Sir George Alexander and the St. James’ Theatre E-Book

A. E. W. Mason

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Sir George Alexander (1858–1918), born George Alexander Gibb Samson, was an English stage actor, theatre producer and theatre manager. After acting on stage as an amateur he turned professional in 1879 and, over the next eleven years, he gained experience with leading producers and actor-managers, including Tom Robertson, Henry Irving and Madge and W. H. Kendal.
During this time, Alexander became interested in theatre management. In 1890 he took a lease on a London theatre and began producing on his own account. The following year, he moved to the St James’s Theatre, where he remained, acting and producing, for the rest of his career. Among the most successful of the new plays he presented were Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), A. W. Pinero’s The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1893) and Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).
Alexander followed Robertson and the Kendals in preferring a naturalistic style of writing and acting to the extravagantly theatrical manner favoured by some earlier actor-managers. He built around him a company of fine actors, many of whom were or later became leading figures in the profession, including Henry Ainley, Arthur Bourchier, Constance Collier, Julia Neilson, Fred Terry and Marion Terry. As an actor, Alexander’s range was limited, and he did not attempt the great heroic roles or play much tragedy. His genre was naturalistic, and rarely very profound, comedy and drama, in which he was a recognised leader.

Leseprobe

A. E. W. Mason

SIR GEORGE ALEXANDER AND THE ST. JAMES’ THEATRE

Copyright

First published in 1935

Copyright © 2020 Classica Libris

Preface

I beg here to thank Dame Madge Kendal for allowing me to print a letter from the late W. H. Kendal; Mrs. Hughes for allowing me to print letters from the late Sir Arthur Pinero; Captain Vyvyan Holland, letters from the late Oscar Wilde; the Executors of Henry James, O.M., and all other Executors who have given me similar permissions.

There are two Appendices at the end of the volume. The first gives a complete list of all the plays produced at the St. James’ Theatre by Sir George Alexander, with the dates of production: the second a list, as complete as I could make it, of plays produced by other managements during Alexander’s tenancy.

A. E. W. Mason

Chapter 1

The St. James’ Theatre — Alexander’s policy — Managers and authors in 1890 — Alexander’s birth, boyhood, and early career

The St. James’ Theatre on the 1st of January 1935 entered upon its centenary; and until it had passed middle age it was a place as harassed and experimental as a post-war country. There were, to be sure, bright passages in its history. Ristori and Rachel trailed their tragic robes upon its boards. There Henry Irving, as Rawdon Scudamore in Dion Boucicault’s play, Hunted Down, under the management of Miss Herbert, made his first significant appearance in London. For eight years John Hare and the Rendais graced it with the lustre of their art. They produced there The Falcon, a one-act play by Lord Tennyson founded upon a story by Boccaccio, and the second of the Laureate’s works to be presented on the stage. They were responsible too for The Squire and The Hobby Horse, the first full-length comedies of Arthur Pinero, who at this same theatre was to confer and acquire such high distinction in after years. But apart from those periods, the doors of the St. James’ Theatre were as often shut as open. Managements went in and were shorn and went out. Strange entertainments called burlettas failed to entertain; and even the lions of Van Amburgh could not roar the public in. But in November of the year 1890, an actor thirty-two years of age, with no more than eleven years’ professional experience, took the theatre over, held it until his death twenty-eight years later, and gave to it a high and lasting place in any history of the English stage.

No doubt the adventure was more possible then than it would be in these days. There were not half a dozen sub-lessees, all wanting something for nothing, between the owner of the theatre and the man who did the work. Salaries and rates alike were lower. A play could be acted to houses half full and pay its way until a successor was ready. But none the less, the long management of George Alexander was an achievement which required, beyond the actor’s talents, the judgment and courage which go to the making of any prince of industry.

Alexander brought to his theatre a considered policy, but it would be wrong to infer that it had anything whatever to do with the kind of play which he meant to produce. A foolish and misleading phrase came into use in the Press. A play was or was not “a St. James’ play.” It generally was not, for the phrase was really only useful to a critic with an unacted comedy in his pocket — and there was a large number of such in the ‘nineties, as Alexander’s correspondence shows. It was a useful weapon to them, because it stroked the manager whilst it smashed the play. But in truth there never was such a thing as a St. James’ play. The theatre never specialised, and its repertory became wide enough to cover the whole catalogue of Polonius. Comedies, Shakespearian, modern and romantic, farces, dramas of the day and dramas in costume, tragedies in verse, and tragedies in prose, historical plays, plays of provincial life, pantomimes — all got their opportunity on the stage of the St. James’, if only they were thought to be good enough of their kind.

Nevertheless Alexander had a definite policy. In the first place what he strove for was the proper balance of the play and not the predominance of the leading part. The best acting which could be obtained to set the theme fairly before the public was obtained. It will be seen again and again throughout this Memoir with what care, with how minute an examination, the cast was fixed. An old friend of Alexander, writing to him upon the anniversary of his twentieth year of management, exclaimed: “You have not only done great things yourself, but you have given others a great chance of distinguishing themselves. I cannot think of a manager so unselfish.” Irene Vanbrugh, Ethel Irving, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Fay Davis, Lilian Braithwaite, Henry Ainley, Harry Irving, Matheson Lang, Herbert Waring, H. V. Esmond, Sydney Valentine, C. M. Lowne, Allan Aynesworth, Alfred Bishop, Nigel Playfair, and a host of other actors of the highest ability were engaged to interpret a play and not to exploit a star. This star shone in a constellation.

A small incident occurred during the rehearsals of a play of my own called The Witness for the Defence, which illustrates more concisely than argument could do Alexander’s point of view. He was in the middle of a scene with Ethel Irving when he stopped and stood with that doleful, harassed look which used to overspread his face when the bottom was dropping out of his world. From the stalls, I asked him what the trouble was. He replied:

“We’re in the centre of the stage.”

I was a little staggered, for I had never thought of actor-managers as people liable to be distressed upon finding themselves in that position. As a rule they drift by some process of magnetism inevitably towards it. But he explained.

“You see, we play to rather sophisticated audiences here, and if I’m in the centre of the stage they’ll say, ‘There of course is the actor-manager’, and the illusion of your play’s gone.”

Neither he nor any member of his company was stinted of his moment, but he must make his profit of it somewhere else than in the centre of the St. James’ stage. So the positions were altered, and the scene played a little to one side. The audience, in a sentence, was to receive the full value of the play if it held value which good acting, thoughtful stage-management, and appropriate scenery could bring out.

There was a second principle in Alexander’s theatrical faith, and one no less important. In the farewell speech which Mr. Hare, as he was then, delivered at the St. James’ Theatre on the dissolution of his partnership with the Kendals, he said:

It has been argued to our prejudice that we have favoured too much the productions of foreign authors; but I would ask you to remember that in the matter of plays, the demand has ever been greater than the supply and that the history of the English stage for many years has proved it to be incapable of being entirely independent of foreign work. I can safely say, however, that to England we have always turned first for the dramatic fare that we have placed before you. That we have not done more has been our misfortune; I would like to think not altogether our fault.

Those words were spoken on the night of July 1st, 1888, and within three years it was proved that the supply could be made equal to the demand. No one contemplating the brilliant records of Sir John Hare and the Kendals, whether in association or apart, can doubt that they were supremely anxious to enlist the help of English authors. Dame Madge Kendal, indeed, in making a presentation to Alexander on the conclusion of his twenty-fifth year of management, before a crowded audience at the St. James’ Theatre, attributed the great pride which all of the theatrical calling took in his success mainly to his consistent faith in English authorship. But at the time when John Hare made his speech it was not so easy to translate faith in English authorship into actual English plays. The attitude of authors was one difficulty, the custom of the theatres another. There still lingered, for instance, amongst the managers of theatres a belief that it was undesirable that the public should know what actual cash the house held, how much of a crowded audience was “paper”, how much money. And if the author was let into the secret, it would be a secret no longer. A whisper of failure would precipitate failure. It was preferable, therefore, to buy the play outright for a fixed sum and then trim it and shape it as the manager’s judgment and the practice of rehearsals suggested. This was Sir Henry Irving’s plan. In other cases, the author went upon the salary list of the theatre as Tom Robertson did with the Bancrofts in the Tottenham Court Road. The author had very likely been an actor himself like Robertson and R. C. Carton and Pinero. And though these gentlemen were responsible for brilliant and successful plays, the field was limited, the supply was not equal to the demand.

English authors, for their part, were suspicious of the stage; they were inclined to despise it, or to pretend to despise it. J. M. Barrie had not yet devoted his unique quality to the theatre. George Bernard Shaw’s bicycle was only beginning to describe the astonishing curve which carried him through debates and arguments and the vociferous Societies to the popular triumphs of Saint Joan and The Apple-Cart. But not very many others were trying, or at all events trying openly. Their status had changed of late years. The Copyright Bill had been passed. The era of patronage was gone. The author of a book was no longer hired, except for some special and occasional commission. He took a royalty instead of a fee or a fixed salary. He stood in a more direct relation to the public. What he wrote went to his readers without alteration by a stage-manager. It went in the exact shape which he wanted. He stood or he fell by the work of his hand; and the reading public was widening like a circle in a pond. Magazines pullulated; publishers multiplied. Authors would have their work served hot in their own style of cooking first, and when the dish was cold, the stage could have the hash of an adaptation afterwards. The stage inevitably turned to France. There was the magic of French art, a little more vivid than it is today, and it was to be got cheap. Sardou with his prolific output and his genius for effect was the magician of the day. Tin under his touch became silver-gilt, and there was often metal more precious than tin. The rights of Sardou’s plays could be bought outright for a modest sum, and the manager could then put the author’s fees in his pocket. It would, for instance, be interesting to know how much in the way of author’s fees Sir Squire Bancroft, the owner of the acting-rights of Diplomacy, received from the various revivals of that play.

Alexander brought to King Street, St. James’, a fresh point of view and a generous spirit. He planned to build a theatre of high prestige and financial success upon the foundations of British authorship. To that end he went diligently out in search of authors. Having secured the sympathy and promises of the most famous playwrights, he sought the collaboration of men who had so far never dreamed of writing a play at all. John Davidson, for instance, the poet, alas, too soon forgotten, Miss Cholmondeley, Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, Stephen Phillips, and, later on, Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, Quiller-Couch, Max Beerbohm, E. V. Lucas, A. E. W. Mason, and H. G. Wells. They were invited to talk over any theme they might have in mind before they set pen to paper, so that disappointment might not follow. I know no manager today except Mr. Basil Dean who so puts himself about. Indeed, the young playwright is now at a loss what to do with his play when he has written it, and sometimes, even when his play is accepted, he has to find the money for its production himself. It is surprising in how short a time the example of Alexander has been forgotten. For his policy brought to him prosperity and a most excellent name. Out of the sixty-two full-length and the nineteen one-act plays produced by him during his twenty-seven years of management only eight were of foreign origin; and when the final accounts were made up, it was seen that he had paid £6705 in commissions for and advances upon plays which dates and circumstances had compelled him to forgo. But none the less the policy paid hand over fist.

George Alexander Gibb Samson was born on June 19th, 1858, at or near to Reading. There is a possibility that he was actually born in a train, and if that is true, he was already predestined to play with success the part of John Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest. For Worthing, though not born in a train, was deposited in a railway station cloakroom. In any case he was a born traveller, for he wrote to his father at the age of five from Bath and at the age of six from Carlisle, and to his mother at the age of ten from Bradford-on-Avon. He began his education at Clifton, continued it at Ealing, and completed it in Scotland. For he got the most of his education at the High School of Stirling. Two fragments of his studies still remain. An essay on Ovid written at the age of fourteen and a rhymed translation of a passage in Virgil’s Bucolics. The essay is of an unimpeachable correctitude, the young critic concluding that Ovid is still remembered as one of the most luscious if one of the most indecent poets that the Augustan age ever produced. The rhymed translation was composed in the style of Pope when its author was one month short of fifteen years of age, and the astonishing feature of it for those who were compelled to decode his handwriting in later years was not so much his similarity to Pope as the admirable clearness of his calligraphy. For the rest, his attendance at school seems to have been irregular; but when he did attend, according to his old schoolmaster, Duncan MacDougall, his “amiable and manly manner was quite a power in the midst of many rough and untutored boys”. Young Samson’s father had an agency in the dry-goods trade which covered a good part of the western counties; and at the age of fifteen the boy went to London as a clerk in the office of Messrs Leaf, Son & Company of Old Change. He at once gave evidence of a characteristic which all his life was strong in him. He never let his friends go, and being a shrewd business man as well as an artist, he took care that as he progressed, they should be made pleasantly aware of his advancement. He conducted a correspondence with Duncan MacDougall, who was then approaching his seventieth year and looking forward to a period of otium cum dignitate. Duncan MacDougall’s letters, written in the most elegant copperplate hand, belong to the days of circuitous phrases. London is always “the great Metropolis” and its business people “the merchant princes of the earth”. The old gentleman was obviously flattered by the attentions of a favourite pupil and responds with affection. He regrets that the business hours in London are very long but is satisfied that if only Alexander retains the mens sana in corpore sano he will become one of those merchant princes himself; as indeed he did. Duncan MacDougall gives advice:

Avoid I entreat you the pernicious habit of smoking, the prevalent vice of the day. As to beer drinking to excess I need say nothing as I know by experience you are too much of a gentleman and have been trained too well ever to be guilty of so odious a crime.

Half a year later Duncan MacDougall is receiving and is returning good wishes for many delightful returns of “this gay and festive season”.

At this time Alexander took part in an amateur dramatic performance given by the staff of the house at the St. James’ Theatre in aid of the Royal Hospital for Consumption. Duncan MacDougall is “glad to find that your superior dramatic talent is devoted to so good a cause”. He proceeds to gossip about his pupils and his fellow masters. Three of the former are now becoming ministers. Of one of the latter, Herr Boos, “we have got rid without a tear, and the Board hope to secure as his successor a M. Vignon of the Royal Academy, Inverness, a gentleman of the highest qualifications and unblemished reputation, he neither drinks nor smokes, nor teaches music nor shirks his duty”. As a gentle reminder to his ex-pupil he underlines the word “smokes”. The amateur dramatic performance seems to have been an annual affair, for two years later, in 1876, MacDougall is acknowledging a programme and wishing for a bumper house. The old schoolmaster is a little troubled about the political situation:

The whole talk here, as with you, is peace or war, and I do hope the former may be the result under the able policy of Derby and Salisbury in whom even the Radicals have confidence. Gladstone has been most outrageous on the subject and his letter writing mania with Bright’s inflammatory harangues are doing a world of mischief and playing into the hands of Russia in whose honour they place implicit confidence. Nous verrons.

There is but one more letter from Duncan MacDougall. It was written after his pupil had taken to the stage as his profession and when the old gentleman was enjoying his otium cum dignitate very much indeed. The letter displays a breadth of view which seems a little surprising in a schoolmaster of those days. For whereas young Samson’s father was so angry with his son for deserting the house of Leaf that for a time all communications ceased between them, Duncan MacDougall acknowledges some Press cuttings and a photograph with complete sympathy. The letter is dated March 9th, 1883, after Alexander had made an appearance as Romeo at the Court Theatre. “I take the deepest interest in your advancement in a profession so precarious and laborious, but fervently hope that you may not regret your decision to devote your talent to the stage where so many have made shipwreck and so few have reached the highest position with an unsullied reputation. I have been examining the papers”, he writes, “to see any notice of the Court Theatre, but in our Scotch papers we seldom find any articles except on the Lyceum. I do wish you had been going to America with Irving and his company… From boyhood I have had a strong dramatic bias and have seen the greatest actors of this century in their greatest characters.” Duncan MacDougall is to be left here, enjoying his otium cum dignitate and no doubt receiving from time to time until his death news of the rapid advancement of his old pupil.

It was indeed extraordinarily rapid. In the autumn of 1879 he joined the repertory company of Ada Swanborough and W. H. Vernon at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, took the name of George Alexander, and appeared in The Snowball and other plays. During the tour the company acted at Bridge of Allan, where it was seen by Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood. For a letter from the Field-Marshal, written thirty-four years afterwards, describes the pleasure which Alexander’s performance gave to him and quotes a prediction of his future success. In October of the same year he was engaged by William Foulis for a company touring in the “Caste” comedies through the smaller towns of England at a salary of £2:10s a week, to play juvenile lead. He opened with that company on Boxing Night of the year 1880, and within two months he received an offer from Tom Robertson, Junior, of the parent company to tour with him from April 19th until July 4th at a weekly salary of £3: 10s. He so clearly justified this promotion that he was re-engaged by Tom Robertson for an autumn season at £5 a week and for the season of 1881 at £6. It was in the summer of that year that he made his London debut at the Court Theatre under the management of Mr. Barrett, and in November he was engaged by Henry Irving to appear at the Lyceum as Caleb Deecie in a revival of Albery’s comedy The Two Roses at a salary of seven guineas a week for six performances. Alexander hesitated to accept this engagement. He was inclined to think that he ought to stay in the provinces playing a variety of parts for some while longer and he explained his inexperience to Irving. Irving, however, was satisfied with his choice and overrode Alexander’s scruples. Indeed he could hardly have chosen better. The character of the blind Caleb Deecie is naturally sympathetic to any audience. “Nature has been your friend”, a family acquaintance wrote to the young actor, and Alexander brought to the part on the night of December 26th, 1881, besides his good looks, a quiet sense of humour and a sort of gentle manliness — in fact, just that quality which old Duncan MacDougall had remarked in him when he was a boy. He was stalwart without being robustious, tender without mawkishness, and, though he appeared in a cast which included besides Henry Irving, William Terriss, Winifred Emery, Fanny Josephs, and David James the original “our Mr. Jenkins”, he made his own quite definite mark. Meanwhile he was persistently moving along, sending a copy of a criticism here and another one there amongst his old friends, and before the run of The Two Roses was over he was already in communication with Messrs Hare and Kendal, who were planning their season at the St. James’ Theatre for the year 1883. On June 14th he was engaged to play the second parts to W. H. Kendal at a weekly salary of ten guineas, and was re-engaged by that same management on September 21st, 1883, at a salary of twelve guineas. During the next year he went back to the Lyceum to play in Comedy and Tragedy during Mary Anderson’s season, and on July 19th he returned to Henry Irving. During the next six years he remained with Irving, occupying the position in the company hitherto held by William Terriss. He began at a salary of £20 with an additional one-sixth for each matinee and ended with a salary of £45 with the same provision. They were fateful years for Alexander, years of protracted rehearsals under a master’s eye with an accompaniment of criticism which could be devastating. The late Norman McKinnel who made his London debut at Drury Lane in Dante told me that the company could predict the sort of rehearsal it was going to have by the style of hat which Irving wore to it. If he wore a shining silk hat, he was going to be debonair and kind. If he wore a soft felt hat, his “storm-hat”, as it was called, his sou’wester in fact, the weather was going to be trying to the nerves. Norman McKinnel on his first rehearsal had the misfortune to fin’d his chief wearing his storm-hat. He had to make his entrance alone as an old man and without speaking a word totter right across the rehearsal room, which was wider even than the Lyceum stage. He tottered his best in a dead silence past Irving seated in his chair with his storm-hat on his head. When he reached the opposite wall Irving said to him: “No, no, my boy. That won’t do! Ague, you know, not alcohol! Try it again!” And he tottered across that room six times.

This, of course, was on a later day than when Alexander was at the Lyceum, but Arthur Machen, who acted at the St. James’ Theatre, quoted in the Evening News one of Alexander’s recollections of that period:

When I was at the Lyceum [he said], after five or six hours of rehearsal by Irving I would go home almost crying. I would tell my wife that I was afraid I had made a dreadful mistake in going on the stage. And I made up my mind that if I ever had a company of my own, I would let them down pretty easy.

It was no doubt a hard and anxious time. But on the other hand he was a constant witness of acting inspired by genius and elaborated with infinite care. He saw spectacles in the grand style, he played a wide range of parts, and his shrewd Scotch mind took warning from the unhindered extravagance which reigned in the Lyceum Theatre from the portico to the stage door. He had one great but short-lived disappointment. In December 1885 he was cast for the small but showy part of Valentine in Faust. A well-known hero of the Sheridan comedies was preferred to him for the part of Faust. This relegation to a secondary position was a heart-breaking business for the young and ambitious actor; but he followed the example of Macready in his early days at Covent Garden, and he did his best in the one scene in which he appeared. H. B. Conway, the actor chosen to play Faust, was in bad health and after four performances he retired from the cast and never acted again. Alexander stepped into the part and played it for the rest of a run which for length in those days was unexampled.

There is no doubt that he had always set in front of himself as his goal the management of a theatre of his own, and in 1889 the project began to take a more definite shape. There was now no part for him at the Lyceum in Calmour’s play, The Amber Heart. He moved from the Lyceum to the Adelphi and, while playing in the melodrama, London Day by Day, he rented the Avenue Theatre. He had secured a farce by Hamilton Aidé called Dr. Bill. The Gattis, however, would not release him from his engagement in London Day by Day, so he put up Dr. Bill with Fred Terry in the part which he would otherwise have played himself. Dr. Bill was an instant success, and when Alexander was able to join the cast it lost nothing of its popularity. The second act closed with a dance — the Kangaroo Dance. It is interesting to note that amongst the congratulations which Alexander received twenty-one years later when a knighthood was conferred upon him was one from Herman Finck, the well-known conductor at the Palace Theatre, who was playing the first violin in the orchestra at the Avenue, under the leadership of Mr. John Crook, when Dr. Bill with the Kangaroo Dance took the town.

The season, however, was not to end without a calamity. The manager of the Avenue Theatre bolted to Mexico with the greater part of Dr. Bill’s fees. Dr. Bill, however, survived the theft. The Struggle for Life, an adaptation of a play by Alphonse Daudet, followed Dr. Bill, but was a failure. That was succeeded by Sunlight and Shadow, a comedy by R. C. Carton, which just held its own. Alexander, who had been told by Henry Irving that he could return to his old position at the Lyceum if after a six months’ trial of management he so preferred, might well have been tempted now to accept that offer. But whatever he lacked it was not courage. He signed the lease for the St. James’ Theatre in November 1890, installed electric light there, reupholstered the seats, and became definitely that object of so much debate, an actor-manager.

Chapter 2

The actor-manager — The position of the theatre in the’90’s compared with its position today — The preparation of a play at the St. James’ — Alexander’s consideration for his company — His first production at the St. James’ Theatre: The Idler

It is difficult for a younger generation to understand the winds of acrimony which beat about the head of an actor-manager in the’90’s; and they were not blown up by a bellows. They rose from a genuine passion. The Theatre held a more important place then in the cultural life of the nation than it does today. The great characters of the Elizabethan dramatists, which demand at once the very deeps of emotion and a close intellectual analysis to control them, were more frequently seen upon the stage. The public was more familiar with the plays and took a greater interest in a comparison of the players. Criticism was more subtle. The coming change which was destined to confer upon the race more of Mr. MacDougall’s mens sana in corpore sano had only shown itself as yet too faintly to affect the accustomed mode of life. Summer time was not yet invented. Golf courses were still sparse; Wimbledon was still more of a suburb than the playground of Europe. No one danced between the courses of dinner; there were no Night Clubs to which you took your wife; Bridge had not gagged the wits and the bores with an indiscriminate hand; and the cinema had not yet made its alluring appeal. The theatre was the entertainment. Nowadays at a dinner party you are more likely to hear the new film discussed than the new play. Then the platinum blonde had not bleached and plastered her locks; dogs were not yet horses; and the Great War lay hidden in the mists of the future. The play was the excitement and the relaxation. Now it is one of many.

The bubble boom which followed upon the war added its influence to the changes in the national way of life. Men whom accident rather than foresight had lifted for a brief while into an unexpected prosperity found a pleasant evasion from the Excess Profits Tax in backing plays. Theatre after theatre could have taken its device from the “In and Out” Club in Piccadilly; and still the aspiring backers stood in a queue. Under the stress of inflated rentals, salaries based upon the assumption that the run of the play would hardly outlast the period of rehearsals, plays chosen by men who had no gift to visualise them as they read them, and the narrow purse of the public, the position of the actor-manager became precarious. So precarious indeed that the gallant and able Gladys Cooper has no longer a theatre of her own. The actor-manager today is an oddity. But in the’90’s he was so prominent and debatable a personage that that stately periodical The Nineteenth Century opened its pages to a symposium as to whether he ought to exist or die. George Alexander, the young Marcellus of his craft, was invited by James Knowles, the editor and proprietor, to contribute his views, but he was then preparing for his migration from the Avenue Theatre to the St. James’ and had other work upon his hands. By one argument the actor-manager was a commercial figure and the bane of art. He was jealous; Edmund Kean would not act with Macready; Booth smashed Macready’s last American tour with a fatal riot. He chose plays with an eye only to the leading part; they satisfied his vanity, but they destroyed the prestige of the theatre. Thus one side. Mr. John Galsworthy, at a later date, accepted the argument. He wrote to Sir George Alexander on April 14th, 1913:

You were, as you say, so very kind as to ask me to write for your theatre. I have received such requests from other leading actor-managers, but I cannot honestly believe that any play I have written would have been accepted on the condition that I might cast it as I thought it should be cast (without extravagance) to get out the essence of the play. Actor-managers, I take it, are nearly all in management as lovers of the theatre, and believers in themselves — some of them obviously magnetic and charming personalities rather than interpreters. Why should they put on plays in which the leading parts are cast as the author feels they should be cast?… You yourself are the attraction to half the public, and half the commercial value of the play. Whatever you may wish to do you have always that fact before you. What I have always before me is the essence of my play. How to reconcile the two factors I have not yet discovered.

It is true that less than two years afterwards he succeeded in making that reconciliation. For on February 7th, 1915, Mr. Galsworthy did propose to Sir George Alexander that he should produce two plays of his, The Full Moon and The Little Man. But the earlier letter no doubt expressed his real view on the question which so troubled patrons of the theatre in 1890.

On the other side stand one or two arguments most difficult to answer. There is nothing more chancy than the choice of a play. It requires the trained vision of a man who can see it in his mind acted whilst he reads it, and that gift is most likely to be found in a man whose instinct and intelligence and experience, working together, have brought him to the topmost rank. For no one on earth can tell what the fate of a play may be until the curtain has fallen upon the final scene. Expected failures have run the season through; expected triumphs have been withdrawn within the week. And so it always has been. On page 143 of the first volume of Macready’s Reminiscences you can read his verdict:

From the many opportunities subsequently afforded me of testing the fallibility of opinion in these cases, the conclusion has been forced upon me that the most experienced judges cannot with certainty predict the effect in representation of plays which they may have read or even seen rehearsed. Some latent weakness, some deficient link in the chain of interest, imperceptible till in actual presence, will oftentimes balk hopes apparently based on the firmest principles and baffle judgments respected as oracular.

In actual presence are the vital words. The audience makes all the difference. It not only reveals errors, it discovers merits. It would hardly overshoot the truth to say that no play has been publicly given without the audience reacting in some totally unexpected way to a line, a piece of stage business, and even at times to a whole scene. The audience is, metaphorically speaking, a sleeping partner in the concern, and if the play be dull, literally one too. It becomes a kind of collaborator whose share neither actor nor author nor producer can foresee; a current passes from neighbour to neighbour in the seats, a fellowship is born, a play damned or made. It is a case of blind men on a road, but the one of them who has travelled the most roads and taken the fewest wrong turnings is the best guide. The actor-manager, too, has something else besides his financial prosperity to consider. He has his own good name. Herbert Tree, when he was asked what he thought of the prospects of Stephen Phillips’ play Ulysses, answered, “It will be a very good play to go bankrupt on”. Thus the other side.