The Drama, the oldest and the most complicated of the Arts, is, strangely enough, the only art for which there is no margin of opportunity. For a play succeeds or it fails. Architecture, music, painting, every form of literature not directly written for production before the footlights can count upon incalculable chances of revision; of reconsideration; of suspended judgment, and even of fluctuating esteem. But the fortunes of a stage-play can only be absolute. On the stage alone there is no appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober. The stage-play, the drama under modern conditions can only live in so far as it can pay for its footing night by night. For the art of the modern drama is above all things art exploited as commerce. It is the reproduction of human accident and human emotion moving with more or less of force and dexterity, between the excisions of the Censor and the exigencies of the box-office; bound by every circumstance of its production to conquer the approval of a crowd within the first few hours of its existence, or, in sober fact to cease to exist.

* La Samaritaine. Evangile en trois tableaux, en vers. Paris, Charpentier et Fasquelle: 1898.

Cyrano de Bergerac. Comedie Heroique, en vers. Paris, Charpentier, et Fasquelle: 1898.

Les Romanesques. Comedie en trois actes,

No other art lives under similar conditions. And in spite of the remarkable revival of public interest in things relating to the theatre which has taken place in England during the last twenty-five years-an interest generous enough to include the idiosyncrasies and adventures, the incomes, the wardrobes and the opinions of actors and actresses-it is perhaps uncertain, if we judge from our own dramatists exclusively, whether these conditions have not finally severed that connection between the stage and literature which the Elizabethans did so much to establish. In the same way that the influences of our climate, the size of our modern houses and our disuse as meeting-places of public buildings, have limited the field for sculpture, so it may be that the cost and money-making necessities of our theatres will end by strictly limiting the intellectual proportions of the modern play. Already there are not wanting critics, steady, sober and honest, lovers of the drama, and yet disposed to regard the little brotherhood of modern dramatists, groping their way in worlds of art half realized, en vers. Paris, Charpentier et Fasquelle:

1899.

La Princesse Lointaine. Piece en quatre actes, en vers. Paris, Charpentier et Fasquelle: 1839.

L'Aiglon. En six actes, en vers. (Unpublished: 1900.)

as so many children at play in some old curiosity-shop; a place where all the material is worn; is very old; made precious by dead and gone effort; and where the only novelty possible consists in some new anachronism. For fanatics such as these the Days of Creation are strictly limited to six. The Greek dramatists, the Latins, Shakespeare, have spoken the last word of a noble and a living art; and to our generation only remains the no less vital, but simpler, evolution of the musichall.

Obviously this is a defensible point of view. And so is the point of view which advocates a State theatre, subsidized; respected; controlled on something of the lines of the Théâtre Français, as a protest against our present system of the actor-manager; of opportunist and ephemeral writing; and of protracted runs. Although whether this latter scheme, given the protestant and inartistic attitude of the average Anglo-Saxon mind, can ever be more than a counsel of perfection, seems doubtful, to say the least. Yet the opportunist play, however brilliant, the play designed to run its season like any other fashionable object, though it may 'be a valuable piece of property, can hardly be a valuable contribution to literature; and, while admitting unreservedly that success on the English stage does not in the smallest degree depend upon a conscious preoccupation with the art of the drama (unconscious preoccupation there must be, or there could be no play)-it would be interesting to inquire whether, and how far, such a consciousness would necessarily imperil that success? We areas a nation only too apt to plume ourselves over our least obviously artistic achievements.

Yet,

if the gaiety, the good temper, the abounding animal spirits of, say, "Charley's Aunt" have kept that joyous production alive for some thousands of

triumphant nights, it is only fair to remember that "Antony and Cleopatra" has lasted longer still. It is not the presence of the literary quality, it is the deadness of the literary quality present, the deficiency of it, the affectation of it, the imitation of it, which send so many of the so-called "serious" plays hurtling down the dusty steeps of theatrical failure. Because a thing which is vital, commonly handled, has the power to live, need a thing as vital, but delicately and beautifully manipulated, run a distinctly poorer chance? Not treatment, not selection, but lifevitality-an organic being, is the very first essential and condition of the dramatic art. It is the first-mais après?

Journalism, the ideal journalism, consists in formulating brilliantly what the man in the street was on the verge of saying. And there are hundreds and hundreds of definitely successful plays-and therefore living playswhich never rise for one moment in point of treatment above the level of smart and workmanlike journalism of journalism which is to literature what a wall-paper is to a picture. You must be able to command it in large quantities before it begins to count. And it is precisely because the public attention has been so strenuously called upon to take note of these restricted successes, it is because the public imagination has been so fired by the financial interests which they represent, that any discussion of the literary side of the drama appears so irrelevant and academic. Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien to every non-artistic conscience; and "capacity for the nobler feeling," said Stuart Mill long ago, "is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance." As a race we British do more than distrust-we dislike all conscious experiments in art, not apologized for and made reputable by age, or death,

or tradition. To hurl a brick-bat at the passing "literary" wherever detected in daily life, serves in some fashion to vindicate the choice of pleasures of The Plain Citizen. And indeed the literary quality as he understands it-"art" considered as something extraneous to life, "art" visualized as a collection of black old masters and the minor poets, "art" as an attitude, an excrescence, a reminiscence deserves much of the peculiar form of encouragement he is prepared to offer.

at

Naturally this does not affect the fact that in all real art (as Spinoza says of morality) imitation has no place. Success, even the vulgarest success, can neither be copied nor forged precisely because of the modicum of artistic presentation which every living record of life contains. And if we set aside as too local, too near to us for illustrative criticism, our own still somewhat unclassified playwrights-without tempting to count the various measures of success attained by Mr. Pinero; by Mr. Parker; by Mr. Bernard Shaw; by Captain Marshall's neat and happy fantasy; or by the industry of Mr. Grundy -it is surely possible to expect many precious things still of an art which has so lately blossomed into work so experimental in purpose, so classic in treatment, so flexible, so vivid, so fullfed as the brilliant group of plays we owe to M. Edmond Rostand. And it matters little, considered from the point of view of the wealth of the contemporary drama, that we should quote the works of a foreigner, a Frenchman; since it is one of the divine attributes of art that what enriches one enriches all. When M. Rostand, not content with the ordinary problems and difficulties of stage-craft, deliberately assumes the additional burden of expressing himself exclusively in rhymed verse, he adopts a literary attitude towards the drama, and exhibits a force of literary passion for the purities of

and his work-which is ours, a part of our intellectual capital, exactly in proportion to our capacity for enjoying it -may well serve to illustrate what is really the pressing question, "la question du jour," of the ambitious modern play-writer.-How far, under actual conditions of theatrical production, does the literary quality make or mar the fortunes of the contemporary play?

He has given us five plays "Les Romanesques," a comedy in three acts, produced at the Comédie Française in 1894, and crowned by the French Academy; a four-act play, "La Princesse Lointaine," which appeared at the Renaissance Theatre, with Madame Sarah Bernhardt in the title rôle, in 1895; "La Samaritaine," in April of 1897, also produced by the same actress, and described as "An Evangel, in three tableaux;" "Cyrano de Bergerac," a heroic comedy in five acts, which also appeared in 1897, at the Porte Saint-Martin; and "L'Aiglon," a drama written in no less than six acts, treating of the life and death of the young Duc de Reichstadt, the son of Napoleon I, and again with Madame Bernhardt as chief interpreter. This last play is actually on the stage in Paris, and, at the moment we write is still unrevised and unpublished. "Cyrano de Bergerac" and the "Romanesques" (under the title of "The Fantasticks") were both acted in English, and in London, for a brief period last season. Neither Mr. Wyndham as Cyrano nor Mrs. Patrick Campbell as Percinet achieved a popular suc

cess.

It has been stated-we do not know with how much authority-that the

But

"Samaritaine" is an earlier work than its gay, delicate, Watteau-like predecessor. It is, in any case, a striking, occasionally a very beautiful, example of that re-awakened cult for the beautiful, the mystic, and the suggestive which found its chief expression among ourselves in Burne-Jones, in William Morris, and in Rossetti; which inspired Maeterlinck and Verlaine, and has influenced Huysmans and all the younger littérateurs in France. All sincere reactions from the irreligious attitude of mind are interesting. But what makes M. Rostand's work of far greater value than any of the attempts to revive the old miracle play-any of the biblical paraphrases and parables of M. Antoine's theatre-is the mastery of effect and technique, the scenic sense, the theatrical intelligence, with which he handles his material. The story is the story of the Woman of Samaria. what, in other hands, could so easily have degenerated into a series of rhetorical declamations and piously panoramic scenes, is here moulded with an extraordinary tact and delicacy into the vague and yet convincing outlines of a genuine drama. Any representation of Christ upon the stage is inherently objectionable to the average Anglo-Saxon mind, unless, as at Oberammergau, the physical conditions are such as to do away with all the ordinary associations of the playhouse. It is perhaps to be regretted, in our own interest, that this absence of the friendly Germanpeasant environment, and of the German-peasant method of acting, should make such a difference in our sense of the decorous and the becoming. Photine, the Samaritan courtesan, impassioned and detached as a prayer or a flame, wandering down the gray hillside among the olives to find the unknown Master waiting by the well; or in the market-place, drawing the indifferent jeering town about her by the single intensity of her purpose, is an

extraordinarily interesting example of the working of the dramatic instinct about an old and worn theme. There is, perhaps, some far-off echo of Russian mysticism, some reminiscence of the humble, ardent, illuminated heroines of Tolstoy and of Dostoevsky, in M. Rostand's conception of Photine; at moments in her impassioned and pathetic faith we seem to hear speaking the mystical sister of the Sonia of "Crime and Punishment," but with what a distinguishing sense of beauty has he not marked as his own, and rescued even the most hazardous passages of his work! That a few-a very few of his verses should seem to our ears to border perilously upon the irreverently grotesque and the ridiculous was inevitable, considering his theme. Humor is as local as patriotism. When Lamartine, writing the history of his own time in his old age, describes a fierce political meeting which he addressed from the balcony of the Hotel de Ville, and sighs, "Mon Dieu, alors, comme j'étais beau!" he gives an example of detached observation and unselfconsciousness which not one Anglo-Saxon in a million ever reaches. But, apart from these slight incongruities, how admirable is the handling of "La Samaritaine"! With what precision is the situation put before us! Done with how few words and yet how definitely is the characterization of the individual disciples; the arch-priest, the merchants; how swiftly and unconsciously we find ourselves informed of the political situation, the warring interests, all the complicated policy of the little inconspicuous mountain town! It is chiefly the difference in the quality-la facture of the verse which inclines us to consider "Les Romanesques" as later work. "I do not tell you that the subject of this comedy is new at all points," says M. Jules Lemaitre, "but its execution appears to me remarkable. This is brilliant stuff;

all sparkling with wit, and, in places, glowing with a large and easy sense of gaiety. It is not to be confounded with the pretty little play, the elaborate little stage-jewel of slender value. . There is already the large grasp of craft-mastery in 'Les Romanesques.'" And further on the wittiest and most authoritative of dramatic critics comments on the analogy in lovely lightness of treatment between M. Ros-. tand's little piece and the classic "A quoi rêvent les jeunes filles?" of Alfred de Musset. "But Rostand," he goes on to say, "conveys an impression of frank lightheartedness and plastic grace a thing become rare among us where Beauty seems more and more the inseparable companion of Sadness." And it is, indeed, this very deliverance from all modern morbidity, this return to a clearer atmosphere and an antique joyousness, which gives Rostand's work an indisputable distinction of its own. Emotion without regret;-a gallant acceptance of life with all its possibilities and without many of its more harassing questions-that is the keynote of his work. But the refusal to investigate these questions comes from choice and not from insensibility. It is this spirit of delight in exquisite and precise form, this happy play with charming words and images, and gay, and fleeting, and delicate sensation, which differentiates "Les Romanesques" from the thousand and one poudré plays of the French repertory. "The time of the play is immaterial," says the author in his stage directions, "provided the costumes be pretty;" and the little lovers, delighted and absorbed in their own fantastic, elusive likenesses to Romeo and Juliet, live through one endless summer day-under the old trees of an old park, where an old wall symbolizes the old obstacles old fathers place before young lovewith the spontaneous grace and fleeting troubles of the Golden Age. This is

the land of pure romance; the land bordered by the green and rustling Forest of Arden, and stretching to the seaports of Bohemia. The story we are asked to follow dates from the first careless pair of lovers, and was acted by the first careful parent. But if you would have an example of how ingeniously M. Rostand can weave and complicate the simple threads of the simplest situation, consider for one moment his joyous invention of Straforelthat swaggering and full-blown predecessor of the picturesque Cyrano. Resourceful; unscrupulous; largely conversant with men, women and things; at home in the world which he reverences and exploits; extravagant, magnificent and at his wit's end for his day's earnings; vain; gross; indulgent; vital;-Straforel, by the cunning of his author's art, is set upon his feet and stalks about fairyland with as assured a tread as Poins or bully Bardolph among the Kentish lanes. Indeed, in breadth and ease of treatment Strafor-el is, perhaps, the most Shakespearean of M. Rostand's figures; while, as an acting part, the rôle is well-nigh actorproof.

And the student interested in our author's methods should not fail to note how, in this early work, we find all the leading characteristics of his later and more ambitious writings. The construction, the peculiar breaking-up of his verse, are already here. The long scenes during which a single word is repeated and reiterated with ever-increasing effect have already been invented. The varying "Monsieur. Mais, Monsieur..." of Sylvette when Straforel makes reckless and alarming love to her is but a foreshadowing of the tender, tragic, pathetic revelation to Bergerac of Roxane's unattainable love. This deliberate insistence upon the culminative value of a single worda mere exclamation-struck upon again 1 Les Romanesques, scene ii. act iii.