"THE DEGENERATE FRENCH STAGE."

Evening Post, Volume LXX, Issue 37, 12 August 1905, Page 13

"THE DEGENERATE FRENCH STAGE."

M. Porel delivers himself, in La Revue de Paris, of a long lamentation over tho degenerate and degenerating conditions of the French stage. According, to him, writes a New York daily, _the situation is no better over there than it is here, and he ascribes it to causes which are not essentially different from those with which we are familiar. If he does not inveigh against the paralysing influences of a vast monopoly, he complains bitterly of the spirit of commercialism that dominates all departments of the theatre, the increasing expenses of production, of the great army of deadheads that must be placated, of the exactions of the press and of the Society of A'-*hors, the substitution of sensatioi^ sm, and frivolity for all serious work, and the gradual disappearance of actors properly trained in the traditional accomplishments of their complicated art. All these evils he attributes in part to tho transformation wrought in the French character by the unstable quality of notional politics, and the restless, impatient, and speculative spirit aroused by the uncertainties of the future. He thinks that the great massi of the theatre-going public, compelled to frequent the inferior kind of theatres by their inability to pay tho high prices demanded by the better sort, have lost through unfamiliarity all sense of the higher literary and dramatic standards; and are content with their present baso entertainments, only because they know not of others finer and more worthy. As a remedy ho proposes that all the subsidised theatres should be required to give a certain number of free performances yearly of masterpieces of every kind — tragedy, high and low comedy, musical extravaganzas, etc., etc. — in the interests of public instruction, the theory being that the crowd, once informed of the reality, would no longer put up with the imitations. Unfortunately, there is no good reason for believing that M. Porol's specific — even supposing it to have be^n adopted — would be more efficacious than any one of the many remedies suggested by other theatrical doctors, professional and amateur. The theatre will have to work out its own salvation. By and by it .will return to more sober courses, after learning, by cruel experience, the penalties which are the inevitable fruit of a policy of greed, recklessness, and profligacy.