It is often a mere toss-up whether X, Y or Z goes to a theatre or a music-hall, or a collection of "side shows" or a boxing-match; and the only solid wall of demarcation in pleasuredom lies between going to see something which pretends to be something else, and going to see something which admits itself to be its painful self. On the one hand, we have Smith posing as the Prince of Denmark; on the other the fat woman, whose unpleasant mass of unhealthy flesh is real—the lady giant hovers between reality and fiction. On the one side art, on the other artless entertainment; but, after all, it is difficult to say that this wall is very solid, since sometimes the artless department is abominably artful, and sometimes, as in the famous story of the mimic with a live pig in a poke, the real is an impostor.
The interest in the matter lies mainly with the audience, with the human beings greedy for pleasure and entertainment, with the traveller who, after a happy evening at the Comédie Française, endeavours to get taken to the abattoirs of Paris, or risks his life in a visit to the outer Boulevards in order to visit some pestilential Café de la Mort where he will see crude horrors contrived by looking-glasses, drink bad beer out of papier-maché skulls, and receive, in change for his money, base or demonetised coin from waiters dressed as undertakers. And, again, our traveller, after getting a headache at the Louvre and vainly trying to find the Mediaeval improprieties at the Maison Cluny, will refresh himself by a visit to the Morgue, to say nothing of Le Musée Grévin.
Why, then, do we go to the theatre? Why does the theatre exist? Why do the enthusiasts rage and profess that it ought to be endowed? Well, upon reflection, one sees that there are two bodies of playgoers, both, no doubt, in search of pleasure: and, speaking very broadly, the one is the little group whose curiosity concerning life is almost entirely intellectual, and the other is the vast body of sensation-hunters, to whom the latest showy play, the newest musical comedy, the divorce case of the moment, the freak in vogue, are the means of real excitement—an excitement which they want to obtain with the minimum expenditure of time, trouble or thought.
A remarkable thing to the observer is the hostility of the sensation-monger to intellectual amusement. If a play has a gloomy ending it is promptly denounced as painful by the people who welcome an entertainment consisting of biograph pictures representing some awful catastrophe, and by persons who revel in a good series of animated photographs of somebody being guillotined, or tortured in a Russian gaol, and do not care to waste their tears over the sorrows of people in a play, though perhaps a really roaring farce would entertain them, if it included a good deal of knockabout business. The uncivilized people who consider that practical joking is permissible are as a rule bitterly hostile to serious drama.
It is hard to discover any clear theory in relation to these facts. Attempts to establish a proposition are met by the fact that the sensation-monger who delights in the horrors of real life, who gets joy from a thrillingly dangerous performance at a music-hall, when he goes to the theatre sometimes seems pleased by a piece almost in a direct ratio to its unreality. A finely observed comedy, such as The Silver Box of Mr Galsworthy, irritates the sensation-monger; it is so absurdly true that he does not think it clever of the author to have written it. Tom Jones contains useful matter for thought on the subject. Something prodigious out of the lumber-room of the theatres impresses him far more. In England the explanation of this may be a strangely twisted feeling of utilitarianism, which causes us to object to thinking without being paid for thinking; wherefore it seems an act almost of impudence to ask us to pay money to see a play which cannot be understood or appreciated without serious thought.
[CHAPTER XII ]
MISCELLANEOUS
[Signor Borsa on the English Theatres ]
Those mere casual playgoers who may think that the articles on drama in The Westminster Gazette have been needlessly pessimistic ought to read "The English Stage of To-Day," by Mario Borsa, translated by Mr Selwyn Brinton, and published by Mr John Lane; a lively, interesting book, in which are expressed vigourously the ideas of a very acute, intelligent writer upon our modern theatre. "Hence it is no wonder that all that is artificial, absurd, commonplace, spectacular, and puerile is rampant upon the English stage; that theatrical wares are standardized, like all other articles of trade...." "Still, in spite of all this booming and histriomania, one of the greatest intellectual privations from which the foreigner suffers in London is, I repeat, the lack of good comedy and good prose drama." Such sentences are specimens of his views about the current drama of London, and he endorses the sad phrase of Auguste Filon, "Le drame Anglais, à peine né, se meurt."
In some respects the book is surprising. The author exhibits an intimacy of knowledge that appears almost impossible in one who, for a long time after his arrival in London, was "ignorant of the very language of the country." He has learnt our tongue well enough to give us some literary criticisms of value, notably upon the Irish theatre and the poetry of Mr W.B. Yeats, and he has made himself acquainted in a remarkable way with the plays of the last fifteen years or so, with the theatrical clubs and the various movements of revolt against our puppet theatre. There are slips, no doubt, such as the suggestion that the Independent Theatre introduced Ibsen to London, it being the fact that several of his plays had been presented before this Society was born.