Judgments in Vacation

by Sir Edward Abbott Parry

He was a well good wright a carpentére.”

Chaucer.

The play is very nearly extinct. This is an age of dramatists. The reason is not far to seek. The playwright is merely a craftsman. The dramatist—so his friends in the press tell him—is a genius. And in these years genius is plentiful and craftsmanship becomes a rarer thing every day.

Just at the moment it is certainly not considered important to be a playwright. It is better to be an aviator. In the eighteenth century it was better to be a performing bear. But in my view now as in the eighteenth century the alternatives to the theatre will not destroy the theatre and a sound entertaining play will always find theatre-goers. There is room for plays written by a playwright, and as it is open to anyone who cares to learn the business to become a respectable craftsman—just as a man can learn to play the fiddle or make an etching on copper—there will generally be a few writers for the stage of literary merit who can turn out a stage play capable of weathering the varied storms of taste and criticism by which it is assailed in its endeavours to make safe harbour in the Box Office.

A playwright is according to Dr. Johnson “a maker of plays.” The word “wright” is satisfactorily enough a Saxon word derived from wyrht, the third person indicative of wyrcan, meaning “one that worketh.” The mere derivation of the word is enough to account for the absence of the thing itself. This is not an age of work. We retain in a degraded form the Saxon word, but the Saxon idea is foreign to our civilisation. Still in things that really matter we cling to the old world notion of a “wright” or person who knows his business, as in our word “ship-wright.” Unfortunately in the affairs of the theatre which in the present age do not really matter very much, any clever man may exploit his wares without learning his business. Money is lost over it, and the theatre as an institution suffers. But playgoers like voters and ratepayers will continue the struggle to obtain a well-made article built according to their tastes, and in course of time workmanship in playwriting will have its value again. Meanwhile it seems a pity that among so many brilliant and intelligent writers for and about the stage, hardly one will take the trouble to master a few essential problems of what is really, compared to the technicalities of music or painting, a simple business.

If a man were to claim to be a ship-wright for instance, it would be accounted to him as a matter of blame if, after money and time had been spent on building his vessel, it were to be found bottom up on the evening of the launching. Explain it as he might, his career as a ship-wright would be endangered. With a playwright it is quite otherwise. If a man hangs out a sign that he is a wheelwright, you go to him in the expectation that he can make a wheel. It may not be a highly artistic wheel. It may be roughly painted, there may be no poetical carving in its wood-work, still you do expect him to turn you out a wheel. You would be disappointed if the article were oblong or rhomboid in shape. You would hesitate to trust yourself to it if it had no hub, no spokes, no tyres—none of the attributes of a wheel, and you would certainly be utterly disgusted if it did not run. But a playwright who makes his play without dramatic hubs or spokes or tyres, is often accredited a genius by those who have never learned how, and how only, a play can be made, and the fact that his play does not run is set down to the centrifugal ignorance of the spectators by the side of the road who came there desiring to see it run.

There are of course many playwrights to-day who are masters of their craft and audiences who can approve of them, but unfortunately the men who make it their business to write criticisms of the theatre are peculiarly and in some cases boastfully ignorant of the business of the playwright. In this way they mislead the aspirant dramatist into the idea that his audience is to blame for not appreciating his play, when his audience is only the mercury in the barometer recording the general depression that must result in a theatre from a badly made play. However beautiful the words and the sentiments of a play may be, and whatever their moral and literary value, they are quite useless unless they are put in a form to get over the footlights. Quite silly sentiments and foolish language may be made serviceable by a playwright who knows his craft, and it would be valuable if some of the writers about theatrical affairs were to turn their attention from the discovery of new genius to the interesting business of the making of stage plays. One does not expect this to happen just yet, for the stage as a craft is a dull thing from a literary point of view, compared to the politics of the theatre and the apportioning of praise and blame—especially the latter—to writers, actors, and theatre-goers. Besides, there is a cult and creed among these writers, and to be in the movement, you must of necessity abjure the well-made play. I read a very clever essay the other day by a modern writer about the theatre, proving that “the well-made play” was the abomination of desolation. The essay was full of learning and epigram, and the questions were cleverly begged and answered in an apparent spirit of generosity, but it did not convince me. Supposing the title of the essay instead of being “the well-made Play” had been “the well-made Coat” or “the well-made Porridge” and the author had set out to prove to you that you were a stodgy Early Victorian duffer, because you pretended to like well-made coats and well-made porridge, might you not reasonably have sighed over his perversity. But this would never happen, for you will find that in the matter of coats and porridge, your writer is full of learning, and will write on these subjects if at all, with a sound knowledge of the craft he is criticising. Indeed I think the playwright and the actor are the only craftsmen whose work is widely written about by people who deliberately refrain from learning the grammar of the crafts they are writing about. Even the critic of pictures has generally failed to paint them, and that in itself is a liberal education. But many brilliant entertaining writers about the stage seem to base their right to be read with attention upon the scant attention they have themselves given to the subject matter of their criticisms. Thankful as I am, for the amusement contained in their epigrams, I am still of opinion that for men to set out to judge a play who have no idea how a play is made, and no desire to learn how a play is made, is bound to end in amazement.

I remember taking an eminent antiquarian to Old Trafford on the occasion of a county cricket match. It was in the historic days of A. N. Hornby and Lancashire were in the field. My friend—who by-the-bye had written dramatic criticism in his early days—knew little or nothing about cricket but was not wanting in that kind of courage that goes to the making of a great critic. Viewing the game solemnly for about a quarter of an hour, he at length delivered judgment. “If I were Hornby,” he said, “I should never have chosen those two fellows in the long white coats for a Lancashire team; they haven’t tried to stop a ball for the last ten minutes.” I am often reminded of that story when I read a criticism of a play. Nor do I for a moment harbour any feelings of wrath against average critics. Like my friend they too have great literary and scholastic qualities that I can humbly envy and admire, but there is one thing that they have not taken the trouble to learn because it is too simple and easy for their really superior intelligence—the rules of the game.

And playwriting is a game like chess or cricket or many another great game and many a duffer can learn its elementary moves and rules and the more studious can master its gambits and strategy, but not even the greatest can succeed at the game, or understand what the game is about if they will not learn the rules. This is an age in which quackery and slush and conceit are having a long innings, and it is a common boast that some new genius has found a new way of saving souls, or painting pictures or making plays that is to revolutionise the practice of these things. Originality is a good thing, and who shall say a harsh word to the youth who dreams in the waking hours of his inexperience of a new way of doing old things. There are many new things to be done in the world, but not so very many for the playwright or the wheelwright. The world has long ago laid down the lines on which a play or a wheel is to be built and whilst it is open to us to use any material we choose, that will bear the necessary strain and decorate it with all the artistic ability we possess the structure must be sound—the work of the wright must be done—or all is vanity. The most eloquent writer of sermons in the world cannot make a play of his preachings merely by chopping them into acts and giving them to different eminent actors and actresses to recite.