ARTHUR WING PINERO

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1511, 14 February 1901, Page 23

ARTHUR WING PINERO

SATIRIST AND WRITER OF PLAYS.

(By “Sidney Dark” in London “Dailv Mail/’)

Commerce gave the stage Mr Henry Arthur Jones, the law gave it Mr Pinero. The son and grandson of solicitors, lie commenced life as a lawyer’s clerk. Like Dickens, lie had no great love for briefs and deeds, and in 1874, when he was nineteen, he bacame an actor, getting an engagement to play “general utility” parts in Edinburgh at £l. a week.

He remained on the stage for ten years, playing with Sir Henry Irving and the Kendals, and making his,final appearance in the Hay market revival of “The Rivals.”

- The actor was the father cf the dramatist, for the one significant quality of ail Mr Pinero’s plays is the perfection of their , stagecraft. His collected writings might be headed, ‘'Written by a mummer for mummers,” and in the work of no other modern playwright are. there so many “fat” parts, so many opportunities for the actor to distinguish himself. MR PINERO IN THREE PARTS. The great artist must have both something to say and a knowledge of how to say it. and one of these things is just as’ important as the other. The fact that Shakespeare and Sheridan, Scribe and Sardou, Ibsen and Sudermann, Pinero and Jones thoroughly understand the technique of the stage, is one of the great reasons of the interest and success of their plays. Mr Pinero has written a score of dramas. Seventeen of them are published in book form by Hemeinann, and though this series "does not include his early work, .such as “The Squire,” it extends from 1885 to 1889, and from it a very clear idea can be obtained of the phases through which Mr Pinero has pasted; cf his strength, of his weakness, and of hi 3 development.

Putting aside one or two comparatively unimportant works, the plays can be roughly divided into three sections. There are first the Court Theatre farces, “The Magistrate,” ‘ The Schoolmistress,” “Dandy Dick,” and “The Cabinet Minister,” the last, by the way, produced in 1890, later than “Sweet Lavender” and “The Profligate.” The seec-nd set consists of his more artistic comedies, “Sweet Lavender,” produced in 1888; “The Times,” in 1891; “The Amazons,” in 1893; and “Trelawney of the Wells,” in 1898. The last series comprise the more thoughtful plays, on which his fame mainly rests: “The Profligate,” “The Second Mrs Tauqueray,” “The No-

torious Mrs Ebbsmith,” "The Benent of the Doubt,” and “The Gay' Lord Quax.” “The Princess and the Butterfly," with its curious mixture of realism, symbolism, and half a dozen other tilings, stands bi r itself. IMPOSSIBLE FARCES.

His Court farces are acclaimed by many writers as something entirely fresh and new. Mr Pinero has himself sounded the only note for criticism to strike in his famous inversion of Die Phenyl’s line, “Praise, praise, praise, but blame? oli, dear no” 5 but it may be imagined that lie must himself be surprised at the unanimity with which his critics have accepted his text. Mr Malcolm Salaman, who is Mr Pinero’s official interpreter, says in one of his prefaces that “farce should treat of probable people placed in possible circumstances.” As a matter of fact, nearly every farce turns on hopelessly improbable people doing entirely impossible things . A man is persistently taken by his nearest and dearest for some one else who is utterly unlike him. Half a dozen people are concealed : n a loom, the other occupants of which never dream of their presence, and so on, and in verisimilitude Mr Pinero’s farces do not seem to me one whit better than any,- other farces.

Whoever heard of a respectable cl erg.yman being taken for a racing rough, and kept in prison in that capacity for two or three days? Yet, that is the main idea of “Dandy Dick.” Again, Mr Joseph Lebanon, the comic Jew in “The ©abinet Minister,” is as utterly unlike any real person as the villain of a. transpontine melodrama, and the merest elementary knowledge of the world makes it qnite certain that such a person would not be tolerated for five minutes in an carl’s backyard, let alone at his dining table. HIS BEST COMEDY. In the second' series of plays Mr Pinero strikes a much higher note. “'Sweet Lavender,” with all its artificial sentimentality, does tell the story of persons approximating to reality, and Dick Phenyl is a masterpieece. But I have always regarded “The Amazpns” as the author’s most artistic comedy. He -has said, or Mr Salaman has said for him, that “the comic playwright- must seek his humour in the exaggeration of sentiment”; and though “The AiTiar zons” is distinctly marred by the inclusion of two hopeless caricatures among its characters, Mr Pinero seems to have carried out his doctrine more satisfactorily here than anywhere else.

Despite his Portuguese descent, few modern writers are temporamentallymore English than Mr Pinero. His reticence, his quiet hospitality-, his love of sports —riding, cycling, cricket, and so 011 — ara qualities we like to think belong to our race. In a good deal of his work he resembles Dickens. “Sweet Lavender,” for instance, must certainly have been written when, as Mr Archer said, “The Dickens stop was on.” But with all this, Mr Pinero is not absurdly insular, and lie has strongly felt the influence of Ibsen in its tendency towards realism and truth—a great rjo-od—-and also in its affection for neurotic women and flabby morals—a considerable evil.

It is no exaggeration to say that the production <of “The Profligate” at the Garrick Theatre in 1889 marks the beginning of a new era in the history of the English stage.' Never before had the dramatist had the courage to look the facts of life plainly in the face, and to describe truthfully and relentlessly the inevitable results of wrong-do-ing. In 1893 came “The Second Mrs Tanqueray,” by far the greatest of the Pinero plays, and one of the half-dozen dramas of our generation that are likely to live. The true note of tragedy is its inevitableness, and the sense that the audience has all through “The Second Mrs Tanqueray,” that the net is hopelessly ■and relentlessly closing round Paula, that however she may struggle the result must be the same, marks the play as a real human tragedy. WANTED—THE REAL LORD QUEX.

“The! Notorious Mrs Ebbsmitli” was a much poorer thing. The Duke of St. Olphert is melodrama. Agnes Ebbsmith herself never convinces. Mr Bernard Shaw, who certainly has some knowledge. of the “Hyde Park orator” lady, showed the whole weakness of the conception in one of his most trenchant “Saturday Review” articles. It is said of Mr Pinero that he lias observed most of the things for himself; but one rather wonders where he found Mrs Ebbsmitli, or even Lord Quex. In the last of his plays, Ibsenism, or rather, Zolaism is rampant. The wholesome Englishman is utterly swamped in foreign philosophy and foreign points cf view.

With all its undoubted cleverness, much of “The Gay Lord Quex” strikes roe as an offence against good taste, and the idea of the marriage of the old roue with the young girl, which seems so desirable to Mr Pinero, must be utterly repugnant to most other people. Of course, Sophie Eulgarney was anr toer masterly creation, and the superb .reading of it by Miss Irene Vanbrugh, the one young English actress with really great comedy ability, gave the play most of its success.

Mr micro has just completed another drama, which will bo produced by Mr Arthur Bourcliier at the Garrick Theatre

in the spring. Its production will be an event of ti;c greatest theatrical importance. That- it will be clever frees without saying; but that its cleverness will bo devoted to a. high and worhy subject, and that its author will set out to prove that art can soar to the heavens much more comfortably than wallow in the gutter, will be the hope of every one who admires hi 3 genius and cares for the stage.