Robert G. Lawrence
'You have come to dwell on Fairyland once more'
I have borrowed these words from Alfred Austin's plodding and effusive tribute to Herbert Tree's most enduring memorial, Her/His Majesty's Theatre, Haymarket, London. The quoted words evoke the opulence and beauty (perhaps not to the taste of our times) of the theatre planned and built by Tree in 1896 and 1897. That building is not the real subject of this review nor of the books by John Ripley and John Coldwell Adams; nonetheless, Her Majesty's Theatre figures prominently in all three, because Herbert Tree chose Gilbert Parker's adaptation of his own best-selling novel The Seats of the Mighty (1896) to open this playhouse on 28 April 1897.
Many theatre historians have waited impatiently for several years for the Ripley book in order to read the text of the hitherto unpublished play that Tree pushed vigorously in the direction of qualified success in the USA and England; some potential readers were interested in learning more about the process of staging Parker's story; yet other Canadians were anxious to revive an earlier pride in a man they called their own on the strength of several popular novels set in Canada (Ripley and Adams tell us that Gilbert Parker left Canada in 1886, at twenty-six, to settle in Australia and later in England; he returned to his native land only as a visitor.)
Readers of this dramatization of The Seats of the Mighty are served well with preliminaries, text, cast lists, and illustrations. Dr. Ripley provides us first with thirty-seven pages of interesting explanatory material, summarizing well the circumstances of adaptation of novel to play and the many modifications of the play transcript from the first stage presentation in Birmingham, England (21 October 1896), through numerous further changes in Washington, New York, and Boston, climaxing in a final version at Her Majesty's in the spring of 1897.
At the heart of Tree's choice of play and his assiduous promotion of it for a year was his large ego: he saw a juicy part for himself in the character of Tinoir Doltaire, the villain of this drama set chiefly in Quebec City in the summer of 1759. Tree and Parker tinkered for months with the characterization of Doltaire (not an historical figure) in order to make him more sympathetic than he had been in Parker's novel, creating an ambivalence in Doltaire's motivations that puzzled audiences and irritated critics.
I liked Ripley's skilful reporting of the buildup of excitement in London previous to Wednesday, 18 April 1897. Her Majesty's held 1,600 seats; for the first night 1,200 were reserved, but with 10,000 applications (and long lineups for unreserved seats), 'Tree was obliged to hold two première performances' (Introduction, p 9). Ripley is a bit misleading here, because the restless Edward, Prince of Wales, was not likely to sit through the same long play during two successive evenings. The true première performance was on Wednesday 28 April when, according to Madeleine Bingham, the newfangled electric lighting failed briefly; however, playgoers on Thursday 29 got the same wordy ode by Poet Laureate Alfred Austin, read by Mrs. Herbert Tree, and they too listened to Clara Butt and a chorus singing all the stanzas of God Save the Queen. Later audiences missed these preliminary pleasures, although after 8 May they had, in addition to the four-act Seats of the Mighty, a one-act curtain-raiser without words, 'Chand d'Habits, subsequently called Old Clo' or The Old Clo' Man. Ripley and Adams say nothing about this 'gruesome' little pantomime (London Times, 10 May), although an overly long theatre evening may have contributed to the brief stage life of Seats.
Regrettably, John Ripley gives his readers almost no historical background to this melodrama with its roots deep in Canadian history. Most of the readers of this book will be Canadians, notoriously fuzzy in their knowledge of events in this country in 1759.
The 8 ½ x 11 format of both Introduction and text, the large type, varied type faces, and generous spacing make the play very easy to read. Stage directions, the editor's end notes, illustrations or photos of various productions of Seats enable the reader readily to visualize the action. (It is not clear why Bigot's speech in the middle of Act IV, p 113, is printed twice, with no explanatory note.)
The visual impression of the Tree production that a reader carries away reinforces Alfred Austin's allusion to Tree's new theatre as a 'Fairyland.' The opening scene was set in the opulent Palace of Versailles, with sumptuous costumes and staging. Early in the action the self-interested courtier Doltaire is shipped off to New France, to rescue some embarrassing letters written by Mme de Pompadour; Doltaire attaches himself to the beautiful heroine Alixe Duvarney, who finds him distasteful. She is in love with an English army officer, Captain Robert Moray, whom Doltaire arranges to have arrested and tortured as a spy. Need I go on? The remainder of the plot is a complex mixture of accusations, avowals of passion, sexual harassment, disguise, secret messages, and a duel, climaxing in the destruction of the hero-villain Doltaire by means of a bomb timed to go off beneath him just as the conquering British invade the town. Dr. Ripley supplements the text of Seats with much useful and interesting material. I liked particularly his inclusion of reproductions of seven reviews of the play, published in April and May 1897. They reinforce Ripley's statements in the Introduction about the problems in the drama, and they catch the excitement of the opening of Tree's new theatre.
London critics generally approved of the costumes and sets, but were quite unkind to the play itself, using words like 'inconsistencies,' 'absurdities,' 'melodramatic,' and 'prolix.' Of course, an actor-manager with Tree's self-confidence could easily survive comments like 'the play has little to recommend it.' I wonder why the editor included reviews from both the Westminster Gazette and the Westminster Budget without explanation. The three illustrations in each review are identical, as are the texts, apart from the deletion from the Budget of some three hundred words. Better to have utilized the fair and perceptive review in the London Times (19 April 1897), which may not be easily available to all readers of this book. The volume concludes with descriptions of the forty-seven surviving promptbooks (in the University of Bristol Theatre Collection) and three useful brief biographies: Parker, Tree, and Ripley.
What a superb triumph 28 April 1897 might have been for everyone concerned! The opening of Her Majesty's Theatre was a preliminary to the celebrations later of Queen Victoria's sixtieth year on the throne, Herbert Tree had produced yet another elaborate costume drama, and Gilbert Parker should have been proud to be the first Canadian dramatist to have a play staged in a major theatre in London. Yet the best-laid plans ... and The Seats of the Mighty faded away after only five and a half weeks on stage.
I am very grateful to John Ripley for 'reviving' it and satisfying my longstanding curiosity about the circumstances of its production, and for providing us with the text of the play, because I somehow feel that we shall not likely see that Fairyland on stage again, although John Adams reports that Parker's novel was made into a moderately successful movie in 1914.
By convenient coincidence, a paperback edition of Adams' good biography of Gilbert Parker has recently been published. Theatre historians interested primarily in Parker as a playwright will find only a dozen or so pages in Adams' book specifically on that topic; however, the biographer deals thoroughly and entertainingly with his subject as lecturer, journalist, poet, author of short stories and extremely popular novels, world traveller, and Member of Parliament (Gravesend, England). (The thorough biographies, although not updated, are still very useful.)
Previous to his adaptation of his novel The Seats of the Mighty, at Tree's behest, Parker had successfully adapted Goethe's Faust and Gunter's Mr. Barnes of New York for the Australian stage, and had created one original play, The Wedding Gift, which came and went unnoticed in London. Adams provides some useful historical background to the novel and play The Seats of the Mighty, but adds very little to Ripley's account of the staging. According to Adams, Gilbert Parker subsequently took almost no interest in the professional theatre, being wholly engaged as novelist and parliamentarian.