MY LIFE AS A DRAMATIC CRITIC
I had always wanted to be a dramatic critic. A taste for sitting backand watching other people work, so essential to the make-up of thissub-species of humanity, has always been one of the leading traits inmy character.
I have seldom missed a first night. No sooner has one periodical gotrid of me than another has had the misfortune to engage me, with theresult that I am now the foremost critic of the day, read assiduouslyby millions, fawned upon by managers, courted by stagehands. Mylightest word can make or mar a new production. If I say a piece isbad, it dies. It may not die instantly. Generally it takes forty weeksin New York and a couple of seasons on the road to do it, but itcannot escape its fate. Sooner or later it perishes. That is the sortof man I am.
Whatever else may be charged against me, I have never deviated fromthe standard which I set myself at the beginning of my career. If I amcalled upon to review a play produced by a manager who is consideringone 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 hasfed me. I praise that actor's performance. I can only recall oneinstance of my departing from my principles. That was when thechampagne was corked, and the man refused to buy me another bottle.
As is only natural, I have met many interesting people since Iembarked on my career. I remember once lunching with rare Ben Jonsonat 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 ayoung man with a nobby forehead and about three inches of beard doinghimself well at a neighboring table at the expense of Burbage themanager.
"Ben," I asked my companion, "who is that youth?" He told me that thefellow was one Bacon, a new dramatist who had learned his technique byholding horses' heads in the Strand, and who, for some reason orother, wrote under the name of Shakespeare. "You must see his_Hamlet_," said Ben enthusiastically. "He read me the script lastnight. They start rehearsals at the Globe next week. It's a pippin. Inthe last act every blamed character in the cast who isn't already deadjumps on everyone else's neck and slays him. It's a skit, you know, onthese foolish tragedies which every manager is putting on just now.Personally, I think it's the best thing since _The Prune-Hater'sDaughter_."
I was skeptical at the moment, but time proved the correctness of myold friend's judgment; and, having been present after the openingperformance at a little supper given by Burbage at which sack ran likewater, and anybody who wanted another malvoisie and seltzer simply hadto beckon to the waiter, I was able to conscientiously praise it inthe highest terms.
I still treasure the faded newspaper clipping which contains theadvertisement of the play, with the legend, "Shakespeare has put oneover. A scream from start to finish."--Wodehouse, in _The WeeklyBear-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 roastinga play on the morning after production, and then having another go atit in the Sunday edition under the title of "Second Swats" or "ThePast Week in the Theatre," which has made it pretty rocky going fordramatists who thus get it twice in the same place, and experience thecomplex emotions of the commuter who, coming home in the dark, tripsover 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 onwhat the poet Milton used to call "the nod." I remember Brigham Youngsaying 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 Iwant to take in a show with the wife, I have to buy up the whole ofthe orchestra floor. And even then it's a tight fit."
My fellow critics and I escape this financial trouble, and it gives usa good deal of pleasure, when the male star is counting the house overthe heroine's head (during their big love scene) to see him frown ashe catches sight of us and hastily revise his original estimate.