Scolding the Faithful.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIV, Issue 25, 22 June 1910, Page 34

Scolding the Faithful.

It is always “the faithful” —so to put It—who get the scoldings in this life. We New Zealanders have noticed that, even in this far corner of the world l how can there be a corner in a globe, by the way?). Those who go to church are : mindly rated because of the decay of church going; patrons of art exhibitions re bitterly reproached because otherfolk won’t spend shillings to see pictures. So, it is quite in order that “Old Playgoers” should listen to a trenchant attack of modern dramatic conditions byMr. H. Arthur Jones. Mr. Jones said that he felt that if we were to have an English drama it would be well that there should be a good understanding between those who wrote and acted and those who paid to support it. The absence of any direct means of communication between playwright and playgoer tended to shut out all new and striking developments. He believed that a few very simple rules were the only ones by which we could establish and sustain a national English drama as distinct from what he heard a sympathetic friend describe as “legs" and tomfoolery.” There was a good deal to be said for “legs and tomfoolery” as specific against boredom, but in our present condition they were the greatest enemies of drama, because just now they constituted the great staple, the enormous bulk of the entertainment that was being nightly offered in thousands of theatres and music-halls* in the British Empire. He supposedif the takings of these two dif-

ferent classes of entertainment could be thoroughly audited it would be found that the money paid nightly to see “legs and tomfoolery” would bear about the same proportion to the money paid to see drama as Falstaff’s half-crown’s worth of sack bore to his halfpennyworth of bread. He confessed to a hearty dislike of hole-and-corner drama, appealing to cliques and coteries and especially to those appealing merely to the superior person. Plays, to be successful, must have an almost universal appeal. In London not a single actor, author, or manager could touch sixpence until about £l,OOO a week had been taken. Was it a wonder that “legs and tomfoolery” were triumphant? It was impossible to separate drama and popular amusement on the actual stage. They would always be inextricably mixed and muddled in an unholy alliance of varying proportions. In the majority of cases he found that the theatre was generally regarded by playgoers as a funny place where funny people did funny things, and it was judged wholly on that level. It follows that if by chance a playgoer went to a theatre where the dramatist and actors were trying to give him the true pleasure of drama, he was merely bored because he was looking out for a comedian. Our only hope of founding a school of national drama lay in separating drama and popular amusement in our own minds and in getting a larger and larger number of playgoers to make this distinction. At present we seemed to have no settled type of drama. We had many types and styles, and most of them seemed to be lifeless imitations of the Elizabethan drama, the romantic cape and sword drama, the French modern drama, or the Norwegian drama. The only thing that we did supremely well, because we did it spontaneously, was the “legs and tomfoolery,” just as, according to William Morris, the only style of really living English architecture was the style of the modern corner public-house.