Melpomene

The Terrible and the Pathetic, Tragedies Old and New

There are two kinds of tragedy: terrible and tearful. When you saw John Barrymore carried up the front stoop of Elsinore and off into the West, you didn't feel like crying. A tragic climax such as that one gives a feeling of mystery and terror much more than of pity. When, on the other hand, you see Camille dying by inches in the postponed embrace of Armand Duval, you do want to weep.

There is no reason to despise the pathetic as opposed to the terrible- Some of the most poignant moments in all drama have been tearful. One such is the last scene of the Cherry Orchard, as presented by the Moscow Players. But there is a definite line separating the Shakespearean and Greek tragedies from the modern tragedy of defeat.

Within the last few weeks, there have been four new plays without a "happy ending." There was, for example, A Square Peg. The maltreated husband therein killed himself just before taking his final curtain call, but that was not the trag-edy of the piece. The tragic climax came when he was denied the grateful haven of a jail sentence. It was not an inspiring catastrophe. One hardly felt toward Mr. Huckins as toward a Lucifer, shouting defiance from the overheated shade of the Inferno.

Then came The Laughing Lady, Ethel Barrymore's comedy of epigrammatic manners. The impulse at the end of that entertaining series of pruderies was simply to call the author a liar and go home in disgust--or else not to believe that it was over at all. But even if you had thought that that was the end of all things for the heroine's decorous amour, you would not have been thrilled at her renunciation. You could have cried about it.

The public reaction to Hail and Farewell is not hard to analyze. The public has been reacting to it identically--under the name of Ca- mille--for a good many years. And its mode of expression has been consistently lachrymal and always will be, as long as Camille continues to renounce her happiness and persists in giving up her charming ghost at the critical moment.

The most recent of the tearful school is, of course, Humoresque. The last act is played in the midst of a murmur of wails and doleful little noises and choked sobs which bear eloquent witness to the emotional devastation enjoyed by the entire audience.

All these are instances of the tragedy of pity. There are very few modern plays wherein there is a sort of triumphant beauty even in defeat, as in the old schools of high tragedy.