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CHAPTER XII

LATER VICTORIAN AND CONTEMPORARY DRAMA: ANALYSIS AND THE

SOCIAL IMPULSE

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87. Continental Influences." There is a week that is the turn of the year; there was a year that was the turn of the century. About 1870 the force of the French Revolution faltered and fell: the year that was everywhere the death of Liberal ideas: the year when Paris fell: the year when Dickens died. Liberalism (in Newman's sense) really did strike Christianity through headpiece and head; that is, it did daze and stun the ignorant and illprepared intellect of the English Christian. And Christianity did smite Liberalism through breastplate and through breast; that is, it did succeed, through arms and all sorts of awful accidents, in piercing more or less to the heart of the Utilitarian-and finding that he had none. Victorian Protestantism had not head enough for the business; Victorian Radicalism had not heart enough for the business. Down fell they dead together, exactly as Macaulay's Lay says and still stood all who saw them fall almost until the hour at which I write."

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Thus brilliantly has the brilliant Chesterton 1 struck the keynote of the period to which we have come. It was not an age of idealism, but of pessimism, largely 1 1 The Victorian Age in Literature, 213-15.

consequent upon the materialism of which one had heard for years. Romanticism was dead, but it had an afterglow in Pre-Raphaelitism, and a second afterglow in aestheticism; and when the exotic lilies could no longer conceal their frailty they crumbled-into ashes.

All went back to De Quincey, "the first and most powerful of the decadents;" and De Quincey has some affinity with Congreve. The principle also touched the paganism of Keats. The sensuousness of this great poet is reflected in Rossetti, his chivalry in Hunt, and his woodcarving in Morris. Of the great poets of the middle of the century, Browning alone opposed a solid front to the forces of decay. Tennyson wrote In Memoriam and in the wide field of criticism the influences at work developed the "Art for Art's sake" heresy, one of the most subtle and at the same time one of the most powerful forces ever exerted in imaginative literature. Three great prose writers-De Quincey, Poe, and Pater-inspired or represented this movement. De Quincey emphasized style, Poe beauty, and Pater a rather effete something called aestheticism. The first influenced the second, and the second the third. Poe's great divorce of art and morality was fatal, and it is the key to much of the pessimism and many of the wasted lives strewn like wrecks over the reign of Victoria. His influence was frankly acknowledged by Rossetti. Formerly romanticism, developing with the Wesleyan revival, had encouraged the love of nature and communion with God; but now science, looking at Poe's three faculties-intellect, feeling, will-appropriated the first; rationalism, substituted for religion, turned the will to its purpose; and art was told to shift for itself. It didand with a vengeance.

This decadent principle-this supreme emphasis on style and lilies-was in 1870, however, largely a foreign importation. Certainly it was foreign in so far as it affected the drama. Gleaming in the lyrics of Musset or Les Fleurs du Mal of Baudelaire, it was carried into the drama in Musset's own Lorenzaccio. On the side of technique it developed into a school with the pattern-made plays of Scribe; in subject-matter it was largely stimulated by Dumas and Sardou. Swinburne was steeped in it, and something of it entered into his poetic dramas. In 1871 moreover, after decades in which foreigners were unwelcome, the company of the Comédie Française came to England and was received with enthusiasm. In 1879 it came again, and this time it included such performers as Favart, Delaunay, and Sarah Bernhardt. In the light of the great art and the finish of the French productions, Englishmen began to feel very provincial. Even Matthew Arnold wrote an article, "The French Play in London," pleading for a stronger national theatre.

This, however, is only half of the story. One can not fully estimate the English drama of the close of the century if he does not also take into account the social impulse. Here again the influence came from France, but perhaps in even larger measure from Norway. Something of it was to be seen in the work of Feuillet and Augier. Still more was it in Hugo. Sometimes it descended into melodrama. There was also about it, however, a serious element that could not lightly be waved aside. Sue's Les Mystères de Paris and Hugo's Notre Dame became the inspiration of a long line of plays, which with Les Misérables (1862) developed into a vogue. The Streets of London, Lights o' London, London by Gaslight, Under the

Gaslight, and London Life were only a few of many similar titles.

If Hugo, however, was the heart of social unrest, its soul was Henryk Ibsen (1828-1906). This great Norwegian dramatist was first introduced to England by an article by Mr. Edmund Gosse in the Fortnightly Review in 1873. Not long afterwards Mr. William Archer made himself the translator and general sponsor in England for the new voice; and within fifteen years the representative plays of the dramatist had in one way or another been set before the British public. Furious discussion arose. At the head of the opposition and generally representative of conservative elements was Clement Scott, probably the foremost dramatic critic of the day. There could be no question as to Ibsen's great ability in analysis and technique; and in the long run he contributed most vitally to the emancipation of the drama by his insistence upon frank discussion of the great social problems agitating the age. He felt that there could be no progress if there was not absolute honesty. Naturally he developed upon the stage many subjects that formerly had been proscribed. His fearless driving of bad premises to a logical conclusion tended toward pessimism, while his consideration of such subjects as marriage and heredity tended toward an absorption with sex problems from which we are not yet free.

These two great influences—a decadent principle that emphasized surface beauty and style, and a realism that easily descended into naturalism, in one way or another constantly affected the drama in the closing years of the century. Not infrequently they became interwoven. It is also worthy of note in passing that England again wit

nessed an array of great performers. As at the beginning of the century, a period of uncertainty in the drama was partially atoned for by a great era in the history of the English stage. The Bancrofts, the Kendals, and Irving and Terry gave a new care to their work and greatly increased the dignity of the actor's profession.

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88. Oscar Wilde. The prime representative of aestheticism as it affected the drama was Oscar Wilde (18561900), a writer who was singularly gifted in understanding a passing mood of the day in which he lived and in responding to this with brilliant epigrams. His plays were as follows: Vera, or The Nihilists (1883), The Duchess of Padua (1891), Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), ▲ Woman of No Importance (1893), Salomé (1895), An Ideal Husband (1895), and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). Lady Windermere's Fan, a study in the attitude of society toward a woman who has lost respectability, is perhaps most typical of the dramatist's skilful craftsmanship. Lord Windermere would have Lady Windermere invite Mrs. Erlynne to her birthday party. The suggestion is indignantly spurned. Later, however, Mrs. Erlynne, who is really Lady Windermere's mother, saves her daughter in an exceedingly compromising situation by taking the burden upon herself; and Lady Windermere never knows the real basis of the sacrifice. Actual performance of this play, as with others by the dramatist, almost invariably impresses one with his tense*Note that Mrs. Kendal was Madge Robertson, youngest sister of T. W. Robertson.

For a brief clear statement of the precision and finish of the work of the Bancrofts and Kendals, and their encouragement of native effort, as distinguished from Irving's adherence to older traditions, see Dickinson, 49-67.

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