A NATION AL THEATRE.
AN idea which always crops up once or twice in a generation, and always excites a certain amount of interest, has this year been started again. It is proposed to reform the Stage. A Committee of gentlemen has been formed to give England a National Theatre, a theatre, that is, whore a company of perfect actors and actresses may perform plays of the highest kind, plays which shall elevate and refine their audiences, as modern plays certainly do not. The project is as yet inchoate, but the leading notion of the projectors, so far as we understand it, is more busi- ness-like and practical thau such notions usually are. They see that they must not trust to audiences for their means, for if they do, they will have to make the attraction of audiences their main object, and so will be compelled to glide by degrees into the very practices which it is their intention to supersede. If they depend on the public at first, the choice for the National, as for every other theatre, will be between melodrama and burlesque, between sensa- tion and stripping. The Committee propose, therefore, as their first object, to emancipate their theatre from dependence on audi- ences, and to form a great fund, the managers of which shall' play the part which in France is played by the State,—shall, in fact, give the National Theatre a subvention out of subscribers' pookets. There is no doubt, we imagine, that if a sufficiently large sum, say 1200,000—that sum looks large, but its interest is less than £20 a night, which it is easy to lose—could be collected, the Committee might in the course of a generation or so succeed in part of their design. The offer of salaries for life would by degrees draw to the theatre the pick of the profession, a rigid discipline might be established, discipline directed against the absurd vanities and jealousies which now make of actors rivals instead of colleagues, and old plays might in twenty years be performed, as Moliere's comedies, for example, were performed at the ConteVie Francaise. The pick of the actors of England might be concentrated in one theatre. That would be a gain to our children, who would then have a chance of seeing first-rate acting; and to the profession, whose ideal would thereby be in- sensibly raised. Their highest prospect would be one day to be summoned to the National Theatre, they would have a motive for labour and study, and they would be sure, even if unconsdiously, to approximate to the style that theatre would have succeeded in creating. The tradition of good acting would be renewed and maintained, and the public would always be able to see the great old works worthily performed.
That would be a new and a great and a perfectly unobjection- able pleasure, and if any rich man, or body of rich men, are willing to provide it for the next generation, he or they will deserve and in time receive the cordial recognition of the public. They will have done a very great and a disinterested service to the community. If Mr. Cole were to head the movement, or instance, and find the money out of some surplus or surpluses produced by his international shops, he would deserve all the credit which at this moment he does not always receive, would directly encourage art, and might even, if he managed things well, increase the value of property in South Kensington. South Kensington would be just the place for that kind of theatre, which people ought not to visit impromptu, but after duo mental preparation, being just enough out of the way to make it an effort to get there, and therefore to deter people who want only to be amused for an hour. With plenty of thus, and great liberality, and very careful management, a splendid company of actors might be got together, and that would, as we say, be a gain to society ; but then, we suspect, it would be the only gain. Except by a slight influence on acting, a perfect theatre of this kind would not, we fear, exercise much influence on "the Drama," which would remain as stupid and as debasing as it is at present. The precedents are against success. The Parisians have the thing the Committee demands in perfection, and its existence makes no difference. Millie. Fevre may act till criticism is silenced by admiration, and Schneider will draw all the same. Indeed the tendency of the grand theatre would be to attract the great actors away from its rivals, and so throw rnauagers back more completely on their own resources, carpenters, acrobats, and pretty women. The mass of theatre-going mankind will not go to see "high acting" except as an occasional change. They are people weary with the business of life, tired of its comedy, and satiated through newspapers with its tragedy, and they want to be amused for an evening without having to thiek. They might as well play chess as go to see " Hamlet," however perfectly portrayed. Why they are amused by burlesque as at present per- formed may be unintelligible, but it is certain that they are, nearly as much amused as they are by the pantomime, to which they are supposed by the English social code to go for the sake of the children only. They will not give up spectacle, and light music, and lively though vulgar dancing, and amusingly silly puns, for a theatre organized on artistic principles and poetry which they can enjoy quite as thoroughly at home. They will take their country cousins perhaps, but for themselves, they will go, as the Parisians do, to the theatre which amuses them most with the least possible expenditure of brains. We do not believe that if Shake- speare were played in London by a company marshalled by Shake- speare himself, and trained up to his ideal, that the new com- pany would close a single London theatre. All it would do would be to draw an audience which at present does not go to the theatre at all, an audience which, not being weary with work, can find in appreciative criticism an enjoyable relaxation. John Smith, with too many wants and too little money, and twelve hours' work a day, does not find it ono. The theatres of the in- ferior eort may perish one day from i change in the public temper or in the public ideas of the tolerable, but.they will not be changed by any competition with an institution not intended to supply what they do, namely, an evening recreation which can be enjoyed by people who want to be half asleep. Nor do we believe that the National Theatre would do much to develop dramatic litera- ture. Plays would be sent them, no doubt, if they paid well, but not good plays. The capacity for making good plays is in our day diverted from making them into making good poetry, novels, and magazine articles. No sort of obtain- able price would tempt the authors of "The Ring and the Book' or "Silas Marner," to expend on a play which might or might not be accepted, and might or might not succeed, the tragic power which produced those works. They prefer to address their audi- ences themselves instead of through instruments who may be out of rapport with their minds, and at best can only interpret half their thoughts. Even if they made the effort, we question if they would succeed, if the public is any longer capable of appreciating tragedy except when softened, as Shakespeare's tragedies are, by familiarity from childhood. The single tragedy of our day which has been a great success, "Rip Van Winkle," owes that success to the exceptional, and as we think unequalled, genius of a single actor, and no subvention or organization can be relied on to pro- duce Mr. Jeffersons. Comedies, no doubt, we might have, but that is the direction in which the new enterprise would bring us least, for we have at least one good comedy theatre already. We doubt if we ever had anything very much better than the Prince of Wales's company playing Robertson, and though Robertson might be surpassed, the genius that would surpass him would in our days write novels. The old plays might be given perfectly, and that would be a great luxury ; but that is all, we fear, that the pro- jectors would secure, and that they would not secure in less than twenty years. We do not say that result is not worth the trouble and the expense. On the contrary, we think the perfecting of any art which admits of the development of genius, of any art, that is, not limited by inexorable conditions, is worth very great expense and trouble, nor at heart do we sympathize with the English reluctance to contribute State money towards the end, but it is of no use to secure a good thing by assuming that we shall secure other things which will not be secured at all.
The Drama is not dead, or likely to die ; but we suspect that its influence in the world will in the future be of a different kind, that acting will be one of the arts enjoyed by the few, but of little in- terest for the many. With them it is being superseded, like every other kind of intellectual excitement, by the Press, by the drama of real life, which every day, every improvement in the moans of communication, every change in the style of writing makes so much more vivid and sensational. Mrs. Davy kissing her murdered victim's lips, interests the masses more than Lady Macbeth. Except as a fine art, as a mode of express- ing and giving life to complex intellectual conceptions, no acting is so interesting as the demeanour of persons in real life in critical situations, and the journals are full to repletion of that, of stories more attractive Mau any melodrama, of events more exciting than any finale, of situations more complicated than any playwright ever devised. The teaching function of the Drama is gone, and it is as an art only that it can hope to live. As an art it is worth developing ; and if the Committee of the National Theatre can develop it, as they can if they can find the money, the patience, and the managing capacity, they will do a good work of its limited kind. But they will not reform either the theatres, or the drama, or the world.
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