Naturalism and Revolt in the Theatre

Irish Jesuit Province

Naturalism and Revolt in the TheatreReview by: Gabriel FallonThe Irish Monthly, Vol. 65, No. 770 (Aug., 1937), pp. 542-547Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20514173 .

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542

Sitting at the Play.

Naturalism and Revolt in the Theatre

By GABRIEL FALLON.

N rATURALISM has degraded the stage-it has banished everything that is truly of the theatre, and destroyed the whole scheme on which its existence depends."

That was written by a dramatic critic in 1902. It is just as apt thirty-five years after. Naturalism is still degrading the stage.

The feeble escapes from it which are attempted now and then by courageous producers, by lonely and heroic playwrights simply serve to focus our attention on the fact that naturalism is our theatre's commonplace.

" This naturalism," said Valery Briussov, " thinks it is fixl filling its mission when everything on the stage is in as perfect correspondence with actuality as it is possible to make it. The actors take pains to talk exactly as men talk in taverns, the scenic artists give us pictures that are exact copies from nature, and the costumes are doubtless the result of archwological research. Yet, when all is said and done, there are certain things which this particular theatre cannot reproduce. The most careful imitation of nature must always remain imperfect: there is little real differ ence between Stanislavsky's device for imitating the sound of

falling rain and the primitive labels exhibited on the stage in Shakespeare's day. Scenery can never be anything but a sign post to serve as a guide for the imagination. When a storm has



NA TURALISM AND REVOLT IN TIE THEATRE 543

to be represented on the stage the howling of the wind "off"

aind the visible swaying of the property trees are of far less imnport ance than that the actor should comport himself as a man over taken by a storm would do. Consequently it would be wiser to Forego such elaborate imitation and employ only such surround ings as do not distract the attention of the public from the actor."

Naturalism in the theatre came to fuill growth in the days of the despondent sociologist. The old actor, the full-blooded fellow who could speak a Shakespearean soliloq(uy foir the verse that it 'is instead of mincing it into a palli(d prose, houiind hiinself out of office, his occupation taken by the iiutitattors of tavern speech and

(irawing-room drawl, the actors witlh the trule-to-life accents,, 'Twas well: the new actor fitted the play as p)erfec(tly as the play

fitted the actor. The inexorable law of thc thieatre was at work.

'rhe third A was quickly found and thic new aiudincec clamnoured for the new actor in the new true-to-lil e )lay. Arnd weren't our

Victorians and Edwardians pleased ! 1'They sai(1 : " This is the tlheatre for us." Perhaps it was; perhaps they deserved no better. ltut in their time the fungus of naturalisin spread. T'here was reaction, of course, small and extreme at first, in time increasing in size and sense. And to-day there is a whlolesome feeling abroad tthat all is not well with the theatre, that the theatre is not life, that naturalism is wrong, that the theatre is, and must remain, the theatre.

Says W. B. Yeats in his preface to A Full Moon in March: I came to the conclusion that prose dialoguie is as unpopular

atnong my studious friends as dialogue in verse among actors and

playgoers." I once asked a friend, a man with a keen apprecia tion of drama, why he so strangely never vent to the theatre.

* Why should I," he said, "w hen I can sit by the fire and rea Shakespeare. Better to be blessed at home than to be bored atbroad." A dramatic critic, Hubert Griffith, writing in The



514 THE IRISH MONTHLY

Observer on May 9th, 1937, lamented: " London is hailing Coronation Week with half-a-dozen light comedies, and very nearly a round dowen of crook plays, but of plays with any deeper or more imaginative content-not a trace! " One would imagine that William Shakespeare had never existed, that a play like

Henry V had never been penned. Yes, even to the depths of half-a-dozen light comedies, and a round dozen of crook plays deeper still-has this naturalism dragged the theatre.

Ludwig Lewisohn, w%riting on the renaissance of the Drama in a foreword to Reinhardt's production of The Eternal Road, says: " For the past seventy-five years the theatre has been by and large realistic. That is to say, it has employed the symnbols of observed reality, rather than those of dreanm or vision, and has sought to produce the illusion of life itself.... If the draina, if the theatre is to have a new birth it will reInemnber the religious festivals from which it arose and re-arose; once more the back drop of the stage will be eternity; once more the playwright will speak from a mount of vision and not from rooms or mines or docks. "

" Excellent!" you may say. But a word of warning. There is a strange tendency abroad to label things nowadays. It is a fashion amongst the revolutionists in the theatre to call the old naturalistic theatre " the bourgeois theatre," and again, " the so-called proletarian theatre," and to suggest that to be a revolu tionist in drama one must inevitably step in with every movement of the left-hand file. Even the gentleman whonm I have juist quoted felt (for all his fair opinions) that he must needs refer to

Wagner as a man with " a small spiteful, ugly mind-t/ie mind of a stage-struck Fascist". The fact that in the very next sentence he describes the mnusician as an " incomparable old

magician who knew everytlhing, and was a towering genius in addition " makes his whole reference rather ludicrous. But the



NAITURALISM AND REVOLT IN THE T"HEA'tRE 545

phrase " mind of a stage-struck Fascist " irks. The truth is (I

beg your pardon for dragging this in) that the disciples of Marx are ready-far more ready than we are-to take advantage of this

theatre revolt. They realise-far more deeply than we do-how powerful a force the theatre is. And (if we are foolish enough to

let them) they will turn its heaviest guns against us. This is not

scaremongering. It is not a part of that panic which impels people to-day to cry Communist " to the man who happens to use the word " social "or " Fascist " to a known member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. It is simply the sad sober truth.

* * *

'the " stylistic theatre, the first extreme reaction in the revolt against naturalism began by laying an overbalanced stress on the purely decorative side of the theatre. It ended. by making the actor altogether superfluous. It became a theatre for

marionettes. Naturally as soon as the " stylistic " theatre felt that it had outgrown the second A-the actor-its doom was sealed. The old law of the theatre asserted itself. The

cc stylistic " theatre decoratively died. Now while the theatre in this country-that Anglo-Irish

dramatic movement which will ever be but a pale reflection of its English mother-was overgrown by the weed of naturalism, " stylism " left it untouched. And it is significant that the

Anglo-Irish theatre that might have been-the theatre of the Fays and their players-the Allgoods, the O'Neills, the Sinclairs,

broke and fled just at the moment when naturalism had firmly struck its roots into Abbey soil. They were the last, or almost the last actors of our time. Their work as actors stands out phenomenally on the English stage to-day. As for the rest, in plays and playing it has been naturalism all the way.

We are striving-desperately striving-to build up a theatre of our own, a theatre in our own language. But how? By



546 THE IRISH MONTHLY

using this old out-worn naturalistic Anglo-Irish theatre as our model, a theatre which is even far more awry as a theatre than it

is as. a national institution. We seem to be incapable of looking anywhere but across our eastern coastline or back farther than the day before yesterday.

* * *

The salvation of the theatre lies in the return of verse dramatic verse, the return of the theatre to the theatre, in its highest, its most unnaturalistic form. Even to-day, after many years of the worst form of naturalism, it is an easy matter to find an audience for dramatic verse. Try Shakespeare. But remem ber this : it is not so easy to find an actor. Actors will have to be trained. Mr. Yeats has spoken of the reluctance of the actor the naturalistic actor-to speak dramatic verse. To give the poor fellow his due, his reluctance probably arises from a consciousness of his inability to speak it. As for your scenery and effects so loved of the naturalistic theatre, open King Lear, Act 3, Scene 1, and read this:

A HEATH.

Storm still. Enter Kent and a Gentleman, meeting.

KENT: Who's there, besides foul weather? GENT: One minded like the weather, most unquietly. KENT: I know you. Where's the king? GENT: Contending with the fretful elements;

Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea, Or swell the curled waters 'bove the main, That things might change or cease; tears his white

hair, Which the impetuous blasts, with eyeless rage, Catch in their fury, and make nothing of;



NA TURALISM AND REVOLT IN THE THEATRE 547

Strives in his little world of man to out-scorn The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain. This nnight, wherein the cub-drawn bear wouldL couch, The lion and the belly-pinched wolf Keep their fur dry, unbonneted he runs, And bids what will take all.

Where now is your naturalistic theatre? What can your scenic-artist or your effects-man add to that? What can your actor do beyond thanking God for Shakespeare and his lines, resolvling to speak them not at all or sl)eak them well. Read it again. Better still, read it aloud. le c caught with the heath of

it, the storm of it, the Lear of it, the miiighty sweep of it, the genius of it. For that is dramatic dialoguie, that is setting for tragedy-that is theatre; and it has no relation whatsoever with any of the puny pessimisms that peeI) fromTi unyider the lying label of drama in our theatre to-day.

Return to first principles, then; drive away naturalism from our stage, bring back theatre to our theatre, and genius will beget genius. The theatre will rise again.



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Naturalism and Revolt in the Theatre