Some remarks which appeared in a popular weekly paper concerning Mrs Patrick Campbell's Deirdre and Electra deserve a little consideration. One of the critics attached to the paper spoke of the affair as being an "indifferent performance of indifferent tragedies," and then said it was "a simple affectation to profess to enjoy it," and that it was not, "as some people seem to think, a mark of culture, but only of insufficient culture not to acknowledge that one is bored by this kind of thing."
An affronted critic wrote to the paper, complaining of the charge of affectation and insufficient culture, and was promptly rebuked as a "bumptious correspondent," and told that his letter convinced the critic that he was one of those affected persons whose misdirected zeal the writer deplored. This attitude is not a novelty. Many of the critics, at one period, charged the professed admirers of Wagner with being impostors or imbeciles; later on, anyone who professed to like the pictures of Whistler or Rossetti or Burne-Jones, or of any of the Impressionists, was accused of affectation. When Ibsen was introduced to England the conservative critics raved, and alleged that the Ibsenites (or "Obscenites"—the word was considered very witty) were humbugs; this was one of the least offensive charges. The same kind of thing happened in the case of Maeterlinck. Many other instances might be cited.
It is a curious form of attack. Why should a critic who alleged that he had much pleasure and certainly no boredom from Mr Yeats' play and Mrs Campbell's beautiful acting, be charged with affectation and also with insufficient culture? Of course, the critics are insufficiently cultured. There are thousands of plays and books that they ought to have read, of dramas they ought to have witnessed, of pictures they ought to have seen, masses of music they ought to have heard—and have not—and, therefore, they are persons of very insufficient culture. But the writer in question should offer some evidence of his own sufficiency of culture before alleging that the critic's opinion concerning the play and the performance was due to a lack of culture.
After all, one would seem entitled to express an opinion on a question of art or pleasure without being called a liar by someone who takes a different view. The matter is one of some importance because the attack is insidious and dangerous. The deadliest weapon in the hands of the critic is the allegation of boredom. You can say that a piece is vulgar, indelicate, inartistic, indecent, full of "chestnuts," old-fashioned, "melodramatic," ill-constructed or unoriginal, without doing fatal injury, but if you allege that you and everybody else suffered from boredom your attack may be fatal. This is the reason why the charge is so often made by people with strong prejudices.
There is something to be said on both sides. No doubt the lovers of the severer form of drama, the worshippers of Shaw, the playgoers who supported the societies of which the Independent Theatre was the first and regarded the Court Theatre for a while as a kind of Mecca, are not always judicious when talking about musical comedy and comic opera, and some of them have been very narrow-minded. They have refused to admit the merit of any comic operas, except those of Gilbert and Sullivan, they have lavished indiscriminating abuse upon almost all others, have looked upon Daly's Theatre and the Gaiety and the Prince of Wales' as so many Nazareths. This, of course, has caused a great deal of annoyance to the lovers of musico-dramatic work.
Moreover, some of the austere folk have denounced melodrama and farce, and the so-called romantic comedy, without drawing nice distinctions. This indiscriminate denunciation has naturally caused annoyance and reprisals. Because some critics disliked A Chinese Honeymoon enormously, because wild motor 'buses could not drag them to see The Scarlet Pimpernel, they do not doubt, or pretend to doubt, that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people have enjoyed these pieces. Without for one moment believing in the phrase "De gustibus non est disputandum" as ordinarily interpreted, one must fully recognise that palates differ. If M. Steinheil chose to dine upon cold pork-pie, sausage, cold veal and lobster as the papers allege, it is not surprising that he died, only a little amazing that the French police were puzzled as to the cause of his death, but there was no reason for charging him with affectation in eating such a meal or insufficient culture, though it was hardly the banquet of a gourmet. One may pull a wry face at a costly Bouillabaisse chez Roubillon at Marseilles without doubting that poor old "G.A.S.," and Thackeray too, loved the dish. Some prefer homely beer to any of the white wines of the Rhine, yet many people honestly enjoy those high-priced varieties of weak-minded vinegar; and no doubt it is not affectation which causes some people to allege that they like black pudding and tripe and onions.
The matter has its serious aspect. The attacks made, very unfairly, upon the novel forms of drama by conservative critics, when they take this form of alleging that not only the critic but the audience was bored, and that professed admirers are insincere, undoubtedly are very effective, and certainly are sometimes made in good faith.
There are people so foolish as to think that nobody can like what they do not; also so fatuous as to consider that no one ought to like what they do not; but to jump from this to alleging that the professed admirers of ambitious works are humbugs is outrageous. The butcher boy enjoys Sweeney Todd, the Barber of Fleet Street: why should he disbelieve my statement that others get pleasure from a performance of a Hedda Gabler, which would hardly appeal to him?
Large numbers of playgoers have been kept away from able and ambitious dramas, written by dramatists with a true artistic aim, because of the oft-repeated allegations by newspaper writers, who did not like them, that everybody was bored; also the wholesale denunciation of the lighter forms of dramatic and musico-dramatic forms of entertainment by some of the critics has weakened their influence, has led the man in the street to think that if Mr X. or Y. or Z. can find no pleasure in what he likes that he will get no entertainment from what they admire. One supposes, at least hopes, that dramatic critics of all kinds and grades have an honest desire for the advance and success of British Drama. They will hardly be successful in their wishes unless on each side a little more tolerance is shown for the opinions professed by members of the other.
In some criticisms on certain demi-semi-private performances given in London by a well-known French actress and her company there seemed to be a note not often discoverable in English articles dealing with the theatre. It appeared as if several of the writers had a kind of fierce exultation in the thought that the play represented was likely to shock a good many people—people presumably entitled to have their feelings considered seriously. In the annals of English art there has been rather a scanty exhibition of the desire to do what may be most easily described by two French phrases, "épater le bourgeois" or "ébouriffer le bourgeois."
It is, in fact, noticeable that we possess no recognised English set phrase, such as "to startle the Philistine" or "to ruffle the hair of the Philistine." Indeed, before Matthew Arnold imported the term Philistine from Germany, as equivalent in art matters to the French "le bourgeois" or the later expression "l'épicier," we really had nothing at all to correspond with these terms. For to shock "Mrs Grundy" is quite off the point. This is the more remarkable because the bourgeois feeling—treated, by the way, admirably in Balzac's short story "Pierre Grassou"—has long been the curse of English art, and, as represented by the Royal Academy, still remains a paramount power for evil.
It cannot be said that the desire to "ébouriffer le bourgeois" often leads to valuable results so far as the works intended to accomplish the feat are concerned, although it is possible that some of them have otherwise had a beneficial result. Another French phrase, "pour activer la digestion," contains a hint that such an attempt may indirectly render service to art. Our popular ideas of medical treatment have never adopted the theory suggested by the foreign phrase, which is that when the digestive apparatus is sluggish it is advisable to eat something violently indigestible so that the stomach, summoning all its forces to deal with the intruder, may be aroused to a state of activity. This is a kind of theory to be tried on the dog—not your own dog, of course.
Yet it may be that an occasional slap in the face of the public in respect of artistic matters awakens it from the complacent state of lethargy in which it lies with regard to most questions of art.
The young English dramatist has very few opportunities of making the hair of the Philistine stand on end or activating his digestion; he is worse off than the youthful British painter who, as those that have haunted the English studios and the ateliers on the Surrey side of the Seine well know, can give a kind of birth to his insults to the taste of the churchwarden. Once down upon canvas a picture is at least half-alive, whilst nothing is more pitifully dead than the audacious play in manuscript.
The Théâtre de l'Oeuvre gave to French revolutionaries in dramatic art the chance of setting the Seine on fire, but the Censor has allowed our playwrights little scope. The evasion of his authority by means of nominally private performances has brought into brief life on the boards very few pieces in my time in which one can really see evidence of the youthful desire to shock the Philistine. In Ghosts, Les Trois Filles de M. Dupont, and Monna Vanna, though all three were prohibited by the authority, there is no sign of the particular element in question. The first two are serious, sober studies of social problems, not intended to shock or startle but to educate the orthodox. The prohibition of the third was simply an official blunder in relation to a dignified work of art.
On the other hand there is a trace of the spirit in Mrs Warren's Profession, and Salome seems full of it. Curiously enough, in some of the permitted dramas by Mr Bernard Shaw there is evidence of this desire. Mr Shaw often seems to be saying, "I'm going to make your flesh creep." He is a brilliant dramatist, and also, desperately in earnest, and it may well be that they are right who think that his plays will live along after the death of most English works produced since the public and critics were bewildered at the first performance of Widowers' Houses, and he certainly appears to adopt as a policy the theory of stirring up into activity the lethargic stomach of the British playgoer by devices carefully calculated to make him howl.
Salome stands in another category: the author had no lesson to teach. As a work of art his play would not be invalidated or even weakened if, instead of the biblical characters and phrases, he had invented his prophet, slightly altered time and place, and left out the quotations; but to have done this would have been to avoid shocking people. Of course it is not always easy to be certain whether an audacity is employed with the desire to "ébouriffer le bourgeois" that may be excusable, or with the object of beating the big drum and calling attention, ignobly, to the existence of a work which, but for such means of publicity, might have remained unnoticed. In the case of Salome it is hard to guess to which of these two motives one ought to ascribe the choice of treatment made by the lamentable man of genius who illustrated the truth of the theory advocated by the late dramatic critic of The Times in his work "The Insanity of Genius."
Such audacities often deceive the youthful critic, and, in some of the notices referred to, the signs of youth are manifest in the ill-balanced enthusiasm, as well as in the employment of phrases of praise which the old hand shirks with a curious kind of bashfulness.
In criticism there is a difficulty analogous to that which is supposed to beset the performance of the part of Juliet; it is rather nicely put in the title of one of Béranger's poems—and also of a rather dreary, once popular, novel, "Si Jeunesse Savait, si Vieillesse Pouvait." In youth one has intense sympathy with the lost causes, or, rather, with those that have not yet been found, and superb contempt for the conventional, without possessing the judgment to distinguish the tares from the wheat; every novelty attracts, every audacity appeals, and we introduce obscure artists of alleged genius by the dozen to an unsympathetic world; as age and judgment come enthusiasm wanes, till at last the inevitable crystallization begins and new ideas beat vainly at the doors of our minds.
Even before the crystallization has become serious it is very hard to appreciate the rare novelties of idea offered in our theatres; weariness of stale conventions which affects the young critic in a less degree than the old, does not easily induce one to accept mere outrages upon them. Salome, indeed, has some outrages upon stale conventions, but they are rather stale outrages.
Certain French comedies have reduced unconventionality in morals to a kind of spurious conventionality; in some of them the idea of marriage as a preliminary to connubial relations is regarded as rather shocking. Some day Madame Granier will hide her face in her hands, shameful at the insult of "married woman" hurled at her; and our youthful critic will admire the audacity. Caution requires the statement that it was not Madame Granier who gave the semi-demi-private performances: honesty compels one to admit that these remarks constitute a moan about lost youth, and are full of envy, hatred and malice towards those blessed with splendidly indiscreet enthusiasm for flaunting audacity in artistic matters.
At this, the season of the country cousin, the gift and sometimes receipt of game, the abandonment of autumn underclothing and the overhauling of pike tackle, a question is often put to the critic. It comes from the country cousin, and is generally in these words or thereabouts: "What piece ought we to take tickets for?" which generally has an under-surface suggestion, and might be translated into: "For what theatre are you going to get us seats?" Of course we are dense enough not to notice that the inquiry is more than skin-deep; the question of "paper" for the critics is not one concerning which it is necessary or desirable to write. The answer to the surface inquiry generally provokes a discussion. In a guarded way the critic makes a reply containing the formula "I think you would like ——" which does not altogether please the inquirer. For the country cousin suspects the existence of a lurking insult to him upon the point of taste or intelligence.
The end of it is always, or nearly, the same, and to the effect that of course we "jaded critics" do not really care about any pieces at all, and only visit the theatre because we are paid to go, and that it is awfully unfair that such "jaded"—one cannot help insisting upon the word "jaded"—people should be allowed to act as critics. It has been suggested bluntly that we ought to be dismissed after fifteen years' labour, and of course, if there were a pension—but then we are no better off in that respect than county-court judges.
Yet even the cleverest country cousin cannot suggest any useful employment for superannuated, middle-aged dramatic critics.
No doubt we have been advising our cousins quite wisely as to what is likely to please them, for if we learn nothing else by our labour we certainly get to know what kind of play and performance is to the taste of other people.
Sometimes one asks oneself what truth there is in the jaded critic theory. It cannot be pretended that a man who goes to the theatre three times or so a week pays each visit in the hopeful state of mind or with the expectation of intense enjoyment possible to those who only patronize the playhouse now and then and pick their pieces. Indeed, he very often sets out with the knowledge that he is going to pass a dull evening. If he is unable to guess that, his experience will have told him little and his capacity is small. Moreover, he cannot be expected to take such pleasure in the average play as if his visits were rare, and what has been said about the play necessarily applies to the acting.
Sometimes when watching a work of common quality, a painful idea comes into one's mind, and we wonder how people, compelled to see it night after night perhaps for half-a-year, can endure the strain. What, for instance, must be the sufferings of the conductor or of a member of the orchestra at a successful second-rate musical comedy; of a stage manager compelled for months, one after another, to direct a brainless farce? Of course the people lumped together in the technical term as "the front of the house" have a remedy, and after the first night or two only appear in the auditorium when the curtain is down, or, to be more accurate, just before it descends, when all hands are expected to be on deck.
There are critics that resemble the person who denied that any beer could be bad, and would sooner pass an evening in a theatre watching a mediocre play acted in a style no better than it deserves than at home in a well-stocked library. They resemble the journalist in a story by Balzac who, when blind, haunted a newspaper office and revelled in the smell of printers' ink, and they have been known for their own pleasure to pay a second visit to a piece on which they wrote a condemnatory criticism. In fact, they have the curious mania for the theatre which induces many people with no talent for acting to abandon comfortable careers and starve on the stage—or at the stage door.
That the critic's sufferings in the playhouse are considerable is incontestable, and they are keener at the performance of works of mediocrity than when watching very bad plays. Fortunately there are two sides to every hedge. When the play has any touch of originality, or even novelty, our pleasure is far keener than that of the unsophisticated, and we often perceive originality or novelty where the public notices none. A whole field of enjoyment is open to us in the triumphs of technique which is almost untrodden by the general public. Our poles of pain and pleasure are farther apart than those of the Man in the Street. There have been pieces and performances concerning which the praise of the critics, or some of them, has seemed mere raving to the ordinary playgoer. Several actors and actresses whom we prefer to some of the popular favourites have been banished from London by the indifference of Londoners, and there are "stars" beloved in the theatres who irritate the observant because they have never learnt their art, and nevertheless triumph by mere force of personality.
No doubt the critics, so far as acting is concerned, often—very often—fall into an error and censure acting which does not move them yet impresses the audience, forgetting that it is the advantage and disadvantage of the actor that he need only affect, and must affect, those before him, and that to move only a minority of a normal audience is to act badly. One may write but cannot act for posterity, and therefore the actor, the pianist, the violinist, and the like should not be grudged their noisy, obvious demonstrations of admiration.
Does the critic really get jaded? Is it unfair that the "jaded" critic should deal with the average play? In answering the latter question one should consider whether the notices of the younger critics, too fresh to have become jaded, are more valuable than those of the veterans. Perhaps the two questions should be treated together.
Most critics do get jaded. The critic is jaded when he is saturated with theatrical impressions and cannot take up any more, when new pieces merely recall memories of old pieces or are disliked and distrusted because they do not. After a certain age, varying with the individual, all, or almost all, of us gradually move towards a condition of repugnance to new ideas—a repugnance that becomes hatred when they are inconsistent with the old theories that have grown to be part of ourselves as well as of our stock-in-trade; and when this movement has gone far we are "jaded," are unfit to estimate the value of new ideas; we are still competent to apply the old theories to plays and acting based on them, but of course cumber the ground and retard progress. In youth, having few theories of our own or that have cost us enough labour in acquirement to seem very precious, we tend to be over-hospitable to new ideas and accept dangerous guests.
The notices of the veterans, even of the jaded, upon the average work are sounder, as a rule, than those of the young hands, because the latter very often mistake things merely new to them for things actually new, and they are kinder for the reason that the writers know how great are the difficulties in the way of writing plays from a novel standpoint and of getting them produced when written. There is less violence in their views.
Happy the critic during the years when he is old enough to be cautious about accepting new ideas and young enough to be enthusiastic concerning them after careful consideration, when he is so mature as not to desire to stagger the orthodox by the impudence of his opinions, and sufficiently youthful to be willing to shock the conservative by the audacity of his views. He may then seem jaded because he is not easily moved, but will be quicker to give encouragement to sincere effort, to perceive talent imperfectly manifested, and to appreciate technical triumphs than when he was younger and yet able to welcome novel ideas even if they assail cherished theories.
Probably many of the craft have wasted a good deal of the last few first-nightless weeks in the trying task of reading plays, not the printed plays by dramatists of reputation, but the manuscripts with which we, or some of us, are flooded. It is hard to guess why strangers should assume that we are willing to spend our time in reading their plays, but they do. Some apparently deem it to be part of our duties, and even believe that there exists a Government fund which pays our expenses of postages and stationery, for many of the amateur authors make no provision for the return of their work. Occasionally there comes a suggestion that we are really conferring no favour because the pleasure of reading the play will pay for our pains. Some imagine us to be agents for the managers. Even the proposal to pay a commission if we place the piece is not rare; now and then it is wrapped up gracefully, but frequently is expressed in the bluntest fashion.
Upon consideration of the batch lately waded through several things stand out. Firstly, most of them exhibit no trace of cleverness; so far as one can see the writers are people without any gift at all for writing—for writing anything—but are ordinary commonplace people who, unless their conversation is more brilliant than their written matter, would not be considered clever by their friends in everyday life.
They write farces or comedies, in an orthodox form, which contain a surprisingly small number of jokes or efforts at wit and humour. Their works have the air of being mere preliminary plays—the playwrights apparently have set out scenes and written dialogue intended to indicate the nature of the proposed piece with the view afterwards not, indeed of polishing, for there is nothing to polish, but of rewriting, putting in the vital passages during the process. One cannot offer any useful advice to these people, save that of suggesting they should turn their attention to gardening or golf. They have only one fault, and it is that they have no quality. Such writers, as a rule, have at least one small quite useless virtue—their pieces are not ridiculously unsuitable in point of form for the stage.
A more interesting class consists of authors who possess some talent and no idea how to use it. They write comedies which have some clever passages, some lines witty enough to deserve a laugh, and exhibit capacity in character-drawing, but are not at all in an acceptable form. A comedy in six acts, with twenty scenes, would not be considered for a moment by a modern manager.
We have returned in a curious way to something like the ideas underlying "the unities"; perhaps that statement is incorrect, but, at least, we have put upon our dramatists certain working laws almost as embarrassing as the unities. The average playgoer has no idea of the skill involved in writing the ordinary successful comedy of the present time.
The modern dramatist has nothing approaching the licence of his predecessors. Construction was comparatively easy in the time of a Sheridan or a Goldsmith; not only were they allowed to use explanatory dialogue, in which A told B a number of things which B knew already, because the author desired the audience to learn them; but they were permitted to give direct statements of fact in soliloquies. Such licence has gone: asides are dead, statements of fact in soliloquies are only permitted in formal tragedies. Moreover, having the right to make almost an unlimited number of changes of scenery, they were enabled to present in action the facts which in our days have to be told to the audience in dialogue—dialogue written under severe limitations. In consequence, the mechanical difficulties of construction were then very small. Nowadays, except in the case of melodrama, complicated stories have to be told in three or four acts, with no change of scenery during an act.
Let anyone who doubts whether this creates a difficulty take an ordinary famous old comedy and rewrite it in a form in which it would be accepted as a new play by a London manager, and he will find the difficulty enormous. To the youthful dramatist this exercise is very valuable means of studying the art of construction. When, unassisted by the work of former adapters, he has succeeded in converting half-a-dozen eighteenth-century comedies into three or four act comedies, without any changes of scenery during an act, and has used all the matter of the old comedies in his versions and yet avoided the employment of the soliloquy, or the aside, or the explanatory dialogue in which A tells B what B knows already, he will have learnt a great deal of his craft. This explanatory dialogue is the sort of passage in which a son reminds his mother of the date of his birth, and the profession of his father, and of the period when she sent him to school and so on.
It may be doubted confidently whether a change of style, which has increased so enormously the practical difficulties of writing acceptable plays, has been beneficial to drama. There are writers with wit and a sense of character who under the freer system of old days might have produced successful plays, but are never able to acquire the mechanical skill now demanded, and are kept off the stage by artificial regulations, some of them not based upon essential ideas of drama but in reality upon questions connected with scenery.
One cannot have many changes of the elaborate scenery nowadays employed in comedy, and the illusion sought and to some extent obtained by these costly, complicated sets makes the very useful carpenter's scene impossible. It often happens that incongruities and absurdities in modern plays are due to desperate efforts to overcome these difficulties. Scenes take place in the drawing-room that ought to have been out of doors; things are said that should have been done; and there are long passages of dialogue where short scenes of action would be preferable.
In a large number of cases the manuscripts we read are unacceptable because the authors have not complied with these requirements of the modern stage; and it is impossible for us, with the best will in the world, to reconstruct the works. We can only point out, regretfully, that they do not comply with these modern regulations, and we know quite well that the dramatists will be unable to make the necessary changes. The modern system has had the great disadvantage of putting out of the range of the average writer of comedy a good many subjects that deserve treatment, but can only be handled with success by writers of great experience or those who possess remarkable gifts for the semi-mechanical work of construction, which are not necessarily allied to the higher qualities needed by the dramatist.
Of course, some of the manuscripts are ridiculous: five-act plays that would not last an hour and a half upon the stage and three-act comedies which would require an evening per act; tragedies in rhymed verse not up to the standard of cracker poetry. It is difficult to understand how such things come to be written. The authors must sometimes go to the theatre or read plays, and therefore ought to know that their works are unsuitable, and that they are wasting money in getting their stuff typewritten. Presumably the phenomenon is somehow connected with the curious glamour of the stage. The person who would not dream of trying to cook a chop without some little study of the methods of the kitchen will try to write farce or comedy or tragedy and not deem it necessary seriously to consider the elementary laws governing such works.
Possibly the editor sometimes looks with curiosity at the envelopes of letters addressed to a dramatic critic at the editorial office. Let us trust that in the case of those envelopes obviously bearing a lady's handwriting curiosity is not tinged with suspicion. Letters directed to "The Dramatic Editor" are generally American, and contain statements of tremendous importance concerning, as a rule, people of whom one has never heard and requesting the critic to publish them in the next issue of "his" paper.
The documents forwarded by the office are only a tithe of those which come to the critic officially, there being several ways of ascertaining addresses. Many consist of requests to read plays, and exhibit pitifully the strange blindness of parents. A number are almost according to a pattern and run about thus: "DEAR SIR,—Having been a constant reader of your admirable criticisms and sharing sincerely your views about the drama, now, alas! in such a deplorable condition, I feel that there is sufficient sympathy between us for you to be anxious to read the MS. that I enclose and give me your candid opinion about it ["candid" is generally underlined], and if you share the opinion that my friends entertain concerning its merits you will perhaps be of assistance to me in getting it brought to the attention of the managers." With this there arrives, unaccompanied by stamps for its return, some work of a hopeless character, often an indifferent specimen of the sort of mechanical farce which, even when good, amuses us little.
Occasionally a romantic drama is received. Once there came a really touching letter from a lady in great trouble on account of want of money, such trouble that she not only failed to enclose stamps for return of her MS. but did not use half enough to frank the heavy packet. She felt sure that the novelty of her plot would make up for any trifling defects due to inexperience. The drama, which was full of "Gadzooks!" and the like, and Roundheads and Cavaliers, concerned Oliver Cromwell and Charles I., and included a plot to rescue the unhappy monarch on the scaffold, which was only frustrated by the direct intervention of "Old Noll," who, after a struggle, used the axe with his own hands. It had seven acts and thirty-three scenes.
We read scores of these pieces, and in most cases our "candid" criticism is not well received. Ere now the reward for the unpaid labour of five or six hours has been a postcard explaining that the author can well understand the deplorable condition of our drama, seeing how incompetent the critics are. There is, of course, another side to the matter. A few pieces—a very small proportion, alas!—have merit, and a few of the authors of the few pieces accept the unpaid critic's remarks reasonably.
Another crop consists of letters from indignant authors or players, which contain argument or abuse, or both. The epistles from authors in some cases are so interesting that it is sad to think we are too obscure to have a biographer who might use them. Those of the players have their humours, particularly when from the aggrieved actresses. One deserves to be mentioned; it stated that, reading between the lines, the lady understood the critic to suggest she was too old for the part of Juliet, and therefore sent a copy of her birth certificate.
It was only a copy—there was only her word to show that it was a copy of her certificate; in the law courts they will not accept your own evidence that you are a minor, even if you bring a certificate issued by Somerset House; they want proof of your being the person named in the certificate. If the letter had contained a photograph it would have shown that, although alleged to be only twenty-two years old, the lady weighed about 200 lbs., and had a large, flat face, with an inadequate pug-nose.
In a number of cases one is implored to come to the Pier Concert Hall at Flushington-on-Sea, or the like, because, "owing to your appreciative remarks about my performance as the Second Gravedigger in Hamlet, I am sure you would like to see my King Lear." These give a good deal of trouble, because it is difficult to decline without hurting feelings. Another branch lies in the simple request from people with whom one is unacquainted for introduction to managers whom one does not know.
Fortunately there is another and a pleasanter side. There are letters that we prize, and unfortunately cannot quote, from authors, generally young authors, with thanks for words of encouragement, particularly in relation to unsuccessful work that seemed to have been unlucky; and there are letters from actors and actresses, speaking with gratitude—gratitude unearned, since only duty has been done—for words of praise which have helped to get an engagement or at least to give courage where hope had grown faint. They must be difficult letters to write, since it is clear that the writers generally feel doubtful whether they ought to be written. An ingenious phrase from one of them may be quoted: "I can hardly be taking a liberty in giving a harmless pleasure to a stranger, and I am sure from what I have read of your criticisms that it will be a pleasure to you to know that you have given great comfort and encouragement to one whom you deem worthy of praise."
Last of all are letters from persons who are or profess to be impartial critics of our criticisms, and desire to cause us to change our opinions. An unimportant article—a second-hand article borrowed from Charles Lamb—concerning the effect, on the stage, of Shakespeare's dramas has brought in a respectable revenue to the Post Office, whilst correspondence concerning the wickedness of praising problem plays, however interesting, must have substantially helped some stationers to pay their rent. Fewer but far more exasperating are the epistles in which people express their hearty agreement with opinions which we have never expressed, and give praise and encouragement to us for attacking institutions that we do not think undesirable or defending conduct really deplored by us. Even the obscure are often misunderstood.
After careful consideration, and almost taking the trouble of rereading some of my little essays, we have failed to discover exactly why the letter set out hereafter was written. Apparently the articles have been a little bitter concerning what some of us call commercial drama, even rather ferocious about a recent crop of plays.
Certainly it seems well that the other side should be heard, that the middle-class sensualist—perhaps "the average hedonist" is a better translation of "l'homme moyen sensual"—should be allowed to express his views; for one is disinclined to attach importance to the Philistine observations in the theatrical trade papers or in the interviews with managers. At the same time, some doubts are possible concerning the letter; it seems to contain some implicit evidence that it was concocted by somebody holding a brief, by a person accustomed to controversy; it is written on the Sports Club notepaper, and merely signed "A Middle-Aged Pleasure-Seeker."
"DEAR SIR,—I have read a great deal about the theatres in The Westminster Gazette, signed by 'E.F.S.' I take in the paper because I disagree with its views on all topics—particularly the drama—and I like to hear the other side. Why have you not got a sense of humour? Why do you not cease flogging that dead horse, the British Drama? Do you think you can flog it into life? Do you believe that British Drama, as you understand it, ever did live, or ever will? I don't. There is too much common sense in London.
"Why do you persist in girding at Mr Tree because he gives beautiful scenery instead of what you think fine plays? Lots of people enjoy his entertainments. I don't myself, for I agree with you that Shakespeare and Phillips are tiresome. I notice, by the way, that you even begin to gibe at the scenery and suggest that it is not beautiful because it is too pretty, which is a mere paradox, and of course absurd. Why do you keep howling against melodrama and musical comedy?
"Above all, what grounds have you for supposing that we can have, or ought to have, a drama based upon true observation of life? Every one of us, every day of his existence, is the hero of a drama based upon the true observation of life, and a very tiresome drama too, as a rule, and we all want to see dramas in the theatre that take us out of ourselves. You seem to think that we can and ought to have a drama like the novels of Meredith, which I believe nobody ever reads, or the pictures of Whistler, that are simply ridiculous, or the ugly music of Strauss—I don't mean the one who writes waltzes.
"Even assuming that there are people who like such novels, or pictures, or music, your case is none the better, for ordinary people don't get trapped into being bored by them, and such works can live without general support, whilst drama has to appeal to the bulk of us, and you cannot stick over the proscenium-arch some phrase such as 'Philistines will be irritated.'
"Of course there are people who think drama ought to be educational, and preach moral lessons, and so on. Well, the popular drama is pretty moral, except, perhaps, musical comedy, which does seem a little topsy-turvy in its lessons; and the Censor prevents politics being introduced or religion being attacked. Every attempt to teach what you would call moral lessons must fall because we know that after all the play is not real. I confess that the romantic and the sentimental rather bore me; but you cannot expect a fifty-year-old stockbroker to be sentimental or romantic. My wife and daughters enjoy that sort of thing, and they simply worship Mr Lewis Waller, of whom I get a bit jealous at times.
"I like the exciting pieces and the funny farces, and all the pretty dresses and pretty undresses and the pretty girls and pretty music of the musical comedies.
"You appear to imagine that the business of the theatre is to make the audience think; perhaps that would be all right if it appealed merely to idle people, but ninety-nine folk out of a hundred who go to a theatre in the evening have already done a day's work; even those who don't earn their living are pretty tired after dinner. So it is clear that there are not people enough to support a drama which it is difficult to understand. Moreover, you forget that when we have to read, as sometimes happens, the high-class books, we can skip the dull parts; indeed, I get to know all that I need about the important books by reading the reviews that tear the guts out of them and merely leave the padding behind; but, unfortunately, you cannot skip the dull parts of a play unless it is a very well-known work, like Hamlet or Macbeth, when, if a man has a good seat, he can escape quite a lot of the philosophising passages.
"The solid truth is that we English, like the Americans, have too much good sense to worry about drama. There are a certain number of cranks and faddists who get an unholy delight out of eccentric plays, but they are few in the Anglo-Saxon countries, where good sense reigns. We only take fairy tales seriously when we are children; we never get intoxicated by ideas; this is where we differ from the Continentals. Art is all very well in its way and in its proper place. I like a good picture, or a good song, or a rattling story as well as anybody; but art ought not to be shoved down our throats. You will observe that the Americans, really a great people, are like us in this respect, and none of their plays—at least those that come over here—belong to the intellectual drama about which you rave. When they want to be intellectual they play Shakespeare, not giving us more of the Bard than is absolutely necessary, but letting us have full measure of pretty music, scenery and dresses. Augustin Daly used to do it perfectly.
"By all means have a little theatre of your own and enjoy dull plays in it, but don't denounce our cakes and ale, or think yourself any better than people with healthy tastes who can enjoy such works as Mrs Dot, or The Explorer, or The Duke's Motto. And what does it matter where the plays come from any more than where the nuts come from? Anyone would think you were a rabid Protectionist who reads your howls about imported plays. Art is universal, not local—I read that in some real high-toned book—and if a play is good, don't worry whether its author is French or German or American. You don't grumble if he is Norwegian. Why not? Do be consistent even if you cannot be broad-minded. And, lastly, let the Censor alone; you have flung enough mud at him; I am tired of reading energetic attacks which you know quite well are mere beating of the wind. Your unfortunate reader,
"A MIDDLE-AGED PLEASURE-SEEKER"
It is fair to add that the amiable correspondent is inaccurate in some of his allegations. We have never said that the plays of Shakespeare or Phillips are tiresome, or that Mr Tree's scenery is not beautiful because it is too pretty, but have hinted that it is sometimes too academically or conventionally pretty. And we have not protested against the importation of plays, but against the importation of rubbish no better than our rubbish of a similar character. We have not demanded that all drama should be intellectual, but merely that the intellectual should be given a fair hearing.
It is to be feared that the dramatic critics are not really popular; people have even spoken of them as parasites, without displaying a nice acquaintance with language. On this side of the footlights most people regard us as mere beefeaters, but taste the fare approved by us suspiciously. There is a lurking doubt in the general mind as to our honesty.
The people on the other side know that the "champagne and chicken" idea is ill-founded: perhaps they even regret this occasionally, but they love us none the better. Clement Scott used to be very bitter in print about the ingratitude of players; there was an article by him complaining that those who loved him on account of half-a-dozen laudatory notices turned round and reviled him because of an unflattering phrase in a seventh, and the topic was one upon which he had a means of knowledge quite unequalled. Services weigh less than disservices.
Under such circumstances, mindful of the fact that our remarks are read very closely by people whom they affect deeply, it is most important that our censure should appear just—to others. We ought to be extremely careful that those whom we blame cannot point out that upon their face our remarks are unfair. It is not always easy to remember this, particularly when one is young, and sometimes it is difficult to sacrifice the pleasure of a neat phrase because it may do a little injustice. When looking at such a neat, crushing sentence as "A better company would have been wasted upon such a play, a better play upon such a company," one wonders anxiously whether, in order to write it, the critic may not have been unjust to somebody.
There are dangerous phrases such as this one from a notice upon a play given a little while ago—it runs as follows:—"Mr X. did everything that mortal actor could do for this indifferent comedy. Whenever he had a chance to be funny he was very funny. More than that, he almost made a live figure of a dummy, and that means that Mr X. did more for his author than his author had done for him." How on earth could the critic know whether his suggestions were true? The play was new; the part taken by Mr X. had never been acted by anybody else; there was no basis for comparison. Obviously there was no foundation for suggesting that from the performance it could be seen that the actor did anything not intended by the author. He spoke the author's text, and nothing indicates that he introduced any "business" unsuggested by him. The piece happens to have been printed for private circulation, so that one can make the assertion confidently.
What means, then, could the writer have of coming to the conclusion that the part, as acted, was any better than the part as written, or that the actor had done more or less than carry out admirably the ideas of the dramatist?
There are instances, of course, where a playwright does owe more to the actor than the actor to him. In L'Auberge des Adrets, known in England as Robert Macaire, Frédéric Lemaître put the author under an immense debt, perhaps without earning his gratitude, by deliberately converting a turgid, inept, hopeless melodrama into an almost immortal lucrative burlesque. In Our American Cousin Sothern worked up a minor part, that of Dundreary, into something like the whole play, with the result that a piece which might have died in a month lived many years.
It is well known that in certain classes of musico-dramatic pieces the so-called authors expect the leading low comedian to find his own jokes, or most of them, and certainly Mr Arthur Roberts and others have contributed a bigger share of the effective dialogue than that of the persons supposed to have written the book. In such cases the critic has grounds for suggesting that Mr X. "made a live figure of a dummy," and that means that "Mr X. did more for his author than his author had done for him." The case under discussion is quite different. There was nothing to indicate that the actor did more than carry out admirably the very clever ideas of the author—an author, by-the-by, who happens to be very meticulous about having his ideas carried out, and therefore is in the habit of attending rehearsals and expressing his opinion at them. It is regrettable that criticism should be written in this fashion, since it causes a feeling of distrust. Probably the writer had no desire to be unjust, or even unfair in the comparatively venial way of doing rather less than justice to the author in his desire to do rather more to the actor.
It may be urged, by way of answer, that all of us at times are in peril of undervaluing the efforts of the player by suggesting that he has not got full measure out of his part. Perhaps we do occasionally some injustice in this respect; we may imagine that a character ought to act better than it is acted when in fact the author has failed to carry out his intentions, and it is impossible for the player to make the part seem other than that of a dummy. Even in cases where we make such a mistake there may be grounds for the opinion expressed. It cannot be shown a priori that our opinion is unjust, though a failure afterwards by several actors of incontestable excellence to give life to the part might prove that we were wrong. In other words, the criticism upon the face of it is fair, and here is its distinction from what is being blamed. Possibly it looks as if the whole matter were one of form; even if this be so, the fact is no answer. In some aspects of life it is more important to seem just than to be just. It is of real moment that nothing should be done to diminish the by no means extravagant weight of dramatic criticism either in the opinion of the public or that of authors and players.
A little while ago there was a meeting of creditors. The debtor was a dramatic critic. There was a great deal of talking. The assets were in inverse ratio to the debts and one creditor, registered under the Moneylenders Act, was very wrathful. Time after time he kept making his suggestion that the debtor was able to get something from his friends wherewith to pay his enemies; and at last, under some pressure, he spoke clearly.
He suggested that as the debtor was still the dramatic critic of an important paper he ought to go and see some of the leading managers and get assistance from them. The speaker was confident that they would gladly advance a substantial sum to a man in the debtor's position without any expectation of direct repayment. What happened after this, of course, was a matter of no importance; but it was interesting and surprising to find a man of business believing that the dramatic critics are easily corruptible, corrupt and corrupted. We are very honest, without being entitled to boast of our honesty; we are like the ladies who from time to time on the stage are bitterly attacked by a heroine with a past. We are ferociously virtuous because we have not been sufficiently charming to be tempted. The phrase "chicken and champagne" still lingers, and I have heard it suggested, in the country, that after the play is over we are regaled by a banquet behind the scenes: "regaled" was the word actually used. It is not difficult to answer that suggestion since most of the critics who count are busily consuming midnight oil, not champagne, as soon as the play is over, and then go to bed tired. Mr Archer, in feigned indignation, once complained that he had never been insulted by the offer of a bribe, and, if my memory is accurate, he even suggested a doubt whether there existed a manager who would lend him half-a-crown! He certainly underrated his weight as well as his value. Yet there is a memorable utterance of a manager to the effect that those of the critics worth bribing could not be bribed, and those willing to be bribed were not worth bribing. Still, there have been instances of efforts. A manager, now no more, once sent an expensive trifle at Christmas to one of us, who, embarrassed by it, indulged in a graceful but rather costly victory by sending a still more expensive trifle to the manager on his birthday, and this closed the incident. Into the nice question whether and how far, apart from anything so vulgar as bribery, we are always strictly impartial I do not care to venture; it may be that even Brutus was sometimes "influenced" without knowing it.
It is painful to be honest and yet suspected. The other day it was brutally suggested that the formation of the Society of Dramatic Critics had some connexion with the coming into force of the Act for the suppression of bribery. Foreigners always presume that we have itching palms, salved in due course by the managers or by the players. Not long ago one of us received a letter from a Continental artist saying that she was about to appear in London; that for a long time past she had received much pleasure and profit from his articles in The ——: that she was very anxious that an article concerning her should appear in The ——; and that if he would be so charming as to arrange it, she would be glad to pay any price—the word "any" was underlined.
No photograph accompanied the letter. No answer came to his reply; probably she was surprised at the attitude adopted by him in referring her to the advertisement manager.
It used to be—perhaps is still—the custom in France for players and dramatists to call upon the critics before or immediately after the premières; and not long ago some of the French actresses in London sent their cards to the representatives of the leading English newspapers. The most charitable would guess that these visits to the dramatic critic sometimes influence his notice to an undesirable extent.
It has been said, no doubt untruly, that the rate of pay of the critics of Paris is based in part upon the supposition that their post gives them collateral advantages. In England the popular idea is that the critics are paid vast sums by their editors and also enjoy these little extras.
This idea is possibly the explanation of the fact that editors sometimes get letters from people offering to act as dramatic critics without any salary at all. Apparently the writers of such letters think that the work would be well enough paid for otherwise. Of course they may be merely sufferers from the curious first-night mania which induces a great many people to go to what, as a rule, is the worst but one of the performances of a play. The second, we know, is absolutely the worst, since the performers are suffering from a reaction and fatigue, and there has been no time for improvements to be made in consequence of criticism, amateur and professional. Undoubtedly, in the case of many people, the desire to be present on the first night is merely a snobbish wish to take part in what journalists call "a function," and a large number of first-nighters would attend certain premières even if absolutely sure that the performance would be tedious to them. They are present to be seen, and not to see, although nine out of ten of them are of no importance.
The topic is one of delicacy, since everyone is anxious, naturally, not to write anything which could enable his friends to suggest that he is vexed because nobody has attempted to bribe him. The supreme humiliation is for the person who is willing to sin and never gets tempted. It is a little curious, seeing what large sums are at stake, that the new Bribery Act may be regarded as needless so far as we are concerned. In the past there may have been dishonesty; indeed, there was in the case of one or two very well-known critics. The best story in connection with this attempted briber relates to one of the most esteemed of our craft, a writer who has lately retired from the active service of life. A manager sent to him a present of game, and the critic, feeling embarrassed, applied to his editor, Sir John Robinson, for advice. Sir John, who was rich enough in sense of humour, told him that he had better eat the birds promptly in order that corruption might not be added to bribery.
In the fact that, except in rare cases, no efforts are made to bribe London critics there is an agreeable tribute to their honesty. A good many thousands of pounds are at stake; there are not a dozen critics worth bribing; the production budget would only require a small proportionate increase to provide quite a handsome sum to the dozen, yet the offer is not made.
The uncharitable will say that there are not a dozen, or even two or three, worth bribing; yet, although from time to time managers, or rather actor-managers, allege that the critics have little influence, nearly all the managers, actor-managers included, occasionally admit that even if the critics cannot make plays succeed they may be able to kill some.
After all, a failure may be more or less disastrous: the receipts of a piece which runs only three weeks may amount to a thousand pounds more or less; and, using a slightly Irish phrase, the three weeks may be either a fortnight or a month, during which there are gross takings greater or less, while the disbursements are a constant figure. Probably the critics could not kill a production—the word "production" is ugly, but needed to cover both play and performance—which has real elements of popularity in it, assuming that the management has the bold wisdom to run it against bad notices. Moreover, the most amiable criticisms in the world could do no more than mitigate the disaster of an essentially unpopular production.
Some managers place a rather extravagant reliance upon our fairness. Not only do they dissemble their love for some of us, but they even kick us upstairs, and some of us are compelled to pretend that we can see a play better from the dress circle than the stalls. On a first night in certain theatres there are unimportant deadheads in the best seats of the stalls, and the representatives of great English newspapers are hidden behind pillars or put in what, after the first night, will be fourth or fifth rows of the pit, or sent to Coventry in the dress circle—sometimes back rows of it—and one may well feel proud to belong to a craft in the honesty of which the managers have such profound confidence.
There are moments when the thought comes that managers put some of us into very bad seats because they feel that, conscious of unmerited ill-treatment, we will write opinions more favourable than we really hold, for fear lest what we think our true opinions have been unjustly affected by our ill-treatment. Since this was written, one of us heard something quaint about the craft. He was in the torture chair of the dentist, who was talking of the theatres, ignorant of the fact that his victim was a dramatic critic—such is fame—and he spoke about the difficulty of getting tickets for a first-night, and said that most of the seats are given to the press and the only way is to go to the box office on the evening of the first night, since some tickets are generally sold back to the management by the poor hacks anxious to earn a dishonest penny. The sufferer did not contradict him or tell him that most of us get only one ticket and have to use it. You see, no wise man disputes with his "gum architect," who has too many methods of avenging himself if defeated in a controversy. No man is a hero to his dentist.
The sun was on and the fish were off. Strenuous efforts had failed to put the angler in the position of the gentleman qui peut brâmer ses amis. Dr Tench, the fresh-water physician, whose medical powers have been somewhat overrated, though he can keep himself alive for an astonishing length of time out of the water, declined the most abominably tempting baits. The pike were only represented by baby jacklets: the rudd and the roach were rare and almost microscopic; as for the carp, of course one did not expect to catch the sly, shy creatures. The friend who had been lured to fish in the big lake, modestly called a pond, put down his rod, and, after a few remarks about the fish, which ought not to be set out in print, said in a meditative way, "I wonder what would happen if there were no dramatic critics." To which came the reply, that there would be no performances, since performances without an audience are almost unimaginable, and every spectator acts to some extent as a dramatic critic.
By the way, it is a curious distinction of the actor's art that he needs an audience more than any other artist. The singer, violinist, and other executants of music, if they really love music, can to almost the full extent of such love enjoy performing to themselves alone as much as before a crowd. The painter and sculptor have a keen pleasure in doing their work and seek no spectator save a model; it is true they desire the world to see the child of their efforts, but that is partly because they are creators, as well as executants. Certainly, the singer would sing for pure pleasure in singing if stranded alone upon a desert island, and marooned men would write books or music if they could, and stranded painters would paint. Would an actor in the position of Robinson Crusoe act to amuse himself—at least, would he do so before he had his man Friday as an involuntary and perhaps ungratified spectator?
The hapless piscator—the word ceased to be pretentious after Walton's use of it—refused to bait his hook again, and said, "I mean, what would happen if there were none of you professional chaps who write criticisms that nobody reads except the other dramatic critics?" To remark that if only the critics read criticisms the suppression of criticism obviously would be needless was an easy triumph, so he continued in a grumbling way,
"What I mean is—suppose that after a play you merely gave some sort of account of the plot and did not say whether the piece was good or bad, or proper or shocking, or how it was acted, and so on, would it make any difference? I mean," he added, hastily anticipating a question, "would people go more or less to the theatre, or would the kind of plays and acting change? I suppose it would make a little difference; would the difference be great?"
The answer was "Yes."
After all, the public may award the farthings, but the critics are of weight upon the question of fame; the crowd to some extent acts as jury, the critics are judges; and to pursue the figure, whilst the verdicts are of immediate influence, the judgments remain on record. In the future it will often be difficult to find out what were the verdicts; but there will be no doubt about the judgments. Moreover, whilst, as in the law courts, the verdicts are often due to prejudice and to mere temporary causes, the reasoned judgments, when and so far as reasonable, are based on a firmer foundation.
Probably the theatres would suffer, since there would be less talk about them. For the average Englishman is timid in opinion, and, unless fortified by ideas gleaned from the papers, scamps his conversation on topics concerning which opinions may be expressed. When he has exhausted such subjects as the weather, his health, his private affairs and those of his neighbours, he is accustomed to bestow upon his listeners, in a distorted form, the opinions concerning books, plays, pictures, etc., that he has read in the papers and understood imperfectly; and he certainly would talk far less about plays if he had not the aid of the critic's views.
Of course he would be able to call a piece "awfully good," "simply ripping," "sweetly pretty," "beastly rot," "awfully dull," and to use ill-assorted adjectives concerning the players; but beyond this he would hardly venture for fear of uttering absurdities. A curious humour is that people who have read the opinions which he is misrepresenting, in the papers from which he got them, will listen without patent signs of boredom, and in their turn utter second-hand opinions on similar subjects.
Clearly, then, talk on the topic would languish but for our promptings; and if the theatres were less talked of there would be fewer visitors to them. Furthermore, if there were to be no newspaper criticisms of plays or players, the gossip about them would be diminished even in the papers, for the thrilling personal paragraphs would lose their point if given without adjectives, and adjectives involve criticism of one kind or another.
Would the pieces and performances be affected by the suppression of criticism? Certainly, to some extent. For even if the professional critics tell little more than the amateurs who offer friendly advice, their remarks have a greater weight—partly, indeed, because in a sense they are not gratuitous. All observers have noticed the fact that we rarely act on the opinion of mere friends, however sound. Moreover, no one can deny that when the critics, belonging as they do to many schools of thought and thoughtlessness, agree, they are likely to be correct.
Even putting them on a humbler level, and assuming that some merely express the views of the public, they are serviceable, since the opinions of the world at large are almost wordless, and the author or player unguided save by those immediately around him, and unable to learn more of the public ideas concerning a play or performance than is shown by inarticulate noises and by good or bad houses, would remain curiously ignorant of errors against art and mistakes as to the desires of playgoers.
No doubt, to voice the public's thoughts is not our loftiest task, but it is useful to do so, and there can be no denial of the fact that we know very well what the public likes. It has often been said that we make remarkably bad prophecies as to the fate of plays, but some of the instances quoted are not in point, since they concern works ultimately licked into shape, which, but for the adverse notices, would have remained unchanged till early death ended them.
Real mistakes are made by us in this respect, but generally the mistake is in believing that a piece will be successful which, however, proves to be a failure; we overrate the public taste, or fail to take into account matters quite foreign to the qualities of an entertainment which nevertheless determine its fate.
Of the more important aspect of the critic's mission, his duty in trying to aid in the development of art, the luckless angler was not thinking. Certainly, few, even of those who denounce the critics, will, if they think the matter over, refuse to admit that to the public, the players, and even authors, the humble craftsmen render useful services, quite apart from the value of the work they do for art, by their power of giving voice to the public, whom they study carefully and under favourable circumstances, and by exercising to some extent the function of censor in addition to those of beefeater and guide.
Somebody has forwarded from America a newspaper article called "The Theatrical Syndicate's Reply to Its Critics," to which is given the signature of Mr Marc Klaw, partner of Messrs Klaw & Erlanger, well-known American managers. During the last few years The Referee has been uttering a note of warning about the danger of the establishment in London or England of a theatrical trust. Other papers have handled the subject, and in particular an interview with Mr David Belasco has appeared, in which he explained and vehemently defended his attitude towards the theatrical trust in the United States.
Mr Klaw's article is amusing in its unconscious humour. In one part he denies the existence of certain facts, whilst in another he attempts to show that their existence is beneficial to everybody. The important feature of it is a candid admission that the aims of the syndicate are entirely commercial and that he, one of its principal members, looks upon the theatre from no other point of view than that of business.
"The theatre," he says, "is governed by the rules and observances of all other commercial enterprises. It is not out to dictate to public taste. It is out to satisfy the public demand. While even such a purely business undertaking must be hedged about with essential suggestions of artistic refinement, I do not believe that the public demands of us that we should give over our commercialism. Moreover, the public would have no such right."
There is no need to criticise Mr Klaw's style: still it is rather amusing to think that he sometimes discusses the literary quality of his wares.
If there be any chance of our theatres becoming subject to a syndicate which replies officially to its critics in such a fashion there is serious danger to be considered. Now, according to certain statements by Mr Belasco and by writers in and to The Referee, the Theatrical Syndicate does, in fact, control to a very great extent the drama in America, and there is no real doubt about the accuracy of the proposition that the drama in the States is in a worse plight than the drama in London. If, judging by the ordinary picked American productions over here, the evidence were otherwise insufficient, the tone of Mr Klaw's article would render it satisfying.
According to Mr Klaw, the Syndicate has conferred certain advantages upon all persons connected with the theatre—except the critics and the public. He does not venture to put his case any higher than that of a trade combination, and it is clear that he at least does not consider the theatre from the point of view of dramatic art. It is difficult to accept this with equanimity. A phrase of his—"the theatre itself is a business house, exhibiting the pictures of the dramatist and composer under the proper light and most attractive auspices, just as the picture-dealer has a picture-house in which he displays the best efforts of the painters and illustrators"—is based on a curious fallacy.
The picture-dealer will not hurt his business if, in addition to stocking the Royal Academy works, upon which he relies for his bread-and-butter, in the front window, he devotes a little space at the back to the unconventional efforts of the true artists. To do this costs him nothing, and he may even make money by such a policy.
The manager of the strictly commercial theatre cannot follow the picture-dealer's example; he must risk serious loss every time that he produces a non-commercial piece. In one respect Mr Klaw is in agreement with some of the English antagonists of the trust system; like them, he is almost indignant at the idea that the theatre should attempt to educate or dictate to the public. As a corollary, he and they must be opposed to the idea that the dramatist or player should have an educational value. Do they think that the public needs no education in theatrical art? Are they content that the great half-washed should remain in their present condition, which exhibits painfully a great lack of education? Presumably.
Mr Klaw deals with the dramatic critic. Here, of course, our withers are wrung and we write with a bias. He is indignant because the Syndicate is accused of an attempt to "stifle and muzzle" dramatic criticism. He thinks that it is "to his best interests to have it [dramatic criticism] absolutely impartial, absolutely just, and always on the most dignified plane." Then he explains that it is because certain American dramatic critics have fallen from this high standard, or never reached it, that they have been driven from the Syndicate's paradises. Who is to decide whether the critic in a particular case is "absolutely impartial, absolutely just, and on the most dignified plane"? Mr Klaw and his colleagues, of course.