ITHE NATIONAL THEATRE

TIMOTHEUS

Our air-taxi landed us at what I took to be the nineteenth floor, and we walked almost at once into a huge hyperboloid pit, the walls of which consisted of tiers of seats. It would hold, I gathered, some twenty thousand people, and much resembled a Roman theatre, except for the peculiar curve of the walls, and the seats continuing to the very bottom of the funnel. There was no sign of any stage, and on my questioning Fabian,[2]he pointed to the saucer-like dome which formed the roof, or lid of the building. I was afraidthat to keep my eyes fixed upon this airy stage would mean ricking my neck, but I was reassured on being shown the shape of our seats. Not only were they well slanted back, but they were also provided with rests for the head, such as we are familiar with at our barbers’ and dentists’; and I was told that with the body in the position proper to the chairs, our emotional apparatus lent itself most readily to suggestion.

[2]The author’s general guide—Vergil to his Dante.

I then asked him if the performance was to be a good one, and he replied that “The clutch was officially ranked as A2 for efficiency, but that he did not know what it was for.” I was much puzzled as to his meaning until I learnt that ‘clutch’ was the name given to a drama of the kind about to take place, where everything was under thecontrol of one man, the ‘fairfusser’ as he is called, who designs the movement, the emotional sequences, the voices, and whatever else is needed. I laid myself open to much banter on the part of Ierne[3]by asking whether it was to be a tragedy or a comedy: such a crude distinction, she said, was typical of the muddle-headedness of our age, on a level with the antitheses classical-romantic, conservative-liberal, matter-mind, and even intellect-emotion we were so fond of making, and which for absurdity were only equalled by our craze for dressing men and women in different sorts of clothes. The object of a drama, Fabian enlightened me, was to summon up a given state ofbeing, pure or complex; and once the fairfusser knew what the clutch was for, it was his business to produce the right emotion. I began to speak of emotion for its own sake, but Ierne hurriedly checked me, saying that I would shock anyone who might overhear, for there was no biological value in emotion for its own sake. This made me think less agreeably of her kindness to me on the last evening.

[3]The author’s guide in the more intimate social relationships.

I was therefore still confused by their speaking of what a clutch was ‘for,’ as though it might be a sort of charity matinée, and was about to put the question, when the theatre became pitch dark: the clutch was beginning.

At first I was aware only that the roof, or ‘stage’ had become luminous, the light varying in strength, as it doeson the ceiling of a room when clouds travel across the sun. Soon it became more steadily bright, and vague human figures began to take shape on it, shadows at first, some of enormous size, advancing and retreating, making wide gestures of an import I could not grasp. Sometimes the shadows would assume solid shape and stand up as live beings, seeming to detach themselves from the dome so as not to appear in the least like those extravagant persons who populate the ceilings of many of our own theatres: and among them was one singularly graceful form which seemed to dominate the rest, and whose motions I could not help following, so great was the pleasure they gave me.

Soon I became conscious that the air of the theatre was pulsating in amanner which never quite became sound, and in a definite rhythm, which varied occasionally, but yet seemed to conform to the original beat, much as a poet will modulate his verse. Now a faint perfume hit the sense, while an uneasy feeling stole over me, as if something had been done I did not want. Then, from the body of the theatre, as from a member of the audience, a voice spoke, in the tones of a man resigned to grief:

No means at all to hideMan from himself can find:No way to start aside.Out of the hell of mind.

No means at all to hide

Man from himself can find:

No way to start aside.

Out of the hell of mind.

and I felt myself sinking into such an agony of despair as I can remember having gone through only in dreams, or under the influence of supernaturalfear. Struggle as I might against the weight of oppression, I was forced to abandon myself to the flow of dire tribulation, in which remorse succeeded terror, and all the passions of the world were black. And from all around the theatre, now from here, now from there, above me and below me, sometimes in front and sometimes at my back, I could hear voices and the noise of approaching events. Once I thought a voice cried out:

Desolate, as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when the sun has gone down to his rest.

and in the midst of a tumult of pulsations and perfumes and shadowy occurrences, a woman whispered, it seemed close by my ear:

And Pity, like a naked, new-born babe.

At that the sense of intolerable woe lightened; the rhythm changed, the figures appeared human and brave, while joy seemed to issue from the very walls of the theatre with the words:

Love’s banners on the battlements of song,

which trickled from every side. At last, without warning, in a triumphant burst of sudden glory such as makes us laugh with active lungs, a loud but harmonious cry resounded from the very middle of the theatre, where there was nothing visible but empty air, calling:

Where are the eagles and the trumpets?

and I remembered no more till we found ourselves perched on the outer landing of the theatre waiting for our taxi to take us home.

It was then that I found myself prey to strange and mingled, but insistent emotions, partly of kindly generosity, and partly of self-sacrifice. Looking at the men and women around me I could see that they too were strongly moved, making gestures foreign to the occasion, such as taking out their pocket-books, searching in them feverishly, and doing sums on slips of paper. Some whom I could see were giving themselves up to despair, and others were arguing with their wives. Fabian then pointed out to me that most of the carriages taking people away from the theatre, instead of flying in alldirections, made for a building upon which was written large

SUBSCRIBE HERE FOR THE EURBANK LOAN.OFFICES OPEN.

That, he said, accounted for the clutch. There was a crisis, he continued, in the bank upon which the credit of the League of Europe was founded, and the governments were anxious to sell the scrip of the new loan. The clutch we had seen had, no doubt, been performed that afternoon in the larger towns all over the continent, the language alone being suitably varied; and by this means the bank would be placed on a firm footing once more. My emotion was damped on learning this, for after all, I could have little interest in the finances of a country in which I had no stake: but enough ofmy feeling was left to make me give a foolishly large tip to the driver of our machine.

I was naturally curious to know by what means the frame of mind had been aroused, and in the evening Fabian was kind enough to enlighten me, going very learnedly into the origins of the form which met with such success. I was very surprised, and not a little proud, to find that a large part of the science had had its starting point in our own day, as he showed from several old books: but he on his part seemed inclined to think we had been wanting in genius to have had so much knowledge to hand, and yet not have been able to use it.

The shape of the theatre had been chosen for acoustic reasons, on accountof certain properties of the hyperbola, which I had not the mathematics to understand, but which, Fabian said, had been utilised in the third (1914–1918) of the five great wars of European settlement, for finding out by their report, the exact post of hidden guns. It was this which had enabled the fairfusser to make the last cry seem to come from the void; the other speeches had merely been delivered by variously placed loud-speakers, connected in due turn with a wireless gramophone. I may here say that the phrases I have remembered and written down are only a very small number of those used in the performance, and which, for some reason, seemed familiar. The other words spoken in the clutch were of like great emotive power, chosen or inventedby the fairfusser for this reason alone: and though they may seem to have no logical thread, or connection in real life, their place in the scheme was very carefully thought out. The reasons, and the terminology, for all this were too far advanced for me to be able to hold them in my head, but I have since traced some passages Fabian showed me as early sources of the form, and which will give the reader some idea of the great cleverness of the design.

“Thus the indirect methods of hypnotising, like many of the technical procedures used in making jokes, have the effect of checking certain distributions of mental energy which would interfere with the course of events in the unconscious, and theylead eventually to the same result as the direct methods of influence by means of staring or stroking.”[4]

[4]Freud,Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, page 97.

From there the high road is plain to see; the phrases of the clutch check or loosen ‘certain distributions of mental energy,’ for art is only a kind of hypnotism: but the perfection which I had ‘felt’ had not been arrived at without much arduous trial. At one time jumbled up words had been tried, or single ones, but even the most striking, such asdeath, orbeauty, orruin, had not had an effect at all to be put beside that of the shortest sentence. Familiar quotations had also been made use of, but they were put by for two reasons. The first was that all men did not respond in the same way,since all men are not equally noble, some even finding risible “Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.” The second was that hardly any quotations were familiar enough to be known by everybody: for example, the words “Till the conversion of the Jews” moved people quite unevenly, some connecting them with religion, others with their pass-books, and a few with an old obscure poem. This, besides preventing many from entering into the proper mood, destroyed that singleness in the audience without which the highest suggestible state cannot be reached: for an emotion is infectious only if the units of the crowd are ready to agree together, as I have often noticed on first nights when the friends of an author try to sweep the criticsaway on a tide of noisy enthusiasm. And further, emotion caught on the wing is always stronger than when it is the result of deliberate thought.

As to the shadows on the ‘stage,’ these were for fixing the attention of all upon the same thing; and I discovered that every member of the audience had been greatly drawn towards the figure which had seized upon my imagination, and had to some extent made himself one with it, as we now do sometimes with the hero of a play. This had served to transform the loose ‘herd’ into a unified and thus suggestible ‘horde,’ if I do not mistake the terms.

The air being made to throb was merely to create a rhythm, the effects of which had been keenly studied.Again to copy a passage I have traced:

“Among the results of rhythm susceptibility and vivacity of emotion, limitations of the field of attention, marked differences in the incidence of belief feelings closely analogous to those which alcohol and nitrous oxide can induce ... may be noted.”[5]

and I can willingly believe this, for I have myself often felt very curiously stirred when listening to the jazz-band at young people’s parties.

[5]I. A. Richards,The Principles of Literary Criticism, page 143.

The naming of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas as it used to be called, brings me to the perfumes, which, I learnt, were led along each row of seats by what I had taken for hot-water pipes. This again, Fabian said, was a legacy of the third (1914–1918) GreatWar of European Settlement, and he gave me to read an account I have since recovered of a gas which caused “the most appalling mental distress and misery.”[6]Of course the means had been much refined, and the fairfusser could at will set free gases which brought about sorrow, fear, joy, shame, the love of glory or of animals, and indeed any emotion, all without the least risk of harm; though it is true that some serious mishaps, especially in the early stages, had unluckily happened.

[6]J. B. S. Haldane,Callinicus.

The combined result was that almost any feeling, and any required degree of that feeling, could be produced by the fairfusser, and this the government found of the greatest use at times ofpolitical or European crisis, when wars were to be declared or averted, or any controversial measure passed.

I was bound to utter my high admiration of the lengths to which the art of the drama had been carried, and made so salutary an influence, though I could not help doubting whether such a tool in the hands of rulers might not be a little dangerous: but I was assured that this had already been foreseen, and that the national theatres were closed during the period of a general election, and of debates of high moment, such as those on the budget.

I asked if there were no theatres in which human beings came upon the stage and strutted and talked after the manner of common life, as they do to-day, and I was told that there weremany kinds: but that before going to see them I would be taken to the Dramatic Academy, which had been handsomely endowed by an Anglo-Caucasian millionaire. I thought I should learn more of the trend of the art by going there than by attendance at a number of theatres, and gladly consented to the proposal.

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