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8. BIRTH, MARRIAGE AND DEATH
Nothing can obliterate the importance of birth, marriage and death. Our views on them may change, and change drastically, but they still remain the main factors of life, be the cynics as cynical as they please, the stage as glamorous or sordid.
The variations on these three themes are endless, changing with time and place. What one worships another ridicules, and often ridicules all the more because he realizes the weakness of his case. To-day, perhaps more than ever before, we have an almost limitless variety of aspects. In many theatres and cinemas much of the artificiality that characterized the themes of such Victorian plays as the second mrs. tanqueray still exists to-day, but in the outlying London theatres and in the smaller theatres, belonging to clubs and so unsupervised by the censor, frankness and freedom often abound.
In every direction there are pointers to what is happening. The banalities in the French film, the well-digger's daughter, dealing with the eternal problem of the illigitimate child, and of the play, message for Margaret, giving us the clash between mistress and wife, are in striking contrast to such plays as the celibate or on the way. the celibate deals with the effects, direct and indirect, of a celibacy, enforced by fate, and on the way tackles straightforwardly the attitude of the welleducated woman who insists on having a child as a right in itself and quite openly treats all objections as trivial and irrelevant. One must not forget such plays as Robert's wife, where orthodox religion conflicts with obvious medical expediency, nor the young woman in and no birds sing pulled in opposite directions by the prospect of marriage and her profession as a doctor. Nor the importance of the comedies. The bride, in fools rush in, who reads the marriage service for the first time a few hours before her wedding and decides that it is all a lot of nonsense, has a far deeper significance than mere farce. It was preceded many years before by the admirable dover road at the Haymarket Theatre where Henry Ainley with a whimsical humour waylays run-a-way couples and compels them to live together for a few weeks to see if they really want to continue their running away. In such plays, however varied in outlook, real people live and capture our sympathy; the dramatic situations, and even the theme itself, arise naturally and incidentally, and they probably do more good than many a sermon.
Death is more difficult to deal with. We know no sequel. But we make guesses in the theatre and occasionally with considerable details. Our powers of invention are no longer blurred over by the mists of mysticism though the next world is sometimes made rather artificially into a dream. In fear no more, Mr. Arcularis is a very real person though he dwells in the hereafter. What happens to him may not give us any very interesting information, yet such plays inevitably give us a new outlook on death and do something to put a break on the apparent indifference which sometimes characterizes our attitude to everything not directly concerned with the petty details of living.
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