A Stage Allegory

Horowhenua Chronicle, 27 June 1913, Page 4

A Stage Allegory

BOTTOM AS THEATRE MANAGER, (By "Gallery."—Sydney Sun.) Bottom: Let mo play the lion too; 1 will roar that it will do an; man's heart good to hear me; will roar, that 1 will mako the duk< say, "Lot him roar again, let liin roar again." Qninco: An' should you do it terri bly, you would fright the duches and the ladies, that they woult shriek; and that were enough t hang us all. •All: That would hang us, ever, mother's sou. Bottom : There are things in tiii comedy of L'yramus and Thisb; that will never please. First Pyramus must draw n sword to kil himsell ; which the ladies canno abide. How answer you that? Snout: By'r takin', a parlou fear. Starveling: I believe we inns leave the.killing out, when nil i done. Snout: Will not the ladies b a f oared of the lion? Starveling: I fear it, 1 prom is you. Bottom : Masters, you ought ti consider with yourselves; to brinj in—God shield lis!—a lion anion; ladies, is a most dreadful thing lor there is not a more fearful wile ■ fowl living. —"A Midsummer Night's Dream Acts I and 111. Shakespeare wrote his own skit; lor the Review Season, and put then into his plays when and where hi felt inclined. A number of theat rical references are scattered through the dramas. In "Hamlot" there is the well-known lecture ol advice from the Prince to the playei> of which Oscar "Wilde remarked, that its most famous aphorism was "deliberately said by Hamlet in order to convince the bystanders of his absoluto insanity in all art matters.'' It is not generally recognised howaver that in "A Midsummer Night's Dream,'' Shakespeare set himself, ivith prophecy and premeditation, tc portray the moods of theatrical man figers of the twentieth century, both inside and outside the Commonwealth Australia. The first principle of the manager is caution, the second is caution, and •he third is caution. The perpetually present' fear in theatrical proluction is that the piece may affright the ladies—of 'both sexes. Ladies—of both sexes—are not frightened nowadays by the apparition >f a mock lion on the stage, nor •i ere they when Shakespeare wrote, loi w lieu the Duke Theseus went to ice Nick Bottom kill himself. H,it ;liev are frightened (or. at least.

eatrical managers think so) 1

the operation, on the stage, of tho tragic will of Fate. \ot murders, or suicides., or seductions—those things have conic to be regarded as harmless cogs in theatrical machinery. The lion which the modern Nick Hottom was scared to introduce—God shield us!—among the ladies is that hideous and terrible wild-fowl, an Unpleasant Ending. "How did you like the play?" one lady (of either .sex) says to another next day. "[ don't know,* the •second lady answers; ''it ends unpleasantly, doesn't it?" And the lady who is writing tho popular criticism on the new drama ends her notice with tho words. "The unpleasant denouement of the play leaves the audience with a sense of something unfinished." Take a few dramas which have been staged in England and Australia during the last ten years. "Leah Kleschna" was dramatis oil Leah was the daughter of a thief, and a hold splendid character. She flashed through the life j of a prince, hut was thrown back I into the dirt again. Then Nick Bottom, theatrical manager, got hold of the story. "This the ladles cannot abide," he exclaimed. Though Leah had come to her proper dramatic finish, Bottom was certain that the ladies would be affrighted. Did he throw the play away? Not he; he added a now act to it. He placed Le.ah in a paddock cutting cabbages for a living. Into' this romantic setting came her hero, her prince, and they fell on eaeh other's boo-o-ziim. Curtain. The manager of one Australian theatre sent to one critic (not of the ladylike sort) a paragraph saying "The number of Chinese who came to see Leah Klcschn?, is surprising. Which the critic printed, adding succinctly. "Not surprising; lor the last, act is just about good enough to appeal to a Chinese market gardener." When Kipling wrote "The Lighf. that Failed," he slaughtered his hero, Dick Heldar, which was a better climax, and a truer one, than, marrying him to a pretentious little" prig whom the author had drawn in Maisie. Nick Bottom got hold of Kipling, and persuaded him to rewrite the end of the story leaving Dick alive. And so it was dramatised, with Maisie pulling her hair down, and ruddling round him in a most attractive fashion. Tho play

need to bo a feared. "An Englishman's Home ,, was a queer sort of an effort, written by an amateur, and more like a political sermon than a play. Still, it Wiiis an effective drama, as well as a very virile piece of polities. It was intended to teach Englishmen the value of universal military training, and the folly of depending on an improvised soldiery. The horo of the play "Mr Brown" took pot shots at tlie German invaders from his own house; consequently, since he was a civilian, the only fate possible fate for him w,as to bo stood against the wall of his own house and shot* But how that lion would have frighted the ladies of England! Consequently, he was shot' out in the wings, and at the- last moment a picturesi|iie mob of glittering British soldiers marched in to save their country. .So the play ended in a spectacle of shrieking absurdity. No wonder the European audiences, when it was translated, hooted and derided it off the stage. In Shakespeare's piny, Nick Bottom's careful revelation of the lion as nothing more than Snug, the joiner, was not needed for the duchess and the ladies, who would not have been very nervous. Often the playgoer thinks that the modern manager, like Bottom, is too timorous, ami credits audiences with less intelligence than they possess. Still, they are woiiderfulll.v unanimous, rhey cry in chorus that it would never do to startle the public in any » - ay. "That would hang us, every mother's son."

You cannot call the managers names for their caution. They, like Bottom, come not to offend. Like him, their hope is that they will get their sixpence a day for playing P.vranius through long and comfortable! years. Jiut that fact does not make Shakespeare's allegory any the ess excellent.