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

75
Melodrama and farce deal in simple, unqualified emotions
and characters, and it seems clear that Pinero aimed for
equivocal and complex effects. Phenyl is a drunken barrister,
strangely dependent upon the young, hearty man with whom he
shares lodgings* Like the Dean of St. Marvel!»s in Dandy Dick
or the title character of The Magistrate he is forced to take
stock of his settled opinions of himself and of life* the
characters are not simply brought to an extreme test of virtue,
or mace ridiculous by forfeit of dignity, as the persons in
melodrama or farce might be, but are submitted to a subtler
and more reflective profess of self-revaluation. In Sweet
Lavender some of the characters are put through the extreme
test of fortitude and humanity, and the result is sentimentality.
It is likely that Pinero never found the effective way
of accomplishing his aims within the commercial theatre t The
Second Mrs Tanqueray owes its essential failure as much to the
author*s inability to dispense with or modify crudities of plot
as to the shortcomings in his understanding of people that Shaw
oq
discerned. y In the farces the presence of conventional dilemnas
and characters can subserve the presentation of fullydeveloped
and recogniaably human beirtges in the serious plays,
for some reason, the contrived situations and false characters
are too intimately involved with the difficulties encountered
by the central character. The means by which Pinero could make
the fatigued genre of farce new and vital could not be applied
with success to "drama".
The four plays duscussed above are representative of the
way in which some authors were attempting to alter and develop
the existing forms of popular play: none of them has survived
in the repertoire of the nineteen-seventies, and of Pinero»s
plays only the major farces can command a popular audience -
one, The Magistrate, has received six important London revivals
since the turn of the century (in 1943, 1944, 1950, 1964 and
1969). Apart from Pinero f s work and the Savoy Operas, nothing
of the prodigious dramatic output of the eighteen-eighties
survives on the contemporary stage. A count based on reviews
published in The Times shows that twenty-two pieces by F.C.Burnand
were produced in the course of the decade, and four of his older
plays revived; twenty-three by H.J.Byron, who died in