by Tim Rayborn
That triumph was short-lived, however. Wilde had a powerful enemy, the Marquess of Queensberry, who was enraged that his son Lord Alfred Douglas was having an affair with Wilde. On the play’s opening night, the marquess had planned to attend and throw rotten vegetables at the stage to cause trouble and disruption, but Wilde had been tipped off to this little plot and had him barred from entering the theater. Queensberry, not to be deterred, formally accused Wilde of homosexuality, which resulted in his arrest for libel. Wilde wished to press the charge in response, against the advice of his friends. Queensberry hired private detectives to dig up the dirt on Wilde and found what he needed to have the libel charge dismissed. Wilde was brought to trial and ultimately sentenced to two years of hard labor from 1895 to 1897. Afterward, he went into exile in France and died there of cerebral meningitis in 1900, the years in prison having worn him down. A humorist to the last, he is said in his final days to have had some choice words about his hotel room’s decorations. Depending on whom you believe, he may have said, “Either these curtains go, or I do,” or perhaps, “This wallpaper will be the death of me—one of us will have to go.” He may actually have said the second of these quotes sometime earlier in his life; there are several variations, and no one knows which, if any, are true. In any case, his wonderful wit survived even in the face of denunciation and poverty.
His remains were transferred to Père Lachaise Cemetery in 1909, and soon after, his grave became a site of literary pilgrimage. In 2011, the tomb was cleaned of the hundreds of lipstick kisses left on it over the years, and a glass barrier was erected to prevent further damage. The barrier itself is now also covered in kisses and love-note graffiti. Wilde would probably be amused.
Alfred Jarry (1873–1907)
Absinthe, ether, at least two bottles of any vintage, and merdre
Jarry was a diminutive French writer who explored symbolism—the idea, also found in Impressionism, that an artistic subject conveyed symbolic, rather than direct, meaning—and proto-absurdism in his works. At less than five feet tall, he managed to make quite an impression. His works shocked even liberal Paris by pushing the boundaries and reveling in satirical views of society.
Born in Laval (west of Paris, near Brittany), he had an early taste for the absurd and grotesque. When he was fifteen, he and a classmate wrote a play mocking one of their teachers through a caricature named Père Heb, a bloated figure with three teeth who would later become the main character of his infamous play Ubu Roi.
Moving to Paris as a teenager, Jarry was eventually drafted into the army, but he was so short that his uniforms did not fit, and his appearance was so comical that he was excused from marching in drills and parades. He was eventually discharged for “health reasons,” though this could just as easily have been due to his diminutive size. Afterward, he gave himself over to writing provocative works and imbibing large amounts of alcohol, as you do.
In December 1896, Jarry’s most infamous play, Ubu Roi (“King Ubu”), premiered—and failed—at the Théâtre de l’Œuvre. It is an absurd drama that lifts various ideas and motifs from Shakespeare’s plays, including Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Winter’s Tale, along with Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex. Parisians had never seen anything like it. It tells the tale of the repulsive Ubu, a misshapen monster drawn from his earlier Père Heb. Ubu represents greed and stupidity, people who are not worthy of what they have, and those who do terrible things in the name of questionable ideals. He leads a revolution in Poland and succeeds in killing the king and the royal family. When the king’s ghost demands vengeance, Ubu begins killing the people for their money. One of Ubu’s servants escapes to Poland and convinces the Russian tsar to declare war on the tyrant. Ubu marches out to fight them, while his wife attempts to steal his money, but is stopped by Bougrelas, the crown prince who is now trying to lead a new revolt against Ubu. Ubu defeats the Russians, but is attacked by a random bear; um, okay. His wife then comes to him, pretending to be the Angel Gabriel; um, right. Bougrelas enters the scene, but Ubu defeats him by hitting him with the body of the bear; um, whatever. The Ubu and his wife flee to France. The end. Huh?
This kind of bizarre narrative was a precursor to the Theater of the Absurd, which used slang, vulgar words, and odd patterns of speech to explore existentialist and even nihilist subjects and characters who can see no purpose in life or in the situations they find themselves in. The play was meant as a satire and commentary on the dark side of society, inspired by a hapless teacher from Jarry’s youth. Before the performance, Jarry spoke to the audience and said, “You are free to see in M. Ubu however many allusions you care to, or else a simple puppet—a school boy’s caricature of one of his professors who personified for him all the ugliness in the world.” This caveat didn’t help matters, though. As the play opened, Ubu walked out onstage and addressed the crowd with his opening word, “Merdre!” (“shit” with an extra “r” added in). Well, that got the audience’s attention! For the next fifteen minutes or so, the play could not continue, as there was so much commotion. Jeers, booing, cheering, and whistling filled the theater from those offended and those delighted. Eventually things settled down enough for the play to continue, but its absurdity and increasing outrages were proving to be too unsettling. A riot broke out at its conclusion and the play was subsequently banned from the stage.
Jarry responded by adapting it to a puppet theater and delving ever further into shocking, avant-garde works that mocked society and religion. He adopted some of Ubu’s traits, including referring to himself in the royal “we.” He moved into a small flat—the roof was so low that only he could fit in it without crouching—and began carrying a revolver when he went out. When one of his neighbors complained that the gun could kill her children, he replied that if that happened, “we should ourselves be happy to get new ones with you.” Well, that’s one way to build community spirit! Picasso, incidentally, acquired and wore Jarry’s gun after his death; he also collected several of his manuscripts.
Beyond his writings, Jarry was entirely devoted to alcoholic drinks, referring to absinthe as the “green goddess” and to alcohol in general as a “sacred herb.” He was said to have once painted his face green and ridden through Paris on his bicycle in honor of his love for absinthe. If he could not obtain alcohol, he drank ether, which was a popular alternative for some poor or destitute addicts. His friend Rachilde (the pen name of writer Marguerite Vallette-Eymery) wrote, maybe with some exaggeration:
Jarry began the day by consuming two litres of white wine, then three absinthes between ten o’clock and midday, at lunch he washed down his fish, or his steak, with red or white wine alternating with further absinthes. In the afternoon, a few cups of coffee laced with brandy or other spirits whose names I’ve forgotten, then, with dinner—after, of course, more aperitifs—he would still be able to take at least two bottles of any vintage, good or bad. Now I never saw him really drunk.
Drunk or not, in the end, a combination of poverty, alcoholism, drug use, and tuberculosis did him in at the age of thirty-four, an almost perfect embodiment of the Romantic ideal for how a writer should exit this life.
8
The Modern Age
The term “modern” is always a bit perplexing and, honestly, not very helpful. In art and music, it has been used to describe works created after 1900 as a way of distinguishing them from the Romantic era, but obviously, this classification only works to a certain point. A painting or piece of music created in 1905 likely has more in common with the nineteenth century than it does with art or music created in 2005, unless the latter piece is deliberately retro. So it’s not really all that useful to apply the “modern” label, but it has become a convenient way to categorize works, even if it’s not particularly accurate these days.
After all, if something made in the first decade of the twentieth century is “modern,” then what must the same thing be a hundred years later? Well, there is a category called “post-modern,” which tries to define those wo
rks of art and literature that came “after” the modern era. The big problem with this naming strategy, of course, is that new definitions are always racing against time, and like all of us, they inevitably lose (yes, that’s depressing). At what point does “post-modern” no longer apply because something even newer has replaced it? It starts getting a bit silly after a while. So, in the interest of cutting down on confusion and maybe even (regrettably) reducing the potential silliness a bit, we will refer to all dramatic creations and productions from the twentieth century as “modern” and be done with it.
Here are some examples of modern dramatic bizarreness that prove that our recent and technological innovations in no way hindered the gruesome and the strange from permeating the theatrical world. Odd deaths continued, stupid accidents happened, and if anything, drama got even weirder than ever before.
Pedro Muñoz Seca (1879–1936)
Laughing until the end
Muñoz Seca was a noted Spanish writer of comedies who enjoyed great success in his lifetime, but whose life ended in tragedy. He wrote about three hundred plays, both long and short, and was known for his cultivation of a new theatrical from, the astracanada. This genre made great use of puns and wordplay, slang and slapstick comedy, and his best-known example, La venganza de Don Mendo (“The Revenge of Don Mendo”), is a parody set during the Middle Ages about a knight who loses everything in a bet and is then betrayed by his lover. He assumes a new identity as a minstrel and seeks to restore himself.
Muñoz Seca was highly educated, having studied philosophy and law in Seville, and after relocating to Madrid at the beginning of the twentieth century, he taught Greek, Latin, and Hebrew and also worked as a lawyer and civil servant. Somehow, he found the time to turn out an astonishing number of comic plays over the next few decades, most of which were well received.
However, the real world all too often interferes with the best intentions of artists. Spain experienced considerable amounts of political turmoil in the 1920s and ’30s, first being ruled by the inept dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera (with the king’s support) and then going through the declaration of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931, during a time when the world was in the grips of the Depression. Civil unrest, strikes, and even assassinations became more common as the decade progressed, ultimately leading to the Spanish Civil War and the rise of Franco’s fascist dictatorship.
Muñoz Seca’s works became more political in the 1930s—he started writing plays that satirized the republic and its failings. His play, La oca (“The Goose”), for example, looked at the effects of antimonarchist laws and the seizure and redistribution of lands, which left peasants increasingly unhappy. Leftist papers denounced the play as “stupid.” This provocative writing was not the best idea, and with the increased turmoil of the time, he ended up putting himself in danger. Various revolutionaries accused him of being sympathetic to the old monarchy, a serious offense. He and his wife were arrested in 1936, though she was later released. He was accused of sedition, or whatever trumped-up charge they could come up with to silence him. It was enough for him to be sentenced to death, and he was shot by a Republican Army firing squad in November 1936. Knowing he had no chance of escape or reprieve, he remained a humorist to the end. In his last words, he indulged in some black comedy, telling his captors that they could take his land, home, money, and his life, “but there is one thing that you cannot take from me—the fear that I have!”
John Barrymore (1882–1942)
An acid tongue, to say the least
Barrymore was an American actor whose talents were showcased onstage, in films, and on radio, though he preferred to think of himself as primarily as a stage actor, being called the greatest living tragedian for his performance as Hamlet. However, he left the theater in the 1920s to concentrate on silent and then talking films, weary of the endless repetition of live performance. A part of the legendary Barrymore acting family, he was the grandfather of actress Drew Barrymore.
Barrymore struggled with alcoholism throughout his life, and though this would be tragic in itself, he is listed here because of his remarkably sharp tongue and for the semi-urban legend about his final send-off (more on that below). Barrymore was highly opinionated about art, other people, and just about everything, it seems. A number of amusing stories about him have circulated over the years. He was already drinking fairly heavily in his twenties, and one account relates that he slept through the 1906 San Francisco earthquake after a night of considerable imbibing. The army apparently pressed him into service to help clean up the post-earthquake mess, to which his uncle quipped, “It took a calamity of nature to get him out of bed and the US army to make him go to work.”
Fortunately for theater lovers, his work ethic was rather stronger when it came to his roles; he was quite hard on himself, actually. After his first performance as Hamlet, he sat in his dressing room feeling that he had failed. A sycophantic well-to-do fan came in to congratulate him, kissing his hand and saying, “O master! I enjoyed your performance so much!” To which Barrymore replied, “Not half so much as I am enjoying yours.”
Despite his many years as a screen actor, he stubbornly refused to memorize lines for films, requiring stagehands to hold up cards with his parts written on them so he could see them and read them while he acted. Because he was John Barrymore, this was tolerated. Occasionally, directors and others would castigate him for this behavior, to which he would reply that his memory was full of beautiful words from Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the sonnets, and other such works. He once added, “Do you expect me to clutter up all that with this horseshit?”
While performing in the play Redemption at the Plymouth Theater in New York in 1918, Barrymore was especially annoyed by the fact that several people in the front rows were coughing. During intermission, he sent someone out to buy a large fish, which he then concealed under his coat as the second act began. When the inevitable coughing once again commenced, he produced the fish, flung it at the offenders, and announced, “Chew on that, you walruses, while the rest of us get on with the play!”
He died in May 1942 of cirrhosis, complicated by kidney failure and pneumonia. Fellow actor Errol Flynn made the rather astonishing and grotesque claim that Barrymore’s body was “borrowed” by film director Raoul Walsh and some others (under the pretense of taking it for Barrymore’s disabled aunt to view) and was brought to his (Flynn’s) home. Flynn wrote:
They got into the house and brought the corpse inside. They moved my favorite chair … so that I would see [it] as I entered. They sat Jack [Barrymore] in the chair, propping him up. I was drunk—sad drunk—when I reached home…. As I opened the door I pressed the button. The lights went on and my God—I stared into the face of Barrymore! His eyes were closed. He looked puffed, white, bloodless. They hadn’t embalmed him let. I let out a delirious scream!
Flynn ran out of the house, where he was stopped by the very amused pranksters and informed that it was “only a gag.” Those crazy Hollywood directors! Flynn said that he immediately sobered up but was so shaken that he couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night. One of Barrymore’s good friends denied this whole incident, saying that he was with the body all evening, but Flynn’s seemingly sincere account and the general jerkish nature of the whole prank give it some credibility. Perhaps Barrymore left the world with one last dramatic performance?
Michel de Ghelderode (1898–1962)
A vision of the end
Michel de Ghelderode was a Belgian playwright whose works explored the avant-garde and reveled in the dark and grotesque. He was less interested in realism, preferring to portray the freakish onstage by use of puppets, mime, masks, and elaborate stage sets. He wrote some sixty plays and about a hundred stories, and his influences included the Commedia dell’Arte, puppet theaters, the bizarre paintings of Bosch and Breughel, and religious imagery.
In his play The Bizarre Horseman, for example, he includes a scene of a rider approaching some Breughel-like individuals, who mis
take him for Death and strike up a cacophonous song of welcome. One of them proclaims, “Let’s dance to Death!” while another declares, “I’ll dance till I drop!” Such scenes recall the somewhat-grotesque depictions of musicians and dancers found in the works of those Renaissance masters.
A common theme in many of his works was the use of religious figures and biblical scenes without the beliefs that usually accompany them. Such themes are often instead wrapped up with vulgarity in the form of sexual, gluttonous, and scatological humor. The religious aspects of his works came partially from the influence of his mother, Jeanne-Marie Rans, who before giving birth to four children had been a candidate for admission to holy orders and retained her faith throughout her life.
Ghelderode wanted to enrich his fantastical dramas with the concept of “total theater”—the idea that a production should appeal to the senses in a grand way and enrich the emotions and the mind. A play could include not only dialogue, but also music, art, sonorities in language, and sounds and lighting designed to induce an almost hallucinatory sensation in viewers. He advocated for lavish and complex theatrical special effects and many of his plays are set in a grotesque and distorted medieval Flanders, which evokes the landscapes and twisted figures of those Bosch and Breughel paintings. He wrote specifically for a puppet theater in some instances (Les Marionnettes de la Renaissance d’Occident), and many of his plays for human actors call for those performers to behave more like marionettes than human beings. They strike static poses and make odd facial expressions, giving their performances an unreal and unsettling quality.
Ghelderode suffered from poor health for most of his life. When he was sixteen, he was afflicted with typhus and claimed that at one point, he saw a mysterious lady by his bedside. She told him, “Not now, sixty-three.” He interpreted this to mean that he would recover (which he did) and that he would live until the age of sixty-three. In fact, he died only two days before his sixty-fourth birthday.
