OUR COMEDIANS BETTER THAN OUR TRAGEDIANS.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2659, 12 May 1908, Page 7

OUR COMEDIANS BETTER THAN OUR TRAGEDIANS.

SIR W. S. GILBERT SAYS FARCE

IS THE COMING VOGUE. .•/ s t I' 1"* « * 5 £ l V* t.I I ■ ' . i t j. i ' What in your opinion "is the coining vogue of plays—tragedy, drama, comedy, or what?" Sir W. S. Gilbert was asked by Mr. Bram Stoker, who contributes 4n with the famous humorist and 1 playwright to the New York "World." "Tragedy is hopeless," was the answer ; "drama has better prospects ; comedy better still ; farce best of all. I speak, of course, of. tftfe; comparative probability of success, not of actual merit. The different forms of comedy are easier of fulfilment. We have at present a considerable number of. fine comedians, but few, if any,* tragediansJ'i if H* 5 • *

"How do you account for that ?"

"Supply and demand. Everybody wants comedy, but no ODe wants tragedy. They go to see S}iako.speare's tragedies because; a fijrtain knowfledge of his " wof*k is properly held to be essential to people of education. People like to be on a sort of nodding acquaintance with his plays ; and so they go to see them, because to witness a performance of his plays is the easiest and the pleasantest .way ? of acquiring, a knowledge of them. Bfit in reality in tragedy it is the aictpr who draws. But as the" world wants comedy "it has it, and fairly good comedy, too. Pincro and such men have done an infinity of good in raising comedy higher." "How about musical comedy ?"

"That is two things. As we have writers of comedy and good comedians the prospects of comedy are bright enough. "But I fear there is no composer now before the public whose workjfis being taken seriously by connoisseurs —I except Mr. German, whose work is of a higher order than that of his rivals. I think this is a pity, for the modern musical comedies serve to amuse people, even if they cannot claim to be art of a high order. "They please a very large class—those who don't want to think ; the shop-girl, the typewriter, the gentjeman from Aldershot, and the . people who make theatre parties and merely want to be amused." "How do you think the stage —the dramatic stage—is and is to be affected by the great popuflarity of the music-hall ?"

"That is a rivalry in which the theatre is very heavily handicapped. The work in a music-hall is carried on under conditions which would be absolutely fatal to good work in a theatre.

"And then again the performers arc different. Every performer in a music-hall'? is more or less a. master in his craft. Not the? actors .. oily, but all who take part—conjurers, trick bicyclists, dancers, and so forth. A man does not go on the musichall stage merely because he ± has been spun for a clerkship in a bank or lias failed in the Guards.

"The strong point about the musichall commercially is that it only tries to amuse. There its ambition is satisfied ; it does not try to elevate."

"There are," suggested Mr. Fram Stoker, "those who say that the public won't allow literary merit to; be exercised in play-writing." Sir W. S. Gilbert smiled—a grim sort of smile—as he answered—

"If plays with a strong pretension to literary merit fail, they do so not on account of that literary merit, but in spite of it. In a play the public want the story, and any departure from its strict course, introduced because the author is of opinion that the literary excellence of the departure justifies its introduction. simply adds to its chances of failure. Some authors make the same mistake with what they call 'comic relief.' I sometimes think it would be a good thing if when a dramatist had completed his play he would read it carefully from beginning to end and cut out all the passages with which, on account of their literary excellence, he is best pleased." Then with a grim naivette all his own he added —"I have not always done it myself !"