Her Majesty's Theatre

“ They are exceedingly fond of theatricals, and every prince and nobleman, who can afford it, has a theatre of his own. No festival of any kind can be held without theatricals. Their plays are generally some fictitious love tale, or history, and some of the actions of the actresses are most lascivious and vulgar, but perhaps not more so than the exhibitions of the stage in Europe and America to-day. ”

“ Where is the advantage of a National Theatre in London unless there are existing at least six Repertory Theatres in the provinces which may serve as training grounds for actors and for the experiments of dramatists? ”

“ It appears, that our ancient theatres were little better than barns, while those of the present day may vie with palaces in extent, splendour, and decoration; and nothing can more strongly exhibit the contrast between the present age and that of Queen Elizabeth, than the difference in the expense of a London theatre. ”

“ It is difficult at the present day to realise such scenes as that presented by the Imperial Theatre during the performance that evening. The comparative smallness of the interior and dimness of the lights, combined with the incomparable splendour and richness in the appearance of the audience which filled every portion of the theatre, even to the gallery of the servants, with undiminished brilliancy, produced an effect of subdued splendour and of a mystic glow of colour which we should look for in vain in any theatre in Europe now. ”

“ They at present are the people’s favourites, and all have individually a large public following. It was but just to these men to ask them to come into the scheme as honorary members of the institution, in the hope that they would associate themselves with those parts and plays of more than ordinary merit which undoubtedly have a claim to be admitted into the repertory of a National Theatre, and with which they individually were specially identified. ”

“ But all these amusements pale before the growing delight of play-going. To the allegorical morality play—revived to-day by the Elizabethan Stage Society in the representation of "Everyman"—succeeded historical representations, at first crude, but carried to a triumphant height by Shakspere. When Elizabeth ascended the throne there was no theatre: miscellaneous plays were acted in the courtyards of great inns or other open spaces, on temporary stages standing on four legs and protected by an awning in bad weather. But in 1576 a regular playhouse was established and called The Theatre. ”

“ Queen Elizabeth heard plays in the hall of the Middle Temple, the hall of Hampton Palace, and at Greenwich and at Richmond; but she never went to the Globe Theatre. In historic temples there should be no trifling with historic themes; and surely, in a theatre of the nineteenth century, dedicated to Shakespeare, while no fantastic regard should be paid to the usages of the past, it would be tasteful and proper to blend the best of ancient ways with all the luxury and elegance of these times. It is much, however, to have built what can readily be made a lovely theatre ”

“ 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.
285 There is one thing in which I heartily agree with the expressed opinions of many well-known actors. ”

“ In that panic the English drama disappeared for the time, and at the moment of writing it does not exist. There are many excellent entertainments at our different theatres, and most of them are deservedly successful. But in the very height of this theatrical season there is not a single London theatre that is giving a play that so much as pretends to picture our modern English life,—I might almost say that pretends to picture human life at all. ”

“ The theatres present, at first view, a very favourable aspect of French character. The audience uniformly conduct themselves with propriety and decorum; they are always attentive to the piece represented, and shew themselves, in general very good judges of theatrical merit; and the entertainments which please their taste are certainly of a superior order to a great part of those which are popular in England. A great number of the performances which are loudly applauded by the pit and boxes of the London theatres, would be esteemed low and vulgar, even by the galleries at the Theatre Français. ”

“ We have not in this country any such obstacle to universal success as the Theatre Francais, but Providence has given us, for wise purposes no doubt, Private Theatricals (not always so private as they should be) , which domesticate the drama, and supply the stage with some of the most beautiful and best dressed performers the world has ever seen. ”

“ And yet in spite of all this, the writer of these lines has ventured to believe that the London theatres are highly characteristic of English civilization. The plays testify indirectly if not directly to the national manners, and the whole system on which play-going is conducted completes the impression which the pieces make upon the observer. One can imagine, indeed, nothing more characteristic than such a fact as that a theatre-going people is hopelessly destitute of a drama. ”

“ Throughout the kingdom there was a growing predilection for theatrical entertainments—it was the national anticipation of a public theatre.
If Elizabeth, a popular sovereign, in 1572 checked the strollers assuming the character of players, two years afterwards, in 1574, she granted a patent to the servants of the Earl of Leicester1 “to exercise the faculty of playing stage-plays, as well for the recreation of our loving subjects, as for our solace and pleasure;” ”

“ For let there be no confusion: art and the theatre are not the same thing; almost one might say that if a play possesses artistic quality it holds a passport to eternity, with this difference, that many things lost in eternity are remembered. A little more may be said of this further on.
London has always been a city of theatres, perhaps because we have, for many centuries, laboured under the Puritan tradition: its bitterness has attached to the theatre a glamour foreign to it in hotter lands. ”

“ The million toilers from mine, and factory, and workshop, and loom, and office, and field, share with their more wealthy neighbours the feast of reason and imagination spread out in the Crystal Palace.
It is strange indeed to see so many nations assembled and represented on one spot of British ground. In short, it is one great theatre, with thousands of performers, each playing his own part. ”

“ Now, I sympathize with a National Theatre as a memorial to Shakespeare, because I think the highest honour that can be rendered to our poet-dramatist is to provide English actors—and Shakespeare was himself an actor—with a permanent home where dramatic art as an art can be recognized and encouraged; and a National Theatre can give dignity to the dramatic profession and inspire emulation among its members by conferring upon them honours and rewards, provided always that the actors are the servants of the institution and not of a salaried official in that institution. ”

“ At the same time, a bevy of beautiful ladies, their complexions delicately tinted with white and carmine, escorted by lords, old and young, who led them, not by the arm, nor even by the hand, but by the tips of their fingers, began filing out from the Palace Theatre, taking great care to walk sidewise, in order not to disarrange their hoops. ”

“ The theatre itself was not altered, except by the platform occupied by the king; it is sufficiently splendid as it stands; but the stage, whose area is much larger than that of the pit, was hung in rich drapery as a vast tent, and garnished to profusion with flags and arms. Along the sides, on a level with the lower row of boxes, extended galleries of crimson velvet, festooned with flowers. These were filled with ladies, and completed a circle about the house of beauty and magnificence, of which the king and his dazzling suite formed the corona. ”

“ Henceforth the Miracle play was doomed, and hereafter budded forth a new drama, the full blossom thereof culminating in the immortal works of William Shakespeare.
The construction of the open-air stage, where the Miracle plays were exhibited, totally differed from any kind of stage adopted by Europeans for the last three hundred years. The inn-yard performance presents a greater likeness to our present theatre than the primitive shows represented before our ancestors of the Middle Ages compared with the inn-yard performances. ”

“ Of the countless thousands who can enjoy Molière’s incomparable humour, how many are there who would pause before Leonardo’s Monna Lisa in the Louvre? How many again in our own country, of those who are familiar with the tragedies of Shakespeare, ever find their way into the British Museum or the National Gallery?
And yet the prejudice against the public support of the theatre endures, and can only, I think, be broken down by the demands of the democracy. If a national theatre is to be established in England, it must realise that it has a national mission. ”

“ They had the true theatric instinct—the right theatre spirit. They were in their seats as soon as the opened doors would let them enter. The tuning of the fiddles was exquisite music to their ears—an essential part of the drama. Every moment was precious to them. They would as lief have missed the rising of the great curtain, sweeping upwards with ecstatic jerk into the flies, as have gone out before the last act, or worn their hats to spoil the delight of others. For them the Theatre held something of a sacred pleasure—the dear pleasaunce of populous cities. ”

“ If we could secure this endowment, that theatre would become in a very few years the most fashionable, if not the most popular, in London, and even the great public would go to it. Nor need such a theatre be expensive—as theatres go—for it is to the mind and not to the eye that it must appeal. A sufficient audience is there ready; what is lacking is the point of focus, a single-hearted and coherent devotion to the best, and the means to pursue that ideal without extravagance but without halting. ”

“ Large convenient approaches from Shoreditch lead, by lobbies equally convenient, into one of the finest and largest theatres in London. Handsome in shape, thoughtful in arrangement, excellently conducted, this theatre is a model place of public entertainment. From every part of it, an excellent view of the stage can be had; the comfort of the audience is well cared for; there is everywhere ample space, and to spare, and the ventilation is perfect. ”

“ We are assured that the artistes who have just finished their engagements at the King’s Theatre, London, are thoroughly discouraged, and that few of them feel disposed to return another year to the capital of England. ”

“ For the moment we are only concerned with the sixteenth century. A glance back over my footnotes will show many examples in which action is said to be ‘above’ or ‘aloft’, or is accompanied by the ascent or descent of personages from or to the level of the main stage. This interplay of different levels is indeed the outstanding characteristic of the Elizabethan public theatre, as compared with the other systems of stage-presentment to which it stands in relation. ”

“ The British drama has at the present moment two special haunts—the theatre and the concert-hall. It is needless for the dramatic authors to complain that their pieces are damned. Who cares for their pieces? All they have to say has no relation to our present habitudes and thoughts. If they will write for the theatres, let them write something worthy of illustration, and be as realistic in their writing as Mr Kean is in his acting, and in his stage appointments. And let them invade the concert-halls, where a new drama is springing up for the amusement of those who cannot away with the theatre. ”

“ These latter were to leave me, however, with a fonder vision still than that of the comparatively jejune "lecture-room" version; for the first exhibition of them to spring to the front was the fine free rendering achieved at a playhouse till then ignored by fashion and culture, the National Theatre, deep down on the East side, whence echoes had come faintest to ears polite, but where a sincerity vivid though rude was now supposed to reward the curious. ”

“ There was not a single theatre in London at which plays, old and new, were not selected and mounted solely with a view to their continuous performance for as many nights as possible, anything short of fifty nights constituting an ignominious and probably ruinous failure. It was found, too, that those theatres were most successful which were devoted exclusively to exploiting the talent of an individual actor. ”

“ For the Theatre, as the original source of all the arts, the spring from which half a hundred streams have poured, into the separate arts of music, dancing, singing, poetry, pageantry, and what not—the Theatre in its historic aspect as the spirit of communal festivity—is significant to us not as the vehicle of a so-called dramatic art, separate and distinct from the arts which go to make it up, but rather as the institution which preserves the memory of the common origin of all these arts and which still has the power to unite them in the service of a common purpose. ”