16 
LAND 6? WATER 
October 17, 1918 
me mexTRE m 
By W. J. Turner 
ON Tuesday evening I went to see that "entirely 
new play," The Female Hun, at the Lyceum. 
If, I thought, the play lives up to the title, I 
should have an amusing evening. On. my way. 
I speculated vaguely on the fact that though 
we can speak of the Frenchman and .the Frenchwoman, we 
do not speak of the Belgian m;in and the Belgian woman ; 
while such a phrase as the female Belgian is felt instinctively 
to be hardly complimentary. It is even doubtful whether 
one would talk like that of a camel ; and the average English- 
man, confronted with the difficult}' of referring to a camel 
»f the opposite sex would endeavour to denote by some 
subtle inflection of his voice wliat sort of a camel hie meant ,•* 
^ cruder mind might be found carrying bravely on with 
"the lady camel," but it would be an extremely tactless and 
unromantic man who in the presence of the Ijeast referred 
to it as "the female camel." This camel business is doubly 
relevant, for oh my way to The Female Hun 1 actually saw 
a. camel. It is the camel used in Chu Chin Chow, and it 
lires in a stable not far from Jermyn Street. Any night it 
may be seen issuing from the garage, where it lives all day 
disguised as a horse, and progressing through the grey London 
weather to His Majesty's Theatre, where it sniffs sardonically 
at Mr. Oscar Asche's desert. It is a painful thought to con- 
template that thoroughlv sincere camel lending its unique 
countenance to all that flummerj', having to listen to those 
Allahs ! and Wallahs ! and pretend it believes them. 
I would go a long way to see a camel, and if Mr. Oscar Asche 
wants Chu Chin Chow to run another two year's I would 
suggest his adding an elephant, a gnu, an Xrabian pig, and 
a few hyenas. As for The Female Hun, I am afraid there is 
nothing that would make her last two years, except, perhaps, 
a collection of real Huns. It is an extremely dull play, 
not bad enough to be funny, and quite unworthy of its title. 
It is not even melodramatic ; it is — middle class. It gives 
the impression that the author had attempted to tone down 
the old crudities and extravagances, and write a genteel 
melodrama. The best thing in it is Mr. J. C. Aubrey's 
outburst in the last act. Mr. Aubrey is the old style "of 
villain, and he does his best to get hissed and be incredible 
and ridiculous, but he doesn't get much of a chance. Most 
remarkable is the inability of Mr. Walter Melville, who has 
been writing this sort of play for many years, to construct 
a better plot. The Female Hun is unmasked in the very 
first act, and what follows is a series of more or less dis- 
connected scenes, in none of which is there any attempt to build 
up a climax or get a crescendo of effect. One feels that one's 
patriotism is expected to take all the strain of listening, without 
any effort on the part of the author ; and certainly the immense 
audience present seemed, quite willing to do all that was 
expected of them. When the first spy was arrested, one of 
the stage hands asks: "What is to be done with him?" 
And, without hesitation, a voice from the audience shouts : 
"Burn him !" A German officer exclaims : "But for these 
accursed English, we would now be masters of the world" ; 
and a woman's voice promptly interjects : "Never !" This 
is the way to write plays, you know ! Get half your dialogue 
from the audience ; it will save you .a great deal of trouble 
and time, besides being more effective than anything you 
can do ! In fact, there is no reason why, if one became 
skilful in inventing suitable openings for the audience, the 
whole plot should not depend on the audience, and vary 
from night to night according to its character. There would 
be some fun in going to the theatre then, and no play need 
ever come off until all its possibilities had been thoroughly 
exploited. As The Female Hun stands, most of the fun 
comes from the audience — although there are one or two 
bits of unconscious humour from the author. The General's 
daughter is asked : " Are you afraid ? " ; and replies : "Not 
a weeny bit ! " The General, too, has a taste for out-of-the- 
way expressions ; probably his head is still full of the Dead- 
wood Dicks he was educated on, for when the Cabinet 
Minister, Lord Pilcher, arrives at his house, he addresses 
him thus; "Welcome, Lord P., to my humble dwelhng ! " 
and Lord P., whose speciality was probably Pirates, replies : 
" Pleased to meet you. Captain ! " These are the best things ; 
but another good remark was, I think, tlie General's, who, 
when the hero goes to rescue the heroine, says : "Take my 
revolver ; 'tis not a service weapon, but it may save her ! " 
Lord P. has rushed from his allotment down to the General's 
countrv house because Haig has wired that he would like 
to attack at dawn, and wants a strategic plan. With the 
aid of a pair of compasses, an eraser, and a threej)enny bit 
(1 couldn't see the exact implements) the strategic plan is 
drawn up, and Lord P. departs. After he has gone, the 
General paces up and down his study with anxiety gnawing 
at his breast bone. Suddenly he hears a noise : a faint rustle. 
What is it ! Silence ! He returns to his meditations. 
Again he hears it. There is some one there. Who is it ? 
IT IS THE FEMALE HUN ! 
Does he know who she is ? No ! Who is she ? She is 
his wife. At this point no bard can resist breaking into song : 
'Tis sad to see a soldier brave 
Discover the bride he has won 
Is a dumped importation from over the ware. 
In short, a female Hun. '■ 
Dragging her from behind the curtain into the middle of 
the stage, he shoots her, with that disregard for the law so 
necessarv in stage generals. It is novvhere stated what fee 
the Female Hun was paid by her Govcrnfnent, but she Nvould 
have been dear at any price. Her habit of hiding behind 
curtains and stealing papers when people were about showed 
an aptitude for doing the wrong thing, fatal in a spy. After 
the heroic battle with the Female Hun, the General, whose 
blood is now up, sends his aide-de-camp to capture a sub- 
marine which has abducted his niece, and is floating about in 
the sea near hishouse. Withthehelpof a serio-comicheutenant, 
the aide-de-camp captures the submarine, and the war is won. 
The extraordinary thing is that the audience liked the 
play, and certainly its sentiments were irreproachable, and 
its scenes varied. I have said nothing about the wonderful 
record-breaking aeroplane which crawls crab-wise across the 
background at twehty miles an hour, or the prisoners' camp 
in Germany, d^ended by one line of barbed wire and an 
over- fed sentry ; but one must leave something to the imagina- 
tion. Personally, while'the audience was enjoying all these 
acts of valour, 1 found my thoughts returning to that camel 
I had seen making its way through the dim twilight of the 
evening. What a strange life for a beast to be hidden away 
in a small dark stable all the day, and at night to emerge 
like a dream and stand for a little while before thousands 
of faces, and then return to the darkness of its stall, and 
chew grass or walnut shells, or whatever it is that a camel 
is 'provided with by the Food Controller. People with 
imagination might very easily find more entertainment 
wandering among the "props." at the back of the stage 
than before the curtain. Imagination is not to be expected 
in a melodrama ; but, in fact; the greatest difficulty the 
dramatist has in writing any play is to give rein to the 
imagination, which is absolutely cramped and rendered 
immobile by the dead litter of the stage's innumerable shams 
and pretences. A poet or a novelist can summon up the 
very scents of Arabia by describing a camel travelling over 
the desert ; but bring a camel on to the stage, and you 
may get a scent, but it will not be of Arabia ; in fact, the 
camel will probably seem a mere humped beast having lost 
all character. The stage is frightfully matter of fact. It is 
ne.xt to impossible to get "atmosphere." When it is got, it 
is by dialogue, which in itself is extraordinarily dry and 
uncoloured." There is more "atmosphere." in Ibsen than in 
all Maeterlinck and Yeats, though Ibsen is writing what 
seems to be a direct matter-of-fact prose. Everybody 
knows Chesterton'* description of Yeats' plays, as plays, 
in which there is but one hero, and his name is Atmosphere'; 
but this in only true of the plays when read. When acted 
on the stage, all atmosphere fades away from them, because 
it has been got by literary and not by dramatic means ; it 
simply does not carry across the footlights. The con.sequence 
is that many of our best young writers believe that you 
cannot get atmosphere into a play, and that confirms them 
in their dislike of the theatre, the author of The Female 
Hun was not troubled by considerations of atmosphere ; his 
was the simpler task of "producing a stirring, patriotic, and 
wholesome plav. It had to meet the average man's query 
about a play which is, in the words of Mr. Montagu, " can it 
be seen without giving me any disease ? " 
