King's Theatre, London

“ The richer, and titled classes, were not content with witnessing professional skill, but strove to emulate and surpass the performers at their own amateur entertainments, and the most notable of these private societies was the Pic Nic Society.
[323]
There were eight Theatres in London, i.e., when one or other was not burnt down—namely, The King’s, Haymarket; Covent Garden; Drury Lane; Theatre Royal, Haymarket; The Royalty, in Goodman’s Fields; Sadlers Wells; Astley’s; and the Royal Circus, now the Surrey, on the other side the river. ”

“ If such a scene was required at all, it should, certainly, have been produced in a less attractive form. We should not have been so severe on this subject if we did not feel that no theatre in London less needs to depend on such displays for success. No theatre in London has it so completely in its power to show to what noble uses a stage may be applied; for on none is there so near an approach to the ancient glory of the drama in the skill and ensemble of the actors. Exercising talents like these on ghosts and festivals is a mere waste of power. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For smart society is a great supporter of the drama, and even royalty, whose attendance in the theatre is always announced beforehand by the supply of white silk programmes in the royal box, occasionally vouchsafes its presence. Especially is there always a great furore over the procuring of "first night" seats at the best London theatres. So far, indeed, as the audience of the stalls is concerned, the "first-nighters" are, more or less, always the same people ”

“ In no theatres of the first class outside London and New York is the system known, and even here and in New York it is of comparatively recent origin. But Londoners have grown so accustomed to the system that they overlook the havoc which it works on the theatre as a home of art. Both actor and playgoer suffer signal injury from its effects. It limits the range of drama which is available at our great theatres to the rank and file of mankind. Especially serious is the danger to which the unchangeable programme exposes histrionic capacity and histrionic intelligence. ”

“ The absurd liberalism of the day has given every corner of London a theatre, and has degraded the character of the stage in all. By scattering the ability which still exists, it has stripped the great theatres of the very means of representing dramatic excellence; while, by adopting popular contrivances to obtain temporary success, they have driven away dramatic genius in contempt or in despair. Our stage is now condemned to be fed like a felon from the dungeons, and, like the felon, to feel a stigma in every morsel which it puts between its lips. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. Thus when the fourth quarter of the century opened, the long “run” and the actor-manager were in firm possession of the field. ”

“ The majority of young men and maidens love comic opera, which seems, indeed, to be one of the paying "lines" in the London of to-day. Music-halls flourish; it is an eloquent sign of the times that the large and ornate "Palace Theatre,"—opened, with such a flourish of trumpets, a few years ago as the "New English Opera House," and known far and wide by its flashes of brilliant search-light,—should now have descended to a "variety" show. The great middle-class supports Shakespeare and the "legitimate" drama; shop-girls, and dressmakers' apprentices, like the "society" plays of the St. ”

“ In plain English, most of our theatres are managed, or rather mismanaged, upon the supposition that the principal players are more important than what they represent.
It is the opinion of many disinterested observers that only three or four of our actors and actress in legitimate drama draw an appreciable amount of money in London to the theatre, and sacrifices made for those who do not obviously are futile. ”

“ Your victims' eyes would weep them, O lights of London Town."
Theatrical managers are callous; they can, indeed, hardly be otherwise, for the stage, like journalism, is scarcely "a charitable institution"; and the supply of stage applicants is far greater than the demand. When a new play is to be produced at a theatre, see how its waiting-rooms and grimy staircases are daily crowded with young men and women, all eager, all well-dressed, (p. 276) and all anxiously trying to conceal their often desperate need of money. For they must always be well-dressed ”

“ If the murky London daylight in the theatre shows a mournful change from its nocturnal glories, even sadder is the contrast between the splendid entrance hall, or lobby, blazing with welcome lights, and the dark, grimy, and generally wretched "stage-door," which opens, mostly, into some gloomy back-street, and seems, to the uninitiated at least, to have no connection at all with the theatre. ”

“ Now it happened that in London there was a theatre given up to a season of foreign opera, and, this theatre having been built by one of those gifted geniuses so common among theatre architects, it followed that the balcony (into which, of course, neither the architect nor the manager for whom it was built had ever strayed) contained a number of seats from which no view of the stage was visible at all—unless one stood up, and then the people behind were deprived of their view. This, of course, means nothing to architects or managers. ”

“ At these central theatres successful plays are allowed to “run” for protracted periods, but there are numerous fine houses in other parts of London which are generally occupied by a succession of touring companies presenting either revivals of popular plays or plays successful at the moment in the central theatres. The principal music halls (variety theatres) are in Shaftesbury Avenue, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and the Strand. The Covent Garden theatre is the principal home of grand opera ”

“ But the best of the masques written by Ben Jonson and ‘produced,’ as we say, in our century, by Inigo Jones, will be given in a few years’ time, when James the First is king. I want you to remember, however, that the sixteenth century is the great time for plays of all sorts. We saw how the theatres on Bankside were crowded. Everywhere, not only in the theatres, but in private houses, and public halls, acting is going on, and plays are being written to meet the taste for it. This is the great age of the drama and London is full of geniuses who are play-writers and poets. ”

“ Again, the railways which bring London productions to the country take country playgoers by the thousand to London. The wealthier classes, in the Lancashire, Yorkshire and Midland towns at any rate, do almost all their theatre-going in London, or during the autumn months when the leading London companies go on tour. Thus the better class of comedy and drama has a hard fight to maintain itself in the provinces, and the companies devoted to melodrama and musical farce enjoy an ominous preponderance of popularity. ”

“ A spectator with his senses attuned to all those easy Parisian harmonies feels himself, in London, to be in a place in which the drama cannot, in the nature of things, have a vigorous life. Before he has put his feet into a theatre he is willing to bet his little all that the stage will turn out to be weak. If he is challenged for the reasons of this precipitate skepticism, he will perhaps be at loss to give them ”

“ 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. ”

“ Crowds move slowly in front of these—it is not possible to hurry even on the broad pavements, and most people move leisurely, with the head a little to one side, looking at the large windows, carrying parcels. Then there are more old houses behind old trees, or behind little terraces, then, more new shops. A brand new theatre, immense, domed, suddenly holds aloft, at its very apex, a large allegorical figure that appears on the point to soar over all these buildings and all these people. ”

“ I felt uncomfortable the brief time I spent there, breathed freer as I emerged from it, and felt as if escaping pursuit from some of its ruffianly inmates as I dashed away through the throng of vehicles in a Hansom cab to my hotel.
Theatre-going in London is an expensive amusement. In the theatres—that is, the good and respectable ones—there is no chance for people of moderate means, except the undesirable places that cannot be filled in any other way than by selling the admission at a rate within their reach. ”

“ 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? ”

“ I cannot, however, help observing that many large doors seem so obviously necessary in Theatres, that I dare not attempt to account for the diminutive size of the two through which the audience actually creep in the pit of Covent-garden Theatre. An alarm of fire in that house must end fatally, whether it spread, or was immediately extinguished [310:A] .
The amusements of the present day are very confined: the two Theatres and the Opera for the winter, and the Haymarket for the summer, are [311] the only established places of entertainment ”

“ For, after all, what is the use of our Commissionership if we do not speak the truth? We say, then, that in few theatres of London can a fair representation be presented to the public of any dramatic work whatever, which contains more than one principal part; there is scarcely one theatre, in short, where a play can be acted. Let us not blame the unfortunate modern author, therefore, if he accommodates himself to circumstances, and produces a drama with one strongly developed character surrounded by nonentities. ”

“ Of course, every stranger walks through this quarter, for in it are the most ancient and renowned among the theatres of London, namely, Covent-garden and Drury-lane.
Old and venerable houses are they, with blackened columns and sooty walls, and surrounded with the questionable traffic of an equivocal neighbourhood. A theatre in prudish London has not much good fame to lose ”

“ 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. ”

“ London managers, also, impose actors on the public because they have a London reputation, and this creates a monopoly which becomes a tyranny upon art. Whether the artist is suited or not for the part, he must be put into it, for box-office considerations.
To sum up. For the first time in the history of our stage the theatre is put under the management of a literary director, presumably with a view to bringing scholarly intelligence to bear upon the exponents of drama ”

“ When we consider the few new theatres that have been built, such as the Scala, the Little Theatre, the Ambassadors, we are sure that the old cannot be brought up to date. Like most old institutions, the English theatre can be reformed only by dynamite.
As in many human things, architecture is at fault. The playhouse is evolved from the Roman circus. But the circus offered a performance without scenery, which could be seen from all sides. When scenery came, it grew impossible to show the play except from one side, so as not to give away the mystery ”