網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

speaking), or, 'I'll do it, Mother' (the child here dances also). 'If you can't think of anything to say, dance!' is the oft-heard direction of irritable stage managers, desirous of maintaining as large a cast as possible.

As the bird flies, as the squirrel runs, and as, without these characteristic movements, no speech on their part seems complete, so the child accompanies his speech with dancing.

Occasionally there will be someone present who, though determined to take part, will not dance and does n't know anything to say.' It is almost superfluous to indicate that this person is usually of the 'opposite' sex. He can, of course, be run over by something- a very important rôle in which only the most primitive forms of speech

like groans and yells are needed. Nevertheless in the ever-present drama of family life a place must be made for him. Again the need of plenty of movement helps out. 'You can spank the Baby,' announced a small mother of seven, with ten children on her hands and, so far, no father in the cast. It was a difficult rôle, as it turned out. There were long intervals when the play went on without him. He had to spank the Baby enough and yet not too much. But some kind of father seemed needed. He was retained only by far more than his share of the seeded raisins Iwith which the drama had been temporarily endowed.

Although spanking is primarily a gesture, and hence in itself important in the drama, it is a highly sophisticated action. The question of who is to be spanked arises, and it must be solved or the play cannot proceed. The person above mentioned was not really gifted for his rôle, or he would not have had to be detained by means of frequent refreshment. As a matter of fact, although the youngest and smallest of the cast is obliged, by very reason

of his size, to be the person spanked, a profound sense of justice - and the fact that, though small, he can, even at that, run away- often assigns the larger part of whatever there may be to eat to the person who is spanked. 'We'll give you a whole little cake if you'll be naughty and let us spank you,' I once heard a whole cast telling an obdurate three-year-old, who was insisting on being good.

I wish to say here that, although corporal punishment is fast being discredited in adult reality, its hold on child drama is unshaken. To anyone who objects to spanking in the drama, I can reply only by leaving it to his own imagination to find an adequate substitute, and get it accepted by the actors. I have observed many remarkable instances of its use. I have seen a Mother spank a day-old Baby three times in ten minutes. I have seen a Father Kitty spank all his children, one after another, for apparently no reason at all. Spanking is one of the gestures of that rarest of persons in the child world, the actor with a sense of comedy. I was witness of a play of school life, enacted again and again and again in what was supposed to be the profound secrecy of a stage under the apple tree, whose whole charm lay in the sudden spanking of a grade teacher by the principal. Spanking in the drama has no basis in cruelty. One very sweet and earnest little girl, after a long summer afternoon spent in the profound recreation of dramatic production, went home and implored her mother to get a baby. Then I can take care of him,' she added, 'and spank him.' And this although spanking was unknown in any branch of the family.

I believe, myself, that the popularity of corporal punishment in the drama is due to a profound and troubling doubt in the heart of the average person of seven as to his or her place in the world.

To be able, even in the drama, to inflict even imaginary punishment on someone else is reassuring, just as, at the age of six, one of the profoundest pleasures of life is looking back on one's childhood. The introduction of a Baby into a playa Baby doing all sorts of excessively foolish things, an absurd person, a helpless person; one who cannot speak (imagine it!) or walk establishes definitely in the hearts of the rest of the cast the fact (other wise somewhat clouded) that six and eight and ten are big — truly big. And only a large and strong and, above all else, an important person can inflict punishment on another. To anyone observing child drama this becomes evident in many ways. One small boy of four, with a very aggressive personality, was lured into taking the part of the spanked by the sight of a large cupcake with chocolate frosting. Having eaten the cake in the early part of the play, he began to make his rôle so unusual and interesting by the introduction of new grimaces and an entirely new vocalization of the conventional yells let out by the person spanked that the entire cast stood around him, carried away by admiration, and the person spanking threw away her ruler and, as manager of the play and owner of all the refreshments, demanded the part for herself.

III

Child drama needs no material aids. One adult mother, preparing at top speed for company, and hindered at every step by her two youngsters, finally locked them for an hour in an entirely empty room in the third story. Carried away by her own work, she forgot them completely for far more than the allotted time, and rushed repentantly to the stairs, calling to them. 'We'll be down as soon as we can,'

called back a little voice, sweetly, 'but the Baby's got a terrible cold. You might let us know,' added the voice anxiously, 'when it stops snowing downstairs.' It was a lovely June day. Although only two children had been locked in, there were apparently at least three persons in the cast. The whole thing had the air of being highly imaginative. Yet when one comes to analyze child drama it will be found that its distinction from adult drama lies not so much in imaginative power as in the power to accept known facts and experiences in an unusual juxtaposition. This is brought about by an unconscious but simple and unvarying trick of technique. The experiences and facts of the drama are those of life, but the transitions known to the adult world are all omitted. The Baby is born, grows up, has a birthday, is married and has a Baby of her own. The Mother is poor; the children have no breakfast; they go to school, and on coming home they find a thousand dollar bill on the front porch. How simple, how natural! And then if, on going out with the thousand dollars to get something to eat for dinner, you get run over by an automobile, this too is one of the things that are constantly happening; and you are fortunate in having the thousand dollars along to give half of it to a poor old man who is standing on the street corner as you come out of the hospital, after having had ten bones set; and when you get home, why, there is a new Baby sitting in the high chair by the table, eating apple sauce.

To anyone who could object, we can only retort by a counter-question. Babies do sit in high chairs, don't they? They do eat apple sauce, don't they? Well?

The material of child drama is highly realistic. Children in their plays use all the simple material of the lives they

see around them. The marrying and giving in marriage; the sicknesses, and accidents, and bereavements; the going to business, riding in trains and trolleys and automobiles; the cooking, and sweeping, and entertaining, within the walls of the home all these are the material of drama. But the child who is one day to be grown-up does not fail to divine something behind the facts of life. Unhesitatingly he transfers it to his play. 'Why, this is cake now!' ejaculates the Father in the play, on whom his daily office trip is palling. 'It was bread a minute ago.' And no actor is so dull that he or she cannot take the cue. 'Yes,' is the simple reply, 'the Fairy was here and turned all our bread to cake.' In every play the Fairy comes and goes whenever needed. The Fairy leaves a million dollars on the top step of the porch of the Poor Woman, so that she finds it when she comes out to sweep. How exactly what one would expect from a Fairy!

This is one of the most desired of rôles, not only because of the Fairy's social position, but because of the simple directness and ease of all her gestures. She speaks little or not at all. She never stays long. The essence of her character is in the act of her appearance. The proof of her worth and her reality is that she goes. But she leaves a Baby in the empty crib. Of course. Any Fairy would. Where else would she put it? She waves her wand, and the four walls within which the children play, and which are just beginning to get tiresome, part and let them into deep, winding, underground caves, where they can most delightfully shudder; or out upon the deck of a ship, plunging through most dangerous waves. Then she disappears. 'Here comes your mother,' I heard an annoyed voice say once as, with the best of intentions, I approached the stage

under the apple tree, with a plate of sandwiches in my hand. Silently I set the refreshments down, and quickly I withdrew. 'She's a Fairy,' I heard judgment pronounced as I disappeared; and I drew a breath of relief, for I had work of my own to do. From certain noises among the cast I knew they were getting hungry, and I wanted the play to go on a while longer. It was the most successful rôle that I have ever played on this stage called life; but once having played it, having, as it were, committed myself, I had to concede the one unvarying rule of child drama. Even the smallest and the weakest, even the ones that play the part of being spanked and of being the Baggage Car, cannot be disqualified from playing the rôle of Fairy. 'He's been bad all morning,' I heard one little girl defend her small brother from injustice. 'Now he ought to be the Fairy.'

[ocr errors]

Child drama admits of no spectators. Everyone must get in on the cast or go away. But if you are gardening in the neighborhood of the stage under the apple tree, or if you are deeply absorbed in your sewing at the porch window, who can prevent your overhearing something? And what is the harm of overhearing children? They will never tell you anything directly. You are supposed to know. To them you are a child, grown tall and strong and strangely in the possession of authority. They do not know that manhood and womanhood mean the death of childhood a strange and sorrowful death, hidden in the heart of each 'grown' person. They do not know that we do not know. They know we teach them; they know we study them; they know we sorrow over them. They do not know that to overhear them, as we work, is to us what the Fairy in their play is to them.

EUROPE'S BURSTING BUBBLE OF DEMOCRACY

BY ROBERT SENCOURT

IN the United States, 'democracy' has been a sacred word, its meaning high and holy: it was an ideal, typical of the land of the free and the home of the brave. Like many unquestioned words, it was not only vaguely sublime, but sublimely vague. In Europe it never reached its apotheosis; it was, in fact, always under suspicion, and often boldly used as a term of disrespect. In England it had a sort of social stigma: it suggested the politics of the grocer, and not seldom of the grocer whose honesty depended entirely on that being his best policy. To well-bred English ears the great word had a nasty, sneaky sort of sound. It meant the rule of the mass; and people in good society thought of the mass as smelly, unclean, threatening, stupid, and generally low. But gradually liberal politicians began to use it, and in 1910 a certain majority of the electors of England supported the Liberal leader - Mr. Asquith as he was then; to-day he is better known in England as the husband of Lady Oxford, a lady not with a past, as he has, but with an autobiography. Now his plea was that the will of the people must prevail; so bold a contention did not disdain to be 'democratic.'

While Lord Oxford was still Prime Minister the war began, and the war depended very much on President Wilson. President Wilson was never thought of as anything but a Democrat; he felt nothing but satisfaction in

I

the name of the party of which he was the head. He associated democracy with his great scheme of moral reform for Europe, so eloquently recommended by America's financial and military resources. Those who welcomed one welcomed the other. The word became popular; it began to shine in Europe with the cloudy brilliance which had haloed it in America. The war was won to make the world safe for democracy.

But no sooner was that done than another great adventure absorbed the energies of Europe: it was to make democracy safe for the world. A word so vague, and not long ago so menacing, might still contain a latent peril. Would it not be as well to make the world not only safe for but safe from democracy? Gentle meanings were suggested for it, and massive platitudes blunted its sharper edge. "The will of the people must prevail' and 'Good government is no substitute for self-government' were found not to be its exact principles. It did not really mean that the voice of the people was the voice of God, for now even Tories were democrats.

A clever young Oxford don actually wrote a whole book describing his faith in the words "Tory Democracy,' which, being interpreted by his opponents, were found to mean prayer and tariff reform. Democracy meant for him preferential duties and an Established Church. To this book Lord Birkenhead wrote a preface.

Others said that it meant that the 'people should choose their own rulers'; but in practice it means, at most, that they choose parliamentary representatives — a very different thing. Others said that it meant 'government by consent of the governed' - surely a phrase that might be applied to any government not actually overturned by an election or a revolution. Others accepted it in exchange for that wellworn shibboleth, 'the greatest good of the greatest number.' It was the triumph of sovereigns to be 'democratic'; and then it meant smiling amiably at cheering crowds instead of doing what no sovereign ever could either have done or want to do passing acclamation by in haughty nonchalance. To be simple, tactful, shrewd, amusing, or sympathetic was to be democratic; and there would have been, in fact, an almost perfect example of democracy in the tone of this account of it. Leviathan was no longer the fearsome monster of the deep; it took its pastime innocently in shallow waters. The tiger had become a pet as playful as a kitten. Yet was there not a limerick about a tamed tiger?

There was a young lady of Niger,
Who went for a ride on a tiger;

They came back from the ride
With the lady inside,

And a smile on the face of the tiger. After that the dear animal was locked up in a cage. The present occupation of Europe is the taming of democracy. Occasionally it roars, and is fed.

II

Before the war, Europe was controlled by six great nations: Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Italy, France, and Great Britain. Some of these were supposed to be democratic, some were not. Russia, for example, was not. It showed the figure of

absolute monarchy; in reality it was a bureaucracy, controlled by a privileged caste. Austria-Hungary and Germany were much the same, but the bureaucracy was perhaps more benevolent and certainly more efficient. It was violently nationalist, and that nationalism overreached itself. But did Germany become democratic because it became republican? The German people were unable to control themselves, and they had found it out. "Two things the German people will never understand,' said Ludendorff, 'and never long endure: parliamentary government and voluntary service.' Ludendorff, of course, is an extremist, but he represents a great body of German opinion, which showed remarkable ability to govern. If occasional theorists like Naumann or Thomas Mann are hopeful of democracy, the body of German intellectuals are more than skeptical. 'Our parliamentarism is a caricature,' says Oswald Spengler, the author of the most famous and most popular book produced in Germany since the war, Der Untergang des Abendlandes. 'The parliamentary age,' he asserts, 'is irrevocably ended. A people has only one right to be well governed; and since the mass cannot undertake the task, it must be performed by individuals. The supreme need is the strengthening of the governing power with high responsibility.'

Professor Dibelius is not a politician of the Ludendorff school, but he believes that English parliamentarism is impossible in Germany, and that the German attempt at it is a sham. "The German imitation,' he wrote, in his book, England (published in 1923), 'drags to the ballot box, every year or two, people with only a fitful interest in politics, and compels the elector to vote for a list of unknown names. The German parliamentarism is a manufactured import, which the mass of the

« 上一頁繼續 »