one is confident that a hundred years hence his name will be highly
honoured among the little band who helped to bring back some life and
truth to the English theatre of this age. He would wish for nothing
better than that. And idle though it is to ask what his death, at little
more than youth, may mean in the way of loss to the art that he lived
for, his friends know that as dear a life as any of our time has gone
suddenly, inexplicably, taking with it the tenderest love of every one
who knew him. And he leaves with us an example without any stain.

JOHN DRINKWATER.

_London_,

_Midsummer 1921_.

[Illustration]

THE BEGGAR'S OPERA

NOTE ON THE SCENE AND COSTUMES AT THE LYRIC THEATRE, HAMMERSMITH

Superficially the task of staging _The Beggar's Opera_ was one of
supreme ease. Indeed, so easy was it that it became a matter of some
embarrassment to prune and select the required amount of data. Here was
Hogarth and his actual scene of Newgate with Macheath in chains; here
was Laroon's _Cries of London_ falling, in its edition of 1733, pat into
the period; here was the National Portrait Gallery and, added to these,
here was the benefit of all Mr. Charles E. Pearce's research.[1] After a
month or two of work in designing, the ease became so marked and
apparent that it engendered in me the beginnings of mistrust. Still,
I persevered in scene and costume with historically accurate
reproduction and, until three weeks before the actual work was due to be
carried out at the costumier's and in the painting shops, I felt
comparatively cheerful. Then I reviewed my forces--the little scale
models of the scenes, the characters in painted cardboard--all exact and
accurate. Something was wrong and the result was, I confess, appalling.
I had not made allowances either for my theatre or for my audience.
I had forgotten that it required a spacious Georgian theatre, the
intimacy of the side-boxes, the great personages sitting on the stage.
The Duke of Bolton, Major Pauncefoot and Sir Robert Fagg were not in
their places as in Hogarth's painting; the pit would not be filled with
tye-wigs and hoops and there would be a sharper line of division between
the actors and the spectators than ever existed in 1728. Something else
had to be done. As reproduction was a failure one would try to give an
impression of the same thing. Impressionism proved even worse than
accuracy. It was neither one thing nor the other. It merged into "ma