PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
Volume 108, February 23, 1895.
edited by Sir Francis Burnand
THE O. W. VADE MECUM.
Question. Is it easy to become a dramatist?
Answer. As easy as anything else.
Q. What are the requisites?
A. A West-end theatre, a first-rate troupe of artists, atrained audience, and a personality.
Q. What do you mean by a trained audience?
A. An assembly accustomed to accept everything as wit, andto laugh at anything.
Q. Would such a gathering consider it amusing for someone tosay "Flirting with one's husband is quite indelicate: it is likewashing one's clean linen in public"?
A. Certainly; and would find much to admire in a dialoguegiven over for something like ten minutes to an exhaustiveconsideration of muffins.
Q. And what do you mean by a personality?
A. More or less—an insouciant manner, and a ratherstartling button-hole.
Q. Does the personality require a speech or a cigarette?
A. Neither now, as both have ceased to be the fashion.
Q. Given the requisites you have specified for creating adramatist, what is the product?
A. A trivial comedy for serious people.
Q. Why give a play such a title?
A. Why not?
Q. Can a comedy occupying two or three hours inrepresentation be entirely trivial?
A. Not to the members of the audience.
Q. And are they serious people?
A. That depends upon the condition of their brains and theircapacity of enjoyment.
Q. Does the trivial comedy require a plot?
A. Nothing to speak of.
Q. Or characterisation?
A. No, for the same kind of dialogue will do for all thecompany—for London ladies, country girls, justices of the peace,doctors of divinity, maid-servants, and confidential butlers.
Q. What sort of dialogue?
A. Inverted proverbs and renovated paradoxes.
Q. Is this kind of dialogue entirely new?
A. Not entirely, as something rather like it has been heardat the Savoy for the last ten or twenty years.
Q. But is it good enough for a British Public?
A. Quite good enough. They will laugh when a London ladyexpresses surprise at finding flowers growing in the country, and roarwhen they hear the retort, that plants are as common in the provincesas people in town.
Q. But surely this vein of sarcasm, satire, or whatever itis, will some day be worked out. What can the dramatist then do?
A. Act upon precedent, and try something else.
A PURIST IN ENGLISH.
"You called me very Late this Morning,Jenkinson!"
"Yes, Sir, I'm sorry to say I overlaidmyself!"
TONING IT DOWN.
(See the Daily Papers of Last Week.)
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