International studio (40.1910)

Recent Work by Mr. Cayley Robinson

encounter and interpret secrets of the psychic
planes that are only now coming to the surface.
If this is so, the production of " The Blue Bird,"
simple, humourous, unambitious in other ways as
it is, will remain one of the most significant move-
ments in the history of the modern drama. And
as a souvenir of this movement, the slight sketches,
the suggestions of design by which Mr. Cayley
Robinson came to assist in the reconstruction of so
fantastic a drama, have an interest and an import-
ance which sufficiently warrant their inclusion in
this paper on his recent work.

Some dramatis persona in " The Blue Bird " are
the spirits of ordinary things. There are, of course,
people for whom everything has not a spirit of its
own, but they would probably make exception in
favour of such a thing as a Perfume of the Night.
Even for the most unimaginative the night is
haunted. Estimate of an artist, however, is to be

„ ... ,, . taken in the revelations of his art about an unim-

"rags ("the blue bird," act i.)

by cayley robinson pressive thing, and always, of course, it is the spirit
of a thing that is rendered when a painting of it is
something has happened, that a curious atmosphere a success. T. M. W.

has been projected, without being in sympathy.
They may know it by the fact that here is creation
and suggestion, antagonistic to their own nature r
and desire. Even from that standpoint they are

judges of the success of the creation, and, as •• y / \ Yd<

admission of its power to affect them, even their 5/ / f_ -l

antagonism is the finest of compliments to the ' ^^0WT/IVs *'£*"'** ' v

artist. For all we know, though there is no reason ^^Hpr / IM\ - '^j^*-^*>

to believe it, Mr. Cayley Robinsons own tempera- ^wttf { /will "^}»TC.vv *^ \

ment may be antagonistic to Maeterlinck's, but at ~~-W>(mk ''

least they have both pressed further than other ^jJetLft / ■r^JHt

people into the unknown regions—and it is there

that they meet. In the "Blue Bird" they have ' f . -i r<Km^^J^(^^. .

abandoned their separate arts to feel and think in J „ . v ,-•

another art, the most material, frivolous, objective '

of all the arts—the art of the stage; and the craft of —)~ . \ ' J

it—stage-craft. It is true that the stage is, above \\ $\

all other realms, the realm of pure illusion, that / W

here the senses must be cheated at every moment,
that in this art reality itself, the conveyance of the

simplest realism, is the greatest of all illusions. \
But when again in this reality we have not to .\
find the outward world, but the inward one of
thought, we get some idea of the impossibility of

the task that was undertaken at the Haymarket. - \_j

And despite its extraordinary success as an effort, \,r '

was it an effort, after all, to achieve the impossible?

Can the stage ever be the vehicle of presentiments J \

and apprehensions instead of deeds ? But there is

also the question whether the life of all the arts design for one of the "perfumes of the night"'

in the future will not depend upon their ability to ("the blue bird," act v.) by cayley robinson,

209