“DULL” DRAMA

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1070, 6 September 1930, Page 24

“DULL” DRAMA

St. John Ervine and Badly-Dressed Plays HUMAN INTEREST ON THE STAGE “I hate plays about common people who wear dull clothes.” This comment from a woman correspondent, prompted St. John Ervine the eminent London critic, to write in the London “Observer” on “The Dull Drama.” The happiest person is surely the man or the woman who is interested in the largest number of spectacles and can accommodate himself to the most various people, he writes. The lady who refuses to look at any but prettily-decorated plays wilfully deprives herself of a large part of human interest, and is in danger of becoming narrow-minded; but who will say that she is not a more righteous person than the rest of us? Her aversion from dull plays about common people may spring from an altuist.ic wish that all men and women may be distinguished and wear line clothes.

There are people (but I do not admire them, for their minds seem to me to be muzzy) who think that they are doing good to the poor by living in slums. That is a queer notion. My ambition is, not to live in slums, but to abolish slums; and I cannot pretend to feel respect for persons who encourage slum-owners in their disgusting possessions by providing them with tenants who may be trusted to pay their rent regularly. Rent, if it is paid for slums at all. should be intermittently and insufficiently paid. Frequent Mistakes It is a pity, I think, to wrap oneself up in one’s class and imagine that it alone is good,'but it is a greater pity to pretend that poverty is better than riches, that malnutrition is better than nourishment, that foul air is better than fresh air. and that happiness is enjoyed bnly by those who are desperately poor. These mistakes aro not made by the poor. I know, for I have been poor, and, so far as 1 am concerned, those who like poverty can have it.

I have no sympathy with those hard-minded persons who exclaim in horror at the spectacle of a working girl in silk stockings. Why should she not have silk stockings and pretty clothes? Has she not the normal, healthy desire of the normal healthy girl to look her best? My friends think I am off my head when I say that I look forward to the day when the workman and his wife will change for dinner. I like to think of the labourer coming home in the evening to a warm bath and a cool evening suit, and I like to think of his wife sitting down with him to a wellcooked meal in a frock that will refresh his eyes. If this is lunacy, let me continue to be a lunatic.

What I have written is enough. 1 hope, to indicate that I do not en tirely disapprove of the lady whe hates plays about common people whe wear duli clothes. There is a sense in which her statement seems almosl to be beautiful. Narrow Opinions But she is in danger not only 01 becoming narrow in her opinions, bu of becoming smug and self-satisfiec if she insists that because a pool man is unskilled in the handling o: different sorts of knives and forks and must wear the same suit at his dinner that he wears at his work, h< is, therefore, uninteresting. I try t( the best of my ability to keep np mind clear of cant, and I am dis trustful of those persons who repea the prejudices of other people as i they were inspired opinions, which perhaps, is why so many people thinl that I am a rude and cantankeroui fellow.

I am impatient, for example, with people who periodically assure me that they have heard more wisdom from the mouths of simple peasants than they have ever heard from the months of eminent men. One of my friends, a man of distinction, tried to work that ancient wheeze off on me several years ago. He had. he told me, been profoundly impressed, even profoundly influenced, by words that were said to him by poor men encountered on the road. His statement excited my curiosity, and 1 begged him 1o share some of this deep wisdom with me so that I, too, might be impressed and improved. He hummed and liabhed and finally flushed with embarrassment and said that he could scarcely be expected to remember everything that he had heard, and was very cross with me when I retorted that if I had been profoundly impressed, even profoundly influenced, by the wisdom of any person, especially if he were a poor and uninstructed man. I should expect to be able to retail the influential wisdom to my friends. Some of it must have stuck in his memory. How, then, had it happened that he had forgotten all of it? A Literary Fashion

Another friend accused me of being tactless, and, in making the accusation, exposed my first friend as a humbug, canting in a way that is common among many members of the middle-class, especially if they have been to the older universities. He had never heard anything profoundly wise from the lips of casual D-encountered labourers, and was "merely affecting a literary fashion. Many authors, for example, Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw, put some of their choicest sentences into the mouths of humble men, and simpleton highbrows imagine, in consequence, that humble men drop wisdom and profundity as easily as a hen drops an egg.

They forget that the wisdom of these humble characters has been given to them by men who were great, that the profound remarks were invented by Shakespeare and Mr. Shaw and that what is attributed to the commonalty should justly be attributed to the rarer minds. I do not doubt that there are poor wise men, like rnat one who is mentioned so briefly but so pointedly, in Ecclesiastes : There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it: now there was found in it a poor wise man. and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man.”

But the author of the apocryphal Eccleslasticus, although he is certain that the industrial men “maintain the state of tlie world" is certain, too that ‘the wisdom of a learned mail comcth by opportunity of leisure: and lie that hath little business shall become wise.” “How can he get wisdom. 1 he exclaims, “that holdeth the plou-li and that glorieth in the goad, that driveth oxen, and is occupied in their labours, and whose talk is ol bullocks?”