The Story of a Play | Page 9

feeling of the spectator."
"And Godolphin would say that if you let the carpenter have something
to do he would give the scene itself, and you could have the effect of it
at first hand."
Maxwell laughed. "I wonder how much they believe in those
contrivances of the carpenter themselves. They have really so little to
do with the dramatic intention; but they have been multiplied so since
the stage began to make the plays that the actors are always wanting

them in. I believe the time will come when the dramatist will avoid the
occasion or the pretext for them."
"That will be after Godolphin's time," said Mrs. Maxwell.
"Well, I don't know," returned Maxwell. "If Godolphin should happen
to imagine doing without them he would go all lengths."
"Or if you imagined it and let him suppose he had. He never imagines
anything of himself."
"No, he doesn't. And yet how perfectly he grasps the notion of the thing
when it is done! It is very different from literature, acting is. And yet
literature is only the representation of life."
"Well, acting is the representation of life at second-hand, then, and it
ought to be willing to subordinate itself. What I can't bear in Godolphin
is his setting himself up to be your artistic equal. He is no more an artist
than the canvas is that the artist paints a picture on."
Maxwell laughed. "Don't tell him so; he won't like it."
"I will tell him so some day, whether he likes it or not."
"No, you mustn't; for it isn't true. He's just as much an artist in his way
as I am in mine, and, so far as the public is concerned, he has given
more proofs."
"Oh, his public!"
"It won't do to despise any public, even the theatre-going public."
Maxwell added the last words with a faint sigh.
"It's always second-rate," said his wife, passionately. "Third-rate,
fourth-rate! Godolphin was quite right about that. I wish you were
writing a novel, Brice, instead of a play. Then you would be really
addressing refined people."
"It kills me to have you say that, Louise."

"Well, I won't. But don't you see, then, that you must stand up for art all
the more unflinchingly if you intend to write plays that will refine the
theatre-going public, or create a new one? That is why I can't endure to
have you even seem to give way to Godolphin."
"You must stand it so long as I only seem to do it. He's far more
manageable than I expected him to be. It's quite pathetic how docile he
is, how perfectly ductile! But it won't do to browbeat him when he
comes over here a little out of shape. He's a curious creature," Maxwell
went on with a relish in Godolphin, as material, which his wife suffered
with difficulty. "I wonder if he could ever be got into a play. If he could
he would like nothing better than to play himself, and he would do it to
perfection; only it would be a comic part, and Godolphin's mind is for
the serious drama." Maxwell laughed. "All his artistic instincts are in
solution, and it needs something like a chemical agent to precipitate
them, or to give them any positive character. He's like a woman!"
"Thank you," said Mrs. Maxwell.
"Oh, I mean all sorts of good things by that. He has the sensitiveness of
a woman."
"Is that a good thing? Then I suppose he was so piqued by what I said
about his skirt-dance that he will renounce you."
"Oh, I don't believe he will. I managed to smooth him up after you
went out."
Mrs. Maxwell sighed. "Yes, you are very patient, and if you are patient,
you are good. You are better than I am."
"I don't see the sequence exactly," said Maxwell.
They were both silent, and she seemed to have followed his devious
thought in the same muse, for when he spoke again she did not
reproach him with an equal inconsequence. "I don't know whether I
could write a novel, and, besides, I think the drama is the supreme
literary form. It stands on its own feet. It doesn't have to be pushed

along, or pulled along, as the novel does."
"Yes, of course, it's grand. That's the reason I can't bear to have you do
anything unworthy of it."
"I know, Louise," he said, tenderly, and then again they did not speak
for a little while.
He emerged from their silence, at a point apparently very remote, with
a sigh. "If I could only know just what the feelings of a murderer really
were for five minutes, I could out-Shakespeare Shakespeare in that play.
But I shall have to trust to the fall of