26 
THE DRAMA AND THE STAGE. 
[Nature and Art, June 1, 1866. 
* 
THE DRAMA AND 
THE 
STAGE. 
I E the Drama can be associated with Nature, the Stage 
ought to be classed with Art ; but in the present state 
of theatrical matters, we fear that neither classification 
would be just. Our plays no longer represent human 
nature, although it is the chief aim of the existing stage to 
realize actualities. We have, indeed, fallen upon a strange 
conjunction of affairs as relates to the Drama ; for while 
there is a loud call for real tables, real chairs, real carpets ; 
clocks that will go ; looking-glasses that actually reflect ; 
real silks and satins for the women’s dresses ; coats made by 
Poole ; and even for real horses and dogs on occasions : yet 
there is no call for real human emotion, nor a true and deep 
exemplification of human nature. There is an amazing 
desire in audiences (to see the real outside of everything ; 
and the caterers for the public, the managers — who are 
always amongst the most supple of creatures — pander to 
this demand with even a reckless extravagance. Go where 
we will amongst the twenty-three theatres that minister to 
the amusement, as it is courteously termed, of London, we 
find a strenuous effort made to produce on the stage strong 
realities. At one theatre we had a real fire-engine, drawn 
in with real horses, to put out a fire, which is so real that 
it literally consumes a good deal of inflammable paper. 
This is for the genteel people at a theatre named after 
Eoyalt.y — The Princess’s. At another, peculiarly devoted 
to the people, but taking the highest name in the land — 
The Victoria — reality is still further intensified, and in one 
piece may be seen a faic simile of a casual ward ; a section 
of an hospital ; a prison scene ; a fire ; and a real railway 
engine and train. We hardly know how realization can go 
further. Yet the genius of a former generation must not be 
forgotten, for Mr. Bunn, at the classic and historic theatre 
of Drury Lane, once opened a way into the veritable street, 
and showed the actual coaches and carts passing, to the ex- 
cessive delight of the audience of a theatre always supposed 
to be devoted to the legitimate drama. 
But we should not object to this extraordinary rage for 
realization, if it were also extended to the exemplification 
of human beings and to some illustration of human 
character. But let us Walk into the first theatre we come 
to, say the Olympic, and test how far the principle is 
carried out. The newest play there, Love’s Martyr, is an 
adaptation by Mr. Leicester Buckingham, of a French play 
by Monsieur Soulie. Here the manager provides us with 
everything real and in good taste ; and the French author 
takes great pains to keep within the leading canon of the 
modern French Drama, that the language shall be strictly 
confined to the carrying on the action of the piece ; and to 
this canon the English adapter most precisely adheres. 
By this means it is supposed that the Drama fulfils the 
grand office for which it is said it was created, to show a 
series of events woven into an exciting story. The con- 
sequence is that all mental development is abandoned ; all 
the internal conflict of emotion is left 'undeveloped ; and the 
figures pass before the audience real as to clothes, and real 
as to speech as far as it goes ; but with no more of their 
inward human nature shown than one could learn in a 
thronged thoroughfare where a suicide, a murder, or any 
other catastrophe had taken place. The personages of such 
a drama have indeed certain coarse outlined characteristics. 
There is a swell villain — a, mild gentleman — a murderous 
usurer — a jealous husband — an agonised wife — a silly 
artist — who has a vulgar wife. But of all these people we 
know nothing by their own revealment beyond a surface 
manner, for they avoid soliloquies ; and none of the old and 
antique dramatic expressions is allowed, that would show us 
their minds, their reasoning, their impulses, and their 
feelings. We only see their actions ; we are only interested 
in the events ; and as to the illustration of human cha- 
racter and the display of that endless variety of human dis- 
position that is constantly occurring-, we are told that it is 
beside the office of the drama to portray it ; and that to 
attempt to do so only leads to endless absurdities and 
prosing. Inhuman as are the painful efforts made to avoid 
what this class of writers for the stage call absurdities, 
they fall into much greater. Thus while all is outwardly 
real in such plays as Love’s Martyr, we find that the conduct 
of the personages is most unreal, strained, and unnatural. 
One word spoken would have put an end to all the agony of 
the heroine of Love’s Martyr ; while we only see her suffer- 
ing in the outward spasmodic form of action. She is much 
less real than Juliet, who shows us, in frequent soliloquies, 
the agitation of her soul. 
It is well we should put to the test the new doctrine, that 
action only is to be shown on the stage. Were this so, all 
the classic and almost all the elder English drama would be 
swept from the stage. And the triumphing answer of the 
real school — the literalists, the authors of the French 
drama par excellence — is, “ it is swept from the stage.” 
And yet in to-day’s bills are announced, Hamlet, Macbeth, 
Katherine and Petruchio, Henry VIII., Lady of Lyons, 
The Rivals, The School for Scandal, Kichelieu, and the 
Winter’s Tale, to be performed, and mostly at minor 
theatres. The truth is, the mind will ever seek an exposi- 
tion of itself, and whatever the realistic writers may say, 
there always will be a reaction towards the poetical and 
character drama. It is indeed from a want of fully compre- 
hending the words which give a title to our own publication 
that these fallacies arise. Nature and Art are both im- 
perfectly defined and understood. Nature extends her 
powers further than to actualities, and works with a prin- 
ciple in many things that are the result of art. The 
nature of art, if it may be permitted for a moment to use 
the phrase, is not a nature we see exemplified in any actual 
objects; but it is the ruling principle which forms a new 
set of objects, things, and occurrences. It would be a misuse 
of language to say that the fairies or the ghosts of Shake- 
speare, or of any other poet or inventor, are natural ; yet 
they most undoubtedly seem to have a nature of their own, 
by which we are moved or interested. To talk, therefore, 
of nature (thereby meaning actuality) being a sort of 
art, is to confound the object and the operation . of 
imaginative work. To seek to reduce the imagination to a 
mere inventive faculty to involve and evolve a series of 
facts into an exciting story, is to make an angel do the 
work of a journeyman. It is, in truth, to reduce art to 
artisanship. 
Such, however, is not only the office of the present 
drama ; but it is proclaimed to be the only office, and the 
only mode of treating it. The result is, that the poetical, 
the expanding, the analysing mode of the poetical drama 
comes to be treated by fanatical and ignorant realists, as a 
mass of absurdity, and burlesque arises as an expression of 
this feeling. Juliet’s agony is parodied ; as are the disquisi- 
tions of Hamlet, the soliloquies of Iago, the subtle reason- 
ings of Richard. The Antigone becomes a farce, and every 
subtle delineation of human character is derided as a prosy 
surplusage. But the Real never has, and never will, satisfy 
human nature, which is ever consumed with an insatiable 
desire to pry into itself, and which always hails all lights, 
whether direct or reflected, that will help to illustrate the 
ever-varying human soul. Thus the classic and the Shake- 
spearian drama “ will rise,” though realistic burlesque 
writers “ would overwhelm them to men’s eyes.” 
Hereafter we shall illustrate our theories by a rigid 
examination of the novelties of the theatres. 
