Lotta, they were supported by his company clothed from his wardrobe,
with properties from his own storehouse and with the primitive
stock-scenery which had been seen in a hundred other plays. The
manners and customs of those distant days are preserved for us in
the autobiographies of Anna Cora Mowatt, of Joseph Jefferson, and of
Clara Morris. More often than not, the manager was himself an actor,
Burton or Wallack appearing now and again on his own stage; and his
wife was not infrequently the leading lady. Sometimes the manager was
a playwright, William Dunlap or Augustin Daly; and then he found his
profit in presenting his own pieces. Sometimes he had been recruited
from some other calling, R. M. Field or A. M. Palmer; but always was
he devoted to the drama, thoroughly familiar with the traditions of
the stage, and thoroughly enjoying his association with the theater.
He was a local institution; and sometimes, Caldwell in New Orleans or
Rice in Chicago, he was one of the leading citizens of the town.
When a popular minstrel-company wanted the theater for a week or two,
the manager was sometimes obliging enough to send his company to
play in a smaller city if its “opera-house” chanced to be unoccupied.
He did this more willingly when a glittering spectacle, the ‘Black
Crook’ or the ‘Twelve Temptations’ asked him to turn out; but this
complaisance hastened his downfall, since his well-worn scenery had
a pallid look after the effulgent splendor of the interloper. Then,
after a while, one and another of the more prominent stars (Joseph
Jefferson, first of all, as he confesses in his autobiography),
dissatisfied with the inadequacy of the mounting of their plays
and disgusted by the carelessness and incompetence with which they
were only too often supported by the stock-actors, began to engage
companies of their own, with all the performers specially chosen
for the characters they were to impersonate; they arranged to carry
with them the special scenery required by the plays they intended to
present that season. Soon there were so many of these, that at least
one theater in each of the larger cities gave up its own company
and relied exclusively upon these combinations, as the travelling
companies were then called.
For a few years the managers of the stock-company houses made a
valiant fight; but in the end they had to retire from the field,
defeated. It had been a severe blow to them, when they were
deprived of the potent attraction of the stars. Without these stars,
and in fact in opposition to them, the performances given by the
stock-companies were found to be inferior. The local scenery, the
local costumes and the local properties were discovered to be mere
make-shifts, unworthy at their best, and often worse than unworthy,
especially when they were compared with the stricter propriety of
the scenic equipment provided for the elaborate productions sent
out from New York. The local offerings appeared to be provincial,
whereas those which were brought from afar had on them the stamp of
metropolitan approval.
So it was that sooner or later the managers of stock-companies had
to withdraw from a lost battle. Some of them kept their theaters and
sank to the humble position of janitors. Some moved to New York and
became producers on their own account and managers of travelling
companies. Some retired to obscurity; and some died in time to escape
bankruptcy. Whether the vanquishing of the local stock-companies by
the travelling companies was advantageous or not, it was inevitable
since it was the result of inexorable economic conditions, in
conjunction with equally inexorable geographic conditions. It was a
swift and startling change in the methods of conducting the business
of the theater, a change brought about by forces wholly beyond the
control of those engaged in that business.
Before the end of the nineteenth century the organization of the
theater in the United States became what it is now. In New York, in
all the larger cities and in most of the smaller, the playhouses
are controlled by one or the other of the two rival syndicates.
The resident managers of these playhouses are scarcely more than
caretakers, since they can exercise little or no choice as to the
attractions which play engagements in their theaters. The producing
managers choose plays, engage actors and are responsible for all the
accessories. Most of these producing managers are in partnership
with one or the other of the syndicates, because these syndicates
control all the important theaters in all the important towns. Thus
it is that the artistic guidance of the drama is in the hands of the
producing managers, and the financial government is in the hands of
the syndicates.
Many of the producing managers are akin in type to the managers of
the resident stock-companies, that is to say, they are sometimes
actors, sometimes playwrights and sometimes men drawn from
other callings by the lure of the theater. Most of the members
of the syndicates are men of affairs, who have gone into the
theater-business as they would go into any other business, mainly
for their own profit; and their interest in the drama as an art is
intermittent, whereas their interest in the theater as a business
is incessant. Their attitude and their actions have called for
sharply hostile criticism, summed up in the accusation that they
have commercialized the theater. Now, all students of stage-history
know that there has always been a commercial side to the theater,
excepting in ancient Greece and in the Middle Ages, when the drama
was more or less religious in its associations. In modern times we
have ascertained that the drama cannot flourish as an art unless the
theater prospers as a business. No art can survive unless it affords
a fairly satisfactory living to those who devote themselves to it;
and as the appeal of the drama is to the people as a whole it can
never be independent of the takings at the door. Even in the few
subsidized theaters of Europe, national or municipal, the grant in
aid made by the government is never enough to support the enterprize.
IV
Commercialism in the theater is often bitterly denounced by young
persons who conceive of art as ethereally detached from all financial
considerations. The real question is not whether the theater is
commercial, but whether it is unduly commercial, whether it has
money-making for its chief aim, whether it is willing to sacrifice
its artistic aspirations to the single purpose of making money. The
theater was commercial, to a certain extent, in the time of Shakspere
and Molière, of Sheridan and Beaumarchais; but it was not then unduly
commercial. Is it unduly commercial now and here, to-day in the
United States? Is its organization exclusively in the control of men
who are thinking only of the profits to be made, and who know nothing
and care less about the drama as an art?
Here again it is necessary to distinguish and to point out the
yawning gulf between the playhouses which are truly homes of the
drama and the playhouses which have been surrendered outright to
mere spectacles. There are in our theaters to-day a heterogeny of
so-called musical comedies, summer song-shows, Follies and Passing
Shows, sometimes beautifully mounted but often empty of anything
but glitter and violent movement, far-fetched fun, and unnecessary
noise. These exhibitions occupy the stages of theaters where we might
hope to see something better; they are money-making speculations, no
more and no less; they supply nothing but vacuous entertainment for
those who go to a show warranted to demand no mental effort from the
spectators; they are examples of naked commercialism. As far as the
drama is concerned, they are utterly negligible, as negligible as is
the circus which now invades the theater only at very rare intervals.
There remain to be considered the large proportion of our theaters
the stage-doors of which remain open to the drama in all its various
manifestations, tragedy, comedy, farce, problem-play, or what not.
Now, nobody familiar with the facts can deny or doubt that the
theater here and now is hospitable to the drama. No really noteworthy
European play, no matter where it was originally brought out, fails
to be presented sooner or later in New York. It may be gay, the
latest Parisian farce, for example; and then its chance comes sooner.
It may be somber or even gloomy, the ‘Weavers’ of Hauptmann, for
instance, the ‘John Ferguson’ of St. John Ervine or the ‘Jest’ of
Sem Benelli; and then its chance may be late in coming. And side by
side with these more or less important importations there are a host
of native pieces of every degree of merit, reflecting almost every
aspect of American life and character, from the ‘Salvation Nell’ of
Edward Sheldon to the ‘Why Marry?’ of Jesse Lynch Williams, from the
‘Mrs. Leffingwell’s Boots’ of Augustus Thomas to the ‘Get Rich Quick
Wallingford’ of George M. Cohan.
Nor is the drama of the past without its opportunity also. Sothern
and Marlowe draw audiences limited only to the capacity of the
houses in which they appear; Robert Mantell carries with him a
varied repertory; and Walter Hampden is enabled to present ‘Hamlet’
for an unexpected series of performances. It must be confessed that
Shakspere is more fortunate than Sheridan and that we have not now
the privilege of beholding the ‘Rivals’ or the ‘School for Scandal’
or any of the Old Comedies as frequently as we used to have it in the
days when Burton and Wallack and Daly managed their own theaters and
had permanent companies accustomed to present these specimens of a
form of the drama now demoded.
It is a lamentable fact, the full significance of which is grasped
only by a few, that New York, perhaps the most populous city in the
world, is entirely dependent on road-shows. It has now no theater
managed with an eye single to its appeal to the population of
Manhattan. It has to rely absolutely upon travelling combinations. It
is true, of course, that many of these combinations do not travel;
they begin and end their careers here in New York; but they were
all of them intended to travel, if they had first succeeded in New
York. The stars open their season where it is most convenient and
they come into New York when they can; but the immense majority of
new plays, American and British and translated from foreign tongues,
are produced in New York, altho some of them may have a trial week
in Washington or Atlantic City, a week of dress-rehearsals before a
relatively unimportant audience. If these new plays please Broadway,
they stay as long as they can and then they pack up and begin their
wanderings to other cities. Experience has shown that this is the
only profitable way to conduct the theatrical business; and economic
conditions are as inexorable in the theatrical as in any other
business.
The geographic conditions reinforce the economic; and in the United
States the geographic conditions differ widely from those in any
other country, more especially from those in Great Britain. As London
is an easily accessible capital of a small country, the heaviest
receipts are to be expected from the performances there; the London
companies are engaged for the run of the piece; and they do not go
on the road, the provinces being visited only by inferior touring
companies. As New York is a far longer distance from most of the
other large cities of the United States and as there are many of
these large cities, as well as many smaller towns, equally eager to
welcome any play which has won metropolitan approval, the heaviest
receipts are often not in New York itself but in the multitude of
these other cities and towns. Therefore New York is, in the eyes
of the producing managers, often only a starting point; and their
ultimate goal lies in the vast territory which stretches from the
Atlantic to the Pacific. The outside market, so to speak, is so wide
and the demand so insatiable, that the producing managers are hard
put to supply it. And when they happen to hit on an attractive piece
their profits may be enormous.
One reason why the American theater seems to many to be unduly
commercialized is that it has been at times amazingly profitable.
Until toward the end of the nineteenth century the theatrical was
the most precarious of businesses, extra-hazardous for the managers,
the actors and the authors. When they died Shakspere and Molière
were able to leave to their families only a modest competence. David
Garrick is almost the only manager in all the long history of the
theater in Great Britain and the United States who was able to retire
with a fortune. Benefits had to be arranged for Lester Wallack and
for A. M. Palmer. The playwrights were in no better case than the
players or the managers; and in the nineteenth century more than one
potential dramatist turned novelist simply because novel-writing was
easier and more profitable than playwriting.
But in the final third of the last century the right of a foreign
author to control his own work was internationally recognized, thus
relieving the playwrights of our language from competition with
pieces purloined from alien authors. The right of a British author to
control his work in the United States was also established, relieving
the American playwright from competition with pieces imported from
England without payment. The far-flung British Commonwealth continued
to expand; and the remoter regions of the United States became more
densely populated. And the most successful pieces of British and
American authorship were discovered to be exportable to France and
Germany and Italy.
V
In consequence of all these causes the possible profits of a lucky
playwright are now as abundant as those of the lucky novelist, and
on occasion even more so. One play in every score draws a prize; and
one in every hundred draws a grand prize of several hundred thousand
dollars. In addition to the ordinary business profit there is now
the possibility of holding one of these superlatively lucky numbers
in the lottery; and two or three of these may come out of the wheel
of fortune in the same season. This possibility is encouraging to
those possessed by the spirit of speculation and rather discouraging
to those who are more inclined to honor the drama as an art. At best
the presentation of a play is a gamble, since no one, not even the
most expert, can do more than guess at the impression it will make
on the public. What every one can see is that the broader and bolder
its topic and its treatment the more likely is a drama to prove
attractive to the largest body of playgoers, while the comedy of
lighter fabric and of more delicate texture will probably please only
a smaller group of the more refined and the more intelligent.
Of course, this has always been the case; and the managers of the
past have always been tempted to enlarge their audiences by indulging
in sensation and in spectacle. But to-day the temptation is greater
than ever before; and perhaps it is more often yielded to. And here
we feel the unfortunate power of the purely commercial syndicates
who are ready always to smooth the path of the overwhelming success
by opening all their theaters to it, while they are inhospitable to
plays of a less emphatic allurement. This is perhaps the most obvious
defect of the present organization of the theater in America—that it
puts great power in the hands of a small group of men, most of whom
take little or no interest in the drama as an art, regarding a play
as a manufactured article out of which they expect to make all that
the traffic will bear.
Yet as this present organization is the result of economic and
geographic causes it is idle to declaim against it; and it is foolish
to indulge in offensive personalities. What is, is; and what will
be, will be. We can find comfort in the fact that the best plays of
this burgeoning dramatic epoch do get acted and have their chance,
here and now. And we can hope that some device will be discovered
to make easier the production of plays of the highest class. There
are managers now, and not a few of them, who have aspirations and
ambitions, and who would be contented with a modest profit on a fair
business risk without seeking always for wealth beyond the dreams of
avarice through a long-shot gamble.
Perhaps it may be well to remark that the present organization of
the theater is not responsible for the fact that the average play
presented to-day is often seen to be a pretty poor thing. In this
respect the present is no worse than the past. The average play has
always been a pretty poor thing; and playhouses of other times and
other lands have presented a host of plays below the average. The
‘Titus Andronicus,’ which is more or less Shakspere’s, is a barbarous
and brutal piece; and ‘Measure for Measure’ is only a little better
in its blatant crudity of motive and method. The contemporaries of
Corneille and Molière and Racine are deservedly forgotten. So are the
contemporaries of Æschylus and Sophocles and Euripides. Only devoted
explorers of the annals of the drama are aware of the ineptness and
imbecility to be found in the pieces of the inferior playwrights even
in the most glorious epochs of the theater. Certainly the average
play of to-day is a better play, it is better acted, and it is better
mounted than the average play of fifty or a hundred years ago.
VI
That the drama of our language has been born again in the last three
or four decades is proof positive that the organization of the
theater has not been wholly inefficient. It cannot be as defective
as has been shrilly proclaimed by juvenile enthusiasts who are in a
hurry for the millennium and who are disappointed that it does not
arrive over night. It is to be put to its credit that in one city
at least, in the city of New York, the persistent playgoer has a
very wide range of opportunity—probably unrivaled anywhere else in
the world. He has his choice of a hundred new American plays every
season, plays good, bad and indifferent. He has a chance to see
the most important plays by contemporary foreign dramatists. He is
likely to have occasion in the course of a single season to renew
his acquaintance with half-a-dozen or half-a-score of Shakspere’s
comedies or tragedies. He may wander at will to playhouses where
the performances are given in French or in German, in Chinese or in
Yiddish. He can feast his eyes on the puppet-shows of the Italians
and on the ballet-pantomimes of the Russians. He can adventure
himself in any one of half-a-dozen Little Theaters devoted to the
very latest effusions of the most idealistic idealists and the most
realistic realists, native and foreign. In short, he will find on the
annual bill of fare a heterogeny of tempting dishes, lacking, it is
true, more than one delicacy which he may desire to taste.
The other side of the ledger, however, tells another story. While New
York has a plethora and while a few of the largest cities may find a
sufficiency, the smaller cities suffer from painful penury, and the
less important towns are starving to death. Many an interesting play
lacks breadth of popular appeal; and the managers shrink from taking
it on the road; and if they are bold enough to run this risk it is
only to a few of the larger centers of population that they dare to
go. In the smaller cities possessing only one important playhouse,
this may be occupied week after week by mere shows. It is true that
in not a few of the smaller towns there are stock-companies making
a brave struggle, putting on the more successful pieces as soon as
these are released for stock but producing them in haste as best they
can with a small company, the members of which are sadly overworked,
playing in one piece six nights, and four, five or six matinees while
they are scrambling through rehearsals and learning their parts in
the play in preparation for the following week.
In the towns which are still smaller, the drama is to be seen only
sporadically, intermittently, casually; and there are college
communities with a thousand students or more who do not have the
privilege of seeing a play of Shakspere’s properly acted and
adequately produced from one year’s end to another. The only reliance
of these communities is on the happy accident of a travelling company
filling out a week with one-night stands or the establishment by
themselves of a Little Theatre supported by local talent. These
Little Theaters are helpful in keeping alive an understanding
of the drama; but their scope is strictly limited and their
continued existence depends upon the fortunate accident of their
control by some one who has a native gift for management and for
stage-management.
The existing organization is not unsatisfactory as far as New York
is concerned. It is less satisfactory even in the largest of the
other cities. It is entirely unsatisfactory in the smaller cities and
the larger towns.
How then shall this unfortunate condition be remedied? Professor
W. L. Phelps has no doubt that he has discovered the cure; and he
tells us with all the emphasis of italics that “there must be a
stock-company in every city.” He explains that by this he does not
mean the kind of stock-company which exists to-day but the older
type of stock-company such as existed forty years ago in New York
at Wallack’s and Daly’s and in Boston at the Museum. What Professor
Phelps is proposing is a return to the system which flourished a
century ago, and two centuries ago, and which is entirely unfamiliar
to the present. As it happens I am old enough to be able to
supplement with my own recollection the ample information easily
accessible in actors’ autobiographies and in stage histories.
Memory is treacherous, so I cannot be certain, but I believe that I
was present in 1869 at the opening of the Fifth Avenue Theater by
Augustin Daly and in 1872 at the opening of the Union Square Theater
by A. M. Palmer. I know that I was able to follow the shorter careers
of the companies at the Madison Square directed by Steele Mackaye and
the Mallorys, at the Park Theater by Abbey, at the Empire by Charles
Frohman and at the Lyceum by Daniel Frohman.
In all these theaters there was a permanent company, which changed
its membership slowly and which contained at least half-a-dozen
actors and actresses of distinction. In all of them the manager was
an autocrat, selecting the performers and choosing the plays. Now
and again he engaged a travelling star, Edwin Booth or Mrs. Scott
Siddons at Daly’s and Charles James Matthews or Dion Boucicault
at Wallack’s; and then all the other parts in the repertory of
these stars were assumed by the actors of the stock-company. But
these star-engagements were infrequent; and for the most part the
burden fell upon the stock-company, which had to be large enough to
undertake any kind of piece, comedy or farce, tragedy or melodrama,
or even burlesque or extravaganza. The manager distributed the parts
subject always to the unwritten law that no performer should be
called upon to appear in a character which was not in his or her
“line of business.” The hero had to be given to the “leading man” and
the heroine to the “leading woman.” The villain—and in the dramas of
those distant days there was likely to be a villain of the deepest
dye—was assigned to the heavy man; while the brisk young fellows
fell to the lot of the juvenile lead or of the light comedian. The
broadly comic parts were assigned to the low comedian; and there
were frequently two of him, the first low comedy and the second low
comedy. Strongly marked characters went to the character-actor,
who had to be a master of make-up. The elderly characters were in
the hands of the old man and the old woman; there was sometimes
also a second old man, altho if the character-actor was both
versatile and obliging he could be prevailed upon to play one of
the more aged characters. The serving maids were attributed to the
singing chambermaid, who would have her best chance when a farce or
extravaganza was in the bill.
VII