Pick, J.M. (1980). The interaction of financial practices, critical judgement and professional ethics in London West End theatre management 1843-1899. (Unpublished Doctoral thesis, City University London) City Research Online Original citation: Pick, J.M. (1980). The interaction of financial practices, critical judgement and professional ethics in London West End theatre management 1843-1899. (Unpublished Doctoral thesis, City University London) Permanent City Research Online URL: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/7681/ Copyright & reuse City University London has developed City Research Online so that its users may access the research outputs of City University London's staff. Copyright © and Moral Rights for this paper are retained by the individual author(s) and/ or other copyright holders. All material in City Research Online is checked for eligibility for copyright before being made available in the live archive. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to from other web pages. Versions of research The version in City Research Online may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check the Permanent City Research Online URL above for the status of the paper. Enquiries If you have any enquiries about any aspect of City Research Online, or if you wish to make contact with the author(s) of this paper, please email the team at [email protected]. THE INTERACTION OF FINANCIAL PRACTICES, CRITICAL JUDGEMENT AND PROFESSIONAL ETHICS IN LONDON WEST END THEATRE MANAGEMENT 1843 - 1899. John Morley Pick, M. A. Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the City University, London. Research undertaken in the Centre for Arts and Related Studies (Arts Administration Studies). October 1980, 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements 4 Abstract 5 One. Introduction: the Nature of Theatre Management 1843-1899 6 1: a The characteristics of managers 9 1: b Professional Ethics 11 1: c Managerial Objectives 15 1: d Sources and methodology 17 Two. Income 29 2: a Size and locations of theatres 31 2: b The apportionment of the auditorium 39 2: c Prices of admission 46 2: d The length of the run 53 2: e Income from sources other than tickets 58 2: f Factors inhibiting the maximisation of income 65 Three. Expenditure 80 81 3: a Hiring a theatre 84 3: b Hiring actors 3: c Payment to authors 87 3: d Scenery 90 92 3: e Stage Staff 3: f Publicity 95 3: g Insurance and Legal Costs 98 2 Four. Cash Control and accounting 104 4: a Budgeting 104 4: b Financial systems 114 4: c Accounting 117 Five. State Subsidy 127 5: a The financial arguments 131 5: b The arguments over critical standards 134 5: c State support and professional ethics 137 5: d Conclusions 140 Appendix One. - Alphabetical list of West End Managers 1843-1899 149 Appendix Two. West End Theatres included in the study. 159 Appendix Three. Long Runs - London theatres in each decade 162 Appendix Four. Primary Source Material and its location 172 Appendix Five. Contemporary published sources 176 Newspapers, magazines and journals. Select List. 176 Accounts written by contemporaries. Select List. 177 Published lectures and pamphlets. Select List. 180 Contemporary Biographies and. works of reference. A Select List. - 181 Book List 182 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. I am grateful to my colleagues in Arts Administration Studies, Centre for Arts, City University for their help and advice ; I have been particularly grateful to Or. Michael Hammett, whose work on Wilson Barrett's Grand Theatre Leeds management interlocks with this study. I have had much help and advice from colleagues in the Society for Theatre Research, and 'I was particularly indebted to detailed help before and after my paper on Samuel Phelps' management, given to the Society in February, 1978. I have been conscious of the kindness of many of the present managers of London theatres, who have offered help where they can, and have allowed me to view private documents. Of the many libraries and librarians in London who have helped me I am most conscious of my debt to the staff of the Enthoven Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, particularly Ms. K. Aylmer, and Mr. A. Latham, who have searched for me and given me access to materials at a difficult time for them, when the collection is closed to the public. I owe also a particular debt to the staff of the manuscript room at the British Museum, and finally to my wife who found time to check through drafts of the work in spite of having just finished research of her own. I grant powers to the University Librarian to allow this thesis to be copied in whole or in part without further reference to This me. permission covers only single copies made for study purposes, subject to normal conditions of acknowledgement. 4 ABSTRACT. This study describes in detail the context - physical, social the and artistic - in which the London theatre managers concerned with West End formed their ethical, critical and financial beliefs about in the correct way to run a theatre, between 1843 and 1899. It analyses detail the methods of creating and controlling income, of notions of expenditure and budgeting, and of the ways in which accounts were kept and in which they were used for information. Together with a description of these practices the thesis analyses the social aspirations of the influential managers, and argues that their desire to belong to an artistic elite at. times distorted their critical judgement, and certainly led them in some cases to establish techniques of theatre management which were not serving the art, nor were efficient in business terms, but which contributed to their aspirations to higher rank. The last section of the study describes and analyses the various arguments at the end of the century about state subvention, and state aid for the (London) theatre, for the insight this gives on the financial, ethical and critical beliefs prevailing in the West End theatre community. It comes to the conclusion that the narrowly middle class audience, the expensive production, and the genteel methods of managing this influential group of theatres existed not because of any economic or social necessity, but because the manaoers had collectively willed it to be so. Moreover this period of management has particular importance for us, because so many of its limited principles and methods have been accepted as normal theatre practice in our own century, and because have continued to limit our theatre, artistically and socially, of the limitations of nineteenth century arts administration. 1980. 5 ONE INTRODUCTION : THE NATURE OF THEATRE MANAGEMENT 1843-1899 As Professor Booth has remarked, the 'economic and business aspects of nineteenth century theatre organisation have hardly (1) been touched'. This study is centrally concerned with those aspects of theatre management in the West End of London between 1843 and 1899 and aims 1) to illuminate the context in which the practices of nineteenth century theatre management developed, ii) to describe financial practices in the leading West End theatres, and iii) to describe the implications those of practices and their interaction with the avowed ethical standards and critical judgements of the managers of the period. Many writers about the period have described it as if the managers in London's theatres were carried along by currents of public taste over which they had no control, and as if the growing complexity of budgeting, of controlling expenditure or of producing higher income (2) were at best a series of devices for accommodating shifts of public mood. This study aims to show that the reality was much more complicated, but that the theatre became what it was by the turn of the century because of a clear ambition on behalf of the influential managers to achieve a certain status for the theatre, and that this manifested itself in a series of decisive management decisions taken not in response to public attitudes, but formative of them. In our time, when we often profess a desire to make the theatre once more a general pastime, we are able to discern those elements in managerial practice which have made the practice of theatre-going one which appeals almost exclusively to a minority audience that is. middle class and highly educated. Although these practices often exhibit themselves in economic and business decisions, it would be unsatisfactory to describe those decisions in isolation. To be understood they must be placed in historical context, and for their importance to be appreciated we must frequently examine the public motive (or its lack) for these actions. The researcher must, like the managers who form the central interest of the study, be concerned with legal aspects of management as well as perceptions of changing public mood, must be. concerned the language with public . of 6 theatre in addition to its financial practices. The study must make the assertion that just as the play and its reception affect the pricing, the publicity and the box office practices, so do those practices in turn affect what is written, and what is accepted and what is played. A fine mind such as Henry James is not turned to writing stuff like the second act of Guy Domville(3 because of the imperatives of some intangible dramatic tradition, but because part)that the theatre in his time was so ordered that James believed (in in that building, with that kind of audience paying those prices and with those expectations aroused, that was the kind of stuff that would be heard. The St. James was not decorated, nor were the seats priced, nor the advertising written as a result of some poll of popular taste, or with a disinterested concern for a literary tradition, but because Alexander had a clear notion of the in he to social and artistic milieu which wished operate , and a clear idea of the kinds of people that he wished to enter his theatre.