Essays on the Theatre
Theatre. By Desmond MacCarthy. (McGibbon & Kee. 12s. 6d.) FOR a dramatic critic who writes his weekly stint of words and, after polishing and refining his piece to the best of his ability, lets it fall into the icy gulf of posterity without receiving the slightest reaction, the slightest sound of a splash for his trouble; for this hopeless creature it is a comfort to come across one of the ephemeral tribe whose writings can still be read with interest and profit some thirty or forty years after they were produced. This collection of essays on the theatre by Desmond MacCarthy (they all deal with the theatre apart from some wise remarks about censorship and some pleasant anecdotes grouped under the heading 'Good Talk') is therefore a cheering event and the more so in that it proves how right a critic can be about works contemporary with him.
MacCarthy was right about a great many things. He was right about the defects of Galsworthy at a time when that dramatist's reputation stood high. He was right about the quality which can be found in the plays of Somerset Maugham. He was right about Six Characters in Search of an Author the first time that difficult play was produced in London, and, if some of his remarks now sound a little elementary (Signor Piranilello, he says, 'has suggested the inevitable limitations of the modern drama ....'), how many critics would not have been hopelessly confused by so novel a con- vention as that used in Six Characters. The only thing he seems to have been wrong about was Strindberg, and thiS was from the best of motives. Evidently he was so repelled by what might be called the anti-humanity of Strindberg's representation of an inevitably destructive sexual dialectic, that he failed to see the bitter truth concealed within this world of male and female anthropophagi. MacCarthy then was a judicial critic, a critic who was right. He applied a fine general intelligence to the theatre, and the justice of his appreciation is that of a cultivated man talking of what he loves. It was he who made the concessions in most instances (look how fair he is to Barrie), and he was always careful to judge works by their own standards. The first essay in this collection contains a distinction between two Desmond MacCarthys—the critic 'who thinks nearly every play produced throughout the year practically negligible from the point of view of art,' and Desmond MacCarthy No. 2, a 'good-natured and impressionable creature' who 'forgets there are such things as masterpieces' and 'cries and laughs easily.' The alternation of these not quite Jekyll and Hyde figures resulted in him doing himself, play and actors justice. Yet at this point a doubt intrudes. Is it the only function of a critic to be 'right,' even judicially 'right' (it is certainly his function to judge)? Paradoxically, the very greatest critics of any art form have been those who have been determinedly and cussedly wrong, doing continual injustice to the works which they considered from the height of a dogmatic series of prejudices. Where do they stand as compared with someone like MacCarthy? The answer is that they had something to sell. Their criticism was a blow in a battle to get certain standards and certain types of art accepted.
The outstanding example in dramatic criticism is Shaw. Shaw could be thoroughly unjust to Marlowe ('abysmally inferior,' the true Elizabethan blank-verse beast'), since Marlowe was at the opposite pole (not perhaps quite so opposite as Shaw thought) from the type of drama he was concerned to advocate for the English stage in the Nineties: a drama of ideas deriving from a portion of Ibsen. But this kind of injustice does not harm Shaw as a critic. It was the reverse side of his effective influence on the theatre of the day. He, in fact, was the dogmatist, the preacher. MacCarthy was the judge, and, like most judges, had to accept a limitation on his Power to influence the course of events directly.
In one sense this lack of a close involvement in the theatre's wars Made it harder for MacCarthy. If you have something to sell, your standards are automatically set for you, but the empirical judge Must make up his laws as he goes along. MacCarthy had his laws, but, as they appear in the present volume, they are a little vague. A play must have action; symbolism on the stage is most effective When interpreted by the characters themselvds; 'realism is only a means not an end.' It is when he gets down to an individual play, Playwright or player that he is at his best. About The Wild Duck or The Cherry Orchard, Hamlet or John Gabriel Borktnan he is deeply and satisfyingly revealing. His comparison of Duse and Bernhardt is better, more humane than Shaw's, though they both preferred Duse. And how well he takes the significance of Chekhov's revolu- tion in the drama: 'Above all, his dialogue resembles real life in its inconsequence.' But to read his criticism is continually to be struck by its wisdom and humanity. MacCarthy can only be compared with the greatest Writers on the English theatre, though he differed in kind from Hazlitt the descriptive or Shaw the dogmatic. Crippled by want of space and boorish from increasing specialisation, the contemporary dramatic critic cuts a poor figure beside him. But, if he wants to learn at least humility (and, after all, why should he not?) he should study these essays and notices with some care.
ANTHONY HARTLEY
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