THE THEATRE.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE RICH JEW OF MALTA," BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.— PHOENIX SOCIETY.
IN an essay on Marlowe the late Professor Edward Dowden pointed out that whereas the evidence of his contemporaries shows us the poet in Shakespeare concealed and almost for- gotten in the man, making it clear that to them Shakespeare appeared not as a bard or prophet inspired, or divinely commissioned, but as " a pleasant comrade, genial, gentle . . . ready and bright in wit, quick and sportive in conversation," Marlowe, on the other hand, was referred to as a man " pos- sessed by his art " ; one who
" Stood Up to the chin in the Pierian flood."
jt is in keeping with this difference in character that the art of Shakespeare should be natural, realistic, objective, like the art of Chaucer, and that Marlowe, on the contrary, like Milton, should find his inspiration in abstract passions or ideas. In seeing the performance of a play by Marlowe this should be remembered, for it will prepare us for a good deal that we might otherwise find perplexing. It will prepare us, for example, for the total absence of that sense of humour which is the fine flower of a most exquisite sense of proportion. This sense of humour, never so abundant as in Shakespeare, and the chief source of the objectiveness of his work, its wealth of characterization, its fluidity and mobility, Marlowe, in common with his great successor, Milton, lacked. Marlowe's plays are, in reality, dramatic poems, like Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. " Revenge," says Dowden, " is not the subject of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice ; Antonio and Shylock, Portia and Nerissa, Lorenzo and Jessica, Bassanio and Gratiano—these are the true subjects." But revenge, disobedience,
" Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit . . ."
and a host of other imaginary, abstract virtues and vices are the true subjects of Paradise Lost, as tyranny is the subject of Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, lust the subject of The Cenci, power the subject of Marlowe's Tamberlaine, ambition the subject of his Faustus, and not any particular Jew, but Jew the subject of The Jew of Malta.
Marlowe, Milton, Shelley, all three were fanatics, cranks, men driven by a vertigo of the imagination, or by excessive idealism, to extremes which more ordinary men find laughable. It was not therefore surprising—it was meet and proper—that the audience at the Phoenix Society's performance of The Jew of Malta last Monday should frequently have roared with laughter. A dramatic performance of Paradise Lost would, given as adequate a representation, be shrieked off the stage. But, it will be objected, Paradise Lost was not written for the stage—it is a poem, not a play. True, but stage representation only brings into a special prominence essential characteristics of an imaginative work.
There is, however, another point. The audience at The Jew of Malta enjoyed itself thoroughly, both when it was laughing and when it was seriously interested. There was, for the majority, not a flat or boring moment in the whole performance. But there are some dull, pedantic minds who have no appreciation of immense gusto, of bold sweeping vigour, of fertility of invention, of a rich, flooding tide of language ; they prefer a mean, finicky dovetailing of incident into incident, characterless but laughterproof, like an American detective play or a French melodrama. These critics fasten on to such trifles as Marlowe's impetuous way with corpses, complain of his extravagance of plot and language, and dismiss his Jew as a caricature, forgetting that there is an art of caricature and of the grotesque.
They also forget that it is necessary to go to an Elizabethan play with a certain liveliness of the historical sense. What is incredible to us was not incredible to Marlowe's contem- poraries. What filled them with horror may cause in us only laughter. We Georgians do not believe in witches or in Jews crucifying children, but in Eugenics, Christian Science, Spiritualism, and many other absurdities which I am not allowed to name here, as they might be cherished by too many of our readers. It shows extraordinary inelasticity of mind, and real lack of education, to suffer so from the illusions of our time and yet show no intellectual sympathy for the illusions of others.
And where do we find this lack of education Y Not in the people—who can enjoy all the Elizabethans at the " Old Vic " ; not in the intelligentsia—to whose support such societies as the Phoenix owe their existence ; but in our illiterate and genteel lower middle class, which is so amply represented in the London daily Press. This is the voice that at every Phoenix Society performance declares its non-comprehension of these old masterpieces, and votes for the latest dead drawing-room artifice from Paris or the suburbs
Of the actors, Mr. Baliol Holloway as the Jew deserves the greatest praise. His was an all-round, superb performance, full of light and shade, and remarkable for its range of expres- sive gesture. Mr. Thesiger was exactly right as Ithamore, so was Mks Margaret Yarde as the Courtezan. Miss Isabel Jeans as Abigail, and Mr. Frank Cellier as the Bully, could hardly have been bettered. Miss Jeans also looked beautiful
in a superb dress. Mr. Howard Rose as the Governor some- times spoke in such a casual, matter-of-fact tone at moments of crisis that he produced laughter where both Marlowe and the process of centuries had failed. The other members of the cast were all adequate in what was a first-rate production W. J. TunsrEn.
The usual " Recreations of London " will be found on page 702.
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