Heartbreak House
Men who had just read the news that Charles Wyndham was dying,
and were thereby sadly reminded of Pink Dominos and the torrent
of farcical comedies that followed it in his heyday until every
trick of that trade had become so stale that the laughter they
provoked turned to loathing: these veterans also, when they
returned from the field, were as much pleased by what they knew
to be stale and foolish as the novices by what they thought fresh
and clever.
Commerce in the Theatre
Wellington said that an army moves on its belly. So does a London
theatre. Before a man acts he must eat. Before he performs plays
he must pay rent. In London we have no theatres for the welfare
of the people: they are all for the sole purpose of producing the
utmost obtainable rent for the proprietor. If the twin flats and
twin beds produce a guinea more than Shakespeare, out goes
Shakespeare and in come the twin flats and the twin beds. If the
brainless bevy of pretty girls and the funny man outbid Mozart,
out goes Mozart.
Unser Shakespeare
Before the war an effort was made to remedy this by establishing
a national theatre in celebration of the tercentenary of the
death of Shakespeare. A committee was formed; and all sorts of
illustrious and influential persons lent their names to a grand
appeal to our national culture.
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