Reviews. The King's Threshold. By W.B. Yeats. Abbey Theatre, November 15th, 1921. The Saloon. By Henry James. Dublin Drama League, November 13th, 1921.

A Machine Readable Version

Thomas MacGreevy

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The King's Threshold. By W.B. Yeats. Abbey Theatre, November 15th, 1921.
The Saloon. By Henry James. Dublin Drama League, November 13th, 1921.

Only a great poet could give adequate artistic expression to the revelation of the greatness and the pitifulness of the human spirit that was granted to those who had eyes to see when Terence MacSwiney went out of life a year ago. It was natural that Mr. Yeats's mind should turn in those days to that play of his in which a poet had starved rather than see his calling dishonoured by a little king and an ignorant military ascendancy; and that, in the light of MacSwiney's unalterable faith in himself, of the nobility of the impulse that drove him to the course he took, and the pitifulness of his end, Mr. Yeats changed the old pretty ending to a new one of tragic dignity.

Being the greatest of the present–day poets—a deservedly distinguished critic has called him the greatest Silver poet since Virgil—Mr. Yeats could be relied on to treat his theme with that austerity of expression necessary to bring it before us in all its great simple dignity. He has wrought a tragedy that will be part of our human heritage. There are not finer lines in literature than those spoken by the Poet's Youngest and Oldest Pupil at the end—

O.P.	—You wrong his greatness speaking so of triumph.

Y.P.	—Oh, silver trumpets, be you lifted up And cry to the great race that is to come. Long-throated swans upon the waves of time, Sing loudly, for beyond the wall of the worlds, That race may hear our music and awake.

O.P.	—Not what it leaves behind it in the light, But what it carries with it to the dark Exalts the soul. Nor song nor trumpet blast Can call up races from the worsening world To mend the wrong and war the solitude Of the great shade we follow to the tomb.

The production at the Abbey was simple and dignified except that the shadows thrown on the back cloth by the pillars were disturbing. The acting, however, was consistently bad. Even Mr. Fitzgerald was not good, nor was Mr. Kirwan. Mr. Carolan alone spoke his words with any feeling for their significance.

The storm of derision that arose on the publication of Henry James' letter two years ago was an indication of the vulgarity of contemporary journalism. Two reviews that I remember were not contemptuous. Mr. Darrell Figgis wrote most sympathetically in "The Irish Statesman" and Mr. Desmond McCarthy in the " New Statesman" escaped farther than he usually does from the drab atmosphere of that most Broadbentian of all English periodicals. Henry James has been curiously misunderstood by English men of letters : Mr. H.G. Wells' attack on him is notorious. Mr. Shaw, with all his Irish sensibility, was almost the only critic in London who was just to " Guy Domville " when it was produced twenty-five years ago. Henry James loved a society of delicate sensibilities and fine tastes. He was limited to the interpretation of such society: but he was not wrong about it. He was treated, however, as if he were intolerant enough to postulate his theory of living as the only one, whereas the truth was that he was one of the few great men of his day who realized that there is no theory of living capable of general application: that the practice of life is different for every individual, and lasting relationships between individuals or groups of individuals can never be based on more than approximately identical theories. In the world which Henry James loved, however, and which he interpreted perfectly, everyone was an Epicurean. They were men and women of innate refinements, interested in the arts, interested in themselves, and tolerant of each other, above all tolerant. For Henry James' philosophy was all kindliness, kindliness often, we should remember, being as much a matter of forbearance as of positive generosity.

"The Saloon," which Mr. Lennox Robinson produced for the Dublin Drama League this week, with appropriate distinction, shows Henry James' fine qualities at their most perfect expression. It is a study of the situation that arises amongst the members—the dead members as well as the living ones—of an old English military family, the Wingraves, when the heir, a candidate for entrance to Sandhurst, declines to go on with soldiering as a career on the grounds that he cannot reconcile his conscience to the fundamental, the essential activity of a soldier's existence, killing. He is disinherited, disowned by his relatives. They simply did not understand. With one exception, every Wingrave before him had been cowardly enough to obey the family tradition, and take up heroism as a profession. The one who had refused had been beaten to death and the ghost of the murdered hero, who, even in death would not understand or tolerate a heroism of finer caliber than his own. The dead are as intolerant as the living and Owen Wingrave too, for all his nobility, is sacrificed. It is pessimistic philosophy, this Epicureanism of Henry James', and in "The Saloon" it was scarcely relieved by [p.] the revulsion of feeling towards Owen of the girl whom he had expected to marry, but who, in the new situation, as the daughter of a longer line of soldier ancestors than even he had, had felt impelled to tell him that she was not prepared to marry a coward. She comes back to him only when it is too late, when she knows that the ghost will destroy him. Her love did triumph, but she had shown in the first instance so little appreciation of the fine fibre of Owen Wingrave's nature, that whatever her feelings about the nobility of soldiering, one has to believe that hers was a poor sort of love.

I think the introduction of a ghost shows that Henry James was unable to make life, as he observed it, square with this desperate philosophy. Even artistically it is scarcely successful, but if one isolates it from the argument of the play, the scene of Owen Wingrave's death is extraordinarily effective. And the audience at the Abbey rose to it in a way that made one wish Henry James could have been there. He would have been pleased with the actors too. They had all without exception that air of easy good breeding that is essential for the interpretation of his work. Miss Nell Stewart, though she lacked variety in the long scene between the lovers, played with exquisite delicacy all through, and in the little scene at the fire, and in the last scene, she could not have been more perfect. Her make-up erred on the quiet side, but she realized for all that Owen's perfect portentous description of Kate, she was "all bristling with accomplishments, and all blooming with beauty." Miss Elspeth Stephens as the wife of Owen's army coach, Spencer Coyle, had a delicious good-night scene, in which a little of Henry James' sense of fineness in even slight relationships comes out, and she played it with the prettiest delicacy imaginable. Mr. Alan Duncan had a good-night scene too—a comical one, which the audience liked.

Mr. Duncan has gained much in assurance since his appearance in "The Revolutionist." He carried himself easily, and fitted naturally into Jamesian atmosphere. Mr. Brereton Barry as Owen is a little too robust to do that. He has a fine appearance and a fine voice—his booming of the challenge to the ghost at the end was a magnificent effect of its kind, but he was never Owen Wingrave. Mr. James Duncan was most happily cast as Spencer Coyle. He played a little too quietly perhaps, but he gave one admirably the sense of the grace and sincerity that made him trusted by the whole Wingrave household, and beloved by Owen. He was perfectly a young man's man. Miss Jessie Hill was admirable, too, as Kate Julian's mother, very much the faded lady with a marriageable daughter ho stays in other people's houses. And she was so "nice." "I don't know what you mean by 'rum,' Mr. Letchmere, but when such a situation arises in such a house as this, it seems to me to be very, very dreadful." Oh, Henry James has a sense of comedy for all his portentousness.

The Dublin Drama League is to be warmly congratulated on a distinguished production of a distinguished play.