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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Book About the Theater, by Brander Matthews
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Book About the Theater
+
+Author: Brander Matthews
+
+Release Date: July 20, 2011 [EBook #36790]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Ernest Schaal, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                      _Books by Brander Matthews_
+
+BIOGRAPHIES
+
+    Shakspere as a Playwright
+    Molière, His Life and His Works
+
+ESSAYS AND CRITICISMS
+
+    French Dramatists of the 19th Century
+    Pen and Ink, Essays on subjects of more or less importance
+    Aspects of Fiction, and other Essays
+    The Historical Novel, and other Essays
+    Parts of Speech, Essays on English
+    The Development of the Drama
+    Inquiries and Opinions
+    The American of the Future, and other Essays
+    Gateways to Literature, and other Essays
+    On Acting
+    A Book About the Theater
+
+                                 A BOOK
+                           ABOUT THE THEATER
+
+                             [Illustration]
+
+                         LE BALLET DE LA REINE
+
+                        A FRENCH COURT BALLET IN
+                         THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH
+                                CENTURY
+
+                                 A BOOK
+                           ABOUT THE THEATER
+
+                                   BY
+                            BRANDER MATTHEWS
+
+    PROFESSOR OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY; MEMBER
+              OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS
+
+                             [Illustration]
+
+                                NEW YORK
+                        CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+                                  1916
+
+                          COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY
+                        CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+                        Published October, 1916
+
+                             [Illustration]
+
+                           TO AUGUSTUS THOMAS
+
+MY DEAR AUGUSTUS:
+
+Let me begin by confessing my regret that I cannot overhear your first
+remark when you receive this sheaf of essays, many of which are devoted
+to the subordinate subdivisions of the art of the stage. As it is, I can
+only imagine your surprise at discovering that this book, which contains
+papers dealing with certain aspects of the theater rarely considered to
+be worthy of criticism, is signed by the occupant of the earliest chair
+to be established in any American university specifically for the study
+of dramatic literature. I fancy I can hear the expression of your wonder
+that a sexagenarian professor should turn aside from his austere
+analysis of the genius of Sophocles and of Shakspere, of Molière and of
+Ibsen, to discuss the minor arts of the dancer and the acrobat, to
+chatter about the conjurer and the negro minstrel, to consider the
+principles of pantomime and the development of scene-painting. But I am
+emboldened to hope that your surprise will be only momentary, and that
+you will be moved to acknowledge that perhaps there may be some
+advantage to be derived from these deviations into the by-paths of stage
+history.
+
+You are rather multifarious yourself; "like Cerberus, you are three
+gentlemen at once"; you have been a reporter, you have published a
+novel, you have painted pictures, you have delivered addresses--and you
+write plays, too. I think that you, at least, will readily understand
+how a student of the stage may like to stray now and again from the main
+road and to ramble away from the lofty temple of dramatic art to loiter
+for a little while in one or another of its lesser chapels. And you,
+again, will appreciate my conviction that these loiterings and these
+strollings may be as profitable as that casual browsing about in a
+library which is likely to enrich our memories with not a little
+interesting information that we might never have captured had we adhered
+to a rigorous and rigid course of study. You will see what I mean when I
+declare my belief that I have come back from these wanderings with an
+increased understanding of the theory of the theater, and with an
+enlarged acquaintance with its manifold manifestations.
+
+Perhaps I ought to explain, furthermore, that these excursions into the
+purlieus of the playhouse began long, long ago. I gave a Punch and Judy
+show before I was sixteen; I performed experiments in magic, I blacked
+up as Tambo, I whitened myself as Clown, I played the low-comedy part in
+a farce, and I attempted the flying trapeze before I was twenty; and I
+was not encouraged by the result of these early experiences to repeat
+any of the experiments after I came of age. I think it was as a spinner
+of hats and as the underman of a "brothers' act" that I came nearest to
+success; at least I infer this from the fact--may I mention it without
+seeming to boast?--that with my partners in this brothers' act, I was
+asked if I would care to accept an engagement with a circus for the
+summer. As to the merits of the other efforts I need say nothing now;
+the rest is silence. When the cynic declared that the critics were those
+who had failed in literature and art, he overstated his case, as is the
+custom of cynics. But it is an indisputable advantage for any critic to
+have adventured himself in the practise of the art to the discussion of
+which he is to devote himself; he may have failed, or at least he may
+not have succeeded as he could wish; but he ought to have gained a
+firmer grasp on the principles of the art than he would have had if he
+had never risked himself in the vain effort.
+
+With this brief word of personal explanation I step down from the
+platform of the preface to let these various essays speak for
+themselves. If they have any message of any value, I feel assured in
+advance that your friendly ear will be the first to interpret it. And I
+remain,
+
+                                  Ever yours,
+                                                   BRANDER MATTHEWS.
+
+    COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,
+        IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+                                                                PAGE
+
+     I. THE SHOW BUSINESS                                         1
+
+    II. THE LIMITATIONS OF THE STAGE                             17
+
+   III. A MORAL FROM A TOY THEATER                               37
+
+    IV. WHY FIVE ACTS?                                           55
+
+     V. DRAMATIC COLLABORATION                                   77
+
+    VI. THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS AND THE NOVELIZATION
+            OF PLAYS                                              93
+
+   VII. WOMEN DRAMATISTS                                         111
+
+  VIII. THE EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING                          127
+
+    IX. THE BOOK OF THE OPERA                                    153
+
+     X. THE POETRY OF THE DANCE                                  169
+
+    XI. THE PRINCIPLES OF PANTOMIME                              185
+
+   XII. THE IDEAL OF THE ACROBAT                                 201
+
+  XIII. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF NEGRO-MINSTRELSY                 217
+
+   XIV. THE UTILITY OF THE VARIETY-SHOW                          235
+
+    XV. THE METHOD OF MODERN MAGIC                               251
+
+   XVI. THE LAMENTABLE TRAGEDY OF PUNCH AND JUDY                 271
+
+  XVII. THE PUPPET-PLAY, PAST AND PRESENT                        287
+
+ XVIII. SHADOW-PANTOMIME, WITH ALL THE MODERN
+            IMPROVEMENTS                                         303
+
+   XIX. THE PROBLEM OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM                        319
+
+                             ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+    Le ballet de la reine                             _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                         FACING PAGE
+
+    Upper half of Plate No. 1, the 'Miller and His Men'           40
+
+    A group of the principal characters from Pollock's juvenile
+        drama, the 'Miller and His Men'                           42
+
+    Explosion of the mill. A back drop in the
+        'Miller and His Men'                                      46
+
+    Plate No. 7, the 'Miller and His Men'                         48
+
+    Lower half of Plate No. 5, the 'Miller and His Men'           52
+
+    The Roman Theater at Orange                                  134
+
+    The multiple set of the French medieval stage                134
+
+    The set of the Italian comedy of masks                       134
+
+    An outdoor entertainment in the gardens of the Pitti Palace
+        in Florence in the early sixteenth century               136
+
+    The set for the opera of 'Persée' (as performed at the Opéra
+        in Paris in the seventeenth century)                     140
+
+    A prison (designed by Bibiena in Italy in the eighteenth
+        century)                                                 140
+
+    The screen scene of the 'School for Scandal' at Drury Lane
+        in 1778                                                  144
+
+    A landscape set                                              146
+
+    A set for the opera of 'Robert le Diable'                    146
+
+    The set of the last act of the 'Garden of Allah'             148
+
+    A set for 'Medea'                                            148
+
+    The set of 'OEdipe-Roi' (at the Théâtre Français)            150
+
+    The set of the 'Return of Peter Grimm'                       150
+
+    Scenes from Punch and Judy                                   274
+
+    Scenes from Punch and Judy (continued)                       276
+
+    Roman puppets. Greek and Roman puppets. Puppet of Java       290
+
+    A Sicilian marionette show                                   292
+
+    A Belgian puppet. A Chinese puppet theater. Puppet figure
+        representing the younger Coquelin                        294
+
+    Puppets in Burma                                             296
+
+    The puppet play of Master Peter (Italian)                    296
+
+    A Neapolitan Punchinella                                     300
+
+    The broken bridge. Plan showing the construction of a
+        shadow-picture theater. A Hungarian dancer
+        (a shadow picture)                                       308
+
+    Shadow Pictures. The return from the Bois de Boulogne. The
+        ballet. A regiment of French soldiers                    310
+
+    Shadow Picture. The Sphinx I: Pharaoh passing in triumph     312
+
+    Shadow Picture. The Sphinx II: Moses leading his people out
+        of Egypt                                                 314
+
+    Shadow Picture. The Sphinx III: Roman warriors in Egypt      316
+
+    Shadow Picture. The Sphinx IV: The British troops to-day     318
+
+                                   I
+
+                           THE SHOW BUSINESS
+
+                           THE SHOW BUSINESS
+
+                                   I
+
+At an interesting moment in Disraeli's picturesque career in British
+politics he indulged in one of his strikingly spectacular effects, in
+accord with his characteristic method of boldly startling the somewhat
+sluggish imagination of his insular countrymen; and in the next week's
+issue of _Punch_ there was a cartoon by Tenniel reflecting the general
+opinion in regard to his theatrical audacity. He was represented as
+Artemus Ward, frankly confessing that "I have no principles; I'm in the
+show business."
+
+The cartoon was good-humored enough, as _Punch's_ cartoons usually are;
+but it was not exactly complimentary. It was intended to voice the vague
+distrust felt by the British people toward a leader who did not
+scrupulously avoid every possible opportunity to be dramatic. And yet
+every statesman who was himself possessed of constructive imagination,
+and who was therefore anxious to stir the imaginations of those he was
+leading, has laid himself open to the same charge. Burke, for one, was
+accused of being frankly theatrical; and Napoleon, the child of that
+French Revolution which Burke combated with undying vigor, never
+hesitated to employ kindred devices. When Napoleon took the Imperial
+Crown from the hands of the Pope to place it on his own head, and when
+Burke cast the daggers on the floor of the House of Commons, they were
+both proving that they were in the show business. So was Julius Cæsar
+when he thrice thrust aside the kingly crown; and so was Frederick on
+more than one occasion. Even Luther did not shrink from the spectacular
+if that could serve his purpose, as when he nailed his theses to the
+door of the church.
+
+If the statesmen have now and again acted as tho they were in the show
+business, we need not be surprised to discover that the dramatists have
+done it even more often, in accord with their more intimate relation to
+the theater. No one would deny that Sardou and Boucicault were showmen,
+with a perfect mastery of every trick of the showman's trade. But this
+is almost equally true of the supreme leaders of dramatic art,
+Sophocles, Shakspere, and Molière. The great Greek, the great
+Englishman, and the great Frenchman, however much they might differ in
+their aims and in their accomplishments, were alike in the avidity with
+which they availed themselves of every spectacular device possible to
+their respective theaters. The opening passage of 'OEdipus the King,'
+when the chorus appeals to the sovran to remove the curse that hangs
+over the city, is as potent on the eye as on the ear. The witches and
+the ghost in 'Macbeth,' the single combats and the bloody battles that
+embellish many of Shakspere's plays are utilizations of the spectacular
+possibilities existing in that Elizabethan playhouse, which has seemed
+to some historians of the drama to be necessarily bare of all appeal to
+the senses. And in his 'Amphitryon' Molière has a succession of purely
+mechanical effects (a god riding upon an eagle, for example, and
+descending from the sky) which are anticipations of the more elaborate
+and complicated transformation scenes of the 'Black Crook' and the
+'White Fawn.'
+
+At the end of the nineteenth century the two masters of the stage were
+Ibsen and Wagner, and both of them were in the show business--Wagner
+more openly and more frequently than Ibsen. Yet the stern Scandinavian
+did not disdain to employ an avalanche in 'When We Dead Awaken,' and to
+introduce a highly pictorial shawl dance for the heroine of his 'Doll's
+House.' As for Wagner, he was incessant in his search for the
+spectacular, insisting that the music-drama was the "art-work of the
+future," since the librettist-composer could call to his aid all the
+other arts, and could make these arts contribute to the total effect of
+the opera. He conformed his practise to his principles, and as a result
+there is scarcely any one of his music-dramas which is not enriched by a
+most elaborate scenic accompaniment. The forging of the sword, the ride
+of the Valkyries, the swimming of the singing Rhinemaidens, are only a
+few of the novel and startling effects which he introduced into his
+operas; and in his last work, 'Parsival,' the purely spectacular element
+is at least as ample and as varied as any that can be found in a
+Parisian fairy-play or in a London Christmas pantomime. And what is the
+'Blue Bird' of M. Maeterlinck, the philosopher-poet, who is also a
+playwright, but a fairy-play on the model of those long popular in
+Paris, the 'Pied de Mouton,' and the 'Biche au Bois'? It has a meaning
+and a purpose lacking in its emptier predecessors; but its method is the
+same as that of the uninspired manufacturers of these spectacular
+pieces.
+
+                                   II
+
+It is not without significance that our newspapers, which have a keen
+understanding of the public taste, are in the habit of commenting upon
+entertainments of the most diverse nature under the general heading of
+"Amusements." It matters not whether this entertainment is proffered by
+Barnum and Bailey, or by Weber and Fields, by Sophocles or by Ibsen, by
+Shakspere or by Molière, by Wagner or by Gilbert and Sullivan, it is
+grouped with the rest of the amusements. And this is not so illogical as
+it may seem, since the primary purpose of all the arts is to entertain,
+even if every art has also to achieve its own secondary aim. Some of
+these entertainments make their appeal to the intellect, some to the
+emotions, and some only to the nerves, to our relish for sheer
+excitement and for brute sensation; but each of them in its own way
+seeks, first of all, to entertain. They are, every one of them, to be
+included in the show business.
+
+This is a point of view which is rarely taken by those who are
+accustomed to consider the drama only in its literary aspects, and who
+like to think of the dramatic poet as a remote and secluded artist,
+scornful of all adventitious assistance, seeking to express his own
+vision of the universe, and intent chiefly, if not solely, on portraying
+the human soul. And yet this point of view needs to be taken by every
+one who wishes to understand the drama as an art, for the drama is
+inextricably bound up with the show business, and to separate the two is
+simply impossible. The theater is almost infinitely various, and the
+different kinds of entertainment possible in it cannot be sharply
+distinguished, since they shade into each other by almost imperceptible
+gradations. Only now and again can we seize a specimen that completely
+conforms to any one of the several types into which we theoretically
+classify the multiple manifestations of the drama.
+
+Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Barnum and Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth
+might seem, at first sight, to stand absolutely outside the theater. But
+it is impossible not to perceive the close kinship between the program
+of the Barnum and Bailey show and the program of the New York
+Hippodrome, since they have the circus in common. At the Hippodrome,
+however, we have at least a rudimentary play with actual dialog and with
+abundant songs and dances executed by a charging squadron of
+chorus-girls; and in this aspect its spectacle is curiously similar to
+the nondescript medley which is popularly designated as a "summer
+song-show." Now, the summer song-show is first cousin to the so-called
+American "comic opera"--so different from the French _opéra comique_.
+Even if it has now fallen upon evil days, this American comic opera is
+a younger sister of the sparkling ballad-opera of Gilbert and Sullivan,
+and of the exhilarating _opéra bouffe_ of Offenbach, with its libretto
+by Meilhac and Halévy.
+
+We cannot fail to perceive that the librettos of Gilbert and of Meilhac
+and Halévy are admirable in themselves, that they would please even
+without the music of Sullivan and Offenbach, and that they are truly
+comedies of a kind. That is to say, the books of 'Patience' and
+'Pinafore' do not differ widely in method or in purpose from Gilbert's
+non-musical play 'Engaged'; and the books of the 'Vie Parisienne' and
+the 'Diva' do not differ widely from Meilhac and Halévy's non-musical
+play, 'Tricoche et Cacolet.' 'Engaged' and 'Tricoche et Cacolet' are
+farces or light comedies, and we find that it is not easy to draw a
+strict line of demarcation between light comedies of this sort and
+comedies of a more elevated type. Gilbert was also the author of
+'Sweethearts,' and of 'Charity,' and Meilhac and Halévy were also the
+authors of 'Froufrou.' Still more difficult would it be to separate
+sharply plays like 'Charity' and 'Froufrou' from the social dramas of
+Pinero and Ibsen, the 'Benefit of the Doubt,' for instance, and the
+'Doll's House.' Sometimes these social dramas stiffen into actual
+tragedy, the 'Second Mrs. Tanqueray,' for example, and 'Ghosts.' And
+more than one critic has dwelt upon the structural likeness of the
+somber and austere 'Ghosts' of Ibsen to the elevated and noble
+'OEdipus the King' of Sophocles, even if the Greek play is full of a
+serener poetry and charged with a deeper message.
+
+It is a far cry from Buffalo Bill's Wild West to the 'OEdipus' of
+Sophocles; but they are only opposite ends of a long chain which binds
+together the heterogeneous medley of so-called "amusements." In the eyes
+of every observer with insight into actual conditions, the show business
+bears an obvious resemblance to the United States, in that it is a vast
+territory divided into contiguous States, often difficult to bound with
+precision; and, like the United States, the show business is, in the
+words of Webster, "one and indivisible, now and forever." There is
+indisputable profit for every student of the art of the stage in a frank
+recognition of the fact that dramatic literature is inextricably
+associated with the show business, and the wider and deeper his
+acquaintance with the ramifications of the show business, the better
+fitted he is to understand certain characteristics of the masterpieces
+of dramatic literature. Any consideration of dramatic literature, apart
+from the actual conditions of performance, apart from the special
+theater for which any given play was composed, and to the conditions of
+which it had, perforce, to conform, is bound to be one-sided, not to say
+sterile. The masterpieces of dramatic literature were all of them
+written to be performed by actors, in a theater, and before an audience.
+And these masterpieces of dramatic literature which we now analyze with
+reverence, were all of them immediately successful when represented by
+the performers for whom they were written, and in the playhouses to the
+conditions of which they had been adjusted.
+
+It is painfully difficult for the purely literary critic to recognize
+the inexorable fact that there are no truly great plays which failed to
+please the contemporary spectators for whose delight they were devised.
+Many of the plays which win success from time to time, indeed, most of
+them, achieve only a fleeting vogue; they lack the element of
+permanence; they have only theatrical effectiveness; and they are devoid
+of abiding dramatic value. But the truly great dramas established
+themselves first on the stage; and afterward they also revealed the
+solid qualities which we demand in the study. They withstood, first of
+all, the ordeal by fire before the footlights of the theater, and they
+were able thereafter also to resist the touchstone of time in the
+library.
+
+When an academic investigator into the arid annals of dogmatic
+disquisition about the drama was rash enough to assert that, "from the
+standpoint of the history of culture, the theater is only one, and a
+very insignificant one, of all the influences that have gone to make up
+dramatic literature," Mr. William Archer promptly pointed out that this
+was "just about as reasonable as to declare that the sea is only one,
+and a very insignificant one, among the influences that have gone to the
+making of ships." It is true, Mr. Archer admitted, that there are "model
+ships and ships built for training purposes on dry land; but they all
+more or less closely imitate sea-going vessels, and if they did not, we
+should not call them ships at all.... The ship-builder, in planning his
+craft, must know what depths of water--be it river, lake, or ocean--she
+will have to ply in, what conditions of wind and weather she may reckon
+upon encountering, and what speed will be demanded of her if she is to
+fulfil the purpose for which she is destined.... The theater--the actual
+building, with its dimensions, structure, and scenic appliances--is the
+dramatist's sea. And the audience provides the weather."
+
+                                  III
+
+Since the drama is irrevocably related to the theater, all the varied
+ramifications of the show business have their interest and their
+significance for students of the stage. It is not too much to say that
+there is no form of entertainment, however humble and however remote
+from literature, which may not supply a useful hint or two, now and
+again, to the historian of the drama. For example, few things would seem
+farther apart than the lamentable tragedy of Punch and Judy and the
+soul-stirring plays of the Athenian dramatic poets; and yet there is
+more than one point of contact between these two performances. An alert
+observer of a Punch-and-Judy show in the streets of London can get help
+from it for the elucidation of a problem or two which may have puzzled
+him in his effort to understand the peculiarities of Attic tragedy. Mr.
+Punch's wooden head, for example, has the same unchanging expression
+which characterized the towering masks worn by the Athenian performers.
+In like manner a nondescript hodgepodge of funny episodes, interspersed
+with songs and dances, such as Weber and Fields used to present in New
+York, may be utilized to shed light on the lyrical-burlesques of
+Aristophanes as these were performed in Athens more than two thousand
+years ago.
+
+Perhaps even a third instance of this possibility of explaining the
+glorious past by the humble present may not be out of place. A few years
+ago Edward Harrigan put together a variety-show sketch, called the
+'Mulligan Guards,' and its success encouraged him to develop it into a
+little comic drama called the 'Mulligan Guards' Picnic,' which was the
+earliest of a succession of farcical studies of tenement-house life in
+New York, culminating at last in a three-act comedy, entitled 'Squatter
+Sovereignty.' In this series of humorous pieces Harrigan set before us a
+wide variety of types of character, Irishmen of all sorts, Germans and
+Italians, negroes and Chinamen, as these are commingled in the
+melting-pot of the cosmopolitan metropolis. These humorous pieces were
+the result of a spontaneous evolution, and their author was wholly
+innocent of any acquaintance with the Latin drama. And yet, as it
+happened, Harrigan was doing for the tenement-house population of New
+York very much what Plautus had done for the tenement-house population
+of Rome. A familiarity with the plays of the Latin playwright could not
+but increase our appreciation of the amusing pieces of the
+Irish-American sketch-writer; and a familiarity with the comic dramas of
+Harrigan could not fail to be of immediate assistance to us in our
+desire to understand the remote life which Plautus was dealing with.
+
+The plays of the Roman dramatist were deliberately adapted from the
+Greek, and they therefore had an avowedly literary source, whereas the
+immediate origin of the plays performed in New York was only an
+unpretending sketch for a variety-show; but both of these groups had the
+same flavor of veracity in their reproduction of the teeming life of the
+tenements. Humble as is the beginning of the 'Mulligan Guard' series, at
+least as humble is the beginning of the improvised pieces of the
+Italians, the comedy of masks, which Molière lifted into literature in
+his 'Etourdi,' and in his 'Fourberies de Scapin.' In the hands of the
+Italians the comedy of masks was absolutely unliterary, since it was not
+even written, and its performers were not only comedians, but acrobats
+also. And here the drama is seen to be impinging on the special sphere
+of the circus--just as it does again in the plays prepared for the New
+York Hippodrome. It is more than probable that this improvised comedy of
+the Italians is the long development of a primitive semi-gymnastic,
+semi-dramatic entertainment, given by a little group of strollers,
+performing in the open market-place to please the casual crowd that
+might collect.
+
+Equally unpretending was the origin of the French melodrama, which
+Victor Hugo lifted into literature in his 'Hernani' and 'Ruy Blas.' It
+began in the temporary theaters erected for a brief season in one or the
+other of the fairs held annually in different parts of Paris. The
+performances in these playhouses were almost exactly equivalent to those
+in our variety-shows; they were medleys of song and dance, of acrobatic
+feats and of exhibitions of trained animals. As in our own
+variety-shows, again, there were also little plays performed from time
+to time, at first scarcely more than a framework on which to hang songs
+and dances, but at last taking on a solider substance, until finally
+they stiffened themselves into pathetic pieces in three or more acts,
+capable of providing pleasure for a whole evening. The humor was direct,
+and the characters were painted in the primary colors; the passions were
+violent, and the plots were arbitrary; but the playwrights had
+discovered how to hold the interest of their simple-minded spectators,
+and how to draw tears and laughter at will.
+
+In fact, the more minutely the history of the stage is studied, the more
+clearly do we perceive that the beginnings of every form of the drama
+are strangely unpretentious, and that literary merit is attained only in
+the final stages of its development. Dramatic literature is but the
+ultimate evolution of that which in the beginning was only an
+insignificant and unimportant experiment in the show business; and it
+must always remain intimately related to the show business, even when it
+climbs to the lonely peaks of the poetic drama. Whatever its value, and
+however weighty its message, it is still to be commented upon under the
+head of "amusements," for if it does not succeed in amusing, it ceases
+to exist except in the library, and even there only for special
+students. It lives by its immediate theatrical effectiveness alone, even
+if it can survive solely by its literary quality.
+
+                                   IV
+
+Those who are in the habit of gaging the drama by this literary quality
+only are prone to deplore the bad taste of the public which flocks to
+purely spectacular pieces. But this again is no new thing, and it does
+not disclose any decline in the ability to appreciate the best. A
+century ago in London, when Sarah Siddons and John Philip Kemble were in
+the full plenitude of their powers, and when they were performing the
+noblest plays of Shakspere, they were thrust aside for a season or two
+while the theater was given up to empty melodramatic spectacles like
+'Castle Specter' and the 'Cataract of the Ganges.' It was horrifying to
+the lovers of the drama that these great actors in those great plays
+should have to give way to the attraction exerted on the public by a
+trained elephant, or by an imitation waterfall; but it is equally
+horrifying to be informed that the theater in London for which Shakspere
+wrote his masterpieces, and in which he himself appeared as an actor,
+was also used for fencing-matches, and for bull-baitings and
+bear-baitings, and that the theater in Athens for which Sophocles wrote
+his masterpieces, and in which he may have appeared as an actor, was
+also used for the annual cock-fight.
+
+So strong is the popular appreciation of spectacle that the drama, the
+true theater as distinguished from the mere show business, has always to
+fight for its right to exist, and to hold its place in competition with
+less intellectual and more sensational entertainments. The playhouses of
+any American city are likely to have a lean week whenever the circus
+comes to town, and perhaps the chief reason why the most of them now
+close in summer is to be sought not so much in the frequent hot spells,
+as in the irresistible attraction exerted by the base-ball games. The
+drama in Spain, which flourished superbly in the days of Lope de Vega
+and Calderon, sank into a sad decline when it had to compete with the
+fiercer delights of the bullfight; and the drama in Rome was actually
+killed out by the overpowering rivalry of the sports of the arena, the
+combats of gladiators, and the matching of men with wild beasts. What is
+known to the economists as Gresham's Law, according to which an inferior
+currency always tends to drive out a superior, seems to have an analog
+in the show business.
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                   II
+
+                      THE LIMITATIONS OF THE STAGE
+
+                      THE LIMITATIONS OF THE STAGE
+
+                                   I
+
+Few competent critics would dispute the assertion that the drama, if not
+actually the noblest of the arts, is at all events the most
+comprehensive, since it can invoke the aid of all the others without
+impairing its own individuality or surrendering its right to be
+considered the senior partner in any alliance it may make. Poetry,
+oratory, and music, painting, sculpture, and architecture, these the
+drama can take into its service, with no danger to its own control. Yet
+even if the drama may have the widest range of any of the arts, none the
+less are its boundaries clearly defined. What it can do, it does with a
+sharpness of effect and with a cogency of appeal no other art can rival.
+But there are many things it cannot do; and there are not a few things
+that it can attempt only at its peril. Some of these impossibilities and
+inexpediencies are psychologic subtleties of character and of sentiment
+too delicate and too minute for the magnifying lens of the theater
+itself; and some of them are physical, too large in themselves to be
+compressed into the rigid area of the stage. In advance of actual
+experiment, it is not always possible for even the most experienced of
+theatrical experts to decide the question with certainty.
+
+Moreover, there is always the audience to be reckoned with, and even old
+stagers like Henry Irving and Victorien Sardou cannot foresee the way
+in which the many-headed monster will take what is set before it. When
+Percy Fitzgerald and W. G. Wills were preparing an adaptation of the
+'Flying Dutchman' for Henry Irving, the actor made a suggestion which
+the authors immediately adopted. The romantic legend has for its hero a
+sea-captain condemned to eternal life until he can find a maiden willing
+to share his lot; and when at last he meets the heroine she has another
+lover, who is naturally jealous of the new aspirant to her hand. The
+young rival challenges Vanderdecken to a duel, and what Irving proposed
+was that the survivor of the fight should agree to throw the body of his
+rival into the sea, and that the waves should cast up the condemned
+Vanderdecken on the shore, since the ill-fated sailor could not avoid
+his doom by death at the hand of man. This was an appropriate
+development of the tale; it was really imaginative; and it would have
+been strangely moving if it had introduced into it a ballad on the old
+theme. But in a play performed before us in a theater its effect was not
+altogether what its proposer had hoped for, altho he presented it with
+all his marvelous command of theatrical artifice.
+
+The stage-setting Irving bestowed upon this episode was perfectly in
+keeping with its tone. The spectators saw the sandy beach of a little
+cove shut in by cliffs, with the placid ocean bathed in the sunset glow.
+The two men crossed swords on the strand; Vanderdecken let himself be
+killed, and the victorious lover carried his rival's body up the rocks
+and hurled it into the ocean. Then he departed, and for a moment all
+was silence. A shuddering sigh soon swept over the face of the waters,
+and a ripple lapped the sand. Then a little wave broke on the beach, and
+withdrew, rasping over the stones. At last a huge roller crashed forward
+and the sea gave up its dead. Vanderdecken lay high and dry on the
+shore, and in a moment he staggered to his feet, none the worse for his
+wounds. But unfortunately the several devices for accomplishing this
+result, admirable as they were, drew attention each of them to itself.
+The audience could not help wondering how the trick of the waves was
+being worked, and when the Flying Dutchman was washed up by the water,
+it was not the mighty deep rejecting Vanderdecken, again cursed with
+life, that the spectators perceived, but rather the dignified Henry
+Irving himself, unworthily tumbled about on the dust of his own stage.
+In the effort to make visible this imaginative embellishment of the
+strange story, its magic potency vanished. The poetry of the striking
+improvement on the old tale had been betrayed by its translation into
+the material realities of the theater, since the concrete presentation
+necessarily contradicted the abstract beauty of the idea.
+
+Here we find ourselves face to face with one of the most obvious
+limitations of the stage--that its power of suggestion is often greater
+than its power of actual presentation. There are many things, poetic and
+imaginative, which the theater can accomplish, after a fashion, but
+which it ventures upon only at imminent peril of failure. Many things
+which are startlingly effective in the telling are ineffective in the
+actual seeing. The mere mechanism needed to represent them will often be
+contradictory, and sometimes even destructive. Perhaps it may be
+advisable to cite another example, not quite so cogent as Irving's
+'Vanderdecken,' and yet carrying the same moral. This other example will
+be found in a piece by Sardou, a man who knew all the possibilities of
+the theater as intimately as Irving himself, and who was wont to utilize
+them with indefatigable skill. Indeed, so frequently did the French
+playwright avail himself of stage devices, and so often was he willing
+to rely upon them, that not a few critics of our latter-day drama have
+been inclined to dismiss him as merely a supremely adroit theatrical
+trickster.
+
+In his sincerest play, 'Patrie,' the piece which he dedicated to Motley,
+and which he seems himself to have been proudest of, Sardou invented a
+most picturesque episode. The Spaniards are in possession of Brussels;
+the citizens are ready to rise, and William of Orange is coming to their
+assistance. The chiefs of the revolt leave the city secretly and meet
+William at night in the frozen moat of an outlying fort. A Spanish
+patrol interrupts their consultation, and forces them to conceal
+themselves. A little later a second patrol is heard approaching, just
+when the return of the first patrol is impending. For the moment it
+looks as tho the patriots would be caught between the two Spanish
+companies. But William of Orange rises to the occasion. He calls on his
+"sea-wolves"; and when the second patrol appears, marching in single
+file, there suddenly spring out of the darkness upon every Spanish
+soldier two fur-clad creatures, who throttle him, bind him, and throw
+him into a hole in the ice of the moat. Then they swiftly fill in this
+gaping cavity with blocks of snow, and trample the path level above it.
+And almost immediately after the sea-wolves have done their deadly work
+and withdrawn again into hiding, the first patrol returns, and passes
+all unsuspecting over the bodies of their comrades--a very practical
+example of dramatic irony.
+
+As it happened, I had read 'Patrie' some years before I had an
+opportunity to see it on the stage, and this picturesque scene had
+lingered in my memory so that in the theater I eagerly awaited its
+coming. When it arrived at last I was sadly disappointed. The sea-wolves
+belied their appetizing name; they irresistibly suggested a group of
+trained acrobats, and I found myself carelessly noting the artifices by
+the aid of which the imitation snowballs were made to fill the trapdoor
+of the stage which represented the yawning hole in the ice of the frozen
+moat. The thing told was picturesque, but the thing seen was curiously
+unmoving; and I have noted without surprise that in the latest revival
+of 'Patrie' the attempt to make this episode effective was finally
+abandoned, the sea-wolves being cut out of the play.
+
+                                   II
+
+In 'Patrie' as in 'Vanderdecken' the real reason for the failure of
+these mechanical devices is that the plays were themselves on a superior
+level to those stage-tricks; the themes were poetic, and any theatrical
+effect which drew attention to itself interrupted the current of
+emotional sympathy. It disclosed itself instantly as incongruous, as out
+of keeping with the elevation of the legend--in a word, as inartistic. A
+similar effect, perhaps even more frankly mechanical, would not be
+inartistic in a play of a lower type, and it might possibly be helpful
+in a frankly spectacular piece, even if this happened also to be poetic
+in intent. In a fairy-play, a _féerie_, as the French term it, we expect
+to behold all sorts of startling ingenuities of stage-mechanism, whether
+the theme is delightfully imaginative, as in Maeterlinck's beautiful
+'Blue Bird,' or crassly prosaic, as in the 'Black Crook' and the 'White
+Fawn.'
+
+In picturesque melodrama also, in the dramatization of 'Ben Hur,' for
+example, we should be disappointed if we were bereft of the wreck of the
+Roman galley, and if we were deprived of the chariot race. These
+episodes can be presented in the theater only by the aid of mechanisms
+far more elaborate than those needed for the scenes in 'Vanderdecken'
+and 'Patrie'; but in 'Ben Hur' these mechanisms are not incongruous and
+distracting as were the simpler devices of 'Vanderdecken' and 'Patrie,'
+because the dramatization of the romanticist historical novel is less
+lofty in its ambition, less imaginative, less ethereally poetic. In
+'Vanderdecken' and in 'Patrie' the tricks seemed to obtrude themselves,
+whereas in 'Ben Hur' they were almost obligatory. In certain melodramas
+with more modern stories--in the amusing piece called the 'Round Up,'
+for example--the scenery is the main attraction. The scene-painter is
+the real star of the show. And there is no difficulty in understanding
+the wail of the performer of the principal part in a piece of this sort,
+when he complained that he was engaged to support forty tons of scenery.
+"It's only when the stage-carpenters have to rest and get their breath
+that I have a chance to come down to the footlights and bark for a
+minute or two."
+
+A moment's consideration shows that this plaintive protest is
+unreasonable, however natural it may be. In melodramas like the 'Round
+Up' and 'Ben Hur,' as in fairy-plays like the 'Blue Bird,' the acting is
+properly subordinated to the spectacular splendor of the whole
+performance. When we enter a theater to behold a play of either of these
+types, we expect the acting to be adequate, no doubt, but we do not
+demand the highest type of histrionic excellence. What we do anticipate,
+however, is a spectacle pleasing to the eye and stimulating to the
+nerves. In plays of these two classes the appeal is sensuous rather than
+intellectual; and it is only when the appeal of the play is to the mind
+rather than to the senses that merely mechanical effects are likely to
+be disconcerting.
+
+Mr. William Archer has pointed out that Ibsen in 'Little Eyolf,' has for
+once failed to perceive the strict limitation of the stage when he
+introduced a flagstaff, with the flag at first at half-mast, and a
+little later run up to the peak. Now, there are no natural breezes in
+the theater to flutter the folds of the flag, and every audience is
+aware of the fact. This, then, is the dilemma: either the flag hangs
+limp and lifeless against the pole, which is a flat spectacle, or else
+its folds are made to flutter by some concealed pneumatic blast or
+electric fan, which instantly arouses the inquiring curiosity of the
+audience. Here we find added evidence in support of Herbert Spencer's
+invaluable principle of Economy of Attention, which he himself applied
+only to rhetoric, but which is capable of extension to all the other
+arts--and to no one of them more usefully than to the drama. At any
+given moment a spectator in the theater has only so much attention to
+bestow upon the play being presented before his eyes, and if any portion
+of his attention is unduly distracted by some detail--like either the
+limpness or the fluttering of a flag--then he has just so much less to
+give to the play itself.
+
+Very rarely, indeed, can we catch Ibsen at fault in a technical detail
+of stage-management; he was extraordinarily meticulous in his artful
+adjustment of the action of his social dramas to the picture-frame stage
+of our modern cosmopolitan theater. He was marvelously skilful in
+endowing each of his acts with a background harmonious for his
+characters; and nearly always was he careful to refrain from the
+employment of any scenic device which might attract attention to
+itself. He eschewed altogether the more violent spectacular effects,
+altho he did call upon the stage manager to supply an avalanche in the
+final act of 'When the Dead Awaken'; but even this bold convulsion of
+nature was less incongruous than might be expected, since it was not
+exhibited until the action of the play itself was complete. In fact, the
+avalanche might be described as only a pictorial epilog.
+
+                                  III
+
+The principle of sternly economizing the attention of the audience can
+be violated by distractions far less extraneous and far less extravagant
+than avalanches. When Marmontel's forgotten tragedy of 'Cleopatra' was
+produced in the eighteenth century at the Théâtre Français, the
+misguided poet prevailed upon Vaucanson to make an artificial asp, which
+the Egyptian queen coiled about her arm at the end of the play, thereby
+releasing a spring, whereupon the beast raised its head angrily and
+emitted a shrill hiss before sinking its fangs into Cleopatra's flesh.
+At the first performance a spectator, bored by the tediousness of the
+tragedy, rose to his feet when he heard the hiss of the tiny serpent: "I
+agree with the asp!" he cried, as he made his way to the door.
+
+But even if Vaucanson's skilful automaton had not given occasion for
+this disastrous gibe, whatever attention the audience might pay to the
+mechanical means of Cleopatra's suicide was necessarily subtracted from
+that available for the sad fate of Cleopatra herself. If at that moment
+the spectators noted at all the hissing snake, then they were not really
+in a fit mood to feel the tragic death-struggle of "the serpent of old
+Nile." A kindred blunder was manifest in a recent sumptuously
+spectacular revival of 'Macbeth,' when the three witches flew here and
+there thru the dim twilight across the blasted heath, finally vanishing
+into empty air. These mysterious flittings and disappearances were
+achieved by attaching the performers of the weird sisters to invisible
+wires, whereby they could be swung aloft; the trick had been exploited
+earlier in the so-called Flying Ballet, wherein it was a graceful and
+amusing adjunct of the terpsichorean revels. But in 'Macbeth' it emptied
+Shakspere's scene of its dramatic significance, since the spectator
+waited for and watched the startling flights of the witches, and admired
+the dexterity with which their aerial voyages were controlled; and as a
+result he failed to feel the emotional importance of the interview
+between Macbeth and the withered croons, whose untoward greetings were
+to start the villain-hero on his downward career of crime.
+
+In this same revival of 'Macbeth' an equally misplaced ingenuity was
+lavished on the apparition of Banquo's ghost at the banquet. The
+gruesome specter was made mysteriously visible thru the temporarily
+transparent walls of the palace, until at last he emerged to take his
+seat on Macbeth's chair. The effect was excellent in itself, and the
+spectators followed all the movements of the ghost with pleased
+attention, more or less forgetting Macbeth, and failing to note the
+maddening effect of the apparition upon the seared countenance of the
+assassin-king. In this revival of 'Macbeth' no opportunity was neglected
+to adorn the course of the play with every possible scenic and mechanic
+accompaniment; and the total result of these accumulated artificialities
+of presentation was to rob one of Shakspere's most poetic tragedies of
+nearly all its poetry, and to reduce this imaginative masterpiece to the
+prosaic level of a spectacular melodrama.
+
+Another of Shakspere's tragedies has become almost impossible in our
+modern playhouses, because the stage-manager does not dare to do without
+the spectacular effects that the story seems to demand. Shakspere
+composed 'King Lear' for the bare platform-stage of the Globe Theater,
+devoid of all scenery, and supplied with only the most primitive
+appliances for suggesting rain and thunder; and he introduced three
+successive storm scenes, each intenser in interest than the one that
+went before, until the culmination comes in perhaps the sublimest and
+most pitiful episode in all tragedy, when the mad king and his follower,
+who is pretending to be insane, and his faithful fool are together out
+in the tempest. At the original production, three centuries ago, the
+three storms may have increased in violence as they followed one
+another; but at best the fierceness of the contending elements could
+then be only suggested, and the rain and the thunder were not allowed
+to divert attention away from the agonized plight of the mad monarch.
+But to-day the three storm scenes are rolled into one, and the
+stage-manager sets out to manufacture a realistic tempest in rivalry
+with nature. The mimic artillery of heaven and the simulated deluge from
+the skies which the producer now provides may excite our artistic
+admiration for his skill, but they distract our attention from the
+coming together of the characters so strangely met in the midst of the
+storm. The more realistically the tempest is reproduced the worse it is
+for the tragedy itself; and in most recent revivals the full effect of
+the painful story has been smothered by the sound and fury of the
+man-made storm.
+
+The counterweighted wires which permit the figures of the Flying Ballet
+to soar over the stage and to float aloft in the air, disturb the
+current of our sympathy when they are employed to lend lightness to
+intangible creatures like the weird sisters of Shakspere's tragedy; but
+they have been more artistically utilized in two of Shakspere's comedies
+to suggest the ethereality of Puck and of Ariel. The action of the
+'Midsummer Night's Dream' takes place in fairy-land, and that of the
+'Tempest' passes in an enchanted island, and even if we wonder for a
+moment how the levitation of these airy spirits is achieved, this
+temporary distraction of our attention is negligible in playful comedies
+like these with all their scenes laid in a land of make-believe. And yet
+it may be doubted whether even the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' and the
+'Tempest,' fairy-plays as they are, do not on the whole lose more than
+they gain from elaborate scenic and mechanical adjuncts. They are of
+poetry all compact, and the more simply they are presented, the less
+obtrusive the scenery and the less protruded the needful effects, the
+more the effort of the producer is centered upon preserving the ethereal
+atmosphere wherein the characters live, move, and have their being, the
+more harmonious the performance is with the pure fancy which inspired
+these two delightful pieces, then the more truly successful is the
+achievement of the stage-manager.
+
+                                   IV
+
+On the other hand, of course, the scenic accompaniment of a poetic play,
+whether tragic or romantic or comic, must never be so scant or so barren
+as to disappoint the spectators. The stage-accessories must be adequate
+and yet subordinate; they ought to resemble the clothes of a truly
+well-dressed woman, in that they never call attention to themselves
+altho they can withstand and even reward intimate inspection. This
+delicate ideal of artistic stage-setting, esthetically satisfying, and
+yet never flamboyant, was completely attained in the production of
+'Sister Beatrice,' at the New Theater, due to the skill and taste of Mr.
+Hamilton Bell. The several manifestations of the supernatural might
+easily have been over-emphasized; but a fine restraint resulted in a
+unity of tone and of atmosphere, so subtly achieved that the average
+spectator carried away the memory of more than one lovely picture
+without having let his thoughts wander away to consider by what means he
+had been made to feel the presence of a miracle.
+
+The special merit of this production of 'Sister Beatrice' lay in the
+delicate art by which more was suggested than could well be shown. In
+the theater, more often than not, the half is greater than the whole,
+and what is unseen is frequently more powerful than what is made
+visible. In Mr. Belasco's 'Darling of the Gods,' a singularly beautiful
+spectacle, touched at times with a pathetic poetry, the defeated
+samurais are at last reduced to commit hara-kiri. But we were not made
+spectators of these several self-murders; we were permitted to behold
+only the dim cane-brake into which these brave men had withdrawn, and to
+overhear each of them call out his farewell greetings to his friends
+before he dealt himself the deadly thrust. If we had been made witnesses
+of this accumulated self-slaughter we might have been revolted by the
+brutality of it. Transmitted to us out of a vague distance by a few
+scattered cries, it moved us like the inevitable close of a truly tragic
+tale.
+
+In the 'Aiglon' of M. Rostand, Napoleon's feeble son finds himself alone
+with an old soldier of his father's on the battle-field of Wagram; and
+in the darkness of the night, and in the turmoil of a wind-storm the
+hysteric lad almost persuades himself that he is actually present at the
+famous fight, that he can hear the shrieks of the wounded, and the
+groans of the dying, and that he can see the hands and arms of the dead
+stretched up from the ground. This is all in the sickly boy's fancy, of
+course, and yet in Paris the author had voices heard, and caused hands
+and arms to be extended upward from the edge of the back drop, thus
+vulgarizing his own imaginative episode by the presentation of a
+concrete reality. Not quite so inartistic as this, and yet frankly
+freakish was the arrangement of the closet scene between Hamlet and his
+mother, when Sarah-Bernhardt made her misguided effort to impersonate
+the Prince of Denmark. On the walls of the room where Hamlet talks
+daggers to the queen there were full-length, life-sized portraits of her
+two successive husbands, and when Hamlet bids her look on this picture,
+and on this, the portrait of Hamlet's father became transparent, and in
+its frame the spectators suddenly perceived the ghost. This is an
+admirable example of misplaced cleverness, of the search for novelty for
+its own sake, of the sacrifice of the totality of impression to a mere
+trick.
+
+'Hamlet' is the most poetic of plays, and the 'Aiglon' does its best to
+be poetic, and therefore the less overt spectacle there may be in the
+performance of these dramas the easier it will be for the spectator to
+focus his attention on the poetry itself. Even more pretentiously poetic
+than the 'Aiglon' is 'Chantecler,' upon which the ambitious author has
+also lavished a great variety of stage-effects--as tho he were not quite
+willing to rely for success upon his lyrical exuberance. In M. Rostand's
+'Aiglon' and 'Chantecler,' as in Sarah-Bernhardt's 'Hamlet,' there was
+to be observed a frequent confusion of the merely theatric with the
+purely dramatic--a confusion to be found forty years ago in Fechter's
+'Hamlet.' That picturesque French actor made over the English tragedy
+into a French romantic melodrama; he kept the naked plot, and he cut out
+all the poetry. He lowered Shakspere's play to the level of the other
+melodramas in which he had won success--for instance, 'No Thorofare,'
+due to the collaboration of Dickens and Wilkie Collins, or the earlier
+'Fils de la Nuit,' acted in Paris long before Fechter appeared on the
+English-speaking stage.
+
+The 'Son of the Night' was a pirate bold, personated, of course, by
+Fechter, and in one act his long, low, rakish craft with its black flag
+flying, skimmed across the stage, cutting the waves, and dropping anchor
+close to the footlights. The surface of the sea was represented by a
+huge cloth, and the incessant motion of the waves was due to the
+concealed activities of a dozen boys. The play had so long a run that
+the sea-cloth was worn dangerously thin. At last at one performance, a
+rent spread suddenly and disclosed a disgusted boy, just as the pirate
+ship with the Son of the Night on its deck was preparing to come about.
+Fechter was equal to the emergency. "Man overboard!" he cried, and,
+leaning over the bow of the boat, he grabbed the boy by the collar and
+pulled him on deck. Probably very few of the spectators noticed the
+mishap, and if they had all observed it, what matter? A laugh or two,
+more or less, during the performance of a prosaic melodrama, is of
+little or no consequence. A disconcerting accident like this in a play
+like the 'Son of the Night' does not cut any vital current of sympathy,
+for this is a quality to which the piece could make no claim. But in a
+truly poetic play a mishap of this sort would be a misfortune in that it
+might precipitate the interest and interrupt the harmony of attention
+demanded by the imaginative drama itself.
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                  III
+
+                       A MORAL FROM A TOY THEATER
+
+                       A MORAL FROM A TOY THEATER
+
+                                   I
+
+In 1881, when William Ernest Henley was hard put to it to make a living,
+Sir Sidney Colvin kindly recommended him for the editorship of the
+monthly _Magazine of Art_. Among the contributors whom the new editor
+called to his aid was Robert Louis Stevenson, and among the
+contributions the latter made to the former's magazine was the highly
+characteristic and self-revelatory essay, entitled 'A Penny Plain and
+Two Pence Colored,' now included in the volume called 'Memories and
+Portraits.' In this playful paper Stevenson makes one of his many
+returns to his boyhood, whose moods he could always recapture at will
+with the assistance of that imaginative memory which was one of his
+special gifts, and he was able to replevin from the dim limbo of things
+half forgotten his longing delight in the toy theater, the scenes for
+which and the necessary properties and the several characters themselves
+in their successive dresses were to be procured printed on very thin
+cardboard, so that the proud possessor might cut them out at will. If
+the youthful capitalist had accumulated twopence, he could acquire these
+treasures already resplendent in their glowing hues; and yet Stevenson
+held that the lad was happier who parted with only a single penny,
+reserving the half of his fortune for the purchase of the paints
+wherewith he might himself vivify this scenery and these properties,
+and so cause his characters to start to life, emblazoned in the bold
+colors which please the puerile mind.
+
+These sheets of thin cardboard, with thin little pamphlets containing
+the text of the pieces to be performed in the toy theater, were
+originally known as Skelt's Juvenile Drama; and one Skelt seems to have
+been its originator, probably in the early part of the nineteenth
+century. Apparently he parted with his precious stock in trade to one
+Park, who passed it on in due season to one Webb, who transmitted it to
+one Redington, until at last it descended to its present owner, one B.
+Pollock, of 73 Hoxton Street, London, N. Stevenson affected to think
+that Skelt's Juvenile Drama had "become, for the most part, a memory";
+yet it survives now in the second decade of the twentieth century as
+Pollock's Juvenile Drama, and Mr. Pollock proclaims that he has
+republished some score plays, and that he keeps them always in print,
+plain and colored. He offers, furthermore, to supply "Drop Scenes, Top
+Drops, Orchestras, Foot and Water Pieces, Single Portraits,
+Combats--Fours, Sixes, Twelves, Sixteens--Fairies, Horse Soldiers,
+Clowns, Rifles, Animals, Birds, Butterflies, Houses, Views, Ships, &c.,
+plain and colored, 1/2_d_ sheet plain, 1_d_ sheet colored."
+
+[Illustration: Taken from upper half of Plate No. 1, which is the
+title-page of the series, this section of which is also a guide for the
+setting of the first scene in the 'Miller and His Men']
+
+It is from the covers of "the book of the words" of the 'Miller and His
+Men' that this enticing proclamation is taken--the 'Miller and His Men,'
+"adapted only for Pollock's characters and scenes," and accompanied by
+"7 Plates characters, 11 Scenes, 3 Wings, Total 21 Plates." The persons
+of the drama and the scenes wherein that drama is played out to its
+fiery end, are all in the bolder manner of the Old Masters, who sought
+the broadest effects, and who willingly neglected petty details. How
+bold and how broad the manner and the effects can best be judged by an
+honest transcription from the final page of the book of words, wherein
+the terse and tense dialog, single speech clashing with single speech,
+is accompanied by stage directions for the instruction of the Young
+Masters who are about to produce the sublime spectacle:
+
+     _Enter Grindorf left hand, plate 4._
+
+     _Enter Karl and Friberg, swords drawn, plate 4, followed by the
+     Troops, right hand, plate 7._
+
+     _Grindorf_: Ha! ha! I have escaped you, have I?
+
+     _Karl_: But you are caught in your own trap.
+
+     _Grindorf_: Spiller!--Golotz! Golotz! I say!
+
+     _Count_: Villain! you cannot escape us now! Surrender, or
+     instantly meet thy fate!
+
+     _Grindorf_: Surrender! I have sworn never to descend from this
+     place alive!
+
+     _Enter Lothair, as Spiller, 3rd dress, left hand, plate 7._
+
+     _Grindorf_: Spiller, let my bride appear.
+
+     _Exit Lothair._
+
+     _Enter Kehnar, right hand, plate 1._
+
+     _Enter Ravina with torch, plate 7._
+
+     _Ravina_: Before it is too late, restore Claudine to her
+     father's arms!
+
+     _Grindorf_: Never!
+
+     _Ravina_: Then I know my course!
+
+     _Enter Lothair with Claudine, left hand, plate 6._
+
+     _Kehnar_: My child! Ah, Grindorf, spare her!
+
+     _Grindorf_: Hear me, Count Friberg; if you do not withdraw your
+     followers, by my hand she dies!
+
+     _Count_: Never, till thou art yielded to justice!
+
+     _Grindorf_: No more--this to her heart!
+
+     _Lothair_: And this to thine!
+
+     _Exit Lothair and Claudine, and Grindorf._
+
+     _Re-enter Grindorf and Lothair fighting, plate 6, fight and
+     exit._
+
+     _Grindorf to be put on wounded, plate 7._
+
+     _Re-enter Lothair with Claudine, plate 6._
+
+     _Lothair_: Ravina, fire the train!
+
+     _Scene changes to explosion, Scene 11, No. 9._
+
+The words are striking and the actions are startling, and it is no
+wonder that plate 7 and scene 11, No. 9, filled with joy the heart of
+Robert Louis Stevenson when he was a perfervid Scot of fourteen. In his
+manly maturity, when he had risen to an appreciation of portraits by
+Raeburn, and when he had sat at the feet of that inspired critic of
+painting, his cousin, R. A. M. Stevenson, he admitted that he had no
+desire to insist upon the art of Skelt's purveyors. "Those wonderful
+characters that once so thrilled our soul with their bold attitude,
+array of deadly engines and incomparable costume, to-day look somewhat
+pallidly," he confessed regretfully; "the extreme hard favor of the
+heroine strikes me, I had almost said with pain; the villain's scowl no
+longer thrills me like a trumpet; and the scenes themselves, those once
+incomparable landscapes, seem the efforts of a prentice hand. So much of
+fault we can find; but, on the other side, the impartial critic rejoices
+to remark the presence of a great unity of gusto; of those direct
+claptrap appeals which a man is dead and buriable when he fails to
+answer; of the footlight glamor, the ready-made, barefaced, transpontine
+picturesque, a thing not one with cold reality, but how much dearer to
+the mind!"
+
+[Illustration: A group of the principal characters from Pollock's
+juvenile drama, the 'Miller and His Men,' cut out and assembled as
+called for in Scene 10, a part of which is quoted in the text]
+
+                                   II
+
+"Transpontine" is a Briticism for which the equivalent Americanism is
+"Bowery." The plays which Skelt vended for the enjoyment of romantic
+youth were not of his own invention, nor were they the work of his
+hirelings; they were artfully simplified condensations of melodramas
+long popular in London at the theaters on the Surrey side of the Thames,
+and in New York at the Bowery. In French's Standard Drama, the Acting
+Edition, to be obtained in yellow covers for fifteen cents, one may find
+"the 'Miller and His Men,' a Melo-Drama in Two Acts, by F. Pocock, Esq.,
+author of the 'Robber's Wife,' 'John of Paris,' 'Hit or Miss,' 'Magpie
+and the Maid,' etc., with original casts, scene and property plots,
+costumes, and all the stage business." And the list of properties
+required for the final scene helps to elucidate what may have been
+cryptic in the dialog quoted from the compacted adaptation of Skelt:
+
+     _Scene 4_:--_Slow match laid from stage in C. to mill. Lighted
+     torch for Ravina. Red fire and explosion 3 E. L. H. Wood crash
+     3 E. L. H. Six stuffed figures of robbers behind mill, L. H.
+     Eight guns, swords, and belts for hussars. Disguise cloak for
+     Lothair. Fighting swords for Lothair and Wolf._ [Wolf is
+     evidently another name for Grindorf.]
+
+Thus we see that the pleasant country of the Skelts stretched from the
+Surrey side of the Thames to the Bowery bank of the Hudson, and that the
+Skeltic temperament was purely melodramatic, its bass notes being
+transposed to adjust it to the clear treble of boyhood. It is greatly to
+be regretted that no inquiring scholar has yet devoted himself to the
+task of tracing the history of English melodrama, as Professor Thorndike
+has traced the history of English tragedy. Of course, there have always
+been melodramatic plays ever since the drama began to assert itself as
+an independent form of art. There is a melodramatic element in the
+'Medea' of Euripides, as there is in the 'Rodogune' of Corneille; and in
+the Elizabethan theater the so-called tragedy of blood is nothing if not
+melodramatic. Yet the special form of English melodrama that flourished
+in the later years of the eighteenth century and the earlier years of
+the nineteenth deserves a more careful study than it has yet received.
+Apparently it was due partly to a decadence of the native type of drama
+represented by Lillo's 'George Barnwell,' and partly to the stimulation
+received first from the emotional pieces of the German Kotzebue, and
+afterward from the picturesque pieces of the French Pixérécourt. And not
+to be neglected is the influence immediately exerted on the popular
+plays of the latter part of the period by the romances of Scott and of
+Cooper.
+
+Altho these plays were devoid of literary merit, of style, of veracity
+of character delineation, of sincerity of motive, they were not without
+theatrical effectiveness--or they could never have maintained
+themselves in the theater. As Sir Arthur Pinero has seen clearly, "a
+drama which was sufficiently popular to be transferred to the toy
+theaters was almost certain to have a sort of rude merit in its
+construction. The characterization would be hopelessly conventional, the
+dialog bald and despicable--but the situations would be artfully
+arranged, the story told adroitly and with spirit." In other words, the
+compounders of these melodramas were fairly skilful in devising plots
+likely to arouse and to sustain the interest of uncritical audiences.
+Probably they were unfamiliar with Voltaire's assertion that the success
+of a play depends mainly upon the choice of its story; and it is
+unlikely that they had any knowledge of Aristotle's declaration that
+plot is primarily more important than character; but they accomplished
+their humble task as well as if they had been heartened by these
+authorities. These ingenious and ingenuous pieces were none of them
+contributions to English dramatic literature, and they are not enshrined
+in its annals; but they were effective stage-plays, nevertheless, and
+they had, therefore, an essential quality lacking in the closet-dramas
+which Shelley and Byron were composing in those same years.
+
+                                  III
+
+In the illuminating lecture on Stevenson as a writer of plays delivered
+by Sir Arthur Pinero in 1903 before the members of the Edinburgh
+Philosophical Institution, the confessions contained in 'A Penny Plain
+and Two Pence Colored' are skilfully employed to explain Stevenson's
+flat failure as a playwright. Many of his ardent admirers must have
+wondered why it was that he adventured four times into dramatic
+authorship, only to undergo a fourfold shipwreck. Yet Sir James Barrie
+and Mr. John Galsworthy, essayists and novelists at first, as Stevenson
+was, strayed successfully from prose fiction into the acted drama. Was
+not Stevenson as anxious for this theatrical triumph as any one of
+these? Was he not as richly dowered with dramatic power, as inventive,
+as responsive to opportunity, as ready to master a new craft? Why, then,
+did he fail where they have succeeded?
+
+For these baffling questions Sir Arthur Pinero has an acceptable answer.
+Stevenson was unable to establish himself as a play-maker, first,
+because he did not take the art of play-making seriously; he did not put
+his full strength in it, mind and soul and body, contenting himself when
+he was a man with playing at play-making as he had played with his toy
+theater when he was a boy. The second cause of his disappointment as a
+dramatist was due to the abiding influence of this toy theater, and to
+the fact that the pieces he attempted were planned in rivalry with the
+'Miller and His Men,' and therefore that they were hopelessly out of
+date before they were conceived. (There is a third reason, not mentioned
+by Sir Arthur, and yet suggesting itself irresistibly to any one who
+knew the editor of the _Magazine of Art_ personally; all four of
+Stevenson's attempts at play-writing were made in collaboration with
+Henley, who was the least equipped by temper and by temperament for the
+practise of dramaturgy.)
+
+      _Scene II_ POLLOCK'S SCENES _IN THE MILLER AND HIS MEN. Nº9_
+
+[Illustration: _London. Published by B Pollock,73 Hoxton Street Hoxton_
+Explosion of the mill. A back drop in the 'Miller and His Men,' Scene
+II]
+
+Yet even if Stevenson had worked alone, and even if he had taken the new
+art seriously, he could never have won a place among the playwrights
+until he had fought himself free from the sinuous coils of Skeltery. In
+his youth he had saved his pence to purchase the accessories of Skelt's
+Juvenile Drama with boyish delight in the acquisition of things longed
+for to be possessed at last. When he had purchased plate 7 and scene 11,
+No. 9, he thought they were his possessions. But, of a truth, he was
+their possession, even if he did not know his slavery. As a man he was
+subdued to what he had worked in as a boy; and when he wanted to write
+plays of his own, he had no freedom to follow the better models of his
+own day; he was a bondman to Skelt, a thrall to Park, a minion to Webb,
+a chattel to Redington and to Pollock. "What am I?" he asked in his
+self-revelatory essay, humorously exaggerating, no doubt, yet
+subconsciously stating the exact truth; "What am I? What are life, art,
+letters, the world, but what my Skelt has made them? He stamped himself
+upon my immaturity." And the impression was then so deep that it could
+not be effaced in maturity. The boy in Stevenson survived, instead of
+dying when the man was born.
+
+The art of play-writing, like the art of story-telling, and, indeed,
+like all the other arts, demands both a native gift and an acquired
+craft. Its basic principles are the same ever since the drama began; but
+its immediate methods vary at different times and in different
+countries. While every artist must say what it is given him to say, he
+can say it acceptably only by acquiring the method of speech employed by
+his immediate predecessors. However original he may prove himself at the
+end, in the beginning he can only imitate the methods and borrow the
+processes and avail himself of the practises which the elder craftsmen
+are employing successfully at the moment when he sets himself to learn
+their trade. He must--to use the apt term of the engineers--he must keep
+himself abreast of "state of the art." This is what the great dramatists
+have ever done; Sophocles follows in the footsteps of Æschylus, as
+Shakspere emulates Marlowe and Kyd, and as Molière went to school to the
+adroit and acrobatic Italian comedians. These great dramatists were
+perfectly content to begin by taking over the patterns devised by their
+immediate predecessors in play-making, even if they were soon to enlarge
+these patterns and so modify them to suit their even larger needs.
+
+[Illustration: POLLOCK'S CHARACTERS IN THE MILLER AND HIS MEN. _Plate
+7_
+
+Plate No. 7, complete as published, ready to be cut out and put into
+use in the toy theater]
+
+Now, the state of the art when Stevenson turned to the theater was in
+accord with the picture-frame stage of to-day, with a single set to the
+act, and without the soliloquies and the confidential asides to the
+audience which may then have been proper enough on the apron-stage of
+the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Even in the lower grade
+of playhouse, where rude and crude melodramas were performed, the method
+and the manner of the 'Miller and His Men' had long departed. The
+pleasure that melodrama can give is perennial; but its processes vary in
+accord with the changing conditions of the theater. The door was open
+for Stevenson to write melodrama, if he preferred that species of play,
+and if he desired to varnish it with literature as he was to varnish the
+police-novel or mystery-story in the 'Wrecker.' But if he sought to do
+this, he was bound to inform himself as to the state of the art at the
+instant of composition. If he shut his eyes to the changed conditions of
+the theater since the 'Miller and His Men' had won a wide popularity in
+the playhouse, then he made an unpardonable blunder, for the battle was
+lost before he could deploy his forces. He might have been forewarned by
+the failure of Charles Lamb in a like attempt. When Lamb's Elizabethan
+imitation 'John Woodvil' was rejected for Drury Lane by John Philip
+Kemble as not "consonant with the taste of the age"; its exasperated
+author cried: "Hang on the age! I'll write for antiquity!" But those who
+write for antiquity cannot complain if they do not delight their
+contemporaries. It is to his contemporaries, and not to antiquity or to
+posterity, that every true dramatist has appealed.
+
+                                   IV
+
+And as Stevenson might have taken warning from the sad fate of Lamb, so
+he might have found his profit in considering the happy fortune of
+Victor Hugo, who also had a taste for melodrama. When the leader of the
+French romanticists felt that it was incumbent upon him to conquer the
+theater which the classicists held as their last stronghold, he was
+swift to consider the state of the art. He sought immediate success upon
+the stage, and the most successful plays of that period in France were
+the melodramas of Pixérécourt, and of his followers, and therefore Hugo
+sat himself down to spy out the secrets of their craft. He made himself
+master of their methods, and he put together the striking and startling
+plots of 'Hernani' and 'Ruy Blas' in strict accord with their formulas,
+certain that he could varnish with literature their melodramatic
+actions. So glittering was his varnish, so brilliant was his metrical
+rhetoric, so glowing were his golden verses, that he blinded the
+spectators and kept the most of them from peering beneath at his
+arbitrary and artificial skeleton of supporting melodramatic structure.
+To-day, after fourscore years, we can see just what it is that Hugo did;
+and his plays, superb as they are in their lyric adornment, stand
+revealed as frank melodramas, lacking sincerity of motive and veracity
+of character drawing. But when Hugo wrote them they were in Kemble's
+phrase "consonant with the taste of the age," and the best of them have
+not yet worn out their welcome in the theater.
+
+Stevenson did not heed the warning of Lamb, and he did not profit by the
+example of Hugo. 'Deacon Brodie' was born out of date; so was 'Admiral
+Guinea'; and all the varnish of literature which the two collaborators
+applied externally and with loving solicitude availed naught. It is due
+to his entanglement in the strangling coils of Skeltery that Stevenson
+did not take the drama seriously. He seemed to have looked at it as
+something to be tossed off lightly to make money in the interstices of
+honest work. In his stories, long and short, he strove for effect, no
+doubt, but he was bent also on achieving sincerity and veracity. In his
+plays he made little effort for either sincerity or veracity, so far at
+least as his plot was concerned; and he thought he could lift these
+concoctions to the level of literature by the polish of his dialog, and
+by qualities applied on the outside instead of being developed from the
+inside. He seems to have believed that in the drama, at least, he could
+attain beauty by constructing his ornament instead of by ornamenting his
+construction, ignoring or ignorant of the fact that in the drama, the
+construction, if only it be solid enough, and four square to all the
+winds that blow, needs no ornament and is most impressive in its stark
+simplicity.
+
+In his boyhood Goethe had also played with a toy theater, and it was a
+puppet-show piece which first called his attention to the mighty theme
+of his supreme poem; but the great German poet, captivated as he may
+have been by his youthful experience, was able in his manhood to free
+himself from its shackles. He came in time to have a profound insight
+into the principles of dramatic art, and of the dramaturgic craft. In
+his old age he talked about the theater freely and frequently to
+Eckermann; and there are few of his utterances which do not furnish food
+for reflection. Here is one of them:
+
+     Writing for the stage is something peculiar; and he who does
+     not understand it had better leave it alone. Every one thinks
+     that an interesting fact will appear interesting on the
+     boards--nothing of the kind! Things may be very pretty to read,
+     and very pretty to think about; but as soon as they are put
+     upon the stage the effect is quite different; and that which
+     has charmed us in the closet will probably fall flat on the
+     boards.... Writing for the stage is a trade that one must
+     understand, and requires a talent that one must possess. Both
+     are uncommon, and where they are not combined, we have scarcely
+     any good result.
+
+That Stevenson had the native gift of the dramatist is undisputable, and
+Sir Arthur Pinero in his lecture was able to make this clear. But
+"writing for the stage is also a trade that one must acquire"; and when
+Stevenson sought to acquire it he apprenticed himself to Skelt not to
+Sardou, to Redington and Pollock, not to Augier and Dumas.
+
+(1914.)
+
+[Illustration: Grindoff and banditti carousing. Lower half of Plate No.
+5, Pollock's characters in the 'Miller and His Men']
+
+P.S.--After the publication of this paper in _Scribner's Magazine_, a
+friendly reader in Great Britain was kind enough to copy out for me this
+Skeltian lyric, which appeared in the London _Fun_ in 1868, and which
+was probably rimed by Henry S. Leigh:
+
+AN EARLY STAGE
+
+    Ah me! since first, long, long ago,
+      I learned to love the British stage,
+    It has--or I have--altered so,
+      It scarce receives my patronage!
+    Where are the villain's spangled tabs,
+      His cloak, his ringlets, and his belt?
+    Where are his scowls, his growls, his stabs,
+      As shown of old by Park and Skelt?
+
+    Once was I manager myself,
+      And played the 'Miller and his Men';
+    My company--ah, happy elf!
+      I had no trouble with them then--
+    They never sulked, forgot their lines,
+      Threw up their parts, or asked for "gelt"--
+    For as the reader p'r'aps divines--
+      I got them all of Park and Skelt.
+
+    I stuck them on, and cut them out,
+      I painted them with colors bright;
+    I scattered tinsel-specks about,
+      And made them things of beauty, quite--
+    Not joys forever--ne'ertheless,
+      They've vanished just as snowflakes melt.
+    None can restore the bliss, I guess,
+      I once derived from Park and Skelt.
+
+    How I revered the artist's skill
+      Who did my heroes represent--
+    With scowls the very soul to thrill--
+      With one leg straight and one leg bent!
+    I loved his ladies full of grace,
+      And on their beauties fondly dwelt:--
+    My first pictorial love could trace
+      Her pedigree to Park and Skelt.
+
+    Ah me! 'tis many a year since I
+      Those dear old plates--a penny plain
+    And two-pence colored--did espy;
+      I ne'er shall see their like again!
+    The world's with disappointment rife,
+      And I have far too often felt
+    That actors now are less like life
+      Than those I bought of Park and Skelt!
+
+                                   IV
+
+                             WHY FIVE ACTS?
+
+                             WHY FIVE ACTS?
+
+                                   I
+
+In the eighteenth century, both in England and in France, every stately
+and ponderous tragedy and every self-respecting comedy obeyed the
+obligation imposed by long tradition and duly stretched itself out to
+the full measure of five acts, no more and no less. It felt bound thus
+to distend itself, even tho its theme might be far too frail for so huge
+a frame, and even tho the unfortunate author often found himself at his
+wit's end to piece out his play's end. Any one who has had occasion to
+read widely in the works of the eighteenth century playwrights cannot
+fail to feel abundant sympathy for the harassed poet who plaintively
+called on Parliament to pass a law abolishing fifth acts altogether.
+This unduly distressed dramatist was an Englishman; but about the same
+time a Frenchman, weary of contemplating the frequent emptiness of the
+contemporary tragic stage, sarcastically remarked that, after all, it
+must be very easy _not_ to write a tragedy in five acts.
+
+Yet if tragedy was to be written at all, it had to have five acts, since
+a smaller number would not seem proportionate to a truly tragic subject.
+But why five acts? Why has five the number sacred to the tragic muse?
+Why did even the comic muse demand it? Why does George Meredith,
+discussing comedy, declare that "five is dignity with a trailing robe;
+whereas one, or two, or three acts would be short skirts, and
+degrading." Why not three acts, or seven? Why was it that any other
+number of acts was unthinkable--or at least never thought of?
+
+Questions like these seem to have floated before the mind of the Abbé
+d'Aubignac, writing in the seventeenth century, and he came very near
+putting to himself the query which serves as a title for this chapter.
+"Poets have generally agreed that all Drammas regularly should have
+neither more nor less than Five Acts; and the Proof of this is the
+general observation of it; but for the Reason, I do not know whether
+there be any founded in Nature. Rhetorick has this advantage over Poetry
+in the Parts of Oration, that the Exord, Narration, Confirmation and
+Peroration are founded upon a way of discoursing natural to all Men....
+But for the Five Acts of the Drammatick Poem, they have not been framed
+upon any sound ground."
+
+That the division of a drama into five parts was accepted in every
+civilized country as the only possible division, seems very strange
+indeed, when we consider that there is really no artistic justification
+for it, nor any logical necessity. Like every other work of art a play
+ought to have a single subject, a clearly defined topic; in other words,
+it ought to have Unity of Action. There is no denying that some of the
+greatest artists have, now and again, been tempted to deal with two
+themes at the same time, combining these as best they could in a single
+work at the risk of leaving us a little in doubt as to their intention;
+but in the immense majority of acknowledged masterpieces the interest is
+carefully centered in a single object. In these masterpieces the action
+is single and unswerving, sweeping forward irresistibly to its
+inevitable end.
+
+If, therefore, we accept the Unity of Action as a general rule, binding
+upon all artists, we can hardly deny that the most obviously natural
+arrangement for the story is to set it forth in one act, without any
+intermission or subdivision whatsoever--a single action in a single act.
+Yet it is the play in three acts which we are bound to recognize at once
+as possessing the ideal form, since it enables the dramatist to set
+apart the three divisions, which Aristotle declared to be essential to a
+well-constructed tragedy--the beginning, the middle, and the end--each
+presented in an act of its own. To put a play into more than three acts
+is possible only by halving one or another of these three essential
+parts. In a four-act play, the beginning may be split into two acts; and
+in a five-act play the middle may also be subdivided.
+
+The logic of the three-act form, and the convenience of it also, are so
+obvious that ever since the tyranny of the Procrustean framework in five
+acts was abolished in the middle years of the nineteenth century,
+practical playwrights of all countries have favored it more and more.
+The young Dumas used it in his later plays, and so did Ibsen, that
+consummate master of stagecraft, emancipated from empty traditions, but
+profiting shrewdly by every available device of his immediate
+predecessors. If the four-act form is also popular to-day, this seems to
+be because the modern dramatist, intending a play in three acts, finds
+himself forced by sheer press of matter, to subdivide one of the
+essential members, as Sir Arthur Pinero had to do in the 'Second Mrs.
+Tanqueray' and Mr. Henry Arthur Jones in the 'Liars.' Even the opera,
+which liked the larger framework of five acts when Scribe was writing
+librettos for Halévy and Meyerbeer, is now content with only three,
+since Wagner revealed his skill as a librettist.
+
+It is true that Freytag, in his sadly old-fashioned treatise on 'Technic
+of the Drama,' accepted without cavil the five-act form, and even
+attempted to justify it by asserting that there are in fact five
+divisions of a tragic action. He symbolized the arrangement of a drama
+in a pyramidal structure, declaring that it ascends from the
+Introduction to the Climax, and then descends to the Catastrophe.
+Obviously these are only different terms for the beginning, the middle,
+and the end. But he vainly imagined two other members, the Rise, which
+intervenes between the Introduction and the Climax, and the Fall, which
+he inserted between the Climax and the Catastrophe. Obviously, again,
+this is an explanation after the event; and it seems to have its origin
+solely in his acceptance of the five-act form. And Freytag was forced to
+abandon his own theory when he considered honestly certain of the
+masterpieces of the modern drama. He admitted it to be "impossible that
+the single acts should correspond entirely to the five great divisions
+of the action." He asserted that "in the Rising Action, the first stage
+was usually in the first act, the last sometimes in the third; of the
+Falling Action the beginning and the end were sometimes taken in the
+third and fifth acts." Yet he failed to see that if he made this
+admission, he cut the ground from under his feet, and that there was no
+longer any acceptable reason for his insistence upon the five-act form.
+
+Freytag had no doubt at all as to the necessity of the division into
+five acts. He received it with blind faith, as tho it had been
+prescribed by divine authority. Yet if he had chosen to explore the
+early history of the drama in his own tongue, he would have found Hans
+Sachs sometimes extending his plays into six acts, and even into seven.
+And if he had cared to consider the drama of the Spaniards he would have
+seen that the most of the plays of Calderon are in three acts--a
+division which the great dramatic poet of Spain had taken over, as he
+had taken over so much else, from his masterful predecessor, Lope de
+Vega. In his interesting and illuminating little treatise on the art of
+writing plays, Lope de Vega gave the credit of establishing the
+three-act form to Virues. Plays had previously been written in four
+acts; as Lope puts it pleasantly: "The drama had gone on all fours, like
+a child, and truly it was then in its infancy."
+
+Freytag ignored or was ignorant of Hans Sachs and Calderon. His mind was
+fixed on Goethe and on Schiller, altho his vision also included
+Shakspere, upon whom the two German poets had more or less modeled
+themselves. The tradition of the five-act form might not obtain in the
+earliest German drama, as it did not obtain in the Spanish; but it was
+firmly established in the later German drama, in the English, and in the
+French. It is easy to see that the later Germans derived it from the
+French and the English; but where did the French and the English get it?
+Where could they get it? No such division existed in the medieval drama,
+in the mysteries and in the miracle-plays, out of which the drama of
+every modern language has been developed. No such division existed in
+the Greek drama, which has served as a standard and as a stimulus to the
+drama of every modern literature. A Greek tragedy was represented
+without any intermission in a single, long unbroken act; and if a
+sequence of three plays was sometimes performed, one after another, on
+the same day, and dealing with successive periods of the same story,
+this trilogy might suggest a division into three parts. Nor is any hint
+of the duty of dividing a tragedy into five parts to be discovered
+anywhere in Aristotle.
+
+                                   II
+
+And yet we must go back to the Greek theater if we want to see why it is
+that the 'Femmes Savantes' of Molière and the 'School for Scandal' of
+Sheridan are each of them in five acts. But it is not from a Greek that
+we get the law that this division was obligatory on all self-respecting
+dramatists; it is from a Roman, writing at a time when the drama of his
+own language had been ousted from the stage by pantomimic spectacle and
+by gladiatorial combat. It is Horace, who, in his epistle on the art of
+poetry, declares the necessity of five acts:
+
+    Ne brevior, neu sit quinto productior actu
+    Fabula quae posci vult et spectata reponi.
+
+Sir Theodore Martin rendered this in an English rimed couplet, which
+does not completely convey the meaning of the two Latin lines, but which
+will serve to show the rigidity of the rule laid down by the Roman poet:
+
+    Five acts a play must have, nor more nor less,
+    To keep the stage and have a marked success.
+
+But this still leaves us groping in the dark. Why did Horace declare
+this law? What warrant had he? What put the idea into his head? These
+are questions answered by a French scholar, M. Weil; in one of his
+ingenious and learned 'Études sur le Drame Antique,' he explains that
+Horace derived much of his theory of the poetic art from the Alexandrian
+critics, and more particularly from the writings of a certain
+Neoptolemus of Parium. Probably the Alexandrian authors of tragedy had
+been led to adopt a division into five acts by following the example of
+Euripides, whose practise was not uniform, but who tended to reduce to
+four the number of the lyric odes in his tragedies, thus separating the
+purely dramatic passages into five parts.
+
+In Athens the drama had been slowly evolved out of the tragic songs; and
+in the surviving tragedies of Æschylus, the earliest of the three great
+dramatic poets of Greece, we discover that the choral odes are more
+abundant than the dialog which carries on the plot. In the extant plays
+of his mighty successor, Sophocles, the drama is seen emerging
+triumphant, but the lyrical passages are still frequent and important.
+In the later pieces of Euripides, the third and most modern of the Attic
+tragedians, we note that the drama has almost wholly disengaged itself
+from the lyric out of which it sprang. In Æschylus and in Sophocles the
+number of choral odes and the number of episodes, of purely dramatic
+passages in dialog, is never fixed, varying from play to play as the
+plot might demand. But in Euripides the choral odes are more detached
+from the drama; beautiful in themselves, they seem to exist rather for
+their own sake than in any integral relation to the play itself. And
+apparently Euripides was far more interested in his play, in his plot,
+and in his characters, than in these extraneous lyric passages, so he
+reduced them to the lowest possible number, generally to four, serving,
+so to speak, as exquisite interact music, separating the pathetic play
+into five episodes in dialog.
+
+The Alexandrian tragedians came long after Euripides, and to their
+sophisticated taste his pathetic and emotional plays appealed far more
+than the austerer and manlier masterpieces of his two great
+predecessors. Apparently they accepted his form as final; they may even
+have left out the choruses altogether; and then their tragedies had five
+separate episodes--in other words, five acts. It is these lost
+Alexandrian tragedies, composed in the decadent days of the Greek drama,
+which seem to have served as the model for Seneca, the eloquent
+rhetorician--even tho he frequently took over the theme and often more
+or less of the structure of certain of the dramas of Euripides.
+
+The tragedies of Seneca are to be considered rather as dramatic poems
+than as poetic dramas, since they were intended not really for
+performance by actors, in a theater, before an audience, but for
+recitation by a single elocutionist in a private house--much as a
+professional reader of our own time might recite unaided a more or less
+dramatic poem by Shelley or Byron or Browning. Coming long after Horace,
+Seneca unhesitatingly accepted all of the restrictions insisted upon by
+the Latin lyrist--including the purely academic limitation of the number
+of speakers taking part in any dialog to three, a limitation absolutely
+absurd in a poem not intended for actual acting and not forced to
+conform to the accidental conditions of the Attic stage. Obeying also
+the other rule which he found in Horace's codification of the laws of
+dramatic poetry, the Hispano-Roman rhetorician was careful always to cut
+up his play into five parts. But he saw his profit in retaining the
+chorus, since this could be made to serve as the appropriate mouthpiece
+for the elaborate passages of elocutionary splendor in which he
+delighted.
+
+It is not to be wondered at that the Italian scholars of the Renascence
+followed the precept of Horace and the practise of Seneca. They were far
+more at home in Latin than they were in Greek; and they could hardly
+help reading into the literature of Athens what they were already
+familiar with in the authors of Rome. To them Seneca was as imposing as
+Sophocles, and Horace was almost as weighty as Aristotle. So it is that
+Scaliger and Minturno prescribe five acts, and that Castelvetro (always
+more practical in his point of view) points out that poets seem to have
+found the five-act form most suitable. When an Italian scholar-poet
+turned from criticism to creation, the tragedies he conscientiously
+composed obeyed all the rules, and his dramatic poems were as academic
+as those of Seneca, in that they were intended not for production by
+professional actors in a regular theater before spectators who had paid
+their way in, but only for an occasional performance by the author
+himself assisted by a few of his friends before a little group of
+cultivated admirers of antiquity, contemptuous of the real public. These
+soulless dramatic poems, devised for declamation by amateurs before a
+gathering of dilettants, are now perceived to be merely literary
+curiosities, having little connection with the real drama made for the
+regular theater and its myriad-minded body of playgoers.
+
+Just as the Italian dramatic poems were imitations of Seneca, so the
+French dramatic poems, composed a little later, were imitations of these
+Italians, and also of Seneca, more or less indirectly. They were the
+imitations of an imitation, aping the outward form of the drama, but
+empty of all genuine dramatic spirit, artificial in passion and
+high-flown in rhetoric. And there are early English attempts at this
+same sort of academic tragedy, more imitative still, since we can see in
+them the commingled influence of the French and of the Italians
+immediately, and also of the remoter Seneca, whom they revered as the
+exemplar of true tragedy. Such a play is 'Gorboduc,' belauded by the
+scholarly Sidney--and even on one occasion acted, by main strength. In
+all of these imitations, English and French and Italian, we find the
+stately chorus abounding in lofty rhetoric; and we find also, and
+always, the division into five acts. But in the folk-theater, which the
+scholar-poets scorned, and out of which the living drama was to be
+developed, there is no trace of any division into acts. In the mysteries
+and the miracle-plays, and in the chronicle-plays which grew out of
+them, there are numberless episodes, each complete in itself, and never
+combined artificially into acts. The composer of any one of these
+folk-dramas conceived his story as a continuous narrative shown in
+action; and he gave no thought to the number of divisions, of episodes,
+of separate scenes, or of acts that it might seem to have.
+
+                                  III
+
+Tragedy has ever been held to be more elevated than comedy and more
+worthy; and comedy has continually accepted the conditions appropriate
+to tragedy. Since the dignity of tragedy demanded a division into five
+acts, comedy was also subjected to the same rule; and this was done in
+spite of the fact that the plays of Plautus and Terence (composed long
+before Horace codified his advice to intending poets) were not divided
+into acts, if we may judge by the earliest of the surviving manuscripts.
+So it is that we find the scholarly authors of the two earliest of
+English comedies, 'Ralph Roister Doister' and 'Gammer Gurton's Needle,'
+knowing what was expected of them, and giving the five-act form to both
+of these amusing plays. But these two comedies, almost contemporary as
+they are with the academic and undramatic tragedy of 'Gorboduc,' are far
+superior to it in adaptability for actual performance. They are not
+intended only to be recited; they can be acted easily and profitably. As
+we analyze them we see that the structural complexity may be derived
+from the comic dramas of Plautus and Terence, but that the inner spirit
+is that of the English folk-theater, of the robust medieval
+farce-writers, of the unknown humorist who has left us the laughable and
+veracious scene of Mak and the Shepherds.
+
+Scholars as they were, the authors of these two comedies did not scorn
+the primitive plays of the plain people of their own time. They did not
+despise the unpretending folk-drama which was then pleasing the
+populace; in fact, they took stock of it, and found their profit in so
+doing. They saw that to be raised up to the level of literature it
+needed only to be chastened and stiffened. They accepted the living
+tradition of play-making as it came down to them, and in accord with
+this tradition they wrought their humorous fantasies, adding the higher
+polish and the more adroit plot which they had learned to appreciate in
+the Latin comic dramatists. They accepted the native play, bare as it
+was, and they enriched it by bestowing on it as much as it could carry
+of the finer art of the Romans. Thus it is that the authors of 'Ralph
+Roister Doister' and of 'Gammer Gurton's Needle' may have pointed out
+the path of progress to the author of the 'Comedy of Errors,' whereas
+the authors of 'Gorboduc,' contemptuously rejecting the folk-theater of
+their own day, and idly copying the classicist imitations of the
+Italians, thereby relinquished whatever direct influence they might have
+had upon the growth of tragedy in England.
+
+Both 'Ralph Roister Doister' and 'Gammer Gurton's Needle' were probably
+written for performance by college boys, and they have not a little of
+the brisk heartiness and of the broad horse-play to which we are
+accustomed in the college pieces of to-day. It was for performance at
+court that Lyly wrote the most of his plays, which lack the vivacity and
+the liveliness distinguishing the two college comic dramas, but which
+yet reveal a far better understanding of the drama than was possessed by
+the authors of 'Gorboduc.' Lyly again is careful to divide his plays
+into five acts. But his contemporaries Greene and Peele, writing solely
+for the professional playhouses, were bound by none of the rules which
+might be expected in college or at court. Whatever their own scholarly
+equipment, when they wrote for the professional players, they followed
+unhesitatingly the traditions of the contemporary theater. As
+playwrights they were the direct heirs of the anonymous and ignorant
+devisers of the medieval drama. They had a story to set on the stage;
+they chose a succession of more or less effective episodes, and they
+carelessly cast these into dialog, with little thought of form or of
+construction. Never do their plays contain matter enough for five full
+acts; and we may be certain that no such framework was ever in the mind
+of either of these dramatic poets. In the original editions of their
+pieces we find no separation into acts and scenes; and if this needless
+and misleading subdivision is found in later editions it is the doing of
+misguided editors.
+
+In what is accepted as the earliest edition of Kyd's 'Spanish Tragedy,'
+the most widely popular of all the pre-Shaksperian plays, the text is
+actually divided into four acts. But this division is not structural; it
+is almost accidental, as tho it was an afterthought, inserted at the
+last moment into the copy intended for the printer, and never in the
+mind of the playwright himself when he was preparing the prompt-book for
+the actors; and Shakspere, who followed Kyd in more ways than one,
+apparently followed him in this also. In the folio edition of his plays,
+published after his death, a division into five acts has been made; but
+the task has not been accomplished any too skilfully--for example, the
+second act of 'King John' has but eighty lines, and here the division is
+into four acts only. The suggestion has been proffered that it was,
+perhaps, left to the printers to do, the influence of Ben Jonson having
+been powerful enough to establish the theory that a self-respecting
+dramatist would never fail to cast his tragedies in the five-act form.
+It is to be noted also that no division into acts is to be found in the
+quarto editions published in Shakspere's lifetime; and this is very
+significant since these quartos seem to have been piratical copies from
+shorthand notes taken surreptitiously in the theater, thus recording the
+actual conditions of performance.
+
+It may be doubted whether Shakspere conceived his plays in accordance
+with any such subdivisions. Some of them, the 'Comedy of Errors' for
+one, which can be acted in the space of an hour and a quarter, are far
+too slight for so huge a framework. On the other hand, the several
+appearances of Chorus punctuate 'Henry V' into five divisions,
+apparently an intentional conformity to the Horatian rule. Of course,
+there were generally several intermissions in the Elizabethan
+performance of a play, altho the resulting divisions were not
+necessarily five; and it is noteworthy that Shakspere makes Jaques
+declare that man's life had seven acts.
+
+                                   IV
+
+The fact is that Shakspere was a professional playwright, and that he
+had no merely academic theories. In composing his plays he followed
+unhesitatingly the principles that had guided his immediate
+predecessors. He was seeking ever to give the playgoing public what it
+had been accustomed to enjoy in the theater, better in degree, no
+doubt, but the same in kind. Like these predecessors, he kept to the
+traditions inherited from the medieval mysteries; and he thought in
+terms, not of acts and of scenes, as a modern playwright is forced to
+do, but of a continuous narrative shown in action. In doing so he
+resembles Herodotus, whose history has also been cut up by later
+editors, dividing it into nine books, altho, as Professor Bury has
+reminded us, "such divisions had not yet come into fashion" in the
+historian's own day. There is no reason to suppose that Shakspere would
+have approved of the attempt of the editors of the folio to subdivide
+his plays, each into five acts. There is every reason to suppose that he
+would have been greatly annoyed if he could have foreseen the way in
+which later editors have chosen further to chop up the acts into an
+infinity of scenes.
+
+Nowadays, we have been so accustomed to read Shakspere in one or another
+of the trim and tidy modern editions, with a wanton division into acts
+and into scenes, each of which indicates a change of place, and each of
+which seems to suggest a change of scenery, that it is only by a
+resolute effort of the will that we are able to shake off the
+prepossessions derived from this unfortunate and confusing presentation
+of his text. Probably even to-day a majority of those who enjoy reading
+Shakspere would be surprised to be told that there is no warrant
+whatever for these alleged changes of scene, and for these superabundant
+subdivisions of his story. Many of these readers would be taken aback by
+the unexpected discovery that all this cutting up of Shakspere's text
+was the work of his commentators, with Rowe at the head of the
+procession. Some of these readers would feel as tho they were deprived
+of a precious possession, if they had only an edition in which all this
+useless machinery was swept away.
+
+And yet this is just the edition which is demanded by the present state
+of Shaksperian scholarship, and which is now made possible by our new
+understanding of the Elizabethan theater, with its rude platform thrust
+out into the yard, so different from our modern theaters, in which the
+stage is withdrawn behind a picture-frame. The Tudor platform-stage is
+wholly unlike the picture-frame stage of to-day; but it is very like the
+"pageant," or the scaffold on which the mysteries and miracle-plays were
+presented. It was to the simple conditions of his semi-medieval theater
+that Shakspere adjusted himself, rude as those conditions may now appear
+to us who are accustomed to the sumptuous picturesqueness of our own
+luxuriant playhouses.
+
+In accepting the theater as he found it, and in availing himself of all
+its possibilities, such as they were, Shakspere showed his usual common
+sense. Only by striving to reconstruct for ourselves in our mind's eye,
+as it were, the playhouse where he plied his trade and earned his
+living, can we come to any adequate appreciation of his art, of his
+craftsmanship as a playwright, of his dramaturgic skill. And in any
+honest effort to understand how his mighty dramas were originally
+produced by himself and by his fellow actors in the round O of the
+wooden Globe Theater, unroofed and unlighted except by the dingy
+daylight of northern Europe, we need always to keep fast in our mind the
+fact that all preconceptions are false that may be derived from our
+memory of latter-day performances in theaters of a type which the
+Elizabethan dramatists could not foresee, and of which the conditions
+are often the exact opposite of those they accepted without hesitation.
+That is to say, the most profitable way to reconstruct mentally the
+Tudor playhouse is to banish from our minds every impression made by our
+modern theater, with its elaborate complexity, and to study out for
+ourselves the simple circumstances of performance in the Middle Ages.
+And as a first step toward the proper standpoint, we must cast out our
+traditional belief that Shakspere always accepted the classicist formula
+of five acts, proclaimed by Horace, and employed by Seneca. That he did
+use it in one or two plays seems indisputable, and he may very well have
+employed it in a few others, but there is no reason to suppose that he
+would have submitted himself any more willingly to the rule of five acts
+than he did to the rule of the three unities.
+
+It may be doubted also whether not a few dramatists, writing later than
+Shakspere, would not have done well to claim the liberty he and Lope de
+Vega chose to exercise at will. Racine, for one, had sadly to stretch
+his 'Athalie' to fill out the five-act framework which he had blindly
+accepted, altho he had earlier limited 'Esther' to three acts. Schiller,
+for another, would have gained a swifter compactness for his play if he
+had left out the needless fifth act of his 'William Tell' and rolled his
+fourth act into his third. Victor Hugo had to manufacture a fourth act
+for his 'Ruy Blas,' so slightly related to his main story that it was
+cut out of the English adaptation acted by Fechter and Booth. Ibsen, it
+may be added, composed his first tragedy, 'Catiline,' in three acts,
+altho it was in blank verse, thus early revealing his characteristic
+independence of tradition.
+
+(1907.)
+
+P. S.--Since this paper was written I have found two opinions as to the
+number of acts a play ought to have which were unknown to me when I
+undertook the discussion. The first is in the 'Dasarupa,' the Hindu
+treatise on the craft of play-making: "There are five stages of the
+action which is set on foot by those that strive after a result:
+Beginning, Effort, Prospect of Success, Certainty of Success, Attainment
+of the Result."
+
+The second is in the commentary made by Robert Louis Stevenson during
+his methodical perusal of the dramas of the elder Dumas. After reading
+'Henri III et sa Cour,' Stevenson declares that here in Dumas's first
+piece "is the cloven foot; a fourth act that has no part or lot in the
+play; a fourth act that is a mere incubus and interruption--that takes
+the eye off the action, and between two spirited and palpitating scenes
+interjects a damned sermon on the history of France. Poor Tribonian had
+a sore job to make up the fifty books of the Pandects; what was that to
+the labor of a dramatist bent on filling his five acts? I go as far as
+this: the natural division of the normal play is four: Act I,
+exposition; Act II, the problem produced; Act III, the problem argued;
+Act IV, the way out of it."
+
+(1916.)
+
+                                   V
+
+                         DRAMATIC COLLABORATION
+
+                         DRAMATIC COLLABORATION
+
+                                   I
+
+It is a significant fact that whenever and wherever the drama has
+flourished most abundantly and most luxuriantly, we are certain to find
+a tendency to collaboration, to the partnership of two authors in the
+composition of one play. In England in the spacious days of good Queen
+Bess, there is not only the famous association of Beaumont and Fletcher,
+but also a host of other more or less temporary combinations, Fletcher
+with Shakspere and Massinger, Dekker with Ben Jonson and with Middleton.
+In Spain Lope de Vega joined forces with Montalvan and with others. In
+France in the seventeenth century Molière, once at least called to his
+aid Corneille and Quinault; and in France again in the nineteenth
+century we find Augier working with Sandeau and with Foussier, Scribe
+working with Legouvé, and with a score of others, while Dumas the elder
+was encompassed by a cloud of collaborators, and Dumas the younger was
+willing on more than one occasion to join various writers in the plays
+which he included in the separate volumes of his works, called by him
+the 'Théâtre des Autres.' Then also in France there was the
+long-continued alliance of Meilhac and Halévy, to which we owe
+'Froufrou' and the 'Grand Duchess of Gérolstein'; and there was also
+the almost equally interesting association of MM. Caillavet and de
+Flers. Sardou had one ally in the composition of 'Divorçons,' and
+another in the composition of 'Madame Sans Gêne.' In Great Britain in
+recent years we have seen Sir James Barrie and Sir Arthur Pinero unite
+in writing a book for music; Mr. Bennett and Mr. Knoblauch unite in
+writing 'Milestones'; Mr. Granville Barker and Mr. Laurence Housman
+unite in writing 'Prunella.' And in the United States there was a score
+of years ago the steady collaboration of Mr. Belasco with the late H. C.
+De Mille, to which we owe the 'Charity Ball' and the 'Wife'; and more
+recently Mr. Belasco also has collaborated with Mr. John Luther Long in
+writing 'Madame Butterfly,' and the 'Darling of the Gods.' Mr. Augustus
+Thomas was once the partner of Mr. Clay Greene; Mr. Bronson Howard
+composed one of his latest plays, 'Peter Stuyvesant, Governor of New
+Amsterdam,' in association with another American man of letters; and Mr.
+Booth Tarkington and Mr. Harry Leon Wilson were the co-authors of the
+'Man from Home' and of half a dozen other pieces.
+
+While this prevalence of the practise of collaboration in periods of
+dramatic productivity is significant, it is equally significant that
+there is no corresponding prevalence of the practise of collaboration in
+novel-writing. True it is that there are certain fairly well-known
+partnerships in the history of prose fiction--that of Erckmann-Chatrain,
+in French, for instance, and that of Besant and Rice in English. True it
+is that Dickens and Wilkie Collins were joint authors of 'No
+Thorofare,' and that Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner were joint
+authors of the 'Gilded Age.' True it is also, that novels have been
+written not only by two partners, but by what can fairly be described as
+a syndicate of associated authors, the 'King's Men' by four, 'Six of One
+and Half a Dozen of the Other' by six, and the 'Whole Family' by twelve
+(including Mr. Howells and Mr. Henry James, Mrs. Mary E. Wilkins
+Freeman, and Doctor Henry van Dyke). These freakish conglomerates are
+sporadic only; they seem to be little better than literary "stunts"; and
+even the union of two writers in the production of a single novel is far
+less frequently to be observed than the union of two writers in the
+production of a single play. The former is unusual, whereas the latter
+seems to be so common as to excite no comment.
+
+Now, there must be a reason for this difference. If the playwrights find
+it advantageous to double up, and the novelists do not discover any
+profit in putting on double harness, there ought to be some evident
+explanation. When we consider more carefully the essentially different
+conditions of the art of prose fiction and the art of play-writing, it
+is not difficult to perceive fairly obvious reasons for the varying
+procedure of the practitioners of these rival arts, which may seem so
+much alike, but which are really so very different in their methods and
+in their possibilities.
+
+The French critic Joubert once asserted that "to make in advance an
+exact and detailed plan is to deprive one's intellect of all the
+pleasures of novelty and chance meeting during its execution; it is to
+make this execution insipid, and in consequence impossible, in works
+calling for enthusiasm and imagination." This is an overstatement--but
+it is not a misstatement--of a principle of composition which is
+fundamentally sound in the writing of prose fiction, but which is
+fundamentally unsound in the writing of plays. The drama demands a
+well-built story, artfully put together, while a novel need not have a
+coherent and compact plot. Some great novels, Fielding's 'Tom Jones' for
+one, and Turgenef's 'Smoke' for another, have each of them a beautifully
+articulated structure, and so has Mr. Howells's 'Rise of Silas Lapham,'
+to take a later example. But other great novels are frankly more or less
+haphazard in their movement, the 'Pickwick Papers,' for instance, and
+'Tartarin on the Alps,' and 'Huckleberry Finn.' And it is not too much
+to say that only a very few novels attain to the severity of structure,
+the regularity of action, the straightforward, unswerving movement which
+we discover in the dramas of a corresponding rank, and which can be
+achieved only by making in advance the exact and detailed plan that
+Joubert held to be fatal in works calling for enthusiasm and
+imagination.
+
+Of course, the drama can utilize enthusiasm and imagination quite as
+often and quite as abundantly as can prose fiction, but it must use
+these precious gifts with a discretion which is not imposed upon its
+rival. In a novel enthusiastic imagination may lure the story-teller
+into a host of by-paths not foreseen by him when he set out on his
+journey; and while he is adventuring himself in these by-paths, he may
+chance to encounter characters of a diverting or an appealing
+personality, whom it may amuse him to delineate, and whom the readers of
+his book will be glad to welcome. But in a drama the story-teller is
+debarred from these wanderings from the straight and narrow road, and he
+must, perforce, control his enthusiastic imagination, compelling it to
+do its work within the rigid limits of the artfully devised framework of
+the plot.
+
+In other words, character is all-important in prose fiction, and the
+ultimate fame of the novelist depends upon his power of endowing his
+creatures with life, and upon his ability to let them obey the laws of
+their being before our eyes. This must the playwright also achieve; but
+he has the added duty of relating his characters intimately to the main
+action of his drama. Now, the novelist is under no obligation of this
+sort; he appeals not to a crowd seated before a stage, but to the
+solitary reader in the study; and experience shows that solitary readers
+do not insist upon the solidity of structure in a novel which the same
+individuals desire and demand when they betake themselves to the
+theater. The novel-reader may be satisfied by characters who do not know
+their own minds, and who are merely exhibited and put through their
+paces, without having any vital relation to the story, even if there is
+anything which can fairly be called a story--and in some novels of high
+repute, in Sterne's 'Sentimental Journey,' for example, and in Anatole
+France's 'Histoire Contemporaine,' each of them extending over several
+volumes, there is little or no story, no main thread, no pretense of a
+plot.
+
+                                   II
+
+Here, then, is the fatal difference between a novel and a play; a novel
+may have a plot, but a plot is not necessary, and it can get along with
+a minimum of story; whereas a play must have a plot, skilfully
+articulated, even if the skeleton is beautifully covered; it must have a
+story peopled by persons knowing their own minds, a story set in action
+by a dominating will, which determines the successive episodes of the
+action. As the making of a plot, as the putting together of a supporting
+skeleton of action, calls for dexterity of workmanship, for ingenuity of
+resource, for adroitness of construction, for the most careful
+consideration of the means whereby the end is to be obtained, two heads
+are often better than one, because the partners have to talk the thing
+out to its uttermost details before they decide upon the straight line
+which is the shortest distance between two points. The technic of
+play-making is more exacting than the technic of novel-writing, and it
+requires imperatively the exact and detailed plan which Joubert held to
+be hampering to enthusiasm and imagination. Scott, for example, as he
+tells us himself, began more than one of his novels not knowing what he
+was going to put into it, and not knowing from day to day, as he was
+writing, what his ultimate goal would be. But no playwright, however
+happy-go-lucky in his tendencies, has ever dared to begin a play before
+he knew with absolute certainty how he intended to end it. In the drama
+we insist upon a straightforward and unswerving action; the end is
+implied in the beginning, and the beginning is only what that end makes
+necessary.
+
+As the technic of the drama is exacting, it needs to be acquired by a
+period of apprenticeship; and here is another of the indisputable
+advantages of collaboration. The more inexperienced of the two
+collaborators is taken into the studio, so to speak, of the more expert,
+and he thereby learns the secrets of stage-craft in the best possible
+way, by applying them under the direction, or at the suggestion and by
+the advice, of an older practitioner, to whom they have become so
+familiar that they are a second nature, as it were.
+
+Collaboration is the best conceivable school for young playwrights. It
+is impossible to overestimate the influence of Scribe's multiplied
+collaborations upon the drama of France in the mid-years of the
+nineteenth century; and almost as potent, because almost as wide-spread,
+was the influence of the many collaborations of the elder Dumas. Most of
+those who were the temporary partners of Scribe and Dumas were subdued
+to their more powerful associate, and contributed little or nothing
+beyond their fundamental suggestions for the several plays, and their
+incidental suggestions as to details of the working-out. That is to say,
+most of the plays signed by Scribe and Dumas in partnership with others
+have a close similarity to the plays they signed alone. But from this
+generalization we may except 'Adrienne Lecouvreur' and 'Bataille de
+Dames,' in which Scribe had Legouvé for a partner, and in which we find
+a greater richness of character delineation than in any of the pieces
+that Scribe composed alone, as we find also a greater dexterity of
+construction than in any of the pieces that Legouvé composed alone.
+
+To the fact that 'Milestones' was written by Mr. Arnold Bennett and Mr.
+Edward Knoblauch in conjunction, and to the friendly discussion due to
+their working together, we may credit the superior stage-effectiveness
+of this play over the 'Kismet,' which Mr. Knoblauch wrote alone, and
+over the 'Great Adventure,' for which Mr. Bennett was solely
+responsible. To the composition of 'Milestones' each of these two
+authors, the American and the Englishman, brought his special
+qualifications, each of them not only stimulating but supplementing the
+other. So we find the most famous French comedy of the nineteenth
+century, the 'Gendre de M. Poirier,' a better piece of work, more
+equably balanced than any play written alone by either Augier or
+Sandeau.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to say that there is little profit in a
+partnership for play-making when both of the associates are equally
+inexpert, or when they were both possessed of wrong notions about the
+art of the drama. In the former case we have the blind leading the
+blind, and the most lamentable example of this is the long forgotten
+'Ah Sin,' which Bret Harte and Mark Twain combined to compose that C. T.
+Parsloe could impersonate the Heathen Chinee. In the latter case we have
+not only the blind leading the blind, but a perverseness in going the
+wrong way, intensified by the complete sympathy between the two
+associates; and the most lamentable example of this is the 'Deacon
+Brodie' of Robert Louis Stevenson and William Ernest Henley, who not
+only were ignorant of the modern technic of the drama, but who ignored
+it of set purpose, deliberately going up a blind alley despite the plain
+sign that there was no thorofare.
+
+                                  III
+
+Yet Stevenson, at least, perceived clearly enough what ought to be the
+more evident advantages of collaboration, that it focused "two minds
+together on the stuff," thus producing "an extraordinarily greater
+richness of purview, consideration, and invention." Collaboration will
+probably always produce a greater richness of invention, since each of
+the partners is likely to stimulate the other, their two minds striking
+sparks like flint and steel. But it can produce a greater richness of
+consideration only when each is willing both to yield and to oppose.
+Neither must yield too easily; each of them must stand out for his own
+suggestions; and each of them must insist on weighing and measuring the
+suggestions of his ally. If they are too sympathetic, if their two
+hearts beat as one, then the advantage of their having two heads is
+diminished. If the two partners always think alike, then there will be
+no greater richness of purview.
+
+When a play composed by two of his friends failed to find the success on
+the stage which had been anticipated for it, Mr. Augustus Thomas made
+the shrewd remark that the two authors had probably been "too polite to
+each other"--that is to say, that they had not insisted upon criticising
+the successive suggestions made by each in turn. On the other hand, the
+collaborators must be broad-minded enough not to resent this necessary
+criticism. Like any other partnership, collaboration is a ticklish
+experiment, and it can be profitable only when the two partners are
+willing to give and take. They need more than usual self-control; they
+must be able, each of them, to preserve his own self-respect while full
+of regard for the self-respect of the other. It is not surprising that
+the long collaborations of Erckmann-Chatrain and of Meilhac and Halévy
+finally came to a sudden end because of an abrupt quarrel. That
+disagreement is likely to arise out of the discussions inherent in any
+profitable literary partnership is evidenced by a retort credited to the
+younger Dumas, who was a rather authoritative partner, and who did not
+always succeed in keeping on good terms with those whose plays he had
+bettered. A friend once suggested a theme for a play, and invited the
+collaboration of Dumas. "But why should I wish to quarrel with you?" was
+answer of the witty dramatist.
+
+Perhaps the most remarkable instance of self-control in all the long
+history of collaboration is that of Théodore Barrière, the author of the
+once-famous play called the 'Marble Heart,' one of the latest of whose
+pieces (adapted by Augustin Daly as 'Alixe') was composed in
+collaboration with his mother-in-law!
+
+Sometimes the breach between the two partners is postponed until after
+the play is completed and produced. Charles Reade and Tom Taylor joined
+forces in the composition of the long-popular comedy called 'Masks and
+Faces,' and after it had established itself upon the stage, Charles
+Reade took its plot and its characters and utilized them in his charming
+novel, 'Peg Woffington,' and as he had taken the liberty of thus making
+a private profit out of the property of the partnership, it is not to be
+wondered at that Tom Taylor was distinctly displeased. But Charles
+Reade, altho he collaborated with Tom Taylor, with Paul Merritt, and
+with Dion Boucicault, was more or less deficient in the courtesy and
+consideration that a man ought to possess to fit him for partnership.
+When he allied himself with Dion Boucicault in the writing of the novel
+of 'Foul Play,' the collaborators quarreled so violently that they felt
+themselves justified in preparing rival dramatizations of the story they
+had written in conjunction, so that London playgoers had the opportunity
+of choosing between two different theatrical adaptations of the same
+tale.
+
+When the two partners are courteous to each other but not too yielding,
+when they are sympathetic but not too much alike in their
+characteristics and qualifications, when each of them supplements the
+weaker points of the other, then collaboration ought to result in plays
+of more variety of invention, and of more ingenuity of construction than
+is likely to be possessed by the average play due to a single mind. This
+much must be admitted; and it is the final justification for
+collaboration. But altho these partnerships in play-making spread abroad
+a knowledge of the principles of the art, and altho they raise the
+probable value of the average play, it must be admitted also, and with
+equal frankness, that the possibilities of collaboration are sharply
+limited.
+
+No single one of the mightiest masterpieces of dramatic literature,
+ancient and modern, is to be credited to collaboration; and the only
+possible exception to this sweeping statement would be urged by the
+critics who hold that the 'Gendre de M. Poirier' of Augier and Sandeau
+is the masterpiece of French comedy in the nineteenth century. Those who
+have climbed to the loftiest height of dramatic art have always done so
+alone, sustained by enthusiasm and supported by imagination. In spite of
+the greater "richness of purview, consideration, and invention" that
+collaboration undoubtedly bestows, the man of surpassing genius, the
+great master of the drama, Sophocles or Shakspere or Molière, works best
+alone. It is true that he may now and again take to himself an ally, as
+Shakspere condescended to the assistance of Fletcher in 'Henry VIII,'
+and as Molière invoked the aid of Corneille in 'Psyché,' but it is true
+also that these plays, written in collaboration by Shakspere and by
+Molière, are not the plays which establish and confirm their fame.
+Indeed, these plays are not even among the more important pieces of
+Shakspere and Molière, and the reputation of the authors would be no
+lower if these plays had never come into existence.
+
+It is by the comedies and tragedies which Shakspere wrote alone that the
+Elizabethan stage is made glorious, and not by the dramatic romances
+that go under the joint names of Beaumont and Fletcher. It is by the
+lyrical melodramas of which Victor Hugo was sole author that we recall
+the Romanticist revolt in the French theater in 1830, and immediately
+thereafter, and not by the perfervidly passionate pieces that the elder
+Dumas put together in partnership with a group of now-forgotten
+auxiliaries. It is by the comedies that Augier and the younger Dumas
+wrote, each of them expressing himself in his own fashion, that the
+drama of France is illumined a score or more years later, and not by the
+comedies in the composition of which Scribe had the aid of an army of
+allies.
+
+In any period of abundant fertility we can observe growing together at
+the same time from the soil, a fairly large number of trees rising above
+the underbrush, and we can also perceive here and there a tree of
+conspicuous eminence towering above these clumps of average height. In
+the luxuriant forest of the drama many of the trees of average height
+may be ticketed with two names, but the monarchs of the wood, those
+whose tops lift themselves high above their neighbors--these will be
+found to bear only single signature.
+
+(1914.)
+
+                                   VI
+
+                    THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS AND
+                       THE NOVELIZATION OF PLAYS
+
+                    THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS AND
+                       THE NOVELIZATION OF PLAYS
+
+                                   I
+
+In Professor Bliss Perry's admirably suggestive 'Study of Prose
+Fiction,' he devotes one chapter to a careful consideration of the
+essential distinctions between prose fiction and the drama, in which he
+makes it plain that "the novel and the play are not merely two different
+modes of communicating the same fact or truth," because "the different
+modes of presentation really result in the communication of a different
+fact." Professor Perry declares that the field of the dramatist is
+marked off from that of the novelist "by the nature of the artistic
+medium which each man employs," and he asserts that the choice of a
+medium for presenting his story and projecting his characters "depends
+wholly upon the personality and training of the artist and the nature of
+the fact or truth that he wishes to convey to the public". And he sums
+up by insisting that "a novel is typically as far removed from a play as
+a bird is from a fish, and that any attempt to transform one into the
+other is apt to result in a sort of flying-fish, a betwixt-and-between
+thing--capable, indeed, of both swimming and flying, but good at
+neither." In other words, a dramatized novel or a novelized play is an
+attempt to breed an amphibious creature which, as the Irishman once
+defined it, "can't live on the land, and dies in the water."
+
+The difference between the novel and the play is due to the inexorable
+fact that one is intended to be read alone in the study, and that the
+other is intended to be seen on the stage by a crowd; it ought to be
+obvious to all who care to consider the question, and yet there are many
+who fail to grasp the distinction, deceived by the illusive but
+superficial similarities between the two forms, each of which contains a
+story carried on by characters who take part in dialogs. And as a result
+of this failure to apprehend the vital differences between the two types
+of story-telling, the narrative to be perused and the action to be
+witnessed, our theaters have long been invaded by dramatized novels, and
+our book-stores are now being besieged by novelized plays. In many
+cases, if not in most of them, the motive for the transformation is
+simply commercial; and in view of the immediate gain to be garnered, the
+artistic disadvantages of the procedure are overlooked. If hundreds of
+thousands of readers have found pleasure in following the footsteps of a
+fascinating heroine thru the pages of a prose fiction, it is possible
+always that hundreds of thousands of spectators may be lured to behold
+her adventures when they are set forth anew in a stage-play. And if a
+compelling plot has drawn audiences night after night into the theater,
+it is possible again that this plot may attract book-buyers in equal
+numbers when it is retold in a narrative for the benefit of those
+remote from the playhouse, or reluctant to risk themselves within its
+portals. Managers are ready to tempt the novelist with the hope of a
+second crop of fame and fortune, and publishers dangle the same golden
+bait before the eyes of the dramatist.
+
+Altho this effort to kill two birds with one stone is more frequent of
+late than it used to be, it is not at all new--indeed it existed before
+the rise of prose fiction. The dramatic poets of Greece borrowed
+episodes from the earliest epic poets. Centuries later Shakspere laid
+violent hands on Italian tales and on English romances. On the other
+hand, while it must be admitted that the dramatizing of novels has been
+far more prevalent in the past than the novelizing of plays, this latter
+practise, suddenly popular in the twentieth century, was not unknown in
+the centuries that preceded ours. For example, Le Sage levied upon the
+Spanish playwrights for many of the characters and the situations he
+needed, for his rambling, picaresque novels, 'Gil Blas' and its sister
+stories. Another illustration can be found in England earlier than any
+in France; and before the play of 'Pericles,' which Shakspere seems to
+have edited and improved, was printed and perhaps even before it was
+performed, it was novelized by an obscure writer named Wilkins, who was
+very probably the author of the original version of the straggling piece
+that Shakspere revised. Thru the long years prose fiction and the drama
+have struggled with each other for the favor of the public, and each of
+them has always been willing to borrow from its rival whenever it found
+material fitted for its own special purpose.
+
+                                   II
+
+But altho the dramatizing of novels was less uncommon a century or two
+ago than the novelizing of plays, neither was frequent and neither of
+them was in any way prohibited by law. That is to say, the novel and the
+play were held to be so different that the novelist could not prevent
+the dramatist from borrowing his stories, and the playwright could not
+forbid the writer of prose fiction from taking over his plots. Even the
+dramatizing of novels was so uncommon that the earlier story-tellers
+were not moved to protest when they saw their fictions employed by the
+playwrights; in fact, they were often inclined to accept this as a
+compliment to their original invention. Marmontel, for instance, in the
+preface to a late edition of his 'Moral Tales,' pointed with pride to
+the fact that one of these prose narratives had been turned into a play,
+and suggested complacently that there were other stories in his
+collection worthy of the same fate. Tennyson borrowed the story of his
+'Dora' from Miss Mitford; and Charles Reade had no scruple in making a
+play out of Tennyson's poem. It must be admitted that Reade's attitude
+was rather inconsistent, for he writhed in pain when one of his own
+novels was cut into dialog and put on the stage without his permission,
+and yet he himself made plays out of novels by Anthony Trollope and by
+Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett without asking their leave, and without
+heed to their subsequent protests against his high-handed proceeding.
+Apparently, when he was the aggressor he thought that he was doing a
+service to his victims.
+
+When Reade was guilty of this offense against the developing literary
+morals of the nineteenth century, he was probably within his legal
+rights, since the British law had not then advanced to the point of
+recognizing the author's complete ownership of the fiction he had
+created. This defect has been remedied at last, and in the existing
+copyright and stage-right legislation of Great Britain and the United
+States authors are assumed to reserve to themselves every privilege
+which they do not specifically deprive themselves of; and they need no
+longer announce that they desire to retain all rights for their own
+profit. Both in the British code and in the American the novelist has
+now the sole privilege of making a play out of his story, and the
+dramatist has the sole privilege of making a novel out of his play.
+_Dramatization_ is a word of respectable antiquity, and the
+corresponding word, _novelization_, has now been legally recognized as a
+distinctive term. The authors had felt a wrong when others could legally
+make money out of a plot they had invented; and they asserted a moral
+right to control their own works whatever might be the form of
+presentation. The progress of legal reform was slow, as it usually is,
+but it was also certain. The moral right has now become a legal right of
+which the original author may avail himself or not, as he pleases. He
+may, if he chooses, dramatize his own novel and novelize his own play;
+or, if he prefers, he can sell the permission to rehandle his material
+to a professional playwright or to a professional storyteller.
+
+                                  III
+
+There is one peculiar distinction between the novel and the play which
+Professor Bliss Perry did not emphasize. A novel may please long, and
+please many when it is only a study of character, like the 'Crime of
+Sylvestre Bonnard' of M. Anatole France, or when it is only the record
+of a series of adventures and misadventures passing before the eyes of
+the chief personage, like the 'Huckleberry Finn' of Mark Twain. A play,
+on the other hand, is likely to fail to please audiences in the theater
+unless it sets before the spectators a clearly defined struggle, a
+conflict of desires, a stark assertion of the human will. That is to
+say, the drama must deal with a struggle, and the novel need not. The
+drama must be dynamic and the novel may be static--if these scientific
+terms may be employed without pedantry. Therefore, while any play may be
+novelized, with more or less chance of pleasing its new public, if the
+task is skilfully accomplished, only those novels can be successfully
+dramatized which happen to present an essential struggle and to display
+the collision of contending volitions. Any dramatization of the 'Crime
+of Sylvestre Bonnard' or of 'Huckleberry Finn,' of 'Gil Blas' or of the
+'Pickwick Papers,' is foredoomed to failure, for these prose fictions
+do not contain the stuff out of which a vital play could be made. But
+'Jane Eyre,' for example, and the 'Tale of Two Cities,' and 'Uncle Tom's
+Cabin' do possess this necessary dramatic element, and they can be made
+into plays with a prospect of pleasing audiences in the theater.
+
+Even when the novel chances to have the essential struggle which the
+drama demands, the task of adapting it to the stage is not so easy as
+the non-expert supposes. At first sight it may seem as if there ought to
+be very little difficulty in turning a novel into a play. There is a
+story ready-made, situations in abundance, and characters endowed with
+the breath of life. Yet as a matter of fact, it is harder to make a play
+out of a novel than it is to write an original play. The immediate
+danger before the theatrical adapter is that he may be tempted to serve
+up the story merely as a panorama of successive episodes instead of
+casting out resolutely everything, however good in itself, which does
+not bear directly upon the fundamental conflict. This is one reason why
+the novelist had better leave the work of dramatization to an
+experienced playwright, who will ruthlessly omit many an episode that
+the story-teller could not bring himself to discard. In fact, it is hard
+even for the expert adapter to disentangle the special situations of a
+novel which alone are available in a play, and he is often tempted to
+retain much that he had better leave out.
+
+Perhaps it is not too daring a paradox to suggest that a prose fiction
+is most likely to be made into a good play when the playwright has not
+read the book he is dramatizing, but has only been told the story, so
+that he is free to handle the situations afresh in accord with the
+conditions of dramatic art, and free to discard the special developments
+chosen by the novelist in accord with the very different conditions of
+narrative art. The best version of Mrs. Henry Wood's 'East Lynne' is the
+French play, 'Miss Multon,' by Adolphe Belot and Eugène Nus; and neither
+of the French collaborators knew any more about the English novel than
+its bare story, which was told to one of them by a French actress, who
+could read English. Now and again a clever playwright, even when he has
+the disadvantage of complete familiarity with the novel, can break loose
+from it and yet preserve its full flavor; and this is what Mr. George M.
+Cohan was able to do in the play wherein he presented the leading
+characters of Mr. George Randolph Chester's 'Get-Rich-Quick-Wallingford'
+in a set of situations very different from those in the original story.
+
+Thus we see that only a few novels are really fit to be dramatized, and
+that even these are often dramatized ineffectively because the
+playwright has followed the story-teller too closely instead of putting
+the plot back into solution, so to speak, and letting it recrystallize
+in dramatic form. The novelizer has a larger liberty since every play
+contains a story and characters capable of being transferred to prose
+fiction. But his task has its equivalent danger, and the writer of the
+narrative may be content merely to tread in the footsteps of the
+dramatist, and to do no more than write out more amply the dialog and
+the stage business, instead of reconceiving the plot afresh to tell it
+more in accord with the divergent principles of the art of prose
+fiction. The limitations of time to "the two hours' traffic of the
+stage" compel the dramatist to extreme compression; his dialogs must be
+far compacter and more pregnant than is becoming in the more leisurely
+novel, where the author can take all the time there is. Moreover, the
+playwright often does no more than allude to episodes which it would
+profit the novelist to present in detail to his readers; and the adroit
+novelizer will be quick to seize upon hints of this sort to amplify into
+chapters containing interesting material for which the original play
+supplied only the most summary suggestion.
+
+                                   IV
+
+The novelizing of plays is frequent and profitable in America in these
+early years of the twentieth century; and it had been attempted
+infrequently even in the seventeenth century. Yet only one of these
+novelized plays has succeeded in winning an honorable place for itself
+in prose fiction. This is the charming tale of theatrical life in the
+eighteenth century, 'Peg Woffington,' which Charles Reade made out of
+the comedy of 'Masks and Faces,' written by him in collaboration with
+Tom Taylor. Reade took the liberty of novelizing this comedy without
+asking Taylor's permission, and even without consulting his
+collaborator; and all the comment that need be made is that the
+procedure was truly characteristic of Reade's lordly attitude toward
+others--an attitude taken by him on many other occasions. But whatever
+injustice he did to his fellow worker, he did none to the joint product
+of their invention; he transmuted a play into a novel with due
+appreciation of the demands of the other art, and he produced a
+fascinating tale with a fascinating heroine, which has been read by
+thousands who have had no suspicion that Peg Woffington had originally
+figured in a comedy.
+
+Charles Reade was able to accomplish this feat because he was more
+skilful as a novelist than as a dramatist, altho he fancied himself
+rather as a maker of plays than as a writer of stories. More than once
+did he attempt to repeat this early success in winning two prizes with
+the same horse. He took the 'Pauvres de Paris' of Brisebarre and
+Nus--the same play which Dion Boucicault had adapted as the 'Streets of
+New York'--and made a version which he called 'Gold,' under which name
+it had a few performances. He had materially modified the French plot in
+his English play; and he got still further away from Brisebarre and Nus,
+when he novelized 'Gold,' and called it 'Hard Cash,' a matter-of-fact
+romance. Later he dramatized this novel of his, and the resulting play
+did not bear any close resemblance to the 'Pauvres de Paris.'
+
+Reade also collaborated a few years later with Henry Pettitt in a piece
+called 'Singleheart and Doubleface,' which he promptly proceeded to
+novelize--again without consulting his partner. For this indelicacy,
+swift vengeance followed, as the British novel, being then unprotected
+by copyright in the United States, was immediately dramatized by Messrs.
+George H. Jessop and William Gill. It may be noted here casually that
+another of Reade's romances, 'White Lies,' afterward dramatized by him,
+had been originally novelized from a French play called the 'Château de
+Grantier,' written by Auguste Maquet (the ally of Dumas in the 'Three
+Guardsmen' and 'Monte Cristo'). It is not a little surprising that a man
+like Reade, who prided himself on his originality, and who even went so
+far as to accuse George Eliot of stealing his thunder, should have been
+willing to call so frequently on the aid of collaborators, and to derive
+so much of his material from foreign sources.
+
+The only other author who has ventured to turn a play into a novel, and
+then back into a play varying widely from the original piece, is Sir
+James Barrie, and what he did was not quite what Reade had done. Sir
+James wrote a charming story, called the 'Little White Bird,' and he
+found in his own prose fiction part of the material out of which he was
+moved later to make a charming play, called 'Peter Pan.' For reasons
+best known to himself, but deplored by all who are interested in the
+progress of the English drama, Sir James Barrie has chosen to publish
+only a few of his comedies. Yet he met the demands of a multitude of
+readers by borrowing from his fantastic piece a part of the material
+which he made into a delightful tale, called 'Peter Pan in Kensington
+Gardens.' These successive rehandlings of an idea, first in prose
+fiction, then in dramatic form, and finally again in prose fiction, were
+possible only to a novelist who was also a dramatist--to an author who
+had mastered the secrets of two different methods of story-telling, the
+method of the theater and the method of the library.
+
+                                   V
+
+The novelist-dramatist of this type is a comparatively new figure in
+literature. Formerly there was a sharp line of cleavage between the man
+who wrote novels and the man who wrote plays, altho one or the other
+might be lured on occasion into a sporadic raid into the territory of
+the other. During three-quarters of the nineteenth century prose fiction
+reigned supreme in every modern literature except that of France, and
+the novelists were rather inclined to look down on the playwrights, and
+to dismiss the drama as an inferior form, likely to be absolutely
+superseded by prose fiction. But toward the end of the century there
+began to be visible signs of an awakening interest in the drama, and
+also of a slackening interest in prose fiction. The novelists of the
+twentieth century, so far from holding the drama to be an inferior form,
+are discovering that it is at least a more difficult form, and therefore
+artistically more attractive. As a result of this discovery not a few
+novelists have turned playwrights, taking the pains to learn the
+principles of the more dangerous art of play-making. Sir James Barrie in
+England, M. Paul Hervieu in France, Herr Sudermann in Germany, and
+Signor d'Annunzio in Italy may not have abandoned altogether the prose
+fiction in which they first won fame, but at least they now devote the
+major part of their energies to the drama. It may be recalled that Clyde
+Fitch began his literary career as a writer of short stories, and that
+Mr. Bernard Shaw originally emerged to view as the author of a novel.
+
+On the other hand, it must be noted as significant that the playwrights
+are not tempted to turn novelists; they seem to be satisfied with their
+own art as the more exacting, and therefore the more interesting. M.
+Rostand and M. Maeterlinck, Sir Arthur Pinero and Mr. Henry Arthur
+Jones, Mr. William Gillette and Mr. Augustus Thomas have not been lured
+from the drama into prose fiction. The novel is a loose form which makes
+only lax demands on its practitioners, and which does not require an
+artist always to do his best. The play has a severe technic, and it
+tolerates no carelessness of construction. The more gifted a
+story-teller may be, and the more artistic, the more probable it is that
+in the immediate future he will seek to express himself in the drama,
+even if he is also moved now and again to return to the easier path of
+prose fiction.
+
+And this raises another interesting point. Now that the drama is rising
+again into rivalry with prose fiction, is not the playwright who allows
+his piece to be novelized a traitor to his cause? Is he not, in fact,
+confessing that he esteems the play inferior to the novel? Apparently
+this is the attitude taken by the more prominent dramatists of the day;
+most of them publish their plays to be read, and few of them allow these
+plays to be novelized--altho they might find a superior profit if they
+descended to this. It is an unfortunate fact that the public which is
+eager to read prose fiction is not so eager to read the drama. In the
+dearth of dramatic literature in our language during the nineteenth
+century, the public lost the habit of reading plays, a habit possessed
+by the public of the eighteenth century before the vogue of the novel
+had been established in consequence of the overwhelming popularity of
+Scott, followed speedily by that of Dickens and Thackeray.
+
+Yet there are signs that the general reader is slowly recovering the
+ability to find pleasure in the perusal of a play. The social dramas of
+Ibsen have, most of them, been performed here and there in the theaters
+of Great Britain and the United States; but they have been read by
+thousands who have had no opportunity to see them on the stage. So it is
+with the plays of Mr. Bernard Shaw, most of which have also appeared in
+our playhouses. So it is with the plays of M. Maeterlinck, only a few of
+which have been produced in the American theater. In time, it seems
+highly probable that the reading public will extend as glad a welcome to
+a play by Mr. Galsworthy or by Mr. Booth Tarkington as to one of their
+novels. But this happy state can be brought about only if the
+dramatists resolutely refrain from novelizing their plays themselves,
+and from authorizing novelization by others.
+
+(1913.)
+
+                                  VII
+
+                            WOMEN DRAMATISTS
+
+                            WOMEN DRAMATISTS
+
+                                   I
+
+To some of the more ardent advocates of the theory that women are
+capable of rivaling men in every one of the arts it is a little
+surprising, not to say disconcerting, that there are so few female
+playwrights. The drama is closely akin to the novel, since it is another
+form of story-telling; and in the telling of stories women have been
+abundantly productive from a time whereof the memory of man runneth not
+to the contrary. And as performers on the stage women have achieved
+indisputable eminence; in fact, acting is probably the earliest of the
+arts (as possibly it is still the only one) in which women have won
+their way to the very front rank; and in the nineteenth century there
+were two tragic actresses, Mrs. Siddons and Rachel, certainly not
+inferior in power and in elevation to the most distinguished of tragic
+actors. Why is it, then, that women story-tellers have not thrust
+themselves thru the open stage door to become more effective competitors
+of the men playwrights?
+
+Before considering this question, it may be well to record that women
+playwrights have appeared sporadically both in French literature and in
+English. In France Madeleine Béjart, whose sister Molière married, was
+credited with the authorship of more than one play; and in the last
+hundred years George Sand and Mme. de Girardin brought out comedies and
+dramas, several of which succeeded in establishing themselves in the
+repertory of the Comédie-Française. In England at one time or another
+plays of an immediate popularity were produced by Mrs. Aphra Behn, Mrs.
+Centlivre, and Mrs. Inchbald; and in America Mrs. Bateman's 'Self,' and
+Mrs. Mowatt's 'Fashion' held the stage for several seasons, while few of
+recent successes in the New York theaters had a more delightful
+freshness or a more alluring fantasy than Mrs. Gates's 'Poor Little Rich
+Girl,' and few of them have dealt more boldly with a burning question
+than Miss Ford's 'Polygamy.' These examples of woman's competence to
+compose plays with vitality enough to withstand the ordeal by fire
+before the footlights are evidence that if there exists any prejudice
+against the female dramatist it can be overcome. They are evidence,
+also, that women are not debarred from the competition; and fairness
+requires the record here that, when Mr. Winthrop Ames proffered a prize
+for an American play, this was awarded to a woman.
+
+But to grant equality of opportunity is not to confer equality of
+ability, and when we call the roll of the dramatists who have given
+luster to French literature and to English, we discover that this list
+is not enriched by the name of any woman. The fame of George Sand is not
+derived from her contributions to dramatic literature, and the
+contributions of Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Centlivre, and Mrs. Inchbald, of Mrs.
+Bateman and Mrs. Mowatt, entitle them to take rank only among the minor
+playwrights of their own generations; and to say this is to say that
+their plays are now familiar only to devoted specialists in the annals
+of the stage, and that the general reader could not give the name of a
+single piece from the pen of any one of these enterprising ladies. In
+other words, the female playwrights are so few and so unimportant that a
+conscientious historian of either French or English dramatic literature
+might almost neglect them altogether without seriously invalidating his
+survey. Perhaps the only English titles that are more than mere items in
+a barren catalog are Mrs. Centlivre's 'Wonder' and Mrs. Cowley's
+'Belle's Stratagem'; and the French pieces of female authorship which
+might protest against exclusion are almost as few--Mme. de Girardin's
+'La Joie fait Peur,' and George Sand's 'Marquis de Villemer' and
+'Mariage de Victorine.'
+
+Indeed, the women playwrights of the past and of the present might be
+two or three times more numerous than they are, and two or three times
+more important without even treading upon the heels of the male
+play-makers. This is an incontrovertible fact; yet it is equally
+indisputable that as performers in the theater women are competitors
+whom men respect and with whom they have to reckon, and that as
+story-tellers women are as popular and as prolific as men. And here we
+are brought back again to the question with which this inquiry began:
+Why is it then that women have not been as popular and as prolific in
+telling stories on the stage? Why cannot they write a play as well as
+they can act in it?
+
+One answer to this question has been volunteered by a woman who
+succeeded as an actress, and who did not altogether fail as a dramatic
+poetess, altho she came in later life to have little esteem for her
+earlier attempts at play-writing. It is in her 'Records of a Girlhood'
+that Fanny Kemble expressed the conviction that it was absolutely
+impossible for a woman ever to be a great dramatist, because "her
+physical organization" was against it. "After all, it is great nonsense
+saying that intellect is of no sex. The brain is, of course, of the same
+sex as the rest of the creature; beside the original female nature, the
+whole of our training and education, our inevitable ignorance of common
+life and general human nature, and the various experiences of existence
+from which we are debarred with the most sedulous care, is insuperably
+against it"--that is, against the possibility of a really searching
+tragedy, or of a really liberal comedy ever being composed by a woman.
+To this rather sweeping denial of the dramaturgic gift to women Fanny
+Kemble added an apt suggestion, that "perhaps some of the manly, wicked
+queens, Semiramis, Cleopatra, could have written plays--but they lived
+their tragedies instead of writing of them."
+
+                                   II
+
+At first sight it may seem as if one of Fanny Kemble's assertions--that
+no woman can be a dramatist because of her inevitable ignorance of life
+and of the experiences of existence from which she is debarred--is
+disproved by the undeniable triumphs of women in acting, and by the
+indisputable victories won by women in the field of prose fiction,
+achieved in spite of these admitted limitations. But on a more careful
+consideration it will appear that as an actress woman is called upon
+only to embody and to interpret characters conceived by man with the aid
+of his wider and deeper knowledge of life. And when we analyze the most
+renowned of the novels by which women have attained fame, we discover
+that the best of these deal exclusively with the narrower regions of
+conduct, and with the more restricted areas of life with which she is
+most familiar as a woman, and that when she seeks to go outside her
+incomplete experience of existence she soon makes us aware of the gaps
+in her equipment.
+
+One of the strongest stories ever written by a woman is the 'Jane Eyre'
+of Charlotte Brontë; and the inexperience of the forlorn and lonely
+spinster is almost ludicrously made manifest in her portrayal of
+Rochester, a superbly projected figure, not sustained by intimate
+knowledge of the type to which he belongs. Charlotte Brontë knew Jane
+Eyre inside and out; but she did not know even the outside of Rochester.
+Because women are debarred with the most sedulous care from various
+experiences of existence they can never know men as men can know women.
+This is the basis for the shrewd remark that in dealing with affairs of
+the heart men novelists rarely tell all they know, whereas women
+novelists are often tempted to tell more than they know. Even women like
+George Eliot and George Sand, who have more or less broken out of
+bounds, are still more or less confined to their individual associations
+with the other sex; and they lack the inexhaustible fund of information
+about life which is the common property of men.
+
+Women have most satisfactorily displayed their special endowment for
+fiction not in what must be called the dramatic novel, not in
+soul-searching studies like the 'Scarlet Letter' and 'Anna Karénine,'
+but rather in less solidly supported inquiries into the interrelation of
+character and social convention, as in 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Castle
+Rackrent.' It would be unfair to assert that Maria Edgeworth and Jane
+Austen are superficial; yet it is not unfair to say that they do not
+explore deeply, and that they do not deal with what Stevenson called the
+great passionate crises of existence, "when duty and inclination come
+nobly to the grapple." This is the essential struggle of the drama; and
+the authoress of 'Jane Eyre' sought to present it boldly, even if she
+was handicapped by insufficient information; and this essential struggle
+was what Charlotte Brontë herself missed in Jane Austen: "The passions
+are perfectly unknown to her; she rejects even a speaking acquaintance
+with that stormy sisterhood. What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves
+flexibly, it suits her to study; but what throbs fast and full, tho
+hidden, what the blood rushes thru, what is the unseen seat of life, and
+the sentient target of death--this Miss Austen ignores."
+
+Jane Austen spent her great gift on the carving of cherry-stones,
+laboring with exquisite art to lift into temporary importance the
+eternally unimportant; and Charlotte Brontë, in her ampler endeavor, was
+ever hampered by inadequacy of knowledge. George Eliot, with wider
+opportunity than either of these predecessors, profited by both of them
+and borrowed their processes in turn; she was broader than they were,
+and bolder in her attack on life; her effort is more strenuously
+intellectual than theirs, and therefore a little fatiguing, and this is
+perhaps why her vogue seems now to be evaporating slowly. And when all
+is said, no one of these clever story-tellers really attains to an
+altitude of accomplishment where she can fairly be considered as a
+competitor of the mighty masters of prose fiction. No woman novelist is
+to be ranked among the supreme leaders, worthy to stand by the side of
+Cervantes and Fielding, Balzac and Tolstoi. The merits of the women
+novelists are many and they are beyond cavil; but no one of them has yet
+been able to handle a large theme powerfully and to interpret life with
+the unhasting and unresting strength which is the distinguishing mark of
+the mightier masters of fiction.
+
+                                  III
+
+Furthermore, we find in the works of female storytellers not only a lack
+of largeness in topic, but also a lack of strictness in treatment. Their
+stories, even when they charm us with apt portraiture and with adroit
+situation, are likely to lack solidity of structure. 'Castle Rackrent,'
+an illuminating picture of human nature in a special environment, is a
+straggling sequence of episodes; 'Pride and Prejudice' is almost
+plotless, when considered as a whole; and 'Romola' is ill-proportioned
+and misshapen. No woman has ever achieved the elaborate solidity of 'Tom
+Jones,' the superb structure of the 'Scarlet Letter,' or the simple
+unity of 'Smoke.' And here we come close to the most obvious explanation
+of the dearth of female dramatists--in the relative incapacity of women
+to build a plan, to make a single whole compounded of many parts, and
+yet dominated in every detail by but one purpose.
+
+The drama demands a plot, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and
+with everything rigorously excluded which does not lead from the
+beginning thru the middle to the end. The novel refuses to submit itself
+to any such requirement; it can make shift to exist without an
+articulated skeleton. There is little or no plot, there is only a casual
+succession of more or less unrelated incidents in 'Gil Blas' and
+'Tristram Shandy,' in the 'Pickwick Papers,' and in Huckleberry Finn.'
+The novel may be invertebrate and yet survive, whereas the play without
+a backbone is dead--which is biologic evidence that the drama is higher
+in the scale of creation than prose fiction.
+
+"The novel, as practised in English, is the perfect paradise of the
+loose end," so Mr. Henry James once pointed out, whereas "the play
+consents to the logic of but one way, mathematically right, and with the
+loose end as gross an impertinence on its surface and as grave a
+dishonor as the dangle of a snippet of silk or wool on the right side of
+a tapestry." The action of a story may be what its writer pleases, and
+he can reduce it to a minimum or embroider it at will with airy
+arabesques of incessant digression; but the plot of a play must be a
+straight line, the shortest distance between two points, the point of
+departure and the point of arrival. And it is because of this imperative
+necessity for integrity of construction that the drama is more difficult
+than prose fiction. Since a part of our pleasure in any art is derived
+from our consciousness of the obstacles to be overcome by the artist,
+and from our recognition of the skill displayed by him in vanquishing
+them, we have here added evidence in behalf of the belief in the
+artistic superiority of the play over the novel merely as a form of
+expression.
+
+The drama may be likened to the sister art of architecture in its
+insistent demand for plan and proportion. A play is a poor thing, likely
+to expire of inanition, unless its author is possessed of the ability to
+build a plot which shall be strong and simple and clear, and unless he
+has the faculty of enriching it with abundant accessories in accord with
+a scheme thought out in advance and adhered to from start to finish.
+With this constructive skill women seem to be less liberally endowed
+than men; at least, they have not yet revealed themselves as architects,
+altho they have won a warm welcome as decorators--a subordinate art for
+which they are fitted by their superior delicacy and by their keener
+interest in details. Much of the pervasive charm of many of the
+cleverest novels of female authorship lies in the persistent ingenuity
+with which the lesser points of character, of conduct, and of manners
+are presented. In Jane Austen, in Maria Edgeworth, and often also in
+George Eliot, we are delighted by little miracles of observation, and by
+little triumphs in the microscopic analysis of subtle and unsuspected
+motives. But in these very books, the story, however felicitously
+decorated, is not sustained by a severe architectural framework. And it
+is this firm certainty of structure that the drama imperatively demands.
+
+In other words, women seem to be less often dowered than men with what
+Tyndall called "scientific imagination," with the ability to put
+together a whole in which the several parts are never permitted to
+distend a disproportionate space. This scientific imagination is
+essential to the playwright; and the novelist is fortunate if he also
+possesses it, altho it is not essential to him. A novel may be only a
+straggling succession of episodes; a play must have fundamental unity. A
+novelist may fire with a shot-gun and bring down his bird on the wing,
+whereas a playwright needs a rifle to arrest the charging lion.
+
+It is a significant fact that only once was George Sand really
+triumphant as a dramatist, and that this single success was won by the
+secret aid of the cleverest of contemporary playwrights. She was
+passionately devoted to the theater; she had many intimate friends among
+the stage-folk; she delighted in private theatricals; and she wrote a
+dozen or more plays, several of them dramatized from her own stories.
+The sole play which held its own on the stage in rivalry with the best
+work of Augier and Dumas _fils_ was the 'Marquis de Villemer,' and it
+owed its more fortunate fate to the gratuitous and unacknowledged
+collaboration of Dumas _fils_.
+
+For the author of the 'Mariage de Victorine,' the author of the 'Dame
+aux Camélias' had a high esteem, which he took occasion to express more
+than once in his critical papers; and she regarded him with
+semi-maternal affection, often inviting him to join the little parties
+at Nohant. On one of his visits he heard her say that she was intending
+to dramatize the 'Marquis de Villemer,' but that she did not quite see
+her way to compact its leisurely action in conformity with the rigid
+restrictions of the stage. That evening he borrowed a copy of the novel
+to take up to his own room; and the next morning when he came down to
+the late breakfast, he laid before her half a dozen sheets of paper,
+whereon she found a complete scenario for her guidance, an adroit
+division of her novel into acts and scenes, needing only to be clothed
+with dialog. With his intuitive understanding of the principles of
+play-making, and with his masterly power of construction, he had solved
+her problems for her and made it easy for her to write the play.
+
+Here is an unexampled kind of collaboration, since the invention of the
+story, the creation of the characters, the dialog to be spoken--these
+were all due to George Sand alone; but the concentrating of the
+interest, the heightening of the personages of the narrative to adjust
+themselves to the perspective of the theater, the serried and
+irresistible momentum of the action--these were the contribution of
+Dumas, a freewill offering to his old friend. The piece that she wrote
+was hers and hers alone, and yet it had a dramatic vitality lacking in
+all her other plays, because a man had intervened at the right moment to
+provide the architectural framework which the woman could not have
+bestowed upon it, however felicitous she might be in the decoration.
+
+                                   IV
+
+Thus it is that we can supply two answers to the two questions posed at
+the beginning of this inquiry: Why is it that there are so few women
+playwrights? And why is it that the infrequent plays produced by women
+playwrights rarely attain high rank? The explanation is to be found in
+two facts: first, the fact that women are likely to have only a
+definitely limited knowledge of life, and, second, the fact that they
+are likely also to be more or less deficient in the faculty of
+construction. The first of these disabilities may tend to disappear if
+ever the feminist movement shall achieve its ultimate victory; and the
+second may depart also whenever women submit themselves to the severe
+discipline which has compelled men to be more or less logical.
+
+(1915.)
+
+                                  VIII
+
+                    THE EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING
+
+                    THE EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING
+
+                                   I
+
+Only recently have students of the stage seized the full significance of
+the fact that dramatic literature is always conditioned by the
+circumstances of the special theater for which it was designed. They are
+at last beginning to perceive that they need to know how a play was
+originally represented by actors before an audience and in a theater to
+enable them to appreciate adequately the technical skill of the
+playwright who composed it. The dramatist is subdued to what he works
+in; and he can accomplish only that which is possible in the particular
+playhouse for which his pieces were destined. For the immense open air
+auditorium of ancient Athens, with its orchestra leveled at the foot of
+the curving hillside whereon thousands of spectators took their places,
+the dramatic poet had to select a simple story and to build massively.
+For the unadorned platform of the Tudor theater, with its arras pendent
+from the gallery above the stage, and with its restless groundlings
+standing in the yard, the playwright was compelled to heap up swift
+episodes violent with action. For the eighteenth-century playhouse, with
+its apron projecting far beyond the line of the curtain, the dramatist
+was tempted to revel in ornate eloquence and in elaborate wit. And
+nowadays the dramatic author utilizes skilfully all the manifold
+resources of the twentieth-century picture-frame stage, not only to give
+external reality to the several places where his story is supposed to be
+laid, but also to lend to these stage-sets the characteristic atmosphere
+demanded by his theme.
+
+Merely literary critics, secluded in their studies, intent upon the
+poetry of a play and desirous of deducing its philosophy, rarely seek to
+visualize a performance on the stage, and they are, therefore, inclined
+to be disdainful of the purely theatrical conditions to which its author
+has had, perforce, to adjust his work. As a result they sometimes
+misunderstand the dramatic poet's endeavors, and they often misinterpret
+his intentions. On the other hand, purely theatrical critics may be
+inclined to pay too much attention to stage-arrangements,
+stage-business, and stage-settings, and even on occasion to disregard
+the dramatist's message and his power of creating character to consider
+his technic alone. And yet it can scarcely be denied that the theatrical
+critics are nearer to the proper method of approach than the literary
+critics who neglect the light which a careful consideration of
+stage-conditions and of stage-traditions may cast upon the masterpieces
+of the drama.
+
+Since all these masterpieces of the drama were devised to be heard and
+to be seen rather than to be read, the great dramatic poets have always
+been solicitous about the visual appeal of their plays. They have ever
+been anxious to garnish their pieces with the utmost scenic
+embellishment and the utmost spectacular accompaniment of the special
+kind that a play of that particular type could profit by. In view of the
+importance of this scenic embellishment and of its influence upon the
+methods of the successive playwrights, there is cause for wonder that we
+have no satisfactory attempt to tell the history of the art of the
+scene-painter as this has been developed thru the long ages. The
+materials for this narrative are abundant, even if they still lie in
+confusion. Certain parts of the field have been surveyed here and there;
+but no substantial treatise has yet been devoted to this alluring
+investigation. The scholar who shall hereafter undertake the task will
+need a double qualification; he must master the annals of painting in
+Renascence Italy, and later in France and in England, and he must
+familiarize himself with the circumstances of the theater at the several
+periods when the art of the scene-painter made its successive steps in
+advance.
+
+It is partly because we have no manual covering the whole field that we
+find so many unwarranted assertions in the studies of the scholars who
+confine their criticism to a single period of the development of the
+drama. Partly also is this due to the fact that we are each of us so
+accustomed to the theaters of our own century and of our own country
+that we find it difficult not to assume similar conditions in the
+theaters of other centuries and other countries. Thus the Shaksperian
+commentators of the early eighteenth century seem not to have doubted
+that the English playhouse in the days of Elizabeth was not unlike the
+English playhouse in the days of Anne; and as a result they cut up the
+plays of Shakspere into acts and into scenes, each supposed to take
+place in a different spot, in accord with the eighteenth-century stage
+practise, and absolutely without any justification from the customs of
+the Tudor theater. This was the result of looking back and of believing
+that the late sixteenth-century stage must have resembled the early
+eighteenth-century stage. We are now beginning to see that, in any
+effort to recapture the methods of the Elizabethan theater, we must
+first understand the customs of the medieval stage, and then look
+forward from that point. Of all places in the world the playhouse is,
+perhaps, the most conservative, and the most reluctant to relinquish
+anything which has proved its utility in the past and which is accepted
+by the public in the present; and many of the peculiarities of the Tudor
+theater are survivals from the medieval performances.
+
+There are still to be found classical scholars who accept the existence
+of a raised stage in the theater of Dionysus at Athens, and even of
+painted scenery such as we moderns know; and they find support in the
+assertion of Aristotle that among the improvements due to Sophocles was
+the introduction of "scenery." But what did the Greek word in the text
+of Aristotle which is rendered into English as "scenery" really mean? At
+least, what did it connote to an Athenian? Something very different, we
+may be sure, from what the term "scenery" connotes to us. Certainly,
+the physical conditions of the stageless Attic theater precluded the
+possibilities of painted scenes such as we are now familiar with. That
+there were no methods of representing realistically, or even summarily,
+the locality where the action is taking place is proved by the detailed
+descriptions of these localities which the dramatic poet was careful to
+put into the mouths of his characters whenever he wished the audience to
+visualize the appropriate background of the action. We may be assured
+that the dramatists would never have wasted time in describing what the
+spectators had before their eyes. Ibsen and Rostand and d'Annunzio are
+poets, each in his own fashion, but their plays are devoid of all
+descriptions of the special locality where the action passes--that task
+has been spared them by the labors of the modern scene-painter working
+upon their specific directions.
+
+As there was no scenery in the Greek theater so there was little or none
+in the Roman. M. Camille Saint-Saëns once suggested that certain airy
+scaffoldings in the Pompeian wall-paintings were perhaps derived from
+scenic accessories. But this seems unlikely enough; and the surviving
+Latin playhouses have a wide and shallow stage closed in by a sumptuous
+architectural background, suggesting the front of a palace with three
+portals, often conveniently utilized as the entrances to the separate
+dwellings of the several characters. Again, we may infer the absence of
+scenery from the elaboration with which Plautus, for one, localizes the
+habitations of his leading characters. In Rome, as in Athens, some kind
+of a summary indication of locality, some easily understood symbol, may
+have been employed; but of scene-painting, as we moderns know the art,
+there is not a trace.
+
+                                   II
+
+It is not until we come to the mysteries of the Middle Ages that we find
+the beginnings of the modern art, and even here it is only a most
+rudimentary attempt that we can discover. The mystery probably developed
+earliest in France, as it certainly flourished there most abundantly;
+and the French represented the dramatized Bible story on a long, shallow
+platform, at the back of which they strung along a row of summary
+indications of certain necessary places, beginning with Heaven on the
+spectator's left, and ending with Hell on his right, and including the
+Temple, the house of the high priest and the palace of Herod. These
+necessary places were called "mansions," and they served to localize the
+action whenever this was deemed advisable, the front of the platform
+remaining a neutral ground which might be anywhere. But these mansions
+do not prove the existence of scene-painters; they were very slight
+erections, a canopy over an altar serving to indicate the Temple, and a
+little portico sufficing to represent a palace; and they were probably
+built by house-carpenters and painted by housepainters, just as any boat
+which might be called for would be constructed by the shipwrights.
+
+[Illustration: The Roman Theater at Orange
+From the model at the Paris Opéra]
+
+[Illustration: The multiple set of the French medieval stage
+From the model in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University]
+
+[Illustration: The set of the Italian comedy of masks]
+
+And as we need not assume the forming of a guild of scene-painters
+because of these mansions which performed some of the functions of our
+modern scenery, so also we must not assume it because the medieval
+artisans invented a variety of elaborate spectacular devices, flying
+angels, for example, and roaring flames from Hell-Mouth. Even in the
+stageless and sceneless Attic theater, there had been many mechanical
+effects of one kind or another, especially in the plays of
+Euripides--the soaring dragon-chariot of Medea, for instance, and the
+similar contrivance whereby a god might descend from the skies.
+Mechanical tricks even when they are most ingenious, do not imply the
+aid of the scene-painter; and even to-day they are the special task of
+the property-man, or of the master-mechanic, altho the scene-painter's
+aid may be invoked also to make them more effective. That there were
+property-makers in the Middle Ages admits of no doubt, and also highly
+skilled artificers delighting in the daring ingenuity of their
+inventions. There were abundant properties, it may be noted, on the
+Elizabethan stage, well-heads, thrones, and arbors; and Henslow's diary
+records payment for a variety of such accessories. But there is not in
+that invaluable document a single entry indicating any payment for
+anything equivalent to the work of the scene-painter.
+
+Adroit as were the French mechanics who prepared the abundant
+spectacular effects of the medieval mysteries, they were surpassed in
+skill by the Italian engineers of the Renascence, who lent their aid to
+the superb outdoor festivals wherein the expanding artistic energy of
+the period was most magnificently displayed. Leonardo da Vinci did not
+disdain to design machines disclosing a surprising fertility of
+resource. It was from those outdoor spectacles of the Italians that the
+French court-ballets are directly descended, and also the English masks,
+which demanded the collaboration of Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson. But at
+first the Italians got along without the aid of the yet unborn
+scene-painter, and the inventions of the engineer were carried out by
+the mechanic and the decorator. Even as late as the seventeenth century
+a magnificent spectacle presented in the garden of the Pitti Palace in
+Florence relied mainly upon the ingenious engineer and scarcely at all
+upon the scene-painter. It seems probable that it is here in Italy in
+the Renascence, and at first as an accompaniment of the outdoor
+spectacle, or of its indoor rival, that the art of the actual
+scene-painter had its birth. The engineers required the aid of the
+artists--indeed, in those days, when there was little specialization of
+function, the engineers were almost always artists themselves, capable
+of their own decoration.
+
+[Illustration: An outdoor entertainment in the gardens of the Pitti
+Palace in Florence in the early sixteenth century
+From a contemporary print]
+
+In time there would be necessary specialization, and after a while
+certain artists came to devote themselves chiefly to scene-painting,
+finding their immediate opportunity in the decoration of the operas,
+which then began to multiply. The opera has always been aristocratic,
+expensive, and spectacular, and it continued the tradition of the
+highly decorated open-air festivals. In fact, it improved upon this
+tradition, in so far as that was possible, and it achieved a variety of
+mechanical effects scarcely less complicated than those which charm our
+eyes to-day in 'Rheingold' and 'Parsifal.' Thirty years ago the late
+Charles Nuitter, the archivist of the Paris Opéra and himself a
+librettist of wide experience, drew my attention to Sabbatini's
+'Practica di fabricar scene e machini ne' teatri' (published in 1638),
+and he assured me that the resources of the Opéra did not go beyond
+those which were at the command of the Italians three centuries earlier.
+"They could do then," he asserted, "almost everything that we can do now
+here at the Opéra. For example, they could bring a ship on the stage
+under full sail. We have only one superiority over them: we have
+abundant light now, we have electricity, and they were dependent on
+candles and lamps."
+
+Yet even in Italy in the Renascence the most popular form of the drama,
+the improvised play which we call the comedy-of-masks, was performed in
+a traditional stage-setting representing an open square, whereon only
+the back-cloth seems to have been the work of the scene-painter, the
+sides of the stage being occupied by four or more houses, two or three
+on each side, often consisting of little more than a practicable door
+with a practicable window over it, not made of canvas, but constructed
+out of wood by the carpenter, with the solidity demanded by the climbing
+feats of the athletic comedians and by their acrobatic agility. The
+traditional set of the comedy-of-masks conformed to that recommended for
+the comic drama by Serlio, in his treatise on architecture, published in
+1545; but it may be noted also that Serlio's suggested set for the
+tragic drama was not dissimilar even if it were distinctly more
+dignified.
+
+                                  III
+
+The opera seems to have been the direct descendant of the court-ballet,
+known in England as the mask, as that in its turn was derived from the
+open-air spectacle of the Italian Renascence, such as survived in
+Florence in the seventeenth century. In the beginning the court-ballets
+of France, like the masks of England, were not given in a theater with a
+stage shut off by a proscenium arch, but in the ball-room or
+banqueting-hall of a palace. One end of this spacious apartment, often
+but not always provided with a raised platform, served as the stage
+whereon one or more places, a mountain, for instance, and a grotto, were
+represented, at first by the decorated machines of the artistic
+engineers only, but afterward by the canvas frames of scene-painters.
+The action of the court-ballets or of the masks was not necessarily
+confined to this stage, so to call it. The spectators were ranged along
+the walls and under the galleries (if there were any), leaving the main
+part of the hall bare; and the performers descended frequently into this
+area, which was kept free for them, and which was better fitted for
+their dances and processions and other intricate evolutions than the
+scant and cluttered stage.
+
+A twentieth-century analog to this sixteenth-century practise can be
+seen in the spectacle presented in our modern three-ringed circuses--the
+'Cleopatra,' for example, which was the opening number on the Barnum and
+Bailey program not long ago, where the Roman troops and the Egyptian
+populace came down from the stage and paraded around the arena. Bacon in
+his essay on 'Masques,' used the word "scenery" as tho he meant only
+decorated scaffolds, perhaps movable; and his expression of desire for
+room "to be kept clear" implies the use of the body of the hall for the
+maneuvers of the performers. Ludovic Celler, in his study of 'Mise en
+scène au dix-septième siècle' in France, shows that the action of the
+court-ballet was sometimes intermitted that the spectators could join in
+the dancing, as at an ordinary ball. In the earlier Italian open-air
+festivals, and in the earlier French court-ballets there was not even a
+proscenium sharply separating the stage from the rest of the hall; but
+in England by the time of Inigo Jones the advantage of a proscenium had
+been discovered, and we have more than one of the sketches which that
+skilful designer devised for his masks. But even then this proscenium
+was not permanent and architecturally conventionalized; it was invented
+afresh for every successive entertainment, and it was adorned with
+devices peculiar to that particular mask. Inigo Jones had also advanced
+to the use of actual scenery, that is to say, of canvas stretched upon
+frames and then painted. Mr. Hamilton Bell believes it possible that the
+invention of grooves to sustain wings and flats may be ascribed to Inigo
+or to his assistant and successor, Webb.
+
+Even in the Italian opera, where all the scenery was due to the brush of
+the scene-painter, there was for a long while a formal and monotonous
+regularity. Whether the set was an interior or an exterior, a public
+place or a hall in a palace, the arrangement was rectangular, with a
+drop at the back and a series of wings on either side equidistant from
+one another. This stiff representation of a locality is preserved for us
+nowadays in the toy-theaters which we buy for our children, altho it is
+now seen on the actual stage only in certain acts of old-fashioned
+operas. It lingers also in the variety-shows, where it is the proper
+setting for many items of their miscellaneous programs.
+
+Altho the Italians had discovered perspective early in the Renascence
+they utilized it on the stage timidly at first, bestowing this
+rectangular regularity upon all their sets, both architectural interiors
+or exteriors and rural scenes, in which rigid wood-wings receded,
+diminishing in height to a landscape painted on the drop at the back,
+thus leaving the whole stage free for the actors. Not until the end of
+the seventeenth century did an Italian scene-painter, Bibiena, venture
+to abandon the balanced symmetry of the square set, and to slant his
+perspective so as to present buildings at an acute angle, thereby not
+only gaining a pleasing variety, but also enlarging immensely the
+apparent spaciousness of the scene, since he was able to carry the eyes
+of the spectator into vague distances, and to suggest far more than he
+was able to display. This advance was accompanied by a more liberal use
+of stairways and platforms--"practicables" as the stage-phrase is--that
+is to say, built up by the carpenters so that the actors could go from
+one level to another. Hitherto flights of steps and balconies had been
+only painted, not being intended for actual use by the performers.
+
+[Illustration: The set for the opera of 'Persée' (as performed at the
+Opéra in Paris in the seventeenth century)]
+
+[Illustration: A prison (designed by Bibiena in Italy in the eighteenth
+century)]
+
+A similar development took place also in the landscape scenes; the
+foreground was raised irregularly, so that the persons of the play might
+climb up. Practicable bridges were swung across torrents, and the
+earlier formality of pastoral scenes began to disappear. Apparently the
+scene-painters were influenced at this time by the landscape-painters,
+more especially by Poussin. The interrelation of painting and
+scene-painting, each in turn affecting the other, is far closer than
+most historians of art have perceived. It is not unlikely, for example,
+that Gainsborough and Constable, who were the fathers of the Barbizon
+men, had been stimulated by the stage-pictures of De Lutherbourg. David
+Garrick profited by the innovating art of De Lutherbourg, a pupil of
+Vanloo, who came to England in 1771. Apparently it was De Lutherbourg
+who invented "raking-pieces"--as the scene-painters term the low
+fragments of scenery which mask the inclines of mounds. To him also is
+credited the first use of transparent scenes to reproduce the effect of
+moonlight upon water, and to suggest the flames of volcanoes. Thus to
+him must be ascribed the beginnings of that complicated realism by which
+our latter-day scene-painters are enabled to create an appropriate
+atmosphere for poetic episodes.
+
+                                   IV
+
+The next step in advance, and one of the most important in the slow
+development of the scene-painter's art, took place in France early in
+the nineteenth century, and simultaneous with the romanticist movement,
+which modified the aims and ambitions of the artists as much as it did
+those of the poets. The severe stateliness of the stage-set which was
+adequate for the classicist tragedies of Racine and Voltaire, generally
+a vague interior of an indefinite palace, stiff and empty, was
+hopelessly unsuitable for the fiery dramas of Victor Hugo and the elder
+Dumas. An even greater opportunity for spectacular regeneration was
+afforded, in these same early decades of the nineteenth century, by the
+bold and moving librettos which Scribe constructed for Meyerbeer and
+Halévy at the Opéra, and for Auber at the Opéra-Comique. The exciting
+cause of the scenic complexities that we find in Wagner's music-dramas
+can be discovered in these librettos of Scribe's, from 'Robert the
+Devil' to the 'Africaine.' For one act of 'Robert the Devil,' that in
+which the spectral nuns dance among the tombs under the rays of the
+moon, Ciceri invented the most striking and novel setting yet exhibited
+on any stage--a setting not surpassed in poetic glamor by any since
+seen in the theater, altho its eery beauty may have been rivaled by one
+scene in the 'Source,' a ballet produced also at the Opéra forty-five
+years ago--a moon-lit tarn in a forest-glade, with half-seen sylphs
+floating lightly over its silvered surface. This exquisitely poetic set
+was imported from Paris to New York and inserted in the brilliant
+spectacle of the 'White Fawn.'
+
+The ample effect of these scenes was made possible only by the immense
+improvement in the illumination of the stage due to the introduction of
+gas. Up to the first quarter of the nineteenth century the
+stage-decorator had been dependent upon lamps--a few of these arranged
+at the rim of the curving apron which jutted out into the auditorium far
+beyond the proscenium, and a few more hidden here and there in the flies
+and wings. Early in the nineteenth century gas supplanted oil; and a
+little later than the middle of the century gas was powerfully
+supplemented by the calcium light. Toward the end of the century gas in
+its turn gave way to the far more useful electric light, which could be
+directed anywhere in any quantity, and which could be controlled and
+colored at will. It was Henry Irving, more especially in his marvelous
+mounting of a rather tawdry version of 'Faust,' who revealed the
+delicate artistic possibilities of our modern facilities for stage
+illumination.
+
+In France the romanticist movement of Hugo was swiftly succeeded by the
+realistic movement of Balzac, who was the earliest novelist to relate
+the leading personages of his studies from life to a characteristic
+background and to bring out the intimate association of persons and
+places. From prose fiction this evocation of characteristic surroundings
+was taken over by the drama; and a persistent effort was made to have
+the successive sets of a play suggestive and significant in themselves,
+and also representative of the main theme of the piece. The actors were
+no longer dependent upon the "float," as the footlights were called;
+they did not need to advance out on the apron to let the spectators
+follow the changing expression of their faces, and in time the apron was
+cut back to the line of the proscenium, and the curtain rose and fell in
+a picture-frame which cut the actors off from their proximity to the
+audience--a proximity forever tempting the dramatic poet to the purely
+oratorical effects proper enough on a platform.
+
+When the modern play calls for an interior this interior now takes on
+the semblance of an actual room. Apparently the "box-set," as it is
+called, the closed-in room with its walls and its ceiling, was first
+seen in England in 1841, when 'London Assurance' was produced; but very
+likely it had earlier made its appearance in Paris at the Gymnase. To
+supply a room with walls of a seeming solidity, with doors and with
+windows, appears natural enough to us, but it was a startling innovation
+fourscore years ago. When the 'School for Scandal' had been originally
+produced at Drury Lane in 1775, the library of Joseph Surface, where
+Lady Teazle hides behind the screen, was represented by a drop at the
+back, on which a window was painted, and by wings set starkly parallel
+to this back-drop and painted to represent columns. There were no
+doors; and Joseph and Charles, Sir Peter and Lady Teazle, walked on thru
+the openings between the wings, very much as tho they were passing thru
+the non-existent walls. To us, this would be shocking; but it was
+perfectly acceptable to English playgoers then; and to them it seemed
+natural, since they were familiar with no other way of getting into a
+room on the stage.
+
+[Illustration: The screen scene of the 'School for Scandal' at Drury
+Lane in 1778 From a contemporary print]
+
+The invention of the box-set, of a room with walls and ceilings, doors
+and windows, led inevitably to the appropriate furnishing of this room
+with tangible tables and chairs. Even in the eighteenth century the
+stage had been very empty; it was adorned only with the furniture
+actually demanded by the action of the drama; and the rest of the
+furniture, bookcases and sideboards, chairs and tables, was frankly
+painted on the wings and on the back-drop by the side of the painted
+mantelpieces, the painted windows, and the painted doors. In the plays
+of the twentieth century characters sit down and change from seat to
+seat; but in the plays produced in England and in France before the
+first quarter of the nineteenth century all the actors stood all the
+time--or at least they were allowed to sit only under the stress of
+dramatic necessity--as in the fourth act of 'Tartuffe,' for instance. In
+all of Molière's comedies there are scarcely half a dozen characters who
+have occasion to sit down; and this sitting-down is limited to three or
+four of his more than thirty pieces. Nowadays every effort is made to
+capture the external realities of life. Sardou was not more careful in
+composing his stage-sittings in his fashion than was Ibsen in
+prescribing the scenic environment that he needed. The author's minute
+descriptions of the scenes where the action of the 'Doll's House' and of
+'Ghosts' passes prove that Ibsen had visualized sharply the precise
+interior which was, in his mind, the only possible home for the
+creatures of his imagination. And Mr. Belasco has recently bestowed upon
+the winning personality of his 'Peter Grimm' the exact habitation to
+which that appealing creature would return in his desire to undo after
+death what in life he had rashly commanded.
+
+                                   V
+
+While the scene-painter of our time is most often called upon to realize
+the actual in an interior and to delight us with a room the dominant
+quality of which is that it looks as tho it was really lived in by the
+personages we see moving around in it, he is not confined to those
+domestic scenes. There are other plays than the modern social dramas;
+and these other plays make other demands upon the artist. On occasion he
+has to supply a gorgeous scenic accompaniment for the Roman and Egyptian
+episodes of 'Antony and Cleopatra,' to suggest the blasted heath where
+Macbeth may meet the weird sisters, and to call up before our delighted
+eyes the placid charm of the Forest of Arden. The awkward and
+inconsistent sky-borders, strips of pendent canvas wholly
+unsatisfactory as substitutes for the vast depths of the starry heavens,
+he is able to dispense with by lowering a little the hangings at the top
+edge of the picture-frame, and by thus limiting the upward gaze of the
+spectators, so that he can forgo the impossible attempt to imitate the
+changing sky. He can achieve an effect of limitless space, as in the
+last act of the 'Garden of Allah' (which brings before us the endless
+vision of Sahara), by the use of a cyclorama background, the drop being
+suspended from a semicircular rod which runs around the top of the
+stage, shutting in the view absolutely, and yet yielding itself to a
+representation of sand and sky meeting afar off on the faint horizon.
+
+[Illustration: A landscape set Designed by P. Fontanesi in Italy in the
+eighteenth century]
+
+[Illustration: A set for the opera of 'Robert le Diable' At the Paris
+Opéra]
+
+In the past half-century, and more especially since the improvement of
+the electric light, scene-painting has become very elaborate and very
+expensive. Instead of being kept in its proper place as the decoration
+of the drama, as a beautiful accessory of the action, it has often been
+pushed to the front, so as to attract attention to itself, and thereby
+to distract attention from the play which it was supposed to illuminate.
+Sometimes Shakspere has been smothered in scenery, and sometimes the art
+of the actor has been subordinated to the art of the scene-painter. Now,
+it must be admitted that nothing is too good for the masterpieces of the
+drama, and that Sophocles no less than Shakspere ought to be presented
+to the public with all the pomp that his lofty themes and his marvelous
+workmanship may demand. But the plays of the mighty dramatic poets
+ought not to be used merely as pegs on which to hang gorgeous apparel.
+After all, the play's the thing; and whenever the scene-painter and his
+invading partner, the stage-manager, are prompted to oust the drama from
+its pre-eminence, and to substitute an exhibition of their accessory
+arts, the result is a betrayal of the playwright.
+
+A well-known British art critic once told me that when the curtain rose
+at a certain London revival of 'Twelfth Night,' and disclosed Olivia's
+garden, he sat entranced at the beauty of the spectacle before his eyes,
+with its subtle harmonies of color, so entranced, indeed, that he found
+himself distinctly annoyed when the actors came on the stage and began
+to talk. For the moment, at least, he wished them away, as disturbers of
+his esthetic delight in the lovely picture on which his eyes were
+feasting. But even a stage-setting as captivating as this might very
+well be justified if it had been employed to fill a gap in the action,
+and to buttress up the interest of an episode where the dramatist had
+allowed the appeal of his story to relax. Perrin, the manager of the
+Comédie-Française thirty years ago, declined to produce a French version
+of 'Othello' because he found a certain dramatic emptiness in the scenes
+at Cyprus at the opening of the second act, which he felt he would have
+to mask by the beauty of spectacular decoration, too costly an expedient
+in his opinion for the finances of the theater just then.
+
+[Illustration: The set of the last act of the 'Garden of Allah' From the
+model in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University]
+
+[Illustration: A set for 'Medea' Designed by Herr Gustav Lindemann]
+
+It was Perrin, however, who produced the French version of the
+'OEdipus the King' of Sophocles, and who bestowed upon it a single set
+of wonderful charm and power, at once dignified, appropriate, and
+beautiful in itself. It represented an open space between a temple and
+the palace of the ill-fated OEdipus, with an altar in the center, and
+with the profile of another temple projected against the distant sky and
+relieved by the tall, thin outline of poplar-trees. The monotony of this
+rectangular architectural construction was avoided by placing all the
+buildings on a slant, the whole elevation of the temple being visible on
+the left of the spectators, whereas only a corner of the colonnade of
+the palace on the right was displayed. This set at the Théâtre-Français
+was the absolute antithesis of the original scenic surroundings in the
+theater of Dionysus more than two thousand years ago, when the
+masterpiece of Sophocles had been performed in the open-air orchestra,
+with only a hut of skins or a temporary wooden building to serve as a
+background for the bas-reliefs of the action.
+
+So elaborate, complicated, and costly have stage-sets become in the past
+half-century, that there are already signs of the violent reaction that
+might be expected. Mr. Gordon Craig, an artist of remarkable
+individuality, has gone so far as to propose what is almost an abolition
+of scene-painting. He seeks to attain effects of massive simplicity by
+the use of unadorned hangings and of undecorated screens, thus
+substituting vast spaces for the realistic details of the modern
+scene-painter. No doubt, there are a few plays for which this method of
+mounting would be appropriate enough--M. Maeterlinck's 'Intruder,' for
+one, and his 'Sightless' for another, plays which are independent of
+time and space, and in which the action appears to pass in some
+undiscovered limbo. As yet the advanced and iconoclastic theories of Mr.
+Craig have made few adherents, the most notable being the German,
+"Professor" Reinhardt, who lacks Mr. Craig's fine feeling for form and
+color, and who is continually tempted into rather ugly eccentricities of
+design, being apparently moved by the desire to be different from his
+predecessors rather than by the wish to be superior to them.
+
+                                   VI
+
+Interesting as are Mr. Craig's suggestions, and wellfounded as may be
+his protest against the excessive ornamentation to which we are too
+prone nowadays, there is no reason to fear that his principles will
+prevail. The art of the scene-painter is too welcome, it is too plainly
+in accord with the predilections of the twentieth century, for it to be
+annihilated by the fiat of a daring and reckless innovator. It will be
+wise if the producers should harken to Mr. Craig's warnings and curb
+their tendency to needless extravagance; but we may rest assured that a
+return to the bareness of the Attic theater or of the English theater in
+the time of the Tudors is frankly unthinkable now that the art of
+scene-painting has been developed to its present possibilities. In
+fact, the probability is rather that the scene-painters will continue to
+enlarge the boundaries of their territory and to discover new means and
+new methods of delighting our eyes by their evocations of interesting
+places.
+
+[Illustration: The set of 'OEdipe-Roi' (at the Théâtre Français)]
+
+[Illustration: The set of the 'Return of Peter Grimm' From the model in
+the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University]
+
+Perhaps they would be more encouraged to go on and conquer new worlds if
+there was a wider recognition of the artistic value of their work. Altho
+De Lutherbourg and Clarkson Stanfield won honorable positions in the
+history of painting by their easel-pictures, the art of scene-painting
+does not hold the place in the public esteem that many of its
+practitioners deserve. Théophile Gautier, often negligible as a critic
+of the acted drama, was always worth listening to when he turned to
+pictorial art; and he was frequent in praise of the scene-painters of
+his time and of scene-painting itself as a craft of exceeding difficulty
+and of inadequate appreciation. Probably one reason why the
+scene-painter has not received his due meed of praise is because his
+work is not preserved. It exists only during the run of the play which
+it decorates. When the piece disappears from the boards, the scenes
+which adorned it vanish from sight. They linger only in the memory of
+those who happened to see this one play--and even then, in fact, only in
+the memory of such spectators as have trained themselves to pay
+attention to stage-pictures. For the scene-painter there is no
+Luxembourg; still less is there any Louvre. As Gautier sympathetically
+declared, "it is sad to think that nothing survives of those
+masterpieces destined to live a few evenings only, and disappearing
+from the washed canvas to give place to other marvels, equally fugitive.
+How much invention, talent, and genius may be lost--and not always
+leaving even a name!"
+
+It is pleasant to know that at the Opéra in Paris a formal order of the
+government has for now a half-century prescribed the preservation of the
+original models--the little miniature sets which the scene-painter
+submits for the approval of the manager and the dramatist before he
+begins work upon the actual scene. These models are always upon the same
+scale, and in the gallery connected with the library of the Opéra a
+dozen of these models are set up to be viewed by visitors. Of course no
+tiny model, however cleverly fashioned, can give the full effect of the
+scene which has been conceived in terms of a huge stage; and yet the
+miniature reproductions do not betray the scene-painter as much as an
+engraving or a photograph often betrays the painter. Whatever its
+limitations, and they are obvious enough, the collection of models at
+the Opéra is at least an attempt to retard the oblivion that Théophile
+Gautier deplored, and to provide for the scene-painter a substitute,
+however inadequate, for the Louvre and the Luxembourg.
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                   IX
+
+                         THE BOOK OF THE OPERA
+
+                         THE BOOK OF THE OPERA
+
+                                   I
+
+A few years ago _Punch_ had a satirical drawing representing a British
+matron conveying a bevy of youthful daughters to the French play in
+London. To a friend who called her attention to the rather risky
+atmosphere of the very Parisian comedy which they were about to behold,
+the worthy mother promptly explained that she was not bringing her
+daughters to see the play itself; she was bringing them to see only the
+acting. Probably a great many opera-goers would make a similar
+explanation if they were asked whether they were interested in the book
+of the opera or only in the music. They would be likely to protest that
+they cared little or nothing for the libretto, and that they were
+attracted solely by the score. But, as a matter of fact, the opera-goers
+who might make this reply would be self-deceived. Whether they are aware
+of it or not, they are unlikely to be attracted to any opera unless it
+happens to have an interesting story, built up into a coherent and
+captivating plot. When the libretto is unintelligible or uninteresting,
+the most delightful music fails to allure them into the opera-house.
+This is one of the reasons why the 'Magic Flute,' which contains much of
+Mozart's most beautiful melodic invention, is so rarely heard in our
+opera-houses, and why it is so sparsely attended when it is presented.
+The libretto of the 'Magic Flute' is dull and ineffective, and even
+Mozart's genius proved unable to overcome this initial handicap.
+
+The ordinary opera-goer is likely to treat the libretto with calm
+contempt. He is prone to assert that nobody cares about the words, and
+he does not reflect that behind and beneath the words is the supporting
+structure of the story. After all, an opera is a play, it is a
+music-drama, and the plot is as important in a play the words of which
+are to be sung as in a play the words of which are to be spoken. True it
+is, of course, that in an opera the words may not be heard distinctly,
+and perhaps they need not be seized with certainty, since the emotion
+they set forth is more amply conveyed by the music. But the musician
+cannot express emotion musically, unless there is emotion for him to
+express, unless he has characters immeshed in a series of situations
+which evoke vivid and contrasting sentiments for him to translate into
+music. As the music-drama is a drama, it must obey the laws of the
+drama; it must represent a conflict of contending desires; it must be
+carried on by characters firm of purpose and resolute in achieving their
+several aims. These characters must be sharply individualized and boldly
+contrasted; and the story in which they take part must be at once strong
+and simple, calling for no elaborate explanation and moving forward
+steadily and irresistibly. It must have a lyric aspect, lending itself
+naturally to song; and it ought also to afford opportunity for the
+spectacular effects appropriate to the large stage of the opera-house.
+
+So contemptuous of the libretto is the ordinary opera-goer that he
+rarely inquires as to the name of the author of the book, altho he is
+generally familiar with the name of the composer of the score. He may or
+he may not be aware that Wagner was his own librettist, and quite
+possibly he supposes that it is the ordinary custom of the composers to
+write the words for their own music. He knows that 'Carmen' was composed
+by Bizet, and that the 'Huguenots' was composed by Meyerbeer; but he
+would be greatly puzzled if he was asked to name the librettists of
+these two operas, the adroit playwrights who devised the skeletons of
+dramatic action which sustained the composers and provided them with
+ample opportunities for the exercise of their melodic gift. As a matter
+of fact, the book of 'Carmen' was written in collaboration by two of the
+most distinguished French dramatists of the nineteenth century, Meilhac
+and Halévy, the authors of 'Froufrou' and of the librettos of
+Offenbach's 'Belle Hélène,' 'Grand Duchess of Gérolstein,' and
+'Périchole.' And the book of the 'Huguenots' was the work of the master
+stage-craftsman, Scribe, the author of 'Adrienne Lecouvreur' and of the
+'Ladies' Battle,' and of countless other plays performed in every modern
+language, and in all the countries of the world.
+
+Bizet wrote other operas besides 'Carmen,' and if these other operas
+have vanished from the stage, the reason may be that the librettos to
+which they were composed were not as ingenious and not as interesting
+as the book of 'Carmen.' One of these forgotten operas of Bizet's was a
+dramatization of the 'Fair Maid of Perth,' and another was called the
+'Pearl Fisher'; but neither of these books was devised by Meilhac and
+Halévy. And Scribe was not only the librettist of the 'Huguenots' and of
+the 'Africaine' for Meyerbeer; he also wrote the books of 'Fra Diavolo'
+and of 'Crown Diamonds' for Auber, the book of the 'Dame Blanche' for
+Boïeldieu, and the book of the 'Juive' for Halévy. Indeed, it is evident
+that Wagner himself as a librettist must be considered as a direct
+disciple of Scribe; certainly his book of the 'Flying Dutchman' has its
+points of resemblance with the books Scribe invented for 'Robert the
+Devil,' and for the 'Prophet.' Even the libretto of Wagner's
+'Master-Singers of Nuremberg,' altho it is far richer in tone than any
+of Scribe's librettos for Auber, is constructed in accord with
+principles already applied by the French playwright. In fact, the
+influence of Scribe is patent thruout the long history of opera in the
+nineteenth century; he was not only the most prolific of librettists
+himself, but the operatic formula he devised was borrowed by the best of
+the librettists who followed him. Scribe was not the writer of the books
+of 'Faust,' or of 'Roméo et Juliet,' or of 'Aïda,' but all these
+librettos were carefully built in accord with the principles that he had
+practised for half a century.
+
+                                   II
+
+Probably the average opera-goer is contemptuous of the libretto, because
+he thinks it is an easy task to write the mere words of an opera. To
+him, no doubt, the opera lives by its music, and by its music alone. But
+there is really no warrant for this uncomplimentary attitude. An opera
+is a music-drama, and if it is to achieve success, wide-spread and
+long-lasting, its drama must be as effective as its music. Experience
+proves that, so far from being as easy as it seems, the construction of
+a satisfactory libretto is really a difficult feat, to be achieved only
+by an expert in stage-craft. It is no task to be confided to an amateur
+play-maker, to a mere lyrist, ignorant of the art of the theater. First
+of all, a satisfactory book must contain the skeleton of a good play;
+and, second, this must be the special kind of play which will not only
+inspire the musician, but afford him a succession of special
+opportunities for the exercise of his own art. The book of an opera must
+be a good play; and more than once have we seen a libretto deprived of
+its music and written out again in prose for production in non-musical
+theaters. 'Carmen' is one example of this transformation. The late Sir
+Henry Irving was so taken with Wagner's 'Flying Dutchman' that he had it
+made over into a play for his own acting--'Vanderdecken.'
+
+The book of an opera must be a good play, and therefore not a few
+successful operas have been composed on plots which had already won
+approval as plays on the stage. Indeed, many modern composers are so
+convinced of the necessity that librettos shall be attractive in
+themselves that they are continually borrowing popular plays to deck
+with melody. 'Salomé' and 'Pelléas et Mélisande,' 'Madam Butterfly' and
+'Cavalleria Rusticana,' the 'Bohème' and the 'Tosca' were all successful
+without music before they were set to music to win a second success. The
+book of Verdi's 'Rigoletto' is based on Victor Hugo's drama, 'Le Roi
+s'Amuse'; and oddly enough it was the operatic libretto, rather than the
+original poetic drama, which suggested the English play on the same
+theme, Tom Taylor's blank-verse drama, the 'Fool's Revenge.' Another of
+Verdi's librettos was borrowed from Hugo's 'Hermani', while his
+'Traviata,' as we all know, is taken from the play of the younger Dumas,
+long popular in America as 'Camille.' Two of Verdi's latest operas had
+Shaksperian themes, 'Otello' and 'Falstaff.'
+
+It is instructive to note, so an American musical critic once asserted,
+that of all Gounod's dozen operas, "the only two which have survived are
+the two which are derived from Goethe's 'Faust' and from Shakspere's
+'Romeo and Juliet'"; and he added a reminder that in these operas the
+music owes its success "not only to the aid derived from its
+associations with a favorite play, but also in part to the fact that the
+composer's creative imagination was fertilized by the splendid
+opportunities for dramatic composition offered by these plays. Gounod
+was moved by the joys and woes of Margaret and of Juliet, and it is
+only under the influence of deep feeling that such masterworks can be
+created." When Gounod set to music a poetic play by Goethe, and when
+Verdi set to music a group of characters created by Shakspere, the
+composers might well be inspired by the poets; and they were thus aided
+to attain the utmost of which they are capable as musicians.
+
+But it may be doubted whether any musician could find any really helpful
+inspiration in dramas of vulgar violence, such as the 'Tosca' of Sardou,
+and the 'Salomé' of Oscar Wilde; and it is extremely improbable that the
+operas composed to such unworthy themes will be able to achieve any
+durable popularity. In plots of so coarse a character there is neither
+beauty nor poetry, and the vogue of music-dramas having subjects so
+debased is likely to be fleeting. On the other hand, there was both
+poetry and beauty in the original plays of 'Madam Butterfly' and
+'Cavalleria Rusticana,' and we need not be surprised if the operas
+composed on these themes prove to have a long life in the musical
+theaters. We may even go further and suggest that there was a haunting
+and ethereal grace about Maeterlinck's 'Pelléas et Mélisande' which
+seemed almost to demand translation into the sister art of music.
+
+The two most effective French comedies of the eighteenth century, the
+'Barber of Seville' and the 'Marriage of Figaro,' supplied librettos,
+one for Rossini and the other for Mozart. We may be sure that sooner or
+later some other composer, Italian or American or German, will be
+tempted to undertake an opera based on Fulda's 'Two Sisters,' in which
+there could not help being a very effective part for the prima donna.
+And sooner or later again some musician with an appreciation of humor
+and sentiment will be moved to take for his libretto the comedy of
+'Masks and Faces,' by Charles Reade and Tom Taylor, generally known by
+the name of its fascinating heroine, Peg Woffington. No doubt there are
+not a few other modern plays in which composers will discover musical
+possibilities.
+
+                                  III
+
+The key to an understanding of the importance of the libretto lies in
+the term Wagner used to describe the art-work of the future; he called
+this a "music-drama." The exclusive lover of music is tempted to look
+down on opera because its music is contaminated with drama; and for a
+similar reason, the exclusive lover of the drama is not attracted to
+opera because the drama is there more or less sacrificed to the music.
+But there are many opera-goers who best relish music and the drama when
+they are presented in conjunction. In a music-drama of the highest type,
+in Wagner's 'Tannhaüser,' for example, the music and the drama are
+Siamese twins; they were brought forth at a single birth. Each helps the
+other, and neither calls upon the other for any undue sacrifice. They
+can be enjoyed together better than they can be enjoyed apart, since
+each depends upon the other; and united they stand or fall.
+
+Mr. H. T. Finck was not overstating the case when he insisted that the
+ideal opera is one in which the book and the score are each of them of
+absorbing interest, "and yet make a doubly deep impression when heard
+together." The stories of 'Faust' and of 'Carmen' and of 'Lohengrin' are
+delightful in themselves, merely to read; and a musical expert can find
+pleasure in playing the music from them on the piano. "Yet how much more
+effective they are when we hear and see music and play together on the
+stage." And then the same writer goes on to point out that the best
+"libretto is one which tells its story to the eye," as in the case of
+'Carmen,' for example. "No one with eyes to see can fail, for instance,
+to follow the career of 'Carmen,' from her flirtation with the young
+officer to the scene before the bullring where he stabs her."
+
+It was an acute French dramatic critic who once asserted that "the
+skeleton of every good play is a pantomime," and the assertion is more
+emphatically true when applied to the skeleton of a libretto. Indeed, as
+the words are rarely heard distinctly, and as they are often in a
+foreign language, there is double need of a story so clear and so
+straightforward that it can be caught by the eye alone from the actions
+and gestures and facial expressions of the performers without the aid of
+the actual words. But the inventing and the constructing of a plot of
+this seemingly simple effectiveness is a task of extraordinary
+difficulty--if we may judge by the infrequency of its achievement. And
+undoubtedly it is this difficulty which has led so many musicians to
+compose their scores to books only slightly altered from plays which had
+already an attested popularity in the theater. By so doing it has seemed
+to them that they were minimizing the risk of finding their music
+handicapped by an ineffective story. The danger in this case lies in the
+temptation to set to music any play which may chance to be successful
+without considering sufficiently whether it is really worthy of the
+composer's labor.
+
+There is another disadvantage also in this snatching at successful plays
+to serve as opera-librettos. Most successful plays nowadays deal with
+modern life, and they may owe much of their success to the skill with
+which the dramatist has been able to seize the external aspects of
+reality. Now, it is an interesting question whether a realistic piece of
+this sort can ever supply an entirely satisfactory book for an opera,
+since music is emotional and idealizing. To many persons the opera seems
+singularly unreal, strangely remote from actual life. Such persons are
+shocked that Tristan, for instance, should sing for half an hour when he
+is dying from physical weakness. Tolstoy sided with those who take this
+attitude, and he had no difficulty in showing up the absurd unreality of
+an operatic performance, if one insists upon applying to it the standard
+of our ordinary existence, since we do not burst into song ordinarily to
+express our every-day desires. Of course, there would be no great
+difficulty in showing up the absurd unreality of every other art, if the
+same standard is insisted upon. No art can justify itself for a moment
+unless we are willing to admit the essential conventions which alone
+permit it to exist.
+
+Tolstoy might as well have pointed out that sculpture is ridiculous,
+since no human being is ever all of one color, body and clothes, as a
+statue must be, whether it is made of marble or of bronze. He could have
+declared that painting is equally untrue to the mere facts of life,
+since it represents nature absolutely without motion, as when it depicts
+a field of waving corn which does not really wave but stands fixed
+forever. If Tolstoy or any one else refuses to accept the conventions of
+any art, there is no possible reply, except to make it clear to him that
+he is thereby depriving himself of the delight which that art can give.
+A departure from the mere fact underlies every art; and it is only
+because of that departure that the art exists. By convention, that is to
+say, by tacit agreement between the artist and the public, the artist is
+allowed to deny certain of the facts of life in order to provide the
+public with the specific pleasure which only his art can afford.
+
+In the Shaksperian drama the underlying convention is that the persons
+of the play belong to a race of people who always express themselves
+poetically in English blank verse. In opera this necessary agreement
+requires us to concede the existence of men and women to whom song is
+the natural means of communicating all their sentiments and all their
+thoughts. If we are willing to accept this implied contract, then there
+is no absurdity in Tristan's singing with his dying breath, since he
+belongs to a race of creatures who have no other method of speech. If we
+are unwilling to be parties to this agreement, if we deny the existence
+of any such creatures, then there is nothing for us to do but to keep
+out of the opera-house. It was this convention which Tolstoy rejected,
+and by this rejection he refused the enjoyment which the opera can give
+to those who are satisfied to accept its conditions.
+
+                                   IV
+
+But there is no denying that the imperative operatic convention requires
+us to admit a very violent departure from the facts of life as we all
+know them. We are now so accustomed to blank verse in Shakspere's plays,
+tragic and comic, that we accept it almost without noticing it. By long
+habit, we have come to consider blank verse as "natural" in a poetic
+play, especially when that play sets before us heroic figures of the
+remote past. And here is the danger in the operas which have been
+composed on books made out of modern popular pieces, more or less
+realistic in their atmosphere. The "naturalness" of the men and women in
+these plays of to-day tends to draw attention to the "unnaturalness" of
+their customary use of song to express their emotions.
+
+This danger Wagner skilfully avoided in his later music-dramas derived
+from the Nibelungen myth. He set before us shadowy creatures involved
+in strange intrigues far back in the legendary past and wholly devoid
+of any modern or realistic suggestion. As Tristan and Siegfried and
+Brunhild are all idealized persons, taking part in poetic fictions, we
+are willing enough to accept their exclusive use of song; and we
+recognize at once the artistic inconsistency of Tolstoy's protest. To
+beings so remote from our daily life, from our ordinary experience, the
+standard of fact cannot fairly be applied. We acknowledge the full right
+of such creatures to dwell eternally in the land of song alone.
+
+But we are perhaps a little less willing to make this acknowledgment
+when we find the composer asking us to believe that men and women of our
+own time and of our own country, the characters of the 'Girl of the
+Golden West,' for example, or even some of those of 'Madam Butterfly,'
+should eschew the plain prose of ordinary speech and insist on
+discussing their love-affairs in the obviously "unnatural" medium of
+song. That is to say, there is a striking incongruity between musical
+expression and the realistic characters of most modern plays. We enjoy
+the opera partly because it is not "natural," not "real," in the
+ordinary meaning of these words; and if the plot and the people are
+aggressively modern and matter-of-fact, our attention is necessarily
+called to the "unnaturalness" of their incessant vocalization. A certain
+remoteness from real life, even a certain vaporous intangibility as to
+time and place, seem to be a helpful element in our enjoyment of a
+music-drama.
+
+Perhaps it is due to this remoteness, to this unreality, that the
+opera-goer is willing enough to have a story end unhappily, altho the
+playgoer is now likely to be painfully affected by a tragic ending.
+Whatever the reason, it is a fact that most of our popular plays end
+merrily in a church, while most of our popular operas end sadly in a
+churchyard. The calculation has been made that out of twoscore operas
+sung in New York at the two opera-houses a season or so ago, only half a
+dozen ended happily; the large majority of them culminated in the death
+of the hero or of the heroine or of both together. Music is a sister of
+poetry, and we need not wonder that the musicians are likely to prefer
+the opera-book which has a tragic catastrophe.
+
+(1910.)
+
+                                   X
+
+                      THE POETRY OF THE DANCE
+
+                      THE POETRY OF THE DANCE
+
+                                   I
+
+The Greek of old was wise in his generation and poetic as was his habit,
+when he imagined nine muses and when he feigned that each of them was to
+watch over a separate art, and to inspire those who might strive to
+excel in this. It is true that nowadays we cannot help feeling that the
+sister-muses of Tragedy and of Comedy have been a little derelict to
+their duty, if they are really responsible for all the plays of our
+time, not a few of which seem to be sadly lacking in inspiration. But of
+late another of the sacred nine appears to have aroused herself out of
+her lethargy and to have awakened to a fuller realization of her
+opportunity. At least, there are many evidences now visible in the
+United States that Terpsichore has been attending strictly to business,
+and sending out travelers with many diverse specimens of her wares.
+Indeed, there has probably never been a time when so many different
+varieties of the dance have been on exhibition before the American
+people. It was once remarked by a shrewd observer that there were only
+three kinds of dancing, the graceful, the ungraceful, and the
+disgraceful. And in the United States we have had presented to us in the
+past few years specimens of all three kinds.
+
+In the middle of September, 1910, the Playground Association of America
+held an outdoor session in Van Cortlandt Park, in New York, and three
+hundred persons, mostly children, took part in the exercises. The most
+interesting feature of the program was a series of national folk-dances
+executed by boys and girls from the public schools. New York is the huge
+melting-pot where all nationalities of Europe meet to be fused into
+Americans; and these children were, most of them, executing the dances
+of the countries their parents had come from--dances for which they had,
+therefore, a traditional and hereditary predilection. German girls in
+the costumes of the Rhine, gave a peasant dance to the simple tune of
+'Ach, du lieber Augustin'; and colored children, in perfect rhythm,
+moved thru a reel to the music of the 'Suwanee River.' The wild
+Hungarian _czardas_ was carried off with a splendid swing by men and
+women born on the banks of the Danube; and an Irish quartet displayed
+their agility and their precision of time-keeping in a four-handed
+country-dance. And at the end, all the participants in the several
+national dances took part in a general harvest-dance. This was an
+effective spectacle, possible only here in America, where
+representatives of many peoples come to mingle, even tho each of them
+retains a sentiment of loyalty to the old home it has left forever.
+
+Here in the open air, in a public park, at this meeting of the
+Playground Association, there was this joyous and wholesome revival of
+the folk-dances of a dozen different races; and at the same time, in one
+or another of half a score of the theaters of the great city,
+ill-trained and half-clothed women were vainly capering about the stage
+in doubtful efforts to suggest the Oriental contortions of Salomé. These
+were, most of them, consciously and deliberately inartistic, appealing
+directly to the baser instincts and to the lower curiosities of man.
+Nothing could have been in sharper contrast with the folk-dances of the
+foreign-born children, which were gay and healthy and spontaneous. The
+exercises in the park were examples of the kind of dancing which cannot
+help being graceful, while most of the performances in the theaters were
+specimens of the kind of dancing which can fairly be described as
+ungraceful, even if they cannot all of them be dismissed as disgraceful.
+While the folk-dances of the children would fill the heart with a pure
+delight, the sorry spectacle presented in some of the theaters was not
+to be witnessed without a certain loss of self-respect; it recalled the
+gross pantomimes of the later Roman theater, righteously denounced by
+the Fathers of the Church.
+
+Yet it is only just to record that in other theaters there were then
+other spectacles to make amends for these sorry exhibitions. There were
+several interesting attempts to recall the severe beauty of Greek
+dancing. Lithe figures with free and floating draperies sought to
+recapture the irreclaimable charm that lives for us in the lovely
+Tanagra figurines, or that flits elusively around the sides of Attic
+vases. Ambitious efforts were made by one dancer and by another to
+translate into step and posture and gesture the intangible poetry of
+Shelley and the haunting music of Mendelssohn. Unfortunately, the result
+was rarely commensurate with the effort; and, in fact, a complete
+success was not possible. The muse of dancing has no right to endeavor
+to annex the territory of her sisters, who are charged with the care of
+poetry and music. The several arts are strongest when each remains
+strictly within its own limitations. For example, program-music is not
+yet assured of its welcome, and program-dancing is far more difficult to
+follow with complete comprehension.
+
+And there was a further defect in these efforts to revive the classic
+dances and to devise more modern interpretations of poetry and music.
+Success, if possible at all, would be possible only to a highly trained
+performer, mistress of every device of the terpsichorean art and
+elaborately schooled in pantomimic expression. Now, it is not unfair to
+say that no one of the performers of these so-called classic dances had
+undergone this severe schooling. No one of them had the lightness, the
+ease, the perfect mastery of method, the floating grace of the true
+dancer, who has been taught from childhood, until all the tricks of the
+craft are second nature. Without this arduous training any one who
+attempts an ambitious display can scarcely fail to reveal instantly the
+lamentable fact that she is not mistress of the technic of the art she
+has undertaken to practise. She does not know how to get her effects;
+she does not even know what effects are possible. She is almost certain
+to appear amateurish, and she is likely to seem awkward also, not to say
+ungainly. As Pope put it tersely: "Those move easiest who have learned
+to dance."
+
+These well-meant attempts to link dancing with poetry and music could be
+entirely satisfactory only to those who have given little consideration
+to dancing as an art, or who have small opportunity to see any really
+beautiful dancing. There is no wonder that any effort to spiritualize
+dancing, to give it a soul, to elevate it to the lofty level of the
+lyric, should be welcomed by those who have been disgusted by the ugly
+and vulgar high-kicking of the so-called pony ballets. The acrobatic
+contortions of these athletic performers were wholly without charm, as
+unalluring as they were violent. And equally unacceptable are the
+frequent exhibitions of toe-dancing, sheer gymnastic feats, difficult,
+indeed, but essentially uninteresting. Of a truth, these pony ballets on
+the one hand, and these toe-dancers on the other, are exponents of
+eccentricity. What they accomplish lies outside the true art of dancing.
+It is not inspired by Terpsichore, and the saddened muse must veil her
+face when she is forced to behold these crude exhibitions of misplaced
+energy.
+
+                                   II
+
+The true art of dancing is entirely free from all apparent effort. No
+matter how difficult may be the feat that is accomplished, it must seem
+easy. Every gesture must be expressive, every movement must be
+beautiful, every step must have ease and lightness and grace. Forty
+years ago and more, the 'Black Crook' brought to America three or four
+dancers trained in the best schools of Europe--Bonfanti and Betty Rigl,
+Rita Sangalli and Morlacchi. One of this quartet, Rita Sangalli, was
+afterward the chief dancer at the Paris Opéra, where she was followed in
+time by Rosita Mauri, a dancer who added beauty of face and of form to a
+masterly accomplishment. They were all gifted pantomimists; they had all
+of them the perfection of technic; they were all of them capable of the
+most varied difficulties of the art; and they all of them vanquished
+these difficulties with unobtrusive ease. They had attained to that
+perfection of art, when the art itself is hidden, and when only the
+consummate result is visible. Each of them had absolute certainty of
+execution, and each of them could float across the stage the embodiment
+of grace, exquisite in its ethereal delicacy.
+
+For those whose memories cannot recall the haunting remembrance of the
+days that are gone there is abundant compensation in the opportunity
+which has been afforded of late to behold the dancing of Mlle. Genée and
+of Mlle. Pavlova. They are, at least, the equal of any of their
+predecessors, and it may be doubted whether Taglioni or Fanny Elssler
+surpassed them in mastery. They are the perfection of effortless ease;
+altho they suggest only the lightness of the butterfly, they have the
+steel strength of the gymnast. Behind their marvelous and bewildering
+accomplishment there is a native gift, rich and full; and there is also
+the utmost rigor and perseverance in training. What they are able to do
+with seeming spontaneity and with apparent freedom is the result of
+indefatigable industry and of merciless labor.
+
+But tho this schooling sustains them, it is never paraded--indeed, it is
+scarcely perceived. There is not the faintest suggestion of hard work
+about their performances; there is nothing that hints at effort; their
+art is able to conceal itself absolutely, and to delight us only with
+the perfect result of their long apprenticeship. Capable of the most
+obstinate feats of strength and of agility, Mlle. Genée and Mlle.
+Pavlova never "show off"; they are never guilty of parading a difficulty
+for its own sake, and their conquest of technical obstacles serves only
+to support and intensify the continuous suggestion of aerial elevation
+and of ineffable lightness. It is to be noted, also, that as they scorn
+the task of the mere gymnast, they do not wear the scant costume of the
+acrobat; they are enveloped in ample draperies, which fall into lines of
+beauty with every movement.
+
+Nothing more exquisite than their dancing has ever been seen on the
+American stage. Theirs is the dancing which is graceful--which, indeed,
+is grace itself. Here is the art at its utmost possibility, purged of
+all its dross. When they are floating effortless thru space we cannot
+help recalling the possibly apocryphal anecdote which records the visit
+of Emerson and Margaret Fuller to the theater to see Fanny Elssler. They
+gazed with increasing delight, until at last Margaret Fuller could not
+contain her enthusiasm. She turned and said: "Ralph, this is poetry!" To
+which the philosopher is said to have responded: "Margaret, this is
+religion!"
+
+Perfection is always rare, and there is now only one Mlle. Genée, and
+only one Mlle. Pavlova, as there was only one Rosita Mauri a quarter of
+a century ago. It is a pity that the Danish dancer has had to appear
+here in an ordinary musical show and not in a framework more worthy of
+her and of her art, and better fitted to display it. She has revealed
+herself only in two or three _entrées de ballet_, as the French term
+them--incidental dances; and she has not yet been seen here in a _ballet
+d'action_, a complete story told in pantomime. It was the poet, François
+Coppée, who devised the plot of the 'Korrigane' for Rosita Mauri; and he
+had had Théophile Gautier as a predecessor in the preparation of a
+ballet-libretto. All those who are interested in every manifestation of
+the art of the drama, must find pleasure in the _ballet d'action_, with
+its adroit commingling of dance and pantomime; it gives a delight
+possible to no other form of the drama; and at its best it is more
+closely akin to pure poetry. Being her own manager, Mlle. Pavlova has
+been seen in a series of ballets more appropriate to her extraordinary
+gifts than those in which Mlle. Genée has been permitted to appear.
+
+                                  III
+
+There was one scene of the 'Source,' a ballet popular at the Opéra in
+Paris during the exhibition of 1867, which must linger in the memory of
+all who had the good fortune to behold it--a scene so beautiful that it
+was borrowed for the 'White Fawn,' which was the successor of the 'Black
+Crook' here in the United States. It represented a silvery glade in the
+lone forest, with a mysterious lake, on the surface of which the spirits
+of the springtime came forth to disport themselves. It was a vision of
+airy grace and of haunting legend; and it is only one example of the
+poetic possibilities of the contribution of dance and pantomime in a
+coherent story. It may be well to recall the fact that the plots of
+these _ballets d'action_ are often strong enough to enable them to serve
+as the basis of a libretto for an opera. It was a ballet of Scribe's,
+for example, which was taken for the book of the 'Somnambula'; and the
+book of the favorite opera 'Martha' began its existence as a libretto
+for a ballet.
+
+While the _ballet d'action_ affords the fullest opportunity for the
+perfect art of dancers like Rosita Mauri and Adeline Genée and Anna
+Pavlova, there are other forms not to be despised. Twenty-five years ago
+the Italian Marenco brought out his stupendous 'Excelsior,' which was
+taken from Italy to Paris, then to New York, and finally to London.
+'Excelsior' was an allegorical ballet; it represented the conflict of
+light and darkness, of progress and superstition, of invention and
+reaction. It filled a whole evening with spectacle and glitter and
+movement. It lacked the poetic simplicity of the 'Source' and of the
+'Korrigane'; but it had other qualities of its own. What set it apart
+from all the ballets that had gone before was the subordination of the
+individual terpsichorean artist to the main body. Marenco employed the
+best dancers to be found in Italy, no doubt, but he did not rely on them
+so much as on the intricate and ingenious handling of the crowds of
+lesser dancers, by whom they were surrounded.
+
+The novelty of 'Excelsior' and of the two or three gigantic Italian
+spectacles which were patterned upon it--'Messalina' and 'Sieba'--lay in
+the maneuvering of the masses, in the extraordinary skill with which
+squadrons of figures were made to charge across the stage and combine
+and melt into one another most unexpectedly and most delightfully. The
+whole stage was a blaze of artfully contrasted colors, and it was filled
+with a riot of motion and of glitter. And Marenco made use of male
+dancers far more abundantly than any of his predecessors, utilizing them
+to wear the more somber colors, to suggest a sterner vigor, and to
+emphasize a bolder contrast. He was responsible also for another
+novelty, often employed by others since; he increased the height of his
+swerving lines of dancers, now and again, by mounting some of the
+figures on stands, and by putting revolving globes and iridescent
+banners into the hands of the men in the background.
+
+It is the method of Marenco in 'Excelsior' which has been followed in
+the often pleasing ballets of the Hippodrome in New York. Really good
+soloists are now very scarce, even in Milan and in Vienna, long the
+nurseries of the ballet; and there seem to be none too many even in
+Petrograd, which has preserved and improved upon the traditions of Paris
+and Milan. And in the absence of accomplished soloists, the deviser of
+the ballets at the Hippodrome has been compelled to get along without
+them as best he could. He has been forced to rely on the maneuvering of
+masses of girls, possessed of only a rudimentary instruction in the
+elements of the terpsichorean art. In other words, he has had to make up
+in quantity for the absence of quality. But he has at his disposition an
+immense stage, across which he could set his squadrons marching and
+gliding and glittering. He could not count on the skill of his
+principals who were not expert enough to demand the attention of the
+spectators; but he could seek striking effects of light and color in the
+costumes, as he moved his masses to and fro and as he swung them
+together. If only there had been a little better training for the more
+prominent performers, the 'Four Seasons' would have been a most artistic
+entertainment, in spite of the absence of any single dancer of real
+distinction.
+
+                                   IV
+
+The dearth of remarkable dancers is due to the inexorable fact that
+dancing is the most arduous of all the arts; its technic is the most
+difficult to acquire. Indeed, this technic can be acquired only in early
+youth, when the muscles are flexible and when they can be supplied at
+will. It is early in her teens that a dancer must begin her training if
+she aspires to eminence in the art. This training is very severe, and it
+must never be relaxed. Rubinstein used to say that if he omitted his
+practise for a single day he noticed it in his playing; if he omitted it
+two days his enemies found it out; and if he omitted it three days even
+his friends discovered it. The apprentice dancer can never omit a single
+day of hard and uninteresting toil. Incessant application, during all
+the long years of youth, is the price the ambitious beginner must pay
+for the mastery of her art. She can have no vacations; she can have few
+relaxations; she must keep herself constantly in training; she must be
+prepared to surrender many of the things which make life worth living.
+And it is no wonder that so few have the courage to persevere, and that
+there is only one Rosita Mauri, only one Adeline Genée, and only one
+Anna Pavlova in a quarter of a century. It is no wonder that the
+inventor of terpsichorean spectacles nowadays finds himself compelled to
+get along as best he can without a satisfactory soloist and to rely
+rather on his handling of a mass of inadequately trained dancers.
+
+But even if the highly accomplished soloist, absolute mistress of all
+the possibilities of the art, is very rare, there are certain forms of
+dancing which do not demand this ultimate skill and which call for
+little more than grace and ease and charm, combined with a knowledge of
+the simpler steps. For example, the Spanish Carmencita, whose portraits
+by Mr. Sargent and by Mr. Chase now hang in the Luxembourg in Paris and
+in the Metropolitan Museum in New York--Carmencita was not a skilful
+dancer; she had undergone no inexorable schooling; she glided thru only
+a few elementary movements. But she made no effort; she did not pretend
+to what was not in her power; she was simple and unaffected. Her charm
+was not in her singing or in her dancing; it was in her personality, in
+the alluring and exotic suggestion of her individuality.
+
+Nor could anybody venture to assert that Miss Kate Vaughan and Miss
+Letty Lind were dancers in the same class with Mauri, Genée, and
+Pavlova; but then they did not pretend to be. They knew only a few steps
+of obvious simplicity, and they displayed no unexpected dexterity. But
+the skirt-dance as they performed it was a memory of delight, with its
+grace and its ease, with its perfect rhythm and with the swish of its
+clinging draperies. It had a fascination of its own, quite different
+from the fascination of the more poetic and ethereal ballet-dancing of
+Rita Sangalli and Rosita Mauri. It was not of the stage exactly, but
+almost of the drawing-room. It gave the same pleasure which we felt when
+we were privileged to behold a court minuet led by the late Mrs. G. H.
+Gilbert, who had been a dancer in the days of her youth. There is one
+perfect beauty of the best ballet-dancing and there are other beauties
+of different kinds in the skirt-dancing of the two Englishwomen and in
+the languorous swaying of the Spanish gipsy.
+
+Beauty of yet another order there was in an exhibition which was called
+a dance, perhaps because there was no other word for it, but which
+demanded no skill with the feet and which necessitated rather strength
+in the arms. This was the luminous dance of Miss Loie Fuller, when she
+swirled voluminous and prolonged draperies in lights that came from
+above and from below, and from both sides--lights that changed by
+exquisite gradations from one tint to another, the figure of the dancer
+spinning around, now slowly and now swiftly, while her arms weaved
+fantastic circles in the air, revealing unexpected combinations of
+color, controlled by perfect taste. This may not have been dancing, by
+any strict definition of the word, but it was decorative, artistic,
+imaginative, and inexpressibly beautiful. It supplied a glimpse of
+unsuspected delight; and probably Terpsichore would not disdain to claim
+it for her own, however vigorously she might repel the suggestion that
+she had any responsibility for the violence of the toe-dances, for the
+vulgarity of the pony ballet, or for the ungainly caperings which
+pretend to recapture the free movements of the Greeks.
+
+(1910-1915)
+
+                                   XI
+
+                      THE PRINCIPLES OF PANTOMIME
+
+                      THE PRINCIPLES OF PANTOMIME
+
+                                   I
+
+In his suggestive study of ancient and modern drama, M. Émile Faguet
+dwells on the fact that the drama is the only one of the arts which can
+employ to advantage the aid of all the other arts. The muses of tragedy
+and comedy can borrow narrative from the muse of epic poetry and song
+from the muse of lyric poetry. They can avail themselves of oratory,
+music, and dancing. They can profit by the assistance of the architect,
+the sculptor, and the painter. They can draw on the co-operation of all
+the other arts without ceasing to be themselves and without losing any
+of their essential qualities. This was seen clearly by Wagner, who
+insisted that his music-dramas were really the art-work of the future,
+in that they were the result of a combination of all the arts. Quite
+possibly the Greeks had the same idea, since Athenian tragedy has many
+points of similarity to Wagner's music-drama; it had epic passages and a
+lyric chorus set to music; it called for stately dancing against an
+architectural background.
+
+But altho the muses of the drama may invoke the help of their seven
+sisters, they need not make this appeal unless they choose. They can
+give their performances on a bare platform, or in the open air, and
+thus get along without painting and architecture. They can disdain the
+support of song and dance and music. They can concentrate all their
+effort upon themselves and provide a play which is a play and nothing
+else. And this is what Ibsen has done in his somber social-dramas.
+'Ghosts,' for example, is independent of anything extraneous to the
+drama. It is a play, only a play, and nothing more than a play.
+
+Yet it is possible to reduce the drama to an even barer state than we
+find in Ibsen's gloomy tragedy in prose. Ibsen's characters speak; they
+reveal themselves in speech; and it is by words that they carry on the
+story. A story can be presented on the stage, however, without the use
+of words, without the aid of the human voice, by the employment of
+gesture only, by pure pantomime. No doubt, the drama makes a great
+sacrifice when it decides to do without that potent instrument of
+emotional appeal, the human voice; and yet it can find its profit, now
+and then, in this self-imposed deprivation. Certain stories there are,
+not many, and all of them necessarily simplified and made very clear,
+which gain by being bereft of the spoken word and by being presented
+only in the pantomime. And these stories, simple as they must be, if
+they are to be apprehended by sight alone without the aid of sound, are,
+nevertheless, capable of supporting an actual play with all the
+absolutely necessary elements of a drama.
+
+In his interesting and illuminating volume on the 'Theory of the
+Theater,' Mr. Clayton Hamilton has a carefully considered definition of
+a play. He asserts that "a play is a story devised to be presented by
+actors on a stage before an audience." Perhaps it might be possible to
+amend this by saying "in a theater," instead of "on a stage," since we
+are now pretty certain that there was no stage in the Greek theater when
+Sophocles was writing for it. But this is but a trifling correction, and
+the definition as a whole is excellent. It includes every possible kind
+of dramatic entertainment, Greek tragedy and Roman comedy, medieval
+farce and modern melodrama, the music-drama of Wagner and the
+problem-play of Ibsen, the summer song-show and the college boy's
+burlesque. Obviously it includes the wordless play, the story devised to
+be presented on a stage and before an audience by actors who use gesture
+only and who do not speak.
+
+In forgoing the aid of words the drama is only reducing itself to its
+absolutely necessary elements--a story, and a story which can be shown
+in action. It is not quite true that the skeleton of a good play is
+always a pantomime, since there are plays the plot of which cannot be
+conveyed to the audience except by actual speech. Yet some of the
+greatest plays have plots so transparent that the story is clear, even
+if we fail to hear what the actors are saying. It has been asserted that
+if 'Hamlet,' for example, were to be performed in a deaf-and-dumb
+asylum, the inmates would be able to understand it and to enjoy it. They
+would be deprived of the wonderful beauty of Shakspere's verse, no
+doubt, and they would scarcely be able even to guess at the deeper
+significance of the philosophy which enriches the tragedy; but the story
+would unroll itself clearly before their eyes so that they could follow
+the succession of scenes with adequate understanding.
+
+With his customary shrewdness and his usual gift of piercing to the
+center of what he was engaged in analyzing, Aristotle more than four
+thousand years ago saw the necessity of a neatly articulated plot. "If
+you string together a set of speeches," he said, "expressive of
+character and well finished in point of diction and thought, you will
+not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play,
+which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and
+artistically constructed incidents." No broader statement than this
+could be made as to the all-importance of the story itself--and
+pantomime is a story and nothing else, a story capable of being
+translated by the actions of the performers, without the aid of speech.
+Nor need we suppose that a play without words is necessarily devoid of
+poetry. There may be poetry in the "set of speeches expressive of
+character and well finished in point of thought and diction"; but there
+may be poetry also in the theme itself, in the actual story. 'Romeo and
+Juliet,' for example, is fundamentally poetic in its theme, and it
+retains its poetic quality even when it is made to serve as the libretto
+of an opera, as it would also retain this if it should be stripped bare
+to be presented in pantomime.
+
+In a recent work on the 'Essentials of Poetry,' Professor William A.
+Neilson has made this clear: "Many a drama is a genuine poetic creation,
+altho it may be simple to the point of baldness in diction and exhibit
+the fundamental qualities of poetry only in the characterization and in
+the significance, proportion, and verisimilitude of the plot." That is
+to say, the drama can use two kinds of poetry, that which is internal
+and contained in the plot, and that which is external and confined to
+the language. It can employ
+
+          jewels five-words long,
+    That on the stretched forefinger of all Time
+    Sparkle forever.
+
+But it can also attain poetry without the use of superb and sonorous
+phrases and solely by its choice of theme. This is what the poets have
+often felt, and as a result French lyrists, like Théophile Gautier and
+François Coppée, have not disdained to compose librettos for pantomimic
+ballets, 'Giselle' and the 'Korrigane.' One of the most successful of
+the recent Russian ballets was simply a representation of Gautier's
+poetic fantasy, 'One of Cleopatra's Nights,'
+
+                                   II
+
+Perhaps because the pantomime contains only the essential element of the
+drama--action--it has always been a popular form of play; and it appears
+very early in the history of the theater. Indeed, it seems to be the
+sole type of play achievable by primitive man--if we may judge from
+observations made among savages who are still in the earlier periods of
+social development. Gesture precedes speech, and a pantomime was
+possible even before a vocabulary was developed. In the Aleutian
+Islands, for example, the pantomime is the only form of play known. One
+of the little plays of the islanders has been described. It was acted by
+two performers only, one representing a hunter, and the other a bird.
+The hunter hesitates but finally kills the bird with an arrow; then he
+is seized with regret that he has slain so noble a bird; whereupon the
+bird revives and turns into a beautiful woman who falls into the
+hunter's arms. This is the simplest of stories, but it lends itself to
+effective acting; it is capable of being interpreted adequately by means
+of gesture alone; and it is just the kind of play which would appeal to
+an Aleutian audience, being wholly within their experience and their
+apprehension.
+
+Pantomime flourished in Rome and in Constantinople in the sorry years of
+the decline and fall of the empire; and it was then low and lascivious.
+A great part of the fierce hostility to the theater displayed by the
+Fathers of the Christian Church was due to the fact that the only drama
+of which they had any knowledge was pantomime of a most objectionable
+character, offensive in theme and even more offensive in presentation.
+With the conversion of the empire to Christianity, pantomimes of this
+type, appealing only to lewd fellows of the baser sort, was very
+properly prohibited. But pantomime of another type sprang up in the
+Middle Ages in the Christian churches to exemplify and to make visible
+to the ignorant congregations, certain episodes of sacred history. In
+the Renascence dumb-shows were represented before monarchs, at their
+weddings and at their stately entrances into loyal cities. And
+dumb-shows were often employed in the Elizabethan stage, sometimes as
+prologs to the several acts, as in 'Gorboduc,' for example, and
+sometimes within the play itself, as in 'Hamlet.'
+
+In the eighteenth century pantomime had a double revival, in France and
+in England. In France, Noverre elevated the _ballet d'action_, that is
+to say, the story told in pantomime and adorned with dances. Sometimes
+these _ballets d'action_ were in several acts, relying for interest on
+the simple yet ingenious plot, and only decorated, so to speak, with
+occasional dances. From Noverre and from France the tradition of the
+pantomime with interludes of dancing, spread at first to Italy and
+Austria, and later to Russia.
+
+In England the development of pantomime was upon different lines, due to
+the influence of the Italian comedy-of-masks, with its unchanging
+figures of Pantaleone, Columbina, and Arlecchino. These figures were
+still further simplified; and to Pantaloon, Columbine, and Harlequin
+there was added the characteristically British figure of the Clown. The
+most famous impersonator of the clown was Grimaldi, whose memoirs were
+edited by Charles Dickens. The mantle of Grimaldi fell upon an American,
+G. L. Fox, whose greatest triumph, in the late sixties, was in a
+pantomime called 'Humpty-Dumpty'--the riming prolog of which was
+written by A. Oakey Hall (then Tweed's mayor of New York). G. L. Fox and
+his brother, C. K. Fox (who was the inventor of the comic scenes), had
+been preceded in America by a family of French pantomimists known as the
+Ravels; and they were followed by the family known as the Hanlon-Lees,
+who had originally been acrobats, and who appeared in a French play, in
+which the other characters spoke while the Hanlon-Lees expressed
+themselves only in gesture. Here again Scribe had been before them, with
+his libretto for the opera of 'Masaniello,' in which there is a
+principal part for a pantomimic actress, Fenella. And when the great
+French actor, Frédéric Lemaître, had lost his voice by overstrain,
+Dennery wrote a play for him, the 'Old Corporal,' in which he appeared
+as a soldier of Napoleon's Old Guard, who had been stricken dumb during
+the retreat from Russia.
+
+This exploit of Frédéric Lemaître's is not as extraordinary as it seems.
+A truly accomplished actor ought to be able to forgo the aid of speech.
+Even in our modern plays gesture is more significant than speech. To
+place the finger on the lips is more effective than to say "Hush!" The
+tendency of the modern drama on our amply lighted picture-frame stage is
+to subordinate the mere words to the expressive action. In Mr.
+Gillette's 'Secret Service,' for example, the impression is sometimes
+made rather by gesture than by speech; and a large portion of the most
+effective scene, that where the hero is wounded while he is sending a
+telegraph message, is presented in pantomime with little assistance from
+actual dialog. Similar effects are to be found in many of Mr. Belasco's
+plays, especially in the 'Darling of the Gods.' In all good acting the
+gesture precedes the word; and often the gesture makes the word itself
+unnecessary, because it has succeeded in conveying the impression and in
+making the full effect by itself, so that the spoken phrase lags
+superfluous.
+
+                                  III
+
+In France in the final decades of the nineteenth century there was a
+wide-spread revival of interest in pantomime, where the art had been
+dormant since the days of Deburau. A society was formed for its
+encouragement, and a host of little wordless plays was the result. The
+most ambitious effort was the 'Enfant Prodigue,' a genuine comedy in
+three acts, by M. Michel Carré, with music by M. Alfred Wormser. This
+wordless play on the perennially attractive theme of the Prodigal Son
+proved to be the modern masterpiece of pantomime. It was limpidly clear
+in its story; it was ingeniously put together in its plot; it combined
+humor and pathos; and it was devoid of the acrobatic features and of the
+slap-stick fun which have generally been considered the inevitable
+accessories of pantomime. We had brought before us the dull and prim
+home life of old Pierrot and of his wife, and we were made to behold the
+impatience of young Pierrot with this prim dullness. We saw the
+Prodigal rob his father and go forth in search of pleasure. In the
+second act we were witnesses of the sad results of the pleasure young
+Pierrot had sought superabundantly, and we discovered that he had spent
+his money and that he was capable of descending to marked cards to win
+more gold to satisfy the caprices of the woman who had fascinated him.
+We saw his return with his ill-gotten gains after his charmer had been
+tempted to go off with a wealthier man. And in the third act we were
+taken back to the home of his broken-hearted parents; and we witnessed
+the Prodigal's return, poverty-stricken, disenchanted, and reformed. His
+mother takes him to her arms; but his father is obdurate. Then we hear
+the fife and drum afar off, and young Pierrot, if he has lived
+unworthily for himself, can at least die worthily for his country. So
+the old father relents and bestows his blessing on the erring son as the
+boy goes forth to war.
+
+The art of the 'Enfant Prodigue' was at once delicate and firm; and its
+popularity was not confined to France. Here was a true play, moving to
+tears as well as to laughter, holding the interest by a human story of
+universal appeal. It was taken across the Channel from Paris to London,
+and from London it was taken across the ocean to New York. Augustin
+Daly, always on the alert for novelty, brought it out at his own
+theater, first with his own company, and then a little later with a
+French company. Excellent as was the performance of the French company,
+two characters were as well sustained by the American company. Charles
+Leclercq appeared as old Pierrot, and he had had in his youth experience
+in pantomime in England. Mrs. G. H. Gilbert appeared as Mrs. Pierrot,
+and in her youth she had been a ballet dancer, and had taken part in
+pantomimes. To these two performers the principles of the art of gesture
+were perfectly familiar; and it was a constant delight to follow the
+dexterity and the adequacy of their gestures. But Miss Rehan, who
+appeared as the Prodigal Son, had had no pantomimic experience, and she
+was not able to acquire the art offhand. In dozens of dramas she had
+revealed herself as an actress, not only of great personal charm, but
+also of great histrionic skill. Merely as an actress she was
+incomparably superior to the impersonator of the Prodigal Son in the
+French company; but merely as a pantomimist she was inferior. More than
+once she appeared as if she wanted to speak, failing because she was
+deprived of voice. Her gestures seemed like afterthoughts; they lacked
+spontaneity and inevitability. She suggested at moments that she was a
+poor dumb boy gasping for words.
+
+Now, the convention underlying pantomime is that we are beholding a
+story carried on by a race of beings whose natural method of
+communicating information and ideas is gesture--just as the convention
+of opera is that we are beholding a story carried on by a race of beings
+whose natural method of communicating information and ideas is song. No
+such races of beings ever existed; but we must admit the existence of
+such races as a condition precedent to our enjoyment of pantomime and of
+opera. The spectators must accept the art as it is, and the performers
+must refrain from any suggestion that they would speak if they could.
+This underlying convention was viciously violated in "Professor"
+Reinhardt's overpraised 'Sumurun,' when the Hunchback gives a shriek of
+horror as he sees the woman he loves in the arms of another man. It is
+viciously violated again in the same play when Sumurun and two
+attendants are heard singing. If Sumurun can sing, why can she not
+speak? If the Hunchback can shriek and sob audibly, why is he ordinarily
+reduced to mere gesture?
+
+'Sumurun' was provided with a plot devised by Herr Freksa, and with
+music composed by Herr Hollaender; and it was produced by "Professor"
+Max Reinhardt. The story was a little complicated, and it lacked the
+transparent simplicity of the 'Enfant Prodigue,' as it lacked also the
+broad humanity of the French piece. Its chief claim to attention was
+that it is an amusing spectacle, sensual as well as sensuous. Its humor
+had a Teutonic heaviness in marked contrast with the Gallic lightness of
+the 'Enfant Prodigue.' "Professor" Reinhardt sought eccentricity rather
+than originality, queerness rather than beauty. His effort was directed
+to the achieving of something unexpected and something different rather
+than to the attaining of something good in itself, or of something
+poetic. Esthetically, musically, dramatically the German pantomime was
+pitiably inferior to the French; and yet so potent and so permanent is
+the appeal of the wordless play that 'Sumurun' pleased a host of younger
+playgoers, not old enough to be able to recall the 'Enfant Prodigue' or
+'Humpty-Dumpty,' the Hanlon-Lees, or the Ravels.
+
+                                   IV
+
+'Sumurun,' like the 'Enfant Prodigue,' was supported by its music, which
+sustained the gestures and which sometimes suggested more than gesture
+alone can do. In the 'Enfant Prodigue,' for example, one of the most
+amusing scenes is that in which the elderly rich man tenders his
+affections to the charmer who has fascinated the Prodigal Son. She
+insists upon marriage. It would be difficult to convey this idea in pure
+pantomime. So she points to the fourth finger of the left hand, and the
+orchestra plays the familiar Wedding March, thus instantly conveying the
+idea. When she goes off to get her bonnet, the elderly suitor repeats
+her gesture, and the orchestra repeats the Wedding March, whereupon he
+winks and shakes his head, giving us clearly to understand that his
+intentions are strictly dishonorable.
+
+'Sumurun' is rather a spectacle than a play; and therefore it makes
+comparatively little use of the conventionalized gestures which may be
+described as the accepted vocabulary of pantomime, and which have been
+developed by the followers of Noverre in France and in Italy. This
+vocabulary of gesture is only a codification of the signs which we
+naturally make--shaking the head for "no," nodding for "yes," and laying
+a finger on the lips for "hush!" The basis of any such vocabulary must
+be the series of gestures by the aid of which man has always expressed
+his emotions. This is why the traditional gestures of theatrical
+pantomime do not, and indeed cannot, differ greatly from any natural
+sign language. The universality of this pantomimic vocabulary was
+curiously evidenced forty years ago when Morlacchi, the Italian dancer,
+married Texas Jack, the American scout. She had been trained in
+pantomime at La Scala, in Milan, and he had acquired the sign language
+of the Plains Indians. And they found that they could hold converse with
+each other in pantomime, she using the Italian-French gestures and he
+employing the gestures of the redskins.
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                  XII
+
+                        THE IDEAL OF THE ACROBAT
+
+                        THE IDEAL OF THE ACROBAT
+
+                                   I
+
+When Huckleberry Finn went to the circus he sneaked in under the tent
+when the watchman was absent. He had money in his pocket, but he feared
+that he might need this. "I ain't opposed to spending money on
+circuses," he confessed, "when there ain't no other way, but there ain't
+no use in _wasting_ it on them." In spite of the fact that he had not
+paid for his seat, and that he was thereby released from the necessity
+of getting his money's worth, he declared cheerfully that "it was a real
+bully circus. It was the splendidest sight that ever was, when they all
+come riding in, two and two, a gentleman and a lady, side by side, the
+men just in their drawers and undershirts, and no shoes nor stirrups,
+and resting their hands on their thighs, easy and comfortable ... and
+every lady with a lovely complexion, and perfectly beautiful, and
+looking like a gang of real sure-enough queens.... And then, one by one,
+they got up and stood, and went a-weaving around the ring so gentle and
+wavy and graceful, the men looking ever so tall and airy and straight,
+with their heads bobbing and skimming along, away up there under the
+tent roof, and every lady's rose-leaf dress flapping soft and silky
+around her hips, and she looking like the most loveliest parasol."
+
+However much Huck was impressed by the Grand Entry, he seems to have
+been more pleased by the surprising act, traditionally known as 'Pete
+Jenkins,' and never better described than by Mark Twain's youthful hero.
+"And by and by a drunk man tried to get into the ring--said he wanted to
+ride; said he could ride as well as anybody that ever was. They argued
+and tried to keep him out, but he wouldn't listen, and the whole show
+came to a standstill. Then the people began to holler at him and make
+fun of him.... So then the ring-master he made a little speech, and said
+he hoped there wouldn't be no disturbance, and if the man would promise
+he wouldn't make no more trouble, he would let him ride, if he thought
+he could stay on the horse.... The minute he was on the horse he began
+to rip and tear and jump and cavort around ... the drunk man hanging
+onto his neck, and his heels flying in the air every jump.... But pretty
+soon he struggled up astraddle and grabbed the bridle, a-reeling this
+way and that; and the next minute he sprung up and stood! and the horse
+a-going like a house afire, too. He just stood there, a-sailing around
+as easy and as comfortable as if he warn't ever drunk in his life--and
+then he begun to pull off his clothes and sling them. He shed them so
+thick they kind of clogged up the air, and altogether he shed seventeen
+suits. And then, here he was, slim and handsome, and dressed the
+grandiest and prettiest you ever saw, and he lit into that horse and
+made him hum--and finally skipped off and made his bow and danced off
+to the dressing-room, and everybody just a-howling with pleasure and
+astonishment. Then the ring-master, he see how he had been fooled, and
+he was the sickest ring-master you ever see, I reckon. Why, it was one
+of his own men! He had got up that joke all out of his own head, and
+never let on to nobody!"
+
+Yet in this enjoyment of a practical joke, dear to every boy's heart,
+Huck did not fail to note that the skilful rider who had pretended to be
+intoxicated, stood up at last, "slim and handsome." Even Huck Finn,
+neglected son of the town-drunkard, was quick to respond to the appeal
+of the supple and well-proportioned figure of the rider after the
+superimposed clothing had been discarded, just as he had felt the
+attraction of the varied colors and the graceful evolutions of the Grand
+Entry. At bottom, it was the beauty of the display that he appreciated
+most keenly. By the side of this passage from Mark Twain's masterpiece
+may be set a passage from Mr. Hamlin Garland's best story, 'Rose of
+Dutcher's Coolly,' in which we find recorded the impressions of a girl
+of about the same age, the daughter of a hard-working Wisconsin farmer.
+Rose had never seen a circus before, and even the morning street parade
+fired her imagination.
+
+"On they came, a band leading the way. Just behind, with glitter of
+lance and shine of helmet, came a dozen knights and fair ladies riding
+spirited chargers. They all looked strange and haughty, and sneeringly
+indifferent to the cheers of the people. The women seemed small and
+firm and scornful, and the men rode with lances uplifted, looking down
+at the crowd with a haughty droop in their eyelids." Rose "did not laugh
+at the clown jigging by in a pony-cart, for there was a face between her
+and all that followed--the face of a bare-armed knight, with brown hair
+and a curling mustache, whose proud neck had a curve in it as he bent
+his head to speak to his rearing horse.... His face was fine, like
+pictures she had seen."
+
+In the afternoon Rose attended the performance in the tent and "sat in a
+dream of delight as the band began to play.... Then the music struck
+into a splendid gallop and out from the curtained mysteries beyond, the
+knights and ladies darted, two by two, in glory of crimson and gold, and
+green and silver. At their head rode the man with the brown mustache." A
+little later "six men dressed in tights of blue and white and orange ran
+into the ring, and her hero led them. He wore blue and silver, and on
+his breast was a rosette. He looked a god to her. His naked limbs, his
+proud neck, the lofty carriage of his head, made her shiver with
+emotion. They all came to her, lit by the white radiance; they were not
+naked, they were beautiful.... They invested their nakedness with
+something which exalted them. They became objects of luminous beauty to
+her, tho she knew nothing of art. To see him bow and kiss his fingers to
+the audience was a revelation of manly grace and courtesy." When at last
+the show was over and Rose went out into the open air, "it seemed
+strange to see the same blue sky arching the earth; things seemed
+exactly the same, and yet Rose had grown older. She had developed
+immeasurably in those few hours." As they looked back at the tents, Rose
+knew that "something sweet and splendid and mystical was passing out of
+her life after a few hours' stay there. Her feeling of loss was none the
+less real because it was indefinable to her."
+
+She never saw this acrobat again, and after a little while she knew that
+she did not want to see him. He lingered in her memory, a vision from
+another world than any she had ever dreamed--a world of heroic romance
+and of lofty idealism. "She began to live for him, her ideal. She set
+him on high as a being to be worshiped, as a man fit to be her judge. In
+the days and weeks which followed she asked herself: 'Would he like me
+to do this?' When the sunset was very beautiful, she thought of him....
+Vast ambitions began in her.... She would do something great for his
+sake.... In short, she consecrated herself to him as to a king, and
+seized upon every chance to educate herself to be worthy of him." And
+while her soul was thus expanding under the influence of this poetic
+idealization of a manly figure revealed to her only for two or three
+hours, all unconsciously she patterned her movements upon his. She
+walked with a free stride, and her body came to have the easy carriage
+of the athlete. Later, when Rose had matured into a beauty of her own,
+she confessed to an elder woman this sentimental awakening in her early
+girlhood; and it became evident to her friend that "the beautiful poise
+of the head, and supple swing of the girl's body was in part due to the
+suggestion of the man's perfect grace."
+
+                                   II
+
+To the realistic imagination of the boy, Huck, the circus was a fleeting
+spectacle of beauty; and to the romantic imagination of the girl, Rose,
+it lingered long as a dream of poetry. Young Americans, both of them,
+living in these modern days when the human form, male and female, is
+decorously dissembled and disguised by ugly and complicated garments,
+they had been allowed by the exceptional freedom of the circus to
+recapture something of the frank and innocent delight of the Greeks in
+the beauty of the body, in its beauty merely as a body, and not as the
+habitation of the mind and the soul. Alert as the Greeks were to admire
+the deeds of the mind--no race ever more so--they were no less keen in
+their appreciation of the things of the body. They were glad to crown
+the poet for his lyric conquest, but they bestowed the laurel wreath
+also on the athlete who had won to the front in the race. The lofty
+nobility of their tragedy testifies to the clarity of their
+intelligence; and the supreme power of their sculpture is evidence of
+their loving study of the human body, bearing itself in beauty, clad in
+few and flowing garments which allowed the eye to follow the free play
+of the muscles.
+
+It is only in the circus or the gymnasium or the swimming-pool that we
+moderns are permitted to behold what was a daily spectacle to the
+Greeks; and it is because the circus preserves for us this occasional
+privilege that it deserves to survive. The jocularities of the clowns,
+the intricate evolutions of the trained animals, the golden glitter of
+the gorgeous cavalcades--all these are but the casual accompaniments of
+the essential privilege of the circus to present to us a succession of
+men and women, with their bodies in perfect condition, to exhibit to us
+that purely physical beauty which we are ever in danger of overlooking
+or even forgetting. These acrobats, slim and handsome, as Huck Finn
+found them, in their "shirts and drawers," may display their daring and
+their grace, standing on a circling steed or swinging from a flying
+trapeze, revolving on a horizontal bar or building themselves up into
+human pyramids on the bark of the arena; but, except for the sake of
+variety, the way in which they may choose to exhibit their skill and to
+show themselves is unimportant. What is important is that we may have
+the shifting spectacle of the human body in the highest condition of
+physical efficiency, delighting our eyes by obedience to the everlasting
+laws of beauty.
+
+While the Greeks had far more opportunities than are vouchsafed to us
+moderns to behold the human body exhibiting its strength and its skill
+in graceful play, we have the advantage that many of the most effective
+exercises are latter-day inventions. It seems unlikely that the
+Athenians and the Spartans, even tho they were horsemen, had attained to
+the art of bareback riding; they may have bestraddled a saddleless
+steed, but they had not learned how to stand on his back, and to turn
+somersets in time with the stride of the horse. It is, of course,
+possible that they were familiar with this, but no sculpture and no
+vase-painting, no anecdote in the works of the prose-writers, and no
+line of the lyrists survives to authorize us to believe it. And it is
+fairly certain, also, that they lacked the horizontal bar, which affords
+limitless possibilities to the adventurous acrobat of our own times,
+both when it is erected singly and when it is combined in sets of three,
+either fixed in the arena or raised aloft in the air to produce the
+appearance of a remoter ethereality.
+
+The trapeze has a name of Greek origin, and it was possibly known to the
+Greeks. But the Greeks did not foresee the full possibilities of the
+trapeze, since its most startling utilization, the feat known as the
+Flying Trapeze, was invented by the French acrobat, Léotard, only a
+little later than the middle of the nineteenth century. The Flying
+Trapeze is the ultimate achievement of acrobatic art, and it demands the
+utmost combination of skilful strength and of easy grace. It was a feat
+that the Greeks would have appreciated and enjoyed, since it demanded
+and disclosed the perfection of physical courage and of physical skill.
+Of late, the Flying Trapeze has been complicated and doubled in
+difficulty by the introduction of a second performer, who at first makes
+the leap simultaneously with his partner, and afterward separates from
+him and springs thru the air to the trapeze which his associate has
+just abandoned, the pair thus floating past each other in mid-air. In
+this more elaborated form the task is more perilous, no doubt, and far
+less easy of accomplishment; but it cannot be achieved with quite the
+same graceful mastery as when a single performer seems to glide
+ethereally from bar to bar, as tho it was impossible for him to fall or
+to fail to catch his almost invisible support. This graceful mastery was
+the most marked characteristic of Léotard, the original inventor of the
+Flying Trapeze; and it may be doubted whether any of those who have
+followed the path he traced thru the air, and who have vanquished
+difficulties beyond those which he conquered, have been able to outdo
+him in the abiding essential of grace.
+
+                                  III
+
+The overcoming of difficulty is one of the elements of the pleasure
+which we take in any art, and part of our enjoyment of a sonnet, for
+example, must be ascribed to the apparent ease with which the poet is
+able to express his thought, amply and completely, within the rigid
+limitations of his fourteen lines, with their prescribed arrangement of
+five or six rimes. But our delight is diminished if we are made
+conscious of the effort it has cost the artist to attain his aim. Many a
+later performer on the Flying Trapeze let us see that the feats he is
+attempting are so difficult that they cannot be accomplished without
+obvious effort. That is to say, we are made aware that the acrobat is
+exhibiting a "stunt," and this is bad art. Difficulty overcome is worth
+while only when it is overcome seemingly without any strain, and when
+art is sufficient to conceal itself. However difficult the artist's
+achievement may be, its charm is doubled if he can make it appear to be
+easy.
+
+It happens that I am able to bring his personal testimony to the fact
+that this was the principle which always governed Léotard himself. When
+the French gymnast paid his only visit to the United States, more than
+forty years ago, he used to practise in a gymnasium which I also
+frequented. He spoke no English, and I had a little school-boy French,
+so that a certain intimacy sprang up. One day Léotard asked me to swing
+a trapeze for him, and he sprang off and caught it with a single hand,
+and then as the second trapeze returned he twisted and grasped the first
+trapeze again with one hand. This evoked from me an immediate
+exclamation of astonishment and admiration at the startling conquest of
+difficulty, and it was followed by the natural question why so
+extraordinary a feat had never been exhibited in public. Léotard
+explained that the leaps from trapeze to trapeze with the aid of one
+hand only must be lopsided, since the body is inevitably more or less
+twisted, and he added that as there was an unavoidable and ungraceful
+wrenching of the person, he had determined never to exhibit this feat in
+public, difficult as it might be.
+
+But altho Léotard was not willing to perform in public with only one
+hand, it was a most invaluable exercise in private. His ability to
+accomplish his leaps thus handicapped gave him a redoubled confidence
+when he was using both of his hands. That he was right in resisting the
+temptation to startle the spectators by a "stunt" of surprising
+difficulty is beyond question. It could not be made to seem easy, and it
+could not be accomplished with grace. Therefore it was not fit for
+exhibition, even tho Léotard might feel sure that he could do it without
+risk of failure. Here the French acrobat revealed himself as bound by
+the eternal principles which underlie all the arts, that of the acrobat
+no less than those of the painter and the poet. There is lack of art in
+the performances of many acrobats of remarkable skill, who attempt feats
+which they are not always certain of achieving. Indeed, they are
+sometimes willing to profit by this very uncertainty. They fail the
+first time of trying, and even the second, and these failures serve the
+purpose of advertising to the spectators the difficulty of the task they
+have undertaken. Then the third time, or the fourth, they succeed,
+whereupon they reap the unworthy reward of applause from the unthinking.
+
+The artist should never let us see his failures. If he is not certain
+that he can perform what he promises, then he had better refrain from
+the attempt. It was in the same winter that Léotard was in New York, in
+the late sixties of the nineteenth century, that the Hanlon Brothers
+paid one of their welcome visits to America. The Hanlons they were then,
+and they were acrobats pure and simple, altho later, when they called
+themselves the Hanlon-Lees, they had become pantomimists. As acrobats
+they held fast to the same principles which governed Léotard in his
+performances. They insisted upon certainty of execution; they never
+failed to perform the feat they set out to accomplish, and to perform it
+successfully the first time they attempted it. And no matter how
+difficult the feat might be, or how novel or how effective, if they
+could not attain absolute certainty of execution, they refrained from
+setting it before the public. I was told at the time that there were two
+or three surprising and alluring exercises which the Hanlons had
+invented themselves, which they practised laboriously and faithfully all
+that winter, and which they wisely refrained from ever putting on their
+program because they were never able to assure themselves of a uniformly
+successful result. They could do any one of these feats four times out
+of five, but the fifth time there would be a miscalculation of energy,
+and the attempt would have to be repeated. And they were unwilling to
+let the public witness any performance of theirs which was not perfect
+in its execution.
+
+                                   IV
+
+Here again the modern acrobat, who is guided by a real feeling for his
+art, is in accord with the principles which the Greeks obeyed. In Attic
+tragedy, for example, there are no exhibitions of violence, no scuffles,
+and no assassinations, and this is not so much because the Greeks
+shrank from scenes of blood, as some critics have vainly contended, but
+rather because the actors in the Attic drama were raised on thick boots
+and were topped by towering masks, which made it almost impossible for
+them to take part in episodes of vigorous action, in hand-to-hand
+struggles, in murders before the eyes of the spectators, without danger
+of displacing the mask, and thereby distracting the attention of the
+audience from the immediate purpose of the dramatic poet. What could not
+be done gracefully the Greeks refrained from attempting. The exhibition
+of difficulty for the sake of difficulty, still more the failure to
+accomplish a "stunt" for the sake of calling attention to its
+difficulty--these things the Greeks abhorred. They would as surely have
+disapproved of the misguided artifices of the acrobats who make a
+practise of failing once or twice in order to multiply the immediate
+effect of their ultimate success as they would reprove the exhibition of
+a difficulty conquered for its own sake. It is only in the best
+acrobatic performances that we moderns are privileged to perceive what
+was a constant delight to the Greeks--the beauty of the human form, in
+its finest physical perfection, certain of its strength and easy in its
+grace.
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                  XIII
+
+                        THE DECLINE AND FALL OF
+                            NEGRO-MINSTRELSY
+
+                THE DECLINE AND FALL OF NEGRO-MINSTRELSY
+
+                                   I
+
+Of all the varied and manifold kinds of theatrical entertainment
+negro-minstrelsy is the only one which is absolutely native to these
+States, and the only one which could not have come into existence
+anywhere else in the civilized world. Here in America alone has the
+transplanted African been brought into intimate contact with the
+transplanted European. Other nations may have disputed our claim to the
+invention of the steamboat and the telegraph, but negro-minstrelsy is as
+indisputably due to American inventiveness as the telephone itself. Here
+in the United States it had its humble beginnings; here it expanded and
+flourished for many years; from here it was exported to Great Britain,
+where it established itself for many seasons; from here it has made
+sporadic excursions into France and into Germany; and here at last it
+has fallen into a decline and a degeneracy and a decay which seem to
+doom it to a speedy extinction. Its life was little longer than that
+vouchsafed to man, threescore years and ten, for it was born in the
+fifth decade of the nineteenth century, and in the second decade of the
+twentieth it lingers superfluous on the stage, with none to do it
+reverence.
+
+Time was when the negro minstrels held possession of three or four
+theaters in the single city of New York, and when a dozen or more troops
+were traveling from town to town; and now they have long ago surrendered
+their last hall in the metropolis, and only a solitary company winds its
+lonely way from theater to theater thruout the United States. The few
+surviving practitioners of the art are reduced to the presentation of
+brief interludes in the all-devouring variety-shows, or to the
+impersonation of sparse negro characters in occasional comedies. The
+Skidmore Guards, who paraded so gaily at Harrigan and Hart's, are
+disbanded now these many years; Johnny Wild of joyous memory is no more,
+and Sweatnam, bereft of his fellows in sable drollery, is seen only in a
+chance comedy like 'Excuse Me,' or the 'County Chairman.' George Christy
+and Dan Emmett and Dan Bryant have gone and left only fading memories of
+their breezy songs, their nimble dances, and their flippant quips. Edwin
+Forrest and Edwin Booth blacked up more than once, Joseph Jefferson and
+Barney Williams besmeared themselves with burnt cork on occasion; but it
+is not by these darker episodes in their artistic careers that they are
+now recalled, and the leading actors of to-day think scorn of
+negro-minstrelsy--whenever they deign to give it a thought. And yet it
+must be noted frankly that when The Lambs wanted to raise money for
+their new club-house, they did not disdain the art of the negro
+minstrel, and more than twoscore of them went forth to conquer,
+willingly disguised in the uniform blackness assumed long ago by George
+Christy and Dan Bryant.
+
+It is to be hoped that some devoted historian will come forward before
+it is too late and tell us the history of this very special form of
+theatrical art, the only one indigenous to our soil. Indeed, now that
+our American universities are paying attention to the drama, what more
+alluring theme for the dissertation demanded of all candidates for the
+doctorate of philosophy than an inquiry into the rise and fall of
+negro-minstrelsy? In the late Laurence Hutton's conscientious and
+entertaining volume on the 'Curiosities of the American Stage,' there is
+a chapter in which the subject is treated historically, altho the
+chronicler wasted much of his precious space in considering the
+succession of sable characters in the regular drama--Shakspere's
+Othello, Southerne's Oroonoko, Bickerstaff's Mungo, Boucicault's Pete
+(in the 'Octoroon'), Uncle Tom, Topsy, Eliza, and their companions (in
+the undying dramatization of Mrs. Stowe's story). These were all parts
+in plays wherein white characters were prominent. The first performer of
+a song-and-dance, that is of a sketch in which the darky performer was
+sufficient unto himself, and was deprived of any support from persons of
+another complexion, seems to have been "Jim Crow" Rice--the title of
+whose lively lyric survives in the name bestowed upon the cars reserved
+for colored folk on certain Southern railroads. Rice found his pattern
+in an old negro who did a peculiar step after he had sung to a tune of
+his own contriving:
+
+    Wheel about, turn about;
+        Do jus' so:
+    An' ebery time I turn about,
+        I jump Jim Crow.
+
+Rice carried Jim Crow to England, and he made a specialty of dandy
+darkies. But he was not the discoverer of negro-minstrelsy, as we know
+it, altho he blazed the trail for it. Indeed, it was quite probably due
+to the influence of Rice and his darky dandies that the negro minstrels
+confined their efforts to the imitation of the town negro rather than of
+the plantation negro, the field-hand of the Uncle Remus type. Rice first
+impersonated Jim Crow in the late twenties, and it was in the middle of
+the thirties that he went to England. And it was in the early forties
+that Dan Emmett, Frank Brower, Billy Whitlock, and Dick Pelham happened
+to meet by accident in a New York boarding-house, and amused themselves
+with songs accompanied by the banjo, the tambourine, and the bones.
+Pleased by the result of their exercises, they appeared together at a
+benefit, and negro-minstrelsy was born. At first there was no
+differentiation into Interlocutors and End-men; they all took an equal
+share in the more or less improvised dialog; they sang, and they played,
+and they danced the 'Essence of Old Virginny.'
+
+Probably Emmett began early to provide new tunes for them. He was the
+composer of 'Old Dan Tucker' and the 'Boatman's Dance,' of 'Walk Along,
+John,' and 'Early in the Morning,' and one walk-around which he devised
+in the late fifties for Bryant's Minstrels, 'Dixie,' was introduced by
+Mrs. John Wood into a burlesque, which she was playing in New Orleans,
+just before the outbreak of the Civil War. The sentiment and the tune
+took the fancy of the ardent Louisianans, and they carried it with them
+into the Confederate army, where it soon established itself as the
+war-song of the South. And then when Richmond had fallen at last,
+Lincoln ordered the bands of the victorious army to play 'Dixie,' with
+the wise explanation that as we had captured the Southern capital, we
+had also captured the Southern song. And 'Dixie,' which had begun life
+so humbly as a walk-around in a minstrel-show in New York, bids fair to
+survive indefinitely as the musical testimony to the fact that the cruel
+war is over, and that these States are now one nation.
+
+                                   II
+
+It was only a year or two after the quartet of Emmett, Brower, Whitlock,
+and Pelham had shown the possibilities of the new form of amusement that
+troops of negro minstrels began to supply an entire evening's amusement.
+The regulation First Part was devised with its curving row of vocalists,
+instrumentalists, and comedians. The dignified Interlocutor took his
+place in the middle of the semicircle, and uttered the time-honored
+phrase: "Gentlemen, be seated. We will commence with the overture."
+Bones captured the chair at one end, and Tambo pre-empted that on the
+other; and they began their wordy skirmish with the Middleman, in which
+that pompous presiding officer always got the worst of it. This device
+for immediate and boisterous laughter, this putting down of the
+Middleman by the End-man, the negro minstrels appear to have borrowed
+from the circus, where the clown is also permitted always to discomfit
+the stiff and stately ring-master.
+
+But altho the minstrels may have taken over this effective trick from
+the circus, with which some of the earlier performers had had intimate
+relations, the trick itself is of remote antiquity. The side-splitting
+colloquy of the End-man with the Middleman may be exactly like the
+interchange of merry jests between the clown and the ring-master, yet it
+is far older than the modern circus. It existed in Paris, for example,
+in the sixteenth century, when the quack doctor was accompanied by his
+jack-pudding. Many of the dialogs heard on the Pont-Neuf between Mondor
+and Tabarin have been preserved, and the method is precisely that of the
+dialogs between ring-master and clown, Interlocutor and End-man, even to
+the persistent repetition of the question which contains the catch.
+"Master," Tabarin would begin, "can you tell me which is the more
+generous, a man or a woman?" And the quack doctor would solemnly reply:
+"Ah, Tabarin, that is a question which has been greatly debated by the
+philosophers of antiquity, and they have been unable to decide which is
+truly the more generous, a man or a woman." Then Tabarin would briskly
+retort: "Never mind the old philosophers. I can tell you." And with
+great contempt the ponderous quack doctor would return: "What, Tabarin,
+do you mean to say that you can tell us which is the more generous, a
+man or a woman." Tabarin promptly responded that he could. "Then," asked
+Mondor, "pray do so. Which is the more generous, a man or a woman?" And
+thereupon, to the great disgust of Mondor, Tabarin would proffer his
+ribald explanation. Unfortunately the explanation he gave is frankly too
+ribald to be given here, for nowadays we are more squeamish than the
+idlers who gathered around the quack doctor's platform in Paris three or
+four centuries ago. The dialogs of Mondor and Tabarin were brief enough,
+but they often made up for their brevity in their breadth.
+
+This kind of catch-question was known in England, under Elizabeth, as
+"selling a bargain," and it is not infrequent in the plays of the time.
+It will be found more than once in earlier plays of Shakspere; for
+example, when his "clowns" (as the low-comedy characters were then
+called) were allowed to run on at their own sweet will. Not a little of
+the dialog of the two Dromios is closely akin in its method to the
+interchange of question and answer between the Interlocutor and the
+End-man. We may be sure this method of evoking laughter was employed
+also by the improvising comedians of the Italian comedy-of-masks, with
+which negro-minstrelsy has other points of resemblance. It must have
+been popular with the wandering glee-men of the rude Middle Ages; and
+now that negro-minstrelsy is disappearing and now that our circuses
+have burgeoned into three rings under a tent too vast for any merely
+verbal repartees, it has not departed from among us, since it still
+survives as the staple of the so-called "sidewalk conversationalists"
+who swap personalities in our superabundant variety-shows.
+
+We do not know with historic certainty how soon the First Part
+crystallized into the form which has long been traditional--the opening
+overture, the catch-questioning of End-man and Middleman, the comic
+songs of Bones and Tambo in turn, the sentimental ballads by the
+silver-throated vocalists, and the concluding walk-around. The rest of
+the evening's entertainment never took on any definite framework, altho
+the final item on the program was likely to be a piece of some length,
+often a burlesque of a serious drama then popular, and this little play
+"enlisted the whole strength of the company." Between the stately First
+Part and the more pretentious terminating sketch, the minstrels
+presented a variety of acts in which the several members exhibited their
+specialities. A clog-dance was always in order--altho the mechanical
+precision of this form of saltatorial exercise was wholly foreign to the
+characteristics of the actual negroes whom the minstrels were supposed
+to be representing. A stump-speech was certain of a warm
+reception--altho this again departed from the true negro tradition, and,
+in fact, often degenerated into frank burlesque, wholly unrelated to the
+realities of life. Sketches, like those which Rice had earlier composed
+for his own acting, were likely to have a little closer relation to the
+genuine darky.
+
+Yet here again the negro minstrel was not avid of overt originality. He
+was willing to find his profit in the past and to translate into negro
+dialect any farce, however ancient, which might contain comic situations
+or humorous characters that could be twisted to suit his immediate
+purpose. He seized upon the ingenious plots of certain of the pantomimes
+brought to America from France half a century ago by the Ravels. And on
+occasion he went, unwittingly, still further afield for his prey. There
+is in print, in a collection of so-called Ethiopian drama, an amusing
+sketch, entitled the 'Great Mutton Trial'; and the remote source of this
+is to be sought in the oldest and best farce which has survived in
+French literature. 'Maître Pierre Pathelin' is now acted occasionally by
+the Comédie-Française in Paris, in a version which preserves its
+original flavor; but in the eighteenth century an adaptation, made by
+Brueys and Palaprat, and called the 'Avocat Pathelin,' was popular. It
+was this later perversion which served as the basis of an English farce,
+entitled the 'Village Lawyer,' and the 'Great Mutton Trial' is simply
+the 'Village Lawyer' transmogrified to suit the bolder and more robust
+methods of the negro minstrels.
+
+                                  III
+
+And here we may discover the real reason why negro-minstrelsy failed to
+establish itself. It neglected its opportunity to devote itself
+primarily to its own peculiar field--the humorous reproduction of the
+sayings and doings of the colored man in the United States. To represent
+the negro in his comic aspects and in his sentimental moods was what the
+minstrels pretended to do; but the pretense was often only a hollow
+mockery. Even the musical instruments they affected, the banjo and the
+bones, were not as characteristic of the field-hand, or even of the town
+darky, as the violin. Indeed, the bones cannot be considered as in any
+way special to the negro; they were familiar to Shakspere's Bottom, who
+declared: "I have a reasonable good ear in music; let us have the tongs
+and the bones." And the wise recorder of the words and deeds of Uncle
+Remus asserted that he had never listened to the staccato picking of a
+banjo in the negro-quarters of any plantation.
+
+"I have seen the negro at work," so Harris once stated, "and I have seen
+him at play; I have attended his corn-shuckings, his dances, and his
+frolics; I have heard him give the wonderful melody of his songs to the
+winds; I have heard him give barbaric airs to the quills" (that is to
+say, to the Pan-pipes); "I have heard him scrape jubilantly on the
+fiddle; I have seen him blow wildly on the bugle, and beat
+enthusiastically on the triangle; but I have never heard him play on
+the banjo." Mr. George W. Cable thereupon came forward with his
+evidence to the effect that, altho the banjo was to be found
+occasionally on a plantation, it was far less frequently seen than the
+violin. It will be noted that Harris was speaking of the Georgian negro,
+and that Mr. Cable was talking about the negro in Louisiana; and perhaps
+the true habitat of the banjo is to be found farther north and near to
+the border States. At any rate, there is a footnote to one of Thomas
+Jefferson's 'Notes on Virginia' (published in 1784), which informs us
+that the instrument proper to the slaves of the Old Dominion is "the
+banjar, which they brought hither from Africa, and which is the origin
+of the guitar, its chords being precisely the four lower chords of the
+guitar."
+
+Now and again some one negro minstrel did make a serious study of a
+negro type; such a performer was J. W. McAndrews, the "Watermelon Man."
+But the most of them were content to be comic without any effort to
+catch the special comicality of the darky; and sometimes they strayed so
+completely from the path as to indulge in songs in an alleged Irish
+brogue or in a dislocated German dialect. Now, nothing could well be
+conceived more incongruously inartistic than a white man blacked up into
+the semblance of a negro, and then impertinently caroling an impudent
+Irish lyric. Yet the general neglect of the opportunities for a more
+accurate presentation of negro characteristics is to be seen in the
+strange fact that the minstrels failed to perceive the possible
+popularity of rag-time tunes, and failed also to put the cake-walk on
+the stage. Even at the height of its vogue in the mid years of the
+nineteenth century, negro-minstrelsy did not occupy its own field, and
+did not try to raise therein the varied flowers of which they had the
+seed.
+
+Instead of cultivating the tempting possibilities which lay before them,
+and devoting themselves to a loving delineation of the colored people
+who make up a tenth of our population, they turned aside to devote
+themselves to the spectacular elaboration of their original
+entertainment. The clog-dances became most intricate and more
+mechanical--and thereby still more remote from the buck-and-wing dancing
+of the real negro. The First Part was presented with accompaniments of
+Oriental magnificence and of variegated glitter. The chorus was
+enlarged; the musicians were multiplied; the End-men operated in relays;
+and at last the bass-drum which towered aloft over Haverly's Mastodon
+Minstrels bore the boastful legend: "40. Count Them. 40." And when the
+suspicious spectator obeyed this command, he discovered to his surprise
+that the vaunt was more than made good since he had a full view of at
+least half a dozen performers in addition to the promised twoscore.
+
+At the apex of his inflated prosperity Haverly invaded Germany with his
+mastodonic organization; and one result of his visit was probably still
+further to confuse the Teutonic misinformation about the American type,
+which seems often to be a curious composite photograph of the red men of
+Cooper, the black men of Mrs. Stowe, and the white men of Mark Twain
+and Bret Harte. And it was reported at the time that another and more
+immediate result of this rash foray beyond the boundaries of the
+English-speaking race was that Haverly was, for a while, in danger of
+arrest by the police for a fraudulent attempt to deceive the German
+public, because he was pretending to present a company of _negro_
+minstrels, whereas his performers were actually white men!
+
+It should be recorded that while the vogue lasted, there did come into
+existence sundry troops of minstrels whose members were all of them
+actually colored men, altho they conformed to the convention set by
+those whom they were imitating and conscientiously disguised themselves
+with burnt cork, to achieve the sable uniformity temporarily attained by
+the ordinary negro minstrels. Perhaps the most obvious parallel of the
+blacking up of veritable colored men to follow the example of the white
+men who pretended to imitate the negro is to be found in the original
+performance of 'As You Like It,' on the Elizabethan stage, when the
+shaven boy-actor who impersonated Rosalind disguised himself as a lad,
+and then had to pretend to Orlando that he was a girl.
+
+                                   IV
+
+For the decline and fall of negro-minstrelsy it is easy to find more
+than one sufficient explanation. First of all, it may have been due to
+its failure to devote itself lovingly to the representation of the many
+peculiarities of the negro himself. Second, it is possible that
+negro-minstrelsy had an inherent and inevitable disqualification for
+enduring popularity, in that it was exclusively masculine and
+necessarily deprived of the potent attractiveness exerted by the members
+of the more fascinating sex. And in the third place, its program was
+rather limited and monotonous, and therefore negro-minstrelsy could not
+long withstand the competition of the music-hall, of the variety-show,
+and of the comic musical pieces, which satisfied more amply the exactly
+similar taste of the public for broad fun commingled with song and
+dance.
+
+Whatever the precise cause may be, there is no denying that
+negro-minstrelsy is on the verge of extinction, however much we may
+bewail the fact. It failed to accomplish its true purpose, and it is
+disappearing, leaving behind it little that is worthy of preservation
+except a few of its songs. This, at least, it has to its credit--that it
+gave Stephen Collins Foster the chance to produce his simple melodies.
+Perhaps we might even venture to assert that the existence of
+negro-minstrelsy is justified by a single one of these songs--by 'Old
+Folks at Home,' which has a wailing melancholy and an unaffected pathos,
+lacking in the earlier and more saccharine 'Home, Sweet Home,' which
+the English composer, Bishop, based on an old Sicilian tune. After
+Foster came Root and Work, and 'My Old Kentucky Home' was succeeded by
+'Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching,' and by 'Marching thru
+Georgia'--which last lyric now shares its popularity only with 'Dixie'
+as a musical relic of the Civil War.
+
+It would be pleasant to know whether it was one of Foster's songs, and
+which one it may have been that once touched the tender heart of
+Thackeray. "I heard a humorous balladist not long since," the novelist
+recorded, "a minstrel with wool on his head, and an ultra Ethiopian
+complexion, who performed a negro ballad that I confess moistened these
+spectacles in a most unexpected manner. They have gazed at dozens of
+tragedy-queens dying on the stage and expiring in appropriate blank
+verse, and I never wanted to wipe them. They have looked up, with deep
+respect be it said, at many scores of clergymen without being dimmed,
+and behold! a vagabond with a corked face and a banjo, sings a little
+song, strikes a wild note, which sets the heart thrilling with happy
+pity."
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                  XIV
+
+                    THE UTILITY OF THE VARIETY-SHOW
+
+                    THE UTILITY OF THE VARIETY-SHOW
+
+                                   I
+
+In an advertisement issued by one of the huge department stores of New
+York not long ago, the assertion was made that the house had on sale
+"all the new novelties." A purist in language might be moved to protest
+that this proclamation was plainly tautological, because it is the
+essential quality of every novelty to be new. But even a purist in
+language, if he happens also to be an honest observer of things as they
+are, would be forced to admit that his supercilious cavil had only a
+superficial justification, since, as a matter of fact, there are many
+novelties which are not new, and which, indeed, are venerably ancient.
+It was Solomon, superabundantly married, and therefore in an excellent
+position to acquire wisdom, who declared that there is nothing new under
+the sun. Wireless telegraphy is only a development of the signaling by
+beacon-fires, which was practised by the Greeks and which they employed
+to convey immediately to Greece the glad tidings of the fall of Troy;
+and moving-pictures are only an ingenious amplification of the zoëtrope
+of our childhood.
+
+The amusement-parks which sprang up all over the United States in the
+early part of the twentieth century, in imitation of those at Coney
+Island, bear an undeniable resemblance to the Foire Saint Laurent and
+to the other fairs of Paris in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
+and even the loud-voiced crier who proclaims the merits of the several
+side-shows, and who is now known as a "barker," bears a name which is
+only a translation of that given to his forbears two hundred years ago
+in France--_aboyeur_.
+
+The so-called cabaret-shows, prevalent in the larger cities of the
+United States in the winter of 1911-1912, were hailed as the very latest
+form of amusement, combining as they did the solid pleasures of the
+table with the ethereal delights of song-and-dance; and yet Froissart is
+a witness that something very like the cabaret-show was known in the
+Middle Ages, and Gibbon has recorded its existence nearly a thousand
+years earlier, at the court of Theodoric. Indeed, the Romans, and the
+Greeks before them, had employed performers of one sort or another to
+relieve the monotony of their banquets. Gaditanian dancers were popular
+thruout the wide realm of Rome, almost two thousand years before
+Carmencita came from Cadiz to warble and caper at midnight in the
+studios of American painters, just before and just after the guests had
+enjoyed the refreshments provided by their artistic hosts.
+
+As the cabaret-show is only another form of the well-known "vaudeville
+supper," it must be relegated to the class of novelties which are not
+new. And vaudeville itself is only the long familiar variety-show. It
+may now be called by a new name, and many of those who do not look
+behind a label may accept it as a new thing; nevertheless it is very
+old, indeed. The name "vaudeville" is an absurd misnomer, like so many
+other terms due to our habit of careless borrowing from other tongues.
+In French _vaudeville_ originally designated a kind of topical song,
+bristling with pointed gibes at the follies of the moment; and then in
+time it took on another meaning, when it was used to describe a light
+and lively farce interspersed with occasional lyrics set to
+old-fashioned tunes. It is impossible to say just how and why this
+French word, which had two distinct meanings in its own language, should
+have been imported into English to characterize improperly a form of
+amusement which we had long known by the admirably exact name of
+variety-show. The French themselves call their own type of variety-show,
+at which refreshments are served, a _café-concert_. Their nickname for
+it is a _beuglant_, a place where there is "howling"--which seems to
+imply that they do not expect too much melody from the singers, who
+appear at these performances. In England an establishment of this kind
+is called a music-hall; and it was more than half a century ago that
+Planché described their blatant lyrics set to brazen tunes as "most
+music-hall, most melancholy."
+
+Whatever its name may be in the different parts of the world, the
+entertainment is much the same. The most frequent item on the program is
+the comic song, often accompanied by a rudimentary dance. Sometimes it
+is in the martial staccato of Paulus's 'En revenant de la révue' which
+boosted General Boulanger into a furious but fleeting political
+popularity. Sometimes it is the coonful melody of 'Under the Bamboo
+Tree' or 'Dinah, the Moon am Shining.' Sometimes it is an almost
+epileptic lyric, like 'Tarara-boom-de-ay.' Sometimes a singer of a more
+delicate art, like Yvette Guilbert, ventures upon songs of a more subtly
+sentimental appeal. There may be a swift succession of solos, male
+singers and female alternating, those of the most fame appearing latest,
+as is the practise in the first part of the Parisian open-air
+_café-chantant_, the Alcazar or the Ambassadeurs. There may be duets or
+trios or quartets, serious or comic, decorously unadorned or diversified
+by dancing. There may be songs to be interpreted by half a dozen
+performers, accompanied by more or less dramatic action, like the
+'Mulligan Guards,' which was the simple germ wherefrom sprouted the long
+series of more and more elaborate Harrigan and Hart plays, delineating
+with keen insight and with sympathetic humor the manifold aspects of
+tenement-house life in New York, and possessing a rich flavor of fun
+curiously akin to that which amuses us in the plays wherein Plautus had
+sketched the tenement-house life in Rome two thousand years ago.
+
+While the song and the song-and-dance and the song-and-parade may be the
+staple of the entertainment, the variety-show justifies its name by the
+medley of other exhibitions it presents. It delights in the dance
+unaccompanied by the song; and in some of the English music-halls, the
+Alhambra and the Empire in London, the ballet is the foremost
+attraction, providing an opportunity for the display of her dainty art
+to so exquisite a dancer as Mlle. Genée. In New York it is now a refuge
+for the waifs and strays of vanishing negro-minstrelsy. It is ready to
+welcome the wandering conjurer and the strolling juggler. It extends its
+hospitality to the acrobat, single or in groups, throwing flipflaps on
+the stage, flying thru the air on a trapeze or diving into the water in
+a tank. It acts as host to the trainer of performing animals, dogs and
+cats, seals and elephants. It lends its stage to the puppet-show
+performer, to the sidewalk conversationalist, and to the ventriloquist,
+with his pair of stolid figures seemingly seated uncomfortably on his
+knees and actually supported by his hands, while his adroit fingers
+manipulate their mechanical mouths.
+
+Of late, the variety-show has accepted the aid of the exhibitors of
+moving-pictures, just as the exhibitors of moving-pictures have invoked
+the casual assistance of song-and-dance teams and of other vaudeville
+performers to relieve the strain on the eyes of their spectators. And
+the introduction of the cinematograph, or the bioscope, or whatever it
+may be called, is, perhaps, the only real novelty in our latter-day
+variety-show. All the other performers are presenting feats of a kind
+known to our remote ancestors, even if these feats are now more
+skilfully presented. Animals were put thru their paces hundreds of years
+ago; and performing dogs and educated bears figure frequently in the
+illuminations which decorate many a medieval manuscript. There were
+tight-rope dancers in Alexandria and in Byzantium; there were
+contortionists in Rome and in Greece, and the flexibility of these
+latter is preserved for us in the vase-paintings which have been
+replevined from the ashes of Pompeii and the lava of Herculaneum.
+Quintillian tells us of the wonderful feats of certain performers on the
+stage in his day, "with balls, and of other jugglers whose dexterity is
+such that one might suppose the things which they throw from them to
+return of their own accord, and to fly wheresoever they are commanded."
+The art of modern magic has enlarged its boundaries by the aid of the
+modern sciences of mechanics and physics, but elementary
+sleights-of-hand were known to a remote antiquity, and savages always
+had their medicine-men and their marabouts, workers of primitive wonders
+to strike awe into the souls of their unsophisticated beholders. The
+variety-show may have the variety it vaunts itself as possessing; but to
+novelty it can lay little claim.
+
+                                   II
+
+The constituent elements of the variety-show as we know it to-day have
+existed since a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the
+contrary--to use the old legal phrase. The appeal of almost every one of
+these elements and of the variety-show as a whole is ever to the eye and
+to the ear, to the senses rather than to the emotions; and to the
+intellect it appeals even more infrequently. Its primary purpose is to
+afford a kaleidoscopic succession of contrasted amusements for the
+benefit of those who are easily satisfied by glitter of spectacle, by
+incessant movement, and by violent music. It is the ideal entertainment
+for that redoubtable entity, the Tired Business Man, who checks his
+brains with his overcoat, and who resents having to witness anything in
+the theater which might make him think. Not only does the variety-show
+flourish because it is exactly adjusted to the unintellectual and purely
+sensational likings of the Tired Business Man and to the similar tastes
+of his fit mate, who is fatigued because her life is idle and empty, but
+for his benefit also, and for hers the summer song-show and the alleged
+"comic opera" and the misnamed "review" have been called into existence.
+Indeed, it is obvious enough that most of our summer song-shows and many
+of our "comic operas" and "reviews" are, in reality, only more or less
+disguised variety-shows.
+
+With facts as they are, there is never any excuse for quarreling. The
+Tired Business Man is a fact; and it is only fair that what he demands
+shall be supplied by caterers to the cravings of the populace. But even
+tho his name is legion, the Tired Business Man is to be accepted only
+with contemptuous toleration. He is to be endured only so long as he
+does not insist on imposing his likings upon others who have a more
+delicate perception, and who are willing to bring their brains with them
+when they take their places in the theater. Even in the variety-show
+which seems often to exist only for the pleasure of those who still
+linger in what one of George Eliot's wise characters aptly called "a
+puerile state of culture," nevertheless, we can now and again discover
+signs of a longing for something less void of purpose than mere
+spectacle. For example, it was in a variety-show that Mr. Belasco's
+finely imaginative dramatization of Mr. Long's 'Madame Butterfly' was
+set before the American public several years prior to its being adorned
+by the pathetic music of Puccini for the benefit of opera-goers.
+
+In fact, it is well to remember that the _opéra comique_ of the French
+had its humble origin in the theater of the Parisian fairs, where also
+we can discover the rude beginnings of that crude form of melodrama
+which Victor Hugo lifted into literature in 'Hernani' and 'Ruy Bias,'
+casting the cloth-of-gold of his splendid lyricism over the arbitrarily
+articulated skeleton of his violent action. It was an old negro-minstrel
+act, representing the rehearsal of an amateur band, that the Hanlon-Lees
+borrowed to amplify into a rough-and-tumble pantomime for performance in
+a variety-show in Paris; and this knockabout sketch proved to be the
+stepping-stone which enabled them soon to achieve the fantastic
+eccentricity of their 'Voyage en Suisse,' performed in real theaters,
+first in Paris and then in New York, to the joy of all who could
+appreciate the perfection of their art as pantomimists. And, once again,
+it was in a variety-show of the lowest class that Denman Thompson first
+appeared as 'Josh Whitcomb Among the Female Bathers,' a vulgar episode
+of indelicate humor, wherein, however, was contained the germ of that
+perennially popular play, the 'Old Homestead,' which gave a pure
+pleasure to countless thousands of theater-goers, season after season,
+for at least a quarter of a century.
+
+When we look back over the long annals of the variety-show we cannot
+escape the conclusion that here is its real opportunity, its true
+function, and its necessary justification. For the most part, it
+supplies a purely sensational amusement for the unthinking; and yet it
+is continually serving as a nursery for the actual theater. It is thus
+seen to be a proving ground for the seeds of widely different dramatic
+species--_opéra comique_ and melodrama in France, the _ballet d'action_
+in England, the rural play in the United States. It is not always
+conscious of its possibilities, nor does it always improve them to best
+advantage. Normally it provides an entertainment appealing mainly to the
+senses, often empty, and often unsatisfying because of its monotony. But
+on occasion it is capable of grasping at higher things, and of
+encouraging artists who will sooner or later outgrow its limitations and
+transfer their activities to the theaters wherein audiences are more
+eager for veracity of character portrayal.
+
+                                  III
+
+On one side the variety-show intersects the ring of the circus and the
+curving line of the First Part of negro-minstrelsy, while on the other
+it impinges on the sphere of the more literary drama. Its existence is
+evidence that the show business is always the show business, no matter
+how manifold and dissimilar its manifestations may seem to be. The men
+and women who have grown up in the regular theaters are a little
+inclined to be scornfully jealous of the less highly esteemed performers
+in the variety-show, even if they themselves are occasionally tempted by
+the lure of high pay for hard work to condescend to vaudeville
+engagements. No doubt, the bill of fare set before us more often than
+not in the variety-show justifies this attitude on the part of the high
+priests of the more legitimate drama; yet they ought to be broad-minded
+enough to recognize merit wherever it may be found. The late John
+Gilbert, best of Sir Peter Teazles, and of Sir Anthony Absolutes, was
+not a little provoked by the praise bestowed upon Harrigan and Hart and
+their associates by Mr. Howells and by other critics of the acted drama,
+who relished the peculiar flavor of 'Squatter Sovereignty' and its
+companion plays. Gilbert was puzzled to discover any reason why any
+criticism whould be wasted on pieces which pretended to be little more
+than variety-show sketches. But Joseph Jefferson, a far more versatile
+comedian than John Gilbert, was swift to discern merit, and he was
+wholly free from toplofty condescension toward other forms of the
+histrionic art than that in which he was himself pre-eminent--perhaps,
+because in his youth he had often appeared as a burlesque actor, an
+experience which he gladly admitted to have been very valuable to him.
+After Jefferson had gone to see one of the nondescript pieces at Weber
+and Fields's music-hall, joyous spectacles commingled of song and dance,
+of eccentric character and of sheer fun, he was loud in his praise of
+the histrionic art displayed here and there in the course of the
+performance, declaring without hesitation that one episode, in which the
+two managers took part, was simply the finest piece of comic acting he
+had seen that whole winter. Probably the ordinary playgoers, who had
+flocked to be amused by this loose-jointed piece, took a somewhat
+apologetic attitude toward the pleasure they had received; and probably
+they supposed that their pleasure at the entertainment offered to them
+was due mainly to the pervading bustle and dazzle of the kaleidoscopic
+show. But Jefferson had a keener insight into the practise of the art he
+adorned; and he recognized at once the sheer histrionic skill which lent
+the illusion of life to the fantastic impossibility of the humorous
+situation.
+
+Jefferson, one may venture to assert, would not have been surprised if
+he had learned that an American university professor of dramatic
+literature, whenever he came to discuss the lyrical-burlesques of
+Aristophanes, was in the habit of sending his whole class to Weber and
+Fields that his students might see for themselves the nearest modern
+analog to the robust fantasies of the great Greek humorist. Aristophanes
+was a many-sided genius; as a lyric poet of ethereal elevation he must
+be set by the side of Shelley; as a keen satirist of contemporary fads
+and foibles he must be compared with Rabelais; and as a fun-maker pure
+and simple, as a comic playwright, willing and able to evoke unexpected
+laughter by ludicrous antics, he reveals an undeniable likeness to the
+adroit devisers of the hodgepodge of humorous episodes represented with
+contagious humor by Weber and Fields. And the heterogeneous pieces which
+used to be produced by the two performers who devote themselves to the
+dislocation of the English language were outgrowths of the variety-show,
+from which, indeed, the two performers themselves were graduates.
+
+It is this aspect of the variety-show, its supplying of opportunities
+for artistic development to ambitious performers, and its own
+spontaneous generation of dramatic forms capable of being lifted into
+literature--it is this aspect of the variety-show which would be
+emphasized by any competent writer undertaking to narrate its long and
+involved history. That no one has yet written a history of the
+variety-show is as surprising as that no one has yet written a history
+of negro-minstrelsy. The materials for such a book are accessible and
+abundant, since there are already richly documented accounts of the
+fairs of Paris and of London, in which the variety-show flourished
+centuries ago. There are accounts of the English concert-halls as they
+now exist and of the French _café-concerts_. The historian will also be
+aided by the various treatises on the ballet, and on the circus, and on
+the puppet-show, with all of which forms of entertainment the
+variety-show has always had intimate relations.
+
+It may be that the future historian will be moved to point out the
+superficial likeness between the variety-show and the Sunday issues of
+certain American newspapers. These Sunday newspapers are really
+magazines--that is to say, they occupy a position midway between
+journalism and literature, just as the variety-show occupies a position
+midway between the circus and the theater. The magazine pages of these
+Sunday newspapers set before their readers a very variegated bill of
+fare; they provide photographs of recent events--which are the
+equivalent of the moving-pictures of the variety-show; they contain
+short-stories--which are, in narrative, what the brief plays of the
+variety-show are in dialog and action; they abound in anecdotes and in
+comic sayings--which are closely akin to the utterances of the sidewalk
+conversationalists of the variety-show. And the variety-show itself is
+like journalism, in that it is a modern combination of elements of the
+remotest antiquity, for altho the actual newspaper is only two or three
+centuries old, there were always channels by which news was conveyed to
+the eager public. The men of Athens nearly two thousand years ago were
+glad to hear and to tell some new thing, and their wants were supplied,
+even if there was in classical antiquity and in the Middle Ages no
+organization faintly anticipating the marvelous machinery for
+collecting and distributing information possessed by the newspapers of
+the twentieth century.
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                   XV
+
+                       THE METHOD OF MODERN MAGIC
+
+                       THE METHOD OF MODERN MAGIC
+
+                                   I
+
+"Autobiography," said Longfellow--altho the remark does not seem
+especially characteristic of this gentle poet--"is what biography ought
+to be." And in the long list of alluring autobiographies, from Cellini's
+and Cibber's, from Franklin's and Goldoni's, there are few more
+fascinating than the 'Confidences of a Prestidigitator' of
+Robert-Houdin. A hostile critic of Robert-Houdin's career has recorded
+the fact--if it is a fact--that Robert-Houdin once confided to a fellow
+magician that his autobiography had been written for him by a clever
+Parisian journalist; and it must be admitted that not a few amusing
+French autobiographies have not been the children of their putative
+parents--for instance, the memoirs of Vidocq, the detective. Yet this is
+not as damaging an admission as it may seem at first sight since the
+clever Parisian journalist may have been little more than the amanuensis
+of the prestidigitator, hired only to give literary form to the actual
+recollections of his employer. Such a proceeding would not deprive
+Robert-Houdin's autobiography by its authenticity. It remains a classic,
+beloved by all who joy in the delights of conjuring. Unfortunately the
+hostile critic has gone further in his attack upon Robert-Houdin's
+reputation, and he has succeeded in showing that the renowned French
+conjurer claimed as his own invention not a few illusions which had been
+already exhibited by his predecessors in the art of deception.
+
+Yet this unjustified boasting does not invalidate Robert-Houdin's title
+to be considered the father of modern magic. Even if he was treading in
+the path of those who had gone before, he attained at last to a
+consistent theory of the art, far in advance of that held by earlier
+magicians. Many of his marvels, and perhaps more than one of the most
+striking of them, may have been but improvements upon effects originally
+contrived by others; yet every succeeding generation can rise only by
+standing upon the shoulders of the generations that went before, and it
+is justified in availing itself of all that these earlier generations
+may have discovered and invented. Robert-Houdin tells us himself that he
+was greatly indebted to the Comte de Grisy, whose stage-name was
+Torrini. In fact, Robert-Houdin might be called a pupil of Torrini, as
+Mr. John S. Sargent is a pupil of Carolus Duran. It was upon Torrini's
+dignified simplicity as a magician that Robert-Houdin modelled his own
+unpretending presentation of his feats of magic. Apparently it was a
+famous conjurer named Frikell, who first discarded the cumbersome and
+glittering array of apparatus which used to be displayed on the stage to
+dazzle the eyes of the spectators; but this discarding of obtrusive
+paraphernalia was not deliberate, being due only to the accidental
+destruction of Frikell's stage-furniture by fire, whereby the performer
+was suddenly forced to rely upon the less complicated experiments, which
+could be exhibited without extraneous aid. The abandoning of overt
+apparatus, which Frikell was forced into by misfortune, Robert-Houdin
+adopted as an abiding principle. He kept his stage as unencumbered as
+possible, altho, of course, he brought forward from time to time the
+special objects necessary for the illusions he was about to exhibit.
+
+Not only did he perform on a stage which was intended to resemble a
+drawing-room, he also eschewed any other costume than that appropriate
+to a drawing-room. Earlier performers had not hesitated to deck
+themselves in Oriental apparel or in the flowing garb of a medieval
+magician. Robert-Houdin was always modern and never medieval; and he
+adopted this attitude deliberately. He was the first to formulate the
+fundamental principle of the modern art of magic--that a conjurer should
+be "an actor playing the part of a magician." One of the foremost
+exponents of modern magic, Mr. Maskelyne, notes that many conjurers
+strive only to play the part of some other conjurer; and it might be
+added that there are not a few who fail entirely to see the necessity
+for playing a part and who content themselves with a purposeless display
+of their misplaced dexterity. But the masters of the art are men like
+Robert Heller and Buatier da Kolta, who were accomplished comedians,
+each in his own fashion, and who presented a succession of little
+plays--for a truly good experiment in magic is really a diminutive
+drama.
+
+It may be brief and simple--a play in one act; or it may be prolonged
+and complicated--a play in three or five acts. But like any other play
+it ought to possess a central idea and to have a definite plot. It
+should tend straight toward its single conclusion, which must be the
+logical development of all that has gone before; that is to say, it must
+possess what the critics of the drama term Unity of Action. It should
+have a beginning, a middle, and an end, in accord with Aristotle's
+requirement for a tragedy. It must work up to its culmination with a
+steadily increasing intensity of interest. It must contain nothing not
+directly contributory to the startling climax which is its surprising
+and satisfying conclusion. It must not digress or dally in by-paths,
+however entertaining these may be in themselves, but push onward to its
+inevitable finish. It is only by conceiving of every one of his
+successive experiments as a play, complete in itself and governed by the
+inexorable laws of the drama, that the magician can rise to the summit
+of his art. He is a conjurer and a comedian at the same time, making his
+dexterity the servant of his drama, and never for a single moment
+allowing this dexterity to force itself upon the attention of the
+audience. Indeed, the one thing he ought to conceal is his possession of
+any special gift in manipulation. He should keep his audience ever
+guessing as to the method of his apparent miracles.
+
+                                   II
+
+It is because Robert-Houdin was seemingly the first conjurer to adopt
+these principles as his irrefragable code of procedure that he is to be
+accepted as the father of modern magic. He never allowed himself to
+parade his skill in manipulating coins and cards at the risk of
+distracting the attention of the spectators from the central and
+culminating effect around which he had constructed his plot. No doubt,
+he possessed dexterity in abundance, but it was subordinate to his
+dramatic intent. No doubt, again, some of the devices he used had
+sometimes been employed by a long succession of his predecessors in
+conjuring. As a matter of course he availed himself of all sorts of mere
+tricks, of ingenious sleights, and of artful apparatus that the
+conjurers who went before him had devised for their own use long before
+he was born. An experiment in magic--to use the term that Mr. Maskelyne
+prefers, is not a mere trick--or at least it ought not to be. It is not
+the exhibition of a device or of a sleight or of an adroit mechanical
+apparatus. Rather is it a coherent whole, direct in its development, no
+matter how many subtleties of concealment and deception it may employ in
+the course of its accomplishment.
+
+Most amateurs in the art of magic, and also only too many professional
+performers, place their reliance mainly upon the trick itself--the
+deceptive manipulation or the novel apparatus--and are satisfied to get
+out of it what they can. They invent new methods of changing a card or
+of making coins pass into a box, overlooking the fact that these
+inventions are valueless except as they may be utilized to facilitate
+the execution of one of those larger feats which only are fairly to be
+entitled experiments in magic, and which are distinguished always by the
+direct simplicity and the straightforward unity of their plots. In fact,
+an experiment in magic must aim at that totality of effect, that perfect
+subordination of the minor means to the major end, which Poe insisted
+upon as the dominant characteristic of the true short-story. And this
+totality of effect can be achieved only by the rigorous exclusion of
+everything which in any way contradicts that central idea out of which
+the true short-story must always be developed. Unity and totality, and a
+rigorous obedience to what Herbert Spencer called the Principle of
+Economy of Attention--these are the essential elements in the
+presentation of a worthy experiment in magic.
+
+An intimate friend of the late Alexander Hermann, the last of a long
+line of Hermanns who have been eminent in the history of the art, has
+asserted that Alexander Hermann was wont to insist that the conjurer
+must possess three qualifications for the practise of his profession.
+The first of these is dexterity; the second is dexterity; and the third
+is also dexterity. Now, there is a sense in which this assertion is
+true; but it may be easily misapprehended. A conjurer needs to be
+dexterous, altho more than one master of modern magic, notably Robert
+Heller, has not been pre-eminent in the possession of this
+qualification. A moderate degree of dexterity is essential, and perhaps
+more than a moderate degree; but dexterity is not the prime requisite,
+which is rather the dramatic instinct, or, perhaps, it had better be
+called the dramaturgic imagination, that can hit on a new idea and build
+it up into a plot, and thus devise an experiment in magic completely
+satisfactory to the artistic sense.
+
+What the master of the magic art never forgets is that dexterity is not
+an end in itself; it is only one of the means by the aid of which the
+marvel may be wrought. There are, to-day, performers of a surpassing
+skill in the manipulation of cards and coins, capable of feats which
+would have been the despair of Robert-Houdin and of Robert Heller; and
+some of them are so enamored of their own dexterity that in their
+eagerness for its exhibition they lose sight of unity and totality. As a
+result of this lapse from the loftier standards of their art they
+present a disconcerting huddle of sleights of hand until the amazed
+spectators lose all sense of progression, as these bewildering effects
+tumble over one another without any attempt at climax. Such a
+performance is an empty display of difficulty conquered for its own
+sake; it is only a sequence of "stunts"; it is mere vanity and vexation
+of spirit. It is like the favorite Scotch dish, the haggis, which is
+said to supply only "confused feeding."
+
+It is always interesting to note how the principles of the arts have a
+certain relation, and how we can constantly discover parallels in two
+wholly different fields. This abuse of dexterity in the art of modern
+magic is closely akin to the abuse of toe-dancing in the art of the
+ballet. As the conjurer ought to have dexterity at his command to serve
+when it is needed, so the accomplished ballet-dancer ought to be able to
+walk on her toes, when this feat will fit into the scheme of the special
+dance she has undertaken to perform. But for a dancer to confine herself
+to the executing of a series of difficult steps involving nothing more
+than toe-dancing is to circumscribe the range of her art and to accept
+as the end what ought to be only the means. Here again, we have a frank
+substitution of a single "stunt" for the larger liberty accorded by a
+more intelligent understanding of the true principles of the art. The
+excessive toe-work of the dancer, like the excessive dexterity of the
+conjurer, is at bottom only what boys call "showing off"; and in the
+long run even boys tire of this. To descend to showing off is equivalent
+to the blunder common in bad architecture, when we cannot help seeing
+that the artist has gone afield to construct his ornament, instead of
+concentrating his effort on ornamenting his construction.
+
+So far from permitting himself ever to show off, or to invite attention
+to his own skill, the master of modern magic is careful always to
+conceal as far as possible the method by which he accomplishes his
+wonders. He utilizes at will and in conjunction ingenious apparatus and
+manual dexterity, without ever calling the attention of the spectators
+to either. He refrains even from turning up his sleeves or from passing
+for special examination any of the objects he is employing, while
+taking care to let it be seen accidentally that these objects are really
+above suspicion. Like the playwright constructing a play, the composer
+of an experiment in magic must ever keep in mind his audience; and he
+must strive always to foresee the exact impression he is making upon the
+spectators. Like the playwright, the modern magician must so build up
+each of his experiments that it seizes the attention of the spectators
+early, that it arouses their interest, that it holds this interest
+unrelaxed to the end, and that at last it satisfies while it surprises.
+This can be achieved only when all the elements of the experiment, the
+idea itself, the plot, the dexterous devices, and the ingenious
+apparatus which may be necessary, are all so combined and controlled and
+harmonized as to leave on the memory of the audience a clear and
+consistent impression--indeed, an impression so sharp that a majority of
+those who witnessed the experiment could describe it the next day.
+
+It is the disadvantage of the empty display of dexterity for its own
+sake that fails to leave this definite deposit in the memory; and the
+spectators are quite unable to recall the central effect. This is
+generally because there was, in fact, no central effect for them to
+seize, the performer having scattered his efforts, as tho he were using
+a shot-gun instead of hitting the bull's-eye with a single rifle-shot.
+The master of the art is careful to economize the attention of his
+audience, to focus it, so to speak, and to arrange his sequence of
+effects so adroitly that, however multifarious and even complicated may
+be the means whereby he is achieving his object, the result is attained
+so directly and so simply that it can be apprehended by the spectators
+readily and instantly. The experiment has been exhibited as tho it were
+the easiest thing in the world, even if it is at the same time perceived
+to be the most impossible to account for. To arrive at this result the
+performer must preserve an absolute simplicity of manner; he presents
+himself as a gentleman amusing himself by amusing other gentlemen, who
+have come together at his invitation to be amused.
+
+                                  III
+
+A gentleman amusing other gentlemen--that should be the ideal; and this
+ideal not only forbids any foolish clowning and any trivial buffoonery
+on the part of the performer, but it prohibits also any attempt on his
+part to incite the gentlemen he is amusing to laugh at any one of their
+own number who may have been kind enough to lend a hat or a watch, or to
+come up on the stage as a volunteer assistant by request. Nothing is
+cheaper, and nothing is in worse taste, than for the performer to make
+personal remarks about any member of his audience or to hold any one of
+the spectators up to ridicule. The conjurer is a comedian playing the
+part of a modern magician, but he is not a low-comedian, ready to get a
+laugh at any price and at the cost of any one else. He may be as
+pleasant as he can, and even as humorous, but he can preserve his own
+self-respect only by having due regard to the self-respect of all those
+who have gathered to enjoy his performance. Readers of Robert-Houdin's
+memoirs will remember how one of the old-school performers used to
+advertise that he would Eat a Man Alive, and how he sprinkled flour and
+pepper and salt all over the hapless creature who volunteered to be
+devoured, and then proceeded to bite the finger of the disgusted and
+unfortunate victim. This is "most tolerable and not to be endured."
+
+If a demand were to be made for a list of the books likely to be the
+most useful to those who desire to master the principles of the art of
+modern magic, one would have to begin by recommending the preliminary
+perusal of the autobiography of Robert-Houdin, from which a host of
+useful hints may be gleaned. The Frenchman tells us, for instance, how
+he once showed off before Torrini and exhibited his manipulative skill
+over a pack of cards, making a needless display of dexterity, designed
+to dazzle the eyes of the spectators; and how Torrini pointed out the
+futility and the disadvantage of this. Then it would be well to consult
+the invaluable series of volumes on modern magic by "Professor Hoffman"
+wherein the various tricks and sleights and apparatus are described and
+illustrated. These books contain what may be called the raw material of
+the art, the processes which the magician can employ at will in building
+up his larger experiments in magic, each of which should be a complete
+play in itself. Finally, when the student has found out how tricks can
+be done, he would do well to turn his attention to 'Our Magic,' by Mr.
+Maskelyne and his associate, Mr. David Devant. And from this logical
+treatise he can learn how experiments in magic ought to be composed. It
+is from this admirable discussion of the basic principles of modern
+magic that several of the points made in this essay have been borrowed.
+
+Mr. Devant calls attention to the fact that new tricks are common, new
+manipulative devices, new examples of dexterity, and new applications of
+science, whereas new plots, new ideas for effective presentation, are
+rare. He describes a series of experiments of his own, some of which
+utilize again, but in a novel manner, devices long familiar, while
+others are new both in idea and in many of the subsidiary methods of
+execution. One of the most hackneyed and yet one of the most effective
+illusions in the repertory of the conjurer, is that known as the Rising
+Cards. The performer brings forward a pack of cards, several of which
+are drawn by members of the audience and returned to the pack, whereupon
+at the command of the magician they rise out of the pack, one after the
+other, in the order in which they were drawn. In the oldest form in
+which this illusion is described in the books on the art of magic, the
+pack is placed in a case supported by a rod standing on a base; and the
+secret of the trick lies in this rod and its base. The rod is really a
+hollow tube, and the base is really an empty box. The tube is filled
+with sand, on the top of which rests a leaden weight, to which is
+attached a thread so arranged over and under certain cards as to cause
+the chosen cards to rise when it descends down the tube; and in putting
+the cards into the case the conjurer releases a valve at the bottom of
+the tube, so that the sand might escape into the box, whereby the weight
+is lowered, the thread then doing its allotted work, and the cards
+ascending into view, no matter how far distant from them the performer
+may be standing when he achieves his miracle.
+
+It seems likely that the invention of this primitive apparatus may have
+been due to the fact that some eighteenth-century conjurer happened to
+observe the sand running out of an hour-glass, and set about to find
+some means whereby this escape of sand could be utilized in his art. The
+hollow rod, the escaping sand, and the descending weight have long since
+been discarded; but the illusion of the Rising Cards survives and is now
+performed in an unending variety of ways. The pack may be held in the
+hand of the performer, without the use of any case; or it may be placed
+in a glass goblet; or it may be tied together with a ribbon and thus
+suspended from cords that swing to and fro almost over the heads of the
+spectators, and however they may be isolated, the chosen cards rise
+obediently when they are bidden. The original effect subsists, even tho
+the devices differ.
+
+It was left for Mr. Devant to give a new twist to this old illusion. For
+a full pack of playing-cards he substituted ten cards two or three times
+larger than playing-cards, and with the ten numerals printed or painted
+in bold black. These pasteboards are given for examination, and so is a
+case into which they fit. After they have been duly inspected they are
+put into the case which is hung from chains. A clean slate is also
+shown, and wrapped up and given to a spectator to hold. Then three
+members of the audience are invited to write each a number composed of
+three figures, and these three numbers are added by a fourth spectator.
+The total is found to be written on the slate; and then at the behest of
+the performer the cards containing the figures of this total rise in
+proper sequence out of the case. It may be noted that the writing on the
+slate is also an old and well-worn device, and so is the method of
+making sure that the total of the three numbers written by different
+persons shall agree with that already concealed on the slate. Yet these
+three familiar effects are here united in a refreshingly novel
+experiment in magic, being now fitted into a new plot. The devices
+themselves are old enough, but Mr. Devant is entitled to full credit for
+the new combination.
+
+                                   IV
+
+The fundamental principles which Robert-Houdin accepted and which he
+seems to have taken over from Torrini, Messrs. Maskelyne and Devant have
+elucidated in their philosophic disquisition, and yet in one particular
+their practise is not yet level with their preaching. Before
+Robert-Houdin and Frikell, or at least before Torrini, and even after
+these three artists had set a better example, the majority of conjurers
+filled the stage with gaudy apparatus and insisted on its blazing with
+an unnecessary prodigality of lights. One magician in the middle of the
+nineteenth century came forward on a stage absolutely dark, and suddenly
+fired a pistol, thereby lighting two hundred candles arranged in
+pyramids behind him. Another hung his stage with black velvet and
+adorned it with skulls. Torrini and Robert-Houdin made an approach to
+the unadorned simplicity of an actual drawing-room, altho Robert-Houdin
+seems to have permitted himself a long shelf at the back of his stage on
+which his various automatic figures were assembled awaiting their
+summons to take part in the program. Even Messrs. Maskelyne and Devant
+are satisfied with a stage-setting which is frankly only a
+stage-setting--as stagy, in fact, as the ordinary scenery to be seen in
+a variety-show.
+
+Now, it may be admitted that a nondescript set of this sort, vaguely
+Oriental, with arches and curtains, and somewhat suggestive of comic
+opera, may not be inappropriate when any one of the bolder illusions is
+to be presented--the Box Trick or the Aerial Suspension, the Mystic
+Cabinet or the Talking Sphinx. Indeed, a special set of scenery is often
+actually necessary for the presentation of marvels depending mainly on
+optics or mechanics. But for the first part of the program, when the
+performer appears in ordinary evening-dress, and when he is presenting
+himself as a gentleman in a drawing-room, amusing other gentlemen, by
+means of experiments in magic, every one of which may be likened to a
+little play, why should not the stage-set be that of a drawing-room, or
+of a bachelor's study, as accurately reproduced as similar rooms are
+reproduced in the modern comedies of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones and Mr.
+Augustus Thomas? The set accepted by Messrs. Maskelyne and Devant is
+devoid of the actuality of a real room; it is fantastically stagy, and
+therefore it lacks both veracity and dignity.
+
+Sooner or later some modern magician, in advance over his rivals, will
+take this final step, and the curtain will rise on a stage with a
+box-set realistically reproducing a handsome room, with all its
+decorations and hangings and furniture in harmony, Jacobean in style, or
+Chippendale, as the performer's preference may be. There will be chairs
+and tables in their proper places; there will be book-cases, and
+window-boxes of flowers; and perhaps there will be a cellaret, where the
+performer may procure any goblet or decanter he needs. There will be a
+broad desk in the center, with its writing-pad and its book-rack, and
+possibly its heap of magazines and weekly papers. This set thus
+furnished will look like a room that has really been lived in; it will
+have a door in each of the side walls, and when the curtain rises the
+stage will be empty. Then the doorbell will ring, and the servant will
+enter at one door, and, going across the stage to the other, he will
+admit his master--the master at last of the truly modern art of magic.
+The magician will give his hat and coat to the servant, who will take
+them out, and who will never appear on the stage again except in
+response to the master's pressure on the electric button, ordinarily
+used to summon a servant. And the magician will present his succession
+of experiments in magic, utilizing only the objects which he may borrow
+from the spectators, or which would naturally be found in a gentleman's
+room. The apparent absence of all apparatus, the naturalness of the
+environment, the easy simplicity and the convincing reality of the
+back-ground--all these elements will coalesce to heighten the effect of
+the marvels to be wrought by a comedian playing the part of a magician.
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                  XVI
+
+                       THE LAMENTABLE TRAGEDY OF
+                             PUNCH AND JUDY
+
+                THE LAMENTABLE TRAGEDY OF PUNCH AND JUDY
+
+                                   I
+
+When we consider how cosmopolitan is the population of these United
+States, and how freely we have drawn upon all the races of Europe, it is
+very curious that the puppet-show does not flourish in our American
+cities as it flourishes in many of the towns on the other side of the
+Western Ocean. The shrill squeak of Punch is not infrequent in the
+streets of London--altho it may not now be heard as often as it was a
+score of years ago. In Paris in the gardens of the Tuileries and of the
+Luxembourg, and again in the Champs-Elysées where the children
+congregate in the afternoon, there are nearly half a dozen enclosures
+roped off and provided with cane chairs so that spectators, old and
+young, may be gladdened by the vision of Polichinelle, and by the pranks
+of Guignol. Yet even in Paris there are not now as many puppet-shows as
+there were fifty years ago; and in Italy and in Germany the traveler
+fails to find as frequent exhibitions of this sort as he used to meet
+with in the years that are gone. Apparently there is everywhere a waning
+interest in the plays performed by the little troop of personages
+animated by the thumb and fingers of the invisible performer. And
+perhaps the declining vogue of this diminutive drama in old Europe is
+one reason why it has never achieved a wide popularity in young America.
+
+In France the puppet-show is stationary; it has its fixed habitation and
+abode; and its lovers can easily discover where to find it when they
+seek the specific pleasure it alone can provide. In England the
+spectacle of Punch and Judy is ambulatory; the bloodthirsty hero and the
+bereaved heroine roam the streets at large, and their arrival in any one
+avenue of traffic can never be predicted with certainty. In the United
+States poor Punch has never ventured to show his face in the open
+street, seeking the suffrages of the casual throng; he is not
+peripatetic but intermittent, and he makes his appearances only in
+private houses, and only when he is sent for specially to entertain the
+children's party. Here in America Punch is still a stranger to the broad
+public; he has an exotic flavor; he suggests Dickens, somehow; and he
+must be wholly unknown to countless thousands who would rejoice to make
+his acquaintance and to laugh at his terrible deeds.
+
+His terrible deeds!--perhaps there is in these words a possible
+explanation for the failure of Punch to win favor among the descendants
+of the Puritans, who are always inclined to apply severe moral standards
+of conduct. Now, if we apply any moral standard at all to the conduct of
+Mr. Punch, the result is simply appalling, for the customary drama of
+which he is the sole hero sets before us a story of triumphant
+villainy, adequately to be compared only with the dastardly history of
+Richard III in Shakspere's melodramatic tragedy. Mr. Punch is an
+accessory before the fact in the death of his infant child, and when his
+devoted wife very naturally remonstrates with him, he turns upon her
+with invective and violence--a violence which culminates in
+assassination. Having once seen red and tasted blood, he finds himself
+swiftly started upon a career of crime. His total depravity tempts him
+to a startling succession of hideous murders. He slays an inoffensive
+negro, a harmless clown, and a worthy policeman. Then he succeeds, by a
+simple trick, in hanging the hangman himself. By his fatal assaults upon
+these two officers of justice, the necessary policeman and the useful
+hangman, Mr. Punch exhibits his contempt for the majesty of the law. He
+stands forth, without a shred of conscience, as a practical anarchist,
+rejecting all authority. His hand is against every man and every man's
+hand is against him. And having violated the laws of this world, he
+finally discloses his callous contempt for the punishment which ought to
+await him in the next world; he has a hand-to-hand fight with the devil
+himself--a deadly struggle from which he emerges victorious. And this is
+the end, which crowns the work.
+
+[Illustration: Behind the scenes]
+
+[Illustration: Punch throws away the child]
+
+[Illustration: Punch, Judy, and their child]
+
+[Illustration: Punch quiets Judy]
+
+When we consider the several episodes of Mr. Punch's abhorrent history,
+we are reluctantly forced to the conclusion that his story is even less
+informed with morality than that of Richard III. The crookbacked king
+comes to a bad end at last; he meets with the just retribution for his
+many misdeeds; and he falls before the sword of Richmond. But Mr. Punch
+comes to a good end, and so far as we may know, he lives happy ever
+after, like the princes and princesses of the fairytales. He may even
+marry again and have another child, to be made away with in its turn.
+The more we consider his misdeeds and his misadventures the more
+shocking they are to our moral sense. Mr. Punch appears as a monster of
+such hideous mien that to be hated he needs but to be seen. This is how
+he must appear to every one of us who applies a moral standard to the
+drama, and who is willing to hold every character in a play to a strict
+accountability for his words and deeds. If we apply this moral standard
+to the play of Punch and Judy, then that play must be dismissed as
+profoundly and hopelessly immoral, carrying ethical infection to all who
+are so unfortunate as to be spectators at its performance. And more
+particularly, it is an absolutely unfit piece for the young, whose
+immature minds need to be guarded against everything which might tend to
+confuse the delicate distinctions between right and wrong.
+
+But, of course, we do not apply a moral standard to the sayings and
+doings of Mr. Punch, for the plain and sufficient reason that he is not
+a human being. He is not a man and a brother, upon whom we may be
+tempted to pattern ourselves. He is but a six-inch puppet, a thing of
+shreds and patches, a wooden-headed doll, vitalized for a moment only by
+the hand concealed inside his flimsy body with its flaunting colors. He
+is too fantastic, too impossible, too unreal, too unrelated to any
+possible world, for us to feel called upon to frown upon his misdeeds or
+to take them seriously. He is a joke, and we know that he is a joke, and
+all the children know that he is only a joke. Even the youngest child is
+never tempted to believe in his existence and to be moved to follow his
+example or to imitate his dark deeds. The proof of the pudding is in the
+eating; and the proof of a play is in the effect it produces upon the
+spectators. We may question whether any one of the millions of
+performances of the lamentable tragedy of Mr. Punch has suggested to a
+single father the fatal neglect of his offspring or to a single husband
+the possibility of wife-murder. And we may doubt whether any child,
+after witnessing Mr. Punch's murderous combats with the policeman and
+the devil, has ever felt any lessening of his respect for those two
+time-honored guardians of law and order.
+
+[Illustration: Punch on his steed]
+
+[Illustration: Punch teaches Jack Ketch how to hang a man]
+
+[Illustration: Punch in prison]
+
+[Illustration: Punch kills the Devil]
+
+The plea of confession and avoidance which is here set up for Punch and
+Judy is much the same as that set up by Charles Lamb for the frolicsome
+Restoration comedies. Lamb admitted that they were degradingly
+immoral--if you took them seriously and accepted them as pictures of
+life. But he insisted that they were not really amenable to this moral
+standard, since they were plainly impossible in any world known to man.
+Macaulay had no difficulty in showing that Lamb was judging others by
+his clever and sophisticated self. To Lamb the creatures of Wycherley
+and Congreve might reveal manners and customs which removed them from
+the sphere of recognizable humanity; but the majority of his
+fellow-spectators were not so nimble-witted; they saw characters on the
+stage personated by living performers, and they beheld these characters
+shamelessly doing shameful things. Because the persons in the play were
+represented by actual human beings they seemed indisputably human; and
+their deeds could not be considered as outside morality. Yet the plea
+made by Lamb for the Restoration comedies has a certain validity when it
+is put forward in behalf of Mr. Punch. He is not personated by an actual
+human being; and even the least sophisticated of juvenile spectators
+does not accept him as a fellow-creature strictly amenable to the human
+code.
+
+                                   II
+
+Historians of the Greek drama have often commented on the fact that the
+Athenian actors wore towering masks, and that thereby they were deprived
+of all facial expression. In our snug modern theaters, with their
+well-lighted stages, we follow with our eyes the shifting emotions as
+these chase each other across the faces of the actors; and this is one
+of our keenest pleasures in the playhouse. In the huge theater of
+Dionysius at Athens, with its ten or twenty thousand spectators, seated
+tier on tier, along the curving hillside of the Acropolis, the actor was
+too far removed from most of the playgoers for any play of feature to be
+visible; and critics have commiserated the Attic dramatists on their
+deprivation of this element of potent appeal. Yet the question arises
+whether the Greek playwrights were really the losers by this immobility
+of the actors' faces; and we may be allowed to doubt that they were when
+we recall the fact that the faces of Mr. Punch and of Mrs. Judy, of the
+policeman and of the hangman, are also fixed once for all. The
+expression that Mr. Punch wears when he is fondling the baby is,
+perforce, the same which illuminates his face when he is engaged in
+joyful combat with the devil, a foeman worthy of his stick. Here the
+imagination of the spectator comes to the rescue. The wooden head of Mr.
+Punch is unchanging, no doubt; but those who gaze entranced upon his
+marvelous doings never miss the play of feature which they would expect
+if they were part of the audience in a playhouse for grown-ups. Quite
+possibly the Athenian spectators did not mind the immobility of the
+masks their actors wore; indeed, that very immobility may have been an
+incentive to their imaginations. When the Greeks went to their open-air
+theater, as when we gather around the tent-like theater of Mr. Punch,
+they knew in advance, as we also know, that the faces of the performers
+would be unchanging; therefore they did not expect any variety of
+expression; and probably they got along as well without it as we do at a
+puppet-show.
+
+There is another likeness between Attic tragedy and Punch and Judy;
+there is a limitation in the number of characters we are allowed to see
+at the same time. As the hidden performer who operates all the figures
+has only two hands, he can bring before us at any one moment only Mr.
+Punch and one other of the several characters. The fingers of the right
+hand animate Mr. Punch, and the fingers of the left hand animate in turn
+Mrs. Judy and the negro and the clown. At Athens (for reasons which need
+not here be discussed) the dramatist had the use of only three actors,
+even tho these might each of them "double" and appear as two or more of
+the successive characters of the play. So it was that there were never
+more than three persons taking part in any given episode of an Attic
+tragedy as there are never more than two persons taking part in any
+given episode of Punch and Judy. In the thumb-and-finger plays devised
+in Paris by M. Lemercier de Neuville, he felt so severely the
+inconvenience of his limitation to two characters that he devised a kind
+of spiral-spring arrangement inside the costumes of his little figures
+to hold up their heads; and he prepared invisible supports jutting out
+just below the flat ledge which forms the base of the proscenium. Thus
+he was enabled to leave the figure in sight, while he withdrew his hand
+to animate another character. His _Pupazzi_, as he called them, were
+clever caricatures of contemporary celebrities; and he was ingenious
+enough sometimes to maneuver half a dozen of them at once with his
+single pair of hands, four adjusted into the projecting rests, and two
+on his fingers.
+
+In the sumptuous puppet-show in the gardens of the Tuileries the same
+result is achieved by the employment of two or three manipulators, so
+that four or even six figures may appear at once. This has greatly
+enlarged the scope of the performance; and the manager of this theater
+has very ambitious aims. He likes to rearrange for his juvenile audience
+the most appropriate of the pieces which have won favor in the real
+theaters, and to present these with all sorts of spectacular adornments.
+He has even ventured to give plays as elaborate as 'Around the World in
+Eighty Days.' But it may be doubted whether this vaulting ambition has
+not overleaped itself, and whether a puppet-show does not gain rather
+than lose by restricting its efforts within narrower limits. After all,
+nothing so delights us at a puppet-show as the feats which are most
+characteristic and least difficult of accomplishment. We joy to behold
+one tiny figure belaboring another with his solid club or to follow the
+vicissitudes of a bout at single-stick, when both combatants thwack
+lustily at each other's wooden heads.
+
+                                  III
+
+Yet this mention of M. Lemercier de Neuville's _Pupazzi_, with their
+varied repertory of Aristophanic commentaries on current events, and
+this memory of the spectacular efforts exhibited in the gardens of the
+Tuileries, suggest a possible explanation for the fact that Punch and
+Judy have failed to find wide-spread favor here in America and that they
+seem to be losing their pristine popularity in England. There is a
+pitiable monotony of program in all English-speaking puppet-shows. They
+confine their repertory to the single play which sets forth the deeds
+and misdeeds of Mr. Punch. Now, in the Continent of Europe there is no
+such monotony. Not only in the gardens of the Tuileries but in the
+Champs-Elysées a young spectator can sit thru performance after
+performance without fear of having to witness the same piece. Punch
+appears in only one drama, whereas his French rival, Guignol, in his
+time plays many parts, with a host of other characters to be his
+associates, some in one piece and some in another. And the several plays
+are adorned with a variety of scenery. Of course, there cannot be a very
+wide range of subject; and always is the stick a prominent feature in
+the miniature drama. There are a certain number of traditional Guignol
+pieces, handed down from generation to generation. Some of these have
+been printed for the use of devoted students of the drama, and some are
+to be had in little pamphlets for the benefit of the happy French
+children who may have had a puppet theater with its dozen or more
+figures presented to them as a New Year's gift. There is in the Dramatic
+Museum of Columbia University the manuscript of half a dozen of these
+little plays, written out (in all the license of his own simplified
+spelling) by the incomparable performer who was in charge of the leading
+Guignol in the Champs-Elysées in 1867.
+
+It is rather curious that the English puppet-show should have confined
+itself for now nearly a hundred years to the unique Punch and Judy,
+when the puppet-shows of other countries have a changing repertory. It
+was a puppet performance of a German perversion of Marlowe's 'Doctor
+Faustus' which first introduced Goethe to the Faust legend. George Sand,
+unlike the great German poet in most ways, was yet like him in her
+delight in the puppet-show. In her country place at Nohant, she had a
+tiny theater of her own for which she dressed all the puppets, while her
+son Maurice carved the heads, painted the scenery, devised the plays,
+and improvised the dialog. Maurice Sand it was, sometimes alone, but
+occasionally with the aid of a friend, who manipulated the little
+figures and bestowed upon them a momentary vitality. His mother
+persuaded him to write out a dozen of the more successful of his little
+plays for puppets and to publish them; and this volume, the 'Théâtre des
+Marionnettes à Nohant,' appeared in 1876. George Sand herself wrote a
+delightful account of the humble beginnings of this famous puppet-show,
+and described how there came in time to be all sorts of ingenious
+improvements for achieving spectacular effects.
+
+She declared that the puppet-show is not what it is vainly thought,
+because it demands an art of a special kind, not only in the
+construction of the little figures themselves, but more especially in
+the story which these little figures are to interpret. She held that the
+particular field of the puppet playwright-performer was to be found in
+the dramatization of protracted fantastic romances, abounding in comic
+characters and in comic episodes and gratifying the fundamental human
+liking for long-drawn tales of adventure and for fantastic
+fairy-stories. She found in her son's acted narratives a rest from
+reality, a release from the oppression of every-day life, an excursion
+into a realm of fancy and of legend--even if the legend was itself a
+fanciful invention of the improvising performer. And she declared that
+she liked the puppet playhouse in her own home, because it was a
+domestic and fireside pleasure, which could be enjoyed without the
+exertion imposed by a visit to a real theater. Obviously she found as
+much delight in being a spectator--after having been a costumer--as her
+son did in being the author and operator of the spectacle.
+
+                                   IV
+
+There is one note to be made upon George Sand's account of the slow
+development of the puppet-show at Nohant, beginning as early as 1847. If
+you will look at any set of Punch and Judy figures hung up to-day in the
+toy store to tempt the eye of Young America, you will discover alongside
+Mr. Punch and Mrs. Judy, Jack Ketch and the Devil, a strange green
+figure with huge jaws and double rows of white teeth. This verdant beast
+has a body like all other Punch and Judy figures, a loose cloth funnel
+to slip over the sleeve of the operator; but its head suggests the head
+of an alligator, or of a crocodile, or of a dragon. Now, if you will
+turn to the classic text of the English play of Punch and Judy, edited
+with a learned introduction and an abundance of scholarly annotation by
+John Payne Collier--at least, so it is believed, altho the rare little
+book is anonymous--you will find no mention of any strange beast of this
+sort. Collier's text of the play is adorned by two dozen illustrations,
+etched by George Cruikshank, and in no one of these plates will you
+discover any crocodile, or alligator, or dragon. You will find Toby, the
+dog, who still survives in most of the few shows to be seen to-day in
+the streets of London; and you will find Hector, the gallant steed that
+Mr. Punch mounts with difficulty--and it is sad to have to record that
+Hector is no longer in the service of Mr. Punch. In fact, one devoted
+admirer of puppet-shows, whose memory goes back nearly fifty years, is
+ready to declare that he has never laid eyes on Hector--except in
+Cruikshank's illustrations. But Mr. Punch, deprived of the privilege of
+bestriding Hector, now enjoys the fiercer delight of overcoming the
+green-eyed alligator.
+
+Here we have a question of profound historic interest. Whence came the
+strange beast with the wide jaws? And here is where George Sand's
+pleasant paper is a very present help in time of need. She tells us that
+her son besought her to make a green monster for one of the earliest
+pieces he devised for her puppet-figures. She did as she was bid, and
+she sacrificed a pair of blue velvet slippers to provide the marvelous
+creature with his gently smiling jaws. She draws attention to the fact
+that the slippers were blue, and to the further fact that nevertheless
+the strange beast was always called the Green Monster. And here may be
+the explanation of the historic mystery. The fame of the puppets of
+Nohant was borne abroad; they were talked about all thru France; and
+they were discussed again and again in the Parisian newspapers. What
+more likely than that one of the professional puppet players should have
+seen the infinite possibilities of the Green Monster, and should have
+perceived its novel fascination for children? Thereupon he borrowed it
+for his own performances. Certainly it is that the Green Monster is a
+character in at least one of the manuscript plays preserved in the
+Dramatic Museum of Columbia University, and written out half a century
+ago. Probably the Green Monster strayed from the puppet-show of the
+Champs-Elysées sooner or later to one of the toy stores of Paris at the
+request of some boy who desired it for his own. When the Green Monster
+had elected domicile in the stores of Paris, he was soon appropriated by
+the toy-makers of Germany for export to Great Britain and the United
+States.
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                  XVII
+
+                   THE PUPPET-PLAY, PAST AND PRESENT
+
+                   THE PUPPET-PLAY, PAST AND PRESENT
+
+                                   I
+
+In her charming and instructive account of the ingenious puppet-shows
+with which her son Maurice used to amuse himself and her guests at
+Nohant half a century ago, George Sand records the fact that the erudite
+scholar, Magnan, who wrote a learned history of the puppet-show from the
+remotest antiquity, did not discriminate sharply between the two
+entirely different kinds of little figures, both of which are carelessly
+called puppets in English, and marionettes in French. One class
+comprises these empty and flexible figures which are animated by the
+thumb and two fingers of the performer who exhibits them by holding his
+hands above his head, as in the 'Punch and Judy' show. The other
+contains the larger dolls, suspended on wires (which are supposed to be
+invisible) and manipulated by one or more performers overhead, who give
+life to these figures by jerking the various strings as the action of
+the play may require. These last are the true marionettes; and for the
+first we have, unfortunately, no distinctive name. It is greatly to be
+regretted that the two very different types of puppets are not set apart
+from each other satisfactorily by the contributor of the article on
+marionettes in the latest edition of the 'Encyclopedia Britannica.'
+
+Each of these two sorts of puppets has an interest of its own; and each
+of them has its special and peculiar relation to the drama. Both of them
+have a long and honorable history, and can be traced back in the scanty
+records of a remote antiquity; altho it seems more likely that the true
+marionette--the little figure moved by wires from overhead--is the older
+of the two, antedating by many centuries the Punch and Judy figure,
+which owes its abrupt and awkward movements to the human thumb and
+fingers. Both classes are to be found to-day all over the world, not
+only in the cities of civilization, but in unsuspected nooks and corners
+on all the shores of all the seven seas. In Turkey, for example, under
+the name of Karaguez, there is a Punch and Judy of enormous popularity
+and of doubtful decency, while in Siam there are marionettes which
+perform religious plays of traditional appeal. Apparently the
+puppet-show of one type or the other satisfies in its fashion that
+dramatic instinct which every people possesses in greater or less
+intensity.
+
+Both kinds of puppet-show flourish in France, and have there been lifted
+to a more elevated plane of art; and both kinds retain their popularity
+in Italy, altho in an humbler form. The French are inveterate artists;
+and they are like the Greeks in desiring to do all things decently and
+in order. The Italians have, perhaps, a stronger native gift for the
+drama and they are ready to enjoy a simpler and more primitive
+puppet-play. It is from Italy that we who speak English have derived our
+Punch and Judy. Mr. Punch is a direct descendant of that favorite figure
+of robust Neapolitan farce, Pulcinella; and so is the French
+Polichinelle. And in Italy to-day the true marionettes have an even
+broader popularity than the Punch and Judy figures. The Italians who
+have lately flocked to America in their thousands, until New York now
+contains more of them than Venice, have imported in the original
+package the legendary puppet-show setting forth the romantic stories of
+the Middle Ages and of the early Renascence. We look upon Mr. Punch as
+comic; but the Italians take their pleasure seriously and the
+marionettes in their puppet-shows to be seen in New York are truly
+heroic, and not infrequently highly tragic.
+
+[Illustration: Roman puppets Greek and Roman puppets Puppet of Java]
+
+In the interesting discussion of 'Medieval Story,' in which Professor W.
+W. Lawrence of Columbia University has traced the influence of various
+ideals of the Middle Ages upon our modern social organization, he has a
+striking description of the marionette performances which the exiles of
+Italy have brought with them to America. "Any one who walks thru the
+Italian quarter of New York City in the evening may notice over a
+doorway an illuminated sign, 'Theater of Marionettes.' If his curiosity
+tempts him inside, into the low room crowded with enthusiastic
+spectators, he will see, on a rude stage, a group of puppets almost as
+large as life, representing knights and ladies, acting out a little
+drama in response to the jerking of strings fastened to their arms, and
+of iron rods firmly fixed in their heads. The warriors are gorgeously
+attired in shining armor and plumed helmets; and the ladies have
+wonderful costumes of bright colors, with a great deal of embroidery and
+decoration. An Italian in shirt-sleeves in the wings at the side of the
+stage speaks their lines for them, with all the elocutionary flourishes
+which he can command. Fiercely immobile as to expression, but most
+active as to arms and legs, these manikins march about, soliloquize,
+make love, and debate in council. But it is their battles which arouse
+the greatest enthusiasm among the audience; and, indeed, these are
+fought in a way that is a joy to see. Then it is that heroic deeds are
+done--tin swords resound upon tin armor, helmets are battered about and
+knocked off, dust rises from the field, the valiant dead fall in staring
+heaps. At such moments the spectators can hardly restrain themselves
+from emotion, yet the story is well known to them--perhaps some one
+sitting near by will volunteer to explain it, asserting that he has
+known it ever since he was a boy and that he has read it all in a book
+which he has at home, called 'Reali di Franci.' It is a version of the
+old tale of Charlemagne and his knights, which, after traveling far from
+its native home in France, was taken up by the Italian people many
+centuries ago, and made so much their own that few heroes have been
+closer to their hearts than Roland, or as they call him, Orlando. Even
+in their homes in the New World they still celebrate him, so that the
+very newsboys in the streets of modern America are keeping alive the
+heroic traditions of the age of Charlemagne."
+
+[Illustration: A Sicilian marionette show
+From "By Italian Seas," by Ernest C. Peixotto]
+
+                                   II
+
+When we compare the account which Professor Lawrence has here given of
+the Italian puppet-shows in New York with the description of these same
+performances in their native land half a century ago, which we find in
+the 'Roba di Roma' of W. W. Story, the American sculptor-poet, we
+perceive that there has been little modification of method in the past
+threescore years. Story studied all sides of the Roman populace, and he
+maintained that nothing was more characteristically Italian than the
+marionette theater. He tells us that the love for the acting of
+_burattini_ [or puppets] is universal among the lower classes thruout
+Italy, and in some cities, especially in Genoa, no pains are spared "in
+their costume, construction, and movement to render them lifelike. They
+are made of wood, generally from two to three feet in height, with very
+large heads, and supernatural glaring eyes that never wink, and are clad
+in all the splendor of tinsel, velvet, and steel. Their joints are so
+flexible that the least weight or strain upon them effects a
+dislocation, and they are moved by wires attached to their heads and
+extremities. The largest are only about half the height of a man, yet as
+the stage and all the appointments and scenery are upon the same scale
+of proportion, the eye is soon deceived, and accepts them as of
+life-size. But if by accident a hand or arm of one of the wire-pullers
+appears from behind the scenes or descends below the hangings, it
+startles you by its portentous size; and the audience in the
+stage-boxes instead of reducing the _burattini_ to Lilliputians by
+contrast, as they lean forward, become themselves Brobdingnagians, with
+elephantine hands and heads."
+
+Story insisted that there is nothing ludicrous to an Italian audience in
+the performances of these diminutive men and women. On the contrary,
+nothing is more serious both to the spectators and to the unforeseen
+operators. In fact, he declared, no human being could be so serious as
+these tiny performers. "Their countenances are as solemn as death, and
+more unchanging than the face of a clock. Their terrible gravity when,
+with drooping heads and collapsed arms, they fix on you their great
+goggle-eyes is at times ghastly. The plays they perform are mostly
+heroic, romantic, and historical. They stoop to nothing which is not
+startling in incident, imposing in style, and grandiose in movement. And
+the Italian audience listens with a grave and profound interest, as tho
+the performers were not mere puppets, but actually the heroes they are
+supposed to be. The inflated and extravagant discourse of the characters
+is accepted at its face value; to the spectators it is grand and noble.
+And the foreign visitor must control any desire he may feel to smile at
+the extraordinary spectacle he is witnessing, and at the marvelous
+rodomontade he is hearing. To laugh out loud at one of these heroic
+puppet-plays would be as indecorous as to indulge in laughter during a
+church service."
+
+[Illustration: A Belgian puppet A Chinese puppet theater Puppet figure
+representing the younger Coquelin]
+
+Incidental to the heroic dramas which the puppets play are interludes of
+ballet-dancing like those which are intercalated, more or less adroitly,
+into the grand opera performed by full-grown men and women. The Italians
+are born pantomimists, and they are accomplished dancers. Therefore,
+there is no reason for surprise that human pantomime and human dancing
+are imitated in the marionette theaters. There is reason for surprise,
+however, that Story did not perceive clearly the advantages possessed by
+the dancing puppets over the dancers of more solid flesh and blood. He
+found something comic in the pantomime of the puppets, "whose every
+motion is effected by wires, who imitate the gestures of despair with
+hands that cannot shut, and, with a wooden gravity of countenance, throw
+their bodies into terrible contortions to make up for the lack of
+expression in the face." In mere pantomime it is probable that the
+puppets would labor under a serious disability, for if a performer
+cannot use his voice, he needs facial expression to assist the gestures
+by which only can he then convey his meaning to the other performers and
+to the spectators. Perhaps it is not too much to assert that the
+puppet-show is not the proper place for pantomime.
+
+                                  III
+
+We need not wonder that Story admitted their dancing to be superior to
+their pantomime. Yet he failed to appreciate the true cause of this
+superiority, and he was inclined to comment upon the dancing of the
+_burattini_ in a somewhat satiric fashion. He tells us how the principal
+dancer suddenly appears, "knocks her wooden knees together, and jerking
+her head about, salutes the audience with a smile quite as artificial as
+we could see in the best trained of her fleshly rivals." But this
+artificial smile must have been fixed and permanent on the features of
+this diminutive dancer--or else the Roman-American essayist merely
+imagined its presence. "Then, with a masterly ease, after describing
+air-circles with her toes far higher than her head and poising herself
+in impossible positions, she bounds or rather flies forward with
+superhuman lightness, performs feats of choreography to awaken envy in
+Cerito and drive Elssler to despair, and, poising on her pointed toe
+that disdains to touch the floor, turns never-ending pirouettes on
+nothing at all, till at last, throwing both her wooden hands forward,
+she suddenly comes to a swift stop to receive your applause."
+
+This description is unsympathetic, and it induces the surmise that the
+operator of the _burattini_ at the performance described was not a
+master of his art and did not know how to profit by the possibilities of
+that art. Yet one of Story's phrases serves to explain why the suspended
+puppet is superbly qualified to excel in ballet-dancing; that phrase is
+the one which credits the dancing doll with "supernatural lightness." A
+skilful operator of the wires which bestow life and movement and grace,
+is able to imitate easily and exquisitely the most difficult feats of
+the human dancer. If he is sufficiently adroit he robs his suspended
+figure of all awkwardness, and he dowers her with a floating ethereality
+surpassing that attainable by any living performer. Now, this floating
+ethereality is precisely the quality which gives us most pleasure when
+we are spectators at the performance of a really fine ballet. It is the
+supreme art of the great dancer to soar lightly aloft, seeming to spurn
+the stage and to abide in the air. Only very rarely is this illusion
+possible to the merely human dancer; and when achieved it is but
+fleeting. Yet this illusion is absolutely within the control of the
+manipulator of the puppet-dancers. He can make them execute feats of
+levitation, achievable only by the most marvelously gifted and by the
+most arduously trained of human dancers.
+
+[Illustration: Puppets in Burma]
+
+[Illustration: The puppet play of Master Peter (Italian)]
+
+Of course, the skilful performer must carefully avoid swinging his tiny
+figures aimlessly thru the air. He must limit the feats that he permits
+them to accomplish to those which can be actually accomplished by human
+beings, altho he can do easily what the human beings can achieve only
+with more or less obvious effort, and he can impart a volatile
+elasticity a little beyond the power of any human being however favored
+by Terpsichore. When 'Salome' was, for a season, the sensation of the
+hour, it was produced by Holden's marionettes; and it afforded a
+delightful spectacle long to be remembered by all who had the felicity
+of beholding it. Whatever of vulgarity or of grossness there might be in
+the play itself, or in the Dance of the Seven Veils, was purged away by
+the single fact that all the performers were puppets. So dexterous was
+the manipulation of the unseen operator who controlled the wires and
+strings which gave life to the seductive Salome as she circled around
+the stage in most bewitching fashion, and so precise and accurate was
+the imitation of a human dancer, that the receptive spectator could not
+but feel that here at last the play of doubtful propriety had found its
+only fit stage and its only proper performer. The memory of that
+exhibition is a perennial pleasure to all who possess it. A thing of
+beauty it was; and it abides in remembrance as a joy forever. It
+revealed the art of the puppet-show at its summit. And the art itself
+was eternally justified by that one performance of the highest technical
+skill and of the utmost delicacy of taste.
+
+If the most marvelous exploits of terpsichorean art, almost inexecutable
+by the human toes and the human legs of living dancers, are capable of
+reproduction by puppets skilfully manipulated by the puller of the wires
+and strings whereby the little figures are suspended, so also are the
+dexterous feats of the juggler. One of the specialties of the sole
+surviving puppet-show of this sort in the Champs-Elysées is the
+performance of a juggler who tosses aloft and catches in turn a number
+of glittering balls. The delicate balancing of the tight-rope walker,
+with her frequent pirouettes on her toes, and with her surprising
+summersets, is also one of the exhibitions in which the puppet can defy
+the rivalry of any living executant, however skilful in the art. At the
+circus we feel that the tightrope dancer might fall, whereas at the
+puppet-show we know with certainty that any fatal mishap is impossible.
+In Holden's marionette program the miniature mimicry of humanity was
+carried to the utmost edge of the possible; and no item on his bill of
+fare was more delectable than the series of scenes in which the
+traditional Clown and Pantaloon played tricks on the traditional
+Policeman, and in which they joined forces in belaboring an inoffensive
+donkey. As the unfortunate quadruped was also a puppet, there was no
+painful strain on our sympathy.
+
+                                   IV
+
+If a performance by puppets deprived 'Salome' of its vulgar grossness by
+removing it outside the arena of humanity, so to speak, and by
+relegating it to an unreal world beyond the strict diocese of the
+conscience, so a performance by puppets of a passion-play or of any
+other drama in which the Deity has perforce to appear as a character, is
+thereby relieved of any tincture of irreverence. We no longer see a
+divine being interpreted by a human being. We cannot help feeling that
+all the persons in the play, whether they dwell in heaven or on earth,
+are equally remote from our common humanity. And therefore we need not
+be surprised when we discover that the marionette has long been allowed
+to appear in religious drama. Indeed, it appears probable that the very
+name _marionette_ is directly derived from the name of the Virgin.
+
+Very early in the history of the Christian Church were the puppets
+permitted to perform passion-plays and little dramas derived from the
+stories contained both in the New and the Old Testaments. In England
+under Elizabeth and James religious puppet-shows of this kind went
+wandering about the kingdom, taking into the smallest villages an
+entertainment which would afford to the rural inhabitants the same kind
+of pleasant instruction which the dwellers in the larger towns had in
+the more elaborate and long-drawn mysteries performed by the
+trade-guilds on the Corpus Christi day. That masterly rogue Autolycus in
+the 'Winter's Tale' tells us that in his time he had been on the road
+with "a motion of the Prodigal Son"--and a _motion_ was the Elizabethan
+term for a marionette-exhibition. In like manner one of the characters
+in Ben Jonson's 'Every Man out of His Humor' speaks of "a new motion of
+the city of Nineveh, with Jonas and the whale." Of course, the puppet
+performers, like the grown-up actors, did not long confine themselves to
+sacred themes; they ventured also into contemporary history. A puppet
+showman who appears in Ben Jonson's 'Bartholomew Fair' tells us that a
+certain motion setting forth the mysterious Gunpowder Plot, was "a
+get-penny."
+
+Story described one puppet-play which he saw in a little village on the
+main road from Rome to Naples, and which had for its central figure
+Judas Iscariot. But here again his attitude is unsympathetic, perhaps
+because the performance was clumsy. "The kiss of Judas, when, after
+sliding along the stage, he suddenly turned with a sidelong jerk and
+rapped the other wooden puppet's head with his own, as well as the
+subsequent scene in which he goes out and hangs himself, beggar
+description." Yet the expatriated American spectator honestly recorded
+that the Italian spectators "looked and listened with great gravity,
+seemed to be highly edified, and certainly showed no signs of seeing
+anything ludicrous in the performance." We may venture the suggestion
+that even the sophisticated sculptor-poet himself would have seen
+nothing ludicrous in this performance if the operator of Judas had been
+as skilful as the operator of Salome in Holden's marionettes.
+
+[Illustration: A Neapolitan Punchinella
+From "By Italian Seas," by Ernest C. Peixotto]
+
+A few years ago in Paris one of the younger poets wrote a passion-play
+which was performed during Lent by a company of dolls, designed and
+dressed in fit and appropriate costumes by an artist friend familiar
+with the manners and customs of the Holy Land. While the wires were
+managed by expert hands, the words of the dialog were spoken by the poet
+himself, and by two or three other poets who came to his aid. This must
+have been a seemly spectacle, and it won careful consideration from more
+than one of the most eminent dramatic critics of France. Here we may
+find a useful suggestion for those who wish to see certain plays by
+modern dramatic poets, in which the Deity is a necessary
+character--Rostand's 'Samaritaine,' for one, and Hauptmann's 'Hannele,'
+for another. Many of the devout have a natural repugnance to any
+performance on the stage (with its materialistic environment and its
+often sordid conditions) which calls for the impersonation of a divine
+being by an actor of ordinary flesh and blood. Yet if these same plays
+were reverently performed by marionettes the aroma of irreverence would
+be removed. It might even be possible to reproduce in the puppet-show
+not a little of the solemn religious effect which is felt by all
+visitors to the passion-play at Oberammergau.
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                 XVIII
+
+           SHADOW-PANTOMIME WITH ALL THE MODERN IMPROVEMENTS
+
+           SHADOW-PANTOMIME WITH ALL THE MODERN IMPROVEMENTS
+
+                                   I
+
+An American; improving on a suggestion of a Frenchman, has declared that
+"language was given to man to conceal his thoughts--and to woman to
+express her emotions." Unfortunately, language is so often inexact that
+even when it is sufficient to express emotion, it is not precise enough
+even to conceal thought. Sometimes a term is wholly devoid of truth, as
+when we call a certain solid a "lead-pencil," which contains no lead,
+and when we label a certain liquid "soda-water," which contains no soda.
+Sometimes the term is so vague that it may mean all things to all men.
+Who, for example, would be bold enough to insist on his own definition
+of "romanticism"? Sometimes again the term covers two or three things
+which demand a sharper differentiation. This is the case with the
+compound word "shadow-pantomime." It is the only name for three distinct
+things.
+
+First, there is the representation by the dark profile of the human hand
+upon a wall or a screen, of human heads, and of animal figures, either
+by an adroit arrangement of the fingers alone, or by the aid of adjusted
+shapes of cardboard, so as to suggest a hat on the head and a pipe in
+the mouth and other needed accessories; this primitive entertainment is
+sometimes styled "shadowgraphy."
+
+Second, there is the full-sized silhouette of a human figure, due to the
+shadow cast by the body standing before a lamp, and magnified or
+diminished as it approaches or recedes the spectators. This is the
+familiar parlor amusement which Sir James Barrie cleverly utilized with
+dramatic effect in the final act of his 'Professor's Love-Story,' when
+one of the characters, standing outside a house, sees the black profiles
+of other characters projected clearly on the drawn shade of the window
+before which he is placed.
+
+Then, thirdly, there is the true shadow-pantomime, called by the French
+"Chinese shadows," _ombres chinoises_, in which the tiny figures, made
+either of flat cardboard or of metal, are exhibited behind a translucent
+screen and before a strong light. This is by far the most interesting
+and the most important of the three widely different kinds of
+semi-dramatic entertainment, often carelessly confounded together even
+in the special treatises devoted to this humble art. In France these
+Chinese shadows have been popular for more than a hundred years, since
+it was in the eighteenth century that the performer who took the name of
+Séraphin established his little theater and won the favor of the younger
+members of the royal family by his presentation of the alluring
+spectacle, the rudimentary little piece, still popular with children,
+and still known by its original title, the 'Broken Bridge.'
+
+It may not be fanciful to infer that the immediate suggestion for this
+spectacle was derived from the contemporary vogue of the silhouette
+itself, this portrait in solid black taking its name from the Frenchman
+who was minister of finance in 1759. At all events, it was in 1770 that
+Séraphin began to amuse the children of Paris; and it was more than a
+century thereafter that M. Lemercier de Neuville elaborated his
+ingeniously articulated _Pupazzi noirs_. It was a little later still
+that Caran d'Ache delighted the more sophisticated children of a larger
+growth, who were wont to assemble at the Chat Noir, with the striking
+series of military silhouettes resuscitating the mighty Napoleonic epic.
+And it was at the Chat Noir again that Rivière revealed the further
+possibilities latent in shadow-pantomime, and to be developed by the aid
+of colored backgrounds supplied by a magic lantern. Restricted as the
+sphere of the shadow-pantomime necessarily is, the native artistic
+impulse of the French has been rarely better disclosed than by their
+surprising elaboration of a form of amusement, seemingly fitted only to
+charm the infant mind, into an entertainment satisfactory to the richly
+developed esthetic sense of mature Parisian playgoers. Just as the
+rustic revels of remote villagers contained the germ out of which the
+Greeks were able to develop their austere and elevating tragedy, and
+just as the modern drama was evolved in the course of centuries out of
+the medieval mysteries, one source of which we may discover in the
+infant Christ in the cradle still displayed at Christmastide in
+Christian churches thruout the world, so the simple Chinese shadows of
+Séraphin supplied the root on which Parisian artists were able to graft
+their ingenious improvements.
+
+The little spectacle proffered originally by Séraphin was frankly
+infantile in its appeal, and the 'Broken Bridge' is as plainly adjusted
+to the simple likings of the child as is the lamentable tragedy of Punch
+and Judy or the puppet-show in which Polichinelle exhibits his hump and
+his terpsichorean agility. The two arms of the broken bridge arch over a
+little stream but fail to meet in the center. A flock of ducks crosses
+leisurely from one bank to the other. A laborer appears on the left-hand
+fragment of the bridge and begins to swing his pick to loosen stones at
+the end, and these fragments are then seen to fall into the water. The
+figure of the workman is articulated, or at least one arm is on a
+separate piece and moves on a pivot so that a hidden string can raise
+the pick and let it fall. The laborer sings at his work; and in France
+he indulges in the traditional lyric about the Bridge of Avignon, where
+everybody dances in a circle. Then a traveler appears on the right-hand
+end of the bridge. He hails the laborer, who is hard of hearing at
+first, but who finally asks him what he wants. The traveler explains
+that he wishes to cross and asks how he can do this. The laborer keeps
+on picking away, and sings that "the ducks and the geese they all swim
+over." The irritated traveler then asks how far it is across, and the
+laborer again sings, this time to the effect that "when you're in the
+middle you're half-way over." Then the traveler inquires how deep the
+stream may be, and he gets the exasperating response in song, that if
+he will only throw in a stone, he'll soon find the bottom. This dialog
+bears an obvious resemblance to that traditionally associated with the
+tune of the 'Arkansaw Traveler.'
+
+[Illustration: The broken bridge]
+
+[Illustration: _Reproduced by permission of Hachette & Co., Paris_
+Plan showing the construction of a shadow-picture theater]
+
+[Illustration: A Hungarian dancer. This explains the mechanism of the
+shadow picture opposite
+A Hungarian dancer
+From a shadow picture by Lemercier de Neuville]
+
+Then a boatman appears, rowing his little skiff, his backbone pivoted so
+that his body can move to and fro. The traveler makes a bargain with him
+and is taken across, after many misadventures, one of them with a
+crocodile, which opens its jaws and threatens to engulf the boat--this
+amphibious beast having been a recent addition to the original playlet,
+and probably borrowed from the Green Monster not long ago added to the
+group of Punch and Judy figures. And the exciting conclusion of this
+entrancing spectacle displays a most moral application of the principle
+of poetic justice. The ill-natured laborer advances too far out on his
+edge of the broken bridge, and detaches a large fragment. As this
+tumbles into the water he loses his footing and falls forward himself,
+only to be instantly devoured by the crocodile, which disappears with
+its unexpected prey, whereupon the placid ducks and geese again swim
+over--and the curtain falls.
+
+                                   II
+
+There are a score of other little plays like the 'Broken Bridge,'
+adroitly adjusted to the caliber of the juvenile mind. In a British
+collection may be found a piece representing a succession of appalling
+episodes supposed to take place in a 'Haunted House,' and in a French
+manual for the use of youthful amateurs may be discovered a rudimentary
+version of Molière's 'Imaginary Invalid,' to be performed by silhouettes
+with articulated limbs. Here again we perceive the inaccuracy of the
+term "shadow-pantomime," since the most of the figures are not
+articulated, and, being motionless, they are deprived of the freedom of
+gesture which is the essential element of true pantomime. Moreover, they
+are all made to take part in various dialogs, and this again is a
+negation of the fundamental principle of pantomime, which ought to be
+wordless. Here the French term "Chinese shadows" is more exact and less
+limiting than the English "shadow-pantomime." It is perhaps a pity that
+the old-fashioned term "gallanty-show," has not won a wider acceptance
+in English.
+
+The little pieces due to Séraphin and his humble followers in France and
+in England, devised to amuse children only, were simple enough in plot,
+and yet they were sufficient to suggest to admirers of this unpretending
+form of theatrical art plays of a more imposing proportion. M. Paul
+Eudel, the art critic, has published an amply illustrated volume in
+which he collected the fairy-pieces, and the more spectacular melodramas
+composed by his grandfather in the first quarter of the nineteenth
+century, in the dark days that preceded Waterloo. And in the third
+quarter of the nineteenth century, in the dark days that preceded Sedan,
+M. Lemercier de Neuville, relinquishing for a while the Punch and Judy
+puppets which he called _Pupazzi_, and which he had exhibited in a
+succession of gentle caricatures of Parisian personalities with a mildly
+Aristophanic flavor of contemporary satire, turned to the familiar
+Chinese shadows of his childhood and devised what he called his _Pupazzi
+noirs_, animated shadows. He also has issued a collection of these
+little pieces with a full explanation of the method of performance and
+with half a hundred illustrations, revealing all the secrets of
+maneuvering the little figures. Indeed, Lemercier de Neuville's manual
+is the most ample which has yet appeared; and it is the most interesting
+in that he was at once his own playwright, his own designer of figures,
+and his own performer.
+
+[Illustration: The return from the Bois de Boulogne
+Four shadow pictures by Caran d'Ache]
+
+[Illustration: The ballet
+From a shadow picture by Lemercier de Neuville]
+
+[Illustration: _Reproduced by permission of Hachette & Co., Paris_
+A regiment of French soldiers
+From a shadow picture by R. de La Nézière]
+
+As the grandfather of M. Eudel had been more ambitious than Séraphin, so
+Lemercier de Neuville was more ambitious than the elder Eudel. And yet
+his procedure was precisely that of his predecessors, and he did not in
+any way modify the principles of the art. All he did was to elaborate
+the performance by the use of more scenery, of more spectacular effects,
+and of more numerous characters. He introduced a company of Spanish
+dancers, for example, and he did not hesitate to throw on his screen the
+sable and serrated profile of a long line of ballet dancers. He followed
+Eudel in arranging a procession of animals, rivaling a circus parade,
+many of them being articulated so that they could make the appropriate
+movements of their jaws and their paws. And he paid special attention to
+his silhouette caricatures of contemporary celebrities, Zola for one,
+and Sarah-Bernhardt for another.
+
+Then the Franco-Russian draftsman, who called himself Caran d'Ache, made
+a new departure and started the art of the shadow-pantomime in a new
+career. He called his figures "French shadows," _ombres françaises_, and
+he surrendered the privilege of articulating his figures so that they
+could move. At least, he refrained from this except on rare occasions,
+preferring the effect of immobility and relying mainly upon a new
+principle not before employed by any of his predecessors. He made a
+specialty of long lines and of large masses of troops, not all on the
+same plane, but presented in perspective. He chose also to forgo the aid
+of speech and his figures were silent, except when some officer called
+out a word of command, or when a company of Cossacks rode past singing
+one of the wailing lyrics of the Caucasus as melancholy as the steppes.
+
+One of the most attractive items on his program was a representation of
+the return of vehicles and equestrians from the Bois de Boulogne in the
+afternoon. Some of the figures were merely characteristic types sharply
+seized and outlined with all the artist's masterly draftsmanship, and
+some of them were well-known personages easily recognizable by his
+Parisian spectators--Lesseps on horseback, for example, and Rochefort in
+an open cab. These successive figures were simply pushed across the
+screen one after another, each of them as motionless as a statue, the
+men fixed in one attitude, and the legs of the horses retaining always
+the same position. This absence of animal movement was, of course, a
+violation from the facts of life, like that which permits the painter to
+depict a breaking wave or a sculptor to model a running boy at a single
+moment of the movement. Yet this artistic conversion was immediately
+acceptable since the spectator received a simplified impression and
+his attention was not distracted by the inevitable jerkiness of the
+limbs of the men and the beasts.
+
+[Illustration: _Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, Paris_
+The Sphinx I: Pharaoh passing in triumph
+From a shadow picture by Amédée Vignola]
+
+Caran d'Ache's masterpiece, however--and it may honestly be styled a
+masterpiece--was not the 'Return from the Bois de Boulogne' but his
+'Epopée,' his epic evocation of the grand army of Napoleon. Single
+figures like the Little Corporal on horseback, and like Murat and others
+of the Emperor's staff, he projected with a fidelity and a veracity of
+accent worthy of Détaille or even Meissonier. Yet fine as these single
+figures might be, they were only what had been attempted by earlier
+exponents of the art--even if they were more impressive than had been
+achieved by any one of his predecessors. These single figures were
+necessarily presented all on the same plane, and the startling and
+successful innovation of the Franco-Russian draftsmanship was his
+skilful use of perspective, a device which had not occurred to any of
+those in whose footsteps he was following, even Lemercier de Neuville
+having presented his ballet dancers in a flat row. What Caran d'Ache did
+was to bring before us company after company of the Old Guard, and troop
+after troop of cuirassiers, their profiles diminishing in height as
+the figures receded from the eye. He thus attained to an effect of
+solidity and even of immensity, far beyond anything ever before achieved
+by any earlier exhibitor of shadows. He succeeded in suggesting space,
+and of maneuvering before the astonished eyes of the entranced
+spectators a vast mass of men under arms, marching forward resolutely in
+serried ranks to victory or to death.
+
+The late Jules Lemaître, the most open-minded of French dramatic
+critics, and the most hospitable in his attitude toward the minor
+manifestations of theatric art, has recorded that this Napoleonic epic
+of Caran d'Ache communicated to him not only an emotion of actual
+grandeur, but also the thrill of war itself. He declared that "by the
+exactness of the perspective preserved in his long files of soldiers,
+Caran d'Ache gives us the illusion of number and of a number immense and
+indefinite. And by the automatic movement which sets all his troops in
+action at once, he gives us the illusion of a single soul, of a communal
+thought animating innumerable bodies--and thereby he evokes in us the
+impression of measureless power.... His silent poem, with its sliding
+profiles is, I think, the only epic in all French literature." And those
+who are familiar with the other French efforts to attain to lyric
+largeness, and who have had also the unforgetable felicity of beholding
+Caran d'Ache's marvelous projection of the Napoleonic legend, will be
+prepared to admit that Lemaître did not overstate the case.
+
+[Illustration: _Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, Paris_
+The Sphinx II: Moses leading his people out of Egypt
+From a shadow picture by Amédée Vignola]
+
+                                   III
+
+What the Franco-Russian artist had done was to reveal the alluring
+possibilities placed at the command of the shadow-pantomimist by the
+ingenious employment of perspective; and there remained only one more
+step to be taken for the final development of the art to its ultimate
+capacity. This was the addition of color; and this step was taken by an
+associate of Caran d'Ache in the exhibitions given at the Chat
+Noir--Henri Rivière. Color could be added in two ways. In the first
+place, the outlines of lanterns and of battle-flags could be cut out,
+and slips of appropriately tinted paper could be inserted in the
+openings so that the light might shine thru. This relieved the monotony
+of the uniformity of the sable figures, and added a note of amusing
+gaiety. But this was an innovation of very limited scope; and it could
+have been earlier utilized in the flat figures of Lemercier de Neuville,
+for example, if he had happened to think of it. Far wider in its
+artistic possibilities was the second of Rivière's improvements. For the
+ordinary lamp which cast a steady glow on the white screen whereon the
+profile figures appeared, he substituted a magic lantern, the painted
+slides of which enabled him to supply an appropriately colored
+background. Then he went further and employed two magic lanterns,
+superimposed; and these enabled him to get the effect of "dissolving
+views" whereby he could vary his background at will. The immediate
+result of this ingenious improvement was that the artist could bestow
+upon his shadow-pantomime not a little of the richness of color which
+delights our eyes in the stained glass of medieval cathedrals.
+
+Rivière was not only an inventor, he was also an artist, richly gifted
+with imagination; and his imagination suggested to him at once the three
+or four themes best fitted for treatment by his novel apparatus. One of
+these was the 'Wandering Jew'; another was the 'Prodigal Son'; and a
+third was the 'Temptation of Saint Anthony'--all legends of combined
+dramatic and pictorial appeal. Yet the most effective of all the
+experiments in this new form was due not to Rivière himself but to the
+collaboration of two of his disciples, M. Fragerolle and M. Vignola.
+This was the 'Sphinx,' in which the artists most adroitly combined all
+the advantages of the original flat profiles, and of the long files of
+figures in perspective such as Caran d'Ache had employed, with varied
+backgrounds due to the aid of the magic lantern first utilized by
+Rivière. Of all human monuments no one has had so marvelous a series of
+spectacles pass before its sightless eyes as the Sphinx, reclining
+impassive at the edge of the desert, and at the foot of the pyramids.
+Race after race has descended into the valley of the Nile, and lingered
+for a little space, a few centuries more or less, and departed at last.
+Conqueror after conqueror has come and gone again; and the Sphinx has
+kept its inscrutable smile.
+
+[Illustration: _Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, Paris_
+The Sphinx III: Roman warriors in Egypt
+From a shadow picture by Amédée Vignola]
+
+M. Fragerolle composed the music and the words of the stately chants
+which accompanied the exhibition of the figures passing before the
+backgrounds, due to the pencil and the palette of M. Vignola. By the aid
+of the magic lantern the gigantic visage of the lion with a woman's head
+towers aloft, permanent and immutable, while the joyous procession of
+Egyptian dancers and soldiers and priests celebrates the completion of
+the statue itself. Then we are witnesses of the fierce invasion of the
+Assyrians, with the charge of their chariots and their horsemen; and we
+behold the rout of the natives while their capital burns in the
+distance. Next we gaze at the departure of the Jews, led by Moses and
+laden with the spoils of the Egyptians. After the Hebrews have gone,
+Sesostris appears, to be greeted by a glad outpouring of the populace.
+Yet soon the Persians descend on Egypt, with their castellated elephants
+and their immense hordes of fighting men. Still the Sphinx looks down,
+immovable and implacable; and the Greeks in turn take the valley of the
+Nile for their own. One of their daughters, Cleopatra, floats past in
+her galley by night; and in the morning she extends her hospitality to
+the Roman, Cæsar or Antony. And while the Latins are the rulers of the
+land of Egypt, the Virgin and her Son with the patient ass that bears a
+precious burden, skirt the sandy waste, and go on their way to the Holy
+Land, leaving the Sphinx behind them as they journey forward in the
+green moonlight. After long centuries the Arabs break in with their
+brilliant bands of horsemen, and a little later the Crusaders come to
+give them battle. More long centuries elapse and suddenly Napoleon
+emerges at the head of the troops of the French Republic. Then we have
+the Egypt of to-day, with the British soldiers parading before the feet
+of the Sphinx; and finally the recumbent statue appears to us once more
+and for the last time, when the light of the sun is going out, and the
+world is emptied of its population again, and the ice is settling down
+on the Sphinx, alone amid freezing desolation. And this last vision is
+projected by the magic lantern, without the aid of any profile figures,
+since man has ceased to be.
+
+Here we have a true epic poem, simple yet grandiose, and possible only
+to the improved shadow-pantomime of France at the end of the nineteenth
+century--even if this art is only a logical evolution from the
+gallanty-show of Séraphin. "This humble black profile," said Jules
+Lemaître, "which had been thought fit at best of a few comic effects to
+amuse little children only, has been diversified and colored; it has
+been made beautiful, serious, tragic; by the multiplication of the
+devices it has been rendered capable of giving us a powerful impression
+of collective life, and the artists who have developed it have known how
+to make it translate to our eyes the great spectacles of history and the
+sweeping movement of multitudes."
+
+(1912.)
+
+[Illustration: _Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, Paris_
+The Sphinx IV: The British troops to-day
+From a shadow picture by Amédée Vignola]
+
+                                  XIX
+
+                   THE PROBLEM OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM
+
+                   THE PROBLEM OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM
+
+                                   I
+
+It is now no longer in dispute that there has been in the past score or
+two of years a striking revival of the drama in the English language,
+and that there are to-day British and American playwrights who write
+plays which are worth while--plays which are both actable and
+readable--plays which often deserve and which sometimes even demand
+serious critical consideration. This revival has necessarily resulted in
+calling attention to the present condition of dramatic criticism in
+Great Britain and in the United States. In a period of dramatic
+productivity, dramatic criticism has an indisputable function and is
+charged with an undeniable duty, both to the aspiring play-makers and to
+the main body of the playgoing public. We cannot help asking ourselves
+whether our dramatic critics rightly apprehend their function and
+whether they properly discharge their duty; and to these pressing
+questions the most conflicting answers are returned.
+
+Some there are who insist that it is hopeless to expect the desired
+outflowering of dramatic literature in our language to take place so
+long as our dramatic criticism is as inadequate, as incompetent, and as
+unsatisfactory as they declare it to be. Others there are who take a
+more tolerant view, holding the public itself to be at fault for the
+existing state of things, and who, therefore, believe that we are now
+getting dramatic criticism quite as good as we deserve. Few there are
+who venture to deny that there is room for improvement--altho no two of
+these agree in their suggestions for bringing about a bettering of
+present conditions. In the multitude of these counsellors there is
+darkness and confusion.
+
+Perhaps there is a dim possibility of dissipating a little of this dark
+confusion by an analysis of the exact content, which we discover in the
+term "dramatic criticism," and then by a further inquiry as to whether
+our customary use of the term is not misleading. "Dramatic criticism" to
+most of us connotes the newspaper reviewing of the nightly spectacles in
+our theaters. Plainly this was the meaning of the term in the mind of
+Mr. Howells years ago, when he declared that "our dramatic criticism is
+probably the most remarkable apparatus of our civilization" and that it
+"surpasses that of other countries as much as our fire-department. A
+perfectly equipped engine stands in every newspaper office, with the
+steam always up, which can be manned in nine seconds and rushed to the
+first theater where there is the slightest danger of drama within five
+minutes; and the combined efforts of these tremendous machines can pour
+a concentrated deluge of cold water upon a play which will put out
+anything of the kind at once."
+
+There is no denying that this use of the term by Mr. Howells is
+supported by custom. Yet it is distinctly unfortunate, for if the
+newspaper comment upon the novelties of the stage is to be accepted as
+"dramatic criticism," then what term have we left to describe the more
+piercing and the more comprehensive discussion of the first principles
+of the art of play-making which we find in Francisque Sarcey and in
+George Henry Lewes, not to go back to Lessing and to Aristotle? It is
+equally unfortunate that there is an equivalent inaccuracy in bestowing
+the title of "literary criticism" upon the newspaper comments upon the
+current books, for if this journalistic summarizing is to be accepted as
+"literary criticism," then what are we to call the exquisite evaluation
+of favorite authors which we find in Matthew Arnold and Sainte-Beuve?
+
+Of course, it is always idle to protest against the popular use or
+misuse of words and terms and phrases. The people as a whole own the
+language, and have a right to make it over and to modify the original
+meaning of words. If popular usage chooses not to distinguish between
+two very different things, and to call both of them "dramatic
+criticism," there is no redress, and yet it is impossible to discuss the
+problem of dramatic criticism except by trying to separate the two
+things thus confounded. Therefore, for the purpose of this inquiry only,
+and without any hope of changing the accepted usage, I make bold to
+suggest that "play-reviewing" might be employed to describe the notices
+written in the office of a newspaper, notices necessarily prepared under
+pressure and under strict limitations of time and space.
+
+These newspaper notices are sometimes careless, they are sometimes
+perfunctory, and they are sometimes cruel; and occasionally they are
+careful, conscientious, and clever, done with a dexterity worthy of high
+praise when we consider all the conditions under which it is displayed.
+But even at its best, play-reviewing cannot attain to the level of true
+dramatic criticism, more leisurely in its composition, larger in its
+scope, and more discriminating in its choice of topic. The
+play-reviewing of the daily journal is akin in aim to the
+book-reviewing, which has for its purpose the swift consideration of the
+volume in vogue at the moment. In our morning and evening papers the
+book-reviewing and the play-reviewing are both of them necessarily
+up-to-date, in fact, up-to-the-last-minute. To be contemporaneous,
+instantly and necessarily and inexorably, is their special quality and
+their immediate purpose; it is the reason for their existence and the
+excuse for their being.
+
+                                   II
+
+Here it may be well to cite again the oft-quoted confession of the late
+Jules Lemaître, writer of volume after volume in which he discussed the
+leading men of letters of his own time and of his own country:
+"Criticism of our contemporaries is not criticism--it is conversation."
+Now, conversation may be a very good thing; indeed, when it is as clear
+and as sparkling as was Lemaître's, it is an excellent thing; yet he
+was right in admitting that it is not criticism, since it could not but
+lack the touchstone of time, the perspective of distance, the assured
+application of the eternal standards. And play-reviewing, like
+book-reviewing, cannot be anything but conversation about our
+contemporaries. It may descend to chaff-like chatter about the writers
+of the hour and to empty gossip about their sayings and doings; or it
+may have the sterner merits of brilliant conversation at its best. But
+it is not really criticism in the finer sense of the word; it cannot be;
+and one may go further and say that it ought not to be, since true
+criticism is more or less out of place in a newspaper--because the
+direct object of a newspaper is to present the news, with only the
+swiftest of commentaries thereon.
+
+The final distinction between literature and journalism is to be sought
+in their diverging and irreconcilable objects. The desire of the former
+is for permanence, and the aim of the latter is the immediate
+impression. When literature triumphs it is for all time--more or less.
+When journalism most completely achieves its purpose its success is
+temporary, to be retained only by iteration and reiteration, since it
+has for its target the events of the fleeting moment. If we admit this
+distinction between journalism and literature, we have no difficulty in
+discovering journalism in many places other than the daily and weekly
+papers; very properly it fills the most of the space in the monthly
+magazines, and even in the quarterly reviews; and it abounds in our
+book-stores, since only a small proportion of the volumes which pour
+from the press every year possess the combined substance and style, the
+solidity of matter and the delightfulness of manner which lift mere
+writing up to the loftier level of literature.
+
+On the other hand, we may find literature of inexpugnable quality, not
+only in the magazines, but also now and again in the newspapers. Drake's
+'American Flag' and Kipling's 'Recessional' appeared in daily journals,
+and so did the literary criticism of Sainte-Beuve and the dramatic
+criticism of Lessing and of Lemaître. But these were but happy
+accidents, and the great newspaper editor has rarely striven to make his
+journal a persistent vehicle for the publication of literature. He feels
+that this is foreign to his main purpose, and he is content when his
+editorial articles, and his news stories are vigorous and
+picturesque--clean, clear, and cogent in their English. He knows, better
+than any one else, that it is not by its external literary merits that
+newspaper-writing is to be judged. What he wants above all else is the
+news, all the news, and nothing but the news--accompanied, of course, by
+the obligatory comment this news may deserve. He needs editorial
+writers, reporters, and correspondents who are newspaper men, and not
+men of letters, except in so far as these men of letters may have
+accepted the special conditions of newspaper work.
+
+Now, criticism, whether literary or dramatic, is a department of
+literature, dealing with the permanent, and having little to do with the
+temporary. It demands qualifications very rarely united--insight,
+equipment, disinterestedness, and sympathy. So far from being easy,
+criticism is quite as difficult as creation--more difficult, indeed, if
+we may judge by its greater rarity. In a superbly creative period there
+are sometimes three or four distinguished poets, friendly rivals, almost
+contemporaneous; and even at such a time there is rarely more than one
+critic worthy to be companioned with them. Æschylus and Sophocles and
+Euripides followed one after the other; and in time the sole Aristotle
+came forward as their critic. Corneille and Molière and Racine labored
+side by side, and only Boileau was competent to interpret and to
+encourage them.
+
+When it attains to the serene plane of Aristotle and Boileau, of Lessing
+and Sainte-Beuve, criticism is actually creation. "The critical faculty
+as applied to the masterpieces of literature, and still more the
+critical faculty as applied to the art of literature itself, is akin to
+the creative faculty of the artist," so Professor Mackail has told us.
+"It does not deal with letters as something detached from life, but as
+the form or substance in which life is intelligibly presented. Its
+interpretation is also creation." But the criticism of dramatic
+literature which is also creation, is possible only when the critical
+faculty is applied to the masterpieces of dramatic literature; and
+nobody knows better than the play-reviewer that masterpieces of dramatic
+literature do not present themselves frequently and that they cannot be
+acclaimed as masterpieces until they have stood the test of time. And
+this is why a critic-creator would be a little out of place on the staff
+of a newspaper, daily or weekly, whether he was assigned to deal with
+the drama or with literature at large.
+
+                                  III
+
+The necessary task of the book-reviewer or of the play-reviewer, is not
+criticism of the creative kind, since for that he is always likely to
+lack material. His task is humbler even if it is honorable; it is to
+report upon the novelties of the day, and to inform the readers of the
+newspaper as to the nature and the merits of these novelties. His work
+is essentially reporting, even if it is reporting of a special kind,
+calling for special qualifications. The connection of the drama with the
+show business is intimate, and it always has been. In the long history
+of the theater there is no period without its successful pieces, the
+appeal of which was mainly sensuous--to the eye and to the ear, rather
+than to the emotions and to the intellect. While the drama is an art,
+and perhaps the loftiest of the arts, the show business is a trade. This
+is no new thing--altho ignorant idealists often declare it so to be, and
+altho it may make itself a little more obvious at one time than at
+another. What confronts us is the condition of things as they are, not
+the theory of things as they might be.
+
+There would be occupation for a dramatic critic, who was also a creator,
+only if our theaters were presenting in rapid succession a sequence of
+masterpieces, tragedies of austere power, comedies of searching satire,
+social dramas of piercing suggestion. But this is not the case now here
+in the United States in the twentieth century; and it never has been the
+case anywhere or anywhen, not even in Weimar when Goethe dominated the
+ducal theater. In our playhouses we are proffered our choice of
+Shakspere and Ibsen, Pinero and Hauptmann, Henry Arthur Jones and
+Augustus Thomas, Barrie and Gillette, Sardou and George M. Cohan; and at
+the same time we are invited to choose between 'Trilby' and the
+'Celebrated Case,' melodramas and farces, summer song-shows and
+ultra-contemporary reviews, alleged comic operas and terpsichorean
+spectacles. Most of these latter exhibitions do not demand or deserve
+criticism of any kind; but they need to be reported upon like any other
+item in the news of the day.
+
+If this is the case, it might as well be recognized frankly. There is
+always advantage in seeing things as they are, in fronting the facts and
+in looking them squarely in the face. Sooner or later some one of those
+who are in charge of our metropolitan newspapers will perceive the
+possibility of a change of method. He will charge one of his staff with
+the supervision of the theatrical news, the announcements of new plays,
+and the personal gossip about the players; and he will authorize this
+editor to send competent reporters to all first performances, directed
+to report upon them as they would report upon any other event of
+immediate interest. He would warn these reporters that they were
+strictly to consider themselves as reporters, and that they were,
+therefore, to refrain from explicit criticism. He would so select his
+men that a melodrama should be dealt with by a reporter who liked a good
+melodrama, and that a summer song-show should be described by a reporter
+who could find pleasure in inoffensive and amusing spectacle. If this
+policy should be adopted, and announced clearly and emphatically,
+probably most of the occasions for quarrel between managers and editors
+would disappear; and the immense majority of the readers of the daily
+paper would be supplied with exactly the information they would prefer.
+
+Then, for the benefit of the smaller number who are really interested in
+the drama as a serious art, the editor-in-chief might avail himself of
+the fact that the Sunday issue, while it is still a newspaper containing
+the news of the preceding twenty-four hours, is also a magazine, to be
+read in more leisurely fashion, and therefore at liberty to treat timely
+topics with a larger freedom. Here space could be found for genuine
+dramatic criticism by the most competent expert available. This dramatic
+critic should have nothing whatever to do with the news of the theaters,
+or with the first-night play-reviewing. He should not be tired and bored
+by having to go to the theater half a dozen times a week, and by being
+forced to analyze plays which do not reward analysis. He would be
+expected to select out of the current performances that one which
+promised to be most worthy of careful consideration, and he would feel
+himself free to discuss this at such length as it might seem to him to
+deserve. To him also should be intrusted the more significant of the new
+books upon the history of the theater, and upon the art of the drama. In
+the summer (and also whenever at any other season there might be a
+dearth of inspiring topics), this dramatic critic would not be expected
+to contribute, since he should never be called upon to make bricks
+without straw.
+
+Even in New York this method is not as new as it may seem, and more than
+one metropolitan daily has approximated to it, altho no one of them has
+completely detached the dramatic critic from the play-reviewer and from
+the supervisor of theatrical gossip. And it has long been adopted in
+certain of the Paris newspapers. In the _Temps_, for example, when
+Sarcey was its dramatic critic, there was a daily column of theatrical
+announcements and of brief reports upon first-night performances; and
+with this department of the news of the theaters Sarcey had nothing to
+do, and for it he had no responsibility. Then in the ample space
+specially reserved for him in the issue of every Sunday afternoon, he
+dealt with the dramatic themes that seemed to him worth while. If a play
+appeared to demand prolonged study, he might go to see it two, or even
+three times, before he undertook to formulate his opinion; and on
+occasion he would carry over his detailed discussion of a very important
+drama into the article of the following Sunday. On the other hand, if
+no recent play seemed to him to deserve his continued attention, he
+would devote himself to one of the recent books about the theater or to
+a detailed discussion of the proper interpretation of one of the
+classics of the French drama kept constantly in the repertory of the
+Comédie-Française.
+
+                                   IV
+
+The adoption of this method would relieve the dramatic critic from one
+of his existing disadvantages; he would be released from criticising the
+pieces which are beneath criticism. The literary critic, and even the
+ordinary book-reviewer, never spends his time in considering dime
+novels--whereas the dramatic critic is now called upon to waste many
+evenings in beholding a play which is only the theatrical equivalent of
+a dime novel. The immediate result of this futile and fatiguing
+expenditure of energy is likely to be discouraging and even enervating.
+If the dramatic critic could be totally relieved from all contact with
+the show business when the show business has only a casual connection
+with the drama, it would tend to keep him fit for his essential task.
+Under the present conditions it is no wonder that the theatrical
+reviewer wearies of his task and loses the gusto and the zest without
+which all work tends to degenerate into the perfunctory and the
+mechanical.
+
+We need not fear that the first-night reporting would be ill done if
+competent reporters were instructed that they were not to consider
+themselves as critics, and that it was their sole duty to report, as
+they would report anything else, conscientiously and accurately. The
+difficulty would not be in finding reporters able to discharge this
+duty, it would be in the discovery of dramatic critics possessing the
+fourfold qualifications of insight, equipment, disinterestedness, and
+sympathy, which every critic must be endowed with whatever the art he
+undertakes to analyze. And the difficulty would be increased by the fact
+that the dramatic critic needs an understanding of three different arts,
+the art of acting, the art of literature, and the art of the drama--of
+play-making as distinct from literature.
+
+It would be idle to hope that even if this method were adopted we should
+soon be able to develop in the United States and in Great Britain a
+group of dramatic critics of the capacity and the quality of Lessing and
+Sarcey, of George Henry Lewes and William Archer. Yet it is solely by
+the adoption of this method that we can hope to provide the opportunity
+for the appearance of the true dramatic critic, who can fit himself for
+his finer work only by being set free from the necessity of doing work
+quite unworthy of him, altho necessary to the newspaper itself. And the
+development of a group of dramatic critics of a higher type than can be
+found to-day--except possibly in a scant half-dozen dailies and weeklies
+and monthlies--is a condition precedent to the development of our drama.
+Of course, these dramatic critics, whatever their endowment, could give
+little help directly to the dramatic authors, since it is a mistake to
+suppose that the critic is capable of counselling the author, or that he
+is charged with any such duty. Where the critic can help is by
+disseminating knowledge about the dramatic art, and by raising the
+standard of appreciation in the public at large--that public which even
+the mightiest dramatist has to please or else to fail of his purpose.
+
+(1915.)
+
+                          TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+
+Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_.
+
+Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.
+
+Throughout the document, the [oe] ligature was replaced with "OE".
+
+The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up
+paragraphs and so that they are next the text they illustrate. Thus the
+page number of the illustration might not match the page number in the
+List of Illustrations, and the order of illustrations may not be the
+same in the List of Illustrations and in the book.
+
+Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected
+unless otherwise noted below:
+
+Throughout the book, "avalanch" was replaced with "avalanche".
+
+On page 56, the single quotation mark was removed from the block-quoted
+paragraph.
+
+On page 116, "denial of of" was replaced with "denial of".
+
+On page 230, "Amercan" was replaced with "American".
+
+On page 296, "air-cirlces" was replaced with "air-circles".
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Book About the Theater, by Brander Matthews
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Book About the Theater, by Brander Matthews
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Book About the Theater
+
+Author: Brander Matthews
+
+Release Date: July 20, 2011 [EBook #36790]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Ernest Schaal, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="bbox">
+<p class="center"><i>Books by Brander Matthews</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Biographies</span></p>
+
+<p>Shakspere as a Playwright<br />
+Molière, His Life and His Works</p>
+
+<hr class="hrsm"/>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Essays and Criticisms</span></p>
+
+<p>French Dramatists of the 19th Century<br />
+Pen and Ink, Essays on subjects of more or less importance<br />
+Aspects of Fiction, and other Essays<br />
+The Historical Novel, and other Essays<br />
+Parts of Speech, Essays on English<br />
+The Development of the Drama<br />
+Inquiries and Opinions<br />
+The American of the Future, and other Essays<br />
+Gateways to Literature, and other Essays<br />
+On Acting<br />
+A Book About the Theater</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<h2>A BOOK<br />
+ABOUT THE THEATER</h2>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_fp" id="image_fp"></a>
+<img src="images/i_006.png" alt="" title="" /><br />
+<span class="caption">LE BALLET DE LA REINE<br />
+<br />
+A FRENCH COURT BALLET IN<br />
+THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH<br />
+CENTURY</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h1">A BOOK<br />
+ABOUT THE THEATER</p>
+
+<p class="h2">BY<br />
+BRANDER MATTHEWS</p>
+
+<p class="center">PROFESSOR OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY; MEMBER<br />
+OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_007.png" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cnobmargin">NEW YORK</p>
+<p class="cnomargins">CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS</p>
+<p class="cnotmargin">1916</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="cnobmargin"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1916, by</span></p>
+<p class="cnomargins">CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS</p>
+<hr class="hrsm"/>
+<p class="cnotmargin">Published October, 1916</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_008.png" alt="" title=""/>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<h2>TO AUGUSTUS THOMAS</h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">My Dear Augustus:</span></p>
+
+<p class="indent">Let me begin by confessing my regret that I cannot
+overhear your first remark when you receive this sheaf
+of essays, many of which are devoted to the subordinate
+subdivisions of the art of the stage. As it is,
+I can only imagine your surprise at discovering that
+this book, which contains papers dealing with certain
+aspects of the theater rarely considered to be worthy
+of criticism, is signed by the occupant of the earliest
+chair to be established in any American university
+specifically for the study of dramatic literature. I
+fancy I can hear the expression of your wonder that
+a sexagenarian professor should turn aside from his
+austere analysis of the genius of Sophocles and of
+Shakspere, of Molière and of Ibsen, to discuss the
+minor arts of the dancer and the acrobat, to chatter
+about the conjurer and the negro minstrel, to consider
+the principles of pantomime and the development of
+scene-painting. But I am emboldened to hope that
+your surprise will be only momentary, and that you
+will be moved to acknowledge that perhaps there may
+be some advantage to be derived from these deviations
+into the by-paths of stage history.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">You are rather multifarious yourself; "like Cerberus,
+you are three gentlemen at once"; you have been
+a reporter, you have published a novel, you have
+painted pictures, you have delivered addresses&mdash;and
+you write plays, too. I think that you, at least, will
+readily understand how a student of the stage may
+like to stray now and again from the main road and to
+ramble away from the lofty temple of dramatic art to
+loiter for a little while in one or another of its lesser
+chapels. And you, again, will appreciate my conviction
+that these loiterings and these strollings may be
+as profitable as that casual browsing about in a library
+which is likely to enrich our memories with not a little
+interesting information that we might never have
+captured had we adhered to a rigorous and rigid course
+of study. You will see what I mean when I declare
+my belief that I have come back from these wanderings
+with an increased understanding of the theory of
+the theater, and with an enlarged acquaintance with
+its manifold manifestations.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Perhaps I ought to explain, furthermore, that these
+excursions into the purlieus of the playhouse began
+long, long ago. I gave a Punch and Judy show before
+I was sixteen; I performed experiments in magic, I
+blacked up as Tambo, I whitened myself as Clown, I
+played the low-comedy part in a farce, and I attempted
+the flying trapeze before I was twenty; and I was
+not encouraged by the result of these early experiences
+to repeat any of the experiments after I came of age.
+I think it was as a spinner of hats and as the underman
+of a "brothers' act" that I came nearest to success;
+at least I infer this from the fact&mdash;may I mention
+it without seeming to boast?&mdash;that with my partners
+in this brothers' act, I was asked if I would care to
+accept an engagement with a circus for the summer.
+As to the merits of the other efforts I need say nothing
+now; the rest is silence. When the cynic declared
+that the critics were those who had failed in literature
+and art, he overstated his case, as is the custom of
+cynics. But it is an indisputable advantage for any
+critic to have adventured himself in the practise of the
+art to the discussion of which he is to devote himself;
+he may have failed, or at least he may not have succeeded
+as he could wish; but he ought to have gained
+a firmer grasp on the principles of the art than he would
+have had if he had never risked himself in the vain
+effort.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">With this brief word of personal explanation I step
+down from the platform of the preface to let these
+various essays speak for themselves. If they have
+any message of any value, I feel assured in advance
+that your friendly ear will be the first to interpret it.
+And I remain,</p>
+
+<p class="cnobmargin">Ever yours,</p>
+<p class="rnotmargin">Brander Matthews</p>
+
+<p class="lnobmargin">Columbia University,</p>
+<p class="lnotmargin">in the City of New York.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">CONTENTS</p>
+
+<p class="right">PAGE</p>
+
+<ul class="TOCRSC">
+<li>The Show Business <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">1</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The Limitations of the Stage <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">17</a></span></li>
+
+<li>A Moral from a Toy Theater <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">37</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Why Five Acts? <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">55</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Dramatic Collaboration <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">77</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The Dramatization of Novels and the<br />
+Novelization of Plays <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">93</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Women Dramatists <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">111</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The Evolution of Scene-Painting <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">127</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The Book of the Opera <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">153</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The Poetry of the Dance <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">169</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The Principles of Pantomime <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">185</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The Ideal of the Acrobat <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">201</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The Decline and Fall of Negro-Minstrelsy <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">217</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The Utility of the Variety-Show <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">235</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The Method of Modern Magic <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">251</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The Lamentable Tragedy of Punch and Judy <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">271</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The Puppet-Play, Past and Present <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">287</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Shadow-Pantomime, with All the Modern<br />
+Improvements <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">303</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The Problem of Dramatic Criticism <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">319</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Le ballet de la reine <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_fp"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></span></p>
+
+<p class="right">FACING PAGE</p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Upper half of Plate No. 1, the 'Miller and His Men' <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_057">40</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">A group of the principal characters from<br /> Pollock's juvenile drama, the 'Miller and His Men' <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_061">42</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Explosion of the mill. A back drop in the 'Miller and His Men' <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_067">46</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Plate No. 7, the 'Miller and His Men' <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_071">48</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Lower half of Plate No. 5, the 'Miller and His Men' <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_077">52</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">The Roman Theater at Orange <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_161">134</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">The multiple set of the French medieval stage <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_161">134</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">The set of the Italian comedy of masks <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_161">134</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">An outdoor entertainment in the gardens of<br />
+the Pitti Palace in Florence in the early sixteenth century <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_165">136</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">The set for the opera of 'Persée' (as<br />
+performed at the Opéra in Paris in the seventeenth century) <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_171">140</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">A prison (designed by Bibiena in Italy in the eighteenth century) <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_171">140</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">The screen scene of the 'School for Scandal'<br /> at Drury Lane in 1778 <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_177">144</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">A landscape set <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_181">146</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">A set for the opera of 'Robert le Diable' <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_181">146</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">The set of the last act of the 'Garden of Allah' <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_185">148</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">A set for 'Medea' <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_185">148</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">The set of '&OElig;dipe-Roi' (at the Théâtre Français) <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_189">150</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">The set of the 'Return of Peter Grimm' <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_189">150</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Scenes from Punch and Judy <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_315">274</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Scenes from Punch and Judy (continued) <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_319">276</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Roman puppets. Greek and Roman puppets. Puppet of Java. <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_335">290</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">A Sicilian marionette show <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_339">292</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">A Belgian puppet. A Chinese puppet theater.<br /> Puppet figure representing the younger Coquelin <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_343">294</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Puppets in Burma <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_347">296</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">The puppet play of Master Peter (Italian) <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_347">296</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">A Neapolitan Punchinella <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_353">300</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">The broken bridge. Plan showing the construction of a<br />
+ shadow-picture theater. A Hungarian dancer (a shadow picture) <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_363">308</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Shadow Pictures. The return from the Bois de<br />
+ Boulogne. The ballet. A regiment of French soldiers <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_367">310</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Shadow Picture. The Sphinx I: Pharaoh passing in triumph <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_371">312</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Shadow Picture. The Sphinx II: Moses leading his people out of Egypt <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_375">314</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Shadow Picture. The Sphinx III: Roman warriors in Egypt <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_379">316</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Shadow Picture. The Sphinx IV: The British troops to-day <span class="ralign"><a href="#image_383">318</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">I<br />THE SHOW BUSINESS<a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">THE SHOW BUSINESS<br />I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">At</span> an interesting moment in Disraeli's picturesque
+career in British politics he indulged in one of his strikingly
+spectacular effects, in accord with his characteristic
+method of boldly startling the somewhat sluggish
+imagination of his insular countrymen; and in the next
+week's issue of <i>Punch</i> there was a cartoon by Tenniel
+reflecting the general opinion in regard to his theatrical
+audacity. He was represented as Artemus Ward,
+frankly confessing that "I have no principles; I'm in
+the show business."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The cartoon was good-humored enough, as <i>Punch's</i>
+cartoons usually are; but it was not exactly complimentary.
+It was intended to voice the vague distrust
+felt by the British people toward a leader who did not
+scrupulously avoid every possible opportunity to be
+dramatic. And yet every statesman who was himself
+possessed of constructive imagination, and who was
+therefore anxious to stir the imaginations of those he
+was leading, has laid himself open to the same charge.
+Burke, for one, was accused of being frankly theatrical;
+and Napoleon, the child of that French Revolution
+which Burke combated with undying vigor, never hesitated
+to employ kindred devices. When Napoleon
+took the Imperial Crown from the hands of the Pope
+to place it on his own head, and when Burke cast the
+daggers on the floor of the House of Commons, they
+were both proving that they were in the show business.
+So was Julius Cæsar when he thrice thrust aside
+the kingly crown; and so was Frederick on more than
+one occasion. Even Luther did not shrink from the
+spectacular if that could serve his purpose, as when he
+nailed his theses to the door of the church.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">If the statesmen have now and again acted as tho
+they were in the show business, we need not be surprised
+to discover that the dramatists have done it
+even more often, in accord with their more intimate
+relation to the theater. No one would deny that
+Sardou and Boucicault were showmen, with a perfect
+mastery of every trick of the showman's trade. But
+this is almost equally true of the supreme leaders
+of dramatic art, Sophocles, Shakspere, and Molière.
+The great Greek, the great Englishman, and the great
+Frenchman, however much they might differ in their
+aims and in their accomplishments, were alike in the
+avidity with which they availed themselves of every
+spectacular device possible to their respective theaters.
+The opening passage of '&OElig;dipus the King,' when the
+chorus appeals to the sovran to remove the curse that
+hangs over the city, is as potent on the eye as on the
+ear. The witches and the ghost in 'Macbeth,' the
+single combats and the bloody battles that embellish
+many of Shakspere's plays are utilizations of the spectacular
+possibilities existing in that Elizabethan playhouse,
+which has seemed to some historians of the
+drama to be necessarily bare of all appeal to the senses.
+And in his 'Amphitryon' Molière has a succession of
+purely mechanical effects (a god riding upon an eagle,
+for example, and descending from the sky) which are
+anticipations of the more elaborate and complicated
+transformation scenes of the 'Black Crook' and the
+'White Fawn.'</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At the end of the nineteenth century the two masters
+of the stage were Ibsen and Wagner, and both of
+them were in the show business&mdash;Wagner more openly
+and more frequently than Ibsen. Yet the stern Scandinavian
+did not disdain to employ an avalanche in
+'When We Dead Awaken,' and to introduce a highly
+pictorial shawl dance for the heroine of his 'Doll's
+House.' As for Wagner, he was incessant in his search
+for the spectacular, insisting that the music-drama
+was the "art-work of the future," since the librettist-composer
+could call to his aid all the other arts, and
+could make these arts contribute to the total effect
+of the opera. He conformed his practise to his principles,
+and as a result there is scarcely any one of his
+music-dramas which is not enriched by a most elaborate
+scenic accompaniment. The forging of the sword, the
+ride of the Valkyries, the swimming of the singing
+Rhinemaidens, are only a few of the novel and startling
+effects which he introduced into his operas; and
+in his last work, 'Parsival,' the purely spectacular element
+is at least as ample and as varied as any that
+can be found in a Parisian fairy-play or in a London
+Christmas pantomime. And what is the 'Blue Bird'
+of M. Maeterlinck, the philosopher-poet, who is also
+a playwright, but a fairy-play on the model of those
+long popular in Paris, the 'Pied de Mouton,' and the
+'Biche au Bois'? It has a meaning and a purpose
+lacking in its emptier predecessors; but its method is
+the same as that of the uninspired manufacturers of
+these spectacular pieces.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">II</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is not without significance that our newspapers,
+which have a keen understanding of the public taste,
+are in the habit of commenting upon entertainments
+of the most diverse nature under the general heading
+of "Amusements." It matters not whether this entertainment
+is proffered by Barnum and Bailey, or by
+Weber and Fields, by Sophocles or by Ibsen, by Shakspere
+or by Molière, by Wagner or by Gilbert and Sullivan,
+it is grouped with the rest of the amusements.
+And this is not so illogical as it may seem, since the
+primary purpose of all the arts is to entertain, even if
+every art has also to achieve its own secondary aim.
+Some of these entertainments make their appeal to
+the intellect, some to the emotions, and some only to
+the nerves, to our relish for sheer excitement and for
+brute sensation; but each of them in its own way
+seeks, first of all, to entertain. They are, every one
+of them, to be included in the show business.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">This is a point of view which is rarely taken by those
+who are accustomed to consider the drama only in its
+literary aspects, and who like to think of the dramatic
+poet as a remote and secluded artist, scornful of all adventitious
+assistance, seeking to express his own vision
+of the universe, and intent chiefly, if not solely, on
+portraying the human soul. And yet this point of
+view needs to be taken by every one who wishes to
+understand the drama as an art, for the drama is inextricably
+bound up with the show business, and to
+separate the two is simply impossible. The theater is
+almost infinitely various, and the different kinds of
+entertainment possible in it cannot be sharply distinguished,
+since they shade into each other by almost
+imperceptible gradations. Only now and again can we
+seize a specimen that completely conforms to any one
+of the several types into which we theoretically classify
+the multiple manifestations of the drama.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Barnum and Bailey's
+Greatest Show on Earth might seem, at first sight, to
+stand absolutely outside the theater. But it is impossible
+not to perceive the close kinship between the
+program of the Barnum and Bailey show and the program
+of the New York Hippodrome, since they have
+the circus in common. At the Hippodrome, however,
+we have at least a rudimentary play with actual dialog
+and with abundant songs and dances executed by
+a charging squadron of chorus-girls; and in this aspect
+its spectacle is curiously similar to the nondescript
+medley which is popularly designated as a "summer
+song-show." Now, the summer song-show is first
+cousin to the so-called American "comic opera"&mdash;so
+different from the French <i>opéra comique</i>. Even if it has
+now fallen upon evil days, this American comic opera
+is a younger sister of the sparkling ballad-opera of Gilbert
+and Sullivan, and of the exhilarating <i>opéra bouffe</i>
+of Offenbach, with its libretto by Meilhac and Halévy.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">We cannot fail to perceive that the librettos of Gilbert
+and of Meilhac and Halévy are admirable in themselves,
+that they would please even without the music
+of Sullivan and Offenbach, and that they are truly
+comedies of a kind. That is to say, the books of
+'Patience' and 'Pinafore' do not differ widely in
+method or in purpose from Gilbert's non-musical play
+'Engaged'; and the books of the 'Vie Parisienne' and
+the 'Diva' do not differ widely from Meilhac and
+Halévy's non-musical play, 'Tricoche et Cacolet.'
+'Engaged' and 'Tricoche et Cacolet' are farces or light
+comedies, and we find that it is not easy to draw a
+strict line of demarcation between light comedies of
+this sort and comedies of a more elevated type. Gilbert
+was also the author of 'Sweethearts,' and of
+'Charity,' and Meilhac and Halévy were also the authors
+of 'Froufrou.' Still more difficult would it be
+to separate sharply plays like 'Charity' and 'Froufrou'
+from the social dramas of Pinero and Ibsen, the
+'Benefit of the Doubt,' for instance, and the 'Doll's
+House.' Sometimes these social dramas stiffen into
+actual tragedy, the 'Second Mrs. Tanqueray,' for example,
+and 'Ghosts.' And more than one critic has
+dwelt upon the structural likeness of the somber and
+austere 'Ghosts' of Ibsen to the elevated and noble
+'&OElig;dipus the King' of Sophocles, even if the Greek
+play is full of a serener poetry and charged with a
+deeper message.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is a far cry from Buffalo Bill's Wild West to the
+'&OElig;dipus' of Sophocles; but they are only opposite
+ends of a long chain which binds together the heterogeneous
+medley of so-called "amusements." In the
+eyes of every observer with insight into actual conditions,
+the show business bears an obvious resemblance
+to the United States, in that it is a vast territory
+divided into contiguous States, often difficult to bound
+with precision; and, like the United States, the show
+business is, in the words of Webster, "one and indivisible,
+now and forever." There is indisputable profit
+for every student of the art of the stage in a frank
+recognition of the fact that dramatic literature is inextricably
+associated with the show business, and the
+wider and deeper his acquaintance with the ramifications
+of the show business, the better fitted he is to
+understand certain characteristics of the masterpieces
+of dramatic literature. Any consideration of dramatic
+literature, apart from the actual conditions of performance,
+apart from the special theater for which
+any given play was composed, and to the conditions
+of which it had, perforce, to conform, is bound to be
+one-sided, not to say sterile. The masterpieces of dramatic
+literature were all of them written to be performed
+by actors, in a theater, and before an audience.
+And these masterpieces of dramatic literature which
+we now analyze with reverence, were all of them immediately
+successful when represented by the performers
+for whom they were written, and in the playhouses
+to the conditions of which they had been
+adjusted.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is painfully difficult for the purely literary critic
+to recognize the inexorable fact that there are no truly
+great plays which failed to please the contemporary
+spectators for whose delight they were devised. Many
+of the plays which win success from time to time,
+indeed, most of them, achieve only a fleeting vogue;
+they lack the element of permanence; they have only
+theatrical effectiveness; and they are devoid of abiding
+dramatic value. But the truly great dramas established
+themselves first on the stage; and afterward
+they also revealed the solid qualities which we demand
+in the study. They withstood, first of all, the ordeal
+by fire before the footlights of the theater, and they
+were able thereafter also to resist the touchstone of
+time in the library.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">When an academic investigator into the arid annals
+of dogmatic disquisition about the drama was rash
+enough to assert that, "from the standpoint of the
+history of culture, the theater is only one, and a very
+insignificant one, of all the influences that have gone
+to make up dramatic literature," Mr. William Archer
+promptly pointed out that this was "just about as
+reasonable as to declare that the sea is only one, and a
+very insignificant one, among the influences that have
+gone to the making of ships." It is true, Mr. Archer
+admitted, that there are "model ships and ships built
+for training purposes on dry land; but they all more
+or less closely imitate sea-going vessels, and if they
+did not, we should not call them ships at all.... The
+ship-builder, in planning his craft, must know what
+depths of water&mdash;be it river, lake, or ocean&mdash;she will
+have to ply in, what conditions of wind and weather
+she may reckon upon encountering, and what speed
+will be demanded of her if she is to fulfil the purpose
+for which she is destined.... The theater&mdash;the actual
+building, with its dimensions, structure, and scenic appliances&mdash;is
+the dramatist's sea. And the audience
+provides the weather."</p>
+
+<p class="h2">III</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Since the drama is irrevocably related to the theater,
+all the varied ramifications of the show business have
+their interest and their significance for students of the
+stage. It is not too much to say that there is no form
+of entertainment, however humble and however remote
+from literature, which may not supply a useful
+hint or two, now and again, to the historian of the
+drama. For example, few things would seem farther
+apart than the lamentable tragedy of Punch and Judy
+and the soul-stirring plays of the Athenian dramatic
+poets; and yet there is more than one point of contact
+between these two performances. An alert observer
+of a Punch-and-Judy show in the streets of
+London can get help from it for the elucidation of a
+problem or two which may have puzzled him in his
+effort to understand the peculiarities of Attic tragedy.
+Mr. Punch's wooden head, for example, has the same
+unchanging expression which characterized the towering
+masks worn by the Athenian performers. In like
+manner a nondescript hodgepodge of funny episodes,
+interspersed with songs and dances, such as Weber
+and Fields used to present in New York, may be utilized
+to shed light on the lyrical-burlesques of Aristophanes
+as these were performed in Athens more than two
+thousand years ago.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Perhaps even a third instance of this possibility of
+explaining the glorious past by the humble present
+may not be out of place. A few years ago Edward
+Harrigan put together a variety-show sketch, called
+the 'Mulligan Guards,' and its success encouraged him
+to develop it into a little comic drama called the
+'Mulligan Guards' Picnic,' which was the earliest of
+a succession of farcical studies of tenement-house life
+in New York, culminating at last in a three-act comedy,
+entitled 'Squatter Sovereignty.' In this series of
+humorous pieces Harrigan set before us a wide variety
+of types of character, Irishmen of all sorts, Germans
+and Italians, negroes and Chinamen, as these are
+commingled in the melting-pot of the cosmopolitan
+metropolis. These humorous pieces were the result of
+a spontaneous evolution, and their author was wholly
+innocent of any acquaintance with the Latin drama.
+And yet, as it happened, Harrigan was doing for the
+tenement-house population of New York very much
+what Plautus had done for the tenement-house population
+of Rome. A familiarity with the plays of the Latin
+playwright could not but increase our appreciation of
+the amusing pieces of the Irish-American sketch-writer;
+and a familiarity with the comic dramas of
+Harrigan could not fail to be of immediate assistance
+to us in our desire to understand the remote life which
+Plautus was dealing with.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The plays of the Roman dramatist were deliberately
+adapted from the Greek, and they therefore had an
+avowedly literary source, whereas the immediate origin
+of the plays performed in New York was only an unpretending
+sketch for a variety-show; but both of
+these groups had the same flavor of veracity in their
+reproduction of the teeming life of the tenements.
+Humble as is the beginning of the 'Mulligan Guard'
+series, at least as humble is the beginning of the improvised
+pieces of the Italians, the comedy of masks,
+which Molière lifted into literature in his 'Etourdi,'
+and in his 'Fourberies de Scapin.' In the hands of the
+Italians the comedy of masks was absolutely unliterary,
+since it was not even written, and its performers
+were not only comedians, but acrobats also. And here
+the drama is seen to be impinging on the special sphere
+of the circus&mdash;just as it does again in the plays prepared
+for the New York Hippodrome. It is more than probable
+that this improvised comedy of the Italians is the
+long development of a primitive semi-gymnastic, semi-dramatic
+entertainment, given by a little group of
+strollers, performing in the open market-place to please
+the casual crowd that might collect.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Equally unpretending was the origin of the French
+melodrama, which Victor Hugo lifted into literature
+in his 'Hernani' and 'Ruy Blas.' It began in the
+temporary theaters erected for a brief season in one or
+the other of the fairs held annually in different parts of
+Paris. The performances in these playhouses were almost
+exactly equivalent to those in our variety-shows;
+they were medleys of song and dance, of acrobatic
+feats and of exhibitions of trained animals. As in
+our own variety-shows, again, there were also little
+plays performed from time to time, at first scarcely
+more than a framework on which to hang songs and
+dances, but at last taking on a solider substance, until
+finally they stiffened themselves into pathetic pieces
+in three or more acts, capable of providing pleasure
+for a whole evening. The humor was direct, and the
+characters were painted in the primary colors; the
+passions were violent, and the plots were arbitrary;
+but the playwrights had discovered how to hold the
+interest of their simple-minded spectators, and how to
+draw tears and laughter at will.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In fact, the more minutely the history of the stage
+is studied, the more clearly do we perceive that the beginnings
+of every form of the drama are strangely unpretentious,
+and that literary merit is attained only in
+the final stages of its development. Dramatic literature
+is but the ultimate evolution of that which in the
+beginning was only an insignificant and unimportant
+experiment in the show business; and it must always
+remain intimately related to the show business, even
+when it climbs to the lonely peaks of the poetic drama.
+Whatever its value, and however weighty its message,
+it is still to be commented upon under the head of
+"amusements," for if it does not succeed in amusing,
+it ceases to exist except in the library, and even there
+only for special students. It lives by its immediate
+theatrical effectiveness alone, even if it can survive
+solely by its literary quality.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">IV</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Those who are in the habit of gaging the drama by
+this literary quality only are prone to deplore the bad
+taste of the public which flocks to purely spectacular
+pieces. But this again is no new thing, and it does not
+disclose any decline in the ability to appreciate the
+best. A century ago in London, when Sarah Siddons
+and John Philip Kemble were in the full plenitude of
+their powers, and when they were performing the noblest
+plays of Shakspere, they were thrust aside for a season
+or two while the theater was given up to empty melodramatic
+spectacles like 'Castle Specter' and the 'Cataract
+of the Ganges.' It was horrifying to the lovers
+of the drama that these great actors in those great
+plays should have to give way to the attraction exerted
+on the public by a trained elephant, or by an imitation
+waterfall; but it is equally horrifying to be informed
+that the theater in London for which Shakspere wrote
+his masterpieces, and in which he himself appeared as
+an actor, was also used for fencing-matches, and for
+bull-baitings and bear-baitings, and that the theater in
+Athens for which Sophocles wrote his masterpieces,
+and in which he may have appeared as an actor, was
+also used for the annual cock-fight.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">So strong is the popular appreciation of spectacle
+that the drama, the true theater as distinguished from
+the mere show business, has always to fight for its
+right to exist, and to hold its place in competition with
+less intellectual and more sensational entertainments.
+The playhouses of any American city are likely to have
+a lean week whenever the circus comes to town, and
+perhaps the chief reason why the most of them now
+close in summer is to be sought not so much in the
+frequent hot spells, as in the irresistible attraction exerted
+by the base-ball games. The drama in Spain,
+which flourished superbly in the days of Lope de
+Vega and Calderon, sank into a sad decline when it
+had to compete with the fiercer delights of the bullfight;
+and the drama in Rome was actually killed out
+by the overpowering rivalry of the sports of the arena,
+the combats of gladiators, and the matching of men
+with wild beasts. What is known to the economists
+as Gresham's Law, according to which an inferior currency
+always tends to drive out a superior, seems to
+have an analog in the show business.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1912.)</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">II<br />THE LIMITATIONS OF THE STAGE<a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">THE LIMITATIONS OF THE STAGE<br />I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Few</span> competent critics would dispute the assertion
+that the drama, if not actually the noblest of the arts,
+is at all events the most comprehensive, since it can
+invoke the aid of all the others without impairing its
+own individuality or surrendering its right to be considered
+the senior partner in any alliance it may make.
+Poetry, oratory, and music, painting, sculpture, and
+architecture, these the drama can take into its service,
+with no danger to its own control. Yet even if the
+drama may have the widest range of any of the arts,
+none the less are its boundaries clearly defined. What
+it can do, it does with a sharpness of effect and with
+a cogency of appeal no other art can rival. But there
+are many things it cannot do; and there are not a few
+things that it can attempt only at its peril. Some of
+these impossibilities and inexpediencies are psychologic
+subtleties of character and of sentiment too delicate
+and too minute for the magnifying lens of the theater
+itself; and some of them are physical, too large in
+themselves to be compressed into the rigid area of
+the stage. In advance of actual experiment, it is not
+always possible for even the most experienced of theatrical
+experts to decide the question with certainty.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Moreover, there is always the audience to be reckoned
+with, and even old stagers like Henry Irving and
+Victorien Sardou cannot foresee the way in which the
+many-headed monster will take what is set before it.
+When Percy Fitzgerald and W. G. Wills were preparing
+an adaptation of the 'Flying Dutchman' for Henry
+Irving, the actor made a suggestion which the authors
+immediately adopted. The romantic legend has for
+its hero a sea-captain condemned to eternal life until
+he can find a maiden willing to share his lot; and when
+at last he meets the heroine she has another lover, who
+is naturally jealous of the new aspirant to her hand.
+The young rival challenges Vanderdecken to a duel,
+and what Irving proposed was that the survivor of
+the fight should agree to throw the body of his rival
+into the sea, and that the waves should cast up the
+condemned Vanderdecken on the shore, since the ill-fated
+sailor could not avoid his doom by death at the
+hand of man. This was an appropriate development
+of the tale; it was really imaginative; and it would
+have been strangely moving if it had introduced into it
+a ballad on the old theme. But in a play performed
+before us in a theater its effect was not altogether what
+its proposer had hoped for, altho he presented it with
+all his marvelous command of theatrical artifice.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The stage-setting Irving bestowed upon this episode
+was perfectly in keeping with its tone. The spectators
+saw the sandy beach of a little cove shut in by cliffs,
+with the placid ocean bathed in the sunset glow. The
+two men crossed swords on the strand; Vanderdecken
+let himself be killed, and the victorious lover carried
+his rival's body up the rocks and hurled it into the
+ocean. Then he departed, and for a moment all was
+silence. A shuddering sigh soon swept over the face
+of the waters, and a ripple lapped the sand. Then a
+little wave broke on the beach, and withdrew, rasping
+over the stones. At last a huge roller crashed forward
+and the sea gave up its dead. Vanderdecken lay high
+and dry on the shore, and in a moment he staggered
+to his feet, none the worse for his wounds. But unfortunately
+the several devices for accomplishing this
+result, admirable as they were, drew attention each
+of them to itself. The audience could not help wondering
+how the trick of the waves was being worked, and
+when the Flying Dutchman was washed up by the
+water, it was not the mighty deep rejecting Vanderdecken,
+again cursed with life, that the spectators perceived,
+but rather the dignified Henry Irving himself,
+unworthily tumbled about on the dust of his own
+stage. In the effort to make visible this imaginative
+embellishment of the strange story, its magic potency
+vanished. The poetry of the striking improvement
+on the old tale had been betrayed by its translation
+into the material realities of the theater, since the
+concrete presentation necessarily contradicted the abstract
+beauty of the idea.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Here we find ourselves face to face with one of the
+most obvious limitations of the stage&mdash;that its power
+of suggestion is often greater than its power of actual
+presentation. There are many things, poetic and
+imaginative, which the theater can accomplish, after
+a fashion, but which it ventures upon only at imminent
+peril of failure. Many things which are startlingly
+effective in the telling are ineffective in the actual seeing.
+The mere mechanism needed to represent them
+will often be contradictory, and sometimes even destructive.
+Perhaps it may be advisable to cite another
+example, not quite so cogent as Irving's 'Vanderdecken,'
+and yet carrying the same moral. This other example
+will be found in a piece by Sardou, a man who knew
+all the possibilities of the theater as intimately as
+Irving himself, and who was wont to utilize them
+with indefatigable skill. Indeed, so frequently did the
+French playwright avail himself of stage devices, and
+so often was he willing to rely upon them, that not a
+few critics of our latter-day drama have been inclined
+to dismiss him as merely a supremely adroit theatrical
+trickster.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In his sincerest play, 'Patrie,' the piece which he
+dedicated to Motley, and which he seems himself to
+have been proudest of, Sardou invented a most picturesque
+episode. The Spaniards are in possession of
+Brussels; the citizens are ready to rise, and William
+of Orange is coming to their assistance. The chiefs of
+the revolt leave the city secretly and meet William at
+night in the frozen moat of an outlying fort. A Spanish
+patrol interrupts their consultation, and forces them
+to conceal themselves. A little later a second patrol
+is heard approaching, just when the return of the first
+patrol is impending. For the moment it looks as tho
+the patriots would be caught between the two Spanish
+companies. But William of Orange rises to the occasion.
+He calls on his "sea-wolves"; and when the
+second patrol appears, marching in single file, there
+suddenly spring out of the darkness upon every Spanish
+soldier two fur-clad creatures, who throttle him,
+bind him, and throw him into a hole in the ice of the
+moat. Then they swiftly fill in this gaping cavity
+with blocks of snow, and trample the path level above
+it. And almost immediately after the sea-wolves have
+done their deadly work and withdrawn again into
+hiding, the first patrol returns, and passes all unsuspecting
+over the bodies of their comrades&mdash;a very practical
+example of dramatic irony.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As it happened, I had read 'Patrie' some years before
+I had an opportunity to see it on the stage, and
+this picturesque scene had lingered in my memory so
+that in the theater I eagerly awaited its coming.
+When it arrived at last I was sadly disappointed. The
+sea-wolves belied their appetizing name; they irresistibly
+suggested a group of trained acrobats, and I found
+myself carelessly noting the artifices by the aid of which
+the imitation snowballs were made to fill the trapdoor
+of the stage which represented the yawning hole
+in the ice of the frozen moat. The thing told was picturesque,
+but the thing seen was curiously unmoving;
+and I have noted without surprise that in the latest
+revival of 'Patrie' the attempt to make this episode
+effective was finally abandoned, the sea-wolves being
+cut out of the play.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">II</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In 'Patrie' as in 'Vanderdecken' the real reason for
+the failure of these mechanical devices is that the plays
+were themselves on a superior level to those stage-tricks;
+the themes were poetic, and any theatrical
+effect which drew attention to itself interrupted the
+current of emotional sympathy. It disclosed itself instantly
+as incongruous, as out of keeping with the elevation
+of the legend&mdash;in a word, as inartistic. A similar
+effect, perhaps even more frankly mechanical,
+would not be inartistic in a play of a lower type, and it
+might possibly be helpful in a frankly spectacular
+piece, even if this happened also to be poetic in intent.
+In a fairy-play, a <i>féerie</i>, as the French term it, we expect
+to behold all sorts of startling ingenuities of stage-mechanism,
+whether the theme is delightfully imaginative,
+as in Maeterlinck's beautiful 'Blue Bird,' or crassly
+prosaic, as in the 'Black Crook' and the 'White Fawn.'</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In picturesque melodrama also, in the dramatization
+of 'Ben Hur,' for example, we should be disappointed
+if we were bereft of the wreck of the Roman galley,
+and if we were deprived of the chariot race. These
+episodes can be presented in the theater only by the
+aid of mechanisms far more elaborate than those needed
+for the scenes in 'Vanderdecken' and 'Patrie'; but
+in 'Ben Hur' these mechanisms are not incongruous
+and distracting as were the simpler devices of 'Vanderdecken'
+and 'Patrie,' because the dramatization of
+the romanticist historical novel is less lofty in its ambition,
+less imaginative, less ethereally poetic. In
+'Vanderdecken' and in 'Patrie' the tricks seemed to
+obtrude themselves, whereas in 'Ben Hur' they were
+almost obligatory. In certain melodramas with more
+modern stories&mdash;in the amusing piece called the
+'Round Up,' for example&mdash;the scenery is the main attraction.
+The scene-painter is the real star of the
+show. And there is no difficulty in understanding the
+wail of the performer of the principal part in a piece of
+this sort, when he complained that he was engaged to
+support forty tons of scenery. "It's only when the
+stage-carpenters have to rest and get their breath that
+I have a chance to come down to the footlights and
+bark for a minute or two."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A moment's consideration shows that this plaintive
+protest is unreasonable, however natural it may be.
+In melodramas like the 'Round Up' and 'Ben Hur,' as
+in fairy-plays like the 'Blue Bird,' the acting is properly
+subordinated to the spectacular splendor of the whole
+performance. When we enter a theater to behold a
+play of either of these types, we expect the acting to
+be adequate, no doubt, but we do not demand the
+highest type of histrionic excellence. What we do anticipate,
+however, is a spectacle pleasing to the eye
+and stimulating to the nerves. In plays of these two
+classes the appeal is sensuous rather than intellectual;
+and it is only when the appeal of the play is to the
+mind rather than to the senses that merely mechanical
+effects are likely to be disconcerting.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Mr. William Archer has pointed out that Ibsen in
+'Little Eyolf,' has for once failed to perceive the strict
+limitation of the stage when he introduced a flagstaff,
+with the flag at first at half-mast, and a little later run
+up to the peak. Now, there are no natural breezes in
+the theater to flutter the folds of the flag, and every
+audience is aware of the fact. This, then, is the dilemma:
+either the flag hangs limp and lifeless against
+the pole, which is a flat spectacle, or else its folds are
+made to flutter by some concealed pneumatic blast or
+electric fan, which instantly arouses the inquiring curiosity
+of the audience. Here we find added evidence in
+support of Herbert Spencer's invaluable principle of
+Economy of Attention, which he himself applied only to
+rhetoric, but which is capable of extension to all the
+other arts&mdash;and to no one of them more usefully than
+to the drama. At any given moment a spectator in
+the theater has only so much attention to bestow upon
+the play being presented before his eyes, and if any
+portion of his attention is unduly distracted by some
+detail&mdash;like either the limpness or the fluttering of a
+flag&mdash;then he has just so much less to give to the play
+itself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Very rarely, indeed, can we catch Ibsen at fault in a
+technical detail of stage-management; he was extraordinarily
+meticulous in his artful adjustment of the
+action of his social dramas to the picture-frame stage
+of our modern cosmopolitan theater. He was marvelously
+skilful in endowing each of his acts with a
+background harmonious for his characters; and nearly
+always was he careful to refrain from the employment
+of any scenic device which might attract attention to
+itself. He eschewed altogether the more violent spectacular
+effects, altho he did call upon the stage manager
+to supply an avalanche in the final act of 'When
+the Dead Awaken'; but even this bold convulsion of
+nature was less incongruous than might be expected,
+since it was not exhibited until the action of the play
+itself was complete. In fact, the avalanche might be
+described as only a pictorial epilog.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">III</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The principle of sternly economizing the attention
+of the audience can be violated by distractions far less
+extraneous and far less extravagant than avalanches.
+When Marmontel's forgotten tragedy of 'Cleopatra'
+was produced in the eighteenth century at the Théâtre
+Français, the misguided poet prevailed upon Vaucanson
+to make an artificial asp, which the Egyptian queen
+coiled about her arm at the end of the play, thereby
+releasing a spring, whereupon the beast raised its head
+angrily and emitted a shrill hiss before sinking its fangs
+into Cleopatra's flesh. At the first performance a
+spectator, bored by the tediousness of the tragedy,
+rose to his feet when he heard the hiss of the tiny serpent:
+"I agree with the asp!" he cried, as he made
+his way to the door.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But even if Vaucanson's skilful automaton had not
+given occasion for this disastrous gibe, whatever attention
+the audience might pay to the mechanical means
+of Cleopatra's suicide was necessarily subtracted from
+that available for the sad fate of Cleopatra herself.
+If at that moment the spectators noted at all the hissing
+snake, then they were not really in a fit mood to
+feel the tragic death-struggle of "the serpent of old
+Nile." A kindred blunder was manifest in a recent
+sumptuously spectacular revival of 'Macbeth,' when
+the three witches flew here and there thru the dim
+twilight across the blasted heath, finally vanishing into
+empty air. These mysterious flittings and disappearances
+were achieved by attaching the performers of the
+weird sisters to invisible wires, whereby they could be
+swung aloft; the trick had been exploited earlier in
+the so-called Flying Ballet, wherein it was a graceful
+and amusing adjunct of the terpsichorean revels. But
+in 'Macbeth' it emptied Shakspere's scene of its dramatic
+significance, since the spectator waited for and
+watched the startling flights of the witches, and admired
+the dexterity with which their aerial voyages
+were controlled; and as a result he failed to feel the
+emotional importance of the interview between Macbeth
+and the withered croons, whose untoward greetings
+were to start the villain-hero on his downward
+career of crime.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In this same revival of 'Macbeth' an equally misplaced
+ingenuity was lavished on the apparition of
+Banquo's ghost at the banquet. The gruesome specter
+was made mysteriously visible thru the temporarily
+transparent walls of the palace, until at last he emerged
+to take his seat on Macbeth's chair. The effect was
+excellent in itself, and the spectators followed all the
+movements of the ghost with pleased attention, more
+or less forgetting Macbeth, and failing to note the
+maddening effect of the apparition upon the seared
+countenance of the assassin-king. In this revival of
+'Macbeth' no opportunity was neglected to adorn the
+course of the play with every possible scenic and mechanic
+accompaniment; and the total result of these
+accumulated artificialities of presentation was to rob
+one of Shakspere's most poetic tragedies of nearly all
+its poetry, and to reduce this imaginative masterpiece
+to the prosaic level of a spectacular melodrama.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Another of Shakspere's tragedies has become almost
+impossible in our modern playhouses, because the
+stage-manager does not dare to do without the spectacular
+effects that the story seems to demand. Shakspere
+composed 'King Lear' for the bare platform-stage
+of the Globe Theater, devoid of all scenery, and supplied
+with only the most primitive appliances for suggesting
+rain and thunder; and he introduced three
+successive storm scenes, each intenser in interest than
+the one that went before, until the culmination comes
+in perhaps the sublimest and most pitiful episode in
+all tragedy, when the mad king and his follower, who
+is pretending to be insane, and his faithful fool are
+together out in the tempest. At the original production,
+three centuries ago, the three storms may have
+increased in violence as they followed one another;
+but at best the fierceness of the contending elements
+could then be only suggested, and the rain and the
+thunder were not allowed to divert attention away
+from the agonized plight of the mad monarch. But
+to-day the three storm scenes are rolled into one, and
+the stage-manager sets out to manufacture a realistic
+tempest in rivalry with nature. The mimic artillery of
+heaven and the simulated deluge from the skies which
+the producer now provides may excite our artistic admiration
+for his skill, but they distract our attention
+from the coming together of the characters so strangely
+met in the midst of the storm. The more realistically
+the tempest is reproduced the worse it is for the tragedy
+itself; and in most recent revivals the full effect of the
+painful story has been smothered by the sound and
+fury of the man-made storm.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The counterweighted wires which permit the figures
+of the Flying Ballet to soar over the stage and to float
+aloft in the air, disturb the current of our sympathy
+when they are employed to lend lightness to intangible
+creatures like the weird sisters of Shakspere's tragedy;
+but they have been more artistically utilized in two of
+Shakspere's comedies to suggest the ethereality of
+Puck and of Ariel. The action of the 'Midsummer
+Night's Dream' takes place in fairy-land, and that of
+the 'Tempest' passes in an enchanted island, and even
+if we wonder for a moment how the levitation of these
+airy spirits is achieved, this temporary distraction of
+our attention is negligible in playful comedies like these
+with all their scenes laid in a land of make-believe.
+And yet it may be doubted whether even the 'Midsummer
+Night's Dream' and the 'Tempest,' fairy-plays
+as they are, do not on the whole lose more than
+they gain from elaborate scenic and mechanical adjuncts.
+They are of poetry all compact, and the more
+simply they are presented, the less obtrusive the scenery
+and the less protruded the needful effects, the more
+the effort of the producer is centered upon preserving
+the ethereal atmosphere wherein the characters live,
+move, and have their being, the more harmonious the
+performance is with the pure fancy which inspired these
+two delightful pieces, then the more truly successful
+is the achievement of the stage-manager.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">IV</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On the other hand, of course, the scenic accompaniment
+of a poetic play, whether tragic or romantic or
+comic, must never be so scant or so barren as to disappoint
+the spectators. The stage-accessories must
+be adequate and yet subordinate; they ought to resemble
+the clothes of a truly well-dressed woman, in
+that they never call attention to themselves altho they
+can withstand and even reward intimate inspection.
+This delicate ideal of artistic stage-setting, esthetically
+satisfying, and yet never flamboyant, was completely
+attained in the production of 'Sister Beatrice,' at the
+New Theater, due to the skill and taste of Mr. Hamilton
+Bell. The several manifestations of the supernatural
+might easily have been over-emphasized; but a fine
+restraint resulted in a unity of tone and of atmosphere,
+so subtly achieved that the average spectator carried
+away the memory of more than one lovely picture without
+having let his thoughts wander away to consider
+by what means he had been made to feel the presence
+of a miracle.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The special merit of this production of 'Sister Beatrice'
+lay in the delicate art by which more was suggested
+than could well be shown. In the theater, more
+often than not, the half is greater than the whole, and
+what is unseen is frequently more powerful than what
+is made visible. In Mr. Belasco's 'Darling of the
+Gods,' a singularly beautiful spectacle, touched at
+times with a pathetic poetry, the defeated samurais
+are at last reduced to commit hara-kiri. But we were
+not made spectators of these several self-murders; we
+were permitted to behold only the dim cane-brake into
+which these brave men had withdrawn, and to overhear
+each of them call out his farewell greetings to his
+friends before he dealt himself the deadly thrust. If
+we had been made witnesses of this accumulated self-slaughter
+we might have been revolted by the brutality
+of it. Transmitted to us out of a vague distance
+by a few scattered cries, it moved us like the inevitable
+close of a truly tragic tale.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In the 'Aiglon' of M. Rostand, Napoleon's feeble son
+finds himself alone with an old soldier of his father's
+on the battle-field of Wagram; and in the darkness of
+the night, and in the turmoil of a wind-storm the hysteric
+lad almost persuades himself that he is actually
+present at the famous fight, that he can hear the
+shrieks of the wounded, and the groans of the dying,
+and that he can see the hands and arms of the dead
+stretched up from the ground. This is all in the sickly
+boy's fancy, of course, and yet in Paris the author
+had voices heard, and caused hands and arms to be
+extended upward from the edge of the back drop, thus
+vulgarizing his own imaginative episode by the presentation
+of a concrete reality. Not quite so inartistic as
+this, and yet frankly freakish was the arrangement of
+the closet scene between Hamlet and his mother, when
+Sarah-Bernhardt made her misguided effort to impersonate
+the Prince of Denmark. On the walls of the
+room where Hamlet talks daggers to the queen there
+were full-length, life-sized portraits of her two successive
+husbands, and when Hamlet bids her look on
+this picture, and on this, the portrait of Hamlet's
+father became transparent, and in its frame the spectators
+suddenly perceived the ghost. This is an admirable
+example of misplaced cleverness, of the search
+for novelty for its own sake, of the sacrifice of the
+totality of impression to a mere trick.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">'Hamlet' is the most poetic of plays, and the 'Aiglon'
+does its best to be poetic, and therefore the less overt
+spectacle there may be in the performance of these
+dramas the easier it will be for the spectator to focus
+his attention on the poetry itself. Even more pretentiously
+poetic than the 'Aiglon' is 'Chantecler,' upon
+which the ambitious author has also lavished a great
+variety of stage-effects&mdash;as tho he were not quite willing
+to rely for success upon his lyrical exuberance.
+In M. Rostand's 'Aiglon' and 'Chantecler,' as in
+Sarah-Bernhardt's 'Hamlet,' there was to be observed
+a frequent confusion of the merely theatric with the
+purely dramatic&mdash;a confusion to be found forty years
+ago in Fechter's 'Hamlet.' That picturesque French
+actor made over the English tragedy into a French
+romantic melodrama; he kept the naked plot, and he
+cut out all the poetry. He lowered Shakspere's play
+to the level of the other melodramas in which he had
+won success&mdash;for instance, 'No Thorofare,' due to the
+collaboration of Dickens and Wilkie Collins, or the
+earlier 'Fils de la Nuit,' acted in Paris long before
+Fechter appeared on the English-speaking stage.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The 'Son of the Night' was a pirate bold, personated,
+of course, by Fechter, and in one act his long, low,
+rakish craft with its black flag flying, skimmed across
+the stage, cutting the waves, and dropping anchor close
+to the footlights. The surface of the sea was represented
+by a huge cloth, and the incessant motion of
+the waves was due to the concealed activities of a
+dozen boys. The play had so long a run that the sea-cloth
+was worn dangerously thin. At last at one performance,
+a rent spread suddenly and disclosed a disgusted
+boy, just as the pirate ship with the Son of the
+Night on its deck was preparing to come about. Fechter
+was equal to the emergency. "Man overboard!"
+he cried, and, leaning over the bow of the boat, he
+grabbed the boy by the collar and pulled him on deck.
+Probably very few of the spectators noticed the mishap,
+and if they had all observed it, what matter? A
+laugh or two, more or less, during the performance of
+a prosaic melodrama, is of little or no consequence. A
+disconcerting accident like this in a play like the 'Son
+of the Night' does not cut any vital current of sympathy,
+for this is a quality to which the piece could
+make no claim. But in a truly poetic play a mishap
+of this sort would be a misfortune in that it might precipitate
+the interest and interrupt the harmony of attention
+demanded by the imaginative drama itself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1912.)</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">III<br />A MORAL FROM A TOY THEATER<a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">A MORAL FROM A TOY THEATER<br />I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> 1881, when William Ernest Henley was hard put to
+it to make a living, Sir Sidney Colvin kindly recommended
+him for the editorship of the monthly <i>Magazine
+of Art</i>. Among the contributors whom the new editor
+called to his aid was Robert Louis Stevenson, and
+among the contributions the latter made to the former's
+magazine was the highly characteristic and self-revelatory
+essay, entitled 'A Penny Plain and Two Pence
+Colored,' now included in the volume called 'Memories
+and Portraits.' In this playful paper Stevenson makes
+one of his many returns to his boyhood, whose moods
+he could always recapture at will with the assistance of
+that imaginative memory which was one of his special
+gifts, and he was able to replevin from the dim limbo
+of things half forgotten his longing delight in the toy
+theater, the scenes for which and the necessary properties
+and the several characters themselves in their successive
+dresses were to be procured printed on very thin
+cardboard, so that the proud possessor might cut them
+out at will. If the youthful capitalist had accumulated
+twopence, he could acquire these treasures already
+resplendent in their glowing hues; and yet
+Stevenson held that the lad was happier who parted
+with only a single penny, reserving the half of his fortune
+for the purchase of the paints wherewith he might
+himself vivify this scenery and these properties, and so
+cause his characters to start to life, emblazoned in the
+bold colors which please the puerile mind.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">These sheets of thin cardboard, with thin little pamphlets
+containing the text of the pieces to be performed
+in the toy theater, were originally known as Skelt's
+Juvenile Drama; and one Skelt seems to have been
+its originator, probably in the early part of the nineteenth
+century. Apparently he parted with his precious
+stock in trade to one Park, who passed it on in due
+season to one Webb, who transmitted it to one Redington,
+until at last it descended to its present owner,
+one B. Pollock, of 73 Hoxton Street, London, N.
+Stevenson affected to think that Skelt's Juvenile
+Drama had "become, for the most part, a memory";
+yet it survives now in the second decade of the twentieth
+century as Pollock's Juvenile Drama, and Mr.
+Pollock proclaims that he has republished some score
+plays, and that he keeps them always in print, plain
+and colored. He offers, furthermore, to supply "Drop
+Scenes, Top Drops, Orchestras, Foot and Water Pieces,
+Single Portraits, Combats&mdash;Fours, Sixes, Twelves,
+Sixteens&mdash;Fairies, Horse Soldiers, Clowns, Rifles, Animals,
+Birds, Butterflies, Houses, Views, Ships, &amp;c.,
+plain and colored, 1/2<i>d</i> sheet plain, 1<i>d</i> sheet colored."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_057" id="image_"></a>
+<img src="images/i_057.png" alt="" title="" /><br />
+<span class="caption">Taken from upper half of Plate No. 1, which is the title-page of the series, this section of which
+is also a guide for the setting of the first scene in the 'Miller and His Men'</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">It is from the covers of "the book of the words" of
+the 'Miller and His Men' that this enticing proclamation
+is taken&mdash;the 'Miller and His Men,' "adapted only
+for Pollock's characters and scenes," and accompanied
+by "7 Plates characters, 11 Scenes, 3 Wings, Total 21
+Plates." The persons of the drama and the scenes
+wherein that drama is played out to its fiery end, are
+all in the bolder manner of the Old Masters, who sought
+the broadest effects, and who willingly neglected petty
+details. How bold and how broad the manner and
+the effects can best be judged by an honest transcription
+from the final page of the book of words, wherein
+the terse and tense dialog, single speech clashing with
+single speech, is accompanied by stage directions for
+the instruction of the Young Masters who are about
+to produce the sublime spectacle:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="indent"><i>Enter Grindorf left hand, plate 4.</i></p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Enter Karl and Friberg, swords drawn, plate 4, followed by
+the Troops, right hand, plate 7.</i></p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Grindorf</i>: Ha! ha! I have escaped you, have I?</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Karl</i>: But you are caught in your own trap.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Grindorf</i>: Spiller!&mdash;Golotz! Golotz! I say!</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Count</i>: Villain! you cannot escape us now! Surrender, or
+instantly meet thy fate!</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Grindorf</i>: Surrender! I have sworn never to descend from
+this place alive!</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Enter Lothair, as Spiller, 3rd dress, left hand, plate 7.</i></p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Grindorf</i>: Spiller, let my bride appear.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Exit Lothair.</i></p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Enter Kehnar, right hand, plate 1.</i></p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Enter Ravina with torch, plate 7.</i></p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Ravina</i>: Before it is too late, restore Claudine to her father's
+arms!</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Grindorf</i>: Never!</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Ravina</i>: Then I know my course!</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Enter Lothair with Claudine, left hand, plate 6.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<blockquote><p class="indent"><i>Kehnar</i>: My child! Ah, Grindorf, spare her!</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Grindorf</i>: Hear me, Count Friberg; if you do not withdraw
+your followers, by my hand she dies!</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Count</i>: Never, till thou art yielded to justice!</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Grindorf</i>: No more&mdash;this to her heart!</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Lothair</i>: And this to thine!</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Exit Lothair and Claudine, and Grindorf.</i></p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Re-enter Grindorf and Lothair fighting, plate 6, fight and exit.</i></p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Grindorf to be put on wounded, plate 7.</i></p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Re-enter Lothair with Claudine, plate 6.</i></p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Lothair</i>: Ravina, fire the train!</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><i>Scene changes to explosion, Scene 11, No. 9.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="indent">The words are striking and the actions are startling,
+and it is no wonder that plate 7 and scene 11, No. 9,
+filled with joy the heart of Robert Louis Stevenson
+when he was a perfervid Scot of fourteen. In his manly
+maturity, when he had risen to an appreciation of portraits
+by Raeburn, and when he had sat at the feet of
+that inspired critic of painting, his cousin, R. A. M.
+Stevenson, he admitted that he had no desire to insist
+upon the art of Skelt's purveyors. "Those wonderful
+characters that once so thrilled our soul with their bold
+attitude, array of deadly engines and incomparable costume,
+to-day look somewhat pallidly," he confessed
+regretfully; "the extreme hard favor of the heroine
+strikes me, I had almost said with pain; the villain's
+scowl no longer thrills me like a trumpet; and the
+scenes themselves, those once incomparable landscapes,
+seem the efforts of a prentice hand. So much of fault
+we can find; but, on the other side, the impartial critic
+rejoices to remark the presence of a great unity of
+gusto; of those direct claptrap appeals which a man
+is dead and buriable when he fails to answer; of the
+footlight glamor, the ready-made, barefaced, transpontine
+picturesque, a thing not one with cold reality,
+but how much dearer to the mind!"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_061" id="image_061"></a>
+<img src="images/i_061.png" alt="" title="" /><br/>
+<span class="caption">A group of the principal characters from Pollock's juvenile drama, the 'Miller and His Men,'
+cut out and assembled as called for in Scene 10, a part of which is quoted in the text</span></div>
+
+<p class="h2">II</p>
+
+<p class="indent">"Transpontine" is a Briticism for which the equivalent
+Americanism is "Bowery." The plays which
+Skelt vended for the enjoyment of romantic youth were
+not of his own invention, nor were they the work of his
+hirelings; they were artfully simplified condensations
+of melodramas long popular in London at the theaters
+on the Surrey side of the Thames, and in New York
+at the Bowery. In French's Standard Drama, the
+Acting Edition, to be obtained in yellow covers for
+fifteen cents, one may find "the 'Miller and His Men,'
+a Melo-Drama in Two Acts, by F. Pocock, Esq., author
+of the 'Robber's Wife,' 'John of Paris,' 'Hit or Miss,'
+'Magpie and the Maid,' etc., with original casts, scene
+and property plots, costumes, and all the stage business."
+And the list of properties required for the final scene
+helps to elucidate what may have been cryptic in the
+dialog quoted from the compacted adaptation of Skelt:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="indent"><i>Scene 4</i>:&mdash;<i>Slow match laid from stage in C. to mill. Lighted torch
+for Ravina. Red fire and explosion 3 E. L. H. Wood crash
+3 E. L. H. Six stuffed figures of robbers behind mill, L. H.
+Eight guns, swords, and belts for hussars. Disguise cloak for
+Lothair. Fighting swords for Lothair and Wolf.</i> [Wolf is
+evidently another name for Grindorf.]</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="indent">Thus we see that the pleasant country of the Skelts
+stretched from the Surrey side of the Thames to the
+Bowery bank of the Hudson, and that the Skeltic
+temperament was purely melodramatic, its bass notes
+being transposed to adjust it to the clear treble of
+boyhood. It is greatly to be regretted that no inquiring
+scholar has yet devoted himself to the task of tracing
+the history of English melodrama, as Professor
+Thorndike has traced the history of English tragedy.
+Of course, there have always been melodramatic plays
+ever since the drama began to assert itself as an independent
+form of art. There is a melodramatic element
+in the 'Medea' of Euripides, as there is in the
+'Rodogune' of Corneille; and in the Elizabethan theater
+the so-called tragedy of blood is nothing if not
+melodramatic. Yet the special form of English melodrama
+that flourished in the later years of the eighteenth
+century and the earlier years of the nineteenth deserves
+a more careful study than it has yet received. Apparently
+it was due partly to a decadence of the native
+type of drama represented by Lillo's 'George Barnwell,'
+and partly to the stimulation received first from
+the emotional pieces of the German Kotzebue, and
+afterward from the picturesque pieces of the French
+Pixérécourt. And not to be neglected is the influence
+immediately exerted on the popular plays of the latter
+part of the period by the romances of Scott and of
+Cooper.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Altho these plays were devoid of literary merit, of
+style, of veracity of character delineation, of sincerity
+of motive, they were not without theatrical effectiveness&mdash;or
+they could never have maintained themselves
+in the theater. As Sir Arthur Pinero has seen
+clearly, "a drama which was sufficiently popular to
+be transferred to the toy theaters was almost certain
+to have a sort of rude merit in its construction. The
+characterization would be hopelessly conventional, the
+dialog bald and despicable&mdash;but the situations would
+be artfully arranged, the story told adroitly and with
+spirit." In other words, the compounders of these
+melodramas were fairly skilful in devising plots likely
+to arouse and to sustain the interest of uncritical
+audiences. Probably they were unfamiliar with Voltaire's
+assertion that the success of a play depends
+mainly upon the choice of its story; and it is unlikely
+that they had any knowledge of Aristotle's declaration
+that plot is primarily more important than character;
+but they accomplished their humble task as well as if
+they had been heartened by these authorities. These
+ingenious and ingenuous pieces were none of them contributions
+to English dramatic literature, and they are
+not enshrined in its annals; but they were effective
+stage-plays, nevertheless, and they had, therefore, an
+essential quality lacking in the closet-dramas which
+Shelley and Byron were composing in those same
+years.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">III</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In the illuminating lecture on Stevenson as a writer
+of plays delivered by Sir Arthur Pinero in 1903 before
+the members of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution,
+the confessions contained in 'A Penny Plain and
+Two Pence Colored' are skilfully employed to explain
+Stevenson's flat failure as a playwright. Many of his
+ardent admirers must have wondered why it was that
+he adventured four times into dramatic authorship,
+only to undergo a fourfold shipwreck. Yet Sir James
+Barrie and Mr. John Galsworthy, essayists and novelists
+at first, as Stevenson was, strayed successfully from
+prose fiction into the acted drama. Was not Stevenson
+as anxious for this theatrical triumph as any one
+of these? Was he not as richly dowered with dramatic
+power, as inventive, as responsive to opportunity, as
+ready to master a new craft? Why, then, did he fail
+where they have succeeded?</p>
+
+<p class="indent">For these baffling questions Sir Arthur Pinero has
+an acceptable answer. Stevenson was unable to establish
+himself as a play-maker, first, because he did
+not take the art of play-making seriously; he did not
+put his full strength in it, mind and soul and body,
+contenting himself when he was a man with playing
+at play-making as he had played with his toy theater
+when he was a boy. The second cause of his disappointment
+as a dramatist was due to the abiding influence
+of this toy theater, and to the fact that the
+pieces he attempted were planned in rivalry with the
+'Miller and His Men,' and therefore that they were
+hopelessly out of date before they were conceived.
+(There is a third reason, not mentioned by Sir Arthur,
+and yet suggesting itself irresistibly to any one who
+knew the editor of the <i>Magazine of Art</i> personally; all
+four of Stevenson's attempts at play-writing were made
+in collaboration with Henley, who was the least
+equipped by temper and by temperament for the practise
+of dramaturgy.)</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_067" id="image_067"></a>
+<img src="images/i_067.png" alt="Scene II POLLOCK'S SCENES IN THE MILLER and his MEN. Nº9
+
+London. Published by B Pollock,73 Hoxton Street Hoxton" title="Scene II POLLOCK'S SCENES IN THE MILLER and his MEN. Nº9
+
+London. Published by B Pollock,73 Hoxton Street Hoxton" /><br />
+<span class="caption">Explosion of the mill. A back drop in the 'Miller and His Men,' Scene II</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">Yet even if Stevenson had worked alone, and even
+if he had taken the new art seriously, he could never
+have won a place among the playwrights until he had
+fought himself free from the sinuous coils of Skeltery.
+In his youth he had saved his pence to purchase the
+accessories of Skelt's Juvenile Drama with boyish delight
+in the acquisition of things longed for to be possessed
+at last. When he had purchased plate 7 and
+scene 11, No. 9, he thought they were his possessions.
+But, of a truth, he was their possession, even if he did
+not know his slavery. As a man he was subdued to
+what he had worked in as a boy; and when he wanted
+to write plays of his own, he had no freedom to follow
+the better models of his own day; he was a bondman
+to Skelt, a thrall to Park, a minion to Webb, a chattel
+to Redington and to Pollock. "What am I?" he asked
+in his self-revelatory essay, humorously exaggerating,
+no doubt, yet subconsciously stating the exact truth;
+"What am I? What are life, art, letters, the world,
+but what my Skelt has made them? He stamped
+himself upon my immaturity." And the impression
+was then so deep that it could not be effaced in maturity.
+The boy in Stevenson survived, instead of dying when
+the man was born.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The art of play-writing, like the art of story-telling,
+and, indeed, like all the other arts, demands both a
+native gift and an acquired craft. Its basic principles
+are the same ever since the drama began; but its immediate
+methods vary at different times and in different
+countries. While every artist must say what it is
+given him to say, he can say it acceptably only by acquiring
+the method of speech employed by his immediate
+predecessors. However original he may prove
+himself at the end, in the beginning he can only imitate
+the methods and borrow the processes and avail himself
+of the practises which the elder craftsmen are employing
+successfully at the moment when he sets himself
+to learn their trade. He must&mdash;to use the apt term
+of the engineers&mdash;he must keep himself abreast of
+"state of the art." This is what the great dramatists
+have ever done; Sophocles follows in the footsteps of
+Æschylus, as Shakspere emulates Marlowe and Kyd,
+and as Molière went to school to the adroit and acrobatic
+Italian comedians. These great dramatists were
+perfectly content to begin by taking over the patterns
+devised by their immediate predecessors in play-making,
+even if they were soon to enlarge these patterns
+and so modify them to suit their even larger needs.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_071" id="image_071"></a>
+<img src="images/i_071.png" alt="POLLOCK&#39;S Characters in the MILLER and his MEN. Plate 7" title="POLLOCK&#39;S Characters in the MILLER and his MEN. Plate 7" /><br />
+<span class="caption">Plate No. 7, complete as published, ready to be cut out and put into use in the toy theater</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">Now, the state of the art when Stevenson turned to
+the theater was in accord with the picture-frame stage
+of to-day, with a single set to the act, and without the
+soliloquies and the confidential asides to the audience
+which may then have been proper enough on the apron-stage
+of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
+Even in the lower grade of playhouse, where rude and
+crude melodramas were performed, the method and
+the manner of the 'Miller and His Men' had long departed.
+The pleasure that melodrama can give is
+perennial; but its processes vary in accord with the
+changing conditions of the theater. The door was
+open for Stevenson to write melodrama, if he preferred
+that species of play, and if he desired to varnish it
+with literature as he was to varnish the police-novel
+or mystery-story in the 'Wrecker.' But if he sought
+to do this, he was bound to inform himself as to the
+state of the art at the instant of composition. If he
+shut his eyes to the changed conditions of the theater
+since the 'Miller and His Men' had won a wide popularity
+in the playhouse, then he made an unpardonable
+blunder, for the battle was lost before he could deploy
+his forces. He might have been forewarned by the
+failure of Charles Lamb in a like attempt. When
+Lamb's Elizabethan imitation 'John Woodvil' was rejected
+for Drury Lane by John Philip Kemble as not
+"consonant with the taste of the age"; its exasperated
+author cried: "Hang on the age! I'll write for antiquity!"
+But those who write for antiquity cannot
+complain if they do not delight their contemporaries.
+It is to his contemporaries, and not to antiquity or to
+posterity, that every true dramatist has appealed.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">IV</p>
+
+<p class="indent">And as Stevenson might have taken warning from
+the sad fate of Lamb, so he might have found his profit
+in considering the happy fortune of Victor Hugo, who
+also had a taste for melodrama. When the leader of
+the French romanticists felt that it was incumbent
+upon him to conquer the theater which the classicists
+held as their last stronghold, he was swift to consider
+the state of the art. He sought immediate success
+upon the stage, and the most successful plays of that
+period in France were the melodramas of Pixérécourt,
+and of his followers, and therefore Hugo sat himself
+down to spy out the secrets of their craft. He made
+himself master of their methods, and he put together
+the striking and startling plots of 'Hernani' and 'Ruy
+Blas' in strict accord with their formulas, certain that
+he could varnish with literature their melodramatic
+actions. So glittering was his varnish, so brilliant was
+his metrical rhetoric, so glowing were his golden verses,
+that he blinded the spectators and kept the most of
+them from peering beneath at his arbitrary and artificial
+skeleton of supporting melodramatic structure.
+To-day, after fourscore years, we can see just what it
+is that Hugo did; and his plays, superb as they are in
+their lyric adornment, stand revealed as frank melodramas,
+lacking sincerity of motive and veracity of
+character drawing. But when Hugo wrote them they
+were in Kemble's phrase "consonant with the taste of
+the age," and the best of them have not yet worn out
+their welcome in the theater.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Stevenson did not heed the warning of Lamb, and
+he did not profit by the example of Hugo. 'Deacon
+Brodie' was born out of date; so was 'Admiral Guinea';
+and all the varnish of literature which the two collaborators
+applied externally and with loving solicitude
+availed naught. It is due to his entanglement in the
+strangling coils of Skeltery that Stevenson did not take
+the drama seriously. He seemed to have looked at it
+as something to be tossed off lightly to make money in
+the interstices of honest work. In his stories, long and
+short, he strove for effect, no doubt, but he was bent
+also on achieving sincerity and veracity. In his plays
+he made little effort for either sincerity or veracity, so
+far at least as his plot was concerned; and he thought
+he could lift these concoctions to the level of literature
+by the polish of his dialog, and by qualities applied on
+the outside instead of being developed from the inside.
+He seems to have believed that in the drama, at least,
+he could attain beauty by constructing his ornament
+instead of by ornamenting his construction, ignoring or
+ignorant of the fact that in the drama, the construction,
+if only it be solid enough, and four square to all
+the winds that blow, needs no ornament and is most
+impressive in its stark simplicity.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In his boyhood Goethe had also played with a toy
+theater, and it was a puppet-show piece which first
+called his attention to the mighty theme of his supreme
+poem; but the great German poet, captivated as he
+may have been by his youthful experience, was able in
+his manhood to free himself from its shackles. He
+came in time to have a profound insight into the principles
+of dramatic art, and of the dramaturgic craft.
+In his old age he talked about the theater freely and
+frequently to Eckermann; and there are few of his
+utterances which do not furnish food for reflection.
+Here is one of them:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p class="indent">Writing for the stage is something peculiar; and he who
+does not understand it had better leave it alone. Every one
+thinks that an interesting fact will appear interesting on the
+boards&mdash;nothing of the kind! Things may be very pretty to
+read, and very pretty to think about; but as soon as they are
+put upon the stage the effect is quite different; and that which
+has charmed us in the closet will probably fall flat on the boards....
+Writing for the stage is a trade that one must understand,
+and requires a talent that one must possess. Both are uncommon,
+and where they are not combined, we have scarcely any
+good result.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="indent">That Stevenson had the native gift of the dramatist
+is undisputable, and Sir Arthur Pinero in his lecture
+was able to make this clear. But "writing for the
+stage is also a trade that one must acquire"; and when
+Stevenson sought to acquire it he apprenticed himself
+to Skelt not to Sardou, to Redington and Pollock, not
+to Augier and Dumas.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1914.)</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_077" id="image_077"></a>
+<img src="images/i_077.png" alt="" title="" /><br/>
+<span class="caption">Grindoff and banditti carousing. Lower half of Plate No. 5, Pollock's characters in the
+'Miller and His Men'</span></div>
+
+<p class="indent">P.S.&mdash;After the publication of this paper in <i>Scribner's
+Magazine</i>, a friendly reader in Great Britain was
+kind enough to copy out for me this Skeltian lyric,
+which appeared in the London <i>Fun</i> in 1868, and which
+was probably rimed by Henry S. Leigh:</p>
+
+<p class="center">AN EARLY STAGE</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah me! since first, long, long ago,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">I learned to love the British stage,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">It has&mdash;or I have&mdash;altered so,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">It scarce receives my patronage!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Where are the villain's spangled tabs,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">His cloak, his ringlets, and his belt?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Where are his scowls, his growls, his stabs,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">As shown of old by Park and Skelt?</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Once was I manager myself,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And played the 'Miller and his Men';</span><br />
+<span class="i0">My company&mdash;ah, happy elf!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">I had no trouble with them then&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">They never sulked, forgot their lines,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Threw up their parts, or asked for "gelt"&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">For as the reader p'r'aps divines&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">I got them all of Park and Skelt.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I stuck them on, and cut them out,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">I painted them with colors bright;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I scattered tinsel-specks about,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And made them things of beauty, quite&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Not joys forever&mdash;ne'ertheless,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">They've vanished just as snowflakes melt.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">None can restore the bliss, I guess,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">I once derived from Park and Skelt.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How I revered the artist's skill</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Who did my heroes represent&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">With scowls the very soul to thrill&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">With one leg straight and one leg bent!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I loved his ladies full of grace,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And on their beauties fondly dwelt:&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">My first pictorial love could trace</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Her pedigree to Park and Skelt.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah me! 'tis many a year since I</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Those dear old plates&mdash;a penny plain</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And two-pence colored&mdash;did espy;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">I ne'er shall see their like again!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The world's with disappointment rife,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And I have far too often felt</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That actors now are less like life</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Than those I bought of Park and Skelt!</span>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">IV<br />
+WHY FIVE ACTS?<a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">WHY FIVE ACTS?<br />I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the eighteenth century, both in England and in
+France, every stately and ponderous tragedy and every
+self-respecting comedy obeyed the obligation imposed
+by long tradition and duly stretched itself out to the
+full measure of five acts, no more and no less. It felt
+bound thus to distend itself, even tho its theme might
+be far too frail for so huge a frame, and even tho the
+unfortunate author often found himself at his wit's
+end to piece out his play's end. Any one who has had
+occasion to read widely in the works of the eighteenth
+century playwrights cannot fail to feel abundant sympathy
+for the harassed poet who plaintively called
+on Parliament to pass a law abolishing fifth acts altogether.
+This unduly distressed dramatist was an
+Englishman; but about the same time a Frenchman,
+weary of contemplating the frequent emptiness of the
+contemporary tragic stage, sarcastically remarked that,
+after all, it must be very easy <i>not</i> to write a tragedy
+in five acts.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Yet if tragedy was to be written at all, it had to have
+five acts, since a smaller number would not seem proportionate
+to a truly tragic subject. But why five
+acts? Why has five the number sacred to the tragic
+muse? Why did even the comic muse demand it?
+Why does George Meredith, discussing comedy, declare
+that "five is dignity with a trailing robe; whereas
+one, or two, or three acts would be short skirts, and
+degrading." Why not three acts, or seven? Why was
+it that any other number of acts was unthinkable&mdash;or
+at least never thought of?</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Questions like these seem to have floated before the
+mind of the Abbé d'Aubignac, writing in the seventeenth
+century, and he came very near putting to
+himself the query which serves as a title for this chapter.
+"Poets have generally agreed that all Drammas
+regularly should have neither more nor less than Five
+Acts; and the Proof of this is the general observation
+of it; but for the Reason, I do not know whether there
+be any founded in Nature. Rhetorick has this advantage
+over Poetry in the Parts of Oration, that the
+Exord, Narration, Confirmation and Peroration are
+founded upon a way of discoursing natural to all Men....
+But for the Five Acts of the Drammatick Poem,
+they have not been framed upon any sound ground."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That the division of a drama into five parts was accepted
+in every civilized country as the only possible
+division, seems very strange indeed, when we consider
+that there is really no artistic justification for it, nor
+any logical necessity. Like every other work of art
+a play ought to have a single subject, a clearly defined
+topic; in other words, it ought to have Unity of Action.
+There is no denying that some of the greatest artists
+have, now and again, been tempted to deal with two
+themes at the same time, combining these as best they
+could in a single work at the risk of leaving us a little
+in doubt as to their intention; but in the immense majority
+of acknowledged masterpieces the interest is
+carefully centered in a single object. In these masterpieces
+the action is single and unswerving, sweeping
+forward irresistibly to its inevitable end.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">If, therefore, we accept the Unity of Action as a
+general rule, binding upon all artists, we can hardly
+deny that the most obviously natural arrangement
+for the story is to set it forth in one act, without any
+intermission or subdivision whatsoever&mdash;a single action
+in a single act. Yet it is the play in three acts which
+we are bound to recognize at once as possessing the
+ideal form, since it enables the dramatist to set apart
+the three divisions, which Aristotle declared to be essential
+to a well-constructed tragedy&mdash;the beginning,
+the middle, and the end&mdash;each presented in an act of
+its own. To put a play into more than three acts is
+possible only by halving one or another of these three
+essential parts. In a four-act play, the beginning may
+be split into two acts; and in a five-act play the middle
+may also be subdivided.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The logic of the three-act form, and the convenience
+of it also, are so obvious that ever since the tyranny
+of the Procrustean framework in five acts was abolished
+in the middle years of the nineteenth century, practical
+playwrights of all countries have favored it more
+and more. The young Dumas used it in his later plays,
+and so did Ibsen, that consummate master of stagecraft,
+emancipated from empty traditions, but profiting
+shrewdly by every available device of his immediate
+predecessors. If the four-act form is also popular
+to-day, this seems to be because the modern dramatist,
+intending a play in three acts, finds himself forced by
+sheer press of matter, to subdivide one of the essential
+members, as Sir Arthur Pinero had to do in the 'Second
+Mrs. Tanqueray' and Mr. Henry Arthur Jones in the
+'Liars.' Even the opera, which liked the larger framework
+of five acts when Scribe was writing librettos for
+Halévy and Meyerbeer, is now content with only three,
+since Wagner revealed his skill as a librettist.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is true that Freytag, in his sadly old-fashioned
+treatise on 'Technic of the Drama,' accepted without
+cavil the five-act form, and even attempted to justify
+it by asserting that there are in fact five divisions of a
+tragic action. He symbolized the arrangement of a
+drama in a pyramidal structure, declaring that it
+ascends from the Introduction to the Climax, and then
+descends to the Catastrophe. Obviously these are
+only different terms for the beginning, the middle, and
+the end. But he vainly imagined two other members,
+the Rise, which intervenes between the Introduction
+and the Climax, and the Fall, which he inserted between
+the Climax and the Catastrophe. Obviously,
+again, this is an explanation after the event; and it
+seems to have its origin solely in his acceptance of the
+five-act form. And Freytag was forced to abandon his
+own theory when he considered honestly certain of the
+masterpieces of the modern drama. He admitted it
+to be "impossible that the single acts should correspond
+entirely to the five great divisions of the action." He
+asserted that "in the Rising Action, the first stage was
+usually in the first act, the last sometimes in the third;
+of the Falling Action the beginning and the end were
+sometimes taken in the third and fifth acts." Yet he
+failed to see that if he made this admission, he cut the
+ground from under his feet, and that there was no longer
+any acceptable reason for his insistence upon the five-act
+form.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Freytag had no doubt at all as to the necessity of
+the division into five acts. He received it with blind
+faith, as tho it had been prescribed by divine authority.
+Yet if he had chosen to explore the early history of the
+drama in his own tongue, he would have found Hans
+Sachs sometimes extending his plays into six acts, and
+even into seven. And if he had cared to consider the
+drama of the Spaniards he would have seen that the
+most of the plays of Calderon are in three acts&mdash;a division
+which the great dramatic poet of Spain had taken
+over, as he had taken over so much else, from his masterful
+predecessor, Lope de Vega. In his interesting
+and illuminating little treatise on the art of writing
+plays, Lope de Vega gave the credit of establishing the
+three-act form to Virues. Plays had previously been
+written in four acts; as Lope puts it pleasantly: "The
+drama had gone on all fours, like a child, and truly it
+was then in its infancy."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Freytag ignored or was ignorant of Hans Sachs and
+Calderon. His mind was fixed on Goethe and on
+Schiller, altho his vision also included Shakspere, upon
+whom the two German poets had more or less modeled
+themselves. The tradition of the five-act form might
+not obtain in the earliest German drama, as it did not
+obtain in the Spanish; but it was firmly established in
+the later German drama, in the English, and in the
+French. It is easy to see that the later Germans derived
+it from the French and the English; but where
+did the French and the English get it? Where could
+they get it? No such division existed in the medieval
+drama, in the mysteries and in the miracle-plays, out
+of which the drama of every modern language has been
+developed. No such division existed in the Greek
+drama, which has served as a standard and as a stimulus
+to the drama of every modern literature. A Greek
+tragedy was represented without any intermission in a
+single, long unbroken act; and if a sequence of three
+plays was sometimes performed, one after another, on
+the same day, and dealing with successive periods of
+the same story, this trilogy might suggest a division
+into three parts. Nor is any hint of the duty of dividing
+a tragedy into five parts to be discovered anywhere
+in Aristotle.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">II</p>
+
+<p class="indent">And yet we must go back to the Greek theater if we
+want to see why it is that the 'Femmes Savantes' of
+Molière and the 'School for Scandal' of Sheridan are
+each of them in five acts. But it is not from a Greek
+that we get the law that this division was obligatory
+on all self-respecting dramatists; it is from a Roman,
+writing at a time when the drama of his own language
+had been ousted from the stage by pantomimic spectacle
+and by gladiatorial combat. It is Horace, who,
+in his epistle on the art of poetry, declares the necessity
+of five acts:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">Ne brevior, neu sit quinto productior actu</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Fabula quae posci vult et spectata reponi.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">Sir Theodore Martin rendered this in an English
+rimed couplet, which does not completely convey the
+meaning of the two Latin lines, but which will serve to
+show the rigidity of the rule laid down by the Roman
+poet:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">Five acts a play must have, nor more nor less,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To keep the stage and have a marked success.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">But this still leaves us groping in the dark. Why
+did Horace declare this law? What warrant had he?
+What put the idea into his head? These are questions
+answered by a French scholar, M. Weil; in one of his
+ingenious and learned 'Études sur le Drame Antique,'
+he explains that Horace derived much of his theory of
+the poetic art from the Alexandrian critics, and more
+particularly from the writings of a certain Neoptolemus
+of Parium. Probably the Alexandrian authors
+of tragedy had been led to adopt a division into five
+acts by following the example of Euripides, whose practise
+was not uniform, but who tended to reduce to
+four the number of the lyric odes in his tragedies, thus
+separating the purely dramatic passages into five parts.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In Athens the drama had been slowly evolved out
+of the tragic songs; and in the surviving tragedies of
+Æschylus, the earliest of the three great dramatic poets
+of Greece, we discover that the choral odes are more
+abundant than the dialog which carries on the plot.
+In the extant plays of his mighty successor, Sophocles,
+the drama is seen emerging triumphant, but the lyrical
+passages are still frequent and important. In the later
+pieces of Euripides, the third and most modern of the
+Attic tragedians, we note that the drama has almost
+wholly disengaged itself from the lyric out of which it
+sprang. In Æschylus and in Sophocles the number of
+choral odes and the number of episodes, of purely dramatic
+passages in dialog, is never fixed, varying from
+play to play as the plot might demand. But in Euripides
+the choral odes are more detached from the drama;
+beautiful in themselves, they seem to exist rather for
+their own sake than in any integral relation to the play
+itself. And apparently Euripides was far more interested
+in his play, in his plot, and in his characters,
+than in these extraneous lyric passages, so he reduced
+them to the lowest possible number, generally to four,
+serving, so to speak, as exquisite interact music, separating
+the pathetic play into five episodes in dialog.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Alexandrian tragedians came long after Euripides,
+and to their sophisticated taste his pathetic and
+emotional plays appealed far more than the austerer
+and manlier masterpieces of his two great predecessors.
+Apparently they accepted his form as final; they
+may even have left out the choruses altogether; and
+then their tragedies had five separate episodes&mdash;in
+other words, five acts. It is these lost Alexandrian
+tragedies, composed in the decadent days of the Greek
+drama, which seem to have served as the model for
+Seneca, the eloquent rhetorician&mdash;even tho he frequently
+took over the theme and often more or less of
+the structure of certain of the dramas of Euripides.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The tragedies of Seneca are to be considered rather
+as dramatic poems than as poetic dramas, since they
+were intended not really for performance by actors,
+in a theater, before an audience, but for recitation by
+a single elocutionist in a private house&mdash;much as a
+professional reader of our own time might recite unaided
+a more or less dramatic poem by Shelley or Byron
+or Browning. Coming long after Horace, Seneca unhesitatingly
+accepted all of the restrictions insisted
+upon by the Latin lyrist&mdash;including the purely academic
+limitation of the number of speakers taking part in any
+dialog to three, a limitation absolutely absurd in a
+poem not intended for actual acting and not forced to
+conform to the accidental conditions of the Attic stage.
+Obeying also the other rule which he found in Horace's
+codification of the laws of dramatic poetry, the Hispano-Roman
+rhetorician was careful always to cut up
+his play into five parts. But he saw his profit in retaining
+the chorus, since this could be made to serve
+as the appropriate mouthpiece for the elaborate passages
+of elocutionary splendor in which he delighted.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is not to be wondered at that the Italian scholars
+of the Renascence followed the precept of Horace and
+the practise of Seneca. They were far more at home
+in Latin than they were in Greek; and they could
+hardly help reading into the literature of Athens what
+they were already familiar with in the authors of
+Rome. To them Seneca was as imposing as Sophocles,
+and Horace was almost as weighty as Aristotle. So it
+is that Scaliger and Minturno prescribe five acts, and
+that Castelvetro (always more practical in his point
+of view) points out that poets seem to have found the
+five-act form most suitable. When an Italian scholar-poet
+turned from criticism to creation, the tragedies he
+conscientiously composed obeyed all the rules, and his
+dramatic poems were as academic as those of Seneca,
+in that they were intended not for production by professional
+actors in a regular theater before spectators
+who had paid their way in, but only for an occasional
+performance by the author himself assisted by a few
+of his friends before a little group of cultivated admirers
+of antiquity, contemptuous of the real public. These
+soulless dramatic poems, devised for declamation by
+amateurs before a gathering of dilettants, are now
+perceived to be merely literary curiosities, having little
+connection with the real drama made for the regular
+theater and its myriad-minded body of playgoers.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Just as the Italian dramatic poems were imitations
+of Seneca, so the French dramatic poems, composed a
+little later, were imitations of these Italians, and also
+of Seneca, more or less indirectly. They were the imitations
+of an imitation, aping the outward form of the
+drama, but empty of all genuine dramatic spirit, artificial
+in passion and high-flown in rhetoric. And there
+are early English attempts at this same sort of academic
+tragedy, more imitative still, since we can see in them
+the commingled influence of the French and of the
+Italians immediately, and also of the remoter Seneca,
+whom they revered as the exemplar of true tragedy.
+Such a play is 'Gorboduc,' belauded by the scholarly
+Sidney&mdash;and even on one occasion acted, by main
+strength. In all of these imitations, English and
+French and Italian, we find the stately chorus abounding
+in lofty rhetoric; and we find also, and always, the
+division into five acts. But in the folk-theater, which
+the scholar-poets scorned, and out of which the living
+drama was to be developed, there is no trace of any
+division into acts. In the mysteries and the miracle-plays,
+and in the chronicle-plays which grew out of
+them, there are numberless episodes, each complete
+in itself, and never combined artificially into acts.
+The composer of any one of these folk-dramas conceived
+his story as a continuous narrative shown in
+action; and he gave no thought to the number of
+divisions, of episodes, of separate scenes, or of acts
+that it might seem to have.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">III</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Tragedy has ever been held to be more elevated than
+comedy and more worthy; and comedy has continually
+accepted the conditions appropriate to tragedy. Since
+the dignity of tragedy demanded a division into five
+acts, comedy was also subjected to the same rule; and
+this was done in spite of the fact that the plays of Plautus
+and Terence (composed long before Horace codified
+his advice to intending poets) were not divided
+into acts, if we may judge by the earliest of the surviving
+manuscripts. So it is that we find the scholarly
+authors of the two earliest of English comedies, 'Ralph
+Roister Doister' and 'Gammer Gurton's Needle,'
+knowing what was expected of them, and giving the
+five-act form to both of these amusing plays. But
+these two comedies, almost contemporary as they are
+with the academic and undramatic tragedy of 'Gorboduc,'
+are far superior to it in adaptability for actual
+performance. They are not intended only to be recited;
+they can be acted easily and profitably. As
+we analyze them we see that the structural complexity
+may be derived from the comic dramas of Plautus and
+Terence, but that the inner spirit is that of the English
+folk-theater, of the robust medieval farce-writers,
+of the unknown humorist who has left us the laughable
+and veracious scene of Mak and the Shepherds.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Scholars as they were, the authors of these two comedies
+did not scorn the primitive plays of the plain
+people of their own time. They did not despise the
+unpretending folk-drama which was then pleasing the
+populace; in fact, they took stock of it, and found their
+profit in so doing. They saw that to be raised up to
+the level of literature it needed only to be chastened
+and stiffened. They accepted the living tradition of
+play-making as it came down to them, and in accord
+with this tradition they wrought their humorous fantasies,
+adding the higher polish and the more adroit
+plot which they had learned to appreciate in the Latin
+comic dramatists. They accepted the native play,
+bare as it was, and they enriched it by bestowing on it
+as much as it could carry of the finer art of the Romans.
+Thus it is that the authors of 'Ralph Roister Doister'
+and of 'Gammer Gurton's Needle' may have pointed
+out the path of progress to the author of the 'Comedy
+of Errors,' whereas the authors of 'Gorboduc,' contemptuously
+rejecting the folk-theater of their own day, and
+idly copying the classicist imitations of the Italians,
+thereby relinquished whatever direct influence they
+might have had upon the growth of tragedy in England.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Both 'Ralph Roister Doister' and 'Gammer Gurton's
+Needle' were probably written for performance
+by college boys, and they have not a little of the brisk
+heartiness and of the broad horse-play to which we are
+accustomed in the college pieces of to-day. It was for
+performance at court that Lyly wrote the most of his
+plays, which lack the vivacity and the liveliness distinguishing
+the two college comic dramas, but which
+yet reveal a far better understanding of the drama than
+was possessed by the authors of 'Gorboduc.' Lyly
+again is careful to divide his plays into five acts. But
+his contemporaries Greene and Peele, writing solely
+for the professional playhouses, were bound by none
+of the rules which might be expected in college or at
+court. Whatever their own scholarly equipment, when
+they wrote for the professional players, they followed
+unhesitatingly the traditions of the contemporary
+theater. As playwrights they were the direct heirs of
+the anonymous and ignorant devisers of the medieval
+drama. They had a story to set on the stage; they
+chose a succession of more or less effective episodes,
+and they carelessly cast these into dialog, with little
+thought of form or of construction. Never do their
+plays contain matter enough for five full acts; and we
+may be certain that no such framework was ever in
+the mind of either of these dramatic poets. In the
+original editions of their pieces we find no separation
+into acts and scenes; and if this needless and misleading
+subdivision is found in later editions it is the doing
+of misguided editors.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In what is accepted as the earliest edition of Kyd's
+'Spanish Tragedy,' the most widely popular of all the
+pre-Shaksperian plays, the text is actually divided into
+four acts. But this division is not structural; it is
+almost accidental, as tho it was an afterthought, inserted
+at the last moment into the copy intended for
+the printer, and never in the mind of the playwright
+himself when he was preparing the prompt-book for
+the actors; and Shakspere, who followed Kyd in more
+ways than one, apparently followed him in this also.
+In the folio edition of his plays, published after his
+death, a division into five acts has been made; but the
+task has not been accomplished any too skilfully&mdash;for
+example, the second act of 'King John' has but eighty
+lines, and here the division is into four acts only. The
+suggestion has been proffered that it was, perhaps, left
+to the printers to do, the influence of Ben Jonson
+having been powerful enough to establish the theory
+that a self-respecting dramatist would never fail to
+cast his tragedies in the five-act form. It is to be noted
+also that no division into acts is to be found in the
+quarto editions published in Shakspere's lifetime; and
+this is very significant since these quartos seem to have
+been piratical copies from shorthand notes taken surreptitiously
+in the theater, thus recording the actual
+conditions of performance.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It may be doubted whether Shakspere conceived his
+plays in accordance with any such subdivisions.
+Some of them, the 'Comedy of Errors' for one, which
+can be acted in the space of an hour and a quarter,
+are far too slight for so huge a framework. On the
+other hand, the several appearances of Chorus punctuate
+'Henry V' into five divisions, apparently an intentional
+conformity to the Horatian rule. Of course,
+there were generally several intermissions in the
+Elizabethan performance of a play, altho the resulting
+divisions were not necessarily five; and it is noteworthy
+that Shakspere makes Jaques declare that man's life
+had seven acts.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">IV</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The fact is that Shakspere was a professional playwright,
+and that he had no merely academic theories.
+In composing his plays he followed unhesitatingly the
+principles that had guided his immediate predecessors.
+He was seeking ever to give the playgoing public what
+it had been accustomed to enjoy in the theater, better
+in degree, no doubt, but the same in kind. Like these
+predecessors, he kept to the traditions inherited from
+the medieval mysteries; and he thought in terms, not
+of acts and of scenes, as a modern playwright is forced
+to do, but of a continuous narrative shown in action.
+In doing so he resembles Herodotus, whose history has
+also been cut up by later editors, dividing it into nine
+books, altho, as Professor Bury has reminded us, "such
+divisions had not yet come into fashion" in the historian's
+own day. There is no reason to suppose that
+Shakspere would have approved of the attempt of the
+editors of the folio to subdivide his plays, each into
+five acts. There is every reason to suppose that he
+would have been greatly annoyed if he could have
+foreseen the way in which later editors have chosen
+further to chop up the acts into an infinity of scenes.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Nowadays, we have been so accustomed to read
+Shakspere in one or another of the trim and tidy modern
+editions, with a wanton division into acts and into
+scenes, each of which indicates a change of place, and
+each of which seems to suggest a change of scenery,
+that it is only by a resolute effort of the will that we
+are able to shake off the prepossessions derived from
+this unfortunate and confusing presentation of his text.
+Probably even to-day a majority of those who enjoy
+reading Shakspere would be surprised to be told that
+there is no warrant whatever for these alleged changes
+of scene, and for these superabundant subdivisions of
+his story. Many of these readers would be taken
+aback by the unexpected discovery that all this cutting
+up of Shakspere's text was the work of his commentators,
+with Rowe at the head of the procession.
+Some of these readers would feel as tho they were deprived
+of a precious possession, if they had only an
+edition in which all this useless machinery was swept
+away.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">And yet this is just the edition which is demanded
+by the present state of Shaksperian scholarship, and
+which is now made possible by our new understanding
+of the Elizabethan theater, with its rude platform
+thrust out into the yard, so different from our modern
+theaters, in which the stage is withdrawn behind a
+picture-frame. The Tudor platform-stage is wholly
+unlike the picture-frame stage of to-day; but it is very
+like the "pageant," or the scaffold on which the mysteries
+and miracle-plays were presented. It was to the
+simple conditions of his semi-medieval theater that
+Shakspere adjusted himself, rude as those conditions
+may now appear to us who are accustomed to the sumptuous
+picturesqueness of our own luxuriant playhouses.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In accepting the theater as he found it, and in availing
+himself of all its possibilities, such as they were,
+Shakspere showed his usual common sense. Only by
+striving to reconstruct for ourselves in our mind's eye,
+as it were, the playhouse where he plied his trade and
+earned his living, can we come to any adequate appreciation
+of his art, of his craftsmanship as a playwright,
+of his dramaturgic skill. And in any honest effort to
+understand how his mighty dramas were originally
+produced by himself and by his fellow actors in the
+round O of the wooden Globe Theater, unroofed and
+unlighted except by the dingy daylight of northern
+Europe, we need always to keep fast in our mind the
+fact that all preconceptions are false that may be derived
+from our memory of latter-day performances in
+theaters of a type which the Elizabethan dramatists
+could not foresee, and of which the conditions are often
+the exact opposite of those they accepted without hesitation.
+That is to say, the most profitable way to reconstruct
+mentally the Tudor playhouse is to banish
+from our minds every impression made by our modern
+theater, with its elaborate complexity, and to study
+out for ourselves the simple circumstances of performance
+in the Middle Ages. And as a first step toward
+the proper standpoint, we must cast out our traditional
+belief that Shakspere always accepted the classicist
+formula of five acts, proclaimed by Horace, and
+employed by Seneca. That he did use it in one or two
+plays seems indisputable, and he may very well have
+employed it in a few others, but there is no reason to
+suppose that he would have submitted himself any more
+willingly to the rule of five acts than he did to the rule
+of the three unities.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It may be doubted also whether not a few dramatists,
+writing later than Shakspere, would not have done well
+to claim the liberty he and Lope de Vega chose to
+exercise at will. Racine, for one, had sadly to stretch
+his 'Athalie' to fill out the five-act framework which
+he had blindly accepted, altho he had earlier limited
+'Esther' to three acts. Schiller, for another, would
+have gained a swifter compactness for his play if he
+had left out the needless fifth act of his 'William Tell'
+and rolled his fourth act into his third. Victor Hugo
+had to manufacture a fourth act for his 'Ruy Blas,' so
+slightly related to his main story that it was cut out
+of the English adaptation acted by Fechter and Booth.
+Ibsen, it may be added, composed his first tragedy,
+'Catiline,' in three acts, altho it was in blank verse,
+thus early revealing his characteristic independence
+of tradition.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1907.)</p>
+
+<p class="indent">P. S.&mdash;Since this paper was written I have found two
+opinions as to the number of acts a play ought to have
+which were unknown to me when I undertook the discussion.
+The first is in the 'Dasarupa,' the Hindu
+treatise on the craft of play-making: "There are five
+stages of the action which is set on foot by those that
+strive after a result: Beginning, Effort, Prospect of
+Success, Certainty of Success, Attainment of the Result."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The second is in the commentary made by Robert
+Louis Stevenson during his methodical perusal of the
+dramas of the elder Dumas. After reading 'Henri III
+et sa Cour,' Stevenson declares that here in Dumas's
+first piece "is the cloven foot; a fourth act that has
+no part or lot in the play; a fourth act that is a mere
+incubus and interruption&mdash;that takes the eye off the
+action, and between two spirited and palpitating scenes
+interjects a damned sermon on the history of France.
+Poor Tribonian had a sore job to make up the fifty
+books of the Pandects; what was that to the labor of
+a dramatist bent on filling his five acts? I go as far
+as this: the natural division of the normal play is
+four: Act I, exposition; Act II, the problem produced;
+Act III, the problem argued; Act IV, the way out of
+it."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1916.)</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">V<br />
+DRAMATIC COLLABORATION<a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">DRAMATIC COLLABORATION<br />I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is a significant fact that whenever and wherever the
+drama has flourished most abundantly and most luxuriantly,
+we are certain to find a tendency to collaboration,
+to the partnership of two authors in the composition
+of one play. In England in the spacious days
+of good Queen Bess, there is not only the famous association
+of Beaumont and Fletcher, but also a host of
+other more or less temporary combinations, Fletcher
+with Shakspere and Massinger, Dekker with Ben Jonson
+and with Middleton. In Spain Lope de Vega
+joined forces with Montalvan and with others. In
+France in the seventeenth century Molière, once at
+least called to his aid Corneille and Quinault; and in
+France again in the nineteenth century we find Augier
+working with Sandeau and with Foussier, Scribe working
+with Legouvé, and with a score of others, while
+Dumas the elder was encompassed by a cloud of collaborators,
+and Dumas the younger was willing on
+more than one occasion to join various writers in the
+plays which he included in the separate volumes of his
+works, called by him the 'Théâtre des Autres.' Then
+also in France there was the long-continued alliance of
+Meilhac and Halévy, to which we owe 'Froufrou' and
+the 'Grand Duchess of Gérolstein'; and there was also
+the almost equally interesting association of MM.
+Caillavet and de Flers. Sardou had one ally in the
+composition of 'Divorçons,' and another in the composition
+of 'Madame Sans Gêne.' In Great Britain in
+recent years we have seen Sir James Barrie and Sir
+Arthur Pinero unite in writing a book for music; Mr.
+Bennett and Mr. Knoblauch unite in writing 'Milestones';
+Mr. Granville Barker and Mr. Laurence
+Housman unite in writing 'Prunella.' And in the
+United States there was a score of years ago the steady
+collaboration of Mr. Belasco with the late H. C. De
+Mille, to which we owe the 'Charity Ball' and the
+'Wife'; and more recently Mr. Belasco also has collaborated
+with Mr. John Luther Long in writing
+'Madame Butterfly,' and the 'Darling of the Gods.'
+Mr. Augustus Thomas was once the partner of Mr.
+Clay Greene; Mr. Bronson Howard composed one of
+his latest plays, 'Peter Stuyvesant, Governor of New
+Amsterdam,' in association with another American
+man of letters; and Mr. Booth Tarkington and Mr.
+Harry Leon Wilson were the co-authors of the 'Man
+from Home' and of half a dozen other pieces.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">While this prevalence of the practise of collaboration
+in periods of dramatic productivity is significant, it is
+equally significant that there is no corresponding prevalence
+of the practise of collaboration in novel-writing.
+True it is that there are certain fairly well-known
+partnerships in the history of prose fiction&mdash;that of
+Erckmann-Chatrain, in French, for instance, and that
+of Besant and Rice in English. True it is that Dickens
+and Wilkie Collins were joint authors of 'No Thorofare,'
+and that Mark Twain and Charles Dudley
+Warner were joint authors of the 'Gilded Age.' True
+it is also, that novels have been written not only by
+two partners, but by what can fairly be described as a
+syndicate of associated authors, the 'King's Men' by
+four, 'Six of One and Half a Dozen of the Other' by
+six, and the 'Whole Family' by twelve (including Mr.
+Howells and Mr. Henry James, Mrs. Mary E. Wilkins
+Freeman, and Doctor Henry van Dyke). These freakish
+conglomerates are sporadic only; they seem to be
+little better than literary "stunts"; and even the union
+of two writers in the production of a single novel is
+far less frequently to be observed than the union of
+two writers in the production of a single play. The
+former is unusual, whereas the latter seems to be so
+common as to excite no comment.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Now, there must be a reason for this difference. If
+the playwrights find it advantageous to double up,
+and the novelists do not discover any profit in putting
+on double harness, there ought to be some evident explanation.
+When we consider more carefully the essentially
+different conditions of the art of prose fiction
+and the art of play-writing, it is not difficult to perceive
+fairly obvious reasons for the varying procedure of the
+practitioners of these rival arts, which may seem so
+much alike, but which are really so very different in
+their methods and in their possibilities.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The French critic Joubert once asserted that "to
+make in advance an exact and detailed plan is to deprive
+one's intellect of all the pleasures of novelty and
+chance meeting during its execution; it is to make this
+execution insipid, and in consequence impossible, in
+works calling for enthusiasm and imagination." This
+is an overstatement&mdash;but it is not a misstatement&mdash;of
+a principle of composition which is fundamentally
+sound in the writing of prose fiction, but which is
+fundamentally unsound in the writing of plays. The
+drama demands a well-built story, artfully put together,
+while a novel need not have a coherent and compact
+plot. Some great novels, Fielding's 'Tom Jones' for
+one, and Turgenef's 'Smoke' for another, have each
+of them a beautifully articulated structure, and so has
+Mr. Howells's 'Rise of Silas Lapham,' to take a later
+example. But other great novels are frankly more or
+less haphazard in their movement, the 'Pickwick
+Papers,' for instance, and 'Tartarin on the Alps,' and
+'Huckleberry Finn.' And it is not too much to say
+that only a very few novels attain to the severity of
+structure, the regularity of action, the straightforward,
+unswerving movement which we discover in the dramas
+of a corresponding rank, and which can be achieved
+only by making in advance the exact and detailed plan
+that Joubert held to be fatal in works calling for enthusiasm
+and imagination.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Of course, the drama can utilize enthusiasm and
+imagination quite as often and quite as abundantly
+as can prose fiction, but it must use these precious
+gifts with a discretion which is not imposed upon its
+rival. In a novel enthusiastic imagination may lure
+the story-teller into a host of by-paths not foreseen by
+him when he set out on his journey; and while he is
+adventuring himself in these by-paths, he may chance
+to encounter characters of a diverting or an appealing
+personality, whom it may amuse him to delineate, and
+whom the readers of his book will be glad to welcome.
+But in a drama the story-teller is debarred from these
+wanderings from the straight and narrow road, and he
+must, perforce, control his enthusiastic imagination,
+compelling it to do its work within the rigid limits of
+the artfully devised framework of the plot.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In other words, character is all-important in prose
+fiction, and the ultimate fame of the novelist depends
+upon his power of endowing his creatures with life, and
+upon his ability to let them obey the laws of their
+being before our eyes. This must the playwright also
+achieve; but he has the added duty of relating his
+characters intimately to the main action of his drama.
+Now, the novelist is under no obligation of this sort;
+he appeals not to a crowd seated before a stage, but to
+the solitary reader in the study; and experience shows
+that solitary readers do not insist upon the solidity
+of structure in a novel which the same individuals
+desire and demand when they betake themselves to the
+theater. The novel-reader may be satisfied by characters
+who do not know their own minds, and who are
+merely exhibited and put through their paces, without
+having any vital relation to the story, even if there is
+anything which can fairly be called a story&mdash;and in
+some novels of high repute, in Sterne's 'Sentimental
+Journey,' for example, and in Anatole France's 'Histoire
+Contemporaine,' each of them extending over
+several volumes, there is little or no story, no main
+thread, no pretense of a plot.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">II</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Here, then, is the fatal difference between a novel
+and a play; a novel may have a plot, but a plot is not
+necessary, and it can get along with a minimum of
+story; whereas a play must have a plot, skilfully articulated,
+even if the skeleton is beautifully covered; it
+must have a story peopled by persons knowing their
+own minds, a story set in action by a dominating will,
+which determines the successive episodes of the action.
+As the making of a plot, as the putting together of
+a supporting skeleton of action, calls for dexterity of
+workmanship, for ingenuity of resource, for adroitness
+of construction, for the most careful consideration
+of the means whereby the end is to be obtained, two
+heads are often better than one, because the partners
+have to talk the thing out to its uttermost details before
+they decide upon the straight line which is the
+shortest distance between two points. The technic
+of play-making is more exacting than the technic of
+novel-writing, and it requires imperatively the exact
+and detailed plan which Joubert held to be hampering
+to enthusiasm and imagination. Scott, for example,
+as he tells us himself, began more than one of his novels
+not knowing what he was going to put into it, and not
+knowing from day to day, as he was writing, what his
+ultimate goal would be. But no playwright, however
+happy-go-lucky in his tendencies, has ever dared to
+begin a play before he knew with absolute certainty
+how he intended to end it. In the drama we insist
+upon a straightforward and unswerving action; the
+end is implied in the beginning, and the beginning is
+only what that end makes necessary.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As the technic of the drama is exacting, it needs to
+be acquired by a period of apprenticeship; and here is
+another of the indisputable advantages of collaboration.
+The more inexperienced of the two collaborators
+is taken into the studio, so to speak, of the more expert,
+and he thereby learns the secrets of stage-craft in the
+best possible way, by applying them under the direction,
+or at the suggestion and by the advice, of an older
+practitioner, to whom they have become so familiar
+that they are a second nature, as it were.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Collaboration is the best conceivable school for young
+playwrights. It is impossible to overestimate the influence
+of Scribe's multiplied collaborations upon the
+drama of France in the mid-years of the nineteenth
+century; and almost as potent, because almost as wide-spread,
+was the influence of the many collaborations
+of the elder Dumas. Most of those who were the temporary
+partners of Scribe and Dumas were subdued to
+their more powerful associate, and contributed little
+or nothing beyond their fundamental suggestions for
+the several plays, and their incidental suggestions as
+to details of the working-out. That is to say, most of
+the plays signed by Scribe and Dumas in partnership
+with others have a close similarity to the plays they
+signed alone. But from this generalization we may
+except 'Adrienne Lecouvreur' and 'Bataille de Dames,'
+in which Scribe had Legouvé for a partner, and in which
+we find a greater richness of character delineation than
+in any of the pieces that Scribe composed alone, as we
+find also a greater dexterity of construction than in
+any of the pieces that Legouvé composed alone.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">To the fact that 'Milestones' was written by Mr.
+Arnold Bennett and Mr. Edward Knoblauch in conjunction,
+and to the friendly discussion due to their
+working together, we may credit the superior stage-effectiveness
+of this play over the 'Kismet,' which Mr.
+Knoblauch wrote alone, and over the 'Great Adventure,'
+for which Mr. Bennett was solely responsible.
+To the composition of 'Milestones' each of these two
+authors, the American and the Englishman, brought
+his special qualifications, each of them not only stimulating
+but supplementing the other. So we find the
+most famous French comedy of the nineteenth century,
+the 'Gendre de M. Poirier,' a better piece of work,
+more equably balanced than any play written alone by
+either Augier or Sandeau.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is scarcely necessary to say that there is little
+profit in a partnership for play-making when both of
+the associates are equally inexpert, or when they were
+both possessed of wrong notions about the art of the
+drama. In the former case we have the blind leading
+the blind, and the most lamentable example of this is
+the long forgotten 'Ah Sin,' which Bret Harte and
+Mark Twain combined to compose that C. T. Parsloe
+could impersonate the Heathen Chinee. In the
+latter case we have not only the blind leading the
+blind, but a perverseness in going the wrong way, intensified
+by the complete sympathy between the two
+associates; and the most lamentable example of this
+is the 'Deacon Brodie' of Robert Louis Stevenson and
+William Ernest Henley, who not only were ignorant of
+the modern technic of the drama, but who ignored it
+of set purpose, deliberately going up a blind alley despite
+the plain sign that there was no thorofare.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">III</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Yet Stevenson, at least, perceived clearly enough
+what ought to be the more evident advantages of collaboration,
+that it focused "two minds together on the
+stuff," thus producing "an extraordinarily greater richness
+of purview, consideration, and invention." Collaboration
+will probably always produce a greater
+richness of invention, since each of the partners is
+likely to stimulate the other, their two minds striking
+sparks like flint and steel. But it can produce a greater
+richness of consideration only when each is willing both
+to yield and to oppose. Neither must yield too easily;
+each of them must stand out for his own suggestions;
+and each of them must insist on weighing and measuring
+the suggestions of his ally. If they are too sympathetic,
+if their two hearts beat as one, then the advantage
+of their having two heads is diminished. If the
+two partners always think alike, then there will be no
+greater richness of purview.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">When a play composed by two of his friends failed
+to find the success on the stage which had been anticipated
+for it, Mr. Augustus Thomas made the shrewd
+remark that the two authors had probably been "too
+polite to each other"&mdash;that is to say, that they had not
+insisted upon criticising the successive suggestions
+made by each in turn. On the other hand, the collaborators
+must be broad-minded enough not to resent
+this necessary criticism. Like any other partnership,
+collaboration is a ticklish experiment, and it can be
+profitable only when the two partners are willing to
+give and take. They need more than usual self-control;
+they must be able, each of them, to preserve his own
+self-respect while full of regard for the self-respect of
+the other. It is not surprising that the long collaborations
+of Erckmann-Chatrain and of Meilhac and Halévy
+finally came to a sudden end because of an abrupt
+quarrel. That disagreement is likely to arise out of
+the discussions inherent in any profitable literary partnership
+is evidenced by a retort credited to the younger
+Dumas, who was a rather authoritative partner, and
+who did not always succeed in keeping on good terms
+with those whose plays he had bettered. A friend once
+suggested a theme for a play, and invited the collaboration
+of Dumas. "But why should I wish to quarrel
+with you?" was answer of the witty dramatist.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Perhaps the most remarkable instance of self-control
+in all the long history of collaboration is that of Théodore
+Barrière, the author of the once-famous play called
+the 'Marble Heart,' one of the latest of whose pieces
+(adapted by Augustin Daly as 'Alixe') was composed
+in collaboration with his mother-in-law!</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Sometimes the breach between the two partners is
+postponed until after the play is completed and produced.
+Charles Reade and Tom Taylor joined forces
+in the composition of the long-popular comedy called
+'Masks and Faces,' and after it had established itself
+upon the stage, Charles Reade took its plot and its
+characters and utilized them in his charming novel,
+'Peg Woffington,' and as he had taken the liberty of
+thus making a private profit out of the property of the
+partnership, it is not to be wondered at that Tom Taylor
+was distinctly displeased. But Charles Reade, altho
+he collaborated with Tom Taylor, with Paul Merritt,
+and with Dion Boucicault, was more or less deficient
+in the courtesy and consideration that a man ought
+to possess to fit him for partnership. When he allied
+himself with Dion Boucicault in the writing of the
+novel of 'Foul Play,' the collaborators quarreled so
+violently that they felt themselves justified in preparing
+rival dramatizations of the story they had written
+in conjunction, so that London playgoers had the opportunity
+of choosing between two different theatrical
+adaptations of the same tale.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">When the two partners are courteous to each other
+but not too yielding, when they are sympathetic but
+not too much alike in their characteristics and qualifications,
+when each of them supplements the weaker
+points of the other, then collaboration ought to result
+in plays of more variety of invention, and of more ingenuity
+of construction than is likely to be possessed
+by the average play due to a single mind. This much
+must be admitted; and it is the final justification for
+collaboration. But altho these partnerships in play-making
+spread abroad a knowledge of the principles
+of the art, and altho they raise the probable value of
+the average play, it must be admitted also, and with
+equal frankness, that the possibilities of collaboration
+are sharply limited.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">No single one of the mightiest masterpieces of dramatic
+literature, ancient and modern, is to be credited
+to collaboration; and the only possible exception to
+this sweeping statement would be urged by the critics
+who hold that the 'Gendre de M. Poirier' of Augier
+and Sandeau is the masterpiece of French comedy in
+the nineteenth century. Those who have climbed to
+the loftiest height of dramatic art have always done
+so alone, sustained by enthusiasm and supported by
+imagination. In spite of the greater "richness of
+purview, consideration, and invention" that collaboration
+undoubtedly bestows, the man of surpassing genius,
+the great master of the drama, Sophocles or Shakspere
+or Molière, works best alone. It is true that he may
+now and again take to himself an ally, as Shakspere
+condescended to the assistance of Fletcher in 'Henry
+VIII,' and as Molière invoked the aid of Corneille in
+'Psyché,' but it is true also that these plays, written
+in collaboration by Shakspere and by Molière, are not
+the plays which establish and confirm their fame.
+Indeed, these plays are not even among the more important
+pieces of Shakspere and Molière, and the reputation
+of the authors would be no lower if these
+plays had never come into existence.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is by the comedies and tragedies which Shakspere
+wrote alone that the Elizabethan stage is made glorious,
+and not by the dramatic romances that go under
+the joint names of Beaumont and Fletcher. It is by
+the lyrical melodramas of which Victor Hugo was sole
+author that we recall the Romanticist revolt in the
+French theater in 1830, and immediately thereafter,
+and not by the perfervidly passionate pieces that the
+elder Dumas put together in partnership with a group
+of now-forgotten auxiliaries. It is by the comedies
+that Augier and the younger Dumas wrote, each of them
+expressing himself in his own fashion, that the drama
+of France is illumined a score or more years later, and
+not by the comedies in the composition of which Scribe
+had the aid of an army of allies.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In any period of abundant fertility we can observe
+growing together at the same time from the soil, a
+fairly large number of trees rising above the underbrush,
+and we can also perceive here and there a tree
+of conspicuous eminence towering above these clumps
+of average height. In the luxuriant forest of the
+drama many of the trees of average height may be
+ticketed with two names, but the monarchs of the
+wood, those whose tops lift themselves high above
+their neighbors&mdash;these will be found to bear only single
+signature.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1914.)</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">VI<br />
+THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS AND<br />
+THE NOVELIZATION OF PLAYS<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">
+THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS<br />
+AND THE NOVELIZATION OF PLAYS<br />I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> Professor Bliss Perry's admirably suggestive 'Study
+of Prose Fiction,' he devotes one chapter to a careful
+consideration of the essential distinctions between
+prose fiction and the drama, in which he makes it
+plain that "the novel and the play are not merely two
+different modes of communicating the same fact or
+truth," because "the different modes of presentation
+really result in the communication of a different fact."
+Professor Perry declares that the field of the dramatist
+is marked off from that of the novelist "by the nature
+of the artistic medium which each man employs," and
+he asserts that the choice of a medium for presenting
+his story and projecting his characters "depends wholly
+upon the personality and training of the artist and the
+nature of the fact or truth that he wishes to convey to
+the public". And he sums up by insisting that "a
+novel is typically as far removed from a play as a bird
+is from a fish, and that any attempt to transform one
+into the other is apt to result in a sort of flying-fish, a
+betwixt-and-between thing&mdash;capable, indeed, of both
+swimming and flying, but good at neither." In other
+words, a dramatized novel or a novelized play is an
+attempt to breed an amphibious creature which, as the
+Irishman once defined it, "can't live on the land, and
+dies in the water."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The difference between the novel and the play is
+due to the inexorable fact that one is intended to be
+read alone in the study, and that the other is intended
+to be seen on the stage by a crowd; it ought to be obvious
+to all who care to consider the question, and yet
+there are many who fail to grasp the distinction, deceived
+by the illusive but superficial similarities between
+the two forms, each of which contains a story
+carried on by characters who take part in dialogs.
+And as a result of this failure to apprehend the vital
+differences between the two types of story-telling, the
+narrative to be perused and the action to be witnessed,
+our theaters have long been invaded by dramatized
+novels, and our book-stores are now being besieged
+by novelized plays. In many cases, if not in most of
+them, the motive for the transformation is simply
+commercial; and in view of the immediate gain to be
+garnered, the artistic disadvantages of the procedure
+are overlooked. If hundreds of thousands of readers
+have found pleasure in following the footsteps of a
+fascinating heroine thru the pages of a prose fiction, it
+is possible always that hundreds of thousands of spectators
+may be lured to behold her adventures when
+they are set forth anew in a stage-play. And if a compelling
+plot has drawn audiences night after night into
+the theater, it is possible again that this plot may attract
+book-buyers in equal numbers when it is retold
+in a narrative for the benefit of those remote from the
+playhouse, or reluctant to risk themselves within its
+portals. Managers are ready to tempt the novelist
+with the hope of a second crop of fame and fortune,
+and publishers dangle the same golden bait before the
+eyes of the dramatist.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Altho this effort to kill two birds with one stone is
+more frequent of late than it used to be, it is not at all
+new&mdash;indeed it existed before the rise of prose fiction.
+The dramatic poets of Greece borrowed episodes from
+the earliest epic poets. Centuries later Shakspere laid
+violent hands on Italian tales and on English romances.
+On the other hand, while it must be admitted that the
+dramatizing of novels has been far more prevalent in
+the past than the novelizing of plays, this latter practise,
+suddenly popular in the twentieth century, was
+not unknown in the centuries that preceded ours. For
+example, Le Sage levied upon the Spanish playwrights
+for many of the characters and the situations he needed,
+for his rambling, picaresque novels, 'Gil Blas' and its
+sister stories. Another illustration can be found in
+England earlier than any in France; and before the
+play of 'Pericles,' which Shakspere seems to have
+edited and improved, was printed and perhaps even
+before it was performed, it was novelized by an obscure
+writer named Wilkins, who was very probably the author
+of the original version of the straggling piece that
+Shakspere revised. Thru the long years prose fiction
+and the drama have struggled with each other for the
+favor of the public, and each of them has always been
+willing to borrow from its rival whenever it found
+material fitted for its own special purpose.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">II</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But altho the dramatizing of novels was less uncommon
+a century or two ago than the novelizing of plays,
+neither was frequent and neither of them was in any
+way prohibited by law. That is to say, the novel and
+the play were held to be so different that the novelist
+could not prevent the dramatist from borrowing his
+stories, and the playwright could not forbid the writer
+of prose fiction from taking over his plots. Even the
+dramatizing of novels was so uncommon that the earlier
+story-tellers were not moved to protest when they saw
+their fictions employed by the playwrights; in fact,
+they were often inclined to accept this as a compliment
+to their original invention. Marmontel, for instance,
+in the preface to a late edition of his 'Moral Tales,'
+pointed with pride to the fact that one of these prose
+narratives had been turned into a play, and suggested
+complacently that there were other stories in his collection
+worthy of the same fate. Tennyson borrowed
+the story of his 'Dora' from Miss Mitford; and
+Charles Reade had no scruple in making a play out
+of Tennyson's poem. It must be admitted that Reade's
+attitude was rather inconsistent, for he writhed in pain
+when one of his own novels was cut into dialog and
+put on the stage without his permission, and yet he
+himself made plays out of novels by Anthony Trollope
+and by Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett without asking
+their leave, and without heed to their subsequent protests
+against his high-handed proceeding. Apparently,
+when he was the aggressor he thought that he was
+doing a service to his victims.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">When Reade was guilty of this offense against the
+developing literary morals of the nineteenth century,
+he was probably within his legal rights, since the British
+law had not then advanced to the point of recognizing
+the author's complete ownership of the fiction
+he had created. This defect has been remedied at
+last, and in the existing copyright and stage-right legislation
+of Great Britain and the United States authors
+are assumed to reserve to themselves every privilege
+which they do not specifically deprive themselves of;
+and they need no longer announce that they desire to
+retain all rights for their own profit. Both in the British
+code and in the American the novelist has now the sole
+privilege of making a play out of his story, and the
+dramatist has the sole privilege of making a novel out
+of his play. <i>Dramatization</i> is a word of respectable
+antiquity, and the corresponding word, <i>novelization</i>,
+has now been legally recognized as a distinctive term.
+The authors had felt a wrong when others could legally
+make money out of a plot they had invented; and they
+asserted a moral right to control their own works whatever
+might be the form of presentation. The progress
+of legal reform was slow, as it usually is, but it was also
+certain. The moral right has now become a legal right
+of which the original author may avail himself or not,
+as he pleases. He may, if he chooses, dramatize his
+own novel and novelize his own play; or, if he prefers,
+he can sell the permission to rehandle his material to
+a professional playwright or to a professional storyteller.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">III</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There is one peculiar distinction between the novel
+and the play which Professor Bliss Perry did not emphasize.
+A novel may please long, and please many
+when it is only a study of character, like the 'Crime of
+Sylvestre Bonnard' of M. Anatole France, or when it is
+only the record of a series of adventures and misadventures
+passing before the eyes of the chief personage,
+like the 'Huckleberry Finn' of Mark Twain. A play,
+on the other hand, is likely to fail to please audiences
+in the theater unless it sets before the spectators a
+clearly defined struggle, a conflict of desires, a stark
+assertion of the human will. That is to say, the drama
+must deal with a struggle, and the novel need not.
+The drama must be dynamic and the novel may be
+static&mdash;if these scientific terms may be employed without
+pedantry. Therefore, while any play may be
+novelized, with more or less chance of pleasing its new
+public, if the task is skilfully accomplished, only those
+novels can be successfully dramatized which happen
+to present an essential struggle and to display the collision
+of contending volitions. Any dramatization of
+the 'Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard' or of 'Huckleberry
+Finn,' of 'Gil Blas' or of the 'Pickwick Papers,' is foredoomed
+to failure, for these prose fictions do not contain
+the stuff out of which a vital play could be made.
+But 'Jane Eyre,' for example, and the 'Tale of Two
+Cities,' and 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' do possess this necessary
+dramatic element, and they can be made into plays
+with a prospect of pleasing audiences in the theater.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Even when the novel chances to have the essential
+struggle which the drama demands, the task of adapting
+it to the stage is not so easy as the non-expert supposes.
+At first sight it may seem as if there ought to
+be very little difficulty in turning a novel into a play.
+There is a story ready-made, situations in abundance,
+and characters endowed with the breath of life. Yet
+as a matter of fact, it is harder to make a play out of
+a novel than it is to write an original play. The
+immediate danger before the theatrical adapter is that
+he may be tempted to serve up the story merely as a
+panorama of successive episodes instead of casting out
+resolutely everything, however good in itself, which
+does not bear directly upon the fundamental conflict.
+This is one reason why the novelist had better leave
+the work of dramatization to an experienced playwright,
+who will ruthlessly omit many an episode that
+the story-teller could not bring himself to discard. In
+fact, it is hard even for the expert adapter to disentangle
+the special situations of a novel which alone are
+available in a play, and he is often tempted to retain
+much that he had better leave out.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Perhaps it is not too daring a paradox to suggest
+that a prose fiction is most likely to be made into a
+good play when the playwright has not read the book
+he is dramatizing, but has only been told the story, so
+that he is free to handle the situations afresh in accord
+with the conditions of dramatic art, and free to discard
+the special developments chosen by the novelist in
+accord with the very different conditions of narrative
+art. The best version of Mrs. Henry Wood's 'East
+Lynne' is the French play, 'Miss Multon,' by Adolphe
+Belot and Eugène Nus; and neither of the French collaborators
+knew any more about the English novel
+than its bare story, which was told to one of them by a
+French actress, who could read English. Now and
+again a clever playwright, even when he has the disadvantage
+of complete familiarity with the novel, can
+break loose from it and yet preserve its full flavor; and
+this is what Mr. George M. Cohan was able to do in
+the play wherein he presented the leading characters
+of Mr. George Randolph Chester's 'Get-Rich-Quick-Wallingford'
+in a set of situations very different from
+those in the original story.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Thus we see that only a few novels are really fit to
+be dramatized, and that even these are often dramatized
+ineffectively because the playwright has followed
+the story-teller too closely instead of putting the plot
+back into solution, so to speak, and letting it recrystallize
+in dramatic form. The novelizer has a larger
+liberty since every play contains a story and characters
+capable of being transferred to prose fiction. But his
+task has its equivalent danger, and the writer of the
+narrative may be content merely to tread in the footsteps
+of the dramatist, and to do no more than write
+out more amply the dialog and the stage business,
+instead of reconceiving the plot afresh to tell it more
+in accord with the divergent principles of the art of
+prose fiction. The limitations of time to "the two
+hours' traffic of the stage" compel the dramatist to
+extreme compression; his dialogs must be far compacter
+and more pregnant than is becoming in the more
+leisurely novel, where the author can take all the time
+there is. Moreover, the playwright often does no
+more than allude to episodes which it would profit the
+novelist to present in detail to his readers; and the
+adroit novelizer will be quick to seize upon hints of
+this sort to amplify into chapters containing interesting
+material for which the original play supplied only the
+most summary suggestion.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">IV</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The novelizing of plays is frequent and profitable in
+America in these early years of the twentieth century;
+and it had been attempted infrequently even in the
+seventeenth century. Yet only one of these novelized
+plays has succeeded in winning an honorable place for
+itself in prose fiction. This is the charming tale of
+theatrical life in the eighteenth century, 'Peg Woffington,'
+which Charles Reade made out of the comedy
+of 'Masks and Faces,' written by him in collaboration
+with Tom Taylor. Reade took the liberty of novelizing
+this comedy without asking Taylor's permission,
+and even without consulting his collaborator; and all
+the comment that need be made is that the procedure
+was truly characteristic of Reade's lordly attitude toward
+others&mdash;an attitude taken by him on many other
+occasions. But whatever injustice he did to his fellow
+worker, he did none to the joint product of their invention;
+he transmuted a play into a novel with due
+appreciation of the demands of the other art, and he
+produced a fascinating tale with a fascinating heroine,
+which has been read by thousands who have had no
+suspicion that Peg Woffington had originally figured in
+a comedy.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Charles Reade was able to accomplish this feat because
+he was more skilful as a novelist than as a dramatist,
+altho he fancied himself rather as a maker of
+plays than as a writer of stories. More than once did
+he attempt to repeat this early success in winning two
+prizes with the same horse. He took the 'Pauvres de
+Paris' of Brisebarre and Nus&mdash;the same play which
+Dion Boucicault had adapted as the 'Streets of New
+York'&mdash;and made a version which he called 'Gold,'
+under which name it had a few performances. He had
+materially modified the French plot in his English play;
+and he got still further away from Brisebarre and Nus,
+when he novelized 'Gold,' and called it 'Hard Cash,'
+a matter-of-fact romance. Later he dramatized this
+novel of his, and the resulting play did not bear any
+close resemblance to the 'Pauvres de Paris.'</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Reade also collaborated a few years later with Henry
+Pettitt in a piece called 'Singleheart and Doubleface,'
+which he promptly proceeded to novelize&mdash;again
+without consulting his partner. For this indelicacy,
+swift vengeance followed, as the British novel, being
+then unprotected by copyright in the United States,
+was immediately dramatized by Messrs. George H.
+Jessop and William Gill. It may be noted here casually
+that another of Reade's romances, 'White Lies,' afterward
+dramatized by him, had been originally novelized
+from a French play called the 'Château de Grantier,'
+written by Auguste Maquet (the ally of Dumas in the
+'Three Guardsmen' and 'Monte Cristo'). It is not a
+little surprising that a man like Reade, who prided
+himself on his originality, and who even went so far
+as to accuse George Eliot of stealing his thunder, should
+have been willing to call so frequently on the aid of collaborators,
+and to derive so much of his material from
+foreign sources.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The only other author who has ventured to turn a
+play into a novel, and then back into a play varying
+widely from the original piece, is Sir James Barrie, and
+what he did was not quite what Reade had done. Sir
+James wrote a charming story, called the 'Little White
+Bird,' and he found in his own prose fiction part of the
+material out of which he was moved later to make a
+charming play, called 'Peter Pan.' For reasons best
+known to himself, but deplored by all who are interested
+in the progress of the English drama, Sir James
+Barrie has chosen to publish only a few of his comedies.
+Yet he met the demands of a multitude of readers by
+borrowing from his fantastic piece a part of the material
+which he made into a delightful tale, called 'Peter Pan
+in Kensington Gardens.' These successive rehandlings
+of an idea, first in prose fiction, then in dramatic form,
+and finally again in prose fiction, were possible only
+to a novelist who was also a dramatist&mdash;to an author
+who had mastered the secrets of two different methods
+of story-telling, the method of the theater and the
+method of the library.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">V</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The novelist-dramatist of this type is a comparatively
+new figure in literature. Formerly there was a sharp
+line of cleavage between the man who wrote novels and
+the man who wrote plays, altho one or the other might
+be lured on occasion into a sporadic raid into the territory
+of the other. During three-quarters of the nineteenth
+century prose fiction reigned supreme in every
+modern literature except that of France, and the novelists
+were rather inclined to look down on the playwrights,
+and to dismiss the drama as an inferior form,
+likely to be absolutely superseded by prose fiction.
+But toward the end of the century there began to be
+visible signs of an awakening interest in the drama, and
+also of a slackening interest in prose fiction. The
+novelists of the twentieth century, so far from holding
+the drama to be an inferior form, are discovering that
+it is at least a more difficult form, and therefore artistically
+more attractive. As a result of this discovery not
+a few novelists have turned playwrights, taking the
+pains to learn the principles of the more dangerous
+art of play-making. Sir James Barrie in England, M.
+Paul Hervieu in France, Herr Sudermann in Germany,
+and Signor d'Annunzio in Italy may not have abandoned
+altogether the prose fiction in which they first
+won fame, but at least they now devote the major part
+of their energies to the drama. It may be recalled
+that Clyde Fitch began his literary career as a writer
+of short stories, and that Mr. Bernard Shaw originally
+emerged to view as the author of a novel.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On the other hand, it must be noted as significant
+that the playwrights are not tempted to turn novelists;
+they seem to be satisfied with their own art as the more
+exacting, and therefore the more interesting. M. Rostand
+and M. Maeterlinck, Sir Arthur Pinero and Mr.
+Henry Arthur Jones, Mr. William Gillette and Mr.
+Augustus Thomas have not been lured from the drama
+into prose fiction. The novel is a loose form which
+makes only lax demands on its practitioners, and which
+does not require an artist always to do his best. The
+play has a severe technic, and it tolerates no carelessness
+of construction. The more gifted a story-teller
+may be, and the more artistic, the more probable it is
+that in the immediate future he will seek to express
+himself in the drama, even if he is also moved now and
+again to return to the easier path of prose fiction.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">And this raises another interesting point. Now that
+the drama is rising again into rivalry with prose
+fiction, is not the playwright who allows his piece to
+be novelized a traitor to his cause? Is he not, in fact,
+confessing that he esteems the play inferior to the
+novel? Apparently this is the attitude taken by the
+more prominent dramatists of the day; most of them
+publish their plays to be read, and few of them allow
+these plays to be novelized&mdash;altho they might find a
+superior profit if they descended to this. It is an unfortunate
+fact that the public which is eager to read
+prose fiction is not so eager to read the drama. In the
+dearth of dramatic literature in our language during
+the nineteenth century, the public lost the habit of
+reading plays, a habit possessed by the public of the
+eighteenth century before the vogue of the novel had
+been established in consequence of the overwhelming
+popularity of Scott, followed speedily by that of
+Dickens and Thackeray.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Yet there are signs that the general reader is slowly
+recovering the ability to find pleasure in the perusal
+of a play. The social dramas of Ibsen have, most of
+them, been performed here and there in the theaters
+of Great Britain and the United States; but they have
+been read by thousands who have had no opportunity
+to see them on the stage. So it is with the plays of
+Mr. Bernard Shaw, most of which have also appeared
+in our playhouses. So it is with the plays of M.
+Maeterlinck, only a few of which have been produced in
+the American theater. In time, it seems highly probable
+that the reading public will extend as glad a welcome
+to a play by Mr. Galsworthy or by Mr. Booth Tarkington
+as to one of their novels. But this happy
+state can be brought about only if the dramatists resolutely
+refrain from novelizing their plays themselves,
+and from authorizing novelization by others.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1913.)</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">VII<br />WOMEN DRAMATISTS<a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">WOMEN DRAMATISTS<br />I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">To</span> some of the more ardent advocates of the theory
+that women are capable of rivaling men in every one
+of the arts it is a little surprising, not to say disconcerting,
+that there are so few female playwrights. The
+drama is closely akin to the novel, since it is another
+form of story-telling; and in the telling of stories women
+have been abundantly productive from a time whereof
+the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. And
+as performers on the stage women have achieved indisputable
+eminence; in fact, acting is probably the
+earliest of the arts (as possibly it is still the only one)
+in which women have won their way to the very front
+rank; and in the nineteenth century there were two
+tragic actresses, Mrs. Siddons and Rachel, certainly
+not inferior in power and in elevation to the most distinguished
+of tragic actors. Why is it, then, that
+women story-tellers have not thrust themselves thru
+the open stage door to become more effective competitors
+of the men playwrights?</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Before considering this question, it may be well to
+record that women playwrights have appeared sporadically
+both in French literature and in English. In
+France Madeleine Béjart, whose sister Molière married,
+was credited with the authorship of more than one
+play; and in the last hundred years George Sand and
+Mme. de Girardin brought out comedies and dramas,
+several of which succeeded in establishing themselves
+in the repertory of the Comédie-Française. In England
+at one time or another plays of an immediate
+popularity were produced by Mrs. Aphra Behn, Mrs.
+Centlivre, and Mrs. Inchbald; and in America Mrs.
+Bateman's 'Self,' and Mrs. Mowatt's 'Fashion' held
+the stage for several seasons, while few of recent successes
+in the New York theaters had a more delightful
+freshness or a more alluring fantasy than Mrs. Gates's
+'Poor Little Rich Girl,' and few of them have dealt
+more boldly with a burning question than Miss Ford's
+'Polygamy.' These examples of woman's competence
+to compose plays with vitality enough to withstand the
+ordeal by fire before the footlights are evidence that
+if there exists any prejudice against the female dramatist
+it can be overcome. They are evidence, also, that
+women are not debarred from the competition; and
+fairness requires the record here that, when Mr. Winthrop
+Ames proffered a prize for an American play,
+this was awarded to a woman.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But to grant equality of opportunity is not to confer
+equality of ability, and when we call the roll of the
+dramatists who have given luster to French literature
+and to English, we discover that this list is not enriched
+by the name of any woman. The fame of
+George Sand is not derived from her contributions to
+dramatic literature, and the contributions of Mrs.
+Behn, Mrs. Centlivre, and Mrs. Inchbald, of Mrs.
+Bateman and Mrs. Mowatt, entitle them to take rank
+only among the minor playwrights of their own generations;
+and to say this is to say that their plays are
+now familiar only to devoted specialists in the annals
+of the stage, and that the general reader could not give
+the name of a single piece from the pen of any one of
+these enterprising ladies. In other words, the female
+playwrights are so few and so unimportant that a conscientious
+historian of either French or English dramatic
+literature might almost neglect them altogether
+without seriously invalidating his survey. Perhaps the
+only English titles that are more than mere items in
+a barren catalog are Mrs. Centlivre's 'Wonder' and
+Mrs. Cowley's 'Belle's Stratagem'; and the French
+pieces of female authorship which might protest against
+exclusion are almost as few&mdash;Mme. de Girardin's 'La
+Joie fait Peur,' and George Sand's 'Marquis de Villemer'
+and 'Mariage de Victorine.'</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Indeed, the women playwrights of the past and of
+the present might be two or three times more numerous
+than they are, and two or three times more important
+without even treading upon the heels of the male play-makers.
+This is an incontrovertible fact; yet it is
+equally indisputable that as performers in the theater
+women are competitors whom men respect and with
+whom they have to reckon, and that as story-tellers
+women are as popular and as prolific as men. And here
+we are brought back again to the question with which
+this inquiry began: Why is it then that women have
+not been as popular and as prolific in telling stories on
+the stage? Why cannot they write a play as well as
+they can act in it?</p>
+
+<p class="indent">One answer to this question has been volunteered
+by a woman who succeeded as an actress, and who did
+not altogether fail as a dramatic poetess, altho she
+came in later life to have little esteem for her earlier
+attempts at play-writing. It is in her 'Records of a
+Girlhood' that Fanny Kemble expressed the conviction
+that it was absolutely impossible for a woman ever to
+be a great dramatist, because "her physical organization"
+was against it. "After all, it is great nonsense
+saying that intellect is of no sex. The brain is, of
+course, of the same sex as the rest of the creature;
+beside the original female nature, the whole of our
+training and education, our inevitable ignorance of
+common life and general human nature, and the various
+experiences of existence from which we are debarred
+with the most sedulous care, is insuperably against it"&mdash;that
+is, against the possibility of a really searching
+tragedy, or of a really liberal comedy ever being composed
+by a woman. To this rather sweeping denial of
+the dramaturgic gift to women Fanny Kemble added
+an apt suggestion, that "perhaps some of the manly,
+wicked queens, Semiramis, Cleopatra, could have
+written plays&mdash;but they lived their tragedies instead
+of writing of them."</p>
+
+<p class="h2">II</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At first sight it may seem as if one of Fanny Kemble's
+assertions&mdash;that no woman can be a dramatist because
+of her inevitable ignorance of life and of the experiences
+of existence from which she is debarred&mdash;is disproved
+by the undeniable triumphs of women in acting,
+and by the indisputable victories won by women in
+the field of prose fiction, achieved in spite of these admitted
+limitations. But on a more careful consideration
+it will appear that as an actress woman is called
+upon only to embody and to interpret characters conceived
+by man with the aid of his wider and deeper
+knowledge of life. And when we analyze the most
+renowned of the novels by which women have attained
+fame, we discover that the best of these deal exclusively
+with the narrower regions of conduct, and with
+the more restricted areas of life with which she is most
+familiar as a woman, and that when she seeks to go
+outside her incomplete experience of existence she soon
+makes us aware of the gaps in her equipment.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">One of the strongest stories ever written by a woman
+is the 'Jane Eyre' of Charlotte Brontë; and the inexperience
+of the forlorn and lonely spinster is almost
+ludicrously made manifest in her portrayal of Rochester,
+a superbly projected figure, not sustained by intimate
+knowledge of the type to which he belongs.
+Charlotte Brontë knew Jane Eyre inside and out; but
+she did not know even the outside of Rochester. Because
+women are debarred with the most sedulous care
+from various experiences of existence they can never
+know men as men can know women. This is the basis
+for the shrewd remark that in dealing with affairs of
+the heart men novelists rarely tell all they know,
+whereas women novelists are often tempted to tell
+more than they know. Even women like George Eliot
+and George Sand, who have more or less broken out
+of bounds, are still more or less confined to their individual
+associations with the other sex; and they lack
+the inexhaustible fund of information about life which
+is the common property of men.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Women have most satisfactorily displayed their
+special endowment for fiction not in what must be
+called the dramatic novel, not in soul-searching studies
+like the 'Scarlet Letter' and 'Anna Karénine,' but
+rather in less solidly supported inquiries into the interrelation
+of character and social convention, as in 'Pride
+and Prejudice' and 'Castle Rackrent.' It would be
+unfair to assert that Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen
+are superficial; yet it is not unfair to say that they do
+not explore deeply, and that they do not deal with
+what Stevenson called the great passionate crises of
+existence, "when duty and inclination come nobly to
+the grapple." This is the essential struggle of the
+drama; and the authoress of 'Jane Eyre' sought to
+present it boldly, even if she was handicapped by insufficient
+information; and this essential struggle was
+what Charlotte Brontë herself missed in Jane Austen:
+"The passions are perfectly unknown to her; she rejects
+even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy
+sisterhood. What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves
+flexibly, it suits her to study; but what throbs fast
+and full, tho hidden, what the blood rushes thru, what
+is the unseen seat of life, and the sentient target of
+death&mdash;this Miss Austen ignores."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Jane Austen spent her great gift on the carving of
+cherry-stones, laboring with exquisite art to lift into
+temporary importance the eternally unimportant; and
+Charlotte Brontë, in her ampler endeavor, was ever
+hampered by inadequacy of knowledge. George Eliot,
+with wider opportunity than either of these predecessors,
+profited by both of them and borrowed their
+processes in turn; she was broader than they were, and
+bolder in her attack on life; her effort is more strenuously
+intellectual than theirs, and therefore a little
+fatiguing, and this is perhaps why her vogue seems now
+to be evaporating slowly. And when all is said, no
+one of these clever story-tellers really attains to an
+altitude of accomplishment where she can fairly be
+considered as a competitor of the mighty masters of
+prose fiction. No woman novelist is to be ranked
+among the supreme leaders, worthy to stand by the
+side of Cervantes and Fielding, Balzac and Tolstoi.
+The merits of the women novelists are many and they
+are beyond cavil; but no one of them has yet been
+able to handle a large theme powerfully and to interpret
+life with the unhasting and unresting strength
+which is the distinguishing mark of the mightier masters
+of fiction.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">III</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Furthermore, we find in the works of female storytellers
+not only a lack of largeness in topic, but also a
+lack of strictness in treatment. Their stories, even
+when they charm us with apt portraiture and with
+adroit situation, are likely to lack solidity of structure.
+'Castle Rackrent,' an illuminating picture of human
+nature in a special environment, is a straggling sequence
+of episodes; 'Pride and Prejudice' is almost plotless,
+when considered as a whole; and 'Romola' is ill-proportioned
+and misshapen. No woman has ever
+achieved the elaborate solidity of 'Tom Jones,' the
+superb structure of the 'Scarlet Letter,' or the simple
+unity of 'Smoke.' And here we come close to the most
+obvious explanation of the dearth of female dramatists&mdash;in
+the relative incapacity of women to build a plan,
+to make a single whole compounded of many parts,
+and yet dominated in every detail by but one purpose.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The drama demands a plot, with a beginning, a
+middle, and an end, and with everything rigorously
+excluded which does not lead from the beginning thru
+the middle to the end. The novel refuses to submit
+itself to any such requirement; it can make shift to
+exist without an articulated skeleton. There is little
+or no plot, there is only a casual succession of more or
+less unrelated incidents in 'Gil Blas' and 'Tristram
+Shandy,' in the 'Pickwick Papers,' and in Huckleberry
+Finn.' The novel may be invertebrate and yet
+survive, whereas the play without a backbone is dead&mdash;which
+is biologic evidence that the drama is higher
+in the scale of creation than prose fiction.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">"The novel, as practised in English, is the perfect
+paradise of the loose end," so Mr. Henry James once
+pointed out, whereas "the play consents to the logic
+of but one way, mathematically right, and with the
+loose end as gross an impertinence on its surface and
+as grave a dishonor as the dangle of a snippet of silk
+or wool on the right side of a tapestry." The action
+of a story may be what its writer pleases, and he can
+reduce it to a minimum or embroider it at will with
+airy arabesques of incessant digression; but the plot
+of a play must be a straight line, the shortest distance
+between two points, the point of departure and the
+point of arrival. And it is because of this imperative
+necessity for integrity of construction that the drama
+is more difficult than prose fiction. Since a part of our
+pleasure in any art is derived from our consciousness of
+the obstacles to be overcome by the artist, and from
+our recognition of the skill displayed by him in vanquishing
+them, we have here added evidence in behalf
+of the belief in the artistic superiority of the play over
+the novel merely as a form of expression.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The drama may be likened to the sister art of architecture
+in its insistent demand for plan and proportion.
+A play is a poor thing, likely to expire of inanition,
+unless its author is possessed of the ability to
+build a plot which shall be strong and simple and clear,
+and unless he has the faculty of enriching it with abundant
+accessories in accord with a scheme thought out
+in advance and adhered to from start to finish. With
+this constructive skill women seem to be less liberally
+endowed than men; at least, they have not yet revealed
+themselves as architects, altho they have won
+a warm welcome as decorators&mdash;a subordinate art for
+which they are fitted by their superior delicacy and by
+their keener interest in details. Much of the pervasive
+charm of many of the cleverest novels of female authorship
+lies in the persistent ingenuity with which the
+lesser points of character, of conduct, and of manners
+are presented. In Jane Austen, in Maria Edgeworth,
+and often also in George Eliot, we are delighted by
+little miracles of observation, and by little triumphs
+in the microscopic analysis of subtle and unsuspected
+motives. But in these very books, the story, however
+felicitously decorated, is not sustained by a severe
+architectural framework. And it is this firm certainty
+of structure that the drama imperatively demands.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In other words, women seem to be less often dowered
+than men with what Tyndall called "scientific imagination,"
+with the ability to put together a whole in which
+the several parts are never permitted to distend a
+disproportionate space. This scientific imagination is
+essential to the playwright; and the novelist is fortunate
+if he also possesses it, altho it is not essential to him.
+A novel may be only a straggling succession of episodes;
+a play must have fundamental unity. A novelist may
+fire with a shot-gun and bring down his bird on the
+wing, whereas a playwright needs a rifle to arrest the
+charging lion.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is a significant fact that only once was George
+Sand really triumphant as a dramatist, and that this
+single success was won by the secret aid of the cleverest
+of contemporary playwrights. She was passionately
+devoted to the theater; she had many intimate friends
+among the stage-folk; she delighted in private theatricals;
+and she wrote a dozen or more plays, several of
+them dramatized from her own stories. The sole play
+which held its own on the stage in rivalry with the
+best work of Augier and Dumas <i>fils</i> was the 'Marquis
+de Villemer,' and it owed its more fortunate fate to
+the gratuitous and unacknowledged collaboration of
+Dumas <i>fils</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">For the author of the 'Mariage de Victorine,' the
+author of the 'Dame aux Camélias' had a high esteem,
+which he took occasion to express more than once in
+his critical papers; and she regarded him with semi-maternal
+affection, often inviting him to join the little
+parties at Nohant. On one of his visits he heard her
+say that she was intending to dramatize the 'Marquis
+de Villemer,' but that she did not quite see her way
+to compact its leisurely action in conformity with the
+rigid restrictions of the stage. That evening he borrowed
+a copy of the novel to take up to his own room;
+and the next morning when he came down to the late
+breakfast, he laid before her half a dozen sheets of
+paper, whereon she found a complete scenario for her
+guidance, an adroit division of her novel into acts and
+scenes, needing only to be clothed with dialog. With
+his intuitive understanding of the principles of play-making,
+and with his masterly power of construction,
+he had solved her problems for her and made it easy
+for her to write the play.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Here is an unexampled kind of collaboration, since
+the invention of the story, the creation of the characters,
+the dialog to be spoken&mdash;these were all due to
+George Sand alone; but the concentrating of the interest,
+the heightening of the personages of the narrative
+to adjust themselves to the perspective of the
+theater, the serried and irresistible momentum of the
+action&mdash;these were the contribution of Dumas, a freewill
+offering to his old friend. The piece that she wrote
+was hers and hers alone, and yet it had a dramatic
+vitality lacking in all her other plays, because a man
+had intervened at the right moment to provide the
+architectural framework which the woman could not
+have bestowed upon it, however felicitous she might
+be in the decoration.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">IV</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Thus it is that we can supply two answers to the two
+questions posed at the beginning of this inquiry: Why
+is it that there are so few women playwrights? And
+why is it that the infrequent plays produced by women
+playwrights rarely attain high rank? The explanation
+is to be found in two facts: first, the fact that women
+are likely to have only a definitely limited knowledge
+of life, and, second, the fact that they are likely also to
+be more or less deficient in the faculty of construction.
+The first of these disabilities may tend to disappear if
+ever the feminist movement shall achieve its ultimate
+victory; and the second may depart also whenever
+women submit themselves to the severe discipline
+which has compelled men to be more or less logical.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1915.)</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">VIII<br />
+THE EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING<a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">THE EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING<br />I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Only</span> recently have students of the stage seized the
+full significance of the fact that dramatic literature is
+always conditioned by the circumstances of the special
+theater for which it was designed. They are at last
+beginning to perceive that they need to know how a
+play was originally represented by actors before an
+audience and in a theater to enable them to appreciate
+adequately the technical skill of the playwright who
+composed it. The dramatist is subdued to what he
+works in; and he can accomplish only that which is
+possible in the particular playhouse for which his
+pieces were destined. For the immense open air auditorium
+of ancient Athens, with its orchestra leveled
+at the foot of the curving hillside whereon thousands
+of spectators took their places, the dramatic poet had
+to select a simple story and to build massively. For the
+unadorned platform of the Tudor theater, with its
+arras pendent from the gallery above the stage, and
+with its restless groundlings standing in the yard,
+the playwright was compelled to heap up swift episodes
+violent with action. For the eighteenth-century playhouse,
+with its apron projecting far beyond the line of
+the curtain, the dramatist was tempted to revel in
+ornate eloquence and in elaborate wit. And nowadays
+the dramatic author utilizes skilfully all the manifold
+resources of the twentieth-century picture-frame stage,
+not only to give external reality to the several places
+where his story is supposed to be laid, but also to lend
+to these stage-sets the characteristic atmosphere demanded
+by his theme.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Merely literary critics, secluded in their studies, intent
+upon the poetry of a play and desirous of deducing
+its philosophy, rarely seek to visualize a performance
+on the stage, and they are, therefore, inclined to be
+disdainful of the purely theatrical conditions to which
+its author has had, perforce, to adjust his work. As
+a result they sometimes misunderstand the dramatic
+poet's endeavors, and they often misinterpret his intentions.
+On the other hand, purely theatrical critics
+may be inclined to pay too much attention to stage-arrangements,
+stage-business, and stage-settings, and
+even on occasion to disregard the dramatist's message
+and his power of creating character to consider his technic
+alone. And yet it can scarcely be denied that the
+theatrical critics are nearer to the proper method of
+approach than the literary critics who neglect the light
+which a careful consideration of stage-conditions and
+of stage-traditions may cast upon the masterpieces of
+the drama.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Since all these masterpieces of the drama were devised
+to be heard and to be seen rather than to be read,
+the great dramatic poets have always been solicitous
+about the visual appeal of their plays. They have ever
+been anxious to garnish their pieces with the utmost
+scenic embellishment and the utmost spectacular accompaniment
+of the special kind that a play of that
+particular type could profit by. In view of the importance
+of this scenic embellishment and of its influence
+upon the methods of the successive playwrights,
+there is cause for wonder that we have no satisfactory
+attempt to tell the history of the art of the scene-painter
+as this has been developed thru the long ages.
+The materials for this narrative are abundant, even if
+they still lie in confusion. Certain parts of the field
+have been surveyed here and there; but no substantial
+treatise has yet been devoted to this alluring investigation.
+The scholar who shall hereafter undertake
+the task will need a double qualification; he must
+master the annals of painting in Renascence Italy, and
+later in France and in England, and he must familiarize
+himself with the circumstances of the theater at the
+several periods when the art of the scene-painter made
+its successive steps in advance.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is partly because we have no manual covering
+the whole field that we find so many unwarranted assertions
+in the studies of the scholars who confine their
+criticism to a single period of the development of the
+drama. Partly also is this due to the fact that we are
+each of us so accustomed to the theaters of our own
+century and of our own country that we find it difficult
+not to assume similar conditions in the theaters
+of other centuries and other countries. Thus the
+Shaksperian commentators of the early eighteenth century
+seem not to have doubted that the English playhouse
+in the days of Elizabeth was not unlike the English
+playhouse in the days of Anne; and as a result
+they cut up the plays of Shakspere into acts and into
+scenes, each supposed to take place in a different spot,
+in accord with the eighteenth-century stage practise,
+and absolutely without any justification from the
+customs of the Tudor theater. This was the result
+of looking back and of believing that the late sixteenth-century
+stage must have resembled the early eighteenth-century
+stage. We are now beginning to see
+that, in any effort to recapture the methods of the
+Elizabethan theater, we must first understand the
+customs of the medieval stage, and then look forward
+from that point. Of all places in the world the
+playhouse is, perhaps, the most conservative, and the
+most reluctant to relinquish anything which has proved
+its utility in the past and which is accepted by the
+public in the present; and many of the peculiarities
+of the Tudor theater are survivals from the medieval
+performances.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There are still to be found classical scholars who
+accept the existence of a raised stage in the theater of
+Dionysus at Athens, and even of painted scenery such
+as we moderns know; and they find support in the assertion
+of Aristotle that among the improvements due
+to Sophocles was the introduction of "scenery." But
+what did the Greek word in the text of Aristotle which
+is rendered into English as "scenery" really mean?
+At least, what did it connote to an Athenian? Something
+very different, we may be sure, from what the
+term "scenery" connotes to us. Certainly, the physical
+conditions of the stageless Attic theater precluded
+the possibilities of painted scenes such as we are now
+familiar with. That there were no methods of representing
+realistically, or even summarily, the locality
+where the action is taking place is proved by the detailed
+descriptions of these localities which the dramatic
+poet was careful to put into the mouths of his characters
+whenever he wished the audience to visualize the
+appropriate background of the action. We may be
+assured that the dramatists would never have wasted
+time in describing what the spectators had before their
+eyes. Ibsen and Rostand and d'Annunzio are poets,
+each in his own fashion, but their plays are devoid of
+all descriptions of the special locality where the action
+passes&mdash;that task has been spared them by the labors
+of the modern scene-painter working upon their specific
+directions.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As there was no scenery in the Greek theater so
+there was little or none in the Roman. M. Camille
+Saint-Saëns once suggested that certain airy scaffoldings
+in the Pompeian wall-paintings were perhaps derived
+from scenic accessories. But this seems unlikely
+enough; and the surviving Latin playhouses have a
+wide and shallow stage closed in by a sumptuous architectural
+background, suggesting the front of a palace
+with three portals, often conveniently utilized as the
+entrances to the separate dwellings of the several characters.
+Again, we may infer the absence of scenery
+from the elaboration with which Plautus, for one, localizes
+the habitations of his leading characters. In
+Rome, as in Athens, some kind of a summary indication
+of locality, some easily understood symbol, may
+have been employed; but of scene-painting, as we
+moderns know the art, there is not a trace.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">II</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is not until we come to the mysteries of the Middle
+Ages that we find the beginnings of the modern art,
+and even here it is only a most rudimentary attempt
+that we can discover. The mystery probably developed
+earliest in France, as it certainly flourished there most
+abundantly; and the French represented the dramatized
+Bible story on a long, shallow platform, at the
+back of which they strung along a row of summary
+indications of certain necessary places, beginning with
+Heaven on the spectator's left, and ending with Hell
+on his right, and including the Temple, the house of
+the high priest and the palace of Herod. These necessary
+places were called "mansions," and they served
+to localize the action whenever this was deemed advisable,
+the front of the platform remaining a neutral
+ground which might be anywhere. But these mansions
+do not prove the existence of scene-painters;
+they were very slight erections, a canopy over an altar
+serving to indicate the Temple, and a little portico
+sufficing to represent a palace; and they were probably
+built by house-carpenters and painted by housepainters,
+just as any boat which might be called for
+would be constructed by the shipwrights.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_161" id="image_161"></a>
+<img src="images/i_161.png" alt="The Roman Theater at Orange
+From the model at the Paris Opéra
+
+The multiple set of the French medieval stage
+From the model in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University
+
+The set of the Italian comedy of masks"
+title="The Roman Theater at Orange
+From the model at the Paris Opéra
+
+The multiple set of the French medieval stage
+From the model in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University
+
+The set of the Italian comedy of masks" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">And as we need not assume the forming of a guild
+of scene-painters because of these mansions which
+performed some of the functions of our modern scenery,
+so also we must not assume it because the medieval
+artisans invented a variety of elaborate spectacular
+devices, flying angels, for example, and roaring flames
+from Hell-Mouth. Even in the stageless and sceneless
+Attic theater, there had been many mechanical
+effects of one kind or another, especially in the plays
+of Euripides&mdash;the soaring dragon-chariot of Medea,
+for instance, and the similar contrivance whereby a
+god might descend from the skies. Mechanical tricks
+even when they are most ingenious, do not imply the
+aid of the scene-painter; and even to-day they are the
+special task of the property-man, or of the master-mechanic,
+altho the scene-painter's aid may be invoked
+also to make them more effective. That there
+were property-makers in the Middle Ages admits of
+no doubt, and also highly skilled artificers delighting
+in the daring ingenuity of their inventions. There were
+abundant properties, it may be noted, on the Elizabethan
+stage, well-heads, thrones, and arbors; and
+Henslow's diary records payment for a variety of such
+accessories. But there is not in that invaluable document
+a single entry indicating any payment for anything
+equivalent to the work of the scene-painter.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Adroit as were the French mechanics who prepared
+the abundant spectacular effects of the medieval mysteries,
+they were surpassed in skill by the Italian engineers
+of the Renascence, who lent their aid to the
+superb outdoor festivals wherein the expanding artistic
+energy of the period was most magnificently displayed.
+Leonardo da Vinci did not disdain to design
+machines disclosing a surprising fertility of resource.
+It was from those outdoor spectacles of the Italians
+that the French court-ballets are directly descended,
+and also the English masks, which demanded the collaboration
+of Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson. But at
+first the Italians got along without the aid of the yet
+unborn scene-painter, and the inventions of the engineer
+were carried out by the mechanic and the decorator.
+Even as late as the seventeenth century a
+magnificent spectacle presented in the garden of the
+Pitti Palace in Florence relied mainly upon the ingenious
+engineer and scarcely at all upon the scene-painter.
+It seems probable that it is here in Italy in
+the Renascence, and at first as an accompaniment of
+the outdoor spectacle, or of its indoor rival, that the
+art of the actual scene-painter had its birth. The engineers
+required the aid of the artists&mdash;indeed, in those
+days, when there was little specialization of function,
+the engineers were almost always artists themselves,
+capable of their own decoration.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_165" id="image_165"></a>
+<img src="images/i_165.png" alt="" title="" /><br />
+<span class="caption">An outdoor entertainment in the gardens of the Pitti Palace in Florence in the early sixteenth century<br />
+From a contemporary print</span></div>
+
+<p class="indent">In time there would be necessary specialization, and
+after a while certain artists came to devote themselves
+chiefly to scene-painting, finding their immediate opportunity
+in the decoration of the operas, which then
+began to multiply. The opera has always been aristocratic,
+expensive, and spectacular, and it continued
+the tradition of the highly decorated open-air festivals.
+In fact, it improved upon this tradition, in so far as
+that was possible, and it achieved a variety of mechanical
+effects scarcely less complicated than those which
+charm our eyes to-day in 'Rheingold' and 'Parsifal.'
+Thirty years ago the late Charles Nuitter, the archivist
+of the Paris Opéra and himself a librettist of wide experience,
+drew my attention to Sabbatini's 'Practica di
+fabricar scene e machini ne' teatri' (published in 1638),
+and he assured me that the resources of the Opéra did
+not go beyond those which were at the command of the
+Italians three centuries earlier. "They could do then,"
+he asserted, "almost everything that we can do now
+here at the Opéra. For example, they could bring a
+ship on the stage under full sail. We have only one
+superiority over them: we have abundant light now,
+we have electricity, and they were dependent on candles
+and lamps."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Yet even in Italy in the Renascence the most popular
+form of the drama, the improvised play which we
+call the comedy-of-masks, was performed in a traditional
+stage-setting representing an open square,
+whereon only the back-cloth seems to have been the
+work of the scene-painter, the sides of the stage being
+occupied by four or more houses, two or three on each
+side, often consisting of little more than a practicable
+door with a practicable window over it, not made of
+canvas, but constructed out of wood by the carpenter,
+with the solidity demanded by the climbing feats of
+the athletic comedians and by their acrobatic agility.
+The traditional set of the comedy-of-masks conformed
+to that recommended for the comic drama by Serlio,
+in his treatise on architecture, published in 1545; but
+it may be noted also that Serlio's suggested set for the
+tragic drama was not dissimilar even if it were distinctly
+more dignified.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">III</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The opera seems to have been the direct descendant
+of the court-ballet, known in England as the mask,
+as that in its turn was derived from the open-air spectacle
+of the Italian Renascence, such as survived in
+Florence in the seventeenth century. In the beginning
+the court-ballets of France, like the masks of England,
+were not given in a theater with a stage shut off
+by a proscenium arch, but in the ball-room or banqueting-hall
+of a palace. One end of this spacious
+apartment, often but not always provided with a
+raised platform, served as the stage whereon one or
+more places, a mountain, for instance, and a grotto,
+were represented, at first by the decorated machines of
+the artistic engineers only, but afterward by the canvas
+frames of scene-painters. The action of the court-ballets
+or of the masks was not necessarily confined to
+this stage, so to call it. The spectators were ranged
+along the walls and under the galleries (if there were
+any), leaving the main part of the hall bare; and the
+performers descended frequently into this area, which
+was kept free for them, and which was better fitted for
+their dances and processions and other intricate evolutions
+than the scant and cluttered stage.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A twentieth-century analog to this sixteenth-century
+practise can be seen in the spectacle presented in our
+modern three-ringed circuses&mdash;the 'Cleopatra,' for example,
+which was the opening number on the Barnum
+and Bailey program not long ago, where the Roman
+troops and the Egyptian populace came down from the
+stage and paraded around the arena. Bacon in his
+essay on 'Masques,' used the word "scenery" as tho
+he meant only decorated scaffolds, perhaps movable;
+and his expression of desire for room "to be kept clear"
+implies the use of the body of the hall for the maneuvers
+of the performers. Ludovic Celler, in his study of
+'Mise en scène au dix-septième siècle' in France, shows
+that the action of the court-ballet was sometimes intermitted
+that the spectators could join in the dancing,
+as at an ordinary ball. In the earlier Italian open-air
+festivals, and in the earlier French court-ballets there
+was not even a proscenium sharply separating the
+stage from the rest of the hall; but in England by the
+time of Inigo Jones the advantage of a proscenium
+had been discovered, and we have more than one of
+the sketches which that skilful designer devised for
+his masks. But even then this proscenium was not
+permanent and architecturally conventionalized; it was
+invented afresh for every successive entertainment,
+and it was adorned with devices peculiar to that particular
+mask. Inigo Jones had also advanced to the
+use of actual scenery, that is to say, of canvas stretched
+upon frames and then painted. Mr. Hamilton Bell
+believes it possible that the invention of grooves to
+sustain wings and flats may be ascribed to Inigo or to
+his assistant and successor, Webb.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Even in the Italian opera, where all the scenery was
+due to the brush of the scene-painter, there was for a
+long while a formal and monotonous regularity.
+Whether the set was an interior or an exterior, a public
+place or a hall in a palace, the arrangement was rectangular,
+with a drop at the back and a series of wings
+on either side equidistant from one another. This stiff
+representation of a locality is preserved for us nowadays
+in the toy-theaters which we buy for our children,
+altho it is now seen on the actual stage only in certain
+acts of old-fashioned operas. It lingers also in the
+variety-shows, where it is the proper setting for many
+items of their miscellaneous programs.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Altho the Italians had discovered perspective early
+in the Renascence they utilized it on the stage timidly
+at first, bestowing this rectangular regularity upon all
+their sets, both architectural interiors or exteriors and
+rural scenes, in which rigid wood-wings receded, diminishing
+in height to a landscape painted on the drop at
+the back, thus leaving the whole stage free for the actors.
+Not until the end of the seventeenth century did an
+Italian scene-painter, Bibiena, venture to abandon the
+balanced symmetry of the square set, and to slant his
+perspective so as to present buildings at an acute angle,
+thereby not only gaining a pleasing variety, but also
+enlarging immensely the apparent spaciousness of the
+scene, since he was able to carry the eyes of the spectator
+into vague distances, and to suggest far more
+than he was able to display. This advance was accompanied
+by a more liberal use of stairways and platforms&mdash;"practicables"
+as the stage-phrase is&mdash;that is to say,
+built up by the carpenters so that the actors could go
+from one level to another. Hitherto flights of steps
+and balconies had been only painted, not being intended
+for actual use by the performers.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_171" id="image_171"></a>
+<img src="images/i_171.png" alt="The set for the opera of &#39;Persée&#39; (as performed at the
+Opéra in Paris in the seventeenth century)
+
+A prison (designed by Bibiena in Italy in the
+eighteenth century)" title="The set for the opera of &#39;Persée&#39; (as performed at the
+Opéra in Paris in the seventeenth century)
+
+A prison (designed by Bibiena in Italy in the
+eighteenth century)" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">A similar development took place also in the landscape
+scenes; the foreground was raised irregularly, so
+that the persons of the play might climb up. Practicable
+bridges were swung across torrents, and the
+earlier formality of pastoral scenes began to disappear.
+Apparently the scene-painters were influenced at this
+time by the landscape-painters, more especially by
+Poussin. The interrelation of painting and scene-painting,
+each in turn affecting the other, is far closer
+than most historians of art have perceived. It is not
+unlikely, for example, that Gainsborough and Constable,
+who were the fathers of the Barbizon men, had
+been stimulated by the stage-pictures of De Lutherbourg.
+David Garrick profited by the innovating art
+of De Lutherbourg, a pupil of Vanloo, who came to
+England in 1771. Apparently it was De Lutherbourg
+who invented "raking-pieces"&mdash;as the scene-painters
+term the low fragments of scenery which mask the inclines
+of mounds. To him also is credited the first
+use of transparent scenes to reproduce the effect of
+moonlight upon water, and to suggest the flames of
+volcanoes. Thus to him must be ascribed the beginnings
+of that complicated realism by which our latter-day
+scene-painters are enabled to create an appropriate
+atmosphere for poetic episodes.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">IV</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The next step in advance, and one of the most important
+in the slow development of the scene-painter's
+art, took place in France early in the nineteenth century,
+and simultaneous with the romanticist movement,
+which modified the aims and ambitions of the
+artists as much as it did those of the poets. The
+severe stateliness of the stage-set which was adequate
+for the classicist tragedies of Racine and Voltaire,
+generally a vague interior of an indefinite palace, stiff
+and empty, was hopelessly unsuitable for the fiery
+dramas of Victor Hugo and the elder Dumas. An
+even greater opportunity for spectacular regeneration
+was afforded, in these same early decades of the nineteenth
+century, by the bold and moving librettos which
+Scribe constructed for Meyerbeer and Halévy at the
+Opéra, and for Auber at the Opéra-Comique. The
+exciting cause of the scenic complexities that we find
+in Wagner's music-dramas can be discovered in these
+librettos of Scribe's, from 'Robert the Devil' to the
+'Africaine.' For one act of 'Robert the Devil,' that in
+which the spectral nuns dance among the tombs under
+the rays of the moon, Ciceri invented the most striking
+and novel setting yet exhibited on any stage&mdash;a setting
+not surpassed in poetic glamor by any since seen in the
+theater, altho its eery beauty may have been rivaled by
+one scene in the 'Source,' a ballet produced also at the
+Opéra forty-five years ago&mdash;a moon-lit tarn in a forest-glade,
+with half-seen sylphs floating lightly over its
+silvered surface. This exquisitely poetic set was imported
+from Paris to New York and inserted in the
+brilliant spectacle of the 'White Fawn.'</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The ample effect of these scenes was made possible
+only by the immense improvement in the illumination
+of the stage due to the introduction of gas. Up to the
+first quarter of the nineteenth century the stage-decorator
+had been dependent upon lamps&mdash;a few of
+these arranged at the rim of the curving apron which
+jutted out into the auditorium far beyond the proscenium,
+and a few more hidden here and there in the
+flies and wings. Early in the nineteenth century gas
+supplanted oil; and a little later than the middle of the
+century gas was powerfully supplemented by the calcium
+light. Toward the end of the century gas in its
+turn gave way to the far more useful electric light,
+which could be directed anywhere in any quantity,
+and which could be controlled and colored at will. It
+was Henry Irving, more especially in his marvelous
+mounting of a rather tawdry version of 'Faust,' who
+revealed the delicate artistic possibilities of our modern
+facilities for stage illumination.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In France the romanticist movement of Hugo was
+swiftly succeeded by the realistic movement of Balzac,
+who was the earliest novelist to relate the leading personages
+of his studies from life to a characteristic
+background and to bring out the intimate association
+of persons and places. From prose fiction this evocation
+of characteristic surroundings was taken over by
+the drama; and a persistent effort was made to have
+the successive sets of a play suggestive and significant
+in themselves, and also representative of the main
+theme of the piece. The actors were no longer dependent
+upon the "float," as the footlights were called;
+they did not need to advance out on the apron to let
+the spectators follow the changing expression of their
+faces, and in time the apron was cut back to the line
+of the proscenium, and the curtain rose and fell in a
+picture-frame which cut the actors off from their proximity
+to the audience&mdash;a proximity forever tempting
+the dramatic poet to the purely oratorical effects proper
+enough on a platform.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">When the modern play calls for an interior this interior
+now takes on the semblance of an actual room.
+Apparently the "box-set," as it is called, the closed-in
+room with its walls and its ceiling, was first seen in
+England in 1841, when 'London Assurance' was produced;
+but very likely it had earlier made its appearance
+in Paris at the Gymnase. To supply a room with
+walls of a seeming solidity, with doors and with windows,
+appears natural enough to us, but it was a startling
+innovation fourscore years ago. When the 'School
+for Scandal' had been originally produced at Drury
+Lane in 1775, the library of Joseph Surface, where Lady
+Teazle hides behind the screen, was represented by a
+drop at the back, on which a window was painted, and
+by wings set starkly parallel to this back-drop and
+painted to represent columns. There were no doors;
+and Joseph and Charles, Sir Peter and Lady Teazle,
+walked on thru the openings between the wings, very
+much as tho they were passing thru the non-existent
+walls. To us, this would be shocking; but it was perfectly
+acceptable to English playgoers then; and to
+them it seemed natural, since they were familiar with
+no other way of getting into a room on the stage.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_177" id="image_177"></a>
+<img src="images/i_177.png" alt="" title="" /><br />
+<span class="caption">The screen scene of the 'School for Scandal' at Drury Lane in 1778<br />
+From a contemporary print</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">The invention of the box-set, of a room with walls
+and ceilings, doors and windows, led inevitably to the
+appropriate furnishing of this room with tangible tables
+and chairs. Even in the eighteenth century the stage
+had been very empty; it was adorned only with the
+furniture actually demanded by the action of the drama;
+and the rest of the furniture, bookcases and sideboards,
+chairs and tables, was frankly painted on the wings
+and on the back-drop by the side of the painted mantelpieces,
+the painted windows, and the painted doors. In
+the plays of the twentieth century characters sit down
+and change from seat to seat; but in the plays produced
+in England and in France before the first quarter
+of the nineteenth century all the actors stood all the
+time&mdash;or at least they were allowed to sit only under
+the stress of dramatic necessity&mdash;as in the fourth act
+of 'Tartuffe,' for instance. In all of Molière's comedies
+there are scarcely half a dozen characters who have
+occasion to sit down; and this sitting-down is limited
+to three or four of his more than thirty pieces. Nowadays
+every effort is made to capture the external
+realities of life. Sardou was not more careful in composing
+his stage-sittings in his fashion than was Ibsen
+in prescribing the scenic environment that he needed.
+The author's minute descriptions of the scenes where
+the action of the 'Doll's House' and of 'Ghosts' passes
+prove that Ibsen had visualized sharply the precise
+interior which was, in his mind, the only possible home
+for the creatures of his imagination. And Mr. Belasco
+has recently bestowed upon the winning personality
+of his 'Peter Grimm' the exact habitation to which
+that appealing creature would return in his desire to
+undo after death what in life he had rashly commanded.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">V</p>
+
+<p class="indent">While the scene-painter of our time is most often
+called upon to realize the actual in an interior and to
+delight us with a room the dominant quality of which
+is that it looks as tho it was really lived in by the personages
+we see moving around in it, he is not confined
+to those domestic scenes. There are other plays than
+the modern social dramas; and these other plays make
+other demands upon the artist. On occasion he has
+to supply a gorgeous scenic accompaniment for the
+Roman and Egyptian episodes of 'Antony and Cleopatra,'
+to suggest the blasted heath where Macbeth
+may meet the weird sisters, and to call up before our
+delighted eyes the placid charm of the Forest of Arden.
+The awkward and inconsistent sky-borders, strips of
+pendent canvas wholly unsatisfactory as substitutes
+for the vast depths of the starry heavens, he is able
+to dispense with by lowering a little the hangings at
+the top edge of the picture-frame, and by thus limiting
+the upward gaze of the spectators, so that he can
+forgo the impossible attempt to imitate the changing
+sky. He can achieve an effect of limitless space, as in
+the last act of the 'Garden of Allah' (which brings before
+us the endless vision of Sahara), by the use of a
+cyclorama background, the drop being suspended from
+a semicircular rod which runs around the top of the
+stage, shutting in the view absolutely, and yet yielding
+itself to a representation of sand and sky meeting afar
+off on the faint horizon.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_181" id="image_181"></a>
+<img src="images/i_181.png" alt="A landscape set
+Designed by P. Fontanesi in Italy in the eighteenth century
+
+A set for the opera of &#39;Robert le Diable&#39;
+At the Paris Opéra"
+title="A landscape set
+Designed by P. Fontanesi in Italy in the eighteenth century
+
+A set for the opera of &#39;Robert le Diable&#39;
+At the Paris Opéra" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">In the past half-century, and more especially since
+the improvement of the electric light, scene-painting
+has become very elaborate and very expensive. Instead
+of being kept in its proper place as the decoration
+of the drama, as a beautiful accessory of the action,
+it has often been pushed to the front, so as to attract
+attention to itself, and thereby to distract attention
+from the play which it was supposed to illuminate.
+Sometimes Shakspere has been smothered in scenery,
+and sometimes the art of the actor has been subordinated
+to the art of the scene-painter. Now, it must
+be admitted that nothing is too good for the masterpieces
+of the drama, and that Sophocles no less than
+Shakspere ought to be presented to the public with all
+the pomp that his lofty themes and his marvelous
+workmanship may demand. But the plays of the
+mighty dramatic poets ought not to be used merely as
+pegs on which to hang gorgeous apparel. After all,
+the play's the thing; and whenever the scene-painter
+and his invading partner, the stage-manager, are
+prompted to oust the drama from its pre-eminence, and
+to substitute an exhibition of their accessory arts, the
+result is a betrayal of the playwright.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A well-known British art critic once told me that
+when the curtain rose at a certain London revival of
+'Twelfth Night,' and disclosed Olivia's garden, he sat
+entranced at the beauty of the spectacle before his
+eyes, with its subtle harmonies of color, so entranced,
+indeed, that he found himself distinctly annoyed when
+the actors came on the stage and began to talk. For
+the moment, at least, he wished them away, as disturbers
+of his esthetic delight in the lovely picture on
+which his eyes were feasting. But even a stage-setting
+as captivating as this might very well be justified if
+it had been employed to fill a gap in the action, and to
+buttress up the interest of an episode where the dramatist
+had allowed the appeal of his story to relax.
+Perrin, the manager of the Comédie-Française thirty
+years ago, declined to produce a French version of
+'Othello' because he found a certain dramatic emptiness
+in the scenes at Cyprus at the opening of the second
+act, which he felt he would have to mask by the
+beauty of spectacular decoration, too costly an expedient
+in his opinion for the finances of the theater
+just then.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_185" id="image_185"></a>
+<img src="images/i_185.png" alt="The set of the last act of the Garden of Allah
+From the model in the Dramatic Museum
+of Columbia University
+
+A set for Medea
+Designed by Herr Gustav Lindemann"
+title="The set of the last act of the Garden of Allah
+From the model in the Dramatic Museum
+of Columbia University
+
+A set for Medea
+Designed by Herr Gustav Lindemann" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">It was Perrin, however, who produced the French
+version of the '&OElig;dipus the King' of Sophocles, and who
+bestowed upon it a single set of wonderful charm and
+power, at once dignified, appropriate, and beautiful
+in itself. It represented an open space between a
+temple and the palace of the ill-fated &OElig;dipus, with an
+altar in the center, and with the profile of another
+temple projected against the distant sky and relieved
+by the tall, thin outline of poplar-trees. The monotony
+of this rectangular architectural construction
+was avoided by placing all the buildings on a slant,
+the whole elevation of the temple being visible on the
+left of the spectators, whereas only a corner of the
+colonnade of the palace on the right was displayed.
+This set at the Théâtre-Français was the absolute antithesis
+of the original scenic surroundings in the theater
+of Dionysus more than two thousand years ago, when
+the masterpiece of Sophocles had been performed in
+the open-air orchestra, with only a hut of skins or a
+temporary wooden building to serve as a background
+for the bas-reliefs of the action.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">So elaborate, complicated, and costly have stage-sets
+become in the past half-century, that there are
+already signs of the violent reaction that might be
+expected. Mr. Gordon Craig, an artist of remarkable
+individuality, has gone so far as to propose what is
+almost an abolition of scene-painting. He seeks to
+attain effects of massive simplicity by the use of unadorned
+hangings and of undecorated screens, thus
+substituting vast spaces for the realistic details of the
+modern scene-painter. No doubt, there are a few
+plays for which this method of mounting would be appropriate
+enough&mdash;M. Maeterlinck's 'Intruder,' for one,
+and his 'Sightless' for another, plays which are independent
+of time and space, and in which the action
+appears to pass in some undiscovered limbo. As yet
+the advanced and iconoclastic theories of Mr. Craig
+have made few adherents, the most notable being the
+German, "Professor" Reinhardt, who lacks Mr.
+Craig's fine feeling for form and color, and who is continually
+tempted into rather ugly eccentricities of design,
+being apparently moved by the desire to be different
+from his predecessors rather than by the wish to
+be superior to them.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">VI</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Interesting as are Mr. Craig's suggestions, and wellfounded
+as may be his protest against the excessive
+ornamentation to which we are too prone nowadays,
+there is no reason to fear that his principles will prevail.
+The art of the scene-painter is too welcome, it
+is too plainly in accord with the predilections of the
+twentieth century, for it to be annihilated by the fiat
+of a daring and reckless innovator. It will be wise
+if the producers should harken to Mr. Craig's warnings
+and curb their tendency to needless extravagance;
+but we may rest assured that a return to the bareness
+of the Attic theater or of the English theater in the
+time of the Tudors is frankly unthinkable now that the
+art of scene-painting has been developed to its present
+possibilities. In fact, the probability is rather that
+the scene-painters will continue to enlarge the boundaries
+of their territory and to discover new means and
+new methods of delighting our eyes by their evocations
+of interesting places.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_189" id="image_189"></a>
+<img src="images/i_189.png" alt="The set of &OElig;dipe-Roi (at the Théâtre Français)
+
+The set of the Return of Peter Grimm
+From the model in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University"
+title="The set of &OElig;dipe-Roi (at the Théâtre Français)
+
+The set of the Return of Peter Grimm
+From the model in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University" /><br />
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">Perhaps they would be more encouraged to go on
+and conquer new worlds if there was a wider recognition
+of the artistic value of their work. Altho De
+Lutherbourg and Clarkson Stanfield won honorable
+positions in the history of painting by their easel-pictures,
+the art of scene-painting does not hold the
+place in the public esteem that many of its practitioners
+deserve. Théophile Gautier, often negligible as a
+critic of the acted drama, was always worth listening
+to when he turned to pictorial art; and he was frequent
+in praise of the scene-painters of his time and of scene-painting
+itself as a craft of exceeding difficulty and of
+inadequate appreciation. Probably one reason why
+the scene-painter has not received his due meed of
+praise is because his work is not preserved. It exists
+only during the run of the play which it decorates.
+When the piece disappears from the boards, the scenes
+which adorned it vanish from sight. They linger only
+in the memory of those who happened to see this one
+play&mdash;and even then, in fact, only in the memory of
+such spectators as have trained themselves to pay
+attention to stage-pictures. For the scene-painter
+there is no Luxembourg; still less is there any Louvre.
+As Gautier sympathetically declared, "it is sad to think
+that nothing survives of those masterpieces destined to
+live a few evenings only, and disappearing from the
+washed canvas to give place to other marvels, equally
+fugitive. How much invention, talent, and genius may
+be lost&mdash;and not always leaving even a name!"</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is pleasant to know that at the Opéra in Paris a
+formal order of the government has for now a half-century
+prescribed the preservation of the original
+models&mdash;the little miniature sets which the scene-painter
+submits for the approval of the manager and
+the dramatist before he begins work upon the actual
+scene. These models are always upon the same scale,
+and in the gallery connected with the library of the
+Opéra a dozen of these models are set up to be viewed
+by visitors. Of course no tiny model, however cleverly
+fashioned, can give the full effect of the scene which
+has been conceived in terms of a huge stage; and yet
+the miniature reproductions do not betray the scene-painter
+as much as an engraving or a photograph often
+betrays the painter. Whatever its limitations, and
+they are obvious enough, the collection of models at
+the Opéra is at least an attempt to retard the oblivion
+that Théophile Gautier deplored, and to provide for
+the scene-painter a substitute, however inadequate,
+for the Louvre and the Luxembourg.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1912.)</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">IX<br />THE BOOK OF THE OPERA<a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">THE BOOK OF THE OPERA<br />I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A few</span> years ago <i>Punch</i> had a satirical drawing representing
+a British matron conveying a bevy of youthful
+daughters to the French play in London. To a
+friend who called her attention to the rather risky
+atmosphere of the very Parisian comedy which they
+were about to behold, the worthy mother promptly explained
+that she was not bringing her daughters to see
+the play itself; she was bringing them to see only the
+acting. Probably a great many opera-goers would
+make a similar explanation if they were asked whether
+they were interested in the book of the opera or only
+in the music. They would be likely to protest that
+they cared little or nothing for the libretto, and that
+they were attracted solely by the score. But, as a
+matter of fact, the opera-goers who might make this
+reply would be self-deceived. Whether they are aware
+of it or not, they are unlikely to be attracted to any
+opera unless it happens to have an interesting story,
+built up into a coherent and captivating plot. When
+the libretto is unintelligible or uninteresting, the most
+delightful music fails to allure them into the opera-house.
+This is one of the reasons why the 'Magic
+Flute,' which contains much of Mozart's most beautiful
+melodic invention, is so rarely heard in our opera-houses,
+and why it is so sparsely attended when it is
+presented. The libretto of the 'Magic Flute' is dull
+and ineffective, and even Mozart's genius proved unable
+to overcome this initial handicap.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The ordinary opera-goer is likely to treat the libretto
+with calm contempt. He is prone to assert that nobody
+cares about the words, and he does not reflect that behind
+and beneath the words is the supporting structure
+of the story. After all, an opera is a play, it is a music-drama,
+and the plot is as important in a play the words
+of which are to be sung as in a play the words of which
+are to be spoken. True it is, of course, that in an
+opera the words may not be heard distinctly, and perhaps
+they need not be seized with certainty, since the
+emotion they set forth is more amply conveyed by
+the music. But the musician cannot express emotion
+musically, unless there is emotion for him to express,
+unless he has characters immeshed in a series of situations
+which evoke vivid and contrasting sentiments
+for him to translate into music. As the music-drama
+is a drama, it must obey the laws of the drama; it
+must represent a conflict of contending desires; it
+must be carried on by characters firm of purpose and
+resolute in achieving their several aims. These characters
+must be sharply individualized and boldly contrasted;
+and the story in which they take part must
+be at once strong and simple, calling for no elaborate
+explanation and moving forward steadily and irresistibly.
+It must have a lyric aspect, lending itself naturally
+to song; and it ought also to afford opportunity
+for the spectacular effects appropriate to the large
+stage of the opera-house.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">So contemptuous of the libretto is the ordinary
+opera-goer that he rarely inquires as to the name of
+the author of the book, altho he is generally familiar
+with the name of the composer of the score. He may
+or he may not be aware that Wagner was his own
+librettist, and quite possibly he supposes that it is the
+ordinary custom of the composers to write the words
+for their own music. He knows that 'Carmen' was
+composed by Bizet, and that the 'Huguenots' was composed
+by Meyerbeer; but he would be greatly puzzled
+if he was asked to name the librettists of these two
+operas, the adroit playwrights who devised the skeletons
+of dramatic action which sustained the composers and
+provided them with ample opportunities for the exercise
+of their melodic gift. As a matter of fact, the book
+of 'Carmen' was written in collaboration by two of the
+most distinguished French dramatists of the nineteenth
+century, Meilhac and Halévy, the authors of
+'Froufrou' and of the librettos of Offenbach's 'Belle
+Hélène,' 'Grand Duchess of Gérolstein,' and 'Périchole.'
+And the book of the 'Huguenots' was the
+work of the master stage-craftsman, Scribe, the author
+of 'Adrienne Lecouvreur' and of the 'Ladies' Battle,'
+and of countless other plays performed in every modern
+language, and in all the countries of the world.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Bizet wrote other operas besides 'Carmen,' and if
+these other operas have vanished from the stage, the
+reason may be that the librettos to which they were
+composed were not as ingenious and not as interesting
+as the book of 'Carmen.' One of these forgotten operas
+of Bizet's was a dramatization of the 'Fair Maid
+of Perth,' and another was called the 'Pearl Fisher';
+but neither of these books was devised by Meilhac and
+Halévy. And Scribe was not only the librettist of the
+'Huguenots' and of the 'Africaine' for Meyerbeer; he
+also wrote the books of 'Fra Diavolo' and of 'Crown
+Diamonds' for Auber, the book of the 'Dame Blanche'
+for Boïeldieu, and the book of the 'Juive' for Halévy.
+Indeed, it is evident that Wagner himself as a librettist
+must be considered as a direct disciple of Scribe; certainly
+his book of the 'Flying Dutchman' has its points
+of resemblance with the books Scribe invented for
+'Robert the Devil,' and for the 'Prophet.' Even the
+libretto of Wagner's 'Master-Singers of Nuremberg,'
+altho it is far richer in tone than any of Scribe's librettos
+for Auber, is constructed in accord with principles already
+applied by the French playwright. In fact, the
+influence of Scribe is patent thruout the long history of
+opera in the nineteenth century; he was not only the
+most prolific of librettists himself, but the operatic
+formula he devised was borrowed by the best of the
+librettists who followed him. Scribe was not the writer
+of the books of 'Faust,' or of 'Roméo et Juliet,' or of
+'Aïda,' but all these librettos were carefully built in
+accord with the principles that he had practised for
+half a century.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">II</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Probably the average opera-goer is contemptuous of
+the libretto, because he thinks it is an easy task to write
+the mere words of an opera. To him, no doubt, the
+opera lives by its music, and by its music alone. But
+there is really no warrant for this uncomplimentary
+attitude. An opera is a music-drama, and if it is to
+achieve success, wide-spread and long-lasting, its drama
+must be as effective as its music. Experience proves
+that, so far from being as easy as it seems, the construction
+of a satisfactory libretto is really a difficult feat,
+to be achieved only by an expert in stage-craft. It is
+no task to be confided to an amateur play-maker, to
+a mere lyrist, ignorant of the art of the theater. First
+of all, a satisfactory book must contain the skeleton of
+a good play; and, second, this must be the special kind
+of play which will not only inspire the musician, but
+afford him a succession of special opportunities for the
+exercise of his own art. The book of an opera must
+be a good play; and more than once have we seen a
+libretto deprived of its music and written out again
+in prose for production in non-musical theaters.
+'Carmen' is one example of this transformation. The
+late Sir Henry Irving was so taken with Wagner's
+'Flying Dutchman' that he had it made over into a
+play for his own acting&mdash;'Vanderdecken.'</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The book of an opera must be a good play, and therefore
+not a few successful operas have been composed
+on plots which had already won approval as plays on
+the stage. Indeed, many modern composers are so
+convinced of the necessity that librettos shall be attractive
+in themselves that they are continually borrowing
+popular plays to deck with melody. 'Salomé' and
+'Pelléas et Mélisande,' 'Madam Butterfly' and 'Cavalleria
+Rusticana,' the 'Bohème' and the 'Tosca'
+were all successful without music before they were set
+to music to win a second success. The book of Verdi's
+'Rigoletto' is based on Victor Hugo's drama, 'Le Roi
+s'Amuse'; and oddly enough it was the operatic libretto,
+rather than the original poetic drama, which
+suggested the English play on the same theme, Tom
+Taylor's blank-verse drama, the 'Fool's Revenge.'
+Another of Verdi's librettos was borrowed from Hugo's
+'Hermani', while his 'Traviata,' as we all know, is
+taken from the play of the younger Dumas, long popular
+in America as 'Camille.' Two of Verdi's latest
+operas had Shaksperian themes, 'Otello' and 'Falstaff.'</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is instructive to note, so an American musical
+critic once asserted, that of all Gounod's dozen operas,
+"the only two which have survived are the two which
+are derived from Goethe's 'Faust' and from Shakspere's
+'Romeo and Juliet'"; and he added a reminder
+that in these operas the music owes its success "not
+only to the aid derived from its associations with a
+favorite play, but also in part to the fact that the
+composer's creative imagination was fertilized by the
+splendid opportunities for dramatic composition offered
+by these plays. Gounod was moved by the joys
+and woes of Margaret and of Juliet, and it is only under
+the influence of deep feeling that such masterworks
+can be created." When Gounod set to music a poetic
+play by Goethe, and when Verdi set to music a group
+of characters created by Shakspere, the composers
+might well be inspired by the poets; and they were
+thus aided to attain the utmost of which they are capable
+as musicians.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But it may be doubted whether any musician could
+find any really helpful inspiration in dramas of vulgar
+violence, such as the 'Tosca' of Sardou, and the
+'Salomé' of Oscar Wilde; and it is extremely improbable
+that the operas composed to such unworthy themes
+will be able to achieve any durable popularity. In
+plots of so coarse a character there is neither beauty
+nor poetry, and the vogue of music-dramas having
+subjects so debased is likely to be fleeting. On the
+other hand, there was both poetry and beauty in the
+original plays of 'Madam Butterfly' and 'Cavalleria
+Rusticana,' and we need not be surprised if the operas
+composed on these themes prove to have a long life in
+the musical theaters. We may even go further and
+suggest that there was a haunting and ethereal grace
+about Maeterlinck's 'Pelléas et Mélisande' which
+seemed almost to demand translation into the sister
+art of music.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The two most effective French comedies of the eighteenth
+century, the 'Barber of Seville' and the 'Marriage
+of Figaro,' supplied librettos, one for Rossini and
+the other for Mozart. We may be sure that sooner
+or later some other composer, Italian or American or
+German, will be tempted to undertake an opera based
+on Fulda's 'Two Sisters,' in which there could not help
+being a very effective part for the prima donna. And
+sooner or later again some musician with an appreciation
+of humor and sentiment will be moved to take for
+his libretto the comedy of 'Masks and Faces,' by Charles
+Reade and Tom Taylor, generally known by the name
+of its fascinating heroine, Peg Woffington. No doubt
+there are not a few other modern plays in which composers
+will discover musical possibilities.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">III</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The key to an understanding of the importance of
+the libretto lies in the term Wagner used to describe
+the art-work of the future; he called this a "music-drama."
+The exclusive lover of music is tempted to
+look down on opera because its music is contaminated
+with drama; and for a similar reason, the exclusive
+lover of the drama is not attracted to opera because
+the drama is there more or less sacrificed to the music.
+But there are many opera-goers who best relish music
+and the drama when they are presented in conjunction.
+In a music-drama of the highest type, in Wagner's
+'Tannhaüser,' for example, the music and the drama
+are Siamese twins; they were brought forth at a single
+birth. Each helps the other, and neither calls upon
+the other for any undue sacrifice. They can be enjoyed
+together better than they can be enjoyed apart,
+since each depends upon the other; and united they
+stand or fall.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Mr. H. T. Finck was not overstating the case when
+he insisted that the ideal opera is one in which the book
+and the score are each of them of absorbing interest,
+"and yet make a doubly deep impression when heard
+together." The stories of 'Faust' and of 'Carmen' and
+of 'Lohengrin' are delightful in themselves, merely
+to read; and a musical expert can find pleasure in
+playing the music from them on the piano. "Yet
+how much more effective they are when we hear and
+see music and play together on the stage." And then
+the same writer goes on to point out that the best
+"libretto is one which tells its story to the eye," as in
+the case of 'Carmen,' for example. "No one with eyes
+to see can fail, for instance, to follow the career of
+'Carmen,' from her flirtation with the young officer
+to the scene before the bullring where he stabs her."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was an acute French dramatic critic who once
+asserted that "the skeleton of every good play is a
+pantomime," and the assertion is more emphatically
+true when applied to the skeleton of a libretto. Indeed,
+as the words are rarely heard distinctly, and as
+they are often in a foreign language, there is double
+need of a story so clear and so straightforward that it
+can be caught by the eye alone from the actions and
+gestures and facial expressions of the performers without
+the aid of the actual words. But the inventing
+and the constructing of a plot of this seemingly simple
+effectiveness is a task of extraordinary difficulty&mdash;if
+we may judge by the infrequency of its achievement.
+And undoubtedly it is this difficulty which has led so
+many musicians to compose their scores to books only
+slightly altered from plays which had already an attested
+popularity in the theater. By so doing it has
+seemed to them that they were minimizing the risk of
+finding their music handicapped by an ineffective story.
+The danger in this case lies in the temptation to set
+to music any play which may chance to be successful
+without considering sufficiently whether it is really
+worthy of the composer's labor.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There is another disadvantage also in this snatching at
+successful plays to serve as opera-librettos. Most successful
+plays nowadays deal with modern life, and they
+may owe much of their success to the skill with which
+the dramatist has been able to seize the external aspects
+of reality. Now, it is an interesting question whether
+a realistic piece of this sort can ever supply an entirely
+satisfactory book for an opera, since music is emotional
+and idealizing. To many persons the opera seems
+singularly unreal, strangely remote from actual life.
+Such persons are shocked that Tristan, for instance,
+should sing for half an hour when he is dying from physical
+weakness. Tolstoy sided with those who take this
+attitude, and he had no difficulty in showing up the
+absurd unreality of an operatic performance, if one
+insists upon applying to it the standard of our ordinary
+existence, since we do not burst into song ordinarily
+to express our every-day desires. Of course, there
+would be no great difficulty in showing up the absurd
+unreality of every other art, if the same standard is
+insisted upon. No art can justify itself for a moment
+unless we are willing to admit the essential conventions
+which alone permit it to exist.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Tolstoy might as well have pointed out that sculpture
+is ridiculous, since no human being is ever all of
+one color, body and clothes, as a statue must be,
+whether it is made of marble or of bronze. He could
+have declared that painting is equally untrue to the
+mere facts of life, since it represents nature absolutely
+without motion, as when it depicts a field of waving
+corn which does not really wave but stands fixed forever.
+If Tolstoy or any one else refuses to accept the
+conventions of any art, there is no possible reply, except
+to make it clear to him that he is thereby depriving
+himself of the delight which that art can give.
+A departure from the mere fact underlies every art;
+and it is only because of that departure that the art
+exists. By convention, that is to say, by tacit agreement
+between the artist and the public, the artist is
+allowed to deny certain of the facts of life in order to
+provide the public with the specific pleasure which
+only his art can afford.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In the Shaksperian drama the underlying convention
+is that the persons of the play belong to a race
+of people who always express themselves poetically in
+English blank verse. In opera this necessary agreement
+requires us to concede the existence of men and women
+to whom song is the natural means of communicating
+all their sentiments and all their thoughts. If we are
+willing to accept this implied contract, then there is no
+absurdity in Tristan's singing with his dying breath,
+since he belongs to a race of creatures who have no
+other method of speech. If we are unwilling to be
+parties to this agreement, if we deny the existence of
+any such creatures, then there is nothing for us to do
+but to keep out of the opera-house. It was this convention
+which Tolstoy rejected, and by this rejection
+he refused the enjoyment which the opera can give to
+those who are satisfied to accept its conditions.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">IV</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But there is no denying that the imperative operatic
+convention requires us to admit a very violent departure
+from the facts of life as we all know them. We
+are now so accustomed to blank verse in Shakspere's
+plays, tragic and comic, that we accept it almost
+without noticing it. By long habit, we have come to
+consider blank verse as "natural" in a poetic play,
+especially when that play sets before us heroic figures
+of the remote past. And here is the danger in the
+operas which have been composed on books made out
+of modern popular pieces, more or less realistic in their
+atmosphere. The "naturalness" of the men and
+women in these plays of to-day tends to draw attention
+to the "unnaturalness" of their customary use of
+song to express their emotions.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">This danger Wagner skilfully avoided in his later
+music-dramas derived from the Nibelungen myth.
+He set before us shadowy creatures involved in strange
+intrigues far back in the legendary past and wholly
+devoid of any modern or realistic suggestion. As Tristan
+and Siegfried and Brunhild are all idealized persons,
+taking part in poetic fictions, we are willing enough
+to accept their exclusive use of song; and we recognize
+at once the artistic inconsistency of Tolstoy's protest.
+To beings so remote from our daily life, from our ordinary
+experience, the standard of fact cannot fairly
+be applied. We acknowledge the full right of such
+creatures to dwell eternally in the land of song alone.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But we are perhaps a little less willing to make this
+acknowledgment when we find the composer asking
+us to believe that men and women of our own time and
+of our own country, the characters of the 'Girl of the
+Golden West,' for example, or even some of those of
+'Madam Butterfly,' should eschew the plain prose of
+ordinary speech and insist on discussing their love-affairs
+in the obviously "unnatural" medium of song.
+That is to say, there is a striking incongruity between
+musical expression and the realistic characters of most
+modern plays. We enjoy the opera partly because it
+is not "natural," not "real," in the ordinary meaning
+of these words; and if the plot and the people are
+aggressively modern and matter-of-fact, our attention
+is necessarily called to the "unnaturalness" of their
+incessant vocalization. A certain remoteness from real
+life, even a certain vaporous intangibility as to time
+and place, seem to be a helpful element in our enjoyment
+of a music-drama.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Perhaps it is due to this remoteness, to this unreality,
+that the opera-goer is willing enough to have a story
+end unhappily, altho the playgoer is now likely to be
+painfully affected by a tragic ending. Whatever the
+reason, it is a fact that most of our popular plays end
+merrily in a church, while most of our popular operas
+end sadly in a churchyard. The calculation has been
+made that out of twoscore operas sung in New York
+at the two opera-houses a season or so ago, only half
+a dozen ended happily; the large majority of them culminated
+in the death of the hero or of the heroine or
+of both together. Music is a sister of poetry, and we
+need not wonder that the musicians are likely to prefer
+the opera-book which has a tragic catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1910.)</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">X<br />
+THE POETRY OF THE DANCE<a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">THE POETRY OF THE DANCE<br />I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> Greek of old was wise in his generation and poetic
+as was his habit, when he imagined nine muses and
+when he feigned that each of them was to watch over
+a separate art, and to inspire those who might strive
+to excel in this. It is true that nowadays we cannot
+help feeling that the sister-muses of Tragedy and of
+Comedy have been a little derelict to their duty, if
+they are really responsible for all the plays of our time,
+not a few of which seem to be sadly lacking in inspiration.
+But of late another of the sacred nine appears
+to have aroused herself out of her lethargy and to have
+awakened to a fuller realization of her opportunity.
+At least, there are many evidences now visible in the
+United States that Terpsichore has been attending
+strictly to business, and sending out travelers with
+many diverse specimens of her wares. Indeed, there
+has probably never been a time when so many different
+varieties of the dance have been on exhibition before
+the American people. It was once remarked by a
+shrewd observer that there were only three kinds of
+dancing, the graceful, the ungraceful, and the disgraceful.
+And in the United States we have had presented
+to us in the past few years specimens of all three
+kinds.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In the middle of September, 1910, the Playground
+Association of America held an outdoor session in
+Van Cortlandt Park, in New York, and three hundred
+persons, mostly children, took part in the exercises.
+The most interesting feature of the program was a
+series of national folk-dances executed by boys and
+girls from the public schools. New York is the huge
+melting-pot where all nationalities of Europe meet to
+be fused into Americans; and these children were,
+most of them, executing the dances of the countries
+their parents had come from&mdash;dances for which they
+had, therefore, a traditional and hereditary predilection.
+German girls in the costumes of the Rhine, gave
+a peasant dance to the simple tune of 'Ach, du lieber
+Augustin'; and colored children, in perfect rhythm,
+moved thru a reel to the music of the 'Suwanee River.'
+The wild Hungarian <i>czardas</i> was carried off with a
+splendid swing by men and women born on the banks
+of the Danube; and an Irish quartet displayed their
+agility and their precision of time-keeping in a four-handed
+country-dance. And at the end, all the participants
+in the several national dances took part in a
+general harvest-dance. This was an effective spectacle,
+possible only here in America, where representatives
+of many peoples come to mingle, even tho each
+of them retains a sentiment of loyalty to the old home
+it has left forever.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Here in the open air, in a public park, at this meeting
+of the Playground Association, there was this joyous
+and wholesome revival of the folk-dances of a dozen
+different races; and at the same time, in one or another
+of half a score of the theaters of the great city, ill-trained
+and half-clothed women were vainly capering
+about the stage in doubtful efforts to suggest the Oriental
+contortions of Salomé. These were, most of them,
+consciously and deliberately inartistic, appealing directly
+to the baser instincts and to the lower curiosities
+of man. Nothing could have been in sharper contrast
+with the folk-dances of the foreign-born children,
+which were gay and healthy and spontaneous. The
+exercises in the park were examples of the kind of
+dancing which cannot help being graceful, while most
+of the performances in the theaters were specimens of
+the kind of dancing which can fairly be described as
+ungraceful, even if they cannot all of them be dismissed
+as disgraceful. While the folk-dances of the
+children would fill the heart with a pure delight, the
+sorry spectacle presented in some of the theaters was
+not to be witnessed without a certain loss of self-respect;
+it recalled the gross pantomimes of the later Roman
+theater, righteously denounced by the Fathers of the
+Church.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Yet it is only just to record that in other theaters
+there were then other spectacles to make amends for
+these sorry exhibitions. There were several interesting
+attempts to recall the severe beauty of Greek dancing.
+Lithe figures with free and floating draperies
+sought to recapture the irreclaimable charm that lives
+for us in the lovely Tanagra figurines, or that flits elusively
+around the sides of Attic vases. Ambitious efforts
+were made by one dancer and by another to translate
+into step and posture and gesture the intangible
+poetry of Shelley and the haunting music of Mendelssohn.
+Unfortunately, the result was rarely commensurate
+with the effort; and, in fact, a complete success
+was not possible. The muse of dancing has no right
+to endeavor to annex the territory of her sisters, who
+are charged with the care of poetry and music. The
+several arts are strongest when each remains strictly
+within its own limitations. For example, program-music
+is not yet assured of its welcome, and program-dancing
+is far more difficult to follow with complete
+comprehension.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">And there was a further defect in these efforts to revive
+the classic dances and to devise more modern
+interpretations of poetry and music. Success, if possible
+at all, would be possible only to a highly trained
+performer, mistress of every device of the terpsichorean
+art and elaborately schooled in pantomimic
+expression. Now, it is not unfair to say that no one
+of the performers of these so-called classic dances had
+undergone this severe schooling. No one of them had
+the lightness, the ease, the perfect mastery of method,
+the floating grace of the true dancer, who has been
+taught from childhood, until all the tricks of the craft
+are second nature. Without this arduous training any
+one who attempts an ambitious display can scarcely
+fail to reveal instantly the lamentable fact that she is
+not mistress of the technic of the art she has undertaken
+to practise. She does not know how to get her effects;
+she does not even know what effects are possible.
+She is almost certain to appear amateurish, and she
+is likely to seem awkward also, not to say ungainly.
+As Pope put it tersely: "Those move easiest who have
+learned to dance."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">These well-meant attempts to link dancing with
+poetry and music could be entirely satisfactory only
+to those who have given little consideration to dancing
+as an art, or who have small opportunity to see any
+really beautiful dancing. There is no wonder that
+any effort to spiritualize dancing, to give it a soul, to
+elevate it to the lofty level of the lyric, should be welcomed
+by those who have been disgusted by the ugly
+and vulgar high-kicking of the so-called pony ballets.
+The acrobatic contortions of these athletic performers
+were wholly without charm, as unalluring as they were
+violent. And equally unacceptable are the frequent
+exhibitions of toe-dancing, sheer gymnastic feats, difficult,
+indeed, but essentially uninteresting. Of a truth,
+these pony ballets on the one hand, and these toe-dancers
+on the other, are exponents of eccentricity.
+What they accomplish lies outside the true art of dancing.
+It is not inspired by Terpsichore, and the saddened
+muse must veil her face when she is forced to
+behold these crude exhibitions of misplaced energy.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">II</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The true art of dancing is entirely free from all apparent
+effort. No matter how difficult may be the
+feat that is accomplished, it must seem easy. Every
+gesture must be expressive, every movement must be
+beautiful, every step must have ease and lightness and
+grace. Forty years ago and more, the 'Black Crook'
+brought to America three or four dancers trained in the
+best schools of Europe&mdash;Bonfanti and Betty Rigl,
+Rita Sangalli and Morlacchi. One of this quartet,
+Rita Sangalli, was afterward the chief dancer at the
+Paris Opéra, where she was followed in time by Rosita
+Mauri, a dancer who added beauty of face and of form
+to a masterly accomplishment. They were all gifted
+pantomimists; they had all of them the perfection of
+technic; they were all of them capable of the most
+varied difficulties of the art; and they all of them vanquished
+these difficulties with unobtrusive ease. They
+had attained to that perfection of art, when the art
+itself is hidden, and when only the consummate result
+is visible. Each of them had absolute certainty of
+execution, and each of them could float across the
+stage the embodiment of grace, exquisite in its ethereal
+delicacy.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">For those whose memories cannot recall the haunting
+remembrance of the days that are gone there is abundant
+compensation in the opportunity which has been
+afforded of late to behold the dancing of Mlle. Genée
+and of Mlle. Pavlova. They are, at least, the equal
+of any of their predecessors, and it may be doubted
+whether Taglioni or Fanny Elssler surpassed them in
+mastery. They are the perfection of effortless ease;
+altho they suggest only the lightness of the butterfly,
+they have the steel strength of the gymnast. Behind
+their marvelous and bewildering accomplishment there
+is a native gift, rich and full; and there is also the
+utmost rigor and perseverance in training. What they
+are able to do with seeming spontaneity and with apparent
+freedom is the result of indefatigable industry
+and of merciless labor.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But tho this schooling sustains them, it is never
+paraded&mdash;indeed, it is scarcely perceived. There is
+not the faintest suggestion of hard work about their
+performances; there is nothing that hints at effort;
+their art is able to conceal itself absolutely, and to
+delight us only with the perfect result of their long
+apprenticeship. Capable of the most obstinate feats of
+strength and of agility, Mlle. Genée and Mlle. Pavlova
+never "show off"; they are never guilty of parading a
+difficulty for its own sake, and their conquest of technical
+obstacles serves only to support and intensify
+the continuous suggestion of aerial elevation and of
+ineffable lightness. It is to be noted, also, that as they
+scorn the task of the mere gymnast, they do not wear
+the scant costume of the acrobat; they are enveloped
+in ample draperies, which fall into lines of beauty with
+every movement.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Nothing more exquisite than their dancing has ever
+been seen on the American stage. Theirs is the dancing
+which is graceful&mdash;which, indeed, is grace itself.
+Here is the art at its utmost possibility, purged of all
+its dross. When they are floating effortless thru space
+we cannot help recalling the possibly apocryphal anecdote
+which records the visit of Emerson and Margaret
+Fuller to the theater to see Fanny Elssler. They gazed
+with increasing delight, until at last Margaret Fuller
+could not contain her enthusiasm. She turned and
+said: "Ralph, this is poetry!" To which the philosopher
+is said to have responded: "Margaret, this is
+religion!"</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Perfection is always rare, and there is now only one
+Mlle. Genée, and only one Mlle. Pavlova, as there was
+only one Rosita Mauri a quarter of a century ago.
+It is a pity that the Danish dancer has had to appear
+here in an ordinary musical show and not in a framework
+more worthy of her and of her art, and better
+fitted to display it. She has revealed herself only in
+two or three <i>entrées de ballet</i>, as the French term them&mdash;incidental
+dances; and she has not yet been seen here
+in a <i>ballet d'action</i>, a complete story told in pantomime.
+It was the poet, François Coppée, who devised the plot
+of the 'Korrigane' for Rosita Mauri; and he had had
+Théophile Gautier as a predecessor in the preparation
+of a ballet-libretto. All those who are interested in
+every manifestation of the art of the drama, must find
+pleasure in the <i>ballet d'action</i>, with its adroit commingling
+of dance and pantomime; it gives a delight
+possible to no other form of the drama; and at its
+best it is more closely akin to pure poetry. Being her
+own manager, Mlle. Pavlova has been seen in a series
+of ballets more appropriate to her extraordinary gifts
+than those in which Mlle. Genée has been permitted to
+appear.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">III</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There was one scene of the 'Source,' a ballet popular
+at the Opéra in Paris during the exhibition of 1867,
+which must linger in the memory of all who had the
+good fortune to behold it&mdash;a scene so beautiful that it
+was borrowed for the 'White Fawn,' which was the
+successor of the 'Black Crook' here in the United
+States. It represented a silvery glade in the lone forest,
+with a mysterious lake, on the surface of which
+the spirits of the springtime came forth to disport
+themselves. It was a vision of airy grace and of haunting
+legend; and it is only one example of the poetic
+possibilities of the contribution of dance and pantomime
+in a coherent story. It may be well to recall
+the fact that the plots of these <i>ballets d'action</i> are often
+strong enough to enable them to serve as the basis of
+a libretto for an opera. It was a ballet of Scribe's, for
+example, which was taken for the book of the 'Somnambula';
+and the book of the favorite opera 'Martha'
+began its existence as a libretto for a ballet.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">While the <i>ballet d'action</i> affords the fullest opportunity
+for the perfect art of dancers like Rosita Mauri
+and Adeline Genée and Anna Pavlova, there are other
+forms not to be despised. Twenty-five years ago the
+Italian Marenco brought out his stupendous 'Excelsior,'
+which was taken from Italy to Paris, then to
+New York, and finally to London. 'Excelsior' was an
+allegorical ballet; it represented the conflict of light
+and darkness, of progress and superstition, of invention
+and reaction. It filled a whole evening with spectacle
+and glitter and movement. It lacked the poetic simplicity
+of the 'Source' and of the 'Korrigane'; but it
+had other qualities of its own. What set it apart from
+all the ballets that had gone before was the subordination
+of the individual terpsichorean artist to the main
+body. Marenco employed the best dancers to be found
+in Italy, no doubt, but he did not rely on them so
+much as on the intricate and ingenious handling of
+the crowds of lesser dancers, by whom they were surrounded.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The novelty of 'Excelsior' and of the two or three
+gigantic Italian spectacles which were patterned upon
+it&mdash;'Messalina' and 'Sieba'&mdash;lay in the maneuvering
+of the masses, in the extraordinary skill with which
+squadrons of figures were made to charge across the
+stage and combine and melt into one another most
+unexpectedly and most delightfully. The whole stage
+was a blaze of artfully contrasted colors, and it was
+filled with a riot of motion and of glitter. And Marenco
+made use of male dancers far more abundantly than
+any of his predecessors, utilizing them to wear the
+more somber colors, to suggest a sterner vigor, and to
+emphasize a bolder contrast. He was responsible also
+for another novelty, often employed by others since;
+he increased the height of his swerving lines of dancers,
+now and again, by mounting some of the figures on
+stands, and by putting revolving globes and iridescent
+banners into the hands of the men in the background.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is the method of Marenco in 'Excelsior' which has
+been followed in the often pleasing ballets of the Hippodrome
+in New York. Really good soloists are now
+very scarce, even in Milan and in Vienna, long the
+nurseries of the ballet; and there seem to be none too
+many even in Petrograd, which has preserved and improved
+upon the traditions of Paris and Milan. And
+in the absence of accomplished soloists, the deviser of
+the ballets at the Hippodrome has been compelled to
+get along without them as best he could. He has been
+forced to rely on the maneuvering of masses of girls,
+possessed of only a rudimentary instruction in the elements
+of the terpsichorean art. In other words, he
+has had to make up in quantity for the absence of
+quality. But he has at his disposition an immense
+stage, across which he could set his squadrons marching
+and gliding and glittering. He could not count on
+the skill of his principals who were not expert enough
+to demand the attention of the spectators; but he
+could seek striking effects of light and color in the costumes,
+as he moved his masses to and fro and as he
+swung them together. If only there had been a little
+better training for the more prominent performers,
+the 'Four Seasons' would have been a most artistic
+entertainment, in spite of the absence of any single
+dancer of real distinction.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">IV</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The dearth of remarkable dancers is due to the inexorable
+fact that dancing is the most arduous of all
+the arts; its technic is the most difficult to acquire.
+Indeed, this technic can be acquired only in early youth,
+when the muscles are flexible and when they can be
+supplied at will. It is early in her teens that a dancer
+must begin her training if she aspires to eminence in
+the art. This training is very severe, and it must
+never be relaxed. Rubinstein used to say that if he
+omitted his practise for a single day he noticed it in
+his playing; if he omitted it two days his enemies
+found it out; and if he omitted it three days even his
+friends discovered it. The apprentice dancer can never
+omit a single day of hard and uninteresting toil. Incessant
+application, during all the long years of youth,
+is the price the ambitious beginner must pay for the
+mastery of her art. She can have no vacations; she
+can have few relaxations; she must keep herself constantly
+in training; she must be prepared to surrender
+many of the things which make life worth living.
+And it is no wonder that so few have the courage to
+persevere, and that there is only one Rosita Mauri,
+only one Adeline Genée, and only one Anna Pavlova
+in a quarter of a century. It is no wonder that the
+inventor of terpsichorean spectacles nowadays finds
+himself compelled to get along as best he can without
+a satisfactory soloist and to rely rather on his handling
+of a mass of inadequately trained dancers.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But even if the highly accomplished soloist, absolute
+mistress of all the possibilities of the art, is very rare,
+there are certain forms of dancing which do not demand
+this ultimate skill and which call for little more
+than grace and ease and charm, combined with a
+knowledge of the simpler steps. For example, the
+Spanish Carmencita, whose portraits by Mr. Sargent
+and by Mr. Chase now hang in the Luxembourg in
+Paris and in the Metropolitan Museum in New York&mdash;Carmencita
+was not a skilful dancer; she had undergone
+no inexorable schooling; she glided thru only a
+few elementary movements. But she made no effort;
+she did not pretend to what was not in her power;
+she was simple and unaffected. Her charm was not
+in her singing or in her dancing; it was in her personality,
+in the alluring and exotic suggestion of her
+individuality.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Nor could anybody venture to assert that Miss Kate
+Vaughan and Miss Letty Lind were dancers in the
+same class with Mauri, Genée, and Pavlova; but then
+they did not pretend to be. They knew only a few
+steps of obvious simplicity, and they displayed no unexpected
+dexterity. But the skirt-dance as they performed
+it was a memory of delight, with its grace and
+its ease, with its perfect rhythm and with the swish of
+its clinging draperies. It had a fascination of its own,
+quite different from the fascination of the more poetic
+and ethereal ballet-dancing of Rita Sangalli and Rosita
+Mauri. It was not of the stage exactly, but almost of
+the drawing-room. It gave the same pleasure which
+we felt when we were privileged to behold a court
+minuet led by the late Mrs. G. H. Gilbert, who had
+been a dancer in the days of her youth. There is one
+perfect beauty of the best ballet-dancing and there
+are other beauties of different kinds in the skirt-dancing
+of the two Englishwomen and in the languorous swaying
+of the Spanish gipsy.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Beauty of yet another order there was in an exhibition
+which was called a dance, perhaps because there
+was no other word for it, but which demanded no skill
+with the feet and which necessitated rather strength
+in the arms. This was the luminous dance of Miss
+Loie Fuller, when she swirled voluminous and prolonged
+draperies in lights that came from above and
+from below, and from both sides&mdash;lights that changed
+by exquisite gradations from one tint to another, the
+figure of the dancer spinning around, now slowly and
+now swiftly, while her arms weaved fantastic circles
+in the air, revealing unexpected combinations of color,
+controlled by perfect taste. This may not have been
+dancing, by any strict definition of the word, but it
+was decorative, artistic, imaginative, and inexpressibly
+beautiful. It supplied a glimpse of unsuspected delight;
+and probably Terpsichore would not disdain to
+claim it for her own, however vigorously she might repel
+the suggestion that she had any responsibility for
+the violence of the toe-dances, for the vulgarity of the
+pony ballet, or for the ungainly caperings which pretend
+to recapture the free movements of the Greeks.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1910-1915)</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">XI<br />
+THE PRINCIPLES OF PANTOMIME<a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">THE PRINCIPLES OF PANTOMIME<br />I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> his suggestive study of ancient and modern drama,
+M. Émile Faguet dwells on the fact that the drama is
+the only one of the arts which can employ to advantage
+the aid of all the other arts. The muses of tragedy
+and comedy can borrow narrative from the muse of
+epic poetry and song from the muse of lyric poetry.
+They can avail themselves of oratory, music, and
+dancing. They can profit by the assistance of the
+architect, the sculptor, and the painter. They can
+draw on the co-operation of all the other arts without
+ceasing to be themselves and without losing any of
+their essential qualities. This was seen clearly by
+Wagner, who insisted that his music-dramas were
+really the art-work of the future, in that they were the
+result of a combination of all the arts. Quite possibly
+the Greeks had the same idea, since Athenian tragedy
+has many points of similarity to Wagner's music-drama;
+it had epic passages and a lyric chorus set to
+music; it called for stately dancing against an architectural
+background.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But altho the muses of the drama may invoke the
+help of their seven sisters, they need not make this
+appeal unless they choose. They can give their performances
+on a bare platform, or in the open air, and
+thus get along without painting and architecture.
+They can disdain the support of song and dance and
+music. They can concentrate all their effort upon
+themselves and provide a play which is a play and
+nothing else. And this is what Ibsen has done in his
+somber social-dramas. 'Ghosts,' for example, is independent
+of anything extraneous to the drama. It is
+a play, only a play, and nothing more than a play.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Yet it is possible to reduce the drama to an even
+barer state than we find in Ibsen's gloomy tragedy in
+prose. Ibsen's characters speak; they reveal themselves
+in speech; and it is by words that they carry
+on the story. A story can be presented on the stage,
+however, without the use of words, without the aid of
+the human voice, by the employment of gesture only,
+by pure pantomime. No doubt, the drama makes a
+great sacrifice when it decides to do without that potent
+instrument of emotional appeal, the human voice; and
+yet it can find its profit, now and then, in this self-imposed
+deprivation. Certain stories there are, not
+many, and all of them necessarily simplified and made
+very clear, which gain by being bereft of the spoken
+word and by being presented only in the pantomime.
+And these stories, simple as they must be, if they are
+to be apprehended by sight alone without the aid of
+sound, are, nevertheless, capable of supporting an
+actual play with all the absolutely necessary elements
+of a drama.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In his interesting and illuminating volume on the
+'Theory of the Theater,' Mr. Clayton Hamilton has a
+carefully considered definition of a play. He asserts
+that "a play is a story devised to be presented by actors
+on a stage before an audience." Perhaps it might
+be possible to amend this by saying "in a theater,"
+instead of "on a stage," since we are now pretty certain
+that there was no stage in the Greek theater when
+Sophocles was writing for it. But this is but a trifling
+correction, and the definition as a whole is excellent.
+It includes every possible kind of dramatic entertainment,
+Greek tragedy and Roman comedy, medieval
+farce and modern melodrama, the music-drama of
+Wagner and the problem-play of Ibsen, the summer
+song-show and the college boy's burlesque. Obviously
+it includes the wordless play, the story devised to be
+presented on a stage and before an audience by actors
+who use gesture only and who do not speak.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In forgoing the aid of words the drama is only reducing
+itself to its absolutely necessary elements&mdash;a
+story, and a story which can be shown in action. It
+is not quite true that the skeleton of a good play is
+always a pantomime, since there are plays the plot
+of which cannot be conveyed to the audience except
+by actual speech. Yet some of the greatest plays have
+plots so transparent that the story is clear, even if we
+fail to hear what the actors are saying. It has been
+asserted that if 'Hamlet,' for example, were to be performed
+in a deaf-and-dumb asylum, the inmates would
+be able to understand it and to enjoy it. They would
+be deprived of the wonderful beauty of Shakspere's
+verse, no doubt, and they would scarcely be able even
+to guess at the deeper significance of the philosophy
+which enriches the tragedy; but the story would unroll
+itself clearly before their eyes so that they could
+follow the succession of scenes with adequate understanding.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">With his customary shrewdness and his usual gift
+of piercing to the center of what he was engaged in
+analyzing, Aristotle more than four thousand years
+ago saw the necessity of a neatly articulated plot. "If
+you string together a set of speeches," he said, "expressive
+of character and well finished in point of diction
+and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic
+effect nearly so well as with a play, which, however
+deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically
+constructed incidents." No broader statement
+than this could be made as to the all-importance of the
+story itself&mdash;and pantomime is a story and nothing
+else, a story capable of being translated by the actions
+of the performers, without the aid of speech. Nor
+need we suppose that a play without words is necessarily
+devoid of poetry. There may be poetry in the
+"set of speeches expressive of character and well finished
+in point of thought and diction"; but there may
+be poetry also in the theme itself, in the actual story.
+'Romeo and Juliet,' for example, is fundamentally
+poetic in its theme, and it retains its poetic quality
+even when it is made to serve as the libretto of an opera,
+as it would also retain this if it should be stripped
+bare to be presented in pantomime.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In a recent work on the 'Essentials of Poetry,' Professor
+William A. Neilson has made this clear: "Many
+a drama is a genuine poetic creation, altho it may be
+simple to the point of baldness in diction and exhibit
+the fundamental qualities of poetry only in the characterization
+and in the significance, proportion, and
+verisimilitude of the plot." That is to say, the drama
+can use two kinds of poetry, that which is internal and
+contained in the plot, and that which is external and
+confined to the language. It can employ</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i4">jewels five-words long,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That on the stretched forefinger of all Time</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Sparkle forever.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">But it can also attain poetry without the use of
+superb and sonorous phrases and solely by its choice
+of theme. This is what the poets have often felt, and
+as a result French lyrists, like Théophile Gautier and
+François Coppée, have not disdained to compose librettos
+for pantomimic ballets, 'Giselle' and the 'Korrigane.'
+One of the most successful of the recent
+Russian ballets was simply a representation of Gautier's
+poetic fantasy, 'One of Cleopatra's Nights,'</p>
+
+<p class="h2">II</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Perhaps because the pantomime contains only the
+essential element of the drama&mdash;action&mdash;it has always
+been a popular form of play; and it appears very
+early in the history of the theater. Indeed, it seems
+to be the sole type of play achievable by primitive man&mdash;if
+we may judge from observations made among
+savages who are still in the earlier periods of social development.
+Gesture precedes speech, and a pantomime
+was possible even before a vocabulary was developed.
+In the Aleutian Islands, for example, the
+pantomime is the only form of play known. One of
+the little plays of the islanders has been described.
+It was acted by two performers only, one representing
+a hunter, and the other a bird. The hunter hesitates
+but finally kills the bird with an arrow; then he is
+seized with regret that he has slain so noble a bird;
+whereupon the bird revives and turns into a beautiful
+woman who falls into the hunter's arms. This is the
+simplest of stories, but it lends itself to effective acting;
+it is capable of being interpreted adequately by
+means of gesture alone; and it is just the kind of play
+which would appeal to an Aleutian audience, being
+wholly within their experience and their apprehension.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Pantomime flourished in Rome and in Constantinople
+in the sorry years of the decline and fall of the
+empire; and it was then low and lascivious. A great
+part of the fierce hostility to the theater displayed by
+the Fathers of the Christian Church was due to the
+fact that the only drama of which they had any knowledge
+was pantomime of a most objectionable character,
+offensive in theme and even more offensive in presentation.
+With the conversion of the empire to Christianity,
+pantomimes of this type, appealing only to
+lewd fellows of the baser sort, was very properly prohibited.
+But pantomime of another type sprang up
+in the Middle Ages in the Christian churches to exemplify
+and to make visible to the ignorant congregations,
+certain episodes of sacred history. In the Renascence
+dumb-shows were represented before monarchs, at their
+weddings and at their stately entrances into loyal
+cities. And dumb-shows were often employed in the
+Elizabethan stage, sometimes as prologs to the several
+acts, as in 'Gorboduc,' for example, and sometimes
+within the play itself, as in 'Hamlet.'</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In the eighteenth century pantomime had a double
+revival, in France and in England. In France, Noverre
+elevated the <i>ballet d'action</i>, that is to say, the story
+told in pantomime and adorned with dances. Sometimes
+these <i>ballets d'action</i> were in several acts, relying
+for interest on the simple yet ingenious plot, and only
+decorated, so to speak, with occasional dances. From
+Noverre and from France the tradition of the pantomime
+with interludes of dancing, spread at first to
+Italy and Austria, and later to Russia.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In England the development of pantomime was
+upon different lines, due to the influence of the Italian
+comedy-of-masks, with its unchanging figures of Pantaleone,
+Columbina, and Arlecchino. These figures
+were still further simplified; and to Pantaloon, Columbine,
+and Harlequin there was added the characteristically
+British figure of the Clown. The most famous
+impersonator of the clown was Grimaldi, whose memoirs
+were edited by Charles Dickens. The mantle
+of Grimaldi fell upon an American, G. L. Fox, whose
+greatest triumph, in the late sixties, was in a pantomime
+called 'Humpty-Dumpty'&mdash;the riming prolog
+of which was written by A. Oakey Hall (then Tweed's
+mayor of New York). G. L. Fox and his brother, C.
+K. Fox (who was the inventor of the comic scenes), had
+been preceded in America by a family of French pantomimists
+known as the Ravels; and they were followed
+by the family known as the Hanlon-Lees, who had
+originally been acrobats, and who appeared in a French
+play, in which the other characters spoke while the
+Hanlon-Lees expressed themselves only in gesture.
+Here again Scribe had been before them, with his libretto
+for the opera of 'Masaniello,' in which there is a
+principal part for a pantomimic actress, Fenella. And
+when the great French actor, Frédéric Lemaître, had
+lost his voice by overstrain, Dennery wrote a play for
+him, the 'Old Corporal,' in which he appeared as a
+soldier of Napoleon's Old Guard, who had been stricken
+dumb during the retreat from Russia.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">This exploit of Frédéric Lemaître's is not as extraordinary
+as it seems. A truly accomplished actor
+ought to be able to forgo the aid of speech. Even in
+our modern plays gesture is more significant than
+speech. To place the finger on the lips is more effective
+than to say "Hush!" The tendency of the modern
+drama on our amply lighted picture-frame stage is
+to subordinate the mere words to the expressive action.
+In Mr. Gillette's 'Secret Service,' for example, the impression
+is sometimes made rather by gesture than by
+speech; and a large portion of the most effective scene,
+that where the hero is wounded while he is sending a
+telegraph message, is presented in pantomime with
+little assistance from actual dialog. Similar effects
+are to be found in many of Mr. Belasco's plays, especially
+in the 'Darling of the Gods.' In all good acting
+the gesture precedes the word; and often the gesture
+makes the word itself unnecessary, because it has succeeded
+in conveying the impression and in making
+the full effect by itself, so that the spoken phrase lags
+superfluous.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">III</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In France in the final decades of the nineteenth
+century there was a wide-spread revival of interest in
+pantomime, where the art had been dormant since the
+days of Deburau. A society was formed for its encouragement,
+and a host of little wordless plays was
+the result. The most ambitious effort was the 'Enfant
+Prodigue,' a genuine comedy in three acts, by M. Michel
+Carré, with music by M. Alfred Wormser. This wordless
+play on the perennially attractive theme of the
+Prodigal Son proved to be the modern masterpiece of
+pantomime. It was limpidly clear in its story; it was
+ingeniously put together in its plot; it combined humor
+and pathos; and it was devoid of the acrobatic features
+and of the slap-stick fun which have generally been
+considered the inevitable accessories of pantomime.
+We had brought before us the dull and prim home life
+of old Pierrot and of his wife, and we were made to
+behold the impatience of young Pierrot with this prim
+dullness. We saw the Prodigal rob his father and go
+forth in search of pleasure. In the second act we were
+witnesses of the sad results of the pleasure young
+Pierrot had sought superabundantly, and we discovered
+that he had spent his money and that he was
+capable of descending to marked cards to win more
+gold to satisfy the caprices of the woman who had
+fascinated him. We saw his return with his ill-gotten
+gains after his charmer had been tempted to go off with
+a wealthier man. And in the third act we were taken
+back to the home of his broken-hearted parents; and
+we witnessed the Prodigal's return, poverty-stricken,
+disenchanted, and reformed. His mother takes him
+to her arms; but his father is obdurate. Then we
+hear the fife and drum afar off, and young Pierrot, if
+he has lived unworthily for himself, can at least die
+worthily for his country. So the old father relents and
+bestows his blessing on the erring son as the boy goes
+forth to war.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The art of the 'Enfant Prodigue' was at once delicate
+and firm; and its popularity was not confined to
+France. Here was a true play, moving to tears as well
+as to laughter, holding the interest by a human story
+of universal appeal. It was taken across the Channel
+from Paris to London, and from London it was taken
+across the ocean to New York. Augustin Daly, always
+on the alert for novelty, brought it out at his own
+theater, first with his own company, and then a little
+later with a French company. Excellent as was the
+performance of the French company, two characters
+were as well sustained by the American company.
+Charles Leclercq appeared as old Pierrot, and he had
+had in his youth experience in pantomime in England.
+Mrs. G. H. Gilbert appeared as Mrs. Pierrot, and in
+her youth she had been a ballet dancer, and had taken
+part in pantomimes. To these two performers the
+principles of the art of gesture were perfectly familiar;
+and it was a constant delight to follow the dexterity
+and the adequacy of their gestures. But Miss Rehan,
+who appeared as the Prodigal Son, had had no pantomimic
+experience, and she was not able to acquire the
+art offhand. In dozens of dramas she had revealed
+herself as an actress, not only of great personal charm,
+but also of great histrionic skill. Merely as an actress
+she was incomparably superior to the impersonator of
+the Prodigal Son in the French company; but merely
+as a pantomimist she was inferior. More than once
+she appeared as if she wanted to speak, failing because
+she was deprived of voice. Her gestures seemed like
+afterthoughts; they lacked spontaneity and inevitability.
+She suggested at moments that she was a poor
+dumb boy gasping for words.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Now, the convention underlying pantomime is that
+we are beholding a story carried on by a race of beings
+whose natural method of communicating information
+and ideas is gesture&mdash;just as the convention of opera
+is that we are beholding a story carried on by a race
+of beings whose natural method of communicating information
+and ideas is song. No such races of beings
+ever existed; but we must admit the existence of such
+races as a condition precedent to our enjoyment of
+pantomime and of opera. The spectators must accept
+the art as it is, and the performers must refrain from
+any suggestion that they would speak if they could.
+This underlying convention was viciously violated in
+"Professor" Reinhardt's overpraised 'Sumurun,' when
+the Hunchback gives a shriek of horror as he sees the
+woman he loves in the arms of another man. It is
+viciously violated again in the same play when Sumurun
+and two attendants are heard singing. If Sumurun
+can sing, why can she not speak? If the Hunchback
+can shriek and sob audibly, why is he ordinarily reduced
+to mere gesture?</p>
+
+<p class="indent">'Sumurun' was provided with a plot devised by
+Herr Freksa, and with music composed by Herr Hollaender;
+and it was produced by "Professor" Max
+Reinhardt. The story was a little complicated, and
+it lacked the transparent simplicity of the 'Enfant
+Prodigue,' as it lacked also the broad humanity of the
+French piece. Its chief claim to attention was that
+it is an amusing spectacle, sensual as well as sensuous.
+Its humor had a Teutonic heaviness in marked contrast
+with the Gallic lightness of the 'Enfant Prodigue.'
+"Professor" Reinhardt sought eccentricity rather than
+originality, queerness rather than beauty. His effort
+was directed to the achieving of something unexpected
+and something different rather than to the attaining
+of something good in itself, or of something poetic.
+Esthetically, musically, dramatically the German pantomime
+was pitiably inferior to the French; and yet so
+potent and so permanent is the appeal of the wordless
+play that 'Sumurun' pleased a host of younger playgoers,
+not old enough to be able to recall the 'Enfant
+Prodigue' or 'Humpty-Dumpty,' the Hanlon-Lees, or
+the Ravels.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">IV</p>
+
+<p class="indent">'Sumurun,' like the 'Enfant Prodigue,' was supported
+by its music, which sustained the gestures and
+which sometimes suggested more than gesture alone
+can do. In the 'Enfant Prodigue,' for example, one
+of the most amusing scenes is that in which the elderly
+rich man tenders his affections to the charmer who has
+fascinated the Prodigal Son. She insists upon marriage.
+It would be difficult to convey this idea in pure pantomime.
+So she points to the fourth finger of the left
+hand, and the orchestra plays the familiar Wedding
+March, thus instantly conveying the idea. When she
+goes off to get her bonnet, the elderly suitor repeats her
+gesture, and the orchestra repeats the Wedding March,
+whereupon he winks and shakes his head, giving us
+clearly to understand that his intentions are strictly
+dishonorable.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">'Sumurun' is rather a spectacle than a play; and
+therefore it makes comparatively little use of the conventionalized
+gestures which may be described as the
+accepted vocabulary of pantomime, and which have
+been developed by the followers of Noverre in France
+and in Italy. This vocabulary of gesture is only a
+codification of the signs which we naturally make&mdash;shaking
+the head for "no," nodding for "yes," and
+laying a finger on the lips for "hush!" The basis of
+any such vocabulary must be the series of gestures by
+the aid of which man has always expressed his emotions.
+This is why the traditional gestures of theatrical pantomime
+do not, and indeed cannot, differ greatly from
+any natural sign language. The universality of this
+pantomimic vocabulary was curiously evidenced forty
+years ago when Morlacchi, the Italian dancer, married
+Texas Jack, the American scout. She had been trained
+in pantomime at La Scala, in Milan, and he had acquired
+the sign language of the Plains Indians. And
+they found that they could hold converse with each
+other in pantomime, she using the Italian-French gestures
+and he employing the gestures of the redskins.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1912.)</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">XII<br />
+THE IDEAL OF THE ACROBAT<a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">THE IDEAL OF THE ACROBAT<br />I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">When</span> Huckleberry Finn went to the circus he sneaked
+in under the tent when the watchman was absent.
+He had money in his pocket, but he feared that he
+might need this. "I ain't opposed to spending money
+on circuses," he confessed, "when there ain't no other
+way, but there ain't no use in <i>wasting</i> it on them."
+In spite of the fact that he had not paid for his seat,
+and that he was thereby released from the necessity
+of getting his money's worth, he declared cheerfully
+that "it was a real bully circus. It was the splendidest
+sight that ever was, when they all come riding in, two
+and two, a gentleman and a lady, side by side, the men
+just in their drawers and undershirts, and no shoes
+nor stirrups, and resting their hands on their thighs,
+easy and comfortable ... and every lady with a
+lovely complexion, and perfectly beautiful, and looking
+like a gang of real sure-enough queens.... And
+then, one by one, they got up and stood, and went
+a-weaving around the ring so gentle and wavy and
+graceful, the men looking ever so tall and airy and
+straight, with their heads bobbing and skimming along,
+away up there under the tent roof, and every lady's
+rose-leaf dress flapping soft and silky around her hips,
+and she looking like the most loveliest parasol."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">However much Huck was impressed by the Grand
+Entry, he seems to have been more pleased by the surprising
+act, traditionally known as 'Pete Jenkins,' and
+never better described than by Mark Twain's youthful
+hero. "And by and by a drunk man tried to get
+into the ring&mdash;said he wanted to ride; said he could
+ride as well as anybody that ever was. They argued
+and tried to keep him out, but he wouldn't listen, and
+the whole show came to a standstill. Then the people
+began to holler at him and make fun of him.... So
+then the ring-master he made a little speech, and said
+he hoped there wouldn't be no disturbance, and if the
+man would promise he wouldn't make no more trouble,
+he would let him ride, if he thought he could stay on
+the horse.... The minute he was on the horse he
+began to rip and tear and jump and cavort around ...
+the drunk man hanging onto his neck, and his heels
+flying in the air every jump.... But pretty soon he
+struggled up astraddle and grabbed the bridle, a-reeling
+this way and that; and the next minute he sprung up
+and stood! and the horse a-going like a house afire, too.
+He just stood there, a-sailing around as easy and as
+comfortable as if he warn't ever drunk in his life&mdash;and
+then he begun to pull off his clothes and sling them.
+He shed them so thick they kind of clogged up the air,
+and altogether he shed seventeen suits. And then, here
+he was, slim and handsome, and dressed the grandiest
+and prettiest you ever saw, and he lit into that horse and
+made him hum&mdash;and finally skipped off and made his
+bow and danced off to the dressing-room, and everybody
+just a-howling with pleasure and astonishment.
+Then the ring-master, he see how he had been fooled,
+and he was the sickest ring-master you ever see, I
+reckon. Why, it was one of his own men! He had
+got up that joke all out of his own head, and never let
+on to nobody!"</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Yet in this enjoyment of a practical joke, dear to
+every boy's heart, Huck did not fail to note that the
+skilful rider who had pretended to be intoxicated,
+stood up at last, "slim and handsome." Even Huck
+Finn, neglected son of the town-drunkard, was quick
+to respond to the appeal of the supple and well-proportioned
+figure of the rider after the superimposed
+clothing had been discarded, just as he had felt the
+attraction of the varied colors and the graceful evolutions
+of the Grand Entry. At bottom, it was the beauty
+of the display that he appreciated most keenly. By the
+side of this passage from Mark Twain's masterpiece
+may be set a passage from Mr. Hamlin Garland's best
+story, 'Rose of Dutcher's Coolly,' in which we find recorded
+the impressions of a girl of about the same age,
+the daughter of a hard-working Wisconsin farmer.
+Rose had never seen a circus before, and even the
+morning street parade fired her imagination.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">"On they came, a band leading the way. Just behind,
+with glitter of lance and shine of helmet, came a
+dozen knights and fair ladies riding spirited chargers.
+They all looked strange and haughty, and sneeringly
+indifferent to the cheers of the people. The women
+seemed small and firm and scornful, and the men rode
+with lances uplifted, looking down at the crowd with
+a haughty droop in their eyelids." Rose "did not
+laugh at the clown jigging by in a pony-cart, for there
+was a face between her and all that followed&mdash;the face
+of a bare-armed knight, with brown hair and a curling
+mustache, whose proud neck had a curve in it as he
+bent his head to speak to his rearing horse.... His
+face was fine, like pictures she had seen."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In the afternoon Rose attended the performance in
+the tent and "sat in a dream of delight as the band
+began to play.... Then the music struck into a
+splendid gallop and out from the curtained mysteries
+beyond, the knights and ladies darted, two by two,
+in glory of crimson and gold, and green and silver. At
+their head rode the man with the brown mustache."
+A little later "six men dressed in tights of blue and
+white and orange ran into the ring, and her hero led
+them. He wore blue and silver, and on his breast was
+a rosette. He looked a god to her. His naked limbs,
+his proud neck, the lofty carriage of his head, made
+her shiver with emotion. They all came to her, lit
+by the white radiance; they were not naked, they were
+beautiful.... They invested their nakedness with
+something which exalted them. They became objects
+of luminous beauty to her, tho she knew nothing of art.
+To see him bow and kiss his fingers to the audience was
+a revelation of manly grace and courtesy." When at
+last the show was over and Rose went out into the
+open air, "it seemed strange to see the same blue sky
+arching the earth; things seemed exactly the same,
+and yet Rose had grown older. She had developed
+immeasurably in those few hours." As they looked
+back at the tents, Rose knew that "something sweet
+and splendid and mystical was passing out of her life
+after a few hours' stay there. Her feeling of loss was
+none the less real because it was indefinable to her."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">She never saw this acrobat again, and after a little
+while she knew that she did not want to see him. He
+lingered in her memory, a vision from another world
+than any she had ever dreamed&mdash;a world of heroic
+romance and of lofty idealism. "She began to live
+for him, her ideal. She set him on high as a being to
+be worshiped, as a man fit to be her judge. In the
+days and weeks which followed she asked herself:
+'Would he like me to do this?' When the sunset was
+very beautiful, she thought of him.... Vast ambitions
+began in her.... She would do something great
+for his sake.... In short, she consecrated herself to
+him as to a king, and seized upon every chance to educate
+herself to be worthy of him." And while her soul
+was thus expanding under the influence of this poetic
+idealization of a manly figure revealed to her only for
+two or three hours, all unconsciously she patterned her
+movements upon his. She walked with a free stride,
+and her body came to have the easy carriage of the
+athlete. Later, when Rose had matured into a beauty
+of her own, she confessed to an elder woman this sentimental
+awakening in her early girlhood; and it became
+evident to her friend that "the beautiful poise of the
+head, and supple swing of the girl's body was in part
+due to the suggestion of the man's perfect grace."</p>
+
+<p class="h2">II</p>
+
+<p class="indent">To the realistic imagination of the boy, Huck, the
+circus was a fleeting spectacle of beauty; and to the
+romantic imagination of the girl, Rose, it lingered long
+as a dream of poetry. Young Americans, both of them,
+living in these modern days when the human form,
+male and female, is decorously dissembled and disguised
+by ugly and complicated garments, they had been allowed
+by the exceptional freedom of the circus to recapture
+something of the frank and innocent delight
+of the Greeks in the beauty of the body, in its beauty
+merely as a body, and not as the habitation of the mind
+and the soul. Alert as the Greeks were to admire the
+deeds of the mind&mdash;no race ever more so&mdash;they were
+no less keen in their appreciation of the things of the
+body. They were glad to crown the poet for his lyric
+conquest, but they bestowed the laurel wreath also
+on the athlete who had won to the front in the race.
+The lofty nobility of their tragedy testifies to the
+clarity of their intelligence; and the supreme power of
+their sculpture is evidence of their loving study of the
+human body, bearing itself in beauty, clad in few and
+flowing garments which allowed the eye to follow the
+free play of the muscles.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is only in the circus or the gymnasium or the
+swimming-pool that we moderns are permitted to behold
+what was a daily spectacle to the Greeks; and it
+is because the circus preserves for us this occasional
+privilege that it deserves to survive. The jocularities
+of the clowns, the intricate evolutions of the trained
+animals, the golden glitter of the gorgeous cavalcades&mdash;all
+these are but the casual accompaniments of the
+essential privilege of the circus to present to us a succession
+of men and women, with their bodies in perfect
+condition, to exhibit to us that purely physical
+beauty which we are ever in danger of overlooking
+or even forgetting. These acrobats, slim and handsome,
+as Huck Finn found them, in their "shirts and
+drawers," may display their daring and their grace,
+standing on a circling steed or swinging from a flying
+trapeze, revolving on a horizontal bar or building
+themselves up into human pyramids on the bark of the
+arena; but, except for the sake of variety, the way in
+which they may choose to exhibit their skill and to show
+themselves is unimportant. What is important is that
+we may have the shifting spectacle of the human body
+in the highest condition of physical efficiency, delighting
+our eyes by obedience to the everlasting laws of
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">While the Greeks had far more opportunities than
+are vouchsafed to us moderns to behold the human body
+exhibiting its strength and its skill in graceful play,
+we have the advantage that many of the most effective
+exercises are latter-day inventions. It seems unlikely
+that the Athenians and the Spartans, even tho they
+were horsemen, had attained to the art of bareback
+riding; they may have bestraddled a saddleless steed,
+but they had not learned how to stand on his back,
+and to turn somersets in time with the stride of the
+horse. It is, of course, possible that they were familiar
+with this, but no sculpture and no vase-painting, no
+anecdote in the works of the prose-writers, and no line
+of the lyrists survives to authorize us to believe it.
+And it is fairly certain, also, that they lacked the horizontal
+bar, which affords limitless possibilities to the
+adventurous acrobat of our own times, both when it
+is erected singly and when it is combined in sets of
+three, either fixed in the arena or raised aloft in the air
+to produce the appearance of a remoter ethereality.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The trapeze has a name of Greek origin, and it was
+possibly known to the Greeks. But the Greeks did
+not foresee the full possibilities of the trapeze, since its
+most startling utilization, the feat known as the Flying
+Trapeze, was invented by the French acrobat, Léotard,
+only a little later than the middle of the nineteenth
+century. The Flying Trapeze is the ultimate achievement
+of acrobatic art, and it demands the utmost combination
+of skilful strength and of easy grace. It was
+a feat that the Greeks would have appreciated and enjoyed,
+since it demanded and disclosed the perfection
+of physical courage and of physical skill. Of late, the
+Flying Trapeze has been complicated and doubled in
+difficulty by the introduction of a second performer,
+who at first makes the leap simultaneously with his
+partner, and afterward separates from him and springs
+thru the air to the trapeze which his associate has just
+abandoned, the pair thus floating past each other in
+mid-air. In this more elaborated form the task is more
+perilous, no doubt, and far less easy of accomplishment;
+but it cannot be achieved with quite the same graceful
+mastery as when a single performer seems to glide
+ethereally from bar to bar, as tho it was impossible for
+him to fall or to fail to catch his almost invisible support.
+This graceful mastery was the most marked
+characteristic of Léotard, the original inventor of the
+Flying Trapeze; and it may be doubted whether any
+of those who have followed the path he traced thru
+the air, and who have vanquished difficulties beyond
+those which he conquered, have been able to outdo
+him in the abiding essential of grace.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">III</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The overcoming of difficulty is one of the elements
+of the pleasure which we take in any art, and part of
+our enjoyment of a sonnet, for example, must be
+ascribed to the apparent ease with which the poet is
+able to express his thought, amply and completely,
+within the rigid limitations of his fourteen lines, with
+their prescribed arrangement of five or six rimes.
+But our delight is diminished if we are made conscious
+of the effort it has cost the artist to attain his aim.
+Many a later performer on the Flying Trapeze let us
+see that the feats he is attempting are so difficult that
+they cannot be accomplished without obvious effort.
+That is to say, we are made aware that the acrobat is
+exhibiting a "stunt," and this is bad art. Difficulty
+overcome is worth while only when it is overcome seemingly
+without any strain, and when art is sufficient to
+conceal itself. However difficult the artist's achievement
+may be, its charm is doubled if he can make it
+appear to be easy.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It happens that I am able to bring his personal testimony
+to the fact that this was the principle which
+always governed Léotard himself. When the French
+gymnast paid his only visit to the United States, more
+than forty years ago, he used to practise in a gymnasium
+which I also frequented. He spoke no English, and I
+had a little school-boy French, so that a certain intimacy
+sprang up. One day Léotard asked me to
+swing a trapeze for him, and he sprang off and caught
+it with a single hand, and then as the second trapeze
+returned he twisted and grasped the first trapeze again
+with one hand. This evoked from me an immediate
+exclamation of astonishment and admiration at the
+startling conquest of difficulty, and it was followed by
+the natural question why so extraordinary a feat had
+never been exhibited in public. Léotard explained that
+the leaps from trapeze to trapeze with the aid of one
+hand only must be lopsided, since the body is inevitably
+more or less twisted, and he added that as there was
+an unavoidable and ungraceful wrenching of the person,
+he had determined never to exhibit this feat in
+public, difficult as it might be.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But altho Léotard was not willing to perform in
+public with only one hand, it was a most invaluable exercise
+in private. His ability to accomplish his leaps
+thus handicapped gave him a redoubled confidence
+when he was using both of his hands. That he was
+right in resisting the temptation to startle the spectators
+by a "stunt" of surprising difficulty is beyond
+question. It could not be made to seem easy, and it
+could not be accomplished with grace. Therefore it
+was not fit for exhibition, even tho Léotard might feel
+sure that he could do it without risk of failure. Here
+the French acrobat revealed himself as bound by the
+eternal principles which underlie all the arts, that of
+the acrobat no less than those of the painter and the
+poet. There is lack of art in the performances of many
+acrobats of remarkable skill, who attempt feats which
+they are not always certain of achieving. Indeed,
+they are sometimes willing to profit by this very uncertainty.
+They fail the first time of trying, and even
+the second, and these failures serve the purpose of advertising
+to the spectators the difficulty of the task
+they have undertaken. Then the third time, or the
+fourth, they succeed, whereupon they reap the unworthy
+reward of applause from the unthinking.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The artist should never let us see his failures. If he
+is not certain that he can perform what he promises,
+then he had better refrain from the attempt. It was
+in the same winter that Léotard was in New York, in
+the late sixties of the nineteenth century, that the
+Hanlon Brothers paid one of their welcome visits to
+America. The Hanlons they were then, and they
+were acrobats pure and simple, altho later, when they
+called themselves the Hanlon-Lees, they had become
+pantomimists. As acrobats they held fast to the same
+principles which governed Léotard in his performances.
+They insisted upon certainty of execution; they never
+failed to perform the feat they set out to accomplish,
+and to perform it successfully the first time they attempted
+it. And no matter how difficult the feat
+might be, or how novel or how effective, if they could
+not attain absolute certainty of execution, they refrained
+from setting it before the public. I was told
+at the time that there were two or three surprising and
+alluring exercises which the Hanlons had invented
+themselves, which they practised laboriously and faithfully
+all that winter, and which they wisely refrained
+from ever putting on their program because they were
+never able to assure themselves of a uniformly successful
+result. They could do any one of these feats four
+times out of five, but the fifth time there would be a
+miscalculation of energy, and the attempt would have
+to be repeated. And they were unwilling to let the
+public witness any performance of theirs which was
+not perfect in its execution.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">IV</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Here again the modern acrobat, who is guided by a
+real feeling for his art, is in accord with the principles
+which the Greeks obeyed. In Attic tragedy, for example,
+there are no exhibitions of violence, no scuffles,
+and no assassinations, and this is not so much because
+the Greeks shrank from scenes of blood, as some critics
+have vainly contended, but rather because the actors
+in the Attic drama were raised on thick boots and were
+topped by towering masks, which made it almost impossible
+for them to take part in episodes of vigorous
+action, in hand-to-hand struggles, in murders before
+the eyes of the spectators, without danger of displacing
+the mask, and thereby distracting the attention of the
+audience from the immediate purpose of the dramatic
+poet. What could not be done gracefully the Greeks
+refrained from attempting. The exhibition of difficulty
+for the sake of difficulty, still more the failure to
+accomplish a "stunt" for the sake of calling attention
+to its difficulty&mdash;these things the Greeks abhorred.
+They would as surely have disapproved of the misguided
+artifices of the acrobats who make a practise
+of failing once or twice in order to multiply the immediate
+effect of their ultimate success as they would reprove
+the exhibition of a difficulty conquered for its
+own sake. It is only in the best acrobatic performances
+that we moderns are privileged to perceive what
+was a constant delight to the Greeks&mdash;the beauty of the
+human form, in its finest physical perfection, certain
+of its strength and easy in its grace.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1912.)</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">XIII<br />
+THE DECLINE AND FALL OF<br />
+NEGRO-MINSTRELSY<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">THE DECLINE AND FALL<br /> OF NEGRO-MINSTRELSY<br />I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Of</span> all the varied and manifold kinds of theatrical entertainment
+negro-minstrelsy is the only one which
+is absolutely native to these States, and the only one
+which could not have come into existence anywhere
+else in the civilized world. Here in America alone has
+the transplanted African been brought into intimate
+contact with the transplanted European. Other nations
+may have disputed our claim to the invention of
+the steamboat and the telegraph, but negro-minstrelsy
+is as indisputably due to American inventiveness as the
+telephone itself. Here in the United States it had its
+humble beginnings; here it expanded and flourished
+for many years; from here it was exported to Great
+Britain, where it established itself for many seasons;
+from here it has made sporadic excursions into France
+and into Germany; and here at last it has fallen into
+a decline and a degeneracy and a decay which seem
+to doom it to a speedy extinction. Its life was little
+longer than that vouchsafed to man, threescore years
+and ten, for it was born in the fifth decade of the nineteenth
+century, and in the second decade of the twentieth
+it lingers superfluous on the stage, with none to
+do it reverence.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Time was when the negro minstrels held possession
+of three or four theaters in the single city of New York,
+and when a dozen or more troops were traveling from
+town to town; and now they have long ago surrendered
+their last hall in the metropolis, and only a solitary
+company winds its lonely way from theater to theater
+thruout the United States. The few surviving practitioners
+of the art are reduced to the presentation of
+brief interludes in the all-devouring variety-shows, or
+to the impersonation of sparse negro characters in
+occasional comedies. The Skidmore Guards, who paraded
+so gaily at Harrigan and Hart's, are disbanded
+now these many years; Johnny Wild of joyous memory
+is no more, and Sweatnam, bereft of his fellows in sable
+drollery, is seen only in a chance comedy like 'Excuse
+Me,' or the 'County Chairman.' George Christy and
+Dan Emmett and Dan Bryant have gone and left only
+fading memories of their breezy songs, their nimble
+dances, and their flippant quips. Edwin Forrest and
+Edwin Booth blacked up more than once, Joseph
+Jefferson and Barney Williams besmeared themselves
+with burnt cork on occasion; but it is not by these
+darker episodes in their artistic careers that they are
+now recalled, and the leading actors of to-day think
+scorn of negro-minstrelsy&mdash;whenever they deign to
+give it a thought. And yet it must be noted frankly
+that when The Lambs wanted to raise money for their
+new club-house, they did not disdain the art of the
+negro minstrel, and more than twoscore of them went
+forth to conquer, willingly disguised in the uniform
+blackness assumed long ago by George Christy and
+Dan Bryant.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is to be hoped that some devoted historian will
+come forward before it is too late and tell us the history
+of this very special form of theatrical art, the only
+one indigenous to our soil. Indeed, now that our
+American universities are paying attention to the
+drama, what more alluring theme for the dissertation
+demanded of all candidates for the doctorate of philosophy
+than an inquiry into the rise and fall of negro-minstrelsy?
+In the late Laurence Hutton's conscientious
+and entertaining volume on the 'Curiosities of the
+American Stage,' there is a chapter in which the subject
+is treated historically, altho the chronicler wasted
+much of his precious space in considering the succession
+of sable characters in the regular drama&mdash;Shakspere's
+Othello, Southerne's Oroonoko, Bickerstaff's Mungo,
+Boucicault's Pete (in the 'Octoroon'), Uncle Tom,
+Topsy, Eliza, and their companions (in the undying
+dramatization of Mrs. Stowe's story). These were all
+parts in plays wherein white characters were prominent.
+The first performer of a song-and-dance, that is of a
+sketch in which the darky performer was sufficient
+unto himself, and was deprived of any support from
+persons of another complexion, seems to have been
+"Jim Crow" Rice&mdash;the title of whose lively lyric survives
+in the name bestowed upon the cars reserved for
+colored folk on certain Southern railroads. Rice found
+his pattern in an old negro who did a peculiar step after
+he had sung to a tune of his own contriving:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">Wheel about, turn about;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Do jus' so:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">An' ebery time I turn about,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">I jump Jim Crow.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">Rice carried Jim Crow to England, and he made a
+specialty of dandy darkies. But he was not the discoverer
+of negro-minstrelsy, as we know it, altho he
+blazed the trail for it. Indeed, it was quite probably
+due to the influence of Rice and his darky dandies
+that the negro minstrels confined their efforts to the
+imitation of the town negro rather than of the plantation
+negro, the field-hand of the Uncle Remus type.
+Rice first impersonated Jim Crow in the late twenties,
+and it was in the middle of the thirties that he went
+to England. And it was in the early forties that Dan
+Emmett, Frank Brower, Billy Whitlock, and Dick
+Pelham happened to meet by accident in a New York
+boarding-house, and amused themselves with songs
+accompanied by the banjo, the tambourine, and the
+bones. Pleased by the result of their exercises, they
+appeared together at a benefit, and negro-minstrelsy
+was born. At first there was no differentiation into
+Interlocutors and End-men; they all took an equal
+share in the more or less improvised dialog; they sang,
+and they played, and they danced the 'Essence of
+Old Virginny.'</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Probably Emmett began early to provide new tunes
+for them. He was the composer of 'Old Dan Tucker'
+and the 'Boatman's Dance,' of 'Walk Along, John,'
+and 'Early in the Morning,' and one walk-around
+which he devised in the late fifties for Bryant's Minstrels,
+'Dixie,' was introduced by Mrs. John Wood
+into a burlesque, which she was playing in New Orleans,
+just before the outbreak of the Civil War. The
+sentiment and the tune took the fancy of the ardent
+Louisianans, and they carried it with them into the
+Confederate army, where it soon established itself as
+the war-song of the South. And then when Richmond
+had fallen at last, Lincoln ordered the bands of the
+victorious army to play 'Dixie,' with the wise explanation
+that as we had captured the Southern capital,
+we had also captured the Southern song. And 'Dixie,'
+which had begun life so humbly as a walk-around in
+a minstrel-show in New York, bids fair to survive indefinitely
+as the musical testimony to the fact that the
+cruel war is over, and that these States are now one
+nation.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">II</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was only a year or two after the quartet of Emmett,
+Brower, Whitlock, and Pelham had shown the
+possibilities of the new form of amusement that troops
+of negro minstrels began to supply an entire evening's
+amusement. The regulation First Part was devised
+with its curving row of vocalists, instrumentalists, and
+comedians. The dignified Interlocutor took his place
+in the middle of the semicircle, and uttered the time-honored
+phrase: "Gentlemen, be seated. We will
+commence with the overture." Bones captured the
+chair at one end, and Tambo pre-empted that on the
+other; and they began their wordy skirmish with the
+Middleman, in which that pompous presiding officer
+always got the worst of it. This device for immediate
+and boisterous laughter, this putting down of the
+Middleman by the End-man, the negro minstrels appear
+to have borrowed from the circus, where the
+clown is also permitted always to discomfit the stiff and
+stately ring-master.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But altho the minstrels may have taken over this
+effective trick from the circus, with which some of the
+earlier performers had had intimate relations, the trick
+itself is of remote antiquity. The side-splitting colloquy
+of the End-man with the Middleman may be
+exactly like the interchange of merry jests between the
+clown and the ring-master, yet it is far older than the
+modern circus. It existed in Paris, for example, in
+the sixteenth century, when the quack doctor was accompanied
+by his jack-pudding. Many of the dialogs
+heard on the Pont-Neuf between Mondor and Tabarin
+have been preserved, and the method is precisely that
+of the dialogs between ring-master and clown, Interlocutor
+and End-man, even to the persistent repetition
+of the question which contains the catch. "Master,"
+Tabarin would begin, "can you tell me which is the
+more generous, a man or a woman?" And the quack
+doctor would solemnly reply: "Ah, Tabarin, that is a
+question which has been greatly debated by the philosophers
+of antiquity, and they have been unable to
+decide which is truly the more generous, a man or a
+woman." Then Tabarin would briskly retort: "Never
+mind the old philosophers. I can tell you." And with
+great contempt the ponderous quack doctor would
+return: "What, Tabarin, do you mean to say that you
+can tell us which is the more generous, a man or a
+woman." Tabarin promptly responded that he could.
+"Then," asked Mondor, "pray do so. Which is the
+more generous, a man or a woman?" And thereupon,
+to the great disgust of Mondor, Tabarin would proffer
+his ribald explanation. Unfortunately the explanation
+he gave is frankly too ribald to be given here, for nowadays
+we are more squeamish than the idlers who gathered
+around the quack doctor's platform in Paris three
+or four centuries ago. The dialogs of Mondor and
+Tabarin were brief enough, but they often made up for
+their brevity in their breadth.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">This kind of catch-question was known in England,
+under Elizabeth, as "selling a bargain," and it is not
+infrequent in the plays of the time. It will be found
+more than once in earlier plays of Shakspere; for example,
+when his "clowns" (as the low-comedy characters
+were then called) were allowed to run on at their
+own sweet will. Not a little of the dialog of the two
+Dromios is closely akin in its method to the interchange
+of question and answer between the Interlocutor and
+the End-man. We may be sure this method of evoking
+laughter was employed also by the improvising
+comedians of the Italian comedy-of-masks, with which
+negro-minstrelsy has other points of resemblance. It
+must have been popular with the wandering glee-men
+of the rude Middle Ages; and now that negro-minstrelsy
+is disappearing and now that our circuses have
+burgeoned into three rings under a tent too vast for
+any merely verbal repartees, it has not departed from
+among us, since it still survives as the staple of the so-called
+"sidewalk conversationalists" who swap personalities
+in our superabundant variety-shows.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">We do not know with historic certainty how soon
+the First Part crystallized into the form which has long
+been traditional&mdash;the opening overture, the catch-questioning
+of End-man and Middleman, the comic
+songs of Bones and Tambo in turn, the sentimental
+ballads by the silver-throated vocalists, and the concluding
+walk-around. The rest of the evening's entertainment
+never took on any definite framework, altho
+the final item on the program was likely to be a piece
+of some length, often a burlesque of a serious drama
+then popular, and this little play "enlisted the whole
+strength of the company." Between the stately First
+Part and the more pretentious terminating sketch, the
+minstrels presented a variety of acts in which the several
+members exhibited their specialities. A clog-dance
+was always in order&mdash;altho the mechanical precision
+of this form of saltatorial exercise was wholly foreign
+to the characteristics of the actual negroes whom the
+minstrels were supposed to be representing. A stump-speech
+was certain of a warm reception&mdash;altho this
+again departed from the true negro tradition, and, in
+fact, often degenerated into frank burlesque, wholly
+unrelated to the realities of life. Sketches, like those
+which Rice had earlier composed for his own acting,
+were likely to have a little closer relation to the genuine
+darky.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Yet here again the negro minstrel was not avid of
+overt originality. He was willing to find his profit in
+the past and to translate into negro dialect any farce,
+however ancient, which might contain comic situations
+or humorous characters that could be twisted to suit
+his immediate purpose. He seized upon the ingenious
+plots of certain of the pantomimes brought to America
+from France half a century ago by the Ravels. And
+on occasion he went, unwittingly, still further afield
+for his prey. There is in print, in a collection of so-called
+Ethiopian drama, an amusing sketch, entitled
+the 'Great Mutton Trial'; and the remote source of
+this is to be sought in the oldest and best farce which
+has survived in French literature. 'Maître Pierre
+Pathelin' is now acted occasionally by the Comédie-Française
+in Paris, in a version which preserves its
+original flavor; but in the eighteenth century an adaptation,
+made by Brueys and Palaprat, and called the
+'Avocat Pathelin,' was popular. It was this later perversion
+which served as the basis of an English farce,
+entitled the 'Village Lawyer,' and the 'Great Mutton
+Trial' is simply the 'Village Lawyer' transmogrified to
+suit the bolder and more robust methods of the negro
+minstrels.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">III</p>
+
+<p class="indent">And here we may discover the real reason why negro-minstrelsy
+failed to establish itself. It neglected its
+opportunity to devote itself primarily to its own peculiar
+field&mdash;the humorous reproduction of the sayings
+and doings of the colored man in the United States.
+To represent the negro in his comic aspects and in his
+sentimental moods was what the minstrels pretended
+to do; but the pretense was often only a hollow mockery.
+Even the musical instruments they affected, the
+banjo and the bones, were not as characteristic of the
+field-hand, or even of the town darky, as the violin.
+Indeed, the bones cannot be considered as in any way
+special to the negro; they were familiar to Shakspere's
+Bottom, who declared: "I have a reasonable good ear
+in music; let us have the tongs and the bones." And
+the wise recorder of the words and deeds of Uncle
+Remus asserted that he had never listened to the
+staccato picking of a banjo in the negro-quarters of
+any plantation.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">"I have seen the negro at work," so Harris once
+stated, "and I have seen him at play; I have attended
+his corn-shuckings, his dances, and his frolics; I have
+heard him give the wonderful melody of his songs to
+the winds; I have heard him give barbaric airs to the
+quills" (that is to say, to the Pan-pipes); "I have heard
+him scrape jubilantly on the fiddle; I have seen him
+blow wildly on the bugle, and beat enthusiastically on
+the triangle; but I have never heard him play on the
+banjo." Mr. George W. Cable thereupon came forward
+with his evidence to the effect that, altho the
+banjo was to be found occasionally on a plantation,
+it was far less frequently seen than the violin. It will
+be noted that Harris was speaking of the Georgian
+negro, and that Mr. Cable was talking about the negro
+in Louisiana; and perhaps the true habitat of the banjo
+is to be found farther north and near to the border
+States. At any rate, there is a footnote to one of
+Thomas Jefferson's 'Notes on Virginia' (published in
+1784), which informs us that the instrument proper to
+the slaves of the Old Dominion is "the banjar, which
+they brought hither from Africa, and which is the origin
+of the guitar, its chords being precisely the four lower
+chords of the guitar."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Now and again some one negro minstrel did make a
+serious study of a negro type; such a performer was
+J. W. McAndrews, the "Watermelon Man." But the
+most of them were content to be comic without any
+effort to catch the special comicality of the darky; and
+sometimes they strayed so completely from the path
+as to indulge in songs in an alleged Irish brogue or in
+a dislocated German dialect. Now, nothing could
+well be conceived more incongruously inartistic than
+a white man blacked up into the semblance of a negro,
+and then impertinently caroling an impudent Irish
+lyric. Yet the general neglect of the opportunities
+for a more accurate presentation of negro characteristics
+is to be seen in the strange fact that the minstrels
+failed to perceive the possible popularity of rag-time
+tunes, and failed also to put the cake-walk on the
+stage. Even at the height of its vogue in the mid years
+of the nineteenth century, negro-minstrelsy did not
+occupy its own field, and did not try to raise therein
+the varied flowers of which they had the seed.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Instead of cultivating the tempting possibilities
+which lay before them, and devoting themselves to a
+loving delineation of the colored people who make up
+a tenth of our population, they turned aside to devote
+themselves to the spectacular elaboration of their original
+entertainment. The clog-dances became most intricate
+and more mechanical&mdash;and thereby still more
+remote from the buck-and-wing dancing of the real
+negro. The First Part was presented with accompaniments
+of Oriental magnificence and of variegated
+glitter. The chorus was enlarged; the musicians were
+multiplied; the End-men operated in relays; and at
+last the bass-drum which towered aloft over Haverly's
+Mastodon Minstrels bore the boastful legend: "40.
+Count Them. 40." And when the suspicious spectator
+obeyed this command, he discovered to his surprise
+that the vaunt was more than made good since
+he had a full view of at least half a dozen performers
+in addition to the promised twoscore.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At the apex of his inflated prosperity Haverly invaded
+Germany with his mastodonic organization;
+and one result of his visit was probably still further to
+confuse the Teutonic misinformation about the American
+type, which seems often to be a curious composite
+photograph of the red men of Cooper, the black men
+of Mrs. Stowe, and the white men of Mark Twain and
+Bret Harte. And it was reported at the time that
+another and more immediate result of this rash foray
+beyond the boundaries of the English-speaking race
+was that Haverly was, for a while, in danger of arrest
+by the police for a fraudulent attempt to deceive the
+German public, because he was pretending to present
+a company of <i>negro</i> minstrels, whereas his performers
+were actually white men!</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It should be recorded that while the vogue lasted,
+there did come into existence sundry troops of minstrels
+whose members were all of them actually colored men,
+altho they conformed to the convention set by those
+whom they were imitating and conscientiously disguised
+themselves with burnt cork, to achieve the sable
+uniformity temporarily attained by the ordinary negro
+minstrels. Perhaps the most obvious parallel of the
+blacking up of veritable colored men to follow the
+example of the white men who pretended to imitate
+the negro is to be found in the original performance of
+'As You Like It,' on the Elizabethan stage, when the
+shaven boy-actor who impersonated Rosalind disguised
+himself as a lad, and then had to pretend to
+Orlando that he was a girl.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">IV</p>
+
+<p class="indent">For the decline and fall of negro-minstrelsy it is easy
+to find more than one sufficient explanation. First of
+all, it may have been due to its failure to devote itself
+lovingly to the representation of the many peculiarities
+of the negro himself. Second, it is possible that negro-minstrelsy
+had an inherent and inevitable disqualification
+for enduring popularity, in that it was exclusively
+masculine and necessarily deprived of the potent attractiveness
+exerted by the members of the more fascinating
+sex. And in the third place, its program was
+rather limited and monotonous, and therefore negro-minstrelsy
+could not long withstand the competition of
+the music-hall, of the variety-show, and of the comic
+musical pieces, which satisfied more amply the exactly
+similar taste of the public for broad fun commingled
+with song and dance.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Whatever the precise cause may be, there is no denying
+that negro-minstrelsy is on the verge of extinction,
+however much we may bewail the fact. It failed to
+accomplish its true purpose, and it is disappearing,
+leaving behind it little that is worthy of preservation
+except a few of its songs. This, at least, it has to its
+credit&mdash;that it gave Stephen Collins Foster the chance
+to produce his simple melodies. Perhaps we might
+even venture to assert that the existence of negro-minstrelsy
+is justified by a single one of these songs&mdash;by
+'Old Folks at Home,' which has a wailing melancholy
+and an unaffected pathos, lacking in the earlier
+and more saccharine 'Home, Sweet Home,' which the
+English composer, Bishop, based on an old Sicilian
+tune. After Foster came Root and Work, and 'My
+Old Kentucky Home' was succeeded by 'Tramp,
+Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching,' and by
+'Marching thru Georgia'&mdash;which last lyric now shares
+its popularity only with 'Dixie' as a musical relic of
+the Civil War.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It would be pleasant to know whether it was one of
+Foster's songs, and which one it may have been that
+once touched the tender heart of Thackeray. "I heard
+a humorous balladist not long since," the novelist recorded,
+"a minstrel with wool on his head, and an ultra
+Ethiopian complexion, who performed a negro ballad
+that I confess moistened these spectacles in a most
+unexpected manner. They have gazed at dozens of
+tragedy-queens dying on the stage and expiring in
+appropriate blank verse, and I never wanted to wipe
+them. They have looked up, with deep respect be it
+said, at many scores of clergymen without being
+dimmed, and behold! a vagabond with a corked face
+and a banjo, sings a little song, strikes a wild note,
+which sets the heart thrilling with happy pity."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1912.)</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">XIV<br />
+THE UTILITY OF THE VARIETY-SHOW<a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">THE UTILITY OF THE VARIETY-SHOW<br />I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> an advertisement issued by one of the huge department
+stores of New York not long ago, the assertion
+was made that the house had on sale "all the new
+novelties." A purist in language might be moved to
+protest that this proclamation was plainly tautological,
+because it is the essential quality of every novelty to
+be new. But even a purist in language, if he happens
+also to be an honest observer of things as they are,
+would be forced to admit that his supercilious cavil
+had only a superficial justification, since, as a matter
+of fact, there are many novelties which are not new,
+and which, indeed, are venerably ancient. It was
+Solomon, superabundantly married, and therefore in
+an excellent position to acquire wisdom, who declared
+that there is nothing new under the sun. Wireless
+telegraphy is only a development of the signaling by
+beacon-fires, which was practised by the Greeks and
+which they employed to convey immediately to Greece
+the glad tidings of the fall of Troy; and moving-pictures
+are only an ingenious amplification of the zoëtrope of
+our childhood.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The amusement-parks which sprang up all over the
+United States in the early part of the twentieth century,
+in imitation of those at Coney Island, bear an
+undeniable resemblance to the Foire Saint Laurent
+and to the other fairs of Paris in the sixteenth and
+seventeenth centuries, and even the loud-voiced crier
+who proclaims the merits of the several side-shows,
+and who is now known as a "barker," bears a name
+which is only a translation of that given to his forbears
+two hundred years ago in France&mdash;<i>aboyeur</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The so-called cabaret-shows, prevalent in the larger
+cities of the United States in the winter of 1911-1912,
+were hailed as the very latest form of amusement,
+combining as they did the solid pleasures of the table
+with the ethereal delights of song-and-dance; and yet
+Froissart is a witness that something very like the
+cabaret-show was known in the Middle Ages, and
+Gibbon has recorded its existence nearly a thousand
+years earlier, at the court of Theodoric. Indeed, the
+Romans, and the Greeks before them, had employed
+performers of one sort or another to relieve the monotony
+of their banquets. Gaditanian dancers were
+popular thruout the wide realm of Rome, almost two
+thousand years before Carmencita came from Cadiz
+to warble and caper at midnight in the studios of
+American painters, just before and just after the guests
+had enjoyed the refreshments provided by their artistic
+hosts.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As the cabaret-show is only another form of the well-known
+"vaudeville supper," it must be relegated to
+the class of novelties which are not new. And vaudeville
+itself is only the long familiar variety-show. It
+may now be called by a new name, and many of those
+who do not look behind a label may accept it as a new
+thing; nevertheless it is very old, indeed. The name
+"vaudeville" is an absurd misnomer, like so many
+other terms due to our habit of careless borrowing from
+other tongues. In French <i>vaudeville</i> originally designated
+a kind of topical song, bristling with pointed
+gibes at the follies of the moment; and then in time it
+took on another meaning, when it was used to describe
+a light and lively farce interspersed with occasional
+lyrics set to old-fashioned tunes. It is impossible to
+say just how and why this French word, which had
+two distinct meanings in its own language, should have
+been imported into English to characterize improperly
+a form of amusement which we had long known by the
+admirably exact name of variety-show. The French
+themselves call their own type of variety-show, at
+which refreshments are served, a <i>café-concert</i>. Their
+nickname for it is a <i>beuglant</i>, a place where there is
+"howling"&mdash;which seems to imply that they do not
+expect too much melody from the singers, who appear
+at these performances. In England an establishment
+of this kind is called a music-hall; and it was more than
+half a century ago that Planché described their blatant
+lyrics set to brazen tunes as "most music-hall, most
+melancholy."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Whatever its name may be in the different parts of
+the world, the entertainment is much the same. The
+most frequent item on the program is the comic song,
+often accompanied by a rudimentary dance. Sometimes
+it is in the martial staccato of Paulus's 'En revenant
+de la révue' which boosted General Boulanger
+into a furious but fleeting political popularity. Sometimes
+it is the coonful melody of 'Under the Bamboo
+Tree' or 'Dinah, the Moon am Shining.' Sometimes it
+is an almost epileptic lyric, like 'Tarara-boom-de-ay.'
+Sometimes a singer of a more delicate art, like Yvette
+Guilbert, ventures upon songs of a more subtly sentimental
+appeal. There may be a swift succession of
+solos, male singers and female alternating, those of the
+most fame appearing latest, as is the practise in the
+first part of the Parisian open-air <i>café-chantant</i>, the
+Alcazar or the Ambassadeurs. There may be duets
+or trios or quartets, serious or comic, decorously unadorned
+or diversified by dancing. There may be
+songs to be interpreted by half a dozen performers,
+accompanied by more or less dramatic action, like the
+'Mulligan Guards,' which was the simple germ wherefrom
+sprouted the long series of more and more elaborate
+Harrigan and Hart plays, delineating with keen
+insight and with sympathetic humor the manifold
+aspects of tenement-house life in New York, and possessing
+a rich flavor of fun curiously akin to that which
+amuses us in the plays wherein Plautus had sketched
+the tenement-house life in Rome two thousand years
+ago.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">While the song and the song-and-dance and the
+song-and-parade may be the staple of the entertainment,
+the variety-show justifies its name by the medley
+of other exhibitions it presents. It delights in the
+dance unaccompanied by the song; and in some of the
+English music-halls, the Alhambra and the Empire in
+London, the ballet is the foremost attraction, providing
+an opportunity for the display of her dainty art to so
+exquisite a dancer as Mlle. Genée. In New York it
+is now a refuge for the waifs and strays of vanishing
+negro-minstrelsy. It is ready to welcome the wandering
+conjurer and the strolling juggler. It extends its
+hospitality to the acrobat, single or in groups, throwing
+flipflaps on the stage, flying thru the air on a trapeze
+or diving into the water in a tank. It acts as host to
+the trainer of performing animals, dogs and cats, seals
+and elephants. It lends its stage to the puppet-show
+performer, to the sidewalk conversationalist, and to
+the ventriloquist, with his pair of stolid figures seemingly
+seated uncomfortably on his knees and actually
+supported by his hands, while his adroit fingers manipulate
+their mechanical mouths.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Of late, the variety-show has accepted the aid of the
+exhibitors of moving-pictures, just as the exhibitors
+of moving-pictures have invoked the casual assistance
+of song-and-dance teams and of other vaudeville performers
+to relieve the strain on the eyes of their spectators.
+And the introduction of the cinematograph,
+or the bioscope, or whatever it may be called, is, perhaps,
+the only real novelty in our latter-day variety-show.
+All the other performers are presenting feats
+of a kind known to our remote ancestors, even if these
+feats are now more skilfully presented. Animals were
+put thru their paces hundreds of years ago; and performing
+dogs and educated bears figure frequently in
+the illuminations which decorate many a medieval
+manuscript. There were tight-rope dancers in Alexandria
+and in Byzantium; there were contortionists in
+Rome and in Greece, and the flexibility of these latter
+is preserved for us in the vase-paintings which have
+been replevined from the ashes of Pompeii and the
+lava of Herculaneum. Quintillian tells us of the wonderful
+feats of certain performers on the stage in his
+day, "with balls, and of other jugglers whose dexterity
+is such that one might suppose the things which they
+throw from them to return of their own accord, and to
+fly wheresoever they are commanded." The art of
+modern magic has enlarged its boundaries by the aid
+of the modern sciences of mechanics and physics, but
+elementary sleights-of-hand were known to a remote
+antiquity, and savages always had their medicine-men
+and their marabouts, workers of primitive wonders to
+strike awe into the souls of their unsophisticated beholders.
+The variety-show may have the variety it
+vaunts itself as possessing; but to novelty it can lay
+little claim.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">II</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The constituent elements of the variety-show as we
+know it to-day have existed since a time whereof the
+memory of man runneth not to the contrary&mdash;to use
+the old legal phrase. The appeal of almost every one
+of these elements and of the variety-show as a whole
+is ever to the eye and to the ear, to the senses rather
+than to the emotions; and to the intellect it appeals
+even more infrequently. Its primary purpose is to
+afford a kaleidoscopic succession of contrasted amusements
+for the benefit of those who are easily satisfied
+by glitter of spectacle, by incessant movement, and by
+violent music. It is the ideal entertainment for that
+redoubtable entity, the Tired Business Man, who
+checks his brains with his overcoat, and who resents
+having to witness anything in the theater which might
+make him think. Not only does the variety-show
+flourish because it is exactly adjusted to the unintellectual
+and purely sensational likings of the Tired Business
+Man and to the similar tastes of his fit mate, who
+is fatigued because her life is idle and empty, but for
+his benefit also, and for hers the summer song-show
+and the alleged "comic opera" and the misnamed
+"review" have been called into existence. Indeed, it
+is obvious enough that most of our summer song-shows
+and many of our "comic operas" and "reviews" are,
+in reality, only more or less disguised variety-shows.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">With facts as they are, there is never any excuse for
+quarreling. The Tired Business Man is a fact; and it
+is only fair that what he demands shall be supplied by
+caterers to the cravings of the populace. But even
+tho his name is legion, the Tired Business Man is to
+be accepted only with contemptuous toleration. He
+is to be endured only so long as he does not insist on
+imposing his likings upon others who have a more
+delicate perception, and who are willing to bring their
+brains with them when they take their places in the
+theater. Even in the variety-show which seems often
+to exist only for the pleasure of those who still linger
+in what one of George Eliot's wise characters aptly
+called "a puerile state of culture," nevertheless, we
+can now and again discover signs of a longing for something
+less void of purpose than mere spectacle. For
+example, it was in a variety-show that Mr. Belasco's
+finely imaginative dramatization of Mr. Long's 'Madame
+Butterfly' was set before the American public
+several years prior to its being adorned by the pathetic
+music of Puccini for the benefit of opera-goers.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In fact, it is well to remember that the <i>opéra comique</i>
+of the French had its humble origin in the theater of
+the Parisian fairs, where also we can discover the rude
+beginnings of that crude form of melodrama which
+Victor Hugo lifted into literature in 'Hernani' and
+'Ruy Bias,' casting the cloth-of-gold of his splendid
+lyricism over the arbitrarily articulated skeleton of
+his violent action. It was an old negro-minstrel act,
+representing the rehearsal of an amateur band, that
+the Hanlon-Lees borrowed to amplify into a rough-and-tumble
+pantomime for performance in a variety-show
+in Paris; and this knockabout sketch proved to
+be the stepping-stone which enabled them soon to
+achieve the fantastic eccentricity of their 'Voyage en
+Suisse,' performed in real theaters, first in Paris and
+then in New York, to the joy of all who could appreciate
+the perfection of their art as pantomimists. And,
+once again, it was in a variety-show of the lowest class
+that Denman Thompson first appeared as 'Josh Whitcomb
+Among the Female Bathers,' a vulgar episode
+of indelicate humor, wherein, however, was contained
+the germ of that perennially popular play, the 'Old
+Homestead,' which gave a pure pleasure to countless
+thousands of theater-goers, season after season, for at
+least a quarter of a century.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">When we look back over the long annals of the
+variety-show we cannot escape the conclusion that
+here is its real opportunity, its true function, and its
+necessary justification. For the most part, it supplies
+a purely sensational amusement for the unthinking;
+and yet it is continually serving as a nursery for the
+actual theater. It is thus seen to be a proving ground
+for the seeds of widely different dramatic species&mdash;<i>opéra
+comique</i> and melodrama in France, the <i>ballet
+d'action</i> in England, the rural play in the United States.
+It is not always conscious of its possibilities, nor does
+it always improve them to best advantage. Normally
+it provides an entertainment appealing mainly to the
+senses, often empty, and often unsatisfying because of
+its monotony. But on occasion it is capable of grasping
+at higher things, and of encouraging artists who will
+sooner or later outgrow its limitations and transfer
+their activities to the theaters wherein audiences are
+more eager for veracity of character portrayal.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">III</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On one side the variety-show intersects the ring of
+the circus and the curving line of the First Part of
+negro-minstrelsy, while on the other it impinges on the
+sphere of the more literary drama. Its existence is
+evidence that the show business is always the show
+business, no matter how manifold and dissimilar its
+manifestations may seem to be. The men and women
+who have grown up in the regular theaters are a little
+inclined to be scornfully jealous of the less highly
+esteemed performers in the variety-show, even if they
+themselves are occasionally tempted by the lure of
+high pay for hard work to condescend to vaudeville
+engagements. No doubt, the bill of fare set before us
+more often than not in the variety-show justifies this
+attitude on the part of the high priests of the more
+legitimate drama; yet they ought to be broad-minded
+enough to recognize merit wherever it may be found.
+The late John Gilbert, best of Sir Peter Teazles, and
+of Sir Anthony Absolutes, was not a little provoked
+by the praise bestowed upon Harrigan and Hart and
+their associates by Mr. Howells and by other critics
+of the acted drama, who relished the peculiar flavor
+of 'Squatter Sovereignty' and its companion plays.
+Gilbert was puzzled to discover any reason why any
+criticism whould be wasted on pieces which pretended
+to be little more than variety-show sketches. But
+Joseph Jefferson, a far more versatile comedian than
+John Gilbert, was swift to discern merit, and he was
+wholly free from toplofty condescension toward other
+forms of the histrionic art than that in which he was
+himself pre-eminent&mdash;perhaps, because in his youth
+he had often appeared as a burlesque actor, an experience
+which he gladly admitted to have been very valuable
+to him. After Jefferson had gone to see one of
+the nondescript pieces at Weber and Fields's music-hall,
+joyous spectacles commingled of song and dance, of
+eccentric character and of sheer fun, he was loud in
+his praise of the histrionic art displayed here and there
+in the course of the performance, declaring without
+hesitation that one episode, in which the two managers
+took part, was simply the finest piece of comic acting
+he had seen that whole winter. Probably the ordinary
+playgoers, who had flocked to be amused by this loose-jointed
+piece, took a somewhat apologetic attitude
+toward the pleasure they had received; and probably
+they supposed that their pleasure at the entertainment
+offered to them was due mainly to the pervading bustle
+and dazzle of the kaleidoscopic show. But Jefferson
+had a keener insight into the practise of the art
+he adorned; and he recognized at once the sheer histrionic
+skill which lent the illusion of life to the fantastic
+impossibility of the humorous situation.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Jefferson, one may venture to assert, would not have
+been surprised if he had learned that an American
+university professor of dramatic literature, whenever
+he came to discuss the lyrical-burlesques of Aristophanes,
+was in the habit of sending his whole class to
+Weber and Fields that his students might see for themselves
+the nearest modern analog to the robust fantasies
+of the great Greek humorist. Aristophanes was a
+many-sided genius; as a lyric poet of ethereal elevation
+he must be set by the side of Shelley; as a keen satirist
+of contemporary fads and foibles he must be compared
+with Rabelais; and as a fun-maker pure and simple,
+as a comic playwright, willing and able to evoke unexpected
+laughter by ludicrous antics, he reveals an
+undeniable likeness to the adroit devisers of the hodgepodge
+of humorous episodes represented with contagious
+humor by Weber and Fields. And the heterogeneous
+pieces which used to be produced by the two performers
+who devote themselves to the dislocation of
+the English language were outgrowths of the variety-show,
+from which, indeed, the two performers themselves
+were graduates.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is this aspect of the variety-show, its supplying of
+opportunities for artistic development to ambitious
+performers, and its own spontaneous generation of dramatic
+forms capable of being lifted into literature&mdash;it
+is this aspect of the variety-show which would be
+emphasized by any competent writer undertaking to
+narrate its long and involved history. That no one
+has yet written a history of the variety-show is as surprising
+as that no one has yet written a history of
+negro-minstrelsy. The materials for such a book are
+accessible and abundant, since there are already richly
+documented accounts of the fairs of Paris and of
+London, in which the variety-show flourished centuries
+ago. There are accounts of the English concert-halls
+as they now exist and of the French <i>café-concerts</i>. The
+historian will also be aided by the various treatises on
+the ballet, and on the circus, and on the puppet-show,
+with all of which forms of entertainment the variety-show
+has always had intimate relations.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It may be that the future historian will be moved
+to point out the superficial likeness between the variety-show
+and the Sunday issues of certain American newspapers.
+These Sunday newspapers are really magazines&mdash;that
+is to say, they occupy a position midway
+between journalism and literature, just as the variety-show
+occupies a position midway between the circus
+and the theater. The magazine pages of these Sunday
+newspapers set before their readers a very variegated
+bill of fare; they provide photographs of recent events&mdash;which
+are the equivalent of the moving-pictures of
+the variety-show; they contain short-stories&mdash;which
+are, in narrative, what the brief plays of the variety-show
+are in dialog and action; they abound in anecdotes
+and in comic sayings&mdash;which are closely akin to
+the utterances of the sidewalk conversationalists of the
+variety-show. And the variety-show itself is like
+journalism, in that it is a modern combination of elements
+of the remotest antiquity, for altho the actual
+newspaper is only two or three centuries old, there
+were always channels by which news was conveyed to
+the eager public. The men of Athens nearly two thousand
+years ago were glad to hear and to tell some new
+thing, and their wants were supplied, even if there was
+in classical antiquity and in the Middle Ages no organization
+faintly anticipating the marvelous machinery
+for collecting and distributing information possessed
+by the newspapers of the twentieth century.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1912.)</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">XV<br />
+THE METHOD OF MODERN MAGIC<a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">THE METHOD OF MODERN MAGIC<br />I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">"Autobiography,"</span> said Longfellow&mdash;altho the remark
+does not seem especially characteristic of this gentle
+poet&mdash;"is what biography ought to be." And in the
+long list of alluring autobiographies, from Cellini's and
+Cibber's, from Franklin's and Goldoni's, there are few
+more fascinating than the 'Confidences of a Prestidigitator'
+of Robert-Houdin. A hostile critic of Robert-Houdin's
+career has recorded the fact&mdash;if it is a fact&mdash;that
+Robert-Houdin once confided to a fellow magician
+that his autobiography had been written for him by a
+clever Parisian journalist; and it must be admitted
+that not a few amusing French autobiographies have
+not been the children of their putative parents&mdash;for
+instance, the memoirs of Vidocq, the detective. Yet
+this is not as damaging an admission as it may seem
+at first sight since the clever Parisian journalist may
+have been little more than the amanuensis of the
+prestidigitator, hired only to give literary form to the
+actual recollections of his employer. Such a proceeding
+would not deprive Robert-Houdin's autobiography
+by its authenticity. It remains a classic, beloved by
+all who joy in the delights of conjuring. Unfortunately
+the hostile critic has gone further in his attack upon
+Robert-Houdin's reputation, and he has succeeded in
+showing that the renowned French conjurer claimed
+as his own invention not a few illusions which had been
+already exhibited by his predecessors in the art of deception.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Yet this unjustified boasting does not invalidate
+Robert-Houdin's title to be considered the father of
+modern magic. Even if he was treading in the path
+of those who had gone before, he attained at last to a
+consistent theory of the art, far in advance of that held
+by earlier magicians. Many of his marvels, and perhaps
+more than one of the most striking of them, may
+have been but improvements upon effects originally
+contrived by others; yet every succeeding generation
+can rise only by standing upon the shoulders of the
+generations that went before, and it is justified in availing
+itself of all that these earlier generations may have
+discovered and invented. Robert-Houdin tells us himself
+that he was greatly indebted to the Comte de Grisy,
+whose stage-name was Torrini. In fact, Robert-Houdin
+might be called a pupil of Torrini, as Mr.
+John S. Sargent is a pupil of Carolus Duran. It was
+upon Torrini's dignified simplicity as a magician that
+Robert-Houdin modelled his own unpretending presentation
+of his feats of magic. Apparently it was a
+famous conjurer named Frikell, who first discarded
+the cumbersome and glittering array of apparatus
+which used to be displayed on the stage to dazzle the
+eyes of the spectators; but this discarding of obtrusive
+paraphernalia was not deliberate, being due only
+to the accidental destruction of Frikell's stage-furniture
+by fire, whereby the performer was suddenly
+forced to rely upon the less complicated experiments,
+which could be exhibited without extraneous aid.
+The abandoning of overt apparatus, which Frikell was
+forced into by misfortune, Robert-Houdin adopted as
+an abiding principle. He kept his stage as unencumbered
+as possible, altho, of course, he brought forward
+from time to time the special objects necessary for the
+illusions he was about to exhibit.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Not only did he perform on a stage which was intended
+to resemble a drawing-room, he also eschewed
+any other costume than that appropriate to a drawing-room.
+Earlier performers had not hesitated to deck
+themselves in Oriental apparel or in the flowing garb
+of a medieval magician. Robert-Houdin was always
+modern and never medieval; and he adopted this
+attitude deliberately. He was the first to formulate
+the fundamental principle of the modern art of magic&mdash;that
+a conjurer should be "an actor playing the part
+of a magician." One of the foremost exponents of
+modern magic, Mr. Maskelyne, notes that many conjurers
+strive only to play the part of some other conjurer;
+and it might be added that there are not a few
+who fail entirely to see the necessity for playing a part
+and who content themselves with a purposeless display
+of their misplaced dexterity. But the masters
+of the art are men like Robert Heller and Buatier da
+Kolta, who were accomplished comedians, each in his
+own fashion, and who presented a succession of little
+plays&mdash;for a truly good experiment in magic is really
+a diminutive drama.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It may be brief and simple&mdash;a play in one act; or
+it may be prolonged and complicated&mdash;a play in three
+or five acts. But like any other play it ought to possess
+a central idea and to have a definite plot. It
+should tend straight toward its single conclusion, which
+must be the logical development of all that has gone
+before; that is to say, it must possess what the critics
+of the drama term Unity of Action. It should have a
+beginning, a middle, and an end, in accord with Aristotle's
+requirement for a tragedy. It must work up
+to its culmination with a steadily increasing intensity
+of interest. It must contain nothing not directly contributory
+to the startling climax which is its surprising
+and satisfying conclusion. It must not digress or dally
+in by-paths, however entertaining these may be in
+themselves, but push onward to its inevitable finish.
+It is only by conceiving of every one of his successive
+experiments as a play, complete in itself and governed
+by the inexorable laws of the drama, that the magician
+can rise to the summit of his art. He is a conjurer
+and a comedian at the same time, making his dexterity
+the servant of his drama, and never for a single moment
+allowing this dexterity to force itself upon the attention
+of the audience. Indeed, the one thing he ought
+to conceal is his possession of any special gift in manipulation.
+He should keep his audience ever guessing
+as to the method of his apparent miracles.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">II</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is because Robert-Houdin was seemingly the first
+conjurer to adopt these principles as his irrefragable
+code of procedure that he is to be accepted as the father
+of modern magic. He never allowed himself to parade
+his skill in manipulating coins and cards at the risk of
+distracting the attention of the spectators from the
+central and culminating effect around which he had
+constructed his plot. No doubt, he possessed dexterity
+in abundance, but it was subordinate to his
+dramatic intent. No doubt, again, some of the devices
+he used had sometimes been employed by a long
+succession of his predecessors in conjuring. As a
+matter of course he availed himself of all sorts of mere
+tricks, of ingenious sleights, and of artful apparatus
+that the conjurers who went before him had devised
+for their own use long before he was born. An experiment
+in magic&mdash;to use the term that Mr. Maskelyne
+prefers, is not a mere trick&mdash;or at least it ought not to
+be. It is not the exhibition of a device or of a sleight
+or of an adroit mechanical apparatus. Rather is it
+a coherent whole, direct in its development, no matter
+how many subtleties of concealment and deception it
+may employ in the course of its accomplishment.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Most amateurs in the art of magic, and also only
+too many professional performers, place their reliance
+mainly upon the trick itself&mdash;the deceptive manipulation
+or the novel apparatus&mdash;and are satisfied to get
+out of it what they can. They invent new methods of
+changing a card or of making coins pass into a box,
+overlooking the fact that these inventions are valueless
+except as they may be utilized to facilitate the execution
+of one of those larger feats which only are fairly
+to be entitled experiments in magic, and which are
+distinguished always by the direct simplicity and the
+straightforward unity of their plots. In fact, an experiment
+in magic must aim at that totality of effect,
+that perfect subordination of the minor means to the
+major end, which Poe insisted upon as the dominant
+characteristic of the true short-story. And this totality
+of effect can be achieved only by the rigorous exclusion
+of everything which in any way contradicts
+that central idea out of which the true short-story
+must always be developed. Unity and totality, and a
+rigorous obedience to what Herbert Spencer called the
+Principle of Economy of Attention&mdash;these are the essential
+elements in the presentation of a worthy experiment
+in magic.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">An intimate friend of the late Alexander Hermann,
+the last of a long line of Hermanns who have been
+eminent in the history of the art, has asserted that
+Alexander Hermann was wont to insist that the conjurer
+must possess three qualifications for the practise
+of his profession. The first of these is dexterity; the
+second is dexterity; and the third is also dexterity.
+Now, there is a sense in which this assertion is true;
+but it may be easily misapprehended. A conjurer
+needs to be dexterous, altho more than one master of
+modern magic, notably Robert Heller, has not been
+pre-eminent in the possession of this qualification.
+A moderate degree of dexterity is essential, and perhaps
+more than a moderate degree; but dexterity is
+not the prime requisite, which is rather the dramatic
+instinct, or, perhaps, it had better be called the dramaturgic
+imagination, that can hit on a new idea and
+build it up into a plot, and thus devise an experiment
+in magic completely satisfactory to the artistic sense.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">What the master of the magic art never forgets is
+that dexterity is not an end in itself; it is only one of
+the means by the aid of which the marvel may be
+wrought. There are, to-day, performers of a surpassing
+skill in the manipulation of cards and coins, capable
+of feats which would have been the despair of Robert-Houdin
+and of Robert Heller; and some of them are
+so enamored of their own dexterity that in their eagerness
+for its exhibition they lose sight of unity and
+totality. As a result of this lapse from the loftier
+standards of their art they present a disconcerting
+huddle of sleights of hand until the amazed spectators
+lose all sense of progression, as these bewildering effects
+tumble over one another without any attempt at
+climax. Such a performance is an empty display of
+difficulty conquered for its own sake; it is only a sequence
+of "stunts"; it is mere vanity and vexation of
+spirit. It is like the favorite Scotch dish, the haggis,
+which is said to supply only "confused feeding."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is always interesting to note how the principles of
+the arts have a certain relation, and how we can
+constantly discover parallels in two wholly different
+fields. This abuse of dexterity in the art of modern
+magic is closely akin to the abuse of toe-dancing in
+the art of the ballet. As the conjurer ought to have
+dexterity at his command to serve when it is needed,
+so the accomplished ballet-dancer ought to be able to
+walk on her toes, when this feat will fit into the scheme
+of the special dance she has undertaken to perform.
+But for a dancer to confine herself to the executing of
+a series of difficult steps involving nothing more than
+toe-dancing is to circumscribe the range of her art
+and to accept as the end what ought to be only the
+means. Here again, we have a frank substitution of a
+single "stunt" for the larger liberty accorded by a
+more intelligent understanding of the true principles
+of the art. The excessive toe-work of the dancer, like
+the excessive dexterity of the conjurer, is at bottom
+only what boys call "showing off"; and in the long run
+even boys tire of this. To descend to showing off is
+equivalent to the blunder common in bad architecture,
+when we cannot help seeing that the artist has gone
+afield to construct his ornament, instead of concentrating
+his effort on ornamenting his construction.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">So far from permitting himself ever to show off, or
+to invite attention to his own skill, the master of modern
+magic is careful always to conceal as far as possible
+the method by which he accomplishes his wonders.
+He utilizes at will and in conjunction ingenious apparatus
+and manual dexterity, without ever calling the
+attention of the spectators to either. He refrains even
+from turning up his sleeves or from passing for special
+examination any of the objects he is employing, while
+taking care to let it be seen accidentally that these objects
+are really above suspicion. Like the playwright
+constructing a play, the composer of an experiment in
+magic must ever keep in mind his audience; and he
+must strive always to foresee the exact impression he
+is making upon the spectators. Like the playwright,
+the modern magician must so build up each of his experiments
+that it seizes the attention of the spectators
+early, that it arouses their interest, that it holds this
+interest unrelaxed to the end, and that at last it satisfies
+while it surprises. This can be achieved only when
+all the elements of the experiment, the idea itself, the
+plot, the dexterous devices, and the ingenious apparatus
+which may be necessary, are all so combined and controlled
+and harmonized as to leave on the memory of
+the audience a clear and consistent impression&mdash;indeed,
+an impression so sharp that a majority of those who
+witnessed the experiment could describe it the next
+day.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is the disadvantage of the empty display of dexterity
+for its own sake that fails to leave this definite
+deposit in the memory; and the spectators are quite
+unable to recall the central effect. This is generally
+because there was, in fact, no central effect for them to
+seize, the performer having scattered his efforts, as tho
+he were using a shot-gun instead of hitting the bull's-eye
+with a single rifle-shot. The master of the art is
+careful to economize the attention of his audience, to
+focus it, so to speak, and to arrange his sequence of
+effects so adroitly that, however multifarious and even
+complicated may be the means whereby he is achieving
+his object, the result is attained so directly and so
+simply that it can be apprehended by the spectators
+readily and instantly. The experiment has been exhibited
+as tho it were the easiest thing in the world,
+even if it is at the same time perceived to be the most
+impossible to account for. To arrive at this result the
+performer must preserve an absolute simplicity of
+manner; he presents himself as a gentleman amusing
+himself by amusing other gentlemen, who have come
+together at his invitation to be amused.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">III</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A gentleman amusing other gentlemen&mdash;that should
+be the ideal; and this ideal not only forbids any foolish
+clowning and any trivial buffoonery on the part of the
+performer, but it prohibits also any attempt on his
+part to incite the gentlemen he is amusing to laugh at
+any one of their own number who may have been kind
+enough to lend a hat or a watch, or to come up on the
+stage as a volunteer assistant by request. Nothing is
+cheaper, and nothing is in worse taste, than for the
+performer to make personal remarks about any member
+of his audience or to hold any one of the spectators
+up to ridicule. The conjurer is a comedian playing
+the part of a modern magician, but he is not a low-comedian,
+ready to get a laugh at any price and at
+the cost of any one else. He may be as pleasant as
+he can, and even as humorous, but he can preserve his
+own self-respect only by having due regard to the self-respect
+of all those who have gathered to enjoy his
+performance. Readers of Robert-Houdin's memoirs
+will remember how one of the old-school performers used
+to advertise that he would Eat a Man Alive, and how
+he sprinkled flour and pepper and salt all over the
+hapless creature who volunteered to be devoured, and
+then proceeded to bite the finger of the disgusted and
+unfortunate victim. This is "most tolerable and not
+to be endured."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">If a demand were to be made for a list of the books
+likely to be the most useful to those who desire to
+master the principles of the art of modern magic, one
+would have to begin by recommending the preliminary
+perusal of the autobiography of Robert-Houdin, from
+which a host of useful hints may be gleaned. The
+Frenchman tells us, for instance, how he once showed
+off before Torrini and exhibited his manipulative skill
+over a pack of cards, making a needless display of
+dexterity, designed to dazzle the eyes of the spectators;
+and how Torrini pointed out the futility and the disadvantage
+of this. Then it would be well to consult
+the invaluable series of volumes on modern magic by
+"Professor Hoffman" wherein the various tricks and
+sleights and apparatus are described and illustrated.
+These books contain what may be called the raw material
+of the art, the processes which the magician can
+employ at will in building up his larger experiments in
+magic, each of which should be a complete play in itself.
+Finally, when the student has found out how
+tricks can be done, he would do well to turn his attention
+to 'Our Magic,' by Mr. Maskelyne and his associate,
+Mr. David Devant. And from this logical treatise
+he can learn how experiments in magic ought to be
+composed. It is from this admirable discussion of the
+basic principles of modern magic that several of the
+points made in this essay have been borrowed.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Mr. Devant calls attention to the fact that new
+tricks are common, new manipulative devices, new examples
+of dexterity, and new applications of science,
+whereas new plots, new ideas for effective presentation,
+are rare. He describes a series of experiments of his
+own, some of which utilize again, but in a novel manner,
+devices long familiar, while others are new both in
+idea and in many of the subsidiary methods of execution.
+One of the most hackneyed and yet one of the
+most effective illusions in the repertory of the conjurer,
+is that known as the Rising Cards. The performer
+brings forward a pack of cards, several of which are
+drawn by members of the audience and returned to the
+pack, whereupon at the command of the magician they
+rise out of the pack, one after the other, in the order in
+which they were drawn. In the oldest form in which
+this illusion is described in the books on the art of
+magic, the pack is placed in a case supported by a rod
+standing on a base; and the secret of the trick lies in
+this rod and its base. The rod is really a hollow tube,
+and the base is really an empty box. The tube is
+filled with sand, on the top of which rests a leaden
+weight, to which is attached a thread so arranged over
+and under certain cards as to cause the chosen cards
+to rise when it descends down the tube; and in putting
+the cards into the case the conjurer releases a valve
+at the bottom of the tube, so that the sand might
+escape into the box, whereby the weight is lowered,
+the thread then doing its allotted work, and the cards
+ascending into view, no matter how far distant from
+them the performer may be standing when he achieves
+his miracle.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It seems likely that the invention of this primitive
+apparatus may have been due to the fact that some
+eighteenth-century conjurer happened to observe the
+sand running out of an hour-glass, and set about to
+find some means whereby this escape of sand could be
+utilized in his art. The hollow rod, the escaping sand,
+and the descending weight have long since been discarded;
+but the illusion of the Rising Cards survives
+and is now performed in an unending variety of ways.
+The pack may be held in the hand of the performer,
+without the use of any case; or it may be placed in a
+glass goblet; or it may be tied together with a ribbon
+and thus suspended from cords that swing to and
+fro almost over the heads of the spectators, and however
+they may be isolated, the chosen cards rise obediently
+when they are bidden. The original effect subsists,
+even tho the devices differ.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was left for Mr. Devant to give a new twist to
+this old illusion. For a full pack of playing-cards he
+substituted ten cards two or three times larger than
+playing-cards, and with the ten numerals printed or
+painted in bold black. These pasteboards are given
+for examination, and so is a case into which they fit.
+After they have been duly inspected they are put into
+the case which is hung from chains. A clean slate is
+also shown, and wrapped up and given to a spectator
+to hold. Then three members of the audience are invited
+to write each a number composed of three figures,
+and these three numbers are added by a fourth
+spectator. The total is found to be written on the
+slate; and then at the behest of the performer the
+cards containing the figures of this total rise in proper
+sequence out of the case. It may be noted that the
+writing on the slate is also an old and well-worn device,
+and so is the method of making sure that the
+total of the three numbers written by different persons
+shall agree with that already concealed on the slate.
+Yet these three familiar effects are here united in a
+refreshingly novel experiment in magic, being now
+fitted into a new plot. The devices themselves are old
+enough, but Mr. Devant is entitled to full credit for
+the new combination.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">IV</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The fundamental principles which Robert-Houdin
+accepted and which he seems to have taken over from
+Torrini, Messrs. Maskelyne and Devant have elucidated
+in their philosophic disquisition, and yet in one
+particular their practise is not yet level with their
+preaching. Before Robert-Houdin and Frikell, or at
+least before Torrini, and even after these three artists
+had set a better example, the majority of conjurers
+filled the stage with gaudy apparatus and insisted on
+its blazing with an unnecessary prodigality of lights.
+One magician in the middle of the nineteenth century
+came forward on a stage absolutely dark, and suddenly
+fired a pistol, thereby lighting two hundred candles
+arranged in pyramids behind him. Another hung his
+stage with black velvet and adorned it with skulls.
+Torrini and Robert-Houdin made an approach to the
+unadorned simplicity of an actual drawing-room, altho
+Robert-Houdin seems to have permitted himself a long
+shelf at the back of his stage on which his various automatic
+figures were assembled awaiting their summons
+to take part in the program. Even Messrs. Maskelyne
+and Devant are satisfied with a stage-setting which is
+frankly only a stage-setting&mdash;as stagy, in fact, as the
+ordinary scenery to be seen in a variety-show.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Now, it may be admitted that a nondescript set of
+this sort, vaguely Oriental, with arches and curtains,
+and somewhat suggestive of comic opera, may not be
+inappropriate when any one of the bolder illusions is to
+be presented&mdash;the Box Trick or the Aerial Suspension,
+the Mystic Cabinet or the Talking Sphinx. Indeed,
+a special set of scenery is often actually necessary for
+the presentation of marvels depending mainly on optics
+or mechanics. But for the first part of the program,
+when the performer appears in ordinary evening-dress,
+and when he is presenting himself as a gentleman
+in a drawing-room, amusing other gentlemen, by means
+of experiments in magic, every one of which may be
+likened to a little play, why should not the stage-set
+be that of a drawing-room, or of a bachelor's study, as
+accurately reproduced as similar rooms are reproduced
+in the modern comedies of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones
+and Mr. Augustus Thomas? The set accepted by
+Messrs. Maskelyne and Devant is devoid of the actuality
+of a real room; it is fantastically stagy, and therefore
+it lacks both veracity and dignity.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Sooner or later some modern magician, in advance
+over his rivals, will take this final step, and the curtain
+will rise on a stage with a box-set realistically reproducing
+a handsome room, with all its decorations and hangings
+and furniture in harmony, Jacobean in style, or
+Chippendale, as the performer's preference may be.
+There will be chairs and tables in their proper places;
+there will be book-cases, and window-boxes of flowers;
+and perhaps there will be a cellaret, where the performer
+may procure any goblet or decanter he needs.
+There will be a broad desk in the center, with its writing-pad
+and its book-rack, and possibly its heap of magazines
+and weekly papers. This set thus furnished will
+look like a room that has really been lived in; it will
+have a door in each of the side walls, and when the
+curtain rises the stage will be empty. Then the doorbell
+will ring, and the servant will enter at one door,
+and, going across the stage to the other, he will admit
+his master&mdash;the master at last of the truly modern art
+of magic. The magician will give his hat and coat
+to the servant, who will take them out, and who will
+never appear on the stage again except in response to
+the master's pressure on the electric button, ordinarily
+used to summon a servant. And the magician will
+present his succession of experiments in magic, utilizing
+only the objects which he may borrow from the
+spectators, or which would naturally be found in a
+gentleman's room. The apparent absence of all apparatus,
+the naturalness of the environment, the easy
+simplicity and the convincing reality of the back-ground&mdash;all
+these elements will coalesce to heighten
+the effect of the marvels to be wrought by a comedian
+playing the part of a magician.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1912.)</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">XVI<br />
+THE LAMENTABLE TRAGEDY OF<br />
+PUNCH AND JUDY<a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">THE LAMENTABLE TRAGEDY OF PUNCH AND
+JUDY<br />I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">When</span> we consider how cosmopolitan is the population
+of these United States, and how freely we have drawn
+upon all the races of Europe, it is very curious that
+the puppet-show does not flourish in our American
+cities as it flourishes in many of the towns on the other
+side of the Western Ocean. The shrill squeak of
+Punch is not infrequent in the streets of London&mdash;altho
+it may not now be heard as often as it was
+a score of years ago. In Paris in the gardens of
+the Tuileries and of the Luxembourg, and again in the
+Champs-Elysées where the children congregate in the
+afternoon, there are nearly half a dozen enclosures
+roped off and provided with cane chairs so that spectators,
+old and young, may be gladdened by the vision
+of Polichinelle, and by the pranks of Guignol. Yet
+even in Paris there are not now as many puppet-shows
+as there were fifty years ago; and in Italy and in Germany
+the traveler fails to find as frequent exhibitions
+of this sort as he used to meet with in the years that
+are gone. Apparently there is everywhere a waning
+interest in the plays performed by the little troop of
+personages animated by the thumb and fingers of the
+invisible performer. And perhaps the declining vogue
+of this diminutive drama in old Europe is one reason
+why it has never achieved a wide popularity in young
+America.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In France the puppet-show is stationary; it has its
+fixed habitation and abode; and its lovers can easily
+discover where to find it when they seek the specific
+pleasure it alone can provide. In England the spectacle
+of Punch and Judy is ambulatory; the bloodthirsty
+hero and the bereaved heroine roam the streets
+at large, and their arrival in any one avenue of traffic
+can never be predicted with certainty. In the United
+States poor Punch has never ventured to show his
+face in the open street, seeking the suffrages of the
+casual throng; he is not peripatetic but intermittent,
+and he makes his appearances only in private houses,
+and only when he is sent for specially to entertain the
+children's party. Here in America Punch is still a
+stranger to the broad public; he has an exotic flavor;
+he suggests Dickens, somehow; and he must be wholly
+unknown to countless thousands who would rejoice to
+make his acquaintance and to laugh at his terrible
+deeds.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">His terrible deeds!&mdash;perhaps there is in these words
+a possible explanation for the failure of Punch to win
+favor among the descendants of the Puritans, who are
+always inclined to apply severe moral standards of
+conduct. Now, if we apply any moral standard at all
+to the conduct of Mr. Punch, the result is simply appalling,
+for the customary drama of which he is the sole
+hero sets before us a story of triumphant villainy, adequately
+to be compared only with the dastardly history
+of Richard III in Shakspere's melodramatic tragedy.
+Mr. Punch is an accessory before the fact in the death
+of his infant child, and when his devoted wife very naturally
+remonstrates with him, he turns upon her with
+invective and violence&mdash;a violence which culminates
+in assassination. Having once seen red and tasted
+blood, he finds himself swiftly started upon a career
+of crime. His total depravity tempts him to a startling
+succession of hideous murders. He slays an inoffensive
+negro, a harmless clown, and a worthy policeman.
+Then he succeeds, by a simple trick, in hanging the
+hangman himself. By his fatal assaults upon these
+two officers of justice, the necessary policeman and the
+useful hangman, Mr. Punch exhibits his contempt for
+the majesty of the law. He stands forth, without a
+shred of conscience, as a practical anarchist, rejecting
+all authority. His hand is against every man and every
+man's hand is against him. And having violated the
+laws of this world, he finally discloses his callous contempt
+for the punishment which ought to await him
+in the next world; he has a hand-to-hand fight with the
+devil himself&mdash;a deadly struggle from which he emerges
+victorious. And this is the end, which crowns the
+work.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_315" id="image_315"></a>
+<img src="images/i_315.png" alt="Behind the scenes
+
+Punch throws away the child
+
+Punch, Judy, and their child
+
+Punch quiets Judy" title="Behind the scenes
+
+Punch throws away the child
+
+Punch, Judy, and their child
+
+Punch quiets Judy" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">When we consider the several episodes of Mr. Punch's
+abhorrent history, we are reluctantly forced to the conclusion
+that his story is even less informed with morality
+than that of Richard III. The crookbacked king
+comes to a bad end at last; he meets with the just
+retribution for his many misdeeds; and he falls before
+the sword of Richmond. But Mr. Punch comes to a
+good end, and so far as we may know, he lives happy
+ever after, like the princes and princesses of the fairytales.
+He may even marry again and have another
+child, to be made away with in its turn. The more
+we consider his misdeeds and his misadventures the
+more shocking they are to our moral sense. Mr.
+Punch appears as a monster of such hideous mien that
+to be hated he needs but to be seen. This is how he
+must appear to every one of us who applies a moral
+standard to the drama, and who is willing to hold
+every character in a play to a strict accountability for
+his words and deeds. If we apply this moral standard
+to the play of Punch and Judy, then that play must be
+dismissed as profoundly and hopelessly immoral, carrying
+ethical infection to all who are so unfortunate as
+to be spectators at its performance. And more particularly,
+it is an absolutely unfit piece for the young,
+whose immature minds need to be guarded against
+everything which might tend to confuse the delicate
+distinctions between right and wrong.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But, of course, we do not apply a moral standard to
+the sayings and doings of Mr. Punch, for the plain and
+sufficient reason that he is not a human being. He is
+not a man and a brother, upon whom we may be
+tempted to pattern ourselves. He is but a six-inch
+puppet, a thing of shreds and patches, a wooden-headed
+doll, vitalized for a moment only by the hand
+concealed inside his flimsy body with its flaunting
+colors. He is too fantastic, too impossible, too unreal,
+too unrelated to any possible world, for us to feel called
+upon to frown upon his misdeeds or to take them seriously.
+He is a joke, and we know that he is a joke,
+and all the children know that he is only a joke. Even
+the youngest child is never tempted to believe in his
+existence and to be moved to follow his example or
+to imitate his dark deeds. The proof of the pudding
+is in the eating; and the proof of a play is in the effect
+it produces upon the spectators. We may question
+whether any one of the millions of performances of
+the lamentable tragedy of Mr. Punch has suggested
+to a single father the fatal neglect of his offspring or
+to a single husband the possibility of wife-murder.
+And we may doubt whether any child, after witnessing
+Mr. Punch's murderous combats with the policeman
+and the devil, has ever felt any lessening of his respect
+for those two time-honored guardians of law and order.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_319" id="image_319"></a>
+<img src="images/i_319.png" alt="Punch on his steed
+
+Punch teaches Jack Ketch how to
+hang a man
+
+Punch in prison
+
+Punch kills the Devil" title="Punch on his steed
+
+Punch teaches Jack Ketch how to
+hang a man
+
+Punch in prison
+
+Punch kills the Devil" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">The plea of confession and avoidance which is here
+set up for Punch and Judy is much the same as that
+set up by Charles Lamb for the frolicsome Restoration
+comedies. Lamb admitted that they were degradingly
+immoral&mdash;if you took them seriously and
+accepted them as pictures of life. But he insisted that
+they were not really amenable to this moral standard,
+since they were plainly impossible in any world known
+to man. Macaulay had no difficulty in showing that
+Lamb was judging others by his clever and sophisticated
+self. To Lamb the creatures of Wycherley and
+Congreve might reveal manners and customs which
+removed them from the sphere of recognizable humanity;
+but the majority of his fellow-spectators were not
+so nimble-witted; they saw characters on the stage
+personated by living performers, and they beheld these
+characters shamelessly doing shameful things. Because
+the persons in the play were represented by actual
+human beings they seemed indisputably human; and
+their deeds could not be considered as outside morality.
+Yet the plea made by Lamb for the Restoration comedies
+has a certain validity when it is put forward in
+behalf of Mr. Punch. He is not personated by an
+actual human being; and even the least sophisticated
+of juvenile spectators does not accept him as a fellow-creature
+strictly amenable to the human code.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">II</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Historians of the Greek drama have often commented
+on the fact that the Athenian actors wore towering
+masks, and that thereby they were deprived of all facial
+expression. In our snug modern theaters, with their
+well-lighted stages, we follow with our eyes the shifting
+emotions as these chase each other across the faces
+of the actors; and this is one of our keenest pleasures
+in the playhouse. In the huge theater of Dionysius at
+Athens, with its ten or twenty thousand spectators,
+seated tier on tier, along the curving hillside of the
+Acropolis, the actor was too far removed from most
+of the playgoers for any play of feature to be visible;
+and critics have commiserated the Attic dramatists
+on their deprivation of this element of potent appeal.
+Yet the question arises whether the Greek playwrights
+were really the losers by this immobility of the actors'
+faces; and we may be allowed to doubt that they were
+when we recall the fact that the faces of Mr. Punch
+and of Mrs. Judy, of the policeman and of the hangman,
+are also fixed once for all. The expression that
+Mr. Punch wears when he is fondling the baby is, perforce,
+the same which illuminates his face when he is
+engaged in joyful combat with the devil, a foeman
+worthy of his stick. Here the imagination of the spectator
+comes to the rescue. The wooden head of Mr.
+Punch is unchanging, no doubt; but those who gaze
+entranced upon his marvelous doings never miss the
+play of feature which they would expect if they were
+part of the audience in a playhouse for grown-ups.
+Quite possibly the Athenian spectators did not mind
+the immobility of the masks their actors wore; indeed,
+that very immobility may have been an incentive to
+their imaginations. When the Greeks went to their
+open-air theater, as when we gather around the tent-like
+theater of Mr. Punch, they knew in advance, as
+we also know, that the faces of the performers would
+be unchanging; therefore they did not expect any
+variety of expression; and probably they got along as
+well without it as we do at a puppet-show.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There is another likeness between Attic tragedy and
+Punch and Judy; there is a limitation in the number
+of characters we are allowed to see at the same time.
+As the hidden performer who operates all the figures
+has only two hands, he can bring before us at any one
+moment only Mr. Punch and one other of the several
+characters. The fingers of the right hand animate
+Mr. Punch, and the fingers of the left hand animate
+in turn Mrs. Judy and the negro and the clown. At
+Athens (for reasons which need not here be discussed)
+the dramatist had the use of only three actors, even
+tho these might each of them "double" and appear
+as two or more of the successive characters of the play.
+So it was that there were never more than three persons
+taking part in any given episode of an Attic tragedy
+as there are never more than two persons taking
+part in any given episode of Punch and Judy. In
+the thumb-and-finger plays devised in Paris by M.
+Lemercier de Neuville, he felt so severely the inconvenience
+of his limitation to two characters that he
+devised a kind of spiral-spring arrangement inside
+the costumes of his little figures to hold up their
+heads; and he prepared invisible supports jutting out
+just below the flat ledge which forms the base of the
+proscenium. Thus he was enabled to leave the figure
+in sight, while he withdrew his hand to animate another
+character. His <i>Pupazzi</i>, as he called them, were
+clever caricatures of contemporary celebrities; and he
+was ingenious enough sometimes to maneuver half a
+dozen of them at once with his single pair of hands,
+four adjusted into the projecting rests, and two on his
+fingers.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In the sumptuous puppet-show in the gardens of the
+Tuileries the same result is achieved by the employment
+of two or three manipulators, so that four or
+even six figures may appear at once. This has greatly
+enlarged the scope of the performance; and the manager
+of this theater has very ambitious aims. He likes
+to rearrange for his juvenile audience the most appropriate
+of the pieces which have won favor in the real
+theaters, and to present these with all sorts of spectacular
+adornments. He has even ventured to give
+plays as elaborate as 'Around the World in Eighty
+Days.' But it may be doubted whether this vaulting
+ambition has not overleaped itself, and whether a
+puppet-show does not gain rather than lose by restricting
+its efforts within narrower limits. After all,
+nothing so delights us at a puppet-show as the feats
+which are most characteristic and least difficult of
+accomplishment. We joy to behold one tiny figure
+belaboring another with his solid club or to follow the
+vicissitudes of a bout at single-stick, when both combatants
+thwack lustily at each other's wooden heads.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">III</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Yet this mention of M. Lemercier de Neuville's
+<i>Pupazzi</i>, with their varied repertory of Aristophanic
+commentaries on current events, and this memory of
+the spectacular efforts exhibited in the gardens of the
+Tuileries, suggest a possible explanation for the fact
+that Punch and Judy have failed to find wide-spread
+favor here in America and that they seem to be losing
+their pristine popularity in England. There is a pitiable
+monotony of program in all English-speaking
+puppet-shows. They confine their repertory to the
+single play which sets forth the deeds and misdeeds of
+Mr. Punch. Now, in the Continent of Europe there
+is no such monotony. Not only in the gardens of the
+Tuileries but in the Champs-Elysées a young spectator
+can sit thru performance after performance without
+fear of having to witness the same piece. Punch
+appears in only one drama, whereas his French rival,
+Guignol, in his time plays many parts, with a host of
+other characters to be his associates, some in one
+piece and some in another. And the several plays
+are adorned with a variety of scenery. Of course, there
+cannot be a very wide range of subject; and always is
+the stick a prominent feature in the miniature drama.
+There are a certain number of traditional Guignol
+pieces, handed down from generation to generation.
+Some of these have been printed for the use of devoted
+students of the drama, and some are to be had in little
+pamphlets for the benefit of the happy French children
+who may have had a puppet theater with its dozen
+or more figures presented to them as a New Year's
+gift. There is in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia
+University the manuscript of half a dozen of these little
+plays, written out (in all the license of his own simplified
+spelling) by the incomparable performer who was
+in charge of the leading Guignol in the Champs-Elysées
+in 1867.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It is rather curious that the English puppet-show
+should have confined itself for now nearly a hundred
+years to the unique Punch and Judy, when the puppet-shows
+of other countries have a changing repertory.
+It was a puppet performance of a German perversion
+of Marlowe's 'Doctor Faustus' which first introduced
+Goethe to the Faust legend. George Sand, unlike the
+great German poet in most ways, was yet like him
+in her delight in the puppet-show. In her country
+place at Nohant, she had a tiny theater of her own
+for which she dressed all the puppets, while her son
+Maurice carved the heads, painted the scenery, devised
+the plays, and improvised the dialog. Maurice Sand
+it was, sometimes alone, but occasionally with the aid
+of a friend, who manipulated the little figures and bestowed
+upon them a momentary vitality. His mother
+persuaded him to write out a dozen of the more successful
+of his little plays for puppets and to publish
+them; and this volume, the 'Théâtre des Marionnettes
+à Nohant,' appeared in 1876. George Sand herself
+wrote a delightful account of the humble beginnings
+of this famous puppet-show, and described how there
+came in time to be all sorts of ingenious improvements
+for achieving spectacular effects.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">She declared that the puppet-show is not what it
+is vainly thought, because it demands an art of a
+special kind, not only in the construction of the little
+figures themselves, but more especially in the story
+which these little figures are to interpret. She held
+that the particular field of the puppet playwright-performer
+was to be found in the dramatization of
+protracted fantastic romances, abounding in comic
+characters and in comic episodes and gratifying the
+fundamental human liking for long-drawn tales of
+adventure and for fantastic fairy-stories. She found
+in her son's acted narratives a rest from reality, a release
+from the oppression of every-day life, an excursion
+into a realm of fancy and of legend&mdash;even if the
+legend was itself a fanciful invention of the improvising
+performer. And she declared that she liked the
+puppet playhouse in her own home, because it was a
+domestic and fireside pleasure, which could be enjoyed
+without the exertion imposed by a visit to a real
+theater. Obviously she found as much delight in
+being a spectator&mdash;after having been a costumer&mdash;as
+her son did in being the author and operator of the
+spectacle.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">IV</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There is one note to be made upon George Sand's
+account of the slow development of the puppet-show
+at Nohant, beginning as early as 1847. If you will
+look at any set of Punch and Judy figures hung up
+to-day in the toy store to tempt the eye of Young
+America, you will discover alongside Mr. Punch and
+Mrs. Judy, Jack Ketch and the Devil, a strange green
+figure with huge jaws and double rows of white teeth.
+This verdant beast has a body like all other Punch and
+Judy figures, a loose cloth funnel to slip over the sleeve
+of the operator; but its head suggests the head of an
+alligator, or of a crocodile, or of a dragon. Now, if
+you will turn to the classic text of the English play of
+Punch and Judy, edited with a learned introduction
+and an abundance of scholarly annotation by John
+Payne Collier&mdash;at least, so it is believed, altho the
+rare little book is anonymous&mdash;you will find no mention
+of any strange beast of this sort. Collier's text
+of the play is adorned by two dozen illustrations,
+etched by George Cruikshank, and in no one of these
+plates will you discover any crocodile, or alligator, or
+dragon. You will find Toby, the dog, who still survives
+in most of the few shows to be seen to-day in
+the streets of London; and you will find Hector, the
+gallant steed that Mr. Punch mounts with difficulty&mdash;and
+it is sad to have to record that Hector is no longer
+in the service of Mr. Punch. In fact, one devoted admirer
+of puppet-shows, whose memory goes back
+nearly fifty years, is ready to declare that he has never
+laid eyes on Hector&mdash;except in Cruikshank's illustrations.
+But Mr. Punch, deprived of the privilege of
+bestriding Hector, now enjoys the fiercer delight of
+overcoming the green-eyed alligator.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Here we have a question of profound historic interest.
+Whence came the strange beast with the wide
+jaws? And here is where George Sand's pleasant paper
+is a very present help in time of need. She tells us
+that her son besought her to make a green monster
+for one of the earliest pieces he devised for her puppet-figures.
+She did as she was bid, and she sacrificed a
+pair of blue velvet slippers to provide the marvelous
+creature with his gently smiling jaws. She draws attention
+to the fact that the slippers were blue, and to
+the further fact that nevertheless the strange beast
+was always called the Green Monster. And here may
+be the explanation of the historic mystery. The fame
+of the puppets of Nohant was borne abroad; they
+were talked about all thru France; and they were
+discussed again and again in the Parisian newspapers.
+What more likely than that one of the professional
+puppet players should have seen the infinite possibilities
+of the Green Monster, and should have perceived
+its novel fascination for children? Thereupon he
+borrowed it for his own performances. Certainly it is
+that the Green Monster is a character in at least one
+of the manuscript plays preserved in the Dramatic
+Museum of Columbia University, and written out
+half a century ago. Probably the Green Monster
+strayed from the puppet-show of the Champs-Elysées
+sooner or later to one of the toy stores of Paris at the
+request of some boy who desired it for his own. When
+the Green Monster had elected domicile in the stores
+of Paris, he was soon appropriated by the toy-makers
+of Germany for export to Great Britain and the United
+States.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1912.)</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">XVII<br />
+THE PUPPET-PLAY, PAST AND PRESENT<a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">THE PUPPET-PLAY, PAST AND PRESENT<br />I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> her charming and instructive account of the ingenious
+puppet-shows with which her son Maurice used
+to amuse himself and her guests at Nohant half a century
+ago, George Sand records the fact that the erudite
+scholar, Magnan, who wrote a learned history of the
+puppet-show from the remotest antiquity, did not discriminate
+sharply between the two entirely different
+kinds of little figures, both of which are carelessly called
+puppets in English, and marionettes in French. One
+class comprises these empty and flexible figures which
+are animated by the thumb and two fingers of the performer
+who exhibits them by holding his hands above
+his head, as in the 'Punch and Judy' show. The other
+contains the larger dolls, suspended on wires (which
+are supposed to be invisible) and manipulated by one
+or more performers overhead, who give life to these
+figures by jerking the various strings as the action of
+the play may require. These last are the true marionettes;
+and for the first we have, unfortunately, no distinctive
+name. It is greatly to be regretted that the
+two very different types of puppets are not set apart
+from each other satisfactorily by the contributor of
+the article on marionettes in the latest edition of the
+'Encyclopedia Britannica.'</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Each of these two sorts of puppets has an interest
+of its own; and each of them has its special and peculiar
+relation to the drama. Both of them have a long and
+honorable history, and can be traced back in the scanty
+records of a remote antiquity; altho it seems more
+likely that the true marionette&mdash;the little figure moved
+by wires from overhead&mdash;is the older of the two,
+antedating by many centuries the Punch and Judy figure,
+which owes its abrupt and awkward movements
+to the human thumb and fingers. Both classes are
+to be found to-day all over the world, not only in the
+cities of civilization, but in unsuspected nooks and
+corners on all the shores of all the seven seas. In
+Turkey, for example, under the name of Karaguez,
+there is a Punch and Judy of enormous popularity and
+of doubtful decency, while in Siam there are marionettes
+which perform religious plays of traditional appeal.
+Apparently the puppet-show of one type or the
+other satisfies in its fashion that dramatic instinct
+which every people possesses in greater or less intensity.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Both kinds of puppet-show flourish in France, and
+have there been lifted to a more elevated plane of art;
+and both kinds retain their popularity in Italy, altho
+in an humbler form. The French are inveterate artists;
+and they are like the Greeks in desiring to do all
+things decently and in order. The Italians have, perhaps,
+a stronger native gift for the drama and they
+are ready to enjoy a simpler and more primitive puppet-play.
+It is from Italy that we who speak English
+have derived our Punch and Judy. Mr. Punch is a
+direct descendant of that favorite figure of robust
+Neapolitan farce, Pulcinella; and so is the French Polichinelle.
+And in Italy to-day the true marionettes
+have an even broader popularity than the Punch and
+Judy figures. The Italians who have lately flocked to
+America in their thousands, until New York now contains
+more of them than Venice, have imported in the
+original package the legendary puppet-show setting
+forth the romantic stories of the Middle Ages and of
+the early Renascence. We look upon Mr. Punch as
+comic; but the Italians take their pleasure seriously
+and the marionettes in their puppet-shows to be seen
+in New York are truly heroic, and not infrequently
+highly tragic.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_335" id="image_335"></a>
+<img src="images/i_335.png" alt="Roman puppets
+
+Greek and Roman puppets
+
+Puppet of Java" title="Roman puppets
+
+Greek and Roman puppets
+
+Puppet of Java" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">In the interesting discussion of 'Medieval Story,' in
+which Professor W. W. Lawrence of Columbia University
+has traced the influence of various ideals of the
+Middle Ages upon our modern social organization, he
+has a striking description of the marionette performances
+which the exiles of Italy have brought with them
+to America. "Any one who walks thru the Italian
+quarter of New York City in the evening may notice
+over a doorway an illuminated sign, 'Theater of Marionettes.'
+If his curiosity tempts him inside, into the
+low room crowded with enthusiastic spectators, he will
+see, on a rude stage, a group of puppets almost as large
+as life, representing knights and ladies, acting out a
+little drama in response to the jerking of strings fastened
+to their arms, and of iron rods firmly fixed in
+their heads. The warriors are gorgeously attired in
+shining armor and plumed helmets; and the ladies
+have wonderful costumes of bright colors, with a great
+deal of embroidery and decoration. An Italian in
+shirt-sleeves in the wings at the side of the stage
+speaks their lines for them, with all the elocutionary
+flourishes which he can command. Fiercely immobile
+as to expression, but most active as to arms and legs,
+these manikins march about, soliloquize, make love,
+and debate in council. But it is their battles which
+arouse the greatest enthusiasm among the audience;
+and, indeed, these are fought in a way that is a joy to
+see. Then it is that heroic deeds are done&mdash;tin swords
+resound upon tin armor, helmets are battered about
+and knocked off, dust rises from the field, the valiant
+dead fall in staring heaps. At such moments the spectators
+can hardly restrain themselves from emotion,
+yet the story is well known to them&mdash;perhaps some
+one sitting near by will volunteer to explain it, asserting
+that he has known it ever since he was a boy and
+that he has read it all in a book which he has at home,
+called 'Reali di Franci.' It is a version of the old tale
+of Charlemagne and his knights, which, after traveling
+far from its native home in France, was taken up by
+the Italian people many centuries ago, and made so
+much their own that few heroes have been closer to
+their hearts than Roland, or as they call him, Orlando.
+Even in their homes in the New World they still celebrate
+him, so that the very newsboys in the streets of
+modern America are keeping alive the heroic traditions
+of the age of Charlemagne."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_339" id="image_339"></a>
+<img src="images/i_339.png" alt="" title="" /><br />
+<span class="caption">A Sicilian marionette show
+From "By Italian Seas," by Ernest C. Peixotto</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="h2">II</p>
+
+<p class="indent">When we compare the account which Professor Lawrence
+has here given of the Italian puppet-shows in
+New York with the description of these same performances
+in their native land half a century ago, which we
+find in the 'Roba di Roma' of W. W. Story, the American
+sculptor-poet, we perceive that there has been
+little modification of method in the past threescore
+years. Story studied all sides of the Roman populace,
+and he maintained that nothing was more characteristically
+Italian than the marionette theater. He tells
+us that the love for the acting of <i>burattini</i> [or puppets]
+is universal among the lower classes thruout Italy,
+and in some cities, especially in Genoa, no pains are
+spared "in their costume, construction, and movement
+to render them lifelike. They are made of wood, generally
+from two to three feet in height, with very large
+heads, and supernatural glaring eyes that never wink,
+and are clad in all the splendor of tinsel, velvet, and
+steel. Their joints are so flexible that the least weight
+or strain upon them effects a dislocation, and they are
+moved by wires attached to their heads and extremities.
+The largest are only about half the height of a
+man, yet as the stage and all the appointments and
+scenery are upon the same scale of proportion, the eye
+is soon deceived, and accepts them as of life-size. But
+if by accident a hand or arm of one of the wire-pullers
+appears from behind the scenes or descends below the
+hangings, it startles you by its portentous size; and
+the audience in the stage-boxes instead of reducing
+the <i>burattini</i> to Lilliputians by contrast, as they lean
+forward, become themselves Brobdingnagians, with
+elephantine hands and heads."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Story insisted that there is nothing ludicrous to an
+Italian audience in the performances of these diminutive
+men and women. On the contrary, nothing is more
+serious both to the spectators and to the unforeseen
+operators. In fact, he declared, no human being could
+be so serious as these tiny performers. "Their countenances
+are as solemn as death, and more unchanging
+than the face of a clock. Their terrible gravity when,
+with drooping heads and collapsed arms, they fix on
+you their great goggle-eyes is at times ghastly. The
+plays they perform are mostly heroic, romantic, and
+historical. They stoop to nothing which is not startling
+in incident, imposing in style, and grandiose in
+movement. And the Italian audience listens with a
+grave and profound interest, as tho the performers were
+not mere puppets, but actually the heroes they are supposed
+to be. The inflated and extravagant discourse
+of the characters is accepted at its face value; to the
+spectators it is grand and noble. And the foreign visitor
+must control any desire he may feel to smile at the
+extraordinary spectacle he is witnessing, and at the
+marvelous rodomontade he is hearing. To laugh out
+loud at one of these heroic puppet-plays would be as
+indecorous as to indulge in laughter during a church
+service."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_343" id="image_343"></a>
+<img src="images/i_343.png" alt="A Belgian puppet
+
+A Chinese puppet theater
+
+Puppet figure representing the younger Coquelin"
+title="A Belgian puppet
+
+A Chinese puppet theater
+
+Puppet figure representing the younger Coquelin" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">Incidental to the heroic dramas which the puppets
+play are interludes of ballet-dancing like those which
+are intercalated, more or less adroitly, into the grand
+opera performed by full-grown men and women. The
+Italians are born pantomimists, and they are accomplished
+dancers. Therefore, there is no reason for surprise
+that human pantomime and human dancing are
+imitated in the marionette theaters. There is reason
+for surprise, however, that Story did not perceive
+clearly the advantages possessed by the dancing puppets
+over the dancers of more solid flesh and blood.
+He found something comic in the pantomime of the
+puppets, "whose every motion is effected by wires, who
+imitate the gestures of despair with hands that cannot
+shut, and, with a wooden gravity of countenance,
+throw their bodies into terrible contortions to make
+up for the lack of expression in the face." In mere
+pantomime it is probable that the puppets would labor
+under a serious disability, for if a performer cannot use
+his voice, he needs facial expression to assist the gestures
+by which only can he then convey his meaning
+to the other performers and to the spectators. Perhaps
+it is not too much to assert that the puppet-show
+is not the proper place for pantomime.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">III</p>
+
+<p class="indent">We need not wonder that Story admitted their dancing
+to be superior to their pantomime. Yet he failed
+to appreciate the true cause of this superiority, and he
+was inclined to comment upon the dancing of the
+<i>burattini</i> in a somewhat satiric fashion. He tells us
+how the principal dancer suddenly appears, "knocks
+her wooden knees together, and jerking her head
+about, salutes the audience with a smile quite as
+artificial as we could see in the best trained of her
+fleshly rivals." But this artificial smile must have
+been fixed and permanent on the features of this diminutive
+dancer&mdash;or else the Roman-American essayist
+merely imagined its presence. "Then, with a masterly
+ease, after describing air-circles with her toes far higher
+than her head and poising herself in impossible positions,
+she bounds or rather flies forward with superhuman
+lightness, performs feats of choreography to
+awaken envy in Cerito and drive Elssler to despair,
+and, poising on her pointed toe that disdains to touch
+the floor, turns never-ending pirouettes on nothing at
+all, till at last, throwing both her wooden hands forward,
+she suddenly comes to a swift stop to receive
+your applause."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">This description is unsympathetic, and it induces
+the surmise that the operator of the <i>burattini</i> at the
+performance described was not a master of his art and
+did not know how to profit by the possibilities of that
+art. Yet one of Story's phrases serves to explain why
+the suspended puppet is superbly qualified to excel in
+ballet-dancing; that phrase is the one which credits
+the dancing doll with "supernatural lightness." A
+skilful operator of the wires which bestow life and
+movement and grace, is able to imitate easily and exquisitely
+the most difficult feats of the human dancer.
+If he is sufficiently adroit he robs his suspended figure
+of all awkwardness, and he dowers her with a floating
+ethereality surpassing that attainable by any living
+performer. Now, this floating ethereality is precisely
+the quality which gives us most pleasure when we
+are spectators at the performance of a really fine
+ballet. It is the supreme art of the great dancer to
+soar lightly aloft, seeming to spurn the stage and to
+abide in the air. Only very rarely is this illusion possible
+to the merely human dancer; and when achieved
+it is but fleeting. Yet this illusion is absolutely within
+the control of the manipulator of the puppet-dancers.
+He can make them execute feats of levitation, achievable
+only by the most marvelously gifted and by the
+most arduously trained of human dancers.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_347" id="image_347"></a>
+<img src="images/i_347.png" alt="Puppets in Burma
+
+The puppet play of Master Peter (Italian)" title="Puppets in Burma
+
+The puppet play of Master Peter (Italian)" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">Of course, the skilful performer must carefully avoid
+swinging his tiny figures aimlessly thru the air. He
+must limit the feats that he permits them to accomplish
+to those which can be actually accomplished by
+human beings, altho he can do easily what the human
+beings can achieve only with more or less obvious
+effort, and he can impart a volatile elasticity a little
+beyond the power of any human being however favored
+by Terpsichore. When 'Salome' was, for a
+season, the sensation of the hour, it was produced by
+Holden's marionettes; and it afforded a delightful
+spectacle long to be remembered by all who had the
+felicity of beholding it. Whatever of vulgarity or of
+grossness there might be in the play itself, or in the
+Dance of the Seven Veils, was purged away by the single
+fact that all the performers were puppets. So dexterous
+was the manipulation of the unseen operator who
+controlled the wires and strings which gave life to the
+seductive Salome as she circled around the stage in
+most bewitching fashion, and so precise and accurate
+was the imitation of a human dancer, that the receptive
+spectator could not but feel that here at last the
+play of doubtful propriety had found its only fit
+stage and its only proper performer. The memory of
+that exhibition is a perennial pleasure to all who possess
+it. A thing of beauty it was; and it abides in
+remembrance as a joy forever. It revealed the art of
+the puppet-show at its summit. And the art itself
+was eternally justified by that one performance of the
+highest technical skill and of the utmost delicacy of
+taste.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">If the most marvelous exploits of terpsichorean art,
+almost inexecutable by the human toes and the human
+legs of living dancers, are capable of reproduction by
+puppets skilfully manipulated by the puller of the
+wires and strings whereby the little figures are suspended,
+so also are the dexterous feats of the juggler.
+One of the specialties of the sole surviving puppet-show
+of this sort in the Champs-Elysées is the performance
+of a juggler who tosses aloft and catches in
+turn a number of glittering balls. The delicate balancing
+of the tight-rope walker, with her frequent
+pirouettes on her toes, and with her surprising summersets,
+is also one of the exhibitions in which the puppet
+can defy the rivalry of any living executant, however
+skilful in the art. At the circus we feel that the tightrope
+dancer might fall, whereas at the puppet-show we
+know with certainty that any fatal mishap is impossible.
+In Holden's marionette program the miniature
+mimicry of humanity was carried to the utmost edge
+of the possible; and no item on his bill of fare was more
+delectable than the series of scenes in which the traditional
+Clown and Pantaloon played tricks on the
+traditional Policeman, and in which they joined forces
+in belaboring an inoffensive donkey. As the unfortunate
+quadruped was also a puppet, there was no
+painful strain on our sympathy.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">IV</p>
+
+<p class="indent">If a performance by puppets deprived 'Salome' of its
+vulgar grossness by removing it outside the arena of
+humanity, so to speak, and by relegating it to an unreal
+world beyond the strict diocese of the conscience,
+so a performance by puppets of a passion-play or of
+any other drama in which the Deity has perforce to
+appear as a character, is thereby relieved of any tincture
+of irreverence. We no longer see a divine being
+interpreted by a human being. We cannot help feeling
+that all the persons in the play, whether they dwell
+in heaven or on earth, are equally remote from our
+common humanity. And therefore we need not be
+surprised when we discover that the marionette has
+long been allowed to appear in religious drama. Indeed,
+it appears probable that the very name <i>marionette</i>
+is directly derived from the name of the Virgin.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Very early in the history of the Christian Church
+were the puppets permitted to perform passion-plays
+and little dramas derived from the stories contained
+both in the New and the Old Testaments. In England
+under Elizabeth and James religious puppet-shows of
+this kind went wandering about the kingdom, taking
+into the smallest villages an entertainment which would
+afford to the rural inhabitants the same kind of pleasant
+instruction which the dwellers in the larger towns had
+in the more elaborate and long-drawn mysteries performed
+by the trade-guilds on the Corpus Christi day.
+That masterly rogue Autolycus in the 'Winter's Tale'
+tells us that in his time he had been on the road with
+"a motion of the Prodigal Son"&mdash;and a <i>motion</i> was the
+Elizabethan term for a marionette-exhibition. In like
+manner one of the characters in Ben Jonson's 'Every
+Man out of His Humor' speaks of "a new motion of
+the city of Nineveh, with Jonas and the whale." Of
+course, the puppet performers, like the grown-up actors,
+did not long confine themselves to sacred themes; they
+ventured also into contemporary history. A puppet
+showman who appears in Ben Jonson's 'Bartholomew
+Fair' tells us that a certain motion setting forth the
+mysterious Gunpowder Plot, was "a get-penny."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Story described one puppet-play which he saw in a
+little village on the main road from Rome to Naples,
+and which had for its central figure Judas Iscariot.
+But here again his attitude is unsympathetic, perhaps
+because the performance was clumsy. "The kiss of
+Judas, when, after sliding along the stage, he suddenly
+turned with a sidelong jerk and rapped the other
+wooden puppet's head with his own, as well as the subsequent
+scene in which he goes out and hangs himself,
+beggar description." Yet the expatriated American
+spectator honestly recorded that the Italian spectators
+"looked and listened with great gravity, seemed to be
+highly edified, and certainly showed no signs of seeing
+anything ludicrous in the performance." We may
+venture the suggestion that even the sophisticated
+sculptor-poet himself would have seen nothing ludicrous
+in this performance if the operator of Judas had
+been as skilful as the operator of Salome in Holden's
+marionettes.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_353" id="image_353"></a>
+<img src="images/i_353.png" alt="" title="" /><br />
+<span class="caption">A Neapolitan Punchinella<br />
+From "By Italian Seas," by Ernest C. Peixotto</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">A few years ago in Paris one of the younger poets
+wrote a passion-play which was performed during Lent
+by a company of dolls, designed and dressed in fit and
+appropriate costumes by an artist friend familiar with
+the manners and customs of the Holy Land. While
+the wires were managed by expert hands, the words of
+the dialog were spoken by the poet himself, and by
+two or three other poets who came to his aid. This
+must have been a seemly spectacle, and it won careful
+consideration from more than one of the most eminent
+dramatic critics of France. Here we may find a useful
+suggestion for those who wish to see certain plays
+by modern dramatic poets, in which the Deity is a
+necessary character&mdash;Rostand's 'Samaritaine,' for one,
+and Hauptmann's 'Hannele,' for another. Many of
+the devout have a natural repugnance to any performance
+on the stage (with its materialistic environment
+and its often sordid conditions) which calls for the
+impersonation of a divine being by an actor of ordinary
+flesh and blood. Yet if these same plays were reverently
+performed by marionettes the aroma of irreverence
+would be removed. It might even be possible to
+reproduce in the puppet-show not a little of the solemn
+religious effect which is felt by all visitors to the passion-play
+at Oberammergau.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1912.)</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">XVIII<br />
+SHADOW-PANTOMIME WITH ALL THE
+MODERN IMPROVEMENTS<a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">
+SHADOW-PANTOMIME WITH ALL THE MODERN
+IMPROVEMENTS<br />I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">An</span> American; improving on a suggestion of a Frenchman,
+has declared that "language was given to man to
+conceal his thoughts&mdash;and to woman to express her
+emotions." Unfortunately, language is so often inexact
+that even when it is sufficient to express emotion,
+it is not precise enough even to conceal thought.
+Sometimes a term is wholly devoid of truth, as when
+we call a certain solid a "lead-pencil," which contains
+no lead, and when we label a certain liquid "soda-water,"
+which contains no soda. Sometimes the term
+is so vague that it may mean all things to all men.
+Who, for example, would be bold enough to insist on
+his own definition of "romanticism"? Sometimes
+again the term covers two or three things which demand
+a sharper differentiation. This is the case with
+the compound word "shadow-pantomime." It is the
+only name for three distinct things.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">First, there is the representation by the dark profile
+of the human hand upon a wall or a screen, of
+human heads, and of animal figures, either by an adroit
+arrangement of the fingers alone, or by the aid of adjusted
+shapes of cardboard, so as to suggest a hat on
+the head and a pipe in the mouth and other needed
+accessories; this primitive entertainment is sometimes
+styled "shadowgraphy."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Second, there is the full-sized silhouette of a human
+figure, due to the shadow cast by the body standing
+before a lamp, and magnified or diminished as it approaches
+or recedes the spectators. This is the familiar
+parlor amusement which Sir James Barrie cleverly
+utilized with dramatic effect in the final act of his
+'Professor's Love-Story,' when one of the characters,
+standing outside a house, sees the black profiles of
+other characters projected clearly on the drawn shade
+of the window before which he is placed.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Then, thirdly, there is the true shadow-pantomime,
+called by the French "Chinese shadows," <i>ombres chinoises</i>,
+in which the tiny figures, made either of flat cardboard
+or of metal, are exhibited behind a translucent
+screen and before a strong light. This is by far the
+most interesting and the most important of the three
+widely different kinds of semi-dramatic entertainment,
+often carelessly confounded together even in the special
+treatises devoted to this humble art. In France these
+Chinese shadows have been popular for more than
+a hundred years, since it was in the eighteenth century
+that the performer who took the name of Séraphin
+established his little theater and won the favor of the
+younger members of the royal family by his presentation
+of the alluring spectacle, the rudimentary little
+piece, still popular with children, and still known by
+its original title, the 'Broken Bridge.'</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It may not be fanciful to infer that the immediate
+suggestion for this spectacle was derived from the
+contemporary vogue of the silhouette itself, this portrait
+in solid black taking its name from the Frenchman
+who was minister of finance in 1759. At all events, it
+was in 1770 that Séraphin began to amuse the children
+of Paris; and it was more than a century thereafter
+that M. Lemercier de Neuville elaborated his ingeniously
+articulated <i>Pupazzi noirs</i>. It was a little later
+still that Caran d'Ache delighted the more sophisticated
+children of a larger growth, who were wont to assemble
+at the Chat Noir, with the striking series of military
+silhouettes resuscitating the mighty Napoleonic epic.
+And it was at the Chat Noir again that Rivière revealed
+the further possibilities latent in shadow-pantomime,
+and to be developed by the aid of colored
+backgrounds supplied by a magic lantern. Restricted
+as the sphere of the shadow-pantomime necessarily
+is, the native artistic impulse of the French has been
+rarely better disclosed than by their surprising elaboration
+of a form of amusement, seemingly fitted only to
+charm the infant mind, into an entertainment satisfactory
+to the richly developed esthetic sense of mature
+Parisian playgoers. Just as the rustic revels of remote
+villagers contained the germ out of which the Greeks
+were able to develop their austere and elevating tragedy,
+and just as the modern drama was evolved in the
+course of centuries out of the medieval mysteries, one
+source of which we may discover in the infant Christ
+in the cradle still displayed at Christmastide in Christian
+churches thruout the world, so the simple Chinese
+shadows of Séraphin supplied the root on which Parisian
+artists were able to graft their ingenious improvements.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The little spectacle proffered originally by Séraphin
+was frankly infantile in its appeal, and the 'Broken
+Bridge' is as plainly adjusted to the simple likings of
+the child as is the lamentable tragedy of Punch and
+Judy or the puppet-show in which Polichinelle exhibits
+his hump and his terpsichorean agility. The two arms
+of the broken bridge arch over a little stream but fail
+to meet in the center. A flock of ducks crosses leisurely
+from one bank to the other. A laborer appears on the
+left-hand fragment of the bridge and begins to swing
+his pick to loosen stones at the end, and these fragments
+are then seen to fall into the water. The figure of the
+workman is articulated, or at least one arm is on a
+separate piece and moves on a pivot so that a hidden
+string can raise the pick and let it fall. The laborer
+sings at his work; and in France he indulges in the traditional
+lyric about the Bridge of Avignon, where everybody
+dances in a circle. Then a traveler appears on
+the right-hand end of the bridge. He hails the laborer,
+who is hard of hearing at first, but who finally asks
+him what he wants. The traveler explains that he
+wishes to cross and asks how he can do this. The
+laborer keeps on picking away, and sings that "the
+ducks and the geese they all swim over." The irritated
+traveler then asks how far it is across, and the
+laborer again sings, this time to the effect that "when
+you're in the middle you're half-way over." Then
+the traveler inquires how deep the stream may be,
+and he gets the exasperating response in song, that
+if he will only throw in a stone, he'll soon find the
+bottom. This dialog bears an obvious resemblance
+to that traditionally associated with the tune of the
+'Arkansaw Traveler.'</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_363" id="image_363"></a>
+<img src="images/i_363.png" alt="The broken bridge
+
+Reproduced by permission of Hachette &amp; Co., Paris
+Plan showing the construction of a shadow-picture theater
+
+A Hungarian dancer. This explains the
+mechanism of the shadow picture opposite
+
+A Hungarian dancer
+
+From a shadow picture by Lemercier de Neuville" title="The broken bridge
+
+Reproduced by permission of Hachette &amp; Co., Paris
+Plan showing the construction of a shadow-picture theater
+
+A Hungarian dancer. This explains the
+mechanism of the shadow picture opposite
+
+A Hungarian dancer
+
+From a shadow picture by Lemercier de Neuville" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">Then a boatman appears, rowing his little skiff, his
+backbone pivoted so that his body can move to and
+fro. The traveler makes a bargain with him and is
+taken across, after many misadventures, one of them
+with a crocodile, which opens its jaws and threatens to
+engulf the boat&mdash;this amphibious beast having been
+a recent addition to the original playlet, and probably
+borrowed from the Green Monster not long ago added
+to the group of Punch and Judy figures. And the exciting
+conclusion of this entrancing spectacle displays
+a most moral application of the principle of poetic
+justice. The ill-natured laborer advances too far out
+on his edge of the broken bridge, and detaches a large
+fragment. As this tumbles into the water he loses
+his footing and falls forward himself, only to be instantly
+devoured by the crocodile, which disappears
+with its unexpected prey, whereupon the placid ducks
+and geese again swim over&mdash;and the curtain falls.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">II</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There are a score of other little plays like the 'Broken
+Bridge,' adroitly adjusted to the caliber of the juvenile
+mind. In a British collection may be found a piece
+representing a succession of appalling episodes supposed
+to take place in a 'Haunted House,' and in a French
+manual for the use of youthful amateurs may be discovered
+a rudimentary version of Molière's 'Imaginary
+Invalid,' to be performed by silhouettes with articulated
+limbs. Here again we perceive the inaccuracy of the
+term "shadow-pantomime," since the most of the
+figures are not articulated, and, being motionless, they
+are deprived of the freedom of gesture which is the essential
+element of true pantomime. Moreover, they
+are all made to take part in various dialogs, and this
+again is a negation of the fundamental principle of
+pantomime, which ought to be wordless. Here the
+French term "Chinese shadows" is more exact and
+less limiting than the English "shadow-pantomime."
+It is perhaps a pity that the old-fashioned term
+"gallanty-show," has not won a wider acceptance in
+English.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The little pieces due to Séraphin and his humble
+followers in France and in England, devised to amuse
+children only, were simple enough in plot, and yet they
+were sufficient to suggest to admirers of this unpretending
+form of theatrical art plays of a more imposing proportion.
+M. Paul Eudel, the art critic, has published
+an amply illustrated volume in which he collected
+the fairy-pieces, and the more spectacular melodramas
+composed by his grandfather in the first quarter of
+the nineteenth century, in the dark days that preceded
+Waterloo. And in the third quarter of the nineteenth
+century, in the dark days that preceded Sedan, M.
+Lemercier de Neuville, relinquishing for a while the
+Punch and Judy puppets which he called <i>Pupazzi</i>, and
+which he had exhibited in a succession of gentle caricatures
+of Parisian personalities with a mildly Aristophanic
+flavor of contemporary satire, turned to the
+familiar Chinese shadows of his childhood and devised
+what he called his <i>Pupazzi noirs</i>, animated shadows.
+He also has issued a collection of these little pieces
+with a full explanation of the method of performance
+and with half a hundred illustrations, revealing all
+the secrets of maneuvering the little figures. Indeed,
+Lemercier de Neuville's manual is the most ample
+which has yet appeared; and it is the most interesting
+in that he was at once his own playwright, his own
+designer of figures, and his own performer.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_367" id="image_367"></a>
+<img src="images/i_367.png" alt="The return from the Bois de Boulogne
+Four shadow pictures by Caran d&#39;Ache
+
+The ballet
+From a shadow picture by Lemercier de Neuville
+Reproduced by permission of Hachette &amp; Co., Paris
+
+A regiment of French soldiers
+From a shadow picture by R. de La Nézière" title="The return from the Bois de Boulogne
+Four shadow pictures by Caran d&#39;Ache
+
+The ballet
+From a shadow picture by Lemercier de Neuville
+
+Reproduced by permission of Hachette &amp; Co., Paris
+
+A regiment of French soldiers
+
+From a shadow picture by R. de La Nézière" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">As the grandfather of M. Eudel had been more ambitious
+than Séraphin, so Lemercier de Neuville was
+more ambitious than the elder Eudel. And yet his
+procedure was precisely that of his predecessors, and
+he did not in any way modify the principles of the art.
+All he did was to elaborate the performance by the use
+of more scenery, of more spectacular effects, and of
+more numerous characters. He introduced a company
+of Spanish dancers, for example, and he did not hesitate
+to throw on his screen the sable and serrated profile
+of a long line of ballet dancers. He followed Eudel
+in arranging a procession of animals, rivaling a circus
+parade, many of them being articulated so that they
+could make the appropriate movements of their jaws
+and their paws. And he paid special attention to his
+silhouette caricatures of contemporary celebrities, Zola
+for one, and Sarah-Bernhardt for another.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Then the Franco-Russian draftsman, who called
+himself Caran d'Ache, made a new departure and
+started the art of the shadow-pantomime in a new
+career. He called his figures "French shadows,"
+<i>ombres françaises</i>, and he surrendered the privilege of
+articulating his figures so that they could move. At
+least, he refrained from this except on rare occasions,
+preferring the effect of immobility and relying mainly
+upon a new principle not before employed by any of
+his predecessors. He made a specialty of long lines
+and of large masses of troops, not all on the same plane,
+but presented in perspective. He chose also to forgo
+the aid of speech and his figures were silent, except
+when some officer called out a word of command, or
+when a company of Cossacks rode past singing one of
+the wailing lyrics of the Caucasus as melancholy as the
+steppes.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">One of the most attractive items on his program was
+a representation of the return of vehicles and equestrians
+from the Bois de Boulogne in the afternoon.
+Some of the figures were merely characteristic types
+sharply seized and outlined with all the artist's masterly
+draftsmanship, and some of them were well-known
+personages easily recognizable by his Parisian spectators&mdash;Lesseps
+on horseback, for example, and Rochefort
+in an open cab. These successive figures were
+simply pushed across the screen one after another,
+each of them as motionless as a statue, the men fixed
+in one attitude, and the legs of the horses retaining
+always the same position. This absence of animal
+movement was, of course, a violation from the facts
+of life, like that which permits the painter to depict
+a breaking wave or a sculptor to model a running boy
+at a single moment of the movement. Yet this
+artistic conversion was immediately acceptable since
+the spectator received a simplified impression and his
+attention was not distracted by the inevitable jerkiness
+of the limbs of the men and the beasts.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_371" id="image_371"></a>
+<img src="images/i_371.png" alt="Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, Paris" title="Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, Paris" /><br />
+<span class="caption">The Sphinx I: Pharaoh passing in triumph<br />
+From a shadow picture by Amédée Vignola</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">Caran d'Ache's masterpiece, however&mdash;and it may
+honestly be styled a masterpiece&mdash;was not the 'Return
+from the Bois de Boulogne' but his 'Epopée,' his epic
+evocation of the grand army of Napoleon. Single figures
+like the Little Corporal on horseback, and like
+Murat and others of the Emperor's staff, he projected
+with a fidelity and a veracity of accent worthy of
+Détaille or even Meissonier. Yet fine as these single
+figures might be, they were only what had been attempted
+by earlier exponents of the art&mdash;even if they
+were more impressive than had been achieved by any
+one of his predecessors. These single figures were
+necessarily presented all on the same plane, and the
+startling and successful innovation of the Franco-Russian
+draftsmanship was his skilful use of perspective,
+a device which had not occurred to any of those
+in whose footsteps he was following, even Lemercier
+de Neuville having presented his ballet dancers in a
+flat row. What Caran d'Ache did was to bring before
+us company after company of the Old Guard, and troop
+after troop of cuirassiers, their profiles diminishing in
+height as the figures receded from the eye. He thus
+attained to an effect of solidity and even of immensity,
+far beyond anything ever before achieved by any earlier
+exhibitor of shadows. He succeeded in suggesting
+space, and of maneuvering before the astonished eyes
+of the entranced spectators a vast mass of men under
+arms, marching forward resolutely in serried ranks to
+victory or to death.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The late Jules Lemaître, the most open-minded of
+French dramatic critics, and the most hospitable in his
+attitude toward the minor manifestations of theatric
+art, has recorded that this Napoleonic epic of Caran
+d'Ache communicated to him not only an emotion of
+actual grandeur, but also the thrill of war itself. He
+declared that "by the exactness of the perspective preserved
+in his long files of soldiers, Caran d'Ache gives
+us the illusion of number and of a number immense and
+indefinite. And by the automatic movement which
+sets all his troops in action at once, he gives us the
+illusion of a single soul, of a communal thought animating
+innumerable bodies&mdash;and thereby he evokes
+in us the impression of measureless power.... His
+silent poem, with its sliding profiles is, I think, the
+only epic in all French literature." And those who are
+familiar with the other French efforts to attain to lyric
+largeness, and who have had also the unforgetable
+felicity of beholding Caran d'Ache's marvelous projection
+of the Napoleonic legend, will be prepared to
+admit that Lemaître did not overstate the case.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_375" id="image_375"></a>
+<img src="images/i_375.png" alt="Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, Paris" title="Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, Paris" /><br />
+<span class="caption">The Sphinx II: Moses leading his people out of Egypt<br />
+From a shadow picture by Amédée Vignola</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="h2">III</p>
+
+<p class="indent">What the Franco-Russian artist had done was to
+reveal the alluring possibilities placed at the command
+of the shadow-pantomimist by the ingenious employment
+of perspective; and there remained only one
+more step to be taken for the final development of the
+art to its ultimate capacity. This was the addition of
+color; and this step was taken by an associate of
+Caran d'Ache in the exhibitions given at the Chat Noir&mdash;Henri
+Rivière. Color could be added in two ways.
+In the first place, the outlines of lanterns and of battle-flags
+could be cut out, and slips of appropriately tinted
+paper could be inserted in the openings so that the
+light might shine thru. This relieved the monotony
+of the uniformity of the sable figures, and added a note
+of amusing gaiety. But this was an innovation of very
+limited scope; and it could have been earlier utilized
+in the flat figures of Lemercier de Neuville, for example,
+if he had happened to think of it. Far wider in
+its artistic possibilities was the second of Rivière's improvements.
+For the ordinary lamp which cast a
+steady glow on the white screen whereon the profile
+figures appeared, he substituted a magic lantern, the
+painted slides of which enabled him to supply an appropriately
+colored background. Then he went further
+and employed two magic lanterns, superimposed; and
+these enabled him to get the effect of "dissolving
+views" whereby he could vary his background at will.
+The immediate result of this ingenious improvement
+was that the artist could bestow upon his shadow-pantomime
+not a little of the richness of color which
+delights our eyes in the stained glass of medieval
+cathedrals.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Rivière was not only an inventor, he was also an
+artist, richly gifted with imagination; and his imagination
+suggested to him at once the three or four themes
+best fitted for treatment by his novel apparatus. One
+of these was the 'Wandering Jew'; another was the
+'Prodigal Son'; and a third was the 'Temptation of
+Saint Anthony'&mdash;all legends of combined dramatic and
+pictorial appeal. Yet the most effective of all the experiments
+in this new form was due not to Rivière
+himself but to the collaboration of two of his disciples,
+M. Fragerolle and M. Vignola. This was the 'Sphinx,'
+in which the artists most adroitly combined all the advantages
+of the original flat profiles, and of the long
+files of figures in perspective such as Caran d'Ache had
+employed, with varied backgrounds due to the aid of
+the magic lantern first utilized by Rivière. Of all
+human monuments no one has had so marvelous a
+series of spectacles pass before its sightless eyes as the
+Sphinx, reclining impassive at the edge of the desert,
+and at the foot of the pyramids. Race after race has
+descended into the valley of the Nile, and lingered for a
+little space, a few centuries more or less, and departed
+at last. Conqueror after conqueror has come and gone
+again; and the Sphinx has kept its inscrutable smile.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_379" id="image_379"></a>
+<img src="images/i_379.png" alt="Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, Paris" title="Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, Paris" /><br />
+<span class="caption">The Sphinx III: Roman warriors in Egypt<br />
+From a shadow picture by Amédée Vignola</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">M. Fragerolle composed the music and the words of
+the stately chants which accompanied the exhibition
+of the figures passing before the backgrounds, due to
+the pencil and the palette of M. Vignola. By the aid
+of the magic lantern the gigantic visage of the lion
+with a woman's head towers aloft, permanent and immutable,
+while the joyous procession of Egyptian
+dancers and soldiers and priests celebrates the completion
+of the statue itself. Then we are witnesses
+of the fierce invasion of the Assyrians, with the charge
+of their chariots and their horsemen; and we behold
+the rout of the natives while their capital burns in the
+distance. Next we gaze at the departure of the Jews,
+led by Moses and laden with the spoils of the Egyptians.
+After the Hebrews have gone, Sesostris appears,
+to be greeted by a glad outpouring of the populace.
+Yet soon the Persians descend on Egypt, with their
+castellated elephants and their immense hordes of
+fighting men. Still the Sphinx looks down, immovable
+and implacable; and the Greeks in turn take the
+valley of the Nile for their own. One of their daughters,
+Cleopatra, floats past in her galley by night; and
+in the morning she extends her hospitality to the
+Roman, Cæsar or Antony. And while the Latins are
+the rulers of the land of Egypt, the Virgin and her Son
+with the patient ass that bears a precious burden,
+skirt the sandy waste, and go on their way to the Holy
+Land, leaving the Sphinx behind them as they journey
+forward in the green moonlight. After long centuries
+the Arabs break in with their brilliant bands of horsemen,
+and a little later the Crusaders come to give them
+battle. More long centuries elapse and suddenly
+Napoleon emerges at the head of the troops of the
+French Republic. Then we have the Egypt of to-day,
+with the British soldiers parading before the feet of
+the Sphinx; and finally the recumbent statue appears
+to us once more and for the last time, when the light
+of the sun is going out, and the world is emptied of its
+population again, and the ice is settling down on the
+Sphinx, alone amid freezing desolation. And this last
+vision is projected by the magic lantern, without the
+aid of any profile figures, since man has ceased to be.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Here we have a true epic poem, simple yet grandiose,
+and possible only to the improved shadow-pantomime
+of France at the end of the nineteenth century&mdash;even
+if this art is only a logical evolution from the gallanty-show
+of Séraphin. "This humble black profile," said
+Jules Lemaître, "which had been thought fit at best
+of a few comic effects to amuse little children only,
+has been diversified and colored; it has been made
+beautiful, serious, tragic; by the multiplication of the
+devices it has been rendered capable of giving us a
+powerful impression of collective life, and the artists
+who have developed it have known how to make it
+translate to our eyes the great spectacles of history
+and the sweeping movement of multitudes."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1912.)</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="image_383" id="image_383"></a>
+<img src="images/i_383.png" alt="Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, Paris" title="Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, Paris" /><br />
+<span class="caption">The Sphinx IV: The British troops to-day<br />
+From a shadow picture by Amédée Vignola</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">XIX<br />THE PROBLEM OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM<a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="h2">THE PROBLEM OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM<br />I</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is now no longer in dispute that there has been in
+the past score or two of years a striking revival of the
+drama in the English language, and that there are
+to-day British and American playwrights who write
+plays which are worth while&mdash;plays which are both
+actable and readable&mdash;plays which often deserve and
+which sometimes even demand serious critical consideration.
+This revival has necessarily resulted in
+calling attention to the present condition of dramatic
+criticism in Great Britain and in the United States.
+In a period of dramatic productivity, dramatic criticism
+has an indisputable function and is charged with
+an undeniable duty, both to the aspiring play-makers
+and to the main body of the playgoing public. We
+cannot help asking ourselves whether our dramatic
+critics rightly apprehend their function and whether
+they properly discharge their duty; and to these pressing
+questions the most conflicting answers are returned.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Some there are who insist that it is hopeless to expect
+the desired outflowering of dramatic literature in
+our language to take place so long as our dramatic
+criticism is as inadequate, as incompetent, and as unsatisfactory
+as they declare it to be. Others there are
+who take a more tolerant view, holding the public itself
+to be at fault for the existing state of things, and who,
+therefore, believe that we are now getting dramatic
+criticism quite as good as we deserve. Few there are
+who venture to deny that there is room for improvement&mdash;altho
+no two of these agree in their suggestions
+for bringing about a bettering of present conditions.
+In the multitude of these counsellors there is darkness
+and confusion.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Perhaps there is a dim possibility of dissipating a
+little of this dark confusion by an analysis of the exact
+content, which we discover in the term "dramatic criticism,"
+and then by a further inquiry as to whether our
+customary use of the term is not misleading. "Dramatic
+criticism" to most of us connotes the newspaper
+reviewing of the nightly spectacles in our theaters.
+Plainly this was the meaning of the term in the mind
+of Mr. Howells years ago, when he declared that "our
+dramatic criticism is probably the most remarkable
+apparatus of our civilization" and that it "surpasses
+that of other countries as much as our fire-department.
+A perfectly equipped engine stands in every newspaper
+office, with the steam always up, which can be manned
+in nine seconds and rushed to the first theater where
+there is the slightest danger of drama within five minutes;
+and the combined efforts of these tremendous
+machines can pour a concentrated deluge of cold water
+upon a play which will put out anything of the kind
+at once."</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There is no denying that this use of the term by Mr.
+Howells is supported by custom. Yet it is distinctly
+unfortunate, for if the newspaper comment upon the
+novelties of the stage is to be accepted as "dramatic
+criticism," then what term have we left to describe
+the more piercing and the more comprehensive discussion
+of the first principles of the art of play-making
+which we find in Francisque Sarcey and in George
+Henry Lewes, not to go back to Lessing and to Aristotle?
+It is equally unfortunate that there is an equivalent
+inaccuracy in bestowing the title of "literary criticism"
+upon the newspaper comments upon the current
+books, for if this journalistic summarizing is to be
+accepted as "literary criticism," then what are we to
+call the exquisite evaluation of favorite authors which
+we find in Matthew Arnold and Sainte-Beuve?</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Of course, it is always idle to protest against the
+popular use or misuse of words and terms and phrases.
+The people as a whole own the language, and have a
+right to make it over and to modify the original meaning
+of words. If popular usage chooses not to distinguish
+between two very different things, and to call
+both of them "dramatic criticism," there is no redress,
+and yet it is impossible to discuss the problem of dramatic
+criticism except by trying to separate the two
+things thus confounded. Therefore, for the purpose
+of this inquiry only, and without any hope of changing
+the accepted usage, I make bold to suggest that "play-reviewing"
+might be employed to describe the notices
+written in the office of a newspaper, notices necessarily
+prepared under pressure and under strict limitations
+of time and space.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">These newspaper notices are sometimes careless,
+they are sometimes perfunctory, and they are sometimes
+cruel; and occasionally they are careful, conscientious,
+and clever, done with a dexterity worthy of high praise
+when we consider all the conditions under which it is
+displayed. But even at its best, play-reviewing cannot
+attain to the level of true dramatic criticism, more
+leisurely in its composition, larger in its scope, and more
+discriminating in its choice of topic. The play-reviewing
+of the daily journal is akin in aim to the book-reviewing,
+which has for its purpose the swift consideration
+of the volume in vogue at the moment. In our
+morning and evening papers the book-reviewing and
+the play-reviewing are both of them necessarily up-to-date,
+in fact, up-to-the-last-minute. To be contemporaneous,
+instantly and necessarily and inexorably,
+is their special quality and their immediate purpose;
+it is the reason for their existence and the excuse for
+their being.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">II</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Here it may be well to cite again the oft-quoted confession
+of the late Jules Lemaître, writer of volume after
+volume in which he discussed the leading men of letters
+of his own time and of his own country: "Criticism
+of our contemporaries is not criticism&mdash;it is conversation."
+Now, conversation may be a very good
+thing; indeed, when it is as clear and as sparkling as
+was Lemaître's, it is an excellent thing; yet he was
+right in admitting that it is not criticism, since it could
+not but lack the touchstone of time, the perspective of
+distance, the assured application of the eternal standards.
+And play-reviewing, like book-reviewing, cannot
+be anything but conversation about our contemporaries.
+It may descend to chaff-like chatter about
+the writers of the hour and to empty gossip about
+their sayings and doings; or it may have the sterner
+merits of brilliant conversation at its best. But it is
+not really criticism in the finer sense of the word; it
+cannot be; and one may go further and say that it
+ought not to be, since true criticism is more or less out
+of place in a newspaper&mdash;because the direct object of
+a newspaper is to present the news, with only the swiftest
+of commentaries thereon.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The final distinction between literature and journalism
+is to be sought in their diverging and irreconcilable
+objects. The desire of the former is for permanence,
+and the aim of the latter is the immediate impression.
+When literature triumphs it is for all time&mdash;more or
+less. When journalism most completely achieves its
+purpose its success is temporary, to be retained only
+by iteration and reiteration, since it has for its target
+the events of the fleeting moment. If we admit this
+distinction between journalism and literature, we have
+no difficulty in discovering journalism in many places
+other than the daily and weekly papers; very properly
+it fills the most of the space in the monthly magazines,
+and even in the quarterly reviews; and it abounds in
+our book-stores, since only a small proportion of the
+volumes which pour from the press every year possess
+the combined substance and style, the solidity of matter
+and the delightfulness of manner which lift mere
+writing up to the loftier level of literature.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On the other hand, we may find literature of inexpugnable
+quality, not only in the magazines, but also
+now and again in the newspapers. Drake's 'American
+Flag' and Kipling's 'Recessional' appeared in daily
+journals, and so did the literary criticism of Sainte-Beuve
+and the dramatic criticism of Lessing and of
+Lemaître. But these were but happy accidents, and
+the great newspaper editor has rarely striven to make
+his journal a persistent vehicle for the publication of
+literature. He feels that this is foreign to his main
+purpose, and he is content when his editorial articles,
+and his news stories are vigorous and picturesque&mdash;clean,
+clear, and cogent in their English. He knows,
+better than any one else, that it is not by its external
+literary merits that newspaper-writing is to be judged.
+What he wants above all else is the news, all the news,
+and nothing but the news&mdash;accompanied, of course,
+by the obligatory comment this news may deserve.
+He needs editorial writers, reporters, and correspondents
+who are newspaper men, and not men of letters,
+except in so far as these men of letters may have accepted
+the special conditions of newspaper work.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Now, criticism, whether literary or dramatic, is a
+department of literature, dealing with the permanent,
+and having little to do with the temporary. It demands
+qualifications very rarely united&mdash;insight, equipment,
+disinterestedness, and sympathy. So far from
+being easy, criticism is quite as difficult as creation&mdash;more
+difficult, indeed, if we may judge by its greater
+rarity. In a superbly creative period there are sometimes
+three or four distinguished poets, friendly rivals,
+almost contemporaneous; and even at such a time
+there is rarely more than one critic worthy to be companioned
+with them. Æschylus and Sophocles and
+Euripides followed one after the other; and in time the
+sole Aristotle came forward as their critic. Corneille
+and Molière and Racine labored side by side, and only
+Boileau was competent to interpret and to encourage
+them.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">When it attains to the serene plane of Aristotle and
+Boileau, of Lessing and Sainte-Beuve, criticism is
+actually creation. "The critical faculty as applied to
+the masterpieces of literature, and still more the critical
+faculty as applied to the art of literature itself, is akin
+to the creative faculty of the artist," so Professor Mackail
+has told us. "It does not deal with letters as
+something detached from life, but as the form or substance
+in which life is intelligibly presented. Its interpretation
+is also creation." But the criticism of
+dramatic literature which is also creation, is possible
+only when the critical faculty is applied to the masterpieces
+of dramatic literature; and nobody knows
+better than the play-reviewer that masterpieces of
+dramatic literature do not present themselves frequently
+and that they cannot be acclaimed as masterpieces
+until they have stood the test of time. And this
+is why a critic-creator would be a little out of place
+on the staff of a newspaper, daily or weekly, whether
+he was assigned to deal with the drama or with literature
+at large.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">III</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The necessary task of the book-reviewer or of the
+play-reviewer, is not criticism of the creative kind,
+since for that he is always likely to lack material. His
+task is humbler even if it is honorable; it is to report
+upon the novelties of the day, and to inform the readers
+of the newspaper as to the nature and the merits
+of these novelties. His work is essentially reporting,
+even if it is reporting of a special kind, calling for special
+qualifications. The connection of the drama with the
+show business is intimate, and it always has been. In
+the long history of the theater there is no period without
+its successful pieces, the appeal of which was mainly
+sensuous&mdash;to the eye and to the ear, rather than to the
+emotions and to the intellect. While the drama is an
+art, and perhaps the loftiest of the arts, the show
+business is a trade. This is no new thing&mdash;altho
+ignorant idealists often declare it so to be, and altho
+it may make itself a little more obvious at one time
+than at another. What confronts us is the condition
+of things as they are, not the theory of things as they
+might be.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There would be occupation for a dramatic critic,
+who was also a creator, only if our theaters were presenting
+in rapid succession a sequence of masterpieces,
+tragedies of austere power, comedies of searching satire,
+social dramas of piercing suggestion. But this is not
+the case now here in the United States in the twentieth
+century; and it never has been the case anywhere or
+anywhen, not even in Weimar when Goethe dominated
+the ducal theater. In our playhouses we are proffered
+our choice of Shakspere and Ibsen, Pinero and Hauptmann,
+Henry Arthur Jones and Augustus Thomas,
+Barrie and Gillette, Sardou and George M. Cohan; and
+at the same time we are invited to choose between
+'Trilby' and the 'Celebrated Case,' melodramas and
+farces, summer song-shows and ultra-contemporary
+reviews, alleged comic operas and terpsichorean spectacles.
+Most of these latter exhibitions do not demand
+or deserve criticism of any kind; but they need
+to be reported upon like any other item in the news of
+the day.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">If this is the case, it might as well be recognized
+frankly. There is always advantage in seeing things
+as they are, in fronting the facts and in looking them
+squarely in the face. Sooner or later some one of
+those who are in charge of our metropolitan newspapers
+will perceive the possibility of a change of method.
+He will charge one of his staff with the supervision of
+the theatrical news, the announcements of new plays,
+and the personal gossip about the players; and he will
+authorize this editor to send competent reporters to
+all first performances, directed to report upon them as
+they would report upon any other event of immediate
+interest. He would warn these reporters that they
+were strictly to consider themselves as reporters, and
+that they were, therefore, to refrain from explicit
+criticism. He would so select his men that a melodrama
+should be dealt with by a reporter who liked a
+good melodrama, and that a summer song-show should
+be described by a reporter who could find pleasure in
+inoffensive and amusing spectacle. If this policy
+should be adopted, and announced clearly and emphatically,
+probably most of the occasions for quarrel
+between managers and editors would disappear; and
+the immense majority of the readers of the daily paper
+would be supplied with exactly the information they
+would prefer.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Then, for the benefit of the smaller number who are
+really interested in the drama as a serious art, the
+editor-in-chief might avail himself of the fact that the
+Sunday issue, while it is still a newspaper containing
+the news of the preceding twenty-four hours, is also
+a magazine, to be read in more leisurely fashion, and
+therefore at liberty to treat timely topics with a larger
+freedom. Here space could be found for genuine dramatic
+criticism by the most competent expert available.
+This dramatic critic should have nothing whatever to
+do with the news of the theaters, or with the first-night
+play-reviewing. He should not be tired and
+bored by having to go to the theater half a dozen times
+a week, and by being forced to analyze plays which do
+not reward analysis. He would be expected to select
+out of the current performances that one which promised
+to be most worthy of careful consideration, and
+he would feel himself free to discuss this at such length
+as it might seem to him to deserve. To him also should
+be intrusted the more significant of the new books
+upon the history of the theater, and upon the art of
+the drama. In the summer (and also whenever at
+any other season there might be a dearth of inspiring
+topics), this dramatic critic would not be expected to
+contribute, since he should never be called upon to
+make bricks without straw.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Even in New York this method is not as new as it
+may seem, and more than one metropolitan daily has
+approximated to it, altho no one of them has completely
+detached the dramatic critic from the play-reviewer
+and from the supervisor of theatrical gossip.
+And it has long been adopted in certain of the Paris
+newspapers. In the <i>Temps</i>, for example, when Sarcey
+was its dramatic critic, there was a daily column of
+theatrical announcements and of brief reports upon
+first-night performances; and with this department of
+the news of the theaters Sarcey had nothing to do,
+and for it he had no responsibility. Then in the
+ample space specially reserved for him in the issue of
+every Sunday afternoon, he dealt with the dramatic
+themes that seemed to him worth while. If a play
+appeared to demand prolonged study, he might go to
+see it two, or even three times, before he undertook to
+formulate his opinion; and on occasion he would carry
+over his detailed discussion of a very important drama
+into the article of the following Sunday. On the other
+hand, if no recent play seemed to him to deserve his
+continued attention, he would devote himself to one
+of the recent books about the theater or to a detailed
+discussion of the proper interpretation of one of the
+classics of the French drama kept constantly in the
+repertory of the Comédie-Française.</p>
+
+<p class="h2">IV</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The adoption of this method would relieve the dramatic
+critic from one of his existing disadvantages;
+he would be released from criticising the pieces which
+are beneath criticism. The literary critic, and even
+the ordinary book-reviewer, never spends his time in
+considering dime novels&mdash;whereas the dramatic critic
+is now called upon to waste many evenings in beholding
+a play which is only the theatrical equivalent of a dime
+novel. The immediate result of this futile and fatiguing
+expenditure of energy is likely to be discouraging
+and even enervating. If the dramatic critic could be
+totally relieved from all contact with the show business
+when the show business has only a casual connection
+with the drama, it would tend to keep him fit for his
+essential task. Under the present conditions it is no
+wonder that the theatrical reviewer wearies of his task
+and loses the gusto and the zest without which all
+work tends to degenerate into the perfunctory and the
+mechanical.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">We need not fear that the first-night reporting would
+be ill done if competent reporters were instructed that
+they were not to consider themselves as critics, and that
+it was their sole duty to report, as they would report
+anything else, conscientiously and accurately. The
+difficulty would not be in finding reporters able to discharge
+this duty, it would be in the discovery of dramatic
+critics possessing the fourfold qualifications of
+insight, equipment, disinterestedness, and sympathy,
+which every critic must be endowed with whatever the
+art he undertakes to analyze. And the difficulty would
+be increased by the fact that the dramatic critic needs
+an understanding of three different arts, the art of
+acting, the art of literature, and the art of the drama&mdash;of
+play-making as distinct from literature.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It would be idle to hope that even if this method
+were adopted we should soon be able to develop in the
+United States and in Great Britain a group of dramatic
+critics of the capacity and the quality of Lessing
+and Sarcey, of George Henry Lewes and William
+Archer. Yet it is solely by the adoption of this method
+that we can hope to provide the opportunity for the
+appearance of the true dramatic critic, who can fit
+himself for his finer work only by being set free from
+the necessity of doing work quite unworthy of him,
+altho necessary to the newspaper itself. And the development
+of a group of dramatic critics of a higher
+type than can be found to-day&mdash;except possibly in a
+scant half-dozen dailies and weeklies and monthlies&mdash;is
+a condition precedent to the development of our
+drama. Of course, these dramatic critics, whatever
+their endowment, could give little help directly to the
+dramatic authors, since it is a mistake to suppose that
+the critic is capable of counselling the author, or that
+he is charged with any such duty. Where the critic
+can help is by disseminating knowledge about the dramatic
+art, and by raising the standard of appreciation
+in the public at large&mdash;that public which even the
+mightiest dramatist has to please or else to fail of his
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">(1915.)</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<div class="tnote">
+<h3>Transcriber's Notes:</h3>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="indent">The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up
+paragraphs and so that they are next the text they illustrate. Thus the
+page number of the illustration might not match the page number in the
+List of Illustrations, and the order of illustrations may not be the
+same in the List of Illustrations and in the book.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected
+unless otherwise noted below:</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Throughout the book, "avalanch" was replaced with "avalanche".</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 56, the single quotation mark was removed from the block-quoted paragraph.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 116, "denial of of" was replaced with "denial of".</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 230, "Amercan" was replaced with "American".</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 296, "air-cirlces" was replaced with "air-circles".</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Book About the Theater, by Brander Matthews
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+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Book About the Theater, by Brander Matthews
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Book About the Theater
+
+Author: Brander Matthews
+
+Release Date: July 20, 2011 [EBook #36790]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Ernest Schaal, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                      _Books by Brander Matthews_
+
+BIOGRAPHIES
+
+    Shakspere as a Playwright
+    Moliere, His Life and His Works
+
+ESSAYS AND CRITICISMS
+
+    French Dramatists of the 19th Century
+    Pen and Ink, Essays on subjects of more or less importance
+    Aspects of Fiction, and other Essays
+    The Historical Novel, and other Essays
+    Parts of Speech, Essays on English
+    The Development of the Drama
+    Inquiries and Opinions
+    The American of the Future, and other Essays
+    Gateways to Literature, and other Essays
+    On Acting
+    A Book About the Theater
+
+                                 A BOOK
+                           ABOUT THE THEATER
+
+                             [Illustration]
+
+                         LE BALLET DE LA REINE
+
+                        A FRENCH COURT BALLET IN
+                         THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH
+                                CENTURY
+
+                                 A BOOK
+                           ABOUT THE THEATER
+
+                                   BY
+                            BRANDER MATTHEWS
+
+    PROFESSOR OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY; MEMBER
+              OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS
+
+                             [Illustration]
+
+                                NEW YORK
+                        CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+                                  1916
+
+                          COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY
+                        CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+                        Published October, 1916
+
+                             [Illustration]
+
+                           TO AUGUSTUS THOMAS
+
+MY DEAR AUGUSTUS:
+
+Let me begin by confessing my regret that I cannot overhear your first
+remark when you receive this sheaf of essays, many of which are devoted
+to the subordinate subdivisions of the art of the stage. As it is, I can
+only imagine your surprise at discovering that this book, which contains
+papers dealing with certain aspects of the theater rarely considered to
+be worthy of criticism, is signed by the occupant of the earliest chair
+to be established in any American university specifically for the study
+of dramatic literature. I fancy I can hear the expression of your wonder
+that a sexagenarian professor should turn aside from his austere
+analysis of the genius of Sophocles and of Shakspere, of Moliere and of
+Ibsen, to discuss the minor arts of the dancer and the acrobat, to
+chatter about the conjurer and the negro minstrel, to consider the
+principles of pantomime and the development of scene-painting. But I am
+emboldened to hope that your surprise will be only momentary, and that
+you will be moved to acknowledge that perhaps there may be some
+advantage to be derived from these deviations into the by-paths of stage
+history.
+
+You are rather multifarious yourself; "like Cerberus, you are three
+gentlemen at once"; you have been a reporter, you have published a
+novel, you have painted pictures, you have delivered addresses--and you
+write plays, too. I think that you, at least, will readily understand
+how a student of the stage may like to stray now and again from the main
+road and to ramble away from the lofty temple of dramatic art to loiter
+for a little while in one or another of its lesser chapels. And you,
+again, will appreciate my conviction that these loiterings and these
+strollings may be as profitable as that casual browsing about in a
+library which is likely to enrich our memories with not a little
+interesting information that we might never have captured had we adhered
+to a rigorous and rigid course of study. You will see what I mean when I
+declare my belief that I have come back from these wanderings with an
+increased understanding of the theory of the theater, and with an
+enlarged acquaintance with its manifold manifestations.
+
+Perhaps I ought to explain, furthermore, that these excursions into the
+purlieus of the playhouse began long, long ago. I gave a Punch and Judy
+show before I was sixteen; I performed experiments in magic, I blacked
+up as Tambo, I whitened myself as Clown, I played the low-comedy part in
+a farce, and I attempted the flying trapeze before I was twenty; and I
+was not encouraged by the result of these early experiences to repeat
+any of the experiments after I came of age. I think it was as a spinner
+of hats and as the underman of a "brothers' act" that I came nearest to
+success; at least I infer this from the fact--may I mention it without
+seeming to boast?--that with my partners in this brothers' act, I was
+asked if I would care to accept an engagement with a circus for the
+summer. As to the merits of the other efforts I need say nothing now;
+the rest is silence. When the cynic declared that the critics were those
+who had failed in literature and art, he overstated his case, as is the
+custom of cynics. But it is an indisputable advantage for any critic to
+have adventured himself in the practise of the art to the discussion of
+which he is to devote himself; he may have failed, or at least he may
+not have succeeded as he could wish; but he ought to have gained a
+firmer grasp on the principles of the art than he would have had if he
+had never risked himself in the vain effort.
+
+With this brief word of personal explanation I step down from the
+platform of the preface to let these various essays speak for
+themselves. If they have any message of any value, I feel assured in
+advance that your friendly ear will be the first to interpret it. And I
+remain,
+
+                                  Ever yours,
+                                                   BRANDER MATTHEWS.
+
+    COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,
+        IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+                                                                PAGE
+
+     I. THE SHOW BUSINESS                                         1
+
+    II. THE LIMITATIONS OF THE STAGE                             17
+
+   III. A MORAL FROM A TOY THEATER                               37
+
+    IV. WHY FIVE ACTS?                                           55
+
+     V. DRAMATIC COLLABORATION                                   77
+
+    VI. THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS AND THE NOVELIZATION
+            OF PLAYS                                              93
+
+   VII. WOMEN DRAMATISTS                                         111
+
+  VIII. THE EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING                          127
+
+    IX. THE BOOK OF THE OPERA                                    153
+
+     X. THE POETRY OF THE DANCE                                  169
+
+    XI. THE PRINCIPLES OF PANTOMIME                              185
+
+   XII. THE IDEAL OF THE ACROBAT                                 201
+
+  XIII. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF NEGRO-MINSTRELSY                 217
+
+   XIV. THE UTILITY OF THE VARIETY-SHOW                          235
+
+    XV. THE METHOD OF MODERN MAGIC                               251
+
+   XVI. THE LAMENTABLE TRAGEDY OF PUNCH AND JUDY                 271
+
+  XVII. THE PUPPET-PLAY, PAST AND PRESENT                        287
+
+ XVIII. SHADOW-PANTOMIME, WITH ALL THE MODERN
+            IMPROVEMENTS                                         303
+
+   XIX. THE PROBLEM OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM                        319
+
+                             ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+    Le ballet de la reine                             _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                         FACING PAGE
+
+    Upper half of Plate No. 1, the 'Miller and His Men'           40
+
+    A group of the principal characters from Pollock's juvenile
+        drama, the 'Miller and His Men'                           42
+
+    Explosion of the mill. A back drop in the
+        'Miller and His Men'                                      46
+
+    Plate No. 7, the 'Miller and His Men'                         48
+
+    Lower half of Plate No. 5, the 'Miller and His Men'           52
+
+    The Roman Theater at Orange                                  134
+
+    The multiple set of the French medieval stage                134
+
+    The set of the Italian comedy of masks                       134
+
+    An outdoor entertainment in the gardens of the Pitti Palace
+        in Florence in the early sixteenth century               136
+
+    The set for the opera of 'Persee' (as performed at the Opera
+        in Paris in the seventeenth century)                     140
+
+    A prison (designed by Bibiena in Italy in the eighteenth
+        century)                                                 140
+
+    The screen scene of the 'School for Scandal' at Drury Lane
+        in 1778                                                  144
+
+    A landscape set                                              146
+
+    A set for the opera of 'Robert le Diable'                    146
+
+    The set of the last act of the 'Garden of Allah'             148
+
+    A set for 'Medea'                                            148
+
+    The set of 'OEdipe-Roi' (at the Theatre Francais)            150
+
+    The set of the 'Return of Peter Grimm'                       150
+
+    Scenes from Punch and Judy                                   274
+
+    Scenes from Punch and Judy (continued)                       276
+
+    Roman puppets. Greek and Roman puppets. Puppet of Java       290
+
+    A Sicilian marionette show                                   292
+
+    A Belgian puppet. A Chinese puppet theater. Puppet figure
+        representing the younger Coquelin                        294
+
+    Puppets in Burma                                             296
+
+    The puppet play of Master Peter (Italian)                    296
+
+    A Neapolitan Punchinella                                     300
+
+    The broken bridge. Plan showing the construction of a
+        shadow-picture theater. A Hungarian dancer
+        (a shadow picture)                                       308
+
+    Shadow Pictures. The return from the Bois de Boulogne. The
+        ballet. A regiment of French soldiers                    310
+
+    Shadow Picture. The Sphinx I: Pharaoh passing in triumph     312
+
+    Shadow Picture. The Sphinx II: Moses leading his people out
+        of Egypt                                                 314
+
+    Shadow Picture. The Sphinx III: Roman warriors in Egypt      316
+
+    Shadow Picture. The Sphinx IV: The British troops to-day     318
+
+                                   I
+
+                           THE SHOW BUSINESS
+
+                           THE SHOW BUSINESS
+
+                                   I
+
+At an interesting moment in Disraeli's picturesque career in British
+politics he indulged in one of his strikingly spectacular effects, in
+accord with his characteristic method of boldly startling the somewhat
+sluggish imagination of his insular countrymen; and in the next week's
+issue of _Punch_ there was a cartoon by Tenniel reflecting the general
+opinion in regard to his theatrical audacity. He was represented as
+Artemus Ward, frankly confessing that "I have no principles; I'm in the
+show business."
+
+The cartoon was good-humored enough, as _Punch's_ cartoons usually are;
+but it was not exactly complimentary. It was intended to voice the vague
+distrust felt by the British people toward a leader who did not
+scrupulously avoid every possible opportunity to be dramatic. And yet
+every statesman who was himself possessed of constructive imagination,
+and who was therefore anxious to stir the imaginations of those he was
+leading, has laid himself open to the same charge. Burke, for one, was
+accused of being frankly theatrical; and Napoleon, the child of that
+French Revolution which Burke combated with undying vigor, never
+hesitated to employ kindred devices. When Napoleon took the Imperial
+Crown from the hands of the Pope to place it on his own head, and when
+Burke cast the daggers on the floor of the House of Commons, they were
+both proving that they were in the show business. So was Julius Caesar
+when he thrice thrust aside the kingly crown; and so was Frederick on
+more than one occasion. Even Luther did not shrink from the spectacular
+if that could serve his purpose, as when he nailed his theses to the
+door of the church.
+
+If the statesmen have now and again acted as tho they were in the show
+business, we need not be surprised to discover that the dramatists have
+done it even more often, in accord with their more intimate relation to
+the theater. No one would deny that Sardou and Boucicault were showmen,
+with a perfect mastery of every trick of the showman's trade. But this
+is almost equally true of the supreme leaders of dramatic art,
+Sophocles, Shakspere, and Moliere. The great Greek, the great
+Englishman, and the great Frenchman, however much they might differ in
+their aims and in their accomplishments, were alike in the avidity with
+which they availed themselves of every spectacular device possible to
+their respective theaters. The opening passage of 'OEdipus the King,'
+when the chorus appeals to the sovran to remove the curse that hangs
+over the city, is as potent on the eye as on the ear. The witches and
+the ghost in 'Macbeth,' the single combats and the bloody battles that
+embellish many of Shakspere's plays are utilizations of the spectacular
+possibilities existing in that Elizabethan playhouse, which has seemed
+to some historians of the drama to be necessarily bare of all appeal to
+the senses. And in his 'Amphitryon' Moliere has a succession of purely
+mechanical effects (a god riding upon an eagle, for example, and
+descending from the sky) which are anticipations of the more elaborate
+and complicated transformation scenes of the 'Black Crook' and the
+'White Fawn.'
+
+At the end of the nineteenth century the two masters of the stage were
+Ibsen and Wagner, and both of them were in the show business--Wagner
+more openly and more frequently than Ibsen. Yet the stern Scandinavian
+did not disdain to employ an avalanche in 'When We Dead Awaken,' and to
+introduce a highly pictorial shawl dance for the heroine of his 'Doll's
+House.' As for Wagner, he was incessant in his search for the
+spectacular, insisting that the music-drama was the "art-work of the
+future," since the librettist-composer could call to his aid all the
+other arts, and could make these arts contribute to the total effect of
+the opera. He conformed his practise to his principles, and as a result
+there is scarcely any one of his music-dramas which is not enriched by a
+most elaborate scenic accompaniment. The forging of the sword, the ride
+of the Valkyries, the swimming of the singing Rhinemaidens, are only a
+few of the novel and startling effects which he introduced into his
+operas; and in his last work, 'Parsival,' the purely spectacular element
+is at least as ample and as varied as any that can be found in a
+Parisian fairy-play or in a London Christmas pantomime. And what is the
+'Blue Bird' of M. Maeterlinck, the philosopher-poet, who is also a
+playwright, but a fairy-play on the model of those long popular in
+Paris, the 'Pied de Mouton,' and the 'Biche au Bois'? It has a meaning
+and a purpose lacking in its emptier predecessors; but its method is the
+same as that of the uninspired manufacturers of these spectacular
+pieces.
+
+                                   II
+
+It is not without significance that our newspapers, which have a keen
+understanding of the public taste, are in the habit of commenting upon
+entertainments of the most diverse nature under the general heading of
+"Amusements." It matters not whether this entertainment is proffered by
+Barnum and Bailey, or by Weber and Fields, by Sophocles or by Ibsen, by
+Shakspere or by Moliere, by Wagner or by Gilbert and Sullivan, it is
+grouped with the rest of the amusements. And this is not so illogical as
+it may seem, since the primary purpose of all the arts is to entertain,
+even if every art has also to achieve its own secondary aim. Some of
+these entertainments make their appeal to the intellect, some to the
+emotions, and some only to the nerves, to our relish for sheer
+excitement and for brute sensation; but each of them in its own way
+seeks, first of all, to entertain. They are, every one of them, to be
+included in the show business.
+
+This is a point of view which is rarely taken by those who are
+accustomed to consider the drama only in its literary aspects, and who
+like to think of the dramatic poet as a remote and secluded artist,
+scornful of all adventitious assistance, seeking to express his own
+vision of the universe, and intent chiefly, if not solely, on portraying
+the human soul. And yet this point of view needs to be taken by every
+one who wishes to understand the drama as an art, for the drama is
+inextricably bound up with the show business, and to separate the two is
+simply impossible. The theater is almost infinitely various, and the
+different kinds of entertainment possible in it cannot be sharply
+distinguished, since they shade into each other by almost imperceptible
+gradations. Only now and again can we seize a specimen that completely
+conforms to any one of the several types into which we theoretically
+classify the multiple manifestations of the drama.
+
+Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Barnum and Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth
+might seem, at first sight, to stand absolutely outside the theater. But
+it is impossible not to perceive the close kinship between the program
+of the Barnum and Bailey show and the program of the New York
+Hippodrome, since they have the circus in common. At the Hippodrome,
+however, we have at least a rudimentary play with actual dialog and with
+abundant songs and dances executed by a charging squadron of
+chorus-girls; and in this aspect its spectacle is curiously similar to
+the nondescript medley which is popularly designated as a "summer
+song-show." Now, the summer song-show is first cousin to the so-called
+American "comic opera"--so different from the French _opera comique_.
+Even if it has now fallen upon evil days, this American comic opera is
+a younger sister of the sparkling ballad-opera of Gilbert and Sullivan,
+and of the exhilarating _opera bouffe_ of Offenbach, with its libretto
+by Meilhac and Halevy.
+
+We cannot fail to perceive that the librettos of Gilbert and of Meilhac
+and Halevy are admirable in themselves, that they would please even
+without the music of Sullivan and Offenbach, and that they are truly
+comedies of a kind. That is to say, the books of 'Patience' and
+'Pinafore' do not differ widely in method or in purpose from Gilbert's
+non-musical play 'Engaged'; and the books of the 'Vie Parisienne' and
+the 'Diva' do not differ widely from Meilhac and Halevy's non-musical
+play, 'Tricoche et Cacolet.' 'Engaged' and 'Tricoche et Cacolet' are
+farces or light comedies, and we find that it is not easy to draw a
+strict line of demarcation between light comedies of this sort and
+comedies of a more elevated type. Gilbert was also the author of
+'Sweethearts,' and of 'Charity,' and Meilhac and Halevy were also the
+authors of 'Froufrou.' Still more difficult would it be to separate
+sharply plays like 'Charity' and 'Froufrou' from the social dramas of
+Pinero and Ibsen, the 'Benefit of the Doubt,' for instance, and the
+'Doll's House.' Sometimes these social dramas stiffen into actual
+tragedy, the 'Second Mrs. Tanqueray,' for example, and 'Ghosts.' And
+more than one critic has dwelt upon the structural likeness of the
+somber and austere 'Ghosts' of Ibsen to the elevated and noble
+'OEdipus the King' of Sophocles, even if the Greek play is full of a
+serener poetry and charged with a deeper message.
+
+It is a far cry from Buffalo Bill's Wild West to the 'OEdipus' of
+Sophocles; but they are only opposite ends of a long chain which binds
+together the heterogeneous medley of so-called "amusements." In the eyes
+of every observer with insight into actual conditions, the show business
+bears an obvious resemblance to the United States, in that it is a vast
+territory divided into contiguous States, often difficult to bound with
+precision; and, like the United States, the show business is, in the
+words of Webster, "one and indivisible, now and forever." There is
+indisputable profit for every student of the art of the stage in a frank
+recognition of the fact that dramatic literature is inextricably
+associated with the show business, and the wider and deeper his
+acquaintance with the ramifications of the show business, the better
+fitted he is to understand certain characteristics of the masterpieces
+of dramatic literature. Any consideration of dramatic literature, apart
+from the actual conditions of performance, apart from the special
+theater for which any given play was composed, and to the conditions of
+which it had, perforce, to conform, is bound to be one-sided, not to say
+sterile. The masterpieces of dramatic literature were all of them
+written to be performed by actors, in a theater, and before an audience.
+And these masterpieces of dramatic literature which we now analyze with
+reverence, were all of them immediately successful when represented by
+the performers for whom they were written, and in the playhouses to the
+conditions of which they had been adjusted.
+
+It is painfully difficult for the purely literary critic to recognize
+the inexorable fact that there are no truly great plays which failed to
+please the contemporary spectators for whose delight they were devised.
+Many of the plays which win success from time to time, indeed, most of
+them, achieve only a fleeting vogue; they lack the element of
+permanence; they have only theatrical effectiveness; and they are devoid
+of abiding dramatic value. But the truly great dramas established
+themselves first on the stage; and afterward they also revealed the
+solid qualities which we demand in the study. They withstood, first of
+all, the ordeal by fire before the footlights of the theater, and they
+were able thereafter also to resist the touchstone of time in the
+library.
+
+When an academic investigator into the arid annals of dogmatic
+disquisition about the drama was rash enough to assert that, "from the
+standpoint of the history of culture, the theater is only one, and a
+very insignificant one, of all the influences that have gone to make up
+dramatic literature," Mr. William Archer promptly pointed out that this
+was "just about as reasonable as to declare that the sea is only one,
+and a very insignificant one, among the influences that have gone to the
+making of ships." It is true, Mr. Archer admitted, that there are "model
+ships and ships built for training purposes on dry land; but they all
+more or less closely imitate sea-going vessels, and if they did not, we
+should not call them ships at all.... The ship-builder, in planning his
+craft, must know what depths of water--be it river, lake, or ocean--she
+will have to ply in, what conditions of wind and weather she may reckon
+upon encountering, and what speed will be demanded of her if she is to
+fulfil the purpose for which she is destined.... The theater--the actual
+building, with its dimensions, structure, and scenic appliances--is the
+dramatist's sea. And the audience provides the weather."
+
+                                  III
+
+Since the drama is irrevocably related to the theater, all the varied
+ramifications of the show business have their interest and their
+significance for students of the stage. It is not too much to say that
+there is no form of entertainment, however humble and however remote
+from literature, which may not supply a useful hint or two, now and
+again, to the historian of the drama. For example, few things would seem
+farther apart than the lamentable tragedy of Punch and Judy and the
+soul-stirring plays of the Athenian dramatic poets; and yet there is
+more than one point of contact between these two performances. An alert
+observer of a Punch-and-Judy show in the streets of London can get help
+from it for the elucidation of a problem or two which may have puzzled
+him in his effort to understand the peculiarities of Attic tragedy. Mr.
+Punch's wooden head, for example, has the same unchanging expression
+which characterized the towering masks worn by the Athenian performers.
+In like manner a nondescript hodgepodge of funny episodes, interspersed
+with songs and dances, such as Weber and Fields used to present in New
+York, may be utilized to shed light on the lyrical-burlesques of
+Aristophanes as these were performed in Athens more than two thousand
+years ago.
+
+Perhaps even a third instance of this possibility of explaining the
+glorious past by the humble present may not be out of place. A few years
+ago Edward Harrigan put together a variety-show sketch, called the
+'Mulligan Guards,' and its success encouraged him to develop it into a
+little comic drama called the 'Mulligan Guards' Picnic,' which was the
+earliest of a succession of farcical studies of tenement-house life in
+New York, culminating at last in a three-act comedy, entitled 'Squatter
+Sovereignty.' In this series of humorous pieces Harrigan set before us a
+wide variety of types of character, Irishmen of all sorts, Germans and
+Italians, negroes and Chinamen, as these are commingled in the
+melting-pot of the cosmopolitan metropolis. These humorous pieces were
+the result of a spontaneous evolution, and their author was wholly
+innocent of any acquaintance with the Latin drama. And yet, as it
+happened, Harrigan was doing for the tenement-house population of New
+York very much what Plautus had done for the tenement-house population
+of Rome. A familiarity with the plays of the Latin playwright could not
+but increase our appreciation of the amusing pieces of the
+Irish-American sketch-writer; and a familiarity with the comic dramas of
+Harrigan could not fail to be of immediate assistance to us in our
+desire to understand the remote life which Plautus was dealing with.
+
+The plays of the Roman dramatist were deliberately adapted from the
+Greek, and they therefore had an avowedly literary source, whereas the
+immediate origin of the plays performed in New York was only an
+unpretending sketch for a variety-show; but both of these groups had the
+same flavor of veracity in their reproduction of the teeming life of the
+tenements. Humble as is the beginning of the 'Mulligan Guard' series, at
+least as humble is the beginning of the improvised pieces of the
+Italians, the comedy of masks, which Moliere lifted into literature in
+his 'Etourdi,' and in his 'Fourberies de Scapin.' In the hands of the
+Italians the comedy of masks was absolutely unliterary, since it was not
+even written, and its performers were not only comedians, but acrobats
+also. And here the drama is seen to be impinging on the special sphere
+of the circus--just as it does again in the plays prepared for the New
+York Hippodrome. It is more than probable that this improvised comedy of
+the Italians is the long development of a primitive semi-gymnastic,
+semi-dramatic entertainment, given by a little group of strollers,
+performing in the open market-place to please the casual crowd that
+might collect.
+
+Equally unpretending was the origin of the French melodrama, which
+Victor Hugo lifted into literature in his 'Hernani' and 'Ruy Blas.' It
+began in the temporary theaters erected for a brief season in one or the
+other of the fairs held annually in different parts of Paris. The
+performances in these playhouses were almost exactly equivalent to those
+in our variety-shows; they were medleys of song and dance, of acrobatic
+feats and of exhibitions of trained animals. As in our own
+variety-shows, again, there were also little plays performed from time
+to time, at first scarcely more than a framework on which to hang songs
+and dances, but at last taking on a solider substance, until finally
+they stiffened themselves into pathetic pieces in three or more acts,
+capable of providing pleasure for a whole evening. The humor was direct,
+and the characters were painted in the primary colors; the passions were
+violent, and the plots were arbitrary; but the playwrights had
+discovered how to hold the interest of their simple-minded spectators,
+and how to draw tears and laughter at will.
+
+In fact, the more minutely the history of the stage is studied, the more
+clearly do we perceive that the beginnings of every form of the drama
+are strangely unpretentious, and that literary merit is attained only in
+the final stages of its development. Dramatic literature is but the
+ultimate evolution of that which in the beginning was only an
+insignificant and unimportant experiment in the show business; and it
+must always remain intimately related to the show business, even when it
+climbs to the lonely peaks of the poetic drama. Whatever its value, and
+however weighty its message, it is still to be commented upon under the
+head of "amusements," for if it does not succeed in amusing, it ceases
+to exist except in the library, and even there only for special
+students. It lives by its immediate theatrical effectiveness alone, even
+if it can survive solely by its literary quality.
+
+                                   IV
+
+Those who are in the habit of gaging the drama by this literary quality
+only are prone to deplore the bad taste of the public which flocks to
+purely spectacular pieces. But this again is no new thing, and it does
+not disclose any decline in the ability to appreciate the best. A
+century ago in London, when Sarah Siddons and John Philip Kemble were in
+the full plenitude of their powers, and when they were performing the
+noblest plays of Shakspere, they were thrust aside for a season or two
+while the theater was given up to empty melodramatic spectacles like
+'Castle Specter' and the 'Cataract of the Ganges.' It was horrifying to
+the lovers of the drama that these great actors in those great plays
+should have to give way to the attraction exerted on the public by a
+trained elephant, or by an imitation waterfall; but it is equally
+horrifying to be informed that the theater in London for which Shakspere
+wrote his masterpieces, and in which he himself appeared as an actor,
+was also used for fencing-matches, and for bull-baitings and
+bear-baitings, and that the theater in Athens for which Sophocles wrote
+his masterpieces, and in which he may have appeared as an actor, was
+also used for the annual cock-fight.
+
+So strong is the popular appreciation of spectacle that the drama, the
+true theater as distinguished from the mere show business, has always to
+fight for its right to exist, and to hold its place in competition with
+less intellectual and more sensational entertainments. The playhouses of
+any American city are likely to have a lean week whenever the circus
+comes to town, and perhaps the chief reason why the most of them now
+close in summer is to be sought not so much in the frequent hot spells,
+as in the irresistible attraction exerted by the base-ball games. The
+drama in Spain, which flourished superbly in the days of Lope de Vega
+and Calderon, sank into a sad decline when it had to compete with the
+fiercer delights of the bullfight; and the drama in Rome was actually
+killed out by the overpowering rivalry of the sports of the arena, the
+combats of gladiators, and the matching of men with wild beasts. What is
+known to the economists as Gresham's Law, according to which an inferior
+currency always tends to drive out a superior, seems to have an analog
+in the show business.
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                   II
+
+                      THE LIMITATIONS OF THE STAGE
+
+                      THE LIMITATIONS OF THE STAGE
+
+                                   I
+
+Few competent critics would dispute the assertion that the drama, if not
+actually the noblest of the arts, is at all events the most
+comprehensive, since it can invoke the aid of all the others without
+impairing its own individuality or surrendering its right to be
+considered the senior partner in any alliance it may make. Poetry,
+oratory, and music, painting, sculpture, and architecture, these the
+drama can take into its service, with no danger to its own control. Yet
+even if the drama may have the widest range of any of the arts, none the
+less are its boundaries clearly defined. What it can do, it does with a
+sharpness of effect and with a cogency of appeal no other art can rival.
+But there are many things it cannot do; and there are not a few things
+that it can attempt only at its peril. Some of these impossibilities and
+inexpediencies are psychologic subtleties of character and of sentiment
+too delicate and too minute for the magnifying lens of the theater
+itself; and some of them are physical, too large in themselves to be
+compressed into the rigid area of the stage. In advance of actual
+experiment, it is not always possible for even the most experienced of
+theatrical experts to decide the question with certainty.
+
+Moreover, there is always the audience to be reckoned with, and even old
+stagers like Henry Irving and Victorien Sardou cannot foresee the way
+in which the many-headed monster will take what is set before it. When
+Percy Fitzgerald and W. G. Wills were preparing an adaptation of the
+'Flying Dutchman' for Henry Irving, the actor made a suggestion which
+the authors immediately adopted. The romantic legend has for its hero a
+sea-captain condemned to eternal life until he can find a maiden willing
+to share his lot; and when at last he meets the heroine she has another
+lover, who is naturally jealous of the new aspirant to her hand. The
+young rival challenges Vanderdecken to a duel, and what Irving proposed
+was that the survivor of the fight should agree to throw the body of his
+rival into the sea, and that the waves should cast up the condemned
+Vanderdecken on the shore, since the ill-fated sailor could not avoid
+his doom by death at the hand of man. This was an appropriate
+development of the tale; it was really imaginative; and it would have
+been strangely moving if it had introduced into it a ballad on the old
+theme. But in a play performed before us in a theater its effect was not
+altogether what its proposer had hoped for, altho he presented it with
+all his marvelous command of theatrical artifice.
+
+The stage-setting Irving bestowed upon this episode was perfectly in
+keeping with its tone. The spectators saw the sandy beach of a little
+cove shut in by cliffs, with the placid ocean bathed in the sunset glow.
+The two men crossed swords on the strand; Vanderdecken let himself be
+killed, and the victorious lover carried his rival's body up the rocks
+and hurled it into the ocean. Then he departed, and for a moment all
+was silence. A shuddering sigh soon swept over the face of the waters,
+and a ripple lapped the sand. Then a little wave broke on the beach, and
+withdrew, rasping over the stones. At last a huge roller crashed forward
+and the sea gave up its dead. Vanderdecken lay high and dry on the
+shore, and in a moment he staggered to his feet, none the worse for his
+wounds. But unfortunately the several devices for accomplishing this
+result, admirable as they were, drew attention each of them to itself.
+The audience could not help wondering how the trick of the waves was
+being worked, and when the Flying Dutchman was washed up by the water,
+it was not the mighty deep rejecting Vanderdecken, again cursed with
+life, that the spectators perceived, but rather the dignified Henry
+Irving himself, unworthily tumbled about on the dust of his own stage.
+In the effort to make visible this imaginative embellishment of the
+strange story, its magic potency vanished. The poetry of the striking
+improvement on the old tale had been betrayed by its translation into
+the material realities of the theater, since the concrete presentation
+necessarily contradicted the abstract beauty of the idea.
+
+Here we find ourselves face to face with one of the most obvious
+limitations of the stage--that its power of suggestion is often greater
+than its power of actual presentation. There are many things, poetic and
+imaginative, which the theater can accomplish, after a fashion, but
+which it ventures upon only at imminent peril of failure. Many things
+which are startlingly effective in the telling are ineffective in the
+actual seeing. The mere mechanism needed to represent them will often be
+contradictory, and sometimes even destructive. Perhaps it may be
+advisable to cite another example, not quite so cogent as Irving's
+'Vanderdecken,' and yet carrying the same moral. This other example will
+be found in a piece by Sardou, a man who knew all the possibilities of
+the theater as intimately as Irving himself, and who was wont to utilize
+them with indefatigable skill. Indeed, so frequently did the French
+playwright avail himself of stage devices, and so often was he willing
+to rely upon them, that not a few critics of our latter-day drama have
+been inclined to dismiss him as merely a supremely adroit theatrical
+trickster.
+
+In his sincerest play, 'Patrie,' the piece which he dedicated to Motley,
+and which he seems himself to have been proudest of, Sardou invented a
+most picturesque episode. The Spaniards are in possession of Brussels;
+the citizens are ready to rise, and William of Orange is coming to their
+assistance. The chiefs of the revolt leave the city secretly and meet
+William at night in the frozen moat of an outlying fort. A Spanish
+patrol interrupts their consultation, and forces them to conceal
+themselves. A little later a second patrol is heard approaching, just
+when the return of the first patrol is impending. For the moment it
+looks as tho the patriots would be caught between the two Spanish
+companies. But William of Orange rises to the occasion. He calls on his
+"sea-wolves"; and when the second patrol appears, marching in single
+file, there suddenly spring out of the darkness upon every Spanish
+soldier two fur-clad creatures, who throttle him, bind him, and throw
+him into a hole in the ice of the moat. Then they swiftly fill in this
+gaping cavity with blocks of snow, and trample the path level above it.
+And almost immediately after the sea-wolves have done their deadly work
+and withdrawn again into hiding, the first patrol returns, and passes
+all unsuspecting over the bodies of their comrades--a very practical
+example of dramatic irony.
+
+As it happened, I had read 'Patrie' some years before I had an
+opportunity to see it on the stage, and this picturesque scene had
+lingered in my memory so that in the theater I eagerly awaited its
+coming. When it arrived at last I was sadly disappointed. The sea-wolves
+belied their appetizing name; they irresistibly suggested a group of
+trained acrobats, and I found myself carelessly noting the artifices by
+the aid of which the imitation snowballs were made to fill the trapdoor
+of the stage which represented the yawning hole in the ice of the frozen
+moat. The thing told was picturesque, but the thing seen was curiously
+unmoving; and I have noted without surprise that in the latest revival
+of 'Patrie' the attempt to make this episode effective was finally
+abandoned, the sea-wolves being cut out of the play.
+
+                                   II
+
+In 'Patrie' as in 'Vanderdecken' the real reason for the failure of
+these mechanical devices is that the plays were themselves on a superior
+level to those stage-tricks; the themes were poetic, and any theatrical
+effect which drew attention to itself interrupted the current of
+emotional sympathy. It disclosed itself instantly as incongruous, as out
+of keeping with the elevation of the legend--in a word, as inartistic. A
+similar effect, perhaps even more frankly mechanical, would not be
+inartistic in a play of a lower type, and it might possibly be helpful
+in a frankly spectacular piece, even if this happened also to be poetic
+in intent. In a fairy-play, a _feerie_, as the French term it, we expect
+to behold all sorts of startling ingenuities of stage-mechanism, whether
+the theme is delightfully imaginative, as in Maeterlinck's beautiful
+'Blue Bird,' or crassly prosaic, as in the 'Black Crook' and the 'White
+Fawn.'
+
+In picturesque melodrama also, in the dramatization of 'Ben Hur,' for
+example, we should be disappointed if we were bereft of the wreck of the
+Roman galley, and if we were deprived of the chariot race. These
+episodes can be presented in the theater only by the aid of mechanisms
+far more elaborate than those needed for the scenes in 'Vanderdecken'
+and 'Patrie'; but in 'Ben Hur' these mechanisms are not incongruous and
+distracting as were the simpler devices of 'Vanderdecken' and 'Patrie,'
+because the dramatization of the romanticist historical novel is less
+lofty in its ambition, less imaginative, less ethereally poetic. In
+'Vanderdecken' and in 'Patrie' the tricks seemed to obtrude themselves,
+whereas in 'Ben Hur' they were almost obligatory. In certain melodramas
+with more modern stories--in the amusing piece called the 'Round Up,'
+for example--the scenery is the main attraction. The scene-painter is
+the real star of the show. And there is no difficulty in understanding
+the wail of the performer of the principal part in a piece of this sort,
+when he complained that he was engaged to support forty tons of scenery.
+"It's only when the stage-carpenters have to rest and get their breath
+that I have a chance to come down to the footlights and bark for a
+minute or two."
+
+A moment's consideration shows that this plaintive protest is
+unreasonable, however natural it may be. In melodramas like the 'Round
+Up' and 'Ben Hur,' as in fairy-plays like the 'Blue Bird,' the acting is
+properly subordinated to the spectacular splendor of the whole
+performance. When we enter a theater to behold a play of either of these
+types, we expect the acting to be adequate, no doubt, but we do not
+demand the highest type of histrionic excellence. What we do anticipate,
+however, is a spectacle pleasing to the eye and stimulating to the
+nerves. In plays of these two classes the appeal is sensuous rather than
+intellectual; and it is only when the appeal of the play is to the mind
+rather than to the senses that merely mechanical effects are likely to
+be disconcerting.
+
+Mr. William Archer has pointed out that Ibsen in 'Little Eyolf,' has for
+once failed to perceive the strict limitation of the stage when he
+introduced a flagstaff, with the flag at first at half-mast, and a
+little later run up to the peak. Now, there are no natural breezes in
+the theater to flutter the folds of the flag, and every audience is
+aware of the fact. This, then, is the dilemma: either the flag hangs
+limp and lifeless against the pole, which is a flat spectacle, or else
+its folds are made to flutter by some concealed pneumatic blast or
+electric fan, which instantly arouses the inquiring curiosity of the
+audience. Here we find added evidence in support of Herbert Spencer's
+invaluable principle of Economy of Attention, which he himself applied
+only to rhetoric, but which is capable of extension to all the other
+arts--and to no one of them more usefully than to the drama. At any
+given moment a spectator in the theater has only so much attention to
+bestow upon the play being presented before his eyes, and if any portion
+of his attention is unduly distracted by some detail--like either the
+limpness or the fluttering of a flag--then he has just so much less to
+give to the play itself.
+
+Very rarely, indeed, can we catch Ibsen at fault in a technical detail
+of stage-management; he was extraordinarily meticulous in his artful
+adjustment of the action of his social dramas to the picture-frame stage
+of our modern cosmopolitan theater. He was marvelously skilful in
+endowing each of his acts with a background harmonious for his
+characters; and nearly always was he careful to refrain from the
+employment of any scenic device which might attract attention to
+itself. He eschewed altogether the more violent spectacular effects,
+altho he did call upon the stage manager to supply an avalanche in the
+final act of 'When the Dead Awaken'; but even this bold convulsion of
+nature was less incongruous than might be expected, since it was not
+exhibited until the action of the play itself was complete. In fact, the
+avalanche might be described as only a pictorial epilog.
+
+                                  III
+
+The principle of sternly economizing the attention of the audience can
+be violated by distractions far less extraneous and far less extravagant
+than avalanches. When Marmontel's forgotten tragedy of 'Cleopatra' was
+produced in the eighteenth century at the Theatre Francais, the
+misguided poet prevailed upon Vaucanson to make an artificial asp, which
+the Egyptian queen coiled about her arm at the end of the play, thereby
+releasing a spring, whereupon the beast raised its head angrily and
+emitted a shrill hiss before sinking its fangs into Cleopatra's flesh.
+At the first performance a spectator, bored by the tediousness of the
+tragedy, rose to his feet when he heard the hiss of the tiny serpent: "I
+agree with the asp!" he cried, as he made his way to the door.
+
+But even if Vaucanson's skilful automaton had not given occasion for
+this disastrous gibe, whatever attention the audience might pay to the
+mechanical means of Cleopatra's suicide was necessarily subtracted from
+that available for the sad fate of Cleopatra herself. If at that moment
+the spectators noted at all the hissing snake, then they were not really
+in a fit mood to feel the tragic death-struggle of "the serpent of old
+Nile." A kindred blunder was manifest in a recent sumptuously
+spectacular revival of 'Macbeth,' when the three witches flew here and
+there thru the dim twilight across the blasted heath, finally vanishing
+into empty air. These mysterious flittings and disappearances were
+achieved by attaching the performers of the weird sisters to invisible
+wires, whereby they could be swung aloft; the trick had been exploited
+earlier in the so-called Flying Ballet, wherein it was a graceful and
+amusing adjunct of the terpsichorean revels. But in 'Macbeth' it emptied
+Shakspere's scene of its dramatic significance, since the spectator
+waited for and watched the startling flights of the witches, and admired
+the dexterity with which their aerial voyages were controlled; and as a
+result he failed to feel the emotional importance of the interview
+between Macbeth and the withered croons, whose untoward greetings were
+to start the villain-hero on his downward career of crime.
+
+In this same revival of 'Macbeth' an equally misplaced ingenuity was
+lavished on the apparition of Banquo's ghost at the banquet. The
+gruesome specter was made mysteriously visible thru the temporarily
+transparent walls of the palace, until at last he emerged to take his
+seat on Macbeth's chair. The effect was excellent in itself, and the
+spectators followed all the movements of the ghost with pleased
+attention, more or less forgetting Macbeth, and failing to note the
+maddening effect of the apparition upon the seared countenance of the
+assassin-king. In this revival of 'Macbeth' no opportunity was neglected
+to adorn the course of the play with every possible scenic and mechanic
+accompaniment; and the total result of these accumulated artificialities
+of presentation was to rob one of Shakspere's most poetic tragedies of
+nearly all its poetry, and to reduce this imaginative masterpiece to the
+prosaic level of a spectacular melodrama.
+
+Another of Shakspere's tragedies has become almost impossible in our
+modern playhouses, because the stage-manager does not dare to do without
+the spectacular effects that the story seems to demand. Shakspere
+composed 'King Lear' for the bare platform-stage of the Globe Theater,
+devoid of all scenery, and supplied with only the most primitive
+appliances for suggesting rain and thunder; and he introduced three
+successive storm scenes, each intenser in interest than the one that
+went before, until the culmination comes in perhaps the sublimest and
+most pitiful episode in all tragedy, when the mad king and his follower,
+who is pretending to be insane, and his faithful fool are together out
+in the tempest. At the original production, three centuries ago, the
+three storms may have increased in violence as they followed one
+another; but at best the fierceness of the contending elements could
+then be only suggested, and the rain and the thunder were not allowed
+to divert attention away from the agonized plight of the mad monarch.
+But to-day the three storm scenes are rolled into one, and the
+stage-manager sets out to manufacture a realistic tempest in rivalry
+with nature. The mimic artillery of heaven and the simulated deluge from
+the skies which the producer now provides may excite our artistic
+admiration for his skill, but they distract our attention from the
+coming together of the characters so strangely met in the midst of the
+storm. The more realistically the tempest is reproduced the worse it is
+for the tragedy itself; and in most recent revivals the full effect of
+the painful story has been smothered by the sound and fury of the
+man-made storm.
+
+The counterweighted wires which permit the figures of the Flying Ballet
+to soar over the stage and to float aloft in the air, disturb the
+current of our sympathy when they are employed to lend lightness to
+intangible creatures like the weird sisters of Shakspere's tragedy; but
+they have been more artistically utilized in two of Shakspere's comedies
+to suggest the ethereality of Puck and of Ariel. The action of the
+'Midsummer Night's Dream' takes place in fairy-land, and that of the
+'Tempest' passes in an enchanted island, and even if we wonder for a
+moment how the levitation of these airy spirits is achieved, this
+temporary distraction of our attention is negligible in playful comedies
+like these with all their scenes laid in a land of make-believe. And yet
+it may be doubted whether even the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' and the
+'Tempest,' fairy-plays as they are, do not on the whole lose more than
+they gain from elaborate scenic and mechanical adjuncts. They are of
+poetry all compact, and the more simply they are presented, the less
+obtrusive the scenery and the less protruded the needful effects, the
+more the effort of the producer is centered upon preserving the ethereal
+atmosphere wherein the characters live, move, and have their being, the
+more harmonious the performance is with the pure fancy which inspired
+these two delightful pieces, then the more truly successful is the
+achievement of the stage-manager.
+
+                                   IV
+
+On the other hand, of course, the scenic accompaniment of a poetic play,
+whether tragic or romantic or comic, must never be so scant or so barren
+as to disappoint the spectators. The stage-accessories must be adequate
+and yet subordinate; they ought to resemble the clothes of a truly
+well-dressed woman, in that they never call attention to themselves
+altho they can withstand and even reward intimate inspection. This
+delicate ideal of artistic stage-setting, esthetically satisfying, and
+yet never flamboyant, was completely attained in the production of
+'Sister Beatrice,' at the New Theater, due to the skill and taste of Mr.
+Hamilton Bell. The several manifestations of the supernatural might
+easily have been over-emphasized; but a fine restraint resulted in a
+unity of tone and of atmosphere, so subtly achieved that the average
+spectator carried away the memory of more than one lovely picture
+without having let his thoughts wander away to consider by what means he
+had been made to feel the presence of a miracle.
+
+The special merit of this production of 'Sister Beatrice' lay in the
+delicate art by which more was suggested than could well be shown. In
+the theater, more often than not, the half is greater than the whole,
+and what is unseen is frequently more powerful than what is made
+visible. In Mr. Belasco's 'Darling of the Gods,' a singularly beautiful
+spectacle, touched at times with a pathetic poetry, the defeated
+samurais are at last reduced to commit hara-kiri. But we were not made
+spectators of these several self-murders; we were permitted to behold
+only the dim cane-brake into which these brave men had withdrawn, and to
+overhear each of them call out his farewell greetings to his friends
+before he dealt himself the deadly thrust. If we had been made witnesses
+of this accumulated self-slaughter we might have been revolted by the
+brutality of it. Transmitted to us out of a vague distance by a few
+scattered cries, it moved us like the inevitable close of a truly tragic
+tale.
+
+In the 'Aiglon' of M. Rostand, Napoleon's feeble son finds himself alone
+with an old soldier of his father's on the battle-field of Wagram; and
+in the darkness of the night, and in the turmoil of a wind-storm the
+hysteric lad almost persuades himself that he is actually present at the
+famous fight, that he can hear the shrieks of the wounded, and the
+groans of the dying, and that he can see the hands and arms of the dead
+stretched up from the ground. This is all in the sickly boy's fancy, of
+course, and yet in Paris the author had voices heard, and caused hands
+and arms to be extended upward from the edge of the back drop, thus
+vulgarizing his own imaginative episode by the presentation of a
+concrete reality. Not quite so inartistic as this, and yet frankly
+freakish was the arrangement of the closet scene between Hamlet and his
+mother, when Sarah-Bernhardt made her misguided effort to impersonate
+the Prince of Denmark. On the walls of the room where Hamlet talks
+daggers to the queen there were full-length, life-sized portraits of her
+two successive husbands, and when Hamlet bids her look on this picture,
+and on this, the portrait of Hamlet's father became transparent, and in
+its frame the spectators suddenly perceived the ghost. This is an
+admirable example of misplaced cleverness, of the search for novelty for
+its own sake, of the sacrifice of the totality of impression to a mere
+trick.
+
+'Hamlet' is the most poetic of plays, and the 'Aiglon' does its best to
+be poetic, and therefore the less overt spectacle there may be in the
+performance of these dramas the easier it will be for the spectator to
+focus his attention on the poetry itself. Even more pretentiously poetic
+than the 'Aiglon' is 'Chantecler,' upon which the ambitious author has
+also lavished a great variety of stage-effects--as tho he were not quite
+willing to rely for success upon his lyrical exuberance. In M. Rostand's
+'Aiglon' and 'Chantecler,' as in Sarah-Bernhardt's 'Hamlet,' there was
+to be observed a frequent confusion of the merely theatric with the
+purely dramatic--a confusion to be found forty years ago in Fechter's
+'Hamlet.' That picturesque French actor made over the English tragedy
+into a French romantic melodrama; he kept the naked plot, and he cut out
+all the poetry. He lowered Shakspere's play to the level of the other
+melodramas in which he had won success--for instance, 'No Thorofare,'
+due to the collaboration of Dickens and Wilkie Collins, or the earlier
+'Fils de la Nuit,' acted in Paris long before Fechter appeared on the
+English-speaking stage.
+
+The 'Son of the Night' was a pirate bold, personated, of course, by
+Fechter, and in one act his long, low, rakish craft with its black flag
+flying, skimmed across the stage, cutting the waves, and dropping anchor
+close to the footlights. The surface of the sea was represented by a
+huge cloth, and the incessant motion of the waves was due to the
+concealed activities of a dozen boys. The play had so long a run that
+the sea-cloth was worn dangerously thin. At last at one performance, a
+rent spread suddenly and disclosed a disgusted boy, just as the pirate
+ship with the Son of the Night on its deck was preparing to come about.
+Fechter was equal to the emergency. "Man overboard!" he cried, and,
+leaning over the bow of the boat, he grabbed the boy by the collar and
+pulled him on deck. Probably very few of the spectators noticed the
+mishap, and if they had all observed it, what matter? A laugh or two,
+more or less, during the performance of a prosaic melodrama, is of
+little or no consequence. A disconcerting accident like this in a play
+like the 'Son of the Night' does not cut any vital current of sympathy,
+for this is a quality to which the piece could make no claim. But in a
+truly poetic play a mishap of this sort would be a misfortune in that it
+might precipitate the interest and interrupt the harmony of attention
+demanded by the imaginative drama itself.
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                  III
+
+                       A MORAL FROM A TOY THEATER
+
+                       A MORAL FROM A TOY THEATER
+
+                                   I
+
+In 1881, when William Ernest Henley was hard put to it to make a living,
+Sir Sidney Colvin kindly recommended him for the editorship of the
+monthly _Magazine of Art_. Among the contributors whom the new editor
+called to his aid was Robert Louis Stevenson, and among the
+contributions the latter made to the former's magazine was the highly
+characteristic and self-revelatory essay, entitled 'A Penny Plain and
+Two Pence Colored,' now included in the volume called 'Memories and
+Portraits.' In this playful paper Stevenson makes one of his many
+returns to his boyhood, whose moods he could always recapture at will
+with the assistance of that imaginative memory which was one of his
+special gifts, and he was able to replevin from the dim limbo of things
+half forgotten his longing delight in the toy theater, the scenes for
+which and the necessary properties and the several characters themselves
+in their successive dresses were to be procured printed on very thin
+cardboard, so that the proud possessor might cut them out at will. If
+the youthful capitalist had accumulated twopence, he could acquire these
+treasures already resplendent in their glowing hues; and yet Stevenson
+held that the lad was happier who parted with only a single penny,
+reserving the half of his fortune for the purchase of the paints
+wherewith he might himself vivify this scenery and these properties,
+and so cause his characters to start to life, emblazoned in the bold
+colors which please the puerile mind.
+
+These sheets of thin cardboard, with thin little pamphlets containing
+the text of the pieces to be performed in the toy theater, were
+originally known as Skelt's Juvenile Drama; and one Skelt seems to have
+been its originator, probably in the early part of the nineteenth
+century. Apparently he parted with his precious stock in trade to one
+Park, who passed it on in due season to one Webb, who transmitted it to
+one Redington, until at last it descended to its present owner, one B.
+Pollock, of 73 Hoxton Street, London, N. Stevenson affected to think
+that Skelt's Juvenile Drama had "become, for the most part, a memory";
+yet it survives now in the second decade of the twentieth century as
+Pollock's Juvenile Drama, and Mr. Pollock proclaims that he has
+republished some score plays, and that he keeps them always in print,
+plain and colored. He offers, furthermore, to supply "Drop Scenes, Top
+Drops, Orchestras, Foot and Water Pieces, Single Portraits,
+Combats--Fours, Sixes, Twelves, Sixteens--Fairies, Horse Soldiers,
+Clowns, Rifles, Animals, Birds, Butterflies, Houses, Views, Ships, &c.,
+plain and colored, 1/2_d_ sheet plain, 1_d_ sheet colored."
+
+[Illustration: Taken from upper half of Plate No. 1, which is the
+title-page of the series, this section of which is also a guide for the
+setting of the first scene in the 'Miller and His Men']
+
+It is from the covers of "the book of the words" of the 'Miller and His
+Men' that this enticing proclamation is taken--the 'Miller and His Men,'
+"adapted only for Pollock's characters and scenes," and accompanied by
+"7 Plates characters, 11 Scenes, 3 Wings, Total 21 Plates." The persons
+of the drama and the scenes wherein that drama is played out to its
+fiery end, are all in the bolder manner of the Old Masters, who sought
+the broadest effects, and who willingly neglected petty details. How
+bold and how broad the manner and the effects can best be judged by an
+honest transcription from the final page of the book of words, wherein
+the terse and tense dialog, single speech clashing with single speech,
+is accompanied by stage directions for the instruction of the Young
+Masters who are about to produce the sublime spectacle:
+
+     _Enter Grindorf left hand, plate 4._
+
+     _Enter Karl and Friberg, swords drawn, plate 4, followed by the
+     Troops, right hand, plate 7._
+
+     _Grindorf_: Ha! ha! I have escaped you, have I?
+
+     _Karl_: But you are caught in your own trap.
+
+     _Grindorf_: Spiller!--Golotz! Golotz! I say!
+
+     _Count_: Villain! you cannot escape us now! Surrender, or
+     instantly meet thy fate!
+
+     _Grindorf_: Surrender! I have sworn never to descend from this
+     place alive!
+
+     _Enter Lothair, as Spiller, 3rd dress, left hand, plate 7._
+
+     _Grindorf_: Spiller, let my bride appear.
+
+     _Exit Lothair._
+
+     _Enter Kehnar, right hand, plate 1._
+
+     _Enter Ravina with torch, plate 7._
+
+     _Ravina_: Before it is too late, restore Claudine to her
+     father's arms!
+
+     _Grindorf_: Never!
+
+     _Ravina_: Then I know my course!
+
+     _Enter Lothair with Claudine, left hand, plate 6._
+
+     _Kehnar_: My child! Ah, Grindorf, spare her!
+
+     _Grindorf_: Hear me, Count Friberg; if you do not withdraw your
+     followers, by my hand she dies!
+
+     _Count_: Never, till thou art yielded to justice!
+
+     _Grindorf_: No more--this to her heart!
+
+     _Lothair_: And this to thine!
+
+     _Exit Lothair and Claudine, and Grindorf._
+
+     _Re-enter Grindorf and Lothair fighting, plate 6, fight and
+     exit._
+
+     _Grindorf to be put on wounded, plate 7._
+
+     _Re-enter Lothair with Claudine, plate 6._
+
+     _Lothair_: Ravina, fire the train!
+
+     _Scene changes to explosion, Scene 11, No. 9._
+
+The words are striking and the actions are startling, and it is no
+wonder that plate 7 and scene 11, No. 9, filled with joy the heart of
+Robert Louis Stevenson when he was a perfervid Scot of fourteen. In his
+manly maturity, when he had risen to an appreciation of portraits by
+Raeburn, and when he had sat at the feet of that inspired critic of
+painting, his cousin, R. A. M. Stevenson, he admitted that he had no
+desire to insist upon the art of Skelt's purveyors. "Those wonderful
+characters that once so thrilled our soul with their bold attitude,
+array of deadly engines and incomparable costume, to-day look somewhat
+pallidly," he confessed regretfully; "the extreme hard favor of the
+heroine strikes me, I had almost said with pain; the villain's scowl no
+longer thrills me like a trumpet; and the scenes themselves, those once
+incomparable landscapes, seem the efforts of a prentice hand. So much of
+fault we can find; but, on the other side, the impartial critic rejoices
+to remark the presence of a great unity of gusto; of those direct
+claptrap appeals which a man is dead and buriable when he fails to
+answer; of the footlight glamor, the ready-made, barefaced, transpontine
+picturesque, a thing not one with cold reality, but how much dearer to
+the mind!"
+
+[Illustration: A group of the principal characters from Pollock's
+juvenile drama, the 'Miller and His Men,' cut out and assembled as
+called for in Scene 10, a part of which is quoted in the text]
+
+                                   II
+
+"Transpontine" is a Briticism for which the equivalent Americanism is
+"Bowery." The plays which Skelt vended for the enjoyment of romantic
+youth were not of his own invention, nor were they the work of his
+hirelings; they were artfully simplified condensations of melodramas
+long popular in London at the theaters on the Surrey side of the Thames,
+and in New York at the Bowery. In French's Standard Drama, the Acting
+Edition, to be obtained in yellow covers for fifteen cents, one may find
+"the 'Miller and His Men,' a Melo-Drama in Two Acts, by F. Pocock, Esq.,
+author of the 'Robber's Wife,' 'John of Paris,' 'Hit or Miss,' 'Magpie
+and the Maid,' etc., with original casts, scene and property plots,
+costumes, and all the stage business." And the list of properties
+required for the final scene helps to elucidate what may have been
+cryptic in the dialog quoted from the compacted adaptation of Skelt:
+
+     _Scene 4_:--_Slow match laid from stage in C. to mill. Lighted
+     torch for Ravina. Red fire and explosion 3 E. L. H. Wood crash
+     3 E. L. H. Six stuffed figures of robbers behind mill, L. H.
+     Eight guns, swords, and belts for hussars. Disguise cloak for
+     Lothair. Fighting swords for Lothair and Wolf._ [Wolf is
+     evidently another name for Grindorf.]
+
+Thus we see that the pleasant country of the Skelts stretched from the
+Surrey side of the Thames to the Bowery bank of the Hudson, and that the
+Skeltic temperament was purely melodramatic, its bass notes being
+transposed to adjust it to the clear treble of boyhood. It is greatly to
+be regretted that no inquiring scholar has yet devoted himself to the
+task of tracing the history of English melodrama, as Professor Thorndike
+has traced the history of English tragedy. Of course, there have always
+been melodramatic plays ever since the drama began to assert itself as
+an independent form of art. There is a melodramatic element in the
+'Medea' of Euripides, as there is in the 'Rodogune' of Corneille; and in
+the Elizabethan theater the so-called tragedy of blood is nothing if not
+melodramatic. Yet the special form of English melodrama that flourished
+in the later years of the eighteenth century and the earlier years of
+the nineteenth deserves a more careful study than it has yet received.
+Apparently it was due partly to a decadence of the native type of drama
+represented by Lillo's 'George Barnwell,' and partly to the stimulation
+received first from the emotional pieces of the German Kotzebue, and
+afterward from the picturesque pieces of the French Pixerecourt. And not
+to be neglected is the influence immediately exerted on the popular
+plays of the latter part of the period by the romances of Scott and of
+Cooper.
+
+Altho these plays were devoid of literary merit, of style, of veracity
+of character delineation, of sincerity of motive, they were not without
+theatrical effectiveness--or they could never have maintained
+themselves in the theater. As Sir Arthur Pinero has seen clearly, "a
+drama which was sufficiently popular to be transferred to the toy
+theaters was almost certain to have a sort of rude merit in its
+construction. The characterization would be hopelessly conventional, the
+dialog bald and despicable--but the situations would be artfully
+arranged, the story told adroitly and with spirit." In other words, the
+compounders of these melodramas were fairly skilful in devising plots
+likely to arouse and to sustain the interest of uncritical audiences.
+Probably they were unfamiliar with Voltaire's assertion that the success
+of a play depends mainly upon the choice of its story; and it is
+unlikely that they had any knowledge of Aristotle's declaration that
+plot is primarily more important than character; but they accomplished
+their humble task as well as if they had been heartened by these
+authorities. These ingenious and ingenuous pieces were none of them
+contributions to English dramatic literature, and they are not enshrined
+in its annals; but they were effective stage-plays, nevertheless, and
+they had, therefore, an essential quality lacking in the closet-dramas
+which Shelley and Byron were composing in those same years.
+
+                                  III
+
+In the illuminating lecture on Stevenson as a writer of plays delivered
+by Sir Arthur Pinero in 1903 before the members of the Edinburgh
+Philosophical Institution, the confessions contained in 'A Penny Plain
+and Two Pence Colored' are skilfully employed to explain Stevenson's
+flat failure as a playwright. Many of his ardent admirers must have
+wondered why it was that he adventured four times into dramatic
+authorship, only to undergo a fourfold shipwreck. Yet Sir James Barrie
+and Mr. John Galsworthy, essayists and novelists at first, as Stevenson
+was, strayed successfully from prose fiction into the acted drama. Was
+not Stevenson as anxious for this theatrical triumph as any one of
+these? Was he not as richly dowered with dramatic power, as inventive,
+as responsive to opportunity, as ready to master a new craft? Why, then,
+did he fail where they have succeeded?
+
+For these baffling questions Sir Arthur Pinero has an acceptable answer.
+Stevenson was unable to establish himself as a play-maker, first,
+because he did not take the art of play-making seriously; he did not put
+his full strength in it, mind and soul and body, contenting himself when
+he was a man with playing at play-making as he had played with his toy
+theater when he was a boy. The second cause of his disappointment as a
+dramatist was due to the abiding influence of this toy theater, and to
+the fact that the pieces he attempted were planned in rivalry with the
+'Miller and His Men,' and therefore that they were hopelessly out of
+date before they were conceived. (There is a third reason, not mentioned
+by Sir Arthur, and yet suggesting itself irresistibly to any one who
+knew the editor of the _Magazine of Art_ personally; all four of
+Stevenson's attempts at play-writing were made in collaboration with
+Henley, who was the least equipped by temper and by temperament for the
+practise of dramaturgy.)
+
+      _Scene II_ POLLOCK'S SCENES _IN THE MILLER AND HIS MEN. No.9_
+
+[Illustration: _London. Published by B Pollock,73 Hoxton Street Hoxton_
+Explosion of the mill. A back drop in the 'Miller and His Men,' Scene
+II]
+
+Yet even if Stevenson had worked alone, and even if he had taken the new
+art seriously, he could never have won a place among the playwrights
+until he had fought himself free from the sinuous coils of Skeltery. In
+his youth he had saved his pence to purchase the accessories of Skelt's
+Juvenile Drama with boyish delight in the acquisition of things longed
+for to be possessed at last. When he had purchased plate 7 and scene 11,
+No. 9, he thought they were his possessions. But, of a truth, he was
+their possession, even if he did not know his slavery. As a man he was
+subdued to what he had worked in as a boy; and when he wanted to write
+plays of his own, he had no freedom to follow the better models of his
+own day; he was a bondman to Skelt, a thrall to Park, a minion to Webb,
+a chattel to Redington and to Pollock. "What am I?" he asked in his
+self-revelatory essay, humorously exaggerating, no doubt, yet
+subconsciously stating the exact truth; "What am I? What are life, art,
+letters, the world, but what my Skelt has made them? He stamped himself
+upon my immaturity." And the impression was then so deep that it could
+not be effaced in maturity. The boy in Stevenson survived, instead of
+dying when the man was born.
+
+The art of play-writing, like the art of story-telling, and, indeed,
+like all the other arts, demands both a native gift and an acquired
+craft. Its basic principles are the same ever since the drama began; but
+its immediate methods vary at different times and in different
+countries. While every artist must say what it is given him to say, he
+can say it acceptably only by acquiring the method of speech employed by
+his immediate predecessors. However original he may prove himself at the
+end, in the beginning he can only imitate the methods and borrow the
+processes and avail himself of the practises which the elder craftsmen
+are employing successfully at the moment when he sets himself to learn
+their trade. He must--to use the apt term of the engineers--he must keep
+himself abreast of "state of the art." This is what the great dramatists
+have ever done; Sophocles follows in the footsteps of AEschylus, as
+Shakspere emulates Marlowe and Kyd, and as Moliere went to school to the
+adroit and acrobatic Italian comedians. These great dramatists were
+perfectly content to begin by taking over the patterns devised by their
+immediate predecessors in play-making, even if they were soon to enlarge
+these patterns and so modify them to suit their even larger needs.
+
+[Illustration: POLLOCK'S CHARACTERS IN THE MILLER AND HIS MEN. _Plate
+7_
+
+Plate No. 7, complete as published, ready to be cut out and put into
+use in the toy theater]
+
+Now, the state of the art when Stevenson turned to the theater was in
+accord with the picture-frame stage of to-day, with a single set to the
+act, and without the soliloquies and the confidential asides to the
+audience which may then have been proper enough on the apron-stage of
+the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Even in the lower grade
+of playhouse, where rude and crude melodramas were performed, the method
+and the manner of the 'Miller and His Men' had long departed. The
+pleasure that melodrama can give is perennial; but its processes vary in
+accord with the changing conditions of the theater. The door was open
+for Stevenson to write melodrama, if he preferred that species of play,
+and if he desired to varnish it with literature as he was to varnish the
+police-novel or mystery-story in the 'Wrecker.' But if he sought to do
+this, he was bound to inform himself as to the state of the art at the
+instant of composition. If he shut his eyes to the changed conditions of
+the theater since the 'Miller and His Men' had won a wide popularity in
+the playhouse, then he made an unpardonable blunder, for the battle was
+lost before he could deploy his forces. He might have been forewarned by
+the failure of Charles Lamb in a like attempt. When Lamb's Elizabethan
+imitation 'John Woodvil' was rejected for Drury Lane by John Philip
+Kemble as not "consonant with the taste of the age"; its exasperated
+author cried: "Hang on the age! I'll write for antiquity!" But those who
+write for antiquity cannot complain if they do not delight their
+contemporaries. It is to his contemporaries, and not to antiquity or to
+posterity, that every true dramatist has appealed.
+
+                                   IV
+
+And as Stevenson might have taken warning from the sad fate of Lamb, so
+he might have found his profit in considering the happy fortune of
+Victor Hugo, who also had a taste for melodrama. When the leader of the
+French romanticists felt that it was incumbent upon him to conquer the
+theater which the classicists held as their last stronghold, he was
+swift to consider the state of the art. He sought immediate success upon
+the stage, and the most successful plays of that period in France were
+the melodramas of Pixerecourt, and of his followers, and therefore Hugo
+sat himself down to spy out the secrets of their craft. He made himself
+master of their methods, and he put together the striking and startling
+plots of 'Hernani' and 'Ruy Blas' in strict accord with their formulas,
+certain that he could varnish with literature their melodramatic
+actions. So glittering was his varnish, so brilliant was his metrical
+rhetoric, so glowing were his golden verses, that he blinded the
+spectators and kept the most of them from peering beneath at his
+arbitrary and artificial skeleton of supporting melodramatic structure.
+To-day, after fourscore years, we can see just what it is that Hugo did;
+and his plays, superb as they are in their lyric adornment, stand
+revealed as frank melodramas, lacking sincerity of motive and veracity
+of character drawing. But when Hugo wrote them they were in Kemble's
+phrase "consonant with the taste of the age," and the best of them have
+not yet worn out their welcome in the theater.
+
+Stevenson did not heed the warning of Lamb, and he did not profit by the
+example of Hugo. 'Deacon Brodie' was born out of date; so was 'Admiral
+Guinea'; and all the varnish of literature which the two collaborators
+applied externally and with loving solicitude availed naught. It is due
+to his entanglement in the strangling coils of Skeltery that Stevenson
+did not take the drama seriously. He seemed to have looked at it as
+something to be tossed off lightly to make money in the interstices of
+honest work. In his stories, long and short, he strove for effect, no
+doubt, but he was bent also on achieving sincerity and veracity. In his
+plays he made little effort for either sincerity or veracity, so far at
+least as his plot was concerned; and he thought he could lift these
+concoctions to the level of literature by the polish of his dialog, and
+by qualities applied on the outside instead of being developed from the
+inside. He seems to have believed that in the drama, at least, he could
+attain beauty by constructing his ornament instead of by ornamenting his
+construction, ignoring or ignorant of the fact that in the drama, the
+construction, if only it be solid enough, and four square to all the
+winds that blow, needs no ornament and is most impressive in its stark
+simplicity.
+
+In his boyhood Goethe had also played with a toy theater, and it was a
+puppet-show piece which first called his attention to the mighty theme
+of his supreme poem; but the great German poet, captivated as he may
+have been by his youthful experience, was able in his manhood to free
+himself from its shackles. He came in time to have a profound insight
+into the principles of dramatic art, and of the dramaturgic craft. In
+his old age he talked about the theater freely and frequently to
+Eckermann; and there are few of his utterances which do not furnish food
+for reflection. Here is one of them:
+
+     Writing for the stage is something peculiar; and he who does
+     not understand it had better leave it alone. Every one thinks
+     that an interesting fact will appear interesting on the
+     boards--nothing of the kind! Things may be very pretty to read,
+     and very pretty to think about; but as soon as they are put
+     upon the stage the effect is quite different; and that which
+     has charmed us in the closet will probably fall flat on the
+     boards.... Writing for the stage is a trade that one must
+     understand, and requires a talent that one must possess. Both
+     are uncommon, and where they are not combined, we have scarcely
+     any good result.
+
+That Stevenson had the native gift of the dramatist is undisputable, and
+Sir Arthur Pinero in his lecture was able to make this clear. But
+"writing for the stage is also a trade that one must acquire"; and when
+Stevenson sought to acquire it he apprenticed himself to Skelt not to
+Sardou, to Redington and Pollock, not to Augier and Dumas.
+
+(1914.)
+
+[Illustration: Grindoff and banditti carousing. Lower half of Plate No.
+5, Pollock's characters in the 'Miller and His Men']
+
+P.S.--After the publication of this paper in _Scribner's Magazine_, a
+friendly reader in Great Britain was kind enough to copy out for me this
+Skeltian lyric, which appeared in the London _Fun_ in 1868, and which
+was probably rimed by Henry S. Leigh:
+
+AN EARLY STAGE
+
+    Ah me! since first, long, long ago,
+      I learned to love the British stage,
+    It has--or I have--altered so,
+      It scarce receives my patronage!
+    Where are the villain's spangled tabs,
+      His cloak, his ringlets, and his belt?
+    Where are his scowls, his growls, his stabs,
+      As shown of old by Park and Skelt?
+
+    Once was I manager myself,
+      And played the 'Miller and his Men';
+    My company--ah, happy elf!
+      I had no trouble with them then--
+    They never sulked, forgot their lines,
+      Threw up their parts, or asked for "gelt"--
+    For as the reader p'r'aps divines--
+      I got them all of Park and Skelt.
+
+    I stuck them on, and cut them out,
+      I painted them with colors bright;
+    I scattered tinsel-specks about,
+      And made them things of beauty, quite--
+    Not joys forever--ne'ertheless,
+      They've vanished just as snowflakes melt.
+    None can restore the bliss, I guess,
+      I once derived from Park and Skelt.
+
+    How I revered the artist's skill
+      Who did my heroes represent--
+    With scowls the very soul to thrill--
+      With one leg straight and one leg bent!
+    I loved his ladies full of grace,
+      And on their beauties fondly dwelt:--
+    My first pictorial love could trace
+      Her pedigree to Park and Skelt.
+
+    Ah me! 'tis many a year since I
+      Those dear old plates--a penny plain
+    And two-pence colored--did espy;
+      I ne'er shall see their like again!
+    The world's with disappointment rife,
+      And I have far too often felt
+    That actors now are less like life
+      Than those I bought of Park and Skelt!
+
+                                   IV
+
+                             WHY FIVE ACTS?
+
+                             WHY FIVE ACTS?
+
+                                   I
+
+In the eighteenth century, both in England and in France, every stately
+and ponderous tragedy and every self-respecting comedy obeyed the
+obligation imposed by long tradition and duly stretched itself out to
+the full measure of five acts, no more and no less. It felt bound thus
+to distend itself, even tho its theme might be far too frail for so huge
+a frame, and even tho the unfortunate author often found himself at his
+wit's end to piece out his play's end. Any one who has had occasion to
+read widely in the works of the eighteenth century playwrights cannot
+fail to feel abundant sympathy for the harassed poet who plaintively
+called on Parliament to pass a law abolishing fifth acts altogether.
+This unduly distressed dramatist was an Englishman; but about the same
+time a Frenchman, weary of contemplating the frequent emptiness of the
+contemporary tragic stage, sarcastically remarked that, after all, it
+must be very easy _not_ to write a tragedy in five acts.
+
+Yet if tragedy was to be written at all, it had to have five acts, since
+a smaller number would not seem proportionate to a truly tragic subject.
+But why five acts? Why has five the number sacred to the tragic muse?
+Why did even the comic muse demand it? Why does George Meredith,
+discussing comedy, declare that "five is dignity with a trailing robe;
+whereas one, or two, or three acts would be short skirts, and
+degrading." Why not three acts, or seven? Why was it that any other
+number of acts was unthinkable--or at least never thought of?
+
+Questions like these seem to have floated before the mind of the Abbe
+d'Aubignac, writing in the seventeenth century, and he came very near
+putting to himself the query which serves as a title for this chapter.
+"Poets have generally agreed that all Drammas regularly should have
+neither more nor less than Five Acts; and the Proof of this is the
+general observation of it; but for the Reason, I do not know whether
+there be any founded in Nature. Rhetorick has this advantage over Poetry
+in the Parts of Oration, that the Exord, Narration, Confirmation and
+Peroration are founded upon a way of discoursing natural to all Men....
+But for the Five Acts of the Drammatick Poem, they have not been framed
+upon any sound ground."
+
+That the division of a drama into five parts was accepted in every
+civilized country as the only possible division, seems very strange
+indeed, when we consider that there is really no artistic justification
+for it, nor any logical necessity. Like every other work of art a play
+ought to have a single subject, a clearly defined topic; in other words,
+it ought to have Unity of Action. There is no denying that some of the
+greatest artists have, now and again, been tempted to deal with two
+themes at the same time, combining these as best they could in a single
+work at the risk of leaving us a little in doubt as to their intention;
+but in the immense majority of acknowledged masterpieces the interest is
+carefully centered in a single object. In these masterpieces the action
+is single and unswerving, sweeping forward irresistibly to its
+inevitable end.
+
+If, therefore, we accept the Unity of Action as a general rule, binding
+upon all artists, we can hardly deny that the most obviously natural
+arrangement for the story is to set it forth in one act, without any
+intermission or subdivision whatsoever--a single action in a single act.
+Yet it is the play in three acts which we are bound to recognize at once
+as possessing the ideal form, since it enables the dramatist to set
+apart the three divisions, which Aristotle declared to be essential to a
+well-constructed tragedy--the beginning, the middle, and the end--each
+presented in an act of its own. To put a play into more than three acts
+is possible only by halving one or another of these three essential
+parts. In a four-act play, the beginning may be split into two acts; and
+in a five-act play the middle may also be subdivided.
+
+The logic of the three-act form, and the convenience of it also, are so
+obvious that ever since the tyranny of the Procrustean framework in five
+acts was abolished in the middle years of the nineteenth century,
+practical playwrights of all countries have favored it more and more.
+The young Dumas used it in his later plays, and so did Ibsen, that
+consummate master of stagecraft, emancipated from empty traditions, but
+profiting shrewdly by every available device of his immediate
+predecessors. If the four-act form is also popular to-day, this seems to
+be because the modern dramatist, intending a play in three acts, finds
+himself forced by sheer press of matter, to subdivide one of the
+essential members, as Sir Arthur Pinero had to do in the 'Second Mrs.
+Tanqueray' and Mr. Henry Arthur Jones in the 'Liars.' Even the opera,
+which liked the larger framework of five acts when Scribe was writing
+librettos for Halevy and Meyerbeer, is now content with only three,
+since Wagner revealed his skill as a librettist.
+
+It is true that Freytag, in his sadly old-fashioned treatise on 'Technic
+of the Drama,' accepted without cavil the five-act form, and even
+attempted to justify it by asserting that there are in fact five
+divisions of a tragic action. He symbolized the arrangement of a drama
+in a pyramidal structure, declaring that it ascends from the
+Introduction to the Climax, and then descends to the Catastrophe.
+Obviously these are only different terms for the beginning, the middle,
+and the end. But he vainly imagined two other members, the Rise, which
+intervenes between the Introduction and the Climax, and the Fall, which
+he inserted between the Climax and the Catastrophe. Obviously, again,
+this is an explanation after the event; and it seems to have its origin
+solely in his acceptance of the five-act form. And Freytag was forced to
+abandon his own theory when he considered honestly certain of the
+masterpieces of the modern drama. He admitted it to be "impossible that
+the single acts should correspond entirely to the five great divisions
+of the action." He asserted that "in the Rising Action, the first stage
+was usually in the first act, the last sometimes in the third; of the
+Falling Action the beginning and the end were sometimes taken in the
+third and fifth acts." Yet he failed to see that if he made this
+admission, he cut the ground from under his feet, and that there was no
+longer any acceptable reason for his insistence upon the five-act form.
+
+Freytag had no doubt at all as to the necessity of the division into
+five acts. He received it with blind faith, as tho it had been
+prescribed by divine authority. Yet if he had chosen to explore the
+early history of the drama in his own tongue, he would have found Hans
+Sachs sometimes extending his plays into six acts, and even into seven.
+And if he had cared to consider the drama of the Spaniards he would have
+seen that the most of the plays of Calderon are in three acts--a
+division which the great dramatic poet of Spain had taken over, as he
+had taken over so much else, from his masterful predecessor, Lope de
+Vega. In his interesting and illuminating little treatise on the art of
+writing plays, Lope de Vega gave the credit of establishing the
+three-act form to Virues. Plays had previously been written in four
+acts; as Lope puts it pleasantly: "The drama had gone on all fours, like
+a child, and truly it was then in its infancy."
+
+Freytag ignored or was ignorant of Hans Sachs and Calderon. His mind was
+fixed on Goethe and on Schiller, altho his vision also included
+Shakspere, upon whom the two German poets had more or less modeled
+themselves. The tradition of the five-act form might not obtain in the
+earliest German drama, as it did not obtain in the Spanish; but it was
+firmly established in the later German drama, in the English, and in the
+French. It is easy to see that the later Germans derived it from the
+French and the English; but where did the French and the English get it?
+Where could they get it? No such division existed in the medieval drama,
+in the mysteries and in the miracle-plays, out of which the drama of
+every modern language has been developed. No such division existed in
+the Greek drama, which has served as a standard and as a stimulus to the
+drama of every modern literature. A Greek tragedy was represented
+without any intermission in a single, long unbroken act; and if a
+sequence of three plays was sometimes performed, one after another, on
+the same day, and dealing with successive periods of the same story,
+this trilogy might suggest a division into three parts. Nor is any hint
+of the duty of dividing a tragedy into five parts to be discovered
+anywhere in Aristotle.
+
+                                   II
+
+And yet we must go back to the Greek theater if we want to see why it is
+that the 'Femmes Savantes' of Moliere and the 'School for Scandal' of
+Sheridan are each of them in five acts. But it is not from a Greek that
+we get the law that this division was obligatory on all self-respecting
+dramatists; it is from a Roman, writing at a time when the drama of his
+own language had been ousted from the stage by pantomimic spectacle and
+by gladiatorial combat. It is Horace, who, in his epistle on the art of
+poetry, declares the necessity of five acts:
+
+    Ne brevior, neu sit quinto productior actu
+    Fabula quae posci vult et spectata reponi.
+
+Sir Theodore Martin rendered this in an English rimed couplet, which
+does not completely convey the meaning of the two Latin lines, but which
+will serve to show the rigidity of the rule laid down by the Roman poet:
+
+    Five acts a play must have, nor more nor less,
+    To keep the stage and have a marked success.
+
+But this still leaves us groping in the dark. Why did Horace declare
+this law? What warrant had he? What put the idea into his head? These
+are questions answered by a French scholar, M. Weil; in one of his
+ingenious and learned 'Etudes sur le Drame Antique,' he explains that
+Horace derived much of his theory of the poetic art from the Alexandrian
+critics, and more particularly from the writings of a certain
+Neoptolemus of Parium. Probably the Alexandrian authors of tragedy had
+been led to adopt a division into five acts by following the example of
+Euripides, whose practise was not uniform, but who tended to reduce to
+four the number of the lyric odes in his tragedies, thus separating the
+purely dramatic passages into five parts.
+
+In Athens the drama had been slowly evolved out of the tragic songs; and
+in the surviving tragedies of AEschylus, the earliest of the three great
+dramatic poets of Greece, we discover that the choral odes are more
+abundant than the dialog which carries on the plot. In the extant plays
+of his mighty successor, Sophocles, the drama is seen emerging
+triumphant, but the lyrical passages are still frequent and important.
+In the later pieces of Euripides, the third and most modern of the Attic
+tragedians, we note that the drama has almost wholly disengaged itself
+from the lyric out of which it sprang. In AEschylus and in Sophocles the
+number of choral odes and the number of episodes, of purely dramatic
+passages in dialog, is never fixed, varying from play to play as the
+plot might demand. But in Euripides the choral odes are more detached
+from the drama; beautiful in themselves, they seem to exist rather for
+their own sake than in any integral relation to the play itself. And
+apparently Euripides was far more interested in his play, in his plot,
+and in his characters, than in these extraneous lyric passages, so he
+reduced them to the lowest possible number, generally to four, serving,
+so to speak, as exquisite interact music, separating the pathetic play
+into five episodes in dialog.
+
+The Alexandrian tragedians came long after Euripides, and to their
+sophisticated taste his pathetic and emotional plays appealed far more
+than the austerer and manlier masterpieces of his two great
+predecessors. Apparently they accepted his form as final; they may even
+have left out the choruses altogether; and then their tragedies had five
+separate episodes--in other words, five acts. It is these lost
+Alexandrian tragedies, composed in the decadent days of the Greek drama,
+which seem to have served as the model for Seneca, the eloquent
+rhetorician--even tho he frequently took over the theme and often more
+or less of the structure of certain of the dramas of Euripides.
+
+The tragedies of Seneca are to be considered rather as dramatic poems
+than as poetic dramas, since they were intended not really for
+performance by actors, in a theater, before an audience, but for
+recitation by a single elocutionist in a private house--much as a
+professional reader of our own time might recite unaided a more or less
+dramatic poem by Shelley or Byron or Browning. Coming long after Horace,
+Seneca unhesitatingly accepted all of the restrictions insisted upon by
+the Latin lyrist--including the purely academic limitation of the number
+of speakers taking part in any dialog to three, a limitation absolutely
+absurd in a poem not intended for actual acting and not forced to
+conform to the accidental conditions of the Attic stage. Obeying also
+the other rule which he found in Horace's codification of the laws of
+dramatic poetry, the Hispano-Roman rhetorician was careful always to cut
+up his play into five parts. But he saw his profit in retaining the
+chorus, since this could be made to serve as the appropriate mouthpiece
+for the elaborate passages of elocutionary splendor in which he
+delighted.
+
+It is not to be wondered at that the Italian scholars of the Renascence
+followed the precept of Horace and the practise of Seneca. They were far
+more at home in Latin than they were in Greek; and they could hardly
+help reading into the literature of Athens what they were already
+familiar with in the authors of Rome. To them Seneca was as imposing as
+Sophocles, and Horace was almost as weighty as Aristotle. So it is that
+Scaliger and Minturno prescribe five acts, and that Castelvetro (always
+more practical in his point of view) points out that poets seem to have
+found the five-act form most suitable. When an Italian scholar-poet
+turned from criticism to creation, the tragedies he conscientiously
+composed obeyed all the rules, and his dramatic poems were as academic
+as those of Seneca, in that they were intended not for production by
+professional actors in a regular theater before spectators who had paid
+their way in, but only for an occasional performance by the author
+himself assisted by a few of his friends before a little group of
+cultivated admirers of antiquity, contemptuous of the real public. These
+soulless dramatic poems, devised for declamation by amateurs before a
+gathering of dilettants, are now perceived to be merely literary
+curiosities, having little connection with the real drama made for the
+regular theater and its myriad-minded body of playgoers.
+
+Just as the Italian dramatic poems were imitations of Seneca, so the
+French dramatic poems, composed a little later, were imitations of these
+Italians, and also of Seneca, more or less indirectly. They were the
+imitations of an imitation, aping the outward form of the drama, but
+empty of all genuine dramatic spirit, artificial in passion and
+high-flown in rhetoric. And there are early English attempts at this
+same sort of academic tragedy, more imitative still, since we can see in
+them the commingled influence of the French and of the Italians
+immediately, and also of the remoter Seneca, whom they revered as the
+exemplar of true tragedy. Such a play is 'Gorboduc,' belauded by the
+scholarly Sidney--and even on one occasion acted, by main strength. In
+all of these imitations, English and French and Italian, we find the
+stately chorus abounding in lofty rhetoric; and we find also, and
+always, the division into five acts. But in the folk-theater, which the
+scholar-poets scorned, and out of which the living drama was to be
+developed, there is no trace of any division into acts. In the mysteries
+and the miracle-plays, and in the chronicle-plays which grew out of
+them, there are numberless episodes, each complete in itself, and never
+combined artificially into acts. The composer of any one of these
+folk-dramas conceived his story as a continuous narrative shown in
+action; and he gave no thought to the number of divisions, of episodes,
+of separate scenes, or of acts that it might seem to have.
+
+                                  III
+
+Tragedy has ever been held to be more elevated than comedy and more
+worthy; and comedy has continually accepted the conditions appropriate
+to tragedy. Since the dignity of tragedy demanded a division into five
+acts, comedy was also subjected to the same rule; and this was done in
+spite of the fact that the plays of Plautus and Terence (composed long
+before Horace codified his advice to intending poets) were not divided
+into acts, if we may judge by the earliest of the surviving manuscripts.
+So it is that we find the scholarly authors of the two earliest of
+English comedies, 'Ralph Roister Doister' and 'Gammer Gurton's Needle,'
+knowing what was expected of them, and giving the five-act form to both
+of these amusing plays. But these two comedies, almost contemporary as
+they are with the academic and undramatic tragedy of 'Gorboduc,' are far
+superior to it in adaptability for actual performance. They are not
+intended only to be recited; they can be acted easily and profitably. As
+we analyze them we see that the structural complexity may be derived
+from the comic dramas of Plautus and Terence, but that the inner spirit
+is that of the English folk-theater, of the robust medieval
+farce-writers, of the unknown humorist who has left us the laughable and
+veracious scene of Mak and the Shepherds.
+
+Scholars as they were, the authors of these two comedies did not scorn
+the primitive plays of the plain people of their own time. They did not
+despise the unpretending folk-drama which was then pleasing the
+populace; in fact, they took stock of it, and found their profit in so
+doing. They saw that to be raised up to the level of literature it
+needed only to be chastened and stiffened. They accepted the living
+tradition of play-making as it came down to them, and in accord with
+this tradition they wrought their humorous fantasies, adding the higher
+polish and the more adroit plot which they had learned to appreciate in
+the Latin comic dramatists. They accepted the native play, bare as it
+was, and they enriched it by bestowing on it as much as it could carry
+of the finer art of the Romans. Thus it is that the authors of 'Ralph
+Roister Doister' and of 'Gammer Gurton's Needle' may have pointed out
+the path of progress to the author of the 'Comedy of Errors,' whereas
+the authors of 'Gorboduc,' contemptuously rejecting the folk-theater of
+their own day, and idly copying the classicist imitations of the
+Italians, thereby relinquished whatever direct influence they might have
+had upon the growth of tragedy in England.
+
+Both 'Ralph Roister Doister' and 'Gammer Gurton's Needle' were probably
+written for performance by college boys, and they have not a little of
+the brisk heartiness and of the broad horse-play to which we are
+accustomed in the college pieces of to-day. It was for performance at
+court that Lyly wrote the most of his plays, which lack the vivacity and
+the liveliness distinguishing the two college comic dramas, but which
+yet reveal a far better understanding of the drama than was possessed by
+the authors of 'Gorboduc.' Lyly again is careful to divide his plays
+into five acts. But his contemporaries Greene and Peele, writing solely
+for the professional playhouses, were bound by none of the rules which
+might be expected in college or at court. Whatever their own scholarly
+equipment, when they wrote for the professional players, they followed
+unhesitatingly the traditions of the contemporary theater. As
+playwrights they were the direct heirs of the anonymous and ignorant
+devisers of the medieval drama. They had a story to set on the stage;
+they chose a succession of more or less effective episodes, and they
+carelessly cast these into dialog, with little thought of form or of
+construction. Never do their plays contain matter enough for five full
+acts; and we may be certain that no such framework was ever in the mind
+of either of these dramatic poets. In the original editions of their
+pieces we find no separation into acts and scenes; and if this needless
+and misleading subdivision is found in later editions it is the doing of
+misguided editors.
+
+In what is accepted as the earliest edition of Kyd's 'Spanish Tragedy,'
+the most widely popular of all the pre-Shaksperian plays, the text is
+actually divided into four acts. But this division is not structural; it
+is almost accidental, as tho it was an afterthought, inserted at the
+last moment into the copy intended for the printer, and never in the
+mind of the playwright himself when he was preparing the prompt-book for
+the actors; and Shakspere, who followed Kyd in more ways than one,
+apparently followed him in this also. In the folio edition of his plays,
+published after his death, a division into five acts has been made; but
+the task has not been accomplished any too skilfully--for example, the
+second act of 'King John' has but eighty lines, and here the division is
+into four acts only. The suggestion has been proffered that it was,
+perhaps, left to the printers to do, the influence of Ben Jonson having
+been powerful enough to establish the theory that a self-respecting
+dramatist would never fail to cast his tragedies in the five-act form.
+It is to be noted also that no division into acts is to be found in the
+quarto editions published in Shakspere's lifetime; and this is very
+significant since these quartos seem to have been piratical copies from
+shorthand notes taken surreptitiously in the theater, thus recording the
+actual conditions of performance.
+
+It may be doubted whether Shakspere conceived his plays in accordance
+with any such subdivisions. Some of them, the 'Comedy of Errors' for
+one, which can be acted in the space of an hour and a quarter, are far
+too slight for so huge a framework. On the other hand, the several
+appearances of Chorus punctuate 'Henry V' into five divisions,
+apparently an intentional conformity to the Horatian rule. Of course,
+there were generally several intermissions in the Elizabethan
+performance of a play, altho the resulting divisions were not
+necessarily five; and it is noteworthy that Shakspere makes Jaques
+declare that man's life had seven acts.
+
+                                   IV
+
+The fact is that Shakspere was a professional playwright, and that he
+had no merely academic theories. In composing his plays he followed
+unhesitatingly the principles that had guided his immediate
+predecessors. He was seeking ever to give the playgoing public what it
+had been accustomed to enjoy in the theater, better in degree, no
+doubt, but the same in kind. Like these predecessors, he kept to the
+traditions inherited from the medieval mysteries; and he thought in
+terms, not of acts and of scenes, as a modern playwright is forced to
+do, but of a continuous narrative shown in action. In doing so he
+resembles Herodotus, whose history has also been cut up by later
+editors, dividing it into nine books, altho, as Professor Bury has
+reminded us, "such divisions had not yet come into fashion" in the
+historian's own day. There is no reason to suppose that Shakspere would
+have approved of the attempt of the editors of the folio to subdivide
+his plays, each into five acts. There is every reason to suppose that he
+would have been greatly annoyed if he could have foreseen the way in
+which later editors have chosen further to chop up the acts into an
+infinity of scenes.
+
+Nowadays, we have been so accustomed to read Shakspere in one or another
+of the trim and tidy modern editions, with a wanton division into acts
+and into scenes, each of which indicates a change of place, and each of
+which seems to suggest a change of scenery, that it is only by a
+resolute effort of the will that we are able to shake off the
+prepossessions derived from this unfortunate and confusing presentation
+of his text. Probably even to-day a majority of those who enjoy reading
+Shakspere would be surprised to be told that there is no warrant
+whatever for these alleged changes of scene, and for these superabundant
+subdivisions of his story. Many of these readers would be taken aback by
+the unexpected discovery that all this cutting up of Shakspere's text
+was the work of his commentators, with Rowe at the head of the
+procession. Some of these readers would feel as tho they were deprived
+of a precious possession, if they had only an edition in which all this
+useless machinery was swept away.
+
+And yet this is just the edition which is demanded by the present state
+of Shaksperian scholarship, and which is now made possible by our new
+understanding of the Elizabethan theater, with its rude platform thrust
+out into the yard, so different from our modern theaters, in which the
+stage is withdrawn behind a picture-frame. The Tudor platform-stage is
+wholly unlike the picture-frame stage of to-day; but it is very like the
+"pageant," or the scaffold on which the mysteries and miracle-plays were
+presented. It was to the simple conditions of his semi-medieval theater
+that Shakspere adjusted himself, rude as those conditions may now appear
+to us who are accustomed to the sumptuous picturesqueness of our own
+luxuriant playhouses.
+
+In accepting the theater as he found it, and in availing himself of all
+its possibilities, such as they were, Shakspere showed his usual common
+sense. Only by striving to reconstruct for ourselves in our mind's eye,
+as it were, the playhouse where he plied his trade and earned his
+living, can we come to any adequate appreciation of his art, of his
+craftsmanship as a playwright, of his dramaturgic skill. And in any
+honest effort to understand how his mighty dramas were originally
+produced by himself and by his fellow actors in the round O of the
+wooden Globe Theater, unroofed and unlighted except by the dingy
+daylight of northern Europe, we need always to keep fast in our mind the
+fact that all preconceptions are false that may be derived from our
+memory of latter-day performances in theaters of a type which the
+Elizabethan dramatists could not foresee, and of which the conditions
+are often the exact opposite of those they accepted without hesitation.
+That is to say, the most profitable way to reconstruct mentally the
+Tudor playhouse is to banish from our minds every impression made by our
+modern theater, with its elaborate complexity, and to study out for
+ourselves the simple circumstances of performance in the Middle Ages.
+And as a first step toward the proper standpoint, we must cast out our
+traditional belief that Shakspere always accepted the classicist formula
+of five acts, proclaimed by Horace, and employed by Seneca. That he did
+use it in one or two plays seems indisputable, and he may very well have
+employed it in a few others, but there is no reason to suppose that he
+would have submitted himself any more willingly to the rule of five acts
+than he did to the rule of the three unities.
+
+It may be doubted also whether not a few dramatists, writing later than
+Shakspere, would not have done well to claim the liberty he and Lope de
+Vega chose to exercise at will. Racine, for one, had sadly to stretch
+his 'Athalie' to fill out the five-act framework which he had blindly
+accepted, altho he had earlier limited 'Esther' to three acts. Schiller,
+for another, would have gained a swifter compactness for his play if he
+had left out the needless fifth act of his 'William Tell' and rolled his
+fourth act into his third. Victor Hugo had to manufacture a fourth act
+for his 'Ruy Blas,' so slightly related to his main story that it was
+cut out of the English adaptation acted by Fechter and Booth. Ibsen, it
+may be added, composed his first tragedy, 'Catiline,' in three acts,
+altho it was in blank verse, thus early revealing his characteristic
+independence of tradition.
+
+(1907.)
+
+P. S.--Since this paper was written I have found two opinions as to the
+number of acts a play ought to have which were unknown to me when I
+undertook the discussion. The first is in the 'Dasarupa,' the Hindu
+treatise on the craft of play-making: "There are five stages of the
+action which is set on foot by those that strive after a result:
+Beginning, Effort, Prospect of Success, Certainty of Success, Attainment
+of the Result."
+
+The second is in the commentary made by Robert Louis Stevenson during
+his methodical perusal of the dramas of the elder Dumas. After reading
+'Henri III et sa Cour,' Stevenson declares that here in Dumas's first
+piece "is the cloven foot; a fourth act that has no part or lot in the
+play; a fourth act that is a mere incubus and interruption--that takes
+the eye off the action, and between two spirited and palpitating scenes
+interjects a damned sermon on the history of France. Poor Tribonian had
+a sore job to make up the fifty books of the Pandects; what was that to
+the labor of a dramatist bent on filling his five acts? I go as far as
+this: the natural division of the normal play is four: Act I,
+exposition; Act II, the problem produced; Act III, the problem argued;
+Act IV, the way out of it."
+
+(1916.)
+
+                                   V
+
+                         DRAMATIC COLLABORATION
+
+                         DRAMATIC COLLABORATION
+
+                                   I
+
+It is a significant fact that whenever and wherever the drama has
+flourished most abundantly and most luxuriantly, we are certain to find
+a tendency to collaboration, to the partnership of two authors in the
+composition of one play. In England in the spacious days of good Queen
+Bess, there is not only the famous association of Beaumont and Fletcher,
+but also a host of other more or less temporary combinations, Fletcher
+with Shakspere and Massinger, Dekker with Ben Jonson and with Middleton.
+In Spain Lope de Vega joined forces with Montalvan and with others. In
+France in the seventeenth century Moliere, once at least called to his
+aid Corneille and Quinault; and in France again in the nineteenth
+century we find Augier working with Sandeau and with Foussier, Scribe
+working with Legouve, and with a score of others, while Dumas the elder
+was encompassed by a cloud of collaborators, and Dumas the younger was
+willing on more than one occasion to join various writers in the plays
+which he included in the separate volumes of his works, called by him
+the 'Theatre des Autres.' Then also in France there was the
+long-continued alliance of Meilhac and Halevy, to which we owe
+'Froufrou' and the 'Grand Duchess of Gerolstein'; and there was also
+the almost equally interesting association of MM. Caillavet and de
+Flers. Sardou had one ally in the composition of 'Divorcons,' and
+another in the composition of 'Madame Sans Gene.' In Great Britain in
+recent years we have seen Sir James Barrie and Sir Arthur Pinero unite
+in writing a book for music; Mr. Bennett and Mr. Knoblauch unite in
+writing 'Milestones'; Mr. Granville Barker and Mr. Laurence Housman
+unite in writing 'Prunella.' And in the United States there was a score
+of years ago the steady collaboration of Mr. Belasco with the late H. C.
+De Mille, to which we owe the 'Charity Ball' and the 'Wife'; and more
+recently Mr. Belasco also has collaborated with Mr. John Luther Long in
+writing 'Madame Butterfly,' and the 'Darling of the Gods.' Mr. Augustus
+Thomas was once the partner of Mr. Clay Greene; Mr. Bronson Howard
+composed one of his latest plays, 'Peter Stuyvesant, Governor of New
+Amsterdam,' in association with another American man of letters; and Mr.
+Booth Tarkington and Mr. Harry Leon Wilson were the co-authors of the
+'Man from Home' and of half a dozen other pieces.
+
+While this prevalence of the practise of collaboration in periods of
+dramatic productivity is significant, it is equally significant that
+there is no corresponding prevalence of the practise of collaboration in
+novel-writing. True it is that there are certain fairly well-known
+partnerships in the history of prose fiction--that of Erckmann-Chatrain,
+in French, for instance, and that of Besant and Rice in English. True it
+is that Dickens and Wilkie Collins were joint authors of 'No
+Thorofare,' and that Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner were joint
+authors of the 'Gilded Age.' True it is also, that novels have been
+written not only by two partners, but by what can fairly be described as
+a syndicate of associated authors, the 'King's Men' by four, 'Six of One
+and Half a Dozen of the Other' by six, and the 'Whole Family' by twelve
+(including Mr. Howells and Mr. Henry James, Mrs. Mary E. Wilkins
+Freeman, and Doctor Henry van Dyke). These freakish conglomerates are
+sporadic only; they seem to be little better than literary "stunts"; and
+even the union of two writers in the production of a single novel is far
+less frequently to be observed than the union of two writers in the
+production of a single play. The former is unusual, whereas the latter
+seems to be so common as to excite no comment.
+
+Now, there must be a reason for this difference. If the playwrights find
+it advantageous to double up, and the novelists do not discover any
+profit in putting on double harness, there ought to be some evident
+explanation. When we consider more carefully the essentially different
+conditions of the art of prose fiction and the art of play-writing, it
+is not difficult to perceive fairly obvious reasons for the varying
+procedure of the practitioners of these rival arts, which may seem so
+much alike, but which are really so very different in their methods and
+in their possibilities.
+
+The French critic Joubert once asserted that "to make in advance an
+exact and detailed plan is to deprive one's intellect of all the
+pleasures of novelty and chance meeting during its execution; it is to
+make this execution insipid, and in consequence impossible, in works
+calling for enthusiasm and imagination." This is an overstatement--but
+it is not a misstatement--of a principle of composition which is
+fundamentally sound in the writing of prose fiction, but which is
+fundamentally unsound in the writing of plays. The drama demands a
+well-built story, artfully put together, while a novel need not have a
+coherent and compact plot. Some great novels, Fielding's 'Tom Jones' for
+one, and Turgenef's 'Smoke' for another, have each of them a beautifully
+articulated structure, and so has Mr. Howells's 'Rise of Silas Lapham,'
+to take a later example. But other great novels are frankly more or less
+haphazard in their movement, the 'Pickwick Papers,' for instance, and
+'Tartarin on the Alps,' and 'Huckleberry Finn.' And it is not too much
+to say that only a very few novels attain to the severity of structure,
+the regularity of action, the straightforward, unswerving movement which
+we discover in the dramas of a corresponding rank, and which can be
+achieved only by making in advance the exact and detailed plan that
+Joubert held to be fatal in works calling for enthusiasm and
+imagination.
+
+Of course, the drama can utilize enthusiasm and imagination quite as
+often and quite as abundantly as can prose fiction, but it must use
+these precious gifts with a discretion which is not imposed upon its
+rival. In a novel enthusiastic imagination may lure the story-teller
+into a host of by-paths not foreseen by him when he set out on his
+journey; and while he is adventuring himself in these by-paths, he may
+chance to encounter characters of a diverting or an appealing
+personality, whom it may amuse him to delineate, and whom the readers of
+his book will be glad to welcome. But in a drama the story-teller is
+debarred from these wanderings from the straight and narrow road, and he
+must, perforce, control his enthusiastic imagination, compelling it to
+do its work within the rigid limits of the artfully devised framework of
+the plot.
+
+In other words, character is all-important in prose fiction, and the
+ultimate fame of the novelist depends upon his power of endowing his
+creatures with life, and upon his ability to let them obey the laws of
+their being before our eyes. This must the playwright also achieve; but
+he has the added duty of relating his characters intimately to the main
+action of his drama. Now, the novelist is under no obligation of this
+sort; he appeals not to a crowd seated before a stage, but to the
+solitary reader in the study; and experience shows that solitary readers
+do not insist upon the solidity of structure in a novel which the same
+individuals desire and demand when they betake themselves to the
+theater. The novel-reader may be satisfied by characters who do not know
+their own minds, and who are merely exhibited and put through their
+paces, without having any vital relation to the story, even if there is
+anything which can fairly be called a story--and in some novels of high
+repute, in Sterne's 'Sentimental Journey,' for example, and in Anatole
+France's 'Histoire Contemporaine,' each of them extending over several
+volumes, there is little or no story, no main thread, no pretense of a
+plot.
+
+                                   II
+
+Here, then, is the fatal difference between a novel and a play; a novel
+may have a plot, but a plot is not necessary, and it can get along with
+a minimum of story; whereas a play must have a plot, skilfully
+articulated, even if the skeleton is beautifully covered; it must have a
+story peopled by persons knowing their own minds, a story set in action
+by a dominating will, which determines the successive episodes of the
+action. As the making of a plot, as the putting together of a supporting
+skeleton of action, calls for dexterity of workmanship, for ingenuity of
+resource, for adroitness of construction, for the most careful
+consideration of the means whereby the end is to be obtained, two heads
+are often better than one, because the partners have to talk the thing
+out to its uttermost details before they decide upon the straight line
+which is the shortest distance between two points. The technic of
+play-making is more exacting than the technic of novel-writing, and it
+requires imperatively the exact and detailed plan which Joubert held to
+be hampering to enthusiasm and imagination. Scott, for example, as he
+tells us himself, began more than one of his novels not knowing what he
+was going to put into it, and not knowing from day to day, as he was
+writing, what his ultimate goal would be. But no playwright, however
+happy-go-lucky in his tendencies, has ever dared to begin a play before
+he knew with absolute certainty how he intended to end it. In the drama
+we insist upon a straightforward and unswerving action; the end is
+implied in the beginning, and the beginning is only what that end makes
+necessary.
+
+As the technic of the drama is exacting, it needs to be acquired by a
+period of apprenticeship; and here is another of the indisputable
+advantages of collaboration. The more inexperienced of the two
+collaborators is taken into the studio, so to speak, of the more expert,
+and he thereby learns the secrets of stage-craft in the best possible
+way, by applying them under the direction, or at the suggestion and by
+the advice, of an older practitioner, to whom they have become so
+familiar that they are a second nature, as it were.
+
+Collaboration is the best conceivable school for young playwrights. It
+is impossible to overestimate the influence of Scribe's multiplied
+collaborations upon the drama of France in the mid-years of the
+nineteenth century; and almost as potent, because almost as wide-spread,
+was the influence of the many collaborations of the elder Dumas. Most of
+those who were the temporary partners of Scribe and Dumas were subdued
+to their more powerful associate, and contributed little or nothing
+beyond their fundamental suggestions for the several plays, and their
+incidental suggestions as to details of the working-out. That is to say,
+most of the plays signed by Scribe and Dumas in partnership with others
+have a close similarity to the plays they signed alone. But from this
+generalization we may except 'Adrienne Lecouvreur' and 'Bataille de
+Dames,' in which Scribe had Legouve for a partner, and in which we find
+a greater richness of character delineation than in any of the pieces
+that Scribe composed alone, as we find also a greater dexterity of
+construction than in any of the pieces that Legouve composed alone.
+
+To the fact that 'Milestones' was written by Mr. Arnold Bennett and Mr.
+Edward Knoblauch in conjunction, and to the friendly discussion due to
+their working together, we may credit the superior stage-effectiveness
+of this play over the 'Kismet,' which Mr. Knoblauch wrote alone, and
+over the 'Great Adventure,' for which Mr. Bennett was solely
+responsible. To the composition of 'Milestones' each of these two
+authors, the American and the Englishman, brought his special
+qualifications, each of them not only stimulating but supplementing the
+other. So we find the most famous French comedy of the nineteenth
+century, the 'Gendre de M. Poirier,' a better piece of work, more
+equably balanced than any play written alone by either Augier or
+Sandeau.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to say that there is little profit in a
+partnership for play-making when both of the associates are equally
+inexpert, or when they were both possessed of wrong notions about the
+art of the drama. In the former case we have the blind leading the
+blind, and the most lamentable example of this is the long forgotten
+'Ah Sin,' which Bret Harte and Mark Twain combined to compose that C. T.
+Parsloe could impersonate the Heathen Chinee. In the latter case we have
+not only the blind leading the blind, but a perverseness in going the
+wrong way, intensified by the complete sympathy between the two
+associates; and the most lamentable example of this is the 'Deacon
+Brodie' of Robert Louis Stevenson and William Ernest Henley, who not
+only were ignorant of the modern technic of the drama, but who ignored
+it of set purpose, deliberately going up a blind alley despite the plain
+sign that there was no thorofare.
+
+                                  III
+
+Yet Stevenson, at least, perceived clearly enough what ought to be the
+more evident advantages of collaboration, that it focused "two minds
+together on the stuff," thus producing "an extraordinarily greater
+richness of purview, consideration, and invention." Collaboration will
+probably always produce a greater richness of invention, since each of
+the partners is likely to stimulate the other, their two minds striking
+sparks like flint and steel. But it can produce a greater richness of
+consideration only when each is willing both to yield and to oppose.
+Neither must yield too easily; each of them must stand out for his own
+suggestions; and each of them must insist on weighing and measuring the
+suggestions of his ally. If they are too sympathetic, if their two
+hearts beat as one, then the advantage of their having two heads is
+diminished. If the two partners always think alike, then there will be
+no greater richness of purview.
+
+When a play composed by two of his friends failed to find the success on
+the stage which had been anticipated for it, Mr. Augustus Thomas made
+the shrewd remark that the two authors had probably been "too polite to
+each other"--that is to say, that they had not insisted upon criticising
+the successive suggestions made by each in turn. On the other hand, the
+collaborators must be broad-minded enough not to resent this necessary
+criticism. Like any other partnership, collaboration is a ticklish
+experiment, and it can be profitable only when the two partners are
+willing to give and take. They need more than usual self-control; they
+must be able, each of them, to preserve his own self-respect while full
+of regard for the self-respect of the other. It is not surprising that
+the long collaborations of Erckmann-Chatrain and of Meilhac and Halevy
+finally came to a sudden end because of an abrupt quarrel. That
+disagreement is likely to arise out of the discussions inherent in any
+profitable literary partnership is evidenced by a retort credited to the
+younger Dumas, who was a rather authoritative partner, and who did not
+always succeed in keeping on good terms with those whose plays he had
+bettered. A friend once suggested a theme for a play, and invited the
+collaboration of Dumas. "But why should I wish to quarrel with you?" was
+answer of the witty dramatist.
+
+Perhaps the most remarkable instance of self-control in all the long
+history of collaboration is that of Theodore Barriere, the author of the
+once-famous play called the 'Marble Heart,' one of the latest of whose
+pieces (adapted by Augustin Daly as 'Alixe') was composed in
+collaboration with his mother-in-law!
+
+Sometimes the breach between the two partners is postponed until after
+the play is completed and produced. Charles Reade and Tom Taylor joined
+forces in the composition of the long-popular comedy called 'Masks and
+Faces,' and after it had established itself upon the stage, Charles
+Reade took its plot and its characters and utilized them in his charming
+novel, 'Peg Woffington,' and as he had taken the liberty of thus making
+a private profit out of the property of the partnership, it is not to be
+wondered at that Tom Taylor was distinctly displeased. But Charles
+Reade, altho he collaborated with Tom Taylor, with Paul Merritt, and
+with Dion Boucicault, was more or less deficient in the courtesy and
+consideration that a man ought to possess to fit him for partnership.
+When he allied himself with Dion Boucicault in the writing of the novel
+of 'Foul Play,' the collaborators quarreled so violently that they felt
+themselves justified in preparing rival dramatizations of the story they
+had written in conjunction, so that London playgoers had the opportunity
+of choosing between two different theatrical adaptations of the same
+tale.
+
+When the two partners are courteous to each other but not too yielding,
+when they are sympathetic but not too much alike in their
+characteristics and qualifications, when each of them supplements the
+weaker points of the other, then collaboration ought to result in plays
+of more variety of invention, and of more ingenuity of construction than
+is likely to be possessed by the average play due to a single mind. This
+much must be admitted; and it is the final justification for
+collaboration. But altho these partnerships in play-making spread abroad
+a knowledge of the principles of the art, and altho they raise the
+probable value of the average play, it must be admitted also, and with
+equal frankness, that the possibilities of collaboration are sharply
+limited.
+
+No single one of the mightiest masterpieces of dramatic literature,
+ancient and modern, is to be credited to collaboration; and the only
+possible exception to this sweeping statement would be urged by the
+critics who hold that the 'Gendre de M. Poirier' of Augier and Sandeau
+is the masterpiece of French comedy in the nineteenth century. Those who
+have climbed to the loftiest height of dramatic art have always done so
+alone, sustained by enthusiasm and supported by imagination. In spite of
+the greater "richness of purview, consideration, and invention" that
+collaboration undoubtedly bestows, the man of surpassing genius, the
+great master of the drama, Sophocles or Shakspere or Moliere, works best
+alone. It is true that he may now and again take to himself an ally, as
+Shakspere condescended to the assistance of Fletcher in 'Henry VIII,'
+and as Moliere invoked the aid of Corneille in 'Psyche,' but it is true
+also that these plays, written in collaboration by Shakspere and by
+Moliere, are not the plays which establish and confirm their fame.
+Indeed, these plays are not even among the more important pieces of
+Shakspere and Moliere, and the reputation of the authors would be no
+lower if these plays had never come into existence.
+
+It is by the comedies and tragedies which Shakspere wrote alone that the
+Elizabethan stage is made glorious, and not by the dramatic romances
+that go under the joint names of Beaumont and Fletcher. It is by the
+lyrical melodramas of which Victor Hugo was sole author that we recall
+the Romanticist revolt in the French theater in 1830, and immediately
+thereafter, and not by the perfervidly passionate pieces that the elder
+Dumas put together in partnership with a group of now-forgotten
+auxiliaries. It is by the comedies that Augier and the younger Dumas
+wrote, each of them expressing himself in his own fashion, that the
+drama of France is illumined a score or more years later, and not by the
+comedies in the composition of which Scribe had the aid of an army of
+allies.
+
+In any period of abundant fertility we can observe growing together at
+the same time from the soil, a fairly large number of trees rising above
+the underbrush, and we can also perceive here and there a tree of
+conspicuous eminence towering above these clumps of average height. In
+the luxuriant forest of the drama many of the trees of average height
+may be ticketed with two names, but the monarchs of the wood, those
+whose tops lift themselves high above their neighbors--these will be
+found to bear only single signature.
+
+(1914.)
+
+                                   VI
+
+                    THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS AND
+                       THE NOVELIZATION OF PLAYS
+
+                    THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS AND
+                       THE NOVELIZATION OF PLAYS
+
+                                   I
+
+In Professor Bliss Perry's admirably suggestive 'Study of Prose
+Fiction,' he devotes one chapter to a careful consideration of the
+essential distinctions between prose fiction and the drama, in which he
+makes it plain that "the novel and the play are not merely two different
+modes of communicating the same fact or truth," because "the different
+modes of presentation really result in the communication of a different
+fact." Professor Perry declares that the field of the dramatist is
+marked off from that of the novelist "by the nature of the artistic
+medium which each man employs," and he asserts that the choice of a
+medium for presenting his story and projecting his characters "depends
+wholly upon the personality and training of the artist and the nature of
+the fact or truth that he wishes to convey to the public". And he sums
+up by insisting that "a novel is typically as far removed from a play as
+a bird is from a fish, and that any attempt to transform one into the
+other is apt to result in a sort of flying-fish, a betwixt-and-between
+thing--capable, indeed, of both swimming and flying, but good at
+neither." In other words, a dramatized novel or a novelized play is an
+attempt to breed an amphibious creature which, as the Irishman once
+defined it, "can't live on the land, and dies in the water."
+
+The difference between the novel and the play is due to the inexorable
+fact that one is intended to be read alone in the study, and that the
+other is intended to be seen on the stage by a crowd; it ought to be
+obvious to all who care to consider the question, and yet there are many
+who fail to grasp the distinction, deceived by the illusive but
+superficial similarities between the two forms, each of which contains a
+story carried on by characters who take part in dialogs. And as a result
+of this failure to apprehend the vital differences between the two types
+of story-telling, the narrative to be perused and the action to be
+witnessed, our theaters have long been invaded by dramatized novels, and
+our book-stores are now being besieged by novelized plays. In many
+cases, if not in most of them, the motive for the transformation is
+simply commercial; and in view of the immediate gain to be garnered, the
+artistic disadvantages of the procedure are overlooked. If hundreds of
+thousands of readers have found pleasure in following the footsteps of a
+fascinating heroine thru the pages of a prose fiction, it is possible
+always that hundreds of thousands of spectators may be lured to behold
+her adventures when they are set forth anew in a stage-play. And if a
+compelling plot has drawn audiences night after night into the theater,
+it is possible again that this plot may attract book-buyers in equal
+numbers when it is retold in a narrative for the benefit of those
+remote from the playhouse, or reluctant to risk themselves within its
+portals. Managers are ready to tempt the novelist with the hope of a
+second crop of fame and fortune, and publishers dangle the same golden
+bait before the eyes of the dramatist.
+
+Altho this effort to kill two birds with one stone is more frequent of
+late than it used to be, it is not at all new--indeed it existed before
+the rise of prose fiction. The dramatic poets of Greece borrowed
+episodes from the earliest epic poets. Centuries later Shakspere laid
+violent hands on Italian tales and on English romances. On the other
+hand, while it must be admitted that the dramatizing of novels has been
+far more prevalent in the past than the novelizing of plays, this latter
+practise, suddenly popular in the twentieth century, was not unknown in
+the centuries that preceded ours. For example, Le Sage levied upon the
+Spanish playwrights for many of the characters and the situations he
+needed, for his rambling, picaresque novels, 'Gil Blas' and its sister
+stories. Another illustration can be found in England earlier than any
+in France; and before the play of 'Pericles,' which Shakspere seems to
+have edited and improved, was printed and perhaps even before it was
+performed, it was novelized by an obscure writer named Wilkins, who was
+very probably the author of the original version of the straggling piece
+that Shakspere revised. Thru the long years prose fiction and the drama
+have struggled with each other for the favor of the public, and each of
+them has always been willing to borrow from its rival whenever it found
+material fitted for its own special purpose.
+
+                                   II
+
+But altho the dramatizing of novels was less uncommon a century or two
+ago than the novelizing of plays, neither was frequent and neither of
+them was in any way prohibited by law. That is to say, the novel and the
+play were held to be so different that the novelist could not prevent
+the dramatist from borrowing his stories, and the playwright could not
+forbid the writer of prose fiction from taking over his plots. Even the
+dramatizing of novels was so uncommon that the earlier story-tellers
+were not moved to protest when they saw their fictions employed by the
+playwrights; in fact, they were often inclined to accept this as a
+compliment to their original invention. Marmontel, for instance, in the
+preface to a late edition of his 'Moral Tales,' pointed with pride to
+the fact that one of these prose narratives had been turned into a play,
+and suggested complacently that there were other stories in his
+collection worthy of the same fate. Tennyson borrowed the story of his
+'Dora' from Miss Mitford; and Charles Reade had no scruple in making a
+play out of Tennyson's poem. It must be admitted that Reade's attitude
+was rather inconsistent, for he writhed in pain when one of his own
+novels was cut into dialog and put on the stage without his permission,
+and yet he himself made plays out of novels by Anthony Trollope and by
+Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett without asking their leave, and without
+heed to their subsequent protests against his high-handed proceeding.
+Apparently, when he was the aggressor he thought that he was doing a
+service to his victims.
+
+When Reade was guilty of this offense against the developing literary
+morals of the nineteenth century, he was probably within his legal
+rights, since the British law had not then advanced to the point of
+recognizing the author's complete ownership of the fiction he had
+created. This defect has been remedied at last, and in the existing
+copyright and stage-right legislation of Great Britain and the United
+States authors are assumed to reserve to themselves every privilege
+which they do not specifically deprive themselves of; and they need no
+longer announce that they desire to retain all rights for their own
+profit. Both in the British code and in the American the novelist has
+now the sole privilege of making a play out of his story, and the
+dramatist has the sole privilege of making a novel out of his play.
+_Dramatization_ is a word of respectable antiquity, and the
+corresponding word, _novelization_, has now been legally recognized as a
+distinctive term. The authors had felt a wrong when others could legally
+make money out of a plot they had invented; and they asserted a moral
+right to control their own works whatever might be the form of
+presentation. The progress of legal reform was slow, as it usually is,
+but it was also certain. The moral right has now become a legal right of
+which the original author may avail himself or not, as he pleases. He
+may, if he chooses, dramatize his own novel and novelize his own play;
+or, if he prefers, he can sell the permission to rehandle his material
+to a professional playwright or to a professional storyteller.
+
+                                  III
+
+There is one peculiar distinction between the novel and the play which
+Professor Bliss Perry did not emphasize. A novel may please long, and
+please many when it is only a study of character, like the 'Crime of
+Sylvestre Bonnard' of M. Anatole France, or when it is only the record
+of a series of adventures and misadventures passing before the eyes of
+the chief personage, like the 'Huckleberry Finn' of Mark Twain. A play,
+on the other hand, is likely to fail to please audiences in the theater
+unless it sets before the spectators a clearly defined struggle, a
+conflict of desires, a stark assertion of the human will. That is to
+say, the drama must deal with a struggle, and the novel need not. The
+drama must be dynamic and the novel may be static--if these scientific
+terms may be employed without pedantry. Therefore, while any play may be
+novelized, with more or less chance of pleasing its new public, if the
+task is skilfully accomplished, only those novels can be successfully
+dramatized which happen to present an essential struggle and to display
+the collision of contending volitions. Any dramatization of the 'Crime
+of Sylvestre Bonnard' or of 'Huckleberry Finn,' of 'Gil Blas' or of the
+'Pickwick Papers,' is foredoomed to failure, for these prose fictions
+do not contain the stuff out of which a vital play could be made. But
+'Jane Eyre,' for example, and the 'Tale of Two Cities,' and 'Uncle Tom's
+Cabin' do possess this necessary dramatic element, and they can be made
+into plays with a prospect of pleasing audiences in the theater.
+
+Even when the novel chances to have the essential struggle which the
+drama demands, the task of adapting it to the stage is not so easy as
+the non-expert supposes. At first sight it may seem as if there ought to
+be very little difficulty in turning a novel into a play. There is a
+story ready-made, situations in abundance, and characters endowed with
+the breath of life. Yet as a matter of fact, it is harder to make a play
+out of a novel than it is to write an original play. The immediate
+danger before the theatrical adapter is that he may be tempted to serve
+up the story merely as a panorama of successive episodes instead of
+casting out resolutely everything, however good in itself, which does
+not bear directly upon the fundamental conflict. This is one reason why
+the novelist had better leave the work of dramatization to an
+experienced playwright, who will ruthlessly omit many an episode that
+the story-teller could not bring himself to discard. In fact, it is hard
+even for the expert adapter to disentangle the special situations of a
+novel which alone are available in a play, and he is often tempted to
+retain much that he had better leave out.
+
+Perhaps it is not too daring a paradox to suggest that a prose fiction
+is most likely to be made into a good play when the playwright has not
+read the book he is dramatizing, but has only been told the story, so
+that he is free to handle the situations afresh in accord with the
+conditions of dramatic art, and free to discard the special developments
+chosen by the novelist in accord with the very different conditions of
+narrative art. The best version of Mrs. Henry Wood's 'East Lynne' is the
+French play, 'Miss Multon,' by Adolphe Belot and Eugene Nus; and neither
+of the French collaborators knew any more about the English novel than
+its bare story, which was told to one of them by a French actress, who
+could read English. Now and again a clever playwright, even when he has
+the disadvantage of complete familiarity with the novel, can break loose
+from it and yet preserve its full flavor; and this is what Mr. George M.
+Cohan was able to do in the play wherein he presented the leading
+characters of Mr. George Randolph Chester's 'Get-Rich-Quick-Wallingford'
+in a set of situations very different from those in the original story.
+
+Thus we see that only a few novels are really fit to be dramatized, and
+that even these are often dramatized ineffectively because the
+playwright has followed the story-teller too closely instead of putting
+the plot back into solution, so to speak, and letting it recrystallize
+in dramatic form. The novelizer has a larger liberty since every play
+contains a story and characters capable of being transferred to prose
+fiction. But his task has its equivalent danger, and the writer of the
+narrative may be content merely to tread in the footsteps of the
+dramatist, and to do no more than write out more amply the dialog and
+the stage business, instead of reconceiving the plot afresh to tell it
+more in accord with the divergent principles of the art of prose
+fiction. The limitations of time to "the two hours' traffic of the
+stage" compel the dramatist to extreme compression; his dialogs must be
+far compacter and more pregnant than is becoming in the more leisurely
+novel, where the author can take all the time there is. Moreover, the
+playwright often does no more than allude to episodes which it would
+profit the novelist to present in detail to his readers; and the adroit
+novelizer will be quick to seize upon hints of this sort to amplify into
+chapters containing interesting material for which the original play
+supplied only the most summary suggestion.
+
+                                   IV
+
+The novelizing of plays is frequent and profitable in America in these
+early years of the twentieth century; and it had been attempted
+infrequently even in the seventeenth century. Yet only one of these
+novelized plays has succeeded in winning an honorable place for itself
+in prose fiction. This is the charming tale of theatrical life in the
+eighteenth century, 'Peg Woffington,' which Charles Reade made out of
+the comedy of 'Masks and Faces,' written by him in collaboration with
+Tom Taylor. Reade took the liberty of novelizing this comedy without
+asking Taylor's permission, and even without consulting his
+collaborator; and all the comment that need be made is that the
+procedure was truly characteristic of Reade's lordly attitude toward
+others--an attitude taken by him on many other occasions. But whatever
+injustice he did to his fellow worker, he did none to the joint product
+of their invention; he transmuted a play into a novel with due
+appreciation of the demands of the other art, and he produced a
+fascinating tale with a fascinating heroine, which has been read by
+thousands who have had no suspicion that Peg Woffington had originally
+figured in a comedy.
+
+Charles Reade was able to accomplish this feat because he was more
+skilful as a novelist than as a dramatist, altho he fancied himself
+rather as a maker of plays than as a writer of stories. More than once
+did he attempt to repeat this early success in winning two prizes with
+the same horse. He took the 'Pauvres de Paris' of Brisebarre and
+Nus--the same play which Dion Boucicault had adapted as the 'Streets of
+New York'--and made a version which he called 'Gold,' under which name
+it had a few performances. He had materially modified the French plot in
+his English play; and he got still further away from Brisebarre and Nus,
+when he novelized 'Gold,' and called it 'Hard Cash,' a matter-of-fact
+romance. Later he dramatized this novel of his, and the resulting play
+did not bear any close resemblance to the 'Pauvres de Paris.'
+
+Reade also collaborated a few years later with Henry Pettitt in a piece
+called 'Singleheart and Doubleface,' which he promptly proceeded to
+novelize--again without consulting his partner. For this indelicacy,
+swift vengeance followed, as the British novel, being then unprotected
+by copyright in the United States, was immediately dramatized by Messrs.
+George H. Jessop and William Gill. It may be noted here casually that
+another of Reade's romances, 'White Lies,' afterward dramatized by him,
+had been originally novelized from a French play called the 'Chateau de
+Grantier,' written by Auguste Maquet (the ally of Dumas in the 'Three
+Guardsmen' and 'Monte Cristo'). It is not a little surprising that a man
+like Reade, who prided himself on his originality, and who even went so
+far as to accuse George Eliot of stealing his thunder, should have been
+willing to call so frequently on the aid of collaborators, and to derive
+so much of his material from foreign sources.
+
+The only other author who has ventured to turn a play into a novel, and
+then back into a play varying widely from the original piece, is Sir
+James Barrie, and what he did was not quite what Reade had done. Sir
+James wrote a charming story, called the 'Little White Bird,' and he
+found in his own prose fiction part of the material out of which he was
+moved later to make a charming play, called 'Peter Pan.' For reasons
+best known to himself, but deplored by all who are interested in the
+progress of the English drama, Sir James Barrie has chosen to publish
+only a few of his comedies. Yet he met the demands of a multitude of
+readers by borrowing from his fantastic piece a part of the material
+which he made into a delightful tale, called 'Peter Pan in Kensington
+Gardens.' These successive rehandlings of an idea, first in prose
+fiction, then in dramatic form, and finally again in prose fiction, were
+possible only to a novelist who was also a dramatist--to an author who
+had mastered the secrets of two different methods of story-telling, the
+method of the theater and the method of the library.
+
+                                   V
+
+The novelist-dramatist of this type is a comparatively new figure in
+literature. Formerly there was a sharp line of cleavage between the man
+who wrote novels and the man who wrote plays, altho one or the other
+might be lured on occasion into a sporadic raid into the territory of
+the other. During three-quarters of the nineteenth century prose fiction
+reigned supreme in every modern literature except that of France, and
+the novelists were rather inclined to look down on the playwrights, and
+to dismiss the drama as an inferior form, likely to be absolutely
+superseded by prose fiction. But toward the end of the century there
+began to be visible signs of an awakening interest in the drama, and
+also of a slackening interest in prose fiction. The novelists of the
+twentieth century, so far from holding the drama to be an inferior form,
+are discovering that it is at least a more difficult form, and therefore
+artistically more attractive. As a result of this discovery not a few
+novelists have turned playwrights, taking the pains to learn the
+principles of the more dangerous art of play-making. Sir James Barrie in
+England, M. Paul Hervieu in France, Herr Sudermann in Germany, and
+Signor d'Annunzio in Italy may not have abandoned altogether the prose
+fiction in which they first won fame, but at least they now devote the
+major part of their energies to the drama. It may be recalled that Clyde
+Fitch began his literary career as a writer of short stories, and that
+Mr. Bernard Shaw originally emerged to view as the author of a novel.
+
+On the other hand, it must be noted as significant that the playwrights
+are not tempted to turn novelists; they seem to be satisfied with their
+own art as the more exacting, and therefore the more interesting. M.
+Rostand and M. Maeterlinck, Sir Arthur Pinero and Mr. Henry Arthur
+Jones, Mr. William Gillette and Mr. Augustus Thomas have not been lured
+from the drama into prose fiction. The novel is a loose form which makes
+only lax demands on its practitioners, and which does not require an
+artist always to do his best. The play has a severe technic, and it
+tolerates no carelessness of construction. The more gifted a
+story-teller may be, and the more artistic, the more probable it is that
+in the immediate future he will seek to express himself in the drama,
+even if he is also moved now and again to return to the easier path of
+prose fiction.
+
+And this raises another interesting point. Now that the drama is rising
+again into rivalry with prose fiction, is not the playwright who allows
+his piece to be novelized a traitor to his cause? Is he not, in fact,
+confessing that he esteems the play inferior to the novel? Apparently
+this is the attitude taken by the more prominent dramatists of the day;
+most of them publish their plays to be read, and few of them allow these
+plays to be novelized--altho they might find a superior profit if they
+descended to this. It is an unfortunate fact that the public which is
+eager to read prose fiction is not so eager to read the drama. In the
+dearth of dramatic literature in our language during the nineteenth
+century, the public lost the habit of reading plays, a habit possessed
+by the public of the eighteenth century before the vogue of the novel
+had been established in consequence of the overwhelming popularity of
+Scott, followed speedily by that of Dickens and Thackeray.
+
+Yet there are signs that the general reader is slowly recovering the
+ability to find pleasure in the perusal of a play. The social dramas of
+Ibsen have, most of them, been performed here and there in the theaters
+of Great Britain and the United States; but they have been read by
+thousands who have had no opportunity to see them on the stage. So it is
+with the plays of Mr. Bernard Shaw, most of which have also appeared in
+our playhouses. So it is with the plays of M. Maeterlinck, only a few of
+which have been produced in the American theater. In time, it seems
+highly probable that the reading public will extend as glad a welcome to
+a play by Mr. Galsworthy or by Mr. Booth Tarkington as to one of their
+novels. But this happy state can be brought about only if the
+dramatists resolutely refrain from novelizing their plays themselves,
+and from authorizing novelization by others.
+
+(1913.)
+
+                                  VII
+
+                            WOMEN DRAMATISTS
+
+                            WOMEN DRAMATISTS
+
+                                   I
+
+To some of the more ardent advocates of the theory that women are
+capable of rivaling men in every one of the arts it is a little
+surprising, not to say disconcerting, that there are so few female
+playwrights. The drama is closely akin to the novel, since it is another
+form of story-telling; and in the telling of stories women have been
+abundantly productive from a time whereof the memory of man runneth not
+to the contrary. And as performers on the stage women have achieved
+indisputable eminence; in fact, acting is probably the earliest of the
+arts (as possibly it is still the only one) in which women have won
+their way to the very front rank; and in the nineteenth century there
+were two tragic actresses, Mrs. Siddons and Rachel, certainly not
+inferior in power and in elevation to the most distinguished of tragic
+actors. Why is it, then, that women story-tellers have not thrust
+themselves thru the open stage door to become more effective competitors
+of the men playwrights?
+
+Before considering this question, it may be well to record that women
+playwrights have appeared sporadically both in French literature and in
+English. In France Madeleine Bejart, whose sister Moliere married, was
+credited with the authorship of more than one play; and in the last
+hundred years George Sand and Mme. de Girardin brought out comedies and
+dramas, several of which succeeded in establishing themselves in the
+repertory of the Comedie-Francaise. In England at one time or another
+plays of an immediate popularity were produced by Mrs. Aphra Behn, Mrs.
+Centlivre, and Mrs. Inchbald; and in America Mrs. Bateman's 'Self,' and
+Mrs. Mowatt's 'Fashion' held the stage for several seasons, while few of
+recent successes in the New York theaters had a more delightful
+freshness or a more alluring fantasy than Mrs. Gates's 'Poor Little Rich
+Girl,' and few of them have dealt more boldly with a burning question
+than Miss Ford's 'Polygamy.' These examples of woman's competence to
+compose plays with vitality enough to withstand the ordeal by fire
+before the footlights are evidence that if there exists any prejudice
+against the female dramatist it can be overcome. They are evidence,
+also, that women are not debarred from the competition; and fairness
+requires the record here that, when Mr. Winthrop Ames proffered a prize
+for an American play, this was awarded to a woman.
+
+But to grant equality of opportunity is not to confer equality of
+ability, and when we call the roll of the dramatists who have given
+luster to French literature and to English, we discover that this list
+is not enriched by the name of any woman. The fame of George Sand is not
+derived from her contributions to dramatic literature, and the
+contributions of Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Centlivre, and Mrs. Inchbald, of Mrs.
+Bateman and Mrs. Mowatt, entitle them to take rank only among the minor
+playwrights of their own generations; and to say this is to say that
+their plays are now familiar only to devoted specialists in the annals
+of the stage, and that the general reader could not give the name of a
+single piece from the pen of any one of these enterprising ladies. In
+other words, the female playwrights are so few and so unimportant that a
+conscientious historian of either French or English dramatic literature
+might almost neglect them altogether without seriously invalidating his
+survey. Perhaps the only English titles that are more than mere items in
+a barren catalog are Mrs. Centlivre's 'Wonder' and Mrs. Cowley's
+'Belle's Stratagem'; and the French pieces of female authorship which
+might protest against exclusion are almost as few--Mme. de Girardin's
+'La Joie fait Peur,' and George Sand's 'Marquis de Villemer' and
+'Mariage de Victorine.'
+
+Indeed, the women playwrights of the past and of the present might be
+two or three times more numerous than they are, and two or three times
+more important without even treading upon the heels of the male
+play-makers. This is an incontrovertible fact; yet it is equally
+indisputable that as performers in the theater women are competitors
+whom men respect and with whom they have to reckon, and that as
+story-tellers women are as popular and as prolific as men. And here we
+are brought back again to the question with which this inquiry began:
+Why is it then that women have not been as popular and as prolific in
+telling stories on the stage? Why cannot they write a play as well as
+they can act in it?
+
+One answer to this question has been volunteered by a woman who
+succeeded as an actress, and who did not altogether fail as a dramatic
+poetess, altho she came in later life to have little esteem for her
+earlier attempts at play-writing. It is in her 'Records of a Girlhood'
+that Fanny Kemble expressed the conviction that it was absolutely
+impossible for a woman ever to be a great dramatist, because "her
+physical organization" was against it. "After all, it is great nonsense
+saying that intellect is of no sex. The brain is, of course, of the same
+sex as the rest of the creature; beside the original female nature, the
+whole of our training and education, our inevitable ignorance of common
+life and general human nature, and the various experiences of existence
+from which we are debarred with the most sedulous care, is insuperably
+against it"--that is, against the possibility of a really searching
+tragedy, or of a really liberal comedy ever being composed by a woman.
+To this rather sweeping denial of the dramaturgic gift to women Fanny
+Kemble added an apt suggestion, that "perhaps some of the manly, wicked
+queens, Semiramis, Cleopatra, could have written plays--but they lived
+their tragedies instead of writing of them."
+
+                                   II
+
+At first sight it may seem as if one of Fanny Kemble's assertions--that
+no woman can be a dramatist because of her inevitable ignorance of life
+and of the experiences of existence from which she is debarred--is
+disproved by the undeniable triumphs of women in acting, and by the
+indisputable victories won by women in the field of prose fiction,
+achieved in spite of these admitted limitations. But on a more careful
+consideration it will appear that as an actress woman is called upon
+only to embody and to interpret characters conceived by man with the aid
+of his wider and deeper knowledge of life. And when we analyze the most
+renowned of the novels by which women have attained fame, we discover
+that the best of these deal exclusively with the narrower regions of
+conduct, and with the more restricted areas of life with which she is
+most familiar as a woman, and that when she seeks to go outside her
+incomplete experience of existence she soon makes us aware of the gaps
+in her equipment.
+
+One of the strongest stories ever written by a woman is the 'Jane Eyre'
+of Charlotte Bronte; and the inexperience of the forlorn and lonely
+spinster is almost ludicrously made manifest in her portrayal of
+Rochester, a superbly projected figure, not sustained by intimate
+knowledge of the type to which he belongs. Charlotte Bronte knew Jane
+Eyre inside and out; but she did not know even the outside of Rochester.
+Because women are debarred with the most sedulous care from various
+experiences of existence they can never know men as men can know women.
+This is the basis for the shrewd remark that in dealing with affairs of
+the heart men novelists rarely tell all they know, whereas women
+novelists are often tempted to tell more than they know. Even women like
+George Eliot and George Sand, who have more or less broken out of
+bounds, are still more or less confined to their individual associations
+with the other sex; and they lack the inexhaustible fund of information
+about life which is the common property of men.
+
+Women have most satisfactorily displayed their special endowment for
+fiction not in what must be called the dramatic novel, not in
+soul-searching studies like the 'Scarlet Letter' and 'Anna Karenine,'
+but rather in less solidly supported inquiries into the interrelation of
+character and social convention, as in 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Castle
+Rackrent.' It would be unfair to assert that Maria Edgeworth and Jane
+Austen are superficial; yet it is not unfair to say that they do not
+explore deeply, and that they do not deal with what Stevenson called the
+great passionate crises of existence, "when duty and inclination come
+nobly to the grapple." This is the essential struggle of the drama; and
+the authoress of 'Jane Eyre' sought to present it boldly, even if she
+was handicapped by insufficient information; and this essential struggle
+was what Charlotte Bronte herself missed in Jane Austen: "The passions
+are perfectly unknown to her; she rejects even a speaking acquaintance
+with that stormy sisterhood. What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves
+flexibly, it suits her to study; but what throbs fast and full, tho
+hidden, what the blood rushes thru, what is the unseen seat of life, and
+the sentient target of death--this Miss Austen ignores."
+
+Jane Austen spent her great gift on the carving of cherry-stones,
+laboring with exquisite art to lift into temporary importance the
+eternally unimportant; and Charlotte Bronte, in her ampler endeavor, was
+ever hampered by inadequacy of knowledge. George Eliot, with wider
+opportunity than either of these predecessors, profited by both of them
+and borrowed their processes in turn; she was broader than they were,
+and bolder in her attack on life; her effort is more strenuously
+intellectual than theirs, and therefore a little fatiguing, and this is
+perhaps why her vogue seems now to be evaporating slowly. And when all
+is said, no one of these clever story-tellers really attains to an
+altitude of accomplishment where she can fairly be considered as a
+competitor of the mighty masters of prose fiction. No woman novelist is
+to be ranked among the supreme leaders, worthy to stand by the side of
+Cervantes and Fielding, Balzac and Tolstoi. The merits of the women
+novelists are many and they are beyond cavil; but no one of them has yet
+been able to handle a large theme powerfully and to interpret life with
+the unhasting and unresting strength which is the distinguishing mark of
+the mightier masters of fiction.
+
+                                  III
+
+Furthermore, we find in the works of female storytellers not only a lack
+of largeness in topic, but also a lack of strictness in treatment. Their
+stories, even when they charm us with apt portraiture and with adroit
+situation, are likely to lack solidity of structure. 'Castle Rackrent,'
+an illuminating picture of human nature in a special environment, is a
+straggling sequence of episodes; 'Pride and Prejudice' is almost
+plotless, when considered as a whole; and 'Romola' is ill-proportioned
+and misshapen. No woman has ever achieved the elaborate solidity of 'Tom
+Jones,' the superb structure of the 'Scarlet Letter,' or the simple
+unity of 'Smoke.' And here we come close to the most obvious explanation
+of the dearth of female dramatists--in the relative incapacity of women
+to build a plan, to make a single whole compounded of many parts, and
+yet dominated in every detail by but one purpose.
+
+The drama demands a plot, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and
+with everything rigorously excluded which does not lead from the
+beginning thru the middle to the end. The novel refuses to submit itself
+to any such requirement; it can make shift to exist without an
+articulated skeleton. There is little or no plot, there is only a casual
+succession of more or less unrelated incidents in 'Gil Blas' and
+'Tristram Shandy,' in the 'Pickwick Papers,' and in Huckleberry Finn.'
+The novel may be invertebrate and yet survive, whereas the play without
+a backbone is dead--which is biologic evidence that the drama is higher
+in the scale of creation than prose fiction.
+
+"The novel, as practised in English, is the perfect paradise of the
+loose end," so Mr. Henry James once pointed out, whereas "the play
+consents to the logic of but one way, mathematically right, and with the
+loose end as gross an impertinence on its surface and as grave a
+dishonor as the dangle of a snippet of silk or wool on the right side of
+a tapestry." The action of a story may be what its writer pleases, and
+he can reduce it to a minimum or embroider it at will with airy
+arabesques of incessant digression; but the plot of a play must be a
+straight line, the shortest distance between two points, the point of
+departure and the point of arrival. And it is because of this imperative
+necessity for integrity of construction that the drama is more difficult
+than prose fiction. Since a part of our pleasure in any art is derived
+from our consciousness of the obstacles to be overcome by the artist,
+and from our recognition of the skill displayed by him in vanquishing
+them, we have here added evidence in behalf of the belief in the
+artistic superiority of the play over the novel merely as a form of
+expression.
+
+The drama may be likened to the sister art of architecture in its
+insistent demand for plan and proportion. A play is a poor thing, likely
+to expire of inanition, unless its author is possessed of the ability to
+build a plot which shall be strong and simple and clear, and unless he
+has the faculty of enriching it with abundant accessories in accord with
+a scheme thought out in advance and adhered to from start to finish.
+With this constructive skill women seem to be less liberally endowed
+than men; at least, they have not yet revealed themselves as architects,
+altho they have won a warm welcome as decorators--a subordinate art for
+which they are fitted by their superior delicacy and by their keener
+interest in details. Much of the pervasive charm of many of the
+cleverest novels of female authorship lies in the persistent ingenuity
+with which the lesser points of character, of conduct, and of manners
+are presented. In Jane Austen, in Maria Edgeworth, and often also in
+George Eliot, we are delighted by little miracles of observation, and by
+little triumphs in the microscopic analysis of subtle and unsuspected
+motives. But in these very books, the story, however felicitously
+decorated, is not sustained by a severe architectural framework. And it
+is this firm certainty of structure that the drama imperatively demands.
+
+In other words, women seem to be less often dowered than men with what
+Tyndall called "scientific imagination," with the ability to put
+together a whole in which the several parts are never permitted to
+distend a disproportionate space. This scientific imagination is
+essential to the playwright; and the novelist is fortunate if he also
+possesses it, altho it is not essential to him. A novel may be only a
+straggling succession of episodes; a play must have fundamental unity. A
+novelist may fire with a shot-gun and bring down his bird on the wing,
+whereas a playwright needs a rifle to arrest the charging lion.
+
+It is a significant fact that only once was George Sand really
+triumphant as a dramatist, and that this single success was won by the
+secret aid of the cleverest of contemporary playwrights. She was
+passionately devoted to the theater; she had many intimate friends among
+the stage-folk; she delighted in private theatricals; and she wrote a
+dozen or more plays, several of them dramatized from her own stories.
+The sole play which held its own on the stage in rivalry with the best
+work of Augier and Dumas _fils_ was the 'Marquis de Villemer,' and it
+owed its more fortunate fate to the gratuitous and unacknowledged
+collaboration of Dumas _fils_.
+
+For the author of the 'Mariage de Victorine,' the author of the 'Dame
+aux Camelias' had a high esteem, which he took occasion to express more
+than once in his critical papers; and she regarded him with
+semi-maternal affection, often inviting him to join the little parties
+at Nohant. On one of his visits he heard her say that she was intending
+to dramatize the 'Marquis de Villemer,' but that she did not quite see
+her way to compact its leisurely action in conformity with the rigid
+restrictions of the stage. That evening he borrowed a copy of the novel
+to take up to his own room; and the next morning when he came down to
+the late breakfast, he laid before her half a dozen sheets of paper,
+whereon she found a complete scenario for her guidance, an adroit
+division of her novel into acts and scenes, needing only to be clothed
+with dialog. With his intuitive understanding of the principles of
+play-making, and with his masterly power of construction, he had solved
+her problems for her and made it easy for her to write the play.
+
+Here is an unexampled kind of collaboration, since the invention of the
+story, the creation of the characters, the dialog to be spoken--these
+were all due to George Sand alone; but the concentrating of the
+interest, the heightening of the personages of the narrative to adjust
+themselves to the perspective of the theater, the serried and
+irresistible momentum of the action--these were the contribution of
+Dumas, a freewill offering to his old friend. The piece that she wrote
+was hers and hers alone, and yet it had a dramatic vitality lacking in
+all her other plays, because a man had intervened at the right moment to
+provide the architectural framework which the woman could not have
+bestowed upon it, however felicitous she might be in the decoration.
+
+                                   IV
+
+Thus it is that we can supply two answers to the two questions posed at
+the beginning of this inquiry: Why is it that there are so few women
+playwrights? And why is it that the infrequent plays produced by women
+playwrights rarely attain high rank? The explanation is to be found in
+two facts: first, the fact that women are likely to have only a
+definitely limited knowledge of life, and, second, the fact that they
+are likely also to be more or less deficient in the faculty of
+construction. The first of these disabilities may tend to disappear if
+ever the feminist movement shall achieve its ultimate victory; and the
+second may depart also whenever women submit themselves to the severe
+discipline which has compelled men to be more or less logical.
+
+(1915.)
+
+                                  VIII
+
+                    THE EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING
+
+                    THE EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING
+
+                                   I
+
+Only recently have students of the stage seized the full significance of
+the fact that dramatic literature is always conditioned by the
+circumstances of the special theater for which it was designed. They are
+at last beginning to perceive that they need to know how a play was
+originally represented by actors before an audience and in a theater to
+enable them to appreciate adequately the technical skill of the
+playwright who composed it. The dramatist is subdued to what he works
+in; and he can accomplish only that which is possible in the particular
+playhouse for which his pieces were destined. For the immense open air
+auditorium of ancient Athens, with its orchestra leveled at the foot of
+the curving hillside whereon thousands of spectators took their places,
+the dramatic poet had to select a simple story and to build massively.
+For the unadorned platform of the Tudor theater, with its arras pendent
+from the gallery above the stage, and with its restless groundlings
+standing in the yard, the playwright was compelled to heap up swift
+episodes violent with action. For the eighteenth-century playhouse, with
+its apron projecting far beyond the line of the curtain, the dramatist
+was tempted to revel in ornate eloquence and in elaborate wit. And
+nowadays the dramatic author utilizes skilfully all the manifold
+resources of the twentieth-century picture-frame stage, not only to give
+external reality to the several places where his story is supposed to be
+laid, but also to lend to these stage-sets the characteristic atmosphere
+demanded by his theme.
+
+Merely literary critics, secluded in their studies, intent upon the
+poetry of a play and desirous of deducing its philosophy, rarely seek to
+visualize a performance on the stage, and they are, therefore, inclined
+to be disdainful of the purely theatrical conditions to which its author
+has had, perforce, to adjust his work. As a result they sometimes
+misunderstand the dramatic poet's endeavors, and they often misinterpret
+his intentions. On the other hand, purely theatrical critics may be
+inclined to pay too much attention to stage-arrangements,
+stage-business, and stage-settings, and even on occasion to disregard
+the dramatist's message and his power of creating character to consider
+his technic alone. And yet it can scarcely be denied that the theatrical
+critics are nearer to the proper method of approach than the literary
+critics who neglect the light which a careful consideration of
+stage-conditions and of stage-traditions may cast upon the masterpieces
+of the drama.
+
+Since all these masterpieces of the drama were devised to be heard and
+to be seen rather than to be read, the great dramatic poets have always
+been solicitous about the visual appeal of their plays. They have ever
+been anxious to garnish their pieces with the utmost scenic
+embellishment and the utmost spectacular accompaniment of the special
+kind that a play of that particular type could profit by. In view of the
+importance of this scenic embellishment and of its influence upon the
+methods of the successive playwrights, there is cause for wonder that we
+have no satisfactory attempt to tell the history of the art of the
+scene-painter as this has been developed thru the long ages. The
+materials for this narrative are abundant, even if they still lie in
+confusion. Certain parts of the field have been surveyed here and there;
+but no substantial treatise has yet been devoted to this alluring
+investigation. The scholar who shall hereafter undertake the task will
+need a double qualification; he must master the annals of painting in
+Renascence Italy, and later in France and in England, and he must
+familiarize himself with the circumstances of the theater at the several
+periods when the art of the scene-painter made its successive steps in
+advance.
+
+It is partly because we have no manual covering the whole field that we
+find so many unwarranted assertions in the studies of the scholars who
+confine their criticism to a single period of the development of the
+drama. Partly also is this due to the fact that we are each of us so
+accustomed to the theaters of our own century and of our own country
+that we find it difficult not to assume similar conditions in the
+theaters of other centuries and other countries. Thus the Shaksperian
+commentators of the early eighteenth century seem not to have doubted
+that the English playhouse in the days of Elizabeth was not unlike the
+English playhouse in the days of Anne; and as a result they cut up the
+plays of Shakspere into acts and into scenes, each supposed to take
+place in a different spot, in accord with the eighteenth-century stage
+practise, and absolutely without any justification from the customs of
+the Tudor theater. This was the result of looking back and of believing
+that the late sixteenth-century stage must have resembled the early
+eighteenth-century stage. We are now beginning to see that, in any
+effort to recapture the methods of the Elizabethan theater, we must
+first understand the customs of the medieval stage, and then look
+forward from that point. Of all places in the world the playhouse is,
+perhaps, the most conservative, and the most reluctant to relinquish
+anything which has proved its utility in the past and which is accepted
+by the public in the present; and many of the peculiarities of the Tudor
+theater are survivals from the medieval performances.
+
+There are still to be found classical scholars who accept the existence
+of a raised stage in the theater of Dionysus at Athens, and even of
+painted scenery such as we moderns know; and they find support in the
+assertion of Aristotle that among the improvements due to Sophocles was
+the introduction of "scenery." But what did the Greek word in the text
+of Aristotle which is rendered into English as "scenery" really mean? At
+least, what did it connote to an Athenian? Something very different, we
+may be sure, from what the term "scenery" connotes to us. Certainly,
+the physical conditions of the stageless Attic theater precluded the
+possibilities of painted scenes such as we are now familiar with. That
+there were no methods of representing realistically, or even summarily,
+the locality where the action is taking place is proved by the detailed
+descriptions of these localities which the dramatic poet was careful to
+put into the mouths of his characters whenever he wished the audience to
+visualize the appropriate background of the action. We may be assured
+that the dramatists would never have wasted time in describing what the
+spectators had before their eyes. Ibsen and Rostand and d'Annunzio are
+poets, each in his own fashion, but their plays are devoid of all
+descriptions of the special locality where the action passes--that task
+has been spared them by the labors of the modern scene-painter working
+upon their specific directions.
+
+As there was no scenery in the Greek theater so there was little or none
+in the Roman. M. Camille Saint-Saens once suggested that certain airy
+scaffoldings in the Pompeian wall-paintings were perhaps derived from
+scenic accessories. But this seems unlikely enough; and the surviving
+Latin playhouses have a wide and shallow stage closed in by a sumptuous
+architectural background, suggesting the front of a palace with three
+portals, often conveniently utilized as the entrances to the separate
+dwellings of the several characters. Again, we may infer the absence of
+scenery from the elaboration with which Plautus, for one, localizes the
+habitations of his leading characters. In Rome, as in Athens, some kind
+of a summary indication of locality, some easily understood symbol, may
+have been employed; but of scene-painting, as we moderns know the art,
+there is not a trace.
+
+                                   II
+
+It is not until we come to the mysteries of the Middle Ages that we find
+the beginnings of the modern art, and even here it is only a most
+rudimentary attempt that we can discover. The mystery probably developed
+earliest in France, as it certainly flourished there most abundantly;
+and the French represented the dramatized Bible story on a long, shallow
+platform, at the back of which they strung along a row of summary
+indications of certain necessary places, beginning with Heaven on the
+spectator's left, and ending with Hell on his right, and including the
+Temple, the house of the high priest and the palace of Herod. These
+necessary places were called "mansions," and they served to localize the
+action whenever this was deemed advisable, the front of the platform
+remaining a neutral ground which might be anywhere. But these mansions
+do not prove the existence of scene-painters; they were very slight
+erections, a canopy over an altar serving to indicate the Temple, and a
+little portico sufficing to represent a palace; and they were probably
+built by house-carpenters and painted by housepainters, just as any boat
+which might be called for would be constructed by the shipwrights.
+
+[Illustration: The Roman Theater at Orange
+From the model at the Paris Opera]
+
+[Illustration: The multiple set of the French medieval stage
+From the model in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University]
+
+[Illustration: The set of the Italian comedy of masks]
+
+And as we need not assume the forming of a guild of scene-painters
+because of these mansions which performed some of the functions of our
+modern scenery, so also we must not assume it because the medieval
+artisans invented a variety of elaborate spectacular devices, flying
+angels, for example, and roaring flames from Hell-Mouth. Even in the
+stageless and sceneless Attic theater, there had been many mechanical
+effects of one kind or another, especially in the plays of
+Euripides--the soaring dragon-chariot of Medea, for instance, and the
+similar contrivance whereby a god might descend from the skies.
+Mechanical tricks even when they are most ingenious, do not imply the
+aid of the scene-painter; and even to-day they are the special task of
+the property-man, or of the master-mechanic, altho the scene-painter's
+aid may be invoked also to make them more effective. That there were
+property-makers in the Middle Ages admits of no doubt, and also highly
+skilled artificers delighting in the daring ingenuity of their
+inventions. There were abundant properties, it may be noted, on the
+Elizabethan stage, well-heads, thrones, and arbors; and Henslow's diary
+records payment for a variety of such accessories. But there is not in
+that invaluable document a single entry indicating any payment for
+anything equivalent to the work of the scene-painter.
+
+Adroit as were the French mechanics who prepared the abundant
+spectacular effects of the medieval mysteries, they were surpassed in
+skill by the Italian engineers of the Renascence, who lent their aid to
+the superb outdoor festivals wherein the expanding artistic energy of
+the period was most magnificently displayed. Leonardo da Vinci did not
+disdain to design machines disclosing a surprising fertility of
+resource. It was from those outdoor spectacles of the Italians that the
+French court-ballets are directly descended, and also the English masks,
+which demanded the collaboration of Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson. But at
+first the Italians got along without the aid of the yet unborn
+scene-painter, and the inventions of the engineer were carried out by
+the mechanic and the decorator. Even as late as the seventeenth century
+a magnificent spectacle presented in the garden of the Pitti Palace in
+Florence relied mainly upon the ingenious engineer and scarcely at all
+upon the scene-painter. It seems probable that it is here in Italy in
+the Renascence, and at first as an accompaniment of the outdoor
+spectacle, or of its indoor rival, that the art of the actual
+scene-painter had its birth. The engineers required the aid of the
+artists--indeed, in those days, when there was little specialization of
+function, the engineers were almost always artists themselves, capable
+of their own decoration.
+
+[Illustration: An outdoor entertainment in the gardens of the Pitti
+Palace in Florence in the early sixteenth century
+From a contemporary print]
+
+In time there would be necessary specialization, and after a while
+certain artists came to devote themselves chiefly to scene-painting,
+finding their immediate opportunity in the decoration of the operas,
+which then began to multiply. The opera has always been aristocratic,
+expensive, and spectacular, and it continued the tradition of the
+highly decorated open-air festivals. In fact, it improved upon this
+tradition, in so far as that was possible, and it achieved a variety of
+mechanical effects scarcely less complicated than those which charm our
+eyes to-day in 'Rheingold' and 'Parsifal.' Thirty years ago the late
+Charles Nuitter, the archivist of the Paris Opera and himself a
+librettist of wide experience, drew my attention to Sabbatini's
+'Practica di fabricar scene e machini ne' teatri' (published in 1638),
+and he assured me that the resources of the Opera did not go beyond
+those which were at the command of the Italians three centuries earlier.
+"They could do then," he asserted, "almost everything that we can do now
+here at the Opera. For example, they could bring a ship on the stage
+under full sail. We have only one superiority over them: we have
+abundant light now, we have electricity, and they were dependent on
+candles and lamps."
+
+Yet even in Italy in the Renascence the most popular form of the drama,
+the improvised play which we call the comedy-of-masks, was performed in
+a traditional stage-setting representing an open square, whereon only
+the back-cloth seems to have been the work of the scene-painter, the
+sides of the stage being occupied by four or more houses, two or three
+on each side, often consisting of little more than a practicable door
+with a practicable window over it, not made of canvas, but constructed
+out of wood by the carpenter, with the solidity demanded by the climbing
+feats of the athletic comedians and by their acrobatic agility. The
+traditional set of the comedy-of-masks conformed to that recommended for
+the comic drama by Serlio, in his treatise on architecture, published in
+1545; but it may be noted also that Serlio's suggested set for the
+tragic drama was not dissimilar even if it were distinctly more
+dignified.
+
+                                  III
+
+The opera seems to have been the direct descendant of the court-ballet,
+known in England as the mask, as that in its turn was derived from the
+open-air spectacle of the Italian Renascence, such as survived in
+Florence in the seventeenth century. In the beginning the court-ballets
+of France, like the masks of England, were not given in a theater with a
+stage shut off by a proscenium arch, but in the ball-room or
+banqueting-hall of a palace. One end of this spacious apartment, often
+but not always provided with a raised platform, served as the stage
+whereon one or more places, a mountain, for instance, and a grotto, were
+represented, at first by the decorated machines of the artistic
+engineers only, but afterward by the canvas frames of scene-painters.
+The action of the court-ballets or of the masks was not necessarily
+confined to this stage, so to call it. The spectators were ranged along
+the walls and under the galleries (if there were any), leaving the main
+part of the hall bare; and the performers descended frequently into this
+area, which was kept free for them, and which was better fitted for
+their dances and processions and other intricate evolutions than the
+scant and cluttered stage.
+
+A twentieth-century analog to this sixteenth-century practise can be
+seen in the spectacle presented in our modern three-ringed circuses--the
+'Cleopatra,' for example, which was the opening number on the Barnum and
+Bailey program not long ago, where the Roman troops and the Egyptian
+populace came down from the stage and paraded around the arena. Bacon in
+his essay on 'Masques,' used the word "scenery" as tho he meant only
+decorated scaffolds, perhaps movable; and his expression of desire for
+room "to be kept clear" implies the use of the body of the hall for the
+maneuvers of the performers. Ludovic Celler, in his study of 'Mise en
+scene au dix-septieme siecle' in France, shows that the action of the
+court-ballet was sometimes intermitted that the spectators could join in
+the dancing, as at an ordinary ball. In the earlier Italian open-air
+festivals, and in the earlier French court-ballets there was not even a
+proscenium sharply separating the stage from the rest of the hall; but
+in England by the time of Inigo Jones the advantage of a proscenium had
+been discovered, and we have more than one of the sketches which that
+skilful designer devised for his masks. But even then this proscenium
+was not permanent and architecturally conventionalized; it was invented
+afresh for every successive entertainment, and it was adorned with
+devices peculiar to that particular mask. Inigo Jones had also advanced
+to the use of actual scenery, that is to say, of canvas stretched upon
+frames and then painted. Mr. Hamilton Bell believes it possible that the
+invention of grooves to sustain wings and flats may be ascribed to Inigo
+or to his assistant and successor, Webb.
+
+Even in the Italian opera, where all the scenery was due to the brush of
+the scene-painter, there was for a long while a formal and monotonous
+regularity. Whether the set was an interior or an exterior, a public
+place or a hall in a palace, the arrangement was rectangular, with a
+drop at the back and a series of wings on either side equidistant from
+one another. This stiff representation of a locality is preserved for us
+nowadays in the toy-theaters which we buy for our children, altho it is
+now seen on the actual stage only in certain acts of old-fashioned
+operas. It lingers also in the variety-shows, where it is the proper
+setting for many items of their miscellaneous programs.
+
+Altho the Italians had discovered perspective early in the Renascence
+they utilized it on the stage timidly at first, bestowing this
+rectangular regularity upon all their sets, both architectural interiors
+or exteriors and rural scenes, in which rigid wood-wings receded,
+diminishing in height to a landscape painted on the drop at the back,
+thus leaving the whole stage free for the actors. Not until the end of
+the seventeenth century did an Italian scene-painter, Bibiena, venture
+to abandon the balanced symmetry of the square set, and to slant his
+perspective so as to present buildings at an acute angle, thereby not
+only gaining a pleasing variety, but also enlarging immensely the
+apparent spaciousness of the scene, since he was able to carry the eyes
+of the spectator into vague distances, and to suggest far more than he
+was able to display. This advance was accompanied by a more liberal use
+of stairways and platforms--"practicables" as the stage-phrase is--that
+is to say, built up by the carpenters so that the actors could go from
+one level to another. Hitherto flights of steps and balconies had been
+only painted, not being intended for actual use by the performers.
+
+[Illustration: The set for the opera of 'Persee' (as performed at the
+Opera in Paris in the seventeenth century)]
+
+[Illustration: A prison (designed by Bibiena in Italy in the eighteenth
+century)]
+
+A similar development took place also in the landscape scenes; the
+foreground was raised irregularly, so that the persons of the play might
+climb up. Practicable bridges were swung across torrents, and the
+earlier formality of pastoral scenes began to disappear. Apparently the
+scene-painters were influenced at this time by the landscape-painters,
+more especially by Poussin. The interrelation of painting and
+scene-painting, each in turn affecting the other, is far closer than
+most historians of art have perceived. It is not unlikely, for example,
+that Gainsborough and Constable, who were the fathers of the Barbizon
+men, had been stimulated by the stage-pictures of De Lutherbourg. David
+Garrick profited by the innovating art of De Lutherbourg, a pupil of
+Vanloo, who came to England in 1771. Apparently it was De Lutherbourg
+who invented "raking-pieces"--as the scene-painters term the low
+fragments of scenery which mask the inclines of mounds. To him also is
+credited the first use of transparent scenes to reproduce the effect of
+moonlight upon water, and to suggest the flames of volcanoes. Thus to
+him must be ascribed the beginnings of that complicated realism by which
+our latter-day scene-painters are enabled to create an appropriate
+atmosphere for poetic episodes.
+
+                                   IV
+
+The next step in advance, and one of the most important in the slow
+development of the scene-painter's art, took place in France early in
+the nineteenth century, and simultaneous with the romanticist movement,
+which modified the aims and ambitions of the artists as much as it did
+those of the poets. The severe stateliness of the stage-set which was
+adequate for the classicist tragedies of Racine and Voltaire, generally
+a vague interior of an indefinite palace, stiff and empty, was
+hopelessly unsuitable for the fiery dramas of Victor Hugo and the elder
+Dumas. An even greater opportunity for spectacular regeneration was
+afforded, in these same early decades of the nineteenth century, by the
+bold and moving librettos which Scribe constructed for Meyerbeer and
+Halevy at the Opera, and for Auber at the Opera-Comique. The exciting
+cause of the scenic complexities that we find in Wagner's music-dramas
+can be discovered in these librettos of Scribe's, from 'Robert the
+Devil' to the 'Africaine.' For one act of 'Robert the Devil,' that in
+which the spectral nuns dance among the tombs under the rays of the
+moon, Ciceri invented the most striking and novel setting yet exhibited
+on any stage--a setting not surpassed in poetic glamor by any since
+seen in the theater, altho its eery beauty may have been rivaled by one
+scene in the 'Source,' a ballet produced also at the Opera forty-five
+years ago--a moon-lit tarn in a forest-glade, with half-seen sylphs
+floating lightly over its silvered surface. This exquisitely poetic set
+was imported from Paris to New York and inserted in the brilliant
+spectacle of the 'White Fawn.'
+
+The ample effect of these scenes was made possible only by the immense
+improvement in the illumination of the stage due to the introduction of
+gas. Up to the first quarter of the nineteenth century the
+stage-decorator had been dependent upon lamps--a few of these arranged
+at the rim of the curving apron which jutted out into the auditorium far
+beyond the proscenium, and a few more hidden here and there in the flies
+and wings. Early in the nineteenth century gas supplanted oil; and a
+little later than the middle of the century gas was powerfully
+supplemented by the calcium light. Toward the end of the century gas in
+its turn gave way to the far more useful electric light, which could be
+directed anywhere in any quantity, and which could be controlled and
+colored at will. It was Henry Irving, more especially in his marvelous
+mounting of a rather tawdry version of 'Faust,' who revealed the
+delicate artistic possibilities of our modern facilities for stage
+illumination.
+
+In France the romanticist movement of Hugo was swiftly succeeded by the
+realistic movement of Balzac, who was the earliest novelist to relate
+the leading personages of his studies from life to a characteristic
+background and to bring out the intimate association of persons and
+places. From prose fiction this evocation of characteristic surroundings
+was taken over by the drama; and a persistent effort was made to have
+the successive sets of a play suggestive and significant in themselves,
+and also representative of the main theme of the piece. The actors were
+no longer dependent upon the "float," as the footlights were called;
+they did not need to advance out on the apron to let the spectators
+follow the changing expression of their faces, and in time the apron was
+cut back to the line of the proscenium, and the curtain rose and fell in
+a picture-frame which cut the actors off from their proximity to the
+audience--a proximity forever tempting the dramatic poet to the purely
+oratorical effects proper enough on a platform.
+
+When the modern play calls for an interior this interior now takes on
+the semblance of an actual room. Apparently the "box-set," as it is
+called, the closed-in room with its walls and its ceiling, was first
+seen in England in 1841, when 'London Assurance' was produced; but very
+likely it had earlier made its appearance in Paris at the Gymnase. To
+supply a room with walls of a seeming solidity, with doors and with
+windows, appears natural enough to us, but it was a startling innovation
+fourscore years ago. When the 'School for Scandal' had been originally
+produced at Drury Lane in 1775, the library of Joseph Surface, where
+Lady Teazle hides behind the screen, was represented by a drop at the
+back, on which a window was painted, and by wings set starkly parallel
+to this back-drop and painted to represent columns. There were no
+doors; and Joseph and Charles, Sir Peter and Lady Teazle, walked on thru
+the openings between the wings, very much as tho they were passing thru
+the non-existent walls. To us, this would be shocking; but it was
+perfectly acceptable to English playgoers then; and to them it seemed
+natural, since they were familiar with no other way of getting into a
+room on the stage.
+
+[Illustration: The screen scene of the 'School for Scandal' at Drury
+Lane in 1778 From a contemporary print]
+
+The invention of the box-set, of a room with walls and ceilings, doors
+and windows, led inevitably to the appropriate furnishing of this room
+with tangible tables and chairs. Even in the eighteenth century the
+stage had been very empty; it was adorned only with the furniture
+actually demanded by the action of the drama; and the rest of the
+furniture, bookcases and sideboards, chairs and tables, was frankly
+painted on the wings and on the back-drop by the side of the painted
+mantelpieces, the painted windows, and the painted doors. In the plays
+of the twentieth century characters sit down and change from seat to
+seat; but in the plays produced in England and in France before the
+first quarter of the nineteenth century all the actors stood all the
+time--or at least they were allowed to sit only under the stress of
+dramatic necessity--as in the fourth act of 'Tartuffe,' for instance. In
+all of Moliere's comedies there are scarcely half a dozen characters who
+have occasion to sit down; and this sitting-down is limited to three or
+four of his more than thirty pieces. Nowadays every effort is made to
+capture the external realities of life. Sardou was not more careful in
+composing his stage-sittings in his fashion than was Ibsen in
+prescribing the scenic environment that he needed. The author's minute
+descriptions of the scenes where the action of the 'Doll's House' and of
+'Ghosts' passes prove that Ibsen had visualized sharply the precise
+interior which was, in his mind, the only possible home for the
+creatures of his imagination. And Mr. Belasco has recently bestowed upon
+the winning personality of his 'Peter Grimm' the exact habitation to
+which that appealing creature would return in his desire to undo after
+death what in life he had rashly commanded.
+
+                                   V
+
+While the scene-painter of our time is most often called upon to realize
+the actual in an interior and to delight us with a room the dominant
+quality of which is that it looks as tho it was really lived in by the
+personages we see moving around in it, he is not confined to those
+domestic scenes. There are other plays than the modern social dramas;
+and these other plays make other demands upon the artist. On occasion he
+has to supply a gorgeous scenic accompaniment for the Roman and Egyptian
+episodes of 'Antony and Cleopatra,' to suggest the blasted heath where
+Macbeth may meet the weird sisters, and to call up before our delighted
+eyes the placid charm of the Forest of Arden. The awkward and
+inconsistent sky-borders, strips of pendent canvas wholly
+unsatisfactory as substitutes for the vast depths of the starry heavens,
+he is able to dispense with by lowering a little the hangings at the top
+edge of the picture-frame, and by thus limiting the upward gaze of the
+spectators, so that he can forgo the impossible attempt to imitate the
+changing sky. He can achieve an effect of limitless space, as in the
+last act of the 'Garden of Allah' (which brings before us the endless
+vision of Sahara), by the use of a cyclorama background, the drop being
+suspended from a semicircular rod which runs around the top of the
+stage, shutting in the view absolutely, and yet yielding itself to a
+representation of sand and sky meeting afar off on the faint horizon.
+
+[Illustration: A landscape set Designed by P. Fontanesi in Italy in the
+eighteenth century]
+
+[Illustration: A set for the opera of 'Robert le Diable' At the Paris
+Opera]
+
+In the past half-century, and more especially since the improvement of
+the electric light, scene-painting has become very elaborate and very
+expensive. Instead of being kept in its proper place as the decoration
+of the drama, as a beautiful accessory of the action, it has often been
+pushed to the front, so as to attract attention to itself, and thereby
+to distract attention from the play which it was supposed to illuminate.
+Sometimes Shakspere has been smothered in scenery, and sometimes the art
+of the actor has been subordinated to the art of the scene-painter. Now,
+it must be admitted that nothing is too good for the masterpieces of the
+drama, and that Sophocles no less than Shakspere ought to be presented
+to the public with all the pomp that his lofty themes and his marvelous
+workmanship may demand. But the plays of the mighty dramatic poets
+ought not to be used merely as pegs on which to hang gorgeous apparel.
+After all, the play's the thing; and whenever the scene-painter and his
+invading partner, the stage-manager, are prompted to oust the drama from
+its pre-eminence, and to substitute an exhibition of their accessory
+arts, the result is a betrayal of the playwright.
+
+A well-known British art critic once told me that when the curtain rose
+at a certain London revival of 'Twelfth Night,' and disclosed Olivia's
+garden, he sat entranced at the beauty of the spectacle before his eyes,
+with its subtle harmonies of color, so entranced, indeed, that he found
+himself distinctly annoyed when the actors came on the stage and began
+to talk. For the moment, at least, he wished them away, as disturbers of
+his esthetic delight in the lovely picture on which his eyes were
+feasting. But even a stage-setting as captivating as this might very
+well be justified if it had been employed to fill a gap in the action,
+and to buttress up the interest of an episode where the dramatist had
+allowed the appeal of his story to relax. Perrin, the manager of the
+Comedie-Francaise thirty years ago, declined to produce a French version
+of 'Othello' because he found a certain dramatic emptiness in the scenes
+at Cyprus at the opening of the second act, which he felt he would have
+to mask by the beauty of spectacular decoration, too costly an expedient
+in his opinion for the finances of the theater just then.
+
+[Illustration: The set of the last act of the 'Garden of Allah' From the
+model in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University]
+
+[Illustration: A set for 'Medea' Designed by Herr Gustav Lindemann]
+
+It was Perrin, however, who produced the French version of the
+'OEdipus the King' of Sophocles, and who bestowed upon it a single set
+of wonderful charm and power, at once dignified, appropriate, and
+beautiful in itself. It represented an open space between a temple and
+the palace of the ill-fated OEdipus, with an altar in the center, and
+with the profile of another temple projected against the distant sky and
+relieved by the tall, thin outline of poplar-trees. The monotony of this
+rectangular architectural construction was avoided by placing all the
+buildings on a slant, the whole elevation of the temple being visible on
+the left of the spectators, whereas only a corner of the colonnade of
+the palace on the right was displayed. This set at the Theatre-Francais
+was the absolute antithesis of the original scenic surroundings in the
+theater of Dionysus more than two thousand years ago, when the
+masterpiece of Sophocles had been performed in the open-air orchestra,
+with only a hut of skins or a temporary wooden building to serve as a
+background for the bas-reliefs of the action.
+
+So elaborate, complicated, and costly have stage-sets become in the past
+half-century, that there are already signs of the violent reaction that
+might be expected. Mr. Gordon Craig, an artist of remarkable
+individuality, has gone so far as to propose what is almost an abolition
+of scene-painting. He seeks to attain effects of massive simplicity by
+the use of unadorned hangings and of undecorated screens, thus
+substituting vast spaces for the realistic details of the modern
+scene-painter. No doubt, there are a few plays for which this method of
+mounting would be appropriate enough--M. Maeterlinck's 'Intruder,' for
+one, and his 'Sightless' for another, plays which are independent of
+time and space, and in which the action appears to pass in some
+undiscovered limbo. As yet the advanced and iconoclastic theories of Mr.
+Craig have made few adherents, the most notable being the German,
+"Professor" Reinhardt, who lacks Mr. Craig's fine feeling for form and
+color, and who is continually tempted into rather ugly eccentricities of
+design, being apparently moved by the desire to be different from his
+predecessors rather than by the wish to be superior to them.
+
+                                   VI
+
+Interesting as are Mr. Craig's suggestions, and wellfounded as may be
+his protest against the excessive ornamentation to which we are too
+prone nowadays, there is no reason to fear that his principles will
+prevail. The art of the scene-painter is too welcome, it is too plainly
+in accord with the predilections of the twentieth century, for it to be
+annihilated by the fiat of a daring and reckless innovator. It will be
+wise if the producers should harken to Mr. Craig's warnings and curb
+their tendency to needless extravagance; but we may rest assured that a
+return to the bareness of the Attic theater or of the English theater in
+the time of the Tudors is frankly unthinkable now that the art of
+scene-painting has been developed to its present possibilities. In
+fact, the probability is rather that the scene-painters will continue to
+enlarge the boundaries of their territory and to discover new means and
+new methods of delighting our eyes by their evocations of interesting
+places.
+
+[Illustration: The set of 'OEdipe-Roi' (at the Theatre Francais)]
+
+[Illustration: The set of the 'Return of Peter Grimm' From the model in
+the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University]
+
+Perhaps they would be more encouraged to go on and conquer new worlds if
+there was a wider recognition of the artistic value of their work. Altho
+De Lutherbourg and Clarkson Stanfield won honorable positions in the
+history of painting by their easel-pictures, the art of scene-painting
+does not hold the place in the public esteem that many of its
+practitioners deserve. Theophile Gautier, often negligible as a critic
+of the acted drama, was always worth listening to when he turned to
+pictorial art; and he was frequent in praise of the scene-painters of
+his time and of scene-painting itself as a craft of exceeding difficulty
+and of inadequate appreciation. Probably one reason why the
+scene-painter has not received his due meed of praise is because his
+work is not preserved. It exists only during the run of the play which
+it decorates. When the piece disappears from the boards, the scenes
+which adorned it vanish from sight. They linger only in the memory of
+those who happened to see this one play--and even then, in fact, only in
+the memory of such spectators as have trained themselves to pay
+attention to stage-pictures. For the scene-painter there is no
+Luxembourg; still less is there any Louvre. As Gautier sympathetically
+declared, "it is sad to think that nothing survives of those
+masterpieces destined to live a few evenings only, and disappearing
+from the washed canvas to give place to other marvels, equally fugitive.
+How much invention, talent, and genius may be lost--and not always
+leaving even a name!"
+
+It is pleasant to know that at the Opera in Paris a formal order of the
+government has for now a half-century prescribed the preservation of the
+original models--the little miniature sets which the scene-painter
+submits for the approval of the manager and the dramatist before he
+begins work upon the actual scene. These models are always upon the same
+scale, and in the gallery connected with the library of the Opera a
+dozen of these models are set up to be viewed by visitors. Of course no
+tiny model, however cleverly fashioned, can give the full effect of the
+scene which has been conceived in terms of a huge stage; and yet the
+miniature reproductions do not betray the scene-painter as much as an
+engraving or a photograph often betrays the painter. Whatever its
+limitations, and they are obvious enough, the collection of models at
+the Opera is at least an attempt to retard the oblivion that Theophile
+Gautier deplored, and to provide for the scene-painter a substitute,
+however inadequate, for the Louvre and the Luxembourg.
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                   IX
+
+                         THE BOOK OF THE OPERA
+
+                         THE BOOK OF THE OPERA
+
+                                   I
+
+A few years ago _Punch_ had a satirical drawing representing a British
+matron conveying a bevy of youthful daughters to the French play in
+London. To a friend who called her attention to the rather risky
+atmosphere of the very Parisian comedy which they were about to behold,
+the worthy mother promptly explained that she was not bringing her
+daughters to see the play itself; she was bringing them to see only the
+acting. Probably a great many opera-goers would make a similar
+explanation if they were asked whether they were interested in the book
+of the opera or only in the music. They would be likely to protest that
+they cared little or nothing for the libretto, and that they were
+attracted solely by the score. But, as a matter of fact, the opera-goers
+who might make this reply would be self-deceived. Whether they are aware
+of it or not, they are unlikely to be attracted to any opera unless it
+happens to have an interesting story, built up into a coherent and
+captivating plot. When the libretto is unintelligible or uninteresting,
+the most delightful music fails to allure them into the opera-house.
+This is one of the reasons why the 'Magic Flute,' which contains much of
+Mozart's most beautiful melodic invention, is so rarely heard in our
+opera-houses, and why it is so sparsely attended when it is presented.
+The libretto of the 'Magic Flute' is dull and ineffective, and even
+Mozart's genius proved unable to overcome this initial handicap.
+
+The ordinary opera-goer is likely to treat the libretto with calm
+contempt. He is prone to assert that nobody cares about the words, and
+he does not reflect that behind and beneath the words is the supporting
+structure of the story. After all, an opera is a play, it is a
+music-drama, and the plot is as important in a play the words of which
+are to be sung as in a play the words of which are to be spoken. True it
+is, of course, that in an opera the words may not be heard distinctly,
+and perhaps they need not be seized with certainty, since the emotion
+they set forth is more amply conveyed by the music. But the musician
+cannot express emotion musically, unless there is emotion for him to
+express, unless he has characters immeshed in a series of situations
+which evoke vivid and contrasting sentiments for him to translate into
+music. As the music-drama is a drama, it must obey the laws of the
+drama; it must represent a conflict of contending desires; it must be
+carried on by characters firm of purpose and resolute in achieving their
+several aims. These characters must be sharply individualized and boldly
+contrasted; and the story in which they take part must be at once strong
+and simple, calling for no elaborate explanation and moving forward
+steadily and irresistibly. It must have a lyric aspect, lending itself
+naturally to song; and it ought also to afford opportunity for the
+spectacular effects appropriate to the large stage of the opera-house.
+
+So contemptuous of the libretto is the ordinary opera-goer that he
+rarely inquires as to the name of the author of the book, altho he is
+generally familiar with the name of the composer of the score. He may or
+he may not be aware that Wagner was his own librettist, and quite
+possibly he supposes that it is the ordinary custom of the composers to
+write the words for their own music. He knows that 'Carmen' was composed
+by Bizet, and that the 'Huguenots' was composed by Meyerbeer; but he
+would be greatly puzzled if he was asked to name the librettists of
+these two operas, the adroit playwrights who devised the skeletons of
+dramatic action which sustained the composers and provided them with
+ample opportunities for the exercise of their melodic gift. As a matter
+of fact, the book of 'Carmen' was written in collaboration by two of the
+most distinguished French dramatists of the nineteenth century, Meilhac
+and Halevy, the authors of 'Froufrou' and of the librettos of
+Offenbach's 'Belle Helene,' 'Grand Duchess of Gerolstein,' and
+'Perichole.' And the book of the 'Huguenots' was the work of the master
+stage-craftsman, Scribe, the author of 'Adrienne Lecouvreur' and of the
+'Ladies' Battle,' and of countless other plays performed in every modern
+language, and in all the countries of the world.
+
+Bizet wrote other operas besides 'Carmen,' and if these other operas
+have vanished from the stage, the reason may be that the librettos to
+which they were composed were not as ingenious and not as interesting
+as the book of 'Carmen.' One of these forgotten operas of Bizet's was a
+dramatization of the 'Fair Maid of Perth,' and another was called the
+'Pearl Fisher'; but neither of these books was devised by Meilhac and
+Halevy. And Scribe was not only the librettist of the 'Huguenots' and of
+the 'Africaine' for Meyerbeer; he also wrote the books of 'Fra Diavolo'
+and of 'Crown Diamonds' for Auber, the book of the 'Dame Blanche' for
+Boieldieu, and the book of the 'Juive' for Halevy. Indeed, it is evident
+that Wagner himself as a librettist must be considered as a direct
+disciple of Scribe; certainly his book of the 'Flying Dutchman' has its
+points of resemblance with the books Scribe invented for 'Robert the
+Devil,' and for the 'Prophet.' Even the libretto of Wagner's
+'Master-Singers of Nuremberg,' altho it is far richer in tone than any
+of Scribe's librettos for Auber, is constructed in accord with
+principles already applied by the French playwright. In fact, the
+influence of Scribe is patent thruout the long history of opera in the
+nineteenth century; he was not only the most prolific of librettists
+himself, but the operatic formula he devised was borrowed by the best of
+the librettists who followed him. Scribe was not the writer of the books
+of 'Faust,' or of 'Romeo et Juliet,' or of 'Aida,' but all these
+librettos were carefully built in accord with the principles that he had
+practised for half a century.
+
+                                   II
+
+Probably the average opera-goer is contemptuous of the libretto, because
+he thinks it is an easy task to write the mere words of an opera. To
+him, no doubt, the opera lives by its music, and by its music alone. But
+there is really no warrant for this uncomplimentary attitude. An opera
+is a music-drama, and if it is to achieve success, wide-spread and
+long-lasting, its drama must be as effective as its music. Experience
+proves that, so far from being as easy as it seems, the construction of
+a satisfactory libretto is really a difficult feat, to be achieved only
+by an expert in stage-craft. It is no task to be confided to an amateur
+play-maker, to a mere lyrist, ignorant of the art of the theater. First
+of all, a satisfactory book must contain the skeleton of a good play;
+and, second, this must be the special kind of play which will not only
+inspire the musician, but afford him a succession of special
+opportunities for the exercise of his own art. The book of an opera must
+be a good play; and more than once have we seen a libretto deprived of
+its music and written out again in prose for production in non-musical
+theaters. 'Carmen' is one example of this transformation. The late Sir
+Henry Irving was so taken with Wagner's 'Flying Dutchman' that he had it
+made over into a play for his own acting--'Vanderdecken.'
+
+The book of an opera must be a good play, and therefore not a few
+successful operas have been composed on plots which had already won
+approval as plays on the stage. Indeed, many modern composers are so
+convinced of the necessity that librettos shall be attractive in
+themselves that they are continually borrowing popular plays to deck
+with melody. 'Salome' and 'Pelleas et Melisande,' 'Madam Butterfly' and
+'Cavalleria Rusticana,' the 'Boheme' and the 'Tosca' were all successful
+without music before they were set to music to win a second success. The
+book of Verdi's 'Rigoletto' is based on Victor Hugo's drama, 'Le Roi
+s'Amuse'; and oddly enough it was the operatic libretto, rather than the
+original poetic drama, which suggested the English play on the same
+theme, Tom Taylor's blank-verse drama, the 'Fool's Revenge.' Another of
+Verdi's librettos was borrowed from Hugo's 'Hermani', while his
+'Traviata,' as we all know, is taken from the play of the younger Dumas,
+long popular in America as 'Camille.' Two of Verdi's latest operas had
+Shaksperian themes, 'Otello' and 'Falstaff.'
+
+It is instructive to note, so an American musical critic once asserted,
+that of all Gounod's dozen operas, "the only two which have survived are
+the two which are derived from Goethe's 'Faust' and from Shakspere's
+'Romeo and Juliet'"; and he added a reminder that in these operas the
+music owes its success "not only to the aid derived from its
+associations with a favorite play, but also in part to the fact that the
+composer's creative imagination was fertilized by the splendid
+opportunities for dramatic composition offered by these plays. Gounod
+was moved by the joys and woes of Margaret and of Juliet, and it is
+only under the influence of deep feeling that such masterworks can be
+created." When Gounod set to music a poetic play by Goethe, and when
+Verdi set to music a group of characters created by Shakspere, the
+composers might well be inspired by the poets; and they were thus aided
+to attain the utmost of which they are capable as musicians.
+
+But it may be doubted whether any musician could find any really helpful
+inspiration in dramas of vulgar violence, such as the 'Tosca' of Sardou,
+and the 'Salome' of Oscar Wilde; and it is extremely improbable that the
+operas composed to such unworthy themes will be able to achieve any
+durable popularity. In plots of so coarse a character there is neither
+beauty nor poetry, and the vogue of music-dramas having subjects so
+debased is likely to be fleeting. On the other hand, there was both
+poetry and beauty in the original plays of 'Madam Butterfly' and
+'Cavalleria Rusticana,' and we need not be surprised if the operas
+composed on these themes prove to have a long life in the musical
+theaters. We may even go further and suggest that there was a haunting
+and ethereal grace about Maeterlinck's 'Pelleas et Melisande' which
+seemed almost to demand translation into the sister art of music.
+
+The two most effective French comedies of the eighteenth century, the
+'Barber of Seville' and the 'Marriage of Figaro,' supplied librettos,
+one for Rossini and the other for Mozart. We may be sure that sooner or
+later some other composer, Italian or American or German, will be
+tempted to undertake an opera based on Fulda's 'Two Sisters,' in which
+there could not help being a very effective part for the prima donna.
+And sooner or later again some musician with an appreciation of humor
+and sentiment will be moved to take for his libretto the comedy of
+'Masks and Faces,' by Charles Reade and Tom Taylor, generally known by
+the name of its fascinating heroine, Peg Woffington. No doubt there are
+not a few other modern plays in which composers will discover musical
+possibilities.
+
+                                  III
+
+The key to an understanding of the importance of the libretto lies in
+the term Wagner used to describe the art-work of the future; he called
+this a "music-drama." The exclusive lover of music is tempted to look
+down on opera because its music is contaminated with drama; and for a
+similar reason, the exclusive lover of the drama is not attracted to
+opera because the drama is there more or less sacrificed to the music.
+But there are many opera-goers who best relish music and the drama when
+they are presented in conjunction. In a music-drama of the highest type,
+in Wagner's 'Tannhaueser,' for example, the music and the drama are
+Siamese twins; they were brought forth at a single birth. Each helps the
+other, and neither calls upon the other for any undue sacrifice. They
+can be enjoyed together better than they can be enjoyed apart, since
+each depends upon the other; and united they stand or fall.
+
+Mr. H. T. Finck was not overstating the case when he insisted that the
+ideal opera is one in which the book and the score are each of them of
+absorbing interest, "and yet make a doubly deep impression when heard
+together." The stories of 'Faust' and of 'Carmen' and of 'Lohengrin' are
+delightful in themselves, merely to read; and a musical expert can find
+pleasure in playing the music from them on the piano. "Yet how much more
+effective they are when we hear and see music and play together on the
+stage." And then the same writer goes on to point out that the best
+"libretto is one which tells its story to the eye," as in the case of
+'Carmen,' for example. "No one with eyes to see can fail, for instance,
+to follow the career of 'Carmen,' from her flirtation with the young
+officer to the scene before the bullring where he stabs her."
+
+It was an acute French dramatic critic who once asserted that "the
+skeleton of every good play is a pantomime," and the assertion is more
+emphatically true when applied to the skeleton of a libretto. Indeed, as
+the words are rarely heard distinctly, and as they are often in a
+foreign language, there is double need of a story so clear and so
+straightforward that it can be caught by the eye alone from the actions
+and gestures and facial expressions of the performers without the aid of
+the actual words. But the inventing and the constructing of a plot of
+this seemingly simple effectiveness is a task of extraordinary
+difficulty--if we may judge by the infrequency of its achievement. And
+undoubtedly it is this difficulty which has led so many musicians to
+compose their scores to books only slightly altered from plays which had
+already an attested popularity in the theater. By so doing it has seemed
+to them that they were minimizing the risk of finding their music
+handicapped by an ineffective story. The danger in this case lies in the
+temptation to set to music any play which may chance to be successful
+without considering sufficiently whether it is really worthy of the
+composer's labor.
+
+There is another disadvantage also in this snatching at successful plays
+to serve as opera-librettos. Most successful plays nowadays deal with
+modern life, and they may owe much of their success to the skill with
+which the dramatist has been able to seize the external aspects of
+reality. Now, it is an interesting question whether a realistic piece of
+this sort can ever supply an entirely satisfactory book for an opera,
+since music is emotional and idealizing. To many persons the opera seems
+singularly unreal, strangely remote from actual life. Such persons are
+shocked that Tristan, for instance, should sing for half an hour when he
+is dying from physical weakness. Tolstoy sided with those who take this
+attitude, and he had no difficulty in showing up the absurd unreality of
+an operatic performance, if one insists upon applying to it the standard
+of our ordinary existence, since we do not burst into song ordinarily to
+express our every-day desires. Of course, there would be no great
+difficulty in showing up the absurd unreality of every other art, if the
+same standard is insisted upon. No art can justify itself for a moment
+unless we are willing to admit the essential conventions which alone
+permit it to exist.
+
+Tolstoy might as well have pointed out that sculpture is ridiculous,
+since no human being is ever all of one color, body and clothes, as a
+statue must be, whether it is made of marble or of bronze. He could have
+declared that painting is equally untrue to the mere facts of life,
+since it represents nature absolutely without motion, as when it depicts
+a field of waving corn which does not really wave but stands fixed
+forever. If Tolstoy or any one else refuses to accept the conventions of
+any art, there is no possible reply, except to make it clear to him that
+he is thereby depriving himself of the delight which that art can give.
+A departure from the mere fact underlies every art; and it is only
+because of that departure that the art exists. By convention, that is to
+say, by tacit agreement between the artist and the public, the artist is
+allowed to deny certain of the facts of life in order to provide the
+public with the specific pleasure which only his art can afford.
+
+In the Shaksperian drama the underlying convention is that the persons
+of the play belong to a race of people who always express themselves
+poetically in English blank verse. In opera this necessary agreement
+requires us to concede the existence of men and women to whom song is
+the natural means of communicating all their sentiments and all their
+thoughts. If we are willing to accept this implied contract, then there
+is no absurdity in Tristan's singing with his dying breath, since he
+belongs to a race of creatures who have no other method of speech. If we
+are unwilling to be parties to this agreement, if we deny the existence
+of any such creatures, then there is nothing for us to do but to keep
+out of the opera-house. It was this convention which Tolstoy rejected,
+and by this rejection he refused the enjoyment which the opera can give
+to those who are satisfied to accept its conditions.
+
+                                   IV
+
+But there is no denying that the imperative operatic convention requires
+us to admit a very violent departure from the facts of life as we all
+know them. We are now so accustomed to blank verse in Shakspere's plays,
+tragic and comic, that we accept it almost without noticing it. By long
+habit, we have come to consider blank verse as "natural" in a poetic
+play, especially when that play sets before us heroic figures of the
+remote past. And here is the danger in the operas which have been
+composed on books made out of modern popular pieces, more or less
+realistic in their atmosphere. The "naturalness" of the men and women in
+these plays of to-day tends to draw attention to the "unnaturalness" of
+their customary use of song to express their emotions.
+
+This danger Wagner skilfully avoided in his later music-dramas derived
+from the Nibelungen myth. He set before us shadowy creatures involved
+in strange intrigues far back in the legendary past and wholly devoid
+of any modern or realistic suggestion. As Tristan and Siegfried and
+Brunhild are all idealized persons, taking part in poetic fictions, we
+are willing enough to accept their exclusive use of song; and we
+recognize at once the artistic inconsistency of Tolstoy's protest. To
+beings so remote from our daily life, from our ordinary experience, the
+standard of fact cannot fairly be applied. We acknowledge the full right
+of such creatures to dwell eternally in the land of song alone.
+
+But we are perhaps a little less willing to make this acknowledgment
+when we find the composer asking us to believe that men and women of our
+own time and of our own country, the characters of the 'Girl of the
+Golden West,' for example, or even some of those of 'Madam Butterfly,'
+should eschew the plain prose of ordinary speech and insist on
+discussing their love-affairs in the obviously "unnatural" medium of
+song. That is to say, there is a striking incongruity between musical
+expression and the realistic characters of most modern plays. We enjoy
+the opera partly because it is not "natural," not "real," in the
+ordinary meaning of these words; and if the plot and the people are
+aggressively modern and matter-of-fact, our attention is necessarily
+called to the "unnaturalness" of their incessant vocalization. A certain
+remoteness from real life, even a certain vaporous intangibility as to
+time and place, seem to be a helpful element in our enjoyment of a
+music-drama.
+
+Perhaps it is due to this remoteness, to this unreality, that the
+opera-goer is willing enough to have a story end unhappily, altho the
+playgoer is now likely to be painfully affected by a tragic ending.
+Whatever the reason, it is a fact that most of our popular plays end
+merrily in a church, while most of our popular operas end sadly in a
+churchyard. The calculation has been made that out of twoscore operas
+sung in New York at the two opera-houses a season or so ago, only half a
+dozen ended happily; the large majority of them culminated in the death
+of the hero or of the heroine or of both together. Music is a sister of
+poetry, and we need not wonder that the musicians are likely to prefer
+the opera-book which has a tragic catastrophe.
+
+(1910.)
+
+                                   X
+
+                      THE POETRY OF THE DANCE
+
+                      THE POETRY OF THE DANCE
+
+                                   I
+
+The Greek of old was wise in his generation and poetic as was his habit,
+when he imagined nine muses and when he feigned that each of them was to
+watch over a separate art, and to inspire those who might strive to
+excel in this. It is true that nowadays we cannot help feeling that the
+sister-muses of Tragedy and of Comedy have been a little derelict to
+their duty, if they are really responsible for all the plays of our
+time, not a few of which seem to be sadly lacking in inspiration. But of
+late another of the sacred nine appears to have aroused herself out of
+her lethargy and to have awakened to a fuller realization of her
+opportunity. At least, there are many evidences now visible in the
+United States that Terpsichore has been attending strictly to business,
+and sending out travelers with many diverse specimens of her wares.
+Indeed, there has probably never been a time when so many different
+varieties of the dance have been on exhibition before the American
+people. It was once remarked by a shrewd observer that there were only
+three kinds of dancing, the graceful, the ungraceful, and the
+disgraceful. And in the United States we have had presented to us in the
+past few years specimens of all three kinds.
+
+In the middle of September, 1910, the Playground Association of America
+held an outdoor session in Van Cortlandt Park, in New York, and three
+hundred persons, mostly children, took part in the exercises. The most
+interesting feature of the program was a series of national folk-dances
+executed by boys and girls from the public schools. New York is the huge
+melting-pot where all nationalities of Europe meet to be fused into
+Americans; and these children were, most of them, executing the dances
+of the countries their parents had come from--dances for which they had,
+therefore, a traditional and hereditary predilection. German girls in
+the costumes of the Rhine, gave a peasant dance to the simple tune of
+'Ach, du lieber Augustin'; and colored children, in perfect rhythm,
+moved thru a reel to the music of the 'Suwanee River.' The wild
+Hungarian _czardas_ was carried off with a splendid swing by men and
+women born on the banks of the Danube; and an Irish quartet displayed
+their agility and their precision of time-keeping in a four-handed
+country-dance. And at the end, all the participants in the several
+national dances took part in a general harvest-dance. This was an
+effective spectacle, possible only here in America, where
+representatives of many peoples come to mingle, even tho each of them
+retains a sentiment of loyalty to the old home it has left forever.
+
+Here in the open air, in a public park, at this meeting of the
+Playground Association, there was this joyous and wholesome revival of
+the folk-dances of a dozen different races; and at the same time, in one
+or another of half a score of the theaters of the great city,
+ill-trained and half-clothed women were vainly capering about the stage
+in doubtful efforts to suggest the Oriental contortions of Salome. These
+were, most of them, consciously and deliberately inartistic, appealing
+directly to the baser instincts and to the lower curiosities of man.
+Nothing could have been in sharper contrast with the folk-dances of the
+foreign-born children, which were gay and healthy and spontaneous. The
+exercises in the park were examples of the kind of dancing which cannot
+help being graceful, while most of the performances in the theaters were
+specimens of the kind of dancing which can fairly be described as
+ungraceful, even if they cannot all of them be dismissed as disgraceful.
+While the folk-dances of the children would fill the heart with a pure
+delight, the sorry spectacle presented in some of the theaters was not
+to be witnessed without a certain loss of self-respect; it recalled the
+gross pantomimes of the later Roman theater, righteously denounced by
+the Fathers of the Church.
+
+Yet it is only just to record that in other theaters there were then
+other spectacles to make amends for these sorry exhibitions. There were
+several interesting attempts to recall the severe beauty of Greek
+dancing. Lithe figures with free and floating draperies sought to
+recapture the irreclaimable charm that lives for us in the lovely
+Tanagra figurines, or that flits elusively around the sides of Attic
+vases. Ambitious efforts were made by one dancer and by another to
+translate into step and posture and gesture the intangible poetry of
+Shelley and the haunting music of Mendelssohn. Unfortunately, the result
+was rarely commensurate with the effort; and, in fact, a complete
+success was not possible. The muse of dancing has no right to endeavor
+to annex the territory of her sisters, who are charged with the care of
+poetry and music. The several arts are strongest when each remains
+strictly within its own limitations. For example, program-music is not
+yet assured of its welcome, and program-dancing is far more difficult to
+follow with complete comprehension.
+
+And there was a further defect in these efforts to revive the classic
+dances and to devise more modern interpretations of poetry and music.
+Success, if possible at all, would be possible only to a highly trained
+performer, mistress of every device of the terpsichorean art and
+elaborately schooled in pantomimic expression. Now, it is not unfair to
+say that no one of the performers of these so-called classic dances had
+undergone this severe schooling. No one of them had the lightness, the
+ease, the perfect mastery of method, the floating grace of the true
+dancer, who has been taught from childhood, until all the tricks of the
+craft are second nature. Without this arduous training any one who
+attempts an ambitious display can scarcely fail to reveal instantly the
+lamentable fact that she is not mistress of the technic of the art she
+has undertaken to practise. She does not know how to get her effects;
+she does not even know what effects are possible. She is almost certain
+to appear amateurish, and she is likely to seem awkward also, not to say
+ungainly. As Pope put it tersely: "Those move easiest who have learned
+to dance."
+
+These well-meant attempts to link dancing with poetry and music could be
+entirely satisfactory only to those who have given little consideration
+to dancing as an art, or who have small opportunity to see any really
+beautiful dancing. There is no wonder that any effort to spiritualize
+dancing, to give it a soul, to elevate it to the lofty level of the
+lyric, should be welcomed by those who have been disgusted by the ugly
+and vulgar high-kicking of the so-called pony ballets. The acrobatic
+contortions of these athletic performers were wholly without charm, as
+unalluring as they were violent. And equally unacceptable are the
+frequent exhibitions of toe-dancing, sheer gymnastic feats, difficult,
+indeed, but essentially uninteresting. Of a truth, these pony ballets on
+the one hand, and these toe-dancers on the other, are exponents of
+eccentricity. What they accomplish lies outside the true art of dancing.
+It is not inspired by Terpsichore, and the saddened muse must veil her
+face when she is forced to behold these crude exhibitions of misplaced
+energy.
+
+                                   II
+
+The true art of dancing is entirely free from all apparent effort. No
+matter how difficult may be the feat that is accomplished, it must seem
+easy. Every gesture must be expressive, every movement must be
+beautiful, every step must have ease and lightness and grace. Forty
+years ago and more, the 'Black Crook' brought to America three or four
+dancers trained in the best schools of Europe--Bonfanti and Betty Rigl,
+Rita Sangalli and Morlacchi. One of this quartet, Rita Sangalli, was
+afterward the chief dancer at the Paris Opera, where she was followed in
+time by Rosita Mauri, a dancer who added beauty of face and of form to a
+masterly accomplishment. They were all gifted pantomimists; they had all
+of them the perfection of technic; they were all of them capable of the
+most varied difficulties of the art; and they all of them vanquished
+these difficulties with unobtrusive ease. They had attained to that
+perfection of art, when the art itself is hidden, and when only the
+consummate result is visible. Each of them had absolute certainty of
+execution, and each of them could float across the stage the embodiment
+of grace, exquisite in its ethereal delicacy.
+
+For those whose memories cannot recall the haunting remembrance of the
+days that are gone there is abundant compensation in the opportunity
+which has been afforded of late to behold the dancing of Mlle. Genee and
+of Mlle. Pavlova. They are, at least, the equal of any of their
+predecessors, and it may be doubted whether Taglioni or Fanny Elssler
+surpassed them in mastery. They are the perfection of effortless ease;
+altho they suggest only the lightness of the butterfly, they have the
+steel strength of the gymnast. Behind their marvelous and bewildering
+accomplishment there is a native gift, rich and full; and there is also
+the utmost rigor and perseverance in training. What they are able to do
+with seeming spontaneity and with apparent freedom is the result of
+indefatigable industry and of merciless labor.
+
+But tho this schooling sustains them, it is never paraded--indeed, it is
+scarcely perceived. There is not the faintest suggestion of hard work
+about their performances; there is nothing that hints at effort; their
+art is able to conceal itself absolutely, and to delight us only with
+the perfect result of their long apprenticeship. Capable of the most
+obstinate feats of strength and of agility, Mlle. Genee and Mlle.
+Pavlova never "show off"; they are never guilty of parading a difficulty
+for its own sake, and their conquest of technical obstacles serves only
+to support and intensify the continuous suggestion of aerial elevation
+and of ineffable lightness. It is to be noted, also, that as they scorn
+the task of the mere gymnast, they do not wear the scant costume of the
+acrobat; they are enveloped in ample draperies, which fall into lines of
+beauty with every movement.
+
+Nothing more exquisite than their dancing has ever been seen on the
+American stage. Theirs is the dancing which is graceful--which, indeed,
+is grace itself. Here is the art at its utmost possibility, purged of
+all its dross. When they are floating effortless thru space we cannot
+help recalling the possibly apocryphal anecdote which records the visit
+of Emerson and Margaret Fuller to the theater to see Fanny Elssler. They
+gazed with increasing delight, until at last Margaret Fuller could not
+contain her enthusiasm. She turned and said: "Ralph, this is poetry!" To
+which the philosopher is said to have responded: "Margaret, this is
+religion!"
+
+Perfection is always rare, and there is now only one Mlle. Genee, and
+only one Mlle. Pavlova, as there was only one Rosita Mauri a quarter of
+a century ago. It is a pity that the Danish dancer has had to appear
+here in an ordinary musical show and not in a framework more worthy of
+her and of her art, and better fitted to display it. She has revealed
+herself only in two or three _entrees de ballet_, as the French term
+them--incidental dances; and she has not yet been seen here in a _ballet
+d'action_, a complete story told in pantomime. It was the poet, Francois
+Coppee, who devised the plot of the 'Korrigane' for Rosita Mauri; and he
+had had Theophile Gautier as a predecessor in the preparation of a
+ballet-libretto. All those who are interested in every manifestation of
+the art of the drama, must find pleasure in the _ballet d'action_, with
+its adroit commingling of dance and pantomime; it gives a delight
+possible to no other form of the drama; and at its best it is more
+closely akin to pure poetry. Being her own manager, Mlle. Pavlova has
+been seen in a series of ballets more appropriate to her extraordinary
+gifts than those in which Mlle. Genee has been permitted to appear.
+
+                                  III
+
+There was one scene of the 'Source,' a ballet popular at the Opera in
+Paris during the exhibition of 1867, which must linger in the memory of
+all who had the good fortune to behold it--a scene so beautiful that it
+was borrowed for the 'White Fawn,' which was the successor of the 'Black
+Crook' here in the United States. It represented a silvery glade in the
+lone forest, with a mysterious lake, on the surface of which the spirits
+of the springtime came forth to disport themselves. It was a vision of
+airy grace and of haunting legend; and it is only one example of the
+poetic possibilities of the contribution of dance and pantomime in a
+coherent story. It may be well to recall the fact that the plots of
+these _ballets d'action_ are often strong enough to enable them to serve
+as the basis of a libretto for an opera. It was a ballet of Scribe's,
+for example, which was taken for the book of the 'Somnambula'; and the
+book of the favorite opera 'Martha' began its existence as a libretto
+for a ballet.
+
+While the _ballet d'action_ affords the fullest opportunity for the
+perfect art of dancers like Rosita Mauri and Adeline Genee and Anna
+Pavlova, there are other forms not to be despised. Twenty-five years ago
+the Italian Marenco brought out his stupendous 'Excelsior,' which was
+taken from Italy to Paris, then to New York, and finally to London.
+'Excelsior' was an allegorical ballet; it represented the conflict of
+light and darkness, of progress and superstition, of invention and
+reaction. It filled a whole evening with spectacle and glitter and
+movement. It lacked the poetic simplicity of the 'Source' and of the
+'Korrigane'; but it had other qualities of its own. What set it apart
+from all the ballets that had gone before was the subordination of the
+individual terpsichorean artist to the main body. Marenco employed the
+best dancers to be found in Italy, no doubt, but he did not rely on them
+so much as on the intricate and ingenious handling of the crowds of
+lesser dancers, by whom they were surrounded.
+
+The novelty of 'Excelsior' and of the two or three gigantic Italian
+spectacles which were patterned upon it--'Messalina' and 'Sieba'--lay in
+the maneuvering of the masses, in the extraordinary skill with which
+squadrons of figures were made to charge across the stage and combine
+and melt into one another most unexpectedly and most delightfully. The
+whole stage was a blaze of artfully contrasted colors, and it was filled
+with a riot of motion and of glitter. And Marenco made use of male
+dancers far more abundantly than any of his predecessors, utilizing them
+to wear the more somber colors, to suggest a sterner vigor, and to
+emphasize a bolder contrast. He was responsible also for another
+novelty, often employed by others since; he increased the height of his
+swerving lines of dancers, now and again, by mounting some of the
+figures on stands, and by putting revolving globes and iridescent
+banners into the hands of the men in the background.
+
+It is the method of Marenco in 'Excelsior' which has been followed in
+the often pleasing ballets of the Hippodrome in New York. Really good
+soloists are now very scarce, even in Milan and in Vienna, long the
+nurseries of the ballet; and there seem to be none too many even in
+Petrograd, which has preserved and improved upon the traditions of Paris
+and Milan. And in the absence of accomplished soloists, the deviser of
+the ballets at the Hippodrome has been compelled to get along without
+them as best he could. He has been forced to rely on the maneuvering of
+masses of girls, possessed of only a rudimentary instruction in the
+elements of the terpsichorean art. In other words, he has had to make up
+in quantity for the absence of quality. But he has at his disposition an
+immense stage, across which he could set his squadrons marching and
+gliding and glittering. He could not count on the skill of his
+principals who were not expert enough to demand the attention of the
+spectators; but he could seek striking effects of light and color in the
+costumes, as he moved his masses to and fro and as he swung them
+together. If only there had been a little better training for the more
+prominent performers, the 'Four Seasons' would have been a most artistic
+entertainment, in spite of the absence of any single dancer of real
+distinction.
+
+                                   IV
+
+The dearth of remarkable dancers is due to the inexorable fact that
+dancing is the most arduous of all the arts; its technic is the most
+difficult to acquire. Indeed, this technic can be acquired only in early
+youth, when the muscles are flexible and when they can be supplied at
+will. It is early in her teens that a dancer must begin her training if
+she aspires to eminence in the art. This training is very severe, and it
+must never be relaxed. Rubinstein used to say that if he omitted his
+practise for a single day he noticed it in his playing; if he omitted it
+two days his enemies found it out; and if he omitted it three days even
+his friends discovered it. The apprentice dancer can never omit a single
+day of hard and uninteresting toil. Incessant application, during all
+the long years of youth, is the price the ambitious beginner must pay
+for the mastery of her art. She can have no vacations; she can have few
+relaxations; she must keep herself constantly in training; she must be
+prepared to surrender many of the things which make life worth living.
+And it is no wonder that so few have the courage to persevere, and that
+there is only one Rosita Mauri, only one Adeline Genee, and only one
+Anna Pavlova in a quarter of a century. It is no wonder that the
+inventor of terpsichorean spectacles nowadays finds himself compelled to
+get along as best he can without a satisfactory soloist and to rely
+rather on his handling of a mass of inadequately trained dancers.
+
+But even if the highly accomplished soloist, absolute mistress of all
+the possibilities of the art, is very rare, there are certain forms of
+dancing which do not demand this ultimate skill and which call for
+little more than grace and ease and charm, combined with a knowledge of
+the simpler steps. For example, the Spanish Carmencita, whose portraits
+by Mr. Sargent and by Mr. Chase now hang in the Luxembourg in Paris and
+in the Metropolitan Museum in New York--Carmencita was not a skilful
+dancer; she had undergone no inexorable schooling; she glided thru only
+a few elementary movements. But she made no effort; she did not pretend
+to what was not in her power; she was simple and unaffected. Her charm
+was not in her singing or in her dancing; it was in her personality, in
+the alluring and exotic suggestion of her individuality.
+
+Nor could anybody venture to assert that Miss Kate Vaughan and Miss
+Letty Lind were dancers in the same class with Mauri, Genee, and
+Pavlova; but then they did not pretend to be. They knew only a few steps
+of obvious simplicity, and they displayed no unexpected dexterity. But
+the skirt-dance as they performed it was a memory of delight, with its
+grace and its ease, with its perfect rhythm and with the swish of its
+clinging draperies. It had a fascination of its own, quite different
+from the fascination of the more poetic and ethereal ballet-dancing of
+Rita Sangalli and Rosita Mauri. It was not of the stage exactly, but
+almost of the drawing-room. It gave the same pleasure which we felt when
+we were privileged to behold a court minuet led by the late Mrs. G. H.
+Gilbert, who had been a dancer in the days of her youth. There is one
+perfect beauty of the best ballet-dancing and there are other beauties
+of different kinds in the skirt-dancing of the two Englishwomen and in
+the languorous swaying of the Spanish gipsy.
+
+Beauty of yet another order there was in an exhibition which was called
+a dance, perhaps because there was no other word for it, but which
+demanded no skill with the feet and which necessitated rather strength
+in the arms. This was the luminous dance of Miss Loie Fuller, when she
+swirled voluminous and prolonged draperies in lights that came from
+above and from below, and from both sides--lights that changed by
+exquisite gradations from one tint to another, the figure of the dancer
+spinning around, now slowly and now swiftly, while her arms weaved
+fantastic circles in the air, revealing unexpected combinations of
+color, controlled by perfect taste. This may not have been dancing, by
+any strict definition of the word, but it was decorative, artistic,
+imaginative, and inexpressibly beautiful. It supplied a glimpse of
+unsuspected delight; and probably Terpsichore would not disdain to claim
+it for her own, however vigorously she might repel the suggestion that
+she had any responsibility for the violence of the toe-dances, for the
+vulgarity of the pony ballet, or for the ungainly caperings which
+pretend to recapture the free movements of the Greeks.
+
+(1910-1915)
+
+                                   XI
+
+                      THE PRINCIPLES OF PANTOMIME
+
+                      THE PRINCIPLES OF PANTOMIME
+
+                                   I
+
+In his suggestive study of ancient and modern drama, M. Emile Faguet
+dwells on the fact that the drama is the only one of the arts which can
+employ to advantage the aid of all the other arts. The muses of tragedy
+and comedy can borrow narrative from the muse of epic poetry and song
+from the muse of lyric poetry. They can avail themselves of oratory,
+music, and dancing. They can profit by the assistance of the architect,
+the sculptor, and the painter. They can draw on the co-operation of all
+the other arts without ceasing to be themselves and without losing any
+of their essential qualities. This was seen clearly by Wagner, who
+insisted that his music-dramas were really the art-work of the future,
+in that they were the result of a combination of all the arts. Quite
+possibly the Greeks had the same idea, since Athenian tragedy has many
+points of similarity to Wagner's music-drama; it had epic passages and a
+lyric chorus set to music; it called for stately dancing against an
+architectural background.
+
+But altho the muses of the drama may invoke the help of their seven
+sisters, they need not make this appeal unless they choose. They can
+give their performances on a bare platform, or in the open air, and
+thus get along without painting and architecture. They can disdain the
+support of song and dance and music. They can concentrate all their
+effort upon themselves and provide a play which is a play and nothing
+else. And this is what Ibsen has done in his somber social-dramas.
+'Ghosts,' for example, is independent of anything extraneous to the
+drama. It is a play, only a play, and nothing more than a play.
+
+Yet it is possible to reduce the drama to an even barer state than we
+find in Ibsen's gloomy tragedy in prose. Ibsen's characters speak; they
+reveal themselves in speech; and it is by words that they carry on the
+story. A story can be presented on the stage, however, without the use
+of words, without the aid of the human voice, by the employment of
+gesture only, by pure pantomime. No doubt, the drama makes a great
+sacrifice when it decides to do without that potent instrument of
+emotional appeal, the human voice; and yet it can find its profit, now
+and then, in this self-imposed deprivation. Certain stories there are,
+not many, and all of them necessarily simplified and made very clear,
+which gain by being bereft of the spoken word and by being presented
+only in the pantomime. And these stories, simple as they must be, if
+they are to be apprehended by sight alone without the aid of sound, are,
+nevertheless, capable of supporting an actual play with all the
+absolutely necessary elements of a drama.
+
+In his interesting and illuminating volume on the 'Theory of the
+Theater,' Mr. Clayton Hamilton has a carefully considered definition of
+a play. He asserts that "a play is a story devised to be presented by
+actors on a stage before an audience." Perhaps it might be possible to
+amend this by saying "in a theater," instead of "on a stage," since we
+are now pretty certain that there was no stage in the Greek theater when
+Sophocles was writing for it. But this is but a trifling correction, and
+the definition as a whole is excellent. It includes every possible kind
+of dramatic entertainment, Greek tragedy and Roman comedy, medieval
+farce and modern melodrama, the music-drama of Wagner and the
+problem-play of Ibsen, the summer song-show and the college boy's
+burlesque. Obviously it includes the wordless play, the story devised to
+be presented on a stage and before an audience by actors who use gesture
+only and who do not speak.
+
+In forgoing the aid of words the drama is only reducing itself to its
+absolutely necessary elements--a story, and a story which can be shown
+in action. It is not quite true that the skeleton of a good play is
+always a pantomime, since there are plays the plot of which cannot be
+conveyed to the audience except by actual speech. Yet some of the
+greatest plays have plots so transparent that the story is clear, even
+if we fail to hear what the actors are saying. It has been asserted that
+if 'Hamlet,' for example, were to be performed in a deaf-and-dumb
+asylum, the inmates would be able to understand it and to enjoy it. They
+would be deprived of the wonderful beauty of Shakspere's verse, no
+doubt, and they would scarcely be able even to guess at the deeper
+significance of the philosophy which enriches the tragedy; but the story
+would unroll itself clearly before their eyes so that they could follow
+the succession of scenes with adequate understanding.
+
+With his customary shrewdness and his usual gift of piercing to the
+center of what he was engaged in analyzing, Aristotle more than four
+thousand years ago saw the necessity of a neatly articulated plot. "If
+you string together a set of speeches," he said, "expressive of
+character and well finished in point of diction and thought, you will
+not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play,
+which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and
+artistically constructed incidents." No broader statement than this
+could be made as to the all-importance of the story itself--and
+pantomime is a story and nothing else, a story capable of being
+translated by the actions of the performers, without the aid of speech.
+Nor need we suppose that a play without words is necessarily devoid of
+poetry. There may be poetry in the "set of speeches expressive of
+character and well finished in point of thought and diction"; but there
+may be poetry also in the theme itself, in the actual story. 'Romeo and
+Juliet,' for example, is fundamentally poetic in its theme, and it
+retains its poetic quality even when it is made to serve as the libretto
+of an opera, as it would also retain this if it should be stripped bare
+to be presented in pantomime.
+
+In a recent work on the 'Essentials of Poetry,' Professor William A.
+Neilson has made this clear: "Many a drama is a genuine poetic creation,
+altho it may be simple to the point of baldness in diction and exhibit
+the fundamental qualities of poetry only in the characterization and in
+the significance, proportion, and verisimilitude of the plot." That is
+to say, the drama can use two kinds of poetry, that which is internal
+and contained in the plot, and that which is external and confined to
+the language. It can employ
+
+          jewels five-words long,
+    That on the stretched forefinger of all Time
+    Sparkle forever.
+
+But it can also attain poetry without the use of superb and sonorous
+phrases and solely by its choice of theme. This is what the poets have
+often felt, and as a result French lyrists, like Theophile Gautier and
+Francois Coppee, have not disdained to compose librettos for pantomimic
+ballets, 'Giselle' and the 'Korrigane.' One of the most successful of
+the recent Russian ballets was simply a representation of Gautier's
+poetic fantasy, 'One of Cleopatra's Nights,'
+
+                                   II
+
+Perhaps because the pantomime contains only the essential element of the
+drama--action--it has always been a popular form of play; and it appears
+very early in the history of the theater. Indeed, it seems to be the
+sole type of play achievable by primitive man--if we may judge from
+observations made among savages who are still in the earlier periods of
+social development. Gesture precedes speech, and a pantomime was
+possible even before a vocabulary was developed. In the Aleutian
+Islands, for example, the pantomime is the only form of play known. One
+of the little plays of the islanders has been described. It was acted by
+two performers only, one representing a hunter, and the other a bird.
+The hunter hesitates but finally kills the bird with an arrow; then he
+is seized with regret that he has slain so noble a bird; whereupon the
+bird revives and turns into a beautiful woman who falls into the
+hunter's arms. This is the simplest of stories, but it lends itself to
+effective acting; it is capable of being interpreted adequately by means
+of gesture alone; and it is just the kind of play which would appeal to
+an Aleutian audience, being wholly within their experience and their
+apprehension.
+
+Pantomime flourished in Rome and in Constantinople in the sorry years of
+the decline and fall of the empire; and it was then low and lascivious.
+A great part of the fierce hostility to the theater displayed by the
+Fathers of the Christian Church was due to the fact that the only drama
+of which they had any knowledge was pantomime of a most objectionable
+character, offensive in theme and even more offensive in presentation.
+With the conversion of the empire to Christianity, pantomimes of this
+type, appealing only to lewd fellows of the baser sort, was very
+properly prohibited. But pantomime of another type sprang up in the
+Middle Ages in the Christian churches to exemplify and to make visible
+to the ignorant congregations, certain episodes of sacred history. In
+the Renascence dumb-shows were represented before monarchs, at their
+weddings and at their stately entrances into loyal cities. And
+dumb-shows were often employed in the Elizabethan stage, sometimes as
+prologs to the several acts, as in 'Gorboduc,' for example, and
+sometimes within the play itself, as in 'Hamlet.'
+
+In the eighteenth century pantomime had a double revival, in France and
+in England. In France, Noverre elevated the _ballet d'action_, that is
+to say, the story told in pantomime and adorned with dances. Sometimes
+these _ballets d'action_ were in several acts, relying for interest on
+the simple yet ingenious plot, and only decorated, so to speak, with
+occasional dances. From Noverre and from France the tradition of the
+pantomime with interludes of dancing, spread at first to Italy and
+Austria, and later to Russia.
+
+In England the development of pantomime was upon different lines, due to
+the influence of the Italian comedy-of-masks, with its unchanging
+figures of Pantaleone, Columbina, and Arlecchino. These figures were
+still further simplified; and to Pantaloon, Columbine, and Harlequin
+there was added the characteristically British figure of the Clown. The
+most famous impersonator of the clown was Grimaldi, whose memoirs were
+edited by Charles Dickens. The mantle of Grimaldi fell upon an American,
+G. L. Fox, whose greatest triumph, in the late sixties, was in a
+pantomime called 'Humpty-Dumpty'--the riming prolog of which was
+written by A. Oakey Hall (then Tweed's mayor of New York). G. L. Fox and
+his brother, C. K. Fox (who was the inventor of the comic scenes), had
+been preceded in America by a family of French pantomimists known as the
+Ravels; and they were followed by the family known as the Hanlon-Lees,
+who had originally been acrobats, and who appeared in a French play, in
+which the other characters spoke while the Hanlon-Lees expressed
+themselves only in gesture. Here again Scribe had been before them, with
+his libretto for the opera of 'Masaniello,' in which there is a
+principal part for a pantomimic actress, Fenella. And when the great
+French actor, Frederic Lemaitre, had lost his voice by overstrain,
+Dennery wrote a play for him, the 'Old Corporal,' in which he appeared
+as a soldier of Napoleon's Old Guard, who had been stricken dumb during
+the retreat from Russia.
+
+This exploit of Frederic Lemaitre's is not as extraordinary as it seems.
+A truly accomplished actor ought to be able to forgo the aid of speech.
+Even in our modern plays gesture is more significant than speech. To
+place the finger on the lips is more effective than to say "Hush!" The
+tendency of the modern drama on our amply lighted picture-frame stage is
+to subordinate the mere words to the expressive action. In Mr.
+Gillette's 'Secret Service,' for example, the impression is sometimes
+made rather by gesture than by speech; and a large portion of the most
+effective scene, that where the hero is wounded while he is sending a
+telegraph message, is presented in pantomime with little assistance from
+actual dialog. Similar effects are to be found in many of Mr. Belasco's
+plays, especially in the 'Darling of the Gods.' In all good acting the
+gesture precedes the word; and often the gesture makes the word itself
+unnecessary, because it has succeeded in conveying the impression and in
+making the full effect by itself, so that the spoken phrase lags
+superfluous.
+
+                                  III
+
+In France in the final decades of the nineteenth century there was a
+wide-spread revival of interest in pantomime, where the art had been
+dormant since the days of Deburau. A society was formed for its
+encouragement, and a host of little wordless plays was the result. The
+most ambitious effort was the 'Enfant Prodigue,' a genuine comedy in
+three acts, by M. Michel Carre, with music by M. Alfred Wormser. This
+wordless play on the perennially attractive theme of the Prodigal Son
+proved to be the modern masterpiece of pantomime. It was limpidly clear
+in its story; it was ingeniously put together in its plot; it combined
+humor and pathos; and it was devoid of the acrobatic features and of the
+slap-stick fun which have generally been considered the inevitable
+accessories of pantomime. We had brought before us the dull and prim
+home life of old Pierrot and of his wife, and we were made to behold the
+impatience of young Pierrot with this prim dullness. We saw the
+Prodigal rob his father and go forth in search of pleasure. In the
+second act we were witnesses of the sad results of the pleasure young
+Pierrot had sought superabundantly, and we discovered that he had spent
+his money and that he was capable of descending to marked cards to win
+more gold to satisfy the caprices of the woman who had fascinated him.
+We saw his return with his ill-gotten gains after his charmer had been
+tempted to go off with a wealthier man. And in the third act we were
+taken back to the home of his broken-hearted parents; and we witnessed
+the Prodigal's return, poverty-stricken, disenchanted, and reformed. His
+mother takes him to her arms; but his father is obdurate. Then we hear
+the fife and drum afar off, and young Pierrot, if he has lived
+unworthily for himself, can at least die worthily for his country. So
+the old father relents and bestows his blessing on the erring son as the
+boy goes forth to war.
+
+The art of the 'Enfant Prodigue' was at once delicate and firm; and its
+popularity was not confined to France. Here was a true play, moving to
+tears as well as to laughter, holding the interest by a human story of
+universal appeal. It was taken across the Channel from Paris to London,
+and from London it was taken across the ocean to New York. Augustin
+Daly, always on the alert for novelty, brought it out at his own
+theater, first with his own company, and then a little later with a
+French company. Excellent as was the performance of the French company,
+two characters were as well sustained by the American company. Charles
+Leclercq appeared as old Pierrot, and he had had in his youth experience
+in pantomime in England. Mrs. G. H. Gilbert appeared as Mrs. Pierrot,
+and in her youth she had been a ballet dancer, and had taken part in
+pantomimes. To these two performers the principles of the art of gesture
+were perfectly familiar; and it was a constant delight to follow the
+dexterity and the adequacy of their gestures. But Miss Rehan, who
+appeared as the Prodigal Son, had had no pantomimic experience, and she
+was not able to acquire the art offhand. In dozens of dramas she had
+revealed herself as an actress, not only of great personal charm, but
+also of great histrionic skill. Merely as an actress she was
+incomparably superior to the impersonator of the Prodigal Son in the
+French company; but merely as a pantomimist she was inferior. More than
+once she appeared as if she wanted to speak, failing because she was
+deprived of voice. Her gestures seemed like afterthoughts; they lacked
+spontaneity and inevitability. She suggested at moments that she was a
+poor dumb boy gasping for words.
+
+Now, the convention underlying pantomime is that we are beholding a
+story carried on by a race of beings whose natural method of
+communicating information and ideas is gesture--just as the convention
+of opera is that we are beholding a story carried on by a race of beings
+whose natural method of communicating information and ideas is song. No
+such races of beings ever existed; but we must admit the existence of
+such races as a condition precedent to our enjoyment of pantomime and of
+opera. The spectators must accept the art as it is, and the performers
+must refrain from any suggestion that they would speak if they could.
+This underlying convention was viciously violated in "Professor"
+Reinhardt's overpraised 'Sumurun,' when the Hunchback gives a shriek of
+horror as he sees the woman he loves in the arms of another man. It is
+viciously violated again in the same play when Sumurun and two
+attendants are heard singing. If Sumurun can sing, why can she not
+speak? If the Hunchback can shriek and sob audibly, why is he ordinarily
+reduced to mere gesture?
+
+'Sumurun' was provided with a plot devised by Herr Freksa, and with
+music composed by Herr Hollaender; and it was produced by "Professor"
+Max Reinhardt. The story was a little complicated, and it lacked the
+transparent simplicity of the 'Enfant Prodigue,' as it lacked also the
+broad humanity of the French piece. Its chief claim to attention was
+that it is an amusing spectacle, sensual as well as sensuous. Its humor
+had a Teutonic heaviness in marked contrast with the Gallic lightness of
+the 'Enfant Prodigue.' "Professor" Reinhardt sought eccentricity rather
+than originality, queerness rather than beauty. His effort was directed
+to the achieving of something unexpected and something different rather
+than to the attaining of something good in itself, or of something
+poetic. Esthetically, musically, dramatically the German pantomime was
+pitiably inferior to the French; and yet so potent and so permanent is
+the appeal of the wordless play that 'Sumurun' pleased a host of younger
+playgoers, not old enough to be able to recall the 'Enfant Prodigue' or
+'Humpty-Dumpty,' the Hanlon-Lees, or the Ravels.
+
+                                   IV
+
+'Sumurun,' like the 'Enfant Prodigue,' was supported by its music, which
+sustained the gestures and which sometimes suggested more than gesture
+alone can do. In the 'Enfant Prodigue,' for example, one of the most
+amusing scenes is that in which the elderly rich man tenders his
+affections to the charmer who has fascinated the Prodigal Son. She
+insists upon marriage. It would be difficult to convey this idea in pure
+pantomime. So she points to the fourth finger of the left hand, and the
+orchestra plays the familiar Wedding March, thus instantly conveying the
+idea. When she goes off to get her bonnet, the elderly suitor repeats
+her gesture, and the orchestra repeats the Wedding March, whereupon he
+winks and shakes his head, giving us clearly to understand that his
+intentions are strictly dishonorable.
+
+'Sumurun' is rather a spectacle than a play; and therefore it makes
+comparatively little use of the conventionalized gestures which may be
+described as the accepted vocabulary of pantomime, and which have been
+developed by the followers of Noverre in France and in Italy. This
+vocabulary of gesture is only a codification of the signs which we
+naturally make--shaking the head for "no," nodding for "yes," and laying
+a finger on the lips for "hush!" The basis of any such vocabulary must
+be the series of gestures by the aid of which man has always expressed
+his emotions. This is why the traditional gestures of theatrical
+pantomime do not, and indeed cannot, differ greatly from any natural
+sign language. The universality of this pantomimic vocabulary was
+curiously evidenced forty years ago when Morlacchi, the Italian dancer,
+married Texas Jack, the American scout. She had been trained in
+pantomime at La Scala, in Milan, and he had acquired the sign language
+of the Plains Indians. And they found that they could hold converse with
+each other in pantomime, she using the Italian-French gestures and he
+employing the gestures of the redskins.
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                  XII
+
+                        THE IDEAL OF THE ACROBAT
+
+                        THE IDEAL OF THE ACROBAT
+
+                                   I
+
+When Huckleberry Finn went to the circus he sneaked in under the tent
+when the watchman was absent. He had money in his pocket, but he feared
+that he might need this. "I ain't opposed to spending money on
+circuses," he confessed, "when there ain't no other way, but there ain't
+no use in _wasting_ it on them." In spite of the fact that he had not
+paid for his seat, and that he was thereby released from the necessity
+of getting his money's worth, he declared cheerfully that "it was a real
+bully circus. It was the splendidest sight that ever was, when they all
+come riding in, two and two, a gentleman and a lady, side by side, the
+men just in their drawers and undershirts, and no shoes nor stirrups,
+and resting their hands on their thighs, easy and comfortable ... and
+every lady with a lovely complexion, and perfectly beautiful, and
+looking like a gang of real sure-enough queens.... And then, one by one,
+they got up and stood, and went a-weaving around the ring so gentle and
+wavy and graceful, the men looking ever so tall and airy and straight,
+with their heads bobbing and skimming along, away up there under the
+tent roof, and every lady's rose-leaf dress flapping soft and silky
+around her hips, and she looking like the most loveliest parasol."
+
+However much Huck was impressed by the Grand Entry, he seems to have
+been more pleased by the surprising act, traditionally known as 'Pete
+Jenkins,' and never better described than by Mark Twain's youthful hero.
+"And by and by a drunk man tried to get into the ring--said he wanted to
+ride; said he could ride as well as anybody that ever was. They argued
+and tried to keep him out, but he wouldn't listen, and the whole show
+came to a standstill. Then the people began to holler at him and make
+fun of him.... So then the ring-master he made a little speech, and said
+he hoped there wouldn't be no disturbance, and if the man would promise
+he wouldn't make no more trouble, he would let him ride, if he thought
+he could stay on the horse.... The minute he was on the horse he began
+to rip and tear and jump and cavort around ... the drunk man hanging
+onto his neck, and his heels flying in the air every jump.... But pretty
+soon he struggled up astraddle and grabbed the bridle, a-reeling this
+way and that; and the next minute he sprung up and stood! and the horse
+a-going like a house afire, too. He just stood there, a-sailing around
+as easy and as comfortable as if he warn't ever drunk in his life--and
+then he begun to pull off his clothes and sling them. He shed them so
+thick they kind of clogged up the air, and altogether he shed seventeen
+suits. And then, here he was, slim and handsome, and dressed the
+grandiest and prettiest you ever saw, and he lit into that horse and
+made him hum--and finally skipped off and made his bow and danced off
+to the dressing-room, and everybody just a-howling with pleasure and
+astonishment. Then the ring-master, he see how he had been fooled, and
+he was the sickest ring-master you ever see, I reckon. Why, it was one
+of his own men! He had got up that joke all out of his own head, and
+never let on to nobody!"
+
+Yet in this enjoyment of a practical joke, dear to every boy's heart,
+Huck did not fail to note that the skilful rider who had pretended to be
+intoxicated, stood up at last, "slim and handsome." Even Huck Finn,
+neglected son of the town-drunkard, was quick to respond to the appeal
+of the supple and well-proportioned figure of the rider after the
+superimposed clothing had been discarded, just as he had felt the
+attraction of the varied colors and the graceful evolutions of the Grand
+Entry. At bottom, it was the beauty of the display that he appreciated
+most keenly. By the side of this passage from Mark Twain's masterpiece
+may be set a passage from Mr. Hamlin Garland's best story, 'Rose of
+Dutcher's Coolly,' in which we find recorded the impressions of a girl
+of about the same age, the daughter of a hard-working Wisconsin farmer.
+Rose had never seen a circus before, and even the morning street parade
+fired her imagination.
+
+"On they came, a band leading the way. Just behind, with glitter of
+lance and shine of helmet, came a dozen knights and fair ladies riding
+spirited chargers. They all looked strange and haughty, and sneeringly
+indifferent to the cheers of the people. The women seemed small and
+firm and scornful, and the men rode with lances uplifted, looking down
+at the crowd with a haughty droop in their eyelids." Rose "did not laugh
+at the clown jigging by in a pony-cart, for there was a face between her
+and all that followed--the face of a bare-armed knight, with brown hair
+and a curling mustache, whose proud neck had a curve in it as he bent
+his head to speak to his rearing horse.... His face was fine, like
+pictures she had seen."
+
+In the afternoon Rose attended the performance in the tent and "sat in a
+dream of delight as the band began to play.... Then the music struck
+into a splendid gallop and out from the curtained mysteries beyond, the
+knights and ladies darted, two by two, in glory of crimson and gold, and
+green and silver. At their head rode the man with the brown mustache." A
+little later "six men dressed in tights of blue and white and orange ran
+into the ring, and her hero led them. He wore blue and silver, and on
+his breast was a rosette. He looked a god to her. His naked limbs, his
+proud neck, the lofty carriage of his head, made her shiver with
+emotion. They all came to her, lit by the white radiance; they were not
+naked, they were beautiful.... They invested their nakedness with
+something which exalted them. They became objects of luminous beauty to
+her, tho she knew nothing of art. To see him bow and kiss his fingers to
+the audience was a revelation of manly grace and courtesy." When at last
+the show was over and Rose went out into the open air, "it seemed
+strange to see the same blue sky arching the earth; things seemed
+exactly the same, and yet Rose had grown older. She had developed
+immeasurably in those few hours." As they looked back at the tents, Rose
+knew that "something sweet and splendid and mystical was passing out of
+her life after a few hours' stay there. Her feeling of loss was none the
+less real because it was indefinable to her."
+
+She never saw this acrobat again, and after a little while she knew that
+she did not want to see him. He lingered in her memory, a vision from
+another world than any she had ever dreamed--a world of heroic romance
+and of lofty idealism. "She began to live for him, her ideal. She set
+him on high as a being to be worshiped, as a man fit to be her judge. In
+the days and weeks which followed she asked herself: 'Would he like me
+to do this?' When the sunset was very beautiful, she thought of him....
+Vast ambitions began in her.... She would do something great for his
+sake.... In short, she consecrated herself to him as to a king, and
+seized upon every chance to educate herself to be worthy of him." And
+while her soul was thus expanding under the influence of this poetic
+idealization of a manly figure revealed to her only for two or three
+hours, all unconsciously she patterned her movements upon his. She
+walked with a free stride, and her body came to have the easy carriage
+of the athlete. Later, when Rose had matured into a beauty of her own,
+she confessed to an elder woman this sentimental awakening in her early
+girlhood; and it became evident to her friend that "the beautiful poise
+of the head, and supple swing of the girl's body was in part due to the
+suggestion of the man's perfect grace."
+
+                                   II
+
+To the realistic imagination of the boy, Huck, the circus was a fleeting
+spectacle of beauty; and to the romantic imagination of the girl, Rose,
+it lingered long as a dream of poetry. Young Americans, both of them,
+living in these modern days when the human form, male and female, is
+decorously dissembled and disguised by ugly and complicated garments,
+they had been allowed by the exceptional freedom of the circus to
+recapture something of the frank and innocent delight of the Greeks in
+the beauty of the body, in its beauty merely as a body, and not as the
+habitation of the mind and the soul. Alert as the Greeks were to admire
+the deeds of the mind--no race ever more so--they were no less keen in
+their appreciation of the things of the body. They were glad to crown
+the poet for his lyric conquest, but they bestowed the laurel wreath
+also on the athlete who had won to the front in the race. The lofty
+nobility of their tragedy testifies to the clarity of their
+intelligence; and the supreme power of their sculpture is evidence of
+their loving study of the human body, bearing itself in beauty, clad in
+few and flowing garments which allowed the eye to follow the free play
+of the muscles.
+
+It is only in the circus or the gymnasium or the swimming-pool that we
+moderns are permitted to behold what was a daily spectacle to the
+Greeks; and it is because the circus preserves for us this occasional
+privilege that it deserves to survive. The jocularities of the clowns,
+the intricate evolutions of the trained animals, the golden glitter of
+the gorgeous cavalcades--all these are but the casual accompaniments of
+the essential privilege of the circus to present to us a succession of
+men and women, with their bodies in perfect condition, to exhibit to us
+that purely physical beauty which we are ever in danger of overlooking
+or even forgetting. These acrobats, slim and handsome, as Huck Finn
+found them, in their "shirts and drawers," may display their daring and
+their grace, standing on a circling steed or swinging from a flying
+trapeze, revolving on a horizontal bar or building themselves up into
+human pyramids on the bark of the arena; but, except for the sake of
+variety, the way in which they may choose to exhibit their skill and to
+show themselves is unimportant. What is important is that we may have
+the shifting spectacle of the human body in the highest condition of
+physical efficiency, delighting our eyes by obedience to the everlasting
+laws of beauty.
+
+While the Greeks had far more opportunities than are vouchsafed to us
+moderns to behold the human body exhibiting its strength and its skill
+in graceful play, we have the advantage that many of the most effective
+exercises are latter-day inventions. It seems unlikely that the
+Athenians and the Spartans, even tho they were horsemen, had attained to
+the art of bareback riding; they may have bestraddled a saddleless
+steed, but they had not learned how to stand on his back, and to turn
+somersets in time with the stride of the horse. It is, of course,
+possible that they were familiar with this, but no sculpture and no
+vase-painting, no anecdote in the works of the prose-writers, and no
+line of the lyrists survives to authorize us to believe it. And it is
+fairly certain, also, that they lacked the horizontal bar, which affords
+limitless possibilities to the adventurous acrobat of our own times,
+both when it is erected singly and when it is combined in sets of three,
+either fixed in the arena or raised aloft in the air to produce the
+appearance of a remoter ethereality.
+
+The trapeze has a name of Greek origin, and it was possibly known to the
+Greeks. But the Greeks did not foresee the full possibilities of the
+trapeze, since its most startling utilization, the feat known as the
+Flying Trapeze, was invented by the French acrobat, Leotard, only a
+little later than the middle of the nineteenth century. The Flying
+Trapeze is the ultimate achievement of acrobatic art, and it demands the
+utmost combination of skilful strength and of easy grace. It was a feat
+that the Greeks would have appreciated and enjoyed, since it demanded
+and disclosed the perfection of physical courage and of physical skill.
+Of late, the Flying Trapeze has been complicated and doubled in
+difficulty by the introduction of a second performer, who at first makes
+the leap simultaneously with his partner, and afterward separates from
+him and springs thru the air to the trapeze which his associate has
+just abandoned, the pair thus floating past each other in mid-air. In
+this more elaborated form the task is more perilous, no doubt, and far
+less easy of accomplishment; but it cannot be achieved with quite the
+same graceful mastery as when a single performer seems to glide
+ethereally from bar to bar, as tho it was impossible for him to fall or
+to fail to catch his almost invisible support. This graceful mastery was
+the most marked characteristic of Leotard, the original inventor of the
+Flying Trapeze; and it may be doubted whether any of those who have
+followed the path he traced thru the air, and who have vanquished
+difficulties beyond those which he conquered, have been able to outdo
+him in the abiding essential of grace.
+
+                                  III
+
+The overcoming of difficulty is one of the elements of the pleasure
+which we take in any art, and part of our enjoyment of a sonnet, for
+example, must be ascribed to the apparent ease with which the poet is
+able to express his thought, amply and completely, within the rigid
+limitations of his fourteen lines, with their prescribed arrangement of
+five or six rimes. But our delight is diminished if we are made
+conscious of the effort it has cost the artist to attain his aim. Many a
+later performer on the Flying Trapeze let us see that the feats he is
+attempting are so difficult that they cannot be accomplished without
+obvious effort. That is to say, we are made aware that the acrobat is
+exhibiting a "stunt," and this is bad art. Difficulty overcome is worth
+while only when it is overcome seemingly without any strain, and when
+art is sufficient to conceal itself. However difficult the artist's
+achievement may be, its charm is doubled if he can make it appear to be
+easy.
+
+It happens that I am able to bring his personal testimony to the fact
+that this was the principle which always governed Leotard himself. When
+the French gymnast paid his only visit to the United States, more than
+forty years ago, he used to practise in a gymnasium which I also
+frequented. He spoke no English, and I had a little school-boy French,
+so that a certain intimacy sprang up. One day Leotard asked me to swing
+a trapeze for him, and he sprang off and caught it with a single hand,
+and then as the second trapeze returned he twisted and grasped the first
+trapeze again with one hand. This evoked from me an immediate
+exclamation of astonishment and admiration at the startling conquest of
+difficulty, and it was followed by the natural question why so
+extraordinary a feat had never been exhibited in public. Leotard
+explained that the leaps from trapeze to trapeze with the aid of one
+hand only must be lopsided, since the body is inevitably more or less
+twisted, and he added that as there was an unavoidable and ungraceful
+wrenching of the person, he had determined never to exhibit this feat in
+public, difficult as it might be.
+
+But altho Leotard was not willing to perform in public with only one
+hand, it was a most invaluable exercise in private. His ability to
+accomplish his leaps thus handicapped gave him a redoubled confidence
+when he was using both of his hands. That he was right in resisting the
+temptation to startle the spectators by a "stunt" of surprising
+difficulty is beyond question. It could not be made to seem easy, and it
+could not be accomplished with grace. Therefore it was not fit for
+exhibition, even tho Leotard might feel sure that he could do it without
+risk of failure. Here the French acrobat revealed himself as bound by
+the eternal principles which underlie all the arts, that of the acrobat
+no less than those of the painter and the poet. There is lack of art in
+the performances of many acrobats of remarkable skill, who attempt feats
+which they are not always certain of achieving. Indeed, they are
+sometimes willing to profit by this very uncertainty. They fail the
+first time of trying, and even the second, and these failures serve the
+purpose of advertising to the spectators the difficulty of the task they
+have undertaken. Then the third time, or the fourth, they succeed,
+whereupon they reap the unworthy reward of applause from the unthinking.
+
+The artist should never let us see his failures. If he is not certain
+that he can perform what he promises, then he had better refrain from
+the attempt. It was in the same winter that Leotard was in New York, in
+the late sixties of the nineteenth century, that the Hanlon Brothers
+paid one of their welcome visits to America. The Hanlons they were then,
+and they were acrobats pure and simple, altho later, when they called
+themselves the Hanlon-Lees, they had become pantomimists. As acrobats
+they held fast to the same principles which governed Leotard in his
+performances. They insisted upon certainty of execution; they never
+failed to perform the feat they set out to accomplish, and to perform it
+successfully the first time they attempted it. And no matter how
+difficult the feat might be, or how novel or how effective, if they
+could not attain absolute certainty of execution, they refrained from
+setting it before the public. I was told at the time that there were two
+or three surprising and alluring exercises which the Hanlons had
+invented themselves, which they practised laboriously and faithfully all
+that winter, and which they wisely refrained from ever putting on their
+program because they were never able to assure themselves of a uniformly
+successful result. They could do any one of these feats four times out
+of five, but the fifth time there would be a miscalculation of energy,
+and the attempt would have to be repeated. And they were unwilling to
+let the public witness any performance of theirs which was not perfect
+in its execution.
+
+                                   IV
+
+Here again the modern acrobat, who is guided by a real feeling for his
+art, is in accord with the principles which the Greeks obeyed. In Attic
+tragedy, for example, there are no exhibitions of violence, no scuffles,
+and no assassinations, and this is not so much because the Greeks
+shrank from scenes of blood, as some critics have vainly contended, but
+rather because the actors in the Attic drama were raised on thick boots
+and were topped by towering masks, which made it almost impossible for
+them to take part in episodes of vigorous action, in hand-to-hand
+struggles, in murders before the eyes of the spectators, without danger
+of displacing the mask, and thereby distracting the attention of the
+audience from the immediate purpose of the dramatic poet. What could not
+be done gracefully the Greeks refrained from attempting. The exhibition
+of difficulty for the sake of difficulty, still more the failure to
+accomplish a "stunt" for the sake of calling attention to its
+difficulty--these things the Greeks abhorred. They would as surely have
+disapproved of the misguided artifices of the acrobats who make a
+practise of failing once or twice in order to multiply the immediate
+effect of their ultimate success as they would reprove the exhibition of
+a difficulty conquered for its own sake. It is only in the best
+acrobatic performances that we moderns are privileged to perceive what
+was a constant delight to the Greeks--the beauty of the human form, in
+its finest physical perfection, certain of its strength and easy in its
+grace.
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                  XIII
+
+                        THE DECLINE AND FALL OF
+                            NEGRO-MINSTRELSY
+
+                THE DECLINE AND FALL OF NEGRO-MINSTRELSY
+
+                                   I
+
+Of all the varied and manifold kinds of theatrical entertainment
+negro-minstrelsy is the only one which is absolutely native to these
+States, and the only one which could not have come into existence
+anywhere else in the civilized world. Here in America alone has the
+transplanted African been brought into intimate contact with the
+transplanted European. Other nations may have disputed our claim to the
+invention of the steamboat and the telegraph, but negro-minstrelsy is as
+indisputably due to American inventiveness as the telephone itself. Here
+in the United States it had its humble beginnings; here it expanded and
+flourished for many years; from here it was exported to Great Britain,
+where it established itself for many seasons; from here it has made
+sporadic excursions into France and into Germany; and here at last it
+has fallen into a decline and a degeneracy and a decay which seem to
+doom it to a speedy extinction. Its life was little longer than that
+vouchsafed to man, threescore years and ten, for it was born in the
+fifth decade of the nineteenth century, and in the second decade of the
+twentieth it lingers superfluous on the stage, with none to do it
+reverence.
+
+Time was when the negro minstrels held possession of three or four
+theaters in the single city of New York, and when a dozen or more troops
+were traveling from town to town; and now they have long ago surrendered
+their last hall in the metropolis, and only a solitary company winds its
+lonely way from theater to theater thruout the United States. The few
+surviving practitioners of the art are reduced to the presentation of
+brief interludes in the all-devouring variety-shows, or to the
+impersonation of sparse negro characters in occasional comedies. The
+Skidmore Guards, who paraded so gaily at Harrigan and Hart's, are
+disbanded now these many years; Johnny Wild of joyous memory is no more,
+and Sweatnam, bereft of his fellows in sable drollery, is seen only in a
+chance comedy like 'Excuse Me,' or the 'County Chairman.' George Christy
+and Dan Emmett and Dan Bryant have gone and left only fading memories of
+their breezy songs, their nimble dances, and their flippant quips. Edwin
+Forrest and Edwin Booth blacked up more than once, Joseph Jefferson and
+Barney Williams besmeared themselves with burnt cork on occasion; but it
+is not by these darker episodes in their artistic careers that they are
+now recalled, and the leading actors of to-day think scorn of
+negro-minstrelsy--whenever they deign to give it a thought. And yet it
+must be noted frankly that when The Lambs wanted to raise money for
+their new club-house, they did not disdain the art of the negro
+minstrel, and more than twoscore of them went forth to conquer,
+willingly disguised in the uniform blackness assumed long ago by George
+Christy and Dan Bryant.
+
+It is to be hoped that some devoted historian will come forward before
+it is too late and tell us the history of this very special form of
+theatrical art, the only one indigenous to our soil. Indeed, now that
+our American universities are paying attention to the drama, what more
+alluring theme for the dissertation demanded of all candidates for the
+doctorate of philosophy than an inquiry into the rise and fall of
+negro-minstrelsy? In the late Laurence Hutton's conscientious and
+entertaining volume on the 'Curiosities of the American Stage,' there is
+a chapter in which the subject is treated historically, altho the
+chronicler wasted much of his precious space in considering the
+succession of sable characters in the regular drama--Shakspere's
+Othello, Southerne's Oroonoko, Bickerstaff's Mungo, Boucicault's Pete
+(in the 'Octoroon'), Uncle Tom, Topsy, Eliza, and their companions (in
+the undying dramatization of Mrs. Stowe's story). These were all parts
+in plays wherein white characters were prominent. The first performer of
+a song-and-dance, that is of a sketch in which the darky performer was
+sufficient unto himself, and was deprived of any support from persons of
+another complexion, seems to have been "Jim Crow" Rice--the title of
+whose lively lyric survives in the name bestowed upon the cars reserved
+for colored folk on certain Southern railroads. Rice found his pattern
+in an old negro who did a peculiar step after he had sung to a tune of
+his own contriving:
+
+    Wheel about, turn about;
+        Do jus' so:
+    An' ebery time I turn about,
+        I jump Jim Crow.
+
+Rice carried Jim Crow to England, and he made a specialty of dandy
+darkies. But he was not the discoverer of negro-minstrelsy, as we know
+it, altho he blazed the trail for it. Indeed, it was quite probably due
+to the influence of Rice and his darky dandies that the negro minstrels
+confined their efforts to the imitation of the town negro rather than of
+the plantation negro, the field-hand of the Uncle Remus type. Rice first
+impersonated Jim Crow in the late twenties, and it was in the middle of
+the thirties that he went to England. And it was in the early forties
+that Dan Emmett, Frank Brower, Billy Whitlock, and Dick Pelham happened
+to meet by accident in a New York boarding-house, and amused themselves
+with songs accompanied by the banjo, the tambourine, and the bones.
+Pleased by the result of their exercises, they appeared together at a
+benefit, and negro-minstrelsy was born. At first there was no
+differentiation into Interlocutors and End-men; they all took an equal
+share in the more or less improvised dialog; they sang, and they played,
+and they danced the 'Essence of Old Virginny.'
+
+Probably Emmett began early to provide new tunes for them. He was the
+composer of 'Old Dan Tucker' and the 'Boatman's Dance,' of 'Walk Along,
+John,' and 'Early in the Morning,' and one walk-around which he devised
+in the late fifties for Bryant's Minstrels, 'Dixie,' was introduced by
+Mrs. John Wood into a burlesque, which she was playing in New Orleans,
+just before the outbreak of the Civil War. The sentiment and the tune
+took the fancy of the ardent Louisianans, and they carried it with them
+into the Confederate army, where it soon established itself as the
+war-song of the South. And then when Richmond had fallen at last,
+Lincoln ordered the bands of the victorious army to play 'Dixie,' with
+the wise explanation that as we had captured the Southern capital, we
+had also captured the Southern song. And 'Dixie,' which had begun life
+so humbly as a walk-around in a minstrel-show in New York, bids fair to
+survive indefinitely as the musical testimony to the fact that the cruel
+war is over, and that these States are now one nation.
+
+                                   II
+
+It was only a year or two after the quartet of Emmett, Brower, Whitlock,
+and Pelham had shown the possibilities of the new form of amusement that
+troops of negro minstrels began to supply an entire evening's amusement.
+The regulation First Part was devised with its curving row of vocalists,
+instrumentalists, and comedians. The dignified Interlocutor took his
+place in the middle of the semicircle, and uttered the time-honored
+phrase: "Gentlemen, be seated. We will commence with the overture."
+Bones captured the chair at one end, and Tambo pre-empted that on the
+other; and they began their wordy skirmish with the Middleman, in which
+that pompous presiding officer always got the worst of it. This device
+for immediate and boisterous laughter, this putting down of the
+Middleman by the End-man, the negro minstrels appear to have borrowed
+from the circus, where the clown is also permitted always to discomfit
+the stiff and stately ring-master.
+
+But altho the minstrels may have taken over this effective trick from
+the circus, with which some of the earlier performers had had intimate
+relations, the trick itself is of remote antiquity. The side-splitting
+colloquy of the End-man with the Middleman may be exactly like the
+interchange of merry jests between the clown and the ring-master, yet it
+is far older than the modern circus. It existed in Paris, for example,
+in the sixteenth century, when the quack doctor was accompanied by his
+jack-pudding. Many of the dialogs heard on the Pont-Neuf between Mondor
+and Tabarin have been preserved, and the method is precisely that of the
+dialogs between ring-master and clown, Interlocutor and End-man, even to
+the persistent repetition of the question which contains the catch.
+"Master," Tabarin would begin, "can you tell me which is the more
+generous, a man or a woman?" And the quack doctor would solemnly reply:
+"Ah, Tabarin, that is a question which has been greatly debated by the
+philosophers of antiquity, and they have been unable to decide which is
+truly the more generous, a man or a woman." Then Tabarin would briskly
+retort: "Never mind the old philosophers. I can tell you." And with
+great contempt the ponderous quack doctor would return: "What, Tabarin,
+do you mean to say that you can tell us which is the more generous, a
+man or a woman." Tabarin promptly responded that he could. "Then," asked
+Mondor, "pray do so. Which is the more generous, a man or a woman?" And
+thereupon, to the great disgust of Mondor, Tabarin would proffer his
+ribald explanation. Unfortunately the explanation he gave is frankly too
+ribald to be given here, for nowadays we are more squeamish than the
+idlers who gathered around the quack doctor's platform in Paris three or
+four centuries ago. The dialogs of Mondor and Tabarin were brief enough,
+but they often made up for their brevity in their breadth.
+
+This kind of catch-question was known in England, under Elizabeth, as
+"selling a bargain," and it is not infrequent in the plays of the time.
+It will be found more than once in earlier plays of Shakspere; for
+example, when his "clowns" (as the low-comedy characters were then
+called) were allowed to run on at their own sweet will. Not a little of
+the dialog of the two Dromios is closely akin in its method to the
+interchange of question and answer between the Interlocutor and the
+End-man. We may be sure this method of evoking laughter was employed
+also by the improvising comedians of the Italian comedy-of-masks, with
+which negro-minstrelsy has other points of resemblance. It must have
+been popular with the wandering glee-men of the rude Middle Ages; and
+now that negro-minstrelsy is disappearing and now that our circuses
+have burgeoned into three rings under a tent too vast for any merely
+verbal repartees, it has not departed from among us, since it still
+survives as the staple of the so-called "sidewalk conversationalists"
+who swap personalities in our superabundant variety-shows.
+
+We do not know with historic certainty how soon the First Part
+crystallized into the form which has long been traditional--the opening
+overture, the catch-questioning of End-man and Middleman, the comic
+songs of Bones and Tambo in turn, the sentimental ballads by the
+silver-throated vocalists, and the concluding walk-around. The rest of
+the evening's entertainment never took on any definite framework, altho
+the final item on the program was likely to be a piece of some length,
+often a burlesque of a serious drama then popular, and this little play
+"enlisted the whole strength of the company." Between the stately First
+Part and the more pretentious terminating sketch, the minstrels
+presented a variety of acts in which the several members exhibited their
+specialities. A clog-dance was always in order--altho the mechanical
+precision of this form of saltatorial exercise was wholly foreign to the
+characteristics of the actual negroes whom the minstrels were supposed
+to be representing. A stump-speech was certain of a warm
+reception--altho this again departed from the true negro tradition, and,
+in fact, often degenerated into frank burlesque, wholly unrelated to the
+realities of life. Sketches, like those which Rice had earlier composed
+for his own acting, were likely to have a little closer relation to the
+genuine darky.
+
+Yet here again the negro minstrel was not avid of overt originality. He
+was willing to find his profit in the past and to translate into negro
+dialect any farce, however ancient, which might contain comic situations
+or humorous characters that could be twisted to suit his immediate
+purpose. He seized upon the ingenious plots of certain of the pantomimes
+brought to America from France half a century ago by the Ravels. And on
+occasion he went, unwittingly, still further afield for his prey. There
+is in print, in a collection of so-called Ethiopian drama, an amusing
+sketch, entitled the 'Great Mutton Trial'; and the remote source of this
+is to be sought in the oldest and best farce which has survived in
+French literature. 'Maitre Pierre Pathelin' is now acted occasionally by
+the Comedie-Francaise in Paris, in a version which preserves its
+original flavor; but in the eighteenth century an adaptation, made by
+Brueys and Palaprat, and called the 'Avocat Pathelin,' was popular. It
+was this later perversion which served as the basis of an English farce,
+entitled the 'Village Lawyer,' and the 'Great Mutton Trial' is simply
+the 'Village Lawyer' transmogrified to suit the bolder and more robust
+methods of the negro minstrels.
+
+                                  III
+
+And here we may discover the real reason why negro-minstrelsy failed to
+establish itself. It neglected its opportunity to devote itself
+primarily to its own peculiar field--the humorous reproduction of the
+sayings and doings of the colored man in the United States. To represent
+the negro in his comic aspects and in his sentimental moods was what the
+minstrels pretended to do; but the pretense was often only a hollow
+mockery. Even the musical instruments they affected, the banjo and the
+bones, were not as characteristic of the field-hand, or even of the town
+darky, as the violin. Indeed, the bones cannot be considered as in any
+way special to the negro; they were familiar to Shakspere's Bottom, who
+declared: "I have a reasonable good ear in music; let us have the tongs
+and the bones." And the wise recorder of the words and deeds of Uncle
+Remus asserted that he had never listened to the staccato picking of a
+banjo in the negro-quarters of any plantation.
+
+"I have seen the negro at work," so Harris once stated, "and I have seen
+him at play; I have attended his corn-shuckings, his dances, and his
+frolics; I have heard him give the wonderful melody of his songs to the
+winds; I have heard him give barbaric airs to the quills" (that is to
+say, to the Pan-pipes); "I have heard him scrape jubilantly on the
+fiddle; I have seen him blow wildly on the bugle, and beat
+enthusiastically on the triangle; but I have never heard him play on
+the banjo." Mr. George W. Cable thereupon came forward with his
+evidence to the effect that, altho the banjo was to be found
+occasionally on a plantation, it was far less frequently seen than the
+violin. It will be noted that Harris was speaking of the Georgian negro,
+and that Mr. Cable was talking about the negro in Louisiana; and perhaps
+the true habitat of the banjo is to be found farther north and near to
+the border States. At any rate, there is a footnote to one of Thomas
+Jefferson's 'Notes on Virginia' (published in 1784), which informs us
+that the instrument proper to the slaves of the Old Dominion is "the
+banjar, which they brought hither from Africa, and which is the origin
+of the guitar, its chords being precisely the four lower chords of the
+guitar."
+
+Now and again some one negro minstrel did make a serious study of a
+negro type; such a performer was J. W. McAndrews, the "Watermelon Man."
+But the most of them were content to be comic without any effort to
+catch the special comicality of the darky; and sometimes they strayed so
+completely from the path as to indulge in songs in an alleged Irish
+brogue or in a dislocated German dialect. Now, nothing could well be
+conceived more incongruously inartistic than a white man blacked up into
+the semblance of a negro, and then impertinently caroling an impudent
+Irish lyric. Yet the general neglect of the opportunities for a more
+accurate presentation of negro characteristics is to be seen in the
+strange fact that the minstrels failed to perceive the possible
+popularity of rag-time tunes, and failed also to put the cake-walk on
+the stage. Even at the height of its vogue in the mid years of the
+nineteenth century, negro-minstrelsy did not occupy its own field, and
+did not try to raise therein the varied flowers of which they had the
+seed.
+
+Instead of cultivating the tempting possibilities which lay before them,
+and devoting themselves to a loving delineation of the colored people
+who make up a tenth of our population, they turned aside to devote
+themselves to the spectacular elaboration of their original
+entertainment. The clog-dances became most intricate and more
+mechanical--and thereby still more remote from the buck-and-wing dancing
+of the real negro. The First Part was presented with accompaniments of
+Oriental magnificence and of variegated glitter. The chorus was
+enlarged; the musicians were multiplied; the End-men operated in relays;
+and at last the bass-drum which towered aloft over Haverly's Mastodon
+Minstrels bore the boastful legend: "40. Count Them. 40." And when the
+suspicious spectator obeyed this command, he discovered to his surprise
+that the vaunt was more than made good since he had a full view of at
+least half a dozen performers in addition to the promised twoscore.
+
+At the apex of his inflated prosperity Haverly invaded Germany with his
+mastodonic organization; and one result of his visit was probably still
+further to confuse the Teutonic misinformation about the American type,
+which seems often to be a curious composite photograph of the red men of
+Cooper, the black men of Mrs. Stowe, and the white men of Mark Twain
+and Bret Harte. And it was reported at the time that another and more
+immediate result of this rash foray beyond the boundaries of the
+English-speaking race was that Haverly was, for a while, in danger of
+arrest by the police for a fraudulent attempt to deceive the German
+public, because he was pretending to present a company of _negro_
+minstrels, whereas his performers were actually white men!
+
+It should be recorded that while the vogue lasted, there did come into
+existence sundry troops of minstrels whose members were all of them
+actually colored men, altho they conformed to the convention set by
+those whom they were imitating and conscientiously disguised themselves
+with burnt cork, to achieve the sable uniformity temporarily attained by
+the ordinary negro minstrels. Perhaps the most obvious parallel of the
+blacking up of veritable colored men to follow the example of the white
+men who pretended to imitate the negro is to be found in the original
+performance of 'As You Like It,' on the Elizabethan stage, when the
+shaven boy-actor who impersonated Rosalind disguised himself as a lad,
+and then had to pretend to Orlando that he was a girl.
+
+                                   IV
+
+For the decline and fall of negro-minstrelsy it is easy to find more
+than one sufficient explanation. First of all, it may have been due to
+its failure to devote itself lovingly to the representation of the many
+peculiarities of the negro himself. Second, it is possible that
+negro-minstrelsy had an inherent and inevitable disqualification for
+enduring popularity, in that it was exclusively masculine and
+necessarily deprived of the potent attractiveness exerted by the members
+of the more fascinating sex. And in the third place, its program was
+rather limited and monotonous, and therefore negro-minstrelsy could not
+long withstand the competition of the music-hall, of the variety-show,
+and of the comic musical pieces, which satisfied more amply the exactly
+similar taste of the public for broad fun commingled with song and
+dance.
+
+Whatever the precise cause may be, there is no denying that
+negro-minstrelsy is on the verge of extinction, however much we may
+bewail the fact. It failed to accomplish its true purpose, and it is
+disappearing, leaving behind it little that is worthy of preservation
+except a few of its songs. This, at least, it has to its credit--that it
+gave Stephen Collins Foster the chance to produce his simple melodies.
+Perhaps we might even venture to assert that the existence of
+negro-minstrelsy is justified by a single one of these songs--by 'Old
+Folks at Home,' which has a wailing melancholy and an unaffected pathos,
+lacking in the earlier and more saccharine 'Home, Sweet Home,' which
+the English composer, Bishop, based on an old Sicilian tune. After
+Foster came Root and Work, and 'My Old Kentucky Home' was succeeded by
+'Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching,' and by 'Marching thru
+Georgia'--which last lyric now shares its popularity only with 'Dixie'
+as a musical relic of the Civil War.
+
+It would be pleasant to know whether it was one of Foster's songs, and
+which one it may have been that once touched the tender heart of
+Thackeray. "I heard a humorous balladist not long since," the novelist
+recorded, "a minstrel with wool on his head, and an ultra Ethiopian
+complexion, who performed a negro ballad that I confess moistened these
+spectacles in a most unexpected manner. They have gazed at dozens of
+tragedy-queens dying on the stage and expiring in appropriate blank
+verse, and I never wanted to wipe them. They have looked up, with deep
+respect be it said, at many scores of clergymen without being dimmed,
+and behold! a vagabond with a corked face and a banjo, sings a little
+song, strikes a wild note, which sets the heart thrilling with happy
+pity."
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                  XIV
+
+                    THE UTILITY OF THE VARIETY-SHOW
+
+                    THE UTILITY OF THE VARIETY-SHOW
+
+                                   I
+
+In an advertisement issued by one of the huge department stores of New
+York not long ago, the assertion was made that the house had on sale
+"all the new novelties." A purist in language might be moved to protest
+that this proclamation was plainly tautological, because it is the
+essential quality of every novelty to be new. But even a purist in
+language, if he happens also to be an honest observer of things as they
+are, would be forced to admit that his supercilious cavil had only a
+superficial justification, since, as a matter of fact, there are many
+novelties which are not new, and which, indeed, are venerably ancient.
+It was Solomon, superabundantly married, and therefore in an excellent
+position to acquire wisdom, who declared that there is nothing new under
+the sun. Wireless telegraphy is only a development of the signaling by
+beacon-fires, which was practised by the Greeks and which they employed
+to convey immediately to Greece the glad tidings of the fall of Troy;
+and moving-pictures are only an ingenious amplification of the zoetrope
+of our childhood.
+
+The amusement-parks which sprang up all over the United States in the
+early part of the twentieth century, in imitation of those at Coney
+Island, bear an undeniable resemblance to the Foire Saint Laurent and
+to the other fairs of Paris in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
+and even the loud-voiced crier who proclaims the merits of the several
+side-shows, and who is now known as a "barker," bears a name which is
+only a translation of that given to his forbears two hundred years ago
+in France--_aboyeur_.
+
+The so-called cabaret-shows, prevalent in the larger cities of the
+United States in the winter of 1911-1912, were hailed as the very latest
+form of amusement, combining as they did the solid pleasures of the
+table with the ethereal delights of song-and-dance; and yet Froissart is
+a witness that something very like the cabaret-show was known in the
+Middle Ages, and Gibbon has recorded its existence nearly a thousand
+years earlier, at the court of Theodoric. Indeed, the Romans, and the
+Greeks before them, had employed performers of one sort or another to
+relieve the monotony of their banquets. Gaditanian dancers were popular
+thruout the wide realm of Rome, almost two thousand years before
+Carmencita came from Cadiz to warble and caper at midnight in the
+studios of American painters, just before and just after the guests had
+enjoyed the refreshments provided by their artistic hosts.
+
+As the cabaret-show is only another form of the well-known "vaudeville
+supper," it must be relegated to the class of novelties which are not
+new. And vaudeville itself is only the long familiar variety-show. It
+may now be called by a new name, and many of those who do not look
+behind a label may accept it as a new thing; nevertheless it is very
+old, indeed. The name "vaudeville" is an absurd misnomer, like so many
+other terms due to our habit of careless borrowing from other tongues.
+In French _vaudeville_ originally designated a kind of topical song,
+bristling with pointed gibes at the follies of the moment; and then in
+time it took on another meaning, when it was used to describe a light
+and lively farce interspersed with occasional lyrics set to
+old-fashioned tunes. It is impossible to say just how and why this
+French word, which had two distinct meanings in its own language, should
+have been imported into English to characterize improperly a form of
+amusement which we had long known by the admirably exact name of
+variety-show. The French themselves call their own type of variety-show,
+at which refreshments are served, a _cafe-concert_. Their nickname for
+it is a _beuglant_, a place where there is "howling"--which seems to
+imply that they do not expect too much melody from the singers, who
+appear at these performances. In England an establishment of this kind
+is called a music-hall; and it was more than half a century ago that
+Planche described their blatant lyrics set to brazen tunes as "most
+music-hall, most melancholy."
+
+Whatever its name may be in the different parts of the world, the
+entertainment is much the same. The most frequent item on the program is
+the comic song, often accompanied by a rudimentary dance. Sometimes it
+is in the martial staccato of Paulus's 'En revenant de la revue' which
+boosted General Boulanger into a furious but fleeting political
+popularity. Sometimes it is the coonful melody of 'Under the Bamboo
+Tree' or 'Dinah, the Moon am Shining.' Sometimes it is an almost
+epileptic lyric, like 'Tarara-boom-de-ay.' Sometimes a singer of a more
+delicate art, like Yvette Guilbert, ventures upon songs of a more subtly
+sentimental appeal. There may be a swift succession of solos, male
+singers and female alternating, those of the most fame appearing latest,
+as is the practise in the first part of the Parisian open-air
+_cafe-chantant_, the Alcazar or the Ambassadeurs. There may be duets or
+trios or quartets, serious or comic, decorously unadorned or diversified
+by dancing. There may be songs to be interpreted by half a dozen
+performers, accompanied by more or less dramatic action, like the
+'Mulligan Guards,' which was the simple germ wherefrom sprouted the long
+series of more and more elaborate Harrigan and Hart plays, delineating
+with keen insight and with sympathetic humor the manifold aspects of
+tenement-house life in New York, and possessing a rich flavor of fun
+curiously akin to that which amuses us in the plays wherein Plautus had
+sketched the tenement-house life in Rome two thousand years ago.
+
+While the song and the song-and-dance and the song-and-parade may be the
+staple of the entertainment, the variety-show justifies its name by the
+medley of other exhibitions it presents. It delights in the dance
+unaccompanied by the song; and in some of the English music-halls, the
+Alhambra and the Empire in London, the ballet is the foremost
+attraction, providing an opportunity for the display of her dainty art
+to so exquisite a dancer as Mlle. Genee. In New York it is now a refuge
+for the waifs and strays of vanishing negro-minstrelsy. It is ready to
+welcome the wandering conjurer and the strolling juggler. It extends its
+hospitality to the acrobat, single or in groups, throwing flipflaps on
+the stage, flying thru the air on a trapeze or diving into the water in
+a tank. It acts as host to the trainer of performing animals, dogs and
+cats, seals and elephants. It lends its stage to the puppet-show
+performer, to the sidewalk conversationalist, and to the ventriloquist,
+with his pair of stolid figures seemingly seated uncomfortably on his
+knees and actually supported by his hands, while his adroit fingers
+manipulate their mechanical mouths.
+
+Of late, the variety-show has accepted the aid of the exhibitors of
+moving-pictures, just as the exhibitors of moving-pictures have invoked
+the casual assistance of song-and-dance teams and of other vaudeville
+performers to relieve the strain on the eyes of their spectators. And
+the introduction of the cinematograph, or the bioscope, or whatever it
+may be called, is, perhaps, the only real novelty in our latter-day
+variety-show. All the other performers are presenting feats of a kind
+known to our remote ancestors, even if these feats are now more
+skilfully presented. Animals were put thru their paces hundreds of years
+ago; and performing dogs and educated bears figure frequently in the
+illuminations which decorate many a medieval manuscript. There were
+tight-rope dancers in Alexandria and in Byzantium; there were
+contortionists in Rome and in Greece, and the flexibility of these
+latter is preserved for us in the vase-paintings which have been
+replevined from the ashes of Pompeii and the lava of Herculaneum.
+Quintillian tells us of the wonderful feats of certain performers on the
+stage in his day, "with balls, and of other jugglers whose dexterity is
+such that one might suppose the things which they throw from them to
+return of their own accord, and to fly wheresoever they are commanded."
+The art of modern magic has enlarged its boundaries by the aid of the
+modern sciences of mechanics and physics, but elementary
+sleights-of-hand were known to a remote antiquity, and savages always
+had their medicine-men and their marabouts, workers of primitive wonders
+to strike awe into the souls of their unsophisticated beholders. The
+variety-show may have the variety it vaunts itself as possessing; but to
+novelty it can lay little claim.
+
+                                   II
+
+The constituent elements of the variety-show as we know it to-day have
+existed since a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the
+contrary--to use the old legal phrase. The appeal of almost every one of
+these elements and of the variety-show as a whole is ever to the eye and
+to the ear, to the senses rather than to the emotions; and to the
+intellect it appeals even more infrequently. Its primary purpose is to
+afford a kaleidoscopic succession of contrasted amusements for the
+benefit of those who are easily satisfied by glitter of spectacle, by
+incessant movement, and by violent music. It is the ideal entertainment
+for that redoubtable entity, the Tired Business Man, who checks his
+brains with his overcoat, and who resents having to witness anything in
+the theater which might make him think. Not only does the variety-show
+flourish because it is exactly adjusted to the unintellectual and purely
+sensational likings of the Tired Business Man and to the similar tastes
+of his fit mate, who is fatigued because her life is idle and empty, but
+for his benefit also, and for hers the summer song-show and the alleged
+"comic opera" and the misnamed "review" have been called into existence.
+Indeed, it is obvious enough that most of our summer song-shows and many
+of our "comic operas" and "reviews" are, in reality, only more or less
+disguised variety-shows.
+
+With facts as they are, there is never any excuse for quarreling. The
+Tired Business Man is a fact; and it is only fair that what he demands
+shall be supplied by caterers to the cravings of the populace. But even
+tho his name is legion, the Tired Business Man is to be accepted only
+with contemptuous toleration. He is to be endured only so long as he
+does not insist on imposing his likings upon others who have a more
+delicate perception, and who are willing to bring their brains with them
+when they take their places in the theater. Even in the variety-show
+which seems often to exist only for the pleasure of those who still
+linger in what one of George Eliot's wise characters aptly called "a
+puerile state of culture," nevertheless, we can now and again discover
+signs of a longing for something less void of purpose than mere
+spectacle. For example, it was in a variety-show that Mr. Belasco's
+finely imaginative dramatization of Mr. Long's 'Madame Butterfly' was
+set before the American public several years prior to its being adorned
+by the pathetic music of Puccini for the benefit of opera-goers.
+
+In fact, it is well to remember that the _opera comique_ of the French
+had its humble origin in the theater of the Parisian fairs, where also
+we can discover the rude beginnings of that crude form of melodrama
+which Victor Hugo lifted into literature in 'Hernani' and 'Ruy Bias,'
+casting the cloth-of-gold of his splendid lyricism over the arbitrarily
+articulated skeleton of his violent action. It was an old negro-minstrel
+act, representing the rehearsal of an amateur band, that the Hanlon-Lees
+borrowed to amplify into a rough-and-tumble pantomime for performance in
+a variety-show in Paris; and this knockabout sketch proved to be the
+stepping-stone which enabled them soon to achieve the fantastic
+eccentricity of their 'Voyage en Suisse,' performed in real theaters,
+first in Paris and then in New York, to the joy of all who could
+appreciate the perfection of their art as pantomimists. And, once again,
+it was in a variety-show of the lowest class that Denman Thompson first
+appeared as 'Josh Whitcomb Among the Female Bathers,' a vulgar episode
+of indelicate humor, wherein, however, was contained the germ of that
+perennially popular play, the 'Old Homestead,' which gave a pure
+pleasure to countless thousands of theater-goers, season after season,
+for at least a quarter of a century.
+
+When we look back over the long annals of the variety-show we cannot
+escape the conclusion that here is its real opportunity, its true
+function, and its necessary justification. For the most part, it
+supplies a purely sensational amusement for the unthinking; and yet it
+is continually serving as a nursery for the actual theater. It is thus
+seen to be a proving ground for the seeds of widely different dramatic
+species--_opera comique_ and melodrama in France, the _ballet d'action_
+in England, the rural play in the United States. It is not always
+conscious of its possibilities, nor does it always improve them to best
+advantage. Normally it provides an entertainment appealing mainly to the
+senses, often empty, and often unsatisfying because of its monotony. But
+on occasion it is capable of grasping at higher things, and of
+encouraging artists who will sooner or later outgrow its limitations and
+transfer their activities to the theaters wherein audiences are more
+eager for veracity of character portrayal.
+
+                                  III
+
+On one side the variety-show intersects the ring of the circus and the
+curving line of the First Part of negro-minstrelsy, while on the other
+it impinges on the sphere of the more literary drama. Its existence is
+evidence that the show business is always the show business, no matter
+how manifold and dissimilar its manifestations may seem to be. The men
+and women who have grown up in the regular theaters are a little
+inclined to be scornfully jealous of the less highly esteemed performers
+in the variety-show, even if they themselves are occasionally tempted by
+the lure of high pay for hard work to condescend to vaudeville
+engagements. No doubt, the bill of fare set before us more often than
+not in the variety-show justifies this attitude on the part of the high
+priests of the more legitimate drama; yet they ought to be broad-minded
+enough to recognize merit wherever it may be found. The late John
+Gilbert, best of Sir Peter Teazles, and of Sir Anthony Absolutes, was
+not a little provoked by the praise bestowed upon Harrigan and Hart and
+their associates by Mr. Howells and by other critics of the acted drama,
+who relished the peculiar flavor of 'Squatter Sovereignty' and its
+companion plays. Gilbert was puzzled to discover any reason why any
+criticism whould be wasted on pieces which pretended to be little more
+than variety-show sketches. But Joseph Jefferson, a far more versatile
+comedian than John Gilbert, was swift to discern merit, and he was
+wholly free from toplofty condescension toward other forms of the
+histrionic art than that in which he was himself pre-eminent--perhaps,
+because in his youth he had often appeared as a burlesque actor, an
+experience which he gladly admitted to have been very valuable to him.
+After Jefferson had gone to see one of the nondescript pieces at Weber
+and Fields's music-hall, joyous spectacles commingled of song and dance,
+of eccentric character and of sheer fun, he was loud in his praise of
+the histrionic art displayed here and there in the course of the
+performance, declaring without hesitation that one episode, in which the
+two managers took part, was simply the finest piece of comic acting he
+had seen that whole winter. Probably the ordinary playgoers, who had
+flocked to be amused by this loose-jointed piece, took a somewhat
+apologetic attitude toward the pleasure they had received; and probably
+they supposed that their pleasure at the entertainment offered to them
+was due mainly to the pervading bustle and dazzle of the kaleidoscopic
+show. But Jefferson had a keener insight into the practise of the art he
+adorned; and he recognized at once the sheer histrionic skill which lent
+the illusion of life to the fantastic impossibility of the humorous
+situation.
+
+Jefferson, one may venture to assert, would not have been surprised if
+he had learned that an American university professor of dramatic
+literature, whenever he came to discuss the lyrical-burlesques of
+Aristophanes, was in the habit of sending his whole class to Weber and
+Fields that his students might see for themselves the nearest modern
+analog to the robust fantasies of the great Greek humorist. Aristophanes
+was a many-sided genius; as a lyric poet of ethereal elevation he must
+be set by the side of Shelley; as a keen satirist of contemporary fads
+and foibles he must be compared with Rabelais; and as a fun-maker pure
+and simple, as a comic playwright, willing and able to evoke unexpected
+laughter by ludicrous antics, he reveals an undeniable likeness to the
+adroit devisers of the hodgepodge of humorous episodes represented with
+contagious humor by Weber and Fields. And the heterogeneous pieces which
+used to be produced by the two performers who devote themselves to the
+dislocation of the English language were outgrowths of the variety-show,
+from which, indeed, the two performers themselves were graduates.
+
+It is this aspect of the variety-show, its supplying of opportunities
+for artistic development to ambitious performers, and its own
+spontaneous generation of dramatic forms capable of being lifted into
+literature--it is this aspect of the variety-show which would be
+emphasized by any competent writer undertaking to narrate its long and
+involved history. That no one has yet written a history of the
+variety-show is as surprising as that no one has yet written a history
+of negro-minstrelsy. The materials for such a book are accessible and
+abundant, since there are already richly documented accounts of the
+fairs of Paris and of London, in which the variety-show flourished
+centuries ago. There are accounts of the English concert-halls as they
+now exist and of the French _cafe-concerts_. The historian will also be
+aided by the various treatises on the ballet, and on the circus, and on
+the puppet-show, with all of which forms of entertainment the
+variety-show has always had intimate relations.
+
+It may be that the future historian will be moved to point out the
+superficial likeness between the variety-show and the Sunday issues of
+certain American newspapers. These Sunday newspapers are really
+magazines--that is to say, they occupy a position midway between
+journalism and literature, just as the variety-show occupies a position
+midway between the circus and the theater. The magazine pages of these
+Sunday newspapers set before their readers a very variegated bill of
+fare; they provide photographs of recent events--which are the
+equivalent of the moving-pictures of the variety-show; they contain
+short-stories--which are, in narrative, what the brief plays of the
+variety-show are in dialog and action; they abound in anecdotes and in
+comic sayings--which are closely akin to the utterances of the sidewalk
+conversationalists of the variety-show. And the variety-show itself is
+like journalism, in that it is a modern combination of elements of the
+remotest antiquity, for altho the actual newspaper is only two or three
+centuries old, there were always channels by which news was conveyed to
+the eager public. The men of Athens nearly two thousand years ago were
+glad to hear and to tell some new thing, and their wants were supplied,
+even if there was in classical antiquity and in the Middle Ages no
+organization faintly anticipating the marvelous machinery for
+collecting and distributing information possessed by the newspapers of
+the twentieth century.
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                   XV
+
+                       THE METHOD OF MODERN MAGIC
+
+                       THE METHOD OF MODERN MAGIC
+
+                                   I
+
+"Autobiography," said Longfellow--altho the remark does not seem
+especially characteristic of this gentle poet--"is what biography ought
+to be." And in the long list of alluring autobiographies, from Cellini's
+and Cibber's, from Franklin's and Goldoni's, there are few more
+fascinating than the 'Confidences of a Prestidigitator' of
+Robert-Houdin. A hostile critic of Robert-Houdin's career has recorded
+the fact--if it is a fact--that Robert-Houdin once confided to a fellow
+magician that his autobiography had been written for him by a clever
+Parisian journalist; and it must be admitted that not a few amusing
+French autobiographies have not been the children of their putative
+parents--for instance, the memoirs of Vidocq, the detective. Yet this is
+not as damaging an admission as it may seem at first sight since the
+clever Parisian journalist may have been little more than the amanuensis
+of the prestidigitator, hired only to give literary form to the actual
+recollections of his employer. Such a proceeding would not deprive
+Robert-Houdin's autobiography by its authenticity. It remains a classic,
+beloved by all who joy in the delights of conjuring. Unfortunately the
+hostile critic has gone further in his attack upon Robert-Houdin's
+reputation, and he has succeeded in showing that the renowned French
+conjurer claimed as his own invention not a few illusions which had been
+already exhibited by his predecessors in the art of deception.
+
+Yet this unjustified boasting does not invalidate Robert-Houdin's title
+to be considered the father of modern magic. Even if he was treading in
+the path of those who had gone before, he attained at last to a
+consistent theory of the art, far in advance of that held by earlier
+magicians. Many of his marvels, and perhaps more than one of the most
+striking of them, may have been but improvements upon effects originally
+contrived by others; yet every succeeding generation can rise only by
+standing upon the shoulders of the generations that went before, and it
+is justified in availing itself of all that these earlier generations
+may have discovered and invented. Robert-Houdin tells us himself that he
+was greatly indebted to the Comte de Grisy, whose stage-name was
+Torrini. In fact, Robert-Houdin might be called a pupil of Torrini, as
+Mr. John S. Sargent is a pupil of Carolus Duran. It was upon Torrini's
+dignified simplicity as a magician that Robert-Houdin modelled his own
+unpretending presentation of his feats of magic. Apparently it was a
+famous conjurer named Frikell, who first discarded the cumbersome and
+glittering array of apparatus which used to be displayed on the stage to
+dazzle the eyes of the spectators; but this discarding of obtrusive
+paraphernalia was not deliberate, being due only to the accidental
+destruction of Frikell's stage-furniture by fire, whereby the performer
+was suddenly forced to rely upon the less complicated experiments, which
+could be exhibited without extraneous aid. The abandoning of overt
+apparatus, which Frikell was forced into by misfortune, Robert-Houdin
+adopted as an abiding principle. He kept his stage as unencumbered as
+possible, altho, of course, he brought forward from time to time the
+special objects necessary for the illusions he was about to exhibit.
+
+Not only did he perform on a stage which was intended to resemble a
+drawing-room, he also eschewed any other costume than that appropriate
+to a drawing-room. Earlier performers had not hesitated to deck
+themselves in Oriental apparel or in the flowing garb of a medieval
+magician. Robert-Houdin was always modern and never medieval; and he
+adopted this attitude deliberately. He was the first to formulate the
+fundamental principle of the modern art of magic--that a conjurer should
+be "an actor playing the part of a magician." One of the foremost
+exponents of modern magic, Mr. Maskelyne, notes that many conjurers
+strive only to play the part of some other conjurer; and it might be
+added that there are not a few who fail entirely to see the necessity
+for playing a part and who content themselves with a purposeless display
+of their misplaced dexterity. But the masters of the art are men like
+Robert Heller and Buatier da Kolta, who were accomplished comedians,
+each in his own fashion, and who presented a succession of little
+plays--for a truly good experiment in magic is really a diminutive
+drama.
+
+It may be brief and simple--a play in one act; or it may be prolonged
+and complicated--a play in three or five acts. But like any other play
+it ought to possess a central idea and to have a definite plot. It
+should tend straight toward its single conclusion, which must be the
+logical development of all that has gone before; that is to say, it must
+possess what the critics of the drama term Unity of Action. It should
+have a beginning, a middle, and an end, in accord with Aristotle's
+requirement for a tragedy. It must work up to its culmination with a
+steadily increasing intensity of interest. It must contain nothing not
+directly contributory to the startling climax which is its surprising
+and satisfying conclusion. It must not digress or dally in by-paths,
+however entertaining these may be in themselves, but push onward to its
+inevitable finish. It is only by conceiving of every one of his
+successive experiments as a play, complete in itself and governed by the
+inexorable laws of the drama, that the magician can rise to the summit
+of his art. He is a conjurer and a comedian at the same time, making his
+dexterity the servant of his drama, and never for a single moment
+allowing this dexterity to force itself upon the attention of the
+audience. Indeed, the one thing he ought to conceal is his possession of
+any special gift in manipulation. He should keep his audience ever
+guessing as to the method of his apparent miracles.
+
+                                   II
+
+It is because Robert-Houdin was seemingly the first conjurer to adopt
+these principles as his irrefragable code of procedure that he is to be
+accepted as the father of modern magic. He never allowed himself to
+parade his skill in manipulating coins and cards at the risk of
+distracting the attention of the spectators from the central and
+culminating effect around which he had constructed his plot. No doubt,
+he possessed dexterity in abundance, but it was subordinate to his
+dramatic intent. No doubt, again, some of the devices he used had
+sometimes been employed by a long succession of his predecessors in
+conjuring. As a matter of course he availed himself of all sorts of mere
+tricks, of ingenious sleights, and of artful apparatus that the
+conjurers who went before him had devised for their own use long before
+he was born. An experiment in magic--to use the term that Mr. Maskelyne
+prefers, is not a mere trick--or at least it ought not to be. It is not
+the exhibition of a device or of a sleight or of an adroit mechanical
+apparatus. Rather is it a coherent whole, direct in its development, no
+matter how many subtleties of concealment and deception it may employ in
+the course of its accomplishment.
+
+Most amateurs in the art of magic, and also only too many professional
+performers, place their reliance mainly upon the trick itself--the
+deceptive manipulation or the novel apparatus--and are satisfied to get
+out of it what they can. They invent new methods of changing a card or
+of making coins pass into a box, overlooking the fact that these
+inventions are valueless except as they may be utilized to facilitate
+the execution of one of those larger feats which only are fairly to be
+entitled experiments in magic, and which are distinguished always by the
+direct simplicity and the straightforward unity of their plots. In fact,
+an experiment in magic must aim at that totality of effect, that perfect
+subordination of the minor means to the major end, which Poe insisted
+upon as the dominant characteristic of the true short-story. And this
+totality of effect can be achieved only by the rigorous exclusion of
+everything which in any way contradicts that central idea out of which
+the true short-story must always be developed. Unity and totality, and a
+rigorous obedience to what Herbert Spencer called the Principle of
+Economy of Attention--these are the essential elements in the
+presentation of a worthy experiment in magic.
+
+An intimate friend of the late Alexander Hermann, the last of a long
+line of Hermanns who have been eminent in the history of the art, has
+asserted that Alexander Hermann was wont to insist that the conjurer
+must possess three qualifications for the practise of his profession.
+The first of these is dexterity; the second is dexterity; and the third
+is also dexterity. Now, there is a sense in which this assertion is
+true; but it may be easily misapprehended. A conjurer needs to be
+dexterous, altho more than one master of modern magic, notably Robert
+Heller, has not been pre-eminent in the possession of this
+qualification. A moderate degree of dexterity is essential, and perhaps
+more than a moderate degree; but dexterity is not the prime requisite,
+which is rather the dramatic instinct, or, perhaps, it had better be
+called the dramaturgic imagination, that can hit on a new idea and build
+it up into a plot, and thus devise an experiment in magic completely
+satisfactory to the artistic sense.
+
+What the master of the magic art never forgets is that dexterity is not
+an end in itself; it is only one of the means by the aid of which the
+marvel may be wrought. There are, to-day, performers of a surpassing
+skill in the manipulation of cards and coins, capable of feats which
+would have been the despair of Robert-Houdin and of Robert Heller; and
+some of them are so enamored of their own dexterity that in their
+eagerness for its exhibition they lose sight of unity and totality. As a
+result of this lapse from the loftier standards of their art they
+present a disconcerting huddle of sleights of hand until the amazed
+spectators lose all sense of progression, as these bewildering effects
+tumble over one another without any attempt at climax. Such a
+performance is an empty display of difficulty conquered for its own
+sake; it is only a sequence of "stunts"; it is mere vanity and vexation
+of spirit. It is like the favorite Scotch dish, the haggis, which is
+said to supply only "confused feeding."
+
+It is always interesting to note how the principles of the arts have a
+certain relation, and how we can constantly discover parallels in two
+wholly different fields. This abuse of dexterity in the art of modern
+magic is closely akin to the abuse of toe-dancing in the art of the
+ballet. As the conjurer ought to have dexterity at his command to serve
+when it is needed, so the accomplished ballet-dancer ought to be able to
+walk on her toes, when this feat will fit into the scheme of the special
+dance she has undertaken to perform. But for a dancer to confine herself
+to the executing of a series of difficult steps involving nothing more
+than toe-dancing is to circumscribe the range of her art and to accept
+as the end what ought to be only the means. Here again, we have a frank
+substitution of a single "stunt" for the larger liberty accorded by a
+more intelligent understanding of the true principles of the art. The
+excessive toe-work of the dancer, like the excessive dexterity of the
+conjurer, is at bottom only what boys call "showing off"; and in the
+long run even boys tire of this. To descend to showing off is equivalent
+to the blunder common in bad architecture, when we cannot help seeing
+that the artist has gone afield to construct his ornament, instead of
+concentrating his effort on ornamenting his construction.
+
+So far from permitting himself ever to show off, or to invite attention
+to his own skill, the master of modern magic is careful always to
+conceal as far as possible the method by which he accomplishes his
+wonders. He utilizes at will and in conjunction ingenious apparatus and
+manual dexterity, without ever calling the attention of the spectators
+to either. He refrains even from turning up his sleeves or from passing
+for special examination any of the objects he is employing, while
+taking care to let it be seen accidentally that these objects are really
+above suspicion. Like the playwright constructing a play, the composer
+of an experiment in magic must ever keep in mind his audience; and he
+must strive always to foresee the exact impression he is making upon the
+spectators. Like the playwright, the modern magician must so build up
+each of his experiments that it seizes the attention of the spectators
+early, that it arouses their interest, that it holds this interest
+unrelaxed to the end, and that at last it satisfies while it surprises.
+This can be achieved only when all the elements of the experiment, the
+idea itself, the plot, the dexterous devices, and the ingenious
+apparatus which may be necessary, are all so combined and controlled and
+harmonized as to leave on the memory of the audience a clear and
+consistent impression--indeed, an impression so sharp that a majority of
+those who witnessed the experiment could describe it the next day.
+
+It is the disadvantage of the empty display of dexterity for its own
+sake that fails to leave this definite deposit in the memory; and the
+spectators are quite unable to recall the central effect. This is
+generally because there was, in fact, no central effect for them to
+seize, the performer having scattered his efforts, as tho he were using
+a shot-gun instead of hitting the bull's-eye with a single rifle-shot.
+The master of the art is careful to economize the attention of his
+audience, to focus it, so to speak, and to arrange his sequence of
+effects so adroitly that, however multifarious and even complicated may
+be the means whereby he is achieving his object, the result is attained
+so directly and so simply that it can be apprehended by the spectators
+readily and instantly. The experiment has been exhibited as tho it were
+the easiest thing in the world, even if it is at the same time perceived
+to be the most impossible to account for. To arrive at this result the
+performer must preserve an absolute simplicity of manner; he presents
+himself as a gentleman amusing himself by amusing other gentlemen, who
+have come together at his invitation to be amused.
+
+                                  III
+
+A gentleman amusing other gentlemen--that should be the ideal; and this
+ideal not only forbids any foolish clowning and any trivial buffoonery
+on the part of the performer, but it prohibits also any attempt on his
+part to incite the gentlemen he is amusing to laugh at any one of their
+own number who may have been kind enough to lend a hat or a watch, or to
+come up on the stage as a volunteer assistant by request. Nothing is
+cheaper, and nothing is in worse taste, than for the performer to make
+personal remarks about any member of his audience or to hold any one of
+the spectators up to ridicule. The conjurer is a comedian playing the
+part of a modern magician, but he is not a low-comedian, ready to get a
+laugh at any price and at the cost of any one else. He may be as
+pleasant as he can, and even as humorous, but he can preserve his own
+self-respect only by having due regard to the self-respect of all those
+who have gathered to enjoy his performance. Readers of Robert-Houdin's
+memoirs will remember how one of the old-school performers used to
+advertise that he would Eat a Man Alive, and how he sprinkled flour and
+pepper and salt all over the hapless creature who volunteered to be
+devoured, and then proceeded to bite the finger of the disgusted and
+unfortunate victim. This is "most tolerable and not to be endured."
+
+If a demand were to be made for a list of the books likely to be the
+most useful to those who desire to master the principles of the art of
+modern magic, one would have to begin by recommending the preliminary
+perusal of the autobiography of Robert-Houdin, from which a host of
+useful hints may be gleaned. The Frenchman tells us, for instance, how
+he once showed off before Torrini and exhibited his manipulative skill
+over a pack of cards, making a needless display of dexterity, designed
+to dazzle the eyes of the spectators; and how Torrini pointed out the
+futility and the disadvantage of this. Then it would be well to consult
+the invaluable series of volumes on modern magic by "Professor Hoffman"
+wherein the various tricks and sleights and apparatus are described and
+illustrated. These books contain what may be called the raw material of
+the art, the processes which the magician can employ at will in building
+up his larger experiments in magic, each of which should be a complete
+play in itself. Finally, when the student has found out how tricks can
+be done, he would do well to turn his attention to 'Our Magic,' by Mr.
+Maskelyne and his associate, Mr. David Devant. And from this logical
+treatise he can learn how experiments in magic ought to be composed. It
+is from this admirable discussion of the basic principles of modern
+magic that several of the points made in this essay have been borrowed.
+
+Mr. Devant calls attention to the fact that new tricks are common, new
+manipulative devices, new examples of dexterity, and new applications of
+science, whereas new plots, new ideas for effective presentation, are
+rare. He describes a series of experiments of his own, some of which
+utilize again, but in a novel manner, devices long familiar, while
+others are new both in idea and in many of the subsidiary methods of
+execution. One of the most hackneyed and yet one of the most effective
+illusions in the repertory of the conjurer, is that known as the Rising
+Cards. The performer brings forward a pack of cards, several of which
+are drawn by members of the audience and returned to the pack, whereupon
+at the command of the magician they rise out of the pack, one after the
+other, in the order in which they were drawn. In the oldest form in
+which this illusion is described in the books on the art of magic, the
+pack is placed in a case supported by a rod standing on a base; and the
+secret of the trick lies in this rod and its base. The rod is really a
+hollow tube, and the base is really an empty box. The tube is filled
+with sand, on the top of which rests a leaden weight, to which is
+attached a thread so arranged over and under certain cards as to cause
+the chosen cards to rise when it descends down the tube; and in putting
+the cards into the case the conjurer releases a valve at the bottom of
+the tube, so that the sand might escape into the box, whereby the weight
+is lowered, the thread then doing its allotted work, and the cards
+ascending into view, no matter how far distant from them the performer
+may be standing when he achieves his miracle.
+
+It seems likely that the invention of this primitive apparatus may have
+been due to the fact that some eighteenth-century conjurer happened to
+observe the sand running out of an hour-glass, and set about to find
+some means whereby this escape of sand could be utilized in his art. The
+hollow rod, the escaping sand, and the descending weight have long since
+been discarded; but the illusion of the Rising Cards survives and is now
+performed in an unending variety of ways. The pack may be held in the
+hand of the performer, without the use of any case; or it may be placed
+in a glass goblet; or it may be tied together with a ribbon and thus
+suspended from cords that swing to and fro almost over the heads of the
+spectators, and however they may be isolated, the chosen cards rise
+obediently when they are bidden. The original effect subsists, even tho
+the devices differ.
+
+It was left for Mr. Devant to give a new twist to this old illusion. For
+a full pack of playing-cards he substituted ten cards two or three times
+larger than playing-cards, and with the ten numerals printed or painted
+in bold black. These pasteboards are given for examination, and so is a
+case into which they fit. After they have been duly inspected they are
+put into the case which is hung from chains. A clean slate is also
+shown, and wrapped up and given to a spectator to hold. Then three
+members of the audience are invited to write each a number composed of
+three figures, and these three numbers are added by a fourth spectator.
+The total is found to be written on the slate; and then at the behest of
+the performer the cards containing the figures of this total rise in
+proper sequence out of the case. It may be noted that the writing on the
+slate is also an old and well-worn device, and so is the method of
+making sure that the total of the three numbers written by different
+persons shall agree with that already concealed on the slate. Yet these
+three familiar effects are here united in a refreshingly novel
+experiment in magic, being now fitted into a new plot. The devices
+themselves are old enough, but Mr. Devant is entitled to full credit for
+the new combination.
+
+                                   IV
+
+The fundamental principles which Robert-Houdin accepted and which he
+seems to have taken over from Torrini, Messrs. Maskelyne and Devant have
+elucidated in their philosophic disquisition, and yet in one particular
+their practise is not yet level with their preaching. Before
+Robert-Houdin and Frikell, or at least before Torrini, and even after
+these three artists had set a better example, the majority of conjurers
+filled the stage with gaudy apparatus and insisted on its blazing with
+an unnecessary prodigality of lights. One magician in the middle of the
+nineteenth century came forward on a stage absolutely dark, and suddenly
+fired a pistol, thereby lighting two hundred candles arranged in
+pyramids behind him. Another hung his stage with black velvet and
+adorned it with skulls. Torrini and Robert-Houdin made an approach to
+the unadorned simplicity of an actual drawing-room, altho Robert-Houdin
+seems to have permitted himself a long shelf at the back of his stage on
+which his various automatic figures were assembled awaiting their
+summons to take part in the program. Even Messrs. Maskelyne and Devant
+are satisfied with a stage-setting which is frankly only a
+stage-setting--as stagy, in fact, as the ordinary scenery to be seen in
+a variety-show.
+
+Now, it may be admitted that a nondescript set of this sort, vaguely
+Oriental, with arches and curtains, and somewhat suggestive of comic
+opera, may not be inappropriate when any one of the bolder illusions is
+to be presented--the Box Trick or the Aerial Suspension, the Mystic
+Cabinet or the Talking Sphinx. Indeed, a special set of scenery is often
+actually necessary for the presentation of marvels depending mainly on
+optics or mechanics. But for the first part of the program, when the
+performer appears in ordinary evening-dress, and when he is presenting
+himself as a gentleman in a drawing-room, amusing other gentlemen, by
+means of experiments in magic, every one of which may be likened to a
+little play, why should not the stage-set be that of a drawing-room, or
+of a bachelor's study, as accurately reproduced as similar rooms are
+reproduced in the modern comedies of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones and Mr.
+Augustus Thomas? The set accepted by Messrs. Maskelyne and Devant is
+devoid of the actuality of a real room; it is fantastically stagy, and
+therefore it lacks both veracity and dignity.
+
+Sooner or later some modern magician, in advance over his rivals, will
+take this final step, and the curtain will rise on a stage with a
+box-set realistically reproducing a handsome room, with all its
+decorations and hangings and furniture in harmony, Jacobean in style, or
+Chippendale, as the performer's preference may be. There will be chairs
+and tables in their proper places; there will be book-cases, and
+window-boxes of flowers; and perhaps there will be a cellaret, where the
+performer may procure any goblet or decanter he needs. There will be a
+broad desk in the center, with its writing-pad and its book-rack, and
+possibly its heap of magazines and weekly papers. This set thus
+furnished will look like a room that has really been lived in; it will
+have a door in each of the side walls, and when the curtain rises the
+stage will be empty. Then the doorbell will ring, and the servant will
+enter at one door, and, going across the stage to the other, he will
+admit his master--the master at last of the truly modern art of magic.
+The magician will give his hat and coat to the servant, who will take
+them out, and who will never appear on the stage again except in
+response to the master's pressure on the electric button, ordinarily
+used to summon a servant. And the magician will present his succession
+of experiments in magic, utilizing only the objects which he may borrow
+from the spectators, or which would naturally be found in a gentleman's
+room. The apparent absence of all apparatus, the naturalness of the
+environment, the easy simplicity and the convincing reality of the
+back-ground--all these elements will coalesce to heighten the effect of
+the marvels to be wrought by a comedian playing the part of a magician.
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                  XVI
+
+                       THE LAMENTABLE TRAGEDY OF
+                             PUNCH AND JUDY
+
+                THE LAMENTABLE TRAGEDY OF PUNCH AND JUDY
+
+                                   I
+
+When we consider how cosmopolitan is the population of these United
+States, and how freely we have drawn upon all the races of Europe, it is
+very curious that the puppet-show does not flourish in our American
+cities as it flourishes in many of the towns on the other side of the
+Western Ocean. The shrill squeak of Punch is not infrequent in the
+streets of London--altho it may not now be heard as often as it was a
+score of years ago. In Paris in the gardens of the Tuileries and of the
+Luxembourg, and again in the Champs-Elysees where the children
+congregate in the afternoon, there are nearly half a dozen enclosures
+roped off and provided with cane chairs so that spectators, old and
+young, may be gladdened by the vision of Polichinelle, and by the pranks
+of Guignol. Yet even in Paris there are not now as many puppet-shows as
+there were fifty years ago; and in Italy and in Germany the traveler
+fails to find as frequent exhibitions of this sort as he used to meet
+with in the years that are gone. Apparently there is everywhere a waning
+interest in the plays performed by the little troop of personages
+animated by the thumb and fingers of the invisible performer. And
+perhaps the declining vogue of this diminutive drama in old Europe is
+one reason why it has never achieved a wide popularity in young America.
+
+In France the puppet-show is stationary; it has its fixed habitation and
+abode; and its lovers can easily discover where to find it when they
+seek the specific pleasure it alone can provide. In England the
+spectacle of Punch and Judy is ambulatory; the bloodthirsty hero and the
+bereaved heroine roam the streets at large, and their arrival in any one
+avenue of traffic can never be predicted with certainty. In the United
+States poor Punch has never ventured to show his face in the open
+street, seeking the suffrages of the casual throng; he is not
+peripatetic but intermittent, and he makes his appearances only in
+private houses, and only when he is sent for specially to entertain the
+children's party. Here in America Punch is still a stranger to the broad
+public; he has an exotic flavor; he suggests Dickens, somehow; and he
+must be wholly unknown to countless thousands who would rejoice to make
+his acquaintance and to laugh at his terrible deeds.
+
+His terrible deeds!--perhaps there is in these words a possible
+explanation for the failure of Punch to win favor among the descendants
+of the Puritans, who are always inclined to apply severe moral standards
+of conduct. Now, if we apply any moral standard at all to the conduct of
+Mr. Punch, the result is simply appalling, for the customary drama of
+which he is the sole hero sets before us a story of triumphant
+villainy, adequately to be compared only with the dastardly history of
+Richard III in Shakspere's melodramatic tragedy. Mr. Punch is an
+accessory before the fact in the death of his infant child, and when his
+devoted wife very naturally remonstrates with him, he turns upon her
+with invective and violence--a violence which culminates in
+assassination. Having once seen red and tasted blood, he finds himself
+swiftly started upon a career of crime. His total depravity tempts him
+to a startling succession of hideous murders. He slays an inoffensive
+negro, a harmless clown, and a worthy policeman. Then he succeeds, by a
+simple trick, in hanging the hangman himself. By his fatal assaults upon
+these two officers of justice, the necessary policeman and the useful
+hangman, Mr. Punch exhibits his contempt for the majesty of the law. He
+stands forth, without a shred of conscience, as a practical anarchist,
+rejecting all authority. His hand is against every man and every man's
+hand is against him. And having violated the laws of this world, he
+finally discloses his callous contempt for the punishment which ought to
+await him in the next world; he has a hand-to-hand fight with the devil
+himself--a deadly struggle from which he emerges victorious. And this is
+the end, which crowns the work.
+
+[Illustration: Behind the scenes]
+
+[Illustration: Punch throws away the child]
+
+[Illustration: Punch, Judy, and their child]
+
+[Illustration: Punch quiets Judy]
+
+When we consider the several episodes of Mr. Punch's abhorrent history,
+we are reluctantly forced to the conclusion that his story is even less
+informed with morality than that of Richard III. The crookbacked king
+comes to a bad end at last; he meets with the just retribution for his
+many misdeeds; and he falls before the sword of Richmond. But Mr. Punch
+comes to a good end, and so far as we may know, he lives happy ever
+after, like the princes and princesses of the fairytales. He may even
+marry again and have another child, to be made away with in its turn.
+The more we consider his misdeeds and his misadventures the more
+shocking they are to our moral sense. Mr. Punch appears as a monster of
+such hideous mien that to be hated he needs but to be seen. This is how
+he must appear to every one of us who applies a moral standard to the
+drama, and who is willing to hold every character in a play to a strict
+accountability for his words and deeds. If we apply this moral standard
+to the play of Punch and Judy, then that play must be dismissed as
+profoundly and hopelessly immoral, carrying ethical infection to all who
+are so unfortunate as to be spectators at its performance. And more
+particularly, it is an absolutely unfit piece for the young, whose
+immature minds need to be guarded against everything which might tend to
+confuse the delicate distinctions between right and wrong.
+
+But, of course, we do not apply a moral standard to the sayings and
+doings of Mr. Punch, for the plain and sufficient reason that he is not
+a human being. He is not a man and a brother, upon whom we may be
+tempted to pattern ourselves. He is but a six-inch puppet, a thing of
+shreds and patches, a wooden-headed doll, vitalized for a moment only by
+the hand concealed inside his flimsy body with its flaunting colors. He
+is too fantastic, too impossible, too unreal, too unrelated to any
+possible world, for us to feel called upon to frown upon his misdeeds or
+to take them seriously. He is a joke, and we know that he is a joke, and
+all the children know that he is only a joke. Even the youngest child is
+never tempted to believe in his existence and to be moved to follow his
+example or to imitate his dark deeds. The proof of the pudding is in the
+eating; and the proof of a play is in the effect it produces upon the
+spectators. We may question whether any one of the millions of
+performances of the lamentable tragedy of Mr. Punch has suggested to a
+single father the fatal neglect of his offspring or to a single husband
+the possibility of wife-murder. And we may doubt whether any child,
+after witnessing Mr. Punch's murderous combats with the policeman and
+the devil, has ever felt any lessening of his respect for those two
+time-honored guardians of law and order.
+
+[Illustration: Punch on his steed]
+
+[Illustration: Punch teaches Jack Ketch how to hang a man]
+
+[Illustration: Punch in prison]
+
+[Illustration: Punch kills the Devil]
+
+The plea of confession and avoidance which is here set up for Punch and
+Judy is much the same as that set up by Charles Lamb for the frolicsome
+Restoration comedies. Lamb admitted that they were degradingly
+immoral--if you took them seriously and accepted them as pictures of
+life. But he insisted that they were not really amenable to this moral
+standard, since they were plainly impossible in any world known to man.
+Macaulay had no difficulty in showing that Lamb was judging others by
+his clever and sophisticated self. To Lamb the creatures of Wycherley
+and Congreve might reveal manners and customs which removed them from
+the sphere of recognizable humanity; but the majority of his
+fellow-spectators were not so nimble-witted; they saw characters on the
+stage personated by living performers, and they beheld these characters
+shamelessly doing shameful things. Because the persons in the play were
+represented by actual human beings they seemed indisputably human; and
+their deeds could not be considered as outside morality. Yet the plea
+made by Lamb for the Restoration comedies has a certain validity when it
+is put forward in behalf of Mr. Punch. He is not personated by an actual
+human being; and even the least sophisticated of juvenile spectators
+does not accept him as a fellow-creature strictly amenable to the human
+code.
+
+                                   II
+
+Historians of the Greek drama have often commented on the fact that the
+Athenian actors wore towering masks, and that thereby they were deprived
+of all facial expression. In our snug modern theaters, with their
+well-lighted stages, we follow with our eyes the shifting emotions as
+these chase each other across the faces of the actors; and this is one
+of our keenest pleasures in the playhouse. In the huge theater of
+Dionysius at Athens, with its ten or twenty thousand spectators, seated
+tier on tier, along the curving hillside of the Acropolis, the actor was
+too far removed from most of the playgoers for any play of feature to be
+visible; and critics have commiserated the Attic dramatists on their
+deprivation of this element of potent appeal. Yet the question arises
+whether the Greek playwrights were really the losers by this immobility
+of the actors' faces; and we may be allowed to doubt that they were when
+we recall the fact that the faces of Mr. Punch and of Mrs. Judy, of the
+policeman and of the hangman, are also fixed once for all. The
+expression that Mr. Punch wears when he is fondling the baby is,
+perforce, the same which illuminates his face when he is engaged in
+joyful combat with the devil, a foeman worthy of his stick. Here the
+imagination of the spectator comes to the rescue. The wooden head of Mr.
+Punch is unchanging, no doubt; but those who gaze entranced upon his
+marvelous doings never miss the play of feature which they would expect
+if they were part of the audience in a playhouse for grown-ups. Quite
+possibly the Athenian spectators did not mind the immobility of the
+masks their actors wore; indeed, that very immobility may have been an
+incentive to their imaginations. When the Greeks went to their open-air
+theater, as when we gather around the tent-like theater of Mr. Punch,
+they knew in advance, as we also know, that the faces of the performers
+would be unchanging; therefore they did not expect any variety of
+expression; and probably they got along as well without it as we do at a
+puppet-show.
+
+There is another likeness between Attic tragedy and Punch and Judy;
+there is a limitation in the number of characters we are allowed to see
+at the same time. As the hidden performer who operates all the figures
+has only two hands, he can bring before us at any one moment only Mr.
+Punch and one other of the several characters. The fingers of the right
+hand animate Mr. Punch, and the fingers of the left hand animate in turn
+Mrs. Judy and the negro and the clown. At Athens (for reasons which need
+not here be discussed) the dramatist had the use of only three actors,
+even tho these might each of them "double" and appear as two or more of
+the successive characters of the play. So it was that there were never
+more than three persons taking part in any given episode of an Attic
+tragedy as there are never more than two persons taking part in any
+given episode of Punch and Judy. In the thumb-and-finger plays devised
+in Paris by M. Lemercier de Neuville, he felt so severely the
+inconvenience of his limitation to two characters that he devised a kind
+of spiral-spring arrangement inside the costumes of his little figures
+to hold up their heads; and he prepared invisible supports jutting out
+just below the flat ledge which forms the base of the proscenium. Thus
+he was enabled to leave the figure in sight, while he withdrew his hand
+to animate another character. His _Pupazzi_, as he called them, were
+clever caricatures of contemporary celebrities; and he was ingenious
+enough sometimes to maneuver half a dozen of them at once with his
+single pair of hands, four adjusted into the projecting rests, and two
+on his fingers.
+
+In the sumptuous puppet-show in the gardens of the Tuileries the same
+result is achieved by the employment of two or three manipulators, so
+that four or even six figures may appear at once. This has greatly
+enlarged the scope of the performance; and the manager of this theater
+has very ambitious aims. He likes to rearrange for his juvenile audience
+the most appropriate of the pieces which have won favor in the real
+theaters, and to present these with all sorts of spectacular adornments.
+He has even ventured to give plays as elaborate as 'Around the World in
+Eighty Days.' But it may be doubted whether this vaulting ambition has
+not overleaped itself, and whether a puppet-show does not gain rather
+than lose by restricting its efforts within narrower limits. After all,
+nothing so delights us at a puppet-show as the feats which are most
+characteristic and least difficult of accomplishment. We joy to behold
+one tiny figure belaboring another with his solid club or to follow the
+vicissitudes of a bout at single-stick, when both combatants thwack
+lustily at each other's wooden heads.
+
+                                  III
+
+Yet this mention of M. Lemercier de Neuville's _Pupazzi_, with their
+varied repertory of Aristophanic commentaries on current events, and
+this memory of the spectacular efforts exhibited in the gardens of the
+Tuileries, suggest a possible explanation for the fact that Punch and
+Judy have failed to find wide-spread favor here in America and that they
+seem to be losing their pristine popularity in England. There is a
+pitiable monotony of program in all English-speaking puppet-shows. They
+confine their repertory to the single play which sets forth the deeds
+and misdeeds of Mr. Punch. Now, in the Continent of Europe there is no
+such monotony. Not only in the gardens of the Tuileries but in the
+Champs-Elysees a young spectator can sit thru performance after
+performance without fear of having to witness the same piece. Punch
+appears in only one drama, whereas his French rival, Guignol, in his
+time plays many parts, with a host of other characters to be his
+associates, some in one piece and some in another. And the several plays
+are adorned with a variety of scenery. Of course, there cannot be a very
+wide range of subject; and always is the stick a prominent feature in
+the miniature drama. There are a certain number of traditional Guignol
+pieces, handed down from generation to generation. Some of these have
+been printed for the use of devoted students of the drama, and some are
+to be had in little pamphlets for the benefit of the happy French
+children who may have had a puppet theater with its dozen or more
+figures presented to them as a New Year's gift. There is in the Dramatic
+Museum of Columbia University the manuscript of half a dozen of these
+little plays, written out (in all the license of his own simplified
+spelling) by the incomparable performer who was in charge of the leading
+Guignol in the Champs-Elysees in 1867.
+
+It is rather curious that the English puppet-show should have confined
+itself for now nearly a hundred years to the unique Punch and Judy,
+when the puppet-shows of other countries have a changing repertory. It
+was a puppet performance of a German perversion of Marlowe's 'Doctor
+Faustus' which first introduced Goethe to the Faust legend. George Sand,
+unlike the great German poet in most ways, was yet like him in her
+delight in the puppet-show. In her country place at Nohant, she had a
+tiny theater of her own for which she dressed all the puppets, while her
+son Maurice carved the heads, painted the scenery, devised the plays,
+and improvised the dialog. Maurice Sand it was, sometimes alone, but
+occasionally with the aid of a friend, who manipulated the little
+figures and bestowed upon them a momentary vitality. His mother
+persuaded him to write out a dozen of the more successful of his little
+plays for puppets and to publish them; and this volume, the 'Theatre des
+Marionnettes a Nohant,' appeared in 1876. George Sand herself wrote a
+delightful account of the humble beginnings of this famous puppet-show,
+and described how there came in time to be all sorts of ingenious
+improvements for achieving spectacular effects.
+
+She declared that the puppet-show is not what it is vainly thought,
+because it demands an art of a special kind, not only in the
+construction of the little figures themselves, but more especially in
+the story which these little figures are to interpret. She held that the
+particular field of the puppet playwright-performer was to be found in
+the dramatization of protracted fantastic romances, abounding in comic
+characters and in comic episodes and gratifying the fundamental human
+liking for long-drawn tales of adventure and for fantastic
+fairy-stories. She found in her son's acted narratives a rest from
+reality, a release from the oppression of every-day life, an excursion
+into a realm of fancy and of legend--even if the legend was itself a
+fanciful invention of the improvising performer. And she declared that
+she liked the puppet playhouse in her own home, because it was a
+domestic and fireside pleasure, which could be enjoyed without the
+exertion imposed by a visit to a real theater. Obviously she found as
+much delight in being a spectator--after having been a costumer--as her
+son did in being the author and operator of the spectacle.
+
+                                   IV
+
+There is one note to be made upon George Sand's account of the slow
+development of the puppet-show at Nohant, beginning as early as 1847. If
+you will look at any set of Punch and Judy figures hung up to-day in the
+toy store to tempt the eye of Young America, you will discover alongside
+Mr. Punch and Mrs. Judy, Jack Ketch and the Devil, a strange green
+figure with huge jaws and double rows of white teeth. This verdant beast
+has a body like all other Punch and Judy figures, a loose cloth funnel
+to slip over the sleeve of the operator; but its head suggests the head
+of an alligator, or of a crocodile, or of a dragon. Now, if you will
+turn to the classic text of the English play of Punch and Judy, edited
+with a learned introduction and an abundance of scholarly annotation by
+John Payne Collier--at least, so it is believed, altho the rare little
+book is anonymous--you will find no mention of any strange beast of this
+sort. Collier's text of the play is adorned by two dozen illustrations,
+etched by George Cruikshank, and in no one of these plates will you
+discover any crocodile, or alligator, or dragon. You will find Toby, the
+dog, who still survives in most of the few shows to be seen to-day in
+the streets of London; and you will find Hector, the gallant steed that
+Mr. Punch mounts with difficulty--and it is sad to have to record that
+Hector is no longer in the service of Mr. Punch. In fact, one devoted
+admirer of puppet-shows, whose memory goes back nearly fifty years, is
+ready to declare that he has never laid eyes on Hector--except in
+Cruikshank's illustrations. But Mr. Punch, deprived of the privilege of
+bestriding Hector, now enjoys the fiercer delight of overcoming the
+green-eyed alligator.
+
+Here we have a question of profound historic interest. Whence came the
+strange beast with the wide jaws? And here is where George Sand's
+pleasant paper is a very present help in time of need. She tells us that
+her son besought her to make a green monster for one of the earliest
+pieces he devised for her puppet-figures. She did as she was bid, and
+she sacrificed a pair of blue velvet slippers to provide the marvelous
+creature with his gently smiling jaws. She draws attention to the fact
+that the slippers were blue, and to the further fact that nevertheless
+the strange beast was always called the Green Monster. And here may be
+the explanation of the historic mystery. The fame of the puppets of
+Nohant was borne abroad; they were talked about all thru France; and
+they were discussed again and again in the Parisian newspapers. What
+more likely than that one of the professional puppet players should have
+seen the infinite possibilities of the Green Monster, and should have
+perceived its novel fascination for children? Thereupon he borrowed it
+for his own performances. Certainly it is that the Green Monster is a
+character in at least one of the manuscript plays preserved in the
+Dramatic Museum of Columbia University, and written out half a century
+ago. Probably the Green Monster strayed from the puppet-show of the
+Champs-Elysees sooner or later to one of the toy stores of Paris at the
+request of some boy who desired it for his own. When the Green Monster
+had elected domicile in the stores of Paris, he was soon appropriated by
+the toy-makers of Germany for export to Great Britain and the United
+States.
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                  XVII
+
+                   THE PUPPET-PLAY, PAST AND PRESENT
+
+                   THE PUPPET-PLAY, PAST AND PRESENT
+
+                                   I
+
+In her charming and instructive account of the ingenious puppet-shows
+with which her son Maurice used to amuse himself and her guests at
+Nohant half a century ago, George Sand records the fact that the erudite
+scholar, Magnan, who wrote a learned history of the puppet-show from the
+remotest antiquity, did not discriminate sharply between the two
+entirely different kinds of little figures, both of which are carelessly
+called puppets in English, and marionettes in French. One class
+comprises these empty and flexible figures which are animated by the
+thumb and two fingers of the performer who exhibits them by holding his
+hands above his head, as in the 'Punch and Judy' show. The other
+contains the larger dolls, suspended on wires (which are supposed to be
+invisible) and manipulated by one or more performers overhead, who give
+life to these figures by jerking the various strings as the action of
+the play may require. These last are the true marionettes; and for the
+first we have, unfortunately, no distinctive name. It is greatly to be
+regretted that the two very different types of puppets are not set apart
+from each other satisfactorily by the contributor of the article on
+marionettes in the latest edition of the 'Encyclopedia Britannica.'
+
+Each of these two sorts of puppets has an interest of its own; and each
+of them has its special and peculiar relation to the drama. Both of them
+have a long and honorable history, and can be traced back in the scanty
+records of a remote antiquity; altho it seems more likely that the true
+marionette--the little figure moved by wires from overhead--is the older
+of the two, antedating by many centuries the Punch and Judy figure,
+which owes its abrupt and awkward movements to the human thumb and
+fingers. Both classes are to be found to-day all over the world, not
+only in the cities of civilization, but in unsuspected nooks and corners
+on all the shores of all the seven seas. In Turkey, for example, under
+the name of Karaguez, there is a Punch and Judy of enormous popularity
+and of doubtful decency, while in Siam there are marionettes which
+perform religious plays of traditional appeal. Apparently the
+puppet-show of one type or the other satisfies in its fashion that
+dramatic instinct which every people possesses in greater or less
+intensity.
+
+Both kinds of puppet-show flourish in France, and have there been lifted
+to a more elevated plane of art; and both kinds retain their popularity
+in Italy, altho in an humbler form. The French are inveterate artists;
+and they are like the Greeks in desiring to do all things decently and
+in order. The Italians have, perhaps, a stronger native gift for the
+drama and they are ready to enjoy a simpler and more primitive
+puppet-play. It is from Italy that we who speak English have derived our
+Punch and Judy. Mr. Punch is a direct descendant of that favorite figure
+of robust Neapolitan farce, Pulcinella; and so is the French
+Polichinelle. And in Italy to-day the true marionettes have an even
+broader popularity than the Punch and Judy figures. The Italians who
+have lately flocked to America in their thousands, until New York now
+contains more of them than Venice, have imported in the original
+package the legendary puppet-show setting forth the romantic stories of
+the Middle Ages and of the early Renascence. We look upon Mr. Punch as
+comic; but the Italians take their pleasure seriously and the
+marionettes in their puppet-shows to be seen in New York are truly
+heroic, and not infrequently highly tragic.
+
+[Illustration: Roman puppets Greek and Roman puppets Puppet of Java]
+
+In the interesting discussion of 'Medieval Story,' in which Professor W.
+W. Lawrence of Columbia University has traced the influence of various
+ideals of the Middle Ages upon our modern social organization, he has a
+striking description of the marionette performances which the exiles of
+Italy have brought with them to America. "Any one who walks thru the
+Italian quarter of New York City in the evening may notice over a
+doorway an illuminated sign, 'Theater of Marionettes.' If his curiosity
+tempts him inside, into the low room crowded with enthusiastic
+spectators, he will see, on a rude stage, a group of puppets almost as
+large as life, representing knights and ladies, acting out a little
+drama in response to the jerking of strings fastened to their arms, and
+of iron rods firmly fixed in their heads. The warriors are gorgeously
+attired in shining armor and plumed helmets; and the ladies have
+wonderful costumes of bright colors, with a great deal of embroidery and
+decoration. An Italian in shirt-sleeves in the wings at the side of the
+stage speaks their lines for them, with all the elocutionary flourishes
+which he can command. Fiercely immobile as to expression, but most
+active as to arms and legs, these manikins march about, soliloquize,
+make love, and debate in council. But it is their battles which arouse
+the greatest enthusiasm among the audience; and, indeed, these are
+fought in a way that is a joy to see. Then it is that heroic deeds are
+done--tin swords resound upon tin armor, helmets are battered about and
+knocked off, dust rises from the field, the valiant dead fall in staring
+heaps. At such moments the spectators can hardly restrain themselves
+from emotion, yet the story is well known to them--perhaps some one
+sitting near by will volunteer to explain it, asserting that he has
+known it ever since he was a boy and that he has read it all in a book
+which he has at home, called 'Reali di Franci.' It is a version of the
+old tale of Charlemagne and his knights, which, after traveling far from
+its native home in France, was taken up by the Italian people many
+centuries ago, and made so much their own that few heroes have been
+closer to their hearts than Roland, or as they call him, Orlando. Even
+in their homes in the New World they still celebrate him, so that the
+very newsboys in the streets of modern America are keeping alive the
+heroic traditions of the age of Charlemagne."
+
+[Illustration: A Sicilian marionette show
+From "By Italian Seas," by Ernest C. Peixotto]
+
+                                   II
+
+When we compare the account which Professor Lawrence has here given of
+the Italian puppet-shows in New York with the description of these same
+performances in their native land half a century ago, which we find in
+the 'Roba di Roma' of W. W. Story, the American sculptor-poet, we
+perceive that there has been little modification of method in the past
+threescore years. Story studied all sides of the Roman populace, and he
+maintained that nothing was more characteristically Italian than the
+marionette theater. He tells us that the love for the acting of
+_burattini_ [or puppets] is universal among the lower classes thruout
+Italy, and in some cities, especially in Genoa, no pains are spared "in
+their costume, construction, and movement to render them lifelike. They
+are made of wood, generally from two to three feet in height, with very
+large heads, and supernatural glaring eyes that never wink, and are clad
+in all the splendor of tinsel, velvet, and steel. Their joints are so
+flexible that the least weight or strain upon them effects a
+dislocation, and they are moved by wires attached to their heads and
+extremities. The largest are only about half the height of a man, yet as
+the stage and all the appointments and scenery are upon the same scale
+of proportion, the eye is soon deceived, and accepts them as of
+life-size. But if by accident a hand or arm of one of the wire-pullers
+appears from behind the scenes or descends below the hangings, it
+startles you by its portentous size; and the audience in the
+stage-boxes instead of reducing the _burattini_ to Lilliputians by
+contrast, as they lean forward, become themselves Brobdingnagians, with
+elephantine hands and heads."
+
+Story insisted that there is nothing ludicrous to an Italian audience in
+the performances of these diminutive men and women. On the contrary,
+nothing is more serious both to the spectators and to the unforeseen
+operators. In fact, he declared, no human being could be so serious as
+these tiny performers. "Their countenances are as solemn as death, and
+more unchanging than the face of a clock. Their terrible gravity when,
+with drooping heads and collapsed arms, they fix on you their great
+goggle-eyes is at times ghastly. The plays they perform are mostly
+heroic, romantic, and historical. They stoop to nothing which is not
+startling in incident, imposing in style, and grandiose in movement. And
+the Italian audience listens with a grave and profound interest, as tho
+the performers were not mere puppets, but actually the heroes they are
+supposed to be. The inflated and extravagant discourse of the characters
+is accepted at its face value; to the spectators it is grand and noble.
+And the foreign visitor must control any desire he may feel to smile at
+the extraordinary spectacle he is witnessing, and at the marvelous
+rodomontade he is hearing. To laugh out loud at one of these heroic
+puppet-plays would be as indecorous as to indulge in laughter during a
+church service."
+
+[Illustration: A Belgian puppet A Chinese puppet theater Puppet figure
+representing the younger Coquelin]
+
+Incidental to the heroic dramas which the puppets play are interludes of
+ballet-dancing like those which are intercalated, more or less adroitly,
+into the grand opera performed by full-grown men and women. The Italians
+are born pantomimists, and they are accomplished dancers. Therefore,
+there is no reason for surprise that human pantomime and human dancing
+are imitated in the marionette theaters. There is reason for surprise,
+however, that Story did not perceive clearly the advantages possessed by
+the dancing puppets over the dancers of more solid flesh and blood. He
+found something comic in the pantomime of the puppets, "whose every
+motion is effected by wires, who imitate the gestures of despair with
+hands that cannot shut, and, with a wooden gravity of countenance, throw
+their bodies into terrible contortions to make up for the lack of
+expression in the face." In mere pantomime it is probable that the
+puppets would labor under a serious disability, for if a performer
+cannot use his voice, he needs facial expression to assist the gestures
+by which only can he then convey his meaning to the other performers and
+to the spectators. Perhaps it is not too much to assert that the
+puppet-show is not the proper place for pantomime.
+
+                                  III
+
+We need not wonder that Story admitted their dancing to be superior to
+their pantomime. Yet he failed to appreciate the true cause of this
+superiority, and he was inclined to comment upon the dancing of the
+_burattini_ in a somewhat satiric fashion. He tells us how the principal
+dancer suddenly appears, "knocks her wooden knees together, and jerking
+her head about, salutes the audience with a smile quite as artificial as
+we could see in the best trained of her fleshly rivals." But this
+artificial smile must have been fixed and permanent on the features of
+this diminutive dancer--or else the Roman-American essayist merely
+imagined its presence. "Then, with a masterly ease, after describing
+air-circles with her toes far higher than her head and poising herself
+in impossible positions, she bounds or rather flies forward with
+superhuman lightness, performs feats of choreography to awaken envy in
+Cerito and drive Elssler to despair, and, poising on her pointed toe
+that disdains to touch the floor, turns never-ending pirouettes on
+nothing at all, till at last, throwing both her wooden hands forward,
+she suddenly comes to a swift stop to receive your applause."
+
+This description is unsympathetic, and it induces the surmise that the
+operator of the _burattini_ at the performance described was not a
+master of his art and did not know how to profit by the possibilities of
+that art. Yet one of Story's phrases serves to explain why the suspended
+puppet is superbly qualified to excel in ballet-dancing; that phrase is
+the one which credits the dancing doll with "supernatural lightness." A
+skilful operator of the wires which bestow life and movement and grace,
+is able to imitate easily and exquisitely the most difficult feats of
+the human dancer. If he is sufficiently adroit he robs his suspended
+figure of all awkwardness, and he dowers her with a floating ethereality
+surpassing that attainable by any living performer. Now, this floating
+ethereality is precisely the quality which gives us most pleasure when
+we are spectators at the performance of a really fine ballet. It is the
+supreme art of the great dancer to soar lightly aloft, seeming to spurn
+the stage and to abide in the air. Only very rarely is this illusion
+possible to the merely human dancer; and when achieved it is but
+fleeting. Yet this illusion is absolutely within the control of the
+manipulator of the puppet-dancers. He can make them execute feats of
+levitation, achievable only by the most marvelously gifted and by the
+most arduously trained of human dancers.
+
+[Illustration: Puppets in Burma]
+
+[Illustration: The puppet play of Master Peter (Italian)]
+
+Of course, the skilful performer must carefully avoid swinging his tiny
+figures aimlessly thru the air. He must limit the feats that he permits
+them to accomplish to those which can be actually accomplished by human
+beings, altho he can do easily what the human beings can achieve only
+with more or less obvious effort, and he can impart a volatile
+elasticity a little beyond the power of any human being however favored
+by Terpsichore. When 'Salome' was, for a season, the sensation of the
+hour, it was produced by Holden's marionettes; and it afforded a
+delightful spectacle long to be remembered by all who had the felicity
+of beholding it. Whatever of vulgarity or of grossness there might be in
+the play itself, or in the Dance of the Seven Veils, was purged away by
+the single fact that all the performers were puppets. So dexterous was
+the manipulation of the unseen operator who controlled the wires and
+strings which gave life to the seductive Salome as she circled around
+the stage in most bewitching fashion, and so precise and accurate was
+the imitation of a human dancer, that the receptive spectator could not
+but feel that here at last the play of doubtful propriety had found its
+only fit stage and its only proper performer. The memory of that
+exhibition is a perennial pleasure to all who possess it. A thing of
+beauty it was; and it abides in remembrance as a joy forever. It
+revealed the art of the puppet-show at its summit. And the art itself
+was eternally justified by that one performance of the highest technical
+skill and of the utmost delicacy of taste.
+
+If the most marvelous exploits of terpsichorean art, almost inexecutable
+by the human toes and the human legs of living dancers, are capable of
+reproduction by puppets skilfully manipulated by the puller of the wires
+and strings whereby the little figures are suspended, so also are the
+dexterous feats of the juggler. One of the specialties of the sole
+surviving puppet-show of this sort in the Champs-Elysees is the
+performance of a juggler who tosses aloft and catches in turn a number
+of glittering balls. The delicate balancing of the tight-rope walker,
+with her frequent pirouettes on her toes, and with her surprising
+summersets, is also one of the exhibitions in which the puppet can defy
+the rivalry of any living executant, however skilful in the art. At the
+circus we feel that the tightrope dancer might fall, whereas at the
+puppet-show we know with certainty that any fatal mishap is impossible.
+In Holden's marionette program the miniature mimicry of humanity was
+carried to the utmost edge of the possible; and no item on his bill of
+fare was more delectable than the series of scenes in which the
+traditional Clown and Pantaloon played tricks on the traditional
+Policeman, and in which they joined forces in belaboring an inoffensive
+donkey. As the unfortunate quadruped was also a puppet, there was no
+painful strain on our sympathy.
+
+                                   IV
+
+If a performance by puppets deprived 'Salome' of its vulgar grossness by
+removing it outside the arena of humanity, so to speak, and by
+relegating it to an unreal world beyond the strict diocese of the
+conscience, so a performance by puppets of a passion-play or of any
+other drama in which the Deity has perforce to appear as a character, is
+thereby relieved of any tincture of irreverence. We no longer see a
+divine being interpreted by a human being. We cannot help feeling that
+all the persons in the play, whether they dwell in heaven or on earth,
+are equally remote from our common humanity. And therefore we need not
+be surprised when we discover that the marionette has long been allowed
+to appear in religious drama. Indeed, it appears probable that the very
+name _marionette_ is directly derived from the name of the Virgin.
+
+Very early in the history of the Christian Church were the puppets
+permitted to perform passion-plays and little dramas derived from the
+stories contained both in the New and the Old Testaments. In England
+under Elizabeth and James religious puppet-shows of this kind went
+wandering about the kingdom, taking into the smallest villages an
+entertainment which would afford to the rural inhabitants the same kind
+of pleasant instruction which the dwellers in the larger towns had in
+the more elaborate and long-drawn mysteries performed by the
+trade-guilds on the Corpus Christi day. That masterly rogue Autolycus in
+the 'Winter's Tale' tells us that in his time he had been on the road
+with "a motion of the Prodigal Son"--and a _motion_ was the Elizabethan
+term for a marionette-exhibition. In like manner one of the characters
+in Ben Jonson's 'Every Man out of His Humor' speaks of "a new motion of
+the city of Nineveh, with Jonas and the whale." Of course, the puppet
+performers, like the grown-up actors, did not long confine themselves to
+sacred themes; they ventured also into contemporary history. A puppet
+showman who appears in Ben Jonson's 'Bartholomew Fair' tells us that a
+certain motion setting forth the mysterious Gunpowder Plot, was "a
+get-penny."
+
+Story described one puppet-play which he saw in a little village on the
+main road from Rome to Naples, and which had for its central figure
+Judas Iscariot. But here again his attitude is unsympathetic, perhaps
+because the performance was clumsy. "The kiss of Judas, when, after
+sliding along the stage, he suddenly turned with a sidelong jerk and
+rapped the other wooden puppet's head with his own, as well as the
+subsequent scene in which he goes out and hangs himself, beggar
+description." Yet the expatriated American spectator honestly recorded
+that the Italian spectators "looked and listened with great gravity,
+seemed to be highly edified, and certainly showed no signs of seeing
+anything ludicrous in the performance." We may venture the suggestion
+that even the sophisticated sculptor-poet himself would have seen
+nothing ludicrous in this performance if the operator of Judas had been
+as skilful as the operator of Salome in Holden's marionettes.
+
+[Illustration: A Neapolitan Punchinella
+From "By Italian Seas," by Ernest C. Peixotto]
+
+A few years ago in Paris one of the younger poets wrote a passion-play
+which was performed during Lent by a company of dolls, designed and
+dressed in fit and appropriate costumes by an artist friend familiar
+with the manners and customs of the Holy Land. While the wires were
+managed by expert hands, the words of the dialog were spoken by the poet
+himself, and by two or three other poets who came to his aid. This must
+have been a seemly spectacle, and it won careful consideration from more
+than one of the most eminent dramatic critics of France. Here we may
+find a useful suggestion for those who wish to see certain plays by
+modern dramatic poets, in which the Deity is a necessary
+character--Rostand's 'Samaritaine,' for one, and Hauptmann's 'Hannele,'
+for another. Many of the devout have a natural repugnance to any
+performance on the stage (with its materialistic environment and its
+often sordid conditions) which calls for the impersonation of a divine
+being by an actor of ordinary flesh and blood. Yet if these same plays
+were reverently performed by marionettes the aroma of irreverence would
+be removed. It might even be possible to reproduce in the puppet-show
+not a little of the solemn religious effect which is felt by all
+visitors to the passion-play at Oberammergau.
+
+(1912.)
+
+                                 XVIII
+
+           SHADOW-PANTOMIME WITH ALL THE MODERN IMPROVEMENTS
+
+           SHADOW-PANTOMIME WITH ALL THE MODERN IMPROVEMENTS
+
+                                   I
+
+An American; improving on a suggestion of a Frenchman, has declared that
+"language was given to man to conceal his thoughts--and to woman to
+express her emotions." Unfortunately, language is so often inexact that
+even when it is sufficient to express emotion, it is not precise enough
+even to conceal thought. Sometimes a term is wholly devoid of truth, as
+when we call a certain solid a "lead-pencil," which contains no lead,
+and when we label a certain liquid "soda-water," which contains no soda.
+Sometimes the term is so vague that it may mean all things to all men.
+Who, for example, would be bold enough to insist on his own definition
+of "romanticism"? Sometimes again the term covers two or three things
+which demand a sharper differentiation. This is the case with the
+compound word "shadow-pantomime." It is the only name for three distinct
+things.
+
+First, there is the representation by the dark profile of the human hand
+upon a wall or a screen, of human heads, and of animal figures, either
+by an adroit arrangement of the fingers alone, or by the aid of adjusted
+shapes of cardboard, so as to suggest a hat on the head and a pipe in
+the mouth and other needed accessories; this primitive entertainment is
+sometimes styled "shadowgraphy."
+
+Second, there is the full-sized silhouette of a human figure, due to the
+shadow cast by the body standing before a lamp, and magnified or
+diminished as it approaches or recedes the spectators. This is the
+familiar parlor amusement which Sir James Barrie cleverly utilized with
+dramatic effect in the final act of his 'Professor's Love-Story,' when
+one of the characters, standing outside a house, sees the black profiles
+of other characters projected clearly on the drawn shade of the window
+before which he is placed.
+
+Then, thirdly, there is the true shadow-pantomime, called by the French
+"Chinese shadows," _ombres chinoises_, in which the tiny figures, made
+either of flat cardboard or of metal, are exhibited behind a translucent
+screen and before a strong light. This is by far the most interesting
+and the most important of the three widely different kinds of
+semi-dramatic entertainment, often carelessly confounded together even
+in the special treatises devoted to this humble art. In France these
+Chinese shadows have been popular for more than a hundred years, since
+it was in the eighteenth century that the performer who took the name of
+Seraphin established his little theater and won the favor of the younger
+members of the royal family by his presentation of the alluring
+spectacle, the rudimentary little piece, still popular with children,
+and still known by its original title, the 'Broken Bridge.'
+
+It may not be fanciful to infer that the immediate suggestion for this
+spectacle was derived from the contemporary vogue of the silhouette
+itself, this portrait in solid black taking its name from the Frenchman
+who was minister of finance in 1759. At all events, it was in 1770 that
+Seraphin began to amuse the children of Paris; and it was more than a
+century thereafter that M. Lemercier de Neuville elaborated his
+ingeniously articulated _Pupazzi noirs_. It was a little later still
+that Caran d'Ache delighted the more sophisticated children of a larger
+growth, who were wont to assemble at the Chat Noir, with the striking
+series of military silhouettes resuscitating the mighty Napoleonic epic.
+And it was at the Chat Noir again that Riviere revealed the further
+possibilities latent in shadow-pantomime, and to be developed by the aid
+of colored backgrounds supplied by a magic lantern. Restricted as the
+sphere of the shadow-pantomime necessarily is, the native artistic
+impulse of the French has been rarely better disclosed than by their
+surprising elaboration of a form of amusement, seemingly fitted only to
+charm the infant mind, into an entertainment satisfactory to the richly
+developed esthetic sense of mature Parisian playgoers. Just as the
+rustic revels of remote villagers contained the germ out of which the
+Greeks were able to develop their austere and elevating tragedy, and
+just as the modern drama was evolved in the course of centuries out of
+the medieval mysteries, one source of which we may discover in the
+infant Christ in the cradle still displayed at Christmastide in
+Christian churches thruout the world, so the simple Chinese shadows of
+Seraphin supplied the root on which Parisian artists were able to graft
+their ingenious improvements.
+
+The little spectacle proffered originally by Seraphin was frankly
+infantile in its appeal, and the 'Broken Bridge' is as plainly adjusted
+to the simple likings of the child as is the lamentable tragedy of Punch
+and Judy or the puppet-show in which Polichinelle exhibits his hump and
+his terpsichorean agility. The two arms of the broken bridge arch over a
+little stream but fail to meet in the center. A flock of ducks crosses
+leisurely from one bank to the other. A laborer appears on the left-hand
+fragment of the bridge and begins to swing his pick to loosen stones at
+the end, and these fragments are then seen to fall into the water. The
+figure of the workman is articulated, or at least one arm is on a
+separate piece and moves on a pivot so that a hidden string can raise
+the pick and let it fall. The laborer sings at his work; and in France
+he indulges in the traditional lyric about the Bridge of Avignon, where
+everybody dances in a circle. Then a traveler appears on the right-hand
+end of the bridge. He hails the laborer, who is hard of hearing at
+first, but who finally asks him what he wants. The traveler explains
+that he wishes to cross and asks how he can do this. The laborer keeps
+on picking away, and sings that "the ducks and the geese they all swim
+over." The irritated traveler then asks how far it is across, and the
+laborer again sings, this time to the effect that "when you're in the
+middle you're half-way over." Then the traveler inquires how deep the
+stream may be, and he gets the exasperating response in song, that if
+he will only throw in a stone, he'll soon find the bottom. This dialog
+bears an obvious resemblance to that traditionally associated with the
+tune of the 'Arkansaw Traveler.'
+
+[Illustration: The broken bridge]
+
+[Illustration: _Reproduced by permission of Hachette & Co., Paris_
+Plan showing the construction of a shadow-picture theater]
+
+[Illustration: A Hungarian dancer. This explains the mechanism of the
+shadow picture opposite
+A Hungarian dancer
+From a shadow picture by Lemercier de Neuville]
+
+Then a boatman appears, rowing his little skiff, his backbone pivoted so
+that his body can move to and fro. The traveler makes a bargain with him
+and is taken across, after many misadventures, one of them with a
+crocodile, which opens its jaws and threatens to engulf the boat--this
+amphibious beast having been a recent addition to the original playlet,
+and probably borrowed from the Green Monster not long ago added to the
+group of Punch and Judy figures. And the exciting conclusion of this
+entrancing spectacle displays a most moral application of the principle
+of poetic justice. The ill-natured laborer advances too far out on his
+edge of the broken bridge, and detaches a large fragment. As this
+tumbles into the water he loses his footing and falls forward himself,
+only to be instantly devoured by the crocodile, which disappears with
+its unexpected prey, whereupon the placid ducks and geese again swim
+over--and the curtain falls.
+
+                                   II
+
+There are a score of other little plays like the 'Broken Bridge,'
+adroitly adjusted to the caliber of the juvenile mind. In a British
+collection may be found a piece representing a succession of appalling
+episodes supposed to take place in a 'Haunted House,' and in a French
+manual for the use of youthful amateurs may be discovered a rudimentary
+version of Moliere's 'Imaginary Invalid,' to be performed by silhouettes
+with articulated limbs. Here again we perceive the inaccuracy of the
+term "shadow-pantomime," since the most of the figures are not
+articulated, and, being motionless, they are deprived of the freedom of
+gesture which is the essential element of true pantomime. Moreover, they
+are all made to take part in various dialogs, and this again is a
+negation of the fundamental principle of pantomime, which ought to be
+wordless. Here the French term "Chinese shadows" is more exact and less
+limiting than the English "shadow-pantomime." It is perhaps a pity that
+the old-fashioned term "gallanty-show," has not won a wider acceptance
+in English.
+
+The little pieces due to Seraphin and his humble followers in France and
+in England, devised to amuse children only, were simple enough in plot,
+and yet they were sufficient to suggest to admirers of this unpretending
+form of theatrical art plays of a more imposing proportion. M. Paul
+Eudel, the art critic, has published an amply illustrated volume in
+which he collected the fairy-pieces, and the more spectacular melodramas
+composed by his grandfather in the first quarter of the nineteenth
+century, in the dark days that preceded Waterloo. And in the third
+quarter of the nineteenth century, in the dark days that preceded Sedan,
+M. Lemercier de Neuville, relinquishing for a while the Punch and Judy
+puppets which he called _Pupazzi_, and which he had exhibited in a
+succession of gentle caricatures of Parisian personalities with a mildly
+Aristophanic flavor of contemporary satire, turned to the familiar
+Chinese shadows of his childhood and devised what he called his _Pupazzi
+noirs_, animated shadows. He also has issued a collection of these
+little pieces with a full explanation of the method of performance and
+with half a hundred illustrations, revealing all the secrets of
+maneuvering the little figures. Indeed, Lemercier de Neuville's manual
+is the most ample which has yet appeared; and it is the most interesting
+in that he was at once his own playwright, his own designer of figures,
+and his own performer.
+
+[Illustration: The return from the Bois de Boulogne
+Four shadow pictures by Caran d'Ache]
+
+[Illustration: The ballet
+From a shadow picture by Lemercier de Neuville]
+
+[Illustration: _Reproduced by permission of Hachette & Co., Paris_
+A regiment of French soldiers
+From a shadow picture by R. de La Neziere]
+
+As the grandfather of M. Eudel had been more ambitious than Seraphin, so
+Lemercier de Neuville was more ambitious than the elder Eudel. And yet
+his procedure was precisely that of his predecessors, and he did not in
+any way modify the principles of the art. All he did was to elaborate
+the performance by the use of more scenery, of more spectacular effects,
+and of more numerous characters. He introduced a company of Spanish
+dancers, for example, and he did not hesitate to throw on his screen the
+sable and serrated profile of a long line of ballet dancers. He followed
+Eudel in arranging a procession of animals, rivaling a circus parade,
+many of them being articulated so that they could make the appropriate
+movements of their jaws and their paws. And he paid special attention to
+his silhouette caricatures of contemporary celebrities, Zola for one,
+and Sarah-Bernhardt for another.
+
+Then the Franco-Russian draftsman, who called himself Caran d'Ache, made
+a new departure and started the art of the shadow-pantomime in a new
+career. He called his figures "French shadows," _ombres francaises_, and
+he surrendered the privilege of articulating his figures so that they
+could move. At least, he refrained from this except on rare occasions,
+preferring the effect of immobility and relying mainly upon a new
+principle not before employed by any of his predecessors. He made a
+specialty of long lines and of large masses of troops, not all on the
+same plane, but presented in perspective. He chose also to forgo the aid
+of speech and his figures were silent, except when some officer called
+out a word of command, or when a company of Cossacks rode past singing
+one of the wailing lyrics of the Caucasus as melancholy as the steppes.
+
+One of the most attractive items on his program was a representation of
+the return of vehicles and equestrians from the Bois de Boulogne in the
+afternoon. Some of the figures were merely characteristic types sharply
+seized and outlined with all the artist's masterly draftsmanship, and
+some of them were well-known personages easily recognizable by his
+Parisian spectators--Lesseps on horseback, for example, and Rochefort in
+an open cab. These successive figures were simply pushed across the
+screen one after another, each of them as motionless as a statue, the
+men fixed in one attitude, and the legs of the horses retaining always
+the same position. This absence of animal movement was, of course, a
+violation from the facts of life, like that which permits the painter to
+depict a breaking wave or a sculptor to model a running boy at a single
+moment of the movement. Yet this artistic conversion was immediately
+acceptable since the spectator received a simplified impression and
+his attention was not distracted by the inevitable jerkiness of the
+limbs of the men and the beasts.
+
+[Illustration: _Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, Paris_
+The Sphinx I: Pharaoh passing in triumph
+From a shadow picture by Amedee Vignola]
+
+Caran d'Ache's masterpiece, however--and it may honestly be styled a
+masterpiece--was not the 'Return from the Bois de Boulogne' but his
+'Epopee,' his epic evocation of the grand army of Napoleon. Single
+figures like the Little Corporal on horseback, and like Murat and others
+of the Emperor's staff, he projected with a fidelity and a veracity of
+accent worthy of Detaille or even Meissonier. Yet fine as these single
+figures might be, they were only what had been attempted by earlier
+exponents of the art--even if they were more impressive than had been
+achieved by any one of his predecessors. These single figures were
+necessarily presented all on the same plane, and the startling and
+successful innovation of the Franco-Russian draftsmanship was his
+skilful use of perspective, a device which had not occurred to any of
+those in whose footsteps he was following, even Lemercier de Neuville
+having presented his ballet dancers in a flat row. What Caran d'Ache did
+was to bring before us company after company of the Old Guard, and troop
+after troop of cuirassiers, their profiles diminishing in height as
+the figures receded from the eye. He thus attained to an effect of
+solidity and even of immensity, far beyond anything ever before achieved
+by any earlier exhibitor of shadows. He succeeded in suggesting space,
+and of maneuvering before the astonished eyes of the entranced
+spectators a vast mass of men under arms, marching forward resolutely in
+serried ranks to victory or to death.
+
+The late Jules Lemaitre, the most open-minded of French dramatic
+critics, and the most hospitable in his attitude toward the minor
+manifestations of theatric art, has recorded that this Napoleonic epic
+of Caran d'Ache communicated to him not only an emotion of actual
+grandeur, but also the thrill of war itself. He declared that "by the
+exactness of the perspective preserved in his long files of soldiers,
+Caran d'Ache gives us the illusion of number and of a number immense and
+indefinite. And by the automatic movement which sets all his troops in
+action at once, he gives us the illusion of a single soul, of a communal
+thought animating innumerable bodies--and thereby he evokes in us the
+impression of measureless power.... His silent poem, with its sliding
+profiles is, I think, the only epic in all French literature." And those
+who are familiar with the other French efforts to attain to lyric
+largeness, and who have had also the unforgetable felicity of beholding
+Caran d'Ache's marvelous projection of the Napoleonic legend, will be
+prepared to admit that Lemaitre did not overstate the case.
+
+[Illustration: _Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, Paris_
+The Sphinx II: Moses leading his people out of Egypt
+From a shadow picture by Amedee Vignola]
+
+                                   III
+
+What the Franco-Russian artist had done was to reveal the alluring
+possibilities placed at the command of the shadow-pantomimist by the
+ingenious employment of perspective; and there remained only one more
+step to be taken for the final development of the art to its ultimate
+capacity. This was the addition of color; and this step was taken by an
+associate of Caran d'Ache in the exhibitions given at the Chat
+Noir--Henri Riviere. Color could be added in two ways. In the first
+place, the outlines of lanterns and of battle-flags could be cut out,
+and slips of appropriately tinted paper could be inserted in the
+openings so that the light might shine thru. This relieved the monotony
+of the uniformity of the sable figures, and added a note of amusing
+gaiety. But this was an innovation of very limited scope; and it could
+have been earlier utilized in the flat figures of Lemercier de Neuville,
+for example, if he had happened to think of it. Far wider in its
+artistic possibilities was the second of Riviere's improvements. For the
+ordinary lamp which cast a steady glow on the white screen whereon the
+profile figures appeared, he substituted a magic lantern, the painted
+slides of which enabled him to supply an appropriately colored
+background. Then he went further and employed two magic lanterns,
+superimposed; and these enabled him to get the effect of "dissolving
+views" whereby he could vary his background at will. The immediate
+result of this ingenious improvement was that the artist could bestow
+upon his shadow-pantomime not a little of the richness of color which
+delights our eyes in the stained glass of medieval cathedrals.
+
+Riviere was not only an inventor, he was also an artist, richly gifted
+with imagination; and his imagination suggested to him at once the three
+or four themes best fitted for treatment by his novel apparatus. One of
+these was the 'Wandering Jew'; another was the 'Prodigal Son'; and a
+third was the 'Temptation of Saint Anthony'--all legends of combined
+dramatic and pictorial appeal. Yet the most effective of all the
+experiments in this new form was due not to Riviere himself but to the
+collaboration of two of his disciples, M. Fragerolle and M. Vignola.
+This was the 'Sphinx,' in which the artists most adroitly combined all
+the advantages of the original flat profiles, and of the long files of
+figures in perspective such as Caran d'Ache had employed, with varied
+backgrounds due to the aid of the magic lantern first utilized by
+Riviere. Of all human monuments no one has had so marvelous a series of
+spectacles pass before its sightless eyes as the Sphinx, reclining
+impassive at the edge of the desert, and at the foot of the pyramids.
+Race after race has descended into the valley of the Nile, and lingered
+for a little space, a few centuries more or less, and departed at last.
+Conqueror after conqueror has come and gone again; and the Sphinx has
+kept its inscrutable smile.
+
+[Illustration: _Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, Paris_
+The Sphinx III: Roman warriors in Egypt
+From a shadow picture by Amedee Vignola]
+
+M. Fragerolle composed the music and the words of the stately chants
+which accompanied the exhibition of the figures passing before the
+backgrounds, due to the pencil and the palette of M. Vignola. By the aid
+of the magic lantern the gigantic visage of the lion with a woman's head
+towers aloft, permanent and immutable, while the joyous procession of
+Egyptian dancers and soldiers and priests celebrates the completion of
+the statue itself. Then we are witnesses of the fierce invasion of the
+Assyrians, with the charge of their chariots and their horsemen; and we
+behold the rout of the natives while their capital burns in the
+distance. Next we gaze at the departure of the Jews, led by Moses and
+laden with the spoils of the Egyptians. After the Hebrews have gone,
+Sesostris appears, to be greeted by a glad outpouring of the populace.
+Yet soon the Persians descend on Egypt, with their castellated elephants
+and their immense hordes of fighting men. Still the Sphinx looks down,
+immovable and implacable; and the Greeks in turn take the valley of the
+Nile for their own. One of their daughters, Cleopatra, floats past in
+her galley by night; and in the morning she extends her hospitality to
+the Roman, Caesar or Antony. And while the Latins are the rulers of the
+land of Egypt, the Virgin and her Son with the patient ass that bears a
+precious burden, skirt the sandy waste, and go on their way to the Holy
+Land, leaving the Sphinx behind them as they journey forward in the
+green moonlight. After long centuries the Arabs break in with their
+brilliant bands of horsemen, and a little later the Crusaders come to
+give them battle. More long centuries elapse and suddenly Napoleon
+emerges at the head of the troops of the French Republic. Then we have
+the Egypt of to-day, with the British soldiers parading before the feet
+of the Sphinx; and finally the recumbent statue appears to us once more
+and for the last time, when the light of the sun is going out, and the
+world is emptied of its population again, and the ice is settling down
+on the Sphinx, alone amid freezing desolation. And this last vision is
+projected by the magic lantern, without the aid of any profile figures,
+since man has ceased to be.
+
+Here we have a true epic poem, simple yet grandiose, and possible only
+to the improved shadow-pantomime of France at the end of the nineteenth
+century--even if this art is only a logical evolution from the
+gallanty-show of Seraphin. "This humble black profile," said Jules
+Lemaitre, "which had been thought fit at best of a few comic effects to
+amuse little children only, has been diversified and colored; it has
+been made beautiful, serious, tragic; by the multiplication of the
+devices it has been rendered capable of giving us a powerful impression
+of collective life, and the artists who have developed it have known how
+to make it translate to our eyes the great spectacles of history and the
+sweeping movement of multitudes."
+
+(1912.)
+
+[Illustration: _Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, Paris_
+The Sphinx IV: The British troops to-day
+From a shadow picture by Amedee Vignola]
+
+                                  XIX
+
+                   THE PROBLEM OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM
+
+                   THE PROBLEM OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM
+
+                                   I
+
+It is now no longer in dispute that there has been in the past score or
+two of years a striking revival of the drama in the English language,
+and that there are to-day British and American playwrights who write
+plays which are worth while--plays which are both actable and
+readable--plays which often deserve and which sometimes even demand
+serious critical consideration. This revival has necessarily resulted in
+calling attention to the present condition of dramatic criticism in
+Great Britain and in the United States. In a period of dramatic
+productivity, dramatic criticism has an indisputable function and is
+charged with an undeniable duty, both to the aspiring play-makers and to
+the main body of the playgoing public. We cannot help asking ourselves
+whether our dramatic critics rightly apprehend their function and
+whether they properly discharge their duty; and to these pressing
+questions the most conflicting answers are returned.
+
+Some there are who insist that it is hopeless to expect the desired
+outflowering of dramatic literature in our language to take place so
+long as our dramatic criticism is as inadequate, as incompetent, and as
+unsatisfactory as they declare it to be. Others there are who take a
+more tolerant view, holding the public itself to be at fault for the
+existing state of things, and who, therefore, believe that we are now
+getting dramatic criticism quite as good as we deserve. Few there are
+who venture to deny that there is room for improvement--altho no two of
+these agree in their suggestions for bringing about a bettering of
+present conditions. In the multitude of these counsellors there is
+darkness and confusion.
+
+Perhaps there is a dim possibility of dissipating a little of this dark
+confusion by an analysis of the exact content, which we discover in the
+term "dramatic criticism," and then by a further inquiry as to whether
+our customary use of the term is not misleading. "Dramatic criticism" to
+most of us connotes the newspaper reviewing of the nightly spectacles in
+our theaters. Plainly this was the meaning of the term in the mind of
+Mr. Howells years ago, when he declared that "our dramatic criticism is
+probably the most remarkable apparatus of our civilization" and that it
+"surpasses that of other countries as much as our fire-department. A
+perfectly equipped engine stands in every newspaper office, with the
+steam always up, which can be manned in nine seconds and rushed to the
+first theater where there is the slightest danger of drama within five
+minutes; and the combined efforts of these tremendous machines can pour
+a concentrated deluge of cold water upon a play which will put out
+anything of the kind at once."
+
+There is no denying that this use of the term by Mr. Howells is
+supported by custom. Yet it is distinctly unfortunate, for if the
+newspaper comment upon the novelties of the stage is to be accepted as
+"dramatic criticism," then what term have we left to describe the more
+piercing and the more comprehensive discussion of the first principles
+of the art of play-making which we find in Francisque Sarcey and in
+George Henry Lewes, not to go back to Lessing and to Aristotle? It is
+equally unfortunate that there is an equivalent inaccuracy in bestowing
+the title of "literary criticism" upon the newspaper comments upon the
+current books, for if this journalistic summarizing is to be accepted as
+"literary criticism," then what are we to call the exquisite evaluation
+of favorite authors which we find in Matthew Arnold and Sainte-Beuve?
+
+Of course, it is always idle to protest against the popular use or
+misuse of words and terms and phrases. The people as a whole own the
+language, and have a right to make it over and to modify the original
+meaning of words. If popular usage chooses not to distinguish between
+two very different things, and to call both of them "dramatic
+criticism," there is no redress, and yet it is impossible to discuss the
+problem of dramatic criticism except by trying to separate the two
+things thus confounded. Therefore, for the purpose of this inquiry only,
+and without any hope of changing the accepted usage, I make bold to
+suggest that "play-reviewing" might be employed to describe the notices
+written in the office of a newspaper, notices necessarily prepared under
+pressure and under strict limitations of time and space.
+
+These newspaper notices are sometimes careless, they are sometimes
+perfunctory, and they are sometimes cruel; and occasionally they are
+careful, conscientious, and clever, done with a dexterity worthy of high
+praise when we consider all the conditions under which it is displayed.
+But even at its best, play-reviewing cannot attain to the level of true
+dramatic criticism, more leisurely in its composition, larger in its
+scope, and more discriminating in its choice of topic. The
+play-reviewing of the daily journal is akin in aim to the
+book-reviewing, which has for its purpose the swift consideration of the
+volume in vogue at the moment. In our morning and evening papers the
+book-reviewing and the play-reviewing are both of them necessarily
+up-to-date, in fact, up-to-the-last-minute. To be contemporaneous,
+instantly and necessarily and inexorably, is their special quality and
+their immediate purpose; it is the reason for their existence and the
+excuse for their being.
+
+                                   II
+
+Here it may be well to cite again the oft-quoted confession of the late
+Jules Lemaitre, writer of volume after volume in which he discussed the
+leading men of letters of his own time and of his own country:
+"Criticism of our contemporaries is not criticism--it is conversation."
+Now, conversation may be a very good thing; indeed, when it is as clear
+and as sparkling as was Lemaitre's, it is an excellent thing; yet he
+was right in admitting that it is not criticism, since it could not but
+lack the touchstone of time, the perspective of distance, the assured
+application of the eternal standards. And play-reviewing, like
+book-reviewing, cannot be anything but conversation about our
+contemporaries. It may descend to chaff-like chatter about the writers
+of the hour and to empty gossip about their sayings and doings; or it
+may have the sterner merits of brilliant conversation at its best. But
+it is not really criticism in the finer sense of the word; it cannot be;
+and one may go further and say that it ought not to be, since true
+criticism is more or less out of place in a newspaper--because the
+direct object of a newspaper is to present the news, with only the
+swiftest of commentaries thereon.
+
+The final distinction between literature and journalism is to be sought
+in their diverging and irreconcilable objects. The desire of the former
+is for permanence, and the aim of the latter is the immediate
+impression. When literature triumphs it is for all time--more or less.
+When journalism most completely achieves its purpose its success is
+temporary, to be retained only by iteration and reiteration, since it
+has for its target the events of the fleeting moment. If we admit this
+distinction between journalism and literature, we have no difficulty in
+discovering journalism in many places other than the daily and weekly
+papers; very properly it fills the most of the space in the monthly
+magazines, and even in the quarterly reviews; and it abounds in our
+book-stores, since only a small proportion of the volumes which pour
+from the press every year possess the combined substance and style, the
+solidity of matter and the delightfulness of manner which lift mere
+writing up to the loftier level of literature.
+
+On the other hand, we may find literature of inexpugnable quality, not
+only in the magazines, but also now and again in the newspapers. Drake's
+'American Flag' and Kipling's 'Recessional' appeared in daily journals,
+and so did the literary criticism of Sainte-Beuve and the dramatic
+criticism of Lessing and of Lemaitre. But these were but happy
+accidents, and the great newspaper editor has rarely striven to make his
+journal a persistent vehicle for the publication of literature. He feels
+that this is foreign to his main purpose, and he is content when his
+editorial articles, and his news stories are vigorous and
+picturesque--clean, clear, and cogent in their English. He knows, better
+than any one else, that it is not by its external literary merits that
+newspaper-writing is to be judged. What he wants above all else is the
+news, all the news, and nothing but the news--accompanied, of course, by
+the obligatory comment this news may deserve. He needs editorial
+writers, reporters, and correspondents who are newspaper men, and not
+men of letters, except in so far as these men of letters may have
+accepted the special conditions of newspaper work.
+
+Now, criticism, whether literary or dramatic, is a department of
+literature, dealing with the permanent, and having little to do with the
+temporary. It demands qualifications very rarely united--insight,
+equipment, disinterestedness, and sympathy. So far from being easy,
+criticism is quite as difficult as creation--more difficult, indeed, if
+we may judge by its greater rarity. In a superbly creative period there
+are sometimes three or four distinguished poets, friendly rivals, almost
+contemporaneous; and even at such a time there is rarely more than one
+critic worthy to be companioned with them. AEschylus and Sophocles and
+Euripides followed one after the other; and in time the sole Aristotle
+came forward as their critic. Corneille and Moliere and Racine labored
+side by side, and only Boileau was competent to interpret and to
+encourage them.
+
+When it attains to the serene plane of Aristotle and Boileau, of Lessing
+and Sainte-Beuve, criticism is actually creation. "The critical faculty
+as applied to the masterpieces of literature, and still more the
+critical faculty as applied to the art of literature itself, is akin to
+the creative faculty of the artist," so Professor Mackail has told us.
+"It does not deal with letters as something detached from life, but as
+the form or substance in which life is intelligibly presented. Its
+interpretation is also creation." But the criticism of dramatic
+literature which is also creation, is possible only when the critical
+faculty is applied to the masterpieces of dramatic literature; and
+nobody knows better than the play-reviewer that masterpieces of dramatic
+literature do not present themselves frequently and that they cannot be
+acclaimed as masterpieces until they have stood the test of time. And
+this is why a critic-creator would be a little out of place on the staff
+of a newspaper, daily or weekly, whether he was assigned to deal with
+the drama or with literature at large.
+
+                                  III
+
+The necessary task of the book-reviewer or of the play-reviewer, is not
+criticism of the creative kind, since for that he is always likely to
+lack material. His task is humbler even if it is honorable; it is to
+report upon the novelties of the day, and to inform the readers of the
+newspaper as to the nature and the merits of these novelties. His work
+is essentially reporting, even if it is reporting of a special kind,
+calling for special qualifications. The connection of the drama with the
+show business is intimate, and it always has been. In the long history
+of the theater there is no period without its successful pieces, the
+appeal of which was mainly sensuous--to the eye and to the ear, rather
+than to the emotions and to the intellect. While the drama is an art,
+and perhaps the loftiest of the arts, the show business is a trade. This
+is no new thing--altho ignorant idealists often declare it so to be, and
+altho it may make itself a little more obvious at one time than at
+another. What confronts us is the condition of things as they are, not
+the theory of things as they might be.
+
+There would be occupation for a dramatic critic, who was also a creator,
+only if our theaters were presenting in rapid succession a sequence of
+masterpieces, tragedies of austere power, comedies of searching satire,
+social dramas of piercing suggestion. But this is not the case now here
+in the United States in the twentieth century; and it never has been the
+case anywhere or anywhen, not even in Weimar when Goethe dominated the
+ducal theater. In our playhouses we are proffered our choice of
+Shakspere and Ibsen, Pinero and Hauptmann, Henry Arthur Jones and
+Augustus Thomas, Barrie and Gillette, Sardou and George M. Cohan; and at
+the same time we are invited to choose between 'Trilby' and the
+'Celebrated Case,' melodramas and farces, summer song-shows and
+ultra-contemporary reviews, alleged comic operas and terpsichorean
+spectacles. Most of these latter exhibitions do not demand or deserve
+criticism of any kind; but they need to be reported upon like any other
+item in the news of the day.
+
+If this is the case, it might as well be recognized frankly. There is
+always advantage in seeing things as they are, in fronting the facts and
+in looking them squarely in the face. Sooner or later some one of those
+who are in charge of our metropolitan newspapers will perceive the
+possibility of a change of method. He will charge one of his staff with
+the supervision of the theatrical news, the announcements of new plays,
+and the personal gossip about the players; and he will authorize this
+editor to send competent reporters to all first performances, directed
+to report upon them as they would report upon any other event of
+immediate interest. He would warn these reporters that they were
+strictly to consider themselves as reporters, and that they were,
+therefore, to refrain from explicit criticism. He would so select his
+men that a melodrama should be dealt with by a reporter who liked a good
+melodrama, and that a summer song-show should be described by a reporter
+who could find pleasure in inoffensive and amusing spectacle. If this
+policy should be adopted, and announced clearly and emphatically,
+probably most of the occasions for quarrel between managers and editors
+would disappear; and the immense majority of the readers of the daily
+paper would be supplied with exactly the information they would prefer.
+
+Then, for the benefit of the smaller number who are really interested in
+the drama as a serious art, the editor-in-chief might avail himself of
+the fact that the Sunday issue, while it is still a newspaper containing
+the news of the preceding twenty-four hours, is also a magazine, to be
+read in more leisurely fashion, and therefore at liberty to treat timely
+topics with a larger freedom. Here space could be found for genuine
+dramatic criticism by the most competent expert available. This dramatic
+critic should have nothing whatever to do with the news of the theaters,
+or with the first-night play-reviewing. He should not be tired and bored
+by having to go to the theater half a dozen times a week, and by being
+forced to analyze plays which do not reward analysis. He would be
+expected to select out of the current performances that one which
+promised to be most worthy of careful consideration, and he would feel
+himself free to discuss this at such length as it might seem to him to
+deserve. To him also should be intrusted the more significant of the new
+books upon the history of the theater, and upon the art of the drama. In
+the summer (and also whenever at any other season there might be a
+dearth of inspiring topics), this dramatic critic would not be expected
+to contribute, since he should never be called upon to make bricks
+without straw.
+
+Even in New York this method is not as new as it may seem, and more than
+one metropolitan daily has approximated to it, altho no one of them has
+completely detached the dramatic critic from the play-reviewer and from
+the supervisor of theatrical gossip. And it has long been adopted in
+certain of the Paris newspapers. In the _Temps_, for example, when
+Sarcey was its dramatic critic, there was a daily column of theatrical
+announcements and of brief reports upon first-night performances; and
+with this department of the news of the theaters Sarcey had nothing to
+do, and for it he had no responsibility. Then in the ample space
+specially reserved for him in the issue of every Sunday afternoon, he
+dealt with the dramatic themes that seemed to him worth while. If a play
+appeared to demand prolonged study, he might go to see it two, or even
+three times, before he undertook to formulate his opinion; and on
+occasion he would carry over his detailed discussion of a very important
+drama into the article of the following Sunday. On the other hand, if
+no recent play seemed to him to deserve his continued attention, he
+would devote himself to one of the recent books about the theater or to
+a detailed discussion of the proper interpretation of one of the
+classics of the French drama kept constantly in the repertory of the
+Comedie-Francaise.
+
+                                   IV
+
+The adoption of this method would relieve the dramatic critic from one
+of his existing disadvantages; he would be released from criticising the
+pieces which are beneath criticism. The literary critic, and even the
+ordinary book-reviewer, never spends his time in considering dime
+novels--whereas the dramatic critic is now called upon to waste many
+evenings in beholding a play which is only the theatrical equivalent of
+a dime novel. The immediate result of this futile and fatiguing
+expenditure of energy is likely to be discouraging and even enervating.
+If the dramatic critic could be totally relieved from all contact with
+the show business when the show business has only a casual connection
+with the drama, it would tend to keep him fit for his essential task.
+Under the present conditions it is no wonder that the theatrical
+reviewer wearies of his task and loses the gusto and the zest without
+which all work tends to degenerate into the perfunctory and the
+mechanical.
+
+We need not fear that the first-night reporting would be ill done if
+competent reporters were instructed that they were not to consider
+themselves as critics, and that it was their sole duty to report, as
+they would report anything else, conscientiously and accurately. The
+difficulty would not be in finding reporters able to discharge this
+duty, it would be in the discovery of dramatic critics possessing the
+fourfold qualifications of insight, equipment, disinterestedness, and
+sympathy, which every critic must be endowed with whatever the art he
+undertakes to analyze. And the difficulty would be increased by the fact
+that the dramatic critic needs an understanding of three different arts,
+the art of acting, the art of literature, and the art of the drama--of
+play-making as distinct from literature.
+
+It would be idle to hope that even if this method were adopted we should
+soon be able to develop in the United States and in Great Britain a
+group of dramatic critics of the capacity and the quality of Lessing and
+Sarcey, of George Henry Lewes and William Archer. Yet it is solely by
+the adoption of this method that we can hope to provide the opportunity
+for the appearance of the true dramatic critic, who can fit himself for
+his finer work only by being set free from the necessity of doing work
+quite unworthy of him, altho necessary to the newspaper itself. And the
+development of a group of dramatic critics of a higher type than can be
+found to-day--except possibly in a scant half-dozen dailies and weeklies
+and monthlies--is a condition precedent to the development of our drama.
+Of course, these dramatic critics, whatever their endowment, could give
+little help directly to the dramatic authors, since it is a mistake to
+suppose that the critic is capable of counselling the author, or that he
+is charged with any such duty. Where the critic can help is by
+disseminating knowledge about the dramatic art, and by raising the
+standard of appreciation in the public at large--that public which even
+the mightiest dramatist has to please or else to fail of his purpose.
+
+(1915.)
+
+                          TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+
+Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_.
+
+Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.
+
+Throughout the document, the [oe] ligature was replaced with "OE".
+
+The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up
+paragraphs and so that they are next the text they illustrate. Thus the
+page number of the illustration might not match the page number in the
+List of Illustrations, and the order of illustrations may not be the
+same in the List of Illustrations and in the book.
+
+Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected
+unless otherwise noted below:
+
+Throughout the book, "avalanch" was replaced with "avalanche".
+
+On page 56, the single quotation mark was removed from the block-quoted
+paragraph.
+
+On page 116, "denial of of" was replaced with "denial of".
+
+On page 230, "Amercan" was replaced with "American".
+
+On page 296, "air-cirlces" was replaced with "air-circles".
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Book About the Theater, by Brander Matthews
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
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author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-14 20:06:33 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-14 20:06:33 -0700
commit	5a960a5d36060cc95de1690b390fa15571aaf4d4 (patch)
tree	d79f5d1c79f43491c2fe783e38f651d77d9f91eb