in a complete and overwhelming way they are morals with a play in them!

It is a question if any play in which art is subservient to other motives has been at all effective in the purpose for which it was written or produced. A time may come when the people-these organizations all claim to be for the "people"-will bring their whole mental and spiritual equipment with them into the theatre: thus far they only bring a rather impoverished emotional quality. The emotional drama and the drama of ideas alike are therefore able to send only a limited appeal across the footlights, an appeal lacking too many of the qualities with which the propagandist ought to work if he would make any really lasting or worthy impression. There can be, for example, no particular achievement in persuading an audience to applaud an out-of-work who lies in his garret-bed and flings defiance at capitalism, as Mr. Galsworthy persuades it during The Silver Box, or to hiss an aristocrat when he reproaches the heroine for being a washerwoman, as we are told has been done in Paris during the performance of Madame Sans-Gêne. But it is a definite triumph for an audience to depart exalted in heart, and with mind re-vitalized from an atmosphere of imaginative beauty that has a purpose neither specifically "moral" nor of empty amusement.

The irony of the position is that the bibulously cheerful indecencies of the thoroughgoing commercial theatres of London are often much nearer in their relationship to a genuinely artistic theatre than are the dismal ethics of the propagandist and loftybrowed theorist who would usurp the proper function of the drama without a scruple. "Perhaps we are too altruistic to be artistic," said Oscar Wilde; perhaps we are too little of either to appreciate the altruism of art.

VI

Towards suggestion and poetic reality, and away from actuality and factuality: this, must be the general tendency of the theatre with which the idealist has any concern. Why the ambition of the scenic artist and producer should ever have been directed in the past towards naturalistic settings, towards the

literal reproduction of everyday existence, is difficult to explain. For the actual action and dialogue of even the most "real" play have never, for their part, had the remotest resemblance to everyday existence. In this sense Mr. Galsworthy's Loyalties, for example, is not more actualistic than Macbeth. The scenes in which the young officer steals the money of a fellow-guest at a country house and meets with the tragic consequences are the carefully selected, concentrated and heightened essence of Mr. Galsworthy's knowledge of life, and could no more take place in the haphazard of actual existence than would a barbarous Scottish king carry on a conversation with his wife at the supper table in blank verse.

It is a commonplace of the other arts that all facts are drawn upon during the process of creation without any fact being retained as a fact, the reality having been perceived behind the appearance rather than the reality in the appearance. Why should the dramatist be expected to abrogate this elemental right of the artist? Why should the interpreter, the theatrical craftsman, be permitted to neutralize the dramatist's symbolistic methods by treating the mere appearance as reality itself, by making concrete objects of what the dramatist wishes to retain, as far as possible, as suggestive symbols? Life, as presented by the creative artist, possesses an essential unity, and the dramatist, being a creative artist, attempts to preserve this essential unity; but the inferior artist, the mere interpreter, who is not creative in any true sense, seems to be dissatisfied if he has not destroyed that unity. Symbols can never be effectively materialized. The theatrical craftsmen who have enlisted under the banner of Mr. Gordon Craig or M. Adolphe Appia or any of the pioneering æstheticians in the modern theatre would seem to stand or fall by their gift of super-symbolizing rather than materializing the symbols of the dramatist. Their success is assured if they are able to evoke what Mr. Rutherston has called a "decorative suggestion" which does not disavow relationship with the actor and the audience, giving a sense of the tragic or the gay, of breadth, height, space, depth, or the reverse, by means of contrast and implication and not by any attempt at imitation. The vital consequence would be that the dramatist's vision is thereby pre

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served, living and lovely in spite of the encounter at the theatre, and creating a life of loveliness that becomes a part of its own.

The cry of "impracticability" which has already been raised against men like Craig and Appia must, in face of the irresistible argument for symbolism against actualism, lose any significance which might have been given to it by the standing of those who have raised it. "I think," states Mr. Craig to the present writer, "that out of more than two hundred designs I have no more than thirty which I could not carry out on the existing stage." Stanislawsky, Wyspiansky, Craig, Reinhardt-all the great producers except Appia and Bakst-are trained actors who have acted, stage-managers who have practised. Wyspiansky and Craig have been writers on the theatre and also done dramatic work themselves; and they, with Appia and Bakst are all practising designers for the theatre. Thus, even if we take the trouble to meet the objection on its own plane, we will not fail to show that in considering the idealists of the modern theatre during our survey of its prospects we are not dealing with impossibilists, but with practical men.

Such gifts as Mr. Craig, M. Appia and M. Bakst and half a dozen others have brought to the great plays which have drawn from them an æsthetic response such gifts are not insignificant ones. They have crystallized the glory of drama: they have taken so many loose jewels and given them the substantial and appropriate settings (to paraphrase an illustration used by George Jean Nathan in his valuable book on The Critic and the Drama) which have fittingly brought out their radiance. In this, already an inspiring fact of contemporary theatrical history, resides the greater hope of a living theatre in our own time. By such a hope is cancelled the half of those fears which were increased to a mountain's height while the "practical" man, so called, were in possession of the playhouse with no better warranty than that their first cousins were operating in Wall Street, members of the Stock Exchange.

THOMAS MOULT.

MIDDAY PAUSE

BY MURIEL HARRIS

It is not only in the cathedral towns of France that high noon has its celebrants. But it is there perhaps that the midday quiet, which in big towns and villages alike is almost a rite, makes itself most felt. For centuries the wheels of the heavy wooden carts have ceased their rumbling over the cobbles; the little shop retires from its cream cheeses and Brussels sprouts into the recess behind; a rusty black figure ceases its labors at midday and steals into the great cathedral to kneel for a few moments on the stone pavement, coloured by the sunlight through the jewelled, thirteenth-century glass. Even the black cat composes itself anew upon a window-sill which dates back to St. Louis, as generations of black cats have composed themselves before in its sunny corners. The world is asleep-no, not asleep, merely celebrating high noon, just as other countries celebrate the dewy morn or the return from the plough, the classic movements of mankind.

And this is the habit of perhaps the most hard-working race in the world, to cease deliberately for two hours in the middle of the day from all work, in the interests of-well-food, perhaps sleep, perhaps the petit verre in the café, a game of draughts or the click of the billiard ball; certainly of much conversation, the high price of living, taxation, whether potatoes will keep this winter or whether it is safe to buy them only in small quantities, whether the price of wine will go still lower, how those countries can really exist where no wine is- but really no wine; this last accompanied by a wink or a finger laid flat upon the nose. For when your Frenchman disbelieves, he likes to make quite sure that you register his disbelief, that you recognize him to be as knowing as he would like to be. It is two hours of nothing in particular and everything in general; two hours of relaxation from the drill of life; two hours which, taken at high noon, make inroads on the morning sleep, the evening leisure, prevent the sharp differentia

tion of work and play; express, in fact, a philosophy quite other than that generally recognized by the Anglo-Saxon nations.

It is perhaps this sharp differentiation between work and play which distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon from the Latin nations. The Anglo-Saxon works because he has to; because he wants to get somewhere; because he hopes that some day he may not have to work; because he may make a great deal of money by means of which he may do other things than work; may have power, possessions; sometimes indeed because he enjoys the sheer piling up of money, the movement, the prestige, the thrills-for again he may always lose it. And thus when he works he has little time for anything else; he cannot linger by the wayside to pick a flower and savor the joy, not of making but of being. And, as times change, he does this faster and faster until all his joy is in incessant movement and he looks back to the slow centuries and wonders how anybody before him ever existed at all. In all his work there is the ulterior motive, another reason than that of the work itself. He calls it money very often, and here again is the curious paradox that in actual fact he is not really as fond of money as is the Frenchman, who makes it sou by sou, who would rather save one sou than spend two in order to make four, who works long hours for sous and accumulates them with affectionate pains and trouble in order to hand them on to his children, who in their turn will also work for sous. And yet the Frenchman stays to celebrate high noon, while the Anglo-Saxon presses on to finish his work and have done with it once for all.

For the Frenchman looks on work as part of life, not as a disagreeable part of the day which must be got over with the greatest dispatch, in order to enjoy a part which is not disagreeable. Work and play; play and work; he does not divide them into two water-tight compartments, into a mutual antagonism; does not adopt a manner for one and a manner for the other; does not take up an attitude in the one, in order the better to relax in the other. The little shops which have always closed at high noon in peace or war, under autocracies and under republics, disregarding both as not being of the real things of life, which throw their handkerchiefs over their faces and pretend that they are dozing and must by no means be awakened, are not really asleep at all.