Pictorial Shakespeare, 1880-1890 - eTheses Repository - University ...

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aa well r.a to the theatre", but discerned a cynicism it attributed
to theatrical cliche (29 January 1881). Of Lords and
Commons (Haymarket 24 November 1883) The Athenaeum observed:
He will do better and more successful work.,,
when he will infuse into his plays more human
sympathy. (1 December 18Q3)
Clement Scott compared the same play with the work of Tom
Robertson, who was "loved" and popular,
Because with all his cynicism he looked upon
the best side of human nature, hoped for the
beet, loved the best, encouraged the best.
Pinero, on the other hand, was "altogether too clever":
...he writes too well, he is too epigrammatic
and thoughtful, to be led a;vay by the
heartlecsness and emptiness of the age he
loves*
He might show signs of cyniciam but for him, as for Robertson,
there was hope (Illustrated London IJCWG, 1 December 1883).
Pinero made two important excursions into serious drama
during the eighteon-eighties. The first, in 1881, was The Squire.
which generated some controversy as to whether the author had
plagiarized Far From The Madding Crowd (published in 1874).
It v; D reasonably successful and Scott w.s very kind to the
&ew dramatist in his Daily Telegraph review:
not a success only in an ordinary and conventional
sense; its merit is deeper, its vrortli more oolid
than one is accustomed to find in the hollow ring
of theatrical applause.
It shared the qualities of Hardy's novels, Scott observed with
no ironic intention, as though the novelist "had turned crojnatic
autlior",The Squire v;c.s "Jnglish and true, dramatic and
interesting, sound and good" (30 December 1881). "English" as
a term of o/nnrobation is common in Scott's critical vocabulary:
here it carries two meanings. In the first place, Piiic-ro's
play w s not based on a French original; in sedition, it was
free from an objectionable worldliness, in so far as it did
not c'eal with salacious persons or actions, and was not cynic*0--?-'
The connection between cynicisn and "".n^iish-ness" cn.n be ace.:.
in ^cott's review of Sweot LavPm.grtPinero»s second neijor "drama".