Fanny’s First Play

that you did not sit there shrinking in every fibre at the thought of what might come next? Trotter Not a bit. Any clever modern girl could turn out that kind of thing by the yard. The Count Then, sir, tomorrow I start for Venice, never to return. I must believe what you tell me. I perceive that you are not agitated, not surprised, not concerned; that my own horror (yes, gentlemen, horror⁠—horror of the very soul) appears unaccountable to you, ludicrous, absurd, even to you, Mr. Trotter, who are little younger than myself. Sir: if young people spoke to me like that, I should die of shame: I could not face it. I must go back. The world has passed me by and left me. Accept the apologies of an elderly and no doubt ridiculous admirer of the art of a bygone day, when there was still some beauty in the world and some delicate grace in family life. But I promised my daughter your opinion; and I must keep my word. Gentlemen: you are the choice and master spirits of this age: you walk through it without bewilderment and face its strange products without dismay. Pray deliver your verdict. Mr. Bannal: you know that it is the custom at a Court Martial for the youngest officer present to deliver his judgment first; so that he may not be influenced by the authority of his elders. You are the youngest. What is your opinion of the play? Bannal Well, who’s it by? The Count That is a secret for the present. Bannal You don’t expect me to know what to say about a play when I don’t know who the author is, do you? The Count Why not? Bannal Why not! Why not!! Suppose you had to write about a play by Pinero and one by Jones! Would you say exactly the same thing about them? The Count I presume not. Bannal Then how could you write about them until you knew which was Pinero and which was Jones? Besides, what sort of play is this? that’s what I want to know. Is it a comedy or a tragedy? Is it a farce or a melodrama? Is it repertory theatre tosh, or really straight paying stuff? Gunn Can’t you tell from seeing it? Bannal I can see it all right enough; but how am I to know how to take it? Is it serious, or is it spoof? If the author knows what his play is, let him tell us what it is. If he doesn’t, he can’t complain if I don’t know either. I’m not the author. The Count But is it a good play, Mr. Bannal? That’s a simple question. Bannal Simple enough when you know. If it’s by a good author, it’s a good play, naturally. That stands to reason. Who is the author? Tell me that; and I’ll place the play for you to a hair’s breadth. The Count I’m sorry I’m not at liberty to divulge the author’s name. The author desires that the play should be judged on its merits. Bannal But what merits can it have except the author’s merits? Who would you say it’s by, Gunn? Gunn Well, who do you think? Here you have a rotten old-fashioned domestic melodrama acted by the usual stage puppets. The hero’s a naval lieutenant. All melodramatic heroes are naval lieutenants. The heroine gets into trouble by defying the law (if she didn’t get into trouble, thered be no drama) and plays for sympathy all the time as hard as she can. Her good old pious mother turns on her cruel father when he’s going to put her out of the house, and says she’ll go too. Then there’s the comic relief: the comic shopkeeper, the comic shopkeeper’s wife, the comic footman who turns out to be a duke in disguise, and the young scapegrace who gives the author his excuse for dragging in a fast young woman. All as old and stale as a fried fish shop on a winter morning. The Count But⁠— Gunn Interrupting him. I know what you’re going to say, Count. You’re going to say that the whole thing seems to you to be quite new and unusual and original. The naval lieutenant is a Frenchman who cracks up the English and runs down the French: the hackneyed old Shaw touch. The characters are second-rate middle class, instead of being dukes and millionaires. The heroine gets kicked through the mud: real mud. There’s no plot. All the old stage conventions and puppets without the old ingenuity and the old enjoyment. And a feeble air of intellectual pretentiousness kept up all through to persuade you that if the author hasn’t written a good play it’s because he’s too clever to stoop to anything so commonplace. And you three experienced men have sat through all this, and can’t tell me who wrote it! Why, the play bears the author’s signature in every line. Bannal Who? Gunn Granville Barker, of course. Why, old Gilbey is straight out of The Madras House. Bannal Poor old Barker! Vaughan Utter nonsense! Can’t you see the difference in style? Bannal No. Vaughan Contemptuously. Do you know what style is? Bannal Well, I suppose you’d call Trotter’s uniform style. But it’s not my style⁠—since you ask me. Vaughan To me it’s perfectly plain who wrote that play. To begin with, it’s intensely disagreeable. Therefore it’s not by Barrie, in spite of the footman, who’s cribbed from The Admirable Crichton. He was an earl, you may remember. You notice, too, the author’s offensive habit of saying silly things that have no real sense in them when you come to examine them, just to set all the fools in the house giggling. Then what does it all come to? An attempt to expose the supposed hypocrisy of the Puritan middle class in England: people just as good as the author, anyhow. With, of course, the inevitable improper female: the Mrs. Tanqueray, Iris, and so forth. Well, if you can’t recognize the author of that, you’ve mistaken your professions: that’s all I have