Let me discuss what is urged against us. It is said that if we did not get free tickets we should pay to visit the play. There is a little truth in this, but not much. We might take tickets for the pit to see the good plays; our judgment tells us they are but few, whereas a sense of duty compels us in our quasi-professional capacity to attend even the most deplorable rubbish. This aspect of the matter amounts to no more than a trifle. The managers would gain little from our occasional shillings and lose much by our frequent absence.
It is urged that we do not applaud. I maintain that deceitful applause is not in our implied contract; certainly we never hiss or boo, though there is a splendid tradition rendered popular by poor Lal Brough that one of us found a play so utterly bad that he left his seat, went to the box-office, and bought a ticket, in order that he might express his opinion without prejudice to his conscience. As a body we are playgoers of judgment and experience, and, though I protest that we clap generously when there is a reasonable opportunity, the suggestion that we are a claque failing to do its duty because we do not applaud bad pieces is an outrageous insult.
No, sir; I do but humbly voice the opinion of my fellow-deadheads when I say that we would rather be abolished than have to offer sycophantic applause as part of the bargain. I insist a little upon this aspect, because the refusal to applaud rubbish seems to be looked upon as the dead head and front of our offending, if I may take a trifling liberty with the words of the Swan of Avon.
I had forgotten, sir, to mention one of our most important services. It is notorious that many plays are run in London without there being any expectation that they will make money in the Metropolis, but in the belief that if they can be called "a great London success," our simple-minded cousins in the country will accept them with enthusiasm. How, I ask you, are these London successes manufactured? How could they be without our aid? I could name plays that have been run for a hundred nights in town at a heavy loss, and yet have proved gold-mines; and I have visited them at the call of duty and seen with my trained eyes so few of the paying public that a mere sense of decency would have compelled the managers to close the doors if we had not been present.
Our assistance on these occasions is an odious part of our duty. It goes sadly against my conscience to be one of a kind of stage-army audience, playing a part in order to deceive country or colonial managers into the belief that some piece of rubbish has had a genuinely successful London run. Is not service of this character to be counted? Surely, at the least, if we are to be abolished it should be recognized that the old hands amongst us are entitled to some compensation. Why, sir, seeing that serious politicians do not propose to suppress licences for the sale of poisons without giving compensations, surely we, who have done much and suffered much, ought not to be put into limbo without some recognition of our services. I remain, yours sincerely,
CAPUT MORTUUM
Just a line. On careful consideration of this letter, it seems only right to make a suggestion that some doubts exist whether it is entirely genuine, but it certainly appears to contain some grains of truth.
[Theatrical Advertisements ]
It may be doubted whether the historian will call our period "the age of advertisement," though some have thought so. For there are such rapid and prodigious growths in the base craft of beating the big drum that our most audacious and colossal efforts may, to our grandchildren, seem like a Brown Bess to a modern repeater in comparison with their means of man-allurement. Of all the arts the one relying most upon advertisement is the drama; yet the phrase is half-unjust to real drama.
Perhaps it is fairer to say that there is more advertisement in connexion with the theatrical art than any other, or, indeed, all the others put together. The position is surprising; a large mass of the reading matter of the London papers is filled with copy concerning the theatres and players, though only a small percentage is criticism. More people would recognize each of thirty popular performers than could identify even one of the great in other branches of art or in science. A recent squabble about a couple of actresses has been the subject of greater fuss than would be caused by the discovery of the lost books of Livy, of a picture by Apelles, of the MS. of an unknown opera by Beethoven, of a method of making accumulators out of papier-maché, or a mode of manufacturing radium at a cost of twopence a pound. There have been thousands of columns printed concerning the marriages of (so-called) actresses to young gentlemen of family.