On one side the variety-show intersects the ring of the circus and the
curving line of the First Part of negro-minstrelsy, while on the other
it impinges on the sphere of the more literary drama. Its existence is
evidence that the show business is always the show business, no matter
how manifold and dissimilar its manifestations may seem to be. The men
and women who have grown up in the regular theaters are a little
inclined to be scornfully jealous of the less highly esteemed performers
in the variety-show, even if they themselves are occasionally tempted by
the lure of high pay for hard work to condescend to vaudeville
engagements. No doubt, the bill of fare set before us more often than
not in the variety-show justifies this attitude on the part of the high
priests of the more legitimate drama; yet they ought to be broad-minded
enough to recognize merit wherever it may be found. The late John
Gilbert, best of Sir Peter Teazles, and of Sir Anthony Absolutes, was
not a little provoked by the praise bestowed upon Harrigan and Hart and
their associates by Mr. Howells and by other critics of the acted drama,
who relished the peculiar flavor of 'Squatter Sovereignty' and its
companion plays. Gilbert was puzzled to discover any reason why any
criticism whould be wasted on pieces which pretended to be little more
than variety-show sketches. But Joseph Jefferson, a far more versatile
comedian than John Gilbert, was swift to discern merit, and he was
wholly free from toplofty condescension toward other forms of the
histrionic art than that in which he was himself pre-eminent--perhaps,
because in his youth he had often appeared as a burlesque actor, an
experience which he gladly admitted to have been very valuable to him.
After Jefferson had gone to see one of the nondescript pieces at Weber
and Fields's music-hall, joyous spectacles commingled of song and dance,
of eccentric character and of sheer fun, he was loud in his praise of
the histrionic art displayed here and there in the course of the
performance, declaring without hesitation that one episode, in which the
two managers took part, was simply the finest piece of comic acting he
had seen that whole winter. Probably the ordinary playgoers, who had
flocked to be amused by this loose-jointed piece, took a somewhat
apologetic attitude toward the pleasure they had received; and probably
they supposed that their pleasure at the entertainment offered to them
was due mainly to the pervading bustle and dazzle of the kaleidoscopic
show. But Jefferson had a keener insight into the practise of the art he
adorned; and he recognized at once the sheer histrionic skill which lent
the illusion of life to the fantastic impossibility of the humorous
situation.
Jefferson, one may venture to assert, would not have been surprised if
he had learned that an American university professor of dramatic
literature, whenever he came to discuss the lyrical-burlesques of
Aristophanes, was in the habit of sending his whole class to Weber and
Fields that his students might see for themselves the nearest modern
analog to the robust fantasies of the great Greek humorist. Aristophanes
was a many-sided genius; as a lyric poet of ethereal elevation he must
be set by the side of Shelley; as a keen satirist of contemporary fads
and foibles he must be compared with Rabelais; and as a fun-maker pure
and simple, as a comic playwright, willing and able to evoke unexpected
laughter by ludicrous antics, he reveals an undeniable likeness to the
adroit devisers of the hodgepodge of humorous episodes represented with
contagious humor by Weber and Fields. And the heterogeneous pieces which
used to be produced by the two performers who devote themselves to the
dislocation of the English language were outgrowths of the variety-show,
from which, indeed, the two performers themselves were graduates.
It is this aspect of the variety-show, its supplying of opportunities
for artistic development to ambitious performers, and its own
spontaneous generation of dramatic forms capable of being lifted into
literature--it is this aspect of the variety-show which would be
emphasized by any competent writer undertaking to narrate its long and
involved history. That no one has yet written a history of the
variety-show is as surprising as that no one has yet written a history
of negro-minstrelsy. The materials for such a book are accessible and
abundant, since there are already richly documented accounts of the
fairs of Paris and of London, in which the variety-show flourished
centuries ago. There are accounts of the English concert-halls as they
now exist and of the French _cafe-concerts_. The historian will also be
aided by the various treatises on the ballet, and on the circus, and on
the puppet-show, with all of which forms of entertainment the
variety-show has always had intimate relations.
It may be that the future historian will be moved to point out the
superficial likeness between the variety-show and the Sunday issues of
certain American newspapers. These Sunday newspapers are really
magazines--that is to say, they occupy a position midway between
journalism and literature, just as the variety-show occupies a position
midway between the circus and the theater. The magazine pages of these
Sunday newspapers set before their readers a very variegated bill of
fare; they provide photographs of recent events--which are the
equivalent of the moving-pictures of the variety-show; they contain
short-stories--which are, in narrative, what the brief plays of the
variety-show are in dialog and action; they abound in anecdotes and in
comic sayings--which are closely akin to the utterances of the sidewalk
conversationalists of the variety-show. And the variety-show itself is
like journalism, in that it is a modern combination of elements of the
remotest antiquity, for altho the actual newspaper is only two or three
centuries old, there were always channels by which news was conveyed to
the eager public. The men of Athens nearly two thousand years ago were
glad to hear and to tell some new thing, and their wants were supplied,
even if there was in classical antiquity and in the Middle Ages no
organization faintly anticipating the marvelous machinery for
collecting and distributing information possessed by the newspapers of
the twentieth century.
(1912.)