16 - The closed shop
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 December 2009
Summary
Rumours circulating towards the end of the century of the extraordinary fortunes to be made by writing for the theatre had the effect of raising the expectations of countless young hopefuls and impoverished pensioners seized by the desire to stake a claim in this new gold-rush. A little before the outbreak of the Great War, Alfred Capus reckoned that there must have been between 7,000 and 8,000 Frenchmen and -women living at the time who had written shorter or longer plays performed before the footlights either in Paris or in the provinces, at public or private theatres, not counting the ‘thousands of others who have lodged manuscripts with theatre directors and are anxiously awaiting a reply’. Some confirmation of this statement is to be found in the recollections of Camillo Antona- Traversi, who was employed as secretary by Réjane after she inaugurated her own theatre in 1906. His most tiresome job was to go through all the manuscripts submitted by ‘unknowns’ – the dramatists who had already won a reputation, Bernstein, Porto- Riche, Henri Bataille, Romain Coolus, took their work directly to Mme Réjane; and he lists a few of the miscellaneous would-be playwrights whose efforts he was forced to peruse, knowing he would almost certainly have to write back politely rejecting them.
The retired schoolmaster living on a few investments and with time on his hands is suddenly gripped by the conviction that he has a hidden talent; the schoolboy forced to resit his baccalaureat curses his examiners and gets his own back by inflicting on the theatre reader five acts in verse – no less! This moneybags wants to prove to his wife that he can do it and commits a farce in the manner of Feydeau. […]
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- The Theatre Industry in Nineteenth-Century France , pp. 241 - 256Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993