Commonplace Actors.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVI, Issue 8, 23 August 1911, Page 16

Commonplace Actors.

Why the Drama is Declining.

By

Cecily Hamilton,

Author of “Diana of Dobson’s. ,f

IT seems to be pretty generally admitted nowadays that the influence of the British drama is declining and falling rather more rapidly than usual; and that the theatre proper —the theatre where you can see ‘‘Othello,” “Charley’s Aunt,” and the “Wicked SVoman of Wolverhampton" —is being very hard put to it to hold its own against the rival attractions of the knockabout comedian, the intelligent performing seal, and the picture palace ■with its sixpenny stalls and afternoon tea thrown in. Various reasons are advanced for this lamentable lack of public interest in the playhouse; the most widespread and popular being the specious theory' that it is the incompetency of the British dramatist which is at the root of all the trouble—which boldly asserts that theatres are empty because of the badness of the plays performed therein. Like many widespread and popular theories, this assertion is quite without foundation; more, it is on the face of it ridiculous. 1 should be the last to maintain that British dramatists are not, in the main, incompetent, and their plays, in the main, bad ; what I do maintain is that the public not only does not dislike bad plays, but likes them actively —nay, adores them. If you have any doubts upon that point, you have only to spend a casual evening at any one of the old picture palaces in your immediate neighbourhood. where the chances are that in the course of the entertainment you will have to sit through two or three potted melodramas so infantile , in plot and crude in construction that no manager in his senses Would dare to present them upon tlie ordinary stage, the said crude and infantile melodramas being received by a crowded audience with every sign and mark of manifest delight. Clearly, then, the futility' of the plays presented is not the reason for the deserted state of the regular theatre—clearly, then, it 5s not with the much-abused author that the blame should lie. lie may' be inept; but his very' ineptitude is a draw —on the bioscope. Why, then, docs it no longer draw in 'the theatre? At the risk of appearing discourteous I feel bound to say that I believe it is because the actor is no longer the attraction that he used to be. By that I do not mean that he is worse professionally—less capable, less talented. Quite apart from his professional qualifications, his formerly unassailable hold upon the interest and affections of the public is not what once it was. This, of course, is by no means the first time that the fact has been pointed out to hi.n; over and over again he has been warned that he stands not where he did—that, work lie the paragraph never so wisely, spread he the photographic postcard never so widely, he does not draw as once he used to do. Indeed, it ha- been hinted more than once that it is the very use and over use of the channels of advertisement that has caused his decline iu public adoration; that the man ami woman in the street have become weary of his journalistic confidences, have turned, in sheer satiety. from the perpetual presentment of his stern or smiling features. He would have done belter —so he I* informed—to wrap himself in the veil of mystery which is half the attraction of the world beyond the footlights. So far the advice has not done him any good, and one douhts if it ever will, being in the very nature of tilings a counsel of perfection and impossible to follow The actor, like the theatre, lives by publicity; why blame him then

for geeking as much as he can get’ Where —so it seems to me—he does err, and err often and profoundly, is in the manner of his self-advertisement, in his ridiculous miscalculation of the taste of a thoroughly respectable public. To illustrate what I mean. Take up an ordinary theatrical interview, say, with the leading lady of the Asterisk Theatre—s o who ha- just leap* to success, and thereby stirred all London to enthusiasm by her performance of a woman with a long and lurid past. She was magnificent, from the pit; she stirred your blood and thrilled you, brought a choke into your throat. . . . and here is her photograph feeding her pet canary. . . . and, again, dispensing nursery tea to her children, Bobby and Janet. She is photographed with her pet dog, with her workbox, with her husband, witxx all the common objects of her house —with all the common objects of everybody’s houses. And, if the interviewer has set her down aright, her conversation is as amiably domestic as her counterfeit presentment; there is not a word she utters that does not indicate the model mother, the careful housekeeper, the wife of blameless virtue. In short, she is most thoroughly respectable—even as you and I! And be it remembered that it is the opposite that attracts you—not the similar. We, as a people, are intensely respectable; and it is just because we are so intensely respectable that the mere suggestion of raffishness and contact with raffishness has for us an irresistible attraction. Why do so many English people spend their hard-earned savings on week-end trips to Paris? Merely because there is about the very name of Paris a suggestion of that impropriety so dear to the soul of the well-conducted Briton—because, even if he has seen nothing more exhilarating than the Morgue and the tomb of Napoleon, he feels that fie has somehow had a gay and waggslx time. . . . And, exactly in the same way, when the actor and actress were understood to be people you really could not ask to dinner, they exercised an irresistible fascination over those who would have been horrified at the idea of exchanging afternoon calls with them—and took seats in the pit instead. I do not suppose, for an instant that the theatrical profession, as a whole, was ever less respectable in its manner of living than any other and corresponding classes of the community; but until recent years it was clever enough to pretend that it was. And as long as it kept up the pretence, the actor, just because he was m a'tor, was m attraction, a power in the land; tales c-f d ink and divorce rt i its were whispered abort him, anl these vho heard an 1 ’hose who told the tales alike decided they' must have a lock at him. Then, in >i red moment came the craving for respectability: the insistence on the ."act that the actor in his private life, the actress in her private life, were even as other men and women are — blameless and orderly and dull. And as a result of that craving and insistence the public has apologised; lias admitted that the actor may lie a thoroughly respectable person .. . . and, having made that admission and apology, has ceased to find him interesting.