XSHAKESPEARE MENTIONS MOVIES
The thought of interviewing a gentlemanly genius like William Shakespeare after stacking up against such remote and formidable characters as Bluebeard, Brigham Young and Jesse James was most refreshing, though it took some nerve after all to tackle the world’s champion dramatic poet. I had feared he might be slightly disinclined to talk, not being familiar with the ways of modern journalism, but I was speedily set at ease on that point.
“Not talk for publication?” said the shade of Shakespeare, as he resumed his seat in his Morris chair upon my entrance, and tried to look like his pictures. “Not talk for publication? Did you ever know an actor, playwright or a poet who wouldn’t? And I’ve been all three, and a theatrical manager thrown in. It’s quite a while since I trod the boards, or walked the ties, but I’ve managed to keep fairly in touch with the times from frequent trips down below to oblige my mediumistic friends. There’s a great boom on just now. I could getan engagement every night in the week, and a pair of matinées, if I cared to perform. But there’s nothing in it. If they’d let me perform in my own plays it would be different. But there’s not much demand for them, it seems. All they’ll let me do is play the tambourine in a dark cabinet and scribble on slates and turn tables—just vaudeville I call it. And I see they’re beginning to censor my plays and cut out all references to booze on account of the new prohibition law. They made one of my actors quit giving the line: ‘I can call spirits from the vasty deep.’ Said it gave a wrong impression and tantalized men in the audience who thought the speaker was referring to his private stock down cellar. Well, all the world’s a stage—and the last time I was down I noticed most of the girls seemed to believe in making up for their parts. Talk about fresh paint!
“But you wished me to compare modern theatrical conditions with those of my day. This is an age of specialists, but as I have said, when I was on earth, ‘One man in his time plays many parts.’ I used to write a play, hire a company, rehearse it, take the leading part myself, sell tickets at the door, usher, beat the bass drum, fill the lamps and sweep out. I’ve died on the stage and two minutes later gone up into the top gallery to bounce a couple ofrowdies. But we were all trained to versatility in those days. No women were allowed to act, you know. You can’t imagine how nice and peaceful it was in our companies. Nobody ever threatened to quit because the type of his name on the posters was an eighth of an inch smaller than somebody else’s. Nobody ever cried all over the stage because somebody made disparaging remarks about his complexion or said his teeth showed he was ten years older than he claimed. But there were disadvantages, too, from the absence of the girls. Men had to take feminine parts. And you take an Ophelia, for instance, who chews tobacco and is drunk half the time, and it’s hard to invest the part with the genuine pathos it demands. I remember one time I hired a tall, gawky youth to play the part of Desdemona. He was all right the first week, but after that his voice suddenly began changing, and it sounded like a phonograph record that’s had a fall and got twisted. A Desdemona with a deep bass voice that switches to a shrill soprano without warning and then back again to the husky rumbling in the space of thirty seconds is bound to incur adverse criticism.
“I once had a Lady Macbeth, too, who had a habit of smoking his pipe behind the scenes while waiting for his cue. And one time, when he got the call, he absent-mindedly forgot toput his pipe away. It is entirely contrary to tradition for Lady Macbeth to smoke a pipe in the sleep-walking scene, and I had to dispense with his services the next Saturday night. And barring absent-mindedness, he was the best Lady Macbeth I ever had, too. I suppose our performances were pretty bum. But there were no daily newspaper dramatic critics then, and we didn’t know how rotten we were. Ignorance was bliss, both for us and for our audiences. We were handicapped, also, by lack of scenery. Our property man had a sinecure. The only ‘set’ we had consisted of a couple of kitchen chairs and a tin pan—the latter for the thunder. We used the chairs for thrones or mossy banks or anything else that happened to be needed. The audience had to picture the rest of the scenery. There was no curtain and the orchestra consisted of one performer. That insured harmony in the orchestra. Our equipment was ahead of your modern companies in only one respect: that of costumes. We always had plenty of costumes, such as they were. The last time I was down below I attended a musical comedy performance, and I was pained to observe how badly handicapped the management was in the matter of costumes. There weren’t half enough to go around. And the thermometer was below zero, too. As I said, we alwayshad enough costumes, because we used the same ones in every performance. Everybody, from Romeo to old King Lear, wore an antiquated red bathrobe and slippers. At least we managed to keep warm. Unlike your modern managers, we never had to hang out the ‘Standing room only’ sign. Nobody would have gone if he couldn’t get a seat. But I’ve been told that nowadays theater audiences will stand for anything. I can believe it after seeing some of your plays. As I have remarked in one of my own compositions, ‘Sweet are the uses of advertisements.’
“But to return to our discussion. The present generation has witnessed a wonderful addition to the dramatic art. I refer to the moving pictures. You thought I wouldn’t be for them? I am. I think they’re wonderful. I only wish we’d had them in my day. I’d have been able to retire about ten years sooner. You see, the highest salary I ever got was about twenty-five a week, and out of that I had to pay my board and traveling expenses—everything but hauling trunks to the hotel. Then I went into the producing game and did a little better. But even then, some Saturday nights, the ghost didn’t walk—except the one in Hamlet. I understand the average salary of a modern moving picture actor is a million dollars a year andaccident insurance. Newcomers learning the business draw down nominal pay of five thou’ a week. Small my-lord-the-carriage-waits parts get only two thousand a week, and so on down to the supes and scene-shifters and deckhands struggling to support their families on a hundred or so a day. I figure that the salary of a first-class movie actor for one year would have supported in luxury all the actors of my day for their entire lifetimes. And they’d have saved money. In my day an actor was about the next thing to a professional pauper. Like the dentist, he eked out a hand-to-mouth existence, but unlike the dentist he didn’t often have the opportunity of filling an aching void—his stomach. Life was just one bill collector after another. When anybody was needed to play the rôle of the half-starved apothecary in Romeo and Juliet there was no trouble finding a fellow who looked the part. There was always a rush of volunteers for the banquet scenes—if real food was provided. But I don’t begrudge your modern actors their prosperity. I only wish the stuff had been handed around a little earlier. That’s all.”
“Are you so enthusiastic over the movies, Mr. Shakespeare, that you like to have them produce your own plays? Or is that sacrilege?”
“I’d like to have my plays in the movies ifthey’d produce them properly. But what makes me sore is to have them leave out all the pep. When a play is transferred from the book or the stage to the movie, certain necessary changes should be made. The first requirement of the picture play is action. There’s no place for talk. Now, if they’re going to have my plays in the movies, I wish they’d popularize ’em. For instance, in my day there wasn’t an actor who knew how to throw a pie. Nobody could fire a pistol without ever taking aim—the way the movie actors do it. I hate to see my plays fail just for lack of a few pies and pistols, artistically handled. When one of my productions is put on the screen they engage some long-faced tragedian who’s immersed in great gobs of gloom all the time—some impressive individual with a St. Bernard voice that’s entirely wasted in the movies. What I say is: get somebody like Charlie Chaplin for Romeo and Mary Pickford for Juliet, Mary Carr or Nazimova for the nurse, and put some punch into it. Take Hamlet: imagine Ben Turpin and his fat side kick as grave diggers! What a rattling good duel Doug Fairbanks and Bill Hart could pull off with pistols at forty paces! If they’re going to have my plays in the movies, then have movie actors give them; that’s all I say. Andmake them real movie plays while they’re about it.”
“One question more, Mr. Shakespeare. You have described most graphically the seven ages of man. In view of femininity’s wonderful progress, could you not give me a parting message on the ages of woman?”
The great dramatist pondered deeply for a moment and then replied in an impressive tone. “Woman has only two ages nowadays,” he said with a sigh. “Her real one and the one she uses to vote.”
His air of finality showed me that our interview was at an end.