[21] It is interesting that in an unpublished letter of Beardsley’s to Smithers when the latter was intending to produce _The Peacock_, an unpublished quarterly, Beardsley promises him his best work.
Lastly in this chaunt of omissions comes the drama of the nineties. Unfortunately the drama, in so far as it affects the group of the nineties with which we are concerned, is almost a nullity. Aubrey Beardsley once commenced a play, which was never heard of, in collaboration with Brandon Thomas. Ernest Dowson wrote what Beardsley called a ‘tiresome’ playlet. John Davidson perpetrated a number of plays such as _Bruce_ (1886), _Smith, a tragic farce_ (1888), _Scaramouch in Naxos_, and two other plays in 1889 when he was feeling his way, and translated much later as hackwork a play of François Coppée’s and Victor Hugo’s _Ruy Blas_. Theodore Peters’ pastoral and other similar trifles only go to show how barren the group itself was in the dramatist’s talent. Nor can much be said for such poetic plays as Theodore Wratislaw’s _The Pity of Love_.
But it must be remembered, as a matter of fact, such a sweeping conclusion may not only be unjust but even impertinent. For where in all the theatres of the London of the nineties would the plays (if they had been written) of these young men have found a home? Probably the dramatic output of the nineties was nil because there were no small theatres in London at that date of the type to give these young men a hope that any works they might write could be produced. So only at the end of the decade do we see the dramatic outburst when the Irish movement founded a theatre of its own and produced J. M. Synge, and also when Miss Horniman gave Manchester a repertory theatre, and then Stanley Houghton came.
True, at the same period as the nineties Oscar Wilde was producing plays burlesquing the world of Society, and Bernard Shaw was getting ready to launch his own works by bombasting every one else’s; but the little movement of the younger men remained dramatically dumb. Nothing came even when George Moore produced _The Strike at Arlingford_ and John Todhunter _The Black Cat_. It is a hard thing to believe that all these young men were devoid of the dramatic instinct. I prefer for my part to blame the London theatrical world for the lack of those minute theatres which have become so much a part of the night life of big continental cities and are so admirably adapted for the production of the works of new dramatists.