Arthur Machen

“ And here, by the way, is one of the great causes of the ordinary competent actor's decline. If it is believed that people go to see one man or one woman, or perhaps a man and a woman together, and that it doesn't matter how the other parts are played, then evidently it will not be worth while paying good wages to good actors, and by consequence good actors will starve and die out. ”

“ The moral is that the miseries of the artist are likely to be reflected directly or indirectly in his art; and I hope the deduction is clear. If acting is, in the main, an uncomfortable, precarious, underpaid, ill-treated, sweated business, then the best people will be kept out of it, and consequently the performances will suffer, and therefore the public will miss several laughs and agonies that more competent players could have given them. ”

“ Actors tell me that they are artists, and as such they do not care to be classed with low, common working-men; so they stay outside their Union. When the low fellows in question work overtime they get extra pay, and, I think, on an advanced scale; the proud artist does his overtime—or matinée—usually for nothing, rarely for half-pay. It is not at all uncommon for a whole company, who have been engaged for a nominal three months, who have rehearsed, gratis, for a fortnight, to see "the notice" go up at the end of six weeks, which means that the management has robbed them of a month's pay. ”

“ Yet he is a part of the picture, and though he may do no good by his competence, he can do an infinite deal of harm by his incompetence; he can be the one false note in the harmony, ruining the whole effect. Well, if this average actor-man that we are discussing is to be kept in existence, his life must be made tolerable and (under our present commercial dispensation) he must be paid decent wages. ”

“ So long as melodrama pays, so long will it be produced; so long will the players be taught to practise a series of absurd conventions found to be effectual in "getting rounds." Only at rare intervals can a competent recruit be gained from such a field as this; only a strong man can go through a course of undiluted blood and remain unaffected by it. But other woes are not beyond remedy—if only the players will look to it. Take, for example, the ordinary touring contract. You have an interview with the manager, and he tells you that the tour will be one of twelve weeks. ”

“ I am afraid that no efforts, but merely time and circumstance, can do anything to mend one of the greatest evils in the matter of the stage. So long as hundreds of provincial towns prefer absurd blood-and-thunder "dramas" to decent plays, ancient and modern, so long will thousands of actors be trained in a very bad school, in a rubbishy method of enacting rubbish. ”

“ I have heard of a manager who was very proud of a Wall which was made of Real Bricks; it would be better to boast of a company composed of Real Actors.
Players, in spite of their miseries and misfortunes, are in the main good-tempered folk; they grumble and bear it if they cannot always grin and bear it. ”

“ Benson, who has the passion of Shakespeare, expects his company to cherish something of the same ardour in their breasts, to think for themselves, to watch the work of their elders, to bring something of the freedom of Nature and of life on to the boards, to be men and women, not things that have been wound up by the puppet showman, that can always be depended upon to be on a certain square at a certain moment, and to waggle the little finger of the left hand according to careful instructions at a given cue. There is no company where the necessary technique is so thoroughly taught ”

“ The logical end of this system would be for one or two players to give the whole play between them to the accompaniment of splendid revolving scenery. At intervals richly-clad supers at 2s. a night would rush on and do something brisk and exciting while the stars rested their voices. If the public wish for such a state of things there is nothing more to be said; but if they want to see a play played as a whole, then competent players must be engaged down to the smallest parts. The small-part actor is a negative but necessary person ”

“ In Utopia managers will agree together that this practice shall cease; in London it will continue and performances will get more ragged and incompetent, and the good craftsman will become scarcer, till the general public signifies in some way or another that it is displeased with the result. There are many reasons why the music-halls flourish at the theatres' expense, and perhaps one of them is that the music-hall "artistes," with few exceptions, know their business. ”

“ Still, one can always fall back on Providence and Smiles and the Blessings of Civilisation; and if the worst come to the worst it is usually safe to say that the author must be guilty of gross exaggeration. It is quite strange how we all hate to be told the plain hard truth about anything. ”

“ In our own happy land there are workpeople who are perhaps not quite so comfortable as they would like to be, who are forced to live in poisonous slum-settlements and to pursue trades which mean degradation and early death ”

“ This practice, I believe, is illegal, and the salary in question would be recoverable at law; but of what use is the law to the actor? He may win his case and secure his pound or two, and be regarded ever after as "a troublesome man to have in a theatre." It is not to be wondered at that he grumbles in his dressing-room and does nothing. Still, of course he has the comfort of knowing that he is an Artist, not a working-man; so he stays outside the Union. And all this, as I have said. does not tend to attract the average capable man into the profession ”

“ Moreover—and this touches Londoners nearly—if from one reason or another the provincial theatres do not afford a good school, then London acting will deteriorate, and cultured, wealthy, and intelligent audiences will be brought within measurable distance of boredom. ”

“ However good the leader may be, the whole effect is said to be deplorable if the other violins are uncertain, the flutes flat, the trombones sharp, and the bassoon-players just beginning to learn their business. ”

“ Blank and Miss Dash, supported by a large company of Idiots and Incompetents"—it is a question of drilling inexperienced people into automata; their speech is measured, their gestures are measured, their stations on the stage are chalked out for them. ”