The Audience by Alice Meynell — Read

The long laugh that sometimes keeps the business of the stage waiting is only a sign of the exchange of parts that in the theatre every night takes place. The audience are the players. Their audience on the stage are bound to watch them, to understand them, to anticipate them, and to divine them. But once known and their character established in relation to a particular play, the audience -- what is called the audience -- need give no further trouble. They themselves cannot alter; they are fixed and compelled by the tremendous force of averages. The most inexorable of laws, and the most irresistible of necessities are upon them; they cannot do otherwise; they are out of the reach of accidents; they are made fast in their own mediocrity. They are a thousand London people; and no genius, or no imbecility, amongst them has any effect upon that secure sovereignty of a number.

The long laugh generally means that the house -- by its unalterable majority -- has laughed at one joke three times. The stage waits upon the audience, and the audience rehearses its collective and inevitable laugh. It performs. It communicates itself, and art is a communication. A small and chosen party is made up, behind the footlights, to see a thousand people, given helpless into the hands of destiny and subject to averages, so express themselves.