Those who followed his body to St. Paul’s will not easily forget the touching solemnity of the occasion. His own Chorus from the Savoy was permitted to sing one of his own beautiful compositions as the coffin was slowly lowered into the vault. That so beautiful and sunny a nature, rich in all the qualities that make for sweet friendship, and so nobly endowed with gifts that leave his place as a musician lasting and secure, should have been consigned to such martyrdom of physical suffering ranks among those decrees of fate that it is vain to question and idle to seek to evade. Few men could boast of having conferred upon their generation such fresh and lasting enjoyment; for it may be confidently said that, in that long series of works in which his name will ever be associated with that of Sir William Gilbert, there was added to the garnered store of the world’s pure pleasure a new harvest of delight reaped from a field that none had tilled before.
To those who love the theatre the labours of rehearsal, though they are exacting and sometimes exhausting, yield many delightful experiences. There comes a moment even in the writing of a play when the puppets of the author’s invention seem suddenly to take a detached existence and to follow a law of development that is only half-consciously dictated by their creator. This impression, which I suppose nearly all writers in the region of fiction must have felt, is renewed and intensified as a play takes shape upon the stage. The intrusion of the actor’s personality, sometimes enhancing the original conception, and always in some degree modifying the intended balance of the design, adds a new colour to the written page. And then, as day by day the scattered fragments are gradually united and the interpretation grows in emotional strength, there come moments of keen enjoyment of the actor’s art that equal, if they do not surpass, any later impression that may be yielded when the performance is finally presented with the added effects of costume and scenery.
The bare, empty stage, with the players in their ordinary working-day dress, presents but a mournful appearance to a chance visitor who is a stranger to the scene. But those who work day by day in the theatre sometimes find, as the rehearsals advance, that this ill-lit, unfurnished void can on a sudden be transformed into a world of enchantment. The actor and the author together are as yet undisturbed in their task, and what is still to come in the way of added illusion their imagination can readily supply.
And yet the bringing together of all the contributory arts that are combined in the service of an important production has an interest of its own. From the initial step, when the little toy models of the scenic artist are passed and approved, to the final moment of the dress rehearsal, there is a vast amount of work to be done in every department, and during the progress of that work the theatre becomes a truly democratic institution. Author and composer, the master carpenter, the property master, and the electrician are linked together in a spirit of equal comradeship, and there is not one of them all who has it not in his power to make or mar the work of his fellows.
It is one of the inscrutable laws of the theatre that nothing is ever quite ready until the last moment. Costumes are delayed, properties are incomplete, or it may be some scene that did not quite fit its purpose is undergoing structural amendment, and has yet to receive the final touches at the hands of the scene-painter. All these circumstances, perhaps inevitable in view of the countless details that have to be fitted together in order to perfect the complex puzzles of a production, are apt to give to the final rehearsals an impression of chaos and confusion. It is not an uncommon remark made by those who are admitted to such rehearsals, “But you surely do not intend to produce this play in two days’ time?” And, except to the expert who knows that what is lacking is already in an advanced stage of preparation, the doubt implied in the question is natural enough.
But even with all the experience of the expert there are occasions when these inevitable delays approach very nearly to disaster. I remember that the dress rehearsal of Called Back, when I had not yet gained a full mastery over the mechanical resources of the theatre, lasted till six o’clock in the morning, and during the small hours one after another of the members of the company came to me and implored that the production might be postponed. But with an audacity that was born of inexperience I persisted that all would be ready in time. We left the theatre at half-past six, and were back again at ten o’clock to renew the rehearsal, and to the astonishment of all,—an astonishment in which I confess I shared,—when the evening came, the play went without mishap to a successful close. But these long rehearsals often result in trials of temper as well as of strength, and now and again it happens that the wearied stagehands are not wholly equal to their work.
King Arthur was produced under conditions that were exceptionally trying, for, at the time that the heavy scenic material had to be arranged upon the stage, a pantomime was running at the theatre during the afternoons. Much that was employed in the pantomime had to be daily removed to make room for our own scenery, and replaced again for the performance of the next afternoon. At one of the rehearsals, as Arthur Sullivan and I stood upon the stage listening to his setting of the “May Song,” the high platform upon which Queen Guinevere and her maids were standing suddenly gave way, and to our horror fell with a crash to the stage. For the moment we thought that some grave disaster must have occurred, but with sudden instinct Miss Terry had flung herself prone upon the pedestal where she had been standing, and escaped with nothing more serious than a few bruises.
The protest against scenic display in the theatre is constantly renewed, but is not always very intelligently directed. That scenery can be inappropriate in its magnificence is true enough, but it is not less true that it can be equally inappropriate in its inefficiency. The question, when all is said, is one of taste and fitness, and involves no irrefutable principle.
To ignore the enlarged resources of the modern scene-painter’s art would, I think, be foolish, even if it were possible. The problem before the theatre now is to control these resources, and to reconsider and to reforge the means which shall set them again in clear subjugation to the essential claims of the drama. It may be conceded that during the last thirty years the need of this subjugation has not always been sufficiently borne in mind, and there have been instances not a few where the eye has been fed at the expense of the ear. But this scenic art is a thing so beautiful in itself that it would be hard indeed if any mere pedantry of taste should force its exclusion from the theatre.