"THE MIRACLE."

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1399, 27 March 1912, Page 4

"THE MIRACLE."

Controversies about the moral or religious effect of stage-plays are apt to be rather beside the mark.

Y\hen twenty Kensitites brought on a fight in the street outside Olympia, where Professor Max Beinhardt was . producing The Miracle, the ludicrous irrelevancy of the proceeding must have struck an understand-

ing observer even more than its violence and fanaticism. Yet we do not doubt that a great many excellent people judged The Miracle— just as sections of our local public have at times judged some far less impressive stage-plays—not by how it made them feel, but by what they thought about it. _ That is the great mistake in criticising the drama or any other form of art. Plays are to be scei. and felt, not argued about. The natural way of looking at The Miracle was that of the person who wrote a long letter to the Spectator for no other purpose than the joy of setting down his impressions. He begs for space to tell of "the incomparable visions" at Olympia, the terrible

vastness of it all, the bells in tho sky, the rose-leaves falling from heaven, "the moment when the

image stirred and stood and laid aside her mantle," the "light and darkness, music and silence, multitude and solitude" that played upon the heart. Only in his final reference to the Madonna does he so much as approach the question of a moral

in the play: "Perhaps the memory of the singing shouting crowds, and the endless processions, is less vivid

than the memory of that one figure, alone, slowly stirring witih life, slowly disrobing and discrowning herself for the work of helping another woman." The writer of this letter is clearly an educated and thoughtful man, and if ho does not enter_ into the discussions of the Kensitites and the other controversialists, it is not because he cannot, but because he has found, or never lost, the right way of looking at i play.

There are any number of wrong ways. Mr. Keusit has denounced The Miracle as "absolutely Satanic," while two eminent Roman Catholics, Lord Braye and Colonel Vauohan, think just as badly of it, though, of course, for quite other reasons. None of them see that reasons have nothing to do with the merits of the play. Some of the objectors, as might have been expected, have condemned the play without having seen it. They have read the "plot" and have formed their different notions as to what

it _ "teaches." Thus Mr, Kensit thinks its object is to lure innocent girls into convents and to keep them there! On the other hand a devchit Roman Catholic, who may or may not have visited Olympia, writes to The Tablet! to say that "the object of the play is to show in the strongest manner how good triumphs over vice." He might just as well have said that its object is to show how a statue turns into a living being, A play is moral or immoral, not as the good people in it succeed or fail, but as it makes the spectator love virtue more or less. So far ,r the stage has a moral function it is simply "to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image." So far 'as we can judge, at this distance from the actual performance, the whole case seems to be extremely well summed up by another writer in Tlir

Tablet, who, without troubling to discuss the conflicting views as to

the character, of the episode introduced, points out that

he primary effect of "The Miracle." is lot either definitely devotional or defin-

itelv the reverse, but purely and -imply aesthetic, and, judged from "the aesthetic standpoint ulono, there is little fault to be found with it. I confess that. I see nothing in "The Miracle" to shock or olVeml Ihe religious seiw; were it otherwise the eili.-lie ell'ei-1 would he marred, and the artistic eli'eel h almost laullle--; anil, on the other hand. I see Utile in "The Miracle" lo stimulate the religious sense, just became the aesthetic appeal i- so overpowering as to ah-orli the im.igin.ition and concentrate it upon a purely artistic impression.

Ha thon ooks whether- ti rnntiYQ* however reverently, handled,

can bo legitimately used to onhance an artistic effect. He thinks not. He feels, though he wisely does not argue about it, that religion should not be made a handmaid to art. That is a question which goes far beyond the actual merit of the play. On that point the perfect and comprehensive comment was that made by Mit. Asqumt. "The Prime Minister was present in the afternoon," wrote the Daily Mail of a recent date, "and said of the performance: 'It is very beautiful indeed.' " Which of course, is all there was to he said.