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

74
I note, by the bye, that Sweet Lavender in the
playbill is described as a drama* From"a drama
we expect a lesson, or at least a serious purpose*
Beyond its attempts at character and laughter,
which are partially successful, I do not see much
purpose in Mr Pinero*s latest play.
(7 April 1888)
The play is in many respects equivocal* Wedderbum* s relationship
with Ruth, and Dick Phenyl's pathetic dipsomania, are
hardly comic. Mrs Gilfillian is, in the first instance, a
ludricous caricature. Her demeanour and her speeches occasion*11?
fore-shadow Lady Bracknell - of the pushy Horace Bream she
confides to Clement:
We shall never shake him off* He saved Minnie's
life in Paris by pulling her from under a tramcar
in the Avenue Mirabeau** *So careless of her
to get there1 I closed my eyes and in imagination
heard the crackling of her bones. This person
rushed forward and restored her to the sidewalk,
as he will persist in calling the pavement. 27
Mrs Gilfillian is conceived, in the first act, as an artificially
callous and cynical figure t later she is given more human
attributes. The change is not so much the development of a
personality, as an alteration in the dramatist's method.
Bream never develops, and we are led to a. sume that a change
in Minnie brings about the change in her attitude to him*
Wedderbum is a thankless part for an actor, demanding an
"overnight" transformation from a paternal worldling to repentant
and sententious sinner.
These inconsistencies suggest a degree of indecision in
Pinero's mind as to what kind of play he was writing. Alongside
crudities of plot - coincidences, poor exposition, and
an absurdly providential happy reunion of Ruth and Wedderbum
brought about by a deus ex machina, Doctor Delaney - is a wellcontrived
and interesting character, Dick Phenyl. Phenyl, being
a drunkard, is obliged to feign sobriety, and has a self-awareness
which is quite unlaboured. Whereas Wedderbum, Mrs Gilfillian,
Minnie and Huth are allowed to comment without subtlety
on their new-found knowledge of themselves, Phenyl knows from
the beginning what sort of man he is, and is aware of each
mood as he passes througjj it. Max Beerbohm described the
technique require^ of the actor playing Phenyl as "the grotesquepathetic
style"