EDITORIAL NOTES
LAST month we referred here to the fact that a deputation was to wait on Mr. Fisher to press the claim of the drama to State encouragement. The deputation, which included critics, actors, and representatives of all the most important societies concerned, was received on March 13th. Whatever may or may not come of it, its mere reception in Whitehall is an event which marks an important step in the evolution of the official attitude towards the drama, which, until recently, was conceived as a thing with which the State had no relations save that of blue-penciller. For this we may chiefly thank the new and vigorous British Drama League and its secretary, Mr. Geoffrey Whitworth. Several resolutions were laid before the Minister. With some of the proposals commended to him he had, as Minister of Education, nothing to do; but his reply to the deputation was very sympathetic in tone and showed full cognisance of the part that dramatic representation might play in national life.
We do not propose to dwell at length upon all the suggestions which, tentatively or confidently, were made by the deputation or the Conference which instructed it. One of them we frankly dislike, and that is the proposal that the Universities should recognise the new status of the drama by establishing faculties of the drama. Those who propose this cannot mean merely that our dramatic inheritance should be studied as literature; for the encouragement of such study falls within the scope of the English schools, which are becoming more important and more intelligently conducted every year. They cannot mean, either, we suppose, that dramatic representation should be encouraged; that is not the job of a faculty unless a Doctorate or Baccalaureate of Histrionics be contemplated. They can only intend that a theoretical and practical training in the dramatist's art should be given, that a scientific study of the principles—technics or some such thing would be the word—of dramatic writing, based on the analysis of admitted masterpieces and (perhaps) admitted failures, should be followed, or accompanied, by the writing, under surveillance, of new dramatic works. It is conceivable. We met recently a lady who had won the Doctorate of Philosophy in an American University. She had nothing about her of the grey sobriety of the metaphysician or the ethicist; and, questioned, she stated that she had taken her degree in the School of Short-Story Writing. Well, we know those American academic treatises on short-story writing: champion instruments for taking the bloom off any work of art and killing the artistic impulses of any student simple enough to surrender himself to them. And though we do not know, and we don't think posterity will know, the plays written by those graduates of American Universities who have gone out into the world as dramatic writers of approved competence, we have seen some of the manuals on which they also have pastured: manuals admirable only as subjects for burlesque. In the teaching of literature criticism of the drama, examination (if you like) of the elements of dramatic construction, has its place with other forms of criticism; the history of the drama with other sorts of history. There is no harm done, and a certain stimulus may be given to the talented, if students are encouraged to write "original" works, and if a certain amount of academic credit is given for such works. But a school of dramatic production, or of novel-writing, or of poetical composition ... may we be saved from that! The way in which teachers may develop dramatic, as other literary, talent is by encouraging the intelligent reading of good literature, and by demonstrating the grand truth that its roots lie in life fearlessly observed and passionately felt.
The more amateur dramatic performance—of works which have some imaginative quality in them—the better. If the Board of Education, which has already (we think) done a good deal to encourage both music and mimetics in the schools, can still further humanise the curriculum, all the richer will be the community, all the more amusing will be the lives of the children, and, in the end, all the richer will be our art. The Universities may probably be left to take care of themselves. Very likely a word of encouragement from a Minister of Education, a Prime Minister, or an Archbishop of Canterbury might in some places remove obscurantist opposition or secure facilities which have not been forthcoming. But young men are not children. They can arrange things for themselves, with the assistance of sympathetic and not necessarily official elders. And that the junior members of the Universities, since the war, have been taking with a new zest to dramatic production is a matter of common observation. If we go no farther than Oxford and Cambridge we have seen during the present term—eight weeks old as we write—the successful production of Mr. Hardy's Dynasts by the O.U.D.S., and at Cambridge the Marlowe Society's production of The White Devil and the revival of Purcell's Faerie Queene, organised by Dr. Rootham, Mr. Clive Carey, and Mr. Dent. This last was an imposing operation: a large acting cast, a ballet, an orchestra, dresses and scenery were supplied by junior members of the University and local ladies. Next term the A.D.C. are performing a modern comedy, and Comus is amongst the other things mooted for May Week. Organisation from above is nothing as good as this, especially if it takes the form of organisation of an academic course.
But the place of the drama in education is too large and difficult a subject to be dealt with in detail here: what we do wish to say a few words about is what, after all, was the main object of the deputation's visit to Whitehall, though it had little to do with the Minister of Education, as such—we mean the National Theatre. It was to this that the speakers for the deputation, particularly Dr. Courtney and Sir Sidney Lee, chiefly addressed themselves. Here also we have a subject which invites extended treatment if we begin to contemplate the possible relations between public authorities generally and the drama. It is reported that in South London a Town Council desires to give help out of the rates to the new operatic venture at the Surrey Theatre; and before long we shall probably hear suggestions that where local authorities wish to maintain theatrical enterprises they should obtain grants-in-aid from the Government. That is a large and a complicated, not to say a controversial, matter. But the National Theatre question can be strictly localised. All we need ask is: Ought there, or ought there not, to be a permanently endowed institution in London where the best English plays should be produced regardless of commercial risks, and ought, or ought not, the State to lend its moral and financial support to such an institution? And since there exists already a National Theatre Fund, which has acquired a site for a playhouse, we are faced ultimately with the question whether the Government should take a direct financial and administrative interest in that scheme.
The National Theatre scheme grew out of the preparations for commemorating the Tercentenary of Shakespeare's death—which fell in 1916, during the war. In 1904 a committee was organised, and in 1905 it was resolved, at a Mansion House meeting, to collect funds for an architectural memorial and, if possible, for a small theatre in which Elizabethan and other plays could be performed. In 1908 another Mansion House meeting was held, at which it was proposed to erect a statue in Portland Place (so convenient because it is very wide and nobody ever goes there) at a cost of not less than £100,000. Such an expenditure on such an object horrified a great many people. For some time—notably after the publication of an admirable book by Messrs. Granville Barker and William Archer—interest had been growing in the proposal for a National Theatre. The £100,000 statue scheme naturally led to the suggestion that a theatre would be a better memorial than a statue, and that two birds could be killed with one stone if the National Theatre were to be the Shakespeare Memorial. The notion was accepted; the two movements were amalgamated; and a fund for a Shakespeare Memorial Theatre was opened by a committee of which Lord Plymouth was chairman and Sir Israel Gollancz secretary. The public appeal was not so successful as it might have been. By 1910 the sum of £90,000 had been collected, of which £70,000 came from a single donor, Sir Carl Meyer. The committee spent £61,000 on a site in Gower Street, from which a certain revenue has since been received. Then came the war. The collection of money stopped, and it has not (so far as we are aware) been made clear to the public what the committee has been doing since the Armistice, what it proposes to do in the near future, and when it intends to make a bid for the rest of the four or five or (it may now be) six or seven hundred thousand that is required for the erection and endowment of a theatre.
Now it is evident that sooner or later the project must be resumed and a further appeal made to the public. It is possible that this appeal will be more successful than the last. After all, we hear of twenty new millionaires in Bradford alone, and any one of these could contribute a large portion of the whole sum required, thereby earning fame and, very likely, a public honour better deserved than some. It is obvious on the face of it that if the Government is known to look on the scheme with a benevolent eye its chances of success will be brighter. Is it impossible that, should the whole sum not be raised from private persons, the Government should guarantee a subsidy? This would, of course, involve some measure of Government control, and the presence of Government representatives on the permanent body of Trustees, who would sit there precisely as do the two Government directors recently appointed to the Board of a Cellulose Company. We say this without prejudice to the general question of the relations between the community and the theatre. The idea has been mooted that municipalities should subsidise theatres and that the Government should assist them with grants-in-aid. It is attractive, and a Whitehall Committee might well be appointed to explore it. But the National Theatre is a distinct and peculiar proposal. What we desire is that there should be in the capital one house with a position resembling that of the Comédie Française, or the Old Imperial Opera House in Petrograd, a house devoted to the production of good plays, provided with a stock company, and guaranteed against all the fluctuations of fortune. In brief, the revival of the English classic plays should be systematised. It should not be left to chance whether an Englishman should live and die without having an opportunity of seeing a competent, or indeed any, performance of Troilus and Cressida, of Marlowe's Faustus, of The Duchess of Malfi, of The Critic, of The Knight of the Burning Pestle, of The Way of the World, of The Broken Heart: to mention but a few of the interesting plays that ordinary managers can scarcely ever be expected to put on. For the ordinary manager must almost always build on hopes of a long run. These plays probably would not hold the stage for long runs; and if one of them did have a long run, it would only mean that during that run no other play would be visible at the theatre where it was being produced. Some of Shakespeare's plays have scarcely any prospect of being produced in our time in a London theatre, save only at the "Old Vic.," which has so finely struggled for existence, and so gloriously (though how far does its permanence rest on the continuance of a single life?) succeeded. Theatres are limited in number. They have become the subjects of violent speculation. Even if a private man with the most ambitious of plans obtained a theatre we should have no guarantee that he would not pass his theatre on next day to somebody who was willing to give him a handsome profit for his lease and hoped to recoup himself by a year's run of revue or American melodrama. We conceive that if publishing houses were like theatres, and could issue only one work at a time, Messrs. Methuen (we hope they will allow us to use their name as an illustration) might well be excused if, as between Shakespeare (of whom they publish admirable editions) and Tarzan of the Apes they chose, at this moment, the latter. There is a public for both kinds, but the smaller at any given moment (though over a long period the larger) is very badly catered for in the theatrical world, where everybody is bidding for the great rewards that the larger public can bestow, and is, at present, under the necessity of paying a "shortage" rent, which will not go down unless some prodigiously rich and adventurous syndicate starts building new theatres wholesale.
How far a National Theatre, especially a State-assisted National Theatre, can be expected, or will consider it its duty, to produce new plays of merit is doubtful. If that is one of its functions it will not be its chief function; were it so its work would be the centre of perpetual tempests of controversy, and its controllers would learn what lobbying means. It will have quite enough to do if it concentrates on the systematic revival, on repertory lines, of the best classic plays, with occasional production of foreign plays and of old plays of historical interest. That, surely, is a thing which should be done, a work which should be continually maintained and developed, a work which should as certainly be maintained at the public expense (if necessary) as should, say, the Encyclopædia Britannica or the Dictionary of National Biography, should there ever come a time when no publisher felt able to spare the capital required to keep those great compilations going. After all, what is there to differentiate the cases of these enterprises from that of the British Museum, which nobody, whatever his opinion about public undertakings generally, suggests should be, or ever could be, stablished and maintained on its present scale by private enterprise?
The binding-case for Vol. I. of The London Mercury will be ready early in April. The case is of black cloth, with a white label in a sunk panel. It is designed to hold the six numbers plus an eight-page index (which will also be ready early in the month) and minus the six wrappers and the advertisement pages. Binding-cases will be supplied from this office at 3s. 6d. post free. If readers prefer that we should bind their numbers for them, they may send them here and pay an inclusive 6s., which will cover the cost of the case, the work of binding, and the return postage. The volume will be rather a fat one, but we felt that readers would think that twice a year was quite often enough to have this labour imposed on them.