THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 1897.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10413, 10 April 1897, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 1897.

Paters by the last mail contain accounts of a new play by M. Sardou, the famous dramatist, which has been brought out at Paris, with Madame Sara Bernhardt impersonating the heroine, It is a typical drama of the modern sohool, and is tentitled "Spiritisnie,"

The spirit of an age is manifested in its literature, and what that spirit is must be of deep interest to every thoughtful man. Naturally, he desires above all things to recognise what are the hopes and fears of the humanity around him, what is "the stream of tendency," what men and women regard as the oiiiefest good, what they look upon as constituting the happiness of life, what are their moral aims, what are their thoughts about the mysteries that surround us. All this finds expression in the drama, in fiction, and in poetry. The poetry we have had has certainly been varied enough. Tennyson does express the tliinkiug of the time to a great extent in his "In Jlemoriam," but as a whole probably his verse is too smooth and polished to be recognised as expressing the profounder vein of thought. As for fiction, wo have such a vast quantity upon our hands that we have scarcely commenced to sort it out. What is true to human nature eternally, and what expresses 'the thought of the age, will live. All the rest will perish, and it will be a good riddance. For the most exact expression of the wants and wishes of the age, we are always justified in looking to the drama. And,, by the way, it is somewhat singular that while our fiction is almost monopolised by women, We have no female dramatist of any standing. There is no interpreter of the times like the playwright. It is no profanity to call Shakespeare a playwright. The most learned man of his day, himself a Writer of plays, said that Shakespeare wrote "not for ail age only, but for nil time." Ben Jonson saw scores of new plays produced, written for the people" then living, and fairly expressing their thoiicrhts and -tastes, but he perceived that Shakespeare's pjays hftd in them something more, a great quality of 'embodying and expressing eternal human iiatufe, But there U no doubt that Shakespeare had in.

'all his plays chiefly in hie mind the audience that assembled at his theatre, and that he would never have written a play that he did not think would "take." Whether Sardou, or Pinero, or Ibsen will live beyond their immediate generation, remains to be seen ; but at all events we must apply to them first if we would find what interests this generation. The novelists may write to express individual ideas, but the playwright has to appeal to a jury in the box, who will at once give a verdict.

It is only uatural to suppose that some considerable change would be effected iu the novel and the drama by the great alteration which lias taken place in the social and political position of women. And it is a curious thing that iu a great many instances the modern heroine is a "woman with a past.' Is it possible that that can be" one result of the increased influence of the female sex in the domain of literature? But M. Sardou's play turns on the forgiveness by a husband of an erring wife, and this perhaps is the second result. The heroine of the play is a Mdlle. Simone, who marries a gentleman named d'Aubenas. She complains that her husband, after having neglected her for chemistry and alchemy, is now neglecting her for Spiritualism, in these circumstances, there soon comes on the scene a lover named Stourdza. The lady's plot is to accompany some friends to the railway station, and then letting these friends go on by train, to return and take up her abode with Stourdza. The husband meantime is absorbed in his Spiritualistic studies and seances. Then the railway station is burned, several persons lose their lives, and the remains of a lady are found to whom Mine. d'Aubenas had entrusted some of her jewels. It is thought to be Madame, and the husband, a prey to despair, mourns the death of his wife, and expresses in one breath his adoration and his grief. Madame is quite content to live with Stourdza, aud to let her loving husband rave, but Stourdza thought to get the fortune she had in her own right, and linds that she being now considered dead, lie will not come into possession of the money. He is deeply disappointed, but eventually gets killed in a duel. Then the husband shows such an absorbing love for his faithless wife, that it is thought by a confederate of the wife's that lie would forgive all. He invokesjier spirit at a seance, and she appears in reality, but the husband thinks that it is his wife's spirit. She confesses her sin, and the husband declares that were she living he would forget and forgive. She then casts ofl the winding sheet in which she is wrapped, and throws herself at his feet. D'Aubenas catches her in his arms and assures her of his unalterable love. The last scene is no doubt very striking, but the contrivance of the fire at the railway station, and the mistaking of the remains, is one which lias been used up in novels and plays, and it is a wonder that M. Sardou could not find something less hackneyed.

Is this a wholesome story, or ;i wholesome moral 1 It is long ago established in literature and in real life that n husband may be forgiven. But in regard to the wife, Mrs. Uruudy, who lays down and administers the moral law, lias until lately been implacable, or nearly bo. But our dramatists, as is shown by " The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" and "The Notorious Mrs. Ebbswortli," are struggling with the problem, and it will perhaps after all be carried that tbe wife has a right to forgiveness. To be sure, we have tho forgiving husband in the very earliest stages of literature. Did not Menelaus get all the Grecian princes to muster their fleets and forces for the recovery of Helen, and after Troy was destroyed, he took her back with him to Sparta as its Queen, although she had married one of Pims'a brothers after her first lover's death, in Pinero's play, Tauqneray marries Paula, who lifts had her lovers, because he thinks that all along she lias been better than her life, and lie shows a long-suffering tenderness towards her, which most men and women would count weakness. The breakdown of the matrimonial experiment ie due to the accidunt of the appearance of a former lover, as the lover of her husband's daughter.

But it must be admitted that the heroine with a past is a novelty in modern literature. Cleopatra, no doubt, had a past when Shakespeare dealt with her. But Antony knows all about that past, and there is no turning of the play upon any moral repentance or any incident of her previous history. Cleopatra was simply oue of those women who infatuate every man who comes in contact with them. Let us be thankful they are very few. The tragedy in which that unfortunate young man Uraddock has become involved shows how helpless a nmn is when he has become infatuated. Craddook said that his mind had become unhinged through brooding on the pending separation, and ho committed what was in his case the most serious of crimes, and utterly destroyed his future. Except Cleopatra, we know all about Shakespeare's heroines from their childhood. With Scott, who might be taken amongst the dramatists, we are always on healthy ground. Lucy Asliton, Rose Bradwardine, Flora Mclvor, Diana Vernon, and all the rest of them, have no past. The sex question does not come in at all, except in the falling in love and getting married, which is altogether too prosaic and commonplace for the modern drama or novel. Although women do not write dramas, it is unquestionable that they powerfully influence those who do. They create the taste which has moulded the form of Inany modern plays. If such a drama as "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" or "Spiritisme" had been put before an audience in the days of our grandfathers, they would have condemned it utterly, and indeed would have been at a loss to conceive how it was ever written.