PREFACE.
A great majority of the new plays are condemned
in the first performance, and many
of those which the public consents to tolerate
are but little esteemed; it has therefore been
thought, that, among the rejected pieces,
some might be found not inferior in merit to
those preferred by the managers; and that a
collection of them would enable the lovers of
the drama to appreciate the taste and judgment
with which the management of the
theatres is conducted, in relation to the refusal
and reception of plays, and how far the
assertion is correct, that the pantomimic state
of the stage is owing to a decline in the dramatic
genius of the nation.
In undertaking to supply this desideratum,
the proprietors of “The Rejected Theatre”
are actuated solely by a wish to vindicate the
reputation of English literature from the
charge which has so long been, in their opinion
unjustly, urged against the dramatic
department. They cannot believe, while in
every other branch of polite learning the
nation has been regularly advancing, that the
drama should have been as regularly retrograde.
In the prosecution of this work, they
expect to verify their own opinion, and to
convince the public that there might be a
better mode of ascertaining what pieces are
or are not suitable for representation, than
that which is now in practice. If the managers
of the theatres imagine that we are
instigated by motives of resentment, arising
from feelings of personal disappointment, it
will only serve to rivet our conviction that
men of intellects so mean and narrow ought
not to have an unlimited control over the
most exalted amusement of polished life; far
less the arbitrary power of treating, as their
caprice may dictate, the most difficult and
dignified production of human genius.
In truth, the conduct of the managers is
below our consideration. We aspire to introduce
some degree of reformation into a great
department of the national means of instruction,
and will rarely condescend to notice
those kind of shows which the patentees of
the theatres may think it profitable to encourage.
We are hostile to the principle of
monopoly, and our undertaking is levelled
against its effects on the stage.
Taste is so nearly allied to good sense, that
it is impossible to corrupt the one without
having previously impaired the other.
If the public taste be so corrupted, as
the apologists for the present state of the
English drama assert, it is a painful, an
alarming consideration, and more dangerous
to the future welfare of the country than all
those excrescences in the government, to
which theoretical quacks so loudly call attention,
and endeavour to exalt themselves by
offering to cure. But, as in all other matters
the nation never thought more judiciously
than it does at present, and as
through a long course of political events of
the most extraordinary nature, it has acted
with an admirable constancy of affection for
those institutions and principles which the
experience of all ages had demonstrated to be
the best, we will not believe that the good
sense of England is so far impaired, as the
public taste appears to be corrupted, judging
from the exhibitions of the stage. For we
know that the public has no choice in the
exhibitions,—that it is not allowed to prefer,
but only to condemn; and we do not think
that what it submits to receive from the
managers is generally admired. On the
contrary, in all circles, the theatrical spectacles
are despised: and we believe that the
theatres are indebted for their chief support,
more to the multitude of strangers constantly
in town, and who have no other way of
spending the evening, than to the established
inhabitants. Mankind in quest of amusement
are easily pleased, and crowds are always
generous. If the audience applaud the
show of the managers, it is because they are
disposed for amusement, and do not measure
their satisfaction by the merits of the performance.
A regular frequenter of the theatre,
however, can easily discriminate the
applause excited by excellence, and the approbation
bestowed on the endeavours of mediocrity.
The inclination for dramatic entertainments
is, in the present age, more general, than it
ever was before in this country. There is
not a town of any consequence in the kingdom,
without a regular theatre; few even of
the villages are unvisited by the itinerant actors;
and the whole of them derive their fund
of entertainment from the two metropolitan
houses. It must be evident, that so general a
predilection cannot exist without some genius
for the dramatic art being actively excited.
Although every other thing is supposed
to have acquired a private, a local, or a
provincial reputation for excellence, before
it receives the approbation of the embodied
intelligence of the kingdom in London,
it so happens at present, that the fruit
of this dramatic genius is brought before the
metropolitan public in its crudest state, and
that the audience in London, are obliged to
hear and see performances, which are not
worthy of being exhibited in the meanest
country theatres. The very reverse of this
might be expected. It might be thought,
before any play was brought out in London,
that it had received the full applause of the
provinces, and was honored with an exhibition
in the capital, as the final criterion of its
merit, and to confirm or annul the celebrity,
which it had previously obtained. The
origin of the present custom is well-known.
The theatre was first established in town,
and the country having acquired its taste
for the drama from London, has continued
under every alteration of circumstances, habitually
to draw from the same source.
The consequence is, that in the country the
literary department of the stage is much better
than in town, for only the best pieces are
acted in the provinces, while all the bad
are never heard of beyond the capital.
Why is this the case? why is there a different
rule for the plays and the players?
Few actors have the assurance to make their
first appearance on the London boards, and
still fewer of those who do so, ever afterwards,
attain much distinction in their profession.
Almost all the best performers, perhaps
it may be justly said, that all the performers
of the first class of every department,
have had their fame in London before them,
and have been summoned to the metropolitan
theatres, by the voice and curiosity of the
public. Might not some such rule as that
which governs the performers, be established
for the improvement of compositions for
the stage? The very last stock Tragedy properly
deserving the name, was originally
performed in a provincial theatre. We allude
to the Douglas by Home. Perhaps,
had it been first exhibited in town, its
celebrity would have been less; it might
even have failed, for the author would have
been convicted, on the first night, of his
plagiarism from the Merope of Maffei, but
the Douglas was brought out in a quarter
where Italian literature has never been much
cultivated.
It may be said that this example rather
furnishes a proof of the utility of the custom
of introducing the new pieces first in London.
We think not. For, notwithstanding that
the whole train of maternal anxiety in the
tragedy of Douglas, is a most remarkable
imitation of the same feeling in the Merope,
still the piece has great intrinsic merit, and
beauties which fully entitle it to all the fame
that it has obtained. Merit and beauties,
however, which would not have been, probably,
sufficient to have borne it up against the
rash flippancy of newspaper criticism, especially
as the mere charge of the plagiarism of
parts, would have been extended to the
whole. We are decidedly of opinion, that
the high rank which Douglas holds among
the stock pieces of the theatre, is owing in a
great degree to the celebrity which it had
acquired, before it was represented in London.
We even think, that had it been originally
offered to the London managers, it
would have been rejected; for it possesses
none of those boisterous incidents, which are
supposed by them, to be essential to tragedy.
Indeed the interest depends so much
upon the merits of the dialogue, that the
stage is more naked throughout the performance
of Douglas, than in that of any
other tragedy in the language. The proprietors
of the Rejected Theatre, therefore, conceive,
by regularly furnishing a series of rejected
plays, that authors, at last convinced
of the smallness of the chance of getting
any composition represented in London, will
have recourse to the provincial theatres; and
that in time the great audience of London,
will become the arbiters of the poet's merit,
as well as of that of the performers, without
being obliged to endure the bald disjointed
chat, which has so long been allowed to occupy
the place of dramatic dialogue.
If it shall appear by this work, that the
pieces rejected by the managers, are in general
as good as those which are successfully
performed, the public will be enabled to judge
how far the present system of management
ought to be allowed to continue; for, admitting,
that the expediency of continuing the
monopoly may be justified, which, however,
we do not think possible, it must still be
granted, that some alteration is requisite, in
order to accomplish that reformation in the
British drama, which the public have a right
to claim. We are little disposed to admire
any thing French, especially in what relates
to the consideration of public rights and
popular interest, but still we must acknowledge
that the mode of accepting and refusing
plays at Paris, is greatly superior to
what it is in London; and we think that if
the monopoly of the stage must be continued
among us, the public ought to obtain an alteration
in the system, as far as relates to the
authors. In Paris, the managers have no
voice, as managers, in the approval or rejection
of pieces offered for representation. The
author presents his drama, with a list of the
actors for whom the characters are in his
opinion best adapted, and when the piece is
read in the green room, the actors, severally,
give their opinions as to whether it ought, or
ought not, to be accepted. But in London
it is not known, by whose taste or judgment
the plays are approved or rejected.
The public will derive another advantage
from the establishment of “The Rejected
Theatre,” if the undertaking meet with that encouragement,
which an undertaking so greatly
national deserves. It will enable the world
to see how far the modern dramatic genius
of England is barren, as well as inferior. For
the million of London being restricted to
two theatres, it so happens, that for weeks,
nay months together, the same pieces are
repeated, by which the very essence of
amusement, variety, is almost banished from
the stage. It is alleged, that this is owing
to the popularity of the plays or of certain
performers, in particular characters; but we
do not think so. It is more owing to
the want of competition. Few plays have
of late years been performed, to which any
lover of the drama has returned on account
of the merits of the piece. But, until
the crowd is successively satisfied, the lovers
of the drama must abstain from their recreation,
or run the risk of being satiated with
a monotony of dullness.
Should there be no limitation to the number
of nights which the same play may be annually
repeated, since the public have but two
places of dramatic entertainment, to which
they can resort? We may frequent what
tavern we please, reside where we choose,
read what we will; but in our amusements
we must be slaves to the patentees of Drury
Lane and Covent Garden, as if the pecuniary
accidents by which those gentlemen became
the arbiters of the dramatic art, conferred on
them any inclination to study what was most
agreeable to the public, while they are actuated
solely by motives of personal emolument.
We have, it is true, no better assurance
for obtaining excellence in any thing,
than by leaving it dependant on motives of
private advantage, and the managers of the
theatres, as much as any other traders, no
doubt feel the influence of this principle.
But what we maintain is, that they are not
incited by the spirit of emulation; and that
the inhabitants of London have no greater
chance of being well served by having only
two theatres, than the strangers would be,
if the law had decreed that there should be
only two hotels for their accommodation.
If we expect excellence in the performances
of the theatre, we must subject the interests
of the patentees to the effects of competition.
It is very extraordinary that, although the
frequenters of the playhouse are probably as
numerous as those of the established church,
and that, although, of one kind and another,
there are probably as many theatres in the
kingdom as there are members of parliament,
no law has yet been passed, or even proposed,
for regulating this important branch of domestic
polity. To what cause, in so enlightened
a country as England, are we to
attribute the neglect of so great, so general
an institution—an institution, perhaps, as essential
to manners in a refined state of
society, as the church itself is to morals?
The stage has, in England, become almost
as great an organ of public instruction as
the pulpit. Is it proper that there should
be no law to regulate what is taught from
it, except the notions of one obscure solitary
individual, the reader of plays in the Lord
Chamberlain's department? It would be better
if some of those who are so loud and vociferous
for alterations in the state of the
government, would look a little more to their
private trusts; and evince that they really
possess some capacity for directing national
affairs, by the judgment and liberality with
which they promote the interests of the
drama—a department of domestic œconomy
which has more permanent influence on the
character of the nation, than the measures of
any administration, and which, in a moral
point of view, is infinitely more dignified and
important than the objects of half of all the
questions annually discussed in the House of
Commons.
When a third theatre was projected some
time ago, a dirty and fraudulent trick
was practised for the purpose of deluding
the country into a belief that the undertaking
was not wanted. A paper was published,
containing a list of the London
theatres, by which it was made to appear
that there were no less than thirteen, capable
of containing about thirty thousand spectators.
We ask every man of taste in the metropolis
if this be true. We ask even Mr.
Whitbread. That there are thirteen public
places, to which the inhabitants occasionally
go in quest of amusement, we do not deny.
We know, indeed, that there are not only
thirteen, but that there are thousands; for we
will not allow that the stuff and trumpery
which is nightly despised by the successive visitors
to almost every one of the places named
in that list, deserve more to be regarded as
legitimate dramatic entertainments, than the
jollity and junkettings of the ale-houses. On
the contrary, we do most seriously and conscientiously
believe, that there is more humour,
and as much elegance of dialogue, to
be met with at the latter, as there is either to
be heard, or hoped for under the present system,
in the performances of the former.
Let permission be given to the proprietors of
all the thirteen places of resort, honoured
with the name of theatre, to exhibit whatever
they please, and we shall cease to regard the
public opponents of the third regular theatre
as influenced by selfish motives. That
several of the minor houses have attempted
to introduce the regular drama, is a notorious
fact; and the inference from it is conclusive.
For their attempts were founded on
observations deduced from experience. They
felt that the senseless shows which they had
been in the practice of exhibiting, were not
relished by the public, and saw that the regular
drama was, after all, the only sure source of
emolument in theatrical speculations. Are not
such surreptitious endeavours to encroach on
the monopoly of the other theatres, a decisive
proof, that the public taste is not to
blame for the substitution of monstrous goblins,
and roaring madness, in the place of the
natural spectacle, and colloquial poetry of the
drama? When we are told by the mechanists,
and artists of the great playhouses, that
the public taste is so depraved, that only shows
and pantomimes can hope for success, let
them also tell us, why those houses which were
established only for such exhibitions, have endeavored
to abandon them, and why those
speculators who believed in the corruption of
the public taste, have been prosecuted for attempting
to retrieve the consequences of their
expense on shows and pantomimes, by the revival
of the regular drama? The persecution
of the proprietors of the Pantheon, has produced
a sensation on the public mind more conducive
to the emancipation of the stage,
than all the complaints of disappointed authors.
It has contradicted, beyond all power
of equivocation, the improbable assertion,
that while the public had grown more enlightened
in every thing else, it had become
more barbarous and foolish in its amusements.
It has decided that the bellowing
and sleights of carpentry and coloring, which
form the grand characteristics of the modern
English stage, are really despised by the
British public. It has established this truth,
that the theatrical monopolists conceive themselves
to have an interest in withholding rational
dramatic entertainments from the public!
But while we thus distinctly state our
opinion of the present mode of managing
the literary department of the theatre, in
justice to the managers we should add, that
we do not agree with those authors who complain
of contemptuous treatment in the rejection
of their plays. We cannot conceive
the managers to be actuated by any insulting
disposition, and when they send back a piece
with a laconic note stating, that they are of
opinion it would not succeed in representation,
they, undoubtedly, only follow a general
official rule, which they have found it convenient
to adopt. It is very true, that the expression
might be less seemingly arrogant,
and that it would be more palatable were
they to say that they thought the piece would
not serve the interests of their concern;
thus avoiding the ungracious appearance of
censorial presumption; but the essence of
rejection would still continue the same.
Whatever is established as a general rule,
ought never to be felt as particularly applied.
It is not to the terms in which
the refusal is couched, that offence should
be taken; indeed we do not see any cause for
personal offence at all. But that there is
something in the mode of judging plays
without submitting them to the green-room,
and which ought to be altered, we think is
indisputable. At the same time, we also
think that were authors to offer their productions,
in the first instance, to the provincial
managers, they would have a better chance
of being treated, more according to what
they fancy themselves entitled to, and run
less risk of disappointment in the event of
obtaining a representation. Surely there is
no dramatic author who would not think the
applause of a Bath, a Dublin, or an Edinburgh
audience, a great step towards distinction.
In our opinion, the audience in those
cities are greatly superior to the inhabitants
of London, in dramatic taste; for the standard
of excellence is higher in the provinces
than in the capital, owing to this simple and
obvious cause—The provinces see only the
best of the metropolitan entertainments,
and are wholly untainted with the effects
of witnessing the ordinary and condemned.
The inhabitants of London, in judging of
mankind, have, doubtless, some superiority
over those of the country, but this very knowledge,
which enables them to discriminate the
motives of action with more acuteness, impairs
the delicacy of the mental tact; and the
mortification which most of them secretly feel
on comparing their sense of the moral sublime
and beautiful with that of their country
friends, should teach them in matters of taste,
particularly in what relates to the living
representation of human actions, to be
less confident in their judgment. If dramatic
authors were sensible of this, before
seeking to gain the profitable applause of the
metropolis, they would endeavour to merit the
honorable esteem of the provinces. How
many of them would thus avoid the contempt
to which they expose themselves, by
seeing their essays exciting disgust at the
first appeal! How many of those who, probably
in consequence of the failure of their
premature conceptions, have abandoned the
cultivation of their talents, would perhaps
by a gradual progression from the provinces
to London, have attained fame and fortune
from those very persons who could not endure
their crude effusions! The public has no sympathy
for the mortifications of authors. On the
contrary, there is no other unhappy being
supposed to be a fair object of ridicule, but
a disappointed poet.
If authors could once be convinced that,
notwithstanding all their own fine sayings
about laurels and immortality, they are in fact
but tradesmen; or if the epithet be less disagreeable,
but a class of artists dependant
on the wants and inclinations of the public
for all their consequence, they would soon
acquire some of that consideration which
they claim, and which may perhaps be due
to them. Could they be inspired with a
portion of that spirit of incorporation, that
fraternal spirit, by which the booksellers and
players have become their masters, and could
they be taught to act simultaneously, they
would not fail of obtaining that influence in the
community, from which their jealousy of one
another is the cause of excluding them. At
present, authors, as a body, have no political
consideration. There is no reason in the
nature of things, why they should remain so.
How does it happen that painters and sculptors
are so much more important in society
than literary men, and in England form a
tribunal, whose awards guide the government
and the legislature in matters of art? Is it
not owing to their incorporation? Is the
nature of authors so much more mercurial
than that of painters and sculptors, that they
cannot be incorporated? Would the institution
of a literary academy do nothing towards
the reformation of the stage? If such
an academy were authorised to select the
dramas offered for representation, would the
arrangement not be more suitable to the
dignity and importance of the trust, than that
the power of licensing plays, should rest in an
individual, a whole year of whose talents and
merits is not thought worth half the value
of one night's performance at Covent Garden
theatre?
Had the claims, of “The Rejected Theatre”
to public patronage, been founded on the exertions
of those, who are interested in its success
as a publication, that patronage would have
been solicited with more diffidence. But this is
not the case. The proprietors are only
affording an opportunity for talent to manifest
itself, and for mortified genius to appeal
to the public against a sentence from which
there is no other appeal. Their share in the
merits of the work is absolutely nothing.
They have only constructed a building, and
opened it to the poets and to the world. In
doing this they are actuated by a great public
motive, and they are confident that the
public will support them. By their success
a reformation must inevitably ensue in the
exhibitions of the stage, and the most dignified
of all the amusements of polished society
will necessarily be improved. Diffidence
in such a cause would be affectation.
They expect the authors of rejected dramas to
furnish them with materials, and the lovers of
the drama are too sensible of the benefits that
must accrue to themselves, not to grant a degree
of encouragement that will rather induce the
proprietors to extend, than to renounce their
undertaking. Nor do they fear that the liberality
of the public will on this occasion be
contracted, and the ultimate utility of the
work estimated by the compositions in the
early numbers. It must be obvious to every
candid mind, that at first the materials are necessarily
limited to the communications of private
friends, and that unlike every other publication,
The Rejected Theatre may be expected
less deserving of patronage, at the beginning
than after it has been some time established.
The work is formed with the hope of effectuating
some reformation of the English stage.
Its merits will depend on the voluntary communications
of dramatic authors, and to deserve
them it must receive the indulgence, and
share the wonted generosity of the public.
