How the Theatre fared
Let us now contract our view rather violently from the European
theatre of war to the theatre in which the fights are sham
fights, and the slain, rising the moment the curtain has fallen,
go comfortably home to supper after washing off their rose-pink
wounds. It is nearly twenty years since I was last obliged to
introduce a play in the form of a book for lack of an opportunity
of presenting it in its proper mode by a performance in a
theatre. The war has thrown me back on this expedient. Heartbreak
House has not yet reached the stage. I have withheld it because
the war has completely upset the economic conditions which
formerly enabled serious drama to pay its way in London. The
change is not in the theatres nor in the management of them, nor
in the authors and actors, but in the audiences. For four years
the London theatres were crowded every night with thousands of
soldiers on leave from the front. These soldiers were not
seasoned London playgoers. A childish experience of my own gave
me a clue to their condition. When I was a small boy I was taken
to the opera. I did not then know what an opera was, though I
could whistle a good deal of opera music. I had seen in my
mother's album photographs of all the great opera singers, mostly
in evening dress.
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