THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 PLAYWRITING.
 
 PLAYWRITING: 
 
 A HANDBOOK 
 
 FOR WOULD-BE 
 
 DRAMATIC AUTHORS. 
 
 BY 
 
 A DRAMATIST. 
 
 
 London : 
 
 THE STAGE OFFICE 
 
 Clement's Inn Passage, Strand, W.C. 
 
 SECOND EDITION.
 
 MACRAE, CURTICE, AND CO., LIM, 
 PRINTERS, 
 CLEMENT'S HOUSE, CLEMENT'S INN PASSAGE, LONDON W.C.
 
 Pr-/ 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Introductory 
 
 Playwriting 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 Playwriting (continued) 
 
 ■ ■ 15 
 
 "Planting " 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 24 
 
 Reading 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 35 
 
 Matinees 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 45 
 
 Rehear 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 57 
 
 lav'iGfio?
 
 VI 
 
 Contents. 
 
 Production 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 66 
 
 Monetary 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 75 
 
 Legal 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 .. 83 
 
 Legal {continued) ... 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 91 
 
 Legal {concluded) ... 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 99 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 106 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 Plans of Stage and Explanation of Stage Directions.
 
 PREFACE, 
 
 '-gT^^^ 
 
 It was many, many years ago that I began my viclancholy 
 career as a Dramatic Author; and a hard and bitter -fought 
 beginning I can well remember that it was. I was inexpe- 
 rienced, shy, and foolish ; without money, without influence. I knew 
 not a single soul connected even in the most distant way with the 
 theatrical world. I knew no one to advise me or give me a hint. 
 For years I danced in impotent frenzy around the high strong walls 
 that guard the city of Dramatic Art. I ran my head against the 
 stones, I tore myself against the spiky gates, I soused myself in the 
 dirty moat, I screamed and cursed, and blubbed. At last, I climbed 
 over and got in. I don't think much of the shoiv now I am in ; 
 but that^has nothing to do with us here, our object in this little 
 book being merely to discuss the question of getting in ; and I 
 enumerate the dijjicidties that beset me only to show to the struggling 
 young besiegers of to-day how, with the aid of pig-headed obstinacy, 
 sublime conceit, thick skin, and a genius for nagging and boring and 
 worrying human people's lives out of them, it is possible to force even 
 so strongly guarded a portal as the stage door of the present century.
 
 viii Preface. 
 
 I also hope to shoiv yon how to force that door with less waste of 
 time and energy than I spent upon the task myself Many years of 
 fretful groping, of useless labour, of misdirected effort could be saved 
 to most beginners by a brief glimpse into that strange world they 
 hope to win, by a moment's knowledge of its funny little ways, by a 
 passing insight into the character of its curious inhabitants. 
 
 It is this glimpse, this knowledge, this insight, that I propose to 
 give my readers. 
 
 Nor do I anticipate that by so doing I shall be the means of 
 overcrowding the Dramatic Market. The road that leads to that 
 market is a very long road, a very stoney road, a rery uphill road, a 
 very wearisome to the flesh and heart-breaking to the spirit road ; 
 and only a few of the many who start — only the very strong and the 
 very determined, can ever hope to reach the other end. Such strength 
 and determination no book can give you. All I can hope to do 
 is to guide you along the right path, to save you from ivalking at 
 the rate of five miles an hour down the wrong lanes, and puffing 
 and blowing round the wrong turnings. 
 
 THE AUTHOR.
 
 PLAYVSARITING. 
 
 %-r^ 
 
 v^mm 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 I WISH it were not so hackneyed a custom, that of quoting 
 Puncli's advice to people about to marry, and applying it to the 
 particular question in hand, because I wanted to do the very 
 same thing here. I wanted to begin these papers with : 
 " Advice to people about to write plays. Don't." But the idea 
 has been done to death, and so, of course, I can't make use 
 of it. 
 
 And it would have been good advice too. Goethe, who, one 
 might think, would have escaped the flints and briars of the 
 literary path if anybody could have done so, said (I am not 
 using the exact words ; it is easier to paraphrase than to hunt 
 up a reference), that, if young men only knew what a trymg, 
 troublous life an author had to lead, the courts of the Muses 
 would be but sparsely crowded with aspirants. This was 
 spoken of authorship in general, and is certainly true enough of 
 it. But dramatic authorship is to the profession of literature as 
 reversing is to waltzing — an agony within a misery. A man 
 
 B
 
 2 Playwritmg. 
 
 who means to be a dramatist must be prepared for a life of 
 never-ending strife and fret — a brain and heart-exhausting 
 struggle from the hour when, full of hope, he starts off with his 
 first farce in his pocket to the days when, involuntarily taking 
 the advice of one of the early masters of his own craft, to wit, 
 old rare Ben Jonson, he leaves '* the loathed stage, and the more 
 loathsome age." 
 
 The mere writing of a play is generally allowed to be 
 moderately harassing business of itself, but this, if not the last, 
 is at all events the very least of a dramatic author's difficulties. 
 It is only a necessary preliminary, like the catching of the hare 
 before you jug it. His real work begins when his three or four 
 acts are neatly " typed " out, and tied up with red tape. When, 
 after months, perhaps years, of hawking it about from pillar to 
 post — and very wooden-headed posts some of them are — of 
 trotting attendance here, of waiting attendance there, of urging 
 and scheming elsewhere, it is, at length, accepted, even then he 
 is not much nearer the goal of production than he was before ; 
 for, if the proverb " There's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip " 
 should be kept in mind more constantly by any one class than 
 another in this uncertain sphere, it is by those having business 
 in connection with the British drama. The glorious uncer- 
 tainty of the turf, the fascinating fickleness of woman, the in- 
 teresting variableness of the weather, fade into insignificance 
 beside the magnificent unreliableness of all theatrical arrange- 
 ments and affairs. But that I do not care to tell the secrets of 
 my prison-house, 1 could tales unfold — tales of disappointments 
 and delays, of hopes deferred, of chances dashed from the 
 grasp at the very moment they seemed clutched, of weary 
 wpitings rewarded by failure, of enterprise and effort leading 
 only to defeat, of hard work winning only loss — tales whose 
 lightest word would harrow up the soul of the would-be drama- 
 tist, freeze his young blood, and make his each particular hair 
 to stand on end. But this theatrical blazon must not be to
 
 Introductory. 3 
 
 ears outside the Profession. Nor need it be. There is no 
 necessity to go behind the scenes to gather proof of the doubt 
 and indecision that spread hke a baneful fungus over every 
 dramatic flower-bed. Each week the theatrical columns of the 
 newspapers teem with evidences of the unfortunate fact, and he 
 who runs can read. Let me cull a few examples from the 
 records of a past season.* An announcement appears in the 
 papers that Mr. Jos. Hatton and Mr. Wm. Terriss are writing 
 a drama for the Adelphi. Messrs. Gatti immediately reply that 
 they know nothing whatever about this. Mr. Hatton thereupon 
 writes that he and Mr. Terriss drafted out the complete plot of 
 a play and read it to the Adelphi management, and that he 
 certainly was under the impression that it had been virtually 
 accepted, and that nothing remained but to fill in the dialogue. 
 This is the last heard of the business. Reflection : — What 
 were and are Mr. Hatton's inward feelings upon the subject ; 
 ditto Mr. Terriss'. Again, and in connection with the same 
 house, it was understood that Mr. Geo. R. Sims — not a young 
 beginner to whom disappointment would come like mother's 
 milk — was collaborating with Mr. Pettitt in a piece to follow , 
 The Harbour Lights. Then came news that that arrangement 
 was off, and that the next production would be from the pen of 
 Messrs. Grundy and Pettitt. Then, that Messrs. Grundy and 
 Pettitt's piece — written, accepted, and settled for — has been 
 indefinitely postponed, and that a revival of Peep 0' Day was to 
 be put on during the autumn, and that Messrs. Grundy and 
 Pettitt were not altogether pleased about the business — a sur- 
 mise well within the pale of belief. As for the making and 
 upsetting of plans at the Globe during the same season referred 
 to, the mind grows dizzy at contemplation of them. A new 
 comedy, by Geo, P. Hawtrey, entitled 7.0.(7. is to follow The 
 
 * 188G-7. 1786-7 would have done just as well as a sample. 1986-7 will 
 produce a precisely similar state of affairs. 
 
 u 2
 
 4 Playwriti7ig. 
 
 Pickpocket. Out comes The Lodgers. I.O.U. is to follow The 
 Lodgers. A new farcical comedy by Mr. Grundy is to follow 
 The Lodgers. Mr. F. C. Burnand is adapting La Doctoresse for 
 the Globe, and the piece will be put on in a week or two. Out 
 comes a revival of The Snowball. Mr. Grundy's nev/ piece will 
 follow The Snowball. Mr. Burnand's adaptation of The 
 Doctoresse will follow The Snowball. Mr. Hawtrey is in treaty for 
 a new farce by Manville Fenn and J. H, Darnley. Then more 
 talk of Grundy's piece, and then, after all this groaning, the 
 mountain produces a revival of The Private Secretary. To follow 
 The Secretary, a new farcical comedy by VV. Lestocq and Walter 
 Everard was in active production. Instead of that, we had at 
 last The Doctor. Put yourself, my dear reader, in the place of 
 Mr. Geo. P. Hawtrey, of Mr. Grundy, of Mr. Manville Fenn, 
 of Mr. Lestocq, of Mr. Walter Everard, and imagine that your 
 brilliant comedy, after dangers and difficulties innumerable, all 
 happily surmounted, had at last been accepted, and was, as 
 you fondly imagined, on the eve of production, that you had 
 told all your friends about it, and they had congratulated you, 
 and had hoped, with somewhat unnecessary anxiety, that it 
 would be a success, and you had, in anticipation of your forth- 
 coming wealth, ordered a new hat, and had airily hinted to 
 your tailor that he could send his bill in if he liked (if he liked !), 
 and that, indeed, matters were so far forward and so firmly fixed 
 that you had sent round announcements to the papers, a thing 
 you would not do until you felt your footing pretty certain for 
 fear of being laughed at afterwards. And the next morning, 
 Hey Presto ! all your substantial looking castle has tumbled 
 down about your ears, and you are standing, half blinded, in 
 the dust and dirt of its ruins. 
 
 Call to mind the announcements and counter-announcements 
 regarding nearly every theatre in London, and the same 
 ghastly spectre of uncertainty is conjured up before you. At 
 the Prmcess's a new romantic drama by Henry Herman was to
 
 Introductory. 5 
 
 have been brought out in the spring. What has become of 
 that? 
 
 These are all recent instances, examples drawn from the 
 1886-7 season. But the tale has ever been the same. I have 
 before me old programmes, announcing dozens upon dozens of 
 forthcoming productions in the most particular and positive 
 manner, not one of which has ever seen the light. To speak of 
 more recent times, what has become of the Hypatia that a well- 
 known London journalist had written for Mary Anderson ? 
 When is Mr. Irving going to produce that piece which Mr. 
 Frank Marshall told us some years ago was in his hands ? 
 Where is Theodora, twice on the eve of being played at the 
 Princess's ? Take in The Stage, my dear young reader, and cut 
 out the announcements each week of plays that are being written, 
 of plays that have been accepted, of plays that are about to be 
 produced. Paste them all into a book, and when one is played 
 — no matter whether it be a success or a failure, that is another 
 matter altogether — put a tick against it. When a year, say, has 
 gone by, and nothing has been heard of another, put a cross 
 against that other, and compare, as you go on, the number of 
 ticks with the number of crosses. And remember that each cross 
 represents a very heavy heart being carried about for many a 
 long day under somebody or other's waistcoat — tells that some- 
 body or other feels very sick and cold down the back as he moves 
 about his little world, trying to appear careless and to laugh it 
 off — that somebody or other feels very tired and weary of the 
 struggle, and almost wishes now and then that it were over. 
 
 And if such are the discomfitures and defeats of men who have 
 already fought their way into the dramatic citadel — of men like 
 those I have referred to, who are all known, and more or less 
 influential in theatrical circles — if such are their disappointments 
 what, think you, mu.st be the struggles and heartbreakings of 
 the young beginners — of the nameless fighters, who with no 
 friend within to show them a ladder, with no golden key to un-
 
 6 Play writing, 
 
 lock the iron gates, are tearing their hands against the jagged 
 walls without ? 
 
 Their disappointment cannot be traced by reference to 
 programmes and paragraphs in Theatrical Chit Chat. Thar 
 failures upon failures, their daily repulses, their broken hopes are 
 known only to the one pet sister, the one staunch chum. But 
 you may be sure that for every single buffet among the one group 
 there are fifty knock-down blows among the other. 
 
 Therefore it is that I feel it my duty to advise you not to try 
 to become a dramatist. 
 
 Not that I expect for a moment that you will follow my advice. 
 Not that I should respect you much if you did. Every profes- 
 sion has its drawbacks. Every state of life into which you are 
 called, or into which you push your way, without waiting to be 
 called, has its anxieties and perplexities. But to every workman 
 his own trade appears the most undesirable of all ; and if you 
 wait to enter a calling until those already in it recommend it to 
 you, you will sit and twiddle your thumbs till grave-time. A 
 baker sees all the disadvantages incident to a bakehouse, and 
 imagines a butcher's business is all smooth sailing. Play-writing 
 seems to me a thing to be shunned and escaped from ; but, were 
 I a lawyer, there is little doubt but that, like all the solicitors I 
 know, I should warn young men against .entering the law ; and 
 had I adopted the profession of a chimneysweep, I expect I 
 should never weary of telling people to be anything but that, and 
 of expatiating on the discomforts of early rising, and the sinful- 
 ness of smoke-consuming grates. 
 
 I knew a young man once who thought he would go on the 
 stage, and he mentioned the idea to some friends of his who were 
 in the business, and they talked to him, and told him things 
 about an actor's life, till he couldn't go to sleep of nights for 
 terror, so he gave up the notion of being an actor, and determined 
 to become a doctor, which was, perhaps, not so pleasant, but 
 more practicable. And he consulted the family physician on the
 
 hitroductory. 7 
 
 subject, and a cousin, who was an army surgeon, and he also 
 explained his intention to a couple of old schoolfellows in 
 London ; and they just opened his eyes to the thing a bit, and 
 he saw clearly that the professions were all done for, and must 
 soon come to an end. So he made up his mind not to bother 
 about ambition, but to keep a small shop and live comfortably. 
 And he asked the local tradesmen what would be the best sort 
 of shop for him to keep, and they recommended him not to keep 
 any shop at all, but to buy two yards of good stout rope and hang 
 himself, because that was what he'd have to do in the end, if he 
 did keep a shop; and that, if he did it at the beginning, he'd 
 save the shop's keep during the intervening period. Then he 
 concluded that he might just as well be an actor after all. He 
 is doing remarkably well now. 
 
 Be a dramatist, my young friend, if you feel you have any 
 talent in that direction, and possess the pluck to fight down the 
 hundred difficulties that will confront you at every step, the 
 endurance to stand firm against the hundred disappointments 
 that will surge round you at every point. You will, if you are 
 careful to look fairly at your own work with clear mental eye- 
 sight, and not gloat over it through the microscope of conceit, 
 soon discover whether you have any real dramatic ability or not. 
 If not, by all means quit the business promptly, for the most you 
 will accomplish, in such case, will be to gain the position of a 
 theatre hack — grinding out childish drivel, and earning thereby, 
 at tremendous cost of labour, an average but uncertain income 
 of from a hundred to two hundred a year. 
 
 If, however, you have dramatic talent, it would be wicked, in 
 the present state of affairs, not to let the British stage have the 
 benefit of it ; and if you can put together anything better than a 
 hotch-potch of old scenes and incidents, explained in language 
 that no human being was ever known to employ off the stage, 
 and enlivened by wit of that character which is usually asso- 
 ciated with a horse collar, the public — which has been a long
 
 8 Playwriting. 
 
 while waiting for you — will, you may be sure, welcome and 
 reward you right royally. 
 
 • Therefore, I say again, that if you want to be a dramatist by 
 all means try ; and if you will follow me to the next chapter, we 
 will discuss the making of the play which you are to thunder at 
 the dingy portal of the Thespian Castle wherein the Princess 
 Fame lies captive. 
 
 But mind ! if things do turn out wrong ; if time and labour are 
 both wasted ; if only failures crown your efforts, and you come 
 back from the field wounded and o'erthrown, remember, please, 
 that I knew very well how 'twould be, and that I told you so ! 
 
 This reflection will, I feel, be a consolation to you.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 PLAYWRITING. 
 
 Many, many years ago, there appeared in the columns of a 
 certain theatrical journal, published in a far-off land, a series of 
 papers written by a certain youthful but eminent dramatic author 
 of that period and country, upon the art of writing plays. I did 
 not travel to that far-off land to read those articles because, 
 being a dramatic author myself, I naturally doubted the possi- 
 bility of any other dramatic author knowing anything worth 
 listening to upon the subject. But people not so clever as I am 
 — -mere ordinary mortals — who did read those articles in those 
 ancient days, told me that they were excellent, and that they 
 explained the whole matter so explicitly and thoroughly that any 
 person of common intelligence, who had studied them, ought to 
 be able to sit down then and there and write a brilliant comedy ; 
 and indeed, so unreservedly did that youthful but eminent 
 dramatist give himself away, and so recklessly did he lay bare 
 the secrets of his art, that older and more selfish playwrights 
 began to grow alarmed. 
 
 " My boy," said they, kindly but reproachfully, " My boy, 
 isn't it rather foolish of you to go telling everyone how to write 
 plays ? We shall have the market glutted with stirring dramas
 
 lo Play writing. 
 
 and side-splitting comedies if you go on in this way. And prices 
 will go down, and we shall all be edged oflfour perches. Don't 
 do it." 
 
 And that youthful^but eminent personage began to see himself 
 that he had been rather foolish. But, as he said, the mischief 
 was done then. 
 
 ' And yet I have not noticed that since that time the public 
 has been any the more, what one may call, surfeited with great 
 plays than it was before, or that the quality of plays in general 
 has to any noticeable extent been improved. 
 
 This may seem strange on first consideration, but, perhaps, 
 it is that the dramatic art, like poetry and spelling, is one of 
 those things that cannot be learned, but which must be born in 
 a part3\ A man that needs to be told how to write a play, it is 
 useless telling, for he will never write one, and a man that can 
 write a play does not need to be told how to do it. It is a case 
 of instinct not experience. One hears a good deal of nonsense 
 talked (ye gods and little fishes — whatever that exclamation may 
 imply — what a deal of nonsense one does hear talked in this 
 world !) of the necessity of "training" for a dramatic author, 
 and solemn idiots write pompous articles about the presumption 
 of any person under the age of seventy-five attempting to write 
 for the stage. They insist upon the necessity of young men 
 spending the freshest and strongest part of their lives patiently 
 waiting to grow old, and, meanwhile, studying the great modern 
 English dramatists; as if insight into human nature and dramatic 
 inspiration were, like blindness and dotage, merely a question 
 of years. Dion Boucicault wrote London Assurance before he was 
 eighteen, and in nine cases out of ten an author's first work is 
 the best he ever turns out. The fancy soars far higher in youth 
 than in age, and tears flow freer and laughter rings brighter at 
 twenty-five than at fifty. 
 
 Nor do you need a knowledge of Greek tragedy and an inti- 
 mate acquaintance with the dramatic literature of the Restora-
 
 Playwriting. ii 
 
 tion, to write a play that will move the hearts that are beating 
 beside yours to-day. A book-worm never made a great author. 
 The mouldering thought of a buried age, the tale told for a 
 generation that has passed away, will be but little use to you, if 
 you wish to do work for the boards, and not for the shelves. 
 The living life around you is your book, and your brain is your 
 teacher. Learn from them. 
 
 A nature capable of vibrating to the whole gamut of human 
 passion and emotion ; a sympathy so wide and deep that there 
 is room for all humanity upon its bosom, from the little lovesick 
 maiden to the stern strong man, from the castle dreaming boy 
 to the fretful beldam, from the yokel to the statesman, from 
 the strumpet to the saint ; a mental vision that will pierce the 
 murderer's heart, the hero's soul, and lay bare their inmost 
 thoughts before you ; a never-failing instinct that will reveal to 
 you the one dramatic moment in each scene of life ; the artist's 
 inborn art that alone can teach you how to show to others what 
 you see — these qualifications and these qualifications only will 
 you need to become a dramatic author. 
 
 I do not, however, teach them. 
 
 But although it is not possible to learn how to write poetry, 
 even a Milton must master the rules of verse ; and, though 
 dramatists cannot be turned out like barristers and carpenters, 
 still a Shakespeare must go through a school. You must 
 acquire the technical skill as well as possess the natural talent 
 for the work. 
 
 Unfortunately for you, however, the laws of the drama, though 
 as strong and as impossible to sail against as is the shifting 
 wind, are as impalpable and as invisible as is the air. You will 
 not find them stored in any handbook, you will not hear them 
 from the lips of any master. I could roll off fifty or a hundred 
 neatly-turned instructions for you here, but they would no more 
 teach you to write a play than a treatise on navigation would 
 help a landsman to handle a yacht. Beyond a few rudimentary
 
 12 Play writing. 
 
 hints and technical rules, which we will discuss hereafter, 
 nothing can be taught, no help can be given. 
 
 Then what the blazes, you naturally ask in your common, 
 vulgar way, am I writing this chapter for ? My boy, I will 
 tell you, Carlyle said truly that the greatest thought was the 
 thought that made men think. I am going to teach you the 
 greatest of teaching, according to that same principle : I am 
 joing to teach you how to learn. 
 
 Attend the theatres constantly. See all plays (Heaven help N 
 you !). Read what is written and listen to what is said of them 
 afterwards. Note which are successful, and think out why 
 they are successful. Note those that fail, and worry it out until 
 you see clearly why it was that they did fail. Watch the play 
 as a young bird watches the early flight of its mother. Analyse 
 it scene by scene as a chemical student analyses a new drug. 
 Note in each what it is that most holds you. Remember, when 
 you are musing over it afterwards, what it was that bored you. 
 If a situation grips your entire senses, keeps you breathless with 
 excitement and suspense, and leaves you at the end thoroughly 
 delighted or deeply thoughtful, do not forget that situation in a 
 hurry — not, at all events, until you have dissected every line of 
 it, until its whole anatomy lies bare before you, and you can 
 trace its structure up from the point where your attention was 
 first arrested to the precipice whereon it culminated. 
 
 If, on the other hand, the situation seemed as though it 
 ought to have aroused you, and yet did not, examine into it 
 until you grasp the reason why it missed its mark. If the 
 situation itself was powerful, then it must have been the clumsy 
 building up that marred it, in which case study that clumsy 
 building up so as to avoid it. If the scene, however, was well 
 constructed, and yet fell flat — which will be rare, for, in literature, 
 it is the workmanship far more than the material that tells ; a 
 skilful writer obtaining a stronger effect out of a broken promise 
 than an unskilful one will out of a couple of murders and a
 
 Play writing. 13 
 
 forgery — then the motive must have been weak indeed, and you 
 will remember what that motive was. 
 
 Note, in good plays, how the scenes follow one another, how 
 quiet and playful ones generally precede passionate ones — a 
 thunderstorm following immediately upon a hurricane would 
 not be impressive — and how tempest is succeeded by calm. 
 Note how delay, as in the scene after the murder of Duncan, in 
 Macbeth, carried to a certain point, spurs anticipation ; how, 
 carried beyond that point, it only aggravates. Note all en- 
 trances and exits, how they are managed ; the excuses that take 
 people off the stage when they are not wanted ; the circum- 
 stances causing seventeen total strangers to one another, each 
 residing in an entirely different part of the globe, to be for ever 
 turning up together in the same spot, and mark what appears 
 sensible and what appears so absurd as to spoil your interest 
 in the whole scene. 
 
 Note, above all things, how the story is told and the sus- 
 pense maintained. Observe — when you get the chance — how 
 the interest, set rolling early in the first act, and gathering force 
 at every scene, leaps forward, without pause, from act to act, 
 till the grand catastrophe is reached ; and solve the method by 
 which this is done very carefully indeed, for such a play will be 
 an ideal play, and, if you can construct another like it, there 
 will be a big fortune in it for you. 
 
 Study, particularly, every example you can find, bearing on 
 that vexed question as to whether the audience should be taken 
 into your confidence or be surprised. Is is a question that can 
 never be decided, and you must choose for yourself. For my 
 own part, I am inclined to favour the confidence trick. The 
 interest of an audience is not in their curiosity but in their 
 expectation. In Hamlet they know the whole story by the end of 
 the first act. After that they are merely waiting for what they 
 feel must happen— the death of Claudius at the hand of his 
 murdered brother's son.
 
 14 Play writing. 
 
 Beginners, at all events, I should strongly advise against 
 working on the surprise method. It is certainly false art, and 
 though some startling effects may now and then have been 
 obtained from it, these have been won always by old, expe- 
 rienced hands. As a rule, the attempt has resulted in failure. 
 
 Go and see a really good play over and over again (no, I do 
 not get any commission), studying it from a different point of 
 view each time. Give 5'^our whole attention one night to the 
 story and how it is treated as a whole ; another time, examine 
 the construction, that is, the arrangement of the scenes and 
 acts ; a third time, note the situations and the way they are 
 worked up ; a fourth, the dialogue ; a fifth, the characters ; a 
 sixth, the minor details of movement and positions, and so on ; 
 and upon everything you see and note, endeavour to improve. 
 
 Do not read plays. Having the print of a piece before you 
 while recalling to mind its representation is very useful in assist- 
 ing your analysis, but do not be content with reading merely. 
 There is a vast difference between a play acted and a play read, 
 the inability to perceive, which stands much in the way of 
 would-be dramatists, and your business is with the former, not 
 with the latter. Familiarise yourself with how things look on 
 the stage, not how they read by the fireside. Get so acquainted 
 with the stage that you will be able to conjure up a vision of 
 it at will ; that, while writing, you will see, through your half- 
 closed eyes, the curtained opening with the lighted scene 
 beyond, and your puppets fretting out their dream life there- 
 upon ; see them pacing gracefully its air-built floor ; see them 
 fiercely fronting and defying one another ; kneeling gentlv to 
 their mistresses, standing crushed with mute despair, flying at 
 their false foe's throat, sobbing out their sorrows on their 
 lovers' breast, dying with a curse upon their lips — " left centre, 
 down stage."
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PLAYWRiTiNG f Continued). 
 
 Th eatre going, too, besides making you acquainted with the 
 drama's laws, will — more important still — make you acquainted 
 with and enable 5'Ou to understand the likes and dislikes of 
 those who make the drama's laws, to wit, the drama's patrons. 
 Go to the pit (I take it, of course, that you are not a snob, with 
 objections to "anything common"). The gallery is useful for 
 a change, but .is, as a rule, too noisy and inattentive. The 
 dress circle is "young personny " and respectable. It giggles 
 at all the love scenes, and murmurs, " Oh, isn't he nice ! " when- 
 ever the hero appears. The stalls chatter, and regard the play 
 as a nuisance. It is from the pit that you get the idea of the 
 general public taste. 
 
 And do not despise public taste in that haughty, youthful 
 way of yours, because that's silly. It is the fashion among bad 
 workmen of all trades, who imagine that their want of success 
 must be due to anything and everything rather than to them- 
 selves, to sneer at their employers ; but, as a matter of fact, the 
 public are far better judges of art than the " artistic " cranks 
 who abuse them. The Lyceum, ever since Irving took the 
 management of it, has been the most steadily patronised theatre
 
 1 6 Play writing. 
 
 in London. Lohengrin, which your superior " artistic" folk would 
 have strangled at its birth, has grown to be one of the most 
 popular of all operas. Lady Clancavty and Dandy Dick were both 
 immense draws ; while — well, some of the theatres do not do 
 very well sometimes, and their not doing so is another pretty 
 clear proof of the correctness of public taste. 
 
 Therefore do not grumble at public taste, but rather follow 
 it. I do not mean pander to it. It must be left to your own 
 good judgment to distinguish between its healthy appetite and 
 its^sick fancies. 
 
 A first night pit, the first three rows of it, will be your best 
 guide. The critics merely echo more or less the voice of the 
 house, and the six feet behind the stalls is the mouth through 
 which that voice is heard. Sit there, and understand the 
 thought around you. Mark what goes down with them, 
 and what they grow restless at and cough through. It is 
 wonderful what an index to an audience's mind their cough is. 
 They can sit in direct draughts with their clothes wet through 
 all the evening, and take no harm, but a prosy scene brings on 
 an epidemic of bronchitis sufficient to lay half of them in their 
 graves. You will find — what, if you have any dramatic talent, 
 you will not need to learn — that it is action, not talk, that 
 arouses and holds an audience. Drama means action. A grip 
 of the hand, a look, a sob, tells an audience more than twelve 
 pages of dialogue could explain. Silence is the eloquence of 
 drama. Avoid long speeches, especially those that have nothing 
 to do with the play. A theatrical audience does not care two- 
 pence for poetical descriptions of moonlight, and treatises on 
 social problems. If you want to display your "fine writing" 
 put it into essays or poems. Anyhow, keep it out of your. 
 stage-work. Harvest would have been a success, I am confident^ 
 if it had not been for the magnificent lectures on Bohemia, old 
 age, Scotch law, and every other chance topic that happened to 
 arise.
 
 Playivriting. 17 
 
 Plays of this kind always remind me of those frauds thc}^ 
 used to palm off upon me in my boyish days as stories, where 
 Tommy would go for a walk with his mother and ask questions 
 on scientific subjects — the blithering young idiot ! — and be 
 answered in two pages of useful information. 
 
 You will find they want their drama strong. Idyllic themes 
 must, if employed at all, be confined to one-act pieces. Modern 
 theatre-goers will not accept two hours of them. Young Mrs. 
 Winthrop is a lovely piece, but weak in motive, and it did not 
 draw. 
 
 Aiidiences are not — to their credit — partial to niaudliness. 
 Eschew broken-hearted maidens and love-sick youths as heroes 
 and heroines. They love not cynicism except as flavouring to 
 "heart." 
 
 They are not too much troubled about probability, provided 
 possibility is not outraged. But the more reasonable things are 
 why of course the better. They will " make believe " with you 
 that a man would never recognise his wife in somebody else's 
 hat, and they take in law that would make Blackstone, if he 
 heard it, turn in his grave. But they would be glad of a change 
 in these respects. Verb sap. 
 
 Audiences do not thirst, as young beginners fancy they do, 
 for exhaustive particulars on points of detail. They accept your 
 premises without any wish to argue the matter. If you tell them 
 that youi villain murdered his aunt three years before the play 
 began, they take your word for it, and pass it. This, however, 
 is not sufficient for your young playwright. Hs must explain 
 why the man killed his aunt, how he killed his aunt, and what 
 the uncle said about it. In Barbara it was necessary to the play 
 that someone should have left Miss B. a .fortune. The how, 
 why, when, and by whom it was left were immaterial. But 
 Mr. Jerome, in his youthful conscientiousness, evidently felt he 
 had not done his duty by us until he had given us the history 
 of Barbara's aunt, and tht early life and adventures of 
 
 c
 
 1 8 Play writing. 
 
 Barbara's mamma. It was the one weak point of tlie 
 play. 
 
 And now for the few practical instructions before hinted 
 at. 
 
 Do not put important matter into the first few lines of an act. 
 There is always a bustle and buzz as the curtain goes up and 
 the house settles down, and the opening speeches are half lost. 
 Let them be like the opening bars of an overture — a mere call 
 to attention. Do not, if you can avoid it, have your leading 
 people " discovered." The actors do not like it. They do not 
 get much applause for being discovered. What they like is for 
 their entrance to be "led up to." And, for the same reason, do 
 not bring on two characters together. Each actor thinks the 
 applause is meant only for him, and it makes unpleasantness 
 during the whole run of the piece. 
 
 While on this branch of the art, remember, too, that actors 
 prefer entrances and exits by the centre rather than side ones, 
 as showing them off to more advantage. 
 
 Every character must have a speech or an action to "take 
 them off," and should not enter a moment before they are 
 wanted. Pay great attention to your curtain. In melodrama 
 it should certainly be upon a situation of some sort — the comic 
 man denouncing the villain being the most popular. In comedy 
 this is not necessary, but, even there, it should be at some 
 moment of dramatic significance. In any event, bear in mind 
 that it is your last word, and that your audience will remember 
 you by it to the exclusion of everything else that has gone 
 before. To them it is the concentrated summing-up of the 
 Avhole act. 
 
 To understand the carpentry of play- writing, you must be 
 personally acquainted with the stage. The grouping, position, 
 and movement of your characters — the correct poising of the 
 picture — is an essential part of your work, and, to perform it 
 properly, you must be at home among " flats " and " wings,"
 
 Play writing. 19 
 
 " back-cloths " and " front cloths," half-sets and full sets, 
 "L.2.E." and "R.i.E."* You must be familiar with the 
 technical language of the stage, or you will not be able to 
 explain yourself, and a manager, glancing over your MS., will 
 naturally conclude that you do not know your subject, and will 
 throw the thing aside. 
 
 To attempt to become a play-writer without practical 
 experience of the land behind the scenes is like trying to build 
 an easy chair upon a knowledge of cabinet making derived from 
 " Cassell's Popular Recreator." /I could explain to you that, as 
 a general rule, the chief action of each scene should take place , 
 in the centre, well down stage — that is, near the footlights ; 1 
 that there are certain points at which the actor should take the 
 stage, and others at which he should retire up. I could tell 
 you that a set scene in the middle of an act must be preceded 
 by a front one, and that that front one must not be of a delicate 
 character, as, if so, the noise of the carpenters, building up 
 behind it, would drown it. But it would be like telling a man 
 how to swim. 
 
 No, you must go upon the stage. If you can afford the time 
 and mone}^ join a countr}' company for a fdw months, or enter 
 as utility at some small London theatre. An agent will arrange 
 this for you very readily. You must be prepared to keep your- 
 self during this temporary enlistment, and the business, alto- 
 gether, will cost you, probably, about a hundred pounds. But 
 it will be money well spent. If you cannot manage this plan, go 
 in as a super somewhere. Where there's a will there's a way. 
 
 To come back to our playwriting, let me urge you to be, above 
 all things, practicable, A theatre is not a temple of art, but a 
 house of business, and the question that a manager will ask 
 himself when considering whether to accept your piece or not, 
 will be, not how much merit, but how mucli money there is in 
 it. Keep your grand ideas and your experiments until you 
 
 • See plans in Appendix. 
 
 C 2
 
 20 Play IV ri ting. 
 
 have got the ear of the pubUc. People must be wiUing to 
 follow you before you can lead them. 
 
 Your early pieces, also, must not be too expensive to produce. 
 A manager cannot be expected to hazard much upon the work 
 of an untried man. Do not begin by writing plays requiring 
 elaborate scenery and heavy casts. Do not ask for the Colos- 
 seum by moonlight with view of Rome in the distance. You 
 will only get a " courtyard " with a " mediaeval street " 
 backing, if they do take the piece. Simple modern interiors or 
 stock exteriors such as " a country lane," "a street," "fairy 
 glen Llangolfechmaenmawr," should be your aim, and if only 
 one scene to each act so much the better, both from the artistic 
 and the economic point of view. Likewise, do not go in for 
 balls, and swell picnics, and marriages, you will not be able to 
 afford to give large parties until you have made your way. 
 
 It is for these thrifty reasons that "curtain raisers" are the 
 ver}' best things for young dramatists to start upon. Costing, 
 comparatively speaking, nothing to put on, and their success 
 or failure not involving any very serious consideration, they 
 form a pretty safe medium by which a manager can test an 
 untried man. They also afford excellent practice, enabling you 
 to feel your way before attempting more ambitious work, and — 
 very important indeed — commencing your career with them 
 gives you a reputation for modesty, and modesty is always a 
 good card to play. That is all I have to say on the subject of 
 play-writing except this, do not, my young would-be dramatist, 
 write five-act blank verse tragedies. I can hardly believe that 
 you do ever write such things, but managers and the comic 
 journals are always saying that you do, and, as they wouldn't 
 tell a lie, I take it that you really do, and, therefore, beg you not 
 to. Do not write either tragedy or blank verse. Both are drugs 
 in the market. Tragedy was all very well in the old earnest 
 ages, but in these frothy, fevered days of persifage men have 
 neither the time, inclination, nor ability to think.
 
 Playwriting. 21 
 
 And to put your dialogue into the form of blank verse is to 
 hamper yourself for no reason whatever. Blank verse is only 
 justifiable for thought so deep and strong that it falls of itself 
 into that form. If your thought is of that kind and fashion it 
 is not you whom I would presume to teach, and these articles 
 you will pass by from beginning to end with a smile. It is only 
 to my younger brother workers in the fields of common- 
 place, but, let us hope, honest and well meaning art that I am 
 speaking, and to them I say emphatically do not venture on 
 verse. Our thought, ony fancy, our philosophy will be mounted 
 well enough on prose. We should only look puny and ridiculous 
 behind the great sweeping wings of Pegasus. 
 
 And, indeed, I doubt if the age would listen to us were we 
 to write the verse of Milton or of Dante ; at all events, not the 
 theatrical age. Shakespeare himself would be cold-shouldered 
 if he came trotting round trying to introduce his wares to us 
 now. He is appreciated, as it is, true ; but how much of that 
 appreciation is of understanding, and how much of custom and 
 fashion ? 
 
 Shakespeare is an old-established firm, and the public 
 have grown to accept him as part of the order of things. They 
 have been brought up to admire and revere him as a religion, 
 and they murmur his praises in the same way that they mumble 
 through the Litany at church, without in the slightest knowing 
 why they do it, or what it is it all means. Had Shakespeare 
 been born thirty and not three hundred years ago his name, 
 instead of being a household word, would be unknown to the 
 public altogether, and familiar — dimly as that of a pestering 
 nuisance — only to tlie theatrical lessees. 
 
 I can well imagine how a London manager would greet our 
 young friend Shakespeare, coming to him in this year of grace 
 one thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight, with the MS. of 
 Hamlet under his arm. Let us for a moment conjure up the 
 scene. Let us take an imaginary manager, say, the husband of
 
 22 Play writing. 
 
 Mrs. Gamp's ghostly patroness — Mrs. Harris — and listen to the 
 brief interview. 
 
 Harris {opening and reading letters, and speaking without turning round). 
 Well, my boy, what is it ? You must be quick ; I've only a minute to spare. 
 
 Shakespeare [zvith a ratlier meaningless chuckle, nervously twisting his hat 
 the while). Er-er, 'bout that play of mine, you know. Left it with you 'bout 
 a week ago. Said you'd glance it over, you know, er — 
 
 Harris. Oh, ah, yes, Prince Claude ; or, the Castle Spectre. I — 
 
 Shakespeare [apologetically'). Hamlet; or, the Prince of Denmark, I think 
 I— 
 
 Harris. Oh yes, so it was. Yes, very pretty thing ; nothing much in it 
 though — undramatic — hardly the thing to suit us. 
 
 Shakespeare {after n pause, speaking 7vith a slight tremor in his voice, and 
 smoothing his hat abstractedly, but with great care). I — I rather thought it 
 would have suited you. I thought it— it — you know — strong, you know, in 
 the play scene, and at the grave ; and — I, Hamlet, I thought it would have 
 been a good part for you. Just suited your style. A good opportunity for 
 pathos, you know, in the parting with Ophelia, and with the mother, and — 
 
 Harris. Oh, no, nothing in the part at all ; and the speeches are too long 
 altogether, and rambling. We want smartness, you know, my boy, in a play 
 — everything brisk and quick. All those long-winded soliloquies, they'd kill 
 any play. 
 
 Shakespeare. I meant them as typical of the character. You see, he's a 
 very thoughtful, moody man, and all that, and — and — they seemed to me to 
 be — to be what a dreamy, deep-thinking, suffering man would say to himself 
 when his brain and heart were wracked — with life, like a great, cruel wave 
 rising to dash him down, and his puny hands are so powerless, the father that 
 he loved lies murdered in his grave, and the woman — the sweet-loving girl — 
 
 Harris {interrupting). Yes ; well, I read it carefully through, and I didn't 
 like it. I haven't time to argue about it. The ghost business isn't bad, but 
 all the rest is utterly worthless. 
 
 Shakespeare. Then you can't do anything with it ? 
 
 Harris. Certainly not. {A pause). The thing's no good as it stands. If 
 you like to take my advice— I'm an older man than you— you'd cut out all 
 those long speeches, and work in a detective. Something might be done with 
 it then, perhaps, in the provinces. 
 
 Shakespeare. What, to track the King down, like.' 
 
 Harris. Yes, I should think you might make a fair play of it then. Work 
 up the ghost a bit more.
 
 Playwriting. 
 
 Shakespeare {eagerly). Would you take it then, if I did that ? 
 
 23 
 
 Harris. No, I couldn't. I merely threw out the idea to you, as I i<now 
 something about these things. 
 
 Shakespeare. Then it's no good, of course, my leaving it with you any 
 longer (taking it from the tabic and looking rather sadly at it). 
 
 Harris. None, whatever, my boy. 
 
 Shakespeare. Well, thank you very much for having read it, Mr. Harris. 
 Good morning. 
 
 Mr. Harris, absorbed in his letters, makes no response, and Mr. Shakespeare, 
 taking up his hat, and trying to fix his MS. under his coat so that it zcon't be seen, 
 goes out, closing the door softly behind Aim.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " PLANTING." 
 
 And now the play — the sparkling comedy, the exciting drama, 
 
 the screaming farce — is written, and has been neatly " typed " 
 
 or copied out. Always see to this most carefully. The play 
 
 must be easily readable or it won't be read, or if it be read, read 
 
 with growing irritation and perplexity, not conducive to its 
 
 chances of acceptance. To have it " typed " is the most 
 
 practicable. Type-writing is nearly as plain as printing, and 
 
 very cheap— cheaper than " copying " indeed. Mr. Gilbert had 
 
 his first play printed, I know (there are few people who don't 
 
 know that fact by this time, I should think), and Mr. Gilbert 
 
 showed himself, thereby, wise in his generation. But then that 
 
 was the last but one generation, and before the days of 
 
 Remingtons and Columbias, or he would not have paid seven or 
 
 eight pounds for printing, when he could have had it typed for 
 
 five to ten shillings an act. I am not going to advertise any 
 
 particular type-writing firm. There are five or six of them in 
 
 the neighbourhood of the Strand, and one is much about as 
 
 good as another. 
 
 Let me see, where were we ? Oh yes, I remember, the play 
 is finished and typed and ready for acting, and the only thing 
 remaining is to get it accepted.
 
 " Planting.'' 23 
 
 Well, you will naturally think, in the case of such a piece as 
 this, that can't be very difficult. Managers will jump at it. My 
 dear hoy, you don't know them. You've no idea how blind they 
 are to their own interests. Why I, myself — an important, clever 
 writer like I am — have, at this moment, in my desk, plays that 
 brilliant, startling, dramatic, and amusing that they would 
 create quite a furore in Europe if they were only produced, and 
 managers read them, and then hum and hah over them, and 
 hesitate about them, and throw cold water upor them as though 
 they were quite ordinary, commonplace plays. One is too 
 farcical, and they are going to give up farces. Another is too 
 serious, and they are going to give up serious plays. That one 
 has no part for Mr. Jones, and this one wouldn't suit Miss 
 Brown. And one is too long, and the public won't sit out long 
 pieces ; and another is too short, and the public want a gootl 
 deal for their money now-a-days. And a third the company 
 doesn't suit, and a fourth doesn't suit the company. Besides,, 
 the manager has got too many plays on his hands already, and 
 can't look at any more. 
 
 That is how they go on, throwing away fortunes like that. 
 
 I have sworn not to reveal professional secrets anywhere in 
 these pages, or I could surprise you, my dear young reader,, 
 pretty considerably with the names — the very well-known names- 
 — of dramatists who must be well accustomed to the sensation 
 of having their plays rejected. It is not exclusively beginners 
 either in literature or stage work that are alone familiar with 
 the dreary legends, ** Returned with thanks," " Declined with 
 compliments." By the way, did you ever hear of the young 
 man who tried to become a contributor to one of our leading 
 magazines ? He kept on sending in articles, and the editor 
 kept on sending them back ; till at last he got so mad tii.il lie 
 sent in a Latin noun ; he said lie knew there wasn't an editor 
 in England that could decline that. But this is frivoling, and 
 these pages are supposed to be serious.
 
 26 PI ay writing. 
 
 The most successful men find difficulty in getting their work 
 accepted. Sims's Lights of London went round to nearly every 
 manager in London before Mr. Wilson Barrett was 'cute enough 
 to produce it, and, indeed, Mr. Sims had so despaired of its ever 
 seeing the footlights that he had turned it into novel form and 
 published it as a tale. And at the time, remember, Mr. Sims 
 was not an unknown dramatist, but the author of three extra- 
 ordinarily successful plays. Jim the Penman had a similar and 
 even longer fight, though the late Sir Chas. Young was a man 
 of much influence and wide acquaintanceship in the theatrical 
 world. Mrs. Kendal, among others, objected to the play on 
 account of the character of the wife. It was produced at the 
 Haymarket, not at the risk of the management, and with very 
 little idea on their part that it would prove anything but a 
 failure. Tom Robertson — well " in " the magic circle at the 
 time — walked about for I hardly like to say how many years 
 with the MS. of Caste under his arm. " Too talky-talky " they 
 all said. "No plot — no story — no complication — no good!" 
 With your play in 3 our pocket, my young friend, you can reckon 
 you have three 3-ears' hard work before you in getting it played ; 
 and your talent for writing is a useless ornament to you without 
 the "character" — the "grit" necessary to transform your 
 written fancy into an acted fact — without the force, as Tennyson 
 has it, to make your merit known. 
 
 Therefore, do not despair at repulse ; do not lose your temper 
 at delay ; do not snivel and snarl at disappointment. Go about 
 the job (it is a big one) quietly, and in business-like manner. 
 You will, if you deserve it, win in the end. Nature never wastes 
 materials. " Mute Miltons " exist but in imagination — not in 
 her solid halls of fact. If she means a man to be a poet, or a 
 painter, or a dramatist she sees the matter through. 
 
 I cannot lay down any hard and fast rules for you to go upon 
 in getting a play accepted. It would be like laying down hard 
 and fast rules for getting your girl to accept you. I can only
 
 " Planting.'^ 27 
 
 offer suggestions and hints. The actual details, of course, 
 depend upon what sort of man you yourself are, what sort of 
 man your manager is, and what the particular circumstances of 
 the particular case may be. For instance, one may say, 
 generally, that personal interviews have more effect upon 
 managers and actors than have letters, which, as a rule, they 
 never answer. But if you happen, as is not at all unlikely in a 
 young literary man, to be of a painfully nervous temperament, 
 then it will be far better for you to go about the work by 
 correspondence. Again, the peculiar knack of fly throwing 
 that would induce one manager to bite would frighten away 
 another ; and laying down instructions for the different handling 
 of each man would be useless. The managers of to-day are not 
 the managers of to-morrow. To know the best mode ot 
 approaching Mrs. Bernard Beere or Mr. H. Beerbohm-Tree 
 might probably enough be but small good to you by the time 
 your play was ready, and to reveal to you the soft side of Mr. 
 Wilson Barrett or Mr. Hare would not only endanger my life at 
 the hands of those gentlemen ("speshul 'dition ! 'tack on 
 dramatic horther by well-known London manager — 'orrible 
 scene — speshul ! ") but would promptly convert that soft side 
 of theirs into their very roughest side, and I shouldn't know 
 how to tackle them myself then when I wanted to. No, I can 
 only show you the direction. You must find the path for your- 
 self. 
 
 First of all, however, following the true bucolic method, I 
 will point out to you the way 7iot to go. You know the sort of 
 thing I mean. You meet a country bumpkin, and ask him the 
 way to Podger-in-the-Hole, and he scratches his head, and 
 turns round three times, and then points along the road and 
 tells you to go straight on, and about a mile and a-half 
 you'll come across a lane, leading off" to the left by a haystack. 
 " Leading off to the left by a haystack," you repeat, " Yes ? " 
 
 Yees, weel, doan't 'ee gaw down theer," he replies, at the rate
 
 28 Play writing. 
 
 of three words a minute, " 'cause that don't lead naweer. But 
 'ee keep straint oan and ee'll come to a stoil." " A stile," you 
 say, beginning to get rather impatient, " Yes, well.'" " Yees, an 
 as I wor sayin' 'ee. cooms to a stoile. But 'ee mustn't gaw 
 oveer that, ee knaw, cause that be only the way ta Farmeer 
 Wurzles's," and so on. 
 
 In the same way, I say to you, don't make yourself a 
 nuisance. Don't hang about the stage door or other spots, 
 lying in wait for the manager, till he gets to dread the sound of 
 your name. Don't write him long and excited letters three 
 times a week. Don't make pitiful appeals to him on senti- 
 mental grounds. Mr. Wilson Barrett, when playing Chatterton, 
 was attacked with great energy by a young gentleman to the 
 tune of: — "Ah, you can rave about the sorrows and trials of 
 a young author in imagination. You can enter into his feelings 
 well enough upon the stage ; but you will not put yourself out 
 of the way to help one in real life." That was not business. 
 Even if you do feel yourself slighted and ill-used, you should 
 not show it. Put your lips tight together, and bear it. 
 
 Don't ever send in a play without first having obtained per- 
 mission to do so. Don't, when it is in, worry the manager 
 about it too soon or too often. Don't write to the papers about 
 your ill-treatment. They will insert your letter, and, at the 
 same time, write a leader pointing out what ill-regulated, foolish 
 persons you and your class are, and you will get your name up 
 as a quarrelsome party who should be avoided. Do not argue 
 with managers, but accept their decisions, and appear to be 
 impressed with, and grateful for, their views. If they think 
 your play stupid, your opposition will never make them think 
 it is not stupid, but your agreement will make them think yoi/ 
 remarkably clever. Don't be satirical, I know you are. All 
 we clever men are. But it is a dangerous gift, as the young 
 lady said who was so beautiful that the monkey would kiss her, 
 and you should dissemble it. Be guided by common sense in
 
 " Planiins^y 29 
 
 "6 
 
 3^our tactics. Do not send drawing-room comedy to the Adelphi, 
 and sensational melodrama to Terry's. Do not try to talk Mr. 
 Toole over into playing a heavy, emotional drama, because you 
 will only be wasting your own valuable time, to say nothing of 
 that versatile comedian's. Do not send a farcical comedy to 
 Drury Lane, or submit a piece containing a wreck at sea, a 
 •dynamite explosion, view of Constantinople, and vivid repre- 
 sentation of the Jubilee procession to the Strand or Royalty 
 Theatres. Do not offer a one-act farce as curtain-raiser to a 
 house that is playing a three-act one as its chief attraction, nor 
 send a pathetic little drama of The Step Sister type to the 
 Gaiety. 
 
 Send one-part plays to the actors or actresses that they 
 would best suit. Actors are more get-at-able than managers, 
 and if they fanc}^ the part they may push the piece for 3'ou, and 
 of course they have naturally much influence (more of this 
 anon). The Red Lamp, I am thinking, would have stood a very 
 poor chance of production if sent to Messrs. Russell and 
 Bashford instead of to Mr. Tree ; and Mr. Irving would hardly 
 have bought The Amber Heart if it had not been for Miss Terry. 
 Every actor and actress, especially young rising actors and 
 actresses, are ever on the look-out for plays in which they them- 
 selves particularly shine, and if you can write a piece containing 
 a part just adapted to their style, and calculated to afford them 
 a good "display," that piece stands a very good chance of 
 being very carefully considered. Such plays — one-part plays — 
 are, in consequence, the best line for a beginner to work. Mind, 
 however, that the play is a one-part play ; actors do not relish 
 rivalry. And take care that the parts suit your man all 
 through. It is popularly supposed that an actor can represent 
 any character — that Toole could easily play Hamlet, and that 
 for Mr. Penley to impersonate Henry VIII. would be merely a 
 f)uestion of making-up. Actors themselves, though, know that 
 lliis is not so, and that their range extends only to the bounds
 
 30 Playwriting. 
 
 of their own personality. The part in which an actor shows 
 himself at his best is that part in which his own private 
 individual characteristics are displayed to their most dramatic 
 advantage. The poorest actor, given the necessary technical 
 training, can act one character to perfection, that character 
 beir.g himself, while the greatest performer is stagey and 
 artificial when once outside his own nature. 
 
 See, however, that the part fits your actor thoroughly, and 
 that it is nowhere beyond his powers ; if it is, he will tell you 
 that it is an impossible character, and contrary to the laws of 
 human nature. 
 
 All this, too, will be excellent practice in preparing 3-ou for the 
 time when you will have to " write to order," to fit a company,' 
 as the term goes. What a hideous necessity having to do that 
 is, by the way. It is like making a man to fit some old coat and 
 trousers that the tailor happens to have on hand, and doesn't 
 know what to do with. How can the critics expect art and 
 drama when a m.anager's instructions to a struggling author 
 are — if not in words, in very plain meaning — ■" Oh, play be 
 damned ! See that the girl and I get plenty of fat ; that's all 
 that's wanted" And, the author — but there, who cares for the 
 author ? It is the actor, in his flaring costume, that poses in 
 graceful attitudes on the top of the pole for the people to gape 
 at. The author is the party v/ho puffs about underneath, sup- 
 porting the pole on his chest. Nobody looks at him. 
 
 Adopting this course — this course of writing plays that you 
 will send to actors in the first instance rather than to managers 
 — will gain you acquaintanceship with players, and such an 
 acquaintanceship is, remember, your chiefest aim, object, and 
 goal. It is by actors' help principally that you will get a footing 
 in the theatrical world. You must, somehow, by hook or by 
 crook, by fair means or by foul, secure the friendship of one or 
 more actors — the more the better. Without them your case is 
 hopeless. Few managers will be found to pay any serious
 
 ''Planting:' 31 
 
 attention to the work of men unknown to them. I should say- 
 no manager ever does so, but that I have heard from the lips of 
 some most positive assurances that they do I should not 
 otherwise have believed it. 
 
 But anyhow, and even if any of them do pay attention to 
 unknown men, men known to them by some means or other 
 stand a much better chance of their favour, and the introduction 
 will come with more weight from an actor than from any other 
 person. Added to this, your actor friend knows how, when, and 
 where, and with what bait your manager should be fished. He 
 knows the general habits of the creature, its shy season, its 
 hungry times, its particular taste. It is but little use getting a 
 manager to read a play when he is not actually wanting a play ; 
 he will have forgotten all about it by the time he is. While a 
 play is drawing, it never seems to occur to them that it will ever 
 cease to draw, and they rarely trouble themselves about its 
 successor until they are dropping ;^ioo or so a week over it. 
 
 You do not know the ground. You waste your time on the 
 wrong trail, and chances go by while you are following up false 
 scents. What you want is a little note one morning : — 
 
 Dear- 
 
 " Have you anything that would do for us? Pinero's piece has 
 fallen through, ard Thome's off his head for a play. Wouldn't that last 
 thing of yours do — that four act one ? Write the old man up a bit for T. T. 
 Run down to the theatre and see him this morning ; you'll catch him between 
 II and 12. I'll speak to him about it meanwhile. 
 
 " In haste, yours, ." 
 
 Then, when you go down, instead of the stage-door keeper 
 coming back with a message that Mr. Thorne is very busy, and 
 will you see Mr. Alport, you will at once be asked to " Step this 
 way, please, and mind the stair." 
 
 An actor can be of immense service to you at the beginning
 
 32 Play writing. 
 
 of your career (as you can be to him when you are once an 
 established author). He has the ear of the manager, and can 
 speak the right word for you at the right moment. He is 
 standing at the wings, and the piece, which has had a long and 
 successful run, is going a little dull. The house is not so full as 
 it hitherto has been, and the applause is sounding weaker. The 
 manager strolls thoughtfully forward, and stands watching the 
 stage. 
 
 " Not going so well to-night," says your friend the actor. 
 
 " No," says the manager, dreamily. 
 
 "We shall want a change soon." 
 
 " 'Fraid so." (A pause.) 
 
 " Heard a lovely play read the other day." 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 " Yes ; just the thing for you — some splendid scenes in it. ' 
 
 "Who's it by?" 
 
 " There's one situation in the third act, the finest thing I've 
 ever come across. Splendidly worked up, too." 
 
 " Who's the author ? " 
 
 " Full of interest, beautifully written, not a " 
 
 " Is it your own ? '' 
 
 " No ; a friend of mine, a very clever young fellow He's got 
 the real stuft in him." 
 
 " Ah ! I never care much about venturing upon an untried 
 man— too risky." 
 
 " Oh, he won't be untried long. This piece is coming on soon. 
 I think the Macklins have got it. They were wanting it I know." 
 (This is a lie.) 
 
 " Got good parts for Brown and Robinson ? " 
 
 " Oh, there's a part in for Brown that would simply make the 
 success of the piece without anything else ; and there's a de- 
 lightful part for Robinson, too. Oh, it really is — I don't say it 
 because he's a friend of mine — but it really is a damned fine 
 play."
 
 ^'■Planting.'" 33 
 
 " Well, tell him to send it down. I'd like to have a look at 
 it."' 
 
 "Well, I can't say; I think, as I said, he's parted with it 
 already; I'm not sure." 
 
 " Can you find. out, and let me know ? " 
 
 " Well, look here, I'll tell you what I'll do, if he hasnH settled 
 — I don't expect he has finally yet — I'll send him down to you 
 to-morrow." 
 
 " Very well, I shall be here about eleven, and if he comes we 
 can talk it over." 
 
 So you go down at eleven, and talk it over, and try to persuade 
 him that it is the grandest play that was ever written, and to- 
 convey to him some slight conception of its brilliancy, its 
 power, its novelty, and its exceptional suitability in every 
 direction. 
 
 In his interests, and merely as a friend, you advise him, 
 strongly, not to let the chance slip by him of securing the piece. 
 You hint, vaguely, concerning the anxiety of other managers to 
 get hold of it — only you want him to hear it first. You expatiate 
 — if he is an actor — upon the splendid part there is in it for 
 himself, a part, too, which he alone can do full justice to ; and 
 you talk to him of the ease with which it can be produced, and 
 the ridiculously small expense required for " putting it on." 
 Then you prove to him, conclusively, that it is bound to be a 
 success; and exemplify to him that it is just the sort of piece 
 the public want. If, for instance, it is a farcical comedy, you 
 dwell upon the fact that farcical comedy is the only thing that 
 " draws " now-a-days. If it is not a farcical comedy, you explain 
 that farcical comedy is played out, that playgoers are sick of 
 mre tomfoolery, and require sense and wit. If it is a niclodraina * 
 you bring forward the whole history of the stage to show thai 
 melodrama always has been, and always is, the favourite dish 
 with the great mass of the paying public. If it is a comedy or 
 a tragedy, you say that people are tired of the old hackneyed 
 
 D
 
 34 
 
 Play writing. 
 
 melodramatic stuff they have always had set before them, and 
 are longing for a change. 
 
 All of which, although not rousing him to any visible enthu- 
 siasm, impresses him, and he says : — " All right, my boy, I'll 
 hear it on Thursday morning at twelve, here in the theatre." 
 And you answer : " Twelve o'clock on Thursday — right, I'll be 
 down." 
 
 Then you shake hands and part, and till twelve o'clock on 
 Thursday your life moves slowly on its wheels.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 READING. 
 
 And now it is twelve o'clock on Thursda}', and here we arc 
 at the stage door as the clock is striking. Ah, we shall not be 
 quite so punctual when we are a little more familiar with the 
 theatrical world, and know that its time is arranged on 
 auctioneer's principles, and that twelve is for twelve-thirty 
 o'clock precisely. 
 
 We have, it is probable, had a glass of sherry or a nip of 
 brandy coming along, but even that has not made our knees 
 quite as steady and our voice quite as clear as we could wish ; 
 and there is a guilty huskiness about our manner of asking the 
 stage doorkeeper if the manager is in, suggestive of our having 
 come to borrow money, or sell him a dog. 
 
 He is a slightly gruffy party, the stage doorkeeper, and a little 
 hard of hearing. He rises and comes towards us with his 
 newspaper in his hand, and we repeat our question. He regards 
 us with great suspicion, and says no, the manager isn't there, 
 his tone implying that it is the last place in the world where 
 any sensible man would expect to find him. We remark 
 " Oh ! " upon this, and look round vacantly. Then Cerberus 
 asks us if we have any appointment with the manager, and on 
 our eagerly responding in the affirmative, he says, " Wait a bit," 
 
 1) 2
 
 36 Playwriting. 
 
 and pulls open the inner door, and calls out for Harry. Harry,, 
 an intelligent lad — call boy, errand boy — emerges, whistlings 
 with an empty beer can in his hand, and to him Cerberus- 
 appeals as to the probability of the manager's coming or not 
 coming. Harry knows all about the matter, and expects the 
 manager any minute, and if you are Mr, Blank (you are Mr. 
 Blank) you are" to go down stairs and wait for him. So down 
 you go. 
 
 The inside of a theatre is a dismal place by daylight. The 
 empty stage is dimly lighted by one flaring gas jet issuing from 
 an upright T in the centre of the footlights. A shadowy figure 
 in a white jacket is hovering about at the back, hauling "wings " 
 and " fiats " about, and carrying on a conversation with an 
 unseen " Bill," whose answers appear to come from high up, 
 or low down, you can't tell which. But it all seems very 
 ghostly. The curtain is up, and the house looks small and 
 dingy. The stalls and decorations are shrouded in dirty white 
 cloths. The sunshine streams in here and there, and makes the 
 place look still more dreary. You walk about, and get the 
 hump. 
 
 Every step you hear, and the banging of every door, you 
 fancy is the manager coming, and you rush to the stairs to see. 
 You wonder if he has come and doesn't know you are there. 
 You wonder if he has forgotten the appointment. You wonder 
 if anything has happened to him. 
 
 At last ! after waiting about half an hour (don't be too 
 surprised though if he doesn't turn up at all. I said in a pre- 
 vious chapter that a theatre was a house of business, and so it 
 is, but the folks in connection with it might be more business- 
 like for all that. Some of them are, in our idiomatic language 
 of Cockaigne, fair cough-drops). In the present case, we 
 suppose that our man is a tolerably well-behaved member of his 
 class, and, as I was saying, he, after half an hour or so, arrives, 
 accompanied by his stage-manager, and the three of you then
 
 Reading. 3 7 
 
 'i) 
 
 proceed to either the great man's own private sanctum, or else 
 to the green-room, and the business of the day begins. 
 
 It is a trying ordeal, under any circumstances, the reading of 
 a play; and listening to one is just fifty times worse. I never 
 could have believed what a terrible punishment hearing a play 
 read w^as until some two years ago, when one was read for the 
 hrst time to me. We started at seven o'clock in the evening, 
 all as jolly as sandboys (I haven't the ghost of a notion what a 
 sandboy is, or why it should be jolly ; but it's a good old well- 
 established simile, and I always use it when I get a chance. 
 My poor father was fond of it too, I remember. It has always 
 been a favourite with our family). Yes, as jolly then as 
 sand boys we were at seven — two of us to listen and one to 
 read. " Go it, old man," we said ; and he coughed, and 
 went it. 
 
 We laughed at all the jokes in the first act, and criticised the 
 characters, and argued about the plot, and said we thought it 
 very good. The second act began at nine. We discussed it 
 less at detail. The jokes in that act were not so good ; the 
 interest in the story was not so absorbing as it had been. 
 I and the rest of the audience got into a sort of habit of 
 looking somewhat frequently at our watches, and shaking 
 them to see if they had stopped. I and the rest of 
 the audience agreed, at the end of the act, that the play 
 was still very good, but that it would want cutting. On 
 the author, however, showing an inchnation to argue the point, 
 we gave in, and agreed that it didn't want cutting, and begged 
 him to get on with the third act. The reading of the third act 
 commenced at 10.35 '■> ^^ 10.40 the rest of the audience wanted 
 to know what time the last train left for Battersea. Why, 
 seeing that he resided in the next street but two, he wanted the 
 last train to Battersea, I have never been able to understand. I 
 said I believed it went at 11.55. But he said no; he thought it 
 was 10.50, and, murmuring something about its being a matter
 
 38 Playwriting. 
 
 of life or death, and having only just recollected it, he left with- 
 out another word. 
 
 So I listened to the remainder of the play by myself, but 
 what it was about I couldn't tell you to save my life. Whether 
 the hero married the heroine, and who turned out to be the 
 rightful heir, I don't know — and I didn't care. Somebody died 
 about the middle of the act, and I was glad of it. That is all 
 I recollect, most of m}^ energies having been concentrated at 
 the time upon my endeavours to yawn without opening ni)- 
 mouth. It is a difficult and exhausting feat. You swell 
 inwardly, your nostrils dilate, your lips and eyebrows are com- 
 pressed, and give you a vicious, murderous appearance. At 
 last the water comes into your eyes, and you breathe hard, and 
 it is over. And then the whole process immediately commences 
 again. 
 
 And yet it was a very good play, and, when it came out about 
 nine months afterwards, proved a smart and rattling piece 
 enough. 
 
 That experience taught me two useful lessons. One was not 
 to ever read a play to anybody except as a matter of painful 
 necessity, and, in the interests of your friends, I strongly recom- 
 mend the rule to you. Very young authors rather fancy they 
 are conferring a favour in giving their fellow-mortals an oppor- 
 tunity of listening to their compositions, but I can assure you 
 the fellow-mortals do not regard it in any festive light at all. It 
 only bores them, and their manner shows this, whatever their 
 conventional gush may say ; and then the young author is in 
 the depths of despair, and loses all belief in himself and his 
 work. Don't worry your friends at all about your work. You 
 don't really want their opinion ; you onl}^ want their praise. 
 They know this, and tell you that the piece is lovely — the finest 
 thing they have ever heard — will be sure to make a great 
 success — no difficulty about getting that out, they should thinky 
 etc., etc. — but : "never had such a fearful four hours in all my
 
 Reading. 39 
 
 life" is what they say to each other when they get outside. If 
 they do express their views honestly — give you " their candid 
 opinion," as you have begged of them — it will in nine cases^ 
 out of ten be to tell you that they do not like it, and that will 
 upset you and do no good. To attempt to follow their sugges- 
 tions would be to expose your play to the fate of the old man's 
 donkey. You must judge your work for yourself, and rely upon 
 your oii'u opinion. Especially, above all things, do not ask 
 another literary man his views about it. Each artist looks at 
 his art from his own platform. He cannot see it from a brother 
 artist's standpomt, and consequently all work but his own, how- 
 ever perfect it may be, must of necessity appear distorted to his 
 eyes. Shakespeare's work seems to me in many ways to be 
 false and faulty ; and were Shakespeare alive, he would, I am 
 convinced, object to my methods. Thus do artists disagree. 
 
 The second lesson that I learned by that reading was not to 
 despair when other people yawned and dozed while listening to 
 the reading of a piece of mine. A play is written to be acted, 
 not read, and that it does not sound exciting at the desk is no 
 proof that it will be dull when on the stage. Besides, I doubt 
 whether listening to some two or three steady hours' reading of 
 the best novel or tale — things which are written for reading — 
 would prove exhilarating. I shouldn't care to sit out a whole 
 morning of even " Middlemarch." 
 
 But we are wandering away from the little room where the 
 manager and the stage-manager are waiting to hear our play. 
 Let us return there and read it. 
 
 It will, as I say, be a trying ordeal for you. It will always be 
 so, right up to the end of your career. 
 
 If you are a young author, full of hope and belief in your- 
 self, and with corresponding capacity for disappointment and 
 despair, the strain is pretty well as much as you can bear. 
 When you are an old one, with your reputation, not to make, 
 but — far more difficult— to maintain, and when managerial con-
 
 40 Play writing. 
 
 fidence in you, once shaken, would be impossible to re-establish, 
 the tension is even still more severe. 
 
 The room is cold and cheerless, and you feel that your two 
 companions and yourself make but a poor show in it. The 
 manager is opening and reading his letters in an abstracted 
 manner, and appears to have forgotten who you are, and to be 
 titfully wondering why you are there, and why he is there, and 
 Avhat it is all about. As for the stage-manager, he makes no 
 attempt to disguise his opinion that the whole proceeding is a 
 piece of foolishness ; and before the reading commences you 
 have come to view the thing in the same light yourself, and to 
 wish that you were the proprietor of a prosperous fried fish shop, 
 and had never bothered your head about plays at all. 
 
 Then the manager requests you to "Fire away," and you sit 
 down and open your MS., and begin. 
 
 Much depends upon how you read. A poor play can be given 
 the semblance of sparkle and wit by a clever reader, but authors, 
 generally speaking, are not good readers — F. C. Burnand and 
 W. S. Gilbert being the exceptions that only prove the rule — 
 and more often a piece with real humour and " go " in it will 
 sound flat, stale, and unprofitable to the two weary listeners 
 Avho form its first audience. Also, it is difficult to read with any 
 spirit at all under the circumstances. A crowd of two is not an 
 invigorating one to perform before, even when both are sympa- 
 thetic and admiring, and to interest or amuse a manager or 
 stage-manager in any play is like trying to excite a newspaper 
 •editor about politics. They have heard plays till they are sick, 
 of the very word play. They know all your jokes by heart. 
 They have been familiar with all your novel situations for years, 
 They can tell 3'ou the whole of 5'our plot after hearing the first 
 fifty lines. The speeches at which you have pictured the whole 
 house rising with enthusiasm they sit through unmoved, only 
 remarking at the end that it will want cutting; and the humour 
 that you have feared would be almost dangerous as likely to send
 
 Reading. 41 
 
 weak persons into too severe convulsions, they sit and stare at 
 with fixed, glassy eye. 
 
 And yet you can very soon tell if the piece is " going " with 
 them. They do not laugh, they do not smile, they do not say 
 anything. There is no outward sign whatever from which you 
 can gather any opinion. But an intangible, undefinable, electric 
 current seems to run round from one to the other, and yon feel 
 that they are in sjanpathy with you, and that you are carrying 
 them with you as you read. 
 
 Sometimes a startlingly strong and novel piece will work 
 them up to such a degree that they actually show emotion. If 
 the manager titters upon the first or second witty line, and goes 
 on to laugh heartily as you turn over the pages, you can begin 
 to think about the terms that you will ask. I have heard tell 
 of an instance in which the stage-manager was observed to wipe 
 away a tear during the reading of the pathetic part of a play. 
 If so, the situation must have been wondrously sad, I rather 
 doubt the whole story though myself. 
 
 To read on against a strengthening conviction that your labour 
 is useless, that they do not care for the piece, and are sure not 
 to accept it, is terribly depressing work. The silence of the 
 room, broken only by the sound of your own voice, grows more 
 oppressive every moment. The air seems to get colder. You 
 go on grinding out the lines in a dull, hopeless, mechanical 
 manner. You have no sense of what you are reading, and you 
 give no sense to the words. Your throat is dry and parched. 
 You try to rouse yourself up, to throw some fire into your 
 reading, but it is useless. The deadness only deepens, and you 
 feel as thankful as the other two, when at last it is all over, and 
 the manager has thanked you for giving him the pleasure of 
 hearing the piece, and you have thanked the manager forgiving 
 you the pleasure of reading it to him, and you arc outside in the 
 open air and can breathe. 
 
 When, on the otlier hand, however, it is plain tliat your
 
 42 Playwriting. 
 
 manager is enjoying the play more and more as it goes on, and 
 his acceptance of it appears more and more certain every 
 moment, then your reading becomes almost ecstatic. You 
 rattle through the comic scenes with unctuous gusto, and the 
 manager laughs and shakes in his seat, and the stage-manager 
 gravely guffaws. The heroine recounts her woes, and your 
 voice quavers with emotion, and the manager blows his nose, 
 and the stage-manager quietly sighs and looks at his boots. 
 Your hero thunders forth his magnificent defiance of the villain, 
 and the room resounds with your passionate tones, and the 
 manager's eye fires, and his fist clenches in sympathy, and the 
 stage-manager shakes his head and looks determined. And when 
 you have finished, the manager jumps up and turns to the stage- 
 manager with — " Well, I think that's the sort of thing we want, 
 isn't it ? " and the stage-manager, though less enthusiastic in 
 his manner, smiles, and says that he thinks they can do with 
 it. 
 
 After that, terms are discussed. (These not being quite so 
 brilliant for the author as is generally supposed. But of this 
 more anon); and, when they are settled, the "casting" is 
 argued out, and arranged. 
 
 " Well, Annie Hughes will play Maria, I suppose,' says the 
 manager, turning to the stage-manager. 
 
 "Isn't she rather affected? " says the stage-manager. 
 
 The stage-manager never likes anybody's acting, and makes a 
 virtue of always speaking his mind. 
 
 " Ah, how charming she was in that thing of Rae's at the 
 Criterion," murmurs the manager, thoughtful^. 
 
 " I think she's all right," strikes in the author, " if she's kept 
 well in hand," 
 
 " Ah, that's all very well to sa}', but will you keep her well in 
 hand ? " replies the stage-manager ; " I don't care for the job, I 
 tell you frankly."
 
 Reading. 43 
 
 " I think that will be all right, Tom," says the manager. 
 " She must understand that she's not to play about in it." 
 
 " Oh, very well. We can but try." 
 
 Maria — Annie Hughes. 
 
 "Who'll play Angelma?" 
 
 "You won't better Cissy Grahame for that," says the stage- 
 manager. 
 
 " We wan't someone very strong for that," puts in the author,^ 
 anxiously. " That's the part I'm more nervous about than 
 any." 
 
 " Well, my dear boy, you couldn't want anyone stronger. 
 She's been doing some very good work lately, Cissy has." (The 
 stage-manager always regards himself as a permanent opposi- 
 tion. If the author or the manager fancy anyone, he regards ■ 
 that person as a duffer. If they are doubtful of anyone, he is 
 that person's champion.) 
 
 " Oh, all right, as long as you are satisfied about her strength. 
 I don't remember her in anything, myself, lately." 
 
 " Oh, you'll find her all right," adds the manager assuringl)-.- 
 
 Angelina — Cissy Grahame. 
 
 " Now, what about Granthorne ? " asks the author. 
 
 " Yes, that's our difficulty," remarks the manager. 
 
 " You'll have to engage someone for that," says his lieutenant.. 
 
 The three people stare atone another for a bit, and ponder. 
 
 " What do you think of Bassett Roe ? " suggests the opposi- 
 tion. 
 
 " Hardly his style," replies the governor. Besides, he'll only 
 play villains now, I know." 
 
 " Lewis Waller has been coming to the front a good deal 
 lately," is the second suggestion of the stage-manager. 
 
 " I I'm," says the author. " Think he'd do ? " 
 
 " It is a most difficult thing to put your hands on a good 
 juvenile lead nowadays," parenthetically observes the chief. 
 
 "How do you like Waring ? " hazards the author.
 
 -44 Playwriting. 
 
 " He'd do all right, but we can't get him." 
 
 " Cartwright," suddenly exclaims the author, as if he'd just 
 guessed a riddle. 
 
 "Not your man at all," says the stage-manager. 
 
 "What would he want ? " asks the manager. 
 
 " Oh, you'd get him for ten." 
 
 " Nearer twenty," says the opposition. 
 
 " Well, say fifteen," says the author gaily, who, not having 
 to pay, looks upon this arguing about five or ten pounds a week 
 as foolish. 
 
 " Bucklaw," says the manager, musingly. 
 
 " Bucklaw's your man," says the other ; " and you'd get him 
 for about ten or twelve." 
 
 " Do you think he could do it ? " inquires the author. 
 
 " Well, he's been playing all Wilson Barrett's parts in the 
 provinces. He ought to." 
 
 "Bucklaw, Bucklaw," mutters the author, "wasn't that the 
 man at the Opera Comique ? " 
 
 " Yes — he played the lover — the young Scotchman." 
 
 " Oh, yes— Oh, he'd do splendidly." 
 
 " I wonder if he's free ? 
 
 "Soon find out." 
 
 " Well, we'll take it that he is for the present." 
 
 Granthorne — Bucklaw. 
 
 And so on, and so on, till the casting is complete. Then the 
 manager, saying he will write and let you know when the 
 reading before the company is fixed for, shakes hands and 
 wishes you good morning; and leaving the MS. on his table, 
 you go out much easier in your mind than you came in. 
 
 The dingy little street is a radiant road, the London air is 
 
 sweet and pleasant in your nostrils. The dirty urchins round 
 
 about are your brothers, and you love them all. You love 
 
 everybody. Even your wife's relations you do not positively 
 
 ■ dislike, for the moment.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MATINEES. 
 
 I LEFT you at the end of the last chapter in a very happy 
 frame of mind indeed. You had read your play to a manager, 
 and it had been accepted then and there, terms settled, and 
 cast arranged. Three days afterwards an envelope arrives, 
 bearing the name of the theatre and its lessee printed very 
 prominently across it. This you naturally guess to be an 
 appointment for the reading before the company, and, trembling 
 with suppressed delight, you break the seal. The letter 
 expresses shortly the manager's regret that circumstances have 
 arisen rendering it impossible for him to produce your play as 
 arranged, the MS. of which he returns by book post ; and you 
 sit down in the nearest chair, and stare round you vacantly, and 
 wonder why your mouth is getting so dry. 
 
 You pull yourself together, however, in a day or two, and, 
 finding it impossible to get your first man to reconsider his 
 decision, set to work to get another home for the piece. You 
 see or write to pretty well every manager in London, antl a few 
 country ones besides. To som« of tliem you reati it, and the}' 
 don't care for it, as it doesn't suit them — do not always attiibute 
 a manager's declining a piece to his not liking it. Of course : 
 " I like it very much indeed, my boy ; but I couldn't use it just
 
 46 Playwriting. 
 
 at present," is, as a rule, the polite formula for " Your play is 
 utter rubbish, my dear fellow, and I wouldn't have it as a gift." 
 But occasionally a man really likes a piece, and yet does not 
 -see his way to accepting it. It does not fit in with his company, 
 or his theatre, or his stage, or his pocket, and he has regretfully 
 to let it go. To other managers you have sent it for them to 
 read themselves, and it has come back, in one or two instances, 
 by the next post almost, which has greatly irritated you ; and 
 in more instances not for two or three months, which has 
 caused you still greater irritation. And you have grown to 
 almost hate the sight of the thing, and yet, by strange perver- 
 sity, to firmer and firmer believe in it, and to love it. You rail 
 at all the managers, and call them fools, and you have grand 
 bursts of defiance ot things in general, during which you pace 
 your bedroom in heroic style, and shake your fist at the world, 
 and run your fingers through your hair, and fiing it back from 
 your forehead in quite a leonine manner, and throw your 
 arms up towards the ceiling, after Ajax defying the lightning 
 method ; and stupid, brainless, soulless mankind shall have your 
 play. You will force their dull eyes to see its beauties, their 
 doltish ears to hear its music. Their sluggish hearts shall beat 
 quick at its magic touch, and their unwilling voices swell a 
 chorus to its praise. 
 
 You will produce it at a matinee/ 
 
 You are quite right, but do not, let me beg of you, think of a 
 matinee until you have exhausted every other means. The 
 scenery and properties provided at matinees are of themselves 
 •enough to make any piece ridiculous, and the audience — well, 
 the audience is a " deadhead " audience, and a more depressing 
 audience to play to than a deadhead audience you wouldn't get 
 built for you anywhere in the world. I don't know why it is ; 
 they mean well, they applaud liberally, they look nice, but they 
 are not, as an audience, a success, and, for my own part, I 
 should consider a house of " first-night wreckers," who had
 
 Alatinces. 47 
 
 previously been kept outside in the pouring rain for two hours, 
 and afterwards made to sit out No. One Round the Corney or Turn 
 Him Out, as far preferable. There is an air of unsubstantialness 
 about a matinee audience. Playing to them is like playing before 
 your own relatives ; you feel they are not real. 
 
 Then the critics, whether they know 'it or not tl^emselves, 
 come prejudiced against the whole show. It is impossible that 
 they can help doing so. I have been a critic, and I know what 
 it is like to go four times or so a week, to sit out, in a stuffy 
 theatre on a sweltering afternoon, a play which, in nineteen cases 
 out of twenty, is utter trash. The critic, as a rule, gets paid a 
 fixed salary per annum. He gets no more pay for attending 
 and writing about a dozen pieces than he would for attending 
 and waiting about one, and all that matinees bring him in there- 
 fore, is more boredness and more work. Some of them, the 
 pressmen, look in only for an act or so, getting thereby a most 
 hazy notion of the plot, and then going home and criticising the 
 play as being ununderstandable. The great majority of them, 
 however, do most conscientiously sit out matinee after matinee, 
 from the beginning of the first act to the end of the last. How 
 they bear it I never can comprehend ; they must have iron con- 
 stitutions and the patience of Job. But you can't expect that 
 they should go to one with any feelings of love and gratitude to 
 its promoter. 
 
 The mere fact of its being a matinee is, by the law of averages, 
 presumptive evidence that it will prove a failure. About a 
 hundred new pieces are produced at matinees every year. Ot 
 that hundred some two are not utterly useless. The other 
 ninety-eight never seethe light again. The very word matinee 
 at once conjures up visions of dreary horror ; of wild, incom- 
 prehensible plots ; of unconnected, meaningless scenes ; of 
 hackneyed, impossible characters ; of dialogue bald as a two- 
 year-old doll ; of ancient humour, conventional sentiment, and 
 ridiculous situations. The matinee is the theatrical Nazareth,
 
 48 Play writing. 
 
 and people ask one another, Can any good thing come out at a 
 matinee ? 
 
 Occasionally there does. Jim the Penman and The Great Pink 
 Pearl are two examples of exceedingly clever plays that the 
 matinee has given to us, and Wood Barrow Farm and Captain 
 Swift are still more recent samples, and yours, my youth- 
 ful dramatic friend, may make another. At all events, you 
 can but try. I put all the disadvantages and drawbacks of 
 the system before you as a matter of duty, but these papers are 
 not written to discourage you ; the battle is quite hard enough 
 without that. Besides, your friends will do all that is necessary 
 in that direction for you. For my part, if you can't get your 
 piece accepted, and you can manage the expense, I certainly 
 advise to bring it out in this way, rather than burn it, which is 
 the only other- thing you can do with it. It does have its chance. 
 The press is there, and a certain number of managers and 
 actors; and, if there be an}- good in the play, and I don't see 
 why there shouldn't be — I'm a believer in young men my- 
 self, they should be possessed of more freshness and origi- 
 nality, more fancy, sparkle, and fire than we old, worked-out 
 mines — if, as I say, there be any good in the play, it will be 
 noted. 
 
 A matinee will cost you, in round figures, from /"loo to £120^ 
 At least that will be the outgoing. What the house may bring 
 you in, concerning which we will talk later on, will be a set off 
 against it. Of course, to an " insider " the expense will be much 
 less. If you can get your theatre lent to you for nothing, and 
 about two-thirds of your company to play for love, the thing can 
 be done for some £^0 or £^0 gross. But we are not talking^ 
 about " insiders," but about rank onts'iders. 
 
 I should advise you to get a good cast together. It will be a 
 question of only about ;^io or £15 on the total between a first- 
 class company and a duffing one, and, if you can get somegood^
 
 Matinees. 49 
 
 well-known names on your bill, they will " draw " more than 
 their fees. Of the value to the piece of having it well played I 
 need surely not speak. To fetch down a " star " to play in your 
 piece is, of course, a great acquisition, but unless the part is 
 really an extraordinarily fine one, and, more germane to the 
 point still, you can induce the actor to see it in that light, you 
 will find this very difficult to accomplish. No mere monetary 
 consideration will induce a man, earning a salary of /'30 or £:^o 
 a week, to devote time and labour upon a part which can bring 
 him no further reputation, but, on the contrary, perhaps damage 
 that which he already possesses, added to which, an important 
 actor does not naturally care to make himself too common. 
 Occasionally, however, to try, or rather to show, their strength 
 in a new line, a Geo. Giddens or a Fred Leslie, or even perhaps 
 an Ellen Terry, will play a character they particularly fancy, 
 and of the advantage to the author of such a stroke of luck the 
 history of The Amber Heart speaks all that can be said. 
 
 But, as a rule, it is from the ranks of the young, " the 
 promising" "the rising," that your recruiting takes place. 
 They, generally speaking, are eager to play for you. In these 
 days of long runs young actors and actresses pine for practice 
 and opportunity — as the formation among them of the Dramatic 
 Students' Society amply proves — and matinees afford them the 
 only means of obtaining these. 
 
 You will get first-class artistes of this latter kind for a fee of 
 about five guineas — always employ guineas in dealing with 
 professional folk. There is a difference of a shilling between a 
 guinea and a pound in actual value, but the difference from a 
 sentimental point of view it would be difficult to estimate. A 
 doctor who would be pleased at a guinea would be insulted at a 
 pound. If a publisher sends me a cheque for ten pounds ten 
 shillings for an article, I am happy ; if he sends me a ten pound 
 note I talk about the discourtesy with which genius is treated 
 by vulgar upstart tradesmen. You would get very good people 
 
 E 
 
 e>
 
 50 Playwriting. 
 
 for five guineas. Your second grade characters you would get 
 competently played for about three guineas ; and your small 
 parts for a guinea and a-half. Any big person, such as Lottie 
 Venne — big, speaking artistically, I mean — Mackintosh, Pate- 
 man, &c., I expect you would have to pay ten or fifteen to. Of 
 course, this is speaking roundly ; the exact figures in each case 
 would be a matter of arrangement at the time, and depend upon 
 the actor's anxiety or disinclination to play, his or her degree of 
 popularity at the time, and the nature of the part. For the very 
 trying character of Count Freund, in Percy Lynwood and Mark 
 Ambient's Christina, Mr. Herman Vezin was, I am told, paid 
 
 You will not find the casting all plain sailing, even if 30U are 
 one of those lucky beings to whom the monetary question will 
 be of no miportance. Some of the people you may want will 
 not care for their parts. One girl won't play second fiddle to- 
 "that empty-headed little idiot " the other girl. One will make 
 it a sine qua non that the part is one in which he can wear evening 
 dress, and another will want to knov.' " if the sympathies of the 
 
 audience are with him in the part " ; and Miss doesn't 
 
 choose to play with that selfish brute ; and Mr. can't 
 
 be expected to act, and won't, if " Miss doesn't play up "' 
 
 to him. 
 
 Others will be under engagement to various managers who 
 will not let them play for matinees. Mr. Irving never, as a rule, 
 allows any member of his company to act outside the Lyceum ; 
 and Mr. Chas. Wyndham also has a strong objection to loaning 
 an actor. That their manager will not let them play is, by- 
 the-way, the excuse that artistes generally rely upon when they 
 do not want to play. It is often the polite form of saying " I 
 don't want to have anything to do with the piece at all," so do 
 not, when met with this rejoinder, argue the matter, and offer 
 to go and see the manager about it. 
 
 When you have got your company together you can fix the
 
 Matinees. 51 
 
 date. Some of them will be playing for other matinees, and some 
 will have important rehearsals at their own theatres. You must 
 manage to select a day that will suit them all. Then also you 
 must be careful not to clash with any other matinee, or, indeed, 
 with any other theatrical event of any kind. Sapte's Uncle's 
 Ghost, I remember, came out on the same day as the Mansion 
 House lunch to the theatrical profession. The critics were 
 called both by duty and pleasure rather to the substantial fare 
 provided by the Lord Mayor than to the ghostly entertainment 
 of Mr Sapte, and the next morning's notices were few and far 
 between. 
 
 As regards the period of year, try and arrange your produc- 
 tion early — before critics, managers, and the public have become 
 sick of the mere word matinee — before the theatre is as stifling as 
 an oven, and everyone is longing to be outside in the glorious 
 sunshine. In June and July matinees literally swarm, and it is 
 next to impossible to get a free date, and difficult to get a cast 
 together. Get your play finished early. If it is not ready before 
 the end of April far better practise patience, and leave it over 
 till the next season. 
 
 Now, for a theatre. This will cost you from /"ao to £^S- 
 Don't, if you can possibly help it, ever have anything to do with 
 " unlucky " houses. I never was the slightest superstitious 
 imtil I came to have to do with theatres. But, from some 
 houses, it really does seem impossible to exorcise the demon of 
 misfortune. The price asked should include the services of the 
 whole of the theatre staff, both back and front — hut not, of 
 course, the use of the courteous and magnificent-looking acting 
 manager, to whom you will have to pay a fee of from five to ten 
 guineas. The carpenters, scene-shifters, gas men, and others, 
 behind will expect a tip, say a pound or thirty shillings given to 
 the head carpenter to divide among the lot. The price also 
 includes gas, programmes, band (in most cases), and the use of 
 all scenery and properties that the house may have in stock. 
 
 !•: 2
 
 52 - Play writing. 
 
 You will have some rare fun over the scenery and mounting. 
 At some of the theatres they seem to possess only one interior 
 and one exterior. Juliet's bed-chamber on Monday becomes 
 the Widow Melnotte's cottage on Tuesday, a pawn-shop on 
 Wednesday, a palace on Thursday, and a boat-house on Friday. 
 Othello and Sir Charles Surface stretch their legs under the 
 same table, and both sit in Austrian bent-wood chairs, while 
 " Street in Venice by Night," " Outside the Pot and Whistle, 
 Drury-lane," and " Market Cross, St. Peter's, Yorkshire," are 
 all represented by a " Mediaeval Street." I remember " Lai " 
 
 Brough getting a very hearty laugh at the expense of the 
 
 management once (about the only thing that ever was got at 
 the expense of that house for a matinee, I expect). A "com- 
 fortably-furnished apartment " in some palace or mansion was 
 " mounted " with the usual rickety table and one chair. " Lai '' 
 apologised for this to another character in the piece, by explain- 
 ing that they had "just had the brokers in." 
 
 The hire of the theatre also gives you the right to at least 
 one full rehearsal there, with scenery, props., and music ; and 
 as a matter of courtesy, you are generally permitted the use of 
 the stage for your rehearsals whenever it is not otherwise 
 employed. When it is otherwise employed you will have the 
 enjoyment of heading your company about from one theatre to 
 another till you find rest for the sole of your foot. Nearly any 
 theatre is willing to lend you their stage when vacant, and you 
 will find the acting managers most good-natured and obliging 
 gentlemen. In the busy season, however, most of the stages 
 are nearly constantly occupied, and then with your company 
 trailing behind you like a school treat, you will cross from the 
 Cri. to the Pav., or the Troc. Neither the Pav. nor the Troc 
 are available, upon which Buggins, your leading man, who is 
 playing at the Haymarket thinks that that house is free, and 
 you and Buggins, leavmg the others behind you, run down there 
 to see. The Haymarket people are very sorry — pity you weren't
 
 Matinees. 53 
 
 five minutes earlier — have just lent the stage to Juggins and his 
 company— think you might get in at the Adelphi. Oft" in a cab 
 to the Adelphi — no good — " Tooles's, cabby." " Yessir."' 
 " Oh, Mr. Donald, are you using your stage this morning ? " 
 " Just this instant lent it to Muggins, or you should have it in 
 a moment.'' " Dammit. Just my luck. Come on Buggins. 
 Princess's.'' " Yessir."' " Can you lend us your stage this 
 morning?" "No; we're using the stage. Can have the 
 saloon if you like, though." " Oh, can we. Thanks, awfully. 
 God bless you. We'll go and fetch the gang at once." 
 " Trocadero, Cabby.'' " Now, then, where are you all. We've 
 got the Princess's saloon. Where's Fuggins ? where's 
 Huggins ? Got tired of waiting, and gone over to the Criterion ? 
 Met a friend from Australia, and gone into Scott's, has he ? Ah, 
 we'll soon have 'em out. Miss Puggins gone home. Oh, its 
 too bad of her, really. Never mind, we must do without her. 
 Come on." 
 
 Your artistes will give you about eight or ten rehearsals, but 
 two or three of the cast will be absent at each, and their parts 
 will have to be read. Altogether, you will have a fearful time 
 over the rehearsals, and will probably look ten years older when 
 they are over than you did before. I intend to deal with 
 rehearsals at length in my next chapter, so I will not go far into 
 the subject here, only advising you to sec that you have a good 
 stage-manager. If you have not sufficient experience and 
 authority yourself, it would be better to engage one, even if it 
 does cost you seven, eight, or ten guineas extra. As a rule, in 
 matinee rehearsals, everybody is stage-manager. This is useful, 
 as giving liveliness to the proceedings, but the play suffers 
 badly. Jones wants to arrange the thing from the point of view 
 that the most important character in the piece is the character 
 played by Jones. He is most indefatigable in instructing all 
 the others how to act up to Jones, how to place themselves so 
 that Jones is always the central figure of the picture, how to
 
 54 Play writing. 
 
 speak so that Jones's anwers may be effective, how to behave 
 so as never to take the attention of the audience away from 
 Jones. Brown disagrees with Jones's views on stage manage- 
 ment, thinks Jones too anxious to show his (Jones's) part up at 
 the expense of the others, considers, on the contrary, that it is 
 Brown's part that is the important one to be played up to, 
 instructs the rest of the company accordingly. Rest of com- 
 pany disagree from both Jones and Brown, also from each 
 other, also from author, whom they all think an ass. Result, 
 everybody stage-manages everybody else, and complains that 
 nobody else listens to them. 
 
 As regards the business part of your arrangements, leave 
 these to the acting manager. 
 
 He will see to all the advertising for you, an item that will 
 cost you about £^o or £2,5- Four days' advertisements in the 
 newspapers, a dozen sandwich men (poor devils !) for a couple 
 of days, and a few hundred posters and small bills will be all 
 you require. Less than this will make the thing a hole-and- 
 corner affair, and more than this is useless. You only want to 
 attract the attention of those particularly interested in theatrical 
 affairs. The general public it is idle whistling for. 
 
 Give him a list of your friends, and he will send them a 
 circular, requesting their orders for tickets ; and this will save 
 you the unpleasant task of personal touting. It will surprise 
 you to find how many friends you have when you come to make 
 a list of them for purposes like this. All previous little 
 differences and dislikes are forgotten under the genial in- 
 fiaences of such a moment, and your heart goes out to every 
 human being whose name and address you can recollect. 
 What if you and the man next door have had words over the 
 garden wall, and you have tried to poison his cat, and he has 
 called out across the street to his bo)^ to come away and not be 
 seen talking to your boy, and you have yelled out to your boy 
 that if ever you catch him again speaking to low people's
 
 Matinees. 55 
 
 children you'll give him what for ! What if such trifles have 
 been ? Shall they be allowed to stand in the way of friendship 
 between Christian men ? No ! you will forgive your enemy — 
 and put his name down. 
 
 You are quite right, for it is from this list alone that any 
 actual receipts will be brought into the house. One or two 
 country people, wandering aimlessly about the Strand not 
 knowing what to do with themselves, may, in a weak moment, 
 turn into the pit, but there will be no crush anywhere, so you 
 must work your friends to the last man. Put down your rela- 
 tions even, if you can be sure that they won't create any 
 disturbance. 
 
 Your acting manager will see to the invitations to the Press 
 and to the managers, and get as many members of these two 
 classes as he can. Actors, actresses, and authors are admitted 
 on presentation of their card. There is a goodish crowd of 
 them always pressing round the box-office. Why they come is 
 a mystery. 
 
 He (the A. M.) will also get your play licensed for you. 
 Should you ever desire to do this for yourself, however, the 
 following is the course to be adopted : — 
 
 A neat copy of the play, bearing the signature of the 
 manager of the theatre at which it is to be presented, must be 
 sent, accompanied by a fee of one guinea, if in one act, and of 
 two guineas if in two or more acts, to " Edwin F. S. Pigott, 
 Esq., M.A., Examiner of Plays, H.M. Household, St. James's 
 Palace." The proposed date of production must also be 
 stated. Then in about a week, if nothing objectionable be 
 found in the work, the Lord Chamberlain's license for it to be 
 played will be sent to the theatre. Or, if the Lord Chamberlain 
 does not forbid within seven clear days after the play has been 
 sent to him, his permission may be assumed. 
 
 Other odds and ends of expenditure will be a few pounds for 
 the two or three copies of the play that you will require and for
 
 56 
 
 Playivriting. 
 
 copies of the parts. Then there will be a certain amount 
 needed for postage, messengers, tips, &c. Nothing can be done 
 without tipping in this world ; and I expect when we go to the 
 next we shall be asked to " please remember the fireman." 
 
 That is all I can think of, and I daresay you will think it 
 quite enough. Oh — of course if it is a "costume" play you 
 will be expected to provide dress, wigs, &c. 
 
 If the piece is a failure, you will never hear any more of it — 
 except, of course, from your friends. If it is a success, it will 
 be eagerly sought for, and }ou will be able to command good 
 terms. I hope it will be a success — at least, I say I hope it 
 will, as that is the proper thing to say. As a matter of fact, I 
 don't care a hang whether it is or not.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 REHEARSING. 
 
 It may be remembered that, in the last chapter, we left our 
 hero engaged in a fearful struggle with a matinee. We will now 
 retrace our steps, and return to our story at the point where 
 the villain of this tale (the manager I mean, of course) had 
 accepted the play, and arranged for its production. The matinee 
 affair was really all a dream. Our author was very tired and 
 sleepy when the letter of which we spoke was brought to him, 
 and suddenly dropped off to sleep with the envelope unopened 
 in his hand, and dreamed the events recorded. Now, however, 
 it is morning, and he awakes and rubs his eyes. " Then that 
 awful tnatinee -was all a horrid dream," he exclaims; "and I 
 don't owe forty-seven pounds ten shillings and ninepence, and 
 the papers haven't said that ' another three hours' drivel was 
 served up at the Criterion yesterday afternoon for the delecta- 
 tion of those unfortunate beings whom duty compels to frequent 
 matinee performances.' And the letter then from the theatre, 
 saying they were not going to do the piece after all ! What ! 
 — why here it is, lying on the lloor unopened ? What does it 
 say, really ? ' Dear Mr. Author, — Please be down here to- 
 morrow, Wednesday, at twelve to read Blood Stained Bill; or.
 
 _5 8 PI ay writing . 
 
 ihe Brigand of Mount Blanc to company. — Very truly yours, 
 T. H. E. Manager.' " 
 
 So you see everything turned out happily after all. 
 
 At twelve o'clock he, having dressed himself in his best 
 clothes, and bought a new pair of gloves, coming along, presents 
 himself at the stage door — not hesitatingly and nervously this 
 time, but as if the whole place belonged to him. Other people 
 — actors out of work and young authors— mere outsiders, silly, 
 presumptuous lads who think they can write plays, members of 
 *' the great unacted club," poor fellows ! Our hero pities them, 
 but thinks it would be better if they gave up trying to force 
 themselves into a groove for which they are unfitted, and re- 
 turned to their stools — these people are waiting about, but they 
 are told the manager will be unable to see anybody that morning, 
 as he has an miportant engagement. Will our author step down 
 stairs into the green room ? 
 
 In the green room he finds the stage-manager talking to a 
 couple of gentlemen and three ladies. The stage-manager 
 greets him pleasantly, and introduces him. The gentlemen 
 bow, the ladies bow and smile, and our hero thinks he shall like 
 being a dramatic author very much. Others soon arrive, and 
 €ver3^body seems to have their best clothes on, and our hero is 
 glad he put his on. Everybody is a little nervous, too, and 
 subdued. Altogether, the affair is not unlike a wedding. 
 
 The manager arrives at last, and, all the company being there, 
 the reading at once takes place. This is a very much more 
 jovial matter than was the former reading. There is no anxiety 
 or doubt on either side, no up-hill fighting against chill}' dis- 
 belief and assured boredness. On the contrary, the company 
 have been told that the play is going to be a good one, and 
 everyone is in an encouragingly prepared-to-be-pleased mood. 
 They form an excellent audience, too, any company of actors 
 (and be it enacted that w'henever " actors " are spoken of in 
 these papers in the masculine gender the same shall extend to
 
 Rehearsing. 59 
 
 either sex), and it is a pleasure to read to them. They laugh in 
 the right places, and become properly pensive during the sad 
 situations. They do not, when Edwin clasps Angelina to his 
 bosom with " And now, m}^ own, my darling girl, one last fare- 
 well before we part, perhaps never more to meet upon this 
 earth," giggle behind their handkerchiefs, nor double up with a 
 shriek, and try to lie down in their seats when the villain, saying 
 " Die, then ! " murders the good old man. They will grasp 
 every point. They will understand the full significance of every 
 line. The reading is rattled through amid laughter, murmurs 
 01 delight, and even, perhaps, slight applause ; and, at the end, 
 the company rise to beam smiles and congratulations upon our 
 modest friend. Let us hope he is modest. That of itself will 
 confer upon him a certain amount of distinction among the 
 ranks of dramatic authors. 
 
 At least, this is what takes place, provided the play is an 
 undoubtedly good one. Very often, however, the company is 
 assembled to hear a piece which has only been accepted in 
 desperation, and because nothing else could be found, and 
 something must be had. Then the proceedings are by no means 
 so smooth, and the author, especially, has a very rough time 
 of it. There is depressing silence, broken only by coughs 
 and fidgetings during his reading. Stoical resignation is the 
 pervading expression of countenance, and everybody carefully 
 avoids catching anybody else's eye. If anybody does by acci- 
 dent do so, the look that is exchanged between those two is 
 charged with a meaning which it would be difficult to express 
 shortly in words. Some of tlie more complaining among the 
 Psalms, together with selections from the book of Job and the 
 Lamentations of Jeremiah would seem, thougli, to imply the 
 idea. At the end, there is an ominous silence, and the audience 
 rise, anxious to get outside and relieve their feelings by telling 
 each otlur what they tliink of it. " \\'( II, (here you are ; that's 
 it," sajs the manager, defiantly, and nobcdy contradicts him.
 
 6o Playwriting. 
 
 The author looks pale and jaded, and sits, saying nothing, till 
 one or two have left. Then he smiles feebly and asks the stage- 
 manager what he thinks of it. The stage-manager replies in a 
 pre-occupied air : " Ah — well — we must see what we can do 
 with it," and prefers to keep his opinion to himself till he finds 
 the manager alone (the stage-manager has great influence as 
 regards the final acceptance or refusal of a play. His voice is, 
 indeed, the casting vote). The author, very meek and generally 
 apologetic, then puts it in low whisper to one or two of the 
 company what they think of it, whereupon they recollect that 
 they have trains to catch, and murmuring evasive replies slide 
 out ; upon which the author buttonholes the youngest member 
 of the company (who is nervous and doesn't know how to get 
 away), and proves to him that the play is an A i affair and 
 bound to succeed. 
 
 Under these circumstances, the piece rarely comes to a head. 
 
 The force against it is too powerful, and after floundering 
 through one or two rehearsals, it sinks into the great quagmire 
 of stillborn drama, and is never heard of again. 
 
 But we are not thinking of such pieces as these. We are 
 dealing in this chapter with the brilliantly clever comedy that 
 you, my young friend, have penned — the comedy that is 
 welcomed by the whole company with effusion. We will even 
 go so far as to suppose that they are all pleased with their parts, 
 and that even the low comedy is not absolutely dissatisfied with 
 his. Such being the case, the first rehearsal is appointed for 
 eleven, on the next day but one, and at 11.30 on that day you 
 will all be standing on the stage, waiting for the leading lady, 
 who has been delayed owing to the death of a near relative. 
 
 The first few rehearsals will be mainly devoted to "positions," 
 entrances, and exits, movements, situations, and such like. 
 They will not become interesting from an artistic point of view 
 until, say, after the first week, by which time the mechanic a 
 portion of the work being fairly in hand, and "parts" having
 
 Rehearsing. 6 1 
 
 been mastered, the " character " comes in for attention. During 
 this first week's rehearsals, however, the parts will be read, 
 heroes, heroines, villains, and comic lovers, all trapesing about 
 the stage with books in their hands, and gabbling through your 
 witty or poetic lines in a way calculated to break j^our heart. 
 
 Not that they do not appreciate them. No one will do so 
 more, and even in the hurry and worry of these early times a 
 frequent laugh, and a constant " What a lovely line ! " " Isn't 
 this a pretty scene ? " " What a splendid situation! " tell that, 
 notwithstanding seeming indifference, the play is being followed 
 and understood. 
 
 But, of course, as I have said, the words and ideas are of 
 secondary importance just now. The " business " of the scenes 
 is the chief thing to be attended to. 
 
 Hero. " I love you, Anastasia, with a passion so transcendental that 
 
 neither earth, nor Heaven, nor even ." Well, now where do I take he 
 
 hand ? " At earth ? " 
 
 Stage Manager. No, no, my boy. When you get to " Heaven." 
 
 Comic Man {waiting his turn at the wings). Never will get there. You will 
 arrange for it to come ofif at the third place mentioned, if you take my 
 advice. 
 
 Stage Manager {who very properly regards rehearsals from a serious point of 
 
 view — severely). We are here to rehearse a play, Mr. , if you please. Not 
 
 to play the fool. 
 
 {Comic Man unostentatiously withdraws from the scene, and is 
 heard no 7nore). 
 
 Heroine. Well, then, am I to stand stock still all through his speech ? 
 
 Stage Manager. No, no, of course not. You — what are the stage 
 directions ? 
 
 Prompter {at table C). " Stands proud a^d erect. Left Centre." 
 
 Heroine {laughing). Well, I can't stand "proud and erect" for five 
 minutes. I shall have some gallery boy asking *' if it's alive." 
 
 Author. No, no, Miss . You understand the idea, surely. You're 
 
 being made love to. You don't want to jump about. 
 
 Stage Manager (who has his own opinion about the author's opinions concern- 
 ing these matters). Well, my boy, she's quite right. No woman would stand 
 like a dummy for five or six minutes even to be made love to. 
 
 Author {who fancies he Unoivs all that is to he known about human nature, and
 
 62 Playwriting, 
 
 about the habits and manners of wonisn in particular). Well, what would she 
 do? 
 
 Stage Manager. Well, she'd toy with her fan or something or make some 
 movement towards him. 
 
 MAHA.GKR {who has entered du7-ing the argument, and been listening to it un- 
 observed, now coming forward). How would it be to break up Laurence's 
 speech and let her answer him at the beginning. Then she could sit all the 
 while he was telling her about his mother. 
 
 Stage Manager. That's the very thing I've been arguing for all along. 
 You'll find you'll have to do it too when you come to see the thing worked 
 out. 
 
 Author. Well, I particularly don't want to. I want that exact situation. 
 It will be all right you'll see when the speeches are properly given. You 
 can't judge of it now at all. 
 
 Manager. Well, leave that now. We can easily see about it afterwards. 
 
 So, for the present, it is arranged that Anastasia is to stand 
 stock still while Laurence tells her about his mother, and that 
 he is to take her hand when he gets to " Heaven." 
 
 Every position, every movement of a hand, every fluttering 
 of a fan, every wink, every shrug of the shoulder is carefully 
 worked out at rehearsal. The distance separating a husband 
 and wife from each other during a quarrel is scrupulousl}" 
 measured (what a pity it is not measured and maintained in 
 real life !), and whether Edwin's passionate kiss shall be on the 
 right or left side of Angelina's nose is decided by the stage- 
 manager's going round into the stalls, and seeing from there 
 which looks most full of tenderness. Grouping, posing, and 
 situations require an immense amount of care. That prett}' 
 picture of Letty rushing with a little cry of joy into Robin's 
 arms, while her white-haired father rises, smiling, to greei; him, 
 has cost a vast amount of labour to produce ; and Letty, and 
 Robin, and the author, and the manager, and the stage-manager, 
 and the white-haired father have had a fearful time over it. The 
 stage-manager thought that Robin should come down c, and 
 that Letty should meet him there. The author, on the other 
 hand, would rather lose his hopes of heaven (not much of a stake
 
 Rehearsing. 63 
 
 for him) than allow that. He is nuts on the idea that Robin 
 should stand at the door with his arms stretched out, and that 
 Letty should first exclaim " Robin !'' and then run towards him. 
 Stage-manager saj's: " Oh, all right; do it that way, and you 
 will spoil the whole situation," Author says, " Not at all, my 
 dear fellow. It will be a little novel, that's all." Letty, appealed 
 to on the quiet by the author, and not wishing to offend that 
 party, says she feels more like running the whole way ; appealed 
 to publicly by the stage-manager, and being anxious not to 
 affront that personage, says she does think it would take off a 
 little from the distance if Robin came down a few steps. If the 
 author is a young hand it is probable that the stage-manager's, 
 view will be finally adopted. If, however, the former is a man 
 of standmg, then it will probably be the stage-manager's views 
 that will suffer. 
 
 Of course, in the case of " big" authors, no one would think 
 of opposing their notions. A Gilbert's or a Pinero's MS. would 
 CDntain all stage directions down to the very minutest, and these 
 would be carried out without question. 
 
 It being at last settled where Letty and Robin are to embrace, 
 the white-haired father has to be fixed. Shall he rise the 
 moment he sees Robin, or shall he remain seated until the 
 lovers have done cuddling, and run towards him ? Will white- 
 haired father try both ways, please, and now the other way 
 again ? " Yes ; the first way is right. Will you please make a 
 note of that, Chudleigh ? You rise as Robin enters." 
 
 There will be from twenty to thirty, or even more, rehearsals 
 of a big piece, and after the skeleton of the play, as the move- 
 ments and positions may be termed, has been knocked into 
 some sort of shape, the company begins to pay more heed to 
 the lines. Here, also, every intonation, every accent, every 
 laugh, every sigh is arranged, and practised, and tried again 
 and again, until both stage-manager and author are thoroughly 
 satisfied. The very big artistes naturally are left a good deal
 
 64 Play writing. 
 
 to themselves, but the minor ones have usually merely to give 
 effect to their instructions. On the whole, if he is under a good 
 stage-manager, this redounds to the actor's advantage, but it 
 must be very annoying, if, as occasionally happens, he is pitched 
 into by the Press for doing that very thing that he himself was 
 most anxious not to do, but which the author or the stage- 
 manager insisted on his doing. 
 
 From all this, it will be seen that the fortunes of a play depend 
 much upon the stage-manager, and a good stage-manager is 
 worth his weight in £^ notes. Do not, if you are a young 
 author, quarrel with him. He has been born and bred in the 
 theatre, and he naturally is somewhat imbued with " theatrical " 
 ideas, but it is better to let him have his own way than to set 
 him against you and your piece, and he can do it far more good 
 than he will do harm to it. Of course, I do not mean that you 
 should give up any vital point, or suffer any change that could 
 really injure the play. But it is not likely at all that you will 
 come to loggerheads there. It is in small matters of detail 
 that you will fight, and, in these, he is more likely to be right 
 than you. 
 
 On the professional stage the great aim is to rehearse exactly 
 as the piece will be plaj-ed. Back drawing amateurs who 
 " reserve " themselves for the evening, and like to come out with 
 "surprises," would do well to remember that men like Irving, 
 and Willard, and Beerbohm-Tree go through their parts 
 morning after morning in the same tones, and with the same 
 gestures and expressions as on the opening night. " Surprises " 
 would not be welcomed. Everyone must know what everyone 
 Ise is going to do, and be prepared for it. Indeed, a final dress 
 renearsai is often a better performance of a piece than the one 
 that first takes place before the public. Nothing is forgotten or 
 bungled. There is no nervousness, no apprehension. 
 
 As the rehearsals proceed you will probably enough be 
 required to alter your piece, to cut out one scene here and write
 
 Rehearsing, 6 ^ 
 
 •^is 
 
 in another one there, to shorten this part and " write up " that. 
 If your manager is playing you may safely reckon that his part 
 will want a lot of writing up, and you are lucky if it does not 
 come to be a monologue. Your comic man will also want his 
 part altered, and " strengthened " a good deal, and he will 
 possibly offer to help you in your reconstruction. If there are 
 two comic men in the piece, God help you. 
 
 To sum up shortly, the period of " Rehearsals " will be a very 
 trying time with you, and the business will need all your tact. 
 You will want to maintain and have carried out all your ideas,. 
 and, at the same time, not to offend the stage-manager, or differ 
 with the manager, or quarrel with the actors. I wish you well 
 of the job.
 
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 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PRODUCTION. 
 
 -" On Saturday next will be produced an entirely new and 
 original comedy, entitled (give it an attractive title, that is half 
 the battle, something short, impressive, and easily remembered), 
 written by" — well, by you, you know. Such is the announce- 
 ment that appears one morning among the theatrical advertise- 
 ments, an announcement which you read over a good many 
 times to yourself with a quiet smile, though half doubting if all 
 is not a dream. There have been so many difficulties to over- 
 come, so many disappointments to be borne, such a long and 
 bitter battle to fight ! Over and over again have you seemed on 
 the point of victory, and over and over again have you been 
 driven back defeated : it seems impossible to believe that 
 success has actually, at last, come home to you. Do not be too 
 certain of it even then. It is just possible that in the next day's 
 papers, when you look, you will be greeted with an advertise- 
 ment stating that some revival of an old piece, or a continua- 
 tion of the present one, will take the place of the production 
 previously announced. Such things have been on more than one 
 •occasion. Of course, established and successful authors would
 
 Production. 67 
 
 not be played with. Men like Grundy and Pinero would require 
 a written agreement, by which the manager would bind himself 
 to produce their play within some specified time, to be entered 
 into, before they would commence to write a play at all. But 
 then m.anagers have no wish to break agreements with esta- 
 blished and successful authors. On the contrary, it is they, the 
 managers, who are the parties most anxious to keep them. A 
 popular author is fought after like a pretty girl at a picnic, and 
 can dictate his own terms. W. S. Gilbert used to make it a 
 stipulation that any play of his — whether successful or not — 
 should be run for a hundred nights at least ; and, seeing that 
 ^200 a week can very easily be lost upon an unsuccessful piece, 
 the fact that such terms were eagerly swallowed proves what a 
 scarcity of good dramatic writers there must be. 
 
 But in the case of 5'oung and unknown authors, the boot is 
 entirely on the other foot. The manager, even if he likes the 
 play, has no particular anxiety to produce it. Let us, in the 
 theatrical world, say what we like, it is an undoubted fact that 
 there is a prejudice against new authors, merely as new authors, 
 and quite apart from any question of their inexperience. Why 
 managers should endeavour to narrow the market from which 
 they draw their supply is a mystery which a business man 
 would find it difficult to solve, but they themselves appear to 
 see nothing extraordinary in such a course. Indeed, they seem 
 more eager to maintain a dramatic " corner " than even are 
 the members of that very corner, and I believe they would 
 rather lose a thousand pounds over a play by an old hand than 
 win a thousand pounds upon the work of a fresh man. This 
 clannism v/ill irritate you at the beginning of your career, but 
 when you have once forced your way within the magic circle 
 where it reigns, you will be loud in praise of the system, and 
 indignant at any thought of interference with it. 
 
 However, when matters have gone so far that the play has 
 actually been advertised for production, even a new author 
 
 F 2
 
 68 Flaywriting. 
 
 may, as a rule, take it that the piece is safe ; and his anxiety 
 then passes from the manager and fixes itself upon the public 
 and the Press. I do not think you need give yourself much 
 concern as to your first piece being a success. If a play by an 
 unknown man has been accepted by a London manager, and 
 has passed the various stages up to production, it is tolerably 
 sure to be received, if not with acclamation, at all events with 
 no disfavour ; for, although how it read will be but a poor guide 
 to how it will act, the rehearsals, as they progressed, would 
 soon show what it would play like, and, if these rehearsals were 
 not perfectly satisfactory, very little hesitation would be shown 
 in giving the whole thing up. 
 
 As for the mere reading, that is never a test as to how a piece 
 will play. A man with a vivid imagination, who concentrated 
 all his efforts in conjuring up, as it was read to him, a com- 
 plete picture of the play being performed, might be able to say 
 decisively how anything would go ; but it is very difficult to do 
 this. Often a scene which has read delightfully plays weakly ; 
 and a piece that seems foolish when read may act quite smartly 
 and brightly. As I said in a previous chapter, it is only action 
 that can properly fill a stage, and this, to be judged of, must be 
 seen. A narrative that would thrill us when read, sounds 
 wearisome when two people sit R. and L. and let it off at one 
 another across a stage. The scene between the two women, 
 in Westland Marston's Under Fire, read quite excitingly ; when 
 one came to sit in a stall and see it one yawned. In the same 
 way, scenes that, perhaps, read crudely and confusedly may act 
 forcibly. The church scene in Much Add about Nothing is not 
 the same in the book as it was at the Lyceum. 
 
 Theatrical people, in particular, make very bad judges of how 
 a play will go with the public. The artist appreciates the 
 technique of the art. The public care about the picture as a 
 whole. Your actor is loud in praise of the way in which a scene 
 is built up, or a situation led to, or an acting opportunity
 
 Production. 69 
 
 afforded. Your public doesn't care twopence for anything so 
 long as they are amused and interested. To sum up, public 
 and artistes view a work from diametrically opposite points of 
 view: the latter from "behind," where they see and criticise 
 the weaving of the threads ; the former from " the front," where 
 the finished fabric is seen as a whole, and the pattern pleases 
 or displeases. 
 
 Now, after this little digression, we will, if you please, return 
 to our subject, viz., the first night and its attendant circum- 
 stances. 
 
 All your friends will, of course, expect stalls or boxes. Well, 
 you will have to let them expect. Nearly every booked seat in 
 the house will be required for the critics, managers, authors, 
 actors, and distinguished people generally, who are always 
 invited to every theatrical event. The list numbers some two 
 or three hundred. You will have to put your friends in the 
 pit and gallery, where, by-the-bye, too, they will be much more 
 useful to you, seeing that they will be able to applaud, and shout 
 " Bravo," and call for "author!" there — conduct they could 
 not pursue if in the stalls or circle. Mind, though, for goodness 
 sake, that they don't make themselves and you (which is more 
 important still) ridiculous over this applauding business. As a 
 rule, the friends of the author do more on a first night to damn 
 his play than ever he, and the manager, and the actors all put 
 together do. They roar applause at everything — good, bad, and 
 indifferent, more especially the bad and indifferent ; and that 
 riles the people who are not friends ; and they — the people who 
 are not friends — then tell the people who are friends to " shut 
 up," and " go home," and " stow it " ; and there's a general 
 row and riot all through. A dozen discreet friends (if you happen 
 to be lucky enough to possess so large a number), who will 
 never let it be seen that they are your friends ; who will only 
 hint applause, and never persist in it if it is not taken up ; who 
 will know the right word and the right moment to gently
 
 yo Playwriting. 
 
 deprecate any opposition, and not, by boisterous abuse, to only 
 increase it ; who will laugh, when they do laugh, as if they were 
 really amused, and not as if they were merely trying to make a 
 noise ; and who will express approval in the usual method, 
 without making an exhibition of themselves — that dozen will be 
 of far more service to you than a gross of the regulation first 
 night " friend." See, too, that they distribute themselves about 
 the house in twos and threes, not get together all in a heap. 
 
 As for yourself, you will probably have a box into which you 
 will go with your nearest and your dearest, and any aunt or 
 uncle or other person from whom you may have any expecta- 
 tions. You will sit well back in the darkest corner and listen 
 breathlessly — not to the play but to the house. Will they laugh 
 at your jokes ? Will there run round a suppressed murmur of 
 delight at your poetry ? a burst of applause at your heroic 
 sentiments ? Some of your best lines (at least, so they are sure 
 to seem to you) will be missed out, and much of the wit and 
 humour you had most reckoned on will fall flat. This will be 
 counterbalanced by lines you had never thought anything 
 particular about being taken up and applauded. 
 
 You will not be wanted behind until the very end (if the piece 
 turns out a failure it might be as well not to go even then), and 
 you will be far better not there. The excitement and nervous- 
 ness " behind " during a first night is something almost comical, 
 and anybody who gets in anybody else's way there stands a 
 very good chance of being brutally murdered, and his mangled 
 remains put outside the stage door. I used to think that I had 
 a good share of suppressed nervousness ready for most occasions, 
 but I look upon myself as a happy, thoughtless child on a first 
 night compared with the company. They can't help it. It is 
 the acting temperament, I have heard the late John Clayton 
 — a man whom to look at, you would not think troubled with 
 nervousness — say that no success could ever compensate him 
 for the agony he suffered on a first night.
 
 Production. 7 1 
 
 If, however, the piece is a success you will slip out during the 
 last act and make your way round so as to be ready for the 
 possible and probable "call." 
 
 And now a word or two as to this call. Some folks hold 
 that authors should never, under any circumstances, take calls, 
 and argue that they have no business before the curtain at ail, 
 their place being the study and not the stage. But that's all non- 
 sense. No doubt, from an artistic point of view, it is quite 
 orrect, but there is a nature side to the question. Authors are 
 only human (though to judge by the airs that we give ourselves 
 you might be led to think this impossible), and they like 
 applause. Applause, indeed, in one form or another, is what 
 we all live for, from the statesman to the mountebank, and the 
 sweetest form in which it can be offered us is the form that we 
 can see and hear — the hand clappings and the cheers like the 
 roar of the waves upon a shingly beach, the waving hats and 
 handkerchiefs like a tossing forest before our half-dazed eyes. 
 Very childish and little-minded it may be, perhaps, to love and 
 long for such mere tinsel, but we men are only childish and 
 little-minded at the best, and always shall be. Mr. Wills does, 
 it is true, as we poor lesser lights are often reminded, rise superior 
 to this weakness, and never appears before the curtain ; but 
 then Mr. Wills is a philosopher of the kind you read about but 
 very seldom meet, a man who cares more about his long clay 
 and his glass of grog and his quiet chat than about all the 
 theatres, and plays and playgoers, ever built. As for the average 
 author, he, so long as reason holds a seat in his distracted brain, 
 will be eager to take a " call." 
 
 A young author will, naturally, be especially eager to do so, 
 and by all means let him. The only thing I have to say is, be 
 careful that it is a genuine, unanimous call. Do not force your- 
 self, as it were, before the curtain ; and do not go if there has 
 been much opposition to the piece during its progress, even if 
 you are called. If you do, you will receive what is termed a 
 " mixed reception."
 
 72 Play-writing. 
 
 These mixed receptions are often indignantly spoken of as 
 " author baiting," but they are really nothing of the kind, and 
 the explanation of them is extremely simple. The pit and 
 gallery of a theatre on a first night generally contains a certain 
 number of " orders," who, because they are friends of the people 
 connected with the house, or in gratitude for their free admission, 
 can usually be reckoned upon for plenty of applause. Whether 
 the custom is a wise one or not is a question for argument, and 
 there is something to be said on both sides. Against the system, 
 it may be urged that the successful houses rarely have recourse 
 to it, and that by their indiscriminate applause the " orders," 
 like the friends before referred to, irritate the paying portion of 
 the audience, and create an opposition that would not otherwise 
 arise. On the other hand, " orders " help to fill the house, and 
 give a cheerful air to the proceedings ; while in case of success, 
 they help to swell the approval, and, in case of opposition, they 
 can counterbalance, or, perhaps, even drown the dissentient 
 voices. In any event, they save the piece from being received 
 in dead silence, which would be worse for it than any amount 
 of row. 
 
 But I did not start to argue this matter out, but merely to 
 explain that it is these holders of orders who are mainly respon- 
 sible for the doubtful welcome that an author occasionally gets. 
 After the curtain has finally fallen on a weak or bad play — or a 
 play that, at all events, has not pleased the paying part of the 
 audience — the friends and the orders, together with a few of 
 those good, honest souls, who would applaud the tom-cat if he 
 came and sat down on the stage, at once begin cheering and 
 calling for " author." The regular playgoers thereupon yell out, 
 " No, no ; we do not want the author." In spite of this, how- 
 ever, or because their voices are not distinguished in the 
 hubbub, out he steps. The one section cheer vociferously. 
 The other, as a protest against it being assumed that the play 
 is approved of, think it their duty to howl at him as if he were
 
 Frodtiction. 73 
 
 a villain o the deepest dye, or belonged to the opposite 
 political party. 
 
 Therefore, make sure, before you accept a seeming call, that 
 it is a sure thing. You can easily forecast, during the playing 
 of the piece, whether this will be so or not. If your work is 
 not appreciated, unfavourable comments, ironical laughter, and 
 occasional hisses will be heard during the acts. 
 
 But assuming that the success is certain, and the call har- 
 monious, then take it by all means — not by rushing in before 
 the curtain is well down, and in front of the actors : I have 
 seen that done, and it doesn't look at all pretty — but by stepping 
 in modestly last of all. Do not appear too eager to come 
 forward, and do not prance up to the middle of the footlights, 
 and stand there for a couple of minutes, bowing and smirking 
 like an organ-grinder on the look-out for coppers. This I have 
 also seen done, and it also does not look pretty. Move two or 
 three steps from the boxes, bow as gracefully as Nature and 
 nervousness will permit, and retire promptly and quietly. Of 
 course, you have rehearsed all this in the privacy of your apart- 
 ment beforehand ; but you will not find such preparation of 
 much use, as if, at the time, you can recollect who you are and 
 what you are doing there it will be as much as you can manage. 
 
 If by any chance the play is a frost, and you do get hissed 
 instead of cheered, well, you must grin and bear it. It won't 
 kill you. It will be a hard knock for you, that is all ; and hard 
 knocks we all have to take our share of in the battle of life. 
 Cowards cry out, and want to lie down when they get hit ; 
 brave men fight on, careless of blows. Besides, a play may 
 fail on the first night, and yet work up into a success. The 
 Private Secretary was hooted at on its first production, and 
 " slated " next morning by the Press. But it brought Mr. 
 Hawtrey in something like a hundred thousand pounds for all 
 that. 
 
 But I am harping on the chances of failure. Lot us imagine
 
 74 Play writing. 
 
 that your reception is an enthusiastically cordial one, that the 
 house " rises" to receive you, and breaks into cheer after cheer. 
 Then drink it in and enjoy it, for it will be the sweetest music 
 your ears will ever hear. Make the most of it, and remember 
 it, for you will never hear such strains twice. The same 
 applause and the same cheers may greet you another time, but 
 they will be to you merely an index from which you can judge 
 the price your play will fetch. 
 
 You will not get much sleep that night, and the next morning 
 you will be up betimes, and off to the newspaper shop. You 
 will, in all probability, have paid either Messrs. Romeike or 
 Messrs. Curtice a guinea, for which sum they will send you a 
 hundred " notices." If these are flattering, and describe you 
 as " promising,'' or " coming," you will consider it the cheapest 
 guinea's worth of pleasure you have ever bought. If the 
 papers consider your play a "weak and crude production," 
 and wonder how any manager could have been induced to put 
 on such a farrago of nonsense and ill taste, then you will wish 
 that you had spent your one pound one in having rides on the 
 switchback railway. But, on the whole, the notices are likely 
 to be favourable and encouraging. To the two extremes of 
 authorship, the very old and well established, and the beginners, 
 the critics are very gentle. 
 
 You will not have had patience, however, to wait for Messrs. 
 Curtice or Romeike's little boys, and will, as I have said, be off 
 to buy newspapers the first thing in the morning. You will 
 come back, reading one as you walk along, and carrying the 
 rest under your arm, and will wander into the road, and up 
 against carts and cabs, and step on people, and look up, when 
 they swear at you, with a vacant, gaping expression. 
 
 This excitement, also, will hardly outlive your first play. 
 After a little while, the only opinion you will care for will be the 
 opinion of the public as expressed at the box-office.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 MONETARY. 
 
 And now for the £ s. d. part of the matter — the most important 
 part of the matter from the majority of people's point of view. 
 Your artist has painted his picture, your poet has sung his song, 
 your cobbler has cobbled his shoes, your preacher has preached 
 his sermon, your organ grinder has ground out his tune, your 
 dramatist has written his play, and the great question with one 
 and all is, what shall I get for it ? What is it going to bring 
 me in ? 
 
 They are all quite right. In the Golden Age, perhaps, men 
 laboured for love, as the foolish birds still sing and the unbusi- 
 ness-like flowers scent the summer air ; but now, in this hard 
 iron age, we only work for gold ; and the man that asks for less 
 the world despises as either fool or hypocrite. 
 
 So, unless you wish to encourage roguery (and Heaven knows 
 there's enough in the world without your help) by letting others 
 reap the harvest of your brain, by all means see that you get 
 your fair price for your work. But don't keep the question too 
 much in front of you while you are working. If you work 
 merely for money, you'll find you'll make very little money. It 
 is an undoubted fact that, in the long run, and taking things as
 
 76 Playwriting. 
 
 a whole, it is the best work that pays best, and the best work — 
 nay, no work at all worthy the name, can be done while your 
 mind is filled with the dreamings of a huckster and the cogita- 
 tions of a cheapjack. When once your work is finished and in 
 your pocket, and you are going about trying to find a customer 
 for it, then be as sharp, aye, and as grasping, and mercenary, 
 and sordid even, as you can be, or you'll be done. But while 
 you are working you must be an artist, and work for Art's sake. 
 Let the hacks, devoid of brain and heart, roll off the rubbish of 
 a day, and snatch the passing coins the careless crowd flings 
 to them for their tumbling. If you are an artist, you will find 
 it the best policy to do only artistic work. 
 
 After which little homily we will come to figures. 
 
 There are false impressions abroad concerning dramatic 
 authors and their takings. It is popularly supposed that a 
 successful play brings its author in from one to two hundred 
 thousand pounds, and when I was young and used to believe 
 this stuff, I used to wonder why it was that popular dramatists 
 lived so quietly in little houses at St. John's Wood or Brixton, 
 instead of having two or three palaces each in different parts of 
 the country. When I csime to understand matters, however, I 
 found that they did not receive such large incomes as I had 
 imagined. Still, a very comfortable living may be earned by 
 playwriting, and the returns to the author are certainly far in 
 excess of those in any other branch of literature. 
 
 There are two methods of dealing with plays — one by sale, 
 the other by " royalties," the latter of which is by far the most 
 generally employed. 
 
 Indeed, now that the author's share forms so large a propor- 
 tion of the profits in a piece, it is hardly possible that any out- 
 and-out sale of all his rights could be arranged. A successful 
 play is a property well worth from ^"20,000 to ;^30,ooo ; and an 
 author would be foolish to part with all his rights in a piece he 
 had any faith in, for anything under ^3,000 to ^4,000. On the
 
 Monetary, yy 
 
 other hand, the MS. of a play, if a failure, is only worth i|d. a 
 lb., so that a speculator would not care to risk so large a sum, 
 especially seeing how impossible it is to say beforehand whether 
 a piece, however good, will take with the public. One thousand 
 pounds would be, I should say, the most that would ever be paid 
 down for a piece ; and a manager would need a deal of faith in 
 an author before he parted even with that sum. 
 
 As a rule, the only plays that are bought outright are dramas 
 of the transpontine or provincial school, for which £^o or ;^ioo 
 would be considered a handsome price, and plays written 
 specially to suit some artiste, such as My Sweetheart and Hans 
 the Boatman, &c., pieces which would be comparatively valueless 
 if left to stand alone. Young authors also often sell their pieces 
 outright, being only too glad to get it accepted anyhow, and 
 rightly arguing to themselves that it is better for them to get it 
 out, and have the advertisement, even if they have to let it go 
 for an old song, as the saying is, than to lose a chance which 
 may not come again for years. 
 
 Still, I would advise them not to part with it too recklessly. 
 Youth has to pay its footing in all trades. Charles Dickens 
 only got ^500 for a book that must have brought in ;^5o,ooo ; 
 and Thackeray wrote his best work for the wages of an artizan ; 
 and a young dramatist can't expect, with his first play, to take 
 the footing of a Sims or Pinero. But there is a limit to all 
 things, and there is no necessity to give away the labour of 
 months, if not years. A little firmness and tact will often 
 obtain reasonable terms, where an impatient young author is 
 only too eager to give up every advantage. If a man offers to 
 buy your play at all, it means that he wants it, and that there's 
 something in it. A good play is a very rare thing to get hold 
 of, and is worth a price. How to manage in any particular 
 case will, of course, depend upon the circumstances, and you 
 must use your own judgment ; I cannot advise you. All I say 
 is, keep your head cool.
 
 78 Play writing . 
 
 The purchase of particular rights in a play, such as the 
 American rights, the Australian rights, the provincial rights, 
 &c., is a common enough thing ; but this is after the play has 
 been produced and proved successful. The American rights 
 are of great value — almost as valuable as the English rights. 
 There are special firms in America who make it their business 
 to look after the works of English authors out there, and collect 
 and remit them their fees. Nearly all the successful plays, and 
 especially the melodramas produced in London, are played all 
 through the States, and bring in the English authors very 
 handsome returns. Still, if you can get anything like a reason- 
 able sum, I would strongly advise you to sell the American 
 right out and out as soon as possible. They are an enterprising 
 people across the herring pond, and it is not always easy to 
 obtain your fees. 
 
 So also with Australia ; ^100 at your bankers in London is 
 well worth ;^20o owing to you in New South Wales. 
 
 The provincial rights I hardly see the wisdom of ever parting 
 with. You can never expect to get, in a lump sum down, any- 
 thing approaching in amount to what " royalties " would, under 
 usual circumstances, bring you in ; and, unless you are very 
 hard up for ready money, I should say stick to all British 
 rights, you cannot very easily miss your fees in England, Ireland, 
 or Scotland. 
 
 The other system, the " royalty " system of payment, may 
 itself be subdivided into two methods, the one the payment of 
 a stated sum per night, the other the payment of a percentage 
 on the gross takings. The latter system is the one most usually 
 adopted with regard to London, the former as regards the pro- 
 vinces. The payment per night, if a fixed sum, varies from £1 
 up to £^. One pound a night would be fair enough to pay for 
 a country drama — that is, one written for and produced in the 
 country ; and £<^ would be readily given for a " London
 
 Monetary. 79 
 
 success " — that is, a piece that has had a moderate run and 
 tolerable notoriety at some West-end house. 
 
 Adaptations are also commonly paid for by a fixed sum — j^ou 
 will come down to adapting very soon. You will start with the 
 high resolve to uphold the dignity of your profession and your 
 country, and scorn the idea of being the mere purveyor of 
 other men's thought. After a few years you will take kindly to 
 Bowdlerising French indecencies, and cooking up German 
 horse play, and terming the result your " new and original play." 
 This was done not many years ago by thieving English play- 
 wrights without giving the foreign author one halfpenny. Now, 
 however, the anxiety to get hold of new French and Germ.an 
 successes has forced a certain amount of honesty into the 
 matter ; for it is a law of nature that nothing can work for any 
 length of time upon a foundation of dishonesty. Managers 
 and authors keep a look out at Paris and Berlin, and the 
 moment a good play shows its head the English rights are 
 bought from the author, and the piece secured to the purchaser 
 in this country under a system of international copyright, which 
 will be explained in the next chapter. Then some native 
 author is given the thing to " adapt," and he is either paid so 
 much down for his work, or he takes so much royalty per night, 
 or the adapter secures the play for himself from the foreign 
 author, and then deals with it as his own. 
 
 Adapting, it is fair to add, is not such an easy task as it 
 sounds. To any man of brains I should say writing an original 
 piece would be simpler. 
 
 When a play is paid for by percentage, as is the usual method 
 with all leading original plays, five to ten per cent, on the gross 
 receipts is the usual fee, and as a good draw will bring into the 
 box-office an average of ;^2oo per night, and will run for from 
 one to two years, and as a couple of provincial companies will 
 be sent round with the piece at the same time, and bring in the
 
 8o Play writing. 
 
 author between them fees almost equal to those received from 
 the London house, and as, in addition to this, there is the 
 American and Colonial rights before referred to, and the piece 
 will very likely be revived and have another long run before it 
 is finally laid by, it may be seen that one play may easily be 
 something like a fortune in itself. 
 
 If you can get five per cent, for your early pieces, that is as 
 much as you can expect ; ten per cent, is only paid to esta- 
 blished popular writers. I have heard of twelve being asked, 
 but that was for a piece that had already been successfully pro- 
 duced, and then they didn't get it. Two authors, of course, 
 share the five or ten per cent., as the case may be, between them. 
 All the foregoing applies to three or four-act pieces, but 
 curtain raisers are coming to the front just now, and can, if 
 properly worked among the amateurs, be made a very respect- 
 able little property. Uncle's Will, I believe, brings in Mr. 
 Theyre Smith a steady income of ^^50 per annum ; and a friend 
 of mine tells me that a little play of his, written many years 
 ago, has returned him an average of ;^2o a year ever since. 
 The price paid by theatres for first pieces varies from 30s. to 
 ^6 a week, and as such pieces are often revived, and are played 
 constantly round the provinces, they well repay writing. It is 
 from the amateurs, however, that the chief income of a one- 
 act play is derived, there always being a fair demand for such 
 pieces among these ladies and gentlemen. 
 
 If your curtain-raiser is successful, when produced, take it to 
 Mr, French, of 89, Strand. He won't say much, being a 
 comfortable-looking old gentleman of few words, but for 3s. a 
 printed page he will publish it, and put it in his list, sending 
 you fifty copies, which you can write pretty dedications in, and 
 send round to all the girls you know. He will also collect your 
 fees trom the amateurs, and, after deducting his commission, 
 hand you over the balance each month. As I have said, a good 
 one-act play will be used pretty frequently by the various A.D.
 
 Monetary. 8i 
 
 clubs and societies about the country, and, for each performance 
 of it, Mr. French will charge them ten or fifteen shillings, or a 
 gumea. 
 
 Anything bej'ond a one-act piece, however, it is not safe to 
 have published, because, under the American copyright laws,, 
 a play, published over here in book form, can be sneaked and 
 performed over there for nothing. One-act pieces don't matter. 
 They are rarely used in America, and the American right of 
 them is, consequently, next to 7iil. Of any big play, likely to be 
 sought after by the amateurs, let Mr. French have two or three 
 neatly-typed copies, which he will loan round when required. 
 But, there, don't listen to me. Go to the shop, and business- 
 like Mr. Hogg, the manager, will advise you the best thing ta 
 do, and you can't do better than follow his advice. 
 
 Well, there you are. I've told you what you can get for a 
 play, now all you've got to do is to go and get it ; and, when 
 you've got it, don't spend it recklessly. Seriously, though, if 
 you do get ;^i 0,000 for a play that has taken you three months 
 to write, don't go reckoning your income at £['40,000 per annum. 
 for the rest of your life, and start living up to it. This advice 
 might be given, too, to some authors I know who are not exactly 
 beginners, and who ought to know how few and far between 
 successes are. 
 
 At present rates, two or three lucky hits are sufficient to set 
 a man up for life if he is prudent. I wonder if the ghosts of the 
 old dramatists who drudged and starved on the paltr}' pittance 
 their glorious works brought in to them ever feel a pang of envy 
 shoot through their shadowy breasts, when they look down (or 
 maybe up), and see us, their pimy descendants, glutted with the 
 fat of the land. The work of Shakespeare's whole life never 
 brought him m what can be won now-a-day by adapting a 
 German farce. Fourpence, I see, from an antiquarian maga- 
 zine, is what an author was paid in early days for writing a 
 miracle play, the entry runnmg : — 
 
 G
 
 82 Playwnting. 
 
 " Itm. Pd. Peter ffor writinge the play, 4d." (I wonder if 
 Peter had much difficulty in getting that play accepted.) 
 Buckstone received from first to last ;^ioo for the Green Bushes, 
 one of the most successful and constantly-played dramas of the 
 last generation ; and Cary died with a halfpenny in his pocket, 
 while his pieces were filling the theatre night after night. 
 
 For the improvement in our position, we dramatists have 
 principally to thank Scribe in France, and W. S. Gilbert in our 
 own country. Before Scribe's time, authors considered them- 
 selves happy with a few pounds for a drama, and what induced 
 them to write plays instead of devoting their time to some more 
 profitable employment is a mystery. Scribe, however, by 
 combining his brethren together, and introducing a sort of 
 trades unionism among them, soon changed all that, much to 
 the disgust and indignation of the Parisian managers, and the 
 good work that Scribe commenced in France, Gilbert completed 
 in England by insisting upon the ten per cent, principle. 
 We have very little to grumble at now. 
 
 =F^€ 
 
 
 ^^-^^^c^-^^^ ^^r^^^-^^
 
 CH APT ER X 
 
 LEGAL. 
 
 This will be a very long, and, I fear, a dry chapter, but, 
 nevertheless, I advise you to read it. If the advantage to you 
 bears any approximation to the labour it has entailed on me it 
 will prove of much service to you. 
 
 The laws relating to theatrical affairs have been fearfully and 
 wonderfully made, and they grow more confused, contradictory, 
 and unintelligible with every fresh attempt to elucidate them. 
 They appeared to me somewhat complicated and mysterious 
 even before I went, for the purposes of these articles, thoroughly 
 into the matter. Now that I understand them — as far as 
 human understanding can cope with them — the Chinese 
 grammar seems straightforwardness itself compared with them. 
 A vague notion is hovering through my distracted brain that an 
 author can claim no right in his work at all, and that anybody can 
 slap his head, and take his play away from him, and that he has 
 no legal redress whatever ; and as one justification among many 
 for this opinion of mine, I may mention that at the date I am 
 writing, a certain person is advertising in the American papers 
 that he has adapted Mr. Rider Haggard's "She" for the stage 
 
 G 2
 
 84 Playwriting. 
 
 (without the author's permission, mind), and threatening anyone 
 who does the same (including Mr. Rider Haggard himself) 
 with all the penalties of the law ; and really it is a question of 
 grave argument if the law is not on his side. 
 
 A sort of custom of the trade has grown up, regulating all 
 dealings connected with plays, and this, among honest men^ 
 answers well enough in practice ; but it rests on no sure legal 
 foundation, and, were managers and authors to examine too- 
 minutely into the abyss of law over which they exist, they 
 would probably go mad. 
 
 The whole confusion arising from its being undecided (and 
 it never will, I expect, be decided) whether there is any 
 " common law " right, as it is termed, in literature. The great 
 wieght of judicial opinion is against there being this right, but 
 some of the judges hold that there is such right, so that un- 
 certain as law is in every case it is just fifty times more uncertair^ 
 than ever in all theatrical matters. 
 
 Now, by "common law" — I am sorry to be a bore, but I 
 must get you to thoroughly understand this preliminary point 
 of the matter, so much depends upon it. By " common law "' 
 is meant the law that is established, not by Act of Parliament, 
 but by plain justice and common sense ; or to quote a 
 celebrated judge, " by the common law is meant those princi- 
 ples, usages, and rules of action applicable to the government 
 and security of person and property which do not rest for 
 their authority upon any express declaration of the Legislature."' 
 If you devote your brains and labour to making a three-legged 
 stool, that stool is yours by right of common law. No one 
 may steal it from you, or injure it, or lay a finger on it without 
 your permission. It is yours from the hour you make it till 
 the crack of doom (unless somebody very heavy sits down on 
 it, and, even then, the pieces belong to you). No one dare 
 dispute your claim to it, and every court in the land will 
 protect you in the enjoyment of that three-legged stool. But
 
 Legal. 85 
 
 if you devote your time to writing a play or a book, the law 
 ■washes its hands of you, and leaves you to the mercy of a 
 bunch of ill-worded, involved, and not-to-be understood 
 statutes, under which you can be robbed and swindled with 
 impunity by every dirty blackguard who may be hanging on to 
 the fringe of the theatrical profession. 
 
 " Yes," says the judge, adjusting his spectacles, " A. wrote 
 the play, and B. stole it from him. That, I take it, is clear. 
 Now, I will carefully consider the Act, and then give my judg- 
 ment accordingly." 
 
 In nine cases out of ten the judgment is for B., and A. has to 
 pay the costs. 
 
 In " Murray v. Elliston " (to go no further back) Byron's 
 tragedy of Marino Faliero, the copyright of which belonged to Mr. 
 Murray, had been taken and altered, and performed as a play 
 at Drury Lane. If ever there was a case of cool and im- 
 pudent robbery it was here. Verdict for the defendant. 
 
 Another famous case, in which the principle of there being 
 no common law-right in literary work was maintained, is 
 ■" Reade v. Conquest." Mr. Reade argued, among other points, 
 that the performance of Mr. Conquest's play — adapted from 
 his (Mr. Reade's) novel, " It's Never Too Late To Mend "— 
 injured the sale of the book, and also prevented him himself 
 from making the use of the tale as a play, thereby claiming, as the 
 judge pointed out, a common law right in his work ; and, although 
 Reade won the case, as we shall see hereafter, when dealing 
 more fully with the case under another branch of the subject, 
 he failed entirely on this head, the Court holding that an author 
 had no common law right in his play, " tliat the time had 
 passed when the question was open to discussion, and that it 
 must now be considered to be settled that copyright in a 
 published work only exists by statute." 
 
 In " Turner v. Robinson " the Master of Rolls (Ireland) said, 
 •-' Works of literature are unprotected by the common law."
 
 86 Playwriting. 
 
 In " Toole v. Young," Lord Chief Justice Cockburn said,. 
 " The author of a drama is not protected by the common law." 
 
 On the other hand, Judge Erie, in "Jeffreys v. Boosey," held 
 most strongely that there was a common law right in coypright 
 and stageright (" Stageright," a word invented by the late 
 Chas. Reade, and now generally adopted, implies the right of 
 a dramatist in his plays similar to the " copyright " enjoyed by 
 an author in his books) ; and the following sentences from his- 
 judgment are worth recording : — 
 
 " The right of an author in his works is analogous to the 
 rights of ownership in other personal property. 
 
 "In other matters the (common) law has been adapted to 
 the progress of society according to justice and convenience, 
 and by analogy it should be the same for literary works, and 
 they should become property with all its incidents on the most 
 elementary principles of securing to industry its fruits and tO' 
 capital its profits." 
 
 And he, Judge Erie, concluded his exhaustive and closely 
 argued decision with these words : — " Upon this review of 
 principle and authority, I submit that authors have property in 
 their works by common law as well since the statute of Anne 
 as before it." (It had been argued that even if such right had 
 previously existed, the Copyright Act, passed in the reign of 
 Queen Anne, had destroyed it.) 
 
 Lord St. Leonards, in the same case, it should be mentioned,, 
 however, held just the opposite opinion to Erie. 
 
 Another eloquent judge, Judge Aston, may also be quoted on 
 the same side : — " The invasion of this sort of property (literary 
 property) is as much against every man's sense of it as it is 
 against natural reason and moral rectitude. It is against the 
 conviction of every man's own breast who attempts it. He 
 knows it not to be his own. He knows he injures another, and 
 he does not do it for the sake of the public, but treacherously 
 and for mere gain (animo lucruadi).'" " The law of nature and
 
 Legal. 87 
 
 truth and the hght of reason and the common sense of mankind 
 is against it." 
 
 And, to conclude our quotations, Judge Dodderidge, speaking 
 of the same subject, asks, " Why should the common law be 
 deemed so narrow and illiberal as not to recognise and receive 
 under its protection a property so circumstanced as the 
 present ? " 
 
 So much for general introduction ; now let us examine into 
 details. 
 
 The rights — such as they are — of a dramatic author in the 
 play he has written are given to him by special statutes which 
 have been passed from timic to time, beginning with the famous 
 Copyright Act, "8 Anne, c. 19"; and into these rights I 
 propose to wade. 
 
 To state them with any certainty is impossible. A council 
 of the best lawyers in the kingdom could not do that. The 
 exact meaning of a statute is always a matter of argument, 
 much to the advantage of the arguers. One judge thinks it 
 means one thing and another judge holds that the words must 
 be taken to imply the opposite ; and if you do ever have to go 
 to law over any of your plays, I pity you. 
 
 Now, first of all, let us understand what it is we are going to 
 talk about. This is always a great point gained in every argu- 
 ment. The Act declares the matter to which it refers to be 
 " any tragedy, comedy, play, opera, farce, and any other 
 dramatic piece or entertainment"; and how wide an area the 
 Courts allow the definition to cover may be judged by the fact 
 that in " Russell v. Smith," a mere song, entitled "The Ship on 
 Fire," sung by a gentleman in evening dress, and without any 
 scenic accessory, was deemed a " dramatic piece " within the 
 meaning of the Act, it being of a descriptive character, and the 
 supposed words of the persons on board being employed. Any 
 of Sims's ballads would, by the same reasoning, be held to be 
 dramatic pieces, and Mr. Sims could, if he chose, control their
 
 88 Playwriting. 
 
 recitation. Indeed, half of the recitations one hears at smoking 
 concerts, &c., could, I should argue from this decision, be 
 deemed dramatic pieces, and their performance protected. 
 
 Such being your property, what are your rights in it ? 
 
 Before publication, your work belongs to you by right ot 
 common law, that is, so long as your play remains unacted it 
 is your property in the same way that your hat and boots are 
 your property, and anyone interfering with it can be dealt with 
 simply and expeditiously by the common law. 
 
 This may not, at first sight, appear much of a privilege, but 
 there might arise circumstances under which the principle 
 would confer distinct advantage on the author. For instance, 
 if you lent your play to some man to read before it was " pub- 
 lished" (the "publication" of a play is its first public 
 performance), and he took it, or a copy of it, and performed it 
 without your permission, that would be a simple robbery, and 
 could be stopped at once. Were matters otherwise your only 
 remedy would be an expensive and uncertain law-suit. 
 
 Nor could anyone " crib " any scenes or ideas from it — the 
 proof that he had done so, however, would rest with you, and 
 as, if he did do such a thing, he would be pretty sure to alter 
 and disguise them, and would then argue that they were his 
 OAvn, you would have extreme difficulty in establishing the fact. 
 
 You can allow your unpublished play to be performed 
 privately (the distinction between a private and a public per- 
 formance I will describe later on) without in the least perilling 
 your rights. 
 
 Printing a play in book form, and selling it over a counter, 
 is not deemed a " publication " of the play, and does not injure 
 your stage-right in Her Majesty s dominions. But it deprives you 
 of your chances in America at once, A play, as I have said, 
 is not considered published until it has been publicly performed. 
 To take an example, you can write a play and have it published 
 in a book or magazine without endangering your stage-right in
 
 Legal. 8g 
 
 it as a play. Some time ago a comedietta was published in 
 The Lady's Pictorial. All the acting rights of that comedietta 
 remain with the author, and nobody can touch it any way.* 
 
 Selling the book copyright in a play does not carry with it 
 the sale of the stageright. 
 
 Mr, W. S. Gilbert's plays are published in book form, and 
 sold all over England. Now I do not know whether Mr. Gil- 
 bert has sold the book copyright of those plays to the publisher, 
 or whether he and the publisher share profits, or what the 
 
 * Some friends have taken objection to my view of the law on this point 
 and doubt the safety of first pubhshing a play in book form. It would, of 
 course, be absurd to dogmatise upon such a very shifty science as Law ; and, 
 as a question of expediency, I should advise any author not to publish his 
 play as a book before having it performed ; but, nevertheless, I feel tolerably 
 sure of my ground ; and I believe that any manager performing without the 
 consent of the author, any play first published in book form would get the 
 worst of the argument. The Act (5 and 6 Victoria — clause 22) distinctly 
 states that the sale of the book copyright of a play does not carry with it the 
 right of representation. If the law expressly withholds the stageright from the 
 purchaser of the copyright of a play, it surely would not throw open such stage- 
 right to every outsider. Again, the law actually directs a foreign author, 
 wishing to secure his play in this country, to first publish a translation of 
 such a play in book form, and Frou-Frou, was first published here in the 
 columns of a magazine. 
 
 Nor have practical experiments of the kind been wanting. Not very long 
 ago"Ouida" published a thoroughly actable little play, reserving at the 
 same time the stageright. Surely a play with the name of " Ouida" attached 
 to it would have been worth stealing, and there is no lack of thieves hanging 
 round the theatrical profession, Some years back a series of one-act plays 
 appeared in a now defunct paper — Tlie Play. Many of these were quite 
 actable, and one of them, written by the late Palgrave Simpson, would have 
 been well worth putting on at any theatre. It has not been touched. There 
 are plays on Mr. French's list which have never been publicly performed, 
 and fairly good little comediettas often appear in the various magazines. The 
 explanation is that while the author of a narrative possesses only one right in 
 his work, namely, that of copyright, his more fortunate brother, the author 
 of a drama, possesses both copyright and stageright, and can dispose of the 
 two rights separately. Lastly, a play, until it Seen publicly performed, 
 belongs to the author by right of Conuiion Law.
 
 go Playwriting. 
 
 arrangement is ; but, for the sake of argument, we will suppose 
 that he has sold the copyright out-and-out to the publisher. 
 This does not give the publisher any right to act the plays, or 
 to deal with them upon the stage in any way. The exact words 
 of the statute are " no assignment of the copyright of any book 
 consisting of, or containing a dramatic piece shall be holden to 
 convey to the assignee the right of representing or performing 
 such dramatic piece." " Book " here includes any article 
 story, &c., &c., published in any magazine or newspaper. 
 
 But such publication in book form does deprive you of the 
 American right, so don't print any play you think you can do 
 anything with over there. Every play printed and sold for 6d. 
 over Messrs. French's counter can, under the American law, be 
 played anywhere in the United States without the English 
 author being paid a halfpenny. 
 
 Of course, mere printing for private circulation, without 
 publishing, is only like having so many copies of the play 
 written or typed out, and carries with it no legal effect. Indeed, 
 at most of the theatres now, new plays are always printed for 
 rehearsal and other purposes instead of beings copied out in 
 writing as formerly. 
 
 So much for your rights before publication. Now, assuming 
 your piece to have been published, i.e., performed in public, let 
 us examine into what rights you then possess over it.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 LEGAL {contimied). 
 
 In not very ancient days, dramatic authors had little, if any^ 
 rights at law over the representation of their works ; and the 
 only practical means they could adopt for protection was that 
 of being careful that there was only one copy of their play, and 
 that that copy did not get into the hands of unscrupulous 
 persons, who would keep it, or make a copy of it, and. so be 
 able to perform the play without their consent. They must 
 have had an anxious time. 
 
 In William IV. 's reign, however, a bill was obtained, prin- 
 cipally through the exertions of Sir Bulwer Lytton, conferring 
 upon dramatists a distinct control over the performance of 
 their pieces, and subsequent legislation has steadily improved 
 our position. 
 
 By Bulwer Lytton's Act — the first Act in which " stage 
 right," as distinct from " copyright, the right of multiplying 
 printed copies of a book," was recognised as a property — the 
 author of a dramatic piece (the definition of which we settled 
 in our last chapter) was given the " sole liberty of representing 
 it, or causing it to be represented, at any place of dramatic 
 entertainment in any part of the British dominions." 
 
 By " place of dramatic entertainment," it has been decided, 
 by the Courts and the Act between them, to mean any place io
 
 <92 Play writing. 
 
 Avhich admission is charged for either directly or indirectly, or any- 
 place in which wine, beer, or spirits (" excisable liquor") shall 
 be sold. A performance in such a place consitutes a public 
 performance. In this way, Lady Campbell's garden, when As 
 You Like It was played there, and a guinea charged for admis- 
 sion, would have been a " place of dramatic entertainment." 
 
 The payment for admission need not be by money taken at 
 the doors, nor even by previous purchase of tickets. "The 
 purchase of any article being made a condition for any person 
 to see a stage play," is held by the Act to be proof that the 
 performance is taking place " for hire," and no piece must be 
 played "for hire" except in a place licensed for "dramatic 
 entertainment." Some amateur dramatic clubs refuse to pay 
 author's fees on the ground that the performances are private, 
 that no money is taken at the doors, and no tickets sold. But 
 I very much doubt, having regard to the words of the Act I 
 have just quoted, whether their contention would hold good ; 
 and it would certainly be worth while for authors to club 
 together and try a case. It could be argued that, although no 
 money is taken actually on the night of the performance, still 
 the membership to the club, which gives the right of admission, 
 is always charged for, and that thus payment is " indirectly " 
 taken, the purchase of membership in the club being made a 
 condition for such right of entry. That the shirking of the 
 unfortunate author's fees is a mean piece of artful dodgery goes 
 without saying, and, if the few clubs (exceptions to an honour- 
 able rule) who practice it, could be compelled to act honestly, 
 it would be better for themselves and society in general. 
 
 Lord Coleridge, it may be noticed, in " Shelley v. Bethell," 
 xieclined to adopt, as exclusive test of the privacy of a 
 performance, that " no charge was made for admission." 
 
 The definition of a " private " performance received its latest 
 elucidation in " Duck v. Bates." The three judges, in that 
 case, held that to constitute a performance a private one it was
 
 Legal. 95 
 
 not sufficient merely that no money was taken, but the perform- 
 ance must be of a ''domestic " character, and take place in a^ 
 private building — not a building hind for the purpose. 
 
 Neither, at a private performance should any programmes be 
 sold, or any collection be made. 
 
 The consent of the author of any piece to its performance or 
 performances must, in strictness, be " first had and obtained in 
 writing." But, of course, in practice the consent is, under 
 ordinary circumstances, assumed. 
 
 Now, before we go any further, it may be as well to inquire 
 here, into who is the " author " of a piece, and who is the 
 proprietor and owner of the stageright therein. 
 
 As a general rule, as in the case of a man sitting down and 
 writing a play " all out of his own head." The author is by 
 law the proprietor. But, sometimes a writer is employed by a 
 manager or other person to write for him, and then the case is 
 not so simple. 
 
 First of all, it has been decided, in " Shepherd v. Conquest," 
 that a man cannot be hired at so much wages to write a play. 
 Literature is, very properly, not permitted by our Courts to be 
 dealt with on the same footing as tinkering or tailoring. You 
 can engage a carpenter at two pounds a week to make a table 
 for you, and when that table is madC; it belongs to you. But if 
 you engage a dramatist as your servant, and set him to work to 
 write a play, that play, when done, is not yours but his. In 
 " Shepherd v. Conquest " the proprietors of the Surrey Theatre 
 employed a Mr. Courtney to go to Paris for them and adapt a 
 certain French piece then being played there, they paying him 
 travelling expenses, and a weekly salary. This was done, the 
 adaptation being called Old 'yoe and Young Joe, and the Surrey 
 Managers took possession of it, under the belief that Mr. 
 Courtney having been, as it were, their paid workman in the 
 matter the result of his work belonged to them. Courtney, who, 
 to say the least of it, seems to have been pretty sharp, however,.
 
 94 Playwritiiig. 
 
 in spite of this, dealt with the piece as his own, and the court 
 upheld him in doing so. Chief Justice Jervis in his judgment, 
 said : " that the intention of the legislature in the enactments 
 relating to copyright was to elevate and protect literary men ; 
 that such an intention could only be effectuated by holding that 
 the actual composer of the work was the author and proprietor 
 of the copyright, and that no relation existing between him and 
 an employer who himself took no intellectual part in the 
 production of the work could, without an assignment in writing, 
 vest the proprietorship of it in the latter '' ; and he decided that 
 as no such assignment in writing had been made the piece still 
 belonged to Courtney. 
 
 But where the manager or other person who is bringing out 
 the play arranges and plans the production himself, and 
 employs one or more authors to write special parts — mere 
 accessories to the whole scheme — then the portions so written 
 by those authors belong not to them, but to the manager — the 
 organiser of the whole scheme. 
 
 In this way, presuming, as I believe was the case, that Mr. 
 Irving employed Mr. Frank Marshall to make for a specified sum 
 the alterations and additions required in Werner, those alterations 
 and additions belong not to their author, Mr. Marshall, but to 
 their author's employer and the organiser of the whole produc- 
 tion, Mr. Irving, and this without any assignment from Mr. 
 Marshall. 
 
 This principle was fixed in "Hattont;. Kean." Mr. Kean 
 had "organised" a play, and had employed Mr. Hatton to 
 compose a piece of music as part of the performance. Held : 
 "that the music so composed by the direction and under the 
 superintendence of the defendant, and as part of the general 
 plan of the spectacle," was the property of the defendant. In 
 all subsequent cases of the kind the same ruling has held good. 
 
 In a similar way, an author can engage other writers to 
 assist him in his work. He might engage one man to write
 
 Legal. 95 
 
 songs to be sung by one or more of the characters, and another 
 man to write him a curse for the villain to pronounce, and a 
 third man to write him a love scene, and yet the whole play 
 would belong to him, just as a picture, that his pupils have 
 helped him to paint, belongs to an artist. 
 
 All that is necessary is that the portions and matter so com- 
 posed by the employes shall be accessory to the whole, and 
 shall be a " part and parcel " of it, and not independent pieces, 
 and that they shall be composed binder the divection, and with the 
 intellectual assistance of the employer. 
 
 Sir J. Leach, with reference to this subject, said, in " Barfield 
 V. Nicholson," " I am of opinion that under the statute the 
 person who forms the plan, and who embarks in the speculation 
 of a work, and who employs various persons to compose 
 different parts of it, adapted to their own peculiar acquirements 
 — that he, the person who so forms the plan and scheme of the 
 work, and pays different artists of his own selection, who upon 
 certain conditions contribute to it, is the author and proprietor 
 of the work." 
 
 The mere suggestion of the subject by another person, and 
 even his alterations and improvements (?) do not give him any 
 title to any share in the authorship. Even his giving you the 
 whole plot would not entitle him to any such share, except with 
 your consent. Joint authorship or " collaboration," as it is 
 termed, must be the result of preconcerted joint design. 
 
 And now with regard to the vexed and complicated question 
 of " adapting" plays from novels and tales. 
 
 Up to within a few months ago — that is up to the Spring of 
 i88S, anyone could legally "adapt," or, in plain language, steal, 
 another man's novel or tale, and make a play of it without his 
 consent and without paying him one halfpenny, or acknowledging 
 him in any way. 
 
 By the disgraceful condition of our copyright laws no " stage- 
 right" in his work is reserved to the author of any novel — and
 
 96 Playwriting. 
 
 by the word " novel" please remember I mean to include an}^ 
 tale, or story, or poeni, published either by itself or in any 
 magazine, or newspaper, or journal. He can prevent its being 
 printed and sold without his permission, but he cannot prevent 
 its being acted. 
 
 In " Reade v. Conquest," Mr. Reade wrote a novel called 
 " It's Never Too Late to Mend." Another man adapted it for 
 the stage without Reade's consent, and such adaptation was 
 played at the Grecian Theatre. Held " that representing the 
 incidents of a published novel in a dramatic form upon the 
 stage, although done publicly and lor profit, is no infringement 
 of copyright." Mr. Reade won this particular case in the end, 
 but it was upon an entirely distinct argument. 
 
 In " Toole v. Young " the same ruling was maintained. Mr. 
 Hollingshead (" one HoUingshead " as the reports have it, as if 
 there were room in this world for two John Hollingsheads), 
 wrote a novel and published it in Good Words. H. P. Grattan 
 " adapted " that novel for the stage, and the piece was performed 
 under the title oi Glory. Held " that however shabby and dis- 
 creditable it may seem " (I am quoting the Judge's words) "any 
 person has a right to dramatise the novel without being liable 
 to an action on the ground that Mr. Hollingshead had the 
 copyright." 
 
 Other cases could be cited, but they would merely go to 
 prove the same fact, viz., that the work of a man's brain, if put 
 into " book" form, could be sneaked from him, and acted on 
 the stage, not only without the interference of, but with the 
 actual protection of the Law ! 
 
 The only safeguard that the author of a novel had against us 
 " dramatists " was the expensive, cumbersome, and, for many 
 of them, quite impossible plan of dramatising their story them- 
 selves, and getting it publicly performed before they published 
 it as a book. 
 
 But we have changed all that. The Law remains the same
 
 Legal. 97 
 
 as opposed to honesty and justice as it was before. Theoretically 
 you can still appropriate stories and " adapt" novels to the stage, 
 but practically, except in the very unlikely event of the famous 
 decision in Warne v. Seebohm being reversed, the theatrical 
 Dick Turpin's long career is over. 
 
 By a legal quibble, as brilliant as that raised for the defendant 
 in Shylock v. Antonio, a long-standing evil has been swept away. 
 Trickery has been called upon to take up the lance for Justice 
 against Law ; and to the delight of all decent men. Law has 
 been defeated. Th^ Little Lord Fannthvoy case is too familiar 
 just at present to need recalling; but, to make this chapter 
 complete, I will briefly state it. 
 
 Mrs. Burnett wrote a book called " Little Lord Fauntleroy," 
 and assigned the English copyright to Messrs. Warne. A Mr. 
 Seebohm " adapted " the story to the stage, as thousands of 
 adapters before him had adapted thousands of novels ; and the 
 piece was played at the Prince of Wales's Theatre. Mrs. 
 Burnett, through Messrs. Warne, objected, as thousands of 
 adapted novelists had before objected ; and went to law, as tens 
 of objecting novelists had done before, "to enforce her objec- 
 tions ; and everybody laughed at her, and said she was only 
 throwing her money away, and that she was bound to lose the 
 day, as all her predecessors had. 
 
 But Mrs. Burnett's legal advisers were geniuses, and they won 
 the day for her ; and, now that they have shown how easy and 
 simple it is for a novelist to protect his property, there is little 
 fear of thieves breaking through and stealing in future. The 
 Copyright Act, as I have already pointed out, does not protect 
 an author against having his story acted on the stage ; but it 
 does most emphatically assert that no one shall multiply copies 
 of his book, or of any part of his book. "Very well," said Mrs. 
 Burnett's counsel toMr. Seebohm, "play Little I>ord Fauntleroy 
 as much as you like. We cannot prevent that. But you have 
 sent a copy of the play you have made out of the novel to the 
 
 H
 
 98 
 
 Playwriting. 
 
 Lord Chamberlain. In that copy of the play there are passages 
 taken from the novel. You have thus multiplied copies of parts 
 of the novel. The Copyright Act forbids you to do this, and 
 the copy of your play in which such copy parts occur is forfeit 
 to our clients ; and we demand of the Lord Chamberlain that 
 he give it up. This plea was successfully upheld by the Court,, 
 and the copy of the play lodged for licensing purposes at the 
 Lord Chamberlain's office was given up to Messrs. Warne ; and 
 as the Lord Chamberlain cannot or will not license a play unless 
 a copy of it is in his possession, and as no play can be performed 
 without his license, the piece had to be withdrawn. 
 
 It has been suggested in some quarters that Seebohm might 
 have evaded the law by cutting out the portions of the book he 
 desired to use, and pasting them on the pages of his play ; it 
 being argued that this would not be multiplying copies, but 
 only using up copies bought from the rightful owners. But the 
 idea will not bear consideration by anyone acquainted with law. 
 Whether the copy was faked up with scissors and paste, or 
 written out it would be just the same — the work of the would-be 
 pirate ; and the copy would be issued by him, not by the owner 
 of the copyright, the only person entitled to issue copies. 
 
 Of course, all this cannot prevent ideas and suggestions being 
 taken from novels ; nor is it desirable that it should do so.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 LEGAL (concluded). 
 
 Licensing I have spoken about in a previous chapter. 
 Every pla)^ must be Hcensed before performance, and all addi- 
 tions and alterations to old plays must also be licensed. Of 
 course, this is practically needed only in the case of important 
 alterations. 
 
 Registering is a very particular matter, and should be paid 
 great attention to. At Stationers' Hall, just off Ludgate-hill, a 
 book is kept for the registration of " the proprietorship" in the 
 copyright of books and plays, and the assignment of such 
 copyright (" copyright " here includes " stageright.") The 
 proprietor of the copyright — that is, the author of the play or 
 his assignee — can, at any time after the first performance of the 
 play, enter his right in this book of registry, and such entry is 
 prima facie proof of his proprietorship, but subject to be rebutted 
 by evidence. 
 
 The mode of entry is by stating the title of the play, the 
 name and address of the author (yourself), the name and address 
 of the proprietor (also yourself), unless you have sold the piece, 
 in which case leave it to the purchaser to do all this, and the 
 
 H 2
 
 100 Play writing. 
 
 date and place of its first performance. For making this entry 
 you must pay 5s. 
 
 After having registered your proprietorship, you can, for 
 another 5s., make another entry assignmg your right to anybody 
 you hke — to your wife, for instance, if you are afraid of bank- 
 ruptcy, or it is otherwise advisable that you should get rid of 
 your ownership in the piece. 
 
 This assignment by mere entry is quite as legal and binding 
 as though it had been done by formal deed, and it saves the 
 stamp. 
 
 Indeed, " registration " is the one point where the law is 
 really kind to authors. A simple entry in this registry book, a 
 certified copy of which can be had for five shillings, is, as I have 
 said, legal prima facie evidence of ownership, whether as author 
 or assignee, and it rests upon the other side to prove that the 
 entry is wrong. 
 
 A wrongful entry will be ordered to be expunged from the 
 book upon application to the Court by the rightful proprietor, 
 and the person who has made the wrongful entry will be 
 punished. 
 
 You are not compelled to make this registration at all, and 
 your not doing so will not damage your rights in any way. But 
 you cannot sue until such registration has been made, so that 
 the first thing your solicitor will do, upon being instructed by 
 you to proceed against anyone for infringing your play, is to go 
 to Stationers' Hall and see that you are duly registered as 
 proprietor of the play. If it has not been done already he will 
 do it then, and that will be quite sufficient. 
 
 Titles are regarded as trade marks ; you must not use another 
 man's title, nor a "colourable imitation," of it, for the same 
 ■class of work. The principle upon which the Court will act in 
 the matter is that of preventing the pubhc from being deceived 
 as to what work is really being offered to them. You would not 
 be allowed just now to write a three-act comic opera, and call
 
 Le^al. 10 1 
 
 -^6 
 
 it Dorothy, because that would be a palpable attempt to trade 
 upon the popularity of the Prince of Wales's piece. But you 
 would be allowed (probabl}', not certainly) to call a melodrama 
 or a one-act farce Dorothy, because there could be no pretence 
 then that you were trying to make the public believe that your 
 play was Mr. Collier's. 
 
 It would just depend upon the view the judge took of the 
 matter ; and it would save trouble and bother if you adopted 
 some other title altogether. 
 
 I hope it will be needless for me to caution you against 
 writing anything immoral, or of a nature calculated to bring 
 public institutions into contempt (please don't do this), or an}'- 
 thing to injure or caricature public or private individuals. If 
 you write anything of this kind the Lord Chamberlain will 
 refuse to license it ; or if it does by chance slip through his 
 fingers at the time of reading, it will be prohibited afterwards 
 (as the author of The Happy Land, in which Messrs. Righton, 
 Fisher and Hill brought Mr. Gladstone and Messrs. Lowe and 
 Ayrton into contempt, could tell you). 
 
 The term for which your play is protected is during j^our 
 lifetime and for seven years afterwards, or for forty-two years 
 from the date of its first performance, whichever period may be 
 the longer. After this, it is public property. 
 
 " Stageright " in a play is a legal property, and can be assigned, 
 or bequeathed, or, in fact, dealt with just as any other form of 
 property may be. 
 
 As regards international stageright, the question is a big one, 
 but I propose to go into it only so far as English authors are 
 affected. 
 
 At the end of 1887 ^ ^ew copyright convention came into 
 operation as between England and certain foreign countries. 
 It has not really altered matters very much in effect from what 
 they were before ; but it has done away with a good deal of
 
 102 Play writing. 
 
 harassing detail formerly necessary to be gone through, especially 
 by foreign authors desiring to secure copyright with us. 
 
 The countries included in the convention are France, Ger- 
 many, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Haiti, Liberia (wherever that may 
 be), Tunis, and Switzerland. In those nine countries the 
 English author can secure a limited stageright for his play, 
 provided he publishes a translation of his play in such country 
 or countries within ten years after its original production. If 
 he allow the ten years to go by without doing this, his play is 
 public property in those countries. The course of proceeding 
 in each case will depend upon the laws and customs of the 
 particular country, and can be carried out effectively only 
 through some foreign agent. Practically speaking, this part of 
 the matter is unimportant. English plays are rarely required 
 abroad. The boot is on the other foot. 
 
 Plays brought out in any of these countries can likewise be 
 protected in England, and, as this affects the greater industry 
 of adaptation, we must examine into the matter. 
 
 The foreign author sells his British right to an Englishman 
 It need not be to an Englishman. It need not be to anyone 
 He, the foreign author, may carry the matter through himself. 
 But I am, for the sake of example, taking the ordinary custom. 
 The course that the English purchaser had then to follow used 
 to be a most expensive and dangerous one, full of complicated 
 formalities, the slightest bungling over any one of which would 
 ruin the whole work. (The rights in Frou Frou were lost merely 
 because Mr. Edwards' translation was not, in parts, a 
 sufficiently literal one). 
 
 Literal translations had to be made and published within 
 given periods, copies lodged at the public libraries, the work 
 registered at Stationers' Hall, &c., &c„ &c. All this is now 
 needless, and it is only required that a translation or adaptation 
 of the original foreign play be published in book form or pro- 
 duced at a theatre within ten years from the date of its original
 
 Legal. 103 
 
 production abroad. If the ten years go by, and the piece is 
 neither published nor produced then anyone is at hberty to use it. 
 
 It is not necessary now (as formerly it was) that the foreign 
 work should be registered in England before translation or 
 adaptation. It is sufficient for the play to have been registered 
 in the country of its origin, according to the laws and customs 
 of that country. 
 
 The purchaser's right to the foreign work only lasts for ten 
 years, but, when it is once " adapted," the adaptation becomes 
 a play of itself, subject to all the regulations and rights of an 
 original work, and belongs to the adapter or his assignee for the 
 usual term of seven years beyond the adapter's lifetime, or 42 
 3'ears from the first performance, whichever period may be the 
 longer. 
 
 The Act finally proceeds to completely stultify itself by 
 expressly stating that it only prohibits adaptations "with non- 
 essential alterations, additions, or abridgments so made as not 
 to confer the character of a new original work " ; and it would 
 thus appear to give the honest purchaser very little for his 
 money, as what is the use of his purchasing the rights from the 
 foreign author, and going to all the trouble and expense of 
 registering, translating, &c., when, by making his adaptation a 
 little freer than usual, and hacking it about sufficiently to enable 
 him to argue that he had made "essential alterations, &c.," he 
 could take it for nothing. But, if the Act is framed foolishly, 
 the courts have decided to administer it wisely. In " Wood v 
 Chart " the judge stated very clearly that if the first and 
 authorised adaptation had been in order, and he had been 
 asked to prohibit the second and unauthorised adaptation on 
 the ground of its being a "piratical translation," he would have 
 done so ; and there is no doubt that the legitimate proprietor 
 of any adaptation would be upheld by the courts in preventing 
 the performance of, to quote the judge's words, " anything like 
 it — anything approaching it."
 
 I04 Playwriting. 
 
 With respect to all other foreign countries except the nine 
 named we can steal from them and they can steal from us 
 with impunity. 
 
 Our copyright and stageright relationships with America are 
 complicated and mysterious. I do not intend to examine into 
 them, as that would be of no practical use. I shall content 
 myself with merely stating the bare facts, as they at present 
 exist, without troubling you with the reasons and explanations. 
 
 How the question stands generally, may be judged by the 
 following extract from " Morgan's Law of Literature " (an 
 American authority) : — "It appears, first, that an alien 
 dramatic author in the United States practically and in effect 
 receives precisely the same protection in his literary property 
 as the citizen can receive in his ; and, secondly, that by 
 neglecting to comply with our copyright laws the alien dramatic 
 author can actually enjoy greater privileges of protection in 
 his literary property than he could by complying with them." 
 
 So long as you do not publish your play in book form, and 
 sell copies, it cannot be played in America without your consent. 
 One method of dealing with it over there is for you to sell your 
 American rights to a citizen of the United States. Such sale is 
 generally a mere formal matter, the purchaser being your agent,, 
 or the agent of the English purchaser out there, and the 
 purchase money being merely nominal — one dollar or so. The 
 piece is then played, and your fees collected and remitted to 
 you b}' the agent. Of course, if you sell the piece for a sum 
 down to some American manager that simplifies the case. The 
 usual custom, however, is merely for an American manager to 
 take the piece, and remit you the agreed royalties in just the 
 same way as an English manager would. 
 
 The American author is not so fortunate as his English 
 brother. Any play produced first in America can be stolen 
 and played in England, as poor Dion Boucicault has learned tO' 
 his cost. To protect themselves from this robbery American
 
 Legal. 105 
 
 authors now produce their plays through some hole-and-corner 
 performance in England before producing them in America, as 
 Young Mvs. Wmthrop was produced at the IMarylebone Theatre 
 a few days before it was first played in America, and the 
 English stageright thus secured to Mr. Bronson Howard. 
 
 This method of acquiring the English stageright is in 
 accordance with the provisions of our Dramatic Copyright Act, 
 Avhich gives to a foreign author the full British right for his 
 play, provided it be first produced in this country. 
 
 I think I have now explained to you pretty fully your legal 
 rights, privileges, and protections as a dramatist. How to 
 enforce and maintain those rights, privileges, and protections 
 in a court of law — the steps necessary to recover your fees, to 
 prevent unauthorised performance of 5^our plays, to defeat 
 infringement, to guard against piracy or theft — this I do not 
 propose to tell you. It would necessitate a chapter much longer 
 than the present one, and be of no practical use. You could 
 not conduct the case yourself. You must put yourself in the 
 hands of some solicitor who has made a special study of copy- 
 right cases (there are not too many lawyers who do thoroughly 
 understand this work. You will do well to make a careful 
 selection). He will know what to do, and will do it, and your 
 knowing all about it, too (even if your unlegally trained mind 
 could understand the process, which is doubtful) would be 
 mere surplusage. 
 
 All that it is needful for you to grasp with reference to the 
 matter is (i) That if any person shall play any dramatic piece, 
 or any part of it, without the consent in writing of the pro- 
 prietor (or his agent), at any place of dramatic entertainment 
 in Her Majesty's dominions, that person shall be liable to 
 payment of various penalties and damages. (2) That every 
 action for any offence or injury must be brought within twelve 
 months after the offence is committed.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 And now, old reader — I say " old reader," just as, if I v/ere 
 talking to you, I should say " old man," because I know you 
 are a man, and a young one to boot. No women, speaking 
 generally, are dramatists, or seem to desire to become so. 
 Seeing how they dominate all other branches of imaginative 
 literature, this is curious. I suppose it is that they are un- 
 dramatic by nature. Their whole mental organisation is 
 opposed to the directness, the silence which constitute, as it were, 
 the two thunder-clouds from which the lightning of " action " 
 (that is, " drama ") springs. Take George Eliot, who, of all 
 women writers, approaches the nearest in her instincts to the 
 dramatic. Two splendid scenes of hers occur to me at this 
 moment, both pregnant with drama in its highest form, and 
 both spoilt, from a dramatic point of view, by eloquent 
 description and philosophical comment. The one is Silas 
 Marner's finding of the child ; and the other the death of 
 Maggie Tulliver and her brother, Tom, swamped in the flood, 
 by the old mill, where as children they had lived and played. 
 Scenes such as these, in the hands of a true dramatist, would 
 be made to speak for themselves, and say all that could be
 
 Conclusion. 107 
 
 said, without one word from the author. Every Hne of argu- 
 ment or explanation weakens incident. It is Hke draping a 
 statue. But a woman's mind, I am sure, could never be made 
 to grasp this fact. A woman would never be content to let 
 the audience imagine her hero's grief and despair. When 
 Reginald returns to his home to find a note from Anastasia, 
 announcing her departure with Alphonse, the foreign villain, it 
 would never be sufficient, in her idea, for Reginald to exclaim, 
 '' My God ! " and sink into chair, L. C. " as Curtain, &c." She 
 would give Reginald a ten minutes' soliloquy, in which he 
 would explain to the house by the aid of heartrending adjec- 
 tives that he was awfully upset — that he should never have 
 believed it — that he could'nt understand it — and that he had 
 loved her with a love, &c. But enough on this subject of 
 women (women are always leading us men astray), and the 
 impossibility of their becoming dramatists. It is of, and to, 
 the people who can and may become dramatists that I wish to 
 say a few parting words. I think I have already given all the 
 practical advice and information that it is in my power to give, 
 and these few last words will, therefore, be as few last words 
 generally are, mere exhortation. I shall rather like giving 
 them. Preaching to other people what they should do always 
 was my strong point. I feel then that I am doing good, and 
 that without any undue exertion or annoyance to myself. I 
 suppose everybody feels the same, and that is why good advice 
 and moral maxims are so plentiful in this world ; and that 
 there is always an average of ten or twelve enthusiastic teachers 
 to every one conscientious disciple. 
 
 This is an age in which we are all "on the make," and an 
 author's reputation rests not on what he does, but on how much 
 he gets. L.S.D. is the standard of art in this nineteenth 
 century. The manager comes before the curtain, and 
 announces that the nightly receipts have maintained an average 
 of over three hundred pounds, and that the advance booking
 
 io8 Playwritmg. 
 
 still continues unabated, and the pit rises up and cheers, and 
 the stalls flutter with suppressed delight, and all feel that 
 they are in the presence of a great and good man. On the 
 first night, the play appears to a mere plain intelligence, a 
 poor, weak, trashy thing, badly constructed, badly written^ 
 with puerile plot, impossible characters, and hackneyed 
 incidents. But it runs for a thousand nights and brings in 
 fifty thousand pounds or so, which proves to every practical 
 mind that the first impressions of the piece were wrong, and 
 that instead of being the maudlin balderdash that a less 
 enlightened age might have fancied it to be, it is in reality a 
 grand and noble piece of literature. Then we gush over 
 William Snooks, the author, as if he were Homer, and Hugo, 
 and Goethe, and Schiller, and Dickens, and Moliere rolled into 
 one. Did Shakespeare, or Ben Jonson, or Marlowe, or 
 Sheridan ever write a play that brought in fifty thousand 
 pounds ? No ! Very well then, do not let us hear any more 
 about these over-rated old mummies while we've got a literary 
 god like Snooks, hanging about. Managers, actors, brother 
 authors, critics, and the public generally will respect you far 
 more for writing a play by which you gain a fortune, than for 
 penning the grandest comedy that ever graced the English stage 
 if it fails to "draw." Against this tendency of the age very 
 few of us have the strength and courage to do battle. We 
 start full of chivalrous and heroic resolutions. We respect 
 ourselves, and we honour our profession. We lay to heart 
 pretty little catch phrases about the stage being a greater 
 power for good than the pulpit, about literature being the 
 prophet of the modern day wilderness ; and we determine 
 that our pen shall be drawn only in the service of honour and 
 manhood, and shall dart its ridicule against only the mean and 
 the false ; but, after a time, we seem to find that the service of 
 honour and manhood is a somewhat hard and poorly paid 
 service, and that in the ranks of folly the wage is high and the
 
 Conclusion. 109 
 
 promotion rapid, so we quickly right about face and cross over 
 to the enemy. 
 
 Still it is advisable, even from the most sordid point of view, 
 not to be too eager for the change, especially if you [are at all 
 capable of good work, It is an undoubted fact that in the long 
 run, and taking a man's career as a whole, it is the best writing 
 that pays. Quick, shallow trumpery, trimmed so as to just 
 catch the popular breeze of the moment, may skim along 
 bravely enough during a transient sunny hour, but it is in the 
 great, slow-moving, stately ships, built with long labour, 
 launched with trouble and care, that the solid merchandise of 
 the world is brought home. You want to be a successful 
 dramatic author, not the author of a successful drama. A lucky 
 fluke will make you the latter, but the former can be achieved 
 only by a steady course of sound work. The former is over 
 and done with, and the fortune spent on the " easy come, easy 
 go " principle in a year or two, and you are never heard of 
 again. The latter is a career ! 
 
 And from other motives — not sordid ones, if you can have 
 patience to listen to such — it is well to aim at only true, honest 
 work. The popularity gained may not be any wider, but it 
 will be far deeper, and, though self-respect is a somewhat costly 
 luxury to indulge in, it is nevertheless a healthy and invigorat- 
 ing one. If you can afford it, that is, if you have a sufficiently 
 manly mind to be content with comfort (which can be 
 purchased anywhere for three hundred a year), and not be 
 craving like a child, for everything you see, then by all means 
 purchase it. 
 
 Give the public the deepest and highest you have in you. Do 
 not be afraid that it will be too good for them. Never be 
 satisfied with anything because it's "good enough." Feel that 
 whatever you write is the best that you can do. Then, whether 
 it succeeds or not, it is none of your fault. 
 
 Remember that, as a rule, the most lasting work takes the
 
 no Play writing. 
 
 longest time to do. There may come moments of inspiration 
 in which you can dash off a certain amount of good stuff quickly.. 
 Such moments are like the two or three hundred yards of level 
 and half way up the hill over which every now and then the team 
 will rattle your coach at a spanking gallop, but it is the steady 
 jog-trot you must depend upon for the day's journey. Do not, 
 therefore, pride yourself on having " knocked off'' an act in one 
 day. In all probability it will be a day wasted. A couple of 
 months spent over it will be far better. Writers like Dickens, 
 Thackeray, Macaulay, and George Eliot took weeks to write a 
 chapter or two. It is your little twopenny-halfpenny authors — 
 the sort that would be dear at six for a shilling — that "knock 
 off" things in a few hours. 
 
 Be honest — never mind if you are laughed at for it. If you 
 take a foreign author's play, pay him something and acknowledge 
 it, even though, owing to some omission on his part, or by the 
 fault of the law, you are not legally compelled to do so. If you 
 " adapt" a man's book, let it be a straightforward, above-board 
 transaction. I can only see one difference myself between the 
 man who steals a man's purse or watch and the man who steals 
 a play, and that is that the latter is a coward as well as a thief, 
 because he knows he cannot be punished. 
 
 Do not dabble in indecencies. That sort of thing pays less- 
 and less every year. A certain number of people, of course, 
 roar over them, but you do not hear the silent disgust of the 
 better half of the audience. 
 
 Do not write too much. I say this not in the cause of the 
 public, but for your own sake. A writer is not an inexhaustible 
 stream ; he is only a mine. He contains a certain amount of 
 good metal, and what comes after that is rubbish And do not 
 write too quickly. A brain can't be driven like a cab horse 
 Many a clever dramatist works himself to death in the 
 first few years of his popularity, and then has to sit aside and 
 know himself " played out " before his time. A man, after one
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 iir 
 
 or two successes, is applied to on every side for plaj^s. Managers, 
 who a year ago would not look at the very pieces that have 
 since made him famous, now crowd round him and offer him any 
 terms to write anything. If he is wise, he shuts his ears and 
 goes quietly in his own course. If he is foolish, " he makes 
 haste to be rich," undertakes three or four times as much work 
 as he is capable of properly performing, is compelled to "scamp" 
 it, and, in consequence, turns out failure after failure. 
 
 Do not — but I will take my own advice for once, and not write 
 too much. I have said all that is in me worth saying, perhaps 
 more, on this matter of " playwriting.'' I will stop before I 
 come to the rubbish. Good-bye, and here's luck !
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 In the early pages of this work, the remark was made 
 that it is absolutely necessary for a playwright to be 
 personally acquainted with the stage. Many readers of 
 this book, however, will find that " going on the stage " 
 or them is an impossibility. For the guidance and 
 assistance of those who are unacquainted with the world 
 behind the footlights, and wholly ignorant of " stage 
 directions," their meaning and bearing in playwriting, this 
 Appendix is intended. A careful study of the plans and 
 sketches given will enable, it is hoped, all would-be dramatic 
 authors to make the stage directions of their plots at least 
 intelligible to the professional mind. 
 
 The first plate gives a ground i)lan of the stage, and 
 its entrances as ordinarily arranged.
 
 The second plate gives a perspective view of an imaginary 
 exterior scene. 
 
 The third plate gives a ground plan of the second. 
 
 The fourth plate gives a perspective view of an imaginary 
 interior scene. 
 
 The fifth plate gives a ground plan of the fourth. 
 
 ho^tltghtt. 
 
 Promft itds Left 1st 
 cj Stagt iittniue. 
 
 L.i.E. 
 Left ucomd iniroMft 
 
 L.V.E. 
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 Vowa Stage, 
 
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 ' Satit uiiU of Slagt. 
 
 CfiNERAX. PLAN OF STAGE. WITH ENTRANCES AND EXITS
 
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 STAGE PLAM OF INTgRIOS SCENE. -
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 
 ^ OCT 5 1970 
 
 JCT 18 1570 
 
 Form L9-Series 444 
 
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 AUG 3 1983 
 
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