The Sunny Side of the Street

by Marshall P. Wilder

When I say “Londoners” I refer to the better class. The common people flock to the comedies, farces and burlesques, of which London is full; they laugh at whatever is placed before them and demand a lot more of the same kind. But the educated, well-bred Englishman makes a serious matter of theatre-going. He goes to the play with the same face that he displays in “the city,” as the business section of London is called. He changes his clothes, for it is bad form not to be in evening dress when one goes to a London theatre of the better class. But he does not change his face. Play-going is as much a duty with him, as business is, and I am inclined to believe it is quite as much of a bore. However that may be, it is a matter of his serious daily routine. He goes to the theatre to think; goes as solemnly as an American on his way to church.

Indeed, the talk one overhears in the lobby and stalls of a high class English theatre recall some church experiences to an American. The play is analyzed; so are its parts, as if the whole thing were a matter of conscience or morals, as occasionally it is. A “problem” play which would drive Americans out of a theatre, unless in Boston, where they would doze through the performance, trusting to the morning papers for points enough to talk about, will make its way to the profoundest depths of the English heart and head.

It must not be inferred that English gentlemen and ladies do not enjoy good comedies. They are grateful for anything that is humorous and witty, but they regard such performances as mere relishes or dessert; the pièce de rêsistance must be solid.

The best London audiences are drawn from the fashionable set—the “smart set,” all members of which attend the theatre whenever their evenings are unoccupied by social duties. There are no matinées—by name; the English say “morning performance,” which means the same thing; and of course “morning” means afternoon, for the fashionable set turn night into day so successfully, that the old fashioned morning is gone before they get out of bed.

“He reads what the papers say about it.”

Only a man of good income can afford steady theatre-going on the English plan. His seat costs him about $2.75, and his program twenty-five cents more; to these expenses must be added cab fares both ways, for your Londoner won’t walk more than a block after dark, if he can help it. After he has seen and heard the performance he talks a lot about it, and thinks it over, and next day reads what the papers say about it, and these say as much and say it as seriously as if the playhouses were of as much importance as the House of Parliament. Only recently have American literary weeklies taken up the theatres, but the Englishman has seen solemn critiques of plays in the Athenæum and Academy ever since he began to read those papers.

The well-to-do American wants change, relaxation and fun when he goes to the theatre. He is fully as intellectual as his English cousin and has quite as keen comprehension of the best dramatic work; this is proved by his enthusiastic support of all productions of Shakespeare. But a coldly correct drama with a sad end does not appeal to him, no matter how good the acting.

American plays are usually too compact and too rapid of action to succeed on the English stage. Bronson Howard’s brilliant “Henrietta” was highly praised by the London press and Londoners loyally try to like whatever their newspaper tells them to. Yet “The Henrietta” did not quite suit. The audience simply could not understand the character of “Bertie” the millionaire’s indolent, cheery, stupid son who pretended to be a devil of a fellow at his club, but really had no head for liquor and tobacco nor any heart for the society of chorus girls. London society has many young men with some one of Bertie’s peculiarities, but the combination—why, as one Londoner said: “No chap can be so many things, don’t you know.”

Even Mr. J. L. Shine, the accomplished actor who played the part, did not seem to understand it. Another mistake was with “The little English Lord,” as he was called in the play—a lordling whom a rich American girl had married. Here he was a fussy little fellow, an undersized dude—a caricature, in fact, and made no end of fun, but on the London stage he was the real thing, and taken seriously. The management seemed to be afraid to travesty so sacred a personage as a noble lord. I imagine this was a mistake, for at least a portion of the British people had been so far emancipated as to appreciate fun poked at the “hupper classes.”