MODERN TREATMENT OF DRAMA

Southland Times, Issue 23540, 21 June 1938, Page 8

MODERN TREATMENT OF DRAMA

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY PLAYS COMPARED The weekly meeting of the Workers’ Educational Association literature class was held at Everybody’s Hall last evening when Mr G. L. Swift occupied the chair. Mr S. G. August discussing the contrast between contemporary and eighteenth century drama, said that today playwrights had tended largely to journalistic treatment when they presented modern problems in dramatic form. To make the presentation as startling as possible was their aim and success largely hinged on that point. In a usual box-office success the public was taken by storm. The faults of modern plays were the shortcomings, of journalism, for like the newspaper, they were for the day only. Few modern plays outlived their season at the theatre, but of course that did not detract from their value as entertainment or influence; it merely accentuated their journalistic treatment and background, as compared with their qualities as permanent literature. Modern plays, continued the speaker, were realistic arid outspoken as a rule, but they were a sincere attempt at a new interpretation of life. Eighteenth century drama, on the other hand, was generally romantic in outlook, not actually true to life as it was lived; but as the romantic ideal wished it to be. What actually crept into it was the eighteenth century outlook, and so it displayed a moral and ethical fabric which would not be tolerated today. Playwrights of today were less hampered by mere convention and were more bent on social reform, and if their work lacked artistic finish, it was certainly a genuine product of the hour.