As the audience en bloc remain seated, so the length of the performance must be taken into account by managers; and commonly two hours and a half is considered the maximum length to which a performance should run, though I must say that we have at times sinned by keeping our audiences seated until eleven o’clock, and it has been even later. Of course in this branch of the subject must be also considered the difficulty of reaching their homes experienced by audiences in cities whose liberal arrangements of space, and absence of cheap cabs, renders necessary a due regard to time. In matter of duration, however, the audience is not to be trifled with or imposed on. I have heard of a case in a city of Colorado where the manager of a travelling company, on the last night of an engagement, in order to catch a through train, hurried the ordinary performance of his play into an hour and a half. When next the company were coming to the city they were met en route, some fifty miles out, by the sheriff, who warned them to pass on by some other way, as their coming was awaited by a large section of the able-bodied male population armed with shot guns. The company did not, I am informed, on that occasion visit the city. I may here mention that in America the dramatic season lasts about eight months—from the beginning of the “fall” in September till the hot weather commences in April. During this period the theatres are kept busy, as there are performances on the evenings of every week day, and in the South and West on Sunday evening also, whilst matinées are given every Saturday, and in a large number of cases every Wednesday. In certain places even the afternoon of Sunday sees a performance. It is a fact, somewhat amusing at first, that in nearly all towns of comparatively minor importance the theatre is known as the Opera House.
I have dwelt on the external condition of the American audiences in order to explain the condition antecedent to the actor’s appearance. The differences between various audiences are so minute that some such insight seems necessary to enable one to recognise and understand them. An actor in the ordinary course of his work can only partially at best realise such differences as there may be, much less attempt to state them explicitly. His first experience before a strange audience is the discovery whether or not he is en rapport with them. This, however, he can most surely feel, though he cannot always give a reason for the feeling. As there is, in the occurrences of daily life, a conveyance other than by words of meaning, of sentiment, or of understanding between different individuals, so there is a carriage of mutual understanding or reciprocity of sentiment between the stage and the auditorium. The emotion which an actor may feel, or which his art may empower him successfully to simulate, can be conveyed over the floats in some way which neither actor nor audience may be able to explain; and the reciprocation of such emotion can be as surely manifested by the audience by more subtle and unconscious ways than overt applause or otherwise. It must be remembered that the opportunities which I have had of observing audiences have been almost entirely from my own stage. Little facility of wider observation is afforded to a man who plays seven performances each week and fills up most of the blank mornings with rehearsal or travel. I only put forward what I feel or believe. Such belief is based on the opportunities I have had of observation or of following out the experience of others.
The dominant characteristic of the American audience seems to be impartiality. They do not sit in judgment, resenting as positive offences lack of power to convey meanings or divergence of interpretation of particular character or scene. I understand that when they do not like a performance they simply go away, so that at the close of the evening the silence of a deserted house gives to the management a verdict more potent than audible condemnation. This does not apply to questions of morals, which can be, and are, as quickly judged here as elsewhere. On this subject I give entirely the evidence of others, for it has been my good fortune to see our audiences seated till the final falling of the curtain. Again, there is a kindly feeling on the part of the audience towards the actor as an individual, especially if he be not a complete stranger, which is, I presume, a part of that recognition of individuality which is so striking a characteristic in American life and customs. Many an actor draws habitually a portion of his audience, not in consequence of artistic merit, not from capacity to arouse or excite emotion, but simply because there is something in his personality which they like. This spirit forcibly reminds me of the story told of the manager of one of the old “Circuits,” who gave as a reason for the continued engagement of an impossibly bad actor, that “he was kind to his mother.” The thorough enjoyment of the audience is another point to be noticed. Not only are they quick to understand and appreciate, but there seems to be a genuine pleasure in the expression of approval. American audiences are not surpassed in quickness and completeness of comprehension by any that I have yet seen, and no actor need fear to make his strongest or his most subtle effort, for such is sure to receive instant and full acknowledgment at their hands.
There is little more than this to be said of the American audience. But short though the record is, the impression upon the player himself is profound and abiding. To describe what one sees and hears over the footlights is infinitely easier than to convey an idea of the mental disposition and feeling of the spectators. The house is ample and comfortable, and the audience is well-disposed to be pleased. Ladies and gentlemen alike are mostly in morning dress, distinguished in appearance, and guided in every respect by a refined decorum. The sight is generally picturesque. Even in winter flowers abound, and the majority of ladies have bouquets either carried in the hand or fastened on the shoulder or corsage. At matinée performances especially, where the larger proportion of the audience is composed of ladies, the effect is not less pleasing to the olfactory senses than to the eye. Courteous, patient, enthusiastic, the American audience is worthy of any effort which the actor can make on its behalf, and he who has had experience of them would be an untrustworthy chronicler if he failed, or even hesitated, to bear witness to their intelligence, their taste and their generosity.—Fortnightly Review.
[STIMULANTS AND NARCOTICS.]
BY PERCY GREG.
Among all the signal inventions, discoveries, and improvements of the age, social and material, scientific and mechanical, few, perhaps, are fraught with graver possibilities for good and evil than the great achievement of recent medicine—the development, if it should not more properly be called the discovery, of anæsthetics. Steam has revolutionized mechanics; the locomotive, the steam-hammer, and the power-loom, the creation of the railway and the factory system, have essentially modified social as well as material civilization; and it is possible at least that electric lights and motors, telegraphs and telephones, may produce yet greater consequences. This last century has been signalized by greater mechanical achievements than the whole historic period since the discovery of iron. But in obvious, immediate influence on human happiness, it is quite conceivable that the discovery of chloroform, ether, and other anæsthetics—the diffusion of chloral, opium, and other narcotics, putting them within the reach of every individual, at the command of men and women, almost of children, independently of medical advice or sanction—may be, for a time at least, more important than those inventions which have changed the fundamental conditions of industry, or those which may yet change them once more. It is difficult for the rising generation to realize that state of medicine, and especially of surgery, which old men can well remember; when every operation, from the extraction of a bad tooth to the removal of a limb, must be performed upon patients in full possession of their senses. In those days the horror with which men and women, uninfluenced by scientific enthusiasm, now regard the alleged tortures of vivisection was hardly possible. Thousands of human beings had yearly to undergo—every man, woman, and child might have to undergo—agonies quite as terrible as any that the most ardent advocate of the rights of animals, the most vivid imagination excited by fear for dearly loved dumb companions, ascribes to the vivisector’s knife. It may well be doubted whether the highest brutes are capable of suffering any pain comparable with that of hardy soldiers or seamen—much less with that of sensitive, nervous men, and delicate women—when the surgeon’s blade cut through living, often inflamed tissues, generally rendered infinitely more sensitive by previous disease or injury, while the brain was fully, intensely conscious; every nerve quivering with even exaggerated sensibility. The brutes, at any rate, are spared the long agony of anticipation, and at least half the tortures of memory. They may fear for a few minutes; our fathers and mothers lay in terror for hours and days, nay, persons of vivid imagination must have suffered acutely through half a lifetime, in the expectation that, soon or late, their only choice might lie between excruciating temporary torture and a death of lingering hopeless anguish. No gift of God, perhaps, has been so precious, no effort of human intellect has done more to lessen human suffering and fear, to take from life much of its darkest evil and horror, than anæsthesia as developed during the last fifty years. True that in the case of severe operations it is as yet beyond the power of medicine to give complete relief. If spared the torture of the operation, the patient has yet to endure the cruel smart that the knife leaves behind. But the relief of previous terror, of the awful, unspeakable, and, to those who never felt it, almost inconceivable agony endured while the flesh was carved, and the bone sawn, have disappeared from the sick room and the hospital.
Narcotics should be carefully distinguished from anæsthetics. Their use is different, not in degree only, but in character and purpose. Their legitimate object is two-fold: primarily, in a limited number of cases, to relieve or mitigate pain temporarily or permanently incurable; but secondarily and principally to cure what to a large and constantly increasing class in every civilized country is among the severest trials attendant on sickness, over-work, or nervous excitement—that loss of sleep which is a terrible affliction in itself, and aggravates, much more than inexperience would suppose, every form of suffering with which it is connected. Nature mercifully intended that prolonged intolerable pain should of itself bring the relief of sleep or swooning; and primitive races like the Red Indian, living in the open air, with dull imagination and insensible nerves, still find such relief. The victims of Mohawk and Huron tortures have been known, during a brief intermission of agony, to sleep at the stake till fire was used to awaken them. But among the many drawbacks of civilized life must be counted the tendency of artificial conditions to defeat some of Nature’s most merciful provisions. The nerves of civilized men are too sensitive, the brains developed by hereditary culture and constant exercise are too restless, to obtain from sleep that relief in pain, especially prolonged pain, that nature apparently intended. Many of us, even in sleep, are keenly sensitive to suffering, at least to chronic as distinguished from acute pain, to dull protracted pangs like those of rheumatism, ear-ache, or tooth-ache. A little sharper pain, and sleep becomes impossible. The sufferer is not only deprived of the respite that slumber should afford, but insomnia itself enhances his sensibility, besides adding a new and terrible torment of its own. Artificial prevention of sleep was notoriously among the most cruel and the most certainly mortal of mediæval or barbaric tortures. The sensations of one who has not slept for several nights, beginning with a restless, unnatural, constantly increasing consciousness of the brain, its existence and its action, passing by degrees into an acute, unendurably distressing irritation of that organ—generally unconscious or insensible, probably because its habitual sensibility would be intolerable—are indescribable, unimaginable by those who have not felt them; and seem to be proportionate to the activity of the intellect, the susceptibility of nerve and vitality of temperament—the capacity for pain and pleasure. In a word, the finer the physical and nervous character, the more terrible the torment of sleeplessness. A little more and the patient is confronted with one of the most frightful forms of pain and terror, the consciousness of incipient insanity. But long before reaching this stage, sleeplessness exaggerates pain and weakens the power of endurance, quickens the sensibility of the nerves, enfeebles the will, exacerbates the temper, produces a physical and nervous irritability which to an observer unacquainted with the cause seems irrational, unaccountable, extravagant, even frantic, but which afflicts the patient incomparably more than those, however near and however sensitive, on whom it is vented. Drugs, then, which enable the physician in most cases to check insomnia at an early stage—to secure, for example, in a case of chronic pain, six or seven hours of complete repose out of the twenty-four, to arrest a mischief which leads by the shortest and most painful route directly to insanity—are simply invaluable.
It may seem a paradox, it is a truism, to say that in their value lies their peril. Because they have such power for good, because the suffering they relieve is in its lighter forms so common, because neuralgia and sleeplessness are ailments as familiar to the present generation as gout, rheumatism, catarrh to our grandfathers, therefore the medicines which immediately relieve sleeplessness and neuralgic pain are among the most dangerous possessions, the most subtle temptations, of civilized and especially of intellectual life. Every one of these drugs has, besides its immediate and beneficial effect, other and injurious tendencies. The relief which it gives is purchased at a certain price; and in every instance the relief is lessened or rendered uncertain, the mischievous influence is enhanced and aggravated by repetition; till, when the use has become habitual, it has become pure abuse, when the drug has become a necessity of life it has lost the greater part if not the whole of its value, and serves only to satisfy the need which itself alone has created. Contrary to popular tradition, we believe that of popular narcotics opium is on the whole, if the most seductive, the least injurious; chloral, which at first passed for being almost harmless, is probably the most noxious of all, having both chemical and vital effects which approach if they do not amount to blood-poisoning. It is said (we do not affirm with what truth) that the subsequent administration of half a teaspoonful of a common alkali operates as an antidote to some of these specific effects. The bromide of potash, another favorite, especially with women, is less, perhaps, a narcotic proper than a sedative. It is said not to produce sleep directly, like chloral or opium, by stupefaction, but at least in small doses simply to allay the nervous irritability which is often the sole cause of sleeplessness. But in larger quantities and in its ultimate effects it is scarcely less to be dreaded than chloral. It has been recommended as a potent, indeed a specific and the only specific, remedy for sea-sickness. But the state to which, as its advocate allows, the patient must be reduced, a state of complete nervous subjection to the power of the drug, seems worse than the disease, save in its most cruel and dangerous forms. Such points, however, may be left to the chemist, the physician, or the physiologist; our purpose is rather to indicate briefly the social aspects of the subject, the social causes, conditions, and consequences of that narcotism which is, if not yet a prevalent, certainly a rapidly-spreading habit.
The desire or craving for stimulants in the most general sense of the word—for drugs acting upon the nerves whether as excitant or sedative agents—is an almost if not absolutely universal human appetite; so general, so early developed, that we might almost call it an instinct. Alcohol, of course, is the most popular, under ordinary circumstances the most seductive, and by far the most widely diffused of all stimulant substances. From the Euphrates to the Straits of Dover, the vine has been from the earliest ages second only to corn in popular estimation; wine, next to bread, the most prized and most universal article of human food. The connection between Ceres and Bacchus is found in almost every language as in the social life of every nation, from the warlike Assyrian monarchy, the stable hierocratic despotism of Egypt, to the modern French Republic and German Empire. Corn itself has furnished stimulant second in popularity to wine alone; the spirit which delighted the fiercer, sterner races of Northern Europe—Swede, Norwegian, and Dane, St. Olaf, and Harold Hardrada, as their descendants of to-day; and the ale of our own Saxon and Scandinavian ancestry, which neither spirit, cider, nor Spanish wine has superseded among ourselves. The vine, again, seems to have been native to America; but the civilized or semi-civilized races of the southern and central part of the Western Continent had other more popular and more peculiar stimulants, also for the most part alcoholic. The palm, again, has furnished to African and Asiatic tribes a spirit not less potent or less noxious, not less popular and probably not less primitive, than whiskey or beer. But where alcohol has been unknown, among races to whose habits and temperament it was alien, or in climates where so powerful an excitant produced effects too palpably alarming to be tolerated by rulers or law-givers royal or priestly, other and milder stimulants or sedatives are found in equally universal use. Till the white man introduced among them his own destructive beverages, till the “fire-water” spread demoralization and disease, tobacco was the favorite indulgence of the Red Indian of North America, and very probably of that mighty race which preceded them and seems to have disappeared before they came upon the scene—the Mound-builders, whose gigantic works bear testimony to the existence of an agriculture scarcely less advanced or less prolific, a despotism probably not less absolute than that of Egypt. Coffee has for ages been almost equally dear to the Arabs; tea has been to China all that wine is and was to Europe, probably from a still earlier period, and has taken hold on the Northern, as coffee and tobacco upon the Southern, branches of the Tartar race. Opium, or drugs resembling opium in character, have been found as well suited to the temper, as delightful to the taste, of the quieter and more passive Oriental races as wine to the Aryan and Semitic nations. The Malays, the Vikings of the East Indies, found in bhang a drug the most exciting and maddening in its effects of any known to civilized or uncivilized man; a substitute for opium or haschisch bearing much the same relation to those sedatives as brandy or whiskey to the light wines of Southern Europe.