Impartial spectator

“ The audience was a uniform mass of people, the same sort of people everywhere, attentive, good-humoured, well-behaved and shabby. Like the London Stage Society, one’s place in the house is determined by ballot. ”

“ An audience—the heart of the crowd, the intellect of the mass, whatever you wish to call it—is at once the jury that tries a play and the judge who pronounces sentence to speedy death or a long and happy life. ”

“ Do audiences, on the other hand, use to come in crowds to play-houses to see indifferent performers? and when there, do they, out of pure charity and good-will, bestow their applause as well as their money upon tiresome performances? ”

“ Democracy on the front of the stage before an applauding audience; performers absorbed in their parts, forgetting that the landlord has to be paid in money yet to be earned. Behind the stage, the real play, the absorbing interest, the high stakes—occasional discreet laughter through the peep-hole when an actor makes an impassioned appeal to the gods. ”

“ An audience demands your complete resources, so you must not imagine you can carelessly give anything but your best efforts. The selections should always be less difficult than you are really capable of performing, a safe rule to follow. Then your audience will know you bring authority to your task, and authority is very necessary to command respect. ”

“ I argued that the workers should take part in the city government. I quit the tin mill and went around making speeches. And as there were no movies, and the men had nothing to do evenings but listen to speeches, it was no trouble at all to find an audience. I learned that a politician or an orator has the same appetite for audiences that a drunkard has for gin. When is an orator not an orator? When he hasn't got an audience. ”

“ All guests are seated and are roughly divided into two groups. A representative is chosen from each side. Each one is to proclaim the merits of the members of his group. The only drawback is that they are to do it at the same time. Impartial judges are chosen, and they are to base their judgment on delivery, continuity of thought, and last, but most important, on truth! The speakers face the audience, and at a signal, start to speak at the same time, each one trying his best to drown out the other. ”

“ The audience, when it is also the judge, has the responsibility of careful attention, analysis, and comparison. It is too much to expect usual general audiences to refuse to be moved by unworthy pleas and misrepresentations, to accord approval only to the best speakers and the soundest arguments. ”

“ Minister, lecturer, singer, no one has any right to ask of his audience anything more than opportunity,—the externals of attention. All the rest is his own look-out. If you prepossess your mind with a theme, you do not give him an even chance. ”

“ The spectator in a theatre expects to see a character pretended, and knows that what he sees is make-believe, not real. A spectator in real life, chosen to be duped, expects no such thing, and is therefore ready to take a pretence for what it purports to be. ”

“ With what importance does he appear to the multitude! in the courts of judicature, with what veneration! When he rises to speak, the audience is hushed in mute attention; every eye is fixed on him alone; the crowd presses round him; he is master of their passions; they are swayed, impelled, directed, as he thinks proper. ”

“ We cannot even say that the professional politicians are still made to "fill the stage." That metaphor is false, because upon a stage the audience knows that it is all play-acting, and actually sees the figures.
Let any man of reasonable competence soberly and simply describe the scene in the House of Commons when some one of the ordinary professional politicians is speaking. ”

“ The young man or the young lady who has given years of study to preparation for the stage finds the debut night one fraught with fears and hopes. There are friends behind the scenes and friends in the audience willing to overlook faults and exaggerate excellencies; but there are cold, stern critics, too, anxious to puncture the new candidate for public favor in every tender spot their cruel eyes can search out, and there is the great public, that fickle body whose applause or condemnation often depends upon the whim of the moment. ”

“ In all such cases, that there may be some correspondence of sentiments between the spectator and the person principally concerned, the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can, to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home to himself every little circumstance of distress which can possibly occur to the sufferer. ”

“ Every single speaker, who, like me, attempts to entertain an audience, has not only the censure of that assembly to dread, but also every part of his own behaviour to fear. The smallest error of voice, judgment, or delivery, will be noted: "All that can be presumed upon in his favour is, a hope that he may meet with that indulgence which an English audience are so remarkable for, and that every exhibition stands so much in need of." ”

“ Sensation among the audience—they gesticulate—they screech—they bellow—the commissary puts on his greatcoat—the secretary gives a last touch to his nails and pockets his penknife—the audience disperses—the silhouette of a man effaces itself—all is over. ”

“ The managers may know what the audience wants, just as the editors of some of the most sensational newspapers say that they make a newspaper to suit the public. The newspaper need not be well written, but it must startle with incident and surprise, found or invented. An observer must notice that the usual theatre-audience in New York or Boston today laughs at and applauds costumes, situations, innuendoes, doubtful suggestions, that it would have blushed at a few years ago. Has the audience been creating a theatre to suit its taste, or have the managers been educating an audience? ”

“ I always make it a rule to make especial preparation for each separate address. No two audiences are exactly alike. It is my aim to reach and talk to the heart of each individual audience, taking it into my confidence very much as I would a person. ”

“ Since I've emerged from the emotional developments of the affair I have thought it out in a hundred aspects, and it does seem to me that this way in which men and women make audiences for one another is a curiously influential force in their lives. For some it seems an audience is a vital necessity, they seek audiences as creatures seek food; others again, my uncle among them, can play to an imaginary audience. I, I think, have lived and can live, without one. ”

“ WOODWARD IN "EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR." CHAPTER IX. THE AUDIENCES OF 1700-1750.
Mr. Isaac Bickerstaffe has laid it down as a rule that it is the duty of every person in a theatrical audience to show his "attention, understanding, and virtue." To the insuperable difficulty of the task may, perhaps, be attributed the carelessness of audiences on this point. How is a man, for instance, to demonstrate his virtue in the public assembly? Steele answers the query—by showing a regard for it when exhibited on the stage. ”

“ They stimulate interest and challenge criticism, not less because the interest and the criticism come from a seat in the audience rather than from "behind the scenes"—which is not always a disadvantage. ”

“ Do not suppose, however, that the consternation of the Press reflects any consternation among the general public. Anybody can upset the theatre critics, in a turn of the wrist, by substituting for the romantic commonplaces of the stage the moral commonplaces of the pulpit, platform, or the library. ”

“ He knows that the general public is as uncritical of an audience as of a play or of acting, so he fills his house as well as he can with the very deadest of deadheads; "orders" are distributed lavishly to people whose presence in the theatre is actually a favour to the management. ”

“ Godolphin. I think the audience is as much concerned in the play as the actor or the author, and if either of these fails in the ideal, or does a bit of clap-trap when they have wrought the audience up in expectation of something noble, then they insult the audience—or all the better part of it."
"The better part of the audience never fills the house," said the actor. ”

“ It is the audience that makes the American critic, as it is the audience that makes the American manager, the American actor, and the American play. When we have an audience that will be more interested in the art of an actor than in his personality, we shall have more actors who think of the characters they have to impersonate and not of the effect on the audience of their impersonating such a character. When we have a larger public that wishes to think in the theater, we shall have more managers producing thoughtful plays, and more thoughtful critics to review them. ”

“ I said, "I do not want to be made to show off in the arena before audiences. I am willing to tame animals and to keep on taming animals, but I do not want to be forced to display my powers before the populace and the nobility, Senate and court. I have the most powerful antipathy to being compelled to become a performer as part of a public spectacle." ”

“ Here is the royal road to fame: get together a small and select audience of connoisseurs, real experts, whose praise, whose blame are equally to be relied upon; display your skill to these; and if you can win their approval, you may rest content that in a single hour you have gained a national reputation. I argue thus. If you are known to be an admirable performer by persons who are themselves universally known and admired, what have you to do with public opinion? Public opinion must inevitably follow the opinion of the best judges. ”

“ It is thrilling to think—to know that for any act of mine, I shall get twice as much praise or twice as much blame. It is quite exciting to hold the center of the national stage, with the spectators not knowing whether to laugh or to weep. ”

“ It drew a crowded house, most of the audience being required from time to time as performers—a circumstance that is apt to restrain criticism, since critics can be really untrammelled only when pleasantly certain of not having to face the limelight themselves. ”

“ To read intelligibly, audibly, and agreeably, to speak with taste and elegance, to address an audience—whether a mass assemblage of the sovereign people, or the servants of the people, in Congress assembled, or an intelligent audience gathered for intellectual instruction and enjoyment, each require careful and persevering practice, critical discrimination and disciplined taste. ”

“ The audience, as the play began, was in the customary benevolent mood of audiences beholding amateur productions, ready to see good if possible, anxious to show favour to all the young actors and to praise without discrimination, aware of the proximity of proud fathers and mothers. ”

“ But to shew Respect to an Audience is worth the best Actor's Labour, and, his Business consider'd, he must be a very impudent one that comes before them with a conscious Negligence of what he is about. ”

“ Indeed, unless my insight is at fault, I should say that, in a meeting of working men, even when the discussion appears on the surface to be concerned merely with material subjects, the hearts of the audience are generally set on something quite different. ”

“ And once in, there is no adult in the audience who is so critical an auditor. He knows all about the drama, all about the music, and all about everything connected with it. He applauds at the right place, and if there be the slightest fault of omission or commission in the representation, his hiss is the first and the most distinct and deadly. ”

“ You have the spectacle of the representatives of the universities endeavouring to frustrate or unnerve their opponents, at moments of excitement, by cries of derision and mockery, or heartening their own supporters and performers with exclamations of 'Now, Joe!' or 'He's got them!' or 'He's the boy!' At the crises in the fortunes of the game, the spectators take a collective and important part. ”

“ The verdict of the audience is better than the examination of a hundred so-called experts. There is something about an audience that makes it seem like a great human individual, whether in Naples or in San Francisco. ”

“ When an audience is assembled particularly to enjoy the entertainment and incidentally from curiosity to see and hear the strange speaker, it is well for the speech to be built from materials furnished by the local performers. ”

“ And now in order to close this chapter, already too long, let me say that there is a class of public speaker, fortunately very small, who neither in manner nor in matter is worth listening to, and yet these men will hold an otherwise intelligent audience, nay, will compel enthusiasm and subsequent adherence to the most fantastic or immoral of causes. ”

“ It is that, with such audiences as I have described—indeed with a majority of popular audiences—the desire to be informed and instructed is greater than the desire to be amusingly entertained. No doubt a joke or an anecdote with a witty point will make such hearers laugh. But there is a superior charm for them in a clear statement of an interesting subject and in lucidly logical reasoning. He who aims at making a lasting impression upon the minds and hearts of his hearers in a popular audience should take care not to undervalue their intelligence, their moral sense, and their self-respect. ”

“ It seemed impossible to interest an audience under such conditions, but evidently the men liked variety, for when we began to speak they quieted down and closed around us until we had an audience that filled the streets in every direction and as far as our voices could reach. Never have we had more courteous or enthusiastic listeners than those wild and happy horsemen. Best of all, they not only cheered our sentiments, but they followed up their cheers with their votes. I spoke from an automobile, and when I had finished one of the cowboys rode close to me and asked for my New York address. ”