W. Stanley Houghton: An Introduction and Bibliography

W. Stanley Houghton: An Introduction and Bibliography PAUL MORTIMER George Rowell ends his study of the history of drama and theatre from the late nineteenth century to the outbreak of World War I with a statement that has direct bearing on this article: By the dictate ofthe alphabet Shakespeare, Sheridan and Shaw stand side by side on the library shelf, and by the dictate ofthe public theirplays command the English repertory. Of other playwrights who shaped the course of English drama the playgoer sees and learns little. These forgotten men and the times in which they lived and worked are part of the pattern of the English theatre. To ignore them is to neglect the whole pattern as well as its parts. I W. Stanley Houghton is one of these forgotten playwrights who made an important contribution to English drama. Since his death at the age of only thirty-two, in 1913, his name has gradually faded from memory, although his most famous play, Hindle Wakes (1912), remains familiar. No detailed biography ofhim exists; indeed, the absence ofsuch a work is curious, since he achieved national and, in due course, American fame, and his reputation remained high for several years after his death. Ironically, the 1914 edition of Who's Who was released to the press at the time of his death on II December 1913; in it was Houghton's first entry. Virtually all the national papers carried his death, with The Manchester Guardian (now The Guardian) in particular giving it wide coverage because he had been a part-time memberofits staff. His native city, Manchester, was so proud ofhim that it erected a memorial tablet in his honour. Its unveiling in February 1915 was performed by Miss A.E.F. Horniman, whose Gaiety Theatre (Manchester) was an influential enterprise in the development of repertory theatre in England. Houghton wrote many of his plays for her. At approximately the same time, a memorial scholarship, originally intended to be offered to Manchester University, was instituted at The Manchester Grammar School, where Houghton had been a pupil. W. Stanley Houghton: Introduction and Bibliography 475 Many brief accounts of his life did appear after his death, and Houghton still features in most standard reference books connected with drama and the theatre. However, these accounts give very little indication of either Houghton or his works. Several contain erroneous information which appears also in later editions. For example, A Dictionary ofLiterature in the English Language2 and Everyman's Dictionary of Literary Biography, English and American' both record that Houghton died in Paris, when in fact he died and was cremated in Manchester. The Encyclopedia ofWorld Theatre" considering Hindle Wakes, says that Fanny became pregnant as a result ofher affair with Alan: this reading not only is wrong, but completely undermines the very strength of Fanny's refusal to marry Alan, a misinterpretation which in tum detracts from the play's greatest contemporary shock. Even The Dictionary ofNational Biography' has incorrect dates for the writing and first productions of some of Houghton's works. The only biography of any note is that by the playwright Harold Brighouse, who in 1914 wrote the introduction to a tmee-volume edition ofThe Works of Stanley Houghton (Constable, 1914). But these volumes, whilst valuable, are incomplete: they do not contain many of Houghton's works, and they provide ottly a general, and at times vague, account of his life. James Agate, that influential and renowned critic, was quick to note the anomaly: Where we chiefly fault Mr. Brighouse's introduction is that it gives little clue to the personality of the man, to that diffidence and chann, that obvious pre-occupation with the best-intentioned in life and art which conquered all of those critics who knew him intimately. .. . In this introduction Houghton is only a name and there is no indication as to the manner of man he was.6 Robin Littlewood, founder ofthe Critics' Circle, and for fifty years one ofFleet Street's respected critics,7 added that: perhaps itis inevitable that the biography itself, evidently official, and full ofconsidered eulogy and pennitted detail, does not fe-create for us with absolute truth to nature the image...