Читать книгу The Selected Works of Arnold Bennett: Essays, Personal Development Books & Articles - Arnold Bennett - Страница 89

There are eight or ten theatres in London under regular and successful managements who find the supply of suitable plays rather inadequate to the demand, and who are ready to buy suitable plays, no matter who offers them. Many times have I heard managers confess, after the event, that they had been “up a tree” for lack of a suitable play. I am acquainted with a number of instances in which first-class West End managers have bought plays from playwrights of no reputation and no experience. One manager once assured me that he attached no importance whatever to the name of the author of a play, and that, other things being equal, he preferred an unknown author, since an unknown author would be content with smaller royalties. “Your famous playwright,” he added bitterly, “wants all the profits.”

One of the most extraordinary mysteries about the modern stage is that more men are not tempted to make a bid for the splendid rewards which it showers on the successful dramatist. I have been admitted to some of the managerial secrets of a West End theatre second to none in renown, in success, and in the inclusive breadth of its repertoire. I have seen the book containing particulars of every play offered to that theatre. I was curious enough to count the number offered in the course of a year; it was just a hundred. The manager appeared to think that a hundred plays per annum was a lot, and he was astonished when I told him that in a similar period a first-class firm of publishers (with not a tenth of a theatre’s notoriety) will receive upwards of a thousand manuscripts.

The aspirant who sends a manuscript to a good West End theatre may be sure that it will be considered, and that if it contains even the germ only of a possible play, he will be treated with courtesy and consideration. He may have some difficulty in recovering possession of his manuscript, owing to the unbusiness-like habits which prevail in some theatres; but pertinacity will triumph over negligence. In some other theatres he will find an official precision which equals the precision of a City merchant. The somewhat morbid conditions of stage-life have a tendency to make certain histrionic lights rather difficult to deal with; in one or two cases the difficulty is extreme and acute. But on the whole the conduct of negotiations and the transaction of business generally in the theatrical world are rendered pleasant by long traditions of courtesy and good fellowship. The very best theatres are most willing to receive the advances of a stranger.