Denison’s plays are Canadian by virtue of the author’s parentage and family traditions (his mother being the late Flora McD. Denison), and by the plays themselves being on Canadian themes, with Canadian characters moving in Canadian surroundings. They are realistic satiric dramas of life and thought in Canadian ‘backwoods’ and rural settlements. The dramatist presents the life and speech and conduct of these characters with such broad realism that the plays themselves are a mordant satire on existence and society in isolated Canadian communities. But Denison’s plays are also a satire within a satire. It is not life in certain Canadian communities that he is really satirizing, but an attitude of the Canadian people themselves.
The people of Canada dearly love ‘high’ romance and spurious sentimentality. They find this spurious sentimentality in some Canadian fiction, and the romance in the poetic dramas of Mair, Mrs. Curzon, Wilfred Campbell, Dr. Dollard, Robert Norwood, and others. Boldly, therefore, and with evident sincerity, Merrill Denison conceived the idea of satirizing the lovers of spurious sentimentality by presenting them with plays which would be the antithesis of ‘high’ romance and affected sentimentality—with life so broadly or coarsely realistic that the people of Canada would not like the life or the plays.
Two of the plays—Brothers in Arms and the Weather Breeder—portray life in the Canadian backwoods districts as Mr. Denison has observed that life. Two of the plays—From Their Own Place and Marsh Hay—portray, according to Mr. Denison, life in the poorer or more sordid farming districts of Canada. The dramatist has explained his motive and aim. He says: ‘These plays have their origin in the needs of a theatre—not the theatre. Brothers in Arms was written because a Canadian comedy was needed to fill a bill and none could be found. In writing it as an innovation, I wrote of a part of Canada I knew, and introduced as characters actual Canadians. The result was new, but, as might have been expected, Canadian. It must be remembered that these plays were written for a Canadian theatre, not Broadway, and that any literature of the theatre in Canada must follow the same course—be written for Canadian production.’
It may be regretted that Denison went to sordid and vulgar society in Canada for his dramatic subjects or material. But he had just cause to satire Canadian life by means of realistic Canadian plays. For the intellectual dishonesty, and the ‘immoral moral psychology,’ which creates the spurious or hectic sentimentality in certain Canadian fiction would compel a sane-minded man to show the other side of the picture, and to show it with pervasive and vivid realism. Denison perceived and felt the profound untruth or falsity of certain forms of 20th century Canadian fiction. In his view, it was all too ‘nice’ and saccharine as art; it had neither truth nor strength. Denison felt that no such men and women as appear in many of the novels of the Realistic Romances exist in Canada. In his opinion, the substance of these novels is puerile and vain invention. He, therefore, decided to present to the Canadian public real men and women as they really live, move and have their being in Canada—even if they are, as indeed they are, sordid and vulgarized men and women. Denison’s plays, then, are a Protest; they are also a Satire. What the dramatist is protesting against is not the life that he presents in his plays. What he is satirizing is not Canadian life as such. He is protesting against intellectual dishonesty and spurious sentimentality in Canadian fiction. He is satirizing the life and characters which these Canadian fictionists have presented in their romances.
Denison presents his material in three one-act plays with four to six characters, and in one four-act play with fourteen characters. It is the business of the dramatic critic to estimate Denison’s success in dramaturgy, to determine whether they are well-constructed and actable plays. On the strictly literary side, his plays in The Unheroic North, despite their sordid or vulgarized characters, and despite the sections of society and life presented in them, intrigue the attention and make interesting and diverting reading. As satires on the methods and ideals of certain Canadian romantic fictionists, on the social life at least of certain Canadian communities Denison’s realistic dramas are a significant beginning of creative Stage Drama in Canada.