THE MANCHESTER STAGE
In other things the knowing artist may
Judge better than the people; but a play
(Made for delight, and for no other use)
If you approve it not, has no excuse.
WALLER: “Prologue to the Maid’s Tragedy.”
A good history of the Manchester stage remains to be written.
Theatrically, the city has a very noble past, and there are many signs
that its future may be equally illustrious. Probably the red-letter
day in the annals of the Manchester stage is October 15, 1864, when
Charles Calvert, with a performance of “The Tempest,” started those
ten years of Shakespearean revivals which are now noteworthy in the
wider history of the drama of England. I once heard a lover of art,
who was also a banker, say that Manchester had but three things to her
credit, the Rylands Library, Ford Madox Brown’s frescoes in the Town
Hall, and Charles Calvert’s Shakespearean revivals. I told him that he
did not know the water-colours in the Whitworth Gallery or the
old-world romance of the Chetham Hospital, and he was bound to admit,
after inspection of these securities, that he would have to increase
our artistic overdraft.
The drama owes many debts to Charles Calvert. He was the first to
recognise the merit of Henry Irving, and engaged him for the stock
company at the Theatre Royal in 1860.
“Why on earth did you engage that raw fellow?” asked an influential
friend of Calvert at a rehearsal. Calvert looked at Irving, and
theatrically touched his own forehead, intimating that he considered
that Irving had brains, and that that was the reason of the
engagement. Those five years which Irving spent in the company under
Charles Calvert must have had a deep influence in moulding his
ambitions and educating his ideals.
But in 1886, when I came to Manchester, the old stock companies were
gone and forgotten. The days of the touring companies were in their
prime, and the _cognoscenti_――they would not like to be called merely
the “knowing ones”――deplored in eloquent prose the splendours of the
theatrical past. Had they aspired to verse they would have sung with
Wordsworth:――
“A jolly place,” said he, “in times of old;
But something ails it now: the spot is cursed.”
Yet speaking as one whose duty it was to go to the theatre every week
and write about it, I doubt if any city had better theatrical fare
than Manchester in the later eighties.
For in those days, mind you, we were a humble people. Those learned
young gentlemen who can see no theatrical merit in the leading London
actors, and will find no virtue in a play that entertains the general
public, had not yet left those dour Nonconformist nurseries, where
doubtless they were raised. It was, if not a better world, certainly a
merrier world, and the poor, old-fashioned, uneducated pagans in it
actually went to the playhouse after a hard day’s work in search of
entertainment. What is more, they got it. And being good judges of
acting, and keen about the actor’s art, there came to meet them a
never-ending procession of the best actors from London, bringing down
their own companies in pieces that had met with success in town.
Turning over some playbills of 1887 it is impossible not to realise
that the theatre-goer of that date had the opportunity of seeing a
higher and more varied standard of acting than it is possible to
witness in the Manchester of to-day. In that one year we had Mr.
Farren, that master of old English comedy, in his three greatest
studies, Sir Peter Teazle, Sir Anthony Absolute, and Lord Ogleby. One
wishes Charles Lamb could have lived to see Farren, and describe his
Sir Peter. Lamb only saw King, the comic, fretful, old bachelor, but
left on record his judgment that Sir Peter was to be played as a real
man, a neighbour, or old friend, which judgment Farren put into
execution. Then Miss Mary Anderson was on tour with the most ardent,
handsome, and intelligent _jeune premier_ of our time, Forbes-Robertson.
They were playing “Pygmalion and Galatea,” “Romeo and Juliet,” and “As
You Like It.” Barry Sullivan was still with us, and those who never
saw him in “Richard III.” and “The Gamester” will not be able nowadays
to realise what was meant by the “high and palmy” school of acting,
and what were its merits and shortcomings. Up against this interesting
memory of bygone acting was young Benson, with his fresh, intelligent,
new methods and clever comrades, capturing the hearts and winning the
intellectual sympathy of an ever-widening circle of play-goers.
In the same year, too, Wilson Barrett brought “Claudian” and the
“Silver King,” with the company and scenery that he had with him in
London and America; Toole and Edward Terry paid us regular visits, and
Mr. and Mrs. Kendal gave us a notable revival of “Lady Clancarty.”
Sarah Bernhardt paid Manchester a flying visit with performances of
“Adrienne” and “Theodora”; and last, but not least, Henry Irving and
Ellen Terry rejoiced the hearts of Manchester playgoers with what we
always regarded as the festival week of our theatrical calendar.
When I hear people groaning over the theatre in the provinces of
twenty-five years ago, I would ask them to read that list of events
and honestly say whether the programme of to-day can beat it. It may
be said that there are no such stars in the firmament to-day, and,
therefore, they cannot shine upon Manchester. But that is not wholly
true. There are great actors to-day and great productions, but
nowadays they are not brought to Manchester.
The main reason why that is so is probably a commercial one. For some
time a dead set was made against “eminent” actors and their London
productions by mistaken friends of another type of drama. Certain
writers on the drama in Manchester made themselves “laughing stogs to
other men’s humours,” as a Welshman may say, by exalting the players
on the eastern side of Peter Street into a glorious company of
apostles, and deliberately tormenting the actors on the western side
of the thoroughfare as though they were a noble army of martyrs. No
doubt it injured business, and kept some of the bigger actors away
from Manchester.
But, in my view, the great days of touring companies in the provinces
are over. A London success now has a bigger chance in Australia and a
less certain but, of course, more remunerative chance in America. And
although a run round some of the big towns in England may be included
in the future plans of the more popular actors, yet I think it is
quite unlikely that Manchester will ever see so many first-rate
performances on the road as there were in 1887. Nor is this altogether
a matter of regret. I have always been an optimist about the English
theatre, and have never believed that it would fall into the hands of
either financiers or cranks. And in watching the evolution of the
theatre in Manchester it has been manifest for a long time that some
form of repertory theatre was on the way.
The beginnings were made, I think, in 1893, when Mr. Louis Calvert
produced “A Blot in the ’Scutcheon” for Mr. Charles Hughes, who, as
chairman of Convocation of the University, gave a theatrical party to
his guests. He was the leading spirit of our Independent Theatre,
which produced “Candida,” “The Master Builder,” “Love’s Labour Lost,”
and “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” without scenery, and many other
interesting plays, in 1894. Louis Calvert was also associated with
Flanagan in the earlier Shakespearean revivals at the Queen’s, whence
he was spirited away by Sir Herbert Tree to act in and assist him with
several memorable Shakespearean productions in London. Robert
Courtneidge, too, must not be forgotten as a Manchester manager, who,
at the Prince’s Theatre, gave two beautiful and reverently intelligent
productions of “As You Like It” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In
these editions everything was done for the text and the play, and the
actor’s art was not hampered, but the adornment, exquisite as it was,
clothed the drama without overwhelming it with finery.
These were the forerunners of Miss Horniman’s Repertory Theatre, which
has won for Manchester such renown in the world of the drama, coming
as it did at exactly the right moment, and coming――as surely it has
come――to stay.
I am not one of those who has ever indulged in extravagant hymns of
praise over any of the particular plays and artists of the Manchester
Repertory Theatre. I think its greatest enemies have been its
“die-hard” friends, who insisted, in season and out of season, that
every actor and actress upon its stage was a genius with a consummate
knowledge of technique, and that every play produced by a local
playwright could only possibly have been improved upon by some Belgian
or Dutchman. As I have always said, the acting is so good and many of
the plays are so interesting that they deserve to be judged by the
highest standard, and, to my mind, the highest standard of acting and
production is to be found in the London theatres. There is no doubt
that the old stock companies had a great advantage in coming in
contact with the star actor from time to time and playing with him. In
the modern repertory theatre this is not so. There must necessarily be
a certain touch of the amateur in a repertory company. For myself, I
recognise it, and I like it, but I see no use in telling an amateur
that he or she has great technical skill and nothing to learn. One
does not expect to find a series of golf champions on a local green,
and we should not expect or pretend to a series of star actors in a
repertory company.
When the repertory system becomes more universal, and broadens out on
the wide healthy lines of providing entertainment for all classes of
people and giving smaller proportion of time, say one day in seven, to
the cranks and pulpiteers of the drama, we shall find the repertory
theatres getting a greater hold on local patriotism, and one by one
growing stronger in good work and higher ambitions, until at last they
unite into what will be in truth, as well as in name, a national
theatre.
There is one thing in which I heartily agree with the expressed
opinions of many well-known actors. The Manchester audience is a great
audience. Once captured and really entertained, the Manchester
audience is a fearless and loyal friend. I have often been delighted
to read in local critical columns the solemn excommunication of a
play――especially an amusing play――and to note the pompous warning to
the audience that if they are amused by this kind of thing they
condemn their mental condition, and their moral purpose is ended; and
then to go into the theatre and hear a Manchester audience in thorough
enjoyment of what their guardian high priest has forbidden. Only the
other day I read that “Our Boys” visited the Gaiety Theatre, and the
play “_mirabile dictu_ went amazingly.” The Manchester digestion is
good, its appetite is healthy, and many years of theatrical diet akin
to the highest and most moving cheese has not destroyed the taste for
a slice of honest plum cake. This kind of pedagogic critical
literature is like the leader-writer’s essay. It fills the columns of
the newspaper very decoratively. But when the polling boxes are turned
out on the table and the votes are counted, you can appraise its
value. It is the box office that speaks.
I am pleased to remember that on the few occasions I have ventured on
dramatic productions I have had the Manchester audience with me.
Perhaps they carry toleration too far, but I state the facts as they
occurred. It was always certain to my mind from the days when I ran a
toy theatre and cut the characters out of cardboard――would that some
of the live actors could be cut out of their cardboard!――that I should
some day produce a real piece of my own in a real theatre, but I had
waited so long about it that really the ambition had nigh gone to
rest. It was Louis Calvert who aroused it when he was staying with me
at Nevin, in North Wales, in 1900. “Why not write a play?” he asked,
and, of course, I responded too readily to the suggestion, and no
sooner was his back turned than I was astride my hobby-horse and
galloping round the history of the world in search of a subject.
I reined up in the paddock of her gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth,
where I had always felt at home since I failed to gain a prize for her
biography at the early age of nine. I wrote a splendid play about
Queen Elizabeth. It was quite modern in its construction. Everyone sat
down and talked as long as he or she wanted to, and went in and out
without any dramatic reason. There were very many acts, and as many
scenes to the acts as Shakespeare himself could have supplied, and
there was a lot of real history in it lifted from Froude. It was a
valuable human document, and from the standpoint of the elect of
to-day it was a play. I doubt, however, if in its original form it
would ever have been produced. The supply of that kind of thing seems
far larger than the demand, and my ugly duckling got turned into a
really well-behaved swan through Louis Calvert’s collaboration.
“Collaboration” is a form of literary wrestling that is delightful
exercise, but can only be indulged in with advantage by good-tempered
friends. My partnership with Calvert began in this way. I took the
script of my play up to London, and read it to him. I did not read all
of it, for it was a warm summer afternoon, and he fell asleep before I
was a quarter through with it――somewhere about Act ii., scene 7, if I
remember right. In the end he dismissed it with costs――the costs
taking the form of breakfasting with me the next morning at my hotel.
I remember we had curried chicken for breakfast, and I have mentally
associated curried chicken and dramatic construction ever since.
It was during his second helping of chicken that Calvert suddenly
announced that there was an “idea” in my play. The words, the history,
the construction, and everything else were useless, but the “idea” was
there. At the time I thought this estimate unduly pessimistic, now I
regard it as glowing with the warmth of friendship or curry or both.
Louis Calvert reduced the “idea” to its lowest common denominator of
four scenes. With easy hand he unbarred the gates of light and
extinguished by the brilliancy of a few suggestions the petty
historical sequences that I had borrowed from Froude, and within a few
months out of the ashes of my old play arose “England’s Elizabeth,”
which was produced at the Theatre Royal on Monday, April 29, 1901.
I remember that first night very well indeed. There was a crowded
house, and I was eager to see how far the play was going to interest
the public. At the same time I had some doubt how far I was entitled
to take a prominent part in the proceedings as half the author of a
play on its first-night production. I felt rather like a father at a
christening, proud and happy, but ready to give the real credit of the
affair to my partner.
I happened to find myself in a box with my back more or less to the
stage, and I found that I could best measure the way the piece was
going, as I used to do speeches to the jury in the old days, by fixing
on the most unpromising face in the jury and watching it closely to
see if it developed any interest in the proceedings. I chose an old
gentleman in the third row of the stalls, who turned out to have a
very kindly nature, for he began to enjoy himself in the first scene,
and refused his wife’s entreaties to come away and catch his train in
the middle of the last act.
One performance among many good ones stands out in my memory. It was
that of Mr. Edmond Gwenn as an old gardener. During the rehearsals Mr.
Gwenn, no doubt in the interests of the piece, had uttered sentiments
of his own, which in my conceited way I thought inferior to the words
I had written. Diffidently I approached him on the subject, and
suggested that beautiful as his words were mine had a sort of first
mortgage on his attention, as being prior in date if not in relevance.
With great charm of manner Mr. Gwenn assured me that on the first
night I should have every word as written, and I shall never forget
not only hearing the words, such as they were, but having contributed
to the success of one of the most perfect pieces of character acting I
ever witnessed. Some day “England’s Elizabeth” will be discovered. I
know it is a good play, for many years afterwards a scene-shifter in
London asked me after it, and assured me that he had seen “a good deal
of it” when he was at the Theatre Royal. Moreover, the lady who took
the coats and hats told me that she had seen it several times, and
always went in at the end of the last act to cry. These testimonials
are unanswerable. Anyhow, the play is worth reviving if only for its
first gardener.
It was a popular success with its first-night audience, and at the end
of the play I was hurried into the wings, and Mr. Calvert and I went
forward and made our bow. It was not a joint bow, we each made one of
our own. Calvert’s was far the best, mine was but an indifferent
affair, and then when the curtain went down there were cries of
“speech,” and Calvert insisted that I must go on alone and say
something. I must have been very nervous, for I made a wretched mess
of it. What I really intended to say, of course, was that all the best
things in the play were Calvert’s; but what happened was that having
thanked the audience for our kindly reception, I concluded: “I have
often been asked as to this collaboration, which parts of the play I
have written, and which parts Mr. Calvert has written. I can tell you
in a sentence. All the parts that you have enjoyed are mine, the rest
are Calvert’s.” There was a yell of delight. I made a really beautiful
bow this time and retired to the wings, where Calvert was shaking a
friendly fist at me in histrionic anger.
Since then I have been in at many first nights in which I was
interested, and several of them have been in Manchester, where, as I
have already said, I have found a kindly welcome. And although I have
no cause to complain, but rather the reverse, of any want of kindness
in any audiences to whom I have submitted my work, I must admit that I
think the dullest first nights I have ever attended are those of a
play intended to be amusing which is produced in London. For the house
is full of guests, most of whom are regular diners-out at meals of
this kind, with very little appetite for ordinary cake, or else they
are critics on duty. And at no time are these latter more to be pitied
than on the first night of a farce. If they went to be amused they
would cease to be critics, and as they go to criticise they are little
likely to be amused.
I have been at two first nights of farces in which I was interested.
What I have seen is a strenuous battle between the actors and a great
part of the audience, a sort of tug-of-war to see if the actors could
tug any laugh out of the weary play-goers in front. In the two battles
I witnessed, the actors won. In the first of them a curious incident
occurred. A well-known and ample author――let us hide the breadth of
his identity behind the letter C―――― ――not being to the manner born of
first nights, was so tickled at the early humours of the opening
scenes of “What the Butler Saw” that he laughed by himself in his
unprecedented radical way all through the first act. His laughter was
like a minute gun at sea, exploding at intervals amidst unechoing
icebergs. There from the second row of the dress circle came the
laughter of a kind heart as the merriment of a little child expressed
in the music of a bull of Basan. The sound of it frightened the actors
horribly, and my friend and collaborator, Frederick Mouillot, rushed
round to the stage to assure the terrified artists that it really was
laughter. For apparently it is not etiquette to extend any sort of
notice to the first act on a first night. But later on everyone joined
in and stooped to enjoy the fun for the moment, though C―――― continued
to lead by several octaves.
Some day in a better world I hope to write as funny a farce, with as
excellent a collaborator as Mouillot, and to have it as well acted,
and I shall play it in a big theatre with the roof off. And there
shall be no one in front but shall have the heart of a little child
and the lungs of a giant. It will always be a dull thing to produce a
farce written for young hearts before an audience with wrinkled
livers.
And I think one of the most amusing judgments ever made after one of
my Manchester first nights was delivered by an anonymous amateur
critic on a post-card, which was placed upon my desk as I started my
work in Quay Street on the morning after the production of “The
Captain of the School.” I have received many absurd anonymous
communications in my time, for there are a great many folk whose only
taste in life seems to be to expand the postal revenue in this
fashion. Some of them are crudely coarse and objectionable, but this
post-card breathed a genuine sincerity and honesty of dispraise that
was admirable. It ran:
A VOTER.
Sir,――I went last night to see your play. It was like your
verdicts――Rotten!
Rough on the playwright, of course, but does it not contain a subtle
compliment to the Judge? I extend to my anonymous correspondent my
best thanks. No post-card that I have ever carried about in my pocket
has given greater pleasure to my friends.
That first night of “The Captain of the School,” on November 14, 1910,
had a keen interest for me, inasmuch as it was the first appearance of
my daughter, Miss Dorothy Parry, so that, as it were, from a domestic
point of view we were having two first nights at the same time. She
made an excellent success, which she repeated in London and elsewhere;
but certainly she ought to agree with my appreciation of the
Manchester audience. May it be my good fortune to risk another argosy
among its friendly waves before the end of the last act.