There is one very noteworthy fact: from the point of view of a London manager the scenery and appointments were contemptible, and this apparently did not matter a rap. An audience, five-sixths of it British, was enthralled by these players, although the scenery and the furniture of the indoor sets had no pretension to magnificence, were sometimes almost absurdly squalid.
The venture at the Shaftesbury showed that if you give what the public deems good acting you need not bother about painted canvas and furniture; and what applies to good acting applies to good plays. The Sicilians taught us this, even if, perhaps, little else; for our players, unless they are to represent Sicilians, or such volcanic creatures, can learn comparatively little from them. Indeed, our delightful visitors could be taught something by our despised stage in the way of reticence, for there is little doubt that they love a horror for horror's sake and revel in the gory joys of the penny gaff. This may be said with full recognition of the fact that, according to their own standard, they are intensely sincere and superbly equipped in consequence of hard work and natural gifts.
[Alleged Dearth of Great Actresses ]
Lately there have appeared some remarks by an unnamed "prominent dramatic author" alleging that "there is a dearth of great actresses just now," and stating that "several serious plays which it was hoped might be produced next autumn are in danger of being indefinitely postponed because of the inability of finding actresses capable of playing strongly emotional parts in drama of deep and complex interest." These dramas of "deep and complex interest" are quite as rare in our theatre as great actresses and we only believe in their existence when we see them.
Of course there is a dearth of great actresses—there always was and always will be: "great" is only a relatively term. Thank goodness for this, seeing that they are sadly injurious to drama. On the other hand, to allege a lack of actresses competent to play strong emotional parts seems quite unjust.
The remarks of the "prominent dramatic author" were followed by a letter to the same effect by Mr George Rollit, known to fame as the author of a fairly good farce produced in 1904 at the Royalty. He appears to have allowed it to get known that a new play of his was to be produced in the West End, but he was unable to find "an adequate exponent for the leading role"—what a pretty phrase!—"which requires an emotional young actress, capable of portraying strong light and shade." He received many offers from actresses, none of whom were suitable.
These two complainants are making a mistake concerning the task of the dramatist, who fails in his labours if his plays cannot adequately be acted without the assistance of great actresses. They are foolishly pandering to the vanity of the players, who as a rule have a tendency to exaggerate their importance in relation to drama. The error is very common, and the idea that plays should be written primarily to exhibit the players and not the ideas of the author is the bane of our theatre.
Until our dramatists act firmly on the view that their duty is to write plays interesting when rendered by a good, starless company, they will only produce as a rule bravura pieces of little artistic value. By all means let them write strongly emotional parts, if they can; but they are not worthy of their royalties if their characters do not generally lie within the range of a fair number of actresses. There is a grotesque mixture of vanity and modesty in the mind of an author who thinks his work worthy of performance by an actress of genius and at the same time believes it to be too weak to succeed without her help.
It will be answered, probably, that Shakespeare's plays demand players of genius and yet certainly are not mere bravura pieces. There is truth und untruth in this—truth that our public will not patronize Shakespeare when acted by average performers; untruth in the proposition that they cannot adequately be represented by players without genius. We have unfortunately got into the very bad habit of going to see his works not for their intrinsic interest but for the sake of the acting and mounting. It is not Hamlet but Mr Smith as the Prince of Denmark; not Romeo and Juliet but Miss Brown and Mr Jones as the lovers of Verona, and so on, which form the attraction; and the works are cut and played out of balance in order to meet the demand.
The author would have resented a suggestion that his characters are so superhuman as to need marvellous performance: these remarks are without prejudice to the question whether even with the aid of great players Shakespeare's dramas reveal a fair proportion of their merits on the stage.