Max Beerbohm

“ Even so, however, I am not blind to the great merits of the play as it stands. It is well that the writer of poetic drama should be a dramatist and a poet. Here is a play that abounds in striking situations, and I have searched it vainly for one line that does not scan. What I nowhere feel is that I have not elsewhere been thrilled or lulled by the same kind of thing. I do not go so far as to say that Brown inherited his parents’ deplorable lack of imagination. ”

“ He seemed almost to wish he hadn’t. ‘Facts get in one’s way so,’ he complained. ‘History is one thing, drama is another. Aristotle said drama was more philosophic than history because it showed us what men WOULD do, not just what they DID. I think that’s so true, don’t you? I want to show what Savonarola WOULD have done if--’ He paused. ”

“ I used to write a great deal about the future of the British drama, and they, for their part, used to think and talk a great deal about it. People who care about books and pictures find much to interest and please them in the present. It is only the students of the theatre who always fall back, or rather forward, on the future. Though second-nighters do come to see, they remain rather to hope and pray. I should have known anywhere, by the visionary look in his eyes, that Brown was a confirmed second-nighter. ”

“ That hearken’d to Lorenzo and now reel
Inebriate with the exuberance
Of his verbosity?
[The crowd makes an obvious effort to pull itself together.]
A man can fool
Some of the people all the time, and can
Fool all the people sometimes, but he cannot
Fool ALL the people ALL the time.
[Loud cheers. Several cobblers clap one another on the back. Cries of ‘Death to Lorenzo!’ The meeting is now well in hand.] ”

“ There is much to be said for the theory that a dramatist should first vitalise his characters and then leave them unfettered; but I do feel that Brown’s misused the confidence he reposed in them. The labour of so many years has somewhat the air of being a mere improvisation. Savonarola himself, after the First Act or so, strikes me as utterly inconsistent. ”

“ A man more virtuous than I am, and
A thousand times more intellectual;
Yet envy not I him, for--shall I name him?--
He loves not you. His name? I will not cut
Your hearts by speaking it. Here let it stay
On tip o’ tongue.
[Insistent clamour.]
Then steel you to the shock!--
Savonarola.
[For a moment or so the crowd reels silently under the shock. Cobbler down c. is the first to recover himself and cry ‘Death to Savonarola!’ The cry instantly becomes general. Lor. holds up his hand and gradually imposes silence.] ”

“ Neither he nor she knows that the other is in the next cell. The audience, however, knows this.
Each cell (because of the width and height of the proscenium) is of more than the average Florentine size, but is bare even to the point of severity, its sole amenities being some straw, a hunk of bread, and a stone pitcher. The door of each is facing the audience. Dimish light.
Lucrezia wears long and clanking chains on her wrists, as does also Savonarola. Imprisonment has left its mark on both of them. Savonarola hair has turned white. His whole aspect is that of a very old, old man. ”

“ He himself was looking rather glum; and, as we walked away from the theatre, I said to him, ‘I suppose you feel rather like Thackeray when he’d “killed the Colonel”: you’ve got to kill the Monk.’
‘Not quite that,’ he answered. ‘But of course he’ll die very soon now. A couple of years or so. And it does seem rather sad. It’s not merely that he’s so full of life. He has been becoming much more HUMAN lately. ”

“ I did try, hard, to finish ‘Savonarola.’
Artistically, of course, the making of such an attempt was indefensible. Humanly, not so. It is clear throughout the play--especially perhaps in Acts III and IV--that if Brown had not steadfastly in his mind the hope of production on the stage, he had nothing in his mind at all. Horrified though he would have been by the idea of letting me kill his Monk, he would rather have done even this than doom his play to everlasting unactedness. ”

“ His parents, at the time of his birth, lived in Ladbroke Crescent, XV. They must have been an extraordinarily unimaginative couple, for they could think of no better name for their child than Ladbroke. This was all very well for him till he went to school. But you can fancy the indignation and delight of us boys at finding among us a newcomer who, on his own confession, had been named after a Crescent. ”

“ No, I do not mean Lorenzo. He
Is ‘neath contempt.
[Loud and prolonged laughter, accompanied with hideous grimaces at Lor. Exeunt Lor. and Cos.]
I name a woman’s name,
[The women in the crowd eye one another suspiciously.]
A name known to you all--four-syllabled,
Beginning with an L.
[Pause. Enter hurriedly Luc., carrying the ring. She stands, unobserved by any one, on outskirt of crowd. Sav. utters the name:]
Lucrezia! ”

“ After the entry of Savonarola, he never told me what characters were appearing. ‘All sorts of people appear,’ he would say rather helplessly. ‘They insist. I can’t prevent them.’ I used to say it must be great fun to be a creative artist ”

“ Aristotle’s or Zeno’s, Lady--‘tis neither latest nor last. For,
marry, if the cobbler stuck to his last, then were his latest his last
in rebus ambulantibus. Argal, I stick at nothing but cobble-stones,
which, by the same token, are stuck to the road by men’s fingers.
Luc. ”