From The Fortnightly Review. THE BLIGHT ON THE DRAMA.

A little more than a year ago towards the close of 1895-the English drama seemed to be prospering and promising mightily. Three or four authors of established repute were producing vigorously, and, in the main, progressing; two or three younger men were coming gallantly to the front; never in our day, at any rate, had the outlook been more encouraging. We had talked for years of a renascence of the drama-we now began almost to believe in it. The end of the nineteenth century seemed to be bringing us, what we had not possessed since the beginning of the eighteenth, a dramatic literature. Goldsmith and Sheridan formed the isolated rearguard of what is loosely termed the Restoration School. They were stragglers, some sixty years belated, consummating, not initiating, a tradition. Our living playwrights, if not Goldsmiths, or even Sheridans, in individual genius, seemed at least to have their faces turned towards the future, and to be marching in the van of а movement, not bringing up the rear.

Gradually, as the winter of '95 closed in, this cheerful outlook darkened. A blight seemed to have fallen on our budding hopes. October 16th, when "The Benefit of the Doubt" was produced at the Comedy Theatre, was the last really inspiriting evening vouchsafed us by the Fates. Here was an original play of sterling and brilliant ability-the maturest work Mr. Pinero had yet done-launched, as it seemed, on a long career of success. What could be more auspicious? A fortnight later, heralded by that priceless advertisement, an American "boom," "Trilby" was produced. It was clear that we were in for a craze, an infatuation, always a disturbing factor in theatrical life; but, after all, who could quarrel with this innocent fairy-tale for grown-up children? Presently we began to hear disquieting rumors about "The Benefit of the Doubt;" it was not the success it promised to be; it was to have but a short run. Then

Mr. Alexander, at the St. James's, produced "The Divided Way," a very able but unequal and depressing play by Mr. H. V. Esmond. It had not the slightest chance of attracting the multitude, and as a matter of fact it failed completely. Still, it was pleasant to find so much talent in a new writer. After a run of ten weeks, "The Benefit of the Doubt" was taken off. In any other city in the world, sixty performances would have been reckoned a quite satisfactory success; here, with our huge rents, huge salaries, and huge expenses of all sorts, the play was esteemed little better than a failure. Thus 1895 closed discouragingly; and in the first weeks of '96 the blight set in definitely and malignantly. Months before, I had received from America, with Mr. Wilson Barrett's compliments, sheafs of cuttings from the St. Louis papers or was it Cincinnati?— announcing in giant headlines, "A DRAMATIC REVOLUTION," and all sorts of other marvels, which the critics of Cincinnati (or was it St Louis?) regarded as necessarily ensuing from the production of Mr. Barrett's magnificent new drama, "The Sign of the Cross." The very first batch of cuttings that reached me contained reports of eulo gistic sermons, and interviews with local clerics of all denominations; and every week brought from some new city a further outburst of pulpit puffery. The cleverness of the thing was unmistakable. At the cost of a few free admissions, Mr. Barrett secured the enthusiastic co-operation, in place of the more or less active hostility, of the most effective advertising agency in the world, and thereby "tapped" (as it has been picturesquely put) an immense and impressionable new public. It was clear that a happy instinct had guided him, both in selecting the right moment for the experiment and in devising the right play wherewith to attempt it. One felt curious to see his miracle-working and oracle-working drama; but for my part, though the clerical enthusiasm did not inspire me with the liveliest confidence, I can sincerely say that it awoke in me no ac

tive prejudice against "The Sign of the Cross." On the 4th of January it was produced at the Lyric Theatre, before an audience liberally sprinkled with clergymen, and was greeted with frantic applause. The clergy, from the bench of bishops downwards, played their part with the utmost docility; there was no effective protest in the press; and the "great religious drama" has, as we know, run through the whole year to crowded houses, it being apparent, observers tell us, that a large proportion of any given audience consisted of people who had never been to a theatre before. Had it appealed exclusively to the theatrical inexperience and literary incompetence of the religious public, the mischief would not have been so great. But there can be no doubt that its vulgarity, puerility, and brutality have had an unholy attraction for the ordinary playgoer as well. Here was a craze ten times more hurtful than the acutest "Trilby" mania—a phenomenon that could not but strike a chill to our hopes of prog

ress.

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With "The Prisoner of Zenda," pleasant but empty romanticism took possession for the whole year of the St. James's stage; while "Michael and his Lost Angel," a strenuous and able love-tragedy by Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, failed to maintain itself at the Lyceum for more than ten days, and was followed by the Coppée-Davidson "For the Crown," interesting but-not English. One of our foremost literary managers, Mr. Hare, had deserted us before the disastrous year began; and now another, Mr. Comyns Carr, was forced to quit the field. The comedy was given over to nauseous farce; the Garrick, after both Mr. Jones and Mr. Grundy had made brief appearance on its bills, was submerged in the flowing tide of musical comedy. This gigantic "bore" has swept over theatre after theatre in the course of the year. Here is a list of musical comedies produced at West End theatres alone, to say nothing of others which have been seen at suburban houses: "The Gay Barmaid," "The Geisha," "The Gay

Parisienne," "On the March," "Biarritz," "Monte Carlo," "Newmarket," "My Girl," "The Belle of Cairo," "The Little Genius," "The White Silk Dress," "Lord Tom Noddy," "The Circus Girl." At no time have there been fewer than four or five such pieces running simultaneously; and although we shall presently have to look a little more closely into the conditions of their success, there can be no doubt that they have attracted to themselves and diverted from the more serious drama, an immense body of playgoers. For the rest, we have had three important and interesting Shakespearean revivals—“Henry IV.," "Cymbeline," and "As You Like It." The usual Adelphi, Drury Lane, and Princess's melodramas have run their more or less successful course; a pantomimic French farce, without music, has been mensely popular at the Vaudeville; and divers other farces, original and adapted, have been produced at other theatres, many of them imbecile, some of them offensive, none of them either notably clever or notably successful. Finally, the Haymarket, opening under a new management, has been given over to a confused adaptation of a cape-and-sword romance.

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One original English play of a certain modest merit has been produced and has succeeded-Messrs. Parker and Carson's "Rosemary" at the Criterion. That is the whole dramatic harvest of 1896.

May we not say, then, that a blight has fallen on our nascent or renascent English drama? Our dramatists of proved intelligence and skill are silent or find no hearers; our younger writers knock in vain at the managers' doors; the stage (a few revivals and adaptations apart) is entirely devoted to trivial and ephemeral, if not brutal and degrading, spectacles; our two dozen theatres, in the course of a twelvemonth, produce one new play which may, at a pinch, be held to touch the confines of literature. Where are the hopes of yester-year?

They are very much where they were, I fancy; for, to trifle with you no

longer, this

pessimistic opening is purely rhetorical. A blight there has been, no doubt-a curious and regrettable depression in serious drama. But I hope to show good reason for believing that it has been in great measure a matter of pure chance, and that such permanent causes as have helped to bring it about are likely, in the nature of things, to be equally helpful in bringing about a reaction. The three signs of the times for which we have to account are these: (1) the failure, or comparative failure, of certain serious and able plays; (2) the extravagant popularity of schoolboy and school-girl romances; (3) the exorbitant vogue of musical farce, and its encroachments upon the domain of drama. Let us take these phenomena in their order.

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In order to prove, or even to make it seem probable, that the public has tired of serious drama, as such, we should have to point to one or two plays for whose failure no adequate reason could be assigned, except a revolution in public taste. But I have heard of no such plays. In all the five cases which come within the period under review-"The Benefit of the Doubt," "The Divided Way," "Michael and his Lost Angel," "The Rogue's Comedy," "The Greatest of These" there were reasons in the plays themselves, or in the circumstances of their presentation, amply sufficient to count for the lot which befell them. "The Benefit of the Doubt" suffered from the fatal disadvantage of a weak last act. It came within an ace of wrecking the play on the first nightthe audience, which had received the first two acts with eager enthusiasm, grew more and more restless as the third act proceeded, until I, for part, sat on thorns lest their impatience should find open expression. Disaster was averted for the moment; but I have not the slightest doubt that succeeding audiences experienced the same uneasiness, and that consequently the general impression which got abroad-the tea-table criticism which really decides the fate of a play

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-was in this case unfavorable. Moreover, three of the most important parts were very unfortunately acted; and in a play in which the responsibility is so evenly divided, even one piece of bad acting makes havoc of the general effect. Surely, then, we need not assume a revulsion in popular taste in order to account for the short run of a play which had so much against it. "The Divided Way" was the promising but crude and imperfect work of a beginner. It could scarcely have succeeded had the public been never so avid of serious drama. As for "Michael and his Lost Angel," which also had the inherent disadvantage of dwindling towards the end, it cannot be said either to have succeeded or failed. It was, as old Downes says of one of the lost angels of the Restoration playhouse, "erept the stage" with unprecedented haste and under inexplicable conditions. At the time of its withdrawal there was at least an even chance that, in spite of certain faults and drawbacks, it would have taken hold of the great public. Mr. Jones's other play, "The Rogue's Comedy," was a clever but slight piece of work, designed, I fancy, rather for Mr. Willard's travelling repertory than for a long London run. It was scarcely to be classed as serious drama, and its failure (if it did fail) meant as little as its success would have meant had it succeeded. Mr. Grundy's play, on the other hand, "The Greatest of These," was serious enough in all conscience, and strong and moving to boot. But it was old-fashioned in style, and produced on one of Mr. and Mrs. Kendal's flying visits to town, under circumstances which excluded in advance any likelihood of prolonged popularity. Here ends the roll-call of serious modern plays produced since the setting in of the alleged blight. What lesson, then, can we learn from it?

Simply that a play of this class must be pretty uniformly strong and pretty evenly well acted, and must be given a reasonable chance at a theatre in Vogue, if it is to win the rare prize of prolonged popular success. This moral