Preface. | Act I. | Act II. | Act III.
Mr. Grein has asked me to write a preface to The Black Cat.I cannot myself see much occasion for this. Why should an author becalled upon to make a speech before the curtain? Because, I presume,people want to have something to talk about besides the play itself,and an author must surely have "views." Well, it is a day ofviews—and of talk.
The Black Cat was produced at the Opera Comique on December8th, 1893, at one of the Independent Theatre Society's performances.It had a certain succès d'estime before a special audience, forwhom, however, it was not written; and it has not been performedsince.
The critics were wonderfully kind. They actually praised the play;some reluctantly, some with a reckless enthusiasm which quiteastonished me. I had expected a much less pleasant reception.
The main objection they made to the thing was that it had a tragicending, which they kindly suggested I had tacked on to my comedy, toappeal to the morbid taste of an "Independent" audience.Unfortunately I had done nothing of the kind. The play was conceivedbefore the Independent Theatre had come into existence. The end wasforeseen from the beginning; the tragedy being implicit in thesubject. The tragic motive lay deeper than the death of the heroine,who might have been allowed to live, if that last symbolic pageantryhad not had its dramatic fitness. Given the characters and thecircumstances, the end is the absolutely right one.
Of course the circumstances might have been altered, and a sort ofreconciliation patched up between husband and wife. But this wouldbe a somewhat flat piece of cynicism, only justifiable on the groundtaken by the Telegraph, that modern actors cannot play, and oughtnot to be expected to play, modern tragedy.
The conventional "happy ending" demanded by sentimental critics tosuit the taste of sentimental playgoers, the divided parents leftweeping in each other's arms over the recovered child, would also bequite possible. But surely even a modern dramatist may for once beallowed to preserve a grain of respect for nature and dramatic art?This would be an outrage against both. It would not be decentcomedy, it would be mere burlesque, as sentimentality always is tothe judicious.
The only other alternative I see is the exodus of the wife, with orwithout her child; or of the husband, with or without his mistress.But this would be rank Ibsenism, and outrage British morality, whichwould be still more dreadful. Only a "practical dramatist" could cutthe Gordian knot, and at the last moment introduce the erring Mrs.Tremaine, still charming in the garb of a Sister of Mercy, to bringdown the curtain upon a tableau of Woman returning to her Duty, andMan to his Morality. And I, alas! am not a "practical dramatist."
Still, if the play had been an experiment, I might have furtherexperimented with it, and rehandled its ending. But it was not inits main lines an experiment. It was a thing seen and felt; and soit must remain, in its printed form, at least—"a poor thing," itmay be, "but mine own!"
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