Part 6 (1/2)

Dorriforth. Produced--partly. A play isn't fully produced until it is in a form in which you can refer to it. We have to talk in the air. I can refer to my Congreve, but I can't to my Pinero. {*}

* Since the above was written several of Mr. Pinero's plays have been published.

Florentia. The authors are not bound to publish them if they don't wish.

Dorriforth. Certainly not, nor are they in that case bound to insist on one's not being a little vague about them. They are perfectly free to withhold them; they may have very good reasons for it, and I can imagine some that would be excellent and worthy of all respect. But their withholding them is one of the signs.

Auberon. What signs?

Dorriforth. Those I just spoke of--those we are trying to read together.

The signs that ambition and desire are folly, that the sun of the drama has set, that the matter isn't worth talking about, that it has ceased to be an interest for serious folk, and that everything--everything, I mean, that's anything--is over. The sooner we recognize it the sooner to sleep, the sooner we get clear of misleading illusions and are purged of the bad blood that disappointment makes. It's a pity, because the theatre--after every allowance is made--_might_ have been a fine thing.

At all events it was a pleasant--it was really almost a n.o.ble--dream.

_Requiescat!_

Florentia. I see nothing to confirm your absurd theory. I delight in the play; more people than ever delight in it with me; more people than ever go to it, and there are ten theatres in London where there were two of old.

Dorriforth. Which is what was to demonstrated. Whence do they derive their nutriment?

Auberon. Why, from the enormous public.

Dorriforth. My dear fellow, I'm not talking of the box-office. What wealth of dramatic, of histrionic production have we to meet that enormous demand? There will be twenty theatres ten years hence where there are ten to-day, and there will be, no doubt, ten times as many people ”delighting in them,” like Florentla. But it won't alter the fact that our dream will have been dreamed. Florentia said a word when we came in which alone speaks volumes.

Florentia. What was my word?

Auberon. You are sovereignly unjust to native talent among the actors--I leave the dramatists alone. There are many who do excellent, independent work; strive for perfection, completeness--in short, the things we want.

Dorriforth. I am not in the least unjust to them--I only pity them: they have so little to put _sous la dent_. It must seem to them at times that no one will work for them, that they are likely to starve for parts--forsaken of G.o.ds and men.

Florentia. If they work, then, in solitude and sadness, they have the more honor, and one should recognize more explicitly their great merit.

Dorriforth. Admirably said. Their laudable effort is precisely the one little loop-hole that I see of escape from the general doom. Certainly we must try to enlarge it--that small aperture into the blue. We must fix our eyes on it and make much of it, exaggerate it, do anything with it tha may contribute to restore a working faith. Precious that must be to the sincere spirits on the stage who are conscious of all the other things--formidable things--that rise against them.

Amicia. What other things do you mean?

Dorriforth. Why, for one thing, the grossness and brutality of London, with its scramble, its pressure, its hustle of engagements, of preoccupations, its long distances, its late hours, its nightly dinners, its innumerable demands on the attention, its general congregation of influences fatal to the isolation, to the punctuality, to the security, of the dear old playhouse spell. When Florentia said in her charming way--

Florentia. Here's my dreadful speech at last.

Dorriforth. When you said that you went to the Theatre Libre in the afternoon because you couldn't spare an evening, I recognized the death-knell of the drama. _Time_, the very breath of its nostrils, is lacking. Wagner was clever to go to leisurely Bayreuth among the hills--the Bayreuth of s.p.a.cious days, a paradise of ”development.”

Talk to a London audience of ”development!” The long runs would, if necessary, put the whole question into a nutsh.e.l.l. Figure to yourself, for then the question is answered, how an intelligent actor must loathe them, and what a cruel negation he must find in them of the artistic life, the life of which the very essence is variety of practice, freshness of experiment, and to feel that one must do many things in turn to do any one of them completely.

Auberon. I don't in the least understand your _acharnement_, in view of the vagueness of your contention.