George Bernard Shaw: The Playwright as Producer

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW: THE PLAYWRIGHT AS PRODUCER 1. The Significance O'f the Playwright-PrO'ducer There are various ways of testing the health of a national drama at any given moment in its history. One of the best tests is simply this: whether or not the playwright is competent to assist in the directing of his play and whether or not he is permitted to do so. It is a significant fact that in the four great periods in the history of the European theatre-the Classical Period in ancient Greece, the Golden Age in Spain, the Elizabethan period in England, the Age of Louis XIV in France-there were major playwrights who helped to direct their own plays. In Greece, Aeschylus not only acted in his own tragedies, but devised masks and footwear for his players. In Spain, Calder6n directed the court productions of his plays, and we find Lope de Vega expounding a very practical stage-doctrine when he declares, 'Very seldom should the stage remain without someone speaking . . . besides its being a great defect, the avoidance of it increases grace and artifice.'l This remark anticipates one of George Bernard Shaw's favourite principles as a director. In France, Moliere was a director as well as a dramatist; in L'Impromptu de Versailles he appears as a character and discusses the casting of parts and various points of technique. Inter alia, he invented a system of notation to train his players in proper accentuation. This, too, anticipates one of Shaw's main preoccupations as a director-playwright. In the Elizabethan theatre, Shakespeare, Jonson, and Fletcher 'instructed' their actors, to use the Elizabethan term. After the Restoration, the status of the English playwright declined somewhat, though we hear of Sir William Davenant and other dramatists conducting rehearsals. This decline was accelerated in the eighteenth century because actor-management became the dominant system in the English theatre and the playwright was usually very subordinate to the actor who controlled the playhouse. This system prevailed from the time of Garrick to that of Herbert Beerbohm Tree. During this period, English drama sank to its lowest ebb; in 1820, for instance , Charles Dibdin the Younger wrote that fantastic medley, The Admirable Crichton, which was solely designed to show off Ed1 'The New Art of Writing Plays in this Age' (1609), in Barrett H. Clark (ed.), European Theories of the Drama (New York, 1947), p. 72. 347 348 MODERN DRAMA February mund Kean's various lines as tragedian, comedian, dancer, singer, fencer, and tumbler. An improvement came in the 1860'S when T. W. Robertson collaborated with Squire and Marie Bancroft in the directing of his plays. This revival of the tradition of the playwrightdirector was maintained by W. S. Gilbert, who had rehearsal copies of his plays specially printed so that the actors could get a proper knowledge of each playas a whole. He was, however, a very sarcastic and dictatorial producer and often quarrelled with his players. Like Gilbert, A. W. Pinero was a very accomplished playwrightdirector , but he, too, was a despot who permitted not the slightest deviation from his predetermined stage business. He demanded several dress rehearsals and had to have the auditorium to himself at the first of them, when he would station himself in the dress circle with a lantern, a notebook, and a pencil, jotting down his comments and final orders for the cast. 2. Shaw and the Actor-Managers Though some playwrights were directing their own plays when Shaw began his work as a dramatist in the 1890'S, they were a small minority. Most of the London theatres were stilI dominated by actormanagers and most of these actor-managers found Shaw's early work almost incomprehensible and did not stage it when they had the chance to do so. The history of Shaw's dealings with all the British actor-managers of this period, except Forbes Robertson, is funny or pathetic, according to the mood of the reader. Very diffidently, Sir Henry Irving took out an option on The Man of Destiny, but he produced Sardou's play about Napoleon instead, and when Ellen Terry showed him the MS of Captain Brassbound...