Magic: A Fantastic Comedy is a 1913 comedy play by the English writer G. K. Chesterton. The plot centres around the conflict between a conjurer, a young woman who believes he is really magic, and her arrogant brother who rationalises everything. When the conjurer begins to do tricks that the brother cannot explain, the brother begins to go insane. The young woman and the other characters – a wealthy duke, a family doctor, and a local priest – attempt to convince the conjurer to divulge how the tricks were done in the hopes of curing him of his madness.
The play was written after George Bernard Shaw pestered Chesterton for several years to write a play, believing that Chesterton's style would be successful on stage. Produced by Kenelm Foss, the play premiered at the Little Theatre in London on 7 November and received positive reviews from audiences; Chesterton was reportedly nearly mobbed in the lobby of the theatre by an adulatory audience following the show's first performance. Critical reviews were similarly positive, praising Chesterton's choice to use colour instead of music for dramatic effect and his ability to create an atmosphere that evoked evil throughout the play.
The play was successful and published by the end of the year, though Chesterton himself saw little of the profits. It was performed over a hundred times in the United Kingdom and the United States. Despite this success, Magic is considered to be Chesterton's "one and only play", due to the lack of drama in his other published stage works; only one of his other plays was ever staged during his lifetime.
Background
G. K. Chesterton was an English author and philosopher who shared a long and intimate friendship with the Irish writer and playwright George Bernard Shaw; the two were intellectual rivals who differed on many topics, perhaps best-known through their series of public debates. Several times over the course of their friendship, Shaw attempted to get Chesterton to write a play. In 1908, he wrote a humorous letter to Chesterton, which reads in part:
Shaw even gave several suggestions as to topic and theme, but Chesterton did not adapt any of them. In 1909, for example, Shaw suggested a play called The Dialogue of the Devil and St. Augustine in which Augustine of Canterbury arrives in contemporary England and discusses life with characters based on politicians and writers of the day. Shaw went so far as to offer Chesterton £100 () if he could produce a workable version of the plot as a play within three months. If Chesterton could do so, Shaw would retain the stage rights, but Chesterton would keep the copyright, the writing credits would not include any sign of input from Shaw, and Chesterton could buy the stage rights back for £250 () whenever he wanted.
In 1912, Shaw wrote Androcles and the Lion "to insult and taunt and stimulate" Chesterton. While the play was still a draft, Shaw asked Chesterton's wife, Frances, if he could come over to their home to perform an hour-and-a-half sketch of it for them and any confederates she could get. Shaw told her that he hoped he could "count on your read complicity" to pretend she loved it to get Chesterton to produce a stage play. When the full version of Androcles finally premiered, the drama critic Desmond MacCarthy singled out Chesterton in a review, opining that Chesterton should write something similar for the stage. Hilaire Belloc, a longtime friend and collaborator, also believed that Chesterton would be successful on the stage; both he and F. Anstey proffered an outline for a play based on a work of Belloc's for Chesterton to dramatise, but it never materialised.
It is ultimately unknown what prompted Chesterton to write the play. Ada Chesterton, his sister-in-law, reported that, although the concept for Magic had been in the works for several months, Chesterton had been asked by a young unemployed man to write a play so that he could offer to stage it and gain steady employment from the theatre's management, which prompted Chesterton to begin writing the play down. She also noted that Chesterton had thoroughly enjoyed writing the play.
Plot
In a short prelude, a ditzy young woman, Patricia Carleon, meets a stranger in the woods who claims to be a fairy. The first act opens with Doctor Grimthorpe and Reverend Smith meeting each other for the first time. Grimthorpe reveals that the Duke is becoming the ward of his niece and nephew, Patricia and her brother Morris, and the doctor expresses concern that Patricia's tales about seeing fairies are the sign of mental illness, which runs in the family. Morris, a successful but novice businessman, arrives from the United States and is angered by his sister being allowed to meet strange men in the woods. The stranger trespasses on the property; Morris and Grimthorpe chase him, but Patricia recognises him and waves him in. He then reveals himself to be the Conjurer hired by the Duke to perform at an event that night. Patricia accuses him of ruining the fairy tale she was living in.
In the second act, the Conjurer looks over his equipment in preparation for the event. Patricia enters and the two equivocate over the concept of truth, leaving her less angry with him. Morris enters and leafs through the Conjurer's equipment, explaining how each trick works. He presses the Conjurer about a trick where a goldfish is made to appear but is really just a sliced carrot, which the Conjurer confirms is true before performing the trick and producing a live goldfish. Morris is flabbergasted, but attempts to regain himself. Smith, Grimthorpe, and Morris argue about religion and Patricia leaves. When Morris tries to belittle him, the Conjurer begins to make the surrounding furniture move around. Morris accuses the Conjurer of playing cheap tricks to undermine his position in the argument. When the Conjurer makes the red light across the street turn blue and back again, Morris flies into a frenzy, unable to discern how the Conjurer did it. Grimthorpe gets Morris to bed and the Conjurer expresses remorse to Smith about having done the trick. Grimthorpe and Smith argue over religion once again.
In the third act, Morris can be heard thrashing and babbling in his room while Smith, Grimthorpe, and the Duke attempt to get the Conjurer to reveal how the trick was done. They believe that if Morris is presented with a rationale, he will get better. The Duke tries to bribe the Conjurer, but he rips up the cheque and confesses that it was real magic. No one believes him and the Conjurer lambasts Smith for his unbelief and asks him if he even believes in God; Smith responds that he wishes he could believe. The Duke, Grimthorpe, and Smith leave. Patricia enters and asks the Conjurer how the trick is done. He derails the conversation and declares his love for her. He absentmindedly proposes to her and she accepts. She asks again how the trick was done. Somewhat defensively, he explains that he used to fake tricks and ultimately became able to control real demons. These demons attempted to seize control of him; he was able to wrest control back, but the demons still bother and taunt him. He explains that the room they are in is full of them.
The Conjurer departs to the garden to ask God for help. When he returns, he says that he has come up with a convincing lie to tell Morris so that he will regain his sanity. When the group asks what the lie is, the Conjurer refuses to tell them because if he does, they will all choose to believe it instead of coming to grips with the idea that magic is real. The plan works and Morris becomes well again. The Conjurer says goodbye to Patricia, but she refuses his goodbye and thanks him for allowing the fairy tale to end by becoming true.
Premiere and run
Following a trial production four days earlier in Eastbourne, Magic premiered at the Little Theatre in London on 7 November 1913, produced by Kenelm Foss. The play was written with the Little Theatre in mind, which – before its destruction – contained a relatively small stage and only 477 seats; Chesterton narrowed the scope of the play, keeping the setting of the three main acts in one location, the Duke's drawing room, though the prelude takes place elsewhere. Franklin Dyall was the first actor to play the Conjurer; he had been recommended by Frances Noel, sister of Conrad Noel. Fred Lewis and Grace Croft both were the first actors to play the Duke and Patricia, respectively.
George Bernard Shaw was at the opening performance and reportedly gave a standing ovation, shouting "Bravo!" from his box. Although Chesterton's sister-in-law – Ada Chesterton – believed Chesterton's work was generally inferior to his brother's, she wrote a glowing retrospective about the night. According to her:
Following the premiere, Chesterton arrived at his newspaper's office around 6 pm and left with his brother for a drink before dinner and the two were greeted by an enthusiastic crowd. Although Chesterton generally had an aversion to the telephone, he was reportedly so happy with the influx of congratulations and greetings he received following the play's opening night that he answered the phone himself, which his sister-in-law referred to as "extraordinary". Putnam's Sons published a successful book version of the script shortly after the premiere.
Although the play was well-received, Chesterton only received compensation for the play from one of the backers, probably Haynes, and it was years before Chesterton was able to repossess the rights to the play. Chesterton was notoriously bad with his finances and Shaw sought to protect the success of Chesterton's work from his poor financial management. After seeing the contract Chesterton had agreed to for the play, Shaw wrote to Chesterton's wife, saying:
The play ran for over a hundred performances. For the hundredth performance, Shaw's short play The Music Cure began being featured as the curtain raiser following a promise Shaw made to Chesterton "if there should be [a hundredth] one", though The Music Cure was only performed seven times.
Reception and influence Magic was popular with audiences and met with positive critical reception. In general, critics were surprised by how well Chesterton had adapted to the stage, despite never having written a play before. Others remarked that the use of colour instead of music during climactic scenes for effect was a welcome choice, as was his ability to create strong characters in the context of a live audience. In particular, the moment when the red lamp changes to blue was viewed as a "felt experience" by audience members years after their first viewing of the play. Other commentators praised the atmosphere of the play, noting that a looming sense of evil penetrated the performances. The Chesterton scholar Denis J. Conlon notes that, although Chesterton had not converted to Catholicism yet, the play seems to indicate that he believed something in the universe worked on behalf of evil. The Swedish literary scholar Birgitta Steene describes the play as an extension of Chesterton's book Orthodoxy, itself a criticism of moral relativism and the moral cowardice of those who defend strict rationalism. For Steene, "Chesterton gave voice to a demand for absolute faith, even to the point of absurdity".
Domestic reception
Shaw wrote resounding praise for the play, more than any other critic. In 1916, writing for the New Statesman, Shaw called Chesterton "an artist of almost magical dexterity in language and casuistry". He finished his piece with a paragraph about Magic, writing: