whether happily or not may be doubted, is apparently the more common result.

6

The work we have cited was published in 1731, and only ten years later appeared David Garrick, to give practical disproof of the doctrine, that the genius for acting to perfection' is limited in its scope;-his very earliest performances having made it clear that a truly great actor of tragedy may, and probably will, be a great actor of comedy, even as Shakspeare had demonstrated the theory of Socrates to be true, that the genius of comedy is the same as that of tragedy, and that the writer of tragedy ought to be a writer of comedy also.'* But he did what was of infinitely more importance; for by personal example, and by his skill and energy as manager of Drury Lane Theatre, he raised the dramatic art, and the ambition and status of its professors to a level previously unknown. He had himself, immense as was his popularity from the first, suffered from the shifty and precarious life, which was inevitable where the metropolitan theatres were in the hands of men who cared nothing for art, and had no principle or purpose in management, but that of making money on any terms. For this state of things there was no cure but the practical one of a theatre conducted on a definite plan, and in which the best actors could be sure of a permanent home. It is for the interests of the best actors to be together,' wrote Garrick to Mrs. Pritchard's husband in 1747, when he entered upon his lesseeship of Drury Lane; neither was it from any fault of his, if they were not kept together down to the close of his lesseeship in 1776. He omitted no opportunity of securing for his theatre whatever, either in plays or actors, could best enable him to keep up the relish in the public for a vigorous intellectual drama. The better the play, the more certain was it of being worthily presented; for with such performers as Mrs. Cibber, Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. Yates, Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Clive, Miss Pope, Miss Younge, Mrs. Abington, Barry, Mossop, Sheridan, Woodward, King, Smith, Shuter and Weston, not to mention a host of others of inferior ability, character, passion, pathos, poetry, humour or wit, were more likely to gain than suffer in the rendering. What a scope was here for emulation of the best kind behind the curtain! What a school for taste to the audiences before it! Held together as these admirable artists were, moreover, by a man like Garrick, no less conspicuous for practical

* It will be remembered how the last thing remembered by Aristodemus, the narrator of the 'Symposium,' was Socrates insisting on this proposition to Aristophanes and Agathon, the rest of the party having been for some time, thanks to Agathon's wine, beyond the reach of argument.

sense

sense and a fine critical faculty than for genius as an actor, all that was best in them was brought out as it could never otherwise have been. In his own person he set before them the example of unwearied study in preparation, and scrupulous care in performance; and the same discipline which he imposed upon himself he enforced upon his company, by careful rehearsals and unwearied efforts to infuse into them the suggestions of his own intelligence and experience. Even performers of great name owed more of their success than their vanity admitted to what was done for them in this way by Garrick. As plain-speaking Kitty Clive wrote to him in 1776:

...

'I have seen you with your magical hammer in your hand endeavouring to beat your ideas into the heads of creatures who had none of their own. There are people now on the stage to whom you gave their consequence; they think themselves very great; now let them go on in their new parts, and they will soon convince the world what their genius is.'

However this might be, the public at least were the gainers. The system struck root. Care in study, care in performance, acute and active intelligence brought to bear on the whole business of the scene, the contrast of varied styles of excellence, the constant endeavour to bring out by the best considered experiments in what is technically known as 'stage business' all the strength of good dramatic situations, begot a standard of excellence upon the stage of Garrick's theatre, which re-acted upon the public taste, and diffused its influence even to remote provincial stages. Nor was his personal character and intimate relations with the best society without a salutary influence upon the status of actors generally. Junius with his accustomed brutality might denounce him as a 'vagabond.' But public opinion no longer recognised the force of the epithet. The personal friend of Chatham, Camden, and the Archbishop of Canterbury might still by statute be a vagabond, but he was not therefore the less a gentleman. He had beaten down by the excellence of his private life, no less than by his genius, the narrow prejudice which had dealt with actors as people beyond the pale of good society; and what he began was made secure by many followers of the art, in whom were found moral worth, well regulated lives, and all good grace to grace a gentleman.' In none were these more conspicuous than in the Kemble family, who so soon after Garrick's departure renewed, under a different phase, the splendours of the actor's art; and continued in the person of John Kemble, during his management first of Drury Lane and afterwards of Covent Garden, the system of discipline

and the standard of prevailing excellence which Garrick had established.

Admirable as John Kemble was in his enthusiasm for his art, he committed, or more probably was forced by the undue size of Covent Garden Theatre into, the mistake of initiating those gorgeous scenic displays, which were immediately copied in a spirit of rivalry at Drury Lane, and which have done so much to degrade the stage as the home of art. So long as scenery and carefully dressed supernumeraries merely illustrate and relieve the action of the scene it is fit and proper that they should be of the best kind; but when these are carried to the point of shouldering aside the dramatic interest '-to use Sir W. Scott's happy phrase- the effect is disastrous. Disastrous in all ways,-disastrous to actors, disastrous to public taste, and, as ample experience has proved, disastrous to theatres themselves. Disastrous to actors, because they feel that they are little better than puppets in the spectacle,-disastrous to the taste of the public, because their eyes and senses, not their brains and hearts, are appealed to; and disastrous to theatres, because the outlay involved can never be compensated. Sooner or later comes the inevitable failure, for the many-headed beast,' though gratified by ever increasing splendour of scenery and ever multiplying masses of richly attired processionists, gets sated in the end, and turns in disgust from the weary show. We seem to be nearing this stage at the present moment. Even those who formerly applauded what were mistakenly called Shakspearian revivals, have begun to think that it would be better if the carpenter and scene-painter were put into the background, and theatres were forced to rely for attraction upon the development of character and passion; while the much more numerous class, who look to the theatre for intellectual stimulus and refreshment, for wit, character, incident, and poetry, are crying aloud for the establishment of some theatre in the metropolis, where their desire may be gratified, and the languid hours that succeed to a day of hard work may be brightened by the combination of good literature with good acting.

The cry is a natural one-but how to meet it is a problem of no ordinary difficulty. What excellence existed in our theatres. in bygone days was, as we have indicated, the slow growth of many years, and of circumstances abnormally happy in the fact of the great presiding minds at the head of the two great metropolitan theatres. It was more easy to dislocate and ultimately destroy the system under which that excellence flourished, than it can ever be to restore an equivalent for it. The schools for dramatic art are extinct, the traditions of the stage lost, and as

these

these traditions were the results of the observation and experience of the ablest actors through many generations, this is a loss not lightly to be estimated, where the great dramas of our older literature are concerned.* Actors, moreover, are united by no common bond. There is no centre to which they can rally, no leader whom they would be content to follow and obey. A theatre is a venture too costly to be risked, upon the mere chance of finding a public sufficiently patient to bear with the shortcomings of such actors as might in the first instance be available for a higher class of drama, for the sake of the good intention shown in the plan on which it was conducted, and until the actors could be got into such excellent working order as might satisfy an educated and fastidious taste. Whoever enters,

therefore, upon an enterprise of this sort, must be both content and able to wait. He must be of a spirit, moreover, not easily daunted, for his discouragements from within, as well as from without, will be neither few nor slight. Actors, even in the days of discipline and subordination, were never easy to manage. Like other artists they are apt to be, by temperament, irritable, jealous, and capricious, and, as Sir W. Scott has well said in a letter to his friend Terry ('Lockhart's Life,' vol. vii. p. 371), Jealousy among them is signally active, because their very persons are brought into direct comparison, and from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot they are pitted by the public in express rivalry against each other.' So racked and tormented was Garrick by their jealousies and caprice, supplemented as they were, and always will be, by the unreason and caprice of audiences, that he said the plagues of management for one year are sufficient to expiate a whole life of sin.' These difficulties are not likely to be lighter now, when the internal discipline of theatres has all but disappeared; when, moreover, there is absolutely no standard of excellence to appeal to, and every third and fourth-rate declaimer, or buffoon, is struggling for a front place, and sees no reason why he should not have it. Position and prominence on the stage, as elsewhere, means money value, and in these days when even art among artists becomes subordinate to lust of gain, the theatre is not likely to be exempt from the prevailing vice.

And yet, if we are not to continue calmly under the shame of being without a theatre commensurate with the culture of the

It is well known, for example, that Betterton used to acknowledge his obligations to Taylor of the Blackfriars Company, and to the elder Lowin; the former of whom was instructed in the character of Hamlet, and the latter in that of Henry VIII. by Shakspeare himself. What Betterton thus learned was transmitted through an unbroken chain to Garrick and Barry, and helped to form their excellence and that of their successors.

age,

age, some effort must be made to overcome these and the other practical difficulties which crowd upon the mind of whosoever is conversant with the condition of the theatrical world. What the other countries of Europe have done surely we can accomplish in England also. It is true, no doubt, that the superior tone and finish, which prevail in the best theatres of France and Germany, are due in a great measure to the fact that being, by reason of the state subventions, less dependent on the caprices of the public taste, they can afford to appeal to a higher culture than theatres which, like ours, must come to a stand-still unless they can attract the general public. Government assistance for any theatre in this country is hopeless; neither is it to be desired, for it would be an injustice to the other theatres from which it was withheld. Some equivalent for it must, however, be found, and for this we may fairly look to that public spirit and private wealth by which so many admirable results are achieved among us. In a country so rich as ours the sum required would be a mere trifle, and it could undoubtedly be found without difficulty. But it is not desirable it should be found, unless the organisation of such a theatre as we point at were in other respects complete. The money would most probably be wanted, not in hard cash, but in the shape of a guarantee similar in principle to that under which our two great Exhibitions were constructed. And, on the supposition already put, this guarantee would in all likelihood no more require to be drawn upon in the one case than in the others.

The more perplexing problem, however, is the internal organisation; and first as to the actors. Scattered about among the theatres in the metropolis and provinces there are actors and actresses of experience and artistic feeling, who, for the chance of finding a home in a high class metropolitan theatre-where they were sure of being treated with the courtesy and consideration due to the members of a liberal profession--would, no doubt, be content to make present sacrifices both in income and in nominal position. If these were brought together for the purpose of playing pure drama, where they could be assured of a permanent position as the result of proved ability and conscientious industry, and subjected to a distinct code of rules as to precedence, and to a stringent discipline as to rehearsals and performance, similar to those which prevail in the Comédie Française, the foundation would, at all events, be laid for that system of co-operation on which, much more than actual genius in the actors themselves, the charm rests of the performances at that theatre. We should get rid, under this state of things, of the ignorance, the slovenliness, the vulgarity, the want of har

mony