Playwrights on playmaking

by Brander Matthews

Nor is the drama of the past without its opportunity also. Sothern and Marlowe draw audiences limited only to the capacity of the houses in which they appear; Robert Mantell carries with him a varied repertory; and Walter Hampden is enabled to present ‘Hamlet’ for an unexpected series of performances. It must be confessed that Shakspere is more fortunate than Sheridan and that we have not now the privilege of beholding the ‘Rivals’ or the ‘School for Scandal’ or any of the Old Comedies as frequently as we used to have it in the days when Burton and Wallack and Daly managed their own theaters and had permanent companies accustomed to present these specimens of a form of the drama now demoded.

It is a lamentable fact, the full significance of which is grasped only by a few, that New York, perhaps the most populous city in the world, is entirely dependent on road-shows. It has now no theater managed with an eye single to its appeal to the population of Manhattan. It has to rely absolutely upon travelling combinations. It is true, of course, that many of these combinations do not travel; they begin and end their careers here in New York; but they were all of them intended to travel, if they had first succeeded in New York. The stars open their season where it is most convenient and they come into New York when they can; but the immense majority of new plays, American and British and translated from foreign tongues, are produced in New York, altho some of them may have a trial week in Washington or Atlantic City, a week of dress-rehearsals before a relatively unimportant audience. If these new plays please Broadway, they stay as long as they can and then they pack up and begin their wanderings to other cities. Experience has shown that this is the only profitable way to conduct the theatrical business; and economic conditions are as inexorable in the theatrical as in any other business.

The geographic conditions reinforce the economic; and in the United States the geographic conditions differ widely from those in any other country, more especially from those in Great Britain. As London is an easily accessible capital of a small country, the heaviest receipts are to be expected from the performances there; the London companies are engaged for the run of the piece; and they do not go on the road, the provinces being visited only by inferior touring companies. As New York is a far longer distance from most of the other large cities of the United States and as there are many of these large cities, as well as many smaller towns, equally eager to welcome any play which has won metropolitan approval, the heaviest receipts are often not in New York itself but in the multitude of these other cities and towns. Therefore New York is, in the eyes of the producing managers, often only a starting point; and their ultimate goal lies in the vast territory which stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The outside market, so to speak, is so wide and the demand so insatiable, that the producing managers are hard put to supply it. And when they happen to hit on an attractive piece their profits may be enormous.

One reason why the American theater seems to many to be unduly commercialized is that it has been at times amazingly profitable. Until toward the end of the nineteenth century the theatrical was the most precarious of businesses, extra-hazardous for the managers, the actors and the authors. When they died Shakspere and Molière were able to leave to their families only a modest competence. David Garrick is almost the only manager in all the long history of the theater in Great Britain and the United States who was able to retire with a fortune. Benefits had to be arranged for Lester Wallack and for A. M. Palmer. The playwrights were in no better case than the players or the managers; and in the nineteenth century more than one potential dramatist turned novelist simply because novel-writing was easier and more profitable than playwriting.

But in the final third of the last century the right of a foreign author to control his own work was internationally recognized, thus relieving the playwrights of our language from competition with pieces purloined from alien authors. The right of a British author to control his work in the United States was also established, relieving the American playwright from competition with pieces imported from England without payment. The far-flung British Commonwealth continued to expand; and the remoter regions of the United States became more densely populated. And the most successful pieces of British and American authorship were discovered to be exportable to France and Germany and Italy.

V

In consequence of all these causes the possible profits of a lucky playwright are now as abundant as those of the lucky novelist, and on occasion even more so. One play in every score draws a prize; and one in every hundred draws a grand prize of several hundred thousand dollars. In addition to the ordinary business profit there is now the possibility of holding one of these superlatively lucky numbers in the lottery; and two or three of these may come out of the wheel of fortune in the same season. This possibility is encouraging to those possessed by the spirit of speculation and rather discouraging to those who are more inclined to honor the drama as an art. At best the presentation of a play is a gamble, since no one, not even the most expert, can do more than guess at the impression it will make on the public. What every one can see is that the broader and bolder its topic and its treatment the more likely is a drama to prove attractive to the largest body of playgoers, while the comedy of lighter fabric and of more delicate texture will probably please only a smaller group of the more refined and the more intelligent.

Of course, this has always been the case; and the managers of the past have always been tempted to enlarge their audiences by indulging in sensation and in spectacle. But to-day the temptation is greater than ever before; and perhaps it is more often yielded to. And here we feel the unfortunate power of the purely commercial syndicates who are ready always to smooth the path of the overwhelming success by opening all their theaters to it, while they are inhospitable to plays of a less emphatic allurement. This is perhaps the most obvious defect of the present organization of the theater in America—that it puts great power in the hands of a small group of men, most of whom take little or no interest in the drama as an art, regarding a play as a manufactured article out of which they expect to make all that the traffic will bear.

Yet as this present organization is the result of economic and geographic causes it is idle to declaim against it; and it is foolish to indulge in offensive personalities. What is, is; and what will be, will be. We can find comfort in the fact that the best plays of this burgeoning dramatic epoch do get acted and have their chance, here and now. And we can hope that some device will be discovered to make easier the production of plays of the highest class. There are managers now, and not a few of them, who have aspirations and ambitions, and who would be contented with a modest profit on a fair business risk without seeking always for wealth beyond the dreams of avarice through a long-shot gamble.