Man and Superman and Three Other Plays (8 page)

Finally, may I put in a plea for the actors themselves? Born actors have a susceptibility to dramatic emotion which enables them to seize the moods of their parts intuitively. But to expect them to be intuitive as to intellectual meaning and circumstantial conditions as well, is to demand powers of divination from them: one might as well expect the Astronomer Royal to tell the time in a catacomb. And yet the actor generally finds his part full of emotional directions which he could supply as well or better than the author, whilst he is left quite in the dark as to the political, religious, or social beliefs and circumstances under which the character is supposed to be acting. Definite conceptions of these are always implicit in the best plays, and are often the key to their appropriate rendering; but most actors are so accustomed to do without them that they would object to being troubled with them, although it is only by such educative trouble that an actor's profession can place him on the level of the lawyer, the physician, the churchman, and the statesman. Even as it is, Shylock as a Jew and usurer, Othello as a Moor and a soldier, Caesar, Cleopatra and Anthony, as figures in defined political circumstances, are enormously easier for the actor than the countless heroes as to whom nothing is ever known except that they wear nice clothes, love the heroine, baffle the villain, and live happily ever after.

The case, then, is overwhelming for printing and publishing not only the dialogue of plays, but for a serious effort to convey their full content to the reader. This means the institution of a new art; and I daresay that before these volumes are ten years old, the attempt that it makes in this direction will be left far behind, and that the customary, brief, and unreadable scene specification at the head of an act will by then have expanded into a chapter, or even a series of chapters, each longer than the act itself, and no less interesting and indispensable. No doubt one result of this will be the production of works of a mixture of kinds, part narrative, part homily, part description, part dialogue, and (possibly) part drama—works that can be read, but not acted. I have no objection to such works; but my own aim has been that of the practical dramatist; if anything my eye has been too much on the stage, though I have tried to put down nothing that is irrelevant to the actor's performance or the audience's comprehension of the play. I have of course been compelled to omit some things that a stage representation could convey, simply because the art of letters, though highly developed grammatically, is still in its infancy as a technical speech notation: for example, there are fifty ways of saying Yes, and five hundred of saying No, but only one way of writing them down. Even the use of spaced letters instead of italics for underlining, though familiar to foreign readers, will have to be learned by the English public before it becomes effective. But if my readers do their fair share of the work, I daresay they will understand nearly as much of the plays as I do myself.

Finally, a word as to why I have labeled the three plays in this first volume Unpleasant. The reason is pretty obvious; their dramatic power is used to force the spectator to face unpleasant facts. No doubt all plays which deal sincerely with humanity must wound the monstrous conceit which it is the business of romance to flatter. But here we are confronted, not only with the comedy and tragedy of individual character and destiny, but with those social horrors which arise from the fact that the average homebred Englishman, no matter however honorable and goodnatured he may be in his private capacity, is, as a citizen, a wretched creature who, whilst clamoring for a gratuitous millennium, will shut his eyes to the most villainous abuses if the remedy threatens to add another penny in the pound to the rates and taxes which he has to be half cheated, half coerced into paying. In “Widowers' Houses” I have shewn middle class respectability and younger son gentility fattening on the poverty of the slum as flies fatten on filth. That is not a pleasant theme. In “The Philanderer” I have shewn the grotesque relations between men and women which have arisen under marriage laws which represent to some of us a political necessity (especially for other people), to some a divine ordinance, to some a romantic ideal, to some a domestic profession for women, and to some that worst of blundering abominations, an institution which society has outgrown but not modified, and which “advanced” individuals are therefore forced to evade. The scene with which “The Philanderer” opens, the atmosphere in which it proceeds, and the marriage with which it ends, are, for the intellectually and artistically conscious classes in modern society, typical; and it will hardly be denied, I think, that they are unpleasant. In “Mrs. Warren's Profession” I have gone straight at the fact that, as Mrs. Warren puts it, “the only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her.” There are some questions on which I am, like most Socialists, an extreme Individualist. I believe that any society which desires to found itself on a high standard of integrity of character in its units should organize itself in such a fashion as to make it possible too for all men and all women to maintain themselves in reasonable comfort by their industry without selling their affections and their convictions. At present we not only condemn women as a sex to attach themselves to “breadwinners,” licitly or illicitly, on pain of heavy privation and disadvantage; but we have great prostitute classes of men: for instance, dramatists and journalists, to whom I myself belong, not to mention the legions of lawyers, doctors, clergymen, and platform politicians who are daily using their highest faculties to belie their real sentiments: a sin compared to which that of a woman who sells the use of her person for a few hours is too venial to be worth mentioning; for rich men without conviction are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity. Hardly a pleasant subject this!

I must, however, warn my readers that my attacks are directed against themselves, not against my stage figures. They can not too thoroughly understand that the guilt of defective social organization does not lie alone on the people who actually work the commercial makeshifts which the defects make inevitable, and who often, like Sartorius and Mrs. Warren, display valuable executive capacities and even high moral virtues in their administration, but with the whole body of citizens whose public opinion, public action, and public contribution as ratepayers alone can replace Sartorius‘s
^f
slums with decent dwellings, Charteris's
^g
intrigues with reasonable marriage contracts, and Mrs. Warren's profession with honorable industries guarded by a humane industrial code and a “moral minimum” wage.

How I came, later on, to write plays which, dealing less with the crimes of society, and more with its romantic follies, and with the struggles of individuals against those follies, may be called, by contrast, Pleasant, is a story which I shall tell on resuming this discourse for the edification of the readers of the second volume.

 

(To be continued in our next.)

MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION

ACT I

 

THE GENTLEMAN
²
[
taking off his hat
] I beg your pardon. Can you direct me to Hindhead View—Mrs. Alison's?

THE YOUNG LADY [
glancing up from her book
] This is Mrs. Alison's. [
She resumes her work.
]

THE GENTLEMAN Indeed! Perhaps—may I ask are you Miss Vivie Warren?

 

THE YOUNG LADY [
sharply, as she turns on her elbow to get a good look at him]
Yes.

THE GENTLEMAN [
daunted and conciliatory
] I'm afraid I appear intrusive. My name is Praed. [
VIVIE at once throws her books upon the chair, and gets out of the hammock.
] Oh, pray don't let me disturb you.

VIVIE [
striding to the gate and opening it for him
] Come in, Mr. Praed. [
He comes in.
] Glad to see you. [
She proffers her hand and takes his with a resolute and hearty grip. She is an attractive specimen of the sensible, able, highly-educated young middle-class Englishwoman. Age 22. Prompt, strong, confident, self-possessed. Plain, business-like dress, but not dowdy. She wears a chatelaine at her belt, with a fountain pen and a paper knife among its pendants
.]

PRAED Very kind of you indeed, Miss Warren. [
She shuts the gate with a vigorous slam: he passes in to the middle of the garden, exercising his fingers, which are slightly numbed by her greeting
.] Has your mother arrived?

VIVIE [
quickly, evidently scenting aggression
] Is she coming?

PRAED [
surprised
] Didn't you expect us?

VIVIE No.

PRAED Now, goodness me, I hope I've not mistaken the day. That would be just like me, you know. Your mother arranged that she was to come down from London and that I was to come over from Horsham to be introduced to you.

VIVIE [
not at all pleased
] Did she? H‘m! My mother has rather a trick of taking me by surprise—to see how I behave myself when she's away, I suppose. I fancy I shall take my mother very much by surprise one of these days, if she makes arrangements that concern me without consulting me beforehand. She hasn't come.

PRAED [
embarrassed
] I'm really very sorry.

VIVIE [
throwing off her displeasure
] It's not your fault, Mr. Praed, is it? And I'm very glad you've come, believe me. You are the only one of my mother's friends I have asked her to bring to see me.

PRAED [
relieved and delighted
] Oh, now this is really very good of you, Miss Warren!

VIVIE Will you come indoors; or would you rather sit out here whilst we talk?

PRAED It will be nicer out here, don't you think?

VIVIE Then I'll go and get you a chair. [
She goes to the porch for a garden chair.
]

PRAED [
following her
] Oh, pray, pray! Allow me. [
He lays hands on the chair
.]

VIVIE [
letting him take it
] Take care of your fingers: they're rather dodgy things, those chairs. [
She goes across to the chair with the books on it; pitches them into the hammock; and brings the chair forward with one swing.
]

PRAED [
who has just unfolded his chair
] Oh, now d o
^h
let me take that hard chair! I like hard chairs.

VIVIE So do I. [
She sits down.
] Sit down, Mr. Praed. [
This invitation is given with genial peremptoriness, his anxiety to please her clearly striking her as a sign of weakness of character on his part
.]

PRAED By the way, though, hadn't we better go to the station to meet your mother?

VIVIE [
coolly
] Why? She knows the way. [
PRAED hesitates, and then sits down in the garden chair, rather disconcerted.
] Do you know, you are just like what I expected. I hope you are disposed to be friends with me?

PRAED [
again beaming
] Thank you, my dear Miss Warren; thank you. Dear me! I'm so glad your mother hasn't spoilt you! VIVIE How?

PRAED Well, in making you too conventional. You know, my dear Miss Warren, I am a born anarchist. I hate authority. It spoils the relations between parent and child—even between mother and daughter. Now I was always afraid that your mother would strain her authority to make you very conventional. It's such a relief to find that she hasn't.

VIVIE Oh! have I been behaving unconventionally?

PRAED Oh, no: oh, dear no. At least not conventionally unconventionally, you understand. [
She nods. He goes on, with a cordial outburst.
] But it was so charming of you to say that you were disposed to be friends with me! You modern young ladies are splendid—perfectly splendid!

VIVIE [
dubiously
] Eh? [
watching him with dawning disappointment as to the quality of his brains and character.
]

PRAED When I was your age, young men and women were afraid of each other: there was no good fellowship—nothing real—only gallantry copied out of novels, and as vulgar and affected as it could be. Maidenly reserve!—gentlemanly chivalry!—always saying no when you meant yes!—simple purgatory for shy and sincere souls!