altogether. When the municipal theatre is freed of the unimaginative
control of private capital seeking unlimited profit, it is still wise
to require a moderate return on the expended outlay. The municipal
theatre can only live healthily in the presence of a public desire or
demand for it, and that public desire or demand can only be measured
by the playhouse receipts. A municipal theatre would not be
satisfactorily conducted if money were merely lost in it, or spent on
it without any thought of the likelihood of the expenditure proving
remunerative. Profits need never be refused; but all above a fixed
minimum rate of interest on the invested capital should be applied to
the promotion of those purposes which the municipal theatre primarily
exists to serve--to cheapen, for example, prices of admission, or to
improve the general mechanism behind and before the scenes. No surplus
profits should reach the pocket of any individual manager or
financier.
IV
There is in England a demand and desire on the part of a substantial
section of the public for this new form of theatrical enterprise,
although its precise dimensions may not be absolutely determinate. The
question is thereby adapted for practical discussion. The demand and
desire have as yet received inadequate recognition, because they have
not been satisfactorily organised or concentrated. The trend of an
appreciable section of public opinion in the direction of a limited
municipalisation of the theatre is visible in many places. Firstly,
one must take into account the number of small societies which have
been formed of late by enthusiasts for the exclusive promotion of one
or other specific branch of the literary drama--the Elizabethan drama,
the Norwegian drama, the German drama. Conspicuous success has been
denied these societies because their leaders tend to assert narrow
sectional views of the bases of dramatic art, or they lack the
preliminary training and the influence which are essential to the
efficient conduct of any public enterprise. Many of their experiences
offer useful object-lessons as to the defects inherent in all narrow
sectional effort, however enthusiastically inspired. But at the same
time they testify to a desire to introduce into the current theatrical
system more literary and artistic principles than are at present
habitual to it. They point to the presence of a zeal--often, it may
be, misdirected--for change or reform.
The experiment of Mr Benson points more effectively in the same
direction. A public-spirited champion of Shakespeare and the classical
drama, he has maintained his hold in the chief cities of Ireland,
Scotland, and the English provinces for a generation. Although for
reasons that are not hard to seek, he has failed to establish his
position in London, Mr Benson's methods of work have enabled him to
render conspicuous service to the London stage in a manner which is
likely to facilitate reform. For many years he has supplied the
leading London theatres with a succession of trained actors and
actresses. Graduates in Mr Benson's school can hardly fail to
co-operate willingly in any reform of theatrical enterprise, which is
calculated to develop the artistic capacities of the stage.
Other circumstances are no less promising. The justice of the cry for
the due safeguarding of the country's dramatic art by means of
publicly-organised effort has been repeatedly acknowledged of late by
men of experience alike in dramatic and public affairs. In 1898 a
petition was presented to the London County Council requesting that
body to found and endow a permanent opera-house "in order to promote
the musical interest and refinement of the public and the advancement
of the art of music." The petition bore the signatures of two hundred
leaders of public opinion, including the chief members of the dramatic
profession. In this important document, particulars were given of the
manner in which the State or the municipality aided theatres in
France, Germany, Austria, and other countries of Europe. It was shown,
that in France twelve typically efficient theatres received from
public bodies an annual subsidy amounting in the aggregate to
£130,000. The wording of the petition and the arguments employed by
the petitioners were applicable to drama as well as to opera. In fact,
the case was put in a way which was more favourable to the pretensions
of drama than to those of opera. One argument which always tells
against the establishment of a publicly-subsidised opera-house in
London does not affect the establishment of a publicly-subsidised
theatre. Opera is an exotic in England; drama is a native product, and
has exerted in the past a wider influence and has attracted a wider
sympathy than Italian or German music.
The London County Council, after careful inquiry, gave the scheme of
1898 benevolent encouragement. Hope was held out that a site for
either a theatre or an opera-house might be reserved "in connection
with one of the contemplated central improvements of London." Nothing
in the recent history of the London County Council gives ground for
doubting that it will be prepared to give practical effect to a
thoroughly matured scheme.
Within the Council the principle of the municipal theatre has found
powerful advocacy. Mr John Burns, who is not merely the spokesman of
the working classes, but is a representative of earnest-minded
students of literature, has supported the principle with generous
enthusiasm. The intelligent artisans of London applaud his attitude.
The London Trades Council passed resolutions in the autumn of 1901
recommending the erection of a theatre by the London County Council,
"so that a higher standard of dramatic art might be encouraged and
made more accessible to the wage-earning classes, as is the case in
the State and municipal theatres in the principal cities on the
Continent." The gist of the argument could hardly be put more
pintally. [Transcriber's Note: so in original.]
Of those who have written recently in favour of the scheme of a
municipal theatre many speak with the authority of exceptional
experience. The actor Mr John Coleman, one of the last survivors of
Phelps's company at Sadler's Wells Theatre, argued with cogency,
shortly before his death in 1903, that the national credit owed it to
itself to renew Phelps's experiment of the middle of last century;
public intervention was imperative, seeing that no other means were
forthcoming. The late Sir Henry Irving in his closing years announced
his conviction that a municipal theatre could alone keep the classical
and the poetic drama fully alive in the theatres. The dramatic critic
Mr William Archer, has brought his expert knowledge of dramatic
organisation at home and abroad to the aid of the agitation. Various
proposals--unhappily of too vague and unauthoritative a kind to
guarantee a satisfactory reception--have been made from time to time
to raise a fund to build a national theatre, and to run it for five
years on a public subsidy of £10,000 a year.
The advocates of the municipalising principle have worked for the most
part in isolation. Such independence tends to dissipate rather than
to conserve energy. A consolidating impulse has been sorely needed.
But the variety of the points of views from which the subject has been
independently approached renders the less disputable the genuine width
of public interest in the question.
The argument that it is contrary to public policy, or that it is
opposed to the duty of the State or municipality, to provide for the
people's enlightened amusement, is not formidable. The State and the
municipality have long treated such work as part of their daily
functions, whatever the arguments that have been urged against it. The
State, in partnership with local authorities, educates the people,
whether they like it or no. The municipalities of London and other
great towns provide the people, outside the theatre, with almost every
opportunity of enlightenment and enlightened amusement. In London
there are 150 free libraries, which are mainly occupied in providing
the ratepayers with the opportunities of reading fiction--recreation
which is not always very enlightened. The County Council of London
furnishes bands of music to play in the parks, at an expenditure of
some £6000 a year. Most of our great cities supply, in addition,
municipal picture galleries, in which the citizens take pride, and to
which in their corporate capacity they contribute large sums of money.
The municipal theatre is the natural complement of the municipal
library, the municipal musical entertainment, and the municipal art
gallery.
V
Of the practicability of a municipal theatre ample evidence is at
hand. Foreign experience convincingly justifies the municipal mode of
theatrical enterprise. Every great town in France, Germany, Austria,
and Switzerland has its municipal theatre. In Paris there are three,
in addition to four theatres which are subsidised by the State. It is
estimated that there are seventy municipal theatres in the
German-speaking countries of Europe, apart from twenty-seven State
theatres. At the same time, it should be noted that in the French and
German capitals there are, at the side of the State and municipal
playhouses, numerous theatres which are run on ordinary commercial
lines. The prosperity of these houses is in no way checked by the
contiguity of theatrical enterprise of State or municipality.
All municipal theatres on the continent of Europe pursue the same
aims. They strive to supply the citizens with true artistic drama
continuously, and to reduce the cost of admission to the playhouse to
the lowest possible terms. But the working details of the foreign
municipal theatres differ widely in individual cases, and a
municipality which contemplates a first theatrical experiment is
offered a large choice of method. In some places the municipality acts
with regal munificence, and directly assumes the largest possible
responsibilities. It provides the site, erects the theatre, and allots
a substantial subsidy to its maintenance. The manager is a municipal
officer, and the municipal theatre fills in the social life of the
town as imposing a place as the town-hall, cathedral, or university.
Elsewhere the municipality sets narrower limits to its sphere of
operations. It merely provides the site and the building, and then
lets the playhouse out at a moderate rental to directors of proved
efficiency and public spirit, on assured conditions that they honestly
serve the true interests of art, uphold a high standard of production,
avoid the frivolity and spectacle of the market, and fix the price of
seats on a very low scale. Here no public funds are seriously
involved. The municipality pays no subsidy. The rent of the theatre
supplies the municipality with normal interest on the capital that is
invested in site and building. It is public credit of a moral rather
than of a material kind which is pledged to the cause of dramatic art.
In a third class of municipal theatre the public body confines its
material aid to the gratuitous provision of a site. Upon that site
private enterprise is invited to erect a theatre under adequate
guarantee that it shall exclusively respect the purposes of art, and
spare to the utmost the pockets of the playgoer. To render dramatic
art accessible to the rank and file of mankind, with the smallest
possible pressure on the individual citizen's private resources, is of
the essence of every form of municipal theatrical enterprise.
The net result of the municipal theatre, especially in German-speaking
countries, is that the literary drama, both of the past and present,
maintains a grip on the playgoing public which is outside English
experience. There is in Germany a very flourishing modern German drama
of literary merit. Sudermann and Hauptmann hold the ears of men of
letters throughout Europe. Dramas by these authors are constantly
presented in municipal theatres. At the same time, plays by the
classical dramatists of all European countries are performed as
constantly, and are no less popular. Almost every play of Shakespeare
is in the repertory of the chief acting companies on the German
municipal stage. At the side of Shakespeare stand Schiller and Goethe
and Lessing, the classical dramatists of Germany; Molière, the
classical dramatist of France; and Calderon, the classical dramatist
of Spain. Public interest is liberally distributed over the whole
range of artistic dramatic effort. Indeed, during recent years
Shakespeare's plays have been performed in Germany more often than
plays of the modern German school. Schiller, the classical national
dramatist of Germany, lives more conspicuously on the modern German
stage than any one modern German contemporary writer, eminent and
popular as more than one contemporary German dramatist deservedly is.
Thus signally has the national or municipal system of theatrical
enterprise in Germany served the cause of classical drama. All the
beneficial influence and gratification, which are inherent in artistic
and literary drama, are, under the national or municipal system,
enjoyed in permanence and security by the German people.
Vienna probably offers London the most instructive example of the
national or municipal theatre. The three leading Viennese
playhouses--the Burg-Theater, the Stadt-Theater, and the
Volks-Theater--illustrate the three modes in which public credit may
be pledged to theatrical enterprise. The palatial Burg-Theater is
wholly an institution of the State. The site of the Stadt-Theater, and
to a large extent the building, were provided by the municipality,
which thereupon leased them out to a private syndicate, under a
manager of the syndicate's choosing. The municipality assumes no more
direct responsibility for the due devotion of the Stadt-Theater to
dramatic art than is implied in its retention of reversionary rights
of ownership. The third theatre, the Volks-Theater, illustrates the
minimum share that a municipality may take in promoting theatrical
enterprise, while guaranteeing the welfare of artistic drama.
The success of the Volks-Theater is due to the co-operation of a
public body with a voluntary society of private citizens who regard
the maintenance of the literary drama as a civic duty. The site of the
Volks-Theater, which was formerly public property and estimated to be
worth £80,000, is in the best part of the city of Vienna. It was a
free gift from the government to a limited liability company, formed
of some four hundred shareholders of moderate means, who formally
pledged themselves to erect on the land a theatre with the sole object
of serving the purposes of dramatic art. The interest payable to
shareholders is strictly limited by the conditions of association. An
officially sanctioned constitution renders it obligatory on them and
on their officers to produce in the playhouse classical and modern
drama of a literary character, though not necessarily of the severest
type. Merely frivolous or spectacular pieces are prohibited, and at
least twice a week purely classical plays must be presented. No piece
may be played more than two nights in immediate succession. The
actors, whose engagements are permanent, are substantially paid, and
an admirably devised system of pensions is enforced without making
deductions from salaries. The price of seats is fixed at a low rate,
the highest price being 4s., the cheapest and most numerous seats
costing 10d. each. Both financially and artistically the result has
been all that one could wish. There is no public subsidy, but the
Emperor pays £500 a year for a box. The house holds 1800 persons,
yielding gross receipts of £200 for a nightly expenditure of £125.
There are no advertising expenses, no posters. The newspapers give
notice of the daily programme as an attractive item of news.
VI
There is some disinclination among Englishmen deliberately to adopt
foreign methods, to follow foreign examples, in any walk of life. But
no person of common sense will reject a method merely because it is
foreign, if it can be proved to be of utility. It is spurious
patriotism to reject wise counsel because it is no native product. On
the other hand, it is seriously to asperse the culture and
intelligence of the British nation to assume that no appreciable
section of it cherishes that taste for the literary drama which keeps
the national or municipal theatre alive in France and Germany. At any
rate, judgment should be held in suspense until the British playgoers'
mettle has been more thoroughly tested than hitherto.
No less humiliating is the argument that the art of acting in this
country is at too low an ebb to justify the assumption by a public
body of responsibility for theatrical enterprise. One or two critics
assert that to involve public credit in a theatre, until there exist
an efficient school of acting, is to put the cart before the horse.
This objection seems insubstantial. Competent actors are not
altogether absent from the English stage, and the municipal system of
theatrical enterprise is calculated to increase their number rapidly.
Abroad, the subsidised theatres, with their just schemes of salary,
their permanent engagements, their well-devised pension systems,
attract the best class of the profession. A competent company of
actors, which enjoys a permanent home and is governed by high
standards of art, forms the best possible school of acting, not merely
by force of example, but by the private tuition which it could readily
provide. In Vienna the companies at the subsidised theatres are
recruited from the pupils of a State-endowed conservatoire of actors.
It is improbable that the British Government will found a like
institution. But it would be easy to attach a college of acting to the
municipal theatre, and to make the college pay its way.
Much depends on the choice of manager of the enterprise. The manager
of a municipal theatre must combine with business aptitude a genuine
devotion to dramatic art and dramatic literature. Without a fit
manager, who can collect and control a competent company of actors,
the scheme of the municipal theatre is doomed to failure. Managers of
the requisite temper, knowledge, and ability are not lacking in France
or Germany. There is no reason to anticipate that, when the call is
sounded, the right response will not be given here.
Cannot an experiment be made in London on the lines of the Vienna
Volks-Theater? In the first place, it is needful to bring together a
body of citizens who, under leadership which commands public
confidence, will undertake to build and control for a certain term of
years a theatre of suitable design in the interests of dramatic art,
on conditions similar to those that have worked with success in
Berlin, Paris, and notably Vienna. Then the London County Council,
after the professions it has made, might be reasonably expected to
undertake so much responsibility for the proper conduct of the new
playhouse as would be implied by its provision of a site. If the
experiment failed, no one would be much the worse; if it succeeded, as
it ought to succeed, the nation would gain in repute for intelligence,
culture, and enlightened patriotism; it would rid itself of the
reproach that it pays smaller and less intelligent regard to
Shakespeare and the literary drama than France, Germany, Austria, or
Italy.
Phelps's single-handed effort brought the people of London for
eighteen years face to face with the great English drama at his
playhouse at Sadler's Wells. "I made that enterprise pay," he said,
after he retired; "not making a fortune certainly, but bringing up a
large family and paying my way." Private troubles and illness
compelled him suddenly to abandon the enterprise at the end of
eighteen years, when there happened to be none at hand to take his
place of leader. All that was wanting to make his enterprise
permanent, he declared, was some public control, some public
acknowledgment of responsibility which, without impeding the efficient
manager's freedom of action, would cause his post to be filled
properly in case of an accidental vacancy. Phelps thought that if he
could do so much during eighteen years by his personal, isolated, and
independent endeavour, much more could be done in permanence under
some public method of safeguard and guarantee. Phelps's services to
the literary drama can hardly be over-estimated. His mature judgment
is not to be lightly gainsaid. It is just to his memory to put his
faith to a practical test.
VII
ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PHILOSOPHY[24]
[Footnote 24: This paper, which was originally prepared in 1899 for
the purposes of a popular lecture, is here printed for the first
time.]
I
A French critic once remarked that a whole system of philosophy could
be deduced from Shakespeare's pages, though from all the works of the
philosophers one could not draw a page of Shakespeare. The second
statement--the denial of the presence of a page of Shakespeare in the
works of all the philosophers--is more accurate than the assertion
that a system of philosophy could be deduced from the plays of
Shakespeare. It is hopeless to deduce any precise system of philosophy
from Shakespeare's plays. Literally, philosophy means nothing more
recondite than love of wisdom. Technically, it means scientifically
restrained speculation about the causes of human thought and conduct;
it embraces the sciences of logic, of ethics, of politics, of
psychology, of metaphysics. Shakespeare's training and temper unfitted
him to make any professed contribution to any of these topics.
Ignorant persons argue on hazy grounds that the great avowed
philosopher of Shakespeare's day, Francis Bacon, wrote Shakespeare's
plays. There is no need to confute the theory, which confutes itself.
But, if a confutation were needed, it lies on the surface in the
conflicting attitudes which Shakespeare and Bacon assume towards
philosophy. There is no mistaking Bacon's attitude. The supreme aim of
his writings was to establish the practical value, the majestic
importance, of philosophy in its strict sense of speculative science.
He sought to widen its scope, and to multiply the ranks of its
students.
Bacon's method is formally philosophic in texture. He carefully
scrutinises, illustrates, seeks to justify each statement before
proceeding to a conclusion. Every essay, every treatise of Bacon,
conveys the impression not merely of weighty, pregnant eloquence, but
of the argumentative and philosophic temper. Bacon's process of
thinking is conscious: it is visible behind the words. The argument
progresses with a cumulative force. It draws sustenance from the
recorded opinions of others. The points usually owe consistency and
firmness to quotations from old authors--Greek and Latin authors,
especially Plato and Plutarch, Lucretius and Seneca. To Bacon, as to
all professed students of the subject, philosophy first revealed
itself in the pages of the Greek writers, Plato and Aristotle, the
founders for modern Europe of the speculative sciences of human
thought and conduct. Greatly as Bacon modified the Greek system of
philosophy, he began his philosophic career under the influence of
Aristotle, and, despite his destructive criticism of his master, he
never wholly divested himself of the methods of exposition to which
the Greek philosopher's teaching introduced him.
In their attitudes to philosophy, Shakespeare and Bacon are as the
poles asunder. Shakespeare practically ignores the existence of
philosophy as a formal science. He betrays no knowledge of its Greek
origin and developments.
There are two short, slight, conventional mentions of Aristotle's name
in Shakespeare's works. One is a very slight allusion to Aristotle's
"checks" or "moral discipline" in _The Taming of the Shrew_. That
passage is probably from a coadjutor's pen. In any case, it is merely
a playful questioning of the title of "sweet philosophy" to monopolize
a young man's education.[25]
[Footnote 25: Tranio, the attendant on the young Pisan, Lucentio, who
has come to Padua to study at the university, counsels his master to
widen the field of his studies:--