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A.W. Pinero attacks Lord Halsbury and Sir Edward Clarke, Birmingham, 1900
ON AND OFF THE STAGE.
Mr. Pinero Hits Back with Great Effect.
‘Mr. Pinero was in good fighting form last night at Birmingham. It was the thirty-sixth Shakespeare Commemoration dinner of the Birmingham Dramatic and Literary club, held at the Grand Hotel, and Mr. Pinero was responding for the drama. On such an occasion Mr. Pinero is at his best. He has a fine presence, a rich resonant voice, the air of authority. He swept the dramatic horizon with his telescope. But he paused in the business to thrash the unofficial critics. Pinero, like Fuzzy-Wuzzy, is a good fighting man.
‘First came the inevitable war-word, "At such a time," said the dramatist, "one is almost ashamed to have nothing better to do – nothing, at least, more closely in accord with the great, the stirring, deeds of the moment – than to talk about the mimic stage and the art which furnishes the mimic stage with its fables." He turned to the poetic drama – "one with which I am not myself associated, with which, indeed, natural incapacity will always prevent me from being associated."
‘But Pinero was itching for the fray, and we got to it quickly over the modern drama. Note in passing some pretty phrases: "the poetic drama may be likened in its effect upon the general public to a piece of statuary or to a painting full of colour, or arrested movement, of story. The crowd gathers before the painted story."
‘Then came the sharp, biting reference to those who are ever "snapping at the heels of the writer who takes the manners of his day for his material." Hot on this came a thrust at the self-appointed critics – "gentlemen conspicuous in walks of life remote from art and literature, who are, in my opinion, not so qualified to speak as professional critics." The offenders were named, and prominent names they were – Lord Halsbury [the Lord Chancellor] and Sir Edward Clarke!
‘Mr. Pinero quoted their utterances on literary and stage "degeneracy," as reported in the Press, and began his hitting back. He twitted Sir Edward with his bad logic; but while paying the deepest respect to these gentleman as lawyers, Mr. Pinero repudiated their position as literary critics.
‘"What, indeed," said Mr. Pinero slyly, "would be said to Mr. Swinburne, to Mr. Kipling, or to any prominent dramatic author, were one of them to presume to question Lord Halsbury on, let us say, the wisdom of some of his judicial appointments?"
‘Then came the peroration-charged with warning. "If Lord Halsbury and Sir Edward Clarke elect to enter the ranks of the critics upon the strength of such indiscriminating denunciations, they must not complain…. if we class them with those who fail to recognise that it is life with which literature and the stage have to deal, and not their own prudish and sentimental view of it."
‘Mr. Pinero then put in rather a clever "counter"; "The real decadent drama and the real decadent literature are the drama and literature which present a flattering but false conception of human conduct." "Finally, they must not accuse us of discourtesy if we make bold to warn them of the danger of evil association with those people who, under the pretence of being moralists, are nothing but moral-mongers."
‘And so Mr. Pinero fought for his hand. It’s all in the day’s work. For all that, the author of The Gay Lord Quex is too sagacious an observer of his day not to appreciate a misgiving which is not confined to Lord Halsbury and Sir Edward Clarke.
‘None of us probably wants (to quote Mr. Pinero again) "to reduced the English drama to the intellectual level of the drawing-room charade." Mr. Pinero will concede that what is "wholesome" – the word is inevitable – is not necessarily dull. What appeals to the freshman may also arrest the attention of the seasoned man. A Message from Mars [by Richard Ganthony, Avenue Theatre, London, 22 November 1899], for example, delights the nursery, but it is the fastidious stalls who get the curtain up seven times at the close of act two!
(L.B.E., Daily Express, London, Tuesday, 24 April 1900, p.5g)
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