All of the above-mentioned characteristics of theatre audiences, their
instinct for contention and for partisanship, their credulity, their
sensuousness, their susceptibility to emotional contagion, their incapacity
for original thought, their conservatism, and their love of the
commonplace, appear in every sort of crowd, as M. Le Bon has proved with
ample illustration. It remains for us to notice certain traits in which
theatre audiences differ from other kinds of crowds.
In the first place, a theatre audience is composed of individuals more
heterogeneous than those that make up a political, or social, or sporting,
or religious convocation. The crowd at a foot-ball game, at a church, at a
social or political convention, is by its very purpose selective of its
elements: it is made up entirely of college-folk, or Presbyterians, or
Prohibitionists, or Republicans, as the case may be. But a theatre audience
is composed of all sorts and conditions of men. The same theatre in New
York contains the rich and the poor, the literate and the illiterate, the
old and the young, the native and the naturalised. The same play,
therefore, must appeal to all of these. It follows that the dramatist must
be broader in his appeal than any other artist. He cannot confine his
message to any single caste of society. In the same single work of art he
must incorporate elements that will interest all classes of humankind.
Those promising dramatic movements that have confined their appeal to a
certain single stratum of society have failed ever, because of this, to
achieve the highest excellence. The trouble with Roman comedy is that it
was written for an audience composed chiefly of freedmen and slaves. The
patrician caste of Rome walked wide of the theatres. Only the dregs of
society gathered to applaud the comedies of Plautus and Terence. Hence the
oversimplicity of their prologues, and their tedious repetition of the
obvious. Hence, also, their vulgarity, their horse-play, their obscenity.
Here was fine dramatic genius led astray, because the time was out of
joint. Similarly, the trouble with French tragedy, in the classicist period
of Corneille and Racine, is that it was written only for the finest caste
of society,--the patrician coterie of a patrician cardinal. Hence its
over-niceness, and its appeal to the ear rather than to the eye. Terence
aimed too low and Racine aimed too high. Each of them, therefore, shot wide
of the mark; while Molière, who wrote at once for patrician and plebeian,
scored a hit.
The really great dramatic movements of the world--that of Spain in the age
of Calderon and Lope, that of England in the spacious times of great
Elizabeth, that of France from 1830 to the present hour--have broadened
their appeal to every class. The queen and the orange-girl joyed together
in the healthiness of Rosalind; the king and the gamin laughed together at
the rogueries of Scapin. The breadth of Shakespeare's appeal remains one of
the most significant facts in the history of the drama. Tell a filthy-faced
urchin of the gutter that you know about a play that shows a ghost that
stalks and talks at midnight underneath a castle-tower, and a man that
makes believe he is out of his head so that he can get the better of a
wicked king, and a girl that goes mad and drowns herself, and a play within
the play, and a funeral in a churchyard, and a duel with poisoned swords,
and a great scene at the end in which nearly every one gets killed: tell
him this, and watch his eyes grow wide! I have been to a thirty-cent
performance of _Othello_ in a middle-western town, and have felt the
audience thrill with the headlong hurry of the action. Yet these are the
plays that cloistered students study for their wisdom and their style!
And let us not forget, in this connection, that a similar breadth of appeal
is neither necessary nor greatly to be desired in those forms of literature
that, unlike the drama, are not written for the crowd. The greatest
non-dramatic poet and the greatest novelist in English are appreciated
only by the few; but this is not in the least to the discredit of Milton
and of Meredith. One indication of the greatness of Mr. Kipling's story,
_They_, is that very few have learned to read it.
Victor Hugo, in his preface to _Ruy Blas_, has discussed this entire
principle from a slightly different point of view. He divides the theatre
audience into three classes--the thinkers, who demand characterisation; the
women, who demand passion; and the mob, who demand action--and insists that
every great play must appeal to all three classes at once. Certainly _Ruy
Blas_ itself fulfils this desideratum, and is great in the breadth of its
appeal. Yet although all three of the necessary elements appear in the
play, it has more action than passion and more passion than
characterisation. And this fact leads us to the theory, omitted by Victor
Hugo from his preface, that the mob is more important than the women and
the women more important than the thinkers, in the average theatre
audience. Indeed, a deeper consideration of the subject almost leads us to
discard the thinkers as a psychologic force and to obliterate the
distinction between the women and the mob. It is to an unthinking and
feminine-minded mob that the dramatist must first of all appeal; and this
leads us to believe that action with passion for its motive is the prime
essential for a play.
For, nowadays at least, it is most essential that the drama should appeal
to a crowd of women. Practically speaking, our matinée audiences are
composed entirely of women, and our evening audiences are composed chiefly
of women and the men that they have brought with them. Very few men go to
the theatre unattached; and these few are not important enough, from the
theoretic standpoint, to alter the psychologic aspect of the audience. And
it is this that constitutes one of the most important differences between a
modern theatre audience and other kinds of crowds.
The influence of this fact upon the dramatist is very potent. First of all,
as I have said, it forces him to deal chiefly in action with passion for
its motive. And this necessity accounts for the preponderance of female
characters over male in the large majority of the greatest modern plays.
Notice Nora Helmer, Mrs. Alving, Hedda Gabler; notice Magda and Camille;
notice Mrs. Tanqueray, Mrs. Ebbsmith, Iris, and Letty,--to cite only a few
examples. Furthermore, since women are by nature comparatively inattentive,
the femininity of the modern theatre audience forces the dramatist to
employ the elementary technical tricks of repetition and parallelism, in
order to keep his play clear, though much of it be unattended to. Eugène
Scribe, who knew the theatre, used to say that every important statement in
the exposition of a play must be made at least three times. This, of
course, is seldom necessary in a novel, where things may be said once for
all.
The prevailing inattentiveness of a theatre audience at the present day is
due also to the fact that it is peculiarly conscious of itself, apart from
the play that it has come to see. Many people "go to the theatre," as the
phrase is, without caring much whether they see one play or another; what
they want chiefly is to immerse themselves in a theatre audience. This is
especially true, in New York, of the large percentage of people from out of
town who "go to the theatre" merely as one phase of their metropolitan
experience. It is true, also, of the many women in the boxes and the
orchestra who go less to see than to be seen. It is one of the great
difficulties of the dramatist that he must capture and enchain the
attention of an audience thus composed. A man does not pick up a novel
unless he cares to read it; but many people go to the theatre chiefly for
the sense of being there. Certainly, therefore, the problem of the
dramatist is, in this respect, more difficult than that of the novelist,
for he must make his audience lose consciousness of itself in the
consciousness of his play.
One of the most essential differences between a theatre audience and other
kinds of crowds lies in the purpose for which it is convened. This purpose
is always recreation. A theatre audience is therefore less serious than a
church congregation or a political or social convention. It does not come
to be edified or educated; it has no desire to be taught: what it wants is
to have its emotions played upon. It seeks amusement--in the widest sense
of the word--amusement through laughter, sympathy, terror, and tears. And
it is amusement of this sort that the great dramatists have ever given it.
The trouble with most of the dreamers who league themselves for the
uplifting of the stage is that they consider the theatre with an illogical
solemnity. They base their efforts on the proposition that a theatre
audience ought to want to be edified. As a matter of fact, no audience ever
does. Molière and Shakespeare, who knew the limits of their art, never said
a word about uplifting the stage. They wrote plays to please the crowd; and
if, through their inherent greatness, they became teachers as well as
entertainers, they did so without any tall talk about the solemnity of
their mission. Their audiences learned largely, but they did so
unawares,--God being with them when they knew it not. The demand for an
endowed theatre in America comes chiefly from those who believe that a
great play cannot earn its own living. Yet _Hamlet_ has made more money
than any other play in English; _The School for Scandal_ never fails to
draw; and in our own day we have seen _Cyrano de Bergerac_ coining money
all around the world. There were not any endowed theatres in Elizabethan
London. Give the crowd the sort of plays it wants, and you will not have to
seek beneficence to keep your theatre floating. But, on the other hand, no
endowed theatre will ever lure the crowd to listen to the sort of plays it
does not want. There is a wise maxim appended to one of Mr. George Ade's
_Fables in Slang_: "In uplifting, get underneath." If the theatre in
America is weak, what it needs is not endowment: it needs great and popular
plays. Why should we waste our money and our energy trying to make the
crowd come to see _The Master Builder_, or _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_, or
_The Hour Glass_, or _Pélléas and Mélisande_? It is willing enough to come
without urging to see _Othello_ and _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_. Give us
one great dramatist who understands the crowd, and we shall not have to
form societies to propagate his art. Let us cease our prattle of the
theatre for the few. Any play that is really great as drama will interest
the many.