Robert Louis Stevenson [37]
is inimical to the drama and in which the Stevensonian type all too largely abounds for successful dramatic production. Mr Henley perhaps put it too strongly when he said that what was supremely of interest to R. L. Stevenson was Stevenson himself; but he indicates the tendency, and that tendency is inimical to strong, broad, effective and varied dramatic presentation. Water cannot rise above its own level; nor can minds of this type go freely out of themselves in a grandly healthy, unconscious, and unaffected way, and this is the secret of the dramatic spirit, if it be not, as Shelley said, the secret of morals, which Stevenson, when he passed away, was but on the way to attain. As we shall see, he had risen so far above it, subdued it, triumphed over it, that we really cannot guess what he might have attained had but more years been given him. For the last attainment of the loftiest and truest genius is precisely this - to gain such insight of the real that all else becomes subsidiary. True simplicity and the abiding relief and enduring power of true art with all classes lies here and not elsewhere. Cleverness, refinement, fancy, and invention, even sublety of intellect, are practically nowhere in this sphere without this.
CHAPTER XIV - STEVENSON AS DRAMATIST
IN opposition to Mr Pinero, therefore, I assert that Stevenson's defect in spontaneous dramatic presentation is seen clearly in his novels as well as in his plays proper.
In writing to my good friend, Mr Thomas M'Kie, Advocate, Edinburgh, telling him of my work on R. L. Stevenson and the results, I thus gathered up in little the broad reflections on this point, and I may perhaps be excused quoting the following passages, as they reinforce by a new reference or illustration or two what has just been said:
"Considering his great keenness and force on some sides, I find R. L. Stevenson markedly deficient in grip on other sides - common sides, after all, of human nature. This was so far largely due to a dreamy, mystical, so far perverted and, so to say, often even inverted casuistical, fatalistic morality, which would not allow him scope in what Carlyle would have called a healthy hatred of fools and scoundrels; with both of which classes - vagabonds in strictness - he had rather too much of a sneaking sympathy. Mr Pinero was wrong - totally and incomprehensibly wrong - when he told the good folks of Edinburgh at the Philosophical Institution, and afterwards at the London Birkbeck Institution, that it was lack of concentration and care that made R. L. Stevenson a failure as a dramatist. No: it was here and not elsewhere that the failure lay. R. L. Stevenson was himself an unconscious paradox - and sometimes he realised it - his great weakness from this point of view being that he wished to show strong and original by making the villain the hero of the piece as well. Now, THAT, if it may, by clever manipulation and dexterity, be made to do in a novel, most certainly it will not do on the stage - more especially if it is done consciously and, as it were, of MALICE PREPENSE; because, for one thing, there is in the theatre a very varied yet united audience which has to give a simultaneous and immediate verdict - an audience not inclined to some kinds of overwrought subtleties and casuistries, however clever the technique. If THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE (which has some highly dramatic scenes and situations, if it is not in itself substantially a drama) were to be put on the stage, the playwright, if wisely determined for success, would really have - not in details, but in essential conception - to kick R. L. Stevenson in his most personal aim out of it, and take and present a more definite moral view of the two villain-heroes (brothers, too); improve and elevate the one a bit if he lowered the other, and not wobble in sympathy and try to make the audience wobble in sympathy also, as R. L. Stevenson certainly does. As for BEAU AUSTIN, it most emphatically, in view of this, should be
CHAPTER XIV - STEVENSON AS DRAMATIST
IN opposition to Mr Pinero, therefore, I assert that Stevenson's defect in spontaneous dramatic presentation is seen clearly in his novels as well as in his plays proper.
In writing to my good friend, Mr Thomas M'Kie, Advocate, Edinburgh, telling him of my work on R. L. Stevenson and the results, I thus gathered up in little the broad reflections on this point, and I may perhaps be excused quoting the following passages, as they reinforce by a new reference or illustration or two what has just been said:
"Considering his great keenness and force on some sides, I find R. L. Stevenson markedly deficient in grip on other sides - common sides, after all, of human nature. This was so far largely due to a dreamy, mystical, so far perverted and, so to say, often even inverted casuistical, fatalistic morality, which would not allow him scope in what Carlyle would have called a healthy hatred of fools and scoundrels; with both of which classes - vagabonds in strictness - he had rather too much of a sneaking sympathy. Mr Pinero was wrong - totally and incomprehensibly wrong - when he told the good folks of Edinburgh at the Philosophical Institution, and afterwards at the London Birkbeck Institution, that it was lack of concentration and care that made R. L. Stevenson a failure as a dramatist. No: it was here and not elsewhere that the failure lay. R. L. Stevenson was himself an unconscious paradox - and sometimes he realised it - his great weakness from this point of view being that he wished to show strong and original by making the villain the hero of the piece as well. Now, THAT, if it may, by clever manipulation and dexterity, be made to do in a novel, most certainly it will not do on the stage - more especially if it is done consciously and, as it were, of MALICE PREPENSE; because, for one thing, there is in the theatre a very varied yet united audience which has to give a simultaneous and immediate verdict - an audience not inclined to some kinds of overwrought subtleties and casuistries, however clever the technique. If THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE (which has some highly dramatic scenes and situations, if it is not in itself substantially a drama) were to be put on the stage, the playwright, if wisely determined for success, would really have - not in details, but in essential conception - to kick R. L. Stevenson in his most personal aim out of it, and take and present a more definite moral view of the two villain-heroes (brothers, too); improve and elevate the one a bit if he lowered the other, and not wobble in sympathy and try to make the audience wobble in sympathy also, as R. L. Stevenson certainly does. As for BEAU AUSTIN, it most emphatically, in view of this, should be