The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1913-10-01
The Questionable Play


Our dramas, like our novels, are becoming
more serious. Elizabethan mouthings, Queen
Anne persiflage Victorian melodrama, and ma
chine made Moderns seem to be giving way
somewhat to the play with purpose The
drama of super-realism such as Ghosts, Dam
aged Goods, Mrs. Warrens Profession and With
in the Law, has come to stay, for time at least,
and demands our attention.
1t does not need to demand very hard it seems
for much attention is being paid it In more ways
than one. Some classes are being shocked at its
exposures of social nakedness while others herald
it as the forerunner of the emancipated drama.
To some it appeals the very acme of morality;
others crying it down salacious appeal
to the instincts of vice.
The question has become live one, once
more, as to what constitutes an immoral play. Is
there any feasible standard by which play can
be judged morally? We believe there is.
We have sat for two hours watching the Rus
sian dancers, Pavlowa and Mordkin, so entranced,
so absorbed, as to be translated into another
world. These perfect artists have the heaven
born ability to please the very soul.
We have groaned through fifteen minutes at
theatres not million miles from here while other
disgusted disappointed and insulted.
And yet these latter were attired in the same
costumes for the most part as the Russians, and
nimble, alert and agile. Their movements
in themselves might have found a place in the
Russian ballet without marrng its art. Where
in lay the difference?
The difference we believe is, in substance,
that the Russian dancers used their bodies and
their movements to express emotions felt which
pure and inspiring. AS Pavlowa moved
through the "swan dance" one saw, not Pavlowa,
but the swan. Her costume and actions made
you see and feel what she was seeing and feel
ing and that itself was pure In other words,
she used her body of expressing her
soul.
The others mentioned had nothing to express
with their bodies but were merely making mo-
tons to display them if they did have some
thing to express it salacous and immoral.
The impure dancer displays her body in order
that you may see it; Pavlowa displays her body
in order that by means of it she can make you
see something else.
This same principle, we believe, may be
applied to the play. 1t is not the "nakedness
of it or the realism of it which makes play
good or bad. A good play like Mrs. Warren's
Profession may speak with complete frankness
of many things not very pleasant; very bad
play may not speak one hard word or reveal one
piece of vice or crime 1t is not the properties
of the play, the scenes, the characters, OF
the words, which determine it's moral tone; it
is what the author and the actors are trying tc
express by these things.
Mrs. Warren as Shaw created her. does not
offend ones moral sense because through Mrs
Warren the author is revealing purifying anc
exalted truth. But if Shaw had exhibited Mrs
Warren merely to satisfy the craving of ar
indecent curiosity merely to stir the dregs il
the bottom of vulgar natures, his play would be
immoral
A short time since, we happened along short
ly after unfortunate man had been killed by
locomotive The mangled body lay on the
ground covered by tarpaulin. A crowd had
gathered, looking at the quiet shape with awe
and silence. Presently man, unable to restrain
his curiosity and in order to show his nerve,
lifted the covering and looked at the corpse Al
most every man there shrunk from him WHOSE
curiosity was so morbid. Later a physician anc
a coroner came and removed the tarpaulin. No
body felt resentment. They were impelled b,
their sense of duty.
If playwright writes play merely to salts
fly morbid curiosity he produces an immoral play
if he writes it, though with unflinching ant
terrible realism, to convey to his hearers tina
which will make them stronger and more human
he has written moral play
Fall Festival at the Library
He will he wise Fall Festival 1-;e;+o~ VIII