Dorriforth. Why, for one thing, the grossness and brutality of London, with its scramble, its pressure, its hustle of engagements, of preoccupations, its long distances, its late hours, its nightly dinners, its innumerable demands on the attention, its general congregation of influences fatal to the isolation, to the punctuality, to the security, of the dear old playhouse spell. When Florentia said in her charming way—
Florentia. Here’s my dreadful speech at last.
Dorriforth. When you said that you went to the Théâtre Libre in the afternoon because you couldn’t spare an evening, I recognized the death-knell of the drama. Time, the very breath of its nostrils, is lacking. Wagner was clever to go to leisurely Bayreuth among the hills—the Bayreuth of spacious days, a paradise of “development.”
Talk to a London audience of “development!” The long runs would, if necessary, put the whole question into a nutshell. Figure to yourself, for then the question is answered, how an intelligent actor must loathe them, and what a cruel negation he must find in them of the artistic life, the life of which the very essence is variety of practice, freshness of experiment, and to feel that one must do many things in turn to do any one of them completely.
Auberon. I don’t in the least understand your acharnement, in view of the vagueness of your contention.
Dorriforth. My acharnement is your little joke, and my contention is a little lesson in philosophy.
Florentia. I prefer a lesson in taste. I had one the other night at the “Merry Wives.”
Dorriforth. If you come to that, so did I!
Amicia. So she does spare an evening sometimes.
Florentia. It was all extremely quiet and comfortable, and I don’t in the least recognize Dorriforth’s lurid picture of the dreadful conditions. There was no scenery—at least not too much; there was just enough, and it was very pretty, and it was in its place.