Pinero: A Theatrical Life by John Dawick (review)

Book Reviews bearers. What was advertised varied - conspicuous consumption, sexuality, or women's rights - but by tracing the deployment of the strategy. the street theatre of Edwardian protest is shown to have direct and concrete links to strategies first tried on the stage. TRACY C. DAVIS, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY JOHN DAWlCK. Pinero: A Theatrical Life. University Press of Colorado 1993- pp. 434. $37·5°· To reflect Pinero's own methods, John Dawick shapes this biography into four Acts, a design that "pin" points Sir Arthur's technical efficiency and underscores the pathos of his final years when, as ante-bellum relic, he fOWld "the smart cynicism of the 19205 ... positively distasteful ... (and] gave up wriling about the contemporary social world." Like Pinero's dramas, this account is immediately accessible and (from moment to moment) provocative. without (in the long run) disturbing one's predetermined view of its subject. Blessedly, though, Dawick's stylish prose has none of his original's rotundities . Act One explores Pinero's early years as unwilling solicitor's clerk, frequenter of theatre pits and. ultimately, "general utility" at Edinburgh's Theatre Royal. By judiciously sifting contemporary Post Office directories, the archives of Somerset House, and unpublished )euers, Dawick presents a substantial underview of beginnings Pinero only touched on. as self-conscious eminence. Here an unguarded Pin dashes off selfdeprecating letters to Cousin Lilly that show the Victorian middle-class sense of fun which later animated his spry Court farces. The emergence of that farceur takes up Act Two ("Development") then on, with thoughts as to the honour of England's "serious" drama, to Act Three ("Climax"). Lauded 'by the crilic William Archer for his modernity, Pinero was nailed by GBS in The Saturday Review for pulling his punches. Although all this has been documented before, Dawick impels us into Pinero's discomfort by means of crucial letters and reviews which culminate in Shaw's scathing put-down of The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith : "as in The Second Mrs Tanqueray, [Pinero] has no idea beyond that of doing something daring and bringing down the house by running away from the consequences ." Yet, as GBS admitted, those plays made a convenient stalking-horse because "I write plays myself, and ... my school is in violent reaction against that of Mr. Pinero." Publicly, with the dignity befitting "England's Premier Dramatist," Pinero ignored those sniper's bullets (by claiming [0 read only the critique-less Mining Journal), but privately - to give him his due - he seems to have realized what Shaw was up to and so could balance those self-serving attacks against their author's genuine passion for the theatre. In consequence, the two playwrights finally experienced a wary friendship (though "advanced" writers li~e Barker had thought them worlds apart). It was Shaw Book Reviews 537 (again for reasons of his own) who pressed for Pin's knighthood and recruited him against censorship and.for a National Theater. Interestingly. this Fourth Act ("Resolution"), in many ways a diminuendo. contains Dawick's most useful shadings of the accepted portrait. New details about the Shawl Pinero friendship show a resilience that weathered Shaw's expulsion from the Dramatists ' Club (due to his anti-war stance), though "the genial insults they had exchanged ... became a thing of the past and their letters and meetings less frequent." The outbreak of war, soon after his stepson's suicide, affected Pinero deeply: "it's as if an iron door had suddenly banged ~nd shut out the operations of one's brain." Yet, though inspiration failed him, audiences did not. A musical version of The Magistrate successfully captured the wartime mood; another, based on In Chancery, ran for a year after peace was declared. And, during those years, at least seven of his plays were translated onto the silent screen. At the end of the decade, his wife's death left him "in bad physical case" and, though he continued to raise funds for needy ex-servicemen, he felt ill-attuned to the theatre's increased commercialism. Nevertheless. successful revivals of major plays kept his name alive in the 1920S until the repeated failure of new work brought about an eclipse some years before his death in...