for as a doubtful digression. In my list the ‘Liar’ is credited
to Samuel Foote, because it could not very well be credited to
any other author. But when it was last acted in New York, the text
used was a revision by Lester Wallack of an earlier condensation by
Charles James Mathews. Moreover Foote’s own play was an adaptation
of Corneille’s ‘Menteur,’—an adaptation more or less influenced by
an earlier version of the French piece, Steele’s ‘Lying Lover.’ To
go still further back, Corneille had taken his story from a Spanish
original, the ‘Verdad Sospiciosa’ of Alarcon. And we may bring to
an end this summary record of the strange adventures of a plot by
setting down the fact that Alarcon, altho a Spaniard, had been born
in Mexico. So we can, if we so choose, claim the ‘Liar’ in all its
many transformations as the earliest play to be written by a native
American.
To these fifteen comedies originally produced in the eighteenth
century, we may add seven plays produced in the first three score
years of the nineteenth century:
Tobin’s ‘Honeymoon’ (1805).
Knowles’ ‘Hunchback’ (1832).
Knowles’ ‘Love Chase’ (1837).
Bulwer-Lytton’s ‘Money’ (1840).
Boucicault’s ‘London Assurance’ (1841).
Boucicault’s ‘Old Heads and Young Hearts’ (1844).
Reade and Taylor’s ‘Masks and Faces’ (often called ‘Peg Woffington’)
(1852).
To the best of my recollection no one of these nineteenth century
pieces has been seen on the New York stage since the twentieth
century began.
I have no right to assume that any other theater-goer of fifty years
of experience would select exactly these twenty-two plays as being
the Old Comedies; but I make bold to believe that my selection
includes all the pieces which demand to be so grouped together.
III
A lover of the theater whose playgoing has been done in the past
score of years may be moved to ask why it is that these plays, which
evoked the loyal laughter of his father and his grandfather, have
been utterly banished from the twentieth century stage, and why they
are as unknown in the playhouses of London as they are in those of
New York and of Boston. To this question it is possible to give three
answers.
In the first place these Old Comedies show the signs of age, even
when we read them. They seem to most moderns more or less arbitrary
in plot, more or less artificial in dialog, and more or less archaic
in method. To assert this is to admit that they are hopelessly out
of date both in their content and in their form. They abound, for
example, in asides and in soliloquies, addressed directly to the
audience; and they are decorated with frequent bravura passages,
devised to exhibit the virtuosity of the performer, just as the solos
of the earlier Italian operas were introduced merely to allow the
soprano to execute her variations or the tenor to attain his high
C. The tone of these humorous plays is too highly colored for our
subdued taste, and many of their characters strike us as caricatures
of humanity, almost fantastic in their wilful eccentricity. In
short, these pieces one and all belong to a type of drama hopelessly
out of fashion, unfamiliar in many of its aspects. In the theater
what is unfamiliar is frequently ludicrous, merely because of its
unfamiliarity; and we are inclined to laugh at it, as we do at the
wearing apparel of a decade ago. In playmaking, as in dressmaking,
styles change with disconcerting swiftness.
This brings us to the second reason for the disappearance of these
Old Comedies from the twentieth century theater. Their departure was
coincident with the breaking up of the stock-company, kept together
year after year with only occasional changes in its membership. Forty
years ago the company at Wallack’s, like that at the Boston Museum,
was a homogeneous body, with customs of its own, imparted to the
newcomers it enrolled and accepted reverently by these recruits.
It was in the habit of appearing in one or more of the Old Comedies
every winter; its elder members knew the traditional business and the
traditional effects in each of these comic dramas; and they were glad
to pass on this knowledge to the younger members. As a result of this
an Old Comedy could always be used as a stop-gap when a new play had
failed to please the public; and it could be brought out at a week’s
notice. In other words, the stock-company was a repertory company,
ready to revive on demand any one of a dozen or more Old Comedies and
assured in advance that this revival would be welcome to a majority
of the playgoers, many of whom would be glad of the chance to compare
it with the performances of two or three seasons before.
Altho these companies at Wallack’s in New York and later at Daly’s
also, as well as that at the Museum in Boston, utilized the Old
Comedies mainly as life-preservers, to be put on whenever new plays
sank under them, they relied upon these new plays for the major part
of their season, reserving their revivals for sudden contingencies.
But these new plays of half-a-century ago were not widely unlike
the Old Comedies in their external characteristics; they also had
their soliloquies, their asides, and their bravura passages; they
were also more or less arbitrary in plot, more or less artificial in
dialog and more or less archaic in method, or at least they would so
appear to us of the twentieth century if they could be galvanized
into life again for our inspection.
The pleasant comedies of T. W. Robertson, ‘Caste’ for one and ‘Ours’
for another, which were hailed on their first appearance as “natural”
and even as “realistic,” have revealed themselves at their most
recent resuscitations to be almost as mannered and as mechanical
as were the Old Comedies. In fact, the more closely we study the
English drama between 1860 and 1870 the more clearly we perceive the
influence of the English drama between 1770 and 1780. In the century
which stretches from 1770 to 1870 we can observe no violent break in
the continuity of the development of the drama.
But between 1870 and 1920 there was a startling change; the drama
made a new departure; and this is the third reason why the Old
Comedies have been cast out of our twentieth century theaters.
The new departure was the result of two influences, working
simultaneously. One of these influences was internal; it was the
rapid advance of the so-called realistic movement, of which Balzac
was the pioneer in the novel and of which the younger Dumas was the
pioneer in the play. It is easy for us to see now that Balzac and
Dumas were both of them on occasion ultra-romanticist; but none the
less were they more realistic than their immediate predecessors
had been. They tried to present life as they saw it with their own
eyes, animated by an unquenchable desire to deal with it frankly
and honestly. Balzac spent himself in the effort to be exact and to
relate all his myriad characters to the background before which each
of them had posed for him; and Dumas was almost as strenuous in his
demand for veracity.
The other influence was external; it was the gradual modification of
the ground-plan of the playhouse, a modification which resulted at
last in the picture-frame stage to which we are now accustomed and to
which all the plays of this century are necessarily adjusted. In size
and in shape the theater for which Reade and Taylor composed ‘Masks
and Faces’ was very like the theater for which Sheridan had composed
the ‘School for Scandal,’ three-quarters of a century earlier; and
it was very unlike the theater for which Sir Arthur Pinero composed
‘Mid-Channel,’ nearly three-quarters of a century after.
The theater of Reade and Taylor, and of Sheridan also, was a large
building with a stage which projected in a curve into the auditorium,
so that the proscenium boxes were in the rear of the footlights.
This stage was only dimly lighted,—in Sheridan’s time with oil-lamps
and in Reade and Taylor’s with gas-jets. The curve into the
orchestra, far beyond the curtain, was known as the apron; and the
most significant episodes of the play had to be acted out on this
apron, remote from the scenery, because it was only when he was close
to the footlights that the changing expression on the performer’s
face could be seen by the spectators. As the actor on the stage was
in intimate association with the audience, the playwrights did not
hesitate to give him confidential asides and explanatory soliloquies
to be delivered directly at the neighborly spectators; and they also
provided him with the lofty rhetoric and the artfully articulated set
speeches not inappropriate to a platform orator.
But in the course of the past half-century the scenic investiture of
a play has become more elaborate, more precise, more characteristic
and more realistic. The electric light has come to illuminate all
parts of the scene with equal brilliancy, so that it is no longer
necessary for the performer to advance to the front of the apron
in order that his expression may be seen; and therefore the apron,
being useless, was abolished. The curtain now rises only a foot or
two behind the footlights; and the proscenium-arch is now made to
serve as a picture-frame, through which the spectator gazes at the
performers, who are carefully trained to “keep in the picture.” The
playwrights, no less then the players, have been compelled to modify
their methods; and they soon discovered that soliloquies and bravura
passages were incongruous with the realistic set and with acting
carefully restrained until it was afraid to get “outside the picture.”
IV
This change in the conditions of performance was brought about
gradually, unintentionally and by the logic of events. None the
less is it one of the most momentous in all the long history of the
drama; and we may doubt whether its remoter results have even yet
made themselves manifest. It is perhaps the chief cause why the Old
Comedies have gone out of favor. They were composed for a different
theater, to be performed by actors with a different training, before
audiences with different expectations. The companies who were
accustomed to act the Old Comedies and who were conversant with their
traditions have been dispersed; and the actors of to-day would be ill
at ease in these robust and florid comic dramas, but perhaps not more
ill at ease than would be the spectators of to-day.
It is not that our actors are individually any less gifted than
their predecessors of half-a-century ago, or that the art of acting
has declined in the past fifty years; and we may venture the
suggestion that the old time performers might be almost as awkward
and as constrained in our modern problem-plays composed for the
picture-frame stage as the contemporary performers would be in the
Old Comedies composed for the apron-stage.
It may very well come to pass in the final quarter of this twentieth
century, when the conditions of the theater have been still further
modified (in ways we cannot foresee), that the best and most
representative of the plays popular in the first quarter of this
century will reveal themselves as archaic in method as are now the
Old Comedies of the eighteenth century. If that should come to pass,
some writer of 1970 may be moved to inquire into the reasons why the
problem-play of 1920 has been banished from the boards.
(1919)
XIII
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE THEATER
XIII
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE THEATER
I
The drama is now, and always has been, dependent upon the theater.
It is only in the playhouse itself that a play reveals its full
force. For the complete disclosure of its power, a drama demands not
only the theater itself, with the actors and all the accessories,
it requires also the presence of the spectators, that we may feel
the contagion of communal emotion aroused by its passionate appeal.
It has to be born on the stage and to prove thereon its right to
live, before it can hope for survival in the study. It must perforce
please the playgoers of its own time and of its own country for whom
it was specially composed, because only after it has gained their
approval is there any chance of its winning the favor of succeeding
generations.
The theater can exist without the drama, as it did in imperial Rome
when the stage was given over to dancers and acrobats and animal
trainers. But the drama can never exist without the theater; and thus
it is that those of us who love the drama of our own tongue and who
want to see it flourish luxuriantly both to-day and to-morrow, cannot
but take a keen interest in the organization of the theater. We would
like to see it organized on a sound basis, for we are well aware that
any defect in its organization will necessarily react injuriously
upon the development of the drama.
It need not surprise us that the organization of the theater in the
United States in the opening decades of the twentieth century has
been the subject of attacks as violent as they are vociferous. I say
that it need not surprise us, because all students of the history of
the stage are aware that the organization of the theater has never
been satisfactory in any country or at any period—except possibly in
Greece in the glorious days when Æschylus and Sophocles and Euripides
brought forth their rival masterpieces in the spacious Theater of
Dionysus just below the towering Parthenon. And we cannot tell
whether or not the organization of the Athenian theater was really
as satisfactory as it seems to have been, since there may have been
many an adverse criticism which has not come down to us after twenty
centuries. We do know that the organization of the theater in Rome in
the period of Plautus and Terence was most unsatisfactory, with its
actors who were slaves and who might be scourged if they failed to
receive the plaudits they begged for piteously at the end of the play
and with its audiences made up of a mob of freedmen often imperfectly
familiar with the Latin tongue.
The organization of the theater in England under Elizabeth and in
France under Louis the Fourteenth was not approved by many of the
subjects of these monarchs; and the better we know it, the less it
approves itself to us, since it imposed harsh restriction upon actors
and authors alike. The organization of the French theater under
Louis the Sixteenth was bitterly attacked by Beaumarchais; and every
reader of the ‘Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber’ will recall
his diatribes against the conditions which obtained in England in
his time. So every reader of Joseph Jefferson’s ‘Autobiography’ will
recall his account of the squalid life led by the wandering companies
of actors here in the United States in the second quarter of the
nineteenth century. Within the past few years Henry Arthur Jones and
William Poel have declaimed against the organization of the theater
in England at the present time; and the latter has gone so far as
to demand drastic legislation to remedy a situation which he deems
intolerable.
This being the state of affairs in other lands and in other
centuries, we need not be surprised by the vehement protests against
the existing organization of the theater here in America. Nor need
we assume that these present protests have as little foundation as
had many of those which were raised in the past.
II
The first thing we find when we undertake investigation is that the
organization of the theater here and now is unlike any other which
has ever existed anywhere else. In Greece the annual performances
were in the hands of the state. In Rome performances were given
gratuitously, more often than not, the cost being borne by an
aspiring politician wishing to win the suffrages of the mob. In the
Middle Ages the performances were at first in the churches under the
complete control of the priests; and later they were out-of-doors on
church festivals, and in charge of the gilds. In Shakspere’s time
and in Molière’s a number of the more important actors associated
themselves together, arranged for a theater, hired the subordinate
performers, and divided the takings at the door, share and share
alike. In these companies one of the actors undertook the function
of manager, representing his comrades and more or less guiding their
fortunes. But these managers had only so much authority as might be
delegated to them by their fellow-sharers; they were not autocrats,
engaging and discharging the members of the company according to
their own caprice; their risk or their profit was not larger than
that of their associates.
In the company at the Globe theater, Burbage seems to have been the
dominant personality; yet from all we have been able to gather, we
may venture a guess that Shakspere, with his gift for friendship, his
solidity of character and his shrewdness in business, was probably
the second in command, so to speak. In the company at the Palais
Royal Molière was the honored chief, to whom his fellow-players were
loyally devoted; but the associated actors managed their affairs in
town-meeting and as an actor Molière shared equally with the others,
altho he received extra allowances from time to time to reward his
special service as the stock-playwright of the theater. This type
of organization is still seen now and again in the United States,
when a company, deserted by its manager, continues its existence as
a commonwealth; and it is the type which has been preserved by the
Comédie-Française in Paris ever since this company was established by
Molière.
The French government provides the theater and also an annual
subvention, in return for which it designates a manager, who has
a stated salary, and also his equal share of the profits. But
this appointed manager is not supreme; he can make no important
decision without the advice and consent of the committee chosen by
the associated actors. He is in fact an executive only; and his
relations with the company depend on his tact, his ability and his
powers of persuasion. If he has these qualifications, and if he is
successful in rolling up the profits which are annually divided by
the associated actors (and which are in addition to their modest
salaries) he may be allowed more or less to have his own way. If,
on the other hand, he is fussy and feeble, and especially if the
receipts fall off, then the associated actors make his life a burden
and the last state of that manager is worse than the first.
Altho this type of organization has many evident advantages, and
altho it was once almost universal in France, in England, and in
Italy, it has been generally abandoned in favor of a simpler type,
whereby the power and the profit are concentrated in the hands of a
manager who is solely responsible for the recruiting of the company,
for the choice of the plays and for the debts of the concern. The
change seems to have taken place slowly; and Colley Cibber was one
of three actors who directed the destiny of the theater to which
he was attached. Yet at that very time the rival theater was most
autocratically managed by an illiterate speculator named Rich.
The reason for the change is not far to seek. The management of a
theater is, after all, a complicated business enterprize, exceedingly
difficult to conduct successfully; and a business enterprize is
always one man’s job. A commonwealth is impossible unless there is
the cordiality which makes for co-operation; and actors are often
super-abundantly endowed with the artistic temperament which makes
them kittle cattle to drive. Even in Paris, it would probably be
impossible to start a rival company to the Comédie-Française,
organized on the same basis. Indeed, the Comédie-Française itself
has more than once been on the edge of shipwreck; its most popular
actors and actresses have deserted it from time to time, Rachel and
Sarah Bernhardt, Coquelin and Lebargy; and its continued existence is
due to the cohesive force of its inherited traditions, some of which
go back to Molière, while others are codified in the famous decree
signed at Moscow by Napoleon.
In the eighteenth century the two rival theaters in London, Covent
Garden and Drury Lane, were managed for long periods by George Colman
the elder and by David Garrick; they had secured as members of their
respective companies almost every actor and actress in Great Britain
who had achieved eminence; and the companies they collected remained
almost unchanged from year to year, new recruits being drafted from
the provinces only as the veterans ceased to lag superfluous on the
stage. As the result of this continuity of association the tragedians
and the comedians knew each other intimately and they were accustomed
to the team-play which is essential to an effective performance.
In the nineteenth century, Montigny made the Gymnase the most
attractive playhouse in Paris, excepting only the Théâtre Français.
Madame Vestris gave a temporary vogue to Covent Garden; and Buckstone
held the reins for a longer period at the Haymarket. In New York
there were stock-companies of a similar permanence, altho of a less
even excellence, first at the Park Theater, next at Burton’s and
finally at Wallack’s and at Daly’s. In Boston, R. M. Field at the
Museum was able to keep together, for a term of years, in fact, for
more than a quarter of a century, a strong and coherent company
of comedians headed by William Warren; and in San Francisco for
a briefer period John McCullough and Lawrence Barrett surrounded
themselves with actors and actresses of undeniable ability.
It was only in the last third of the nineteenth century that
this type of theatrical organization slowly disappeared. When
the Bancrofts had firmly established themselves in London in the
little Prince of Wales’s Theater, they began to engage actors not
for the whole of a single theatrical season, but only for the run
of the piece. It is true that half-a-dozen of the more important
performers remained with them and were provided with parts in play
after play; but there was no longer any permanence in the membership
of the company. The example of the Bancrofts was followed by the
Kendals, by Wyndham and by Hare, and even by Henry Irving. These
managers all engaged special performers to suit the characters of
the successive plays that they produced; and they were thus relieved
of the increasing expense of maintaining a stock-company capable
of presenting any kind of play, comedy or tragedy or melodrama. As
England is only a comparatively small island and as the multiplying
railroads made it easily accessible from all parts of the kingdom,
people from the provinces flocked to the capital and the plays
presented in London ran for constantly increasing periods, from a
hundred to even a thousand nights. And during these runs the manager
was not paying salaries to actors whose names were absent from the
program. So it came about that the stock-companies ceased to be and
that the leading performers became part-time workers, appearing now
in one playhouse and now in another, and yet fairly familiar with the
methods of the other performers likely to be engaged with them for
any new play or for any revival of an old play.
III
The abandonment of the permanent stock-companies and the practice of
engagements only for the run of the piece, was brought about in Great
Britain by economic pressure due in part to geographic conditions.
And it was brought about in the United States almost simultaneously
by a similar economic pressure due to widely different geographic
conditions. The organization of the American theater prior to 1870
was very much what the organization of the British theater had been a
century earlier. In every town of any importance there was at least
one theater, occasionally owned by the manager but more generally
leased by him. It was his private enterprize; he engaged the actors
and the actresses, who were likely to remain with him season after
season; he accumulated his own scenery, his own costumes and his own
properties; he stood ready always and at forty-eight hours’ notice
to put up ‘Hamlet’ or the ‘School for Scandal,’ the ‘Lady of Lyons’
or ‘Camille,’ ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ or ‘Ten Nights in a Bar-room,’
‘Mazeppa’ or the ‘Naiad Queen,’ without invoking any outside
assistance.