Gypsy Queen. THE Woods were green, my Gypsy Queen, O'er field and fell, through dale and dell, Amidst her bowers, Her fruits and flowers, How changed is now the mountain's brow, How bleak and bare the woods that were How sad and drear The time of year For you and me. The rose will bloom on bower and tomb, For bridal wreath or bier, And though she grieves to shed her leaves, But Love (who fled) Is worse than dead For you and me! CECIL MAXWELL-LYTE. The Drama of the Day. BY HERMAN MERIVALE. AUTHOR OF FAUCIT OF BALLIOL,' ETC. If you happen to be world to retreat, as full What if, as in my case, THERE are two classes of subject about which it is very difficult to write or speak. The one, that about which one knows too little; the other, that about which one knows too much. As to the first, of course, the remedy is easy. Unless you know enough of a subject, let it alone in that way until you do; a simple course which would, if enforced by social or other law, so instantly and startlingly reduce the number of us authors, orators, statesmen, actors, critics, gentlemen of science, and the rest of it, that the "irreducible minimum" would find itself a fact before we knew where we were. That would be very dreadful, for in these hard times more than ever, how should we all live? those of us, at least, who do live? And, if we didn't, would it matter much to anybody? But then, if you know too much? like Bibo, when he thought fit from the of champagne as an egg's full of meat? one is a meat-filled egg where the Drama is concerned? If I may be forgiven the distinction, I do not of necessity mean the Theatre, which is too often very much less like the Drama than almost any institution I know: less like it far than History; less like it far than Truth; less like it far than the comedies and tragedies of life which work their own very scenes and acts out beneath our eyes, through an infinite mist of laughter or of tears; or, truer yet, of tears and laughter mixed. No, the Drama is not always the Theatre; but it is what the Theatre ought to be. It ought not to be content with holding the mirror up to Nature; it should be Nature's mirror itself. "Quicquid agunt homines: votum, timor, ira, voluptas";-to be mistranslated for the benefit of the unLatined as: "All that men are, Desire, Fear, Anger, Sense";-that is the Drama, as it ought to be. But in that same meaty egg, all depends on which end we chip first. Shall we begin with the thick end, the Drama as it ought to be-or with the thin end, the Drama as it is? Now the pessimist or the cynic, no doubt, would give us the comfortable encouragement of assuring us, that whatever else may happen to us, we cannot on this subject run the worst of all human risks, the risk of being bored. For he would tell us that a paper on the Drama of the Day could not be long enough for that, because there is none. But I am myself neither pessimist nor cynic, thank Heaven, and none the worse for that. As far as the Drama is concerned, I have never been able to get over my youthful instincts, of loving "the play." In fact the first play I ever saw was the one I liked the least, and remember almost the best. It was the 'Battle of Waterloo,' at Astley's. In the sensation-scene of the day, the English army, drawn up in two lines in red, occupied the prompter's side of the stage. The French army, drawn up in two lines in blue, each line consisting of exactly the same number of men on both parties, occupied the O. P., or opposite side to the Prompter. Two vivandières, the French in blue and the English in red, each with a small drum round her waist, a drumstick in her right hand and a flask of spirits in her left, occupied the corners of the stage nearest the footlights, as corner-women. From them the van-lines of the two armies converged inwards to the back-cloth, each third man on either side having a cannon in front of him. The top-cannons, naturally, met mouth to mouth; and behind them, with drawn swords pointed upwards to an uncertain kind of Futurity, stood on either side Napoleon Buonaparte, and the Duke of Wellington. After a deathly pause of expectation, consequent on the top cannon-man on the French side missing his cue, the signal was given. Every third man struck a match "To each gun a lighted brand, In a bold determined hand; and the battle of Waterloo was fought out then and there. The stage was filled with smoke and cries. When it cleared, both the armies were dead, or wounded. The cannon survived, though exhausted; so did Napoleon and Wellington, for the purposes of history. So did the two vivandières, as the comic characters of the drama, for the private purposes of the plot. As for myself, an excessively nervous boy (this was about 1844, I think), with an extreme dislike to gunpowder, I trembled under the benches of the dress-circle when the firing began, stuck my fingers in my ears and howled, and was pulled out by my father, who was in fits of laughter, when the battle was over, in order to see that Wellington and Napoleon, and Molly the vivandière, had got through without visible injury. For some little time after this ordeal I regarded the theatre with some terror, I think; and it must have been a little later that, as Charles Lamb writes in his own delicious way, "it became to me, upon a new stock, the most delightful of all recreations." Nobody was ever fonder of the "The Play," as it is so pleasantly and familiarly called, than Thackeray. "Ain't you fond of the play?" I well remember his saying to a club friend of the quite-correct type, as we were all going out of "Queen Victoria's own theayter" together. He had given me, a boy, dinner at the old Garrick in King Street, to take me there. Well, Thackeray," said the friend, "of course I am. I like a good play." "Oh, go away," answered the dear old kindly giant. "I said 'The Play'; you don't even understand what I mean." Every well-conditioned mortal loves "The Play." Never tell me that its mission is to educate. There is too much of education, Heaven knows! It is much higher—it is to entertain. It is to relax the overtried nerves it is to purify the world-mixed spirit— it is to get rid of that dreadful thing the Real, for a brief breath of the Ideal to let you know, even when dealing most with the kind of drama most called realistic, that for a short hour or two of the strange mystery called life, the stories to which you listen do not happen, the sorrows even which touch you, are not true. It is never possible to honour the Play too highly. For since first Thespis started the business in a go-cart, never has God's infinite and varied mercy provided a more delightful outlet for the cares-the yearningsthe troubles of mankind. It was a London manager, a man of a kind heart under a rough outside, who told me once that his theatre was a charity. For his sixpenny gallery meant this. Its tenants understood, he thought, not over-much of what they saw and heard, and cared perhaps a little less. But the same tenants came, night after night. That sixpence meant, for them, three hours of light and warmth of forgetfulness-and of home-to men whose home, may be, offered but little of the attractions connected, to luckier people, with that sacred name. I say luck-if luck there be the which I doubt. But by many different names we men call the same thing. One evening, this manager told me, an excellent old woman came up the stairs of his theatre-not a thousand miles from the Strand and presented an order of admission to the upper boxes, for Exeter Hall. With a presence of mind and a sense of humour for which I infinitely honour him, the acting-manager at once accepted the order. "Certainly, Madam," he said. "Show the lady and her friend two good seats upstairs." They were shown upstairs, and sate it out. On her way down, the dear old lady insisted on seeing that acting-manager, and shaking hands with him. "Thank you, my dear sir," she said; "I have spent an exceedingly pleasant evening." Exeter Hall, to her, was from that time a joy for ever. The performance had been a burlesque. And I should like to ask, why not? "The Play's" the thing. At the present point of theatrical art, the graceful combinations of form and colour, the gentle influences of pleasant tune, the infinite rest to the brain, and pleasure to the eye, that these attractions give to the sensuous (not sensual) side which exists in all of us, through Him that made us and not we ourselves, are not to be denied or under-rated, surely. When we talk of drama, let us remember-"Tout genre est permis, hors le genre ennuyeux." All plays are good plays, which do not bore us. And, speaking as a dramatist, I can only say that if I write a play which bores my public-the which public I love, for they are my dearest friends-that play is a bad one. And when any body talks or writes about such and such a thing-no matter what-picture, novel, play, what you please, being "too good for the public," I maintain that they are not to be listened to. To whom do we writers, painters, actors, any body else appeal, except to the Public, which means my readers and me, and every body? And if the Public won't have us, please where and what are we? The Public decided long ago, upon the broad lines, that of the existing wonders of nature Niagara is the first; of the existing wonders of art, the survival of the Roman Colosseum. I mean of course, as the Public does, of those within the Public's ken. Well! I have seen them both, and I agree. Amen. I am a Public, essentially. And when I read from such and such a writer of such and such a play, or such and such a book, that it is quite acceptable to the writer's mind, but far and away above the heads of the Public, I feel that were I the Public, I should be wanting to punch that writer's head. In the name of common sense, I wonder to what other judgment do we all appeal, who profess art in its all and many forms, and to what other judgment can we? So far, I have been a little "leading up." For I am writing as a dramatist, who, like other men, has known his losses and his gains. And I wax a little weary. As far at least as a man can, who as he grows older grows more and more convinced of the humorous side of life, with all the blessings which are brought in its train; less and less inclined to quarrel; more and more inclined to forbear. Because, as a dramatist, I want the Public, and the Public wants me, here in England. I don't mean my little individual self, but me the English dramatist. The English dramatist wants the English public. The English public wants the English dramatist. "Lord Chatham, with his rapier drawn, Stood waiting for the Earl of Chatham." But how are we going to get at each other, my Public and I? Again I say, that I speak of myself as a mere personal expression. I mean the English play-writer, about whom there is no more |