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by "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

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Title: Our Stage and Its Critics

Author: "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

Release Date: September 9, 2004 [EBook #13408]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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OUR STAGE AND ITS CRITICS

BY

"E.F.S."

OF "THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE"

_1910_

PREFACE

Whilst reading the proof-sheets of these articles I have been oppressed
by the thought that they give a gloomy idea about the state of our
Stage. Yet I am naturally sanguine. Indeed, no one taking a deep
interest in our drama could have written for a score or so of years
about it unless of a naturally sanguine temperament. There has been
great progress during my time, yet we still are far from possessing a
modern national drama creditable to us. Some imagine that the British
have no inborn genius for writing drama, or acting it, and look upon
those dramatists and players whose greatness cannot be denied as mere
exceptions to a rule. Without alleging that at the moment we have a
Shakespeare, a Garrick or a Siddons, I assert confidently that we own
dramatists and players able, if rightly used, to make our theatre worthy
of our country and also that the misuse of them is appalling. For very
many years the history of the English stage has been chiefly a record of
waste, of gross commercialism and of honest efforts ruined by adherence
to mischievous traditions: the Scottish and Irish stage have been mere
reflections of our own.

At the moment Ireland is making a brave and remarkably successful
effort at emancipation, and during the last few years has laid the
foundations of a National Theatre and built a good deal upon them.
Scotland lags a little, yet the energy and enthusiasm of Mr Alfred
Wareing and the citizens of Glasgow have enabled them to create an
institution not unlikely to serve as the home of a real Scots drama.
They offer to the native playwright an opportunity of showing that a
national drama