Having noted the decline of adaptation, we may now trace a stage farther the development of the English drama. The first stage, already surveyed, ends with the production of Sweet Lavender in 1888. Up to this point its author, Pinero (b. 1855), stood practically alone, and had won his chief successes as a humorist. Henry Arthur Jones (b. 1851) was known as little more than an able melodramatist, though in one play, Saints and Sinners (1884), he had made some attempt at a serious study of provincial life. R. C. Carton (b. 1856) had written, in collaboration, one or two plays of slight account. Sydney Grundy (b. 1848) had produced scarcely any original work. The second stage may be taken as extending from 1889 to 1893. On the 24th of April 1889 John Hare opened the new Garrick theatre with The Profligate, by Pinero—an unripe and superficial piece of work in many ways, but still a great advance, both in ambition and achievement, upon any original work the stage had seen for many a year.
With all its faults, it may be said that The Profligate notably enlarged at one stroke the domain open to the English dramatist. And it did not stand alone. The same year saw the production of two plays by H. A. Jones, Wealth and The Middleman, in which a distinct effort towards a serious criticism of life was observable, and of two plays by Sydney Grundy, A Fool’s Paradise and A White Lie, which, though very French in method, were at least original in substance. Jones during the next two years made a steady advance with Judah (1890), The Dancing Girl and The Crusaders (1891). Pinero in these years was putting forth less than his whole strength in The Cabinet Minister (1890), Lady Bountiful and The Times (1891), and The Amazons (March 1893). But meanwhile new talents were coming forward. The management of George Alexander, which opened at the Avenue theatre in 1890, but was transferred in the following year to the St James’s, brought prominently to the front R. C. Carton, Haddon Chambers and Oscar Wilde. Carton’s two sentimental comedies, Sunlight and Shadow (1890) and Liberty Hall (1892), showed excellent workmanship, but did not yet reveal his true originality as a humorist. Haddon Chambers’s work (notably The Idler, 1891) was as yet sufficiently commonplace; but in Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) Oscar Wilde showed himself at his first attempt a brilliant and accomplished dramatist. Wilde’s subsequent plays, A Woman of No Importance (1893) and An Ideal Husband and The Importance of being Earnest (1895), though marred by mannerism and insincerity, did much to promote the movement we are here tracing.
As the production of The Profligate marked the opening of the second period in the revival of English drama, so the production of the same author’s The Second Mrs Tanqueray is very clearly the starting-point of the third period. Before attempting to trace its course we may do well to glance at certain conditions which probably influenced it.
In the first place, economic conditions. The Bancroft-Robertson movement at the old Prince of Wales’s, between 1865 and 1870, was of even more importance from an economic than from a literary point of view. By making their little theatre a luxurious place of resort, and faithfully imitating in their productions the accent, costume and furniture of upper and upper-middle class life, the Bancrofts had initiated a reconciliation between society and the stage. Throughout the middle decades of the century it was the constant complaint of the managers that the world of wealth and fashion could not be tempted to the theatre. The Bancroft management changed all that. It was at the Prince of Wales’s that half-guinea stalls were first introduced; and these stalls were always filled. As other theatres adopted the same policy of upholstery, both on and off the stage, fashion extended its complaisance to them as well. In yet another way the reconciliation was promoted—by the ever-increasing tendency of young men and women of good birth and education to seek a career upon the English stage. The theatre, in short, became at this period one of the favourite amusements of fashionable (though scarcely of intellectual) society in London. It is often contended that the influence of the sensual and cynical stall audience is a pernicious one. In some ways, no doubt, it is detrimental; but there is another side to the case. Even the cynicism of society marks an intellectual advance upon the sheer rusticity which prevailed during the middle years of the 19th century and accepted without a murmur plays (original and adapted) which bore no sort of relation to life. In a celebrated essay published in 1879, Matthew Arnold (whose occasional dramatic criticisms were very influential in intellectual circles) dwelt on the sufficiently obvious fact that the result of giving English names and costumes to French characters was to make their sayings and doings utterly unreal and “fantastic.” During the years of French ascendancy, audiences had quite forgotten that it was possible for the stage to be other than “fantastic” in this sense. They no longer thought of comparing the mimic world with the real world, but were content with what may be called abstract humour and pathos, often of the crudest quality. The cultivation of external realism, coinciding with, and in part occasioning, the return of society to the playhouse, gradually led to a demand for some approach to plausibility in character and action as well as in costume and decoration. The stage ceased to be entirely “fantastic,” and began to essay, however imperfectly, the representation, the criticism of life. It cannot be denied that the influence of society tended to narrow the outlook of English dramatists and to trivialize their tone of thought. But this was a passing phase of development; and cleverly trivial representations of reality are, after all, to be preferred to brainless concoctions of sheer emptiness.
Quite as important, from the economic point of view, as the reconciliation of society to the stage, was the reorganization of the mechanism of theatrical life in the provinces which took place between 1865 and 1875. From the Restoration to the middle of the 19th century the system of “stock companies” had been universal. Every great town in the three kingdoms had its established theatre with a resident company, playing the “legitimate” repertory, and competing, often by illegitimate means, for the possession of new London successes. The smaller towns, and even villages, were grouped into local “circuits,” each served by one manager with his troupe of strollers. The “circuits” supplied actors to the resident stock companies, and the stock companies served as nurseries to the patent theatres in London. Metropolitan “stars” travelled from one country theatre to another, generally alone, sometimes with one or two subordinates in their train, and were “supported,” as the phrase went, by the stock company of each theatre. Under this system, scenery, costumes and appointments were often grotesquely inadequate, and performances almost always rough and unfinished. On the other hand, the constant practice in a great number and variety of characters afforded valuable training for actors, and developed many remarkable talents. As a source of revenue to authors, the provinces were practically negligible. Stageright was unprotected by law; and even if it had been protected, it is doubtful whether authors could have got any considerable fees out of country managers, whose precarious ventures usually left them a small enough margin of profit.
The spread of railways throughout the country gradually put an end to this system. The “circuits” disappeared early in the ’fifties, the stock companies survived until about the middle of the ’seventies. As soon as it was found easy to transport whole companies, and even great quantities of scenery, from theatre to theatre throughout the length and breadth of Great Britain, it became apparent that the rough makeshifts of the stock company system were doomed. Here again we can trace to the old Prince of Wales’s theatre the first distinct impulse towards the new order of things. Robertson’s comedies not only encouraged but absolutely required a style of art, in mounting, stage-management and acting, not to be found in the country theatres. To entrust them to the stock companies was well-nigh impossible. On the other hand, to quote Sir Squire Bancroft, “perhaps no play was ever better suited than Caste to a travelling company; the parts being few, the scenery and dresses quite simple, and consequently the expenses very much reduced.” In 1867, then, a company was organized and rehearsed in London to carry round the provincial theatres as exact a reproduction as possible of the London performance of Caste and Robertson’s other comedies. The smoothness of the representation, the delicacy of the interplay among the characters, were new to provincial audiences, and the success was remarkable. About the same time the whole Haymarket company, under Buckstone’s management, began to make frequent rounds of the country theatres; and other “touring combinations” were soon organized. It is manifest that the “combination” system and the stock company system cannot long coexist, for a manager cannot afford to keep a stock company idle while a London combination is occupying his theatre. The stock companies, therefore, soon dwindled away, and were probably quite extinct before the end of the ’seventies. Under the present system, no sooner is a play an established success in London than it is reproduced in one, two or three exact copies and sent round the provincial theatres (and the numerous suburban theatres which have sprung up since 1895), Company A serving first-class towns, Company B the second-class towns, and so forth. The process is very like that of taking plaster casts of a statue, and the provincial companies often stand to their London originals very much in the relation of plaster to marble. Even the London scenery is faithfully reproduced in material of extra strength, to stand the wear-and-tear of constant removal. The result is that, instead of the square pegs in round holes of the old stock company system, provincial audiences now see pegs carefully adjusted to the particular holes they occupy, and often incapable of fitting any other. Instead of the rough performances of old, they are now accustomed to performances of a mechanical and soulless smoothness.
In some ways the gain in this respect is undeniable, in other ways the loss is great. The provinces are no longer, in any effective sense, a nursery of fresh talents for the London theatres, for the art acquired in touring combinations is that of mimicry rather than of acting. Moreover, provincial playgoers have lost all personal interest and pride in their local theatres, which have no longer any individuality of their own, but serve as a mere frame for the presentation of a series of ready-made London pictures. Christmas pantomime is the only theatrical product that has any really local flavour in it, and even this is often only a second-hand London production, touched up with a few topical allusions. Again, the railways which bring London productions to the country take country playgoers by the thousand to London. The wealthier classes, in the Lancashire, Yorkshire and Midland towns at any rate, do almost all their theatre-going in London, or during the autumn months when the leading London companies go on tour. Thus the better class of comedy and drama has a hard fight to maintain itself in the provinces, and the companies devoted to melodrama and musical farce enjoy an ominous preponderance of popularity.
On the whole, however—and this is the main point to be observed with regard to the literary development of the drama—the economic movement of the five- and twenty years between 1865 and 1890 was enormously to the advantage of the dramatic author. A London success meant a long series of full houses at high prices, on which he took a handsome percentage. The provinces, in which a popular playwright would often have three or four plays going the rounds simultaneously, became a steady source of income. And, finally, it was found possible, even before international copyright came into force, to protect stageright in the United States, so that about the beginning of the ’eighties large receipts began to pour in from America. Thus successful dramatists, instead of living from hand to mouth, like their predecessors of the previous generation, found themselves in comfortable and even opulent circumstances. They had leisure for reading, thought and careful composition, and they could afford to gratify their ambition with an occasional artistic experiment. Failure might mean a momentary loss of prestige, but it would not spell ruin. A distinctly progressive spirit, then, began to animate the leading English dramatists—a spirit which found intelligent sympathy in such managers as John Hare, George Alexander, Beerbohm Tree and Charles Wyndham. Nor must it be forgotten that, though the laws of literary property, internal and international, remained far from perfect, it was found possible to print and publish plays without incurring loss of stageright either at home or in America. The playwrights of the present generation have accordingly a motive for giving literary form and polish to their work which was quite inoperative with their predecessors, whose productions were either kept jealously in manuscript or printed only in miserable and totally unreadable stage editions. It is no small stimulus to ambition to know that even if a play prove to be in advance of the standards of taste or thought among the public to which it is originally presented, it will not perish utterly, but will, if it have any inherent vitality, continue to live as literature.
Having now summed up the economic conditions which made for progress, let us glance at certain intellectual influences which tended in the same direction. The establishment of the Théâtre Libre in Paris, towards the close of 1887, Influence of foreign drama. unquestionably marked the beginning of a period of restless experiment throughout the theatrical world of Europe. A. Antoine and his supporters were in open rebellion against the artificial methods of Scribe and the Second Empire playwrights. Their effort was to transfer to the stage the realism, the so-called “naturalism,” which had been dominant in French fiction since 1870 or earlier; and this naturalism was doubtless, in its turn, the outcome of the scientific movement of the century. New methods (or ideals) of observation, and new views as to the history and destiny of the race, could not fail to produce a profound effect upon art; and though the modern theatre is a cumbrous contrivance, slow to adjust its orientation to the winds of the spirit, even it at last began to revolve, like a rusty windmill, so as to fill its sails in the main current of the intellectual atmosphere. Within three or four years of its inception, Antoine’s experiment had been imitated in Germany, England and America. The “Freie Bühne” of Berlin came into existence in 1889, the Independent Theatre of London in 1891. Similar enterprises were set on foot in Munich and other cities. In America several less formal experiments of a like nature were attempted, chiefly in Boston and New York. Nor must it be forgotten that in Paris itself the Théâtre Libre did not stand alone. Many other théâtres à côté sprang up, under such titles as “Théâtre d’Art,” “Théâtre Moderne,” “Théâtre de l’Avenir Dramatique.” The most important and least ephemeral was the “Théâtre de l’Œuvre,” founded in 1893 by Alex. Lugné-Poë, which represented mainly, though not exclusively, the symbolist reaction against naturalism.
The impulse which led to the establishment of the Théâtre Libre was, in the first instance, entirely French. If any foreign influence helped to shape its course, it was that of the great Russian novelists. Tolstoi’s Puissance des ténèbres was the only “exotic” play announced in Antoine’s opening manifesto. But the whole movement was soon to receive a potent stimulus from the Norwegian poet Henrik Ibsen.