LIBRARY 
 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN 01 EGO
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
 
 THE 
 
 EXEMPLARY 
 THEATRE 
 
 B Y 
 
 HARLEY GRAN VILLE-BARKER
 
 Printed in England at the Cloister Press, Heaton Mersey, near Manchester
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE history of a book's writing has an 
 interest for its author, when (the worst over) 
 he is able to recall it, that he can hardly 
 expect its readers to share. But in the origin and 
 development of the ideas which I have tried to 
 express in " The Exemplary Theatre " I do seem 
 to find a significance sufficiently impersonal for 
 their recording, perhaps, to be pardonable. 
 
 The history begins, then, about twenty years 
 ago at a meeting held in some drawing-room in the 
 further West End of London. My memory is not 
 more precise ; nor does it distinguish who was 
 present. But the meeting's object the object at 
 least that emerged was to consider what steps 
 could be taken towards the foundation of a national 
 theatre, and its result the appointment of a com- 
 mittee to draw up a scheme. From this point my 
 memory grows clearer. The committee consisted 
 of Gilbert Murray, A. C. Bradley, Spenser Wilkin- 
 son, William Archer, Hamilton Fyfe, and longo 
 intervallo my humble self. It met several times 
 at Spenser Wilkinson's house and discussed at 
 some length and, as was to be expected, with great 
 learning the principles that should govern the 
 establishment and conduct of national theatres in 
 general. Spenser Wilkinson, I remember, was 
 most apt to turn for a solution of our difficulties 
 to the practice of the ancient Greeks. I trust I sat 
 silent. I was impatient the scheme seemed likely 
 to be long in coming to birth. I am sure I looked 
 forward to a national theatre in being within the next 
 year or so. I have since thought, as the sequel will 
 show, that our theorizing need not have been wasted. 
 But one morning William Archer arrived at my 
 rooms in the Adelphi and delivered himself some- 
 what to this effect :
 
 PREFACE 
 
 " We must get something on paper. What you 
 and I have to do is to draw up a practical scheme, 
 and these other fellows may amend it if they know 
 how." 
 
 He had only to command me, so we set to work, 
 and the result to which, I should add, his con- 
 tribution much outweighed mine was a consider- 
 able mass of detail which we named "A Scheme and 
 Estimates for a National Theatre." My memory 
 becomes vague again. I presume the scheme 
 was submitted in some form to the responsible 
 committee, though I am quite sure that the parent 
 meeting was never reassembled. The committee 
 probably gave up the ghost at being challenged 
 to pronounce upon the subscription prices that 
 should be charged for a second performance of 
 Measure for Measure, whether and when a third 
 scenic artist should come on the pension fund, and 
 the number of charwomen that would be wanted. 
 Archer and I were left proudly alone with our 
 offspring. 
 
 We then proceeded to self-suppression : first 
 in favour of seven godfathers I must name them : 
 Henry Irving, Squire Bancroft, J. M. Barrie, 
 Helen d'Oyly Carte, John Hare, Henry Arthur 
 Jones, and A. W. Pinero and contingently in 
 favour of any beneficent millionaire to whom their 
 good word might recommend this magnificent 
 opportunity. It should be his scheme for 350,000 
 or so. There were no offers. The benevolence 
 of the godfathers availed nothing. I fancy some 
 timid approaches were made to the Government. 
 But tariff reform or the tariff reformer rather 
 was at that time Mr. Balfour's amply sufficient 
 trouble, and his interest, so he is reported to have 
 said on the broaching of the subject, lay rather 
 vi
 
 PREFACE 
 
 in classical concerts with the prices at twopence, 
 fourpence, and sixpence. I fancy, too, that candi- 
 dates for baronetcies and the like were not quite 
 so numerous then ; besides, 350,000 much over- 
 topped the market-rate. 
 
 I recall, amid the barren complaisance with 
 which the scheme was greeted by the few who took 
 the trouble to read it, one piece of harsh and perti- 
 nent criticism from Bernard Shaw. 
 
 " It's no good," he said, " for no one with the 
 youth and energy to get such a theatre started would 
 do a "hand's turn for the sake of such a musty list of 
 plays as you put down. The old drama or the 
 new drama may serve you, but old-fashioned drama's 
 the devil." 
 
 We had apologetically ruled out of the specimen 
 repertory Ibsen and Hauptmann and Shaw himself, 
 and a few others (Brieux had slipped in, though), 
 on the ground that it was no advanced theatre we 
 were designing. So that, with a little heat, Archer 
 replied that as quite notorious Ibsenites, Haupt- 
 mannites, Shavians, etc., we had made this great 
 sacrifice as a pledge of good faith. To which 
 Shaw only answered that if we hadn't the courage 
 of our opinions we deserved to be ignored. 
 
 We were. But that was to have contented us 
 if only the millionaire would have fathered the 
 already well godfathered scheme. And Shaw's 
 criticism, if pertinent, was partial. But it raises 
 one interesting issue. Does not a little self-seeking 
 do more to promote public confidence than a dis- 
 interestedness which will either be suspected as 
 hypocritical or condemned as half-hearted ? 
 
 Some years later, however, when Archer and I 
 had travelled together to America and were dis- 
 cussing in New York a not dissimilar project, there 
 
 vii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 blazed up in London public meetings, press 
 paragraphs, and all a movement to establish a 
 national theatre as a tercentenary monument to 
 Shakespeare. And we returned to find the com- 
 mittee, to which we were added, disposed to adopt 
 our scheme as at least a preliminary text-book. It had, 
 I think, by this time been published, was no longer 
 anonymous, but remained as disinterested as ever. 
 
 Into the next ten years' history of the Shakespeare 
 National Theatre Committee I do not propose 
 to go. Enough to say that when the tercentenary 
 came England and Europe memorialized it in 
 another fashion. I forbear the usual ironic com- 
 ment upon the German patronage of our national 
 poet. But I will record the bitterness of my 
 realization sharpened by the occasion of the 
 theatre's utter and ignominious failure during the 
 war to lift its head into any region of fine feeling 
 and eloquence. It was sharpened still more by the 
 thought that had our Shakespeare National Theatre 
 been earlier brought to a safe existence that would 
 surely have stood in significant honour above the 
 disgrace. 
 
 Well, it is 1921, and the memorial committee 
 is still whistling, and may whistle, for their money 
 and they need more than ,350,000 now. This 
 is not yet a country for the heroic dramatist to live in. 
 And it is no use crying over the spilt years. So, 
 personally, I have turned for comfort upon the 
 subject during these last three or four, to a recon- 
 sideration of the theatre's whole position. And this 
 book is evidence of such comfort as I have found. 
 
 If we had established our national theatre ac- 
 cording to the idea of it commonly current ten to 
 twenty years ago (and the scheme and estimates 
 represents this not unfairly) we might well have 
 viii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 set up something that did not truly or fully represent 
 our national dramatic genius. We were stirred, for 
 one thing, to an emulation of the Theatre Francais, 
 we were inclined to borrow useful items from the 
 plans of the many good German and Scandinavian 
 theatres. No harm in that, once we have achieved 
 an individuality of our own. But have we in 
 dramatic matters more important far than organiza- 
 tion and machinery ? We talk of the renaissance 
 of our theatre; dating it, according to taste, from 
 1 870, 1 890, 1 900 or whenever. And so, no doubt, 
 we most allowedly may. But, for one thing, this is 
 a renaissance of the written drama only. Acting 
 which is the theatre's original art has by no means, 
 if this book is in the right, yet adjusted itself to its 
 new opportunity. And certainly the theatre, as a 
 whole, has only begun to absorb the interesting and 
 often typically English developments of the art of 
 scenic decoration. Moreover, we are all still under 
 the dominance of the well-made play. In our play- 
 writing renaissance, if we broke from Scribe, we 
 fell into the arms of Ibsen and have hardly yet 
 escaped from them. Not that these embraces 
 necessarily did us harm. 
 
 But to survey his heritage and to prosper its work- 
 ing a man must stand upright and feel his feet. 
 
 Now, it is obvious that the drama is, of all others, 
 an intensely racial art ; whatever the playwright 
 may do, the actor cannot and advisedly will not try 
 to translate or adapt himself. The genius of 
 French acting is fitted to the well-made play 
 naturally, as the two things have developed together. 
 Together, moreover, they may almost be said to re- 
 present with perfect fitness the genius of the French 
 nation itself reasonable, precise, rounded neatly 
 and completely from cause to effect. 
 
 ix
 
 PREFACE 
 
 But does it follow that this form and method will 
 be equally expressive of the characteristics of other 
 races ? It is noticeable, on the other hand, that the 
 typical French actor turns from the foreign play if he 
 cannot turn it to himself. Consider the work of 
 three such dramatists as Shakespeare, d'Annunzio, 
 Tchekov. Apart from all excellence of content, is not 
 its salient quality that thrust out for its interpreters 
 to seize racial expressiveness, and does not this 
 necessarily dictate method and, finally, form ? And 
 now consider one or two points in the history of, say, 
 the English and German theatres. In the eighteenth 
 century the Germans borrowed largely from us 
 they swallowed Shakespeare whole. In the nine- 
 teenth they borrowed from the French. They as- 
 similated Ibsen, they gave much original attention 
 to organization and decoration. They have, indeed, 
 a voracious dramatic appetite, and are little inclined 
 to wait patiently for the slow growth of native pro- 
 duct. But when this does, if with difficulty, appear, 
 it is remarkable for rebellion, both in minor methods 
 and larger form, against the borrowed models. In 
 England, from 1660 onwards, foreign influence 
 upon our theatre is apparent. Throughout the nine- 
 teenth century we borrow, indeed we often steal 
 quite shamelessly, from the French : so shamelessly 
 that our sense of " mine and thine " is gone, and we 
 find ourselves, in our own despite, violently trying to 
 convert the very work of Shakespeare and of Sheridan 
 into the likeness of the well-made play. Our 
 modern actors, bred to the borrowed drama, ac- 
 quiesce. To the Elizabethan actor, though, Shake- 
 speare's work, as Shakespeare wrote it, came naturally 
 enough ; he was one of them himself for that matter. 
 And though we need not trouble to argue why 
 Racine would have puzzled Burbage, and how
 
 PREFACE 
 
 more to the point Pinero and Galsworthy would 
 have upset the Globe Theatre stage-manager com- 
 pletely, is it not true that while other English arts 
 can show for all incidental breakings charac- 
 teristic descent, the art of the theatre to-day is most 
 characteristically un-English ? The content of our 
 plays may be native, but the form, as a rule, will be 
 arbitrary and foreign, and will show little regard, or 
 none, for the character of the interpretation the 
 play is to receive. What form does the English 
 genjus for self-expression most readily take ? What 
 dramatist starts by asking himself such a question ? 
 In lyric and epic poetry, in fiction, do we not tend, 
 unhindered still, to run the Shakespearean gamut of 
 rhetoric and metaphysic, to be allusive, to be pas- 
 sionate, seldom ironic, logical hardly ever ? How 
 should we expect to find English actors at their best, 
 burdened with a method, crippled in a form, which, 
 however excellent, is no development of their natural 
 way of expression, is as foreign to that and to them 
 as the words of a foreign language would be ? The 
 trouble is, it would seem, that the integrity of the 
 English theatre has been destroyed. The dramatist 
 can serve strange gods and can profit by it ; the 
 actor cannot. But harmony between the two there 
 must be : because, for all the dramatist's importance, 
 acting is not only the original art of the theatre, it 
 remains its peculiar foundation. And it may be 
 that the time lost in setting up our standard of a 
 Shakespeare memorial will not have been time 
 wasted if in it we can profit by this lesson which 
 Shakespeare's own art so particularly teaches us. 
 
 But further and this is the encouragement of 
 thought by which my share of the Scheme and 
 Estimates has developed into this book it may 
 well be that just as Shakespeare made of drama
 
 PREFACE 
 
 something which outspanned all its then acknow- 
 ledged powers, so we, gathering up tradition with 
 understanding and measuring our power by our 
 need, might make in our turn of the theatre some- 
 thing that would not only better, but quite transcend, 
 its present service to us. Even in its complexity 
 it is so simple an art, and the pleasure and the profit 
 of it are so common a heritage. We have been set- 
 ting, it may be, inappropriate limits to its destiny. 
 
 September 1921 H. G.-B. 
 
 Xll
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter I : The Author's Prejudices, and Others 
 
 The uses of dialogue Dramatists all ; and actors all 
 "The" profession The theatre's appeal to the 
 mob Should drama be accounted one of the fine 
 arts ? The difficulty of ranking the theatre as a 
 social service The difficulty of using the drama in 
 education Art's overrated influence The theatre 
 as catspaw The economics of the modern English 
 theatre Authority's obligation to the theatre The 
 drama's industrial difficulty is that an art shall not be 
 an industry Art as a gift to society Society's re- 
 'sponsibility in accepting the gift There is no such 
 thing as a theatre in England The larger idea of 
 drama pp. 1-37 
 
 Chapter II : The Educational Basis 
 
 Book learning and the educational claims of acting 
 The professional theatre's contribution Public man- 
 ners The tradition of our speech The American 
 language The influences of climate and of recent im- 
 migration The drama as a microcosm of society 
 The self-realization of a child The teaching of psy- 
 chology Democracy, the newspapers, and the whole 
 art of fiction Qualifications and temptations of the 
 journalist The public's self-defence The artistic 
 synthesis The popular attitude towards interpretative 
 art Theatre v. novel The good audience The 
 educational use of drama The Exemplary Theatre 
 The break in the acting tradition Robertson-Ban- 
 croft-Pinero The Ibsen challenge The discredited 
 art of acting The need for a new virtuosity The 
 critics The wrong sort of school The army of 
 women The unprofessional student pp. 38-102 
 
 Chapter III : The Plan of the Theatre as School 
 
 The school's scope No children admitted The 
 broad base of the work No teaching of acting al- 
 lowed The by-paths of the social " settlement " and 
 the " community " theatre The picked recruits 
 Playwriting classes Stage decoration The co-opera- 
 
 xiii
 
 CO NTE NTS 
 
 live study of plays Critical and interpretative bias 
 Bringing the play to life How the seminar works 
 The absorption of the interpreter by the play 
 " Strife " quoted as an example The listening part 
 The placing of a character in the scheme of the play 
 The apparent development of plot from the characters 
 and scenes themselves Mass effect Where student 
 and interpreter part company The misuse of the 
 classics The would-be actor admitted to the play- 
 house at last Experimental work for students in their 
 last year The limits of a play's use to the seminar 
 Subsidiary school work ; lectures, etc. pp. 103-153 
 
 Chapter IF : The Theatre as Playhouse 
 
 No definite boundary between playhouse and school 
 The sort of actor and actress this theatre needs The 
 rescue from vagabondage The need of the actor to 
 study more and perform less The actor's need of 
 other work than acting The destruction of illusion as 
 a step to appreciation Our interest in interpretation 
 the only one worth cultivating The relation of the 
 actors to the management of the theatre The theatre 
 as livelihood The fallacy of administration by com- 
 mittee An integrated audience and its representa- 
 tion The political influence of the theatre as a public 
 institution A council at the head of affairs ; its con- 
 stitution ; its work The council as the conscience of 
 the management Where public blame should fall 
 The theatre's director and his autocracy The choice 
 of plays The dangers of institutionalism The need 
 for a play-reader of unusual importance The diffi- 
 culties of experimenting in play production The 
 play-reader's qualifications and powers A third voice 
 needed in the choosing of plays The fallacy of trying 
 to get everything right at once The librarian ; the 
 making of prompt books ; the conserving of tradition 
 The prompters themselves The workshop The 
 amount of attention to be given to stage decoration 
 The easy way of visual appeal Artistic economy 
 The salutary influence, of conventional staging The 
 need for agreement on convention between inter- 
 preters and audience The workshop and collabora- 
 xiv
 
 CO NTENTS 
 
 tion The workshop's organization Craftsmanship 
 The stranger designer Machinery The right 
 sort of auditorium and the wrong The differing re- 
 quirements of the different kinds of drama pp. 154-220 
 
 Chaffer V : The Production of a Play 
 
 How plays are now thrown on the stage The scratch 
 company The hurried rehearsals The limitations 
 of the human medium Setting to work upon "A Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream" How physical action brings 
 study to a standstill The mysterious process by 
 which the actor identifies himself with his part The 
 dramatist's method, which the actor must follow 
 Tension and conflict Never commit words to 
 memory The mystery of identification again Pro- 
 ductions must be born and not made The two 
 categories of a play's action : the conscious action 
 Unconscious or subconscious action The Scylla and 
 Charybdis of automatism and self-consciousness 
 Pure conventionalism The limits of the personal ap- 
 peal The mystery yet again The actor " lets him- 
 self go " The danger of automatism again Acting 
 the art of sympathy The childhood of the art The 
 demands of its adolescence. pp. 221-253 
 
 Chapter VI : Some Current Difficulties 
 
 Compromise and catchwords The defence of the 
 long-run system Verdict : the long run guilty of 
 the destruction of the art of acting The short run 
 little better Why many gallant efforts at reform have 
 failed The cautious capitalist Practical difficulties 
 for " practical " managements The way out of the 
 difficulty Old methods and new drama The good 
 business man and the theatre The integrated audi- 
 ence The need for a budget The pyramid of 
 policy A Shakespearean parenthesis The theatre's 
 duty towards the drama The theatre's duty towards 
 itself A few sample plays Drama and democracy 
 The danger of the clique The need for a leisured 
 ckss. pp. 254-288 
 
 XV
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 CHAPTER i: THE AUTHOR'S PREJUDICES 
 AND OTHERS 
 
 ONE follows a calling for thirty years and 
 forgets its comparative unimportance ; how 
 could it hold one otherwise ? But, pleading 
 its cause to the world, this is the first thing one 
 must make a show of remembering. For a man of 
 the theatre to write of the theatre as if nothing else 
 mattered is only to invite from the man of the 
 world that polite acquiescence which is deadlier 
 than disagreement. 
 
 This book is a plea for the recognition of the 
 theatre as an educational force. It is addressed 
 mainly to people whose present interest in the theatre 
 is at best perfunctory. And its first chapter takes the 
 appropriate form of a dialogue between a man of the 
 theatre and a minister of education, and is an at- 
 tempt to reconcile the general and particular points 
 of view. 
 
 To begin such a book with a chapter of dialogue The uses of 
 is more than superficially appropriate, for its whole 
 purpose, as will be seen, is implicit in the virtue of 
 this form of expression. We are to argue the 
 educational uses of the dramatic method. Let both 
 parties, then, put their present accomplishment in 
 it to a preliminary test. 
 
 The Man of the Theatre as is only fair 
 frankly exposes his bias. Why pretend in a book 
 of polemic to be disinterested? It is bad enough 
 that the technical questions involved will prevent 
 the lay reader, half the time, from estimating the 
 honesty of the statements. The Minister of Educa- 
 tion replies coolly, judicially. But now consider. 
 Was the admission of bias a disguised appeal for
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 sympathy ? Is the reply only let seem more judicial 
 that it may the safelier be made less so? Is the 
 writer's whole show of accommodation only another 
 form of special pleading? How far, in fact, does 
 his art elucidate the truth of the matter, or is he 
 deliberately using it to obscure the truth ? If the 
 reader can discover him at his tricks, so much the 
 worse for him and for his art ! If he cannot, so 
 much the worse for the reader and the more need 
 for a little education in this dramatic method ! The 
 more need, then, of this book. In one sense its 
 writer is trying, of course, to get round his readers. 
 Why ever else go to the unnatural trouble of writing 
 a book at all ? And he shows but a necessary con- 
 fidence in his case by opening with this demonstra- 
 tion. Yet the gist of the case is that the dramatic 
 form, if honestly used which is to say in terms of 
 an art, artistically used is the vehicle for a very 
 vital sort of truth. And this is its honest use. First, 
 to have the courage, not only of the strength, but of 
 the weakness of one's opinion. Not merely to be 
 self-critical : there is little in that, it may lead only to 
 diffidence. But to project the whole body of one's 
 belief into an individual shape, armed and sustained 
 to the full. Then to attack it. Can such an attack 
 be genuine ; can one hit oneself in the face ? 
 Well, we must not look for a detachment, or an 
 artistry, or an honesty that is superhumanly perfect. 
 But the fact of projection makes all the difference. 
 We shall be tender of a guarded faith : but if it has 
 had its fling, if we have set it free, so to speak, 
 from reservation and control, we shall then be well 
 content to fling back at it and to fling our best. For 
 the harder we fling the greater its credit in sustain- 
 ing our attack. We may take pride even in show- 
 ing alien adversaries that we know its weak spots, 
 naturally, better than ever they can. If it sustains 
 2
 
 THE AUTHOR S PREJUDICES 
 
 our attacks it will certainly be invulnerable to theirs. 
 And if, as it happens, we do demolish it; why, to 
 do so, we must have formed a better opinion and a 
 stronger belief. 
 
 The drama's methods are the commonest in the Dramatists 
 world : they are the methods of everyday conversa- a ^ ; * 
 tion. But they are worth study: the more that, actors 
 becoming suddenly aware we have used them un- 
 knowingly for years, we may think ourselves natural 
 masters of the art which is first to deceive ourselves, 
 and later probably to be deceived in turn, and so to 
 come to the belief that the art lies in its deceiving. 
 
 Now, art is a social danger if it is a continuing un- 
 truth. Surely that does not attach an unreasoning 
 importance to the matter if the practice of this art 
 of the drama is as common as eating. And it is. 
 We dramatize our lives; by no other means can 
 we decide upon the parts we mean to play in them. 
 We are actors all ; but so many of us, setting out with 
 the best intentions, neither know when nor why the 
 performance begins to go wrong, and tricks to take 
 the place of the fine interpretation we meant to give. 
 Nobody hisses perhaps. But that's the worst of it. 
 
 This book's plea for the theatre's salvation is a 
 wider and simpler one than it would seem to be. 
 Technical argument apart, it is a plea for truth-tell- 
 ing (a matter of great artistry) and for the cultivation 
 of a faculty by which the common man may hope, 
 as a rule, to know whether he is being told the 
 truth about things or not. Strange if dramatic art 
 can successfully concern itself with such matters ! 
 But if it can . 
 
 The Minister of Education But, my dear 
 
 sir, don't apologize. Every man worth his salt 
 
 3
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 naturally makes high claims for his own profession. 
 "The" The Man of the Theatre. I don't apologize . . ., 
 profession though I'm readier for the moment with accusations 
 than claims. I recognize, to begin with, that the 
 theatre is not a profession. That was rubbed into 
 me by a kindly editor when I'd written my first" 
 public words on its troubles ... a letter to a 
 newspaper. " Do you mind being accurate ? " he 
 said. " There's a medical profession, a legal profes- 
 sion. The theatre is ... you may choose half a 
 dozen words for it." I went away sorrowful and 
 snubbed. The distinction had never occurred to me, 
 nor had the subtle contempt come home of the 
 journalists' joke (briefless barristers most of them!) 
 about " the " profession. 
 
 I imagine that I fixed upon "calling." One avoids 
 the word " art " . . . though not to escape the Royal 
 Academy's frowns. But how many a programme 
 have I corrected with the actors described not 
 even as artists, but as " artistes "... the printer's 
 unconscious fling ; and who invented that gibe, I 
 wonder ? Actors, I agree, are absurdly sensitive. 
 I suppose that even this generation of them is 
 not quite free from the struggle to be considered 
 gentlemen. It is mostly their relations, though, 
 country clergymen and the like, that distressfully 
 take up the cudgels. And that silliest of plays 
 " David Garrick " even sillier in its motive than 
 the silly prejudices it mocks and appeals to is but 
 just out of date. Better to call the theatre a trade, 
 except for the implication that people make money 
 by it. 
 
 M. of E. But don't they ? 
 
 M. of T. Out of it, yes. But by following the 
 calling and practising the art of the theatre there 
 isn't, for the great majority, much money to be 
 4
 
 THE AUTHOR S PREJUDICES 
 
 made. In that it is as honourable as a profession, 
 codeless though it be. No parson or doctor or 
 civil servant could be, in practice, more disin- 
 terested than the average actor who has settled 
 down to the life. But they are trade victims, if 
 you like. 
 
 M. of E. And is that your first complaint ? 
 
 M. of T. I shan't press it on their behalf. The 
 bored and barren sympathy which the victim in- 
 spires is not at all what I'm after. I want to in- 
 terest you in the theatre. 
 
 M* of E. As ... what ? 
 
 M. of T. As social service. 
 
 M. of E. Interest on my part is to be official and 
 to imply action, is it ? 
 
 M. of T. Admission of the need for action. 
 
 M. of E. Then I must analyse your phrases care- 
 fully. You mean that it should be regulated as a 
 social service ... as a civil service, do you ? 
 
 M. of T. Not strictly . . . not altogether. 
 
 M. of E. No, since civil service became bureau- 
 cracy you're not so eager to entrust your darling 
 schemes to its care. 
 
 M. of T. Well, I'll own that I'm thinking of my 
 average Englishman, who'd sooner have a bad 
 bureaucracy than a good one ... it is a step nearer 
 having none at all. 
 
 M. of E. But you were going to begin with com- 
 plaints. Let us clear the ground of those first. 
 What offends you most in the present state of things? 
 
 M. of T. Fundamentally, I believe, that the The 
 theatre exists by appealing to the mob. Theatre's 
 
 M. of E. To the public. Appeal to 
 
 M. of T. I'vTo, no ... if you mean to analyse my 
 phrases I must pick my words. The public con- 
 notes something, if not organized, at least a little 
 
 5
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 stable, doesn't it ? My first complaint is of the mob 
 appeal, the mob standard of success, and the ever- 
 growing confusion of purpose that results. In 
 London, and very notably in New York, it isn't even 
 a constant . . . it's a shifting, hotel-haunting mob. 
 Oh, a demagogic art, the theatre of to-day, if ever 
 there was one. 
 
 M. of E. That's the fault of a quality, surely, for 
 democratic, as a normal description of it, wouldn't 
 offend you, would it ? 
 
 M. of T. On the contrary. 
 
 M. of E. Well, then, as to its proper method of 
 carrying on. ... I sound old-fashioned, but I'm 
 a weary bureaucrat myself and not over in love, it 
 may surprise you to hear, with indefinite increase of 
 bureaucracy. It takes many generations to train 
 competent officials, you know. Heaven knows that 
 so far we haven't enough to go round. What's wrong 
 with the dear old discredited law of supply and 
 demand to regulate the theatre by ? Can't even 
 you put up with it for a bit ? 
 
 M. of T. Well, I admit that it must depend upon 
 current appreciation more than does any other art, 
 more even than music need, because of the greater 
 expense and complexity of the machinery. There- 
 fore degradation is easier . . . 
 
 M. of E. I protest now . . . that word is yours. 
 You're horribly self-conscious. I should never 
 have dreamed of using it. 
 
 M. of T. You protest, may I say, too readily. 
 You wouldn't use it because you'd never dream of 
 admitting a claim from the theatre to rank with the 
 other arts; music, literature, painting . . . though 
 these, in some respects each one of them, sink as 
 low as the drama can. But you don't cease to 
 honour them for that. 
 6
 
 THE AUTHOR S PREJUDICES 
 
 M. of E. I don't think the theatre does rank with Should 
 the fine arts * ... no. The drama . . . drama be ac- 
 
 M. of T. Oh, please don't make that forgive counted one of 
 me that silly distinction. Drama has no claim 
 to existence apart from the theatre that it should 
 be framed for. As well praise a yacht for being 
 built to stay safely in harbour as exalt a play because 
 it is more fitted for the study than the stage. 
 
 M. of E. But there's a finer distinction. Has any 
 theatre you can name ever lived up to the best 
 opportunities its greatest dramatists have given it ? 
 How many first prizes did Euripides win ? Do 
 you suppose King Lear was popular with actors, or 
 audiences either ? Is it a libel to suggest that the 
 actor of to-day cares very little for the quality of the 
 play he appears in ? 
 
 M. of T. Yes, I think it is. 
 
 M. of E. But the better actor he is the less it 
 affects him, and the poorer the play the greater his 
 
 * Since writing this it has been decided upon technical grounds, 
 by the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies, that acting, at least does 
 not rank as one of the Fine Arts. His judgment, upon which 
 immediately depended the liability of the Academy of Dramatic Art 
 for certain rates, is a practical inconvenience to the progress of the 
 theatre as a social service, and had therefore better be upset as soon 
 as possible. The arguments upon which he founded it, though in- 
 teresting, are vitiated, it seems to me, by his consideration of the 
 constituents of the art as the art itself. And here the drafting of 
 the Academy's charter is also to blame. Had it advanced as the 
 main object of the institution the study of the Art of the Theatre, 
 and left acting, elocution, diction, and the rest in a qualifying 
 clause there would have been a better chance of a favourable 
 decision. For, I humbly suggest to the Registrar, if he will analyse 
 and isolate the constituents of, say, the art of architecture, the exercises 
 in which its students must be trained, he will easily be able to prove 
 that architecture is not a fine art either. The Act of 1843, how- 
 ever, expressly stating that it is so, he was exempt, unfortunately, 
 from the necessity of making the comparison. 
 
 7
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 personal success. My point is let me put it quite 
 brutally that the chief circumstance of the drama, 
 its exploiting of the human personality, and the 
 consequent belittling, instead of exalting, of its every 
 theme, must always forbid it to be thought of as a 
 great art. 
 
 M, of T. Well, I won't question ... for the 
 moment, at any rate ... its absolute value. But 
 can you deny the colossal influence the theatre must 
 have . . . merely by the mass of its output . . . 
 upon the public imagination ? 
 
 M. of E. Certainly I deny it. That sort of 
 energy is expended, as a rule, without direction, 
 and I incline to believe that in the theatre's instance, 
 as far as any moral effect is concerned, one-half of it 
 about cancels out the other. 
 
 M. of T. And you're content with such waste ? 
 
 M. of E. That's part of a bigger question. I don't 
 want to answer it by saying that a licence to waste 
 is all man has gained in this latest prosperous phase 
 of his efforts at civilization. But we do, every one 
 of us, throw away and wear away in the course of 
 our lifetime far more than our individual energies 
 could ever replace. And nowadays we're so many 
 of us mere entrepreneurs. Our lives depend on 
 machinery, actual and social, and on the willingness 
 of ... let us advisedly remember . . . not so 
 very many people to keep the master-machinery 
 going for our benefit. Certainly, therefore, emotional 
 or intellectual extravagance, undirected and mean- 
 ingless, is undesirable. For one may justly say 
 that it prompts recklessness of all kinds. 
 
 M. of T. You yield me my point. 
 
 M. of E. So far. 
 
 M. of T. You agree that an emotionally degraded 
 theatre is a dangerous thing.
 
 THE AUTHOR S PREJUDICES 
 
 M. of E. It's anarchical, perhaps. But, I'm not 
 afraid of a little anarchy, of leaving a little of the 
 primitive social mud for men to relax themselves in. 
 
 M. of T. Out of which they may make their mud- 
 pies of drama ? 
 
 M. of E. Though by all means I'm for clarifying 
 the confusion of mind that leads to the degradation 
 of things of value ... by all simple means. I see my 
 educational way as far as children are concerned. 
 I'd encourage their dancing, singing, playing games 
 that have rhyme and reason . . . not too much reason 
 ... in them. I see my way for the adult over 
 architecture, painting, sculpture, even over music. 
 These are, compared with the theatre, impersonal, 
 abstract arts. One can consecrate them at their 
 best, and set them apart. But the theatre you'll 
 admit to be very difficult to handle for such a purpose. 
 And can you convince me that even at its best it 
 would reward the handling as the arts which have 
 permanency of form do undoubtedly reward our 
 care of them ? Theoretically we should take more 
 trouble over all such things, no doubt, and over 
 many others. But shall we be practically wise to 
 direct our spare energy ... for there's not much 
 to spare . . . towards the theatre ? Should we be 
 even if it were, in its working out, the simplest of 
 the arts ? That's one question. But another, more 
 difficult if not more serious, arises not from its 
 artistic shortcomings ... I leave .you ensuing 
 them . . . but from the complexity of its organiza- 
 tion as an industry. You are proud of the theatre 
 as a living art, reflecting the spirit, even in the 
 commonplace life of the time. Why can't you be 
 content with that ? What would you gain by 
 trying to change its nature . . . for that's what 
 you're after, I fear. Now it's a pleasant super- 
 
 9
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 fluity of life. Society makes certain careless and 
 incoherent demands of it. If the theatre's responses 
 excel them we're grateful, and we store up the 
 remembrance to its credit. If its response should 
 become very poisonous we should have to put the 
 police on it. But suppose we do give it rank with 
 life's necessities, put it to the utilitarian tests, 
 strangle it with regulation, hand it into the care 
 of people with highly developed social consciences 
 . . . what then ? Convince me, if you can, to 
 begin with, that I should educationally gain any- 
 thing. I'm fairly convinced that you would artisti- 
 cally lose. Reform your theatre from within as 
 much as you will . . . 
 
 M. of T. That's not easy. Of whatever calibre 
 you mark it, the drama is still an art. But the 
 theatre as an industry is a successful one. Please 
 tell me upon what basis of reasonableness you set 
 out to reform a successful industry. It is under 
 the control of business men who are not concerned 
 . . . why should they be ? ... with its social 
 functions. They are only indirectly interested in 
 its artistic development. But they are very parti- 
 cularly concerned that what I have called its mob 
 appeal should remain. All's fish that comes to 
 their net with a piece of silver slipped in the gills, 
 and the bigger the catch the better. What other 
 standard of success, then, should we expect 
 them to recognize than the power to attract the 
 greatest possible crowd in the shortest possible 
 time ? 
 
 The difficulty M. of E. But listen now. What you are after 
 of ranking the is the exalting of dramatic art. Good. How will 
 Theatre as a j ts mere recognition (blessed political Mesopotamia 
 
 social service r j\ u ur *.\. '*. rr ii. *. 3 
 
 or a word) by public authority efiect that r 
 
 M. of T. Be careful. Once you admit the prin- 
 10
 
 THE AUTHOR S PREJUDICES 
 
 ciple of recognition I may push you pretty far in its 
 application. 
 
 M. of E. Believe me, I see you at it. Subsidized 
 theatres, colleges of acting . . . 
 
 M. of T. Well, isn't our standard of musical 
 achievement higher to-day because of the recogni- 
 tion of the art and the endowment of musical 
 training during the last fifty years ? 
 
 M. of E. I might question that. Post hoc isn't 
 propter hoc. That the standard of public taste is 
 . . . higher, shall we say ? . . . well, wider ; that 
 it is more . . . shall we call it educated or 
 sophisticated ? . . . I won't deny. But we must not 
 be taken in by the snobbery which leads people to 
 the opera or to classical concerts . . . intellectual 
 snobbery, the most aggravating variety. 
 
 M. of T. Come now, people can only learn to like 
 music by listening to it. I must say that for an 
 educationist you're distressingly impatient. Move- 
 ments of this sort don't show a real result in much 
 under a hundred years. 
 
 M. of E. But remember, once we give authority 
 to professors to spread abroad a respect for some 
 complicated lingo, for their own greater credit 
 they'll go on complicating it indefinitely. Does it 
 follow that the fine phrases mean anything : that 
 Abracadabra casts any spell except upon the credu- 
 lity of its hearers ? That sort of mystery-mon- 
 gering is not education. You don't expect me to 
 encourage you to go round muddling up my 
 teachers' minds . . . and encouraging them to make 
 a worse muddle in their pupils' . . . with talk about 
 the civic importance of the theatre and the psycho- 
 logical necessity for the development of the his- 
 trionic instinct in children. I enjoy a good play, 
 well acted ; so do they. Don't spoil it for us. I 
 
 1 1
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 admit a certain absolute educative value in music. 
 I haven't yet admitted it in the drama, have I ? 
 And I can't retract, I fear, my disparaging remarks 
 about the theatre. But shall I put it this way ? 
 Any of the constituents of dramatic art that I'd be 
 ready to teach in an ordinary school you probably 
 wouldn't be content to call drama at all. 
 
 M. of T. Come, come. We're getting on. I'll 
 hold you to the admission that you might be ready 
 to take the poor, pretentious, and accursed thing in 
 some guise or other within the sacred portals. 
 I'll spare you the reminder that if you didn't teach 
 some form of drama in schools you couldn't teach 
 anything at all ... or rather, I'll return, by your 
 leave, to that later. But I'll promise not to be at all 
 exigent about what you do teach as long as you'll 
 give it its rightful name, and not disguise it as gym- 
 nastics, or as some Cinderella branch of literature. 
 
 M. of E. But from the moment I do touch the 
 accursed thing, and own to touching it, I know I 
 shall be trapped by one difficulty after another. 
 You know that, too. I see you dissembling a 
 malicious grin, and heightening its effect thereby, 
 like the incorrigible man of the theatre that you 
 are. That's the worst of art. It gets round you 
 under false pretences. Give me solid science and 
 I know where I stand. There's a precise value in 
 the subject, and I can test the quality of the teaching. 
 But I'm to put on the list of the school's work some- 
 thing called dramatic study, am I ... or the art of 
 self-expression ? My dear sir, forgive me . . . that 
 simply opens the door to charlatanism. 
 
 M. of T. Oh, I agree. 
 
 M.ofE. Well . . .? 
 
 M. of T. You must go further. This is my 
 point. Half measures are what the charlatan 
 12
 
 THE AUTHOR S PREJUDICES 
 
 thrives on. If you want to escape him you must 
 go the whole way. 
 
 M. of E. To the study of drama in ordinary 
 schools, in ordinary classes ? 
 
 M. of T. Yes. ' 
 
 M. of E. And not as literature ? In action ? 
 
 M. of T. Yes. In whatever amount of action . . . 
 in whatever sort of action the study demands. 
 
 M. of E. Well, now, admitting, for the moment, The difficulty 
 some value in the thing, incalculable but sufficient, of using the 
 my difficulties at once begin. It's a co-operative d ma tn 
 
 j H . education 
 
 art, and very unequally co-operative in its practice ; 
 very hard, therefore, to make use of for individual 
 culture. You'll admit that. 
 
 M. of T. Yes, certainly a young lady can't sit 
 down to a piano and play over a piece of Shakespeare 
 as she can an Etude of Chopin. But hasn't that 
 facility for individual showing-off come near being 
 the damnation of musical education ? 
 
 M. of E. Maybe. In my own opinion, yes. 
 
 M. of T. Yet how can we properly study any art 
 but by practising it ? For the musician there's 
 nothing, I suppose, like a little hard gruelling in 
 an orchestra. Working together at a play does 
 knock the individual nonsense out of young people 
 so oppressively delighted with their newly-found 
 egotisms. . . . 
 
 M. of E. Oh, I'd not mind a class in the drama as 
 an infrequent spree, for no serious attention gets 
 given to it then. Children prefer, though, to be 
 either at work or at play ; and I sympathize with 
 them. But constant class-work in drama, ranking 
 with geography and arithmetic 1 To begin with, 
 how would you prevent the distraction of it from 
 wrecking both the class before and the class after ? 
 
 Af. of T. Oh, that's the trouble, is it ?
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 M. of E. I've not contended so far, remember, 
 that the drama is positively demoralizing. It has 
 its place, and a very worthy one, as recreation. 
 But if you ask me in its name to substitute emotion 
 for thought and pleasure for hard work, and as 
 a part of education . . . education, mark you ! . . . 
 to let loose that spirit in the child which would then 
 find itself very loose indeed in the man, I must find 
 something severe to say. Don't call me old- 
 fashioned. There are no fashions in this. The 
 world has never got on by cultivating its emotions, 
 and it never will. 
 
 M. of T. It may ill become a mere expert in 
 emotionalism to tell you that he detects a confusion 
 of thought, but I think I do. In the same breath . . . 
 at least, if you'd had a proper dramatic training you 
 could have managed it all with one breath ; as it 
 was you took two or three . . . you spoke of letting 
 loose emotions and cultivating them, as if you equally 
 condemned both proceedings. But surely it's only 
 dangerous to let loose an emotion when you haven't 
 cultivated it ? 
 
 M. of E. By no means. Cultivation, for instance, 
 may hall-mark it with an entirely fictitious value, 
 and it may circulate to the ultimate depreciation 
 of the whole moral currency. 
 
 M. of T. Well, I realize that objection. The 
 drama is not free from domestic trouble, so to speak, 
 on the score ; and I must do my best to meet you. 
 But you must let me, for the purposes of argument, 
 idealize my theatre just a little. For we are talking 
 of an imagined future, after all ... near as I want 
 to bring it. 
 
 M. of E. By all means. 
 
 M. of T. Then I can face your sternest conten- 
 tions. You tell me that the theatre does not . . .
 
 THE AUTHOR S PREJUDICES 
 
 you imply that it cannot . . . rank with the other fine 
 arts. Do you mean that within its three hours' 
 limit no possible drama can deal adequately with 
 great subjects unless, perhaps, as with the Greeks, 
 they are formalized almost into ritual. 
 
 M. of E. I won't dogmatise. Possibly, though, 
 one reaches in three hours, or in rather less, the 
 limit of man's capacity to absorb such a potent 
 mixture of emotion and thought. 
 
 M. of T. But come back, for a moment, to the 
 actual present, to the theatre as it now is, and 
 to what does seem to me this perfectly damnable 
 business by which people . . . young people too, 
 mostly . . . have their uncultured emotions played 
 upon night after night by an intellectually seduc- 
 tive, emotionally cloying, sexually provocative and 
 altogether irresponsible entertainment. Do you 
 approve of that ? Is that a socially sound business ? 
 I can imagine your crying : Down with the theatre 
 altogether. I cannot think how you are content to 
 leave it as it is. 
 
 M. of E. Once again, I believe you overrate the 
 effect of such emotional indulgence upon the 
 average man. 
 
 M. of T. Even upon the average young man . . . 
 and woman ? 
 
 M. of E. Oh, for them all emotions get trans- Art's over- 
 muted into the one that Nature most requires them, rate ^ 
 at their time of life, to cultivate. And I should say in fl uence 
 their imagination's digestion is of iron . . . especially 
 the young female's. So you move me very little by 
 " sexually provocative " and " emotionally cloy- 
 ing." Certainly I prefer that they should be stirred 
 to very outbursts of laughter and tears, and for the 
 sake of those sanitarily emotional effects I am quite 
 ready to overlook the simplicity and stupidity of 
 
 '5
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 the cause. But when you say " intellectually seduc- 
 tive " you do touch me nearly, for it is these young 
 people's brains that get green sickness. Un- 
 intelligence I can forgive. But false intelligence 
 is the devil. 
 
 M. of T. Can't they digest that too, and throw 
 off the effects ? 
 
 M. of E. No, my friend ; you may eat too much 
 pudding, and a good game of football will free 
 you from your trouble. But don't try a diet of 
 drugs. Young people are greedy of emotion, or 
 shy of it. To the average adult it is a passing dis- 
 traction, nothing more. . . . 
 
 M. of T. And you prefer it should remain so ? 
 
 M. of E. Frankly, yes. We must be utilitarian. 
 You know we're still in the stage of striving . . . for 
 all our fine talk of " higher " things ... to maintain 
 our poor foothold upon even physical civilization. 
 If a man doesn't respond to the finer stimuli, it is 
 because he has found that they would hinder rather 
 than help him in his everyday round. And I don't 
 want him to be constantly distracted by a sharpened 
 imagination from his dull but necessary daily work. 
 He has learnt that it's necessary ; frankly, I don't 
 want him to find out that it's dull ... for his own 
 sake. 
 
 M. of T. But wouldn't that be a path to enliven- 
 ing it and so enriching it ? 
 
 M. of E. No, there I'm at odds with you. Art, 
 with its exaltation of emotional and spiritual 
 standards, may follow in the wake of social progress, 
 it doesn't prompt it. You'd admit that of all the 
 other fine arts, I think. But because in the theatre 
 you have one so simple, so democratic, so capable, 
 in current phrase, of " direct action " upon the 
 sensibilities of the crowd, you want to forge it 
 16
 
 THE AUTHOR S PREJUDICES 
 
 into a weapon (Forgive my cliches ; I am not, you 
 see, an artist!) of social betterment. You can't. 
 If you could it might turn double-edged, and be- 
 come, I do think, a most dangerous one. Yes, 
 art is in its nature anarchic. Let it remain so 
 then, happily and harmlessly, and keep it from any 
 share in the control of society. 
 
 M. of T. I'll disagree with you to the end 
 of time. You like to say that because art declines 
 measurement by your footrule. Art is con- 
 structive, but it constructs from the elements, 
 as life itself does. Refuse it right functioning, 
 and in its neglect and degradation it does be- 
 come a disintegrating and ... as I hold the theatre 
 of to-day to be, negatively, at least ... an anti- 
 social force. 
 
 M. of E. Then you must reform it from within, 
 autonomously. After all, your industrial problem 
 is not an insoluble one, and in the last instance you 
 can do without the loathed, and I think somewhat 
 libelled, business man better than he can do without 
 you. Qualified artists in combination could assert 
 something like a monopoly value. But now I want 
 to attack you on your own ground.. You theatre 
 reformers ... I suppose you like the title . . . 
 are not single-minded. You confuse the issue you 
 present. You ask me for one thing when you really 
 want another. Come, get on your guard. What- 
 ever else an art may or may not be, it must, to be 
 healthy, be single-minded . . . 
 
 M. of T. Agreed. 
 
 M. of E. And I, personally, should add, simple- The Theatre 
 minded. Therefore, when you make this art, and as catspaw 
 try to make me, the half-conscious victim of your 
 schemes, I tell you you'll do more harm to the 
 drama than good to the theatre containing it, and 
 
 B 17
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 consequently no good at all, in the end, to the society 
 you pretend to set out to serve. 
 
 M. of T. This is a sounding blow. " Schemes " 
 awakens sinister echoes. Please particularize the 
 crime that I contemplate. 
 
 M. of E. Without being personal ? 
 
 M. of T. Oh, be personal if you want to be. 
 
 M. of E. Well, as a simple instance, will you 
 admit that your anxiety to reorganize the theatre 
 hinges in great part on your wish to get a certain 
 sort of play performed which doesn't enjoy much 
 public favour now ? 
 
 M. of T. Naturally. Wait, though, I see where 
 you are driving me . . . 
 
 M. of E. And any specimen is nearly always a 
 " reforming " sort of play, isn't it ? 
 
 M. of T. I make no more admissions. 
 
 M. of E. And is it only a coincidence that many 
 of you theatre reformers are out after reforming the 
 rest of the universe, too ? 
 
 M. of T. What's the concrete accusation ? 
 
 M. of E. Simply that at heart you care little about 
 the theatre in comparsion with the use you can 
 make of it to forward your social and political ideas. 
 
 M. of T. But why, in heaven's name, should a 
 man write three sentences but to express and for- 
 ward an idea ? And since he's a social and political 
 animal, what other ideas should you generally ex- 
 pect from him ? However, don't let's come down 
 to scoring these barren points. If you'll assure 
 me that you don't want to turn us into per- 
 forming poodles I'll own up that the theatre, 
 with its seemingly simple art and its direct 
 appeal . . . the mob appeal, though, mind you, it 
 is I who condemn ... is a tempting platform for 
 the mere lay preacher. 
 18
 
 THE AUTHORS PREJUDICES 
 
 M. of E. Whose sermons, being out of place, are 
 dull . . . which art never has a right to be. 
 
 M. of T. Not duller than most of the plays 
 meant merely to amuse, as no sort of art surely 
 should ever be. You don't admit that ? I'll argue 
 it later if you like. But as to the disingenuous 
 reformer, take this to your comfort. The theatre 
 is very old, and has some of the wise simplicity of 
 age. Given time . . . and art itself never lacks time, 
 though its exemplars may ... it can endure and ab- 
 sorb a- dozen merely intellectual " movements " 
 and still go its way. We organize and combine 
 all sorts of forces to make a mark, but the only 
 thing that leaves one is genius. And you're ready 
 to welcome any species of that, I suppose. 
 
 M. of E. With open arms. Please show me how 
 to organize it into existence. 
 
 M. of T. Patience, patience . . . not with me and 
 my arguments so much as with the poor theatre 
 itself. Do you mind my parenthetically remarking 
 on the unreasonable way in which you public men 
 are apt to demand genius in the arts as the only 
 justification for their existence ? If lawyers and 
 doctors and parsons, civil servants, and soldiers 
 could claim no recognition, no protection for their 
 callings, except on such a ground ... ,1 
 
 M. of E. Good ! One to you ! I grant you 
 that point. 
 
 M. of T. Very well. Arising out of that . . . 
 as they say in a place where a good deal of co- 
 operative dramatic effect is expended, and might, 
 with better training, be more profitably expended . . . 
 you admit, I gather, that, of all the arts, the most 
 dependent, under modern conditions, upon sheer 
 organization is the theatre ? 
 
 M. of E. Yes, if you like. 
 
 19
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 The M. of T. Now I must trouble you for a moment 
 
 economics of w ith some economic history. Twenty-five years 
 the modem or so b ac k the English theatre began to face . . . 
 r*?/ ts belatedly, as is its nature . . . reorganization in the 
 terms of modern industry. Organically the theatre 
 was an industry ; and so that had to come, whether 
 one liked it or not. Most of the important individuals 
 concerned did not like it, and would not face it, 
 until quite recently they found themselves at last 
 overwhelmed, protesting and bewailing, by the ac- 
 complished fact. It was left to others not so inti- 
 mately concerned, but able therefore, perhaps, to take 
 a wider view, to foresee the coming change, and to 
 begin to struggle for the theatre's soul. For that, 
 too, was finally . . . was and is, as we are arguing 
 now . . . involved. They were the " reformers," 
 as you call them : on their behalf I won't resent the 
 name. They saw the theatre as a social service, not 
 first . . . for if first generally last we find ... as a 
 money-making concern. And so they urged that, 
 by one scheme or another, the community must be 
 made responsible for its welfare. The money- 
 makers did not hurry to the struggle. They saw 
 that the industrial development must come, and 
 waited for an easy market ... a good vantage. But 
 straightway the individuals most nearly concerned 
 . . . individualists, indeed, who saw " their " theatre 
 as a private estate " situate " very exclusively in the 
 West End of London and to be parcelled out 
 conveniently among them : actor-managers their 
 generic name! . . . took on a fight with the reformers 
 in the name (God bless us !) of fine art and freedom. 
 I fear you'd have been on their side. For you still 
 take your stand under their showy banner, unaware, 
 apparently, that this particular battle is over. It is 
 over. And what was the course of the fight ? And 
 20
 
 THE AUTHOR S PREJUDICES 
 
 who, does it turn out, was the real enemy ? Why, 
 the money-maker, of course, who ... in his own 
 good time . . . took them, the fools, in the rear. 
 Yes, I repeat without apology . . . the fools 1 
 They should have known that the reformers' cause 
 must finally be theirs. But no, they would go 
 cockily on until the giant Financial Interest, once 
 under way, now swallows them one by one, each at 
 a bite. Some of them personally and professionally 
 survive, partnered as a rule with business men. But 
 ask them the difference between their old situation 
 and the new one if, for a minute, box office success 
 gives them the go-by. 
 
 M. of E. I'll wager that they still prefer the 
 business yoke of the man who makes money out 
 of them, and lets them get as much of it as they 
 can bargain for, to the artistic yoke which would 
 make of them lay figures to illustrate this new 
 " sociological " fashion and that. 
 
 M. of T. Well, whether or no, I fear their tastes 
 and troubles are no longer important. They have 
 counted themselves out of the main fight. They 
 must do now what their capitalists tell them. 
 " Backers," these gentlemen used to be called : 
 they are well to the front now ! But to come again 
 to the artistic sins of the reformers. Wasn't it 
 almost inevitable that men bringing fresh blood to 
 an art which had come to exist, you'll admit, much 
 in appearance and little in content, should believe 
 that, for redressing the balance, only ideas mattered 
 at all ? 
 
 M. of E. But why not artistic ideas ? 
 
 M. of T. But when are ideas not artistic ideas ? 
 I utterly resent the implication that art ... any art, 
 but most especially the simple, democratic art of 
 the theatre ... is to be divorced from the things of 
 
 21
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 everyday life. It only thrives upon fellowship with 
 them. Moreover, I'll assert that if it has drifted 
 hopelessly out of touch with the current of men's 
 minds, it must begin its association again as a 
 servant, not as an equal. Precious lucky the 
 theatre might think itself that men and women 
 with a lively sense of what was important to the 
 world at the moment should take the trouble to make 
 some artistic use of it. And it was the business of 
 the interpretative artists already in possession . . . 
 it was their duty ... to help these interlopers, 
 to exploit them, moreover, if they could, to the 
 theatre's profit. The newcomers were not out after 
 conquest and exclusion. There need have been 
 no quarrel except with certain self-satisfied people, 
 who were not only too lazy or indifferent to use 
 the theatre for the expression of any ideas them- 
 selves, but objected to their own easy livelihood 
 being discredited by those who could and would. 
 The " reformers " made every effort to work even 
 with them, only to be snubbed and sneered at, or, 
 at best, to be patronized. Men of spirit don't 
 stand that. And how you, as a public man, dare 
 to complain that we occupied ourselves with the 
 socialization of the theatre to the prejudice of its 
 artistry, when it was your work we were doing at 
 the expense of our own. . . . 
 
 M. of E. Steady ; this is the point we're to dis- 
 cuss. Why is it my work ? That's what you have 
 to prove. 
 
 M. of T. I'm out to. That was merely my an- 
 swer in passing to your gibe at the " reformers," 
 men who were not of the theatre by training or 
 altogether perhaps at heart, but who saw in it some- 
 thing more than an amusement or an easy method 
 of making money, and who therefore, when they 
 
 22
 
 THE AUTHOR S PREJUDICES 
 
 came to work in it, turned some of their attention 
 to things that, I grant you, are not strictly of the 
 art of the theatre. I dare say it had from the be- 
 ginning an ill effect on their artistry. It is, you 
 may argue, just as bad to be thinking while you 
 write or produce a play either of all the social 
 evils you mean to expose, or the rest of the 
 social service your theatre is doing, as it is to 
 be calculating the money it will earn. But if 
 these men remain even now too self-consciously 
 the preachers and politicians of the theatre, 
 unable to lose themselves in the happiness of 
 their work, once again, isn't it largely because the 
 burden of your neglect has been so heavy upon 
 them ? So that, even from your point of view, 
 wouldn't you have been wiser to take public re- 
 sponsibility for the organizing side of the job ? 
 For, with that done, only quite nice, harmless, 
 '* artistic " people would, we're to take it, have been 
 attracted to the theatre at all. And if any of these 
 damnable reformers had happened to slip in they 
 could have slaked their unholy passions upon 
 systems of lighting, or costume designs, or the 
 setting of Elizabethan plays. Still, the mischief 
 mightn't have stopped there. Reform is like 
 jealousy, and makes the meat it feeds on (notice, 
 please, the appropriately theatrical allusion). A 
 passion for reform, according to the non-reformers, 
 springs from jealousy, nothing more or less. So, 
 once they had murdered the artistic conventions 
 they would have sidled for bigger game, and instead 
 of the present paltry misuse of energy you complain 
 of, you might have had to trace a whole social 
 revolution back to say a production of King 
 Lear. It is really a terrible problem, this of getting 
 people to keep their noses to the grindstone and
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 mind their own business. And the theatre really 
 is not a good place in which to attempt a pattern 
 solution. For if it is to be alive at all it must be 
 concerned with the life all around it, and that only 
 makes its merry men livelier still, more inquisitive, 
 more impertinent. Come, why don't you sup- 
 press the poisonous thing altogether ? 
 
 M. of E. Well . . . taking public charge of it 
 might be one way of dishing the reformers and of 
 doing that. 
 
 Authority's M. of T. I'm ready to run the risk. Give me for 
 obligation the theatre the conscience of a public service . . . 
 to the j re t urn you compliment for snub . . . and I'll trust 
 its own innate life to defeat any bureaucratic 
 stranglings more easily than it manages to escape 
 from the tangle of money-making. Art for art's 
 sake may be a good or a bad cry. Personally, I 
 think it's a bad one on all counts. But there is 
 certainly no art less fitted to respond to it than the 
 dramatic art. And again, while poetry, painting, 
 sculpture can exist for a little in the cloister or the 
 desert, as a reflection from the past or a promise for 
 the future, the drama . . . simple, democratic, crude 
 if you will . . . must be of its age. Therefore, even 
 if I cared for nothing else in the theatre but the 
 quintessential art of the theatre . . . ah, that 
 stamps me as the most pestilent of reformers, doesn't 
 it ? . . .1 should welcome its present attachment 
 to some larger idea, to drag it abreast of the times. 
 M. of E. As an artist, how you ought to hate 
 that phrase ! 
 
 M. of T. . . . abreast of the need of the times. 
 Here is the theatre in the dumps. . . . 
 
 M, of E. I don't maintain that. I don't admit it. 
 And, yet again, why am I to be called on for the 
 helping hand ? 
 24
 
 THE AUTHOR S PREJUDICES 
 
 M. of T. Confound your condescension 1 I'll be 
 offering to help you in a minute. It is dignified, 
 and it is historically right, that an art, bankrupt of 
 consequence, should go into service so as to establish 
 itself again. Did not the Greek drama spring from 
 religious ritual ? It at least had the form, it 
 carried the weight of accepted ceremony. 
 
 M. of E. Am I to take the appeal to history 
 seriously ? 
 
 M. of T. Well, like better men, for bigger ends, 
 I twis$ the picture to my purpose. But one's view 
 of a winding street must depend mustn't it ? 
 upon the point at which one turns to look back on it. 
 
 M. of E. Hark to the advocate of the drama as 
 the saviour of society ! And you ask me to magnify 
 such methods by my approval . . . and, what's more, 
 to multiply your chances of using them ! 
 
 M. of T. Well, as a public man, impressing on us 
 your view of the present, I hope you've nothing 
 worse on your conscience. If we can't find you out, 
 though, that's our fault. However, you may neg- 
 lect my history when the practical present-day 
 questions come to be answered ... as I fear you 
 would indeed, however much you respected it. 
 And you needn't grant me the Greeks . . . and I'll 
 skip the Romans. 
 
 M. of E. Thank you. 
 
 M. of T. But how did the drama struggle to 
 coherent life again out of the Dark Ages ? By 
 clinging to the skirts of the Church or the Guilds. 
 Elizabethan players, remember, were the servants 
 of this lord or that. The best of them were the 
 Queen's servants. That wasn't mere snobbishness, 
 you know : they were formally a part of her house- 
 hold. 
 
 M. of E. But they played to the groundlings. 
 
 25
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 M. of T. So did she ! * The tie loosened later 
 into the quite formal relationship with the patent 
 theatres, and has even outlasted their dissolution. 
 Witness the institution of the censorship in the 
 Lord Chamberlain's office. The best excuse for 
 that foolish business would be a royal theatre sup- 
 ported by the Privy Purse. 
 
 M. of E. But that would hardly suit your re- 
 former. I remark to you that these player-folk 
 were pretty severely kept in their place in those 
 halcyon days. 
 
 M. of T. That mattered little beside the fact that 
 they had their place. How long would they have 
 survived interference without it ? Of course, I 
 don't want them thrust back in it now. What 
 suited that time doesn't suit this. But notice, 
 please, that the theatre is but one among many 
 crafts that have waked up lately to the further im- 
 plications of their freedom to make all the money 
 they can, or starve. 
 
 M. of E. Economically speaking, of course, why 
 not to make all the money there is to make and still 
 to starve ? 
 
 M. of T. Why not, indeed ... as the Russian 
 proletarian discovers ? And while that reduction to 
 absurdity is being reached, still to be starved . . . 
 they themselves and all the rest of us, their customers 
 ... of all the things due to them and from them 
 
 * Did contemporary critics complain of it ? England has had 
 great political performers since to whom she has given more 
 dubious reception. But one finds an instance of the histrionic 
 temperament coming to its own again in a note of Sir John 
 Skel ton's upon meeting Disraeli in 1867: "They say, and say 
 truly enough, ' What an actor the man is ' ; and yet the ultimate 
 impression is of absolute sincerity and unreserve." Vol. IV of 
 the Monypeny-Buckle " Life." 
 26
 
 THE AUTHOR S PREJUDICES 
 
 that don't get quoted at a market-rate. But men 
 are not born doctrinaires, thank God ! They do not 
 come into this world either as little individualists 
 or little socialists, but as something more satisfyingly 
 human than either. And where this impending 
 fool's tragedy has been sensed, watch their efforts 
 . . . scattered and contradictory, no doubt, since, 
 born to this particular inheritance of anarchy that 
 troubles you so little, they can't quite forswear such 
 capital as they have all for the sake of future 
 interest . . . watch these puzzled adventurers in 
 the cause of the greatest unhappiness of the greatest 
 number trying to struggle back into some sort of 
 mutually helpful state of dignity and safety. 
 
 M. of E. And, pray . . . letting the rest of the 
 wide world slide for the moment, as you con- 
 scientiously can, I assure you . . . what stands in 
 the theatre's way ? 
 
 M. of T. I grant you, mainly our own confusion 
 of thought and purpose. We still have to discover 
 . . . and come to a sufficient measure of agreement 
 upon what we want. There are efforts in plenty 
 and experiments enough, but they are particularist 
 still, and they show little perception of any idea 
 of the theatre that could enmesh and might reconcile 
 them all. Playwrights collogue together; the train- 
 ing of actors is in hand; there's an actors' strike in 
 America; in England the Actors' Association, after 
 years of uncomfortable and unprofitable sitting on 
 the fence, dubs itself a trade union. There are 
 village theatres, community theatres, repertory 
 theatres, clubs and leagues and committees of one 
 sort and another; on paper, in embryo, promis- 
 ing well, doing nicely now, or gasping for breath. 
 It's all very interesting, very hopeful, rather exas- 
 perating. 
 
 27
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 M. of E. Well, then, go ahead on those lines, 
 and when you and your fellow enthusiasts have 
 gathered enough strength, drop your differences, 
 fight the commercialism you protest against, and 
 then . . . 
 
 M, of T. But no mere discrediting of commer- 
 cialism will content me. I don't even trouble 
 to attack it, for I see it beaten in its very victory. 
 
 M. of E. A familiar paradox ! 
 
 M. of T. And in this case a very obvious one. 
 The commercialists have won everything that I'm 
 not fighting for, and they are quite content with 
 their spoils. I've nothing against them, then. 
 They'll go their prosperous way and I'll follow my 
 star. We can be quite good friends. And I'm 
 only thankful that the general result of their victory, 
 and nothing else at all, should now so nakedly 
 appear. Does it content you . . . this is the question 
 I'm framing in every form I can ... to see the 
 whole power of the theatre absorbed unashamedly 
 in the greatest entertainment of the greatest number 
 upon the best cash terms, to see it making nothing 
 but a mob appeal ? For is a mob only a danger 
 when it gathers in ill-dressed crowds ? What of 
 the well-dressed mob that makes up a dinner-party 
 of ten ; the ten thousand mobs of a hundred or so, 
 each calling itself the best set in its own dowdy, 
 respectable suburb; the provincial mobs . . . you'll 
 find a dozen different ones in every cathedral town ; 
 the mob innumerable of hard-headed, practical 
 people; the clerical mob, the educational mob, the 
 artistic mob, the medical mob, the sporting mob ? 
 The theatre's business to-day is to talk flattering 
 nonsense to these good people. It may be compli- 
 mentary or abusive nonsense almost indifferently if 
 only it will familiarly echo them, so that they in 
 28
 
 THE AUTHOR S PREJUDICES 
 
 turn can effortlessly echo it, till voice and echo, 
 indistinguishable from each other, deteriorate into a 
 meaningless vacuity. 
 
 M. of E. Excellent vituperation, no doubt. You 
 combine all the usual targets for abuse into one. 
 But at the worst this makes up, I repeat, a very 
 negative danger. 
 
 M. of T. The worst dangers are negative, and the 
 longest breeding. An artist must loathe the mob 
 mind. 
 
 M: of E. No doubt. But we're back where we 
 started. This was your original trouble, more or 
 less. I could agree that a self-respecting way out 
 would be for the real workers in the theatre to 
 recover control over their own industry. But you 
 won't take that. 
 
 M. of T. It would be no way out. For I won't The dramas 
 admit that the theatre is only, or chiefly, an industry, industrial 
 or that the people who make a living by it are the difficulty is 
 only people concerned. I want to fasten responsi- ?*,?" ? 
 
 bilitV Upon you. 'an industry 
 
 M. of E. Well, I'm still waiting to undergo the 
 operation. 
 
 M. of T. It now begins. Where any sort of art 
 is concerned we are apt to talk, aren't we, without 
 knowing perhaps quite what we mean, of men and 
 women having a " gift " for the thing ? An abso- 
 lute gift is it, or one to be held in trust and passed 
 on ? 
 
 M. of E. Well, if you bury that talent you cer- 
 tainly get no good of it, you can't even dig it up 
 unimpaired. Still, there's a market price for the 
 use of it. 
 
 M. of T. Certainly, we must most of us earn our 
 living from day to day. But isn't it a rather 
 startling fact ... at least it should surely startle 
 
 29
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 the commercialists if they would stop to consider 
 it ... that by law one cannot perpetuate property 
 in imaginative work?* Think of the copyright 
 laws, of the hard fight there was even for a term 
 of lifetime and fifty years. What's the other side 
 to that question, if not some conviction that the power 
 to write plays, books, and poems conies as a gift 
 to the writer, and so must in honour be given again ? 
 
 M.o/E. Well? 
 
 Art as a gift M. of T. What I first want to fix upon you is a 
 to Society due responsibility in accepting the gift. Admit the 
 principle. 
 
 M. of E. I am thinking, with some amusement, 
 of the practical consequence of all pictures and 
 sculpture, for instance, coming as gifts to the 
 nation fifty years after their authors were dead and 
 either forgotten or just beginning to be thought of 
 again. Would they then have to be solemnly con- 
 signed by some Ministry of Fine Arts either to a 
 public museum or a public bonfire ? 
 
 M. of T. Ah, these were the things that the 
 nineteenth century really liked to call works of art, 
 conveniently concrete things, " portable property." 
 And please note that this was what gave the artist 
 . . . pre-eminently when dead, but the living exem- 
 plars could not then be denied it ... the dignity 
 of his capital A; these comfortable fortunes that 
 could be made by manoeuvring his work. 
 
 M. of E. Yes, I've been trying lately to buy a good 
 Cotman for our local picture gallery. 
 
 M. of T. I think that a modern Dante might rank 
 picture-dealers with Simonists. 
 
 * Actors and singers, it may be said, who naturally cannot per- 
 petuate property which resides in themselves beyond their own 
 lifetime, " create " nothing in any case. One could dispute upon 
 this point too. But the main argument would not be affected. 
 
 30
 
 THE AUTHOR S PREJUDICES 
 
 M. of E. On the other hand, if you buy from taste 
 and not for names or schools there are good enough 
 pictures going cheap still. However, we digress. 
 
 M. of T. But take book copyrights. They fall 
 in due time into public domain : printing is (com- 
 paratively) cheap, our benefits in literature due to 
 survive will distribute themselves somehow. That 
 interpreted the public attitude, didn't it ... when 
 printing was cheap ? 
 
 M. of E. Yes, I admit this difficulty. There was 
 always the question though over books that called 
 for any care in production, whether, when everyone 
 might print them, it was worth anyone's while to. 
 And now that printing's not cheap any longer 
 and is not apparently ever going to be ... ! The 
 other day a publisher complained to me that he could 
 live upon new novels, but that for this year he'd 
 have to leave unprinted a hundred thousand copies 
 of books of learning. 
 
 M. of T. Yes, and think of the work done for 
 literature and the wages paid for it ... and the no- 
 wages. I won't complain of that, since the scholars 
 don't, though I think they are hardly devoted to 
 poverty in itself. But could the work itself be done 
 at all but for some endowment ? 
 
 M. ofE. No, I'll admit that practically it couldn't be. 
 
 M. of T. And when we come to the problem of 
 the theatre, which has never been helped out, as 
 literature has, by the blessing (and curse ! ) of cheap 
 printing, which can find no old endowments to 
 capture and direct to its needs . . . well, I admit it's 
 a tough problem; I don't blame you for shirking it. 
 But won't you also admit the principle that you, as 
 trustee for the public, cannot in decency come 
 into the inheritance of these dramatic gifts and 
 acquire no responsibility for their right use ?
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 M. of E. I'll admit . . . you'll smile at the banality 
 . . . that something ought to be done for Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 M. of T. A Shakespeare theatre ? 
 
 M.ofE. Yes. 
 
 M. of T. I don't smile. I am too angrily weary 
 with the years of balked advocacy of such a simple 
 . . . surely there could not be a simpler, a more ob- 
 vious duty towards such a name and such a fact in 
 English culture than to make a home in which his 
 plays may live. 
 
 Af. of E. But they do live. 
 
 M. of T. How many have you seen in the last 
 ten years ? 
 
 M. of E. I read them. Yes, I assure you, from 
 time to time I really do read them. 
 
 Society's re- M. of T. About as many people can get at 
 sponsibilityin Shakespeare's plays by reading them as can appre- 
 accepting the ciate Beethoven's Symphonies by fingering them out 
 on the piano. However, your admission, banal 
 though it be, is enough. For once admit you 
 should care for Shakespeare's plays and you're 
 landed with some responsibility towards the actors 
 of them, and towards the actor's art in general, 
 and so towards other plays . . . the inheritance of the 
 future. How you discharge the responsibility is a 
 minor matter. There are a hundred right ways of 
 doing it to be found ; and then there'll be the 
 interest of" rinding the hundred-and-first. Pro- 
 vide me my artists somehow with the machinery for 
 giving . . . that is all I ask. They are, the most of 
 them, so anxious to give if only the machinery were 
 there. And the average man, I believe, is innately 
 enough of an artist to believe that. My own belief, 
 indeed, is that the average man himself is in a like 
 generous case ; but that is beside the point. Com- 
 32
 
 THE AUTHOR S PREJUDICES 
 
 pel us artists to make, or to sell ourselves to those 
 who can make of our art, a commercial machine; 
 or to compete for capital and profit among our- 
 selves and with all the other profit-making indus- 
 tries, and, of course, it's a machine for getting we 
 produce, and the gospel of getting will dominate us. 
 Besides that (you're right) the edge of art is blunted 
 in men who are too much occupied with the machine. 
 For every art and for most industries to-day the 
 common problem is to devise machinery for their 
 conversion to public use that will not impoverish 
 the product. This is notably and tragically true of the 
 art of the theatre. All the better for the theatre, 
 perhaps, if it can march with its fellows towards a 
 general solution. And I want to admit all its 
 special difficulties. So please overlook it if I 
 seem here to speak a little unkindly of a calling I 
 love, and of fellow-workers in it whom I have 
 watched with sympathy and admiration fighting 
 their hard, blind battles. 
 
 The chief difficulty, I repeat, of doing anything for 
 the theatre of to-day is that it is so confoundedly 
 prosperous, if we judge it ... as it is popular to do, 
 as it asks us to judge . . . only by its successes. It is 
 much spoiled, though more than a little despised. 
 The weakness of personal vanity and the hunger for 
 passing praise ... all about the theatre passes so 
 quickly . . . are played upon and themselves made to 
 pay. Its duty to be of the age and of the hour 
 is debauched to a mere appetite for the favour of 
 the moment. It sustains itself amid such golden 
 clouds of illusion that one finds it hard, to begin 
 with, to turn the thoughts of the theatre itself to 
 a soberer standard; and even harder to persuade 
 men like yourself, for instance, that something 
 must really be done to save it from this damnation 
 
 c 33
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 of so-called success, and a something which . . . 
 much as it can be asked to do for itself . . . the 
 theatre cannot be expected to do. Especially so 
 when that something will not come easily to anyone's 
 hand, will not be cheap, will need planning and re- 
 planning, experiment here and there, will ask for 
 the patient work of years to make up for the 
 wasted time and the efforts run to seed before 
 one can even hope to build the theatre of one's faith, 
 to endow it with a success so real and constant as 
 to be quite unnoticed. 
 
 M. of E. Yes, that is the only sort. 
 
 M. of T. But if the men you stand for will do for 
 the theatre the one thing they can do for it, the one 
 thing it can't do for itself, if they will somehow as- 
 sure it a rightful place in the settled economy of 
 society, then . . . yes, I promise you, or if not you, 
 your grandsons . . . that there shall be established 
 among them, as one of the means to their earthly 
 salvation, what I will be bold to describe as a 
 church of art. A body of men and women who 
 will bring their humour, their fancy, passion, and 
 thought to be clarified and formulated in the terms 
 of this art of the drama. Painting, architecture, 
 and music . . . that you are so ready to glorify . . . 
 will take their share in the work ; for the theatre 
 is the meeting-place of many arts. If you'll not 
 have my simile of the church, I'll fall back on chapel, 
 and ask you to remember, too, what chapels called 
 meeting-houses have meant in their time to England 
 and to New England. And this new meeting- 
 house . . . with its doctrines worked out in a human 
 medium, its range from past to future, its analysis in 
 method and synthesis in effect . . . will be, by virtue 
 of the unity in diversity for which it must strive, a 
 microcosm, not only of the social world as it moves, 
 34
 
 THE AUTHOR S PREJUDICES 
 
 laughs, weeps before our eyes, but as it has a 
 sublimer being in the souls of men. 
 
 M. of E. And you ask me to help turn a harmless 
 amusement into something so portentous as that ? 
 
 M. of T. Don't be alarmed. You won't be 
 " saved " in a hurry. There's the advantage of the 
 theatre as a moral force. It can't go very far ahead 
 unless you keep pace with it. 
 
 M. of E. And I am unregenerately just abreast of 
 it now, you think ? 
 
 M.jf T. I'll answer your irony seriously. I There is no 
 don't know. There isn't a theatre to measure you such tflin & as 
 by. There's a mass of material to make one of : 
 plays, mostly on bookshelves, actors with a nightly 
 habit of going through the motions of acting. 
 There are even the makings of an audience, if one 
 may judge by the occasional grumbling . . . 
 
 M. of E. But we should have defined our terms 
 to start with. What, *> then, do you mean by a 
 theatre ? 
 
 M. of T. Not one of these houses of entertain- 
 ment that you now walk tolerantly into and con- 
 temptuously out of. 
 
 M. of E. Not if the entertainment's so bettered 
 that tolerance turns into enthusiasm ? 
 
 M. of T. No. 
 
 M. of E. Well, positively then, what do you mean 
 by a theatre ? 
 
 M. of T. That we can't take much further, I'm 
 afraid, by the method of question and answer. 
 
 M. of E. Then, to follow up the jargon of the 
 House of Commons, hadn't you better proceed to 
 draft your bill ? But is that, by the way, the 
 larger idea you want to tack your renascent art 
 to t ? 
 
 "M. of T. What larger idea ? 
 
 35
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 M. of E. The drama of the popular assembly. 
 
 M. of T. Don't you think that the present per- 
 formances in that particular . . . and rather un- 
 popular . . . assembly are often pretty poor ? 
 
 M. of E. There I counter you yet once more. 
 Heaven forbid that with politics national, social, and 
 industrial developing into a game for everyone to 
 play we should come to rely on easy effects of ora- 
 tory. Let's have the substance of what's to be 
 said as artlessly put as possible; the better can 
 the worth of it be tested. If you want to turn us 
 into a melodramatic nation , , . thank you, I'd sooner 
 you didn't. 
 
 M. of T. But you don't counter me. You only 
 show me what miles apart our minds upon this 
 matter are still. You think about the performers. 
 My trouble, to begin with, is the audience. I 
 grant you they're gullible, and by coarse phrases 
 moreover, not even by fine ones. But you show 
 me that you even you are equally ready to be 
 taken in by artlessness. You don't really think 
 that the more incompetent a man is at expressing 
 himself the more able and honest he is likely to be. 
 Suppose we set ourselves to prevent people being 
 imposed on by absence of oratory, also. For the 
 larger idea I hitch on to is simply to make 
 the drama, its appreciation and its practice . , . and 
 its application through its practice . , . a common 
 factor in the community's education. 
 
 M. of E. You want, do you, to make me a present 
 of the theatre . , . of the whole blessed thing ? 
 
 M. of T. You've called me a reformer and I 
 haven't protested. But I have one key-belief by 
 which I condition my adherence to any stated re- 
 form. Does it tend to produce a greater number 
 of more fully and freely developed human beings, 
 
 36
 
 THE AUTHOR'S PREJUDICES 
 
 and , , , to push the test further, by the present most 
 urgent demands of our civilization . , , of more co- 
 operative human beings ? Can the theatre, by any 
 contrivance, have its strength brought to bear 
 directly on that job ? 
 
 M. of E. I'm to go to my evening's entertain- 
 ment to be more fully and freely developed, am I ? 
 
 M. of T. The evening's entertainment will be but 
 a small part of the business. But do you mind ? 
 
 M. of E. Will the process be decently concealed 
 from, me ? 
 
 M. of T. I will tell you what best can conceal it. 
 A thorough education in dramatic art. By the aid 
 of that you would make the remarkable discovery that 
 good plays are better than bad, and that there are 
 many more sorts of good plays than you imagine. 
 You would find, also, that acting is a very subtle 
 and sensitive art which demands trained apprecia- 
 tion. Plays may not always get the acting they 
 deserve, but audiences mostly do. And, finally, 
 you would find that in learning how to enjoy the 
 theatre you had learned . . . But I'll keep you 
 talking no longer. I'll try, as you say, to draft my 
 bill. If you've the patience to read it ... 
 
 M. of E. I assure you I'm only anxious to be 
 convinced. 
 
 M. of T. Don't say that. We none of us are . . . 
 
 The Man of the Theatre and the Minister of 
 Education now part . . . but only for the time 
 being, it is hoped. 
 
 37
 
 CHAPTER II: THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 Ti 
 
 HE schools of to-day are still dominated by 
 cheap printing. As an exact medium was 
 needed for the study of the exact sciences 
 it was inevitable that book-learning should, 
 as our modern civilization advanced, largely 
 conquer the older methods. But the victory ex- 
 tending beyond the justice of the cause, there have 
 lately been notable attempts at readjustment. And 
 if one must write " still dominated " it is because 
 the rescue of the expressional side of education 
 from its obliteration by the absorptional is halted 
 by other difficulties than any lack of conviction in 
 the individual teachers giving thought to the matter 
 that such a salvation is urgent. 
 
 The convenient notion that an abundance of 
 books will take the place of talent in the teacher, 
 the strangling of even the finest teaching talent in 
 the grip of enormous classes, the unavoidable draw- 
 back that the supply of good teachers will never 
 equal the demand, are major difficulties enough. 
 But what chiefly vitiates the employment of this 
 dancing, singing, acting, now called, still rather 
 half-heartedly, from the play hour to the school 
 hour, is the lack of understanding of the full and 
 proper use to be made of them. This is so, at any 
 rate, as far as the acting is concerned; let me 
 confine myself to that. 
 
 The educationalist asks just how seriously he is 
 to take it. And he has a right to an answer before 
 he can be expected to confirm it in the place it is, 
 he will sometimes impatiently say, usurping in a 
 crowded curriculum. Drawing and music and danc- 
 ing good reasons enough can be given for their 
 study. If the art of the theatre, of which acting is 
 the naturally first grasped branch, is still viewed 
 askance, if its claim to consideration can only be 
 38
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 admitted on the ground that some snatchings at it 
 may be a useful part of the good fun by which the 
 strain of learning must be relieved or by virtue of 
 the extraneous opportunity they will give for prac- 
 tising speech and movement and acquiring self- 
 confidence, its advocates can hardly complain. For, 
 in England at least, the art, as a whole, is neither 
 studied, practised, nor appreciated even by its pro- 
 fessional devotees with any sustained intelligence. 
 
 As a calling the art is hampered by the conditions The profes- 
 of a trade, and a very badly organized trade at that, sioaa/ ^ 
 Gallant attempts have certainly been made, of late tfieatre s 
 years, to improve the quality of the product. With 
 great public spirit Sir Herbert Tree founded a 
 dramatic academy, which pretends, certainly, to no 
 more than the study of acting, but now, under the 
 guidance of representative people, does, no doubt, 
 all it can do for that. There are other institutions 
 and many independent teachers; competent, some 
 of them, and most of them enthusiastic. But, apart 
 from all other drawbacks, they work of necessity 
 with their eyes upon the standards and demands of 
 the professional stage. Now the modern pro- 
 fessional stage does not even ask for recruits deeply 
 studied in the art of acting it has neither the time 
 nor resource to indulge itself in anything so deli- 
 cately complex. And as for the cognate arts, 
 which the theatre blends with its own, of literature, 
 music, or design, the recruit is not expected to be 
 more than conversationally aware of their existence. 
 The professional theatre demands just so much of 
 the external craft of the actor as will measure up to 
 the critical discernment of its present public, which 
 is, in its turn and therefore remains rather low. 
 So it is not to the professional theatre that the 
 educationalist can be expected to turn for advice. 
 
 39
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 " If there's no more in the business than this," 
 he might say, " what use can it be to boys and girls, 
 except as a medium for lung exercise and a means 
 of uncramping themselves after a long spell at their 
 desks ? " 
 
 And if his use of the drama is to extend at all 
 beyond the kindergarten and the primary school, 
 or if he is to give it any other place among the 
 studies of older pupils than that of a semi-recreational 
 subject, he must be brought to consider it in terms 
 for which acting and the theatre, as England now 
 knows them, provide no interpretation. 
 
 Let us first consider the educational claims that 
 are already made on the drama's behalf and place 
 them as high as possible. They are even then 
 by no means to be admitted; and it is ambition 
 with its fine phrases that is fatal to them. 
 They will still be urged, nevertheless, with all the 
 insistent force of narrow enthusiasm. Self-expres- 
 sion, for instance, has become a catchword ; de- 
 velopment of the individuality where parents afford 
 the money and teachers the time a craze ; and 
 into this service drama is dragged by the heels. 
 Well, it is very fit for children often years old to be 
 learning how to move and to speak, if that is what 
 self-expression and the rest of the jargon means. 
 But it is as ridiculous to find adolescents and grown- 
 up people bothering themselves with such simple 
 things as it would be to see them conning the 
 alphabet. 
 
 Public The study of manners is admittedly a very 
 manners necessary one. Manners are the lubricant of the 
 democratic machinery, whether they be the ordinary 
 good manners of strangers and neighbours to each 
 other when no law compels them to show respect, 
 or whether the more complex problem is involved 
 40
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 of expressing and, as an exasperated minority, 
 sometimes suppressing our political opinions. As 
 far as personal good manners are concerned one 
 can be done with the mechanism of the business 
 very early. A child soon masters the essential 
 rules ; teachers, by ranking manners as expressive 
 at all, admit the existence of something more than 
 formality, and we commonly find it in the in- 
 dividual recognition of the " right thing " to do 
 and say at any particular moment. To learn to 
 express that in terms of mutual understanding 
 should be easy enough. But if personal good 
 manners it's a truism are not based on con- 
 sideration their foundation is brittle indeed. 
 
 Just so with public manners. Self-expression 
 provides but one of their rudiments, and its physical 
 side is so comparatively unimportant, such a mere 
 matter of mechanism, that it is as well to be through 
 with one's study of it before reaching an age when 
 such things have ceased to be wholly assimilable. 
 There is nothing a man need know of the general 
 physical rules of public behaviour, standing, moving, 
 speaking, which can't be mastered by the age of 
 sixteen or seventeen, and which can't better there- 
 after begin, as rule, to be forgotten. Beyond that 
 there is certainly the expression of his own mental 
 individuality to be thought of. But it is better, 
 on the other hand, that this side of the training 
 should not be too prominently developed just at 
 the age when the ego begins to grow powerful. 
 Concentration upon externals at this time may result 
 in polite affectations, but attention to sheer self- 
 expression will cultivate a brutality of egotism, emo- 
 tional and spiritual. And that this may be only 
 the more effectively masked by a nervous, fragile 
 exterior any mistress of a girls' school can tell us. 
 
 41
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 The tradition Not that one need deny either the absolute 
 of our speech value of the externals, or that as an offset to five or 
 six generations of mental cramming any sort of 
 expressional fling which can be granted to young 
 people is better than none. When, for instance, 
 our language is the commonest verbal currency in 
 the world, what shame to us that it should not be 
 expressively used ! Since it has unsurpassed tradi- 
 tions of beauty and eloquence, what a scandal if here, 
 in its home, we are unworthy of them 1 Not but 
 that we have unavoidably much to contend with 
 on this head in England. Of necessity seventeenth 
 century English, the last great mould into which 
 our language was poured,* has been broken into by 
 newly-made phrase and word. The Church has a 
 weekly chance to keep the magnificence of the 
 liturgy and the authorized version of the Bible 
 singing in our heads. The theatre, no doubt, 
 could and should do us a like service with Shake- 
 speare. But language must respond to every 
 change of habit. The most, perhaps, that the 
 past masters of our tongue can do for us is to 
 strengthen the bones and the sinews of our speech ; 
 the flesh we must ourselves keep live and healthy 
 by the cleansing process of renewal. Moreover, it 
 
 * Unless some would evidence Johnsonese. But that never, one 
 hopes, became colloquial. Sheridan's dialogue is delightful, the 
 musical cadence of Miss Austen's perfect of its kind, just as Parlia- 
 mentary eloquence of the great period was no doubt very fine. But 
 whether certainly when faith or passion were in question they did 
 more than refine upon, formalise, and weaken the seventeenth cen- 
 tury tradition . . . ? However, I am a seventeenth century man, 
 and, with the best will, unfair to the eighteenth. But compare 
 Walpole's letters with Sir Henry Wotton's, or Lady Mary Wortley 
 Montagu's with for a simple lady's Lady Grace Grenville's. 
 Read the Verney correspondence. In a hundred years how much 
 colour and warmth has vanished ! 
 4 2
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 is possible that in the last three hundred years some 
 absolutely physiological change has taken place in 
 our speaking of English.* How otherwise account 
 for the extended rhetoric of the Elizabethan drama, 
 its feasibility for the actors, its popularity with the 
 audience ? Can one see a packed crowd of ground- 
 lings standing be it remembered through an un- 
 cut Henry V or Measure for Measure, unless the 
 long speeches were taken with a Latin glibness 
 for which we have lost, it would seem, both the 
 mouth j and the ear ? Elizabethan speech, among 
 people pretending to any culture at all, was normally 
 quick : a swifter, fiercer, more full-blooded business 
 than anything we have the custom of now. It is 
 disconcerting, to-day, to find French actors speaking 
 Shakespeare more appropriately and effectively 
 for all the loss in translation than most English 
 actors do. But they can. There is a nation that takes 
 an unaffected pleasure in beautiful words, beautifully 
 spoken. How far we could recapture all this delight 
 it is hard to say, for, no doubt, there were other 
 and psychological causes contributary to its loss. 
 But pleasure in the colour and music of the verse 
 we could certainly have if actors would trouble to 
 give it us. Some trouble on our part, as well as on 
 theirs, is involved, though. If they must learn how 
 to speak Shakespeare's verse we must learn how to 
 listen, the effort being but comparable to the one we 
 must make to appreciate a method of music three 
 centuries old. 
 
 But i for a model of contemporary speech where 
 
 * Some hint of this is to be found in the rapid alteration of Cock- 
 ney. Compare Sam Weller and Albert Chevalier; the difference is 
 almost a physiological one. Tongue, breath, teeth, and lips, that is 
 to say, must conspire quite differently together to produce two such 
 dialects. 
 
 43
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 are we to look ? We ought not to have to look 
 in vain to the theatre, even though the material 
 be it well understood is not to be found in 
 modern imitations of Elizabethan drama. Nor yet 
 shall we find it in elaborately built-up prose, taking 
 the form of drama but belying its spirit. But what 
 better model can there be of perfected everyday 
 speech than the dialogue of a modern play if, under 
 such conditions as a good theatre should impose, 
 it can carry to the audience the fullness of its mean- 
 ing and emotion ? Nor need we rule out for this 
 use the artistic incidents of such streaks of dialect 
 the Mayfair or Whitechapel variety as a play may 
 contain. An awful warning is sometimes as useful 
 as an example. 
 
 One can admit that the theatre, even as it now 
 stands, does serve this purpose a little. So does the 
 Church. Some part of the population gets every 
 Sunday a lesson in English. The quality of the 
 model presented leaves in each case no doubt much 
 to be desired. The parson's speech may be flat 
 and dead. The actor's will be lively enough, 
 though that may be its first and last virtue. But 
 neither calling is so relieved from other cares 
 and charged with this one as to have leisure 
 to acquire such a thing as style. And it is of no 
 use whatever placing the responsibility for our 
 ineptitude and vulgarity of speech upon school 
 teachers. In the first place because the teachers 
 themselves must be taught, in the second because, 
 though the grounding of a child in the habit of 
 good speech is a great thing, the labour will be 
 largely wasted if he is to emerge into an adult 
 world where he will find no public pride in the 
 accomplishment nor any importance attached to it. 
 
 But if difficulties surround us in England, what 
 44
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 about America's mountainous task ? Think of the The 
 problem of preserving a language in its integrity 4 mfnca " 
 when thirty per cent, or so of the children 
 in the schools come to it as to a foreign tongue, 
 when to whole sections of the adult population 
 it remains no more a medium of expression 
 than are the hundred words or so of French, 
 German, Spanish, or Italian, with which the aver- 
 age English or American traveller will pick his 
 way through the hotels and restaurants of Europe. 
 Whether and when the process of the melting- 
 pot will extend to language, and what the 
 final residuum will be, is a question that, quite 
 apart from its difficulty, would range far beyond 
 this present subject. That English will remain 
 the language of America we may regard as 
 fairly certain, and it is sufficient for our pur- 
 pose to point out that its possible remoulding 
 rests upon other considerations than those of 
 literature, and of the present struggle for its soul 
 between the writer of classical traditions, whom 
 nobody (comparatively) reads, and the journalist 
 whom everybody (absolutely) reads. This struggle 
 though is in itself instructive. We note the 
 classicist out-flanking the position by getting at 
 the will-be journalist as he passes as almost all 
 of them now do through college. But then, 
 with his guns trained, often enough the classicist 
 won't stick to them. Lest he be thought dry-as- 
 dust he goes back on Milton to encourage the 
 solemn study of O. Henry and George Ade. 
 Or worse, it is true ! he makes of his Milton 
 and Addison and Pope a mumpsimus jargon, 
 reflected, how horribly, in ceremonial documents 
 and speeches launched from time to time at the 
 public's head. 
 
 45
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 The But the immigrant, though he brings as a rule 
 
 influences of little literary culture of his own,* only partly abides 
 climate and ^ t j ie j ssue o f ^ t> att le t p or he has brought, 
 
 immigration ^ et us rememDer > much else that goes to the making 
 of a spoken language : physical differences to begin 
 with, differences in the emphasis of emotion, long 
 inherited constructional habits of thought. And 
 mixed with all this will be the yet uncalculated 
 influence of climate. Even the approaches, then, 
 to the problem of the standardization of speech in 
 America are complex, and the problem itself is 
 doubtless not within a century or so of anything 
 like a solution. One merely notes meanwhile, as 
 compensations for the present inter-racial distur- 
 bance, that when Americans do take the trouble to 
 speak well and feeling this as but one among 
 many threats to the precious "Anglo-Saxon " domin- 
 ance, the old stock among them often do take a 
 great deal of trouble they achieve a purer, firmer 
 English than can commonly he heard anywhere 
 else; except possibly in Ireland, where a sweetness 
 in place of firmness is added to the carefully ac- 
 quired purity.f And a second compensation may 
 be the bringing to the language, by some, at least, 
 of the foreign element, of a fire and colour of ex- 
 pression and a musical tone of which native speakers 
 seem almost deliberately to deprive it. Did the 
 Yankee twang develop, by chance, from Puritan 
 " psalm-singing " ? Our own i yth century Puritans 
 were reproached with making just such sounds. 
 But for fear of treading too debatable ground we 
 
 * He sometimes brings more than might be supposed. I once 
 caught an Italian workman, solitary under a hedge on Long Island, 
 reading poetry aloud to himself. But he probably went back to 
 Italy later, back to where the poetry came from. 
 
 1 1 have found this among Donegal peasants. 
 46
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 might rather say enlarging our supposition as to 
 the present difficulties of tackling Shakespearian 
 English bring back to America some of the quality 
 lost to England from the time that our own growing 
 political insularity separated us from the cultural 
 influence of the Latin tongues. England gained an 
 integrity for its language thereby, no doubt. But 
 by mid-seventeenth century had not the full benefit 
 of that inured, and since then does not the history 
 of its speaking possibly show, by the drag-back of 
 peasant influences on it, a reversion to slower, 
 slacker, slovenlier ways ? 
 
 Not only in this particular may America, without 
 taking thought, be more fortunate than we, who 
 refuse to. The foreign elements, blended into the 
 American nation of the future, may inform it with a 
 much livelier general expressiveness than our closer 
 origins develop. Certainly one would say, even 
 now, that the American is more ebullient than the 
 Englishman. That may be, again, the influence 
 of climate : it may spring from the difference in 
 social more properly in economic conditions, 
 under which self-assertion is the first step to success, 
 while personal success must, of course, be the good 
 citizen's gospel in any country pledged to extreme 
 individualism. Political democracy and commer- 
 cialism are beginning to flavour our English 
 national life to something of the same taste. But 
 the self thus expressed, or rather asserted, is merely 
 an armour, offensive enough sometimes in every 
 sense but chiefly designed so that upon it the 
 blows of a battling world may rattle : it is hollow, 
 and the real self within often a timid and essentially 
 undeveloped thing. One appreciates that competi- 
 tive conditions have called for this weapon, and 
 how, with our educationalists caught unprepared, 
 
 47
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 any sort of expressional fling to counteract the 
 constrictive influence of the hard grinding of facts, 
 and yet more facts, into a few generations of youth- 
 ful skulls far more deadening work than the 
 gerund-grinding of old is indulged and encouraged 
 in preference to none. 
 
 But as self-expression even if that alone be 
 what we are after does this stoking of the emotional 
 ego and its blowing of steam suffice ? And are we 
 after that alone ? 
 
 Those of us who are aesthetically inclined admit, 
 and should even in opposition insist upon, the 
 importance of these externals. This would be a 
 much more attractive country to live in if all its 
 inhabitants spoke perfectly and moved beautifully, 
 and on public occasions could express themselves 
 with force and distinction. And possibly our 
 countrymen would cut a better figure abroad if they 
 cut a more beautifully expressive one. Not the 
 picked ambassadors of statecraft or learning, 
 who doubtless do express most suitably what they 
 if not, alas, what all of us are ; but the ordinary 
 traveller in commerce or pleasure, for he is also, 
 be it remembered, his country's ambassador. 
 The drama But we must finally recognize that Handsome 
 as a micro- does only as Handsome is. And we have serious 
 cosm of cause of quarrel with those for whom self-expression 
 is only self-assertion ; with no question of the sort 
 of self. For surely this, even aesthetically, is just 
 what does most matter. And further, as in the 
 Church, so in all other society, we being members 
 one of another, expression of the single self is inade- 
 quate. If it were enough there would be nothing 
 for the dramatic or any other art to do in education at 
 all. For does not all art release us from egotism ? 
 Let us examine very critically any artistry that can 
 48
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 be taken as the text of a denial of this : it will, of 
 a certainty, have lodged in some perversion of its 
 true purpose. The art of the drama, viewed in 
 completeness, is anti-egotist to the last degree. 
 It is so in spite of the study of its simpler con- 
 stituents being self-developing merely, and of its 
 professional practice seeming too often to induce 
 vanity, affectation, or self-consciousness though 
 these, it may be forgotten, are egotism's least deadly 
 aspects. 
 
 Dramatic art, fully developed in the form of the 
 acted play, is the working out in terms of make- 
 believe, no doubt, and patchily, biasedly, with much 
 over-emphasis and suppression, but still in the 
 veritable human medium not of the self-realiza- 
 tion of the individual, but of society itself. A play 
 is a pictured struggle and reconciliation of human 
 wills and ideas ; internecine, with destiny or with 
 circumstance. The struggle must be there, and 
 either the reconciliation or the tragedy of its failure. 
 And it is generally in the development of character, 
 by clash and by mutual adjustment, that the de- 
 terminant to the struggle is found. What livelier 
 microcosm of human society, therefore, can there be 
 than an acted play ? Apologically one could push 
 the likeness further. To bring a play to its acting 
 is to discover the following simple law of its com- 
 pleted well-being. If each character in it, even the 
 smallest, is not developed to its fullest capacity 
 the production will be impoverished beyond any 
 hope of salvation by brilliant individual perfor- 
 mances. And yet if every actor the most or the 
 least important does not play his part with a 
 primary loyalty to the whole play and a strict 
 consideration for his fellows artistic failure is as 
 inevitable. Interpretation of the parable is need- 
 
 D 49
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 less. To the service of such an art, then, one must 
 bring far more than a crude power of self-expression ; 
 and equally from its study we may claim that much 
 else is to be gained. 
 
 "The self- But it may be instructive first to probe for the be- 
 
 reaiisation of ginning of the simply self-expressive power. Watch a 
 a child child seeking it. Before he can express himself he 
 has actually, one may say, to create the conscious 
 self that he would express. Now his way of doing 
 this is the paradoxical one of pretending to be 
 somebody else. Children begin to act as soon as 
 they are free of their cradles ; their kicking and 
 gurgling within them may well have a dramatic 
 intention. Throughout nursery time it is games of 
 make-believe that are the most popular. The child 
 is peopling the world of himself. By imitation, by 
 adaptation, he adds one by one to the list of its 
 characters, appropriating and assimilating them by 
 identifying himself with each. By a long process of 
 trial and error, and later by selection and by refine- 
 ment, from out of this crude amalgam of his imagin- 
 ation's experience the conscious self is formed. 
 And the games go on till a supervening self- 
 consciousness shames him from their public playing. 
 Even then they go on in secret : he has learned by 
 this time to play them in this subtler way, just as 
 one learns to read without muttering the words. 
 It is doubtful, indeed, whether, with many 
 people, the great game of make-believe ever 
 stops. It is doubtless but a pseudo-self that 
 he brings into being, and later he will slough it 
 off, perhaps. But this is apparently the primary 
 and practical way by which a child establishes 
 connection with the outer, developed world. It 
 stands for him as a medium of interpretation, this 
 bound-up collection of characters simple and 
 
 50
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 fantastic father and mother and pirate king. It is 
 a various-noted voice, by listening to which he 
 himself learns to speak. It is the glass in which, 
 seeing something he may still call himself, he begins 
 by comparison to see what other people are. It is 
 the dictionary that he looks into for the meaning 
 of the strange things he hears. It is, indeed, his 
 first effort in education. 
 
 But does a genuine self necessarily grow up 
 within this false skin ? For an answer one might 
 ask again how genuine a self must be ? Original 
 it cannot be. There is no fresh creation. And 
 how great is the difference between borrowing 
 spiritual qualities from one's ancestors, as one bor- 
 rows their physical traits, and acquiring them by a 
 conscious effort of imagination from the general 
 store of the world? It is true enough that to 
 play nothing but the game of make-believe all 
 one's life is to remain puerilely ineffective. But 
 that is not to say that the child's method, 
 become acceptedly self-conscious, the historical 
 and critical sense brought also into play with 
 it, is incapable of development to a wider and 
 more serious use. 
 
 What are the obligations that dawn upon the 
 adolescent ? As we have seen, not merely to 
 develop himself as an individual, but, concurrently 
 now, to adapt himself as a member of society. 
 And into what, by a parallel process through the 
 ages, have generations of artists turned that make- 
 believe game of the child but the complex, co- 
 operative art of the drama, this epitome, as lively 
 as art can contrive, of society itself ? Self-expres- 
 sion therefore need be by no means the end of its 
 educational use to us ; for even the beginning 
 though we practise it almost as simply as the child
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 plays his game involves recognition that the self, 
 if it is to be intelligibly expressive at all, must reflect 
 and interpret, as well as express and assert. Study 
 of the drama, indeed, should properly begin for the 
 adolescent not from the self-expressive, but from 
 the exactly opposite standpoint. Let the boy or 
 girl and the man or woman for that matter 
 continue by all means their exercises in expressing 
 and asserting themselves. It is as useful to en- 
 sure such a suppleness as to keep up our golf or 
 our tennis. But from the study of drama we are 
 to demand much else and much more. 
 
 The teaching How is psychology taught nowadays ? The subject 
 of psychology i s admitted, apparently, under one guise or another, 
 and at some remove, into up-to-date curricula. 
 One hears of laboratories dread word ! contain- 
 ing instruments by which the sense of taste, smell, 
 hearing (including, one trusts, the sense of humour, 
 which should surely occasionally abound among the 
 victims of this spiritual vivisection) can be meti- 
 culously measured. In all earnestness they are, 
 no doubt, wonderful places ; but the despised 
 artist must be forgiven if he takes a small chance 
 to poke fun at the deified man of science. If, 
 however, the teaching in schools, and the training 
 of children generally, with its undoubted demand 
 for what one must dare to call the common sense of 
 psychology, are to depend upon the degree of under- 
 standing of these frigid complexities that can be 
 gained by the casual student, then the joke has another 
 aspect and becomes, indeed, a poor one. As well 
 regulate one's daily life by a text-book of algebraic 
 formulae. And small wonder if hard-headed author- 
 ities call out " Away with such nonsense " ; though 
 a smaller wonder, alas, if they cling to it just be- 
 cause it all does sound so scientific, and is so very 
 52
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 difficult to understand. But does not the essence of 
 such psychology as we average human beings need 
 dwell more accessibly in a good play or novel than 
 in any amount of parrotted repetition (for that, 
 half the time, is what it comes to) of scientific 
 teminology ? Would not the scientists therefore be 
 wise to consider what use can be made of the inter- 
 pretative arts as the channel for whatever practical 
 teaching they think can be founded upon their re- 
 searches ? One hesitates, of course, to suggest them 
 as aid j to the researches themselves. 
 
 But, the plain man may ask, need psychology be 
 taught ? If we could make a vital study of it 
 above all, perhaps, if we could get rid of the name 
 the answer, surely, is that there could be few 
 more important for the making of good citizens. 
 Democracy will not continue to exist upon the 
 mere basis of the ballot-box ; so both its ill-wishers 
 and its well-wishers predict. Unless the men and 
 women of the self-governing nations can learn a 
 little more of the art of self-government than resides 
 in the making of a cross now and then (the one- 
 time symbol of their illiteracy !) against the name 
 of the demagogue, who, upon the platform or in 
 the press, will descend to the lowest level of political 
 indecency to cajole it from them then the system 
 is righteously doomed, rotten before it is ripe. The 
 key to self-government, surely to its very beginning 
 is self-understanding, which again must mean, in 
 terms of a community, mutual understanding. Have 
 we no use, then, for psychology, or to find the 
 simpler sounding term the knowledge of our souls ? 
 
 The need for such high-sounding lore in every- Democracy, 
 day matters may not at first appear. But, however *~ newi ~ 
 we limit our understanding of democracy to its ^Tf whole art 
 being government merely by the consent of the offiction 
 
 53 '
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 governed, we yet do find ourselves making pretty 
 constantly all sorts of would-be knowledgeable 
 decisions, though we lack the concrete knowledge 
 that is needed to make them, and always must. 
 Read through a week's newspapers and note the 
 things that are being done if one is a British 
 subject, being done all over the world in one's 
 name. We have necessarily delegated the doing; 
 but wherever a point of principle is involved, 
 or a precedent is created, the responsibility will 
 return upon us. For this we prepare ourselves 
 by currently approving and condemning. When we 
 cease to do either, or when we continue for long to do 
 nothing but approve, we are on the way to a moral 
 abdication of our power. It is idle to protest that 
 we will abide by fixed principles of right or wrong, 
 or by the isms of a party creed. We need to 
 interpret these in the terms of each difficulty's 
 solution as much as do the mandatories of our 
 will ; though, truly, we have but to be wise 
 after the events, and that is sometimes just a little 
 easier. The task, however, seems beyond us, and 
 the newspaper comes to our assistance. It not only 
 tells us what, but why and wherefore besides. It 
 will conjugate for us the entire verb of any possible 
 occurence. We have but to define our principles 
 and the paper that owes allegiance to them will do all 
 the rest. Or if we prefer we may first choose our 
 newspaper and then abide by its opinions whatever 
 they turn out to be. This is easier for us, and for 
 the newspaper, too, which can then render current 
 history more pleasing by reversing the former process 
 (all psychological processes are apparently capable of 
 reversal) and bringing principles into accord with 
 our vicarious successes of policy. 
 
 But some people see almost a moral danger 
 
 54
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 here. They would prefer that a newspaper should 
 present the uncoloured facts alone. That sounds 
 excellent. It seems to betoken unbending in- 
 tegrity. But how procure an uncoloured version 
 of any fact, and should we be better off even 
 then ? That Mrs. Jones died at eleven last 
 night is bare fact, and may need no com- 
 ment ; the cause of her death should it matter 
 may always be a point of opinion. To say that 
 there is a boiler-makers' strike in Northumberland 
 or a rising amongst the Mahsuds sounds informa- 
 tive : but is it ? The average man asks for ex- 
 planation, and into that bias inevitably creeps. 
 A factual education, which would enable one to 
 cope explanatorily and opinionatively with the 
 happenings of the British Empire, would involve 
 something very like learning the Encyclopoedia 
 Britannica by heart, would be about as practicable 
 and about as educative. 
 
 If then we are not to believe all we are told Qualijica 
 and yet have only what we are told to rely tions and 
 on, is there a way out of the dilemma ? This tem P tatlon * 
 same newspaper, perhaps, does, though somewhat : * e r 
 confusedly, point us to it. For the modern 
 newspaper interprets its news. Confused and 
 inappropriate the method as now practised 
 undoubtedly is ; for who, reading with an in- 
 nocent mind an account of any matter " by our 
 special correspondent," is to say where the 
 plain tale of facts ends and their interpreta- 
 tion begins, and how much special pleading 
 does not cover it all ? The involved falsity is 
 neatly given away in the office slang, which calls 
 every recounting of news " a story." But if 
 the medium were properly dissected and honestly 
 used falsity need not invalidate it. There is a 
 
 55
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 science of plain statement; but interpretation and 
 persuasion are arts, and no intrusion of the one 
 method on the other should ever be countenanced. 
 Narrative will necessarily thread and rethread the 
 border line. The skill of it will lie in never travelling 
 over either territory upon false pretences. Now it 
 should be quite feasible, and it is the obvious duty 
 of a newspaper, to differentiate sharply between its 
 use of the three forms. And it should be quite 
 possible for us to discover, by the light of our own 
 critical faculty, when any one of them if it is being 
 straightforwardly used is being grossly misused. 
 With the pitching of a too tall story we 
 readily reject its offences to our common sense, 
 even too readily sometimes but we prefer to err 
 in safety, keeping our most precious possession 
 unsullied. And overdone advocacy will often de- 
 feat its own ends with us. But by the fictional 
 form we are too apt to be hypnotized and hopelessly 
 undone. 
 
 What is our remedy ? Useless to demand that 
 the fictional form shall not be used in such circum- 
 stances. The method combines too many attrac- 
 tions for writer and reader both, and apart from 
 attractiveness it is in many cases the only practic- 
 able way of conveying news. It exemplifies in- 
 deed, in another aspect, the democratic principle of 
 representation. " Our correspondent " at Wash- 
 ington or Tokio, " our special correspondent " sent 
 to report upon a conference, a strike or a prize- 
 fight, is required not to speak on our behalf, but to 
 listen, observe, and interpret, and that he may do 
 so in full measure we accord him just that individual 
 freedom that is claimed in a parliament. His task 
 demands honesty of purpose, self-criticism, selective 
 judgment and great executive skill. There are times 
 56
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 when bare statement is the only effective thing, 
 times when sheer advocacy based on aeccepted fact 
 is all that is needed, and these paths are at least 
 plain. But the knowledge which sifts truth from 
 untruth, the imagination which can vivify without 
 falsifying a narrative, the tact which can weave 
 happening, impression, and opinion without con- 
 fusion, the ability, moreover, to evolve with some 
 swiftness from the process a readable piece of copy 
 such are the qualities currently demanded of 
 the responsible journalist to-day. Equally useless 
 to expect that he will cultivate them without our 
 critical assistance. We cannot apply the spur of it 
 directly, perhaps; though at one remove the editor, 
 keeping a watch on his circulation, will be keen 
 enough to note our distaste for his stunts if it checks 
 the flow of our pennies. But the indirect method, 
 though a slower, is a better one, by which we educate 
 ourselves in an appreciative understanding of this art 
 at its best and towards its worst aspect need only culti- 
 vate in ourselves the crass ability not to be taken in by 
 a pack of lies. We are at the mercy of interpreters 
 to-day, be they statesmen or journalists, speaking 
 for us or to us. We must at all costs get a hold over 
 them. By the stretch of our own knowledge we 
 cannot out-compass them, neither can we neglect 
 the service they render us, with honest intentions 
 as a rule, though its quality be poor. But their 
 inevitable choice of an artistic medium of advocacy 
 and communication does provide us, in our turn, 
 with a touchstone by which we can test the worth of 
 what they say and do and are. For art is of universal 
 heritage. It will not be an instrument of super- 
 human perfection that we can fashion, of course, 
 but we can make it quite effective enough to defeat 
 the demagogue and the yellow journalist, or at the 
 
 57
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 very least to set them such high standards of the 
 cajolery and deception necessary to defeat it as will 
 compel them to be much abler practitioners of their 
 craft than they are at present. Now ability may not 
 connote virtue, but it is the possessor of the one 
 that is most often shamed into a wish to acquire the 
 other : to what else should he devote his surplus 
 energy ? Criticism is stimulus. Most men would 
 rather be good than be found out. 
 
 The public's How is this faculty of discernment to be educated 
 self-defence in a man ? We must remember that with each one 
 of us there are for practical purposes two sorts of 
 truth, upon which we set very different values. For 
 each one of us the boundaries differ ; we shift them 
 for ourselves from time to time. But tell the 
 average man that the river Volga falls into the 
 Black Sea. He may, upon general grounds, be 
 slightly annoyed with you later when he finds out 
 that it doesn't ; rather more so if you've led him to 
 make a particular fool of himself on the point. But he 
 doesn't, as we say, take it to heart: if he thinks you 
 misled him for no ill-purpose he counts your sin 
 against accuracy venial. Tell him, however, that 
 his wife no longer loves him, that his child is dying, 
 or his country in danger, and he behaves very 
 differently indeed. You have attacked, probably, 
 a vital interest, and before he takes action, before 
 even he can bring himself to believe or disbelieve you, 
 he will sound all the appropriate emotions of which 
 he is capable, will try to bring all his past experience 
 in such matters to bear, will colour the evidence 
 presented with one coat after another of suspicion or 
 prejudice. He will go behind the actual evidence, 
 moreover, and colour with feelings of like or dislike 
 the personal character of everyone concerned 
 especially your character. And, finally, if his 
 
 58
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 capacity for genuine emotion and direct thought 
 last out, if he have not taken refuge in the formulae 
 of either, when he comes to a decision he will make 
 it, not in recognition of the truth as it appears to you 
 or the rest of the world (that will be an empty for- 
 mula), but in the strength of his own innermost con- 
 viction of it. This is the only basis on which, in 
 a matter touching him closely, he will dare proceed 
 to action.* This truth is not accuracy, but some- 
 thing fuller if less precise. Let us remark that to 
 reach, this conviction a man goes through all the 
 essential processes of constructing a work of art. 
 And, by such means, in the light of consequences 
 and if he have any power of self-criticism, he 
 educates himself in perception. It does not fol- 
 low, of course, that men, taking action on such 
 grounds, will do strict justice to themselves or 
 to others, but where their affections are concerned 
 what other course can they pursue and hope to 
 sustain ? They may apprehend conduct abstractly 
 finer, but how commit themselves to it ? For to 
 take any action of personal consequence unsanc- 
 tioned by the full exercise of one's own thoughts 
 and feelings is to abrogate one's responsible 
 humanity. At the worst, self-betrayal is the only 
 tolerable sort. 
 
 The next step in perception will be the discovery The artistic 
 that these processes of thought and feeling, alike in synthesis. 
 their genuineness and in their tendency to take 
 refuge in formulas, differ very little as between man 
 and man. The difference, that is to say, will be of 
 intensity (for men are robust, febrile, or weak 
 
 * We are always asking " Can you convince me ? " " I know 
 nothing of the facts, of course, but the man himself doesn't convince 
 me " is a frequent phrase. " That story doesn't carry conviction " 
 says the magistrate . . . which generally implies that it will. 
 
 59
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 emotionally as physically) or of scope (self-pre- 
 cipiency has come less easily to some than to others). 
 But if Smith has developed any genuine feelings at 
 all over the death of his only son he may be pretty 
 sure that Brown's, on the like occasion, were much 
 the same ; and it goes without saying that their 
 formulae of expression will have differed very little. 
 If Smith goes into battle himself the chances are 
 his sensations do not differ essentially from those of 
 the man next him. Young people and continuingly 
 self-centred natures are not over ready to recognize 
 this. It seems to derogate from their perfect in- 
 dividuality. But this illusion is worth losing, they 
 discover, for the gain of a power to apply an inward 
 test of the truth of any tale of battle or bereave- 
 ment that is told them. 
 
 But, granted the wish to tell a tale honestly, does 
 genuineness of feeling promote accuracy of observa- 
 tion to begin with ? Not of itself ; but inferentially 
 yes, more often than not. To be trying to tell, if 
 not the whole truth about one's feelings, yet nothing 
 but the truth involves such a ruthless discipline as 
 cannot easily be broken minute by minute for the 
 sake of a conscious manipulation of facts. Here, 
 however, the question of education assumes import- 
 ance. For the third step in perception is the dis- 
 covery that, apart from their subject, the processes of 
 thought and feeling by which men achieve convic- 
 tion are so akin as to be deducible one from another, 
 recognized in strange dress, and, to a degree, 
 imagined without experience. It is quite possible 
 to acquire enough general knowledge of the work- 
 ing of interpretative consciousness to be able to 
 apply test after test of the genuineness and 
 thus inferentially of the objective truth of a story 
 every circumstance of which may be unfamiliar. 
 60
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 It will not be a scientific test, of course ; ques- 
 tions of science should not be brought within the 
 scope of such a method. But we need not com- 
 plain of its subjection to human fallibility, as it is 
 to the scientifically incalculable stuff of humanity 
 that the method is applied. We must take it for 
 what we are worth. Instruments of an indis- 
 criminating and soulless accuracy we cannot make 
 ourselves ; vehicles of a selective truth we can. Truth 
 may here be a misnomer. Philosophers, severely 
 contemplating the absolute, will condemn such a 
 use of the precious word, but we need one that will 
 stand for the utmost attainable. 
 
 And where shall we turn for its exemplifying 
 if not to the great artists in life's interpretation and 
 the critics who set them their standard ? An artist 
 will in this sense be a truth-teller and a truth-maker : 
 that if he is to picture men anew to themselves he 
 must have a keener observation and a nicer sense of 
 selection than commonly serves. Though he deals 
 with mimic circumstances, they will not be of neces- 
 sity less actual to us than any others outside our 
 experience. For his characters to carry conviction 
 he must first have convinced himself of the truth 
 of them, which will range between the extent of his 
 vision and the limits of his expressional power. We 
 may hold that under conditions of his sole choosing 
 an able man can bamboozle us sadly, and certainly 
 the power of an artist to impose fiction as fact is great. 
 Defoe specialized in doing so. It was said laughingly 
 of Balzac that his Paris came out of his head, and 
 Parisians had to set to work imitating it. But 
 this does not invalidate its educative work to us. 
 Robinson Crusoe and Pere Goriot are true in our 
 present sense of the word. For the artist can- 
 not play us false against our will. The medium 
 
 61
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 he must work in be it colour, form, music, or 
 words can be only an extension and refinement 
 of some natural power of our own. We are 
 fellow craftsmen all, and artists willy-nilly, every 
 one of us. And the better practised we are the 
 further can we range with the master-craftsman 
 both appreciatively and questioningly too. It is 
 indeed as much our business to make common cause 
 with the critic, who, approaching receptively what 
 the artist has dealt with expressively, matches him 
 at the game. 
 
 Now all this might seem unimportant enough, 
 no doubt, if the fictional form, the fictional method, 
 were not in multifarious use beyond the bounds 
 of make-believe. Of such a method of conducting 
 human affairs we may approve or disapprove, but 
 social history has always been deep-dyed in it, and 
 the elaborate mechanism of intercourse which be- 
 longs to modern life has tended to increase its sway. 
 One of the great problems of democratic-imperial 
 government is the bringing "home" to the un- 
 instructed mind of strange fact and distant folk. 
 The lively, simple, immemorial means of personal 
 story telling cannot be neglected. Why, how the 
 even simpler art of picture-making now that the 
 cinema has given it fresh attraction is being 
 pressed into the service of such education ; and by 
 quite serious people, too. Things, it is true, are 
 brought within the scope of these easier methods 
 that never should be. Upon questions of pure 
 science we should not have to be warned to allow 
 for picturesque statement and the personal equation. 
 But in general it seems inevitable that the further 
 we move from strictly measureable matters towards 
 the contests of which our still incalculable humanity 
 is itself the field this will be the game to be 
 62
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 played. Therefore we may as well learn to play it 
 intelligently. 
 
 To the mass of people this power and opportunity The popular 
 is recognizable enough in such a directly interpreta- attitude 
 tive art as story writing, if one may judge by the to ^ ar ^ *- 
 fascinated credulous respect they show mingled, ter ? retatwe 
 no doubt, with a little distrust, as such respect is apt 
 to be for its accredited practitioners. To simple 
 souls the novelist wears something of the aspect of a 
 tribal magician; and "Jones write a play 1 Non- 
 sense, I knew his father," has its roots in the wonder 
 at an almost supernatural achievement. So many 
 of us carry the weight of that uncultured self- 
 consciousness which is affliction rather than gift. 
 This can account, if nothing else will, for the 
 morbid attraction and repulsion which the theatre 
 exercises. The horror with which actors were 
 wont to be regarded had a spice of awe. There is, 
 in fact, general recognition that the artist wields 
 a dangerous power. 
 
 The staying, if not the satisfaction, of the appetite 
 for fictional art is nowadays mostly sought in the 
 novel; indeed, the very word "fiction" has been ap- 
 propriated to its use. The form has obvious con- 
 venience for leisure moments ;* it makes, as a rule, 
 little demand upon critical attention, calls for little 
 pre-knowledge of a subject, and, most importantly, 
 the reader may enjoy his roused emotion in privacy, 
 a boon indeed, though a false one, to the shy and 
 inexpressive soul. But there is more in it, perhaps, 
 than this ; more even than a positive desire to 
 
 * Train journeys, morning and evening, and the better lighting of 
 railway carriages, are probably responsible for two-thirds of the cir- 
 culation of "fiction," whether bound in cloth, in magazine covers, 
 or masquerading in newspapers which could not (or think they 
 could not) get their news read in any less appetising form. 
 
 63
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 escape for an hour into a world of added values and 
 wider sanctions. There is dormant in nearly every 
 one of us the ambition to share this power that 
 can so transmute the common things of life. Fic- 
 tion does not so often raise it to the point of emula- 
 tion, for the habit of writing is new enough to be 
 still a severe strain to most people. But see how 
 the older, directer art of the theatre seizes upon any- 
 one who is not steeled against its influence. It 
 may be only a childish, foolish longing to show off, 
 but who has not " seen themselves " upon the 
 stage, or if one is physically fitter for Falstaff than 
 Romeo, or more positive than reflexive, upon the 
 platform at least ? Even so, however, the ambition 
 may still not push people beyond the confines of 
 their secret mind. It is within it they are content 
 to exercise the unforgotten childish faculty of make- 
 believe, strengthened, broadened a little by real, 
 sometimes but by fictional experience. But even then, 
 so timid is mankind, they would rather play with 
 images safely and far removed from likeness to their 
 everyday life ; for they feel too unskilled, too un- 
 sure, to venture their personal fortunes, even in 
 thought, within viable distance of the beaten 
 track. But upon everyone at times situations 
 are forced in which they must play an indi- 
 vidual part. Then see how at once they turn to art 
 for aid. It is doubtful if any articulate love-making 
 would get done at all had not the poets provided 
 phraseology. And what, further, of the occasions 
 we name them to our shame when, called 
 on for emotion and unable to respond, we turn, 
 unconsciously, to our " novel " experience, and say: 
 ' Well, this at any rate is how I ought to feel ? " 
 And, be it noted, we commit ourselves thereby to 
 many a false step. For a life whose emotions are so 
 64
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 far reflected fiction that experience passes without 
 response or interpretation builds up a character com- 
 plete in falsity. Not an unworthy falsity, we may pro- 
 test, for our novel reading may have been pleasantly 
 innocuous. But if we apply the hard, high standard 
 of artistry to the matter, an arbitrary reaction to 
 an artificial stimulus becomes the unworthiest thing 
 of all, and the resulting emptiness of virtue, hollowly 
 resounding, the deepest damnation. If art, though, 
 is the reflex of good life, what other standard 
 should we apply ? Which of us, after all, can care 
 to own to a character pieced together from scraps of 
 even the very best novels ? Not that art, if we rightly 
 respond to it, makes any such claims of slavery 
 upon us. As its aim is to interpret, not to create, 
 illusion, so its end is not to hold us by its own 
 sufficiency, but, nurturing us, even in its own despite 
 to set us free. It is nonsense to say that when the 
 glamour of the fairy tale, the theatre, of our first 
 emotions when we hear fine music, has gone en- 
 joyment goes too, for appreciation is only then be- 
 ginning. By education we lose, no doubt, some 
 chances of unalloyed pleasure. But our keener 
 discernment not only of the qualities of story, play, 
 or symphony, but of the intentions of their inter- 
 pretation, more than compensates for the loss. 
 
 From this it would seem to follow that we get 
 most stimulus from the arts that call upon us for 
 a constant, lively, critical attention. For educa- 
 tional purposes, then, they are surely the best. 
 A picture makes but little noise in the world ; 
 you must keep very actively keen and sensitive 
 not to pass it by acquiescently. But even after 
 dinner you cannot sit through a symphony without 
 knowing whether you like it or not. Take up a 
 novel in the evening. You may read it, or skip 
 
 6
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 half of it, or throw it aside ; you feel under no 
 obligations to its inanimation. But play-going is a 
 social act, and makes demands upon you that are 
 direct and incidental, both. 
 
 Granted, then apart from the benefit of study- 
 ing particular arts our first need for training in 
 this fundamental artistry of self-realization and 
 expression, the case for music will be strong and the 
 case that we are now more concerned to argue 
 for the drama against the novel very strong. 
 
 Theatre There would be no need to urge the case as against 
 v. the novel if it did not, by force of circumstances, 
 
 Novel so eas ily hold the field, and if the theatre were not 
 on the whole one vast missed opportunity. Com- 
 pare the two arts to-day, and, popularity apart, the 
 novel is at its best. The theatre, if not at its worst 
 artistically, has yet its economic foot stuck fast in a 
 slough. But in the first are strains of weakness, 
 more than those we have already pitched on ; in 
 the other, of great strength. 
 
 For one thing the novel is under the curse 
 that sort of curse to which uncalculated blessings 
 turn of cheap printing. Man, having found 
 out how to make cheap paper and marvellous 
 printing-machines, lets himself be caught in the 
 meshes of the big industries that result. It is in 
 their interests that the paper must now be made 
 and the machine kept going, and art is called into 
 service upon the industry's terms. The public, it 
 seems, can be brought to absorb a vast and varied 
 amount of " fresh-and-fresh " reading. It is to 
 this saturation point, therefore, that the captains 
 of the industry naturally strive. Publishers and 
 editors give, no doubt, what consideration they 
 can to quality of output, but the obligation that 
 predominates with them is to do a certain quantity 
 66
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 of trade. Now the quality of the world's literary 
 talent has certainly not increased in the ratio of its 
 mechanical power to print, bind, and sell books, or 
 of the multiplication of people for whom, reading 
 being a comparative novelty, any reading passes 
 muster. Therefore the average quality of the out- 
 put has let us not say fallen, but certainly tended 
 to adjust itself to the conditions that make for in- 
 dustrial success. We have a smooth supply of 
 rapidly readable and that more may be demanded 
 as rapidly forgettable stuff. The average novel 
 calls for neither assent nor dissent on the part of 
 the reader. It is a harmless, agreeable companion. 
 It is not stimulant : an art which has private reading 
 almost invariably as the basis of its appreciation 
 is the least likely to be. Reading and writing, it 
 must be remembered, are, for artistic purposes, 
 nothing but labour-saving devices, and therefore 
 very subject to abuse once an unconscious use of 
 them has been acquired. If art is concerned with the 
 operation of human spirit upon human spirit, through 
 the medium of an amalgam of sense and brain, vary- 
 ingly constituted, but each a necessary constituent, 
 then purely mechanical intervention must always 
 have an impoverishing effect in so far as it places 
 expression and impression beyond the immediate 
 control of giver and receiver. Poets justly com- 
 plain that the printing press debases their art ; 
 fortunately the habit of testing poems by the living 
 voice is of long survival. Would it be better if 
 we learned to enjoy music solely by the reading of 
 scores, and for the sake of that mental achievement 
 let our sense of hearing and the effect, direct and 
 indirect, upon our emotions sink into atrophy ? 
 
 We must think, too, if we are thinking of the 
 novel educationally, of the moral hypnosis which is 
 
 67
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 latent in solitary and silent enjoyment of the narra- 
 tive form. We are conscious of this danger as it 
 affects our consideration of facts, and at present, 
 perhaps, are in some reaction against it. It is said 
 that the Russian peasant believes that whatever he 
 sees in print must, in virtue of the printing, be true. 
 His late dose of education, practical and other, may, 
 however, have roused him from this attractive de- 
 lusion. We, with our book-learning just a little 
 staler upon the crowd of us, though with the smell 
 of the printer's ink still sickly in our nostrils and 
 strange after the farmyard whiffs of our racial boy- 
 hood, are more in train to a state of conviction that 
 whatever we read is, other evidence to the contrary 
 lacking, a lie. But whether we yield or rebel it is 
 useless to blame the hypnotist. It may be that the 
 so common use of printing, and the ephemeral 
 character of most things printed, do inevitably 
 breed away in those in control their sense of artistic 
 responsibility, and that moral responsibility tends 
 naturally to follow it into desuetude, for the two are 
 finally one. All the more reason, then, that we 
 should train our critical perceptions upon other 
 ground. -The advantages of the narrative form 
 are many and not to be denied. It can play, at the 
 writer's will, all round a subject, unfettered by 
 any unity of time and place, allusive, argumentative, 
 didactic. But in this very freedom lies the tempta- 
 tion to the writer and the danger to us. Our 
 relations with him do seem so direct and intimate. 
 We, carried away, have forgotten the mechanical 
 bond, the human distance. Has he ? He has 
 his conscience to depend on, little else. If 
 he is writing of matters of a knowledge ac- 
 cepted by him and his readers the double 
 bulwark may sufficiently brace him. But when 
 68
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 he begins to roam over the always disputable tracts 
 of the imagination it is much to expect of a man 
 that he be aware, sentence by sentence, of readers, 
 keen and critical to the exact measure of his own 
 creative power. But this and no less is what he 
 needs. And even the most finely developed literary 
 conscience is no good substitute, for, being but a 
 reflex of his own creative mind, it will fasten upon 
 favourite virtues and vices, so that virtues will grow 
 hypertrophied and vices (we must be tender to our 
 own weaknesses ; no one else will) be cockered 
 up and, by careful cultivation, given the importance 
 of virtue. There are instances enough of writers 
 of individuality who, isolated by neglect or unim- 
 pressed by criticism, have by simple over-exercise 
 of conscience so turned in upon themselves, so 
 postured before this glass, as to end in a set self- 
 caricature. Art (which is in itself a reflex) cannot 
 exist alone. It needs the continual reminder of an 
 audience. That it mainly gets and suffers under 
 a stupid audience is a curable evil. The clown 
 tumbling in the circus at least functions more 
 naturally than does the novelist, proof-correcting in 
 solitude. 
 
 Art needs also the discipline of form the only 
 imposition of law to which the artist may submit. 
 Nor is this necessarily a limitation. Form is the 
 equivalent of a code of manners by which performer 
 and audience are at once put on terms with each 
 other.* In rigidity it may equally become a 
 
 * Notice Sir Harry Lauder, whose capital asset is his ability to put 
 his audience at their ease. There could be no more simple material 
 than his, and one might suppose that his every effort would be to 
 invest it with variety . . . not only of content, but of form also. On the 
 contrary, he carefully stops short at the bare assumption of a fresh 
 character. This he will elaborate. But and just because perhaps 
 
 6 9
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 nuisance. But as manners are the framework of 
 a free society, so is a friendly agreement upon 
 form a necessary basis for the social arts. And the 
 directly interpretative arts of music, dancing, story- 
 telling are, in their design and essence, social. 
 That cheap printing, then, has ousted them and has 
 brought the novel, not only to every fireside, but 
 into more solitary corners, has its disadvantages 
 from a cultural standpoint. And just as a religion 
 sustained mainly upon reading of the Bible grows 
 to be uncomfortably concerned with individual 
 salvation, so a social culture fostered by overdoses 
 of fiction tends to an emotional and spiritual ob- 
 scurantism. Appetite is spoiled by silent indul- 
 gence. One grows too timid to put oneself to the 
 test of expression and obstinate in the degree of 
 one's tacit inexperience. 
 
 The good Wherein, now, can the drama better the novel 
 audience as an imaginative stimulant ? To begin with, it is, 
 willy-nilly, a social art in a sense that the novel can- 
 not be. The defect of this quality, certainly, is that 
 it lends itself to mob appeal : claptrap is its own 
 word though no longer its peculiar stigma. But 
 mob is only social gathering degenerate, unwieldy, 
 or more hopefully viewed uneducated and there- 
 fore capable of development into a self-respecting or- 
 ganism. The psychology of audiences is too involved 
 a subject for us to deal with it here at large. But no one 
 would deny that they differ in quality. They differ, 
 an actor will tell us, in their attitude towards the 
 same play and the same company, from city to city 
 
 he must reserve for each new audience a measure of spontaneity 
 he preserves a constant form to work within, of entrance, movement, 
 exit, final glance at the gallery. It is all as rigidly conventional as 
 a Greek tragedy He bounds his audience's expectations, that is to 
 say, into the exact space where he chooses to fulfil them. 
 70
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 and night to night. Nor does their quality at all 
 depend on their size, or their class, or the prices 
 they pay. It is not a very calculable matter, for 
 most audiences to-day come together haphazard. 
 But imagine a panel of from ten to twenty thousand 
 people from which the great majority of a theatre's 
 audience for any one performance would be drawn. 
 Is it fantastic to suppose that by constant, though 
 varying, association in bodies of a thousand more 
 or less, to form a part, though but a passive 
 and surrounding part, of such a highly-vitalized, 
 single-purposed organization as is the acting com- 
 pany of a theatre, they would not develop a corporate 
 spirit ? Admit this possibility and the theatre's 
 pre-eminence among the social arts is admitted also. 
 Music might run it hard, but no other. It remains 
 to discover how best to cultivate this aspect of it. 
 
 The stimulus that a good audience must be to the 
 art of the theatre will not be denied. As audience, 
 we may not get the plays and the acting we desire, 
 for, having no corporate spirit in the matter, our 
 desires are inarticulate ; they are, perhaps, hardly 
 formed. But we do, in art as in government, get what 
 we passively deserve. Even active negation would be 
 more helpful. There will be great hope for the theatre 
 on the day that a play is soundly hissed for its artistic 
 demerits. And who, being a loyal servant of his 
 art, but would wish, not for a pit of kings they, 
 of all people in these constitutional days, must take 
 what they are given without grumbling nor even 
 for a front row of his fellow-dramatists, since the expert 
 talker is mostly a bad listener, but for an audience 
 trained in the art's understanding, with taste 
 sharpened by experience. Who is so sure of his 
 own self-judgment that he may despise this test 
 of his work ? The theatre, as we have said, retains
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 as much as in its developed complexity it may of 
 art's primitive strength in the direct impact of 
 human personalities that is involved. The bard 
 chanting his Homer in a Dorian hall was a degree, 
 though but a degree * directer in his appeal. The 
 loss and divergence which ensues upon introduction 
 of the third factor, the play, finds compensation, 
 surely, and more, in the added interest, the richer 
 complexity of emotion now made possible. The spec- 
 tator of Hamlet, brought to a mimic intimacy with 
 this little world, a part of it yet not a part as he yields 
 himself to the influence of the performance or criti- 
 cises the matter of the play, typifies, too, not inaptly, 
 the sentient citizen of a more sympathetic, maybe, 
 but a more detachedly knowledgeable age. 
 
 And drama holds the discipline of form. This 
 is thrust upon the dramatist by the necessity of a 
 defined relation with the actors ; upon the actors 
 by their need of an understanding with the audience ; 
 the audience, too, are accepting from the curtain's 
 rise a somewhat strict convention. None of the 
 parties to the completing of a play by performance 
 can travel very far without the agreement of the 
 others. Actors and author must have agreed in great 
 detail upon both content and form. The appearance 
 of this agreement must for each occasion be com- 
 plete, though its extent will be neither constant nor 
 very definable. The simpler phases of the under- 
 standing between actors and audience, as exemplified 
 in language and gesture, are so implicit as commonly 
 to escape notice.f But this relation is capable of a 
 
 * See Murray's " Rise of the Greek Epic." 
 
 f But let an Englishman watch a play in Sicily. He may or may 
 not understand the spoken language, but he will at once be conscious 
 how the meaning of gesture is passing him by, plain though it be 
 to his native neighbours. 
 72
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 high degree of development. How do we acquire 
 that unconscious knowledge by which the minds 
 and moods of familiar friends are opened to us ? 
 They use only the words that strangers use, but by 
 reason of a hundred gradations of tone, turns of 
 phrase, by looks and gestures, the meaning is 
 doubled, trebled, intensified out of all likeness. 
 It is not the mere fruit of experience, a reading 
 into the present of an accumulated past. Years 
 of external familiarity with a man will yet leave 
 him a stranger ; and, too truly, one's knowledge of 
 actors and their work may, by experience, come to 
 nothing but extremest boredom. But in the rela- 
 tion between the characters of a play as stated and 
 clarified by the dramatist, as interpreted and vivified 
 by the actors, there is a parallel to the bond of 
 friendship. It is reducible, if not to rule, at least to 
 constancy in terms of art. And the audience, further, 
 by appreciation of the actors' work upon the play, 
 by their own assumption, moreover, of a direct 
 intellectual interest in the play, can establish with 
 the actors a relation of imaginative intimacy which 
 by its very limitation, its de-personalization, its dis- 
 interestedness actors and audience being related 
 to each other only by their interest in the play 
 is the more informing. And it is upon the possi- 
 bilities of this collaboration, little explored as yet, 
 that, as we shall hope to show, the theatre may best 
 base its claim to consideration as an educative art. 
 It has others. Something is to be said for its 
 ability to combine so many sister arts in its service. 
 Music, painting, dancing, literature find a common 
 occasion, and should find a common purpose, in the 
 theatre. Its educational claims as a vehicle of 
 physical self-expression are admitted ; and there is 
 a case to be made not a bad one for the purely 
 
 73
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 educational use of its literature. For some study 
 and practice in the construction of plays and the 
 close-knitting of their dialogue is, perhaps, as useful 
 a discipline in the shaping of thoughts and their 
 putting upon paper as " composition," Latin or 
 Greek verse, or precis writing. 
 
 The educa- But, leaving all this, let us see how the "larger 
 tional use of collaboration " as we may call it of audience with 
 drama actors and dramatist may be built up. We can 
 begin with the apparently simple plan by which a 
 body of men and women sit round a table and 
 mutually study a play. Not to discuss theories of 
 play-writing or acting or production. Such things 
 form, no doubt, an excellent mental background ; 
 and in this relation they might have, perhaps, about 
 the value that scenery will have to a play's acting. 
 But what we are after now is a dose of this 
 primary virtue of the dramatic form, the direct 
 impact of one human individuality upon another, 
 clarified and conventionalized, by the assumption 
 and interpretation of character, diversified and en- 
 riched by the side-glancing that even the smallest 
 elaboration of a play involves with its interweaving 
 of other interests; and the final development of some 
 unity of idea, some conviction. There are possibly 
 fifty different ways by which this study can be con- 
 ducted and as many degrees of its elaboration. 
 But the essential thing is to keep it upon these 
 terms of impersonative interpretation, for only 
 while in a state of artistic life will a play yield us any- 
 thing of its peculiar quality. With the breath out 
 of its body, so to speak, it is nothing but a con- 
 stricted if interesting form of literature, worthy, 
 no doubt, of the learned footnotes that cling to line 
 after line of its classic examples. How often, though, 
 are these but the barrenest wrangling upon ques- 
 
 74
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 tions that would answer themselves if the play were 
 raised from its tomb of printed paper ? They are 
 appropriate only to that ghost of the play, haunt- 
 ing thus disembodied the dry mind of the solitary 
 scholar ! 
 
 Not that the study need aim, with the usual 
 expedition, at a performance of the play. That 
 would at once involve us in the penalty under which 
 the professional actor now lies. He may talk about 
 studying a part or a play, but his concern with it is 
 really very different. His work will rapidly be 
 brought to the test of an effect in which, so to speak, 
 all questions must be begged : it will be for him to 
 assume such a complete identity with his part and 
 the play as must suspend his critical faculties in 
 regard to it altogether. His own fortunes are in- 
 volved, and his concern will be to exploit the play's 
 virtues, especially the more obvious ones, and to ig- 
 nore or to cover its weaknesses. He will feel, too, 
 that he must add from his own personal resources 
 whatever it seems to lack, and in the process, like a 
 ruthless restorer of a building, will often cut into 
 and disfigure the fabric. This is why a play may 
 often be heard in fuller integrity shouted through 
 whole-heartedly and unself-consciously by a band of 
 school-children than panoplied in the skilfullest 
 acting. The professional actor's is a good way, 
 perhaps, of performing a bad play if there is any 
 good way of doing what had better be left undone. 
 But it is very often a bad way to perform a good one. 
 And a method that so abnegates criticism is quite 
 unsuited to educational needs. For that purpose a 
 play must yield us what we want of it in its own 
 despite, to its own damnation, if need be. 
 
 But if neither the anatomical methods of the 
 scholar nor the exhibitive standards of the actor will 
 
 75
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 serve our purpose, to what is it that we are turning ? 
 We cannot have drama in abstraction, so to speak. 
 Of all the arts, because of its collaborative qualities, 
 it formulates itself most elaborately. Its medium 
 is in one sense the simplest possible. Our recipe 
 for the study or performance of a play might begin : 
 Take the requisite number of ordinary human 
 beings. But for its full development it requires 
 nothing less than the complex organization of a 
 theatre. Indeed, if for no other reason than that as 
 evidence of worth we must have instances of per- 
 fection (or as near as the human medium may 
 aspire to), and that precept without example will 
 never convince us, drama must be studied concretely; 
 it is not to be separated from the theatre. Yet 
 again, if it is the art of the theatre itself that we 
 are to regard as educative, not merely its com- 
 ponent parts made use of as physical and emotional 
 exercises, it will be only in the development of 
 that art, purely for its own sake, that its wider uses 
 will become completely apparent. Our system of 
 study, then, for all its detachment from the present 
 uses of drama, must yet centre in a theatre an 
 exemplary theatre, we may call it. 
 
 The And in what, more precisely, must this exemplary 
 
 Exemplary theatre differ from theatres as we now know them ? 
 Theatre j theatre to-day is, as a rule, a place of entertain- 
 ment where plays are produced. A sounder 
 purpose strives to make of it an institution 
 where they are kept alive a library of drama. 
 Following this narrow path of reform we might 
 still hope to better plays, production, and enter- 
 tainment, all three, even beyond recognition ; 
 to sustain and increase the drama's life very greatly. 
 But if what we have said about the wider uses 
 of dramatic art is sound, then to do this and no more 
 76
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 would be to make a one-sided effort to do an arti- 
 ficial thing, which would have no more continuing 
 life in it than have other arts divorced from utility. 
 If we can think, though, of the theatre as a place 
 where dramatic art is to be studied and conserved 
 for its own sake, from where it is to be dis- 
 seminated in every demonstrable form, not only 
 in the single one of the acted play, we shall have 
 cleared our mental ground. The true theatre, then, 
 is to be a place for the study and development 
 of dramatic art, and it must have no more limited 
 function. The striking of a balance, however, 
 between the art's intensive cultivation in the pro- 
 duction of plays and its extensive use as a means 
 of general education is a task that, with the first 
 activity so familiar to us and the second so strange, 
 cannot be attempted dogmatically by a few phrases : 
 it is a matter yet more for discovery than argu- 
 ment. In any given institution a balance could 
 only be struck, certainly by experiment, in the end 
 probably by circumstance. But a contention that 
 various sorts of theatres would always exist, and 
 ought always to exist, from those devoted only to the 
 production of plays to those given almost wholly to 
 study and teaching, does not affect the validity of our 
 main conception of one which would completely 
 and comprehensively exemplify dramatic art. And 
 if we also imagine it in terms of a stark perfection, 
 which, if attained, might burst the bonds of its 
 being altogether (for doubtless dramatic art might 
 develop beyond the power of any theatre to hold it), 
 we shall still not look too far if our direction is right. 
 For all our talk the drama is in no danger of ascend- 
 ing into an artistic heaven, leaving its profitable 
 mundane mission unfulfilled. 
 
 And though we start, quite legitimately, from a 
 
 77
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 conception of the theatre as school, this by no 
 means rubs out, but should rather enhance the 
 more entertaining use of it. For however broad 
 the basis of its educational work, this will properly 
 be conditioned by what are to be the summits 
 of its achievement. Its directors will naturally 
 and rightly assume that if the courses of study 
 there, pursued to their end, make for the per- 
 fect production of a good play, they contain, in 
 virtue of that, all the necessary educational qualities. 
 The theatre, in fact, to be exemplary, must exem- 
 plify its teaching; it must produce plays. It does 
 not follow that all students need pursue the courses 
 to this actual end, and specialize as actors, play- 
 wrights, producers, and the like; and it will be quite 
 as important to insist that, for those who do, any 
 training too extreme, too acrobatic in its kind to be, 
 roughly speaking, of any non-professional use at all 
 will be harmful to them in particular and generally 
 false to an exemplary theatre's principles. To-day 
 few people would dream of going to a school of 
 drama but to learn to be an actor, and, as a conse- 
 quence, the study of acting is pitifully narrowed. 
 Our theatre as school must be a thing of much wider 
 comprehension than any existing school of the theatre. 
 Nor could we get what we wanted simply by adding 
 fresh subjects to any accepted dramatic curriculum, 
 nor by turning any existing theatre into a school. 
 Every theatre and school to-day is involved in a 
 vicious circle of narrowness let it even be brutally 
 said, of incompetence that must be broken be- 
 fore the wider circle can be begun. Now profes- 
 sional acting will be an important product of the 
 exemplary theatre, it will be in a position of master- 
 ship there ; but, to begin with, it must itself go to 
 school again. 
 78
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 It is perhaps worth while to ask why, with the The break in 
 circle of the power of the drama widening for this *** acting 
 last generation, the circle of technical achievement tra * ltton 
 in its interpretation has been not merely failing to 
 widen in response, but actually narrowing. For it 
 can hardly be denied that this is true, making all 
 the allowance we will for the occasional touch of 
 spleen in an older generation displaced by a younger 
 though, indeed, among actors there is oftener to 
 be found great generosity in acknowledging the new 
 regime and for the subtler difficulty that our im- 
 pressions of the performances of plays do un- 
 doubtedly improve by keeping, and in our memory 
 of them are probably at their very best just as we 
 are at the point of forgetting them altogether. 
 The actor of a generation ago may have needed 
 fewer accomplishments ; he can probably claim 
 with justice that he kept those he had in far better 
 trim. That he did as a rule need far fewer no one 
 would deny. Consider the repertory of plays in 
 one of the " famous " old stock companies, and 
 their average quality, and compare it with what 
 would be as representative a selection of drama to- 
 day! And the old stock company system, with its 
 " line " of parts for each actor, in which, by much 
 repetition, under varying circumstances, he could 
 train himself to a certain pitch of perfection, could 
 only have made for a very narrow, if for a very 
 definite, achievement of sheer skill. In the actors 
 who never succeeded to much more than secondary 
 parts it was even, perhaps, quite superficial skill. 
 Good stage manners were enough to raise the body 
 of the plays in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 century drama to a sufficiently respectable level of 
 interpretation. Performances of them must have 
 rather resembled the dancing of quadrilles. While 
 
 79
 
 Robertson 
 Bancroft 
 Pinero 
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 if for most of the plays written between 1800 and 
 1860 any more than this pleasant gymnastic was 
 desired, not even so much did they deserve. And 
 for the full effect of the more important parts an 
 audience relied, then as now, upon a touch of some- 
 thing uncommon in the actor, or, failing it, fell back 
 upon the interest of the play itself. 
 
 After 1870 (I write of England) the leading 
 stock companies began to decline. There were a 
 number of causes for their weakening, but eminent 
 among these certainly was the coming of a new sort 
 of play into which the actors of " lines " of parts 
 could not be fitted. The change is mirrored faith- 
 fully and wittily, as every student of modern theatri- 
 cal history knows, in Pinero's " Trelawney of the 
 Wells." There it would appear that lack of fitness 
 was the chief cause of the " old " actor's undoing, 
 and no doubt the peremptory demands of the 
 " new " dramatist did deal him the first and the 
 sharpest blow. But economic influences finally under- 
 mined the system, since it seemed worth nobody's 
 while to adjust it to new conditions.* With the 
 stock system, then, that prticular sort of training 
 went, and there were few, thinking twice about the 
 matter, to weep for it. 
 
 It is not so easy to determine all the influences 
 in the rise of the next school of English acting ; 
 while, as to its fall, the very fact will still be matter 
 of dispute, much more the conditions that may have 
 effected it. The school can be pretty accurately 
 and very honourably described as the Robertson- 
 Bancroft-Pinero school. One thing should be 
 
 * The economic influences are to be summed up in the dis- 
 covery that the touring of complete productions could be made to 
 pay. The disappearance of the prejudice against Sunday travelling 
 had some effect too. 
 80
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 noted about the early training of, at any rate, its 
 earliest leading figures. They found the stock 
 companies surviving as opportunities of some sort 
 of apprenticeship. They would probably deny, 
 and with justice, that they found much inspiration 
 in them, though some of the companies made an 
 effort, no doubt, to inform the new dispensation 
 with the spirit of the old. But if they only learnt 
 by experiment what not to do they were so much to 
 the good, and were the freer to bring disencumbered 
 imaginations to bear upon the fresh and hcpefuller 
 tasks with which the new dramatists were providing 
 them. Priority among these, in time and in influence 
 combined, belongs to T. W. Robertson ; we must en- 
 visage the effective part of his playwright's career, and 
 the consequences, perhaps, of its untimely ending. 
 He provided material so simple as to be peculiarly 
 suited for the working out by its means of the 
 beginnings of a new way of acting. And it is 
 especially noteworthy that the protagonists of 
 his success were Marie Wilton, till then a bur- 
 lesque actress a dainty and charming burlesque 
 actress no doubt, but regarded probably by the 
 mandarins of the theatre of the eighteen-sixties 
 as something of an outsider and Squire Ban- 
 croft, who was currently referred to, one sus- 
 pects, by these same mandarins as a damned 
 amateur. Reforms and revolutions both are 
 carried through by minorities. Nor could this 
 Robertson-Bancroft influence, by its very nature, 
 be widespread. It tended only to the development 
 of a gentle comedic talent ; it created nothing but a 
 cup-and-saucer school of drama ; a small thing, 
 no doubt, measured against Aeschylus, Shakespeare, 
 and Moliere. But the cups and saucers were of 
 the best china, and they were delicately and deftly 
 
 F 81
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 handled. The influence, however, was not even long 
 lasting. Robertson died, and it seemed that he 
 would have no successors. Albery, who had shown 
 promise in his " Two Roses " rather more than 
 promise dropped out of account. What was 
 Bancroft, as managerial leader of the movement, 
 to do ? He lacked material. He made other quite 
 gallant experiments in native drama, and they failed. 
 So, at last, in desperation he turned back to the 
 potent French theatre for a supply. It was, Heaven 
 knows, a broad and already well-beaten track 
 that thus led him away from the straighter and 
 suddenly steeper path to the revival of a national 
 art. We are not here concerned with the 
 temporary wisdom of this policy, with any question 
 of its inevitability, nor, directly, with its effect upon 
 the rising wave of English play-writing. As a fact 
 the native playwright of later arrival, when his talent 
 was native at all, did go ahead, and kept his eyes 
 fixed on his own course with commendable per- 
 sistence. But the compulsion thus laid afresh 
 at that critical moment upon English actors, 
 cast in adapted French plays, to be modelling their 
 style more than half the time upon French acting 
 was a serious matter. This is often magnificent, 
 hardly ever lacks aptitude and significance, and no 
 doubt a study of its methods would be as great an 
 addition to any actor's education as is some study of 
 the French language to education in general. But 
 it would be no good substitute for an in-and-out 
 familiarity with one's own ; and acting is either an 
 art of intensely racial expression or it is nothing. 
 
 By the time that the third great influence upon 
 this period came in to play by the eighties and 
 nineties, when Bancroft had retired * and Pinero's 
 
 * 1884. 
 82
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 word was law and the discipline of one of his pro- 
 ductions the worthy goal of every young actor's 
 ambition the bastard style had struck root. How 
 far Pinero was wrongly attracted by what was 
 meretricious in it, or was aware of its insuffi- 
 ciency for his final purposes, or did try to remould 
 it to his own taste, it is hard to say. Possibly he 
 does not know: in art one does what one can 
 at the time. The playing of his farces, indeed, 
 fell into the true line of our artistic succession. 
 The.y were eminently English. Here he may be said 
 to have taken the Robertson tradition left derelict, 
 and handsomely renewed and improved upon it. 
 But when he turned to social drama the French 
 influence was waiting to overcome his companies. 
 Perhaps he himself had not wholly escaped it. 
 He was trying new ground, and a touch, now and 
 then, of the hand of Dumas fils may have made it feel 
 firmer. And in any case there were, in this respect, 
 many weaker vessels of playwriting than he ; so 
 the general effect upon the interpretation of plays 
 was unmistakeable. 
 
 The school of acting, then, that shone at its bright- 
 est towards the end of the last century, for all its 
 charm and its easy mastery over the material, good 
 and bad, clean cut or hashed, with which it had to 
 deal, rested partly upon this false foundation, and 
 was therefore destined, not perhaps to a decay in 
 the art of its individual exemplars, but inevitably to 
 a failure of survival in any second generation. Art 
 may temporarily flourish, but it will not seed and 
 grow again except upon a native soil. These actors 
 were, perhaps, too small and too select an aristocracy 
 of talent to do more than tint, historically, the age of 
 their predominance with gold. By no fault of their 
 own, the art to which they contributed their best was, 
 
 83
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 but for a few fine pieces, the work of a play- 
 wright or two steadily pursuing his set purpose, a 
 makeshift, pinchbeck affair, responsive to no serious 
 test. They brought their own share in it to perfection, 
 though ; and if, because of this, they somewhat over- 
 valued the total result, that was but natural. Play- 
 goers of those years will need no list of names : 
 they have them graven upon the tablets of their 
 gratitude. 
 
 The Ibsen But the next challenge of a change brought its 
 challenge cross purposes, too. The challenger was Ibsen, 
 and the movement that tacked itself quite 
 arbitrarily to his name. The movement itself 
 after a while took on major importance and a native 
 hue, so that the apt reply from those of the older 
 fashion, accused of subservience to France, that 
 knuckling under to Norway was no better, dropped 
 idle. The resistance put up against this new in- 
 fluence by the interests it offended critical, mana- 
 gerial, histrionic had causes enough. To begin 
 with, the new plays were not popular. Now, if 
 popularity is jam to us all, it is bread and 
 butter to actors. Plain bread may perhaps be 
 earned without it, but that's a hard diet to 
 choose. Contributively, if this sort of play dis- 
 gruntled and puzzled the critics, it led the actor 
 also on to uncertain ground. The old rules for 
 measuring up good parts and bad no longer 
 applied, and in a critical battle over the play's 
 demerits his own reputation was apt (so he feared) 
 to go down. And when later the enthusiasts for 
 the new school of playwriting took to exalting it by 
 the easy process of belittling the old, that made 
 things worse for him still : he could hardly seem a 
 party to the befouling of his once comfortable nest. 
 There was often, no doubt, misguided zeal on the
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 one side, but, really, there was more stupidity, 
 timidity, and sheer lazy indifference of mind on 
 the other. Apart from such extraneous difficulties, 
 though, there must still have been the histrionic 
 difference : it was but increased by circumstances, its 
 springs were deeper. The successful actor of that 
 time thought, wrongly on the whole, that the new 
 plays did not give proper scope for his carefully 
 cultivated technique, but he was right in his usually 
 unavowed fear that their interpretation did, besides, 
 need qualities quite without the scope of any training 
 he had had. 
 
 Now whether, if the tradition of acting had re- 
 mained quite native, its exemplars would have been 
 readier for the new development it is, of course, 
 impossible to say. Hypothetical argument is risky, 
 especially in artistic matters, where no instance even 
 comes true to type. But it is at least possible that 
 actors brought up to the playing of " Caste " ; taught 
 to go, if not to English life for their models, at least 
 to English fiction (if Robertson neglected his 
 immediate theatrical forbears he at least had not 
 read Thackeray for nothing), and accustomed next 
 to the excellent native humours of " Dandy Dick," 
 could have been put to the very different fences of 
 Galsworthy's " Silver Box " without fear of refusal. 
 This is to take for an example of the demand made 
 upon the actor a play in which there can be little 
 suspicion of extraneous influence. As a matter of 
 history this play appeared when the Ibsen 
 battle had been fought out, and a younger genera- 
 tion of actors faced it with equanimity. But who 
 would say that a company got together ten years 
 earlier would have known what to do with it ? It was 
 a serious play. But where would they have found in 
 it the stigmata of the serious plays they then knew, 
 
 85
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 the emotional crisis, the sctne a faire, the ravellings 
 and unravellings of plot ? With such materials 
 they had learnt how to make certain arbitrary effects. 
 In " The Silver Box " they are asked by the author to 
 second his direct observation of the most common- 
 place English life, to " be," as near as may be, a 
 few people picked, with apparent indifference, out 
 of Bayswater, out of the London streets ; and never 
 to mind whether they were, as actors, effective or 
 attractive, or could exhibit any one of the superficial 
 theatrical virtues. The principle one attempts to 
 deduce would be something like this. If the actor 
 be trained to deal with the matter of observation he 
 need fear no novelty. He may attack it boldly and 
 solve its every difficulty by the light of his own ex- 
 perience. Put an English company to an English 
 play and nothing so far could be simpler. But 
 we may take unlikelier instances. We may try a 
 French company with Ibsen, Italians with Shaw, 
 Americans with Benevente ; and though they may 
 present the plays with a superficial absurdity, with 
 every violence of translation not only into a strange 
 language but into movement and furnishings still 
 further from anything the author saw, yet, 
 because they have searched back to the essential 
 common relations between themselves, the play, 
 and its author's meaning, they will be able to bring 
 it alive upon the stage. But actors trained only in 
 the arbitrary effects of a manner of acting will 
 stand timid and hesitant before any new matter 
 that once they set it working may bring mere 
 manner to naught, and leave them helpless and 
 invalidate. 
 
 Difference of technique in construction and dia- 
 logue between the new plays and the old could have 
 been left out of account beside this difficulty of the 
 86
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 different content. It was at this that the actors 
 balked. They were, perhaps, wise in their theatrical 
 generation, and we need discuss that part of the 
 business no further. Nor does it really matter if 
 our view of what might have been is a tenable one. 
 We are only concerned now with the undoubted 
 and undoubtedly unfortunate result of the breaking 
 of the histrionic tradition. It was neither a very old 
 nor a very certain tradition : it had been distorted 
 and weakened already by extraneous influence. But, 
 for^all that, it was the receptacle of much necessary 
 accomplishment and many desirable graces ; and 
 first its refusal of service to the new school of drama, 
 and later its rejection by that school, have left the 
 English theatre at present the poorer. It was 
 nonsense to say that any duffer could act Ibsen, 
 and Ibsen has in consequence been rather the prey 
 of the duffers to this day. It was equally rash to 
 assume that sympathy with the aims of the new 
 dramatist and a better understanding of his 
 matter were all that was necessary to the per- 
 formance of the play. But that was an opinion 
 which now quite fatally tended to establish itself, 
 not, obviously enough, upon the accrediting of a 
 new sort of actor who could hardly expect to rise 
 to great fame upon such a basis but upon a certain 
 discrediting of the old, when the success of the 
 new dramatists, or more properly the pervasion of 
 the whole theatre by their influence even in failure, 
 forced him into the service. He, very often, did not 
 individually fail, for it became the amiable critical 
 custom to credit the actors at the expense of the 
 play with making the best of a bad job. But his 
 technique when it was all he possessed tending 
 to collapse under him, he had to abandon 
 it and put himself on the level of the new- 
 
 87
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 comers, who had neither any of their own nor any 
 use for his. He had, in fact, to go to school again 
 and there was no school! It was not then so 
 much the actors who were discredited as far 
 worse! the whole art of acting, which has fallen, 
 and remains in these days, most sadly in the dumps. 
 The discre- How else, at least, to explain the undoubted im- 
 dited art of poverishment of English acting in the presence of 
 acting as undoubted an enrichment of English drama? 
 The admission may generously be made that in- 
 dividual actors of this generation of training do 
 often not only fulfil but embellish particular parts 
 by their personal talent and attractiveness. But the 
 main accusation must be answered and it is freely 
 made that, taken by and large, the present lot 
 of English-speaking actors do not know their 
 business. Let us put the matter at its worst. 
 From the actor of small parts little is asked but the 
 sheer technique of expression ; how seldom it is at his 
 disposal ! A hundred excuses may be found, but 
 the fact remains. And those upon whom the main 
 burden of the play is cast are often in little better 
 case. They may have a more sympathetic under- 
 standing of the purpose of the work than their for- 
 bears of thirty years back would have shown. 
 But, in spite of this, their expression of it is fatally 
 clogged in the outflowing by a voice they can't 
 manage, a face that appears to need moving by hand, 
 and a body they hardly dare move at all, unless with 
 a violence which will mask its lack of all finer 
 articulation. 
 
 It is between these two stools, then of a technique 
 outworn and discarded, and an attempt to do with- 
 out any technique at all that the art of acting has 
 now fallen. It has fallen to dullness; a quite 
 unforgivable sin. The writers and producers of 
 88
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 modern comedies may be excused for begging their 
 companies " not to act." It would be uncivil to 
 explain that their appeal in its fullness means " not 
 to act like that." Certain of the later dramatists, 
 it is true, impressed by the vast possibilities of the 
 drama and their own contribution to it, but a little 
 contemptuous of the theatre they so condescendingly 
 make use of, are blind to there being any 
 alternative to the " intelligent reading," which will, 
 they hold, at least give their play its naked, un- 
 hindered chance. But the art of acting was the 
 beginning of drama. Before ever the literary man 
 and his manuscript appeared acting was there, 
 and it remains the foundation of the whole affair. 
 And to ignore its possibilities and to decry its im- 
 portance is to wander into that blind alley which 
 leads to the play more fitted for the study than the 
 stage that yacht so perfectly adapted to lying in 
 the harbour. 
 
 No ; the instinct of the playgoer is right. He 
 goes to the theatre primarily to see good acting, 
 in the never-defeated hope of being carried clean 
 off his feet by great acting.* Failing this, he can 
 perhaps learn to make more of a good play by 
 reading it comfortably at home. He demands 
 
 * Et voi!4 
 
 Le silence rompu qui vole en mille eclats ! 
 
 Le public s'abandonne k 1'immense rafale 
 
 Qui gronde et le secoue ! . . . 
 
 Et le rire au galop qui traverse la salle 
 
 Emporte tout . . . 
 
 Les chagrins, les soucis 
 
 Et les peines, 
 
 Tu comprends bien ceci ? 
 
 Comprends que c'est pour ca qu'ils viennent ! 
 
 A ceui qui font sourire on ne dit pas merci . . . 
 
 DEBURAU (Act IV of Sacha Guitiy's play) praises his art. 
 
 8 9
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 even and quite rightly a certain virtuosity of per- 
 formance; and when he misses it, being (tiresome 
 fellow!) just a little less interested in the play itself 
 than the author has been, he is apt to vote the 
 whole affair either portentous and dull, or trivial and 
 empty, as the case may be. It is upon this shoal 
 that the new drama has been and still is in danger 
 of being becalmed. 
 
 It is a quite avoidable catastrophe. The better 
 the play, the more full of matter, or the more 
 brilliantly evanescent in style, the less excuse has its 
 performance for being dull. But the more does it 
 need acting; not only a fuller understanding, but 
 a greater virtuosity of interpretation. 
 
 The need for Since the old virtuosity was found not to avail 
 a new virtu- what attempt has been made in the English- 
 0slf y speaking theatre to cultivate a new ? Solvitur 
 
 ambulando is a good motto, no doubt, and appro- 
 priate enough to a theatrical system in which actors 
 start their career and are expected to learn what they 
 can of their art by " walking on." And how expect 
 a serious study of principles from a hard-pressed 
 professional theatre, busily adapting itself to change 
 of condition, artistic and economic, living artistically 
 from hand to mouth, and compelled, above all, 
 to consider appearance, to shark up effects, to make 
 a success of the moment at any cost ? 
 
 When the break of tradition came there was no 
 new school to supply as had to be supplied, from 
 fundamentals up and on the new need. What have 
 the present dramatic academies been doing ? One 
 should have intimate knowledge of their working 
 to speak with entire authority; but, judging by 
 results, not much. One doubts, indeed, whether 
 the need itself has yet been precisely formulated. 
 These academies, too, are mostly, with their obliga- 
 90
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 tion to earn fees, compelled to supply not even such 
 sort of study as the professional theatre might find 
 upon consideration most immediately useful in its 
 recruits, but that which the pupils themselves, im- 
 patient for a career, suppose will help them to the 
 swiftest successful assault upon managerial favour. 
 And even the American universities, where the most 
 and the most serious co-operative study of 
 drama is to be found, devote themselves less to 
 acting than to plays and playmaking, and are 
 driven to be (they too!) sadly impatient for results. 
 
 There is as yet no general recognition that 
 modern drama demands a technique of interpreta- 
 tion or could even accommodate a virtuosity all its 
 own. Taking the first at second-hand, it turns 
 a half-disdainful back upon the very possibility 
 of the second. The student of acting will con- 
 tentedly approach a performance of, say, Hialmar 
 Ekdal, bringing to bear upon it the same technical 
 equipment that he has cultivated for Romeo. 
 And although the actor playing old Ekdal will know 
 (one hopes he will know; if he doesn't he will soon 
 discover it, much to the play's misfortune) that the 
 virtuosity which makes Sir Peter Teazle charming 
 is so out of place in Ibsen as to be merely ridiculous, 
 this mostly only means, alas, that he timidly shelters 
 himself within the part, diffusing from it a respect- 
 able dullness. 
 
 Now the difference in the technique of the play- 
 writing is so obvious as almost to escape comment. 
 Shakespeare and Ibsen wrote with pens, wrote dia- 
 logue, designed it for living actors, and there, really, 
 all technical likeness ends. Is it enough, then, for 
 actors to make no more difference in their technical 
 approach to the plays' interpretation than is un- 
 escapably dictated by the fact that in one case
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 strange garments must be swaggered in and blank 
 verse spouted, while in another one wears coats and 
 trousers and speaks prose; is Sheridan's attitude to 
 the world amply defined if a man only carries a cane 
 and a snuff-box ? 
 
 In the last analysis, of course, Romeo and Hial- 
 mar Ekdal (to contrast the two only) are sentient hu- 
 man beings both, and we have already admitted that 
 the essential thing is to go back to the common point 
 of contact with real life, that it matters far less what 
 diverse paths may be travelled away from it. And 
 if, for the covering of the long distance between 
 conception of character and elaboration of perfor- 
 mance, the actor has only a Shakespearean technique 
 available, he must use it : it is absurd to expect 
 any man to discard knowledge even inappropriate 
 knowledge for ignorance Moreover, he TO/// use it. 
 For however much we may argue for Ibsen underacted 
 rather than Ibsen wrongly acted, he has the responsi- 
 bilities of performance to face. He is in honour 
 bound to give the best of himself to the audience, 
 as well as the slice of Ibsen carved for his use. He 
 will not, if he has any proper pride, stand there empty 
 of attraction, be driven back upon that dullness 
 which is to him the deepest artistic damnation. 
 
 The worst, perhaps, of the use of Shakespearean 
 technique in this connection, and the reason, be- 
 sides, why the actor may be so blithely ready to 
 use it, is that it is venerable enough to have acquired 
 an absolute independence of its derivative. But in 
 this both its own purpose is falsified and it remains 
 curiously inappropriate to any other. The first 
 thing needful for the building up of a technique 
 of modern drama is to sort out and restore to their 
 proper use the scraps and ends of method, once, no 
 doubt, living growth, but now detached, dry, and 
 92
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 applied haphazard according to the taste and fancy 
 of the actor. Incidentally, what is usually called 
 the Shakespearean tradition is not Shakespearean at 
 all, and with a continuance of the now happily 
 revived study of the obligations of Elizabethan 
 stagecraft it will, it may be hoped, disappear. The 
 Sheridan technique and the Robertson technique 
 it should not be hard to put in their places. Then 
 the ground will be fairly clear and it will be possible 
 to think unencumberedly of the art of acting in 
 terms of a drama which differs profoundly in matter 
 and very eminently in method even from its nearer 
 ascendants. The interpreters must follow the lines 
 the creators have travelled. If Shakespeare wrote 
 rhetorically, wove his effects out of strands of un- 
 repressed individual emotion, if Sheridan cared 
 greatly for the set of his prose, Robertson for 
 sentiment, Pinero in his farces for well-bitten comic 
 figures, if the work of Ibsen is most strongly marked 
 by the involute process of revelation of character, 
 that of Tchekov by the way in which his men and 
 women are made to seem less like independent 
 human beings than reflections in the depths of the 
 circumstance of his plays these traits of each 
 dramatist mould and pervade his work and should 
 dictate a related method for its interpretation. All 
 acting is interpretation ; it can have no absolute 
 value of its own. How much then of the personal 
 praise and blame that is aimed at actors falls beside 
 the mark when their art has not been looked at in 
 its due relation to the play ! And here even pro- 
 fessional critics fail us as a rule, omissively. To the 
 mere casual public the play may be the actors' own. 
 But the critic is too apt to give it his attention to the 
 exclusion, it would seem, of any serious effort to 
 appreciate at all the actors' share in its completion. 
 
 93
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 The critics It is ill girding at unfortunate beings who, most 
 of them, most of the time, are faced with the im- 
 possible demand for an adjustment in a few para- 
 graphs of cold print of the feverish, factitious, often 
 entirely fictitious enthusiasm of the first-night of 
 
 a play. Nine times out of ten the play itself cannot 
 stand up to the ordeal of a consecutive description, 
 much less of an analysis. Even if it can, more 
 especially when it can, are these the conditions to 
 which any ordinary critic can creditably respond ? 
 There would be excuses enough, under such cir- 
 cumstances, for almost anything he might say or 
 leave unsaid. But it is a pity that he finds it 
 as a rule easier to deal with the play itself at 
 sufficient length, and so is content to let its acting 
 go with a kindly, vague ineptitude of praise or 
 blame. The play, of course, has at least its story, 
 and by sticking to that he need neither involve him- 
 self nor trouble his readers with technical detail. 
 Were he to be either precise or lengthy about the 
 acting he would be straying, he may think, upon 
 very slippery ground. But the flat truth, one 
 fears, is that the average critic knows little or 
 nothing of acting as an art. Not that he is alone 
 in his ignorance. The average audience knows less, 
 and cares hardly at all, demands sensation, the 
 stirring to tears or laughter ; by what means 
 effected is no matter. 
 
 But what stimulus, then, is it to an actor to appear 
 before judges, the expertest of whom can hardly 
 tell, so to speak, a bad part from a good performance, 
 when, condemned to the one as all actors must 
 be from time to time he may still be giving the 
 other. Whether it is this misprision, or the con- 
 trasting gush of easy praise echoed from the un- 
 thinking enthusiasm of an audience, for the carrying 
 
 94
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 off, sometimes by sheer impudence and vitality, of 
 something so obviously effective as to be in the cant 
 phrase actor (it should usually be actress) proof that 
 has a more deleterious effect upon the art of acting 
 is a question. It has become for actors an unim- 
 portant question in view of the conclusion reached 
 by most of them with experience of the rough 
 and smooth of their work, that as they never can 
 count upon discrimination they had better measure 
 the worth of these notices altogether in terms of 
 advertisement, and the parts that they play, there- 
 fore, by the standard of an obvious effectiveness. 
 But for us, and for the art's sake, this is an unhappy 
 and a deleterious conclusion. All parts, and some 
 of the best parts, are not in this headline and poster 
 sense effective, and any effort by the dramatist or 
 actor to make them so must be wholly misdirected. 
 But the actor will be caught by a conscientious 
 panic that he is not " doing his best to make the 
 thing go," and the effort he then makes has only to 
 be shameless enough to be greeted, as often as not, 
 with applause. Yet again, what encouragement is 
 it to a man to cultivate the niceties of restraint and 
 delicate workmanship if, by the end of his career, 
 no one but himself and a few of his colleagues are to 
 be the wiser of his achievement ? Few things can 
 debauch an art so much as the lack of any decent 
 standard of public taste. To every sincere and self- 
 respecting artist each new effort is a new adventure, 
 and it is asking much of an actor to keep his aim 
 and his courage high if his audience indiscriminately 
 applauds better and worse, and often, indeed, prefers 
 the worse to the better. His chance of fame 
 is in the present only, the temptation to " live to 
 please " is doubly hard, for he leaves no score, nor 
 canvas, nor printed book by which posterity may 
 
 95
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 justify his own severer, better judgment of his 
 work. 
 
 There have been admirable critics of acting, from 
 Fielding, Lamb, and Hazlitt onwards, and in their 
 discriminating pages the quick mortality of the art 
 has for some few outstanding names been stayed. 
 And if to-day we were concerned only with the 
 actor's allowable ambition to leave some less fading 
 record of his achievements behind him than the 
 hearsay of popularity we might look for and plan, 
 under better conditions than those of current 
 criticism, some recultivation of the sensitive, pic- 
 turesque writing which does catch for us a little 
 of the passing glamour, helps us to reweave some- 
 thing of the personal spell, which the fine actor once 
 cast upon his audience. But we want not remini- 
 scent value, but an immediate critical stimulus. 
 A conspiracy between critics and actors to play 
 into each other's hands in terms of technical achieve- 
 ment and appreciation to the confounding of the 
 ignorant would be no more than amusing. For the 
 circle of appeal and appreciation in which actors and 
 audience, critical and uncritical alike, revolve is a 
 natural one. It is within its revolution that the 
 art of the theatre is immediately enriched. Granted 
 a good audience, good acting of a sort must result. 
 The actor simply cannot get on at all unless (we 
 now speak of him generically) he can make himself 
 understood and appreciated as he goes. By a pro- 
 cess of trial and error, then, he would be bound to 
 approximate his work to the expectations of his 
 audience, if they, for their part, both could and 
 would take the trouble to register and enforce 
 them. If this ideal relation could be brought into 
 existence, it would be within it within this circle of 
 immediate reactions that all education in acting, 
 96
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 as apart from the accomplishments of the actor, 
 could be let lie. And, once get it going, once the 
 magic circle were formed, the process would not be 
 so impossible of practice as the attractiveness of the 
 theory might lead one to suppose. But intelligent 
 and responsible connection between the three 
 parties between dramatist, actors, and audience 
 having been so wantonly broken, there needs some 
 external study, some grinding at principles, and 
 a deal of practising, before they can be set up again. 
 In other words, we all need not only actors, but 
 dramatist, yes, and audience as well, if a plan com- 
 prehending us all can be devised to go to school 
 again, to take a little trouble over the matter, before 
 we can count upon this art of the drama yielding 
 us in its completeness and complexity, pleasure and 
 profit as well. But it must be to a school ranging 
 wider in the scope of its study and plumbing deeper 
 than does any theatrical academy of to-day.* 
 
 Consider yet again the disabilities under which The wrong 
 almost every school of the theatre now labours, sort of school 
 They are filled with young women and men fever- 
 ishly occupied, as if training for a race ; competitive, 
 keen on accomplishment. The work, too, such as 
 it is, is always disbalanced by the women out- 
 numbering the men. As careers for men go the 
 actor's is not very desirable, and so but for the 
 few who do feel an irresistible call, or whom circum- 
 stances tend to push early in the supply is kept up 
 by drafts of recruits at various stages of disillusion- 
 ment in the discovery of their incompetence for 
 other vocations. Not the best field of cultivation 
 to begin with ! Things are better, no doubt, in 
 this respect than they were. By the traditional 
 
 * I write of England, but I think that no such school as I have in 
 mind does exist anywhere. 
 
 o 97
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 romantic course of running away from home was 
 produced out of the ensuing rough and tumble 
 some fine, full-blooded acting in those that had the 
 sturdiness to survive; just as the daring of running 
 off to sea can be proved to have furnished the world 
 by the same process with some notable seamen 
 and pirates. Things were at their worst, rather, 
 when the theatre, having acquired a sort of gentility, 
 began to be looked on as the home of soft jobs, 
 and, by friends and relations of the attractive wastrel 
 who sought refuge there, as a not too reprehensible 
 foster-mother. They would even manage to add 
 a flavour of humorous pride to their protesting re- 
 mark that " Harry had gone on the stage." The 
 very existence of a school or two, in lieu of the 
 vanished rough and tumble, the implied obligation 
 to take the thing seriously, is a great improvement. 
 But they still specialise far too narrowly. For it is 
 noticeable that when an attraction to drama declares 
 itself and is responded to in the course of a man's 
 general education his particular interest is often less in 
 acting than in the writing or producing of plays, or 
 even for all that the subject seems a dull one in 
 the management of the theatre generally. Take a 
 stage-struck young man down from Oxford or 
 Cambridge, and it is odds that he sees himself as 
 Romeo. Find a man who has been getting his 
 teeth into the dramatic courses (it is true they are 
 called courses in dramatic literature) at Yale or 
 Harvard, or working still more at large in some 
 college further west, and for him a career in the 
 theatre will be a thing of much wider comprehen- 
 sion.* To such a man, it is clear, the present sort of 
 
 * I once met a man who had been studying drama solely as a 
 preliminary to becoming a dramatic critic. He said he thought it 
 a reasonable thing to do ! 
 9 8
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 theatre school, with its nothing but teaching of actor's 
 accomplishments, can have little or no attraction. 
 And its loss of him be this noted is the greater. 
 
 The attraction of the theatre as a career for The army of 
 women, pre-eminent once, for economic reasons at 
 least, as it was one of the few in which they worked 
 on an equality with men, is now suffering by com- 
 parison with the many others opening out to them. 
 It is in any case more of a gamble for women than 
 for men. They may win success earlier, but only 
 to lose it the sooner. If a pretty girl looks upon 
 it as a preliminary canter which she means to aban- 
 don for marriage at the first good opportunity, the 
 convenience is sometimes a double one to her 
 and to the theatre that may be glad to make 
 use of her while her prettiness lasts. But for 
 women who stay in the race there is less demand 
 if competence is all their attainment than for 
 men.* Many college women, both in England and 
 America, are studying drama nowadays for the use 
 it may be to them in teaching, or in the organizing 
 of social life in villages and factory communities; 
 the up-to-date development of district visiting. 
 And for this, no doubt, the theatre school, even at 
 present, could be of use if its curriculum were so ad- 
 justed. Moreover, such a class of students might well 
 be a strength which would a little counterbalance 
 that other, the obvious weakness of every dramatic 
 academy, the crowd of stage-struck young ladies that 
 
 * Developments of the modern drama and the advent of the 
 woman dramatist may alter this. But it is curious how the pro- 
 portion of the seies in the cast of a modern play tends to abide not 
 by the social realities but by the traditions of the theatre built up 
 for the drama of heroic action. Any play of sheer action, it is 
 true, still calls naturally for more men than women. Tradition 
 has something to do with the male overplus, for all that. 
 
 99
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 beset it, possessed by that shallow enthusiasm which 
 is the bane of all art, and to the assaults of which 
 the poor theatre is peculiarly liable. Nothing keeps 
 them out, not the raising of fees; their parents, 
 to be rid of their restlessness, thankfully accede 
 to any such demand. Entrance examinations do 
 not floor them. They have the abounding, crude 
 vitality which carries them lightly over such ob- 
 stacles; and, being admitted, they mount the first 
 steps of the student's ladder with facility oh, 
 fatal facility! The casual looker-on at this phase 
 would really think that something was to come of it 
 all. But then to change the metaphor, as they, 
 at this point, seem to change like locusts, they 
 begin to occupy the land only to feed on it. They 
 learn, and keep on learning, and what they do is 
 arguably good enough, if argument made good art. 
 But all the while it is they, more than any, that ex- 
 haust the resource of the classes and the vitality of 
 the teachers, till they pass on (crowds of their like 
 still to follow them) and pass out to good luck or 
 bad, a sham career, a hopeless struggle, happily 
 sometimes to marriage and cheerful, chatty reminis- 
 cence of the time they studied for the stage, or 
 sadly to some greyer industry and the bitterness of 
 regret. 
 
 There is no full escape, of course, from this 
 sort of student in any art or any profession. Pro- 
 fessions, indeed, seem quite contentedly to absorb 
 them; for they work well to rule. And it is true 
 that out of any such crowd can be picked a real 
 artist or two. But then the teachers must try to be 
 fair to the others, who work only the harder when 
 their secret heart begins to tell them for all the 
 approbation they so earnestly seek for and logically 
 almost compel that it is all in vain. It is hard to 
 100
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 
 
 withhold approbation. And what arguable reasons 
 can one give for saying in each case : " Here 
 craftsmanship should end. Now artistry must 
 begin ? " We cannot all have genius. Has the 
 theatre no place for the craftsman ? How many tried 
 performers with not even so much claim on public 
 attention encumber it successfully. Thus they 
 could argue, in return, these well-meaning ones, 
 even when driven to admit that devoted study has 
 brought them only to the knowledge of what they 
 ought to be able to do and the realization of their 
 failure to achieve it. 
 
 Now in a school with a wider intention than Theunprofa- 
 the training of actors they would be in a very sional student 
 different and a very much better case. The drama, 
 in some form or other, is sure to be made a part of 
 any scheme of social welfare (so-called). Here, then, 
 would be a legitimate course of study for any school 
 of the theatre to provide, and a useful by-path along 
 which those in whom industry is the highest artistic 
 virtue might travel to fairly fruitful careers. 
 
 But a widening of the school's intention would 
 be for the good of any potential actor, even were he 
 (or she) marked out by genius for the straightest 
 cut to popular recognition and success. One of 
 the curses of the professional theatre is the accident 
 of social isolation forced upon it, not any longer by 
 prejudice, but by the simple fact that its work-time 
 is other men's play-time, and vice versa. The need 
 and the means of an escape from this we are to argue 
 in a closer connection, but the preliminary isolation 
 of studentship is as great an evil. And now we 
 have reached the point where the interests of the 
 actor noticeably coincide with those of the public 
 in the theatre as a whole. The problem of his 
 education is the doubled and divided one both of 
 
 101
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 catching him young enough for the elements of his 
 art to be learned and one could comprehensibly 
 say, forgotten,* but explanatorily so absorbed that 
 he can bring a freed mind to its larger aspects; 
 and at the same time to keep him fellowed with 
 those to whom this shadow of life is never to be- 
 come substance; those, they will be this is the 
 importance of the matter for him whose lives, 
 opinions, and feelings he is to understand and inter- 
 pret. They, on the other hand and here is the 
 coincidence of interest can find, we are to argue, 
 an educational use in the drama that will later 
 develop, incidentally, into a deeper pleasure in it. 
 And the drama itself, one would say, cannot fail 
 to be enriched and strengthened by an infusion 
 of new blood and by the demand made of it for 
 wider service. 
 
 At this point, then, our grumbling at schools 
 of the theatre had better give place to castle-building 
 for the theatre as school. 
 
 * To say to a young actor of an old one " He has forgotten more 
 than you have ever learnt " is illuminating and often salutary. 
 
 102
 
 CHAPTER III : THE PLAN OF THE THEATRE AS 
 SCHOOL 
 
 CASTLE-BUILDING it had better be, and 
 from foundations up. One could plan for 
 the development of work already in being, 
 and in practice no doubt, and for purposes of ex- 
 periment, some such nucleus would be helpful. 
 One could both devise and complete a fine new 
 institution suited to a small community making 
 limited demands. But it will be more to our pur- 
 pose to imagine in broad outline a theatre as school, 
 fulfiHing its widest mission under the most exacting 
 circumstances and to beg the question of how it 
 could be brought into being. Details will give 
 verisimilitude, and they are half the fun of castle- 
 building. 
 
 One sees this theatre as school to attempt first The school's 
 a parallel in its status and outward relations, as 
 one of those great specialist schools which form 
 part of the already very catholic University of 
 London.* Its internal organization would be, 
 one cannot deny, both complex and costly. And 
 if one says, to begin with, that the building con- 
 taining it should accommodate two fully equipped 
 and actively working professional playhouses, that 
 might be enough to make most people, most 
 practical educationalists certainly, dismiss the whole 
 project as Utopian. But it can, I think, be demon- 
 strated that this particular complexity is more 
 apparent than real, and would be an economy rather 
 than an extravagance. Such a theatre would look 
 to produce plays with large casts and small; plays, 
 moreover, that might appeal either to large or small 
 sections of the public. It is clearly economical to 
 
 * Such, for instance, as the London School of Economics, or the 
 L.C.C. School of Architecture in Southampton Row. 
 
 103
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 fit a small audience into a small auditorium; it is 
 extravagant when, as may be, plays of small casts 
 are making the larger appeal to leave the overplus 
 of actors unoccupied. Besides this, the scope of 
 the study and its exemplifying, the call, for instance, 
 for student performances, would easily burst the 
 bounds of one playhouse. The carrying on of 
 school-work and theatre-work under one roof would 
 probably be a physical convenience,* and its 
 amalgamation in one educational plan is a funda- 
 mental point of the scheme. The rest of the build- 
 ing equipment would be class-rooms, lecture 
 theatres much the same, indeed, as that needed 
 for any other sort of specialized education. 
 No children Let us at once clear the ground of one just 
 admitted possible misconception, if the remark that potential 
 actors are better caught young should give rise to it. 
 The theatre as school would not be a place for 
 children. All that they need be taught in this kind 
 can be better taught here to their teachers. No sort 
 of study would be provided suitable to any boy or 
 girl under fifteen. Indeed, even for those of univer- 
 sity age as the great majority of students would 
 probably be the curriculum must deliberately 
 discourage any neglect of more general education. 
 Close specialization should in any case be in the 
 nature of post-graduate work. And two hours a 
 day in the less specialized classes would be an ample 
 enough beginning.f For those already determined 
 
 * If it were not, there would be less virtue in the provision of a 
 single containing building. And in London, of course, there are 
 always difficulties in securing large and convenient sites. 
 
 f I am aware of the practical difficulties, especially in'such a 
 place as London, of combining varying studies in various build- 
 ings. But this is a more general problem, in any solution of 
 which the theatre as school would share. 
 104
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 upon the theatre as a career it, of course, would not 
 seem so. They would not find it a sufficiently swift 
 test of their powers to excel. And no doubt the 
 school would drift into admitting anyone over 
 seventeen or eighteen to a full course of study at 
 the start. But it should be discouraging to them 
 upon this issue even in their own interests. The swift 
 test even of such an apparently easily to be dis- 
 cerned natural gift as the dramatic faculty is mis- 
 leading. Slow development strengthens it and 
 deepens the strength. Incidentally, those parents 
 and guardians with intractable children bent upon 
 " going on the stage " would find in this slowly 
 widening opening for study a useful compromise 
 with their own dutiful refusal. Such an exiguous 
 beginning might lack continuance and not be a 
 serious waste of time for the pupil, nor a more 
 important matter for the school. And this process 
 of discouragement, with its implication of other 
 interests to be reconciled, and the response to it, 
 would help to provide, incidentally, the general 
 educational test that the school should demand 
 from its novices. 
 
 Let us reiterate, indeed, that though the school The broad 
 must specialize, even to the extent of directing all ^ ase f tAe 
 its plans of study towards the culminating point of the w 
 fine production of a fine play, yet its claim to recogni- 
 tion is that not only is the base of the pyramid to be 
 broadly educational, but that, at any stage of the 
 building, work of quite general usefulness may be 
 found. The base, indeed, would be broad beyond 
 the functions of the school ; for all study would begin 
 upon the supposition that much preliminary work 
 had been done in earlier schooldays, from kinder- 
 garten onwards. A supposition of the sort would 
 hold true were the school starting fully found to- 
 
 105
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 morrow. Not a child nowadays but is taught 
 (as we have noted) some form of self-expression 
 elocution, singing, dancing, or the like. But it 
 will be, of course, more satisfactorily true after 
 the school's own teaching has filtered down through 
 students become teachers and has spread in wide 
 circles to primary teaching of all sorts. 
 
 The first steps, then, in specialization would be 
 a repetition, or rather a reinforcement, of work 
 already done in a looser, more general way ; it 
 would be a professional stiffening of the standard. 
 It would be test work, the more physical side of it, 
 and designed (once again) for purposes of dis- 
 couragement. We may imagine, for instance, a 
 student who had had some general training in 
 gesture plunged at once into the difficulties of an 
 equivalent of the " Commedia dell' Arte;" or one 
 that had studied diction put to read a passage of 
 prose or verse in twenty different ways, and asked 
 to pitch upon notes in his voice with the absolute 
 accuracy with which they can be tapped on the 
 piano. We may also suppose that when the effect 
 of the school's work has filtered down into general 
 education the co-operative study of plays will be 
 finding, in a simple form, a place in most classes 
 for boys and girls of fourteen to sixteen. In our 
 theatre as school the students will find themselves 
 faced at the beginning with various elaborations 
 of this, for under one form and another it is this 
 co-operative study which must form the backbone 
 of the school's work; and its justification, therefore, 
 must be the backbone of the school's whole scheme. 
 To its consideration, then, we will return later at 
 some length. 
 
 Then there will be the productions of the two 
 full-fledged playhouses which are conceived to be 
 1 06
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 an integral part of the institution. It may 
 seem paradoxical to rank these as student work; 
 and certainly the general public, paying for its 
 seats and enjoying the performances as it would 
 those of any other theatres, will not trouble to 
 think of them in that way. But the productions 
 will truly be and be the better for being the 
 fine flower of the study, or to return to a former 
 metaphor the apex of the pyramid of the school's 
 work. 
 
 And to sum up the school's general policy: it 
 must make the sweep of its studies as comprehensive 
 as possible, must hold back the young men and wo- 
 men who are making the theatre a career, and com- 
 pel them, within reason, to obtain some mastery of 
 their art as a whole; it must cater for the student that 
 seeks intensive knowledge in but one or two direc- 
 tions, by keeping its sectional standards high, by pro- 
 viding opportunity, moreover, for actual research; 
 and, finally and most importantly, it must see 
 that the study in all its branches is generally educa- 
 tional, and is as much in immediate relation to the 
 ordinary cultural needs of men and women as the 
 drama should be in relation to their imaginative 
 lives. 
 
 One of the school's chief difficulties would no 
 doubt be with young people who, if they could not 
 secure an express passage through its every grade 
 and department, would then want to narrow their 
 studies to the one or other branch of the art on 
 which their hearts were set. It is a perennial 
 trouble with the drama that what for other arts 
 might be but simple devotion becomes in most 
 people caught by its lure sheer mania, nothing less. 
 One could unkindly attribute this to the passion for 
 self-expression, self-glorification, of which, to the 
 
 107
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 novice, the art of acting largely consists, were 
 it not that the would-be playwright, the producer, 
 even the would-be manager, is apt to become 
 almost as unbalanced. Perhaps the drama and all 
 about it is in its very nature an irrational occupation, 
 to be pursued only under the stress of emotion and 
 illusion a sort of elaborate dervish-dancing. Per- 
 haps all that rationalized study can do is, by dis- 
 pelling the illusion, to damp the emotion and 
 impoverish the product. One does observe in the 
 careers of some actors a continuing process which 
 might be so explained. First has come a quick 
 physical and emotional adjustment to their work; 
 they " find themselves " as it is called. Then this is 
 duly followed by a hardening into conscious method 
 when they have found themselves out ! Let them 
 be thankful that, if the public is slower to appreciate 
 the first part of the process than they could wish, 
 it is slower still to share in the second. Is the 
 rational study of the dramatic art better then left 
 alone ? Had its development better be confined to 
 some training in gymnastics and to the stimulus of 
 youthful high spirits, or, youth failing, to reliance, 
 when all else fails too, upon those of a more 
 liquid ardency ? The writer of this book natu- 
 rally does not admit a solution which would invali- 
 date it from beginning to end. He believes rather 
 that it is the unhealthy constriction of the art 
 which produces these symptoms in its neophytes, 
 which wearies and depresses its veterans. Bring 
 the drama as an art and a means of education 
 into touch with the normal life of the community 
 and it will develop rationality as a virtue and a 
 strength. 
 
 Young people, of course, will always beset such a 
 school as this fired with the one irrational desire to 
 108
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 " learn to act." It is in the young in the very No teaching 
 young, as we have seen a natural and engaging of acting 
 impulse enough. But it must not be allowed to allowed 
 colour and disturb by its violence the school's whole 
 scheme of work, if for no other reason than the 
 obvious one that the art of acting in its fuller 
 development is not built upon such an indulgence. 
 But here is a danger that calls for deliberate avoidance. 
 Insist all one will upon the concurrence of other 
 studies, loyally, even as these young fanatics may 
 try te detach their minds to them, their hearts will 
 be fixed upon acting upon nothing but acting. 
 The desire of it will possess them like a sort of 
 original sin. They will be acting from breakfast 
 to bedtime, in the street, in the solitude of their 
 rooms ; they will act in their dreams. Their en- 
 thusiasm must be disciplined or it will evaporate 
 fruitlessly, or else it will degenerate into a disease, 
 rather than develop to an art. 
 
 To begin with, they must not be allowed to in- 
 dulge during school hours in anything that can be 
 called acting at all. The rehearsing of plays by callow 
 students leads, under supervision, to their teaching; 
 and to the teaching, moreover, not of the principles 
 of acting, but of its practice or rather of its prac- 
 tices and too often only of its tricks. Something 
 of this sort is unavoidable when any teacher 
 begins to show pupils " how to do it " ; and, 
 sooner or later, every teacher will. But even with- 
 out supervision the student, too soon occupied with 
 effect, neglects cause; and has not the patience, has 
 not the equipment, to work through the slow pro- 
 cesses of interpretation, but takes short cuts to 
 what he thinks ought to be the result, becomes 
 imitative and impersonative merely, and begins to 
 develop a machine-like efficiency. The more 
 
 109
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 aptitude he has the more easily will he do this 
 damage to his art. Nor will the harm end 
 there, but spread. For to fellow-students who are 
 either less apt or whose interest in acting is more 
 impersonal, more purely educative, this show of a 
 result, this showiness rather, will obscure the whole 
 process and meaning of their study, will at the least 
 upset the balance of the class work. 
 
 For his own sake the student should be kept 
 from premature achievement. Acting seems so 
 easy, and like all other art ought, in its accomplish- 
 ment, to seem easy. In its inception, moreover, to 
 the unsophisticated, happily unself-conscious, young 
 person dwelling in the false paradise of artistic 
 innocence it is so easy, that to plunge into the prac- 
 tice of it without having fully faced, not so much its 
 difficulties as its possibilities (its difficulties, that is, 
 in their finest sense) is inevitably to run this risk 
 of developing one's innocence not into knowledge, 
 but into an experienced and hardened ignorance 
 death to one's own art, blight to one's surroundings ! 
 In the amateur that innocence may remain and 
 preserve its peculiar charm ; in the professional it 
 must suffer this change, and, as ignorance, be in- 
 excusable. Then drive these young people, mad 
 to act, and drive them hard against all the 
 more troublesome parts of the business. Let them 
 break their shins, so to speak, and spoil their 
 strength over voice production, elocution, dialectics, 
 eurhythmies ; over the principles of playwriting; 
 upon analytical criticism, theatrical history, the 
 history of costume, costume designing, scene de- 
 signing and making and painting ; not to mention 
 fencing and dancing and singing and music gener- 
 ally. These make up the whole art of the theatre, 
 nothing less, and now the list is not exhausted, 
 no
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 And if the young actor does not mean to acquire 
 at least some understanding of the lot, make it 
 clear to him that, when he emerges from 
 apprenticeship, and comes to occupy his own 
 particular place in any true theatre, he will still be 
 no better than a hand in a factory, his status no more 
 distinguished. Personal ambitions must, one fears, 
 in these first days be tantalized. The student will 
 be led time and again to the actual brink of acting 
 in a play, led round and round, and not till the last 
 possible moment be allowed to plunge in. For 
 once he is in he must swim unaided. His enthu- 
 siasm will survive, there's no fear, while his un- 
 expended powers ripen. And if it fails the theatre 
 will be the better in the loss of him, for, failing 
 under such a test, what could he be trusted to bring 
 to its service but a little vain glory ? 
 
 And the effect of such discipline upon the school 
 as a whole will surely be tonic. It must never seem 
 to offer the meretricious attractions ot the amateur 
 dramatic club or it will be doomed from the start in 
 the eyes of those who look to make a solider use 
 of it. It is to exist for the exemplary study of 
 drama ; it will therefore become its integrity to place 
 in its scheme all the component parts of drama 
 according to their proper proportion and worth. 
 For thus, and thus alone, will it succeed in attract- 
 ing as students a heterogenous body of young men 
 and women, and in encouraging them to seek in 
 active study of the drama something that they look 
 but for the shadow of now, even in their enthusiastic 
 vision of an ideal theatre, something that they 
 would certainly never dream of going to any existing 
 theatrical school to gain. If they find it they will 
 re-bestow it upon dramatic art with interest, some 
 creatively, some appreciatively. From our theatre's 
 
 in
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 own standpoint, then, such a body of students, who 
 will, most of them, have no intention of abiding in 
 her service, is best. And the higher standard of 
 general competence that can thus be set will weed out 
 the weaklings, in talent or intention, those whom no 
 entrance examination detects, those whose pledge to 
 continue their training is valueless and worse for 
 half-hearted students are the best to be rid of. 
 The half-hearted and half-talented of tardy dis- 
 covery are the curse of all such schools ; and 
 their gradual accretion like barnacles, once they 
 dare not cast loose, upon the body of the actor's 
 calling is more than a curse ; it is a prolonged 
 disaster. 
 
 Thebye-paths And a student body with aims other than pro- 
 of the social fessional acting is an attainable object. We have 
 "settlement" a l re ady noted that the extended and varied use of 
 andthe"com- ^rama } n general schooling, and its probable 
 
 mumty' ,. c r ,, 
 
 theatre spreading as a means or recreation among com- 
 
 munity-conscious " people (themselves a growing 
 class) can provide useful bye-paths into which 
 students that remain whole-hearted enough, but 
 yet must discover that there are no personal theatri- 
 cal triumphs ahead for them, can be deflected. 
 " He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches " 
 the aphorism has it. But it is possible in any art, 
 and this being, at any rate, an imperfectly put 
 together world in an art which uses the hap- 
 hazard gifts of physical personality as its medium of 
 expression it is very likely that a talent may be de- 
 veloped, none the less real that it will be somewhat 
 inappropriate to its possessor. It is not so much 
 that the heart of a Romeo may exist in the body of 
 a Falstaff (Nature is usually apter than that. Be- 
 sides, what a theme, comic or tragic, for the drama- 
 tist !) as that a man may be able to cultivate in 
 112
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 himself almost all the qualities of a successful actor, 
 and yet for lack of one of them will fall short of his 
 apparently legitimate ambitions. It may only be 
 perhaps that he cannot respond to the test of 
 physical endurance ; great acting is pitifully depen- 
 dent on the possession of bodily strength ; many an 
 actor must be left out of account because he is not 
 a " fourth act " man. And if again such a good 
 man's chances are to be narrowed by the theatre's 
 own narrowness as a channel for the drama generally, 
 the calling seems bound to become a reservoir of dis- 
 appointed men and women. One will find in it to- 
 day more such women then men. Anno Domini 
 is, of course, a swifter enemy to them, and they do 
 not find such opportunity of adaptation, such a 
 variety of parts, as a man may suit himself to. 
 
 Now to these disinherited heirs of popular success 
 the socialization * of the drama should come as a 
 godsend. As administrators of village and com- 
 munity theatres, superintendents of dramatic work 
 in schools and colleges, a career worthy of the name 
 would be open to them. Nor would they be the 
 theatre's left-handed gift to society. Granted the 
 early discipline of its comprehensive study, they 
 might often become more truly masters of their art 
 than those whose too continued practice of it made 
 them rather its servants. The instinct for acting 
 is such a common one that we can seldom foresee 
 whether cultivation will strengthen or destroy it 
 (early strength is no guarantee of maturity) ; but 
 it must undergo the test. There is no reason what- 
 ever, though, that the development of a general 
 understanding of the art in place of a faculty for 
 individual expression in its medium should rank as 
 
 * The word is used in its strict sense, not as necessarily con- 
 noting any doctrinaire form of Socialism. 
 
 H 113
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 failure if only the opportunities for exercise and 
 influence are there. At present it is as if for a 
 parallel fiction and poetry were the only forms of 
 literature. But the drama also needs its pure 
 scholarship. 
 
 The picked Conversely, one might anticipate with a certain 
 recruits mischievous satisfaction that were the study of acting 
 made wide enough in its application (as for the sake 
 of the actors themselves it should be) people bent 
 on more serious careers in the church, at the bar, 
 in politics, and asking only by the way for what 
 little help in self-development they thought that 
 dramatic art might bring them would halt at some 
 moment to recognize their more fitting career in the 
 theatre. For certainly there are men now in the 
 church, at the bar, in politics, so-called successes, 
 who seem to have nothing but histrionic capacity 
 to recommend them. Whether the theatre would 
 profit by their acquisition may be disputable, but 
 their present professions do not. And if, now and 
 then, the theatre did seduce a possible good lawyer 
 or priest they ought not to be grudged her. If 
 she is not a calling fitted for the best men it needs 
 but a few of them to help make her so. 
 
 Finally; as we began by admitting that, however 
 broad the basis of study, the school's work would 
 rightly be directed towards the perfecting of drama- 
 tic art itself, exemplified in the finest achieve- 
 ments of the theatre, so it would aim to find among 
 its students a small surviving band whom deliberate 
 and sustained choice and the discipline of hard 
 technical training had only confirmed in their desire 
 for the promised land of their art. Well, too, if 
 their choice can be kept to the last possible moment 
 a little free by fellowship with men and women 
 working towards other ends ; while the school's 
 114
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 usefulness to these, for whom study of the drama 
 is to be a mere means, will be a controlling test of 
 the theatre's own wider fulfilment of its purpose in 
 the community at large. 
 
 Into a more specialized category of study would P/aywriting 
 fall playwriting classes. To those familiar with the classes 
 work of this sort, originated by Professor Baker at 
 Harvard and now imitated and developed all over 
 America, there is no need to insist upon its pertin- 
 ence in any school of the theatre. Its effect upon 
 American drama is already patent.* 
 
 Such classes f are most conveniently made up of 
 from ten to twenty students, of whatever seems the 
 right number for free, informal discussion. From 
 the nature of their procedure one might better 
 describe them as seminars. A student or two, or 
 even three, it may be, that have joined in collabora- 
 tion will bring a play for the consideration of the 
 class. The authorship remains as far as possible 
 anonymous. The play may be brought in an un- 
 finished, but not an unformed, condition ; it may 
 lack, that is to say, a last act, but its dialogue and 
 
 * An advisable, an almost necessary, beginning to any practical 
 attempt to realise such a school as this would be a careful critical 
 report of the remarkable and very varied work being done in almost 
 every American university and college. Some of it is doubtless 
 experimental and may be without permanent value, some of it is 
 inco-ordinate and under the curse of being expected to show im- 
 mediate and effective results. Much of the best of it is carried on 
 under every sort of discouragement. But, as a whole, it is a body 
 of endeavour, which, while it cannot create a great American 
 drama foolish to expect that it should is providing every chance 
 for its development. It is fertilizing the soil. Later may come a 
 sense of the equal need of organizing the theatre itself, where alone, 
 under as wholesome conditions as give it birth, a drama may 
 flourish. 
 
 f What follows is not accurate description of any existing ones, 
 but it indicates, fairly correctly, the lines on which they may be run. 
 
 "5
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 scenes must be consecutive. It is either read aloud 
 by the conductor of the class or distributed in MS. 
 It is then put upon the table for discussion, destruc- 
 tive criticism, constructive suggestion. The author 
 will disguise his identity as best he may, either by 
 partaking (this needs some histrionic de-impersona- 
 tive ability besides) or abstaining ; the anonymity is 
 only important in helping the class to discuss the play 
 with absolute freedom. The author may take 
 advantage, negative or positive, of the criticism, and 
 bring up the play again in a further stage of 
 development. Its ultimate destiny may well be the 
 waste-paper basket. It is admittedly prentice work, 
 and although the apprentice may prematurely pro- 
 duce a masterpiece he is not to be expected, or 
 even encouraged, to do so. Early achievement in 
 this, as in all else, is inimical to sustained study. 
 
 It will be seen that this procedure, with whatever 
 possibilities of variation, is simple enough. The 
 validity of the whole idea of such classes has been 
 questioned, but chiefly from the point of view of 
 literary men, to whom composition is an extremely 
 individual, and generally a solitary, thing. For an 
 answer one may note: first, that the playwright's 
 work is not primarily literary at all the writing 
 down of a play is mere convenience ; secondly, that 
 he is part artist but part craftsman, most akin, in 
 his methods perhaps, to an architect, essentially, 
 therefore, a collaborator, even though his be the 
 creative beginning of the collaboration ; thirdly, 
 that as he is far more concerned with technique 
 than other literary men his work is the more 
 discussible quite apart from its inspirational side. 
 
 That no amount of criticism within class or 
 without will make a man a great playwright need 
 not be questioned. The claim of the class is that 
 116
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 he will at least learn there the nature of his materials, 
 and will see their possibilities in the handling. 
 It is to be supposed too that the class critic, by 
 attack and defence, learns as much as the class 
 author. 
 
 Nor need a career as a playwright be the student's 
 single goal. How far an application of the excellent 
 rule that to be complete master in any one branch 
 of art some service in every one is desirable would 
 bring into the playwriting classes future actors and 
 producers we need not inquire, for we have held 
 that any broadening of study, and for the actor any 
 suspension of graduation, is desirable. The gener- 
 ally educational value of the work is very demon- 
 strable. If Greek and Latin verse, English com- 
 position, precis-writing, and the like are good 
 training in literary expression the discipline of play- 
 writing can certainly hold its place with them. As 
 a lesson in conciseness the well-made play is only 
 to be beaten by the sonnet. Of construction, ex- 
 position, clarity, consistency it can be made a perfect 
 example. It is notorious how many accustomed and 
 easy-going essayists and writers of fiction will fall 
 short when they try their hands now and then at 
 the more exacting task. And, for all their protests 
 after failure, it is not ignorance of a few unworthy 
 theatrical tricks that has betrayed them, but often 
 a sheer inability to realize or compass the hard 
 planning and austere practice of the dramatic form. 
 
 There are tricks, as in every other trade, to be 
 learnt if you like, and then for their poverty avoided ; 
 and a very little more appreciation of good drama 
 would render the worst of them (except for their 
 sleight of hand fun) ineffective and worthless. 
 It is true, of course, that the content of the best-made 
 play may be inferior to that of a rambling novel or a 
 
 117
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 slovenly biography. And these, again, have their 
 constructional virtues, which are not those of the 
 play form. But as a training in any sort of writing 
 the play has its peculiar advantages. It is hard 
 discipline. 
 
 One aspect of the playwriting classes needs com- 
 ment. The work has no relation to the workaday 
 activity of a theatre, and it may seem that as the 
 playwright will exercise his craft detachedly he 
 might better study it so ; that there is a real ob- 
 jection to his being exposed at such an impression- 
 able time to influences which may belittle his work's 
 value, may tend to reduce it to the importance of 
 a sort of verbal scene-painting. With the theatre 
 as it is now, in a school that was only its annex, 
 the objection would be very valid. But if this 
 theatre as school does not, by everything else that 
 is in it, turn this drawback to advantage it will exist 
 in vain. In all reality the playwright is a colla- 
 borator, and his work but the part of a whole. 
 Its inception may best be individual and solitary, 
 and no doubt such a man is intellectually better 
 off in the society of those whose minds are not 
 over-occupied with the derivative processes of the 
 theatre. But the remembrance of the coming 
 collaborators should always be with him, and as 
 soon as the completing phase of production begins 
 he should personally assist at it if possible. The 
 best of producers is no good substitute for the 
 playwright himself. But, again, if he is not to be 
 more of a nuisance than a help he should know at 
 least as much of the inner workings of the actor's 
 craft as he may expect the actor to understand of the 
 exigences of his, and he can only learn this in any 
 useful sense by experience or close observation. 
 
 It is noticeable that the playwriting study groups 
 118
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 in America are apt to carry on in what are called 
 workshops,* having discovered, one presumes, 
 that their members write more practical plays, at 
 least, if they take the responsibility of acting them, 
 of painting and shifting their scenery too. That 
 is sound, without doubt. One's only criticism 
 would be that the full rounding of this particular 
 circle of experience does not atone for its minute- 
 ness. The gain would probably be greater if the 
 prentice-playwright could see the work that is 
 complementary to his own more proficiently done 
 than he himself need ever aspire to do it. What 
 he needs is the chance to sense sharply the com- 
 parative value of his own share in the complete 
 process ; and he will do this most profitably by 
 being brought into contact with the rest of the 
 work at its positive best. 
 
 In as close, but in a contrasted, relation to the Stage 
 school's work would come its study of the decorative decoration 
 arts of the theatre. While playwriting may begin 
 intimately and will cut loose, the dress designer 
 and scene-painter must obviously look elsewhere 
 to be taught their particular A. B.C. No more need 
 for a theatre as school to involve itself in that than, 
 on the ground that it calls for music now and then, 
 it should be required to set up a class for trombone 
 players. The basis of study could be made too 
 broad. 
 
 There could be classes in the history and the 
 technical planning of scenery, in the history and 
 designing of costume, equally suited for students 
 completing a general education in drama and those 
 that were making a career by studying painting and 
 drawing elsewhere but had an eye to possible work 
 
 * Professor George P. Baker's Harvard habitat is known as The 
 47 Workshop, and it is the exemplar for many others. 
 
 119
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 in the theatre later. But practical work would need 
 to be that done to meet the theatre's actual require- 
 ments, and could be joined in only upon such con- 
 ditions as these dictated. We must not forget that 
 this is the theatre as school, and not a school of the 
 theatre operating at large. It would be clearly 
 impossible to set up large studios in which scenery 
 was experimentally built and painted, and costumes 
 were made just for the fun of making them, so to 
 speak. For one thing, the cost would be pro- 
 hibitive. But, apart from this, we should be at 
 once betrayed into the worst errors of particu- 
 larism.* A dramatist who works without reference 
 to the acting and staging that his play will need, 
 an actor who takes such an absolute view of his art 
 that he hardly admits obligation to the dramatist, 
 are alike guilty, and pay the penalty of their detach- 
 ment in the ineffectiveness which will always result 
 in the co-operative drama from individual over- 
 assertion. Not less mistaken is the artist (so he 
 claims to be par excellence}, to whom the demands 
 of the theatre, are first and last, material to be com- 
 passed by his own imagination. Having sated it, 
 he will be good enough to allow dramatist and actor 
 if he cannot see himself rid of these altogether 
 to polish off, at his dictation, the few details that 
 remain. This really will not do. It can have no 
 relation to the realities of the theatre. Vision is 
 above all things to be respected and served, but 
 when it can only exist and prosper unfettered the 
 visionary must abide by his isolation and the 
 conditions that attach to it. When the message 
 comes down from the mountain the workers on 
 the plain must make the best use of it they can, 
 
 * An imminent danger, apparently, the moment a decorative 
 artist sees the theatre in his grasp. 
 120
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 and, one fears, adapt it, like the poor day-by-day 
 labourers they are, to their current needs. Useless 
 to plan the removing of very complex and mun- 
 dane machinery to a mountain top, for there are 
 many prophets to serve, and each prophet has, and 
 prefers, his own mountain ! The theatre is not the 
 place for the unchecked expression of a dominant 
 individuality, and any attempt to make it so is a 
 step towards its destruction. Much could be 
 learned, no doubt, from seeing a theatre glorified 
 and destroyed by an individual genius. Much 
 would be gained by the theatre as a whole taking 
 example of what to do and it might possibly be 
 of what not to do. Such experiments are to be hoped 
 for, and from a surplus of energy should be provided 
 for. But we deal here with general principles ; 
 and subversive doctrine must therefore rank as 
 heresy and suffer condemnation, certainly until 
 the true and more catholic faith has been safely 
 established. 
 
 It should, though, be possible to provide for some 
 free experimenting within the walls of the exemplary 
 theatre itself. The most fruitful time for it would 
 probably be when students, towards the end of their 
 prentice tasks, were straining upon the leash of 
 them a little, but were as yet uncommitted to a daily 
 round of responsible work. Some natures, of 
 course, retain an impulse for the untried through a 
 long career. It is the final triumph of any institu- 
 tion to be able to give these untameables fair scope 
 and still keep them loyal to its service, and it will 
 be well worth the stretching of many points of 
 discipline to do so. For in them, all appearances 
 to the contrary, will often lie the spirit of its 
 survival. Losing them, no way to it may be left 
 but by the violent process of destruction and rebirth. 
 
 121
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 The capacity of the theatre workshops to enter- 
 tain apprentices might not equal the demand for 
 practical experience that students would make of 
 them. A certain amount of sheer demonstration 
 for their benefit could be attempted; some benefit 
 accrue from a handling of models. But, generally 
 speaking, the workshops would be the narrow neck 
 of the bottle through which only picked students 
 could hope to pass ; and only a further selection 
 of them could hope for definite and continued em- 
 ployment in the work of the theatre. On the other 
 hand, remembering that the demand for this work 
 must always be limited, the supply of students 
 wanting to devote an apprentice's full time to it 
 might well regulate itself accordingly. 
 
 The co-opera- But the main artery of work in the theatre as 
 tive study of school is likely to be the co-operative study of plays. 
 plays j t w in b Cj t j iat i s to saVj if t he d rama o f analysis 
 
 and especially of social analysis with its peculiar 
 interpretative demands, continues the remarkable 
 development of the last thirty years. Classes in 
 finite and attractive accomplishments may be more 
 closely besieged by the tentative crowd. But the 
 student committing himself to the theatre as a 
 career will find that here is the core of the matter 
 for him: he will be drawn to relate every other 
 study to this. When they have receded in his 
 experience to rank as mere training, or remain as a 
 pleasant gymnastic, the practice of this will endure, 
 for his final maturity is to be that of the supple and 
 sensitive interpretative artist. Moreover, it is upon 
 the broad development of this study that the claims 
 of the drama itself to be generally educative can 
 most safely rest. Now, as the playwright has often 
 moved momentarily beyond the reach of his inter- 
 preters, so, it is obvious, the student could elaborate 
 
 122
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 this aspect of the drama beyond the containing 
 power of the theatre. And, working apart from 
 the co-ordinating influence of the theatre itself, 
 he might well do so, and another drama, more fitted 
 for the study than the stage, might be gendered. 
 But working within its circle there is little such 
 danger. The student whose place when study is over 
 will be not upon the stage but among the audience, 
 whose approach to his subject will, as is to be shown, 
 differ considerably in later stages from the actor's, 
 may-indeed most aptly fulfil the very useful function 
 of pointing to, and testing, the extreme develop- 
 ment of the dramatic form in this direction. Who 
 is to say, for instance, that a Platonic dialogue or 
 the like is not a possible play given suitable inter- 
 pretation and suitable audience ? The one cannot 
 be developed without the intelligent sympathy of 
 the other. But it is by such disinterested study, 
 which incurs no obligation for immediate effect 
 or even for ultimate success, that art as well as 
 science is given life and continuance. 
 
 This co-operative study of plays must, of all 
 others, proceed from the very beginning less upon 
 the lines of a class than of a seminar. It may well 
 be the best plan for the study of any art. One notes 
 its traditional use for painting and sculpture : 
 the pupils at work in a common studio, a professor 
 appearing at intervals as critic, constructive and de- 
 structive, of the work under way. The resultant free- 
 dom of the novice to feel and find his own path saved 
 only from too disastrous blunderings, and then more 
 by example than precept is certainly a necessary 
 basis for any such work as we are to outline here. 
 
 We must note as we proceed where the differences Critical and 
 of approach as between general and particular interpretative 
 student, as between the use of a play for the educa- 
 
 123
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 tional purpose and its preparation for the stage, 
 are likely to lie. They will tend to develop at 
 different times in differing plays. In some they 
 will be of no practical import till presentation to an 
 audience is in question, and then will be merely 
 practical matters to put it crudely of dressing- 
 up and moving about ; in others they would be 
 from the beginning so marked the approach being 
 obviously, as with a mime play, on the lines of pure 
 performance as to rule out the usefulness of such 
 plays as a medium of study altogether. But it is 
 most to our present purpose to insist upon the 
 identity of the methods that can be employed for 
 both study and production, and to comment, if but 
 by implication, upon the fact that each process, as 
 now followed, lacks an essential that the other could 
 supply. Production, for instance, lacks concurrent 
 criticism. What the actor thinks of his own part 
 he, as a rule, wisely keeps to himself wisely, if 
 heroically, for he, at one with the part, is soon to be 
 criticized himself, and a disclaimer of identity will 
 then avail him little. While for co-operative criticism 
 no provision at all is made ; and, indeed, under 
 ordinary conditions of rehearsing it would only result 
 in chaos. The position of the author is god-like 
 worship and obedience being offered to him accord- 
 ing to the credit of his cult. Mutterings of unbelief 
 must be low, for under this banner, after all, every- 
 one concerned is now pledged to march to victory 
 or defeat. Loyalty, then, is a self-regardful virtue. 
 And if the producer told the actors what he really 
 thought of the play it might depress them un- 
 endurably. When the actors discuss each others' 
 parts the effect is commonly disturbing, though a 
 kindly provision of nature somehow always makes 
 the part that you haven't got seem the better one. 
 124
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 It is the worst manners to comment to your fellow 
 actor upon his potential performance except in the 
 terms of the most formal (or fulsome) compliment ; 
 reasonably enough, since his artistic life is at stake 
 and you cannot be responsible for saving it. There 
 develops, in fact, as rehearsals proceed, a conspiracy 
 of rather desperate silence as to the merits of the 
 whole affair. 
 
 On the other hand, the detached and critical 
 study of drama now lacks the first, the most essential, 
 condition of fruitfulness. For until a play has been 
 brought to life by the assumption and setting in 
 motion of its characters no criticism of it can be valid. 
 It may be said, indeed, that the task of the seminar 
 our proposed combination of the two methods 
 will be for the students first to bring the play to life 
 and then destroy it again by criticism if they legiti- 
 mately can. The poorer the play, of course, the 
 more easily could this be accomplished. There 
 are many plays, it goes without saying, that now 
 pursue their way to production, but never could 
 have survived two hours' preliminary destructive 
 criticism. Far better had they thus perished at the 
 righteous hands of their actors before ever the 
 footlights illumined them. It is less obvious, but 
 as true, that drama may make the bravest show on 
 paper, and even treated by actors with that 
 respectful dislike which they suppose to be due to 
 the classic and superior maintain a sort of gal- 
 vanized life, when it would collapse quickly enough 
 if charged with any real vitality; or there may be 
 preserved the illusion of a play which has really 
 been dissolved into the atmosphere of its acting. 
 
 What amount of technical training in its ex- 
 pressive side will a student need before he can use- 
 fully join in this work ? Not very much. For it 
 
 125
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 will be noted that a class of this sort will have to 
 accommodate more than the number required to 
 cast any particular play. For one reason, any 
 alternate shrinkage and increase of numbers would 
 otherwise be a nuisance. For another, and a better, 
 the elasticity which an overplus of students brings 
 to the discussion will be very valuable. One does 
 not want merely to have the cast of the play dis- 
 cussing the play, for bearing in mind our pre- 
 liminary obligation to vitalize the work by imperson- 
 ation this procedure would tend very quickly to 
 harden into a sort of rehearsal; good enough in 
 itself perhaps, better than any one may find at 
 present, but unsuited to our present non-productive 
 purpose. 
 
 The play would be cast, of course. It would 
 not do to start every meeting by a fresh or 
 a haphazard allotment of the parts. That would 
 give us no continuity of development in its study. 
 But there is nothing against a temporary turning 
 of critic into executant, nor against the ex- 
 change of parts nothing, indeed, against any de- 
 vice which would turn the play's every possible 
 facet into the light of discussion. It will be seen, 
 then, that while no " dead wood " is to be desired, 
 no perforcedly silent listeners, no crowd, these 
 classes would yet accommodate indefinite numbers. 
 Not only that, but there would be an actual ad- 
 vantage in composing them of students in varying 
 stages of training ; by no other means would a man 
 learn quicker how much of his art he didn't know 
 and what was the worth of all that he did. An 
 equal and an obvious advantage lies in forming the 
 classes of students who would approach the plays 
 from various points of view the playwright's, the 
 actor's, the critic's, as well as from that more 
 126
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 broadly, and perhaps destructively, critical stand- 
 point which may be taken by the outsider, con- 
 cerned only for the value of the whole business in 
 its application to whatever is for him (and for the 
 moment!) ultimate reality. 
 
 It may be surmised that the conductor of the Bringing the 
 seminar will not have an easy task. We are now P la y to Kf e 
 imagining one twenty or thirty students strong, 
 and its control will call both for authority and 
 experience. But smaller affairs are not to be ruled 
 out, and half a dozen students working upon a play 
 might well be left to elect their own conductor, for 
 it is in this post that the training of a play producer 
 will be found. His powers will be roughly those 
 of the chairman of a committee, and the best con- 
 ductor, by that parallel, will be he who exercises 
 them least arbitrarily. When he is indeed a pro- 
 ducer with responsibility for results his powers will 
 need to be both increased and more strictly defined. 
 For a play's production involves agreement, even if 
 that has finally to be imposed; but for its study an 
 intelligent disagreement may be, to the end, more im- 
 portant. The task of the seminar will, of course, be 
 to come, if possible, to a common understanding of 
 the play: that will be the hall-mark of a quite success- 
 ful session. But the unity will be of no value unless 
 it has proceeded from diversity ; unless, indeed, 
 it is a genuine reconciliation. And if diversity 
 does not exist to begin with it will even be the 
 conductor's business to produce it. These things 
 are a parable, and they are the gist of the drama's 
 educational claims. To bring a mere show of unity 
 out of diversity is a trite task, which might be 
 achieved by vote-taking in a debating society. 
 Let us be clear that this studying of plays is a very 
 far cry from that, and must never be allowed to 
 
 127
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 degenerate into that. Its mainspring is not to be 
 disputing, however mentally clarifying that may be. 
 Our object is to create a unity in diversity a very 
 different and a far more promising thing. Unity in 
 diversity must be our social ideal, and it is this that 
 drama in its very nature does expound and, through 
 the sympathetic power of impersonation, interpret. 
 This is the drama's secret. Our understanding of 
 things human will be barren unless we have emotion- 
 ally realized them first. Experience teaches us, it 
 is true, and if we were wholly unimaginative 
 creatures it might remain our only master. But 
 individual experience at the best is not wide, and it 
 is hard to summarize, interpret, relate to the com- 
 mon lot, and re-value in these wider terms. Not 
 more than once or twice in a lifetime, perhaps, 
 do we stand so revealed to ourselves. We are too 
 intimate with our own hearts ; that is the trouble. 
 And nothing ends in them till life ends, nor can we 
 look back with certainty to any beginning ; we know 
 that our causes are really all effects. Therefore we 
 turn to interpretative art for a synthesis, but so in- 
 capable are we of applying a direct test to anything 
 but the demands and satisfaction of our crude 
 appetites we must even then trust to the vicarious 
 experience it offers to recognise the validity of the 
 very elements that most largely compose it. Now, 
 it is drama, the dramatic power of the assumption of 
 a second identity, that can provide for us best in this 
 kind. Of the directly interpretative arts it is the 
 strictest in form ; in no other can the argument be 
 rounded up, or rounded off, so completely; in no 
 other, if our criticism be keen, are the fallacies of the 
 artist more nakedly exposed. And from no other art 
 do we gain the essential life-giving virtue, without 
 which the best reasoning is barren, of this personal 
 128
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 realization of the human material of a problem, and, 
 for the time that we imaginatively occupy that 
 second self, as genuine a responsibility for its 
 welfare as we take, day by day, for our bodily 
 life and limb. But the unity in diversity that we 
 seek must be achieved as a crown to this responsi- 
 bility, never by its sacrifice. 
 
 It will be remembered that upon acting itself 
 as a part of the school's work we had paradoxically, 
 did it seem, in a school mainly ordained for its study? 
 plaeed a ban not to be lifted till the last possible 
 moment. It is in the work of these seminars of 
 play study that the advantage of the prohibition will 
 be chiefly seen. Imagine a set of young students 
 keen, keyed up, and yet restrained by hard technical 
 training in the gymnastic of their future art, all im- 
 patient to be showing what they can do. They are 
 necessary to the seminar; without them the more 
 coldly critical minds would bring the work to sterile 
 debating. On the other hand it will be for these, 
 who are students of the drama only as a subject 
 contributory to their general education, to put every 
 obstacle in the way of a conscienceless ignoring of 
 the weaknesses, or a facile overpassing of the 
 difficulties, of a play. Not, though, that one would 
 attempt to confine them to criticism. When later, 
 as audience, it is their taste and judgment which 
 sets the standard of plays' performances they will 
 exercise it the better for having come as near as 
 may be to acting themselves. In the seminar they 
 must prove their points of criticism, and as 
 much accomplishment as they need for this 
 it will not be much, as for purposes of study only 
 the play is to be halted far this side of staging 
 they had better acquire. We have assumed some 
 power of dramatic expression to be a part of every 
 
 i 129
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 education ; here will be a test of its quality and 
 value. If a man disputes the conduct of a scene, 
 or the reading of a part, let him take over the part 
 or conduct the scene himself. The whole scheme 
 and purpose of the work implies that he can and 
 should. There is no division yet into actors and 
 audience. We are not concerned with effects, but 
 with causes and process above all, with process. 
 And a third party, the student-dramatist, will find 
 his use in the work, not only as actor and critic, 
 but as the observer of both. For here is a per- 
 formance in embryo ; and he is always to re- 
 member that only in its performance will his own 
 future work be complete. 
 
 How the Let us outline, however roughly, the progress 
 
 seminar of one of these seminars. 
 
 works Q ne supposes, first, a straightforward reading of 
 
 the play ; twice or thrice repeated, with the readers 
 varied. That stamps its meaning upon our minds 
 as far as the author's own words, barely assisted, 
 can convey it. The next step is to discover how 
 far we are all at intellectual agreement upon 
 the play's meaning, when expressed in other words 
 than the author's, upon its implications and applica- 
 tions. There is room now for a general discussion, 
 a sort of " second reading " debate. The tact 
 of the conductor will be taxed, no doubt, to keep 
 this within reasonable limits. He must remember 
 in particular that the discussion is only of value 
 as a preparation for the next stage, in which the 
 seminar's characteristic work begins. However, 
 in six plays out often the issue is apt to be so closely 
 defined that agreement upon it may seem almost too 
 easy to come by. And the next step is to demon- 
 strate how the importing of emotional values may 
 completely upset conclusions arrived at without their 
 130
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 consideration. This is the moment when the play 
 must be brought to life by a selected body of inter- 
 preters. They will need to band themselves to- 
 gether for its integral expression and, so to speak, 
 for its defence. For their interpretation the im- 
 porting of their personalities will certainly give 
 offence to the intellectual agreement upon the play. 
 This is bound to be so, all intention apart. The 
 interpreters may protest that they remain in perfect 
 agreement, that this is merely how they express the 
 preliminary opinion arrived at in common. Now 
 the measure of the difference between the two 
 things, as it will appear to the critical listener, is the 
 measure of the importance of the human factor in 
 any problem. If the critic had not exercised his 
 brains on the matter first, and in conjunction with 
 the interpreter, he would probably take the pro- 
 tested identity of opinion and expression for granted. 
 But now it will seem to him almost fantastic that 
 men can so deceive themselves as to imagine this 
 thing they so apparently are to be of a piece with 
 their mental pretensions. Well, let him analyse and 
 prove the discrepancy if he can. We are now at a 
 point where mere argument no longer avails ; it 
 would only lead to a re-stating of agreement. So 
 the objector must illustrate, must interpret in his 
 turn. And then he in his turn will provide the 
 exhibition of inconsistency. 
 
 But at this stage something else may happen. The absorp- 
 The process of interpreting may work a genuine tion of the 
 change of opinion ; first, and perhaps but half- 
 consciously, perhaps quite unconsciously, in the 
 interpreters themselves ; then, by the light of the 
 interpretation, in their critics. We are trenching 
 now upon discovery of the extent to which an 
 actor is a dramatist's collaborator, of the extent ^to
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 which an idea is in such a case only completed by 
 its expression. This is slippery ground; but upon 
 it, for whatever reason, the biggest playwrights 
 and the poorest stand closest together. The 
 emptier a play, of course, the more easily can an 
 interpreter of creative instincts fill it with his own 
 personality ; though this habit, it may be said, 
 will as a rule seriously disable him from the tackling 
 of more commanding stuff. On the other hand, 
 the greater the play the more easily it will accom- 
 modate the height and breadth of an interpreter's 
 legitimate endeavour. One turns for instances to 
 the recognized classics, the Greeks, the Elizabethans, 
 with their manifold and divergent interpreting by 
 scholars and actors, both. We must remember, 
 though, that distance lends these things the enchant- 
 ment of an obscurity of their surface meaning, even 
 while time may deepen and widen the bearings of 
 their philosophy. The Elizabethans were not 
 drawn to dispute, as we are, over " Hamlet," because 
 the indications of the character had a contemporary, 
 perhaps a very topical, clearness to them. Language 
 alone is an uncertain register of all but the 
 simplest and most material things. It loses veracity 
 with time, as a colour fades and turns. We must 
 in any case translate a poem or a play from the past 
 even as we translate it from one language to another ; 
 and where the meaning of the original, made misty 
 by time, can be questioned the translator has freer 
 play. He may even make a mistranslation his own, 
 and so bind us to it that we reject its correction 
 witness our preference for the mistakes in the 
 English Bible. And it appears therefore that the 
 great playwright is not he who can define his mean- 
 ing most rigidly, but he who has planted in his play 
 ideas vital enough to bear development, to demand 
 132
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 development, yet to defy both belittling and falsifica- 
 tion. This may seem an easy truism to enunciate. 
 But when we come to its application, under such 
 conditions as our seminar will provide, its import is 
 apparent and will become the high test of every 
 play's value, and our response to it a measure of 
 the drama's educational use. 
 
 The kernel of the seminar's work will be the 
 discovery and development with regard to each 
 play of the possibilities of this collaboration between 
 playwright and interpreter. Note that the discovery 
 must always be a fresh and a genuine discovery. 
 It always can be; for each new body of interpreters 
 is new material to be worked in, even though the 
 play itself be well quarried; and so the development, 
 if genuine, will differ naturally with each change of 
 interpretation. Nor will it matter if the would-be 
 collaborators range for a time widely and perversely 
 beyond the limits of the dramatist's intention. They 
 will thus best discover their own limitations. The 
 retreat within its obvious boundaries, the reaction 
 to a sober consolidation of expression, may then 
 exhibit the play's own. It can be seen given a play 
 well charged with vitality of idea, a well-balanced 
 fluid gathering of interpreters and critics, and a con- 
 ductor apt both to provoke differences and to recon- 
 cile them, with a keen sense, too, of the direction 
 and goal of the work what scope there is for a 
 struggle of minds and temperaments. From which 
 obscurity some enlightenment should come. 
 
 What sort of a play should be selected for this 
 purpose ? It is easier to determine the various sorts 
 one would rule out. A play whose characters were 
 unresponsive to analysis by nature or by fault would 
 be of little use to us. A play making early demands 
 for its realization upon sheer rhetoric or external 
 
 133
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 graces would not be of much more. It is odd to be 
 ruling out A Midsummer Night's Dream and, say, 
 The Doctor's Dilemma for very much the same 
 reason, but one reasonably could. For a lesson in 
 beauty of diction A Midsummer Night's Dream is 
 hardly to be surpassed. The would-be political 
 public speaker who neglects the study of the tech- 
 nique of The Doctor's Dilemma, of Major Barbara, 
 and Man and Superman deserves to remain ineffec- 
 tive. But not the greatest bardolater (as Mr. Shaw 
 has nicknamed the tribe) would contend that the 
 characters of Theseus, Lysander, Hermia, and the 
 rest would repay much analysis (Bottom the weaver 
 might !) ; while most of the Shavian drama calls for 
 interpretative collaboration of a sort so clearly de- 
 fined in the text as to be scarcely susceptible to argu- 
 ment at all. That is to say, there is apt to be very 
 little written between the lines. 
 
 Now, in choosing a play for our seminar this 
 particular quality of workmanship will obviously be 
 valuable. If it is to be found exemplified in Shaw's 
 work we should look perhaps to Candida, John Bull's 
 Other Island, Blanco Posnet, and in parts of Getting 
 Married. But the supreme exemplar of the method 
 is probably Tchekov, of whom it may almost be said 
 that he has put more between the lines than in the 
 text itself. The words of The Three Sisters, or The 
 Cherry Orchard are indeed but symbols, each sen- 
 tence merely a prescription by which the actor pre- 
 pares the intended effect, very much more being 
 left to his perception and discretion than the force- 
 ful elocution of his speeches based upon a generally 
 correct realization of the character. When Mr. Shaw, 
 therefore, describes his Heartbreak House as a fantasia 
 in the Russian manner, and thus seems to challenge 
 comparison with Tchekov, he omits (no doubt be- 
 134
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 cause it doesn't greatly interest him : his attention is to 
 content) consideration of this question of technique, 
 a most important one for the interpreter. The one 
 method of writing, it may be, can result in as good 
 a play as the other ; though, by the rule that the 
 more you ask of an actor the more you may get from 
 him, Tchekov's work, complete in performance, will 
 acquire certain virtues that Shaw's must lack. One 
 might offer as a proof of this the contrary demon- 
 stration that while Tchekov's plays inappropriately 
 acted are quite unintelligible, Shaw's need never, at 
 least, be misunderstood. And though we class his 
 plays mostly as modern comedy they call primarily 
 for heroic treatment. 
 
 An instance of the two methods much less vio- 
 lently contrasted can be found in the work of a single 
 author by turning to the volume of Sir James 
 Barrie's plays containing The Twelve Pound Look 
 and The Will. Apart from the fact that the first is a 
 masterpiece had one to instance perfection on this 
 scale in its adaptation of means to end one could 
 hardly do better than name it while the second is, 
 perhaps, worthy of its author but no more, it is 
 most instructive to project both plays towards per- 
 formance as one reads them ; one should, of course, 
 never read a play otherwise. The Twelve Pound 
 Look, for all the necessary sparseness of its dialogue, 
 is essentially a " full " play. You gather that what 
 the characters say is but a small though significant 
 part of all that they think and feel ; you follow 
 them off the stage and back through the years with 
 ease ; half a dozen more plays, it seems, might be 
 written about them. While in The Will all is well 
 said and well done ; but then and there it is ob- 
 viously done with. 
 
 Of two such plays, therefore, it is patent which is 
 
 '35
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 the better fitted for the purpose of our seminar. One 
 could continue, of course, to canvass through modern 
 drama for the more and less suitable ; and the in- 
 dividual method of each dramatist and his variation 
 from type will always be worth consideration in the 
 light of any particular seminar's composition. 
 " Strife " But for a normal illustration of the work let us 
 
 quoted as an imagine the collective studying of such a play as 
 example j ohn Galsworthy's " Strife." It would probably 
 answer the current demand very well. It is not 
 over-encumbered with dialogue. The characters are 
 within the personal observation of most of us, and in 
 themselves not primarily difficult of assumption. 
 It is a play of no very violent twists and turns ; 
 delicate, occasionally, but not over-subtle in its 
 psychology, homogeneous in idea, its two main 
 divisions are simply contrasted, and its general effect 
 is one of mass. There would be no need to spend 
 much time in arriving at intellectual agreement 
 upon its meaning. This is plain enough. Ob- 
 jective criticism of its characters might detain us 
 longer. It would be pertinent, of course, to discuss 
 their type and their truth to type before impersona- 
 tion began to individualize them. But without much 
 delay we could begin to bring the play to life. 
 
 So the struggle can start at once. In the first 
 act typical difficulties and opportunities alike pre- 
 sent themselves. For most of the parts there is 
 little material in the way of dialogue. The inter- 
 preter will have a hard task to hold his conception 
 of the character intact and to strike its note surely 
 when his turn comes. He will be caught at under- 
 emphasis an offence against his fellows, since it 
 denies them support; at over-emphasis a sin 
 against the unity of the scene if by any too highly- 
 coloured effect he shadows his part's surroundings 
 136
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 in which effects of greater importance may be 
 more patiently preparing. The discovery that all 
 parts develop in a different ratio according to 
 their nature and their importance to the play, 
 that no parts develop with any constancy of pace 
 (it may be necessary to wait half a scene, half the 
 play, and then, in a few seconds, gather up all the 
 preparation and elucidate its intention in a sentence 
 or so, for that matter by a change of attitude or a 
 gesture) this discovery may well reduce any novice 
 to a puzzled impotence. The discernment of one's 
 place in the scheme, patent to the looker-on, is 
 lost in the excitement and concentration of par- 
 taking. Tact of emphasis is hard enough to come 
 by ; let any pianist bear witness. But when to 
 this accuracy is added the further demand for an 
 observant variety and so apparent a spontaneity that 
 the qualification must be forgotten ; and when this 
 whole performance has to be given upon an instru- 
 ment so fallible as one's emotional self it will be 
 seen that something more than sheer skill is needed. 
 
 Moreover, the sparsely-speaking part encourages The listening 
 the interpreter in vagaries. He has spare time to P art 
 fill in. He must at all costs keep the silent intervals 
 alive by presenting in them a clearly defined figure. 
 And here the dramatist may most easily have played 
 him false. It is simple, if you can draw character in 
 dialogue at all, to draw it in dialogue that is both sus- 
 tained and consecutive. One differentiates the terms 
 because so many dramatists in practice do not. 
 For fear of letting a character slip from their grasp 
 they will fill up every crack of its development, 
 so to speak, with words ; and thus they rob it of 
 life past any actor's recovering. For words are but 
 a part, at times the minor part, of the true dialogue. 
 Nevertheless, the unspoken things are not the actor's 
 
 137
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 concern merely ; the dramatist must not leave them 
 as a provision of empty spaces and opportunity. 
 He can, and he must, by implication convey to the 
 actors these complementaries of the dialogue. If he 
 cannot dictate them positively and this is difficult, 
 for words are his weapons of precision he must 
 at least safeguard his characters against mis- 
 interpretation. There are means enough to this 
 end. The spoken sentences can, of course, be 
 made to do it by the form and the colour of their 
 phrasing quite apart from their surface meaning. 
 But the elaboration of physical " business " will, 
 on the whole, fail one here. There are, naturally, 
 certain things which can be marked to be done 
 without comment, and if their doing is effectively 
 placed they can be eloquent. There are things of 
 which later comment will complete the significance. 
 These are legitimate devices and may be made 
 The placing positive indications of character. But to detail, 
 of a character for an instance, the gestures, the expression of 
 m the scheme f ace w ^} 1 wn ich a man shall receive the news of 
 of the play j^ s son > s d ea f- n i Sj fo r the dramatist, as great a mis- 
 conception of his share of the whole task as it is 
 if he describes his heroine as five foot seven in 
 height, with golden hair and blue eyes. If these are 
 essentials for the heroine it is a doll he wants, not an 
 actress. In the same way all method of expression 
 is a matter for the actor, and to dictate this to him 
 is as bad a crevice-filling as the multiplication 
 of words. No, the dramatist's part is neither so 
 obvious nor so simple. He has certainly to indicate 
 to the actor what to express, but the freer he leaves 
 him as to how to express it the more he demands 
 from the actor and the greater must be the value 
 of the response. Therefore, for him the method of 
 implication is the right one. And apart from the 
 138
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 primary uses of dialogue, of things said by a 
 character, there are the things said in reply, the 
 things said of one character by another;* there is, 
 more importantly, the position of a character in the 
 scheme of the play and the relation to its fellows 
 all these devices are open. The actor should find 
 himself like a piece on a chess-board, with only cer- 
 tain moves and certain attitudes possible for him. 
 This ascertained position must be the foundation of 
 the actor's study, as it was of the dramatist's inten- 
 tion precedent to any writing of dialogue at all. There 
 is, finally, the character's play of movement and his 
 relation, active and passive, physical and emotional, 
 to the particular scenes he is a part of. This it is 
 the actor's chief work to elaborate. The dramatist 
 must have prompted and safeguarded him by the 
 scheming of the scene. Its writing, as we have 
 noted, is only a part of the business. This scheming 
 can be done simply, it can be done subtly. In its 
 simplicity it is probably achieved by most dramatists 
 by instinct ; by what we call, in this connection, 
 the dramatic instinct, the gift without which even 
 the best writers fail to become tolerable playwrights. 
 It is shown in never forgetting that your character 
 is there, in losing no chance, when, by reference no 
 less than by speech, he may be observed and felt. 
 He must pull his weight in the scene. He must be 
 kept consistent, denied no opportunity that he 
 
 * Though these again are either less valuable when the play's 
 whole account is made up if they are so positively the dramatist's 
 own point of view, so obvious an indication to actor and audience 
 as to re-dramatise the character that says them, or if they introduce 
 yet another complication in the allowance that must be made for 
 another dramatised point of view. This last plan is legitimate 
 and amusing. If Browning had made The Ring and the Book 
 into a play he would, seemingly, have committed himself to this 
 method. But it wants using sparingly, or with great skill. 
 
 139
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 would not deny himself. He must do nothing mis- 
 leading; nor useless for that will be misleading. 
 He must be used with economy : that is to say, he 
 must have no empty moments. There must never 
 be a time during the scene when, however silent the 
 character, it is not possible to ask " What are you 
 thinking ? If you did speak, now, what sort of 
 thing would you say ? " ; and when the actor could 
 not reply, but must reply according to the drama- 
 tist's intention. A character that is not a living 
 part of the scene is a dead drag on it. But all this is 
 simple the commonplace of the dramatic art. 
 
 For subtlety in this scheming of scenes we may 
 turn for an example to any of the four great plays 
 of Tchekov. Of them it is possible to say that the 
 interplay of motive which makes up the action so far 
 transcends any mechanical rules, is so much the 
 outcome of the idiosyncrasies of the characters con- 
 cerned (though one doubts if any play could be so 
 written, yet it does seem as if the meaning of the 
 whole were but a quite fortuitous outcome of the 
 independent action of the parts), that the scenes are 
 positively unactable, their sound makes no sense, 
 unless a basic understanding of the characters has 
 been achieved ; and this achievement is only to be 
 reached by those who can relate characters and 
 play itself to the larger drama of Russian life, of 
 which Tchekov's mind was so perfectly the mirror 
 that he interpreted it as he would have his char- 
 acters interpret the purpose of his plays, the broken 
 lights (never too broken if true) finally giving the 
 full view. No other plays known to the writer ask, 
 as Tchekov's do, for the collaboration of the actor. 
 It is hardly too much to say that they are libretti 
 waiting for music. Yet they are masterpieces of 
 their kind, and of a very noble kind. It is no de- 
 140
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 gradation to a dramatist to confess himself so de- 
 pendent. They are a technical triumph, to say no 
 more. For, granted they can be misinterpreted, 
 there could be no doubt then where the failure was. 
 And if, as complete works of art, they defy trans- 
 lation, since so much of their beauty and purpose 
 cannot be written down, cannot be packed, so to 
 speak, and freighted; that is true of most fine poetry, 
 too. They can stand, however, to anyone as object 
 lessons. One finds in them an example of the 
 length to which the method of unsustained and in- 
 consecutive dialogue can be carried. It does not 
 follow, of course, that there is not sufficient virtue 
 in a more moderate use of the device. We need not 
 try to define how much material should be left in 
 the rough for the actor to mould, nor what should 
 be the exact proportion of implication to definition 
 in speech. Even if some law were discoverable 
 like the one which controls the floating of an iceberg, 
 two-thirds to be submerged to one above the 
 water we should get more fun from our ignorance 
 of it, and from the topplings that must result from 
 the empirical practices of art. 
 
 But and so to end this long parenthesis 
 it is easy to see how much of a dramatist's skill 
 must go into the implications he provides for the 
 more sparsely dialogued characters, and what skill 
 an interpreter needs to discern them. And in such 
 a play as " Strife," for instance, it matters very much 
 that they should be accurately discerned. 
 
 We have said that it is a play of mass effect. Mass effect 
 It may seem to go without saying that a dramatist 
 has no right to employ masses without being certain 
 that in themselves they will be effective. But one can 
 conceive of good plays and find plenty of poor 
 ones in which minor parts do little more than 
 
 141
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 " feed " (to use the expressive theatre slang) the pro- 
 tagonists. The characters may be deliberately chosen 
 and placed so that they are negative, inarticulate, 
 appear for a minute or two on a particular errand, 
 then disappear for good, are anonymous almost. 
 In this case their interpreters' discipline, and a 
 sensitiveness in response or contrast to the tones 
 or moods of the dominant players, will be the most 
 important thing. And incidentally a play of this 
 sort will be the least suited to co-operative study. 
 But in a play like " Strife " not one of the characters 
 is negligible. The effect of the whole is quite 
 genuinely made by the right co-ordination of all 
 the parts ; the meaning of the whole is only to be 
 reached by a correct accounting for all the values, 
 and if the sum is wrong it is little matter where 
 it is wrong. We speak of an ideal " Strife " and an 
 idealized interpretation ; but, of course, no play 
 was ever so perfect that it did not encourage a little 
 maltreatment, no criticism ever so refined that the 
 erring interpreter had not his own case against it. 
 We must know what to aim for, however, and when 
 our object is simply study we may aim high, and 
 aim vaguely even. We have not a performance to 
 think of, with all the imperfections, of dramatist, 
 actors, and audience countering each other, and an 
 air of human tolerance a " will to enjoyment " en- 
 veloping it all. Performance, as we shall see, stands 
 finally for accommodation, compromise, and a unity, 
 forced perhaps and unreal. But students in our 
 seminar may have their free fling between the best 
 and the worst possible. They can measure them- 
 selves very well in these scenes of mechanical com- 
 plexity, but, on the whole, of psychological sim- 
 plicity (of a familiar psychology, anyhow), both by 
 their own ability to conceive and sustain character 
 142
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 and, critically, as against the play's own capacity for 
 expression ; once, by change and change again, by 
 each battling his way to acceptance, the likeliest 
 exponent of every part has been found. 
 
 We are now in sight of the branching of the Where 
 paths of study and production. We should note, student and 
 incidentally, that a cast for the performance of a tnter P reter 
 play, while approaching their task at the beginning 
 from this same standpoint of study, would, for ex- 
 trinsic and intrinsic reasons both, not be committed 
 practically to such a melee of wits as may profit the 
 students. The actors will be from the beginning 
 each in his allotted place. They will criticize the 
 play and not each other. And, having forgotten, 
 as the saying is, more than the students have learnt, 
 or are, many of them, likely to learn, dispute about 
 technicalities will mainly be passed over. They 
 will come much more smoothly to the point where 
 dispute ceases and identification of play and inter- 
 preters begins. 
 
 And it is just on the nearer side of this point that 
 the paths must branch. The student will never need 
 so to identify himself except, recoverably, for the pur- 
 poses of his study. The distinction involved is a fine 
 one, no doubt, and operative more in the collection 
 of a class or a play's cast than over individuals. 
 As we shall see, and as indeed is obvious, a company 
 performing a play has by then abandoned all 
 critical sense. It must be the conductor's business 
 to see that the seminar as a whole never does so. In 
 questions of sheer effect, too, the student will hardly 
 be concerned, in the ebb and flow of feeling for 
 instance, among the crowd of strikers in " Strife." 
 And a final advantage of this play and its kind, 
 for the purposes of study, is that such questions 
 can be long left aside without the main interest 
 
 143
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 being lessened. There are many where such effects 
 are an integral part of the play's inner workings ; 
 and many, admirable for study, classics like the 
 "Agamemnon," for instance, where the ritual, the 
 swing and the sound of it, is bound very closely 
 with the play's mood and actual meaning; like the 
 Moliere farces, whose volubility is most intimate to 
 their character. Then the study of all poetic plays, 
 and of prose plays, too, for that matter, will hinge 
 for some more, for some less upon beauty of 
 execution, without which they cannot be brought to 
 life and so made, according to our definition, the 
 subject of true study at all. But they are not to be 
 ruled out as good educational material for this 
 reason. Rather the contrary. It is for the student 
 to realize and over no sort of play does he need 
 more to realize that an understanding of a poet's 
 work lives upon sympathy with its passion, and that 
 inarticulate sympathy is sympathy stillborn. 
 
 It goes without saying that the choice of a play 
 should depend to some extent on the composition 
 of the class and the disposition and abilities of the 
 students, equally without saying that every sort of 
 play every play, one might say, ideally demands 
 a different method of study. It must be faced, too, 
 that just as in every instance the path of study and 
 production branch at some point, so in the choice 
 of plays the interests of the general student and the 
 embryo actor will not, after a while, remain identical. 
 The actor, intent upon the completer processes of 
 production, will look for plays upon which he can 
 most quickly try his skill of expression ; the student 
 will profit more by those which give him the greatest 
 variety of mental and emotional exercise. One does 
 not conceive of " Love's Labour Lost," "A Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream," or " The School for 
 144 

 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 Scandal " being very fruitful themes for dissection 
 and abstract discussion. But the would-be actor, 
 though he were chained to a table and bidden 
 rationalize his work to the last degree possible, 
 would find ample opportunity in them for the de- 
 velopment of his sense of lyrical speech, of comedic 
 phrasing. Certainly these are things that he will 
 study to some extent apart as technical exercises. 
 But one must not try to do too much of that sort 
 of work in vacua. The would-be actor is to be kept 
 from acting till the very last moment. But no one 
 would advocate that he should not be given a chance 
 to co-ordinate his faculties before he takes the 
 plunge ; a swimmer to follow the metaphor 
 through needs to feel his way in the water before 
 he strikes out. 
 
 This brings up, however, a question of quite The misuse of 
 another sort with regard to the choice of plays. the classics 
 The familiar classics the finest in most cases, that 
 is to say are at the present time shamefully mis- 
 used in the interests of education. Nothing pro- 
 bably has so vitiated our taste for Shakespeare 
 as the commandeering of his great passages for 
 exercises in elocution unless it be the cold-blooded 
 dissection of his plays in the professorial study.* 
 If the classics are to be kept alive their expounders 
 must first of all be kept alive to them. They must 
 preserve for them, as far as ever they can, a fresh- 
 ness of eye, ear, and mind. It would be well, then, 
 for an actor never to have looked at " Hamlet " 
 in his student days at all. He had far better break 
 
 * This latter process applied to the great Greek tragedies 
 robbed them of the very semblance of plays, even, apparently, in 
 the minds of the professors themselves. Professor Gilbert 
 Murray's restoration of Euripides to his place as a playwright was 
 a far-reaching service. 
 
 K 145
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 his shins over "Troilus and Cressida." And for 
 "A Midsummer Night's Dream " and " The School 
 for Scandal," as we called them into service a while 
 back it would be better to read " The Sad Shep- 
 herd " and Farquhar's " Recruiting Officer." The 
 risk that a nascent judgment might thus be per- 
 manently perverted would be very small. If neg- 
 lected masterpieces were rediscovered by this plan, 
 all the better : the student adventurers, just out of 
 their apprenticeship, would be their best possible 
 sponsors. There would rather be a certain danger, 
 perhaps, that, flung upon examples of second-rate 
 classic work, the student might fall back bored and 
 defeated ; but that would not greatly matter. 
 And, quite apart from the question of the de- 
 gradation of fine work involved in their educational 
 misuse, the importance of the classics as factors in 
 this sort of training is over-estimated. They are 
 more delectable meat for maturer years for more 
 catholic minds and the great thing is not to blunt 
 a man's love for them. 
 
 The would-be It would be well, too, that with their near ap- 
 actor ad- proach to graduation the would-be actors should be 
 mitted to kept from the use of the plays, classic or modern, 
 
 'af/ast " wh * c k were a P art f t* 16 repertory of the theatre 
 itself, and from the influence, therefore, of the 
 performances of them. For their last year's work, 
 and for that only, these particular students, and 
 these only, should be brought into the closest touch 
 with the theatre as playhouse of which side of the 
 institution we have yet to speak. But we must 
 presume the existence there of favourite, perhaps 
 famous, actors, who will possess methods and man- 
 nerisms of their own. Now it is a truism that one 
 copies nothing from an artist but his faults. The 
 tendency of the student to copy will always be great, 
 146
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 increasingly great if in this last year he becomes an 
 understudy ; nor much diminished, even though, 
 his training done, he goes to another theatre to play 
 those parts which the favourite actor has made his 
 own, unless he has been deliberately kept from 
 studying them during his pupilage. One needs, 
 indeed, some very definite countervailing influence 
 if study of any sort in dramatic schools is not to 
 result in the transmission of the very individual 
 methods of half a dozen popular actors in an ever- 
 widening circle of impoverishment. And the more 
 the popularity is buttressed by real ability the 
 harder it will be to get from under its shadow. 
 
 By this time, of course, the students who are 
 to graduate as actors will be practically cut off in 
 their work from those that are to pass out else- 
 whither. Their study-seminars for this final year 
 might well be quite self-contained affairs. They 
 should now be set to the task of bringing plays to 
 production. Groups should be formed for this 
 purpose, and split up, and differently formed as 
 often as possible, by the teaching authorities. But 
 the group might well elect its own conductor- 
 producer, and the work should be seen no more till 
 it was at some near stage to completion. The plays, 
 as aforesaid, should preferably not be familiar ones. 
 But, further, the groups might flesh their steel upon 
 completely untried plays, and upon untried sorts of 
 plays ; though, as prentices themselves, they had 
 better not be confronted too exclusively with the 
 mere prentice work of dramatists. There is some- 
 thing to be said, of course, for an occasional student 
 production, home-made from beginning to end ; 
 student playwright, actors, costume designers, and 
 scene-painters, too. But let us sharply beware of too 
 much indulgence in that sort of thing. It has a 
 
 147
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 specious value. At its best it brings all concerned 
 into too narrow a circle, and by lowering their 
 standard of achievement may, at its worst, cocker 
 them up into a lamentable state of self-sufficiency 
 and conceit. The plan works well enough with 
 amateurs. It is, perhaps, the plan of all others 
 for them. They should be master of the processes 
 they employ from A to Z ; it is in this grasping 
 of the whole that their enjoyment of the art will lie. 
 Not for them, it stands to reason, the closer con- 
 centration and more hardly earned triumph of the 
 expert. They must cultivate an art as primitive 
 man cultivated his ; then their simple pleasure in 
 their own success will be attractive and allowable. 
 But those who mean to take a worker's place in the 
 organized republic of the theatre, and to be in- 
 heritors and sharers of the achievement of their 
 forbears and fellows must, from the beginning, 
 measure their own weakness against the finest 
 strength they can find. 
 
 Experimental For students in their final year plays to ex- 
 workfor periment with could without difficulty be found. 
 students in We shall see later how this requirement will fit in 
 with one particular need of the theatre as a whole. 
 And of plays experimental in themselves one may 
 make yet another use. We must remember always 
 the conservatism that any institution breeds ; and 
 the better it is organized, the more comprehensively, 
 the stronger will be the growth. Conservatism, if 
 an eye be kept to its drawbacks, is not a bad thing 
 for the drama. So much, at least, this book in its 
 very theme supposes. The English-spoken drama 
 certainly at this moment suffers from a lack of it 
 calls loudly for any sort of organization at all. But 
 let us see, by all means, to a provision of the means 
 of freedom, of legitimate revolt. For no one will 
 148 

 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 deny that students, graduating from this school to 
 its playhouse side, or leaving for any other play- 
 house of the sort, will tend to accept, with little 
 question, the routine they find there. Routine of 
 action certainly they must accept. But the machin- 
 ery of a theatre is so elaborate that no artistic activity 
 need feel cramped by it. It is routine of mind that 
 would be the danger. Some natures can always 
 contrive to keep a freshness and rebelliousness of 
 mind, and any institution will be lucky if it can 
 attract and hold them, active and unspoiled. But 
 for those readier to accept convention likely, too, 
 to prosper best by following it it may be said 
 that their fruitfullest time of individual develop- 
 ment will be when they have finished their formal 
 training, are pre-eminent on that scale, and have 
 not yet had to sing small in competition with their 
 elders. Now we have done our best, by every de- 
 vice, to keep the student actor free from the teaching 
 which will force him, at the teacher's convenience, 
 into a rut, into the deepest ploughed, directest 
 way to some sort of accomplishment. We can do 
 him a complementary service by setting him in this 
 last spurt of his training at a few quite impracticable 
 and impossible fences, in the shape of plays that are 
 (as the saying goes) not plays at all, and at some 
 whose title to practicability has been lost, or has 
 yet to be proved. It is a pity even so much is the 
 routine mind to be dreaded in training that he 
 cannot come at these fences in company with the 
 general student, with his (presumably) still less 
 particularized point of view. And it would always 
 be worth while to consider, instance by instance, 
 whether the two interests could not be combined. 
 
 It does little harm, of course, to the general 
 student to be working at a play in common theatrical 
 
 149
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 use. Indeed, if he is slow of dramatic instinct, 
 and unready at bringing the thing to life by im- 
 personation, it may be a necessary help to him to have 
 seen the play in full being and at its best. There 
 need be little fear but that the method of work we 
 have outlined for our seminars will effectively prevent 
 their degenerating over such a play as far, at least, 
 as the slow student is concerned into facile and 
 flashy imitation of acting. But with the right, and 
 a rightly assorted, collection of students it should 
 be possible to find work of an unconventionally 
 dramatic form which the student actor could ap- 
 proach, to his continuing advantage, in fellowship 
 with minds more detached from the theatre, in its 
 now narrowing sense, than his own. We can 
 hardly over-estimate the benefit to everyone con- 
 cerned of this assortment of minds and purposes. 
 Particularism is the curse of the arts. In the 
 theatre it is largely a needless curse, so direct is 
 the reflection of life in the art's process. From the 
 theatre as school particularism must at all costs be 
 banished. The keenness of the actor student, 
 with all his technical training so ready to his hand, 
 would make of such a play as " Strife " too slick a 
 mouthful altogether were he not to be checked and 
 his cheerfulness disgruntled by minds more intent 
 on the things themselves, which the play at its best 
 does but reflect ; though, again, these minds 
 might remain unperceptive of half the play's mean- 
 ing were they not stirred by the brightness of its 
 reflection in this keenness to interpret. 
 
 The limits of At what point this mixed company will have 
 a play's use made the most of " Strife " and its like, experiment 
 must determine ; and, indeed, every such seminar 
 should be in itself an experiment. A play, after all, 
 is only complete in its performance to an audience. 
 150
 
 PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 It might sometimes be well, after lively discussion 
 had thrown up the best possible cast for the play, 
 to remit it to such a caucus for final shaping in 
 terms of a performance, the whole seminar meeting 
 again to consider it finally in those terms. Where 
 this trespasses against the general forbidding of pre- 
 mature acting one must consider whether one should 
 not make it one of those exceptions that are the life 
 of all rules. Or one might possibly devise some 
 pseudo-performance which this ideally critical audi- 
 ence could have licence to interrupt by their com- 
 ments at suitable points. And the advantage in 
 this connection of the " impracticable " play, or the 
 play that was not a play at all, would lie just in its 
 natural resistance to the ordinary conditions of 
 performance. Set a seminar to work upon a 
 Platonic dialogue, upon Lowes Dickinson's " A 
 Modern Symposium " ; or, again, upon the 
 " Evidence before a Royal Commission," the ver- 
 batim report of a trial, or a Government interview 
 with Labour leaders set them to extract from that 
 sort of material its last ounce of effective meaning. 
 The verbatim report in particular would have its use. 
 It would furnish for the actor a chance to learn 
 where the substance of drama lies, what it is that 
 he must learn to divine beneath the finely worked 
 surface, prose or poetry, of the plays that are plays. 
 And the more critical mind may come to distinguish, 
 in the light of an artistic test, poverty of matter, 
 flaws in the fabric, pitiful fooleries which passed 
 muster for good sense upon the important occasion 
 itself, which would then have passed muster with 
 him perhaps; but will not now, not in this laboratory 
 where his faculties are fined to their utmost 
 perceptiveness. 
 
 These seminars of play study, then, are to be
 
 Subsidiary 
 
 school work ; 
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 the centre of the school's work, the hub upon which 
 the whole idea of the theatre as school revolves. 
 It would be absurd at this juncture to try and plan 
 their proceedings in greater detail. If the idea 
 of them is vital they would in time develop in many 
 forms. If it is not, then the centre of the theatre 
 as school would shift, and with the shifting we 
 should probably soon be back at our present con- 
 ception of the theatre as playhouse alone and, 
 though it is unimportant, the writing of this book 
 would have been wasted labour. 
 
 The subsidiary work of the school we need now 
 do little more than catalogue. One looks for lec- 
 
 lectures, etc. tures on all sorts of subjects that come within the 
 compass of the theatre's influence. These are more 
 numerous, perhaps, than might be supposed. 
 The history of the theatre itself is important to 
 those who work for it, and of some interest as a side 
 issue in sociology. The history of costume is akin, 
 and here would be the proper centre of its study 
 for the making and wearing of clothes is no small 
 part of its understanding. There is, too, more 
 practical knowledge stored in the brains of de- 
 signers, costumiers, and actors than goes to the 
 compiling of dozens of prettily illustrated books 
 on the subject. We should need, then, a lecture 
 theatre and a library. There would also be studios, 
 where practical work was done in designing and 
 making costumes and scenery. But these would 
 be in effect the workshops of the theatre as play- 
 house, and it would be a question how much time 
 and opportunity could be given to these students, 
 who would, one fears, be apt to throng them rather 
 overwhelmingly if no barriers were put up. In this 
 connection several things must be considered. 
 Training in the elements of design in drawing or 
 152
 
 PLANOF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 
 
 painting is, of course, no part of the theatre's 
 business. Students would arrive so far equipped. 
 How much further they could be usefully taken by 
 working at costume designs on paper or at scenery 
 in models it is hard to say, but probably not very 
 far. Facility in making pretty pictures on paper 
 is just what the theatre does not want to teach them, 
 and a reliance upon the good effect of model scenes 
 is a trap in which it is fatally easy to be caught. 
 On the other hand, it is clear that dresses cannot be 
 made and scenery painted in bulk merely for prac- 
 tice. The likely solution would be a system of 
 " going through the shops " by a selected number of 
 workers, who were giving their entire attention 
 to the work; by an even narrower selection, there 
 might be set up quite advantageously a system of 
 definite apprenticeship. The advantages of this will 
 be better seen when we come to considering the 
 workshops themselves in connection with the 
 theatre as playhouse. 
 
 '53
 
 T 
 
 CHAPTER IV I THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 division between the theatre as school 
 and the theatre as playhouse is a convenient 
 one for the purposes of discussion ; other- 
 wise it should have only a very uncertain existence. 
 On the school side of the boundary there should 
 certainly remain the general students (as we have 
 called them) and, needless to say, the more shifting 
 crowd of people who might be working with special 
 objects of study or research. Passing through it at 
 the proper time would be the students for whom, 
 in one way or another, the theatre was to be liveli- 
 hood ; though not all of them, not many of them 
 probably, could graduate into the playhouse service 
 of this particular theatre. But for the fully qualified 
 members of the theatre staff actors, producers, 
 designers no boundary should exist. 
 
 No definite For this will be the determining feature of the 
 boundary theatre as playhouse, its relation to the larger, the 
 between play- inclusive, entity of the theatre as school. Public 
 house and performances will be found there, in quantity as in 
 the theatres we now know, in quality improved we 
 may hope. Plans for this particular improvement 
 abound, and later it may be worth while to discuss 
 their mechanism ; one must never underrate the 
 importance in the theatre of the machinery of 
 organization. But we are now to think not of 
 plans but of persons. Let us imagine, to begin 
 with, a playhouse company for whom performances 
 will not be the one and only goal. For our play- 
 house is still a part of the theatre as school, part 
 of an institution intended for the study of dramatic 
 art and only incidentally for its exhibition an 
 exemplary theatre. Not, on the other hand, that 
 we are to consider the acting company as teachers, 
 who may (as did the gymnasium instructor of 
 our schooldays) occasionally, as a relief to them- 
 
 '54
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 selves and their pupils, indulge in a little display. 
 It has already been made clear that teaching of that 
 sort is to have the smallest part in the school. 
 They rather remain students, fellow-students with 
 their juniors, taking all the part possible in their 
 study, an increasing part always as that study ad- 
 vances, but students also in their own occupation 
 of the theatre as playhouse. It is only that the 
 completion of their study there takes shape in the 
 performance of plays, since (once more to insist on it) 
 it is the audience which must receptively add the 
 final touch to the work. This may seem the finest 
 of distinctions, and, as we may allow, to the casual 
 theatre-goer not an important one. But the differ- 
 ence involved in the admission or non-admission 
 of the audience as an artistic partner is enormous ; 
 a difference of point of view, of aim, of conduct 
 one after another all three will be involved. 
 
 To start, then, from the human foundation of The sort of 
 the whole matter. What sort of man and woman actor and 
 do we want for such a theatre company, and by actress tflls 
 what inducements can they be caught and kept ? 
 There's an idea still about it is not so much a 
 fiction as a simple truth, a century late in expiring, 
 kept alive perhaps by some touch of romance 
 that an actor's life is an agreeable artistic vaga- 
 bondage. Young people condemned to a career 
 of dull routine and old people regretting their lost 
 opportunities of adventure are its chief fosterers. 
 And, truly enough, for a few years a young man or 
 woman will get little harm, may, indeed, gain a 
 great deal of good, from the comradely atmosphere 
 of the travelling company, and the chance of seeing, 
 if they keep their eyes open, more of their own 
 country, more of the world, and an aspect of 
 both that office work and their summer holidays 
 
 '55
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 would not give them. But a lasting career of casual 
 labour is merely demoralizing, and the life of the 
 touring actor just about as romantic as a commercial 
 traveller's. One may take it for granted that any 
 development of the theatre that is to appeal to actors 
 and actresses must include their rescue from financial 
 insecurity and vagabondage. Who can defend 
 indeed that other part of the present theatrical 
 system which obliges seven actors out of ten to 
 calculate if they dare do so certain a thing upon 
 an average, at best, of one week's idleness in three ? 
 Is it to be held that these haphazards of existence 
 are what give the mummer that air of careless 
 abandonment which is so popular with young ladies? 
 Even if that were a necessary spice to our enjoy- 
 ment of the play it would be rather hard that he 
 and his wife and children (young ladies, he often 
 has a wife ; the creature even has children) should 
 have to pay the price of it. Why should the 
 art of acting, more than another, more than any 
 other human activity, thrive upon fecklessness ? 
 
 Success, of course real success, such as may come 
 for a while to the three out of ten will carry a man 
 out of this category. Not, though, that a lodgment 
 in it denotes failure ; that is the altogether damning 
 and damnable thing. If it did one could honour- 
 ably throw up the game altogether. But a man may 
 do more than moderately well as far as his acting 
 goes and yet be ill-done by indeed in the grip of this 
 system (so-called!), which, at its best, offers him no 
 permanence even of unsatisfactory employment. 
 He is at the mercy of fashion, of the even more 
 demoralizing speculation in fashion, and of fifty 
 other uncertainties of livelihood all avoidable. 
 It is bourgeois, I suppose, to quarrel with such a 
 condition of things. But it is possible that the 
 156
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 theatre may be quite advantageously considered 
 as a rather bourgeois sort of an art. One might 
 add the query whether any art would be the 
 worse for a few bourgeois virtues ? 
 
 However that may be, the exemplary theatre 
 thi^s theatre as school would certainly .need to 
 attract a company of cultured men and women, who 
 incidentally had learned to be good actors and 
 actresses. No set of strange, egotistical creatures, 
 living upon and consumed by what is called the 
 artistic temperament, and caring for no solider 
 sustenance, expert though they might be in curious 
 emotional gymnastics, could, upon any count, 
 find their place in it. One must allow for an occa- 
 sional eccentric: lovable, fascinating in art as in 
 life. Genius will arise, dominating, compelling, 
 impatient of all regulation, apt, at any difference, 
 to be up and away. But one may usefully question 
 whether, in a calling where right regulation counts 
 for so much, even genius will not welcome the free- 
 dom to work more intensely that the good ordering 
 of a community gives. This supposes certainly 
 the upbuilding of a community of sympathy, not a 
 binding together by rule and regulation. But why 
 is this impossible ? 
 
 The rescue from vagabondage is even more The rescue 
 called for in America than in England. The sue- J' om 
 cessful English actor establishes himself in London, va & a on a & 
 and for the most part point-blank refuses to leave. 
 It is pleasanter, better for his reputation, and pays 
 better.* In America every actor, whatever his 
 
 * Exceptions to this rule are one or two actor-managers of un- 
 doubted reputation whom the provinces pay and London does not. 
 But I don't imagine they prefer constant touring. They choose 
 to hold popularity they have won rather than tempt fortune in 
 London. And any English actor may be tempted by an American 
 engagement.
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 reputation, must tour and does tour, for, perhaps, 
 two-thirds of his career. For it is this that pays 
 better ; but there is no reason to suppose that he 
 likes it. One must not presume, though, that he 
 equally dislikes playing the same part night after 
 night. If he is a leading actor the presumption 
 is that a part calling for three or four hundred 
 repetitions is a good part; it is in any case hard for 
 him to apply any other measure to it than that of its 
 success. His next play may be a failure. Now, 
 the penalty of failure will not only be loss of prestige 
 and of money, but the worry far outweighing, 
 as a rule, any pleasure in the work of deciding on 
 and rehearsing for a third. He cannot be expected 
 to despise the long run. And if the pleasanter life of 
 a settled career in one theatre, even as we now know 
 the theatre, is to appeal to the actor, as we now know 
 him, it must offer, besides, some compensation for 
 the inevitable dimming of his personal lustre by the 
 greater light of the institution itself. And it must 
 also balance in his favour the account by which, 
 as against his being kept from exploiting his success 
 to the popular limit, he is to be freed from the 
 equally extreme penalties of failure. Then we may 
 expect him to consider with a more open mind the 
 purely artistic pros and cons. The money question 
 itself should not be such a crucial one. A star of 
 superb brilliance may, of course, fly off from any 
 constellation either on this account or on that of 
 personal fame ; if the temptation is sufficiently 
 great this must be expected. But the average 
 successful actor does not make so much more 
 money than he spends in the making of it that 
 at a time when his choice had to be taken be- 
 tween the certainty of an honourable competence 
 and the many uncertainties of freedom he would
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 not be very likely to choose the more settled 
 career. 
 
 We might then without great difficulty draw the 
 actor into new paths and attract to them, moreover, 
 a more desirable sort of professional pilgrim than 
 will be contented with the old. For though the life 
 of the theatre is doubtless one of vocation, which 
 many a man will follow against his better judgment, 
 still the interaction between the desirable life and the 
 quality of the talent that will recruit to it is close 
 enough. And we shall reap an artistic reward all 
 of us if we are right in believing that dramatic art 
 prospers by the intimacy of its relation to social life, 
 and so will be the richer for such a variety of new- 
 comers. Something more, however, is needed 
 than rescue from vagabondage and reorganiza- 
 tion of work. It goes without saying that the 
 present system, by which a theatre company is kept 
 damnably iterating the same performance eight or 
 more times a week, is to be utterly condemned. 
 But one of the less obvious corollaries of the system 
 is just as harmful and as stupid from every stand- 
 point except the all-dominating one of finance. 
 The matured actor's best chance of developing his The need of 
 art and observing its progress lies less in the per- the actor to 
 formances he gives than in his opportunities for sttt ty more 
 study, and especially for the co-operative study and f er f orm 
 (the only valid kind, as we have seen and must 
 further see) involved in the rehearsing of a play. 
 It is true that he may develop his playing of a part 
 before an audience, but he can hardly then alter its 
 main treatment ; apart from the disturbance to 
 his fellow-actors he would no more choose to do so 
 than does a general to change his dispositions under 
 fire. The system, then, by which this precious 
 time of preparation must be meted out to him as 
 
 1J9
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 parsimoniously as if it cost (as it now does) the eyes 
 out of his manager's head, and the whole valuable 
 process be debased into money saving, time saving, 
 thought saving drill is as much to be condemned 
 as is the ceaseless reiteration of the play once it is 
 successfully produced. No actor should perform 
 a part of any length or importance more than four 
 times a week : he should not appear at all, on an 
 average, more than five times, rehearsals and per- 
 formances should divide his time as equally as 
 possible, and as much, and more, consideration 
 should be given to his being fit to rehearse as now 
 only can be (though it seldom is) to his not being 
 too over-worked to play. 
 
 These are obvious considerations ; and there will 
 always be theatres unable to sound this part of the 
 problem of their relation to their art and the com- 
 munity any deeper than to abide by them : repertory 
 theatres, well organized, with their time fully occu- 
 pied in giving to the public as great a number and as 
 wide a variety of performances as it will absorb. No- 
 thing here said is meant to depreciate their work. 
 They are to be hoped and prayed for. They are 
 possibly the necessary foundation of the exemplary 
 theatre that we are trying to outline ; for only in 
 them, or something akin to them, will the actors 
 attain that solidarity of purpose and that sense of 
 being an integral part of the community, if but 
 of that particular section of the community, which 
 gives them its constant attention ; and only from 
 the appreciation of such a theatre's work will come 
 the lively interest in drama which will fill with 
 the right sort of student the theatre as school. 
 The repertory theatre is the only sensible theatre ; 
 and it is at least a genuine theatre, not a shop for 
 producing plays. But it may have the fault of 
 1 60 

 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 all self-contained machinery inadaptability. There 
 is nothing to prevent and much to encourage such 
 a theatre's becoming academic in the worst sense 
 of that word. Discipline, organization, these are 
 absolute needs. But no art rejoices in mere bonds. 
 And for an art that depends so utterly upon its 
 human factors the danger that in the daily round 
 of routine these may become devitalized and their 
 depression grow into the " sleepy spot " by which 
 the whole fruit will be infected is one that must be 
 pursued to its last hiding-place. 
 
 Therefore we look to do even better and to pro- 
 vide for the company and the whole staff of the 
 exemplary theatre not only such an assortment of 
 work and leisure as will let a man lead the ordinary 
 citizen life, but such a constant connection with 
 (one hopes) students of diverse dispositions, work- 
 ing with varying aims, as will keep him in work 
 even more than in leisure well in the current of 
 the public ideas, and emotions from which, and 
 only from which, is the stuff for his interpretation 
 of life to be drawn. 
 
 And as we are clear of the idea that the student's The actor's 
 only use of the theatre as school would be in learn- need of other 
 ing to act, let us also get rid of any that the actor work than 
 of plays must necessarily be incapable of anything 
 else. He will specialize in acting, no doubt. One 
 would not actually demand of him a talent for 
 making and painting costumes and scenery ; though 
 by all means let him do either or both if he can. 
 And the writing of plays he might equally not take 
 to. But here let two things be remembered: 
 the one, that there is a playmaking as well as a play- 
 writing art. We have of late years been obsessed 
 by the literary drama to the point of forgetting 
 that acting can exist independently of the dictator- 
 
 161
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 ship of words on paper ; and, if acting, plays. 
 Why should it need anything but the habit of close 
 co-operation and the conditions of artistic freedom, 
 which we look for in these theatres of the future, 
 to encourage our actors in the re-creating upon a 
 new basis of some form of various forms of this 
 self-contained drama ? That there is talent for it the 
 work of pantomime and revue comedians has always 
 amply shown. A little too self-contained their work, 
 as a rule, perhaps; too individualist, even selfish! 
 But one can recall instances of remarkable co-opera- 
 tion. And that this should not be capable of exten- 
 sion, that the horizon of such work could not be 
 quite notably enlarged is a matter to be proved, not 
 by any means taken for granted. We may find any 
 day a quartet of comedians improvising fine foolery ; 
 they have brought their faculties to a high pitch 
 to do it. Why should we not expect a company of 
 actors, as highly trained to a harder task, to produce 
 improvizations of beauty and of sense ? They 
 would run upon lines of extreme simplicity, no 
 doubt. Literary association is the beginning of 
 complexity for the theatre ; and, rightly balanced 
 by histrionics, this indeed lifts the whole art far 
 above the competition of any minor combinations 
 of its elements. But, if only that they may the 
 better take their part in the whole, these should 
 assert themselves all they can. 
 
 The second thing to remember is that the art 
 of acting could draw many people to it whom now it 
 keeps or drives away, because the actor's calling 
 demands such exclusive attention. A first-rate 
 actor, it is true, may not wish to do much else but 
 act nothing but a little contributory teaching, 
 lecturing, producing, enough to ease the single 
 strain, to lift him from the rut. How far one can 
 162
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 be a first-rate actor upon any other terms than these 
 is no doubt a question. It may be answered in 
 terms of particular individualities ; it may become 
 a part of the general question of double occupations.* 
 That is too wide a one to trench upon here. But 
 we may premise that, if this be a problem calling for 
 solution, it will be at least more easily solved when, 
 as in a theatre, the occupations could be cognate 
 and complementary than when they would differ 
 so widely as to bear only the present relations be- 
 tween a profession and a hobby. 
 
 But there is no good reason that a man should not 
 be a first-rate actor and give equally serious atten- 
 tion to other work ; whether kindred or contrasted 
 would be a matter for his own temperament and 
 depend upon his capacity for boredom and the sort 
 of stimulus he needed. That the art of acting 
 would profit quite apart from the question of 
 personal relief or private advantage to the actor 
 by the chances of varying employment there can be 
 no doubt at all. It is but an extension of the 
 student's profit when he works, not cooped among 
 his kind, but as one of a medley of minds and 
 purposes. 
 
 And in other directions we must revise our The 
 notions of an actor's relation to his work and of our destruction 
 own relation to it. To many playgoers, even to of illusion 
 hardened ones, the enjoyment of a play lies in the as 
 illusion created. To this the realistic methods of ^ r 
 
 * Mr. Graham Wallas deals most enlighteningly with this 
 problem in the chapter on Professionalism in " Our Social Heri- 
 tage." He takes for his main text the question of teaching and the 
 impossibility for all but a few devoted natures of giving a lifetime 
 of unchanged yet fruitful devotion to the calling. It is possible 
 that the social psychologist may come to think that exclusive con- 
 centration upon the practice of any art exhibits and develops a 
 morbid disposition in a man. 
 
 163
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 production that have now found half a century's 
 favour a favour still enduring, though undermined 
 largely contribute. They find a parallel in the 
 facilely emotional fiction for which the great spread 
 of the habit of reading has provided a market. 
 But this surrender to illusion, however allowable, 
 is only the crudest form of enjoyment the theatre 
 provides. And it is the cruder sort of acting that 
 contributes to it ; the impersonative, not the inter- 
 pretative. When W. T. Stead, at the age of sixty 
 something, went into a theatre for the first time 
 in his life as dramatic critic to the Review of Reviews 
 one of his first remarks was that, if plays were to 
 mean anything to him, no actor, having appeared 
 before him in one part, must ever appear before him 
 in another, or the illusion would be gone. This was 
 charmingly childish and most instructive as a re- 
 duction to absurdity of that particular demand upon 
 the drama. But it is hardly more sensible to ask the 
 actor (after this one fine and free outburst) to limit 
 his art to impersonative attempts to deceive Mr. 
 Stead and his fellow children. They must really 
 seek some other standard of enjoyment. This is 
 easy enough to find, though for its full attainment 
 a little serious attention to the technique of the art 
 is certainly needed. Over any familiar play, in- 
 deed, we admit this standard already ; and far 
 more readily over any opera, familiar or strange to 
 us. Illusion in this last case can hardly be said 
 to exist ; we are thrown entirely upon interpretation 
 for our enjoyment. Now it is not only because of 
 the fuller meal of sensation it provides, its appeal 
 to the eye and its multiplied appeal to the ear, 
 that we go to an opera a dozen times and to a play 
 but once. We have from the first applied a more 
 fruitful method of enjoyment to it. And we take 
 164
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 to a performance of " Hamlet " no hunger for 
 illusion. Many of us, no doubt, have sighed after 
 that fatally lost chance of being one among the very 
 first audience that saw it. Not to have known 
 what was coming ! * But we now go to see the 
 interpretation of a play which is so familiar to us Our interest 
 that many of us could play prompter if need were ; in inter- 
 and however much its poor interpretation may fail pntation 
 to stir us it is not for lack of illusion, or because of ' 
 its familiarity, that we come away disappointed. 
 We are not necessarily bored by the fiftieth hearing 
 of a Beethoven Sonata. Indeed, the closer our 
 familiarity the greater can be our enjoyment if our 
 knowledge of Shakespeare's work is balanced by 
 some appreciation of the technique of acting. 
 For then we ask more of the actor; and, generally 
 speaking, the more one appreciatively asks (in this 
 instance we ask in the negative sense of refusing to 
 do without) the more one gets. The simplest way 
 to some understanding of the actor's art is through 
 knowledge of the plays he performs. Hence, the 
 far more intelligent interest taken in acting in the 
 days when the " classic " repertory was the basis 
 of every actor's reputation. But one may also 
 acquire a technical knowledge which will let us 
 appreciate the interpretation of plays which are 
 neither familiar nor dependent upon virtuosity of 
 treatment such a simple virtuosity as will raise 
 the enthusiasm of a French audience for any finely 
 
 * There is, of course, another side to this, exemplified in the 
 story of the man in the pit who turned to his neighbour 
 at the end of the first act of Irving's performance of " Hamlet," 
 just as the great actor had withdrawn from before the curtain 
 amid applause. " I beg your pardon, sir," he asked, " but have 
 you ever seen this play before ? " " Oh, yes," was the answer. " And 
 will that young man in black appear often ? " " Fairly often." 
 " Eh ? " said the questioner, " Then I'm off," and left the theatre. 
 
 165
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 given screed of verse. This interpretative method 
 of acting that we desiderate will certainly differ so 
 much in degree as almost to seem different in kind 
 from the crude impersonative realism which belongs, 
 properly enough no doubt, to crudely realistic 
 plays: and of its elaboration more later. The 
 point now to make is only that any identification 
 of the player with the part implies a lowering, not 
 a heightening, of artistic achievement. 
 
 It is undesirably limiting for the actor to be 
 tied too strictly to acting; for he will lose thereby 
 catholicity of interest in the theatre. And upon no 
 account should he be allowed to attach to himself 
 in any theatre particular parts. True appreciation 
 of his work in them will only come by comparison 
 with the work of other actors. The idea that even 
 a new part should " belong " to the actor who 
 " creates " it is based upon the childish view of the 
 theatre. This has been reinforced by false methods 
 of production, evolved for inferior plays, leading to 
 paradoxical attempts to combine the weakness of a 
 part and the weakness of an actor so as to produce 
 an appearance of artistic strength. It is only an 
 appearance ; and, even so, a deceptive one. For the 
 identifying of the actor with the part dissolves 
 rapidly with an audience in whom sophistication 
 takes the place of education into a loss of the part 
 in the personality of the actor. And so the ill- 
 gained illusion vanishes. But good plays not only 
 endure, they profit by variety of treatment. And a 
 good actor neither wishes the fact that he has been 
 acting to be ignored, nor looks to suffer by com- 
 parison with successors unless they are to be imita- 
 tors also, when they may expose his insufficiencies by 
 thus revealing their own. And once we join our faith 
 to the interpretative as against the impersonative 
 166
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 method it becomes obvious that, as there is no final 
 and correct way of playing a part, so there are no 
 degrees of artistic dignity involved in a second and 
 third actor following the first. Therefore, once 
 this is recognized, a reasonable amount of change 
 in the casts of the plays given in any theatre will be 
 a stimulus to their attendance and a simple means 
 to the understanding of the actor's art. Of course, 
 players will always find their favourite parts and 
 audiences their favourite players in them. Some 
 indulgence in such fancies will do no harm ; for 
 of all places in the world a theatre is the one where 
 allowance for the human factor should be made. 
 It is the establishment of the principle that matters. 
 
 When we speak, then, of the theatre as playhouse The relation 
 we are to imagine it, not as a body separate from the f tfte actori 
 theatre as school, but rather as the head of that to 
 body ; and of the theatre company not as being so 
 much an assortment of well-trained actors, producers, 
 designers as a homogeneous body of men and 
 women of the theatre, perfected as much in the 
 broad understanding as in the narrower accom- 
 plishment of their work. Specialization there must 
 always be ; people will do predominantly what 
 they do best ; it is a question of degree, but the 
 degree is all-important. Had there been in the 
 English-speaking theatre an uninterrupted de- 
 velopment from the stock to the true repertory 
 system we should still, in accordance with the exi- 
 gencies of modern plays, have long left behind the 
 old divisions of the acting company into leading 
 men and women, juveniles, light comedians, first 
 old men, heavies, singing chambermaids, and all 
 the rest of the menagerie. How much further 
 upon this path of freedom the enlarged concep- 
 tion of the theatre as school would carry us is a 
 
 167
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 question that can only be satisfactorily answered by 
 experience. 
 
 But from that question springs another. What 
 share in the administration should be given to the 
 company ? The pros and cons of this problem 
 are being argued and fought in half the industries 
 of the world at the moment. The theatre of our 
 planning may look to profit by any general solution 
 effected. It has few particular requirements to be 
 satisfied ; but such as these are it is worth while to 
 note them. It would no doubt be practicable for the 
 theatre as a whole to be actually managed by a com- 
 mittee of the company themselves; practicable, but 
 not, perhaps, very advisable. They would have to 
 delegate most adminstrative powers ; policy would 
 be their only effective province. And whether the 
 devising of policy from such an interior point of 
 view is an advantage to an institution whose very 
 life lies in its reflection of the more actual life with- 
 out its walls is to be doubted. The company's 
 united influence could probably be most fruitfully 
 exercised through advisory committees, which could 
 appoint small sub-committees to deal with some of 
 the administrative work of the theatre's internal 
 organization. And they should certainly have a 
 full say in matters that personally concerned them.* 
 
 * The classical instance of a committee having real power in a 
 theatre is that of the one for the selection of plays at the Theatre 
 Francais. I do not pretend to know how, in practice, this works ; 
 but I seem to remember that of the many inevitable and, no doubt, 
 salutary attacks upon an academic institution a large proportion 
 of those levelled at the Francais have been based on its alleged 
 myopic attitude towards the new playwright or the unaccustomed 
 play. Now, for one thing, committees that are large enough to 
 develop parties tend always to a policy of compromise ; that is one 
 good reason for condemning them for such a purpose as this. And 
 even if the plays chosen by a committee in which actors pre- 
 168
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 Another step brings us to the consideration of The theatre 
 the permanence of the company's connection with as livelihood 
 the theatre. Here again we have to consider 
 both absolute conditions (as far as such things 
 can ever exist) and the tendencies of contemporary 
 development, very patent to us. The theatre's 
 every effort at the moment is to establish fixed 
 conditions of employment. Now a certain fixity 
 is dictated by the work of such a theatre as 
 this. Apart from the welcome that might be 
 
 dominated even such sublimated actors as we are forecasting 
 were not always likely to be more remarkable for the superficial 
 effectiveness of their acting qualities than the dramatic soundness 
 of their content, there would always be the danger of a subtle 
 and very fatal form of compromise in the disposition to give each 
 leading actor (and one presumes a committee of leading actors only) 
 his turn at a good part. " It's a long time since so-and-so had his 
 chance : this will give it him." These words might not be spoken, 
 but the understanding would be there. Nothing is harder to 
 break than a ring of mutual interests, and the people composing it 
 are the most powerless. It is cemented by such admirable qualities, 
 but the cement does harden. Loyalty to comrades what can be 
 finer ? But one should give it no chance of undermining the 
 higher abstract loyalty, harder to achieve to the theatre itself. 
 And even if in this supposition one is unjust it is never well to 
 pkce upon actors themselves the burden of choosing plays. For 
 they it is who must face the audience. When a play fails they are, 
 as a rule, the kst to be blamed. To be frank, one has known actors 
 responsible for a failure, who yet, by merely giving that last evidence 
 of their inadequacy for their task, the appearance of good men 
 struggling with adversity, have roused the more sympathy for 
 themselves ; and to the minds of the audience, who knew no more 
 than the presentment before them, have transferred their own 
 shortcomings to the play. Well, it is better this should be so, for 
 playwrights even managements may look to the further future 
 for compensation, while the actor cannot. To-morrow he must 
 face his audience again. Better relieve him, then, of these re- 
 sponsibilities. Let the failures always be accounted the manage- 
 ment's bad choice, and let the actor take all the more credit for 
 successes. 
 
 169
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 offered to an occasional distinguished guest to 
 lecture in the school, or a much less likely event 
 to appear in the playhouse,* and apart from the 
 probationary engagements of young people gradua- 
 ting from the school and even these could not 
 conveniently be for less than a year every member 
 of the company should be at least encouraged- to 
 acquire a permanent interest in it. How closely 
 that interest would need to be sustained is another 
 matter. For several years, certainly, without inter- 
 mission. After that an insistence upon a sabbatical 
 year might be very advisable, and an even looser 
 system of furloughs might have to be devised to 
 meet the case of individualities whose work did not 
 improve, whose spirits were dulled by too strict 
 home-keeping. The theatre would run the risk 
 of losing them, valuable talents perhaps. It would 
 be better to take that chance. The theatre might 
 be the better for their loss, whatever the value of 
 these talents, if they could not accommodate them- 
 selves at least to self-discipline. Moreover, the 
 best way to hold such temperaments, and to hold 
 the best in them, is by the bar of an ever-open door. 
 We may note, besides, that the wider scope 
 
 * Modi less likely, because, however distinguished die actor 
 and warm die welcome, be could not hope to feel or be made at 
 home in his surroundings. For die company would have been 
 cultivating something more important dun dteir own talents, and, 
 strangely enough, something more individual, but less dispensable, 
 than an amalgam of dieir personal talents : die genius of die theatre 
 itself, which will bodi exceed and transcend die sum of all die 
 personal efforts employed- Fitting himself against this and he 
 would be compelled to die most refulgent star would shine less 
 briffiandy dtan was his wont. There wfll be found in die " Scheme 
 and Fatimatii-g for a National Theatre " a very ample discussion 
 of diis point. My mind abides by die plans there detailed; 
 dfcough I should trust less to financial dun to artistic interests 
 to keep die actors tied. 
 '
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 of the work of the theatre as school would bring a 
 practical freedom in this direction that not many 
 mere repertory theatres could attain. Companies 
 nowadays that are organized for the production 
 of particular plays pass from the intensive worry of 
 rehearsals to the more or less extensive boredom of 
 the run. The great improvement, by which a 
 theatre could not only produce, but keep its plays 
 unexhausted and alive, would give it a more reason- 
 ably, but at the same time a very fully occupied 
 company. The management of such a theatre 
 would concern itself closely to avoid the waste of its 
 human material, and with one peg to each hole, 
 but no more, being the economical rule dislocation 
 of its nice arrangements would be a serious matter. 
 But, in a theatre of the still wider scope we en- 
 visage, if the work of the school and the amount of 
 pure study bore a proper proportion to the whole 
 it would absolutely force upon the institution not 
 only an increase of staff, but an elasticity of the 
 playhouse organization that would both permit and 
 encourage the wider distribution of activity we are 
 seeking. 
 
 What the earnings of the company should be we 
 need not discuss in any detail. Ordinary wisdom 
 makes one or two things clear. There will in time, 
 one hopes, be many exemplary theatres, but for all that 
 the example is admired and followed it will be fol- 
 lowed with many a difference. No academy but be- 
 comes both a city to leave and a stronghold to storm. 
 We aim at the virtues of an academy; we shall never 
 escape being, at the least, accused of its vices. 
 Besides, the more thoroughly the exemplary theatre 
 fulfils its purpose the greater number and variety of 
 dramatic outcrops there will be, each with its appro- 
 priate market for its particular wares. And the exem- 
 
 171
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 plary theatres themselves must, for certain purposes, 
 keep in the main market, if not of it. Nothing 
 is less to be desired than the creation of institutions 
 of a cold and cloistered superiority. Therefore the 
 economic conditions under which the company 
 would work should be better than (by which one does 
 not mean only that the pay should be larger), but 
 not essentially different from, those its individual 
 members could find elsewhere. For instance, while 
 an actor, devoting himself to such a theatre as this, 
 should be assured of the decent competence which 
 is his appropriate compensation for preferring to 
 invest his abilities rather than gamble with them, 
 there is no reason he should not be allowed to 
 register incidental success in money value either 
 within the theatre or without. His furloughs 
 should serve this purpose among others, and he 
 should be free to depart altogether without great 
 sacrifice if he has served the theatre for, say, seven 
 years or so, built up a claim to a pension or what 
 not,* and if he then discovers, or it is discovered 
 for him, that he does no more particular good by 
 remaining. The branches must at any cost be 
 kept living ; dead wood is even the worse in that 
 it does not kill the tree. And what does this theatre 
 finally exist for, but the profit of dramatic art 
 generally ? Even the loss, then, of a member of 
 its company, fully seized with its methods and ideals, 
 would be presumably the general gain. A gospel 
 is often spread by apostates. 
 
 One thing only and that on principle should 
 perhaps be altogether avoided : profit-sharing, with 
 its further implication of some sort of joint control. 
 It is no stimulus to quality of production, the only 
 
 * " The Scheme and Estimates for a National Theatre " deals 
 with this question, too, in some detail, and, I think, quite sensibly. 
 172
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 thing for which we are concerned to provide. 
 There can, indeed, be no direct financial profit for 
 anyone concerned in the exemplary theatre, and 
 those who cannot work without the prospect of it 
 had better go elsewhere. 
 
 ^ln these days there is bound to be a committee The fallacy 
 somewhere. Let us then be certain of one thing : of adminis- 
 the foredoomed failure of the exemplary theatre, tran y 
 
 r _-_. c ^.L i j 'c '^. '^.u committee 
 
 or or any institution or the kind, if a committee with 
 administrative powers is at the head of it. 
 
 Administration by a committee spells compro- 
 mise, and not even that in its admitted entirety, 
 but rather as a divided purpose which is the 
 rightful damnation of all art. There would, no 
 doubt, be much that committees might do in such 
 a theatre, given consultative, legislative functions 
 merely. They could usefully co-ordinate the various 
 branches of the theatre's work. And a supreme 
 body of this sort, a council, a board of trustees, 
 would be the pattern link between the theatre 
 itself and the community it serves, and as such 
 valuable beyond question. Much of the theatre's 
 mechanism must be devised, as we have seen, to 
 keep this bond alive, automatically, unconsciously. 
 And the key function of this supreme committee 
 would be to do this actively and deliberately, and 
 to see that all the time it was being done. 
 
 Conceive the theatre as part of a university 
 and its governing body could be provided for more 
 or less according to custom. This would be well 
 enough as far as the theatre as school was con- 
 cerned. But the functions of the theatre as play- 
 house make a case for the setting up of wider con- 
 nections. We must cease to think of an audience 
 as any haphazard collection of people that has paid 
 for admission to a show. Truly under present
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 conditions in big cities it is no more. We find one 
 successful play stuck in a theatre for a year at a 
 time, one section after another of the public is 
 appealed to and exhausted, and the play is kept 
 going for months maybe merely by the favour of the 
 shifting hotel population. This last has increased 
 greatly of late years, and has been particularly catered 
 for (certain plays, one would say, find their chief sup- 
 port in it from the beginning), so that even the loosely 
 established " connections " upon which theatres of 
 better reputation used a little to rely have been 
 dissipated. Any theatre, however, by a simple 
 persistence in policy, may acquire a reputation which 
 will encourage constant attendance, may secure an 
 audience whose taste, while it may not amount to 
 much, will but need in some simple fashion to find 
 a voice for it to be a valid and valuable and a de- 
 finitely consultable part of the theatre's constitution. 
 A theatre manager talks now of the public taste. 
 He deceives himself, for as far as the drama is con- 
 cerned there is no such thing. He addresses him- 
 self to nothing so constant and integral as a public. 
 He caters for the casual appetites of a mob. And 
 more money is lost, more time and energy wasted, 
 in efforts to calculate the incalculable than would 
 suffice to endow a dozen theatres with at least the 
 virtue of self-respect. Once a public is found and 
 formed, though, it may develop a taste well worth 
 respecting. The problem, then, will only be how 
 to render it articulate; and, as far as our exemplary 
 theatre's integrated public is concerned, how best (for 
 one thing) to represent it upon the governing body. 
 An integrated A big university might and why not ? run a 
 audience and theatre entirely for the benefit of its students: for 
 its represen- those that would easily fill it as audience no less than 
 for those going more intimately to school there. 
 174
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 In America, under such a scheme, undergraduate 
 bodies would almost certainly be given a voice in its 
 policy. In England, if such theatres were the 
 fruit of undergraduate enthusiasm, they would be 
 good ground for some experiment in this direction. 
 The working-men's theatres, so common in the 
 German-speaking countries, solve this problem, of 
 course, without any difficulty ; for they start, so to 
 speak, with an organized audience. The bodies, 
 by the bye, most likely to emulate them in England 
 are not the trade unions but the co-operative societies, 
 which have ample experience of the financing, 
 at least, of enterprises not so dissimilar in intention. 
 They might do worse than consider the question. 
 
 Still, sectional audiences, whether of manual 
 workers or shopkeepers, or doctors and lawyers, 
 or stockbrokers and bankers, are not in themselves 
 very desirable. A university audience would only 
 be better because it would at least represent a 
 section cross-cut through the whole community. 
 And there are objections to be urged against any 
 process which will produce in a theatre the atmo- 
 sphere of the coterie. It would be a pity if a choice 
 could only lie between the intensity of a coterie 
 and the anarchy of the mob. Those theatres are 
 the most fortunate in their audience that have a 
 naturally mixed community of negotiable size to 
 draw upon. But how large a town must be to 
 provide a steady five or six thousand theatre-goers 
 a week is too crude a speculation. We must think 
 qualitatively in the matter ; we want a census of its 
 leisured class ; by leisured not meaning idle. 
 Taste in drama will be found to have a very direct 
 relation with industrial fatigue ; the worst audiences 
 being those with minds dulled by occupational 
 routine or debilitated by the lack of any. 
 
 175
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 When an audience can be adequately spoken 
 for by those that represent the community in other 
 public matters the problem is at its simplest. There 
 is no reason that every sizeable town should not 
 possess its theatre and control its theatre as it does 
 any other of its public services. If the elected 
 representative has not superfine taste in these 
 matters it is probably as good as that of the majority 
 of the electors ; if it isn't let them look to it, for 
 perhaps he is betraying them in other imponderable 
 matters as well. But with as great a reliance on ex- 
 pertize as they must have for their education system, 
 for their local hospital (as close and as loose a bond 
 as commonly binds this to elected authorities would 
 be no bad measure of the relations of a theatre) we can 
 easily see how the study and interpretation of drama 
 might be brought under civic protection. And in 
 the larger, less comprehensible communities, where 
 sectionalism of some sort, of taste, class, or income, 
 has more excuse to assert itself, it will be well to 
 counteract its worse effects by assorting the govern- 
 ing body very variously indeed. This council 
 (let us tentatively so call it) should certainly represent 
 the audience of the playhouse, in whose interest also 
 that of the students, past and present, of the school 
 would be bound up. But it should stand, further- 
 more, for the theatre's dignity, and for the fulness 
 of its public purpose. 
 
 The political Upon such principles, though with many varia- 
 influence of tions in practice, councils of national, municipal, or 
 the theatre as un i v ersity theatres might be formed. And it is 
 a -^ u t -. lc t - worth while, in passing, to remember how extra- 
 
 tnstitution .. .. ' . r 5' . 
 
 ordinarily wide is the play or the influence or any 
 theatre that has the status of a public institution. 
 The Theatre Franc.ais is not only the possession 
 of the Parisian, and a shrine that every provincial 
 176
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 Frenchman with a sense of his national culture must 
 make pilgrimage to ; but is it too much to say that 
 it stands for every visitor to Paris, that most visited 
 of cities, as something far more vividly interpretative 
 of France than the galleries, museums, shops, and 
 hotels which are probably his only other haunts ? 
 What deeper insight into the cultural tradition of 
 France can the casual stranger hope for than he 
 will find in this expressive place? The Londoner 
 takes his cathedral, his museum, and national pic- 
 ture galleries as a matter of course. Destroy 
 any of them ; cover Ludgate Hill with shops, or 
 Trafalgar Square with an hotel, and for all that he 
 may be but a passer-by of these shrines, not twice 
 in his lifetime a visitor he would as a good citizen 
 feel impoverished and insulted. Has he not 
 imagination enough to note the gap in his city's 
 crown, where the national theatre should be ? 
 Does it never occur to statesmen, in the intervals 
 of their talk of the bonds of empire, that in a national 
 theatre they could have a perpetual public meeting, 
 so to speak, where the knot of a racial fellowship in 
 apprehension and understanding might be tied with 
 a better, because a less obtrusive, eloquence ? * 
 National theatres will come, no doubt, in England 
 and the Dominions, too, and the political importance 
 of such a one in London might well outshine the 
 educational aspect which we have been at pains 
 
 * Moreover, we are out to fashion bonds for the English- 
 speaking races that shall subject them to no political chafings. 
 Why do all good Americans, when they die, go to Paris, and 
 possibly even greater multitudes in this life ? One answer, at least, 
 is that there is very little to bring them to London instead. As a 
 result of its serious study in their schools and colleges more and more 
 Americans of the younger generation are interested in the drama. 
 But they travel to France and to Germany to refresh their ideas 
 about it never to Engknd now. 
 
 M 177
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 to emphasize. No reason the outshining should 
 harm it. 
 
 The problem of the right adjustment of an 
 tke head of institution to a community's demands upon it 
 affairs; its j s fi rs t o f a H the problem of how its governance 
 should be constituted, of how, in the case of our 
 theatre, then, its council should be made up. Only 
 the principles involved need concern us, for this 
 part of the institution more than any other is likely 
 to depend upon the circumstances of its creation. 
 There will be, however, certain dangers to guard 
 against. In too many such councils is felt the 
 weight, if not of the dead, of the dying, hand. 
 For a museum or a gallery, where products of the 
 past are to be tidily tucked away, this may not so 
 much matter. But in the control of a theatre, which 
 must renew its life day by day, to give even the 
 power of responsible criticism too predominantly 
 to minds that must more naturally judge the present 
 by self-defensive memories than see it as prepara- 
 tion for a future which they themselves will not see 
 might have a very deadening effect. Why should 
 we not find in our council along with government 
 or municipal representatives and nominees of the 
 vested interests of the older generation the younger 
 >eople voicing there their insurgency and discontent ? 
 'o begin with, insurgency within such a body 
 would be far more use to the theatre than attacks 
 from without and the calling for revolution and 
 secession would be ; not to mention that it would 
 make for a healthier and a livelier time than usually 
 falls to the lot of these august assemblies. The 
 theatre would profit by being subjected at such 
 close quarters to the impertinence of youth, by 
 having to match its settled habits with the ir- 
 responsibilities of those whose interests were vested
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 mainly in their hopes for the future. Students' 
 associations, bodies of teachers, church councils, 
 chambers of commerce, manufacturers associations, 
 local trade unions any or all of them might be given 
 nominations to the council. Certainly the students 
 in, the theatre as school should be well represented. 
 But it would be a good opportunity for the devising 
 of fancy franchises. Why should not a nomination 
 be given to the upper forms of a neighbouring 
 public school (the nominee himself perhaps being 
 of full age ) ? Eton could probably be trusted 
 under likely circumstances to return a Radical 
 member. And electoral bodies, of course, could 
 be formed without very much trouble from among 
 the frequenters of the theatre as playhouse. 
 
 Into conditions of the council's tenure we need 
 not go. Service for one year or three or seven or a 
 lifetime ; the filling of vacancies now and then by 
 co-option these are important but mainly circum- 
 stantial matters. For numbers twelve is convenient, 
 twenty full large. But the question of the council's 
 powers is important and trenches on principle. 
 
 Such a body, we must assume, would find itself The council 
 already part of a constitution. But within these limits as the _ 
 it would be the legislative authority of the theatre. co " science 
 
 T 111 r 11- 11 Of the 
 
 It would be a court or appeal : the interpreter both mana g emen t 
 of the constitution and of its own laws. It would 
 be the target against which the public would be 
 invited to hurl their, no doubt, numerous com- 
 plaints. And if it did not get complaints it would 
 be its business to formulate a few ; for here would 
 lie its greatest constant usefulness. The council 
 should be the collective conscience of the theatre's 
 chief official the director, let us call him. The 
 better a director the freer hand will he demand, 
 but he will not wisely want that freedom which is 
 
 179
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 isolation. In any artistic enterprise the difficulties 
 engendered by criticism are genuine and great. 
 Should it always be listened to ; should it ever be 
 listened to ? Much of it is apt to be hopelessly 
 uninstructed, much more of it educate one's critics 
 all one will is unlikely to know when to make 
 allowance for an artistic intention still imperfectly 
 realized. The sponsor knows that if he does not 
 resolutely pursue his own path he is lost, but it may 
 be the wrong path for all that. Now the theatre is 
 peculiarly susceptible to this sort of trouble in both 
 its simple and its complex forms. To begin with, 
 everybody thinks himself competent to criticize 
 drama. He is a modest man indeed who will not 
 venture to say whether a play or its performance 
 is good or bad. And, indeed, it is true that every- 
 body ought to be competent, in some degree, to 
 criticize drama; there is nothing esoteric about the 
 art. But one must remember that, as far as its 
 acting goes, not only an actor's work is criticized, but 
 inferentially his whole personality, his physical, 
 almost his moral, being. We must not wonder that 
 he, at least, is sensitive even to morbidity. Then, 
 again, the co-operation in drama is so complex that 
 it is seldom the incidence of criticism, however just 
 it may be as a whole, will fall justly. To tell who, 
 among the many contributors, is really responsible 
 for failure, and what the degree of blame, needs a 
 very acute eye indeed. The result, as we have else- 
 where noted, is that, while criticism is ostensibly 
 much counted on in the theatre, it is assessed, one 
 fears, in very cynical terms. There are good notices 
 and bad. Praise has a certain commercial value; 
 blame may show in the balance-sheet. 
 
 Where public But with immediate commercial considerations 
 blame should largely ruled out, as they would be in a theatre 
 f al1 1 80 
 
 \
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 where on the one side was a classic repertory with 
 its prescriptive claims and on the other every en- 
 couragement to be patient and not panic-stricken in 
 the pursuit of the untried thing, one would be in- 
 clined to urge a director rather to ignore casual 
 criticism altogether than to let his policy be in- 
 fluenced by it, swayed this way and that. Every 
 soul in the theatre will be to some degree sensitive 
 to what is said about them that is human nature. 
 Very salutary indeed that they should be, just so 
 long as the tenor of their work be not unreasoningly 
 deflected by it. But the completer the co-operation 
 of actor, author, producer, designer, and the more 
 perfect, therefore, this organism of the theatre, the 
 more will praise and blame fall upon individuals 
 very haphazardly. Let the head of the whole 
 affair, therefore, take all the blame to himself, 
 even though he leave the praise to be appropriated by 
 whomsoever it will comfort most. Then he will be 
 glad enough, the director if he is not to become, 
 on the rebound from subservience to the polite 
 mob, completely Bourbon of a chance of that 
 frank question and answer, free from attack and 
 defence, which a finely working conscience can 
 supply. And it is for this purpose that his council 
 should be chiefly fitted. They would have power 
 over him, power to insist that their general policy 
 should be carried out, and if he would not, or if he 
 could not, bring them to like his interpretation or 
 amending of it, to make him resign. But these are 
 mere penalty provisions. This little parliament of 
 the theatre, working with good will, a wise director 
 being keen to consult it, its members having just 
 enough technical knowledge to quicken the dis- 
 cussions, would provide something like that collec- 
 tive mind which we have noted as the peculiar 
 
 181
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 virtue and strength of drama ; would be, in fact, 
 in kindred sort, an epitome of our vision of the 
 theatre at large. 
 
 The council would formulate criticism of its own, 
 constructively one hopes. It would be the filter 
 through which any formal public complaints must 
 be passed. Its meetings should be, finally, occasions 
 for the casting up of other balance sheets than those 
 which the business management will bring before 
 it. The council is the one body to which one 
 can recommend the pursuit of self-satisfaction, 
 since, taking no part in the work but being a part of 
 the theatre, it must satisfy itself continually that 
 the work is well done. And it might report yearly 
 in due form to the general public its considered 
 opinion of the theatre's progress, justify policy, ex- 
 plain good fortune and bad. It should, in fact, be 
 for the public the Theatre Articulate, when there 
 was need to say anything that good work could not 
 say for itself. One would hope that its elections 
 might inspire a little interest and a very definite 
 confidence be reposed in it. 
 
 The theatre's The. director of the theatre should be an autocrat, 
 director and and that his autocracy may be effective it must be 
 his autocracy strictly limited. His council will tell him, for 
 instance, to do what he likes. Without this free- 
 dom, illusory though it must sound, he could not 
 hope to do anything at all. But the theatre, school 
 and playhouse both, company, teachers, students, 
 can never be disciplined into an automaton, carrying 
 out orders without question, whatever the theoretical 
 powers over them may be. And if any such 
 institution could be so conducted it would lose 
 just that spirit of individual and diverse effort 
 which alone can keep it a healthy living body. 
 Therefore all the director's ability to direct and to 
 182
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 manage (in the true sense of the word) will be 
 needed, every ounce weight of it ; and it must be free 
 to flow in this one direction. He must be ready 
 to justify to his council what he has done : if he 
 had first to spend strength in persuading them to let 
 him do it the division of effort would sink him. He 
 will be glad enough, probably, to limit his freedom 
 towards his subordinates, to lighten its burden both 
 by regulation and by much delegation of power. 
 A common rule for the students, common conditions 
 of service for staff and company, will make his 
 relations with them the easier. He must limit his 
 powers, too, according to his own human capacity 
 to work, and to work well according, that is, to 
 the bent of his talent. He is not very likely, for 
 instance, to be an able financier. That qualification 
 will at least, one supposes, not have a prominent 
 place in the list when he is chosen. But there is no 
 good reason, once the scope of the theatre's work is 
 determined and the proportions of its budget ad- 
 justed, that its finance should not be a department 
 almost, if not quite, autonomous, subject to the 
 council's oversight alone. Encroachment upon a 
 director's time by such matters would always be 
 serious enough ; and it would be even more serious 
 if, as is likely, he resisted the encroachment. In- 
 deed, there are no matters in which a director, 
 right for everything else, might, through sheer 
 inability to change his spots, find himself more often 
 in the wrong than money matters. He would be 
 well quit of their burden. 
 
 Another limiting of power and lightening of The choice 
 responsibility wants careful compassing. We must of plays 
 deal at length with the problem of the choosing of 
 plays. For purely practical reasons a director must, 
 over this, if not delegate his powers, at least contrive 
 
 183
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 to extend his faculties very considerably. He cannot 
 hope to read a tithe, or even to consider upon a fair 
 report a half, of the manuscript plays such a theatre 
 is likely to receive. Yet this reading, and the en- 
 couragement or considerate discouragement of the 
 author, is a most important part of the theatre's 
 work, too important to be entrusted to private secre- 
 taries (who in any case would not be found capable 
 of doing it), or to be left at the point of vague and 
 polite letter-writing. Apart, for the moment, from 
 the theatre's relations to the authors of established 
 reputation, and from its concern with the play- 
 writing work of its students, its touch with potential 
 authorship, its fostering of a future supply of play 
 material, must be a matter of great importance. 
 It is not that one would try to " attach " playwrights 
 to the theatre ; no return to even a remote likeness 
 of the tamed hack, turning his stuff out to order, 
 would be either possible (one hopes) or desirable. 
 Even when a young dramatist has studied in the 
 theatre as school the sooner he could shake free of its 
 influence the better ; and if the teaching there is 
 not largely a preparation for the shaking free it will 
 be ill-considered. The best use any student can 
 make of his knowledge is to forget not the know- 
 ledge itself, but the fact that he knows it. And 
 for nobody is it more important than for the drama- 
 tist to escape from this vicious tendency, common 
 to all institutions and their inmates, to revolve 
 perpetually in the circle of his own ideas. 
 The dangers The danger to the dramatist is as great a danger 
 of institution- t o fa e theatre. There will be the classic plays, 
 m accepted material both for study and performance. 
 
 These apart ; if experience counts for anything, the 
 institutional tendency is always to keep in with a 
 school of writers, whose approximation to classic rank 
 184
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 would really seem to be their exceeding dulness; 
 though we may more charitably see them as seeking 
 safety safety above all things ! in the empty 
 prisons of form, beautiful houses once, but only for 
 the souls that built them. This would be bad 
 enough ; but far worse is the trick by which, with an 
 air half apology, half reckless abandonment, the 
 institution brings itself up to date by the belated 
 patronage of some revolutionary dramatist who, 
 a generation ago, was thought to be going to do 
 very desperate things indeed, but somehow has 
 never done them, nor anything else worth mention- 
 ing. From such arrant foolishness some defence 
 must be devised ; though truly it is not easy to find 
 means whereby Satan shall be compelled to cast out 
 Satan, to make rules by which the tyranny of rule 
 can be broken. What one needs, of course, is 
 simply an atmosphere, in which the human being 
 can breathe freely and be human. Then men and 
 women, who, strangely enough, cannot live without 
 breathing, will be happy to come and work in it. 
 
 There clearly must be in any important theatre The need f 01 
 someone of authority and understanding whose a play-reader 
 chief business it will be to deal with plays and of unusual 
 more importantly with playwrights. He must m ^ r 
 have authority, because a good man will not 
 work without it; and only a good man, a man of 
 individual ability, will be listened to by people whose 
 independence of the theatre is their very virtue. And 
 he must probably be given a playreading secretary, so 
 that his mind may not be utterly dulled and his 
 standard hopelessly lowered by the contemplation, 
 day in and day out, of the miles of manuscript upon 
 which there is no possible comment but " Thank 
 you." Every few miles or so, for all that, there is 
 always something worth the stopping to consider. 
 
 185
 
 The difficul- 
 ties of ex- 
 perimenting 
 in play 
 production 
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 From the attempts of the younger generation, 
 with their study of the technique of playwriting and, 
 even better, their improved chances of some asso- 
 ciation with a theatre in being, the quite 
 impossible play is disappearing. It is amazing, 
 though, how literary men of distinction will 
 still produce stretches of dialogue, divided into acts 
 and scenes, which to them, apparently, look like a 
 play and (if they ever read them aloud ; though 
 that, one thinks, is doubtful) sound like a play, but 
 have about as much relation to a play as a picture 
 of a house has to the house itself. But out of the 
 training in technical form for a literary generation 
 or two will come, one hopes, what is far more 
 valuable, its individualized development. This may, 
 encouragingly enough, run into strange paths and 
 to the use of untried material. Now it will be a not 
 unimportant part of the business of the play-reader 
 to help, if he can, to make these experiments fruitful. 
 To-day the best intentioned theatre can do little 
 but accept a play or reject it. The occasional 
 middle course suggestions of this alteration and 
 that, or for a rewriting with a more practised colla- 
 borator is looked on coldly by the author (if he can 
 resist the material temptations attached to it), who 
 only sees the individual growth of his idea cut 
 mercilessly and soullessly to a commonplace pattern. 
 And the manager does not often find the plan worth 
 the trouble it involves. But while rejection is easy 
 enough, acceptance of a play is, for any theatre, the 
 beginning of responsibilities which few people and 
 very few authors seem able to realize. Anything 
 like a reckless policy of experiment is really not 
 possible. For not only the author and the finance of 
 the theatre is involved in failure. A play is, indeed, 
 very much a house of art. The material, the de- 
 186
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 coration, may be fine. But unless you can be 
 reasonably sure that its construction is sound, 
 that it will not come rattling about their ears, you 
 cannot in decency put a defenceless company of 
 actors into it. It is true enough that very profes- 
 si9nalized actors can often be unnecessarily hard 
 upon plays, which are more simple in content or 
 more tentative in method than the robuster stuff 
 they have grown accustomed to. But the question 
 of a play's effectiveness can never be begged. And 
 if actors seek for this quality first of all, and are 
 ready to ensue it rather to the neglect of others, 
 it still does not follow that the test of professional 
 performance is a wholly unfair one. For, after all, 
 when it comes to the point of performance the 
 actors have to make the play effective. And if 
 the author has not supplied them with what they 
 feel to be legitimate means they will turn to 
 illegitimate ones. It may well be that in their 
 anxiety they will, after all, have only obscured the 
 play's true effects. Then the fault is, of course, 
 theirs. They are interpreters, and have no right 
 to force the dramatist's intentions into the mould 
 of their absolute habits. On the other hand, if 
 the dramatist cannot convincingly indicate to his 
 responsible interpreters as they study his text how 
 the promise of it (so to speak) will be fulfilled in 
 performance he courts misfortune. And it comes 
 to this, that in any theatre where the actors are at 
 home but the dramatists are strangers there will be 
 little disposition to run risks. It may be said that 
 with eggs in so many baskets one breakage is no 
 great matter. But it is also true that both the time 
 and space for production of plays will be very 
 precious in our theatre ; there will certainly be 
 none to waste. We have tried to provide in the 
 
 187
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 work of the school for a modicum of sheerly ex- 
 perimental production. But that alone will not 
 take us very far, and it must rest with the play- 
 reader of the theatre to see that no playwriter, 
 bringing anything of dramatic value, is either let go 
 quite empty away or, indeed, quite let go. 
 The play- For the gist of such a task one can lay down 
 
 reader's few laws ; its very feasibility will depend upon the 
 qualifications pl ay _ rea der's personality. But such men (and 
 
 and powers ., . J , . i j 
 
 women, though as yet, with their own worlds to 
 conquer, more rarely) do exist : men whose personal 
 ambitions have been absorbed in an unselfish regard 
 for their art. Theirs are not very dynamic natures, 
 perhaps, but they are receptive and sympathetic. 
 They have dropped the burden of their egoism, 
 have broken the many mirrors of their youthful 
 minds. If ill-luck has left them disappointed that 
 trait may yet be sweetened with humour. They look 
 now to find their account in the passing of the torch 
 to swifter runners.* 
 
 The play-reader would have behind him all the 
 resources of the theatre, within which there is 
 every sort of close collaboration making for the 
 completed drama except this one. The playwright 
 necessarily works elsewhere. For all the associa- 
 tion of his student days, for all the active collabora- 
 tion that he must welcome in the completion of his 
 work, if he does not, in its initiation and develop- 
 ment, keep both a solitary mind and a mind in con- 
 tact rather with realities than shows never with the 
 show of shows at least he will have nothing of 
 
 * Such men are to be found in most universities. But there the 
 contact with a monotonous succession of immature minds may dull 
 them till in time they react to nothing save the obscurities of their 
 own ; and the soft nature grows softer or the hard harder. But 
 to be dealing with fully, variously developed men is another matter. 
 
 188
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 value to bring, nothing that could not be better 
 improvised within the theatre walls. It is literally 
 true that a fresher freer drama could be generated 
 by actors and actresses trained to elaborate variations 
 upon accepted themes than results from the formal 
 literary interference of the dramatist, who, by re- 
 fixing the worn subjects and phrases in would-be 
 novel forms, nailing them down once more in the 
 outline of a play, does but impoverish and deaden 
 the theatre's art. 
 
 Our problem, however, is how to give the play- 
 wright backing, even when it must, by force of 
 circumstances, fall short of a complete production 
 of his play. We are concerned here mainly, of 
 course, with the adolescent playwright, so to call 
 him ; still adolescent in his art, whatever he may 
 be in age or other education. It is not the cheap 
 commodity of advice we see being handed out to 
 him; not that alone, at least, though when that will 
 suffice the play-reader can be free with it, and, 
 one fears, a poor play-reader would rely on it over 
 much. There would be far more worth in a few 
 weeks' association with the theatre. A man's work 
 might be brought, perhaps, to the preliminary 
 stages of production, there being admittedly no 
 chance of taking it further. But it might be handed 
 for a few days to a seminar of the students, or 
 discussed with the author and play-reader by a 
 committee of such of the actors and actresses as 
 would be likely players of it ; talks even with 
 producers and designers would not be should 
 not be, in a sensitive author's mind barren of result. 
 Not only the contact with individuals would count, 
 but the dramatist's entry, even for that little time, 
 into the theatre's general scheme of collaboration. 
 Attendance at rehearsals, at play-readings, at the 
 
 189
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 discussion of productions : these are things that 
 cannot be offered by the ordinary theatres of to-day, 
 where, with all eyes to performance, nothing else 
 counting except as cost, they are scamped and 
 rushed hectic, irritable affairs, best concealed. 
 But when the study of the art is an end in itself, 
 and perfected co-operation the recognized means 
 to that end, a visit to a theatre may come to mean 
 something other than the moral discomfort of intrud- 
 ing upon a few painful rehearsals or indifferently 
 sitting out a show. 
 
 One would have hopes, too, that the atmosphere 
 of this theatre (to venture upon that vague and 
 hackneyed phrase) might be a very sane one. It 
 is not less true of playwrights than of other people 
 who plan things on paper and really a written 
 play is no more than our plan, our theory, of what 
 we hope the completed thing will be that divorce 
 from the practical difficulties of bringing them to 
 being is but too apt to turn would-be servants of the 
 single cause into sectaries, righteous in their own 
 eyes, since they see but themselves matched against 
 chaos. In no art, certainly, are the pretensions 
 of the theorist hollower, or the backings-up of 
 phrases by phrases more vain. There is room in 
 the theatre both for the reformer and the rebel, and 
 for the conventicle as well as for the Church. But 
 there is no health whatever in the editing of tracts 
 by scholars (whose view of the stage is like the 
 Swiss mountaineer's of the Mediterranean), in the 
 drawing of two-dimensional designs for the three- 
 dimensional theatre, nor to outrage the illustra- 
 tion a little in the writing of one-dimensional 
 plays for many-dimensional acting. All this may 
 be excusable enough when, as now, the disastrous 
 conditions of the theatre exclude from its service 
 190
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 man after man whose scholarship, artistry, or in- 
 spiration asks some further encouragement and 
 recompense than cash in hand. But, when better 
 encouragement is to be had, it will be well to 
 remember that the art of the drama is as pragmatical 
 as he art of architecture, and most effectively to be 
 preached by practice. 
 
 While the play-reader himself should have every A third voice 
 latitude in granting the freedom of the theatre to the needed in the 
 potential playwright, whether, when there was a c ^ oostn Sf 
 direct question of the production of a play, his ^ * 
 recommendation and the director's acceptance or 
 rejection would cover the ground of this most im- 
 portant business, is to be doubted. If not, it being 
 hardly practicable to turn director and play-reader 
 into a committee of two with equalized powers, 
 the only feasible plan seems to be the addition of a 
 third authority.* We have rejected the notion of 
 any large committee of actors to exercise this power. 
 Schemes by which the students or the actors or the 
 council themselves or committees elected by the 
 audience might have power to dictate one pro- 
 duction in so many are really hardly worth playing 
 with. The provision of such backdoors is a token 
 of weakness, and the use of them generally a de- 
 moralizing business. The choice of plays will be 
 a dominant part of the theatre's policy, and it must, 
 above all things, show consistency of purpose. 
 For this reason much could be said for letting the 
 director's be the sole voice in the matter. In a 
 theatre where his other work left him time to 
 grapple with it could he be certain, too, of ideal 
 relations with his play-reader this probably, for mere 
 
 * This plan is worked out, as are most of the others for the 
 staff of the theatre as playhouse, in " The Scheme and Estimates 
 for a National Theatre." 
 
 191
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 simplicity's sake, would come so to be. But, apart 
 from the amount of detached attention involved, 
 there is the perennial danger of hardening taste 
 and narrowing mind, in no direction likely to be 
 greater than in the choice of plays. The third 
 authority, then, must be someone who can hope 
 to keep himself as free as humanly may be from this 
 particular risk. And, while the play-reader would 
 try to bring the playwright into tentative collabora- 
 tion with the theatre's work, the part of this third 
 chooser of plays would be to keep out of touch with 
 it altogether. He should never be tempted to 
 consider plays from the point of view of the ease 
 with which the theatre could produce them, never 
 for their sheer effectiveness or their chances of im- 
 mediate success. Ideally he should possess one 
 of those sceptical, critical, troublous minds, un- 
 attachable to any movement, frankly at odds with 
 acquiescence. He should be a discoverer of the 
 talent that would not be drawn into the theatre's 
 orbit. One sees him, perhaps, travelling on its 
 behalf. He would be constantly out-voted in the 
 committee of three. That would not matter. The 
 flavour of his opinion would abide. 
 
 These limitations noted the financial and the 
 play-choosing, the second being less really a limita- 
 tion of power than an extension of faculty to 
 enumerate the director's positive tasks would be 
 but to imply limitations the more. Nor will an 
 attempt to describe a desirable personality for the 
 post be of much more avail. To say that the ideal 
 director must be born and not made is but a way 
 of saying that the man and his qualities the 
 qualities to fit the man, rather can but emerge 
 from the development of the institution itself ; 
 for his abilities must be as near as may be an epi- 
 192 

 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 tomized reflection of its activities. And, in addition, 
 
 he must have the administrative qualities that 
 
 should pertain to direction anywhere. Well, there 
 
 are no such people. And the story of all govern- The fallacy 
 
 ment is the story of the failure to find them, the f tr yig to 
 
 wisdom of the search, and the necessity of putting &( every- 
 
 * u .a.- thing right at 
 
 up with the next best thing. * 
 
 But for the direction of the search a principle 
 is involved which it may be as well, as far as this 
 theatre is concerned, to examine. 
 
 If we do not look for the institution itself, with 
 its accumulating traditions, to give birth to the 
 director,* and by its own virtue to make up for his 
 inevitable deficiencies, then not only this plan, but 
 the very idea of such a theatre as this, had better be 
 scrapped. And there is much to be said from this 
 standpoint. The argument, familiar to every enemy 
 of an academy, that, if you confine an art within set 
 boundaries which are alien to its inner purposes, 
 you do, if so facto, prevent its healthy development, 
 is doubtless a strong one. But the theatre, it must 
 be remembered, depends, as no other art does, 
 upon organization. Of necessity more co-operative 
 than any other, its workers profit most by the perma- 
 nencies of an institution. We may at least look 
 round at this moment and justifiably protest that it 
 has profited enough, and suffered too much, from 
 the vagaries of individual genius. Within the art's 
 generous boundaries there should be room, no 
 doubt, for two policies institutional and free, 
 traditional and iconoclastic ; the one policy does 
 not prosper, indeed, at more than a brickbat's 
 
 * Whether, a century hence, the man appointed were actually a 
 product of the theatre, or an outsider, is a small matter if his pro- 
 fessional qualities were those which it is the theatre's object to 
 cultivate. 
 
 N 193
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 range from the other. But the " free " theatres, 
 dependent upon some individual of genius or some 
 lucky combination of talent, had better remain, 
 organically, comparatively simple affairs. Then 
 there need be no regret at their natural perish- 
 ing when the circumstances that sustained them 
 change ; and, above all, there should be no at- 
 tempt to keep them artificially alive. Lilies that 
 fester smell far worse than the wholesome cab- 
 bage. But a continued new creation of elaborately 
 organized institutions is not to be faced. These, 
 if they are desirable at all, must be designed to en- 
 dure, and an inevitable condition of their endurance 
 will be for the theatre itself, and, above all, the idea 
 of the theatre, to take precedence of any individual 
 talent. 
 
 Now, in practice, this condition will rule out all 
 sorts of attractively easy plans by which a theatre 
 may be brought at high speed to artistic eminence. 
 Find the director of outstanding ability, give him 
 his head, fill his pocket, and the thing is done. 
 Such is the common cry. That the thing might be 
 begun in such a way is possible. Indeed, as things 
 generally, like people, do not begin as they go on 
 it might be the best way to begin. But from the 
 very beginning such a director would have to plan 
 his own obliteration ; and it would not be an easy 
 matter, though he were a model of unselfishness, 
 both to suppress himself and to advantage the 
 theatre to the full by his personal prestige. He 
 may make the best job possible of carrying his 
 burden up the first steep ascent, but if he cannot 
 hand it over when the level is reached, so that he 
 stands from beneath it quite unnoticeably, his work 
 will have been wasted. In his staff, his company, 
 and students he must inoculate loyalty to the 
 194
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 theatre, not to himself. And while it may be called 
 the United States or the British or the Pittsburg 
 or Nottingham Theatre, yet, if from beyond the 
 memory of man (which dates back in such matters 
 for five or ten years) the work there is too much 
 associated with his name, the public (that always 
 likes something to complain about) will take offence 
 at his leaving. So the problem presented is very 
 difficult ; in the flush of success, moreover, it is 
 always ignored.* 
 
 One need not press the point further ; and it is 
 obvious that to complicate the difficulty with 
 financial considerations will greatly worsen it. The 
 farming out of such an enterprise, the sharing 
 of profits (for one thing, there should be no such 
 thing as the making of profits) the more admirable, 
 from what is called a business point of view, such 
 plans are, the more futile, shortsighted, destructive 
 are they, as a rule, to the final purpose of the theatre. 
 
 All these things should be obvious. Compromise 
 of some sort, when things come to the starting- 
 point, there has always to be. One must do as one 
 can, and take the openings that offer. But one should 
 be quite certain that it is compromise and oppor- 
 tunism, and should know where the right road lies. 
 There is an absolute morality in business methods, 
 no doubt, but its pretended application to artistic 
 enterprise is too often a shifting of responsibility, 
 if not, indeed, a left-handed attempt at sabotage. 
 That may seem a hard saying ; but one has seen 
 too many expeditions in altruism bidden to sustain 
 
 * Where was Antoine's theatre without Antoine ? And, con- 
 versely, the Odeon swallowed him like a grave. Why could not 
 the Lessing Theatre Company hold together after Brahm's death ? 
 The Theatre Francais survives all defections. Is that only because 
 of its national character and its subsidy ? 
 
 195
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 themselves upon terms that their sponsors would 
 
 scoff at had they been concerned with commercial 
 
 profit, not to be sore sometimes at the spectacle of 
 
 the right hand of the man of business outstretched 
 
 to receive congratulations upon his public spirit. 
 
 The libra- A functionary barely existent in the theatre of 
 
 rian ; the to-day, but of some importance to such a scheme as 
 
 making of ^^ would be the librarian. His work would be 
 
 ?Z '.!* 5> two-fold. For the playhouse he should be con- 
 tne conser- :< . 
 
 vingof cerned to conserve tradition. There he would be 
 tradition the permanent head of the staff of prompters (a 
 further word about them soon), and responsible 
 for the proper recording of each play's production ; 
 for the writing of a small history of its casting 
 and development; for the preservation in some in- 
 terpretable form of the designs for costumes and 
 scenery ; and, above all, for the making of that 
 particular record known as the prompt book. 
 This last is a difficult business, mostly muddled 
 nowadays, for no one concerned seems to know 
 quite what is wanted. No producer but has been 
 driven distracted, at the revival of a play, by a 
 carelessly marked prompt book. After tangling 
 himself and his company for a few days in its toils 
 he finds it simpler to cut loose and begin again. 
 But meticulously marked books, for all their fascina- 
 tion (perhaps only a producer feels it), are even 
 more dangerous friends. For, as a rule, they show 
 no distinction between the main features of the 
 play's scheme that skeleton upon which the rest is 
 hung and all the minor matters, positions, move- 
 ments, which not only can be varied without injury, 
 but very constantly should be if its acting is not 
 to stiffen. To rehearse a play by such a guide 
 is a poor business and takes the heart out of every- 
 one concerned. The principles of prompt book 
 196
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 making will be implicit in our later discussion of the 
 production of the play itself. But in practice it 
 can, at least, be no mechanical matter. One might 
 compare it to the full score of an opera, but that 
 there the effects of the instruments are calculable, 
 more or less. Now, even if we could tie our actors 
 to notes in their voices and precise liftings of the 
 eyebrows, we presumably would not cinema and 
 gramophone records would be of little positive value. 
 The secret of the art of acting and its whole glory lies 
 in this very impossibility of reducing it to set terms. 
 The prompt book must rather record, then, the 
 meaning of what was done. It should be an over- 
 writing of the play. Not that one wants anything 
 remotely like what is called the novelization of a 
 drama. Better to retain and elaborate a strict 
 technique of expression by which to detail entrance, 
 exit, and movement in general; that will deter the 
 recorder from indulging in fanciful phrasing of his 
 own. On the other hand, the comparative im- 
 portance of these movements and of the cadences 
 of the dialogue and their purpose needs to be indica- 
 ted ; above all does the distinction between essential 
 and permissive things. The dramatist himself, one 
 presumes, will so annotate his work as to give its 
 interpreters what guidance he thinks necessary 
 for their imaginative approach to it. There is an 
 art in doing this so as to feed without choking the 
 actor's imagination. But the prompt book record 
 should differ in kind, should be clear statement of 
 what was done, implication merely of what should 
 be. Acting is an ephemeral art, but it is an en- 
 couragement to continuity of effort that its achieve- 
 ments should be intelligibly enshrined and its tradi- 
 tions formed and preserved. 
 
 The library the room full of books would 
 
 197
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 be a necessary resource for both playhouse and 
 school. If one considers all the subjects upon 
 which workers in the theatre need to be currently 
 informed the very number of books involved is a 
 large one. Books on architecture, costume, manners 
 and customs, topography, not to mention a quite 
 surprising amount of writing upon the art of the 
 theatre itself, will make up but a part of the list. 
 And a certain amount of pure research work would 
 doubtless be sponsored by the school, which must 
 therefore be equipped for it. Where better could 
 the visiting student find his books with less chance 
 of suffocating his learning in the dust of them ? 
 The With regard to the corps of prompters let us 
 
 prompters prefer the old-fashioned simplicity of this slight 
 themselves m i snomer to the pretentiously exact "assistant stage- 
 manager " there is a little to be said. The job 
 once its drudgery were reduced to a minimum by the 
 means of organization and good stage machinery 
 is such an educative one that it should, if possible, 
 be left for the students and beginners to tackle. 
 A sharp dose of the work, even at its crudest, 
 inoculates a man well enough with the practical 
 habit of the stage, but refine it as one may it has not 
 many more possibilities of development than has 
 the kindred job of fagging at a public school. It 
 is a task that everyone should be keen enough to 
 undertake, and no one should want to stick at. 
 A man who did want to would be already devita- 
 lizing into one of those bits of dead wood which 
 must be resolutely cut away from the theatre tree. 
 
 This prompter's job should be practised first 
 in one of the play-study seminars, then in the 
 experimental staging of a play by the students, 
 finally in a full-fledged production or two. He is 
 the secretary, the convener, the recorder, the 
 198 
 
 v
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 remembrancer. A passive agent for the greater 
 part of the time, he is best able to soak in the 
 general effect of the work done. When a student 
 has been concentrating his attention first in one 
 direction, then in another, in no better way will he 
 recover a conspectus of the whole than by taking the 
 prompter's seat. He must master there the tech- 
 nique of recording the production as it develops ; 
 a complex and rather troublesome business this 
 should be for him, as we have seen, but well worth 
 the trouble to anyone who is later to be concerned 
 in producing plays, and possibly in itself, by reason 
 of the close attention and the powers of clear exposi- 
 tion that it needs, an educational study. 
 
 We come now to the staging of plays; and, in The 
 the first place, let us decide that shoddy has no workshop 
 place in the theatre. Just because some scenery 
 may be meant to create an illusion, because the 
 rooms that one sees are not real rooms, nor their 
 furniture amenable to scrutiny, nor to more than a 
 reasonable resistance to usage, it does not follow 
 that such things are, in any derogatory sense, shams. 
 
 The worst of illusion in stage scenery has ever 
 been that it lends itself to claptrap, to tricks ; and 
 one of the best things to be said about formal 
 decoration is that it sets a sterner standard of ac- 
 complishment. Craftsmanship, and not craft, will be 
 called for ; the work must be beautiful and right in 
 itself. Is it too fanciful to contend that in the 
 theatre the various sorts of shoddiness are inter- 
 dependent ? One need not hold that we can 
 promote sound thinking in our playwrights by 
 means of sound carpentry on the stage. But, con- 
 versely, it is undoubtedly true that fineness of 
 feeling in the essentials of the dramatic art must, for 
 the sake of its own preservation, extend itself to a care 
 
 199
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 for the fitness of the practical accessories, even the 
 smallest. Interdependence in the theatre is com- 
 plete. When it is not, something is functioning 
 wrongly or not functioning at all. But for ill, 
 as well as good, the rule holds; and slovenliness in 
 the setting of a chair will react throughout the whole 
 body of work, so subtly at first, perhaps, as to be 
 worth no comment ; and coarser tastes may for long 
 be impervious to the effects. But finally impoverish- 
 ment is sure. 
 
 We must think well, however, what we mean by fit- 
 ness. The actor's performance of Charles Surface 
 will hardly be improved by his sitting before the 
 public upon a genuine Chippendale chair, though one 
 might argue that some appreciation of the merits 
 of Chippendale would not come amiss as a flavour- 
 ing to his study of Joseph ; and Moses, no doubt, 
 had a good working knowledge, to be evidenced in 
 glance and gesture, of objets d'art et de vertu. But we 
 may certainly contend that, starting from the 
 nucleus of four boards and a passion, the passion 
 may be just a little sublimated by the boards being 
 well chosen and, perhaps, scrubbed ; till, arriving 
 at the complex mechanism of the modern theatre, 
 there is no part of it, not the furnishing of the 
 stage, nor the dressing-rooms, not the artistic lives 
 of the actors, nor the trade pride of the carpenters, 
 but will reflect and be reflected in the spirit of the 
 whole. 
 
 Really it stands to reason. For our aim is to make 
 of the theatre a place where the senses are sharpened 
 to immediate response, most immediately in the 
 actors, contributively in all the workers ascendant 
 or distributed, resultantly in the audience. It fol- 
 lows does it not ? that there will be response to 
 coarse stimuli as to fine, and always an easier letting 
 
 200 

 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 down into the slough of bad taste than a tuning up 
 to good. Therefore one cannot afford to knock a 
 nail in wrong. 
 
 It follows then that the decoration and furnish- 
 ing of a play are as integral a part of the 
 theatre's work as its study and acting, and are to be 
 admitted to the same co-ordination. Hence the 
 need, in any theatre aspiring to completeness, of a 
 studio, or, more properly, a workshop. By pre- 
 ferring that term we both emphasize, again, the 
 uselessness for these purposes of mere paper de- 
 signing and the practical impossibility of carrying 
 on very much abstract study. For this last, indeed, 
 there should be not much need. The aesthetic 
 principles involved are not rooted in dramatic art 
 any more than is the craft of carpentry that will, 
 among others, be practised in the same connection. 
 
 In the theatre as school a certain amount of teach- 
 ing of the subject can be devised. There can be lec- 
 tures at large on the history, the theory, and practice 
 of scenic decoration and costume design. But a great 
 deal more learning can be done by students ad- 
 mitted to watch and assist in the carrying out of the 
 practical work. Not much good will come, how- 
 ever, from playing about with half-inch models. 
 That is a showy business, but to use such things 
 for show is to misuse them. They are properly 
 workmen's devices no more and not very effi- 
 cient ones at that. Scale drawings, though not so 
 attractive, are far more useful. 
 
 The workshop, then, must be primarily a part 
 of the theatre as playhouse, though it may pass as 
 many student apprentices through a course of its 
 work as it can do, profitably to them, and without 
 deflecting its own purposes to any sort of 
 dilettantism. 
 
 201
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 The amount Now comes the question what proportion of 
 of attention to time, attention, and energy should a theatre give 
 be given to to th j s s ^ e Q f ^ wor j c p |^ ote that j n the j ast 
 
 S <tef oration analysis it will be energy and not merely money that 
 will be absorbed. Lavish expenditure is, no doubt, 
 a tempting devil ; but it is the business manager's 
 task to put this behind us. The more seductive 
 deep sea, however, is the notion that fine artistry 
 and a free hand are in themselves all-sufficient and 
 utterly desirable. But far better four boards, 
 creaky and unscrubbed, as a stage for our passion 
 than that it should be choked by a collection 
 of bric-a-brac. And what else do scenery, furni- 
 ture, costumes, however fine in themselves, ac- 
 cumulate into if they have not the right and intimate 
 relation to the production as a whole ? And in 
 nineteen cases out of twenty their relation should 
 be subordinate also. For to surround a play with 
 foreign bodies of scenery and costume which, alien 
 in origin and in intention, only obscure its meaning 
 while they pretend to illustrate it, is an artistic 
 crime. And a greater one still is the attempt 
 to bolster up poverty of acting (the heart's blood 
 of all true interpretation) by even the most genuine 
 accessory riches, however brilliant, however at- 
 tractive they may be. 
 
 The right apportionment of energy, it will be 
 said, will differ with each production. No doubt ; 
 and we have admitted the twentieth play to which 
 sheer beauty of staging may be the most important 
 contribution. But we are searching for a formula 
 which will serve generally, and if there were aesthetic, 
 as there are scientific, laws some such definition as 
 the following might possibly be valid. Allow for 
 all the energy that can profitably be expended upon 
 the simple interpretation of a play, then the surplus 
 
 202
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 and the extra energy and enthusiasm engendered by 
 the work of interpretation will allow for just so much 
 external beautifying as will properly complete the 
 whole. If one could follow such a rule strictly the 
 result might be a simplicity of presentation almost 
 uabearably severe. But while it cannot be worked 
 out as a formula, it can stand as a safeguard 
 against temptation. And it does certainly point 
 the way to a rule of simplicity for the great play 
 which needs nothing more, which will by its own 
 virtues absorb the attention of an audience as it should 
 have accounted for the full energies of the actors ; 
 and, on the other hand, to a latitude of fancy in 
 embroidering the slighter fabrics, which do not by 
 their own strength and completeness forbid such 
 attentions. 
 
 Undue emphasis, one feels, has been laid of The easy 
 late years upon stage decoration. There was, in- of visual 
 deed, a crying need both for the practical reformer a PP ea ? 
 and the inspired prophet. Scene-painting had 
 touched depths of dulness, ugliness, and ineptitude 
 from which a few instances of honourable craftsman- 
 ship and creditable imagination could not save it, 
 while the occasional intervention of an artist of 
 academic reputation, superior and aloof, made only 
 specious pretence at a rescue. But the trail of re- 
 form once blazed, there was a rush to it : the 
 reason being, one fears, that this is such an easy 
 way to the " new " theatre, while it looks even 
 easier than it is. If sticks and canvas were the main 
 content of drama, and limelight the liveliest thing 
 about it, what a simple business it would be ! 
 Who suddenly discovered that a bare stage, bounded 
 by a wall with its whitewash gone grey, and lit by a 
 shaft of sunlight from the dust-stained windows 
 above, was in itself a most decorative thing ? It is 
 
 203
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 upon these phenomena, commonplace enough to 
 theatre folk, but always impressive, one would say, 
 to the stranger straying in the day time into the 
 empty, echoing, shrouded house, that the new gospel 
 was based. It was indeed necessary to strip 
 scenery of its sophistications and become again as 
 little children in the matter. But we do not want 
 to go on playing about for ever with these pseudo- 
 simplicities as with toys, and playing (it really is!) 
 upon the innocency of the public. There are signs, 
 however, that the public begin to be as bored 
 by them as for some time past the initiate have 
 been. 
 
 But there is always the temptation of the easiest 
 way. And nothing is easier in the theatre than 
 to overshadow the mental-emotional complexity of 
 the drama, with its sharp demand upon our full 
 attention, by the primitive appeal to the eye or by 
 the hypnosis of sound melodious dronings lulling 
 the intelligence to sleep. Which of us has not 
 heard entranced playgoers, as they passed out from 
 some tremendously decorated, softly boohooing 
 stance to the clattering reality of the streets, ex- 
 claiming: " How beautiful! How artistic! " Though 
 what it was all about they no more knew than did 
 old Caspar the cause of the battle of Blenheim ! 
 
 Theoretically, every play should be approached 
 by its decorator as the actors approach it. He also 
 is to interpret it to the full extent of his and of its 
 own capacity for individual expression. But in 
 practice one had better admit the two admirable 
 safeguards against excess of zeal convention and 
 economy. 
 
 Artistic Q u i te apart from the economy which a business- 
 economy manager, balancing one branch of the theatre's 
 work against another, will very wisely impose on the 
 204 
 
 I
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 workshop, there is an artistic inhibition of over- 
 expenditure of energy or money upon the decora- 
 tion of any play. For, after all, its production is an 
 ephemeral thing. And if, time and time again, 
 everything must begin from the beginning, a com- 
 pany be collected, rehearsed, dressed, instilled with 
 the feeling that this is a matter of life and death 
 all for what ? after a little the mature mind ceases 
 to respond to the fantasy of such demands. So it 
 should reasonably be with the scene-making. If 
 the efforts are to be such as would almost suffice 
 to build a city, the artist, if he has in him any touch 
 of that supremely artistic quality, a sense of fitness, 
 will rebel. And then, if he must stick to the job, 
 for careful design he will substitute brilliant 
 sketches, which make for effect but have no sub- 
 stance behind them. Now, this may be fine 
 artistry of its sort ; but translated to craftsmanship, 
 to the three dimensions of the theatre, to a stage 
 peopled with humanity, it opens the door to 
 shoddy, and is generally the beginning of debase- 
 ment. There is then a fitness to be found in more 
 than the appearance of simplicity, and the measuring 
 of means by end will prove a positive artistic 
 strength. 
 
 And the development of conventional staging, The salutary 
 quite apart from its particular dramatic fitness, influence of 
 answers the same purpose. Just as a standardizing conventional 
 of the measurements for doors, windows, platforms, 
 steps, is a help to the carpenter, so is the conven- 
 tionalizing of a scene to the designer : his imagina- 
 tion is set the freer by the very limitations within 
 which it must work. These must vary very much 
 according to concrete circumstances, and their 
 proper extent will always be arguable. A Greek 
 play, for instance, torn from a Greek theatre, where 
 
 205
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 its convention of staging was built, so to speak, 
 in very marble, is already sorely at any producer's 
 mercy. However, if Greek tragedies are to be kept 
 alive in the English climate they must submit to 
 the conditions of a new playhouse. It would be 
 best, of course, to reproduce the theatre at Athens or 
 Syracuse on a suitable scale, covered and warmed ; 
 and, were a hundred thousand pounds of no conse- 
 quence, London might well be possessed of such a 
 building. But the practical course is to adapt our 
 modern theatre to the necessities of the case. That 
 is not difficult. Minor disputes will arise as to 
 how far, for instance, in providing those essentials 
 of the old theatre which are reflected in the stage- 
 craft of the plays, the "accidentals" should, for the 
 sake of the so-called atmosphere they engender, 
 be reproduced, too.* Each theatre may settle this 
 in its own way and hold its own way to be the best. 
 The important thing is to re-establish the frame- 
 work of a fitting convention. To have designers 
 and producers setting out upon one revival after 
 another with no equipment but blank minds and 
 a bare stage is the depth of folly. Greek plays 
 were written in obedience to a definite con- 
 vention of acting and staging ; therefore the 
 acceptance of a convention as germane to it as 
 the gulf between Athens and out own time allows, 
 by producer and designer, by actors and, most 
 importantly, by the audience, is a necessary part of 
 their performance and enjoyment. Limitation this 
 is not ; convention is law to art, and only within it is 
 one's power of appreciation truly free. And the 
 designer will find that he has amply enough to do, 
 working within this accepted range, and quite 
 enough to ask of beholders without straying be- 
 
 * Personally I think they should not be. 
 2O6
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 yond it. Incidentally, it is roughly true that the 
 more conventional the scene the greater value is 
 given to the beauty and fine quality of its costume 
 and furnishing. This is a question not of simpli- 
 city, but of convention and its acceptance ; the 
 freeing from unnecessary astonishment of the spec- 
 tator's mind and eyes. 
 
 To Mediaeval and Elizabethan drama the same The need for 
 principles will apply, and over their application the agreement on 
 
 same sort of disputes arise. The common quarrel c nventton 
 
 ,, . r cu i between 
 
 over the staging or Shakespeare is a pretty one, i nterpreters 
 
 and something more is involved in it than like or an d audience 
 dislike of platform, stage, and illusionist scenery. 
 The arguments for and against the adaptability of 
 Greek Tragedy can be used with effect by either 
 side. The strict Elizabethan should contend that 
 an open-air theatre and the Greek language are the 
 only allowable means of interpretation, while the 
 advocates of the modern staging of Shakespeare 
 should be content to see Euripides subjected to all 
 the tests of realism as sometimes they are. But 
 it comes to this : what degree of translation will the 
 plays bear much is inevitable and of what de- 
 gree of translation of mind is the audience capable ? 
 Drag Euripides by force across the centuries, strip 
 him of everything which is not the common know- 
 ledge of a London street corner, and, however 
 transcendent his genius, how much of him must 
 we not lose ? The further that we ourselves can 
 go back to meet him, recapturing however hardly 
 a knowledge both of his intention and of what 
 lay, besides, unconscious in his mind, the better our 
 footing will be. Now, Shakespeare may be rhetori- 
 cally not for an age, but for all time. It may be that 
 his genius quite transcends the medium in which it 
 worked though surely at one moment to praise his 
 
 207
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 stagecraft and in the next to contend that in the 
 problem of producing his plays it may safely be ig- 
 nored is something more than paradoxical. It may 
 be true that not the most Elizabethan playing will 
 restore an Elizabethan psychology to the audience; 
 though one would have thought that the world's 
 experience of these last seven years would have 
 taught us that with appropriate stimulus applied 
 the nature of man has not changed so greatly with 
 the ages. Nevertheless, since Shakespeare wrote 
 as he did write and planned for the theatre he knew 
 not, in spite of all argument, as he doubtless 
 would have done for the theatre of these times had 
 he lived in these times it stands to something 
 which will pass for reason that, as he cannot now 
 come to us, the nearer we can get to him the closer 
 understanding we shall have of him. It is a ques- 
 tion of degree, of give and take, and not, perhaps, 
 so much of disquisitioning upon the psychology of 
 audiences as of careful study of his stagecraft 
 study which can only be carried on in the actual 
 staging of the plays themselves. Shakespeare is 
 likely to be the corner-stone of any representative 
 theatre in England as long as the impulse of the 
 Elizabethan age England's renaissance, her gather- 
 ing of strength for the spring that has landed her 
 upon what now perilous height ! endures. There- 
 fore the problem is of more interest to us than its 
 parallel of Greek Tragedy and the Mediaeval play. 
 It is more capable, too, of varying solutions. We 
 are, at any rate, sufficiently near to our Shake- 
 speare for the more and less of distance to count, 
 and for the degree of proximity achieved to be dis- 
 putable by canons of taste as well as reason. It is 
 a problem which each representative theatre must 
 work out to its own salvation. But it must be 
 208
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 remembered that, in the establishment of a stage 
 convention, not only the fancy of the decorator but 
 the attitude of every contributor to the production 
 is involved, and that this cannot be arbitrarily 
 and constantly shifted from one pole to another. 
 Producer, actors, and audience must not be asked 
 to view "Hamlet" as a study in sixteenth-century 
 manners one day and as a view of eleventh-century 
 Denmark, filled by the rotundities of eighteenth- 
 century classicism, the next. A convention is a 
 treaty first between fellow-interpreters and then 
 between them and their public. 
 
 Collaboration will be, in every instance, as The workshop 
 obligatory upon the workshop as upon any other and 
 section of the theatre. This book both tacitly and collaboration 
 expressly rejects the ideal of the theatre which sees 
 everything centred in the imagination and pro- 
 ceeding from the brain of one man. A good 
 enough practical reason for doing so would be the 
 scarcity of supply. If we are to wait for each 
 theatre till the advent of an inspiring genius 
 no, we shall not wait a long time ; that is not what 
 happens. We shall, as now, have many sham 
 theatres in being and one or two real ones in the 
 clouds. But the better reason lies in the sounder 
 belief that the theatre in its very nature is a co- 
 operative art, and that its chief glory is to be so. 
 For if this sublimated single being must be dupli- 
 cated into designer and producer, why should he 
 not be triplicated into author as well ? Further, 
 unless the actors are to be merely puppets, he 
 should logically assume the burden of the acting 
 besides. It is, indeed, noticeable that Gordon 
 Craig true genius and chief prophet in this kind, 
 though, to our great misfortune, retired in these days 
 to absolute supremacy in a theatre of the clouds 
 
 o 209
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 has himself been sometimes driven to this con- 
 clusion and has sought refuge in an exalting of 
 the puppet play. May one not write at the end of 
 such a proposition : Which is absurd ? We all 
 strive for an absolute beauty, an absolute perfection 
 in our work, to the degree of our gift. And if, in 
 solitude, we never reach it we may blame those 
 conflicting elements in ourselves, the penalty and 
 the promise of our very humanity. The more, then, 
 should we approve the friendly art of the theatre, 
 which in its incompleteness is a truer reflection 
 of the life it portrays than in any unimpeachable 
 perfection of achievement it could be. 
 
 The Collaboration admitted, the conditions need deter- 
 
 workskop's mining. Should the workshop form as close a 
 organization cor p O ration as the company of actors and closer, 
 since its work would be more narrowly concen- 
 trated or should it admit the alien designer, even 
 as the playwright must be admitted ? One has 
 little doubt that it should. But the workshop will 
 first tend quite naturally to evolve for itself some 
 such constitution as this. Its head must be 
 established as administrator, teacher, and designer, 
 too. He will be responsible for the working out 
 of the theatre's particular scenic conventions, for 
 continuity of policy, for craftsmanship. This last 
 gathers great importance with simplicity of staging. 
 There is a method of producing plays by which 
 actors, scenes, and furniture are so smudged up in 
 soft lights that neither form nor colour can be 
 accounted for. No doubt this is a method like 
 any other. Perhaps it is the one best suited to 
 plays of muddled content. And a little more 
 smudging with incidental music will complete 
 the characteristic effect. Then there is a more to 
 be respected school of designers that relies upon 
 210 

 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 paint and the quality of the painting no other. 
 This method, though, just because of its striking 
 possibilities, is but suited to a certain kind of play. 
 But only the craftsman can make simplicity fine. 
 For Greek plays, with their rejection of scenic 
 illusion, and upon the platform stage of the Eliza- 
 bethan drama every detail of workmanship tells, 
 and the ideal of the school that has this condition 
 of things to deal with is to put it crudely that 
 you may turn all the lights full on if you want to, 
 and not be ashamed to let the audience see every- 
 thing just as it is. Not that the aim is to destroy 
 illusion, but only to transfer it to the subliminal 
 region of the actors' interpretation of the play. 
 Not that the designer is after realism in the sense 
 that he must have his gold caskets of real gold 
 a matter of mere commercial interest, the bank- 
 ruptcy of all imagination whatever but so that he 
 may bring his material to the perfection which the 
 circumstances fit it for. His appeal to the eye will 
 be both intimate and candid, and in answering this 
 a new bond may be knit between spectator and 
 spectacle, and a new satisfaction enshrined in place 
 of the out-worn pleasure of illusion. 
 
 What the measure of this craftsmanship must be Craftsman- 
 is a question. A good workshop will tend to do **fr 
 more and to do better than necessity demands, 
 for good workmen will only be content to make 
 things as well as they can make them. Experience 
 will answer the question, and in each case 
 differently. But certainly the answer will almost 
 always involve the accumulation of a store of things 
 that are fine in themselves and not to be destroyed 
 or discarded. And apart from the things made, 
 the conventional scenes themselves, and the rather 
 comic medley of a theatre property-room the 
 
 211
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 banners, orders, caskets, thrones there will be the 
 things collected, the furniture, carpets, and hangings. 
 No reason at all that it should be a meaningless, 
 haphazard collection. There can be a policy, and 
 a continuity of policy, in the matter. 
 
 The stranger It would be, then, into a workshop so constituted 
 designer that the stranger designer would at times be in- 
 vited. Not, be it clearly understood, any casual 
 painter or architect, who thinks he would like to 
 have a flutter in the theatre (the architect, of the two, 
 would, by the way, have the better chance of making 
 a steady flight). It no more follows that a painter 
 can design scenery than that a novel writer can 
 write plays. But with enough technique of his 
 own to enable him to collaborate with the theatre 
 craftsman he will be welcomed even as the play- 
 wright is; allowed, too, the pre-eminence of the 
 playwright, for the sake of the imagination which 
 other and broader interests should have kept fresh. 
 The parallel is a close one. As the playwright 
 may often be and should always be if possible 
 his own producer, so the designer with full know- 
 ledge of the theatre crafts could be, from beginning 
 to end, responsible for the carrying out of his de- 
 signs. Needless to say, there will be no room 
 at all for the man who can but do brilliantly on 
 paper. One must distrust a designer if for no 
 other reason when his drawings are attractive at 
 first sight. This, a truism in architecture, still 
 needs some emphasis where scenery and costumes 
 are concerned, if we may judge not only from some 
 theatrical art exhibitions, at which the ecstasies of 
 the amateur may be excusable, but from the pious 
 but futile professional attempts that are made now 
 and then to translate into actuality wonderfully 
 attitudinized pictures. But also, as with the play- 
 
 212 
 
 v
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 wright for the " solidifying " of a production is a 
 lengthy and troublesome and a highly technical 
 process there should be some mitigation for the 
 men to whom work in the theatre would remain 
 a very occasional business. To the mastery of 
 that simple situation comes naturally the work- 
 shop's head. He can edit the work. If the de- 
 signs are of costumes to fit into his conventional 
 backgrounds to some extent he must do so. And 
 this must be the final qualification for his post, one 
 akin to that upon which the play-reader is to base 
 his services to the theatre : the tact of hospitality. 
 
 It is surely the most foolish of mistakes to sup- 
 pose that artists are not capable of co-operation. 
 Much of their work, as of much other work, must 
 be incubated in solitude, of course. But this 
 image of an unreasoning egotist vainglorious, 
 preposterous was, one might almost believe, a 
 product of nineteenth-century fiction, an item in its 
 calculated flattery of commercialism. Or, where 
 the reality does exist, it may have sprung from these 
 very conditions, so bitterly hostile to all art. Let 
 it stand as a living witness against them. 
 
 The average artist among his fellows is very 
 like the average man, and a workshop is his natural 
 environment. Here is an arena into which he may 
 cast his idea for profit by dispute, and gain a new 
 an objective delight in its over-fashioning. Friction 
 will not often be more than wholesomely warming ; 
 here is no audience to embitter a quarrel. And 
 while imagination may be solitary and absolute, 
 craftsmanship is a commonwealth. A workshop 
 might well be the happiest place in a theatre, for 
 its material is kindly and acquiescent. Moreover, 
 the worker can go home and leave it. He is free 
 from the ever-haunting self-consciousness of the 
 
 213
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 actor, who sheds but his clothes in his dressing- 
 room.* 
 
 Some time before the scene designer proclaimed 
 himself the saviour of the drama the contriver of 
 stage mechanism had come to the fore. He did 
 not, it is true, take on the airs of a prophet, but in 
 the sacred name of efficiency he cumbered up the 
 stages of certain theatres and absorbed the energies 
 of their managements, passionate to be up to date. 
 But the result of much experiment with stages that 
 lift and lower, run back or run off sideways, with 
 lights reflected from a colossal " heaven " and 
 electrical contrivances galore, seems to be the ver- 
 dict that the best basis for any production is a bare 
 stage. 
 
 Having said so much in condemnation of 
 machinery, which, while pretending to help the 
 producer, only hinders him, it is fair to qualify the 
 statement. Much of it was crammed into un- 
 suitably built theatres, some of it was put in only 
 by halves : and, at any time, no machine is better 
 than half a one. But such a contrivance, for 
 instance, as the ordinary revolving stage is mainly 
 a nuisance. It is cramping to a degree, drives the 
 scene-designer into (literally) hole-and-corner in- 
 genuities, which by their novelty are too con- 
 spicuous and in their repetition (the bag of tricks 
 is soon exhausted) become wearisome. A drama 
 may yet be written aesthetically fitted for the re- 
 
 * There incidentally is presented a dilemma. Shall the actor 
 escape it by creating a graven image a sub-conscious professional 
 self ? No ; for that will not suffice him for serious work. This 
 is every artist's problem, but, above all, it is the actor's that artist 
 in self to develop such sanity in his work that he never needs 
 to escape it. Or he might keep a sub-conscious self to live by: 
 life being unimportant. Not a happy way out of the difficulty, 
 this! 
 214
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 volving stage, but Shakespeare, eighteenth-century 
 comedy, and most modern plays are grievously mis- 
 placed on it. If Shakespeare does not need the 
 staging for which his work was designed he certainly 
 demands a forthrightness and uniformity of action 
 which is not occasioned by a twisted, tricky back- 
 ground. It is always the method of acting to be 
 employed the producer's first consideration 
 which should dictate the main form of the scene. 
 But it must not be forgotten that the scene will 
 if that has been first considered equally im- 
 print itself upon the action of the play, and so 
 largely influence the very readings of the actors' 
 parts. The ordinary revolving stage, too abun- 
 dantly used (and machinery imposes itself), makes 
 neither for spaciousness nor dignity of production, 
 nor for simplicity nor repose. 
 
 The whole question, however, of stage machinery The right 
 is involved in the larger one of the theatre's plan sort f 
 and purpose. The modern form of theatre build- JJ^J?" 
 ing marks but one stage of the drama's development. w 
 For plays of the so-called realistic school of the 
 nineteenth century little is needed but a picture- 
 frame proscenium and an auditorium made for some 
 intimacy of effect ; and there must be no gallery 
 which will elevate the actor's chin to an angle of 
 disadvantage in the eye of the stalls, or exhibit 
 little more than eyebrows and hair-parting to 
 the patient gods. Even here, though, one may 
 protest, in passing, against the pattern of theatre * 
 which ranks the seats in long straight rows, 
 
 * Dictated in the beginning, I believe, by the Hobson's choice 
 of sites in New York, where theatres must be built to the most 
 economical pattern, extra space being measured off almost 
 literally if extra frontage is involved in four-inch hundred dollar 
 notes. 
 
 2I 5
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 admirable for a view of the stage but and this 
 consideration has been characteristically neglected 
 in a time when everything has been forgotten 
 about the drama except that it is a paid enter- 
 tainment nullifying any friendly relation in the 
 audience to each other. One of the results, 
 accidental possibly, of the accustomed horseshoe 
 formation was that the spectator never quite lost 
 consciousness of his fellows. The effect could, no 
 doubt, be overdone. In the smaller Court theatre 
 at Munich, if you sit in a side box, the party oppo- 
 site is full in your eye, while from the stage comes 
 but a sidelong contribution to the entertainment. 
 There are compensations if the opposite party is 
 interesting and the performance dull. And in 
 many opera houses, of course, the assumption is 
 that people sit in the boxes as much to be seen 
 as to see. But there is more to the question than 
 the encouragement of such agreeable vanity. The 
 relations of the spectators among themselves are 
 a part of their united good relations to the play. 
 One of the tests of a good performance is the 
 feeling of friendliness it creates among the spec- 
 tators. When the curtain falls on the first act, 
 and a total stranger turns round to speak to you 
 and you respond without restraint, you may know 
 that the play has achieved one of its secondary 
 and presumably, therefore, has not failed of its 
 primary purposes. It may be art of the crudest 
 sort that has this effect on people, but it cannot be 
 poor art. And the physical disposition of the 
 audience contributes not a little to the ease with 
 which their emotions may have play. Imagine an 
 auditorium in which people sat blinkered like 
 horses. However excellent the performance, the 
 whole affair would be as flat as if however excel- 
 216
 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 lent the dinner! the diners sat at a long table 
 all facing one way. A double question is in- 
 volved : the physical focussing of attention, and 
 the relative importance of one's own concentration 
 upon the play and of being in touch with one's 
 neighbours. Were it possible to sit round the 
 stage as one sits at a circus, that would be equally 
 wrong. The spectators would be dominantly in 
 touch with each other but distracted from the play.* 
 The question is of first importance in the designing 
 of an auditorium. 
 
 No playhouse, however, such as we have in mind The differing 
 can be built with an eye to one sort of drama only, requirements 
 
 It is difficult to foresee the future, but quite possible <.L e 
 
 . , - . , f different 
 
 to provide for the past in this matter, if one sets out /^ n j s O t 
 
 straightway to do it. It is true that no one who drama 
 has produced a Greek play in a Greek theatre will, 
 for its own sake, ever want to bring it indoors again, 
 though the watcher, shivering in his fur coat under 
 the rigours of an English June may wish it there 
 or further. But if in any modern theatre a Greek 
 play must be scenically incongruous, while a mediae- 
 val play in a picture-frame proscenium will be as 
 well placed as a picnic in a drawing-room, they 
 can at least both be housed so that no essential 
 quality of their stagecraft is warped. And though, 
 it might be argued, one could not distract a 
 whole building scheme for the sole sake of 
 Aeschylus and the author of " Everyman," there 
 would still be the problem of Elizabethan drama to 
 be solved to any English-speaking audience a 
 very vital one. No need to argue in detail the 
 
 * Reinhardt's well-remembered production of " The Miracle " 
 was, to my thinking, largely spoilt by being played under these 
 conditions. And his circus playhouse in Berlin has comparable 
 drawbacks. 
 
 217
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 question between those who are for the Elizabethan 
 stage and that only and those who contend that 
 Shakespeare, not for an age but for all time, is 
 for all sorts and conditions of staging, too. The 
 main point of difference is involved merely in the 
 presence or absence of a proscenium ; and upon 
 it most others hang. The questions of swiftness 
 of speech, of the treatment of the soliloquy, of un- 
 interrupted action, of whether scenery should be 
 realistic or decorative or whether there should 
 be none at all, have been developed by the struc- 
 tural development of the theatre from the platform 
 to the picture stage. This, with its relation to 
 contemporary stagecraft, reacted characteristically 
 upon the performance of older plays. Not till the 
 breach is wide and the accommodation bridges are 
 broken can it be seen in such a case what principles 
 are involved. And now the issues must be fought 
 out experimentally, point by point. But the thrust- 
 ing of the plays within a proscenium, or the attempt 
 to drag them half out again on to a platform stage 
 which has been added as a structural afterthought 
 in defiance of lines of sight and other such 
 practical considerations, is quite too empirical to 
 be enlightening. 
 
 A theatre can undoubtedly be so designed as to 
 provide, not only the picture stage, but a platform 
 with footlights abolished and suitable entrances for 
 Elizabethan plays : it can provide, too, for the 
 converting of a part of the stalls into an arena for a 
 Greek chorus. The architectural problem is not 
 an easy one but it can be solved. An effectively 
 disappearing proscenium should not be hard to 
 contrive. The trouble here has always lain in a 
 lack of space above and around the stage. The 
 gridiron should be more than twice the height of 
 218 

 
 THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 
 
 the auditorium ceiling, and the width between the 
 fly-rails more than the auditorium's practical width. 
 Limitations of site and of building cost stand in the 
 way of this extensiveness. One suspects, too, that 
 architects may have shrunk from the effect of a 
 great square central tower in the midst of the 
 structure ; though one wonders why, as it looks 
 well enough in a cathedral. 
 
 Machinery for the expeditious making of these 
 constructive changes should be a part of the equip- 
 ment of every playhouse with a comprehensive 
 programme. For the rest one wants nothing self- 
 assertive. And in command of this department 
 should be a stage engineer,* solely concerned with 
 the practical working out and the economical run- 
 ning of the schemes of the producers of plays. But 
 the less they are tempted to dally with the marvels 
 of machinery the better. Innocent, child-like beings, 
 beguiled by a new toy, they always find themselves 
 before very long dancing to its clackety tunes. 
 
 Note. Personally (in a very limited experience, 
 it is true) I have never seen a satisfactory working 
 stage. The first requisite is space, not an ex- 
 travagant amount of room to act in, but ample 
 space around it. A normal proscenium opening 
 of thirty feet or so is ample, contraction to twenty- 
 
 * The stage-manager whom he would replace has become to 
 some degree an anachronism. He is still supposed to be interested 
 in the play itself, to watch the actors, rehearse their understudies, 
 and to be responsible for the artistic upkeep of the performances 
 generally. But the coming into fashion of the producer has 
 deprived him of any initiative in such matters, and nowadays he 
 is chosen mainly for his power of controlling the stage staff, his 
 technical knowledge of scenery, and his ability to keep accounts. 
 The position would be better filled by a man who frankly dis- 
 interested himself in the dramatic side of the business altogether. 
 
 219
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 five is sometimes useful, extension to forty that is, 
 effective abolition of the proscenium altogether 
 should be considered a necessity for Greek and 
 Elizabethan drama ; and the stage's working width 
 should be at least a hundred feet. Working depth 
 depends, of course, upon the line of sight from the 
 theatre's top places ; most architects exaggerate 
 its value. With the proscenium in use sixty feet 
 should be ample. With the proscenium removed 
 that is to say, when there are no effects of illusion 
 to be obtained it should be more than enough. 
 Simple decoration and acting do not ask, as a rule, 
 for unoccupied distances. 
 
 Cellar room has its uses; for machinery for 
 altering the stage level is, perhaps, the most practical 
 of all in this kind, and in the construction of scenes 
 it trebles the value of a turntable. This, indeed, 
 is of little general use alone, and of no good use 
 at all unless it can be placed so far back that its 
 diameter can considerably exceed the normal width 
 of the proscenium ; and then obviously no com- 
 plete scene can be set upon it. Lighting is too 
 complicated a matter to discuss here ; it is the 
 Achilles' heel of most stage equipment. Inciden- 
 tally, though, every theatre could and should 
 be so designed that plays can be performed in 
 daylight. 
 
 220
 
 CHAPTER V : THE PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 
 
 WE come to the kernel of the whole matter. How plays 
 And the first thing to note is that condi- an now 
 tions of play production in any such 
 theatre as we are envisaging bear no relation at 
 all to the methods that are thrust upon the managers 
 and producers in money-making theatres to-day. 
 For the simple sake of the contrast, however, it 
 may be well first to envisage these. The money- 
 making (and losing) manager finds himself, at best, 
 with a building he can call his own and a few 
 constant collaborators. The rest play, company, 
 scenery, dresses are brought together to be welded 
 to a whole for the occasion only ; the entity will 
 be dissolved and its material scattered when the 
 occasion is over. For good or ill, then, the manager 
 must work upon very constricted lines. He has, 
 it is true, in theory the widest possible choice of a 
 cast for the play. Anybody in the world that's 
 available may be had at a price. But in practice 
 competition plucking the first fruits of talent the 
 freedom to choose among a swelling crowd of 
 people with whose work you cannot be very inti- 
 mate and to whose methods of work you are in- 
 evitably more or less of a stranger, is a doubtful 
 blessing. It means much to the producer to be 
 familiar with the ways of an actor he is to direct ; 
 it will often save him needless anxiety, friction, false 
 starts, wasted time ; it will mean even more to the 
 actor himself, who is apt to be as nervous as a 
 new found cat at rehearsal if he is not it is no 
 good sign. So, for all their freedom of choice, 
 managers tend to select people they have worked 
 with before. The London stage in particular is 
 accused, from time to time, of being a close cor- 
 poration. It is. And it is only broken up by 
 the advent of new managers who bring some know- 
 
 221
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 ledge of new actors with them. The system has, 
 indeed, many of the limitations of the old stock 
 days and none of their advantages. 
 
 The scratch But the company collected will still be, at best, 
 company a scratch company. For, though the manager may 
 know them, though they may in the round of 
 their work have met each other more or less often, 
 they certainly do not come together now with any 
 corporate sense ; they are, at best, artistic ac- 
 quaintances. Observe, then, that the foundation 
 of a good performance, which is just this corporate 
 sense, has to be laid at the very same time that 
 the superstructure the work upon the play itself 
 is being built. A manifest impossibility. The act- 
 ing of the average play to-day is all superstructure 
 and mostly facade ! If it gives one no sense of 
 stability of intention, of there being in the whole 
 thing any abiding worth of idea (for though the 
 play's execution cannot abide, this may), it is mainly 
 because the performance is not built upon this 
 deeper sub-conscious understanding among its 
 actors.* 
 
 The hurried Moreover, since the company have been brought 
 rehearsals together for this one production only no time must 
 be lost. Rehearsals must be hurried on day by 
 day. To pause for reflection or to correct a mis- 
 take is a costly business. If the production is a 
 very simple one, if no demands are being made on 
 the actors but to repeat, with a few variations, the 
 physical and emotional posturings to which they 
 
 * If artistic worth were calculable in percentages one might 
 estimate a 50 per cent, increase by the crudest, most haphazard 
 cultivation of this corporate power; and this would in its turn add 
 another 50 per cent, to the worth of the individual actor. But 
 that is cheapjack estimation. Due cultivation makes a difference 
 which amounts almost to an organic change. 
 222
 
 PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 
 
 and their audience are accustomed, some success 
 may emerge. But the best that can be expected 
 from such a preparation is a general hard com- 
 petence of execution when the way is plain, and, 
 at any complexly difficult moment, either a helpless 
 clijnging together for safety or a plunge into bust- 
 ling bravado. For the rest, the individual actors 
 and actresses will take care to rouse what delight 
 they can by the exercise of their personal charm ; 
 exercising it, though, as often as not directly upon 
 the audience rather than primarily upon the play. 
 They have their excuse. To surrender this personal 
 power to whatever unity of effect can be gained in 
 three weeks' work or so among a strange company 
 might be to lose it altogether, and to get nothing 
 in exchange so thinks the theatre-wise actor; 
 therefore, while rehearsals go forward he holds it 
 carefully in reserve. There will be some genuine 
 co-operation in the duologues, no doubt. It is 
 necessary, and not very difficult, to work up a sort 
 of mutual responsiveness in these ; for the rest, each 
 for himself and the critics take the hindmost! But 
 this is not to vivify a play. It is at the best but a 
 setting up of its bare bones, and we can be thankful 
 if they are straightly articulated. External elegance 
 may be exhibited, and while our eyes and ears are 
 sufficiently entranced our minds may seize de- 
 tachedly upon the bare meanings of the author's 
 text. But no wonder we rise in aesthetic rebellion 
 against the theatre. For of that fine interplay of 
 visualized character, of (shifting the metaphor) the 
 living tapestry of pictured thought and emotion 
 into which the stuff of a play can be woven in its 
 acting, what have we seen ? Hardly a beginning. 
 Nor by any such means could we hope for it. 
 Yet so used are we to the shackles of the 
 
 223
 
 present system that in all the advocacy of the 
 reform of the theatre from the training of actors 
 to the capturing of audiences one finds no appa- 
 rent realization that (the proper production of 
 plays being, indeed, the mainspring of the whole 
 matter) this is not a way by which any homogeneous 
 work of art can be produced at all. We need to 
 think the whole matter out again from the beginning. 
 
 One word of warning, however. The medium we 
 work in is human, so there can never be a perfect 
 production, nor is there such a thing as an ideal cast; 
 nor should we even try by circumstantial safe- 
 guards to make our play's performance fool proof. 
 In any theatre there will arise, when certain plays 
 are under consideration, the practical question : can 
 we command an inspiring or even an adequate Lear 
 or QEdipus, Peer Gynt, Cyrano or Undershaft? If we 
 for the time being cannot it may be more sensible to 
 hangup those plays. But, again, as what we look for is 
 interpretation, not realization, so with most plays a 
 faithful and lively interpretation of the whole willalways 
 add more in value than we shall lose from individual 
 inability to do full justice physically and emotionally 
 to one or two parts. The unity of our interpreta- 
 tion will be the best measure of our approach 
 not to perfection, about which empty word and 
 teasing thought we should not even bother our- 
 selves but to self-contained vitality. 
 
 The beginnings of a play's preparation by the 
 company differ so little in theory from its purely 
 educational use by students, as this has been out- 
 lined in " The Theatre as School," that we may 
 avoid recapitulation here. In practice, no doubt, 
 the company will get to the gist of their work far 
 more expeditiously. One only hopes they will not 
 be too expeditious; that the wheels, so to speak, 
 224 

 
 PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 
 
 of their well-oiled and well-balanced artistic faculties 
 will grip the road. They will make, too, a rather 
 different use of these earlier stages when plays 
 are in hand that call for certain technical brilliancies 
 of accomplishment. 
 
 Take, for instance, " A Midsummer Night's Setting to 
 Dream." This is less a play, in the sense that we call work upon" A 
 " Rosmersholm " a play, than a musical symphony. Midsummer 
 The characterization will not repay very prolonged J& ts 
 analysis. It can best be vivified and elaborated by 
 the contrasting to eye and ear of individual with in- 
 dividual and group with group. Then the passing 
 and repassing from the lyric to the dramatic mood 
 has to be carefully judged and provided for. To 
 hold an audience to the end entranced with the 
 play's beauty one depends much upon the right 
 changing of tune and time, and the shifting of key 
 from scene to scene and from speech to speech. 
 From the time, for instance, when Puck's and 
 Oberon's bungling with the love juice begins to 
 take effect the action quickens and becomes more 
 and more confused, the changes of tune and time 
 come more frequently, more and more suddenly. 
 But the greater the effect of speed that you want 
 the less haste you must make over it, the more the 
 effect of confusion the clearer cut must your changes 
 be. And all the time it must all be delightful to 
 listen to, musical, with each change in a definite 
 and purposeful relation to what went before, to 
 what will come after. 
 
 Now, once you get to rehearsing the action How physical 
 physically and your actors are occupied with their action brings 
 movements and business moreover, once off the stu <*y * >a 
 stage for a moment or two, out of touch, as actually 
 out of sight and hearing, with what they have left 
 going on there it is impossible for them to 
 
 p 225
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 build up their parts in such a scheme with a 
 continuously abiding sense of the value of the 
 whole, even if this has been arbitrarily formulated 
 by the producer, annotated for the actor line by line 
 and impressed upon him note by note. Besides, 
 one wants no such arbitrary method ; a producer 
 even now resorts to it only in desperation. To 
 suggest, to criticize, to co-ordinate that should be 
 the limit of his function. The symphonic effect 
 must be one made by the blending of the actors' 
 natural voices and by the contrasts that spring 
 from the conflicting emotions which their mutual 
 study of the parts spontaneously engenders. Even 
 over things that seem to need the exactitude of 
 orchestration the scheme of the play's performance 
 must still, as far as possible, grow healthily and 
 naturally into being, or the diversity of the various 
 actors will not become unity without loss of their 
 individual force. And we must never forget that 
 to put a play into action on the stage is to pour it 
 into its mould ; once there it tends very quickly 
 to set. If the performance of such plays as these 
 is not to become mere repetition of ritual they must 
 be kept fluid and experimental in their preparation 
 till appearance and purpose both, fineness and sin- 
 cerity united, can be relied upon for the tempering. 
 But in nearly all plays (except, of course, those 
 of pure mime) the physical action is extraordinarily 
 unimportant, the mental and the emotional action 
 all in all. Delay, then, in entering the physical 
 phase should not trouble the experienced actor. 
 He has no business to be agitating his mind at 
 rehearsals (much less at a performance) over physical 
 movements, unless they are such matters of gym- 
 nastic as fighting, dancing, or the rough and tumble 
 of farce. His training should so have equipped 
 226
 
 PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 
 
 him that all such things come without thought ; 
 come one way or another, with one way as right as 
 the other. His thought he needs to match with 
 the play's thought, and it is not so often he'll have 
 any to spare.* 
 
 "But passing the period of argument and criticism, The 
 which are common to actor and student both, we mysterious 
 come to the point where their paths part company P roce " h 
 
 .1 j . i . which the 
 
 the student sustaining his criticism, the actor acfgr 
 pledged now to the mysterious process by which he identifies 
 identifies himself with the character he is to play.f himself with 
 A lot of rather irritating nonsense is talked about his part 
 this. Amateurs and very young actors tell you 
 solemnly at rehearsals that all will be well (all being 
 at the time usually very ill) once they get into the 
 skin of their parts. The hardened old actor sup- 
 presses (or does not suppress) his contempt, because 
 he knows very well that this must happen if it 
 will happen, that effort does not avail, that even by 
 prayer and fasting it may not come; on the other 
 hand, that rehearsal time is too valuable to be spent 
 standing mentally idle in expectation of the miracle. 
 Still, it is a miracle that yields, if not to contriving, 
 partly, at least, to explanation. 
 
 The phrase " to create a part " is embedded in 
 kindred nonsense, but in it there is sense, too. 
 That the actor can add something all his own to 
 the dramatic material he is given no one would deny. 
 And if one must be disputing his claim to be called 
 creative and original, let the dramatist at least re- 
 member that he, too, does but capture, to inform 
 with something of his own life and pass forth again 
 
 * For all that, though, I have known an experienced actor 
 worry himself almost to death about how he should get out of a 
 stage room when, after all, the only way was through the door. 
 
 t But see also p. 245 et seq, 
 
 227
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 renewed, a brain-full of the ideas and passions 
 which are the common possession of which so 
 possess mankind. We are, indeed, interpreters 
 all. Creation is not man's prerogative. 
 
 This admitted, the relation between the drama- 
 tist's way of work and the actor's will be worth 
 investigating. An essential quality of any work of 
 art is its homogeneity. For a staged play, then, to 
 make good its claim to be one it would seem to fol- 
 low that the actors must continue what the dramatist 
 has begun by methods as nearly related to his in 
 understanding and intention as the circumstances 
 allow. And it is probably true that the staged play 
 is a satisfying work of art to the very degree that 
 this homogeneity exists. We have insisted time 
 and again upon the secondary importance of the 
 physical side of the play's interpretation, for all 
 that in the end it seems to dominate the entire 
 business, to the exclusion even, in innocent eyes, 
 of the dramatist's own share. It would be an 
 exaggeration to say that it stands for no more than 
 does the pen, ink, and paper by which the play was 
 recorded, but quite just to compare it to the tech- 
 nical knowledge of play-making that the dramatist 
 has come to exercise almost unconsciously. And 
 it is likely that the near relation of method, which 
 we want to establish, does lie in this mysterious 
 preliminary process by which the actor " gets into 
 the skin of his part " : for, indeed, all else that he 
 does in performing it can be related to mere tech- 
 nique of expression. It is this mystery, then, that 
 we must investigate and attempt to explain. 
 The drama- To begin with, how does the dramatist work ? 
 tist's method, He may get his play on paper quickly or slowly, 
 which the DU t the stuff in it is the gradual, perhaps the casual, 
 actor must accre tion of thoughts and feelings, formed long 
 228
 
 PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 
 
 before and now framed in words, or arranged into 
 action, for the first time. How much of this pro- 
 cess is conscious, and how much unconscious or 
 sub-conscious, he probably could not tell you. If 
 we say that the experiences are unconsciously or 
 sub-consciously selected and consciously shaped we 
 may not be far wrong. Wherein does the actor's 
 method fellow this ? Certainly no such process is 
 to be found in the stuffing of his memory with 
 words, and the whipping up and out of whatever 
 emotions his repetition of them happens to suggest 
 during the half-drill, half-scramble of the three 
 or four weeks' rehearsing, while he fits himself as 
 best he can his corners into all the other arbitrary 
 corners of that strange shifting Chinese puzzle 
 which is called to-day an efficient and businesslike 
 production. As a matter of fact no actor worth 
 his salt relies upon this sort of preparation ; he has 
 other resources within himself. If he worked, as 
 does the dramatist, in solitude, if he too were a 
 fountain-head, his methods would be of only theore- 
 tical interest, our care but for the result. But his 
 job is derivative and co-operative both. Therefore 
 we must know the rules, if rules there are.* 
 
 * That this creative collaboration among actors and between 
 them and the dramatist can be brought to a high pitch we can 
 have evidence by comparing performances of a play that differ, 
 not in brilliance of execution, but absolutely in the meaning ex- 
 tracted from the play and in the observable addition of dramatic 
 values. I have seen a performance of Tchekov's " Cherry Or- 
 chard " in Moscow, and to read the play afterwards was like read- 
 ing the libretto of an opera missing the music. Great credit to 
 the actors ; no discredit to Tchekov. For and this is what the 
 undramatic writer so fails to understand, though in Tchekov he may 
 find a salient example with the dramatist the words on paper 
 are but the seeds of the play. How be sure, as he writes, as he 
 plants them, that each seed will be fertile ? Well, that is the secret 
 
 229
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 Tension and We must consider certain constituents of the 
 conflict problem. With but a three hours' traffic in which 
 to manosuvre all the material of a play, the longest 
 part can but appear on the stage for a compara- 
 tively few informing and effective passages. To 
 find the inferential knowledge of it that he needs 
 the actor must search, so to speak, behind the scenes, 
 before the rise of the curtain and even after its fall. 
 This is a commonplace ; and all actors who can be 
 said to study their parts at all, not merely to learn 
 them, do, instinctively if not deliberately, work in 
 this way. But unless they do so in concert with 
 their fellows they really more often harm the rest 
 of the play than help the whole. For an isolated 
 performance, of however great interest, if the rest 
 of the acting is sagging, vague, helpless, un- 
 attached, or perversely at cross purposes must 
 distort the play's purpose. No matter if the one 
 seems to be right and all the others wrong. No- 
 thing is right unless the thing as a whole is right. 
 A play is founded upon conflict ; the dramatist, 
 
 of his craft. How to cultivate and raise the crop ? That is the 
 secret of the actor's art. There is demanded, no doubt, something 
 more than acting, if by acting one only means the accomplishment, 
 the graces, or the sound and fury of the stage. For these externals 
 of the business may spring from nothing purposeful, be independent 
 of any dramatic meaning, and then, for all their charm and excite- 
 ment, they come to nothing in the end. It is only when they are 
 the showing of a body of living thought and of living feeling, are in 
 themselves an interpretation of life itself, when, in fact, they acquire 
 further purpose, that they rank as histrionic art. That there are 
 rules for so incorporating them in this creative process of colla- 
 boration we may learn from the Art Theatre in Moscow, where 
 they have to some extent elaborated them, though without pretence 
 at finality, only for the convenience of mutual understanding. 
 Much that follows, indeed, was suggested to me by my memory 
 of a talk with Stanislawsky. And I have, by the way, seen a per- 
 formance of "The Cherry Orchard" elsewhere. 
 230
 
 PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 
 
 to get the thing going at all, must bring his 
 characters into collision, among themselves or with 
 fate or circumstances. He must keep them all in 
 an equally effective fighting trim; if he betrays one 
 of them, denies him his best chance in argument 
 or, action, for all that it may open an easy way out 
 of a difficulty, end a scene quickly, bring a curtain 
 down with effect, the fabric will be weakened, the 
 play's action may be dislocated altogether. It 
 seems obvious, therefore, that the play's interpreta- 
 tion must be founded upon corporate study by the 
 actors, which should begin as an argumentative 
 counterpart of this struggle and develop through 
 the assumption of personality into the desired unity 
 with the play itself. We have outlined the argu- 
 mentative process elsewhere. Let us now consider 
 how the unity is to be achieved. 
 
 It is to be hoped that the very subsidiary matter Never 
 which now bulks so largely of learning the words commit words 
 of the play would be swamped in the process of to memor y 
 argument. Words should never be learnt, for the 
 result as with action, if the play is brought to that 
 prematurely is that they harden in the mind as 
 actualities when they should merely come to it as 
 symbols. All solitary study whatever is (once again) 
 to be deprecated. For to study the play, apart from 
 studying your fellow-actors in the play, is to prefer 
 dry bones to flesh and blood. There is much to be 
 said for the method of the seventeenth-century 
 music-teacher, who locked up the instrument upon 
 his departure for fear that his pupil might practise. 
 Actors might well leave their books behind them 
 on the table. It is in the untroubled intervals 
 between meetings that ideas may make good 
 growth and opposing points of view tend to re- 
 conciliation. That sort of solitary study by which, 
 
 231
 
 T^i? mystery 
 of iden- 
 tification 
 again 
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 so to speak, with your mind quiescent, the matter 
 in hand seems to study you is profitable enough. 
 It is even, for most memories, the easiest way of 
 assimilating the dialogue. A sensitive mind rebels 
 against nothing so much as getting words by rote. 
 And one hopes that even the most expert actors 
 would not come to argue their way very slickly 
 through this preliminary period. No play should 
 move in an efficient straight line between first re- 
 hearsal and performance. This time of survey and 
 discovery is the time, too, when the first tendons are 
 being formed which will come to unite the actor's 
 personality with the crescent figure of the character 
 itself. Here is the mystery; the gestation of this 
 new being that is not the actor's consistent self 
 though partaking of it ; that is not the character 
 worn as a disguise ; individual, but with no absolute 
 existence at all, a relative being only, and now 
 related alike to the actor as to the play. It will be 
 slow in coming to birth : the more unconscious the 
 process the better, for it does not work alike with 
 everyone, never at the same pace, never to the same 
 measure. Wherefore the producer may discover 
 that, to rally his team and to save them from a 
 premature awareness of themselves and each other, 
 it may be well once or twice to move from the table 
 to the stage and engage in the business of a scene 
 or two. This exercise should not last too long, 
 nor should the scenes that are tried follow too much 
 in sequence ; for, above all things, the physical 
 action of the play must not be defined while the 
 thought and feeling that should prompt it are still 
 unsure. But the shock of the change will be re- 
 freshing. It will check the too easy growth of an 
 agreement, the creation of a unity of purpose 
 based only upon words, whether they be the play's 
 232
 
 PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 
 
 or the actors' arguments round and about the play. 
 Quite literally the company should be allowed to 
 feel their feet in the play, to stamp up and down 
 and restore the circulation which too much talk 
 may have slackened. 
 
 , Having got thus far by the aid of two minor Productions 
 negatives, let us lay down a major one. The pro- must *> e 
 duction itself must never be shaped before its natural and " ot 
 form has declared itself. By shaping we are to 
 understand, of course, not only the physical action 
 of the scenes, but their mental and emotional action 
 as well everything, indeed, that could be regulated, 
 were our play an orchestral symphony, by time 
 signatures, metronome markings, sforzandi, rallen- 
 tandi, and the rest, even by the beat of the con- 
 ductor. It is tempting to compare conductor and 
 producer, but one must do so mainly to remark 
 that their powers, if not their functions, are very 
 different. To wield a baton at rehearsals only, 
 and even then to have neither terms nor instruments 
 of precision for explanation or response the 
 limitation is severe. It is better to remember that 
 compared to music and to a far greater degree 
 in comparison with painting, sculpture, and poetry 
 acting is hardly capable of verbal definition. For 
 by admitting the weakness, by abjuring fixation and 
 finality, one can the better profit by the compen- 
 sating strength, the ever fresh vitality of the purely 
 human medium; and so the art will gain, not lose. 
 Some fixity, however, there must be, for the practical 
 reason, if for no other, that co-operation would be 
 impossible without it. But there is the aesthetic 
 reason too, and the theatre's problem is concisely 
 this : how to attain enough definition of form and 
 unity of intent for the staged play to rank as a 
 homogeneous work of art and yet preserve that 
 
 233
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 freedom of action which the virtue of the human 
 medium demands. 
 
 Nothing is easier than to plan out a production 
 in elaborate mechanical perfection, to chalk the 
 stage with patterns for the actors to run upon, to 
 have the dialogue sung through with a certain 
 orecision of pitch, tone, and pace, to bring the 
 whole business to the likeness of a ballet. But 
 nothing will be less like a play as a play should be. 
 Here, too, it is the letter that killeth and only the 
 spirit that giveth life. Even when such a poetical 
 symphony as "A Midsummer Night's Dream " 
 demands for its interpretation a rhythm of speech 
 matched by rhythm of movement individual, con- 
 certed, contrasted which can only be brought by 
 skilful hard practice to the point where it will 
 defy forgetfulness, all this must still be taken the step 
 further to the point where its cumbering recollection 
 is defied, too. Rehearsals, be it noted, have always 
 this main object of enabling an actor to forget both 
 himself and them in the performance. 
 
 But preparation having been brought by one 
 means and another to the stage when the play 
 now a grown, or half-grown, but still unshaped 
 combination of the work of dramatist, producer, 
 actors has acquired life enough to be about to go 
 forward by its own momentum, our positive rules 
 (if they are discoverable) must begin to apply. 
 The two We must now divide the action (using the word 
 
 categories of comprehensively) into two categories. To the first 
 will belong everything that can be considered a 
 part of the main structure of the play (again using 
 the word comprehensively to express the play, not 
 as the dramatist left it, but as it has been so far 
 brought to fuller being). And everything so in- 
 cluded must be capable of clear definition : its 
 
 234 
 
 a play's 
 action : the 
 conscious 
 action
 
 PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 
 
 execution must not vary, it must rank for constancy 
 with the dialogue itself. It is obvious, for instance, 
 that the characters must come on and leave the 
 stage at particular moments in particular ways ; 
 we may take it for granted, too, not only that at 
 certain fixed times in fixed places certain things 
 must be done, but done always with the same em- 
 phasis and intention. This is common form. And 
 thus far (the inconstancy of its human medium al- 
 ways allowed for) the drama moves in line with the 
 more static arts. Into this first category, then, will 
 fall all ceremonial the whole movement, for instance, 
 of such a play as the " Agamemnon." It will also 
 hold the broad relation in tone and time between act 
 and act, between scene and scene, and the emotional, 
 no less than the physical, structure of the action of 
 each scene, its muscular system, so to speak, as apart 
 from its integument, blood and nerves. We should 
 be right to rule into this category any features of 
 the play's interpretation which we hold must be 
 common to every production of it. We might well 
 include, too, all features which, peculiar to this one, 
 called for and were capable of any definition which 
 could be genuinely agreed upon by the interpreters 
 concerned; the greater the number of them the greater 
 the need of agreement, but the less easy its achieve- 
 ment. But these abstract terms become both too 
 vague and too positive. We must cite examples, 
 remembering, however, that no one will ever dup- 
 licate another and that as to each opinions may 
 legitimately differ ; such are the drawbacks to 
 aesthetic law-giving. And, as we must quote a 
 known play, we can but exemplify a second-hand 
 approach to it. To take, then, the occasion of the 
 screen's falling in " The School for Scandal " as a 
 simple case in point. The intention of the author
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 is obvious and the tradition of its expression re- 
 coverable if broken ; and it may not be practically 
 worth while in this instance to do other than re- 
 gister both in the traditional form. But at each 
 reproduction of the play there must be something 
 like a fresh approach to the situation, and as that 
 may theoretically, at least, and tradition apart 
 dictate a remoulding of even the main lines of the in- 
 terpretation, let us assume for the moment that we are 
 wholly free. The treatment of such a situation must 
 obviously be a matter of clear definition and, let us 
 say, of honourable agreement among the people con- 
 cerned. One uses this last epithet because it allows 
 for the greatest possible freedom within the bounds 
 of the understanding. You do not want, even for 
 the sake of the most brilliantly concerted effect, 
 suddenly to change your Charles Surface from a 
 man into an automaton, nor must you dictate to 
 your Sir Peter how he should feel and find his way, 
 breath by breath, to this emotional trysting-place. 
 If you do you will sacrifice to the second's mecha- 
 nical perfection the life and the liveliness of 
 whole minutes leading to it and away from it. 
 Certainly there must be mutual concern here for 
 far more than the words spoken and the places 
 occupied in the scene. But we only need to 
 establish an identity of intention among the actors, 
 so that they may make of the saliency of the 
 moment a knot, so to speak, into which they may 
 tie, simply and surely, those strands of the play's 
 purpose that they severally hold. A most expert 
 feat, no doubt, if it is to be as perfect in its exe- 
 cution as its purpose, and one which can by no 
 means be left to happy accident. But it will be 
 most fruitfully achieved if there is no closer agree- 
 ment upon means than is absolutely needed to com- 
 236
 
 PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 
 
 pass the ends. And the closer the agreement upon 
 the end that is to say, the more skilled in sympathy 
 the group of actors are the less will the precise 
 means be found to matter. In the production of 
 plays, as in many other things, the art lies largely 
 in ^discovering what not to do ; and quite certainly 
 the less you are ever seen doing the better. 
 
 One could multiply examples and doubtless find 
 better ones. But the constricting fault of most 
 modern play production is to treat every possible 
 moment with the utmost severity of regulation, and it 
 is more to our main purpose to insist on the need- 
 lessness of nine-tenths of it. And we can do so infer- 
 entially by going on to consider our second category. 
 
 If the first, for the sake of a single adjective, Unconscious 
 is to include all the conscious action of the play orsuA- 
 the second may be said to hold all the unconscious or consctous 
 deferring to the psychologist's lingo the sub- 
 conscious action. Into it, then, we are to bring 
 everything in the play's acting movement, ex- 
 pression, emotion, thought which may, without 
 disturbance of the production's structure or to the 
 distraction of fellow actors, be carried forward in 
 any one of fifty different ways. We say fifty, as we 
 might say a dozen or a hundred, simply for com- 
 parison with the single way of the first category. 
 And there may be in theory as good an aesthetic 
 reason for exactly enumerating the fifty as there is for 
 prescribing the one. There will appear, indeed, in 
 our plan an indirect method of prescription of the fifty ; 
 for the sub-conscious self has still to be regulated. 
 But practically what we are after is a consciousness 
 of complete freedom. And though the freedom can 
 never be quite complete, neither can any action in 
 the first category be made perfectly accurate, for 
 in each case the work is done in the incalculable 
 
 237
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 human medium which defies (and perhaps despises) 
 exactitude. We aim, then, through this freedom at 
 an appearance of spontaneity. This may seem to 
 some people a very little thing ; if it does they have 
 not a very discriminating taste for acting. That 
 spontaneity itself is unattainable a ha'porth of 
 knowledge of the art will inform us. The task 
 of ensuring its appearance has exercised other 
 writers than Diderot, and this and the many under- 
 lying problems are in one way or another stumbling- 
 blocks to every actor worth the name. 
 
 The Scyl/a The hardening effect of the " long run " upon 
 and acting will be admitted. We may owe to that 
 
 Charybdis of S y S tem in England a care and a finish if a trade 
 auto ! na !l m finish ! in production that was unknown before. 
 "consciousness But tne art ^ act i n g nas incidentally well-nigh been 
 destroyed by it ; for it has reduced art to automatism. 
 No wonder people talk of the cinema as a substitute 
 for the theatre when they are content in their 
 ignorance to see and applaud an actor's thousandth 
 photographic reproduction in his own person of 
 what was once (perhaps) a piece of acting. It 
 should be plain to anyone that no human being can 
 act " Hamlet " eight times a week, if acting is to 
 involve anything more than physical gymnastic. 
 He must, to escape intolerable wear and tear, keep 
 the finer parts of his human mechanism out of 
 commission for at least two performances in every 
 three. And the actor of Rosencrantz is brought 
 to a self-defensive automatism for the very opposite 
 reason,. If he did not make himself into a machine, 
 the little round of the part travelled over and over 
 would reduce him to a state of histrionic imbecility. 
 What a piece of work is a man that we should 
 bring him, even as Rosencrantz, to the state of a 
 squirrel in a cage ! 
 238
 
 PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 
 
 But the tendency to automatism, though lessened, 
 is by no means abolished by the simple expedient of 
 putting on a play three times a week instead of eight 
 and letting the actors play other parts on the re- 
 maining nights. Other influences make for it : 
 disciplinary rehearsals ; or the actor's own effort to 
 build up, by one trial after another, the best possible 
 performance, and having, as he thinks, attained it, 
 then to register each item and try to preserve a con- 
 stant combination of them all. This is a tempting 
 method ; for who does not want on the stage or off 
 to be always at his best ? But it is a vain desire, 
 both off the stage and on. By all means should a 
 man at performance, as at rehearsal, be alert to elimi- 
 nate clumsy touches of expression. But the quite con- 
 scious replacing of them with touches more effective 
 (once the preliminary periods of preparation are over 
 and if he and his part have grown to a single artistic 
 entity) will result in his considering these details 
 rather than the entity which was the objective 
 of his first study, and altogether obliterating under 
 these effects his apprehension of the cause, which is 
 that artistic entity's life. If he anchors himself 
 to this bit of business, to that intonation, even to a 
 particular trick of thought or emotion which he 
 finds he can command, his performance will be- 
 come in time a mosaic of excellent fragments : 
 disturb one, a dozen others are loosened, and then, 
 with the oncoming of fatigue, the whole may begin 
 to break up, for there is no vital principle to unite 
 them. He may satisfy himself at some moment with 
 a particular reading of a passage and then, by a 
 stroke of his mind, be able to transfer his conviction 
 of it to a sub-conscious self which will faithfully 
 record and can later re-express the idea : his con- 
 scious mind thus being freed again for the larger 
 
 239
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 view of part and play. But even so, when, in time, 
 a mass of such detail has accumulated and is brought 
 into action as a concrete whole by the sub-conscious 
 mind, no inner conviction will be prompting it : 
 it will be invariable and lifeless. 
 
 Pure conven- The problem is no easy one. There is the 
 tionalism natural effort after economy to be counted with. 
 At one time and another an actor of Hamlet must 
 try and live through the emotions of Hamlet. 
 But if he were so spendthrift of his energies as 
 to try to re-experience them all at one performance 
 it would be long enough before he could rise to 
 another. Some conventionalism of feeling is as 
 necessary as is, for the sake of economy of thought, 
 the reduction to rule of the play's main movement. 
 And we can conceive, no doubt, purely conven- 
 tional acting of a very satisfying and beautiful kind, 
 appropriate enough in its place. The ritual of the 
 Mass is a performance of this sort, and most imagin- 
 ative people prefer it to the ranting, personal appeal 
 of a revivalist meeting. Greek tragedy, with its 
 religious element, sustains conventional treatment 
 well our modern difficulty being mainly to estab- 
 lish an agreement between actors and audience 
 upon the alphabet of its convention. But in the 
 theatre of the last three hundred and fifty years 
 the element of individual interpretation has come 
 to occupy a dominating place, has developed in 
 complexity and intensity quite beyond the compass 
 of conventional expression. That is clear. And 
 though we may lose thereby in dignity and force 
 it is to be hoped we gain something in vitality 
 The limits of and subtlety. It is possible, too, that the advance 
 the personal of interest in dramatic art, with its mirrored effects, 
 appeal j s due to civilized resentment of a too direct 
 
 emotional appeal to fear of it, if you will. There 
 240
 
 PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 
 
 is reason in such an objection, sound reason. We 
 resent the ranting preacher and the frothy demagogue 
 because they are too intimately connected with the 
 message they bring. If we dislike the men and their 
 method our would-be welcome of the matter is hin- 
 dered, though as often we may disapprove the matter 
 and yet half-wittingly be caught by its terms. God 
 and our country, our honour, morality it is a stiff 
 wrench even to seem to be turning our back upon 
 these nobilities; yet he is a poor demagogue that 
 can't wave some such flag dressing his part, too, 
 for still better effect, in uniform or canonicals, 
 the frock coat of the statesman or the tweed cap of 
 Labour.* But give us the oratio obliqua of art and 
 we are at our ease. Its appreciation puts us to 
 some trouble, no doubt. Anyone can sit still and 
 be preached at, but to get the sense out of a 
 play, a picture, or a symphony we must learn to 
 do our share. But then, upon this third factor 
 of the play thus intruded we can exercise our 
 criticism without prejudice: or we can give sym- 
 pathy and still withhold judgment. We can enter, 
 friends and adversaries together, into a world of 
 make-believe. This is an exact and no derogatory 
 description of it. It is in that world, where we are 
 free for the moment from self-consciousness, self- 
 seeking doubt, and fear, that our true beliefs are made. 
 And so it becomes plainer, perhaps, why in the 
 theatre, where the personal appeal is naturally so 
 strong, we need by some means to detach the actor 
 from himself. Effort to charm us by chorus girl's 
 smile, comedian's wink, or by a tragedian self- 
 
 * There was a certain Labour leader about 1906 who, after 
 dining out, carefully changed back into more plebeian broadcloth 
 before reappearing in the House of Commons. But the other day one 
 turned up in a dinner-jacket. He was a privy councillor, no doubt. 
 
 Q 241
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 centred in the limelight is the demagogy of drama, 
 and rightly to be resented. And it is to be the 
 more condemned; for, at least, the politician drags 
 in no playwright as an unwitting accomplice.* 
 
 To ask for sheer impersonation will not serve ; 
 playing at disguises is only a good child's game.t 
 We need interpreters, but it must truly be the 
 characters of the play which they interpret. Work- 
 ing in full consciousness they cannot do it; self 
 will be asserted. Identification of the actual with 
 the imaginary, of the actor with his part, asking 
 for a murderer to play a murderer and for a 
 saint to appear as a saint, is as impossible as 
 the fiction of personation is puerile. And so we 
 are brought to the need for a creation in the actor 
 of something like an integral sub-conscious self4 
 
 * Not that one condemns chorus girl or comedian for their 
 goings-on, as long as they make no pretence to be practising the 
 art of the theatre. 
 
 f Besides, it is not really a practical game in the theatre. Mr. 
 W. T. Stead displayed the logic of it when he demanded, in joke 
 no doubt, that an actor should play but one part throughout his 
 career, lest illusion be spoilt. See also p. 164. 
 
 $ It might be claimed that there is in all of us, as product of our 
 civilization, a third and entirely unconscious self that operates as 
 automatically in expressing itself in simple movements and gesture 
 as it does in breathing and digesting food. But this is not artistic 
 expression. It is true that this self, the product of civilization, 
 should be perfectly that is, healthily regulated if the artistic 
 expression that will later be founded upon its activity is to be 
 beautiful and complete. But this task we relegate to general educa- 
 tion ; and if our school of the theatre specially provides for such 
 training it should do so with little more particularity than any 
 institution of the sort might provide a gymnasium in which the 
 students could keep themselves fit. Animals are un-self-conscious, 
 and in their natural beauty, having nothing further to express by it, 
 put to shame poor human beings engaged in artistic enterprise. For 
 this reason they should never be brought upon the stage in a play. 
 The two values contradict each other. 
 242
 
 PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 
 
 In this creation a double process is involved : first The mystery 
 the mental search and the provocative argument into y ft a S ain 
 and around the character and the play that we have 
 described ; then the sensitizing of the actor's re- 
 ceptive faculties, mental and emotional, too.* It 
 shpuld be a concurrent process ; and the argument 
 will promote the mental receptivity it will, at 
 least, if the parties to it direct their attention more 
 to the play, the third factor, than to each other. 
 The emotional part of the sensitizing process is not so 
 demonstrable. It is difficult enough even to define 
 sympathy, and, in human relations, it is certainly 
 a fatal error to try and cultivate it by prescrip- 
 tion. But even in the world of make-believe one 
 can affirm no more than this : let the actor sur- 
 render himself wholly to the idea of his part as it 
 forms itself to his apprehension under the spell of 
 this generous study, and there will, by his Muse's 
 grace, be added unto him, as fruit of the personal 
 surrender, this mysterious second personality, which 
 will be not himself and yet will be a part of him- 
 self. He will be wedded to his idea. We make 
 poetry of such a relation between two human 
 beings : we see or experience the shadow of it 
 sometimes. In its fulness it must doubtless re- 
 main an ideal. Nor is its realization quite to be 
 desired ; for no two lives can run wholly together, 
 nor must one yield passively to the other's way. 
 Life demands separate and uncompleted service. 
 If in some other world union could bring per- 
 fection that would be worth preparing for. But 
 here and now in the world of art the impossible 
 is possible. Surrender to an idea robs no man of 
 
 * One is tempted to add physical. Wave your hand suddenly 
 within an inch of an actor's face and watch for the automatically 
 released mobility of expression. 
 
 243
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 his birthright : these wedded beings born of the 
 actor's art live for their one purpose only, and will 
 perish unsustained by it. While they live, though, 
 their very limitations give them power, and perfec- 
 tion, too, to a degree. In any fine playing of a part 
 of Imogen, shall we say ? there is a power not the 
 player's own, and a beauty which certainly does not 
 accompany her off the stage. Nor can the complete 
 effect be accounted for by adding together the words 
 of Shakespeare, the woman's looks and voice, the 
 theatre's lights and scenery. Pick the whole thing 
 to pieces, and you'll no more find out the secret 
 than you'll find a soul in the body's anatomy. If 
 it does not lie in the surrendered self, and the 
 possession for the time of the obedient body by the 
 changeling idea, then where ? Diderot explains the 
 matter carefully and cleverly. One must answer 
 that he never can have acted a part in his life and 
 The actor let himself go in it. That phrase is pregnant. Now, 
 " lets himself everv actor has experienced, more or less, the sensa- 
 s tion of being under his part's control. Mind, there 
 
 can be delusion as to this, with direful consequences. 
 Letting yourself go, when no rounded and complete 
 idea does control you, is like losing your temper, and 
 may result, likewise, either in feckless screaming or 
 a helpless inarticulation. Being soundly angry with 
 anger's cause behind you is another matter, as 
 everybody knows. One may test and value the 
 masterly sensation both in life and art by the extra- 
 ordinary coolness and clarity of mind that should 
 accompany it. 
 
 Once you have learnt the secret ; then, as you act a 
 part so studied, while you may still choose what to do, 
 you can feel assured that whatever you may do will 
 be characteristically right. Impulse, -moreover, to 
 do this or that will not wait upon effort or for a 
 244
 
 PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 
 
 particular call. Through the sensitive channel 
 which the interpreter has now become will flow un- 
 checked the thoughts and emotions generated in 
 the part's studying. These will have been shaped 
 (we recapitulate) ; those of them upon which the 
 play's structure as a work of art depends, definitely 
 and consciously and they must not be vague or 
 varying, and at each fixed point the interpreter 
 must consciously control and direct them. He 
 must, moreover, never let this side of the part's 
 playing escape his quite conscious control, or it will 
 degenerate into automatism; and automatism will 
 not do. But to the rest he need only sub-consciously 
 attend. To demeanour, tones, gestures, and the 
 like he need now oppose no mental bar.* And as 
 they shape themselves spontaneously they will be 
 fresher and more vital ; they will come and go with 
 an ease which interposed calculation could only 
 deaden and destroy. If the underlying idea is just 
 and consistent, if the interpreter is physically trained 
 and mentally and emotionally sensitized if his 
 faculties, that is to say, are sufficiently at one with 
 his conception then all that he does or can do will 
 now have appropriate value and stand in right pro- 
 portion to the whole. And this will be so even 
 though the appearance of what he does may never 
 be twice alike. Indeed, it never will be, because 
 the process is in a very near sense natural and not 
 mechanical at all. And it never should be if we 
 are to take full advantage of the human medium. 
 Far better, though, that this principle of change, thus 
 kept constantly in flow, should not, half the time, be 
 discernible in definite changes at all. To try to save 
 
 * If one may borrow a simile from electrical engineering : he 
 need not pass their current through the converter of his conscious 
 mind. 
 
 245
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 The danger a play's acting from hardening by arbitrary changes 
 f which only disturb its right rhythm and melody 
 
 auto ~. is to gain for it a very indifferent freedom. No 
 
 matism , j-rr ^i i 
 
 again one wants a scene done differently every night. 
 
 An actor's response to a situation and a line, his 
 own or another's, may well seem to be identical six 
 times out of ten. One only wants to be sure that it 
 is a genuine response. 
 
 There is a possible extreme of self-surrender to 
 be noted and avoided. Against extra passivity the 
 actor must be on his guard, or he will find himself, 
 within this second category, the victim of automa- 
 tism again. He must remember with what amazing 
 swiftness, within such artificial limits as a play's 
 performance, habit is established. And unless the 
 quiescence of the conscious mind helps the recep- 
 tive, sub-conscious, emotionally expressive self to be 
 only the more keenly alive and, even when in 
 complete physical quiescence, to be actively alive * 
 the method fails. 
 
 * I find an instance of how this may be in the memory of the 
 Art Theatre at Moscow and a performance there of Tchekov's 
 " The Cherry Orchard." It will be remembered how, in the 
 third act, Madame Ranevsky comes out of the ballroom to hear 
 of the sale, asks but a couple of brief questions, and then stays 
 listening till the curtain falls, never speaking another word. It was 
 not till I re-read the play after seeing it that I was reminded that 
 she could not have spoken a word. The impression left on me by 
 Madame Tchekov's silent performance was that she had played a 
 chief part in a long and strenuous scene. As she had. But how 
 was the effect produced ? One could answer : by doing nothing. 
 That in a sense would be true, if one means that there was not 
 as far as I could detect any elaboration of business which, how- 
 ever discreetly contrived, must have taken attention and detracted 
 value from the figure of Lopakhin, who, flushed with his triumph, 
 struggling with a sort of shyness, vocally dominates the scene. 
 For such a figure at that moment, and throughout the play, is 
 Madame Ranevsky that had the actress deliberately done anything 
 246
 
 PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 
 
 Faced with a school of histrionic sleep-walking 
 we should return with joy to such a confident 
 brilliancy of execution as the competent player deals 
 out to us upon a piano. That is not to be despised, 
 upon occasion, even when translated into the feebler 
 conditions of the theatre. But we are now seeking 
 for the peculiar quality which the constituents of this 
 
 at all she must not only have captured all eyes herself, but have 
 blinded us to everyone else on the stage. The stage directions 
 say that she weeps bitterly, and any actress might regard this as an 
 invitation to " score " by that simplest of all methods of scoring. 
 As far as I remember, Madame Tchekov sat down at the table as 
 the curtain fell, and that was all. But whatever she did was 
 enough. It left her, as she should be, the central figure of the 
 scene. But more would have been more than enough, and would 
 inevitably have obliterated the others. Now we can be quite sure 
 that such an effect was not gained by doing nothing. That would 
 allow the construction of the play and the mechanical arrangement 
 of the scene, with all their virtue, far more than their due. And 
 if this is doubted, substitute in such a case any one actress equally 
 suitable in appearance and manner for any other, and see if the 
 result is the same. It might be more to the point to argue that 
 Madame Tchekov reaped at that moment by entire passivity what 
 she had sown in action during the rest of the play, and that having 
 set her face as one sets a clock she could have safely left her Lopa- 
 khin to play the scene while she thought of what she would have for 
 supper ; and that if she would do no such thing it had only to be from 
 respect for the rest of her performance, or self-respect generally, or 
 regard for her audience. Why bring in this last consideration ? How 
 can an audience distinguish the state of mind, or the degree of 
 emotion, present behind a carefully expressioned face and an 
 appropriately attitudinized figure ? An answer is implied in the fact 
 that to no discerning audience, or upon any important occasion, 
 would the most callous performer of a part risk impoverishing 
 the scene by distracting herself from it. Is this mere super- 
 stition, to be yielded to when fear is upon you, or is there any value 
 in this sub-conscious activity ? If so, by what process is its power 
 conveyed ? Are we to suppose that emotional rays of some sort 
 emanate from the still, silent figure? I do not pretend to say. 
 But personal magnetism is a very palpable thing, and why it should 
 not be controlled, characterized, and directed, I do not know. 
 
 247
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 art of acting can be made to yield us ; and that must, 
 it would seem, reside in some particular virtue of 
 the human medium itself, since that is the drama's 
 distinctive possession. We see its vices easily and 
 often enough, an egotism that must dislocate any 
 artistic form.* Its virtue, then, should probably 
 be sought in the opposite direction. And this may 
 well be found in the very human faculty of sympathy 
 experience transmuted to instinct in its integra- 
 tion and epitomising, under the guise of art, of that 
 great human achievement, by which to the calculable 
 sum of fellowship there is added a mysterious gift. 
 We call it the spirit of a race, the moral of a 
 regiment, the character of a family or an assembly. 
 For as with music; when melody and harmony 
 have been accounted for and praised, through these 
 we have been spoken to, we find, of supernal 
 things so it is, too, with great drama finely shown 
 us. What is that, seemingly, but the repetition 
 of words and the movements of men and women 
 for an hour or two upon a lit and painted stage ? 
 And yet, by furthering with their best thoughts 
 the thoughts of the poet, and more, far more, by 
 yielding themselves utterly, body and spirit, as 
 instruments to the harmony of the play's purpose, 
 a company of actors does bring to birth a thing of 
 powerful beauty that was not in the play before, 
 that is not in themselves, but has now some of the 
 absolute virtue of fine music, some of the quality 
 
 * Let me, however, record my personal experience that only 
 bad actors are artistic egotists (though there are other sorts to be 
 found in the theatre, as elsewhere), or, at least, that their badness is 
 generally in direct ratio to their egotism. But then it is badness in 
 relation to the play, not to their own performances which, alas, 
 are all that the undiscerning public (and therefore success- 
 hardened actors) seem to care about. 
 248
 
 PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 
 
 that can make small things great. There is honour 
 in this art. 
 
 As yet, in our modern theatre, the art of acting The 
 has been but outlined. We guess at the fine ritual childhood of 
 of Greek drama, at the splendid crude pageantry tfie art 
 of ^the mediaeval stage, we can recall to life some- 
 thing of the passionate enjoyment of swift words 
 which must have fired the Elizabethan actors. The 
 drama of that fifty years was like a tongue of the 
 Renaissance flame licking into splendour our Eng- 
 lish common life. The eighteenth century gives 
 us the comedy of manners; truly not much more. 
 But good manners were of artistic value upon the 
 stage when they were valued in the world, and they 
 might be appreciated now for other reasons. The 
 eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have seen also 
 the dominance of the " star " actor with his pocket- 
 ful of popular effects. One does not mean to 
 smother in such a category the fame of a Garrick, 
 a Kean, a Salvini, a Duse, whose genius must have 
 shone bright in any surroundings ; one could bring 
 other names besides to the completion of an honour- 
 able list. And even the pretenders to great title, 
 who do more harm to their absolutist cause than 
 good to themselves, are more sinned against by the 
 system than they are, to begin with, wilful sinners 
 against their art. A " star " is not necessarily a 
 being whose one aim is to outshine. His plaint, 
 on the contrary, is more often that he cannot find 
 adequate reinforcement for his beams. He patheti- 
 cally asks why. It is an innocent question, but for 
 all that such a pertinent one that in the validity of 
 the answer lies the theatre's whole destiny. 
 
 Let us think of a performance to which the 
 audience should come, ignorant of the play, its 
 author, producer, to be given no programme, nor told 
 
 249
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 the name of any actor there. If this were an ideal, 
 its fulfilment, as with most ideals, might be a little 
 too arid to be quite desirable. But the supposition 
 does point to a concentration upon the acted play 
 and upon nothing else whatever. It presumes that 
 in favour of this it is as important to de-personalize 
 actors, producer, and dramatist as it is for the 
 audience themselves to sit attentive and anonymous. 
 Who has not been at a play with great persons 
 prominent in a box, and half the spectators wonder- 
 ing how they were taking it ? It is a difference of 
 degree not of kind if, while the first act drags, 
 we are saying to ourselves " Wait till Miss Smith 
 comes on," or, when the curtain falls on the third, 
 " How well Mr. Brown did that ! " And though 
 the star's supporter may think that in his playing 
 of Rosencrantz he gives himself wholeheartedly to 
 Hamlet the play, and the player of Hamlet the 
 Prince believe of himself the same, at the best they 
 both reckon without the idolatry which is innate 
 in the whole affair from the moment the one " sees 
 himself" as Hamlet and the other is engaged to 
 " support " him, down to the arrival of the audience 
 intent upon the attractions of their favourite actor, 
 and only deepening damnation by saying reverently 
 under their breath, "And in Shakespeare, you know ! " 
 It is for this idolatry that we must somehow sub- 
 stitute a faith in the living drama itself. Still, let us 
 not be too superior. We have most of us joined 
 at some time in the " roar of applause " to which 
 the popular actor has so modestly bowed his head, 
 and have enjoyed the roaring as much as he has 
 possibly more, for with accustomed success there 
 comes, even at the moment, weariness and a bitter 
 aftertaste. And if this sort of thing may be said 
 only to fit the childhood of an art it is the more 
 250 

 
 PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 
 
 welcome, therefore, to the child-mind in ourselves, 
 nourished on those games of make-believe in which 
 we ourselves were glorious protagonists. The joy 
 of the theatre to many of us is that it stimulates the 
 fading memory of them. But it may be, too, that 
 perennial regret for the days of the great actor 
 marks more than the personal ageing of the parti- 
 cular grumbler ; it may show some general matur- 
 ing of mind through a cycle of theatrical culture 
 of whose curve we are not yet aware, under whose 
 influence, also, the race of great actors, in the sense 
 of our use of the epithet, is perishing. And it 
 does certainly seem that in these days in answer, 
 it may be, to our present need of an interpretative 
 art there is being precipitated from the jolly 
 crudities we have so far enjoyed a new idea of the 
 theatre which little more than an idea as yet 
 is making other and harder demands upon actors 
 and audience both, but has a far richer promise to 
 fulfil. 
 
 This demand, as it has fallen on the playwright, The demands 
 he has honoured fairly so far, even if we must of its 
 qualify the response as at times rather rigid and per- 
 verse ; the inevitable consequence, this, of his 
 estrangement from a living theatre. He has been 
 lucky and unlucky both in this detachment : the 
 crippled, half-dead theatre has been only luckless 
 in this as in other deprivations. And upon the 
 actor, powerless to save his own artistic soul not 
 having, indeed, in isolation any soul to save the 
 accumulated demands of a renaissance are now 
 heavy. His obedience must be asked to a stern 
 and searching training of body, mind, and imagina- 
 tion. Next, he must turn his back upon all the 
 attractive tricks which save him so much trouble and 
 can earn him such applause. And, finally, he must 
 
 251
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 be ready to surrender himself and to merge his 
 carefully cultivated artistic identity in a company of 
 his fellows, believing that when in each product 
 of their mutual work it again emerges, if he will 
 often not have gained as much as he gave, yet he 
 will not have given in vain. 
 
 This may be much ; but it is, after all, no more 
 than the world asks of most of her workers. Is the 
 actor to take his place among them, or does he want 
 to stay playing with the other spoiled children ? 
 
 He, in his turn, may ask of us, his audience, 
 what taste we'll show for the results of all this. 
 Well, it is the privilege of truth to make itself be- 
 lieved, and of true art to command respect, but of 
 neither, doubtless, to hold us by their first tentative 
 strivings. To these we must extend patience and 
 an interest more in the end than in the immediate 
 means. Few of us have the eye of faith, though, or 
 the knowledge that goes out to meet, or even the 
 sympathy that will sustain the single-minded adven- 
 turer. And many strivings in the theatre fail because 
 allegiance to an uninspired and uninstructed audience 
 means the making of the best of that world of ap- 
 proval even at the expense of the more dimly seen 
 salvation of an empiric art. Therefore it is that this 
 third factor in the theatre's future is all-important. 
 An audience there must be. Not the finest playing 
 of the best play in the world can fully exist without it. 
 Its presence is the logical extension of the co-opera- 
 tion between actors and playwright, and between 
 the actors themselves, upon which the whole art 
 rests. Not many steps further can the theatre even 
 go than its audience will wholeheartedly follow. 
 Nor should it wish to, for in this wider partnership 
 is the art's final strength. In the collective con- 
 sciousness so formed by playwrights, actors, and 
 252
 
 PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 
 
 audience we can gain from the acted drama an 
 understanding of human relationships deeper and 
 subtler than words and their reasoning can give. 
 Sensitized by art, overtones are added to our 
 nature's scale. And what more wonderful instru- 
 ment has man to play upon than is this living self ? 
 What greater capacity for an orchestration of 
 humanity, with all its thoughts and passions, will 
 he find than lies in a company of men and women 
 highly attuned ? 
 
 253
 
 CHAPTER VI I SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 
 
 T 
 
 'HIS book's concern is to establish a point 
 of view of the theatre that is unfamiliar 
 perhaps, if not new. Much successful 
 achievement, therefore, under the present system 
 falls outside its scope, and many efforts at reform 
 must be seen at an obscuring angle. Not that one 
 wishes to decry either success itself that has no 
 further cares, or the gallant struggles of the victims 
 of the present commercial circumstances to recon- 
 cile contradictory causes and effects. Belief per- 
 sists in them that if only the thistle seed is good 
 enough some sort of grapes will result. Why 
 should not art and twenty per cent, go hand in 
 hand ? All we should ask for is a good play well 
 acted. What can the system matter ? And it is 
 true enough that when it comes to putting ideas 
 into practice there will always be unsuspected 
 difficulties, one's own incapacities not least among 
 them. Then is no time to be discussing the right 
 way. One does the best one can. So it may be 
 worth our while now, perhaps, to end by surveying 
 some of the minor problems that will beset com- 
 promise ; to demolish, if we can, a few of the 
 fallacies that haunt the indeterminate space between 
 the two worlds which one will be pledged to make 
 the best of. For this is the worst of such a situation ; 
 once committed you must protest your satisfaction 
 with it or go forward, or go back ; it is the worst 
 of a half-way house that, as no road is ever straight, 
 you are bound to be a bit in the wrong direction 
 when you rest there. And the best of a point of 
 view is that it overlooks difficulties. But one does 
 not occupy it unsympathetically for all that. 
 Compromise In the theatre, though, the path of compromise 
 and is hard. " Certainly," says the patron of art to the 
 
 catchwords ar dent young reformer, " give me good plays well 
 254 
 
 i
 
 SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 
 
 acted. I ask no more," and he puts down some 
 money. He might as well go to a nurseryman and 
 ask for a fully developed garden by Thursday week. 
 The nurseryman could, no doubt, produce the 
 effect of one which would last, say, till Friday fort- 
 night. A close parallel. The money is spent 
 some theatre landlord probably gets most of it 
 the patron of art then bethinks himself that the 
 drama is an extravagant pastime and an unsatis- 
 factory business. But it isn't a pastime, and any 
 business would be unsatisfactory run on such lines. 
 And even if you only want to have good plays well 
 acted, that isn't a business enterprise either. 
 
 And the theatre suffers from catchwords. The 
 word " repertory " has become almost a curse. In 
 America the term " Little Theatre " has acquired 
 so many significances as now to have none. One 
 may best qualify a little theatre by saying that if 
 it is a success you wish it were bigger, and if it is a 
 failure you wish that it weren't there at all. A 
 repertory theatre, according to the enthusiasts, 
 may be anything from the Comedie Francaise to a 
 band of beginners who produce plays haphazard 
 in a back drawing-room and are animated by what 
 they call the repertory idea. What, in heaven's 
 name, is that ? You might as well have an idea that 
 you run a motor-car by pouring petrol in some- 
 where into the radiator, perhaps. If the term 
 " repertory " is to keep any specific meaning at all 
 it should only be used for an organization by which 
 plays are kept as ready for the stage to make com- 
 parison between a simple and a complex business 
 as books are kept to your hand in a library. If a 
 clearer definition is needed and if one is to argue 
 the advantage of a system one cannot be too clear it 
 will be found that, as a matter of practice, the
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 " repertory idea " must consent to be bound by 
 conditions very near akin to the following. In 
 the theatre expressing it no single play must be 
 given for more than two or three performances 
 running, or for more than three or four in a week, 
 and at least three or four different plays must be 
 performed in a week; so that as a consequence no 
 one play can be performed more than about a 
 hundred times in a season. But it may be played 
 in every one of a hundred seasons, as, no doubt, 
 certain plays in the repertory of the Theatre 
 Francais have been. And a theatre is not worked 
 in this way because of some vague ideal behind it, 
 but because the demand if thus fulfils involves this 
 particular sort of organization, and can be satisfied 
 by no other as is demonstrable and as we had 
 better proceed to demonstrate. 
 
 A " stock " theatre, with a permanent company 
 producing fresh plays week by week, or month by 
 month, is not a repertory theatre. A permanent 
 company is in itself a very desirable thing ; but to 
 produce a play at one time, let it lapse, and revive 
 it at another is no more to keep it alive than it would 
 be if the process were applied to a human body. 
 Nor, again, is a season of a few months or less, 
 in which half a dozen plays for all that they are 
 played variously week by week have been rehearsed 
 at a stretch by a company especially engaged for 
 them, more than by courtesy a repertory season. 
 It is at best a temporary lath-and-plaster fa9ade for 
 a repertory theatre. Walk up the steps, push open 
 the door, and there is nothing behind. There are, 
 moreover it may be stated pretty dogmatically 
 only two logical and economical ways of organizing 
 the drama as a continuing and professional activity : 
 by a full-fledged repertory system, if artistic eco- 
 256
 
 SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 
 
 nomy is what you are after ; for long runs, if you 
 want to make all the money you can in the shortest 
 possible time (you may equally lose it). All com- 
 promise between the two systems means waste of 
 money or of energy, extravagance, and treble the 
 worjc for half the result not even for half, indeed, 
 but rather for a different kind of result altogether. 
 
 Now it should be freely owned that there is much The defence 
 to be said for the long-run system from the public's of the long- 
 point of view, something from the playwright's, and run S 3* tem 
 a great deal from the business manager's : its 
 dominance, indeed, is the charter of his own. 
 
 In a big, busy-living city it is a convenience for 
 the playgoer to know that a play is at his service 
 upon any evening he may be moved to go to it. 
 For this all he seems to sacrifice is the loss of those 
 plays that exhaust their demand in a single month 
 of his absence or over-occupation, but as they are 
 mostly classed as failures he hardly regrets them. 
 As to the plays that have little chance even of a 
 thirty-day popularity, managers, as a rule, do not 
 produce them at all. But he does not stop to think 
 what he misses in this direction. A play to him is 
 (quite reasonably) not altogether a play until it is 
 to be seen in a theatre. So the average playgoer 
 in a big, theatre-filled capital city will never actively 
 complain of the long-run system. At the worst he 
 wearies of the plays he does find, for so many of 
 them seem to run, not for a hundred nights, but 
 (under changing titles) for ever, and he slackens in 
 his playgoing. 
 
 The city whose theatres are served by the touring 
 system barters, so to speak, a disadvantage in this par- 
 ticular form of the long run, for some of the advantages 
 and some disadvantages of the old stock theatre ways. 
 The playgoer in Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, 
 
 R 257
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 Boston, Philadelphia, and Pittsburg does certainly 
 seem to get his drama fresh and fresh. But in 
 practice he rather receives it stale and stale. Plays 
 either reach him when their popularity in London 
 and New York has been exhausted and their princi- 
 pal players are sick of them, or as slavish imitations 
 of the original production. And in these days of 
 high wages and costly transport many do not reach 
 him at all. 
 
 But the long-run system, under whatever guise, 
 suits the business-manager.* It suits him best if 
 he owns or runs the theatre building and lets some- 
 one else in to produce the plays. By letting the 
 temporary partner out as quickly as he let him in 
 and quicker ! he can cut his losses on the failures, 
 while he takes profit on success equivalent not only 
 to the commercial merits of the play, but to the 
 preferential value of his building, for that has en- 
 abled him to strike a good bargain with the producer 
 beforehand. In any case his finance is simple ; and 
 that is a great thing. He invests in a production, 
 sucks it dry, and scraps (or all but) the material, 
 turns off the hands employed, starts his next ven- 
 ture on a new and appropriate basis of expense, 
 and keeps his overhead charges at a minimum. 
 
 The system seems to suit the dramatist, but he 
 is unwise to believe so. Certainly if his play is a 
 success he makes money quickly. And he has all 
 the available acting talent of London or New York 
 to choose from : he has the monopoly both of the 
 theatre's resources and of the attention of the cast, 
 while he coaxes or drills them, or watches them 
 being drilled, to a clockwork precision of ensemble 
 and a meticulous obedience to the last comma of his 
 text. 
 
 * I use the term here in its general, not its particular, sense. 
 258
 
 SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 
 
 But a slight objection to the whole glorious Verdict : the 
 business (and the dramatist should have been the long run 
 first to note this) is that it tends utterly to destroy & ilt y f tAe 
 the art of acting. This cannot prosper under such .?' ruc . to ? ^ 
 
 ... r i T < i tfte art J 
 
 conditions or employment. It may profit a little by act i H g " 
 failure, but what it cannot endure is the numbing 
 monotony of success. So acting's place is taken by 
 the artifice of stage effect, a mechanism guaranteed 
 fool-proof, which makes, therefore, for the en- 
 couragement of fools both among the actors and in 
 the audience. It may really be asserted that most 
 young playgoers of to-day do not know what acting 
 is. They yield themselves happily to the emotional 
 illusions of the play itself, but the stage attitudes 
 they are accustomed to, that bear the stigmata of 
 the art of its interpretation, have about the relation 
 to acting that an oleograph has to a Rembrandt. 
 
 And this alone should suffice to condemn the 
 long run system, whatever may be its convenience 
 to public or financier, for one cannot too often in- 
 sist that the art of acting is the theatre's very flesh 
 and blood. Besides this, however, it keeps from 
 the stage, year in and year out, about seventy-five 
 per cent, of the best drama written ; leaves it to 
 grow dusty on bookshelves, while as a discourage- 
 ment to the new writing of plays fit to survive 
 what could be more effective ? The qualities that 
 look for slow gathering appreciation and make for 
 survival are naturally no more in demand in a profit- 
 seeking theatre than they are in the business of 
 publishing best-selling novels and popular maga- 
 zines. The publisher however, helped by cheaper 
 manufacturing conditions and easy distribution, 
 may, and usually does, put out an assortment of 
 books good, bad, and indifferent. But the long 
 run manager, if he be a consistently good man of 
 
 259
 
 T H B E EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 business never nervously or hypocritically hedging 
 in the direction of " art," should rather try to 
 specialize in the production of the unfit. 
 
 The "short But to replace the long run by the short run, by 
 run" little the experimental matinee or the hastily concocted 
 better "repertory" season, is no remedy; and not even the 
 
 use or misuse of that blessed word " repertory " 
 will make it one. We may protest in the interests 
 of the actor's art against his repetition of a single 
 part eight times a week for six months or more,* 
 but it does not follow that either in his art's interest 
 or his own he will welcome the slave-driving and the 
 uncertainties, artistic and financial, which mostly 
 characterize the alternatives offered him. The long- 
 run system with its careful preparation does at least 
 ensure him against making an unpremeditated fool 
 of himself. Personal success may be longer in 
 coming, but it is obviously easier to sustain when it 
 is partly measured, not by how many plays he will 
 appear in, but how few. The financial conditions 
 he finds either very good or very bad, but that un- 
 certainty has its own queer attraction. Besides, 
 this is the tune that is called, and apparently he 
 must dance to it. London success brings him 
 leisure also, which he can employ in playing golf, 
 or collecting pictures, or even in a second occupa- 
 tion. Lastly, as many of this stage generation have 
 never learnt to act at all, but only to give exhibitions 
 of stage artifice, they really do not suspect what an 
 absorbing business it can be. It should be added, 
 though, that the younger people do struggle against 
 this crippling of their opportunities. And for this 
 
 * A recent theatrical entertainment has survived for something 
 like six years. But, indeed, there seems to be no reason why, when 
 a theatre serves a city of six million people and its rising generations, 
 not to mention its visitors, a play should not run for ever. 
 260
 
 SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 
 
 we have to thank both the stirring of their spirits 
 by such institutions as the Academy of Dramatic 
 Art and the example, for all their failures, of the 
 compromising reformers. 
 
 But let us now analyze the artistic conduct of a why many 
 few of these reforming efforts, and discover why, gallant 
 with all their good will, based as they are upon a e ff orti at 
 contradiction, they cannot serve as solutions of a r> f / or m , e 
 difficulty. As essays in discontent they are ad- 
 mirable, and as evidence of a readiness to do any- 
 thing rather than keep on grumbling even more 
 admirable. But they had better not lay claim to 
 essential virtues. 
 
 To begin with, there can be no continuously 
 fruitful combination between the efforts to sustain 
 a play-producing establishment as a sound com- 
 petitive business enterprise and the desire to make 
 a theatre a home for dramatic art. Financial re- 
 sults may be as good or as bad in the one case as 
 the other, and even the artistic results may look, 
 on the surface and for a time, alike. But, aims 
 differing, counsel will always be divided ; and, in- 
 deed, the outlook, intentions, and the methods 
 employed towards these separate ends should differ 
 absolutely and totally. 
 
 The efforts to reform the theatre during the last 
 fifteen or twenty years in English-speaking countries 
 can roughly be split into two classes : those that 
 have had enough capital and those that haven't ; 
 ten per cent., perhaps, have been of the first class 
 and ninety of the second. And one besetting 
 danger has been that the capitalist, measuring the 
 probabilities of success by the amount of money 
 provided, and yet in his heart rather doubtful of the 
 whole affair, has been apt to demand immediate 
 results, financial or artistic, preferably both. This 
 
 261
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 demand has, of course, led to an inordinate expendi- 
 ture of capital energy, difficult to sustain. The 
 promoters were making, it may be, for full-fledged 
 repertory, but you cannot, so to speak, stick feathers 
 into such an enterprise. For a theatre worthy of 
 its purpose is a complex living organism a thing 
 of growth. It will grow, moreover, in seemingly 
 unpredestined ways and at uncertain pace; so many 
 influences does it owe life to. The strain of trying, 
 god-like, to create at a stroke a full-grown thing, 
 the impossibility of avoiding serious mistakes when 
 neither time nor energy can be allowed for their 
 correction, must lead to an exhausted smash. One 
 is then told that the theatre wouldn't " pay," or that 
 it wouldn't "work." Of course it wouldn't. Good 
 heavens, a fisherman spends more patience to get 
 one trout ; and, what is more, it is the fishing he 
 enjoys ! 
 
 The cautious Then there have been the enterprises of the 
 capitalist cautious capitalist, who watches his expenditure with 
 care and plays for the safety of each step he takes. 
 These have endured better, but naturally at the cost 
 of a limitation of enterprise, and, as a general con- 
 sequence, of a low standard of work. For some 
 degree of comprehensiveness is a necessary virtue 
 in a theatre, and you cannot, moreover, retain talent 
 in your service unless you give it good opportunity. 
 Into this category would fall most of the "short-run" 
 theatres, which by misplaced courtesy are dubbed 
 " repertory." 
 
 There is something, of course, to be said for 
 the short run, though nothing that is unequivocally 
 in its favour. It enables a theatre to produce a 
 number of plays ; and, if the audience could be 
 perfectly mobilized if, that is to say, any theatre 
 could rely upon the constant and immediate sup- 
 262
 
 SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 
 
 port of a definite number of people for every pro- 
 duction the system would be so provokingly simple 
 and so financially sound that its artistic defects and 
 limitations would be too easily forgiven. But the 
 system's rigidity is its undoing. On the artistic 
 side this is patent from the beginning. On the 
 business side, why ever expect to achieve such a 
 mechanically perfect thing ? And if the business 
 ministered to the art as it should do, instead of art 
 being asked to fit itself to business requirements, 
 the attempt would never be made. But business 
 has the whip hand ; and the scheme seems so thrifty, 
 and if you have only so much money and do so 
 want to do something relatively worth doing the 
 temptation is great. We, however, must concern 
 ourselves with the absolute objections to it. 
 
 Should such a theatre have a permanent com- Practical 
 pany ? The answer being inevitably Yes, several difficulties 
 difficulties at once arise.* If the size of it is to be f r 
 suited only to plays of short casts then your choice 
 of productions will be seriously limited. But if you 
 enlarge the company you must keep members of 
 it idle perhaps for weeks at a stretch; and, apart 
 from all other objections, good actors will not stay 
 with you to be kept idle. You may adopt the 
 " practical " compromise of calculating the size of 
 your company by the length of an average cast 
 and trusting to special engagements to fill the gaps 
 that a larger cast would show. But in the first 
 
 * This " inevitably " may be disputed. Well, one could plan, 
 no doubt, to furnish a theatre with rapid relays of productions, 
 each one cast ad hoc. But the effort, the friction, the waste of 
 time, energy, and money would be so stupendous that it is hard 
 to see how such a scheme could endure. It would, exhaustedly, 
 adapt itself before long to long runs or short runs, or to the touring 
 system, or to any other that showed some consideration for human 
 fatigue. 
 
 263
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 place you will be lucky, indeed, to find good actors 
 waiting on a rank like cabs, ready for long rehearsals 
 and a short run (in any case a most thriftless way of 
 engaging them) ; and in the second a revival of 
 the particular play would be very difficult, for you 
 could not expect to make the same special engage- 
 ments over again, and a second posse of strange 
 actors would mean rehearsing de novo. In practice 
 the solution of this problem is evaded by the avoid- 
 ance of plays that involve this difficulty. But a 
 policy which dictates the avoidance of good plays is 
 a pretty poor policy. 
 
 Then arises the question : how short are the 
 short runs to be, and are they all to be equally short ? 
 Much hinges on the answer. The length of a run 
 must be settled beforehand. At least if that is not 
 a rule made to be only very occasionally broken, if 
 the plan is simply to be one of taking off the failures 
 and letting the successes run on, what management 
 will be so consistently strong-minded as ever to 
 limit the tide of success once it is flowing ? And a 
 course of short runs would come to mean that the 
 theatre was involuntarily specializing in failure. 
 
 The outsider may say that a management with 
 a well mobilized audience should, after a while, be 
 able to guess pretty well the amount of attraction 
 each play could be trusted to exercise. On the 
 contrary, the more experienced a manager the 
 readier he will be to own that he can't. And it 
 comes in practice to his trying to strike a safe average 
 run which will not expose his failures to too many 
 empty houses, nor cheat his successes of too many 
 full ones. Further, as he must be tenderer towards 
 his failures than towards the robuster success which, 
 cut back in its prime, can be trusted to shoot up as 
 strongly in a timely revival, he will rather set out 
 264
 
 SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 
 
 to precognize a run that's too short than one that's 
 too long. And so it happens that in this sort of 
 theatre the preference has been mainly for a fort- 
 night's, even for a week's, spell of performances.* 
 Here we touch an ineradicable weakness. If you 
 are to change your bill so often, your productions 
 must be scrambled and your actors shamefully over- 
 worked. The old stock company's way out of 
 this difficulty was to hand to the actor, a while be- 
 fore the season began, a list of the parts he would 
 play. . With most he'd be familiar, for old plays 
 made up about eighty per cent, of the programmes 
 in those days. And the usual attention given to a 
 new one can be gathered from the letters and 
 memoirs of many an infuriated author. To-day, 
 with matinees to consider, a fortnight yields not 
 more than ten rehearsal days, ludicrously insufficient 
 (with the laugh on the wrong side of the producer's 
 mouth) for any play, old or new, if the time is to 
 be used for anything like collective study. In 
 stock company days it was the necessity of doing 
 the job in about half the time that brought into 
 being the curious technique of acting (misnamed 
 
 * At the Court Theatre, 1904-1907, it is true that while short 
 runs that is, runs of a length settled beforehand were the rule 
 they were varied in length, and there was never, I think, a weekly 
 change of bill. But it is the one short-run experiment I know of 
 in the West End of London, where there is a krger potential in- 
 take of audience, both mobilized and casual, than anywhere else 
 (except, of course, in New York). And it must be remembered 
 that the evening bills were almost exclusively drawn from the 
 plays of Bernard Shaw, whose settled popularity was exceptional. 
 Even with this, though and an experimental matinee test to help 
 one as well good guessing was not easy. The Birmingham 
 Repertory Theatre, I believe, with its mobilized audience steadily 
 increasing, finds it possible to increase also the settled number of 
 performances of a play. But the more these are increased the 
 heavier does the penalty of miscalculation become. 
 
 265
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 tradition) more suited to dancing the lancers (which, 
 indeed, it much resembled) than to the interpreta- 
 tion of a play. 
 
 The way out There is, it is true, one method by which plays 
 of the new or old can De produced under these condi- 
 
 dijficulty tions. The principal performer will be the prompter. 
 The actor's study of his part will be the getting 
 of a rough idea of the character and deciding what 
 are to be its salient characteristics. The company 
 will walk through the play once or twice, marking 
 in their books where they come on and go off and 
 their whereabouts on the stage at stated times. 
 And that will be all. At the performance they will 
 stand peeping at a door till the prompter from his 
 central box beckons them on. The prompter 
 will read the words sotto voce, they will repeat them 
 loudly after him ; he can signal them if need be 
 to their places, pantomime their business ; and, 
 relieved of all such responsibilities of memory they 
 can fling themselves into expressing the spirit of 
 their parts. If plays must be produced under such 
 conditions this is, perhaps, the best plan. It may 
 be in any case the best. It may be that we make 
 altogether too much fuss and take too much trouble 
 over the job. Can we get all that is worth getting 
 out of dramatic art by leaving it at the level of a 
 living Punch and Judy ? Possibly we can, in which 
 case this book need not have been written. 
 
 It must be remembered, too, by people who 
 wonder why we cannot restore the old stock com- 
 panies to their prosperity that modern plays cannot 
 so easily be stereotyped in casting or staging as 
 could the old.* A return to the first phase of the 
 
 * Though the old plays were stereotyped in their acting it does 
 not follow, however, that they should have been. And a queer 
 consequence followed. The stock companies, composed of necessity 
 266
 
 SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 
 
 " star " system, by which certain eminent per- 
 formers would go visiting with such parts in their 
 heads as Undershaft in " Major Barbara," Anthony 
 in " Strife," John Gabriel Borkman, and Abraham 
 Lincoln, while the resident company crammed the 
 rest of the play into theirs, and themselves as best 
 they could into the parts that remained ; the whole 
 then being subjected to a recognized ritual of pro- 
 duction this is possible, no doubt, but hardly 
 desirable. Better see the plays under such condi- 
 tions, one might say, than not see them at all. 
 But modern plays are not generally remarkable for 
 the bravura passages which were the strength of the 
 old. They accord ill with the unyielding egoism 
 of a star player who treats his part as a personal 
 possession, while the rest move tentatively round 
 him, protesting or apologetic, disguising as best 
 they may their strangerhood. One disinherits a 
 modern play of its privileges of commonwealth at a 
 performance's peril. 
 
 And in what selection of modern parts a "juvenile," 
 or a " heavy lead," or a " first old man " would 
 set out to equip himself in the hope of an engage- 
 ment is almost beyond discovery. 
 
 The short-run theatre is in fact a short-sighted, if Old methods 
 heroically meant, attempt to provide for the new and new 
 drama by the old methods which the new drama 
 
 of actors following " lines " of parts juveniles, heavies, first old 
 men and women, ingenues, soubrettes (there was even a curious 
 creature called a " singing chambermaid ") were, almost equally 
 of necessity, so catered for by playwrights anxious for production. 
 Hence arose a drama with characters drawn, not from life, but 
 from the resources of this Noah's Ark. Carefree, Charles, his 
 friend, Alderman Glutwell, Mrs. Glutwell, Angelina, their daughter, 
 Sophia, her cousin, Maria, her maid, Toby Taproom, an appren- 
 tice. It was a convention, like any other, grown to a tradition. 
 Robertson broke it. I think we cannot seriously mourn its loss. 
 
 267
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 itself rendered obsolete ; an attempt, therefore, 
 logically foredoomed to failure. And if the logic 
 of the situation cannot convince us, it is open to 
 anyone's observation that each step the drama 
 takes towards a finer artistic freedom makes the 
 task of the new stock company for all its goodwill 
 and for all its disguising as repertory more hope- 
 lessly difficult. 
 
 Does this seem a needlessly virulent attack upon 
 workers in a good cause ? A called-for blow on 
 their side, rather; for they cannot bite the hand that 
 feeds them, and it is, of course, the financial feeding 
 that is most often at fault. Of all the stupidities 
 that pervade the theatre financial stupidities are the 
 worst and really the least excusable. In London 
 and New York more money is thrown away in a 
 year in theatrical speculation and extravagance 
 than would suffice to endow half a dozen genuine 
 theatres. That is a truism. A truth, though, 
 that still needs enforcing is that most of this money 
 goes in things quite inessential to plays and their 
 acting : profit rentals, advertisement, " library "* 
 commissions, inordinate taxes, licence fees, water 
 rates. Even as an industry it is neither well treated 
 nor self-respecting.f 
 
 The good But an industry it is, with its practice and ever- 
 
 business man growing precedent ; and a paying industry, or 
 
 and the 
 
 theatre * In English theatrical parlance a " library " is an outside 
 
 booking-office. What a target for scorn in the phrase ! 
 
 f As an instance of its ill-treatment one may quote the conduct 
 of the London Water Board, who, to make up a deficit in their 
 budget, imposed on the theatres rates which they did not even pre- 
 tend were equitable, on the ground that the theatres could afford to 
 pay. The fairness of the present Entertainment Tax may be 
 disputable. But lack of industrial self-respect is evident in the 
 balance-sheets of nine out of every ten theatrical enterprises. 
 Quotation would take us too far. 
 268 
 
 \
 
 SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 
 
 people would not meddle with it. Bring a scheme, 
 then, for the establishment of a genuine theatre 
 before any average body of business men, and by 
 instinct they consider it in the light of the domin- 
 ating industrial conditions, for all that these may 
 be jdemonstrably both the fruit and the root 
 of insensate extravagance. And they cover their 
 ignorance by such commercial platitudes as " The 
 theatre must be economically managed." Excel- 
 lent. But outline to them the genuine economy of 
 a genuine theatre and they stare. ' That needs a 
 great deal of capital. The return will be slow, but 
 will it be certain ? Why not a simpler scheme, 
 a more modest beginning ? " Their minds are by 
 this time havering uneasily from the theatre as a 
 gay speculation to some glorified reminiscence of 
 their own back-drawing-room experience. If it 
 were a factory * they meant to build they would 
 realize easily enough that money must be spent on 
 equipment, on experience even, not to be returnable 
 in a year or so. And the theatre, a higher organism 
 than the factory, needs more liberal consideration, 
 not less. If the enterprise is to be public-spirited 
 then the good business man will opine that while, 
 of course, it must not be expected to pay in any 
 commercial sense (cent, per cent., or total loss, he 
 will mean by that) it should, to justify its existence, 
 be made to " pay its way." But that does not take us 
 very much further, for it is its way that is in question. 
 There are, of course, many very uncommercial ways 
 of paying. It would be inconvenient, perhaps, to 
 make a theatre as free to the public as is a picture 
 gallery or a museum. Theatres are not places 
 (even if galleries are) into which people should be 
 
 * But even in factories nowadays we are told that it pays to 
 consider the human factor. Why ever suppose that it wouldn't ? 
 
 269
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 encouraged to wander idly. But suppose per- 
 formances at twopence, fourpence, and sixpence a 
 head, which, though crowded to the doors, would 
 still stand very thinly on the credit side of a balance- 
 sheet would this justify the existence of a public- 
 spirited enterprise ? Or, again, if we put the value 
 of dramatic art before public entertainment, is it 
 better to perform a good play to a half-filled house 
 than a worse play to an overflowing one, and, if so, 
 why not a better play still to a house quite empty ? 
 Are plays always or ever to be judged by their 
 immediate appeal ? And if the theatre is a public- 
 spirited enterprise what claim has a minority 
 audience to consideration ? 
 
 These questions may be academic and may seem 
 foolish. But it is only by answering them and 
 their kin, and by analyzing his own answers, that 
 the good business man will be brought to a reason- 
 ing, if not reasonable, attitude towards an attempt at 
 the founding of a genuine theatre. And if its 
 promoter does not at this stage push controversy 
 hard he must not grumble later if, when his first 
 streak of luck fails him (and most of these schemes 
 have, at least, a short attack of success a sort of 
 measles), he fails. Though there will follow from 
 this a worse result, at which we may all most 
 legitimately grumble. For from every such failure 
 the whole cause of the theatre suffers. And a pro- 
 moter may rightly argue, as he fights for conditions 
 or against the misunderstanding of his aims, that 
 far more is involved than his personal success or 
 the prosperity of a single enterprise. 
 
 The one thing needful to begin with is that 
 everyone concerned should agree upon what it is 
 they are up to. No one will propose to give art a 
 free hand and a Fortunatus' purse to dip into. 
 270
 
 SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 
 
 Whether they ought to may be a question, though 
 it is a good case to argue that artistic self-sufficiency 
 would, in the long run, do little but harm. And no 
 one, presumably, will suggest that such a theatre's 
 success should be judged merely by its money- 
 making powers. Crowded houses are exhilarating, 
 but the cause of the crowding must be any 
 management's concern. What is wanted is a 
 determinant. 
 
 This can be found, it would seem, in the audience The 
 that essential part even of the artistic completion integrated 
 of a play. But by no means in the haphazard 
 collection of people that we now describe by the 
 term. If the audience is a completing part of the 
 play's performance obviously its quality and its 
 constitution matter. As well, almost, cast a play 
 haphazard as suppose that anyone dropping in can, 
 by virtue of paying half a crown or half a sovereign, 
 carry through his passive part of the performance 
 with credit. There is an art of listening. Five 
 minutes' test will distinguish a good audience from 
 a bad one ; and numbers have nothing to do with 
 it. Now instinctively we write our plays and plan 
 our productions with an eye to a perfect audience. 
 Or, let us say that we should ; for it's obvious that 
 to do a thing less finely than you can do it for fear 
 of misunderstanding is a fault in art. Therefore, 
 not the least of the tasks of any theatre is to develop 
 out of the haphazard, cash-yielding crowd a body of 
 opinion that will be sensitive, appreciative, and 
 critical. And when such an audience has been 
 formed it can be regarded as an integral, if a not 
 too rigidly calculable, part of the theatre's constitu- 
 tion. Certainly a manager must lead his public's 
 opinion, and not look to be able to follow it. He 
 had better, indeed, force the pace at times ; go 
 
 271
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 boldly ahead with but a few to follow him, leaving 
 the laggards to catch up as they can, even at the 
 risk of having to stop and wait, or at the peril of 
 taking a wrong path. It would be possible, of 
 course, so to organize an audience that they could 
 make positive choice of plays and the like ; but 
 inadvisable. The business of a government is to 
 govern, and no manager should let himself be 
 robbed of his initiative : it is the touchstone for all 
 his other qualities. Besides, this audience, the 
 constituency of his appeal, need not be thought of 
 under a single aspect. It will show divisions of 
 taste more or less constant, definitely attributable 
 sometimes to the various sections of the community 
 for which it is the theatre's duty to cater, such as 
 schools, bodies of teachers, and students, or societies 
 interested in drama from one point of view and 
 another. But even as a whole and, perhaps, better 
 as a whole such an integrated public can act as a 
 determinant. One supposes, be it noted, a theatre 
 doing such a quantity and variety of work that a 
 confirmed playgoer may find fairly full satisfaction 
 in his attendance there. The theatre, in fact, by 
 its policy must look to form its audience's taste, but 
 after that need not be ashamed to regard it as a 
 guide. 
 
 And as a determinant such a public should 
 surely content the good business man engaged in 
 an enterprise of public spirit. He will not have 
 genius rampant and irresponsible, with nothing less 
 mighty than the universe to appeal to. He will not 
 expect the easiest entertainment of the greatest 
 number to be his theatre's aim. But upon the basis 
 of an integrated audience he can budget. 
 The need for The budgeting will always be a tiresome busi- 
 a budget ness, and for some time must be a very chanceful 
 272
 
 SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 
 
 one as well. It is a great drawback to the English- 
 speaking theatre that, while its art has been to some 
 small degree fostered, hardly any practical know- 
 ledge of its proper economy exists economy here 
 meaning housekeeping, and not more of a tyranny 
 than a good housekeeper needs to exercise. It has 
 always been so much easier to apply the recognized 
 commercial standards and these again being so 
 hopelessly vitiated by association with the specula- 
 tive theatre that they offended one's every purpose 
 to salt them with altruism ; to say, for instance, to 
 the well-meaning manager : " Go ahead, and you 
 may lose on your classical swings just what you can 
 make on your popular roundabouts." 
 
 But this is an even more vicious method. Why 
 should a self-respecting roundabout do more than 
 support itself? Oh, but if it doesn't the swings 
 are to be starved ; and they will grow more than 
 ever exiguously and forbiddingly classical. Then, 
 as a remedy, are we to make the roundabouts more 
 popular still ? Such a lazy-minded policy leads one 
 deservedly into muddle and loss, and one returns to 
 the brutal directness of commercialism with relief. 
 
 Nor can one save trouble by laying down golden 
 rules. They are to be rattled off by the dozen; 
 all excellent, and not one that cannot be dangerously 
 misinterpreted. It is simple, and true enough to be 
 worth saying, that a theatre, if it is to do public 
 service, should be given the freedom of the city, 
 released from rent, rates, taxes, the cost of light and 
 police and the necessity of advertising. These 
 things the public should be ready, directly or in- 
 directly, to lose if they are to profit by the theatre. 
 It is worth noting that the smaller the scope of a 
 theatre's work and the shorter the time the estimates 
 cover, the greater will be every cost in proportion. 
 
 s 273
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 And it follows that every limitation of necessary 
 equipment is an extravagance, not an economy ; and 
 every expenditure upon temporary needs equally an 
 extravagance. If there is money to burn at first, 
 and you accumulate a large store of scenery and 
 clothes; a little later, their effective appeal to your 
 public having been made, you are left with the 
 obligation to go on using them ; and this will tell 
 probably at the very moment when that back- 
 wash of enthusiasm comes, from which all such 
 enterprises suffer, and when you'll be needing, 
 above all things, to set free inventiveness and fresh 
 ideas. One lays up this sort of treasure only to 
 wish that moth and rust would corrupt it sooner. 
 
 But there is one rule which, if not pure gold, has 
 at least been tried in many fires. Always from the 
 beginning pay the market-rate for everything and 
 everybody, and if by good luck you get anything 
 cheaper, write down the difference in pencil on the 
 debit side of your accounts. For the deadly back- 
 wash of that first wave of enthusiasm sweeps 
 in among workers as well. If it were only the 
 individual that had to keep himself up to the mark ! 
 But the collective courage of a theatre is a very un- 
 controllable thing, and if, at an unexpected and 
 difficult moment, it may be sapped by a loss of 
 energy, which for some reason is no longer to be 
 given for nothing, but for which there is no proper 
 provision of pay, from that moment, perhaps, dis- 
 integration will begin, unobserved. And most likely 
 it will not be observed until too late to check it. 
 Vice versa, sell nothing under the market-rate ; 
 or, if you do, see that the buyer suitably acknow- 
 ledges the bonus, and that somebody pays the full 
 price and knows what they are paying for. No 
 complimentary seats should be allowed unless the 
 274 

 
 SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 
 
 cost of each compliment is written plainly some- 
 where. No privileges to patrons and guarantors 
 and the like. If they want special seats for first 
 performances with their monograms worked on the 
 back, let them be paid for, in oneway or another, 
 at tl^e right rate ; and a little extra for the monogram 
 would not come amiss. More enterprises have been 
 ruined for the petty convenience of their avowed 
 supporters than all the hard words of their true 
 critics could stimulate to success. 
 
 But confront a manager with his theatre and its The pyramid 
 problems in the concrete; and now he will be wise to fP oitc y 
 build the pyramid of his policy from the bottom up, 
 ideals at the top, the base of expedients tested and 
 tried. He must know first what he wants to do ; 
 he should be allowed time and some money for sheer 
 experiment ; but, above all, he should ask patience 
 from his supporters and authorities while he as- 
 sembles his resources stone by stone. He will be 
 wise if he makes neither attempt nor promise to 
 bring the theatre to normal running conditions in 
 less than three years. He should see that every 
 experience is made illustrative. Let the theatre be 
 set its various tasks. He can size up the gross cost 
 of each with some accuracy and, at a guess, the 
 likely return. Prize plays and their like should 
 have special funds set apart for them. A play which 
 is being studied that term in the city's schools must 
 certainly be performed in the theatre. Very well, 
 put the gross cost on one side. Whether the 
 children see it free or at sixpence a head, and how 
 the account is balanced (balanced it must be), is a 
 matter of convenience. But the incidence must be 
 made clear to everyone concerned. 
 
 The theatre's main task is, of course, to stand as 
 drama's representative with its audience. Now, a 
 
 275
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 A Shake- library to which we have compared our repertory of 
 spearean plays does not buy one book here and there by a 
 parent ests recO g n i ze d author : it has their works on its shelves. 
 The theatre moves more slowly and under obvious 
 disabilities, but the parallel should hold. The 
 whole canon of Shakespeare, for instance, should be 
 brought by degrees into the repertory, certainly of 
 any purely English theatre. And if parts of it 
 cannot hold a place there on their merits we may 
 debit some of that loss, at least, to the literary 
 fetichism by which a frank understanding of the 
 playwright has been obscured. But the gain from 
 the rest when it accrues will probably bid fair to 
 surprise those good people who accept the national 
 poet as they accept other national monuments 
 St. Paul's, the Abbey, the Column in Trafalgar 
 Square, shrines to be passed unnoticed on three 
 hundred and sixty-four days in the year, to be 
 livened by bunting and liturgy upon patriotic 
 occasions. Nelson, the man of deeds, and his 
 peers in the great city crypt or under the transepts 
 at Westminster pass into the shadows of history, 
 but Shakespeare, the man of mere words, does not. 
 Statueless, unrecorded, what they were and did and 
 the meaning of it would be lost in our barren ingrati- 
 tude. But it is utterly right that we should know 
 next to nothing of Shakespeare himself, and the mild 
 curse of wasted time is upon him who tries to re- 
 articulate those bones. And it is entirely appropriate 
 that a silly posed statue, surrounded by music- 
 halls, should be the only attempt of the sort to 
 memorialize his fame. On the day that the nation 
 he has honoured thinks to satisfy its conscience by 
 decreeing some magnificent mass of marble to his 
 name we may fear, indeed, that his gift to them is 
 finally buried beneath it. We still hardly guess at 
 276
 
 SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 
 
 the gift's value. How can we till we accept it ? 
 Promoters of Shakespeare theatres dutifully exploit 
 their possibilities. Certainly it is our duty to 
 provide a home for the plays. Most certainly 
 that alone will be his fitting memorial. But wait 
 till these good memorialists have turned their backs 
 upon the opening ceremony with a sigh of relief 
 and a human resolve after all the squabbles and 
 intrigues which wearily accompany the collective 
 doing of such good deeds never to go near the 
 place again. That will be Shakespeare's chance, 
 his moment, which will last as long as the England 
 lasts which his light illumined. It will not be for 
 all time. His meridian may have passed already. 
 Perhaps we have delayed too long ; history does not 
 bear out our cheery optimism of its being never too 
 late to do anything. Already a tithe of his phrases, 
 the little things that made him laugh, many turns 
 of his thought, are strange to us. But that is 
 no great matter. His spirit flashed upon the sky 
 reflections of an age which was big with the 
 future of our race. Is it still in the fulfilling ? 
 How long before the travaillers feel within them- 
 selves the joys and burdens that the prophet's 
 soul foreknows ? Poets, it is certain, come to their 
 own at no accountable time. But, seeing that the 
 history of these three hundred years shows the 
 common people that Shakespeare sprang from and 
 despised more than a little, moving doubtfully and 
 painfully slipshod, stupid, helpless, heroic, pas- 
 sionate always for something better than they know, 
 and better than they are towards the heritage of 
 their being that his genius seized and showed, is 
 it not very likely that these English may find now, 
 at this expansive moment of their career, as never 
 before they could have found, in the pageant of 
 
 277
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 his work a picture, vivid and informing, of their 
 master-meaning to the world ? 
 
 Theorizing is vain : one can but bring the matter 
 to the proof and, even so, not beyond argument. 
 But let us be clear that upon the last three genera- 
 tions at least the power of Shakespeare the play- 
 wright has never been proved. Needless to say 
 that reading his plays in school is not the way to 
 do it, nor even is taking the children to see, as a 
 treat now and then, a little selection of them acted. 
 Only when they are there to be picked out as a man 
 picks up popular tunes hearing the lot, whistling 
 those that appeal to him time and again, letting slip 
 those that don't shall we know what real hold they 
 have. A tradition of their acting, generally accepted 
 in its essentials,* must first be recreated. For if it 
 
 * Not in the detail of costume or scenery, but in the broad method 
 of playing and staging, yes. Our so-called Shakespearean traditions 
 of to-day, it must be remembered, date, the most venerable of them, 
 from no earlier than the eighteenth century, an age of some great 
 actors, of much well-polished playing, but, if we may judge by 
 its treatment of the texts, of a complete misunderstanding of the 
 Elizabethan drama. It was generally held, then, that all tragic 
 acting should be statuesque witness the sensation caused by the 
 revolutionary irruptions of Garrick and (later) of Kean. The 
 imperfect artificial lighting which superseded the daylight of the 
 early seventeenth-century stage may have had something to do with 
 the growth of this " classic" traditicn. For the actor the leading 
 actor especially valuing the effect of his facial expression, naturally 
 tried to keep himself anchored " in the focus " as it was called, 
 where his audience could best see him. The influence of the 
 French theatre counted for something, too. But from whatever 
 cause the eighteenth-century players of Shakespeare did slow down 
 the verse and over-ballast the action, and bring to the whole business 
 a general heaviness of method from which we have not yet broken 
 free. We still suffer beneath the meaningless oppression of the 
 bass Claudius and contralto Gertrude, brass-bound effigies, a ton- 
 weight on our chests. Mrs. Siddons, for all her genius and with 
 much authority, so distorted Lady Macbeth from the subtle 
 278
 
 SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 
 
 is our inbred selves that are to answer to their call 
 familiarity with the sight and the sound of them 
 must be unquestioned, almost unconscious. Ac- 
 ceptance of tradition will leave room, moreover, for 
 an ampler critical pleasure in the plays' interpreta- 
 tion. Shakespeare a national heritage ! The patri- 
 mony seems divided to-day between schoolmasters, 
 writers who find that his phrases flow easily 
 too easily down their pens, and orators upon 
 ornamental occasions. To the rest of us among 
 whom we may number some thirty-five millions of 
 uncultured rich and poor he is a name, a memory 
 of lessons, an occasional treat to the play, or a peg 
 for a good resolution " I really will read 'As You 
 Like It' to the children!" But in all peoples, and 
 not least in the English, there is unmined wealth 
 of passion and humour and love of beauty. It may 
 lie so near the surface as to be peeping towards 
 expression, and a scratching will show it. And 
 perhaps this very jolly playwright divest him of 
 the trappings in which a grudging idolatry has 
 choked him, give him simply what he asks of us, 
 the freedom of the theatre it may be that even 
 across the space of three centuries he can do more 
 than a little to help set our spirit free. The dumb, 
 the deaf, the blind no census numbers them, 
 or notes the unhappiness and danger that must lie 
 in any nation so inarticulate and so crippled. 
 
 feminine enchantress of Shakespeare's fancy (not less an enchantress 
 but more because it was her husband she held in her toils) into the 
 clarion-noted matron that weakling shadows of her great presence 
 haunt us still. Though the true tradition be lost, this is obviously 
 a false one, and the problem is how to recreate a valid succession 
 from the internal evidence of the plays themselves, with the help, 
 perhaps, of such glimpses of the psychology of both Elizabethan 
 actors and audience as we can gain. Here is, as we know, matter 
 for much dispute, but for very good fun. 
 
 279
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 The theatre's No rhetorical urging will be needed, perhaps, to 
 duty towards enforce upon any public-spirited theatre the all- 
 the drama obvious duty of representing Shakespeare to its 
 audience. But more is implied. The theatre's 
 attitude towards its great dramatist should be its 
 attitude towards all drama. It should have truck 
 with none that cannot hope to be admitted how- 
 ever distantly into this view. The business of any 
 true theatre is, indeed (the simile serves yet once 
 again), to build up a library of living drama. Now 
 the limitations forced upon it with the cost and com- 
 plexity of its machinery, not felt in the library of 
 books, must make it more chary rather than less of 
 being cumbered with experimental stuff. This 
 is no condemnation to unrelenting solemnity. If a 
 manager cannot make bold to say " That tragedy 
 will be forgotten to-morrow, this farce will live for a 
 century," he is not fit for his post. But it does de- 
 mand some scheme of selection which, however 
 else it may be evolved, can certainly not be dictated 
 by the opportunism of a vague wish to please any- 
 body and everybody. Even the selected audience 
 whose judgment may be respected will only form 
 itself in response to a programme. There is no 
 such thing as public taste. The democratic world 
 of culture is, but for some few strongholds of pur- 
 pose and hope, lost in the anarchy of pleasure- 
 seeking. Haphazard armies of fashion march 
 hither and thither under irresponsible and un- 
 known leaders. What should the theatre do here ? 
 It can only exist as a stronghold; self-respecting, 
 even self-sufficient, single-minded. Seek out, hat 
 in hand, bowing and scraping on its behalf, that 
 personified monster the Public, and what does one 
 get ? Halfpence ; and, more deservedly, kicks. Coax 
 the monster if you think you can into a reason- 
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 SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 
 
 able and articulate mood, and ask not what he 
 wants, for the answer is " Find out," and many have 
 been the lives wasted at that task but ask " How 
 should this theatre of yours stand for the drama ? " 
 and with the utmost reasonableness he will reply 
 " Why ask me ? " But, politely ignoring him, use 
 the theatre (it will be noted how the phrase, though 
 twisted a little, flows all too easily down the pen) 
 according to the drama's own honour and dignity, 
 and he, unmastered a little, will soon find his use 
 in it, if pleasure and use are to be found. 
 
 A director can find tasks enough. There is the 
 Shakespeare canon, there is eighteenth-century 
 comedy, there is now not one school, but many, 
 of English-spoken drama. There are the French 
 and Spanish, Italian, German, Scandinavian schools, 
 all worth their place. One could plan out with ease 
 a three years' programme leaving spaces for plays 
 still to be written which should have a consistent 
 purpose. It would not be an especially educational 
 programme, in the sense that plays would be done 
 chronologically, or according to any other inappro- 
 priately logical method. Nor yet should it be ar- 
 ranged as an elaborate exhibition of drama; not as 
 anything so soulless. Its purpose should be the 
 articulation of a body of plays and their acting so 
 ordered and balanced as to make of this theatre a 
 living thing. The peculiar property of the dramatic 
 art is that, by virtue of its human constituents, their 
 show among themselves, and our close touch with 
 them, it can stand as a symbol of that larger life of 
 sympathy given and granted, that extension of 
 personal power, the membership one with another, 
 which is civilization's only sure achievement up 
 to now. First has come realization of oneself; 
 then follows a far and for long, indeed, a feeble 
 
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 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 cry realization of one's neighbour : this art's 
 contribution to the second effort, being her childlike 
 hints that neighbour and self are very much alike, 
 especially neighbour. 
 
 The theatre's Therefore, as both epitome and mirror of our 
 duty towards social life, a theatre's first task is to realize a self, 
 itself compacted, as a man's mind is, of heritage and 
 
 circumstance. Then, without fail, a spirit will in- 
 form it. And so, with full title, it may take its 
 stand as a living unit of that social world of man's 
 creation which is, as we begin to know, the group- 
 ing of groups and powers as much as of indi- 
 viduals, the complex following on the simple its 
 full task being just to make friends. The problem 
 of this enlargement of the laws of individual asso- 
 ciation to a comprehension of groups and powers 
 is admittedly a pressing one in these times. Why 
 are mobs blackguardly ? Why do men deteriorate 
 in crowds ? Must an assemblage be less moral 
 than the individuals that compose it ? Surely the 
 art that offers to elucidate a little these confusions 
 cannot be a negligible one. 
 
 A few sample And the practical road to this ideal goal should 
 as surely please the good business man if he wishes 
 to travel in that direction at all. For he may first 
 know where he is going, and at any point he can 
 stop. If the theatre is a living entity, not a machine, 
 there need be no iron rules for the construction of 
 its programme. Give a sample of Euripides 
 Murray, a cycle of Ibsen, Gilbert's two early 
 farces, Love for Love, The Critic, Le Malade 
 Imaginaire, and say a couple more from Moliere, 
 a selection of Shaw, of Galsworthy, of Pinero, a 
 Hankin comedy, Masefield's The Faithful and 
 The Campden Wonder, one or two of the starkest 
 of Barrie's plays, a de Musset, a Hauptmann, a 
 Terence translated by Bridges, a Mystery play, 
 282 
 
 \
 
 SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 
 
 something by Herne, two or three by the younger 
 American school, a Browning, something by Davies 
 or Milne, by Brieux, Echagaray, Scribe, Sardou, 
 Giacosa, Benevente or Sierra, Tchekov (if you dare), 
 Holberg, d'Annunzio, and pick another half-dozen 
 English names from the good round dozen you can 
 find, not to mention Shakespeare for one leaves 
 out the mention of bread in a diet. If the giving 
 is done with care, and there's careful watching of 
 the gift's taking or rejection, you will be able to 
 tell within a little as you go along just how firmly 
 and how usefully your friendships are forming. 
 You will not be a snob presumably, of either the 
 direct or inverted variety ; you will not bow the 
 knee to literary rank or money-making popularity. 
 You will do no play unless you like it ; and you will 
 never, never call a play a failure unless you feel that 
 it was badly done. If no one comes to see it 
 if, when you've waited patiently enough, still no 
 one comes you may say simply to the thousand 
 people that a theatre must call No One, " I am sorry 
 we cannot present you this excellent play again, 
 unless you choose to pay five times the present 
 price of your seats." No reason they shouldn't; 
 unless, perhaps, for their sake and this play's, 
 other members of your audience if you have only 
 one building, so many actors, and as there are only 
 so many days in the week are being deprived of 
 other good plays that they may wish to see. Just 
 as between self-respect and regard for one's friends, 
 so must these claims be matched with duty to the 
 drama's self. For if that stays unfulfilled, your 
 friends, come they or no to particular plays this 
 may seem their horrid unreasonableness, but they 
 have better instinct than reason will not in the end 
 give a dump for you or your theatre. If it is that 
 you cannot afford to fulfil your duty there is no 
 
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 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 harm in saying so. But your friends must be 
 frankly told, and the good business man be left quite 
 clear where he and his money are failing you. 
 Drama and The problem of social life is the problem of the 
 democracy balance of obligations ; and for the theatre, an 
 epitome of social life itself, and at its truest a radiat- 
 ing centre of almost personal imaginative life, this 
 is the key problem. The obligations to an audience 
 are undoubted. One would like to see every 
 theatre that takes its task comprehensively a popular 
 theatre, crowded with all sorts and conditions of 
 people : for its public should be comprehensive, too. 
 The drama has always tended to be a democratic 
 art ; and an audience class conscious to the point 
 of self-consciousness is inevitably a bad audience. 
 At its best it is apt to be a -feeble audience in its 
 passive politeness, or in its noisy ebullience, ac- 
 cording to the custom of its particular class. Old 
 theatrical hands will tell us to take it as a sure sign 
 of success when, at the end of a second or third act, 
 strangers all over the theatre turn and talk to each 
 other like old acquaintances. The touch of art 
 has succeeded in making that little assembled 
 world kin. 
 
 In the looser bonds of our larger social world no 
 one seriously stands for universal equality unless he 
 may make reservations to his taste. Before God, 
 before the law, in the eye of the bus-conductor 
 will the doctrine that all men are equal satisfactorily 
 expatiate much further ? But we have founded 
 much on the phrase, and it is worth while to make 
 truth of it when one can. And some practical truth 
 we may find, perhaps if we prefer observation to 
 theory not in sweeping condemnation of all class 
 distinctions, but by discovering where, in a so-called 
 state of equality, class distinctions do actually lie. It 
 is quite possible, for instance, to set up an equality 
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 SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 
 
 between the most diverse seeming people in the 
 understanding and appreciation of a work of art. 
 Is this such an unimportant matter as it perhaps 
 appears ? It is a passing fellowship, so we need 
 not trouble it by measurement and analysis, or 
 even disturb our generous conviction of the genuine- 
 ness of each particular occasion. But of the cumu- 
 lative effect of such agreements upon the dis- 
 positions of the partakers there can be no doubt, 
 and it may even be the greater for not being easily 
 calculable. A man will not actually say, perhaps, " I 
 am nearer kin to that unknown who likes the same 
 music and books and plays than I am to my cousin 
 who cares for none of them." But neither will he 
 even trouble to think that blood is a bond which will 
 hold him, if its call comes, when material interests 
 the effective class interests loosen quickly enough. 
 Culture is a bond, knit by the common response to 
 the thousand small voices with which the world of 
 created thought daily calls to us. And therefore 
 the contribution that this art of the theatre in par- 
 ticular can make to the comity of society is a very 
 real one, insisting, as in its nature it does, there and 
 then upon the common response, the mutual under- 
 standing. If it is true that the happiness generated 
 in an audience of all sorts and conditions of people, 
 who are at one only for this hour or two in their 
 liking of a play, but who are made one, we may 
 almost say, for that time by the play's virtue, is 
 fuller and richer than any that will spring in an 
 assembly whose bonds are but a commonly inbred 
 prejudice towards life and the world, then here is 
 indeed a service done to democracy. Must we find 
 solvents for the arbitrary and ineffectual divisions 
 of our changing society ? Do we not then the more 
 need signs lifted up, that will draw men together in 
 the many fellowships of a life enriched by many 
 
 285
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 interests, lest a material age, jealous of distinction, 
 coin us all into a current drabness and dullness 
 tokens by the million of humanity's depreciation ? 
 The danger And for its own sake, quite certainly, the theatre 
 of the clique must k ee p f ree from the prejudices of any artistic 
 class. Whence it gets, to that only can it give; this 
 is art's paradox. We go to the theatre, people say, 
 to be amused, to be taken out of ourselves. No 
 doubt ; but into what ? There is no world but this 
 to write plays about. We can but inhabit it a 
 little more fully in our imagination. We are too 
 modest, though. It is not out of ourselves the 
 dramatist must needs take us, but rather a little 
 further in. There are no possessions of romance 
 and beauty which are not our own, and the secret 
 of appreciating art is first to believe this, and then, 
 perhaps, to have a little patience. For one thing, 
 if we are to enjoy to the full our imaginative 
 inheritance, we need to be not quite so stupidly 
 tired at the end of a dull day's work. There is, 
 indeed, one social distinction which the good theatre 
 must rely upon : it can only appeal to a leisured 
 The need for class a class, that is to say, neither of people busily 
 a leisured being idle nor of work-weary folk reluctantly set 
 free. Ours has been called a quantitative civiliza- 
 tion ; it is true that we are apt to think in quantities 
 both of work done and of holiday time. There 
 is sound sense, no doubt, in a man's claim amidst 
 the regimenting not of industry only, but (for 
 apparently we cannot think upon two planes at 
 once) of life, to have no more said to him than 
 " Here are four clear hours to do as you like with." 
 But leisure, if we may dogmatize, implies not so 
 much an opportunity as a condition and a quality 
 of mind. The ideally leisured man is one relaxing 
 from keen, exhausting maybe, but, before all, well- 
 balanced use of his faculties. To the measure of 
 286
 
 SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 
 
 its misuse in work his nature, in the receptivity of 
 repose, will be found blunted or deformed. It is 
 not apparently either quantity or kind of work 
 that affects the matter, except as they first affect 
 the man. Minds may harden more disastrously 
 than hands, and a lawyer's imagination atrophy for 
 the very reason that an unskilled labourer's is 
 stunted. But the mass of the world's work to-day, 
 it may be said, is too highly specialised to call for the 
 exercise of well-balanced faculties. So much the 
 worse then for the world's work and for its workers. 
 That, at least, is the retort which art, with its sole 
 obligation to man's complete humanity, must make. 
 And if we set the theatre to interpret life, how can 
 it hope to serve men who neither love life itself nor 
 care to live it ? How can art in the end be any better 
 than the reality of which it is the shadow ? It is its 
 shadow, but then it is its illumination, too. The 
 paradox helps us a little, is a reminder that we move 
 always upon lines of seeming contradiction oddly 
 interlacing spirals, as they are, of effect and cause. 
 
 We may turn from a play because the life it paints 
 for us is too familiar and too despised. Can the 
 alchemy of art transmute it to some value for us ? 
 To none greater, in the end, no doubt, than our 
 own metal's worth allows. But in that mysterious 
 process through the lively symbolism of a play's 
 acting, the actors' surrender to the dramatist's idea, 
 the triple sympathy then set up we do gain a 
 vicarious experience that may almost stand for per- 
 sonal illumination. And art's teaching, heaven 
 knows, is not more fallible than life's. 
 
 We get at last, no doubt, and not at very long 
 last either, the government, the church, the theatre 
 we deserve. But always at some point in the spiral's 
 turn, by our goodwill that only theatre or church 
 or government may manage to do a little of the 
 
 287
 
 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE 
 
 deserving for us. Effect, in fact, does sometimes 
 seem to come before its cause. It may be ultimately 
 logically true that art must await its full appreciation 
 till every man works in his kind and to some degree, 
 even as the artist does. If art interprets life, indeed, 
 this must be true ; or art or life is in the wrong. 
 For this perfection, though, of give and take, while 
 art may wait, the artist cannot. He, with his own 
 life and work in contradiction, still must go ahead 
 and do his broken best. 
 
 The ideal theatre, playhouse and school, fount 
 of a city's expression, sounding-board of its emotion 
 and its thought, is neither to be built with hands 
 nor planned on paper. It will be so intimate a 
 part of the people's life they or their teachers will 
 have studied in the school ; the playhouse will be as 
 much their own as is their church or their club 
 that no one will mark the boundaries of its influence. 
 Press, pulpit, politics there are powers these lack 
 that the theatre can well wield ; there are things they 
 fail in now because, perhaps, the theatre does not 
 take its share in the doing. Neither topically, nor 
 in terms of direct reason nor of pure faith, but by 
 the subtler way of art the drama works, to evolve 
 from the sentient mass a finer mind, responding 
 to the fine fellow-mind of the poet, expressed in 
 terms of a common experience through the medium 
 of human beings, whose art has that deeper signifi- 
 cance that we find in the faces and voices of friends 
 with whom we have come through the gates of 
 understanding. This is the ideal, and towards it 
 the paths are many.
 
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