John Todhunter

“ The play will make the actor, not the actor the play; to the great benefit of both play and actor.
But why be so serious over an art whose end is only to amuse? To amuse? Yes; but we are not all equally amused by the same things. There may be forms of humour which tickle some people more exquisitely than even that magnificent making of tea in an old gentleman's hat, which convulses the Charley's Aunt audience. And if amusement be the object of the drama, we must take the word in an extended sense. ”

“ But what is a good play? The enthusiastic critic has a ready answer: "The play that succeeds, that has a long run, that has money in it!" I accept the answer for what it is worth. This potentiality of money is, like "literature," an added grace: and it certainly, in a sense, marks the survival of the fittest. But there are other standards in the great workshop of the artist, Nature. Even the plant or play that lives but a short time may cast its seed into the soil, or imagination, of its day, and, like Banquo, beget a royal race, though not itself a king. ”

“ Men live too much in the sensuous, and women in the supersensuous, to meet fairly. Love, the reconciler, himself is too weak fully to reconcile them and to bring them together in that perfect ecstasy, body to body, spirit to spirit, soul to soul, that “unreserve of mingled being,” which Shelley, giving a voice to the desire of all ages, but especially to modern desire, sighed for. To understand Shelley’s protest against marriage, we must understand his ideal of love—the unconstrained rush together of two personalities of opposite sexes, in whom the body is but the vehicle of the spirit. ”

“ How awfully things look at you when you're going to die! I did not know this. There's Demeter with Undine's wreath of daisies withered on her head. My life has withered with them, since that day she made the libation. She forgot the speedwell for me. Mother! Mother! Mother! This is my libation! (Drinks the poison, and lets the cup fall.) It is done! (She stands a moment perfectly still.) My God! not sleep, but horror! Quick! Quick! (Staggers behind the screen, and throws herself on the couch, where she is hidden from the audience.) Arthur! Arthur! Oh! save me! Arthur—oh! (Moans and dies.) ”

“ The kingdom of heaven was, for him, at the very doors, ready to take shape as soon as man willed it; and man would will it as soon as the mind-forged fetters of his mind were loosed. Accordingly he endeavoured to loose them. He dethroned God that the Spirit of Nature might be enthroned; and then he proceeded to abolish marriage that free love might regenerate mankind. He believed in regeneration by incantation—a few words murmured in men’s ears would make them as obedient to the ideas those sacred words represented as spirits to the spells of a magician. ”

“ If it be not, still it may be a good play in its day and generation. I have not, for the sake of being unconventional, deliberately set myself to violate all the received canons of dramatic art, as practised by the "practical dramatist," thus making a convention of unconventionality. Unconventional art is impossible, and the drama, like other arts, has its conventions. But conventions change, and new ones are evolved, as new problems in art and other things—even morality itself—come in with each new tide of the human imagination. ”

“ Lust, lust, lust: this is the most concentrated form of selfishness—the undying worm at the root of the Tree of Life. This is the tyrant that women have at last begun to recognize as their deadly adversary and to fight against. Shelley, a better physician than Goethe, laid his finger on this plague-spot, and told the age plainly: “Thou ailest here.” But he did not see that instead of saying, “Abolish marriage and prostitution will cease,” he ought to have said, “Abolish prostitution and marriage will cease”—marriage without love being only a particular form of prostitution. ”

“ Denham.
No; have you published it lately?
Vane.
My dear Denham! I never publish anything. In a wilderness of mediocrity obscurity is fame.
Denham.
Yes, a well-advertised obscurity. But surely you have published poems?
Vane.
Where have you lived, my dear fellow? I breathe a poem into the air, and the world hears. If some one prints it, can I help it? One does not print, wake, and become famous; one becomes famous, and the world awakes, cackles, and prints one.
Fitzgerald.
By-the-bye, Vane, there's a quatrain in your "In the House of Hathor" I wanted to ask you about. ”

“ He did, however, see clearly that the bringing of men and women into more complete harmony, by raising the ideal of love, was the most important step towards that renewal of the world, that living of the most perfect life attainable by man, for which he sighed and after which he strove; and he saw clearly that our solution of the marriage problem was imperfect, not merely in practice, but to some extent in theory. ”

“ No, no, my dear sir, the good of society demands fidelity to incurred responsibilities, and we find by practical experience that both men and women, but especially men, are inclined to shirk the responsibilities which indulgence of the sexual passion brings in its train. Hence the marriage contract. It does not concern itself primarily with either love or lovers, but it helps to keep husbands and wives together, and women and children maintained decently without coming upon the rates. And, mind you, it does not by any means leave love out in the cold. ”

“ For when the old ideals become decrepit, we must go back to nature to get the stuff wherewith to make new ones.
As our dramatists advance with the times, people begin to go to the theatre to see plays, and not merely an actor in a part. The "well-made play," which was a piece of mechanical contrivance into which the puppets were ingeniously fitted, may some day develop into a work of art—a thing born rather than made—growing up like a flower in the imagination of the dramatist. ”

“ He, like the socialist, thought that we might go on increasing and multiplying ad libitum, till we reached the ultimate limit of standing-room on the earth, and of miraculous chemical food out of the air, and began, as astral bodies, to emigrate to Mars. Women know better than this; and feel the pinch of population, when what they just now consider their higher life is hampered by children. ”

“ Have you any children, Constance?
Mrs. Denham.
One little girl, just nine. Have you any?
Mrs. Tremaine.
No—none.
Miss Macfarlane.
A woman who has had such unpleasant experiences ought to hate and despise men. But of course you don't?
Mrs. Tremaine.
(laughing) No—I don't think I hate men exactly. I despise some men heartily.
Miss Macfarlane.
They're gey ill to live wi', eh?
Mrs. Tremaine.
I don't think marriage suits me, somehow. I suppose it suits some people. But I think it often tends to reduce them to a dead level of commonplace. The artificial bond makes people too sure of each other. ”

“ Fitzgerald.
This Gyp's awfully good. Who is he, eh?
Vane.
(with patient scorn) A woman!
Fitzgerald.
(with conviction) To be sure! That makes it—splendid! (Chuckles to himself, sits again on sofa, and goes on reading.)
Vane.
(looking at picture) Will you never learn to be an artist, Denham? The modern picture should be a painted quatrain, with colours for words—words which say nothing, because everything has been said, but which suggest all that has been felt and dreamed. Art is the initiation into a mood, a mystery—a sphinx whose riddle every one can answer, yet no one understand. ”

“ I should myself roughly define a good play as one that, when adequately performed, can hold the attention of an unprejudiced audience from beginning to end, whether it amuses or merely interests them. It does not follow that because it may shock, or even bore, some worthy people it is a bad play. Even farcical comedy bores some people, with whom I cannot sympathise. ”

“ We may call these the masculine and feminine elements in love; though of course both exist in all love, whether of man to woman or woman to man. Both sexes give more than they receive, and receive [Pg 13] more than they give. In all love, from the first step beyond mere physical appetite, to the most transcendental Platonism, there are these two antagonistic elements. If the merely self-indulgent element prevails, we tend in the direction of lust, one of the most cruel diseases that plague humanity, which Milton rightly places “hard by hate.” ”

“ Every play, from Charley's Aunt to Hamlet, is a problem play. It is merely a matter of degree. Every play deals with the struggle of men and women to solve some problem of life, great or small: to outwit evil fortune. ”

“ Now, of all the bitter cries ringing in the air at the present time, about the bitterest and most persistent is that not merely of women, but of woman with a capital W. It is the most appalling note of change that can pierce the ear of self-satisfied Conservatism. The patient Griselda has begun to protest against the tyranny of her lord and master. Love’s martyr has at last begun to think that her martyrdom must have its limits. ”

“ And as the play gains in vitality, the playwright begins to feel the absolute necessity for writing decent dialogue—not mere stage dialect that may be scamped and ranted ad libitum by the "star" to suit his own taste, or want of it, but real dialogue, which, while ideally reflecting the colloquial language of the day, taxes the intelligence and feeling of the actor to deliver properly.
This means real progress; for the dialogue is the very life of the play. It alone can bring out the essential import of the situation, the relation of character to character, at any given moment. ”

“ Love goes wantonly about with the Mænads of licentiousness at his heels. But the divine Logos, incarnate as the Son of man, always comes not to destroy but to fulfil.
Just now that highly moral being, Man in the masculine gender, is much shocked at the strangely immoral conduct of his feminine counterpart. In the first place, she has dared to look at the realities of things with her own eyes, not through the rose-coloured spectacles with which he has been at pains to provide her; and not only that, but to peep behind the sacred veil which man has modestly cast over many ugly things. ”

“ Denham.
I would ask your forgiveness humbly enough if that were of any use. It isn't, I know. Sins that are instinctive, not of malice, lie too deep for forgiveness.
Mrs. Denham.
A fine aphorism, no doubt. How does it apply?
Denham.
You can't forgive insults that were not intended, and a "low intrigue" which was only a mad, selfish leap for life. Let us part then, if you please. We missed our moment for passion long ago, if that is what you want.
Mrs. Denham.
My want aches deeper. Well, you love another woman. Go to her. Let her make you happy if she can.
Denham. ”

“ Denham.
Yes. You have not mastered your material yet. Your technique is a little crude. (He resumes his seat in the armchair, and puts down his pipe as she comes.)
Mrs. Denham.
(kneeling beside him) Why will you push me away from you, Arthur? You know I only want to be your wife. You are always implying that our marriage is a failure. Why not say it directly?
Denham.
We are creatures of the transition. We have not quite found the new centre of equilibrium. Marriage, except as a symbol, is either a superfluous bond or the consecration of a mistake. ”