DRURY LANE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 October 1939, Page 7

DRURY LANE

LONDON’S OLDEST THEATRE TERCENTENARY YEAR? ASSOCIATIONS WITH THE PAST. That historic playhouses the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, is rather vaguely celebrating this year its tercentenary, writes John Shand in the "Manchester Guardian.” Before the historians and other knowledgeable folk jump forward with a how. why. and wherefore, may I as vaguely toast the occasion with an unhackneyed talc about Sheridan? When that dramatisl was manager of Drury Lane one of his more intellectual cronies quizzed him for producing there a wildly nonsensical drama by Monk Lewis. “My dear fellow,” replied the wit,'“kindly examine the treasury ledgers. When I see how much money we are taking I am tempted to turn "Romeo and Juliet’ into comic opera.” There are two moments at "the Lane" when I especially want to repeat this anecdote. One is when next the superior play-goer (who, as Mr Priestley will agree, rarely support the superior drama) compains that oneof the finest theatres in London is devoted to romantic nonsense set to music. The other is when I next enter the theatre’s superb rotunda and at the foot of the grand staircase (a staircase royally, theatrically grand, wide enough for a palace I note again the quartet of statues that face each other from opposite points of the compass. A REPRESENTATIVE FIGURE. Shakespeare, Garrick, and Kean seem always to be trying to stare poor Balfe out of countenance —but Balfe, that now-forgotten composer of ‘The Bohemian Girl,’ has as much right as they to be there. He stands as representative of all those popular providers to the popular taste, from the still • famous authors of “The Humorous Lieutenant,” the first play performed at Drury Lane, to the at present wellknown Mr Ivor Novello, today’s most successful Druryologist. The palmy days? At all times Drury Lane has seen all grades of entertainment, the finest plays, actors, and singers, and ‘the worst opera and the classics, melodrama, and menageries. When fate sends us again actors as big as Drury Lane again they will fill it for Shakespeare, if so inclined. And now about this question of the three hundredth birthday. The history of Drury Lane is the subject of a book now being written by Mr W. MacQueen Pope, who is its official publicist and whose family connections with it* stage go back to the eighteenth century. NOT INSISTED UPON. It is Mr Pope who likes to regard 1939 as in a sense this theatre’s tercentenary year; he does not insist on it. The Royal patent now held by the management is dated August 21, 1663. The parchment with its seal is in excellent preservation and bears Charles H’s signature. It was given to Thomas Killigrew, the King’s favourite. He shared this virtual monopoly of the London theatre with Sir William D’Avenant, the poet and dramatist whose experiments in stage spectacle made him the pioneer of English scenic design. Though Killigrew’s influence at Court was a powerful aid in getting this charter, which enforced a previous “warrant” given to them jointly in 1660 a better reason for the King’s gift was that D’Avenant already held a similar patent granted by Charles I in 1639. In this sense the 1663 patent certainly dates back another 24 years. This ori ginal document cannot now be found though it may exist. Mr Pope has often lamented this loss to me, for he could not give the exact date of the tercen ■ tenary. It was therefore with a smirk of satisfaction that I recently showed him a copy of this patent; it is in the 1735 edition, published by Tonson, of Rymer’s "Foedera.” Here in the twentieth volume of this huge collection of State papers copied by that industrious (and notably accurate) antiquary is the complete text of the document which was the seed of Drury Lane Theatre. It is signed by Charles I at Westminister on March 26, 1639. WREN’S BUILDING. As this tercentenary, if it is one, has passed, let it pass. No one at least will dispute that Drury Lane is Lon don’s oldest theatre or that it is the. senior member of London s three Theatres Royal. It is the oldest theatre building, because, though the auditorium is new, the main structure the third on this site, was built in 1812. antedating Covent Garden by 46 years and the Haymarket by eight years. The massive foundations that support the stage are even older. The walls are here over 20 feet thick in places, and possibly belong to the second Drury Lane, which designed by Wren, stood on precisely the same site. Drury Lane is also the oldest of the patent theatres as a theatre site. There was no Covent Garden theatre where the present one stands till 1732 oi where the Haymarket stands till 1721. But even the first Drury Lane was erected not far from where it now is by Gilligrew in 1663. the year he got his patent. Luckily we even know the exact day of the opening. A distin guished playgoer of the period records in his diary entry of May 7. 1663: “This day the new Theatre Royal' begins tract with scenes from ‘The Humorous Lieutenant,’ but I have not time to see it.” WHAT PEPYS WROTE. A pity Pepys missed the very firsnight at Drury Lane, but he founc leisure to take his wife and her womai. to the second performance. He doe* not like the play, complains that thr boxes are too far from the stage, the orchestra too far under the stage, and the pit aisles too narrow. He is alsc ashamed because his ladies are no' well enough dressed —a criticism hr doubtless kept to himself.

To quote Pepys is a reminder that one can draw on many of the bes' writers for reference through the cen furies to Drury Lane, for those who have.sat at its plays make up half the celebrities of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries —poll-

ticians, wits, royalty, 'and critics. A description of Drury Lane as seen by a child on its first visit to the theatre? Take up Elia’s essay on “My First Play.” an early nineteenth century audience at “the Lane” damning a play? Read the essay by Hazlitt, who was so often at this theatre as a London dramatic critic, which describes how Lamb joined in hissing his, own farce. A view of the business of running Drury Lane? Cibber’s lively book provides a first-hand account. A picture of one of the many riots there? Casanova’s memoirs hold a vivid sketch of the mob wrecking the theatre and making Garrick go down on his knees to beg indulgence. THE DRURY LANE GHOST. Of late the historic interest of Drury Lane and the architectural beauties of the rotunda and of such rooms as the spacious Regency saloon behind the circle has led an increasing number of people to ask to see the building, and occasionally a party is conducted round. Mr Pope enthrals his hearers as he guides them. He shows them Dan Leno’s dressing room; the hugc» machines, like a battleship’s engine room, that move the stage: the centre of the stage from the footlights to sec how perspective makes the best auditorium seem quite cosily intimate; thcballet room which, being under the stage, survived the fire of 1809, where generations of dancers have been taught their steps; the spaces in the iron rails outside the building where sentry boxes stood for the soldiers put there to guard the theatre after an eighteenth century riot: the private staircases from the street to the royal box and to the box for the Dukes of Bedford, ground landlords since 1663• the scarlet and lace and wigs of the footmen —the royal livery, once worn by the actors when they were his Majesty’s Company of Comedians and part of the Court as Gentlemen of the Great Chamber. He cannot, however, guarantee to show the Drury Lane ghost. This friendly apparition has been “seen” coming out of the upper circle bar and vanishing through what was once a passage to the stage by persons who know nothing of the odd discovery made by workmen about 80 years ago. While making alterations a wall was pulled down. Behind it-was a small room. It contained a table and chair, and in the chair sat a skeleton with a dagger in its breast. You may laught at the ghost, but the skeleton is a fact. An inquest was held on it.