Basil Rathbone: The Unknown

A play in three acts by W. Somerset Maugham. Opened at the Aldwych Theatre, London, August 9, 1920. The play was performed at the Aldwych through September 18 (Rathbone left the play after this performance), and then transferred to the Lyric Theatre, where it played from September 20 through October 16, 1920. 78 performances total. General Manager, Eugene Bertram; Managing Directors, Charles Gulliver and A.E. Abrahams; Stage Manager, Wallett Waller; Assistant Stage Manager, William Kershaw; Musical Director, Albert Cazabo. Produced by Miss Viola Tree (Lady Tree's daughter).

"Has the war weakened faith?" This is one of the questions explored in W. Somerset Maugham's play The Unknown (first published in 1920).

In his Preface to the Collected Plays, Vol. VI, 1934, Maugham says: "The Unknown was produced immediately after the first World War, and the circumstances of the time helped it to a certain success. I could not anticipate it, for in performance it turned out to have an error of construction that I had not seen. I took up again in it an idea I had used many years before in a forgotten novel called The Hero (1901), and the drama I saw in my mind's eye lay in the conflict between two persons who loved one another and were divided by the simple piety of the one and the lost faith of the other. But to my surprise, it appeared in representation that the drama lay in the argument on one side and the other, and not at all in the personal relations of the characters. The result was that the play came to an end with the second act; the third consequently was meaningless and there was no trick or device I could think of that could make it significant."

Major John Wharton has just come home after serving in the First World War. His parents assume he will now marry Sylvia Bullough, to whom he has been engaged for seven years. John's mother brings up his absence from the Communion Service, and tries to persuade him to come with her during the week. He tries to put her off lightly, but when she insists, he tells her outright, in Sylvia's presence, that he has lost his faith. Asked why, in that case, he came to church at all, he replies that it was an act of courtesy to them.

A long theological argument between John, his parents and Sylvia is brought to an end by the arrival of Dr. Macfarlane, who has come to tell Colonel Wharton the result of a specialist's diagnosis. The Colonel insists on hearing the truth, and is told that he may die at any moment. Though he has boasted to his son that, through all his campaigns, his religious convictions have kept him from feeling fear, now that he is face to face with death, he is afraid. Now he fears death and does not want to die.

As Act II begins, John and his mother discuss his father's fear of death. Mrs. Wharton has sent for the Vicar to console him. Mrs. Littlewood, a widow whose two sons had been killed in the war, arrives with a wedding present for John—a pearl tie-pin that had belonged to her dead son. The vicar and his wife arrive, as well as Sylvia and the doctor. The theological debate continues.

Eventually, the Vicar states that the war was due to "the loving-kindness of God, who wishes to purify the nation by suffering: to err is human, to forgive divine." "And who is going to forgive God?" asks Mrs. Littlewood. She points out that she has been a good woman all her life, and has brought up her sons to be upright and God-fearing men. Now both of them have been taken and she will not forgive God for it. And with this she goes out.

Major John Wharton states frankly that he has not believed in God since his best friend was killed—a man who loved life and excelled in everything. Sylvia then declares that she will not marry him; she has come to the conclusion that an unbelieving husband will be not make a satisfactory father for the children she hopes to have. She takes off her engagement ring and returns it to him.

Act II ends with the collapse of Colonel Wharton, who is then taken off to bed by his wife and the doctor.

Act III begins the next morning. Sylvia, on her way to early service, calls in for news of the Colonel, and is told by Mrs. Wharton that he has died in the night, comforted by the Sacrament and the Vicar's prayers. John, who has gone out for a walk, has not yet heard the news, and Mrs. Wharton asks Sylvia to break it to him. When he comes in, however, Sylvia conceals that fact that his father is dead. Sylvia persuades John to go to Communion under the impression that his father was still alive, and that he would die happy if only the young man would perform a ceremonial act in which he did not believe. Her deceit is betrayed, her plea that she had expected a miracle is cast aside, and the play ends in a sort of wave of anger that a good girl should descend to a base lie for the sake of getting her lover back into the Church.

MR. MAUGHAM AT SEA

In the First Act of his new play Mr. Maugham cracks some mild jokes about people who do not go to church. We fear that he must be one of those people; or perhaps he belongs to the other class who are made the subject of his witticisms, the people who go to church and sleep when they get there. We are not, let us say at once, trying to call Mr. Maugham to account for his personal beliefs and practices; we are only desperately anxious to find out how it is that he can be so grotesquely ignorant of a religion once dominant in this country, and still practised by scattered groups of people all over England. He seems to have just that kind of intimate knowledge of ordinary Christianity that the ordinary Christian has of the religion of Lhasa. ...

When John Wharton came home on leave and announced his doubts to the home circle these were the people he found around him. First there was his father, a retired colonel, who boasted that he had learned from his religion not to fear death, and turned green when the family doctor arrived to break it to him that he was in a bad way and ought to make his will. Then there was his mother, who was a dear old soul, but even more unable to express the substance of her religious convictions than the rest of the persons of the drama. Necessarily, too, the stage parson and his wife were in attendance, burning with controversial zeal. Really, in the Rev. Norman Poole, Mr. Maugham has outdone all the stage parsons that ever existed. the clergy have their weaknesses, but this curious specimen of tactless insolence is a most unintelligent libel on the cloth. Are we never to get beyond the "Private Secretary" in one disguise or another? Lastly, there was John's fiancée, Sylvia, who threw him over when he threw over Christianity, in whom, we surmise, Mr. Maugham meant to depict an intense but narrow-souled High Church young lady, and only succeeded in drawing a nasty compound of priggishness hysteria and superstition.

Over against these unpleasant people stand John, the stoical pagan, who compares life to the fleeting beauty of a Russian dancer's poise, and an old widow lady, who, having had two sons killed in the war, has taken to cards and music-halls as a riposte to the Almighty, and represents the epicurean pagan. (We should not omit the family doctor, who has apparently read Dean Rashdall, and proposes Broad Church accommodations between the parties, but seems to make no converts.) The audience on the first night was, as was to be expected, decisive in its support of the pagans, particularly in their more frivolous moods. Exactly how Mrs. Littlewood's bridge and the Alhambra revues make the spectacle of a world-war more tolerable we should like to be told. But as regards the other and nobler pagan, the young man, we could wish that the people had listened to him instead of laughing so noisily whenever he trampled on the clergyman. For he certainly gave us to understand that an unsparing condemnation of war is as an integral part of his creed. What, no circenses at all? We o not think that will go down. After all, the Rev. Norman at least had hold of this truth—that war is an ennobling thing for non-combatants. May there not be something after all, then, in these old religion? Meanwhile, we offer our sympathy to the small minority of persons who must have suffered acute distress at the perpetual, callous bandying-about of names and ideas that they regard with the same reverence as the lover does the details of love, not for the purpose of a serious debate, but simply to help out a playwright's clumsy game.

The acting of "The Unknown" does much to atone for the piece. Mr. Basil Rathbone, as John, reveals the welcome fact that he can play all kinds of different jeunes premiers as if he were himself a number of persons. His John Wharton has not a trace in it of the hero of "Georges Sand" or of the hero of "Peter Ibbetson." That is most unusual in Mr. Rathbone's line. Mr. C. V. France was as finished as ever in his study of the dying colonel; Mr. Clarence Blakiston gave us a discreet and delightful sketch of the doctor; Miss Ellen O'Malley's natural freshness and attractiveness were not overpowered by the terrible Sylvia till the very end; and Miss Haidée Wright had full play for her incisive and passionate style as Mrs. Littlewood.

—The Athenaeum, Aug. 20, 1920

According to the review in the London Times (10 August 1920), the passionate argument between the vicar and Mrs. Littleton was "the most dramatic and exciting moment in the whole play."

In his review in Nation (21 August 1920) Frank Swinnerton wrote that he found the play tedious and not amusing. "The characters discuss God for three acts." Swinnerton criticized playwright Maugham for not providing a conclusion to the discussion. Maugham, however, apparently preferred to leave it up to each audience member to draw his or her own conclusions.

"The Unknown is not an easy piece to play, and the company was successful in the essential of being sincere. Miss Haidée Wright as Mrs. Littlewood was the outstanding success, and greatly moved the audience. Miss Ellen O'Malley as Sylvia and Mr. H. R. Hignett as the vicar had hard parts with which they did as much as was possible. Mr. Charles V. France and Mr. Basil Rathbone as father and son did well in their easier and more conventional parts. A word of praise is due to Miss Lena Halliday in the small part of the disagreeable Mrs. Poole, the vicar's wife." —The Woman's Leader, 20 August, 1920

"Lady Tree was charmingly motherly and tender as the orthodox Mrs. Wharton, and Mr. C.V. France portrayed the elderly Englishman who wished to die as a soldier and a gentleman, and whose religious convictions has all be made for him, sincerely and naturally. Mr. Basil Rathbone did what he could to give us the impression of a young man torn by religious doubt, but the character possessed none of that burning, passionate conviction by which alone he might have made us better realise his actions and so forgive him the misery he inflicted upon his parents and his fiancee. ... The characters are not so much characters as points-of-view on orthodox religion and equally orthodox agnosticism." —The Tatler, August 25, 1920

"It is a compliment to Mr. Maugham's well-deserved reputation as a dramatist that Miss Viola Tree should have staged such a sombre, futile, and unconvincing play, and have squandered upon it some really admirable acting." —The Scotsman, August 10, 1920

"There is very little wit in the writing of Mr. Maugham's latest play, and little authentic character drawing. It is neat, workmanlike, and superficial. But it is merely practicable. If The Unknown had been produced a year ago, it might have seemed more topical, and it might also have seemed more of a contribution to the perplexities of those who were puzzled by a benevolent God who allowed the wholesale destructions of war. ... The acting successes of the play were made by Miss Haidée Wright and Mr. C.V. France, while both Mr. Clarence Blakiston and Mr. Basil Rathbone acted with great sincerity and skill." —Truth, 18 August, 1920

Play on Belief and Unbelief at Aldwych Theatre

The subject of the play is the conflict between belief and unbelief. There are many arguments, but the author has failed to show how the conflict affects human action. He introduces us to a family of devout believers. The son comes back from the war on leave with his belief gone. There is a widow who has lost both her sons in the war and who shocks everybody by her attitude of indifference. Her faith, too, is shattered, and this is the character which Miss Wright impersonates so convincingly—but it is, in truth, not part of the action.

The climax comes in the last act when the girl to whom the son is engaged behaves in a way which none but a bigot could condone. It is true she thinks her crime can only be atoned by a life of self-sacrifice, but her real sin is not, as she thinks, that by means of a lie she induced her lover—whom she discarded because of his agnosticism—to go to communion service against his will, but that she deliberately wrecks his life at the moment of his father's death, and just before he is about to return to the front. Till then the author's theme had seemed to be the beauty of faith; here he seems to set out to argue that religion is a source of evil. The play ends, symbolically we must assume, as the housemaid comes in in the early morning to dust a room in a house of mourning.

In spite of excellent acting, the reception of the play was only lukewarm, whereas Miss Wright had a great ovation. Lady Tree was admirably touching and sympathetic, Mr. France gave a fine picture of an old Colonel who believes; Mr. Rathbone was a most natural hero, and it is doubtful whether anyone could have done more than Miss Ellen O'Malley did to reconcile us to the actions of the fiancée.

—Daily News, 10 August 1920

Because of the controversial question underlying the play (Has war killed faith?), Miss Viola Tree invited several hundred clergymen to a special matinee of The Unknown at the Aldwych Theatre on August 17, 1920. The audience included army chaplains and nurses, and leaders in religious thought, art, science and letters.

The Bishop of Birmingham, who addressed the audience before the beginning of the performance, read a letter from W. Somerset Maugham, the author of the play. Maugham wrote:

The Bishop expressed his hope that those present would regard the piece as an honest attempt to place on the stage the thoughts and emotions which have occurred to many people during the last few years.

He added that, in his opinion, the clergyman put before the audience was not a flesh-and-blood person at all. People forget that the clergy are very like other people. As for the wife of the clergyman in the play, the Bishop suggested that any young clergyman contemplating marriage should choose a different type of woman—one who won't do all the preaching for him.

Aside from those criticisms, the Bishop liked the play; he said it was very interesting and the acting superb. The play gave food for thought. It did not solve mysteries, but it led people to consider them more and get nearer to the truth.

At the close of the performance Miss Viola Tree briefly thanked the visitors for their presence. She told The Daily Mirror (August 18, 1920), "It was the most wonderful theatrical audience I have ever seen. I have been perfectly astonished at the enthusiasm displayed." Basil Rathbone added that it was "a most appreciative audience—one before whom it was a great pleasure to perform."

"Lady Tree and Mr. Basil Rathbone were as successful as might have been expected in roles which were academical sketches rather than definite characters." —Aberdeen Daily Journal, August 10, 1920

"Even the English playgoer has long since come to see that a play which deals with ethics may be highly arresting, but in The Unknown, at the Aldwych, Mr. Somerset Maugham has daringly entered the debatable land of exegetics, and yet manages to hold us tensely. It is not a gratuitous excursion, for he says openly what many people are thinking furiously, if inarticulately. The grim conundrum of the day ... is this, 'How can an all-powerful and benevolent God permit War?' Mr. Maugham and his protagonist, young Major Wharton, reject the idea of war as a way to Heaven, and regard it as a loathsome Hell, and when the vicar talks about the forgiveness of sins, Mrs. Littlewood, the dry-eyed mother who has lost both her sons, asks with a passion that is in no sense blasphemous from the lips of Miss Haidée Wright, 'Who will forgive God?' Nothing more moving than Miss Wright's bereft mother has been seen for a long time. Mr. Basil Rathbone is admirable as the young soldier." —The Graphic, August 14, 1920

THE UNKNOWN

Though from many points of view unsatisfactory as a play, "The Unknown" evokes interest and admiration, the first for the clarity and impartiality with which the author has put forth the arguments for and against religion.

There are two rival camps in the play, both friendly enemies. On the side of the Church and its teachings stand old Colonel Wharton and his sweet old wife, the Vicar, the Rev. Norman Poole, and Mrs. Poole, and Sylvia Bullough, still young enough thought not quite in her first youth, to be the greatest fanatic of them all. On the other side are ranged the Colonel's only son, Major John Wharton, D.S.O., M.C., and Mrs. Littlewood, a woman deserted by her husband, whose two sons have been killed in the war. John and Sylvia are betrothed, and on his first leave, after four years in India and Gallipoli, they are to be married before he goes out to France. John has been brought up a devout Christian but the terrible years have changed him, and although to save his parents pain he accompanies them to matins, he refuses to stay to Communion, and when pressed reluctantly gives his reasons, that he has ceased to believe in an Omnipotence that allows the injustice and the horrors of war. The Vicar brings forth his stock of arguments, and puts up a good fight for his belief, but John explains his point of view with sound logic, and is brave enough to remain uninfluenced by sentiment. His ally, Mrs. Littlewood is a singularly impressive figure. Returning from France, where she had found her second son dead, she shocks her friend by the apparent indifference of her attitude—she goes to theatres, plays bridge refuses to wear mourning, and sets sympathy aside. For a time she quietly mistakes all attempts to make her explain her attitude, until at last in a fine outburst she voices her scorn of a God who has treated her after a life's faithful service as she would not treat a dog. Faced with death by an insidious disease, the old Colonel's vaunted bravery desert him, and it is not until he is at the point of death that he allows the Vicar to administer the Sacrament, and finds there in the courage to face death calmly Sylvia is unsatisfactory and unsympathetic. She deserts John at the time when he most needs her, declaring that she cannot yoke herself with an unbeliever, and by a lie she persuades him to partake of the Holy Communion, vainly hoping that by so doing a miracle will change his heart. She succeeds in making John feel that he has at last done something to be ashamed of, that he has made a false pretence of belief. The play ends with John following his mother to the room where his father lies dead, and with the entry of the maid to go about her daily tasks.

The outstanding feature of the evening was the magnificent acting of Miss Haidée Wright as Mrs. Littlewood. It was a splendid piece of realism, and must have brought tears to many eyes besides our own. Another fine piece of acting was the Colonel Wharton of Mr. Charles V. France and Mr. Basil Rathbone was admirable as John the Unbeliever. Miss Ellen O'Malley had a very difficult task as Sylvia, and came through it with great credit. Lady Tree was a gracious and charming Mrs. Wharton, and Mr. Clarence Blakiston made a decided hit as a delightful doctor who stood between two camps, and had evolved an excellent religious theory of his own. Mr. H. R. Hignett is one of the few men who could have made the Vicar sympathetic, and Miss Lena Halliday was excellent as the Vicaress. The play was received very quietly, but will probably cause sufficient controversy to carry it through a fair number of performances.

—The Era, August 11, 1920

"Mr. C. V. France was excellent as the father, as Mr. Basil Rathbone was as the son. Lady Tree was a dignified grand dame." —H. G. Hibbert, The Globe, August 10, 1920

"The thought is not very deep in this play. ... But the play grips. It works on the feelings of those to whom the war meant the most profound of sorrows. One can feel the tension being worked up, and the tang of even the crude jarring notes of the play." —Arthur Lynch, "London After the War at the Theatre," Pall Mall Gazette, September 24, 1920

Viola Tree and Basil Rathbone

Mrs. Littlewood (Haidée Wright) makes her passionate outburst to the Rev. Norman Poole (H. R. Hignett) and asks, "Who will forgive God?"

"Mr. Basil Rathbone managed to keep young Wharton a convincing and engaging young man." —The Times, August 10, 1920

Basil Rathbone was engaged by Marie Löhr for her production of Every Woman's Privilege, by J. Hastings Turner, opening at the Globe Theatre on September 28. He therefore had to relinquish his part in The Unknown, which moved on to the Lyric Theatre on September 20. Leslie Faber took over the part of Major John Wharton. Rathbone's final performance in The Unknown was on September 18, 1920.

A Dramatist's Bombshell

An astounding question, "Who is going to forgive God?" electrified the first night at the Aldwych Theatre, London. It was a cry uttered by a bereaved mother in Mr. W. Somerset Maugham's new war play, "The Unknown." The thrill it imparted has not been paralleled since the notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith flung the Bible in the fire. Was it blasphemy? it did not appear to be so in the circumstances, but earnest. Christians may resent Mr. Somerset Maugham's advertisement of the war's aftermath of unbelief. they may reprove him, perhaps, out of his own mouth. "It seems a pity," says a character in the play, "that you didn't hold your tongue. It is so easy to raise doubts; so hard to allay them" Mrs. Littlewood, in "The Unknown," could forgive God when He took her first soldier son. She was a pious woman, and she said "They will be done." She could not forgive Him when He took her second and last son. She remained unforgiving (and here is the danger of Mr. Maugham's play) until and after the final curtain. Mr. Maugham's responsibility towards the Christian faith did not finish there. He also made his soldier hero—a believer before the Way, an unbeliever afterwards—atheistic to the end. On the other hand, in justice to the dramatist, it should be set down that he gave his Christian characters words to speak of the utmost spiritual conviction and consolation. He balanced the scales evenly between the forces of Christianity and Agnosticism. He conveyed the impression that he was merely a looker-on, a recorder. The death of Mrs. Littlewood's second son left the mother stunned, callous, scornful of sympathy. "Why did God take my second? He was the only comfort of my old age, my only joy. I haven't deserved that. I've been cheated. You say that God will forgive us our sins; but who is going to forgive God? Not I. Never! Never!" In a height of frenzy she rushed out of the house. Fortunately for the dramatist, adds the "Daily Express," the last word is with the doctor, whose creed amounted to this. God is not all-powerful. He has his age-long struggle with evil. All of us, even the meanest, can help him. Our goodness adds to His strength. "When we are good, we're buying silver bullets for the King of Heaven. When we are bad, we are trading with the enemy."

—Liverpool Echo, 10 August 1920

An interesting postscript to the story of The Unknown concerns a poster that was banned by the Underground Railway authorities. Miss Viola Tree commissioned artist C. R. W. Nevinson to design a poster to direct attention to Somerset Maugham's play. Titled "The Crucifixion," the poster is described as a beautiful study in vivid orange and blue, with bombs exploding around the Crucified Figure, black and impressive.

The Underground Railway censors decided that the central figure looked like a nude woman, and therefore wouldn't allow it to be displayed on the walls of the Underground railway stations.

Mr. Nevinson explained his position to The Daily Herald (September 28, 1920): "It is most disheartening, and very unjust. The play is a religious one, and must therefore be treated from a religious point of view. I could not draw a ballet girl. It is not that I mind being censored. It happened to me hundreds of times during the war because the authorities did not consider my Tommies were sufficiently cheerful-looking. But this censorship is not even a State affair. The commercial gentlemen who have constituted themselves a committee of censorship got a shock when they saw my poster. They are accustomed to Christ being sugar. When the members of this self-constituted censorship were pressed for an explanation of their action, they said that they had mistaken the figure of Christ for that of a nude woman. This can only be an excuse made to get within their code. I simply meant it to represent the truth that Faith will in the end triumph over any form of scientific reasoning or doubts. It is, in fact, a piece of symbolism."

Miss Viola Tree defended the artist, saying: "I asked Mr. Nevinson to design a poster for the play, and his conception is his own artistic expression of what the play means to him. The poster in my opinion undoubtedly justifies itself. I am determined that the public shall see it and judge for themselves. I shall accept their verdict. We shall exhibit the poster outside the Lyric Theatre, and the views of art experts and any one else interested will be very welcome." (quoted in The Courier, 29 September 1920)