NATIONS AND THEIR PLAYHOUSES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3093, 15 January 1909, Page 4

NATIONS AND THEIR PLAYHOUSES.

"A nation is known by the playhouses it keeps," writes Mr Langdon Everard in an interesting article on "Socialism and the Theatre," in the "Labour Leader." "The Englishman—'God's Englishman,' as some extremely patriotic but woefully irreverent critic has styled him—is packed full of all the r>anly virtues, if we may believe our Imperialists.' However that may be, one thing is certain—the English are Sadly lacking in imagination. The English may be a nation of shopkeepers, but they deal in perishable wares. The poet, the musician, the painter, and the dramatist are held in small , honour amongstsus; whilst the usurer, the captain of industry, the huckster, and the stock-jobber are the pillars of English society. Yet the imagination is the man, as William Blake said. A nation lives not by the markets it but by the songs it sings; not by the factories it builds, but by the dreams it weaves, liecause she refuses to recognise this. England, holding the premier place in the world of commerce, occupies a subordinate position in the sphere of art and culture. That is one of the penalties which a nation must pay if she is to lead in the mad race for commercial supremacy. Yet, what shall it profit ' if a nation gain the whole world and lose its own soul? If exeess of imagination is synonymous with insanity (since few can look long at the sun and remain unblinded), lack of imagination means intellectual damnation. A nation without great dreamers is a nation without great art; a nation without great art is a nation without hope. If, therefore, England is to retrieve her former glory, if she is to regain that splendid position which she occupied in the Elizabethan period, for example, she must root out the soul-destroying canker of capitalistic commercialism. One of the chief touchstones of the real prosperity of a nation is the theatre. A nation is known by the playhouses it keeps. The influence of the modern theatre is greater than that of the pulpit, and it is the position of the drama in this country which suggested the foregoing re-

marks to my mind. What is the position compared with that of, say, Germany? If vvs contrast the average programme of the Lnodon playhouses with those of Berlin, the result is not flattering to English taste. I have before me as I write a list of the plays performed in the German capital in on Shaw heads the list with seven performances! Next comes Schiller, the great German poet, followed by Shakespeare, Gorki, Hofmansthal, Ibsen, and Strindberg —dramatists of the front rank. Haupfcman and Calderon also figure well. Turn to the weekly fare offered to the thousands who nightly throng the London theatres, and judge. Sloppy 'musical comedy'—in which there is usually precious little comedy and less music —holds the ooards; its only dangerous competitor being the futile and frequently nonsensical discussion which passes for a 'problem play.' Those Londoners who care for good plays could be crowded into the Court Theatre. Even an actor of such sterling merit as Mr Forbes Robertson failed to fill the Savoy Theatre — ». slightly larger housi. The glittering shrines of musical comedy, however—to say nothing of the hearts and purses of the managers thereof — are filled to overflowing. Socialism, and Socialism only, it seems 10 me, can save the art of the theatre, with all its tremendous possibilities, from the soiled hands of the muneyhunting spoiler. The art of a nation is the life of a nation, and the drama is not the least wonderful, the Jeast soul-compelling, of the arts."