The Show-Off (Kelly 1924)/Preface

I might as well begin boldly and say that “The Show-Off” is the best comedy which has yet been written by an American. To be sure, it departs quite radically in many respects from the form which has been associated traditionally with comedy. Critics who hold by old standards may point out that it is less lavish with incident than many another native play in the same mood, but they can hardly argue that human personality has ever been made more vivid, more truthful and more complete in the American theatre.

No one can question the authenticity of Aubrey Piper. He moves under his own steam from the moment the curtain rises. At no time does one feel that the hand of the playwright is still on the wheel directing the character to move in this direction or that in order to suit the exigencies of the story. And it seems to me that there is soundness in the scheme whereby the author makes some one character a concern above that of the tale itself. I am no longer drawn to the play “with a big idea” or the comedy constructed for the sake of a single telling scene. When an author works from such a blueprint he must almost inevitably find it necessary to scrunch and whittle his characters now and then to make them fit into his plot scheme. He must bulldoze a little. He must regiment his folk and Prussianize them.

No such interference is visited upon Aubrey Piper of “The Show-Off.” He sets the pace and the story follows. This man is no creature born within the wings of the theatre. We have sat desk to desk with him in offices. He has bumped against us in the subway and as like as not he lives in the flat just across the hall. He has been wrenched out of life.

​But there is one more test which must be met by a play if it is to live among drama of the first order. The playwright has done a great deal if he has been able to create a living, breathing, individual human being. He must do more. At some point in the story this fictional man or woman must stand as a symbol of all mankind. There should be in him some recognizable common factor of humanity. And Aubrey meets the test. He brings to us the realization of the toughness of human fibre. In him there glints the glorious truth that personality endures against the blows of circumstance.

When I was in college much was said to us about the playwright’s obligation to show the development of character. I hold that this obligation is imaginary and should be generally discarded for the sake of truth. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that human beings are moulded early and that their later history is largely an account of the manner in which fate breaks its fingernails in vain efforts to claw them into new habits of thought. The Aubrey Piper whom we see at the close of “The Show-Off” is precisely the same person who stalked into the first act. He has not changed. We know him better and more intimately because we have seen his reaction to various emotional stimuli, but the development has been in the minds of the audience and not in the soul of Aubrey.

Personally I came to like Aubrey exceedingly before the evening was done. I think that George Kelly has succeeded magnificently in this respect. It is essential that the audience should come in time to have a friendliness for the central figure of the comedy. But this is no easy task. Special pleading will not avail and Kelly does not employ it. An author, like a judge or a baseball umpire, is under obligation to preserve at least the appearance of neutrality. He may not lean down from Olympus too palpably to pat some favorite character on the head. Tenderness he may have—indeed we think it becomes the dramatist​—but it must be shown subtly. The sleight-of-hand ought to be fast and skilful enough to deceive the human eye.

And so we have it here. George Kelly builds up the case for Aubrey Piper by countless small strokes. By degrees he opens up the heart of the man. There he stands—liar, braggart, egotist, but the very consistency of his faults colors them with magnificence. From Prometheus down, mankind has chosen for its heroes men who stood pat. “Be yourself, Mother Fisher,” cries Aubrey to his mother-in-law in times of stress, and it is a slogan which he has taken to heart. There is no need for anyone to say “Be yourself, Aubrey.” He never is tempted for a moment to be anything else.

Of course, it may truthfully be said that Aubrey lives in a fantastic dream world of his own creation, but once he has built his world he stands by it. God himself has done no more.