CHAPTER XIII

G. R. Sims--R. C. Carton--Haddon Chambers--The Independent Theatre and Matinee Performances--The Drama of To-morrow--A "Report of Progress"--The Public and the Actors--Actor-Managers--The Forces that have given Birth to the Contemporary English Drama--Disappearance of the Obstacles to its becoming Modern and National--Conclusion.

I have given an account of the beginnings of the contemporary dramatic movement, have indicated the various influences from within and from without which have affected it, by which it has been stimulated or held back; have analysed what seem to me the most characteristic of those dramas which have already seen the light. There remains nothing then for me to do, except to ascend a tower, as it were, and to scan the horizon, and to foretell, if I can do so, what we may expect from the drama of to-morrow.

There is a group of writers who keep near the confines of drama and melodrama, torn between literary ambition and the very natural wish to earn money. What will they do? Will they be artists or artizans? Will they stoop to the conditions of the trade, or rise to the requirements of the art? There are many of their kind whom Sir Augustus Harris has made away with, and whom we shall never get back.

I can remember the hopes given rise to by Mr. Buchanan. But, as Oronte says in Moliere's _Misanthrope_--"_Belle Philis, on desespere alors qu'on espere toujours_." The case of Mr. G. R. Sims is different. There has been no apostasy with him; he has remained what he always was, and has given what he was bound to give. Story-teller, journalist, or playwright, he is an improviser, who does not aim too high, but who combines with a gift of observation, a certain imaginative faculty and a kind of popular humour, together with a touch of Zolaism. Above all, he is a Cockney, and nothing that belongs to Cockneydom is unknown to him. The only play of the period in which you can really smell the East End, as the _maitre_ of Medan would say, is _The Lights o' London_, and that perhaps is why all the London managers, one after the other, returned it to Mr. Sims, "with thanks." _The Lights o' London_ got produced in the end, however, and had an immense success, but a success that was not to endure. It is not towards realism, as we have seen, that the English stage is making.

Who will take the lead amongst the younger school of dramatists? Who will write the _Judahs_, _The Second Mrs. Tanquerays_ of to-morrow? Will it be Mr. Louis N. Parker, Mr. Malcolm Watson, or Mr. J. M. Barrie? Or will it be Mr. Carton, author of _Liberty Hall_ (one of the successes of 1893) and of _The Squire of Dames_, an adaptation, or rather an abridged translation, of _L'Ami des femmes_, which has been attracting the public to the Criterion? Up to the present, Mr. Carton has shown that he possesses wit and talent, but neither observation nor the inventive faculty. But in the near future he may give proof of both.

Or will it be Mr. Haddon Chambers, who is already known in Paris, one of his works, _The Fatal Card_, having crossed the channel? Since then he has written a piece entitled _John-a-Dreams_, played at the Haymarket in 1894, in which Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Mr. Tree joined their talents. It is not a good play, but it is one in which the tendencies of the new drama are clearly shown. I recall one scene of the utmost simplicity, the restrained and sober emotion of which contrasts curiously with the fine phrases a situation such as it contains would inspire in an author of a quarter of a century ago. Kate Cloud loves, and is loved by, Harold Wynn. Before consenting to marry him she gets herself introduced to Harold's father, a country clergyman.

"You do not know me, sir," she says to him (I quote from memory), "but I know you. You came to preach ten years ago at the village of ----. I was with Mrs. Withers then."

"Oh, indeed,--an excellent person," he replies; "but it is strange that I did not make your acquaintance."

"No, it is not strange, really,--do you remember the kind of work she was engaged upon?"

"The redemption of unfortunates, was it not."

"Yes, exactly. And you, doubtless--you helped her?"

"No," Kate replies gravely, sadly, her voice trembling. "No, it was she who helped me." She tells him her story, the sad, perennial story, or rather, having begun it, she leaves him to divine the rest. "They came to my help," she goes on, "but no one came to the help of my mother. She fed and clothed me when I was little; I in my turn fed and clothed her later on."

Then had come years of endeavour, and the hard apprenticeship by which she had made herself an honest woman.

"Now, sir, if a man who had a heart wanted to marry me in full consciousness of my past, should I have the right to accept him?"

"Certainly, my child," the old man answers.

"You would still be of the same opinion even though the man were of your own rank, ... were a friend of yours, ... were your son?"

Harold's father gives a gesture of anguish and horror, of physical recoil and inexpressible confusion. Then he stammers, tries to recover himself, seeks to call to his aid the merciful doctrine of the sacred Book which he has all his life upon his lips, and which he thought he had within his heart. But Kate does not give him time. A gesture has decided her future; she holds herself bound by this instinctive display of a social prejudice which has become his second nature, his second conscience, even to the point of effacing the idea of pardon in him who should be its interpreter and messenger. The title of the play is not misleading, the action being pervaded and, as it were, impregnated by, steeped in, dreaminess. Mr. Haddon Chambers dares to dream in the theatre, and the public seem to me to be ready to keep him company. That anyone should go to the theatre to dream will seem incredible to many Parisians. But we must remember always that the English mind has literary needs, and to a certain point emotional propensities, that are different from ours. We should have in our minds, too, in the place of these theatres of ours so brightly lit, in which the spectacle lies often as much in the boxes and balcony as on the stage, those London theatres, plunged in a semi-obscurity which induces to forgetfulness of oneself and of the ordinary conditions of life. The stage appears like the fabric of a vision. The dull-looking, uninterested faces of the musicians are no longer interposed between us and the scenery. The jingling of a bracelet, a slight rustling of satin, the faint and delicate odour of a rose, the quick breathing of some neighbour who is moved, bring home to us only at moments the presence of other human beings. Perhaps it is the place of all others where one gets furthest away from the thought of reality, where one is readiest to wish for the unlifelike and to love the impossible.

After the writers whom I have named, there are others, and yet others still, whose names the public hardly knows, and at whose manuscripts the managers look askance. The Independent Theatre gave them an opening, but this theatre itself has ceased its existence, beset with difficulties, and there is nothing to suggest that it will come to life again. There remain for them only those matinees in the regular theatres which lend their stage, more or less disinterestedly, for these ephemeral performances in which young actors are to be found interpreting unknown authors to the strangest of publics. The house is full of friends--if it be not empty altogether. A certain number of long-suffering play-lovers attend these tentative representations, sustained by the hope of being the first to discover a talent in process of formation, or a new formula of art: they have come across little up to the present except the _gaucherie_ which feels its way, and the deliberate exaggeration which aims at exciting wonder.

Those who have followed me in this long study of mine, and who have watched the evolution of the English drama through its successive stages, are in a position to see for themselves what advance it has made already during the last thirty years. There is the advance first of all in the taste of the public. The democracy has gone through its course of education; it has "settled," so to speak, and the dregs have sunk to the bottom. Three classes of spectators have gradually been formed by a process of natural selection. The music halls provide for the feasting of the eye; melodrama and farce have attracted and retain an enormous mass of clients; the literary drama and Comedy have secured their own homes, to which one looks only for artistic emotions and refined amusements.

In these are to be found that highest rank of actors and actresses whose rise in fortune, talent, and esteem I have described. To the names already mentioned I would add those of some to whom I have not had occasion to refer in these pages, but whom I have often had the pleasure of applauding: Mr. Willard, Mr. Wilson Barrett, and Mr. Forbes Robertson; Mr. Charles Wyndham, whose confident and brilliant style would do honour to the best of our _societaires_ of the Rue Richelieu; Mr. Robson, whose gift of humorous naturalness almost made a realistic play out of _Liberty Hall_; Lionel Brough, who for thirty years has set the stamp of his whimsical originality upon all his roles; Miss Evelyn Millard, who recalls Mrs. Patrick Campbell without imitating her; and Miss Kate Rorke, who is, on the contrary, her exact opposite, and who incarnates the sweet freshness of pure affection, the innocence which weeps and smiles, just as Mrs. Campbell personifies the love that is disquieting and dangerous; Miss Winifred Emery, an actress of varied and supple talent, capable of depicting caprice no less than virtue and devotion. The list is far from being complete.

There have always been a number of good actors, but what was constantly lacking before the Bancrofts' time was unison. To-day the _ensembles_ are far better than they were, and they would be better still were it not for that perpetual _va-et-vient_ in the theatrical world which is so injurious to the homogeneity of the various companies.

The art of _mise-en-scene_ did not exist. To-day it not merely exists: it has reached a certain degree of perfection. I am not referring now to the scenic splendours and illusions of Drury Lane, though I have no wish to make light of these, but to that appropriate framing, that scrupulous accuracy in the matter of historical details, no less than in the matter of modern accessories, that living atmosphere, to use Irving's formula, with which the intelligent stage-manager should clothe the action of the piece. I have already alluded to the Shakspearian revivals at the Lyceum. No one knows better than Mr. Tree, of the Haymarket, how to give us a glimpse of the real world of fashion, and how to bring home to us the poetry underlying the play which he is producing. Mr. Haddon Chambers must have been grateful to him for that yacht which sped so swiftly past the Needles, bathed in the pale radiance of the moon; and for the scenery in the last act which imparted a sense of austere and solemn grandeur to the conclusion of the play. In the same piece, when Harold, after a sleepless night, threw open his window, and we saw the fields lying under their covering of morning mist, and the fresh and joyous sunlight flooded the room, and there came to our ears the song of the awakening birds, the sensation was full of a rare charm, serving as _andante_ to the loftiest feelings.

It would seem that the dramatists have not so much influence in the matter of _mise-en-scene_ as they might wish. But may this not be that for one reason or another their competency, except in the case of some of them, is inferior to their pretensions? It is the custom to abuse the actor-managers, and to point to them as one of the obstacles to the complete development of the drama. It is a domestic quarrel, and there is no good in interfering between husband and wife. It is possible that some actor-managers succumb to the temptation of ordering their parts to measure, and call for even more docility than talent from the young authors whom they employ. It is possible also that the ill-feeling of a dramatist who has had his work refused, or of an actor who has been left in the background, may have done something to exaggerate the evil. Make a study of the author-manager who has to minister to his own personal vanity, to his own literary prepossessions, and to the needs of his own special circle of admirers and sympathisers; the commercially-minded manager for whom questions of art find their answer in the yearly balance-sheet; the worldly, pleasure-seeking manager, _amateur de theatre_ and to an even greater degree _amateur de femmes_: you will find that each has his faults, and that these faults are just as bad on the whole as the actor-manager's.

Another obstacle is the Censorship. I have shown how absurd it is in principle; it is my duty to add that in practice it is not wholly unreasonable, though it relapses into prudishness every now and then. I have read lately a moving drama, from the pen of Mr. William Heinemann, the celebrated publisher whose enterprising spirit is well known in the world of literature, and who has it in him to make no less a mark in the world of the theatre. The Censorship would not sanction _The First Step_: this piece might have made it known to Londoners that there are couples in their great city whom the registrar has not united and whom the clergyman has not blessed, men of good position who get drunk and beat their mistresses, young girls who leave home in the morning and don't return at night. The Censorship thought it better to spare them this revelation.

But such instances are rare. The Censorship is changing bit by bit, like the beefeaters of the Tower, who replaced their hose by breeches some years ago without warning. These breeches do not go, I am aware, with the hood, doublet, and halbert, but this is our poor way of imitating nature in her transformations. For the Censorship there is only one way of adapting itself to modern life, and that is to disappear. Disappear it will, but slowly and gradually, confining its action to essential cases; and thus it will drag out its existence yet a little while. When, finally, the time will come to give it its _coup-de-grace_, it will be found to have already ceased to breathe.

Who then will succeed to the censor? who will be censor when the Censorship has been abolished? The public itself; the public represented not only by those of its members who are the most refined, but those who are strictest and most uncompromising. In other words, the Puritans will be on the watch. And after all, why not? Are they not one of the forces of the national mind, one of the reasons of England's existence? They are the natural enemies of the theatre, and will last as long as it. When they leave it free, their end or its end will be near at hand, and England's end will be in sight.

We live, not because we choose but because we must. It is thus with the English drama as with everything else. The law that put the dramatic work of foreigners upon the same footing in regard to copyright as their own has made translation and adaptation almost impossible, by reason of the double expense involved. Thenceforward it was necessary for the English dramatist to invent plots for himself, to be original, to be himself. It was thus the English drama came to life.

The vote of Congress, which in 1890 secured copyright in America for English authors, put an end to the old system of keeping plays in manuscript. Once publication was no longer attended by risk, how could they hold aloof from this new form of success? Accordingly they began to print. But in order to be read, a play should be really written. The drama, then, had to become literary. As yet it is literary only in a moderate degree. I began with the question: Is there a living English drama at the present moment? To be living it is necessary that it should express the ideas and the passions of the time, and to be English it should be a faithful likeness, a complete synthesis of all the elements of the national character. The drama, from various causes, was behind the times. These causes, which I have pointed out and discussed, were:--

1. The timidity resulting from excessive severity of manners.

2. The dramatist's lack of opportunity for the study of social life.

3. The Shakespeare cult, which paralysed the imagination by offering it a model that was too big for it, and forms that had become antiquated.

These causes have disappeared one after the other. The moral ideal has become enlarged and has given over a wider field to the dramatist. The dramatist himself has learned to know life outside the green-room and the tavern back-parlour. He has studied from nature instead of copying Goldsmith and Sheridan. Shakespeare has never been less imitated, perhaps because he has never been better acted or better understood.

But what prevented the drama from being "English"? It is we French who have prevented it--it is from our drama that the English playwrights have drawn for so long, at first with an indiscriminate eagerness for which there is no parallel, later more modestly and with discernment. At the risk of offending my compatriots, I must here express my absolute conviction that, except in regard to acting, this French influence has been harmful to the English stage. Our dramatists have enriched some London managers; but they have lain for thirty years on top of the English dramatists, and have stifled their originality--and without deriving much profit from this involuntary tyranny. If only they could have taught their pupils the secrets of their trade! But the English were maladroit disciples of Scribe and Sardou, whilst the philosophy of Dumas and Augier remained to them a closed book.

The French influence has come at last to be what it should be. The two theatres, placed upon the same footing, will lend each other from time to time,--now, the idea of a play which, treated differently on either side of the channel, will serve to measure the divergence or resemblance of the two forms of society; now, a complete play which, translated literally, will give to us a perfect representation of London life, or to the Londoners a perfect representation of ours. Meanwhile the English drama, freed from its leading strings, will find its own way for itself. It is capable of doing so unaided, but I think Ibsen's plays will help it. In this reference to Ibsen my readers may think they see a contradiction in my reasoning. "What!" they will cry. "In order to bring back the English drama to itself again, you say it must be freed from foreign influence, and yet you send it to school to Norway!"

But I have answered this objection by anticipation. I have shown that Ibsen is not a foreigner to England. He seems to have written for Englishmen; he has given them the kind of drama, more or less, that Shakespeare, were he living now, would have given them. I write this sentence, confident that if I am in the world, or, not being in the world, am still read, a score of years hence, no one will be inclined to call me to account for it. To the Northern races, at all events, Ibsen means not a fashion but an era.

What the English drama is in search of, what it is about to create,--with or without Ibsen's assistance,--is a new form in which to reproduce that dualism which has struck and disconcerted every observer, native or foreign, Matthew Arnold, Emerson, Taine. For my part, I have sometimes endeavoured to trace this dualism to the marriage, tempestuous but fruitful, of Saxon and Celt, to the effort, ever vain but never ceasing, of these two refractory elements to fuse and unite. The drama of the sixteenth century came, in a moving and memorable hour, from one of those unions between the young and strong in which there enters something of violence and even of madness. The existing drama is the issue of parents well on in years in a time of gloom and trouble. It is delicate and calls for care. At the same time, it bears resemblances to those who gave it life. A race of heroes who are also buccaneers, a race of poets and shopkeepers, a race fearless of death and devoted to money, calculating but passionate, dreamers yet men of action, capable of the charges of Balaclava and the deal in the Suez shares, cannot possibly find its literary expression either in pure idealism or in realism undiluted. The "bleeding slice of life" awakes in it no appetite; "Art for Art's sake" leaves it wonderfully indifferent; of moralising, it is tired for the time being: it is passing through a stage of sensuous torpor which is not without charm, and it waits open-eyed and, as it were, hesitatingly before the labour of creating society afresh, of building up a new civilisation. It does not wish, and is not able, to forget those problems--that terrible To-morrow--by which we are everywhere threatened. Hence its sensuousness is tempered, refined, saddened by philosophy. And in this mood, what it asks of the drama is not to be amused, or to be excited, but to be made to think.

INDEX

Achurch, Miss, and Ibsen, 281.

Actor-manager on circuit, 49.

Adaptations from the French, 77, 207; law as to, 208; process, 209; S. Grundy's, 216.

Adelphi, The, 41, 46, 63, 195.

Albany, James, 133; his _Two Roses_, 162.

Alexander, Mr., in _Mrs. Tanqueray_, 266.

Almaviva I. and II., 200.

America, Macready in, 73.

Anderson, Mary, 174.

Anstey, Mr., and Ibsen, 282.

Archer, W., on Kean and Macready, 42.

---- on Wills, 177; on Tennyson, 178.

---- on Tennyson and Montanelli, 185, 299-207.

---- and H. A. Jones, 234; and _The Profligate_, 260; and _Mrs. Tanqueray_, 265.

---- and Ibsen, 282, 285, 290.

Arnold, Matthew, in the English Drama, 204; and H. A. Jones, 239.

_Arrah-na-pogue_, 91.

Art of _mise-en-scene_, 307.

Arundel Club, The, 109, 115.

Augier, 209, 257, 269, 312.

Authors of 1850-65, 80.

_Bab Ballads_, 140.

Bancroft, Mr., as Captain Hawtree, 119, 120; his realism, 122; revival of _School for Scandal_, 50, 123.

Bancrofts, the, compared, 122; and Robertson's plays, 133; and the "cup and saucer" comedy, 134; retirement, 136.

Bancroft, Mrs., 101 (see Wilton, Marie).

Barrett, Wilson, 306.

Barrie, J. M., 301.

Batemans, the, 156.

Beauty in the Drama, 252.

_Becket_, Tennyson's, 185, 188, 193.

_Bells, The_, 164, 166.

_Belphegor_, 100.

Beringhiem in _Richelieu_, 69.

Berlioz, 45.

Berne, Treaty of, 208.

Bernhardt, Sarah, 197, 275.

Bjoernson, 406.

---- and Ibsen, 297.

_Black-eyed Susan_, 61, 94.

Bohemia, centre of, 109, 115; in a nutshell, 116.

Boucicault, Dion, 87, 88-92, 93.

---- Mrs. Dion, 90.

_Brand_, Ibsen's, 278, 279, 283.

_Breaking a Butterfly_, 296.

_Broken Hearts_, Gilbert's, 142.

Brooke, 156.

Brough, Lionel, 306.

---- Robert, 110.

Browning and Macready, 64; his dramas, 192.

Buchanan, Robert, 195, 301.

Buckstone, 79, 80, 103, 112, 152.

Bulwer, Lord Lytton, 64-72; at Macready's banquet, 74; portrayal of Riches and Rank, 116 (see Lytton).

_Bunch of Violets, A_, 221.

Burdett-Coutts', Baroness, present to Irving, 167.

Burlesque, 93.

Burnand's _Ixion_, 93-95.

Byron, H. J., 96-99, 103, 104; and Robertson, 134.

---- Lord, 96.

Byronian Satanism and Bulwer Lytton, 65.

_Cabinet Minister, The_, 258.

Campbell, Mrs. Patrick, 250, 266, 275, 276.

---- in _John o' Dreams_, 302, 306.

_Cantab, The_, Robertson in, 112.

Carlyle and the Sagas, 285; and Ibsen, 288.

Carton, 301.

_Caste_, 117; Howe in, 119; Marie Wilton in, 121; scene from, 129.

Cavendish, Ada, 95.

Censor's Successor, the, 310.

Censorship, official, 83.

---- and Sydney Grundy, 214.

---- and _The First Step_, 309.

Chamberlain, Lord, 84.

Chambers, Haddon, 302, 307.

Characters, limited types of, 80.

_Charles I._, Wills's, 165, 166, 177.

_Charley's Aunt_, 284.

Chatterton, 198.

Chedd, 116.

Chippendale's present to Irving, 166.

Cibber, Colley, 168.

Circuit, on, 46-49.

City elocution class, 159.

Clarke, John, 104.

Clary in _The Prisoner of War_, 59.

Classical drama, death of the, 176.

_Clerical Error, A_, 234.

Coleridge on Kean, 42.

_Colleen Bawn_, 90-92.

Comedie Francaise, 197.

Comedies, Robertson's, cause of their success, 122.

Comedy, "Cup and Saucer," 134.

Comedy, the, 196.

Comic opera, 98.

Commission, parliamentary, 64; and Bulwer Lytton, 65.

Compton, 80.

Cook, 198.

_Cool as a Cucumber_, 79.

Copyright in dramatic work, 310.

Coquelin, M., on Mrs. Bancroft, 101.

Coriolanus, Macready as, 41.

Court Theatre, The, 133, 196.

Courtly, Charles, in _London Assurance_, 89.

Covent Garden, 46, 62, 64, 76.

Criticism, dramatic, 81.

Critics, 81.

---- old and new, 198; and Sydney Grundy, 226; and Ibsen, 282.

Cromwell and Richelieu, 68.

Crumbs and Toby in _The Rent Day_, 57.

_Crusaders, The_, 244-248, 259.

"Cup and Saucer" comedy, 134.

_Cup_, Tennyson's, 183.

Cynisca, 150, 152.

_Dandy Dick_, 257.

_Dan'l Druce_, 142.

Darwin and Ibsen, 292.

Delacour, 217.

Delane, Mr., and John Oxenford, 82.

Delaunay, 197.

Democracy and the drama, 72.

Deschapelles, Madame, in _The Lady of Lyons_, 66.

Dick, Robert, 55.

Dickens, Charles, 58; letter on Marie Wilton, 102.

Diderot's rules, 51.

---- paradox, 170, 206.

Dillon, Charles, 100.

_Diplomacy_, origin of, 210.

_Dolls' House, The_, 279, 292, 293, 296.

Drama, legitimate, 40; a national, and Douglas Jerrold, 55, 156.

---- and democracy, 72.

---- the Boucicault, 93.

---- the classical, 176.

---- English and French, 204; elements of the, 252.

---- German, in England, 299.

---- English, cause of its return to life, 310; causes of its decay, 311; Ibsen's influence, 313; what it is seeking, 314.

Dramatic verse, English, 44.

---- criticism, 81, 198.

Dramatists of to-day, 212.

Drury Lane, 40, 62, 76, 195.

Dumas, Alexander, effect of Macready on, 46, 70, 209, 227, 257, 264, 312.

Dundreary, Lord, 112.

"Dust-Hole," The, 104.

Dutton, 198.

_Ebbsmith, The Notorious Mrs._, 275.

Eccles, 128, 129.

Eccles, Polly, 120, 122, 129.

Edgeworth, Miss, 51.

Eily in _Colleen Bawn_, 91.

Ellis, Havelock, and Ibsen, 280.

Emery, Winifred, 306.

_Emperor and Galilean_, Ibsen's, 278, 279.

_Enemy of the People, An_, 280, 284.

_Engaged_, Gilbert's, 144.

English dramatic verse, 44.

Ennery, d', 81.

Evelyn, Alfred, 71.

Examiner of Plays, 84.

_Falcon, The_, 180.

Falconer, Edmund, 89.

Farce, 194.

Farren, 79, 80, 107.

Farren, Nellie, 194.

Father Tom in _Colleen Bawn_, 91.

_Fatal Card, The_, 302.

Faucit, Helen, 79.

Favart, 197.

Fechter in Hamlet, 78, 158.

Feuillet, Octave, 222.

Fielding and the Censorship, 83.

Fielding Club, The, 109, 115.

_Figaro, London_, 199, 200.

_First Step, The_, 309.

Forster, John, and Macready, 64; at Macready's banquet, 74; letter from Dickens, 102.

France, Macready in, 45, 73.

_Francillon_, _Hedda Gabler_, 289, 295.

French actors in London, 78.

---- adaptations, 77, 207; law as to, 208; S. Grundy's, 216.

---- drama prevented English, 311.

Froude, 88.

_Fun_, Gilbert a contributor to, 140.

Gaiety, The, 194.

Garneray's Memoirs, 59.

Garrick, David, the role of, 112.

Garrick and Hare, 117, 157.

Garrick school, 40.

Garrick Club, The, 109, 115, 196.

Garrick, the first night at the, 259.

Gautier, Theophile, 41, 78.

Gerridge, Sam, Hare as, 119, 128, 131.

German drama in England, 299.

_Ghosts_, 280, 292.

Gilbert, irony of, 111.

---- and Robertson, 138; literary career, 139; _Bab Ballads_, 140; _Sweethearts_, 140; _Broken Hearts_, 142; his only woman's character, 144; _Engaged_, 144; _Palace of Truth_, 146; his philosophy, 144-146; _Wicked World_, 147; _Pygmalion and Galatea_, 147-152; _Trial by Jury_, combines with Sullivan, _Princess Ida_, _Patience_, _Iolanthe_, 153; _Pirates of Penzance_, _Pinafore_, 154; a lawyer, 155.

Globe, The, 133.

Goldsmith, 50, 81, 88.

Gosse, Edmund, and Ibsen, 277-280, 285.

_Greatest of These, The_, 233.

Grecian, The, 194.

Grisi, 75.

Grundy, Sydney, 212; first appearance, 214.

---- _The Snowball_, 214; _In Honour Bound_, 216; _A Pair of Spectacles_, 217; _Mammon_, 220; _A Bunch of Violets_, 221; influence of the French, 223; _The Glass of Fashion_, 224; _A Fool's Paradise_, _The Late Mr. Costello_, 225; his peculiarities, 226; _Sowing the Wind_, _An Old Jew_, 227; _The New Woman_, 230; _The Greatest of These_, 233.

---- and Ibsen, 295.

_Grues_, 97.

Hamlet, Irving's, 166.

Hardy, Thomas, and Pinero, 256.

Hare, John, 117; in _Ours_, 119; in _Caste_, 119, 181, 259.

_Harold_, Tennyson's, 185, 188, 190.

Harris, Sir Augustus, 301.

Hawtree, Captain, Bancroft as, 119, 122.

Haymarket, The, 46, 101.

---- and the Bancrofts, 134, 196.

Hazlitt, 49, 82.

Heinemann's, Wm., _First Step_, 309.

Her Majesty's Theatre, 76.

Herman, Mr., and H. A. Jones, 296.

Hippodrama, The, 76.

_Hobby Horse, The_, 257.

Homer, 54.

Hood's _Model Men and Women_, 98.

---- supper-parties, 110, 111, 131.

Horton, Priscilla, 102.

Hoskyns, David, and Irving, 161.

Hugo, Victor, and Bulwer Lytton, 65, 68, 70.

_Humour of a Scholar_ and _Money's_ success, 71.

Hunt, Leigh, 49; and Macready, 64.

Hutchinson, Colonel, 49.

Huxley and Ibsen, 292.

Ibsen, 206, 253, 233.

---- England hears of him, 277; translations by Edmund Gosse and others, 278-280; played by The Independent Theatre, 280; and the Critics, 281-283; and theatrical managers, 284; performed at The Haymarket, 284; and the Sagas, 286; _Peer Gynt_, 287; more intelligible than Carlyle, 288; his methods, 289; realism, 290; his message, 291-292; his types, 293; and democracy, 294; and English dramatists, 295; H. A. Jones's adaptation of _A Dolls' House_, 296; divergence from English admirers, 297; and the Puritans, 298; influence on the English drama, 313.

Icilius and Virginia, 51.

Imagination in the drama, 252.

Independent Theatre, The, 280, 305.

_Iolanthe_, 153.

Irving, Henry, first plays Hamlet, 159; early days, 160; in the provinces and debut in London, 161; as Digby Grant in Albery's _Two Roses_, 163; secures _The Bells_, 164; in _Charles I._, 165; as Hamlet, 166; in _Richelieu_, 166; on staging masterpieces, 167; and Shakespeare's text, 168; his roles, 168; his method, 170; his position as to realism, 171; as a writer and lecturer, 172; "Sir Henry," 172; his success, 173; and Tennyson's _Becket_, 188; and Ibsen, 284.

_Ixion_, Burnand's, 93-95.

Jean, Oliver Saint, 72.

Jerrold, Blanchard, 79.

Jerrold, Douglas, 55-62; _Rent Day_, 56; _Prisoner of War_, 59; _Black-eyed Susan_, 61, 94; and the Censorship, 85.

_John-a-Dreams_, 302-304.

Jones, H. A., 178, 212.

---- _A Clerical Error_, _An Old Master_, 234; _The Silver King_, _Saints and Sinners_, 235-240; _The Case of Rebellious Susan_, 236-250; _Judah_, 239-244; _The Crusaders_, 244-248, 259; _The Tempter_, 248; _Triumph of the Philistines_, 249; _The Masqueraders_, 250, 252; on realism, 251; future work, 252.

---- and Ibsen, 295-297.

Jordan, Mrs., 39.

Josephs, Fanny, 104.

_Judah_, 239-244, 251.

Kean, Charles, 79, 157; his successor, 166.

Kean, Edmund, 40-45; death of, 63.

Keeley, 79.

Keeley, Mrs., 79.

Kemble, Charles, 79.

Kemble, John, 40, 45, 79, 157.

Kendal as Pygmalion, 147; in _The Falcon_, 181.

Kendals in _The Greatest of These_, 233.

Knebworth, Squireen of, 65.

Knowles, Sheridan, 50, 54, 55.

"La Belle Smidson," 45.

Labiche, 215, 217, 218, 219, 257.

Lacy, the bookseller, 107.

_Lady from the Sea, The_, 292.

_Lady of Lyons_, 64, 65-67.

Lamb, Charles, 49, 83.

Lancival, Luce de, 45.

Larkin, 104.

_Late Mr. Costello, The_, 225.

Law as to adaptations and translations, 208.

---- as to foreign dramas, 310.

Legitimate drama, 156.

Lemaitre, Jules, 201.

Lemierra, 45.

Lewes on Macready's Macbeth, 45; on Macready's last performance, 73.

_Liberty Hall_, 301, 306.

Lind, Jenny, 76.

_Little Eyolph_, 290, 299.

_London Assurance_, Boucicault's, 88.

_London Figaro_, 199, 200.

_London, Lights o'_, 302.

Lord, Miss H. F., and Ibsen, 279.

_Lords and Commons_, 256.

_Love, The Comedy of_, Ibsen's, 278.

Lyceum, The, 100.

---- _The Cup_ at, 184.

Lyceum, 196.

Lytton, Lord, 64-72; at Macready's banquet, 74; on Riches and Rank, 116.

Macbeth, Kean as, 41; Macready as, 45.

Mackayers, Joseph, 214.

Macready, 40-45; and Dumas, 46; and authors, 50; and _Virginius_, 55.

---- manager of Drury Lane and Covent Garden, 62, 63, 64, 65; in _Richelieu_, 67; in Paris, 1846, 73.

---- work and farewell performance, 73; last days, 74.

---- and Marie Wilton, 99, 157; and Fechter's Hamlet, 158.

Maeterlink, M., 284.

_Magistrate, The_, 257.

Man of the world type, 120.

Managers, theatre, 77, 308.

Manning, Cardinal, and Becket, 188.

Martin, Lady, 79.

_Master Builder, The_, 290, 295.

Mathews, Charles, 79, 80, 123, 135.

Melnotte, Claude, in _The Lady of Lyons_, 66.

Melodrama, 154, 196.

Memoirs, Marie Wilton's, 99.

Merimee, 54.

Merivale, Herman, 177.

Merritt, 195.

_Michael O'Dowd_, 91.

Millard, Evelyn, 306.

Mitchell, the Bond Street bookseller, 78.

_Model Men and Women_, Hood's, 98.

Moliere, 88, 236.

_Money_, 64, 70-72; Marie Wilton in, 121.

_Moor of Venice_, Kean in, 42.

Moore, George, 289.

Morals of the stage, Byron's effect on, 97.

Morris and the Sagas, 285.

Mortimer, James, 199.

Munich, Ibsen at, 277.

Music, a rival to the drama, 75.

Music halls, 194.

Myles-na-Coppaleen in _Colleen Bawn_, 91.

Myrine, 151.

Mystery in the drama, 252.

Neilson, Adelaide, 159.

Nesville, Juliette, 249.

_New Woman, The_, 230-233.

_Night's Adventure, A_, Robertson's, 107.

_Norah_, Ibsen's, 279.

Norway and England, affinities between, 287.

_Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, The_, 276.

Oakley, Macready as, 41.

_Octoroon_, 91.

Official Censorship, 83.

_Old Jew, An_, 227-230.

_Old Master, An_, 234.

Olympic, The, 107.

_Oonagh, The_, 90.

Operetta, The, 93, 194.

Origin of Official Censorship, 83.

Orleans, Duc d', in _Richelieu_, 69.

_Our American Cousin_, Sothern in, 112.

_Our Boys_, 134, 178.

_Ours_, 117; Marie Wilton in, 121.

"Owls' Roost," 115.

Oxenford, John, 82; on Irving, 164.

_Pair of Spectacles, A_, 217-220.

_Palace of Truth, The_, 146.

Pantomime, the, 76, 98, 194.

Parker, Louis N., 301.

Parliamentary Commission, 64; and Bulwer Lytton, 65.

Passion in the drama, 252.

_Patience_, 153.

Pauline in _The Lady of Lyons_, 66.

_Peep o' Day_, 90.

_Peer Gynt_, Ibsen's, 278, 279, 287.

Penley, Mr., 284.

Pettitt, 195.

Phelps, 76, 157.

_Pilgrim, The White_, 177.

_Pillars of Society, The_, Ibsen's, 279, 280.

_Pinafore_, 154.

Pinero, Arthur W., letter to Mr. Bancroft, 136, 212.

---- personal, 254; an actor, 255; _The Squire_, _Lords and Commons_, 256; _The Magistrate_, _Dandy Dick_, _The Hobby Horse_, 257; _The Times_, _The Cabinet Minister_, 258; _The Profligate_, 259-264; _Lady Bountiful_, 264; _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_, 264-274, 276; _The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith_, 276; and Ibsen, 295.

_Pink Dominoes_, 178.

Pippo, Marie Wilton as, 102, 103, 121.

_Pirates of Penzance_, 154.

Plautus, 88.

Playgoers' Club, Mr. Tree at, 284.

Plays, Examiner of, 84.

Plessy, Madame Arnould, 78.

"Pocket Ibsen," A, 282.

Polhill, Captain, 62.

Prices under the Bancrofts, 135.

Prince of Wales's Theatre, 105 (see Queen's), 113.

---- Robertson's plays at, 114.

---- last visit to, 137.

_Princess Ida_, 153.

Princess's, The, 195.

Princess's translator, The, 78.

_Prisoner of War_, Jerrold's, 59.

"Privileged" theatres, 40, 62-64, 156.

_Profligate, The_, 259-264.

_Promise of May, The_, 182.

Provincial touring, 46-49.

Ptarmigant, Lord and Lady, 116, 127.

Puckler-Muskau, Price, 63.

Puritans and the Stage, 236.

---- and the Censorship, 310.

_Pygmalion and Galatea_, 147; the critics on, 148-152.

_Queen Mary_, Tennyson's, 178, 185, 187, 190.

Queen's Theatre, 104 (see Prince of Wales's).

_The Promise of May_, 182.

Raval, 79.

Ray, Katharine, and Ibsen, 279.

Realism, H. A. Jones on, 252.

---- English horror of, 289; Ibsen's, 289.

_Rebellious Susan, The Case of_, 236, 250.

Rehan, Ada, 174.

Rejane, 197.

_Rent Day, The_, Jerrold's, 56.

Reynolds, 50.

Rhythm of English dramatic verse, 44.

_Richelieu_, 64, 65-70.

Richelieu and Cromwell, 68.

_Richelieu_, Lytton's, 69.

Robertson, Forbes, 306.

Robertson, Madge, as Galatea, 147; in _The Falcon_, 181.

Robertson, T. W., early life, 106; quarrel with Farren, 107; at journalism, 109; in Bohemia, 109-111; writes a play for Sothern, 112; _Society_ and Marie Wilton, 112, 113; success, 117; a wonderful reader, 118; his insight into Marie Wilton's genius, 121; cause of the success of his comedies, 122; only half a realist, 123; characteristics exemplified from _School_, 124; method of character-drawing, 127; his characters, 127-132; marriage, 132; death, 133; and Byron, 134; and Gilbert, 138.

Robins, Miss, and Ibsen, 281.

Robson, Mr., 79, 306.

Roche, Madame, 158.

Romanticism in France, 45.

_Roses, The Two_, 133.

_Rosmersholm_, 292.

Rorke, Kate, 306.

Royalty, The, 95.

Ryder, 79, 158.

Sadler's Wells, 76, 157.

Sagas, The, 285.

Saintine, X. B., and _Richelieu_, 68.

_Saints and Sinners_, 235-240, 244.

Salaries of actors, 135.

Sarcey, Francisque, 201.

Sardou and the Bancrofts, 134, 209, 210, 215, 252, 312.

Savage Club, The, 109, 115.

Scandinavian Society, British, and Ibsen, 279.

School of Common Sense in France, 51.

_School_, 117; Marie Wilton in, 121; scene from, 125.

Scott, Clement, and _The Oonagh_, 90; and Tom Hood's parties, 110; on Robertson's reading, 118; on Irving, 164, 197, 198, 199, 200.

Scribe, 81, 215, 216, 224, 252, 312.

Sedaine's _drame bourgeois_, 51.

Shakespeare, 40, 42, 44, 45, 48, 50, 63, 73, 76; and French actors, 78; in Irving's hand, 173; resuscitation, 175; and melodrama, 196.

"Shakespeare made Easy," 156.

_Shaugraun_, 91.

Shaw, G. B., and Ibsen, 283.

Shelley, 64.

Sheridan, 50, 81, 88.

Shylock, Kean as, 43.

Siddons, Mrs., 40.

_Silver King, The_, 235.

Sims, G. R., 195, 301.

Smith, Albert, 109.

Smithson, Miss, 45.

_Snowball, The_, 214.

_Society_, Robertson's, 112; first performance, 114; success, 117.

"Song of the Gentleman," by Brough, 111.

"Songs of the Governing Classes," by Brough, 111.

Sothern and Robertson, 112, 118.

---- and Irving, 162.

_Sowing the Wind_, 227.

Spanker, Lady Gay, 75.

Spectators, three classes, 305.

Spencer, Herbert, and Ibsen, 292.

_Squire of Dames_, 302.

_Squire, The_, 256.

St. James's Theatre, 78, 181, 196.

Standard, The, 194.

Strand, The, 96, 99, 101; Dickens at, 102, 104, 112, 121.

Stirling, Mrs., in _Caste_, 135.

Sullivan and Gilbert, 153.

Surface, Joseph, Macready as, 41.

Surrey, The, 194.

Swanborough, Mrs., 96, 112.

_Sweethearts_, Gilbert's, 140.

Swinburne's dramas, 192.

Talma on the actor's emotions, 170.

_Tanqueray, The Second Mrs._, 264-274, 276, 289.

Taylor, Tom, 87.

---- _Our American Cousin_, 112.

Taylor, Tom, on Marie Wilton and Robertson, 118.

_Tempter, The_, 248.

Tennyson and Macready, 74; and Gilbert's _Princess Ida_, 153.

---- as a dramatist, 178; and the critics, 178; _The Falcon_, 180; _The Promise of May_, 182; _The Cup_, 183.

---- _Queen Mary_, _Harold_, _Becket_, 185; his sense of history, 186.

Terence, 88.

Terry, Miss Ellen, 167, 174, 178, 189.

Theatre-goers of 1850, 77.

Theatres, number of, 86.

Theatre, commercial decadence of the, 62.

Theatres, "Privileged," 40, 62-64, 156.

Theatre managers, 77.

Thomas, Henry, 159.

Thomas, Moy, 198.

_Ticket of Leave Man_, origin of, 207.

_Times, The_, Pinero's, 258.

Toby and Crumbs in _The Rent Day_, 57.

Toole, John, first appearance, 100.

Tour, on, 46-49.

Translations of foreign plays, law as to, 208.

Travelling companies, 46-49.

Treaty of Berne, 208.

Tree, Mr., and _The Tempter_, 248.

---- and Ibsen, 284.

---- in _John-a-Dreams_, 302; his staying, 307.

_Trial by Jury_, 153.

_Triumph of the Philistines_, 249.

Tussaud's, Madame, Kean and Macready at, 41.

Van Ambrugh, 76.

Vaudeville, The, 133.

Victoria, 39.

Victoria, The, 194.

Virginia and Icilius, 51.

_Virginius_, Knowles's, 50-55.

Virginius's character, 52.

Walkley, A. B., and Ibsen, 283.

Wallington, Nehemiah, 49.

Wallis, Miss, as Cleopatra, 159.

Walpole and the Censorship, 83.

Waring, Mr., and Ibsen, 281.

Watson, Malcolm, 301.

Wells and the classical drama, 177.

_Wicked World, The_, 147.

Willard, Mr., 306.

Wills's _Charles I._, 165, 177; _Claudian_, 177; his conceptions, 178.

Wilton and Kean, 43.

Wilton, Marie, and Macready, 99; at the Lyceum, 100; at the Haymarket, 101; Coquelin on, 101; Dickens on, 102; partnership with Byron, 103; her first company, 104; secures _Society_, 113; and Robertson, 118; her parts in Robertson's plays, 121; early days in Liverpool, 138.

Wilton, the Sisters, 104.

Wingfield, Hon. Lewis W., 95.

Woman, the English, and Ibsen, 293.

Wyndham, Charles, 196, 306.

Yates, Edmund, 62.

Yates, Frederick, 41.

PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED EDINBURGH

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Berlioz did so literally, and married her.

[2] William Archer, _Life of Macready_.

[3] "Write me a drama," said Macready to young Browning, "and save me having to go off to America." The drama was written, but attained only a fourth performance, and did not save the actor from his impending expedition.

[4] As a matter of fact, Bulwer had not even the merit of inventing this arrangement for himself. His play was founded on the novel by X.-B. Saintine.

[5] Charles Mathews played at the _Varietes_, in French, in _L'anglais timide_, an adaptation of _Cool as a Cucumber_, by Blanchard Jerrold.

[6] 10 George II. cap. 19.

[7] In _Thirty Years at the Play_, Clement Scott gives an account of the first night of _The Oonagh_, which has come down to us as a tradition. At two o'clock in the morning the play was still in progress. The house was empty save for a few critics slumbering in their stalls. The actors were on the stage all in a line facing the public, as was then the custom, and there was no sign of the ending, when suddenly the machinists pulled back the carpet on which the chief characters were standing. They collapsed simply!--with the piece, which was never brought to its real conclusion.

[8] T. W. Robertson in _The Illustrated Times_.

[9] Founded on the famous French play _Paillasse_.

[10] To the fourth line he added a footnote to the effect that the name was _not_ Johnson really.

[11] Henry Morley, _Journal of a Playgoer_.

[12] These lines appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, on September 15, 1895. Less than three months later the Kendals produced, for the first time in the provinces, a new drama by Mr. Grundy, _The Greatest of These_. This play, which was performed later in London, is a work of real value. In it Mr. Grundy has forgotten his French models, and has painted English life and English characters with a freedom, a fidelity, a power, worthy of that Ibsen to whom he will not have it that he owes anything. He has put aside his wit in order to be more moving. There is not a weak spot or a trace of bad taste in the whole piece. The scene which takes up most of the third act is equally beautiful, whether regarded from a psychological, a literary, or a purely dramatic standpoint.

[13] His debut was in 1874, when he was nineteen. He has given an account of some of his Edinburgh experiences about this time in a pleasant Preface to Mr. William Archer's _Theatrical World in 1895_.

[14] When this episode was reached on the night of the first performance of _The Master Builder_, a critic turned to Mr. Archer and said, "Will you explain _that_ symbol to us?" "I am not sure," Mr. Archer replied quietly, "that it _is_ a symbol." Upon which, a lady sitting near them interposed: "Excuse my breaking in upon your conversation," she said, "but you may be interested to know that many women are like Mrs. Solness in this. I myself have all the dolls of my childhood safely preserved at home, and I look after them tenderly." It is well known, too, that the Queen's collection of her dolls is preserved at Windsor Castle.

[15] I should have wished to determine the influence exerted by the contemporary German drama upon the dramatic movement in England, but I can find no trace of any such influence at all. Only a single work of Sudermann's has so far been translated, and this came from America. An attempt was made in 1895 to found a permanent _Deutsches Theater_ in London, and works by Freytag, Sudermann, Hauptmann, Otto Hartleber, Max Halbe, and Blumenthal were produced there. I do not know whether the attempt, made under modest, and indeed almost mean, conditions, will be renewed. The critics attended the performance, but the general public paid but little attention to them.

Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.

Punctuation has been corrected without note.

The following misprints have been corrected: "had had" corrected to "had" (page 112) "uninterruped" corrected to "uninterrupted" (page 115) "made" corrected to "make" (page 117) "Pgymalion" corrected to "Pygmalion" (page 151) "protraits" corrected to "portraits" (page 166) "aquainted" corrected to "acquainted" (page 200) "is is" corrected to "is" (page 277) "105" corrected to "50" (index) "succces" corrected to "success" (index)

Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original.