16 
LAND 6? WATER 
October 24, 1918 
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By W, J. Turner 
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IN Roxana, at the Lyric, Miss Doris Keane has secured 
a title for her new play almost as good as Romance, 
and not a little reminiscent of it. I did not see the 
earlier play, so I cannot say anv'thing about it, but 
I find the popularity of its successor — for Roxana is 
the most successful play in London — somewhat surprising. 
Perhaps it does not pretend to be more, than a background 
for Miss Keane's dainty figure — -there are no signs that the 
author takes it seriousl}?, which is a mark of grace — but 
even a background can have merits, and the merits of Roxana 
are about as easy to discover as those of the famou* Rozinante, 
whose bones were more prominent than his virtues. The 
bones of Roxana are equally uncovered with any living flesh, 
and I should never have thought that the play could have 
run a wjek if I did not know what imagination could do. 
It is the same romantic imagination that made Don Quixote 
see in Rozinai^te the most fiery and noble of steeds that fills 
the Lyfic Theatre with people who hang upon every word, 
that falls fi;om Miss Doris Keane's lips. Miss Keane is not 
imiquely beautiful, she is not a remarkable actress, she is not, 
as one would expect, a strange and pervasive personality ; 
in fact, in all three respects she is surpassed by, for instance. 
Miss Jessie Winter, now playing in The Law Divine, at 
Wyndham's. But she is a t\'pe more uncommon in England 
than America: she has a certain charm and a peculiarly 
attractive voice ; and, above all, she has had a poster which ' 
touched the imagination of London, of that vast London 
which has never been to Italy^ which has never read Conrad, 
and which all unknowingly thirsts for beauty as bloodhounds 
are supposed to thirst for blood. The day will come, if it 
has not come already, when theatrical managers will realise 
the extraordinary power of the — shall I say? — "artistic" 
poster. It would be absurd to expect any general appre- 
ciation of recondite be;iuty, but one only has to consider 
that, of the seven million Londoners, half are disappointed 
in their marriages or their fiances, and the other half in 
themselves, their relations, and their friends, to realise what 
an immense ever-present desire exists to meet, if only for a 
brief hour in imagination, some one beautiful, charming, 
and aloof from the atmosphere of their "daily lives, and on 
what a little they will build so long as a row of footlights 
sep.arates them from their ideal. Once given the start, their 
imaginations will do all that the most ambitious business 
manager could desire ; and it was certainly the poster of 
Miss Doris Keane in Romance that invested Miss Keane with 
a power over the minds of the London public that (if she 
will pardon a personal remark which embodies a general 
truth) nothing but marrying her or becgming her sister 
could ever destroy. 
The public is, in a sense, right in putting "personality" 
above good workmanship. There were quite a number of 
goldsmiths in Italy contemporary with Benvenuto Cellini 
who were equally skilled craftsmen, but whenever any of 
them had to compete with him for a commission his descrip- 
tion of what his work was going to be was always so dazzling 
as to sweep his prospective client off his feet. This is how 
we all like to be dealt with. We do not want to find out by 
patient study and concentrated attention the merits of 
anybody. We want to be carried oH our feet with a rush, 
and the greater the demand on our faith, the more we are 
delighted. For one thing, the pubhc has not the time, even 
if it had the ability or the confidence in its judgment, to 
test everything for itself ; it must take some things for 
granted, and, if its imagination is once stirred, it will take 
everything for granted. To be the greatest man in the 
world it would only be necessary to have your 'name 
continually in everp newspaper, but never to have been 
seen. This is how men come to be legends and gods. If 
you are only a name there are no bounds to what people 
can conceive of you, the whole creative power of mankind 
is busy adding to your stature ; and it is precisely because 
the exercise of the imagination is so much more, pleasing 
than analytical reasoning that "personality" is more powerful 
than workmanship. We are not at fault in being so much 
more interested in "personality" or character than in the 
productions of our hands or brains, which we are only too 
apt to think of as so much dead matter ; but the whole 
process of education in art is to lead us to cUscover that 
pLMSonaUty or character can be more profoundly discovered 
in acting, painting, or writing than in the actor, the painter, 
or the writer, who, apart from his work, is often nine- 
tenths pose— that is to say, nothing at all. 
Physical beauty has always been very properly appre- 
ciated in this country. I would say that it could not be 
too highly appreciated, but the standard in the past was 
rather apt to have been chiefly what I might call a quantita- 
tive one. The young Victorian girl's ideal was Cuida's six- 
foot guardsman offering her a peach the size of a balloon ; 
the peach- might taste like a potato and the guardsman be 
as stupid as an owl, but all was well with him if they were 
both of adequate size. In the theatre the standard, until 
of latter years, has been much the same, and it argues increas- 
ing good taste that the more subtle qualities of voice and 
grace which Miss Keane possesses should have been recog- 
nised. I wish I could discover some subtle qualities in 
Roxana, as a play, but I cannot. It was not at all the senti- 
mental American play, as one might have expected ; it 
was rather the flippant, "smart" brand and the acting, 
except for Miss Athene Seyler, as Betty Jackson, was poor. 
There is one amusing scene, however, where Mrs. Jackson 
and the Duke — there is always a duke in an American play^ — 
have supper alone together, much against the Duke's will, 
and she is highly excited in view of his reputation as a 
wicked man, and tells him that "no nice men are good, 
and no good men are nice ! " However, much to her disap- 
pointment, the Duke, in spite of her gurgling endeavours 
to make him "nice," remains "good." This scene was 
extremely well acted by Miss Seyler, who was also very 
entertaining in the last act, where she is accidentally seen 
in her night paint — her hair in curling-papers and her face 
plastered with cream — by her lo\'er, who calls her "a work 
of art ! " which reminds me of the old comic song : 
Her hair is on the mantelpiece, 
Her teeth are in the bath ; 
One arm hangs from the sofa. 
And a leg lies on the hearth. 
Apart from these two moments, there is absolutely nothing 
ind:he play of the sUghtest interest ; and how the man who 
wrote it could have ever hoped to see it produced one could 
not imagine unless one had seen a great number of plays. 
There is. of course, a love interest, which, I suppose, is still 
considered as the strongest card a dramatist can play ; and 
it is the most popular of all love situations, namely, that 
of the husband and wife who fall in love with each other 
after marriage. Why this is the most popular type of love 
story at th? moment might be an interesting subject for 
discussion, but the essential ingredient of any love story is 
nowadays unwillingness of one of the parties. This is a 
far remove from the atmosphere of The Professor's Love 
Story — surely one of the worst plays, as acted in the revival 
by Mr. H. B. Irving a year* or two back, ever written. That 
sickly and thoroughly false and unhealthy sentimentality 
has, I hope, been killed by the war, if not for ever, at least 
for some considerable time. The danger is now all the 
other way ; the general attitude towards love is much closer 
to the French point of view than it has ever been before in 
modern England. In fact, in revues Uke As Yoit Were it 
has become scarcely distinguishable from it, and the engage- 
ment of French actresses in these shows is symptomatic. 
Personally, I do not think As Yoit Were, with its baboon 
"triangle," as nauseating as The Professor's Love Story; 
the former is but a cynical reduction to natural forces that 
is only disturbing to the superficial and ignorant, but the 
latter is a falsification of love by leaving out its basis of 
healthy physical attraction which I find utterly intolerable. 
It is also true that one would rather a lover rhapsodised 
about his mistress's hair than her soul, although neither 
limitation is satisfactorj'. It is significant that with Italian 
poets the language used is very similar, whether the poet 
is referring to his mistress's hair or her soul, the atmosphere 
being always hea\-y and languorous, and far removed from 
the open-air effect of : 
Sliall I compare thee to a summer's day ? 
Thou art more lovely and more temperate 
which suggests an ideal of beauty less oppressive and more 
elusive. The physical quality in which all elements are 
most subtly intermingled is the voice, and it is one to 
which least justice has been done by poets and novelists. 
