WHEN VILLAINS SNEERED

Dunstan Times, 13 May 1935, Page 6

WHEN VILLAINS SNEERED

MELODRAMA AS OUR GRANDFATHERS KNEW IT

Many plays which thrilled audiences in Victorian times excite only ridicule to-day, but recent revivals have been curiously successful in spite of their far-fetched absurdity. “Speak up, Irving, you beggar I” The voice came from the back of the stalls during a performance in London of ‘The Bells.’ Sir Henry Irving, thrown for a moment off his balance, recovered his poise and continued to ir tone the sombre lines he had been speaking, but at the back of the theatre came sounds of a scuffle, and a young man, protesting vehemently, was tin-own unceremoniously into the street.

To disturb a famous actor in the middle of his pet speech would be an unpardonable sin in the modern theatre, but fifty years ago, when melodrama was still in its heyday, and actors were not ashamed to shout and rant, the baiting of the players on the stage was a popular pastime, pursued by young men of Jfashion and education. It was fully expected, too, by the actors, who recruited hirelings from the ranks of defeated pugilists to keep such disturbances within the bounds of reason. Even now the custom persists in some strange backwaters of the modern stage (writes Edward Axford in the ‘ Melbourne Argus’). The cunning squire, embarrassed by the progress of an indiscreet love affair with a trusting village maid, has made up his mind to murder hen On the dimly lit stage the bright-eyed maiden keeps a tryst with him at the door of the red barn. “ I have come to you in my wedding dress,” she greets him, “ and now you will make me your bride.” “ Yes,” sneers the murderous villain, “a bride of death!” And he hits the poor girl over the head with a shovel, stabs her in the heart, just to make sure, and throws the bleeding body into a ditch he has dug in the floor of the barn. “ Ooh ; aren’t men devils!” pipes a shrill voice in the gallery. “Quiet, quiet, please!” bawl the ushers. A hundred hysterical sympathisers are hushed, to silence, broken only by the scrunch of a spade shovelling sand into the grave and the hoarse whisper of the callous villain, “ Now I’m free of you forever!” Ho wipes his hands on a piece of cloth. They are stained with crimson liquid which drips to the floor. “Oh, you fiend!” mutters a palefaced woman, whose eyes are nearly starting from her head. The house is in uproar again. Two burly ushers stride quickly forward and shout, “Silence, there!” But Nemesis has come. Carlos, the gipsy lad, whose sister has also been seduced by the profligate squire, vows vengeance. He holds his clenched fist aloft in a magnificent gesture of retribution, and cries; “ An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and BER-LUD for BER-LUD!” ' “ Ooh, it makes yer blood run cold, don’t it?” whispers a woman to her friend. In the front row of the stalls some young men in evening dress snigger audibly. Once more the pugilists spring forward, shouting, “ Quiet! Silence!” The murderous squire, preening himself in the security of his London house, boasts of his conquests to his dissolute companions. “Ha,” he sneers, “ women will believe anything a man says to them.” “Not this week!” comes a highpitched voice from the stalls. “ Once bit, twice shy!” screams a girl in the gallery. Here come the representatives of the law. The squire is charged with the murder of Maria Marten. “As I stand before my God I did not kill her,” he protests. “ Oh, the liar!” shrieks someone. “Silence! Silence!” bawl the ushers The cowering villain, manacled with clanking chains, is dragged snivelling to the scaffold. The band plays the 1 Dead March.’ Who is the tall, handsome executioner who adjusts the noose so heartlessly round the condemned man’s neck? Why, it is Carlos, the gipsy! Vengeance at last. “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, BER-LUD for BER-LUD!” he chants with terrifying monotony, and, with the excited murmurs of the audience drowning the last words, he releases the bolt and the squire disappears through a hole in the stage. As the curtain begins to fall the rope shakes violently, quivers, and then is still. HISSING THE VILLAIN. That is melodrama as it was played in the days of our grandfathers. The audience is noj; content to watch a play; it must participate in it, hissing the villain, shouting encouragement to the pursued heroine, warning the intended victim of the assassin’s knife, and expressing loud resentment when the actors fail to speak coherently. If more sophisticated playgoers of to-day choose to laugh at cheap platitudes and giggle at heroic absurdities so much the better. What does it matter whether you go to laugh or cry? Mr Gregan M‘Mahon found that the villainous Gideon Blood in Dion Boucicault’s old play, ‘ The Streets of London,’ was as detestable a scoundrel to the young people of Melbourne in 1934 as he was to the youths and maidens who went to hiss him in the ’seventies. But if the young moderns laugh instead of hiss, it makes no difference to the box-office. A few years ago Sir Nigel Playfair filled the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London, every night for three months, when he revived George Lillo’s famous melodrama, ‘ The London Merchant.’ When the smart young Londoners laughed at Lillo’s fulsome verbage _ and transparent sentiments, Sir Nigel Playfair would stop the play, walk solemnly to the footlights, and rebuke the interrupters with a strong look as Kean and Sullivan might have done generations before him. Then they would laugh all the more, which was just 'what Sir Nigel wanted them to do. Listen to the grandiose soliloquy which George Barnwell, emulating Mark Antony, speaks aloud over the body of the uncle he has murdered for his money:— “Expiring saint! Oh, murdered, martyred uncle! Lift up your dying eyes and view your nephew in your murderer! Oh, do not look so tenderly upon me! Let indignation lighten from your eyes and blast me ere you die! Murder, the worst of eriiqes, and parricide, the worst of murders, and this the worst of parricides! Cain, who stands on rc-

cord from the birth of time, and i must to its last period, as accursed,) slow a brother, favoured above him. j Detected Nero, by -another’s hand, despatched a mother that he feared and hated. But, I, with my own hand, have murdered a brother, mother, father, and a friend most loving and beloved. This execrable act of mine’s without a parallel. Oh, may it ever stand alone —the last of murders as it is the worst! ’ And to that horrid woman Millwood he confesses his dreadful crime. “ Behold,” he cries, kneeling at her feet, “ these hands all crimsoned o’er with my dear uncle’s blood! Here’s a sight to make a statue start with horror or turn a living man into a statue! Which indeed it is. RANTING ACTORS. Villains could be splendid confessors 200 years ago, and, strangely enough, extraordinarily blunt-witted. Madam Millwood, the sly schemer, receives a visit from Barnwell, and the following conversation occurs: — Millwood: Please, sir, to sit. 1 am as much at a loss how to receive this honour as I ought, as I am surprised at your goodness in conferring it. Barnwell: I thought you had expected me. I promised to come. Millwood: That is the more surprising : few men are such religious observers of their word. (She places her hand on his, as bv accident.) Barnwell (aside) : Her disorder is so great she don’t perceive she has laid her hand on mine. Heavens! How she trembles I . Those lines, spoken with an air of supreme innocence, were received with due solemnity in 1731. In 1927 they awoke shrieks of laughter, which had to subside before the play could continue. Early in the nineteenth century Sir Edward Lytton-Bulwer wrote 1 Tlie Lady of Lyons,’ a play astonishingly well liked by our grandfathers. In it the hero sends some verses he has written to his sweetheart, who rejects them and orders her lackeys to beat the messenger who brought them. There was a very dramatic episode when the messenger returned with the Melnotte: With blows? No. Gaspar, no; not blows! Caspar: I coul 1 show thee the marks if it were not so deep a shame to bear them. What could thy letters contain. Claude? Melnotte: Not a line that a sell might not have written to an empress. No', not one _ r , , Caspar: Thou art moved, Melnotte; think not of me; I would go through fire and water to serve thee; but a blow! It is not the bruise that galls, but the blush I How a modern audience would love that scene if it were acted to-day! Yet Henry Irving had the greatest respect for that play, and scored in it one of his most brilliant successes. The actors of his day loved nothing finer than a “ fat ” part, with plenty of turgid words to speak, and the noise the rant the better they liked it. “ You may sneer at my humble „ ar b ” bravely quoth the maiden in ? Cast Ashore,’ addressing the unspeakable cad who had denied her the honour of marriage, “ but let me tell you that rags become royal robes when worn for virtue’s sake.” (Loud cheeis.) And Sophia says to the impecunious Tom Jones in Buchanan s play of TooC,, “ I would rather share a garret with the man I love than dwell in a palace with any other living being. (Deafening applause.) „ , , The faithless lover m Column s •John Bull’ (1903), tells a young woman, whom he has compromised, that he cannot marry her in the following words: —“Oh, Mary, how painful if, performing the duty of a son, I must abandon, at last, the expiation of a penitent! But so dependent on each other are the delicate combinations of probity that one broken link perplexes the whole chain, and an abstracted virtue becomes a relative mK< It/ was the custom of the actress who played the part of the poor girl to look" aghast at the end of this speech. And well she might. Any modern girl would be staggcied.