A Book About the Theater Part 2

_Grindorf_: Hear me, Count Friberg; if you do not withdraw your followers, by my hand she dies!

_Count_: Never, till thou art yielded to justice!

_Grindorf_: No more--this to her heart!

_Lothair_: And this to thine!

_Exit Lothair and Claudine, and Grindorf._

_Re-enter Grindorf and Lothair fighting, plate 6, fight and exit._

_Grindorf to be put on wounded, plate 7._

_Re-enter Lothair with Claudine, plate 6._

_Lothair_: Ravina, fire the train!

_Scene changes to explosion, Scene 11, No. 9._

The words are striking and the actions are startling, and it is no wonder that plate 7 and scene 11, No. 9, filled with joy the heart of Robert Louis Stevenson when he was a perfervid Scot of fourteen. In his manly maturity, when he had risen to an appreciation of portraits by Raeburn, and when he had sat at the feet of that inspired critic of painting, his cousin, R. A. M. Stevenson, he admitted that he had no desire to insist upon the art of Skelt's purveyors. "Those wonderful characters that once so thrilled our soul with their bold att.i.tude, array of deadly engines and incomparable costume, to-day look somewhat pallidly," he confessed regretfully; "the extreme hard favor of the heroine strikes me, I had almost said with pain; the villain's scowl no longer thrills me like a trumpet; and the scenes themselves, those once incomparable landscapes, seem the efforts of a prentice hand. So much of fault we can find; but, on the other side, the impartial critic rejoices to remark the presence of a great unity of gusto; of those direct claptrap appeals which a man is dead and buriable when he fails to answer; of the footlight glamor, the ready-made, barefaced, transpontine picturesque, a thing not one with cold reality, but how much dearer to the mind!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: A group of the princ.i.p.al characters from Pollock's juvenile drama, the 'Miller and His Men,' cut out and a.s.sembled as called for in Scene 10, a part of which is quoted in the text]

II

"Transpontine" is a Briticism for which the equivalent Americanism is "Bowery." The plays which Skelt vended for the enjoyment of romantic youth were not of his own invention, nor were they the work of his hirelings; they were artfully simplified condensations of melodramas long popular in London at the theaters on the Surrey side of the Thames, and in New York at the Bowery. In French's Standard Drama, the Acting Edition, to be obtained in yellow covers for fifteen cents, one may find "the 'Miller and His Men,' a Melo-Drama in Two Acts, by F. Poc.o.c.k, Esq., author of the 'Robber's Wife,' 'John of Paris,' 'Hit or Miss,' 'Magpie and the Maid,' etc., with original casts, scene and property plots, costumes, and all the stage business." And the list of properties required for the final scene helps to elucidate what may have been cryptic in the dialog quoted from the compacted adaptation of Skelt:

_Scene 4_:--_Slow match laid from stage in C. to mill. Lighted torch for Ravina. Red fire and explosion 3 E. L. H. Wood crash 3 E. L. H. Six stuffed figures of robbers behind mill, L. H.

Eight guns, swords, and belts for hussars. Disguise cloak for Lothair. Fighting swords for Lothair and Wolf._ [Wolf is evidently another name for Grindorf.]

Thus we see that the pleasant country of the Skelts stretched from the Surrey side of the Thames to the Bowery bank of the Hudson, and that the Skeltic temperament was purely melodramatic, its ba.s.s notes being transposed to adjust it to the clear treble of boyhood. It is greatly to be regretted that no inquiring scholar has yet devoted himself to the task of tracing the history of English melodrama, as Professor Thorndike has traced the history of English tragedy. Of course, there have always been melodramatic plays ever since the drama began to a.s.sert itself as an independent form of art. There is a melodramatic element in the 'Medea' of Euripides, as there is in the 'Rodogune' of Corneille; and in the Elizabethan theater the so-called tragedy of blood is nothing if not melodramatic. Yet the special form of English melodrama that flourished in the later years of the eighteenth century and the earlier years of the nineteenth deserves a more careful study than it has yet received.

Apparently it was due partly to a decadence of the native type of drama represented by Lillo's 'George Barnwell,' and partly to the stimulation received first from the emotional pieces of the German Kotzebue, and afterward from the picturesque pieces of the French Pixerecourt. And not to be neglected is the influence immediately exerted on the popular plays of the latter part of the period by the romances of Scott and of Cooper.

Altho these plays were devoid of literary merit, of style, of veracity of character delineation, of sincerity of motive, they were not without theatrical effectiveness--or they could never have maintained themselves in the theater. As Sir Arthur Pinero has seen clearly, "a drama which was sufficiently popular to be transferred to the toy theaters was almost certain to have a sort of rude merit in its construction. The characterization would be hopelessly conventional, the dialog bald and despicable--but the situations would be artfully arranged, the story told adroitly and with spirit." In other words, the compounders of these melodramas were fairly skilful in devising plots likely to arouse and to sustain the interest of uncritical audiences.

Probably they were unfamiliar with Voltaire's a.s.sertion that the success of a play depends mainly upon the choice of its story; and it is unlikely that they had any knowledge of Aristotle's declaration that plot is primarily more important than character; but they accomplished their humble task as well as if they had been heartened by these authorities. These ingenious and ingenuous pieces were none of them contributions to English dramatic literature, and they are not enshrined in its annals; but they were effective stage-plays, nevertheless, and they had, therefore, an essential quality lacking in the closet-dramas which Sh.e.l.ley and Byron were composing in those same years.

III

In the illuminating lecture on Stevenson as a writer of plays delivered by Sir Arthur Pinero in 1903 before the members of the Edinburgh Philosophical Inst.i.tution, the confessions contained in 'A Penny Plain and Two Pence Colored' are skilfully employed to explain Stevenson's flat failure as a playwright. Many of his ardent admirers must have wondered why it was that he adventured four times into dramatic authors.h.i.+p, only to undergo a fourfold s.h.i.+pwreck. Yet Sir James Barrie and Mr. John Galsworthy, essayists and novelists at first, as Stevenson was, strayed successfully from prose fiction into the acted drama. Was not Stevenson as anxious for this theatrical triumph as any one of these? Was he not as richly dowered with dramatic power, as inventive, as responsive to opportunity, as ready to master a new craft? Why, then, did he fail where they have succeeded?

For these baffling questions Sir Arthur Pinero has an acceptable answer.

Stevenson was unable to establish himself as a play-maker, first, because he did not take the art of play-making seriously; he did not put his full strength in it, mind and soul and body, contenting himself when he was a man with playing at play-making as he had played with his toy theater when he was a boy. The second cause of his disappointment as a dramatist was due to the abiding influence of this toy theater, and to the fact that the pieces he attempted were planned in rivalry with the 'Miller and His Men,' and therefore that they were hopelessly out of date before they were conceived. (There is a third reason, not mentioned by Sir Arthur, and yet suggesting itself irresistibly to any one who knew the editor of the _Magazine of Art_ personally; all four of Stevenson's attempts at play-writing were made in collaboration with Henley, who was the least equipped by temper and by temperament for the practise of dramaturgy.)

_Scene II_ POLLOCK'S SCENES _IN THE MILLER AND HIS MEN. N9_

[Ill.u.s.tration: _London. Published by B Pollock,73 Hoxton Street Hoxton_ Explosion of the mill. A back drop in the 'Miller and His Men,' Scene II]

Yet even if Stevenson had worked alone, and even if he had taken the new art seriously, he could never have won a place among the playwrights until he had fought himself free from the sinuous coils of Skeltery. In his youth he had saved his pence to purchase the accessories of Skelt's Juvenile Drama with boyish delight in the acquisition of things longed for to be possessed at last. When he had purchased plate 7 and scene 11, No. 9, he thought they were his possessions. But, of a truth, he was their possession, even if he did not know his slavery. As a man he was subdued to what he had worked in as a boy; and when he wanted to write plays of his own, he had no freedom to follow the better models of his own day; he was a bondman to Skelt, a thrall to Park, a minion to Webb, a chattel to Redington and to Pollock. "What am I?" he asked in his self-revelatory essay, humorously exaggerating, no doubt, yet subconsciously stating the exact truth; "What am I? What are life, art, letters, the world, but what my Skelt has made them? He stamped himself upon my immaturity." And the impression was then so deep that it could not be effaced in maturity. The boy in Stevenson survived, instead of dying when the man was born.

The art of play-writing, like the art of story-telling, and, indeed, like all the other arts, demands both a native gift and an acquired craft. Its basic principles are the same ever since the drama began; but its immediate methods vary at different times and in different countries. While every artist must say what it is given him to say, he can say it acceptably only by acquiring the method of speech employed by his immediate predecessors. However original he may prove himself at the end, in the beginning he can only imitate the methods and borrow the processes and avail himself of the practises which the elder craftsmen are employing successfully at the moment when he sets himself to learn their trade. He must--to use the apt term of the engineers--he must keep himself abreast of "state of the art." This is what the great dramatists have ever done; Sophocles follows in the footsteps of aeschylus, as Shakspere emulates Marlowe and Kyd, and as Moliere went to school to the adroit and acrobatic Italian comedians. These great dramatists were perfectly content to begin by taking over the patterns devised by their immediate predecessors in play-making, even if they were soon to enlarge these patterns and so modify them to suit their even larger needs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: POLLOCK'S CHARACTERS IN THE MILLER AND HIS MEN. _Plate 7_

Plate No. 7, complete as published, ready to be cut out and put into use in the toy theater]

Now, the state of the art when Stevenson turned to the theater was in accord with the picture-frame stage of to-day, with a single set to the act, and without the soliloquies and the confidential asides to the audience which may then have been proper enough on the ap.r.o.n-stage of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Even in the lower grade of playhouse, where rude and crude melodramas were performed, the method and the manner of the 'Miller and His Men' had long departed. The pleasure that melodrama can give is perennial; but its processes vary in accord with the changing conditions of the theater. The door was open for Stevenson to write melodrama, if he preferred that species of play, and if he desired to varnish it with literature as he was to varnish the police-novel or mystery-story in the 'Wrecker.' But if he sought to do this, he was bound to inform himself as to the state of the art at the instant of composition. If he shut his eyes to the changed conditions of the theater since the 'Miller and His Men' had won a wide popularity in the playhouse, then he made an unpardonable blunder, for the battle was lost before he could deploy his forces. He might have been forewarned by the failure of Charles Lamb in a like attempt. When Lamb's Elizabethan imitation 'John Woodvil' was rejected for Drury Lane by John Philip Kemble as not "consonant with the taste of the age"; its exasperated author cried: "Hang on the age! I'll write for antiquity!" But those who write for antiquity cannot complain if they do not delight their contemporaries. It is to his contemporaries, and not to antiquity or to posterity, that every true dramatist has appealed.

IV

And as Stevenson might have taken warning from the sad fate of Lamb, so he might have found his profit in considering the happy fortune of Victor Hugo, who also had a taste for melodrama. When the leader of the French romanticists felt that it was inc.u.mbent upon him to conquer the theater which the cla.s.sicists held as their last stronghold, he was swift to consider the state of the art. He sought immediate success upon the stage, and the most successful plays of that period in France were the melodramas of Pixerecourt, and of his followers, and therefore Hugo sat himself down to spy out the secrets of their craft. He made himself master of their methods, and he put together the striking and startling plots of 'Hernani' and 'Ruy Blas' in strict accord with their formulas, certain that he could varnish with literature their melodramatic actions. So glittering was his varnish, so brilliant was his metrical rhetoric, so glowing were his golden verses, that he blinded the spectators and kept the most of them from peering beneath at his arbitrary and artificial skeleton of supporting melodramatic structure.

To-day, after fourscore years, we can see just what it is that Hugo did; and his plays, superb as they are in their lyric adornment, stand revealed as frank melodramas, lacking sincerity of motive and veracity of character drawing. But when Hugo wrote them they were in Kemble's phrase "consonant with the taste of the age," and the best of them have not yet worn out their welcome in the theater.

Stevenson did not heed the warning of Lamb, and he did not profit by the example of Hugo. 'Deacon Brodie' was born out of date; so was 'Admiral Guinea'; and all the varnish of literature which the two collaborators applied externally and with loving solicitude availed naught. It is due to his entanglement in the strangling coils of Skeltery that Stevenson did not take the drama seriously. He seemed to have looked at it as something to be tossed off lightly to make money in the interstices of honest work. In his stories, long and short, he strove for effect, no doubt, but he was bent also on achieving sincerity and veracity. In his plays he made little effort for either sincerity or veracity, so far at least as his plot was concerned; and he thought he could lift these concoctions to the level of literature by the polish of his dialog, and by qualities applied on the outside instead of being developed from the inside. He seems to have believed that in the drama, at least, he could attain beauty by constructing his ornament instead of by ornamenting his construction, ignoring or ignorant of the fact that in the drama, the construction, if only it be solid enough, and four square to all the winds that blow, needs no ornament and is most impressive in its stark simplicity.

In his boyhood Goethe had also played with a toy theater, and it was a puppet-show piece which first called his attention to the mighty theme of his supreme poem; but the great German poet, captivated as he may have been by his youthful experience, was able in his manhood to free himself from its shackles. He came in time to have a profound insight into the principles of dramatic art, and of the dramaturgic craft. In his old age he talked about the theater freely and frequently to Eckermann; and there are few of his utterances which do not furnish food for reflection. Here is one of them:

Writing for the stage is something peculiar; and he who does not understand it had better leave it alone. Every one thinks that an interesting fact will appear interesting on the boards--nothing of the kind! Things may be very pretty to read, and very pretty to think about; but as soon as they are put upon the stage the effect is quite different; and that which has charmed us in the closet will probably fall flat on the boards.... Writing for the stage is a trade that one must understand, and requires a talent that one must possess. Both are uncommon, and where they are not combined, we have scarcely any good result.

That Stevenson had the native gift of the dramatist is undisputable, and Sir Arthur Pinero in his lecture was able to make this clear. But "writing for the stage is also a trade that one must acquire"; and when Stevenson sought to acquire it he apprenticed himself to Skelt not to Sardou, to Redington and Pollock, not to Augier and Dumas.

(1914.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Grindoff and banditti carousing. Lower half of Plate No.

5, Pollock's characters in the 'Miller and His Men']

P.S.--After the publication of this paper in _Scribner's Magazine_, a friendly reader in Great Britain was kind enough to copy out for me this Skeltian lyric, which appeared in the London _Fun_ in 1868, and which was probably rimed by Henry S. Leigh:

AN EARLY STAGE

Ah me! since first, long, long ago, I learned to love the British stage, It has--or I have--altered so, It scarce receives my patronage!

Where are the villain's spangled tabs, His cloak, his ringlets, and his belt?

Where are his scowls, his growls, his stabs, As shown of old by Park and Skelt?

Once was I manager myself, And played the 'Miller and his Men'; My company--ah, happy elf!

I had no trouble with them then-- They never sulked, forgot their lines, Threw up their parts, or asked for "gelt"-- For as the reader p'r'aps divines-- I got them all of Park and Skelt.

I stuck them on, and cut them out, I painted them with colors bright; I scattered tinsel-specks about, And made them things of beauty, quite-- Not joys forever--ne'ertheless, They've vanished just as snowflakes melt.

None can restore the bliss, I guess, I once derived from Park and Skelt.

How I revered the artist's skill Who did my heroes represent-- With scowls the very soul to thrill-- With one leg straight and one leg bent!

I loved his ladies full of grace, And on their beauties fondly dwelt:-- My first pictorial love could trace Her pedigree to Park and Skelt.

Ah me! 'tis many a year since I Those dear old plates--a penny plain And two-pence colored--did espy; I ne'er shall see their like again!

The world's with disappointment rife, And I have far too often felt That actors now are less like life Than those I bought of Park and Skelt!

IV

WHY FIVE ACTS?