MR. STEPHEN LEACOCK'S LECTURE ON THIS DRAMA.
IT is very difficult to analyse the means by which a 1 humorist achieves his effects, and except by the incurably curious the attempt may even be regarded as a bore and a wet blanket. Mr. Leacock is particularly elusive, but we believe that the inquisitive reader will find that his jokes are oftenest produced by the magnifying- glass method, which is the same as the method of exaggera- tion, which, again, is the same as the reductio ad absurdum. In his lecture on the Theatre Mr. Leacock said his own experience of the stage might almost be described by the words " just outside." Not only had he acted just outside " New York, Toronto and Montreal, but as a rule his parts had been those of " Voice Speaks from Within " , or Voice from Crowd Without." His audience would therefore readily understand that his experience was mostly of the old type of drama. There was not much scope for him in plays where the characters just sit down on the stage and brood. Once ho was playing in that wonderful piece Uncle Tom's Cabin. The audience would remember that the climax of the play was when Eliza crosses the river on lumps of ice. At the beginning of the run he was one of these lumps of ice, and he described how he put his very heart into it, and swayed and shifted as Eliza stepped on him, and when the manager saw that lump of ice, he knew that its heart was in its work. Then his chance came. Just as Eliza had to oross the ice one of the characters had to say to her : " Hark, they have put the bloodhounds on your track already ! " and then a dog had to howl off. They had had a real dog to do it, but one day the dog was sick. " You know how we actors climb on one another's shoulders. I was sorry for the dog, but, . . ." anyhow, the manager had said to him : " Mr. Leacock, can you howl 1 " Blushingly Mr. Leacock had admitted that he thought he could howl, and from that day the part had been his. Having thus mounted practically to the top of his profession, Mr. Leacock described how he had turned to the writing of plays. He had written one play, so modern that as yet no manager would take it. In the first act all the characters are discovered sitting on the stage. He had read it to one manager, whose comment had been : " Why don't they speak ? " To which the reply was : " Not in this act." In the second act the stage was empty : " When do they come on ? " " Not in this act." In the third act the stage is darkened and in addition draped heavily with crape. " But where have they gone ? queried the manager. " They are all dead." If a play like that ever came your way you would know by these signs that it was a very modern play, just as if a man came in in a tweed suit and a top hat you would know it was a problem play ; or if a door at the back of the shack opened and a gust of snow blew across the stagy you would know that it was a North-West Mounted Police drama.
But for himself he preferred, above all, the play of high society and great affairs. There was a proper way to open such a play. The stage is empty. Enter Sir Richard Thurston, who puts his top hat down on the table. You could tell from the way he takes off his gloves, and tosses them one by one into it, that he is preoccupied by great affairs. Then there is that stage mail. You know the way they rip it open ? "Lady Sidgewick." "Lunch on Thursday with the Duchess." That is to show you what sort of man he is ; anyone might lunch with a Duchess on a Saturday, say, but on a Thursday ! He crosses over to the fireplace and rings. Just before the bell goes enter the valet.
" Is Lady Thurston at home ? "
44 Yes."
" Has anybody been here ? "
" No, except Mr. Harding, Sir Richard." The student of dramatic technique has to note two things with regard to this conversation. First, that the valet does not come in at the door centre back—this is reserved strictly for the principal characters ; and secondly, that the dialogue shows there is something very strange in the relations between Lady Thurston and Mr. Harding. Later, Lady Thurston comes in. Sir Richard talks politics to her. His manner is altered, you can see him altering it. She is listless ; she has picked up a copy of the Spectator and turns over its leaves; at last she lets it go from her listless hand ; it falls with a thud on the floor. (Here Mr. Leacock checked himself, remembering that Mr. St. Loe Strachey was his chairman. " No, no, it couldn't have been the Spectator ! But surely there are papers in this country that fall with a thud if you drop them on the floor ? ") By all this the audience understands that Lady Thurston has as many jewels, as much leisure, amusement, fine clothes, motors, and so on as she wishes, and that, therefore, naturally she is starved. On the stage or in fiction all these things starve a woman. Later, in this sort of play, when a particularly significant conversation is to take place, it should take this sort of form :— He " Long ago ? "
She : "'Long ago." He : " Here in London ? "
She : " Here in London."
Ile " He loved you ? "
She : " He loved me."
Again, in such a play as they had been considering, Mr. Harding should be a narrow, ineffectual looking young man in a frock coat. You know the sort of men that starved women fall in love with ? Presently she will rush to him and he will stagger under her embrace, while she begs him to take her away. " To take her away from this house, this life, this everything. Surely far away she can be rid of this stifling atmosphere. They will go away — south ; and then, among fire-flies, fiacre, orangi, contadini, Milano, aquacalda, piazze,- they will live their lives." But at the critical moment back comes Sir Richard Thurston.
Sir Richard : " You !—Him I " She : " Yes, Him—Me."
She picks up the narrow young man under her arm and tells Sir Richard that they are going away " To life, to love ! Behind the beyond." But perhaps more interesting was the preparation of a cinema play. Here sound knowledge of technique was absolutely necessary. He would proceed to give the audience a sound knowledge of technique, and by way of illustration would choose an educational film which he had recently prepared on the Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. First of all, to be sure that there should be no muddle in the children's minds, you threw on the screen a picture of a man in a bowler hat, " Christopher Colombo, Mr. G. G. Funderdotten." Then a picture of a lady in a shirt waist, " Theresa Colombo, Miss Sadie B. Porkington." Then a picture of a lovely young thing with Mary Pickford curls, " The Spirit of America, Miss Emily Dickinson." You wouldn't find " The Spirit of America " in the text- book and Columbus didn't know he was going to discover her, but she had to be there ; this was part of the technique, she came in a0 right later on. Then you looked at your text-book and it said : " Christopher Colombo was one of a large family, born of poor but honest parents in Genoa about 1460." Well, that was a perfectly straight scene. You put on what was called a " mediaeval interior "—a trestle table, beams, grandfather clock and all that, and a row of children sitting round the table, Theresa Colombo cutting bread and butter and carefully counting the little Colombi to see if she had cut enough pieces. Colombo, senior, is leaning against the clock. This is symbolic ; he is a minor character, you have him leaning against the clock to show that this is so. That is one of the things you want to learn about cinema technique. For instance, suppose you wanted to show a man was plotting, the correct technical symbol was that he sat at a desk, drumming his fingers and rolling his eyes. However, Colombo, senior, j was not plotting, he was just a secondary character, and so you propped him up against the clock. Fade out mediaeval interior. Then you looked at your text-book again, and it said something about his being fond of study, and especially of mathematics and geography, so you showed him next in his little garret. There would be a sloping ceiling six inches from his head as he sat ; this would be symbolic again, the audience would understand from it " this boy never rises from his books." He was educated at a monastery, San Sebastiano. That was all right, you put on a mediaeval exterior and then you had friars, dressing-gowns with cords and tassels, strings of bead; missals and that. But there was a slight difficulty here. In the cinema you could get lots of things, there was never any difficulty about thugs for the scene in the gambling-hell or that midnight cabaret (however, we were coming to that). But it was awful hard to get friars. Now, as you often could not get friars at all, you generally had to dress up your thugs in the dressing-gowns, but it was not always very satisfactory. It was not hard to get them fat and clean-shaven, but they kept on having that sinister look, you know, and it rather spoilt the scene. Well, then, text-book again. " After four years' study at the mon- astery he became convinced that the world was round." Very well. "Close up" of Christopher with an ordinary school globe, putting his two hands round it—ecstatic smile on face. He goes out into the world to communicate his great discovery, and goes from court to court asking for nothing (except, of course, for a fleet of ships, 500 men and provisions for five years) if only he may prove to the world that he is right. The farewell to the monastery makes a strong scene here. Convent bell tolling (you do this in the orchestra), friars pacing up and down, with figure of Columbus getting smaller and smaller in the distance, with waving hand. You must not forget to give him one of those tall, awkward sticks—staffs was tie word ; they must be heavy to lug around, but all stage travellers have to have them. The next thing that you have to show is him going from court to court, and here you can use up a lot of scenes that your actors will have rehearsed v For instance, why should not the King of Sardinia's court be at supper ? Then you get in that midnight cabaret scene. You just put quilted pants and Ferdinand beards on them, and put candles instead of electric lights on the table, and there you are. Well, supposing you want to show him at another court, why not adapt The Bitter Banker " scene ? You know, where the young, unknown and struggling hero, suspected of theft, says to the mil- lionaire sitting at an enormous desk : " Won't you lend sic a million dollars ? Well, with him in the quilted pants and Ferdinand beard, if you just take the telephone off the table that is all you need for " Court of Lorenzo the Magnificent." Of course, you get Christopher to Spain at last, because this is where the people really did send off the expedition. You can have the same crowd who sneered at him in the midnight cabaret—King of Sardinia scene, but this time they just crowd round him and lap it all up with adoring faces. That just shows you the fickleness of these crowds. Then you have a harbour scene where he is choosing his ships. You must get a choppy day for filming this, streamers have got to stream and the breakwater must have breakers to break on it the cinema public expects everything to function. After a bit he starts, and then come in your mid-ocean scenes. Christopher Colombo does not do any navigating, of course, but just lies in the bows. sort of prophesying, and this is where Miss Emily Dickinson comes in ; she has got to float over him now, dressed in white mosquito netting and egging him on all the time. Provisions run short on the voyage ; how are you going to film that ? Easy enough, when you ]mow your tech- nique. Christopher Colombo sitting on deck, crew of two carvels also sitting on deck. Christopher Colombo divides Spanish onion into fourteen parts and hands them to crew, who devour greedily. Well, then you have to get him to America, and then it's quite easy again ; you do the kissing the sacred soil, and the delighted natives and Miss Emily Dickinson blessing him. You don't need to do the return voyage. Anyway, when Christopher got back it seems nobody took much notice of him, so he decided to die in that poignant way only known on the cinema. You have the garret scene again here, and, by the way, the narrower Christopher's bed is the better ; it makes it more poignant because you think how if he moved an inch he would fall off on to the floor. You have to get the domestic touch in here, so you have Theresa Colombo again, and she feeds medicine into him with a long spoon. In the " fade out " he is lying with crossed hands and closed eyes. And that is all there is to it.
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