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actors. I am quite aware that this is a point in which some of the younger dramatic artists and critics are inclined to be a little supercilious. They scorn the idea that in writing a play an author has certain actors and actresses in view. And, indeed, no one would wish to limit the exercise of the dramatic art by too rigorous a regard for those whose lot it may be to interpret it. But it stands to reason that there must be a sort of collaboration between the dramatic author and the artist, because the author has to work, not as the novelist has to work, by means of pen, ink and paper, but by living agencies, whose various qualities and defects make a good deal of difference in the total effectiveness.

In the history of the drama there have been notable examples of the way in which the actor has done more towards the success of a play than the author. There is a classical instance in the case of the piece which we know as 'Robert Macaire.' The piece, as originally written, in the form of 'L'Auberge des Adrets,' was composed by its authors, of whom Benjamin Antier is the best known, as a sombre melodrama, full of tears and extravagance. The celebrated actor, Frederick Lemaître, took it in hand, and transformed it into a colossal piece of buffoonery. Bored, we may suppose, by the task of having to play an insipid rôle of wickedness, and of going through the experience of being hissed every night, Lemaître interpreted the character of the hero as a facetious, cynical, paradoxical ruffian, ridiculing every touch of pathos, and carrying through his wonderful crimes as much by his sense of humour as by his own criminal skill. We may therefore say that Lemaître was the veritable author of 'Robert Macaire'; and it is a piece which has enjoyed a very long period of popularity and fame, because 'Robert Macaire' belongs to a famous type of light-hearted, jovial, humorous ruffian. The 'Mercadet' of Balzac is one of his brothers, and so also is the immortal Falstaff. Take another example of the same kind of thing nearer our own times. The play of 'Becket,' as produced by Henry Irving, was a very different thing from the play as it left the hands of Alfred Tennyson. Indeed, it is reported that Irving went with some trepidation to the author, to suggest some of the changes which his own theatrical instincts told him were

necessary. But, fortunately, he found the great poet in a genial mood, modestly aware of the limitations of the art he was trying to practise, and therefore ready to listen to the suggestions of an actor of great experience and resource. Or take one more instance. There is no question that Edmond Rostand, when he wrote 'Cyrano de Bergerac' had Coquelin in mind; and there is equally little doubt that the character of Cyrano is so identified in our minds with the personality of Coquelin that we can hardly conceive the possibility of its being played in any other fashion.

The third point which the dramatic author has to keep in mind is the relation in which his play stands to his audience and the public taste. Here we touch on the essential difference between the work which a man does in his study and the public effect of that work; or, to put the same thing in another fashion, the difference between the work of a novelist and the work of a dramatist. The novelist appeals to a succession of single readers. The dramatist appeals to a crowd, all watching at the same time, and all, unconsciously perhaps, having their own opinions qualified by those of their neighbours. The psychology of a crowd is a subject (started, if I remember rightly, by M. Gustave Le Bon) which has lately interested a great many writers. We have not worked out the psychology of a crowd, for, indeed, it is rather a mysterious thing. In the first place, of course, we must remember that it is a crowd, and not a mob. That is to say, it is a mass of people who have assembled for a particular purpose, in order to watch a particular thing. It is not a heterogeneous collection of unrelated atoms. Those who do not know much about the matter may sometimes feel surprise that experienced managers of theatres and equally experienced writers of plays are capable of making such mistakes, and are, indeed, for the most part unable to prophesy as to the success or want of success of their most diligent efforts. Well, the answer is a very simple one. You have to hit the common point between three or four different levels of opinion and feeling. You have to find something which will equally please the welldressed crowd in the stalls and dress circle, the wiseacres of the pit, the noisy emotionalists of the gallery; and it is not easy to bring these different elements under a common

denominator. Fortunately drama is the most democratic of the arts; and the people assembled in a theatre, even though they may belong to very different strata of society, are more or less animated by a sort of communal feeling, which could hardly have been expected a priori.

Exactly what the ingredients in this communal feeling are is very difficult to say. An audience, as a rule, is strong in emotion and weak in thought. Therefore, speaking generally, a story, a plot, will naturally appeal to it more than careful analytic psychology. The excellence of a character may be in certain instances caviare to the general. Fortunately the character has to be shown in action, which makes it easier for the majority to understand. But we thus discover one argument to reinforce the old Aristotelian doctrine, that in a play the main element is the story, the μulos-character only coming in the second place. The point may be pushed too far, obviously. Audiences can be educated by a particular school of acting, or a particular management, to appreciate other and finer excellences. Another element is that the theatrical crowd comes into the theatre possessed of certain conventions, expecting a particular kind of treatment, looking for well-known clichés. Thus, for instance, a theatrical crowd is nearly always on the side of the angels,' because men and women in public only wish to show the most honourable sentiments. They dare not applaud a villain, because, if they did, they might be supposed to have some secret sympathy with villainy. Nor must you confuse an audience. You must not make it suppose that the wrong man is the sympathetic character. There must be no mistake between the villain and the hero. The public has its conventions about certain historic personages. It would never, for instance, accept a Richard III who was not deformed and was a good king. And unfortunately it has its own pet solutions for moral questions. That is why the unconventional drama has such a hard struggle. Nothing is, I am afraid, less artistic than a crowd. It could with the utmost difficulty appreciate an art which existed solely for artistic reasons. At the bottom of its heart the theatrical crowd wants some kind of moral; and apparently, too, it wants the kind of moral to which it has been habituated. So that, when a

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very unconventional moralist comes along, like Ibsen, or Alexandre Dumas fils, or George Bernard Shaw, the first struggle that he has is to get the ordinary moral notions newly analysed, and perhaps altered, in spite of the prejudices of ordinary people. But in saying so much I have already invaded the province of what we call the technical possibilities of the dramatic art, the limiting conditions which an enquiry into the dramatic art itself naturally suggests to those who study it.

One of the main differences between a drama and a novel is that while you can take three or four days in perusing a novel, the whole of the drama must be exhibited before you in three hours. This shortness of time during which the whole impression has to be created requires a certain concentration of interest, a certain concentration, also, of machinery, to effect the purpose in view. The dramatist cannot describe the characters of his heroes and his heroines, as the novelist can. He can only present them in action on the stage. He cannot enter into an analysis of their motives, whereas psychological analysis is one of the functions of the novelist. The only way in which the dramatist can analyse a man's motives is by giving his hero or his villain a soliloquy, as Shakespeare allows Iago to soliloquise before the audience and exhibit a good deal of his complexity of character. But this very device, adopted to enable the dramatist to tell the audience something which otherwise they would find it difficult to understand, has now become a discredited part of dramatic technique. The modern play, which dates from Ibsen, has banished the soliloquy from the stage; and Ibsen was so accomplished a master of dramatic technique-a dramatic technique, by the way, learnt in Paris, in the school of Scribe-that the Norwegian's example has been followed by most of our recent writers. The appearance of a soliloquy seems to date a play as belonging to a past period, albeit the revolution has only come about in the last ten or fifteen years. Even when we listen to The Doll's House,' and find Torvald Helmer indulging in a long soliloquy in the middle of the last act, it strikes us as bizarre. The modern fashion is dead against the soliloquy; but it remains a question, in some forms of drama-for instance, poetic and romantic

drama-whether it will ever be possible to get rid altogether of the soliloquy.

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Deprived of this convenient method of explaining the motives of his characters, the dramatist is still more straitly bound to exhibit in action on the stage the characters whom he is representing. And now we get an inkling of the precise point where an older technique may be enlarged and modified. Drama represents human characters in action. But action does not merely mean 'doing things.' It means 'thinking things,' 'arguing things,' threshing things out by close discussion.' It must include mental action, the impact of mind on mind. It must include the whole course of those vivid and illuminating conversations which Dumas fils, Brieux, and especially Ibsen, introduced in the illustration of vexed questions in morals and in life, in the solution of particular problems. If I am not much mistaken, this enlargement of the term 'action' covers most of the development of the modern drama. The action we ask for in drama is not only something done on the stage; it includes all kinds of action-mental activity, clash of ideas, will struggling against will, emotion crushed by intellect, intellect paralysed by emotion-the whole panorama of our physical, mental and moral life; yes! and our dreams, too, if we are to find room for Mr Yeats's beautiful plays, like 'The Land of Heart's Desire,' and Mr Synge's 'Deirdre of the Sorrows.'

If anyone asks why we need to enlarge our conception of drama, one reason, at all events, can be given at once. Very interesting developments of drama are taking place, not only with us in such writers as Galsworthy, Bernard Shaw, Granville Barker, Arnold Bennett, and others, but elsewhere. There are, for instance, the extremely interesting literary movements in that country with which we have only recently become acquainted-Russia; and the more modern drama of Russia is very significant for our present purpose. We simply cannot understand the plays of Tolstoy, of Gorky, and especially of Tchekhof, unless we keep an open mind and try to understand that drama means a good deal more than, in our insular prejudice, we are prepared to accept. When Tchekhof's 'Cherry Orchard' was performed by the Stage Society, the audience, confronted by the unfamiliar, seemed to

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