Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/64

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AT THE PLAY.

"David Copperfield."

If it were a simple question of bulk, few authors would lend themselves to the process of compression so well as Charles Dickens; but the scheme of David Copperfield is too complex, and its interests too many and competitive, to be packed into a three-hours' play, even by Mr. Louis Parker, master of the tabloid. Of the main themes—the career of the hero himself, the machinations of Uriah Heep, the tragedy of Little Em'ly—only the last was at all effective in pillule form. The figure of David Copperfield—always pleasant if rather colourless—served to hold the play together; but the central experience of his life was treated with the extreme of haziness. We were informed of his engagement to Dora, his marriage, her illness, her death, all with the brevity of a French official communiqué; but as for the child-wife herself we never so much as set eyes on her. While again we gathered that the deigns of Uriah Heep were ultimately confounded, nobody without the aid of memory or imagination could possibly have penetrated their obscurity.

On the other hand—whether with or without the connivance of Sir Herbert Tree I dare not conjecture—the person of Wilkins Micawber was given a prominence out of all proportion to his share in any one of the plots. Unlike the something that was to make his fortune, he was always "turning up," and, whenever he did, he practically had the stage to himself.

I am far from quarrelling with this arrangement, for I have never seen Sir Herbert in better form. His humour was of the richest, yet full of quiet subtleties, and merely to gaze upon his grotesque figure was a pure delight. That he should have permitted himself, in a spirit of creative irresponsibility, to deviate at times into the borderland of farce, and become an hilarious blend of himself and Mr. Henry James (I don't know why he suggested to me a burlesque of Mr. Henry James, for I have never known that most distinguished of writers to lapse from decorum) need not trouble anybody in a play where there was no pretence of insisting upon the letter of Dickens.

The transition from Falstaff to Macawber, from a bibber of sack to a bibber of punch, was an easy one for Sir Herbert; but not so wasy were the constant changes from and into the part of Dan'l Peggotty. Here he gave us a really admirable character-sketch—for Peggotty belongs to the region of possibility, whereas Micawber is always a creature of incredible fancy—and I am not sure that his achievement as the old salt was not, for him, the greater of the two. Certainly in the scene where he tells of his search over the world for Little Em'ly he came nearer to simple pathos that I have ever known him to come. Even the strong Somerset accent of this East Anglian tar could not conceal his sincerity.

I shrink from the odious task of distinguishing between the merits of a most admirable cast, but I must mention the delightfully piquant drollery of Miss Sydney Fairbrother as Mrs. Micawber, and the too-brief excellence of Mr. Roy Byford as the Waiter of the "Golden Cross," and Mr. Gayer Mackay as Littimer. Mr. Quartermaine's Uriah Heep—a very careful study—seemed perhaps too obviously stamped from the start with the hallmark of villany. Conversely the Betsey Trotwood of Miss Agnes Tromas appeared to be lacking in austerity of mien.

TWO HERBERTS IN THE FIELD.

[In the scene of the emigration ship the entrance of Micawber follows with startling rapidity upon the exit of Dan'l Peggotty.]

Sir Herbert Tree (as Dan'l Peggotty) to Sir Herbert Tree (as Micawber). "Theer, I zed 'twould happen zo one of these vine days. You've turned up too zoon!"

One shared Mr. Nigel Playfair's enjoyment of the futility of Mr. Dick; but this freakish figure, so typical of Dickens, seemed always a little out of the picture.

Though Mrs. Gummidge, played with a sound restraint by Miss Ada King, insisted from time to time upon the fact that she was a "lone lorn creetur," we were spared a good many of the author's reiterated tags, and I think it was not till his friends had guaranteeded to lubricate his passage to the New World that Mr. Wilkins Micawber so much as alluded to his habitural expectation of something "turning up."

The popularity of the production promises to be exceptional, and with good reason, apart from the high quality of the performance. For with its human tenderness, and the relief of its gaiety, it offers just the right kind of distraction to the strain of public emotion in these times. And, though its matter bears no relation to the subject which absorbs our hearts, the very name of Charles Dickens makes immediate appeal to that national spirit which the War has re-awakened.

O. S.

 

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TO SOME OF OUR EDITORS.

Ye pundits who edit our papers,
 How long will it take you to learn
That mere egotistical capers
 Are not of the highest concern?
The writers who cut them for ages
 In the nostrils of England shall stink,
Yet while able to hamper, you pet and you pamper
 These slingers of poisonous ink.

In the stress of a conflict Titanic,
 When personal sorrow is mute,
We see them beset with a panic
 Of losing their chances of loot;
So they start with indecent endeavour,
 On the flimsiest pretext and hint,
Criticising and squealing, but only revealing
 Their passionate craving for print.

When they ask you to publish their sloppy,
 Sophistical, impudent screeds,
Think, editors, less of "good copy"
 And more of the national needs;
For whether they pontify sadly,
 Or flout us in cap and in bells,
Pontifical pattor and arrogant chatter
 Are worse than the enemy's shells.

There's a saying that's frequently quoted,
 And cannot be wholly ignored,
That the pen, when its force can be noted,
 Is a mightier thing than the sword;
But the mightiness doesn't reside in
 The pen, but the writer behind,
Who, if hostile to reason or bent upon treason,
 No deadlier weapon can find.

In Peace, in the times that were piping,
 When pacifists bade us disarm,
This smart intellectual sniping
 Did less recognisable harm;
But now, in the hour of its peril,
 The country is sick of its Shaws,
And hurls to the devil the sophists who revel
 In pleading the enemy's cause.

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