Entertainer

“ The old entertainers captured us by deliberate unprovoked assault on our attention. But to-day they do not take us by storm. They woo us and win us slowly, by happy craft; and though your admiration is finally wrung from you, it is technique you are admiring—nothing more. All modern art—the novel, the picture, the play, the song—is dying of technique.
I have only the very slightest acquaintance with those gorgeous creatures—the £200 a week men—who top the bill to-day; only the acquaintance of an occasional drink in their rooms. ”

“ Let us plan it all out pretty well beforehand, and then let the performers each time come early, and get posted as to their parts, and the star performer will do the rest.”
70
“Star performer?”
“Yes; I mean, each time have an entertainer, like the juggler——”
“A professional?”
“Not necessarily. I know a chap who does wonderful legerdemain, who’d be glad to come to entertain Our Boys.”
“Oh, yes, I see. And I’ll sing.”
“Yes, you can sing, as special character in some tableau, don’t you see? You could be a mermaid or a Lorelei, sitting on a rock.” ”

“ It has been my good fortune to hear some of the world's best entertainers, but when I cannot hear them I prefer the honest sing-song recitations of a schoolboy or school-girl to the conceited caterwauling of some half-baked elocutionist. ”

“ Their entertainers ought to talk to them in praise of their books, pictures, or performances; and if not connoisseurs, at least declare themselves amateurs of the particular sort their guest excels or would be thought to excel in ”

“ VII. Theater, Parade And Extravagance. The principal diversion, elegant comedy.—Parades and extravagance.
To divert oneself is to turn aside from oneself, to break loose and to forget oneself; and to forget oneself fully one must be transported into another, put himself in the place of another, take his mask and play his part. Hence the liveliest of diversions is the comedy in which one is an actor. It is that of children who, as authors, actors and audience, improvise and perform small scenes. ”

“ The play will make the actor, not the actor the play; to the great benefit of both play and actor.
But why be so serious over an art whose end is only to amuse? To amuse? Yes; but we are not all equally amused by the same things. There may be forms of humour which tickle some people more exquisitely than even that magnificent making of tea in an old gentleman's hat, which convulses the Charley's Aunt audience. And if amusement be the object of the drama, we must take the word in an extended sense. ”

“ VIII THE WIT OF THE PLAY What are the main causes of amusement in the play? The audience, notice, is not kept in the dark one instant about any of the characters. Thus one of the sources of amusement lies in the fact that while the audience occupies somewhat the attitude of omnipotence, it has the pleasure of observing the characters of the play living their lives in the purblind way usual to mortals. Lessing said that a comedy should make us laugh at vices, but the vices must be those of characters who have good qualities also. ”

“ I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel. ”

“ Now step aside, look upon life as a disinterested spectator: many a drama will turn into a comedy. It is enough for us to stop our ears to the sound of music, in a room where dancing is going on, for the dancers at once to appear ridiculous. ”

“ When we leave an agreeable company, and, after a brilliant entertainment, step into the lighted theatre, how can it be expected that we should interest ourselves in the variety of wretchedness and pitiful distress that is here served up for our amusement? ”

“ Proctor.—"The stage is a source of amusement—I may say, of great amusement. It drives away the vapours, raises our spirits, and gives an agreeable variety to life. I willingly overlook what is objectionable in expression and action, for the sake of the high gratification which a good comedy yields; and so do others. To be candid, we think less about our virtue than our enjoyment. We must have some sort of excitement to help us to endure the cross purposes and the ups and downs of life." ”

“ Such humourous acts of daring, brought on the theatre with wit and sense, are of the greatest effect. They are distinguished from intrigue, inasmuch as they are momentary, and that their aim, whenever they are to have one, must not be remote. ”

“ I hate those dirty, paltry equivocations, which go by the name of puns, and pieces of wit. No, Sir, it ever was my opinion that the stage should be a place of rational entertainment; instead of which, I am very sorry to say, most people go there for their diversion: accordingly, I have formed my comedy so that it is no laughing, giggling piece of work. He must be a very light man that shall discompose his muscles from the beginning to the end. ”

“ Prior to the enactment, and for the benefit of those in the audience who might be innocent of French, a British officer gave out the motif in English.
As I sat contentedly in my place—the burden of the wearinesses of the last weeks fallen from my shoulders—it was borne in upon me that much of the success of a play is in the eager and receptive mood of the audience; also that in the naïve freshness [61] of an amateur performance is a charm which has too frequently perished in the more finished production of the professional actor. ”

“ Some play with a certain natural passion, an unstudied directness, without grace, without modulation, with no study of the masters or consciousness of the pervading spirit of the plot; others gives all their thought to their costume and think only of the audience; a few act as those who have mastered the secrets of a serious art, with deliberate subordination of themselves to the great end and motive of the play, spending themselves like good servants, indulging no wilfulness, obtruding no eccentricity, lending heart and tone and gesture to the perfect progress of the action. ”

“ Taken all in all, the sounding profession, the bustling search, and the studied concealment, make a drama, half comedy and half tragedy, the like of which this generation has not seen till now, but the like of which it and its successors may see many times, if the audience does not hiss the play, and remit the actors to the streets. ”

“ I am in the midst of a beautiful comedy—with a sense of latent tears—and the dramatic situations work out delightfully. The rest are only actors; I am actor and spectator as well, and I delight in contriving effective exits. The world is of gold and ivory. ”

“ And so the playlet writer makes his audience go wild with delight— not by scenery, not by costumes, not by having famous players, not by beautifully written speeches, not even by wonderful scenes that flash the dramatic, but by what those scenes in the appealing story mean to the characters and their destiny, whereby each person in the audience is made to be as interested as though it were to him these things were happening with all their dramatic meaning of sadness or gladness. ”

“ But the actor in the private play, the clever and ready wit who makes the charade lively, the musician, the embroideress, the fortune-teller, the good partner at whist, the clever amateur cook, and the artistic member—these can all add to Home Amusements. ”

“ And not only does literature compete with the stage. Music, and other accomplishments of private life, are also now resorted to, for the purpose of furnishing an innocent amusement to the family circle—an amusement less attractive, perhaps, than the theatre, which, with all its errors, has still a powerful inherent charm, but preferred, nevertheless, as making up in simplicity, harmlessness, and cheapness, what it wants in the power of excitement. ”

“ If everything were banished from the stage except that which suits a certain taste, what dismal places our theatres would be! However fond the play-goer may be of tragedy, if you offer him nothing but horrors, he may well ask—"Where's the entertainment for the man who wants an evening's amusement?" The humor of a farce may not seem over-refined to a particular class of intelligence ”

“ So long as the dramatists were not hampered by demands from the audience to have its social, political, or æsthetic fancies humoured, and from the actor to have his egotism flattered, the drama flourished as an art as well as a business. ”

“ His comedies offer elaborate and subtle—even tender—pictures of human character in its eternal types, lively sketches of social follies and literary extravagances, and broad appeals to the ordinary sources of vulgar merriment. Light and perspicuous in construction, he is master of the delicate play of irony, the penetrating force of wit, and the expansive gaiety of frolicsome fun. ”

“ They might have impressed a more appreciative audience, but not one more entertained than the cluster of men who looked and paused and leered in amusement at one another, and thrust out satirical tongues. ”

“ Why do the enthusiasts rage and profess that it ought to be endowed? Well, upon reflection, one sees that there are two bodies of playgoers, both, no doubt, in search of pleasure: and, speaking very broadly, the one is the little group whose curiosity concerning life is almost entirely intellectual, and the other is the vast body of sensation-hunters, to whom the latest showy play, the newest musical comedy, the divorce case of the moment, the freak in vogue, are the means of real excitement—an excitement which they want to obtain with the minimum expenditure of time, trouble or thought. ”

“ He that beholds with understanding eyes can see beneath the thin veil of the commonplace, the romance, the tragedy and the broad comedy that is being played upon the world’s stage by the actors great and little who tread the boards of the Theater of the Universe. ”

“ Has he maintained the dignity of the drama? He will answer, "Of course! We are living in the era of progression. Comedy is a success! All the world is laughing! Success! Success! We are superior to those who have gone before! We make the world laugh!" ”

“ On the other hand, a mixed pleasure is experienced by any one who goes to the theatre, after a day's work, to witness a comedy: when the pleasure of rest and amusement, and that of laughingly snatching a nail from the gaping coffin, is accompanied at a certain moment by real aesthetic pleasure, obtained from the art of the dramatist and of the actors. ”

“ The loafers, the small customers, the gossipers, the lovers, the innocent fun makers, all have parts. There is a graceful plot that gathers interest as the play proceeds and culminates in a brilliant climax. Unquestionably the greatest success as a popular entertainment. ”

“ And now it may be of advantage to sum up what has been said about stage business in this chapter. We have seen how business may be used to condense the story of a playlet; how business is often—though not always—the very heart of the dramatic; how pantomime may be skillfully used to condense salient parts of the playlet story and illumine character; how business may be employed to break up a clumsy but necessarily long speech—thus sometimes saving a playlet from the failure of the tedious;—and why business is more productive of comedy than is dialogue. ”

“ Let there be everywhere heard the rustling of dancers, the loud, immodest laughter of the theatre; let a succession of the most cruel and the most voluptuous pleasures maintain a perpetual excitement. ”

“ The laughter of the theatre is of another stamp. Every reader and spectator judges of wit by his own standard, and measures it by his capacity, or by his condition: the different capacities and conditions of men make them diverted on very different occasions. ”

“ We makers of plays, your grace, often have but a small part in our own contrivances. Many a time have I devised a play in the spirit of comedy, but it is ever the characters themselves who spin the plot. ”

“ Truly, monsieur, you are old beyond your years, and your education was not confined to Greek and Latin; your talent for acting has been cultivated by a profound study of human nature. You play high comedy to perfection, and you should not let your extreme modesty prevent your aspiring to a more brilliant theatre. ”

“ Who’s Who—in the Audience
Showing That the Smart Playgoer, Not the Smart Play, Is Really the Thing
IT’S ALL IN THE LINES Musical comedy audiences are always notable for the rapt attention they pay to the evening’s entertainment. The male students of the drama, in particular, seem to be ever on the lookout for good lines—especially those of the ladies of the chorus. ”

“ They usually play a comedy, and a ballet. The comic man in the comedy I saw one summer night, is a waiter at an hotel. There never was such a locomotive actor, since the world began. Great pains are taken with him. ”

“ The dance at the end of the first Act brings down the curtain to enthusiastic applause, and, to the end, the old comedy, in spite of various chops and changes, holds its own, as it ever will do, triumphantly. ”

“ In an age of parodies and practical jokes, the more absurd any one could be, the more silly or witty stories he could tell, the more assured was his success in the joyous, frivolous circle, full of fun and laughter. ”

“ The whirl of the dizzy dance, the wild excitement of the race-course, the sensational tricks of the theater, the whole circle of vices and fashionable follies are poor in their results, compared with the better pleasures which arise from our nobler nature. ”