The Theatre of Somerset Maugham

Abstract

No living dramatist is so easy to see whole as Somerset Maugham, for he completed his "theatre" twenty-five years ago and since 1933 has steadfastly refused to return to playwriting. We can see his dramatic work with useful perspective, like that of Galsworthy and Barrie. A few new plays in recent years have vaguely carried his name tag in large print, for an obvious reason, such as Theatre and Jane, but he did not write these plays. In fine print one reads that they derive from Maugham's fiction, as Rain did in 1922. Unlike Henry Arthur Jones, Arthur Wing Pinero, Sir James Barrie, and even Bernard Shaw, Somerset Maugham knew when the time came to stop writing plays, and he stopped. In the Preface to the sixth and final volume of the published plays (1934) he writes: "I am conscious that I am no longer in touch with the public that patronizes the theatre ... It is high time . . . to retire. I do so with relief." He saw that tastes were changing, that the demand for a "good story" was growing less insistent, that the notwell- made play pleased a generation impatient with literary contrivance, that what he considered good workmanship was yielding to what he considered sprawl, that his crispness, "sticking to the point," directness of attack were becoming unfashionable.