Macready relates in his Memoirs that the practice of "calling on" the principal actor was first introduced at Covent Garden Theatre, on the occasion of his first performance of the character of Richard the Third, on October 19th, 1819. "In obedience to the impatient and persevering summons of the house I was desired by Fawcett to go before the curtain; and accordingly I announced the tragedy for repetition amidst the gratulating shouts that carried the assurance of complete success to my agitated and grateful heart." But while loving applause, as an actor needs must, Macready had little liking for the honours of calls and recalls—heartily disapproving of them, indeed, when they seemed to him in any way to disturb the representation. Thus, of his performance of Werner at Manchester, in 1845, he writes: "Acted very fairly. Called for. Trash!" Under date December 23rd, 1844, he records: "Acted Virginius [in Paris] with much energy and power to a very excited audience. I was loudly called for at the end of the fourth act, but could not or would not make so absurd and empirical a sacrifice of the dignity of my poor art." Three years later he enters in his diary: "Acted King Lear with much care and power, and was received by a most kind, and sympathetic, and enthusiastic audience. I was called on, the audience trying to make me come on after the first act, but of course I could not think of such a thing." But these "calls" relate to the conclusion of an act, when, at any rate, the drop-scene was fallen, hiding the stage from view, and when, for a while, there is a pause in the performance, suspension of theatrical illusion. What would Macready have said to "calls" in the course of the scene, while the stage is still
occupied, with certain of the characters of the drama reduced to lay figures by the conduct of their playfellows and the public? Yet in modern times Ophelias, after tripping off insane to find a watery grave, have been summoned back to the stage to acknowledge suavely enough by smiles and curtsies the excessive applause of the spectators, greatly to the perplexity of King Claudius, Queen Gertrude, and Laertes, and seriously to the injury of the poet's design—and this is but a sample of the follies of the modern theatre in this respect.
Such calls, recalls, and imbecile compliments are indeed wholly reprehensible, and should be suppressed as strenuously as possible. The managers of the Theatre Royal at Dresden some few years since forbade the performers to accept calls before the termination of an act, as "the practice interrupted the progress of the action on the stage," and respectfully requested the audience to abstain from such demands in future. Would that this ordinance had obtained more general obedience.
Writing in 1830, Mr. Parke describes the custom of encoring performers as a prerogative that had been exercised by the public for more than a century; and says, with some justice, that it originated more from self-love in the audience than from gratitude to those who had afforded them pleasure. He considered, however, that encoring had done service upon the whole, by exciting emulation, and stimulating singers to extraordinary exertion; and that though, in many instances, it destroyed the illusion of the scene, it had become so fixed that, in spite even of the burlesque of encoring Lord Grizzle's dying song in Fielding's "Tom Thumb," it continued to prevail as much as ever. He notes it as curious that, "in calling for a repetition, the audiences of the French and English theatres should each have selected a word forming no part of their respective languages—the former making use of the Latin word, bis; and the latter the French word, encore." Double encores, we gather from the same authority, first occurred in England, at the Opera House, during the season of 1808, when Madame Catalani was compelled to sing three times one of her songs in the comic opera, "La Freschetana." As none of the great singers, her predecessors—Mara, Banti, Grassini, and Billington—had ever received a similar compliment, this appeared extraordinary, until the fact
oozed out that Catalani, as part of her engagement, had stipulated for the privilege of sending into the house fifty orders on each night of her performance. After this discovery double encores ceased for a time at the King's Theatre; but the system reappeared at Covent Garden, by way of compliment to Braham, each time the great tenor sang the favourite polacca in the opera of "The Cabinet;" and subsequently like honours were paid to Sinclair upon his return from Italy. Until then, it would seem, Mr. Sinclair had been well satisfied with one encore, and exceedingly anxious that smaller favour should, on no account, be withheld from him. When he played the part of Don Carlos, in the opera of "The Duenna," he was disappointed with the measure of applause bestowed upon his efforts, and complained that the obbligato cadenza—which Mr. Parke had time out of mind played on the oboe in the symphony of the song, "Had I a heart for falsehood framed"—interfered with the effect of his singing, and that the applause which was obtained by the cadenza deprived him of his encore. Accordingly he requested that the cadenza might be suppressed. "Though I thought this a mean and silly application," says Mr. Parke, "I complied with it, and never interfered with his encores afterwards." It must be said for Sinclair, however, that encores had come to be regarded as tests of a singer's merits, and that a re-engagement at the theatre sometimes depended upon this demonstration of public approval. At Vauxhall Gardens, indeed, the manager—"who was not," says Mr. Parke, "a musical luminary"—formed his opinion of the capacities of his singers from the report of a person appointed to register the number of encores obtained by each during the season. The singers who had received the most encores were forthwith re-engaged for the next year. Upon the whole, however, the system was not found to be completely satisfactory. The inferior vocalists, stimulated by the fear of losing their engagements, took care to circulate orders judiciously among their friends, with instructions as to the songs that were to be particularly applauded; and it frequently resulted that the worst performers, if the most artful manoeuvrers, were at the head of the poll at the end of the season, and re-engaged over the heads of superior artists, and greatly to the ultimate detriment of the concern. In reference to this system of obtaining
encores, Mr. Parke cautiously observes: "Without presuming to insinuate that it was surreptitiously introduced into our English theatres, I may be permitted to observe, after forty years' experience in theatrical tactics, that it would not be difficult, through a judicious distribution of determined forcers in various parts of a theatre, with Herculean hands and stentorian voices, to achieve that enviable distinction." Possibly the reader, bearing in mind certain great successes and double and treble encores of our own time, may confirm, from his own experience, Mr. Parke's opinions and suggestions in this direction.
It was a rule of the theatre of the last century that, although the audience were at liberty to demand the presence of an actor upon the stage, particularly with a view to his giving an explanation of any matter in which he had offended them, this privilege did not extend to the case of anyone connected with the theatre other than in a histrionic capacity. Thus, when in the year 1744 a serious riot occurred in Drury-lane Theatre, relative to the excessive charges made for admission to an old entertainment—it being understood that for new entertainments it was permissible to raise the prices—"the Manager (Mr. Fleetwood) was called for by the audience in full cry; but, not being an actor, he pleaded his privilege of being exempted from appearing on the stage before them, and sent them word by one of the performers that he was ready to confer with any persons they should depute to meet him in his own room. A deputation accordingly went from the pit, and the house patiently waited their return."
At this time, no doubt, the actor laboured under certain social disadvantages; and the manager who did not act, however insignificant a person otherwise, was generally regarded as enjoying a more dignified position than that occupied by the most eminent of performers. In time, of course, the status of the actor improved, and he outgrew the supposititious degradation attaching to his exercise of his profession. We have lived to see composers, authors, and even scene-painters summoned before the foot-lights, nothing loath, apparently, to accept this public recognition of their merits. But these are innovations of quite recent date. In a reputable literary and
critical journal,[6] of forty years back, appears an account of the production at the English Opera House (now the Lyceum Theatre) of the opera of "Nourjahad," the work of the late Mr. E.J. Loder, of Bath, then described as the leader of the theatrical orchestra there, and the son and successor of Mr. Loder, whose talents as a musician had been long known in that city, and at the Philharmonic and other concerts. Much praise is awarded to the work, and then we find the following paragraph:
"The silly practice of calling for a favourite actor at the end of a play was upon this occasion, for the first time, extended to a composer; and Mr. E.J. Loder was produced upon the stage to make his bow. As the chance portion of the audience could not possibly be aware that a gentleman so little known in London was present, it would have betrayed less of the secrets of the prison-house if this bit of nonsense had not been preconcerted by injudicious and over-zealous friends. The turn of successful authors will, we suppose, come next; and, therefore, such of them as are not actors had better take a few lessons in bowing over the lamps and be ready. We know some half-dozen whom this process would cause to shake in their shoes more vehemently than even the already accumulated anxieties of a first night."