Stage Production. Simultaneously with this improvement in the kind of play and of the quality of the acting there was also an improvement in the mechanics of the theatre. The whole business of stage decoration, both from the point of view of scenery and of lighting, was undergoing a profound change, due chiefly to the work of E. Gordon Craig, the son of Ellen Terry. The elaborate " sets " used by Sir Henry Irving and, later, by Sir Herbert Tree involved a serious waste of time in changing scenes, to such an extent that Shakespeare's plays were mercilessly " cut " and even re-shaped to make them fit the requirements of the stage-carpenter. The re- action from this sort of thing brought a demand for more manage- able scenery. Craig had been experimenting with stage settings for many years and had produced " sets," particularly suited to poetical plays, which were undeniably beautiful. They had the supreme merit of enabling a manager to perform a Shakespearean play as it was written by its author and with no other " cuts " than were made necessary by a different code of manners or by the obscurity caused through the lapse of time. Craig founded a school of decorative artists in Florence and printed his theories in various books of which the principal one is The Art of the Theatre. His in- fluence on stage decor has been immense. The famous Moscow Art theatre admittedly derives from him, and it is indisputable that Herr Reinhardt, the great German producer, owes much to him (see Reinhardt und seine Buhne, by Ernst Stern and Heinz Herald, Ber- lin, Eysler & Co.). In England Craig's influence is wide and ad- mitted. Decorative artists, such as Norman Wilkinson, Claude Lovat Fraser, (d. June 18 1921), Hugo Rumbold, Charles Ricketts and Albert Rutherston, derive from him, as do producers such as Granville-Barker, Nigel Playfair, Bernard Fagan and Basil Dean. In America Lee Simonson, Robert Edmond Jones and Rollo Peters acknowledge Craig's authority.
Simplicity was the key-note of Craig's demand. He achieved impressions of height and depth by the use of long curtains and the manipulation of light, and it became plain that in future production would be less a matter of complex machinery and more a matter of manipulated light. Drury Lane theatre, on its mechanical side, has the appearance of a large engineering works, and its very complicated machinery requires the attention of a large staff of skilled mechanics. There is not likely to be any growth in the extent of engineering- production, although engineering will not entirely disappear from the theatre. We are likely to achieve a revolving stage in every theatre, with deep cellars into which whole " sets " can, if necessary, be dropped. Scenes will often be a matter, not of substantial things, but of actual light. It will then be possible to produce a Shakespeare play in a great variety of scenes, without elaborate " cuts," in a very short time. In America, where electricity is much cheaper than it is in England, experiments with light have been made for many years, with the result that production is in a more advanced state than it is in England. Some of the more modern English producers, such as Basil Dean, had to import electrical apparatus from America.
The movement for greater simplicity in stage decor received some impetus in England from the employment of Craig by Sir Herbert Tree to make the scenery for Macbeth. A quarrel, followed by litigation, prevented the experiment from being completely made, but Tree used enough of Craig's designs to show their austere beauty and value. It was not, however, until Granville-Barker began his remarkable season at the Savoy theatre with the production of The Winter's Tale in Sept. 1912, followed by Twelfth Night in Nov. of that year and A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1914, that the new methods of production received extensive consideration. Barker, who had been associated with J. E. Vedrenne at the Court theatre where Shaw's plays first received popular support and Galsworthy became known to the public as a dramatist, and was later associated with Frohman and Dion Boucicault in the Duke of York's season already described, entered into management with Lilian McCarthy, both at the Savoy and at the Kingsway, where he conducted seasons of remarkable value and courage, dramatically and decoratively. A number of plays, old and modern, English and foreign, were produced by him in a highly brilliant and, in several instances, ex- ceedingly beautiful manner. Some of his innovations were not successful in obtaining the degree of beauty at which he aimed the use of golden-faced fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream, for ex- ample, introduced a metallic and heavy element, unattractive in itself, into a world where insubstantiality was the primary require- ment, and took, moreover, the English quality out of the play but it is impossible to deny high tribute to him for the quality of his work and the great distinction he achieved for the theatre. The plays produced at the Savoy, in addition to the three Shakespearean plays already named, were The Tragedy of Man by John Masefield ; The Witch, translated from the Norwegian of H. Wiers-Jennsen by Mase- field; The Silver Box by Galsworthy; The Wild Duck by Ibsen; The Doctor's Dilemma by Bernard Shaw; a translation of Moliere's Le Manage Force and Alfred Sutro's translation of Maeterlinck's The Death of Tintagiles. Prior to the season at the Savoy, Barker had conducted a short season at the St. James's where he produced Androcles and the Lion by Shaw, followed by a Harlequinade com- posed by Dion Clayton Calthrop and himself. Simultaneously with his season at the Savoy he conducted a season of modern English plays at the Kingsway, producing The Eldest Son by Gals-
worthy, followed by revivals of his own play, The Voysey Inheritance, Shaw's very popular piece, Fanny's First Play, and Arnold Ben- nett's The Great Adventure in which Henry Ainley and Wish Wynne especially distinguished themselves. Bennett's play was a great popular success, almost as popular as Milestones which he wrote in collaboration with Edward Knoblock. Mr. Shaw seemed to be on the crest of a high wave of popularity, for not only had Fanny's First Play been performed for more than 600 times, but his five-act comedy, Pygmalion, with Sir Herbert Tree and Mrs. Patrick Camp- bell in the principal parts, which was produced at His Majesty's April II 1914, ran for 118 nights, a long run for any play in so large a theatre. -Two plays by Galsworthy, The Mob and The Fugitive, were not popular successes and were hardly on the general high level of his work. Sir James Barrie's activities during the five years preceding the war, apart from the production of The Adored One, were confined to one-act plays, of which The Twelve-Pound Look is likely to be a classic example of the short play at its best. Others of these plays, notably The Will and Rosalind were very near the level of The Twelve-Pound Look.
Effects of the World War. The situation, then, at the outbreak of the World War was one of extraordinary interest in the English theatre. The theatrical season 1913-4 had closed with considerable brilliance. Plays of merit had been extensively performed in London and in the provinces, and the repertory theatres were in a fairly healthy condition. A rich level of acting had been discovered. Pro- duction was on a genuinely artistic scale. The season of 1914-5 seemed likely to open still more brilliantly than the season just concluded. There was even talk of a national theatre at which the plays of Shakespeare would be permanently performed. On Aug. 4 1914 Great Britain declared war against Germany and immediately the great revival of the English theatre languished and seemed at first in danger of total collapse. Many of the repertory theatres soon ceased to exist. In 1921 the Gaiety theatre, Manchester, passed from the hands of Miss Horniman to a kinema syndicate. A gallant effort to maintain a decent standard of plays was made by some managers; Sir Herbert Tree revived L. N. Parker's pageant piece, Drake, and Mr. (now Sir) Frank R. Benson revived Henry the Fifth in the laudable desire to satisfy patriotic cravings with something of value. Granville-Barker produced a number of scenes from Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts at the Kingsway. But these attempts to keep the theatre on a high level were not successful, and very soon began the process of degeneration which was maintained for the whole period of the war. Some of the managers gave up their efforts to save the tradition they had established: Sir Herbert Tree and Cyril Maude went to America. Others such as Gerald du Maurier remained in London and, with great courage, made a fight for decent drama. Among the plays produced by Gerald du Maurier during the war was a strange piece, very popular, entitled Dear Brutus by Sir James Barrie, and a revival of the same author's A Kiss for Cinderella. Du Maurier, more than anyone else during the war, kept faith with fine things finely done.
For the first two years of the war, a form of entertainment in- aptly described as " revue " was very popular. The chief features of these entertainments were light and colour and jingling music and pretty girls and broadly comic effects. They were a medley of music-hall and musical comedy and pantomime performances, reduced to a low level. Some of the individual performers in these entertainments, notably Ethel Levey and Violet Loraine, Harry Tate and George Rpbey, were of indisputable talent, but generally speaking, personalities were submerged in spectacles. Mr. C. B. Cochran, more wise than some of his competitors, exploited per- sonalities in his " revues," which were handsomely and even wittily done, and in Mile. Delysia and Nelson Keys he discovered two artists of very great merit. Farces of a bold and even indecent char- acter were next to the revues in popular esteem. Oddly enough, cer- tain plays commonly called " highbrow " became popular during the war for reasons which were not concerned with literature. Brieux' banned play, Les Avaries, known in England as Damaged Goods, was licensed by the censor for public performance on the representations mainly of medical men and sociologists, and it was widely patronized in London and the provinces. The artistic value of Damaged Goods is slight, but its sociological value is in- disputably great, and it brought a degree of publicity to the discus- sion of evils which would have been impossible in England prior to 1914. The success of this play led to the public performance of Brieux' play, The Three Daughters of M. Dupont, and of Ibsen's Ghosts, from which also the ban was removed by the censor. The latter play, however, is not, like Damaged Goods, a propaganda play and it received little support in spite of its being labelled " A Play for Adults only." The rule of the censor was considerably relaxed during the war and his ban was removed from Shaw's one-act play, The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet, but attempts to obtain a licence for Mrs. Warren's Profession were unsuccessful. Since the conclusion of the war the censor's rule has been tightened again, but, as a re- sult of the changes made on the recommendations of the Joint Select Committee on Stage Plays (censorship) 1909, the rule bears rather less arbitrarily on meritable work than it formerly did.
The end of the war found the stage in a chaotic condition. The demand for entertainment during the hostilities had been so great
