IN truth, it must indeed be here repeated that Stevenson for the reason he himself gave about DEACON BRODIE utterly fails in that healthy hatred of "fools and scoundrels" on which Carlyle somewhat incontinently dilated.Nor does he, as we have seen, draw the line between hero and villain of the piece, as he ought to have done;
and, even for his own artistic purposes, has it too much all on one side, to express it simply.Art demands relief from any one phase of human nature, more especially of that phase, and even from what is morbid or exceptional.Admitting that such natures, say as Huish, the cockney, in the EBB-TIDE on the one side, and Prince Otto on the other are possible, it is yet absolutely demanded that they should not stand ALONE, but have their due complement and balance present in the piece also to deter and finally to tell on them in the action.If "a knave or villain," as George Eliot aptly said, is but a fool with a circumbendibus, this not only wants to be shown, but to have that definite human counterpart and corrective; and this not in any indirect and perfunctory way, but in a direct and effective sense.It is here that Stevenson fails -
fails absolutely in most of his work, save the very latest - fails, as has been shown, in THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE, as it were almost of perverse and set purpose, in lack of what one might call ethical decision which causes him to waver or seem to waver and wobble in his judgment of his characters or in his sympathy with them or for them.Thus he fails to give his readers the proper cue which was his duty both as man and artist to have given.The highest art and the lowest are indeed here at one in demanding moral poise, if we may call it so, that however crudely in the low, and however artistically and refinedly in the high, vice should not only not be set forth as absolutely triumphing, nor virtue as being absolutely, outwardly, and inwardly defeated.It is here the same in the melodrama of the transpontine theatre as in the tragedies of the Greek dramatists and Shakespeare."The evening brings a' 'hame'"
and the end ought to show something to satisfy the innate craving (for it is innate, thank Heaven! and low and high alike in moments of ELEVATED IMPRESSION, acknowledge it and bow to it) else there can scarce be true DENOUEMENT and the sense of any moral rectitude or law remain as felt or acknowledged in human nature or in the Universe itself.
Stevenson's toleration and constant sermonising in the essays - his desire to make us yield allowances all round is so far, it may be, there in place; but it will not work out in story or play, and declares the need for correction and limitation the moment that he essays artistic presentation - from the point of view of art he lacks at once artistic clearness and decision, and from the point of view of morality seems utterly loose and confusing.His artistic quality here rests wholly in his style - mere style, and he is, alas! a castaway as regards discernment and reading of human nature in its deepest demands and laws.Herein lies the false strain that has spoiled much of his earlier work, which renders really superficial and confusing and undramatic his professedly dramatic work - which never will and never can commend the hearty suffrages of a mixed and various theatrical audience in violating the very first rule of the theatre, and of dramatic creation.
From another point of view this is my answer to Mr Pinero in regard to the failure of Stevenson to command theatrical success.He confuses and so far misdirects the sympathies in issues which strictly are at once moral and dramatic.
I am absolutely at one with Mr Baildon, though I reach my results from somewhat different grounds from what he does, when he says this about BEAU AUSTIN, and the reason of its failure - complete failure - on the stage:
"I confess I should have liked immensely to have seen [? to see]
this piece on the boards; for only then could one be quite sure whether it could be made convincing to an audience and carry their sympathies in the way the author intended.Yet the fact that BEAU AUSTIN, in spite of being 'put on' by so eminent an actor-manager as Mr Beerbohm Tree, was no great success on the stage, is a fair proof that the piece lacked some of the essentials, good or bad, of dramatic success.Now a drama, like a picture or a musical composition, must have a certain unity of key and tone.You can, indeed, mingle comedy with tragedy as an interlude or relief from the strain and stress of the serious interest of the piece.But you cannot reverse the process and mingle tragedy with comedy.
Once touch the fine spun-silk of the pretty fire-balloon of comedy with the tragic dagger, and it falls to earth a shrivelled nothing.
And the reason that no melodrama can be great art is just that it is a compromise between tragedy and comedy, a mixture of tragedy with comedy and not comedy with tragedy.So in drama, the middle course, proverbially the safest, is in reality the most dangerous.
Now I maintain that in BEAU AUSTIN we have an element of tragedy.
The betrayal of a beautiful, pure and noble-minded woman is surely at once the basest act a man can be capable of, and a more tragic event than death itself to the woman.Richardson, in CLARISSA HARLOWE, is well aware of this, and is perfectly right in making his DENOUEMENT tragic.Stevenson, on the other hand, patches up the matter into a rather tame comedy.It is even much tamer than it would have been in the case of Lovelace and Clarissa Harlowe;
for Lovelace is a strong character, a man who could have been put through some crucial atonement, and come out purged and ennobled.
