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diff --git a/old/63188-0.txt b/old/63188-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 2e35992..0000000 --- a/old/63188-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2828 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Critic and the Drama, by George Jean -Nathan - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: The Critic and the Drama - - -Author: George Jean Nathan - - - -Release Date: September 12, 2020 [eBook #63188] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRITIC AND THE DRAMA*** - - -E-text prepared by David E. Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading -Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by -Internet Archive (https://archive.org) - - - -Note: Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - https://archive.org/details/criticdrama00nath - - -Transcriber’s note: - - Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. - - - - - -THE CRITIC AND THE DRAMA - - - * * * * * * - -_THE BOOKS OF GEORGE JEAN NATHAN_ - - -_The Theatre_ - - COMEDIANS ALL - THE POPULAR THEATRE - MR. GEORGE JEAN NATHAN PRESENTS - ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE - THE THEATRE, THE DRAMA, THE GIRLS - THE CRITIC AND THE DRAMA - - -_Satire_ - - A BOOK WITHOUT A TITLE - BOTTOMS UP - - -_Plays_ - - THE ETERNAL MYSTERY - HELIOGABALUS (_in collaboration with H. L. Mencken_) - - -_Philosophy_ - - THE AMERICAN CREDO: A CONTRIBUTION TOWARD - THE INTERPRETATION OF THE NATIONAL MIND - (_in collaboration with H. L. Mencken_) - - -_Travel and Reminiscence_ - - EUROPE AFTER 8:15 (_in collaboration with H. L. Mencken_) - - * * * * * * - - -THE · CRITIC · AND -THE · DRAMA - -by - -GEORGE JEAN NATHAN - - -[Illustration] - - - - - - -New York Alfred · A · Knopf Mcmxxii - -Copyright, 1922, by -Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. -Published January, 1922 - -Set up and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y. -Paper (Warren’s) furnished by Henry Lindenmeyr & Sons, New York, N. Y. -Bound by the H. Wolff Estate, New York, N. Y. - -Manufactured in the United States of America - - - - - WITH HIS PERMISSION - TO EDWARD GORDON CRAIG - THE FIRST ÆSTHETICIAN OF THE THEATRE - - - - -CONTENTS - - - CHAPTER - - I. AESTHETIC JURISPRUDENCE 3 - - II. DRAMA AS AN ART 29 - - III. THE PLACE OF THE THEATRE 63 - - IV. THE PLACE OF ACTING 83 - - V. DRAMATIC CRITICISM 113 - - VI. DRAMATIC CRITICISM IN AMERICA 133 - - - - -_Of all the arts and half-arts--perhaps even above that of acting--is -the art of criticism founded most greatly upon vanity. All criticism -is, at bottom, an effort on the part of its practitioner to show off -himself and his art at the expense of the artist and the art which he -criticizes. The heavy modesty practised by certain critics is but a -recognition of, and self-conscious attempt to diminish, the fundamental -and ineradicable vainglory of criticism. The great critics are those -who, recognizing the intrinsic, permanent and indeclinable egotism of -the critical art, make no senseless effort to conceal it. The absurd -critics are those who attempt to conceal it and, in the attempt, make -their art and themselves doubly absurd._ - - - - -I. AESTHETIC JURISPRUDENCE - - - - -I. AESTHETIC JURISPRUDENCE - - -I - -Art is a reaching out into the ugliness of the world for vagrant beauty -and the imprisoning of it in a tangible dream. Criticism is the dream -book. All art is a kind of subconscious madness expressed in terms of -sanity; criticism is essential to the interpretation of its mysteries, -for about everything truly beautiful there is ever something mysterious -and disconcerting. Beauty is not always immediately recognizable as -beauty; what often passes for beauty is mere infatuation; living beauty -is like a love that has outlasted the middle-years of life, and has met -triumphantly the test of time, and faith, and cynic meditation. For -beauty is a sleep-walker in the endless corridors of the wakeful world, -uncertain, groping, and not a little strange. And criticism is its -tender guide. - -Art is a partnership between the artist and the artist-critic. The -former creates; the latter re-creates. Without criticism, art would of -course still be art, and so with its windows walled in and with its -lights extinguished would the Louvre still be the Louvre. Criticism -is the windows and chandeliers of art: it illuminates the enveloping -darkness in which art might otherwise rest only vaguely discernible, -and perhaps altogether unseen. - -Criticism, at its best, is a great, tall candle on the altar of art; -at its worst, which is to say in its general run, a campaign torch -flaring red in behalf of æsthetic ward-heelers. This campaign torch -motif in criticism, with its drunken enthusiasm and raucous hollering -born of ignorance, together with what may be called the Prince Albert -motif, with its sober, statue-like reserve born of ignorance that, -being well-mannered, is not so bumptious as the other, has contributed -largely to the common estimate of criticism as a profession but -slightly more exalted than Second Avenue auctioneering if somewhat less -than Fifth. Yet criticism is itself an art. It might, indeed, be well -defined as an art within an art, since every work of art is the result -of a struggle between the heart that is the artist himself and his mind -that is the critic. Once his work is done, the artist’s mind, tired -from the bitterness of the struggle, takes the form of a second artist, -puts on this second artist’s strange hat, coat and checkered trousers, -and goes forth with refreshed vigour to gossip abroad how much of the -first artist’s work was the result of its original splendid vitality -and how much the result of its gradually diminished vitality and sad -weariness. The wrangling that occurs at times between art and criticism -is, at bottom, merely a fraternal discord, one in which Cain and -Abel belabour each other with stuffed clubs. Criticism is often most -sympathetic when it is apparently most cruel: the propounder of the -sternest, hardest philosophy that the civilized world has known never -failed sentimentally to kiss and embrace his sister, Therese Elisabeth -Alexandra Nietzsche, every night at bed-time. “It is not possible,” -Cabell has written, “to draw inspiration from a woman’s beauty unless -you comprehend how easy it would be to murder her.” And--“Only those -who have firmness may be really tender-hearted,” said Rochefoucauld. -One may sometimes even throw mud to tonic purpose. Consider Karlsbad. - -Art is the haven wherein the disillusioned may find illusion. Truth is -no part of art. Nor is the mission of art simple beauty, as the text -books tell us. The mission of art is the magnification of simple beauty -to proportions so heroic as to be almost overpowering. Art is a gross -exaggeration of natural beauty: there was never a woman so beautiful -as the Venus di Milo, or a man so beautiful as the Apollo Belvedere -of the Vatican, or a sky so beautiful as Monet’s, or human speech so -beautiful as Shakespeare’s, or the song of a nightingale so beautiful -as Ludwig van Beethoven’s. But as art is a process of magnification, -so criticism is a process of reduction. Its purpose is the reducing of -the magnifications of art to the basic classic and æsthetic principles, -and the subsequent announcement thereof in terms proportioned to the -artist’s interplay of fundamental skill and overtopping imagination. - -The most general fault of criticism lies in a confusion of its own -internal processes with those of art: it is in the habit of regarding -the business of art as a reduction of life to its essence of beauty, -and the business of criticism as an expansion of that essence to its -fullest flow. The opposite is more reasonable. Art is a beautiful, -swollen lie; criticism, a cold compress. The concern of art is with -beauty; the concern of criticism is with truth. And truth and beauty, -despite the Sunday School, are often strangers. This confusion of the -business of art and that of criticism has given birth to the so-called -“contagious,” or inspirational, criticism, than which nothing is more -mongrel and absurd. Criticism is designed to state facts--charmingly, -gracefully, if possible--but still facts. It is not designed to exhort, -enlist, convert. This is the business not of the critic, but of -those readers of the critic whom the facts succeed in convincing and -galvanizing. Contagious criticism is merely a vainglorious critic’s -essay at popularity: facts heated up to a degree where they melt into -caressing nothingness. - -But if this “criticism with a glow” is not to be given countenance, -even less is to be suffered the criticism that, in its effort at a -fastidious and elegant reserve, leans so far backward that it freezes -its ears. This species of criticism fails not only to enkindle the -reader, but fails also--and this is more important--to enkindle the -critic himself. The ideal critic is perhaps much like a Thermos bottle: -full of warmth, he suggests the presence of the heat within him without -radiating it. This inner warmth is essential to a critic. But this -inner warmth, where it exists, is automatically chilled and banished -from a critic by a protracted indulgence in excessive critical reserve. -Just as the professional frown assumed by a much photographed public -magnifico often becomes stubbornly fixed upon his hitherto gentle brow, -so does the prolonged spurious constraint of a critic in due time -psychologically hoist him on his own petard. A writer’s work does not -grow more and more like him; a writer grows more and more like his -work. The best writing that a man produces is always just a little -superior to himself. There never was a literary artist who did not -appreciate the difficulty of keeping up to the pace of his writings. A -writer is dominated by the standard of his own writings; he is a slave -_in transitu_, lashed, tormented, and miserable. The weak and inferior -literary artist, such a critic as the one alluded to, soon becomes -the helpless victim of his own writings: like a vampire of his own -creation they turn upon him and suck from him the warm blood that was -erstwhile his. A pose in time becomes natural: a man with a good left -eye cannot affect a monocle for years without eventually coming to need -it. A critic cannot write ice without becoming in time himself at least -partly frosted. - -Paraphrasing Pascal, to little minds all things are great. Great art is -in constant conflict with the awe of little minds. Art is something -like a wonderful trapeze performer swinging high above the heads of the -bewildered multitude and nervous lest it be made to lose its balance -and to slip by the periodic sudden loud marvellings of the folks below. -The little mind and its little criticism are the flattering foes of -sound art. Such art demands for its training and triumph the countless -preliminary body blows of muscular criticism guided by a muscular -mind. Art and the artist cannot be developed by mere back-slapping. If -art, according to Beulé, is the intervention of the human mind in the -elements furnished by experience, criticism is the intervention of the -human mind in the elements furnished by æsthetic passion. Art and the -artist are ever youthful lovers; criticism is their chaperon. - - -II - -I do not believe finally in this or that “theory” of criticism. There -are as many sound and apt species of criticism as there are works -to be criticized. To say that art must be criticized only after this -formula or after that, is to say that art must be contrived only out -of this formula or out of that. As every work of art is an entity, a -thing in itself, so is every piece of criticism an entity, a thing in -itself. That “Thus Spake Zarathustra” must inevitably be criticized by -the canons of the identical “theory” with which one criticizes “Tristan -and Isolde” is surely difficult of reasoning. - -To the Goethe-Carlyle doctrine that the critic’s duty lies alone in -discerning the artist’s aim, his point of view and, finally, his -execution of the task before him, it is easy enough to subscribe, -but certainly this is not a “theory” of criticism so much as it is -a foundation for a theory. To advance it as a theory, full-grown, -full-fledged and flapping, as it has been advanced by the Italian Croce -and his admirers, is to publish the preface to a book without the book -itself. Accepted as a theory complete in itself, it fails by virtue -of its several undeveloped intrinsic problems, chief among which is -its neglect to consider the undeniable fact that, though each work of -art is indubitably an entity and so to be considered, there is yet -in creative art what may be termed an æsthetic genealogy that bears -heavily upon comprehensive criticism and that renders the artist’s aim, -his point of view and his execution of the task before him susceptible -to a criticism predicated in a measure upon the work of the sound -artist who has just preceded him. - -The Goethe-Carlyle hypothesis is a little too liberal. It calls for -qualifications. It gives the artist too much ground, and the critic -too little. To discern the artist’s aim, to discern the artist’s point -of view, are phrases that require an amount of plumbing, and not a few -foot-notes. It is entirely possible, for example, that the immediate -point of view of an artist be faulty, yet the execution of his -immediate task exceedingly fine. If carefully planned triumph in art -is an entity, so also may be undesigned triumph. I do not say that any -such latter phenomenon is usual, but it is conceivable, and hence may -be employed as a test of the critical hypothesis in point. Unschooled, -without aim or point of view in the sense of this hypothesis, -Schumann’s compositions at the age of eleven for chorus and orchestra -offer the quasi-theory some resistance. The question of the comparative -merit of these compositions and the artist’s subsequent work may not -strictly be brought into the argument, since the point at issue is -merely a theory and since theory is properly to be tested by theory. - -Intent and achievement are not necessarily twins. I have always -perversely thought it likely that there is often a greater degree of -accident in fine art than one is permitted to believe. The aim and -point of view of a bad artist are often admirable; the execution of a -fine artist may sometimes be founded upon a point of view that is, from -an apparently sound critical estimate, at striking odds with it. One -of the finest performances in all modern dramatic writing, upon its -critical reception as such, came as a great surprise to the writer who -almost unwittingly had achieved it. Art is often unconscious of itself. -Shakespeare, writing popular plays to order, wrote the greatest plays -that dramatic art has known. Mark Twain, in a disgusted moment, threw -off a practical joke, and it turned out to be literature. - -A strict adherence to the principles enunciated in the Goethe-Carlyle -theory would result in a confinement of art for all the theory’s -bold aim in exactly the opposite direction. For all the critic may -accurately say, the aim and point of view of, say, Richard Strauss -in “Don Quixote” and “A Hero’s Life,” may be imperfect, yet the one -critical fact persists that the executions are remarkably fine. All -things considered, it were perhaps better that the critical theory -under discussion, if it be accepted at all, be turned end foremost: -that the artist’s execution of the task before him be considered -either apart from his aim and point of view, or that it be considered -first, and then--with not too much insistence upon them--his point of -view and his aim. This would seem to be a more logical æsthetic and -critical order. Tolstoi, with a sound, intelligent and technically -perfect aim and point of view composed second-rate drama. So, too, -Maeterlinck. Synge, by his own admissions adjudged critically and -dramatically guilty on both counts, composed one of the truly -first-rate dramas of the Anglo-Saxon stage. - -In its very effort to avoid pigeon-holing, the Goethe-Carlyle theory -pigeon-holes itself. In its commendable essay at catholicity, it is -like a garter so elastic that it fails to hold itself up. That there -may not be contradictions in the contentions here set forth, I am not -sure. But I advance no fixed, definite theory of my own; I advance -merely contradictions of certain of the phases of the theories held -by others, and contradictions are ever in the habit of begetting -contradictions. Yet such contradictions are in themselves apposite and -soundly critical, since any theory susceptible of contradictions must -itself be contradictory and insecure. If I suggest any theory on my -part it is a variable one: a theory that, in this instance, is one -thing and in that, another. Criticism, as I see it--and I share the -common opinion--is simply a sensitive, experienced and thoroughbred -artist’s effort to interpret, in terms of æsthetic doctrine and his -own peculiar soul, the work of another artist reciprocally to that -artist and thus, as with a reflecting mirror, to his public. But to -state merely what criticism is, is not to state the doctrine of its -application. And herein, as I see it, is where the theorists fail to -cover full ground. The anatomy of criticism is composed not of one -theory, but of a theory--more or less generally agreed upon--upon which -are reared in turn other theories that are not so generally agreed -upon. The Goethe-Carlyle theory is thus like a three-story building on -which the constructor has left off work after finishing only the first -story. What certain aspects of these other stories may be like, I have -already tried to suggest. - -I have said that, if I have any theory of my own, it is a theory -susceptible in practice of numerous surface changes. These surface -changes often disturb in a measure this or that phase of what lies -at the bottom. Thus, speaking as a critic of the theatre, I find it -impossible to reconcile myself to criticizing acting and drama from the -vantage point of the same theory, say, for example, the Goethe-Carlyle -theory. This theory fits criticism of drama much better than it -fits criticism of acting, just as it fits criticism of painting and -sculpture much more snugly than criticism of music. The means whereby -the emotions are directly affected, and soundly affected, may at times -be critically meretricious, yet the accomplishment itself may be, -paradoxically, artistic. Perhaps the finest acting performance of our -generation is Bernhardt’s Camille: its final effect is tremendous: yet -the means whereby it is contrived are obviously inartistic. Again, -“King Lear,” searched into with critical chill, is artistically a -poor instance of play-making, yet its effect is precisely the effect -striven for. Surely, in cases like these, criticism founded strictly -upon an inflexible theory is futile criticism, and not only futile but -eminently unfair. - -Here, of course, I exhibit still more contradictions, but through -contradictions we may conceivably gain more secure ground. When his -book is once opened, the author’s mouth is shut. (Wilde, I believe, -said that; and though for some peculiar reason it is today regarded as -suicidal to quote the often profound Wilde in any serious argument, -I risk the danger.) But when a dramatist’s play or a composer’s -symphony is opened, the author has only begun to open his mouth. What -results, an emotional art within an intellectual art, calls for a -critical theory within a critical theory. To this composite end, I -offer a suggestion: blend with the Goethe-Carlyle theory that of the -aforementioned Wilde, to wit, that beauty is uncriticizable, since -it has as many meanings as man has moods, since it is the symbol of -symbols, and since it reveals everything because it expresses nothing. -The trouble with criticism--again to pose a contradiction--is that, in -certain instances, it is often too cerebral. Feeling a great thrill of -beauty, it turns to its somewhat puzzled mind and is apprised that the -thrill which it has unquestionably enjoyed from the work of art might -conceivably be of pathological origin, a fremitus or vibration felt -upon percussion of a hydatoid tumour. - -The Goethe-Carlyle theory, properly rigid and unyielding so far as -emotional groundlings are concerned, may, I believe, at times safely -be chucked under the chin and offered a communication of gipsy ardour -by the critic whose emotions are the residuum of trial, test and -experience. - - -III - -Coquelin put it that the footlights exaggerate everything: they modify -the laws of space and of time; they put miles in a few square feet; -they make minutes appear to be hours. Of this exaggeration, dramatic -criticism--which is the branch of criticism of which I treat in -particular--has caught something. Of all the branches of criticism it -is intrinsically the least sober and the least accurately balanced. It -always reminds me somehow of the lash in the hands of Œacus, in “The -Frogs,” falling upon Bacchus and Xanthus to discover which of the two -is the divine, the latter meantime endeavouring to conceal the pain -that would betray their mortality by various transparent dodges. Drama -is a two-souled art: half divine, half clownish. Shakespeare is the -greatest dramatist who ever lived because he alone, of all dramatists, -most accurately sensed the mongrel nature of his art. Criticism of -drama, it follows, is similarly a two-souled art: half sober, half mad. -Drama is a deliberate intoxicant; dramatic criticism, aromatic spirits -of ammonia; the re-creation is never perfect; there is always a trace -of tipsiness left. Even the best dramatic criticism is always just a -little dramatic. It indulges, a trifle, in acting. It can never be -as impersonal, however much certain of its practitioners may try, as -criticism of painting or of sculpture or of literature. This is why the -best criticism of the theatre must inevitably be personal criticism. -The theatre itself is distinctly personal; its address is directly -personal. It holds the mirror not up to nature, but to the spectator’s -individual idea of nature. If it doesn’t, it fails. The spectator, if -he is a critic, merely holds up his own mirror to the drama’s mirror: a -reflection of the first reflection is the result. Dramatic criticism is -this second reflection. And so the best dramatic criticism has about it -a flavour of the unconscious, grotesque and unpremeditated. “When Lewes -was at his business,” Shaw has said, “he seldom remembered that he was -a gentleman or a scholar.” (Shaw was speaking of Lewes’ free use of -vulgarity and impudence whenever they happened to be the proper tools -for his job.) “In this he showed himself a true craftsman, intent on -making the measurements and analyses of his criticism as accurate, and -their expression as clear and vivid, as possible, instead of allowing -himself to be distracted by the vanity of playing the elegant man of -letters, or writing with perfect good taste, or hinting in every -line that he was above his work. In exacting all this from himself, -and taking his revenge by expressing his most laboured conclusions -with a levity that gave them the air of being the unpremeditated -whimsicalities of a man who had perversely taken to writing about the -theatre for the sake of the jest latent in his own outrageous unfitness -for it, Lewes rolled his stone up the hill quite in the modern manner -of Mr. Walkley, dissembling its huge weight, and apparently kicking it -at random hither and thither in pure wantonness.” - -Mr. Spingarn, in his exceptionally interesting, if somewhat overly -indignant, treatise on “Creative Criticism,” provides, it seems to me, -a particularly clear illustration of the manner in which the proponents -of the more modern theories of criticism imprison themselves in the -extravagance of their freedom. While liberating art from all the -old rules of criticism, they simultaneously confine criticism with -the new rules--or ghosts of rules--wherewith they free art. If each -work of art is a unit, a thing in itself, as is commonly agreed, -why should not each work of criticism be similarly a unit, a thing -in itself? If art is, in each and every case, a matter of individual -expression, why should not criticism, in each and every such case, be -similarly and relevantly a matter of individual expression? In freeing -art of definitions, has not criticism been too severely defined? I -believe that it has been. I believe that there may be as many kinds of -criticism as there are kinds of art. I believe that there may be sound -analytical, sound emotional, sound cerebral, sound impressionistic, -sound destructive, sound constructive, and other sound species of -criticism. If art knows no rules, criticism knows no rules--or, at -least, none save those that are obvious. If Brahms’ scherzo in E flat -minor, op. 4, is an entity, a work in and of itself, why shouldn’t -Huneker’s criticism of it be regarded as an entity, a work in and -of itself? If there is in Huneker’s work inspiration from without, -so, too, is there in Brahms’: if Brahms may be held a unit in this -particular instance with no consideration of Chopin, why may not -Huneker with no consideration of Brahms? - -If this is pushing things pretty far, it is the Spingarns who have made -the pushing necessary. “Taste,” says Mr. Spingarn, “must reproduce the -work of art within itself in order to understand and judge it; and -at that moment æsthetic judgment becomes nothing more or less than -creative art itself.” This rings true. But granting the perfection of -the taste, why define and limit the critical creative art thus born of -reproduction? No sooner has a law been enunciated, writes Mr. Spingarn, -than it has been broken by an artist impatient or ignorant of its -restraints, and the critics have been obliged to explain away these -violations of their laws or gradually to change the laws themselves. -If art, he continues, is organic expression, and every work of art -is to be interrogated with the question, “What has it expressed, and -how completely?”, there is no place for the question whether it has -conformed to some convenient classification of critics or to some law -derived from this classification. Once again, truly put. But so, too, -no sooner have laws been enunciated than they have been broken by -critics impatient or ignorant of their restraints, and the critics of -critics have been obliged to explain away these violations of the laws, -or gradually to change the laws themselves. And so, too, have these -works of criticism provided no place for the question whether they have -conformed to some convenient classification of the critics of criticism -or to some law derived from this classification. - -“Criticism,” said Carlyle, his theories apart, “stands like an -interpreter between the inspired and the uninspired, between the -prophet and those who hear the melody of his words, and catch some -glimpse of their material meaning, but understand not their deeper -import.” This is the best definition that I know of. It defines without -defining; it gives into the keeping of the interpreter the hundred -languages of art and merely urges him, with whatever means may best and -properly suit his ends, to translate them clearly to those that do -not understand; it sets him free from the very shackles which Carlyle -himself, removing from art, wound in turn about him. - - - - -II. DRAMA AS AN ART - - - - -II. DRAMA AS AN ART - - -I - -If the best of criticism, in the familiar description of Anatole -France, lies in the adventure of a soul among masterpieces, the best of -drama may perhaps be described as the adventure of a masterpiece among -souls. Drama is fine or impoverished in the degree that it evokes from -such souls a fitting and noble reaction. - -Drama is, in essence, a democratic art in constant brave conflict with -aristocracy of intelligence, soul and emotion. When drama triumphs, -a masterpiece like “Hamlet” comes to life. When the conflict ends -in a draw, a drama half-way between greatness and littleness is the -result--a drama, say, such as “El Gran Galeoto.” When the struggle -ends in defeat, the result is a “Way Down East” or a “Lightnin’.” -This, obviously, is not to say that great drama may not be popular -drama, nor popular drama great drama, for I speak of drama here not -as this play or that, but as a specific art. And it is as a specific -art that it finds its test and trial, not in its own intrinsically -democratic soul, but in the extrinsic aristocratic soul that is taste, -and connoisseurship, and final judgment. Drama that has come to be -at once great and popular has ever first been given the imprimatur, -not of democratic souls, but of aristocratic. Shakespeare and Molière -triumphed over aristocracy of intelligence, soul and emotion before -that triumph was presently carried on into the domain of inferior -intelligence, soul and emotion. In our own day, the drama of Hauptmann, -Shaw and the American O’Neill has come into its popular own only after -it first achieved the imprimatur of what we may term the unpopular, or -undemocratic, theatres. Aristocracy cleared the democratic path for -Ibsen, as it cleared it, in so far as possible, for Rostand and Hugo -von Hofmannsthal. - -Great drama is the rainbow born when the sun of reflection and -understanding smiles anew upon an intelligence and emotion which that -drama has respectively shot with gleams of brilliant lightning and -drenched with the rain of brilliant tears. Great drama, like great -men and great women, is always just a little sad. Only idiots may be -completely happy. Reflection, sympathy, wisdom, gallant gentleness, -experience--the chords upon which great drama is played--these are -wistful chords. The commonplace urge that drama, to be truly great, -must uplift is, in the sense that the word uplift is used, childish. -The mission of great drama is not to make numskulls glad that they are -alive, but to make them speculate why they are permitted to be alive -at all. And since this is the mission of great drama--if its mission -may, indeed, be reduced to any phrase--it combines within itself, -together with this mystical and awe-struck appeal to the proletariat, -a direct and agreeable appeal to such persons as are, by reason of -their metaphysical perception and emotional culture, superior to and -contemptuous of the proletariat. Fine drama, in truth, is usually just -a trifle snobbish. It has no traffic with such souls as are readily -to be made to feel “uplifted” by spurious philosophical nostrums and -emotional sugar pills. Its business is with what the matchless Dryden -hailed “souls of the highest rank and truest understanding”: souls -who find a greater uplift in the noble depressions of Brahms’ first -trio, Bartolommeo’s Madonna della Misericordia, and Joseph Conrad’s -“Youth” than in the easy buoyancies of John Philip Sousa, Howard -Chandler Christy and Rupert Hughes. The aim of great drama is not to -make men happy with themselves as they are, but with themselves as -they might, yet alas cannot, be. As Gautier has it, “The aim of art is -not exact reproduction of nature, but creation, by means of forms and -colours, of a microcosm wherein may be produced dreams, sensations, and -ideas inspired by the aspect of the world.” If drama is irrevocably -a democratic art and uplift of the great masses of men its noblest -end, Mrs. Porter’s “Pollyanna” must endure as a work of dramatic art a -thousand times finer than Corneille’s “Polyeucte.” - -Drama has been strictly defined by the ritualists in a dozen different -ways. “Drama,” says one, “must be based on character, and the action -proceed from character.” “Drama,” stipulates another, “is not an -imitation of men, but of an action and of life: character is subsidiary -to action.” “Drama,” promulgates still another, “is the struggle of a -will against obstacles.” And so on, so on. Rules, rules and more rules. -Pigeon-holes upon pigeon-holes. Good drama is anything that interests -an intelligently emotional group of persons assembled together in an -illuminated hall. Molière, wise among dramatists, said as much, though -in somewhat more, and doubtless too, sweeping words. Throughout the -ages of drama there will be always Romanticists of one sort or another, -brave and splendid spirits, who will have to free themselves from the -definitions and limitations imposed upon them by the neo-Bossus and -Boileaus, and the small portion Voltaires, La Harpes and Marmontels. -Drama is struggle, a conflict of wills? Then what of “Ghosts”? Drama -is action? Then what of “Nachtasyl”? Drama is character? Then what of -“The Dream Play”? “A ‘character’ upon the stage,” wrote the author -of the last named drama, “has become a creature ready-made--a mere -mechanism that drives the man--I do not believe in these theatrical -‘characters.’” - -Of all the higher arts, drama is perhaps the simplest and easiest. -Its anatomy is composed of all the other arts, high and low, stripped -to their elementals. It is a synthesis of those portions of these -other arts that, being elemental, are most easily assimilable on the -part of the multitude. It is a snatch of music, a bit of painting, -a moment of dancing, a slice of sculpture, draped upon the skeleton -of literature. At its highest, it ranks with literature, but never -above it. One small notch below, and it ranks only with itself, in -its own isolated and generically peculiar field. Drama, indeed, is -dancing literature: a hybrid art. It is often purple and splendid; -it is often profoundly beautiful and profoundly moving. Yet, with -a direct appeal to the emotions as its first and encompassing aim, -it has never, even at its finest, been able to exercise the measure -of direct emotional appeal that is exercised, say, by Chopin’s C -sharp minor Nocturne, op. 27, No. 1, or by the soft romance of the -canvases of Palma Vecchio, or by Rodin’s superb “Eternal Spring,” or -by Zola’s “La Terre.” It may, at its finest as at its worst, of course -subjugate and triumph over inexperienced emotionalism, but the greatest -drama of Shakespeare himself has never, in the truthful confession -of cultivated emotionalism, influenced that emotionalism as has the -greatest literature, or the greatest music, or the greatest painting or -sculpture. The splendid music of “Romeo” or “Hamlet” is not so eloquent -and moving as that of “Tristan” or “Lohengrin”; no situation in the -whole of Hauptmann can strike in the heart so thrilling and profound -a chord of pity as a single line in Allegri’s obvious “Miserere.” The -greatest note of comedy in drama falls short of the note of comedy in -the “Coffee-Cantata” of Bach; the greatest note of ironic remorse -falls short of that in the scherzo in B minor of Chopin; the greatest -intellectual note falls short of that in the first and last movements -of the C minor symphony of Brahms. What play of Sudermann’s has the -direct appeal of “The Indian Lily”? What play made out of Hardy’s -“Tess,” however adroitly contrived, retains the powerful appeal of -the original piece of literature? To descend, what obvious thrill -melodrama, designed frankly for dollars, has--with all its painstaking -and deliberate intent--yet succeeded in provoking half the thrill and -shock of the obvious second chapter of Andreas Latzko’s equally obvious -“Men in War”? - -Art is an evocation of beautiful emotions: art is art in the degree -that it succeeds in this evocation: drama succeeds in an inferior -degree. Whatever emotion drama may succeed brilliantly in evoking, -another art succeeds in evoking more brilliantly. - - -II - -Although, of course, one speaks of drama here primarily in the sense -of acted drama, it is perhaps not necessary so strictly to confine -one’s self. For when the critic confines himself in his discussion -of drama to the acted drama, he regularly brings upon himself from -other critics--chiefly bookish fellows whose theatrical knowledge -is meagre--the very largely unwarranted embarrassment of arguments -anent “crowd psychology” and the like which, while they have little -or nothing to do with the case, none the less make a certain deep -impression upon his readers. (Readers of criticism become automatically -critics; with his first sentence, the critic challenges his -critic-reader’s sense of argument.) This constantly advanced contention -of “crowd psychology,” of which drama is supposed to be at once master -and slave, has small place in a consideration of drama, from whatever -sound point of view one elects to consider the latter. If “crowd -psychology” operates in the case of theatre drama, it operates also in -the case of concert-hall music. Yet no one so far as I know seriously -maintains that, in a criticism of music, this “crowd psychology” has -any place. - -I have once before pointed out that, even accepting the theory of -crowd psychology and its direct and indirect implications so far as -drama is concerned, it is as nonsensical to assume that one thousand -persons assembled together before a drama in a theatre are, by -reason of their constituting a crowd, any more likely to be moved -automatically than the same crowd of one thousand persons assembled -together before a painting in an art gallery. Furthermore, the theory -that collective intelligence and emotionalism are a more facile and -ingenuous intelligence and emotionalism, while it may hold full water -in the psychological laboratory, holds little in actual external -demonstration, particularly in any consideration of a crowd before one -of the arts. While it may be true that the Le Bon and Tarde theory -applies aptly to the collective psychology of a crowd at a prize-fight -or a bull-fight or a circus, one may be permitted severe doubts that -it holds equally true of a crowd in a theatre or in an art gallery -or in a concert hall. The tendency of such a latter group is not -æsthetically downward, but upward. And not only æsthetically, but -intellectually and emotionally. (I speak, of course, and with proper -relevance, of a crowd assembled to hear good drama or good music, or -to see good painting. The customary obscuring tactic of critics in -this situation is to argue out the principles of intelligent reaction -to good drama in terms of yokel reaction to bad drama. Analysis of -the principles of sound theatre drama and the reaction of a group of -eight hundred citizens of Marion, Ohio, to “The Two Orphans” somehow do -not seem to me to be especially apposite.) The fine drama or the fine -piece of music does not make its auditor part of a crowd; it removes -him, and every one else in the crowd, from the crowd, and makes him an -individual. The crowd ceases to exist as a crowd; it becomes a crowd -of units, of separate individuals. The dramas of Mr. Owen Davis make -crowds; the dramas of Shakespeare make individuals. - -The argument to the contrary always somewhat grotesquely assumes that -the crowd assembled at a fine play, and promptly susceptible to group -psychology, is a new crowd, one that has never attended a fine play -before. Such an assumption falls to pieces in two ways. Firstly, it -is beyond reason to believe that it is true in more than one instance -out of a hundred; and secondly it would not be true even if it were -true. For, granting that a crowd of one thousand persons were seeing -great drama for the first time in their lives, what reason is there -for believing that the majority of persons in the crowd who had never -seen great drama and didn’t know exactly what to make of it would be -swayed and influenced by the minority who had never seen great drama -but did know what to make of it? If this were true, no great drama -could ever possibly fail in the commercial theatre. Or, to test the -hypothesis further, take it the other way round. What reason is there -for believing that the majority in this crowd would be moved the one -way or the other, either by a minority that did understand the play, or -did not understand it? Or take it in another way still. What reason is -there for believing that the minority in this crowd who did know what -the drama was about would be persuaded emotionally by the majority who -did not know what the drama was about? - -Theories, and again theories. But the facts fail to support them. -Take the lowest type of crowd imaginable, one in which there is not -one cultured man in a thousand--the crowd, say, at a professional -American baseball game--and pack it into an American equivalent for -Reinhardt’s Grosses Schauspielhaus. The play, let us say, is “Œdipus -Rex.” At the ball game, the crowd psychology of Le Bon operated to the -full. But what now? Would the crowd, in the theatre and before a great -drama, be the same crowd? Would it not be an entirely different crowd? -Would not its group psychology promptly and violently suffer a sudden -change? Whether out of curiosity, disgust, admiration, social shame -or what not, would it not rapidly segregate itself, spiritually or -physically, into various groups? What is the Le Bon theatrical view of -the crowd psychology that somehow didn’t come off during the initial -engagement of Barrie’s “Peter Pan” in Washington, D. C.? Or of the -crowd psychology that worked the other way round when Ibsen was first -played in London? Or of the crowd psychology that, operating regularly, -if artificially, at the New York premières, most often fails, for all -its high enthusiasm, to move either the minority or the majority in its -composition? - -The question of sound drama and the pack psychology of a congress -of groundlings is a famous one: it gets nowhere. Sound drama and -sound audiences are alone to be considered at one and the same time. -And, as I have noted, the tendency of willing, or even semi-willing, -auditors and spectators is in an upward direction, not a downward. No -intelligent spectator at a performance of “Ben Hur” has ever been made -to feel like throwing his hat into the air and cheering by the similar -actions of the mob spectators to the left and right of him. No ignoble -auditor of “The Laughter of the Gods” but has been made to feel, in -some part, the contagion of cultivated appreciation to _his_ left and -right. “I forget,” wrote Sarcey, in a consideration of the subject of -which we have been treating, “what tyrant it was of ancient Greece to -whom massacres were every-day affairs, but who wept copiously over the -misfortunes of a heroine in a tragedy. He was the audience; and for the -one evening clothed himself in the sentiments of the public.” A typical -example of sophisticated reasoning. How does Sarcey know that it was -not the rest of the audience--the crowd--that was influenced by this -repentant and copiously lachrymose individual, rather than that it was -this individual who was moved by the crowd? - -If fallacies perchance insinuate themselves into these opposing -contentions, it is a case of fallacy versus fallacy: my intent is not -so much to prove anything as to indicate the presence of holes in the -proofs of the other side. These holes seem to me to be numerous, and of -considerable circumference. A description of two of them may suffice to -suggest the rest. Take, as the first of these, the familiar Castelvetro -doctrine that, since a theatrical audience is not a select congress but -a motley crowd, the dramatist, ever conscious of the group psychology, -must inevitably avoid all themes and ideas unintelligible to such a -gathering. It may be true that a theatrical audience is not a select -congress, but why confine the argument to theatrical audiences and seek -thus to prove something of drama that may be proved as well--if one is -given to such idiosyncrasies--of music? What, as I have said before, -of opera and concert hall audiences? Consider the average audience -at Covent Garden, the Metropolitan, Carnegie Hall. Is it any way -culturally superior to the average audience at the St. James’s Theatre, -or the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre, or the Plymouth--or even the Neighbourhood -Playhouse down in Grand Street? What of the audiences who attended -the original performances of Beethoven’s “Leonore” (“Fidelio”), -Berlioz’s “Benvenuto Cellini,” the original performances of Wagner -in France and the performances of his “Der Fliegende Holländer” in -Germany, the operas of Händel in England in the years 1733-37, the -work of Rossini in Italy, the concerts of Chopin during his tour of -England and Scotland?... Again, as to the imperative necessity of the -dramatist’s avoidance of all themes and ideas unintelligible to a mob -audience, what of the success among such very audiences of--to name but -a few more recent profitably produced and locally readily recognizable -examples--Shaw’s “Getting Married,” Augustus Thomas’ “The Witching -Hour,” Ibsen’s “The Wild Duck,” Dunsany’s “The Laughter of the Gods,” -Barrie’s “Mary Rose,” Strindberg’s “The Father,” Synge’s “Playboy”?... -Surely it will be quickly allowed that however obvious the themes and -ideas of these plays may be to the few, they are hardly within the -ready intelligence of what the theorists picture as the imaginary mob -theatre audience. Fine drama is independent of all such theories: the -dramatist who subscribes to them should not figure in any treatise upon -drama as an art. - -A second illustration: the equivocation to the effect that drama, -being a democratic art, may not properly be evaluated in terms of -more limited, and aristocratic, taste. It seems to me, at least, an -idiotic assumption that drama is a more democratic art than music. All -great art is democratic in intention, if not in reward. Michelangelo, -Shakespeare, Wagner and Zola are democratic artists, and their art -democratic art. It is criticism of Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Wagner -and Zola that is aristocratic. Criticism, not art, generically wears -the ermine and the purple. To appraise a democratic art in terms of -democracy is to attempt to effect a chemical reaction in nitrogen with -nitrogen. If drama is, critically, a democratic art since it is meant -not to be read by the few but to be played before the many, music must -be critically no less a democratic art. Yet the theorists conveniently -overlook this embarrassment. Nevertheless, if Shakespeare’s dramas -were designed for the heterogeneous ear, so, too, were the songs of -Schumann. No great artist has ever in his heart deliberately fashioned -his work for a remote and forgotten cellar, dark and stairless. He -fashions it, for all his doubts, in the hope of hospitable eyes and -ears, and in the hope of a sun to shine upon it. It is as ridiculous -to argue that because Shakespeare’s is a democratic art it must be -criticized in terms of democratic reaction to it as it would be to -argue that because the United States is a democracy the most acute -and comprehensive criticism of that democracy must lie in a native -democrat’s reaction to it. “To say that the theatre is for the people,” -says Gordon Craig, “is necessary. But to forget to add that part and -parcel of the people is the aristocracy, whether of birth or feeling, -is an omission. A man of the eighteenth century, dressed in silks, in -a fashionable loggia in the theatre at Versailles, looking as if he -did no work (as Voltaire in his youth may have looked), presents, in -essence, exactly the same picture as Walt Whitman in his rough gray -suit lounging in the Bowery, also looking as if he did no work.... One -the aristocrat, one the democrat: the two are identical.” - - -III - -“Convictions,” said Nietzsche, “are prisons.” Critical “theories,” with -negligible exception, seek to denude the arts of their splendid, gipsy -gauds and to force them instead to don so many duplicated black and -white striped uniforms. Of all the arts, drama has suffered most in -this regard. Its critics, from the time of Aristotle, have bound and -fettered it, and have then urged it impassionedly to soar. Yet, despite -its shackles, it has triumphed, and each triumph has been a derision -of one of its most famous and distinguished critics. It triumphed, -through Shakespeare, over Aristotle; it triumphed, through Molière, -over Castelvetro; it triumphed, through Lemercier, over Diderot; it -triumphed, through Lessing, over Voltaire; it triumphed, through -Ibsen, over Flaubert; it has triumphed, through Hauptmann, over Sarcey -and, through Schnitzler and Bernard Shaw, over Mr. Archer. The truth -perhaps is that drama is an art as flexible as the imaginations of its -audiences. It is no more to be bound by rules and theories than such -imaginations are to be bound by rules and theories. Who so all-wise -that he may say by what rules or set of rules living imaginations -and imaginations yet unborn are to be fanned into theatrical flame? -“Imagination,” Samuel Johnson’s words apply to auditor as to artist, -“a licentious and vagrant faculty, unsusceptible of limitations and -impatient of restraint, has always endeavoured to baffle the logician, -to perplex the confines of distinction, and burst the inclosures of -regularity.” And further, “There is therefore scarcely any species -of writing of which we can tell what is its essence, and what are -its constituents; every new genius produces some innovation which, -when invented and approved, subverts the rules which the practice of -foregoing authors had established.” - -Does the play interest, and whom? This seems to me to be the only -doctrine of dramatic criticism that is capable of supporting itself -soundly. First, does the play interest? In other words, how far has the -dramatist succeeded in expressing himself, and the materials before -him, intelligently, eloquently, symmetrically, beautifully? So much for -the criticism of the dramatist as an artist. In the second place, whom -does the play interest? Does it interest inferior persons, or does it -interest cultivated and artistically sensitive persons? So much for the -criticism of the artist as a dramatist. - -The major difficulty with critics of the drama has always been that, -having once positively enunciated their critical credos, they have -been constrained to devote their entire subsequent enterprise and -ingenuity to defending the fallacies therein. Since a considerable -number of these critics have been, and are, extraordinarily shrewd and -ingenious men, these defences of error have often been contrived with -such persuasive dexterity and reasonableness that they have endured -beyond the more sound doctrines of less deft critics, doctrines which, -being sound, have suffered the rebuffs that gaunt, grim logic, ever -unprepossessing and unhypnotic, suffers always. “I hope that I am -right; if I am not right, I am still right,” said Brunetière. “Mr. -William Archer is not only, like myself, a convinced, inflexible -determinist,” Henry Arthur Jones has written, “I am persuaded that -he is also, unlike myself, a consistent one. I am sure he takes care -that his practice agrees with his opinions--even when they are wrong.” -Dramatic criticism is an attempt to formulate rules of conduct for the -lovable, wayward, charming, wilful vagabond that is the drama. For the -drama is an art with a feather in its cap and an ironic smile upon its -lips, sauntering impudently over forbidden lawns and through closed -lanes into the hearts of those of us children of the world who have -never grown up. Beside literature, it is the Mother Goose of the arts: -a gorgeous and empurpled Mother Goose for the fireside of impressible -and romantic youth that, looking upward, leans ever hushed and -expectant at the knee of life. It is a fairy tale told realistically, -a true story told as romance. It is the lullaby of disillusion, the -chimes without the cathedral, the fears and hopes and dreams and -passions of those who cannot fully fear and hope and dream and flame of -themselves. - -“The drama must have reality,” so Mr. P. P. Howe in his engaging -volume of “Dramatic Portraits,” “but the first essential to our -understanding of an art is that we should not believe it to be actual -life. The spectator who shouts his warning and advice to the heroine -when the villain is approaching is, in the theatre, the only true -believer in the hand of God; and he is liable to find it in a drama -lower than the best.” The art of the drama is one which imposes -upon drama the obligation of depicting at once the inner processes -of life realistically, and the external aspects of life delusively. -Properly and sympathetically to appreciate drama, one must look upon -it synchronously with two different eyes: the one arguing against -the other as to the truth of what it sees, and triumphing over this -doubtful other with the full force of its sophistry. Again inevitably -to quote Coleridge, “Stage presentations are to produce a sort of -temporary half-faith, which the spectator encourages in himself and -supports by a voluntary contribution on his own part, because he knows -that it is at all times in his power to see the thing as it really is. -Thus the true stage illusion as to a forest scene consists, not in the -mind’s judging it to be a forest, but in its remission of the judgment -that it is not a forest.” This obviously applies to drama as well as -to dramatic investiture. One never for a moment believes absolutely -that Mr. John Barrymore is Richard III; one merely agrees, for the sake -of Shakespeare, who has written the play, and Mr. Hopkins, who has -cast it, that Mr. John Barrymore is Richard III, that one may receive -the ocular, aural and mental sensations for which one has paid three -dollars and a half. Nor does one for a moment believe that Mr. Walter -Hampden, whom that very evening one has seen dividing a brobdingnagian -dish of goulash with Mr. Oliver Herford in the Player’s Club and -discussing the prospects of the White Sox, is actually speaking -extemporaneously the rare verbal embroideries of Shakespeare; or that -Miss Ethel Barrymore who is billed in front of Browne’s Chop House to -take a star part in the Actors’ Equity Association’s benefit, is really -the queen of a distant kingdom. - -The dramatist, in the theatre, is not a worker in actualities, but in -the essence of actualities that filters through the self-deception of -his spectators. There is no such thing as realism in the theatre: there -is only mimicry of realism. There is no such thing as romance in the -theatre: there is only mimicry of romance. There is no such thing as an -automatic dramatic susceptibility in a theatre audience: there is only -a volitional dramatic susceptibility. Thus, it is absurd to speak of -the drama holding the mirror up to nature; all that the drama can do -is to hold nature up to its own peculiar mirror which, like that in a -pleasure-park carousel, amusingly fattens up nature, or shrinks it, yet -does not at any time render it unrecognizable. One does not go to the -theatre to see life and nature; one goes to see the particular way in -which life and nature happen to look to a cultivated, imaginative and -entertaining man who happens, in turn, to be a playwright. Drama is the -surprising pulling of a perfectly obvious, every-day rabbit out of a -perfectly obvious, every-day silk hat. The spectator has seen thousands -of rabbits and thousands of silk hats, but he has never seen a silk hat -that had a rabbit concealed in it, and he is curious about it. - -But if drama is essentially mimetic, so also--as Professor Gilbert -Murray implies--is criticism essentially mimetic in that it is -representative of the work criticized. It is conceivable that one may -criticize Mr. Ziegfeld’s “Follies” in terms of the “Philoctetes” of -Theodectes--I myself have been guilty of even more exceptional feats; -it is not only conceivable, but of common occurrence, for certain of -our academic American critics to criticize the plays of Mr. Shaw in -terms of Scribe and Sardou, and with a perfectly straight face; but -criticism in general is a chameleon that takes on something of the -colour of the pattern upon which it imposes itself. There is drama -in Horace’s “Epistola ad Pisones,” a criticism of drama. There is -the spirit of comedy in Hazlitt’s essay “On the Comic Writers of the -Last Century.” Dryden’s “Essay on Dramatic Poesy” is poetry. There -is something of the music of Chopin in Huneker’s critical essays on -Chopin, and some of Mary Garden’s spectacular histrionism in his essay -on her acting. Walkley, criticizing “L’Enfant Prodigue,” uses the pen -of Pierrot. Criticism, more than drama with her mirror toward nature, -holds the mirror up to the nature of the work it criticizes. Its end -is the revivification of the passion of art which has been spent in -its behalf, but under the terms laid down by Plato. Its aim is to -reconstruct a great work of art on a diminutive scale, that eyes -which are not capable of gazing on high may have it within the reach -of their vision. Its aim is to play again all the full richness of -the artist’s emotional organ tones, in so far as is possible, on the -cold cerebral xylophone that is criticism’s deficient instrument. In -the accomplishment of these aims, it is bound by no laws that art is -not bound by. There is but one rule: there are no rules. Art laughs at -locksmiths. - -It has been a favourite diversion of critics since Aristotle’s day to -argue that drama is drama, whether one reads it from a printed page -or sees it enacted in a theatre. Great drama, they announce, is great -drama whether it ever be acted or not; “it speaks with the same voice -in solitude as in crowds”; and “all the more then”--again I quote Mr. -Spingarn--“will the drama itself ‘even apart from representation and -actors,’ as old Aristotle puts it, speak with its highest power to the -imagination fitted to understand and receive it.” Upon this point of -view much of the academic criticism of drama has been based. But may -we not well reply that, for all the fact that Shakespeare would still -be the greatest dramatist who ever lived had he never been played in -the theatre, so, too, would Bach still be the greatest composer who -ever lived had his compositions never been played at all? If drama is -not meant for actors, may we not also argue that music is not meant for -instruments? Are not such expedients less sound criticism than clever -evasion of sound criticism: a frolicsome and agreeable straddling -of the æsthetic see-saw? There is the printed drama--criticize it. -There is the same drama acted--criticize it. Why quibble? Sometimes, -as in the case of “Gioconda” and Duse, they are one. Well and good. -Sometimes, as in the case of “Chantecler” and Maude Adams, they are not -one. Well and good. But where, in either case, the confusion that the -critics lay such stress upon? These critics deal not with theories, -but with mere words. They take two dozen empty words and adroitly seek -therewith to fashion a fecund theory. The result is--words. “Words -which,” said Ruskin, “if they are not watched, will do deadly work -sometimes. There are masked words droning and skulking about us just -now ... (there never were so many, owing to the teaching of catechisms -and phrases at school instead of human meanings) ... there never were -creatures of prey so mischievous, never diplomatists so cunning, -never poisoners so deadly, as these masked words: they are the unjust -stewards of men’s ideas....” - - - - -III. THE PLACE OF THE THEATRE - - - - -III. THE PLACE OF THE THEATRE - - -I - -The theatre stands in relation to drama much as the art gallery -stands in relation to painting. Its aim is to set off drama in such -surroundings and in such light as to bring it within the comfortable -vision and agreeable scrutiny of the nomad public. To say that fine -drama may produce an equal effect read as acted may be true or not as -you choose, but so too a fine painting may produce an equal effect -beheld in one’s library as in the Uffizi. Art thrives--art leads to -art--on sympathy and a measure of general understanding. Otherwise, -of what use criticism? To divorce the theatre from a consideration of -drama as an art, to contend, as it has been contended from Aristotle’s -day to Corneille’s, and from Dryden’s and Lamb’s to our own, that -“the more lasting and noble design” of drama rests in a reading rather -than a seeing, may be, strictly, a logical æsthetic manœuvre, but -equally a logical æsthetic manœuvre would be a divorcement of canvas -from painting as an art. The theatre is the canvas of drama. The -printed drama is like a bubbling and sunlit spring, encountered only -by wanderers into the hills and awaiting the bottling process of the -theatre to carry its tonic waters far and wide among an expectant and -emotionally ill people. - -The criticism that nominates itself to hold drama and the theatre as -things apart is a criticism which, for all its probable integrity and -reason, suffers from an excessive aristocracy, like a duchess in a play -by Mr. Sydney Grundy. Its æsthetic nose is elevated to such a degree -that it may no longer serve as a practical organ of earthly smell, -but merely as a quasi-wax feature to round out the symmetry of the -face. It is criticism in a stiff corset, erect, immobile, lordly--like -the Prussian lieutenant of yesterday, a striking figure, yet just a -little absurd. It is sound, but like many things that are sound in -æsthetics, it has its weak points, even its confounding points. For -they say that propaganda can have no place in art, and along comes a -Hauptmann and writes a “Weavers.” Or they say that art is form, and -along comes a Richard Strauss and composes two songs for baritone and -orchestra that set the critics to a mad chasing of their own tails. Or, -opposing criticism as an art, they say that “criticism is art in form, -but its content is judgment, which takes it out of the intuitional -world into the conceptual world”--and along comes an H. G. Wells with -his “The New Machiavelli” which, like criticism, is art in form and -its content judgment. To hold that the drama as an art may achieve -its highest end read by the individual and not acted in the theatre, -is to hold that music as an art may achieve its highest end played by -but one instrument and not by an orchestra. The theatre is the drama’s -orchestra: upon the wood of its boards and the wind of its puppets is -the melody of drama in all its full richness sounded. What if drama -is art and the theatre not art? What if “Hamlet” is art and electric -lights and cheese-cloth are not art? Schubert’s piano trio, op. 99, -is art, and a pianoforte is a mere wooden box containing a number of -little hammers that hit an equal number of steel and copper wires. -What if I can read a full imagination into “Romeo and Juliet” and thus -people it and make it live for me, without going to the theatre? So, -too, can I read a full melody into the manuscript of a song by Hugo -Wolf and thus make it sing for me, without going to a concert hall. But -why? Is there only one way to appreciate and enjoy art--and since when? -Wagner on a single violin is Wagner; Wagner on all the orchestra is -super-Wagner. To read a great drama is to play “Parsifal” on a cornet -and an oboe. - -The object of the theatre is not, as is habitually maintained, a -shrewd excitation of the imagination of a crowd, but rather a shrewd -relaxation of that imagination. It is a faulty axiom that holds the -greatest actor in the theatre to be an audience’s imagination, and -the adroit cultivation of the latter to be ever productive of large -financial return. As I have on more than one occasion pointed out from -available and acutely relevant statistics, the more a dramatist relies -upon the imagination, of an audience, the less the box-office reward -that is his. An audience fills a theatre auditorium not so eager to -perform with its imagination as to have its imagination performed -upon. This is not the paradox it may superficially seem to be. The -difference is the difference between a prompt commercial failure like -Molnar’s “Der Gardeofficier” (“Where Ignorance Is Bliss”) which asks -an audience to perform with its imagination and a great commercial -success like Barrie’s “Peter Pan” which performs upon the audience’s -imagination by supplying to it every detail of imagination, ready-made -and persuasively labelled. The theatre is not a place to which one -goes in search of the unexplored corners of one’s imagination; it is -a place to which one goes in repeated search of the familiar corners -of one’s imagination. The moment the dramatist works in the direction -of unfamiliar corners, he is lost. This, contradictorily enough, is -granted by the very critics who hold to the imagination fallacy which -I have just described. They unanimously agree that a dramatist’s most -successful cultivation of an audience lies in what they term, and -nicely, the mood of recognition, and in the same breath paradoxically -contend that sudden imaginative shock is a desideratum no less. - -In this pleasant remission of the active imagination lies one of the -secrets of the charm of the theatre. Nor is the theatre alone in -this. On even the higher plane of the authentic arts a measure of the -same phenomenon assists in what may perhaps not too far-fetchedly be -termed the negative stimulation of the spectator’s fancy. For all the -pretty and winning words to the contrary, no person capable of sound -introspection will admit that a beautiful painting like Giorgione’s -“The Concert” or a beautiful piece of sculpture like Pisano’s Perugian -fountain actually and literally stirs his imagination, and sets it -a-sail across hitherto uncharted æsthetic seas. What such a painting -or piece of sculpture does is to reach out and, with its overpowering -beauty, encompass and æsthetically fence in the antecedent wandering -and uncertain imagination of its spectator. As in the instance of -drama, it does not so much awaken a dormant imagination as soothe an -imagination already awake. Of all the arts, music alone remains a -telegrapher of unborn dreams. - -The theatre brings to the art of drama concrete movement, concrete -colour, and concrete final effectiveness: this, in all save a few minor -particulars. The art of drama suffers, true enough, when the theatre, -even at its finest, is challenged by it to produce the values intrinsic -in its ghost of a dead king, or in its battle on Bosworth Field, or in -its ship torn by the tempest, or in its fairy wood on midsummer night, -or in its approaching tread of doom of the gods of the mountain. But -for each such defeat it prospers doubly in the gifts that the theatre -brings to it. Such gifts as the leader Craig has brought to the -furtherance of the beauty of “Electra” and “Hamlet,” as Reinhardt and -his aides have brought to “Ariadne” and “Julius Cæsar,” as Golovine -and Appia and Bakst and Linnebach and half a dozen others have -brought to the classics that have called to them, are not small ones. -They have crystallized the glory of drama, have taken so many loose -jewels and given them substantial and appropriate settings which have -fittingly posed their radiance. To say that the reading imagination -of the average cultured man is superior in power of suggestion and -depiction to the imagination of the theatre is idiotically to say that -the reading imagination of every average cultured man is superior in -these powers to the combined theatrical imaginations of Gordon Craig, -Max Reinhardt and Eleanora Duse operating jointly upon the same play. -Even a commonplace imagination can successfully conjure up a landscape -more beautiful than any painted by Poussin or Gainsborough, or jewels -more opalescent than any painted by Rembrandt, or a woman’s dress more -luminous than any painted by Fortuny, or nymphs more beguiling than -any of Rubens’, yet who so foolish to say--as they are wont foolishly -to say of reading imagination and the drama--that such an imagination -is therefore superior to that of the artists? This, in essence, is -none the less the serious contention of those who decline to reconcile -themselves to the theatrically produced drama. This contention, reduced -to its skeleton, is that, since the vice-president of the Corn Exchange -Bank can picture the chamber in the outbuilding adjoining Gloster’s -castle more greatly to his satisfaction than Adolphe Appia can picture -it for him on the stage, the mental performance of the former is -therefore a finer artistic achievement than the stage performance of -the latter. - - -II - -The word imagination leads critics to queer antics. It is, perhaps, -the most manhandled word in our critical vocabulary. It is used -almost invariably in its literal meaning: no shades and shadows are -vouchsafed to it. Imagination, in good truth, is not the basis of art, -but an overtone. Many an inferior artist has a greater imagination -than many a superior artist. Maeterlinck’s imagination is much richer -than Hauptmann’s, Erik Satie’s is much richer than César Franck’s, -and I am not at all certain that Romain Rolland’s is not twice as -opulent as Thomas Hardy’s. Imagination is the slave of the true artist, -the master of the weak. The true artist beats imagination with the -cat-o’-nine-tails of his individual technic until it cries out in pain, -and this pain is the work of art which is born. The inferior craftsman -comfortably confounds imagination with the finished work, and so pets -and coddles it; and imagination’s resultant mincings and giggles he -then vaingloriously sets forth as resolute art. - -The theatre offers to supplement, embroider and enrich the imagination -of the reader of drama with the imaginations of the actor, the scene -designer, the musician, the costumer and the producing director. -Each of these, before he sets himself to his concrete task, has--like -the lay reader--sought the fruits of his own reading imagination. -The fruits of these five reading imaginations are then assembled, -carefully assorted, and the most worthy of them deftly burbanked. -The final staging of the drama is merely a staging of these best -fruits of the various reading imaginations. To say, against this, -that it is most often impossible to render a reading imagination into -satisfactory concrete forms is doubtless to say what is, strictly, -true. But art itself is at its highest merely an approach toward -limitless imagination and beauty. Æsthetics is a pilgrim on the road to -a Mecca that is ever just over the sky-line. Of how many great works -of art can one say, with complete and final conviction, that art in -this particular direction can conceivably go no farther? Is it not -conceivable that some super-Michelangelo will some day fashion an even -more perfect “Slave,” and some super-Shakespeare an even more beautiful -poetic drama? - -The detractors of the theatre are often expert in persuasive -half-truths and masters of dialectic sleight-of-hand. Their -performances are often so adroit that the spectator is quick to believe -that the trunk is really empty, yet the false bottom is there for -all its cunning concealment. Take, for example, George Moore, in the -preface to his last play, “The Coming of Gabrielle.” “The illusion -created by externals, scenes, costumes, lighting and short sentences -is in itself illusory,” he professes to believe, though why he numbers -the dramatist’s short sentences among the externals of the stage -is not quite clear. “The best performances of plays and operas are -witnessed at rehearsals. Jean de Reszke was never so like Tristan at -night as he was in the afternoon when he sang the part in a short -jacket, a bowler hat and an umbrella in his hand. The chain armour and -the plumes that he wore at night were but a distraction, setting our -thoughts on periods, on the short swords in use in the ninth century in -Ireland or in Cornwall, on the comfort or the discomfort of the ships -in which the lovers were voyaging, on the absurd night-dress which -is the convention that Isolde should appear in, a garment she never -wore and which we know to be make-believe. But the hat and feathers -that Isolde appears in when she rehearses the part are forgotten the -moment she sings; and if I had to choose to see Forbes-Robertson play -Hamlet or rehearse Hamlet, I should not hesitate for a moment. The -moment he speaks he ceases to be a modern man, but in black hose the -illusion ceases, for we forget the Prince of Denmark and remember the -mummer.” Years ago, in a volume of critical essays given the title -“Another Book on the Theatre,” I took a boyish delight in setting off -precisely the same noisy firework just to hear the folks in the piazza -rocking-chairs let out a yell. These half-truths serve criticism as -sauce serves asparagus: they give tang to what is otherwise often -tasteless food. This is particularly true with criticism at its most -geometrical and profound, since such criticism, save in rare instances, -is not especially lively reading. But, nevertheless, the sauce is not -the asparagus. And when Mr. Moore (doubtless with his tongue in his -cheek) observes that he can much more readily imagine the lusty Frau -Tillie Pfirsich-Melba as Isolde in a pink and green ostrich feather hat -confected in some Friedrichstrasse atelier than in the customary stage -trappings, he allows, by implication, that he might even more readily -imagine the elephantine lady as the seductive Carmen if she had no -clothes on at all. - -This is the trouble with paradoxes. It is not that they prove too -little, as is believed of them, but that they prove altogether -too much. If the illusion created by stage externals is in itself -illusory, as Mr. Moore says, the complete deletion of all such stage -externals should be the best means for providing absolute illusion. -Yet the complete absence of illusion where this is the case is all too -familiar to any of us who have looked on such spectacles as “The Bath -of Phryne” and the like in the theatres of Paris. A prodigality of -stage externals does not contribute to disillusion, but to illusion. -These externals have become, through protracted usage, so familiar -that they are, so to speak, scarcely seen: they are taken by the eye -for granted. By way of proof, one need only consider two types of -Shakespearian production, one like that of Mr. Robert Mantell and one -like that lately employed for “Macbeth” by Mr. Arthur Hopkins. Where -the overladen stereotyped first production paradoxically fades out of -the picture for the spectator and leaves the path of illusion clear -for him, the superlatively simple second production, almost wholly -bereft of familiar externals, arrests and fixes his attention and -makes illusion impossible. It is true, of course, that all this may be -changed in time, when the deletion of externals by the new stagecraft -shall have become a convention of the theatre as the heavy laying-on of -externals is a convention at present. But, as things are today, these -externals are, negatively, the most positive contributors to illusion. - -It is the misfortune of the theatre that critics have almost always -approached it, and entered it, with a defiant and challenging air. I -have, during the eighteen years of my active critical service, met -with and come to know at least fifty professional critics in America, -in England and on the Continent, and among all this number there -have been but four who have approached the theatre enthusiastically -prejudiced in its favour--two of them asses. But between the one large -group that has been critically hostile and the other smaller group -that has been uncritically effervescent, I have encountered no sign -of calm and reasoned compromise, no sign of frank and intelligent -willingness to regard each and every theatre as a unit, and so to be -appraised, instead of lumping together good and bad theatres alike -and labelling the heterogeneous mass “the theatre.” There is no such -thing as “the theatre.” There is this theatre, that theatre, and still -that other theatre. Each is a unit. To talk of “the theatre” is to -talk of the Greek theatre, the Elizabethan theatre and the modern -theatre in one breath, or to speak simultaneously of the Grosses -Schauspielhaus of Max Reinhardt and the Eltinge Theatre of Mr. A. -H. Woods. “The theatre,” of course, has certain more or less minor -constant and enduring conventions--at least, so it seems as far as we -now can tell--but so, too, has chirography, yet we do not speak of “the -chirography.” There are some theatres--I use the word in its proper -restricted sense--that glorify drama and enhance its beauty; there are -others that vitiate drama. But so also are there some men who write -fine drama, and others who debase drama to mere fodder for witlings.... -The Shakespeare of the theatre of Gordon Craig is vivid and brilliant -beauty. Call it art or not art as you will--what does a label matter? -The Molière of the theatre of Alexander Golovine is suggestive and -exquisite enchantment. Call it art or not art as you will--what does -a label matter? The Wagner of the opera house of Ludwig Sievert is -triumphant and rapturous splendour. Call it anything you like--and -again, what does a label matter? There are too many labels in the -world. - - - - -IV. THE PLACE OF ACTING - - - - -IV. THE PLACE OF ACTING - - -I - -“When Mr. Nathan says that acting is not an art, of course he is -talking arrant rot--who could doubt it, after witnessing a performance -by the great Duse?” So, the estimable actor, Mr. Arnold Daly. Whether -acting is or is not an art, it is not my concern at the moment to -consider, yet I quote the _riposte_ of Mr. Daly as perhaps typical of -those who set themselves as defenders of the yea theory. It seems to -me that if this is a satisfactory _touche_ no less satisfactory should -be some such like rejoinder as: “When Mr. Nathan says that acting _is_ -an art, of course he is talking arrant rot--who could doubt it, after -witnessing a performance by Mr. Corse Payton.” - -If an authentic art is anything which may properly be founded upon an -exceptionally brilliant performance, then, by virtue of the Reverend -Doctor Ernest M. Stires’ brilliant performance in it, is pulpiteering -an art, and, on the strength of Miss Bird Millman’s brilliant -performance in it, is tight-rope walking an art no less. Superficially -a mere dialectic monkey-trick, this is yet perhaps not so absurd as it -may seem, for if Duse’s art lies in the fact that she breathes life and -dynamic effect into the written word of the artist D’Annunzio, Stires’ -lies in the more substantial fact that he breathes life and dynamic -effect into the word of the somewhat greater, and more evasive artist, -God. And Miss Millman, too, brings to her quasi-art, movement, colour, -rhythm, beauty and--one may even say--a sense of fantastic character, -since the effect she contrives is less that of a dumpy little woman -in a short white skirt pirouetting on a taut wire than of an unreal -creature, half bird, half woman, out of some forgotten fable. - -The circumstance that Duse is an artist who happens to be an actress -does not make acting an art any more than the circumstance that Villon -was an artist who happened to be a burglar or that Paderewski is an -artist who happens to be a politician makes burglary and politics arts. -Duse is an artist first, and an actress second: one need only look into -her very great share in the creation of the dramas bearing the name of -D’Annunzio to reconcile one’s self--if not too stubborn, at least in -part--to this point of view. So, also, were Clairon, Rachel and Jane -Hading artists apart from histrionism, and so too, is Sarah Bernhardt: -who can fail to detect the creative artist in the “Mémoires” of the -first named, for instance, or, in the case of the last named, in the -fertile impulses of her essays in sculpture, painting and dramatic -literature? It is a curious thing that, in all the pronouncements of -acting as an art, the names chosen by the advocates as representative -carriers of the æsthetic banner are those of actors and actresses who -have most often offered evidence of artistic passion in fields separate -and apart from their histrionic endeavours. Lemaître, Salvini, Rachel, -Talma, Coquelin, Betterton, Garrick, Fanny Kemble, the Bancrofts, -Irving, Tree, and on down--far down--the line to Ditrichstein, Sothern, -Marie Tempest, Guitry, Gemier and the brothers Barrymore--all give -testimony, in writing, painting, musicianship, poetry and dramatic -authorship to æsthetic impulses other than acting. Since acting itself -as an art is open to question, the merit or demerit of the performances -produced from the æsthetic impulses in point is not an issue: the fact -seems to be that it has been the artist who has become the actor rather -than the actor who has become the artist. - -The actor, as I have on another occasion hazarded, is the child of the -miscegenation of an art and a trade: of the drama and the theatre. -Since acting must appeal to the many--this is obviously its only -reason for being, for acting is primarily a filter through which drama -may be lucidly distilled for heterogeneous theatre-goers--it must, -logically, be popular or perish. Surely no authentic art can rest or -thrive upon such a premise. The great actors and actresses, unlike -great fashioners in other arts, have invariably been favourites of the -crowd, and it is doubtless a too charitable hypothesis to assume that -this crowd has ever been gifted with critical insight beyond cavil. If, -therefore, the actor or actress who can sway great crowds is strictly -to be termed an artist, why may we not also, by strict definition, -similarly term as exponents of an authentic art others who can likewise -sway the same crowds: a great politician like Roosevelt, say, or a -great lecturer like Ingersoll, or a successful practical theologian -like Billy Sunday? (Let us send out these paradox shock-troops to clear -the way for the more sober infantry.) - -I have said that I have no intention to argue for or against acting as -an art yet, for all the circumstance that the case for the prosecution -has long seemed the soundest and the most eloquent, there are still -sporadic instances of imaginative histrionism that give one reason -to ponder. But, pondering, it has subsequently come to the more -penetrating critic that what has on such occasions passed for an -art has in reality been merely a reflected art: the art of drama -interpreted not with the imagination of the actor but, more precisely, -_with the imagination of the dramatist_. In other words, that actor -or actress is the most competent and effective whose imagination is -successful in meeting literally, and translating, the imagination of -the dramatist which has created the rôle played by the particular actor -or actress. To name the actor’s imagination in such a case a creative -imagination is a rather wistful procedure, for it does not create but -merely duplicates. Surely no advocate of acting as a creative art -would be so bold as to contend that any actor, however great, has ever -brought creative imagination to the already full and superb creative -imagination of Shakespeare. This would be, on an actor’s part, the -sheerest impudence. The greatest actor is simply he who is best fitted -by figure, voice, training and intelligence not to invade and annul the -power of the rôle which a great dramatist has imagined and created. -Duse and D’Annunzio were, so to speak, spiritually and physically -one: hence the unmatched perfection of the former’s histrionism in the -latter’s rôles. To see Duse is, save one admit one’s self critically -to the facts, therefore to suffer theoretical art doubts and the -convictions of such as Mr. Daly. - -It is, of course, the common habit of the prejudiced critic to -overlook, in the estimate of acting as an art, the few admirable -exponents of acting and to take into convenient consideration only the -enormous majority of incompetents. But to argue that acting is not an -art simply because a thousand Edmund Breeses and Miss Adele Bloods give -no evidence that it is an art is to argue that sculpture is not an art -simply because a thousand fashioners of Kewpies and plaster of Paris -busts of Charlie Chaplin and Mr. Harding give no evidence in a like -direction. Yet the circumstance that there are admittedly excellent -actors as well as bad actors establishes acting as an art no more than -the circumstance that there are admittedly excellent cuckoo-whistlers -as well as bad cuckoo-whistlers establishes the playing of the -cuckoo-whistle as an art. If I seem to reduce the comparison to what -appears to be an absurdity, it is because by such absurdities, or -elementals, is the status of acting in the field of the arts most -sharply to be perceived. For if Bernhardt’s ever-haunting cry of the -heart in “Izeyl” is a peg, however slight, upon which may be hung a -strand of the theory that maintains acting as an art, so too, by the -strict canon of dialectics, is Mr. Ruben Katz’s ever-haunting cry of -the cuckoo in the coda of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Pastoral -Symphony. - -If acting is an art, the proofs thus far offered are not only -unconvincing but fundamentally, on the score of logic, not a little -droll. Let us view a few illustrations. If criticism is an art (thus -a familiar contention), why is not acting also an art, since both are -concerned with re-creating works of art? But the artist’s work offered -up to the critic is a challenge, whereas the dramatist’s work offered -up to the actor is a consonance. Criticism is war, whether in behalf of -æsthetic friend or against æsthetic foe; acting is agreement, peace. -The critic re-creates, in terms of his own personality, the work of -another and often emphatically different and antagonistic personality. -The actor re-creates, in terms of a dramatist’s concordantly imagined -personality, his own personality: the result is less re-creation -than non-re-creation. In other words, the less the actor creates or -re-creates and the more he remains simply an adaptable tool in the -hands of the dramatist, the better actor he is. The actor’s state is -thus what may be termed one of active impassivity. Originality and -independence, save within the narrowest of limits, are denied him. -He is a literal translator of a work of art, not an independently -imaginative and speculative interpreter, as the critic is. The -dramatist’s work of art does not say to him, as to the critic, “Here I -am! What do you, out of all your experience, taste and training, think -of me?” It says to him, instead and peremptorily, “Here I am! Think -of me exactly as I am, and adapt all of your experience, taste and -training to the interpretation of me exactly as I am!” - -Brushing aside the theory that the true artist is the actor who can -transform his voice, his manner, his character; who will disappear -behind his part instead of imposing himself on it and adding himself to -it--a simple feat, since by such a definition the Messrs. Fregoli and -Henri De Vries, amazing vaudeville protean actors, are true histrionic -artists--Mr. Walkley, in his essay on “The English Actor of Today,” -bravely takes up the defence from what he regards as a more difficult -approach. “In the art of acting as in any other art,” he says, “the -first requisite is life. The actor’s part is a series of speeches and -stage directions, mere cold print, an inert mass that has to be raised -somehow from the dead. If the actor disappears behind it, there is -nothing left but a Golgotha.” Here is indeed gay news! Hamlet, Iago, -Romeo, Shylock--mere “cold print,” inert Shakespearian masses that, -in order to live, have to be raised somehow from the dead by members -of the Lambs’ Club! It is only fair to add that Mr. Walkley quickly -takes to cover after launching this torpedo, and devotes the balance -of his interesting comments to a prudent and circumspect _pas seul_ on -the very middle of the controversial teeter-tawter. For no sooner has -he described the majestic drama of Shakespeare as “mere cold print, an -inert mass that has to be raised somehow from the dead,” than he seems -suddenly, and not without a touch of horror, to realize that he has -ridiculously made of Shakespeare a mere blank canvas and pot of paint -for the use of this or that actor whom he has named, by implication and -with magnificent liberalness, a Raphael, or a mere slab of cold marble -for the sculpturing skill of some socked and buskined Mercié. - - -II - -Modern evaluation of acting as an unquestionable art takes its key -from Rémond de Sainte-Albine, the girlishly ebullient Frenchman whose -pragmatic critical credo was, “If it makes me feel, it is art.” -While it may be reasonable that a purely emotional art may aptly be -criticized according to the degree of emotional reaction which it -induces, it is the quality of emotion resident in the critic that -offers that reasonableness a considerable confusion. A perfectly -attuned and sound emotional equipment--an emotional equipment of -absolute pitch, so to speak--is a rare thing, even among critics of -brilliant intelligence, taste, imagination and experience. Goethe, -Carlyle, Hazlitt, Dryden, Lessing, to mention only five, were -physio-psychological units of dubious emotional structure, if we may -trust the intimate chronicles. Thus, where much of their critical -dramatic writing may be accepted without qualm, a distinct measure of -distrust would attach itself to any critical estimate of acting which -they might have written or actually did write. - -There are, obviously, more or less definite standards whereby we -may estimate critical writings of such men as these so far as those -criticisms deal with what we may roughly describe as the cerebral -or semi-cerebral arts, but there are no standards, even remotely -determinable or exact, whereby we may appraise such of their -criticisms as deal with the directly and wholly emotional art of -acting. It is perhaps not too far a cry to assume that had Mr. William -Archer’s father been murdered shortly before Mr. Archer witnessed Mr. -Forbes-Robertson’s Hamlet, Mr. Archer would have been moved to believe -Mr. Forbes-Robertson on even greater actor-artist than he believed him -under the existing circumstances, or that had Mr. Otto Borchsenius, -the Danish journalist-critic, regrettably found himself a victim of -syphilis when he reviewed August Lindberg’s “Oswald,” he would have -looked on the estimable Lindberg as a doubly impressive exponent of -histrionism. Nothing is more æsthetically and artistically dubious -and insecure than the appraisal of acting; for it is based upon the -quicksands of varying human emotionalism, and of aural and visual -prejudice. Were I, for example, one hundred times more proficient -a critic of drama and life than I am, my criticism of acting would -none the less remain often arbitrary and erratic, for I would remain -constitutionally anæsthetic to a Juliet, however otherwise talented, -who had piano legs, or to a Marc Antony who, for all his histrionic -power, presented to the vision a pair of knock-knees. This, I well -appreciate, is the kind of critical writing that is promptly set down -as flippant, yet it is the truth so far as I am concerned and I daresay -that it is, in one direction or another, the truth so far as the -majority of critics are concerned. - -The most that may be said of the soundness of this or that laudatory -criticism of an actor’s performance is that the performance in point -has met exactly--or very nearly--the particular critic’s personal -notion of how he, as a human being, would have cried, laughed and -otherwise comported himself were he an actor and were he in the actor’s -rôle. The opposite, or denunciatory, phase of such criticism holds a -similar truth. If this is not true, by what standards _can_ the critic -estimate the actor’s performance? By the standards of the actors who -have preceded this actor in the playing of the rôle, you say? What if -the rôle is a new one, a peculiar and novel one, that has not been -played before? Again, you say that the rôle may be in an alien drama -and that the actor may be an alien, both rôle and performance being -foreign to the emotional equipment of the critic. But basic emotions, -the foundation of drama, are universal. Still again, what of such -dramas as “Œdipus Rex,” what of such rôles--this with a triumphant -chuckle on your part? I return the chuckle, and bid you read the -criticisms that have been written of the actors who have played in -these rôles! Invariably the actors have been treated in precisely the -same terms and by the same standards as if they were playing, not in -the drama of the fifth century before Christ, but in “Fedora,” “The -Face in the Moonlight” or “The Count of Monte Cristo.” - -One cannot imagine sound criticism applying to any authentic art the -standard of actor criticism that I have noted. Criticism, true enough, -is always more or less personal, but, in its operation upon the -authentic arts, its personality is ever like a new bottle into which -the vintage wine of art has been poured. Criticism of the authentic -arts is the result of the impact of a particular art upon a particular -critical personality. Criticism of the dubious art of acting is the -result of the impact of a particular critical personality upon this -or that instance of acting. But if this is even remotely true, you -inquire ironically, what of such an excellent instance of acting as -Mimi Aguglia’s “Salome”; how in God’s name may the critic appraise that -performance in the manner set down, i. e., in terms of himself were he -a stage performer? Well, for all the surface humours of the question, -that is actually more or less the way in which he does appraise it. -The actor or actress, unlike the artist in more authentic fields, -may never interpret emotion in a manner unfamiliar to the critic: -the interpretation must be a reflection, more or less stereotyped, -of the critic’s repertoire of emotions. Thus, where art is original -expression, acting is merely the audible expression of a silent -expression. In another phrase, expression in acting is predicated upon, -and limited by, the expression of the critic. It is, therefore, a -mere duplication of expression. And what holds true in the case of the -critic so far as acting is concerned obviously holds doubly true in the -case of the uncritical public. - -Re-reading the celebrated critiques of acting, I come to the conclusion -that the word “art” has almost uniformly been applied to acting by -critics who, thinking that they had perhaps belaboured the subject a -trifle too severely, were disposed graciously to throw it a sop. As -good an illustration as any may be had from Lewes, certainly a friend -of acting if ever there was one. Thus Lewes: - - “The truth is, we exaggerate the talent of an actor because we judge - only from the effect he produces, without inquiring too curiously - into the means. But, while the painter has nothing but his canvas and - the author has nothing but white paper and printers’ ink with which - to produce his effects, the actor has all other arts as handmaids; - the poet labours for him, creates his part, gives him his eloquence, - his music, his imagery, his tenderness, his pathos, his sublimity; - the scene-painter aids him; the costumes, the lights, the music, all - the fascination of the stage--all subserve the actor’s effects; - these raise him upon a pedestal; remove them, and what is he? He who - can make a stage mob bend and sway with his eloquence, what could he - do with a real mob, no poet by to prompt him? He who can charm us - with the stateliest imagery of a noble mind, when robed in the sables - of Hamlet, or in the toga of Coriolanus, what can he do in coat and - trousers on the world’s stage? Rub off the paint, and the eyes are - no longer brilliant! Reduce the actor to his intrinsic value, and - then weigh him with the rivals whom he surpasses in reputation and - fortune.... If my estimate of the intrinsic value of acting is lower - than seems generally current, it is from no desire to disparage _an - art_ I have always loved; but, etc., etc.” - -You will find the same dido in most of the essays on acting: a -protracted series of cuffs and slaps terminating in a gentle -non-sequitur kiss. - -Acting at its finest is, however, often a confusing hypnosis; it is not -to be wondered at that, fresh from its spell, the critic has mistaken -it for a more exalted something than it intrinsically is. The flame -and fire of a Duse, the haunt and magic of a Bernhardt, the powerful -stage sense of creation of a Moissi--these are not a little befuddling. -And, under their serpent-like charm, it is not incomprehensible that -the critic should confound effect and cause. Yet acting, even of the -highest order, is intrinsically akin to the legerdemain of a Hermann or -a Kellar with a Shakespeare or a Molière as an assistant to hand over, -as the moment bids, the necessary pack of cards or bowl of goldfish. -It is trickery raised to its most exalted level: a combination of -experience, intelligence and great charm, not revivifying something -cold and dead, but releasing something quick and alive from the prison -of the printed page. - -The actor who contends in favour of his creative art that he must -experience within him the feeling of the dramatist, that he must -actually persuade himself to feel his rôle with all its turning -smiles and tears, speaks nonsense. So, too, must the auditor, yet who -would term the auditor a creative artist? The actor who contends in -favour of his creative art the exact opposite, that he is, to wit, -a creative artist since he must theatrically create the dramatist’s -moods, illusions and emotions without feeling them himself, also speaks -nonsense. For so, too, in such a case as “Electra,” or “Ghosts,” or “No -More Blondes,” must the auditor, yet who, again, would term the latter -a creative artist? The actor who contends in favour of his creative -art that two accomplished actors often “create” the same rôle in an -entirely different manner, speaks nonsense yet again. For what is not -creation in the first place does not become creation merely because it -is multiplied by two. The actor who further contends in behalf of his -creative art that if effective acting were the mere trickery that some -maintain it to be, any person ordinarily gifted should be able, after a -little experiment, to give an effective stage performance, speaks truer -than he knows. Some of the most remarkable performances on the stage -of the Abbey Theatre of Dublin have been given by just such persons. -And there are numerous other instances. If acting is an art--and -I do not say that it may not be--it at least, as an art, ill bears -cross-examination of even the most superficial nature. - - -III - -Acting is perhaps less an art than the deceptive echo of an art. It -is drama’s exalted halloo come back to drama from the walls of the -surrounding amphitheatre. Criticism of acting too often mistakes -the echo for the original voice. Although the analogy wears motley, -criticism of this kind operates in much the same manner as if it were -to contend that an approximately exact and beautiful Ben Ali Haggin -_tableau vivant_ reproduction of, say, Velasquez’s “The Spinners,” was -creative art in the sense that the original is creative art. Acting is -to the art of the drama much what these so-called living pictures are -to the art of painting. If acting is to be termed an art, it is, like -the living picture, a freak art, an art with belladonna in its eyes and -ever, even at its highest, a bit grotesque. - -In his defence of acting as an art equal to that of poetry and -literature, Henry Irving has observed, “It has been said that acting -is unworthy because it represents feigned emotions, but this censure -would apply with equal force to poet or novelist.” But would it? The -poet and the novelist may feign emotions, but it is their own active -imaginations which feign them. The actor merely feigns passively the -emotions which the imagination of the poet has actively feigned; if -there is feigning, the actor merely parrots it. If there is feigned -emotion in, say, the second stanza of Swinburne’s “Rococo,” and I -mount an illuminated platform and recite the stanza very eloquently -and impressively, am I precisely feigning the emotion of it or am I -merely feigning the emotion that the great imagination of Swinburne has -feigned? Feigned or unfeigned, the emotions of the poet come ready-made -to the heart and lips of the actor. - -Continues Irving further: “It is the actor who gives body to -the ideas of the highest dramatic literature--fire, force, and -sensibility, without which they would remain for most people mere -airy abstractions.” What one engages here is the peculiar logic that -acting is an art since it popularizes dramatic literature and makes it -intelligible to a majority of dunderheads! - -One more quotation from this actor’s defence, and we may pass on. “The -actor’s work is absolutely concrete,” he challenges. “He is brought -in every phase of his work into direct comparison with existing -things.... Not only must his dress be suitable to the part which he -assumes, but his bearing must not be in any way antagonistic to the -spirit of the time in which the play is fixed. The free bearing of -the sixteenth century is distinct from the artificial one of the -seventeenth, the mannered one of the eighteenth, and the careless one -of the nineteenth.... The voice must be modulated to the vogue of the -time. The habitual action of a rapier-bearing age is different from -that of a mail-clad one--nay, the armour of a period ruled in real life -the poise and bearing of the body; and all this must be reproduced on -the stage.... _It cannot therefore be seriously put forward in the -face of such manifold requirements that no Art is required for the -representation of suitable action!_” The italics are those of one -who experiences some difficulty in persuading himself that if Art is -required for such things as these--dress, carriage, modulation of voice -and carrying a sword--Art, strictly speaking, is no less required in -the matter of going to a Quat’-z-Arts costume ball. - -Acting is perhaps best to be criticized not as art but as colourful -and impressive artifice. Miss Margaret Anglin’s Joan of Arc is a -more or less admirable example of acting not because it is art but -because it is a shrewd, vivid and beguiling synthesis of various -intrinsically spurious dodges: black tights to make stout Anglo-Saxon -limbs appear Gallicly slender, a telescoping of words containing the -sound of _s_ to conceal a personal defect in the structure of the -upper lip, a manœuvring of the central action up stage to emphasize, -through a familiar trick of the theatre, the sympathetic frailty of -the character which the actress herself physically lacks, two intakes -of breath before a shout of defiance that the effect of the ring of -the directly antecedent shout on the part of one of the inquisitors -may be diminished.... An effective acting performance is like a great -explosion; and as T N T is made from nitric acid, which is in turn made -from such nitrates as potassium nitrate or saltpeter, which are in turn -derived from the salts of decomposed guano, so is a great explosion -of histrionism similarly made and derived from numerous--and not -infrequently ludicrous and even vulgar--basic elements. - -The ill-balanced species of criticism which appraises an histrionic -performance as art on the sole ground of the hypnotic effect it -produces, with no inquiry into the means whereby that effect is -produced, might analogously, were it to pursue this logic, appraise -similarly as art the performance of an adept literal hypnotist. And -with logic perhaps much more sound. For if acting as an art is to be -appraised in the degree of the effect it imparts to, and induces in, -the auditor-spectator, surely--if there is any sense at all in such -a method of estimate--may certain other such performances as I have -suggested be similarly appraised. Criticism rests upon a foundation of -logic; whatever it may deal with--æsthetics, emotions, what not--it -cannot remove itself entirely from that foundation. Thus, if Mr. John -Barrymore is an artist because, by identifying the heart and mind -of his auditor-spectator with some such character as Fedya and by -suggesting directly that character’s tragic dégringolade, he can make -the auditor-spectator pity and cry, so too an artist--by the rigid -canon of æsthetic criticism--was Friedrich Anton Mesmer, who is said to -have been able to do the same thing. - -What I attempt here is no facile paradox, but a _reductio ad absurdum_ -designed to show up the fallacy of the prevailing method of actor -criticism. In criticism of the established arts, there is no such antic -deportment. The critic never confuses the stimulations of jazz music -with those of sound music, nor the stimulations of open melodrama -with those of more profound drama. From each of these he receives -stimulations of a kind: some superficial, some deep. But he inquires, -in each instance, into the means whereby the various stimulations were -vouchsafed to him. While he recognizes the fact that the sudden and -unexpected shooting off of a revolver in “Secret Service” produces in -him a sensation of shock as great as the sudden and unexpected shooting -off of a revolver in “Hedda Gabler,” he does not therefore promptly, -and with no further reasoning, conclude that the two sensations are of -an æsthetic piece. Nor does he assume that, since the nervous effect -of the fall to death in “The Green Goddess” and of the fall to death -in “The Master Builder” affect him immediately in much the same way, -both sensations are accordingly produced by sound artistic means. -Nor, yet again, does he confuse the quality--nor the springs of that -quality--of the mood of wistful pathos with which “Poor Butterfly” and -“Porgi, Amor” inspire him. But this confusion persists as part and -parcel of the bulk of the criticism of acting. For one Hazlitt, or -Lamb, or Lewes, or Anatole France who retains, or has retained, his -clear discernment before the acted drama, there are, and have been, a -number tenfold who have confounded the wonders of the phonograph with -the wonders of Josef Haydn. - - - - -V. DRAMATIC CRITICISM - - - - -V. DRAMATIC CRITICISM - - -I - -Arthur Bingham Walkley begins one of the best books ever written on -the subject thus: “It is not to be gainsaid that the word criticism -has gradually acquired a certain connotation of contempt.... Every -one who expresses opinions, however imbecile, in print calls himself -a ‘critic.’ The greater the ignoramus, the greater the likelihood of -his posing as a ‘critic.’” An excellent book, as I have said, with a -wealth of sharp talk in it, but Mr. Walkley seems to me to err somewhat -in his preliminary assumption. Criticism has acquired a connotation -of contempt less because it is practised by a majority of ignoramuses -than because it is accepted at full face value by an infinitely greater -majority of ignoramuses. It is not the mob that curls a lip--the mob -accepts the lesser ignoramus at his own estimate of himself; it is the -lonely and negligible minority man who, pausing musefully in the field -that is the world, contemplates the jackasses eating the daisies. - -No man is so contemptuous of criticism as the well-stocked critic, -just as there is no man so contemptuous of clothes as the man with -the well-stocked wardrobe. It is as impossible to imagine a critic -like Shaw not chuckling derisively at criticism as it is to imagine -a regular subscriber to the _Weekly Review_ not swallowing it whole. -The experienced critic, being on the inside, is in a position to look -into the heads of the less experienced, and to see the wheels go round. -He is privy to all their monkeyshines, since he is privy to his own. -Having graduated from quackery, he now smilingly regards others still -at the trade of seriously advancing sure cures for æsthetic baldness, -cancer, acne and trifacial neuralgia. And while the yokels rub in -the lotions and swallow the pills, he permits himself a small, but -eminently sardonic, hiccup. - -It is commonly believed that the first virtue of a critic is honesty. -As a matter of fact, in four cases out of five, honesty is the last -virtue of a critic. As criticism is practised in America, honesty -presents itself as the leading fault. There is altogether too much -honesty. The greater the blockhead, the more honest he is. And as a -consequence the criticism of these blockheads, founded upon their -honest convictions, is worthless. There is some hope for an imbecile -if he is dishonest, but none if he is resolute in sticking to his -idiocies. If the average American critic were to cease writing what he -honestly believes and dishonestly set down what he doesn’t believe, the -bulk of the native criticism would gain some common sense and take on -much of the sound value that it presently lacks. Honesty is a toy for -first-rate men; when lesser men seek to play with it and lick off the -paint, they come down with colic. - -It is further maintained that enthusiasm is a supplementary desideratum -in a critic, that unless he is possessed of enthusiasm he cannot -impart a warm love for fine things to his reader. Surely this, too, -is nonsense. Enthusiasm is a virtue not in the critic, but in the -critic’s reader. And such desired enthusiasm can be directly generated -by enthusiasm no more than a glyceryl nitrate explosion can be -generated by sulfuric acid. Enthusiasm may be made so contagious as to -elect a man president of the United States or to raise an army large -enough to win a world war, but it has never yet been made sufficiently -contagious to persuade one American out of a hundred thousand that -Michelangelo’s David of the Signoria is a better piece of work than -the Barnard statue of Lincoln. Enthusiasm is an attribute of the -uncritical, the defectively educated: stump speakers, clergymen, young -girls, opera-goers, Socialists, Italians, such like. And not only an -attribute, but a weapon. But the cultivated and experienced man has -as little use for enthusiasm as for indignation. He appreciates that -while it may convert a pack of ignoble doodles, it can’t convert any -one worth converting. The latter must be persuaded, not inflamed. He -realizes that where a double brass band playing “Columbia, the Gem -of the Ocean” may leave a civilized Englishman cold to the virtues of -the United States, proof that the United States has the best bathroom -plumbing in the world may warm him up a bit. The sound critic is not a -cheer leader, but a referee. Art is hot, criticism cold. Aristotle’s -criticism of Euripides is as placid and reserved as Mr. William -Archer’s criticism of the latest drama at the St. James’s Theatre; -Brunetière is as calm over his likes as Mr. H. T. Parker of the Boston -_Transcript_. There is no more enthusiasm in Lessing than there is -indignation in Walkley. Hazlitt, at a hundred degrees emotional -Fahrenheit, remains critically cool as a cucumber. To find enthusiasm, -you will have to read the New York _Times_. - -Enthusiasm, in short, is the endowment of immaturity. The greater the -critic, the greater his disinclination to communicate æsthetic heat. -Such communication savours of propaganda and, however worthy that -propaganda, he will have naught to do with its trafficking. If the -ability to possess and communicate enthusiasm is the mark of the true -critic, then the theatrical page of the New York _Journal_ is the -greatest critical literature in America. - -A third contention has it that aloofness and detachment are no less -valuable to the dramatic critic than honesty and enthusiasm. Unless I -am seriously mistaken, also bosh. Dramatic criticism is fundamentally -the critic’s art of appraising himself in terms of various forms of -drama. Or, as I some time ago put it, the only sound dramatic critic is -the one who reports less the impression that this or that play makes -upon him than the impression he makes upon this or that play. Of all -the forms of criticism, dramatic criticism is essentially, and perhaps -correctly, the most personal. Tell me what a dramatic critic eats and -drinks, how far north of Ninetieth Street he lives, what he considers -a pleasant evening when he is not in the theatre, and what kind of -lingerie his wife wears, and I’ll tell you with very few misses what -kind of critic he is. I’ll tell you whether he is fit to appreciate -Schnitzler, or whether he is fit only for Augustus Thomas. I’ll tell -you in advance what he will think about, and how he will react to, -Hauptmann, Sacha Guitry or George V. Hobart. I’ll tell you whether -he is the sort that makes a great to-do when his eagle eye spots Sir -Nigel Waterhouse, M.P., in Act II fingering a copy of the Philadelphia -_Public Ledger_ instead of the London _Times_, and whether he is the -sort that writes “Mr. John Cort has staged the play in his customary -lavish manner” when the rise of the curtain discloses to him a room -elaborately decorated in the latest Macy mode. To talk about the value -of detachment in a dramatic critic is to talk about the value of -detachment in a Swiss mountain guide. The criticism is the man; the man -the criticism. - -Of all forms of criticism, dramatic criticism is the most purely -biological. Were the genii to put the mind of Max Beerbohm into the -head of Mr. J. Ranken Towse, and vice versa, their criticisms would -still remain exactly as they are. But, on the contrary, were the head -of Mr. J. Ranken Towse to be placed on the body of Max Beerbohm, and -vice versa, their criticisms would take on points of view diametrically -opposed to their present. Max would begin admiring the Rev. Dr. Charles -Rann Kennedy and Towse would promptly proceed to put on his glasses -to get a better view of the girl on the end. Every book of dramatic -criticism--every single piece of dramatic criticism--is a searching, -illuminating autobiography. The dramatic critic performs a clinic -upon himself every time he takes his pen in his hand. He may try, as -Walkley puts it, to substitute for the capital I’s “nouns of multitude -signifying many,” or some of those well-worn stereotypes--“It is -thought,” “one may be pardoned for hinting,” “will any one deny?” etc., -etc.--by which criticism keeps up the pretence that it is not a man but -a corporation, but he fools no one. - -To ask the dramatic critic to keep himself out of his criticism, -to detach himself, is thus a trifle like asking an actor to keep -himself out of his rôle. Dramatic critics and actors are much alike. -The only essential difference is that the actor does his acting on a -platform. But, platform or no platform, the actor and the dramatic -critic best serve their rôles when they filter them through their own -personalities. A dramatic critic who is told to keep his personality -out of his criticism is in the position of an actor who, being -physically and temperamentally like Mr. John Barrymore, is peremptorily -directed by a producer to stick a sofa pillow under his belt, put on -six extra heel-lifts, acquire a whiskey voice and play Falstaff like -the late Sir Herbert Tree. The best dramatic critics from the time of -Quintus Horatius Flaccus (_vide_ the “Epistola”) have sunk their vivid -personalities into their work right up to the knees. Not only have they -described the adventures of their souls among masterpieces, but the -adventures of their kidneys, spleens and _cæca_ as well. Each has held -the mirror of drama up to his own nature, with all its idiosyncrasies. -And in it have been sharply reflected not the cut and dried features -of the professor, but the vital features of a red-alive man. The other -critics have merely held up the mirror to these red-alive men, and have -reflected not themselves but the latter. Then, in their vainglory, they -have looked again into the hand-glass and have mistaken the reflection -of the parrot for an eagle. - -A third rubber-stamp: the critic must have sympathy. As properly -contend that a surgeon must have sympathy. The word is misused. What -the critic must have is not sympathy, which in its common usage -bespeaks a measure of sentimental concern, but interest. If a dramatic -critic, for example, has sympathy for an actress he can no more -criticize her with poise than a surgeon can operate on his own wife. -The critic may on occasion have sympathy as the judge in a court of law -may on occasion have it, but if he is a fair critic, or a fair judge, -he can’t do anything about it, however much he would like to. Between -the fair defendant in the lace baby collar and a soft heart, Article -X, Section 123, Page 416, absurdly interposes itself. (In example, -being a human being with a human being’s weaknesses before a critic, I -would often rather praise a lovely one when she is bad than an unlovely -one when she is good--and, alas, I fear that I sometimes do--but in -the general run I try to remember my business and behave myself. It -isn’t always easy. But I do my best, and angels and Lewes could do no -more.) The word sympathy is further mishandled, as in the similar case -of the word enthusiasm. What a critic should have is not, as is common, -sympathy and enthusiasm _before_ the fact, but _after_ it. The critic -who enters a theatre bubblingly certain that he is going to have a good -time is no critic. The critic is he who leaves a theatre cheerfully -certain that he _has_ had a good time. Sympathy and enthusiasm, unless -they are _ex post facto_, are precisely like prevenient prejudice and -hostility. Sympathy has no more preliminary place in the equipment of a -critic than in the equipment of an ambulance driver or a manufacturer -of bird cages. It is the caboose of criticism, not the engine. - -The trouble with dramatic criticism in America, speaking generally, -is that where it is not frankly reportorial it too often seeks to -exhibit a personality when there exists no personality to exhibit. -Himself perhaps conscious of this lack, the critic indulges in heroic -makeshifts to inject into his writings a note of individuality, and the -only individuality that comes out of his perspirations is of a piece -with that of the bearded lady or the dog-faced boy. Individuality of -this freak species is the bane of the native criticism. The college -professor who, having nothing to say, tries to give his criticism -an august air by figuratively attaching to it a pair of whiskers -and horn glasses, the suburban college professor who sedulously -practises an aloofness from the madding crowd that his soul longs -to be part of, the college professor who postures as a man of the -world, the newspaper reporter who postures as a college professor, the -journalist who performs in terms of Art between the Saks and Gimbel -advertisements--these and others like them are the sad comedians in -the tragical crew. In their heavy attempts to live up to their fancy -dress costumes, in their laborious efforts to conceal their humdrum -personalities in the uncomfortable gauds of Petruchio and Gobbo, they -betray themselves even to the bus boys. The same performer cannot -occupy the rôles of Polonius and Hamlet, even in a tank town troupe. - -No less damaging to American dramatic criticism is the dominant -notion that criticism, to be valuable, must be constructive. That -is, that it must, as the phrase has it, “build up” rather than “tear -down.” As a result of this conviction we have an endless repertoire -of architectonic advice from critics wholly without the structural -faculty, advice which, were it followed, would produce a drama twice -as poor as that which they criticize. Obsessed with the idea that they -must be constructive, the critics know no lengths to which they will -not go in their sweat to dredge up cures of one sort or another. They -constructively point out that Shaw’s plays would be better plays if -Shaw understood the punctual technique of Pinero, thus destroying a -“Cæsar and Cleopatra” to construct a “Second Mrs. Tanqueray.” They -constructively point out the trashy aspect of some Samuel Shipman’s -“Friendly Enemies,” suggest more serious enterprises to him, and get -the poor soul to write a “The Unwritten Chapter” which is ten times as -bad. They are not content to be critics; they must also be playwrights. -They stand in mortal fear of the old recrimination, “He who can, does; -he who can’t, criticizes,” not pausing to realize that the names of -Mr. Octavus Roy Cohen and Matthew Arnold may be taken as somewhat -confounding respective examples. They note with some irritation that -the critic for the Wentzville, Mo., _Beacon_ is a destructive critic, -but are conveniently ignorant of the fact--which may conceivably prove -something more--that so was George Farquhar. If destructive criticism, -in their meaning, is criticism which pulls down without building up in -return, three-fourths of the best dramatic criticism written since -the time of Boileau, fully filling the definition, is worthless. One -can’t cure a yellow fever patient by pointing out to him that he should -have caught the measles. One can’t improve the sanitary condition of a -neighbourhood merely by giving the outhouse a different coat of paint. -The foe of destructive criticism is the pro-German of American art. - -Our native criticism suffers further from the commercial Puritanism of -its mediums. What is often mistaken for the Puritanism of the critic -is actually the commercial Puritanism forced upon him by the owner and -publisher of the journal in which his writings appear, and upon which -he has to depend for a livelihood. Although this owner and publisher -is often not personally the Puritan, he is yet shrewdly aware that -the readers of his journal are, and out of this awareness he becomes -what may be termed a circulation blue-nose. Since circulation and -advertising revenue are twins, he must see to it that the sensibilities -of the former are not offended. And his circumspection, conveyed to -the critic by the copy reader or perhaps only sensed, brings about the -Puritan play-acting by the critic. This accounts to no little degree -for the hostile and uncritical reviews of even the most finished risqué -farces, and of the best efforts of American and European playwrights -to depict truthfully and fairly the more unpleasant phases of sex. -“I agree with you that this last naughty farce of Avery Hopwood’s is -awfully funny stuff,” a New York newspaper reviewer once said to me; -“I laughed at it until my ribs ached; but I don’t dare write as much. -One can’t praise such things in a paper with the kind of circulation -that ours has.” It is criticism bred from this commercial Puritanism -that has held back farce writing in America, and I venture to say much -serious dramatic writing as well. The best farce of a Guitry or a -Dieudonné, produced in America today without childish excisions, would -receive unfavourable notices from nine newspapers out of ten. The best -sex drama of a Porto-Riche or a Wedekind would suffer--indeed, already -has suffered--a similar fate. I predicted to Eugene O’Neill, the moment -I laid down the manuscript of his pathological play “Diff’rent,” the -exact manner in which, two months later, the axes fell upon him. - -For one critic like Mr. J. Ranken Towse who is a Puritan by tradition -and training, there are a dozen who are Puritans by proxy. One can -no more imagine a dramatic critic on a newspaper owned by Mr. Cyrus -H. K. Curtis praising Schnitzler’s “Reigen” or Rip’s and Gignoux’s -“Scandale de Deauville” than one can imagine the same critic denouncing -“Ben Hur.” What thus holds true in journalistic criticism holds true -in precisely the same way in the criticism written by the majority -of college professors. I doubt that there is a college professor in -America today who, however much he admired a gay, reprobate farce like -“Le Rubicon” or “L’Illusioniste,” would dare state his admiration in -print. Puritan or no Puritan, it is professionally necessary for him to -comport himself as one. His university demands it, silently, sternly, -idiotically. He is the helpless victim of its æsthetic Ku Klux. Behind -any drama dealing unconventionally with sex, there hovers a spectre -that vaguely resembles Professor Scott Nearing. He sees it ... he -reflects ... he works up a safe indignation. - -Dramatic criticism travels, in America, carefully laid tracks. Signal -lights, semaphores and one-legged old men with red flags are stationed -along the way to protect it at the crossings, to make it safe, and -to guard it from danger. It elaborately steams, pulls, puffs, chugs, -toots, whistles, grinds and rumbles for three hundred miles--and -brings up at something like Hinkletown, Pa. It is eager, but futile. -It is honest, but so is Dr. Frank Crane. It is fearless, but so is the -actor who plays the hero strapped to the papier-mâché buzz-saw. It is -constructive, but so is an embalmer. It is detached, but so is a man in -the Fiji Islands. It is sympathetic, but so is a quack prostatitician. - - - - -VI. DRAMATIC CRITICISM IN AMERICA - - - - -VI. DRAMATIC CRITICISM IN AMERICA - - -I - -Dramatic criticism, at its best, is the adventure of an intelligence -among emotions. The chief end of drama is the enkindling of emotions; -the chief end of dramatic criticism is to rush into the burning -building and rescue the metaphysical weaklings who are wont to be -overcome by the first faint whiffs of smoke. - -Dramatic criticism, in its common run, fails by virtue of its confusion -of unschooled emotion with experienced emotion. A dramatic critic who -has never been kissed may properly appreciate the readily assimilable -glories of “Romeo and Juliet,” but it is doubtful that he will be -able properly to appreciate the somewhat more evasive splendours of -“Liebelei.” The capability of a judge does not, of course, depend -upon his having himself once been in jail, nor does the capability -of a critic depend upon his having personally once experienced the -emotions of the dramatis personæ, but that critic is nevertheless the -most competent whose emotions the dramatis personæ do not so much -anticipatorily stir up as recollectively soothe. - -All criticism is more or less a statement in terms of the present -of what one has viewed of the past through a delicate, modern -reducing-glass. Intelligence is made up, in large part, of dead -emotions; ignorance, of emotions that have lived on, deaf and dumb -and crippled, but ever smiling. The general admission that a dramatic -critic must be experienced in drama, literature, acting and theories -of production but not necessarily in emotions is somewhat difficult of -digestion. Such a critic may conceivably comprehend much of Sheridan, -Molière, Bernhardt and Yevreynoff, but a hundred searching and -admirable things like the beginning of “Anatol,” the middle of “Lonely -Lives” and the end of “The Case of Rebellious Susan” must inevitably -be without his ken, and baffle his efforts at sound penetration. I -do not here posture myself as one magnificently privy to all the -mysteries, but rather as one who, failing perhaps to be on very -intimate terms with them, detects and laments the deficiencies that -confound him. Experience, goeth the saw, is a wise master. But it is, -for the critic, an even wiser slave. A critic on the Marseilles _Petits -Pois_ may critically admire “La Dernière Nuit de Don Juan,” but it -takes an Anatole France critically to understand it. - -The superficial quality of American emotions, sociological and -æsthetic, enjoyed by the great majority of American critics, operates -extensively against profundity in American criticism--in that of -literature and music no less than that of drama. American emotions, -speaking in the mass, where they are not the fixed and obvious emotions -ingenerate in most countries--such as love of home, family and country, -and so on--are one-syllable emotions, primary-colour emotions. The -polysyllabic and pastel emotions are looked on as dubious, even -degenerate. No man, for example, who, though absolutely faithful to -his wife, confessed openly that he had winked an eye at a ballet girl -could conceivably be elected to membership in the Union League Club. -The man who, after a cocktail, indiscreetly gave away the news that he -had felt a tear of joy in his eye when he heard the minuet of Mozart’s -G minor symphony or a tear of sadness when he looked upon Corot’s “La -Solitude,” would be promptly set down by the other members of the golf -club as a dipsomaniac who was doubtless taking narcotics on the side. -If a member of the Y. M. C. A. were to glance out of the window and -suddenly ejaculate, “My, what a beautiful girl!” the superintendent -would immediately grab him by the seat of the pantaloons and throw him -down the back stairs. And if a member of the American Legion were to -sniffle so much as once when the orchestra in the Luna Park dance hall -played “Wiener Blut,” a spy would seize him by the ear and hurry him -before the heads of the organization as a suspicious fellow, in all -probability of German blood. - -The American is either ashamed of honest emotion or, if he is not -ashamed, is soon shamed into shame by his neighbours. He is profoundly -affected by any allusion to Mother, the Baby, or the Flag--the -invincible trinity of American dramatic hokum--and his reactions -thereto meet with the full favour of church and state; but he is -unmoved, he is silently forbidden to be moved, by a love that doesn’t -happen to fall into the proper pigeon-hole, by a work of great beauty -that doesn’t happen to preach a backwoods Methodist sermon, by sheer -loveliness, or majesty, or unadorned truth. And this corsetted emotion, -mincing, wasp-waisted and furtive, colours all native criticism. -It makes the dramatic critic ashamed of simple beauty, and forbids -him honestly to admire the mere loveliness of such exhibitions -as Ziegfeld’s. It makes him ashamed of passion, and forbids him -honestly to admire such excellent dramas as Georges de Porto-Riche’s -“Amoureuse.” It makes him ashamed of laughter, and forbids him to -chuckle at the little naughtinesses of Sacha Guitry and his own Avery -Hopwood. It makes him ashamed of truth, and forbids him to regard with -approbation such a play as “The Only Law.” The American drama must -therefore not create new emotions for him, but must hold the battered -old mirror up to his own. It must warm him not with new, splendid and -worldly emotions, but must satisfy him afresh as to the integrity and -higher merit of his own restricted parcel of emotions. It must abandon -all new, free concepts of love and life, of romance and adventure and -glory, and must reassure him--with appropriate quiver-music--that the -road to heaven is up Main Street and the road to hell down the Avenue -de l’Opéra. - -Though there is a regrettable trace of snobbery in the statement, -it yet remains that--with half a dozen or so quickly recognizable -exceptions--the practitioners of dramatic criticism in America -are in the main a humbly-born, underpaid and dowdy-lived lot. -This was as true of them yesterday as it is today. And as Harlem, -delicatessen-store dinners, napkin-rings and the Subway are not, -perhaps, best conducive to a polished and suavely cosmopolitan -outlook on life and romance and enthralling beauty, we have had -a dramatic criticism pervaded by a vainglorious homeliness, by a -side-street æsthetic, and by not a little of the difficultly suppressed -rancour that human nature ever feels in the presence of admired yet -unachievable situations. Up to fifteen years ago, drama in America -was compelled critically to meet with, and adhere strictly to, the -standards of life, culture and romance as they obtained over on Mr. -William Winter’s Staten Island. Since Winter’s death, it has been -urged critically to abandon the standards of Staten Island and comply -instead with the eminently more sophisticated standards derived from -a four years’ study of Cicero, Stumpf and the Norwegian system of -communal elections at Harvard or Catawba College, combined with a two -weeks’ stay in Paris. For twenty years, Ibsen and Pinero suffered the -American critical scourge because they had not been born and brought -up in a town with a bust of Cotton Mather or William Cullen Bryant in -its public square, and did not think quite the same way about things -as Horace Greeley. For twenty years more, Porto-Riche and Frenchmen -like him will doubtless suffer similarly because, in a given situation, -they do not act precisely as Mr. Frank A. Munsey or Dr. Stuart Pratt -Sherman would; for twenty years more, Hauptmann and other Germans will -doubtless be viewed with a certain measure of condescension because -they have not enjoyed the same advantages as Professor Brander Matthews -in buying Liberty Bonds, at par. - -American dramatic criticism is, and always has been, essentially -provincial. It began by mistaking any cheap melodrama like “The Charity -Ball” or “The Wife” which was camouflaged with a few pots of palms and -half a dozen dress suits for a study of American society. It progressed -by appraising as the dean of American dramatists and as the leading -American dramatic thinker a playwright who wrote such stuff as “All -over this great land thousands of trains run every day, starting and -arriving in punctual agreement because this is a woman’s world! The -great steamships, dependable almost as the sun--a million factories in -civilization--the countless looms and lathes of industry--the legions -of labour that weave the riches of the world--all--all move by the -mainspring of man’s faith in woman!” It has come to flower today in -denouncing what the best European critics have proclaimed to be the -finest example of American fantastic comedy on the profound ground that -“it is alien to American morality,” and in hailing as one of the most -acute studies of a certain typical phase of American life a comedy -filched substantially from the French. - -The plush-covered provincialism of the native dramatic criticism, -operating in this wise against conscientious drama and sound -appreciation of conscientious drama, constantly betrays itself for -all the chintz hocus-pocus with which it seeks drolly to conceal -that provincialism. For all its easy incorporation of French phrases -laboriously culled from the back of Webster, its casually injected -allusions to the Überbrett’l, Stanislav Pshibuishevsky, the excellent -_cuissot de Chevreuil sauce poivrade_ to be had in the little -restaurant near the comfort station in the Place Pigalle, and the -bewitching eyes of the prima ballerina in the 1917 Y. M. C. A. show -at Epernay, it lets its mask fall whenever it is confronted in the -realistic flesh by one or another of the very things against which -it has postured its cosmopolitanism. Thus does the mask fall, and -reveal the old pair of suburban eyes, before the “indelicacy” of -French dramatic masterpieces, before the “polished wit” of British -polished witlessness, before the “stodginess” of the German master -depictions of stodgy German peasantry, before the “gloom” of Russian -dramatic photography, before the “sordidness” of “Countess Julie” and -the “wholesomeness” of “The Old Homestead.” Cosmopolitanism is a -heritage, not an acquisition. It may be born to a man in a wooden shack -in Hardin County, in Kentucky, or in a little cottage in Hampshire in -England, or in a garret of Paris, but, unless it is so born to him, a -thousand Cunard liners and Orient Expresses cannot bring it to him. All -criticism is geography of the mind and geometry of the heart. American -criticism suffers in that what æsthetic wanderlust its mind experiences -is confined to excursion trips, and in that what _x_ its heart seeks to -discover is an unknown quantity only to emotional sub-freshmen. - -Criticism is personal, or it is nothing. Talk to me of impersonal -criticism, and I’ll talk to you of impersonal sitz-bathing. Impersonal -criticism is the dodge of the critic without personality. Some men -marry their brother’s widow; some earn a livelihood imitating George -M. Cohan; some write impersonal criticism. Show me how I can soundly -criticize Mrs. Fiske as Hannele without commenting on the mature aspect -of the lady’s _stentopgia_, and I shall begin to believe that there -may be something in the impersonal theory. Show me how I can soundly -criticize the drama of Wedekind without analyzing Wedekind, the man, -and I shall believe in the theory to the full. It is maintained by the -apostles of the theory that the dramatic critic is in the position -of a judge in the court of law: that his concern, like that of the -latter, is merely with the evidence presented to him, not with the -personalities of those who submit the evidence. Nothing could be more -idiotic. The judge who does not take into consideration, for example, -that--whatever the nature of the evidence--the average Italian, or -negro, or Armenian before him is in all probability lying like the -devil is no more equipped to be a sound judge than the dramatic critic -who, for all the stage evidence, fails to take into consideration that -Strindberg personally was a lunatic, that Pinero, while treating of -British impulses and character, is himself of ineradicable Portuguese -mind and blood, that the inspiration of D’Annunzio came not from a -woman out of life but from a woman out of the greenroom, and that Shaw -is a legal virgin. - -Just as dramatic criticism, as it is practised in America, is Mason-jar -criticism--criticism, that is, obsessed by a fixed determination to put -each thing it encounters into an air-tight bottle and to label it--so -is this dramatic criticism itself in turn subjected to the bottling -and labelling process. A piece of criticism, however penetrating, that -is not couched in the language of the commencement address of the -president of Millsaps College, and that fails to include a mention of -the Elizabethan theatre and a quotation from Victor Hugo’s “Hernani,” -is labelled “journalistic.” A criticism that elects to make its points -with humour rather than without humour is labelled “flippant.” A -criticism that shows a wide knowledge of everything but the subject -in hand is labelled “scholarly.” One that, however empty, prefixes -every name with a Mr. and somewhere in it discloses the fact that the -critic is sixty-five years old is labelled “dignified.” One that is -full of hard common sense from beginning to end but is guilty of wit -is derogatorily labelled “an imitation of Bernard Shaw.” One that says -an utterly worthless play is an utterly worthless play, and then shuts -up, is labelled “destructive”; while one that points out that the same -play would be a much better play if Hauptmann or De Curel had written -it is labelled “constructive and informing.” And so it goes. With the -result that dramatic criticism in America is a dead art language. Like -Mr. William Jennings Bryan, it has been criticized to death. - -The American mania for being on the popular side has wrapped its -tentacles around the American criticism of the theatre. The American -critic, either because his job depends upon it or because he -appreciates that _kudos_ in this country, as in no other, is a gift -of the mob, sedulously plays safe. A sheep, he seeks the comfortable -support of other sheep. It means freedom from alarums, a guaranteed pay -envelope at the end of the week, dignity in the eyes of the community, -an eventual election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters -and, when he reaches three score years and ten and his trousers have -become thin in the seat, a benefit in the Century Theatre with a bill -made up of all the eminent soft-shoe dancers and fat tragediennes -upon whom he has lavished praise. This, in America, is the respected -critic. If we had among us today a Shaw, or a Walkley, or a Boissard, -or a Bahr, or a Julius Bab, he would be regarded as not quite nice. -Certainly the Drama League would not invite him to appear before it. -Certainly he would never be invited to sit between Prof. Richard -Burton and Prof. William Lyon Phelps at the gala banquet to Mr. D. -W. Griffith. Certainly, if his writings got into the paid prints at -all, there would be a discreet editor’s note at the top to the effect -that “the publication of an article does not necessarily imply that it -represents the ideas of this publication or of its editors.” - -Criticism in America must follow the bell-cow. The bell-cow is personal -cowardice, artistic cowardice, neighbourhood cowardice, or the even -cheaper cowardice of the daily and--to a much lesser degree--periodical -press. Up to within a few years ago it was out of the question for -a dramatic critic to write honestly of the productions of David -Belasco and still keep his job. One of the leading New York evening -newspapers peremptorily discharged its reviewer for daring to do so; -another New York newspaper sternly instructed its reviewer not to -make the same mistake twice under the penalty of being cashiered; a -leading periodical packed off its reviewer for the offence. One of -the most talented critics in New York was several years ago summarily -discharged by the newspaper that employed him because he wrote an -honest criticism of a very bad play by an obscure playwright named -Jules Eckert Goodman. Another conscientious critic, daring mob opinion -at about the same time--he wrote, as I recall, something to the effect -that the late Charles Frohman’s productions were often very shoddy -things--was charily transferred the next day to another post on the -newspaper’s staff. I myself, ploughing my familiar modest critical -course, have, indeed, been made not personally unaware of the native -editorial horror of critical opinions which are not shared by the Night -School curricula, the inmates of the Actors’ Home, the Independent -Order of B’nai B’rith, the United Commercial Travelers of America, and -the Moose. Some years ago, a criticism of Hall Caine and of his play -“Margaret Schiller,” which ventured the opinion that the M. Caine was -perhaps not one of the greatest of modern geniuses, so frightened the -editors of the Philadelphia _North American_ and the Cleveland _Leader_ -that I doubt they have yet recovered from the fear of the consequences -of printing the review. - -The ruling ethic of the American press so far as the theatre is -concerned is one of unctuous _laissez faire_. “If you can’t praise, -don’t dispraise,” is the editorial injunction to the reviewer. The -theatre in America is a great business--greater even than the -department store--and a great business should be treated with proper -respect. What if the reviewer does not admire “The Key to Heaven”? It -played to more than _twelve thousand dollars_ last week; it _must_ -be good. The theatre must be helped, and the way to help it is -uninterruptedly to speak well of it. Fine drama? Art? A newspaper has -no concern with fine drama and art; the public is not interested in -such things. A newspaper’s concern is primarily with news. But is not -dramatic swindling, the selling of spurious wares at high prices, news? -Is not an attempt to corrupt the future of the theatre as an honourable -institution and an honourable business also news, news not so very -much less interesting, perhaps, than the three column account of an -ex-Follies girl’s adulteries? The reviewer, for his impertinence, is -assigned henceforth to cover the Jefferson Market police court. - -The key-note of the American journalistic attitude toward the theatre -is a stagnant optimism. Dramatic art and the red-haired copy boy are -the two stock jokes of the American newspaper office. Here and there -one encounters a reviewer who, through either the forcefulness or -the amiability of his personality, is successful for a short time in -evading the editorial shackles--there are a few such still extant -as I write. But soon or late the rattle of the chains is heard and -the reviewer that was is no more. He is an American, and must suffer -the penalty that an American who aspires to cultured viewpoint and -defiant love of beauty must ever suffer. For--so George Santayana, -late professor of philosophy in Harvard University, in “Character and -Opinion in the United States”--“the luckless American who is drawn -to poetic subtlety, pious retreats, or gay passions, nevertheless -has the categorical excellence of work, growth, enterprise, reform, -and prosperity dinned into his ears: every door is open in this -direction and shut in the other; so that he either folds up his heart -and withers in a corner--in remote places you sometimes find such a -solitary gaunt idealist--or else he flies to Oxford or Florence or -Montmartre to save his soul--or perhaps not to save it.” - - - - - * * * * * * - - - - -Transcriber’s note: - - Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. - - Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. - - On page 83, second sentence, after the word So, it appears that a word - is missing. The transcriber is unable to ascertain what the missing - word, if any, might be. - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRITIC AND THE DRAMA*** - - -******* This file should be named 63188-0.txt or 63188-0.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/3/1/8/63188 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. 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