Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2213 page)

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 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 theatre cannot afford to pay me half or a quarter as much for my idea in the form of a play as I can get for it in the form of a novel
or as I could have got for it in Colman
’
s time
he really means that he and his actors take a great deal more now from the nightly receipts of the theatres than they ever thought of taking in the time of John Bull. When the actors
 
profits from the theatre are largely increased, somebody else
’
s profits from the same theatre 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.

There are persons whose interest it may be to deny this; and who will deny it. It is not a question of assertion or denial, but a question of figures. How much per week did a popular actor get in Colman
’
s time? How much per week does a popular actor get now? The biographies of dead players will answer the first question. And the managers
’
books, for the past ten or fifteen years, will answer the second. I must not give offence by comparisons between living and dead men
I must not enter into details, because they would lead me too near to the private affairs of other people. But I tell you again, that the remuneration for good acting has immensely increased in our time, and I am not afraid of having that assertion contradicted by proofs.

I know it may be said that, in quoting Colman
’
s twelve hundred pounds, I have quoted an exceptional instance. Perfectly true. But the admission strengthens my case, for it sets results in this form: in Colman
’
s time, the exceptional price was twelve hundred pounds; in ours it is three hundred. Let us go into particulars, and see whether facts and figures justify the extraordinary disproportion between the reward which theatrical success brought to the author at the beginning of the present century, and the reward which it brings now.

Colman
’
s comedy of John Bull, was produced at Covent Garden Theatre in the year eighteen hundred and three. The. average receipts taken at the doors during, the run of the play, were four hundred and seventy pounds, per night. John Bull ran forty-seven nights. Multiply four hundred and seventy pounds by forty-seven nights, and the gross receipts of the theatre,, during the time of John Bull, amount, in round numbers, to twenty-two thousand pounds. A prodigious sum, produced by an exceptional dramatic success. Exceptional remuneration to author, twelve hundred pounds...

Now, for the present time. A remarkably successful play runs one hundred nights at the present day. But we must set against that fact in the author
’
s favour, two facts in the manager
’
s favour. Excepting Drury Lane, all our theatres are smaller than the Covent Garden Theatre of Colman
’
s time; and, in every case, Drury Lane included, our prices of admission are much lower. We will say, therefore, that while an unusually successful modern play runs its hundred nights, the theatre takes at the doors only one hundred and ten pounds per night. Any person conversant with theatrical matters would probably tell you that one hundred and fifty pounds per night would be nearer the average of the money-taken at the doors of all our theatres
’
large and small
during the run of a particularly successful play. However, we will err on the right side; we will exaggerate the poverty-stricken condition of starving actors and managers in the present day; and we will say that, our modern play which is a great “hit,” runs one hundred nights to houses which take one hundred and ten pounds per night at the doors. Multiply one hundred and ten pounds by one hundred nights, and the product is eleven thousand pounds. Exactly half of what the theatre got in the time of John Bull. Does the successful author meet with the same justice now, which he met with in Colman
’
s time?
in other words, does he get half of what Colman got, for bringing to the theatre half what Colman brought? No; for then he would get six hundred pounds as his exceptional remuneration, instead of the miserable half-price of three hundred which is now offered to him.

Here are the results in plain figures:

“1803.
Poor starving theatre gets
 
22,000.

Amazingly successful author gets
 
1200.

“1858.
Poor starving theatre gets
 
11,000.

Amazingly successful author gets
 
300.

Where has that missing three hundred pounds got to? It has got into the managers’ and actors’ pockets.

It is useless to attempt a defence of the present system by telling me that a different plan of remunerating the dramatic author was adopted in former times, and that a different plan is also practised on the French stage. I am not discussing which plan is best or which plan is worst. I am only dealing with the plain fact, that the present stage-estimate of the author is barbarously low
an estimate which men who had any value for literature, any idea of its importance, any artist-like sympathy with its great difficulties, and its great achievements, would be ashamed to make. I prove that fact by reference to the proceedings of a better past time, and I leave the means of effecting a reform to those who are bound in common honour and common justice to make the reform. It is not my business to re-adjust the commercial machinery of theatres; I don
’
t sit in the treasury, and handle the strings of the money-bags. I say that the present system is a base one toward literature, and that the history of the past, and the experience of the present, prove it to be so. All the reasoning in the world which tries to convince us that a wrong is necessary will not succeed in proving that wrong to be right.

Having now established the existence of the abuse, it is easy enough to get on to the consequences that have arisen from it. At the present low rate of remuneration, a man of ability wastes his powers if he writes for the stage. There are men still in existence, who occasionally write for it, for the love and honour of their Art. Once, perhaps, in two or three years, one of these devoted men will try single-handed to dissipate the dense dramatic fog that hangs over the stage and the audience. For the brief allotted space of time, the one toiling hand lets in a little light, unthanked by the actors, unaided by the critics, unnoticed by the audience. The time expires
the fog gathers back
the toiling hand disappears. Sometimes it returns once more bravely to the hard, hopeless work: and out of all the hundreds whom it has tried to enlighten, there shall not be one who is grateful enough to know it again.

These exceptional men
too few, too scattered, too personally unimportant in the republic of letters, to have any strong or lasting influence
are not the professed dramatists of our times. These are not the writers who make so much as a clerk
’
s income out of the stage. The few men of practical ability who now write for the English Theatre are men of the world, who know that they are throwing away their talents if they take the trouble to invent, for an average remuneration of one hundred and fifty pounds. The well-paid Frenchman supplies them with a story and characters ready-made. The Original Adaptation is rattled off in a week: and the dramatic author beats the clerk after all, by getting so much more money for so much less manual exercise in the shape of writing. Below this clever tactician, who foils the theatre with its own weapons, come the rank-and-file of hack-writers, who work still more cheaply, and give still less (I am rejoiced to say) for the money. The stage results of this sort of authorship, as you have said, virtually drive the intelligent classes out of the theatre. Half a century since, the prosperity of the manager
’
s treasury would have suffered in consequence. But the increase of wealth and population, and the railway connection between London and the country, more than supply in quantity what audiences have lost in quality. Not only does the manager lose nothing in the way of profit
he absolutely gains by getting a vast nightly majority into his theatre, whose ignorant insensibility nothing can shock. Let him cast what garbage he pleases before them, the unquestioning mouths of his audience open, and snap at it. I am sorry and ashamed to write in this way of any assemblage of my own countrymen; but a large experience of theatres forces me to confess that I am writing the truth. If you want to find out who the people are who know nothing whatever, even by hearsay, of the progress of the literature of their own time
who have caught no chance vestige of any one of the ideas which are floating about before their very eyes
who are, to all social intents and purposes, as far behind the age they live in as any people out of a lunatic asylum can be
go to a theatre, and be very careful, in doing so, to pick out the most popular performance of the day. The actors themselves, when they are men of any intelligence, are thoroughly aware of the utter incapacity of the tribunal which is supposed to judge them. Not very long ago, an actor, standing deservedly in the front rank of his profession, happened to play even more admirably than usual in a certain new part. Meeting him soon afterwards, I offered him my mite of praise in all sincerity. “Yes,” was his reply; “I know that I act my very best in that part, for I hardly get a hand of applause in it through the whole evening.” Such is the condition to which the dearth of good literature has now reduced the audiences of English theatres
even in the estimation of the men who act before them.

And what is to remedy this? Nothing can remedy it but a change for the better in the audiences. I have good hope that this change is slowly, very slowly, beginning. “When things are at the worst they are sure to mend.” I really think that, in dramatic matters, they have been at the worst; and I have therefore some belief that the next turn of Fortune
’
s wheel may be in our favour. In certain theatres, I fancy I notice already symptoms of a slight additional sprinkling of intelligence among the audiences. If I am right, if this sprinkling increases, if the few people who have brains in their heads will express themselves boldly, if those who are fit to lead the opinion of their neighbours will resolutely make the attempt to lead it, instead of indolently wrapping themselves up in their own contempt
then there may be a creditable dramatic future yet in store for the countrymen of Shakspere. Perhaps we may yet live to see the day when managers will be forced to seek out the writers who are really setting their mark on the literature of the age
when “starvation prices” shall have given place to a fair remuneration
and when the prompter shall have his share with the publisher in the best work that can be done for him by the best writers of the time.

Meanwhile, there is a large audience of intelligent people, with plenty of money in their pockets, waiting for a theatre to go to. Supposing that such an amazing moral portent should ever appear in the English firmament as a theatrical speculator who can actually claim some slight acquaintance with contemporary literature; and supposing that unparalleled man to be smitten with a sudden desire to ascertain what the circulation actually is of serial publications and successful novels which address the educated classes; I think I may safely predict the consequences that would follow, as soon as our ideal manager had received his information and recovered from his astonishment. London would be startled, one fine morning, by finding a new theatre opened. Names that are now well known on title-pages only would then appear on play-bills also; and tens of thousands of readers, who now pass the theatre door with indifference, would be turned into tens of thousands of play-goers also. What a cry of astonishment would be heard thereupon in the remotest fastness of old theatrical London! “Merciful Heaven! There is a large public, after all, for well-paid original plays, as well as for well-paid original books. And a man has turned up, at last, of our own managerial order, who has absolutely found it out!”