Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2212 page)

“Illustrious Friend, we have been treated to the play (and our good suppers afterwards) for four nights. Three of those nights have been given to the English, to show us what state their dramatic art is in. One of the nights I understand. It showed us what this nation can do in the musical department of the drama. We had an opera written by a living Briton, in the present time. Good, so far. Another of those nights, I also understand. We had Shakspere. It was right to represent the greatest dramatic poet of the world, in the country that gave him birth. But the other night, also devoted to the English Drama, what on earth does it mean? We, as foreigners, having seen Shakspere, next ask naturally what can Shakspeare
’
s dramatic brethren of the present day do for the theatre of their own time? We have seen the English Drama of the past, what is the English Drama of the present? We ask that; and the answer is a play written seventy or eighty years ago, by a great wit whose jokes; speeches, and debts have become a part of the history of England. What! has there been no man, then, who has written an original English play, since the time of The Rivals? If we ask what this nation is doing now in the literature of fiction, will they present to us Goldsmith, Sterne, Smollett, Fielding? If we ask for their modern historians, will they raise the ghosts of Hume and Gibbon? What does it mean? There is living literature of a genuine sort in the English libraries of the present time,
is there no living literature of a genuine sort in the English theatre of the present time also?”

I can quite understand one of our foreign visitors putting these questions; but I cannot at all imagine how we could contrive to give them a creditable and a satisfactory answer. Speaking as one of the English public, I am not only puzzled, as the foreigners might be, but dissatisfied as well. I can get good English poems, histories, biographies, novels, essays, travels, criticisms, all of the present time. Why can I not get good English dramas of the present time as well?

Say I am a Frenchman, fond of the imaginative literature of my country, well-read in all the best specimens of it,
I mean, best in a literary point of view, for I am not touching moral questions now. When I shut up Balzac, Victor Hugo, Dumas, and Souli
, and go to the theatre
what do I find? Balzac, Victor Hugo, Dumas, and Souli
 
again. The men who have been interesting and amusing me in my armchair, interesting and amusing me once more in my stall. The men who can really invent and observe for the reader, inventing and observing for the spectator also. What is the necessary consequence? The literary standard of the stage is raised; and the dramatist by profession must be as clever a man, in his way, as good an inventor, as correct a writer, as the novelist. And what, in my case, follows that consequence? Clearly this: the managers of theatres get as much of my money at night as the publishers of books get in the day.

Do the managers get as much from me in England? By no manner of means. For they hardly ever condescend to address me. I get up from reading the best works of our best living writers, and go to the theatre, here. What do I see? The play that I have seen before in Paris. This may do very well for my servant, who does not understand French, or for my tradesman, who has never had time to go to Paris,
but it is only showing me an old figure in a foreign dress, which does not become it like its native costume. But, perhaps, our dramatic entertainment is not a play adapted from the French Drama. Perhaps it is something English
a Burlesque. Delightful, I have no doubt, to a fast young farmer from the country, or to a convivial lawyer
’
s clerk who has never read anything but a newspaper in his life. But is it satisfactory to me? It is, if I want to go and see the Drama satirised. But I go to enjoy a new play
and I am rewarded by seeing all my favourite ideas and characters in some old play ridiculed. This, like the adapted drama, is the sort of entertainment I do not want.

I read at home David Copperfield, The Newcomes, Jane Eyre, and many more original stories, by many more original authors, that delight me. I go to the theatre, and naturally want original stories by original authors which will also delight me there. Do I get what I ask for? Yes, if I want to see an old play over again. But if I want a new play? Why, then I must have the French adaptation, or the burlesque. The publisher can understand that there are people among his customers who possess cultivated tastes, and can cater for them accordingly, when they ask for something new. The manager, in the same case, recognises no difference between me and my servant. My footman goes to see the play-actors, and cares very little what they perform in. If my taste is not his taste, we may part at the theatre door,
 
he goes in, and I go home. It may be said, Why is my footman
’
s taste not to be provided for? By way of answering that question, I will ask another:
Why is my footman not to have the chance of improving his taste, and making it as good as mine?

The case between the two countries seems to stand thus, then:
In France, the most eminent literary men of the period write, as a matter of course, for the stage, as well as for the library table; and, in France, the theatre is the luxury of all classes. In England, the most eminent literary men write for the library table alone; and, in England, the theatre is the luxury of the illiterate classes
the house of call where the ignorance of the country assembles in high force, where the intelligence of the country is miserably represented by a minority that is not worth counting. What is the reason of this? Why has our modern stage no modern literature?

There is the question with which I threatened you. To what do you attribute the present shameful dearth of stage literature? To the dearth of good actors?
or, if not to that, to what other cause? Of one thing I am certain, that there is no want of a large and a ready audience for original English plays possessing genuine dramatic merit, and appealing, as forcibly as our best novels do, to the tastes, the interests, and the sympathies of our own time. You, who have had some experience of society, know as well as I do that there is in this country a very large class of persons whose minds are stiffened by no Puritanical scruples, whose circumstances in the world are easy, whose time is at their own disposal, who are the very people to make a good audience and a paying audience at a theatre, and who yet, hardly ever darken theatrical doors more than two or three times in a year. You know this; and you know also that the systematic neglect of the theatre in these people has been forced on them, in the first instance, by the shock inflicted on their good sense by nine-tenths of the so-called new entertainments which are offered to them. I am not speaking now of gorgeous scenic revivals of old plays
for which I have a great respect, because they offer to sensible people the only decent substitute for genuine dramatic novelty to be met with at the present time. I am referring to the “new entertainments” which are, in the vast majority of cases, second-hand entertainments to every man in the theatre who is familiar with the French writers
or insufferably coarse entertainments to every man who has elevated his taste by making himself acquainted with the best modern literature of his own land. Let my servant, let my small tradesman, let the fast young farmers and lawyers
’
clerks, be all catered for! But surely, if they have their theatre, I, and my large class ought to have our theatre too! The fast young farmer has his dramatists, just as he has his novelists in the penny journals. We, on our side, have got our great novelists (whose works the fast young farmer does not read)
why, I ask again, are we not to have our great dramatists as well?

With high esteem, yours, my dear sir,

A.
   
READER.

LETTER THE SECOND. FROM MR. AUTHOR TO MR. READER.

MY DEAR SIR,
I thoroughly understand your complaint, and I think I can answer your question. My reply will probably a little astonish you
for I mean to speak the plain truth boldly. The public ought to know the real state of the case, as regards the present position of the English stage toward English Literature, for the public alone can work the needful reform.

You ask, if I attribute the present dearth of stage literature to the dearth of good actors? I reply to that in the negative. When the good literature comes, the good actors will come also, where they are wanted. In many branches of the theatrical art they are not wanted. We have as good living actors among us now as ever trod the stage, And we should have more if dramatic literature called for more. It is literature that makes the actor
not the actor who makes literature. I could name men to you, now on the stage, whose advance in their profession they owe entirely to the rare opportunities, which the occasional appearance of a genuinely good play has afforded to them, of stepping out
men whose sense of the picturesque and the natural in their art, lay dormant, until the pen of the writer woke it into action. Show me a school of dramatists, and I will show you a school of actors soon afterwards
as surely as the effect follows the cause.

You have spoken of France. I will now speak of France also; for the literary comparison with our neighbours is as applicable to the main point of my letter as it was to the main point of yours.

Suppose me to be a French novelist. If I am a successful man, my work has a certain market value at the publisher
’
s. So far my case is the same if I am an English novelist
but there the analogy stops. In France, the manager of the theatre can compete with the publisher for the purchase of any new idea that I have to sell. In France, the market value of my new play is as high, or higher, than the market value of my new novel. If I can work well for the theatre in France, I am just as sure of being able to pay my butcher, my baker, my rent and taxes, as I am when I work well for the publisher. Remember, I am not now writing of French theatres which have assistance from the Government, but of French theatres which depend, as our theatres do, entirely on the public. Any one of those theatres will give me as much, I repeat, for the toil of my brains on their behalf, as the publisher will give for the toil of my brains on his. Now, so far is this from being the case in England, that it is a fact perfectly well known to every literary man in the country, that, while the remuneration for every other species of literature has enormously increased in the last hundred years, the remuneration for dramatic writing has steadily decreased, to such a minimum of pecuniary recognition as to make it impossible for a man who lives by the successful use of his pen, as a writer of books, to alter the nature of his literary practice, and live, or nearly live, in comfortable circumstances, by the use of his pen, as a writer of plays. It is time that this fact was generally known, to justify successful living authors for their apparent neglect of one of the highest branches of their Art. I tell you, in plain terms, that I could only write a play for the English stage
a successful play, mind
by consenting to what would be, in my case, and even more so in the cases of my more successful brethren, a serious pecuniary sacrifice.

Let me make the meanness of the remuneration for stage-writing in our day, as compared with what that remuneration was in past times, clear to your mind by one or two examples. Rather more than a hundred years ago, Doctor Johnson wrote a very bad play called Irene, which proved a total failure on representation, and which tottered, rather than “ran,” for just nine nights, to wretched houses. Excluding his literary copyright of a hundred pounds, the Doctor
’
s dramatic profit on a play that was a failure
remember that!
amounted to one hundred and ninety-five pounds, being just forty-five pounds more than the remuneration now paid, to my certain knowledge, for many a play within the last five years which has had a successful run of sixty, and, in some cases, even of a hundred nights!

I can imagine your amazement at reading this
but I can also assure you that any higher rate of remuneration is exceptional. Let me, however, give the managers the benefit of the exception. Sometimes two hundred pounds have been paid, within the last five years, for a play; and, on one or two rare occasions, three hundred. If Shakspere came to life again, and took Macbeth to an English theatre, in this year, eighteen hundred and fifty-eight, that is the highest market remuneration he could get for it. You are to understand that this miserable decline in the money-reward held out to dramatic literature is peculiar to our own day. Without going back again so long as a century
without going back farther than the time of George Colman, the younger
I may remind you that the comedy of John Bull brought the author twelve hundred pounds. Since then, six or seven hundred pounds have been paid for a new play; and, later yet, five hundred pounds. We have now got to three hundred pounds, as the exception, and to one hundred and fifty, as the rule. I am speaking, remember, of plays in not less than three acts, which are, or are supposed to be, original
of plays which run from sixty to a hundred nights, and which put their bread (buttered thickly on both sides) into the mouths of actors and managers. As to the remuneration for ordinary translations from the French, I would rather not mention what that is. And, indeed, there is no need I should do so. We are talking of the stage in its present relation to English literature. Suppose I wrote for it, as some of my friends suggest I should; and suppose I could produce one thoroughly original play, with a story of my own sole invention, with characters of my own sole creation, every year. The utmost annual income the English stage would, at present prices, pay me, after exhausting my brains in its service, would be three hundred pounds!