The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays Part 70

RANNVEIG (_following her_) The night take you indeed....

GIZUR (_as he enters from the left_) Ay, drive her out; For no man's house was ever better by her.

RANNVEIG Is an old woman's life desired as well?

GIZUR We ask that you will grant us earth hereby Of Gunnar's earth, for two men dead to-night To lie beneath a cairn that we shall raise.

RANNVEIG Only for two? Take it: ask more of me.

I wish the measure were for all of you.

GIZUR Your words must be forgiven you, old mother, For none has had a greater loss than yours.

Why would he set himself against us all....

(_He goes out._)

RANNVEIG Gunnar, my son, we are alone again.

(_She goes up the hall, mounts to the loft, and stoops beside him._)

Oh, they have hurt you--but that is forgot.

Boy, it is bedtime; though I am too changed, And cannot lift you up and lay you in, You shall go warm to bed--I'll put you there.

There is no comfort in my breast to-night, But close your eyes beneath my fingers' touch, Slip your feet down, and let me smooth your hands: Then sleep and sleep. Ay, all the world's asleep.

(_She rises._)

You had a rare toy when you were awake-- I'll wipe it with my hair.... Nay, keep it so, The colour on it now has gladdened you.

It shall lie near you.

(_She raises the bill: the deep hum follows._)

No; it remembers him, And other men shall fall by it through Gunnar: The bill, the bill is singing.... The bill sings!

(_She kisses the weapon, then shakes it on high._)

[CURTAIN]

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION IN READING THE PLAYS

1. _The Forces in the Play._

What is the "pa.s.sion"--that is, what exactly do these people desire who "want their ain way"? What forces favor these desires, and what oppose them--for instance, David Pirnie's determination to tell wee Alexander a bit story, in _The Philosopher of b.u.t.terbiggens_? Can you always put any one character altogether on one side? Or does his own weakness or carelessness or stupidity, for example, sometimes work against his getting what he wants, so that he is, in part, _not_ on his own side, but against it, as Brutus is in _Julius Caesar_? Are there other forces in the play besides the people--storm or accident or fate?

With what side or what character are you in sympathy? Is this constant throughout the play, or do you feel a change at some point in it? Does the author sympathize with any special character? Does he have a prejudice against any one of them? For example, in _Campbell of Kilmhor_, where is your sympathy? Where is the author's, apparently?

2. _The Beginning and the End._

What events important to this play occurred before the curtain rises? Why does the author begin just here, and not earlier or later? How does he contrive to let you know these important things without coming before the curtain to announce them himself, or having two servants dusting the furniture and telling them to each other?

What happens _after_ the curtain falls? Can you go on picturing these events? Are any of them important to the story--for instance, in _The Beggar and the King_? Why did the author stop before telling us these things?

Does the ending satisfy you? Even if you do not find it happy and enjoyable, does it seem the natural and perhaps the inevitable result of the forces at work--in _Riders to the Sea_ and _Campbell of Kilmhor_, for instance? Or has the author interfered to make characters do what they would not naturally do, or used chance and coincidence, like the accidentally discovered will or the long-lost relative in melodramas, to bring about a result he prefers--a "happy ending," or a clap-trap surprise, or a supposed proof of some theory about politics or morals?

Does the interest mount steadily from beginning to end, or does it droop and fail somewhere? You may find it interesting to try drawing the diagram of interest for a play, as suggested in chapter X of Dr. Brander Matthews's _Study of the Drama_, and accounting for the drop in interest, if you find any.

3. _The Playwright's Purpose._

What was the author trying to do in writing the play? It may have been:--

Merely to tell a good story To paint a picture of life in the Arran Islands or in old France or in a modern industrial town To show us character and its development, as in novels like Thackeray's and Eliot's (Of course, brief plays like these cannot show development of character, but only critical points in such development--the result of forces perhaps long at work, or the awakening of new ideas and other determinants of character.) To portray a social situation, such as the relation between workmen and employers, or between men and women To show the inevitable effects of action and motive, as of the determined loyalty of Dugald Stewart and his mother, or the battle of fisher-folk or weavers with grinding poverty.

Of course, no play will probably do any one of these things exclusively, but usually each is concerned most with some one purpose.

What effect has the play on you? Even if its tragedy is painful or its account of human character makes you uncomfortable, is it good for you to realize these things, or merely uselessly unpleasant? Is the play stupidly and falsely cheering because it presents untrue "happy endings" or other distortions of things as they are? Do you think the play has merely temporary, or genuine and permanent, appeal?

NOTES ON THE DRAMAS AND THE DRAMATISTS

_Harold Chapin_: THE PHILOSOPHER OF b.u.t.tERBIGGENS

Harold Chapin, as we learn from _Soldier and Dramatist_ (Lane, 1917), was an American both by ancestry and nativity. But he lived the greater part of his life in England, and died for England at Loos in April, 1915. His activity was always a.s.sociated with the stage. When he was but seven years old he played the little Marcius to his mother's Volumnia at the Shakespeare Festival, at Stratford-on-Avon in 1893. In 1911 he produced Mr. Harold Brighouse's _Lonesome-Like_ and several of his own short plays at the Glasgow Repertory Theatre. For several years before the war he was Mr. Granville Barker's stage manager, and helped him to produce the beautiful Shakespearean plays at the Savoy Theatre in London.

Of Chapin's own dramas, _The New Morality_ and _Art and Opportunity_ have been given recently in New York and in London, and several of the one-act plays at a memorial performance in London in 1916, in matinee at the Punch and Judy Theatre, and before the Drama League in New York in March and April, 1921. Of the shorter plays, mentioned in the bibliographies following these notes, _It's the Poor that 'elps the Poor, The Dumb and the Blind, and The Philosopher of b.u.t.terbiggens_ have been given the highest praise by such critics as Mr. William Archer, who wrote, "No English-speaking man of more unquestionable genius has been lost to the world in this world-frenzy." These true and honest dramas represent the English Repertory theatres at their best in this brief form, and give promise of the great and permanently interesting "human comedy" which Chapin might have completed had his life not been sacrificed. In spite of the simplicity and lightness of the little play here given, there is more shrewd philosophy in old David Pirnie, and more real humanity in his family, than is to be found portrayed in many pretentious social dramas and difficult psychological novels. It is admirable on the stage, as was shown by the Provincetown Players last winter. In the memorial performance for Harold Chapin in London, the author's little son appeared in the part of wee Alexander.

"b.u.t.terbiggens," Mrs. Alice Chapin, the dramatist's mother, replied to an inquiry as to "what b.u.t.terbiggens is or are," "is, are, and always will be a suburb of Glasgow."

There is little difficulty with the modified Scots dialect in this play if one remembers that _ae_ generally takes the place of such sounds as _e_ in _tea_, _o_ in _so_, _a_ in _have_, and so on, and that _a'_ means _all_. A _wean_ is a small _bairn_, _yinst_ is _once_, _ava_ is _at all_, and _thrang_ is "thick" or intimate.

_Distempered_ means calcimined, or painted in water-dissolved color on the plaster.

_Lady Gregory_: SPREADING THE NEWS

In her notes on the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, which she was most influential in building up, Lady Augusta Gregory says that it was the desire of the players and writers who worked there to establish an Irish drama which should have a "firm base in reality and an apex of beauty." This phrase, which admirably expresses the best in the play-making going on to-day, finds most adequate ill.u.s.tration in the work of Synge, of Yeats, and of Lady Gregory herself. The basis in reality of such jolly and robust comedies as her _Seven Irish Plays_ and _New Irish Comedies_ is clearly discernible. They are in the tradition of the best early English comedy, from the miracle plays onward; of Hans Sachs's _Shrovetide Plays_, and of Moliere's dramatizations of medieaval _fabliaux_, as in _The Physician in Spite of Himself_. Lady Gregory describes in her notes on _Spreading the News_ how the play grew out of an idea of picturing tragic consequences from idle rumor and defamation of character. It is certainly not to be regretted that she allowed "laughter to have its way with the little play," and gave Bartley Fallon a share of glory from the woeful day to illuminate dull, older years.

The inhabitants of this same village of Cloon appear as old friends in other of Lady Gregory's plays, with, as usual, nothing to do but mind one another's business. In _The Jackdaw_ another absurd rumor is fanned into full blaze by greed; upon _Hyacinth Halvey_ works the potent and embarra.s.sing influence of too good a reputation. Still other plays attain a notable height of beauty--notably _The Rising of the Moon_ and _The Traveling Man_.

_The Gaol Gate_ tells a story similar to that of _Campbell of Kilmhor_, with genuinely tragic effect. She has written, besides, two volumes of Irish folk-history, _G.o.ds and Fighting Men_ and _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_, which Mr. Yeats calls masterpieces of prose which one "can weigh with Malory and feel no discontent at the tally."[1] A writer who has produced such range and beauty of works, from very human, characteristic comedy and farce to fine, poignant tragedy, besides writing excellent stories and contributing largely to an important experimental theatre, is secure of her share of fame.

The "Removable Magistrate" is apparently one appointed by British officialdom; this one, having just come from the Bay of Bengal, is going to fit upon the natives of Cloon methods which may have worked in a rather different district.

The song "with a skin on it," which Bartley sings, is given in Lady Gregory's _Seven Short Plays_ (Putnam, 1909).