George Moore as Collaborator and Artist: The Making of a Later Esther Waters: A Play

185 GEORGE MOORE AS COLLABORATOR AND ARTIST THE MAKING OF A LATER ESTHER WATERS : A PLAY By W. Eugene Pavis (Purdue University) The discovery of the dramatization of Esther Waters which George Moore wrote with Barrett Clark in 1922 casts new light not only on another of Moore's dramatic collaborations, but also on a problem which Paul A. Newlin discussed in his study of Moore and the drama.*■Basically, it concerns the nature of Moore's artistic commitment to the writing of plays. Even if one ignores the fact that many of Moore's plays were collaborations and that only a few were moderately successful on stage, can one ignore Moore's disparaging remarks about himself as dramatist and about his plays? As Newlin showed, despite Moore's "passionate desire . . . to be an artistic success as a dramatist," when his achievements in the theatre fell short, he often blamed other people and hid his disappointment in flippant remarks . 2 The problem, then, is this: was Moore a serious, committed playwright? The "Preface" to The Coming of GabrielIe, especially its account of how Moore came to write his first Esther Waters play, is a typical example of Moore's attitude. As though to prove that with Gabrielle he had finally succeeded in writing a play "that pleased myself," Moore launched the Preface with a summary dismissal of all his major plays to 1920. After citing trivial causes for his happening to write The Strike at Arlingford, The Bending of the Bough and Esther Waters: A Play in Five Acts, Moore confessed, "I have never put my back, as the saying goe"s~¡ into a play. "3 As Moore saw it, his first attempt to dramatize Esther Waters proved his point. He claimed that he wrote it solely because a "French friend" had wanted to play Esther. While by 1920 Moore could concede that the first three acts "are as good as the novel is," the last two he said "were but tacked together while the play was rehearsed."5 Newlin, however, objected to Moore's dismissal of Esther Waters and to his denial of serious dedication to writing a good play. "A play," Newlin wrote, "based on a successful novel, a play over which one labors off and on for . five years could hardly be considered as a lightly conceived effort."É The evidence provided by this later dramatization partly supports Newlin ' s position. Even though the original Esther Waters: A Play had failed on stage, and, in book form, had certainly added lTttle to Moore's stature, he did not forget it. Though he lightly dismissed it in I920, within two years he was collaborating on a new version. Similarly, Moore's metamorphosis from willing collaborator to jealous artist during his work with Clark seems to support Newlin's view that Moore was deeply committed to the re-creation of the play. Unfortunately , however, the form Moore's "commitment" took involved the appropriation of much new material written by Barrett Clark. The present study will make clear that the new play, despite Moore's confident assertion that one version of it was his own, was largely made possible by Barrett Clark's pointed criticism of the original Esther Waters play and the example of Clark's new version. 186 Since the publication in 1925 of Clark's essay "George Moore at Work," scholars have known that Moore's published dramatization of Esther Waters was not the only version Moore worked on.7 Edwin Gilcher , for example, in his fine bibliography of Moore, calls attention to the "later unpublished dramatization" of Esther Waters described in Clark's essay.8 Yet readers of that essay will remember that what arose from the collaboration was not simply one new version of that play. Moore and Clark did intend to write one, to be produced in America, but Clark reported that when Moore's collaborative warmth began to wane, there came a parting of the ways (p. 209).9 In addition to preserving his own version, Clark kept a full, carefully typed and revised carbon copy of Moore's version of the play.10 Some years afta-Clark's death in 1953, the plays...