|
But
it would not be easy for the twenty-four year-old Harris.
Though he would maintain his influential friendship with Terry, and
though he would, with a letter from educator and critic Barrett
Wendell,[3]
initiate a long-running
acquaintance with Ibsen's proponent and Shaw's personal
friend, William Archer, Harris would remain unable to
sell anything in England other than his translations and
adaptations of German comedies. In the years to
come, Harris would publish numerous short-stories, work
as drama critic for newspapers on both coasts, and
produce over one hundred films, film adaptations, and
plays (among them, his 1940 Broadway hit Johnny
Belinda);
but throughout his stay in England (a stay punctuated by
more successful travels to Paris, Berlin, and Hamburg),
he would find his aspirations obstructed both by his
misapprehension of the direction in which the British
theatre was moving, and by his inability, finally, to
reconcile outmoded dramatic forms with the new demands
being placed upon playwrights and their
work.
Such are the
trials and tribulations, one might say, of most young
apprentices striving for their first break. But
tracing Harris's difficulties through excerpts from his
unpublished letters and illustrations of his early
dramatic work produced for the English stage affords
more than a lackluster characterization of a typical
playwright's struggles. Because of his close
associations with William Archer, Ellen Terry, and
others, we can find in his writing clear indications of
the forces operating in the British theatre at the turn
of the century. Especially intriguing is the
opportunity the letters provide to study Harris's work
in combination both with the criticism he solicited and
an understanding of the historical context in which he
worked. Ultimately, we find that his writing
uniquely informs our perspective regarding the critical
shift from Irving's romantic melodrama to Ibsen and
Shaw's psychological realism--a shift which Harris was
caught in and to which he was finally unable, if not
unwilling, to conform.
The Tea
Pot
On 6 May 1902,
after returning to London from visiting with Ellen Terry
in Stratford-upon-Avon, Harris wrote to his mother of
his determination to learn the art of playwriting on his
own:
I've decided not to try the stage at the
present
time.
Mi/s Terry assured me that Henry Irving's staff
was
filled to the doors, & that she herself was going on
a
protracted rest & could not take me under her wing.
Further[,] the company to which I had access, Mr. F.
R.
Benson's, was not one that I cared particularly to
join,
since Mr Benson, himself, is not a great man,
& because
it would take me away from London just
at a time when
[1/2] I wish most to be here. So
I expect to stay
here, attending the shows, reading
[witticisms] & plays
& writing some every
day, until after the festivities
in June,[4]
&
then go to Paris to begin at French.
Mi/s
Terry, of course, was surrounded most of the
time, & I
had only a chance now & then of
seeing her, or else
something more to my advantage
might have turned up. I
sent her a nice box of
flowers before I left, to keep
my memory green &
fragrant; & in after years when I
have more to
offer I shall approach her again.
(Harris
#31)
Harris would continue to believe that
"there's no better way to become the thorough master of stagecraft
that I hope to be, than to become an actor--temporarily at least"
(Harris #4B); however, without the promise of substantial work with
one of England's premier acting company's, he did not hesitate to
disassociate himself (temporarily, at least) from the protective
cover provided by established professionals. It was a decision
to exercise a freedom of movement that many of his theatrical
forebears did not have. Because of the low regard in which
actors (particularly anonymous ones) were held prior to the turn of
the century, most were forced to keep their own company (Rowell
171). But since the 1830s, the growth of the London suburbs
and improved access to the city had resulted in an influx of more
and wealthier patrons of the theatres (Schmid 9), and this had
combined favorably with actors William Charles Macready's and
Charles Kean's efforts to diminish some of the long-standing
prejudices against the art (Hughes 3). Also, Irving's campaign
for official recognition, begun in the 1870s and complemented by a
positive opinion of the theatre delivered by a Church Congress in
1878 (Schmid 9), contributed significantly to public acceptance of
the acting profession (Rowell 171). Furthermore, as their
ranks swelled, actors were less frequently treated like "social and
artistic outcast[s]" (Sanderson 11): their numbers jumped from more
than 4500 in 1881 to over
12,000 by 1900, and by 1895
almost one half had attended a university
(Sanderson 12-15).
This is not to
suggest that Harris did not have to defend himself
from suspicions that he was allying himself with a
profession which "predisposed" its members "to a
life of self-indulgence encouraging 'lax
principles' and 'complaisant tolerance' of a low
morality" (Sanderson 11). Since some in the
more conservative population (including Harris's
mother, a devout Christian Scientist and wife of a
Protestant lay-minister) still imagined that
actors catered to the prurient interests of
society, and that the theatre "was a place of evil
and frivolity, anathema to a true believer"
(Sanderson 24), Harris was compelled to address
"whether I think it possible for an actress or an
actor to be good" (Harris #41):
I have met a good many of them since leaving
home &
some have been representative
performers; but I can
say] of them that
they are only human--which tells most
of
the story. Their work makes them familiar
with all
sides of life; they barter in
emotions as business men
do in oil
stocks, & become to a certain extent
careless
of what ordinary people
consider serious matters, but
one has
only to dip to the bottom of the pool of
indul-
gence to discover after all what
a shallow place it is,
& in their
hearts actors as well as other people
prefer
to lead exemplary lives merely
because they <hav> are
happiest
when doing so. When I say exemplary I do
not
mean necessarily lives of total
abstinence. You know,
I don't give
a cent for the virtue of the innocent;
the
man who is truly worthy is he who
[3/4] does right
knowing what is wrong.
. . . Now, there is a class
of
people in the world to which part of
the actors belong,
a class to which all
grades of society subscribe, . . .
&
among this class of people you find those who go
to
the extreme in the indulgence of
their natural impul-
ses. I have
met actresses of this kind; I have met
people in respectable society who were no better;
but I
have also met people of both
classes who knew when to
stop.
[4/5] So don't be prejudiced
against actors as a
class; there are
among them both good & bad.
(Harris
#41)
Though palliating
lingering suspicions like his mother's was perhaps
less difficult than it had been--at the turn of
the century Harris and his contemporaries might
even mingle with "polite" society--finding the
facilities to advance their instruction was not as
easy. Prior to the 1900s, merely a few
acting companies and a number of individual tutors
(often retired actors) provided expensive training
for affluent children, and some London colleges
(especially music schools) offered education
emphasizing elocution (Sanderson 32-8). With
such limited resources available to him, it is
understandable that Harris felt in early 1902 that
he must "cast about for an elocution teacher, a
fencing master & other tutors who will make my
début in theatricals something more than that of a
novice" (Harris #4B).
The deficit was being
made up quickly, however. Because of
increasing attendance and decreasing prejudice,
more theatres were being built and existing
theatres were being modified to accommodate
demands for comfort (Rowell 171-2). By 1900,
London contained almost 75 licensed theatres and
over 415 music halls (Hughes 2), and this
competition resulted in reduced prices for
admission (Rowell 172), increased profits, and
higher wages and improved conditions for actors
(Hughes 2).
Despite his apparent declaration of
independence, however, Harris was quick to admit
that "coming as I have in such a hurry without
knowing the conditions has been a great setback
for me, & it will take some time to get
settled in the trees" (Harris #32). He was
not so foolhardy as to sever contact with Terry,
nor was he arrogant enough to believe he would
succeed at his craft without others' encouragement
and intervention. Though the reputation of
and accessibility to the increasing number of
English playhouses and their adherents were
improving rapidly by 1902, attracting another's
patronage, even when it came from within one's
caste, was almost a necessary antecedent to
gaining access to the stage. Apprentice
actors and playwrights more often than not had to
defer to the Victorian theatre's star system and
to the beneficence of powerful actor-managers like
Sir Henry Irving, Sir Charles Wyndham, and F. R.
Benson (Bingham 261).
It is not surprising,
therefore, that Harris initially desired to ally
himself with Irving and Terry, who were widely
acknowledged as the leaders of the British stage
(Hughes 3). Irving, especially, had been
responsible for contributing to the improved
reputation of the theatre and to the quality of
its productions. For example, he mirrored
other "modern" theatre manager's derision toward
ballad-operas, foreign burlesques, and
extravaganzas (Sanderson 24), and concentrated
instead on providing a repertory of "so-called
realistic melodramas" (Schmid 17). Unlike
other managers, however, Irving spared no expense
producing his spectacularly picturesque plays, and
his romantic interpretations of Shakespeare
appealed especially with unprecedented success to
his audiences' increasing desire for serious drama
(Schmid 17). As an actor, he spent much time
perfecting nuances in his movement, expression,
and articulation; as a director, he drilled his
supporting cast with his interpretations of their
roles (Donaldson 83-4), sometimes rehearsing up to
ten weeks (Rowell 35); and as a producer, he spent
remarkable sums of money both to recreate with
meticulous archaeological accuracy elaborate
costumes and multi-level settings, and to develop
new music and lighting techniques to emphasize
themes, beauty, and moods (Hughes 16-7). He
was a perfectionist who demanded that his cast and
crew recreate his conception of every part, every
tone of voice, and every scene before opening
night (Bingham 159).
None of this was lost on Harris, whose attendance at Irving's
production of Victorien Sardou's Dante
in
May, 1903, inspired this romantic reflection:
[T]hey had a clock, an ancient
time-piece, tall, bulky,
which had
instead of a pendulum a life-size figure
of
father Time swinging his scythe with
the ticking of the
mechanism. I
thought as I watched the [1/2] neverend-
ing flight of the precious minutes, what a
ghastly, yet
how efficient an
inspiration it would be always to have
such a reminder, such an admonition ticking at
one's
elbow. There is something so
melancholy, so sadly
sweet in the
inevitable <fit> toning of the
seconds
from the ever revealing &
unknown future, their audible
&
mechanical burst upon the ear, the eye, &
their swift
passage into oblivion. . .
. (Harris #83)
Nor was Harris oblivious
to the current demand for historical accuracy, as
his comments on the displays at the Kensington
Museum suggest: "It's a splendid place to go if
one desires to study the furniture & costuming
of any period, for instance in preparing a play
for staging, & I am very glad to become
acquainted with resources for such information"
(Harris #27).
With his emphasis on innovation,
Irving had, even before Harris's arrival, helped
prepare the theatre for more sweeping change: the
movement from melodramatic spectacles produced by
powerful actor-managers like Irving to
intellectual plays characterized by "ensemble
acting, realistic settings, [and] contemporary
themes" (Rowell 171). But Irving was not
seduced by the increasingly excited murmurs
emanating from playhouses like the Novelty
Theatre, where Ibsen's A Doll's
House premiered on 7 June 1889, or from the
Independent Theatre, where Shaw's Widowers'
Houses premiered in December, 1892. Though
neither his 1902 offerings (William Gorman Will's
Faust [1885] and
Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice) nor his Autumn
tour of the provinces met production costs, his
acting and managerial methods and philosophies
were still attractive, still in demand. And
despite Ibsen's and Shaw's increasing appeal, the
attending public was unprepared to renounce
wholesale the numerous elaborate melodramas
offered elsewhere. As Harris's excited
recount of a 22 April 1902 production of
Ben
Hur
clearly demonstrates, the verisimilitude of
spectacle still retained a strong
attraction:
It was a marvelous
production. The scenery &
costumes
were the most elaborate I have
yet seen; & the camels
which
<you> came swinging on gave [7/8] to the
piece a
touch of genuine reality.
The chariot race of course
was the
event. There were, I believe, six
contestants
each with four
horses abreast. The horses galloped
at
full speed under the falling lashes
& yellings of the
drivers, the
stage under them being made to fly
beneath
<them> their feet after
the manner of a treadmill. The
scenery representing the crowd in the arena
revolved at
the rear of the stage; so,
while the horses moved very
little
relatively to the audience they were going
at
full speed & looked it.
Gradually the steeds of Ben
Hur forged
ahead, & his wheels catching those of
his
rival's tore them from the hubs,
& the disabled chariot
was dragged
through the arena. The crowd went mad.
The scene where Ben Hur's mother
& sister are healed of
leprosy by
Christ was given, without Christ
himself
appearing on the stage; but
while the spectacle was
impressive it
was rather flat to me, being so poorly
devised. The general opinion of the press
was that the
whole scene was a
mistake. There is something in
the
hallelujahs & the bright
light, which shines from the
wings
upon the kneeling multitude, which seems
revolt-
ing, sacrilegious; & the
English people didn't like it.
(Harris
#29)
Significantly, Harris's sensitivity to
critical opinion contrasted with Irving's, who
had little regard both for new plays like
Ibsen's and for the critics who praised
them. By 1902, Irving was relying almost
exclusively on a repertory of revivals--much to
the dismay of George Bernard Shaw, it should be
pointed out, who imagined that Irving (who
referred to him as "Mr. Pshaw") was perfectly
situated (though he stubbornly refused) to mount
more modern works (Shaw, Pen
Portraits, 146; see also Postlewait 173).
Such inflexibility was not, in the critics'
opinions, becoming of someone so powerful.
Thus, Irving became an ideal, perhaps even a
preferred, target, especially for those
interested in taking advantage of the changing
attitudes toward the theatre which, ironically,
Irving's success helped promote. As one
critic has suggested, "theatrical reform must
precede dramatic development" (Rowell 5)--and
for William Archer, drama critic for
The World, and George
Bernard Shaw, playwright and critic for
The Saturday Review, Irving's
influence created ample opportunity for the
development of a more realistic form of
drama.
Certainly Harris was aware of this
changing sentiment toward Irving. His
decision to pursue a friendship with Terry
rather than with the actor-manager, his attempt
to identify himself both as a "New Man"
proficient in "the tendency of the Modern drama"
and as a "friend & admirer" of Shaw (Chapman
#1A), and his excitement at Barrett Wendell's
enclosure of a letter of introduction to William
Archer, "undoubtedly the greatest living critic
of the drama" (Harris #37), all suggest that
Harris preferred to ally himself not merely with
famous and powerful names, but with what he
considered the avaunt garde.
To attempt an
alliance with William Archer was particularly
astute of Harris. Though his drama reviews
for various papers including the Pall Mall
Gazette and The World had arguably
established Archer as England's preeminent
critic (Beerbohm 44), he was also renowned, as
Harris points out, for having "done more to
familiarize the English reading public with the
great Norwe<i>gian dramatist than any
other living man" (Harris #36). Indeed,
since his discovery in 1873 of Ibsen's
Emperor and Galilean, Archer had
assumed the role as translator and editor of
Ibsen's plays, and thereafter considered this
work "one of the chief labours [and] . . . one
of the greatest privileges" of his life (qtd. in
Archer, C. 286). By the time of his death
in 1924, Archer had not only written almost 200
reviews and essays on Ibsen but he had
translated almost all of his work, and he had
even produced and directed several of his plays
(Postlewait 4).
Of greatest importance to an
aspiring playwright like Harris, however, was
the expectation that Archer would inculcate him
with the precepts for achieving success.
For a young man awed by the romantic vision of
Father Time in Dante
and by the spectacle of Ben
Hur, however, we might expect that Archer's
message would be a difficult one. For
instance, Archer was attracted to Ibsen because,
in addition to admiring his poetically creative
intelligence, he believed that the playwright's
realistic dialogues "stimulate thought" by
"destroying conventional lies and exorcising the
'ghosts' of dead truths" (qtd. in Postlewait
19). Archer believed Ibsen's plays force
our consideration of "truth and falsehood, of
justice and injustice, [which are] necessary to
humanise the character and the situation" (qtd.
in Postlewait 18). But to Archer, Ibsen's
plays were not overtly didactic, resolving
themselves by
"turning on points
of casuistry, questions of right and wrong"
(Archer, W., Study and Stage 194).
Instead, like Ibsen's A Doll's
House, they "make people thoroughly realise
the problem, [without forcing] upon them the
particular solution arrived at in this
particular case" (qtd. in Postlewait 17).
To Archer, a successful playwright "has
stimulated thought; he has not tried to lay down
a hard-and-fast rule of conduct" (qtd. in
Postlewait 19).
Fulfilling this goal was less
possible, Archer believed, within the kind of
production Irving preferred, which compromised
realism to melodramatic exaggeration and
implausibility (Schmid 47). With his
flamboyant characters and extravagant
stagecraft, Irving attempted to represent truth
and beauty in order to create "a beautiful and
pleasing effect" (Rowell 36) which might elevate
the national morality (qtd. in Sanderson
16). Archer, however, advocated
rationalism, naturalism, and a mimetic theatre
which avoided "falsehood, distortion, and pose"
as it interpreted psychological truth and
natural beauty (Schmid 44-6). Predictably,
Irving's productions did not ordinarily compare
well in Archer's mind to plays like Ibsen's
A
Doll's House, with its
"tastefully but not expensively furnished" set
(Fjelde 43), and Nora's subtly played social
awakening (Fjelde xxiii). If a play did
not encourage intellectual appreciation, if it
ended, like most melodrama, neatly or
coincidentally, or if it distracted the
spectator with pageantry (as impressive as it
might be), then it violated the criteria
defining praiseworthy realism (Schmid
46-9).
Archer's disappointment with Irving
was shared by his colleague, George Bernard
Shaw, whom he first met in 1882, one year prior
to the publication of Archer's unflattering
analysis, Henry Irving: Actor and Manager: A
Critical Study. There is
no evidence that Harris ever met or conferred
with the playwright, but it is important to
point out both that Shaw was similarly impatient
with fashionable melodrama and actor-managers
who relied on proven, profitable repertories,
and that his opinions, often more vehemently
expressed than Archer's, were just as
influential in determining the fate of the
Victorian theatre. In his preface to
Plays: Pleasant and
Unpleasant, for example,
Shaw complains, "The existing popular drama of
the day is quite out of the question for
cultivated people who are accustomed to use
their brains" (I: x). Shaw believed that
the theatre was largely controlled by
actor-managers who, avoiding the controversy and
risk inherent in staging modern realistic plays,
bowed instead to public taste and to their own
"growing Conservatism" (Shaw, Plays
II: xi-xii). And in Shaw's mind,
Irving, whom he accused of buying new plays to
forestall their production (Shaw, Pen Portraits
24-5), represented the penultimate of
these powerful conservative forces (Bingham
261).
Though Shaw believed that the theatre
was a potentially influential social organ
capable of humanizing its patrons (Donaldson
66), he was perhaps more vocal than Archer in
promoting this change at Irving's expense.
His reviews of Irving's performances, in
addition to earning him the distinction as the
actor's harshest critic (Rowell 104; Bingham
267), usually accentuated Irving's membership in
the romantic old school (Donaldson 66).
Properly, good plays illuminate truth by
"forc[ing] the spectator to face unpleasant
facts" (Shaw, Plays
I: xxv); and to Shaw, Irving's productions
were stale spectacles full of "false morality,
sensationalism, artificiality, and hackneyed
conventionality" (Greenfield
256).
Ultimately, Shaw considered Irving a
great, albeit wasted, talent who clung to
traditional Shakespeare in lieu of further
reforming the theatre through Ibsen's modern
realism (Greenfield 256-7; see also St. John
xxiv). Like Archer, he praised the actor
for garnering respect for his profession (Shaw,
Pen Portraits 165-8), and as late as 1896, Shaw
even solicited Irving to produce a play of his,
A
Man of Destiny, though to no
avail (Bingham 273-4). But both he and
Archer knew Irving was opposed to realistic
drama, and Shaw, prevented by his commitment to
theatrical reform from complimenting more than
the actor-manager's sets and emotive prowess,
strongly derided Irving's distracting mannerisms
and profligacy (Bingham 267).
It is important
to add that Archer's and Shaw's mutual interest
in promoting the realistic exploration of social
issues in the theatre resulted not only in Shaw
filling in for Archer as drama critic when
Archer's intimate involvement with Ibsen's
productions would have otherwise compromised his
objectivity but in collaboration on Rhinegold, a
play Shaw later produced as Widowers'
Houses, and in frequent discussions and
correspondence regarding the theatre (Archer, C.
136; Postlewait 4; Shaw, Collected
Letters, 154). Furthermore, while both men
were endeavoring to influence the direction of
the British Theatre, Shaw was engaging Terry in
correspondence that flattered her abilities,
prodded her to act in more modern work, and
criticized her for her "sterilizing" association
with Irving (Bingham 269; St. John xxv).
Not suprisingly, in 1903 Terry would produce
Ibsen's The Vikings (Ruoff
1005).
It was into this volatile milieu that
Harris cast his first attempts at playwriting:
Irving was in decline, though an audience
remained for romantic melodrama and spectacle;
Archer's and Shaw's more realistic productions
were attracting wider audiences; and after
twenty-four years, Terry was striking out on her
own. It is interesting to discover,
therefore, that in practice, Harris's writing
and the advice he received from Archer and Terry
indicates that his strongest alliances were not
with the "New Drama" at all, and that his
correspondence recreates on a smaller scale the
very battle that Archer and Shaw were engaged in
against Sir Henry Irving and the Romantics.
|
Tempesta
Prior to
leaving for London, Harris spent most March,
1902, working on a tentatively titled one-act
play, Pandita's Birthday, for actor
Robert Edeson,[5]
who had supplied the story idea with
the hope that Harris might create something
worthy of production (Harris #25). In late
March, however, Harris writes, "Edeson returned
my play, saying my light comedy was good but my
serious work, as I expected, was not so
fine. He told me just what he wanted and
thinks I can do it, so I'm to take the play to
London to finish and return him the changed
copy. I am to own the rights in England"
(Harris #20). After another week or so of
revision, Harris completed his "maiden effort"
in London on 12 April 1902.
The one-act play
is set in London and tells the story of
Tempesta, a poor, displaced Italian banana
vendor who is employed by a romantic painter,
Paul, to pose as a brigand for a portrait
intended as a birthday present for Paul's
fiancée, Pandita. While he is painting,
Paul describes his love for Pandita, and
Tempesta sketches a story about his painful
separation from his wife and daughter during a
political upheaval in Italy. When Pandita
arrives with her father (Mr. Wall, a rich
American who argues that his future son-in-law
work for him at a more respectable job),
Tempesta discovers that Pandita is his daughter
and that her "father" is in fact the American
who betrayed him to the Italian government
fifteen years ago. Rather than reclaim his
daughter immediately, however, he corners Wall
and, to his surprise, learns that the American
patiently cared for his wife and daughter until
Tempesta was presumed dead. Following
Wall's pragmatic advice that he could not
provide for Pandita if he reclaimed her,
Tempesta queries Pandita about the strength of
her love for her father and fiancé, and decides
that he cannot disrupt her happiness.
Heartbroken, he "staggers" toward the door with
a painting of his wife which Pandita has given
him.
Harris was undoubtedly excited about the
play's prospects, believing it to be an accurate
reflection of contemporary artistic
preferences:
The interest lies mainly
in the acting. It approaches
almost to pantomime--the story being boiled down
to
merely suggestion. This is
the kind of thing which is
being used
today on the stage, & I think it is
much
nearer what art should be than
the plays we have been
used to, plays
filled with long speeches & dreary
miles
of dialogue. (Harris
#25)
Interestingly, Harris characterizes his
work as "pantomime," by which he probably means
expressionism, though the play lacks the
requisite psychological depth. In fact,
his characters are rather thinly drawn, and
because the work revolves on coincidence and on
strong appeals both to sentiment and to a moral
universe of dichotomized concepts of right and
wrong, the work might be more appropriately
labeled a romantic melodrama.
Though he seemed unaware of his play's affinity with an
established tradition in drama, Harris sent copies to Edeson
and Ralph Gibbs in the United States,[6]
and solicited the advice of William
Archer and actor-managers Sir Charles Wyndham
and Edward Terry. And the first word he
received was very encouraging indeed: on 28 May
1902, he transcribed an excerpt from the New
York Journal which reports that "For the benefit
of Mrs. Lester Wallack, to be given at Wallack's
Theatre, May 22, Robert Edeson has volunteered
to present for the first time on any stage a new
one-act play by Elmer B. Harris, called
'Tempesta'" (Harris #33A).
Harris modestly,
and prematurely, claimed that "these are only
trifles" (Harris #33A). Sir Charles
Wyndham's response was certainly less
enthusiastic, and Edward Terry complained that
his work was "too typically American to be
understood by an British playgoing public"
(Harris #37). Without waiting for a reply
from Archer, Harris announced that the reviews
"made London seem dirtier, hotter, &
generally more disagreeable than before, & I
want to get away from it" (Harris #37).
It is
telling that Harris fled to France. There
he could more freely indulge his first love,
comedy. In England he had been engaged in
a "Study of English Comedy" (Harris #38), but
more than once he complained of "a certain
unromantic, phlegmatic quality in the
Englishman's make[-]up" (Harris #28). Of
the comedy on the English stage, he
adds:
The humor at the playhouses,
also, tends to strengthen
this opinion
of mine. It is the humor of
pantomime;
there are no puns--no wit,
practically, speaking: it is
the fun
of comic situation. It is proverbial among
us
Americans that the Englander is
slow to see a joke. It
is because our jokes are witty; the humor
is in words
rather than in
sense. It is true; the
Engl<a>ishman
looks at you in
dumb stupefaction, <while> after
you
have struck him with a shaft of
wit, while <this> his
cumbersome
mind is jumping the track. You see, wit
is
the jumping of the mental track
& pursuing some un-
thought,
unusual <track> direction; & the
resemblance
of the scenery on all
sides makes the fun. (Harris
#28)
In France, however, he found a
theatre still sympathetic to romantic influences, partly
because of Benoit Constant Coquelin, "the original Cyrano de
Bergerac and France's most prominent actor" (Harris #40).[7]
And to his
delight, Harris was hired to play a small role
in Coquelin's company (Harris #45B): "I walk on,
hold a spear, likewise my tongue--& get
nothing for it, save the pleasure of being under
Coquelin's direction" (Harris #49). From
mid-July 1902 until mid-May 1903, Harris
attended rehearsals and repeatedly claimed, "I
don't know just what the future has for me but
I'm in the best dramatic school on Earth"
(Harris #50).
Harris did not give up,
however, on writing more "serious" drama while
on the Continent. But he could not seem to
match Archer's demands for naturalistic
detail. In response to his request that
Archer lend an opinion about Tempesta
, for example,
Harris reports:
Well, he lent it, but
it wasn't much. Only that my
play didn't amount to any great shucks &
that I needed
to live longer &
learn more of the life I was trying to
discuss. I knew all that before. He
did compliment me
on my
dialogue. But the gist of it is that I am
going
to stop trying to write until I
have some really good
the[.]me to
write about. In other words I'm going
to
live. (Harris #49)
But
Harris's discouragement was only
temporary. After setting
Tempesta
aside, he
announced on 19 October 1902 the commencement of a new play
about an aspiring opera singer who can win back her rich,
adulterous husband only after her uncle provides the
professional break she needs (Harris #52). That same
week, Harris reported that he had begun collaborating on yet
another play with Harold Symmes, a former classmate completing
graduate work in Paris.[8]
It was
on this third play, first titled Family
Debts, then Bad
Debts, and finally The
Crucifixion, that Harris
placed his highest hopes. Like his other
work, The Crucifixion
is romantic
melodrama, relying on coincidences for its
resolution and attacks on the characters'
sensibility for its appeal: a father humiliated
by a former marriage to an adulterous woman from
a lower class compels his son to marry a woman
chosen for him, but the son loves a milkmaid and
marries her anyway. The father disinherits
the son, but the father's former wife appears
suddenly to plead the son's case, and the son's
inheritance is restored. There are, Harris
writes, "a host of incidents, of twists &
turns in the development" (Harris #69).
Furthermore, "there's no villain in it save God
himself who, as Matthew Arnold says, exists
within us, though not ourselves, & works for
righteousness" (Harris #69).
Unsurprisingly, Harris completes this summary of
his dramatic technique with an optimistic avowal
of the power of plays to create a "beautiful and
pleasing effect":
I prefer the
cheerful ending. I prefer the
cheerful
things in life.
Everything is not cheerful, we all
know; but we all know, too, enough of the
[.]severely
uncheerful things to pass
them over without too close
inspection
save as possible results. If I write
any-
thing I wish to make people
<per> think, I wish to make
them
smile & weep, but I wish above all to send
them
home happy. I wish, in
short, to give preference to
the
bright side of this two-sided existence which
shows
to so many of us only the dark
side. (Harris #52)
In many
ways, Harris's preferences for melodramatic
spectacle and ideas whose appeal is primarily
(and popularly) emotional rather than
intellectual mind mirrored those of
Irving. And like Irving, responses to his
work were frequently mixed, and usually
negative. For example, one of the first
reviews of The Crucifixion
came from a
man
named Carnes, a
fellow American playwright visiting Paris:[9]
He thought the first act
exceedingly strong & well done
& began at once talking over the adaptation
<to> in
French. After the
second act, however, the author
backed
down, criticising my drawing of the
heroine,
admiring the [.] character,
yet doubting the truth of
the
development. . . . He disliked, too,
certain phi-
losophical discussions
[3/4] which I had introduced,
saying
that they were not sufficiently identified
with
the [actors or action]. I
was bound to agree in this
point. Most of all, he disliked the
ending, saying it
was the most
horrible of anything he had ever seen,
heard, or thought; too horrible, in fact, even
for a
French audience. However,
he wished to hear Archer's
opinion on
this. . . . So, while not at all
discour-
aged with <by> his
verdict I have brought the play to
London & hope to [4/5] read it to Archer
sometime
this week. (Harris
#83)
Harris's ability to perceive such harsh
criticism optimistically combined with two
favorable responses from Symmes and from a
friend of Coquelin's to dispel any hesitation
there might otherwise have been in the young
playwright's mind to submit the work to Archer
for his appraisal (Harris #83). Indeed,
Harris's enthusiasm for this work was so great
that he imagined that even if Archer agreed with
Carnes's analysis, he wouldn't change a thing:
"I won't change that part of it even for
Archer. The conclusion is logical, &
it appears just as I like it, just as I think
it, & I am sure the punishment the boy
measures out to his father is just what the old
man, the old butch[,] deserves" (Harris
#83). And when Archer sent word to Harris
that he had found the play "interesting" and
wished to discuss it, Harris exulted, "I think I
see a London production of The Crucifixion
not far off!" (Harris #84).
Harris's description of his first audience with
Archer magnifies this excitement even more:
He has nothing excepting
<f[.]> praise for it.
Naturally
there are changes, but they are such as
I
know would inevitably arise.
But he thought the theme
[16/17] too
delicate & the development too sombre
for
an English audience. He has
urged me, however, to
offer it to some
of the managers & has promised to
speak to the president of the Stage Society,
which is
an institution devoted to new
ideas in play-form. So I
shall
follow his advice in this respect. Of
course I
know the subject & they
way I have handled it were
[17/18]
altogether <[....]> too horrible for a
"popular
success," but something may
be done with it by lighten-
ing the
tone. At all events I am delighted with
the
praise he gave me, & feel
quite encouraged to go on.
He thinks I should hurry with my German
& Italian &
return to America
as soon as possible to mingle with
life & devote myself to the problems I shall
find
there. . . . (Harris
#84)
Part of what makes this letter
interesting is not only that it effectively
characterizes Harris's pleasure at receiving
approbation from the famous critic but that it
hints at Archer's emphasis on naturalism, and on
experiencing life before attempting explorations
of complex themes. It was not advice that
Harris was prepared to accept, however.
With Archer's encouragement backing him, Harris
imagined that the Stage Society could not fail
to produce his play (Harris #90). Also,
when Harris sent a copy of the manuscript to
Terry, he did so fully expecting that she who
echo Archer's praise (Harris #86).
But Terry's response, like Archer's, was
mixed. Though she had read only a portion
of The Crucifixion, she was able
to pronounce that "she thought it was
'tremendous!'--but unactable on account of its
sombreness" (Harris #86). And when she
finished the play, she "pronounced it great! but
too <reisky> risky for a woman of her age
& poverty
|
to try. Not
the [1/2] kind of play people like--that is to
say (this is from me, not Ellen) not
sufficiently namby-pamby" (Harris #89). In
the end, Archer, who had warned Harris "not to
be too hopeful" (Harris #91), Terry, and the
Stage Society all refused to produce Harris's
play. Harris was heartbroken, and it was
with bitterness that he wrote to his mother, "I
will send you a copy of the piece by registered
post, so that you can see the kind of play which
has wrung from all who have read it words of
praise & commendation, but which<, at the
same time,> was too new, too original, too
unstagey for London!" (Harris #93).
But Harris's play was neither conceptually
new nor original. It was, as Archer
commented, "too delicate," "too sombre," too
sentimental. In the opinion of those
promoting change in England, romantic melodrama
was no longer preferred.
Nevertheless, it was after Harris's subsequent
move to Germany in
July, 1903, that he finally received the
approbation he sought from Rudolph Schildkraut,
who produced Tempesta
at Hamburg's Schlauspielhaus in
early 1904. It was a limited success, however, and
Harris's low income soon pressed him into working with
Bertha Pogson on translating German plays and adapting
them for the British stage.[10]
Ironically, upon returning from Germany in May, 1904,
and informing Archer of his work, Archer
provided some of his most valuable and revealing
advice:
He does not believe in the
cosmopolitan drama any more
than in
the cosmopolitan man. We had a long
discussion
over it, & he rather
inclined towards my side
<[.....]>
of the end.
However he is right, & I feel that
home
life is what I must plunge into
soon. I told him the
story of my new German play [Under
Treatment] & he said
he couldn't,
being an Englishman, judge of its
merits.
And so with all my work.
Ultimately I must depict
American life
& the sooner I get at it the better.
He
does not deny the advantages of the
training I am
having, but simply says
that Europe is a schoolroom not
a
workshop. . . . He does not encourage me
in this
work of adapting foreign
plays. Translations are dif-
ferent. They are real presentations of new
ideas. But
adaptations are
neither <new> presentations of
new
ideas nor, like original plays,
new presentations of
the old.
Therefore away with them. This, however,
is
only said on principle. He
had no argument to pit
against mine
when I told him I need the money!
(Harris
#130)
Discouraged by his inability
to produce any of his work in England, Harris
would indeed soon return to America to cultivate experiences within
a familiar milieu (Harris #134). His preference as a
playwright, however, would continue to be romantic melodrama
despite the proponents of Modern Drama's
insistence on the exploration of realistic social
and psychological issues, and despite his
own advocacy of and experimentation with
these issues in subsequent plays, film,
and publications. Harris would spend
his time in England caught, finally, between conflicting
impulses to ally himself with theatrical
change and to exploit proven convention--and in
the end he would, like Irving, find himself perpetually challenged
by the conflicting impulse of producing
work for an increasingly sophisticated
audience and personally acceeding to the proven
conventions of
melodrama.
Endnotes
Works
Cited
Back to
Bibliography and Scholarship
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