The theatre presents the same problem as the public-house in respect to
disorder. To begin with, a theatre is actually a place licensed for
the sale of spirits. The bars at a London theatre can be let without
difficulty for 30 pounds a week and upwards. And though it is clear that
nobody will pay from a shilling to half a guinea for access to a theatre
bar when he can obtain access to an ordinary public-house for nothing,
there is no law to prevent the theatre proprietor from issuing free
passes broadcast and recouping himself by the profit on the sale of
drink. Besides, there may be some other attraction than the sale of
drink. When this attraction is that of the play no objection need
be made. But it happens that the auditorium of a theatre, with its
brilliant lighting and luxurious decorations, makes a very effective
shelter and background for the display of fine dresses and pretty faces.
Consequently theatres have been used for centuries in England as
markets by prostitutes. From the Restoration to the days of Macready
all theatres were made use of in this way as a matter of course; and to
this, far more than to any prejudice against dramatic art, we owe the
Puritan formula that the theatre door is the gate of hell. Macready had
a hard struggle to drive the prostitutes from his theatre; and since his
time the London theatres controlled by the Lord Chamberlain have become
respectable and even socially pretentious. But some of the variety
theatres still derive a revenue by selling admissions to women who do
not look at the performance, and men who go to purchase or admire the
women. And in the provinces this state of things is by no means confined
to the variety theatres. The real attraction is sometimes not the
performance at all. The theatre is not really a theatre: it is a drink
shop and a prostitution market; and the last shred of its disguise is
stripped by the virtually indiscriminate issue of free tickets to the
men. Access to the stage is so easily obtained; and the plays preferred
by the management are those in which the stage is filled with young
women who are not in any serious technical sense of the word actresses
at all. Considering that all this is now possible at any theatre, and
actually occurs at some theatres, the fact that our best theatres are
as respectable as they are is much to their credit; but it is still an
intolerable evil that respectable managers should have to fight
against the free tickets and disorderly housekeeping of unscrupulous
competitors. The dramatic author is equally injured. He finds that
unless he writes plays which make suitable sideshows for drinking-bars
and brothels, he may be excluded from towns where there is not room
for two theatres, and where the one existing theatre is exploiting
drunkenness and prostitution instead of carrying on a legitimate
dramatic business. Indeed everybody connected with the theatrical
profession suffers in reputation from the detestable tradition of such
places, against which the censorship has proved quite useless.
Here we have a strong case for applying either the licensing system or
whatever better means may be devized for securing the orderly conduct
of houses of public entertainment, dramatic or other. Liberty must, no
doubt, be respected in so far that no manager should have the right to
refuse admission to decently dressed, sober, and well-conducted persons,
whether they are prostitutes, soldiers in uniform, gentlemen not in
evening dress, Indians, or what not; but when disorder is stopped,
disorderly persons will either cease to come or else reform their
manners. It is, however, quite arguable that the indiscriminate issue
of free admissions, though an apparently innocent and good-natured, and
certainly a highly popular proceeding, should expose the proprietor of
the theatre to the risk of a refusal to renew his licence.