MR STEAD'S FIRST PLAY.

Otago Witness, Volume 14, Issue 2648, 14 December 1904, Page 72

MR STEAD'S FIRST PLAY.

(M.A.P.) — " Gleg at the Uptak'."—

Mr Stead is a personality of endless interest. Some people may love him and some may hate him — nobody hates him who knows him — but everybody is interested in him. He is interesting, indeed, as muck for his weakness as for his strength. His strength all the world knows. ..I know no man of his time who has more remarkable journalistic gifts. In an incredibly short time he can make up all facts of even, a very complicated and big subject; and when he hal? made up the facts, there is no man like him for putting his knowledge and his ideas into striking and convincing form. I remember at this moment many of such, performances, but one in particular I may mention. The best book I ever read about Russia was a book by Mr Stead; and ib gave me a clear and" better idea of what that country is like than any volume of some scores I have gone through. And yet Mr Stead's acquaintance with Russia did not extend over more than a few months — I believe I might say a few weeks. What a mai v vellous man to have taken in something of the spirit, history, and characteristics" of a huge nation like Russia in a lew weeks ! — An Honest Man. — Like many potent personalities, Mr Stead has strange cross-currents in his nature. He has also the defects of his qualities. A subject possesses him the moment he --akes it up ; it is at once a temporary inspiration and a temporary obsession, if that be not either a parados "or a bull. He has that curious mixtuie of the old-time Puritan and of the modern journalist that makes him the lover under every difficulty of the right cause, andi the ready minister to tv hat he considers tk§

dominating interest of the hour. Once, when I was very angry with him about his part in an old Irish controversy, I said that he was too good a fanatic to be a really great journalist, arid too great a journalist to be a -really true fanatic. But, like- all judgments that are summary and epigrammatic, the judgment was false. Everybody now knows that above and bsyond all things Mr Stead is an honest man; in that respect he is truly and unreservedly a fanatic, j±e 'is also a great, journalist with high' ideals. lam told that he supports out of his not very opulent exchequer a number of poor and dependent people, and this support he did Cot cease to give even during the heat of the Boer struggle — that is to say, at a time when his. strong partisanship brought him not only odiinm, but heavy pecuniary loss. — " A Challenging Thing." — It is characteristic of his somewhat tangled character, then, that he should have waited till he was 55 before he paid a visit to a theatre, and that, when he did make, up his mind to make this- great break 1 with ]iis Puritan practice and training, he should' have announced the fact to "all the world. The prophet is never quite free, at any period of the world's history, from the desire to prophesy in the open air and to listening multitudes. The world, certainly," js always disposed to listen to what Mr Stead has to say, and •everybody has been reading with" keen interest his account of his first visit to the theatre. Here is iis own summary of his impressions : "At last! "To my reader's question — "'Well, w°hat do "you. think of it? Just «ne wordi before you begin,' 'T reply— "'I find the Play a very Challenging Thing.' " —The Play's the Thing.— The play vhich he chose for this memorable moment in 'his life was '"The Tempest," as represented at His Majesty's Theatre by Mr Tree. Mr Stead could not have made a better choice. If anybody wanted to get rid of the old ridiculous prejudice of the Puritan against all stage performances he could not do better than see a Shakespearian production by Mr Tree and his , company. Here yoa can behold, in living and realistic formj the fanciful creations of that genius whose possession is the greatest of all England's glories. And here you can also realise — , "what every man does now; realise — that of all the agencies for the cultivation of a love of poetry, of the beautiful and of fine- and noble action, the theatre is to-day most potent. At a time when everybody is deploring the decay of faith, the emptiaiess of churches, the unloosing of so many of the old moorings of life and condiuct, the theatre goes on increasing in influence, an potency, in popularity; and assuredly he must be a dull creature who does not understand that, under such circumstances, it is something like insanity and bad citizenship to withdraw one's influence and one's attendance from the theatre. —Play Within a Play.— There is one criticism on Mr Stead's criticism with which I do not agree, though it appears in so powerful a paper as The Times, and probably from the pen of so great a . critic as Mr Walkley. Mr Walkley recurs to the puzzle in the psychology of man which the play has presented to so many minds — from the day of Aristotle onwards. "If," he writes :

"We imagine ourselves for a moment euteide this world', and try to look upon its doings as perfect strangers, we shall find few things more strange to contemplate than the art of- the theatre. Suppose we are looking at a hive and studying the life of the bee. We observe all the processes of the little creatures ; how they swarm, how some are drones, how the comb and the honey are made, and so forth. Then suppose that, within the •big hive, we notice here and there little {hives, within which bees are also at work. But working at what? With close attention we find that they are going through a mimic representation of the w.orld outside, pretending to swarm, pretendiing to die, making sham wax and ' property ' •honey, all for . the amusement of other ibees. Would not this spectacle puzzle the profoundest philosopher? Should we '' mot talk of the 'inscrutable mystery' of the bee? Well, a Martian, we (may ima--gine, would be equally puzzled by the in"smmerable theatres on this planet, each iwith, its little set of people imitating, for the pleasure of another set, the acting of r jpcopw in the world! outside. But we are ali so used to the theatre, its meaning and its aims, whether we visit it .or not, that yre do not perceive what an essentially , quaint thing it is. Even when we postpone our first visit to the age of 55 we at ' £&cc feel at home inside its walla." j

— Nil Admirari. — j And because Mr Stead is at home within ' the walls of the theatre, andi takes every- 1 thing; for granted, Mr Walkley is almost ' scandalised ; he is certainly disappointed. ; - But as a matter ot tar.t, everybody — even j if Jie wait till 55 — is at home within the ' walls of a theatre. It is all quaint — as ; Mr Walkley says — it is all self-contradic- j tory. You see a play which is supposed J to take place in a oreign country ; in France, in Russia, in Japan, and there you sit quite gravely wliile these people speak your language, and not the language which, if the play_ were real, they would' be speaking. w - You ara asked to believe, that the ten minutes which elapse between J one act and another represent a vast of time — years, nay centuries, and so one j might go on. But the fact is that the j theatre is so essential and so necessary a I portion of the life of the human ' being ' that he accepts all these contradictions j without the least sense of incongruity ; t^e J theatre is as much "an instinct as the desire for food. I was inside a theatre 1 when I was still in frocks ; I saw my first Shakespearean play in a barn where the dissss circle and" .the stalls cost fourpence. I remamber the rapture, but I never rememfoer anything like surprise. I accepted the illusions, the conventions, the contradictions of the theatre as readily '■and as easily as I accepted the fact of thirst and hunger. And Mr Stead, even at 55, was quite consistently human in accepting the pretences of the theatre in good faith — and at once. — Shakespeare and Stead. — It would be impossible for me to go through the various things that Mr Stead has to say with regard to this visit to Mr Tree's theatre. It is a wonderful article, as will be gathered from the fact that it roams over "subjects so varied and remote from each other as Mr Galloway Weir, JM. P., Lord Rosebery, Mr Chamberlain, the-, general election of 1900, and the coming general election of 1905, Rhodesia, and the Jameson Raid. "It is my fate," says Mr Stead, *"to be blessed or cursed with a mind which, however weak it may be in other respects, is exceptionally obwered with the faculty of seeing analogies where others see none, an,d in discovering resemblances which to others are non-existent. ... It was inevitable,, that with such a play as 'The Tempest' and such a symbolic character as Caliban, I should find myself overwhelmed with resemblances, awful and grotesque, or otherwise." And then he. proceeds to draw this strange analogy in reference to f the scerie in which Caliban falls in with the drunken sailors, Trinculo and Stephano, who make him drunk. "It was," says Mb, Stead, "as if I saw represented on the stage in dramatic form the history of the last few years." And ,this is how Mr Stead manages to intenpret the scene : ""Caliban stands ' in this scene, as elsewhere, as the representative of the democracy, robbedi of its rightful inheritance, punished without end for an attempted crime, endowed with just enough education to curse its master, and abandoned by him to a condition, of brutish ignorance and hopeless slavery. Such a strong brute in human shape — it is his Majesty's Caliban, not Shakespeare's, I am speaking of — when wearied with endless burdens, sees approaching another creature whose shape at least recalls his master. Instantly he anticipates nothing but a renewal of torture. The man in question is no emissary of Prospero, but a witty, good-natured, intoxicated sailor, who bears a most striking resemblance in -his- size and facial e=pression to the caricatures of Lord Rosebery. Trinculo is his name, and he fancies . himself all alone on an uninhabited island, having lost all his comrades in the shipwreck. A storm is coming on overhead, and Trinculo-Rosebery, to escape the wrath of the elements, and excusing himself with the adage, 'misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows,' creeps under the gaberdine of Caliban-Democ ; there is no other shelter thereabouts. And there for a time they lie, Trinculo-Rosebery with Caliban-Democracy, head to feet— even as it was.

"But then to him, or rather to them, enters Stephano, the incarnate representative of Jingo Toryism. His face is vinous red, as befits the party of Boniface; he talks about long spoons even as if he were Mr Chamberlain himself, and he carries in his hand the bark-made flagon — I lookedi to see if it was labelled the Daily Mail or Daily Telegraph— full of the heady wine of Jingoism. At first Caliban, distrustful and restless, kicks the newcomer, who marvels at body with the two voices, 'His, forward voice, now, is to speak well of his friend ; his backward voice to utter foul speeches and to detract,' a subtle allusion, in the style of Birmingham, to the different note of the Liberal League and the Liberal party. But Stephano-Chamberlain bears ' no malice. He knows h« has that with him

which will enable him to recover control of the monster and keep him tame. So he plies the monster with fiery wine *oi the true Jingo brand until his poor wits go wool-gathering, andi he mistakes his tempter for a god. After a while TrinculoRosebery recognises the voice of his form-er comrade, and is hauled out unceremoniously by his legs. 'How earnest thou to be the 'siege of this moon-calf? Can he vent Trinculos?'

"Then we see the pitiful tragedy of the Jingo fever and the South African War. Both political parties combine to pass the bottle to the poor monster, but even while assisting at the process Trinculo, after Lord Rosebery's fashion, cannot resist a sneer at the shallow wits of the half-witted monster who swallows with trusting simplicity the absurd stories and the heady liquor of his 'brave god.' Nevertheless, despite the Roseberian gibes and sneers, the poor, scurvy monster kisses the foot of the Jingo Party, and finally the scene ends with a deliriously drunken <since, in which Caliban-Democracy, supported by Trinculo-Rosebery and Steiohano-Chamber-lain, howl in maudlin chorus : 'Ban, 'Ban, Ca — Caliban Has a new master — Get a new man.

"As the curtain fell amid the roars of laughter, I remembered I bad seen it all before on a much larger scale. It was Mafeking night over again."

The vrorld has read a great deal of dramatic criticism in its time, but surely never dramatic criticism or such strange and original lines as these of Mr Stead. I hope Lord Rosebery and Mr Chamberlain will be gratified! by the analogy.

— Paris and London. —

I pass from Mr Stead to just a few words of my own impressions of this very remarkable production. I must begin by confessing that "The Tempest"' is, to my mind, one of Shakespeare's worst acting plays, and that if it had not been for the genius of Mr Tree as a stage producer, the play would have been a failure. It is not a failure, as anybody who visits His Majesty's Theatre any night can see. I have often been in the theatre, but never did I get such a sense of the hold it has upon London as I did on the night I saw "The Tempest." I had with me a friend 1 who ordinarily lives in Paris, and who is something of a theatregoer. As he looked on the stalls of. His Majesty's Theatre, he was almost .dazzled by the display there was of opulence, beauty, even splendour ; there is »nothing more calculated to convey the impression of the magnificence, the wealth, the abounding and, perhaps, too exuberant luxury of the Imperial City of London than the stalls of His Majesty's Theatre on a night when there is a popular production. I always hold that the French are the most truly prosperous people in the world ; but their prosperity, like their economy, is furtive and hidden, andi you see little sign of it in their frowsy theatres and their heteiogeneously-dressed audiences. They prefer art to show, per--haps; but that is another story.

— Mr Tree's Genius. —

Mr Tree, like Mr Stead, is also an extremely interesting personality. Here is a man who ought, 02 c would" think when talking to him, to be a poet, a dramatist, a mam of letters in some sort or other, but he is a manager and an actor instead. I suggest no comparisons — and, above all, no comparison that would be cdicus — by this observation. • For, really, I have to confess that Mr Tree is a poet, is a dramatist, is a man- of letters in his production. Behind almost every scene you see that curious, powerful, kaleidoscopic mind of his working, and producing effects. And it is a mind with a strange and marvellous range. The humorous, the grotesque/ as well as the tragic and the poetic, are within its scope. A play oi Shakespeare as produced by him is a great pantomime, a screaming farce, a moving tragedy, a dreamy and pathetic idyllall at once : to say nothing of being a, wondrous piece of music. Who that ever saw his production of "The Midsummer Night's Dream" or "Twelfth Night" .can ever forget the vast range of emotions which were portrayed by the varying scenes of these plays? It is on© drawback of the present production of "The Tempest" that he is without the beautiful and 1 expressive voice of Mr Courtice Pounds— whose singing in "Twelfth Night" is one cf its haunting recollections.

— A Symbolic Scene. —

All these qualities of Mi Tree's mind and imagination you find in the production of "The Tempest." I have aot time, nor space to go into a lengthened description of the production, and by this time, I daresay, most of my readers have seen the play for themselves. I dwell for a moment only ou one- seene — it is the last in the play. Here, of course, it is Tree, not Shakespeare. There is nothing in the text of the play even to suggest the scene, and yet it is all in accord with the spirit of the play. The foreigners who for a, brief space have made their homes in the island, to which the tempest and misfortune have consigned them, are passing away to their homes, and the island resumes its old loneliness. You see this indciated by v the ship that appears passing off in the distance over the waters. Two only are left of the population that has suing, and danced, and spoken, and plodded, and loved before you — Ariel and Caliban, the fairy and the aboriginal. Ariel comes on the stage; her time of bondage is over; and suddenly she disappears into the upper air ; and then you hear the lovely notes of the lark; it is into the songster of the upper air that Ariel has been turned ; and assuredly it is fitting reincarnation for so sweet and beautiful a young maid' as Miss Tree, in whom Ariel has been embodied. And as the lark sings you see Caliban mounting to a great jutting rock, and seated there he looks out to the sea, and to those strange departing spirits from another land that have been at once his joy and his torture. It is on this scene that the curtain slowly falls. It is a scene that will haunt me" for many a day — symbolic of. so many tiuujKs in this world

of change, and disappointment, and farewells.—T. P.