Our Stage and Its Critics Part 15

In efforts, certainly justifiable, to discover the reason for the failure of the theatrical season, some people have made quite a ferocious attack upon the "deadhead," who really has nothing to do with the case. He has been spoken of as an incubus. Some people regard the free entry of the _caput mortuum_ with a hostility like that shown by our ancestors (and to some extent ourselves) to the mortmain of the Church.

Let us consider the deadhead for a while. First, it is necessary to point out that there are several species. The genus includes all members of the audience who do not pay for their seats. Of course the species of deadhead critic is not attacked on this particular point; yet indirectly some members of it affect the situation, for it is said that there are critics who demand a good deal of "paper" for their friends from managers, even when the tickets are really saleable.

London critics are not treated like their brethren in Paris--the great city in which drama flourishes--where a reverence is exhibited for our craft not manifested in London. On a first night over here you will find that in many theatres the representatives of first-cla.s.s papers are in back rows of the stalls or in the dress circle, whilst deadheads of another species are occupying most of the better places. Moreover, there are very, very few journals to which more than one ticket is sent.

The next kind of deadhead is the unprofessional first-night deadhead, a mixture of personal friends of the manager, the author, the princ.i.p.al players and of "the backers," if any. It is said that they are the most troublesome of all to handle, being utterly unreasonable as a body, and refusing contemptuously seats accepted without a murmur by newspapers that have a million or so of readers. Many are only willing to lend the support of their presence on the first night; seats for the second or a later night are scorned. In this cla.s.s may be reckoned members of _the_ profession, who, with a strange disregard for the convenience of the management, demand a couple of stalls for the _premiere_, though they are in the habit of complaining that a first performance does justice neither to the piece nor to the players. Lastly, in the group of first-night deadheads come the members of the unrecognised, ill-organised, generally tactless claque.

The species that lately has been attacked is divisible into two groups.

The first consists of the people who will not go to the theatre without an order, but do not expect first-night tickets--one may call them the "cadgers." The second species might be ent.i.tled the "window-dressers."

Volumes have been written about the "cadgers," and countless stories told. No doubt they cause trouble and some expense in stamps, stationery and clerical work. Probably they do not really affect the fate of a piece, for there seems no reason to doubt the truth of the general a.s.sertion, that nearly all of them would stay away if they could not get a ticket for nothing.

Now we come to the really lamentable cla.s.s, people who have to be brought into a theatre "with a la.s.soo," to use an American term. Let us look at the position--the melancholy position. The play is not quite a hopeless failure; it is in a Mahomet's coffin position. If it can last a little longer the season may improve and money be made; or it is neither making nor losing on ordinary nights and does paying business on Sat.u.r.days. There is a third state of affairs--perhaps the commonest: it is necessary to keep the piece running for a certain number of weeks, even at a loss, in order that it may visit the provinces and the colonies or the States as a big London success that has enjoyed a long run. Yet paying playgoers keep aloof.

What is the manager to do? If his house is but half full the applause will be faint, the players are likely to act without spirit, and, worse still, the audience may be chilled, and the members of it will tell their friends that the house was almost empty, thereby causing them to think that the entertainment is poor. So half full might become quite empty. What method does the manager adopt? He knows that the general public is as uncritical of an audience as of a play or of acting, so he fills his house as well as he can with the very deadest of deadheads; "orders" are distributed lavishly to people whose presence in the theatre is actually a favour to the management.

It is said that these playgoers are peculiarly severe in their judgments and remarkably apathetic! To the truth of part of this we can testify, since we study such deadheads with great curiosity on the occasions, rather rare, when we see them, for sometimes a dramatic critic gets taken to the theatre by a friend. We think ourselves very famous, yet most of us have friends ignorant of the fact that our trade is to criticize plays. The position is a little quaint; one is asked to dine at about the time that is customary to take afternoon tea; the dinner is short though, if at a fas.h.i.+onable restaurant, the waits are long; and there comes an awful moment when the host mentions that he has got six stalls for the ----. Generally there is some friend present who knows the true position, and exhibits a smile of fiendish mirth.

When this happens we examine the professional deadhead with interest. He reminds one of the hired mourner at the Hebrew funeral. Fantastic clothes, strange devices for keeping s.h.i.+rt-fronts clean, queer contrivances for protecting the throat during the bus-ride home, furtive umbrellas, ample reticules (in which perhaps goloshes are hidden), and a genteel reticence in applause or laughter, are marks of the stranger in the stalls--the harmless, necessary deadhead. He may not be ornamental, nor even she, despite her s.e.x; perhaps they give little encouragement to the players; they bring nothing directly to the exchequer, but they fill a place.

Few of us do more; some of us merely fill a column, and wish we did that duty as conscientiously as most of these poor creatures do theirs, for, though obviously determined not to enjoy themselves, they come punctually, do not cause inconvenience by going out between the acts to waste money on high-priced refreshments, and remain in their places to the bitter end--unlike the cash patrons, so many of whom bustle away brutally towards the close of the entertainment for fear lest they should miss the chance of earning a nightmare at a fas.h.i.+onable restaurant. Seeing what service they render to the managers the deadheads are perhaps ent.i.tled to the protection of the phrase "_de mortuis_."

The foregoing article brought several letters, amongst them one that deserves a little consideration. All responsibility is disclaimed for the letter that is published verbatim:

DEAR SIR,--I have lately read an article by you on the subject of the matinee hat, with almost every word of which I have the honour of expressing my entire disagreement. Although your views on the topic may be absurd, they show that you have a mind capable of appreciating more than one side of a case; so I venture to write to you about the great question of the day, the proposed suppression of the deadhead.

"Ingrat.i.tude, thou marble-hearted fiend," to use the words of the bard; to think that after all our services to them, the managers, too blind to see the obvious causes of their distress, should dream of abolis.h.i.+ng the "harmless necessary" deadhead, who often has rendered to them a.s.sistance like that of the mouse "i' the fable" to the lion.

Permit me to discuss the matter seriously. Let me begin by employing, with trifling modification, a famous phrase by one of the dramatists of the land from which most of our English drama comes: "There are deadheads and deadheads!" They may be put into two main groups--the first-night deadheads and the other-nights deadheads--and there are subdivisions. Few save those immediately concerned would mourn if the first group were abolished--you can guess that I do not belong to it.

Yet I am well acquainted with the group, since a cousin of mine, long time a popular actor, has been of late a too-frequent attendant at these functions.

Of first-night deadheads there are four varieties: Friends of the management, including their brother pros.; friends of the author; friends of princ.i.p.al players in the cast; and the critics. It is a source of great joy to my cousin to see that on these occasion the managers know how to put the critics in their proper places, grouping them, for instance, in rows of stalls bearing the more remote letters of the alphabet, whilst between them and the footlights come the deadheads of the other varieties.

Personally, I wonder whether it is wise to put the gentry of the pen in seats from which they often hear with difficulty, and see without accuracy, in rows of seats normally belonging to the pit, and merely posing, _pro hoc vice_, as stalls, and situate in the headachy region underneath the dress circle.

According to my cousin, the first-night deadheads, as a body, are unpunctual and unappreciative. They chatter a good deal and seem more interested in the audience than the play, and might well be replaced by the many people who would be glad to plank down their money for a seat.

Let them go; and I warrant the managers will be none the worse--I should, indeed, except the gentlemen of the Fourth Estate.

The case of myself and the deadheads of other nights is quite different.

The managers will find it difficult to do without us.

We are present as much for their benefit as for our pleasure.

_Constatons les faits_, if I may borrow another phrase from the French.

Under what circ.u.mstances are we invited? When a play is doing good business? Certainly not. It is when the company are discussing in whispers whether the notice will go up or not, that the Fiery Cross is sent round to us and we come and fill the house. Without us there would be an aching void, and the few paying people, aghast at the gloom, would spread very bad reports. Managers, like nature, abhor a vacuum. Our presence saves the situation and the face of the management. No doubt our a.s.sistance is often vain, but the cases are numerous when, thanks to us, the management has been able to tide over a bad week or two during a run.

"They also serve who only sit and watch" is our motto, taken, you will see, from a line by the "organ-mouthed voice of England." Would not _Dorothy_ have died young but for our intervention? Would not _The Lion and the Mouse_ have enjoyed the success it deserved if we had been called in to dress the house until the public had discovered the piece?

Many are the cases where, during weeks of bad weather or sudden gloom we have rallied loyally to the theatre and kept a play going.

Do services such as this count for nothing? Is my occupation to become like that of the Moor of Venice--merely because managers are forgetful?

Do we make no sacrifices when we come to their aid? What about the expense of coming to and fro? What about wear and tear of dress clothes, useless to some of us except for such purposes, and, in honesty I should add, so far as the nether portions are concerned, for attending funerals?

Let me discuss what is urged against us. It is said that if we did not get free tickets we should pay to visit the play. There is a little truth in this, but not much. We might take tickets for the pit to see the good plays; our judgment tells us they are but few, whereas a sense of duty compels us in our quasi-professional capacity to attend even the most deplorable rubbish. This aspect of the matter amounts to no more than a trifle. The managers would gain little from our occasional s.h.i.+llings and lose much by our frequent absence.

It is urged that we do not applaud. I maintain that deceitful applause is not in our implied contract; certainly we never hiss or boo, though there is a splendid tradition rendered popular by poor Lal Brough that one of us found a play so utterly bad that he left his seat, went to the box-office, and bought a ticket, in order that he might express his opinion without prejudice to his conscience. As a body we are playgoers of judgment and experience, and, though I protest that we clap generously when there is a reasonable opportunity, the suggestion that we are a claque failing to do its duty because we do not applaud bad pieces is an outrageous insult.

No, sir; I do but humbly voice the opinion of my fellow-deadheads when I say that we would rather be abolished than have to offer sycophantic applause as part of the bargain. I insist a little upon this aspect, because the refusal to applaud rubbish seems to be looked upon as the dead head and front of our offending, if I may take a trifling liberty with the words of the Swan of Avon.

I had forgotten, sir, to mention one of our most important services. It is notorious that many plays are run in London without there being any expectation that they will make money in the Metropolis, but in the belief that if they can be called "a great London success," our simple-minded cousins in the country will accept them with enthusiasm.

How, I ask you, are these London successes manufactured? How could they be without our aid? I could name plays that have been run for a hundred nights in town at a heavy loss, and yet have proved gold-mines; and I have visited them at the call of duty and seen with my trained eyes so few of the paying public that a mere sense of decency would have compelled the managers to close the doors if we had not been present.

Our a.s.sistance on these occasions is an odious part of our duty. It goes sadly against my conscience to be one of a kind of stage-army audience, playing a part in order to deceive country or colonial managers into the belief that some piece of rubbish has had a genuinely successful London run. Is not service of this character to be counted? Surely, at the least, if we are to be abolished it should be recognized that the old hands amongst us are ent.i.tled to some compensation. Why, sir, seeing that serious politicians do not propose to suppress licences for the sale of poisons without giving compensations, surely we, who have done much and suffered much, ought not to be put into limbo without some recognition of our services. I remain, yours sincerely,

CAPUT MORTUUM

Just a line. On careful consideration of this letter, it seems only right to make a suggestion that some doubts exist whether it is entirely genuine, but it certainly appears to contain some grains of truth.

Theatrical Advertis.e.m.e.nts

It may be doubted whether the historian will call our period "the age of advertis.e.m.e.nt," though some have thought so. For there are such rapid and prodigious growths in the base craft of beating the big drum that our most audacious and colossal efforts may, to our grandchildren, seem like a Brown Bess to a modern repeater in comparison with their means of man-allurement. Of all the arts the one relying most upon advertis.e.m.e.nt is the drama; yet the phrase is half-unjust to real drama.

Perhaps it is fairer to say that there is more advertis.e.m.e.nt in connexion with the theatrical art than any other, or, indeed, all the others put together. The position is surprising; a large ma.s.s of the reading matter of the London papers is filled with copy concerning the theatres and players, though only a small percentage is criticism. More people would recognize each of thirty popular performers than could identify even one of the great in other branches of art or in science. A recent squabble about a couple of actresses has been the subject of greater fuss than would be caused by the discovery of the lost books of Livy, of a picture by Apelles, of the MS. of an unknown opera by Beethoven, of a method of making acc.u.mulators out of _papier-mache_, or a mode of manufacturing radium at a cost of twopence a pound. There have been thousands of columns printed concerning the marriages of (so-called) actresses to young gentlemen of family.

A digression about these marriages is permissible. Each has led to many articles on alliances between the aristocracy and the stage, and lists of the ladies who in our times have honoured (or dishonoured) the n.o.bility with their hands have been given. Yet there has been little comment upon the fact that, with two or three exceptions, the so-called actresses have had no position of importance in the legitimate ranks of the profession. A woman may perform in a theatre, and even draw a big salary, without being an actress, and she may have brains, beauty and popularity, and nevertheless enjoy little chance of marrying anybody with a "handle to his name," if she confines her work to the non-musical stage.

A distinction suggests itself--it might be that in music and the love of it by the n.o.bly born lies the explanation of the phenomenon; it might be that the blue-blooded youths captured these charmers of the musico-dramatic department in order to enjoy a selfish monopoly of lovely voices, but such is not the case. Two or three of the ladies who have won their way to the "hupper succles" possess talent; one of them has a beautiful voice and great gifts as an actress, and one was a brilliant dancer and became an excellent comedienne. The ruck and run of them, however, have triumphed owing to advertis.e.m.e.nt in subtle and also in crude forms.

Really the actresses of legitimate drama, whom one should call the _actresses_, have a grievance not merely in the fact that the peerage does not woo them (since in a good many instances the bride has paid dearly for her elevation), nor merely because women of the oldest profession open to the s.e.x miscall themselves actresses when in trouble--the term actress being like the word "charity"--but because their t.i.tle includes many persons of notoriety who, if forced to rely solely upon their talent, could hardly earn a pound a week in true drama. "True drama," for the common term "musico-dramatic" points to the fact that the fortunate nymphs belong to the lighter (and sometimes degraded) forms of musical work and not of the legitimate drama. Some wag, no doubt, has called their branch the _leg_-itimate drama.

In the mid-Victorian days the advertis.e.m.e.nts of drama were trifling.

Thirty years ago the photographs of Miss Maud Brans...o...b.., a real beauty, but not an actress of great quality, created quite a stir, and made her name well known throughout the land; and the publication of them was, probably, the beginning of the present deluge. The two ill.u.s.trated papers of importance published pictures only of actresses who by means of their talent had made a genuine sensation; and therefore but few were presented in the year. Nowadays there are from thirty to forty photographs a week in the ill.u.s.trated papers of actresses--using the term in its widest sense.

Many young ladies, who twenty years ago could not by any decent means have got their likenesses exhibited to the public except in shop-window photographs, now simper at us fifty-two times a year, or more, and are sometimes described as "the celebrated actress," though a few of them never get beyond the dignity of a single silly line in the book of a musical hodge-podge. Miss x.x.x smiles at us from her 40-h.p. "bloater car" which has cost a larger sum than eight years of her salary, and the simple-minded think she must be a great star to be able to afford such a luxury, not knowing that she herself is the luxury which someone else is unable to afford. The humble old devices are now stale tricks. The actress in search of notoriety does not lose her jewels: she brings an action which is reported at great length, and during it half-a-dozen members of the profession get a splendid chance of blowing their own trumpets. There was a cruel case a little while ago: one of these "damaged darlings" of the stage did lose her jewels--which had cost about as much as that admirable actress Amy Roselle earned in her honourable career with a tragic ending--but felt bound to keep silent about the loss, since to have mentioned it would have seemed like "out-of-date" advertising. "View jew," she called it.

It would be unfair to suggest that the ladies have a monopoly, for many of the actors also are busy in the art of advertis.e.m.e.nt--some so busy as to have little time to study the technique of their art. However, they get rather less help from the ill.u.s.trated papers, for reasons not quite obvious, if it be correct, as some suppose, that the picture journals are bought for the--not by--the ladies of the family.

The puff system is disadvantageous to the managers, since they have to pay fancy prices for the services of players, no better than others who could be engaged at humble rates, because they have acquired a specious importance by advertis.e.m.e.nt. The result has been a prodigious increase of salaries, without any corresponding gain in revenue, for although the much-"boomed" artist may attract people to a particular theatre, it is not to be a.s.sumed that the quant.i.ty of playgoers is increased, or that more money is spent on the whole by the public because of all this advertising.

The consequence to the managers, as a rule, is that expenditure is much greater, but the total amount of receipts remains the same. Yet the managers as a body are not to be pitied, since not only do they, unwisely, a.s.sist in this artificial glorification of the members of their companies, but some of them also push the advertis.e.m.e.nt of their theatres beyond delicate limits, and by the cunning strenuous efforts of their "press agents" and others beat the big drum very loudly, sometimes sounding a false note, as when they publish, in advertis.e.m.e.nts, garbled criticisms upon their wares.

There are some in the theatrical world who dislike and disdain the illegitimate advertis.e.m.e.nt. Others there are less nicely scrupulous, perhaps, but not sufficiently "smart" or lucky enough to "boom"

themselves. These suffer. Advertis.e.m.e.nt is to the theatrical world like ground bait to anglers. We who, to some extent are behind the scenes, know too well how many admirable actors and actresses have a hard fight for a bare living because their places are taken by people of less knowledge and skill, but more "push" and cunning. Even the general rise in salaries does not help these reticent players, for a salary at the rate of twenty pounds a week is not very useful if you are resting ten months in the year.

It is quite incontestable that we journalists are to be blamed. We help in the "booming"; we are the big drum, the players provide their own trumpets. A conspiracy of silence on our part would do much to mend matters. If for a little while we were to suppress the "personal pars."

and keep out the photographs and only write concerning the theatres strictly as critics, a great change would take place. Probably the revenue of the theatres would not diminish sensibly, but the expenses would. Managers and players would be forced to rely for success upon merit and nothing else, and as a result the standard of drama and acting would be raised. This has been so far perceived that even people belonging to the other side of the footlights have expressed publicly the opinion that the unsatisfactory state of the theatres is partly due to their being too much talked and written about.

Rosalind's phrase that a "good wine needs no bush" is but partly true; merit rarely succeeds by its own virtue when it has to meet unfair compet.i.tion in the shape of advertis.e.m.e.nt.