Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1621 page)

EXPLORED IN TWO LETTERS.

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

* This paper, and the paper on Art, entitled “To Think, or Be Thought For,” which immediately follows it, provoked, at the time of their first appearance, some remonstrance both of the public and the private sort. I was blamed — so far as I could understand the objections — for letting out the truth about the Drama, and for speaking my mind (instead of keeping it to myself, as other people did) on the subject of the Old Masters. Finding, however, that my positions remained practically unrefuted and that my views were largely shared by readers with no professional interest in theaters, and no vested critical rights in old pictures — and knowing, besides, that I had not written without some previous inquiry and consideration — I held steadily to my own convictions; and I hold to them still. These articles are now reprinted (as they were originally produced) to serve two objects which I persist in thinking of some importance: Freedom of inquiry into the debased condition of the English Theater; and freedom of thought on the subject of the Fine Arts.

MY DEAR SIR — I am sufficiently well-educated, and sufficiently refined in my tastes and habits, to be a member of the large class of persons usually honoured by literary courtesy with the title of the Intelligent Public. In the interests of the order to which I belong, I have a little complaint to make against the managers of our theaters, and a question to put afterward, which you, as a literary man, will, I have no doubt, be both able and willing to answer.

Like many thousands of other people, I am fond of reading and fond of going to the theater. In regard to my reading, I have no complaint to make — for the press supplies me abundantly with English poems, histories, biographies, novels, essays, travels, criticisms, all of modern production. But, in regard to going to the theater, I write with something like a sense of injury — for nobody supplies me with a good play. There is living literature of a genuine sort in the English libraries of the present time. Why (I beg to inquire) is there no living literature of a genuine sort in the English theater of the present time also?

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 Soulie, and go to the theater — what do I find? Balzac, Victor Hugo, Dumas, and Soulie again. The men who have been interesting me in my armchair, interesting 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 theaters get my money at night as the publishers of books get it in the day.

Do the managers get my money 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 theater, 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 satirized. But I go to enjoy a new play — and I am rewarded by seeing all my favorite 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 many original stories, by many original authors, that delight me. I go to the theater, 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 theater 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 imaginative writers work, as a matter of course, for the stage, as well as for the library table. In England, the most eminent imaginative writers work for the library table alone. What is the reason of this? 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 theater, 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 theater 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 theater 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 theater, I and my large class ought to have our theater 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 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 afterward — 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 theater 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. Remember, I am not now writing of French theaters which have assistance from the Government, but of French theaters which depend, as our theaters do, entirely on the public. Any one of those theaters 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 in the cases of all my 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 Shakespeare came to life again, and took “Macbeth” to an English theater, in this year, eighteen hundred and sixty-three, 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 further 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 dropped 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 write 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!

I use the expression “exhausting my brains” advisedly. For a man who produces a new work every year, which has any real value and completeness as a work of literary art, does, let him be who he may, for a time, exhaust his brain by the process, and leave it sorely in need of an after-period of absolute repose. Three hundred a year, therefore, is the utmost that a fertile original author can expect to get by the English stage, at present market-rates of remuneration. Such is now the position of the dramatic writer — a special man, with a special faculty. “What is now the position of the dramatic performer, when he happens to be a special man, with a special faculty also? Is his income three hundred a year? Is his manager’s income three hundred a year? The popular actors of the time when Colman got his twelve hundred pounds would be struck dumb with amazement if they saw what salaries their successors are getting now. If stage remuneration has decreased sordidly in our time for authorship, it has increased splendidly for actorship. When a manager tells me now that his theater cannot afford to pay me as much for my idea in the form of a play as the publisher can afford to pay me for it in the form of a novel — he really means that he and his actors take a great deal more now from the nightly receipts of the theaters than they ever thought of taking in the time of “John Bull.” When the actor’s profits from the theater are largely increased, somebody else’s profits from the same theater must be decreased. That somebody else is the dramatic author. There you have the real secret of the mean rate at which the English stage now estimates the assistance of English literature.