I have been asked to write a few lines of introduction to these volumes of Country Plays, and I do so, not because I can claim any right to speak with authority on the subject of drama, but in order that I may associate myself and express my sympathy with the endeavour which the author has made to restore to his rightful estate the English peasant with whom my work for twenty years or more has brought me into close relations.

There have been few serious attempts to depict English country life on the stage. Nor, for that matter, can it be said that the English peasant has fared over well in our literature. Nevertheless, the English countryman has qualities all his own, no less distinctive nor less engaging than those of his Irish, Scottish, Russian, or Continental neighbours, even though his especial characteristics have hitherto been for the most part either ignored or grossly travestied by the playwright. Now in these plays, as it seems to me, he has at last come into his own kingdom and is painted, perhaps for the first time on the stage, in his true colours, neither caricatured on the one hand, nor, on the other, sentimentalised, but faithfully portrayed by a peculiarly sympathetic and skilful hand.

It is well, too, that an authentic record should be preserved of the life that has been lived in our country villages year in year out for centuries before its last vestiges—and they are all that now remain—have been completely submerged in the oncoming tide of modern civilisation and progress. Moreover, the songs and dances of the English peasantry that have become widely known in the last few years have awakened a general interest and curiosity in all that concerns the lives and habits of country people and there are many who will be glad to know what manner of men and women were they who created things of so rare and delicate a beauty.

These plays are very simple plays. With one exception, “The New Year,” they rest for their effects upon dialogue rather than upon dramatic action or plot. There is nothing harrowing, problematical, or pathological about any of them. The stories are as simple, obvious and naÏve, and have the same happy endings as those which the folk delight to sing about in their own songs, and from which, indeed, judging by the titles she has given to her plays, the author drew her inspiration.

It will be noticed that Lady Darwin has eliminated dialect from the speech which she has put into the mouths of her characters. This is not because the English villager has no vernacular of his own—there are as many dialects in England as there are counties—but because dialect, as no doubt Lady Darwin knew full well, is not of the essence of speech. It is the way in which language is used for the purpose of expression, the order in which words are strung together, the subtle, elusive turns of speech, the character of its figures and metaphors, rather than local peculiarities of intonation and pronunciation, which betray and illumine character. And it is upon these, the essential characteristics of speech, that the author of these plays has wisely and, for the most part, wholly, relied to give life and character to the actors of her dramas. The results she has achieved by these means is nothing less than amazing. So accurately has she caught the peculiar inflections, the inversions, the curious meanderings and involutions of peasant speech, so penetrating—uncanny at times—is her insight into the structure and working of the peasant mind, that, did one not know that this was scarcely the fact, one would have been tempted to suspect that the author had herself been born and bred in a country village and lived all her days amongst those whose characters and habits of mind she has described with such fidelity.

Take, for instance, the lesson on courtship which My Man John gives to his master—is not the actual phrasing almost photographic in its accuracy? Note, too, the frequent use of homely metaphor:—

’Tis with the maids as ’tis with the fowls when they be come out from moult. They be bound to pick about this way and that in their new feathers.

I warrant she be gone shy as a May bettel when ’tis daylight.

Ah, you take and let her go quiet, same as I lets th’ old mare when her first comes up from grass.

I likes doing things my own way, mother. Womenfolk, they be so buzzing. ’Tis like a lot of insects around of any one on a summer’s day. A-saying this way and that—whilst a man do go at everything quiet and calm-like.

and the following typical sentences:—

Well, mother, I count I’m back a smartish bit sooner nor what you did expect.

There was a cow—well, ’tis a smartish lot of cows as I’ve seen in my time, but this one, why, the king haven’t got the match to she in all his great palace, and that’s the truth, so ’tis.

I bain’t one as can judge of that, my lord, seeing that I be got a poor old badger of a man, and the days when I was young and did carry a heart what could beat with love, be ahind of I, and the feel of them clean forgot.

The task of selection has not been an easy one. “The New Year” is the only Country play on large and ambitious lines which Lady Darwin left behind her, and it is on this account, as well as for its own merits, which I venture to think are very considerable, that it has been included. “Princess Royal” was written for a special occasion, and is frankly more conventional and artificial than the others, but it will nevertheless appeal to folk-dancers, and for that reason, rather than perhaps for its intrinsic value, room has been found for it. The remaining four are, in their several ways, typical of the author’s work, and I for one have little doubt but that they will make a wide appeal, more especially perhaps to those simple-minded people (of whom I am persuaded there are many, even in these latter-days) who are able to appreciate the unpretentious beauty of an art that is well-nigh artless in its simplicity. Some of them may be too slight in design, too delicate in texture, their beauty too elusive, to succeed on the professional stage; I do not know. But there is a large demand for plays of a non-professional character; and that Lady Darwin’s will be acted with pleasure and listened to with delight in hut or hall or country-house of a winter’s evening, I cannot doubt.

CECIL SHARP.