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File V.
A TRAVELLING THEATRE COMPANY.

Compiler's note:

  This is a memoir by a Danish writer of a season he spent in Sweden in the 1840's as an actor in one of the travelling theatrical companies that in earlier years had visited Skien. Despite the fact that some readers might find several of the incidents offensive, the essay is included because it offers a rare glimpse of the production conditions in these companies. Several of the persons mentioned in the piece, especially the two directors, were well-known characters in Skien during Ibsen's boyhood, because their company was in residence at several different times. The wife of one of them reportedly once gave dancing lessons in Skien after the company had temporarily dissolved.

Erik Bøgh. "Et rejsende skuespillerselskab." Erindringer fra mine unge Dage.
København: Gyldendal, 1894, 303-26.

What especially attracted me to the company was its plan: to travel in Sweden. That gave me the hope that I could rid myself of the clumsiness which every novice usually brings to the theatre, without the Danish public's suffering from it, so that, perhaps as soon as the next year, I could appear on this side of the Sound (i.e., the Danish side) with the proper skill.

After what I had heard about the company's management and talents, I had no reason to desire or expect any long-standing relationship with it. The fact that the season would be spent outside our own country aroused a suspicion that its personnel were not fit take part in a competition with the provincial companies who remained at home, but that did not worry me, since I fancied that the less well the others could perform, the greater prospects must there be for me. However, the information which I collected about its two directors did not sound especially comforting. It was said about the first, the rather well-known J.P. Miller, that he had been implicated in an affair, in its time much-discussed, but hushed up by persons in high places, concerning some degenerate social gatherings in a building adjoining the theatre. He had incurred from that a Consilium abeundi, with the consequence that he travelled to Norway. There he debuted at the Christiania Theatre, made a fiasco, took up journalism, and once again came into conflict with the police, partly on the grounds of a brawl, during which in self-defense he beat a driver to death with a yoke-tree, and partly because of another affair, which did not come fully to light, but still contributed to his being reluctant to go to Norway again.

His partner Julius Olsen was a real old-fashioned provincial actor in the heroic tradition, a serious person who always appeared, both on the stage and in everyday life, in the very highest-heeled cothurni, as the knight without fear and without reproach, but who, when it came down to it, could not conceal that he was a very ordinary plebeian. He dropped out of his noble character all the time, pronounced all foreign words incorrectly and swore like a sailor.

But what about the personnel? They were neither better nor worse than could be expected under two such directors, who into the bargain had booked their engagements after the most favored actors and actresses had been placed with better-established companies. Therefore I was not unprepared for having one thing or another happen to me in the coming season; why had I allowed myself to be engaged, if not to experience something, whatever it might be?

I certainly achieved that. As soon as I entered the hotel over in Skåne, where I was to report for duty, the adventures began. I had scarcely set foot across the threshold before I saw a tall and husky man in summer clothes and shirtsleeves slip past the end of the long corridor into which I had stepped, and in a moment a candelabra flew through the air after him. I was surprised and came to a halt, but before I could interpret the significance of this phenomenon, another projectile, a carafe full of water, came travelling in the same direction, at the level of a man's height, and smashed against the wall. At the same time the fugitive, who had eluded the missile by running into a room at the intersection, came rather calmly out of a door right beside me. I took him for one of the servants of the house and asked him if this was where the theatre company lodged.

"Yes indeed! And you presumably are our new actor? Well then, welcome. I am Director Miller...".

"Ah," I burst out, with an expression which must have betrayed my astonishment at seeing a director treated in such a manner.

Miller, who was a judge of character, instantly guessed my thoughts. "Do I perceive that you are frightened by these tricks?" he asked smilingly, with a little pat on the shoulder.

I could not deny it, and so he reassured me with the assertion that it did not mean anything. "There is a young man here with the company, who sometimes expresses himself in that extravagant way. In other respects he is a splendid fellow, who does not mean any harm by the ruckus he makes," he continued explaining.

This benign interpretation astonished me no less than the bombardment itself, since if the carafe had hit him it would have had the same effect whether it had been sent with good intentions or evil, and therefore I cannot deny that I got a marvellous impression of what was considered fun and what was taken seriously in this company.

At the evening meal I met the rest of the actors and actresses, and here that impression was fully corroborated. Between these gentlemen and ladies a confidence and naturalness prevailed which I had never believed could develop between people who had seen each other for the first time fairly recently, and it was obvious that the few days in which the company had been gathered before my arrival must have been sufficient to eradicate every trace of shyness. Nobody thought to weigh his words; on the contrary, a tacit agreement had evidently been made: that every expression must be several degrees stronger than its significance.

I was received immediately as a fellow conspirator, to whom by reason of the common shipwreck one could without hesitation show absolute confidence, and in the beginning they explained to me, in the adopted unreproduceable jargon, the matter of my first adventure. Miller was known always to favor (or, as his less gifted co-director called it: "favoritize") one or the other of the actors in a rather reckless fashion. The party in question was not merely showered with presents and invitations, but also from the moment he became the director's favorite he was named as the company's absolute juvenile lead, he got all the rewarding roles and had permission to reject all those which he did not like. In return for all these splendors the favorite had to endure the annoyances which were an accompaniment of the patron's peculiarities, and among these there was one which sometimes could be rather embarrassing for the favored hero and lover. The director, who was a bachelor by necessity and a woman-hater on principle, watched over his protégé with Argus-eyed jealousy, so that he should not fall into the hands of any of the "accursed defective creatures," his pet-name for the ladies! Now it had just occurred, that the watched-over young man had displayed, in a little-too-obvious a fashion, his interest in the company's youngest and prettiest female artist: a girl scarcely eighteen years old, who was present and enjoyed herself rather well during the critique. As for the matter in question, it was one of the rather frequent skirmishes between the director and his favorite, and the former's cynical scorn had as usual caused the latter to go berserk, and throw whatever he wanted at him, whereupon he had taken flight.

"Think, how unlucky, that he (i.e., the writer) did not get hit in the neck by the carafe!" burst out one of the ladies.

"But then I should have been doomed," I interjected.

"Yes, surely a lucky break!" it sounded in a chorus, continuing in the jargon.

"But where is the wild berserker now?" I asked.

"Naturally, with his friend and patron," answered everyone.

"Every time, after there has been a kind of scene between them, the director always gives an elegant supper with two place settings, and then the bagatelle is forgotten.

I looked over astonished at the young girl who had interfered with the director's friendship.

"Yes, just wait! It will not stay that way," she said with a triumphant smile.

"Watch out, my girl!" The company's old prompter dropped into the conversation to warn her. "You cannot best the director, and he is capable of anything. If you fall out with him, then you will immediately get your return ticket, and you must not imagine that his friend will lift a finger to keep you!"

"I say: just wait!" continued the young girl, who no doubt counted on being able to prevail.

Probably she attempted to do just that, but not many nights later there was a confrontation in the lover's room between the director and her, and the next day she went home to Denmark, and without any carafes being broken over it.

Despite the fact that this little event is far from being one of the most typical, I suppose it is sufficient to give an impression of the tone and the life of this artistic society, and therefore I believe that it might spare me from noting some of the more drastic ones.

Similarly I hope I can spare my readers a description of the individual members of the company, since none of them had significance for my life's story. I can testify to this: that both on the male and on the female side they belonged to the true bohemia. They were good-natured, friendly, carefree and amazingly irresponsible children of the moment, who all together were more-or-less rebelling against their past and "let the violet see to their future." No great dramatic talent was being wasted in any of them, but even if there had been, it would have been almost impossible for it to manifest itself under the given circumstances. Even though with one exception we were all not much more than novices, there was nothing which resembled instruction, and the rehearsals, of which never more than three were held of even the most difficult pieces, limited themselves to a demonstration of entrances and exits and a reeling off of speeches without corrections or guidance. As far as the distribution of roles was concerned, it was almost unalterably predetermined. The aforementioned juvenile lead was the obvious choice for all the best younger roles. If there were two lovers or one serious lover and a bon-vivant in the same piece, the young actors never got any satisfaction from that, since the pathetic director took one, and then it was a matter of catch-as-catch-can how the uncle, servant, notary, walk-on, and similar small roles would be divided among them.

The situation was the same with the female roles. The best role, whether it was a tragic heroine, an ingenue, a soubrette, a chaperone or a comic matron, was always destined for the director's wife, except that she was a little, insignificant person, who did not put herself out in the theatre at all. As a rule it was difficult enough with the few female talents to fill the few roles in a piece, but if there were for example a woman-friend too many, then they wrote down her speeches in a letter, and if the author required "a girl" where one could not be had, then without further ado they put down "a servant" on the program. When one played "Aprilsnarrene," it was completely impossible to get "Madam Rar's" role assigned, when neither the wife, the young woman, nor the two young girls could double it, and the company had only four actresses. But what difference did that make? Just as easily as one struck the four quartet- singers, one could let little Trine's father meet for the exam instead of her mother, and in that way I got the opportunity to portray: "Mr. Rar, fruit and wild-flower merchant."

When we had come somewhat farther into the country, and as a corollary farther away from our homeland, so that it was likely that the personnel did not have the money to leave the directors and travel back to Denmark, they called a general meeting, in which they offered a kind of balance sheet of their income and expenses in the foregoing weeks, which showed that if the attendance did not get better, it would be impossible for them to meet the stipulated payroll. Therefore they offered us the same conditions that travelling companies usually had: "to play on shares." Miller would have an extra share before the reckoning, for directing and keeping the accounts, as would Olsen, who owned the wardrobe and the repertoire, but the rest of us would fraternally share the balance in equal parts. At this juncture there was not much point in objecting, since they could not keep to the contracts. Besides, these had been issued by the old ex-pastor on behalf of the directors, and both of them explained that they did not regard themselves as bound by the commitments he had imposed upon them, so there was "nothing written" which assured us the regular salaries. Besides, what could we do to them? "Where nothing is,..." etc.

In any case this much was known: the manger was empty, and everybody knew what usually followed from that. ("When the manger is empty the horses bite.") It did not fail to happen here, either. The words that were exchanged were neither gentle nor elegant, and when, as they say, one thing led to another, it was not long before it came to hand-to-hand combat. The large, robust Miller had taken a firm grip on the chest of a slender young actor with his left hand, and his right was already lifted to strike a blow, when the actress who for the time being was engaged to the threatened youth suddenly yanked up one of the windows and with a tearing shriek shouted: "Help! Help!"

That shriek changed the situation instantly. The tumult ceased, and Miller released his victim in order to yank the noisy lady away from the window. A little pause set in, and now our tragic second director took the opportunity to present a pathetic interlude. He stepped forward into the middle of the floor and let his head fall as deeply down on his breast as possible, while he let out three long, deep sighs, whereupon he suddenly heaved his face and hands up towards the ceiling and declaimed:

  "So at last it must come to this! For thirty years now I have been a Scandinavian artist and, if I may say so, a Scandinavian cavalier! Until this day there was not a blot on my name. Young lady! What I have fought for with honor and nobility for thirty years you have destroyed in an instant. Now, may the devil burn me, I would not give two shillings for my good name and reputation."

This incomparable speech had an irresistibly comic effect. It was only the general mood of despondency which prevented it from being taken with deserved applause. I, who had been careful not to say a word during the whole proceedings, and possibly therefore was closest to being regarded as a representative of the absent well- intentioned public, did not have sufficient control over my facial expressions to be able completely to conceal a suppressed laugh over the director's correct appraisal of his name and reputation, and I should have had that (ie., self-control), since I saw clearly that my quiet amusement wounded him more than the others' horse laughs. I had now fallen out with one of the band's chiefs.

The next day the threatened actor showed me an indescribably rude letter he wanted to send to Miller. I advised him against it as altogether unnecessary, but when that did not help, offered at least to edit or rewrite the most injurious phrases. The same thing could after all be intimated in a more careful form, which did not expose the letter writer to the unpleasantnesses which he otherwise would be able to expect. There was for example no risk in expressing himself thus and so.... In short: my warnings and advice were followed.

In the evening, before the performance, as we were sitting in the dressing room and making ourselves up, Miller was in a good mood, as if nothing had happened. In the middle of a conversation with the theatre's tailor he suddenly turned around to my comrade with the words:

"It is true: thanks for the letter: it has amused me. He writes well!"

The letter writer made no answer to his question about what it meant, and I could not very well inject myself into the affair, but I understood immediately that the keen-minded director had guessed what other "he" had embellished the letter's style. I had now accordingly fallen into disfavor with both the chiefs, and my repertoire came to bear witness of that.

It was always the smallest and least significant roles that fell to my lot. If ever I did get a larger role, it was always an unsympathetic character, like Lord Melville in Kean and similar gentlemen, who come on the stage merely in order to be abused. Even if I did get small roles, I still could not complain that they were too few, since it regularly happened that I got three or four in the same piece, for example an old servant in the first act, a young servant in the second and third acts, the old servant again in the fourth and a notary in the fifth.

The presentation of Hagbarth og Signe (by Oehlenschlæger) was a typical production of that kind. Our leading lover had ordered this tragedy, which had not been presented by us earlier, for a benefit performance, and the role assignments were: that the half-century-old Olsen would play "Young Hagbarth;" his ugly little wife: beautiful Signe; the beneficiary: Alger; Miller: Hamund, etc. To me remained the yeomen of the guard Grim and Erik together with the prison guard combined into one character.

When we played on shares, everyone had to furnish himself with the costume pieces which were not found in the wardrobe, and it owned only the remains of a suit of armor, which naturally Hagbarth had to have. The beneficiary, who in Alger's role appears suddenly "armed from head to toe in a new gleaming suit of armor, with helmet grating lowered," had to order his armor, which obviously was reduced to a helmet and coat of mail or rather storm-hat and breastplate. The words "arm-leathers and mail-stockings" were struck in the dialogue, and it was delegated to the town's tinsmith to equip him, Alf and Hamund.

It was also ordered that I procure myself the helmet and armor for the scene in the second act where the yeoman enters from the battle; when I answered that I would create armor made out of cardboard, which I hoped would be strong enough to last for the few evenings in which the tragedy would be performed by us, Hagbarth's aforementioned prospective portrayer answered:

"Just do not let it look as if everything is home-made!"

"If anything it will be too fine rather than too simple," I maintained.

"Don't be shy! By all means make it as beautiful as you can!" he continued scornfully, and I responded to his exhortation a trifle ironically with the promise that I would do my best to exceed his expectations.

I had a hunch that a tinsmith who was accustomed to making only gutters and bathtubs would not be able to supply especially practical helmets, breastplates and shields, and the good small-town craftsman did not disappoint my expectation. It was not his fault that the helmets turned out to resemble a cross between storm-hats and baking tins, the coats of mail a kind of self-cooker, and the shields...; he had done his best and delivered sound tinsmith's- work. He was not a weaponsmith. I certainly was not either, but I had a concept of how a suit of armor was supposed to look, and had some skill in cardboard construction. Besides, I was offended that I had gotten the little yeoman-role and was being required to make my costume as attractive as possible; accordingly I made for myself a complete suit of shining armor, covered with light-blue bronzed paper with silver ornaments on the breastplate and silver borders on all the joints, a helmet with a silver crest and silver grating and a corresponding shield.

Of course it was altogether unreasonable to equip a yeoman in such a fashion, when the king was so poorly armed, but in this company what was not unreasonable! The presentation of this play with the given talents was an insult to the public, and the order to procure costumes, for which we would never again have any use, was altogether inconsiderate towards the personnel, especially towards that part of it who were excluded from the rewarding roles. I for my part had now decided to make my yeoman into a rewarding role, and besides had nothing against meeting the management's chicanery with my own.

The benefit performance drew a full house. Oehlenschlæger's name was on the program, after all, and in a tragedy by the great poet the audience expected fencing, processions and everything that belonged to "grand spectacle." Their expectations were in vain, however. The beneficiary, as the young Prince Alger, who had forged himself a costume of tempered steel, about which his character asserts: "Not even Thor in Thrudvang has a better suit of armor," had to appear in the horribly defective casing made by the tinsmith, and all the rest of the players were equipped with corresponding shabbiness, and there was no trace either of procession or of fencing either on horseback or on foot.

Worse yet was the fact that the iambic dialogue, with its many archaisms and inversions, which in any case was delivered in less than correct Danish and partly with less than distinct voices, was practically incomprehensible to the Swedish provincial public. It was therefore not strange that the first act was presented in solemn silence, and that Director Hagbarth, when the curtain fell in utter silence, expressed his indignation that one "should play a masterpiece to such sleepyheads!"

In the second act, when the skald Halloge, with Erik and the rest of the warriors who have taken part in the battle where Alf has fallen, come back from the duel, the management's tactic to make the strife appear to be as bloody as possible had been to leave all the warriors with the exception of Erik behind on the battlefield. Accordingly I entered alone with the old singer, who sang Alf's death-poem. Probably the shining armor, which I had not worn in the first act, and which put all the rest of the costumes to shame, had allowed the audience to be misled into taking me for a main character in the coming part of the unknown play, and when Erik suddenly appeared as the skald's noble defender against the queen's fury, and after reciting the pathetic speech about ingratitude towards poets, followed him out carrying his harp, a thunder of applause broke out, which was all the stronger in comparison with the whole foregoing silence.

When I came offstage I was met by Director Olsen, who almost choked by bitterness paced back and forth like a lion in his cage and greeted me ironically with the complimentary words: "That is what I call a masterpiece. You are, the devil break me, a great artist, the greatest comic player I have ever seen. Just now I, who in thirty years have played Hagbarth to thunderous approval in all three Nordic kingdoms, have given one of my best scenes, without one hand having stirred for me; all the main characters have been onstage and gone off without applause; the public slept until it snored! But then you come on in a lousy little yeoman-role and speak a miserable exit speech of 10 lines -- and immediately the house breaks out clapping, so that the theatre shakes! I reckon, the devil crush me, you are such a master at playing small roles, that you will never get a bigger one as long as I am director!"

That was a compliment as well, even though it applied more to my armor-making than to my acting talent, and I must say that the directors with rare punctiliousness carried out the offer of exemption from all larger roles. It was only in the relatively few instances when the actors playing the main characters were sick, that I appeared as anything other than respondents, but in such emergencies there was no specialty in which they hesitated to allow me to double for the infirm, no matter how long the role was, or how short the time I had to learn it.

When they would assign me to these roles as understudy, which they were obliged to let me play "on the grounds of not having anybody else," all the same I could not complain that my repertoire was too small, or even less that it was too monotonous. Not counting the regular roles, which boiled down to "making announcements and bringing letters in," I had the opportunity to test my abilities in approximately 30 roles, which included nearly all fields: older figures like dignified fathers, villainous userers and old comics, younger characters like the wild man Alaster (Ørkenens Søn) and one of the elegant lords in Kvækeren og Dandserinden -- seducers like Melville (Kean) and miserable creatures like Ernest in De Danske i Paris. In Jeppe paa Bjerget I played on the one hand Lakaj, on the other hand doctor, bailiff's wife and judge. Everything went according to the formula in En Komedie i det Grønne:

We play large, we play small,
And we play everything equally well!

I scarcely need to mention, that at first I noticed most clearly the mistakes and flaws of others, but only later and with greater difficulty grasped what I myself expressed, since naturally it was the same with me as with all actors: I saw nothing of my own acting, but I was only conscious of the effort, while with cold criticism I could judge what the others achieved. Nevertheless I had a feeling that my self-criticism was not as myopic as it is in most theatre-folk. I soon became conscious that I had a rather good stage presence, spoke a pure Danish, had a flawless voice and understood how to make myself up. I also believed I had a more correct diction than most, and that I had a very quick apprehension and a reliable memory, but there my gifts for the stage ended. The most important ones escaped me. I lacked the confidence which is the precondition for one's being able to give himself away completely in the situation and express the passions with full power. I lacked the fertile wit, which fills out the exaggerated contours in the comic's speeches, expressions and movements, so that the character becomes natural and believable and the liveliness contagious. Finally, because of the small and restricted circumstances in which I had lived, I lacked the freedom and absence of shyness in behavior, which as a rule one acquires only by long practice, if one ever achieves it! Therefore the greatest hope I gave myself for a future in the theatre, was approximately that I could become a skilled and experienced actor in some years, and with the acquaintance I already had with the dark side of theatre-life, such a prospect was not especially tempting. Even before it drew towards the end of the season I was completely cured of my theatrical illusions and in agreement with myself that I must try my luck in another way, but which? Of that I had no inkling.

The time passed, or rather ran quickly during constant travels and small adventures à la Bohême with the company. The matter of the shares dictated that the net income declined as the evenings grew lighter; soon the directors could no longer agree on the reckoning of the accounts, and Miller, who as he himself admitted was economically independent with the aid of an annual subsidy from Christian the Eighth, left the company first. Shortly afterward our second director followed his example and took with him the repertoire and the wardrobe. So there we were, up in Vestergötland, most of us without money for the journey home.

There was now no choice but to give a benefit performance with a repertoire which we could play without a promptbook and in our own clothes. That brought in the necessary money. This was delivered in the evening to the travel fund and at 7 o'clock the next morning the departure would take place.

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The materials on this website are © copyrighted, and are for the use of individuals and educational institutions only. Any commercial use requires the permission of the compiler & translator P.E. Larson.