CHAPTERXVITHE MANCHESTER STAGEIn other things the knowing artist mayJudge better than the people; but a play(Made for delight, and for no other use)If you approve it not, has no excuse.Waller: “Prologue to the Maid’s Tragedy.”A good history of the Manchester stage remains to be written. Theatrically, the city has a very noble past, and there are many signs that its future may be equally illustrious. Probably the red-letter day in the annals of the Manchester stage is October 15, 1864, when Charles Calvert, with a performance of “The Tempest,” started those ten years of Shakespearean revivals which are now noteworthy in the wider history of the drama of England. I once heard a lover of art, who was also a banker, say that Manchester had but three things to her credit, the Rylands Library, Ford Madox Brown’s frescoes in the Town Hall, and Charles Calvert’s Shakespearean revivals. I told him that he did not know the water-colours in the Whitworth Gallery or the old-world romance of the Chetham Hospital, and he was bound to admit, after inspection of these securities, that he would have to increase our artistic overdraft.The drama owes many debts to Charles Calvert. He was the first to recognise the merit of Henry Irving, and engaged him for the stock company at the Theatre Royal in 1860.“Why on earth did you engage that raw fellow?” asked an influential friend of Calvert at a rehearsal. Calvert looked at Irving, and theatrically touched his own forehead, intimating that he considered that Irving had brains, and that that was the reason of the engagement. Those five years which Irving spent in the company under Charles Calvert must have had a deep influence in moulding his ambitions and educating his ideals.But in 1886, when I came to Manchester, the old stock companies were gone and forgotten. The days of the touring companies were in their prime, and thecognoscenti—they would not like to be called merely the “knowing ones”—deplored in eloquent prose the splendours of the theatrical past. Had they aspired to verse they would have sung with Wordsworth:—“A jolly place,” said he, “in times of old;But something ails it now: the spot is cursed.”Yet speaking as one whose duty it was to go to the theatre every week and write about it, I doubt if any city had better theatrical fare than Manchester in the later eighties.For in those days, mind you, we were a humble people. Those learned young gentlemen who can see no theatrical merit in the leading London actors, and will find no virtue in a play that entertains thegeneral public, had not yet left those dour Nonconformist nurseries, where doubtless they were raised. It was, if not a better world, certainly a merrier world, and the poor, old-fashioned, uneducated pagans in it actually went to the playhouse after a hard day’s work in search of entertainment. What is more, they got it. And being good judges of acting, and keen about the actor’s art, there came to meet them a never-ending procession of the best actors from London, bringing down their own companies in pieces that had met with success in town.Turning over some playbills of 1887 it is impossible not to realise that the theatre-goer of that date had the opportunity of seeing a higher and more varied standard of acting than it is possible to witness in the Manchester of to-day. In that one year we had Mr. Farren, that master of old English comedy, in his three greatest studies, Sir Peter Teazle, Sir Anthony Absolute, and Lord Ogleby. One wishes Charles Lamb could have lived to see Farren, and describe his Sir Peter. Lamb only saw King, the comic, fretful, old bachelor, but left on record his judgment that Sir Peter was to be played as a real man, a neighbour, or old friend, which judgment Farren put into execution. Then Miss Mary Anderson was on tour with the most ardent, handsome, and intelligentjeune premierof our time, Forbes-Robertson. They were playing “Pygmalion and Galatea,” “Romeo and Juliet,” and “As You Like It.” Barry Sullivan was still with us, and those who never saw him in“RichardIII.” and “The Gamester” will not be able nowadays to realise what was meant by the “high and palmy” school of acting, and what were its merits and shortcomings. Up against this interesting memory of bygone acting was young Benson, with his fresh, intelligent, new methods and clever comrades, capturing the hearts and winning the intellectual sympathy of an ever-widening circle of play-goers.In the same year, too, Wilson Barrett brought “Claudian” and the “Silver King,” with the company and scenery that he had with him in London and America; Toole and Edward Terry paid us regular visits, and Mr. and Mrs. Kendal gave us a notable revival of “Lady Clancarty.” Sarah Bernhardt paid Manchester a flying visit with performances of “Adrienne” and “Theodora”; and last, but not least, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry rejoiced the hearts of Manchester playgoers with what we always regarded as the festival week of our theatrical calendar.When I hear people groaning over the theatre in the provinces of twenty-five years ago, I would ask them to read that list of events and honestly say whether the programme of to-day can beat it. It may be said that there are no such stars in the firmament to-day, and, therefore, they cannot shine upon Manchester. But that is not wholly true. There are great actors to-day and great productions, but nowadays they are not brought to Manchester.The main reason why that is so is probably acommercial one. For some time a dead set was made against “eminent” actors and their London productions by mistaken friends of another type of drama. Certain writers on the drama in Manchester made themselves “laughing stogs to other men’s humours,” as a Welshman may say, by exalting the players on the eastern side of Peter Street into a glorious company of apostles, and deliberately tormenting the actors on the western side of the thoroughfare as though they were a noble army of martyrs. No doubt it injured business, and kept some of the bigger actors away from Manchester.But, in my view, the great days of touring companies in the provinces are over. A London success now has a bigger chance in Australia and a less certain but, of course, more remunerative chance in America. And although a run round some of the big towns in England may be included in the future plans of the more popular actors, yet I think it is quite unlikely that Manchester will ever see so many first-rate performances on the road as there were in 1887. Nor is this altogether a matter of regret. I have always been an optimist about the English theatre, and have never believed that it would fall into the hands of either financiers or cranks. And in watching the evolution of the theatre in Manchester it has been manifest for a long time that some form of repertory theatre was on the way.The beginnings were made, I think, in 1893, when Mr. Louis Calvert produced “A Blot in the ’Scutcheon” for Mr. Charles Hughes, who, as chairmanof Convocation of the University, gave a theatrical party to his guests. He was the leading spirit of our Independent Theatre, which produced “Candida,” “The Master Builder,” “Love’s Labour Lost,” and “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” without scenery, and many other interesting plays, in 1894. Louis Calvert was also associated with Flanagan in the earlier Shakespearean revivals at the Queen’s, whence he was spirited away by Sir Herbert Tree to act in and assist him with several memorable Shakespearean productions in London. Robert Courtneidge, too, must not be forgotten as a Manchester manager, who, at the Prince’s Theatre, gave two beautiful and reverently intelligent productions of “As You Like It” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In these editions everything was done for the text and the play, and the actor’s art was not hampered, but the adornment, exquisite as it was, clothed the drama without overwhelming it with finery.These were the forerunners of Miss Horniman’s Repertory Theatre, which has won for Manchester such renown in the world of the drama, coming as it did at exactly the right moment, and coming—as surely it has come—to stay.I am not one of those who has ever indulged in extravagant hymns of praise over any of the particular plays and artists of the Manchester Repertory Theatre. I think its greatest enemies have been its “die-hard” friends, who insisted, in season and out of season, that every actor and actress upon itsstage was a genius with a consummate knowledge of technique, and that every play produced by a local playwright could only possibly have been improved upon by some Belgian or Dutchman. As I have always said, the acting is so good and many of the plays are so interesting that they deserve to be judged by the highest standard, and, to my mind, the highest standard of acting and production is to be found in the London theatres. There is no doubt that the old stock companies had a great advantage in coming in contact with the star actor from time to time and playing with him. In the modern repertory theatre this is not so. There must necessarily be a certain touch of the amateur in a repertory company. For myself, I recognise it, and I like it, but I see no use in telling an amateur that he or she has great technical skill and nothing to learn. One does not expect to find a series of golf champions on a local green, and we should not expect or pretend to a series of star actors in a repertory company.When the repertory system becomes more universal, and broadens out on the wide healthy lines of providing entertainment for all classes of people and giving smaller proportion of time, say one day in seven, to the cranks and pulpiteers of the drama, we shall find the repertory theatres getting a greater hold on local patriotism, and one by one growing stronger in good work and higher ambitions, until at last they unite into what will be in truth, as well as in name, a national theatre.There is one thing in which I heartily agree with the expressed opinions of many well-known actors. The Manchester audience is a great audience. Once captured and really entertained, the Manchester audience is a fearless and loyal friend. I have often been delighted to read in local critical columns the solemn excommunication of a play—especially an amusing play—and to note the pompous warning to the audience that if they are amused by this kind of thing they condemn their mental condition, and their moral purpose is ended; and then to go into the theatre and hear a Manchester audience in thorough enjoyment of what their guardian high priest has forbidden. Only the other day I read that “Our Boys” visited the Gaiety Theatre, and the play “mirabile dictuwent amazingly.” The Manchester digestion is good, its appetite is healthy, and many years of theatrical diet akin to the highest and most moving cheese has not destroyed the taste for a slice of honest plum cake. This kind of pedagogic critical literature is like the leader-writer’s essay. It fills the columns of the newspaper very decoratively. But when the polling boxes are turned out on the table and the votes are counted, you can appraise its value. It is the box office that speaks.I am pleased to remember that on the few occasions I have ventured on dramatic productions I have had the Manchester audience with me. Perhaps they carry toleration too far, but I state the facts as they occurred. It was always certain to my mind from the days when I ran a toy theatre andcut the characters out of cardboard—would that some of the live actors could be cut out of their cardboard!—that I should some day produce a real piece of my own in a real theatre, but I had waited so long about it that really the ambition had nigh gone to rest. It was Louis Calvert who aroused it when he was staying with me at Nevin, in North Wales, in 1900. “Why not write a play?” he asked, and, of course, I responded too readily to the suggestion, and no sooner was his back turned than I was astride my hobby-horse and galloping round the history of the world in search of a subject.I reined up in the paddock of her gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth, where I had always felt at home since I failed to gain a prize for her biography at the early age of nine. I wrote a splendid play about Queen Elizabeth. It was quite modern in its construction. Everyone sat down and talked as long as he or she wanted to, and went in and out without any dramatic reason. There were very many acts, and as many scenes to the acts as Shakespeare himself could have supplied, and there was a lot of real history in it lifted from Froude. It was a valuable human document, and from the standpoint of the elect of to-day it was a play. I doubt, however, if in its original form it would ever have been produced. The supply of that kind of thing seems far larger than the demand, and my ugly duckling got turned into a really well-behaved swan through Louis Calvert’s collaboration.“Collaboration” is a form of literary wrestling thatis delightful exercise, but can only be indulged in with advantage by good-tempered friends. My partnership with Calvert began in this way. I took the script of my play up to London, and read it to him. I did not read all of it, for it was a warm summer afternoon, and he fell asleep before I was a quarter through with it—somewhere about Act ii., scene 7, if I remember right. In the end he dismissed it with costs—the costs taking the form of breakfasting with me the next morning at my hotel. I remember we had curried chicken for breakfast, and I have mentally associated curried chicken and dramatic construction ever since.It was during his second helping of chicken that Calvert suddenly announced that there was an “idea” in my play. The words, the history, the construction, and everything else were useless, but the “idea” was there. At the time I thought this estimate unduly pessimistic, now I regard it as glowing with the warmth of friendship or curry or both. Louis Calvert reduced the “idea” to its lowest common denominator of four scenes. With easy hand he unbarred the gates of light and extinguished by the brilliancy of a few suggestions the petty historical sequences that I had borrowed from Froude, and within a few months out of the ashes of my old play arose “England’s Elizabeth,” which was produced at the Theatre Royal on Monday, April 29, 1901.I remember that first night very well indeed. There was a crowded house, and I was eager to see how far the play was going to interest the public. At the same time I had some doubt how far I wasentitled to take a prominent part in the proceedings as half the author of a play on its first-night production. I felt rather like a father at a christening, proud and happy, but ready to give the real credit of the affair to my partner.I happened to find myself in a box with my back more or less to the stage, and I found that I could best measure the way the piece was going, as I used to do speeches to the jury in the old days, by fixing on the most unpromising face in the jury and watching it closely to see if it developed any interest in the proceedings. I chose an old gentleman in the third row of the stalls, who turned out to have a very kindly nature, for he began to enjoy himself in the first scene, and refused his wife’s entreaties to come away and catch his train in the middle of the last act.One performance among many good ones stands out in my memory. It was that of Mr. Edmond Gwenn as an old gardener. During the rehearsals Mr. Gwenn, no doubt in the interests of the piece, had uttered sentiments of his own, which in my conceited way I thought inferior to the words I had written. Diffidently I approached him on the subject, and suggested that beautiful as his words were mine had a sort of first mortgage on his attention, as being prior in date if not in relevance. With great charm of manner Mr. Gwenn assured me that on the first night I should have every word as written, and I shall never forget not only hearing the words, such as they were, but having contributed to the success of one of the most perfect piecesof character acting I ever witnessed. Some day “England’s Elizabeth” will be discovered. I know it is a good play, for many years afterwards a scene-shifter in London asked me after it, and assured me that he had seen “a good deal of it” when he was at the Theatre Royal. Moreover, the lady who took the coats and hats told me that she had seen it several times, and always went in at the end of the last act to cry. These testimonials are unanswerable. Anyhow, the play is worth reviving if only for its first gardener.It was a popular success with its first-night audience, and at the end of the play I was hurried into the wings, and Mr. Calvert and I went forward and made our bow. It was not a joint bow, we each made one of our own. Calvert’s was far the best, mine was but an indifferent affair, and then when the curtain went down there were cries of “speech,” and Calvert insisted that I must go on alone and say something. I must have been very nervous, for I made a wretched mess of it. What I really intended to say, of course, was that all the best things in the play were Calvert’s; but what happened was that having thanked the audience for our kindly reception, I concluded: “I have often been asked as to this collaboration, which parts of the play I have written, and which parts Mr. Calvert has written. I can tell you in a sentence. All the parts that you have enjoyed are mine, the rest are Calvert’s.” There was a yell of delight. I made a really beautiful bow this time and retired to the wings, whereCalvert was shaking a friendly fist at me in histrionic anger.Since then I have been in at many first nights in which I was interested, and several of them have been in Manchester, where, as I have already said, I have found a kindly welcome. And although I have no cause to complain, but rather the reverse, of any want of kindness in any audiences to whom I have submitted my work, I must admit that I think the dullest first nights I have ever attended are those of a play intended to be amusing which is produced in London. For the house is full of guests, most of whom are regular diners-out at meals of this kind, with very little appetite for ordinary cake, or else they are critics on duty. And at no time are these latter more to be pitied than on the first night of a farce. If they went to be amused they would cease to be critics, and as they go to criticise they are little likely to be amused.I have been at two first nights of farces in which I was interested. What I have seen is a strenuous battle between the actors and a great part of the audience, a sort of tug-of-war to see if the actors could tug any laugh out of the weary play-goers in front. In the two battles I witnessed, the actors won. In the first of them a curious incident occurred. A well-known and ample author—let us hide the breadth of his identity behind the letter C—— —not being to the manner born of first nights, was so tickled at the early humours of the opening scenes of “What the Butler Saw” that he laughed byhimself in his unprecedented radical way all through the first act. His laughter was like a minute gun at sea, exploding at intervals amidst unechoing icebergs. There from the second row of the dress circle came the laughter of a kind heart as the merriment of a little child expressed in the music of a bull of Basan. The sound of it frightened the actors horribly, and my friend and collaborator, Frederick Mouillot, rushed round to the stage to assure the terrified artists that it really was laughter. For apparently it is not etiquette to extend any sort of notice to the first act on a first night. But later on everyone joined in and stooped to enjoy the fun for the moment, though C—— continued to lead by several octaves.Some day in a better world I hope to write as funny a farce, with as excellent a collaborator as Mouillot, and to have it as well acted, and I shall play it in a big theatre with the roof off. And there shall be no one in front but shall have the heart of a little child and the lungs of a giant. It will always be a dull thing to produce a farce written for young hearts before an audience with wrinkled livers.And I think one of the most amusing judgments ever made after one of my Manchester first nights was delivered by an anonymous amateur critic on a post-card, which was placed upon my desk as I started my work in Quay Street on the morning after the production of “The Captain of the School.” I have received many absurd anonymous communications in my time, for there are a great many folk whose only taste in life seems to be to expand thepostal revenue in this fashion. Some of them are crudely coarse and objectionable, but this post-card breathed a genuine sincerity and honesty of dispraise that was admirable. It ran:A Voter.Sir,—I went last night to see your play. It was like your verdicts—Rotten!Rough on the playwright, of course, but does it not contain a subtle compliment to the Judge? I extend to my anonymous correspondent my best thanks. No post-card that I have ever carried about in my pocket has given greater pleasure to my friends.That first night of “The Captain of the School,” on November 14, 1910, had a keen interest for me, inasmuch as it was the first appearance of my daughter, Miss Dorothy Parry, so that, as it were, from a domestic point of view we were having two first nights at the same time. She made an excellent success, which she repeated in London and elsewhere; but certainly she ought to agree with my appreciation of the Manchester audience. May it be my good fortune to risk another argosy among its friendly waves before the end of the last act.
In other things the knowing artist mayJudge better than the people; but a play(Made for delight, and for no other use)If you approve it not, has no excuse.Waller: “Prologue to the Maid’s Tragedy.”
In other things the knowing artist mayJudge better than the people; but a play(Made for delight, and for no other use)If you approve it not, has no excuse.Waller: “Prologue to the Maid’s Tragedy.”
In other things the knowing artist may
Judge better than the people; but a play
(Made for delight, and for no other use)
If you approve it not, has no excuse.
Waller: “Prologue to the Maid’s Tragedy.”
A good history of the Manchester stage remains to be written. Theatrically, the city has a very noble past, and there are many signs that its future may be equally illustrious. Probably the red-letter day in the annals of the Manchester stage is October 15, 1864, when Charles Calvert, with a performance of “The Tempest,” started those ten years of Shakespearean revivals which are now noteworthy in the wider history of the drama of England. I once heard a lover of art, who was also a banker, say that Manchester had but three things to her credit, the Rylands Library, Ford Madox Brown’s frescoes in the Town Hall, and Charles Calvert’s Shakespearean revivals. I told him that he did not know the water-colours in the Whitworth Gallery or the old-world romance of the Chetham Hospital, and he was bound to admit, after inspection of these securities, that he would have to increase our artistic overdraft.
The drama owes many debts to Charles Calvert. He was the first to recognise the merit of Henry Irving, and engaged him for the stock company at the Theatre Royal in 1860.
“Why on earth did you engage that raw fellow?” asked an influential friend of Calvert at a rehearsal. Calvert looked at Irving, and theatrically touched his own forehead, intimating that he considered that Irving had brains, and that that was the reason of the engagement. Those five years which Irving spent in the company under Charles Calvert must have had a deep influence in moulding his ambitions and educating his ideals.
But in 1886, when I came to Manchester, the old stock companies were gone and forgotten. The days of the touring companies were in their prime, and thecognoscenti—they would not like to be called merely the “knowing ones”—deplored in eloquent prose the splendours of the theatrical past. Had they aspired to verse they would have sung with Wordsworth:—
“A jolly place,” said he, “in times of old;But something ails it now: the spot is cursed.”
“A jolly place,” said he, “in times of old;But something ails it now: the spot is cursed.”
“A jolly place,” said he, “in times of old;
But something ails it now: the spot is cursed.”
Yet speaking as one whose duty it was to go to the theatre every week and write about it, I doubt if any city had better theatrical fare than Manchester in the later eighties.
For in those days, mind you, we were a humble people. Those learned young gentlemen who can see no theatrical merit in the leading London actors, and will find no virtue in a play that entertains thegeneral public, had not yet left those dour Nonconformist nurseries, where doubtless they were raised. It was, if not a better world, certainly a merrier world, and the poor, old-fashioned, uneducated pagans in it actually went to the playhouse after a hard day’s work in search of entertainment. What is more, they got it. And being good judges of acting, and keen about the actor’s art, there came to meet them a never-ending procession of the best actors from London, bringing down their own companies in pieces that had met with success in town.
Turning over some playbills of 1887 it is impossible not to realise that the theatre-goer of that date had the opportunity of seeing a higher and more varied standard of acting than it is possible to witness in the Manchester of to-day. In that one year we had Mr. Farren, that master of old English comedy, in his three greatest studies, Sir Peter Teazle, Sir Anthony Absolute, and Lord Ogleby. One wishes Charles Lamb could have lived to see Farren, and describe his Sir Peter. Lamb only saw King, the comic, fretful, old bachelor, but left on record his judgment that Sir Peter was to be played as a real man, a neighbour, or old friend, which judgment Farren put into execution. Then Miss Mary Anderson was on tour with the most ardent, handsome, and intelligentjeune premierof our time, Forbes-Robertson. They were playing “Pygmalion and Galatea,” “Romeo and Juliet,” and “As You Like It.” Barry Sullivan was still with us, and those who never saw him in“RichardIII.” and “The Gamester” will not be able nowadays to realise what was meant by the “high and palmy” school of acting, and what were its merits and shortcomings. Up against this interesting memory of bygone acting was young Benson, with his fresh, intelligent, new methods and clever comrades, capturing the hearts and winning the intellectual sympathy of an ever-widening circle of play-goers.
In the same year, too, Wilson Barrett brought “Claudian” and the “Silver King,” with the company and scenery that he had with him in London and America; Toole and Edward Terry paid us regular visits, and Mr. and Mrs. Kendal gave us a notable revival of “Lady Clancarty.” Sarah Bernhardt paid Manchester a flying visit with performances of “Adrienne” and “Theodora”; and last, but not least, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry rejoiced the hearts of Manchester playgoers with what we always regarded as the festival week of our theatrical calendar.
When I hear people groaning over the theatre in the provinces of twenty-five years ago, I would ask them to read that list of events and honestly say whether the programme of to-day can beat it. It may be said that there are no such stars in the firmament to-day, and, therefore, they cannot shine upon Manchester. But that is not wholly true. There are great actors to-day and great productions, but nowadays they are not brought to Manchester.
The main reason why that is so is probably acommercial one. For some time a dead set was made against “eminent” actors and their London productions by mistaken friends of another type of drama. Certain writers on the drama in Manchester made themselves “laughing stogs to other men’s humours,” as a Welshman may say, by exalting the players on the eastern side of Peter Street into a glorious company of apostles, and deliberately tormenting the actors on the western side of the thoroughfare as though they were a noble army of martyrs. No doubt it injured business, and kept some of the bigger actors away from Manchester.
But, in my view, the great days of touring companies in the provinces are over. A London success now has a bigger chance in Australia and a less certain but, of course, more remunerative chance in America. And although a run round some of the big towns in England may be included in the future plans of the more popular actors, yet I think it is quite unlikely that Manchester will ever see so many first-rate performances on the road as there were in 1887. Nor is this altogether a matter of regret. I have always been an optimist about the English theatre, and have never believed that it would fall into the hands of either financiers or cranks. And in watching the evolution of the theatre in Manchester it has been manifest for a long time that some form of repertory theatre was on the way.
The beginnings were made, I think, in 1893, when Mr. Louis Calvert produced “A Blot in the ’Scutcheon” for Mr. Charles Hughes, who, as chairmanof Convocation of the University, gave a theatrical party to his guests. He was the leading spirit of our Independent Theatre, which produced “Candida,” “The Master Builder,” “Love’s Labour Lost,” and “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” without scenery, and many other interesting plays, in 1894. Louis Calvert was also associated with Flanagan in the earlier Shakespearean revivals at the Queen’s, whence he was spirited away by Sir Herbert Tree to act in and assist him with several memorable Shakespearean productions in London. Robert Courtneidge, too, must not be forgotten as a Manchester manager, who, at the Prince’s Theatre, gave two beautiful and reverently intelligent productions of “As You Like It” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In these editions everything was done for the text and the play, and the actor’s art was not hampered, but the adornment, exquisite as it was, clothed the drama without overwhelming it with finery.
These were the forerunners of Miss Horniman’s Repertory Theatre, which has won for Manchester such renown in the world of the drama, coming as it did at exactly the right moment, and coming—as surely it has come—to stay.
I am not one of those who has ever indulged in extravagant hymns of praise over any of the particular plays and artists of the Manchester Repertory Theatre. I think its greatest enemies have been its “die-hard” friends, who insisted, in season and out of season, that every actor and actress upon itsstage was a genius with a consummate knowledge of technique, and that every play produced by a local playwright could only possibly have been improved upon by some Belgian or Dutchman. As I have always said, the acting is so good and many of the plays are so interesting that they deserve to be judged by the highest standard, and, to my mind, the highest standard of acting and production is to be found in the London theatres. There is no doubt that the old stock companies had a great advantage in coming in contact with the star actor from time to time and playing with him. In the modern repertory theatre this is not so. There must necessarily be a certain touch of the amateur in a repertory company. For myself, I recognise it, and I like it, but I see no use in telling an amateur that he or she has great technical skill and nothing to learn. One does not expect to find a series of golf champions on a local green, and we should not expect or pretend to a series of star actors in a repertory company.
When the repertory system becomes more universal, and broadens out on the wide healthy lines of providing entertainment for all classes of people and giving smaller proportion of time, say one day in seven, to the cranks and pulpiteers of the drama, we shall find the repertory theatres getting a greater hold on local patriotism, and one by one growing stronger in good work and higher ambitions, until at last they unite into what will be in truth, as well as in name, a national theatre.
There is one thing in which I heartily agree with the expressed opinions of many well-known actors. The Manchester audience is a great audience. Once captured and really entertained, the Manchester audience is a fearless and loyal friend. I have often been delighted to read in local critical columns the solemn excommunication of a play—especially an amusing play—and to note the pompous warning to the audience that if they are amused by this kind of thing they condemn their mental condition, and their moral purpose is ended; and then to go into the theatre and hear a Manchester audience in thorough enjoyment of what their guardian high priest has forbidden. Only the other day I read that “Our Boys” visited the Gaiety Theatre, and the play “mirabile dictuwent amazingly.” The Manchester digestion is good, its appetite is healthy, and many years of theatrical diet akin to the highest and most moving cheese has not destroyed the taste for a slice of honest plum cake. This kind of pedagogic critical literature is like the leader-writer’s essay. It fills the columns of the newspaper very decoratively. But when the polling boxes are turned out on the table and the votes are counted, you can appraise its value. It is the box office that speaks.
I am pleased to remember that on the few occasions I have ventured on dramatic productions I have had the Manchester audience with me. Perhaps they carry toleration too far, but I state the facts as they occurred. It was always certain to my mind from the days when I ran a toy theatre andcut the characters out of cardboard—would that some of the live actors could be cut out of their cardboard!—that I should some day produce a real piece of my own in a real theatre, but I had waited so long about it that really the ambition had nigh gone to rest. It was Louis Calvert who aroused it when he was staying with me at Nevin, in North Wales, in 1900. “Why not write a play?” he asked, and, of course, I responded too readily to the suggestion, and no sooner was his back turned than I was astride my hobby-horse and galloping round the history of the world in search of a subject.
I reined up in the paddock of her gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth, where I had always felt at home since I failed to gain a prize for her biography at the early age of nine. I wrote a splendid play about Queen Elizabeth. It was quite modern in its construction. Everyone sat down and talked as long as he or she wanted to, and went in and out without any dramatic reason. There were very many acts, and as many scenes to the acts as Shakespeare himself could have supplied, and there was a lot of real history in it lifted from Froude. It was a valuable human document, and from the standpoint of the elect of to-day it was a play. I doubt, however, if in its original form it would ever have been produced. The supply of that kind of thing seems far larger than the demand, and my ugly duckling got turned into a really well-behaved swan through Louis Calvert’s collaboration.
“Collaboration” is a form of literary wrestling thatis delightful exercise, but can only be indulged in with advantage by good-tempered friends. My partnership with Calvert began in this way. I took the script of my play up to London, and read it to him. I did not read all of it, for it was a warm summer afternoon, and he fell asleep before I was a quarter through with it—somewhere about Act ii., scene 7, if I remember right. In the end he dismissed it with costs—the costs taking the form of breakfasting with me the next morning at my hotel. I remember we had curried chicken for breakfast, and I have mentally associated curried chicken and dramatic construction ever since.
It was during his second helping of chicken that Calvert suddenly announced that there was an “idea” in my play. The words, the history, the construction, and everything else were useless, but the “idea” was there. At the time I thought this estimate unduly pessimistic, now I regard it as glowing with the warmth of friendship or curry or both. Louis Calvert reduced the “idea” to its lowest common denominator of four scenes. With easy hand he unbarred the gates of light and extinguished by the brilliancy of a few suggestions the petty historical sequences that I had borrowed from Froude, and within a few months out of the ashes of my old play arose “England’s Elizabeth,” which was produced at the Theatre Royal on Monday, April 29, 1901.
I remember that first night very well indeed. There was a crowded house, and I was eager to see how far the play was going to interest the public. At the same time I had some doubt how far I wasentitled to take a prominent part in the proceedings as half the author of a play on its first-night production. I felt rather like a father at a christening, proud and happy, but ready to give the real credit of the affair to my partner.
I happened to find myself in a box with my back more or less to the stage, and I found that I could best measure the way the piece was going, as I used to do speeches to the jury in the old days, by fixing on the most unpromising face in the jury and watching it closely to see if it developed any interest in the proceedings. I chose an old gentleman in the third row of the stalls, who turned out to have a very kindly nature, for he began to enjoy himself in the first scene, and refused his wife’s entreaties to come away and catch his train in the middle of the last act.
One performance among many good ones stands out in my memory. It was that of Mr. Edmond Gwenn as an old gardener. During the rehearsals Mr. Gwenn, no doubt in the interests of the piece, had uttered sentiments of his own, which in my conceited way I thought inferior to the words I had written. Diffidently I approached him on the subject, and suggested that beautiful as his words were mine had a sort of first mortgage on his attention, as being prior in date if not in relevance. With great charm of manner Mr. Gwenn assured me that on the first night I should have every word as written, and I shall never forget not only hearing the words, such as they were, but having contributed to the success of one of the most perfect piecesof character acting I ever witnessed. Some day “England’s Elizabeth” will be discovered. I know it is a good play, for many years afterwards a scene-shifter in London asked me after it, and assured me that he had seen “a good deal of it” when he was at the Theatre Royal. Moreover, the lady who took the coats and hats told me that she had seen it several times, and always went in at the end of the last act to cry. These testimonials are unanswerable. Anyhow, the play is worth reviving if only for its first gardener.
It was a popular success with its first-night audience, and at the end of the play I was hurried into the wings, and Mr. Calvert and I went forward and made our bow. It was not a joint bow, we each made one of our own. Calvert’s was far the best, mine was but an indifferent affair, and then when the curtain went down there were cries of “speech,” and Calvert insisted that I must go on alone and say something. I must have been very nervous, for I made a wretched mess of it. What I really intended to say, of course, was that all the best things in the play were Calvert’s; but what happened was that having thanked the audience for our kindly reception, I concluded: “I have often been asked as to this collaboration, which parts of the play I have written, and which parts Mr. Calvert has written. I can tell you in a sentence. All the parts that you have enjoyed are mine, the rest are Calvert’s.” There was a yell of delight. I made a really beautiful bow this time and retired to the wings, whereCalvert was shaking a friendly fist at me in histrionic anger.
Since then I have been in at many first nights in which I was interested, and several of them have been in Manchester, where, as I have already said, I have found a kindly welcome. And although I have no cause to complain, but rather the reverse, of any want of kindness in any audiences to whom I have submitted my work, I must admit that I think the dullest first nights I have ever attended are those of a play intended to be amusing which is produced in London. For the house is full of guests, most of whom are regular diners-out at meals of this kind, with very little appetite for ordinary cake, or else they are critics on duty. And at no time are these latter more to be pitied than on the first night of a farce. If they went to be amused they would cease to be critics, and as they go to criticise they are little likely to be amused.
I have been at two first nights of farces in which I was interested. What I have seen is a strenuous battle between the actors and a great part of the audience, a sort of tug-of-war to see if the actors could tug any laugh out of the weary play-goers in front. In the two battles I witnessed, the actors won. In the first of them a curious incident occurred. A well-known and ample author—let us hide the breadth of his identity behind the letter C—— —not being to the manner born of first nights, was so tickled at the early humours of the opening scenes of “What the Butler Saw” that he laughed byhimself in his unprecedented radical way all through the first act. His laughter was like a minute gun at sea, exploding at intervals amidst unechoing icebergs. There from the second row of the dress circle came the laughter of a kind heart as the merriment of a little child expressed in the music of a bull of Basan. The sound of it frightened the actors horribly, and my friend and collaborator, Frederick Mouillot, rushed round to the stage to assure the terrified artists that it really was laughter. For apparently it is not etiquette to extend any sort of notice to the first act on a first night. But later on everyone joined in and stooped to enjoy the fun for the moment, though C—— continued to lead by several octaves.
Some day in a better world I hope to write as funny a farce, with as excellent a collaborator as Mouillot, and to have it as well acted, and I shall play it in a big theatre with the roof off. And there shall be no one in front but shall have the heart of a little child and the lungs of a giant. It will always be a dull thing to produce a farce written for young hearts before an audience with wrinkled livers.
And I think one of the most amusing judgments ever made after one of my Manchester first nights was delivered by an anonymous amateur critic on a post-card, which was placed upon my desk as I started my work in Quay Street on the morning after the production of “The Captain of the School.” I have received many absurd anonymous communications in my time, for there are a great many folk whose only taste in life seems to be to expand thepostal revenue in this fashion. Some of them are crudely coarse and objectionable, but this post-card breathed a genuine sincerity and honesty of dispraise that was admirable. It ran:
A Voter.
Sir,—I went last night to see your play. It was like your verdicts—Rotten!
Rough on the playwright, of course, but does it not contain a subtle compliment to the Judge? I extend to my anonymous correspondent my best thanks. No post-card that I have ever carried about in my pocket has given greater pleasure to my friends.
That first night of “The Captain of the School,” on November 14, 1910, had a keen interest for me, inasmuch as it was the first appearance of my daughter, Miss Dorothy Parry, so that, as it were, from a domestic point of view we were having two first nights at the same time. She made an excellent success, which she repeated in London and elsewhere; but certainly she ought to agree with my appreciation of the Manchester audience. May it be my good fortune to risk another argosy among its friendly waves before the end of the last act.