Shakespeare and the 'Old Vic'

I

‘I AM sure that much of the respect which we pay to an elderly man is due to our suspicion that he could avenge any slight by describing the late Charles Mathews in Cool as a Cucumber. Theatrical reminiscence is the most awful weapon in the armory of old age.’ I am quoting from that delightful essayist, Max Beerbohm, only now beginning to come into his own; and I am about to draw that ‘awful weapon,’ not in self-defense, but because it will give me pleasure to flourish it; I shall not, I think, do much harm, and it is barely possible some good may come of it. And now for the preliminary flourish.

It will, I think, be admitted by any Londoner whose memory carries him back to the palmy days of Irving and Terry, that the theatre in that great metropolis is now in a very parlous state. We do not greatly care for the revival of plays a quarter-century old; plays which once shocked us but which shock us no longer, and in which we remember — But never mind: Gladys Cooper is not a fair exchange for Mrs. Pat Campbell, and Cyril Maude disporting himself as ‘Lord Richard in the Pantry’ does not make us forget but rather long for Forbes-Robertson.

Even the music-hall has gone to h—, I was going to say. The cozy, old-fashioned music-hall, smoky, and witty, and often vulgar, has given way to the gaudy theatre in which revues, tedious and meaningless, are given month after month; performances which would seem to be chiefly a challenge to the police. To one who remembers Lottie Collins and Marie Lloyd — to mention only two names, but memory calls up a dozen; to one to whom Dan Leno was a delight and who frequently joined Herbert Campbell in a chorus; who has breathlessly watched Cinquevalli successfully defy the laws of gravitation, and who has learned his coster songs from Albert Chevalier and Gus Ellen, the passing of the ‘halls’ is nothing short of tragic; but it might perhaps be borne had not the theatre practically disappeared. Then suddenly something happened — and it happened at the Old Vic. And now, and only now, is this paper fairly started.

I know a man who has written two or three books about modern London who confessed to me that he had never been in the Old Vic; comparatively few Londoners know where it is, and many of those who do have but a hazy idea of its character. I stumbled on it quite by accident, in the delightful little cathedral city of Wells while spending a day or two at the Swan. One evening two young ladies were ushered to our table for dinner; they were young, attractive girls, and after the usual preliminaries, the exchanging of mustard for salt, and so forth, we fell into conversation, and I soon discovered that my table-mates were college girls on a holiday. They were taking a walking trip and were about finishing four hundred miles. Then I learned that they were actresses from London; and at length it developed that they had been playing Shakespearean parts at the Old Vic.

‘The “Old Vic,”' I said to myself, wonderingly; ‘I seem to remember a more or less disreputable music-hall of that name on the Surrey side of the river; surely such cultivated women as my companions cannot be playing there, not even Shakespeare!’ Yet it was so. Little by little the story was told of how, many years ago, an enterprising woman, a Miss Emma Cons, had secured the old place and by degrees redeemed it: then she died, and someone else had taken up and carried on the work. When we parted next morning, I was fully determined to visit that theatre at the first opportunity.

Immediately upon my arrival in London I started out to learn exactly where the Old Vic was; the newspapers had not a word to say; finally someone told me it was in Lambeth in the ‘New Cut’; then someone else said it was in the Waterloo Road. Finally, it appeared that both my informants were right, that it was in the New Cut at the corner of the Waterloo Road; and by dint of reading and inquiring this is what I discovered.

In 1811 there was building a great stone bridge over the Thames, for a long time known as the New Bridge: it was completed soon after the glorious battle of Waterloo, which gave a name to many things, including the new bridge and the approaches to it. Shortly after the completion of the bridge, a theatre was begun in the marshes of Lambeth, about half a mile from the Surrey end, and in 1817 its cornerstone was laid, by proxy, by Frince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, uncle to Queen Victoria, afterwards to become famous as the King of the Belgians. No one seems to know if or how the Prince became interested in the theatre, but in any event it was named after him, the Royal Coburg Theatre. With due regard for the character of the surrounding population, it was at once given over to the crudest kind of melodrama and the most vulgar of pantomimes.

The theatre had been erected in a dangerous slum, one of the worst in London, and for a time, in an effort to entice visitors from the other side of the river, it was announced that special guards were posted on the bridge and its approaches, in order that the audience might feel safe both before and after the performance from the attack of thugs and pickpockets. This announcement did not mend matters much.

From the first the theatre had a checkered career: it prospered occasionally, but it usually was in financial or other difficulties. In 1833, in an effort to revive its fortunes it was given a new name, the Royal Victoria, in honor of the young princess who was then heir presumptive to the crown. But no one was deceived thereby. Edmund Kean acted there for a brief moment; but Grimaldi, the famous clown, was more to the taste of its patrons.

However, nothing really succeeded. Its location was desperate, if not positively dangerous.

With the coming of gas, and finally of electricity, and the better policing of the streets, it became relatively safe; but why travel such a distance to see performances of varying degrees of badness? For a hundred years its record was ten failures to one success. Drinking in the theatre was allowed (and still is), and fights were frequent; the audiences were fierce, in the proper use of that term. Missiles, over-ripe fruit, mellow eggs, and occasionally an empty beer-bottle were thrown at the villain on the stage, while the heroine and the still more virtuous hero would invariably be encouraged by loud cries of approval. ‘Never will I give my consent to bring a virtuous girl to a life of shame!’ was a sentiment that, we may be sure, brought the audience of half-drunken men and women to their feet in a burst of delirious applause.

But it was no go. No one seemed to want legitimate drama in the Waterloo Road at the corner of the New Cut; and finally the Old Vic, as it had come to be called, became a music-hall — about as common a music-hall as there was in London. Then it was that I made its acquaintance — but we hardly became friends. It was, before the coming of the taxi, in an out-of-theway part of the town, and the performances, if cheap, were bad, very bad.

But it is always darkest just before dawn. A woman conceived the idea of giving good drama, not trash, at popular prices; and while her success was not great, she turned the tide. When she died, her assistant, Miss Lilian Baylis, took up and carried on the work. With the coöperation of Mr. and Mrs. Mathcson Lang and the help of Ben Greet, and at long last, with the assistance of Russell and Sybil Thorndike, success came to the Old Vic.

II

‘Take me to the Old Vic,’ I said one evening to a taxi-driver, shortly after I reached London.

‘To where, sir?’ he replied.

‘Don’t you know the Old Vic in the Waterloo Road?’ I inquired.

‘I do, sir, but I was n’t sure that I heard you right,’ was the reply.

We entered, and in a few moments we were rolling through St. James’s Park and over Westminster Bridge into Lambeth. On we went, under the great railway bridge which forms the approach to Waterloo Station, through the Lower Marsh, into the Waterloo Road where, just ahead of us was the New Cut.

It is a busy, noisy thoroughfare, ‘ pestered ‘ on both sides, as far as the eye can see, with open-front shops and booths and hand-barrows, lit up at night with flaming naptha torches, on which food and clothing of every kind and character are exposed for sale. Hawkers were crying their wares; the whole neighborhood was swarming with men, women, and children, doing their daily shopping; for in this part of London everyone works when he can, and the purchase of necessities begins when the day’s work is done. We were in—not the famous East End, but the equally sordid South Side of London.

It was nearing seven as we stepped out of our taxi; and going to the ticketoffice, I discovered that the play that evening was Henry IV, Part I, and that the curtain rose at 7.30 sharp. ‘Give me two stalls; how much?’ I inquired.

‘Five shillings each, including wartax,’ was the reply.

Pocketing the little pieces of paper, I stepped out and looked around for a place in which to eat.

‘When in doubt, ask a policeman.’ Of all forms of authority I respect a London policeman most: upon the subjects within his range he speaks with the certainty of a college professor, and he carries himself with the bearing of a bishop. Going up to one, and touching my hat, — for I would not have a policeman outdo me in politeness, — I said, ‘As man to man, if you were standing with your best girl where I am and had only twenty minutes in which to get something to eat, where would you go?’ ‘Hi ‘d go, sir,’he said promptly, ‘to the Wellington Bullet’ (spoken as spelled); ‘you ‘ll find it hexcellent.'

And we did: bread and butter, a cut of cold ham, a Welsh rabbit, and several bottles of Bass; I ask no more and I ask no better. When the curtain rose a few minutes later, we were in our ‘stalls,’ four rows from the front, and I was just beginning to enjoy my after-dinner cigar.

Reader, when did you last see Henry IV, Part I? Have you ever seen it? If you have not, you perhaps think of it as one of Shakespeare’s historical plays. Nonsense! the historical part is mere setting for the greatest comic character in all literature, Falstaff. But first let me describe the audience and the house.

The theatre was packed with a quiet, orderly crowd of plain people; I should say there were about as many, or as few, of what might be called common people as of people from the upper walks of life: there were perhaps as many as half a dozen men and women in evening dress.

Everything in the house was of the plainest and simplest: there was no attempt at decoration, the seats were not too comfortable, and when the curtain went up, it was at once evident that rigid economy had been the watchword on the stage also. There were no footlights; from either side of the proscenium arch two flood-lights played upon the actors, while from the centre hung a long, narrow box containing six or eight lights, which lit up the whole or any part of the stage with white or amber lights as might be desired.

Of scenery there was almost none. A simple backdrop sufficiently indicated the scene, heavy curtains formed the wings; stage carpentry was conspicuous by its absence. It was at once evident that the play was the thing.

In all the arts of the theatre Henry Irving began where Charles Kean left off; he utilized all the mechanical, engineering, and aesthetic devices of his time to perfection; and after him, under Beerbohm Tree at His Majesty’s, stagecraft almost superseded acting; indeed, it was not until the magnificent and spectacular could no further go, that the reaction against the stage upholsterer and electrician came.

Now I could, if necessary, write a very pretty paper on lighting-effects, and I am in some degree acquainted with the merits of ‘remote control,’ electrical apparatus, ‘dead-front’ switchboard devices, and the rest (if the truth must be told, I make and sell them); but I object: to the switchboard attendant usurping the province of the actor. A dark purple sky, slowly changing to blue, to orange, to amber, until the whole scene is of dazzling whiteness, is interesting, but it does not take the place of acting, neither do gorgeous costumes and expensive scenery; indeed, these things may so distract attention that the word and suiting the action to the word, which is what acting is, is lost sight of.

The cost of mounting a magnificent spectacle is to-day almost prohibitive; for costumes alone fifty thousand dollars may be spent, and as much more for the scenery and incidentals. If the play is a success, it is money well invested, but if not — well, only a very rich régisseur can stand the strain.

Now at the Old Vic everything depends upon the actor — no, not everything: the actor depends upon his lines, and he has gone back to Shakespeare to get them.

III

Our great Shakespearean scholar, the late Dr. Furness (and these remarks would, I think, equally apply to his distinguished son), was never at his ease when one began to praise Shakespeare. ‘Shakespeare is,’ he thought, ‘beyond praise. I don’t care who wrote the plays, the important thing is we have them. Whoever it was, I am glad we know so little about him; pretty much all talk about, him is twaddle, especially eulogy.’ Such, in brief, was His attitude. Such seems to be the idea at the Old Vic; the stage is cleared, the actors and actresses come and give their lines with what skill they may, and go, and there ‘s an end on’t.

No, not quite an end; for when the play is over, one goes home with the idea that one has seen the real Shakespeare. Generally speaking, there is not the change of a scene or the omission of a word. The plays are given just as they have come down to us; they are given rapidly — there is only one intermission of about five minutes, just time for a man to stroll to the back of the house, drink a bottle of Bass, light his pipe, and get back to his seat as the curtain goes up again. Be it remembered that Shakespeare did not write for high-brow audiences; he had no idea that his was the greatest intellect that had ever been given to mortal. He wrote for the average man of his own time, and he packed into his plays everything that he could think of that would amuse and interest him. And he was some thinker, with remarkable powers of expression. Dr. Furness would, I think, have permitted me to say that much. The audiences that first saw the plays were very much such audiences as now see them at the Old Vic.

The people of Shakespeare’s day wanted to be amused just as we do; they wanted the action to go right on; a long wait just as the play was getting interesting would never have been tolerated; and so it is to-day. At the Old Vic the curtain goes up at 7.30, and stays up, usually with one brief intermission as I have said, until eleven o’clock, or even twelve o’clock. Hamlet, which is usually cut to death on our stage, is given in two versions: the short version, which takes almost four hours, and the play in its entirety, which takes considerably longer. It is, as it ever has been, enormously popular.

Quite recently Mr. Robert Atkins, the manager, greatly daring, produced Antony and Cleopatra, making the thirty-second Shakespearean play given since the revival began in the winter of 1914-15. If ever a play permitted the use of all the devices that the magician-manager has at his disposal, it is this story of the love of the doting Roman general for the Serpent of the old Nile; but according to report, although given without scenic splendor or any of the magnificence of the modern stage, it was a great success and was played to crowded houses. Why should it not have been? For the speeches in Antony and Cleopatra are almost blinding with color. That Mr. Atkins could, and he would, use those resources w hich sometimes eclipse the work of the dramatist, is shown by his selection to arrange the historic tableaux which were presented with such success in the great hall of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital on the occasion of its celebrating the eight-hundredth anniversary of its foundation.

IV

But we are wandering far from the Old Vic. Let us get back to King Henry IV and the Prince of Wales, and Hotspur, and above all to Falstaff, the glory of the English stage. The first scene, short as it is, is all too long; we await so anxiously the second: ‘ London. An apartment of the Prince’s. Enter the Prince of Wales and Falstaff, ‘ — and the fun begins, and continues almost without interruption for almost four hours. Now, mind you, I do not mean to say that this was the best performance I have ever seen, or that Wilfrid Walter was the greatest Falstaff that ever trod the boards. I do not say that, but with the contentment which comes from sandwiches and Welsh rabbits well bestowed and several bottles of the best of all beverages, ‘ Bass’ (Prohibitionists, this is not an advertisement of an intoxicant); with the knowledge that I had a pocketful of cigars, and, my physician being far away, I intended to smoke them, I settled myself for an evening of unalloyed delight and had it.

What does Horace Walpole say of Henry IV? ‘Now I hold a perfect comedy to be the perfection of human composition, and I firmly believe that fifty Iliads could be created sooner than another such character as Falstaff.’ And this perfect comedy has not been seen on the American stage for years; indeed a generation has grown up that has hardly heard of it.

And a few nights later we saw the Second Part of the same play. Let critics decide which is the better, and let who will, read plays: I want to see them acted. It may be that a Lamb or a Coleridge could derive as much pleasure from reading the plays as from seeing them; but for myself, I can never get the fine points of a play until I have seen it on the stage. This was brought home to me in the scene where Falstaff delivers himself of his famous soliloquy: ‘What is honor? ‘t is a word. . . . Who hath it? he that died o’ Wednesday,’ and the rest. I knew it, of course, but I did not get its full significance until, in a later scene, after the battle in which Sir Walter Blunt is killed, Falstaff, coming by chance upon the body, turns it over with his foot, and discerning who it is, remarks, ' There’s honor for you.’ The acting gave pith and point to the soliloquy, which it had lacked before.

Henry V I have never seen, nor have I read it in close sequence with Henry IV. I could not bear to. In it Falstaff is dead: it may be that, buried in that mountainous mass of flesh, he had a heart which broke when Prince Hal, become a king, neglected him. Anyway he is dead, and Mistress Quickly and Bardolph and Pistol, without Falstaff, are not so interesting to us as they were; Falstaff, their great sun, which warmed and vitalized them, has set. It is almost impossible to think that a man with such a gust for living as Falstaff could die, and like the Hostess of the Tavern in Eastcheap we are sure he is not in Hell, and with Bardolph we would be with him wheresome’er he is.

The scene in which the Hostess tells Bardolph of his master’s death is one of the most wonderful in all literature. Quite recently an English magazine took a census of opinion as to the most humorous and at the same time pathetic passage in English literature: several voles for passages from Sterne were cast, but the vote for the scene of the death of Falstaff was practically unanimous.

‘Just between twelve and one, even at the turning of the tide . . . after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers’ ends, I knew there was but one way; . . . and a’ babbled of green fields.’

We hear of the death of better men undisturbed; or as Prince Hal has it, we could have better spared a better man. What is it about Falstaff, the thief, the liar, the coward, the braggart, that so fascinates us? He is as subtle as Hamlet, and much more wonderful as a creation. Do you challenge this statement? Then think of the many great tragic characters whose names at once occur to us. Good. And now of the comic. Falstaff, Mr. Pickwick, and who else?—Don Quixote, perhaps. Every actor has a feeling that he can play Hamlet, but how many essay the character of Falstaff? In recent years, Lionel Brough and Beerbohm Tree. Of the latter I recently heard a good story illustrative of the acid wit of W. S. Gilbert. Sir Beerbohm, dressed in the several feather-beds the part of Falstaff requires, hot and sweating with exertion, seeing Gilbert wandering about behind the scenes, goes up to him expecting, quite naturally, a word of praise, for Tree was great in the part. And what does the sharp-tongued gentleman say? Looking at the perspiring actor before him, he remarks icily, ‘Your skin is acting well this evening.'

I foolishly did not keep my programmes of the Old Vic performances, but I am sure that I am right in crediting Ethel Harper with the excellent rendition of the part of Mistress Quickly, an early Mrs. Malaprop. She had the quality of pure comedy about her, the kind of humor which we were wont to associate with Mrs. John Drew. Fascinated against her will by the old rogue Falstaff, to whom she could deny neither her kisses nor her silver, deceived and abused by him, but always forgiving him, she hoped to the last that he would keep his promise to make her a lady, his wife; and it was not until after his death that she consented to become the wife of Pistol — a sad falling-off to be sure, but anything is better than dying a maid, if indeed she ever was one.

The Merry Wives should be seen before and not after Henry l \ 7. Whether or not the legend be true that Queen Elizabeth, having rejoiced in the character of Falstaff, gave orders that Shakespeare should write a play showing him in love, the play presents a falling-off in the characters which have so delighted us: they lack spontaneity; humor has degenerated into horseplay; one does not much delight in seeing Falstaff buried in a basket of soiled linen, and Mistress Quickly, now become a servant to Doctor Caius, is not very convincing. We have, to be sure, those excellent romps, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page; but as for sweet Anne Page, you that love her may have her; in other words, the charm of a mature woman more fetcheth me than does that of any bread-and-butter miss whatever.

V

I had not. expected greatly to enjoy The Taming of the Shrew; but when I saw it at the Old Vic, I seemed to see it for the first time and see it whole. Many years ago I saw Booth in a little play arranged by Garrick, called Catharine and Petruchio. I remember nothing of it but Booth’s leaping upon a table and snapping his whip; he used it as a foil to The Fool’s Revenge, in which he excelled. Later, John Drew and Ada Rehan in those delicious Daly days enjoyed in it for a season their usual success. Augustin Daly was too much of an artist to omit the Prologue or the ‘Induction,’ as Shakespeare calls it; but of late years it has not been given; and as, on account of its noisy and boisterous quality, too few people read the play, not everyone remembers that The Taming of the Shrew is a play within a play; without Christopher Sly, the tinker, it loses half its point.

Bear with me while I remind myself of the joy I had one evening at the Old Vic. The story is this: Christopher Sly, a tinker, drunk, being turned out of an alehouse upon a heath, falls asleep; a noble lord, on his way home from a day’s hunting, comes upon him by chance, and inquires of his attendants whether he is dead or drunk. Upon being assured that he is only drunk, he has the bright idea of having him gently picked up and conveyed to his (the noble lord’s) house and put to bed in his best room. When he awakens, he is to be attended as if he were a lord: servants are to hand him a silver basin filled with rose-water in which he may wash his hands and lave his face. Food and wine are to be given him; and he is to be asked what his pleasure is, what apparel he will wear. He is to be made to believe that he is a wealthy nobleman awaking from a long sleep.

The lord’s retainers enter into the spirit of the jest, and, when the drunken tinker awakes, the sport begins; there never was such fun. Sly, rousing himself from his drunken slumber, calls for a pot of ale, and is offered wine instead by one servant, while another perplexes him with the question, ‘ What raiment will your honor wear?’ ‘Raiment!’ cries Sly, ‘ne’er ask me, for I have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than legs, nor no more shoes than feet.’ There never was such make-believe out of a fairy tale, which in some sort this ‘Induction’ is; and it continues until all the actors (except Sly), and the audience are choking with merriment. Finally Sly believes himself actually to be a lord, and when he is told that his entertainers are come to perform a merry comedy, he bids them play. ‘We shall ne’er be younger, let the world slip,’ he says, and The Taming of the Shrew, five acts of farce, begins.

There is no need to detain the reader with the story. The scene is laid in Italy, but the characters are English, the fun is English, the sort of slapstick fun which three hundred years ago kept, and should forever keep, if it be played rapidly, an audience in a roar. How the play ends by Petruchio taming the obstreperous Kate, until in a pretty speech she places her hand under her husband’s foot, all the world knows, and the play ends — according to Shakespeare; but at the Old Vic there are a few lines more taken from an older play, Taming of A Shrew, which form a fitting epilogue, as it were, to what has gone before. The evening is spent; the noble lord is tired and would go to bed. Sly, too, has fallen asleep; two sonants enter and are told to take him up and throw him out upon the heath. When he awakens, thinking now that he is a lord, he calls for his servants to bring him wine and is jeered at. ‘What, am I not a lord?’ he cries; and is told that he is Christopher Sly, a drunken tinker; that he may have been dreaming; that his wife at home is waiting for him. At these words, he rises, pulls himself together, and saying he knows how to tame a shrew, he staggers off. One has a feeling that he will be the master in his house for that night at least — and the curtain falls.

Now play this rapidly, play it, not as a refined comedy, which it is n’t, but as the greatest farce ever written, which it is, and it will run for months.

VI

We all remember the story of the man who sent the manuscript of a novel to a popular magazine: when it was returned to him, as manuscripts usually are, it was with the notation that it could, perhaps, be used if it were shorter. ‘You take up too much time with preliminaries,’ the editor said; ‘cut out the landscape and sky effects and get down to a recital of the facts. In its shortened form, perhaps we can use it.’ When the manuscript was again submitted, it began this way: ‘ “Oh, hell!” said the duchess, who up to this time had taken no part in the conversation.’ Richard III begins in much the same way. Whether originally it was longer than it now is, we do not know; but certainly not an instant is lost at starting. The curtain goes up on a deserted street in London; a moment later the Duke of Gloster, afterwards Richard III, lounges around a corner and begins: —

Only a man determinèd to be a villain would begin his life upon the stage with so murderous a pun, and he rants and indulges in every kind of claptrap until, at the end of the fifth act, no one responding to his despairing cry, ‘A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!’ he is killed and Richmond makes the announcement, ‘The bloody dog is dead.’

I don’t think I am mistaken in saying that Richard III is the finest melodrama ever written. When a man sets out to make a melodrama nowadays, such performances as they used to give at the Adelphi, but which are now given at Drury Lane, by the use of elaborate scenery and mechanism, he secures effects which bewilder the audience and keep it; in suspense; but Shakespcarc had to work another way. He got his eficcts by the play and interplay of his characters. So Richard WOOS and wins his bride at a funeral, admitting that the lady’s beauty had caused him to kill her husband. It is a misuse of words to call this scene theatrical; it is simply verbal horseplay. Richard says so himself, after it is over, in the famous soliloquy: —

To this double question there can be but one answer — No, but what difference does it make? The audience is having such a wonderful time that it does not stop to analyze the situation, and the play goes right on, one extravagant scene after another; people die like flies and nobody cares, until at last, having used every trick in his box, Shakespeare brings the play to an end, and we go home satisfied.

It is now the fashion to berate Colley Cibber for altering this play almost beyond recognition; but I don’t think he really did it much harm. It is good old Cibber, and not Shakespeare, who splits our ears with ‘Richard’s himself again,’ and —

‘My lord, the Duke of Buckingham is here.’

‘What! Buckingham here? Off with his head. So much for Buckingham.’

These speeches are perfectly in key with the rest of the play, otherwise they would not have survived for a hundred and fifty years. They did n’t offend Garrick; it. was the play in which he made his first appearance and he always delighted in it; nor Dr. Johnson, who knew his Shakespeare, and enjoyed Garrick’s performance quite as much as if Shakespeare had been the author of every line. In those days an acting version of a play was one thing and a version ‘for the closet,’ as it was called, was another. But at the corner of the Waterloo Road and the New Cut no Cibber is permitted, and the play crowds the house.

VII

Finally, as the preacher says, rousing his congregation from its slumbers, what lesson can we draw from the performances at the Old Vic? Is it not that Shakespeare can be performed as written, without transpositions to make it suitable for the stage? That cuts should be simply eliminations of prosy passages, of which there are plenty, which interrupt the progress of the play and which fatigue audiences and actors alike? That elaborate scenery and expensive costumes are not essential if the acting is good; and that we have accustomed ourselves to taking Shakespeare too slowly, too seriously, too reverently? Let us forget the author in his work; Shakespeare wrote to amuse; even his tragedies, Macbeth and Lear, and the rest, did not depress his audiences as they do us. They got a lot of fun out of murders and poisonings and ghosts; we do not, and have come to believe that seeing Shakespeare is a serious business. Often we go from a sense of duty, in much the same way as we go to church; and we get about the same amount of pleasure out of it. One can imagine too many domestic conversations something like this: —

WIFE: Charley, don’t forget that Nelly Watson is going to be with us next week, and that she will expect us to take her to the theatre.

HUSBAND: I’m not likely to forget it. What shall wc take her to? I’m told that there is an excellent show at the Broadway.

WIFE: What’s the name of it?

HUSBAND : I’ve forgotten the name, but Connie Constance is in it.

WIFE: I know: Men’s Playthings. They say her gowns are magnificent, they were all made in Paris; I should like to see them, but you know Nelly Watson is sort of high-brow. What would you say to our going to see Twelfth Niqht?

HUSBAND : O Lord!

WIFE: I know, but after all we ‘re going to please her, not ourselves.

HUSBAND: Very well, have it your way. I’ll get the tickets.

WIFE: And what would you say to our asking Fred Hamilton? he’s a nice fellow, and rather fond of Nelly.

HUSBAND: He won’t stand for

Twelfth Night. I know Fred.

WIFE: Oh, yes, he will; we must give a little party, and you will have to dress.

HUSBAND: That’s another bore.

WIFE: I know, but it’s Shakespeare, my dear.

There is a hasty dinner; there is no time for the usual cigar; everyone starts out in a bad humor. And in this frame of mind our friends go to see one of the loveliest comedies ever written.

How much longer, I wonder, will the fiction be kept up that smoking is objectionable to ladies? In Queen Victoria’s day a man was obliged to go to his own bedroom and smoke out of the window; or perhaps, sitting on the floor in front of an open fireplace, blow the smoke up a chimney, fearful all the time that he would be detected. And there was the further idea that tobacco smoke ruined the plush lambrequins and other hangings characteristic of the period. Now that the lambrequins have gone, let us enjoy ourselves: to-day women smoke as much as men do, some of them smoke more. A cigar or a cigarette would add to the delight of a good play, and would be a solace if the play were bad. In England smoking is permitted only in certain theatres, not of the best class; but in all of them, between the acts, young ladies are permitted to cry their wares, ‘Teas and ices; ice and teases,’ rather (o the annoyance of those who are obliged to assist in their delivery to the consumer.

I have n’t the least doubt that flaws could be picked with the performances at the Old Vic. It is easy to find fault. Grant that not all the actors are up to their parts, that not all of them can read blank verse correctly. Reading blank verse is not easy, and it may become a lost art unless, as now seems probable, a Shakespearean revival is seriously undertaken. At the moment we are doing better than the English. A few months ago in New York five Shakespearean performances were running at the same time. It was not too soon: it is of the utmost importance to keep a place upon our stage for actors of the old school: we must preserve the unwritten tradition of the stage: the ‘business,’ as it is called, which is handed down from one generation to another; its loss would be a calamity.

But to return to London. The Old Vic is one of the intellectual assets of the town: it is badly in need of funds: the appointments of the stage are poor, and conveniences for the actors are — well, practically, there are n’t any. The management made its wants known and the hat wras passed, but these are hard times in London. Then the London County Council came around and insisted upon expensive structural changes. Miss Baylis was in despair: what was to be done? Then out of a clear sky, anonymously, came a substantial gift of thirty thousand pounds. Could it be possible? Who was the donor? Was it stage money? No, current paper of the realm, ‘legal tender for any amount,’ was paid in, and gradually it became known that George Dance, the wellknown dramatic author and theatrical manager, had saved the Old Vic. All honor to him! King George and I are in complete accord, for I read in The newspapers only a few days ago that a knighthood was to be conferred upon him.

Who shall say that it was not deserved ? Certainly not the patrons of the Old Vic.

While the managers have been telling us that ‘Shakespeare spells ruin’ and the intellectuals have been talking about the necessity of establishing a national playhouse, the people, not a mile from the spot on which three hundred years ago stood the Globe, have loyally been supporting such a theatre — a theatre to which it is admittedly an honor to belong and in which it is a joy to spend an evening. And remember, dear reader, that all this is to be had for a shilling, for the greater part of the house; the gallery is sixpence, I believe. If the ‘talkies’ are not to be put out of business by the ‘movies,’ which heaven forfend, we must have a theatre to which a man can take a girl without having to put a mortgage on his already heavily encumbered automobile.