Romance in Modem Drama

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12306, 28 November 1925, Page 12

Romance in Modem Drama

.Synge, Drinkwater, Flecker, Dunsany

(Written for the “N.Z. Times,”)

Can romance and modern drama, he associated? At first one would be inclined to answer “No,” because we are apt to. connect the modern dramatic movement with such writers as Ibsen and Shaw, or with such plays as Galsworthy’s “Silver Box,” or Henri Becque’s “Les Corbeaux.” We are apt to feel that all modern plays which have any literary value are concerned in improving the social conditions of our own time, and are definitely didactic in manner. But this is not really so. Many romantic plays have been and are being written—plays that have great literary charm, but which are concerned not with passing phases of existence, hut with the never-varying and fundamental things of life. It is some of these romantic plays that I propose to discuss in this article. It is a good many years since Synge wrote his beautiful Irish dramas, “The Playboy of ’the Western World” was first printed in 1907. To the reader steeped in Ibsen, Shaw and Galsworthy, Synge’s plays must have very much the effect of a violin solo, played by a master hand, and heard in the middle of a scientific lecture. No doubt a great deal of his success is due to the magic of his language. R. A. Scott-James says of him: “It was his genius to be able to tell the stories that have not been traditionalised, and to tell them in a wonderful dialect which may or may not be true to any actual speech, hut which, unlike the jargon that is affectation in many Irish writers, used hy him, has the power of affecting us as the old lonic could move those who spoke in Attic Greek. It helps us to get into the fanciful and grotesque atmosphere which he conjured up out of the most real life.”

I will give two examples of this language. The first is a speech of Christy in “The Play hoy,” and presents a strange but vivid picture of loneliness; “It’s well you know what call I have. It’s well you know it’s a lonesome thing to, be passing small towns with the lights shining sideways when the night is down, or going ill strange plates with a dog noising before you and a' dog noising behind, or drawn to the cities where you’d hear q voice kissing and talking deep love in every shadow of a ditch, and you passing on with empty hungry stomach failing from your heart.” The second example is from “The Well of the Saints”: “There’s the sound of one of them twitteringfjrilow birds, do he coaling in the spring.jime) frqm,beyocd the sea, and there'll oC'ii' firie Warinth now in the sun, and a, sweetness in the air, the way it’ll be a grand thing-.to?be' sitting here quiet and easy, smelling the things growing up and bredding from the earth.” , '

Synge’s language adds greatly to the fascination of his very fascinating Elays. John Drinkwater’s “Abraham lincoln” must be classed as a romantic play, although the romance js not the romance of incident—all the 7 adventure takes place inside one man’s head.

“Kinsmen, ye shall behold 1 Our stage in mimic action, mould A man’s character.

This is the wonder, always, everywhere— Not that vast mutability which is event, The pits and pinnacles of change But man’s desire and valienee that range All circumstances, and come to port unspent.

Agents are these events, these ecstacies And tribulations, to prove the purities Or poor oblivions that are our being. When Beauty and peace possess ,us, they are none.

But as they touch the beauty and peace of men Nor, when our days are done, And the last utterance of doom must fall, Is the doom anything'' Memorable for its apparelling;‘ The bearing of the.man facing it is all.

So kinsmen, we present This for no loud event That is but. fugitive, But that you may behold One mimic action mould The spirit of man immortally to live. ”

So say the two chroniclers,-and the lines- epitomise tho whole play. There is plenty of incident in Flecker’s “Hassani” It is a strange piece of literature, beautiful and ugly in a breath, hut the atmosphere is appropriate to the period of which it tells—the time of the terrible Caliph, Haroun al-Raschid. Haroun has been called by Tennyson “The Good,” and, remembering Tennyson’s poem, it comes to us as something of a shock to read of the Haroun portrayed by Flecker. Flecker’s picture is, however, the true one. The historical Haroun was an intellectual man of great artistic susceptibility, but whose cruelty and caprice were almost unbelievable. He may not .have done the same things as the Haroun of the play—he certainly did others- which were as had if not worse. I can never quite forgive Flecker for the wicked hopelessness of his ghost scene. In the acting version of the ?lay this scene was, I believe, omitted. f it is retained it completely spoils our pleasure in the description of, the -Golden Road to Samarkand, and of the search for the “prophet who will understand.”

, Lqrd Dunsany’s “If” is as strange as “Hassan,” but very different. Grotesque would be the right adjective to apply to it, and yet’ in spite of this, it is a glorification of tile domestic hearth. One figure, only seen on the stage, for a short time, pervades the whole play. Tins is the figure of Alary, the hero’s demure little wife. We are introduced to the dashing Miralda, we takd part in incredible adventures, hut the ..author skilfully contrives that .Mary is never out of our thoughts; and when the' magic crystal is finally smashed, and the furniture, changes from ; green .to reft '.(pi is it red to green we., exult-—for it is the triumph or Alary.’ u.lf : we itiirpt frjim our own to Continental dranVa m our search for romantic plays we find D’Annunzio's pastoral tragedy, “The Daughter of Jorip,” It has been said that D’Annunzio is more of a poet and novelist than a dramatist. Tbis may be so. All the same there are some fine dramatic pictures in this play—that one with which it opens, for instance, when the three little sisters turn out of the three chests the gay clothing to deck their brother’s bride—and that later one, when the procession of kindred arrive with'baskets of grain on their heads, and go through the ceremony of blessing the young couple. It contains also two thrilling episodqs---Mila’s frantic entrance as she flies from the pursuit of the reapers, and her appearance at the end of the play when she comes down from the mountain and Confesses all the sins she did not commit in order to save the man she loves.

These are a few of the romantic plays that are being written. To some of us they are welcome. We honour the men who have tried to improve the life of their own time by their art; we find their plays interesting and stimulating, hut they sometimes seem to imply that the only colour in life is drab, and life is more complex than that. The romantics remind us that there are also crimson and purple, and blue and gold, Hamilton. MARY LOVEL.