Intellectual Gymnastics

Intellectual Gymnastics

How Often Do You Take Out Your Brains to be Exercised?

A play is a sort of emotional dumbbell. An audience goes to the theatre much as it would go to a gymnasium, except that it wants its feelings exercised instead of its muscles.

There are very few more touching spectacles than that of row after row of eager theatre-goers, patiently waiting for something to happen to their emotions. Some are defiant. They set their teeth, adjust their faces to a sneer of quiet superiority, fortify themselves against any attack. Others go with their tongues hanging out. If it is a farce, they control their risibilities with an effort until the curtain rises. If it is a tragedy, they will be provided against any lachrymal emergency with pocketfuls of anticipatory handkerchiefs.

The only place where Anglo-Saxon reticence breaks down completely is the playhouse. In general, the Englishman or American likes to do his crying alone. He will lock himself in his own room, equip himself with smelling salts or a bottle of gin and a sponge, and have a good quiet weep. In the same way, he dislikes rising to high pitches of public hilarity. A reserved smile, or at most a genteel snicker is all he will permit himself in the presence of his associates. But under the sheltering darkness of the playhouse, he will be trapped into any extreme of emotion, and when the lights surprise him in his emotional decollette he will find fellow victims in sufficient numbers to restore his selfesteem.

Playgoers really care very little what the play does to them, as long as it does something. They do not restrict their demands to laughter and tears. Almost equally ecstatic heights are reached by those seeking a vicarious nobility in the person of Pasteur, or luxuriating in the terrors of The Last Warning or Whispering Wires, or thrilling with the sensation of an unaccustomed conversational brilliance with You and I or The Laughing Lady.

No remedy suggests itself for the indecent display of the inner man attendant upon playgoing. Even the suggestion of individual cubicles for spectators has its drawbacks. There is a certain satisfaction in getting together with your fellow men for a couple of hours of spiritual excitement, which segregation would abolish.

A plebiscite would be interesting as to whether the gentle exhiliration of tears or mirth affords most satisfaction to the emotional playgoers.