THE DRAMA. THE HE present visit of the Comédie Française awakens in me a reminiscent mood, which I may perhaps, be allowed very briefly to indulge. The previous visit of the company, in 1879, happens to be a landmark in my memory, for to it I owe my enrolment in the noble army of London theatrical critics. Therefore I remember with peculiar vividness the condition of the theatrical world at that time, both in France and England; and it is curious, and, I may add, encouraging to "our side," to note the changes which these fourteen years have brought. Let us, as courtesy requires, give our guests the precedence. On looking down the long roll of the company's repertory, what is the fact that strikes us? Why, that the official drama in France, if we may call it so, has stood absolutely still. Not a single dramatist of real note has come to the front during all these years; for even the critics who profess to take a perverse pleasure in a "rampagious" puppet-show like Par le Glaive will scarcely claim for M. Richepin a place in the very front rank. The works of permanent interest and importance which have been added. to the repertory since 1879 have all been by writers who attained maturity before that date. Their sum total is no more than threeDumas' Denise and Francillon and Pailleron's Le Monde où l'on s'ennuic We know, of course, that there has been a very marked dramatic movement in France during these years-that a whole new literature has sprung into existence in and around the Théâtre Libre. But the Théâtre-Français, and indeed the paying theatre as a whole, has been entirely outside the movement. The Français took one timid step in the new direction, in reviving La Parisienne of Becque; but the revival did not succeed, and perhaps was not intended to. The Odéon has been less inhospitable to the innovators; but, take it all round, the new literature has had to be content with single performances or the briefest runs, while not one young dramatist has appeared (unless it be M. Henri Lavedan) who has the art of interesting both the many and the few. I cannot hold with some critics that unpopular drama is not properly drama at all. A play which moves and interests one audience of thinkers and artists seems to me to have fulfilled the highest function of drama at least as well as a play which attracts a hundred audiences of —well, of average playgoers. Thus we cannot say that the period has been one of general decline; but for the Théâtre-Français in particular, which ought to be the home of the national dramatic literature, it has certainly not been a period of healthy activity and progress. Returning to us after fourteen years, the French comedians have practically nothing fresh to present, but are obliged to go over the old stock pieces, such as Le Gendre de Monsieur Poirier, Mlle. de la Seiglière, L'Ami Fritz, and so forth, their most important novelties being plays of the Second Empire such as Un Père Prodigue and Les Effrontés, which happen to have been newly taken down from the shelf. The company, too, can at best be said to have tolerably maintained its standard. Got, Febvre, Worms, Mounet-Sully, Mesdames Baretta and Reichemberg, are still at their posts, while Le Bargy, Paul Mounet, Albert Lambert fils, Leloir, and Berr, Mesdames Bartet, De Marsy, Pierson, Muller, and Jane Hading must be reckoned valuable recruits. But where are Sarah Bernhardt, Croizette, Madeleine Brohan, Jouassain, Jeanne Samary, Delaunay, Coquelin, Thiron, Barré? "Il n'y a pas à dire," the Comédie of to-day, though rich in admirable talents, is a less brilliant constellation than it was fourteen years ago. What, now, of the English drama of that date? The answer is simple-there was no English drama worth mentioning. I cannot understand, on looking back, what could tempt anyone to regard theatrical criticism as offering a possible career even to the humblest talents. It must have been like snake-hunting in Iceland. Personally I was allured to the "dreadful trade" by an intense, insensate passion for the theatre; but “Ah me, ah me, what frugal cheer Without regarding our present position with any overweening complacency, we must admit that the English theatre has made enormous progress during these fourteen years. Who were then the leading playwrights? Mr. Gilbert had already turned his attention almost exclusively to opera, and Mr. Wills had reached a point at which his work. was scarcely distinguishable from that of Mr. Calmour. Mr. Albery was doing nothing but an occasional adaptation; managers were competing for the masterpieces of H. J. Byron, and Messrs. Farnie and Reece were in high request as vaudevillists and librettists. Mr. Sydney Grundy had done one or two clever adaptations, but could find no opening for original work. Mr. Pinero was playing small parts at the Lyceum; Mr. Henry Arthur Jones was studying from the life the misdemeanours of middlemen, with no thought of scourging them on the stage; and Mr. Oscar Wilde was a young man of no importance. A year or two later we greeted Messrs. Merivale and Grove's Forget-Me-Not as a work of extraordinary merit (and so it was in its day), while we acclaimed Mr. G. R. Sims's Lights o' London in terms that would now seem a trifle extravagant if applied to The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. In those days there was no NEW REVIEW; and if there had been, it would have taken no cognisance of the drama. Three years later, in the autumn of 1882, I published a book about the drama of the day (heavens, what a subject!—and what a book !), in which I remarked that the stage was altogether ignored by the leading magazines and reviews. That was, at the time, the literal truth. The Nineteenth Century had printed an article by Matthew Arnold on the visit of the Comédie Française, but no serious magazine dreamed of admitting the existence of an English theatre. Now every month brings forth its crop of magazine articles on the drama, and this REVIEW has introduced, what in 1882 I suggested as a thing almost beyond hope, a monthly chronicle of dramatic events. Of course it does not follow that because the drama is no longer despised it is no longer despicable; but the fact remains that in 1893 there is always some matter for the monthly chronicler, and generally more than he can conveniently deal with in the allotted space; while in 1879, or even in 1882, he would have had to make bricks without straw nine months out of the twelve. It would take far too long to trace the stages of this advance. I must remember that I am myself, for the present, a monthly chronicler, not the historian of a decade. But when I think of the events it falls to my lot to chronicle, I cannot but reflect and declare that, in one way and another, theatrical life in England is nowadays comparatively worth living. If anyone in June, '79, had foretold the present June, '93, how we should have scoffed at his prophecy! "The Comédie Française," he might have said, "will be with you again; an Italian actress of the rarest genius will be playing Dumas, Ibsen, and Shakespeare; three great dramas by Ibsen, not adapted but faithfully translated, will be presented within one week at a theatre subsidised by leading members of the political and social world; the manager of the Haymarket will produce a fourth play by Ibsen; a performance will be given by a Society devoted to the production of artistic and interesting plays which are unfitted for the commercial stage; and, best of all, the great success of the day will be an original play by an English author, which will compare very favourably in point of intellectual and technical competence with the ablest modern work presented by the Comédie Française." If any soothsayer, I repeat, had ventured on such a forecast, we should have recommended him, with contumely, to prophesy to the marines. But the incredible, as we see, has come to pass; and that being so, nothing else is incredible. Who knows but that in another fourteen years-in 1907 or thereabouts-we may have an Endowed Theatre and a Dramatic Literature? * The portion of the prophecy referring to Ibsen would have seemed trebly incredible if we could have foreseen the nature of the three plays predicted. At that time there were probably not a dozen people in England to whom the name " Ibsen" conveyed any definite idea; and no one in the world-probably not Ibsen himself-could have foreseen Rosmersholm, Hedda Gabler, and The Master Builder. The Pillars of Society was then his latest published work, and he was at Amalfi, writing A Doll's House. If his development had ceased at this point, and he had continued to produce plays constructed on the formula of the first two acts of A Doll's House, there would have been nothing so surprising in his taking hold upon the English stage. But it would have been hard enough at that time to believe that even Ibsen, under the outward semblance of realistic prose drama, could produce so subtle and complex a tragedy as Rosmersholm, so strange and fascinating a poem as The Master Builder; and how much harder to conceive it possible that such plays should ever be greeted with enthusiastic applause in an English theatre! The rabidest Ibsenoclast is not more astonished than I at their success. The acceptance of Hedda Gabler is not nearly so surprising. No audience of even the most ordinary intelligence could fail to be interested in it; for it has all the superficial attractiveness of a good French play. But Rosmersholm and The Master Builder are harder nuts to crack. The latter, at any rate, has proved too hard for more than one critic, not previously ill-disposed towards Ibsen. And yet it is a fact within my personal knowledge that The Master Builder has made at least as many converts (if we must use so sectarian a term) as any previous Ibsen production, and has awakened enthusiasm in the most unexpected quarters. Could there be * A translation of it was already in the hands of Mr. W. H. Vernon, and was produced by him at the Gaiety in December 1880, without attracting the smallest attention. a clearer proof that the. public, or at any rate a large and influential public, no longer regards the theatre as an intellectual lubberland, but is ready and eager for a drama of ideas? Yes, there can be no rational doubt that Ibsen, and even the despised Independent Theatre, have done a great deal towards making The Second Mrs. Tanqueray possible. Far be it from me to raise the silly parrot-cry of "Ibsen," by way of detracting from the merit of Mr. Pinero's achievement. The Second Mrs. Tanqueray is entirely original. Neither in its qualities nor in its limitations is there the remotest trace of Ibsen's influence. Mr. Pinero may safely challenge anyone to point out a single touch which shows that he has ever seen or heard of a play of Ibsen's. None the less is it true that Nora Helmer and Hedda Gabler have paved the way for Paula Tanqueray. Ibsen has not directly influenced Mr. Pinero, but he has directly and indirectly educated his public for him. He has created an appetite for serious drama even in those (be they critics or playgoers) who have least relish for his own work. He has been in a sense "caviare to the general"; but, even to the general, caviare is an appetiser. Of course, I don't dream of denying that Mr. Pinero has to some extent educated his own public; but could he have cleared at a single bound the gap between The Profligate and Mrs. Tanqueray? Assuredly not; and it is Ibsen who has provided the stepping-stones. Let me return for a moment to the Opera Comique in order to note the remarkable, the almost unprecedented, feat achieved by Miss Elizabeth Robins in presenting within one week the four great characters of Hedda, Rebecca, Hilda, and Agnes-two of them entirely new to her. The mere physical effort was surprising enough, for each of the three first-named parts is about as long as Hamlet. It must be admitted, indeed, that Miss Robins overtaxed her powers of endurance, and that her Hedda and Hilda showed traces of the extreme nervous tension to which she was strung up. Her Rebecca, on the other hand, in which nothing had had time to become mechanical or mannered, was a creation of the rarest subtlety and distinction, while her Agnes expressed the full pathos of one of the most poignantly pathetic passages in literature. But more noteworthy than any individual performance was the vividness with which the actress succeeded in differentiating the whole four. She seemed to put on, not merely new costumes, but a new temperament with each new part-to become a different creature. This gift of character-acting is very rare among women, to |