[Illustration: CONVERSATIONALIST: "Do you play Ping-Pong?"
The vogue of musical comedy was now at its height. _Punch_ has some amusing suggestions in 1900 for adapting _The School for Scandal_ and Mr. Henry Arthur Jones's _Mrs. Dane's Defence_ to suit the fashion of the hour, with appropriate casts, including Dan Leno and Miss Marie Lloyd. His rhymed extravaganza on "The Evolution of Musical Comedy" accurately describes the prevalent method in this quatrain:--
In musical comedy books (Chiefly frivol and froth) You do not spoil the broth By employing a number of cooks.
With the opening of the new century, the "poetic drama" was revived with a certain measure of success by the production of Mr. Stephen Phillips's plays. Mr. Phillips had graduated as an actor, but _Punch_ found him lacking in the theatrical sense, while acknowledging the pomp and pageantry of his verse. _Herod_, with Sir Herbert Tree in the title _rôle_, is condemned for its repulsive realism, and the lack of any character that engaged sympathy. The notice of _Paolo and Francesca_ in 1902 is long, critical and by no means unfriendly, but the resultant impression is of "a negative achievement" in which the purple patches failed to redeem the lack of consistent characterization or of stage-craft. Mr. Henry Ainley is mentioned, but without any recognition of the qualities which have since earned for him distinction and popularity. _Nero_, by the same author, produced in 1906, is described as "out-heroding _Herod_." There were many fine lines but little dramatic action. _Punch_ praises Miss Constance Collier as Poppaea, but cannot take the part seriously. "She looked the Roman lady, played the unfaithful wife, and died effectively as an invalid after a long and inexplicable illness. Perhaps she was poisoned. Nero knows; nobody else does except, perhaps, Mr. Stephen Phillips." Tree's make-up as Nero was most artistic, but he had not one really fine scene given him; Mrs. Tree was an admirable Agrippina; but _Punch_ was not thrilled by the final conflagration, which he describes as a "weird, maniacal but dramatically unsatisfactory finish."
Meanwhile Sir James Barrie and Mr. Bernard Shaw were coming along with leaps and bounds, but neither of them owed much to _Punch_ in the early years of the century. He had nothing but praise for H. B. Irving's acting in _The Admirable Crichton_, but it was a triumph for the actor rather than the playwright. The hero was "a perplexing creation," and the play "a queer mixture of comedy, extravaganza, farce and tragedy." Even less sympathetic was the first notice of _Peter Pan_, in 1905. As _Punch_ had detected resemblances to _The Overland Route_ and _Foul Play_ in _The Admirable Crichton_, so he now found reminiscences of _Peter Schlemihl_ and _Snowdrop_ in the new play. For the rest, he could find little either to amuse or that could even be acknowledged as new or original in the extravaganza. He could not even tell whether the children present enjoyed it. _Punch_ acknowledges that Barrie was the pet of the critics, and congratulates him on having his pieces perfectly acted by first-rate comedians. He frankly admits that he (_Punch_) was in the minority. A year later _Peter Pan_ is recognized as a popular favourite in a much more sympathetic notice. Mr. Shaw was a much tougher morsel to digest, but here, too, one notes a progressive appreciation from the days when _Punch_ pronounced _Man and Superman_ to be "unpresentable," not on moral grounds, but because it was not a mirror of humanity in point either of character or action. Similar reserves are expressed in the notice of _The Doctor's Dilemma_ in 1906. The general verdict is summed up in the epigram that "unfortunately, by steady abuse of it, Mr. Shaw has long ago forfeited his claim to be taken seriously." Yet the play contains "some very excellent phagocytes which enjoy a strong numerical advantage over its malevolent germs." So, again, _Cæsar and Cleopatra_, while affording in many ways a rare intellectual entertainment, was spoiled by the author's passion for being instructive; the piece fell between two stools, for it was neither frankly sacrilegious nor purely serious.