Chapter 18

RANNVEIG Gunnar, my son, we are alone again.

(_She goes up the hall, mounts to the loft, and stoops beside him._)

Oh, they have hurt you--but that is forgot. Boy, it is bedtime; though I am too changed, And cannot lift you up and lay you in, You shall go warm to bed--I'll put you there. There is no comfort in my breast to-night, But close your eyes beneath my fingers' touch, Slip your feet down, and let me smooth your hands: Then sleep and sleep. Ay, all the world's asleep.

(_She rises._)

You had a rare toy when you were awake-- I'll wipe it with my hair.... Nay, keep it so, The colour on it now has gladdened you. It shall lie near you.

(_She raises the bill: the deep hum follows._)

No; it remembers him, And other men shall fall by it through Gunnar: The bill, the bill is singing.... The bill sings!

(_She kisses the weapon, then shakes it on high._)

[CURTAIN]

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION IN READING THE PLAYS

1. _The Forces in the Play._

What is the "passion"--that is, what exactly do these people desire who "want their ain way"? What forces favor these desires, and what oppose them--for instance, David Pirnie's determination to tell wee Alexander a bit story, in _The Philosopher of Butterbiggens_? Can you always put any one character altogether on one side? Or does his own weakness or carelessness or stupidity, for example, sometimes work against his getting what he wants, so that he is, in part, _not_ on his own side, but against it, as Brutus is in _Julius Caesar_? Are there other forces in the play besides the people--storm or accident or fate? With what side or what character are you in sympathy? Is this constant throughout the play, or do you feel a change at some point in it? Does the author sympathize with any special character? Does he have a prejudice against any one of them? For example, in _Campbell of Kilmhor_, where is your sympathy? Where is the author's, apparently?

2. _The Beginning and the End._

What events important to this play occurred before the curtain rises? Why does the author begin just here, and not earlier or later? How does he contrive to let you know these important things without coming before the curtain to announce them himself, or having two servants dusting the furniture and telling them to each other?

What happens _after_ the curtain falls? Can you go on picturing these events? Are any of them important to the story--for instance, in _The Beggar and the King_? Why did the author stop before telling us these things?

Does the ending satisfy you? Even if you do not find it happy and enjoyable, does it seem the natural and perhaps the inevitable result of the forces at work--in _Riders to the Sea_ and _Campbell of Kilmhor_, for instance? Or has the author interfered to make characters do what they would not naturally do, or used chance and coincidence, like the accidentally discovered will or the long-lost relative in melodramas, to bring about a result he prefers--a "happy ending," or a clap-trap surprise, or a supposed proof of some theory about politics or morals?

Does the interest mount steadily from beginning to end, or does it droop and fail somewhere? You may find it interesting to try drawing the diagram of interest for a play, as suggested in chapter X of Dr. Brander Matthews's _Study of the Drama_, and accounting for the drop in interest, if you find any.

3. _The Playwright's Purpose._

What was the author trying to do in writing the play? It may have been:--

Merely to tell a good story To paint a picture of life in the Arran Islands or in old France or in a modern industrial town To show us character and its development, as in novels like Thackeray's and Eliot's (Of course, brief plays like these cannot show development of character, but only critical points in such development--the result of forces perhaps long at work, or the awakening of new ideas and other determinants of character.) To portray a social situation, such as the relation between workmen and employers, or between men and women To show the inevitable effects of action and motive, as of the determined loyalty of Dugald Stewart and his mother, or the battle of fisher-folk or weavers with grinding poverty.

Of course, no play will probably do any one of these things exclusively, but usually each is concerned most with some one purpose.

What effect has the play on you? Even if its tragedy is painful or its account of human character makes you uncomfortable, is it good for you to realize these things, or merely uselessly unpleasant? Is the play stupidly and falsely cheering because it presents untrue "happy endings" or other distortions of things as they are? Do you think the play has merely temporary, or genuine and permanent, appeal?

NOTES ON THE DRAMAS AND THE DRAMATISTS

_Harold Chapin_: THE PHILOSOPHER OF BUTTERBIGGENS

Harold Chapin, as we learn from _Soldier and Dramatist_ (Lane, 1917), was an American both by ancestry and nativity. But he lived the greater part of his life in England, and died for England at Loos in April, 1915. His activity was always associated with the stage. When he was but seven years old he played the little Marcius to his mother's Volumnia at the Shakespeare Festival, at Stratford-on-Avon in 1893. In 1911 he produced Mr. Harold Brighouse's _Lonesome-Like_ and several of his own short plays at the Glasgow Repertory Theatre. For several years before the war he was Mr. Granville Barker's stage manager, and helped him to produce the beautiful Shakespearean plays at the Savoy Theatre in London.

Of Chapin's own dramas, _The New Morality_ and _Art and Opportunity_ have been given recently in New York and in London, and several of the one-act plays at a memorial performance in London in 1916, in matinée at the Punch and Judy Theatre, and before the Drama League in New York in March and April, 1921. Of the shorter plays, mentioned in the bibliographies following these notes, _It's the Poor that 'elps the Poor, The Dumb and the Blind, and The Philosopher of Butterbiggens_ have been given the highest praise by such critics as Mr. William Archer, who wrote, "No English-speaking man of more unquestionable genius has been lost to the world in this world-frenzy." These true and honest dramas represent the English Repertory theatres at their best in this brief form, and give promise of the great and permanently interesting "human comedy" which Chapin might have completed had his life not been sacrificed. In spite of the simplicity and lightness of the little play here given, there is more shrewd philosophy in old David Pirnie, and more real humanity in his family, than is to be found portrayed in many pretentious social dramas and difficult psychological novels. It is admirable on the stage, as was shown by the Provincetown Players last winter. In the memorial performance for Harold Chapin in London, the author's little son appeared in the part of wee Alexander.

"Butterbiggens," Mrs. Alice Chapin, the dramatist's mother, replied to an inquiry as to "what Butterbiggens is or are," "is, are, and always will be a suburb of Glasgow."

There is little difficulty with the modified Scots dialect in this play if one remembers that _ae_ generally takes the place of such sounds as _e_ in _tea_, _o_ in _so_, _a_ in _have_, and so on, and that _a'_ means _all_. A _wean_ is a small _bairn_, _yinst_ is _once_, _ava_ is _at all_, and _thrang_ is "thick" or intimate.

_Distempered_ means calcimined, or painted in water-dissolved color on the plaster.

_Lady Gregory_: SPREADING THE NEWS

In her notes on the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, which she was most influential in building up, Lady Augusta Gregory says that it was the desire of the players and writers who worked there to establish an Irish drama which should have a "firm base in reality and an apex of beauty." This phrase, which admirably expresses the best in the play-making going on to-day, finds most adequate illustration in the work of Synge, of Yeats, and of Lady Gregory herself. The basis in reality of such jolly and robust comedies as her _Seven Irish Plays_ and _New Irish Comedies_ is clearly discernible. They are in the tradition of the best early English comedy, from the miracle plays onward; of Hans Sachs's _Shrovetide Plays_, and of Molière's dramatizations of medieaval _fabliaux_, as in _The Physician in Spite of Himself_. Lady Gregory describes in her notes on _Spreading the News_ how the play grew out of an idea of picturing tragic consequences from idle rumor and defamation of character. It is certainly not to be regretted that she allowed "laughter to have its way with the little play," and gave Bartley Fallon a share of glory from the woeful day to illuminate dull, older years.

The inhabitants of this same village of Cloon appear as old friends in other of Lady Gregory's plays, with, as usual, nothing to do but mind one another's business. In _The Jackdaw_ another absurd rumor is fanned into full blaze by greed; upon _Hyacinth Halvey_ works the potent and embarrassing influence of too good a reputation. Still other plays attain a notable height of beauty--notably _The Rising of the Moon_ and _The Traveling Man_. _The Gaol Gate_ tells a story similar to that of _Campbell of Kilmhor_, with genuinely tragic effect. She has written, besides, two volumes of Irish folk-history, _Gods and Fighting Men_ and _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_, which Mr. Yeats calls masterpieces of prose which one "can weigh with Malory and feel no discontent at the tally."[1] A writer who has produced such range and beauty of works, from very human, characteristic comedy and farce to fine, poignant tragedy, besides writing excellent stories and contributing largely to an important experimental theatre, is secure of her share of fame.

The "Removable Magistrate" is apparently one appointed by British officialdom; this one, having just come from the Bay of Bengal, is going to fit upon the natives of Cloon methods which may have worked in a rather different district.

The song "with a skin on it," which Bartley sings, is given in Lady Gregory's _Seven Short Plays_ (Putnam, 1909).

[Footnote 1: Appendix to _The Poetical Works of William B. Yeats_, volume II, (Macmillan, 1912).]

_Winthrop Parkhurst_: THE BEGGAR AND THE KING

_The Beggar and the King_ looks at first like a pleasant absurdity; it is in reality valuable as a short history of the ostrich method of dealing with realities. The beggar, of course, continues to cry aloud after his tongue, and even his head, have been removed, because there are so many millions of him. Again and again, in the course of history, he has gathered desperate courage to defy authority that is blind and evil. Always at last, as in the French and the Russian revolutions and in the more recent European revolts, he succeeds in wresting the power from those in autocratic authority. And yet, just as of old, not only kings, but all others who attempt dictatorship and the playing of providence, try the simple tactics of the ostrich; they close the window, or their eyes and ears, as a sufficient answer to rebellion. Appreciating the futility of these methods, we have no difficulty in continuing the drama ourselves beyond the fall of the curtain.

Mr. Winthrop Parkhurst, by birth a New Yorker, according to a family tradition is a descendant on his mother's side of John Huss, the Bohemian reformer and martyr, and on his father's of the executioner of Charles I of England. His writings include _Maracca_, a Biblical one-act play, and several short satirical sketches.

_George Middleton_: TIDES

Mr. George Middleton generally pictures in his dramas problems which are not easy to solve. And he does not try to give ready-made solutions. He merely shows us how various people have tried to work these problems; and his dramas are like real life because the attempts at solutions fail as often as they succeed. Certain of the problems Mr. Middleton presents are such as high-school students meet and can well consider; several of these plays appear in the lists following. _Tides_ is about a man who has supported an unpopular theory. Nothing is said about whether his ideal is right or wrong, but it is clear that he has held to it in perfect sincerity of belief and has been quite unmoved by the bitterest persecution. But when he is offered honor and flattering respect, though he does not really change his belief and adherence, he compromises and partially surrenders his ideal. The fable is similar to that of Ibsen's _The League of Youth_, but the telling here is straighter and clearer. William White's self-deception is made evident to him and to us by his honest and courageous wife, who tells him frankly of it. "Haven't you sometimes noticed that is what bitterness to another means: a failure within oneself?" she comments wisely. An effective contrast is furnished by the son, who has altogether and honestly abandoned his father's theories in the face of new realities as he sees them.

_Eugene O'Neill_: ILE

Eugene O'Neill, American seaman, laborer, newspaperman, and dramatist, has been associated for several years with the Provincetown Players. This group, including Mrs. Glaspell and other playwrights of importance, gather in Provincetown, on Cape Cod, during the summer, and in winter present significant foreign and native plays in a converted stable on Macdougall Street in New York, where may be seen the ring to which Pegasus was once tethered! In 1919 Mr. O'Neill received the Pulitzer Prize for the most important American play of the year.

Mr. O'Neill has had experience of the sea, like the great Englishmen, Mr. Masefield and Mr. Joseph Conrad. He knows the interminable whaling voyages, as described in Melville's _Moby_ _Dick_ and the first chapter of _Typee_--best of all in Bullen's _Cruise of the Cachalot_. Out of this experience of hard life and harder men he has written many poignant and terrible dramas--perhaps the greatest this story of the skipper's wife who insisted on making the voyage with her husband and is worn to the edge of insanity by months of ice-bound solitude. The motive of Captain Keeney is like that which caused Skipper Ireson to leave his fellow townsmen to sink in Chaleur Bay. Against his iron determination his wife's piteous pleading and evident suffering are more potent than the mutinying hands; whether she can avail to turn him home "with a measly four hundred barrel of ile" is the problem of the play.

_J.A. Ferguson_: CAMPBELL OF KILMHOR

This tragic story of the war and hatred in Scotland belongs in the series of attempts made by Charles Edward Stuart and his father to regain the throne lost by James II in 1688. "The Young Pretender's" vigorous campaign in 1745, carried far into England, might easily have succeeded but for the quarrels and disaffection of the Highland chiefs who supported him. His failure was completed at the bloody battle of Culloden, or Drumossie Moor, in 1746, celebrated in Scottish story and song of lamentation. Scott's hero Waverley went into the highland country shortly after these uprisings, and David Balfour, in _Kidnapped_, had numerous adventures in crossing it with Allan Breck Stewart, who was in the service of his kinsmen, the exiled Stuarts. The hatred of Campbells and Stuarts, of Lowlander and Highlander, Loyalist and Jacobite, is intense throughout the record of those days.

The young Scot and his stanch and proudly tearless mother are, of course, the heroic characters in the play. We have a hint that Charles Edward Stuart himself is with the band whom the young man protects so loyally. It may seem strange that the drama is named, not for him, but for the crafty and pitiless executioner of the king's justice. But he is after all the most interesting character in the piece, with his Biblical references in broad Lowland Scots (we may suppose that the Stewarts speak Gaelic among themselves), his superstition, his remorseless cruelty. We should like to see how he takes the discovery that, perhaps for the first time, he has been baffled in his career of unscrupulous and bloody deeds!

This play represents the most successful work of the Glasgow Repertory Theatre in 1914. The author has written no others which have been published, though he is credited with a good story or two. It may be hoped that he will write other dramas as excellent as this one. He has put into very brief and effective form here the spirit and idea of a most intense period of merciless conflict.

A _kebbuck_ is a cheese; _keek_ means peek; _toom_, empty; a _besom_, a broom; and _soop_, sweep.

_John Galsworthy_: THE SUN

According to Professor Lewisohn and other critics Mr. Galsworthy is without question the foremost English dramatist to-day. Without arguing or attempting to offer solutions, he gives the most searching presentation of problems which we have to face and somehow settle. In _Strife_, after a furious contest and bitter hardships, the strike is settled by a compromise which the leaders of both sides count as failure. Things are much as they were at the start; the difficulty is no nearer solution. In _Justice_, "society stamps out a human life not without its fair possibilities--for eighty-one pounds," because obviously clear and guilty infraction of law cannot go unavenged. Justice is not condemned by the facts shown in this play, nor is its working extolled. In _The Mob_, the patrioteering element destroys a man who proclaims the injustice of a small and greedy war of conquest. In _The Pigeon_, brilliant debate is held, but no conclusion reached, as to what we should do with derelict and wasted lives, with men who do not fit into the scheme of success and society.

In his sketches and stories Mr. Galsworthy presents these same problems, and again without attempted conclusions. _The Freelands_ particularly is a most dramatic novel of conditions and results similar to those in some of the dramas mentioned above. Many of his sketches and essays also--for example, "My Distant Relative" in _The Inn of Tranquillity_ and "Comfort" in _A Commentary_--are of biting and almost cynical irony in viewing proposed and present solutions of problems; but none suggest panaceas. They merely make us think soberly of the size of our problems and their immense complexity, move us to go out to look for more information and to examine carefully our most solid institutions as well as suggested alterations in them.

A large part of Mr. Galsworthy's time and thought, both during the war and since, has been given to the problem of some measure of justice to soldiers, and particularly to wounded and broken soldiers. In _A Sheaf_ and _Another Sheaf_ appear various papers presenting sharply the conditions of suffering and neglect that actually exist. _The Sun_ is a brief sketch of after-war days,--this time of a wounded man who has gained an advantage over one who escaped injury,--and of joy in deliverance from the hell of war--a joy so profound and luminous that the released soldier cannot let a sharp mischance and disappointment mar his happiness. The whole piece is in the key of Captain Bassoon's verses after the Armistice:--

"Every one suddenly burst out singing."

The other two think the happy soldier mad. We are left wondering what the reaction will be from this height of joyful release to the harsh and sombre conditions of workingmen's life after the peace.

The _silver badge_ represents a discharge for wounds. _Crumps_ are, of course, shells.

_Louise Sounders_: THE KNAVE OF HEARTS

_The Knave of Hearts_ is one of the happy tradition of puppet-plays, which come down in unbroken line from the most ancient history, through the illustrious Dr. Faustus and Mr. Punch, to new and even greater favor and fame to-day. For just as the ancient puppet-shows of Italy and England seemed to be losing ground before the moving-picture invasion, they have been heroically rescued by Mr. Tony Sarg,--whose performance of Thackeray's _The Rose and the Ring_ is perfectly absurd and captivating,--and by other excellent artists.

Puppet-shows are delightful because they are easily made and quite convincing. Very good ones have been improvised even by tiny children, with a pasteboard suit-box opening to the front, a slit at the top to let down paper-doll actors on a thread, a bit of scenery, outdoors or in, drawn as background, and a showman to talk for all the characters. Still better puppets are doll heads and arms of various sorts, dressed in flowing robes and provided with holes for two fingers and a thumb of the operator, who moves them from below. They can be made to dance and antic as you like on a stage above the showman's head, as Punch and Judy have always done. The more elaborate marionettes are worked with strings from above, so that they can open and close their mouths and otherwise act most realistically; these are, of course, more difficult, but quite possible to make. In such simple theatres, Goethe and Robert Louis Stevenson and many other famous people played themselves endless stories. If you want to pursue this idea further, a list of references below gives you opportunity for all the information you like about marionettes and puppets.

_The Knave of Hearts_ is charming, either as a puppet-play or, as a class in junior high school gave it recently, a "legitimate drama." The remarks of the manager are all the funnier when applied to real characters. The play explains clearly the reasons for the strange behavior of a respectable nursery character. It is to be published soon in a book of its own with illustrations by Mr. Maxfield Parrish (Scribner's). The author has written other plays and stories, some of which you may have seen in _St. Nicholas_, and also a pleasant operetta, with music by Alice Terhune--_The Woodland_ _Princess_, listed in the bibliography following. She is also an actress with the New York Comedy Club, an excellent amateur organization.

Pompdebile's coat of arms, with a heart rampant (i.e., standing on its hind legs, however that may be accomplished), reminds one of the arms suggested for the old clergyman-scholar, Mr. Casaubon, in George Eliot's _Middlemarch_--"three cuttlefish sable and a commentator rampant."

_Lord Dunsany_: FAME AND THE POET

Lord Dunsany (Edward Moreton Max Plunkett), the eighteenth baron of his name, is the author of a number of stories and plays unique in their type of clever imaginativeness. Besides the inimitable Five Plays and other dramas listed in the bibliography, his best writings are to be found in _Fifty-One Tales_, which includes "The Hen," "Death and Odysseus," "The True Story of the Hare and the Tortoise," and other highly entertaining matters. _Fame and the Poet_, originally published in the _Atlantic_, has been recently produced with good effect by the Harvard Dramatic Club. Fame's startling revelation to her faithful worshiper of her real nature and attributes is naturally most distressing--even more so, perhaps, than the rendezvous which this same goddess appointed another poet, in the _Fifty-One Tales_: "In the cemetery back of the workhouse, after a hundred years."

Lord Dunsany was a captain in the First Royal Iniskilling Fusileers--a regiment mentioned in Sheridan's _Saint Patrick's Day_--and saw service in Syria and the Near East as well as on the western front. He was wounded on April 25, 1916, in Flanders. Since the war he has visited the United States and seen a performance of his _Tents of the Arabs_ at the Neighborhood Playhouse, New York City.

_Beulah Marie Dix_: THE CAPTAIN OF THE GATE