The theory of this theatre was very simple; and this too, I was proud to think, had been foreshadowed by writers of our own time, one of whom had written, “We have lost the orgy, but in its place we have art,”[7] and another “Poetry acts as a physician.”[8] The aim of the performance was to break down the obstacles we wrongly oppose to our thoughts in rude attempts to fit ourselves to social life, and so allow to drain away those impulses which in any really harmonious nature should never be set up. I must warn the reader of this age not to confuse the method with one of ‘sublimation’ as we say, for this involves the ‘will,’ a fiction of which the futility had long been exposed. It is true that I did not very clearly grasp these matters, which are too far beyond our time—just as Dryden would, perhaps, have found it hard to grasp the true subtleties of Expressionism—but I hope I do not err in saying that an element of vicarious fulfilment also entered into these dramas, on the ground, which no one will contradict, that it is the function of art to provide what everyday life denies us. The name of the theatre, I found indeed, had arisen from that reading of Aristotle which confuses the meaning of Catharsis with that of ‘purgation by excess’: for even in those days the Faculty of Medicine was not always happy in the names it chose for the ills and remedies it invented.
[7] Havelock Ellis, Affirmations.
[8] Robert Graves, Poetic Unreason.
The authorities were, of course, fully aware of the risks run in using such a specific, and its abuse was hindered in the same way as we curtail the buying of opium and other drugs, which wrongly applied prove harmful; and a man was only able to buy a ticket if he showed a paper signed by a doctor to declare him a fitting subject. Medical men were themselves allowed to buy as many tickets as they liked, and a large percentage of the audience was always composed of them, because they wished to observe the effects of the cure upon their patients. It was not without difficulty that Fabian was able to get us the needful pass, and it was only after representing to the authorities that any account of their age which omitted so beneficial a device would be very faulty, that I was granted it.
Before entering the theatre Fabian told me to abandon myself freely to any impulse to laugh, as that was a condition of perfect purging: and of this I was very glad, for I have often, not only before, but since my visit to this time, felt the pain of constraint at light plays, especially if I was with relatives, or else friends with whom I did not wish to become too intimate. But what was my surprise to find, instead of the fescennine jesting I was prepared for, a play I had already seen in Manchester, a drama of the most correct sentiment by one of our notably respectable, even titled playwrights, which might call forth smiles and tears alternately, but not those crude outbursts of mirth I now heard on every side. So little was I able to enter into the spirit of the thing that after the first act Fabian took me out, whispering to me that my callous behaviour might have the worst effect upon the patients seated near me. He seemed to think my bearing had been of set purpose, and only grudgingly gave the explanation I longed for, which was that the people in these times saw a wealth of allusion lurking beneath the innocent phrases; and that what the audience so much relished and admired in our author was the simplicity with which he had hidden the ‘latent content’ under the ‘manifest.’ When I protested my belief that nothing had been more remote from the writer’s mind, Fabian looked coldly at me, as though he were sure I was trying to dupe him.
It was in vain that I pleaded with him to be allowed to attend another of these plays, one of later date, for Fabian would by no means recommend me for a pass, saying that the sense would certainly be beyond me. There was, however, another level of play of the same nature, designed for the stupider sort of people, such as members of Parliament, wardens of libraries, teachers in science or religion at the Public Schools, municipal architects and so on, for which, not without a contemptuous word, he recommended me. He excused his own absence, however; for even, he said, if he could obtain permission, which he doubted, he would not care to go. And indeed, after I had seen the piece, I could not blame him. For determined as I was, this time, to behave with propriety, I allowed myself the license of which we are all guilty sometimes, when our conscience, or ‘censor’ to use the modern term, is off its guard; and laughing very heartily, I have since felt ashamed at my acquiescence in a remedy that must prove so greatly worse than the disease. The least things there were such as make us keep some of our Callot etchings locked in a drawer, and to leave certain portions of Mr Loeb’s excellent library in the original tongue, though some I am told, regard this only as an ingenious device to outwit the laziness of students. At all events, since I was not ill, the performance, I fear, did me no good: whether it would have done so in less happy conditions I am unable to tell, and I dwell upon it no longer, as in any case the experiment will not, I think, be tried in our day, even in the hospitals. Nor would I be convinced of the wisdom of the venture if it were.
In going about the streets I had often noticed, especially in the business quarters, what appeared to be shops or booths, not unlike those places one may see abroad, where men sit in rows to have their boots polished. Above them was displayed a sign on which was written “Two Minutes,” or “Thirty Seconds,” or some like period of time. I had seen the backs of men standing in lines, with pads clamped over their ears and their faces pushed forward into a sort of camera, and had supposed these retreats to be telephone boxes. I was much surprised when Ierne told me they were “Hurry Theatres,” and invited me to accompany her to one of them.
They were erected, as the name implies, for those without the leisure to attend longer performances, and were found very beneficial to brokers and such, who, hurrying from their offices to snatch their midday meal, could pause for the declared number of seconds, and gain, without waste of time, a modicum of ‘organised emotion,’ as Ierne called it; and this was often a great relief to them. For when we are too much troubled by our affairs we may usefully go to art for escape or refreshment. There were a few booths in the more fashionable parts, for errand boys, journalists, and taxi-drivers, while it was found that those in the dentists’ quarter were much patronised: for in going to have our teeth seen to, if we do not like to be late, yet we shrink from entering the place until the last moment, although the waiting rooms are made homely and cheerful with time-tables, comic papers, and copies of Academy pictures. These theatres were also agreeable to those who had arranged to meet friends at a certain spot and were kept waiting, and some had even, in the early days, gained a notoriety as rendezvous.
The camera through which one looked was simply a stereoscopic glass directed on a double film screen, and the pads were the telephone receivers through which one heard the voices of the actors, which seemed to come from their mouths. The plays themselves were most dramatic in character, since their object was to endue the spectator with a highly disturbing emotion in a minimum of time. They were therefore very allusive, and I should have found it hard to understand many of them if the gestures and tones of the actors had not been profoundly striking. I grew to be fond of them and, indeed, with weakly emotional men, they readily become a vice; for when thrills are as easily obtained as cocktails, and as rapidly swallowed, if I may use the term, they form a tonic as difficult to resist as any digestive, and are perhaps as harmful.