The Press Saturday, November 19, 1927. History Through the Drama.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19162, 19 November 1927, Page 14

The Press Saturday, November 19, 1927. History Through the Drama.

Probably no German of the younger school is so interesting to Britons as Emil Ludwig, whose appeal to Britain to take the lead in the peace movement was reported in our cable news last week. It is not long since Dr. Ludwig leapt into fame as the author of a brilliant study of the Kaiser, a biography remarkable alike for its style, its able marshalling of facts, and its honesty. The picture he draws of political blundering, personal instability, royal egotism deepening into megalomania, and Byzantine flattery, is astonishing ana of high historical value, and it is a great deal gained that such a book should have been written by a German and published in Germany. Then came Dr. Ludwig's Napoleon —reviewed some weeks ago in The Press, and noticed again to-day in a special article on onr Literary Page—a new approach to the most discussed man of modern times, which has had a great sale in England and America. Shortly after this appeared in English the author visited England, and expressed opinions on English affairs which showed that the wisdom of his judgment was not confined to the polities of his own country. He confirmed the impression he had given of a good European. Now there has been translated into English a trilogy of plays that he has written on the rise and fall of Bismarck, which despite the preventive efforts of the Kaiser have been published and performed in Germany.

No form of art throws so brilliant a light on history as the drama. The skilled dramatist selects, his events, ignores everything that is extraneous, and literally lets them speak for themselves. The result is a direct and penetrating appeal. The danger of this kind of presentation is that the audience is more at the mercy of the playwright than it would be if it were reading history told in the ordinary way; what is omitted may be necessary to a proper understanding of events and , movements. Dr. Ludwig, however, api pears to have made his selection skilfully and fairly, and the" result is a series of plays of extraordinary historical interest. What he depicts is the birth of an Empire, and a train of events that eventually led up to the greatest war in history. The first play, King and People (1862-64), gives us the appointment of Bismarck as Chancellor and the conflict between Bismarck and the Liberals. They were fateful years for Germany and the world, for had Liberalism.(in the Continental sense) not been beaten to its knees 'first by Bismarck and then by military success and realisation of Empire, the history of Europe would have been different. There is a really dramatic scene where the Chancellor defies the furious House of Representatives and fastens autocracy on Prussia. The second play deals with the Franco-Prussian War, and is rich not only in drama, but in the irony that springs from the audience's knowledge of after events. " But there are " days in one's life on which one would " like to look behind the curtain," says Bismarck to Moltke just after the proclamation of the Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, the hall that fifty years later witnessed the dictation of peace to a crushed Germany. There is also Thiers' parting shot at Bismarck: " You freed ns from our Emperor. "You, I understand, are on the point "of making one for yourselves, and, " some day, it will be you who will be "thanking us for helping you to get "rid of him!" Was this read by the exile of Doom? The last play, dealing with Bismarck's dismissal by the Kaiser, suffers from anti-climax after the tremendous events of 1870-71, but the effect is heightened by the sense of irony to which we have referred. Every spectator of the acted play would know what followed upon the dismissal and the abandonment of Bismarck's policy. It is natural to wonder whether Dr. Ludwig contemplates writing some day a sequel to this trilogy—a sequel that would depict the entry of Germany into t war and her ruinous downfall. " Pride " comes to flower and bears a sheaf of "doom, whence is garnered a harvest " all of tears." Dr. Ludwig's success with themes of our own time throws into relief the poverty of modern English historical drama. Nothing illustrates more clearly the divorce of English drama from national life than the fact that since Shakespeare, with very few exceptions, dramatists have not used great historical events and personages as material —or at any rate used them successfully. Irving acted in a popular play about Charles 1., but Mr Drinkwater did not repeat in his Oliver Cromwell his success with Lincoln. Where are the plays about Chatham and the younger Pitt, Marlborough and Wellington (we must exclude The Dynasts as hardly actable), Canning, Gladstone, and Palmerston, the, defeat of Spain and France, and the making of the Empire? Some day perhaps British dramatists will make use of the vast material of the last fifty years to construct plays of public affairs. Dr. Ludwig has given them a strong lead.