John Todhunter

“ 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. ”

“ 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.) ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Still, even mechanical construction is better than none at all. A play without plot is invertebrate, without bones. It is at his peril that a dramatist departs from accepted rules, even those respecting "strong" curtains and "strong" exits, though in certain cases weak curtains and weak exits may be more really dramatic. Then, valuable as dialogue is, it may be redundant, and make a play "flabby." The actor's rule, that all talk that does not carry on the action is bad, is worthy of all due respect. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The more interest the public and the dramatist take in human nature—that is to say, the better developed they are as regards dramatic sympathy—the more, rich, vivid, and subtle will be the play of character and passion, in the drama demanded and produced. In a word, the less wooden-pated and wooden-hearted they become, the less mechanical and commonplace will their drama be.
We are slowly emerging from the puppet-show conception of drama. Our dramatists are beginning to do more than refurbish the old puppets, and move them about the stage according to the rules of the "well-made" play. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Without action there can be no play; and a play may be made fairly intelligible without a single spoken word, just as a scene from history or fiction may be quite recognisably depicted in a few symbolic lines, dots, and dashes, though no single human figure be decently drawn. ”

“ Now, how does such a play as The Black Cat differ from those we see succeeding on the stage every day? Really not so very much, after all. It merely accentuates a growing tendency in the plays of the period to get more of the stuff of life, our every-day human life, typically upon the stage; with less of the traditional theatrical-academic element. The "well-made play" has itself undergone evolution since the days when it was an aphorism that not what is said but what is done on the stage is the essential thing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I do not solace myself with that belief, so comforting to the unsuccessful, that a play fails merely because of its goodness, or succeeds merely because it is bad; yet it is evident, I think, that other things besides its merits or demerits as a piece of dramatic writing may turn the scale for or against it. A Comedy of Sighs, with its somewhat "impressionist" sketches of character, and aberrations from the ordinary type of a "well-made play," proved to be "too lightly tempered for so loud a wind" as blows upon British bugbears—"Modern Women," and the like. ”

“ Tremaine.
(laughing bitterly) Excuse me, but our little comedy is played out. I am out of the story. (Exit.)
Denham.
(crosses up to door) Stay, Blanche! You must not go like this. One moment, Constance.
(Exit, following Mrs. Tremaine.)
Mrs. Denham.
(flinging herself down on the sofa) My God! my God! what am I to do? How am I to live? I cannot stay in this house with a man who no longer loves me. Oh, if she had not come between us! Yes, yes! A pretty face and a little flattery outweighs a life's devotion. Oh, it is hard, it is hard!
(A pause. Then enter Undine.)
Undine. ”

“ I give up the useless struggle.
(Crosses l, and sits in armchair crouching over fire.)
Denham.
(passionately) Held myself aloof! Good God! is that my fault? You want something that you can neither excite nor reciprocate. (With a sudden change of manner.) No—it was my own dulness of heart. My poor Constance! This has been a revelation for us both. But you don't know how I have tried to conform to your ideals—to spare you in every possible way.
Mrs. Denham.
(bitterly) Yes, you have been very patient, very forbearing, no doubt. It is better to kill a woman than to tolerate her.
Denham. ”

“ We must not, however, forget that action itself is language. What is called the action of a play is simply a story told by the movements of the players. But when we see a man stabbed, or a woman kissed, our curiosity is excited. ”

“ Denham.
Your reason tells you that woman is independent, self-sufficing. Your instincts cry feebly for passion, that savage outlaw which still lies in wait for the modern woman, to carry her whither she would not. Hence your lapse from strict agnostic morality into matrimony, bondage, subjection, and the mistake, Undine. ”

“ Fitzgerald.
(shutting the book on his finger) Bravo, Vane! 'Pon my word, I begin to believe in you.
Vane.
I can endure even that.
Denham.
I am on the wrong tack then?
Vane.
My dear fellow, look at that canvas. What a method! You are like an amateur pianist who tries laboriously to obtain tone, without having mastered the keyboard. One cannot blunder into great art. Only Englishmen make the attempt. You are a nation of amateurs. ”

“ Miss Macfarlane.
Then he's none such a fool, after all. That woman would have led him a pretty dance!
Mrs. Denham.
He loves her—let him go to her. (Rises and crosses l. Stopped by Miss Macfarlane.)
Miss Macfarlane.
Fiddlesticks, my dear! Don't force him into her arms. Mind you, he has vowed to cherish you as well as to love you; and how can he do that if you drive him away? Do ye remember one of his misquotations from Byron:
"Man's love is from his life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's main subsistence?"
There's truth in that.
Mrs. Denham.
Men make love, like everything else, a mere game. ”

“ Denham.
(rises, and lights pipe) Oh, damn the future—and the past too! You take life too seriously. You are a born self-tormentor, too full of anxiety to live. You have the worst form of the great malady of the age, conscience in the agnostic form. You suffer from the new hysteria. ”

“ Yes—for God's sake, go! (She moves towards the door.) But, Blanche, don't leave the house. I can't bear this alone.
Mrs. Tremaine.
(returns to him) You know, dear, I am yours always. Oh, don't hate me! I dare to say it in this presence. (She kisses his hand. He shrinks from her.) Now I can go. (She goes to the door and looks back as Denham kneels and clasps the body in his arms.) Will he hate me now? (Exit Mrs. Tremaine.)
Denham.
Constance! I meant to have kept you from all the thorns of life! It was fate! It was fate!
CURTAIN. Printed by Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. ”

“ All depends upon the treatment; and the play that one audience finds detestable may delight another.
If The Black Cat ever again come to the ordeal of the footlights, I can only hope that it may find an audience as sympathetic as that of the Independent Theatre. ”

“ Then, Constance!
Mrs. Tremaine.
(with scorn) Ay, Constance! You ought to have thought of her before. (Passionately.) Why have you spoken to me? Why have you compelled me to speak, if you are not bold enough to break the bonds that are strangling you?
Denham.
Because I must. Don't tempt me, Blanche. We shall sometimes meet, look in each other's eyes, and keep our secret. It is best so. I love you so much that I would save you from yourself.
Mrs. Tremaine.
I don't understand such love. (Turns away r.)
Denham.
Women never do. They prefer being treated like dogs. ”

“ But an actor is often so absorbed in his own part that he does not easily estimate the bearing of any given speech, even his own, upon the whole play. "Cuts" at rehearsal are not unfrequently found to be too hastily made. Then, what is the action? Not merely the external incidents, but the shifting phases of thought, emotion, character, in the dramatis personæ. It is these that give the incidents their value, and so give dramatic interest to the plot, or story. The dialogue and the incidents are but two phases of the presentment of the story. ”

“ Vane.
One sometimes sees oneself inventing the Narghilé. It involves the black slave, of course, and might lead to a true retrogressive progress—even to the Harîm. One pities the superfluous woman, there are so many about.
Denham.
Yet Mormonism seems to be a failure.
Vane.
It was so dreadfully upholstered!
Denham.
The Harîm would be a new field for the collector. How prices would run up!
Vane.
Ah, Denham, never touch a dream with the vulgarity of real things! (Crosses to picture.)
(Fitzgerald, who has been reading Gyp, suddenly comes forward with the book in his hand, and breaks in.) ”