Perhaps it may be well to remark that the present organization of the theater is not responsible for the fact that the average play presented to-day is often seen to be a pretty poor thing. In this respect the present is no worse than the past. The average play has always been a pretty poor thing; and playhouses of other times and other lands have presented a host of plays below the average. The ‘Titus Andronicus,’ which is more or less Shakspere’s, is a barbarous and brutal piece; and ‘Measure for Measure’ is only a little better in its blatant crudity of motive and method. The contemporaries of Corneille and Molière and Racine are deservedly forgotten. So are the contemporaries of Æschylus and Sophocles and Euripides. Only devoted explorers of the annals of the drama are aware of the ineptness and imbecility to be found in the pieces of the inferior playwrights even in the most glorious epochs of the theater. Certainly the average play of to-day is a better play, it is better acted, and it is better mounted than the average play of fifty or a hundred years ago.
VI
That the drama of our language has been born again in the last three or four decades is proof positive that the organization of the theater has not been wholly inefficient. It cannot be as defective as has been shrilly proclaimed by juvenile enthusiasts who are in a hurry for the millennium and who are disappointed that it does not arrive over night. It is to be put to its credit that in one city at least, in the city of New York, the persistent playgoer has a very wide range of opportunity—probably unrivaled anywhere else in the world. He has his choice of a hundred new American plays every season, plays good, bad and indifferent. He has a chance to see the most important plays by contemporary foreign dramatists. He is likely to have occasion in the course of a single season to renew his acquaintance with half-a-dozen or half-a-score of Shakspere’s comedies or tragedies. He may wander at will to playhouses where the performances are given in French or in German, in Chinese or in Yiddish. He can feast his eyes on the puppet-shows of the Italians and on the ballet-pantomimes of the Russians. He can adventure himself in any one of half-a-dozen Little Theaters devoted to the very latest effusions of the most idealistic idealists and the most realistic realists, native and foreign. In short, he will find on the annual bill of fare a heterogeny of tempting dishes, lacking, it is true, more than one delicacy which he may desire to taste.
The other side of the ledger, however, tells another story. While New York has a plethora and while a few of the largest cities may find a sufficiency, the smaller cities suffer from painful penury, and the less important towns are starving to death. Many an interesting play lacks breadth of popular appeal; and the managers shrink from taking it on the road; and if they are bold enough to run this risk it is only to a few of the larger centers of population that they dare to go. In the smaller cities possessing only one important playhouse, this may be occupied week after week by mere shows. It is true that in not a few of the smaller towns there are stock-companies making a brave struggle, putting on the more successful pieces as soon as these are released for stock but producing them in haste as best they can with a small company, the members of which are sadly overworked, playing in one piece six nights, and four, five or six matinees while they are scrambling through rehearsals and learning their parts in the play in preparation for the following week.
In the towns which are still smaller, the drama is to be seen only sporadically, intermittently, casually; and there are college communities with a thousand students or more who do not have the privilege of seeing a play of Shakspere’s properly acted and adequately produced from one year’s end to another. The only reliance of these communities is on the happy accident of a travelling company filling out a week with one-night stands or the establishment by themselves of a Little Theatre supported by local talent. These Little Theaters are helpful in keeping alive an understanding of the drama; but their scope is strictly limited and their continued existence depends upon the fortunate accident of their control by some one who has a native gift for management and for stage-management.
The existing organization is not unsatisfactory as far as New York is concerned. It is less satisfactory even in the largest of the other cities. It is entirely unsatisfactory in the smaller cities and the larger towns.
How then shall this unfortunate condition be remedied? Professor W. L. Phelps has no doubt that he has discovered the cure; and he tells us with all the emphasis of italics that “there must be a stock-company in every city.” He explains that by this he does not mean the kind of stock-company which exists to-day but the older type of stock-company such as existed forty years ago in New York at Wallack’s and Daly’s and in Boston at the Museum. What Professor Phelps is proposing is a return to the system which flourished a century ago, and two centuries ago, and which is entirely unfamiliar to the present. As it happens I am old enough to be able to supplement with my own recollection the ample information easily accessible in actors’ autobiographies and in stage histories. Memory is treacherous, so I cannot be certain, but I believe that I was present in 1869 at the opening of the Fifth Avenue Theater by Augustin Daly and in 1872 at the opening of the Union Square Theater by A. M. Palmer. I know that I was able to follow the shorter careers of the companies at the Madison Square directed by Steele Mackaye and the Mallorys, at the Park Theater by Abbey, at the Empire by Charles Frohman and at the Lyceum by Daniel Frohman.
In all these theaters there was a permanent company, which changed its membership slowly and which contained at least half-a-dozen actors and actresses of distinction. In all of them the manager was an autocrat, selecting the performers and choosing the plays. Now and again he engaged a travelling star, Edwin Booth or Mrs. Scott Siddons at Daly’s and Charles James Matthews or Dion Boucicault at Wallack’s; and then all the other parts in the repertory of these stars were assumed by the actors of the stock-company. But these star-engagements were infrequent; and for the most part the burden fell upon the stock-company, which had to be large enough to undertake any kind of piece, comedy or farce, tragedy or melodrama, or even burlesque or extravaganza. The manager distributed the parts subject always to the unwritten law that no performer should be called upon to appear in a character which was not in his or her “line of business.” The hero had to be given to the “leading man” and the heroine to the “leading woman.” The villain—and in the dramas of those distant days there was likely to be a villain of the deepest dye—was assigned to the heavy man; while the brisk young fellows fell to the lot of the juvenile lead or of the light comedian. The broadly comic parts were assigned to the low comedian; and there were frequently two of him, the first low comedy and the second low comedy. Strongly marked characters went to the character-actor, who had to be a master of make-up. The elderly characters were in the hands of the old man and the old woman; there was sometimes also a second old man, altho if the character-actor was both versatile and obliging he could be prevailed upon to play one of the more aged characters. The serving maids were attributed to the singing chambermaid, who would have her best chance when a farce or extravaganza was in the bill.
VII
The stock-company system had its advantages and its disadvantages, both artistic and economic. The actor—sometimes under contract for several years—could settle down and have a home where he could bring up his children; he was not a tramp, ever on the go and not knowing where he might be one week from another. He was informed as to approximate length of the theatrical season, and he was not in dread of being thrown out of an engagement in the middle of the winter or of being stranded on the road with his salary unpaid for a month. There was a certain stability and security in his position, altho there was also always the possibility that the manager might exhaust his often meager resources and so find himself unable to keep the theater open or to meet his obligations to his company.