American nights entertainment
it won’t stay put very well)--and the best of Barrie is good in any
company. For example, _The Admirable Crichton_, which even the most
critical have found strong words to praise. The printed version avoids
the fault of the 1918 stage revival in which, as has been said, Barrie
dulled or allowed some one else to dull the edge of his perfect satire.
For a short and appreciative yet discriminating account of Barrie the
playwright, one could not do better than read the chapter upon him in
John W. Cunliffe’s _English Literature During the Last Half Century_
(Macmillan: Revised Edition, 1923).
John Galsworthy, the subject of the first chapter of this book, will
not, of course, be overlooked by anyone concerned in knowing the best
plays of our time. His plays are to be had, complete at present, in
five volumes (_Plays: First Series_; _Plays: Second Series_, etc.) and
a supplementary volume, _Six Short Plays_. Or, with the exception of
the six short plays, each may be had separately. Probably a consensus
would select _Loyalties_, _Justice_, _Strife_, _The Silver Box_, _The
Pigeon_ and _The Skin Game_ as his most important and representative
dramas.
Arnold Bennett’s new play, _Don Juan de Marana_, represents one
fulfilment of a threefold ambition. Don Juan, together with the legend
of the Wandering Jew and the story of Tannhäuser, had attracted him
for years as great subjects for drama. A good deal of preliminary
work on the Wandering Jew theme was wasted by news that somebody
else had written a play on the theme and obtained a production. “I
put the Wandering Jew aside for ten years,” explains Bennett. “With
regard to Tannhäuser, I am still wondering how to cure Elizabeth of
her insipidity, and how to get into the heads of a twentieth century
audience the surely obvious fact that music is not an essential
ingredient of the tale.” Don Juan Tenorio proved impossible as the
basis of a play, but finally Bennett came upon the other, later version
of the Don Juan story. “And then I discovered what I wanted in a work
on my own shelves, the plays of Dumas _père_ in twenty-five volumes. I
ought to have divined that since Dumas wrote plays on everything, he
must have written a play on the Don Juan de Marana variation of the Don
Juan legend.”
At last all of W. Somerset Maugham’s plays are available for the
reader, some ten volumes that include not only _The Circle_, but _Lady
Frederick_, _The Explorer_, _Jack Straw_, etc. It should perhaps
be noted here that the play _Rain_ is not a Maugham play, but an
adaptation of Maugham’s tremendous short story, “Rain,” included in his
book of South Sea tales, _The Trembling of a Leaf_.
John Dos Passos in his _Rosinante to the Road Again_, in the chapter
on “Benavente’s Madrid,” has conveyed with clearness and much
picturesqueness the style and point, the character and perfection of
taste in a certain style (_lo castizo_) with which Jacinto Benavente’s
dramas abound. It is this that from their Spanish viewpoint makes them
of such distinction; but that would hardly account for their success
outside Spain. Larger qualities--a gentle and deadly satire, a nervous
vitality, wit--do that; and the visit of Señor Benavente to America
a few months ago did much to attract attention to his work. Twelve
of his plays, assembled in three volumes in the translations of John
Garrett Underhill, are now accessible to the English reader. Benavente
represents a more modern Spain than the Echegaray with whose _drame
passionel_ those who read plays are sufficiently familiar. He should
be read for his own sake and as a Continental dramatist much more
distinctly representative of something national, something Spanish in
sensibility, than are the outstanding playwrights of other European
lands--excepting Russia, no doubt. One can scarcely read Ibsen for
Norway, or Strindberg for a little corner of the world; Tchekov is
Russia but Andreiev is humanity. Jacinto Benavente, however, is Spain
without the sacrifice of those elements which are of importance to a
society in any country.
The impressive success of the Theatre Guild is known everywhere, and
the Theatre Guild Library is very welcome for its addition of several
of the finest of recent plays to the resources of the reading table.
The series has been auspiciously begun with publication of Karel
Capek’s _R. U. R._, Ernest Toller’s _The Mass-Men_, and Elmer L. Rice’s
_The Adding Machine_. A particularly good pick of recent successes will
be found in _Contemporary American Plays_, edited by Arthur H. Quinn
and containing Jesse Lynch Williams’s “Why Marry?” Eugene O’Neill’s
“The Emperor Jones,” Rachel Crothers’s “Nice People,” Gilbert Emery’s
“The Hero,” and George S. Kaufman’s and Marc Connelly’s “To the Ladies!”
Of recent books on the drama, Stark Young’s _The Flower in Drama:
Papers on the Theatre_, has attracted wide attention and much deserved
praise. Not much more than a year ago Mr. Young, previously a professor
of English, began to write his papers on plays, actors, and the theatre
in general in the New Republic. His articles and reviews attracted at
once the attention of discriminating people interested in the theatre;
their admiration was quickly developed by an attitude which showed
a comprehending sympathy for what the younger men were trying to do
and yet never lost sight of the drama as a developed art with certain
inviolable principles. Moreover, he wrote with wit, precision and
charm. There is no better reading of its sort, I think, than his “Dear
Mr. Chaplin,” his “Circus,” or his “Letter to Duse,” all contained in
this volume. Perhaps a note should explain the title, which is based on
a sentence: “If one aims only at the beautiful, the flower is sure to
appear”--a phrase drawn from Seami, 1363-1444, who, with his father,
stood at the head of the No of Japan.
_18. Lost Patterns_
Collestamore was showing me his library, but a summons to the telephone
had drawn him from the room and I was standing before the set of
shelves between the cases containing rarities and those which held
fine bindings, frankly puzzled. There were not many books ranged here
and I could not make out the distinction that grouped them together.
It might have been no distinction but mere accident in the case of
anyone less methodical than Collestamore. With him, no; some thought or
queer intention must underlie the choosing. Fiction and non-fiction,
new books and some old ones, some volumes of attractive format and
design and others whose homely plainness was possibly compensated by
the fact of their being first editions--it meant nothing. Alphabetical
arrangement by authors hadn’t been attempted and was, indeed, scarcely
worth while until the little assembly grew larger. Then he returned and
met my look of inquiry with:
“You’ve discovered my Lost Patterns.”
“Lost Patterns?”
“Oh,” he said, “there aren’t many of them, as yet. The fact is, I only
thought of it a week ago. It rained all afternoon, so I spent a couple
of hours amusing myself with them--with a beginning of them.”
“‘Lost’? But some of them are new enough.”
“It’s the only name I could think of that I rather liked,” was his
explanation. “A Lost Pattern--the idea I was trying to express--may
be either old or new. It has nothing to do with the edition or the
binding, but everything to do with the contents of a book. Novel or
essay or biography, the text ought to represent something we have
not had before or since and aren’t likely to have again; something
individual in the scheme or the style; something wholly personal in the
flavour--in short, unique, I suppose. What James Huneker would have
called a unicorn. By the way, _he_ is a Lost Pattern, probably.”
“Probably.” I was not unsympathetic to his idea. “You are anxious to
get together a collection for the collection’s sake, I take it.”
“No, for the reader’s sake. It wouldn’t have any value as a collection,
other than the curious, and I swear it could have no value for the
person of literary practices.” I glanced at him but could detect
nothing in his expression. I have always suspected Collestamore of
secret literary practices, concealed efforts to put his freakish self
into words. My idea is that he attempts essays and that so far he is
like a fellow fond of cigarettes and learning to roll his own. He went
on, more meditatively: “A fellow desiring to be a writer would waste
his time if he aped these people.” All the same, I thought, I will bet
that you----
“I began with a few new books,” he was saying. “New or comparatively
so. The thing that started me, I guess, was Elinor Wylie’s novel.” He
fingered his copy of _Jennifer Lorn_.
“I haven’t read it.”
“She has made a replica of the eighteenth century novel, a suitably
fantastic story about an English aristocrat and his bride who
journey to the India of the East India Company and meet with bizarre
adventures. It is what you would expect of a poet enamoured with the
life of that glittering period. I wonder that Max Beerbohm hasn’t done
it long before this. Or Aldous Huxley.”
“I see you have them both represented here.”
“Yes, the thought of them sprang from Mrs. Wylie’s book. I took down
Huxley’s _Crome Yellow_ and his _Mortal Coils_. From Max I wanted the
books of his caricatures--_Rossetti and His Circle_ and that other one
he calls _A Survey_. My collection of Lost Patterns was begun, then and
there. The idea of what would constitute a Lost Pattern was formed--I
don’t say it didn’t enlarge afterward nor that it won’t enlarge or
change shape again. But, essentially, I knew what I wanted.”
“Nobody knows what he wants,” I objected. “The thing is obviously
impossible. You mean you knew that you wanted to add more books to the
five you had assembled.”
“Any way you like.” Collestamore’s indifference was polite, but
profound. “I began looking over the other shelves. The next thing
I came upon was George Moore’s _Hail and Farewell_. We shall never
have a writer like George Moore, not even George Moore.” I thought to
myself: With that nuance, with a phrase like that, he is deliberately
imitating Beerbohm’s prose; I had better take no notice of it. His next
remark startled me.
“Literary style, distinction, in the enterprise I had embarked upon was
of no consequence whatever.” And seeing that this wasn’t brilliantly
intelligible, he continued:
“The thing was much deeper than that--the personal twist or wrinkle was
what I was after, the fly in the amber. Not a perfectly preserved fly
in the amber of a choice literary expression but a wriggling insect
caught on the tanglefoot of unaccustomed words would do as well.” He
was fast throwing grammar overboard in the effort to lighten ship
and bring his thoughts to port. “I have not, as yet, come upon an
illiterate author who deserves inclusion among my Lost Patterns, but I
shouldn’t hesitate to put him in.”
“I see.” After a pause: “Here you’ve got George Meredith. He’s very
nearly illiterate, don’t you think so? Sometimes literacy can go too
far, as in Meredith and in Henry James, whom you’ve put alongside.
Maurice Hewlett is another matter.”
“Well,” said Collestamore, “I stuck them in as a matter of course.
Anybody would naturally have thought of them in such a connection.
The things I really pride myself upon are my detections among these
single and mostly more recent books. You take F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
_This Side of Paradise_, or William McFee’s _Casuals of the Sea_, or
C. E. Montague’s very fetching _Fiery Particles_, or Ernest Bramah’s
_Kai Lung’s Golden Hours_, or Don Marquis’s _Hermione_, or Alfred
B. Stanford’s _The Ground Swell_”--he was half pulling them out and
letting them fall back, as he enumerated them--“and tell me if I have
not shown both enterprise and catholicity.”