I shall never forget a certain performance of King Henry V. There entered a man in silver armour, his visor down, and a gasping female by my side said: ‘That’s Lewis Waller.’ And the worst of it is that she was right, and that I knew she was right. Visor or no visor, I too knew it was Lewis Waller; it was Lewis Waller, slamming and banging British drama as none better could than he, by insisting, in his silver armour, on being always Waller, never Henry V. They are all like that: Mr Gerald du Maurier may dress himself up as a policeman, or swathe his neck in a choker, or get into evening clothes and pretend to be a burglar, but thick over those artifices lies always the charming du Maurier trail. He is loved for that, just as Beerbohm Tree was loved for the confectionery of his voice and the circular movement of his hand, as Mr Hawtrey is loved for his sober cynicism, and Miss Doris Keane for ... I don’t know exactly what. Whatever actors are loved for, it is always for being themselves and never for being their parts; whether, like Miss Lilian Braithwaite, they have cast themselves for the lilies and languors of virtue, or, like Miss Dorothy Minto, for the roses and raptures of vice, to those selections they must cleave, or they shall be loved no more. But if they do cleave to these selves of theirs, then shall they attain fame, and the public will not say: ‘Have you been to Hamlet?’ but ‘Have you seen Martin Harvey?’ And this worship shapes yet another stone to hurl at the English theatre, namely, fantastic salaries, varying between £100 and £300 a week. Call me a Bolshevik if you like, but I say no man is worth £300 a week; nobody knows this when the man is alive, but everybody does the day after he is dead. This would not matter if it did not make the theatre so expensive to run, therefore the prices of the seats so high that only those who can afford it sit in them. The richer the staging, the poorer the play; the dearer the seat, the greater its attraction to the people who know ‘the price of everything and the value of nothing.’ For long purses are made of sows’ ears.
I wonder if something could be done for the theatre. Supposing it were built like the Scala, so that nobody sat at the sides, so that everybody might see the play instead of hats, so that one might have a fit in the stalls and be removed without causing too much trouble (you see, I think of everything), so that the people at the top were not seated so high as to observe mainly the actors’ upper skulls. Supposing a theatre like the Munich Kammerspiele, which holds five hundred, were to be built. Supposing, like that one, it had but one balcony; supposing it were cheap to light; supposing, too, that it had no programme sellers, but delivered programmes at the doors from a penny-in-the-slot machine; supposing it had no cloak-room attendants, but hooks with a number and a padlock; supposing it had no ... I forget the name of the attendant, something like pew-opener, and that the seats were not numbered from A.26 to M.34 in the stalls, not numbered at all in the pit, and re-numbered again in the upper circle; supposing the seats were just numbered 1, 2, 3, so that one could find them; supposing we paid actors for rehearsals and engaged them for a certain term; supposing all this, would the public be pleased? I wonder! I wonder whether the public would like paying less for its seats. If stalls did not cost 10s. 6d., would it trust the play? It certainly does not trust the doctor who charges less than 10s. 6d. And yet, once upon a time, the theatre was cheap. When, sixty years ago, Ben Webster was producing at the Adelphi, a stall cost 5s., and Mr Webster offered amphitheatre stalls ‘with elbows and cushions, secured the whole evening’ for 1s.
Yes, a good deal might be done like this. A good deal might be done by the Lord Chamberlain and the London County Council, if only they would cease to devote all their thoughts to exits from the theatre. (On consideration, this may be well advised.) They might allow smoking, and best of all, they might allow everything, suspend all censorship, and be assured that the plays which are called objectionable would not be staged. I do not mean that there is no demand for objectionable plays; there is; indeed, we nearly all of us like objectionable plays, but the Puritans can trust our Puritan feeling, which makes it impossible for us to enjoy objectionable plays because we dare not be seen enjoying them by other people who are also enjoying them. Ah! if you could go to the play masked it would be different.
What is wrong with the drama is that it does not hold an idea to the square act; is it worth saving? For it may truly be said that the only fault the public finds in a stupid play is that it is not stupid enough. You do not believe me. Let us look at the list of plays in to-day’s paper. To-day there are open thirty-six metropolitan theatres, including some we can leave out, Maskelyne’s, Drury Lane (Opera), the Philharmonic. Of the remaining thirty-three, musical comedy occupies six stages. Say no more about that. If it were not for the lips that sing, our attention would be concentrated on English music. Revue rages at five theatres. This leaves twenty-two plays running. Among them are two spy plays, two comic war plays, a mystical melodrama, four farces; the rest consists in plays made by hands unassisted by heads, plays that the next generation may make by machinery. The groans of old age are heard as Sir Arthur Pinero rigs The Freaks upon their legs, as Mr Somerset Maugham presents Love in a Cottage. And Dear Brutus is the twinkling star that makes darker the Thalian night.
In hardly one of these plays is there a single moment of intellectual distinction. I do not mean that I ask those twenty-two stages to make up the night’s programme of King Lear, Ghosts, Les Trois Filles de Monsieur Dupont, the Sunken Bell, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, but I do think that their coalition might give us more than Dear Brutus. There should be plenty of room for true comedy of the type of The Admirable Crichton, Mrs Gorringe’s Necklace, John Bull’s Other Island, The Cassilis Engagement, Chains, comedy with ideas. There should be room for The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnett, The Playboy of the Western World and other solid plays. But one condition is that we should pay for plays, not players. We do not. If you want evidence consider the following advertisement of When Knights were Bold (a really amusing play):—
WHEN KNIGHTS WERE BOLD.
BROMLEY
CHALLENOR‘Bromley Challenor has a personality and fun of his own.’—Times.
‘An individual style of his own.’—Daily Telegraph.
‘A manner quite his own.’—The Queen.
‘Nothing funnier than the second act.’—Daily Telegraph.
‘His fun is infectious.’—Daily Graphic.
‘Keeps his audience in convulsions.’—Star.
‘Had a triumphant reception.’—Daily Chronicle.
‘Bromley Challenor extracts every spark of fun.’—J. T. Grein, Sunday Times.
‘The play went more gloriously than ever.’—Referee.
MARJORIE
BELLAIRS‘Miss Marjorie Bellairs is a charming actress with a singularly sweet voice.’—Era.
‘Bromley Challenor has a personality and fun of his own.’—Times.
‘An individual style of his own.’—Daily Telegraph.
‘A manner quite his own.’—The Queen.
‘Nothing funnier than the second act.’—Daily Telegraph.
‘His fun is infectious.’—Daily Graphic.
‘Keeps his audience in convulsions.’—Star.
‘Had a triumphant reception.’—Daily Chronicle.
‘Bromley Challenor extracts every spark of fun.’—J. T. Grein, Sunday Times.
‘The play went more gloriously than ever.’—Referee.
‘Miss Marjorie Bellairs is a charming actress with a singularly sweet voice.’—Era.
Ten press quotations. Two refer to the play; one may refer to play or to actor; seven refer to the actor only. (The playwright is not mentioned, but never mind). This does not mean that the newspapers confined their notices to Mr Bromley Challenor, but it does mean that the management selected for quotation only the phrases which refer to the actor, because that is what the public wants, and what it gets for the hastening of its mental decay.
What is wrong with the theatre is, to a certain extent, right with the music-hall, and this for two reasons: we have to deal with a different kind of playgoer, and the excessive valuation of the actor is sharply limited by the worth of his songs. I have seen Ernie Mayne, Ella Shields, and others rouse the house with one song and half-fail with another. The theatre-goer, who, on the whole, is not a music-hall-goer, is usually either in a smug condition, or over-conscious of his digestive process. Nearly all the pit and upper circle, and the bulk of the dress circle, feel that they are indulging in a respectable spree. Leaving aside the one who, in the newspapers, signs his letters as ‘Old Playgoer’ (generally an old fool), or ‘Old Firstnighter,’ probably an old lunatic (because the first night is the worst night), the cheaper seats in a theatre are tenanted mainly by people in a stupefied state of admiration. They have escaped for a few hours from the dug-outs of respectability; their families have not long emerged from the tradition that the theatre is a place of evil repute; some even believe that they are improving their minds, which is touching, whatever the condition of their minds. They file their programmes. They loudly proclaim to their friends that they ‘ought’ to go and see such and such a play. Perhaps they go because they ought to. Perhaps they go to dream dreams; no doubt nightmares do not disappoint them. The stalls are not in search of virtue tempered with a little vice; most of their patrons are confessedly in search of vice neat. They never get it. And if this vice, invisible to anybody who is not a bishop or the editor of a Sunday paper, is necessary to their health, it is because they visit the theatre in a state of advanced repletion, because they are people who manage to be replete in the middle of a European war; such is their nature. No wonder, then, that the cold suet of the drama should have so securely become wrapped in the wet dish-cloth of the playgoer. Thus, it may be true to say that the playgoer gets the plays he deserves. The music-hall-goer is different.