Playwrighting in 1905

Playwrighting in 1905

At this point in time it is useful to take a brief look at the current crop of playwrights. Ibsen* has finished his writing career, but other, equally influential dramatists are all working at the same time. Some of these are very influential, others are the dramatic giants who will continue to dominate the twentieth century.

One of the influential writers is Benjamin Franklin Wedekind* (1864-1918) who has been writing throughout the 1890s: Spring's Awakening* (1891, dealing with adolescent struggle with sexual awareness, botched abortion and suicide), Earth Spirit* and Pandora's Box* (both written in 1895 and concerning a character Lulu, the eternal temptress.) These plays are not widely appreciated in his lifetime, but their mingling of symbolism and naturalism, brutal frankness and lyrical expression, will gain him a growing reputation. After 1900 he begins to have considerable influence on expressionists* because of his stylistic experiments and his rebellion against conventional values. Wedekind* seems to suggest a relationship between commercialized sex (prostitution) and commercialized art, which he regards as a form of prostitution which panders to the public's taste for disguised sexuality. He is really preoccupied with sexual themes and his later plays (Samson*, 1912 and Herakles*, 1917) almost border on lunacy.

Strindberg* had started on a period of great productivity in 1899, writing history plays showing the sweep of Swedish history, "Chamber" plays and avant-garde expressionistic plays. He finally gives up on marriage and on traveling around Europe and goes, in 1903, to Stockholm to live alone for the remainder of his life.

Strindberg*'s influence, both on European playwrights and on American, will be mainly through his expressionistic plays (written after his bout with insanity in the 1890s.) He writes what he calls "dream plays" in which he tries to imitate the disconnected, but apparently logical, form of the dream (remember that Freud* came out in 1900 with his The Interpretation of Dreams.) They are very confusing to audiences familiar with the well-made play. Time and space are irrelevant; the characters multiply, split, vanish; anything can happen and probability is not tied to the real world, but the the logic of a dream. The dreamer (in Strindberg*'s plays the dreamer is the playwright) is in charge of everything in the play, so there are no secrets or incongruities, no external laws apply to the dream. Reality is reshaped to fit his own subjective view of things. Normally unimportant and commonplace things have

a sense of significance. The real and imaginary merge. Especially in his later plays, Strindberg* shows great compassion for lost, alienated human beings, who look for meaning in an incomprehensible world.

His expressionistic plays reveal the stage as the actor's environment (rather than realism's stage as the character's environment). They concern a direct theatrical representation of irrational elements in human psychology and human attempts to reconcile irreconcilable elements, such as love and lust, body and spirit, filth and beauty. He eliminates the rational plot and throws up a series of poetic images in relation to each other. The audience must discover meaning for itself and interpret the irrational and mystical qualities of the plays. These influential plays come out around this time; Dance of Death (1901), A Dream Play (1902), Road to Damascus (1904), The Ghost Sonata (1907).

George Bernard Shaw* had begun writing plays in 1892 but his works don't achieve much popularity until the theatrical seasons 1904-7 when ten of his plays are performed in repertory at the Royal Court Theatre* under the direction of Granville-Barker* and John E. Vedrenne* (1867-1930). These ten plays are: Candida*, John Bull's Other Island*, How He Lied To Her Husband*, You Never Can Tell*, Man and Superman*, Major Barbara*, The Doctor's Dilemma*, Captain Brassbound's Conversion*, The Philanderer*, The Man of Destiny* (a one-act). Shaw* won't write his last full-length play until 1932, making it forty years after his first. While his plays do not have the influence on playwrighting that Strindberg*'s or Ibsen*'s do, he is a major force in the theatre for more than half a century. Shaw*'s comic talents (known as Shavian wit) and his passion for the Fabian society's socialist views combine to provide unique theatrical fare. He makes thinking as exciting and as comic as a bedroom farce. In his plays the interest and excitement comes through the playing off of one point of view against another until a new level of insight is reached. As each new insight arrives, it is challenged by still another opposition. The process of argumentation, of dispute, of contending points of view, make Shaw*'s plays entertaining and rewarding long after their time.

Chekov* comes to the end of his career in 1905, leaving a modest array of plays. The comic one-acts, The Bear*, The Proposal*, and The Wedding*, are fine character farce and still widely done. The full-length plays, The Seagull* , Uncle Vanya*, Three Sisters*, and The Cherry Orchard* are hailed around the world as masterpieces of realism. These plays are very different from the realism of Ibsen. Chekov*'s plays depend on ensemble acting (such as Stanislavsky* provides) because they are not about social problems but the experiences of the characters themselves in relation to each other. There is nothing of the "well-made-play" about Chekov*. Character inter-relationships and the environment in which they take place are much more important than the "story." In this sense, these plays are almost naturalistic.

Granville-Barker* also writes plays. This year it is The Voysey Inheritance*. German playwrights provided considerable realistic material for the rising working-class

audiences in Austria and Germany: Gerhart Hauptmann* (1862-1946) writes about thirty plays beginning in 1889 with Before Sunrise*. His best known work is The Weavers* (1892),

a gritty look at desperate workers driven to revolt. Later (1912) his work becomes very nonrealistic. His basic message is naturalistic, human suffering brought on by circumstances beyond the control of the protagonists.

Arthur Schnitzler* (1862-1931) is an Austrian, preoccupied with the melancholy world- weariness and shallow sexual attitudes that seems to grip the Europeans of this time. He is a friend of Freud* and seems to regard sexual behavior as central to human experience.

Hermann Sudermann* (1857-1928) continues to make use of the well-made-play techniques with popular results. His most popular play, Magda* (1893), provided a terrific vehicle for Bernhardt* and Duse*.

American playwrights are suffering from the strangle-hold of the Syndicate* and, consequently, not producing anything new or significant. Clyde Fitch* (1865-1909) is one of the most successful dramatists. William Moody* (1869-1910) is one of the more promising writers and next year (1906) will have his first work produced, The Great Divide*. It's a sort of landmark because it has both exciting action and literary merit. It focuses on the social "divide" between the society of the East and the rough but open-hearted people of the West.