15 May: Boreham on Edmund Kean

Our Passion for Pretending
The anniversary of the death, in 1833, of Edmund Kean, one of the most brilliant ornaments of the British stage, suggests the reflection that, whilst we are not all doctors, or lawyers, or architects or engineers, we are all actors. The passion for pretence is in the blood. We learn to pretend as soon as we are out of our cradles; and the pastime still fascinates us as we totter on the brink of the grave. A modern poet has described a very old lady playing with a little cripple boy. They can neither of them go running and jumping, so they sit in the yellow sunlight under the maple tree and play a game of their own contriving. They call it hide and seek. The boy bends down his face, closes his eyes and guesses where she is hiding. He is allowed three guesses. She is in the china cupboard! Wrong! Well, she is in the chest in the bedroom! Wrong again, but warmer. Then she is in the clothes-press! In the clothes-press she is! It is his turn to hide. And so they played their exciting game; though neither the wrinkled old woman nor the boy with the twisted knee had stirred from their places under the shade of the maple tree.

It is the oldest game in the world, this game of make believe. It was played, just as it is played today, before any other game was dreamed of; and the children of Tomorrow will be playing it when the games of Today are forgotten. It is, too, the most universal game in the world. It is played in Pekin just as it is played in London; it is played in Mysore just as it is played in New York; it is played in Timbuctoo just as it is played in Hobart. The rules never alter with the period or change with the place. It is equally popular in all grades of society. The royal children play it in the palace grounds and the street urchin's play it in the slums and alleys. It needs no paraphernalia, nor tackle nor gear; you have not to buy a bat or a ball, a raquet or a net; you do not require special grounds or courts or links. Children instinctively feel that, once they begin to pretend, all the latitudes of life lie open. They have shattered the tyrannical barriers of time and space.

Make Believe As Escape From Reality
Older folk invade the self-same realm for the self-same reason. It is the function of the drama, to broaden life's horizon, to tint it with bright colours, and to provide busy people, pressed by many cares, with an escape from the sordid and the commonplace. After a day of work and worry, people flock to the theatre to see the actors and actresses pretend. One actor will pretend to be a cripple and another will pretend to be a king; one actress will pretend to be an empress and one will pretend to be a slave; and the better the actors and actresses pretend, the better the people will like it. Sometimes, indeed, the people themselves do the pretending. At a fancy dress ball, the guests are all pretenders. The troubadour is no troubadour; the viking is no viking; the gipsy no gipsy; the milkmaid no milkmaid. It is all make-believe; and these people have gone to all this trouble and to all this expense that the full-orbed joy of pretending may, for one crowded hour be their own.

Is it wrong to pretend? In the greatest sermon ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus called certain people hypocrites. But a hypocrite is simply a pretender, one who colours his face or dresses up or affects a character other than his real one. Does the condemnation rule our every form of make-believe. If so, the frolics of the children are all under censure. But the preacher of that classical sermon once Himself stood at the corner of the market place and smilingly watched the boys and girls playing at weddings and funerals; and in one of His later utterances, He wove the lively scene into a telling parable. Moreover, He Himself pretended on occasions. He behaved towards a Syro-Phoenician woman as if He had no sympathy with her in her motherly anguish. He saw His disciples in trouble on the lake and feigned to pass them by; and when after journeying with two of His men to Emmaus, He reached the door of their home, He made as though He would have gone farther. In each case, and in several others, He was just pretending.

Beauty That Assumes The Role Of Ugliness
Clearly, therefore, nothing that He said in his most notable and impressive utterances can be construed as rebuking the innocent make-believe of either old or young. Let a man keep his eyes wide open and he will discover some very lovable hypocrites, some very attractive pretenders, in the course of a day's march. In "The Butterfly Man," Marie Omler has reduced the idea to a philosophy of life. Mary Virginia shows John Flint a pasteboard box containing a dark-coloured and a somewhat revolting moth. "You wouldn't call him pretty, would you?" she asks. John agrees. But, with her skilful fingers, Mary touched the moth which instantly lifted its outer wings and revealed the most beautiful pansy-like underwings, resembling films of scarlet velvet, barred and bordered with black. "He's like some people," Mary explained. "You pass them by, thinking how ugly they are; but get into touch with them and they astonish you by their charm!" The phenomenon is very common.

There may be people who trick themselves out to make themselves appear prettier or nicer or—worse still—holier than they really are. But, as against this, there are those who go through life dreading lest their underwings should be seen, their virtues exposed, their goodness unveiled. Bearing themselves distantly, and conveying an impression of aloofness, there is nothing to indicate that their dispositions are so sweet, their characters so strong, their souls so saintly. These amiable pretenders have modelled their behaviour on that of the Creator of the World, who, assuming the guise of a carpenter, gave, in beautiful, modest, and severe simplicity, a representation of human life that has been the adornment and enrichment of the ages.

F W Boreham

Image: Edmund Kean