The Weekly Machen
This week, we offer a fine of example of Arthur Machen rallying the troupes. In this short article, the former actor weaved a convincing argument for a worrying public to attend plays, not only for their mental well-being, but for the survival of the art and its practitioners. Interestingly, this plea comes rather early during the conflict. It had been less than two months since Britain entered the war, but the urgent need for this call demonstrates the all-consuming attention the ongoing tragedy, still in tis infancy, demanded from the public.
Why We Should Go To The Play
by
Arthur Machen
September 24, 1914
A few weeks ago I was talking with a theatrical manager, a friend of mine, who runs companies in the provinces.
I had been out of town for some weeks, and when I get back I was somewhat surprised to find the manager in town.
“How is it you’re not in the country?” I said to him. “I thought you had several companies on the road.”
“On the first Monday in August,” he answered, “I sent out three companies. On the Wednesday night they were all back, and I had lost £250.”
“Then the war is going to be very bad for the profession?”
“There won’t be any profession by the time the war is over.’’
Now it is our business to make this dismal prophecy void. This morning Sir Squire Bancroft writes to The Times, thanking Sir Herbert Tree, Mr. Louis N. Parker, and others for their munificence towards the Actors’ Emergency War Fund.
Bishop’s Exhortation
The veteran actor speaks of the suffering which the war is bound to bring to those whose career is on the stage, and he refers to the exhortation of the Bishop of Winchester not to desert the theatres during the war. And he quotes finally the great reply made by Abraham Lincoln, who was reproached for going to the play in the dark days of the American Civil War.
“Well, it’s just one of two things,” said the great President, “I must either go to the play or bust.”
Of course it is easy to understand the point of view which makes people stay away from the theatre. There is terrible and bloody work forward; the nations of the earth are arrayed in battle. The newspapers publish long lists of the dead, of the desperately wounded; day after day comes a fresh story of the desolation that marks the track of the heathen horde, of the innocent blood that they have spilt, of the noble works that they have made into black ruins.
A Mistaken View
Day by day there sounds in our ears the wail of women and children, and, answering, the heroic voices of our seamen who went down into the deep cheering, as the waves closed over the torpedoed ships. One can understand the feelings of those who say that in such tremendous and tragical times the theatre is out of place.
This point of view is understandable; but it is altogether mistaken. Mistaken, first of all, for those who stay away from the theatre. The war is in all our thoughts, we buy paper after paper, morning, noon, and evening, in our anxiety to know what is happening at the front. When we meet we talk war and very little but war.
All this is inevitable; but all the more, then, should we—for the health of our souls and minds and bodies—take care that for a few hours daily at least our thoughts shall be distracted from the terrific actualities of battle and murder and sudden death. Lincoln saw the absolute necessity of the play to him. He was not merely an American citizen to whom the war meant life or death; he was himself the head of the Northern States, the very pivot on which success or defeat turned. For him, above all, the war meant overwhelming, all engrossing anxiety and apprehension; and so he went to the play, lest he should “bust.” Let us all take heed and profit by his example.
Playing for Nothing
And we should go to the play for a better and a more unselfish reason. At the best of times the theatrical profession is a precarious one; for most of those who follow it the downs are more numerous than the ups; any many a good and well-graced actor knows the sorrowful meaning of the word “resting.” This when things go well, or as well as they ever go; what now, when the war lies like a black cloud on our land and on our hearts? Well, as the Council of the Actors’ Association point out in the current Era, “owing to tours being abandoned there is at present great distress in the profession.” This is true in the country and it is in London.
There is to be no autumn drama at Drury Lane; there is to be no pantomime at the Crystal Palace, which is now in the hands of the Admiralty. Each of these announcements spells distress in large letters. And there are dismal rumours as to business is many of the London theatres now open. Here principals are playing for nothing, half-salaries are accepted by the others who wonder when half-salaries will become no salaries; and the dismal theatrical jest about the tremendous attendance of “the Wood family”—the Wood family means empty benches—has its fullest application.
Let us change all this. Let us forget ourselves and our anxieties, and remember the poor actors and actresses. Let us go to the play and keep distress from the homes of thousands.
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Thanks for this – it is fascinating!
It makes me realize how little I know of the contours of ‘drama’, professional and amateur, in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries.
We had an excellent talk at the Oxford Lewis Society from Kenneth Pickering in the context of his book, Drama in the Cathedral. He pointed out how almost anyone of us living now (this was mid-1980s) has probably seen more, and more good, acting than anyone up to the 1930s or so – with the rise of talking motion pictures and then television (I can’t recall if he said ‘seen – and heard’ where radio broadcast drama was concerned). In 1914 there was no radio to speak of, and only silent films. On the other hand, in 1985 Humphrey Carpenter published O.U.D.S.: A Centenary History of the Oxford University Drama Society, and I have the impression from, e.g., Edith Nesbit’s children’s stories, of a lot of ‘amateur theatricals’ and ‘play-acting’ at home. And here we’ve had Machen’s reports from time to time on assorted ‘festivals’.
In this article, Machen’s accent is on the professional theatre, but a lot of what he says applies more broadly – e.g., the necessary activity of actors (and everyone else involved in a ‘production’), and the interaction of actors and audience, must mean “for a few hours daily at least our thoughts shall be distracted”, in a way they might not be by private reading or listening to gramophone recordings.
By the way, Wikipedia tells us that Edward Stuart Talbot had been Bishop of Winchester since 19 April 1911 (where he would remain until 1923).
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