\ ?N nil CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ' THE Joseph Whitmore Barry dramatic library THE GIFT OF TWO FRIENDS OF Cornell University 1934 ! M.. - .- I .iji'>v *>_iiJiiU4--W"iSi*^- Slin library-circulations DATE DUE RCULATfOKS PRINTCO(NU'S>A. "^ Cornell University Library PN 2037.C88 1911 on M,..art,.,ffLr..,ffiMM The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027127129 ON THE ART OF THE THEATRE \Frontispiece. THE MASQUE OF LONDON. WAPPING OLD STAIRS Quite an impossible scene ; that is to say, impossible to realize on a stage. But I vxinted to know for once what it felt like to be mounting up impossible ladders and beckoning to people to come up after me. ON THE ART OF THE THEATRE By EDWARD GORDON CRAIG BROWNE'S BOOKSTORE CHICAGO L *;» a//* /f// /\u^^^i TO THE EVEE LIVING GENIUS OF THE GREATEST OF ENGLISH ARTISTS WILLIAM BLAKE AND TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS MEMORY OF HIS WIFE THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED P E E F A C E WHAT should be said as Preface ? Should one ask for forgiveness from those one unwit- tingly offends ? Should one admit that words are all nonsense, and that theories, even after one has practised that about which one theorizes, are really of little account ? Or should one stand on the threshold and receive one's guests and hope that they will enjoy themselves ? I think I shall do the latter. Well, in this case, my guests are made up of a thousand invited friends and those half-dozen one did not invite and never would invite, because of their very evil or foolish intentions towards our art. For instance, I willingly throw open the doors of this book to my very dear friends the artists, whether they be painters, sculptors, musicians, poets or architects. These, of course, will stand aside for a moment to allow first of all the beautiful ladies to pass. Then there are the scholars. Well, as I have only schooled myself in one particular branch of knowledge, I feel very shy about meeting such guests. Coming after them is that group of kindly people, men and women, who, without knowing much about art, are fond of it and encourage its growth. These, I am happy to believe, will feel at home here. Then there are other surprises, those engineers, those directors of journals, those managers of stores, those sea captains, men who startle one by suddenly putting in an appearance and expressing a sincere and hearty desire to join in the festivities. Last of all, there is what is known as the theatrical profession. How many of these will accept my invi- tation 2 A rare few, perhaps, but certainly the best. vii PREFACE So, when the rest of us have all assembled, we shall welcome Hevesi, from Budapest ; Stanislawski, Sul- ergitski, Mosquin, and Katchalof, who come from Moscow ; Meyerkhold, who comes from St. Peters- burg; De Vos, from Amsterdam; Starke, from Frankfurt; Fuchs, from Munich; Antoine, Paul Fort and Madame Guilbert, from Paris; and our great poet who has won over the stage, Yeats, from Ireland; and after these the shades of Vallentin, from Berlin ; Wyspiansky, from Krakow ; and Appia from Italy. Least of all are the uninvited guests, with their cheap cynicism and witty remarks which are calculated to put a blight upon every pleasant moment, upon every achievement, who will attempt to rob our happy gathering of all enjoyment, if they can possibly do so. Well, let us hope for the best, that these people will stay away. To the others I present what is within the house and beg that they will forever hold towards it and myself good thoughts. Being in my own house, I let myself go. I am not careful to be cautious among my friends. If I were to do so, they would think that I suspected them of being spies. It is a great honour for me to feel that among my friends are the names of the first artists in Europe. And I think we can all feel happy on the progress which our movement has made, a move- ment which is destined ultimately to restore the Art of the Theatre into its ancient position among the Fine Arts. E. G. C. London, August 16, 1911. CONTENTS PAGE Preface vii Introduction xiii God Save the King xv The Artists of the Theatre of the Future 1 The Actor and the Uber-Marionette . 54 Some Evil Tendencies of the Modern Theatre 95 Plays and Playwrights . . . .112 The Theatre in Russia, Germany, and England 125 The Art of the Theat re (1st Dialogue )., 1^7 v^ The Art of the Theatre (2nd Dialogue) 182 The Ghosts in the Tragedies of Shakespeare 264 Shakespeare's Plays 281 Realism and the Actor .... 286 Open-Air Theatres 289 -^ Symbolism . 293 The Exquisite and The Precious . . 295 ix ILLUSTRATIONS By EDWARD GORDON CRAIG SELECTED FROM HIS COLLECTION OF DESIGNS FOR STAGE SCENES AND COSTUMES Masque of London. Wapping Old Stairs (Frontispiece) To face p. liiLECTRA XIV Much Ado About Nothing. A Dancer 32 Julius Caesar 48 Lantern Bearers 80 Julius Caesar. The Forum 104 Hunger. The Servants 112 Macbeth 118 Peer Gynt. Costume . 124 Hamlet 136 Venice Preserved. Properties 148 The Vikings. Costume. Sigurd 176 Romeo and Juliet 224 Hunger. The Prologue . 262 Macbeth. A Witch 270 Macbeth 280 XI ^ INTRODUCTION I THINK Mr. Craig is the truest revolutionist I have ever known, because he demands a return to the most ancient traditions of which we can dream. Revolution and revelation are not far each from the other, and he gives us both. His torch, destined to set on fire our pseudo-Theatres, our mon- strous and barbarous play-houses, has been kindled at the sacred fires of the most ancient arts. He dis- covered for us that in a rope-dancer there may be more theatrical art than in an up-to-date actor reciting from his memory and depending on his prompter. I am sure all who are working on the stage throughout Europe, creative minds, or stage- managers priding themselves on their being creative miinds, cannot be but most grateful to Mr. Craig, and must regard all that is and shall be done in his honour to be done in the vital interest of the very Art of the Theatre. For more than a hundred years there have been two men working on the stage, spoiling almost all that is to be called Theatrical Art. These two men are the Realist and the Machinist. The Realist offers imitation for life, and the Machinist tricks in place of marvels. So we have lost the truth and the marvel of life — that is, we have lost the main thing pbssessed by the art. The Art of the Theatre as pure imitation is nothing but an alarming demonstration of the abundance of life and the narrowness of Art. It is like the ancient example of the child who was trying to empty the sea with a shell, and, as for the wonderful tricks of the machinist, they naay be marvellous, but they can never be a marvel. A xiii INTROD UCTION flying machine is marvellous, but a bird is a marvel. To the true Artist common life is a marvel and Art more abundant, more intense and more living than life itself. True Art is always discovering the marvel in all that does not seem to be marvellous at all, because Art is not imitation, but vision. That is the great discovery of Mr. Craig on the stage. He found the forgotten wonderland with the sleeping beauty, the land of our dreams and wishes, and has fought for it with the gestures of an artist, with the soul of a child, with the know- ledge of a student, and with the constancy of a lover. He has done the greatest service to the Art in which we are so profoundly interested, and it is a great happiness for us all that he comes off with flying colours. He has his admirers and followers in our little Hungary, the whole of the new generation being under his influence, and, without any disparage- ment to the great merit and good luck of Prof. Reinhardt, we Hungarians, as close neighbours and good observers, dare say that almost all that has been done in Berlin and Dusseldorf, in Munich or in Manheim for the last ten years is to be called the success of Mr. Craig. I am very sorry that I am not able to express all that I feel in a better style. But I am writing in a language which is not mine, and, Uving in a country cottage, far even from my English dic- tionaries, I am obliged to write it as I can, and not as I would. July 10, 1911. Dr. Alexander Hevesi, Dramaturg-Itegisseur of the State Theatre, Budapest. ELECTRA. SOPHOCLES A vast and forbidding doorway, I often think, still remains the best hacJcground for any tragedy — yet when I am told by the archcBologist, who enjoys himself in the dry and dusty days which are gone, that vastness and nobility of line are unimportant, and that a nice little wooden stage and some tasteful hangings about eight to ten feet high will serve, I am so ready to agree that I sometimes wcmder whether these vast doors and open spaces, these shadows and these bursts of light are not out of place. Of cmirse, it all depends whether you come to the theatre for drama or literature. If you come for drama, then let the whole thing live — not alone to the brain, but through the eye and the ear. If you come for a literary treat — best catch the first train home and ovm up to having made a blunder. \Face page xiv. # GOD SAVE THE KING " It is meritorious to insist on forms. Religion and all else naturally clothes itself in forms. All substances clothe them- selves in forms ; but there are suitable true forms, and then there are untrue unsuitable. As the briefest definition one might say, Forms which grow round a substance, if we rightly understand that, will correspond to the real Nature and purport of it, will be true, good ; forms which are consciously put round a substance, bad. I invite you to reflect on this. It distinguishes true from false in Ceremonial Form, earnest solemnity from empty pageant, in all human things." — Cablylb. I SPEAK here as the Artist, and though all artists labour and most are poor, all are loyal, all are the worshippers of Royalty. If there is a thing in the world that I love it is a symbol. If there is a symbol of heaven that I can bend my knee to it is the sky, if there is a symbol of God, the Sun. As for the smaller things which I can touch I am not content to believe in them, as though they could ever be the thing. This I must always keep as something precious. All I ask is that I may be allowed to see it, and what I see must be superb. Therefore God save the King ! " AH Architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it." ^ So do we artists feel about Royalty, and see it more splendid and more noble than any others can ever see it. And if my King wanted to chop off my head I think I would submit cheerfully and dance to the block for the sake of preserving my ideal of Kingship. Kings have given us everything, and we in times gone by have in return made up the splendid pro- cession which follows in their wake. Kings have not stopped giving us everything, but we, alas, have 1 Whitman. XV •^ GOD SAV E THE KIN G ! ^ lately given up forming the splendid processions. We have lost the trick of it because we are losing the old power of our eyes and our other senses. Our senses — those wonderful servants of ours over whom we reign as king — our senses have rebelled. So that it comes to this : that we on our part have lost our royalty. Our senses have had the vanity and the impertinence to revolt. This is infinitely disgusting. Oiu- senses, if you please, are permit- ting themselves the luxury of becoming tired. They want another ruler than the Soul, and expect Jupiter to send them a better. We have pampered our intellect so much of late, have searched the archives of knowledge at so great an expense, that we have bargained our senses away to our unimaginative reason. It costs all this to become practical to-day ; our imagination is the price we pay, a pretty penny indeed. It seems that in the Garden of Paradise, the world, there are as many trees of knowledge as there are men, so that it will no longer do to put our continual yearly " fall " down to woman, and we had surely better try to support her bitter laughter than that harsher scorn of the gods. And the gods are laughing ! My God, so entirely peerless, laughs only with his eyes. He laughs on all the day, and I hear the echo of his laughter all the night. But I know how nobly all has been arranged in this Garden, for my God's laughter is as the song of Paradise in my ears, and its pale echo soothes me to sleep through the night. And as surely as this bounteous laughter pours -^own on me by day and flows away from me by night, so will I find some way of giving thanks for xvi ^ GOD SAVE THE KING! ^ it all : thanksgiving to the joyous laughter and the Royal comfort that it brings. But to many ears this laughter of the Gods is like the shrieking of a storm, and these people raise their eyebrows, grumble, and pray that it will pass. But will it pass ? Will it not shriek in their ears until they be dead, until they have lost the sense of hearing ? Better would it be for these beings to value once more their most noble servants the senses, and attempt to perceive by their means the full meaning of the voice and of the face of God. And when they have understood that they will see the full meaning of the King. While I worship the sun I cannot listen to the talk which twaddles on about the tyranny of kings. The Sun is for me the greatest of tyrants ; that, in fact, is part of my reason for loving the Sun. All truth, the truth of tyranny no less than the truth of slavery, is illumined by the Sun. From the marble columns of Mount Carrara to the wrinkle on the face of my nurse, all is laid bare for me and illumined by his light ; nothing escapes the eye of God. He is a terrible God to those who fear to be burnt by him. From these he will " breed maggots." The Beautiful and the Terrible. Which is which will never be put into words. But I am free to tell myself; and, let me but preserve the senses — ^my eyes, my ears, my touch, and all shall be well — all shall seem far more beautiful than terrible. For not only do these servants of our Royalty help to idealize all things for us, but they also help to fix a limit to our vanity. By their help xvii ^ GOD SAV E THE KING ! ^ I recognize my God as he rises like the spirit of Imagination from the East and sails across the blue straits of heaven. If I had lost the sense of sight I should be unable to see this glory, and, not seeing it, I should demand other miracles from it than Happiness may expect. I should look for it to work some practical daily miracle in vain. Whereas, seeing this daily glory, this Sun, I know that the miracle comes and goes, that the miracle is just the 'passage of this symbol of the Divine, this seeming motion of the Sun from east to west. And that seeming motion of this God is enough for man to know. Mystic voices seem to cry, " Seek to know no more " ; and we answer rebel- liously, " I will be satisfied ; deny me this and an eternal curse fall on ye." "Show his eyes and grieve his heart. Come like shadows, so depart." This seeking to know more — this desire of the brain — threatens to rob our senses of their vitality ; ^our eyes may become dim till we shall no longer recognize the God before us, nor the King as he passes along our way. Our ears seem to be deaf; we begin not to hear the song of Paradise, we fail to pick up the chorus which follows in the wake of Royalty. Our touch, too, is growing coarse. The hem of the robes' brocade was once pleasant to our fingers' touch ; to touch the silken glove with our lips was once a privilege and a luxury. Now we have become the mob ; ambition's aim, oh noble consummation ! Afraid any longer to serve like noblemen, we must slave like thieves, having robbed ourselves of our greatest possession, our fine senses, xviii ^ GOD SAVE THE KING! We are becoming veritable slaves chained together by circumstances, refusing daily to be released by our imagination, that only power which achieves true Freedom. " But for me, I am a free man, by the grace of Royalty. Long live the King ! E. G. C. Florence, 1911. XIX THE ARTISTS OF . THE THEATEE OF THE FUTURE DEDICATED TO THE YOUNG RACE OF ATHLETIC WORKERS IN ALL THE THEATRES. SECOND Thoughts, i dedicate this to THE SINGLE COURAGEOUS INDIVIDUALITY IN THE WORLD OF THE THEATRE WHO WILL SOME DAY MASTER AND REMOULD IT. THEY say that second thoughts are best. They also say it is good to make the best of a bad job, and it is merely making the best of a bad job that I am forced to alter my first and more optimistic dedication to my second. Therefore the second thoughts are best. What a pity and what a pain to me that we should be obliged to admit it ! No such race of athletic workers in the Theatre of to- day exists ; degeneration, both physical and mental, is round us. How could it be otherwise ? Per- haps no surer sign of it can be pointed to than that all those whose work lies in the Theatre are to be continually heard announcing that all is well and that the Theatre is to-day at its highest point of development. But if all were well, no desire for a change would spring up instinctively and continually as it ever does in those who visit or ponder on the modern Theatre. It is because the Theatre is in this i ^ DEDI C A TI ON ^ wretched state that it becomes necessary that some one shall speak as I do; and then I look around me for those to whom I can speak and for those who will listen and, listening, understand; and I see nothing but backs turned towards me, the backs of a race of unathletic workers. Still the individujgil, the boy or man of personal courage, faces me.\ Him I see, and in him I see the force which shall create the race to comeX Therefore to him I speak, and I am content tharhe alone shall understand me. It is the man who will, as Blake says, " leave father, mother, houses and lands if they stand in the way of his art " ; it is the man who will give up personal ambition and the tem- porary success of the moment, he who will cease to desire an agreeable wealth of smooth guineas, but who shall demand as his reward nothing less than the restoration of his home, its liberty, its health, its power. It is to him I speak. YOU are a young man ; you have already been a few years in a theatre, or you have been born of theatrical parents ; or you have been a painter for a while but have felt the longing towards move- ment ; or you have been a manufacturer. Perhaps you quarrelled with your parents when you were eighteen, because you wished to go on the stage, and they would not let you. They perhaps asked why you wanted to go on the stage, and you could give no reasonable answer because you wanted to 2 •^ J WANT TO FLY' ^ do that which no reasonable answer could explain ; in other words, you wanted to fly. And had you said to your parents, " I want to fly," I think that you would have probably got further than had you alarmed them with the terrible words, " I want to go on the stage." f Millions of such men have had the same desire, this desire for movement, this desire to fly, this desire to be merged in some other creature's being, and not knowing that it was the desire to live in the imagination, some have answered their parents, " I want to be an actor; I want to go on the stage.^ I Itl^not that which they want ; and the tragedy begins. I think when walking, disturbed with this newly awakened feeling, a young man will say, " perhaps I want to be an actor "; and it is only when in the presence of the irate parents that in his desperation he turns the " perhaps " into the definite " I want." This is probably your case. You want to fly; you want to exist in some other state, to be in- toxicated with the air, and to create this state in others. Try and get out of your head now that you really want "to go on the stage." If, unfortunately, you are upon the stage, try and get out of your head then that you want to be an actor and that it is the end of all your desires. Let us say that you are already an actor ; you have been so for four or five B 2 3 OBEDIENCE TO YOUR MASTER years, and already some strange doubt has crept upon you. You will not admit it to any one ; your parents would apparently seem to have been right ; you will not admit it to yourself, for you have nothing else but this one thing to cheer yourself with. But I'm going to give you all sorts of things to cheer yourself with, and you may with courage and complete good spirits throw what you will to the winds and yet lose nothing of that which you stood up for in the beginning. You may remain on, yet be above the stage. I shall give you the value of my experience for what it is worth, and may be it will be of some use to you. I shall try to sift what is important for us from what is unimportant ; and if while I am telling you all this you want any doubts cleared or any more exact explanations or details, you have only to ask me for them and I am ready to serve you. To begin with, you have accepted an engagement from the manager of the Theatre. You must serve him faithfully, not because he is paying you a salary, but because you are working under him. And with this obedience to your manager comes the first and the greatest temptation which you will encounter in your whole work. Because you must not merely obey his words but his wishes ; and yet you must not lose yourself. I do not mean to say you must not lose your person- ality, because it is probable your personahty has not come to its complete form. But you must not 4 ■^OBEDIENCE TO NATURE^ lose sight of that which you are in quest of, you must not lose the first feeling which possessed you when you seemed to yourself to be in movement with a sense of swinging upwards. While serving your apprenticeship under your first manager listen to all he has to say and all he can show you about the theatre, about acting, and go further for yourself and search out that which he does not show you. Go where they are painting the scenes ; go where they are twisting the electric wires for the lamps ; go beneath the stage and look at the elaborate constructions; go up over the"\ stage and ask for information about the ropes and j ,p^ the wheels ; but while you are learning all this about jt the Theatre and about acting be very careful to/ 1 remember that outside the world of the Theatre i you will find greater inspiration than inside it : I mean in nature. The other sources of inspiration are music and architecture. I tell you to do this because you will not have it told you by your manager. In the Theatre they study from the Theatre. They take the Theatre as their source of inspiration, and if at times some actors go to nature for assistance, it is to one part of nature only, to that which manifests itself in the human being. This was not so with Henry Irving, but I cannot stop here to tell you of him, for it would mean letter upon letter to put the thing clearly before you. But you can remember that as actor he was unfailingly ion ■-: ^ HENRY IRVING ^ right, and that he studied all nature in order to find symbols for the expression of his thoughts. You will be probably told that this man, whom I hold up to you as a peerless actor, did such and such a thing in such and such a way ; and you will doubt my counsel; but with all respect to your present manager you must be very careful how much credence you give to what he says and to what he shows, for it is upon such tradition that the Theatre has existed and has degenerated. What Henry Irving did is one thing ; what they tell you he did is another. I have had some experience of this. I played in the same Theatre as Irving in Macbeth, and later on I had the oppor- tunity of playing Macbeth myself in a theatre in the north or the south of England. I was curious to know how much would strike a capable and reliable actor of the usual fifteen years' experience, especially one who was an enthusiastic admirer of Henry Irving. I therefore asked him to be good enough to show me how Irving had treated this or that passage ; what he had done and what impres- sion he had created, because it had slipped my memory. The competent actor thereupon revealed to my amazed intelligence something so banal, so clumsy, and so lacking in distinction, that I began to understand how much value was in tradition; and I have had several such experiences. I have been shown by a competent and worthy actress how Mrs. Siddons played Lady Macbeth. ^ INCORRECT TRADITION ^ She would move to the centre of the stage and would begin to make certain movements and certain exclamations which she believed to be a repro- duction of what Mrs. Siddons had done. I presume she had received these from some one who had seen Mrs. Siddons. The things which she showed me were utterly worthless in so far as they had no unity, although one action here, another action there, would have some kind of reflected value; and so I began to see the uselessness of this kind of tuition; and it being my nature to rebel against those who would force upon me something which seemed to me unintelligent, I would have nothing to do with such teaching. I do not recommend you to do the same, although you will disregard what I say and do as I did if you have much of the volcano in you ; but you willN do better to listen, accept and adapt that which/' they tell you, remembering that this your apprentice- ship as actor is but the very beginning of an exceed- ingly long apprenticeship as craftsman in all the crafts which go to make up the art. When you have studied these thoroughly you will find some which are of value, and you will certainly find that the experience as actor has been necessary. The pioneer seldom finds an easy road, and as your way does not end in becoming a celebrated actor but is a much longer and an untrodden way leading to a very different end, you will have all the advan- tages and the disadvantages of pioneering; but 7 ^ THE END IN VIEW -o keep in mind what I have told you : that your aim \Ts not to become a celebrated actor, it is not to be- come the manager of a so-called successful theatre ; it is not to become the producer of elaborate and much-talked-of plays ; it is to become an artist of the Theatre ; and as a base to all this you must, as I have said, serve your term of apprenticeship as actor faithfully and well. If at the end of five years as actor you are convinced that you know what 'your future will be ; if, in fact, you are succeeding, you may give yourself up for lost. Short cuts lead nowhere in this world. Did you think when the longing came upon you and when you told your family that you must go upon the stage that such a great longing was to be so soon satisfied ? Is satis- faction so small a thing ? Is desire a thing of nothing, that a five years' quest can make a parody of it ? But of course not. Your whole life is not too long, and then only at the very end will some small atom of what you have desired come to you. And so you will be still young when you are full of years. ^ ON THE ACTOR <> As a man he ranks high, possesses generosity, and the truest sense of comradeship. I call to mind one actor whom I know and who shall stand as the type. A genial companion, and spreading a sense of companionship in the theatre; generous in giving assistance to younger and less accomplished 8 WHAT THE ACTOR KNOWS actors, continually speaking about the work, picturesque in his manner, able to hold his own when standing at the side of the stage instead of in the centre ; with a voice which commands my attention when I hear it, and, finally, with about as much knowledge of the art as a cuckoo has of any- thing which is at all constructive. An3i;hing to be made according to plan or design is foreign to his nature. But his good nature tells him that others are on the stage besides himself, and that there must be a certain feeling of unity between their thoughts and his, yet this arrives by a kind of good-natured instinct and not through knowledge, and produces nothing positive. Instinct and expe- f rience have taught him a few things (I am not going to call them tricks), which he continually repeats. For instance, he has learned that the sudden drop in the voice from forte to piano has the power of accentuating and thrilling the audience as much as the crescendo from the piano into the j forte. He also knows that laughter is capable of very many sounds, and not merely Ha, Ha, Ha. He knows that geniality is a rare thing on the stage and that the bubbling personality is always wel- comed. But what he does not know is this, that this same bubbling personahty and all this same instinctive knowledge doubles or even trebles its l power when guided by scientific knowledge, that j is to say, by art. If he should hear me say this now he would be lost in amazement and would consider 9 ^ THE CREATIVE POWER ^ that I was saying something which was finicking, dry, and not at all for the consideration of an artist. He is one who thinks that emotion creates emotion, and hates anything to do with calculation. It is not necessary for me to point out that all art has to do with calculation, and that the man who dis- regards this can only be but half an actor. Nature will not alone supply all which goes to create a work of art, for it is not the privilege of trees, moun- tains and brooks to create works of art, or every- thing which they touch would be given a definite and beautiful form. It is the particular power which belongs to man alone, and to him through his intelligence and his will. My friend probably thinks that Shakespeare wrote Othello in a passion of jealousy and that all he had to do was to write the first words which came into his mouth; but I am of the opinion, and I think others hold the same opinion, that the words had to pass through our author's head, and that it was just through this process and through the quality of his imagination and the strength of his brain that the richness of his nature was able to be entirely and clearly ex- pressed, and by no other process could he have arrived at this. Therefore it follows that the actor who wishes to perform Othello, let us say, must have not only the rich nature from which to draw his wealth, but must also have the imagination to know what to bring forth, and the brain to know how to put it before 10 ^ THE IDEAL ACTOR ^ us. Therefore the ideal actor will be the man who^ possesses both a rich nature and a powerful brain. Of his nature we need not speak. It will contain everjrthing. Of his brain we can say that the finer the brain the less liberty will it allow itself, re- membering how much depends upon its co-worker, the Emotion, and also the less liberty will it allow its fellow-worker, knowing how valuable to it is its sternest control. Finally, the intellect would bring both itself a,nd the emotions to so fine a sense of reason that" the work would never boil to the bubbling, point with its restless exhibition of activity, but would create that perfect moderate heat which it would know how to keep temperate. The perfect actor would be he whose brain could conceive and could show us the perfect symbols of all which his nature contains. He would not ramp and rage up and down in Othello, rolling his eyes and clenching his hands in order to give us an im- pression of jealousy; he would tell his brain to inquire into the depths, to learn all that lies there, and then to remove itself to another sphere, the sphere of the imagination, and there fashion certain symbols which, without exhibiting the bare passions, would none the less tell us clearly about them. And the perfect actor who should do this would in time find out that the symbols are to be made mainly from material which lies outside his person. But I will speak to you fully about this when I get to the end of our talk. For then I shall show you 11 THE FACE OF HENRY IRVING that the actor as he is to-day must ultimately disappear and be merged in something else if works of art are to be seen in our kingdom of the Theatre.^ Meantime do not forget that the very nearest approach that has ever been to the ideal actor, with his brain commanding his nature, has been Henry Irving. There are many books which tell you about him, and the best of all the books is his face. Procure all the pictures, photographs, drawings, > you can of him, and try to read what is there. To begin with you will find a mask, and the signifi- cance of this is most important. I think you will find it difficult to say when you look on the face, that it betrays the weaknesses which may have been in the nature. Try and conceive for yourself that face in movement — movement which was ever under the powerful control of the mind. Can you not see the mouth being made to move by the brain, and that same movement which is called expression creating a thought as definite as the line of a draughtsman does on a piece of paper or as a chord does in music ? Cannot you see the slow turning of those eyes and the enlargement of them ? These two movements alone contained so great a lesson for the future of the art of the theatre, pointed out so clearly the right use of expression as opposed to the wrong use, that it is amazing to me that many people have not seen more clearly what the future must be. I should say that the face of Irving was ' See The Actor and the Uber-Marionette," p. 54. 12 THE MASK AS THE MEDIUM the connecting link between that spasmodic and ridiculous expression of the human face as used by the theatres of the last few centuries, and the masks which will be used in place of the human face in the near future. Try and think of all this when losing hope that you will ever bring your nature as exhibited in your face and your person under sufficient command. Know for a truth that there is something other than your face and your person which you may use and which is easier to control. Know this, but make no attempt yet awhile to close with it. Continue to be an actor, continue to learn all that has to be learned, as to how they set about con- trolling the face, and then you will learn finally that it is not to be entirely controlled. I give you this hope so that when this moment arrives you will not do as the other actors have done. They have been met by this difficulty and have shirked it, have compromised, and have not dared to arrive at the conclusion which an artist must arrive at if faithful to himself. That is to say, T that the mask is the only right medium of portray- 1 ing the expressions of the soul as shown through the expressions of the face. ^ ON THE STAGE-MANAGER ^ After you have been an actor you must become a I stage-manager. Rather a misleading title this, 13 MASTER OF THE THEATRE for you will not be permitted to manage the stage. It is a peculiar position, and you can but benefit by the experience, though the experience will not bring either great delights to you or great results to the theatre in which you work. How well it sounds, this title. Stage-manager ! it indicates " Master of the science of the stage." I — Every theatre has a stage-manager, yet I fear (there are no masters of the stage science. Perhaps already you are an under stage-manager. You will therefore remember the proud joy you felt when you were sent for, and, with some solemn words, informed that your manager had decided to advance you to the position of stage-manager, and begged to remind you of the importance of the post, and of the additional one or two pennies that go with the situation. I suppose that you thought that the great and last wonderful day of your dream had arrived, and you held your head a little higher for a week, and looked down on the vast land which seemed to stretch out before you. But after then, what was it ? Am I not right in saying that it meant an early attendance at the theatre to see after the carpenters, and whether the nails had been ordered, and whether the cards were fixed to the doors of the dressing-rooms ? Am I not right in saying that you had to descend again to the stage and stand around waiting to see if things were done to time ? whether the scenery was brought in and hung up to time ? Did not 14 GENERAL UTILITY MAN TO-DAY the costumiere come tearfully to you saying that some one had taken a dress from its box and sub- stituted another ? Did you not request the costumiere to bring the offending party before you ? and did you not have to manage these two in some tactful way so as to offend neither of them, and yet so as to get at the truth of the matter ? And did you ever get at the truth of the matter ? And did these two go away nursing anything but a loathed hate towards you ? Put the best case, one of them liked you, and the other began to intrigue against you the next hour. Did you find yourself still on the stage at about half-past ten, and did not the actors arrive at that hour apparently in total ignorance that you had been there already four hours, and with their superb conviction that the doors of the theatre had just that moment been opened because they had arrived ? And did not at least six of these actors in the next quarter of an hour come up to you and with an " I say, old chap," or " Look here, old fellow," start asking you to arrange something for them on the stage so as to make their task a little easier ? And were not the things which they asked all so opposed one to the other, that to assist any one actor would have been to offend the other five ? Having told them that you would do your best, were you not relieved by the sudden appearance of the director of the theatre, generally the chief actor ? And did you not instantly go to him with the different requests 15 ^ THE REHEARSAL ^ which had been made to you, hoping that he, as master, would take the responsibility of arranging all these difficult matters ? And did he not reply to you, " Don't bother me Avith these details ; please do what you think best," and did not you then instantly know in your heart that the whole thing was a farce — the title, the position, and all? And then the rehearsal commenced. The first words are spoken ; the first difficulty arrives. The play opens with a conversation between two gentle- men seated at a table. Having gone on for about five minutes, the director interrupts with a gentle question. He asks if he is not correct in saying that at yesterday's rehearsal Mr. Brown rose at this or that line, twisting his chair back with a sudden movement ? The actor, a trifle distressed that he has been the cause of the first delay in the day's proceedings, and yet not wishing to take any fault to himself, asks with equal courtesy, " Are these the chairs which we are supposed to use on the night ? " The director turns to the stage-manager, and asks him, " Are these the chairs we use upon the night ? " " No, sir," rephes the stage-manager. A momen- tary look of disapproval, ever so slight, passes from the director, and is reflected upon the faces of the two actors, and a little restless wind passes round the theatre. It is the first little hitch. " I think it would be best to use at rehearsal the chairs we are going to use on the night." " Certainly, sir ! " 16 o THE REHEARSAL ^ The stage-manager claps his hands. " Isherwood," he cries. A thin, sad-looking httle man, with a mask which is impenetrable on account of its extreme sadness, comes on to the stage and stands before the judgment seat. He hesitates. " We shall use the chairs at rehearsal which have been ordered for this scene." " No chairs, sir, have been ordered for this scene." The wind rises. A sharp flash of lightning shows itself on the face of the director, and a sudden frown of thunder hangs upon the brows of the actors. The stage-manager asks to see the property list, that is to say, the list of things used in the scene. Isherwood casts his eyes pathetically across the desert of the stage in search of the leading lady. Being the wife of the director, she has seen no reason for arriving in time. When she arrives she will have the look upon her face of having been concerned with more important busi- ness elsewhere. Isherwood replies, " I had orders, sir, to put these two chairs in Scene II, as they are chairs with pink and red brocade." Great moment for the director. Thunder-clap. " Who gave you these orders ? " " Miss Jones." [Miss Jones is the daughter of the leading lady, who is the wife of the director. Her position is not defined in the theatre, but she may be said to " assist her mother."] Hence the absence of the chairs. Hence the irritation of the entire company. Hence the waste of time in many theatres and certainly in many Enghsh theatres, c 17 WHY A GOOD EXPERIENCE This is but one and the first trial of the stage- manager, who rather plays the part of the tyre than the axle of the wheel of the stage. The rehearsal continues. The stage-manager has to be there all the time with but little control and permitted to have less opinions, and yet held responsible for all errors ; and after it is over, while the actors may retire to their luncheon, he must retire to the property room, the scene-painting room, the carpen- ters' room — must hear all their grievances, must see everything being delayed ; and when the company returns to the theatre fresh after a pause of an hour or so he is expected to be as fresh and as good- humoured without a break of a minute. This would be an easy and pleasant matter if he had the authority of his title; that is to say, if in his contract lay the words " entire and absolute control of the stage and all that is on the stage." But it is none the less a good if a strange expe- rience. It teaches the man who assumes these terrible responsibilities how great a need there is for him to study the science of the stage, so that when it comes to his turn to be the director of the Theatre, he may dispense with the services of a so-called " stage-manager " by being the veritable stage-manager himself. You will do well, after having remained an actor ior five years to assume these difficult responsi- jbilities of stage-manager for a year or two, and never (forget that it is a position capable of development. 18 THE IDEAL S T A G E -M A N A G E R About the ideal stage-manager I have written in my book, The Art of the Theatre,^ and I have shown there that the nature of his position should make him the most important figure in the whole world of the Theatre. It should therefore be your aiiiO to become such a man, one who is able to take a play and produce it himself, rehearsing the actors I and conveying to them the requirements of each I movement, each situation; designing the scenery and the costumes and explaining to those who are | to make them the requirements of these scenes and j costumes; and working with the manipulators of the artificial light, and conveying to them clearly I what is required. Now, if I had nothing better to bring to you than these suggestions, if I had no further ideal, no further truth, to reveal to you about the Stage and about your future than this that I have told you of, I should consider that I had nothing to give you whatever and I should urge you to think no more of the Theatre. But I told you at the beginning of my letter that I was going to give you all sorts of things to cheer yourself with, so that you should have absolute faith in the greatness of the task which you set out to achieve ; and heie I remind you of this again lest you should think that this ideal manager of whom I speak is the ultimate ' This little book I have been able to rescue from a dungeon into which it had been thrown, and it is now free once more to roam the world under the protection of Mr. Heinemann. You will find it on p. 137 of this volume. C 2 19 AND BEYOND achievement possible for you. It is not. Read what I have written about him in The Art of the Theatre, and let that suffice you for the time being; but rest perfectly sure that I have more, much more to follow, and that your hope shall be so high, that no other hope, not even that of the poets or the priests, shall be higher. To return to the duties of the stage-manager. I take it that I have already explained to you, or that you have already experienced, these ordinary difficulties, and that you have learned that great tact is required and no great talent. You have only to take care that in exercising this tact you do not become a little diplomatist, for a Uttle diplomatist is a dangerous thing. Keep fresh your desire to emerge from that position, and your best way to do this is to study how to master the different materials which, later on, you will have to work in when your position is that of the ideal stage- manager. You will then possess your own Theatre, and what you place upon your stage will all be the work of your brain, much of it the work of your hands, and you must waste no time so as to be ready. ON SCENE AND MOVEMENT It is now time to tell you how I believe you may best become a designer of stage scenery and costumes, and how you may learn something about 20 THE STUDY OF THE PLAY the uses of artificial light ; how you may bring the actors who work with you to work in harmony with each other, with the scene, and, most of all, with the ideas of the author. You have been studying, and will go on studying, the works which you wish to present. Let us here limit them to the foiu* great tragedies by Shakespeare. You will know these so well by the time you begin to prepare them for the stage, and the preparation will take you a year or two for each play ; you will have no more doubts as to what impression you want to create; your exercise will be to see how best you can create that impression. Let me tell you at the commencement that it T' is the large and sweeping impression produced by | means of scene and the movement of the figures, | which is undoubtedly the most valuable means at i your disposal. I say this only after very many doubts and after much experience ; and you must always bear in mind that it is from my experience that I speak, and that the best I can do is but to offer you that experience. Although you know that I have parted company with the popular belief that ' the written play is of any deep and lasting value to the Art of the Theatre, we are not going so far as i to dispense with it here. We are to accept it that L^ the play still retains some value for us, and we are not going to waste that ; our aim is to increase it. Therefore it is, as I say, the production of general and broad effects appealing to the eye which will 21 MA CBETH' add a value to that which has already been made valuable by the great poet. > First and foremost comes the scene. It is idle to talk about the distraction of scenery, because the question here is not how to create some distracting scenery, but rather how to create a place which harmonizes with the thoughts of the poet. Come now, we take Macbeth. We know the play well. In what kind of place is that play laid ? How does it look, first of all to our mind's eye, secondly to our eye ? V I see two things. I see a lofty and steep rock, i and I see the moist cloud which envelops the head I of this rock. That is to say, a place for fierce and ; warlike men to inhabit, a place for phantoms to nest in. Ultimately this moisture will destroy the rock ; ultimately these spirits will destroy the men. Now then, you are quick in your question as to what actually to create for the eye. I answer as swiftly — place there a rock ! Let it mount up high. Swiftly I tell you, convey the idea of a mist which hugs the head of this rock. Now, have I departed at all for one eighth of an inch from the vision which I saw in the mind's eye ? But you ask me what form this rock shall take and what colour ? What are the lines which are the lofty lines, and which are to be seen in any lofty cliff ? Go to them, glance but a moment at them ; now quickly set them down on your paper ; ;> the lines and their direcpkm^ never mind the cliff THE COLO U B Do not be afraid to let them go high ; they cannot go high enough ; and remember that on a sheet of paper which is but two inches square you can make a hne which seems to tower miles in the air, and you can do the same on your stage, for it is all a matter of proportion and nothing to do with actuality, y You ask about the colours ? What are the'" colours that Shakespeare has indicated for us ? Do not first look at Nature, but look in the play of the poet. Two; one for the rock, the man; one for the mist, the spirit. Now, quickly, take and accept this statement from me. Touch not aT single other colour, but only these two colours 1 through your whole progress of designing your scene and your costumes, yet forget not each that colour contains many v^xiations. If you are timid for a moment and mistrust yourself or what I tell, when the scene is finished you will not see with your eye the effect you have seen with your mind's eye, when looking at the picture which Shakespeare has indicated. / It is this lack of courage, lack of faith in the value which lies in limitation and in proportion which is the undoing of all the good ideas which are born in the minds of the scene designers. They wish to make twenty statements at once."l They wish to tell us not only of the lofty crag and the mist which clings to it ; they wish to you tell of the moss of the Highlands and of the particular rain which descends in the month of August. They cannot resist 23 PRACTISE AND LOSE NO TIME showing that they know the fonn of the ferns of Scotland, and that their archaeological research has been thorough in all matters relating to the castles of Glamis and Cawdor. And so in their attempt to tell us these many facts, they tell us nothing; all is confusion : " Most sacrilegious murder hath hroke ope The Lord's anointed temple, and stole thence The life o' the building.' So, do as I tell you. Practise with the pencil on paper both on a small scale and on a large scale ; practise with colour on canvas ; so that you may see for yourself that what I say to you is true — and, if you are an Englishman, make haste : for if you do not others who read this in other countries will find in it technical truths and will outstrip you before you are aware of it. But the rock and its cloud of mist is not all that you have to consider. You have to consider that at the base of this rock swarm the clans of strange earthly forces, and that in the mist hover the spirits innumerable; to speak more technically, you have to think of the sixty or seventy actors whose movements have to be made at the base of the scene, and of the other figures which obviously may not be suspended .on wires, and yet must be seen to be clearly separate from the human and more material beings. It is obvious then that some curious sense of a dividing line must be created somewhere upon the stage so that the beholder, even if he look but with 24 A TECHNICAL EXPLANATION his corporal eye, shall be convinced that the two things are separate things. I will tell you how to do this. Line and proportion having suggested the material rock-like substance, tone and colour (one colour) will have given the ethereal to the mist-like vacuum. Now then, you bring this tone and colour downwards until it reaches nearly to the level of the floor ; but you must be careful to bring this colour and this tone down in some place which is removed from the material rock-like substance. You ask me to explain technically what I mean. Let your rock possess but half the width of the stage, let it be the side of a cliff round which many paths twist, and let these paths mingle in one flat space taking up half or perhaps three quarters of the stage. You have room enough there for all your men and women. Now then, open your stage and all other parts. Let there be a void below as well as above, and in this void let your mist fall and fade; and from that bring the figures which you have fashioned and which are to stand for the spirits. I know you are yet not quite comfortable in your mind about this rock and this mist ; I know that you have got in the back of your head the recollection that a little later on in the play come several " interiors " as they are called. But, bless your heart, don't bother about that ! Call to mind that the interior of a castle is made from the stuff which is taken from the quarries. Is it not precisely the same colour to begin with ? and do 25 A TECHNICAL EXPLANATION not the blows of the axes which hew out the great stones give a texture to each stone which resembles the texture given it by natural means, as rain, lightning, frost ? So you will not have to change your mind or change your impression as you proceed. You will have but to give variations of the same theme, the rock — ^the brown; the mist — the grey ; and by these means you will, wonder of wonders, actually have preserved unity. Your success will depend upon your capacity to make variations upon these two themes ; but remember never to let go of the main theme of the play when searching for variations in the scene. By means of your scene you will be able to mould the movements of the actors, and you must be able to increase the impression of your numbers without actually adding another man to your forty or fifty. You must not, therefore. Waste a single man, nor place him in such a position that an inch of him is lost. Therefore the place on which he walks must be the most carefully studied parts of the whole scene. But in telling you not to waste an inch of him I do not therefore mean to convey that you must show every inch of him. It is needless to say >',jmore on this point. By means of suggestion you j may bring on the stage a sense of all things — the ' rain, the sun, the wind, the snow, the hail, the intense heat — but you will never bring them there by attempting to wrestle and close with Nature, in order so that you may seize some of her treasure 26 A TECHNICAL EXPLANATION and lay it before the eyes of the multitude. By means of suggestion in movement you may trans late all the passions and the thoughts of vast numbers of people, or by means of the same you] can assist your actor to convey the thoughts an the emotions of the particular character he im- personates. Actuality, accuracy of detail, is useless/K' , upon the stage. ■ Do you want further directions as to how to become a designer of scenes and how to make them beautiful, and, let us add for the sake of the cause, practical and inexpensive ? I am afraid that if I were to commit my method to writing I should write something down which would prove not so much useless as bad. For it might be very danger- ous for many people to imitate my method. It would be a different thing if you could study with me, practising what we speak about for a few years. Your nature would in time learn to reject that which was unsuited to it, and, by a daily and a much slower initiation, only the more important and valuable parts of my teaching would last. But I can give you now some more general ideas of things which you might do with advantage and things which you may leave undone. For instance, to begin with, don't worry — particularly don't worry your brain, and for Heaven's sake don't think it is important that you have got to do something, especially something clever. I call to mind the amount of trouble I had when 27 MY EARLY EXPERIENCE I was a boy of twenty-one over the struggle to somehow produce designs traditional in character without feeling at all in sympathy with the tradi- tion; and I count it as so much wasted time. I do not hold with others that it was of any value whatever. I remember making designs for scenes for Henry IV. I was working under an actor- manager at the time. I was working in a theatre where the chairs and the tables and other matters of detail played over-important and photographic parts, and, not knowing any better, I had to take all this as a good example. The play of Henry IV, therefore, consisted to my mind of one excellent part. Prince Hal, and thirty or forty other characters that trotted round this part. There was the usual table with the chairs round it on the right side. There at the back was the usual door, and I thought it rather unique and daring at the time to place this door a little bit off the straight. There was the window with the latches and the bolts and the curtains ruffled up to look as if they had been used for some time, and outside the glimpses of English landscape. There were the great flagons; and, of course, on the curtain rising there was to be a great cluster and fluster of " scurvy knaves," who ran in and out, and a noise of jovial drinkers in the next room. There was the little piece of jovial music to take up the curtain, that swinging jig time which we have all grown so familiar with, there were the three girls who pass at the back of 28 ^ WOULD-BE IMITATORS ^ the window, laughing. One pops her head in at the window with a laugh and a word to the potman. Then there is the dwindling of the laughter and the sinking to piano of the orchestra as the fu"st speaking character enters, and so on. My whole work of that time was based on these stupid restless details which I had been led to suppose a production could be made from; and it was only when I banished the whole of this from my thoughts, and no longer permitted myself to see with the eyes of the producers of the period of Charles Kean, that I began to find anything fresh which might be of value to the play. And so for me to tell you how to make your scenes is well-nigh impossible. It would lead you into terrible blun- ders. I have seen some of the scenery which is supposed to be produced according to my teaching, and it is utter rubbish. I let my scenes grow out of not merely the play, but fronx broad sweeps of thought which the play has conjured up in me, or even other plays by the same author have conjured up. For instance, the relation of Hamlet to McuAeth is quite close, and the one play may influence the other. I have been asked so many times, by people eager to make a little swift success or a little money, to explain to them carefully how I make my scenes; because, said they, with sweet simplicity, " then I could make some too." You will hardly believe it, but the strangest of people have said this to me, and if I 29 ^ WOULD-BE IMITATORS ^ could be of service to them without 'being treacher- ous to myself as an artist, and to the art, I would always do so. But you see how vain that would be ! To tell them in five minutes or in five hours or even in a day how to do a thing which it has taken me a lifetime to begin to do would be utterly impossible. And yet when I have been unable to bring myself to tear my knowledge up into little shreds and give it to these people they have been most indignant, at times malignant. And so you see it is not that I am unwilling to explain to you the size and shape of my back-cloths, the colour which is put upon them, the pieces of wood that are not to be attached to them, the way they are to be handled, the lights that are to be thrown upon them, and how and why I do every- thing else; it is only that if I were to tell you, though it might be of some service to you for the next two or three years, and you could produce several plays with enough " effects " therein to satisfy the curiosity of quite a number of people, though you would benefit to this extent you would lose to a far greater extent, and the art would have in me its most treacherous minister. We are not con- cerned with short cuts. We are not concerned with what is to be " effective " and what is to pay. We are concerned with the heart of this thing, and with loving and understanding it. Therefore approach it from all sides, surround it, and do not let yourself be attracted away by the idea of scene as an end 30 THE PREPARATION OF A PLAY in itself, of costume as an end in itself, or of stage ^ management or any of these things, and never lose hold of your determination to win through to the secret — ^the secret which lies in the creation of another beauty, and then all will be well. In preparing a play, while your mind is thinking ; of scene, let it instantly leap round and consider: the acting, movement and voice. Decide nothing yet, instantly leap back to another thought about another part of this unit. Consider the movement robbed of all scene, all costume, merely as move- ment. Somehow mix the movement of the person with the movement which you see in your mind's eye in the scene. Now pour all your colour upon this. Now wash away all the colour. Now begin over again. Consider only the words. Wind them in and out of some vast and impossible picture, and now make that picture possible through the words. Do you see at all what I mean? Look at the thing from every standpoint and through every medium, and do not hasten to begin your work until one medium force you to com- mence. You can far sooner trust other influences to move your will and even your hand than you can trust your own little human brain. This may not be the methodical teachings of the school. The results they achieve are on record, and the record is nothing to boast about. Hard, matter-of-fact, mechanical teaching may be very good for a class, but it is not much good for the individual; and 31 o THE COSTUME BOOKS ^ when I come to teach a class I shall not teach them so much by words as by practical demonstration. — "^^By the way, I may tell you one or two things f that you will find good not to do. For instance, do J \ not trouble about the costume books. When in a great difficulty refer to one in order to see how little it will help you out of your difficulty, but A, your best plan is never to let yourself become com- plicated with these things. Remain clear and fresh. If you study how to draw a figure, how to put on it a jacket, coverings for the legs, covering for the head, and try to vary these coverings in all kinds of interesting, amusing, or beautiful ways, you will get much further than if you feast your eyes and confound your brain with Racinet, Planchet, Hottenroth and the others. The coloured costumes are the worst, and you must take great care with these and be utterly independent when you come to think about what you have been looking at. Doubt and mistrust them thoroughly. If you find afterwards that they contain many good things you will not be so far wrong; but if you accept them straight away your whole thought and sense for designing a CDstume will be lost; you will be able to design a Racinet costume or a Planchet costume, and you will lean far too much on these historically accurate men who are at the same time historically untrue. Better than these that I have mentioned is Viollet le Due. He has much love for the little 32 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING A Dancer. " Charming costume, that," I hear some octor-mMtiager say ; " quite charming — so original, too-^t's a pity it^s im/possible to make it. My ward/robe mistress tells me she couldn't make that because it's not clear." This is typical of the withering praise such a design is met vnth when an anxious actor-manager catches sight of it. It is the habit for some of them — one of them, I. had almost written — to damn everything outside his ovm theatre as impossible, and in such a pathetic way, too. " You are not going to tell me that you seriously consider that is good," he asks of his visitor, and he adds, " / like mine much better " — " mine " is some little invention of one of his servants, for the great man never indulges himself that way. This costume design was carried out to perfection. One is obliged to state these things because of the story-tellers I \_F ace page 32. V I OLLET LE DU C truths which underlie costume, and is very faithful \ in his attitude ; but even his is more a book for the I ^ historical novelist, and one has yet to be written {/ about imaginative costume. Keep continually designing such imaginative costumes. For ex- ample, make a barbaric costume; and a barbaric costume for a sly man which has nothing about it ^ which can be said to be historical and yet is both sly and barbaric. Now make another design for another barbaric costume, for a man who is bold and tender. Now make a third for one who is ugly and vindictive. It will be an exercise. You will probably make blunders at first, for it is no easy thing to do, but I promise you if you persevere long enough you will be able to do it. Then go further ; attempt to design the clothing for a divine figure and for a demonic figure : these of course will be studies in individual costumes, but the main strength of this branch of the work lies in the ^ costume as mass. It is the mistake of all theatrical producers that they consider the costumes of the mass individually It is the same when they come to consider move- ments, the movements of masses on the stage. You must be careful not to follow the custom. We often hear it said that each member of the Meiningen Company composing the great crowd in Julius Caesar was acting a special part of his own. This may be very exciting as a curiosity, and attractive to a rather foolish audience, who would naturally D 33 THE MOVEMENTS OF MASSES sSkY : " Oh, how interesting to go and look at one particular man in a corner who is acting a little part of his own ! How wonderful ! It is exactly like life ! " And if that is the standard and if that is our aim, well and good. But we know that it is not. uVIasses must be I treated as masses,"/fes Rembrandt treats a mass, as Bach and Beethoven treat a mass, and detail has nothing to do with the mass. Detail is very well in itself and in its place. You do not make an impression of mass by crowding a quantity of details together. Detail is made to form mass only by those people who love the elaborate, and it is a much easier thing to crowd a quantity of details together than it is to create a mass which shall possess beauty and interest. On the stage they instantly turn to the natural when they wish to create this elaborate structure. A hundred men to compose a crowd, or, let us say, all Rome, as in Julius Caesar; a hundred men, and each is told to act his little part. Each acts himself, giving vent to his own cries ; each a different cry, though many of them copy the most effective ones, so that by the end of the first twenty nights they are all giving out the same cry. And each of them has his own action, which after the first twenty nights is exchanged for the most effective and popular action ; and by this means a fairly decent crowd of men with waving arms and shouting voices may be composed, and may give some people the impression of a vast 34 THE 'NATURALISTIC* IN MOVEMENT crowd. To others it gives the impression of a crush at a railway station. Avoid all this sort of thing. Avoid the so-called " naturalistic " in movement as well as in scene and costume. The naturalistic stepped in on the Stage because the artificial had grown finicking, insipid ; but do not forget that there is such a thing as noble artificiality. 1 - Some one writing about natural movement and gesture says : " Wagner had long put in practice the system of natural stage action tried of late years at the Theatre Libre in Paris by a French comedian ; a system which, most happily, tends more and more to be generally adopted." It is to prevent such things being written that you exist. This tendency towards the natural has nothing to do with art, and is abhorrent when it shows in art, even as artificiality is abhorrent when we meet it in everyday life. We must understand that the two things are divided, and we must keep each thing in its place ; we cannot expect to rid ourselves in a moment of this tendency to be " natural " ; to make " natural " scenes, and speak in a " natural " voice, but we can fight against it best by studying the other arts. Therefore we have to put the idea of natural or ; unnatural action out of our heads altogether, and i in place of it we have to consider necessary or i unnecessary action. The necessary action at a certain moment may be said to be the natural D 2 35 NATURAL ACTION NOT ALWAYS RIGHT action for that moment; and if that is what is meant by " natural," well and good. In so far as it is right it is natural, but we must not get into our heads that every haphazard natural action is right. In fact, there is hardly any action which is right, there is hardly any which is natural. Action is a way of spoiling something, says Rimbaud. And to train a company of actors to show upon the stage the actions which are seen in every drawing-room, club, public-house or garret must seem to every one nothing less than tomfoolery. That companies are so trained is well known, but it remains almost incredible in its childishness. Just as I told you to invent costume which was significant, so must you invent a series of significant actions, still keeping in mind the great division which exists between action in the mass and action in the individual, and remembering that no action is better than little action. I have told you to make designs for three costumes of a barbaric period, each particularized by some special character. Give action to these figures which you have made. Create for them significant actions, hmiting yourself to those three texts that I have given you, the sly, the bold tender- ness, the ugly and vindictive. Make studies for these, carry your little book or pieces of paper with you and continually be inventing with your pencil little hints of forms and faces stamped with these 36 THE WORD 'BEAUTIFUL' AND — three impressions ; and when you have collected dozens of them select the most beautiful. And now for a word on this. I particularly did not say the most " effective," although I used the word " beautiful " as the artists use it, not as those of the stage use it. I cannot be expected to explain to you all that the artist means by the word beautiful ; but to him it is something which has the most balance about it, the justest thing, that which rings a complete and perfect bell note. Not the pretty, not the smooth, not the superb always, and not always the rich, seldom the " effective " as we know it in the Theatre, although at times that, too, is the beautiful. But Beauty is so vast a thing, and contains nearly all other things — contains even ugliness, which sometimes ceases to be what is held as ugliness, and contains harsh things, but never incomplete things. Once let the meaning of this word Beauty begin to be thoroughly felt once more in the Theatre, and we may say that the awakening day of the Theatre is near. Once let the word effec- tive be wiped off our lips, and they will be ready to speak this word Beauty. When we speak about the effective, we in the Theatre mean something which will reach across the foot lights. The old actor tells the young actor to raise his voice, to " Spit it out " — " Spit it out, laddie ; fling it at the back of the gallery." Not bad advice either ; but 37 A —THE WORD EFFECTIVE' to think that this has not been learnt in the last five or six hundred years, and that we have not got further ; that is what is so distressing about the whole business. Obviously all stage actions and all stage words must first of all be clearly seen, must be clearly heard. Naturally all pointed actions and all pointed speeches must have a clear and distinct form so that they may be clearly understood. We grant all this. It is the same in all art, and as with the other arts it goes without saying; but it is not the one and only essential thing which the elders must be continually drum- ming into the ears of the younger generation when it steps upon the stage. It teaches the young actor soon to become a master of tricks. He takes the short cut instinctively to these tricks, and this playing of tricks has been the cause of the invention of a word — " Theatrical," and I can put my finger on the reason why the young actor labours under this disadvantage the moment he begins his stage experience. It is because previous to his experience he has passed no time as student or as apprentice. I do not know that I am such a great beUever in the schools. I believe very much indeed in the general school which the world has to offer us, but there is this great difference between the " world " schooling of the actor and the " world " schooling of the other artists who do not go to the academies either. A young painter, or a young musician, a young poet, or a young architect, or a young 38 / THE FIRE OF CRITICISM — sculptor may never enter an academy during his f life, and may have ten years' knocking about in the ' world — learning here, learning there, experimenting and labouring unseen and his experiments un- noticed. The young actor may not enter an academy either, and he may also knock about in the world, and he too may experiment just the same as the others, but — and here is the vast difference — all his experiments he must make in front of a public. Every little atom of his work from the first day of his commencing until the last day of his apprentice- ship must be seen, and must come under the fire of criticism. I shall ever be beholden to the higher \ criticism, and for a man of ten years' experience at any work to come under the fire of criticism will benefit him and his work a thousandfold. He has prepared himself ; he has strength ; he knows what he is going to face. But for every boy and girl to be subjected to this the first year that they timidly attempt this enormous task is not only unfair on them but is disastrous to the art of the stage. Let us picture ourselves as totally new to this work. We are on fire with the desire to begin our work. Willingly and with an enormous courage we accept some small part. It is eight lines, and we appear for ten minutes. We are delighted, although almost in a panic. Say it is twenty lines. Do you think we say no ? We are to appear six times, do you think we shall run away ? We may not be angels, but we are certainly not fools for stepping 39 by that more secret means even than wireless tele- graphy. I shall understand the communication. When you have finished your apprenticeship, six to ten years, there will be no need to use further concealment : you will then be fitted to step out and, in your turn, unfurl your banner, for you will be upon the frontier of your kingdom, and about this kingdom I will speak now. I use the word " Kingdom " instinctively in speaking of the land of the Theatre. It explains best what I mean. Maybe in the next three or four thousand years the word Kingdom will have disappeared — Kingdom, Kingship, King — but I doubt it ; and if it does go something else equally fine will take its place. It will be the same thing in a different dress. j_You can't invent anything \ finer than Kingship, the idea of the King. It is merely another word for the Individual, the calm, shrewd personality; and so long as this world J exists the calmest- and the shrewdest personality* ;r-' will always be the KingJ In some rare instances he 1 is called the President, but he is none the less the King. In some instances he is called the Pope, and sometimes the General; it all comes to the same thing, and it is no good denjang it : He is the King. To the artist the thought is very dear. There is the sense of the perfect balancer. The king (to the artist) is that superb part of the scales, which the old workmen made in gold and sometimes touched with beautiful stones ; the delicately worked handle 45 THE BALANCES. OUR DEVICE without which the scales could not exist, and upon which the eye of the measurer must be fixed. Therefore I have taken as the device of our new art these scales, for our art is based upon the idea of perfect balance, the result of movement. Here then is the thing which I promised at the beginning to bring to you. Having passed through your apprenticeship without having been merged in the trade, you are fitted to receive this. Without having done so you would not even be able to see it I have no fear that what I throw to you now will be caught by other hands, because it is visible and tangible only to those who have passed through j/ such an apprenticeship. In the beginning with you • it was Impersonation; you passed on to Repre- t sentation, and now you advance into Revelation When impersonating and representing you made use of those materials which had always been made use of ; that is to say, the human figure as exempli- fied in the actor, speech as exemplified in the poet through the actor, the visible world as shown by means of Scene. You now will reveal by means of movement the invisible things, those seen thi'ough the eye and not with the eye, by the wonderful and divine power of Movement. There is a thing which man has not yet learned to master, a thing which man dreamed not was waiting for him to approach with love; it was invisible and yet ever present with him. Superb in its attraction and swift to retreat, a thing waiting 46 MO V EMEN T but for the approach of the right men, prepared to soar with them through all the circles beyond the earth — ^it is Movement. It is somehow a common belief that only by means of words can truths be revealed. Even the wisdom of China has said : " Spiritual truth is deep and wide, of infinite excellence, but difficult of comprehension. Without words it would be im- possible to expound its doctrine ; without images its form could not be revealed. Words explain the law of two and six, images delineate the relation of four and eight. Is it not profound, as infinite as space, beyond all comparison lovely ? " But what of that infinite and beautiful thing dwelling in space called Movement ? From sound has been drawn that wonder of wonders called Music. Music, one could speak of it as St. Paul speaks of love. It is all love, it is all that he says true love should be. It suffereth all things, and is kind ; is not puffed up, doth not be- have itself unseemly; believeth all things, hopeth all things — ^how infinitely noble. And as like one sphere to another, so is Move- ment like to Music. I like to remember that all things spring from movement, even music; and I like to think that it is to be our supreme honour to be the ministers to the supreme force — ^move- ment. For you see where the theatre (even the poor distracted and desolate theatre) is connected with this service. The theatres of all lands, east and 47 THE SONS OF LOS west, have developed (if a degenerate development) from movement, the movement of the human form. We know so much, for it is on record : and before the human being assumed the grave responsibility of using his own person as an instrument through which this beauty should pass, there was another and a wiser race, who used other instruments. In the earliest days the dancer was a priest or a priestess, and not a gloomy one by any means ; too soon to degenerate into something more like the acrobat, and finally to achieve the distinction of the ballet-dancer. By association with the minstrel, the actor appeared. I do not hold, that with the renaissance of the dance comes the renaissance of the ancient art of the Theatre, for I do not hold that the ideal dancer is the perfect instrument for the expression of all that is most perfect in movement. The ideal dancer, male or female, is able by the strength or grace of the body to express much of the strength and grace which is in himian nature, but it cannot express all, nor a thousandth part of that all. For the same truth applies to the dancer and to all those who use their own person as instrument. Alas ! the human body refuses to be an instrument, even to the mind which lodges in that body. The sons of Los rebelled and still rebel against their father. The old divine unity, the divine square, the peerless circle of our nature has been ruthlessly broken by our moods, and no longer can instinct design the square or draw the circle on the grey wall 48 JULIUS CAESAR Act II. Scene II. Before you like or dislike this design will you do me the fairness of reading Act II. scene ii. It's an exciting scene, and will repay your pains. Then, if you are an actor-manager and you dislike it, mU you design a better? If only one of these so-called actor-manager- producers, who never have really " produced " anything, would let us all see him designing anything, I'm sure we should all be more than willing to applaud his honest endeavours and perhaps his achievement. As it is, he has to call in people to do his work for him. Hence the awful expense — hence the patchwork remits — the dishonesty of the whole system. \_Face fiage 48. THE TRANSLATING INSTRUMENT before it. But with a significant gesture we thiill our souls once more to advance without our bodies upon a new road and win it all back again. This is a truth which is not open to argument, and a truth which does not lessen the beauty which exhales from the dearest singer or the dearest dancer of all times. To me there is ever something more seemly in man when he invents an instrument which is outside his person, and through that instrument translates his message. I have a greater admiration for the organ, for the flute and for the lute than I have for the human voice when used as instrument. I have a greater feeUng of admiration and fitness when I see a machine which is made to fly than when I see a man attaching to himself the wings of a bird. For a man through his person can conquer but/ little things, but through his mind he can conceive and invent that which shall conquer all things. I believe not at all in the personal magic of man, but only in his impersonal magic. It seems to me that we should not forget that we belong to a period after the Fall and not before it. I can at least extract a certain hint from the old story. And though it may be only a story, I feel that it is just the very story for the artist. In that great period previous to this event we can see in our mind's eye the person of man in so perfect a state that merely to wish to fly was to fly, merely to desire that which we call the impossible was to achieve it. We seem E 49 ^ THE NAME OF THIS ART ^ to see man flying into the air or diving into the depths and taking no harm therefrom. We see no foolish clothes, we are aware of no hunger and thirst. But now that we are conscious that this " square deific " has been broken in. upon, we must reahze that no longer is man to advance and proclaim that his person is the perfect and fitting medium for the expression of the perfect thought. So we have to banish from our mind all thought of the use of a human form as the instrument which we are to use to translate what we call Movement. We shall be all the stronger without it. We shall no longer waste time and courage in a vain hope. The exact name by which this art will be known cannot yet be decided on, but it would be a mistake to return and look for names in China, India or Greece. We have words enough in our English language, and let the English word become familiar to the tongues of all the nations. I have written elsewhere, and shall continue to write, all about this matter as it grows in me, and you from time to time will read what I write. But I shall not remove from you the very difficulty which will be the source of your pleasure ; I wish to leave all open and to make no definite rules as to how and by what means these movements are to be shown. This alone let me tell you. I have thought of and begun to make my instrument, and through this instrument I intend soon to venture in my quest of beauty. How do I know whether I can achieve that or not ? 50 THE NAME OF THIS ART ^ Therefore how can I tell you definitely what are the first rules which you have to learn ? Alone and unaided I can reach no final results. It will need the force of the whole race to discover all the beauties which are in this great source, this new race of artists to which you belong. When I have constructed my instrument, and permitted it to make its first assay, I look to others to make like instruments. Slowly, and from the principles which rule all these instruments some better instru- ment will be made. I am guided in the making of mine by only the very first and simplest thoughts which I am able to see in movement. The subtleties and the compli- cated beauties contained in movement as it is seen in Nature, these I dare not consider ; I do not think 1 shall ever be able to hope to approach these. Yet that does not discourage me from attempting some of the plainest, barest and simplest move- ments ; I mean those which seem to me the simplest, those which I seem to understand. And after I have given activity to those I suppose I shall be permitted to continue to give activity to the like of them; but I am entirely conscious that they contain but the simplest of rhythms, the great movements will not yet be captured, no, not for thousands of years. But when they come, great health comes with them, for we shall be nearer balance than we have ever been before. I think that movement can be divided into two E 2 51 THE SQUARE AND THE CIRCLE distinct parts, the movement of two and four which is the square, the movement of one and three which is the circle. There is ever that which is mascuHne in the square and ever that which is feminine in the circle. And it seems to me that before the female spirit gives herself up, and with the male goes in quest of this vast treasure, perfect movement will not be discovered ; at least, I like to suppose all this. And I like to suppose that this art which shall spring from movement will be the first andfinal belief of the world ; and I like to dream that for the first time in the world men and women will achieve this thing together. How fresh, how beautiful it would be ! And as this is a new beginning it lies before men and before women of the next centuries as a vast possibility. In men and women there is a far greater sense of movement than of music. Can it be that this idea which comes to me now will at some future date blossom through help of the woman ? — 'Or will it be, as ever, the,man^s_pajt_to master these things alone ? The musician is a male, the builder is a male, the painter is a male, and the poet is a male. Come now, here is an opportunity to change all this. But I cannot follow the thoughts any farther here, neither will you be able to. ; Get on with the thought of the invention of an instrument by which means you can bring move- ment before our eyes. When you have reached this point in your developments you need have no 52 THE FIRST AND FINAL BELIEF further fear of hiding your feehng or your opinion, but may step forward and join me in the search. You will not be a revolutionary against the Theatre, for you will have risen above the Theatre, and entered into something beyond it. Maybe you will pursue a scientific method on your search, and that will lead to very valuable results. There must be a hundred roads leading to this point — ^not merely one ; and a scientific demonstration of all that you may discover can in no way harm this thing. Well, do you see any value in the thing I give you ? If you do not at first you will by and by. I could not expect a hundred or even fifty, no, not ten, to understand. But one ? It is possible — just possible. And that one will understand that I write here of things, dealing with to-day — dealing with to-morrow and with the future, and he will be careful not to confound these three separate periods. I believe in each period and in the necessity of undergoing-ths^xperience each has to offer. I believe in the time when we shall be able to create works of art in the Theatre without the use of the written play, without the use of actors ; hut I believe also in the necessity of daily work under the conditions which are to-day offered us. The word to-day is good, and the word to- morrow is good, and the words the future are divine — but the word which links all these words is more perfect than all ; it is that balancing word AND. I 53 THE ACTOE AND THE tFBER-MAKIONETTE a a INSCRIBED IN ALL AFFECTION TO MY GOOD FRIENDS, DE VOS AND ALEXANDER HEVESI " To SAVE THE Theatre, the Theatre must be DESTROYED, THE ACTORS AND ACTRESSES MUST ALL DIE OF THE PLAGUE. . . . ThEY MAKE ART IMPOS- SIBLE." — Eleonora Duse : Studies in Seven Arts, Arthur Symons. (Constable, 1900.) IT has always been a matter for argument whether or no Acting is an art, and therefore whether the actor is an Artist, or something quite different. There is little to show us that this ques- tion disturbed the minds of the leaders of thought at any period, though there is much evidence to prove that had they chosen to approach this subject as one for their serious consideration, they would have applied to it the same method of inquiry as used when considering the arts of Music and Poetry, of Architecture, Sculpture and Painting. On the other hand there have been many warm arguments in certain circles on this topic. Those taking part in it have seldom been actors, very rarely men of the Theatre at all, and all have displayed any amount of illogical heat and very little know- ledge of the subject. The arguments against acting being an art, and against the actor being an artist, 54 UNREASONABLE ATTACKS are generally so unreasonable and so personal in their detestation of the actor, that I think it is for this reason the actors have taken no trouble to go into the matter. So now regularly with each season comes the quarterly attack on the actor and on his jolly calling; the attack usually ending in the retirement of the enemy. As a rule it is the literary or private gentlemen wlio fill the enemy's rank. On the strength of having gone to see plays all their lives, or on the strength of never having gone to see a play in their lives, they attack for some reason best known to themselves. I have followed these regular attacks season by season, and they seem mostly to spring from irritability, personal enmity, or conceit. They are illogical from beginning to end. ^ There can be no such attack made on the actor or his calling. My intention here is not to join in any such attempt;; I would merely place before you what seem to me to be the logical facts of a curious case^ and I believe that these admit of no dispute whatever^ ACTING is not an art. It is therefore incorrect to speak of the actor as an artist. For acci- dent is an enemy of the artist. Art is the exact antithesis of pandemonium, and pandemonium is created by the tumbling together of many acci- dents. ArJt arrives only by design. Therefore inj order to make any work of art it is clear w^ may only work in those materials with whid 55 ^ ACTING IS NOT AN ART ^ J we can calculate. Man is not one of these materials. The whole nature of man tends towards freedom ; he therefore carries the proof in his own person that as material for the Theatre he is useless. In the modern theatre, owing to the use of the bodies of men and women as their material, all which is presented there is of an accidental nature. The actions of the actor's body, the expression of his face, the sounds of his voice, all are at the mercy -T of the winds of his emotions : these winds, which must blow for ever round the artist, moving without unbalancing him. But with the actor, emotion possesses him; it seizes upon his limbs, moving them whither it will. i^He is at its beck and call, he moves as one in a frantic dream or as one distraught, swajdng here and there; his head, his arms, his feet, if note utterly beyond control, are so weak to stand against the torrent of his passions, that they are ready to play him false at any moment. It is useless for him to attempt to reason with himself, Hamlet's calm directions (the dreamer's, not the logician's directions, by the way) are thrown to the winds. His limbs refuse, and refuse again to obey his mind the instant emotion warms, while the mind is all the time creating the heat which shall set these emotions afire. As with his movement, so is it with the expression of his face. The mind strugghng and succeeding for a moment, in moving the eyes, or 56 EMOTION CONSPIRES AGAINST ART the muscles of the face whither it will; the mind bringing the face for a few moments into thorough subjection, is suddenly swept aside by the emotion which has grown hot through the action of the mind. Instantly, like lightning, and before the mind has time to cry out and protest, the hot passion has mastered the actor's expression. It shifts and changes, sways and turns, it is chased by emotion from the actor's forehead between his eyes and down to his mouth ; now he is entirely at the mercy of emotion, and crying out to it : " Do with me what you will ! " His expression runs a mad riot hither and thither, and lo ! " Nothing is coming of nothing." f-It is the same with his voice as it is with his movements. Emotion cracks the voice of the actor. "It sways his voice to join in the conspiracy against his mind. Emotion works upon the voice of the acfor, and he produces the impression of discordant emotion. It is of no avail to say that emotion is the spirit of the gods, and is precisely what the artist aims to produce ; first of all this is not true; and even if it were quite true, every stray emotion, every casual feeling, cannot be of value. Therefore the mind of the actor, we see, is less powerful than his emotion, for emotion is able to win over the mind to assist in the destruc- tion of that which the mind would produce; and as the mind becomes the slave of the emotion it follows that accident upon accident must be continually occurring. So then, we have arrived 57 EMOTION CONSPIRES AGAINST ART at this point : that emotion is the cause which first of all creates, and secondly destroys. Art, as lave said, can admit of no accidents. That, fthen, which the actor gives us, is not a work of art ; ut-ift. a series of accidental confessions. In the be- Tginning the human body was not used as material I in the Art of the Theatre. In the beginning the 'Amotions of men and women were not considered as a fit exhibition for the multitude. An elephant and a tiger in an arena suited the taste better, when the desire was to excite. The passionate tussle between the elephant and the tiger gives us all the excitement that we can get from the modem stage, and can give it us unalloyed. Such an exhibition is not more brutal, it is more dehcate, it is more humane; for there is nothing more outrageous than that men and women should be let loose on a platform, so that they may expose that which artists refuse to show except veiled, in the form which their minds create. How it was that man was ever persuaded to take the place which until that time animals had held is not difficult to surmise. The man with the greater learning comes across the man with the greater temperament. He addresses him in something hke the following terms : " You have a most superb countenance ; what magnificent movements you make ! Your voice, it is like the singing of birds ; and how your eye flashes ! What a noble impression you give ! 58 COMEDY OF AUTHOR AND ACTOR You almost resemble a god ! I think all people should have pointed out to them this wonder which is contained in you. I will write a few words which you shall address to the people. You shall stand before them, and you shall speak my lines just as you will. It is sure to be perfectly right." And the man of temperament replies : " Is that really so ? Do I strike you as appearing as a god ? It is the very first time I have ever thought of it. And do you think that by appearing in front of the people I could make an impression which might benefit them, and would fill them with enthusiasm ? "No, no, no," says the inteUigent man; "by no means only by appearing ; but if you have something to say you will indeed create a great impression." The other answers : " I think I shall have some difficulty in speaking your lines. I could easier just appear, and say something instinctive, such as ' Salutation to all men ! ' I feel perhaps that I should be able to be more myself if I acted in that way." " That is an excellent idea," replies the tempter, " that idea of yours : ' Salutation to all men ! ' On that theme I will compose say one hundred or two hundred hues; you'll be the very man to speak those hues. You have yourself suggested it to me. Salutation ! Is it agreed, then, that you will do this ? " " If you wish it," replies the other, with a good-natured lack of reason, and flattered beyond measure. 59 TRAGEDY OF AUTHOR AND ACTOR And so the comedy of author and actor com- mences. The young man appears before the multitude and speaks the lines, and the speaking of them is a superb advertisement for the art of literature. After the applause the young man is swiftly forgotten; they even forgive the way he has spoken the lines ; but as it was an original and new idea at the time, the author found it profit- able, and shortly afterwards other authors found it an excellent thing to use handsome and buoyant men as instruments. It mattered nothing to them that the instrument was a human creature. Al- though they knew not the stops of the instrument, they could play rudely upon him and they found him useful. And so to-day we have the strange picture of a man content to give forth the thoughts of another, which that other has given form to while at the same time he exhibits his person to the public view. He does it because he is flattered ; and vanity — will not reason. But all the time, and however long the world may last, the nature in man will fight for freedom, and will revolt against being made a slave or medium for the expression of another's thoughts. The whole thing is a very grave matter indeed, and it is no good to push it aside and protest that the actor is not the medium for another's thoughts, and that he invests with life the dead words of an author; because even if this were true (true it cannot be), and even if the actor were to present none but the ideas which he 60 ^ THE W A Y OTJ T ^ himself should compose, his nature would still be in servitude; his body would have to become the slave of his mind ; and that, as I have shown, is what the healthy body utterly refuses^ to do. Therefore the body of man, for the reason which I have given, is by nature utterly useless as a material for an art. I am fully aware of the sweeping character of this statement; and as it concerns men and women who are alive, and who as a class are ever to be loved, more must be said lest I give unintentional offence. I know perfectly well that what I have said here is not yet going to create an exodus of all the actors from all the theatres in the world, driving them into sad monasteries where they will laugh out the rest of their lives, with the Art of the Theatre as the main topic for amusing conversation. As I have written else- where, the Theatre will continue its growth and actors will continue for some years to hinder its development.' But I see a loop-hole by which in time the actors can escape from the bondage they, are in. They must create for themselves a new form of acting, consisting for the main part of sjonbolical gesture. To-day they impersonate and interpret; to-morrow they must represent and in- terpret ; and the third day they must create. By this means style may return. To-day the actor impersonates a certain being. He cries to the audience : " Watch me ; I am now pretending to be so and so, and I am now pretending to do so 61 t ^y^ THE ACTOR IMITATES ^ and so ; " and then he proceeds to imitate as ex- actly as possible, that which he has announced he will indicate. For instance, he is Romeo. He tells the audience that he is in love, and he proceeds to show it, by kissing Juliet. This, it is claimed, is a work of art : it is claimed for this that it is an intelligent way of suggesting thought. Why — why, that is just as if a painter were to draw upon the wall a picture of an animal with long ears and then write under it " This is a donkey." The long ears made it plain enough, one would think, without the inscription, and any child of ten does as much. The difference between the child of ten and the artist is that the artist is he who by drawing certain signs and shapes creates the impression of a donkey : and the greater artist is he who creates the impression of the whole genus of donkey, the S'pirit of the thing. The actor looks upon life as a photo-machine looks upon life ; and he attempts to make a picture to rival a photograph. He never dreams of his art as being an art such for instance as music. He I tries to reproduce Nature; he seldom thinks to / invent with the aid of Nature, and he never dreams of creating. As I have said, the best he can do when he wants to catch and convey the poetry of a kiss, the heat of a fight, or the calm of death, is to copy slavishly, photographically — he kisses — he fights — he Hes back and mimics death — and, when you think of it, is not all this dreadfully 62 ACTOR WOULD RIVAL PH OTOGRAPHER I IWII.J stupid ? Is it not a poor art and a poor cleverness,\ which cannot convey the spirit and essence of an idea to an audience, but can only show an artless copy, afacsimile of the thing itself ?CThis is to be an imitator, not an artist. This is to claim kin- ship with the ventriloquist.! There is a stage expression of the actor " getting under the skin of the part." A better one would be getting " out of the skin of the part altogether." " What, then," cries the red-blooded and flashing actor, " is there to be no flesh and blood in this same art of the theatre of yours ? No life ? " It depends what you call life, signor, when you use the word in relation with the idea of art. The painter means something rather different to actual- ity when he speaks of life in his art, and the other artists generally mean something essentially spiritual ; it is only the actor, the ventriloquist, or the animal-stuffer who, when they speak of putting life into their work, mean some actual and lifelike ' " And therefore when any one of these pantomimic gentle- men, who are so clever that they can imitate anything, comes to us, and makes a proposal to exhibit himself and his poetry, we wiU fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy and wonder- ful being ; but we must also inform him that in our State such as he are not permitted to exist : the law will not allow them. And so, when we have anointed him with myrrh, and set a garland of wool upon his head, we shall lead him away to another city. For we mean to employ for our soul's health the rougher and severer poet or story-teller, who will imitate the style of the virtuous only, and will follow those models which we prescribed at first when we began the education of our soldiers." Plato. [The whole passage being too long to print here, we refer the reader to The Bepublic, Book III. p. 395.] 63 ACTOR, ARTIST, MUSICIAN reproduction, something blatant in its appeal, that it is for this reason I say that it would be better if the actor should get out of the skin of the part altogether. If there is any actor who is reading this, is there not some way by which I can make him realize the preposterous absurdity of this delusion of his, this belief that he should aim to make an actual copy, a reproduction ? u am going to suppose that such an actor is here with me as I talk ; and I invite a musician and a painter to join us. Let them speak. I have had enough of seeming to decry the work of the actor from trivial motives. I have spoken this way because of my love of the Theatre, and because of my hopes and belief that before long an extraordinary development is to raise and revive that which is failing in the Theatre, and my hope and belief that the actor will bring the force of his courage to assist in this revival. My attitude towards the whole matter is misunderstood by many in the Theatre. It is considered to be my attitude, mine alone ; a stray quarreller I seem to be in their eyes, a pessi- mist, grumbling; one who is tired of a thing and who attempts to break it. Therefore let the other artists speak with the actor, and let the actor support his own case as best he may, and let him listen to their opinion on matters of art. We sit here conversing, the actor, the musician, the painter and myself. I who represent an art distinct from all these, shall remain silent. 64 THEIR DIFFERENT ATTITUDES vN As we sit here, the talk first turns upon Nature. ^ We are surrounded by beautiful curving hills and trees, vast and towering mountains in the distance covered with snow ; around us innumerable delicate sounds of Nature stirring — Life. " How beautiful," says the painter, " how beautiful the sense of all this ! " He is dreaming of the almost impossi- bility of conveying on to his canvas the full earthly and spiritual value of that which is around him, yet he faces the thing as man generally faces that which is most dangerous. The musician gazes upon the ground. The actor's is an inward and personal gaze at himself. He is unconsciously enjoying the sense of himself, as representing the main and central figure in a really good scene. He strides across the space between us and the view, \ sweeping in a half circle, and he regards the superb \ panorama without seeing it, conscious of one thing \ only, himself and his attitude. Of course an actress would stand there meek in the presence of j Nature. She is but a little thing, a little picturesque ! « Ww % atom ; for picturesque we know she is in every \ , o ' movement, in the sigh which, almost unheard by ' the rest of us, she conveys to her audience and to herself, that she is there, " little me," in the presence of the God that made her, and all the rest of the sentimental nonsense. So we are all collected here, and having taken the attitudes natural to us, we proceed to question each other. And let us imagine that for once we are all really interested F 65 THEY SHALL SPEAK THE TRUTH in finding out all about the other's interests, and the other's work. (I grant that this is very un- usual, and that mind-selfishness, the highest form of stupidity, encloses many a professed artist somewhat tightly in a little square box.) But let us take it for granted that there is a general interest ; that the actor and the musician wish to learn some- thing about the art of painting; and that the painter and the musician wish to understand from the actor what his work consists of and whether and why he considers it an art. For here they shall not mince matters, but shall speak that which they believe. As they are looking only for the truth, they have nothing to fear ; they are all good fellows, all good friends; not thin-skinned, and can give and take blows. " Tell us," asks the painter, " is it true that before you can act a part properly you must feel the emotions of the character you are representing ? " " Oh well, yes and no ; it depends what you mean," answers the actor. " We have first to be able to feel and sympathize and also criticize the emotions of a character; we look at it from a distance before we close with it : we gather as much as we can from the text and we call to mind all the emotions suitable for this character to exhibit. After having many times rearranged and selected those emotions which we consider of importance we then practise to reproduce them before the audience ; and in order to do so we must feel as little as is necessary ; in fact the less we feel, 66 PERFECT ACTING IMPOSSIBLE the firmer will our hold be upon our facial and bodily expression." With a gesture of genial im- patience, the artist rises to his feet and paces to and fro. He had expected his friend to say that it had nothing whatever to do with emotions, and that he could control his face, features, voice and all, just as if hisJ)ody were an instrument. The "^mUsiciarT sinks down deeper into his chair. " But has there never been an actor," asks the artist, " who has so trained his body from head to foot that it would answer to the workings of his mind without permitting the emotions even so much as to awaken ? Surely there must have been one actor, say one out of ten millions, who has done this ? " " No," says the actor emphatically, "never, never ; there never has been an actor who reached such a state of mechanical perfection that his body was absolutely the slave of hi s mind. Edmund Kean of England, Salvini of Italy, Rachel, Eleonora Duse, I call them all to mind and I repeat there never was an actor or actress such as you describe." The artist here asks : " Then you admit that it would be a state of perfection ? " " Why, of course ! But it is impossible ; will always be im- possible," cries the actor; and he rises— almost with a sense of relief. " That is as much as to say, there never was a perfect actor, there has never been an actor who has not spoiled his performance once, twice, ten times, sometimes a hundred times, during the evening ? There never has been a F 2 67 THE WILL OF THE ARTIST piece of acting which could be called even almost perfect, and there never will be ? " For answer the actor asks quickly : " But has there been ever a painting, or a piece of architecture, or a piece of music which may be called perfect ? " " Un- doubtedly," they reply. " The laws which control our arts make such a thing possible." " A picture, for instance," continues the artist, " may con- sist of four lines, or four hundred lines, placed in certain positions ; it may be as simple as possible, but it is possible to make it perfect. That is to say, I can first choose that which is to make the lines; I can choose that on which I am to place the lines : I can consider this as long as I like ; I can alter it; then in a state which is both free from excitement, haste, trouble, nervousness — in fact, in any state I choose (and of course I prepare, wait, and select that also) — I can put these lines to- gether — so — now they are in their place. Having my material, nothing except my own will can move or alter these ; and,, as I have said, my own will is entirely under my control. The line can be straight or it can wave ; it can be round if I choose, and there is no fear that when I wish to make a straight line I shall make a curved one, or that when I wish to make a curved there will be square parts about it. And when it is ready — finished — ^it undergoes no change but that which Time, who finally de- stroys it, wills." " That is rather an extraordinary thing," replies the actor ; " I wish it were possible 68 WORK S OF ART AND CHANCE in my work." " Yes," replies the artist, " it is a very extraordinary thing, and it is that which I hold makes the difference between an intelligent statement and a casual or haphazard statement. [ The most intelhgent statement, that is a work of art. The haphazard statement7~that is a work of | chance. When the intelligent statement reaches^" its highest possible form it becomes a work of fine art. And therefore I have always held, though I may be mistaken, that your work has not the nature of an art. That is to say (and you have ; said it yourself) each statement that you make in your work is subject to every conceivable change which emotion chooses to bring about. That which you conceive in your mind, your body is not per- mitted by Nature to complete. In fact, your body, gaining the better of your intelligence, has in many instances on the stage driven out the in- telligence altogether. Some actors seem to say: ' What value lies in having beautiful ideas ? To what end shall my mind conceive a fine idea, a fine thought, for my body, which is so entirely beyond my control, to spoil ? I will throw my mind overboard, let my body pull me and the play through; ' and there seems to me to be some wisdom in the standpoint of such an actor. He does not dilly-dally between the two things which are contending in him, the one against the other. He is not a bit afraid of the result. He goes at it Hke a man, sometimes a trifle too like a centaur; 69 ^ THE BRAVE ACTOR ^ he flings away all science, all caution, all reason, and the result is good spirits in the audience, and for that they pay willingly. But we are here talk- ing about other things than excellent spirits, and though we applaud the actor who exhibits such a personality as this, I feel that we must not forget that we are applauding his personality, he it is we applaud, not what he is doing or how he is doing it ; nothing to do with art at all, absolutely nothing to do with art, with calculation, or design." " You're a nice friendly creature," laughs the actor gaily, " telling me my art's no art ! But I believe I see what you mean. You mean to say that before I appear on the stage, and before my body commences to come into the question, I am an artist." " Well, yes, you are, you happen to be, because you are a very bad actor; you're abominable on the stage, but you have ideas, you have imagination ; you are rather an exception, I should say. I have heard you tell me how you would play Richard III; what you would do; what strange atmosphere you would spread over the whole thing ; and that which you have told me you have seen in the play, and that which you have invented and added to it, is so remarkable, so consecutive in its thought, so distinct and clear in form, that i] you could make your body into a machine, or into a dead piece of material such as clay ; and i] it could obey you in every movement for the entire space of time it was before the audi- 70 LAWS OF THE ART OF THE THEATRE ence; and if you could put aside Shakespeare's poem — ^you would be able to make a work of art out of that which is in you. For you would not only have dreamt, you would have executed to per- fection ; and that which you had executed could be repeated time after time without so much differ- ence as between two farthings." " Ah," sighs the actor, " you place a terrible picture before me. You would prove to me that it is impossible for us ever to think of ourselves as artists. You take away our finest dream, and you give us nothing in its place." " No, no, that's not for me to give you. That's for you to find. Surely there must be laws at the roots of the Art of the Theatre, just as there are laws at the roots of all true arts, which if found and mastered would bring you all you desire ? " " Yes, the search would bring the actors to a wall." " Leap it, then ! " " Too high ! " " Scale it, then ! " " How do we know where it would lead?" "Why, up and over." " Yes, but that's talking wildly, talking in the air." " Well, that's the direction you fellows have to go ; fly in the air, live in the air. Something will follow when some of you begin to. I sup- pose," continues he, " you will get at the root of the matter in time, and then what a splendid future opens before you ! In fact, I envy you. I am not sure I do not wish that photography had been discovered before painting, so that we of this generation might have had the intense joy 71 LESS EXACT THAN PHOTOGRAPHY of advancing, showing that photography was pretty well in its way, but there was something better ! " " Do you hold that our work is on a level with photography ? " " No, indeed, it is not half as exact. It is less of an art even than photography. In fact, you and I, who have been talking all this time while the musician has sat silent, sinking deeper and deeper into his chair, our arts by the side of his art, are jokes, games, absurdities." At which the musician must go and spoil the whole thing by getting up and giving vent to some foolish remark. The actor immediately cries out, " But I don't see that that's such a wonder- ful remark for a representative of the only art in the world to make," at which they all laugh — the musician in a sort of crest-fallen, conscious manner. " My dear fellow, that is just because he is a musician. He is nothing except in his music. He is, in fact, somewhat unintelligent, except when he speaks in notes, in tones, and in the rest of it. He hardly knows our language, he hardly knows our world, and the greater the musician, the more is this noticeable; indeed it is rather a bad sign when you meet a composer who is intelligent. And as for the intellectual musician, why, that means another ; but we mustn't whisper that name here — he is so popular to-day. What an actor the man would have been, and what a personality he had ! I understand that all his life he had yearnings towards being an actor, and 72 ^ ANEW HOPE ^ I believe he would have been an excellent comedian, whereas he became a musician — or was it a play- wright ? Anyhow, it all turned out a great success — a success of personality." " Was it not a success of art ? " asks the musician. " Well, which art do you mean ? " " Oh, all the arts combined," he replies, blunderingly but placidl y. " How can that be ? How can all arts combine \, and make one art ? It can only make one joke — one Theatre. Things which slowly, by a natural law join together, may have some right in the course r of many years or many centuries to ask Nature V to bestow a new name on their product. Only by this means can a new art be born. I do not be- lieve that the old mother approves of the forcing process ; and if she ever winks at it, she soon has her revenge ; and so it is with the arts. You cannot commingle them and cry out that you have created a new art. // you can find in Nature a new material,^ one which has never yet been used by man to give form to his thoughts, then you can say that you are on the high road towards creating a new art. For you have found that by which you can create it. Jt J then only remains for you to begin. The Theatre, as I see it, has yet to find that material." And thus their conversation ends. For my part I am with the artist's last state- ment. My pleasure shall not be to compete with the strenuous photographer, and I shall ever aini to get something entirely opposed to life as we see 73 A MYSTERIOUS BEAUTY I it. This flesh-and-blood life, lovely as it is to us all, is for me not a thing made to search into, or to fi^y^ out again to the world, even conventionalized. I'l think that my aim|shall rather be to catch some far-off glimpse of that spirit which we call Death — to recall beautiful things from the imaginary world ; they say they are cold, these dead things, I do not know — ^they often seem warmer and more living than that which parades as life. Shades — spirits seem to me to be more beautiful, and filled with more vitality than men and women; cities of men and women packed with pettiness, creatures inhuman, secret, coldest cold, hardest humanity. For, look- ing too long upon life, may one not find all this to be not the beautiful, nor the mysterious, nor the tragic, but the dull, the melodramatic, and the silly : the conspiracy against vitality — against both red heat and white heat ? And from such things which lack the sun of life it is not possible to draw inspiration. But from that mysterious, joyous, and superbly complete life which is called Death-W that Ufe of shadow and of unknown shapes, where all cannot be blackness and fog as is supposed, but vivid colour, vivid light, sharp-cut form;] and which one finds peopled with strange, fierce and solemn figures, pretty figures and calm figures, and those figures impelled to some wondrous harmony of movement — all this is something more than a mere matter of fact. From this idea of death, which seems a kind of spring, a blossoming — from 74 IMPERSONATION UNDESIRABLE this land and from this idea can come so vast an inspiration, that with unhesitating exultation I leap forward to it ; and behold, in an instant, I find my arms full of flowers. I advance but a pace or two and again plenty is around me. I pass at ease on a sea of beauty, I sail whither the winds take | me — there, there is no danger. So much for my own personal wish; but the entire Theatre of the world is not represented in me, nor in a hundred artists or actors, but in something far different. Therefore what my personal aim may be is of very little importance. Yet the aim of the Theatre asj a whole is to restore its art, and it should commence by banishing from the Theatre this idea of im- personation, this idea of reproducing Nature ; for, while impersonation is in the Theatre, the Theatrej can never become free. The performers sho^fraTj train under the influence of an earlier teaching (if*' the very earliest and finest principles are too stern to commence with), and they will have to avoid that frantic desire to put life into their work; for three thousand times against one time it means the bringing of excessive gesture, swift mimicry, speech which bellows and scene which dazzles, on to the stage, in the wild and vain belief that by such means vitahty can be conjured there. And in a few instances, to prove the rule, all this partially succeeds. It succeeds partially with the bubbling personalities of the Stage. With them it is a case of sheer triumph in spite of the rules, in the very 75 THE BUBBLING PERSONALITY teeth of the rules, and we who look on throw our hats into the air, cheer, and cheer again. We have to ; we don't want to consider or to question ; we go with the tide through admiration and suggestion. That we are hypnotized our taste cares not a rap : we are delighted to be so moved, -^ and we literally jump for joy. The great person- ality has triumphed both over us and the art. But personalities such as these are extremely rare, and if we wish to see a personality assert itself in \ the Theatre and entirely triumph as an actor we 1 must at the same time be quite indifferent about the fU)lay and the other actors, about beauty and art. Those who do not think with me in this whole matter are the worshippers, or respectful admirers, of the personalities of the Stage. It is intolerable to them that I should assert that the Stage must be cleared of all its actors and actresses before it will again revive. How could they agree with me ? That would include the removal of their favourites — the two or three beings who transform the stage for them from a vulgar joke into an ideal land. But what should they fear ? No danger threatens their favourites — ^for were it possible to put an act into force to prohibit all men and women from appearing before the public upon the stage of a theatre, this would not in the least affect these favourites — ^these men and women of personality whom the playgoers crown. Consider any one of these personalities born at a period when the Stage 76 o FLA V BERT ^ was unknown ; would it in any way have lessened their power — hindered their expression ? Not a whit. Personality invents the means and ways by which it shall express itself; and acting is but one — ^the very least — of the means at the command of a great personality, and these men and women would have been famous at any time, and in any calling. But if there are many to whom it is in- tolerable that I should propose to clear the Stage of ALL the actors and actresses in order to revive the Art of the Theatre, there are others to whom it seems agreeable. " The artist," says Flaubert, " should be in his^ work like God in creation, invisible and all-power- ful ; he should be felt everywhere and seen nowhere. Art should be raised above personal affection and nervous susceptibility. It is time to give it the perfection of the physical sciences by means of a pitiless method." And again, " I have always tried not to belittle Art for the satisfaction of an isolated personality." He is thinking mainly of the art of literature ; but if he feels this so strongly of the , writer, one who is never actually seen, but merely stands half revealed behind his work, how totally opposed must he have been to the actual appear- ance of the actor — personahty or no personahty. Charles Lamb says : "To see Lear acted, to see an old man tottering about with a stick, turned out of doors by his daughters on a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is painful and dis- 77 V CHARLES LAMB— DANTE— HAZLITT gusting. We want to take him in to shelter, that is all the feeling the acting of Lear ever produced in me. The contemptible machinery by which they mimic the storm which he goes in is not more inadequate to represent the horror of the real elements than any actor can be to represent Lear. They might more easily propose to personate the Satan of Milton upon a stage, or one of Michel- angelo's terrible figures — Lear is essentially im- possible to be represented on the stage." " Hamlet himself seems hardly capable of being acted," says William Hazlitt. Dante in La Vita Nuova tells us that, in a dream, Love, in the figure of a youth, appeared to him. Discoursing of Beatrice, Dante is told by Love " to compose certain things in rhyme, in the which thou shalt set forth how strong a master- ship I have obtained over thee, through her. And so write these things that they shall seem rather to be spoken by a third person, and not directly by thee to her, which is scarce fitting." And again : " There came upon me a great desire to say some- what in rhyme : but when I began thinking how I should say it, methought that to speak of her were unseemly, unless I spoke to other ladies in the second person." We see then that to these men it is wrong that the living person should advance into the frame and display himself upon his own canvas. They hold it as "unseemly " — "scarce fitting." We have here witnesses against the whole 78 <^ ELEANORA DUSE ^ business of the modern stage. Collectively they pass the following sentence : That it is bad art to make so personal, so emotional, an appeal that the beholder forgets the thing itself while swamped by the personality, the emotion, of its maker. And now for the testimony of an actress. Eleonora Duse has said : " To save the Theatre, ' the Theatre must be destroyed, the actors and actresses must all die of the plague. They poison the air, they make art impossible." ^ We may believe her. She means what Flaubert and Dante mean, even if she words it differently. And there are many more witnesses to testify for me, if this is held to be insufficient evidence. There are the people who never go to the theatres, the millions of men against the thousands who do go. Then, we have the support of most of the managers of the Theatre of to-day. The modern theatre- manager thinks the stage should have its plays gorgeously decorated. He will say that no pains should be spared to bring every assistance towards cheating the audience into a sense of reaUty. He will never cease telling us how important all these decorations are. He urges all this for several reasons, and the following reason is not the least : He scents a grave danger in simple and good work ; he sees that there is a body of people who are opposed to these lavish decorations ; he knows that there has been a distinct movement in Europe 1 studies in Seven Arts, Arthur Symons. (Constable, 1900.) 79 ^ N A POLEON ^ against this display, it having been claimed that the great plays gained when represented in front of the plainest background. This movement can be proved to be a powerful one — it has spread from Krakau to Moscow, from Paris to Rome, from London to Berlin and Vienna. The managers fsee this danger ahead of them; they see that if / once people came to realize this fact, if once the I audience tasted of the delight which a sceneless play ; brings, they would then go furi;her and desire the 1 play which was presented without actors ; and finally they would go on and on and on until they, and C^ot the managers, had positively reformed the art. Napoleon is reported to have said : " In life there is much that is unworthy which in art should be omitted ; much of doubt and vacillation ; and all should disappear in the representation of the hero. We should see him as a statue in which the weakness and the tremors of the flesh are no longer perceptible." And not only Napoleon, but Ben Jonson, Lessing, Edmund Scherer, Hans Christian Andersen, Lamb, Goethe, George Sand, Coleridge, Anatole France, Ruskin, Pater ,^ and I suppose all the intelligent men ' Of Sculpture Pater writes : " Its white light, purged from the angry, bloodlike stains of action and passion, reveals, not what is accidental in man, but the god in him^ as opposed to man's restless movement." Again : " The base of all artistic genius is the power of conceiving humanity in a new, striking, rejoicing way, of putting a happy world of its own construction in place of the meaner world of common days, of generating around itself an atmosphere with a novel power of refraction, selecting, transforming, recombining the images it transmits, according to the choice of the imaginative intellect." And 80 THE LANTERN BEARERS A design for costume and lighting, not for a modern theatre. £^^^^^fr?i [Face /-age i THE t) BERrM ARION ETT E and women of Europe—one does not speak of Asia, for even the unintelligent in Asia fail to comprehend photographs while understanding art as a simple and clear manifestation — ^have prote sted against this reprodMfitian ot Nature, and with it photo- graphic and weak actuality. They have protested against all this, and the theatrical managers have argued against them energetically, and so we look for the truth to emerge in due time. It is a reason- able conclusion. Do away with the real tree, do away with the reahty of delivery, do away with the reality of action, and you tend towards the doing away with the actor. This is what must come to pass in time, and I like to see the managers supporting the idea already. Do away^ \ ' with the actor, and you do away with the means \ by which a debased stage-realism is produced and flourishes. No longer would there be a living figure to confuse us into connecting actuality and art ; no longer a living figure in which the weak- ness and tremors of the flesh were perceptible. _, The actor must go,and in his place comes the inani- mate figure — the tJber-marionette we may call him, until he has won for himself a better name. Much has been written about the puppet, or marionette. There are some excellent volumes upon him, and he has also inspired several works of art. To-day again : " All that is accidental, all that distracts the simple eflfect upon us of the supreme types of humanity, all traces in them of the commonness of the worldj it gradually purges away." G 81 y ^ THE MARIONETTE ^ in his least happy period many people come to regard him as rather a superior doll — and to think he has developed from the doll. This is incorrect. He is a descendant of the stone images of the old temples — he is to-day a rather degenerate form of a god. Always the close friend of children, he still knows how to select and attract his devotees. When any one designs a puppet on paper, he draws a stiff and comic-looking thing. Such an one has not even perceived what is contained in the idea which we now call the marionette. He mistakes gravity of face and calmness of body for blank stupidity and angular deformity. Yet even modern puppets are extraordinary things. The applause may thunder or dribble, their hearts beat no faster, no slower, their signals do not grow hurried or confused; and, though drenched in a torrent of bouquets and love, the face of the lead- ing lady remains as solemn, as beautiful and as remote as ever. There is something more than a flash of genius in the marionette, and there is some- thing in him more than the flashiness of displayed personality. The marionette appears to me to be xhe last echo of i some noble and beautiful art of a past civilization. But as with all art which has passed into fat or vulgar hands, the puppet has become a reproach. All puppets are now but low comedians. They imitate the comedians of the larger and fuller blooded stage. They enter only to fall on their back. They drink only to reel, and make 82 ^ EIGHT HUNDRED B.C. <^ love only to raise a laugh. They have forgotten the counsel of their mother the Sphinx. Their bodies have lost their grave grace, they have become stiff. Their eyes have lost that infinite subtlety of seeming to see; now they only stare. They display and jingle their wires and are cock- sure in their wooden wisdom. They have failed to remember that their art should carry on it the same stamp of reserve that we see at times on the work of other artists, and that the highest art is that which conceals the craft and forgets the craftsman. Am I mistaken, or is it not the old Greek Traveller of 800 b.c. who, describing a visit to the temple-theatre in Thebes, tells us that he was won to their beauty by their " noble artifi- ciality " ? " Coming into the House of Visions I saw afar off the fair brown Queen seated upon her throne — her tomb — for both it seemed to me. I sank back upon my couch and watched her symbohc movements. With so much ease did her rhythms alter as with her movements they passed from limb to limb; with such a show of calm did she unloose for us the thoughts of her breast; so gravely and so beautifully did she linger on the statement of her sorrow, that with us it seemed as if no sorrow could harm her; no distortion of body or feature allowed us to dream that she was conquered; the passion and the pain were con- tinually being caught by her hands, held gently, and viewed calmly. Her arms and hands seemed G2 83 ART OF SHOWING AND VEILING at one moment like a thin warm fountain of water which rose, then broke and fell with all those sweet pale fingers like spray into her lap. It would have been as a revelation of art to us had I not already seen that the same spirit dwelt in the other examples of the art of these Egyptians. This ' Art of Showing and Veiling,' as they call it, is so great a spiritual force in the land that it plays the larger part in their religion. We may learn from it somewhat of the power and the grace of courage, for it is impossible to witness a perform- ance without a sense of physical and spiritual refreshment." This in 800 b.c. And who knows whether the puppet shall not once again become the faithful medium for the beautiful thoughts of the artist. May we not look forward with hope to that day which shall bring back to us once more the figure, or symbolic creature, made also by the cunning of the artist, so that we can gain lonce more the " noble artificiality " which the old writer speaks of ? Then shall we no longer be / jUnder the cruel influence of the emotional con- / fessions of weakness which are nightly witnessed by the people and which in their turn create in the beholders the very weaknesses which are exhibited. To that end we must study to remake these images — no longer content with a puppet, we must create an iiber-marionette. The iiber-marionette will