FullReads

Then, as to public amusements, we have to look quite as closely and distrustfully at the action of the reformers as we have at the action of the kind gentlefolk who are going to give us “Daniel Deronda” and the highly entertaining works of Mr. William Deans Howells in place of the dear welcome stories that pass away the long hours. Let it be understood that I do not wish to say one word likely to be construed into a jeer at real culture; but I must, as a matter of mercy, say something in defence of those who cannot understand or win emotions from such things as classical music or the “advanced” drama. Pray, in pity’s name, what is to be said against the commonplace man who hears an accomplished musician play Beethoven, Bach, or Chopin in his–the commonplace one’s–drawing-room, and who says in agony, “Very fine! Very deep! Very profound–profound indeed, sir! Full of breadth and symmetry and that sort of thing! Now do you think we might vary that noble masterpiece with a waltz?” Can we blame the poor fellow? Wagner represents a noise to him, and the awful scorn and despair of the first movement in the “Moonlight Sonata” only lead him to say, “Heavy play with that left hand. Can’t he go faster over the treble, or whatever they call it?” He wants intelligible musical ideas, and we have no right to begin “level-raising” with the unhappy and remonstrant man. The music halls in London are now under strict supervision, and some of them used to need it very much in days gone by. Personally I should suppress the male comic singer who tries to win a laugh from degraded listeners by unseemly means, and I should not scruple to draft a short Act ensuring imprisonment for such as he; but, so long as the entertainment remains inoffensive to the general good sense of the community, we need not weep greatly if it is sometimes just a trifle stupid. No one who does not know the inner life of the working-classes can imagine how restricted are their interests. Moreover, I shall venture on making a somewhat startling statement which may surprise those who look on the surface of things as indicated in the newspapers. The working-classes of a certain grade cherish a certain convention regarding themselves, but they do not understand their own set at all. If they heard a real mechanic or labourer spouting sentiment in the shop or the club, they would silence him very summarily; but the stage working-man, the stage hawker, the stage tinker may utter any claptrap that he likes, and the audience try to believe that they might possibly have been able to talk in the same way but for circumstances. It is not at any time pleasant to see people going on under a delusion; but, supposing the delusion is no worse than that of the man who thinks himself handsome or witty or fascinating while he is really plain or silly or a bore, what can the mistake matter to anybody? We smile at the little vanity, and perhaps pride ourselves a little on our own remarkable superiority, and there the business may very well end. The men of the music hall live, as I have said, entirely in a dull convention; and, if a set of thorough artists were to portray them exactly, no one would be more surprised than the folk whose portraits were taken. The gentlemen who are resolved to regenerate the music-hall stage persist in not considering the audience; and yet, when all is said and done, the poor stupid audience should be considered a little. If we played Browning’s “Strafford” for them, how much would they be “raised”? They would not laugh, they would not yawn; they would be stupefied, and a trifle insulted. Give them a good silly swinging chorus about some subject connected with the tender affections, and let the refrain run to a waltz rhythm or to a striking drawl, and they are satisfied in mind and rejoice exceedingly. The finer class of people in the East-end of London seem to enjoy the very noblest and even the most abstruse of sacred music at the Sunday concerts; but it will be long before the music-hall audiences are educated up even to the standard of those crowds who come off the Whitechapel pavements to hear Handel. We cannot hurry them: why try? Their lives are very hard, and, when the brief gleam comes on the evening of evenings in the week, we should be content with ensuring them decency, safety, order, and let them enjoy their own entertainment in their own way. A thoroughly prosaic and logical preacher might say to those poor souls with perfect truth, “Why do you waste time in coming here to see things which are done much better in the streets? You roar and cheer and stamp when you see a real cab-horse come across from the wings, and yet in an hour you might watch a hundred cabs pass you in the street and you would not cheer the least bit. You hear a costermonger on the stage say, ‘Give me my ‘umble fireside, and let my good old missus ‘and me my cup o’ tea and my ‘ard-earned bit o’ bread, and all the dooks and lords in Hengland ain’t nothin’ to me!’–you hear that, and you know quite well that no costermonger on this goodly earth ever talked in that way, and still you cheer. You like only what is unreal, and, when you are shown a character which is supposed in some mysterious way to resemble you, you are more than delighted, and you applaud a thing which is either a silly caricature or an utterly foolish libel.” The poor and lowly personage thus hailed with cutting denunciation and logic might say, “Please mind your own business. Do you pay my sixpence for the gallery? No; I find it myself, and I come to have my bit of fun with my own money, in my own place, at my own price. I have enough of workshops and streets and what you call real things; so, when I come out to the play, I want them all unreal, and as unreal as possible. Monday morning’s time enough to go back to reality.” As often as ever fussy reformers try to do more than ensure propriety in theatres, so often will they be beaten; and I am quite sure that, if any attempt is made to go too far, we may have on any day a repetition of the O.P. riots, which almost ended in the wrecking of the patent playhouses. Let us be treated like grown beings, and not as if we were still in short baby-frocks. Men resent many things, but they resent being made ridiculous more than all. The committees before which many theatrical managers were obliged to appear a few years since have done good in a few instances; but they have often played the most ridiculous pranks, and they have roused grave fears in minds unused to know fear of any kind. The peculiar prying questions, the successful attempts made to interfere with concerns which should not on any account be public property, the disposition to treat the people, whose mature wisdom is proclaimed from all political platforms, as little children, all combine to make the aspect of the general question not a little alarming. Would it not be better then, in sum, to abstain from raising levels to such a mighty extent, and to strive after improving all the amusements on a less heroic scale?