XII
THE “OLD COMEDIES”
I
It was in 1861 that Wallack’s Theater moved uptown from Broadway and Broome Street to Broadway and 13th Street and that the management passed from the hand of James W. Wallack to that of his son, Lester Wallack. In 1882 Wallack’s Theater made another migration, from Broadway and 13th Street to Broadway and 30th Street; and in this third and final home the company failed to find itself as attractive as it had been when it was lower downtown. Lester Wallack had to relinquish its control; and he was glad to accept as a provision for his declining years the proceeds of an all-star performance of ‘Hamlet’ given for his benefit with Edwin Booth as Hamlet and with Joseph Jefferson as the First Gravedigger.
It was in 1879 while the company was still in its second home, at Broadway and 13th Street, that Lester Wallack made a remark to me which helped to explain why his enterprize came to grief not long after it was transplanted to Broadway and 30th Street. He declared rather plaintively that the management of a theater in New York was in 1879 far more difficult than it had been in his father’s time. “We used to bring out the latest London success,” he told me, “and to revive the Old Comedies, and with a play now and then from Dion [Boucicault] or from John [Brougham], we got through the season very well. But I don’t really know now what people want.”
It was because he did not know what the people of New York wanted that he had to give up the management of his theater and to accept a benefit performance arranged for him by his friendly rivals, Augustin Daly and A. M. Palmer. Altho he had been born in New York Lester Wallack was always proud to consider himself an Englishman. So it was that he remained an alien in the city of his birth, unresponsive to the shifting currents of American life and unaware that the playgoers of New York were slowly surrendering their former habit of colonial dependence upon London. Wallack was so insistently English that he never found himself at home in an American part in an American play; and perhaps he may have felt that he was not really qualified to pass on the merits of a drama dealing with the life of this country. Brougham and Boucicault, Irishmen both, had each of them a far better understanding of American likes and dislikes than Wallack had, altho such an understanding is, of course, absolutely necessary to the manager of a New York theater.
His more energetic rivals in management, Daly and Palmer, often outbid him for the acquisition of the “latest London success,” and they also made direct arrangements to acquire the latest Paris success, whereas Wallack waited until this French piece had been transmogrified into a British piece, almost as foreign to the traditions of the American people as the French original had been. In time Dion and John ceased to supply him with occasional new plays. So it was that he was reduced to the third of his three sources of supply, the Old Comedies. In so doing he was for a while secure from rivalry, altho Daly was soon to become a vigorous and dangerous competitor in this field, which Wallack had long thought to be his exclusive property.
What were these Old Comedies that Wallack mentioned airily and with assurance that his hearer would know exactly what he meant? I can see how the youthful playgoer of to-day might be completely puzzled if called upon to explain this term, perfectly familiar to playgoers who were youthful two score years ago. I can hear this youthful playgoer of to-day asking for a catalog of these Old Comedies and for a list of their authors. And I can imagine him wondering also why it is that he has rarely had a chance to see these Old Comedies which delighted the lovers of the acted drama in the days of his grandfather.
II
The Old Comedies, so called, were a selected group of successful plays which had been produced in the eighteenth century, most of them (altho a few first saw the light of the lamps in the first half of the nineteenth century) and which had survived on the stage, being acted at irregular intervals at the Haymarket Theater in London, at Wallack’s and later at Daly’s Theater in New York, and at the Boston Museum. Curiously enough, no one of Shakspere’s humorous pieces, lovely comedies and lively farces, was included in the catalog of the Old Comedies, altho they were a century older than the youngest of these Old Comedies; and no one of the comic plays of Shakspere’s contemporaries, no comedy-of-humors by Ben Jonson, no dramatic-romance by Beaumont and Fletcher, was regularly enrolled in this special repertory. And, what is even more curious, no one of the comedies of the Restoration, no brilliant and brutal satire by Congreve or Wycherly, no ingenious intrigue by Vanbrugh or Farquhar, had been able to keep the stage and to demand inclusion in this rigorous selection from out the comic masterpieces of the English drama. It may be noted, in a parenthesis, that Daly did revive two of Farquhar’s amusing plays, the ‘Recruiting Officer’ and the ‘Inconstant’; but these revivals were due to Daly’s own taste and neither of these bold and brisk pieces could claim admission to the recognized group of Old Comedies.
Now, if this group did not include any of the humorous pieces of the Elizabethan, Jacobean and Restoration dramatists, what plays did it contain? And no two students of stage-history would agree on the answer to this question. No council was ever empowered to regulate the canon and to prepare a final list of the comic dramas demanding inclusion. The repertory of the Haymarket was not exactly the same as that of Wallack’s, which in its turn did not coincide absolutely with that of the Boston Museum. Yet it is safe to say that every student of stage-history would be likely to put on his list most of the plays which I now venture to include in mine. I find fifteen pieces produced in the eighteenth century which I feel compelled to catalog as truly Old Comedies:
Cibber’s ‘She Would and She Would Not’ (1703).
Mrs. Centlivre’s ‘Busybody’ (1709).
Mrs. Centlivre’s ‘Wonder’ (1717).
Garrick’s ‘High Life Below Stairs’ (1759).
Colman’s ‘Jealous Wife’ (1761).
Foote’s ‘Liar’ (1762).
Garrick and Colman’s ‘Clandestine Marriage’ (1766).
Goldsmith’s ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ (1773).
Sheridan’s ‘Rivals’ (1775).
Sheridan’s ‘School for Scandal’ (1777).
Sheridan’s ‘Critic’ (1779).
Mrs. Cowley’s ‘Belle’s Stratagem’ (1780).
Holcroft’s ‘Road to Ruin’ (1792).
O’Keefe’s ‘Wild Oats’ (1794).
Colman the Younger’s ‘Heir at Law’ (1797).
This list calls for two immediate comments. First, only two of these plays have been acted in any New York theater in the past score of years, that is to say, in the twentieth century; and therefore playgoers under forty have not had the opportunity of seeing any of the others performed by a professional company. Second, every one of these plays was acted in New York during the final forty years of the nineteenth century, some of them being produced at different times by different companies in different theaters. For example, I have had the pleasure in the course of a half-century of playgoing of attending performances of the ‘School for Scandal’ at Wallack’s, at Niblo’s, at the Union Square and at three different Daly’s theaters.
Perhaps a third comment is warranted, to the effect that my catalog of Old Comedies includes specimens of almost every subdivision of the comic drama. The ‘School for Scandal’ is the foremost example in English of what has been called high-comedy, the humorous play in which character is more important than story and of which the plot is caused by the clash of character on character. ‘She Would and She Would Not’ is a vivacious comedy-of-intrigue; and so is the ‘Belle’s Stratagem.’ The ‘Jealous Wife’ in some of its situations, and the ‘Road to Ruin’ also, are almost too serious to be classed as comic dramas. The ‘Critic’ and ‘High Life Below Stairs’ are frankly farces, bustling with business and charged with high spirits. Even the ‘Rivals’ and ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ reveal themselves as closely akin to farce, in so far as their respective actions are not caused spontaneously by the volition of the characters but are arbitrarily brought about by the author himself, visibly pulling the wires which control the movements of his puppets. Probably it was the excessive laudation bestowed on these two more or less farcical pieces of Sheridan and Goldsmith which led Sir Arthur Pinero to formulate his satiric definition: “A comedy is a farce by a deceased author.”
Possibly a fourth comment may be appended altho it must be apologized for as a doubtful digression. In my list the ‘Liar’ is credited to Samuel Foote, because it could not very well be credited to any other author. But when it was last acted in New York, the text used was a revision by Lester Wallack of an earlier condensation by Charles James Mathews. Moreover Foote’s own play was an adaptation of Corneille’s ‘Menteur,’—an adaptation more or less influenced by an earlier version of the French piece, Steele’s ‘Lying Lover.’ To go still further back, Corneille had taken his story from a Spanish original, the ‘Verdad Sospiciosa’ of Alarcon. And we may bring to an end this summary record of the strange adventures of a plot by setting down the fact that Alarcon, altho a Spaniard, had been born in Mexico. So we can, if we so choose, claim the ‘Liar’ in all its many transformations as the earliest play to be written by a native American.
To these fifteen comedies originally produced in the eighteenth century, we may add seven plays produced in the first three score years of the nineteenth century:
Tobin’s ‘Honeymoon’ (1805).
Knowles’ ‘Hunchback’ (1832).
Knowles’ ‘Love Chase’ (1837).
Bulwer-Lytton’s ‘Money’ (1840).
Boucicault’s ‘London Assurance’ (1841).
Boucicault’s ‘Old Heads and Young Hearts’ (1844).
Reade and Taylor’s ‘Masks and Faces’ (often called ‘Peg Woffington’)
(1852).
To the best of my recollection no one of these nineteenth century pieces has been seen on the New York stage since the twentieth century began.
I have no right to assume that any other theater-goer of fifty years of experience would select exactly these twenty-two plays as being the Old Comedies; but I make bold to believe that my selection includes all the pieces which demand to be so grouped together.
III
A lover of the theater whose playgoing has been done in the past score of years may be moved to ask why it is that these plays, which evoked the loyal laughter of his father and his grandfather, have been utterly banished from the twentieth century stage, and why they are as unknown in the playhouses of London as they are in those of New York and of Boston. To this question it is possible to give three answers.
In the first place these Old Comedies show the signs of age, even when we read them. They seem to most moderns more or less arbitrary in plot, more or less artificial in dialog, and more or less archaic in method. To assert this is to admit that they are hopelessly out of date both in their content and in their form. They abound, for example, in asides and in soliloquies, addressed directly to the audience; and they are decorated with frequent bravura passages, devised to exhibit the virtuosity of the performer, just as the solos of the earlier Italian operas were introduced merely to allow the soprano to execute her variations or the tenor to attain his high C. The tone of these humorous plays is too highly colored for our subdued taste, and many of their characters strike us as caricatures of humanity, almost fantastic in their wilful eccentricity. In short, these pieces one and all belong to a type of drama hopelessly out of fashion, unfamiliar in many of its aspects. In the theater what is unfamiliar is frequently ludicrous, merely because of its unfamiliarity; and we are inclined to laugh at it, as we do at the wearing apparel of a decade ago. In playmaking, as in dressmaking, styles change with disconcerting swiftness.
This brings us to the second reason for the disappearance of these Old Comedies from the twentieth century theater. Their departure was coincident with the breaking up of the stock-company, kept together year after year with only occasional changes in its membership. Forty years ago the company at Wallack’s, like that at the Boston Museum, was a homogeneous body, with customs of its own, imparted to the newcomers it enrolled and accepted reverently by these recruits. It was in the habit of appearing in one or more of the Old Comedies every winter; its elder members knew the traditional business and the traditional effects in each of these comic dramas; and they were glad to pass on this knowledge to the younger members. As a result of this an Old Comedy could always be used as a stop-gap when a new play had failed to please the public; and it could be brought out at a week’s notice. In other words, the stock-company was a repertory company, ready to revive on demand any one of a dozen or more Old Comedies and assured in advance that this revival would be welcome to a majority of the playgoers, many of whom would be glad of the chance to compare it with the performances of two or three seasons before.
Altho these companies at Wallack’s in New York and later at Daly’s also, as well as that at the Museum in Boston, utilized the Old Comedies mainly as life-preservers, to be put on whenever new plays sank under them, they relied upon these new plays for the major part of their season, reserving their revivals for sudden contingencies. But these new plays of half-a-century ago were not widely unlike the Old Comedies in their external characteristics; they also had their soliloquies, their asides, and their bravura passages; they were also more or less arbitrary in plot, more or less artificial in dialog and more or less archaic in method, or at least they would so appear to us of the twentieth century if they could be galvanized into life again for our inspection.
The pleasant comedies of T. W. Robertson, ‘Caste’ for one and ‘Ours’ for another, which were hailed on their first appearance as “natural” and even as “realistic,” have revealed themselves at their most recent resuscitations to be almost as mannered and as mechanical as were the Old Comedies. In fact, the more closely we study the English drama between 1860 and 1870 the more clearly we perceive the influence of the English drama between 1770 and 1780. In the century which stretches from 1770 to 1870 we can observe no violent break in the continuity of the development of the drama.
But between 1870 and 1920 there was a startling change; the drama made a new departure; and this is the third reason why the Old Comedies have been cast out of our twentieth century theaters. The new departure was the result of two influences, working simultaneously. One of these influences was internal; it was the rapid advance of the so-called realistic movement, of which Balzac was the pioneer in the novel and of which the younger Dumas was the pioneer in the play. It is easy for us to see now that Balzac and Dumas were both of them on occasion ultra-romanticist; but none the less were they more realistic than their immediate predecessors had been. They tried to present life as they saw it with their own eyes, animated by an unquenchable desire to deal with it frankly and honestly. Balzac spent himself in the effort to be exact and to relate all his myriad characters to the background before which each of them had posed for him; and Dumas was almost as strenuous in his demand for veracity.
The other influence was external; it was the gradual modification of the ground-plan of the playhouse, a modification which resulted at last in the picture-frame stage to which we are now accustomed and to which all the plays of this century are necessarily adjusted. In size and in shape the theater for which Reade and Taylor composed ‘Masks and Faces’ was very like the theater for which Sheridan had composed the ‘School for Scandal,’ three-quarters of a century earlier; and it was very unlike the theater for which Sir Arthur Pinero composed ‘Mid-Channel,’ nearly three-quarters of a century after.
The theater of Reade and Taylor, and of Sheridan also, was a large building with a stage which projected in a curve into the auditorium, so that the proscenium boxes were in the rear of the footlights. This stage was only dimly lighted,—in Sheridan’s time with oil-lamps and in Reade and Taylor’s with gas-jets. The curve into the orchestra, far beyond the curtain, was known as the apron; and the most significant episodes of the play had to be acted out on this apron, remote from the scenery, because it was only when he was close to the footlights that the changing expression on the performer’s face could be seen by the spectators. As the actor on the stage was in intimate association with the audience, the playwrights did not hesitate to give him confidential asides and explanatory soliloquies to be delivered directly at the neighborly spectators; and they also provided him with the lofty rhetoric and the artfully articulated set speeches not inappropriate to a platform orator.
But in the course of the past half-century the scenic investiture of a play has become more elaborate, more precise, more characteristic and more realistic. The electric light has come to illuminate all parts of the scene with equal brilliancy, so that it is no longer necessary for the performer to advance to the front of the apron in order that his expression may be seen; and therefore the apron, being useless, was abolished. The curtain now rises only a foot or two behind the footlights; and the proscenium-arch is now made to serve as a picture-frame, through which the spectator gazes at the performers, who are carefully trained to “keep in the picture.” The playwrights, no less then the players, have been compelled to modify their methods; and they soon discovered that soliloquies and bravura passages were incongruous with the realistic set and with acting carefully restrained until it was afraid to get “outside the picture.”
IV
This change in the conditions of performance was brought about gradually, unintentionally and by the logic of events. None the less is it one of the most momentous in all the long history of the drama; and we may doubt whether its remoter results have even yet made themselves manifest. It is perhaps the chief cause why the Old Comedies have gone out of favor. They were composed for a different theater, to be performed by actors with a different training, before audiences with different expectations. The companies who were accustomed to act the Old Comedies and who were conversant with their traditions have been dispersed; and the actors of to-day would be ill at ease in these robust and florid comic dramas, but perhaps not more ill at ease than would be the spectators of to-day.
It is not that our actors are individually any less gifted than their predecessors of half-a-century ago, or that the art of acting has declined in the past fifty years; and we may venture the suggestion that the old time performers might be almost as awkward and as constrained in our modern problem-plays composed for the picture-frame stage as the contemporary performers would be in the Old Comedies composed for the apron-stage.
It may very well come to pass in the final quarter of this twentieth century, when the conditions of the theater have been still further modified (in ways we cannot foresee), that the best and most representative of the plays popular in the first quarter of this century will reveal themselves as archaic in method as are now the Old Comedies of the eighteenth century. If that should come to pass, some writer of 1970 may be moved to inquire into the reasons why the problem-play of 1920 has been banished from the boards.
(1919)