It was a popular success with its first-night audience, and at the end of the play I was hurried into the wings, and Mr. Calvert and I went forward and made our bow. It was not a joint bow, we each made one of our own. Calvert’s was far the best, mine was but an indifferent affair, and then when the curtain went down there were cries of “speech,” and Calvert insisted that I must go on alone and say something. I must have been very nervous, for I made a wretched mess of it. What I really intended to say, of course, was that all the best things in the play were Calvert’s; but what happened was that having thanked the audience for our kindly reception, I concluded: “I have often been asked as to this collaboration, which parts of the play I have written, and which parts Mr. Calvert has written. I can tell you in a sentence. All the parts that you have enjoyed are mine, the rest are Calvert’s.” There was a yell of delight. I made a really beautiful bow this time and retired to the wings, where
Calvert was shaking a friendly fist at me in histrionic anger.
Since then I have been in at many first nights in which I was interested, and several of them have been in Manchester, where, as I have already said, I have found a kindly welcome. And although I have no cause to complain, but rather the reverse, of any want of kindness in any audiences to whom I have submitted my work, I must admit that I think the dullest first nights I have ever attended are those of a play intended to be amusing which is produced in London. For the house is full of guests, most of whom are regular diners-out at meals of this kind, with very little appetite for ordinary cake, or else they are critics on duty. And at no time are these latter more to be pitied than on the first night of a farce. If they went to be amused they would cease to be critics, and as they go to criticise they are little likely to be amused.
I have been at two first nights of farces in which I was interested. What I have seen is a strenuous battle between the actors and a great part of the audience, a sort of tug-of-war to see if the actors could tug any laugh out of the weary play-goers in front. In the two battles I witnessed, the actors won. In the first of them a curious incident occurred. A well-known and ample author—let us hide the breadth of his identity behind the letter C—— —not being to the manner born of first nights, was so tickled at the early humours of the opening scenes of “What the Butler Saw” that he laughed by
himself in his unprecedented radical way all through the first act. His laughter was like a minute gun at sea, exploding at intervals amidst unechoing icebergs. There from the second row of the dress circle came the laughter of a kind heart as the merriment of a little child expressed in the music of a bull of Basan. The sound of it frightened the actors horribly, and my friend and collaborator, Frederick Mouillot, rushed round to the stage to assure the terrified artists that it really was laughter. For apparently it is not etiquette to extend any sort of notice to the first act on a first night. But later on everyone joined in and stooped to enjoy the fun for the moment, though C—— continued to lead by several octaves.
Some day in a better world I hope to write as funny a farce, with as excellent a collaborator as Mouillot, and to have it as well acted, and I shall play it in a big theatre with the roof off. And there shall be no one in front but shall have the heart of a little child and the lungs of a giant. It will always be a dull thing to produce a farce written for young hearts before an audience with wrinkled livers.
And I think one of the most amusing judgments ever made after one of my Manchester first nights was delivered by an anonymous amateur critic on a post-card, which was placed upon my desk as I started my work in Quay Street on the morning after the production of “The Captain of the School.” I have received many absurd anonymous communications in my time, for there are a great many folk whose only taste in life seems to be to expand the
postal revenue in this fashion. Some of them are crudely coarse and objectionable, but this post-card breathed a genuine sincerity and honesty of dispraise that was admirable. It ran:
A Voter.
Sir,—I went last night to see your play. It was like your verdicts—Rotten!