Originally published in Fraser's Magazine (James Fraser) vol.1 #1 (Feb 1830).
The bankruptcy of Covent Garden Theatre, with the different debates and deliberations which have taken place among those interested in the property, have led us to cogitate a little about the present state of the English drama; and the result of our cogitation is a doubt whether public opinion on the subject be correct; indeed, we suspect it 1s quite wrong.
For example, it is thought that the taste for theatrical representations has declined in this country, and that the business of the stage has fallen from the high estate in which it was wont to delight and amaze the innocent credulity of our youth; and yet the magnitude and number of theatres and theatrites have increased, are increasing, and, the saints say, ought to be diminished. How can such an acknowledged truth be reconciled with the alleged decline in dramatic taste? The capital, the population, and the machinery of the dramatic empire, have been prodigiously augmented since the Siddonian age.
Granted; but there has nevertheless been an overtrading. The same fault has been committed with playhouses as with manufactories; still, that will not solve the question. A greater number of persons now go to theatres than ever did, at any former period, in this island; so far, therefore, as respects the public, there has been no decay of patronage; and in opposition to such a fact, it is somewhat bold to maintain that the taste for the theatre has declined.
But look to the circumstances of the great theatres; look to the condition even of the best actors; and look, likewise, to the mediocrity of the performers in general, as compared with their predecessors. Can that trade be thriving in which the capitalist finds no return, but only loss, and in which the workmen's wages are insufficient to maintain them as they were formerly maintained!
There is some curious contradiction in the facts and circumstances of the case. Are we not told, that the wealth, the population, and the mechanical powers of England, have been constantly augmenting? that the great sources of her national prosperity are undiminished, notwithstanding the blight which has fallen upon the universal commerce of the world, and particularly on every branch of British industry? There is a puzzling similarity in the present condition of Great Britain and Ireland, to that of Drury Lane and Covent Garden: decay and increase, reduction and multiplication, affect their respective fortunes.
Leaving, however, this branch of the question to the political economists, let us return to the post from which we first started,—the decline of dramatic taste.
It may no doubt be maintained, and with considerable plausibility too, that it does not follow, because the number of playgoers has increased, that their taste has been in proportion improved. On the contrary, as the wise are always in the minority, it is fair to infer, that, as by much the smaller number of those who frequent the theatres have agreed that neither the performers nor performance of these times are equal to those of other days, they must therefore be inferior.
But in opposition to this ingenious sophism, we would observe, first, with respect to the performers, it is positively not the case that they are inferior to their predecessors. The stars certainly are not so brilliant as of old, but the CANDLES are brighter. It has pleased destiny to change the crop of talent occasionally. One age is prolific of the regular drama; and then we have Siddonses, and Kembles, and Cookes, &c. in tragedy; and Farrens, and Jordans, and Lewises, and Palmers, and Kings, &c. in comedy. Another favours the cultivation of afterpieces; and the present is an afterpiece age. Never were such afterpieces, and performers so fit for them. Hark to the singers, and behold the pride, pomp, and circumstance, of the melo-dramas which now occupy the sunny side of the field! The regular drama is, at present, only a stock in a corner, as a seed cabbage is with the gardeners. It preserves the recollection that such things were: when the market requires it, a crop will be cultivated again.
It may be that the votaries of the songs and scenes of the afterpiece are not so fastidious in their taste, so refined in their manners, and so highminded in their sentiments, as the stiff brocaded ladies, and erect, powdered, periwigged gentlemen, who, during the dernier five-and-twenty years of the last century, filled the side-boxes with the airs and graces of fashion, as often as the long-predestined countess played Lady Teazle, or the mighty Siddons shewed with what majesty beauty may be united with sensibility.
A play was more a treat in those golden days of the drama; the theatre was not then altogether a place of amusement—it was also a place of exhibition; and as such places have become more numerous, it receives, of course, less patronage. Hyde Park, among others, has diminished the attraction of the playhouse. All the "gentlefolks" see one another there, and may be seen, every afternoon. It is not, therefore, to be expected that they will, so early as the same night, go to look at one another again.
The error, in supposing that the taste for the drama has declined, originated with the players. They imagined, when the fashionables, or, as denominated in the regular drama age, the quality, went to look at one another, that they| came on purpose to see them. It never occurs to these vain gentry, that when "people of rank" go to places of amusement, so that they are amused they care but little whether it be from off or from on the stage.
If the audience were attracted to the drama, for its own sake, the players' way of regarding their performances as the all-in-all of the theatre would be judicious enough; but notorious as it is that the pleasure of the theatre arises from various sources, of which the performance is but one, it is clearly absurd.
Is any thing more common than to hear that the players do not act well to their houses; even they themselves say they do not so;—and why is it so? Simply because sympathy is more animated when the audience is close and numerous. We are not, however, inclined to believe that before a thin audience the player exerts himself less than before a thick one; we think, on the contrary, he exerts himself more. But there is a moral electricity that affects a dense crowd more ardently than a small number, and quickens that sympathy which is felt in crowded theatres, at executions, at cock-tights, at horse-races, and at the astonishing exhibitions of Billy the Rat-catcher.
It has been said and supposed, that it would be for the advantage of the legitimate drama, as it is affectedly called, were it performed in smaller theatres; that it would then become more fashionable, and would, as in the days of Garrick, with his little showbox in Drury Lane, be attended by the fashionable world. We doubt it. Were the theatre small, and yet freely open to the public, it would, even less than at present, be frequented by the elegant and the noble. The playhouse, to become again fashionable, must be what it was formerly:—you must restore the commonalty to their original disregard of theatrical shows, and to their preference to skittles and tea-gardens; or you must produce, by artificial means, the same effect. The rate of admission will not altogether do this. Something like the laws of the opera-house might do much, if you could persuade the higher class to take boxes by the season; but still, while money can procure admission, no entertainment in London can be select. This affects the opera of late very seriously. Grown-up people go not to the theatre merely for such amusement as the stage prepares; they consider the performance but as a medium of attracting the gay together, who will find the rest of the recreations for the night among themselves. On this account, to obtain a fashionable audience, you must make access difficult.
What makes an Eleusinian Almack's such a mystery, but the difficulty of admission? Is there anybody to be met with there that may not be seen in every other place of fashionable resort? Is there a woman or beauty to be fallen in with there, that is not as well known to every one—nay, as common as Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park?
Let a theatre be got up upon the same exclusive system, and you shall have every night of performance—that is, twice a week—it must not be oftener—the most gorgeous audiences that ever any London theatre contained. It is not the stuffs of the banquet that constitute the attraction of the entertainment; it is not the character of the company that makes the ball desirable,—it is because the admissees are supposed to be the elect of the land.
Now, as to the performances. Except young people, and the rosy progeny of the holydays, few, as we maintain, take much pleasure in the theatre for its shows; for if the stage be the mirror of nature, it is as the calm sea is to the landscape—she is shewn upside-down, bottom uppermost; and it costs more trouble to trace the resemblance than is consistent with pleasurable ease. But, although we contend that the taste for the drama has not declined, still we are obliged to admit that dramatic literature has sadly fallen from its ancient dignity. There is no doubt of that. What can it be owing to? To the tasteless ignorance of those who regulate the performances. In the great times of the stage, in Shakespeare's age, the management of the theatres was in the hands of some of the most intellectual men that ever lived. In Garrick's time, when Shakespeare was revived, there was himself, living with the choicest spirits of the time, and himself a bright one, at the head of the management. In his period the best of our modern dramas were produced; and when Sheridan and Kemble ruled the stage, we had also a few good things. But what can be expected but vulgarity from a Dowton and a Wallack?
It may be retorted,—And what did Lord Byron and his squad of refined managers do? Just as much good as was reasonably to be expected from any executive committee—nothing. There was not, moreover, a poetical man of business among them; and a theatre is a little state of itself, inhabited by a singular race, who require not only a monarch, but a sultan, to rule them. The idea of making a republic of Drury Lane Theatre was truly amusing; almost as judicious as the Turk's idea, who said, if the sultan died without heirs, he thought the Ottomans would make a republic. It is not, however, by ruling the performers properly that elevation in the performances is to be obtained. It is not until the managers are made sensible that they must consider the public intelligence high above their own, which their vain ignorance is ever unwilling to allow, that dramatic literature is to be revived. The managers must learn modesty enough, to fear that the public may be more intelligent than they are.
What author, of any reputation in literature, is at present connected with the theatres, even as a prologue writer! True—admitted; because the public does not care about intellectual works.
It is not true. The supposition is as absurd as the opinion which prevailed formerly respecting novels. It was thought no talented author would write novels, or, if they did, their labours would not sell; but what has been the effect of the manly and masterful novels of Sir Walter Scott?) The whole trash, even with the Minerva press to boot, have perished from off the face of the earth, and the booksellers' counters.
The notion, too, of stock-pieces, and the everlasting repetition of good things, till even Shakespeare has become stale, is another error of the players. It is as if the booksellers were to decline all modern novels, and stick to reprints of Smollet's, and Fielding's, and—God save the mark!—Sir Charles Grandison, and Clarissa Harlowe; each of the latter was equal in size to twenty-four volumes of those of Sir Walter. We can scarcely place the folly of the stock-piece system in a stronger light.
It would be a meritorious speculation of one of the managers to try, for an entire season, a series of plays which had never been performed. Let him engage the most eminent authors of the day to write dramas, adapted to the powers of his company, and they will soon see that the public taste is not so low as His Majesty's poor servants the players flatter themselves. Nor will it be long till the language and the genius of the land of Shakespeare are vindicated. A theatre formed upon the principle of exhibiting only new pieces, and even the best only for a limited number of nights, could not fail to succeed. And if such a theatre were upon the exclusive system, it would succeed still better; for the select character of the audience would insure a patient hearing to the end. Thus, both performers and authors would obtain justice, the audience an attractive spectacle, and the managers 2 sure supply to their treasury. Look to this, ye theatrical proprietors! make your boxes private. Shut up your Paphian saloons, and keep less of "a bawdy-house." Divide your pit, as the Opera House has found it necessary to do; seek more to satisfy the understanding before the curtain; and then you will be surprised how the taste for the drama will revive.