Somerset Maugham: A Test Case for Popular Comedy

Somerset Maugham: A Test Case for Popular Comedy CHRISTOPHER INNES Popular comedy is generally a blind spot in dramatic criticism. It may provide a basis for sociological study, but hardly lends itselfto intellectual discussion and seldom offers examples of stylistic innovation. In comparison even farce attracts attention in being frequently polemic, though critics normally focus on genres that reflect their own concepts of seriousness. As a result histories of modem theatre are normally surveys of minority drama that bear little relationship to what actually occupies nine-tenths of the stage. They focus on the drama of ideas or political theatre, as offering material for thematic analysis that has a significance beyond the work itself, on experimental staging for its theoretical significance, which tends to be in inverse proportion to popularity, or on poetic plays because of their clear literary value. Although each may use comic techniques or situations, these are seen as secondary. By contrast and almost by definition, popular comedy is conventional in form and its satire tends to reinforce accepted moral norms instead of challenging society. As such it offers less scope for the display ofnew ideas, on which critical reputations are founded. Typically it deals with folly rather than injustice, with the result that its interest is as topical as its reference and quickly dated. Beneath a veneer of natural appearances its style is artificial, and although - as in Oscar Wilde's plays - an extreme of artifice can be elevated to art, sentimental appeal is undercut as social change makes the artificiality obvious. Once the social detail that substantiates their behaviour becomes outmoded, the humanity of the characters erodes. Eventually with historical distance, identification may be replaced by the imaginative attraction of a period piece, and topicality turns into costume drama: as with Restoration Comedy, where the rakes now appear heartless and the satiric targets seem idiosyncratic eccentricities to modem audiences, while the action is largely appreciated as colourful escapism and the wit for a purely verbal brilliance. Until that point is reached, however, popular comedy is relegated to 550 CHRISTOPHER INNES fashionable amusement. The reviewing of contemporary pieces is little more than advertising, and once taken offthe stage the plays fall into a critical limbo. At first glance, Somerset Maugham's work is in this category, both transient in original appeal and still too close to the present for revaluation. The epigrammatical repartee of his early comedies clearly links him to Wilde, and he specifically referred to them as in the tradition of Restoration drama. The structure and plot situations he employed were conventional, and he described himself as an "improviser" on established dramatic patterns, relying on the value of "spontaneity" rather than the architectural complexity of elaborating a form that would be the unique expression of a particular subject matter. As a result the surface of his plays is deceptively simple. Being explicitly designed for or commissioned by actors, the characterization is determined more by dramatic opportunities than psychological exploration, and corresponded to Maugham's general principle that "the appeal ofdrama is to the emotions rather than the intellect". At the same time, reaching for a wide audience restricts the themes to the apparently conventional. Unable at first (1903) to get Lady Frederick produced, he deliberately created an innocuously virtuous heroine in Mrs. Dot, while the other two plays that marked his first theatrical success in 1908 - with all four running simultaneously on the London stage - could best be described as romantic sentimental melodrama with comic overtones. His reputation as acommercial entertainer coloured the receptionofhis subsequent work, and Maugham has himself contributed to its critical neglect by labelling his comedies "trivial pieces" that had no object but to "hold an audience". Indeed, of the thirty-two plays written between 1892 and 1933 he chose to omit almost halffrom his collected work as without lasting interest. As a result when critics mention his drama at all, the consensus has been dismissive: "You do not ask whether a butterfly conforms to a moral standard; you pin it down and try not to destroy the bloom upon its wings". I Yet the light surface of these plays is deceptive. All end in marriage, but the high society milieu...