Jones. Ah, would yer?
[He drops the box, and rushes on her with a snarl. She slips back past the bed. He follows; a chair is overturned....]
In The Eldest Son we have the same idea not quite so effectively handled—the contrast between the codes of ethics required from the poor and from the rich. There are some good scenes in the play, notably that between Bill and Freda in the first act, and that towards the end, when the whole Cheshire family is brought into action against Freda and her sturdy old father, who at last suddenly solves the difficulty by saying: “I’ll have no charity marriage in my family,” and leading his daughter away. Also the characters of Sir William Cheshire and of his wife are great achievements, both strong and delicate. But the play has not the grip or the reality of The Silver Box.
The failure lies in a certain lack of cohesion and inevitableness in the whole. The rehearsal of Caste, which is introduced in the second act, points the moral rather too obviously. Also the central idea is hampered by the fact that the two illustrative cases are not really parallel. In The Silver Box the theft by young Barthwick is just as blameworthy as that by Jones. Their positions are quite the same, except that, indeed, it is the man of wealth who is the more despicable and deserving of punishment. But no one can say that Bill Cheshire and Freda Studdenham are in the same position as the gamekeeper and the village girl. There are objections to the marriage of Bill and Freda which do not exist in the other case. Certainly there are objections to that too, but the fact remains that the two examples are not parallel.
THE PLAYS
II
There are social and economic ideas at the bottom of The Fugitive, which is to a certain extent symbolical—a study of woman’s position when, for any reason, she is separated from the herd. But in this, as in other of his later plays, Galsworthy’s command of his art is not equal to his enthusiasm for his subject. Moving and forcible as it all is, it has not the balance, the inevitableness, of Strife or The Silver Box. We feel that events are being arranged to suit the basic theory. The career of Clare Dedmond, from her revolt to her downfall, is not a thing foreseen, a thing of fate. We feel somehow that her end is arbitrary—at all events we are not shown the steps that lead to it. The actual catastrophes we witness do not demand it.
None the less the study of Clare is arresting—the woman who is “fine, but not fine enough.” She alienates our sympathies a little in the first act; there is no denying that she behaves childishly, and her husband, uncongenial as he may be, is not quite such a bounder as Malise, in whom, apparently, she finds satisfaction. But somehow that whole first act has an air of unreality about it, a remoteness from life, and a staginess we do not expect from Galsworthy. Later on the movement becomes swifter, and we have the sense of impending tragedy, which is realised in the scene where Clare leaves Malise, though she loves him and he is her only protector, because she discovers that she has become a drag on him and is spoiling his career.
The scene at the Restaurant, too, has its fine points, though[though] it is spoilt by a riot of symbolism and a tendency towards false sentiment. The continuous singing of “This Day a Stag must die” by the revellers at another table is rather an obvious and cheap effect, so too the courtesan’s kiss as the curtain falls. On the whole one feels that The Fugitive is a play in which the author’s plan has been better conceived than carried out.
The central situations of Joy and of The Mob have nothing to do with any social or economic problem, even in a narrowed, personal sense. They deal with conduct, and special cases of conduct. Joy and The Mob, with A Bit o’ Love, stand at the bottom of the scale at the top of which are Justice and Strife. The interest of the two latter is centred in the social and industrial problems they are built on; then come The Silver Box, The Eldest Son, and The Fugitive, in which the social problem undoubtedly exists, but which depend for interest on its personal variations; then come Joy, The Mob, and A Bit o’ Love, in which the interest is purely personal and unconnected with any social idea.
Joy is a play built round an attitude rather than a problem. “A Play on the Letter I” is the sub-title, and from first to last we see how the consideration of self is the governing motive of widely different characters. We see it working openly, in characters that are frankly and aggressively egotistic; we see it acting more subtly in characters of a different stamp. The one person who is free from it is the old governess, Miss Beech, who lives only in her interest in those around her. Somehow, as is often the case with characters purposely in contrast with his general scheme, Galsworthy is occasionally artificial in dealing with Miss Beech. Her “devilishness” is more than once a trifle forced—the author so obviously wants her to be original, unlike both the conventional stage governess, and the conventionally selfless person. She fills to a certain extent the position of Chorus, and her vocation takes from her humanity. She becomes, as the play goes on, more and more of a Voice.