BOOKS AND PAPERS HENRY MORLEY 1851 1866 II THE JOURNAL LONDON PLAYGOER FROM 1851 TO 1866 HENRY MORLEY, LL.D, EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE. LONDON LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, LIMITED BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL GLASGOW, MANCHESTER, AND NEW. .YORK < ' ' PN PROLOGUE. THE writer who first taught Englishmen to look for prin- ciples worth study in the common use of speech, expecting censure for choice of a topic without dignity, excused him- self with this tale out of Aristotle. When Heraclitus lived, a famous Greek, there were some persons, led by curiosity to see him, who found him warming himself in his kitchen, and paused at the threshold because of the meanness of the " place. But the philosopher said lo them, Enter boldly, " for here too there are Gods". The Gods" in the play- house are, indeed, those who receive outside its walls least honour among men, and they have a present right to be its Gods, I fear, not only because they are throned aloft, but also because theirs is the mind that regulates the action of the mimic world below. They rule, and why ? Is not the educated man himself to blame when he turns with a shrug from the too often humiliating list of an evening's perform- ances at all the theatres, to say lightly that the stage is ruined, and thereupon make merit of withdrawing all atten- tion from the players ? The better the stage the better the town. If the stage were what it ought to be, and what good it actors heartily desire to make it, would teach the public to appreciate what is most worthy also in the sister arts, while its own influence would be very strong for good. The great want of the stage in our day is an educated public that will care for its successes, honestly inquire into its failures, and make managers and actors feel that they are not dependent for appreciation of their efforts on the verdict 6 Journal of a London Playgoer. that comes of the one mind divided into fragments between Mr. Dapperwit in the stalls, Lord Froth in the side-boxes, and Pompey Doodle in the gallery. The playgoer who would find in our London theatres a dramatic literature, in which England is rich beyond all other nations, fitly housed, may be indignant at much that he sees in them. But what if Doodle, Dapperwit, and Froth do clap their hands at which are all in pieces leg and no brains ; which the male actor's highest ambition is to caper, slide, and stamp with the energy of a street-boy on a cellar-flap, the actress shows plenty of thigh, and the dialogue, running entirely on the sound of words, hardly admits that they have any use at all as signs of thought ? Whose fault is it that the applauders of these dismal antics sit so frequently as umpires in the judgment of dramatic literature ? Take, for example, that notorious burlesque of Ixion, in which the brother of a Viscount not long ago made his " debut as an actor, and was thus advertised : Great success of the Hon. Lewis Wingfield as Minerva. Other characters by the loveliest women in England." That burlesque of Ixion has no story to develop, or only as much plot as can be told in a sentence. Ixion, scouted by his wife and people, is invited to dinner by Jove, accepts the invitation, goes, flirts with Venus, leaves her for Juno, and is doomed by Jove to lead off the speaking of a tag to the audience from behind a wheel. The whole success of the piece was made by dressing up good-looking girls as immortals lavish in display of leg, and setting them to sing and dance, or rather kick wretched burlesque capers, for the recreation of fast blockheads. If Miss Pelham only knew how she looks in the eyes of the better half of any audience when she comes forward with sandy beard and moustaches disfiguring her face, and with long pink legs wriggling her body into the ungainly gestures of burlesque toeing and heeling, the woman in her would rise in rebellion against the miserable Prologue. 7 vulgarity of the display. As for the Hon. Lewis Wingfield, who dressed his thin figure in petticoats and spoke falsetto as Minerva every man to his taste ! His great success was an idiotic dance in petticoats that might stand for something in competitive examination for admission into the Earlswood Asylum, but as a gentleman's first bid for the honours of the English stage was a distressing sight to see. They who care for the past literature of their country, and look for the right maintaining of its honour by the writers to whose hands it is committed in our day, must blame themselves in part for the too frequent perversion of the stage into an agent for the ruin of the written drama. They turn back from the threshold of the playhouse, flinch- ing from the present meanness of the place, and in vain the actor who desires fit company would bid them enter boldly, and help his desire to reverence the gods they seek. Most of us who have been often to the play have seen the occasional flashing of undeveloped power even from actors who are esteemed third-rate, when they have some- thing to do which plucks well at their energies. Good parts would breed in a few and years many good players ; we, who have in our literature the finest drama in the world, stay at home and scold at the players whom we never see, or go abroad only to be entertained or depressed by them with prosy and ill-written melodramas, or with the bright scenery of bad burlesques. It is not quite so true now as it was but a few years ago for there has sprung up during the last three or four years in several of our journals a healthy little breeze of public criticism but it is still too commonly the case, that the mistaken kindness of his friends by indiscriminate praise robs the player of his best encouragement to strive to a high mark, win definite appreciation for himself, and honour for his calling. The best actor exercising his delightful art 8 Journal of a London Playgoer. upon material that will bring all the subtlest powers into use although, indeed, it is his ill-fortune to work in the most transient material, that cannot survive, except in memory, the moment of its full expression is not the less as true an artist as the poet or the painter or the sculptor, and even more worthy than these are of immediate repute, since that alone is his reward. The sculptor, painter, poet, misunderstood in his own time, leaves his work to do him right. The actor's labour is for ever lost if it miss instant recognition. The public owes, therefore, for its own sake, and in common justice, generous attention to the stage. There has been too much of the disdainful inattentive generosity that shames an honourable profession, and drives many a good actor almost to despair by confounding good and bad under the same cant form of empty, supercilious praise. The London playgoer who in this book adds up the sum of his experience has found much to attack, and thinks it worth attacking seriously, because he has a firm faith in the future of the English stage. Some ways of writing come in and go out with the fashions, but the Drama is too natural a part of us to be cast off. It may be an ailing limb of the great body of our Literature, but- it is a limb, and a main limb. Sense of dramatic action appears in the year-old infant, and enlivens almost every form of child's play. The maturest acts and busiest scenes of life, in proportion as a community is vigorous and has high motives for its energy, quicken the sense that all the world 's a stage. In the chief city of such a community in London where every man lives in active daily perception of the characters and humours and rela- tions to each other of the persons about him, if there be any literary life at all, there is dramatic power. We have a rich soil that grows weeds because we disdain tillage. In the field of our Drama we need never want Prologue. 9 but not flinch when the good wheat ; we must ploughshare is tearing through the thistledown and poppies. There will be no want of good plays when they have room to come up, and are not choked by the bad burlesques and French translations that now occupy the ground. Nor will there be any want of good actors when good acting shall be honestly appreciated, instead of being thoughtlessly con- founded with the bad by undue exaltation of pretenders, or by slight of indiscriminate applause. As it is, we have among our playwrights clever writers, and upon the stage good actors and actresses, to whom this book pays honour. ^ The actor has not now fair play, and will not have it till the educated public honestly comes forward to take the patron- age of the English drama out of the hands of Doodle, Dapperwit, and Froth. The main purpose of this volume is to show the need and use of such an intervention. During the last fourteen or fifteen years, while studying our literature, I have been in professional attendance at the bedside of our modern Drama, seeing nearly every piece produced, with or without music, at the chief London theatres.