Part 14

Before the end of the nineteenth century the organization of the theater in the United States became what it is now. In New York, in all the larger cities and in most of the smaller, the playhouses are controlled by one or the other of the two rival syndicates. The resident managers of these playhouses are scarcely more than caretakers, since they can exercise little or no choice as to the attractions which play engagements in their theaters. The producing managers choose plays, engage actors and are responsible for all the accessories. Most of these producing managers are in partnership with one or the other of the syndicates, because these syndicates control all the important theaters in all the important towns. Thus it is that the artistic guidance of the drama is in the hands of the producing managers, and the financial government is in the hands of the syndicates.

Many of the producing managers are akin in type to the managers of the resident stock-companies, that is to say, they are sometimes actors, sometimes playwrights and sometimes men drawn from other callings by the lure of the theater. Most of the members of the syndicates are men of affairs, who have gone into the theater-business as they would go into any other business, mainly for their own profit; and their interest in the drama as an art is intermittent, whereas their interest in the theater as a business is incessant. Their attitude and their actions have called for sharply hostile criticism, summed up in the accusation that they have commercialized the theater. Now, all students of stage-history know that there has always been a commercial side to the theater, excepting in ancient Greece and in the Middle Ages, when the drama was more or less religious in its associations. In modern times we have ascertained that the drama cannot flourish as an art unless the theater prospers as a business. No art can survive unless it affords a fairly satisfactory living to those who devote themselves to it; and as the appeal of the drama is to the people as a whole it can never be independent of the takings at the door. Even in the few subsidized theaters of Europe, national or municipal, the grant in aid made by the government is never enough to support the enterprize.

IV

Commercialism in the theater is often bitterly denounced by young persons who conceive of art as ethereally detached from all financial considerations. The real question is not whether the theater is commercial, but whether it is unduly commercial, whether it has money-making for its chief aim, whether it is willing to sacrifice its artistic aspirations to the single purpose of making money. The theater was commercial, to a certain extent, in the time of Shakspere and Molière, of Sheridan and Beaumarchais; but it was not then unduly commercial. Is it unduly commercial now and here, to-day in the United States? Is its organization exclusively in the control of men who are thinking only of the profits to be made, and who know nothing and care less about the drama as an art?

Here again it is necessary to distinguish and to point out the yawning gulf between the playhouses which are truly homes of the drama and the playhouses which have been surrendered outright to mere spectacles. There are in our theaters to-day a heterogeny of so-called musical comedies, summer song-shows, Follies and Passing Shows, sometimes beautifully mounted but often empty of anything but glitter and violent movement, far-fetched fun, and unnecessary noise. These exhibitions occupy the stages of theaters where we might hope to see something better; they are money-making speculations, no more and no less; they supply nothing but vacuous entertainment for those who go to a show warranted to demand no mental effort from the spectators; they are examples of naked commercialism. As far as the drama is concerned, they are utterly negligible, as negligible as is the circus which now invades the theater only at very rare intervals.

There remain to be considered the large proportion of our theaters the stage-doors of which remain open to the drama in all its various manifestations, tragedy, comedy, farce, problem-play, or what not. Now, nobody familiar with the facts can deny or doubt that the theater here and now is hospitable to the drama. No really noteworthy European play, no matter where it was originally brought out, fails to be presented sooner or later in New York. It may be gay, the latest Parisian farce, for example; and then its chance comes sooner. It may be somber or even gloomy, the ‘Weavers’ of Hauptmann, for instance, the ‘John Ferguson’ of St. John Ervine or the ‘Jest’ of Sem Benelli; and then its chance may be late in coming. And side by side with these more or less important importations there are a host of native pieces of every degree of merit, reflecting almost every aspect of American life and character, from the ‘Salvation Nell’ of Edward Sheldon to the ‘Why Marry?’ of Jesse Lynch Williams, from the ‘Mrs. Leffingwell’s Boots’ of Augustus Thomas to the ‘Get Rich Quick Wallingford’ of George M. Cohan.

Nor is the drama of the past without its opportunity also. Sothern and Marlowe draw audiences limited only to the capacity of the houses in which they appear; Robert Mantell carries with him a varied repertory; and Walter Hampden is enabled to present ‘Hamlet’ for an unexpected series of performances. It must be confessed that Shakspere is more fortunate than Sheridan and that we have not now the privilege of beholding the ‘Rivals’ or the ‘School for Scandal’ or any of the Old Comedies as frequently as we used to have it in the days when Burton and Wallack and Daly managed their own theaters and had permanent companies accustomed to present these specimens of a form of the drama now demoded.

It is a lamentable fact, the full significance of which is grasped only by a few, that New York, perhaps the most populous city in the world, is entirely dependent on road-shows. It has now no theater managed with an eye single to its appeal to the population of Manhattan. It has to rely absolutely upon travelling combinations. It is true, of course, that many of these combinations do not travel; they begin and end their careers here in New York; but they were all of them intended to travel, if they had first succeeded in New York. The stars open their season where it is most convenient and they come into New York when they can; but the immense majority of new plays, American and British and translated from foreign tongues, are produced in New York, altho some of them may have a trial week in Washington or Atlantic City, a week of dress-rehearsals before a relatively unimportant audience. If these new plays please Broadway, they stay as long as they can and then they pack up and begin their wanderings to other cities. Experience has shown that this is the only profitable way to conduct the theatrical business; and economic conditions are as inexorable in the theatrical as in any other business.

The geographic conditions reinforce the economic; and in the United States the geographic conditions differ widely from those in any other country, more especially from those in Great Britain. As London is an easily accessible capital of a small country, the heaviest receipts are to be expected from the performances there; the London companies are engaged for the run of the piece; and they do not go on the road, the provinces being visited only by inferior touring companies. As New York is a far longer distance from most of the other large cities of the United States and as there are many of these large cities, as well as many smaller towns, equally eager to welcome any play which has won metropolitan approval, the heaviest receipts are often not in New York itself but in the multitude of these other cities and towns. Therefore New York is, in the eyes of the producing managers, often only a starting point; and their ultimate goal lies in the vast territory which stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The outside market, so to speak, is so wide and the demand so insatiable, that the producing managers are hard put to supply it. And when they happen to hit on an attractive piece their profits may be enormous.

One reason why the American theater seems to many to be unduly commercialized is that it has been at times amazingly profitable. Until toward the end of the nineteenth century the theatrical was the most precarious of businesses, extra-hazardous for the managers, the actors and the authors. When they died Shakspere and Molière were able to leave to their families only a modest competence. David Garrick is almost the only manager in all the long history of the theater in Great Britain and the United States who was able to retire with a fortune. Benefits had to be arranged for Lester Wallack and for A. M. Palmer. The playwrights were in no better case than the players or the managers; and in the nineteenth century more than one potential dramatist turned novelist simply because novel-writing was easier and more profitable than playwriting.

But in the final third of the last century the right of a foreign author to control his own work was internationally recognized, thus relieving the playwrights of our language from competition with pieces purloined from alien authors. The right of a British author to control his work in the United States was also established, relieving the American playwright from competition with pieces imported from England without payment. The far-flung British Commonwealth continued to expand; and the remoter regions of the United States became more densely populated. And the most successful pieces of British and American authorship were discovered to be exportable to France and Germany and Italy.

V

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.