THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND.

Waiapu Church Times, Volume I, Issue 5, 1 November 1907, Page 4

THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND.

The imaginative faculty has declined for a long time, one of the penalties paid by the nation for material prosperity. With the decay of imagination there is the corresponding decline in public taste. Shakespeare and the classical drama do not represent the public taste of tne people of Great Britain as regards the Drama. .Fot four months of the year, the harvest time of theatrical managers, from Christmas to Easter, a season often prolonged into May, in every great city in the British Isles outside London, is the pantomime season. It is the pantomime that provides three-fourths of the profits of theatre managers. A period without drama. For the pantomime is no fairy tale now, it is a mere variety entertainment and spectacle, and many children go home from " Beauty and the Beast " and " Jack, the GiantKiller " weeping scalding tears of indignation because the fairy tale they knew by heart is no longer recognisable. For six months in the year the theatre bills advertise " The Chorus Girl," "The Gaiety Girl," The " Everything Girl " — the variety entertainment once more in the modern musical comedy— neither opera nor drama. Many weeks may be sandwiched in with plays like " The Worst Woman in London," " Women and Wine." The remaining two months of the vear are filled in with the latest London successes, the majority of which may perhaps elevate the taste in general, with a few weeks of more or less wholesome melodrama, where virtue always overcomes vice, but belarded with sentimentalism as to exclude finer, taste ; and a solitary week or two of Shakespeare completes the theatrical year. Such is the record of the English theatres, and perhaps three times as many people attend the music halls (not halls of music, but placesof variety entertainment) as the theatres. Some say that about 1 per cent of the people prefer the masterpieces of the great dramatists. " The level of public taste was never so low as it is now," laments a great artist. " Even the melodrama of the other generation was more wholesome than the meretricious trivialities of the musical farces which are pushing everything out of the theatre." And what of the actor's point of view ? The actor is more often than not a man of the highest ideals and aspirations. He is

crushed by the system and his ideals too frequently irretrievably blunted. The system is too powerful for the ordinary individual. The play run for a thousand nights like " Charley's Aunt " transforms the actor-artist into an automaton. The modern actor is no longer schooled as were Sir Henry Irving and Mrs Stirling on their 400 different parts. Versatility and spontaneity belong to the old school. When a man of exceptional ability appears, in spite of the system, as it were, he is "boomed" for all he is worth, the lights are focussed exclusively on him, and his name appears in larger letters than the name of the play. Things " are so rotten in the state of s^tageland " that actors have begun to be paid for their social following and not for their wits. As the actor, trained to be elastic in the " repertoire " system, becomes scarce, tout ensemble gives place to mise en scene. The modern production is arrayed in greater splendor at great expense, and the manager needs to be recouped by a long run, and so the actor's art dwindles. The life of the actor loses much of the healthy tone. Before, daily rehearsals were the rule, nowadays the exception, and Satan steps into the vacuum hours, THE DRAMA IN EUROPE. What a contrast ! A different system holds. See the Copenhagen theatre dedicated to the people, by the people. Turn to Christiana— where the National Fund provides subsidy to keep the theatre astir with every masterpiece that uplifts public taste and the same Fund provides for the restoration of a great cathedral.. Abroad, a theatre '•un for individual gain is almost unknown. All drama and opera houses are kept by the Sovereign, the State, or the Municipality, and subsidised. Why, a town like Irkutsk, in 'Siberia, has a town theatre that would put to shame any theatre in the British Empire. A manager who ran a piece in any privately owned theatre for more than a few nights would be considered inartistic and his reputation suffer. An actor insisting on keeping the centre of the stage would be snubbed. Tt is recognised throughout Europe that subsidy is necessary to keep the classical plays before the people. The Austrian Kaiser gives £50,000 a year to . the Opera House and Bung Theatre in Vienna alone, and the German Emperor spends over £200.000 a year to keep the best plays and operas before the people. In some places the subsidy is part of the education vote.

It is possible to hear as many as twenty-four plays of Shakespeare in one year at a score of separate German theatres. London's record is about three, for the whole of her fifty or sixty theatres. Is it any wonder that the Germans claim Shakespeare as their own National dramatist, and say that in England he is considered poet more than dramatist,, where people buy copies of the plays to present to their friends for putting , in glass book cases. It is true that the schools have been waking up in Great Britain of late years, but it is still the rule to make children study the notes on the text of a play, then they. are encouraged to read the play, and if their parents approve they are permitted to go to a theatre when Shakespeare is acted. Abroad, a child is taken to the play, then he naturally wishes to read, and the study of the text is the last in sequence. In England if it had not been for the zeal of one or two enthusiasts who have sacrificed fortune for the public, the country would have forgotten what a Shakespeare play was like. On the Continent the status, too, of the actor is vastly different. Goethe was manager of the Weimar Theatre. When the Prime Minister of Saxony retired from office he became manager of the Dresden Court Theatre. THE DRAMA IN NEW ZEALAND. The English system prevails, but the New Zealander is not hidebound by tradition and prejudice, and a municipal theatre is not unknown, though run on primitive lines. So things are hopeful for the future, and great things are possible when the Church realises its responsibility towards the people at large. HOW THE CHURCH MAY GET TO WORK. it remains now to consider what is to be done if we are to utilise the power of the drama for the uplifting of the masses, and prevent the theatre from becoming a mere amusement house to pass the time, to kill time. How can we turn the theatre into a home of true art, where the highest form of truth and beauty can be represented, where the poet can express himself at his best, and as with Beethoven, or Angelo, or Wagner, attain the culmination of all art, praise to the Almighty. All work of a permanent nature is subject to the laws of growth. We cannot take the full-grown and crystallised forms from the Continental cities, plant them in New Zealand soil, and expect them to grow. Each country needs to develop on its own lines, to bring its indigenous fruit.

Cannot we make a beginning in each parish ? The country parishes, with purer air and simpler life, are more adaptable than city parishes. The country is full of talent of all kinds ; it only needs organisation. Why should not the local clergyman encourage the children to write elementary dialogues taken from incidents of their daily life, or get the village wit to tell the tale of village life in written conversation? 'A. very ordinary scene might be a talk between the over-zealous District visitor who is anxious to whitewash the ' black sheep ' of the village in a minute, whose mistaken zeal only makes him more hard and more stubborn, and then the tactful person to appear and pour oil on the troubled waters arid give lessons to both. In every village can be found the misunderstood youth who is badly managed by an over-exacting and shrill-tongued mother, or the selfish man who is blind to the heroism of the patient wife-slave. Tragedy and comedy are within a stone's throw, a skeleton is found in every cupboard. Our material lies at our own doors if we would only open wide our eyes of thought, our eyes of aspiration. Again, why not put in dialogueform and tableaux "Vivant's scenes from the life of Bishop Selwyn and "the Whalers, the thrilling incidents of the old missionary days ? And then go further afield to the life of the brother Church itself, scenes from the Life of St. Francis of Assisi, or St. Patrick, or St. Columba ? History teems with drama, still unshapen and unexpressed. All life begins in the cell — so let us begin in our own immediate circle and gradually widen our circles to ab« stract the life Universal. It is well to remember that Shakespeare found many of the characters for his plays in sleepy Stratford-on-Avon. He used more local coloring than we dream of. Then we have trained London actors in our midst, only resting on their oars, waiting to be used for the public good, who have quitted the London stage rather than tarnish their highest ideals. Why not utilise all the talent that God has planted within our reach, and— God helps those who help themselves. " Eye hath riot seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him." " But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit," saith St. Paul. Once the desire is firmly implanted in the hearts of our people, innumerable opportunities will be put in our way. So , why keep closed one of the greatest channels for service-r---the Drama ?

When all grows spontaneously without appearance of effort the time may come when a beautiful garden like that adjacent to the Presbyterian Church in Napier will have a great Theatre and Temple .of Art in its midst, perhaps .an open-air amphitheatre as well, managed by the whole Christian force of the community where the great plays of Shakespeare, Schiller, Goethe, Aeschylus, and Wagner can be heard for a season every year, where local dramatists can provide a rich varied fare drawn from the life of the people, where great dramatic poems like the Book of . Job can be heard from time to time, where great lessons of truth and beauty can be rendered by those consecrated to the work, where new ovations and love-dramas — themes of praise and joy— can be given, all in accord with the true and lively word ofthe Christ Eternal.