Our Responsibility to the English Speaking Theatre

PRESIDENT FENNELL occupied the Chair and introduced the speaker. MR. HAMILTON spoke as follows: When you attend a performance in the theatre I assume that you look at the stage and focus your attention on the actors, and that, of course, is as it should be. But when I go to the theatre nowadays I often sit far forward in the auditorium and turn my back quite rudely on the stage and focus my attention on the audience; because for those of us who are active in the theatre as playwrights or directors or actors or producers, the drama which is enacted in the auditorium is often more momentous and frequently more exciting than the drama which is enacted on the stage. We know, those of us who are active in the theatre, that those people seated out in front, whoever they may be, constitute our partners in the theatre business and our collaborators in the creation of dramatic art. We can do nothing without their collaboration, and without their assistance, and therefore it is very necessary that we should learn to know them, to find out how they think and how they feel, and in what respects their sense of humor differs from our own. It is obvious, of course, that the public is a necessary partner in the business of the theatre. It is indeed the most important of all the partners, because it is the only partner which furnishes the capital, on which alone the business of the theatre can subsist. It is only a little less obvious that the public constitutes a necessary collaborator in the very creation of dramatic art.

A play is necessarily a co-operative undertaking. No dramatist can make a play, all alone by himself. First of all, he needs the collaboration of a company of actors and the assistance of various other artists of the theatre but even the combined efforts of all these artists, carried through to a final dress rehearsal, will not constitute a play without the further collaboration of a gathered audience. For to go back to fundamentals we must remember always that a play exists only during those moments while it is being acted on a stage before an audience. A play has no real existence before the first curtain rises. It ceases, temporarily at least, to have a real existence when the final curtain falls. That of course is the reason why plays can be studied thoroughly only in the theatre, why they cannot be studied in the classroom of the university or in the library. A play cannot be deposited in a library; all that can be deposited in a library is what I might call either the record of a play that has existed in the past, or the directions for making a play that may come into existence in the future. In order really to appreciate "The Merchant of Venice", it will not be sufficient to read the text at home; it will be absolutely necessary in the one available week to drive down to the Princess Theatre and see the performance of Mr. George Arliss. (Applause.) What we commonly call the text of "The Merchant of Venice" is not the play at all. From one point of view the text might be regarded as the report or record of a play that has existed in the past. This record tells us that while the play existed the actors spoke certain lines and performed certain business amidst certain stage surroundings. Here are the words that the actor playing Shylock spoke. Or to reverse the point of view, to look forward instead of backward, we might regard "The Merchant of Venice" as a series of directions for bringing a play into existence. The text tells us that if we will assemble certain actors amidst certain stage surroundings, if they will speak certain lines, and perform certain business, and if in so doing they succeed in calling forth the imaginative response from a gathered audience, a play will spring into existence, which we may call "The Merchant of Venice", and will continue to exist throughout the two or three hours' traffic of the stage. But the presence of a gathered audience is absolutely essential to the existence of the play; and not merely the passive presence of an audience, but the active participation of the audience in the proceedings of the theatre. So long as the people gathered in a theatre remain conscious of the fact that they are looking at something outside of themselves, listening to something outside of themselves, the play has not yet really begun to be. So long as they remain aware of physical division of the theatre into two parts, the world behind the footlights, where the actors are, and the world before the footlights where the spectators are, the play has not "come alive", as children say. A play springs into real existence only when, so to speak, it seems to pour itself over the footlights and begins to happen inside the minds and hearts of the people seated out in front. Or, to reverse the point of view, the people gathered in the auditorium seem in their imaginations to swarm up over the footlights, to enter the room which is exhibited on the stage--if the stage shows a roomso that they feel themselves in their imaginations to be among those present with the other actors, listening to a conversation in which conceivably at any moment they might take a personal part, participating in the passage of an action which presumably at any moment they themselves might interrupt. And it is only when this illusion is created in the theatre, that it is possible for the public to enjoy that vicarious experience of life, to furnish which is the one great function of the drama.

For why do people go to the theatre? They say quite frankly that they go to the theatre to enjoy themselves, and there could be no other reason. But that phrase must be taken literally. They go to the theatre to enjoy themselves, not to enjoy anybody else. Not to enjoy the emotions, or the simulated emotions of the actors, but to enjoy their own emotions as these may be stimulated by what they see and hear. Not to enjoy the ideas of the author, but to enjoy their own ideas, if any--(Laughter)--as their intelligence is galvanized into activity by the proceedings on the stage. And the degree of enjoyment which people may receive in the theatre is proportioned to the amount of the imaginative contribution which they themselves are permitted or required to furnish to the general collaboration. The reason why the experience of going to the theatre on the bankside three hundred years ago, and attending the early performances of the plays of Shakespeare was really more enjoyable than the average experience of attending the performance of an average play in the theatre of today, is that the public was permitted and required to make a larger and greater imaginative contribution. In the last act of "The Merchant of Venice" they listened to the lovely lines of Lorenzo and Jessica and then were required in their own imaginations to create the landscape and the atmosphere of Portia's gardens at Belmont with no assistance of scenery or other actual physical suggestion to the eye. They had more fun than we have in the theatre today, because they were doing more of the work. And even at the present time the most successful of our dramatists artistically, and also in most cases commercially, are those who subtly make it necessary for the public to do most of the work. A conspicuous example is Sir James Barrie, who never tries to tell people anything that they did not know before, but tries instead to remind them of what they have always known but seem to have forgotten. So that, as ideas and emotions are suggested to them, they regard them not as Barrie's, but their own; they say, "Oh yes, I have always known that," or, "That is something I felt when I was a boy, I remember now, so this is something I know all about." They feel as they sit there that they themselves are creating the play as it goes along. They have a better time because they are enjoying themselves than when they attend a performance of another type of dramatist who tries to make most of the play happen on the stage. Plays do not belong on the stage; they belong in the imaginations of the gathered spectators. Because the contribution of the audience is just as important as the contribution of the actors or the contribution of the dramatist, it is obvious that the tone and taste of the drama in any country in any period must necessarily be attuned to the tone and taste of the available theatre-going public. The theatre never has belonged and never can belong to any manager or group of managers, to any dramatist or group of dramatists, to any actor or group of actors. The theatre always has belonged, and always will belong, to the theatre-going public, not to the entire public of a nation, but to that particular section of the general public which takes an active interest in the theatre, which chooses to participate in the affairs of the theatre, and which supports the theatre with its patronage.

In countries and in periods when it is socially customary for the very finest people to take an active interest in the theatre and support it with enthusiasm, the finest of dramatic art is rapidly developed. In other countries and in other periods where it becomes socially customary for the finest people for one reason or another to lose interest in the theatre, to desert the theatre, and when the theatre is handed over to the rabble, the art of the drama is very rapidly debased. If we review the entire history of the drama we shall notice that the dramatic art has climbed to greatness only in places and in periods when a great audience, an audience of extraordinary mental and imaginative equipment has been available for co-operation in its creation. Quite literally the world can never evolve a Shakespeare unless there is ready and waiting an audience capable of appreciating Shakespeare and enjoying Shakespeare, and of helping him to make his plays. The great tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, were written and produced in Athens at that one moment in the history of the human race when our human civilization climbed to the highest pinnacle which ever at any time it has attained. It was perfectly simple and natural for Sophocles and Euripides to write great plays, because they had a great audience to write for. Shakespeare's audience in the London of Elizabeth again, though comparatively crude, comparatively barbarian when set beside the audience of Athens and Pericles, was a very vivid-minded audience, very eager, very enthusiastic, tremendously imaginative. In ancient Rome the drama very rapidly declined. It became socially uncustomary for the patricians to patronize the theatre. They would not go. Tragedy ceased to be. A comic theatre was turned over to the rabble of Rome, and the very ablest of the Roman comic authors like Plautus, were obliged to compose their plays for an audience of morons, an audience furthermore very vulgar in taste, and that is the reason why the plays of Plautus are so excessively and childishly simple in their expositions, so unnecessarily obscene, so extravagantly profane; because he was writing for a vulgar audience that could be appealed to only in vulgar terms. Any type of entertainment that is designed to interest millions of stupid people, the ordinary motion picture of commerce at the present time, for example,--I am not speaking of the half dozen or dozen motion pictures sent forth every year that an adult person may sit through without screaming,--most of them made in Germany-but I am speaking of the ordinary motion picture of commerce, about 90% of the total output, the type of entertainment designed to appeal to millions and millions of people and that means millions and millions of stupid people, because when you get into the multi-millions you are dealing with stupid masses, and it requires an extraordinary command of all the attributes of taste to keep the type of entertainment sufficiently vulgar, so that millions and millions of essentially vulgar people will be able to respond to it. The vulgar mind can respond actively only to vulgar suggestions, just as the intelligent and cultivated and tasteful mind can respond actively only to suggestions within its range. You will see then that the present of our theatre, and the future of our theatre remain necessarily in the hands of those who may choose to constitute the theatre-going public.

In recent years in my country, which is adjacent to yours on the south--(Laughter)--I think we have had considerable cause for worry about the present and the future of our theatre when considered from this particular point of view. I am not worried about our dramatists; I am not worried about our actors; I am not worried about our directors, because in all technical respects our theatre is in a very fine state at the present time. But in recent years, especially in my own city, in New York, and particularly in the decade that has elapsed since the interruption of the world war, it has seemed to many of us that there has been an appreciable decline in the quality of the theatre-going public. I may state the situation briefly in the formula that the best people seem more and more to have been drifting away from the theatre and the worst people seem more and more to flock to it. There are many difficulties in our country which do not obtain in your more civilized Dominion. (Laughter.) In the major cities of my country at the present time, New York, Chicago, and so on, we are pouring millions and millions of dollars every year, which under civilized circumstances would be put definitely into the treasury of the United States in the form of taxes, we are pouring all this money every year into thousands and thousands and thousands of illicit pockets, the pockets of members of the under world, who a few years ago had to work for a living and earned two or three thousand dollars a year, and who now do not have to work for a living at all, and make more than a hundred thousand a year. And this is occasioning a social revolution or overturning, taking people who formerly were at the bottom of the social circle and heaving them up on top. Meanwhile, college professors, preachers, doctors, lawyers, authors, actors, are not making any more money than they were before. And our new class of the newly enriched, an exceedingly numerous class in New York, Chicago, and other cities, on the principle of "Easy come, easy go" are flocking to the theatres with money in both hands. Vulgarians who twenty years ago never thought of attending the legitimate theatre,--they had places of entertainment of their own which had not yet been abolished--(Laughter)--now flock to the first-class theatres, with much more money in their pockets than anybody else, and have in recent seasons exercised a distinctly vulgarizing influence on theatre-going in New York. I have no desire to harp on the theatre of that particular city, except that in the United States it is a very unfortunate fact that the one great centre of producing activity in the commercial theatre happens to be New York.

I remember in the 1890's when I was a small boy going to the theatre in New York, there was a certain edifying flavor in the mere experience of theatre-going. As a boy I used to be taken to Daly's Theatre in the period when the leading man was John Drew, and the leading woman was Ada Rehan, and the leading author was William Shakespeare. (Applause.) I used to feel as I stepped into that temple of entertainment from the outside world that I was ascending from one level of civilization to a higher level, and as I looked about me in the auditorium I felt that it was a social privilege to be among those present in such a gathering, for the theatre was supported by the finest people in the city, and the finest people in the country. Now-a-days in New York on a casual evening--I am not speaking of the three or four bright particular occasions of the theatrical year--but any ordinary evening, if I drift into any ordinary theatre and look at the audience I feel distinctly that in entering the theatre from the outside world I have descended from the level of civilization on which I habitually live, descended to a lower level, and I no longer regard it as a social privilege to find myself among those present in the auditorium. Too frequently as I look about me it seems as if there has been a jail-break at Sing Sing. At other times it seems as if the entire house was filled with friends of the Schuberts, except that it does not seem possible that the Schuberts would have so many friends. (Laughter.) And as I linger in the lobby for purposes of investigation and listen to the people as they come out of the theatre--this is in New York--I am not interested in what they say but I am interested in the sounds they make in saying it. It is evident on any ordinary occasion that a large majority of the people gathered in the theatre speak English, if at all, in manners that are exceedingly broken, and must therefore hear the language with ears that shatter it to pieces. I have in past seasons written plays myself--all of us have sinned--even Mr. Arliss is a temporarily retired playwright. (Laughter.) Now-a-days as I look at those people and listen to them, and say to myself, "If I ever write a play again, these are the people I must write for." The aspect is exceedingly discouraging. And consider how discouraging it must be for the actor, how discouraging it must be for the artist like Mr. Arliss to know that he is to speak the English language on a stage in New York before an audience half of which has no idea of what the English language sounds like, and no desire ever to learn. If he is playing in a modern piece in which the name of Thirty-Third Street is mentioned, he knows before he speaks that more than half the people in that audience call it Thoity-Thoid Street; and how is he to speak to them?

The situation is not so difficult in Canada, and yet I think that all of us must agree that, mainly of course as one of the devastating results of the war, the theatre-going public in London is not so conspicuously fine today as it was twenty-five years ago; it has broken up. Again in England at the present time, mainly for economic reasons, the finest people have tended more or less to desert the theatre. Other people not so fine, who in curious ways have got hold of money, which formerly was assigned by society to their betters, have begun going to the theatre for the first time, and they have tended to vulgarize it. Now it would be a very unfortunate thing if in our countries in the immediate future we should merely turn our theatre over, to the vulgar mob, because they would very quickly make of it an entirely vulgar institution. Yet the only way in which it can be saved from being vulgarized is by some active undertaking of the intelligent, cultured classes, to hold it to its proper purposes. In most of the major cities of the United States, outside of New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, the drama as an art, in recent seasons has almost ceased to be, whereas a generation ago good performances of good plays might be seen in American cities of half a million or more population nearly every week of the season. Now in such cities it is possible to see only one or two, or possibly three, first-class productions of first class plays in the course of the year. The theatre has been dying out. It has been for me a matter of amazement to notice that the people in general do not seem to care anything about it, do not seem to be at all perturbed. I have not studied the conditions in this city, but I dare say it is true at the present time that you see far fewer productions of first-class plays during the course of a season at the Alexandra and Princess theatres than you saw twenty years ago. There has been a very appreciable decline. Nobody does anything about it. I was talking yesterday afternoon in Toledo to a group of leaders of various women's clubs. In that city of Toledo the drama has almost ceased to be, yet nobody seems to be wearing a tragic expression on his face. I said to those women, the drama as a civilizing force must logically be taken as seriously as the church or the university. Perhaps in certain quarters of the United States the drama is more necessary than the university, because the university can dispense only education, and the drama at its best can dispense culture, which is far more needed. I did not attempt to compare the virtue of the university or the theatre with the church, because I did not want to start an argument--(Laughter)--but I said: Let us agree that all three are important institutions; now, I said, suppose you were told in Toledo that beginning with the first of next January the church would cease to be, as an institution in your city. After next January every church edifice would stand empty in your city forever; there would be no church services of any denomination whatsoever, no Christian gathering, all congregations, all churches would be abolished. I said, If that should be decreed, I think somebody would write a letter to a newspaper. (Laughter.) Or suppose that they were told that beginning next January the University of Toledo would close its doors, all public high schools would close their doors, there should be no more public education in the city; I think somebody would get up a meeting of protest or something. But they face a condition, I told them, whereby beginning the first of next January they will never again see a first-class production of a first-class play in their city of 300,000 people. And nobody gets up a mass meeting. nobody even writes a letter to the newspaper, nobody cares at all; they just let the theatre slip away and go by default, and they allow their children to grow up and go through high school and even college without ever having seen a first-class production of a first-class play, and for lack of other ways, of spending their time these children in their teens flock to some gaudy exhibition on the cinematic screen of the story of the' rich and vicious banker who endeavors vainly to seduce the poor but virtuous stenographer. (Laughter.)

If things go on as we have been letting them go recently in our country there will be no professional theatre in the next five years outside of New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. Nobody cares at all. If the people do not want any theatre they won't have any. If they do want a theatre, they will have it, because it has been the thesis of this conversation of mine that the destiny of the theatre is at all times controlled and commanded by the theatre-going public.

Now if the people want the theatre back, what can they do? Organize. Matthew Arnold said, away back in the 1870's, "The theatre is irresistible; organize the theatre." It is already sufficiently organized on the professional side of the footlights; we need not worry about that. It needs to be organized on the public side of the footlights. What ought to be done on this continent, in the United States and Canada, is for us in each of the important cities, Toronto for example, to organize a public, not necessarily large--a public of 5,000 people would be large enough for a city like Toronto--organize 5,000 people in a city of this size, 10,000 in larger cities, who would say "We are interested in the theatre, we wish to participate in the theatre, we desire to sustain the theatre at its highest and its best; we do constitute an audience; we are willing to attend; we desire to attend a first-class production of a first-class play once a month for eight months in the year, and to prove that we are sincere in this desire we will buy our tickets now at the outset of the season." Eight times a $3 ticket is $24; eight times a one dollar ticket is $8; if 5,000 people would pay their money into the treasury, buy their tickets for a season in advance, thereby organizing themselves in each city into a subscription audience, they could command the theatre, because they could see anything they wanted to see. If a circuit of twenty cities could be arranged, in each of which there was an organized subscription audience, the people themselves would say what they wanted to see, and would get it. If one month they wanted to see the Medea of Euripides acted and produced by Margaret Anglin, who is coming here two weeks from now playing a light comedy part, but she is a star of tragedy, Miss Anglin would rehearse the thing in a moment and bring it. If they said they wanted to see Mr. George Arliss perform some noble part, Iago for instance, Mr. Ames, who is a civilized manager, and Mr. Arliss, would be willing to produce the part and go on any circuit of twenty cities. I know Mr. Walter Hamlin, with whom I am associated, would take Cyrano de Bergerac out of storage and produce it. The civilized managers would be delighted to produce the finest plays with the finest actors and the finest caste and send them around to the cities of the country so that the theatre could be patronized once again by people of taste and cultivation, and not merely by a mob of people on a spree who have gone up to the metropolis to have a h---of a time. The people could do something for the theatre by organization. It has been done in the world of music, as Mr. Charlesworth thoroughly knows. Any city that wants to have a symphony orchestra gets it. A certain number of people get together and say: We want a symphony orchestra, we will buy tickets in advance, here is our money, and then the city has an orchestra. Cities that do not do that, do not have them. The art of the drama is just as fine an art as the art of music, and should be considered seriously by the public. Although the public takes seriously the art gallery and the concert hall, it never pays any serious attention to the theatre, and treats all forms of theatrical production as if they were equally unimportant. The most ordinary kind of vulgar show that is shovelled on in New York for the benefit of visitors from Squeedunk, Ohio, is classed the same as Shylock presented by Mr. Arliss. That is all so stupid. Nobody does anything about it. My main interest in travelling about and talking to people of various cities is merely to get them interested in the theatre as an institution, seriously interested. I do not want to tell them what to do about it; I want them to do the thinking. They are the audience and the audience is important in proportion as it does the thinking and becomes creative. (Applause.)

The thanks of the club was extended to the speaker by Mr. George Arliss.