SCOTTISH DRAMA.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 4 October 1924, Page 16

SCOTTISH DRAMA.

— ADDRESS BY MR. W. G. SIMPSON. The following address was given by Chieftain W.- G. Simpson before the Hawera Scottish Society on Wednesday, October 1: Few of the recognised small nations, or even of the big oneA have given more pledges of nationhood than Scotland. (1) She resisted Roman rule and English rule; (2) She was a separate kingdom for eight centuries; (3) She had a Parliament of her own till 1707; (4) She has a. literature and music of her own; (5) A national church; (6) Independent legal and banking systems; (7) A Scottish philosophy in the eighteenth century; (S) Twice in the nineteenth century there /were Scottish schools of painting. in character and mentality the Scottish people remain- almost antithetically different from the English. “The Scots,” as Froissart remarked long ago, “are fonder of pap;eantry and splendour than the English.” When their crust- of reserve breaks down under stress of emotion, they reveal themselves as natural actors, .quick to exploit a dramatic -situationand set it off with picturesque phrases and richly expressive gestures. Why is it that a nation with such a record has- never found expression for its individual and independent characteristics in a national drama? There are many reasons given—some sound, some foolish. There /were many mystery and miracle plays dating from the fifteenth century and many anti-Cathoiic plays, hut when they had served their purpose they were banned, as indeed' all plays were; and, but for the twist given to the national life by the Calvinist Reformation, these forms would probably have coalesced into a native drama. But the grim Geneva ministers, the puritanical and churcliified town councils killed the native drama in its cradle. Theatre entertainments of any kind in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and even in the eighteenth centuries acted on those in authority in Scotland as a red flag is supposed to act on a bull—it sent them mad. All frolics of such a nature were unseemlv and ungodly, and were heavily punished. For doing what some of us were doing the other night in the Hawera Presbyterian Hall—trying to act in Shakespeare—we would have been placed in the stocks— 7VOU know what that Then, after trial and on being found guilty, jurt to make sure that we would be known to everybody. we would have a hole burned through our ear with a hot iron, and, the records tell us. all this +o' “the great pleasure of Almiohtie God and common weil of the real me.” Verv encouraging to budding actors. Second o^'oope—hanging. They could not even bear to see a • mv in print. When Ramsay opened the first circulating library in Scotland in 1725 the magistrates interfered at oo" 6i saving it, was lamentable. Boys., "iris and gentlemen, contributed thereto whereby vice and obscenity were dreadfully propagated. When men of letters nr some of our I Sottish, poets protested they got nothing but abuse, and to this day there •ve peonle. I am sorry to say, who speak of Burns with some reserve he r "•vise of his manly protests against this and other forms of. hypocrisy which he clearly saw, and, of course, -ondomnerl with no uncertain voice. °.ir David Lindsnv’s “Satire of the Thrie Estaites, 1534,” in wit. humour and composition is above anything of the kind produced in England by that ■ late. George Buchanan’s Latin dramas belong to European and not Scottish ’iterature. Tragedies by Sir William Alexander are Scottish only in authorship. Tn 1714 Edinburgh witnessed the first performance ' of Macßeth—the greatest of all Scottish plavs—but Scotland’s contribution to her own stage during the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth century was precisely nil. The men who might have written good Scottish plavs belonged t,o the •piddle classes, who held aloof from (die theatre. The uppe’- or “genteel” desses were denationalised and revolved round London. The illiterate 'ower classes in the large cities were brutalised.by industrialism. The man about town in Glasgow or Edinburgh aped the London rovsterer. Emm the end of Queen Mary’s reign ■intil our own time is merely the history of the drama of Scotland. There i-e men and women who only begin to appreciate love when they have abused. repelled and lost it. Tn like man<cr Scotland began to discover the worth of her national soul when she bad bartered it awav. One of the ( lrst signs of a- national regret was the popularity of the modernised version of Blind Harry’s “Wallace.” hv Hamilton, in 1722. This was the hook that poured a flood of Scottish preindice into the veins of Burns. Thereafter we had a long line of historical plavs. ’ Then Allan Ramsav in 1725 published his famous pastoral drama. “The Gentle Shepherd,” which, with all its faults, is the one vernacular plav worth considering. In 1746 Ramsay, in spite of the fulmirations of the “Unco Gnid,” opened a theatre in Edinburgh. Tll the same vear “Tim Gentle Shepherd” was produced. In 1756 John Home’s “Douglas” was produced in Edinburgh, ami owed its great success to its Scottish theme. With the opening of the Roval Theatre in Edinburgh. 1768, the dark forces opposed to the drama were finally routed. For thirty vears or so Scotland had Rome awful rubbish served up as plays, but when MacPherson’s “Ossian” and Burps’ “Kilmarnock Volume” were published Scottish dramatists returned L o native themes ao-ain. Some of the "objects dealt with were- “Kenneth. King of Scots.” “Danish Invasions.’' “John Ba-lliol,” “Bruce.” “Janies T., 1 IT.. TH. and 1V.,” “Admiral Crichton.” “Patrick Hamilton.” ’‘Cardinal Heaton,” “Mary Stuart.” “Gowrie Conspiracy” and the “Forty-five.” Seventy years ago there were many plays on the Covenanters: then there we-o Scott’s “Anr-hiudrane,” “Doom of Devergoil.” With few exceptions these plays were beneath contempt. “C'-ammond Brig.” once famous, is a witless and doltish production. Most of the pi aye written about this time -e"e illiterate., vulgar productions, but He vo’-«t of all wp’e the hot eh -notches 4 high-faintin’ humorous dialogue, sentiment and song, fighting and dancing that were concocted from the Waverley novels. The few plays written were mostly -übbish. built up on the artificial material, supplied by Sir Walter Scott. 1 ' T Tio waters or d’-matists we*° debauched Tm the “Wizard of Ahbots- ■ "nrd.” Thev oempted the conven- ; tional view of their own country as a back ground to the posturings of ro-

mantic aristocrats, and a museum of obtrusively quaint characters. Never once did a dramatist break through the superficial glaze to the realities of social and domestic life •in Scotland. The fatal spell of--“ Guidebook Romance” was broken in- one direction by John Davidson forty years ago when he brought a big poetic imagination to bear in the wiiting of “Bruce,” a chionicle play. “Bruce” ■still remains 011- best historical play. Burns, who might have washed away the hint f—in the national e«mrteheoii unfortunately did no more than pen his famous protest against this unnatural state of affairs in the prologue he wrote for Mr. Sutherland's benefit night in 1790. But the. pro?test did some good at any rate. for. though it is one hundred and thirty years since he wrote it. it is that call for a- national drama that forms the articles of dramatic faith of the bodv now seeking to foster the flowering of a Scottish stage literature. ” Dining the last- twenty years several attempts have been made to do something in the matter. The last and most famous being Glasgow’s Repertory Theatre, which was closed ten years ago. This brings us to our' ..owii time and shows the position with which the people attempting to give Scotland a drama of her own are faced. Th> ee years ago with little money, and 110 beating of drums, a small band of people calling themselves “The Scotland National Plavers” made their bow to the public of Glasgow, and intimated with a modest gesture that their object was to found a national theatre and help in creating a national drama. This society is looking for plavs to produce, and if there is^anybody here capable of writing a play—plavs with the red blood of drama- in them now is your chance to make a name for yourself. They don’t want any of the R'nb Roy or Crammond Brig type, conventional caricatures of the “pawky Scot,” sncli as we see today on thp English stage, nor do they want the but-and-ben variety, or room apd kitchen soualor, such as we have pH had nut before us as beiim Scottish life. Its aim is to present in dramatic form the real life of Scotland, past and present, of every grade and shade from eve’y angle, and free from exaggeration of any kind. The society has produced thirty plavs, twenty-six for the first time' on any staerp. Jt has fulfilled thre engagements. running in all to eight weeks nf ' t-l’e London Coliseum, has toured the English towns, lias visited twenty Scottish towns, one week at Edinburgh’s best theatre, and' a week at the King’s, Glasgow. The dramatists that stand high in the society’s list are: J. A. Ferguson, John Brandane and George Blake. Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Blake have given the society its greatest tragedies, “Campbell of Kilmohr” and “The Mother.” These plays touch life 011 the raw, and for all their stark realism they are drenched in the melancholy poetry and beauty of Gaeldom. John Brandane has given the society its best comedy, “The Glen is Mine’’—a- three-act play —and, says a writer in the Scot’s Magazine, these three at least are plays for the society to thank Heaven for. Poetic drama has been assayed in a worthy manner by Gordon Bot-t-omley’s “Gruacli.” Mr. A. W. Yuill has dramatised R. L. Stevenson’s “Weir of Hermiston.”

We are now fairly launched on the broad stream of Scottish drama. If our young dramatists have a- determination to profit by the warnings "untamed in the history of the Scottish stage, study deeply the life around them, follow the gleam boldlv, and either write the truth or nothing, the future of Scottish dranlTL is assured. .