117

Mrs. Katherine's Lantern.

(WRITTEN BY W. M. THACKERAY IN A LADY'S ALBUM.)

Begins singing of amore
And delire and dolore-
O the ravishing tenore!

"Lady, do you know the tune?
Ah, we all of us have hummed it!
I've an old guitar has thrummed it,
Under many a changing moon.
Shall I try it? Do RE MI * *
What is this? Ma foi, the fact is,
That my hand is out of practice,
And my poor old fiddle cracked is,
And a man-I let the truth out,-
Who's had almost every tooth out,
Cannot sing as once he sung,

When he was young as you are young,
When he was young and lutes were strung,

And love-lamps in the casement hung."

119

Music-Halls versus the Drama.

OUR Constitution has provided us with an ingenious contrivance for picking men's brains and presenting them in a more or less palatable shape to the public. A Select Committee of the House of Commons, in which men of every variety of opinion are represented, is perhaps the most efficacious means at hand for conducting to a practical and satisfactory issue an inquiry into any given subject. Invested with an authority against which it is useless to rebel, it can summon before it any one who may be best able to afford reliable information or express a competent opinion, or any one who may volunteer to put his own and his class's experience on evidence, or to lay his views, on one side or the other, before it.

One of these committees has recently been sitting to investigate the state of the theatrical licensing laws, which have for some time been the subject of dispute between the managers of theatres and of music-halls. Any question of public amusement touches all classes more or less, and extends itself indirectly into a wide range of topics, to each of which the consideration of the committee must almost involuntarily be drawn. The morality, order, and safety of the people, the education of their taste and feeling, the extension and culture of dramatic and musical literature, are subjects of so much general interest that it may be worth while to give a short summary of the blue-book in which they are fully discussed, before it is consigned with the rest of the progeny of last session to the dusty tomb, whence most of them return no more.

A certain kind of interest is attached to the committee itself. Members of the House of Commons, tired of dreary committees on dull subjects, must have hailed as an agreeable relief their appointment to a board at which they might have a chat with Tom Taylor or Charles Reade, with Fechter or with Buckstone. And the public had the chance of gratifying that peculiar taste for seeing in their everyday clothes, and hearing in their everyday voices, men to whom, in other characters, it had listened often with amusement and delight. But however interesting a discussion on the singular present social position of members of the theatrical profession might be, it is not the object of this article. I shall rather endeavour to give a correct idea of the nature of the dispute between the managers of theatres and of music-halls, already referred to as the origin of the Select Committee on Theatrical Licences, and with that end will briefly review the state of the theatrical law from the date of its first coming into operation down to the present time.

Supreme jurisdiction over all theatrical matters was originally vested in the Master of the Revels, whó derived his authority from the sovereign alone. The managers of the two patent theatres at Covent Garden and Drury Lane enjoyed for a long time an exclusive monopoly of his favour; but from 1660 till the passing of the present Act in 1737, disputes were constantly arising between them and the managers of minor theatres, who from year to year received licences under certain restrictions, but who sought by every means to encroach on the privileges of their patented rivals. The immediate cause of the licensing Act of 1737, 10 George II. c. 28, is by some attributed to a piece called Polly, written as a sequel to the Beggar's Opera, by Gay; by others, to a piece called the Golden Rump, both of them containing offensive allusions to the Walpole administration, and both of them suppressed by the Lord Chamberlain before they could be put upon the stage. Parliament, seeing at last the necessity of providing some legal control over the theatre, and a more extended system of licensing, gave in that year to the Lord Chamberlain the powers of censorship which he has since exercised with various modifications. Whilst constituting him censor of plays throughout Great Britain, it empowered him also to "grant licences for theatrical entertainments within the city and liberties of Westminster." The rendering of this expression, "theatrical entertainment," is at the root of the matter in dispute, and will be more fully discussed hereafter. 1751 an Act was passed, entitled 25 George II. c. 30, by which the Lord Chamberlain in his district, the justices of the peace beyond it, received the power of licensing houses for "music, dancing and public entertainment after 5 o'clock in the afternoon;" but these words were made to signify so much or so little, according to the different views held by the individuals concerned, that the spirit of the law, intended to protect the regular theatres from encroachments, was constantly broken with more or less impunity. For instance, by "dancing" the law meant dancing by the public; but the owners of the licensed houses tried to make it mean dancing by hired dancers for the amusement of spectators. In the same way the words "theatrical entertainment," were applied to strictly dramatic pieces, which by the spirit of the law could still only be performed at the patented theatres, but which less favoured managers sought to put legally on their boards, by the judicious introduction of some irrelevant songs and dances, and by a strained interpretation of the reading of "music, dancing, and public entertainment." So the evil of illegal performances grew, and became the source of constant confusion.

In

It was impossible that dramatic literature or histrionic art could flourish under a system so exclusive and yet so ill-defined. The two patent theatres alone still afforded to the highest ranks of the profession a field suitable to their talents. Tragedy and comedy could not exhaust the capabilities of the play-writers. Melodramas and farces and all kinds of illegitimate offspring were consequently produced, and the profession both of actors and

dramatic authors necessarily suffered at the expense of public entertainment. To provide, if possible, a remedy for this state of things, the Act now in force, 6 and 7 Vict. c. 68, was passed in 1843. It extended the limits of the Lord Chamberlain's jurisdiction to the parliamentary boundaries of London, attempted to define the words "stage plays," provided a code of rules to be observed by the managers and the public, abolished the privileges of the patent theatres, throwing the stage open to free competition, and gave further powers to the magistrates to license theatres and other houses beyond the Lord Chamberlain's district. Twenty-four theatres or saloons in all were licensed by the Lord Chamberlain in that year, to which number very few additions have since been made, although several of the saloons have been converted into regular theatres. On this fact the theatrical managers rest one of their main arguments in the present dispute that as the number of theatres has increased so materially since 1843, the public wants are entirely satisfied; and there can be no object in giving a licence to perform stage plays to all the proprietors of music-halls who apply for one, and who are accused of debasing the drama by adding or introducing entertainments of other than purely dramatic character.

The growing population of London and the increasing demand by the lower classes for the species of amusement that the music-halls afforded, gave rise to so brisk a competition that many kinds of entertainments were provided by the proprietors to gratify their audiences. The prices of admission to the theatres were high, and rules distasteful to many people had to be observed. The saloon managers gave the public of a certain class the entertainment they desired at a lower price, and allowed them to smoke, drink, and eat during the performances. Growing gradually bolder by comparative immunity, they evaded the law and began to give scenic representations, trusting to the ambiguity of the definition of stage plays. The profits of the theatrical managers fell off (they say), and they saw in the saloons a dangerous rivalry which was daily becoming more serious, and an action was at length brought by them against Mr. Strange, the result of which has been the present inquiry.

Such, then is a very brief review of the state of theatrical law up to the present time. It is admitted on all sides that as it now stands it is ill-adapted to these days; it neither sufficiently protects the drama from so-called degradation, nor does it allow sufficient freedom for the provision of a self-acting remedy; it creates the conflicting jurisdictions of the Lord Chamberlain and the justices, and does not define with sufficient distinctness the power of censorship exercised by the former, nor provide adequately for the due execution of the law.

The witnesses summoned before the committee may be divided into three classes: protectionists, moderate reformers, and thorough freetraders, and the following are the subjects on which their evidence was tendered :