THE DECADENT DRAMA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 5731, 28 October 1905, Page 12

THE DECADENT DRAMA.

It has been the custom, ever since the tide of French nastiness first began to flow into" the American, theatre to defend the production of decadent plays, usually of foreign origin (plays for example, like '‘Camilla,” "Ghosts/* "Sapho," "Iris,” “The Second Mrs Tauqueray** and "The Gay Lord Quex,” the production of which is an offence against public decency), on the ground, first. that they are "strong/* and hence desirable for dramatic use, and, secondly. that they teaefh a good and muchuceded "lesson,” and are, therefore, appropriate in the theatre. The season that is now beginning promises to bo active, and also it promises to provide many fabrics of this nauseous filth. Those plays should be prohibited and prevented. They have never done even the slightest good, and they have wrought a prodigious amount of evil. They arc bad in morals, bad in taste, and (with here and there an exception, for verbal vivacity), bad in stylo. It is no adequate defence of a filthy stage exhibition that it is made in a clever way. It should not be made at all. The rectitude of the moral docs not atone for the defilement of the mind. The greater the cleverness, the greater the offence, and the greater the mischief. Some things can be taken for granted—sewer gas, for instance, and garbage. The fact that theso # things are "strong** has been ascertained. People arc not made wiser or better by being deluged with "strength** of that kind: nor is there a particle of sincerity, logic, or principle in the pretence of good moral drift. The majority of pedlars in this theatrical muck caro no more for "good morals*' than they do for stewed prunes; they care for the box office receipts, and that is all. And they depend on the depraved interest of a more or less immoral public to reward and sustain their displays of scandalous connubial complications and sexual sins, not unlike those in which that public itself is frequently industrious. No doctrine is more specious and sophistical than the doctrine that it ’is right to show anything and everything in a work of art, if only you wind up with a moral precept’. Certain spectacles • are, hi themselves, degrading however aptly they point a "moral/* or however pungently they may expliot a "lesson,” "Evil communications corrupt good manners/* These self-appointed teachers of "morals” and "lessons” have an important truth to learn,—which is that both themselves and their dirty preachments arc superfluous intrusive, and impertinent. Carnal, libidinous plays like "Sapho,” "Quex/' and "Iris”: the dull disecting room dramas of Hr Ibsen and Mr Sudcrmann; or the morbid, prolix, and baso ebullitions of M lynnuzio are not moral and have no moral effect: T’ e dramatic scavenger is not made clean because you put a surplice on him. A theatrical audience, in contact with one of these vile plavs,. is first drenched with slime and then instructed to avoid it—and this is called "morality” Whatever may bo the high and holy t.uth with which this form of drama is freighted, the "lesson” is bo absolutely trite as to bo of no value. These concoctions of amatory frenzy and distress only present for public consideration questions that cannot be publicly discussed without offence to decency,— obtruding, equally bv picture and suggestion. spectacles of licentiousness, disease, and crime. The bare existence of such stuff is, in itself, a crime against art. Tho subjects might, perhaps, pro-: perly bo analysed in a medical treatise or by a convention of social philosophers: they have no right to presentation on the stage. No human being,—certainly no ore** turo who is likely to enter a supposedly respectable theatre, —stands in need of illumination as to the duty of fidelity to the marriage vow or as to the general consequences of a fracture of the Seventh Commandment. It is folly to set up, in extenuation -of such muck, that it cither clarifies the views of men, or fortifies tho virtue of women, or expounds any practical truth that is not already a thing of common knowledge. All that such pieces accomplish is tho bcfoulment of the’spectator’s mind with a sickening sense of human weakness, wickedness and vice, and of social corruption and decay. And perhaps the most vicious of all th© results of such tainted trash is that it tends to dark* en( the mood and defile the tone of even the purest mind that is compelled to consider it. When tho proposition is advanced, as it has been, time and again, on the local stage, that a wife who is convinced of her husband’s infidelity should thereupon seek a paramour, and either commit, or seem to commit, adultery. it matters not that this atrocious’theme is peppered with fine moral maxims and florid fulminations of the excellence of virtue. The "lesson" is not only superfluous but insolent. Unfortunately, such pieces are sought and accepted by a considerable class of people who like the zest of piquant impropriety, and who swarm towards anv suggestion of illicit conduct, just as flies buzz over a gabbage pail. The time has been when the stage was made an eminent institution, and useful to society, by reason of splendid acting and the presentment of ennobling works of art; and, to a limited extent it is so now. But the influence of noble thought, conduct, and spectacle should he revived. It never will be revived, however, until the Public becomes sufficiently wise, intelligent, and decent to stay away from all theatres in which the Decadent Drama is presented.—”N. Y. Tribune.”