The Black Cat | Page 2

Avenue last spring, was really an
experiment on the taste of the British public. I wished to ascertain
whether a play depending for its interest rather upon character and
dialogue than upon plot and sensational situations, would be at first

tolerated and afterwards enjoyed by an average audience. Perhaps the
experiment was too audaciously conceived, and too carelessly
conducted, by both author and management. It was unfortunately
vitiated by the presence of a prevalent bacillus, the British bugbear, in
the test-tubes.
The new play was received with inarticulate cries of horror by the
critics. The Telegraph and the World, which had presided in auspicious
opposition over the birth of THE BLACK CAT, now hung terrific in
unnatural conjunction in the horoscope of A Comedy of Sighs. Here was
Ibsenism again--nay, worse than Ibsenism, Dodoism, Sarah-Grandism,
Keynotism, rampant on the English stage! For had I not most
impudently exhibited The Modern Woman upon it? And although there
was no tragedy this time, but beautiful reconciliation, and return to her
Duty at the fall of the curtain, was she not there, the Abomination of
Desolation?
Now we know that the Modern Woman ought not to exist anywhere,
therefore she does not exist, therefore she must be stamped out. Mrs.
Grundy and others have already begun the good work, and have been
diligently stamping her out ever since; with such success that we may
hope she will disappear, with infidelity, Ibsenism, the struggle for
existence, and other such objectionable things. Meanwhile she has
made her _début_, and may cry: _J'y suis, j'y reste!_
The Comedy of Sighs was slain, waving its tiny flag in the van of a
forlorn hope; and over its dead body "Arms and the Man," its
machine-guns volleying pellets of satire, marched to victory.
I do not solace myself with that belief, so comforting to the
unsuccessful, that a play fails merely because of its goodness, or
succeeds merely because it is bad; yet it is evident, I think, that other
things besides its merits or demerits as a piece of dramatic writing may
turn the scale for or against it. A Comedy of Sighs, with its somewhat
"impressionist" sketches of character, and aberrations from the ordinary
type of a "well-made play," proved to be "too lightly tempered for so
loud a wind" as blows upon British bugbears--"Modern Women," and
the like.

And now may I say a few words with regard to some misconceptions
on the part of the critics as to my aim in writing these two plays? One
of them, an enthusiast himself, did me the honour to hail me as a
brother enthusiast, albeit an erring one. Possibly I am. But I have not
been trying to educate the public, which is being educated past its old
standards day by day, without such philanthropic effort on my part. I
have not been trying to write "literary" plays. I quite agree with those
who think that a play must be a play first. If it be "literature" afterwards,
that is an added grace which gives it a permanent value. If it be not,
still it may be a good play in its day and generation. I have not, for the
sake of being unconventional, deliberately set myself to violate all the
received canons of dramatic art, as practised by the "practical
dramatist," thus making a convention of unconventionality.
Unconventional art is impossible, and the drama, like other arts, has its
conventions. But conventions change, and new ones are evolved, as
new problems in art and other things--even morality itself--come in
with each new tide of the human imagination. The "well-made play" of
the day before yesterday is not a canon for all time, even for the most
conservative playgoer.
No, what I have been trying to do is simply to write a good play. Ah
yes! But what is a good play? The enthusiastic critic has a ready answer:
"The play that succeeds, that has a long run, that has money in it!" I
accept the answer for what it is worth. This potentiality of money is,
like "literature," an added grace: and it certainly, in a sense, marks the
survival of the fittest. But there are other standards in the great
workshop of the artist, Nature. Even the plant or play that lives but a
short time may cast its seed into the soil, or imagination, of its day, and,
like Banquo, beget a royal race, though not itself a king.
Now, how does such a play as THE BLACK CAT differ from those we
see succeeding on the stage every day? Really not so very much, after
all. It merely accentuates a growing tendency in the plays of the period
to get more of the stuff of life, our every-day human life, typically upon
the stage;