The Vaudeville Theatre is an American invention. There is nothing like
it anywhere else in the world. It is neither the Café Chantant, the
English music-hall, nor the German garden. What has been called by a
variety of names, but has remained always and everywhere pretty much the
same—reeky with smoke, damp with libations, gay with the informalities
of the half-world—is now doing business with us under the patronage of
the royal American family.
Having expurgated and rehabilitated the tawdry thing, the American
invites in the family and neighbors, hands over to them beautiful
theatres, lavishly decorated and appointed, nails up everywhere church
and army regulations, and in the exuberance of his gayety passes around
ice-water. He hasn't painted out the French name, but that is because
he has been, as usual, in a hurry. Fourteen years ago this may have
been a dream in a Yankee's brain; now it is a part of us. The strictly
professional world has been looking for the balloon to come down, for
the fad to die out, for the impossible thing to stop, but year by year
these theatres increase and multiply, till now they flourish the country
over.
Sometimes the vaudeville theatre is an individual and independent
enterprise; more often it belongs to a circuit. The patronage, expenses,
and receipts are enormous. One circuit will speak for all. It has a
theatre in New York, one in Philadelphia, one in Boston, and one in
Providence, and they give no Sunday performances; and yet these four
theatres entertain over 5,000,000 people every year, give employment
to 350 attachés and to 3,500 actors. Four thousand people pass in
and out of each one of these theatres daily. Ten thousand dollars
are distributed each week in salaries to the actors and $3,500 to the
attachés. Take one theatre for example, the house in Boston. It is open
the year round and it costs $7,000 a week to keep it open, while its
patrons will average 25,000 every week. On a holiday it will play to
from ten to twelve thousand people. How is it possible?
[Illustration: Persons who secrete campaign rations about them,
and camp there from 9.30 A.M. to 10.30 P.M.—Page 486.]
A holiday to an American is a serious affair, so the doors of the
theatre are open and the performance begins when most people are eating
breakfast; 9.30 A.M. is not too soon for the man who pursues pleasure
with the same intensity he puts into business. There are no reserved
seats, so one must come first to be first served. One may go in at 9.30
A.M. and stay until 10.30 at night. If he leaves his seat, though, the
nearest standing Socialist drops into it and he must wait for a vacancy
in order to sit down again.
Not over two per cent. of an audience remains longer than to see the
performance through once, but there are persons who secrete campaign
rations about them, and camp there from 9.30 A.M. to 10.30 P.M., thereby
surviving all of the acts twice and most of them four or five times.
The management calculate to sell out the house two and a half times
on ordinary days and four times on holidays, and it is this system
that makes such enormous receipts possible. Of course I have taken the
circuit which is representative of the vaudeville idea at its best, but
it is not alone in its standards or success, and what I have said about
the houses in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia applies more or less to
all the principal cities of the country, and in a less degree of course
to the houses in the smaller cities.
Some of these theatres are never closed the year round. Some are content
with three matinees a week in addition to their night performances.
Others open their doors about noon and close them at 10.30 at night.
These are called "continuous" houses. It is manifest, I think, that the
vaudeville theatre is playing an important part in the amusement world
and in our national life. Perhaps we should be grateful. At present it
would seem that the moral tone of a theatre is in the inverse ratio of
the price of admission. The higher the price, the lower the tone. It
is certain that plays are tolerated and even acclaimed on the New York
stage to-day which would have been removed with tongs half a dozen years
ago.
[Illustration: Begged me "to soften the asperities."—Page 488.]
On the eighteenth day of last April the member of Parliament for
Flintshire made a formal query in the House of Commons in relation to
the drama, asking "if the Government will, in view of the depraving
nature of several plays now on the stage, consider the advisability
of controlling theatres by licenses." The honorable member appeared to
think one censorship in the person of the Lord Chamberlain not enough
for the growing necessities of London. As we are no longer manufacturers
but importers of plays, and largely by way of London, it is not strange
that there should be some talk here of a legal censorship for our
playhouses.
So far as the vaudeville theatres are concerned, one might as well
ask for a censorship of a "family magazine." It would be a work
of supererogation. The local manager of every vaudeville house is
its censor, and he lives up to his position laboriously and, I may
say, religiously. The bill changes usually from week to week. It is
the solemn duty of this austere personage to sit through the first
performance of every week and to let no guilty word or look escape. But
this is precautionary only.
[Illustration: A Ballad Singer.]
"You are to distinctly understand," say the first words of the contracts
of a certain circuit, "that the management conducts this house upon a
high plane of respectability and moral cleanliness," etc.
But long before the performer has entered the dressing-rooms, he has
been made acquainted with the following legend which everywhere adorns
the walls: