THE END OF THE “PROBLEM” PLAY

New Zealand Mail, 17 September 1902, Page 4

THE END OF THE “PROBLEM” PLAY

The announcement that “Iris" is to be iho last of Mr Pinero’s “serious plays” jpneans that what is called the “problem play” has, so far as the English drama is concerned, given up the ghost. For Pinero is unchallengeably the first of English-writing dramatists, not only of his day. but as well of the many days that have gono by since Robertson began to restore to the English drama the native character which for years it had lacked, liecause our playwrights were content to “convert,” as the wise it call, from the French and the German. Moreover, Pinero is the one English author who has had anything like success in the “problem” school. Therefore, when he gives it up, that school is dead; and as “Iris” is its swan-song, we may well say that nothing in its life became it like the leaving it. Mr Boucicault used to object to the class-name “problem play.” Every play has a problem, he used to say; therefore they cull one school by a name which fdainly belongs to all. It is a good ogioal argument, though here, as in many other cases, literalness is not imperative. For instance, every horse is, Correctly speaking, a horse, hut we make

a distinction in speaking of the sexes; every house is a house, but we call one a cottage, another a villa; and so on, ad infinitum. By “problem play” we indicate, however awkwardly, the late unlamentcd sort of drama which died in the sickly flower of its early youth, and which treated of those ugly phases of modern social life which have accrued through degeneracy, through heredity, through lust, and through other causes of unpleasant effects upon society. Perhaps a more explicit description was suggested by Mr George Rignold when he said, a few years ago. that as a manager he had never housed “French filth or modern English nastiness.” Let us assume so, at any rate, and consider “Iris” and her classmates simply as • "nasty plays.”

Of these nasty plays written by Pinero we have seen in Australia five-r-“ The Second Mrs Tanqueray,” “The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith,” “The Benefit of the Doubt,” “Iris,” and “The Gay Lord Quex.” As a play of interest the Tanqueray one is the greatest of these. It is one of the least problematical (to return to the barred word) of them, because really there is no social or moral question in it. Pinero doesn’t raise an interrogating finger there, but presents you with a woman newly wedded into a new social state, and reveals in her an individual idiosyncracy from which the most inexperienced can see the inference that the affair will turn out badly. She is so suspicious, so jealous, so vulgar, and. in spite of her spasmodic good intentions, so generally intractable, and all this is so plainly and early announced that you can foresee what,.will happen. The spirits and the milk have palpably been so badly mixed that you need not wait for the tragic curdling that is to ensue. But you wait because the play holds you; its weft is so perfect that there is not a loose thread of dialogue in it, though there are several frayed characters; the “persons of the play” are all interesting in one way and another; the pathetic story is unfolded with excellent craftmanship. "Iris” is exactly its opposite in mental scope and treatment. The play is one that develops, and follows with rare success the risky plan of picturing a course of events in which the audience is never given the key beforehand. It is inexorably clamped to the story and its three principal, characters, .There is no pretence of introducing "relief,” as was done to help Mrs Tanqueray to death, and also in that combination of theatrical tricks and unbolievablo coincidences, tho shrieking “Mrs Ebbsmith.” A talo is to bo told, and, by your leave, tho master

will tell it in his own way. If you don’t ] like it, you can leave it—the latter being • apparently the popular alternative. It is the tale of a woman of a fine character < with flaws in it. There is ample precedent for such a chipped entity, of course, heroically in Lamartine’s snrewd observation on Shakespeare, that “in this man everything was great—bad taste as welL as genius.” Her flaws are that she is 1 partly colour-blind in regard to what people are apt to call virtue in a woman, ' forgetting or ignoring that she may be unvirtuous in many other ways; and that she is over-fond of luxuries. She sees the luxury clearly, covetously enough; the other thing she sees but dimly, unfortunately for her and such as her (the name of whom is legion); and she “falls.” But it is a fall so pitiably regrettable and the conflict in a beautiful disposition between love of a man and hatred of poverty, with that moral colour-blindness obseuring-an essentia] aspect, are illustrated with such solemn, unflinching sincerity, that if this writer were to be delivered of a judgment it would.be that "Iris” is the most human, appealing, and, as a serious piece, always the best of all the nasty play 3. But these things are matters of opinion. And yet, it may be demurred to this tentative ruling, "Iris” did not draw. To which there are three answers. One is that the public is not necessarily, especially in a hasty verdict, always right. Another that the play is "gloomy.” And for a final answer, it is just ag well that "Iris” should be a failure. However great its merits, it is one of the nasty ones. Admit with me that it is the best, and even then—eui bono? Even the moral play hag no good effect. Because the man on the stage is virtuous is not a reason why others, or even he in his ordinary habit, should not have cakes and ale. A roughly representative demonstration of this is given in an American story about an actor who once made a. terrific “hit” in the temperance play,' "Ten Nights in a Bar-room,” but is now "doing ten bar-rooms in a night.” And as the moral play is a failure as a moral force, the immoral play must be at least equally. The cold truth is that the drama has. rio great influence one way. or another, which is one reason why the public refused more than a very short hearing to the nasty play, though most of the best dramatist's were offering it. People go to the theatre’' to be entertained. As M. Rostand has j said, if the dramatist, does not entertain , them he will try in vain, to teach them. The public refuses to receive the naslv plays because they avo of the teaehv sort teachy; also because they are on themeA public discussion of which is rightly un-' popular, though sometimes interesting be-

cause of their cheeky pungency, as in fhe case of that, bedroomy play about the amorous peer named Quex. However, the nasty play is done with. No one ever hears nowadays about the "rotten’'’ youth in that impressive but high-smelling tragedy "Ghosts.” The divorced puppets in “The Benefit of the Doubt” have been locked up to die as surely as the new-made bride in the mistletoe song. Mrs Ebbsmith is no longer notorious. And Pinero has, by the washing of his own hands, given some honour to the prophet who, at-the time when Mrs Tanqueray first committed suicide here, paraphrased a piece of “Toe Dancing Girl,” and said that the pub! being asked by the playwright whether the drama might not be made serious, would reply, “Don’t let us suppose anything .so dreadful!” The nasty or problem play is early and acceptably dead. And it goes out, to use Stevenson’s figure, not “trailing with it clouds of glory," but "miserably straggling to an end iu sandy deltas.”—H.J.T., in Sydney “Dail.y Telegraph.”