Recent Dramatic Literature

THE present dramatic epoch in France is so remarkable in some of its aspects that it seems not a little strange that no attempt—at least no attempt in English — should have been made to characterize it comprehensively and systematically until Mr. J. Brander Matthews undertook his work on The French Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century;¹ a similar work in the German having been performed by Paul Lindau. Lindau’s sketches are, however, from a more intimate stand-point, as seems natural and fitting when it is considered that Lindau is one of the foremost and most brilliant dramatists of his own country. He gives us the personality of his subjects, while Mr. Matthews confines himself to their individuality. The German author pictures the men, while the American characterizes the dramatists. The latter’s method is that of a student; Lindau writes from the level of a contemporary. He tells of the things which interest himself as a dramatist. The glimpses of the men we get in his vivacious sketches help us to a better understanding of their works. Mr. Matthews has perhaps pursued the best course for the attainment of his object in keeping close to a single point of view. But a relation of personal traits and methods of dramatic construction, — showing us something of the life of a play, both as it grows under the author’s pen and as it develops in the hands of the players at rehearsal, — with now and then a look into a theatre, like Lindau’s vivid picture of the première of Hugo’s Hernani, might have given a more vital picture of the French drama. But we are indebted to Mr. Matthews for an admirable work. His ideas tally well with Lindau’s, and indeed one of his chief merits is that, being a man of sound judgment himself, he reflects the opinions of the most competent and broadminded observers. This is an excellent test of the higher and truer criticism, when the criticism does not itself point out the way. There is a marked freedom from narrowness and pettiness in Mr. Matthews’ views.

France has so long been foremost on the stage that now it almost seems as if she had always held sway there. But the glory of the era of Molière and Beaumarchais had faded to pale conventionalities beneath the crushing weight of the Empire and the dull commonplaceness of the Restoration, and in the first quarter of this century the French drama had become " the empty echo of a hollow past.” The first impulses, as usual, came from without. From the popularity of German melodramas, and from the arrival of the English actors with Shakespeare’s plays in Paris in 1827, — Kean, Young, Kemble, Macready, — came the creative breeze that was to fan into flame intellectual sparks like Hugo and Dumas. With these, and with the perfection of the playwright’s technique in Scribe, began the splendid march of the contemporary French drama. The German stage of to-day is on a high and healthy plane, and it seems a pity that the English drama, after sowing the seed of rare fruit on French soil, could still sink to its dull commercial depths of to-day. May be its regeneration is destined to come in America, where the theatre has within a few years become strikingly universal, although of a sadly diluted quality. Surrendered, however, as the American stage now is to the importation of questionable “ novelties ” and to endless “ combinations,” the prospect certainly does not look encouraging. Mr. Matthews makes the distinction that, “ although we may not be willing to allow that the French have reached the highest pinnacle of the drama, we can see clearly enough that it is in the drama that they have mounted highest.” And the reason for this he states concisely to be “ because the dramatic is the form best suited for the expression of certain qualities in which the French excel the men of other races. Chief among these national characteristics are a lively wit, a love of effect for its own sake, a gift for writing beautiful prose, and a passion for order and symmetry and clearness.” Writing with true appreciation of Hugo’s grand qualities, Mr. Matthews lets it appear that his place as a dramatist, though eminent, is not classic; his chief service to the theatre being, after all, that of a way-breaker. The rank given to Emile Augier tacitly places that great author preëminently above Hugo as a master dramatist. It is well said that Hugo “ is a great poet, although not a great dramatic poet,” and that “literature is too small to hold him, and the finest of him is outside of it.” Mr. Matthews is happy in his epithets. He speaks of the second Dumas as looking on his father as a sort of prodigal son ; and Sardou he aptly terms one “ who has hardly more to say than Scribe himself, but who is young enough to say nothing in a style fifty years younger than Scribe’s.” Now and then a glimpse is given of some personal trait. We thus gain a real and hearty affection for Scribe, — even though he “ ran a play-factory,” — because of the honest, warm-hearted man’s unassuming life, and his generous treatment of his collaborateurs ; acknowledging the slightest service, and repaying it thousand-fold. We agree wholly and heartily with Mr. Matthews’ enthusiastic estimate of Emile Augier: “ A true child of Beaumarchais, a true grandchild of Molière. He has the Gallic thrust of the one, and something of the broad utterance of the other and greater.” Victor Hugo’s classification of theatre-goers is quoted: “ (1) the Crowd, who look for action, plot, situations; (2) Women, who expect passion, emotion ; (3) Thinkers, who hope for characters, studies of human nature.” “ M. Sardou,” says Mr. Matthews, “ suits the first class, M. Dumas the second, and M. Augier the third. . . . The note of M. Augier is a broad and liberal loyalty ; while M. Dumas’s chief characteristic is a brilliancy often misdirected, and M. Sardou’s a cleverness always ready to take advantage of the moment. M. Dumas is too complex a problem to be considered in a sentence or two ; but M. Sardou is simpler, and one may venture to define his work and M. Augier’s as not unlike the difference between journalism and literature. M. Sardou’s puppets live, move, and have their being in some city forcing-house, where their master keeps them under lock and key. M. Augier’s characters are as free as all out-doors ; and they breathe the open breeze which blows from sea-shore and hill-top, and which has the odor of the pines and not a little of their balsamic sharpness. . . . Home in his eyes is a sacred thing, and throughout his plays we can see a steadfast setting-forth of the holiness of home and the sanctity of the family.” A comparison between the author of Dame aux Camélias and the author of Gates Ajar is novel, to say the least, but Mr. Matthews makes it. In Dumas the younger he finds a strong flavor of puritanism. For his Idées de Madame Aubray, in which “ the preacher fortunately has not yet overmastered the playwright,” an interesting parallel is found in Miss Phelps’s Hedged In. “ Both the American and the French writers, though differing greatly in mental equipment, approach the subject from the same point of view, and give it the same austerity of treatment.” The appearance of the younger Dumas upon the stage was the coming of a fresh force into the French drama. “ The Dame aux Camélias,” says Mr. Matthews, “ was at once simple, pathetic, and audacious. It emancipated French comedy, and gave it the right of free speech. ... It changed the face of modern French comedy by pointing out the path back to nature and the existing conditions of society, and by showing that life should be studied as it was, and not as it had been, or as it might be.” Sardou is summed up in the word “ cleverness,” and is esteemed a man who only caters to the spirit of the hour, and whose characters are the creatures of his situations, while Augier’s situations are the result of his characters.

The estimate of Octave Feuillet is almost contemptuous, and he is ranked “ among the foremost of the French dealers in forbidden fruit, canned for export and domestic use.” The humorous genius of Eugène Labiche, the author of dozens of the merriest farces, and a veritable master in his own domain, receives warm praise, and that remarkable firm of play-writers, Meilhac and Halévy, appreciative comment. Mr. Matthews has no friendship for Zola and his principles of “ naturalism,” which Mr. Matthews believes are not destined to prevail, though they may most likely influence the future of the French drama, the present tendency of which is to give to a series of incoherent pictures of various phases of the fundamental idea precedence over unity and sequence.

We must protest against Mr. Matthews’ assertion of a divorce between poet and playwright. He evidently limits the definition of poet to a writer of poetic verse, whereas the title belongs, by right, to the creative genius in all fields of literature. Emile Augier would still be a great dramatic poet had he never written a drama in verse. When Björnson, the great Norwegian, was in this country, he said, “ I know the limitation which, by English usage, denies to Dickens the title of poet. It is unworthy, and not fine.”

No other figure of the American stage was ever so conspicuous as Edwin Forrest.² No other actor has ever been so intensely American, — embodying some of the best and not a few of the worst national traits. His strong personality, and his leadership of the American stage at a period when the national pride — or rather vanity —was sensitive in ratio to its provincialism, make his life a peculiarly interesting study. An extended biography of Forrest was written a few years ago by the Rev. William R. Alger. Mr. Lawrence Barrett’s volume has more of the character of a memoir for popular reading. At a time when prominent people of all kinds, never, however, suspected of literary tendencies, are besought to write essays on whatever chances to be the topic of the hour, — even “statesmen ” being invited to discuss theological problems, — it is nothing remarkable that an esteemed actor of cultivated tastes should choose a congenial subject, and venture into literature. It is also not surprising that in his work there should often be betrayed the hand of an untrained writer. Such examples of confused imagery as the following are too frequent: “ Past fertile fields, by vine-clad slopes, sunny with the lustre of the grape; halting at young clearings, the abode of the few who had come from the wilderness to lay the corner-stones of future cities on the placid bosom of the broad Ohio.” Bad models must bear the blame for faults of this sort; also for some occasional touches of sentimentalism, and an indulgence in what may be called the hypothetical biographic style, in which a deal of commonplace assumption is used in the treatment of matters about which little or nothing is really known. Otherwise Mr. Barrett has produced an excellent work, — straightforward, sincere, and pleasant to read. It is particularly interesting as the opinion of an actor who has the higher interests of his profession deeply at heart concerning the man who was the foremost American representative of that profession. Mr. Barrett handles his subject with the true biographic spirit, and presents with justice to each the dark as well as the light sides of the great actor’s character. This is shown to have been inherently noble, compelling admiration and almost worship, but defaced by traits of black ugliness, — a splendid diamond wretchedly flawed. With great intellectual traits and a great heart, his nature had a brutal harshness and some coarse, rowdyish instincts. He was a natural leader, but it seems remarkable upon what grounds he was put forward as the champion of America and of the “ people.” It would be hardly possible now for any actor to stir popular feeling in America so deeply by his private grievances. The morbid national sensitiveness of that day in regard to outside criticisms and opinions has happily passed away forever. The story of Forrest’s quarrel with Macready and its bloody sequence seems strangely remote. Macready, with all his cold selfishness and unlovable personality, comes out of the affair immeasurably cleaner than his rival. No man with any delicacy of feeling could have made an appeal to the public for sympathy and support in the unhappy domestic differences which clouded what should have been Forrest’s happiest years. That this should have brought him wide-spread commiseration as the victim of oppression, and arrayed “ good society ” and “ the masses ” in opposing camps for and against the actor, respectively, — that seems incredible now. Mr. Barrett says that Forrest loved his friends and hated his enemies. We are shown that he demanded such unfriend-like, servile adherence from the former that non-compliance made him an enemy to many of the best of them.

Among Mr. Forrest’s finest traits were his untiring efforts for the advancement of his art in America, and Mr. Barrett tells of these with fine appreciation. The picture of the palmy days of the theatre in New York, from 1857 to 1860, when the standard drama held its strongest grasp on the stage, and the new era of the modern drama had also begun, is one of the best parts of the book. In the “ epilogue ” the author speaks feelingly of the distinction between the reward of the actor and that of other artists, drawing an effective comparison from the image of snow once sculptured by Michael Angelo : “ While the ingratitude of contemporaries has embittered the lives of poets, painters, sculptors, composers, and authors, the theatre has been ringing with the applause granted to some gifted actor, whose very name is but a dim and shadowed memory. His fellowartists live in their works; by their works, as enduring as marble, are they known : the actor’s work dies with him ; his image is carved in snow.”

The transmission of the histrionic art by inheritance is a matter of common remark. Perhaps the trait is a reminiscence of the days when the social ban lay heavily upon the players, and the stage-folk lived, not only in a mimic world, but also in a world apart. In The Jeffersons,³ Mr. William Winter tells the story of one of these famous families of actors, — a family which is identified with some of the most brilliant periods of recent stage history. The career of the first Jefferson began under Garrick, and he was distinguished in a field filled with great rivals. The second Jefferson came to America, as a well-trained young actor, towards the close of the last century, when the dramatic art had just become domesticated in the New World, and the first generation of eminent players in our country were his associates. The third Jefferson, a most amiable personality, was of slight distinction as an actor; but all the English-speaking world knows and loves his son, the most famous of a sterling comedian stock. The close style adopted by Mr. Winter in this work, which is exceedingly thorough and painstaking, is followed with the loss of not a little of the reader’s interest at the start. The large array of figures and statistics suggests a hand-book. Accumulations of facts are always dangerous to the vitality essential to real biography. The casual reader will be apt to turn at once to the pages devoted to the present Joseph Jefferson, of whom the author writes with all the enthusiasm born of true friendship and sincere artistic feeling. It is here that the pages are decorated with the characteristic light embroidery that is Winter’s own, — generally fancifully graceful, though now and then marked by a little overdefinition, as in the trailing adjectivity of “ unquestionable, unassailable, auspicious, and beneficent permanence.” The analysis of Jefferson’s Rip Van Winkle is masterly. In citing the tributes of others, we wish the author had alluded to the noble essay of the late George Bryant Woods on the same masterpiece, originally printed in Every Saturday. A life of Joseph Jefferson would be incomplete without it. Mr. Winter gives the repertory of each actor in detail. That of the second Jefferson comprised one hundred and ninety-eight parts. This indicates a schooling such as few young actors are given the advantage of, in these days of long runs. If every one of our large cities could maintain at least one first-class stock company, with frequent changes of repertory, there would be little need of solicitude as to whence should come the material for the new school of fine comedy acting originated by Mr. Jefferson.