Part 14
In consequence of all these causes the possible profits of a lucky playwright are now as abundant as those of the lucky novelist, and on occasion even more so. One play in every score draws a prize; and one in every hundred draws a grand prize of several hundred thousand dollars. In addition to the ordinary business profit there is now the possibility of holding one of these superlatively lucky numbers in the lottery; and two or three of these may come out of the wheel of fortune in the same season. This possibility is encouraging to those possessed by the spirit of speculation and rather discouraging to those who are more inclined to honor the drama as an art. At best the presentation of a play is a gamble, since no one, not even the most expert, can do more than guess at the impression it will make on the public. What every one can see is that the broader and bolder its topic and its treatment the more likely is a drama to prove attractive to the largest body of playgoers, while the comedy of lighter fabric and of more delicate texture will probably please only a smaller group of the more refined and the more intelligent.
Of course, this has always been the case; and the managers of the past have always been tempted to enlarge their audiences by indulging in sensation and in spectacle. But to-day the temptation is greater than ever before; and perhaps it is more often yielded to. And here we feel the unfortunate power of the purely commercial syndicates who are ready always to smooth the path of the overwhelming success by opening all their theaters to it, while they are inhospitable to plays of a less emphatic allurement. This is perhaps the most obvious defect of the present organization of the theater in America—that it puts great power in the hands of a small group of men, most of whom take little or no interest in the drama as an art, regarding a play as a manufactured article out of which they expect to make all that the traffic will bear.
Yet as this present organization is the result of economic and geographic causes it is idle to declaim against it; and it is foolish to indulge in offensive personalities. What is, is; and what will be, will be. We can find comfort in the fact that the best plays of this burgeoning dramatic epoch do get acted and have their chance, here and now. And we can hope that some device will be discovered to make easier the production of plays of the highest class. There are managers now, and not a few of them, who have aspirations and ambitions, and who would be contented with a modest profit on a fair business risk without seeking always for wealth beyond the dreams of avarice through a long-shot gamble.
Perhaps it may be well to remark that the present organization of the theater is not responsible for the fact that the average play presented to-day is often seen to be a pretty poor thing. In this respect the present is no worse than the past. The average play has always been a pretty poor thing; and playhouses of other times and other lands have presented a host of plays below the average. The ‘Titus Andronicus,’ which is more or less Shakspere’s, is a barbarous and brutal piece; and ‘Measure for Measure’ is only a little better in its blatant crudity of motive and method. The contemporaries of Corneille and Molière and Racine are deservedly forgotten. So are the contemporaries of Æschylus and Sophocles and Euripides. Only devoted explorers of the annals of the drama are aware of the ineptness and imbecility to be found in the pieces of the inferior playwrights even in the most glorious epochs of the theater. Certainly the average play of to-day is a better play, it is better acted, and it is better mounted than the average play of fifty or a hundred years ago.
VI
That the drama of our language has been born again in the last three or four decades is proof positive that the organization of the theater has not been wholly inefficient. It cannot be as defective as has been shrilly proclaimed by juvenile enthusiasts who are in a hurry for the millennium and who are disappointed that it does not arrive over night. It is to be put to its credit that in one city at least, in the city of New York, the persistent playgoer has a very wide range of opportunity—probably unrivaled anywhere else in the world. He has his choice of a hundred new American plays every season, plays good, bad and indifferent. He has a chance to see the most important plays by contemporary foreign dramatists. He is likely to have occasion in the course of a single season to renew his acquaintance with half-a-dozen or half-a-score of Shakspere’s comedies or tragedies. He may wander at will to playhouses where the performances are given in French or in German, in Chinese or in Yiddish. He can feast his eyes on the puppet-shows of the Italians and on the ballet-pantomimes of the Russians. He can adventure himself in any one of half-a-dozen Little Theaters devoted to the very latest effusions of the most idealistic idealists and the most realistic realists, native and foreign. In short, he will find on the annual bill of fare a heterogeny of tempting dishes, lacking, it is true, more than one delicacy which he may desire to taste.
The other side of the ledger, however, tells another story. While New York has a plethora and while a few of the largest cities may find a sufficiency, the smaller cities suffer from painful penury, and the less important towns are starving to death. Many an interesting play lacks breadth of popular appeal; and the managers shrink from taking it on the road; and if they are bold enough to run this risk it is only to a few of the larger centers of population that they dare to go. In the smaller cities possessing only one important playhouse, this may be occupied week after week by mere shows. It is true that in not a few of the smaller towns there are stock-companies making a brave struggle, putting on the more successful pieces as soon as these are released for stock but producing them in haste as best they can with a small company, the members of which are sadly overworked, playing in one piece six nights, and four, five or six matinees while they are scrambling through rehearsals and learning their parts in the play in preparation for the following week.
In the towns which are still smaller, the drama is to be seen only sporadically, intermittently, casually; and there are college communities with a thousand students or more who do not have the privilege of seeing a play of Shakspere’s properly acted and adequately produced from one year’s end to another. The only reliance of these communities is on the happy accident of a travelling company filling out a week with one-night stands or the establishment by themselves of a Little Theatre supported by local talent. These Little Theaters are helpful in keeping alive an understanding of the drama; but their scope is strictly limited and their continued existence depends upon the fortunate accident of their control by some one who has a native gift for management and for stage-management.
The existing organization is not unsatisfactory as far as New York is concerned. It is less satisfactory even in the largest of the other cities. It is entirely unsatisfactory in the smaller cities and the larger towns.
How then shall this unfortunate condition be remedied? Professor W. L. Phelps has no doubt that he has discovered the cure; and he tells us with all the emphasis of italics that “there must be a stock-company in every city.” He explains that by this he does not mean the kind of stock-company which exists to-day but the older type of stock-company such as existed forty years ago in New York at Wallack’s and Daly’s and in Boston at the Museum. What Professor Phelps is proposing is a return to the system which flourished a century ago, and two centuries ago, and which is entirely unfamiliar to the present. As it happens I am old enough to be able to supplement with my own recollection the ample information easily accessible in actors’ autobiographies and in stage histories. Memory is treacherous, so I cannot be certain, but I believe that I was present in 1869 at the opening of the Fifth Avenue Theater by Augustin Daly and in 1872 at the opening of the Union Square Theater by A. M. Palmer. I know that I was able to follow the shorter careers of the companies at the Madison Square directed by Steele Mackaye and the Mallorys, at the Park Theater by Abbey, at the Empire by Charles Frohman and at the Lyceum by Daniel Frohman.
In all these theaters there was a permanent company, which changed its membership slowly and which contained at least half-a-dozen actors and actresses of distinction. In all of them the manager was an autocrat, selecting the performers and choosing the plays. Now and again he engaged a travelling star, Edwin Booth or Mrs. Scott Siddons at Daly’s and Charles James Matthews or Dion Boucicault at Wallack’s; and then all the other parts in the repertory of these stars were assumed by the actors of the stock-company. But these star-engagements were infrequent; and for the most part the burden fell upon the stock-company, which had to be large enough to undertake any kind of piece, comedy or farce, tragedy or melodrama, or even burlesque or extravaganza. The manager distributed the parts subject always to the unwritten law that no performer should be called upon to appear in a character which was not in his or her “line of business.” The hero had to be given to the “leading man” and the heroine to the “leading woman.” The villain—and in the dramas of those distant days there was likely to be a villain of the deepest dye—was assigned to the heavy man; while the brisk young fellows fell to the lot of the juvenile lead or of the light comedian. The broadly comic parts were assigned to the low comedian; and there were frequently two of him, the first low comedy and the second low comedy. Strongly marked characters went to the character-actor, who had to be a master of make-up. The elderly characters were in the hands of the old man and the old woman; there was sometimes also a second old man, altho if the character-actor was both versatile and obliging he could be prevailed upon to play one of the more aged characters. The serving maids were attributed to the singing chambermaid, who would have her best chance when a farce or extravaganza was in the bill.
VII
The stock-company system had its advantages and its disadvantages, both artistic and economic. The actor—sometimes under contract for several years—could settle down and have a home where he could bring up his children; he was not a tramp, ever on the go and not knowing where he might be one week from another. He was informed as to approximate length of the theatrical season, and he was not in dread of being thrown out of an engagement in the middle of the winter or of being stranded on the road with his salary unpaid for a month. There was a certain stability and security in his position, altho there was also always the possibility that the manager might exhaust his often meager resources and so find himself unable to keep the theater open or to meet his obligations to his company.
With its incessant changes of bill and with the unending variety of the plays presented, the actors had far more practise in their art than the performers of to-day. With the frequent production of Shakspere’s comedies and tragedies, even the minor members of the company had at least an opportunity to learn how to read blank verse. The permanence of the organization enabled the inexpert young people to become familiar with the methods of their more skilful elders; and it also tended toward the development of that harmony of effort, that team-play, which is of prime importance. On the other hand, the haste with which the constant succession of pieces had to be prepared interfered with thoroughness and with delicacy of interpretation. When a drama was pitchforked on the stage, so to speak, for only half-a-dozen performances, as was often the case, the actors had neither time nor energy to do their best; and they were tempted to fall into the habit of happy-go-lucky slovenliness.
Then the symmetry of the performance was not infrequently blemished by the fact that there was often in the company no performer really capable of acting a salient part in the play about to be produced; and yet this part had to be undertaken by somebody, however ill at ease he might be. There were round pegs in square holes; and this was unavoidable since it was impossible, more often than not, to engage outside performers, even if the manager had desired to do so,—which he rarely did.
If I may be allowed to call myself as a witness I can depose that I have seen not a few performances of the well chosen company at Wallack’s Theater forty-odd years ago which were far less effective than they might have been because one or two prominent characters had to be assigned to performers who were good actors in their own lines but who were hopelessly unsuited to the parts forced upon them because they alone were available. In the ‘Shaughraun’ of Dion Boucicault, for instance, by the side of Boucicault himself and Harry Beckett, Ada Dyas and H. J. Montague, John Gilbert and Madam Ponisi, who were all admirably adapted to the characters Boucicault had composed for them, there were also Joseph Polk and Ione Burke, who were entirely unsuited to the parts they were forced to play. And there were two equally unfortunate miscastings in ‘Diplomacy.’ If this was the case not infrequently at Wallack’s with its long prestige, how much more frequent and more flagrant must have been the misfits in the performances in theaters of inferior grade?
Professor Phelps tells us that all would go well if there could be established a stock-company in every city and even in every large town; but Professor Phelps—fortunately for him—was not born long enough ago to have seen the artistic inadequacy which is inevitable in the stock-company, inadequacy in the acting, in the stage-management and in the mounting. The productions of the managers of traveling companies have set a standard to which no resident stock-company can hope to attain. And the cost of an ambitious attempt to satisfy the expectations of the playgoing public would be prohibitive to any intending manager of a stock-company. He would not dare to undertake the task unless he was supported by an endowment, by a subsidy, or by a large body of subscribers, who being sharers in the enterprize might be more tolerant of relatively unimportant deficiencies in acting and in mounting.
There is no doubt that a repertory theater is highly desirable. It might be of inestimable service both to the author and to the actor. The actor is very unfortunate if, in the malleable years of his youth, he finds himself appearing in the same part for two or three hundred nights; and the author is unfortunate when his play has had its two or three hundred nights and then drops out of sight forevermore. A repertory theater would provide varied experience for the performers and afford them opportunity to acquire versatility; and it could do a great service to the reputation of the playwrights by reviving and keeping on hand, so to speak, the plays which deserve to be seen again and again.
But under present conditions a repertory theater is economically impossible. The rent of a building and the salaries of actors are now prohibitive. A repertory theater in New York, even if it did not aspire to be a rival of the Théâtre Français, must be described as a luxury,—and like all luxuries it would be expensive. It can come into existence, and it can have a chance to continue to exist, only when a group of lovers of the arts of the drama shall combine to provide the theater itself and to make the path easy for its manager.
(1920)
XIV
MEMORIES OF ACTORS
XIV
MEMORIES OF ACTORS
I
A playgoer from my youth up, a playgoer in Paris and London as well as in New York, I have had the good fortune to be on terms of friendly intimacy with not a few of the leading actors of the past half-century, French and British and American. I have elsewhere set down my memories of Edwin Booth and Henry Irving, Joseph Jefferson and Constant Coquelin, four of the foremost figures in the theater at the end of the nineteenth century. There are a dozen or a score of other players with whom I foregathered at one time or another, less prominent in their profession but not for that reason any less attractive in their several ways and not less companionable.
Most of the actors with whom I have had relation were good company; they had seen many men and many places; and their journeyings had worn off any abrading angularities their personalities may have possessed. They had mixed with all sorts and conditions of men; and they thereby gained the shrewd knowledge of human nature which they needed in their art. They had acquired polish even if they did not always possess culture. They were no more likely to be bookish in their tastes, or even to be widely read, than are the practitioners of the other professions, painters and musicians, most of whom are probably too alertly interested in the immediate present to be tempted into dusty exploration of the past. They were often apt in anecdote and quick of wit, with a wide command over words, the result of their acquisition of the sharp and swift dialog of the stage. In no other calling have I found men swifter to make a joke or to take one, even if it happened to be pointed against themselves.
It is sometimes asserted that actors as a class are inclined to be unduly aware of their own excellence in the quality they profess and even unduly inclined to communicate to others their own opinion of their own achievements. My experience, such as it is, does not support this assertion. I have found the men of the stage at least as modest as the men of the studio and the men of the study. Over-swollen vanity is not the exclusive property of any one profession, and I doubt if it is more frequent in actors than in authors or artists. Where I comb out my memories the two most exuberant examples of ingrowing and outflowering self-appreciation that I ever had occasion to observe were both of them physicians, who were also authors and who were wholly unable to resist the ever present temptation to dilate upon their own triumphs and to confide to all listeners the frequent compliments they had gluttonously accepted.
There was nothing of this sort in Booth or Irving, in Jefferson or Coquelin; they were far above it; they were free from self-assertion and even from self-consciousness,—altho of course they could not but be aware of their own outstanding position. In fact, I cannot recall any successful actor of my acquaintance who was abnormally self-centered, or who took himself too seriously. Sometimes, it is true, I have found an actor who had not yet established his position and who now and again seized a chance to let me know that he had played this or that important part not unsuccessfully. But this was not boastful self-praise, even if it might so seem to the uninformed listener; it was only a supplying of information not otherwise available. A writer or a painter has no need to call attention to his book or his picture, because these survive to speak for themselves, even if there are only a few who have them in mind. But the work of the actor has no permanence; it perishes as it comes into being; it instantly ceases to be, except as a memory; and it is as a memory that the actor feels himself called upon to revive it. The difference is that whereas the book of the author, the picture of the artist may be only overlooked, the performance of the actor might be actually unknown to us if he himself did not tell us about it.
II
The first actor whom I came to know was one of the most companionable, the genial John Brougham. In 1869, as a boy I had been present at the opening and at the closing nights of his brief management of the little playhouse in Twenty-fourth Street, behind the Fifth Avenue hotel—a playhouse which not long after became the Fifth Avenue Theater of Augustin Daly and which was rebuilt as the Madison Square Theater by Steele Mackaye. At Brougham’s I had seen his ever-delightful burlesque, ‘Pocahontas,’ in which he himself was the rollicking King Powhatan; and I saw also a later burlesque of his, ‘Much Ado about a Merchant of Venice,’ in which he was an amusing but rather Hibernian Shylock. So it was that when I was elected to the Lotos Club, in the spring of 1871 (while I was still an undergraduate at Columbia College) I seized the earliest opportunity to make Brougham’s acquaintance.
He was not a great actor, that I knew already, altho he was a competent performer; but he had a charming personality, and when he chanced to be cast for a character with which his personality coincided, he was entirely satisfactory. Of course he appeared to best advantage in Irish parts, The O’Grady in Boucicault’s ‘Arrah-na-Pogue’ and Off-lan-aghan in Lester Wallack’s ‘Veteran,’ and above all Sir Lucius O’Trigger in Sheridan’s ‘Rivals.’ I doubt if Sir Lucius has been more sympathetically impersonated by any performer of the second half of the nineteenth century than it was by Brougham. I have seen the character undertaken by W. J. Florence and by Nat Goodwin, actors of a far more opulent equipment than Brougham, yet neither of them succeeded so well in bringing out the gentlemanly simplicity of this lovable character. Goodwin was too completely an American of the nineteenth century to be able to assume the part of an Irish gentleman of the eighteenth century; and Florence, excellent as he was in Irish characters of another kind, bestowed on Sir Lucius a rather finicky affectation, quite out of keeping with the part.
In those distant days the dramatist was sadly underpaid. Brougham told me once that his price for writing a play for a star was three thousand dollars, payable on delivery of the manuscript, a sum smaller than a month’s royalty on a successful play of to-day. And yet more than one of the vehicles Brougham put together for this modest price, ran like the One Hoss Shay. The stage-version of the ‘Old Curiosity Shop,’ in which Lotta doubled Little Nell and the Marchioness, must have been performed several hundred times; and only less successful were other of the made-to-order pieces he composed for Mr. and Mrs. Barney Williams and for Mr. and Mrs. Florence. These last were congenial labor, since they dealt with Irish themes, more or less in imitation of Boucicault’s more solidly built ‘Arrah-na-Pogue’ and ‘Colleen Bawn.’
Where Boucicault was dominating, not to say domineering, Brougham was yielding and unambitious. Their early disagreement over the authorship of ‘London Assurance’ did not prevent their professional association in later years. When ‘Arrah-na-Pogue’ was revived in 1873 at Booth’s Theater, Brougham played The O’Grady, supporting Boucicault as Shaun the Post and Mrs. Boucicault as Arrah. And when Boucicault in 1879 was strangely ill-advised to undertake ‘Louis XI,’ in his own adaptation of the play which Casimir Delavigne had made out of ‘Quentin Durward,’ Brougham was Coitier; and I can testify that on this occasion the honors were divided, or at least the laughs, for I never listened to any dialog more ludicrous than that between a French king with a pronounced Irish accent and a French physician with an equally persistent brogue. These, as Beau Brummel’s valet explained, “these are our failures.”
Brougham had his full share of Irish wit, more spontaneous than Boucicault’s and less likely to be borrowed. He had also the more English delight in punning. In ‘Pocahontas,’ after the opening song Powhatan thanks his attendant braves: