By Lewis Carroll
This article is not going to be a sermon in disguise. This I protest, at the outset, knowing how entirely usage—a mistaken usage, as I think—has limited the word to religious topics only, and that the reader is only too likely to turn this page hastily over, muttering “Chacun son goût. This is meant for sectarians of some kind. I have no such narrow sympathies. Talk to me as a man, and I’ll listen!”
But that is exactly what I want to do. I want to talk to the play-going, or play-writing reader, who may honour me with his attention, as a man: not as a churchman, not as a Christian, not even as a believer in God—but simply as a man who recognises (this, I admit, is essential) that there is a distinction between good and evil; who honours good men and good deeds, simple as being good; and who realises that from evil men and evil deeds comes much, if not all, of the sorrow of life.
And may not the word “good,” also, have a broader meaning than usage has assigned to it? May it not fairly include all that is brave, and manly, and true in human nature? Surely a man may honour these qualities, even though he own to no religious beliefs whatever? A striking example of this kind of “reverence” is recorded of the robber-tribes of Upper Scinde, during Sir Charles Napier’s campaign (I quote from a lecture by Robertson, of Brighton, on “The Influence of Poetry on the Working Classes”):—
“A detachment of troops was marching along a valley, the cliffs overhanging which were crested by the enemy. A sergeant, with eleven men, chanced to become separated from the rest by taking the wrong side of a ravine, which they expected soon to terminate, but which suddenly deepened into an impassable chasm. The officer in command signalled to the party an order to return. They mistook the signal for a command to charge; the brave fellows answered with a cheer, and charged. At the summit of the steep mountain was a triangular platform, defended by a breast-work, behind which were seventy of the foe. On they went, charging up one of these fearful paths, eleven against seventy. The contest could not long be doubtful with such odds. One after another they fell: six upon the spot, the remainder hurled backwards; but not until they had slain nearly twice their own number.
“There is a custom, we are told, amongst the hillsmen, that when a great chieftain of their own falls in battle, his wrist is bound with a thread either of red or green, the red denoting the highest rank. According to custom, they stripped the dead, and threw their bodies over the precipice. When their comrades came, they found their corpses stark and gashed; but round both wrists of every British hero was twined the red thread!”
In “reverence” such as this I am happy to believe that the standard reached on the Stage is fully as high as in the literature of Fiction, and distinctly higher than what often passes without protest in Society.
Take, for instance, the treatment of vice. In Fiction and in many a social circle, vice is condoned, and sentiments utterly vile and selfish are freely expressed, in language that would be hissed off the stage of a respectable theatre, unless put into the mouth of the stage “villain.” In the “Silver King,” as I saw it some years ago, when the gentlemanly scoundrel, splendidly acted by Mr. Willard, sent the coarser scoundrel, who served as his tool on the hateful mission of turning out of doors the poor mother whose child was dying, it was good to hear the low fierce hiss that ran through the audience as the old wretch went off. Any one who witnessed that fine drama would, I think, believe with me that those who thus hiss—evil as their own lives may be in some cases—yet have their better moments, when the veil is lifted, when they see Sin in all its native hideousness, and shudder at the sight!
And, for an example of the sympathy shown by play-goers for what is pure and good, I may recall the experience of a few weeks back, when I went to see “The Golden Ladder” (produced by the same conscientious actor and manager—Mr. Wilson Barrett—who gave us “The Silver King”), and heard with delight the ripple of applause which greeted the soliloquy of the comical old greengrocer, Mr. George Barrett, about his child, to whom he has given the ambitious name “Victoria Alexandra.” “And I guv her them two names, because they’re the best two names as is!” That ripple of applause seemed to me to say “Yes, the very sound of those names—names which recall a Queen whose spotless life has for many long years been a blessing to her people, and a Princess who will worthily follow in her steps—is sweet music to English ears!”
The reader can no doubt recall many occasions when Pit and Gallery have shown equally keen sympathy with self-denial, generosity, or any of the qualities that ennoble human nature. I will content myself with two more examples.
Years ago I saw Mr. Emery play the hero of “All is not Gold that Glitters”—a factory-owner, with a rough manner but a tender heart; and I well remember how he “brought down the house,” when speaking of the “hands” employed in his factory, with the words, “And a’ couldn’t lie down and sleep in peace, if a’ thowt there was man, woman, or child among ’em as was going to bed cold and hungry!” What mattered it to us that all this was fiction? That the “hands,” so tenderly cared for, were creatures of a dream? We were not “reverencing” that actor only, but every man, in every age, that has ever taken loving thought for those around him, that ever “hath given his bread to the hungry, and hath covered the naked with a garment.”
My other example shall be a memory of the greatest actor our generation has seen—one whose every word and gesture seemed inspired, and made one feel “He has me in his power; he can make me laugh and weep as he will!”—I mean Frederick Robson. Who, that ever saw him in “The Porter’s Knot”, can forget the delicious pathos of the scene where the old father, who has sacrificed the earnings of a lifetime to save his son’s reputation and send him abroad, is in an innocent conspiracy, with the girl to whom his son is betrothed, to keep the old mother happy by reading her a letter they pretend to have come from her boy. Unknown to him, the loving girl has resolved on giving her last earnings to the old couple, and has added a postscript. “Dear Mother,—I am getting on so well that I send you this five-pound note,” which the old man, reading the letter to his wife, comes upon so unexpectedly that he nearly betrays the whole plot. Then came the “aside”—with that humorous glance at the audience that none ever gave as he did—“Well! This here has growed since the morning!” And then, suddenly detecting the loving stratagem, and shaking his fist at the girl, “Oh, you little rascal!” As Borachio would say, “I tell this story vilely.” Would that any words of mine could convey to the reader the infinite tenderness that breathed in those whispered “words of unmeant bitterness”!
And now, before narrowing the field of discussion and considering how “reverence” is due to subjects connected with religion, I wish to give to this word also a broader sense than the conventional one. I mean by it simply a belief in some good and unseen being, above and outside human life as we see it, to whom we feel ourselves responsible. And I hold that “reverence” is due, even to the most degraded type of “religion,” as embodying in a concrete form a principle which the most absolute Atheist professes to revere in the abstract.
These subjects may be classed under two headings, according as they are connected with the principle of good or with that of evil. Under the first heading we may name the Deity, and good spirits, the act of prayer, places of worship, and ministers; under the second, evil spirits and future punishment.
The “irreverence” with which such topics are sometimes handled, both on and off the Stage, may be partly explained by the fact (not unlikely to be overlooked) that no word has a meaning inseparably attached to it; a word means what the speaker intends by it, and what the hearer understands by it, and that is all.
I meet a friend, and say “Good morning!” Harmless words enough, one would think? Yet possibly, in some language he and I have never heard, these words may convey utterly horrid and loathsome ideas. But are we responsible for this? This thought may serve to lessen the horror of some of the language used by the lower classes, which, it is a comfort to remember, is often a mere collection of unmeaning sounds, so far as speaker and hearer are concerned.
And even where profane language seems really blameworthy, as being consciously and deliberately used, I do not think the worst instances occur on the Stage; you must turn for such to fashionable Society and popular Literature.
No type of anecdote seems so sure to amuse the social circle as that which turns some familiar Bible-phrase into a grotesque parody. Sometimes the wretched jest is retailed, half-apologetically, as said by a child, “and, of course,” it is added, “the child meant no harm!” Possibly: but does the grown man mean no harm, who thus degrades what he ought to treat with reverence, just to raise a laugh?
Again, can such jesting as that of the “Ingoldsby Legends,” where evil spirits are treated as subjects for uproarious merriment, be tolerated by any one who realises what “evil” means, whether in disembodied spirits (whose existence he may possibly doubt) or in living men and women? Shall the curse of all the race, the misery of all the ages, serve us for a passing jest?
But the lowest depths of conscious and deliberate irreverence that my memory recalls, have been, I am sorry to say, the utterances of reverend jesters. I have heard, from the lips of clergymen, anecdotes whose horrid blasphemy outdid anything that would be even possible on the Stage. Whether it be that long familiarity with sacred phrases deadens one’s sense of their meaning, I cannot tell: it is the only excuse I can think of: and such a theory is partly supported by the curious phenomenon (which the reader can easily test for himself) that if you repeat a word a great many times in succession, however suggestive it may have been when you began, you will end by divesting it of every shred of meaning, and almost wondering how you could ever have meant anything by it!
How far can the Stage use of oaths, or phrases introducing the name of the Deity, be justified? To me it is only when lightly and jestingly uttered that they seem profane. Used gravely, and for a worthy purpose, they are at any rate not to be condemned by any appeal to the Bible: one of the loveliest pieces of its prose-poetry, the well-known “Entreat me not to leave thee,” &c., ends with an undeniable oath, “The Lord do so to me, and more also, it aught but death part thee and me.” And it is on Society, rather than on the Stage, that we should lay the blame of the light use of such language, common in the last generation, when such phrases as “My God!” “Good Lord!” were constantly used as mere badinage, and when so refined a writer as Miss Austen could make a young lady say (in “Pride and Prejudice”) “Lord, how ashamed I should be of not being married before three-and-twenty!” When quite common, such words possibly conveyed no meaning either to speaker or hearer: in these days they jar on the ear, for their strangeness forces us to realise their meaning. When Shakespeare wrote “Much Ado,” Beatrice’s “O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place,” and Benedick’s “O God, sir, here’s a dish I love not; I cannot endure my lady Tongue,” no doubt fell with equally innocent effect on the ear: but in our day, though the first may well be retained, as gravely said and on a worthy occasion, the second comes as a false note; and I think Mr. Irving, instead of toning it down into “O Lord!” would have done better by omitting it altogether.
The act of prayer is almost uniformly treated with reverence on the Stage. My experience furnishes only one instance to the contrary, where the heroine of a ballet, supposed to be in her chamber at night, and soon to be serenaded by her lover at the window, went through the horrid mockery of kneeling in semblance of prayer. But I see no objection to its introduction on the Stage, if reverently represented, as in the scene in “Hamlet,” where Claudius is found praying: and I well remember the grand effect produced by Charles Kean (in “Henry V.,” just before the battle of Agincourt), by kneeling, for a short passionate prayer, on the battle-field.
Places of worship, also, when made the subjects of stage representation, are usually treated with perfect propriety: one must turn to the orgies of the Salvation Army, or the ribaldry of the street preacher, to realise how far religion can be vulgarised, and with what loathsome familiarity the holiest themes can be insulted. We have lately been privileged to see an instance of exquisite taste and reverent handling in the church-scene in “Much Ado” at the Lyceum. Some objected, at the time, to any such scene being put on the Stage, yet probably none of its censors would condemn “sacred” pictures? And surely the distinction between a picture painted on canvas, and a picture formed by living figures on a stage is more fanciful than real? To me the solemn beauty of that scene suggested the hope that some might see it—some to whom the ideas of God, or heaven, or prayer, were strange—and might think “Is this what church is like? I’ll go and see it for myself!” Yet one false note there certainly was to mar the beauty of that scene. The dialogue between Beatrice and Benedick, with all its delicate banter and refined comedy, spoken amid such surroundings, must have given pain to many to whom the special scene had been a pure delight. I heartily wish Mr. Irving could see his way to transfer it to the outside of the church. Surely a manager, who could endure an interpolation so utterly alien to the spirit of the scene as “Kiss my hand again!” can have no very strong feeling about keeping the text of Shakespeare inviolate!
As for ministers of religion, I would not seek to shield them from ridicule when they deserve it; but is it not sometimes too indiscriminate? Mr. Gilbert—to whom we owe a deep debt of gratitude for the pure and healthy fun he has given us in such comedies as “Patience”—seems to have a craze for making bishops and clergymen contemptible. Yet are they behind other professions in such things as earnestness, and hard work, and devotion of life to the call of duty? That clever song, “The pale young curate”, with its charming music, is to me simply painful. I seem to see him as he goes home at night, pale and worn with the day’s work, perhaps sick with the pestilent atmosphere of a noisome garret where, at the risk of his life, he has been comforting a dying man—and is your sense of humour, my reader, so keen that you can laugh at that man? Then at least be consistent. Laugh also at that pale young doctor, whom you have summoned in such hot haste to your own dying child: ay, and laugh also at that pale young soldier, as he sinks on the trampled battle-field, and reddens the dust with his life-blood for the honour of Old England!
Still, the other side of this picture is now and again given us on the Stage, and one could not desire a more gentle and lovable type of old age than the “Vicar of Wakefield,” as played by Mr. Irving, or a more manly and chivalrous hero than the young clergyman in “The Golden Ladder,” played by Mr. Wilson Barrett.
The comic treatment of such subjects as evil spirits must be regarded from a fresh stand-point. “What reverence,” it might fairly be asked, “is due to the Devil, whether we believe that such a being exists or not?” My answer is, that seriousness at least is due in dealing with such subjects. The darkest deeds of lust or cruelty that have blasted human happiness have often seemed to the guilty wretch to be due to influences other than his own thoughts: but, even setting aside such evidence, the whole subject is too closely bound up with the deepest sorrows of life to be fit matter for jesting. Yet how often one hears in Society the ready laughter with which any sly allusion to the Devil is received—ay, even by clergymen themselves, who, if their whole life be not one continuous lie, do believe that such a being exists, and that his existence is one of the saddest facts of life.
In this respect I think the tone of the Stage not lower than—I doubt if it be so low as—that of Society. Such a picture as Irving gives us of “Mephistopheles” must surely have a healthy influence. Who can see it and not realise, with a vividness few preachers could rival, the utter hatefulness of sin?
The same claim, for seriousness of treatment, may be made as to the subjects of Hell and future punishment. In the last generation the Stage, in its constant light use of words, connected with “damnation,” was simply following the lead of Society; and it is satisfactory to notice that the idle curses, no longer heard in respectable Society, are fast vanishing from the Stage. Let me mention one instance of false treatment of this subject on the Stage, and conclude with two of the better kind.
I have never seen Mr. Gilbert’s clever play “Pinafore” performed by grown-up actors: as played by children, one passage in it was to me sad beyond words. It occurs when the captain utters the oath “Damn me!” and forthwith a bevy of sweet innocent-looking little girls sing, with bright, happy looks, the chorus “He said ‘Damn me!’ He said ‘Damn me!’” I cannot find words to convey to the reader the pain I felt in seeing those dear children taught to utter such words to amuse ears grown callous to their ghastly meaning. Put the two ideas side by side—Hell (no matter whether you believe in it or not: millions do), and those pure young lips thus sporting with its horrors—and then find what fun in it you can! How Mr. Gilbert could have stooped to write, or Sir Arthur Sullivan could have prostituted his noble art to set to music, such vile trash, it passes my skill to understand.
But I am no such purist as to object to all such allusions: when gravely made, and for a worthy purpose, they are, I think, entirely healthy in their effect. When the hero of “The Golden Ladder,” claimed as prisoner by a French officer, is taken under the protection of a British captain (finely played by Mr. Bernage), and the Frenchman’s “He is my prison-erre!” is met by the choleric captain’s stentorian reply, “Then, damn it, come on board my ship and take him!” the oath did not sound “irreverent” in any degree. Here was no empty jesting: all was grim earnest!
One more example, and I have done. No dramatic version of “David Copperfield” would do justice to the story if it failed to give the scene after Steerforth has eloped with “little Em’ly”, leaving her betrothed, Ham Peggotty, a broken-hearted man. Ham has brought the news to his father, and David is present.
“Mas’r Davy,” implored Ham, “go out a bit, and let me tell him what I must. You doen’t ought to hear it, sir.”
“I want to know his name!” I heard said, once more.
“For some time past,” Ham faltered, “there’s been a servant about here at odd times. There’s been a gen’lm’n, too. … A strange chay and horses was outside town this monhing. … When the servant went to it, Em’ly was nigh him. The t’other was inside. He’s the man.”
“For the Lord’s love,” said Mr. Peggotty, falling back, and putting out his hand, as if to keep off what he dreaded, “doen’t tell me his name’s Steerforth!”
“Mas’r Davy,” exclaimed Ham, in a broken voice, “it ain’t no fault of yourn—and I am far from laying of it to you—but his name is Steerforth, and he’s a damned villain!”
The critic who would exclaim, on witnessing such a scene, “Shocking irreverence! That oath ought to be cut out!”, attaches a meaning to the word “irreverence” with which I have no sympathy.
May I conclude with an allusion to the distinctly dramatic tone of much of the language of the Bible? In doing so I make no special appeal to Christians: any one, who possesses any literary taste at all, will admit that, for poetry and simple pathos, it stands high in the literature of the world. Much of the vivid force of the parables depends on their dramatic character: one fancies, in reading the parable of the “Sower”, that the recital was illustrated by the actual events of the moment: one pictures a neighbouring hill-side, with its sharp sky-line, along which slowly moves a figure, seen clear and black against the bright sky, and giving, by the regular swing of his arm, a sort of rhythmic cadence to the words of the speaker.
Whether the parable of “The Prodigal Son” has ever served as the basis of a drama I know not: the general idea has no doubt been so used again and again: but the story, as it stands, simply translated into modern life, would make a most effective play.
The First Act, with the splendour of the wealthy home, would be in picturesque contrast with the Second, where we should find the spendthrift in gaudy and ostentatious vulgarity, surrounded by unmanly men and unwomanly women, wasting his substance in the “far country.” The Third might depict his downward career, ending in a deep despair—then the revulsion of feeling—then the pathetic words “I will arise, and go to my Father!” And when the Fourth Act took us back to the ancestral halls, and showed us the wretched outcast, pausing irresolute at the door, mocked by a troop of listless menials, who would fain drive the beggar back to starvation and death, and the old father rushing forth to clasp the wanderer to his breast—might not some eyes, even among the roughs of the Gallery, be “wet with most delicious tears”, and some hearts be filled with new and noble thoughts, and a spirit of “reverence” be aroused, for “whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely,” which would not lightly pass away?