Civilisation needs silence

Hot on the heels of Rosamund Pike taking an audience to task about mid-performance texting, we read last week about yet another furore at an arts venue. This time, the story concerns a mother who attended The Tempest at the RSC with a babe in arms. Unsurprisingly, the baby did not appreciate the need to remain silent, many audience members were irritated, and the mother was asked to watch the second half of the performance on a screen. 

Until recently, taking a baby to watch a Shakespeare play would have seemed an eccentric proposition. You would either get a babysitter or simply accept that you couldn’t go. Frustrating? Yes. Unfair? Perhaps, but almost all of us who have experienced parenthood have been there. Sacrifice comes with the territory during the early years and, like all things baby-related, it’s just a phase. 

But today some arts organisations are nervous about giving the impression that anyone is excluded, even infants. Thus the RSC does allow for the possibility of babies attending shows, but recommends that they be brought to a “chilled” performance, at which normal etiquette rules around silence and moving around are relaxed. It’s a sensible solution: the parent who wants to attend still can, nobody minds the potential disruption, and everyone is happy.

But for some reason, the RSC guidance then vacillates, stating, “However, babes in arms (babies from 0-18 months) can be admitted to any performance, with the exception of preview performances”, with the caveat that the baby must be taken out if it disturbs others. The mother, then, was quite within her rights to book her ticket, but how realistic was it that any baby could get through a show lasting more than two hours without making noise? This was an incident waiting to happen and it’s hard to fathom the RSC’s thinking. 

The interesting point here, then, is not that the mother broke the rules — she did not — but the fact that an organisation should be so nervous about imposing a hard-and-fast policy. And this speaks, I think, to a broader societal shift. In the late twentieth century, we used to be bombarded with diktats about how to behave in daily life. You would see signs at the swimming pool outlawing “dive-bombing” or “heavy petting” and notices on buses telling you not to eat hamburgers. The phrases “défense de fumer” and “défense de cracher” (no spitting — why would we?!) were familiar from school French lessons. Some of these rules seemed petty, but generally people knew what was socially acceptable and what wasn’t. You couldn’t blast music out of your ghetto blaster on the train, you couldn’t ride your bike on the pavement, you couldn’t film the stage during a West End show, and so on.

Recently, however, there has been a complete volte face in our relationship with everyday rules, to the point that in some contexts the very idea of imposing any kind of etiquette guidance is regarded as an affront. A social ethos that places pronounced, sometimes indulgent emphasis on the individual’s right to self-expression means that rules are often viewed as “gatekeeping”, rather than a basic necessity that allows a certain activity to run smoothly for the benefit of the majority. 

Although the RSC, to its credit, did follow through on ushering the mother and baby from the auditorium, we live in an age when organisations are increasingly unwilling to stop any kind of noisy behaviour that disturbs others. We see this permissive attitude manifested in many different ways. I had a special birthday dinner with family — a rare treat in these times of exorbitant restaurant bills — ruined by a dog underneath a nearby table that barked loudly throughout the entire evening. We complained. Other diners complained. Even the owners of other dogs in other rooms complained, as it was winding up their own placid pets. But guess who got the frosty looks from staff? We did, while the attitude towards the owners of the hooligan dog was obsequiousness itself. 

See also public libraries. There seems to be a fundamental mismatch in expectation between longstanding library users and the people currently running them. Those of us who expect a library to be a quiet space, bar the occasional baby and toddler “rhyme time’, seem to be swimming against the tide. It’s quite normal today to witness people talking on the phone or even watching films without headphones. Recently, in my local branch, a group of library users who were quietly reading became exercised by the fact that a man was conducting a loud, extended video call, both ends of the conversation audible. Assistance was sought from staff, who were extremely apologetic — to the man making the call. Once more, it was quite clear that the “problem” was not the noisemaker but the women of a certain age who were “making a fuss”. 

Some activities — reading a book, watching a play, sitting an exam — simply work better in an environment without distraction

Of course, we don’t want a return to full-on authoritarianism in public venues. Back in the 1980s, my mother had to push her case hard in an interview for a library assistant job because the formidable librarian in charge was suspicious that she might bring along her daughter, who would doubtless run amok. (An unlikely proposition, for scarcely a more bookish child existed.) But society did seem to run more smoothly when staff, in libraries, or theatres, or on trains and buses, were willing to “have a word” with people who were disturbing others. Sometimes the freedom of the individual cannot be allowed to prevail over the comfort or enjoyment of the larger group. 

We live in noisy times. But some activities — reading a book, watching a play, sitting an exam — simply work better in an environment without distraction. Very few people will object to arts venues having a few house rules, if clearly stated and reasonable. I doubt that the Royal Opera House has received any complaints about its straightforward policy that under-fives are not permitted into the auditoria, except for special child-focused performances clearly labelled as such. It is simple common sense that a fractious toddler isn’t going to be able to sit through Götterdämmerung, and likewise, a baby will get nothing out of a performance of The Tempest. Yes, we want to give children early exposure to the arts, but let’s be rational.