Читать книгу The Selected Works of Arnold Bennett: Essays, Personal Development Books & Articles - Arnold Bennett - Страница 88

The London stage may be roughly divided into three parts. First and most opulent, the division of musical comedy. The manufacture of musical comedy is interesting and curious, but I am not aware that it has anything to do with dramatic art A more important point is that the world of musical comedy is a self-contained world, an island cut off from the larger world of the stage. I do not think that there is any room in it for an outsider. Its gates are shut against strange faces; and indeed the capitalists of musical comedy have every reason to be content with the men they have got. The second division is that of melodrama, not on the whole a very flourishing division. The decline of melodrama was clearly shown in the transmogrification of the Adelphi Theatre a few years ago. The few successful melodramas seem now to come principally from the United States. The third (miscellaneous) division is that of comedy —a term of wide significance which includes both farces (usually called “light comedies,” or “farcical comedies”), and comedies proper —and “drama,” costume or otherwise. This third division alone possesses any sort of an artistic ideal. It is mainly under the control of a few actor-managers, men of some education who, while they desire money, desire more than money; and it is beyond question prepared to welcome the absolute outsider.