Arthur Wing Pinero
Arthur Wing Pinero (1855-1934) was a prominent English actor and dramatist known for his significant contributions to the English drama scene. Born to a Jewish solicitor in London, he initially pursued law but soon transitioned to the theater, making his mark with innovative plays that combined Continental influences with English theatrical traditions. Pinero gained recognition for his farces in the late 1880s, which emphasized character over mere comedic situations, setting the stage for his more profound works in the 1890s. His play "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" (1893) marked a turning point, as it explored daring themes and social commentary that provoked public discourse.
Throughout his career, Pinero's works often critiqued contemporary sexual norms and societal expectations, prompting controversy akin to that surrounding Henrik Ibsen's plays. Despite his early acclaim, including being knighted in 1909, Pinero's popularity waned in the face of changing theatrical tastes, especially as new voices like Eugene O'Neill emerged. His later works, including "The Enchanted Cottage," showcased a blend of cynicism and sentimentality but ultimately failed to capture the same audience as before. Today, Arthur Wing Pinero is remembered as a pivotal figure who adeptly reflected and shaped the tastes of his era.
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Arthur Wing Pinero
English playwright
- Born: May 24, 1855
- Birthplace: London, England
- Died: November 23, 1934
- Place of death: London, England
Biography
The career of Arthur Wing Pinero (pih-NIHR-oh) is deeply interesting to the historian of the English drama, for in his work can be seen the partial influence of Continental themes and ideas, from Victorien Sardou, the master of the well-made play, to Henrik Ibsen, the creator of the theater of ideas. In Pinero, for two decades, the English found their leading practitioner of these imported skills.
Pinero was the son of a Jewish solicitor in London. With a private school education as a foundation, he read for the law in his father’s office but with no serious intentions of becoming a solicitor. At the age of nineteen he joined the Theatre Royal in Edinburgh, soon supplementing his bit-role acting by writing short dramatic pieces as supplements to longer plays. After the success of The Money Spinner he was able to devote his time to playwriting. Between 1885 and 1887 he wrote three successful farces for the Court Theatre in London. In these he presented “possible people doing improbable things”; that is, he shifted the emphasis from farcical situations to character.
This was a foreshadowing of his greater successes during the 1890’s, beginning with The Second Mrs. Tanqueray in 1893. In this play, and in those that followed, he added to his technically deft work themes and social insights that the public regarded as daring and thought-provoking. For two decades the English press and public regarded each new Pinero play as a likely source of controversy, for his plays usually amounted to a criticism of the current sexual patterns based, Pinero would have his audiences believe, on appearances rather than on sincere attraction and devotion. As a matter of fact, Pinero’s homegrown versions of the continental “problem plays” always contained incidents quite as shocking to contemporary taste as the slamming of the door at the end of Ibsen’s Et dukkehjem (pr., pb. 1879; A Doll’s House, 1880). In The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, for example, the rebellious heroine momentarily throws the Holy Scriptures into the fire. Dramatic strokes like these won Pinero his temporary reputation as an iconoclast. He was knighted in 1909.
Pinero’s reputation waned, however, and during the last twenty years of his life he experienced the bitterness of seeing his fame and public dwindle. To audiences that began to respond to the plays of Eugene O’Neill and Sean O’Casey, Pinero’s representations of upper-class infidelity came to seem mannered and unreal. Of his more than fifty works, most were no longer produced or published. His last successful play, The Enchanted Cottage, is a strange blend of cynical realism and the delicate sentimentalism of J. M. Barrie. Whatever the fluctuating tastes of critical perception decide, it cannot be denied that Pinero measured shrewdly the taste of a generation.
Bibliography
Dawick, John. Pinero: A Theatrical Life. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1993. Dawick provides a look at Pinero’s long history with the theater. Contains bibliography and index.
Griffin, Penny. Arthur Wing Pinero and Henry Arthur Jones. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991. Griffin examines English drama in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on a comparison of the works of Pinero and Henry Arthur Jones. Contains bibliography and index.
Lazenby, Walter. Arthur Wing Pinero. New York: Twayne, 1972. A basic look at the life and works of Pinero. Contains bibliography.
Shaw, George Bernard. Dramatic Opinions and Essays. 2 vols. New York: Brentano’s, 1907. These reviews, published when Shaw was still a drama critic, remain among the most perceptive ever written about Pinero. Despite Pinero’s extraordinary popularity, Shaw exposed the conventionality of the playwright’s ideas and his inability to come to grips with the situations he had created.