Читать книгу The Profligate - Arthur Wing Pinero - Страница 6

Probably few who were present on this occasion will need to be reminded of the impression made upon the audience by the new play, or of the plaudits with which it was greeted. The success that attended the initial representation was echoed for the most part in the chorus of criticism. On all sides the new play was greeted with warm words of welcome, even when these words were qualified by serious critical strictures; the pessimists regarded it at least as an oasis in the desert of our modern drama, while the optimists hailed it as the herald of a bright new era of English dramatic literature. The various voices of criticism were, in fact, unanimous for once in regarding this as an artistic event of quite unusual importance, even while they were raised to question certain psychological and ethical elements of the play in relation to actual human experience.

It does not come within my province here to discuss the several points of controversy, the various critical objections urged against the play, but merely to recall them as a matter of theatrical history. So be it remembered that the central motive of the story was condemned as being fantastically strained, for the simple reason that at this end of the nineteenth century the mental condition of Leslie Brudenell was inconceivable, the position therefore being untenable from the point of view of real life. It was further urged that any right-minded young wife would have submissively accepted the situation in the true wisdom of modern cynicism, or that Dunstan Renshaw would have turned round upon her and with brutal frankness revealed to her that her disillusioning was only the common experience of all wives, and that she must bow to the inevitable and make no fuss. It was laid down as law moreover that, as a leopard cannot change its spots, so can no man who has once lived evilly be influenced to a better, a purer life; that profligate once, profligate he must remain for evermore. Then Hugh Murray, the serious-minded, lofty-natured lawyer, who can never restrain his tongue when he sees wrong-doing, but can be nobly, piteously silent when he must bury his love deep down in his lonely life until it nearly breaks the heart of him—he was found by certain critics to be impossibly unreal and even comic. It was discovered, too, that the office of Messrs. Cheal and Murray was in Furnival’s Inn, Fairyland—that such proceedings as were witnessed in that office could never have been possible in Holborn.

Those who made all these discoveries charged “The Profligate” on this score or that with being untrue to nature or false to art. Yet Mr. Pinero, in essaying to deal dramatically with a moral problem in a manner which, while neither cynical nor commonplace, should still be in touch with human sympathy and possible experience, appears to have deliberately set himself to conceive a group of characters, natural yet not ordinary, which should embody his ideals, and with a sufficient sense of actuality evolve the tragic recoil of sin, the dramatic pathos of innocence in contact with the irony of life, the exquisite influence of purity. Whether Mr. Pinero succeeded in carrying out his idea or not, even the severest of his critics could not deny this play respectful consideration. “A real play at last,” cried one; “a faulty play with one faultless act,” was another’s summing-up after his first enthusiasm had cooled in the refrigerator of time; while yet a third recorded that “no original English play produced on our stage for many a day has stirred its audience so deeply at the time of its representation, or has sent them home with so much to think over, to discuss and to remember.”

“The Profligate” was performed eighty-six consecutive times at the Garrick Theatre with considerable success, and, as I believe some impression to the contrary prevails, I may be pardoned for adding, with results very satisfactory to Mr. Hare’s treasury. The season coming to an end on July 27, the Garrick closed, and Mr. Hare took “The Profligate” on a brief provincial tour. At the Prince of Wales’s Theatre, Birmingham, on September 2, it was received with extraordinary enthusiasm, the local critics poured forth eulogy upon eulogy, and for the next five nights the house was crammed. From Birmingham the play went to Manchester, where it was produced at the Theatre Royal, on September 9, and performed there nine times. But the Manchester critics, though respectful in their attitude, were sparing in their praise. They complained that Mr. Pinero was neither Dumas nor Augior, compared him with Georges Ohnet, and found fault with his metaphors. And the playgoers of Cottonopolis were depressed, and bestowed such scant favour upon the play that Mr. Hare determined to occupy the last three nights of his engagement with a mirthful adaptation of “Les Surprises du Divorce,” and the Manchester folk then attended the theatre in their numbers, and laughed, and were happy again.

A triumph, however, was in store for “The Profligate” at Liverpool. On September 23, and during the rest of the week, it was given at the Shakespeare Theatre, and press and public alike greeted Mr. Pinero’s play with acclaim. Then Mr. Hare returned to town with his company, and reopened the Garrick with “The Profligate” on Wednesday, October 2. Again was criticism busy with the play, and the praise of some had cooled, and the praise of others had warmed, but the original “run” of the play had been interrupted in the midst of its prosperity, Mr. Hare had resigned his part to an actor of less influence and distinction, and after forty-five more performances it was thought politic to withdraw the play. The notable fact remains, however, that while theatrical audiences were still being encouraged to expect “comic relief” and melodramatic sensation, a serious English drama, which made no concession to either, had been performed one hundred and fifty-three times within a few months, with profit to author and to manager.

But although “The Profligate” had been withdrawn from the boards of the theatre, its influence was still active. It commanded a hearing beyond the footlights, even on the platform of the Literary and Scientific Institute. Mr. Pinero was invited by the committee of the Birkbeck Institution to read his play there, and this he did on the evening of May 16th, 1890, with such marked success that he has since been invited to repeat the reading at many of the leading institutions in the provinces.

But the theatrical career of “The Profligate” was to take a wider range. The voice of the British dramatist was to be heard in the land of the foreigner; but it spoke in the necessarily mimetic tones of adaptation, and the tongue was Dutch. “The Profligate,” bearing the title of “De Losbol,” was produced in Amsterdam on November 30, 1889, under the personal supervision of Mr. J. T. Grein, at the Municipal Theatre, which has since been burnt down. Only a partial success is to be recorded, the play having enjoyed but a brief career, as it did also at the Hague, where the production took place at the Royal Theatre. The Dutch critics were for the most part patronising and lukewarm, patronising because the play was English, lukewarm because the author had not treated his theme after the cynical and pessimistic methods of certain modern French writers. But one of the most prominent critics of Holland was fain to admit, in the Algemeen Handelsblad of Amsterdam, that “viewed from an English standpoint, ‘The Profligate’ may certainly be called a remarkable drama,” and that “it is a legitimate play with a properly worked-out plot, although it contains a good deal of coincidence, and shows a want of spirit in the dialogue.”

“The Profligate” is next heard of in Germany, where “The Magistrate” and “Sweet Lavender” already enjoyed popularity; but there the voice of the author was almost lost in the falsetto tones of the adapter. Dr. Oscar Blumenthal, a well-known German littérateur and the popular director of the Lessing Theatre in Berlin, undertook to introduce Mr. Pinero’s play to German playgoers. But Dr. Blumenthal has won reputation as a wit and a humorist, and any work from his pen must make his audience laugh before everything; so he appears to have adopted very drastic measures in preparing “The Profligate” for the German theatre. He has in fact transformed a serious drama of English life into a frivolous comedy of Parisian manners; innocence is turned into intrigue, the betrayed maiden becomes the scheming adventuress, the play terminates with a laugh, and it is called “Falsche Heilige”—which may be translated as “False Saints.” But the result is popular success.

The first performance took place on Friday, February 13, of the present year, at the Stadttheater, Hamburg, and a perfect triumph was achieved, adapter and actors were called before the curtain no less than twenty times, and the press unanimously belauded the “author”—Dr. Blumenthal. Performances then followed with equal success at Altona, Stettin, Graz, München, Dresden, Hildesheim, and Lübeck, and on Saturday, August 29, 1891, “Falsche Heilige” was produced in the German capital at Dr. Blumenthal’s own Lessing Theatre. The reception by Berlin playgoers and critics was as enthusiastic as it had been elsewhere, and the glory of the adapter was everywhere. And this is to spread still further, for the play is to visit all the other important theatrical towns of Germany.

This summarises so far the Continental career of “The Profligate,” but in all probability it will penetrate much further. As a modern instance of the vagaries of adaptation, the following German criticism of “The Profligate” in its Teutonic dress may be found amusing, in connection with the English text of the play:—

“The German author may be indebted to the English original of ‘Falsche Heilige’ for the plan of the piece, and the material for the several acts, but in the entire modelling, in its general character, and in all its merits, it is the play of Blumenthal. It is insinuating and amusing, persuading by fluent, elegant, refined diction, and especially by the sparkling firework witticisms of Blumenthal, which rise like rockets in every scene, while the dramatic aplomb is preserved throughout the grand scene in the third act, which did not fail to impress, as the author intended. Blumenthal has shifted the action of the story into the salons of aristocratic Parisian society, and the strongly perfumed atmosphere of the bons-vivants and the grisettes of Paris, where comfort-loving fathers and guardians compare their marriage-hunting daughters or wards to ‘freckles,’ which (as the German Hugh Murray says) ‘scarcely got rid of, make their reappearance.’ The ornaments of the Boulevards are the main characters of the play, but the author (Blumenthal) nowhere disgusts a sensitive listener. He tones down the conversation of the circle, and accentuates its fascinating features, utilising it as a frame for setting his brilliant coruscating jokes. He places contrastingly by the side of the frivolous Don Juan the sentimentally virtuous Paul Benoit, and by the side of the cunning and false Magdalen the innocent child Jeanne de Lunac. The piece is full of rich veins of light and cheerful amusement.”

The Australian career of “The Profligate” has been both experimental and successful. Mr. Charles Cartwright and Miss Olga Nethersole produced the play at the Bijou Theatre in Melbourne on Tuesday, June 9, of the present year, and for the first time it was acted in the original version, as now printed. The play ended with Dunstan Renshaw’s suicide, a dénouement which the Melbourne critics accepted as “more powerfully dramatic” than the reconciliation, but the impression produced upon the public was considered too painful, and on the following Thursday evening the ending of the Garrick version was substituted for the original, and “gave greater satisfaction to the public.” Consequently, this is how the play was presented on Tuesday, August 4, 1891, at the Garrick Theatre in Sydney, where it achieved very considerable success, and aroused critical enthusiasm, while it was even then urged that the substitution of the “happy ending,” though managerially politic, was calculated to “detract from the actual merits of the play.”

Malcolm C. Salaman.

London, November 1891.

The Profligate

Dunstan Renshaw & Lord Dangars have been wild, and Dunstan is to marry Leslie Brudenell, an innocent school girl. Knowing what Dunstan’s past has been Hugh Murray won’t come to the wedding. Janet Preece, a girl ruined & deserted by Dunstan enters & Murray says he will help find her wronger.

Dunstan returned & in love with Leslie, go to Italy for their honeymoon. The Michael Angelo sketches at their villa draw tourists, among whom are Mrs Stonehay & her daughter, Irene, engaged to Lord Dangars, and a school friend of Leslie. Leslie tries to prevent the match. Dunstan goes to Rome for furnishings & meets Lord Dangars. In the meantime Janet Preece comes to the villa, weak & weary. She confesses she has been ruined & can not marry Wilfred, Leslie’s brother. Leslie persuades her to tell Mrs. Stonehay how Lord Dangars ruined her. Thinking he was the one but when the indictment comes to Leslie’s horror Dunstan is found guilty. She sends him away.

Janet Preece goes for Australia, & leaves Wilfred, Hugh Murray tries to look after Leslie, and Dunstan returns to her. Thinking she will spurn him he takes poison. Leslie comes to him, forgiving calling “Husband!”