Part 24 (1/2)

Theatrical rioting has greatly declined in violence, as well it might, since the O.P. saturnalia of disturbance, which lasted some sixty-six nights at Covent Garden Theatre in 1809. Swords were no longer worn, but the rioters made free use of their fists, called in professional pugilists as their allies, and in addition to catcalls, armed themselves with bells, post-horns, whistles, and watchmen's rattles.

The O.P. riots may be said to have abolished the catcall, but they established ”goose.” Captures of the rioters were occasionally made by Brandon, the courageous box-office keeper, and they were charged at Bow Street Police Court with persistent hissing, with noisily crying ”Silence!” and with ”unnatural coughing.” The charges were not proceeded with, but one of the accused, Mr. Clifford, a barrister, brought an action against Brandon for false imprisonment. In this case the Court of King's Bench decided that, although the audience in a public theatre have a right to express the feelings excited at the moment by the performance, and in this manner to applaud or hiss any piece which is represented, or any performer; yet if a number of persons, having come to the theatre with a predetermined purpose of interrupting the performance, for this end make a great noise so as to render the actors inaudible, though without offering personal violence or doing injury to the house, they are in law guilty of a riot.

Serjeant Best, the counsel for the plaintiff, urged that, as plays and players might be hissed, managers should be liable to their share; they should be controlled by public opinion; Garrick and others had yielded cheerfully to the jurisdiction of the pit without a thought of appealing to Westminster Hall. ”Bells and rattles,” added the serjeant, ”may be new to the pit; but catcalls, which are equally stunning, are as old as the English drama.” Apparently, however, the catcall, its claim to antiquity notwithstanding, was not favourably viewed by the court. In summing up, Chief Justice Mansfield observed: ”I cannot tell on what grounds many people think they have a right, at a theatre, to make such a prodigious noise as to prevent others hearing what is going forward on the stage. Theatres are not absolute necessaries of life, and any person may stay away who does not approve of the manner in which they are managed. If the prices of admission are unreasonable, the evil will cure itself. People will not go, and the proprietors will be ruined, unless they lower their demand. If the proprietors have acted contrary to the conditions of the patent, the patent itself may be set aside by a writ of _scire facias_ in the Court of Chancery.” To the great majority of playgoers it probably occurred that hissing was a simpler and more summary remedy of their grievances and relief to their feelings than any the Court of Chancery was likely to afford. In due time, however, came free trade in the drama and the abolition of the special privileges and monopolies too long enjoyed by the patent theatres.

After the failure of his luckless farce, ”Mr. H.,” Charles Lamb wrote to Wordsworth: ”A hundred hisses (hang the word! I wrote it like _kisses_--how different!), a hundred hisses outweigh a thousand claps.

The former come more directly from the heart.” The reception of the little play had been of a disastrous kind, and Lamb, sitting in the front row of the pit, is said to have joined in condemning his own work, and to have hissed and hooted as loudly as any of his neighbours. ”I had many fears; the subject was not substantial enough.

John Bull must have solider fare than a letter. We are pretty stout about it; have had plenty of condoling friends; but, after all, we had rather it should have succeeded. You will see the prologue in most of the morning papers. It was received with such shouts as I never witnessed to a prologue. It was attempted to be encored.... The quant.i.ty of friends we had in the house--my brother and I being in public offices, &c.--was astonis.h.i.+ng, but they yielded at last to a few hisses.” ”Mr. H.” could probably in no case have achieved any great success, but it may be that its failure was precipitated by the indiscreet cordiality of its author's ”quant.i.ty of friends.” They were too eager to express approbation, and distributed their applause injudiciously. The pace at which they started could not be sustained.

As Monsieur Auguste, the famous _chef des claqueurs_ at the Paris Opera House, explained to Doctor Veron, the manager, ”_Il ne fallait pas trop chauffer le premier acte; qu'on devait, au contraire, reserver son courage et ses forces pour enlever le dernier acte et le denoument_.” He admitted that he should not hesitate to award three rounds of applause to a song in the last act, to which, if it had occurred earlier in the representation, he should have given one round only. Lamb's friends knew nothing of this sound theory of systematised applause. They expended their ammunition at the commencement of the struggle, and when they were, so to say, out of range. It was one of Monsieur Auguste's principles of action that public opinion should never be outraged or affronted; it might be led and encouraged, but there should be no attempt to drive it. ”Above all things, respect the public,” he said to his subordinates. Nothing so much stimulates the disapprobation of the unbia.s.sed as extravagant applause. Reaction certainly ensues; men begin to hiss by way of self-a.s.sertion, and out of self-respect. They resent an attempt to coerce their opinion, and to compel a favourable verdict in spite of themselves. The attempt to encore the prologue to ”Mr. H.” was most unwise. It was a strong prologue, but the play was weak. The former might have been left to the good sense of the general public; it was the latter that especially demanded the watchful support of the author's friends. The infirm need crutches, not the robust. The playbills announced, ”The new farce of 'Mr. H.,' performed for the first time last night, was received by an overflowing audience with universal applause, and will be repeated for the second time to-morrow.” Such are playbills. ”Mr.

H.” never that morrow saw. ”'Tis withdrawn, and there's an end of it,”

wrote Lamb to Wordsworth.

Hissing is no doubt a dreadful sound--a word of fear unpleasing to the ear of both playwright and player. For there is no revoking, no arguing down, no remedying a hiss; it has simply to be endured.

Playgoers have a giant's strength in this respect; but it must be said for them, that of late years at any rate, they have rarely used it tyrannously, like a giant. Of all the dramatists, perhaps Fielding treated hissing with the greatest indifference. In 1743, his comedy of ”The Wedding Day” was produced. Garrick had in vain implored him to suppress a scene which he urged would certainly endanger the success of the piece. ”If the scene is not a good one, let them find it out,”

said Fielding. As had been foreseen, an uproar ensued in the theatre.

The actor hastened to the green-room, where the author was cheering his spirits with a bottle of champagne. Surveying Garrick's rueful countenance, Fielding inquired: ”What's the matter? Are they hissing me now?” ”Yes, the very pa.s.sage I wanted you to retrench. I knew it wouldn't do. And they've so horribly frightened me I shall not be right again the whole night.” ”Oh,” cried the author, ”I did not give them credit for it. So they have found it out, have they?” Upon the failure of his farce of ”Eurydice,” he produced an occasional piece ent.i.tled ”Eurydice Hissed,” in which Mrs. Charke, the daughter of Colley Cibber, sustained the part of Pillage, a dramatic author.

Pillage is about to produce a new play, and one of his friends volunteers to ”clap every good thing till I bring the house down.”

”That won't do,” Pillage sagaciously replies; ”the town of its own accord will applaud what they like; you must stand by me when they dislike. I don't desire any of you to clap unless when you hear a hiss. Let that be your cue for clapping.” Later in the play three gentlemen enter, and in Shakespearean fas.h.i.+on discuss in blank verse the fate of Pillage's production.

THIRD GENTLEMAN. Oh friends, all's lost! Eurydice is d.a.m.ned.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Ha! d.a.m.ned! A few short moments past I came From the pit door and heard a loud applause.

THIRD GENTLEMAN. 'Tis true at first the pit seemed greatly pleased, And loud applauses through the benches rang; But as the plot began to open more (A shallow plot) the claps less frequent grew, Till by degrees a gentle hiss arose; This by a catcall from the gallery Was quickly seconded: then followed claps; And 'twixt long claps and hisses did succeed A stern contention; victory being dubious.

So hangs the conscience, doubtful to determine When honesty pleads here, and there a bribe.

But it was mighty pleasant to behold When the d.a.m.nation of the farce was sure, How all those friends who had begun the claps With greatest vigour strove who first should hiss And show disapprobation.

Surely no dramatist ever jested more over his own discomfiture. In publis.h.i.+ng ”Eurydice” he described it as ”a farce, as it was d--d at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.” This was a following of Ben Jonson's example, who, publis.h.i.+ng his ”New Inn,” makes mention of it as a comedy ”never acted, but most negligently played by some of the king's servants, and more squeamishly beheld and censured by others the king's subjects, 1629; and now, at last, set at liberty to the readers, his majesty's servants and subjects, to be judged of, 1631.”

There is something pathetic in the way Southerne, the veteran dramatist, in 1726, bore the condemnation of his comedy of ”Money the Mistress,” at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre. The audience hissed unmercifully. Rich, the manager, asked the old man, as he stood in the wings, ”if he heard what they were doing?” ”No, sir,” said Southerne calmly, ”I'm very deaf.” On the first representation of ”She Stoops to Conquer,” a solitary hiss was heard during the fifth act at the improbability of Mrs. Hardcastle, in her own garden, supposing herself forty miles off on Crackskull Common. ”What's that?” cried Goldsmith, not a little alarmed at the sound. ”Psha! doctor,” replied Colman, ”don't be afraid of a squib when we have been sitting these two hours on a barrel of gunpowder.” Goldsmith is said never to have forgiven Colman his ill-timed pleasantry. The hiss seems to have been really a solitary and exceptional one. It was ascribed by one journal to c.u.mberland, by another to Hugh Kelly, and by a third, in a parody on ”Ossian,” to Macpherson, who was known to be hostilely inclined towards Johnson and all his friends. The disapprobation excited by the capital scene of the bailiffs in Goldsmith's earlier comedy, ”The Good-natured Man,” had been of a more general and alarming kind, however, and was only appeased by the omission of this portion of the work. Goldsmith suffered exquisite distress. Before his friends, at the club in Gerrard Street, he exerted him greatly to hide the fact of his discomfiture; chatted gaily and noisily, and even sang his favourite comic song with which he was wont to oblige the company only on special occasions. But alone with Johnson he fairly broke down, confessed the anguish of his heart, burst into tears, and swore he would never write more. The condemnation incurred by ”The Rivals,” on its first performance, led to its being withdrawn for revision and amendment. In his preface to the published play Sheridan wrote: ”I see no reason why an author should not regard a first-night's audience as a candid and judicious friend attending, in behalf of the public, at his last rehearsal. If he can dispense with flattery, he is sure at least of sincerity, and even though the annotation be rude, he may rely upon the justness of the comment.” This is calm and complacent enough, but he proceeds with some warmth: ”As for the little puny critics who scatter their peevish strictures in private circles, and scribble at every author who has the eminence of being unconnected with them, as they are usually spleen-swoln from a vain idea of increasing their consequence, there will always be found a petulance and illiberality in their remarks, which should place them as far beneath the notice of a gentleman, as their original dulness had sunk them from the level of the most unsuccessful author.” This reads like a sentence from ”The School for Scandal.”

In truth, hissing is very hard to endure. Lamb treated the misfortune of ”Mr. H.” as lightly as he could, yet it is plain he took his failure much to heart. In his letter signed Semel-d.a.m.natus, upon ”Hissing at the Theatres,” he is alternately merry and sad over his defeat as a dramatist. ”Is it not a pity,” he asks, ”that the sweet human voice which was given man to speak with, to sing with, to whisper tones of love in, to express compliance, to convey a favour, or to grant a suit--that voice, which in a Siddons or a Braham rouses us, in a siren Catalani charms and captivates us--that the musical expressive human voice should be converted into a rival of the noises of silly geese and irrational venomous snakes? I never shall forget the sounds on my night!” He urges that the venial mistake of the poor author, ”who thought to please in the act of filling his pockets, for the sum of his demerits amounts to no more than that,” is too severely punished; and he adds, ”the provocations to which a dramatic genius is exposed from the public are so much the more vexatious as they are removed from any possibility of retaliation, the hope of which sweetens most other injuries; for the public never writes itself.” He concludes with an account, written in an Addisonian vein, of a club to which he had the honour to belong. ”There are fourteen of us, who are all authors that have been once in our lives what is called 'd.a.m.ned.'

We meet on the anniversaries of our respective nights, and make ourselves merry at the expense of the public.... To keep up the memory of the cause in which we suffered, as the ancients sacrificed a goat, a supposed unhealthy animal, to aesculapius, on our feast-nights we cut up a goose, an animal typical of the popular voice, to the deities of Candour and Patient Hearing. A zealous member of the society once proposed that we should revive the obsolete luxury of viper-broth; but, the stomachs of some of the company rising at the proposition, we lost the benefit of that highly salutary and antidotal dish.”

It is to be observed that when a play is hissed there is this consolation at the service of those concerned: they can s.h.i.+ft the burden of reproach. The author is at liberty to say: ”It was the fault of the actors. Read my play, you will see that it did not deserve the cruel treatment it experienced.” And the actor can a.s.sert: ”I was not to blame. I did but speak the words that were set down for me. My fate is hard--I have to bear the burden of another's sins.” And in each case these are reasonably valid pleas. In the hour of triumph, however, it is certain that the author is apt to be forgotten, and that the lion's share of success is popularly awarded to the players.

For the dramatist is a vague, impalpable, invisible personage; whereas the actor is a vital presence upon the scene; he can be beheld, noted, and listened to; it is difficult to disconnect him from the humours he exhibits, from the pathos he displays, from the speeches he utters.

Much may be due to his own merit; but still his debt to the dramatist is not to be wholly ignored. The author is applauded or hissed, as the case may be, by proxy. But altogether it is perhaps not surprising that the proxy should oftentimes forget his real position, and arrogate wholly to himself the applause due to his princ.i.p.al.

High and low, from Garrick to the ”super,” it is probably the actor's doom, for more or less reasons, at some time or another, to be hissed.

He is, as Members of Parliament are fond of saying, ”in the hands of the house,” and may be ill-considered by it. Anyone can hiss, and one goose makes many. Lamb relates how he once saw Elliston, sitting in state, in the tarnished green-room of the Olympic Theatre, while before him was brought for judgment, on complaint of prompter, ”one of those little tawdry things that flirt at the tails of choruses--the pertest little drab--a dirty fringe and appendage of the lamp's smoke--who, it seems, on some disapprobation expressed by a 'highly respectable' audience, had precipitately quitted her station on the boards and withdrawn her small talents in disgust. 'And how dare you,'

said the manager, 'how dare you, madam, without a notice, withdraw yourself from your theatrical duties?' 'I was hissed, sir.' 'And you have the presumption to decide upon the taste of the town?' 'I don't know that, sir, but I will never stand to be hissed,' was the rejoinder of Young Confidence. Then, gathering up his features into one significant ma.s.s of wonder, pity, and expostulatory indignation--in a lesson never to have been lost upon a creature less forward than she who stood before him--his words were these: 'They have hissed ME!'”

It is understood that this argument failed in its effect, for, after all, a hiss is not to be in such wise excused or explained away; its application is far too direct and personal. ”Ladies and gentlemen, it was not I that shot the arrow!” said Braham to his audience, when some bungling occurred in the course of his performance of William Tell, and the famous apple remained uninjured upon the head of the hero's son. If derision was moved by this bungling, still more did the singer's address and confession excite the mirth of the spectators. To another singer, failure, or the dread of failure, was fraught with more tragic consequence. For some sixteen years Adolphe Nourritt had been the chief tenor of the Paris Opera House. He had ”created” the leading characters in ”Robert,” ”Les Huguenots,” ”La Juive,”