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THE
EXEMPLARY THEATRE
BOOKS BY
HARLEY GRANVILLE -BARKER
The Marrying of Ann Leetb
The Voysey Inheritance
Waste
The Madras House
Anatol
Souls on Fifth
Three Short Plays
The Exemplary Theatre
THE
EXEMPLARY
THEATRE
By
HARLEY GRANVILLE - BARKER
t^ON-REFEFC
gWVAD;Q3S
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1922
Copyright, 1923.
By Harlet Granville-Barker
All rights reserved
Published May, 1922
Pbikted ih the United States of Amebica
1d31
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 pardon-
able.
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 pre-
cise; 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 committee to draw up a scheme.
From this point my memory grows clearer. The com-
mittee consisted of Gilbert Murray, A. C. Bradley,
Spenser Wilkinson, William Archer, Hamilton Fyfe,
and — longo intervallo — my humble self. It met
several times at Spenser Wilkinson's house and dis-
cussed 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.
VI PREFACE
But one morning William Archer arrived at my
rooms in tlie Adelphi and delivered himself some-
what to this effect:
"We must get something on paper. 'V^^lat 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 considerable
mass of detail which we named "A Scheme and Es-
timates 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 benev-
olence 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 in classical con-
PREFACE Vll
certs with the prices at twopence, fourpence, and six-
pence. I fancy, too, that candidates for baronetcies
and the hke were not quite so numerous then; besides,
£350,000 much overtopped 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 pertinent 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 had n'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 pro-
mote public confidence than a disinterestedness 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 discussing
in New York a not dissimilar project, there blazed
up in London — public meetings, press paragraphs,
and all — a movement to establish a national theatre
as a tercentenary monument to Shakespeare. And
VIU PREFACE
we returned to find the committee, to which we were
added, disposed to adopt our scheme as at least a
prehminary text-book. It had, I think, by this time
been published, was no longer anonymous, but re-
mained 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 connnent 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 crjang over the spilt years. So, personally,
I have turned for comfort upon the subject during
these last three or four, to a reconsideration 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 according
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 set up some-
thing that did not truly or fully represent our national
dramatic genius. We were stirred, for one thing, to
an emulation of the TheAlre Frangais, we were inclined
to borrow useful items from the plans of the many
good German and Scandinavian theatres. No harm
PREFACE IX
in that, once we have achieved an indivickiality of our
own. But have we — in dramatic matters more
important far than organization and machinery? We
talk of the renaissance of our theatre; dating it, accord-
ing to taste, from 1870, 1890, 1900 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 nec-
essarily 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 represent with
perfect fitness the genius of the French nation itself —
reasonable, precise, rounded neatly and completely
from cause to effect.
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
X PREFACE
not its salient quality — that thrust out for its inter-
preters to seize — racial expressiveness, and does
not this necessarily dictate metliod and, finally, form?
And now consider one or two points lq 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 nineteenth they borrowed from the French. They
assimilated 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 prod-
uct. But when this does, if with difiiculty, 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 nineteenth
century we borrow, indeed we often steal quite shame-
lessly, from the French: so shamelessly that our
sense of "mine and thine" is gone, and we find our-
selves, in our own despite, violently trying to convert
the verA' work of Shakespeare and of Sheridan into
the likeness of the well-made play. Our modern
actors, bred to the borrowed drama, acquiesce. To
the Elizabethan actor, though, Shakespeare'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 — more to the point —
Pinero and Galsworthy would have upset the Globe
Theatre stage-manager completely, is it not true
tluit while other English arts can show — for all
incidental breakings — characteristic descent, the art
of the theatre to-dav is most cliaracteristicallv im-
English? The content of our plays may be native,
but the form, as a rule, will be arbitrarj'^ and foreign,
and will show little regard, or none, for the character
PREFACE XI
of tlie interpretation the play is to receive. What
form does the EngHsh genius for self-expression most
readily take? What dramatist starts by asking him-
self 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 passionate, 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 drama-
tist 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 Shakes-
peare 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 Es-
timates has developed into this book — it may well
be that just as Shakespeare made of drama something
which outspanned all its then acknowledged powers,
so we, gathering up tradition with understanding
and measuring our power by our need, might make
in our turn of the theatre something 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 setting, it may be, inappro-
priate limits to its destiny.
September IdU H. G-B.
!
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 Enghsh 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 responsibility in accept-
ing the gift — There is no such thing as a theatre
in England — The larger idea of drama pp. 1-35
Chapter II: The Educational Basis
Book learning and the educational claims of acting
— The professional theatre 's contribution — Pub-
lic manners — The tradition of our speech — The
American language — The influences of climate
and of recent immigration — The drama as a mi-
crocosm of society — The self-realization of a child
— The teaching of psychology — Democracy, the
newspapers, and the whole art of fiction — Quali-
fications and temptations of the journaUst — The
pubUc 's self-defence — The artistic synthesis —
The popular attitude towards interpretative art —
Theatre v. novel — The good audience — The edu-
cational use of drama — The Exemplary Theatre
— The break in the acting tradition — Robertson-
Bancroft-Pinero — The Ibsen challenge — The
discredited art of acting — The need for a new vir-
tuosity — The critics — The wrong sort of school
— The army of women — The unprofessional stu-
dent pp. 36-95
XIV CONTENTS
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
allowed — The by-paths of the social " settlement "
and the "community" theatre — The picked re-
cruits — Playwriting classes — Stage decoration
— The co-operative 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 ex-
ample — The hstening part — The placing of a char-
acter in the scheme of the play — The apparent
development of plot from the characters and scenes
themselves — Mass effect — Where student and in-
terpreter part company — The misuse of the clas-
sics — The would-be actor admitted to the playhouse
at last — Experimental work for students in their
last year — The Umits of a play 's use to the seminar
— Subsidiary school work; lectures, etc. pp. 96-143
Chapter IV: 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
afi"airs; its constitution; its work — The council as
the conscience of the management — Where public
blame should fall — The theatre 's director and his
autocr.'uy — The choice of plays — The dangers of
institutionalism — The need for a play-reader of
unusual importance — The difliicuUics of experi-
menting in play production — The play-reader's
qualifications and powers — A third voice needed
CONTENTS XV
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 tra-
dition — The prompters themselves — The work-
shop — 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 interpreters and audi-
ence — The workshop and collaboration — 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. 144-206
Chapter 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 Midsummer Night's Dream" —
How physical action brings study to a standstill
— The mysterious process by which the actor
identifies himseff 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 — Produc-
tions must be born and not made — The two cate-
gories of a play 's action : the conscious action —
Unconscious or subconscious action — The Scylla
and Charybdis of automatism and self-conscious-
ness — Pure conventionalism — The limits of the
personal appeal — The mystery yet again — The
actor "lets himself go" — The danger of autom-
atism again — Acting the art of sympathy — The
childhood of the art — The demands of its ad-
olescence pp. 207-237
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 Httle better — Why many gallant efforts at re-
XVI CONTENTS
form have failed — The cautious capitaHst —
Practical diflficulties for "practical" managements
— The way out of the difficulty — Old methods
and new drama — The good business man and the
theatre — The integrated audience — The need
for a budget — The pyramid of policy — A Shakes-
pearean parenthesis — The theatre 's duty towards
the drama — The theatre 's duty towards itseK —
A few sample plays — Drama and democracy —
The danger of the clique — The need for a leisured
class pp. 238-270
THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 appropri-
ate form of a dialogue between a man of the theatre
and a minister of education, and is an attempt to
reconcile the general and particular points of view.
To begin such a book with a chapter of dialogue
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 educa-
tional uses of the dramatic method. Let both parties,
then, put their present accomplislunent in it to a pre-
liminary test.
The Man of the Theatre — as is only fair — frankly
exposes his bias. Why pretend in a book of polemic
to be disinterested .f^ It is bad enough that the tech-
nical questions involved will prevent the lay reader,
half the time, estimating the honesty of the statements.
The Minister of Education replies coolly, judicially.
But now consider. Was the admission of bias a dis-
2 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
guised appeal for 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 — if not 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 confidence in his
case by opening with this demonstration. 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 sustaining
our attack. We may take pride even in showing alien
adversaries that we know its weak spots, naturally,
better than ever they can. If it sustains our attacks
it will certainly be invulnerable to theirs. And if, as
THE author's prejudices 3
it happens, we do demolish it; why, to do so, we must
have formed a better opinion and a stronger behef.
Such is the nature of the dramatic sense that we shall
be glad of this rather than sorry. And the victory will
be our own either way.
The drama's methods are the commonest in the
world: they are the methods of everyday conversa-
tion. But they are worth study: the
more that, becoming suddenly aware we -Dramatists
have used them unknowingly for years, we actors all
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 perform-
ance 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. Tech-
nical argument apart, it is a plea for truth-telling
(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 success-
fully 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 nat-
urally makes high claims for his own profession.
The Man oj the Theatre. I don't apologize . . .
4 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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
The' • • •
, . 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
mmd being accurate.'^" he said. ''There's a medical
profession, a legal profession. 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 Roj'al
Academy's frow^ls. Actors, I agree, are absurdly sen-
sitive. I suppose that even this generation of them is
not quite free from the struggle to be considered gentle-
men. It is mostly their relations, though, country
clergymen and the like, that distressfully take up the
cudgels. x\nd 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. Old of it, yes. But by following the calling
and practising the art of the theatre there is n't, for
the great majority, much money to be 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 disinterested than the average actor
who has settled down to the life. But they aye trade
vicLinis, if you like.
M. of E. And is that your first com])laint?
M. of T. I shan't press it on their behalf. The
bored and barren sympathy which the victim inspires is
THE author's prejudices 5
not at all what I'm after. I want to interest you in
the theatre.
M. of E. As . . . what?
M. of T. As social sen^ice.
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 bureaucracy
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 bureau-
cracy 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.? Slatre'
M. of T. Fundamentally, I believe, that appeal to
the theatre exists by appealing to the mob. the mob
if. of E. To the public.
M. of T. No, no ... if you mean to analyse my
phrases I must pick my words. The public connotes
something, if not organized, at least a little stable,
does n't it.? My first complaint is of the mob appeal,
the mob standard of success, and the evergrowing con-
fusion of purpose that results. In London, and very
notably in New York, it is n'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, would n't
offend you, would it?
6 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
M. of T. On the contrary.
M. of E. Well, then, as to its proper method of
carrymg 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 bureau-
cracy. It takes many generations to train competent
officials, you know. Heaven knows that so far we
have n 't enough to go round. What 's wrong with the
dear old discredited law of supply and demand to regu-
late 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. Therefore
degradation is easier . . .
M. of E. I protest now . . . that word is youi's.
You're horribly self-conscious. I should never have
dreamed of using it.
M. of T. You protest, may I say, too readily. You
would n't use it because you'd never dream of admit-
ting 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.
M. of E. I don't think the theatre does rank with
the fine arts * . . . no. The drama . . .
* 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
i)etter l)e upset as soon as possible. The arguments upon which
he founded it, though interesting, are vitiated, it seems to me, by
his cousiclcration of the constituents of the art as the art itself.
And here the drafting of the Academy's charter is also to blame.
THE author's prejudices 7
M. of T. Oh, please don't make that — forgive
me — that silly distinction. Drama has no claim to
existence apart from the theatre that it ghould
should be framed for. As well praise a drama be
yacht for being built to stay safely in accounted
harbour as exalt a play because it is more ^"^ o^ t^®
fitted for the study than the stage. ^^^^ Arts?
M. of E. But there's a finer distinction. Has any
theatre you can name ever lived up to the best oppor-
tunities 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 aftects
him, and the poorer the play the greater his 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 mo-
ment, 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
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 quaUfying 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, however, expressly stating that
it is so, he was exempt, unfortunately, from the necessity of
making the comparison.
8 THE EXEMPL.\RY THEATRE
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
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 ad-
visedly remember . . . not so very many people to
keep the master-machinery going for our benefit. Cer-
tainly, therefore, emotional or intellectual extrava-
gance, undirected and meaningless, 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.
M. of E. It's anarchical, perhaps. But, I'm not
afraid of a little anarchy, of leaving a little of the prim-
itive social mud for men to relax themselves in.
M. of T. Out of which they may make their mud-
pies of drama. 5^
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 nuich reason . . .
in Ihcm. I see my way for the adult over architecture,
painting, scuIi)Lure, even over music. These are, com-
THE AUTHOR S PREJUDICES 9
pared 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 undoubt-
edly 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 excusing them . . . but from the
complexity of its organization 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-
fluity of life. Society makes certain careless and in-
coherent 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 poi-
sonous 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 anything. I'm fairly convinced that you would
artistically 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
10 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
what basis of reasonableness you set out to reform
a successful industry. It is under the control of busi-
ness men who are not concerned . . . why should they
be? . . . with its social functions. They are only in-
directly interested in its artistic development. But
they are very particularly 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 possi-
ble crowd in the shortest possible time.''
M. of E. But listen now. What you are after is
the exalting of dramatic art. Good. How will its
mere recognition (blessed political Meso-
The potamia of a word) by public authority
difficulty of effect that?
ranMng the j^j ^j y' g^ careful. Once you admit
ineaire as, ..,„ •■•t ^
a social ^^® prmciple oi recognition 1 may push
service 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, is n't our standard of musical achieve-
ment higher to-day because of the recognition of the
art and the endowment of musical training during
the last fifty years?
M. of E. I might question that. Post hoc is n'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 classi-
cal concerts . . . intellectual snobbery, the most aggra-
vating variety.
M. of T. Come now, people can only learn to like
music by lislcning to it. I must say that for an edu-
cationist you're distressingly impatient. Movements
THE author's prejudices 11
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 com-
pHcated 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 credulity of its hearers?
That sort of mystery-mongering 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
psychological necessity for the development of the
histrionic instinct in children. I enjoy a good play,
well acted; so do they. Don't spoil it for us. I admit
a certain absolute educative value in music. I have n'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 would n't be con-
tent 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 did n't teach some form of drama
in schools you could n't teach anything at all . . . or
rather, I'll return, by your leave, to that later. But
I '11 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 gymnastics, 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 diflSculty after another. You know
12 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
that, too. I see you dissembling a malicious grin, and
heightening its effect thereby, like the incorrigible man
of the theatre that j^ou are. That's the worst of art.
It gets round you under false pretences. Give me solid
science and I know w^here 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 something 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. of E. Well , . . ?
M. of T. You must go further. This is my point.
Half measures are w^hat the charlatan 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.ofT. Yes.
M. of E. And not as literature.'* Inaction?
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,
some value in the thing, incalculable but sufficient,
my difficulties at once begin. It's a co-
^."® operative art, and very unequally co-oper-
\ ^y ° ative in its practice; very hard, therefore,
drama in *^ make use of for individual culture,
education 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
has n't that facility for individual showing-off come
near being tlie danmalion of musical education?
M. of E. ]\Iaybe. In my own opinion, yes.
3/. of T. Yet how can we properly study any art
but })y practising it ? For the nuisician there's nothing,
I suppose, like a little hard gruelling in an orchestra.
THE author's prejudices 13
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! To begin with, how would you pre-
vent the distraction of it from wrecking both the class
before and the class after .^^
M. of T. Oh, that's the trouble, is it?
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 emotion-
alism 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 w^as 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 have n'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
14 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 contentions.
You tell me that the theatre does not . . . 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 uncul-
tured emotions played upon night after night by an
intellectually seductive, emotionally cloying, sexually
provocative and altogether irresponsible entertainment.
Do you approve of that.'^ Is that a socially sound busi-
ness.'^ 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 lliem all emotions get transmuted
into the one that Nature most requires them, at their
time of life, to cultivate. And I should say their
imagiiuilion's digestion is of iron . . . especially the
THE AUTHOR S PREJUDICES 15
young female's. So you move me very little by
"sexually provocative" and "emotionally cloying."
Certainly I prefer that they should be
stirred to very outbursts of laughter and ^ + h
tears, and for the sake of those sanita- influence
rily emotional effects I am quite ready to
overlook the simplicity and stupidity of the cause.
But when you say "intellectually seductive" you do
touch me nearly, for it is these young people's brains
that get green sickness. Unintelligence I can forgive.
But false intelligence is the devil.
M. of T. Can't they digest that too, and throw off
the effects .f^
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 aver-
age adult it is a passing distraction, 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 does n'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 would n'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 does n't
prompt it. You 'd admit that of all the other fine arts,
I think. But because in the theatre you have one so
16 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
simple, so democratic, so capable, in current phrase, of
"direct action" upon the sensibilities of the crowd,
you want to forge it 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
become, 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 con-
trol 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 constructive, but it constructs
from the elements, as life itself does. Refuse it right
functioning, and in its neglect and degradation it does
become 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. Whatever 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-
minded. Therefore, when you make this
J~® art, and try to make me, the half-con-
Til6d.Lr6 8.S • •■* o 1 Till
cat's-paw scious victnn oi your schemes, 1 tell you
you '11 do more harm to the dranui tlian
good to the theatre containing it, and consequently
THE author's prejudices 17
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.
31. 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 does n'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, is n'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 comparison with the use you can make
of it to forward your social and political ideas.
AI. of T. But why, in heaven's name, should a man
write three sentences but to express and forward an
idea? And since he's a social and political animal,
what other ideas should you generally expect 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 performing 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.
M. of E. Whose sermons, being out of place, are
dull . . . which art never has a right to be.
18 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 absorb 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 par-
sons, civil servants, and soldiers could claim no recog-
nition, no protection for their callings, except on such
a ground . . . !
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 organizations is the
theatre?
M. of E. Yes, if you like.
M. of T. Now I must trouble you for a moment
with some economic history. Twenty-five years or so
back the English theatre began to face . . . belatedly,
as is its nature . . . reorganization in the terms of
THE author's prejudices 19
modern industry. Organically the theatre was an in-
dustry; and so that had to come, whether one Hked
it or not. Most of the important indi-
viduals concerned did not like it, and The
would not face it, until quite recently economics
they found themselves at last over- „„j^,„
111 • •!' ^ 1 modern
whelmed, protestmg and bewailmg, by the English
accomplished fact. It was left to others not theatre
so intunately 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 "reform-
ers," 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 mar-
ket ... a good vantage. But straightway the indi-
viduals most nearly concerned . . . individualists, in-
deed, who saw "their" theatre as a private estate "situ-
ate" 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 >nou'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 tfie course of the fight .'^ And
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! They should
have known that the reformers' cause must finally be
20 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
theirs. But no, they would go cockily on until the
giant Financial Interest, once under way, now swal-
lows 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 busi-
ness 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. Was n't it almost inevitable that men bring-
ing 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 aW?
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 sinij)le, democratic art of the
theatre . . . is to be divorced from the things of every-
day 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 associnlion again as a servant, not as an equal.
Precious lucky the lliealre nrght think ilself that men
and women with a lively sense of what was im})ortant
to the world at the moment should take the trouble
to make some artistic use of it. And it was the business
THE author's prejudices 21
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 ex-
cept with certain self-satisfied people, who were not
only too lazy or indifi'erent to use the theatre for the
expression of any ideas themselves, 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 social-
ization 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 discuss.
Why is it my work.? That's what you have to prove.
M. of T. I'm out to. That was merely my answ^er
in passing to your gibe at the "reformers," men who
were not of the theatre by training or altogether per-
haps at heart, but who saw in it something more than
an amusement or an easy method of making money,
and who therefore, when they 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 beginning an ill efi'ect on their
artistry. It is, you may argue, just as bad to be think-
ing 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 cal-
culating the money it will earn. But if these men re-
main even now too self-consciously the preachers and
politicians of the theatre, unable to lose themselves in
the happiness of their work, once again, is n't it largely
because the burden of your neglect has been so heavy
22 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
upon them? So that, even from your point of view,
would n't you have been wdser to take pubHc responsi-
bility 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 EHzabethan plays. Still, the
mischief might n'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, 3'ou might have
had to trace a whole social revolution back to — say —
a production of King Lear. It is really a terrible prob-
lem, this of getting people to keep their noses to the
grindstone and mind their otvti 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 suppress 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.
M. of T. I'm ready to run the risk. Give me for
the theatre the conscience of a public
Authority's service ... I return vou compliment for
to^^the^°'' snub . . . and I'll trust its own innate
thea^e ^^^^ ^^ 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
THE author's prejudices 23
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 re-
formers, does n't it.*^ . . . I should welcome its present
attachment to some larger idea, to drag it abreast of
the times.
31. 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 help-
ing hand.'^
M. of T. Confound your condescension! I'll be
offering to help you in a minute. It is dignified, and
it is historically right, that an art, bankrupt of con-
sequence, 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 w^eight of accepted ceremony.
M. of E. Am I to take the appeal to history seri-
ously?
M. of T. Well, like better men, for bigger ends,
I twist the picture to my purpose. But one's view of
a winding street must depend — must n'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
24 THE EXEMPL.\RY THEATRE
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 neglect my his-
tory when the practical present-day questions come to
be answered ... as I fear you would indeed, however
much you respected it. And you need n't grant me the
Greeks . . , and I'll skip the Romans.
M.ofE. Thank vou.
iV. of T. But how did the drama struggle to co-
herent 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 was n't mere snobbishness, you know : they were
formally a part of her household.
M. of E. But they played to the groundlings.
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 supported by the Privy Purse.
M. of E. But that would hardly suit your reformer.
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 fjict that
they had their place. How long would they have sur-
vived interference without it.? Of course, I don't want
them thrust back in it now. What suited that time
does n't suit this. But notice, please, that the theatre
* Did contemporary critics complain of it? England has had
great politieal performers since to whom she has given more dubious
reception. But one finds an instance of the histrionic teniperanient
coming to its own again in a note of Sir John Skcl ton's upon meet-
ing Disraeh in 18(i7: "They say. and say truly enough, 'What
an aelor the man is'; and yet the ultimate impression is of absolute
sincerity and unreserve." — Vcjl. IV of the Monvpeny-Bucklc
"Life."
THE author's prejudices 25
is but one among many crafts that have waked up
lately to the further implications 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
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 ... 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 conscientiously
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 experi-
ments 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. Play-
wrights collogue together; the training of actors is in
hand; there's an actors' strike in America; in England
the Actors' Association, after years of uncomfortable
26 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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, promising
well, doing nicely now, or gasping for breath. It's
all very interesting, very hopeful, rather exasperating.
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 com-
mercialism you protest against, and then . . .
M. of T. But no mere discrediting of commercialism
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 fight-
ing 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 mmiber 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, respect-
able suburb; the provincial mobs . . .you'll find a dozen
(lin'crent ones in every cathedral town; the mob imui-
merable of hard-headed, practical people; the clerical
mob, the educational mob, the artistic mob, the medi-
cal mob, llie sj)orliiig mob? Tlie theatre's business
to-day is to talk flattering nonsense to these good
THE author's prejudices 27
people. It may be complimentary or abusive non-
sense almost indifferently if only it will familiarly echo
them, so that they in turn can effortlessly echo it, till
voice and echo, indistinguishable from each other, de-
teriorate 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 admit
that the theatre is only, or chiefly, an industry, or that
the people who make a living by it are the
only people concerned. I want to fasten <jj.aina's
responsibility upon ijou. industrial
M. of E. Well, I'm still waiting to difficulty is
undergo the operation. that an art
M. of T. It now begins. Where any shall not be
sort of art is concerned we are apt to talk, ^° ^° " J
are n't we, without knowing perhaps quite what we
mean, of men and women having a "gift" for the thing.?
An absolute 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 un-
impaired. 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 is n't it a rather startling
fact ... at least it should surely startle the commer-
cialists if they would stop to consider it . . . that by
law one cannot perpetuate property in imaginative
28 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
work.* Think of the copyright laws, of the hard fight
there was even for a term of Hfetinie and fifty years.
What's the other side to that question, if not some
conviction that the power to write plays, books, and
poems comes as a gift to the writer, and so must in
honour be given again?
M.oJE. Well?
M. of T. What I first want to fix upon you is a
due responsibility in accepting the gift. Admit the
principle.
M. of E. I am thinking, with some
ffift to amusement, of the practical consequence
society ^^ ^^^ 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 consigned by some ^Ministry of Fine
Arts either to a public museum or a public bon-fire?
M. of T. Ah, these were the things that the nine-
teenth century really liked to call works of art, con-
veniently concrete things, "portable property." And
please note that this was what gave the artist . . .
pre-eminently when dead, but the living exemplars
could not then be denied it . . . the dignity of his cap-
ital A; these comfortable fortunes that could be made
by mancEuvring 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.
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.
* Actors and siiiRors, it may be said, who naturally cannot per-
petnaUr property wliicli resides in tlieinselves hevoiid their own life-
time, "create" nothing? in any case. One could dispute upon this
point too. But the main argument would not be atlected.
-THE author's prejudices 29
M. of T. But take book copyrights. They fall in
due time into public domain: printing is (compara-
tively) cheap, our benefits in literature due to survive
will distribute themselves somehow. That interpreted
the public attitude, did n'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 appar-
ently ever going to be . . . ! The other day a pub-
lisher 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 liter-
ature 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. of E. No, I '11 admit that practically it could n'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.^^
M. of E. I'll admit . . . you'll smile at the banality
. . . that something ought to be done for Shakespeare.
M. of T. A Shakespeare theatre.'
30
THE EXEMPLARY 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.
M. 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 realh^ do read them.
M. of T. About as many people can get at Shakes-
peare's plays by reading them as can appreciate
Beethoven's Symphonies by fingering them
Society's out on the piano. However, your admis-
biUtytn' ^^°"' ^^"^^ though it be, is enough. For
accepting ^^^^ admit you should care for Shakes-
the gift peare'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 finding the hundred-and-first. Provide 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 })eside
the point. Compel us artists to make, or to soil our-
selves to those who can make, of our art a conmiercial
macliine; or to conipele for c;ipi(al and profit among
ourselves and with all the otlier profit-making indus-
tries, and, of course, it's a machine forgetting we pro-
THE author's prejudices 31
duce, and the gospel of getting will dominate us. Be-
sides 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 com-
mon problem is to devise machinery for their conver-
sion 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 un-
kindly 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 difficidty, 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 some-
thing must really be done to save it from this damna-
tion 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 replanning, ex-
perim.ent 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
32 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 assure
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. Paint-
ing, 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 '11
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 himian
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,
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.ofT. Don't be alarmed. You won't be "saved"
in a hurry. That'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 unregcnerately just abreast of
it now, you think?
M. of T. I'll answer your irony seriously. I don't
THE author's prejudices 33
know. There is n't a theatre to measure you by.
There's a mass of material to make one of: plays,
mostly on bookshelves, actors with a xhere is
nightly habit of going through the mo- no such
tions of acting. There are even the mak- thing as a
ings of an audience, if one may judge by theatre in
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 entertainment
that you now walk tolerantly into and contemptuously
out of.
M. of E. Not if the entertainment's so bettered that
tolerance turns into enthusiasm .^^
M.ofT. 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, had n'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?
M. of T. What larger idea?
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 unpopular
. . . 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 oratory. 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 did n't.
M. of T. But you don't counter me. You only show
34 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 applica-
tion 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
The larger ^^^ j ^^^^^ ^,^ protested. But I have one
drama key-belief by which I condition my adher-
ence to any stated reform. Does it tend
to produce a greater number of more fully and freely
developed human beings, 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 entertainment
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
THE author's prejudices 35
would find, also, that acting is a very subtle and sensi-
tive art which demands trained appreciation. Plays
may not always get the acting they deserve, but audi-
ences mostly do. And, finally, you would find that in
learning how to enjoy the theatre you had learned . . .
But I '11 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 con-
vinced.
M. of T. Don't say that. We none of us are . . .
The Man of the Theatre and the Minister of Educa-
tion now part . . . but only for the time being, it is
hoped.
Chapter II
The Educational Basis
THE 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 mod-
ern civilization advanced, largely conquer the older
methods. But the victory extending be-
Book yond the justice of the cause, there have
learning lately been notable attempts at readjust-
ed t^ 1 ii^^nt. And if one must write "still dom-
claims of inated" it is because the rescue of the
acting 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 strang-
ling of even the finest teaching talent in the grip of
enormous classes, the unavoidable drawback 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 imderstanding 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
som(^limes impaliently say — usurping in a crowded
curriculum. Drawing and music and dancing — good
reasons enough can be given for their study- If the
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 37
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 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 practising speech and movement and
acquiring self-confidence, its advocates can hardly com-
plain. For, in England at least, the art, as a whole,
is neither studied, practised, nor appreciated even by
its professional devotees with any sustained intelligence.
As a calling the art is hampered by the conditions of
a trade, and a very badly organized trade at that. Gal-
lant attempts have certainly been made,
of late years, to improve the quality '^^^ .
of the product. With great pubHc spirit f^ga-^^gig^
Sir Herbert Tree founded a dramatic contribution
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 profes-
sional stage. Now the modern professional 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 delicately 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 meas-
ure up to the critical discernment of its present public,
which is, in its turn — and therefore remains — rather
low.
38 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
So it is not to the professional theatre that the edu-
cationaHst can be expected to turn for advice. "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 uncramp-
ing 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, never-
theless, with all the insistent force of narrow enthu-
siasm. Self-expression, for instance, has become a
catchword; development 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 of ten 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.
The study of manners is admittedly a very necessary
one. Manners are the lubricant of the democratic
machinery', whether thev be the ordinary
Public 1 £ . ' 1 • u
_ good manners ot strangers and neign-
manners , i i i i i
bours to eacli other wlien no law compels
them to show respect, or whelher the more com-
plex i)rol)l('ni is involved of expressing — and, as an
exasperated minority, sometimes suppressing — our
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 39
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 expres-
sive at all, admit the existence of something more than
formality, and we commonly find it in the individual
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 consideration their foimdation is brittle indeed.
Just so with public manners. Self-expression pro-
vides 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 seven-
teen, and which can't better thereafter begin, as a 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 5e//-expres-
sion will cultivate a brutality of egotism, emotional and
spiritual. And that this may be only the more effec-
tively masked by a nervous, fragile exterior any mis-
tress of a girls' school can tell us.
Not that one need deny either the ab- t,. . ,...
, . , J. ,1 "^ , , The tradition
solute value oi the externals, or that as of our speech
an offset to five or six generations of
mental cramming any sort of expressional fling
which can be granted to young people is better
40 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
than none. When, for instance, our language is the
commonest verbal currencj^ in the world, what shame
to us that it should not be expressively used! Since
it has unsurpassed traditions of beauty and eloquence,
what a scandal if here, in its home, we are unworthy
of them! 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 Shakespeare. 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 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
* Unless some would evidence Johnsonese. But that never, one
hopes, became colloquial. Sheridan's dialogue is delightful, the musi-
cal 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-
century tradition . . . Y 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 Verncy correspondence. In a hundred years how much
colour and warmth has vanished!
t Some hint of this is to be found in the rapid alteration of
Cockney. Compare Sam Wcller and A]b(>rt Chevalier; the differ-
ence is almost a physiological one. Tongue, breath, teeth, and
lips, that is to say. must conspire quite differently together to
produce two such dialects.
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 41
rhetoric of the Eh'zabethan drama, its feasibility for
the actors, its popularity with the audience? Can one
see a packed crowd of groundlings standing — be it
remembered — through an uncut 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 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 un-
affected 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 psycholog-
ical causes contributory 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 compara-
ble and cognate to the one we must make to appre-
ciate a method of music three centuries old.
But for a model of contemporary speech where 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 meaning and emotion? Nor need we
rule out for this use the artistic incidents of such
42 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
streaks of dialect — the Mayf air or Whitechapel variety
— as a play may contain. An awful warning is some-
times 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 in-
eptitude 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 Eng-
^ . land, what about America's mountainous
language task? Think of the problem of preserv-
ing a language in its integrity 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 average
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
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 43
fairly certain, and it is sufficient for our purpose to
point out that its possible remoulding rests upon other
considerations than those of literature, and of the pres-
ent 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 mump-
simus jargon, reflected, how horribly, in ceremonial
documents and speeches launched from time to time
at the public's head.
But the immigrant, though he brings as a rule little
literary culture of his own,* only partly abides by the
issue of this battle. For he has brought,
let us remember, much else that goes to The
the making of a spoken language: physical influences
^'fv ,1 • 'iii'rT ' i^t or climate
dmerences to begm with, dmerences m trie ^^^ ^^
emphasis of emotion, long inherited con- recent
structional habits of thought. And mixed immigration
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 doubt-
less not within a century or so of anything like a solu-
tion. One merely notes meanwhile, as compensations
for the present inter-racial disturbance, that when
* 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.
44 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
Americans do take the trouble to speak well — and
feeling this as but one among many threats to the
precious "Anglo-Saxon" dominance, the old stock
among them often do take a great deal of trouble —
they achieve a purer, firmer English than can commonly
be heard anywhere else; except possibly in Ireland,
where a sweetness in place of finnness is added to the
carefully acquired purity.* And a second compensa-
tion 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-sing-
ing?" Our own seventeenth-century Puritans were
reproached with making just such sounds. But for
fear of treading too debatable ground we might rather
say — enlarging our supposition as to the present
difiBculties of tackling Shakespearean English — bring
back to America some of the quality lost to England
from the time that our owti 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 difi'eronce in social — more properly in economic
* I have found this among Donegal peasants.
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 45
— 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 com-
mercialism are beginning to flavour our English na-
tional 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 competitive conditions have called for
this weapon, and how, with our educationalists caught
unprepared, any sort of expressional fling to counter-
act the constrictive influence of the hard grinding of
facts, and yet more facts, into a few generations of
youthful skulls — far more deadening work than the
gerund-grmding 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 .f* And are we after
that alone.'*
Those of us who are aesthetically inclined admit,
and should even in opposition insist upon, the impor-
tance 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 occa-
sions could express themselves with force and distinc-
tion. 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 countrj^'s ambassador.
But we must finally recognize that Handsome does
46 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
only as Handsome is. And we have serious cause of
quarrel with those for whom self-expression is only
self-assertion; with no question of the sort
The drama Qf ggjf Yot surely this, even sesthetically,
^^.^ is iust what does most matter. And
microcosm « , • i r-n i • n ^i
of society lurtner, as m the Church, so m all other
society, we being members one of another,
expression of the single self is inadequate. 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 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
constituents 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 veri-
table human medium — not of the self-realization of
the individual, but of society itself. A play is a pic-
tured struggle and reconciliation of human wills and
ideas; internecine, with destiny or with circumstance.
The struggle must be there, and either the reconcili-
ation or the tragedy of its failure. And it is generally
in the development of character, by clash and by
mutual adjustment, that the determinant to the strug-
gle is found. What livelier microcosm of human society,
therefore, can there be than an acted play.'* Apolog-
ically one could push the likeness further. To bring a
play to its acting is to discover the following simple
law of its completed well-being. If each character in
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 47
it, even the smallest, is not developed to its fullest
capacity the production will be impoverished beyond
any hope of salvation by brilliant individual perform-
ances. And yet if every actor — the most or the
least important — does not play his part with a pri-
mary loyalty to the whole play and a strict consider-
ation for his fellows artistic failure is as inevitable.
Interpretation of the parable is needless. To the ser-
vice 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.
But it may be instructive first to probe for the be-
ginning of the simply self-expressive power. Watch a
child seeking it. Before he can express
himself he has actually, one may say, to j-gaUzation
create the conscious self that he would ^j ^ ^^uid
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 him-
self. 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 refinement, from out of this crude amalgam of
his imagination's experience the conscious self is formed.
And the games go on till a supervening self-conscious-
ness 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, in-
deed, 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
48 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
it off, perhaps. But this is apparently the primary
and practical way by which a child establishes connec-
tion with the outer, developed world. It stands for
him as a medium of interpretation, this bound-up col-
lection of characters simple and 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 him-
self, 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 differ-
ence between borrowing spiritual qualities from one's
ancestors, as one borrows 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 adoles-
cent? As we have seen, not merely to develop himself
as an individual, but, concurrently now, to adapt him-
self as a member of society. And into what, by a paral-
lel 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-
expression 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 EDUCATIONAL BASIS 49
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 adoles-
cent 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 ensure 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.
How is psychology taught nowadays .^^ The subject
is admitted, apparently, under one guise or another,
and at some remove, into up-to-date cur-
ricula. One hears of laboratories — dread ^^®
word! — containing instruments by which eac ng o
the sense of taste, smell, hearing (in-
cluding, one trusts, the sense of humour, which
should surely occasionally abound among the victims
of this spiritual vivisection) can be meticulously meas-
ured. 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 de-
mand for what one must dare to call the common
sense of psychology, are to depend upon the degree
of understanding of these frigid complexities that can
be gained by the casual student, then the joke has an-
other aspect and becomes, indeed, a poor one. As well
regulate one's daily life by a text-book of algebraic for-
mulae. And small wonder if hard-headed authorities
call out "Away with such nonsense"; though a smaller
wonder, alas, if they cling to it just because it all does
sound so scientific, and is so very diflBcult to under-
stand. But does not the essence of such psychology
as we average human beings need dwell more accessibly
50 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
in a good play or novel than in any amount of parroted
repetition (for that, half the time, is what it comes to)
of scientific terminology? Would not the scientists
therefore be wise to consider what use can be made of
the interpretative arts as the channel for whatever
practical teaching they think can be found upon their
researches? One hesitates, of course, to suggest them
as aid 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 impor-
tant 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 sjTnbol 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 inde-
cency to cajole it from them then the system is right-
eously 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
Democracy, in everyday matters may not at first
the news- appear. But, however we limit our un-
th^ wh r^ derstanding of democracy to its being
art of government merely by the consent of the
fiction governed, we yet do find ourselves mak-
ing pretty constantly all sorts of would-be
knowledgeable decisions, though we lack the concrete
knowledge that is needed to make them, and always
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 51
must. Read through a week's newspapers and note the
things that are being done — if one is a British sub-
ject, 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 cre-
ated, the responsibility will return upon us. For this
we prepare ourselves by currently approving and con-
demning. When we cease to do either, or when we con-
tinue 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 occurrence. 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 here.
They would prefer that a newspaper should present
the uncoloured facts alone. That sounds excellent. It
seems to betoken unbending integrity. But how pro-
cure 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 comment; the
cause of her death — should it matter — may always
52 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
be a point of opinion. To say that there is a boiler-
makers' strike in Northumberland or a rising amongst
the Mahsuds sounds informative: but is it? The aver-
age man asks for explanation, and into that bias inev-
itably creeps. A factual education, which would enable
one to cope explanatorily and opinionatively with the
happenings of the British Empire, would involve some-
thing very like learning the Encyclopaedia Britannica
by heart, would be about as practicable and about as
educative.
If then we are not to believe all we are told and yet
have only what we are told to rely on, is there a way
out of the dilemma .f' This same news-
Qualifica- paper, perhaps, does, though somewhat
tions and confusedly, point us to it. For the modern
fTh ^ ^°°^ newspaper interprets its news. Confused
journalist ^^^ inappropriate the method as now
practised undoubtedly is; for who, reading
with an innocent mind an account of any matter
"by our special correspondent," is to say where the
plain tale of facts ends and their interpretation 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 mediinn were properly dissected and honestly
used falsity need not invalidate it. There is a science
of plain statement; but interpretation and persuasion
are arts, and no intrusion of the one method on the
other should ever be coimtenanced. Narrative will
necessarily thread and rethread the border line. The
skill of it will lie in never travelling over either ter-
ritory upon false pretences. Now it should be quite
feasi})le — and it is the obvious duty of a newsi)aper — to
dilierentiate sluirply between its use of the three forms.
And it should be (juite 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
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 53
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 defeat 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 circumstances.
The method combines too many attractions for writer
and reader both, and apart from attractiveness it is
in many cases the only practicable way of conveying
news. It exemplifies indeed, in another aspect, the
democratic principle of representation. "Our corre-
spondent" at Washington or Tokio, "our special cor-
respondent" 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
when bare statement is the only effective thing, times
when sheer advocacy based on accepted fact is all that
is needed, and these paths are at least plain. But the
knowledge which sifts truth from untruth, the imagi-
nation which can vivify without falsifying a narrative,
the tact which can weave happening, impression, and
opinion without confusion, the ability, moreover, to
evolve with some swiftness from the process a readable
piece of copy — such are the qualities currently de-
manded of the responsible journalist to-day. Equally
useless to expect that he will cultivate them without
our critical assistance. W^e 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
54 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 w^orst aspect need only cultivate 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 instru-
ment of superhuman 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 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.
How is this faculty of discernment to be educated
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
self-defence ^ ''"<'• ^^"' ^*'^' '^^^ average man that the
river Volga falls inlo the Black Sea.
He may, upon general grounds, be slightly annoyed
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 55
with you later when he finds out that it does n't,
rather more so if you've led him to make a particular
fool of himself on the point. But he does n'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 appro-
priate 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 an-
other 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 con-
cerned — especially your character. And, finally, if his
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 formula), but in
the strength of his own innermost conviction of it.
This is the only basis on which, in a matter touch-
ing him closelj^ he will dare proceed to action.* This
truth is not accuracy, but something fuller if less pre-
cise. Let us remark that to reach this conviction a
man goes through all the essential processes of con-
structing 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 follow, of course, that men, taking action
* We are always asking "Can you convince me?" "I know
nothing of the facts, of course, but the man himself does n't convince
me" is a frequent phrase. "Tliat story does n't carry conviction"
says the magistrate . . . which generally implies that it will.
56 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 unsanctioned 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
artistic discovery that these processes of thought
synthesis ^^^ feeling, alike in their genuineness
and in their tendency to take refuge in
formulae, 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 emotionally as physi-
cally) or of scope (self-precipiency 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 say-
ing that their formidse 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 individu-
ality. 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 bereavement that is told
them.
But, granted the wish to tell a tale honestly, does
genuineness of feeling promote accuracy of observation
to begin witli? Not of ilself; but inferentially yes,
more often tlian 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
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 57
easily be broken minute by minute for the sake of a
conscious manipulation of facts. Here, however, the
question of education assumes importance. For the
third step in perception is the discovery that, apart
from their subject, the processes of thought and feeling
by which men achieve conviction 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 working 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. It will not
be a scientific test, of course; questions of science
should not be brought within the scope of such a
method. But we need not complain of its subjection
to human fallibility, as it is to the scientifically incal-
culable stuff of humanity that the method is applied.
We must take it for what we are worth. Instruments
of an indiscriminating and soulless accuracy we can-
not 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 is 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 wuth mimic cir-
cumstances, they will not be of necessity less actual to
us than any others outside our experience. For his
characters to carry conviction he must first have con-
vinced himself of the truth of them, which will range
between the extent of his vision and the limits of his
58 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
expressional power. We may hold that under con-
ditions 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 cannot play
us false against our will. The medium 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 prac-
tised 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 mech-
anism of intercourse which belongs to modern life has
tended to increase its sway. One of the great problems
of democratic-imperial government is tlie bringing
"home" to the uninstructed mind of strange fact and
distant folk. The lively, sim7)le, immemorial means of
personal story telling cannot l)e neglected. Why, how
the even simpler art of ])iclure-niaking — now that the
cinema has given it fresh attraction — is being pressed
into the service of such education; and by quite serious
jx'ople, too. Things, it is true, are brought within the
scope of these easier methods that never should be.
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 59
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 measurable
matters towards the contests of which our still incal-
culable hvmianity is itself the field this will be the
game to be played. Therefore we may as well learn to
play it intelligently.
To the mass of people this power and The
opportunity is recognizable enough in such popular
a directly interpretative art as story-writ- . , .
ing, if one may judge by the fascinated terpretative
credulous respect they show — mingled, art
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! Nonsense, I knew his father," has its roots
in the wonder at an almost supernatural achieve-
ment. So many of us carry the weight of that
uncultured self-consciousness which is afl^iiction rather
than gift. This can account, if nothing else will, for the
morbid attraction and repulsion which the theatre exer-
cises. 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 appro-
priated to its use. The form has obvious convenience
for leisure moments; * it makes, as a rule, little demand
upon critical attention, calls for little pre-knowledge
* Train journeys, morning and evening, and the better lighting
of railway carriages, are probably responsible for two thirds of the
circulation of "fiction," whetlier 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.
60 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 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. Fiction does not so often raise it to the point of
emulation, 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 anyone
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 phys-
ically 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 be-
yond 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
unsure, 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 individual 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, fur-
ther, of tlie occasions — we name tliem to our shame —
when, called on for emotion and imable 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
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 61
to many a false step. For a life whose emotions are so
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 arti-
ficial stimulus becomes the unworthiest thing of all,
and the resulting emptiness of virtue, hollowly resound-
ing, 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 enjoyment goes too, for appreci-
ation is only then beginning. 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 interpretation, 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 educational 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
half of it, or throw it aside; you feel under no obli-
62 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
gations 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 studying
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.
There would be no need to urge the case as against
the novel if it did not, by force of circumstances, so
easily hold the field, and if the theatre were
^^ea re ^^^ ^^ ^j^^ whole one vast missed opportunity.
novel Compare the two arts tc-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 " f resh-and-f resh " 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 of trade. Now the
(jualily 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
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS
for whom, reading being a comparative novelty, any
reading passes muster. Therefore the average quahty
of the output has — let us not say fallen, but certainly
tended to adjust itself to the conditions that make for
industrial 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 stimu-
lant: an art which has private reading — almost in-
variably — as the basis of its appreciation is the least
likely to be. Reading and writing, it must be remem-
bered, 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 amal-
gam of sense and brain, varyingly 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 complain 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 latent
in solitary and silent enjoyment of the narrative form.
We are conscious of this danger as it affects our con-
sideration 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.
64 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
practical and other, may, however, have roused hun
from this attractive delusion. We, with our book-learn-
ing 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 boyhood, are more in train to a state of con-
viction 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 conunon use of printing, and the ephemeral
character of most things printed, do inevitably breed
away in those in control their sense of artistic respon-
sibility, 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 advan-
tages 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 temptation 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 accepted by him and
his readers the double bulwark may sufficiently brace
him. But when 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 hyper-
trophied and vices (we must be tender to our own
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 65
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 unimpressed 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 im-
position 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 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
* 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 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.
66 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
from a cultural standpoint. And just as a religion sus-
tained 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 obscurantism. Appetite is
spoiled by silent indulgence. One grows too timid to
put oneself to the test of expression and obstinate in
the degree of one's tacit inexperience.
Wherein, now, can the drama better the
?.^^° novel as an imaginative stimulant.'* To
begin with, it is, willy-nilly, a social art in
a sense that the novel cannot 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 therefore capable of development into a self-
respecting organism. 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 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 to-
gether haphazard. But imagine a panel of from ten
to twenty thousand people from which the great major-
ity 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 company
of a llicatre, they would not develop a corporate spirit?
Admit this possibility and the tlicatre's pre-eminence
among the social arts is admitted also. Music might
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 67
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 ex-
perience. 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 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 intro-
duction of the third factor, the play, finds compen-
sation, surely, and more, in the added interest, the
richer complexity of emotion now made possible. The
spectator 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 criticises the matter of the play, typifies, too, not
inaptly the sentient citizen of a more sympathetic,
maybe, but a more detachedly knowledgeable age.
* See Murray's "Rise of the Greek Epic."
68 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
And drama holds the disciphne 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 com-
pleting 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 agree-
ment must for each occasion be complete, though its
extent will be neither constant nor very definable. The
simpler phases of the understanding between actors and
audience, as exemplified in language and gesture, are
so implicit as connnonly to escape notice.* But this
relation is capable of a high degree of development.
How do we acquire that imconscious 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 ex-
tremest boredom. But in the relation 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 appre-
* But let an Englisliniun watch a play in Sicily. lie may or
may not nnderstand the sixjken language, but he will at once be
consci(}Us how the meaning of gesture is passing him by, plain
though it be to his native neighbours.
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 69
ciation 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 disinterestedness — actors and
audience being related to each other only by their
interest in the play — is the more informing. And it
is upon the possibilities 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-expres-
sion are admitted; and there is a case to be made — not
a bad one — for the purely educational use of its liter-
ature. For some study and practice in the construction
of plays and the close-knitting of their dialogue is, per-
haps, as useful a discipline in the shaping of thoughts
and their putting upon paper as "composition," Latin
or Greek verse, or precis writing.
But, leaving all this, let us see how the "larger col-
laboration" — as we may call it — of audience with
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 drama
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 convention-
70 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
alized, by the assumption and interpretation of char-
acter, diversified and enriched 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 conducted 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 constricted 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 questions 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, haunting thus disembodied the
dry mind of the solitary scholar!
Not that the study need aim, with the usual expedi-
tion, at a performance of the play. That would at
once involve us in the penalty under which the profes-
sional 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 involved, and his concern will be to exploit
the play's virtues, especially the more obvious ones,
and to ignore or to cover its weaknesses. He will feel,
too, tliat he must add from his own personal resources
whatever it seems to lack, and in the process, like a
nilliless restorer of a building, will often cut into and
disfigure the fabric. This is why a play may often be
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 71
heard in fuller integrity shouted through whole-heart-
edly and unself-consciously by a band of school children
than panoplied in the skilfullest acting. The profes-
sional 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 abne-
gates 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 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 it-
self most elaborately. Its medium is in one sense the
simplest possible. Our recipe for the study or per-
formance of a play might begin: Take the requisite
number of ordinary human beings — . But for its
full development it requires nothing less than the com-
plex organization of a theatre. Indeed, if for no other
reason than that as evidence of worth we must have
instances of perfection (or as near as the human me-
dium may aspire to) , and that precept without example
will never convince us, drama must be studied con-
cretely; 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 component 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 de-
tachment from the present uses of drama, must yet
centre in a theatre — an exemplary theatre, we may
call it.
And in what, more precisely, must this exemplary
theatre differ from theatres as we now know them.^
72 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
A 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,
theatre Following this narrow path of reform we
might still hope to better plays, production
and entertainment, all three, even beyond recognition;
to sustain and increase the drama's life very greatly^
But if what w^e have said about the wider uses of
dramatic art is sound, then to do this and no more
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 disseminated 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, how-
ever, 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 argiunent. In any
given institution a balance could only be struck, cer-
tainly by experiment, in the end probably by circum-
stance. 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 vnh'dily of our main conception of one which
would complclcly and comprehensively exemplify dra-
matic art. And if we also imagine it in terms of a stark
perfection, which, if attained, might burst the bonds of
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 73
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 ascending
into an artistic heaven, leaving its profitable mundane
mission unfulfilled.
And though we start, quite legitimately, from a con-
ception 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 perfect
production of a good play, they contain, in virtue of
that, all the necessary educational qualities. The
theatre, in fact, to be exemplary, must exemplify 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, playwrights, 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 consequence, 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 incom-
petence — that must be broken before the wider circle
can be begun. Now professional acting will be an im-
74 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
portant product of the exemplary theatre, it will be in
a position of mastership there; but, to begin with, it
must itself go to school again.
It is perhaps worth while to ask why, with the circle
of the power of the drama widening for this last gener-
ation, the circle of technical achievement
• ^v. ^^ ^^^ interpretation has been not merely
acting failing to widen in response, but actually
tradition 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 gen-
erosity in acknowledging the new^ regime — and for
the subtler difficulty that our impressions of the per-
formances of plays do undoubtedly improve by keep-
ing, 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 aver-
age 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 vary-
ing 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 })ody of the plays in the seventeenth and
cighteenth-centurj' drama to a suflSciently respectable
level of interpretation. Performances of them must
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 75
have rather resembled the dancing of quadrilles. While
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 something 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 faithfully and wittily, as every
student of modern theatrical history knows, in Pinero's
"Trelawney of the Wells." There it would appear
that lack of fitness w^as 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 particular 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 o° ®^ !°°"
1 «• 1 • mi 11 1 Bancroft:
may have enected it. llie school can be pinero
pretty accurately and very honourably de-
scribed as the Robertson-Bancroft-Pinero school. One
thing should be noted about the early training of, at
* The economic influences are to be summed up in the discovery
that the touring of complete productions could be made to pay.
The disappearance of the prejudice against Sunday travelling had
some effect too.
76 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 ex-
periment what not to do they were so much to the
good, and were the freer to bring disencumbered imagi-
nations to bear upon the fresh and hopefuller tasks
with which the new dramatists were providing them.
Priority among these, in time and in influence com-
bined, belongs to T, W. Robertson; we must envisage
the effective part of his playwright's career, and the
consequences, perhaps, of its untimely ending. He pro-
vided 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 liis success were Marie Wilton,
till then a burlesque 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 Bancroft, who
was currently referred to, one suspects, by these same
mandarins as a damned amateur. Reforms and revolu-
tions both are carried through by minorities. Nor
could this Robertson-Bancroft influence, by its very
nature, be widespread. It tended only to the develop-
ment of a gentle comedic talent; it created nothing but
a cup-and-saucer school of drama; a small thing, no
doubt, measured against ^schylus, Shakespeare, and
Moliere. But the cups and saucers were of the best
china, and they were delicately and deftly 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
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 77
out of account. What was Bancroft, as managerial
leader of the movement, to do? He lacked material.
He made other quite gallant expermients 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 persistence. 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 ex-
pression or it is nothing.
By the time that the third great influence upon this
period came into play — by the eighties and nineties,
when Bancroft had retired* and Pinero's word was
law and the discipline of one of his productions 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 insufficiency 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
* 1884.
78 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
can at the time. The playing of his farces, indeed, fell
into the true line of our artistic succession. They were
eminently English. Here he may be said to have
taken the Robertson tradition left derelict, and hand-
somely renewed and improved upon it. But when he
turned to social drama the French influence was wait-
ing 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
play- writing than he; so the general effect upon the in-
terpretation of plays was unmistakable.
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 indi-
vidual exemplars, but inevitably to a failure of survival
in any second generation. Art may temporarily flour-
ish, 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 contrib-
uted their best was, but for a few fine pieces, the work
of a playwright 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
challen names: they have them graven upon the
tablets of their gratitude.
But the next challenge of a change brought its
cross purposes, too. The challenger was Ibsen, and
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 79
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 influence by the interests it offended — criti-
cal, managerial, 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 disgruntled 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 play-
writing took to exalting it by the easy process of be-
littling 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, mis-
guided zeal on the 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 differ-
ence: 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 remained
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
80 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 for-
bears 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 differ-
ent 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 his-
tory this play appeared when the Ibsen battle had been
fought out, and a younger generation of actors faced
it with equanimity. But who would say that a com-
pany 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, the emotional crisis, the sce?ie 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 commonplace 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 exliibit any one of the superficial
theatrical virtues. The principle one attempts to de-
duce 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 liglit of his own experience.
Put an English company to an English play and nothing
.so far could be simpler. But we may take unlikclier
instances. We may try a French company with Ibsen,
Italians with Shaw, Americans with Benevcnte; and
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 81
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 fur-
nishings still further from anything the author saw, yet,
because they have searched back to the essential com-
mon 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 hesi-
tant 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 dialogue
between the new plays and the old could have been
left out of account beside this difficulty of the 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 re-
sult 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 in-
fluence. 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 performance of the play. But that
was an opinion which now quite fatally tended to es-
tablish itself, not, obviously enough, upon the accred-
82 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
iting 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 cus-
tom 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 newcomers, 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.
How else, at least, to explain the undoubted impov-
erishment of English acting in the presence of as un-
doubted an enrichment of English drama .^^
J."® The admission may generously be made
. r that individual actors of this generation
acting of training do often not only fulfil but em-
bellish 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
understanding of the purpose of the work than their
forbears of tliirty years back would have shown. But,
in spite of this, their expression of it is fatally clogged
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 83
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 without
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 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 contri-
bution 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,
unhindered 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 re-
mains the foundation of the whole affair. And to ignore
its possibilities and to decry its importance 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
* Et voila
Le silence rompu qui vole en mille eclats!
Le public s'abandonne a rimmense rafale
Qui gronde et le secoue! ...
Et le rire au galop qui traverse la salle
Emporte tout . . .
Les chagrins, les soucis
Et les peines.
84 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
more of a good play by reading it comfortably at home.
He demands even — and quite rightly — a certain vir-
tuosity of performance; 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.
Since the old virtuosity was found not to avail, what
attempt has been made in the English-speaking theatre
to cultivate a new? Solvitur amhulando
The need jg ^ good motto, no doubt, and appro-
*°V °^tv priate enough to a theatrical system in
which actors start their career and are ex-
pected 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 adapt-
ing itself to change of condition, artistic and economic,
living artistically from hand to mouth, and compelled,
above all, to consider appeai'ance, to shark up effects,
to make a success of the moment at any cost?
When the break of tradition cjune there was no new
school to supply — as had to be supplied, from funda-
mentals up and on — the new need. \Vhat have the
present dramatic academies been doing? One should
have intimate knowledge of their working to speak with
Tu comprends bicn ccol?
Comprends que c'cst pour ga qu'ils viennent!
A ccux qui font sourirc on ne flit pas mcrci . . .
Dedurau (Act IV of Saclia Guitry's play) praises his art.
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 85
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 obligation to earn fees, compelled to
supply not even such sort of study as the professional
theatre might find upon consideration most immedi-
ately useful in its recruits, but that which the pupils
themselves, impatient 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 interpretation 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 contentedly 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 respectable 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 dialogue,
designed it for living actors, and there, really, all tech-
nical likeness ends. Is it enough, then, for actors to
make no more difference in their technical approach to
the plays' interpretation than is unescapably dictated
by the fact that in one case strange garments must be
86 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
swaggered in and blank verse spouted, while in anotlier
one wears coats and trousers and speaks prose; is Sheri-
dan'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 Hialmar
Ekdal (to contrast the two only) are sentient human
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 concep-
tion of character and elaboration of performance, the
actor has only a Shakespearean technique available,
he must use it: it is absurd to expect any man to dis-
card knowledge — even inappropriate knowledge — for
ignorance. Moreover, he will use it. For however
much we may argue for Ibsen underacted rather than
Ibsen wrongly acted, he has the responsibilities of per-
formance 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, besides,
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 in-
approijriate to any other. The first thing needful for
the building up of a techni(j[ue 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 a])i)liod haphazard according to the
taste and fancy of the actor. Incidentally, what is
usually called the Shakespearean tradition is not Shakes-
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 87
pearean 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 unrepressed individual emotion,
if Sheridan cared greatly for the set of his prose, Rob-
ertson 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 dra-
matist 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 professional critics fail us
as a rule, omissively. To the mere casual public the
play may be the actor's 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 actor's
share in its completion.
It is ill girding at unfortunate beings who,
most of them, most of the time, are faced ...
with the impossible demand for an adjust-
ment in a few paragraphs of cold print of the fe-
verish, factitious, often entirely fictitious enthusiasm
88 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
of the first night of a play. Nine times out of ten
the play itself cannot stand up to the ordeal of a con-
secutive 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 credit-
ably respond.'^ There would be excuses enough, under
such circumstances, 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 himself 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 contrasting gush
of easy praise — echoed from the unthinking enthu-
siasm of an audience, for the carrying 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 unimportant question in view of the conclu-
sion reached by most of them with experience of the
rough and smooth of their work, that as they never
can count ui)on discrimination they had better measure
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 89
the worth of these notices altogether in terms of adver-
tisement, and the parts that they play, therefore, 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 en-
couragement 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 stand-
ard of public taste. To every sincere and self-respect-
ing 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 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 dis-
criminating 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 allow-
able ambition to leave some less fading record of his
achievements behind him than the hearsay of popu-
larity we might look for and plan under better con-
ditions than those of current criticism, some recultiva-
tion of the sensitive, picturesque writing which does
90 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
catch for us a little of the passing glamour, helps us to
reweave something of the personal spell, which the
fine actor once cast upon his audience. But we want
not reminiscent value, but an immediate critical stimu-
lus. 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 igno-
rant 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 process 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, 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 con-
nection between the three parties — between drama-
tist, actors, and audience — having been so wantonly
broken, there needs some external study, some grind-
ing at principles, and a deal of practising, before they
can be set up again. In other words, we all need — not
only actors, l)ut dramatist, yes, and audience as well,
if a plan comprehending us all can be devised — to go
to school again, to take a little trouble over the matter,
l)efore we can count upon this art of the drama yield-
ing us in its completeness and complexity pleasure
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 91
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 un-
der which almost every school of the '^^^
theatre now labours. They are filled with ^/gchoo?^
young women and men feverishly occu-
pied, as if training for a race; competitive, keen on
accomplishment. The work, too, such as it is, is al-
ways disbalanced by the women outnumbering 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 circumstances tend to push
early in — the supply is kept up by drafts of recruits at
various stages of disillusionment 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 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 remark 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 im-
provement. But they still specialize far too narrowly.
* I write of England, but I think that no such school as I have in
mind does exist anywhere.
92 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 Cam-
bridge, 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 comprehension.* To such a man, it is clear, the
present sort of 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 women,
pre-eminent once, for economic reasons at least, as it
The arm ^^^ ^"^ ^^ ^^^® ^^^ ^^ which they worked
of women ?" '^^ equality with men, is now suffer-
ing by comparison 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 suc-
cess earlier, but only to lose it the sooner. If a pretty
girl looks upon it as a preliminary canter which she
means to abandon for marriage at the first good oppor-
tunity, the convenience is sometimes a double one —
to her and to the theatre that may be glad to make use
of her while her prettincss lasts. But for women who
stay in the race there is less demand — if competence
is all their attainment — than for men.f Many col-
I once met a man who had been stiulying dnima solely as a
prdmiinary to becoming a dramatic critic. He said he thought it
a rcas(>n;il)li! tliirif^ to flo!
t Developments of the modern drama — and the advent of the
THE EDUCATIONAL BASIS 93
lege women, both in England and America, are studying
drama nowadays for the use it may be to them in teach-
ing, 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 curricu-
lum were so adjusted. Moreover, such a class of stu-
dents 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 beset it, possessed by that shallow
enthusiasm which is the bane of all art, and to the as-
saults 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 obstacles; and, being
admitted, they mount the first steps of the student's lad-
der 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 argu-
ably good enough, if argument made good art. But all
the while it is they, more than anj% that exhaust 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 hope-
less struggle, happily sometimes to marriage and cheer-
woman dramatist — may alter this. But it is curious how the pro-
portion of the sexes in the cast of a modern play tends to abide not
by the social realities but by the transitions 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.
94 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
ful, chatty reminiscence 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. Professions, in-
deed, 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 withhold approbation. And what argu-
able 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 .f^ How many tried performers — with
not even so much claim on public attention — encum-
ber 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 the
training of actors they would be in a very different
and a very much better case. The drama,
The , jjj some form or other, is sure to be made
sional ' ^ P'^^^ ^^ ^^^ scheme of social welfare (so-
student called). Here, then, would be a legiti-
mate course of study for any school of the
theatre to provide, and a useful by-path along which
tliose 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 EDUCATIONAL BASIS 95
the professional theatre is the accident of social isola-
tion 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 connec-
tion, 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 catching him young enough for the elements
of his art to be learned and — one could comprehensi-
bly 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 become substance;
those, they will be — this is the importance of the
matter for him — whose lives, opinions, and feelings he
is to understand and interpret. 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 in-
fusion 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.
Chapter III
The Plan of the Theatre as School
CASTLE-BUILDING it had better be, and from
foundations up. One could plan for the de-
velopment of work already in being, and in
practice no doubt, and for purposes of experiment,
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 purpose to imagine in broad outline a
theatre as school, fulfilling 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 a parallel — in its status and outward relations,
as one of those great specialist schools
,^ ., which form part of the already very
scope catholic University of London.* Its inter-
nal organization would be, one cannot deny,
both complex and costly. And if one says, to begin with,
that the building containing it should accommodate
two fully equipped and actively working professional
playhouses, that might be enough to make most
people, most practical educationalists certainly, dis-
miss the whole project as Utopian. But it can, I
think, be demonstrated 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 fit a
Such, for instance, as the London School of Economics, or the
L.C.C. School of Architecture in Southampton Row.
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 97
small audience into a small auditorium; it is extrava-
gant — 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 exemj)lifying, 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 fundamental point of the scheme. The rest
of the building equipment would be classrooms, lecture
theatres — much the same, indeed, as that needed for
any other sort of specialized education.
Let us at once clear the ground of one just 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 suit-
able to any boy or girl under fifteen. Indeed, even
for those of university 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 deter-
mined upon the theatre as a career it, of course, would
not seem so. They would not find it a sufficiently
* 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 diflBculties in securing large and convenient sites.
t I am aware of the practical difficulties, especially in guch 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.
98 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
swift test of their powers to excel. And no doubt the
school would drift into admitting anyone over seven-
teen 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 discerned natural gift
as the dramatic faculty — is misleading. Slow develop-
ment strengthens it and deepens the strength. Inci-
dentallj', 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 im-
portant 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 must
specialize, even to the extent of directing all its plans
of study towards the culminating point of
1 e "^0^^ the fine production of a fine play, yet its
^Qj.^ claim to recognition is that not only is the
base of the pyramid to be broadly educa-
tional, 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
tliat much preliminary work had been done in earlier
schooldays, from kindergarten onwards. A suppo-
sition of the sort would hold true were the school
starting fully found to-morrow. Not a child nowadays
but is taught (as we have noted) some form of self-
expression — elocution, singing, dancing, or the like.
Hut it will be, of course, more satisfactorily true after
the school's own teaching has filtered down through
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 99
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 pro-
fessional stiffening of the standard. It would be test
work, the more physical side of it, and designed
(once again) for purposes of c^w'-couragement. We may
imagine, for instance, a student who had had some
general training in gesture plunged at once into the diffi-
culties 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 find-
ing, 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 an integral
part of the institution. It may seem paradoxical to
rank tliese as student work; and certainly the general
public, paymg for its seats and enjoying the perform-
ances as it would those of any other theatres, will not
trouble to think of them in that way. But the produc-
tions will truly be — and be the better for being — the
fine flower of the study, or — to return to a former met-
aphor — the apex of the pyramid of the school's work.
100 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 women
who are making the theatre a career, and compel 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 directions, by keeping its
sectional standards high, by providing opportunity,
moreover, for actual research; and, finally and most
importantly, it must see that the study in all its
branches is generally educational, 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 depart-
ment, 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 be-
comes 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 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 un-
balanced. 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. Perhaps all that rational-
ized study can do is, by dispelling the illusion, to damp
the emotion and impoverish the i)roduct. 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 "Cud themselves" as it is called. Then this is
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 101
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 naturally does not admit a solution which
would invalidate 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 de-
velop 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
" learn to act." It is in the young — in
the very young, as we have seen — a natu- ^^
ral and engaging impulse enough. But it of^ct'ne
must not be allowed to colour and disturb allowed
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, loy-
ally, even as these young fanatics may try to 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 enthusiasm must be disciplined or it will evapo-
102 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
rate fruitlessly, or else it will degenerate into a disease,
rather than develop to an art.
To begin with, they must not be allowed to Indulge
during school hours in anything that can be called
acting at all. The rehearsing of plays by callow stu-
dents 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 practices
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 without super\asIon the student, too soon
occupied with effect, neglects cause; and has not the
patience, has not the equipment, to work through the
slow processes of interpretation, but takes short cuts
to what he thinks ought to be the result, becomes imi-
tative and Impersonatlve merely, and begins to develop
a machine-like efficiency. The more 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 showlness 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 accomplishment, 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 practice of it witliout having fully
fared, not so much Its difficulties as its possibilities (its
difficulties, that Is, In their finest sense) is Inevitably to
run this risk of develo})ing one's Innocence not Into
knowledge, but Into an experienced and hardened
ignorance — death Lo one's own art, blight to one's
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 103
surroundings! In the amateur that innocence may
remain and preserve its peculiar charm; in the pro-
fessional it must suffer this change, and, as ignorance,
be inexcusable. 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, eurythmics;
over the principles of play writing; upon analytical
criticism, theatrical history, the history of costume,
costume designing, scene designing and making and
painting; not to mention fencing and dancing and sing-
ing and music generally. These make up the whole art
of the theatre, nothing less, and now the list is not ex-
hausted. 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 apprentice-
ship, 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 tanta-
lized. 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 enthusiasm will survive, there's no fear, while his
unexpended 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 .f*
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 of the amateur dramatic
club or it will be doomed from the start in the eves 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 com-
104 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
ponent parts of drcoma according to their proper pro-
portion and worth. For thus, and thus alone, will it
succeed in attracting as students a heterogeneous body
of young men and women, and in encouraging them to
seek in active study of the drama something whose
shadow only they look for now, even in their enthusi-
astic 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 cre-
atively, some appreciatively. From our theatre's own
standpoint, then, such a body of students, who will,
most of them, have no intention of abiding m 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 discovery 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.
And a student body with aims other than professional
acting is an attainable object. We have alix?ady noted
that the extended and varied use of drama
^ ^T in general schooling, and its probable
the social spreading as a means of recreation among
"settle- "communitj'^-conscious" ptMjple (them-
ment" and selves a growing class) can pro\4de useful
the CO™- bye-paths into which students that re-
J?""! ^ main whole-hearted enough, but yet must
discover that there arc no i)orsonal the-
atrical triumphs ahead for them, can be deflected,
"lie who can, does; he who cannot, teaches" the
aphorism has it. But it is possible in any art, and
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 105
— this being, at any rate, an imperfectly put together
world — in an art which uses the haphazard gifts of
physical personality as its medium of expression it is
very likely that a talent may be developed, 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. Besides, what a theme, comic or
tragic, for the dramatist!) as that a man may be able
to cultivate in 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 depend-
ent on the possession of bodily strength, and 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 nar-
rowness as a channel for the drama generally, the call-
ing seems bound to become a reservoir of disappointed
men and women. One will find in it to-day more
such women than 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 god-
send. As administrators of village and community
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 con-
tinued practice of it made them rather its servants.
* The word is used in its strict sense, not as necessarily connoting
any doctrinaire form of Socialism.
106 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 matur-
ity) ; but it must undergo the test. There is no reason
whatever, though, that the development of a general
understanding of the art in place of a faculty for in-
dividual expression in its medium should rank as fail-
ure 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.
Conversely, one might anticipate with a certain mis-
chievous satisfaction that were the study of acting
made wide enough in its application (as
.. ^ for the sake of the actors themselves it
recnuts i i i i \
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 recog-
nize their more fitting career in the theatre. For cer-
tainly 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 accjuisition 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 dramatic
art itself, exemplified in the finest achievements of the
theatre, so it would aim to find among its students a
small surviving band whom delil)erate and sustained
choice and the discipline of hard technical training had
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 107
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 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 fall
playwriting classes. To those familiar with the work
of this sort, originated by Professor Baker
at Harvard and now imitated and devel- , ^^^^ ^^^
oped all over America, there is no need
to insist upon its pertinence in any school of the
theatre. Its effect upon American drama is already
patent.*
Such classes t 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 collaboration — will
bring a play for the consideration of the class. The
* 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 whcle, 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.
t What follows is not accurate description of any existing ones,
but it indicates, fairly correctly, the lines on which they may be
run.
108 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
authorship remains as far as possible anonymous. The
play may be brought in an unfinished, but not an un-
formed, condition; it may lack, that is to say, a last
act, but its dialogue and 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, destructive criticism, constructive sugges-
tion. The author will disguise his identity as best he
may, either by partaking (this needs some histrionic
de-impersonative 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 criti-
cism, 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 produce
a masterpiece he is not to be expected, or even en-
couraged, 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 the 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
tliough his be the creative begiiming of the collabora-
tion; thirdly, that as he is far more concerned with
technique than other literary men his work is the more
discussible quite apart from its ins])irati<)nal side.
That no amount of criticism within class or without
will make a uuin a great playwright need not be ques-
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 109
tioned. The claim of the class is that 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 broaden-
ing of study, and for the actor any suspension of gradu-
ation, is desirable. The generally educational value of
the work is very demonstrable. If Greek and Latin
verse, English composition, 'precis writing, and the like
are good training in literary expression the discipline of
playwriting 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, exposition,
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 slovenly bi-
ography. And these, again, have their constructional
virtues, which are not those of the play form. But as a
110 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
training in any sort of writing the play has its peculiar
advantages. It is hard discipline.
One aspect of the playwriting classes needs comment.
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 objection to his being exposed at
such an impressionable 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 has 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 collaborator,
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 remem-
brance of the coming collaborators should always be
with him, and as soon as the completing phase of pro-
duction begins he should personally assist at it if possi-
ble. 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 exigencies
of his, and he can only learn this in any useful sense by
experience or close observation.
It is noticeable that the phiA^wrighting study groups
in America are apt to carry on in what are called work-
shops,* having discovered, one presiunes, that their
members write more practiciil plays, at least, if they
take the responsibility of acting them, of painting and
* Professor GeorRc P. Baker's Harvard liabitat is loiown as The
47 Workshop, and it is the exemplar for many others.
f
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 111
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 minuteness. 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 compara-
tive 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
school's work would come its study of the decorative
arts of the theatre. While play writing may
begin intimately and will cut loose, the , ^^^ ..
dress designer and scene-painter must ob-
viously look elsewhere to be taught their particular
A.B.C. No more need for a theatre as school to in-
volve 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 tech-
nical 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 in the theatre later.
But practical work would need to be that done to meet
the theatre's actual requirements, and could be joined
in only upon such conditions 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.
112 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
SO to speak. For one thing, the cost would be prohibi-
tive. But, apart from this, we should be at once be-
trayed into the worst errors of particularism.* 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 ad-
mits obligation to the dramatist, are alike guilty, and
pay the penalty of their detaclmaent in the ineffective-
ness 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 compassed by his own imagination. Hav-
ing sated it, he will be good enough to allow dramatist
and actor — if he cannot see himself rid of these alto-
gether — 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, and, one fears, adapt it, like the poor day-by-
day labourers they are, to their current needs. Use-
less to plan the removing of very complex and mundane
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. INIuch could be learned, no doubt, from
seeing a theatre glorified and destroyed by an individual
gennis. Much would be gained by the theatre as a
whole laking example of what to do and — it might
An imminent danger, apparently, the moment a decorative
artist sees the theatre m his grasp.
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 113
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 prin-
ciples; 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 w^ork. Some natures, of course, retain an
impulse for the untried through a long career. It is the
final triumph of any institution 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 appear-
ances to the contrary, will often lie the spirit of its sur-
vival. Losing them, no way to it may be left but by
the violent process of destruction and rebirth.
The capacity of the theatre workshops to entertain
apprentices might not equal the demand for practical
experience that students would make of them. A cer-
tain amount of sheer demonstration for their benefit
could be attempted; some benefit accrue from a han-
dling 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 emplojTnent 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.
But the main artery of work in the theatre as school
is likely to be the co-operative study of plays. It will
114 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
be, that is to say, if the drama of analysis — and espe-
cially of social analysis — with its peculiar interpre-
tative demands, continues the remarkable
The development of the last thirty years.
co-operative r^^ • £ -j. ^ ,, . •
study of Classes m nnite and attractive accom-
plays plishments may be more closely besieged
by the tentative crowd. But the student
committing himself to the theatre as a career wull
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
interpreters, so, it is obvious, the student could elabo-
rate 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 with-
in 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 test-
ing, the extreme development 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 interpretation and suitable audionccf*
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
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 115
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 destructive, of the work under
way. The resultant freedom of the novice to feel and
find his own path — saved only from too disastrous
bhmderings, and then more by example than pre-
cept — is certainly a necessary basis for any such work
as we are to outline here.
We must note as we proceed where the differences of
approach as between general and particular student,
as between the use of a play for the educa- .
tional purpose and its preparation for the . " ^^^gt^^
stage, are likely to lie. They will tend to ^^^^ j^^^g
develop at different times in differing plays.
In some they will be of no practical import till pres-
entation 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 be-
ing 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 iden-
tity of the methods that can be employed for both
study and production, and to comment, if but by im-
plication, 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,
116 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 re-
hearsing it would only result in chaos. The position
of the author is god-like — worship and obedience being
offered to him according to the credit of his cult.
Mutterings of unbelief must be low, for under this
banner, after all, everyone 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 unendurably. When the actors discuss each
other's parts the effect is commonly disturbing, though
a kindly provision of nature somehovv always makes
the part you haven't got seem the better one. 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, con-
dition 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. If mav be
said, indeed, that the task of the seminar — our pro-
posed 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 legitimately 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 produc-
tion, but never could have survived two hours' pre-
liminary destructive criticism. Far better had they
thus perished at the righteous hands of their actors
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 117
before ever the footlights ilhimined 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 galvan-
ized life, when it would collapse quickly enough if
charged with any real vitality; or there may be pre-
served the illusion of a play which has really been dis-
solved into the atmosphere of its acting.
What amount of technical training in its expressive
side will a student need before he can usefully join in
this work.^ Not very much. For it 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 an-
other, 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 discussing the play, for — bearing in mind our
preliminary obligation to vitalize the work by imper-
sonation — 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 pres-
ent, 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 allot-
ment 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 exchange of parts — nothing, indeed,
against any device 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
118 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
that, but there would be an actual advantage In compos-
ing 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 form-
ing 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
broadly, and perhaps destructively, critical standpoint
which may be taken by the outsider, concerned only
for the value of the whole business in its application
to whatever is for him (and for the moment!) ulti-
mate reality.
It may be surmised that the conductor of the semi-
nar will not have an easy task. We are now imagining
. , one twenty or thirty students strong, and
the°T°^ its control will call for both authority and
to life 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 train-
ing of a play producer will be found. His powers will
be roughly those of the chairman of a committee, and
the best conductor, by that parallel, will be he who
exercises them least arbitrarily. When he is indeed a
producer 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 in-
telligent disagreement may be, to the end, more im-
portant. The task of the seminar will, of course, be to
come, if possible, to a conmion understanding of the
play: that will be the hall-mark of a quite successful
session. But the unity will be of no value unless it has
proceeded from diversity; unless, indeed, it is a gen-
uine roconcilialion. And if diversity does not exist to
begin with iL will even be the conductor's business to
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 119
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
degenerate into that. Its mainspring is not to be dis-
puting, however mentally clarifying that may be. Our
object is to create a unity in diversity — a very differ-
ent 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 emotionally 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 common 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 inti-
mate 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 incapable
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 recognize 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,
than can provide for us best in this kind. Of the di-
rectly 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.
120 THE EXEMPLu\RY THEATRE
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 realization of the human mate-
rial 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 responsibility,
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 .'^ —
placed a ban not to be lifted till the last possible mo-
ment. 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 impatient to be show-
ing what they can do. They are necessary to the sem-
inar; 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 educa-
tion, to put every obstacle in the way of a conscience-
less 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 ex-
ercise 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 nuich, as for
purposes of study only the play is to be halted far this
side of staging — they had l)etter acquire. We have
assumed some power of dramatic expression to be a
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 121
part of every 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 tlie 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 studcnt-dra:natist, will find his use in the work,
not only as actor and critic, but as the observer of
both. For here is a performance in embryo; and he
is always to remember that only in its performance
will his own future work be complete.
Let us outline, however roughly, the Howthesem-
progress of one of these seminars. One inar works
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 applications. 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
of ten 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 demonstrate how the im-
porting of emotional values may completely upset
conclusions arrived at without their consideration.
This is the moment when the play must be brought to
life by a selected body of interpreters. They will need
to band themselves together for its integral expression
122 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
and, so to speak, for its defence. For their interpre-
tation — the importing of their personahties — 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 protested identity of opinion
and expression for granted. But now it will seem to
him almost fantastic that men can so deceive them-
selves 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 exliibi-
tion of inconsistency.
But at this stage something else may happen. The
process of interpreting may work a genuine change of
opinion; first, and perhaps but half-con-
The sciously, perhaps quite unconsciously, in
^f'th'^*^^^ the interpreters themselves; then, by the
interpreter ^^f^^^^ of the interpretation, in their critics,
by the play We are trenching now upon discovery of the
extent to which an actor is a dramatist's
collaborator, of the extent to 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
tog(>ther. The enij)licr a play, of course, the more
easily can an interpreter of creative instincts fill it
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 123
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
accommodate 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 enchantment of an ob-
scurity 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 mis-
translation his owTi, 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 meaning
most rigidly, but he who has planted in his play ideas
vital enough to bear development, to demand develop-
ment, yet to defy both belittling and falsification.
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 discov-
ery and development with regard to each play of the
124 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 reconcile
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 play should be selected for this pur-
pose.^ It is easier to determine the various sorts one
would rule out. A play whose characters were unre-
sponsive 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 graces would
not be of much more. It is odd to be ruling out A
Midsummer Nighfs Dream and, say, llie Doctor s
Dilemma for very much the same reason, but one
reasonably could. For a lesson in beauty of diction
A Midfiummer Night's Dream is hardly to be sur-
passed. The would-be political public speaker who
neglccls the study of the techni(iue of The Doctor's
Dilemma, of ^fajor Barbara, and Man and Superman
deserves to remain ineffective. But not the great-
est bardolater (as ]\Ir. Shaw has nicknamed the tribe)
would contend that the characters of Theseus, Lysan-
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 125
der, 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 defined in the text as to be scarcely suscep-
tible to argument 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 particu-
lar 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 BidVs 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 sentence merely a pre-
scription by which the actor prepares the intended
effect, very much more being left to his perception and
discretion than the forceful elocution of his speeches
based upon a generally correct realization of the char-
acter. When Mr. Shaw, therefore, describes his Heart-
break House as a fantasia in the Russian manner, and
thus seems to challenge comparison with Tchekov,
he omits (no doubt because it does n'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 per-
formance, will acquire certain virtues that Shaw's
must lack. One might offer as a proof of this the
contrary demonstration 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.
126 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
An instance of the two methods much less violently
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 adap-
tation 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 performance as one reads them;
one should, of course, never read a play otherwise.
The Tivelve Pound Look, for all the necessary sparse-
ness 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 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 individ-
ual method of each dramatist and his variation from
type will always be worth consideration in the light of
any particular seminar's composition.
But for a normal illustration of the work let us
imagine the collective studying of such a play as John
Galsworthy 's " Strife." It would probably
** Strife " answer the current demand very well. It
an°exfm^e ^^ "°^ over-cncumbercd with dialogue,
an examp e ^^^ 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
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 127
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.
Objective 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 present them-
selves. For most of the parts there is little material in
the way of dialogue. The interpreter 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 surround-
ings 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 unpotence. The
discernment of one's place in the scheme, patent to
the looker-on, is lost in the excitement and concentra-
tion of partaking. 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-
128 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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
interpreter in vagaries. He has spare time to fill in.
He must at all costs keep the silent inter-
T^® . vals alive by presenting in them a clearly
IS ening ^gg^gd 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 sustained
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 re-
covering. For words are but a part, at times the minor
part, of the true dialogue. Nevertheless, the unspoken
things are not the actor's concern merely; the drama-
tist must not leave them as a provision of empty spaces
and opportunity. He can, and he must, by miplica-
tion 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.
The fail one here. There are, naturally, cer-
placing of a ^ain things which can be marked to be
[n tr^*^^ done without comment, and if their doing
scheme of is effectively placed they can be eloquent,
the play There are things of which later comment
will complete the significance. These are
legit imate devices and may be made positive indications
of character. But to detail, for an instance, the gestures,
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 129
the expression of face with which a man shall receive
the news of his son's death is, for the dramatist, as great
a misconception 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 ex-
pression 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. There-
fore, for him the method of implication is the right one.
And apart from the 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 him-
self like a piece on a chess-board, with only certain
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 intention
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
* 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 Booh into a play
he would, seemingly, have committed himself to this method. But
It wants using sparingly, or with great skill.
130 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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
simplj', 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 be-
come tolerable playwrights. It is shown in never for-
getting 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 oppor-
tunity that he would not deny himself. He must do
nothing misleading; 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 dramatist'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 Tche-
kov. Of them it is possible to say that the
^ ^f ", interplay of motive which makes up the
parent de- .• r . i i • i
velopment action so tar transcends any mechanical
of plot rules, is so much the outcome of the
from the idiosyncrasies of the characters concerned
characters (though one doubts if any play could be
and scenes •. . j. •. j •/■ ii
thems 1 s ^^ written, yet it does seem as it the mean-
ing of the whole were but a quite fortui-
tous outcome of the independent action of the parts),
that the scenes are positively unactable, their sound
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 131
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 characters in-
terpret 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 degradation to a dramatist to confess him-
self so dependent. 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 translation,
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 any one as object lessons. One
finds in them an example of the length to which the
method of unsustained and inconsecutive 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 discover-
able — 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
132 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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. It
may seem to go without saying that a dramatist has
no right to employ masses without being cer-
g^^^ tain that in themselves they will be effec-
tive. But one can conceive of good plays
— and find plenty of poor ones — in which minor
parts do little more than "feed" (to use the expressive
theatre slang) the protagonists. 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 anony-
mous almost. In this case their interpreters' disci-
pline, 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. AVe speak of an
ideal "Strife" and an idealized interpretation; but, of
course, no play was ever so perfect that it did not en-
courage 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 inipcM'fections, of dramatist,
actors, and audience countering each other, and an
air of hnniau tolerance — a "will to enjoyment" en-
veloping it all. Performance, as we shall see, stands
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 133
finally for accommodation, compromise, and a unity,
forced perhaps and unreal. But students in our semi-
nar may have their free fling between the best and the
worst possible. They can measure themselves very well
in these scenes of mechanical complexity, but, on the
whole, of psychological simplicity (of a familiar psy-
chology, anyhow), both by their own ability to con-
ceive and sustain character and, critically, as against
the play's own capacity for expression; once, by change
and change again, by each battling his way to accept-
ance, the likeliest exponent of every part has been
foimd.
We are now in sight of the branching of the paths of
study and production. We should note, incidentally,
that a cast for the performance of a play,
while approaching their task at the be- Where
ginning from this same standpoint of f c^aent ana
,1 IIP I** !•■•• interpreter
study, would, tor extrmsic and mtrmsic ^
reasons both, not be committed practically company
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 identi-
fication of play and interpreters 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 perform-
ing a play has by then abandoned all critical sense. It
must be the conductor's business to see that the semi-
134 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
nar 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 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 char-
acter. 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, with-
out 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 edu-
cational 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 under-
standing of a poet's work lives upon SJ^npathy 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 stu-
dents, equally without saying that every sort of play —
every play, one might say, ideally — demands a differ-
ent 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 inlays 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
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 135
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 Midsummer Night's Dream," or
*' The School for 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 development of
his sense of lyrical speech, of comedic phrasing. Cer-
tainly these are things that he will study to some ex-
tent apart as technical exercises. But one must not
try to do too much of that sort of work i?i vacuo. 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 facul-
ties 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 another
sort with regard to the choice of plays. The familiar
classics — the finest in most cases, that
is to say — are at the present time shame- . e misuse
fully misused in the interests of edu- classics
cation. Nothing probably 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. The}^ must preserve for them, as far as ever
they can, a freshness of eye, ear, and mind. It would be
* This latter process applied to the great Greek tragedies robbed
them of the very semblance of plays, even, apparently, m the minds
of the professors themselves. Professor Gilbert Murray's restora-
tion of Euripides to his place as a playivright was a far-reaching
service.
136 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
well, then, for an actor never to have looked at "Ham-
let" in his student days at all. He had far better
break his shins over "Troilus and Cressida." And fbr
"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 Shepherd"
and Farquhar's "Recruiting Officer," The risk that a
nascent judgment might thus be permanently perverted
would be very small. If neglected 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 degradation
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.
It would be well, too, that with their near approach
to graduation the would-be actors should be kept from
the use of the plavs, classic or modern,
. , , wliich were a part of the repertory of the
gctor theatre itself, and from the influence,
admitted to therefore, of the performances of them,
the play- For their last year's work, and for that
house at 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 j^erhaps
famous aclors, who will possess methods and manner-
isms of their own. Now it is a truism lliat one copies
nothing from an artist but his faults. Tlie tendency
of the student to copy will always be great, increas-
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 137
ingly great if in lliis last year he becomes an under-
study; nor much diminished, even though, his training
done, he goes to another theatre to phiy those parts
which the favourite actor has made his own, unless he
has been dehberately kept from studying them during
his pupiLage. One needs, indeed, some very definite
countervaiHng influence if study of any sort in dra-
matic 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 elsewhither.
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 something to
be said, of course, for an occasional student produc-
tion, home-made from beginning to end; student play-
wright, actors, costume designers, and scene-painters,
too. But let us sharply beware of too much indulgence
in that sort of thing. It has a 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
138 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
of self-sufBciency 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 pro-
cesses 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 concentra-
tion and more hardly earned triumph of the expert.
They must cultivate an art as primitive man culti-
vated 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 re-
public of the theatre, and to be inheritors 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.
For students in their final year plays to experiment
with could without diflBculty be found. We shall see
later how this requirement will fit in with
Experimen- one particular need of the theatre as a
tal work for ^yj^^ig ^^d of plavs experimental in
students m ^. , i . .i
their last themselves one may make yet another use.
year We must remember always the conserva-
tism 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 legiti-
mate revolt. For no one will deny that students, gradu-
ating from this school to its playhouse side, or leaving for
any oilier ])layhouse of the sort, will tend to accept, with
little question, the routine they find there. Routine of
action certainly they must accept. But the machinery
of a theatre is so elaborate that no artistic activity need
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL • 139
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 insti-
tution 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 in-
dividual development 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
device, 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 com-
plementary 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 prac-
ticability 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 use.
Indeed, if he is slow of dramatic instinct, and unready
at bringing the thing to life by impersonation, 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 act-
140 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
ing. But with the right, and a rightly assorted, collec-
tion of students it should be possible to find work of
an unconventionally dramatic form which the student
actor could approach, 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 keen-
ness 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 meaning
were they not stirred by the brightness of its reflection
in this keenness to interpret.
At what point this mixed company will have made
the most of "Strife" and its like experiment must
determine; and, indeed, every such semi-
The limits ^^.^j. should be in itself an experiment. A
use to ^h P^^J' after all, is only complete in its per-
seminar formance to an audience. It might some-
times be well, after lively discussion has
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 premature
acting one must consider whether one should not make
it one of those exce])tions that are tlie life of all rules.
Or one might possibly devise some pseudo-performance
which this ideally critical audience could have licence
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 141
to interrupt by their comments at suitable points.
And the advantage in this connection of the "imprac-
ticable" 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 "Evi-
dence before a Royal Commission," the verbatim re-
port 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 re-
port 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 be-
neath 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 labora-
tory where his faculties are fined to their utmost per-
ceptiveness.
These seminars of play study, then, are to be 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 pro-
ceedings 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 conception 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 lectures on
142 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
all sorts of subjects that come within the compass of
the theatre's influence. These are more numerous,
perhaps, than might be supposed. The
Subsidiary history of the theatre itself is important
school ^^ those who work for it, and of some
lectures etc. 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 knowl-
edge stored in the brains of designers, 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 playhouse, 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. Train-
ing in the elements of design in drawing or 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 pic-
tures 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 practice. 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
PLAN OF THEATRE AS SCHOOL 143
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.
Chapter IV
The Theatre as Playhouse
THE division between tlie theatre as school and
the theatre as playhouse is a convenient one for
the purposes of discussion; otherwise 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 wav or another, the
theatre was to be livelihood; 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.
For this will be the determining feature of the the-
atre as playhouse, its relation to the larger, the in-
clusive, entity of the theatre as school.
No definite Public performances will be found there, in
boundary quantity as in the theatres we now know,
e een -^ qualitv improved we may hope. Plans for
playhouse ^ T- / • 4- i i a
and school ^"1^ 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 perform-
ances 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 the-
atre. Not, on the other hand, that we are to consider
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 145
the acting company as teachers, who may (as did the
gymnasium instructor of our schooldays) occasionally,
as a relief to themselves 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 advances,
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 difference 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
whole matter. What sort of man and woman do we
want for such a theatre company, and by
what inducements can they be caught and The sort
kept.? There's an idea still about — it is ^^ actor
not so much a fiction as a simple truth, .t,. ., .
, . . . / , . this theatre
a century late m expirmg, kept alive needs
perhaps by some touch of romance — that
an actor's life is an agreeable artistic vagabond-
age. Young people condemned to a career of dull
routine and old people regretting their lost opportuni-
ties 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 com-
pany, 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
146 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
holidays 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 com-
mercial 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 de-
fend indeed that other part of the present theatrical
system which obliges seven actors out of ten to calcu-
late — if they dare do so certain a thing — upon an
average, at best, of one week's idleness in three.f* Is
it to be held that these haphazards of existence are
what give the mummer that air of careless abandon-
ment which is so popular with young ladies? Even if
that were a necessary spice to our enjoyment of the
play it would be rather hard that he and his wife and
children (young ladies, he often has a wife; the crea-
ture 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 honourably
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 perma-
nence even of unsatisfactory employment. He is at the
mercy of fashion, of the even more demoralizing spec-
ulation in fashion, and of fifty other uncertainties of
liveliliood — all avoidable. It is bourgeois, I suj^pose,
to quarrel with such a condition of things. But it is
possible that the theatre may be quite advantageously
considered as a rather bourgeois sort of art. One might
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 147
add the query whether any art would be the worse
for a few bourgeois virtues?
However that may be, the exemplary theatre —
this theatre as school — would certainly need to attract
a company of cultured men and women, who inci-
dentally had learned to be good actors and actresses.
No set of strange, egotistical creatures, living upon
and consumed by what is called the artistic tempera-
ment, and caring for no solider sustenance, expert
though they might be in curious emotional gymnastics,
could, upon any account, find their place in it. One
must allow for an occasional eccentric: lovable, fasci-
nating, in art as in life. Genius will arise, domi-
nating, compelling, impatient of all regulation, apt, at
any difference, to be up and away. But one may use-
fully question whether, in a calling where right regula-
tion counts for so much, even genius will not welcome
the freedom to work more intensely that the good
ordering of a community gives. This supposes cer-
tainly 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 called
for in America than in England. The successful Eng-
lish actor establishes himself in London,
and for the most part point-blank refuses J^^ rescue
to leave. It is pleasanter, better for his vagabond-
reputation, and pays better.* In America ^ge
every actor, whatever his reputation,
must tour — and does tour, for, perhaps, two thirds
of his career. For it is this that pays better; but there
* 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 thej' 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.
148 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
is no reason to suppose that he Hkes 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 outweigh-
ing, as a rule, any pleasure in the work — of deciding
on and rehearsing for a third. He cannot be expected
to despise a long run. And if the pleasant er 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 in-
evitable 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 penal-
ties 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 cither on this account or
on that of personal fame; if the temptation is suffi-
ciently 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 between the certainty of an
honourable competence and the many uncertainties of
freedom he would not be very likely to choose the
more settled career.
We might then without great difficulty draw the
actor into new jiaths and attract to tliem, moreover, a
more desirable sort of professional j)ilgrim llian will
be contented with the old. For though the life of the
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 149
theatre is doubtless one of vocation, which many a man
will follow against his better judgment, still the inter-
action 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 by such a variety of newcomers. Something
more, however, is needed than rescue from vagabondage
and reorganization 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 standpoint ex-
cept the all-dominating one of finance. The matured
actor's best chance of developing his art
and observing its progress lies less in The need
the performances he gives than in his °* the actor
opportunities for study, and especially for j^Q^e^and
the co-operative study (the only valid perform
kind, as we have seen and must further see) less
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 prepara-
tion must be meted out to him as 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
150 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
all, on an average, more than five times; rehearsals and
performances should divide his time as equally as possi-
ble, 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 commu-
nity any deeper than to abide by them: repertory
theatres, well organized, with their time fully occupied
in giving to the public as great a number and as wide a
variety of performances as it will absorb. Nothing
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 atten-
tion; 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 all self-contained
machinery — in adaptability. There is nothing to pre-
vent and much to encourage such a theatre's becom-
ing academic in the worst sense of that word. Disci-
pline, 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 devital-
ized and their depression grow into the "sleepy spot"
by which the whole fruit will be mfected is one that
must be pursued to its last hiding-place.
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 151
Therefore we look to do even better and to provide
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, working 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
only use of the theatre as school would be in learning
to act, let us also get rid of any that the
actor of plays must necessarily be incapa- The actor s
ble of anything else. He will specialize in ^^.^^^ ^^^^
acting, no doubt. One would not actually than acting
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 play-
making as well as a playwriting art. We have of late
years been obsessed by the literary drama to the point
of forgetting that acting can exist independently of
the dictatorship 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 free-
dom, 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-operation. And
that this should not be capable of extension, that
the horizon of such work could not be auite nota-
152 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
bly 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 improvi-
sations of beauty and of sense. ^^ They would run upon
lines of extreme simplicity, no doubt. Literary associ-
ation 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 act-
ing 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 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
* Mr. Graham Wallas deals most enlightcningly with this
problem in the cliaptcr on Professionalism in "Our Social Heritage."
He takes for liis main text tlie question of teacliinj^ an<l tlie impossi-
bility for all but a few devoted natures of giving a lifetime of un-
changed yet fruitful devotion to the calling. It is possible that the
social psychologist may come to think that exclusive concentration
upon the practice of any art exhibits and develops a morbid dis-
position in u man.
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 153
widely as to bear only the present relations between 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 attention 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 cliances 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 oiu notions
of an actor's relation to his work and of our o^^ii re-
lation to it. To many playgoers, even to
hardened ones, the enjoyment of a play The
lies in the illusion created. To this the ^f^jj\^"gfj^°
realistic methods of production that have ^^ ^ ^^ ^^
now found half a century's favour — appreciation
a favour still enduring, though under-
mined — 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 interpretative. 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 Revietvs 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 in-
structive as a reduction to absvirdity of that particular
demand upon the drama. But it is hardly more sensible
154 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
to ask the actor (after this one fine and free outburst)
to Hmit 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 cer-
tainly needed. Over any familiar play, indeed, 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 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 that many of us could
play prompter if need were; and however
Our much its poor interpretation may fail to
interest in gtir us it is not for lack of illusion, or be-
^i^^^^Pf^*^" cause of its familiarity, that we come away
only one disappointed. We are not necessarily
worth bored by the fiftieth hearing of a Beethoven
cultivating Sonata. Indeed, the closer our familiarity
the greater can be om' enjoyment if our
* There is, of course, another sifle to this, exempHfietl 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 witlulrawn from before the curtain amid applause.
"I beg your parchm, sir," he asked, "but have you ever seen tliis
play before?" "Oh, yes," was the answer. "And will that young
ni.iii in black appear often?" — "Fairly often." — "Oh," said the
questioner, " then I'm off," and left the theatre.
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 155
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 understand-
ing 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 given
screed of verse. This interpretative method of acting
that we desiderate will certainly differ so much in de-
gree 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 elabora-
tion 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 par-
ticular parts. True appreciation of his work in them
will only come by comparison with the work of other
actors. Tlie 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 bv false
methods of production, evolved for inferior plays, lead-
ing 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 appear-
ance; and, even so, a deceptive one. For the identify-
156 THE EXEMPL.\RY THEATRE
ing 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 comparison with successors — unless they
are to be imitators 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 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
we are to imagine it, not as a body separate from the
theatre as school, but rather as the head of
The that body; and of the theatre company not
relation of ^g being so much an assortment of well-
+ th^*°^^ trained actors, producers, designers as a
manage- homogeneous body of men and women of
ment of the the theatre, perfected as much in the broad
theatre imderstanding 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
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 157
degree is all-important. Had there been in the English-
speaking theatre an uninterrupted development from
the stock to the true repertory system we should, still,
in accordance with the exigencies 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 chamber-
maids, and all the rest of the menagerie. How much
further upon this path of freedom the enlarged con-
ception of the theatre as school would carry us is a
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 re-
quirements 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 committee of the company themselves;
practicable, but not, perhaps, very advisable. They
would have to delegate most administrative 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
without its walls is to be doubted. The company's
united influence could probably be most fruitfully ex-
ercised through advisory committees, which could
appoint small sub-committees to deal with some of
the administrative work of the theatre's internal organ-
ization. And they should certainly have a full say in
matters that personally concerned them.* Another
* 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
158 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
step brings us to the consideration of the permanence
of the company's connection with the theatre. Here
again we have to consider both absohite
^^ conditions (as far as such things can ever
livelihood exist) and the tendencies ot contemporary
development, very patent to us. The
theatre's every effort at the moment is to estabhsh
fixed conditions of emplojTiient. Now a certain fixity
Frangais. 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 Fran^ais have been based on its alleged
myopic attitude towards the new playwright or the unaccustomed
play. Now, for one thing, committees that are large enougli 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 predom-
inated — even such sublimated actors as we are forecasting —
were not always likely to be more remarkable for the superficial
effectiveness of their actmg 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 lead-
ing actor (and one presumes a committee of leading actors only)
his turn at a good part. "It's a long time smce so-and-so had his
chance: this will giv-e it him." These words might not be spoken,
but the understanding will 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 adntirablc qualities,
but the cement does harden. Loyalty to comrades — wliat can be
finer? But one should give it no chance of undermining tlie higher
abstract loyalty, harder to achieve — to the theatre itself. And
even if in tliis supposition one is imjust it is never well to place
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 last to be blamed. To be frank, one has known actors respon-
sible for a failure, who yet, by merely giving that last evidence of
their inadec|uacy for their task, tlu; appearance of good men strug-
gling with a<lversity, have roused the more sympathy for themselves;
and to the minds of the audience, who knew no more than the pre-
sentment before them, have transferred tlieir own shortcomings to
the play. Well, it is better this should be so, for ])Iayvvrights — even
managements — may look to the further future for compensation.
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 159
is dictated by the work of such a theatre as this. Apart
from the welcome that m.ight be 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 graduating 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 intermission.
After that an insistence upon a sabbatical year might
be very advisable, and an even looser system of fur-
loughs 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, what-
ever the value of these talents, if they could not accom-
modate themselves at least to self-discipline. More-
while the actor cannot. To-morrow he must face his audience
again. Better relieve him, then, of these responsibilities. Let the
failures be accounted the management's bad choice, and let the
actor take all the more credit for successes.
* Much less likely, because, however distinguished the actor
and warm the welcome, he could not hope to feel or be made at
home in his surroundings. For the company would have been
cultivating something more important than their own talents, and,
strangely enough, something more individual, but less dispensable,
than an amalgam of their personal talents: the genius of the theatre
itself, which will both exceed and transcend the sum of all the
personal efforts employed. Pitting himself against this — and he
would be compelled to — the most refulgent star would shine less
brilliantly than was his wont. There will be found in the "Scheme
and Estimates for a National Theatre" a very ample discussion of
this point. My mind abides by the plans there detailed; though
I should trust less to financial than to artistic interests to keep the
actors tied.
160 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
over, 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 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 pluys pass
from the intensive worry of rehearsals to the more or
less extensive boredom of the run. The great improve-
ment, by which a theatre could not only produce, but
keep its plays unexhausted and alive, would give it a
more reasonably, 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 envisage,
if the work of the school and the amount of pure study
bore a proper proportion to the whole it would abso-
lutely 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 dis-
tribution 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 ex-
ample is admired and followed it will be followed with
many a difference. No academy but becomes 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 puipose
the greater number nnd variety of dramatic outcrops
there will be, each with its appropriate market for its
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 161
particular wares. And the exemplary theatres them-
selves 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 in-
vest his abilities rather than gamble with them, there
is no reason he should not be allowed to register inci-
dental 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 alto-
gether 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 gener-
ally.'^ Even the loss, then, of a meinber of its company,
fully seized with its methods and ideals, would be pre-
sumably 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 thing
for which we are concerned to provide. There can,
indeed, be no direct financial profit for anyone con-
* "The Scheme and Estimates for a National Theatre" deals
with this question, too, in some detail, and, I think, quite sensibly.
162 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
cerned in the exemplary theatre, and those who cannot
work without the prospect of it had better go elsewhere.
In these days there is bound to be a committee
somewhere. Let us then be certain of one thing: the
foredoomed failure of the exemplary the-
The fallacy atre, or of any institution of the kind, if
tr t* °"^^' a committee with administrative powers
committee ^^ ^^ ^^^^ head of it. Administration
by a committee spells compromise, and
not even that in its admitted entirety, but rather
as a divided purpose which is the rightful dam-
nation 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 concerned. But the
functions of the theatre as playhouse make a case for
the setting up of wider connections. 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 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 m^ybc merely by the favour of the
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 163
shifting hotel population. This last has increased
greatly of late years, and has been particularly catered
for (certain plays, one would say, find their cliief
support 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 per-
sistence in policy, may acquire a reputation which will
encourage constant attendance, may secure an audi-
ence whose taste, while it may not amount to much,
will but need in some simple fashion to find a voice for
it to be valid and valuable and a definitely consultable
part of the theatre's constitution. A theatre manager
talks now of the pubUc taste. lie deceives himself,
for as far as the drama is concerned there is no such
thing. He addresses himself 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 in-
calculable 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 exem-
plary theatre's integrated public is concerned, how best
(for one thing) to represent it upon the governing body.
A big university might — and why not? — run a
theatre entirely for the benefit of its students: for those
that would easily fill it as audience no
less than for those going more intimately An
to school there. In America, under such a integrated
scheme, undergraduate bodies would al- ^^^ j^^
most certainly be given a voice in its represen-
policy. In England, if such theatres were tation
the fruit of undergraduate enthusiasm,
they would be good ground for some experiment in this
direction. The working-men's theatres,, so cominon
164 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
in the German-speaking countries, so/ve 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
njot 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 atmosphere of the coterie. It would be a
pitj'^ 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 natu-
rally 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 lei-
sured not meaning idle. Taste in drama will be found
to have a very direct relation with iuidustrial fatigue;
the worst audiences being those with minds dulled by
ot!cupational routine or debilitated by the lack of any.
^ When an audience can be adequately spoken for by
those that represent the commimity in other public
ma,tters the problem is at its simplest. There is no
reason that every sizable town should not possess its
theatre and control its theatre as it does any other of
its public servTices. If the elected representative has
not suy)ernne taste in tliese matters it is probably
a.s good as that of the majority of the electors;" if it
isn't let them look to it, for perhaps he is betraying
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 165
them in other imponderable matters as well. But
with as great a reliance on expertize as they must have
for their education system, for their local hospital (as
dose 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 comprehen-
sible 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 assort-
ing the governing body very variously indeed. This
council (let us tentatively so call it) should certainly
represent the audience of the playhouse, in whose inter-
est 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 fullness of
its public purpose.
Upon such principles, though with many variations
in practice, councils of national, municipal, or univer-
sity theatres might be formed. And it is
worth while, in passing, to remember how The
extraordinarily wide is the play of the in- political
fluence of any theatre that has the sta- ., theatre
tus of a public institution. The Theatre ^s a pubUc
Frangais is not only the possession of the institution
Parisian, and a shrine that every provin-
cial 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 inter-
pretative 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 picture galleries
166 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 appre-
hension and understanding might be tied with a better,
because a less obtrusive, eloquence .f^* 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 to emphasize. No reason
the outshining should harm it.
The problem of the right adjustment of an insti-
tution to a community's demands upon it is first of all
the problem of how its governance should
A council be constituted, of how, in the case of our
at the head theatre, then, its cou'^cil should be made
its constitu- ^P" ^^^^ ^^^^ principles involved need con-
tion; its ^^^'^ ^^^> ^or this part of the institution
work 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,
* Moreover, we are out to fashion bonds for the English-speak-
ing races that shall subject them to no political chafings. Why do
all good Americans, wlicn they die, go to Paris, and possil)ly 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 intenjsted in the drama. But they
travel to France and to Germany to refresh their ideas about it —
never to England now.
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 167
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 preparation 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 govern-
ment or municipal representatives and nominees of the
vested interests of the older generation — the younger
people voicing there their insurgency and discontent?
To begin with, insurgency within such a body w^ould be of
far more use to the theatre than attacks from w ithout
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 sub-
jected at such close quarters to the impertinence of
youth, by having to match its settled habits with the
irresponsibilities of those whose interests were vested
mainly in their hopes for the future. Students' asso-
ciations, bodies of teachers, church councils, chambers
of commerce, manufacturers' associations, local trade
unions — any or all of them might be given nomina-
tions to the council. Certainly the students in the
theatre as scliool 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
168 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
not go. Service for one year or three or seven or a
lifetime; the filHng of vacancies now and then by co-
option — these are important but mainly circumstantial
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 al-
ready part of a constitution. But within these limits
it would be the legislative authority of the
The council theatre. It would be a court of appeal : the
as the interpreter both of the constitution and
of^^^^^^^ of its own laws. It would be the target
manage- against which the public would be invited
ment 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
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 pecul-
iarly 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 perfornumce is good or bad.
And, indeed, it is true that everybody ought to be
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 1G9
competent, in some degree, to criticize drama; there is
nothing esoteric about the art. But one must remem-
ber that, as far as its acting goes, not only an actor's
work is criticized, but inferentially his whole person-
ality, 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
elsewhere 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.
But with immediate commercial considerations
largely ruled out, as they would be in a theatre where on
the one side was a classic repertory with its
prescriptive claims and on the other every where
encouragement to be patient and not Kjajne
panic-stricken in the pursuit of the un- should fall
tried thing, one would be inclined to urge
a director rather to ignore casual criticism altogether
than to let his policy be influenced 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 indi-
viduals 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
170 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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, com-
pletely 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 discussions, would provide something like that col-
lective mind which we have noted as the peculiar vir-
tue 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 busi-
ness 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 con-
sidered opinion of the theatre's progress, justify policy,
explain 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 AS PLAYHOUSE 171
The director of the theatre should be an autocrat,
and that his autocracy may be effective it must be
strictly limited. His council will tell him, ^,
for instance, to do what he likes. Without theatre's
this freedom, illusory though it must sound, director
he could not hope to do anything at all. and his
But the theatre, school and playhouse autocracy
both, company, teachers, students, can never be disci-
plined into an automaton, carrying out orders without
question, whatever the theoretical powers over them
may be. And if any such institution could be so con-
ducted 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 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 ca-
pacity to work, and to work well — according, that is,
to the bent of his talent. He is not very likeh% 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 deter-
mined and the proportions of its budget adjusted,
that its finance should not be a department almost, if
not quite, autonomous, subject to the council's over-
sight alone. Encroachment upon a director's time by
such matters would always be serious enough; and it
172 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
would be even more serious if, as is likely, he resisted
the encroachment. Indeed, there are no matters in
which a director, right for everything else, might,
through sheer inability to change his spots, find him-
self more often in the wrong than money matters. He
would be well quit of their burden.
Another limiting of power and lightening of responsi-
bility wants careful compassing. We must deal at
. length with the problem of the choosing of
of plays plays. For purely practical reasons a di-
rector must, over this, if not delegate his
powers, at least contrive 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 encouragement or considerate
discouragement of the author, is a most important
part of the theatre's work, too important to be entrusted
to private secretaries (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 playwriting
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 drama-
tist 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 shak-
ing free it will })e ill-considered. The best use any
student can make of his knowledge is to forget — not
the knowledge itself, but tlie fact that he knows it.
And for nobody is it more important than for the
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 173
dramatist to escape from this vicious tendency, common
to all institutions and their inmates, to revolve per-
petually in the circle of his own ideas.
The danger to the dramatist is as great a danger to
the theatre. There will be the classic plays, accepted
material both for study and performance.
These apart; if experience counts for any- J"®
thing, the institutional tendency is always jn^tftution-
to keep in with a school of writers, whose alism
approximation to classic rank would really
seem to be their exceeding dullness; 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 drama-
tist 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 mentioning. 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 someone of authority and under- The need
standing whose chief business it will be to JJay-reader
deal with plays and — more importantly ^f unusual
— with playwrights. He must have au- importance
thority, 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 inde-
174 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
pendence 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 stand-
ard 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.
From the attempts of the younger generation, with
their study of the technique of playwriting and, even
better, their improved chances of some association with
a theatre in being, the quite impossible play is dis-
appearing. It is amazing, though, how literary men of
distinction will still produce stretches of dialogue, di-
vided 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 train-
ing 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 un-
tried 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 in-
tentioned 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 collaborator — 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 common-
place pattern. And the manager does not often find
the ])lan worth the trouble it involves. But while
rejection is easy enough, acceptance of a play is, for
any theatre, the beginning of responsibilities which
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 175
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 The
failure. A play is, indeed, very much a diflBculties
house of art. The material, the decoration, ° experi-
may be fine. But unless you can be reason- pj^y
ably sure that its construction is sound, production
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 professional-
ized 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 accus-
tomed 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 pro-
fessional performance is a wholly unfair one. For,
after all, when it comes to the point of performance
the actors have to make the play efiective. 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 respon-
sible 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
176 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
very precious in our theatre; there will certainly be
none to waste. We have tried to provide in the work
of the school for a modicum of sheerly experimental
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 away quite empty or, indeed,
quite let go.
For the gist of such a task one can lay down few
laws; its very feasibility will depend upon the play-
reader's personality. But such men (and
"^^^ women, though as yet, with their ovm.
^ ^^~fi^^ ^ worlds to conquer, more rarely) do exist :
GURIIIIC^* 1 11*1* 1 1
tions and Jn.en whose personal ambitions have been
powers 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 swift runners.*
• The play-reader would have behind him all the re-
sources 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 association of his student days,
for all the active collaboration that he must welcome in
the completion of his work, if he does not, in its initi-
ation and development, keep both a solitary mind and a
mind in contact rather with realities than shows —
never with the show of shows at least — he will have
* Sucli men are to he found in most imiversitios. 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.
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 177
nothing of 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 gener-
ated by actors and actresses trained to elaborate vari-
ations upon accepted themes than results from the
formal literary interference of the dramatist, who, by
refixing the worn subjects and phrases in would-be
novel forms, nailing them down once more in the out-
line of a play, does but impoverish and deaden the
theatre's art.
Our problem, however, is how to give the playwright
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 suflSce 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' asso-
ciation with the theatre. A man's work might be
brought, perhaps, to the preliminary stages of pro-
duction, 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 dis-
cussion 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
178 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 dis-
comfort of intruding 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 hack-
neyed 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 com-
pleted 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 them-
selves 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 for both 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 mountain-
eer's of the Mediterranean), in the drawing of two-
dimensional designs for the three-dimensional theatre,
nor — to outrage the illustration a little — in the
writing of one-dimensional i:)lays for many-dimensional
acting. All this may be excusable enough when, as
now, the disastrous conditions of the theatre exclude
from its service man after man whose scholarship,
artistry, or inspiration asks some further encourage-
ment 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 the art of architecture, and most effectively to be
preached by ])ractice.
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 179
While the play-reader himself should have every
latitude in granting the freedom of the theatre to the
potential playwright, whether, when there
was a direct question of the production A third
of a play, his reconmiendation and the voice
director's acceptance or rejection would . ,j^
cover the ground of this most important choosing
business, is to be doubted. If not, it being of plays
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 them-
selves or committees elected by the audience might
have power to dictate one production 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 demoralizing 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 sim-
plicity'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 nan'owing
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
* 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."
180 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
tentative collaboration with the theatre's work, the
part of this third chooser of plays would be to keep out
of touch w4th 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 immediate
success. Ideally he should possess one of those sceptical,
critical, troublous ininds, unattachable to any move-
ment, frankly at odds with acquiescence. He should be
a discoverer of the talent that would not be drawTi
into the theatre's orbit. One sees him, perhaps,
travelling on its behalf. He would be constantly
outvoted 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 limitation of
power than an extension of faculty — to enumerate
the director's positive tasks would be but to unply
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
epitomized reflection of its activities. And, in addition,
he must have the administrative qualities
The that should pertain to direction anywhere,
fallacy of Well, there are no such people. And the
trying to ^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ government is the story of the
fhingTf^t failure to find them, the wisdom of the
at once search, and the necessity of putting up
with the next best thing.
But for the direction of the search a principle is
involved whicli it may be as well, as far as this
theatre is concerned, to examine. ;
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 181
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, ipso facto, pre-
vent 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 permanencies of an institution. We may
at least look round at this moment and justifiably pro-
test 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, tra-
ditional and iconoclastic; the one policy does not pros-
per, indeed, at more than a brickbat's 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 perishing when the circumstances that sus-
tained them change; and, above all, there sliould be no
attempt to keep them artificially alive. Lilies that
fester smell far v-. '^^se than tlie wholesome cabbage.
But a continued new creation of elaborately organized
institutions is not to be faced. These, if they are de-
sirable at all, must be designed to endure, and an in-
evitable condition of their endurance will be for the
* Whether, a century hence, the man appointed were actually a
product of the theatre, or an outsider, is a small matter if his i)ro-
fessional qualities were those which it is the theatre's object to
cultivate.
182 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 sucli 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 un-
selfishness, 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 be-
neath it quite unnoticeably, his work will have been
Wasted. In his staff, his company, and students he
must inoculate loyalty to the theatre, not to himself.
And while it may be called the United States — or the
British — or the Pittsburg — or Nottingham — The-
atre, yet if from bej^ond 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 pre-
sented is very difficult; in the flush of success, more-
over, it is always ignored.*
One need not press the point further; and it is ob-
vious that to complicate the difficulty with financial
* Wlicre was Antoinc's theatre without Antoine? And, con-
versely, the 0([('nn swallowed liini like a grave. Why could not
the I.cssinj^ 'J'licalrc Company hold togothcr after Bralun's tleath?
The Theatre Fraiieais survives all defections. Is that only because
of its national character and its subsidy?
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 183
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 cer-
tain that it is compromise and opportunism, 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
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.
A functionary barely existent in the theatre of to-day,
but of some importance to such a scheme as this, would
be the librarian. His work would be two-
fold. For the playhouse he should be con- The
cerned to conserve tradition. There he librarian;
would be the permanent head of the staff *^p^^t^
of prompters (a further word about them books; the
soon), and responsible for the proper re- conserving
cording of each play's production; for the of tradition
writing of a small history of its casting
and development; for the preservation in some inter-
pretable 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
184 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
business, mostly muddled nowadays, for no one con-
cerned seems to know quite what is wanted. No pro-
ducer 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 distinc-
tion between the main features of the play's scheme —
that skeleton upon which the rest is hung — and all
the minor matters, positions, movements, 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 everyone concerned. The principles of
prompt-book making will be implicit in our later dis-
cussion 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 w^e could tie our actors to
notes in their voices and precise liftings of the eye-
brows, we presumably would not — cinema and gramo-
phone 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 importance of these movements and of
the cadences of the dialogue and their purpose needs
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 185
to be indicated; above all does the distinction between
essential and permissive things. The dramatist him-
self, 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 encouragement to
continuity of effort that its achievements should be
intelligibly enshrined and its traditions formed and
preserved.
The library — the room full of books — would 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 archi-
tecture, 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?
With regard to the corps of prompters — let us prefer
the old-fashioned simplicity of this slight misnomer
to the pretentiously exact " assistant stage-
manager "— there is a little to be said. pj-^^pters
The job — once its drudgery were re- themselves
duced to a minimum by the means of or-
ganization 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
186 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
one may It has not many more possibilities of develop-
ment 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 devital-
izing 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 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 exposition that it needs, an
educational study.
We come now to the staging of plays; and, in the
first place, let us decide that shoddy has no place in the
theatre. Just because some scenery may be
workshoD "^^^^'^t' 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
THE THEATRE AS PL.\YIIOUSE 187
sets a sterner standard of aecomi)li.sliment. Craftsman-
ship, and not craft, will be called for; the work must be
beautiful and right in itself. Is it too fanciful to con-
tend that in the theatre the various sorts of shoddiness
are interdependent? One need not hold that we can
promote sound thinking in our playwrights by means
of sound carpentry on the stage. But, conversely, 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 for the fitness
of the practical accessories, even the smallest. Inter-
dependence in the theatre is complete. 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 through-
out tlie 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 impover-
ishment 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 Chippen-
dale would not come amiss as a flavouring 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
188 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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
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 furnishing oi
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 work-
shop. By preferring that term we both emphasize,
again, the uselessness for these purposes of mere paper
designing and the practical impossibility of carrying oi*
very much abstract study. For this last, indeed, there
should be not much need. The aesthetic principles in-
volved 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 teaching
of the subject can be devised. There can be lectures at
large on the history, the theory, and practice of scenic
decoration and costume design. But a great deal mor^
learning can be done by students admitted to watch
and assist in the carrying out of the practical work.
Not much good will come, however, 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 efficient ones at that. Scale drawings, though
not so attractive, are far more useful.
The worksliop, then, must be j^rimarily a part of the
theatre as playhouse, though it may pass as many stu-
dent apprentices through a course of its work as it can
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 189
do, profitably to them, and witnout deflecting its own
purposes to any sort of dilettantism.
Now comes the question what proportion of time,
attention, and energy should a theatre give to this side
of its work? Note that in the last analysis
it will be energy and not merely money that The
will be absorbed. Lavish expenditure is, amount of
no doubt, a tempting devil; but it is the f en ion o
, . » 1 1-1 be given to
busmess manager s task to put this be- stage
hind us. The more seductive deep sea, decoration
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, furniture, costumes, however
fine in themselves, accumulate into if they have not
the right and intimate relation to the production as a
whole.'' And in nineteen cases out of twenty their re-
lation 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 mean-
ing 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 hea t's blood of all true inter-
pretation) by even the most genuine accessory riches,
however brilliant, however attractive 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 scien-
tific, 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 and the extra energy and
p
190 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE I
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 pres-
entation almost unbearably 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 vir-
tues 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 embroi-
dering the slighter fabrics, which do not by their own
strength and completeness forbid such attentions.
Undue emphasis, one feels, has been laid of late years
upon stage decoration. There was, indeed, a crying
need both for the practical reformer and
Tne easy ^j^g inspired prophet. Scene-painting had
visual touched depths of dullness, ugliness, and
appeal ineptitude from which a few instances of
honourable craftsmanship and creditable
imagination could not save it, while the occasional in-
tervention of an artist of academic reputation, superior
and aloof, made only specious pretence at a rescue.
But the trail of reform 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 upon these phenomena,
commonplace enough to theatre folk, but always im-
pressive, one would say, to the stranger straying in the
daytime into the empty, echoing, shrouded house, that
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 191
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 forever with these pseudo-simplici-
ties 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 over-
shadow 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 seance to the clattering reality of the streets,
exclaiming: "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.
Quite apart from the economy which a business-
manager, balancing one branch of the theatre's work
against another, will very wisely impose on
the workshop, there is an artistic inhi- economy
bition of over-expenditure of energy or
money upon the decoration 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 company 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
192 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
respond to the fantasy of such demands. So it should
reasonablj' 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 substance 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 debasement. 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, quite
apart from its particular dramatic fitness, answers the
same purpose. Just as a standardizing of
The the measurements for doors, windows,
salutary platforms, steps, is a help to the carpenter,
influence ^^ j^ ^^^ conventionalizing of a scene to the
or conven- , . i . • • , • • j . i i? u
tional designer: his imagination is set the ireer by
staging the very limitations within which it must
work. These must vary very much accord-
ing to concrete circumstances, and their proper extent
will always be arguable. A Greek play, for instance,
torn from a Greek theatre, where 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
consef|Ucnce, 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
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 193
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 stagecraft 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 framework 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 conven-
tion of acting and staging; therefore the acceptance of
a convention as germane to it as the gulf between
Athens and our 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
beyond 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 fur-
nishing. This is a question not of simplicity, but of
convention and its acceptance; the freeing from un-
necessary astonishment of the spectator's mind and
eyes.
To Mediaeval and Elizabethan drama the same
principles will apply, and over their application the
same sort of disputes arise. The common quarrel over
the staging of Shakespeare is a pretty one, and some-
thing more is involved in it than like or dislike of
platform, stage, and illusionist scenery. The argu-
ments for and against the adaptability of Greek Trag-
* Personally I think they should not be.
194 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
edy can be used with effect by either side. The strict
EKzabethan should contend that an open-air theatre
and the Greek language are the only allow-
The need able means of interpretation, while the
for agree- advocates of the modern staging of Shakes-
ment on peare should be content to see Euripides
conven ion subjected to all the tests of realism — as
interpreters sometimes they are. But it comes to this:
and what degree of translation will the plays
audience bear — much is inevitable — and of what
degree of translation of mind is the audience
capable? Drag Euripides by force across the centuries,
strip him of everything which is not the common knowl-
edge of a London street corner, and, however tran-
scendent 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 knowl-
edge both of his intention and of what lay, besides,
unconscious in his mind, the better our footing will be.
Now, Shakespeare may be rhetorically not for an age,
but for all time. It may be that his genius quite tran-
scends the medium in which it worked — though surely
at one moment to praise his stagecraft and in the next
to contend that in the problem of producing his plays
it may safely be ignored is something more than para-
doxical. 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
Kr
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 195
can get to him the closer understanding we shall have
of him. It is a question of degree, of give and take,
and not, perhaps, so much of disquisitioning upon the
psychology of audiences as of careful study of his stage-
craft — study which can only be carried on in the actual
staging of the plays themselves. Shakespeare is likely
to be the cornerstone of any representative theatre in
England as long as the impulse of the Elizabethan
age — England's renaissance, her gathering of strength
for the spring that has landed her uj)on what now
perilous height! — endures. Therefore 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, suflBciently
near to our Shakespeare for the more and less of dis-
tance to count, and for the degree of proximity achieved
to be disputable 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 remem-
bered 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 audi-
ence 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 obligatory
upon the workshop as upon any other section of the
theatre. This book both tacitly and expressly rejects
the ideal of the theatre which sees everything centred
in the imagination and proceeding 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
196 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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
The many sham theatres in being and one or
v^rkshop ^^Q j.g^i (jj^gg ijj ^Yie clouds. But the
collabora- better reason lies in the sounder belief
tion 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 duplicated 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 — has himself been sometimes driven to
this conclusion 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 incomplete-
ness is a truer reflection of the life it portrays than
in any unimpeachable perfection of achievement it
could be.
Collaboration admitted, the conditions need de-
termining. Should the workshop form as close a cor-
poration as the company of actors — and
, , , closer, since its work would be more nar-
WOrkSnOD s
organization ^owly concentrated — or should it admit
the alien designer, even as the playwriglit
must be admitted? One lias little doubt that it should.
But the workshop will first tend quite naturally to
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 197
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 work-
ing 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 one best suited to plays of muddled content. And a
little more smudging with incidental music will com-
plete the characteristic effect. Then there is a more to
be respected school of designers that relies upon paint
and the quality of the painting — no other. This
method, though, just because of its striking possi-
bilities, 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 Elizabethan 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 everything 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 bankruptcy
of all imagination whatever — but so that he may
bring his material to the perfection which the circum-
stances 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.
198 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
WTiat the measure of this craftsmanship must be is a
question. A good workshop will tend to do 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 al-
ways involve the accumulation of a store of things that
are fine in themselves and not to be destroyed or dis-
carded. And apart from the things made, the con-
ventional scenes themselves, and the rather comic
medley of a theatre property-room — the 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.
It would be, then, into a workshop so constituted that
the stranger designer would at times be invited. Not,
be it clearly understood, any casual painter
or architect, who thinks he would like to
desiener 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 tech-
nique of his own to enable him to collaborate with
the theatre craftsman he will be welcomed even as
the playwright 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 pro-
ducer, so the designer with full knowledge of the theatre
crafts could be, from beginning to end, responsible for the
carrying out of his designs. Needless to say, there will
be no room at all for the man who can but do brilliantly
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 199
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 con-
cerned, if we may judge not only from some theatrical
art exliibitions, at which the ecstasies of the amateur
may be excusable, but from the pious but futile pro-
fessional attempts that are made now and then to
translate into actuality wonderfully attitudinized pic-
tures. But also, as with the playwright — for the
"solidifying" of a production is a lengthy and trouble-
some and a highly technical process — there should be
some mitigation for the men to whom work in the the-
atre would remain a very occasional business. To the
mastery of that simple situation comes naturally the
workshop's head. He can edit the work. If the de-
signs are of costumes to fit into his conventional back-
grounds 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 suppose
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 unrea-
soning egotist — vainglorious, preposterous — was, one
might almost believe, a product of nineteenth-century
fiction, an item in its calculated flattery of commercial-
ism. 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 environ-
ment. Here is an arena into which he may cast his
idea for profit by dispute, and gain a new — an ob-
jective — delight in its over-fashioning. Friction will
not often be more than wholesomely warming; here is
200 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
no audience to embitter a quarrel. And while imagi-
nation may be solitary and absolnte, craftsmanship is a
commonwealth. A workshop might well be the happiest
place in a theatre, for its material is kindly and acqui-
escent. Moreover, the worker can go home and leave it.
He is free from the ever-haunting self-consciousness of
the actor, who sheds but his clothes in his dressing-
room.*
Some time before the scene designer proclaimed him-
self 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 cum-
bered 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 verdict 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 unsuitably 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 con-
trivance, 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 conspicuous
and in their repetition (the bag of tricks is soon ex-
* There incidentally is presented a dilemma. Shall the actor
escape it by creating a graven image — a suheonscious professional
self? No; for that will not suffice him for serious w.ork. This is
every artist's pr()l)lem. 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 subconscious self to live by; life
being unimportant. Not a happy way out of the diiliculty, this!
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 201
hausted) become wearisome. A drama may yet be
written aesthetically fitted for the revolving stage, but
Shakespeare, eighteenth-century comedy, and most
modern plays are grievously misplaced on it. If
Shakespeare does not need the staging for which his
work was designed he certainly demands a forthright-
ness and uniformity of action which is not occasioned
by a twisted, tricky background. 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 imprint itself upon the action of the play, and
so largely influence the very readings of the actors'
parts. The ordinary revolving stage, too abundantly
used (and machinery imposes itself), makes neither for
spaciousness nor dignity of production, nor for sim-
plicity nor repose.
The whole question, however, of stage machinery is
involved in the larger one of the theatre's plan and
purpose. The modern form of theatre
building marks but one stage of the drama's The right
development. For plays of the so-called ^uditl)rium
realistic school of the nineteenth century ^^^ ^^^
little is needed but a picture-frame prosce- wrong
nium 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 eye-
brows and hair-parting to the patient gods. Even here,
though, one may protest, in passing, against the pattern
of the theatre* which ranks the seats in long straight
* 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 liter-
ally if extra frontage is involved — in four-inch hundred dollar
notes.
202 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
rows, 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 entertaiimient — nulli-
fying any friendly relation in the audience to each other.
One of the results, accidental possibly, of the accus-
tomed 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
opposite 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 inter-
esting 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 agree-
able 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. AMien the curtain falls on the first act, and a
total stranger turns round to speak to you and you re-
spond 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 excellent the
dinner! — the diners sat at a long table all facing one
way. A double cjuestion is involved: the physical fo-
cussing of attention, and the relative importance of
one's own concentration upon the play and of being in
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 203
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 can
be built with an eye to one sort of drama only. It is
difficult to foresee the future, but quite
possible to provide for the past in this differing
matter, if one sets out straightway to do it. require-
It is true that no one who has produced a ments of
Greek play in a Greek theatre will, for its the dififer-
own sake, ever want to bring it indoors ent kinds
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 mediseval 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 build-
ing scheme for the sole sake of ^Eschylus and the
author of "Everyman," there would still be the prob-
lem of Elizabethan drama to be solved — to any
English-speaking audience a very vital one. No need
to argue in detail the 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
* Reinhardt's well-remembered production of "The Miracle"
was, to my thinking, largely spoilt by being played under tliese
conditions. And his circus playhouse in Berlin has comparable
drawbacks.
204 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
it most others hang. The questions of swiftness of
speech, of the treatment of the soliloquy, of uninter-
rupted action, of whether scenery should be realistic
or decorative or whether there should be none at all,
have been developed by the structural 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 accommo-
dation 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 thrusting of the plays within a proscenium, or
the attempt to drag them half out again on to a plat-
form stage which has been added as a structural after-
thought 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 pro-
vide, not only the picture stage, but a platform with
footlights abolished and suitable entrances for Eliza-
bethan 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 the auditorium ceiHng, 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 squarecentral
tower in the midst of the structure; though one wonders
why, as it looks well enough in a cathedral.
Machinery for \he expeditious making of these con-
structive changes should be a part of the ccj[uipment of
THE THEATRE AS PLAYHOUSE 205
every playhouse with a comprehensive programme.
For the rest one wants nothing self-assertive. And in
command of this department should be a stage en-
gineer,* solely concerned with the practical working
out and the economical rimning of the schemes of the
producers of plays. But the less they are tempted to
dally with the marvels of machinery the better. Inno-
cent, 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 extravagant amount
of room to act in, but ample space around it. A normal
proscenium opening of thirty feet or so is ample, con-
traction to twenty-five is sometimes useful, extension
to forty — that is, effective abolition of the prosce-
nium 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.
* 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 de-
prived him of any initiative in such matters, and nowadays he is
chosen mainly for his power of controlling the stage staff, his tech-
nical knowledge of scenery, and his ability to keep accounts. The
position would be better filled by a man who frankly disinterested
himself in the dramatic side of the business altogether.
206 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 complete scene can be set upon it.
Lighting is too complicated a matter to discuss here;
it is the Achilles' heel of most stage equipment. In-
cidentally, though, every theatre could — and should
— be so designed that plays can be performed in day-
light.
Chapter V
The Production of a Play
WE come to the kernel of the whole matter.
And the first thing to note is that condi-
tions of play production in any
such theatre as we are envisaging bear no "-o^ plays
relation at all to the methods that are .,
thrown on
thrust upon the managers and producers ^jjg stage
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 occa-
sion 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 prac-
tice — competition plucking the first fruits of talent —
the freedom to choose among a swelling crowd of
people with whose work you cannot be very intimate
and to whose methods of work you are inevitably
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 ner-
vous as a new found cat at rehearsal — if he is not it is
no good sign. So, for all their freedom of choice, man-
agers tend to select people they have worked with
before. The London stage in particular is accused from
time to time, of being a close corporation. It is. And
208 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
it is only broken up by the advent of new managers who
bring some knowledge of new actors with them. The
system has, indeed, many of the limitations of the old
stock days and none of their advantages.
But the company collected will still be, at best, 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
company ^^^^ often, they certainly do not come to-
gether now with any corporate sense; they
are, at best, artistic acquaintances. 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
acting of the average play to-day is all superstructure
— and mostly f agade ! If it gives one no sense of sta-
bility of intention, of there being in the whole thing
any abiding worth of idea (for though the play's execu-
tion cannot abide, this may), it is mainly because the
performance is not built upon this deeper subconscious^
understanding among its actors.*
Moreover, since the company have been brought
together for this one production only no time must
be lost. Rehearsals must be hurried on
, . , day by day. To pause for reflection or
rehearsals ^^ correct a mistake 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 vjiriations, the physical and emotional pos-
turings to which they and their audience are accus-
* If artistic worth were calculable in percentages one miglit
estimate a 50 per cent, increase by the crudest, most hapliazard cul-
tiv.'ilion of this corpf)rato power; and this would in its turn add
anijthcr 50 per cent, to the wortli of the iiidivichial aetor. But
that is cheapjack estimation. Due cultivation makes a difference
which amounts almost to an organic change.
THE PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 209
tomed, some success may emerge. But the best that
can be expected from such a preparation is a general
hard competence of execution when the way is phiin,
and, at any complexly difficult moment, either a help-
less clinging together for safety or a plunge into bus-
tling 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 alto-
gether, and to get nothing in exchange — so thinks the
theatre-wise actor; therefore, while rehearsals go for-
ward 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 ex-
hibited, and while our eyes and ears are sufficiently
entranced our minds may seize detachedly 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 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 apparent realization that
(the proper production of plays being, indeed, the
210 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 pro-
duction, nor is there such a thing as an
The ideal cast; nor should we even try by cir-
7^1^^*^°°^ cumstantial safeguards to make our play's
human performance fool proof. In any theatre
medium there will arise, when certain plays are
under consideration, the practical question:
can we command an inspiring or even an adequate Lear
or (Edipus, Peer Gynt, Cyrano or Undershaft? If we
for the time being cannot it may be more sensible to
hang up 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 will
always add more in value than we shall lose from indi-
vidual inability to do full justice physically and emo-
tionally to one or two parts. The unity of our inter-
pretation will be the best measure of our approach —
not to perfection, about which empty word and teasing
thought we should not even bother ourselves — but to
self-contained vitality.
The beginnings of a play's preparation by the com-
pany differ so little in theory from its purely educational
use by students, as this has been outlined 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, of their well-oiled and well-balanced artis-
tic 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 bril-
liancies of accomplishment.
THE PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 211
Take, for instance, "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
This is less a play, in the sense that we call "Rosmers-
holm" a play, than a musical symphony.
The characterization will not repay very Setting
prolonged analysis. It can best be vivified *° ^°^^ .
and elaborated by the contrasting to eye Mi^^ummer
and ear of individual with individual and Night's
group with group. Then the passing and Dream "
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 sud-
denly. 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 purpose-
ful relation to what went before, to what will come
after.
Now, once you get to rehearsing the action physi-
cally and your actors are occupied with their move-
ments and business — moreover, once off
the stage for a moment or two, out of How
touch, as actually out of sight and hearing, Physical
with what they have left going on there — brings
it is impossible for them to build up their study to a
parts in such a scheme with a continuously standstill
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 im-
pressed upon him note by note. Besides, one wants
212 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
no such arbitrary method; a producer even now re-
sorts to it only in desperation. To suggest, to criticize,
to co-ordinate — that should be the limit of his function.
The s;yTnphonic effect must be one made by the blend-
ing 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 natu-
rally into being, or the diversity of the various actors
will not become a 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 perform-
ance of such plays as these is not to become mere
repetition of ritual thej^ must be kept fluid and experi-
mental in their preparation till appearance and purpose
both, fineness and sincerity 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 un-
important, 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 gymnastic as fighting, dancing, or
the rough and tumble of farce. His training should so
have equipped 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.*
* 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.
THE PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 213
But passing the period of argument and criticism,
which are common to actor and student both, we come
to the point where their paths part com-
pany — the student sustaining his criti- The
cism, the actor pledged now to the mys- ^oces"by
terious process by which he identifies him- which the
self with the character he is to play.* A actor
lot of rather irritating nonsense is talked identifies
about 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 suppresses (or does not sup-
press) 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 expecta-
tion of the miracle. Still, it is a miracle that yields, if
not to contiiving, partly, at least, to explanation.
The phrase "to create a part" is embedded in kin-
dred 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 remember that he,
too, does but capture, to inform with something of his
own life and pass forth again renewed a brain-full of
the ideas and passions which are the common posses-
sion of — which so possess — mankind. We are, indeed,
interpreters all. Creation is not man's prerogative.
This admitted, the relation between the dramatist's
way of work and the actor's will be worth investigating.
An essential quality of any work of art is its homo-
geneity. For a staged play, then, to make good its
claim to be one it would seem to follow that the actors
* See also p. 229 et seq.
214 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
must continue what the dramatist has begun by meth-
ods as nearly related to his in understanding and inten-
tion 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 drama-
tist'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 technical knowledge of play-making
that the dramatist has come to exercise almost uncon-
sciously. 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
technique of expression. It is this mystery, then, that
we must investigate and attempt to explain.
To begin with, how does the dramatist work? He
may get his play on paper quickly or slowly, but the
stuff in it is the gradual, perhaps the casual.
The accretion of thoughts and feelings, formed
"^^™^*^^*'^ long before and now framed in words, or
which the arranged into action, for the first time,
actor must How much of this process is conscious, and
follow how much unconscious or subconscious,
he probably could not toll you. If we
say that the experiences are unconsciously or subcon-
sciously selected and consciously shaped we may not
be far wrong. Wherein does the actor's method follow
this? Certainly no sucli process is to be found in the
stuffing of his memory with words, and the whipping up
and out of whatever emotions his repot! I ion of them
happens to suggest during the half-drill, half-scramble
THE PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 215
iof 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 business-
like 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 theoretical 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 evi-
dence by comparing performances of a play that differ, not in
brilliance of execution, but absolutely in the meaning extracted from
the play and in the observable addition of dramatic values. I have
seen a performance of Tchekov's "Cherry Orchard" in Moscow, and
to read the play afterwards was like reading 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 of his craft. How to culti-
vate 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 excitement, 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 collaboration 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 performance of "The Cherry Orchard" elsewhere.
216 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
We must consider certain constituents of the prob-
lem. With but a three hours' traffic in which to ma-
. nceuvre all the material of a play, the long-
„„ , ^^„fl. X est part can but appear on the stage for
and conflict ^ x- i r • r • - in.
a comparatively tew miormmg and eftec-
tive passages. To find the inferential knowledge of it
that he needs the actor must search, so to speak, be-
hind 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 per-
formance, of however great interest, — if the rest of the
acting is sagging, vague, helpless, unattached, or per-
versely at cross purposes, — must distort the play's
purpose. No matter if the one seems to be right and
all the others wrong. Nothing is right unless the
thing as a whole is right. A play is founded upon con-
flict; the dramatist, 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 interpretation must be
founded upon corporate study by the actors, which
should begin as an argumentative counterpart of this
struggle and develop througli tlie assumption of per-
sonality into the desired unity wllh the play itself.
We have outlined the argumentative process else-
where. Let ws now consider how the unity is to be
achieved,
THE PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 217
It is to be hoped that the very subsidiary matter —
which now bulks so largely — of learning the words
of the play would be swamped in the proc-
ess of argument. Words should never be Never
learnt, for the result — as with action, if ^ords to
the play is brought to that prematurely — memory
is that they harden in the minds as actu-
alities when they should merely come to it as symbols.
All solitary study whatever is (once again) to be dep-
recated. 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 reconciliation. That sort of solitary study by which,
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 assimi-
lating 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 rehearsal and performance. This time jdenti^a-
of survey and discovery is the time, too, tio^ again
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.
218 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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. WTierefore 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
refreshing. 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 or the
actor's 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 mav have slackened.
Having got thus far by the aid of two minor nega-
tives, let us lay down a major one. The production
itself must never be shaped before its nat-
Productions ^,j..j fo^j^^ j^^s declared itself. By shaping
born and ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ understand, of course, not only
not made 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, met-
ronome markings, sforzandi, rallentandi, and the rest,
even by the beat of the conductor. It is tempting to
compare conductor and producer, but one must do so
mainly to remark that their powers, if not their func-
tions, are very different. To wield a baton at rehears-
als only, and even then to have neither terms nor
instruments of precision for explanation or response —
THE PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 219
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 — act-
ing is hardly capable of verbal definition. For by ad-
mitting the weakness, by abjuring fixation and finality,
one can the better profit by the compensating 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 defini-
tion of form and unity of intent for the staged play to
rank as a homogeneous work of art and yet preserve
that 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 precision of pitch,
tone, and pace, to bring the whole business to the like-
ness of a ballet. But nothing will be less like a play as
a play should be. Here, too, it is the letter that kill-
eth 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,
concerted, 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 fur-
ther 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
220 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
work of dramatist, producer, actors — has acquired
life enough to be about to go forward by its own mo-
mentum our positive rules (if they are discoverable)
must begin to apply.
We must now divide the action (using the word
comprehensively) into two categories. To the first
will belong everything that can be con-
The two sidered a part of the main structure of
categories ^j^g pj^^y (again using the word compre-
actionf^he Pensively to express the play, not as the
conscious dramatist left it, but as it has been so far
action brought to fuller being). And everything
so included must be capable of clear defi-
nition: its 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
emphasis 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 riglit
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 fea-
tures 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 PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 221
the number of them the greater the need of agreement,
but the less easy its achievement. But these abstract
terms become both too vague and too positive. We
must cite examples, remembering, however, that no one
will ever duplicate another and that as to each opinions
may legitimately differ; such are the drawbacks to
sesthetic 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 is obvious and the tradition
of its expression recoverable if broken; and it may not
be practically worth while in this instance to do other
than register 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 interpreta-
tion, let us assume for the moment that w^e are wholly
free. The treatment of such a situation must obviously
be a matter of clear definition and, let us say, of hon-
ourable agreement among the people concerned. One
uses this last epithet because it allows for the greatest
possible freedom within the bounds of the understand-
ing. 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 emo-
tional trysting-place. If you do you will sacrifice to
the second's mechanical perfection the life and the live-
liness of whole minutes leading to it and away from it.
Certainlv 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
222 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 fruit-
fully achieved if there is no closer agreement upon
means than is absolutely needed to compass the ends.
And the closer the agreement upon the end — that is
to say, the more skilled in sympathj^ 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 bet-
ter 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 needlessness of
nine-tenths of it. And we can do so inferentially by
going on to consider our second category.
If the first, for the sake of a single adjective, is to
include all the conscious action of the play the second
may be said to hold all the unconscious or
^^" , — deferring to the psychologist's lingo —
conscious ^j^g subconscious action. Into it, then,
or sub- , . . 1 ,
conscious "^^'^ ^^^ *^ brmg everythmg m the play s
action acting — movement, expression, emotion,
thought — which may, without tlisturb-
ance of the production's structure or to the distrac-
tion 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 comparison with the
single way of the first category. And there may be in
theory as good an {esthetic reason for exactly enumer-
ating the fifty as there is for prescribing the one. There
will ai)pear, indeed in our plan, an indirect method of
THE PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 223
prescription of the fifty; for the subconscious 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 incal-
culable human medium which defies (and perhaps de-
spises) exactitude. We aim, then, through this free-
dom 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 spon-
taneity 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 underlying problems are in one
way or another stumbling-blocks to every actor worth
the name.
The hardening effect of the "long run" upon acting
will be admitted. We may owe to that system in
England a care and a finish — if a trade
finish ! — in production that was unknown , ^
before. But the art of acting has inci- charybdis
dentally well-nigh been destroyed by it; of
for it has reduced art to automatism. No automatism
wonder people talk of the cinema as a ^^^ ^5^^~
substitute for the theatre when they are
, . . , ness
content m their ignorance to see and
applaud an actor's thousandth photographic repro-
duction 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 gym-
nastics. 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.
224 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
If he did not make himself into a machine, the httle
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!
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 remaining
nights. Other influences make for it: disciplinary re-
hearsals; 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 constant 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 eliminate clumsy touches of expression. But
the quite conscious replacing of them with touches
more effective (once the preliminary periods of prepara-
tion 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 partic-
ular trick of thought or emotion which he finds he can
command, his performance will become 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
priii(ii)lc to unite them. lie 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 subconscious self which will
THE PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 225
faithfully record and can later re-express the idea:
his conscious mind thus being freed again for the larger
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 subconscious mind,
no inner conviction will be prompting it: it will be
invariable and lifeless.
The problem is no easy one. There is the 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 tionalism
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 conventional
acting of a very satisfying and beautiful kind, appro-
priate enough in its place. The ritual of the Mass is
a performance of this sort, and most imaginative 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 establish an agreement be-
tween actors and audience upon the alphabet of its
convention. But in the theatre of the last three hun-
dred and fifty years the element of individual inter-
pretation 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 ^t'® "°"*^
in dignity and force it is to be hoped we gain ^gj-gonal
something in vitality and subtlety. It is appeal
possible, too, that the advance of interest
in dramatic art, with its mirrored effects, is due to
civilized resentment of a too direct emotional appeal
226 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
— to fear of it, if you will. There is reason in siicli
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 hindered, 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 oraiio 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 sjTiiphony we must learn to do our share.
But then, upon this third factor of the play thus in-
truded we can exercise our criticism without prejudice:
or we can give sympathy 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-centred
* There was a certain Labour leader about 1906 who, after
dining out, carefully cliangcd liack 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.
THE PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 227
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; play-
ing at disguises is only a good child's game.f We need
interpreters, but it must truly be the characters of the
play which they interpret. Working in full conscious-
ness they cannot do it; self will be asserted. Identifica-
tion 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 subconscious self.|
In this creation a double process is involved: first
the mental search and the provocative argument into
* 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.
t 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. 153.
I It might be claimed tliat 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
trainmg it should do so with little more particularity than any in-
stitution of the sort might provide a gymnasium in which the
students could keep themselves fit. Animals are unself-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.
228 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
and around the character and the play that we have
described; then the sensitizmg of the actor's receptive
faculties, mental and emotional, too.* It should be
a concurrent process; and the argument
will promote the mental receptivity — it
again ^'^^^' ^^ 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 diffi-
cult enough even to define s^anpathy, and, in human
relations, it is certainly a fatal error to try and culti-
vate it by prescription. But even in the world of make-
believe one can affirm no more than this: let the actor
surrender 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 hmi, as fruit of the personal surrender,
this mysterious second personality, which will be not
himself and yet will be a part of himself. 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 fullness it must doubt-
less remain 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 de-
mands separate and uncompleted service. If in some
other world union could bring perfection that would be
worth preparing for. Both here and now in the world
of art the impossible is possible. Surrender to an idea
robs no man of his liirtliright: tliese wedded beings
born of tlie actor's art live for their one purpose only,
and will perish unsustained by it. While they live,
though, their very limilalions give them power, and
perfection, too, to a degree. In any fine playing of a
* One IS tempted to add physical. Wave your hand suddenly
within an ineh f)f an actor's face and watch for the automatically
released mobility of expression.
THE PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 229
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 let himself go in
it. That phrase is pregnant. Now, every J^^ ^^*°^
actor has experienced, more or less, the v^jj^jsgif
sensation of being under his part's control, go »>
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
extraordinary 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 particular call.
Through the sensitive channel which the interpreter
has now become will flow unchecked 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
230 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
vague or varying, and at each fixed point the inter-
preter 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 subconsciously attend. To de-
meanour, 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 calcu-
lation could only deaden and destroy. If the under-
lying idea is just and consistent, if the interpreter is
physically trained and mentally and emotionally sen-
sitized — if his faculties, that is to say, are suflSciently
at one with his conception — then all that he does or
can do will now have appropriate value and stand in
right proportion 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 proc-
ess 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 a play's acting
from hardening by arl)itrary changes which only dis-
turb its right rhythm and melody is to gain for it a very
indifferent freedom. No one wants a scene done differ-
ently 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 avoichMJ. Against extra passivity the actor
* If one may Iwrrow a simile from eloctrical oiiiiincorins^: he
need not pass their current tlirough the converter of his conscious
mind.
THE PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 231
must be on his guard, or he will find himself, within
this second category, the victim of automatism again.
He must remember with what amazing
swiftness, within such artificial limits as ^^^
a play's performance, habit is established. ^f^^^t"
And unless the quiescence of the conscious again
mind helps the receptive, subconscious,
emotionally expressive self to be only the more keenly
alive — and, even when in complete physical quies-
cence, 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 wUl 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, however 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 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 nothmg. 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 sec if the result is the same. It might be more to
232 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 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 direc-
the point to argue that Madame Tehekov 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 Lopakhin 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 per-
formance, 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 care-
fully expressioned face and an appropriately attitudmized 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 superstition, to be yielded to when fear is upon
you, or is there any value in this subconscious activity? If so, by
what process is its power conveyed? Are we to suppose that emo-
tional 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.
* Let me, however, record my personal experience that only
bad actors arc 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 tlie play, not to their own performances — which,
alas, are all that the undiscerning public (and therefore success-
hardened actors) seem to care about.
THE PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 233
tion. And this may well be found in the very human
faculty of sympathy — experience transmuted to in-
stinct — in its integration and epitomizing,
under the guise of art, of that great human ^ ^°^ ®
achievement, by which to the calculable sympathy
sura of fellowship there is added a mys-
terious gift. We call it the spirit of a race, the morale
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 move-
ments 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 that can make
small things great. There is honour in this art.
As yet, in our modern theatre, the art of acting has
been but outlined. We guess at the fine ritual of Greek
drama, at the splendid crude pageantry of
the mediaeval stage, we can recall to life u^auq a
something of the passionate enjoyment ^f ^j^g ^j.^
of swift words which must have fired the
Elizabethan actors. The drama of that fifty years
was like a tongue of the Renaissance flame lick-
ing into splendour our English 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 cen-
234 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
turies have seen also the dominance of the "star"
actor with his pocketful 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 honourable
list. And even the pretenders to great title, who do
more harm to their absolutist cause than good to them-
selves, 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 pathetically asks wh3\ 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 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 desir-
able. But the supposition docs 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 anonv-
mous. Who has not been at a play with great persons
prominent in a box, and half the spectators wondering
how they were taking it.'^ It is a difference of degree —
not of kind — if, while the first act drags, we are saying
to oiH'selves "Wait till Miss Smith comes on," or, when
the curtain fulls on the third, "How well Mr. Brown
did that!" And though the star's supporter may think
tliat in his playing of Rosencrantz he gives himself
wholeheartedly to Hamlet tlie play, and the ])layer of
Hamlet the Prince believe of himself the same, at the
THE PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 235
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 substitute a faith
in the living drama itself. Still, let us not be too supe-
rior. 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 accus-
tomed success there comes, even at the moment, weari-
ness 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 welcome, therefore, to the child-mind in our-
selves, 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 particular grum-
bler; it may show some general maturing 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, he
has honoured fairly so far, even if we must qualify the
response as at times rather rigid and perverse; the in-
236 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
evitable consequence, this, of his estrangement from a
Hving theatre. He has been lucky and unlucky both
in this detachment: the crippled, half-
J^^ dead theatre has been only luckless in this
of its ^^ ^^ other deprivations. And upon the
adolescence ^ctor, powerless to save his own artistic
soul — not having, indeed, in isolation any
soul to save — the accumulated demands of a renais-
sance are now heavy. His obedience must be asked to
a stern and searching training of body, mind, and
imagination. 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
be ready to surrender himself and to merge his care-
fully 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 believed, 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 umnediate means. Few of us have the
eye of faith, though, or the knowledge that goes out to
meet, or even the sjanpalhy that will sustain the single-
minded adventurer. And many stri\'ings in the theatre
fail because allegiance to an uninspired and unin-
structed audience means the making of the best of that
world of approval even at the expense of the more dimly
seen salvation of an empiric art. Therefore it is that
THE PRODUCTION OF A PLAY 237
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-operation
between actors and playwright, and between the actors
themselves, upon which the whole art rests. Not many
steps farther 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 consciousness so formed by play-
wrights, actors, and 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 instrument
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 .f*
Chapter VI
Some Current Difficulties
THIS book's concern is to establish a point of
view of the theatre that is unfamiHar 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 conmiercial
circumstances to reconcile contradictory causes and
effects. Belief persists 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-f^ 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 in-
capacities 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 compromise; 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 sucJi a situation; once
committed you must protest your satisfaction with it
or go forward, or go back; it is the worst of a hnlf-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 unsympatheti-
cally for all that.
In the theatre, tliough, the path of compromise is
hard. "Certainly," says the patron of art to the
SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 239
ardent young reformer, "give me good plays well
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 Thurs- Compromise
day week. The purseryman could, no catchwords
doubt, produce the effect of one which
would last, say, till Friday fortnight. A close par-
allel. The money is spent — some theatre landlord
probably gets most of it — the patron of art then be-
thinks himself that the drama is an extravagant pas-
time and an unsatisfactory business. But it is n'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 is n'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 signifi-
cances 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 were n't there at all. A repertory theatre, according
to the enthusiasts, may be anything from the Comedie
Frangaise 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 somewhere —
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 comparison 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 "repertory idea" must
240 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 per-
formances running, or for more than three or four in
a week, and at least three or four dififerent 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 Frangais have been. And
a theatre is not worked in this way because of some
vague ideal behind it, but because the demand it 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 pro-
ducing fresh plays week by week, or month by month,
is not a repertory theatre. A pennanent 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 espe-
cially engaged for them, more than by courtesy a reper-
tory season. It is at best a temporary lath-and-plaster
fagade for a repertory theatre. ^Yalk 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 economy 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 compromise between the
two systems means waste of money or of energy, extrav-
SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 241
agance, and treble the work 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
to be said for the long-run system from the public's
point of view, something from the play-
wright's, and a great deal from the busi- The
ness manager's: its dominance, indeed, is f+lT^^
the charter of his own. long-run
In a big, busy-living city it is a con- system
venience 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 pleCys that exhaust their demand in a
single month oj 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) forever, 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, Bos-
ton, 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
242 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
exhausted and their principal 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 someone else
in to produce the plays. By letting the temporary
partner out as quickly as he let hmi 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 enabled 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
venture 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 clock-
work precision of ensemble and a meticulous obedience
to the last comma of his text.
But a slight objection to the whole glorious business
(and the dramatist should have been the first to note
this) is that it tends utterly to destroy the art of
acting. This cannot prosper under such conditions
of employment. It may profit a little by 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
* I use the term here in its general, not its particular, sense.
SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 243
makes, therefore, for the encouragement 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 them-
selves happily to the emotional illusions of Verdict:
the play itself, but the stage attitudes they the long run
are accustomed to, that bear the stigmata f^^^
of the art of its interpretation, have about destruction
the relation to acting that an oleograph of the art of
has to a Rembrandt. acting
And this alone should suflSce to condemn
the long-run system, whatever may be its convenience to
public or financier, for one cannot too often insist that the
art of acting is the theatre's very flesh and blood. Be-
sides 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 discouragement 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 magazines.
The publisher however, helped by cheaper manufac-
turing 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 business never ner-
vously or hypocritically hedging in the direction of
"art," should rather try to specialize in the production
of the unfit.
But to replace the long run by the short run, by the
experimental matinee or the hastily concocted "reper-
tory" 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
244 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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, artis-
tic and financial, which mostly character-
^^® ize the alternatives offered him. The
" rttle long-run system with its careful prepara-
better ^^^^ 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 uncertainty 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 occupation. 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 oppor-
tunities. And for this 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 few of these reforming efforts, and discover why,
with all their good will, based as they are upon a
contradiction, they cannot serve as solutions of a
difficulty. As essays in discontent they are a ^mir-
able, and as evidence of a readiness to do anything
rather than keep on grumbling even more admir-
* A recent tlieatrical entertainment has survived for somctliing
like six years. But, indeed, there seems to be no reason wliy, when
a theatre serves a city of six million peoph^ and its rising; generations,
not to mention its visitors, a play should not run forever.
SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 245
able. But they had better not lay claim to essen-
tial virtues.
To begin with, there can be no continuously fruitful
combination between the efforts to sustain a play-pro-
ducing establishment as a sound compet-
itive business enterprise and the desire to ^^y many
make a theatre a home for dramatic art. S^^^^^*-
T^. . , ,, , , efiforts at
1^ mancial results may be as good — or as j-eform have
bad — in the one case as the other, and failed
even the artistic results may look, on the
surface and for a time, alike. But, aims differing, coun-
sel will always be divided; and, indeed, the outlook,
intentions, and the methods employed towards these sep-
arate 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 have n'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 de-
mand immediate results, financial or artistic, preferably
both. This demand has, of course, led to an inordinate
expenditure of capital energy, difficult to sustain. The
promoters were making, it may be, for fidl-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 unpre-
destined 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
246 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
theatre would n't "pay," or that it wouldn't "work."
Of course it would n't. Good heavens, a fisherman
spends more patience to get one trout; and, what is
more, it is the fishing he enjoys !
Then there have been the enterprises of the cautious
capitalist, who watches his expenditure with care and
plays for the safety of each step he takes,
cautious "These have endured better, but naturally
capitalist ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^ limitation of enterprise,
and, as a general consequence, of a low
standard of work. For some degree of comprehen-
siveness 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 mis-
placed 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 relj'' upon the
constant and immediate support of a definite number
of people for every production — the system would be
so provokingly simple and so financially sound that its
artistic defects and limitations would be too easily for-
given. 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 tlie 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 tln-if ty, 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 company?
SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 247
The answer being inevitably Yes, several difficulties at
once arise.* If the size of it is to be 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 Practical
idle perhaps for weeks at a stretch; and, difficulties
apart from all other objections, good actors " practical"
will not stay with you to be kept idle. You manage-
may adopt the "practical" compromise ments
of calculating the size of your com-
pany 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 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 engagements 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
avoidance 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? INIuch
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
* 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.
248 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
consistently strong-minded as ever to limit the tide of
success once it is flowing? And a course of sliort
runs would come to mean that the theatre was in-
voluntarily 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 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 fortnight'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 overworked.
The old stock company's way out of this difficulty was
* 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 larger potential
intake 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 Reper-
tory Theatre, I believe, with its mobilized audience steadily in-
creasing, 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.
SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 249
to hand to the actor, a while before the season began,
a hst 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 atten-
tion 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 ne-
cessity of doing the job in about half the time that brought
into being the curious technique of acting (misnamed tra-
dition) more suited to dancing the lancers (which, indeed,
it much resembled) than to the interpretation of a play.
There is, it is true, one method by which plays — new
or old — can be produced under these conditions. The
principal performer will be the prompter.
The actor's study of his part will be the J^^^ J^^^
getting of a rough idea of the character difficulty
and deciding v/hat 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 perform-
ance 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 them-
selves into expressing the spirit of their part. If plays
must be produced under such conditions this is, per-
haps, 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
250 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 companies to their
prosperity that modern plays cannot so easily be stereo-
typed in casting or staging as could the old.* A return
to the first phase of the "star" system, by which cer-
tain eminent performers would go visiting with such
parts in their heads as Undershaft in "Major Barbara,"
Anthony in "Strife," John Gabriel Borkman, and Abra-
ham 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 production — this
is possible, no doubt, but hardly desirable. Better
see the plays under such conditions, 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
* Though the old plays were stereotyped in their acting it does
not follow, however, that they sliould have been. And a queer
consequence followed. The stock companies, composed of necessity
of actors following "lines" of parts — juveniles, heavies, first old
men and women, ingenues, soubrettes (there was even a curious
creature called a "singing cliambermaid") — were, almost equally
of necessity, so catered for by {)laywrights 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 apprentice.
It was a convention, like any other, grown to a tradition, llobert-
son broke it. I think we cannot seriously mourn its loss.
SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 251
to equip himself in the hope of an engagement is almost
beyond discovery.
The short-run theatre is in fact a short-sighted, if
heroically meant, attempt to provide for the new drama
by the old methods which the new drama
itself rendered obsolete; an attempt, there- ^^^
fore, logically foredoomed to failure. And "^^^^^
if the logic of the situation cannot con- drama
vince 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 good will and for all its disguising as reper-
tory — more hopelessly 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 specu-
lation 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: profitrentals, advertisement, " library "*commis-
sions, inordinate taxes, licence fees, water rates. Even as
an industry it is neither well treated nor self respecting, f
* In English theatrical parlance a "library" is an outside book-
ing-office. What a target for scorn in the phrase!
t 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
pretend 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. Quo-
tation would take us too far.
252 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
But an industry it is, with its practice and ever
growing precedent; and a paying industry, or people
would not meddle with it. Bring a scheme,
The good then, for the establishment of a genuine
Dusmess theatre before any average body of busi-
^■^Q ness men, and by instinct they consider it
theatre in the light of the dominating industrial
conditions, for all that these may be de-
monstrably both the fruit and the root of insensate
extravagance. And they cover their ignorance by such
commercial platitudes as "The theatre must be eco-
nomically managed." Excellent. 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 reminis-
cence 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 mustj
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 incon-
venient, perhaps, to make a theatre as free to the pub-
lic as is a picture gallery or a museum. Theatres are
not places (even if galleries are) into whicli people
* But even in fartorics nowadays we arc told tliat it pays to
consider the human factor. Why ever suppose that it would n't?
SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 253
should be encouraged to wander idly. But suppose
performances 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 per-
form 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 im-
mediate appeal? And if the theatre is a public-
spirited enterprise what claim has a minority audi-
ence 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 reasoning, if not rea-
sonable, 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 fail-
ure 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 Fortu-
natus' purse to dip into. 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
254 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 exhil-
arating, but the cause of the crowding must be any
management's concern. What is wanted is a deter-
minant.
This can be found, it would seem, in the audience
— that essential part even of the artistic completion
of a play. But by no means in the hap-
.^ hazard collection of people that we now
audience describe by the term. If the audience is
a completing part of the play's perform-
ance 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 constitution. 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
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
SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES ^55
choice of plays and the Hke; but inadvisable. The busi-
ness 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 uni-
verse 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 budgeting will always be a tiresome business,
and for some time must be a very chanceful one as
well. It is a great drawback to the Eng-
lish-speaking theatre that, while its art has ^
been to some small degree fostered, hardly budget
any practical knowledge of its proper
economy exists — economy here meaning housekeep-
ing, 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 —
256 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
these again being so hopelessly vitiated by association
with the speculative 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. Wliy
should a self-respecting roundabout do more than sup-
port itself .f* Oh, but if it does n't the swings are to
be starved; and they will grow more than ever exig-
uously 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 direct-
ness 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 ser-
vice, 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 indirectlj^ 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. And it follows that every limitation of
necessary equipment is an extravagance, not an econ-
omy; 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 obliga-
tion to go on using them; and this will tell probably
at the very moment when that backwash of enthusiasm
comes, from which all such cntcri)rises suffer, and when
SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 257
you'll be needing, <above all things, to set free inven-
tiveness 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 jfires. Always from the begin-
ning 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 backwash 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 uncontrollable 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, disintegration 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 acknowledges the bonus, and that
somebody pays the full price and knows what they are
paying for. No complimentary seats should be allowed
unless the cost of each compliment is written plainly
somewhere. No privileges to patrons and guarantors
and the like. If they want special seats for first per-
formances with their monograms worked on the back,
let them be paid for, in one way or another, at the 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
problems in the concrete; and now he will be wise to
build the pyramid of his policy from the bottom up,
258 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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
oolicv should ask patience from his supporters
and authorities while he assembles his re-
sources stone by stone. He wdll 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 plaj's 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 conven-
ience. But the incidence must be made clear to every-
one concerned.
The theatre's main task is, of course, to stand as
drama's representative with its audience. Now a
library — to which we have compared our
A Shakes- repertory of plays — does not buy one
parenthesis book here and there by a recognized
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
SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 259
who accept the national poet as they accept other
national monuments — St. Paul's, the Abbey, the Col-
umn 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 occa-
sions. Nelson, the man of deeds, and his peers in the
great city crj^^t 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 ingratitude. But it is utterly
right that we should know next to nothing of Shakes-
peare himself, and the mild curse of wasted time is
upon him who tries to rearticulate 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 con-
science 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
the gift's value. How can we till we accept it.?^ Pro-
moters 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 alreadJ^
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,
260 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
the little things that made hini 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 themselves 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 com-
mon people that Shakespeare sprang from, and despised
more than a little, moving doubtfully and painfully —
slipshod, stupid, helpless, heroic, passionate 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 his work a picture, vivid and inform-
ing, 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 generations at
least the power of Shakespeare the playwright 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 — hear-
ing 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 re-
* Not in the detail of eostume or scenery, but in the broad
mctliod of playing anrl staging, yes. Our so-called Shakespearean
traflilions of to-day, it must he remembered, date, the most vener-
able of them, from no earlier than tlic eighteenth century, an age of
some great actors, of much well-polished playiiig, but, if we may
SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 261
created. For if it is our inbred selves that are to
answer to their call familiarity with the sight and the
sound of them must be unquestioned, almost uncon-
scious. Acceptance of tradition will leave room, more-
over, for an ampler critical pleasure in the play's inter-
pretation. 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 ornamen-
tal 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
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" tradition. 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 busi-
ness 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
tonweight on our chests. Mrs. Siddons, for all Jier genius and with
much authority, so distorted Lady Macbeth from the subtle femi-
nine 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.
262 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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.
No rhetorical urging will be needed, perhaps, to en-
force upon any public-spirited theatre the all-obvious
duty of representing Shakespeare to its
"^h® audience. But more is implied. The
ea re s theatre's attitude towards its great dra-
towards the niatist should be its attitude towards all
drama 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 for-
gotten to-morrow, this farce will live for a century,"
he is not fit for his post. But it does demand some
scheme of selection which, however else it may be
evolved, can certainly not be dictated by the oppor-
tunism of a vague wish to please anybody and every-
body. Even the selected audience whose judgment
may be respected will only form itself in response to
SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 263
a programme. There is no such thing as public
taste. The democratic world of culture is, but for
some few strongholds of purpose and hope, lost in the
anarchy of pleasure-seeking. Haphazard armies of
fashion march hither and thither under irresponsible
and unknown leaders. What should the theatre do
here.'* It can only exist as a stronghold; self-respect-
ing, even self-suflScient, single-minded. Seek out, hat
in hand, bowing and scraping on its behalf, that per-
sonified monster the Public, and what does one get?
Halfpence; and, more deservedly, kicks. Coax the
monster if you think you can into a reasonable 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 inappropriately logical method.
Nor yet should it be arranged as an elaborate exliibi-
tion of drama; not as anything so soulless. Its purpose
should be the articulation of a body of plays and their
264 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 constitu-
ents, 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 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.
Therefore, as both epitome and mirror of our social
life, a theatre's first task is to realize a self, compacted,
as a man's mind is, of heritage and cir-
The cumstance. Then, without fail, a spirit will
«i^eatre's j^^f^j.^^^ j^. ^^^ ^^^ ^j^j^ f^^H title, it may
towards take its stand as a living unit of that
itself social world of man's creation — which is,
as we begin to know, the grouping of
groups and powers as much as of individuals, the
complex following on the simple — its full task being
just to make friends. The problem of this enlargement
of the laws of individual association 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 cludicate a little these confusions
cannot be a negligible one.
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 pro-
I
SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 265
gramme. Give a sample of Euripides — Murray,
a cycle of Ibsen, Gilbert's two early farces, Love
for Love, The Critic, Le Mala de Imagin-
aire, and — say — a couple more from Moli- ^^
ere, a selection of Shaw, of Galsworthy, of plays
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, something
by Heme, 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 Shakes-
peare — 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 form-
ing. 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 de-
prived of other good plays that they may wish to see.
Just as between self-respect and regard for one's friends.
266 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
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 can-
not afford to fulfil your duty there is no 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.
The problem of social life is the problem of the
balance of obligations; and for the theatre an epitome
of social life itself, and at its truest a radiat-
rama an ^ centre of almost personal imaginative
life, this is the key problem. The obliga-
tions to an audience are undoubted. One would like
to see every theatre that takes its task comprehen-
sively a popular theatre, crowded with all sorts and
conditions of people: for its public should be comprehen-
sive, too. The drama has always tended to be a demo-
cratic 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, according 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 acquaint-
ances. 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 tlie phrase,
and it is worth while to make truth of it when one can.
SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 267
And some practical truth we may find, perhaps — if
we prefer observation to theory — not in sweeping
condemnation of all class distinctions, but by discover-
ing where, in a so-called state of equality class dis-
tinctions do actually lie. It is quite possible, for in-*
stance, to set up an equality 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 cumulative
effect of such agreements upon the dispositions 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 particular 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 understanding. 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
268 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
and ineffectual divisions of our changing society? Do
we not then the more need signs Hfted up that will
draw men together in the many fellowships of a life
enriched by many interests, lest a material age, jealous
of distinction, coin us all into a current drabness and
dullness — tokens by the millions of humanity's de-
preciation?
And for its own sake, quite certainly, the theatre
must keep free 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
the clique 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 inheri-
tance, 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 class — a class, that is to
say, neither of people busily being idle
The need j^Qp q£ work-weary folk reluctantly set free,
leisured Ours has been called a quantitative civili-
class zation; 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 arc four clear hours to do as you like with."
But leisure, if wc may dogmatize, implies not so much
SOME CURRENT DIFFICULTIES 269
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 its misuse in work
his nature, in the receptivity of repose, will be found
blunted or deformed. It is not apparently either quan-
tity 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 specialized 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 seem-
ing 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
actor's surrender to the dramatist's idea, the triple
sympathy then set up — we do gain a vicarious ex-
perience that may almost stand for personal illumina-
tion. 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 govermnent, the church, the theatre we
270 THE EXEMPLARY THEATRE
deserve. But always at some point in the spiral's turn,
by our good will — that only — theatre or church or
government may manage to do a little of the 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 contradic-
tion, 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, per-
haps, 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 under-
standing. This is the ideal, and towards it the paths
are many.
wsm'<^
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