The Wadsworth dispatch. [volume] (Wadsworth, Nev.) 1892-1899, 1897-02-03

Part E.tnself-A Socialist Beneat FER
~formance.
On tho subject Of the thoater. an en-
thusiastic young first nighter would
probably have given Morris up after the
first attempt to gather his opinion Of
''The Second Mrs. Tanqueray'' as an
ordinary citizen who had never formed
the habit of playgoing, and neither knew
nor cared anything about the theater
except as a treat for children nee a year
during the p%antomine season. But Nor
ris would have written for the stage if
there had been any stage that a poet aud
artist could write for. When the Social
ist league one proposed to raise the
wind by q dramatic entertainment and
suggested that he should provide the
play, he set to at once and provided it.
And what kind of play was it? Was
it a miracle play on the lines of those
scenes in the Towneley mysteries be-
tween the shepherds abiding in the
field" which he used to quote with
great relish as his idea of a good bit of
comedy? Not at all. 1t was a topical ex-
travaganza, entitled ''Nupkins Awak-
ened," the chief character parts be-
ing Sir Peter Edlin, Tennyson and an
imaginary archbishop of Canterbury.
Sir Peter owed the compliment to his
activity at that time in sending social
lists to prison on charges of "obstrnc-
tion," which vas always proved by get
ting n policeman to swear that if any
passerby or vehicle had wished to pass
over the particular spot in a thorough
fare on which the speaker or his audi
enc happened to be standing their pres
ence would have INSTRUCTED him.
This contention, which was regarded
as quite sensible and unanswerable by
the newspapers of the day, was put into
q nutshell i'll the course of Sir Peters
summing up in the play. "In fact, gen
tlemen, it is n matter of grave doubt
whether we are not all of us continually
committing this offense from our cradles
to our graves" This speech, which the
though he certainly would have done SO
had he had wit enough to see the alb
surdity Of solemnly sending a man to
prison for two months because another
man could not walk through him. es-
pecially when it would have been so
easy to lock him up for three months on
some respectable pretext, will probably
keep Sir Peters memory green when all
his actual judicial utterances are forgot
ten.
AS TO Tcnnyson, Morris took a social
ist who happened to combine the right
sort of beard with a melancholy temper
ament and drilled him in n certain por-
tentous incivility of speech which, taken
from the quality of his remarks, threw
a light ON Morris opinion of Tennyson
which was all the more instructive be
cause he delighted in Tennyson's verse
as keenly as Wagner delighted in the
music Of Mendelssohn, whose credit for
qualities Of larger scope he nevertheless
wrote down and destroyed.
Morris played the ideal Archbishop
himself. He made no attempt to make
up the part in the ordinary stage fash
ion. He always commended that no more
was necessary for stage illusion than
some indisUinct conventional symbol,
such as a halo for a saint, a crook for a
bishop, or, if you liked, a cloak and
dagger for the villain and a red wig for
the comedian. A pair of clerical bands
and black stockings proclaimed theArch-
bishop. The rest he did by celebrating
his humor and intelligence and present.
ing his own person to the audience like
a lantern with the light blown out, with
a dull absorption in his own dignity
which several minutes of the widest
screaming laughter at him when he en-
tered could not disturb. laughed i'm
moderately myself, and l can still see
quite clearly the long top floor of that
warehouse in the Harrington road as l
saw it in glimpses between my parox-
ysnls. with Morris gravely Oh the stage
in his bands at one end Mrs. Stillman,
a tall and beautiful figure, rising like q
delicate spire above a sky line Of city
chimney pots, at the other, and a M,
ley sea of rolling, wallowing, guffawlnG
socialists between.
There has been no other such success
full first night within living memory, !
believe, but | remember only II ORA
matte critic who took care to be present
William Archer. Morris vas 80 lntor-
ested by his experiment in this sort OF
composition that he for some time talk
ed of trying his hand at serious drama
and would no doubt have done it had
there been any practical occasion for it
or any means Of concentrating it by
stage representation under proper oondi-
tons without spending more time ON
the job than it was worth. Later, 1T II
of DE annual fastiyities OF the Hammer