Shakespeare in the Theatre

by William Poel

The anxiety of dramatic critics to explain “the scant success” of Mr. Frohman’s Repertory Theatre has created a large amount of paper argument, of more or less doubtful value, and now Mr. William Archer has added his view to that of others, and concludes his remarks with some practical advice to those who, in his opinion, are entitled to be regarded as “some of our ablest dramatists.” The nature of this advice, however, is not only curious, but startling, when we recall the reception that was given to Ibsen’s plays on their first appearance in this country, and remember that Mr. Archer was their warmest defender. Regardless of this defence, he now contends that “it is a grave misfortune for any writer, but it is a disaster for the dramatist, to get into the habit of despising popular taste and thinking that he has only himself to please in his writings.”[15] But those who take their dramatic art seriously, and who wish their plays to have more than an ephemeral existence, cannot possibly accept this advice. They will recognize that the highest aim of a dramatist is to create a work valuable for all time, and that the most intimate knowledge of the moods and vagaries of playgoers cannot outweigh the smallest fault in the art of dramatic construction or character drawing. The conscientious artist repudiates the interference of public opinion with the expression of his art; he does not try to follow popular taste, but seeks to control and direct it. “The public,” says George Sand, “is no artist; I will not tell you that we must please it, but we must win it. It winces, but gets over it.” This is the advice Mr. Archer should have tendered to English playwrights, and let us hope it is the advice he meant to tender them. Nature has nowhere resigned her prerogative to the demands of popular taste, nor should the artist abandon his privileges. There is no record of a poet or musician having created a masterpiece through pandering to the “groundlings.” Mozart, on completing an opera, would say: “I shall gain but little by this, but I have pleased myself, and that must be my recompense.” It was Schiller who wrote: “My submission to the public convenience does not extend so far that I can allow any holes in my work and mutilate the characters of men.” And Goethe exclaimed: “Nothing is more abhorrent to a reasonable man than an appeal to the majority.” Lessing has said: “I have no objection to criticism condemning an artist, but it must not contaminate him. He must continue his work knowing that he is happier than his detractors.” And Lessing points the moral in adding: “Genius is condemned to utter only absurdities when it is unfaithful to its mission.” Bernard Shaw and Granville Barker, two of the able dramatists to whom Mr. Archer tenders his advice, have won “the ear of their contemporaries” equally with the more popular writers, Barrie and Maugham, and this they have done by the production of one or two plays which did not reach their hundredth performance. Euripides was none the less famous, as a dramatist, because the Athenian playgoers disliked his opinions and banished him from their midst. In fact, a dramatist is only great when he is able to dispense with the requirements of popular taste; nor will he be satisfied with the knowledge that his play leaves some definite impression upon an audience unless it be that particular impression which belongs to tragedy, or comedy, or history, or pastoral drama, or conversational comedy.

Let it be, then, frankly admitted that a dramatist cannot both live in advance of the opinions of his audience and also reflect them. It is very well for Mr. Archer to talk about the vessel which does not float, but his illustration is surely less obvious than he imagines. A Noah’s Ark will float on the ocean to-day as easily as it did in the days of the Flood, but no modern shipbuilder now would risk his reputation in constructing such a boat on the plea that it remains above water. Will the vessel weather the storms? Will it outlive its competitors? These are the vital questions in the art of both shipbuilding and playwriting.

Mr. Archer seems to forget that there is a prejudice among audiences as well as among individuals, and that every period of life has its own peculiar notions. Sometimes playgoers will receive an author’s brightest comedy with coldness. The burden of Charles Lamb’s reflections was—that the audience of his day came to the theatre to be complimented on its goodness. “The Stranger,” “The Castle Spectre,” and “George Barnwell,” are specimens of the dramatic bill of fare which then found favour. On the other hand, the comic dramatists tried to disparage purity in men and women, and the sparkle of their comedies is unwholesome. In the opinion of many sober minds the dramatic literature of the Restoration is a blot upon our national history, while the gloomy productions that delighted the sentimental contemporaries of Charles Lamb are offences against dramatic art. At neither period was the drama national, in so far as it was representative of the tastes of all classes. Congreve and Wycherly wrote for the fashionable, while the admirers of Lillo’s and Lewis’s moral dramas were chiefly respectable shopkeepers. It was in Shakespeare’s day that the nobility and groundlings together resorted to the playhouse, constituting themselves at once the patrons and pupils of the drama. The Elizabethan playgoer had no desire to bias the judgment of the dramatist. It left him free to represent life vividly and truly. It even encouraged him to be studious of the playgoer’s profit as well as of his pleasure. But the playgoers of the Restoration, and of the period that immediately succeeded it, were intolerant of all views but their own. They regarded with disfavour plays which did not uphold their notions of amusement and morality. They called upon the dramatist to accept the opinion of his public, in these matters, as being superior to his own. As a consequence, the drama suffered in the attempt made to reconcile principles that are in themselves inconsistent, and the judgment of the audience was in no sense a criterion of merit in a play. This explains why some good plays have been coldly received on their first appearance. “She Stoops to Conquer” would have failed but for the presence in the theatre of Dr. Johnson and his friends; Sheridan’s “Rivals,” an even more brilliant comedy, did not secure a fair hearing on its first performance. Of Diderot’s comedy, the “Père de Famille,” its author gives us the following information:

“And why did this piece, which nowadays fills the house before half-past four, and which the players always put up when they want a thousand crowns, have so lukewarm a welcome at first?”

“... If I did not succeed at first it was because the style was new to the audience and actors; because there was a strong prejudice, still existing, against what people call tearful comedy; because I had a crowd of enemies at court, in town, among magistrates, among Churchmen, among men of letters.”

“And how did you incur so much enmity?”

“Upon my word, I don’t know, for I have not written satires on great or small, and I have crossed no man on the path of fortune and dignities. It is true that I was one of the people called Philosophers, who were then viewed as dangerous citizens, and on whom the Government let loose two or three subalterns without virtue, without insight, and, what is worse, without talent....

“To say nothing of the fact that these philosophers had made things more difficult for poets and men of letters in general, and that it was no longer possible to make oneself distinguished by knowing how to turn out a madrigal or a nasty couplet.”[16]

This argument applies as forcibly to what goes on in the theatre in London to-day as it did in Paris nearly two hundred years ago. Perhaps, however, enough has been said to discount the suggestion that popular opinion is in any way responsible for the making of a good play.

M. Claretie once expressed a doubt if Englishmen quite understood the limitations of the French National Theatre; because when the Comédie Française visited London in 1893, the Press (including Mr. Archer) ridiculed the intention of the director to give a more classical programme than English taste demanded, presumably forgetting that the selection of plays should be judged by an academic standard. The Comédie Française visited the Metropolis with a repertory apparently designed to illustrate the whole range of French dramatic literature, and yet, at the bidding of an exacting and ignorant public, it was called upon, without a protest from the critics, to withdraw the masterpieces of Molière and Racine in favour of the modern drama; nor was it to the dignity of the Théâtre Française that its members consented to humour the caprices of playgoers, and condescended to bid for popularity when popularity meant bad taste and a craving for “stars.” But the director, having entered into an arrangement with commercial gentlemen for commercial purposes, unexpectedly found himself compelled to forfeit his academic position, and to place his theatre on a level with a commercial playhouse. Fortunately the surrender did not serve its purpose. General dissatisfaction was expressed with the visit of the Comédie Française. The speculator lost his money, the playgoer did not see his “star,” and the student heard no masterpieces.