Some Moral Aspects of the Problem Play
IF a reporter is sent to interview a man, it is essential that he get hold of the right man, ply him with the proper methods, and sound him on the proper subjects. It is much the same with us. Some sort of definition of the problem play must be arrived at if a case of mistaken identity is to be avoided. We must state definitely what it is about the problem play we wish to get at, and fit method to purpose.
The stage has done this much for us: we can tell a problem play when we see it. Most of us would agree in classing as problem plays the majority of Ibsen’s and Shaw’s, and such plays as Sudermann’s Ehre and Blumenboot, Hauptmann’s Vor Sonnenaufgang, Maeterlinck’s Monna Vanna, Tolstoy’s Power of Darkness, Henry Arthur Jones’s Hypocrites. But why group these plays together ? Surely not because they are alike in æsthetic credo, make-up, and style. Naturalistic, mystical, analytic, they are set to different keys, have a different twang about them. Differences so radical make an æsthetic definition of the problem play a thing of much toil and little profit. It is not worth the risk of losing the richness of my theme; therefore, I shall dwell on the æsthetic only in so far as it bears on the moral.
It is in the sphere of morality that we must look for what is common to problem plays. Understand me rightly. To define such plays as plays dealing with immoral situations or as leaving a bad taste in one’s mouth, is simple, absurd, unjust. Nor do I mean to refer to the moral effect they have on people. The problem of the salutary effect of exhibiting moral rottenness on the stage is one of some practical importance, and we are all familiar with the time-worn pros and cons, — the “ strong meat and children ” argument, Tolstoy’s “ simplicity ” plea, and the “ degeneracy ” refrain of Max Nordau. It is not effects, but aims we wish to get at. Problem plays stand for a peculiar attitude toward the problem of conduct, and it is our purpose to get at that attitude by a “ catch-as-catch-can” method.
A glance at the development of the problem play will help us to get our bearings. The problem play is essentially a modern product. It gives in art what is given in countless other ways: a sense of the complexity and reality of life. Compare our plays with the stilted favorites of a former generation, Virginias, for example. But it is not merely in naturalness of costume, dialogue, and art form, that this keener sense of reality shows itself. Mysticism expresses it quite as strongly. Maeterlinck’s is a search for reality, a reality too deep for words, the undertow of life. Again, modem art reveals in technique and motif a greater appreciation of the complexity of life.
Nowhere does this keener sense of the reality and complexity of life stand out as it does in the problem play. There it expresses itself in two demands. First, art is to be real in the sense of being vital. It is to get beneath the surface-play and pageantry of life; it is to use life-materials as the basis for life-meanings. Second, art is to do full justice to the complex and confused character of life, and at the same time to make a serious try at getting “ rhyme and reason ” out of this jumble of experiences. That accounts for much that is puzzling in the plays named. The average theatre-goer does n’t quite know what to make of such characters as Peer Gynt, Brand, or Werle. That doesn’t mean that there is confused characterdrawing: it means simply that the problem-play writer regards life as an exceedingly complex affair, so delicate and subtle a matter that it calls for an infinite refining of method. It means further that he is keenly aware of the puzzling and problematic character of life, and that he means to raise more questions than he can answer.
Every problem play exhibits the four characteristics named: a sense that life is real and that art ought to be vital, a sense that life is complex, a demand for some sort of unity, and a leaning towards the problematic. In this definition I have given æsthetic considerations a wide berth, for I am husbanding with an eye to a harvest of moral significance. It is easy to see how the four things named figure in moral problems. In such problems we find the greatest complexity, the most urgent need of a solution, and the smallest hope of ever arriving at one. There you cannot shirk the task of unifying. Try to escape it by a moral tour de force, and you will be forced back into it by a subtle dialectic of unrest. And still the puzzling and problematic always remain in questions of duty.
A further step in our definition of the problem play suggests itself. What is more natural than to trace the characteristics given to one final principle and key to the moral significance of problem plays ? And where should we expect greater evidence of such a principle than in plays whose very warp and woof is conflict, —conflict of passions, of ideals, conflict in myriad forms?
Where does this ultimate moral meaning of the problem play lie ? It lies in this, that every problem play is the launching of an individual point of view; a selfconscious criticism of life, its values and ideals. In one sense, every play is a criticism of life. Think of the moral content of King Lear. Think also of the moral conflicts it presents. But such a play is not a problem play: the moral content is spontaneous, the natural yield of a serious and richly gifted mind. In a play like Hamlet the morally significant is held in solution in a plot that has all the richness and loose texture of life itself; it means nothing but depth of feeling, sincerity of art, a firm grip on the forces of life. In problem plays, on the other hand, the moral content is not spontaneous; it is willed as such. So much we may get either from the plays, or on the rebound in the utterances of the playwrights. Take a play like Ghosts. There, much of the dialogue is logical sword-play. Such are the conversations on ideals between Mrs. Alving and Pastor Manders. Often the characters merely voice the author’s views on a variety of subjects. With what amusing perverseness Bernard Shaw airs his views on vivisection, capital punishment, socialism, in his plays! The same sort of inartistic patchwork is found in many of Sudermann’s plays. It gives but a poor idea of the view of life I wish to emphasize.
With Ibsen — master of all masters in his field — such illumination of life does not mean the popping up of a light here or there, a logical flash in the pan: it means a steady glow etching in sharpest outline the problems of life. Where could there be found a better example of logic biting into the very substance of a play than in Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, with its problem of the conflict between the compact majority and the pioneer? The quizzing attitude is vital to the characters. It is the general problematic attitude, rather than the discussion of single problems, that characterizes problem plays of the best type. With the lesser men the aim is too obviously a moral brief or an exhibition of ingenuity. The “ dramatic triangle ” figures so prominently in many plays because it is such an excellent way of getting people into a tangle. Moral problems change from generation to generation; the problemplay writer aims to get to the principle of conflict, which remains the same, however it may play itself off.
That the problem play means a selfconscious criticism of life is brought home forcibly by the utterances of the writers of such plays. They wish to be taken seriously as social critics. Perhaps they over-emphasize the effect of art upon life. Very likely they do. But that doesn’t matter; it is what they mean their plays to be that counts. Of course, they think of their social mission in different terms. Augier and Dumas thought it their business to “ save souls,” as Dumas put it. Sudermann and Hauptmann keep close to the social movements of the day; Ibsen tells us that the past, and the past as it lives in the present, with all their hollowness and falseness, are like a museum, open to us for instruction. An interesting side-light is thrown on An Enemy of the People in this passage from a letter of his to Lucie Wolf: “ But I maintain that a fighter in the intellectual vanguard can never collect a majority around him.” Again, he writes to Björnson in 1867, “ I have taken life very seriously. Do you know that I have separated myself from my own parents, from my own family, because a position of half-understanding was unendurable to me?” What is this but the life-equivalent of much in Brand ? Shaw frequently expresses the belief that the dramatist is a social critic and moral irritant. He calls himself “ a critic of life as well as of art.” He says, “ For art’s sake alone I would not face the toil of writing a single sentence.” Most instructive is his idea of the artist philosopher. In him the great creative forces of life have become self-conscious; he is the organ by which nature understands herself. It is not enough to picture life as one huge pantomime, as Dickens did, or to apprehend the world, as Shakespeare did. Description is not philosophy. Of Shakespeare, Shaw says: “The author has much to show and little to teach.” It is the mission of art to build up in men a consciousness of the great world forces and life problems. This is brought out in the following: —
“This is the true joy of life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown in the scrap heap; the being a force of nature
instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. And also the only real tragedy in life is the being used by personally-mindcd men for purposes which you recognize to be base. All the rest is, at worst, mere misfortune and mortality; this alone is misery, slavery, hell on earth; and the revolt against it is the only force that offers a man’s work to the poor artist, whom our personally-minded rich people would willingly employ as pander, buffoon, beauty-monger, sentimentalizer, and the like.”
The dramatist is to put before men visions of new truth. His works “catch the glint of the unrisen sun.” It is a mistake to eye such views too critically. If it is true that nature becomes self-conscious in the artist, she seems to have become especially wide awake in Shaw, but rather in the sense of intense self-awareness than in that of a mastery of her own processes. It is not only in Ibsen and Ibsen’s kin that we must look for this aim at a worldview with its fusion of critic and pioneer. It is to be found in Tolstoy’s gospel of regeneration through work, sympathy, and self-denial. Maeterlinck’s subtle thought plays about such problems as justice, fate, human destiny. Much as his worldview differs from Ibsen’s, it exhibits in its own way, and quite as perfectly, the sense of the reality and complexity of life, the demand for unity, and the leaning towards the problematic. His attitude is easier to apprehend than to describe. The first thing that will strike you in his plays is a subtle suggestion of the unreality of the material world. It is only a suggestion, but there it is in his penchant for the vague, the unlocalized. His world is largely a world of colors and sounds, a restless world, striking consciousness with a note as monotonous and haunting as the wash of the sea. And yet this strangely intangible world is luminous with meaning, a meaning caught by men and women such as Maeterlinck pictures, strange men and women, lacking something of the robustness of men of flesh and blood, but delicately tuned to the throbbing rhythm of life: men of intuitions, premonitions, faint soul-stirrings, of a clairvoyance that strikes into the meaning of things.
I cannot do justice to Maeterlinck’s world-view, but let me point out in what way it is morally significant. If use is made of this spiritual mysticism in the handling of a moral problem, the result will be a problem play like Monna Vanna. There you have the conflict between the substantial but somewhat clumsy conventional point of view and a spiritual reinterpretation delicately feeling its way. Maeterlinck is just as emphatic an individualist as Ibsen or Shaw. With them, it is a matter of pointing out how a certain institution or convention is absurd, socially destructive. There is little of this churning logic in Maeterlinck. With him, it is a matter of suggesting a new point of view that takes all the meaning and value out of the current social view, —devitalizes it.
One further step must be taken. This social criticism is of a peculiar type, and may be described as the play of individual moral conviction on moral convention. This phrase hits off the moral significance of the problem play. It is my purpose to discuss in a more or less random way some of the many ways in which this theme plays itself off.
But what is moral convention? To speak of moral currency unfortunately suggests the clipping off of whatever of moral opinion is not marketable. On the whole, the term common-sense morality seems best. Common-sense morality stands for a number of definite, normal experiences, and, as such, figures as the point to which the captive balloon of moral theories is attached. Three things go to make it up, each illustrating one phase of conduct.
First, there are a number of institutions and social habits, firmly fixed and working almost automatically. Such are: the state, the family, the whole mass of charitable and educational institutions. Here we have perfectly definite social values, and, based on these values, perfectly definite obligations. Here society states its claim on the individual in blunt, emphatic terms; for there are certain things so vital to society that they cannot be left to the option of individual feeling. That, for example, is why there are sanitary measures and contracts.
The second thing that goes to make up common-sense morality may be characterized by the term public opinion. It is a mass of approved sentiment connected with social institutions. As such, it gives meaning, point, permanence, and an ideal backing to such institutions. Take the institution of marriage. It is largely, of course, a matter of law and definite usage. Something again must be left to the discretion of individual feeling, but much is given over to the guidance of a conservative, well-established mass of feeling, thought, and conviction. Were it not for this great steadying force of public opinion, society would swing violently between two equally undesirable extremes.
The third element in common-sense morality may be called free, detached moral sentiment. Unlike the second, it shows a tendency to cut loose from accredited institutions; it may even attack public opinion and its ideals. It tries its hand at framing ideals. It is not our aim to trace the many forms this detached moral sentiment takes. Very often it degenerates to a sort of idle, vapory daydreaming. It exposes itself then to the keenest shafts of the problem-play writer.
Such is common-sense morality: institutions, public opinion, and free, detached sentiment. As such it is attacked by the problem-play writer, whose art is intensely individual and marked by an earnestness at once destructive and constructive, and whose personality expresses itself largely as intense moral conviction. It is this play of moral conviction on moral convention that gives point and substance to every problem play. Of course, both method of attack and point attacked vary. Rapier thrust, clubbing, long-range shot, goading, and pricking: such are some of the methods. Each one of the three parts of common-sense morality offers points of attack. Widowers’ Houses and Mrs. Warren’s Profession protest against certain institutions and habits. in many of Ibsen’s plays, and also in the divorce plays of the French playwrights, marriage in its present form is attacked. Again, it is not hard to find examples of attack on organized moral sentiment and public opinion. The deadening respectability of such sentiment is satirized in Pillars of Society and in Man and Superman. Jones’s Hypocrites affords an excellent illustration. His attack goes straight to the mark of a solid mass of sentiment which gives support to certain undesirable social habits. Examples of an onslaught on free moral sentiment are easy to find. Idle dreaming is satirized in Peer Gynt and Brand. The character of Werle in The Wild Duck is meant to show the dangerous side of this quixotic idealism. Romanticism, with its flourish of false sentiment, disgusts Shaw because it does not connect with the real problems of life.
We are now ready for some of the variations of our theme. One thing more must be said of common-sense morality: it is always in the making, always on the move. The rate of change, however, varies. Sentiment, organized or not, changes more rapidly than institutions do. The latter disappear very slowly even when all the meaning is taken out of them. It is like a man staying on when there is no reason for his staying, and he knows perfectly well that he wants to go.
In the matter of this slowly changing mass of social habits and values, the problem-play writer assumes that individual conviction shapes and directs it to a higher moral point of view. This is what makes the problem play so intensely interesting, for in it we find the moral consciousness in action, in vital electrifying contact with life. There personal values clash with conventional values, and the clutch at victory expresses itself in a great many different ways: as frontal attack, deploying of forces, skirmishing, diplomatic sparring. This distinguishes the problem play from the doctrinaire play, for the latter stands for what the former attacks. What is dogmatism other than a kind of individual convention ? How different is the quizzing, picking-topieces, tentative attitude of the problemplay writer! Sometimes this insecurity expresses itself as self-satire, as in Ibsen’s Wild Duck; sometimes as a confused interplay of views, as in the last act of Monna Vanna.
The “I beg to differ” attitude of the problem-play writer toward commonsense morality takes two forms: discountenancing the old, and suggesting the new. That means clearing away of social rubbish. It means challenging of titles and weighing of claims. It means finding the problem in the solution.
One of the problems most frequently met with in problem plays is the happiness problem of current habits and ideals. Such a problem would naturally appeal to a poet, for he above all men is intensely aware of the emotional resonances of life. Ordinarily with him the problem of happiness is an acutely personal problem. It amounts to keeping one’s skin whole and agreeably toning one’s experiences. Much of lyrical poetry shows this clearly. Of one of the old Greek lyrical poets it has been said that with him everything — landscape, stormy sea, drenching rain, and driving snow — leads to the same goal, the bowl and its jolly pleasures. Poetry of a loftier strain refines on the problem. With the problem-play writer the whole matter of happiness is given a peculiar turn. There is not much spontaneity in his art, and he is not interested primarily in the sensuous side of life. We rarely hear the natural cry for individual happiness as it rings through the experiences of a Maggie Tulliver. Again, when the self-defeating character of pleasure is dwelt on, as i Peer Gynt, it is dealt with as part of a different problem, that of personality. It is the social side of the happiness problem that interests the problemplay writer.
Let us now look into some of these social phases of the happiness problem which are discussed in problem plays. One thing is assumed: that common-sense morality is and ought to be a great source of social happiness. It is a commonplace to say that at present it is unsatisfactory in that respect. Part of the work of the problem-play writer will consist in pointing impressively the effects on happiness of unsound or defective institutions and conventions. Hauptmann, in Die Weber, arraigns certain industrial abuses in Silesia, and tips his arraignment with the pathetic appeal. A frequent attack is that on social oppression in general. This is typical material for the problem play, for there we find the needed touch of the problematic, due to the play of class prejudices and a clannish way people have of slurring over the interests of other classes. That is what makes the discussion at once imperative and tonic.
Social oppression of one class by another is shown to produce unhappiness, directly in the class oppressed, indirectly in the class doing the exploiting. Plays like Mrs. Warren’s Profession, and many of Pinero’s plays, deal with the festering sore of social vice. How startling the problem when the responsibility is placed where it ought to be placed, on unfavorable social conditions! The slaves of greed and social pariahs are no less wretched. To see a play like Sudermann’s Sodom’s Ende is to look at life with a little less disregard of problems reaching into the life of the unfavored and unsheltered. Social oppression is, according to the problem-play writer, largely the result of effete institutions, ill-judged class privileges, and the like. If problem plays dealt merely with these obvious phases of the happiness problem, there would be nothing noteworthy about them. But they push on to the more intricate and problematic. They show how oppression reacts unfavorably
on character and happiness-chances. It develops such traits as brutality, sordidness of motive, deception, helpless dependence. Where one class has the whiphand, it is but natural for the other to cringe. Sudermann’s Ehre reveals these less obvious miseries of the oppressed class, a misery exhibited most sharply in the pathetic way in which the moral standards of the oppressed are a distorted reflection of those of their oppressors.
In still another way is the undesirability of social rottenness made clear. It corrupts and makes wretched the oppressing class also. It develops short-sightedness, arrogance, brutality, and parasitic habits. No society can prosper when burdened with parasitic, unproductive classes. Such plays as Ghosts, Schmetterlingschlacht, Maskerade, show how looseness of living at the expense of the degradation of another saps social vigor and results in general unhappiness.
An even more significant side of the social-happiness problem is brought out in the way in which the matter of social hypocrisy is dealt with. Ordinarily we give to hypocrisy a stagey, Pecksniffian touch. We do not think of socially organized hypocrisy, or of hypocrisy bred in the bone. It is just these subtle forms of hypocrisy that the problem-play writer dwells on. He tears off the several masks, such as smug respectability, time and place-serving, unprogressiveness, and the rest. (Pillars of Society, An Enemy of the People, Heimat, Maskerade.)
Much of this hypocrisy is the upshot of outworn or ill-working institutions. It is the way the weak have of countering to oppression by the strong. From the Middle Ages down, the sweep of the peasant’s cap has been measured by the length of the nobleman’s sword, and there was as little sincerity in the former as there was force in the latter. That social institutions often produce hypocrisy in this way is a well-known fact. Sudermann, in his Ehre, has shown how the caste system produces sordidness, evasion, deceit; how it demoralizes the individual, and how that brings unhappiness. Most instructive, however, is the social hypocrisy that expresses itself as respectability, solidity. It results when social pressure is strong enough to produce outer conformity, but not equal to the task of shaping individual conviction. In that case, there will be either a double game with shifting and trickery, or conformity to what has lost its meaning. The problematic lies in this, that conformity to social standards may be valuable or dangerous. On the one hand, it gives a certain stability to conduct; it safeguards us against many a squall of emotionalism. On the other hand, it tends to stifle moral initiative, and often leads to social hypocrisy, individuality working underground. This smug respectability is dangerous because it blights individual conviction, the principle of social progress. It tends to preserve what has been outlived, and like a crazy collector prizes things fit only for the scrap-heap. At first glance such conformity to the social cult seems to favor individual happiness by saving much annoyance and thought. Unfortunately, however, the habit of conformity outlasts its justification; to be helplessly comfortable in one set of conditions means to be wretched under changed conditions. Society is always on the move, and the individual is always the standard bearer. This view is what makes the problem play so intensely interesting.
Let me refer to one more happiness problem, that of the destructive effects of certain ways of acting and thinking. It is inconvenient to separate the two, for they play into each other’s hands. Such habits are more common than one might think. Ill-judged marriage-laws, the barter-and-sale marriage Ibsen scores, the absinthe habit, such are examples. Common-sense morality, clumsy at best, misses much of the effect on happiness of habits such as these. It is here that the problem play comes forward with scientific material which enables it to touch on moral aspects more firmly and incisively. It makes much of the connection between alcoholism and disease and insanity, and of the fact that alcoholism interferes with social productiveness. Again, the doctrine of heredity is made much of. Control of one’s impulses means so much more when the next generation may have to pay the reckoning. The problem of inherited handicaps always appealed to Ibsen. It lends a sinister as well as a pathetic touch to the fate of Dr. Rank, in A Doll’s House. With some of Ibsen’s followers the tracing of such pathological conditions becomes almost an obsession. Hauptmann’s earlier plays deal with the problem of hereditary taint on its most unpleasant side. Very often the idea of conflicting claims is introduced, as in Hauptmann’s College Crampton. This problematic element is the saving salt of problem plays. There is a subtle suggestion that there might be some validity in another point of view.
It is perhaps not at once obvious how the discussion of these single happiness problems bears on what is characteristic of problem plays: the play of conviction on moral convention. The connection lies in the fact that what we call commonsense morality plays a double and by no means consistent part. In one sense, it steadies and supports. Not only that, but it is the great forming force that shapes individual opinions. As such, it saves a man many a trying experiment in values, and it puts at his disposal a general happiness fund. It is quite true that commonsense morality is an imperfect happiness arrangement, and is on that account scored heavily in problem plays. But the real point of attack lies elsewhere. Moral convention discourages personal initiative and non-conformity, and therefore raises and perpetuates unhappiness in many forms. Its slowness of gait, its wrongheadedness, its intolerance, — all these things must irritate a man of force and enterprise. Add to this the fact that, as society develops, the happiness impulse assumes more and more individual forms. This, then, is the problematic in the problem, that moral convention harbors two contradictory tendencies. One favors individual happiness, the other interferes with such happiness by conventionalizing the individual. The problem-play writer realizes that on a happiness platform the problem of conviction and convention cannot be solved. He sees too much of the tangles of life to have much faith in the untwisting and logical smoothingout at which the moral theorist tries his hand.
The problem ultimately becomes one of personality and its conflict with common-sense morality. That is the vital problem, but quite as hopeless as the other. First of all, we may ask how the individual is related to the environment that shapes him. The problem play, with its liking for the complex and the problematic, makes the most of this problem. It is presented now as the problem of the hammer and anvil, now as that of the potter and clay. The matter of hereditary influence always interested Ibsen. In one of his letters, he suggests that character is the point of intersection of all sorts of influences; hence often the tragedy of life. It is because of this that a man is often as a house divided against itself.
What makes the problem so difficult is this, that much of custom and convention lives in us as a deadening force. Personality to the problem-play writer means freeing one’s self from this force, asserting the truly individual point of view. Set formulas, machine-made morality, blight personality. Think of Ibsen’s bitter satire. It is the problem of the spark and the clod. No man has insisted more on character than Ibsen has done. Be a person and respect others as persons: this formula is worked out in a wealth of detail. The same may be said with regard to such plays as Heimat and Die Versunkene Glocke.
In this matter of character-building convention fails much as it did in the matter of happiness. The forceful man must stand alone. He is more or less out of touch with society, for society, with the admirable but somewhat narrow economy of a good manager, emphatically discourages personality beyond the point of solid social income. In the eyes of the problem-play writer the problem of character is not in this sense a matter of pounds and pence. And yet it is to the best interests of society to allow a certain amount of non-conformity, and to encourage forceful variation from established standards. On this condition only is moral progress possible. As Shaw puts it, “ Every step in morals is made by challenging the validity of the existing conception of perfect propriety in conduct.” The individual will is the saving principle of morality. It supplies the tension and driving force necessary to social advance.
Here again we come upon the eternal question mark of the problem play. Is character-building a purely individual affair? Is self-culture worth while? Selfexpression does not mean license; to realize the Gyntish self is to realize no self at all, to be a creature betwixt and between, not good enough for heaven and not bad enough for hell. In Brand self-expression takes another tack. It is the ruthless ideal of no compromise that holds him captive. But personality is after all a social affair, and it is the peculiar combination of individualism and an individualized social ideal that makes the problem of personality such a perplexing one in problem plays. Directly connected with this is the stress laid by such men as Ibsen and Tolstoy on the worth of self-sacrifice, renunciation. It furnishes the keynote to many of Ibsen’s later plays. It is represented as a necessary element in strength of character. At the same time faith in one’s self enters into strength of character. This takes us to the problematic in the problem. The ideals of self-culture and social service conflict. There are turmoil, confusion, and clash here as elsewhere.
This then is the true moral meaning of the work of the problem-play writer. He exhibits life as one huge problem, a problem to which there can be no solution other than a constant leavening of social habits and ideals by individual conviction. He is like a priest who lifts the veil of mystery to show us a veil beyond. His revelation is a revelation of mystery.
His office is to keep fresh and clear and ever-flowing the living water of individual conviction that is to cleanse and purify the morality of custom and convention.