Verse in the Theatre
IT was recently my privilege to witness the " Recital " of five of Mr. Gordon Bottomley's dramatic poems. He has written these during the past few years for pro- duction at the verse-speaking festivals organized by Mr. John Masefield at Oxford, by the Scottish Association, and elsewhere. They were now being given at the Rudolf Steiner Hall in London by the players or speakers who were to repeat the performance a few days later at Boar's Hill.
First, a word about Mr. Bottomley as a poet. For thirty years he has been a distinguished member of a small group of artists who have disregarded changing fashions in a devoted allegiance to the Pre-Raphaelite spirit. This is not to say that Mr. Bottomley and Mr. Sturge Moore and Mr. Charles Ricketts and Mr. Charles Shannon write poetry or paint like Pre-Raphaelites, but none of them, I think, would hesitate to own an imaginative kinship to a school whose artistic idiom is not quite that of our immediate moment. The circumstance may have limited Mr. Bottomley's appeal to a new generation, but it has afforded a background of worthy loyalty for his extremely personal art. If he has refreshed himself from springs that are not just now those of common seeking, he has refreshed himself to creative purpose. Admirers of Mr. Bottomley's poetry will always have noted in it an attempt towards a certain harshness of character, a fondness for the figures of cold unyielding virginity, martial ruthlessness, and even supernatural terror, that have somehow never seemed to be quite in concert with his richly decorated lyric moods. A natural gentleness has seemed sometimes to be straining towards a rigour external to itself. It is this desire that has kept. Mr. Bottom' ey's mind constantly directed towards the theatre, with its oppor- tunity for virile action. He has, however, always made it a condition of his entry to the theatre that he should bring his poetry with him, and since the theatre of his day has rejected verse as a common medium of expression, he has had no alternative but to make what theatre he could for himself and his friends. The result was to be seen plainly enough at the Rudolf Steiner Hall.
Mr. Bottomley had decidedly brought his poetry with him, and whatever else we might doubt we could not fail in eager response to frequent passages of lovely verse. This in itself made the occasion more than worth while, but with the most active sympathy for Mr. Bottomley's experiment, I must add that his poetry seemed to me to be very much the most important part of it. That is to say, I did not find that the manner in which the verse was spoken, or the dramatic production of the successive poems was at all at the same height as Mr. Bottomley's lyric genius.
This is not to suggest that Mr. Bottomley was let down by his performers. On the contrary, the direction of the stage in all respects was clearly stamped by his desire, and may, indeed, be said to have been his own conception. I happen to have taken some part, at Glasgow and elsewhere, in the early days of the movement to which Mr. Bottomley and Mr. Masefield have given so much devotion. And I was perfectly clear in my mind from the first that the enterprise was confronted by two serious dangers. In the first place, the method of verse-speaking that we were recommending, and as to the principles of which nearly all the poets, I suppose, are agreed, might very easily lapse into a wail or a whine ; and, secondly, there was the risk that people who might readily be brought to a proper way in lovely speaking of lyric verse should suppose that they could as readily master the much more complicated business of dramatic performance.
Needless to say, at the Steiner Hall performance, all the vulgar tricks of the old platform reciter had dis- appeared. Throughout there was intelligence, a genuine love of poetry, and the presence of a poet of genius presiding over all. And yet I could not help feeling that not in this way would the poets find salvation in the theatre. The verse was largely spoken either with a high-pitched affectation, or with a dying fall, that were equally devitalizing. The leader of the Chorus gave the beauty of her voice no chance, and took the nature out of herself and the verse that she was speaking. Truly inspired by a zeal for poetry, she was not serving poetry well. Again, the speaker of the Interludes, in which Mr. Bottomley said so much that was challenging, did not challenge us in his somewhat faded suggestion of a Burne-Jones angel. He had a lovely voice, and great feeling for his work, but I cannot think that the production was right. Considering the business that he was about, I should like to have seen him come at us with red hair, a kilt and a claymore. Mr. Bottomley pleads in striking verse that ages have been when poetry made its mark from the stage upon the minds of general audiences. But I am sure that when this was so the poetry was delivered with an onset that was here lacking.
This problem arises even in the speaking of lyric verse either on the platform or at a table, but it arises much more forcibly when the verse is to be spoken in the action of the stage. Moreover, this present experiment, made with all Mr. Bottomley's authority and insight, fails to make good a claim that he advances in an Interlude, where he says (I have not the text in front of me) words to the effect that if dramatic verse is perfectly spoken it is perfectly acted. I see precisely what he means, but I am sure that in practice he is wrong. At least half of the evening's work at the Rudolf Steiner Hall failed of its effect simply because the acting was not good enough. There were one or two admirable performinces, notably that of Mr. Alistair Sim as Joseph in " The Widow," which was a matured piece of sensitive stagecraft, and that of Miss Christabel Ayling in " The Singing Sands," where a striking natural beauty was able to express itself through a simple but adequate technique. On the other hand, the choruses in " The Singing Sands " and " Ardvorlich's Wife," intricate in their verse design, and still more intricate in their dramatic intention, were, for me at least, almost a total loss because of a failure to realize that a right feeling is not enough on the stage without skill. I know Mr. Bottomley's difficulties, having had to face them myself. But it is highly import- ant for everybody concerned that there should be no self-deception here. There is a tendency to suggest that a simple and genuine sense of poetry is in itself sufficient to hold the stage, and that contact with the skill of the professional theatre might contaminate its purity. If the new verse-speaking movement is to extend its range from lyric to theatrical performance, then it must avail itself of the proficiency that is common in the theatre to which it would bring a new beauty. It would be ridiculous and ungenerous to complain that the ladies of Mr. Bottomley's Snow Chorus were not the Russian Ballet, and that the choreography had not been designed by M. Massine. But to think of the Russians is inevitably to realize how infinitely short the performance of these ladies was of what it might have been.
I am loth to seem unappreciative of an enterprise that I know to be so tenderly inspired. Like everyone in the audience who cared for poetry, I wanted the performance to succeed, wanted it to prove Mr. Bottomley's method. And when occasionally such splendid verse as " Don Don Deveron " carried the speakers away into its own natural rhythm, I was carried away too. But, on the whole I could not help feeling that a fine challenge was being made ineffectively, and I think it well that someone who cannot be suspected of any lack of sympathy with the hopes that Mr. Bottomley and Mr. Masefield cherish, should say something about it. I can only hope that I have said it without offence.
JOHN DRINK WATER.
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