aywright to get his characters out of a
mess.

The novelist or poet is a difficult person for stage treatment; the
pictures of the dramatist in the theatre are curiously unlifelike--as
unlifelike as the theatrical managers on the stage. There are reasons
for this that need not be discussed.

It seems a pity that the playwrights, when dealing with life in the
strata above shopkeeping, should not apply themselves more fully to the
study of the enormous class which is the backbone of the country,
instead of choosing so often merely the idle classes, members of which
as a rule are less highly individualized. One may apply to the
characters in many of our comedies certain phrases used by Theophile
Gautier: "The personages belong to no particular time or country. They
come and go without our knowing why or how; they neither eat nor drink,
they do not live in any particular place, and have no _metier_."

The "neither eat nor drink," of course, is quite inapplicable; we have
far too much eating and drinking on the stage. The low, comic meals of
the Adelphi are replaced by similar or slightly more "genteel" humours
of comic eating in comedies. It may be that this phenomenon is due to a
belief that playgoers want to see something in the theatres far divorced
from its ordinary life, but this belief seems hardly consistent with
certain notable tendencies towards realism. Undoubtedly the public has
not grown tired of plays dealing seriously with current human life; it
has had no opportunity of growing tired of them.

Since this was written the "Yellow Journalism" editor has twice
appeared, once in the brilliant comedy called _What the Public Wants_,
by Mr Arnold Bennett, where Mr James Hearn represented him superbly, and
on the other occasion in Mr Fagan's clever work called _The Earth_, when
Mr M'Kinnel acted ably. Also we have had an engineer in _The Building of
Bridges_ and a doctor in _Fires of Fate_.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Stage and Its Critics
by "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR STAGE AND ITS CRITICS ***

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