Why Marry?
by Jesse Lynch Williams.
ADVANCE NOTICE BY THE AUTHOR
One afternoon shortly before the New York "opening" of this comedy a most estimable lady sat down to make me a cup of tea.
"Now, do tell me, what is your play about?" she inquired with commendable enthusiasm. For, being a true woman, she had early achieved the becoming habit of letting members of the superior s.e.x talk about themselves.
""Why Marry?"" said I, "tells the truth about marriage."
"Oh, why," she expostulated, "why write unpleasant plays?"
"But it is not "unpleasant.""
"Then it isn"t true!" she exclaimed. "That is, I mean--I mean--did you say cream or lemon?"
And in the pause which accompanied the pouring of the cream I detected the look of one realizing too late that it is always better to think before speaking.
This little incident, it seemed to me, epitomizes charmingly the att.i.tude of "our nicest people" toward our fundamental inst.i.tution. The truth about marriage must be unpleasant. Therefore, tell us something we know isn"t true. It will be so much nicer for our young people.
It is to be feared, however, that young people who go to see "Why Marry?" in the hope of being shocked do not get their money"s worth. I have heard of but two persons who have been scandalized by this play, and they were both old people. One was a woman in the country who had not seen it, but had read the t.i.tle, and so wrote several indignant letters about it. The other was an elderly bachelor of the type which finds useful occupation in decorating club windows like geraniums. He took his niece to see it, and, deciding at the end of Act II that the play was going to be unpleasant in Act III, took her home at once. The next afternoon she appeared at the matine with a whole bevy of her own generation and saw the rest of the play. I asked her later if it had shocked any of them.
"Oh, no," she replied, "we are too young to be shocked."
That little incident also struck me as socially significant. There never were two generations inhabiting the same globe simultaneously with such widely separated points of view.
For several years after this play was first published no theatrical manager on Broadway would produce it. I don"t blame them, I want to thank them for it. I doubt if this sort of thing could have appealed to many theatre-goers then, especially as my young lovers are trying to be good, not bad. "Self-expression" and "the right to happiness" do not enter into their plans. The causes of their courageous and, of course, mistaken decision are unselfish and social motives, however futile and antisocial the results would have been had not their desperate determination been thwarted.... When this play was first published most people were not thinking along these lines. Such ideas were considered radical then. They will soon be old-fashioned--even on the stage.
Kind and discriminating as the critics have been in regard to this comedy (a discriminating critic being, of course, one who praises your play), few of them have seen the point which I thought I was making emphatically clear, namely, that we can"t cure social defects by individual treatment. Not only the lovers, but all the characters in this play are trying to do right according to their lights. There is no villain in this piece. At least the villain remains "off stage." Perhaps that is why so few see him. You are the villain, you and I and the rest of society. We are responsible for the rules and regulations of the marriage game. Instead of having fun with human nature, I tried to go higher up and have fun with human inst.i.tutions.
I say "tried," because apparently I did not succeed. The joke is on me.
Still, I can get some amus.e.m.e.nt out of it: for a great many people seem to like this play who would be indignant if they knew what they were really applauding. They think they are merely enjoying "satire on human nature." Now, it is a curious fact that you can always curse human nature with impunity; can malign it, revile it, boot it up and down the decalogue, and you will be warmly praised. "How true to life!" you are told. "I know some one just like that." (It is always some one else, of course.) But dare lay hands on the Existing Order--and you"ll find you"ve laid your hands on a hornet"s nest.
You see, most people do not want anything changed--except possibly the Law of Change. They do not object to finding fault with mankind because "you can"t change human nature," as they are fond of telling you with an interesting air of originality. But laws, customs, and ideals can be changed, can be improved. Therefore they cry: "Hands off! How dare you!"
Man made human inst.i.tutions, therefore we reverence them. Whereas human nature was merely made by G.o.d. So we don"t think so much of it. We are prejudiced, like all creators, in favor of our own creations. After all, there is excellent precedent for such complacency. Even G.o.d, we are informed, p.r.o.nounced his work "all very good" and rested on the seventh day.
Pretty nearly everything in the play as acted is in the book as published; but by no means all that is in the book could possibly be enacted on the stage in two hours and a half. One scene, a breakfast scene between John and his wife, has been amplified for acting, but all the other scenes as printed here have been shortened for stage purposes and one or two cut out entirely.
The "set" was changed to represent the loggia, instead of the terrace, of John"s "little farm." Outdoor scenes are not supposed to be good for comedy. Walls, or a suggestion of them, produce a better psychological effect for the purpose, besides making it possible to speak in quieter, more intimate tones than when the voice spills out into the wings and up into the paint loft.
Near the end of the play a number of relatives, rich and poor, are supposed to arrive for dinner and for influencing by their presence the recalcitrant couple. That is the way it is printed and that is how it was acted during the first few weeks of the Chicago run. But though the family may have its place in the book, it proved to be an awful nuisance on the stage. No matter how well these minor parts might be acted (or dressed), their sudden irruption during the last and most important moments of the performance distracted the audience"s attention from the princ.i.p.al characters and the main issue. It was not clear who was who.
Programmes fluttered; perplexity was observed.... So we decided that the family must be destroyed. It is always a perplexing problem to devise a subst.i.tute for the family.
JESSE LYNCH WILLIAMS.
ILl.u.s.tRATIONS
HELEN: You"re about the most conceited man I ever knew.
ERNEST: How can I help it, when you admire me so? _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE ALL: Then why, _why_ do you want a divorce?
JUDGE: Because, d.a.m.n it, I don"t like her 30
JUDGE: You poor little pessimists! Human nature to-day is better than it ever was, but our most important inst.i.tution is worse--the most sacred relationship in life has become a jest in the market-place 204
JUDGE: We thought we believed in trial marriage.
Nothing of the sort--trial separation! What marriage put asunder divorce has joined together 230
ACT I
"And So They Were Married"
ACT I
_Up from the fragrant garden comes a girl, running. She takes the broad terrace steps two at a stride, laughing, breathless, fleet as a fawn, sweet as a rose. She is hotly pursued by a boy, handsome, ardent, attractively selfish, and just now blindly determined to catch the pretty creature before she gains the protecting shelter of home. She is determined to let him but not to let him know it.... There, she might have darted in through the open door, but it is such a cold, formal entrance; she pretends to be exhausted, dodges behind a stone tea-table, and, turning, faces him, each panting and laughing excitedly; she alluring and defiant, he merry and dominant._
_She is twenty-five and he is a year or two older, but they are both children; in other words, unmarried._
REX
Think I"ll let you say that to me?
JEAN
[_making a face at him_]