Any dramatist who at a première would fill the theatre with his good friends by giving them passes would have little knowledge of human nature; certain failure would await him. Not only because these so-called good friends, in obedience to their unconscious envy, frankly join the enemy’s ranks, but because the possessors of passes involuntarily get into the psychic condition which is characteristic of “dead-heads,” viz: indifferent critical smugness and a diminished capacity for illusion.
I know of a striking example of this that came under my own observation. One of my friends, a young playwright, invited his tailor and his wife to go to his première, and not to be backward in expressing their approval. He had distributed a sufficiently large number of friends in the orchestra, but the gallery had not been provided for. He had, naturally, also sent two tickets to one of his competitors. It so chanced that I was in the thick of it, because I was interested in seeing how the simple public would receive the piece. I sat right behind the doughty tailor couple, who, of course, did not know me. Several times during the performance we almost came to blows. The married couple hissed with might and main, whereas I applauded with all my power. We exchanged angry words and otherwise acted in a manner characteristic of such a situation and of such a youthful temper as mine then was. The play was a failure. Later we discussed the reason for this failure. One said that the play was not deep enough for the enlightened public. I challenged this contention, and referred to the simple people who sat in front of me and whose names and station I had discovered from some neighbours. My friend would not believe me at first until I had convinced him by a detailed description of the couple that the tailor who had for so many years made his clothes had felt it incumbent on him to repay the author’s gift of a pass by contributing to the failure of his play.
To be under obligations always oppresses us. We have the instinctive impulse to disregard them. A pass is an obligation to acknowledge the excellence of the offered entertainment, to confirm that it is worth the price of admission. In addition to the absence of a need for illusion from material considerations we have to reckon with the impulse to disregard this obligation. These two psychic factors serve to bring about in the heart of the possessor of a pass the defence reaction that I have previously described.
Notwithstanding this, the craving for passes, which formerly was the privilege of the few exceptional personages, keeps growing more and more, infecting other levels of society, and would easily become a serious menace to the directorate of the theatres if these had not hit upon an adequate remedy in distributing passes on the homœopathic principle. They fight the “pass with the pass.” They distribute passes and reduced rate tickets very lavishly for the days on which they know the receipts will be poor and for plays which no longer draw large audiences. The exaction of a small fee on the presentation of the coupon serves to cover part of the running expenses; the house is filled and the many’s fire for passes is quenched. On the following days the people are much more willing to buy their tickets because they think that they can afford to be so extravagant, inasmuch as they had seen one or more performances free or practically so, and are swayed by the unconscious instinct that a purchased pleasure is sure to prove more delightful.
One would have to be a second limping Mephisto to be able to follow the invisible stream of passes in a large metropolis. The romance of a pass is still to be written. It would yield us an insight into the psychology of modern man that would be second to none. It would prove that one of the most important impulses of our time is the desire not to have to work for one’s pleasures. I say “not to work for one’s pleasures” rather than “not to pay for one’s pleasures,” because money always means an equivalent for our work. The most industrious persons are in reality those who are most averse to work. For behind their zeal to accumulate money there is the burning desire to hoard up as much as will ensure an income sufficient to purchase enjoyment without additional work. In the language of every day this would be: a care-free old age. But, in sooth, worry is the main source of our pleasures. Were there no cares the variegated colours of the spectrum that constitute the light of life would be replaced by dull monotonous grays that resemble each other as closely as the two links that unite the two ends of a chain converting it into a whole.
The pursuit after passes is only a small fragment of that mad pursuit after “pleasure without work” that is being enacted all around us. I have gone into the subject so minutely only because it is a typical example of mankind’s stupid beginning to free itself from the iron bonds of material dependence. For the more free we think ourselves, the more enslaved we really are.
IDENTIFICATION
I know a man who suffered a great deal from his wife’s moods. No matter how much he tried he could never please her. If he was happy and contented she called him “Mr. Frivolous” and would say what a fine figure he’d cut in a Punch and Judy show; if, on the contrary, cares troubled him and his face betrayed his anxiety, she called him “Old Grouch” and railed at him for making her life bitter. If he wanted to go to the theatre, she thought they ought to stay home; if he longed for the peace of the home, she egged him on to take part in all sorts of senseless pastimes. Is it any wonder that the poor man became “nervous”? that he lost his peace of mind and his hitherto imperturbable good humour?