Punch: Punch (56.1869)

February 13, 1869.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

63

STAGE COPYISTS AND STAGE CRITICS.

E read in Arch-
deacon Hare’s
Guesses at Truth
of a kind of men
who, coming near
a tree, never lift
up their eyes, but
go looking dili-
gently on the
ground till they
come on a dry
stick, and having
found, it, cry with
a loud voice, “Eu-
reka ! behold one
of the roots! ”
From this order

of men seems to have sprung a good many of the dramatic critics
now-a-days, incompetent or indisposed for the more useful duties
of their calling—measuring the merits, analysing the purposes, gauging
the point, wit, humour, fancy, poetry, imagination of a play, or the
merits or shortcomings of the actors,-—they are large on the possible
sources whence the author may have borrowed his idea, incidents,
subject, story, or situations, if they can possibly refer anything in
the play to anything that has ever been presented on the stage before,
they insist on doing so, no matter how remote the resemblance, or how
improbable the “ conveyance.”

This is a safe and easy game, and gratifies the smaller sentiments of
critical natures. It may sometimes be fair criticism; but in a great
many cases it is equally unfair and useless.

Ever since there has been a stage, dramatists have borrowed their
subjects and stories, and it was when they were most original that they
borrowed most freely and fearlessly. Shaksfeare was a reckless con-
veyancer. Look at the Italian novelists whom he drew upon without
scruple. See how he cut up North’s Plutarch into cantles for his Julius
Caesar and Coriolanus, giving himself no more trouble than was required
for the slicing of North’s prose into ten-foot lengths. Think of the old
plays he was content—like a master-cobbler as he was—to vamp and
patch and polish, and sole and heel,—the earlier King Johns and Henry
the Sixths, andTimons of Athens, and—who knows—Hamlets, perhaps.
He had his critics of the time, one of whom pitched into him as “ a crow
beautified with our feathers.” But before and after him, in all times
and all countries, play-writers, grave or gay, big or little, have put in
practice the right of taking their matter where they found it. Terence
robbed Menander, Seneca, Sophocles, and Euripides; Rotrou,
Corneille and Racine, Seneca and the Greeks; Moliere, Reg-
nard, and their followers, Terence, Plautus, and the Spaniards;
Vanbrugh and Wycherly, Moliere ; Sheridan, Buckingham and
Vanbrugh. And so stage conveyancing has gone on, in a round of
wrong, in all countries, from the earliest times to our own.

BouciCAULT and Maddison Morton are not less original than
Colman and Kenny, but the French sources which the elder play-
wrights drew from were not known to their public. The moderns do
not and cannot keep theirs a secret. Everybody reads the French
feuilletons; Jeff’s shop is open to all; and the Magasin Theatrale
costs only sixpence a number. But, as a matter of fact, what are called
the good old English comedies and farces are, in six cases out of ten
at least, adaptations from the French.

Of course, the dramatist who invents story as well as dialogue and
characters deserves more credit than he who invents only one or two
of the three. But he who makes a character live and move and have
its being for reader or spectator, does more than he who ferrets out
from life or history a subject not yet turned to stage account, or builds
up a plot out of his own invention. So does he who clothes his bor-
rowed skeleton of a story in the beauty of fervid passion and high
thought, sweet and stately verse, consummate wit, or genial humour.

These are the qualities that show the master. The story is but the
peg to hang them upon. True, when the sole merit is in the story,
when all the interest is got out of surprise and suspense, or the shock
of a startling incident, as it often is in modern plays, he who borrows
the story, situation, or incident, borrows all. Where play of passion or
display of character is nil, poetry absent, wit wanting, humour, point,
or grace of style dispensed with, for mere story, let us by all means
credit the inventor of the one quality of the piece with all its success.
But let the critics learn to distinguish between borrower and bor-
rower, between adaptation and adaptation, between those who convey
to enrich, grace, embellish, and invest with new life, and those who
steal to deform and defoul, stunt, and starve — those who bring
everything, and those who bring nothing to replace all that evaporates
in translation.

Why should there not be a rule laid down that the word “ original ”
shall be confined in the bills to pieces of which no original in a dramatic
form already exists, and why should not the International Copyright

Bill be so modified that he who lays a foreign author’s work under
contribution shall pay for it ?

In the meantime Mr. Punch is not sorry that this question should
have been started by the recent charge against Mr. Robertson of
having borrowed the idea of his charming comedy, School, from Bene-
dix’s very inferior Aschenbrodel. For this may set people thinking
wherein lies the merit and demerit of stage-plays.

Would that lack of originality in plot and story were the worst fault
of our dramatic writing.

Undoubtedly, it cannot be said to be a good time for the theatre in
which coarse sensation, buffoonery, and bare ballet-girls usurp so much
room, and are so relied upon to draw.

But there is a great deal more to be said for our stage, even as it is,
than the critics are in the habit of saying, just as there is a great deal
to be said against it that needs saying and is left unsaid. And this
applies to acting as of play-writing.

Till we see sounder and honester, more impartial, and outspoken-
judgment of both—the judgment of critics who know what is good and
relish it, yet can take into account the conditions of the time which
stand in the way of what is good—who have taste and culture, yet are
neither pedantic, bigoted, or impracticable,—and above all critics who
have no interests to serve but those of Art and the public,—Mr. Punch
is as little disposed to lend an ear as to look for good to the cuckoo
cry of originality, raised without distinction or discrimination, and
prompted far oftener by the ill-nature of a rival, or the jealousy of an
unsuccessful confrere, than by the outraged feelings of those who respect
originality, and are anxious to see every man credited with all that
fairly belongs to him, and no more.

THE ENGLISHWOMAN’S DOMESTIC BllOWNRIGG.

A series of vile letters has been published in a certain Magazine,
with the apparent object of outraging the feelings of simple people,
in order to gain notoriety by creating sensation. These communi-
cations might be described as a sort of Brownrigg Papers, with the
qualification that they do not profess to advocate pushing Mrs.
Brownrigg’s practices to murder, and that they affect to recommend
the perpetration of them, not by mistresses on apprentice girls, but by
mothers of families on their grown-up daughters of eighteen or twenty.

The writers of these foul, if feigned, articles enter into minute
details on the choice of instruments of torture, and on devices for
inflicting on young ladies a combination of “shame and pain.” Over
these some of them appear to gloat in such a way as almost to persuade
one that they are in earnest, and write under the influence of feelings
which have been engendered, or aggravated, in Ritualist confessionals.
For further particulars, see the Saturday Review of Jan. 30.

But, although all these odious letters in the Magazine may be mere
inventions, it is possible enough that they may produce the effect of
inflaming the morbid cruelty and malice of some depraved female, and
may so develop a maternal Brownrigg. In that case it is to be hoped
that Mr. Brownrigg, on first discovery, will let his wife know what
he thinks of her discipline by a vigorous application of it to her own
person, and teach her to inflict “ shame and pain ” on her daughter by
putting her to both herself. For this purpose, before all the family
and the servants, following her own procedure, Mr. Brownrigg
would but perform an act of retributive justice by lashing Mrs. B. with
a horsewhip to within an inch of her life. With a horse-whip ? No ;
with a dogwhip—the more appropriate scourge.

Conventual Tender Mercies.

The Court of Queen’s Bench has presented us with a pretty view of
a convent interior. Who says the disclosures are revolting? The
treatment which Sisters of Mercy are liable to be subjected to may
seem merciless. But doubtless it is founded on principle. Its object
is educational. “ She had suffered persecution,” says Sterne, “ and
learned mercy.” Sisters of Mercy are tormented to teach them their
business.

Personal, Surely.

Mr. Raikes, Opposition Member for Chester, declared at a political
banquet, that what a distinguished American said to his friend in a
difficulty was the best thing that could be said, at this crisis, to a Con-
servative. “Stick!” We have no objection, except to the rudeness.
It is what is always said to a person who is too stupid to know how
to Act.

PLEASANT READING.

In Berlin they have a paper which from its name must be a very
disagreeable one to read, ana is, we presume, the organ of all grumbling,
cantankerous, and ill-tempered people, for it is called The Cross
Gazette.

A Fact.—The best check for pauperism—one of Peabody’s.