MORE OR LESS PERSONAL.
It is useless to go squirrel hunting with a
cannon, and it is useless to level the guns of serious criticism at anything
written by [
Mr. Hoyt
](n00209). Mr. Hoyt is not a scheming villain, or a corrupter of
public morals; he is simply a very pleasant, clever, brainless man who is
exceedingly wise in his generation. Mr. Hoyt does not know a great deal, but
he knows the American public better than any other man connected with the
stage. The one thing about him worthy of respect is his staunch Americanism.
He is really and sincerely American. He is really the exponent of the average
American's taste in the matter of comedy. Of course the public taste will some
day outgrow [
"A
Trip to Chinatown"
](n00210) and [
"A Hole in the Ground."
](n02174) It will some day
be able to feel the more delicate humor which cuts cleaner and deeper, but at
present it certainly is not. One charm about Mr. Hoyt is that he is so very
unpretentious, anything will serve him for a theme, any little existing annoyance
that we have all felt and fretted over. His plays can't last long because
their interest is entirely local, but he is not writing plays for posterity,
but for the living present and the box-office receipts of the living
present.
The [
"Green Carnation"
](n02175) is both a clever and an
inane book. Clever in that it is a bright satire, inane in that it devotes
itself to parodying a school almost wearisome to parody. It is not immoral as
the publishers for business reasons have advertised, mere epigrams cannot be
immoral. The book is a collection of epigrams on and off the subject. It
certainly ought to succeed in disgusting people with [
Mr. Wilde's
](n01191)
epigrammtic
epigrammatic
school
once and for all. It turns and twists those
absurb
absurd
mannersisms
mannerisms
and phrases
of Wilde's until they appear as ridiculous as they really are. The hero thinks
jam must be immortal because it is so good; his friend thinks deviled kidneys
must be wicked because they are so beautiful. So the
books
book
strings on from driveling effeminacy to maudliness. In a sense it is a
timely book for the English speaking world needs prodding in the matter of
epigrams. There are a number of really talented young writers who are
sacrificing the strength, vitality and common sense of their style in straining
after the
epigramatics
epigrammatics
. So far as the writer remembers no really great
English author has ever been
epigramatic
epigrammatic
. It's not in the blood—or
the climate. The Frenchman is born with an epigram on his lips. He uses them
unconsciously. When he is a child and fights over his marbles he disputes in
epigrams. The peasants speak in epigrams. But the English were made for
slower, heavier speech. The Frenchman cuts like a rapier, but the Englishman
crushes like a sledge. If he studies French word fencing he only makes a clown
of himself. He can never apply his power through a slender blade and he is at
best only a poor imitation. The affectation poisons his style, his vigor and his
whole personality. He loses not only his art but his manhood. The Anglo-Saxon
must be content to plod heavily along as his fathers did before. He can be
good or wicked or great whichever he chooses, but be cannot be all three at
once. He cannot discuss art and vice in the same breath. The Frenchman may
live en concubinage with his muse, but the Englishman must live in wedlock,
chaste and holy and devoted, "[forsaking all other and clinging to her only](n02192)."
He may be basely, sordidly, contemptibly wicked if he wishes, but he can never
be gracefully or artistically wicked.
In all that dreary
b ok
book
there is one
refreshing character, [
Lady Lock's
](n02176) little boy [
Tommy
](n02177). He is lively and healthy
and eats strawberries instead of making aphorisms about them. We hope that he grew
up to be a big English trooper, and that he drank scotch whisky and smoked
Turkish tobacco and swore only as an Englishman can, and that he never even
learned the meaning of that despicable word "artistic."
It is not customary to praise existing
institutions, that is generally reserved for the institutions of the
seventeenth century. But the present condition of the state penitentiary can
be praised with all fairness. It would be hard to find a better kept prison
anywhere. [
Warden Beemer
](n00023) has humanized the whole place and made it like a
dwelling place of men. There are window plants in every window of the big work
shop, there is a greenhouse and a fish pond in the yard, the convicts now eat
at long tables instead of having their food thrown to them in their cells. The
dirty old flagging of the old cell room has been removed and new laid. The
whole place is as clean and trim as the army barracks. The old sullen
discontent has died off the prisoners' faces and many of them seem to be receiving
an actual education there. The old idea that a prison is a place of punishment
is one of the most barbarous. It is generally conceded that as a rule the men
who are there are there because they lack the finer distinction between right
and wrong, and because one seems to them quite as good as the other. If
prisons are to do any good beyond keeping the more dangerous element of society
away from the less harmful, it must be in cultivating whatever aesthetic sense
its inmates may happen to have.
"Yes." said the leading man with a sigh, "I
played two years with the [
Kendalls
Kendals
](n00301), and I have the warmest admiration for their
acting. Personally? Oh, 'Willie' is a finefellow, but he is of course
somewhat the worse for long years of subjugation. Originally he was the
greatest actor of the two. You don't think he has done as much as his talents
warranted? Good heavens! he has lived with Mrs.
Kendall
Kendal
, what more do you
expect of one man? I don't believe there is another man in England who is
artist enough to have done that. All a lie about temper? Well, I guess not.
He doesn't dare to say a word at rehearsals, she assigns him his parts and his
stage business and he meekly carries them out. The public will never know the
price that man has paid for his wife's good name. Her temper is no better than
[
Lillian Russell's
](n00917), only Lillian never found so patient a man. Time was when
William
Kendall
Kendal
promised to be the greatest emotional actor in
all England, now he will go down into history as Mrs.
Kendall's
Kendal's
leading man. You see it's the
subjection that has done it. No artist can stand subjection, it kills all his
best possibilities. He has cared more for her work and fame than he has for
his own. He has endured all her violence, gratified all her whims, and because
he has endured, because he has prostrated himself completely, the world calls
Mr.
Kendall
Kendal
good. Thralldom like that always seems wrong to me even when it's
legal and has been sanctioned by a parson. It has hurt him just as it has
ruined poor [
Bob Mantell
](n01149), though his is of the respectable kind and Mantell's is
shocking. The only difference is that
Kendall
Kendal
is slated for life and Mantell
might some day shake [
Berrens
Behrens
](n02193) off. Willie
Kendall
Kendal
had the chance to be known as
a great artist—is known as a very amiable husband. Well, that's one way of
using talent. I hope he has enjoyed it. He is one of the men who wasn't
selfish enough to be great. Ah, well, it's all in a lifetime. It's one way of
spending '[a fire God meant for other ends](n02195).' I see by your smile you know the
preceding line of that quotation. No reflection on Madge at all. Good night."
[
Mrs. Burton Harrison
](n01733) is writing on
etiquet
etiquette
for
the [
Ladies' Home Journal
](n02178). That is exactly where Mrs. Harrison belongs and we
rejoice that she has found her level at last. Her novels are discussions on
gowns and table manners, interspersed with dialogue. If she omits the
dialogue and confines herself to
etiquet
etiquette
proper she may do some good in the
world and will certainly cause less pain.
The Nineteenth century is rich in mechanical
inventions. Pictures, music, statues are made by machinery, as well as the
more practical things of life, but [
Dr. Owen
](n02179) is the first man who has made
literature by machinery. For the benefit of those who may be fortunate enough
to be in ignorance of Dr. Owen and his so-called [Baconian cycles](n02180), it may be
stated that he has invented a wheel which he runs over the pages of the works
of [
Shakespeare
](n01572), [
Marlowe
](n02181), [
Greene
](n02182) and others, and which selects certain words on that
page arranged with mathematical precision which tell a story of their own.
These cipher productions Dr. Owen has published in several volumes and is still
busily at work grinding out poetry. Dr. Owen interprets that [
Lord Bacon
](n02183) wrote
the works of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Greene, [
Burton
](n02184) and several others, besides
the twenty odd stout volumes that are accredited to him. In short he claims
that Lord Bacon was the author of the Elizabethan age. In
the first volume of the cipher Bacon tells his own story. He claims that he, and, indeed, a goodly
share of the rest of the population of England, are the sons and direct heirs
of [
Elizabeth
](n00616). Then his lordship proceeds to speak in a very naughty and
unfilial way of his mamma and calls her all the unpleasant names which
Shakespeare, Marlowe, Greene and all the rest of them ever called women, and
they all could be pretty hard on the ladies when they felt so disposed. The
list of sins which he assigns to the queen is remarkable and unique: the only
difficulty is that no one woman's life would be long enough to accomplish so
much wickedness
.
The meter in which these startling
revelations is set forth is also remarkable; there is none which can equal it
in lameness and faultiness unless it is that of the awful epic on America
entitled "[
The Columbiad
](n02194)," which was perpetrated somewhere about the beginning
of this century.
Dr. Owen is now at work unraveling "[
The Tragical
Historie
History
of Mary Queen of Scots
](n02185)." The play thus evolved is a string of
meaningless, high sounding words without action, without deeper meaning,
utterly unfit for the stage and very unpleasant to read. The scene between
[
Mary
](n01787) and Elizabeth which Shakespeare would have filled so full of action is but
a long tirade of ugly epithets. Here is a sample of what Mary says to Elizabeth:
Oh! Inspeakable injustice!
Oh, monstrous, miserable, moth eaten judge!
[Dame Atropos](n02196) to thee resigns her fatal knife—
Although, no doubt, the
murd rous
murderous
knife is dull and
blunt
Till it be whetted on thy stone-hard heart—
To revel in the entrails of tender lambs!
[False to thy God, thy father, and thy brother;](n02199)
Conspirant against thy sister; well I wot,
Whoever got thee, thou has thy mother's guilt!
Had but thy father, Henry,
Match'd according to his state,
Thou hadst
been an anointed queen;
But when he
took a beggar to his bed,
And grac'd
thy mother with her bridal day,
His honor
then he cast away.
If ever lady
wronged her lord so much,
[Thy mother](n02200)
took into her blameful bed,
Some stern,
untutor'd churl; and thus her stock
Was graft
with crab-tree slip, whose fruit though art.
That is as queenly and as elegant as her
language ever becomes. Compare it with this:
[Such an act](n02197)
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows
As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow;
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
With tristful visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act.
This last, which is by no means in Shakespeare's best style,
has nothing in common with the first, it is true, except that they both call
hard names and are rather unpleasant reading. The man who could contently and
continuously write in the style of the first passage quoted could not write the
last. The man who wrote "Mary of Scots" could not have written "[
Hamlet
](n00399)" or
"[
Lear
](n02186)." The end stopped lines, the grotesque exaggerated figures, the false
force, all make the passage ring hollow. The only resemblance it bears to
anything ever attributed to Shakespeare is to some parts of "[
Henry VII.
Henry VIII
](n00928)," which
it is generally conceded Shakespeare did not write. His lines betray the
absurd mixture of Shakespeare diluted by inferior dramatists.
According to Mr. Owen's theory Bacon's real
object in writing at all was to set forth his history and "The Tragical History
of Mary Queen of Scots" and the rest of them. The so called Shakespearian
plays are merely disguises to hide what at that time Bacon feared to tell
plainly. Then Bacon certainly made the disguise of his work infinitely more
beautiful than his real work. He lavished more care, art and imagination on
the straw in which his marbles were packed than on the statues themselves.
This alone is absurd. A man's best work goes where his heart is, where his purpose
lies. If the "Tragical History of Mary" were better literature than Hamlet
then we might believe Hamlet is only wrapping paper. If we are to believe Dr.
Owen, "[
Cymbeline
](n00321)," "[
A Winter's Tale
](n02187)," "[
Romeo and Juliet
](n00641)" are merely [dominoes](n02188),
flimsy masquerade suits in which Lord Bacon's plays have been disporting
themselves through the centuries. If so, we are the more deceived. It is an
appalling practical joke on the world that its greatest literature should be a
sham.
The proofs of the genuineness of Shakespeare,
like that of the New Testament, are internal, not external. Shakespeare is a
truth, a law, not to be influenced by external circumstances or discoveries.
The one invulnerable proof that the plays were written for themselves is their
high seriousness and earnestness. The fact that for three hundred years these
plays have wrought the great minds of every nation up to the highest pitch of
intensity and emotion, is proof positive that they were written at the white
heat of intensity by the greatest mind of all. They are the most serious
product of the most serious of races, the highwater mark of the literature of the
world. Whatever they may conceal they reveal more of the highest triumph of
human art, more of the deepest reading of human life than any other of the
works of man. As to Shakespeare himself it doesn't matter much. "[One will say
he is in the desert, come forth, and another he is in the inner chamber](n02198)." It
is immaterial. But the plays will stand till the judgment after the name of
the builder is forgotten, enduring throughout time, the admiration of all
generations past, the wonder of all generations to be.
It is a peculiar fact that [
Signora Duse
](n00950) has
never allowed [her daughter](n02190) to enter a theatre or to see a play. It is another
evidence of how vastly Duse differs from all other women of the stage. The
love of admiration, of homage, of publicity, the warm fellow feeling for others
of the same profession, the genuine affection for the very outside of the theatre
which are the almost inevitable accompaniments of an actress' life, seem never to
have touched her. She has moved through the crowd of babbling Thespians
without seeing or hearing them, she has worn the motley as though it were a
nun's hood, she has gone from theatre to theatre as though she were going from
shrine to shrine to perform some religious worship. Of her own personality, of
her private life, the public has never had a glimpse; we know as little of it
as we know of Shakespeare. The most enterprising reporters have never been
able to interview her, her answer has always been the same, "I cannot see what
the public wants of one off the stage, I am not beautiful and I am ill." Even
the most imaginative newspapers cannot say what wines she drinks, what books
she reads, or who are her friends. In this respect she is greater than any
other woman who has ever been before the public. She has kept her personality
utterly subdued and unseen and spoken only through her art. It is like the
music one hears in a convent where the tones awaken and thrill, but the singer
is hidden behind the veiled grating of the choir. No one knows what manner of
woman it is that this music comes from. Apparently she has no confidential
friends, there is no man whom she loves, no woman whom she trusts. She is
utterly alone upon the icy heights where other beings cannot live. She is an
actress, yet not of "the profession." In a calling that is the least austere
she leads the life of a nun. One wonders what great sorrow or what hidden joy
it is that Signora Duse guards so closely.
She is the only actress for whom the public
never has a word of contempt or a sneering jest. She has kept her own life so
completely secluded that even the newspapers feel an awe of her. She come and
goes "[one fall form, companionless](n02191)." One night she is as wicked as the
wickedest French comedy, another night she is sublime as the sublimest tragedy.
Beyond this we know absolutely nothing except that this woman is great and ill
and unhappy, and wants neither the world's ridicule nor its sympathy.