Whatever else may be charged against me, I have never deviated from the standard which I set myself at the beginning of my career. If I am called upon to review a play produced by a manager who is considering one of my own works, I do not hesitate. I praise that play.
If an actor has given me a lunch, I refuse to bite the hand that has fed me. I praise that actor’s performance. I can only recall one instance of my departing from my principles. That was when the champagne was corked, and the man refused to buy me another bottle.
As is only natural, I have met many interesting people since I embarked on my career. I remember once lunching with rare Ben Jonson at the Mermaid Tavern—this would be back in Queen Elizabeth’s time, when I was beginning to be known in the theatrical world—and seeing a young man with a nobby forehead and about three inches of beard doing himself well at a neighboring table at the expense of Burbage the manager.
“Ben,” I asked my companion, “who is that youth?” He told me that the fellow was one Bacon, a new dramatist who had learned his technique by holding horses’ heads in the Strand, and who, for some reason or other, wrote under the name of Shakespeare. “You must see his Hamlet,” said Ben enthusiastically. “He read me the script last night. They start rehearsals at the Globe next week. It’s a pippin. In the last act every blamed character in the cast who isn’t already dead jumps on everyone else’s neck and slays him. It’s a skit, you know, on these foolish tragedies which every manager is putting on just now. Personally, I think it’s the best thing since The Prune-Hater’s Daughter.”
I was skeptical at the moment, but time proved the correctness of my old friend’s judgment; and, having been present after the opening performance at a little supper given by Burbage at which sack ran like water, and anybody who wanted another malvoisie and seltzer simply had to beckon to the waiter, I was able to conscientiously praise it in the highest terms.
I still treasure the faded newspaper clipping which contains the advertisement of the play, with the legend, “Shakespeare has put one over. A scream from start to finish.”—Wodehouse, in The Weekly Bear-Baiter (with which is incorporated The Scurvy Knaves’ Gazette).
The lot of a dramatic critic is, in many respects, an enviable one. Lately, there has been the growing practice among critics of roasting a play on the morning after production, and then having another go at it in the Sunday edition under the title of “Second Swats” or “The Past Week in the Theatre,” which has made it pretty rocky going for dramatists who thus get it twice in the same place, and experience the complex emotions of the commuter who, coming home in the dark, trips over the baby’s cart and bumps his head against the hat stand.
There is also no purer pleasure than that of getting into a theatre on what the poet Milton used to call “the nod.” I remember Brigham Young saying to me once with not unnatural chagrin, “You’re a lucky man, Wodehouse. It doesn’t cost you a nickel to go to a theatre. When I want to take in a show with the wife, I have to buy up the whole of the orchestra floor. And even then it’s a tight fit.”
My fellow critics and I escape this financial trouble, and it gives us a good deal of pleasure, when the male star is counting the house over the heroine’s head (during their big love scene) to see him frown as he catches sight of us and hastily revise his original estimate.
THE AGONIES OF WRITING A MUSICAL COMEDY
Which Shows Why Librettists Pick at the Coverlet
The trouble about musical comedy, and the reason why a great many otherwise kindly and broadminded persons lie in wait round the corner with sudden scowls, their whole being intent on beating it with a brick the moment it shows its head, is that, from outside, it looks too easy.
You come into the crowded theatre and consider that each occupant of an orchestra chair is contributing three or four cents to the upkeep of a fellow who did nothing but dash off the stuff that keeps the numbers apart, and your blood boils. A glow of honest resentment fills you at the thought of anyone having such an absolute snap. You little know what the poor bird has suffered, and how inadequate a reward are his few yens per week for what he has been through. Musical comedy is not dashed off. It grows—slowly and painfully, and each step in its growth either bleaches another tuft of the author’s hair or removes it from the parent skull altogether.
The average musical comedy comes into being because somebody—not the public, but a manager—wants one. We will say that Mr. and Mrs. Whoosis, the eminent ballroom dancers, have decided that they require a different sphere for the exhibition of their talents. They do not demand a drama. They commission somebody to write them a musical comedy. Some poor, misguided creature is wheedled into signing a contract: and, from that moment, his troubles begin.
An inspiration gives him a pleasing and ingenious plot. Full of optimism, he starts to write it. By the time he has finished an excellent first act, he is informed that Mr. and Mrs. Whoosis propose to sing three solos and two duets in the first act and five in the second, and will he kindly build his script accordingly? This baffles the author a little. He is aware that both artistes, though extremely gifted northward as far as the ankle-bone, go all to pieces above that level, with the result that by the time you reach the zone where the brains and voice are located, there is nothing stirring whatever. And he had allowed for this in his original conception of the play, by making Mrs. Whoosis a deaf-mute and Mr. Whoosis a Trappist monk under the perpetual vow of silence. The unfolding of the plot he had left to the other characters, with a few ingenious gaps where the two stars could come on and dance.
He takes a stiff bracer, ties a vinegar-soaked handkerchief round his forehead, and sets to work to remodel his piece. He is a trifle discouraged, but he perseveres. With almost superhuman toil he contrives the only possible story which will fit the necessities of the case. He has wrapped up the script and is about to stroll round the corner to mail it, when he learns from the manager who is acting as intermediary between the parties concerned in the production that there is a slight hitch. Instead of having fifty thousand dollars deposited in the bank to back the play, it seems that the artistes merely said in their conversation that it would be awfully jolly if they did have that sum, or words to that effect.
By this time our author has got the thing into his system: or, rather, he has worked so hard that he feels he cannot abandon the venture now. He hunts for another manager who wants something musical, and at length finds one. The only proviso is that this manager does not need a piece built around two stars, but one suited to the needs of Jasper Cutup, the well-known comedian, whom he has under contract. The personality of Jasper is familiar to the author, so he works for a month or two and remoulds the play to fit him. With the script under his arm he staggers to the manager’s office. The manager reads the script—smiles—chuckles—thoroughly enjoys it. Then a cloud passes athwart his brow. “There’s only one thing the matter with this piece,” he says. “You seem to have written it to star a comedian.” “But you said you wanted it for Jasper Cutup,” gasps the author, supporting himself against the water-cooler. “Well, yes, that is so,” replies the manager. “I remember I did want a piece for him then, but he’s gone and signed up with K. and Lee. What I wish you would do is to take this script and twist it to be a vehicle for Pansy Glucose.”
“Pansy Glucose?” moans the author. “The ingenue?” “Yes,” says the manager. “It won’t take long. Just turn your Milwaukee pickle manufacturer into a debutante, and the thing is done. Get to work as soon as you can. I want this rushed.”