ires to escape from it, and there is scarcely an artist worth his salt
who has not at some moments, with the zest of truant joy, made things which
were not for sale. In nearly all the arts it is possible to secede at will
from all allegiance to the business which is based upon them; and Raphael
may write a century of sonnets, or Dante paint a picture of an angel,
without considering the publisher or picture-dealer. But there is one of
the arts--the art of the drama--which can never be disassociated from its
concomitant business--the business of the theatre. It is impossible to
imagine a man making anything which might justly be called a play merely to
please himself and with no thought whatever of pleasing also an audience
of others by presenting it before them with actors on a stage. But the mere
existence of a theatre, a company of actors, an audience assembled,
necessitates an economic organisation and presupposes a business manager;
and this business manager, who sets the play before the public and attracts
the public to the play, must necessarily exert a potent influence over the
playwright. The only way in which a dramatist may free himself from this
influence is by managing his own company, like Moliere, or by conducting
his own theatre, like Shakespeare. Only by assuming himself the functions
of the manager can the dramatist escape from him. In all ages, therefore,
the dramatist has been forced to confront two sets of problems rather than
one. He has been obliged to study and to follow not only the technical laws
of the dramatic art but also the commercial laws of the theatre business.
And whereas, in the case of the other arts, the student may consider the
painter and ignore the picture-dealer, or analyse the mind of the novelist
without analysing that of his publisher, the student of the drama in any
age must always take account of the manager, and cannot avoid consideration
of the economic organisation of the theatre in that age. Those who are most
familiar with the dramatic and poetic art of Christopher Marlowe and the
histrionic art of Edward Alleyn are the least likely to underestimate the
important influence which was exerted on the early Elizabethan drama by
the illiterate but crafty and enterprising manager of these great artists,
Philip Henslowe. Students of the Queen Anne period may read the comedies of
Congreve, but they must also read the autobiography of Colley Cibber, the
actor-manager of the Theatre