S 'i CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF J. Stambaugh DATE DUE wmgFffwffrtfr ' CAYLORD Cornell University Library PN 2189.M68 1914 Theatre of to-day / 1924 027 208 416 The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027208416 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY By ELIZABETH R. HUNT Recommended by the Board of Directors of the Drama League of America THE PLAY OF TO-DAY ' 'A series of luminous stud- ies of play-structure. Miss Hunt's knowledge of the best things on the stage is as thorough as her insight into technique." — Chicago Record-Herald. THE Theatre of Today BY HIRAM KELLY MODERWELL WITH THIRTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS AND NUMEROUS LINE CUTS IN THE TEXT NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN MCMXIV Copyright, 1914 By JOHN LANE COMPANY PUBLISHERS PRINTING! COJIPAHY 207-217 West Twenty-fifth Street, New York TO H. T. PARKER FOREWORD THIS book is intended as a description and ex- planation of the new forces which have entered theatrical production in the last ten years, judged in the light of their probable historical impor- tance as well as of their growing contemporary in- fluence. The remarkable broadening of the field within the decade makes it necessary that such a book shall treat not only of dramatic literature, but of almost all the arts — painting, architecture, colour, design, music — of social theory and its economic nexus, and of sci- entific knowledge of various kinds. These have been treated as simply as possible in their relation and application to the most advanced and representative theatres of Europe and America. In attempting such a task two things become almost inevitable: the breadth of the field makes it necessary to treat the various subjects in perhaps an oversimpli- fied and sometimes superficial manner ; and the need of emphasizing only the essential in the mass of material at hand makes the volume chiefly concerned with the theatres of Germany and Russia, since it is chiefly in those countries that the important work is being done. The superficiality of treatment, so far as it is not the fault of the author, is only the inevitable result of an attempt to get a bird's-eye-view of a broad and com- plex subject, as yet little treated in books. The con- tinued emphasis upon Europe in speaking of "the theatre" in the course of the following pages must not FOREWORD be taken as belittling the vigorous American theatre. The many statements made about "the modern theatre" are not meant to refer to existing theatres in general, and in this light would frequently be quite at variance with the facts ; they refer to the modern aspect of the modern theatre, or perhaps to a somewhat idealised theatre which the author has invented in order to set the essential facts in relief. CONTENTS CHAPTER I The Gathering of the Forces 17 The Theatre of Ten Years Ago and the Theatre of To-day— The Modern Theatre a Synthesis — The Syn- thesis in its Infancy — The Scientist Comes to the Mod- ern Theatre — The Artist Comes to the Modern Theatre — The Musician Comes to the Modern Theatre — The Thinker Comes to the Modern Theatre — Modern Theatre Architecture — Dawning Democracy — Potentiality of the Modern Theatre. CHAPTER II The Mechanical Forces: Improvements in Stage Equipment 38 The Mechanician Becomes Artist — The Revolving Stage, or Drehbuhne — The Rolling Stage, or Wagen- biihne — The Sliding Stage, or Schiebebuhne — The Dres- den Court Theatre — The Cyclorama, or Horizont — Fortuny Lighting — Scene-building — The Problem of Mechanical Operation. CHAPTER III The Artistic Forces: The Stage-Setting, or "Insceniertjng" 59 "Inscenierung" — Break-down of the Old Stage-Setting — The Producer, or Regisseur — The New Art of Stage- setting 1 — Its Practical Basis and Its Inspiration — Motives of Scene-designing: Artistic Beauty, Dramatic Empha- sis, Subjective Truth— Development of Moder> Scene-de- signing— The Three OrTgmaTForcesTAppiaTFuchs, and ' Craigp^Modern Scene-designing in England and France — Conventionalisation — The Inner Conflict in Modern Inscenierung; — Conventionalisation and Representation — Reaction of Modern Inscenierung on Dramatic Art. CHAPTER IV The Artistic Forces: Pure Design .... 83 The Value of Abstraction— "Pure Design" in Art— The Elements of Pure Design: Line and Mass — Appli- cation of Pure Design — "Absolute" Beauty and Dramatic Suggestion — The Tyranny of Pure Design. CONTENTS CHAPTER V The Artistic Forces: Colour 92 Colour in the Old-fashioned Theatre— Principles of Colour Contrast— Decorative and Symbolic Colour — Bakst— Practical Problems in the Use of Colour in the Theatre: Urban and Pevear. CHAPTER VI The Artistic Forces : Lighting 106 Lighting in the Theatre — 'Vices in the Old System of Lighting — Principles of Modern Stage-lighting: The Fortuny System — Practical Application of Modern Stage-lighting — Conventional and Natural Lighting. CHAPTER VII The Artistic Forces: Stylisation 118 The Meaning of "Style" — Gordon Craig's Exegesis of Stylisation — Motives and Methods of Stylisation — Gor- ,/ don Craig — Max Reinhardt — Stanislavsky and the Mos- cow Art Theatre — Problems of Stylisation. CHAPTER VIII The Artistic Forces: Modern Scene Design- ing in America 137 Origin and Nature of the Impulse Toward Artistic Stage-designing in America — Livingston Piatt — Josef Urban— J. Monroe Hewlett, J. C. Huffmann, Robert E. Jones, Samuel Hume — Amateur Centres of Artistic Ex- periment in America. CHAPTER IX The Intellectual Forces : Philosophy in the Modern Drama 14,7 Modern Drama as an Expression of Modern Philos- ophy — The Conception of Law in Art — The Scientific Spirit in the Modern Drama. CONTENTS CHAPTER X PAGE The Literary Forces: French and Italian Dramatists 155 Influences Operative on the Modern French Drama — Traditions Behind the Modern French Drama: The Piece a These, and the Theatre Libre— The Fashionable Dramatists: Bernstein, Bataille, Donnay, Hervieu, Porto- Riche, Bourget, Curel— The Thoughtful Dramatists: Brieux and Mirbeau— The Italian Realists: Giacosa and Bracco. CHAPTER XI The Literary Forces : The Russians .... 176 Peculiar Development of Russian Literature: Influence of Social Life on Literary Expression — Antecedents of Modern Russian Drama — Russian Historical Plays: Alexander Tolstoy — Leo Tolstoy and His Plays — The "Static" Dramatists: Tchekoff and Maxim Gorky — An- dreieff. CHAPTER XII The Literary Forces : Dramatists of the Ger- manic Nations 199 Growth of the New Drama in the Germanic Nations —The Scandinavian Dramatists: Strindberg and Bjorn- son — The Situation in Germany — The Viennese Comedy Writers: Schnitzler and Bahr — Hermann Heierjmanns — Modern English Drama: Granville Barker, Galsworthy, Shaw — The Lesser Dramatists: Barrie, Arnold Bennett, Stanley Houghton, Masefield, etc. — American Drama- tists: Walter, Sheldon, Thomas, Klein, Kennedy, Patter- son, Sinclair, Percy MacKaye. CHAPTER XIII The Literary Forces : The Imaginative Drama- tists 226 ' The Realistic and the Imaginative in Modern Drama — The Italians: D'Annunzio and Benelli — The French: Ros- tand, Maeterlinck, and Verhaeren — The German Poetic Dramatists: Hofmannsthal, Hardt, Eulenberg, etc. — Ferenc Molnar and Frank Wedekind. CONTENTS CHAPTER XIV page The Social Forces: Modern Theatee Aechi- TECTUEE *"" Aristocratic Origin of the Prevailing Theatre Struc- ture — The Democratisation of the Modern Theatre: Max Littmann— Littmann's Methods— The Heroic Theatre— The Modern Open-Air Theatre— Vitality in Modern Theatre Architecture. CHAPTER XV The Social Foeces : Modeen Theatee Organi- sation 257 Organisation: the Relation of Theatre to Audience — Old Theatrical Organisation: Passing the Hat — New Theatre Organisation: The Democratic Theatre as Ex- emplified in the New Free Folk Stage of Berlin — History of the New Free Folk Stage — Fundamental Principles of Democratic Theatre Organisation: The Supplying Of the Demand and the Economy of Resources — Rise of the Repertory Theatre in England and America — Signifi- cance of the Repertory Theatre. CHAPTER XVI The Social Forces: Modern Theatre Eco- nomics 283 The American Theatre Not a Democratic Institution — Waste and Economy in Theatrical Producing; — Budgets of the Repertory and Long Run Theatres — Value of the Subsidy — Parallel Budgets — Sources of Economy — The Personal Factor in German Theatrical Production — j Economics of the English Repertory System — Appli- cation of the Repertory Principle to American Theatrical Conditions. CHAPTER XVII The Synthesis of the Forces 313 The Universality of the Modern Theatre — Democratic I / Vitality the Basis of the Modern Theatre — The Inter- nationalisation of Modern Culture. Appendices 319 ILLUSTRATIONS "DieWalklire" — Act III. Design by Adolph Appia . .Frontispiece "Parsifal" — Act I. Design by Adolph Appia 22 "Parsifal" — Act II. Design by Adolph Appia 30 The Cathedral Scene from "Faust." Design by Fritz Erler . . 88 The Revolving Stage at Bernhardt 's Deutsches Theater ... 42 The Revolving Stage at Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater . -^. . 43 The Cellar Scene from Hebbel's "Genoveva," Dresden Court Theatre. Design by Adolph Linnebach 46 Transverse Section Through Stage of the New Court Theatre in Dresden . . 47 Longitudinal Section of the New Court Theatre in Dresden . 48 "Tales of Hoffmann" — Act III. Design by Josef Urban ... 54 "L'Amore Dei Tre Re" — Act I. Design by Josef Urban . . 62 "L'AmoreDeiTreRe" — Act III. Design by Josef Urban . . . 62 The Silhouette Scene in Germany. Design by Dr. Lert . . 66 The Silhouette Scene in America 66 "Helene de Sparte." Design by Bakst 82 "Hamlet." Design by Gordon Craig 86 Sophocles's"Electra." Design by Gordon Craig 94 Setting for "Everyman" at Dresden Opera House. Design by Adolph Linnebach 98 Street Scene from "Romeo and Juliet," Deutsches Theater, Berlin 114 "King Lear" — Act I, Scene I, Deutsches Theater, Berlin . . . 118 Scene from Tchekoff's "The Cherry Orchard," Moscow Art Theatre 126 Scene from "Tsar Feodor Ivanovitch." Moscow Art Theatre . 130 Setting for "The Life of Man"— Act II. Moscow Art Theatre >. 146 Gluck's" Orpheus"— Act III, Scene I. Design by Golovine . . 150 Moliere's " Le Festin de Pierre " — Act II. Design by Golovine 158 Moliere's "Le Festin de Pierre" — Act IV. Design by Golovine . 162 Sleep Walking Scene from "Macbeth." Design by Strom and Gliese I 78 Design for Maeterlinck's "L'Intruse." Design by Livingston Piatt 182 Forest Scene for "Chantecler." Design by Monroe Hewlett . . 190 "The Merchant of Venice"— Act I, Scene II. Design by Robert E. Jones 194 ILLUSTRATIONS The Reception Hall. Design by Samuel Hume 210 The Duchess's Bedroom, Design by Samuel Hume .... 210 Interior of the Old Opera House in Bayreuth 214 Exterior of the "Large" Court Theatre at Stuttgart. Professor Max Littmann, Architect 222 The Prinzregenten Theater in Munich. Professor Max Littmann, Architect 226 Auditorium of the Prinzregenten Theater, Munich. Professor Max Littmann, Architect 242 Ground Plan of the Theatre Farnese in Parma 240 Ground Plan of the Old Opera House in Bayreuth 241 Ground Plan of the Kesidenztheater in Munich . . . 242 Longitudinal Section of the Kiinstlertheater in Munich . . .246 Ground Plan of the New Court Theatre in Dresden .... 247 Foyer of the Court Theatre at Weimar. Professor Max Littmann, Architect 258 Facsimile of Announcement of Plays for the Season of 1912-13 . 263 Facsimile of Announcement of Concerts and Lectures . . . 273 Interior of the Chicago Little Theatre 274 Orchestra of the Greek Theatre at Bakersfield, California. Louis P. Hobart, Architect 282 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY CHAPTER I THE GATHERING OF THE FORCES TEN years ago this book would have been written entirely about dramatic literature. At that time we thought of the institution of the theatre as being a collection of printed plays together with a few necessary buildings to present them in. The tre- mendous stimulus given the literary theatre by Ibsen kept our attention working overtime and blinded us to the fact that this dramatic literature — a wonderful lit- erature when we come to look over the whole territory — was being presented under the conditions created for the cramped, conventional, and unreal plays of half a century ago. Now all this is changed. From an institution of one art the theatre has become, in the space of less than ten years, an institution of all the arts. Not that the theatre suddenly found its possibilities and became a complete art in place of an incomplete one; not that it has yet found these possibilities and absorbed them. But the realisation began to spread that the theatre was not merely an affair of spoken words and accompanying gestures. And suddenly, al- most overnight, the thinkers saw the possibilities of uni- 17 18 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY versality in the theatre, and set out to develop them slowly, tentatively, but in a spirit of consecration which has given the theatre a largeness and dignity perhaps beyond any other art of to-day. The peculiarly universal nature of the ideal theatre has caught hold of our imaginations. We begin to see dimly that a drama is far more than characters speak- ing words and imitating, or attempting to imitate, lit- eral facts. It is a series of pictures; why not give them the beauty which painters have, after centuries of study, given their canvases? It is a series of archi- tectural designs; why not make use of the fine art of the architect? It is often rhythmic spectacle; why not apply to it the fine art of the dance? It is a kaleido- scope of colour ; why not make use of the art of colour as the painters have mastered it? It is, in one way and another, a collection of blending sounds; why not mould these sounds together with the art of the mu- sician? Further, the theatre, which is essentially a per- formance for the crowd, is the most democratic of all the arts; its subject-matter can come from all depart- ments and planes of life, its art can be and always has been greatest when it presents that which is common to all men in such a way that it can be understood by all men; why not organise it so that it shall be the! property and the servant of all men, rather than the "cinematograph of the idle rich," or the pink tea of the literary select ? The theatre, alone of the arts, can con- centrate all the arts in the service of all men. It is this dream which has taken shape and commenced its incarnation in the last ten years. In a way all this was in the theatre before. The theatre used stage pictures and architectural designs music, dancing, and colour. But these arts were the THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 19 merest accessories, not arts at all. The theatre was a thing which, while using all the arts, cultivated only one. It felt itself under obligation to be beautiful in only one small part of its immense territory, and, as we know, it generally failed in that. Yet all ihe arts needed in the ideal synthesis had been highly developed by themselves. All that was needed was waiting patiently at the stage door, ready to enter and make the theatre a palace of wonders in place of a gallery of disillusionment. To let the artist enter and make the stage picture beautiful in design and colour; to let the architect enter and teach the stage how to build instead of imitating; to let the musician enter and make the stage sounds a symphony in their own right ; to let the social organiser enter and make the playhouse over from a place of the money- changers into a public institution of service — this was what was needed, and what has begun to come to This, and one thing more. For the artist, the archi- tect, the musician, the dancer, and the social organiser, are none too good friends, one with the other. They are inclined to be selfish and narrow, to demand all for their own art and neglect the other arts ; they are likely to forget that when they use their art in the theatre they must apply it to a new set of materials. There must be some intelligence, some direction, some new artist, in short, to make these men work together toward their new end. This new artist, almost unknown since the days of ancient Greece, is the regisseur or the producer. He must know his art as an art in itself, and must be able to use all the other arts to his pur- , pose. He must be the chief executive of the art of the I drama. This regisseur, as yet only feeling his way, is 20 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY the great artist whom we shall meet time and again in the course of this book. But this great synthesised art of the drama is as yet only in its first beginnings. The theatre is m a state of transition. We have in it many interesting experiments, and a few results which seem to our limited imaginations to be relatively complete, but on the whole we cannot study the subject as an art. We must see our contemporary theatre as a conglomeration of forces, coming from all directions and roughly cen- tring in one spot, or we shall think falsely about it. The purpose of this book is to trace and describe these forces individually, especially as they are at the present time, and then to indicate what direction they are tak- ing in their common march, and to suggest what may conceivably be their future. There used to be a conventional structure for the stage from which few theatres, large or small, departed. This structure was a division of the stage by lateral lines or grooves into sections which were the basis for all scene-setting. Scenes were made, almost without exception, by dropping painted canvas from above and by projecting painted "slides" upon the stage along the lateral lines. Nine out of ten scenes were thus constructed entirely of flapping canvas dropped from above and flapping canvas poking out from one side or the other — all in set positions and in parallel lines. There were usually six or eight entrances and exits in the ordinary room, and enough chairs and sofas to seat more or less comfortably the whole court of Eng- land. Occasionally there came a "set scene," in which the usual canvas slides were lashed together to repre- sent three sides of a room, and a similar canvas roof perhaps, was let down from the "flies." This was used THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 21 only for a small enclosed space, and was far from favourably regarded, both because large open scenes were considered more romantic and because the small ones involved a set of movements slightly "unfamiliar to the stage-hands. Some fifteen years ago the "set scene" became com- mon in America, and, within its limits, was greatly im- proved. We now rarely see an old-fashioned "drop" scene, and have almost forgotten how absurd it looks. The "set" scene developed its own rules, and has pro- duced some beautiful results. (Jn its way the setting which Belasco gave to "The Return of Peter Grimm" has seldom been surpassed in America or in Europe. Partly under the stimulus of Belasco's undoubted origi- nality American producers made a solid wall to look like a solid wall, a stairway to seem to be made of hard wood, the furniture believable, and the curtains, doors, and properties tolerable in taste and efficient in the creation of illusion. Indeed these producers often represented a hard wood stairway by a hardwood stair- way, and went to much pains and expense to make their stage settings "like real life." The stage settings of David Belasco may very well be taken to represent the point of departure of the European stage producers whose work this book will^ chiefly describe. They represent on jthe one hand an ideal of close imitation of life which was common in the theatre when the new generation began to make itself felt; on the other hand they represent the mechanical stage resources upon which the recent improvements' have been built. These stage resources some ten or twelve years ago were the usual set of "drops" from above, a clear stage with its set of trap-doors, etc., its footlights and cor- 22 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY responding border lights, both white and coloured, to- gether with the usual spotlight apparatus, and a con- siderable skill in building solid-seeming "sets" with canvas stretched over wood frames, made not according to set rules, but with much flexibility and adaptation to the needs of the scene. Thus the prison scene in "Faust," or the exterior of Macbeth's castle, could be made in sections (of canvas over wood) and literally built, one section upon another. Ordinary walls would be made of "flats" especially constructed for the scene in hand, made in sections and lashed together behind by ropes. Trees were not merely painted on canvas, but built of wood and cork and supplied with appropriate foliage at considerable expense. It is evident that there is no science required in all this beyond the adeptness of a carpenter and the ordi- nary cleverness of the general handy-man. But the last ten years have brought to the stages of Germany and Russia (and in smaller measure to those of Amer- ica) highly trained mechanicians and long-needed mechanical inventions which are now permanently at the disposal of the drama. The revolving stage, permitting five or more complete sets to be built at once and changed in the space of a few seconds ; the sliding stage, permitting one scene to be built on one-half of the stage while the other half is being used for the play; the rolling stage, by which any number of scenes can be set up more or less completely at leisure and quietly rolled before the proscenium when their turn comes- the gigantic sunken sliding stage which has been in- stalled in the new Royal Theater at Dresden ; the For- tuny Lighting system by which our former flat and unreal lighting is replaced with soft, reflected glows of real beauty; the new types of theatre architecture Hi < © < m Z S w Q < in OS < THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 23 which are solving the question of the most appropriate and practical forms under particular conditions — all these are only a part of what applied science has begun to contribute to the art of the modern theatre. It is hard for the layman to realise how far the "stage picture" of fifteen years ago was separated from the picture, in the artist's sense of the word. To the old producer any required set fell into a traditional classification — palace, drawing-room, forest, and so on — and was put together from the materials at hand in the store-room of every theatre, or ordered by number, so to speak, from the scene painter. A palace had a back-drop showing columns, panels, and stucco, an im- posing set of stairs, perhaps, and an abundance of furniture of one sort or another, all embellished with coarse paints in gold, blue, green, yellow, purple, orange and white. A drawing-room had a back drop representing a highly decorated wall, with panels and stucco, canvas sides, innumerable doors and variegated furniture, the whole scene embellished with a similar colour scheme. A forest had a back drop representing a forest, side sets or drops, representing more of it, and perhaps in the foreground individual tree-trunks of canvas, the whole set in waving motion whenever the stage door was opened permitting the entrance of a breeze from the street ; for purposes of "realism" some of the important tree-trunks were constructed of wood and cork, which thus emphasised the unreal nature of the rest of the scene., The colours of this scene were usually the one stroke of originality in it, since they were chiefly flat blues and ugly greens such as were never yet seen in a forest and were a pure effervescence of personality on the part of the scene-painter. If the producer made these sets roughly to imitate the thing 24 THE THEATRE O F TO-DAY to be represented he was satisfied. This was the whole "art" of the old stage setting. To the painter, of course, the art of picture making is something very different. Every artistic canvas is not merely a representation of nature — a room, a for- est, or what not — but also a design within a limited space. The artist is never content merely to imitate what he sees — for anybody can go into a room or forest and see the thing itself. The artist sets himself to select these things in beautiful proportions, and place them beautifully within his oblong frame. An interior by Vermeer, for instance, is an arrangement of lines and masses, balancing or contrasting with one another, and of colours which harmonise, supplement, and con- trast. The painter does not permit himself to take his subject in the way it first happens to hit his eye, nor to pile on his canvas any or all the colours of his palette just because they happen to be in the object painted. It is precisely in selecting out of the prodigality of nature or of his imagination the few simple elements which fit his present purpose, and in arranging these with great care upon his limited canvas, that he finds his greatest joy. Many a painter regards his canvas almost solely as an exercise in pure design or in colour. The modern theatre has brought to its service painters who regard the stage picture as a picture in their own sense, who give to the design within the stage frame the same care in the placing of lines and masses the selecting, harmonising and contrasting of colours that they give to their canvases. Modern producers have begun to see that it is foolish for the theatre to plod along in its old way, when the immense art of the painter is waiting to be applied to its service to make its stage a thing of real beauty. THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 25 In the same way the stage set has been architectural in that it was made in three dimensions, using con- trasting lines and solid masses, physical perspective, and so forth. Yet it made no use of the art of the architect, who knows how out of these materials to make a building not only useful and safe, but also beautiful. The stage space is necessarily an architec- tural design, good or bad. And the modern stage has brought to its service the art of the architect to make this design a beautiful one. The stage has always made use of movement. The gestures of actors and the action of mobs have always been necessary parts of the conduct of a drama. But movement, besides being a realistic accessory of dra- matic action, can be a thing of beauty in itself. The love scene in Romeo and Juliet, for instance, involves movements of the arms, head, and body. As we become familiar with this scene we begin to feel that these motions have a beauty of their own, apart from their immediate significance. Without in the least conceiving the scene as a symbolic dance, or anything of the sort,- we come to see that the rise and fall of these movements, the rhythm of the bodies, the tensions and the relax- ations, have a beauty of their own. Hedda Gabler, throwing the manuscript into the fireplace, is a posed figure. Exactly like Vemeer's interior, she is at once a representation of life and an exercise in pure de- sign. Now the art which has worked out the principles and beauties of human poses and movements is dancing. The drama necessarily uses the elements of the art of dancing in its work. Why not call upon the art of dancing to make its use of these elements beautiful? There is also much dancing, in the stricter sense, de- 26 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY manded in drama, and this can be made not only beau- tiful (which most of our theatre dancing is not), but also appropriate to the dramatic significance. There is also in the drama as a whole, or in its individual scenes, something of the rhythm and motion-design which it is not easy to put into words, but is felt by every one who has much to do with the theatre — the rise, climax, and fall of the plot, pulsations of emotional intensity, alternations in the tone of the lighting, and so on. These values can be regarded as problems in a sort of rhythmic motion, can be refined and directed, without in the least making of our "Hedda Gabler" a symbolic ballet. All these values, totally ignored by the old producer, can be used for beautiful results by applying, wisely and with discretion, something of the art or the instinct of dancing. This is what the stage of the last ten years has begun to do. We have recently developed a new feel- ing for the dance. The Russian dancers from the Imperial Opera House in St. Petersburg, the various solo dancers, such as Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and others, and many troupes of national dancers from various lands, have shown us something of the possi- bilities of dancing in expressing life. Folk-dancing, especially in England, has gained a new popularity, not as a fad, much less as an archaeological study, but as one more instrument for the joy of life. Even "so- ciety dancing," which with the "Tango," the "Maxixe" and the rest, has become a craze in all large cities, is a genuine phenomenon of our reawakening sense of the beauty of rhythm. This joy in motion must necessarily be reflected in our drama, and the theatre has accord- ingly begun to draw into its service a feeling for the art of dancing at its best. THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 27 Just as the drama uses movements it also uses sounds. It is here that the culture, if not the art, of the musician has been called into its service. The tones of the speaking voice, the stage noises (thunder, rain, etc.), and of course incidental music in the strict sense, can be regarded not merely as necessary ac- cessories to the conduct of the drama, but as sounds that can be organised into a beautiful whole. Again, without trying to make our drama a musician's sym- phony, we can approach it with something of the mu- sician's instinct and see to it that the sounds which we" must use shall be refined and harmonised into some relation with each other and with the whole. Our play of "Macbeth," for instance, can be made not only a representation of life, but also something of a pure de- sign in tone. In the case of the dancer and musician, of course, the application is by no means so literal and direct as in that of the painter and architect. Still it is very literally the fine arts of dancing and music which are being called into the service of the modern theatre to make all its rites beautiful in themselves and appro- priate to their end. The most obvious enrichment of the modern theatre has been in its literature. The good native play of thirty years or so ago has become so outmoded that the most uncritical provincial audience will laugh at much that used to pass for high dramatic art. The old play of the better sort — say of Bulwer-Lytton or of Dion Boucicault — was a strangely constricted affair. If its love pangs and poetic justice seemed thrilling happenings to the audience they were the merest routine of calculation on the part of the writers. It was neces- sary that the hero triumph and the villain be brought 28 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY to punishment if the piece was a "play," and that the hero suffer innocently and the villain triumph wickedly if it was a "tragedy." All plays were classifiable by tradition as comedy, romantic tragedy, comedy-drama, dialect comedy, society drama, and so on. They could almost be — and often literally were — ordered by num- ber. The characters were even more strictly tradi- tional. There was the first lead and the second lead, the female lead, the soubrette, the coloured lead, the vil- lain, the adventuress, the Irish dialect comic, the Swedish dialect comic, and so on. An author was scarcely allowed to write a character unless it fell easily into one of the traditional roles. We know now (after being painfully taught by some of the best brains of the age) how unreal all this stuff was. We can see that people never made love as the stage-folk did or triumphed over their enemies in the stage tone of voice^- -The subject-matter of these plays, especially, seems to us now to have been strangely limited. It was sup- posed that men and women could act only from cer- tain traditional motives ; that under given conditions every person in the world would become amorous, revengeful, jealous, or what not. Love was the almost universal subject of the theatre, but only in its most superficial and unreal aspects. It used to be an axiom of the theatre that drama ceased when married life began. It was another axiom — or rather a religious tenet — that people went to the theatre "to escape from the realities of life." Indeed they did ! All that made the life about us (or even the life of a previous age) real and thrilling, was banned from the theatre, "that last sanctuary of unreality." Through Ibsen and those who felt his spirit all THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 29 this was changed. Besides bringing something like the science of logic to the technical work of play construc- tion, they widened its scope so that it could use as subject-matter almost anything that was of importance and dramatic interest in life. To get a suggestion of the range of modern drama we have only to recall the sub- ject-matter of some of our most famous modern plays: the labour and capital struggle in "The Weavers" and "Strife" ; parental authority in "Magda" ; prostitu- tion in "Mrs. Warren's Profession"; traditional relig- ion in "Rosmersholm," "The Devil's Disciple" and a host of others ; venereal disease in "Ghosts" and "Dam- aged Goods" ; the psychology of repression in "Hedda Gabler"; the psychology of the modern business man in "Business is Business" and "The Lion and the Mouse" ; the psychology of adolescence in "The Awak- ening of Spring"; feminine jealousy in "The Girl with the Green Eyes," and so on through hundreds of plays which have revealed to us the forces and meaning of our . modern life. And—yet these realistic plays, which we think of first, are only a part of the riches of modern dramatic literature — a literature which is entirely the product of the last forty, and for the most part of the last twenty years. Within that time we have been given romantic dramas, such as "Cyrano," "L'Aiglon," "Francesca da Rimini," which are assured classics ; the elaborate symbolism of the plays of Maeterlinck, open- ing up to us a whole new world of delicate tempera- mental states ; the brilliant comedies of Shaw and Oscar Wilde, the fiercely vital Russian plays of Tolstoy, An- dreieff, and Maxim Gorky; the tenderly cynical come- dies of Schnitzler; the poetic dramas of many sorts represented by such works as Hauptmann's "The 30 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY Sunken Bell" and Karl Schonherr's "Faith and Fire- side" ; and a group of individual plays which are not to be classified, such as "Salome," "Caesar and Cleopatra," "Peter Pan," and many others. And this extensiveness does not indicate yet the wide range of our modern drama. There is an intensiveness which is still more wonderful. For modern authors have been able to bring into their works a set of values — a thought-content as contrasted with the obvious life- content — which were hardly hinted at in any previous drama since the Greek. The abstract forces which run through our modern life — ideas of individualism, per- sonal freedom, co-operation, compromise, and so on; philosophy of many kinds (in the strict sense) — de- terminism, free will, animism, life as the interaction of forces ; experiments in the drama as an exercise in logic and pure design, as in Hervieu, or in the waking of delicate shades of temperament, as in Maeterlinck ; the exploiting of popular ideas of religion and the super- natural ; sincere attempts to reproduce the original val- ues of the Greek and Elizabethan classics — this wide variety of subject and form has begun, to reflect some- thing like the height and breadth of contemporary life and thought. So the theatre has brought to its service, in place of the rude mechanic writers of forty years ago, much of the best genius and literary ability of the age. It seemed in the early "Ibsenistic" years to be interested solely in the intellectual presentation of contemporary life by the realistic method, and this repelled much tal- ent of the romantic and imaginative sort and kept the theatre still a kind of special cult. But the last ten years seem to have broken down any such exclusiveness. Imaginative and poetic drama is again beginning to -1 o Q < a r. W Q < OS a- THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 31 have something like free play. There is a wide road open for experimentation in new forms and new subject- matter. It is hard to say whether realistic or romantic, verse or prose, modern or classical, "propagandistic" or "aesthetic" has the dominance in the theatre of to-day. In short, modern drama includes, potentially if not ' actually, every style and genre, every sort of subject- matter, physical, spiritual and philosophic, and^every kind of element which exists in the age and which must be contained and reflected in a mature art. But theatre architecture has been a long way from such an ideal state as that foreshadowed by dramatic literature. All of us who are obliged to take cheap seats in the theatre have realised many times that most theatres of the old style are built in utter contempt of < the man with a small income. One feels that the archi- tect thought he was doing us a favour to let us in at all. Many seats in the ordinary "horseshoe" theatre make the stage partly or wholly invisible. Very frequently the back of the balconies is so ill ventilated that the evening is torture. The acoustics of such caves are often wretched. This method of theatre building is both bad ethics and bad art. It prejudices the effect of the drama among the rank and file, whose approval the Greek tragedians held equal in value to that of the rich. To build theatres in which cheap seats are acoustically, optically, or hygienically bad is an insolence in a demo- cratic age. Professor Littmann, of Munich, is revolutionising Germany with a new style of theatre in which, he says : "There shall be no bad seats; there shall not even be any worse seats." His "amphitheatre" playhouse has 32 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY all its rows practically parallel with the proscenium and its floor rising at such an angle that every spectator can look clean over the head of his neighbour in front. The galleries, which are always excellent, are few and short. He is experimenting with many different prob- lems, applying his principle to different demands and working out the formulas for the maximum economy of space, of money, and of artistic effect, on a basis of "a good seat for every one." He is giving Germany a native democratic playhouse to replace its Italian aris- tocratic theatre. At the same time the architects have constantly tried experiments in the large form of theatre for grand spectacles. These experiments go back somewhat to the Greek form, semicircular or even circular. The "Theatre of the Five Thousand" which is being built for Professor Max Reinhardt in Berlin, is such a struc- ture. It must of course be kept for a certain sort of production which demands none of the "intimacy" of our modern realistic drama. In fact, the conditions are so different that we may expect a totally individual style of drama to develop under them. The spread of the idea will mean an enriching of our dramatic life. There is much, also, to be hoped for the simple out- of-door theatre, to be developed either from experi- ments in the Greek style or from the local pageants which have become so popular in America and England. But the most profound change of all is as yet only in germ. This change, if it really comes to pass, as conditions seem to indicate, will mean the complete democratisation of the theatre in its economic organi- sation. The theatre as we know it in America and England is almost entirely a commercial venture. We THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 33 can look for no spirit of experimentation from it, nor for any truly artistic impulse except so far as that is likely to pay dividends. Since it is a private business we have nothing to say about it; its directors can justly reply: "If you don't like what we offer, you can stay away." The royal or municipal endowed theatre in Ger- many and France is only a modification of this com- mercial theatre. It is essentially the same in structure and in its relation to its audience, except that it can prosper on more modest returns. Without disparaging the fine democratic results of the endowed German theatres — their excellent, cheap and varied productions — we must remember that they are essentially the pri- vate aristocratic theatre adopting commercial methods in their operation. Admirable as their results often are, they are in general a bureaucratic rather than a democratic institution. We should not think of criticising this bureaucratic theatre if our eyes had not been opened to something of far finer promise. The germ of this new form has been developed in two large stage societies in Berlin — the "New Free Folk Stage" and the "Schiller Theater." These, with a membership of many thousands each, aim to give good performances of their own at the lowest possible price. They have developed slowly from very modest beginnings and have created a system which in its physical magnitude and its social influence is im- mense. Besides maintaining excellent stock companies in theatres of their own, they have obtained low rates for their members at the best commercial theatres, and have established lectures, recitals and concerts unsur- passed in quality in Berlin. The members are largely workingmen who have built up the institutions with 34 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY their contributions of a few Pfennige at a time. Only a knowledge of the economic structure of these so- cieties and of their marvellously varied programmes and high quality of acting can give an adequate notion of the essential soundness of the idea. In this democratic organisation, when we look at it together with the forces operating in the theatre to- day, we may reasonably feel that we are seeing a type of the theatre of the future. Here we find none of the forcing of the market, none of the speculating and immense waste, which are the characteristics of the commercial theatre in America. The organisation is sound because it gives at cost price a good product for which there is a genuine demand. The effect of this organisation upon the audiences can hardly be too highly estimated ; the members, feeling that they are paying their own bills and with their pennies are making a real sacrifice for an artistic article of real value, par- ticipate in the performances to a far greater extent than is possible where the rich and self-satisfied come to while away an evening. Art is no mere orna&ient to these working people ; it is very closely bound up in their lives. The economy and social utility of these organisa- tions make the spread of them practically a matter of certainty. They offer the solution of many of the problems which are puzzling us in America. At the same time we do not deny certain limitations and dan- gers in their form or organisation. Such an institution can never rise much above the artistic capacity of its owning audience, and in America it would be a long time before we could hope for the brilliant results of the German experiments. A theatre on a large and democratic scale cannot be depended upon for radical THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 35 experiments (and there is no reason why such institu- tions should be expected to usurp the place of the private experimental theatre) . In the third place, there is always the danger (though we believe it to be re- mote) of a sort of narrow mob censorship in such organisations. In a period of social stagnation or men- tal indifference the prejudices of such a body might counteract the best efforts of the wisest directors. It must be admitted that these dangers have not shown themselves seriously in the Berlin experiments, but if we are to get the best out of their lesson we must be equally open-minded toward their advantages and their defects. In Berlin these organisations grew up out of the labour unions and the proletarian unrest of the early nineties. In America it might be a different germ that would develop the institution. We cannot tell ; we must look around, for no institution can be transplanted bodily into a different environment. But the germs of such growth certainly exist in America, and it is fair to believe that the economy and soundness of the idea will make headway against all opposition. The immensity of the institution of the theatre, if such an organisation as this or anything like it even- tually supplants the present one, astonishes the imagi- nation. Instead of a place of amusement to which the people go, the theatre becomes one of the great sacra- ments of life growing up in their midst. It entwines itself in their minds and spirits in a way we can hardly imagine at present. The exterior fact becomes an inner force. The best brains of the age, the most beautiful visions of the artist, become mingled with the people, from the top to the bottom of society, in their daily life. Probably no institution in the world, excepting only the j 36 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY r Christian church, will have had such a universal and personal power in moulding society. With a brilliance and force which the novel can never achieve it will show to men and women themselves and their age. It will bring the thoughts of the philosophers and the visions of the prophets into the homes of men, as Socrates brought philosophy out of the skies into the streets of Athens. All that is hidden, in the facts of life and the meaning of life, will be revealed, and all that is dumb in the souls of men and women will find joyous expression. Nor need we fear that such an institution will be- come rigid and dogmatic, the instrument of powerful men for blinding vision and suppressing thought. The whole system is too vast and flexible; somewhere its audiences will demand self-expression, and the flame will spread. Nor will such an institution of the "mob" suppress the voice of the individual iconoclast or heretic. The artist is the last man in the world to be effectually gagged. It is) only where an institution is under a central authority that such suppression is possible. The theatre of which we are dreaming will be a collection of independent interacting units. And if the individual voice is smothered in one part it will speak in another and wake the sleeping into new life. All the world can never be gagged at once, nor is all the world ever at one time asleep. Because men need to know themselves and their world they will always, in the long run, listen to the individual artist or thinker, providing that artist or thinker has a fit instrument to transmit his message. And this theatre of ours will be one of the most complete, flexible, and noble instrii- jne»ts~ever conceived by man. At least we can have this dream. The forces tend- THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 37 ing toward its realisation are many, those against it few. From all directions, from all departments of life, these influences seem to be concentrating toward a uni- versal democratic institution which shall draw upon the best that men have yet achieved in all the arts. CHAPTER II THE MECHANICAL FORCES: IMPROVE- MENTS IN STAGE EQUIPMENT THE last ten years have brought to the service of the theatre a new figure. His coming we can regard as symbolic. It stands to us as a sign that the theatre of the future can choose what it needs, instead of taking what it can get. The new figure is the worker in applied science. Adolph Linne- bach, regisseur at the Court Theater in Dres3en7~en- tered the service of the Royal Opera House in Vienna as an expert mechanic. He had been educated as a marine engineer, but like all Germans he had mellowed his scientific life with an amateur interest in art; he made pictures and went often to the theatre. And while working professionally under the masterful Roller he saw his science and his art merging and becoming one thing. It is this merging of science and art that we feel as we look inside many of the continental theatres. The stage equipment of twenty years ago was the handiwork of an amateur. Now it is beginning to represent the best skill of the scientist. And just as the clean, accu- rate brain of Mr. Linnebach is creating beauty in the theatre at Dresden, so the elaborate mechanical devices of many of the best German theatres are serving to create stage pictures more imaginative and lovely than we have ever seen before. This coming of the scientist to the theatre is not 38 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 39 a mere conjunction; it is a real absorption by the theatre of what it needs. The playhouse is making the scientist its servant. The mechanical inventions which have been placed at the service of the theatre came because the theatre could not get along without them. We were tired of the clumsy pictures we had been seeing on the stage, tired of the flimsy and unreal settings; tired especially of the disillusioning waits, the gossip and the lights, that we must endure before we could live in the stage story once more. As the realistic plays, with their usual simple settings, began to be insufficient for our taste, the romantic type of play, with its many and elaborate scenes, began to make demands on the theatre which it could not fulfil. It was necessary to find some mechanical means of building elaborate scenes and changing them quickly and easily. This demand is being met in the modern theatre by three stage devices — the revolvingstage, the wagon stage, and the sliding stage. AlongwTEh these'ufveh- tions have come tt multitude of minor improvements, and, for the stage mechanic, a new sense of dignity. The revolving stage or "Drehbuhne" was invented some fifteen years ago by Lautenschlager, director of the Royal Theater in Munich. It has been gradually introduced into a large number of the German theatres and has been installed in the Century, the Little, and the Booth theatres in New York City, though in this country it has never been set to real work. It seems sure to grow in popularity and to become a necessary part of the modern playhouse, at least in a certain class of theatres. The revolving stage is exactly what its name im- plies, and quite as simple in principle as the man in 40 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY the street imagines. It is merely a circular portion of the whole stage, some forty feet or more in diameter, showing about a quarter of its circumference before the proscenium. It rests and revolves upon a heavy iron shaft, which must be sunk with great security into a concrete foundation, extending in some cases fifty feet below the stage level. Turning upon oiled ball- bearings it can be almost or absolutely noiseless, though this is far from being the case (or even an essential) in most of the theatres that now use it. It is usually operated by electric power, revolving leisurely but ef- ficiently under the control of a central lever. It can also be revolved (and very frequently is) by hand. The most famous of the revolving stages — that of Professor Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater in Ber- lin — may be taken as an example of all. This is capable of setting five (or even more) complete scenes at one time, so that half or all of a play can be performed with no more stage work than an occasional pressure on an electric throttle. The accompanying diagram shows the arrangement of the revolving stage for a Reinhardt performance of the first part of "Henry IV." Great flexibility is possible in the stage arrangements. The individual scenes need not be of any certain size. They can be quite tiny— sometimes as narrow as twelve or fourteen feet — if the proscenium arch be contracted by means of curtains. Or they can occupy the whole width of the proscenium and the depth of the whole stage. The battle scene in the present diagram, for instance, shows a hill which is built up over some of the other scenes (interiors) and is later extended to cover prac- tically the whole circle of the stage. A street scene can show the street extending back between rows of houses, through the whole circumference, the houses be- THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 41 ing in reality the backs of other interior scenes of slighter depth. On the whole the revolving stage involves no limi- tations on the form or size of the scene. But it does involve many limitations in the planning of the whole, and in this, perhaps, lies its greatest disadvantage. For the scenery must, in general, be planned so as to occupy the circle, and no more. If one scene is large, some other scene must be small. Two successive large scenes are impossible without a complete reconstruction of the stage-setting. The five sets must be planned nicely to occupy the circle and no more ; the use of the revolving stage thus becomes something of a Chinese puzzle, which demands almost as much mechanical ingenuity as artistic sense. And this is not the worst. For the scenery, being planned for certain physical conditions in relation to other scenes and to the revolving stage, can in general be used only for the production for which it was originally designed. It is evident that the ordi- nary repertory theatre, which often gives as many as a hundred different plays and operas in a single season, cannot build special scenery for each. And if the producer uses the revolving stage he is liable to become the slave of his invention, which spends its master's money without conscience. In general the revolving stage, with all its convenience and artistic possibilities, is at its best only in the private repertory theatre in a large city (of which the Deutsches is the ideal ex- ample), which mounts but few plays a season and car- ries them profitably through long runs. Many of the best theatrical men in Germany are strenuously op- posed to the revolving stage, refusing to introduce it into their theatres, and exposing its disadvantages at every opportunity. 42 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY At the same time their arguments are not as final as they sometimes seem. The fact is that with a cer- tain sort of treatment the revolving stage can become The Revolving Stage at Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater, Arranged for "Henry IV," First Part. In the "long pause'' the stage is partially reset, so that the "hill" is made to cover practically the whole space, being built over some of the rooms. a docile servant, assisting when assistance is needed and keeping meekly out of the way when the producer wishes to do without it. The device need not always be used, THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 43 merely because it has been installed.- Its existence does not prevent scenes being set in the ordinary way, since it is simply a circular part of the flat stage, without *--*. -^ Cathedral Square Street. letter Cathedral Square. The ^Revolving Stage in Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater. Arranged for Henry IV, Second Part. In the "long pause" the stage is partially reset so that the "Cathedral Square" covers practically the whole stage. obstacles or obstructions. It can be used, say, for one performance out of four, and be no bother in the other three. Further, the scenes do not have to be set abso- lutely within the circle. They can have hinged ex- 44 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY tensions which, when the scene is in place, can be flapped out toward the sides, to be flapped back within the circle when the scene is again to be changed. Or the stage can be used to set only the central part of the scene, the rest being built up in the ordinary way after the central part is in place. Thus the greater part of the labour of setting is saved, and the supple- mentary work can be kept very simple. In the third place, the revolving stage can be used in connection with the ordinary small rolling platform, or wagon stage, to be described later, the revolving stage carry- ing the heavier part of the scenery for the whole^play, but supplemented by the other devices. In fact, it can be used as the sliding stage is — the later scenes being built on the rear part while an earlier scene is before the footlights. On the whole the revolving stage can hardly be a drawback for any American theatre, and with wise use can greatly increase its efficiency. It only remains to state that the device can be installed on practically any stage, old or new, at a cost of some $10,000 or $15,000, and is absolutely without danger or uncertainty in its operation. The simplest, most important, and most useful of all the modern German stage devices, is the Wagen- biihne or wagon stage. The marvels that can be pro- duced with this invention are out of all proportion to its cost. It can be introduced and used anywhere, has none of the disadvantages of the revolving stage, and is within the purse of the most modest producer. The wagon stage, as used in Germany, is a platform two metres (a little more than two yards) in width by four in length, placed on noiseless rubber wheels. It costs some $50. Ten or twelve of these platforms THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 45 will mount the most elaborate play with the simplicity and almost with the speed of the revolving stage. In the German repertory theatres the scenery for the evening performance is set up on the wagon stages in the course of the afternoon, and is rolled before the proscenium and fitted together when the time comes. The scenery can be set so as to hide the side of the wagon. In the simple scene there is nothing to do but to roll the wagon in place, and to add the few stage "properties" which German taste permits. Even an elaborate scene can be set up (though not entirely with- out noise) in less than a minute. The practical use of the wagon stage involves many tricks of the trade. For instance one wagon can be used for two or more scenes, by making use of both of its sides. By this means a recent production of "Julius Csesar" in Frankfurt-am-Main was realised with but three wagons (plus some curtains for the tent scene and a few simple properties for the battle). Wagons can be used singly, or clamped together to form a larger wagon. Lack of stage space sometimes prohibits the use of many large wagons waiting for their turn, and in general economy demands the use of single wagons that can be reset in the course of the performance. To some extent, to be sure, scenery for a wagon stage must be made to fit the standard size, and so might be under the disadvantages of the revolving stage. But the wagon stage makes no demands of its own, being simply a movable floor, and by the combination of several wagons a larger movable stage can be created which will receive the stock scenery as it is. Further, of course, the wagon stage does not comprise the whole of the stage set. It is used to set only the principal and heavier parts of the scene, the side walls and minor 46 THE THEATR E OF TO-DAY parts then being set in place by hand. On the whole the flexibility and general usefulness of the wagon stage make it invaluable if it is used with resourcefulness and wisdom according to the peculiarities and demands of each problem. A more elaborate and limited type of stage is that called the Schiebebiihne, or sliding stage, invented by Brahm, head mechanical inspector at the Royal Theatre in Berlin. It might be called a large double wagon stage, sufficient to occupy the whole "stage space," and capable of being slid either to left or to right, so that one-half of it can be used for setting a scene while the other half is used for the performance. The expense of installation is rather heavy, and the nature of the invention demands a prodigality of space behind the scenes which many theatres have not at their disposal. For besides requiring, at each side of the stage proper, a free space equal to that of the stage itself, the de- vice involves the use of a large supplementary space in the rear for the storing of scenery, the side spaces being naturally useless for the purpose. But if these conditions can be met the invention is one of the best. It makes possible the rapid succession of large and elaborate scenes such as cannot be thought of with the revolving stage. It has practically no physical limitations and can receive any sort or shape of scen- ery. It is generally used, of course, in connection with movable wagons, which are stored at the back and rolled on to the stage as needed. Perhaps, so used, it offers no especial advantages over the simple wagon stage, but' there may always come an unusually elaborate scene which wagons alone would be unable to compass in a short space of time. On the whole, however, the sliding stage is a mere « H *> f« C BT3 !zi £sij Sh a *■" O H O <1 H -* - S O h s UJ w o K -Is a s « ■H Oft w «fc-S~ O H J S 1 -a 5J^ ■M IS 1 o B u w en 9 Br c S3 H CO M ■a g^g 3 £ 5 "8 M 1 3 a 47 48 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY luxury, and no theatre can excuse itself for ugly or old-fashioned settings merely because it lacks the money for this device. A desire to enjoy the advantages of the sliding stage Lossow and Kiihne, Architects. Prom "The Architectural Review." Longitudinal Section of the New Court Theatre in Dresden. where only a limited stage space was available led to the construction of one of the most elaborate and ex- pensive stages in Germany (or in the world, for that matter) in the new Royal Theatre at Dresden. This is a sliding stage that does its sliding, so to speak, in the basement. The main stage, after the end of the THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 49 scene, is sunk to a distance of ten metres, then the scene, in one or two sections, is slid off to one side, while the new scene, which has been prepared in the meantime at the other side, is slid on in its place. The whole is then raised to its former position and the play proceeds. The accompanying diagrams should make clear the complicated structure of this stage. The amount of ground space available for the stage itself was but little larger than the stage proper (which is eighteen metres square), because of the street which circles in closely behind it. But the space under the street was entirely available. Here, then, Mr. Linnebach made his side receptories for the sliding scene, together with in- numerable store-rooms and working spaces. Further, the air above the stage was at his disposal. So he raised the stage section of the building to a height of more than a hundred feet, and built here, at the sides of the stage space, over the corridors, and in nooks and crannies, the many dressing-rooms, rehearsal- rooms, work-rooms, and even a restaurant, which go to make this theatre one of the most complete in Europe. It is interesting to reflect how much like a complete city the large modern theatre is. Besides the board and lodging, so to speak, which is abundantly supplied, the Dresden theatre has within its walls all its own power. Many such an institution depends on the city water for its power. But city water supplies are notoriously unreliable, and Mr. Linnebach did not pro- pose that his theatre should delay a performance just because the ordinary kitchen sinks of Dresden were dry. So the stage is operated (in its vertical motion) by its own water-power. Four connected tanks in the base- ment receive the water that is pumped into them, by 50 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY power from an electric dynamo, from a small reservoir of twelve cubic metres' capacity, the dynamo, in turn, being operated by a small steam engine. Each of the three main sections of the stage proper rests upon two huge steel shafts which are sunk in iron tubes resting in concrete which is based to a depth of sixteen metres. Into the iron tubes, under the control of a central lever, rushes the water, under a pressure of some thirty- two "atmospheres," displacing the steel shafts and forc- ing the stage up to the desired level. The tanks serve as an air "cushion," somewhat as in an ordinary steam fire-engine. It is claimed that in all this there is not the slightest danger of accident or failure, as every part of the apparatus is tested to many times its required strain, and the maximum and minimum pressures are automatically and securely controlled. The horizontal motion, unlike the vertical motion, is operated by electricity. Each of the two front sec- tions of the stage has a pair of rolling stages, prac- tically the size of the sections on which they rest, which function much like an ordinary wagon stage. But they are propelled by means of motors placed within them and controlled from a central station through a trailing wire. To simplify the mechanism the actual guiding of these rolling stages is managed by hand. The third and rear section of the stage proper is not supplied with the supplementary wagons nor with the side spaces, since it is used only in very deep scenes, such as occur but rarely in a play, and the work of scene- setting upon this section can be done behind the scenes in the course of the evening. The various sections can be operated together or separately, and can be raised at will to any height, up to two metres, above the ordi- nary stage level. THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 51 This whole system, again, is used in connection with the ordinary wagon stage, which in the old Dresden Royal Theatre has produced such marvels under Mr. Linnebach's technical and artistic direction. The whole play is set up on wagons in the course of the afternoon, and the various sets are rolled on to the sliding stages during the scene just preceding that in which they are needed. Since the underground extensions give the di- rector plenty of space for storing wagons already set, the actual work of setting in the evening is much sim- pler than it would be in a constricted theatre in which many scenes must be set up and taken down in the course of the performance. On this account a full third of the ordinary force of stage hands can be per- manently dispensed with. The whole system, in fact, instead of being costly as might be supposed, is com- paratively inexpensive in operation. The water-power is a slight factor, since it involves nothing but the oper- ation of an ordinary electric dynamo. The motors for the sliding stages merely use up some of the by-product of the regular electric power which must be furnished to the house for ordinary lighting purposes. The origi- nal cost of installation, of course, is large (the whole theatre cost $1,500,000), but such a theatre is built to last a great many years, its financial future is as- sured as it would never be to a commercial American theatre, and the prestige of a first class playhouse is a commercially valuable article which the kingdom and citizens of Saxony are abundantly willing to pay for. It may be added that the price of seats ranges from about a dollar down, and that the elaborate equipment of the playhouse is not a mere snobbish fad. In such a theatre, where the genius of the expert mechanician seems to become most elaborate and com- 52 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY plex, it might be thought that the horse would ride the man. But its complexity is simply the high develop- ment of simple principles. All details are under central control. Everything in regard to the mechanical move- ments of the stage and the complex lighting system is directed from a single central station. This station, presided over by a mechanical expert who is at the same time an artist, is the executive office of the directing artist, who is Mr. Linnebach himself — trained artist and expert mechanic in one. And all the complex ma- chinery of execution, down to its smallest details, is accurately managed through the personal responsibility of intelligent workmen. If in the past we have been afraid to increase the mechanical complexity of our stages it is because we had no confidence in our ability to train responsible workmen to operate them. Yet mere complexity does not imply rough or imperfect op- eration; our most highly organised factories and busi- ness concerns are the smoothest and most accurate in their operation. And there is no reason why the theatre, when it comes in need of the genius of the scientific expert and organiser, should not be developed to any needed point of mechanical complexity. The "sky-drops" or strips of white canvas that used so pitifully to represent the throne of God, have been replaced in the modern theatre by an invention that makes a natural landscape possible. This is the "Horizont," which we may name for the purpose a cyclorama. For convenience we may group all forms of the cyclorama under two names — the Rundhorizont andthe Kuppelhorizont. The Rundhorizont is a white or tinted backing for the stage, built in the form of a segment of a vertical cylinder. It may be constructed of canvas THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 53 or of solid plaster. In the older theatres the canvas Rundhorizont, built on a rigid frame, used to be let down from above. Now, if made of canvas, it is more usually kept, when not in use, on a vertical roller, at one side of the stage, near the front, and carried around behind the stage, unrolling from its cylinder the while, until it connects with a similar cylinder at the opposite side of the stage. It hangs from a circular iron rail, and almost completely encloses the stage, rising to the required distance, usually some twelve metres. It can be rolled up on its original cylinder when it is not needed, leaving the stage once more approachable from all sides. The Rundhorizont can also be built per- manently of plaster over an iron frame. This does away with any flapping or unevenness in the "sky," and usually proves more satisfactory for taking coloured lights. Contrary to one's supposition, this permanent enclosure of the stage does not greatly interfere with the entrances and exits, and no producer hesitates a moment to install it when he has the money. The chief uses of the cyclorama are evident. It presents a continuous dead white or tinted background, which, when played upon by the proper lights, gives a striking illusion of depth and luminous atmosphere. Under the old method the strips of canvas were pain- fully evident as such; their surface flapped and their edges outlined themselves against other drops. It was at best a conventional symbol to designate sky ; it made any other attempts at realism in the settings absolutely fruitless. It was usually painted a flat "sky colour" and would not "take" the lights which were played upon it from time to time. The flapping of the old canvas drops is sometimes evident in the canvas cyclo- rama, which is, in the modern theatre, usually regarded 54 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY as a makeshift. The solid plaster cyclorama presents none of the drawbacks of canvas, and under a sensitive use of lights belies its solid construction altogether. The ordinary plaster cyclorama, however, has the one drawback that its top can usually be seen by the spectators from the front of the ground floor. This fact has led to an extension of the device — the "Kuppel- horizont," or dome cyclorama. This is simply the solid cyclorama domed out four or five metres over the stage. It has the advantage, besides that of its edges being invisible to the audience, of serving as a great hollow reflector and diffuser of light, whose utility will be made plain farther on. The cyclorama is a neutral background on which many subtle and highly varied effects can be produced. Exact shades of colour, when thrown on it by the modern lighting devices, show their true values because of the dead whiteness of the surface. Moving clouds can be shown on it by means of a sort of moving pic- ture machine. Its presence, too, often greatly simpli- fies the problem of stage-setting. With it there is no longer any need for masking the wings and top with special canvas in order to cut off the scene from the stage-wings beyond. Such a set as that of the desert scene of "Cassar and Cleopatra," or that of the moun- tain top in Goethe's "Faust," can show the one physical object called for, and the infinite open sky around. Nor are such poetic effects confined only to special scenes. In general the cyclorama permits a simplicity in the setting of the sides of the stage which is coming more and more to be demanded by modern taste. But perhaps the chief value of the cyclorama, from the standpoint of the stage artist, has not yet been mentioned. For the new device changes altogether the z < B CQ 3 'S u o in a O i—i ~a a c -t-i Z c o So > c w o Q u ■a e rt a; u 3 H +j U CJ < 'S. OJ _l be a) z ■m z yj •< 13 s E 6 t. rt c o THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 55 problem of lighting. Ordinary sunlight is, as we know, not a direct light, but an infinitely reflected light, bandied about by the particles of air and by the ordi- nary physical objects on which it strikes. The mellow- ness and internal luminosity of ordinary sunlight is wholly due to this infinite reflection. It was the lack of this that made the old stage lighting, with its blazing direct artificial glare, so unreal. The cyclorama, and especially the dome cyclorama, permits the stage to be lighted largely or wholly by crisscrossing reflection. The mellow and subtle lighting which it makes possible was altogether unknown under the old methods. Perhaps the most important single factor in the modern stage is the lighting. Some producers say that lighting is nine-tenths of tbe problem. Certainly every artistic stage in Europe has made a new study of light- ing and has completely changed its technical equipment and, correspondingly, its artistic ideals. Fortuny light- ing, now in vogue in some form or other in most of the good European theatres, has revolutionised both the kind of light used and the methods of using it. It sub- stitutes for the ordinary incandescent, or Tungsten, lamps of our foot and proscenium lights a set of arc- lamps sometimes capable of being moved freely. The incandescent lamp, which throws a distinctly yellow light, has the quality of overemphasizing the red and yellow in the colours which it illuminates, and thus ma- terially altering the colour values. The Tungsten lamp is much better, but is still not a pure white. The arc- light, being of a slightly bluish tinge but much more nearly white, is comparatively just to all colours. In operation the Fortuny systems have a range and flexibility which makes lighting the chief technical revo- lution in the contemporary theatre. Briefly, this 56 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY operation is that of reflected light instead of direct light. Instead of lighting the stage with incandescent bulbs of one or another crude colour the Fortuny method throws its brilliant illumination away from the stage against bands of coloured silk which reflect the *■ *4 It. ceiowz&p silk akfj/ve^s \\ 1 JT~ *C£ ^ft ope From "The Architectural Review." Operation op the Fortuny Indirect Lighting System. light in any colour or tint desired, either on the whcle stage or upon a desired part. Sometimes the light is thrown mainly against the cyclorama, which reflects it a second time, and (especially in the case of the Kuppel- horizont) crisscrosses it into a soft diffusion. This alone is sufficient to change stage lighting from disillu- sion into illusion. The whole apparatus is under the THE THEATRE OF TODAY 57 control of one man, who, like most of the mechanics of the modern art theatre, must himself be an artist. The modern theatre must be able to throw any sort of light from any direction on to any part of the stage. But though this demand, and the mechanism by which it is met, seem complicated, the whole system is in reality economical, since one man can operate one lamp, and a few lamps will accomplish what formerly required hun- dreds of bulbs and a complex system of wiring. In fact, the system is rather the contrary of complex in the mechanical sense. It requires, on the other hand, more intelligence and artistry. It has simply become more human. The actual work of scene-building has also become more of an expert's job than formerly. But this is rather the affair of the artist than that of the scientist. It can be said, however, that stage carpentry is a dignified specialised profession in itself, and involves much mechanical ability in the accurate execution of the designer's demands. The problem of building an elaborate scene which will not fall down is not so far removed from that of building an elaborate house that will not fall down. Modern scenery, which must be light, simple, and accurately made, and yet secure and tough, is not to be manufactured by a mere handy man. Much of the scientist's knowledge, too, is demanded for the understanding of colours and lights, paints and perspective, in their optical operation under given stage conditions. Certain modern producers have brought something approaching a science of colour to their work. And there are few functions in the modern theatre which do not require something of the scientist's attitude — the study of the external facts of nature as such, an intellectual understanding of cause and effect 58 THE THEATRE OF T O-DAY in all parts of their work, and a willingness to approach each difficulty as a peculiar and unique problem. While the equipment of the modern stage has been growing more mechanical and complex, the operation of it, as has been suggested, has been growing more human and personal. The "light man," for instance, in a mod- ern German theatre, is not provided with the old-fash- ioned "light-plot," which showed accurately each light and each combination to be used in the course of the whole play, with his "cues" written out and his very levers numbered. The "light-plot" reduced the whole artistic problem of lighting to an unintelligent mechani- cal formula — and the result showed it. The light-man to-day lives through the rehearsals as one of the artistic personnel, receiving his orders or suggestions from the regisseur just as an actor would, and, like the actor, remembering them and executing them in the actual performance without mechanical aids. He has been drawn into the ensemble as a person, depending on his artistic sense, his memory, and his responsibility toward the whole. And he has become not less reliable, but more. And so it is, in general, with all the mechanical functions of the modern stage. They are invented by men for an artistic purpose, and used by men. They have not, like the legendary iron man, enslaved the person who made them. For the relation of the mechanical personnel to the artistic result is a personal artistic relation. The mechanical development of the stage has meant not the mechanicalising of the stage, but the humanising of it. CHAPTER III THE ARTISTIC FORCES: THE STAGE- SETTING, OR "INSCENIERUNG." FOR this chapter we must coin a new word. There is no English word to convey the idea of stage- setting in the modern sense. The German atti- tude toward stage-setting has given the German word for it a distinct meaning — a meaning which must be associated with the new art as it spreads around the world. The corresponding word in England and Amer- ica is lacking because the corresponding fact is lacking in the theatres of England and America. So it is not from affectation but from necessity that we shall speak of modern stage-setting as "Inscenierung." "Inscenierung" comprises the whole process of put- ting a play upon the stage — the acting, scene-designing, lighting, and so on — and the harmonising of these fac- tors to express the particular quality of the play produced. If in the following pages the word "In- scenierung" may be used somewhat more narrowly to~- signify" the mere setting as apart from the action, it will be only with the implication that this setting is an or- ganic part of the play as a whole. No other country (except for a few theatres in Russia) has taken such an attitude toward stage-setting as Germany. The Germans have created the fact ; they have a right to the name. For several reasons the stage-setting of the nine- ties became unsatisfactory to theatre-goers and theatri- 59 60 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY cal producers. These settings rigidly followed the ideal which was thought to be implied in the Ibsen dramas and the later realistic plays — that of reproducing nature, of reproducing on the stage "a real room with the fourth wall left out." This ideal had done fine ser- vice. It had cleared the stage of a mass of useless properties, had replaced the silly superfluity of conven- tional adornment with something of the bareness or of the irregularity of life, had placed two doors where six had flourished before, had put in the scene a chair where the play called for a chair. All stage-setting previously had been, like the plays themselves, conventionally put together by clumsy men- of-the-stage. The realistic drama said "We must show life as it is," and the idea became something like a re- ligion to thousands of workers in the theatre. After a struggle, the bitterness of which we cannot realise now, the idea triumphed, and all theatres which pretended to stand for the best in drama strove to reproduce the physical semblance of life down to its tiniest detail. But when realism had achieved three walls in all accuracy what was to be done? It could not stand still. It must go on logically and put in the fourth wall, or adopt a new ideal — and this ideal was supplied by a striving for a certain sort of simplicity. to look with equal interest at all parts of the stage. But obviously a play, since it is a selected. action, must be seen with the~atFention centred on'the important. This psychological demand" becomes insistent as the novelty of strict realism wears off, and, once the spec- tator has felt the thrill of a setting which actively draws his attention toward the important, it never de- parts. One more condition, a dramatic one, made a change necessary. Realism as applied to an elaborate play, say one of Shakespeare's, demanded much time between scenes for building the setting. These waits, sometimes of ten minutes for a five-minute scene, not only tired the spectator, but destroyed the dramatic continuity. A "Macbeth," which pulses on from scene into scene, should not be brought to a dead stop, filled with lights and gossip, whenever the situation changes. Many modern plays, too, like those of Tolstoy, ask for fre- quent changes of scene. And one finds that with all these works it is profitable to sacrifice elaborateness of the setting for continuity of the play. It is true that with the more recent stage inventions producers might 64 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY give a Shakespearian play with short waits and still with something like old time elaboration in the settings, but it is to be noticed that now that producers have seen the beauty and dramatic fitness of the simpler settings, they don't want to. Out of these conditions and dissatisfactions there arises a man, new to the theatre, symbolic of its al- tered nature — the regisseur. The older theatre had appointed men to be responsible for the various parts of the drama; the regisseur is to be responsible for their harmony. But this is not enough, for one cannot harmonise parts that weren't made to harmon- ise. The regisseur must not only be responsible for the assembling of the parts ; he must be responsible for their designing and making from the beginning. So the regisseur becomes the autocrat of the modern thea- ter, caring for the design and equipment of his play- house, planning and supervising the construction of his scenes and costumes, working out the technical details of scene shifting and building, determining the nature and even the details of the acting, and imagining the lights and all their variations, even down to the spot- ting of a certain part of a certain actor's robe at a certain point in his part. The regisseur, in short, is responsible for the whole. And the fact that he was never needed before the twentieth century (excepting perhaps in ancient Greece) is proof that the drama has become what it never was before. As we look into the European theatres to-day we ! never in a moment's doubt whether the stage set- tings are "old" or "new." The new have "a something" about them which arrests our attention and stimulates our interest. We are puzzled to know just where it is. It is not in the externals, for the setting may consist of are never THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 65 walls and tables and chairs, just as in our American theatres (only better done). But there is something in the arrangement and ordering of it all which gives us at once stimulation and repose. Itjg^jmrpose. The new settings are designed with some artistic end in view. We find our eye centring on this or that spot, while the other parts contrast with it and lead up to it. In short we feel, what we never felt with the old settings, that we are in the presence of an artist. ^-There is never too much in these settings, and what there is is artistically as well as dramatically necessary. They suggest reality, rather than represent it; and when our imagination is thus stimulated we make reality real because, in a sense, we create it ourselves. Bare walls, simple lines, harmonious colours, soft lights — these are part of the new stage settings. One never feels that the scene screams at the top of its voice. A modern interior is a real room, not a fantastic or precious one; but its doors and windows, tables and chairs are part of a picture placed within the pro- scenium frame. The inscenierung of a classical play, say by Shakespeare or Goethe, will catch the spirit of its milieu ; if its action passes in a castle, it will make use of the romantic opportunities of the old grey stone, the mysterious arches, the creeping stairways. A land- scape in modern inscenierung is not a paper and can- vas copy of leaves and grass and shrubbery, but the picture of that landscape, the leaves forming a dark mass, the road a cleft of white in the greenery, and the shrubbery a mass of dark at the side. The colours are attuned to each other, and the lines and masses group themselves around some central point. The background is a real solid, not a flimsy panel; it is real distance, not a flapping sky curtain. The foot- 66 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY lights (if they are used at all) do not glare and force the actors to use exaggerated make-up. Light and shade are not painted on canvas but are the living conse- quences of a real light. And the central secret of it all is artistic selection — the using ..only j>fjwhat is neces- sary and that with a definite purpose. Suppose you are sitting in a darkened auditorium; you look into the proscenium opening and see all black- ness, except here, at one side of the foreground, a noble pier belonging to the nave of some German Cathedral. The pier is of yellow grey stone, built to support huge weight and dignity. About it are many niches, deco- rated with delicate tracery, and within the niches are statues of the saints. This you see, and nothing more, except a poorly clad girl, kneeling, despairing and terri- fied, between the mysteries of good and evil, of God and the Devil. It is Gretchen. The spirit of evil is behind that pier, thundering fearful scoffings against the trem- bling sinner. It is the Cathedral scene from "Faust." What need here of aisles and church pews, candles and stained-glass windows? It is the sanctuary of God, and one great column will tell of His dignity and presence ' here better than many details that know not what they are about. "Remember," says Gordon Craig, "that on a sheet of paper which is but two inches square you can make a line 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." This is the practical basis of it — suggestion rather than representation. "Do not look first at Nature," Craig continues; "look in the play of the poet." And that is the inner inspiration of it all. Just how a producer should set about designing The Silhouette Scene in Germany Design by Dr. Lert Goethe's "Iphigenia" at the Neues Theater in Leipzig. Photograph by Eugene Hutchinson The Silhouette Scene in America "The Sermon on the Mount" at the Little Theatre, Chicago. THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 67 his setting is a theoretical problem much quarrelled about among the producers themselves. Some aim mainly at producing a beautiful picture — in the artist's sense of the word. The artist, for instance, sees on an old-fashioned stage a Macbeth's castle which, if it were copied on canvas, would outrage any artist of any school. It merely represents some corner of some im- aginary castle, a corner chosen for no reason at all or merely for its dramatic fitness. By all the tests which the artist applies to a canvas — proportion, bal- ance, rhythm and so on — this picture is meaningless. It lacks what every artist demands in his work, some- thing known as style. The producer will select the essential thing i» this castle — the stairway down which Lady Macbeth walks in her sleep. This he will place in a semicircular recess at the back, and it will form a beautiful curve from the top half way down. This stair- way is the chief fact in the setting — dramatically and artistically. At each side is a black wall, in front of it is a bare stone floor. Or perhaps the producer has been controlled chiefly by another sort of purpose. He has to design the Plat- form scene in "Hamlet." He shows us in the fore- ground the floor of solid stone; off to the left is an immense patch of sky, grey and impenetrable; at the right is a large square tower, black as darkest midnight. When the haunted figure of Hamlet appears outlined against the sky with the square tower beside him setting off the curves of his figure and cloak, we look at nothing but Hamlet. That is, the producer's whole aim was to centre our attention and interest upon the actor. But besides mere beauty and mere dramatic em- phasis the producer may have a third principle in de- signing his scene. Imagine a large, gloomy room, with 68 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY dark walls and heavy curtains — where a man seems lost in the stale deadness. The oppressiveness is sensed rather than seen. But the oppressiveness which we feel is not so much that of the room as that of the charac- ters in it. Or suppose a dark gallery, with square altars at each side, and flames ascending from them. In it all we feel the heroine's dominant emotion — the very spirit of agonised supplication, the "motif" of the scene. That is, the setting was intended to shadow forth the subjective meaning of the action, to make sensible states of soul. These three motives, beauty, dramatic^ emphasis and subjective truth, are of course not mutually exclusive. They can (and probably should) all be present hr a good stage-setting. But they represent three of the principal tendencies of modern inscenierung, and also, to some extent, three types of modern regisseurs. As a conscious tendency the movement toward ar- tistic stage-settings goes no farther back than the beginning of the twentieth century. But for many years preceding there had been experiments of one sort or another, and expressed theories that seem to look forward to modern times. The German archi- tect Schinkel, designer of the Royal Schauspielhaus in Berlin, took a critical attitude toward stage-settings, demanding that they should support the drama with- out imposing their idiosyncracies upon it. For in- stance, he hated the construction of scenes by means of canvas wings (the only method then in existence) and proposed to mask the sides by means of hang- ing curtains which should remain throughout the play. Immermann, as artistic director of the Dusseldorf Theater, attempted to put Schinkel's ideas into prac- tice. But the German stage of the time (like the THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 69 English) was wholly dominated by the actor's art, and he met with no encouragement. The chief impulse toward stage-reform, before the middle of the century, was a scholarly one. In 1843 Tieck produced "A Mid- summer Night's Dream" in "the Shakespearian man- ner" at the Royal Palace in Potsdam, and Immermann before him had made the experiment. But a new and partly artistic impulse came to Ger- many from England. Charles Kean, son of the great actor, instituted in 1852 his "Shakespeare revivals" which attempted to be "a true and complete image of the history and customs of a people." This was the beginning of the realistic and archaeological Shakespeare scenery which is cultivated to-day by Beerbohm Tree. Through Dingelstedt, director at Munich and Weimar, the idea reached the Meininger brothers at their little private theatre, and was fostered by them with almost religious fervour. The famous journeys of their troupe, which continued from 1874 until the nineties, opened the eyes of German audiences to the possibilities of stage-setting. Their realistic tendency, somewhat sim- plified, was continued at the Deutches Theater in Berlin, under L'Arronge, from 1883 to 1894, and under Otto Brahm, from 1894 until 1904. The reaction to the in- fluence of the Meiningers showed itself in the famous "Shakespeare stage," at Munich, arranged by Intendant von Perfall and Oberregisseur Savits. This fulfilled Schinkel's old demand for side-curtains, and made use of the conventional fore-stage, which is now a common thing in German stage-settings. The Munich Shake- speare stage marked a desire for simplicity, but it was once more an English influence, that of Gordon Craig, which gave the great stimulus toward beauty which marked the first decade of the new century. 70 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY Before his influence was felt, however, Adol ph Appia, probably the most powerful theorist of the new movement, had written his remarkable book, "Die Musik und die Inscenierung." In this, as an artist, he"~3t- -tempiei to deduce from the eontent of the Wagner . music^dramasthe proper stage-settings for them. His conclusions anticipated much of the best work of recent years and his theories have been put in practice in more or less modified form on a great many stages — not so much (if at all) for the Wagner dramas them- selves, which are living under a rigid tradition (the "what the Master wished" myth) but for operas and the more lyrical plays where the producer has artistic ability and a free hand in applying it. Appia started \roth the principle that the setting should make the actor the all-important fact on the stage. He saw the realistic impossibility of the realistic setting, and destructively analysed the current modes of lighting and perspective effects. But unlike the members of the more conventional modern school, he insisted that the stage is a three-dimension space and must be so handled as to make its depth living. He felt a contradiction between the living actor and the dead setting. He wished io bind them into one whole — the drama. How waSrt&s to be done? Appia's answer to ^S»uestion is his chief claim to greatness — genius almos!Sv ; Hi s answer was — "By means of Jthe.Jighting." He saw the deadliness of the" contemporary "methods of lighting, and previsaged with a sort of inspiration the possibilities of new methods which have since become common. This was at a time when he had at his disposal none of the modern lightfog systems. His foreseeing of modern practice by means of rigid Teutonic logic in the service the artist's intui- THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 71 tion makes him one of the two or three foremost theo- rists of the modern movement. The lighting, for Appia, is the spiritual core, the soul, of the drama. The whole action should be con- tained in it, somewhat as we feel the physical body of a friend to be contained in his personality. Appia's second great principle is closely connected with this. While the setting is obviously inanimate, the actor must be in every way emphasised and made living. And this can be accomplished, he says, only by a wise use of lighting, since it is the lights and shadows on a human body which reveal to our eyes the fact that the body is "plastic" — that is, a flexible body of three dimensions. Appia would make the 'setting suggest only the atmos- phere, not the reality, of the thing it stands for, and would soften and beautify it with the lights. The actor he would throw constantly into prominence while keep- ing him always a part of the scene. All the elements and all the action of the drama he would bind together by the lights and shadows. With the most minute care each detail of lighting, each position of each character, in Appia's "produc- tions," is studied out so that the dramatic meaning shall always be evident. Hence, any setting of his contains vastly more thought than is visible at a glance. It is designed to serve for every exigency of the scene — so that a character here shall be in full light at a certain point, while talking directly to a character who must be quite in the dark, or so that the light shall just touch the fringe of one character's robe as she dies, or so that the action shall all take place unimpeded, and so on. At the same time, needless to say, Appia's stage pictures are of the highest artistic beauty. An extension of the Appia practice has given some 72 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY producers the idea of using the stage partially or en- tirely without any "solid" effect. We might call this sort of setting "pure atmosphere." Chief among the producers of "pure atmosphere" is Ottomar Starke, a remarkably talented young regisseur who has worked mainly in Mannheim and Frankfurt- am-Main. His "atmosphere" is produced by the use of net curtains of comparatively delicate texture used in connection with lights and special devices, many of which are his own inventions. The effect depends upon a partially darkened stage. On the net-curtains, from above and behind, are thrown lights of various subdued hues. The nets absorb and diffuse the light, mingling with each other into an atmospheric whole. Under this practice they lose the definiteness which has always, spoiled their effect with the footlight system. Some- times the whole light of the scene is thrown from behind the back drop, which is semi-transparent. By skilful gradation and colouring of this back curtain fine effects of luminosity can be obtained. Clouds, or even flying beasts and humans, can be figured upon the back drop by means of a sort of moving picture machine. The secret of the use of net-curtains (beyond the gen- eral secret of knowledge and skill) lies in the use of the back light, which illuminates them (as contrasted with the front lighting, which simply reveals them). But it is the theory of this method which is most in- teresting. "Lighting," says Mr. Starke, " is my music." Let the stage, by means of its lights, be as alive as the drama itself. Let the mood of the lights vary with the mood of the music or of the action. The internal unity which Appia foresaw is thus strikingly realised in Starke's procedure. Under this the lighting is usually quite arbitrary, making no pretense at natural justifi- THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 73 cation, partly because it throws the whole emphasis on the subjective values of the setting and partly because, in the regisseur's opinion, stage-setting should be "not nature, but style." Even where definite "plastic" or solid settings are required he usually surrounds them, as it were, with atmosphere, and lays chief stress on the effects of lighting. Quite in opposition to Appia, who wishes to ban- ish the painter and his principles altogether from the theatre, is George Fuchs, of Munich, who aims at a form of sta"gJFs : etting that will permit the artist full play. This form is the '^relief" or two^dimension stage, as in use -at the Kiinstlertheater in Munich. Curiously enough, Fuchs starts from precisely "the same premise as Appia — that the business of the setting is to emphasise the actor. But he argues thus : Since the actor must be emphasised, arrange such a stage as will permit him to be always in the foreground, where his voice and gesture will have full value. True perspective is im- possible; therefore giveup the third dimension alto- gether. In compensation you can have all the genius of the painter at your disposal, working untrammelled on a flat surface. This type we might call the "pure picture" stage, since its obvious effort is toward pictorial beauty of effect. The stage (as at the Kiinstler) is very shallow, and is provided on the sides with a permanent frame in the shape of plain towers (with doors for entrances and exits) which can be moved toward or away from each other in order to contract or enlarge the frame. The background is usually a simple back drop or a single set piece of scenery placed either before a neutral curtain or before the cyclorama. The characters are seen out- lined against this background like silhouettes (hence 74 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY the name "relief stage"). As often as possible they are seen in actual profile. In effect the whole is seen as though painted on a canvas. There is no attempt to make the characters seem plastic, rather the contrary. This machinery demands a special treatment'. The designs will tend toward the conventional, and pro- portion — "pure proportion" — will have high value. Pictorial beauty must be sought at every stage of the drama. Action and gesture must be somewhat conven- tionalised and studied, and quite removed from the actu- ality of life. The setting must choose only one or two significant details of the supposed scene (or even omit details altogether) and use them for the highest decora- tive effect. In short, the whole must aim at style, in the aesthetic and narrower sense of the word. It is evident that such a method is somewhat limited in its application, that it will vary in its success ac- cording to the type of play presented, and that it can- not claim to represent anything like the whole art of stage production. Still the range of plays which can be satisfactorily presented on the relief stage is larger than one might suppose. Shakespeare, the problem play and comic opera, are all capable of conventional production, if the true motive of the conventionalisa- tion, suggested by the play itself, be made the basis of it. The Cathedral scene in "Faust" will show only one solid pier against a black curtain. The garden scene will have a somewhat stiffly painted "back drop" with a railing and a bush or two in front. A modern in- terior will have merely a single "back set" showing a door and a window in a bare wall, and a few necessary "properties." "Orpheus in the Underworld" is played almost without scenery, the "picture" arising from the costumes and groupings. THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 75 The whole idea may strike one as stiff and grotesque, and certainly it sounds so in description. But it should be regarded as an experiment in conventionalisation and should be seen to be judged. Its stimulus to the theory of stage-setting has been very great. Another pioneer, the father of them all, is Edward Gordon Craig of England. His work is in many re- spects the most radical and daring of all, and his in- fluence is at present greater than any other one man's. But unlike the Germans he is not a theorist in the logi- cal sense, and his "principles" can hardly be put into words. His practice will be described at greater length in the chapter on "Stylisation," a theory or way of looking at the subject of stage-setting which owes its vitality in great measure to him. These three men, Appia, Fuchs, and Craig, are the chief original influences in modern inscenierung (out- side of Russia). They are of the sort who are "hard to get hold of," and their practice is often better than their precept, but in the future history of the modern stage movement they will bulk very large indeed. We have said that the impulse toward artistic scene-setting came from England. It "came" in rather too literal a sense. For English theatres, on the whole, were strangely slow to understand and adopt the new ideas, which English audiences insisted on regarding as "foreign." The dignified and stately Shakespearian tradition of Beerbohm Tree continued to dominate both acting and scenery. Some of the most intelligent of the English theatrical people are bitterly opposed to the innovations. Miss Lena Ashwell combats the prin- ciple of the regisseur, saying that under it the actress is not allowed to act her part, but must act the di- rector's idea of the part. Miss Horniman, who is 76 THE THEATRE OF T O-DAY radical from head to toe, says that Craig's settings seem to her "pure nonsense." It jgjjranville Barker who chiefly represents the new ideas in England? Hisremarkable seasons at the Court, Kingsway and Savoy theatres have given him an influ- ence which he has used to vitalise English and stage methods. His Shakespearian performances, played at extremely rapid pace, have set a new tradition for Shakespearian acting. The settings, too, for these productions, have been unusual. They have returned in large measure to Shakespearian simplicity of stage, and have borrowed generously from Germany for de- tail. And the London public has liked it all immensely. Or at least it has been very curious. Perhaps Mr. Walkley's opinion of Barker's "The Winter's Tale," published in The London Times, best illustrates the prevalent attitude: "It was bound to come. Here, like it or lump it, is Post-Impressionist Shakespeare. The costumes are after Beardsley and still more after Bakst ; the busbies and caftans and deep-skirted tunics of the courtiers come from the Russian Ballet, and the bizarre smocks and fal-lals of the merry-makers at the sheep-shearing come from the Chelsea Arts Club Ball. The Old Shepherd inhabits a model bungalow from the Ideal Home Exhibition with Voysey windows. Leontes reclines upon a seat which is frankly Art Nouveau. The Bohemian peasants are genuine Thomas Hardy. Squads of supers have symmetrical, automa- ton-like movements which show the influence of 'Su- murun.' . . . It is very startling and provocative and audacious, and on the whole we like it." In Paris, Jacques Rouche, a rich dilettante, leased a run-down theatre on one of the outer boulevards and managed it for several years as the Theatre des Arts. THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 77 He was frankly addicted to German scenery, and was freely hated, when he was not sneered at, on that ac- count. And now, by an extraordinary stroke of radi- cal judgment on the part of the French Ministry, he has been made director of the Paris Opera, and there he is doubtless planning, while professing to the news- papers the obligatory pre-occupation with 'Tart fran- cais," to exemplify modern ideas in a way that will make history at the capital. In nearly all modern inscenierung, whatever the "motif," there Is some amount oiTconventionalisation. This calls into use^ a "number of technical methods al- most unknown to the American stage. They are neces- sarily somewhat artificial, and do not attempt to con- ceal their artificiality. Indeed their artificiality is often a part of their artistic purpose. Mr. Starke's remark- able settings for "Julius Caasar," already mentioned, illustrate what is meant. For these designs are a study not only in decorative beauty, but also in practical economy. The six scenes were built on three wagons which were supplemented by simple additions here and there. A wagon, after being used for one scene, was simply reversed for another, its rear part being de- signed for the purpose. Far from producing a dis- agreeable effect this procedure actually helped to bind the play together by revealing, so to speak, its mechani- cal unity. """""" * Another device is that of conventionalising the front part of the stage only. Some sort of setting, pre- sumably suggesting the spirit of the play, will be ar- ranged for the front part of the stage, allowing a cur- tained opening in the middle. Behind the curtains the setting will be changed for the various acts, and will be carried out with partial or complete realism. The 78 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY front setting may remain constant through the play or may be varied, with different curtains or decorations. Mr. Urban's setting for the third act of "Tales of Hoff- mann" will illustrate a modification of the idea. The sides of the conventional front may remain curtained during a part of the play, to be uncovered for some scene in which the whole of the set will not be out of place. Still another practice is to keep the conventional front constant and in full view of the audience through- out the play, making all the scene changes behind the inner curtain. The conventional front acts as a sort of frame for the stage pictures; it can be very potent, if wisely chosen, in binding all together into the dominant mood. It goes without saying that the action need not be kept behind this front setting, but can come forward whenever special emphasis, or the press of circum- stances, demands. Indeed, it is hardly wise to keep the action too far back, since the acoustical results may be disastrous. And there is no reason why the action should not press forward, since the front setting is an artjstic frame merely, and not a mechanical one. / A certain sort of conventional forestage has been yWd very extensively for some years past in producing Shakespeare and other classics, and has proved invalu- able wherever it has been wisely used. The forestage can be conveniently built out over the usual orchestra pit in the ordinary theatre. Much of the action will take place here, especially that of an intimate sort, as, for instance, the comic relief scenes in Shakespeare, playing in front of the regular curtain, somewhat as vaudeville comedians come out to entertain the audi- ence during changes of scene. It is quite possible, also, to provide a special curtain and simple properties which THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 79 can be used on the forestage for scenes of secondary importance, at the convenience of the producer. Some European stages, as, for instance, that at Weimar, are provided with easily convertible forestages, formed by raising the floor of the orchestra pit to the level of the stage and connecting the forestage and the audi- torium by means of steps. One very useful artistic device which has been strangely absent in the old stages is the contracted pro- scenium frame. There is no good reason why every stage picture should be as wide as the full proscenium opening. Certain scenes, as, for instance, a prison or a small in- terior, are thus made ludicrously large, and the actor is often drowned in a sea of space. Further, the larger scenes are more effective when alternating with small ones. Modern practice in Europe contracts the stage frame at pleasure, either by means of sliding sides as at the Kunstlertheater, or by side and top curtains of neutral shade, or by a special frame designed for each scene and let down from above. Many scenes on the German stage are played with a stage width of no more than twelve or fifteen feet. The resulting intimacy and variety (not to mention economy) make the device too valuable to dispense with. The use of the cyclorama, in whatever form, has caused certain changes in the general method of scene setting. The old practice demanded that the "wings" be always "masked" — that some sort of scenery be placed at the sides of the stage to hide from view the bowels of the stage farther in. Thus we had frequently the anomalies of trees flourishing on the top of a moun- tain or on a desert prairie. Simplicity in an out-of-door scene was thus impossible. The necessary "masking" is now done by the cyclorama. It is no longer needful 80 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY to put into the scene anything that is not required by the drama. With proper lighting we can get some- thing like an effect of infinite space in all directions. The triumphant shoutings of some of the newer producers should not hide from us the fact that they are all sorely puzzled over certain problems. They say, confidently enough, that the setting should express the action and harmonise with its spirit. But they are under the disadvantage that very few of the plays they produce were written for this style of production. The chief difficulty they meet with lies in the in- evitable contradiction between the parts and the whole. Each setting of each scene, they maintain, should har- monise with its action; but also, all the scenes should harmonise with each other, else what becomes of unity? / Most dramatists, Shakespeare for instance, wrote with the effect of the individual scenes in mind. The "unity of the whole" was the merest by-product, to be dis- covered, if at all, after considerable mystic delving. Thus any unity which a regisseur may give to his production must usually be got at some sacrifice ; many of the individual scenes must be falsified, or at least robbed of their full potential effect, that they may be made to harmonise with the particular "unity" which the regisseur has arbitrarily selected for the play. Take the same problem in its more detailed phase. The torch which Lady Macbeth holds as she descends the circular stairway, casts before her a lengthened shadow which precedes her on her deathly march. This shadow is a good mass, considered merely as pure design. It is also fitting from the dramatic standpoint. It is an ideal little touch, the shadow being at once good drama and good pictorial art and got without straining. Now imagine how complicated the problem becomes if one THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 81 seeks to get something of the same double fitness in every moment of a long scene, when characters are coming and going, when the action demands many movings and shiftings. Must we give up this double fitness, or strain the action of the play in order to achieve it? Or perhaps, must we write new plays with this nice fitness continually in mind? Of course no answer can be given. Each problem is unique, each producer must throw his personality into its solution. Sacrifices and compromises are demanded continually, and not more than half a dozen producers in the world at present are ready to take a thorough course and achieve their artistic unity at all costs. These problems more properly belong in the chap- ter on "Stylisation," where they will be discussed and illustrated more completely. But they will enter into a producer's troubles the moment he envisages insceni- erung as something having its own artistic values. It can be readily inferred from what has been said how such revolutions in the background of the drama must affect what we regard as its more intimate parts — action, gesture, voice, and so forth. As a matter of fact the success of such a producer as Max Reinhardt is due at least half to the modulating of his acting to his artistic ensemble. Many German theatres which have as good or better stage setting at times, fail to achieve his effects because they are working with actors who have carried down from a former generation their tradi- tions of acting based on "points" or "effects." If we are changing our conception of the acted drama as a whole it is evident that not alone the stage-setting, but also all the actor's work, must be modified to the new ideal. It is not merely the harmonisation of individuals to the acting ensemble, a thing which was well enough known 82 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY and practised in the nineties, but the harmonisation of these individuals and of the ensemble itself to what the "stylists" would call the "mood," that inner value from which the whole drama is conceived as taking its rise. Gesture is coming to be regarded as revealing not the sentiments expressed, but the sentiments felt. The "tempo," which formerly was aimed merely to set the effect of the individual scenes, is now thought of as a whole, even with something of a decorative value, like the allegro, andante, scherzo, and presto of a sym- phony. To many producers "points" have value not in themselves or even in their revelation of character, but only in their revelation of the "mood" of the play. The art of make-up, be it also noted, suffers certain happy changes under the newer system of lighting: for under the glare of the footlights an actor had to over- come, by violent pencillings and colourings, the deadly effect of the light which tended to make all things as one; under a natural lighting the actor's face and ex- pression retain something like their natural values. Costumes, it need not be said, must be chosen with re- gard to the colour of the other costumes and to the colour scheme of the whole scene. How completely the new conceptions of stage- setting have changed the practice of production has only been suggested in the present chapter. The revo- lution has opened the theatre doors to many specialists and workmen formerly foreign to it, and they are bring- ing their best fruits to its service. When we have seen who these men are and how ancient and noble is the tradition they bear, we shall realise better the im- port and the complexity of modern inscenierung. -a 3 en « 5 c Q o H C < 4-. 2 a S cs c < CHAPTER IV THE ARTISTIC FORCES : PURE DESIGN PURE design in works of representative art (such as pictures), is an artificial abstraction from practical artistic problems. It performs for us the service which abstraction and generalisation per- form for us in any case — helps us to find our way about in a maze of apparently unrelated facts. The "rules" of political economy or ethics are only abstractions which enable us to order our minds in facing the facts of wealth-production or human conduct. But they must be regarded as reflecting facts, not as governing them; they must be held constantly subject to revision. If we stop with our abstract deductions we are often false to the facts. On the other hand, we cannot en- visage the facts except through the help of abstract deductions. Abstraction helps us to think; it must not tyrannise over our thinking. This is the value of "pure design." It helps the artist to grasp many facts about the pictures he has studied and to order his mind while he makes new ones. An artist, for instance, looks at a picture, say an in- terior with a seated figure. In the first instance the picture is a representation of a natural scene. But after looking at it for a time, he ceases to see the win- dow, the table, the seated figure (perhaps he gets bored with these facts) and sees only the outlines. He sees vertical lines and horizontal lines, a curve here gently 83 84 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY contrasting with a solid mass there. These please him and he wonders how to produce a similar pleasing effect in his picture. Now to go through a process of experimentation, painting many doors, tables, and seated women until he finds a beautiful combination of lines, would be an unwise waste of energy. So he ab- stracts from the actual facts, regards the lines as values in themselves, and experiments with these values, exactly as a mathematician abstracts from the numbers in a group of arithmetical problems and uses letters to rep- resent the similar terms in each problem. And just as the mathematician reaches thereby a result which can easily be applied to all his problems, so the artist, ex- perimenting with abstract (or "pure") design, reaches a set of conclusions, which he will call laws or princi- ples, which he can apply to all his pictures. But the working artist may not stop here. He may become fascinated with his abstract problem and con- sider it the whole problem. He may say, as Whistler did, that the thing represented is of no value (can be seen, in fact, every day in the real world) ; what is of value is the relations of the abstract qualities. He will see all his pictures merely as problems in pure design, pure colour, and so on. This is what Whistler meant when he said that a portrait should be just as beauti- ful upside down as right side up. And the layman can get a glimpse of his feeling by studying a good picture —say Whistler's portrait of Sarasate ; here the delicate- ly poised violin bow, contrasting with the vertical line of the picture, the gentle but organic outline of the figure, all can be felt as things of beauty in themselves. The workers in all the arts must make use of these abstractions to avoid frittering away their time. But the layman while benefiting from their results need THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 85 not accept the abstract "laws" any more than he would accept those of the theoretical ethicist or economist. In the modern theatre the artists' influence has been so strong that we begin to f^djgure_d£sigiLas a value in itself. But we. ought to regard J ljanly._^_&jafl^ns~gf envisaging- and ordering the practical facts. "Design" is a technical 'word precious to the work- ing artist, because it represents things which to him are precious. But we can give it a true every-day mean- ing. "Desi gn" in art is simply what it isjn life — con- f j P tp piw Kjaasuh — Once the artist has abstracted from the door, table, and seated figure, he finds he must do some- thing with the lines which remain. What he will do (always, remember, in terms of the lines themselves, since he has abstracted from everything else), what his purpose is with these lines — to create a certain centre of interest, with rhythm and balance, or what not — this is his design. It is evident that the older stage settings totally lacked any design in this sense.' The only function which was given them was a representative one. And perhaps the stage designers would never have thought of giving purpose to their lines except for the growing simplicity of stage settings demanded by the taste of the time. Once we have reduced the "Faust" Prison- scene to a wall, a door, a gate, and the open sky, we find ourselves limited to a few lines and surfaces.r*No producer with an artistic sense can resist using these , lines with some purpose. This pressure of simplicity we/ may take to b^ the origin of pure~design in modern/ stage-settings.^/ The elements, we have said, are lines and masses — nothing more. Lines and masses can come to have a very great meaning 1 — not meaning in the layman's 86 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY sense, as the "meaning" of a sentence, but meaning in terms of pure design. What wonders can be done with a few lines, or with a few masses of black or of colour, or with one or two details — important ones ! Stand before some Gothic cathedral — close to it. Look against its wall and upward, and let those lines engrave themselves upon your eyeballs — lines one after another pressing tirelessly up into space. Forget that life is made of facts, forget that there is a cheap cafe just behind you. Let the world blot itself out and let only those lines remain. You seem to ascend with them — whither? That you cannot tell; upward! that is the whole of it. The noises of the city are a blur; your thoughts become misty. Only those lines remain, striv- ing upward. And they will remain and strive, most likely, after half a dozen governments, liberal, revolu- tionary, and reactionary, have frittered themselves away. Something like this is the effect of line — pure line, in the theatre. The house is dark; only through a mystic frame, "a sheet of paper but two inches square," throbbing in a subdued light, are seen lines which seem "to tower miles in the air." This is the sort of stuff to make infinity visible. But this is not all. Behind the aspiring lines of the cathedral, airy and thread-like in themselves, was a solid mass of masonry, hauled from a distance and built up with we know not how much weary labour of men. What firmly supports lines and gives them their meaning, is mass.. Imagine yourself rested, passive, looking into this wonderful theatre frame, seeing be- sides a few mighty lines, two or three great masses, one narrow and rising out of sight on one side, and another shorter, more compact and limited, to balance with the From "The Art of the Theatre." William Heinemann, London "Hamlet." Design by Gordon Craig THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 87 other — masses solid, impenetrable, and eternal. There is something in these primitive natural forces which speaks to us as ideas cannot. They are of the very stuff of earth and of nature out of which all ideas and refine- ments grow. In their simplicity they feed our senses, as a great idea feeds the mind. These abstract elements have to the artist a mean- ing, not as we say that a Gothic cathedral expresses a "sense of aspiration," or a Greek temple a "sense of completeness," but a definite sensuous reaction for each element, like the various~^Eora ; s'ln music. These ele- ments are more or less definite units of value, which can be contrasted and compared with other units, pro- ducing new combinations, new complex values, and new sensuous experiences. Thus the artist can build up a whole language out of his lines and surfaces, as rich, as varied, as flexible, as our language of words and syntax. In the strict sense, pure design can exist only by and for itself, else it is not "pure." In this sense, only decorations composed of lines and surfaces, represent- ing nothing, can be called pure design. Pure decora- tion is abstract, though perhaps only in a philosophical sense an "abstraction." In t he prese nt cha pter^J aow- ever, we are^ considerinj^jon]^ the pure-design j$£!mem& in stage pictures, which, are. &H. lb" ls6m,e.^xtent -repre- sentative.^ This has become a conscious element, and is easily to be felt by a sensitive observer. Therefore we are justified in speaking of it as pure design, though it is only a subsidiary factor in a representative picture. Pure design is "intensive" in spirit in that you get an additional value from Tf^not by adding a new detail but by looking a second time at the old. The subtle interplay of relations that can be obtained from the balance and rhythm of a few selected straight lines, 88 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY curves, and masses, is enormous. But that is the ar- tist's affair. On the stage a pure design usually has some repre- sentative function. Or rather the design is the abstract vision of the representative stage picture; it can only theoretically be separated from the thing represented. And this picture finds its representative function en- hanced and not diminished when the feeling for pure de- sign is introduced into it. For the spirit of pure de- sign, which always desires order and rejects any addi- tional detail that might destroy balance and orderliness, lends to the carefully selected lines and masses a greater importance and emphasis, enabling the designer to point the poetic effect or to centre the interest upon some spot in the scene with much more accuracy and delicacy than would be possible if the picture were cluttered with unpurposed details. Suppose the stage to consist merely of low steps, with gigantic curtains rolling in from either side, and in many folds (each forming a high vertical line), re- treating toward the open sky just visible between the cleft which the converging curtains leave. This is a rough description of Gordon Craig's design for Act I, scene iv, of the famous "Hamlet" which was produced at the Art Theatre in Moscow. Here we have essen- tially a pure design in vertical lines — nothing more. With an irregular persistence these lines carry upward into space. The only horizontal lines are those of the steps, which contrast with and accentuate the vertical lines. This is all simple enough, but it is on record that the preparation for the production occupied full two years' time, not a little of which was devoted to arrang- ing the exact folds of the curtains. Or imagine a small dark room. In it are only THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 89 two light spots — one the window in the upper left hand corner of the picture, the other the face of an old man, toward the lower right hand corner. This is Martersteig's design for the thirteenth scene of the second part of "Faust" produced at Cologne in 1907. The large, square, dead light spot contrasts with the small tortured face. The living intensity of the small spot balances with the blankness of the large one This latter is off in one corner of the picture, the former (the centre of interest, ..of course) is well toward the centre. This is essentially a pure design in mass. A single straight candlestick on the table contrasts with Faust's bent figure, and this adds a touch of pure de- sign in line. Or imagine a stage with two square pillars at each side and a row of steps between. An ill-defined mass, perhaps a coffin, rests in the middle on the platform, and on each side stands a tall torch shooting three thin flames upward into space. On the top step a woman sits, weeping. Here is a very simple arrangement of verti- cal and horizontal lines, against a supporting mass — the great mass of darkness at the back. But the verti- cal lines dominate — witness the living flames of the torch. This is G. Wunderwald's design for the "Cathe- dral scene" in Hebbel's "Die Niebelungen." To the artist such scenes^are first of all arrange- ments in lines and masses. (_But their chief value on the modern stage lies in their ability to carry poetical suggestion*!""? Here is a set of simple cathedral piers, grouped ina semicircle as a sort of apse. The piers join high above the stage into noble Gothic arches. That is all. It is Linnebach's setting for the German version of "Everyman," at the Royal Theatre in Dres- den. Here we have the ecclesiastical tone of the drama 90 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY shadowed forth in its simplest form, with its most di- rect symbols. A Gothic pier and arch — what suggests the church's spiritual motherhood more powerfully than this? Or here is a huge doorway, two and a half times as high as it is wide, set in a bare stone wall and ap- proached by steps. It is Gordon Craig's design for Sophocles' "Elektra." What can more immediately suggest the classic severity of the play, with its mystery of immense things beyond, than this stark doorway? Or here is the exterior of a prison tower, apparently set on a parapet, out in the open sky. The lines some- how converge to carry the interest toward those barred gates from which a woman will presently step forth. It is the last scene of the first part of "Faust," — Martersteig again, in the famous Cologne production. The apse and the door "represent" nothing; the prison represents a prison. |"But all three take the essential features of the scene, combine them so that the lines and masses shall have beauty and meaning, and order them so that the scenes shall with simple materials have the maximum of poetic suggestiveness. And all three make use of what the artists have pro- vided for our use tiirough their device of the abstrac- tion of pure design~i But nearly all stage pictures, which we have been analysing according to the view of the designer, are fundamentally poetic and dramatic. The Hamlet scene, by its designer's own confession, is meant to suggest "a lonely soul in a dark place." The scene from the second part of "Faust" is meant to make us feel the apartness of Faust from "all things transitory," which are perhaps just suggested by the window, behind which, though dimly, the world still lives. The Hebbel scene THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 91 may suggest the oppressive blackness of the woman's soul. In short, pure design on the stage, though it has a value of its own, should not be regarded as a language of beauty unapplied to the values of life. / Many artists want to consider pure design, or de- sign and colour, as the whole of a picture. Don't sup- pose that the stage is free from this tendency. A sincere artist will be astonishingly selfish in the things that concern his art. If we put one of the abstract artists in charge of our theatre we may expect to see the drama distorted into violent shapes, or even robbed of all its proper meaning, for the sake of making the stage designs "pure." Many excellent producers are doing this now. There will probably always be this danger that pure design will try to monopolise the stage picture. It is for the audience everywhere to like what it likes, to listen open-mindedly to what a sincere artist has to say, but then to accept its own judgment instead of that of any specialist. But though pure design can become a most tyran- nical master we must not forget its constant service to art. Every picture will contain the elements of pure design, whether or no. We want these elements to be beautiful. And while no stage picture, perhaps, should be "just as good up side down," each should be artisti- cally satisfying to one who feels the values of pure design. CHAPTER V THE ARTISTIC FORCES : COLOUR IN this chapter, as in the last, we are dealing with a "pure" subject — abstracted from the various influ- ences with which it must commonly work in prac- tice. It is the more necessary to treat it in this way be- cause colour has only recently come into the theatre as an independent art with laws of its own. It is at present only in process of application. Ten years ago the problem of colour was exactly like the problem of stage design — merely a representa- tive one. Use such colours as will represent the colours of the thing represented — that was the end of it. But just as modern stage art is demanding that the design of a stage picture be satisfactory in itself, so also is it demanding that the colours used be satisfactory as colours. A room was coloured like a room — that was all. But suppose we look at this room until all is oblit- erated except the colours of it ; is this part of the pic- ture beautiful or not ? Modern stage art demands that it be beautiful. If beautiful colouring interferes with the dramatic fitness of the setting, then — no, do not make the setting dramatically unfitting, that is not necessary ; find another setting which will combine dra- matic fitness with satisfactory colouring. This is al- ways possible, except in the rare case where the play calls for ugly colouring, when many producers would — ■ — 92 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 93 say the play should not be produced at all. On the whole it has been abundantly proved that colour as an art can enter with full dignity into the service of the theatre. In looking at the work of the great stage colourists the layman can deduce a few general principles concern- ing colour manipulation in the theatre. Such deduc- tions at least sharpen the observation. Colours, on stage as on easel, do not remain quite themselves when used in combination with other colours. Some "kill" each other; some emphasise each other. Those which most emphasise each other are the pairs known as complements, which, when mixed, make white (or, with pigments, grey). Red and bluish-green, for instance, are complements: Violet and pure yellow, blue and orange, and so on. White light is a mixture in certain proportions of all the spectral colours. White light can also be produced by mixing any pair of com- plements — yellow and violet light, or red and bluish- green light. The common explanation ( far from scien- tific) is that complements, when juxtaposed, emphasise each other because they are the only colours which do not contain some element of each other. But there is another element in the effectiveness of a colour. The hues at the blue end of the spectrum are less violent than those at the red end. The latter have a longer wave length than the former (a ratio of something like seven to four) and, so to speak, hit harder. For this reason they are called "warm" colours and the others "cold." An artist, being sensitive to this distinction, always demands some sort of balance between the "warms" and the "colds." A spot of red seems to burn on a blue canvas, but it would be com- paratively mild on one of green. The contrasting 94 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY of "warms" with "colds" is one of the chief sources of poetic effect in painting. But these conditions are rarely met with in their crudity. For colours, in theoretic parlance, have two dimensions (some theorists say three). First they have colour itself, or, in technical language, hue. Second, they have luminosity, the amount of white mixed with them. There is a definite point of luminosity at which each colour gains its highest intensity — when it seems "reddest" or "yellowest." So the brilliance of our colouring in actual use will be due not only to the hues which are juxtaposed, but also to the intensity at which they are taken. But it is still ordinarily too crude to use merely complementary, contrasting, and luminous colours in our pictures. We usually prefer to use one or more of our colours in several shades — red modulating into orange, blue modulating into green, and so on. We usually select certain easily distinguished hues as the basis of our work with colour — violet, blue, green, yel- low, orange, and red, the so-called primary and second- ary colours. Having chosen certain of these for our colour scheme we use them in various shades, or more accurately, various related hues, say of a reddish orange up to red. These various related hues, when used in proper combination, buttress the pure colour, red, which dominates the group. But if we now add hues from the other (the violet) side of the pure colour, we weaken this dominance of the red by bringing in an admixture of blue. The firm unity of the red group is lost. These three principles indicate the means of get- ting the greatest bald effect out of selected colours or groups of colours. But when a designer comes to har- From " The Art of the Theatre." William Heinemann, London SOPHOCLES'S "ELECTRA." DESIGN BY GORDON CrAIG THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 95 monise or contrast selected colours he must consider further elements. A bald contrast of complementary colours, besides being too crude, is not contrast enough. Complementary colours are highly contrasted in hue; they can also be contrasted in shade. Ordinarily only one of them will be used at its greatest intensity, or near it. The other will be "toned down," in order to give prominence to the first. This brings some harmony out of the stark conflict. A second element in contrast is that of mere amount of colour. A painter will never divide his canvas equally between two contrasting colours. But, having toned down one in order to set off the intensity of the other he will ordinarily introduce another element of con- trast, or rather will regain the lost balance, by using a much greater quantity of the weaker than of the stronger. The less luminous colour, that is, will ordina- rily be used as a background. The more luminous gains something like purpose when thus concentrated. Besides the spectral hues of which we have been speaking there are certain colours, or rather ways of using colour, which are not subject to these laws — gold and silver, black, and (with certain reservations) white. These can ordinarily be used where desired, with any colour combination, and their use is rather a mat- ter of decorative taste than of colour laws. It must not be supposed that these few paragraphs explain how an artist works. An artist, and especially a painter, moves in mysterious ways. His trained taste, his quick imagination, will do any number of things which the laws would condemn ; and, providing only that people find his work beautiful, the laws can be trusted later to readjust themselves to legalise his work. The working artist, in reality, makes his own laws. But THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY these principles, nevertheless, will be found to lie at the bottom of most artistic colour as used on the modern stage (though used very little, it must be confessed). Generally speaking, we may say that colour (apart from its mere representative function) can be used on the stage in two ways — decoratively and symbolically. What we are calling the decorative use of colour is that which produces a pleasing colour design. Making one "abstraction," so as to see, in the scene before us, only colours and colour masses, we find a group of comple- mentary colours, related hues, various tones, "warms" and "colds," and so forth. Are these pleasing? We should be able to come to our stage picture with the artist's eye, looking only for the pure colour design, and find it satisfactory. We may find a background of blues and greenish-blues, framed, more or less conven- tionally, with violet, and against these cold tones (prob- ably used at a low intensity) characters costumed in brilliant yellows and oranges — the complements of the background. We may find a background of rich neu- tral orange and red with a spot of glittering cold blue toward the centre. Or we may see various related hues graduated up to a spot of brilliant pure colour which will form the pictorial centre of interest (where the im- portant action will probably be played). Always, in a good stage picture, no matter how simple, there will be a balance and harmony of colour satisfactory to the artist's eye. A good producer, if he have an eye for colour, will be fecund in decorative colour effects here and there ; one play, for instance, made a certain "pic- ture" by grouping the characters (not stiffly or ob- viously) to form a pleasing curve in the background, the costumes being warmer in hue and more brilliant in intensity until the end of the line downstage — a THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 97 brilliant robe of orange-yellow. These effects, let it be repeated, should not be glaring, and should not be got by distorting the drama (they will naturally bulk larger in romantic and imaginative work) ; but of the various dramatically satisfactory ways of ordering a stage setting one will be most satisfactory in point of colour, and this should be sought for and chosen. But decorative colour rarely exists as a thing in it- self in a stage setting. Its more important office con- sists in symbolising the drama. Our decorative colour scheme will be not merely a beautiful thing but also a thing with a dramatic meaning. We have only to re- call the terminology of colour to realise how rich colour is in poetic suggestiveness. One of the dances* which the Russian Imperial Ballet has been performing in all the European capitals, tells the story of a Caucasian queen who lured strangers into her palace and, having made them drunk with her orgies, put them to death. The erotic intensity of the whole scene was suggested in the fierce warmth of the oranges and reds of the setting and costumes, only slightly modified by the greens toward the centre. Only through the window was a very cold violet-blue. This offered not merely a contrast in feeling, setting off the warmth of the room, but a true complement of the principal colours, setting off the fierce yellow and orange of the costumes. At the end, after the orgy was over and the traveller had been put to death, the whole scene, even including the sky outside, was bathed in hot reds, suggesting the weariness and sweat following an intense period of passion. A most remarkable example of the use of symbolic colour was given in the Paris production of d'Annun- * Thamar. 98 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY zio's play, "La Pisanelle." Perhaps never before in the history of the modern stage have the principles of colour been carried so far. A somewhat detailed de scription of the colour schemes will suggest the i>se of colour in imaginative works. The stage was divided laterally in half, the front section being decorated in black and gold (harmonising with all colours) and always in view of the audience, since the main curtain was behind it. This neutral sec- tion was conceived in the Byzantine spirit which domi- nated the whole and made an excellent frame for viewing all the acts. The drop curtain (a real curtain hanging loosely with real folds and not with painted ones) was of gold and black. The prologue and the three acts were conceived each with a definite tone. And for each there was a special curtain revealed some two minutes before the commencement of the act by the raising of the drop curtain. The drama played in Cyprus during the late cru- sades, when all the civilisations of Europe and Asia — Saracen, Byzantine, Italian, Norman, German, and Pagan Greek — were mingled pell mell. In the prologue we were shown what might be called an interior view of these civilisations. The colour scheme, as may be im- agined, was far from simple. Yet all the chief hues were somehow set off with their complements, and the warmth of the picture centred downstage where most of the important action took place. The general colour scheme of the setting was deep purple and luminous green (complements enriched freely with designs of gold). Just what the scene represented was not clear, nor was it meant to be, but the effect was that of a richly decorated interior, dominated by a sort of primi- Setting for "Everyman" at Dresden Opera House Design by Adolph Linnebach An example of the use of stylization to obtain " atmosphere ' THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 99 tive ecclesiastical mood. A light blue thrown from the side completed the cold unity of the background. The costumes were of nearly all colours, but rich oranges and reds dominated, contrasting with the coldness be- hind. With a wealth of variety in the costumes it was easy for the producer to emphasise pictorially any im- portant dramatic effect by grouping or "spotting" these costumes. At the close of the scene the chief dramatic conflict was between the prince and the queen, his mother. The queen, who had been pictorially in- conspicuous, was clad in a brilliant yellow, and the prince, whose outer garment was of a somewhat neu- tral shade, confronted her, managing to display the inside of his garment — a most brilliant reddish violet. These two colours, the most brilliant and luminous of the whole act, were nearly enough complements to set off each other vividly; the attention was bound to be centred on these two confronted colours — where the dramatic interest also was centred. This was a perfect example of the use of symbolic colour for dramatic effect. The motive of the first act was the diverse outer life of Cyprus. The scene was the quay. The back drop, rather crudely painted, showed the harbour, a confusion of heavy black lines, with a vessel at anchor in a slip. The whole curtain (quite at variance with nature) was suffused with a warm though low-toned red-orange, except for the small bit of water which was a vivid greenish-blue — the complement. The movement of the first part of the act was a riot of rich and con- trasting colours. Various passionate suitors pleaded for the love of the slave girl. Then came the prince. He loved her chastely, as something holy. He was mantled in white and rode upon a white horse. At the 100 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY moment when she accepted him as a "bride in Christ," — at the moment, that is, when her meaning in the drama changed — she was covered with the Prince's white robe and was carried off the stage on the white horse. The second act was a convent garden. Its "mo- tive" was peace and retirement. The curtain for the act was a restful pure blue, with a repeated design in white. The background, rather conventionally painted, was a neutral blue-green, with a touch of red-orange (a complement) in the centre. The nuns were in pure blue and white. La Pisanelle was clad in a greyish white. When the convent was violated by the entrance of the Prince of Antioch with his courtesans, brilliant, profane colour broke in upon the scene. In the third act we are back in the pomp and cruelty of the cotirt, in which La Pisanelle is to die through the intrigues of the queen. The curtain for the act was an intense green with a- stiff gold design. The colour scheme of the whole was too complex to be ex- plained in words. But one brilliant device must be mentioned. La Pisanelle is to be smothered under a mass of flowers. Now we have noticed repeatedly throughout the act a peculiar red in various shades, usually of a low tone and verging toward purple — in the costumes of the ladies in waiting, in the doorway, in the garden behind. As the denouement approaches, reds come upon the scene, each more intense and more purplish. Finally the slaves enter, and, with a mass of flowers of the most intense and hot red violet, smother the Pisan girl. This gradual crescendo of a dominant colour up to one almost too powerful to be endured was an effect which can never be forgotten. We have been able only to suggest the richness of colour effect in this production.. Naturally such bar- THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 101 baric brilliancy must be reserved for the plays which can stand it, and that may not happen often. But this production was of especial importance since it showed at its most intense the work of a man whose name will probably bulk large as a colourist in the his- tory of the theatre — Leon Bakst, the designer of the scenes and costumes. Bakst is a Russian Jew who be- gan life as a painter, probably with no thought of the stage. He studied in Paris until nearly thirty, absorbed much of the new French storm and stress, and re- turned to Russia. Here, after a few years, he became connected with the St. Petersburg Imperial Opera House as designer, and designed a great part of the wonderful stage pictures which have been carried through Europe by the Russian Imperial Ballet, as well as the scenes for several special productions, such as d'Annunzio's "La Pisanelle" and "Saint Sebastian." His colouring forms the sharpest possible contrast to all that the Western world has known. German stage colour prides itself on being "discreet," on work- ing harmonious effects with neutral tones and few of them. Not so Bakst, Benois, Golovine, Anisfeldt. Col- ours for Bakst are- rarely too many or too brilliant. And, working in this way, he has been forced more ob- viously to use the fundamental colour laws which we have described. By plunging to the foundation of colour he has opened up the sources of the subject. His bold use of intense tones and his- inexhaustible ability to manipu- late colour effects in the service of the inner drama make him a man to whom all the world, sooner or later, will have to go to school. Such results are perhaps far enough from what most painters would accept as beautiful. But we must remember that though colour on the modern stage has 102 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY been brought there by the professional painters, first of all, there are several conditions peculiar to the stage which have made stage colour an art by itself. First, there is the mere technical condition of light- ing. Colours on a canvas are produced by pigments. Colours on the stage are produced by pigments and lights. These two function and mix in totally different ways. The primary colours for pigments, according to recent experiments, are yellow, magenta, and cyan blue; for lights the primaries are green, red and violet. The two have distinct and peculiar qualities. The problem is complicated. Colours that are correct in the light of day, are altogether incorrect under the yellow light of the "white" foots. If, in place of "white" we pres- ently introduce a green or an amber, the mixture result- ing is so far from nature and from the intention of the designer that it bears no relation whatever to the result intended. An expert stage colourist regards this as one of the conditions of his work. Stage colour now has two Jactors — two dimensions, almost — nigment and Jisi*- — Marvellous things can be produced by these two factors. It would astonish the layman to learn that a colour painted on a stage canvas is quite black until called forth by a light of a similar colour. Neverthe- less, if you throw a green light on a red surface, your result is — black. This is out of all consonance with the old easy-going "laws" of mixtures. The red, however, will not become visible (as red or any other hue) until a light is thrown on it which contains at least some element of red. Working on this principle, the Viennese regisseur, Joseph Urban, now at the Boston Opera House, has developed a complex system of colouring which, from analogy with the French impressionists, THE THEATRE OP TO-DAY 103 he calls "pointillage." He spots or "points" his canvas with all the colours he intends to bring out on it in the course of the scene. At a distance the spaces between the points are not visible as such, so when he throws a red light on the scene, all the red spots jump out of the canvas and blend together to make a red surface. Similarly, if he now throws a green light, the red spots retire into darkness, and the green take posses- sion of the whole surface. The result to the observer, is nothing short of magical. The process becomes com- plicated through the fact that one does not always throw a pure primary light on the scene ; if the light is a mix- ture of green and red then both the green and the red spots become visible, according to the proportions of green and red in the light. If then white ( a mixture of all three primaries) is thrown upon the surface, all col- ours painted thereon appear. This means usually either that white light must not be used or that the pigments must be used in such proportions that the desired color will appear under the white light. For instance, if the surface contains spots of all three primary colours, two portions of red, two portions of blue, and four portions oi green, the two portions of red, blue and green will blend to make white, and the two remaining portions of green will stand out as green, only tinted with a strong white light. And if the white illumina- tion be strong, even this will not be successful, since the strong white light will reveal the spotting. However, the skilful regisseur uses all these conditions to produce an endless palette of possible colours. Another investigator, proceeding according to the same principles, has perfected the purely mechanical side of the process to an astonishing degree. This is Munroe R. Pevear, a young architect of Boston. He 104 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY has devoted his efforts to determining, to the highest possible degree of accuracy, the real primary colours in lights, and their action with all sorts of pigments, simple and mixture. With simple Tungsten bulbs of the primary colours he achieves a most astonishing varia- tion of hues and tones and shades at will. He goes to no trouble to "point" his canvas ; he mixes the colours he desires in the pigment surface. The whole principle is that of Mr. Urban, only more accurately carried out. There is no doubt a certain gain in naturalness in the avoidance of "pointillage." But the artist with the impressionist's instinct will not be any the more ready to dispense with spotting, since he claims it reproduces \ the effect of living light as a flat mixed pigment can never do. This technical peculiarity in stage colouring gives a new artistic reason for such colouring as that of Bakst. For a colour once drawn out by a similarly coloured light, is more brilliant than under white. And this brilliancy, so much greater than is possible to the easel painter, must become one of the elements of the stage aesthetic of colour. Mr. Bakst and the other Russians have set out to use its possibilities to the full. Hence their barbarous contrasts, their use of funda- mental tones, their dazzling mixtures of hues and tints. And the special function of the theatre gives its colour a particular aesthetic. For the stage picture is always living, dramatic. Its peculiar beauty is one of movement, of participation ; it is dynamic, whereas that of the easel picture is rather contemplative. Hence great vigour and brilliant contrasts are proper to it. What would be garish in the exhibition hall is inspiring on the stage. And yet, perhaps even this is true for us only be- THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 105 cause we are infants in the art of the stage. The savage, having newly discovered colours, delights in fierce reds and violent yellows. And we, who have just discovered colour on the stage, with its peculiar living brilliance, may be in the savage stage. We may come to find a Bakst scene garish, and to demand refinement and subtlety. When we do it will be in the regular course of our artistic evolution and will not be a thing to reject, any more than we ought to reject barbarous colour if it pleases us now. CHAPTER VI THE ARTISTIC FORCES: LIGHTING OF all the problems of the old stage-setting that of lighting was perhaps the simplest. Its chief principle was merely this: Let there be light. Its second principle was this : In case of emotion, let there be green light. One easily recalls the stage table which shone brighter on its under side than on top. On the old stage no one ever had a shadow. Or if there was a shadow, it was cast, life size, on the dis- /tant landscape. In the real world light comes from somewhere. So the first principle of realistic lighting on the stage is that the light shall seem to come from somewhere — from the sun, in an out-of-door scene, from the lamp or chan- delier in an interior, and so on. In either case people have shadows, and shadows which are cast away from the direction of the light. The application of this first, simple principle of modern stage lighting 1 — that light should come from one direction, gave people rational shadows. But this was not all. Producers immediately discovered that shadows may be beautiful masses in the design of the scene. From that moment stage lighting became a fine art. Just as Rembrandt gave his portraits a decorative unity by lighting from one direction, so the modern pro- ducer, by means of lighting, makes the parts of his stage blend into a complete picture. 106 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 107 Once the producers began to experiment with these effects they rediscovered another principle. This we can describe roughly as the hypnotic- power of light. Put a man in a dark room and make him fix his gaze for a certain length of time on a bright spot and you centre his attention to a focal point, deadening the merely logical factors of his brain and sensitising him many times over to sensuous impressions — a state of partial hypnosis. Now these, within certain limits, are exactly the conditions of the theatre — a spectator in a dark room looking at a bright spot. And a state of partial hypnosis, at least to the extent of deadening the logical faculties and heightening the sensuous ones, is precisely that desirable for the complete reception of a work of art. Not, of course, that the logical facul- ties have no place in art, but that the work of art, appealing primarily through the channels of the senses, can be most vividly and justly received when the par- ticular prejudices and mental processes of the receiver are in abeyance. One more quite peculiar quality of light was early perceived by the theorist Appia. This we may call its dynamie-q«aliiy. Light seems a quivering, living thing to us.*"* No other sensuous excitement, save possibly music, can seize and absorb our attention so completely. So, with certain sorts of drama, the newer producers have discovered how to make the light seem to represent the soul of the action itself, carrying us with it in its ebb and flow and giving us the sense of living in its inner life. Before we can begin any work in artistic lighting we must do some destroying. One element in the oldligjhting must go, and go ^completely. That element is theJ:oot- lights as conventionally use3T~We~^can~"say this with 108 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY careless ease now that the Fortuny system has given us a better way. But even before this invention was made known the case against the footlights must have been obvious to any sensitive man of the theatre; that "the foots" continued as long as they did indicates the stag- nation of the old theatre in all but purely literary art. The footlights, with their corresponding border lights from above, give a flat illumination. They make figures visible, but not living; they destroy that most \. precious quality of the sculptor, relief. They were * designed to give the greatest amount of illumination, nothing more. They are meant for the flat surface, not for solid figures. It is the shadows, the nooks and crannies of light and shade, that show a figure to be solid and plastic. Against the flat, unreal lighting of the old theatre the actors had to distort their faces with violent cosmetics. Stage properties and solid parts of the setting were made hard and lifeless by being equally illuminated in all parts. Further, the foot- ,. lights give a crude, direct glare, whereas the light of na- ture is softened by being reflected with infinite com- plexity from innumerable objects and from innumerable directions. Still more serious, the footlights reveal in- stantly the artificiality of any other light used (as, for instance, the front or side "spot"), and cross and con- flict with it in a most disagreeable way. Add to these considerations the facts that footlights come from the bottom, and, with the border lights, cast no shadows (except huge ones on the black curtain), and we have a combination of unrealities that seems almost to have been maliciously purposed. What is there to put in place of the "footlights?" Most important of all there is the revolutionary For- tuny system, already mentioned, which in some modi- THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 109 fication or other has influenced the lighting of nearly every important stage in Germany. The pure Fortuny system was designed for use with a Kuppelhorizont, but only in a few instances is it used exactly as its inventor designed it. The essential part of the scheme is the /' principle of reflected light. Many theatres use this principle in some way~"without paying royalties to the patentee of the Fortuny system. In fact, there is little of this system that can be patented, beyond cer- tain details, such as the devices for operating the reflect- ing screens or lessening the flicker of the lamp. The unpatentable simplicity of the method is Mr. Fortuny's great contribution to the modern stage, and unfor- tunately for him it is largely a free-will gift. An arc-lamp and several pieces of cloth of various colours — these comprise the Fortuny apparatus in its simplest form. They are placed above and to the front of the stage, usually on a gallery along which the operator can move freely. The arc-lamp throws its rays away from the stage. In front of the lamp is a frame containing five slides — the five pieces of silk cloth — which can be lowered in front of the lamp or raised, at the will of the operator. The pieces of cloth are white, black, red, blue and yellow. By proper manipulation of these slides any colours can be obtained in any tint or shade. From the three colours which serve as primaries any colour can be obtained in its normal intensity by simple combination— by the lower- ing of the red slide, for instance, all the way and the blue half the way, thus producing a combination of red and blue in equal proportions. A tint is pro- duced by lowering the white slide so as to increase the proportion of white light in the combination. To obtain a shade the operator partly lowers the black 110 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY slide, thus decreasing the quantity of the reflecting sur- face and hence the brilliancy of the colour. Three or five apparatuses, each equipped with arc-lamp and slides, are usually required to light a large stage, and there must also be a spot-light behind the scenes to cut off any shadows that might be thrown up-stage. by the light from the front. When the theatre is' equipped with a Kuppelhorizont the greater part of the light from the silk slides is reflected a second time before it reaches the stage, thus increasing its diffusion and softness. Mr. Linnebach, head technical inspector of the Court Theatre at Dresden, has invented a modification of the Fortuny system which carries his name. It uses arc- lamps pointed away from the stage, like the Fortuny, but the light is coloured through transparent slides as it comes from the lamps, and the reflection is from a blank white wall. When a mixture of the colours is re- quired, the pure colours are given out from the indi- vidual lamps, and are mixed on the wall. The expense of any such system consists chiefly in the operation of the arc-lamps. They must be power- ful, and six or eight of them will in an evening burn as much as hundreds of incandescent bulbs. The wiring, of course, is simple. But the Fortuny system can never do without supplementary spot-lamps, and many pro- ducers feel that if direct light is going to enter in any way it might as well be used for the whole stage. A stage, in fact, can be lighted altogether with movable spot-lamps placed in the wings. They do not give the subtle softness of indirect light, but the convenience of lamps which can be moved about at will is very great. There is a special technique in the use of these lamps. Such a producer as Reinhardt gets most of his effects THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 111 from them. By skilful manipulation, the colour and de- sign of the scene being kept in view, they can be made to yield a matchless brilliancy of effect. They can never get along entirely without footlights (except for occasional special scenes), but these can be kept low and scarcely noticeable. The footlights are indeed not so bad as certain radical theorists would have us believe; the evil of them is chiefly in their abuse, when they are kept going full tilt. They can be dispensed with if there is some sort of indirect system of illumination. But if they are used they can be used moderately and with discretion. The Fortuny system can be used with a simple Rund- horizont or cloth cyclorama, although with some limita- tions. In set interiors, with a roof let down from the flies, its soft glow is especially useful. Often, in ex- terior scenes, there will appear a noticeable shadow thrown by part of the setting against the cyclorama. This must be obliterated by means of another care- fully modulated light thrown on the darkened surface. Even though a manager have no Fortuny apparatus at his disposal he need not be content with the dis- agreeable glare which American stages use. A brilliant- ly lighted stage is a convention pure and simple, main- tained largely because the audience can imagine no other way and because the "star" wishes to exhibit her facial charms (usually not hers, at that, but the make- up man's). A modulated spot-light played from be- hind the scenes will, with careful stage planning, give the scene a pleasing softness of tone, and vastly more reality and perspective. In any case the footlights can be kept low and used with some artistic sense of their colour and tone values, while special unnoticeable spot- lights are used for the upper part of the stage. Such 112 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY a scheme of lighting, if tastefully used in connection with the colour systems of Mr. Pevear or Mr. Urban, or something equivalent, will go far toward approxi- mating the magic of the Fortuny. Even with such mechanical means as are already in use, American stage lighting can be changed utterly. It requires only taste and care. The Fortuny system is applicable in a great variety of ways: First of all it will fill the place of the old footlights in illuminating the stage. If nothing more is required the lighting machine will usually be hung well forward, just above the proscenium opening, and a little to one side. Special lights (diffuse or direct) can be operated from the wings, through a window or in any other way. (It is quite possible to use lights from two directions, but only one should be obvious.) A third sort of lighting which is coming more and more into use is the transparent lighting, in which the illumina- tion comes wholly or partly through a semi-traiisparent back drop." fc this case we gain a further diffusion, usually in colour, besides a strange sense of living-ness in the background. The lighting in Ottomar Starke's settings for Gluck's "Orpheus" was achieved wholly in this way. Further, there are the occasional special sorts of light, such as that from torches, etc., which may carry all or part of the lighting under certain conditions. The whole course of stage lighting in_the_last ten years has tended toward less light, even approaching a dark stage at times. A darkened stage used to be unthinkable to the old producers, except for special effects of "spooks" and night. To a certain extent their instinct was right, for the elimination of the one bright spot in the hypnotic chamber is liable to set the THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 113 attention adrift. But on the whole the modified light and the masses of shade have become almost inseparable from modern production, and their artistic value is paramount. A darkened stage will make more effective any light used, and will give that ■ softness of outline and the restfulness to the eye which were lacking under the old regime. This is especially true under the For- tuny system, which can modulate its shades with the greatest delicacy and place its light exactly where it chooses. It is only the completely darkened stage that is dangerous, and this can sometimes be used with striking effect if the dramatic interest can be power- fully sustained. Stage light, as we have said, should in general come from but one direction at one time. Some European theatres also use the footlights, turned very low, to raise the tone value of the whole scene, but this prac- tice, which is falling out of use, is merely for the pur- pose of making tpe stage visible and is not in the true sense lighting. *For true lighting is that which makes solid figures plastic. It is this sort of light which we feel to be light, and not mere illumination, and which does the work of light in the real world. And lighting, used in this way becomes surprisingly rich in artistic effects. It is with the producer at every turn to give his work reality, beauty, and vigour. When one sees for the first time a well-planned and well-executed German stage-setting one is at a loss to analyse its peculiar charm. It does not consist primar- ily in the clean, well ordered lines and surfaces, nor in the beauty of its harmonious colouring. The peculiar charm, as of the soul of the thing, is strangely baffling. That charm consists, of course, in the lighting. It seems to an American imagination so impossible that a. 114 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY stage should be other than glaring white, that one does not dream of looking for the explanation in the light- ing. Yet the lighting is the groundwork of all its magic. The light of nature is never (at least in temperate climates) a mere glare. The sun itself may be blinding, but the sunlight which reaches our eyes from the scene is reflected from soft, modulated, and usually darkened objects of many kinds. It is softened with innumer- able shades and tones and colours. It is in these subtle tones that we feel a sense of distance in a landscape. It is in delicate modulations of light and dark that we perceive a human body to be solid and plastic. The light which makes figures and landscapes live on the stage is the light which allows shadings and modula- tions. The light of the "foots" on the American stage has no deeper purpose than that of a burglar's flash- lamp to render an object visible. We want not only visibility on our stage, but also illusion. This illusion, obtained by means of soft reflected light from one di- rection, is what makes the German stage picture seem so strangely beautiful. In exterior scenes soft natural lighting gives with remarkable illusion the sense of distance and perspec- tive. In interior scenes it makes canvas very wood and stone, and human beings living creatures in their world of reality or fancy. In both cases the stage picture seems a living work of art— rharmonious, unified, satis- fying. Instead of paining the eyes, as in the American theatre, it seems to rest them, and, as it were, feed and nourish them. But natural artistic lighting can do more than make living things seem living. It can, in more poetical pieces, actually make lifeless things seem part of the THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 115 living drama, as Appia has done in his settings of the Wagner music-dramas. Trees and stones and castles n to partake of the mood of the play and change and * with it — now mysteriously and foreboding, now and relentless. But it will be asked, "Why make the stage-setting — rocks and trees — livmg?" Appia's answer to this was one of his peculiarly pregnant contributions to modern stage theory. A music-drama, he said (and the theory had been advanced by Nietzsche before him) is gener- ated from music. The music might be called the soul or the will of the drama and the action and the setting its external phenomena — the concrete things by which the inner will makes itself known. The music is a dy- namic, constantly moving thing. The whole of the re- sultant drama should therefore grow and develop with the action, gathering the audience into its inner pur- pose. When we are in this wonder-world where the changing soul of things is made visible to us, rocks and trees can properly take on different moods with the story they express. Hence Appia would have no part of the drama lifeless. He would have the back- ground always in harmony with the action, and unob- trusively expressive of it, so that the action can be thrown into the foreground and the actors work with ..id not against their scenic environment. And here enters the dynamic, hypnotic role of lighting. If truly pv-wj-essive of the mood and subjective meaning of the ., lighting can seem, in our partial hypnosis, to be 'lal motive force. There is a living principle in g second only to that of the actor himself. And aer good lighting even the rocks and stones seem to * into song. In addition to these dramatic functions of lighting 116 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY there are certain purely artistic functions which Euro- pean producers have not been slow to use. Unity, sim- plicity and design in stage pictures can hardly be achieved without the co-operation of light. The whole scene, consisting of many separate canvases, sets, and properties, can be bound together with a single light from one direction, which emphasises the important and obliterates the unimportant, somewhat as in the typical Rembrandt portrait. And by means of this single light, a producer can gain the simplicity which modern taste demands ; a unified scheme of lights and shadows may serve as the central artistic fact around which all de- tails of the picture must be grouped. And lastly, these lights and shadows can be planned to group themselves into a pictorial design. Imagine the great variety of effect possible in con- trasting various masses in size or quality, in showing in light and shade the convolutions of a curtain, in casting across the stage great shadows from the columns of a temple, and so on — and one can see that the pure design which commences with the planning of lines and spaces, can end only in the manipulation of lights. . The preceding paragraphs may have seemed to as- sume that lights may be used at the pleasure of the producer without reference to their natural" justifica- tion — that is, regardless of whether there is a sun or a moon or a street-lamp. This would be true, of course, only in the more or less imaginative play. The pro- cedure must be determined by the original conception of the dramatist and producer. A few producers, who claim to reject nature altogether, use their lights in nearly every case wholly with a view to the beauty of the stage effect. But on the whole, if the stage is meant to suggest some part of the real world, lights THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 117 must be used as though they were natural. Appia, for instance, as extreme as any in some things, never has the sun set and immediately rise again, merely for the sake of pictorial effect. The trend of production at this time is certainly_jriot_ toward- paying very much aftentionlto natureT^and^r ought hot object to what might be called a liberal interpretation of nature, for the sake ofjbeauty of effect.__But beautiful lighting is just as possible in strict realism, where truth to na- ture is rigidly observed, as in imaginative pieces. It is a matter of using a good diffuse light and arranging your scenery to receive it. In a case at the other ex- treme, as for instance the Hades scenes from "Orpheus," there is surely no objection to using lights only with a view to their effect, since it is understood that the lighting system in Hades is at best arbitrary. Of the innumerable variations between these extremes it may be said in general that arbitrary lighting is permissible so long as it does not conflict obviously with such natural demands as are specifically made by the play. Lighting, which was formerly a mere necessary nuisance in dramatic production, has come to be one of the most important forces in the modern theatre. Its possibilities for making stage art supple and expressive are almost boundless. No other element of stage pro- duction will yield so much in return for a little care and artistic sense. No reason — except stupidity — re- mains for the ugjly and-lileles^iHuTninaiio"n"U"sed oh the -^H*C^IL§tage./ Expert knowledge and trained artistic sense on the part of a few producers or their subordi- nates could, through lighting alone, produce a new birth of beauty in our theatre. , CHAPTER VII THE ARTISTIC FORCES: STYLISATION THE tendency which has come in the last ten years to be called "Stylisation" is just what its name implies, the development of style in stage set- tings. Now style, as an artist uses the word, is hard to define. And the artist is not above making a virtue of his failing by saying that style shouldn't be defined, and can't be anyway, except by stupid people. Style, to the artist, is a quality which can be got only through the artistic sense. It has a meaning only when one has a highly developed taste. And the artists are per- fectly right, style cannot be defined and can be appre- ciated, if at all, only directly. This is because style is the marmer^oi €xeGuiiBg-.a work of art, as contrasted with the work ^tself ; and since each true manner is part and parcel in the work there are simply too many manners for one definition. But style is still more; it is manner in the eulogistic sense. One rarely hears an artist say: "He has a bad style." An artist either has a style or he hasn't. If he hasn't he has not yet made his art his own, he is a bungler. Moreover, every true style is unique. If one has found one's own manner of doing things — it is no one else's manner. And one's own manner of doing things consists in a multitude of the tiniest peculiarities — it is made up of all the things which are too little to be governed by rule or tradition. Generally it is the work- 118 a, m 0) m >. ■4-J cr. a a a H g > < U en M H be 3 en en U +j W G u o cfi u H CJ S u. W cl> Q o £ ^ jb w +J z *U w a] u J3 .2 "S KH « H ■— U < — j "5. g 5 -) c < £ THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 119 ing artist who best knows the laws and traditions of his art and therefore he who best knows which are the per- sonal things. For this reason the artist is in a measure justified in considering the appreciation of style in works of art as his own peculiar property. "Style" as applied to stage-settings means some- thing less subtle than this. It is used to express the individuality of the work rather than that 6f~tET worker. It says, not~"Let every stage producer have his own style," but, "Let every stage production have its own style." But still, style on the stage is essentially the same thing as style in the studio, since it emphasises the way of doing a thing rather than the thing done. "Not Realism; but Style," cries Gordon Craig. His meaning is plain : Take what liberties you like with Nature on the stage, but do your work well and thoroughly. Work as a true artist works, letting no detail slip from your attention. Plan every line, every curve, every tiny fold of a curtain, according to your firm design. In this case, be artificial, not natural. Nature has no design in this sense; she does not show the artist's hand ; she has no style. Why copy Nature, already perfect in her way, if we add nothing of our own in the process? Whatever we create, let it be in every part our creation. And people will feel that it was done by a master, and will rejoice that once more an artist is come into the world. It will be gathered from the above that Stylisation . is intended to be a highly personal process. Gordon ; Craig, the most personal of all modern stage designers, thus describes, in his book "On the Art of the Theatre," how he sets to work on the problem of producing "Macbeth:" "Let me tell you at the commencement," he says, 120 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY "that it is the large and sweeping impression produced by means of this scene and the movement of the figures, which is undoubtedly the most valuable means at your disposal. . . . First and foremost comes the scene. It is idle to talk about the distraction of scen- ery, because the question here is not how to create some distracting scenery, but rather how to create a place which harmonises with the thoughts of the poet. "Come now, we take Macbeth. How does it look, first of all to our mind's eye, secondly to our eye? "I see two things. I see a lofty and steep rock, and I see the moist cloud which envelopes the head 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 di- rection, never mind the cliff. Do not be afraid to let them go high; they cannot go high enough; and re- member that on a sheet of paper which is but two inches i square you can make a line which seems to tower miles ] in the air, and you can do the same on your stage, I for it is all a matter of proportion and has nothing to do with actuality. THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 121 "You ask about the colours? What are the colours that Shakespeare has indicated for us? Do not look first 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 a single other colour, but only these two colours through your whole progress of designing your scene and your costumes, yet forget not that each colour contains many variations. 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. "... I know that you are yet not quite com- fortable 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 sev- eral '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 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, actu- ally have preserved unity. Your success will depend upo.n 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." Finally, Mr. Craig has this to say : "I let my scenes 122 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY grow out of not merely the play, but from broad sweeps of thought which the play has conjured up in me." All that is essential in modern stylisation is here — the endeavour to grasp the whole, to discover its inner meaning, to reveal its unity and purpose, to select the essential and repeat it constantly with fitting variations, to suggest rather than to reveal, to work, above all, with the imagination and the poetic sense. But while all this suggests the way the stylist pro- ducer works, it by no means describes his "method." To him every problem is unique. His results are so variable in their external appearance, that it would be useless to try to group them under one description. Their kinship is shown only by two characteristics: selection instead of imitation, and suggestion instead of representation. But while these are common to all styl- ists at the present time, all other factors can differ as widely as the personalities of the producers. Almost any sort of "motif" may serve. A producer may "styl- ise" from externals, such as the architecture of the period, or the stiffness of its manners, or even the lines of its costumes. Or he may stylise from some mere dramatic peculiarity, as when the Weimar Court Thea- tre planned every detail of its "Hamlet" setting from the postulate that it should be performed rapidly with- out cuts. Or he may try to show in the setting the essential conflict of the play, as in Craig's "Macbeth." Or, as in a recent stylisation of Wagner's "Rienzi" at Leipzig, he might show the conflict between pagan Rome and Christian Rome, such as they were at the time. Or he may try to make the whole setting contain the dominant mood of the play, as in Gor- don Craig's "Hamlet," "a lonely soul in a dark place," or in "Brand," suggesting how the rugged magnifi- THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 123 cent beauty of the fiords expresses the uncompro- mising moral nature of the hero. Or he may try merely to harmonise the conflicting picture of the vari- ous scenes by emphasising what is common to all or by suppressing the conflicting elements. Or he may, of course, merely simplify from pure joy in simplicity, or conventionalise from the artist's pleasure in design. Stylisation as used just now refers to all these pro- cedures, permitting all stageworthy "motifs," what- ever their source. On the whole we may say that the guiding ideas in stylisation are two: the synthetic and the subjective. The one looks to form, seeking to attain unityT r the other looks to inner content, seeking to attain ex- - pression. The two may, of course, be present together, and may (and probably should) completely coalesce. But most stylised settings of the present time are easily/ recognisable as either the one or the other. Every play, even one by Ibsen, is made up of cer- tain externally inharmonious elements — different sorts of scenes, very dissimilar costumes, tragic and comic passages, short scenes gapping great intervals of time, and the like. Synthetic stylisation has made it its business to harmonise these elements and to create out of dissimilar factors a unified whole. It seeks to ac- complish this by the selection and emphasising of the significant. Beside the great central fact of the strug- gle between witches and humans in "Macbeth" minor inharmonies sink in indifference. Beside the rugged grandeur of Brand's character, eloquent in every scene, the lapse of months or years between acts is unnotice- able. Beside the religious dignity which ever broods over the play of "Everyman" its naive mingling of life and death, of material and abstract qualities, is nothing. 124 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY By seizing our imagination with a few bold strokes stylisation overshadows the incongruities and dissipa- tions of the drama with its central reality. Subjective or "expressive" stylisation involves a quite new idea — tharb- j the_*ta*ge" setting, as a~work of art in itself, should express the -dominant "Tnoed-jar^ emotion of the play. To the artist the mere representa- tion of Objects isnot expression; the objects, the outer phenomena, are merely the means of expression. So it is not enough to show the queen's chamber in "Ham- let." We must make it express the mood of sin and retribution which overhangs the scene. Only examples of good work can explain how physical objects and lines and surfaces can suggest these inner qualities. But (to return to our stock examples) just as the van- ishing lines of the Gothic cathedral may suggest, by common consent, aspiration, or as a dark, oppressive mass may suggest terror or mystery, so the conven- tionalised stage-settings suggest their poetical mean- ings. And the dramatic value of such expression is Very great. With all the turnings and twistings of Ham- let's spirit it is none too easy for us to discover just what is the trouble. Such an interpretation as that in Gordon Craig's setting may illuminate the whole play for us. Beneath the visible action and the pal- pable motives of any dramatic character there are larger forces and meanings, which can never be logi- cally expressed, since the dramatic work appeals rather to sympathy and experience than to reason. The whole tendency of the dramatic movement in the last thirty years has been to get deeper and deeper beneath the visible surfaces of men, and stylisation is its logical out- come. Lighting is one of the all-important means to styl- THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 125 ised effect. If the setting is to accommodate itself to the internal progress of the drama it will have to avoid painting too much on the scenery. The only means of producing development and variation in the scene is that of lighting. With the modern inventions nearly all problems of colouring, and even of design itself, can be solved by means of lights. The white cyclorama, for instance, can take any colour. A dis- tant view painted on a "back drop" must not have too definite colours of its own if its tone is to vary in the course of the scene, but must be prepared, in one way or another, to throw back various colours as successive lights are thrown on it. The imaginative setting can take most of its colouring from the lights. Usually no more than half the colour is painted ; its supplementary part being supplied by the lights. Or else all the de- sired colours are painted on the surface, according to the pointillage or the mixed colour systems already de- scribed. By manipulating this variable factor of light the whole picture will vary gradually as though a new scene had been substituted. Lighting is naturally one of the chief aids to the imaginative producer, and it is not surprising that lighting on the modern stage has received its highest development at the hands of the stylists. We can trace stylisation from three separate sources, a brief history of which will give an excellent notion of the inner story of the new stage movement. These three influences are not conflicting or rival fac- tors in any well defined sense, but they still represent three more or less distinct spirits in contemporary stage practice. Most European producers trace their artistic pa- ternity back to Gordon Craig. This man, though he 126 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY has done little actual producing, has been probably the most powerful influence in the modern theatre. And it is to be noticed that he came into stage work from out- side, as the artist and designer. Not that Gordon Craig had no "stage sense" — quite the contrary. He is a son of the actress Ellen Terry, and played minor Shakespearian parts for eight years in Henry Irving's company, also doing the "star" roles in the provinces for a time. It was in 1898, that is, when he was twenty-six years old, that he first seri- ously took up drawing and wood engraving. His friends among the actors told him he was a good artist; his friends among the artists told him he was a good actor. He himself had become disgusted with the elaborate nonsense of the English stage and was inclined to stick to designing, which had just received one of its periodi- cal infusions of "new" spirit. But a certain group of artistic friends urged him to combine the two — to bring the art of pure design to the service of the stage. Once convinced, he went into the work with the sort of energy that makes more enemies than friends. In the early 1900's he staged three operas for the Purcell Stage Society. In 1903 he produced Ibsen's "The Vikings" for his mother — an "artistic success, but financial failure." In 1904 he produced a version of Otway's "Venice Preserved" in Berlin. In 1906 he produced for Elenora Duse Ibsen's "Rosmersholm" at the Pergola Theatre in Florence. This list includes most of the productions which bear his name. He was engaged for a number of others, but his principle that "the producer must be the autocrat" nearly always brought friction into the theatre, resulting in his walk- ing out in the early stages of rehearsal. Still these abortive efforts left in some of the best theatres on the < X u u O >< « a a a o H a H In O W a o H O aesthetic said that form ln^teelf-w-^o^hmg; that forml ^ias-ngralues apart fromth e work of w hich it is a parj; and cannoTin-aSy' degree be Ti lawgiver^ to"lTwarTfof ' art. In other words, there is no such thing as form; there are only forms, and each form, for any mature art work, is unique. Take care of the sense, and the sound will take care of itself. Have something to say, and say it; if you have said it well your work will have a beautiful form. The theory, it will be seen, was a direct outgrowth of the nature of Russian literature and this in turn was the direct outgrowth of the political and social as- pirations of the people. As the struggle tightened and became more desperate, the literature deepened and became more intense. As education spread and the middle class and (to a limited degree) the peasants became fired with revolutionary ideas, the literature became more human and more democratic. If this close connection of Russian literature with life dis- pleases you or seems inartistic, you can throw the whole business overboard as unworthy a cultivated man's attention. But if you are to understand Russian litera- ture at all you must understand it as an expression of the aspirations of men and women's lives. The con- nection is forever veiling itself, to escape the notice of the censor or to pierce to the essential beneath the su- perficial. Once you have understood it in one set of terms it is presently talking in another. Like Proteus, it becomes a fish when you are prepared to attack 180 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY an old man, and a snake when you are prepared to catch a fish. But underneath all its disguises it re- mains one and the same thing, with a single soul and a single intention — our old friend, the Revolu- tionary Spirit. The beginning of Russian drama dates from almost the same year as the Russian novel. In the eighteenth century, when English literature was the fashion in Russia, excellent comedies were written in the style of Sheridan, the Empress Catherine herself doing a few of some merit. The characters were usually taken from the Russian upper classes, which, being busy imitating the manners of London or Paris, offered little truly Russian material to the playwrights. However, one or two of the motives of later Russian drama, such as the venality of the bureaucracy or the obsession of foreign fashions, crept into the plays of the time and gave them a native tinge. The venality of the bureau- cracy and its underlings was the whole theme of Gogol's "Revizor," the first great native Russian play, which was suspect and about to be banned by the authorities until the Czar saw it one night and laughed so hard that suppression became impossible. Gogol's material was thoroughly Russian, and from that time on native drama continued to be in good standing with audiences, if not with the political powers. In the fifties and sixties, when Russia was seething with liberal sentiment and the liberation of the serfs was the topic uppermost in people's minds, Ostrovsky wrote his folk-tragedies. Ostrovsky was a real genius, one who, if he had written when Russia was less cut off from the rest of Europe, would have had a world- wide reputation. The peasantry was then just be- ginning to have a place in Russian literature. Ostrovsky THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 181 performed for Russia much the office that Hauptman has more recently performed for Germany — demon- strating to people that poor folk had souls. He knew his types, and presented them with faithful realism, though of course with the technical conventionalities which were then in vogue. But his realism was more than photography. For he refused to give his plays | an ending, just as the plots of real life always carry ' on into new ones. The endings of his last acts always show a vista of the story that continues beyond. The peasant heroine of "The Storm," after her faithless- ness has been discovered and her lover drowned, sees the long, bitter life ahead of her, slavery and social disgrace. So Ostrovsky raises his action from an iso- lated event into a vision of life itself, as though to say : "I am showing you here not men but Man." This tradition has been directly continued in the more modern Russian plays with which this chapter will chiefly deal. But while this realistic drama was developing, parallel with the novel, there was flourishing a poetical and historical drama of great power and beauty. This, too, took its origin from Pushkin, whose "Boris Godounoff," though not especially adapted to the stage, is a classic of Russian poetic drama. The chief continuers of this tradition, in the latter half of the century, were Alexander Tolstoy and Merezhkow- ski. The former drew his subjects from the barbarous and picturesque histories of the Russian kings, develop- ing his plots with considerable historical fidelity and a wealth of local allusion. His plays have somewhat the place in Russian literature that those of Schiller have in German, though they are much more genuine in feeling and language. The Russian operas which have been seen in London and New York — "Boris Godou- jp^ 182 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY noff," "Khovantschina," and "Pskovitienka" — give a good idea of the spirit of these plays. They are a series of historical pictures, as free in point of plot tracing and act structure as the chronicle plays of Shakespeare, always willing to step aside to give a picture of the time, always anxious to obtain the great- est amount of colour and emotional vigour from the historical subject-matter. "The Death of Ivan the Terrible" shows us the vehement senility of the man who by the brandishing of terror established the King- dom of Moscow as the nucleus of modern Russia. We see his intrigues and assist at his overtures of marriage to Queen Elizabeth of England. We see the boyars sitting in council, attempting to manipulate the weaken- ing will of the monarch each for his own benefit. We see the crafty Godounoff, Tartar upstart and adven- turer, gaining Ivan's condence and lording it over the councillors. We see Ivan's wife, bullied but intermit- tently defiant, awaiting with anxiety the answer of her prospective successor, Queen Elizabeth. And then Ivan at the point of death, resentful against the fate of which he fancied himself the master. The plays of Alexander Tolstoy have been a staple of the great Russian theatres. When the experimenters in modern scenery were ready to apply their knowledge, these plays were at hand to meet them in imagination. They did not have to be revived or "rediscovered," but were in the standard repertory. Th us blank verse d rama has flourished in Russia, along with the most thorough-going realistic plays, as a natural part of theatrical art, and not, as in most Western countries, as a sort of incense burnt to the Muses. Exuberance in poetic drama has always been a sign of artistic youth in a nation, and these plays have something of the THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 183 youthfulness of direct attack which we feel in Mar- lowe's dramas. When we come to consider the plays of Count Leo Tolstoy we must leave a wide berth for our preju- dices. Tolstoy has paid the penalty for being too much in earnest. His novels previous to his "conver- sion" in 1879 are admired everywhere: greater ones cannot be found in any literature in the world. But the Tolstoy of the later period is suspected — hated almost — by the world at large. His appeal to con- science is so terrible and direct that we try to escape by calling the man insane, a religious mystic, or (that final condemnation of the middle class mind) impracti- cal. "The Kreutzer Sonata" has probably been as deeply hated as any book of the last half century. And because it is "impractical" (exactly as primitive Christianity was impractical and as all thorough-going religions are impractical) we feel justified in leaving it out of serious consideration. For many, this is merely a cheap and easy way of avoiding the man's moral challenge. It is so easy to point out the childlike quali- ties in this later Tolstoy, the places where he stops thinking and depends on faith. It requires manliness to stand up and face him, and then accept or reject. And because it is easier to sneer and despise we call him a fool and have done with it. And we are sup- ported in our sneers by many a "principle of art," to the effect that no work that preaches can be a real work of art. Now it is evident that the only interest Tolstoy had, in his later years, was in preaching; he had not the least intention of creating works of art. And so the whole matter seems simply solved, with the help of Tolstoy himself. Everything he wrote after 1879 we simply regard as the work of a crazy man, 184 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY exactly as we regard all the compositions of Schu- mann's last five or six years as the product of his in- sanity. Tolstoy's four plays, being all the work of this last period, easily fall into the classification. And any one nurtured in the prevailing science of the drama is inclined to toss them aside with- a smile of pity for the author's childishness. They are so naive in their manner of writing, so utterly innocent of the precious "understanding of stage effects" which we have pain- fully collected these many years, that they seem to some the work of incompetent ignorance. Tolstoy de- spised the theatre of his time, which he felt was nothing but a pandering to sensuality. He had no interest in it unless it could serve him as a pulpit. It is evident that he wasted no single minute studying its esoteric lore. So it seems obvious to many that his plays are nothing but long-winded incompetence. But it is the part of wisdom to hesitate before so grandly pronouncing judgment on a great man. Since it is evident that Tolstoy was not concerned with what fashionable dramatists are interested in, it behooves us to ask what it was that he was driving at. Without such an attitude of mind we shall be as incapable of appreciating his plays as Newton was of appreciating "Paradise Lost," when he asked, "What does it all prove?" It is senseless to judge him by accepted stand- ards, for the reason that he rejected them utterly be- fore he began to write. The only honest attitude is to listen to his plays, free to be interested or bored, as the event decides, and then render account whether we have felt something of what the writer felb was so terribly important to human souls. Personally we may or may not be interested in these moral problems of THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 185 Tolstoy's. But thousands of people have been, in the theatres of Europe; and in the face of this plain fact it is arrant foolishness to say that Tolstoy didn't know what he was about. Tolstoy's method, in plain words was: When you have something to say, say it. The recipe is at once so simple and so profound that no one can quite believe that he meant it. But it explains all his later writing, and explains, for our purpose, his dramatic technique. He had to show a certain character doing certain things. His method was exactly the method of children giving a "show" in the back yard: First show what they did first, then show what they did next — and so on. No feeling about for "act unity," for "conserva- tion of emotional effect," and the like. He is far too deeply concerned with his moral message to be obliged to hunt up any formal unity; there are far too many emotions wasting away human souls in the world, for him to be obliged to "conserve" them as they come, as the studious litterateurs do when they write by rule. There are as many scenes as the author needs, each as long or as short as the content justifies ; as many char- acters as are needed to tell the story, each doing what he may or can, according to his lights. No concern, for balance or proportion, or "stageworthiness." Only' many very human people doing painfully human things, and all bound together by the fierce moral energy of their author. In short, Tolstoy's dramatic technique is all contained in the King's edict in "Alice in Wonder- land": "Begin at the beginning, go on until you get — to the end, and then stop." The pair of plays, "The Power of Darkness" and "The Fruits of Enlightenment" dating from the late eighties, became rather well known in the course of the 186 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY "free stage" movement of the next few years, and have particularly become known to readers of Tolstoy's collected works. The former, if it impresses you at all, impresses you as one of the most terrible tragedies ever written. In the peasant household which Tolstoy shows us lust has full sweep, and evil desire leads to crime after crime, until the whole group, saving only the old father, are involved in the most base and horri- ble crimes. The murder of Okulina's illegitimate child is described in detail by one of the characters who is observing it, while the act is being perpetrated in the cellar of the hut. Not a detail is spared that might make us feel the power of darkness. The spectator feels personally weighed down by this load of crime, even as Nikita, the centre of them all, who finally shouts them out to an assembly of merry-makers, and appeals to God above for mercy. Except for the stark human power of Tolstoy's treatment this play would appear an absurd extravagance. But we know from a glance at the daily papers that its events are not unusual but most ordinary. And we know, as we come to the in- evitable accounting with ourselves, that some elements of the evil which produced this mass of crime is in our own hearts. "The Fruits of Enlightenment" is perhaps the single comic effort of a man who is popularly supposed to be absolutely without a sense of humour. But it is bitter humour, with something of the bitterness of a starv- ing man watching a grand opera. Swesdinseff, in his declining years of idleness, is much taken up with spiritualism, while his wife is equally concerned with microbes and the most approved discoveries of medical science. The one is the dupe of mediums, the other of doctors. These fruits of enlightenment are set over THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 187 against the simplicity of soul of three peasants who come to conclude a business deal with the old man. The latter is stingy and suspicious. His daughter, in council with some of the servants, plans to procure for him the advice of an expert "medium," — namely, his kitchen boy. Swesdinseff signs the contract with the peasants. The plot comes to light, but his daughter Betsy presents her case (and Tolstoy's) in such a convincing manner that all are forgiven, and the master of the house learns something of true enlightenment — namely, simplicity of mind. The play is full of spirit and vigorous character drawing. The other two of Tolstoy's plays — "The Living Corpse," and "And the Light Shines in the Darkness" — are posthumous works found among his papers after his death. Both have been acted through the length and breadth of Germany, the former having been the great success of the season 1912-13 at Rein- hardt's Deutsches Theater in Berlin. Both are even looser in structure than the earlier plays. "The Living Corpse" is perhaps the weakest of the four, but it is a story of absorbing interest. In pure picturesqueness of romantic imagination Tolstoy has here surpassed the fashionable poetic dramatists on their own ground. But romantic imagination, of course, was not what Tolstoy was driving at. He tried to show a man who had made a mess of his life, attempting to undo the evil as best he could — and the stupidity of human law bringing everything back to its evil estate. Feodor Protassoff, weak and vicious, realises the tragedy he has been bringing into his wife's life, and resolves to free her to marry the man she really loves. He writes her a letter telling her he is about to commit suicide and wishes her happiness. He raises the revolver to 188 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY his temple. Then human weakness steps in. Why not merely disappear? Lisa will believe him dead and< he will find some happiness and perhaps some good in his remaining years. So he runs away with a gypsy girl who is in love with him, and Lisa sensibly marries her lover. But one night in an inn a stranger recog- nizes Protassoff, and starts a scheme of blackmail. Protassoff has no money. The matter is reported. Protassoff is arrested. He expresses his (and Tol- stoy's) hatred and contempt of the law and the courts before a judicial examiner. Lisa is tried on a charge of bigamy. Protassoff sees the misery he has caused and shoots himself. The scenes, as they follow one another, are fascinating, now a conversation at after- noon tea, now a revel in a low wine-room. There is many a dramatic moment, recalling Tolstoy's earlier love of pure story-telling. But through it all rings the author's moral fervour. The title is more than a mere name to the story. It refers to the man whose soul has already received the wages of sin. "And the Light Shines in the Darkness" is one of the most remarkable autobiographic documents in the world's literature. The reading public of all coun- tries was thrilled a few years ago by the story of Tolstoy's death, how he left his home and family be- cause he believed that there he was living contrary to the commands of the Scriptures, and wandered forth to get free of compromising ties, that he might be per- fect, even as his Father in Heaven is perfect. He died of exhaustion in the railway station of a tiny Russian village. He was supposed to have been in- sane, but thoughtful people knew that the word had been hurled at plenty of great men before him and proved nothing. What had passed in his mind, THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 189 through these latter years, that made him desert his wife and family, whom he dearly loved, to become a worthless tramp? The answer was found among his papers in the unfinished play, "And the Light Shines in the Darkness." It was a personal and dramatic version of his great essays on religion. It revealed the soul of a man who dared to take the Gospels seriously. It had evidently been worked at, from time to time, for years, and was in all probability a nearly exact transcript of what had been done and said in his own house. The play was Tolstoy himself, going through the most intense struggles of conscience. The last act alone was missing, being sketched in merely with a few lines of a scenario. This last act Tolstoy supplied in the flesh, in his wandering and final death. The last act will probably never be written. It need not be. The tragedy stands without it. It is the tragedy of the man who tries to be consistently re- ligious — to be true to his God and to his neighbour at the same time. Nikolai Ivanovitch has taken the com- mands of Jesus literally. Basing himself on the Gos- pels and rejecting the authority of the Church, he wishes to give away his property, which he says was stolen from the peasants. It is wrong, he says, to live in comfort while our brothers are starving. His wife will not permit him to disinherit his children and leave them and her in poverty. He decides he ought not try to force his convictions on others. He will merely act for himself — leave his house and get free of this entangled luxury. Desertion of wife and family ! Then, he says he will merely keep a single room for himself, and will earn his living by manual labour, like the peasants. But his aged hand bungles the car- pentry he undertakes. A young priest has been won 190 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY over by his talk from the Church to his primitive Chris- tianity, and Boris, son of a Princess, who is a guest in the house, follows him heart and soul. The latter refuses to do military service and is imprisoned. Niko- lai's daughter, Boris's fiancee, begins to hate her father. The family continues to lead the life that is in his eyes frivolous and criminal. They consider him heart- less and unnatural. His attempts to follow the teach- ings of Jesus only bring unhappiness on others. "Ought I to become a wanderer?" he cries in his agony. "Is it a sin to believe in Thee, Father? No, no — Help me, Omy God!" Here the written play closes. Tolstoy's scenario relates that in the last act the Princess, having un- successfully made intervention to the Czar on behalf of her son, breaks into Nikolai's room and stabs him. Of this play it is almost impossible to speak. No praise can add to its greatness, no sneer can detract. The simplicity of its dialogue, the loving justice with which Tolstoy draws all his characters (excepting only the bishop of the Church, whom he hates), the human genuineness of its motives, can be equalled only by the greatest works in the world's literature. It is possible, as we have said, to reject this play altogether. But if one has an ear for these characters in their mortal struggle with Conscience, one must admit that artistic canons are insignificant beside it and recognise in it one of the supreme works of the modern stage. Tolstoy's plays are lawless, but they always con- tain some elements of obvious dramatic conflict. Tche- koff' s plays, on the other hand, are almost completely "static." The old formula for drama said that char- acter must be shown by means of action. TchekofPs a o OS S5 o a u a o THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 191 plays are written for the sake of character. For whole acts there may be no sign prploFacS on. Action occurs only when the author needs it for thTpurpose of producing a change in character. These plays throw us off the scent at first reading or seeing. They have no movement, they seem not to be "getting anywhere." We have to discover for ourselves that all this dialogue is justified in the author's mind if it reveals to us his characters. Why shouldn't character-revealing talk be interesting? And if it is interesting why isn't it good drama? We must get something of Tchekoff's enthusiasm for pure character study before we can appreciate his tender and delicate plays. Tchekoff, coming from a humble family of Little Russia, gained his fame as a short story writer for the magazines. His character sketches were vivid in the extreme and his sense of comedy as lively as that of any Russian author since Gogol. He took to writing plays in the natural course of events* — and in his own style. "Uncle Vanya" was dashed off in a few weeks as a sort of answer to a popular play advancing an analysis of Russian character with which he disagreed. At first his plays were unpopular. But when the Art Theatre of Moscow took them up, mounting and acting them with superb understanding of their subtle charm, he rapidly became one of the best known playwrights in Russia. He did quite as much for the Art Theatre as it had done for him, for his plays became immensely popular, and the theatre adopted as its symbol a seagull, in recognition of his best drama. To appreciate Tchekoff's plays you must be con- tent to sit back in your seat with a soul at rest, willing to let things happen when they will or never, glad to come gradually to know a few people's whose finely 192 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY strung spirits react sensitively to the world about them. It is the mood in which one sits for hours before a wood fire, learning to know a friend from remarks dropped at long intervals in the silence. Tchekoff rare- ly has passages of strong emotion, never of the emo- tion that moves things. When his characters fe el, they show it only by a twitch of the moufE They~~do not rush from emotion into action; they suffer and stay silent. The acting needed for these plays is of quite a v special kind. It must be of great simplicity, without tricks and without set traditions. But it must be highly selective of significant details. Repressed pas- sion, as our emotional actresses show it, is not for Tchekoff. "Do nothing unless there is some special reason" is Tchekoff's lesson to the actor, and a lesson which it is hard for our theatrical generation to learn. "The Seagull" is made of gossamer, and one misses it at first seeing. It demands an audience always on the alert, yet always in repose. The character of the young poet, whose soul is being seared among the selfish and callous people about him, is shown in a multi- tude of the most delicate touches. "Uncle Vanya" is much the same tale, this time an old man and a young girl, who find in each other the sympathy which has failed them in all their associates. In "The Cherry Orchard" the orchard, always seen at the back of the stage, serves as a symbol of Russia. Here is a chance for stylisation in the setting. Tchekoff's plays are full of such chances, but they must not be abused. None but a delicate artistic sympathy should attempt to stylise these plays. One should not leave Tchekoff without mentioning his two delightful one-act farces, "The Bear" and "A THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 193 Proposal of Marriage." These are filled with the most engaging fun, which up to the last line never dulls for a minute. In them one feels the comic genius of "The Revizor" alive again. Maxim G orky , who is chiefly known by his wonder- ful tramp stories, is like Tchekoff, in that his plays too are " static ," but like him in hardly another particular. "A Night's Lodging," generally known by its German title "Nachtasyl," made for him a reputation as a dram- atist which he has since not been able to sustain. "Nach- tasyl" is a wonderful collection of characters, gathered together in a cheap lodging-house, exchanging observa- tions, swapping philosophies, and prying into one an- other's characters. Little happens in the course of the play, except when the old actor gets drunk or the police enter to suppress a fist fight. There seems to be nothing to hold the play together, and yet, as one reads it over, one feels resentful that any single line should be cut. Gorky's later plays lack the wonderful picturesque- ness of character which made "Nachtasyl" famous. Their chief virtue is their faith in the ability of ideas to interest an audience, but as the characters in "Chil- dren of the Sun" continue a conversation through many acts to no apparent purpose, or the arbitrary events of "Middle-Class Lives" fail to dispel the monotony which overhangs the play, we feel that we prefer Gorky ii. story form. The failure of these plays, however, is not the failure of the "static drama," which is success- ful just as often as it can present interesting material to an interested audience. It is merely the failure of a popular author without enough to say. The end of the era dominated by Maxim Gorky which closed with the practical failure of the Revolution of 1905, left Russia in one of its periodic moods of pes- 194 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY simism. These moods of alternate hope and despair, resulting from the political atmosphere, are strangely intense in the Russian character, and strangely wide- spread over the nation. With an accuracy for which there is no parallel in any other country, they are promptly reflected in the current literature. But as always in Russian literature, pessimism does not mean utter loss of faith and interest, but an acknowledgment of outward defeat and a new stock-taking of spiritual' facts. In this new phase Amkejeff has become the dom- inant literary figure. In his novels and sketches, nota- bly "The Seven Who Were Hanged," he had shown him- self master of the realistic manne r that has become tra- ditional 5T±lussian prose. But a spiritual stock-taking demands something besides realism. Andreieff supplied it in a metaphysic which is dynamic, and a mysticism which is humanitarian. To the eternal Russian question, recurring to each generation: "What shall we do about it?" Andreieff replies: "We will continue to strive a nd suff er! Our effort may be co uir Lei acted, baf lrTlhe truest sense it cannot be lost." In "Anathema" he pictures a poor Jewish merchant, consumed with a desire to help his fellow-men. He receives word that he has been left an immense amount of money by a deceased brother in America. He decides to spend it in feeding the poor. The word is spread about and the poor come from all directions. But the more he gives the more there are to receive. Suffering is boundless ; his large fortune is limited. When his resources are nearly at an end the crowd of alms-beggars is larger than ever. Finally, when he has no more to give, their worship turns to re- sentment, then to enmity, then to a mob hatred which kills him and his family. Andreieff has enframed this 'The Merchant of Venice " — Act I, Scene II. Design by Robert E. Jones "In this scene," says the artist, "you see the sky — and little else.'' THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 195 play with a prologue and epilogue at the gates of Heaven. Anathema, the Spirit who Denies, has bar- tered with the Keeper of the Gates for the soul of the Jew. To Anathema good is non-existent ; his laugh can destroy all that seems real; the world is only a night- mare. Has he not proved it? Has not the brotherly love of the Jew led only to hatred and death? But the Keeper of the Gates denies that the love of the Jew has come to naught. The results cannot be measured; nothing that can be measured is of much value ; the spirit which can apprehend only what can be measured is a spirit of death. He, the Keeper of the Gates, stands for eternal Assertion, which cannot die, and which has won the wager with Anathema, the Spirit who Denies, "ever alive in weights and measures, but yet unborn to life. . . ." Mysticism this, but one based on a solid human fact, the love of the poor Jew for his fellow-men "The_ Life of Man ," perhaps the only one of An- dreieff's plays which can be set down as flatly pessimis- tic, has a special interest in this book as probably the only play hitherto written by a great writer which has been jT^-mnP^fr-nm inf-gpfinTWTT^jf^ r siyKcgjjnn We the" chapte: have seen, lrPtheT chapter on Stylisation, the difficulties attendant upon stylising plays not meant for it. Here, is a play that was meant for it, and the Moscow Art Theatre has achieved remarkable results in setting it. The play sets forth the life of Man, in five "pictures": "Birth of the Man and pain of the mother; Love and poverty; Wealth, a ball at the house of the Man; the Man in unhappiness ; Death of the Man." In and out of the action stalks a mysterious figure, "Somebody in Gray," who holds a candle which burns to its end as the Man's death draws nigh. The scenes all commence and 196 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY end in darkness. This or that significant detail comes first into view. Throughout, the endeavour i s to empha- sise the typical and symbolic. The author's care in the "work of stylisation has extended to all sorts of practical details, as when he directs for the final scene in the wine- room, that "the number of men appears greater because of their shadows, which flicker about on the walls and ceiling." In "Ignis Sanat," again, human endeavour seems to come to nothing, but the author's conviction that evil is based on untruth brings its ray of hope. Sawa, a young anarchist, plots to destroy a certain holy picture, in a cloister near his home, in order to destroy the super- stition which its reputation for miracle-working has fos- tered. His sister Lipa is convinced that religion, whether true or not, is good because of the happiness and beauty it brings into men's lives. The monks of the cloister are quite corrupt, and one of them, in con- sideration of a little money, agrees to light the explo- sive on the midnight of the day before the annual festi- val of the picture. The sister gets wind of the plot and spoils it. But the monks have got an idea. They will stage their explosion, with the picture taken away, and then immediately return the picture and make capital out of its miraculous preservation. And the bitterest fact is not that the crowd of worshippers, the next day, on being told of Sawa's intention, crush him to death in their fury, but that they, and even the monks who engi- neered the game, believed that the miracle had actually taken place as their story averred. The play is admira- ble in plot and in the lively characterisation of the brother and sister and of the debauched but good na- tured monks. Andreieff's plays are inclined to the static structure THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 197 of Gorky's. But they have, in addition, the mostjDow- erfully emotion al prose that is being written in modern drama. No literary tendency can be more admirably modern than that which seeks to leave to past centuries rhymed verse, and to cultivate the far finer feeling for noble rhythmic prose. As an example of this, as well as of the humanitarian mysticism referred to, "To the Stars" is Andreieff's most distinctive play. It contains not an iota of action, except for the doings off-stage of a character who does not appear. Just across the Russian border a number of revolutionists are gathered together at the home of one Sergei Ternowski, an as- tronomer who has made it his work to study Life in its largest aspect. His son Nikolai, has led a revolutionary uprising in the streets of a Russian city, has been wounded, captured, and thrown into prison. The whole of the play, admirable in its characterization, consists of the opinions of the characters as to the fate of Niko- lai and the philosophic questions it involves. One of Ternowski's assistants is disgusted by the revolutionists' discussion and returns to work. Another, a Jew, is moved by it to the resolution to go out and fight for men in the world of action. "I want no more to do with science !" he cries. "I am going away from here. I am going with you. I hear how they are crying out there. The stars do not hear it — but I hear it. . . . Yes, I am a Jew and I call upon the God of the Jews : Lord God, to whom vengeance belongs, Lord God, to whom vengeance belongs, appear ! Arise, thou Judge of the World, and give to those who have faith that which they have earned! Lord God, to whom vengeance be- longs, Lord God, to whom vengeance belongs, appear!" And finally comes Marushja, Nikolai's fiancee, with the news that her lover has lost his reason in the tor- 198 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY^ tures of prison and will be an idiot for the rest of his life. Marushja is ready to quit her life or to spend it in a romantic sacrifice at the side of her lover. Hope- lessness hangs over all. Then Ternowski, who has studied Life and knows that all that is good flows from it, speaks: "There is no death. Nikolai lives in you, and in Petya, and in me — in all who remain true to the beauty of his spirit. Do you suppose that Giordano Bruno is dead? Only the animals, which have no countenance, die. Only he who kills dies ; he who is killed, burned, torn in pieces — he lives to eternity. There is no death for men, there is no death for the son of eternity! "In the temples of antiquity there was an eternal fire kept. The wood became ashes, the oil was burned up — but the fire was kept alive eternally. Do you not feel it — here and everywhere? Do you not feel in your- self his pure flame? Who gave you this gentle spirit, whose thought, escaped from the mortal body, lives on in you? Dare you say that your thought is yours? Your soul is only an altar on which the Son of Eternity lights his sacrificial fire! (Raising his arms to the stars.) I greet you, my unknown, my distant friend!" And Marushja says simply: "I will go back into Life." "Go," replies Ternowski. "Give back to Life what you have received from it ! Give the sun its warmth back again ! You will perish, as Nikolai has perished, as all have perished whose part it is to nourish the eternal fire with their fair spirits. But through your destruc- tion you will achieve immortality. Upward to the stars !" CHAPTER XII THE LITERARY FORCES: DRAMATISTS OF THE GERMANIC NATIONS IN grouping together Scandinavia, Germany, Aus- tria, England and America for one chapter we find little beyond the supposed Germanic ancestry of the countries to justify the arbitrary connection. They have had quite different histories and traditions. One general fact alone can be predicated of them : they are learning to know each other. Not a little of this understanding is due to a mutual appreciation of their arts. Mod- ern facilities for printing and translation, for the spreading of daily news and classified information, has put the best part of the art and culture of each na- tion at the disposal of every other nation, the only prac- tical limitation being the stupidity or narrow-minded- ness of the recipient. And in the matter of the drama, of course, this internationalisation has been particularly striking. It is now about a quarter of a century since the first English performances of Ibsen's plays shocked and pained London. Rereading reviews of the time makes one realise what a distressing experience it was for the Englishmen to get somebody else's point of view. We need not lay this to English stupidity ; every nation has at some time repeated the performance, and most of them do it continually. For that first mysteri- ous puzzling out of another viewpoint is a mental and moral struggle. When it has been achieved, life is never 199 200 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY again quite the same. So painful are the successive steps in the brotherhood of man. Thanks in great part to Ibsen this process has been going on steadily in Europe and America in the last twenty or thirty years. There are few more impressive spectacles in the history of literature than the conquer- ing of the European theatre by this grim thinker, writ- ing from a small and remote nation, doing something he wanted to do and nobody else in the world wanted him to do, and finally making everybody else want to do it too. The reawakening of the European theatre is of course due to more than one cause, but as a matter of overwhelming convenience we lay the whole matter to Ibsen and let it go at that. In whatever nation the appreciation of Ibsen penetrated, there arose a new era in drama. Audiences saw a world of new possibilities in the stage, and native authors felt the necessity of doing things that had never been done in the land before. So each nation, while adopting a dramatic convention much like that of every other, developed a personal form of expression more peculiar to itself than it had had before. And with the growing interest the interchange between countries became more abundant. And as a result, the reader of a few well selected foreign plays (in translation, if necessary) can, without going abroad, learn to know viewpoints to understand which he would formerly have had to live in the foreign land. Scandinavia could hardly have been expected to fur- nish the world a second Ibsen, but it did the next best thing 1 — produced one of the most intense geniuses of the time who did some of his most effective work in the dramatic form. Strindberg's plays, still scarcely known in England or America, are permanent fare in Germany, where they are admired, and, what is more important, THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 201 understood at their true value. This understanding can hardly come by direct inspiration; it grows in direct proportion to one's familiarity with the plays. Strind- berg, undoubtedly a genius of great power, ploughed his own furrow, establishing not only a new dramatic type, but a new domain of literary expression. The peculiar form of his play flows from the peculiar nature of his subject-matter. He is writing always the thoughts of a I very intense mind ; he is assuming characters who have \ rare powers of self-analysis ; he is interested not in pre- senting people as they seem, but in analysing them to the utmost. His dramatic method, though at bottom realistic, inevitably becomes one of unusual condensa- tion, sometimes verging into symbolism. He makes his dialogue carry such a quantity of thought that it seems at times as though the whole structure would break down. Sometimes he crowds such an amount of psy- chological analysis (in the strict sense) into a single short scene that we seem, in retrospect, to have lived through several months of a soul's experience. Often the rapid succession of essential moods is beyond what could possibly be found in real life, and there is a re- sulting sense of unreality, as in the one-act "Countess Julie." Violence of this and another sort has preju- diced more than one reader and spectator against Strindberg's plays. We need a bit more charity. This psychological condensation, this overweighting of the dialogue with introspective thought, is only a dramatic convention, the particular artificiality which Strindberg has invented to carry his particular sort of play. Once accept the plays as they stand and you have a wonder- ful group of intellectual experiences open to you. One need not agree with his view of woman as a snake-eyed adventuress in order to sympathize with the writer, his 202 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY intense sympathy for every sort of human feeling, his intense longing to achieve the finest sort of power that was in him, his intense struggle with the vices, some of them the most base and petty, with which he was beset. His historical verse plays never achieved much suc- cess outside Sweden and have rarely been translated into foreign languages. His list of r ealistic_ plays seems endless. The first to be put into English was "The Father," purporting to show how utterly the husband's peace of mind is in the wife's gentle care. We have since had an opportunity to read many another analysis of marriage from his pen. "The Link" is a breathless tale of mutual accusations and recriminations in a di- vorce court, and in the mass of jealousies arising out of perverted sexual passion the child is left adrift. "Com- rades" is a bitter tale of man and wife who sought to "work together;" they were rivals, says Strindberg, and there could be no marriage. "Creditors" shows a wife triumphantly using her power of outplaying and exhausting one man after another. Again and again the woman is an evil genius. In "Countess Julie" she is a sensual maniac, giving herself to her coachman, and then tearing her soul to pieces with doubts and fears. In "Motherlove" she is a mother jealous for domination in her child's every act. In "The Dance of Death" she is a plotter, with two faces as always. In a host of one-act plays Strindberg re- peatedly shows his uncanny power of analysis. His in- tellectual dynamic never seems to fail. His clearness of mental grasp, apart from an occasional symbolism of method, holds the attention spellbound. But he is more than the mysogynist and pessimist. J He is sometimes the moralist and even the tender poet. In the play translated as "There Are Crimes and THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 203 Crimes" he has a powerful study of the growth of moral responsibility, apart from overt acts, in the human con- science. "Snowwhite" is a fairy play, written for pure love of the story. "The Dream Play" is a tour de forc®"""*- of the imagination and a burning symbol of the love for his fellow-men with which he emerged from his mental crisis of 1900. For Strindberg to a great extent came out of his bitterness, his hatred of woman, his mysti- cism, and his violent egotism. He came to feel himself as only a part in a great living world. He died a -So; cialist, and was hailed at labour demonstrations as a comrade. We should forget the bogey of the "pathological" which has kept us prejudiced against Strindberg. He was too honest with himself not to reveal his weaknesses with his strength, and unless we are pathological our- selves we need not fear imbibing the one along with the other. What we have particularly to get from Strind- berg is that fine stimulus of the intellectual dynamic flowing more richly in his plays than it has flowed in any other modern dramatic author. If we will allow for his originality the same license as to method that we allow to anybody else, we shall not be troubled at all by his strangeness of form. And if we allow our minds to vibrate with his we shall be the richer for many an in- tense intellectual experience. The plays of Bjornso n. Ibsen's friend and contem- porary, have long made their place in the German thea- tre, but seem almost too naive to have much driving power into foreign lands. There is in them nothing of Ibsen's fiercely tight intellectual coherence, and there is a certain obviousness of effect, even obviousness of char- acter reading, which is quite unexpected. They seem un- duly perturbed over traits of personality which a child 204 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY would notice, and they tend to be too consciously moral- istic for their body of human content. Bjornson, who is loved in Norway chiefly as a poet, is much more a pogt in his plays than a thinker. He has scenes of very ef- fective satire, in Ibsen's manner, and other scenes of cumulative dramatic intensity in the style of Sardou. But now and again things seem to slip from his grasp. It is the spirit of the man which is impressive, for his thoughts are rather too obvious. And the spirit, as felt in his plays, is of the sort that lifts an audience out of any attitude of reasonableness, and makes it glow, for the moment, by pure force of human sympathy or inspiring language. "When the New Wine Sparkles," written by the old poet only a few weeks before his death, is charged with the glow of youth, and has the poetic element abundantly beneath and beyond its some- what involved plot. "The Bankrupts" traces the effect of sudden poverty on a well-to-do family, and "The Newly Married Couple" shows with considerable deli- cacy of analysis the adjustments made between husband and wife after marriage. "Beyond Human Power," much acted in Germany, is in two parts. In its manner of developing the mystical atmosphere out of a human and realistic plot, this work is highly typical. The sphere of activity in which man can accomplish things by conscious action is limited ; beyond it lies the great cloudy region in which he is face to face with infinite forces. It is this region that Bjornson tries to make us feel, not by mystical means, but by sheer sympathy with the men whose strivings carry them into the mys- tical. The first part of the play has to do with the personal and psychological. A faith-healer, much loved in the country-side, tries the final test, before a com- mittee of sceptical ministers, of curing his wife of her THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 205 life-long sickness. She walks at his command, for the first time in years — and falls dead. In the second part it is the social and material world that is the object of struggle. The faith-healer's son has consecrated him- self to the struggle of the working class against their employers, being convinced that this is the only way to further the improvement of man. He calls a meeting of the employers to discuss the men's demands, and gives the signal for the dynamite explosion which sends him and most of the employers into eternity. But such a problem, too, is beyond human power. Credo and Spero, two symbolical figures in the last act, point the moral. — Germany was the first foreign country to feel strongly the influence of Ibsen. In the late eighties there were stirrings, and with the establishment, in 18 90, nf tjip^Frpip' Tt"hP p i the new realistic and sociological drama had flung its challenge to German art. In the succeeding decade Germany was the leader in the new drama. The almost simultaneous composition, in three different lands, of "Magda," by Sudermann, "Blanch- ette," by Brieux, "Mrs. Warren's Profession," by Ber- nard Shaw, and "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," by Pi- nero ( all brilliant dating points for the new movement) , is a remarkable coincidence. But Germany had the head start, and it was Sudermann and Hauptmann who were looked upon as the leaders in the drama of the future during the nineties. This was largely due, no doubt, to the peculiar condition of Germany, which was then -just starting a new era, having been freed from the reign of the Iron Chancellor and having brought to open consciousness and discussion the social and politi- cal subjects which had been rankling unexpressed in loyal German hearts for half a century. The labour 206 THE THEATRE OP TO-DAY movement of the time, centring in political Socialism, was_Lbe - great dynam i c of the new German drama . yHaupitmann's choosing of dramatic subjects from the J lowest social classes was a sign of the shifting of the centre of human gravity due to the rising importance of the working class. And the new drama had, to a tre- mendous extent, a tone of partisanship with the pro- letariat. More than that, it was actually the prole- tariat — the labour unions and the conscious political So- cialists — who gave the first widespread support to the new drama. Haiiptinann's play, "The Weavers," for years the storm centre of the labour question in Ger- man drama, was first performed by the radical "Free Folk Stage." But what is still more important is the fact that the considerable middle-class application of the new drama was vitally connected with the proletari- an movement. Many who lived through the time proba- bly had no notion that there was any connection be- tween Sudermann's "Honour" or "Magda," and Haupt- mann's "The Weavers." But every tenet of iconoclasm in this middle-class drama — the breaking-up of conven- tional moral codes, the emphasis upon woman as a re- sponsible individual, the denial of traditional authority on every hand — is implicit and explicit in the philoso- phy of the labour movement which antedated it. Moral codes, said the newly conscious working-class, work out to the benefit of those who made them — the middle and upper classes. Woman, because of the growth of mod- ern industrial machinery, has become increasingly an economic unit ; she must become an ethical and political unit. As for authority, continued the working-class, me haven't got it, so it is sure to work against us and we had better deny it. And this philosophy swept up to a certain extent into the middle class, and was vehe- THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 207 mently discussed in drama. All this may sound improb- able to an American, but the whole struggle has been carried on for a much longer time and in a much smaller space in Germany, and the ideas consequently had a greater rebound. The chief upheaval in Germany in the last half century has been that of the proletariat, and the chief forces toward inner change have come from it. Equal suffrage, for instance, has been for years a demand of the German Social-Democratic party, and has only recently become a middle-class fad. But all this vehemence in the realistic drama in Ger- many has died out. For the last ten years Germany's production in drama has been disappointing. Haupt- mann and Sudermann are still writing, but the former is busily repeating himself and the latter is the scorn of all Germans of any class — "a mere Jew," they say, "a sensation-monger." Certainly Sudermann's recent dramatic output has been negligible. The dominating figure in present-day German drama is Wedekind (who will be discussed in another chapter) , a man so strange, so perverse, so anarchic, and withal so talented and so courageous, that he "fits" in no category yet invented. In a general way he is typical of Germany of the last ten years, in his violent reaction to the flatly realistic and "well made" play, in his morbid subject-matter and his defiance of rules. It is difficult to name the man who in Germany is "the continuer of the Sudermann tra- dition." If he is known he is probably not worth nam- ing. The tradition of the nineties seems to have broken off short. In its place we have the unclassifiable plays of Wedekind, the poetic drama of Hofmannsthal, the imaginative plays of Hardt and Eulenberg. We have further the hang-over production of a number of the second-rate men of the nineties. And we have a limited 208 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY output of very delightful comedies, such as Roessler's "The Five Frankforters," successfully played in this country, and Birinski's "The Dance of Fools," which formed the basis for a musical comedy which died a pre- mature American death. But with the single excep- tion of Wedekind, there is not a single author in mod- ern Germany whose work has the drive that will enable it to cross the border and plough up the literary field in a foreign land. Incenierung has the attention of pres- ent day Germans in the theatre. The "artists" want plays written for Inscenierung. The realists want In- scenierung made for realism. In the meantime, a bril- liant theatrical era with classical and imported plays, but no significant current dramatic literature. In Aus tria, however, there is a continuous output of comedies of the highest order. Arthur Schnitzler and Hermann Bahr write as brilliantly, on the whole, as any comedian since Wilde. The Parisian influence which is traditionally operative in Vienna, seems to have given I them a deftness of touch which a Prussian writer never has. At the same time there is in their characterization a certain quality, which we might suggest by the word "meatiness," which is distinctly German. Sctuiitzler is a most delightful figure. The son of a Jewish physician he was himself educated to practice medicine, and served from 1886 to 1888 as second phy- sician in the General Hospital in Vienna. His cycle of oneract jilays, "Anatol ," was written in the leisure hours of his early practice, purely for his amusement and that of his friends. The fact that it brought him fame is an incidental fact. Schnitzler is still a practicing phy- sician. He still writes to please himself and amuse his friends. He is first of all a professional man, and an artist only out of the exuberance of his spirits. His THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 209 fame is still an incidental thing, a thing, so to speak, quite out of his control. A little cleft of Puritanism still separates us from the appreciation of Schnitzler's delightful comedies and the bridge across is slippery. The strenuously im- moral life of the young Viennese dandy, which he sat- irises without ever once condemning, seems to us hardly a matter for laughter. We must catch the trick of ob- serving without participating, of understanding without judging. Anatol, with one new love (at least) for each of his seven playlets, need not be imitated, and cannot be by an American, for his epicurean touch is a thing of Vienna or Paris. The condemnation we have for him is not on the grounds of grossness. Love-making, to Anatol, is a fine art, and as long as due proportion is observed the gods will not be angry. Anatol is the hero of one after another of Schnitz- ler's plays — sometimes very young, sometimes past mid- dle age, under many names and a variety of social ranks. Sometimes important things happen to him ; but usually he is called upon only to observe and guide an action here and there, and take what comes to him with an understanding smile. In "The Green Cockatoo," played by Mrs. Fiske's company as a "curtain-raiser" one season, Anatol appears several times in the role of gallant, visiting a low wine-room in Paris on the evening of the fall of the Bastille, and serving as the butt of a dramatic irony too delicate to be understood by any of the characters. In "Liebelei," one of the best beloved of recent German plays, Anatol is still a student, a somewhat serious-minded one, not yet disillusioned, not yet come to the realisation that all things in life are equally good if accepted with equal good nature. He is having an affair with a married woman, and takes it far 210 THE THEATRE OF TODAY too much to heart. The light touch is missing; the error in taste must be rectified. A fellow student intro- duces him to little Christine, who is young and is look- ing for a hero lover. It was intended that flirting should cure love. But our Liebelei kills souls instead. For the youth takes seriously a duel with the husband he has wronged, is killed, and leaves Christine with the double tragedy of her lover's death and the knowledge of another woman in his life. And so people have come to think that Mr. Schnitz- ler is himself Anatol, that he capitalises his sins for gain and writes his misdemeanors into diverting literature. People do not know him. Mr. Schnitzler is, as we have said, a practising physician, a man of science, a clear- brained, clear-eyed, lovable man, whose art is only the 1 second fact about him. It is the scientific feeling for detail that has made him the world's master in the one- act play. It is the scientific fascination for pure ideas which dictated his most impressive play — 'iErofgssor Bernhardi ." Professor Bernhardi is a physician and a Jew, one of the specialists in a great Vienna hospital. He refuses a Catholic priest admittance to the bedside of a dying patient who had not asked for absolution. The affair is taken up as a scandal. Bernhardi tries to stand on the scientific principle that his duty was to protect his patient in her last hours from the knowl- edge of approaching death. In a third act, which shows a session of the directing board of the hospital, preju- dice and principle come to fine and subtle interplay. Bernhardi is forced from the hospital and condemned to a short term in prison. He comes out wiser, and not more violent. Here, decidedly, is a play of very special calibre. It has but one woman character, and that for only a THE RECEPTION HALL THE DUCHESS S BEDROOM TWO SCENES FOR A POETIC PLAY, DESIGNED BY SAMUEL HUME "These scenes show how a rearrangement of the same simple elements will produce a different effect and create quite a different mood." Photographs by Roper, Cambridge THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 211 moment. It has absolutely n& Jove intere st. Except for the incident with the priest in the first act, there is an utter ab^enc^of^ajry^ibrvious, action. From first act to last the play is talk. Moreover, it has a beginning and a middle, but no "end," for Bernhardi returns to his practice surrounded by the same base antisemitic prejudice as at the first. By all the rules it is undra- matic and not legitimate drama. If the hearer has no brains or no interest in the clash of ideas, the play is a bore. But all this Schnitzler freely risked because as a thinker he was fascinated by the ideas, and as an artist he was fascinated with the problem of throwing them into artistic form. The play is a "legitimate" play be- cause it fascinated thinking audiences throughout Ger- many (it was banned in Austria). If other audiences are bored by it they may go and see "Charley's Aunt," which is no less "legitimate," but somewhat less intelli- gent. To those who can appreciate it "Professor Bern- hardi" has a very personal value, in showing that finest type of artist — the artist who is not afraid to think. Quite different from Schnitzler in personality is Her - mann Bah r. Bahr is the "literary man" par excellence — by which it is understood that he is chiefly occupied with the artistic method by which he manipulates his ob- servations of life. There is no continental author who can write whole acts of more delightful dialogue which are organic parts of a steadily developing comic idea. Bahr's moral world is much like Schnitzler's in his com- edies. The world may be a bad sermon, but it is a very good joke. If you must withhold your condemnation from what is somebody else's business, must you at the same time withhold your laughter? It is said that after the brilliant success which Mr. Belasco made of Bahr's delightful "The Concert" in 212 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY New York he contracted for Bahr's next play, sight unseen, paying cash down. The next play was "The Children." Therein two middle-aged friends are the proud fathers of two children, a son and a daughter, who promptly fall in love with one another. The daugh- ter confides in her father. Donnerblitzen ! The boy is her half-brother! Presently the boy's father comes to his friend with a horrible confession on his lips: the girl is his son's half-sister. Thus do two wrongs most sweetly make a right. There is nothing in the way of the marriage. The two men must heartily forgive each other, and all goes merrily. The play, needless to say, was not acted in New York, and Mr. Belasco lost his advance payment. The detachment necessary to view such a plot as this as comic material illustrates the totally different viewpoint of the cosmopolitan European audience. It I is an extreme example of what is implicit in nearly all French and Viennese comedy — the objectivity of mate- rial, especially dear to the comic artist. But the literary ability necessary to keep such material in the comic mood is very great. For when the mere story would become matter for the district police station, Bahr is | constantly saving it by the humanity or the human- Jseemingness of his characters. In "Principle" he shows a rich middle class family imbued with an ill digested democratic ideal. They discover that the son of the house has "wfonged" the cook. Nothing to do but to force the son to marry her, even at the cost of the fam- ily's standing in the outside world. The mother goes to the kitchen to impart the glad tidings to the girl. The latter is at first dumfounded at such absurdity. The gentleman hadn't intended marriage ; he was only on a little lark ; for her part she is very well satisfied. Then THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 213 she becomes indignant at this attempt to make her marry the young idiot. Besides, she has her own lover, and they are to be married soon. Would Madame destroy her happiness? And so all ends happily. "The Concert," which shows the lady pianist, infatuated with her teacher, receiving lessons from his wife in the ways of caring for his artistic moods, is one of the most de- lightful comedies ever seen on the American stage. Bahr's greatest achievement is his dialogue, which, without straining for farce effect, reveals the numerous nooks of character in every line. It is not a dialogue of "points," and never one of verbal play. Nor is it a dialogue of ideas. It depends for its laughs on a personal acquaintance with the characters, who, from their first entrance, seem to stand before the audience in all their humanity. It is not a noisy type of comedy, this, but one which seems to crowd into two and a half hours all the fun that lies latent in human personality. The smaller countries have been contributing im- portant plays to the European theatre. Leaving aside for the present Hungary and Belgium, whose remarkable contributions will be mentioned in another chapter, we may notice for a moment Holland, which has a vigorous theatrical life of its own. The plays of H^nnannJHei- mraanns have some years since established themselves in European theatres. Heijermanns recalls the realism of the nineties. He writes ex parte, an apologist_of the working class, whose side it is his onlylnferest to present. TSthere is a continuer of the Hauptmann tra- dition Hei j ermanns is the man. His power in presenting sympathetic human figures from the lower class is quite the equal of Hauptmann's. His partisanship is even more pronounced. "The Good Hope," his masterpiece, he has made a 214 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY sort of epic of the sea. There is a dishonest employer, who sends on a voyage an unseaworthy boat, expecting it to be sunk, that he may reap the insurance. The fisher people, who are giving their sons to this financial coup, are shown in all their human helplessness in the power of these tactics. But especially it is the sea, as an evil genius, that dominates the spirit of the play. The third act, which takes place while the Good Hope is still unheard from, is a collection of stories of sea- tragedy, told by the women gathered together in the hut on a stormy night — an impressive passage of prose lyricism. "The Coat of Mail" shows militarism, as it presents itself in a small country, where the only use for an army is to repress strikes. "The Ghetto" shows the prejudices of Jewry against the intermarriage of the second generation with the Christians. "All Souls" is a work of peculiar inspiration. Here Heijermanns shows religious prejudice and impulsive natural life in full conflict. Rita, an illegitimate mother, is sheltered by the village minister, who thus brings scandal down upon his head. He is Christianly forgiving. But the woman is quite unrepentant, and when her lover returns she goes' away with him joyously. The minister, who in the meantime has been driven from his pulpit, can only say a hopeless "Farewell," checkmated by his half- step toward freedom. Heijermanns is not a mere "pho- itographic" realist. He has an imaginative feeling for character, and more especially a sense of the poetry of language which distinguishes the literary artist. ■England has in the last quarter century produced a dramatic literature important out of all proportion to the limited prosperity of her dramatic life. We are constantly under the danger of underestimating this English drama by taking too narrow a view of it. It Interior of the Old Opera House in Bayreuth A typical eighteenth century auditorium of the Italian style. THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 215 is not easy to judge it by any set standard. For whereas Russian drama has been distinguished chiefly by moral earnestness, German by emotional vigour, and French by technical mastery, EngLlshalramajshows before all else intellectual power. And our dogmas incline to give precedence to the emotional and the tech- nical elements, regarding intellect as an affair of dry books and parliamentary debates. In Pinero and Jones England had a lively native drama before the influence of Ibsen arrived. But this influence promptly showed itself, first in the enlarged range of subject-matter, and next in the cleaning-up of technical processes — asides, arbitrary entrances, and the like. We commonly date modern English drama from iPinero's "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," and the reno- Wated Jones and Pinero pretty much dominated the 'English theatre during the nineties. Theorists found abundant matter to praise in the work of these two ad- mirable technicians. But when the centre of interest shifted to another group of writers the cause of the "well made play" seemed to have lost the fight. Ber- nard Shaw , who understood the well-made play quite adequately, and wrote one every now and then by way of variety, was chiefly interested in vitalising audiences with his ideas. And with a courage and clear-headed- ness which are rare among dramatists (whose practical success always seems to depend upon pleasing the great- est number in the easiest way) he continued to write what pleased him, throwing all the powers of one of the most vigorous digestive brains of the age into the theatre. This courage was continued in his close friend, Gjan- ville Barker, in some ways the most masterful writer the modern English drama has produced. What chiefly dis- 216 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY tinguishes Barker from lesser dramatistis is what distin- guishes big men from little men generally — brains. Barker rejected the dogma of the well made play as completely as Shaw rejected the dogma of the romantic love-affair. His plays are filled with passages of ^just talk, " talk which it is a rare privilege to read or hear, but talk which has nothing to do with a "conflict of wills." It would be foolish to deny that he understands the presenting of character on the stage, or the building up of an effective theatrical scene. His starting-point is the idea, which dictates the whole form and content of his drama. His reputation as a dramatist has been slow to develop, partly because he has insisted upon writing what he likes instead of what the crowd likes, and partly because he has been averse to letting his plays be performed by actors who do not understand what he is driving at. Certainly his comparatively slight reputation is not wholly to be explained by the statement that his plays are "undramatic." Shaw is usually quite as undramatic. But Shaw, still suspect in England, has a prodigious reputation on the continent. He is to the ever-generous Germans "Europe's best jester." The Hofburgtheater of Vienna was only too glad to get his "Pymalion" for a first performance on any stage, and became the hero of an international lit- erary event by staging it. Shaw has made his way by force of brain and wit without making concessions to the mob. And Barker could doubtless do the same. But he is chiefly interested in his business of play-pro- ducing, in which he is teaching London as fast as she can learn. Play-writing is his side activity. But that need not prevent us from appreciating his plays at their full remarkable value. We feel in his dialogue an abundance of brain power which we meet THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 217 nowhere else save in Strindberg. We feel that quality which is the excellent basis for the English love of com- I promise — the ability to see both sides, to evaluate allj the forces truly. Barker is a partisan, as earnest a moralist as Brieux, but not a blind partisan. To read or see his plays, after the scarlet emotionalism of Ger- man or French realism, is to feel a cold, purifying winter wind. But now and again this intellectual vigour be- comes translated into emotionalism of strange power. After a whole act of esoteric political discussion in "Waste" we have a short love-scene, one of the most wonderful in all modern drama, which reveals every ele- ment of the emotion of the two people, but carries us along with their feelings. This ability to show the inside of the clock as well as its face, as Dr. Johnson put it, is the great contribution of intellectual validity to the making of plays. In "The Marrying of Ann Leete" the heroine re- volts, as so many English girls are revolting nowadays, and runs away with her gardener. Notice one fact about this action of hers: it explains much about the "intellectual drama" which Barker represents. Ann Leete eloped with her gardener for eugenic reasons, but from emotional motives. She was not a puppet in her action. But she was nevertheless the exponent of a philosophy. The playwright understood and showed both aspects of the case. He kept her flesh and blood, but showed her as raw material for ideas. "The Voysey Inheritance" is a study of the ethics of business dishonesty, which we have met with before in Giacosa's "The Stronger." "Waste" shows the waste to society resulting from stringent application of moral co d eg — waste equally in the weak woman who commits abortion out of fear, and in the strong man who is 218 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY forced from public life by scandal. The third act, in which politicians discuss all aspects of the case, is much like the third act of "Professor Bernhardi" — round- table debate in both cases, but utterly absorbing to one who is willing to bring his brain with him to the theatre. "The Madras House" is Barker's study of the place held by sex in modern life. The Madras House manu- factures women's clothes — that is one of the starting- points. Sex is commercially profitable, very profitable. The fashion-setter, followed slavishly by all English ladies who are com/me U faut, is a certain Parisian damsel with whom one would not dare live in the same block. So the question is discussed, partly by an Eng- lishman who has become Mohammedan in order to be consistent in his attitude toward women. The dramatis persona? shift in each act. Only one of them appears in all four. It is like Brieux's "La Robe Rouge," viewing one subject from four different angles. The play is amazing in its broadness and seeming completeness. It is one of the best statements of Peminism, from the per- sonal standpoint, that has ever appeared. John Galsworthy makes the well made play as well as any Englishman now living. But he is too big a man to be bound by it. His keen sense of proportion and fitness comes from the artist in him, which is always detached and critical, but alwa ys sympat hetic. His " probTeTli" ula r V» state their problem, but do~not solve it. "Strife" show labour and capital wasting themselves fruitlessly in their refusal to compromise. "Justice" shows how our legal procedure "but fans the wheat and saves the chaff with a most evil fan." "The Pigeon" is a delightful character comedy on the impulse of sweet charity in men. "The Fugitive" is much like Brieux's "La Femme Seule," showing how society bullies the THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 219 woman who tries to be independent of men. In all this Galsworthy's touch is deft and sure. His characters act in their own right. He is their observer, but not their manipulator. His seriousness is always reserved, his humour always a trifle bitter. In combining strong hu- man sympathy and sensitive artistic reserve he is more like Turgenieff than like any other English writer. Bern ard s hfl^ is one of the few dramatists who be- came well known in the nineties, of whom it can be said that he hasn't been largely repeating himself since. His plays have undergone no striking "new manner." They have become rather more discursive and loose jointed, more concerned with ideas themselves and less with ob- vious action. There has been less writing with a par- ticular end in view, as when "The Man of Destiny" and "Captain Brassbound's Conversion" were written for Ellen Terry. There has been, in short, a fairly steady tendency away from the type of play prevalent in the nineties, such as "Candida" on the one hand and "The Devil's Disciple" on the other. The newer Shaw play is likely to be "a debate in one sitting," like "Misalli- ance," with the-a1ry-i»sfcmctionSTh~at the curtain might be lowered whenever the audience began to get bored. The topic of discussion becomes more and more the play itself, as in "Getting Married," in which every possible attitude toward the estate of matrimony, seem- ingly, is personified in some character who sits in the old Gothic kitchen and thrashes it out with all comers from the Greengrocer to the Bishop. Here the plot is merely the progress of the discussion, from the pro- prieties of the approaching wedding up to a beautiful contract for a universal marriage arrangement, and down again into the slough of human cross-purposes. And here and there in his output is a play like "The 220 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY Showing-up of Blanco Posnet," banned in England be- cause of some supposed blasphemy ; or "The Dark Lady of the Sonnets" in which the Bard engagingly pleads Shaw's own views concerning him. And then "Fanny's First Play," most delightful of "pot-boilers," and a "box- office success," among the best of them in recent years. And within twelve months "Androcles and the Lion," a whimsical dramatisation of the struggle of Christian and Pagan; "Great Catherine," one more addition to Shaw's list of historical figures; and "Pygmalion," which Germany seems to have adopted as its own. No regularity here; no fixed purpose discoverable. But, be it noted in passing, a freshness and spontaneity of output which belies the ancient charge that Shaw is a "cerebral" writer, without the artist's joy in creation. Hi s freedom of artistic fo rm is one of the most refresh- ing things about him. But the intellectual Shaw has not stood still. He seems to have determined not to be caught growing old, and when his Socialist comrades are busy refining the Marxism or Fabianism of the nineties he propounds the revolutionary doctrine of equal pay for all adults in the state, regardless of the service performed. He gives us in the most compact form and most vigorous of English, a discourse on mar- riage (in the preface to "Getting Married") which, though eminently practical, starts from the most ex- treme premise it is possible to find. Though there is little to be said in general about the newer Shaw, there is so much mental stimulation to be had in detail that the world could easily stand another book about the Shaw of the last three years. It only needs to be said that this man, after a quarter of a century of fighting un- compromisingly for the things he wanted, has become a brilliant commercial success. THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 221 Of the remaining English dramatists one must men- tion Bayrie, who, with "What Every Woman Knows" and theimmortal "Peter Pan" has been steadily increas- ing his reputation and his bank account; and Arnold Bennett, inveterate pot-boiler, who has turned his atten- tion to the stage with the airy remark that writing for the theatre requires no special knowledge or technique, and has produced three or four delightful comedies and many a fat royalty sheet out of his efforts. The late Stanley Houghton, author of "Hindle Wakes," and one of the most gifted of the younger men, had a scarcely equalled ability at combining the polemic idea with the diverting story. Rudolph Besier is still being given his chance to fulfil the splendid promise of his early play "Don." And two English women, Elizabeth Baker with "Chains," and Githa Sowerby with "Rutherford and Son," have easily taken their place among the dram- atists of the second rank. The former play is a study in monotony ; and the latter the familiar story of tainted business and the ethical struggle of the second genera- tion. But quite .out of this class and among the best, or nearly there, one should mention the poet, John Masefield, author of "Nan" and "Pompey the Great." "Nan" is one of the loveliest of plays, a tragedy of sim- ple people which seems to rise at times to Shakespearian dignity. "Pompey" can almost stand beside Shaw's "Caesar and Cleopatra" as a pioneer in what will surely some day become an influential form of drama — the his- torical play in modern but lyric prose. The unusual talents shown by Mr. Masefield are equally those of word, plot, and character. Off in the corner of the Empire a group of writers, clustering around the Abbey Theatre of Dublin, have written a number of realistic comedies which are quite 222 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY as permanent additions to English literature as the plays of Oscar Wilde. These plays are almost as well known among English-speaking nations as those of Shaw, and their virtues need no eulogy to make them appreciated. Shaw has given the highest praise to Lady Gregory, the most notable of these writers. The Abbey Theatre has been almost as masterful at self-advertise- ment as Shaw himself, and the early struggles of the institution are well known. The moral is obvious ; this local activity, chiefly amateur in spirit, produced in a few years a body of dramatic literature as permanent and almost as rtotable as the two score or more of Lon- don theatres were able to achieve in two decades. The Abbey Theatre is the finest text for the apologist for localism in art. The one thoroughly encouraging thing that is to be said about the American drama is that it has a future rather than a past. The division into "high-brow" and "low-brow" well expresses the two extremes that domi- nate American dramatic output, both without any es- pecial courage. The former is industriously copying foreign masterpieces without imitating their boldness of form and message. The latter is as industriously fol- lowing the fashions of Broadway, and turning out a type of play so "up to the minute" that a delay of three months in production is the difference between success and failure. The critic has a sorry time review- ing this dramatic output and trying to separate the worthy from the unworthy. On the whole, the "low- brows" are right in maintaining that the most valuable contributions of American drama are to be found among those plays that please the rag-tag rabble. The plays of George Ade and George Cohan, coming straight out of American life and true to it alone, are of the Exterior of the "Large' Professor Max ' Court Theatre at Stuttgart Littmann, Architect THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 223 stuff that made the Abbey Theatre plays and the great Russian comedies. Europe, while maintaining a supe- rior tone in regard to serious American literary efforts, has always been quick to recognise what was truly dis- tinctive of America — Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Jack London and so forth. Americans have never so true an eye for their national product as the Germans and Russians have. And so it is the American comedies which have chiefly represented American drama abroad. George Cohan is now one of the most sought-after dram- atists in London theatres. Miss Mayo's "Baby Mine" was recently acted in Paris, and the French liked it. Serious American plays, on the other hand, have with few exceptions failed in Europe, amid the sneers of the critics at American "crudeness." However, the serious plays, though they lack any vestige of intellectual power, often come out of Ameri- can life, as regards externals if not as regards the spirit. Charles Klein's "The Lion and the Mouse," slippery as it is when regarded as a work of art, was really a note- worthy achievement, since it ranked at the time as a serious reflection of the American social conscience. Since it opened the way there have been any number of vigorous plays expressing the state of the public mind on matters of politics and business. Probably the most able of the serious American dramatists, in point of execution, is Eugene Walter, who in "The Wolf" and "The Easiest Way" wrote plays worthy of being classed with the best European dramas. No American playwright can equal him in the writing of realistic dialogue, which is dramatic and characteristic and still true to life. Edward Sheldon, exuberantly trying his hand at many things at once, has written a number of plays in which a lively sense of 224 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY the stage often atones for the lack of what we must call an artistic conscience. Augustus Thomas has brought something of his own into American plays in his fine newly acquired sense of finesse in dialogue (a most un- American thing in most people's minds). He is one of the few American playwrights who really understands and respects French plays. Moreover he is one of the few successful American writers who is sincere in trying to say something in his plays, and often lands a failure through too much zeal. Charles Rann Kennedy, though a native of England, has done most of his work in America. Here we have a true "high-brow" who has to his credit at least one "box-office success" — "The Servant in the House." This play, admirable alike as a sermon and as a technical achievement in dramaturgy, was one of the memorable things in American stage history. Mr. Kennedy's in- creasing mysticism and symbolism have helped to keep him from any fruitful connection with the commercial stage since. Of quite another calibre, though no less sincere, is Joseph Medill Patterson, whose plays, "The Fourth Estate," "Rebellion," "Dope" and "By-Prod- ucts" combine critical thought and observation of life with a considerable amount of dramatic ability. One of the few "unproduced dramatists" who deserve high rank among American authors is "Upton Sinclair," au- thor of "The Machine," "The Nature Woman" and "Prince Hagen." The last named, the author states, was rejected by the New Theatre in New York on the express grounds that it "was not in accord with the principles of the founders." For Mr. Sinclair is first of all a Socialist, and all that he writes is devoted to the exposition of a proletarian philosophy. This fact has no doubt helped to keep his considerable abilities from THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 225 achieving practical success on the stage. In this char- acteristic, apart from the artistic value of his plays, he is ahead of his time. The day for a Socialist drama on the stage will surely come. One should not close even such a brief listing of American playwrights without mentioning Mr. Percy MacKaye. His life, from the "practical" point of view, has been one succession of failures. But they are fail- ures of the sort that America needs more of. For Mr. MacKaye has never conceded an iota to popular effect. His verse often rises to a high level, as in the lovely "Sappho and Phaon." He is master of a certain whimsical humour which never fails to be delightful. Some of his realistic comedies have had a mild success on the stage. But his dialogue is not realistic in spirit and his plots incline too much to the arbitrary. The thing that is chiefly admirable in Mr. MacKaye's work is his courage to be himself — the virtue which, more than any other, is lacking in present-day American drama. CHAPTER XIII THE LITERARY FORCES : THE IMAGINATIVE DRAMATISTS WE have observed in a former chapter that though the tendency among scene designers is all toward the imaginative, dramatic authors are still giving their best energies to realistic work. The situation seems anomalous. But the fact is that we de not realise how much imaginative work is being produced now for the theatre, and of what a high order of excellence some of it is. Certainly the reaction against the realism of the nineties has set in. In Ger- many there is scarcely any realistic work of distin- guished quality produced. And though it cannot be said that the imaginative work is of the first quality, it is evident that the efforts of German authors are di- rected toward the poetic. France at present possesses one of the greatest poetic dramatists in all her history. In Russian drama imagination is exuberant. And in both Germany and Austria-Hungary there has appeared a certain sort of poetry-in-realism which is of the high- est interest and significance for the drama of the near future. And finally, in Italy there is a poetic drama of the most impressive character. What causes this imaginative impulse at this time it is not easy to say. Reactio n from extreme realism accounts for part of it, but not all. Our scientific and mercenary age is commonly said to be hostile to the s H U w H 3 C O '3 z U < a o as w H z fc be » g c 2 H H '3 55 J -Q w aj H M u. o < S 4-J a) J3 w +J g o -G 3 w ■*-. Oh fa o O W « a w a, .o H u -C THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 227 poetic, but such an observer as Professor James has found the modern world to be highly idealistic, not to say credulous. It is a time when painting and music are in wildest revolutionary transitions. Perhaps the most adequate thing is to say that the modern world is full of a number of things. Among them the poetic drama will certainly find a place. And it seems true that the effort and demand for it is considerably greater than has yet been made evident. The distinguished names are not many outside of those which are universally known, such as Rostand and d'Annunzio. Much of the output, such as that of Hardt and Eulenberg in Ger- many, is decidedly disappointing. But the tendency is so spontaneous, and is so insistently appearing in all the nooks and crannies, that one must conclude that it has a prosperous period ahead of it. In thinking of poetic plays at the present time we should avoid the careless habit of thinking of them as though they were in opposition to the realistic. The layman may allow his sympathies to be drawn into a controversy such as "realistic vs. poetic," without realis- ing that the whole tournament has been arranged by interested parties. Realistic writers need not be the tough, salty customers that their opponents try to paint. There is no essential conflict between the real- istic and the imaginative; there is no inconsistency be- tween seeing life truly and thinking about it pictur- esquely. Again and again, in authors who are most strict to actuality, we feel touches of the tenderest poetry, or fine rhetorical passages which, while remain- ing true to life, prove the writer's feeling for verbal beauty. In fact the very impulse of the realistic dram- atist, which is to select according to some principle of his own out of the things he sees about him in life, is 228 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY precisely that of the poet. Realistic and imaginative are here used merely to classify plays conveniently according to their outward characteristics. They do not imply any judgment on literary excellence. To one person even a grocery bill may be poetic. To another an exquisite poem may be as matter-of-fact as a grocery bill. It is in Italy that the modern poetic play has ap- peared in greatest splendour. The last half century has surely seen few finer plays than " Francesca da Rimin i." D'Annunzio does not need to die to gain his reputation as the great master of modern Italian prose, and though his dramatic output has been uneven he has deserved, in his best work, the almost unrivalled place he holds. In every way he is distinctive. The love that appears in his plays is a bright scarlet. Each play is weighted down with the imagery of its locale, and is executed with the highest virtuosity. "Francesca" is filled to overflowing with the spirit and lore of the Renaissance. "The Daughter of Jorio" is saturated with folk cus- toms and imagery. "The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian" is surrounded with a clear cold atmosphere of monasti- cism. The scene on the battlements in the second act of "Francesca" has an emotional power that is almost un- paralleled, but built up out of the simplest plot ma- terials. As a plot-weaver d'Annunzio can be extremely deft, as in "The Daughter of Jorio," in which nearly every turn of the action depends somehow on the pe- culiar customs of the country. Usually, however, he plans his scenes chiefly with a view to their pictorial effect. His more realistic plays, such as "Giaconda" and "A Light Under a Bushel," lose most of the beauty that makes the poetic plays so remarkable. Some- times, as in the last mentioned play, evil passion becomes THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 229 so all-engrossing and so meaningless that we should be glad to be rid of the whole affair. It is perhaps a pity that d'Annunzio's life has been so perturbed and uncer- tain. His exile from Italy (only half voluntary) re- sulted in a regrettable dislike for everything Italian and a desire to write in French in which the last three or four plays, none of them first rate, have been written. But for all that we might wish d'Annunzio different from what he is, we must bless the generous fortune that gave us "Francesca" and admit its author to be one of the great dramatic poets of modern times. Another classic of modern Italian drama is Sem Benelli's tragedy, "La Cena delle Beffe" or "The Sup- per of Jokes." This, as one realises early in the action, was written by the hand of a master. Like "Francesca," it passes in the Renaissance — in the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent. The Italians, especially those of the Renaissance, have always loved a joke. Here the poet will give us a gorgeous one for our money. Gianetto, puny, but crafty, has been mistreated by way of sport, by two bullying brothers. Through the winking of Lo- renzo he is enabled to pay them back in their own coin. He spurs his older rival on to making a fool of himself in public, and to such an extent that he is arrested as a madman. Then Gianetto calmly possesses himself of his rival's mistress. Next he sets the man's old victims to torturing him while he is in bonds. Then the man is set at liberty and Gianetto plays with him — wit against strength — with the older man realising perfectly that he has been made ridiculous, yet able to do nothing but fly into a more overpowering rage. Finally he believes he has found a chance for revenge : he will put a dagger into Gianetto's body. He has finished the deed. He sees Gianetto looking at him— and smiling. He looks 230 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY at the corpse. He has killed his own brother. And he comes out of the room of death a gibbering idiot. The I joke has worked. The adroitness and sureness with ) which the involved plot is developed is masterly; the feeling of the Renaissance pervades the play even as it does "Francesca." The characterization, on a broad and heroic scale, is extremely vivid. The verve of a lively story well told is never failing. Earlier plays, particularly "The Mask of Brutus," seem to be only studies for the mature poet who com- mences with "The Supper of Jokes." A later play, "The Love of Three Kings," made a deep impression in America, performed as an opera to Montemezzi's music. It is a story without complexity, so straight- forward and nai've that it seems to come out of a me- diaeval ballad. Fiora, living in the Italy of darkest Christian times, is seized as wife by a conquering bar- barian, and is watched by his blind old father when he is away fighting. And while the husband is thus away one day there comes Fiora's lover, whom she had loved before the intruder came. But she wishes to be true to her husband and grants the lover only a last kiss. And during this kiss the old king Archibaldo feels their pres- ence, and though the lover escapes and Fiora denies, he senses the truth in the tone of her voice, and strangles her. Out of jealousy he had taken a personal revenge, for he had loved her in more than a fatherly way. And then Fiora's corpse is placed in the chapel in the vaults beneath the castle, for its final rites, and poison is put on her lips, for Archibaldo wishes to catch the man who loved her — with the bait of a last kiss. He succeeds, for the lover comes. But Archibaldo's son comes too, for his last kiss, and the old king can only hear the two men falling by the bier. There is a certain archaic THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 231 flavour to this story as Benelli tells it — a quality which I is the creation of genius. The piece is filled with poetry, \bits of symbolism or irony which arise naturally out J of the action and interpret themselves without straining. The characters, individual but not particularised, seem made to be set up in mosaic in a Romanesque church. The piece is said to be an elaborate allegory on Italy, new and old. But beyond any such intention it is a great acted story, told by the means that are oldest to the story-tellers of men. "La Gorgona," a recent play, has more of the con- ventional heroic flavour, but like all Benelli's works, keeps constantly high above the plane of blare and fus- tian. La Gorgona is a maiden of Pisa, chosen by the people to defend the city by her faithfulness and vir- ginity while the men are away at war. Outside the walls waits an allied Florentine army of defense, pledged not to enter the city. But the son of the commander, acting at first from a particular motive of pique, steals within the walls and makes love to La Gorgona in her room. The maiden loves him, and breaks her oath of chastity. But the lover is now doomed to death by his father's oath to the Pisans. Then a bit of plot-intrigue, the return of the Pisans in triumph, and the death, un- necessary as the event proved, of the lover. In these plays we are in a very different world from that of d'Annunzio, where the em otion is e verythin g. For with Benelli the story comesnrst; Hetreats his fable as the old bards treated theirs, lost in it as in utter truth, unconscious of many things which refined folk might criticise, caught up in the sort of fervour that moves primitive people. Where d'Annunzio is nerves, Benelli is muscles. Benelli represents men youthful and objective; d'Annunzio represents them middle-aged and 232 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY sensual. It is a fine thing to bring into self-conscious modern drama the spirit of the great ballads. And this is what Benelli has done. Over the works of Ros tand and M aeterlinck , as well known as any modern "plays of any land, we need not pause. Rostand's astonishing virtuosity and Maeter- linck's astonishing range have received their universal praise. It is a rare thing to have two such plays as "Cy*ftBa4le_Bergerac" and "L'Aiglon" appear in one generation. Asfor Maeterlinck, he has given us in "Monna Vanna" one of the most perfect and lovely plays of modern times. As experiments, his early plays, of which "Pelleas et Melisande" is the best known, have opened up a wide field of sensuous effect in the theatre. And his delightful fairy play, "The Blue Bird," which has been seen from one end of Europe to the other, has at least proved that his genius is not essentially morbid, as his first work made us believe. The weakness of Ma eterlinck is that he is purely a literary man. He has spent much energy on books of "philosophy" that could not live a year except for their style. And his plays are apt to show this spineless softness. But the technical value of the early plays as way-showers can hardly be overestimated. For Maeterlinck was the first man to stylise the written drama. E mile Verhaeren . though he writes in French, repre- sents Belgium in a somewhat national way. He is pri- 'marily an impressionistic poet, an experimenter in free verse and sensuous word-imagery, and would not be mentioned in this book except for one remarkable play, "LesAubes." His two other plays, "The Cloister" and "Philip II," which have been acted in Brussels and Paris, are too flat and uncoloured to leave much of an impression. But "Les Aubes" is unforgettable. The THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 233 "dawn" it shows is that of universal peace. The play is half-realistic, half-imaginative. It seeks to narrate how peace between the nations first began to be a reality on the earth — how Oppidomagne (presumably Paris) was besieged, and how Jacques Herenien, the "tribune," made a compact with the popular leaders in the enemy's army to deliver up the city to a peaceful entry. The officers on both sides rage. But to the soldiers on both sides the point is so obvious — they have nothing to gain by killing one another. And so the besieging army is feasted on the provisions which were stored up for the siege. A few officers had tried to use coercion — and their soldier's guns had been turned on them. Herenien is murdered in a last desperate effort on the part of the dying government, and the play ends with the funeral oration delivered by a popular leader of the once hostile army. The play is more than a pipe-dream of a senti- mentalist's leisure. The sentiment, among the rank and file of European armies, is not so far from that pic- tured in the play, and it is growing each year by leaps and bounds. The popular uprising of Oppidomagne is pictured with obvious reference to past uprisings in Paris, and on the whole the play is given a surprising appearance of verisimilitude. And the author is able, by his own magic, to fill the reader with his own enthusi- asm for the idea of peace by means that are not obvious, but some secret of his craft. /Passing over the imaginative plays of the Irish -School, which are too well known to need comment here, we should notice briefly the poetic drama of modern Gerjnany. It is disappointing, one must confess. It is hardly what we should expect from a great empire at the height of material and spiritual prosperity. It by no means matches the brilliancy of the German theatres. 234. THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY It is only as a promise of better things in the future that these plays have much significance to the outside world. Best known among the German poetic dramatists is certainly H ugo vnn H ofmann fltTigj. Yet he is known chiefly as writer of the librettos for Strauss's operas — "Elektra," "Der Rosenkavalier" and "Ariadne auf Naxos." "Elektra" is without doubt a fine piece of work. The ancient tale is retold with brilliant, though morbid, emphasis on the feelings of the heroine. It is a terrible study in the psychology of repression. For the brutal vigour of the writer's verse the German lan- guage was the ideal medium. And though in von Hof- mannsthal we do not find German at its most exalted, we frequently find it at its most powerful. But few of Hofmannsthal's plays are so firm and vigorous as "Elektra." "The Marriage of Zobeide" is an elaborate oriental piece in one act, telling the sorrows of the heroine, married to a husband she does not love, and fleeing to a lover who does not love her. "Adven- turer and Singer" is only an ordinary piece of intrigue. But the one-act morality, "The Fool and Death," is a real contribution to contemporary drama. The fool is called upon by Death, the Fiddler, to depart this life. He is unwilling. Then to the sound of the fiddle comes first his dead mother, then his former sweetheart, then his old friend. Each lived only for the Fool, and what has the Fool done with this costly life of his? Yes, he is ready to die. And Death, while taking him, marvels at these beings, who explain what cannot be explained, who read what is not written, and chart paths in the eternal darkness. Herbert Eulenberg, who has been writing plays steadily for some fifteen years, is regarded as one of the most promising of German dramatists. His orig- THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 235 inality consists in extracting a strange sort of other- worldliness out of the realistic method. His characters are never real. His plots are intricate and ever-shifting, and his meaning, if he has any, is always being buried in symbolism. Much more direct is Ernst Hardt, author of "Gudrun" and "Tantris the Fool." The former is a frank and lively tale of Vikings, the men fighting and the women intriging over the Princess Gudrun. "Tan- tris" is a reworking of the Tristan legend, in which Tristan reappears to his Isolde in the disguise of a fool, and is put to severe tests by her to prove his identity. He endures the test — and leaves her forever. An unexpected and reassuring note in modern Ger- many is struck by Karl Schonherr, whose play "Faith and Fireside" was an overwhelming popular success a few years ago. Schonherr has for some years been an occasional dramatist, dealing almost solely with the peasant class. In "Faith and Fireside" he struck the heroic vein. He tells a warm-hearted story of the Swiss Protestants suffering under the religious persecution of Austria. The tale and the style are so far removed from !the self-conscious sensuality of much modern German literature, that it seems a startling event. Moreover the play is in itself a fine achievement — the dignity of Schiller without his bombast. For the end of this chapter we have reserved two men who cannot properly be classed anywhere. The first is Ferenc Molnar , who some years ago made one of the popular successes of the season with "T he Devil ," and then passed out of sight. He has broadened and deepened in the meantime. "The Devil" was a realistic play in form, but its success was due to the imagination, or the pseudo-imagination, represented by its infernal hero. Since then Molnar has dealt much in th e - fiup& C: 236 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY natur al. But he is more than a mere theatrical ma- gician. For in " Lillipm " he has written a play that must be set down as the work of genius. Lilliom is a good-for-nothing of Buda Pesth. He marries a stupid little girl, finds work, is discharged, is horrified at the news that he will soon be expected to provide for an- other member of the family ; he arranges with a pal to do a profitable piece of highway robbery, gambles away his share before the job is pulled off, and throws him- self under a passing railway train. He is tried for sui- cide and other sins, before the magistrate of the suicide court of Hell. He refuses to repent for anything, and when he is about to enter his fourteen-year torment asks for a cigarette. At the end of fourteen years he returns to earth, being given the chance to show how his soul has improved during his infernal residence. Lilliom has not improved. He will never improve. It is against his religion. The detectives of Hell take him back to his punishment. The tone of harsh laughter that pervades this play is the work of a dramatist who knows his business every inch of the way. Lilliom is one of those characters who stand for a universal human trait. And a human trait was never presented in more engaging manner than in Molnar's play. And finally, there is Frank Wedekind . Nobody has yet succeeded in classifying him — except, to the satis- faction of some, as an immoral dramatis t.- The classi- fication "immoral" might be allowed to stand, except that it would be quite inadequate. His plays are filled with the most strenuously immoral people that were ever gathered together under one author's name. In "The Box of Pandora" he has apparently tried to ex- hibit every known type of sexual degenerate. Decent THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 237 people appear in his plays only to be laughed at. And yet — to see this is only to see the superficial side of the man. Wedekind is not the beast that some would paint him. Isn't it possible that he is laughing, not at decency, but at the Germany of to-day which is so unnaturally interested in the contents of Pandora's Box? But he will not allow himself to be explained. If he seems to have been reasonable or consistent for a moment, he immediately contradicts himself — and laughs at his observer. His .dialogue has a mordant brilliancy that is rarely equalled. It is a dialogue bristling with "points." It is, in short, the work of the former editor of the German comic weekly "Simplicis- simus." Wedekind's plays are "Simplicissimus" put on the stage. Wedekind is known in this country chiefly by "The Awakening of Spring," which was his earliest performed work. In it he seemed to be a sort of apostle of rational education for children. But the idea was soon dispelled. There is nothing of the apostle about Wedekind. He is only ajo ke-jnaker out of "Simplicissimus." He may have deep moral convictions, but his business does not consist in them. His business is to make jokes. And through a long list of somewhat formless plays he has jeeringly added to his gallery of characters from mod- ern German life — with a biting wit and a command over the resources of the German language, that place him at the head of the German dramatists of to-day. CHAPTER XIV THE SOCIAL FORCES: MODERN THEATRE ARCHITECTURE A GLANCE at the theatres of the eighteenth century will convince us how vastly removed our contemporary theatre structure is from its essential purpose. For our theatre, on its architectural side, is simply one of the many eighteenth century ele- ments that have been carried over into modern life. While the meaning has changed utterly, the form, the hull, has been retained. The modern theatre building is an archaism. For our theatre architecture, like the royal sub- vention, is a remnant, a "hang-over," from the days when art was a mere ornament for the aristocracy. The royal subventioned theatre, in Germany at least, has been partially remoulded until it approximates, in some measure, its modern democratic purpose. And to a cer- tain extent, of course, the modern theatre building has been worked over until its archaic form is not so trou- blesome. But essentially it remains the theatre of roy- alty and of the court. Since it was established, the whole view of society, including that of its artistic life, has been changed; whereas the eighteenth century thought of society as developed "from the top down," we think of it as developed "from the bottom up." That is, speaking broadly, our laws, customs, kings and gov- ernments, are to us the product of the people; to the THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 239 eighteenth century mind the people were the product of the laws, customs, kings and governments. With such an absolute change of front in our view of society (and of society's theatres) there is demanded an equally radical change of front in the basis and method for de- veloping its art institutions (including its theatre build- ings). But until the last few years nothing of the sort has been attempted ; we have been content to modify the worst features of the Qufcmoded aristocratic theatre, and make it serve as best it could. The modern theatre started, of course, in a thor- oughly democratic way. It was at first no more than a performance of wandering players or jugglers in the open street, while the common people stood on the pavement (corresponding to the Elizabethan pit) and those who lived in the houses adjoining the street sat at their windows, which corresponded to the Elizabethan gallery or to the loges of the modern opera house. Or the play — a "mystery" or "miracle" — was performed on the church steps, the people standing or sitting on the grass, while the honoured guests perhaps had special seats built for them around the sides. But this demo- cratic art, like most of the democratic arts of the Mid- dle Ages, was attached by the aristocracy and was set to work ornamenting their lazy lives. So the primitive form of theatre was made into a fashionable playhouse with the materials at the disposal of the kings and dukes. The Theatre Farnese at Parmr., for instance, was modelled on the old Roman amphitheatre (a true prototype of our modern "ho r se-sh oe" theatre). Or theatrical performances, ballets or masques, were given in one of the larger rooms of the palace, the stage being constructed at one end, and boxes built along the walls. This three-sided auditorium was only another and more J3 3 B , a £ '£ o - > 01 «i Ph J3 y £> e 3 Oh c J- fc iA u o p g CO 4) &2 a s $% o fa o «2 h < ►J o C^ to exhibit its audience but to exhibit its play. All shall \ therefore be arranged for the purpose of giving a good ^view of the stage from every seat, good acoustics and *\good ventilation, and this with the greatest possible (■ economy of space and of money. Beauty is by no ) means a non-essential (quite the contrary), but it is to be developed from the utilitarian demands of the building. The principle that everybody shall be able to see implies, in Professor Littmann's theory, the principle that each row of seats shall be at least eye-distance above the row in front. This makes necessary a rise in the auditorium floor, somewhat suggesting that of the old Greek amphitheatres, and from this fact Professor Littmann calls his theatre type the "am- phitheatre," without implying that it is semicircu- lar or "horse-shoe" in shape, like the classical thea- tres. In fact, one of the cardinal principles in. the Litt- mann theatre is that the rows shall be nearly straight, so that every one shall have a direct view of the stage. The seats can continue to rise up to an arbitrary level which Professor Littmann makes the top of the pros- cenium, or stage frame, so that every seat shall afford a view of the whole depth and height of the stage. Ac- cordingly the galleries, if any, must be short, for Pro- fessor Littmann will not risk the acoustics of the ground floor by overhanging it with a long gallery. Here, then, we have all the essential specifications for a Litt- THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 245 mann theatre, drawn from its utilitarian demands- straight rows, a steeply rising ground floor, and a gal- lery, if desirable, starting about where the ground floor seats end, and rising only a short distance, in no case above the level of the proscenium frame; there shall be \no side or proscenium boxes, and in general no boxes $t all except, when demanded, that of the king at the back. For the sake of acoustics the interior shall be con- structed entirely of wood. Sometimes there are heavy pillars or rather pilasters of wood along the walls, sup- porting beams which run across the ceiling, and these are regarded as having a beneficial effect on the acous- tics. 1 One thing Professor Littmann insists upon — that there shall be no cloth or curtains beyond what is abso- lutely necessary. The Kiinstlertheater at Munich, for instance, contains no cloth whatever in its auditorium, beyond a light carpet for the aisles. The seats are quite comfortable without being made into sofas. This "amphitheatre" principle can be applied to many different types of building, as Professor Littmann has demonstrated. The Kiinstlertheater is a small ex- perimental playhouse, made for a special type of stage. It can use, or even waste, space liberally, because its prices are high and its audience will generally be a 'The question of theatre acoustics, which has in the past been an affair of the merest guess-work, even to the best of architects, is just beginning to become a matter of exact science. Dean Sabine, of the Harvard School of Sciences, has made a detailed study of the action of sound-waves in theatres, tracing minutely their courses and reflections, and has been able to apply his the- ories with much success in the designing of new theatres. He is frequently called upon to diagnose and prescribe for a faulty auditorium, as he did in the case of the New York "New Theatre," which was much improved in its acoustical properties after the changes made under his direction. 246 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY selected one. So the angle of rise on its ground floor is very high, equal nearly to a "whole head." There is no gallery. The Prinzregenten Theater in Munich is built for expensive Wagner festivals, has nearly as steep a floor-incline, and is similarly without galleries. Both have a row of unobtrusive boxes at the back. On the whole the principle is the same in both, except that Professor Max Littmann, Architect. From Fuchs' "Die Revolution des Theaters." Longitudinal Section of the Kunstlertheater in Munich. Showing the steep floor-incline of the Littmann theatres. the Prinzregenten has a greater seating capacity and greater economy of space is observed. In the typical democratic theatre, on the other hand, Professor Littmann proceeds differently. Here economy of space and money is essential. If the cheap theatre is to pay it must have as many seats as possible. The problem, as in the Schiller Theater in Berlin, is that of making profitable concessions to economy of space — of getting as many seats as possible at the sacri- fice of some of their ideality, while still keeping them all good. This means that there must be more rows, THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 247 and hence a more moderate floor-incline. The architect found it profitable to increase the capacity to 1,450 by adding a short gallery of six rows and 250 seats, slightly overhanging the floor. There are no boxes, since these would either be too far on the side or would encroach upon the floor seats; and besides, special boxes are contrary to the democratic idea at stake. The PflRQUCT FLOOR From "The Architectural Review." Ground Plan op the New Court Theatre in Dresden. acoustical qualities are excellent. It may be doubted whether so large a theatre is suited for all types of plays — whether an "intimate" realistic drama does not lose most of its reality 100 feet from the stage. This, however, is not a criticism of the Littmann principle, which simply aims to do the best under the conditions at hand. And Professor Littmann, when the money is at his disposal, prefers to build a double theatre, one 248 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY small, for the intimate pieces, and one large, for the operas and spectacles. This is, in fact, what he did in the famous theatres at Stuttgart, and it is quite likely that the idea will hecome popular in the near future. Between these two extremes — the "art theatre" and the "popular theatre" — Professor Littmann applies his principles in many compromise cases. The ordinary court theatre, like that at Weimar or Stuttgart, con- tains the essentials of the amphitheatre principles, though considerably modified; when possible the boxes are removed away from the stage to a position where they will not obstruct the view. When the situation de- mands it Professor Littmann builds galleries, even ex- tensive ones (for he is far from being a "utopian"). In his municipal theatres, like those of Hildesheim or Posen, he strikes a compromise between the court theatre and the democratic theatre, building galleries large enough materially to increase the capacity, in view of the necessary production of operas and spectacular pieces, yet keeping the angle of rise high enough to afford almost unobstructed vision and the rows straight enough to afford a direct view. The Littmann principle is not, of course, the most economical in the sense of huddling the greatest number of seats into a given space. To a certain extent it sac- rifices quantity for quality. But the scientific value of the experiments lies in their obtaining the greatest economy (of space and of money) on a given basis of excellence for all. Their ethical value is in their courageous assertion of the democratic principle: "There shall be no bad seats ; there shall not even be any worse seats." In Professor Littmann we find not only the technical builder or the artistic builder, but first of all the economical builder and the democratic builder. THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 249 It need hardly be added that the Littmann theatres are of the highest excellence from the viewpoint of the actor and stage-manager. The beauty of the Littmann theatres surpasses any- thing in Europe. One may be horrified at this state- ment, as one recalls the glittering reputation of the Paris Opera House and the myriad of others that at- tempt to shine in its tinsel glory. And if one holds a Paris Opera House view of life — that a plain space is an ugly space, that only in many curves lies salvation — a man may call the Littmann theatres plain and cheap and go his way in peace. But the great buoyant prin- ciple of modern art, and especially of modern architec- ture, is that of simplicity. Instead of finding our beauty in endless adornment let us find it in endless selection. There may be a question as to which is the more "beauti- ful ;" there can hardly be a question as to which is the more noble. At all events, the Littmann theatres, and the modern German theatres in general, have chosen simplicity, and no one can deny that they have worked well. The plain walls on the exterior, cut with exquisite vertical lines and combining the most quiet and restful proportions give them a dignity which comports with a more serious and universal view of life than that of the theatre build- ers who held that the theatre should adorn a small and specially nurtured class. The long plain corridors of the foyers, tinted with a delicate "discreet" shade, and sometimes decorated with a vigorous frieze; the fine, candid proportions, the luxury of beautiful wood stained in rich, harmonious tones, the dignity of the square pilasters, the decent simplicity which seems to say: "We are gathered here to see something better than our clothes" — among these things one feels that, 250 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY in things of the theatre, at least, we are at last free of the velvet paw of the eighteenth century. From time to time there have been uncertain at- tempts and more uncertain theorisings toward a type of theatre which, though always dangling before us, has not been an actuality in daily life since the days of Rome. At last, thanks to the energy of Professor_Mas Reinhardt. and a group of enthusiastic (and moneyed) Germans, this too has been begun in Berlin. The type of theatre referred to is that which is sometimes known as the "folk" or "spectacle" theatre, but which we may for convenience know as the lj££oic ..theatre. It is in spirit exactly the opposite of the ideal theatre of the last twenty years — the "intimate" type. It aims at magnitude- — the greatest number of spectators, the most universal subjects, continua l "largen ess" o f effec t_ produced by striking obvious means, such as great masses of people, huge stage set- tings, the broadest kind of declamation and gestures, and grand sweeps of emotion. It is essentially that which the Greek tragedians had in mind. But many of the classic modern plays are equally suited to such per- formance, and from time to time plays are being written for the contemporary theatre which would gain in dig- nity and impressiveness when played on such a scale. It was a Greek revival which gave impulse to the idea in Germany — Reinhardt's "King QMipus" per- formed in the summer of 1910 in the great hall of the municipal exposition park in Munich. The production was later given in Berlin, and has been repeated several times since, to the material prosperity, both of its pro- ducer's fame and of the idea which it embodied. The performance was essentially modern, and a fair THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 251 test of the heroic theatre idea. It was sneered at by the "nine times wise" because of its falsification of the Sophoclean idea. It was, in fact, utterly un-Greek. Greek tragedy, as nearly as we can know it, was a static spectacle, measured and planned, held under firm control in every detail, free only in the emotional force underlying its poetry and slight action, and perhaps repressed even in that. In the Reinhardt production there was the modern feeling, dynamic movement, a continual sense of flux, of pressure, of bursting the limits. One example will illustrate this. The Greek chorus ("chorus of Theban old men" in this case) was composed of twelve or fifteen men who stood still and sang their lines, or danced in set designs. The Rein- hardt chorus was composed of several hundred men and women who rushed on the stage in terror and stretched their hands in supplication toward the altar. This picture with its hundreds of parallel and vanishing lines (the outstretched arms) pointing into space, would have been barbarous to the Greek sense. But the Reinhardt production was planned to capture the popular imagi- nation, to thrill, to intoxicate. It was violently, breath- lessly, moving. It was the old play played for modern people with modern means — surely no more illegal than playing Shakespeare with elaborate scenery. At all events, it succeeded brilliantly and tested out the sound- ness of the heroic theatre idea. When played in Berlin the "GMipus" was given in the Schumann Circus, a building holding some six thou- sand spectators, built in the form of a circle around the circular central stage. About a quarter of the seats in the great circle were taken down to make room for the heroic setting, a magnificent Doric temple. ,Tii£-_w_hole theatre, then, became much like that of the Greeks — a 252 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY \steeply rising amphitheatre comprising more than a full naif circle with a "set" at the back of the stage, and /the practical stage or "orchestra" extending out into > the audience. There was of course no curtain. The en- trances were made underneath the audience, from almost any direction, much as in the Roman amphitheatre. This may be taken roughly as the type of the "hero- ic" theatre. It will aim first of all to hold thousands of people. The play will be performed without scenery in the modern sense, out in the midst of the audience. This last fact practically triples the theatre's capacity, since it makes the side seats as good as any others. Professor Littmann's sketches for such a theatre provide a steeply rising ground floor and two galleries, with rows of loges between, which is perhaps a wise concession to modern demands. One of the most inspiring facts about the "heroic" theatre is that it will lower the price of admission to the size of almost any pocket-book. Such a playhouse in a large modern city, drawing on several hundred thou- sand or even several million people, nearly all of whom are economically within its range, could give very fine and elaborate performances and still make money. Such performances would hardly be continuous, but would probably be specially organised, three or four a year, and run till their public was exhausted. As to the qual- ity of these performances, the Germans seem to have no doubt. Professor Georg Fuchs, one of the chief sup- porters of the idea, says : "It goes without saying that the first producers and actors of the age, as well as a powerful chorus, are at our disposal." He says no more on the subject ; to him there is no more to be said. We may doubt whether such an opinion will hold for Amer- ica, but — we don't know ourselves yet. THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 253 But there is still another and more serious doubt: j Will the public, in the necessary multitudes, support jf such a theatre? The scheme plans to give the classic dramas, as the ones best suited to this type of theatre. Will such plays, traditionally the most distant and unin- teresting to the modern "average man," attract the pub- lic which now spends its pennies on the moving picture shows (the very public which must support the scheme if it is to be a success) ? To this question there is for Germany only one possible answer: Certainly they will. Can we not add that for America there is only one possible answer? Certainly they may? Among the plays which Professor Fuchs suggests as suitable for this theatre are the "Orestes" and "Prome- theus" of iEschylus ; the two "03dipus" plays of Soph- ocles; "The Cyclops" of Euripides; several of Aris- tophanes' comedies; some of the mediaeval mysteries adapted (which latter suggestion we shall amend by a vigorous "No ! In the original form !") ; a number of the historical plays, the tragedies and the comedies I of Shakespeare ; both parts of Goethe's "Faust" and his J "Gotz von Berlichingen ;" nearly all of Schiller's dramas, and two by a "very German" dramatist, Kleist. Professor Fuchs adds some of the operas of Gluck and Mozart, and especially massive productions of the Han- del oratorios and the more splendid choral works of musical literature. And it is of course quite possible that many of the best modern authors might come to write excellently in this genre. The nature of the performances in the "heroic" theatre would be quite special. We may take the Rein- hardt "ffidipus" as a type. Since most of the action is in the open anything approaching an "illusive" scene must be out of the question. The back set, like Professor 254 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY Reinhardt's Doric temple, will be only in the nature of poetic suggestion. It will establish the mood of the play rather than provide a scenic background. All , charm of detail, all warmth of "intimacy" must be radi- (jcally dispensed with. In compensation we have those beauties, much more precious to some people, which come from grand proportions — broad "operatic" ges- ture, vast and noble colour schemes, the ring of heroic voices, the sense of great waves of sound and rhythms of emotion, and the suggestion of something mighty above and beyond the action, as though whole races of men were playing out their tragedy with the stars. One who has been raised in the realistic theatre will still have his doubts after the most eloquent description. But the thing once seen pleads for itself. It may be hard for us to visualise on the instant how "Macbeth," for instance, or "Henry IV," could be played in an open space, with only a conventional castle behind. Yet is was under simpler conditions than this that these plays delighted their Elizabethan audiences. And it is remarkable how easily the imagination will supply what is missing when the attention is fastened on an absorb- ing action or a beautiful poem. Even for us moderns it will be the easiest thing in the world to dispense with our dear painted canvas, and who can say that we shall not prize good acting and noble speech the more for it? The appeal of such pieces to the pageantry instinct in men is more powerful and common than we suppose. And we must not forget, in spite of "American condi- tions," that, in the words of Professor Fuchs, "the understanding, or at least the need, of art, is independ- ent of social status." There is perhaps little essentially to separate this type of dramatic performance from that of thejjpen- THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 255 air theatre. The mere idea of theatrical spectacles in the open air is fascinating to most of us, and year after year the experiment has been tried in some form or other, as in the remarkable "Bohemian Jinks" at Redwood Grove, California. The obvious objection, of course, is that in the ordinary American or European climate weather conditions make any systematic artistic work out of doors too uncertain to be practicable. There is always, of course, the possibility of a canvas covering for such a theatre in case of rain, and there seems little objection to such a procedure, except per- haps the loss of ideality in the scheme and danger of unsatisfactory lighting. But it surely seems possible for certain favoured climates, such as California, parts of Italy, and (why not?) Greece, to use their out-of- door theatres systematically, and develop a local type of play for the purpose. On the whole, though, the open-air theatre will remain an ideal of the joyous, sunlit performance which we shall hope to approximate in our artificial structures. There is one other type of out-of-door theatre which enters not at all into the scheme of the com- mercial or state theatre, but which might have its part in dramatic life, remaining one of the beautiful shrines of the art where the gods themselves seem to come down from their mountains to take part in the performance. This is ideally represented by the tiny open-air theatre which Goethe laid out in the gardens of the Belvidere palace near Weimar. It is entirely enclosed by green- ery. Its stage is perhaps fifteen feet wide by twenty- five deep, its "wings" being merely hedges trained to a height of some six feet. In front of the stage is a sunken pit for a small orchestra, screened from the 256 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY audience by shrubbery. The "auditorium" is a semi- circle, some twenty feet in diameter, terraced into three rows. The "stalls" are ordinary summer chairs. The theatre seats, at most, some twenty spectators. The scenery is only Nature's green, except perhaps for an altar for classical pieces. If there is (and surely there is) an amateur spirit growing joyously here and there, in the out-of-the-way places "where life comes from," such tiny open-air theatres might be the experimental laboratories where great ideas are forged, or the altars at which pure beauty is consecrated. It is a most important thing that the modern thea- tre is becoming dissatisfied with the guest-rooms of eighteenth century aristocracy and is demanding a home of its own. It means that the theatre is developing the power to create all its own materials according to its own needs. This is the sign of a mature, as con- trasted with a parasitic, art. A playhouse — a number of playhouses — built "so" because the art demanded them "so," and not because their grandfather was "so" or because their banker had whimmed them "so" — is not this another sign that the drama of to-morrow will have grown to man's height? CHAPTER XV THE SOCIAL FORCES: MODERN THEATRE ORGANISATION BY theatre organisation is meant, for the present ! purpose, the relation of the theatre to its audi- ence. This is the great fact in the organisation of the theatre, so important that it will be considered the whole fact. It really determines all the others. In the present chapter, therefore, we shall not concern ourselves with the relative duties of the stage manager and the stage director, nor with the authority which the director should exercise over the style of the lead- ing lady's frocks, but shall attempt an outline of what lies henea,th(4*u.*k0*A*-y This is the more important because we rarely think of the subject in its fundamental terms. We have been so busy watching the make-up that we haven't seen the actor beneath. Modern theatres, in Anglo- Saxon lands, have removed themselves so far from their audience that we forget they bear any organic relation to it at all. But if, as is so often stated, the theatre is a social organism, the society which it serves is an element in its organisation. The theatre can no more be explained by studying the theatre than the north pole of a mag- net can be explained by studying it alone. Take away the south pole and you have, not half of a magnet, but no magnet at all. Take away the audience and you have no theatre ; you can't even study what is left, 257 258 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY because, with the audience abstracted, it logically and actually becomes a totally different thing. The organisation of a theatre, then, is the manner in which it is related to its audience. What the audi- ence demands, how it is able and willing to pay for it, how it can make its demands felt, how far minorities have influence, how quickly changes in its demands can be recognised and satisfied — these are the conditions which determine (barring the important but subordi- nate and accidental condition of personal influence) what the theatre is. (Considered in its simplest form as a "social organ- sm," the theatre is a group of people who pay certain )f their members for acting plays for them. In certain cases the actors themselves do not demand money, since they support themselves in other ways and give only their superfluous time to acting. But ordinarily, in any developed society, a certain group must be spe- cialised, and to that extent professionalised, for the work. Some way is then devised for collecting from the audience which has desired their services money for their support and for the other necessary expenses of the performances. The simplest way of collecting this money is the primitive one of passing the hat. The most modest itinerant troupes of entertainers usually used this expe- dient, and sometimes do so still. It makes little differ- ence, from the economic standpoint, whether the hat is passed to a single individual, a king or a noble, or to the rag-tag rabble. It does not even change the situa- tion materially if the king or noble promises in ad- vance to contribute toward a performance he desires. So long as the performance was initiated by the troupe itself, or by its managers, the system is fundamentally THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 259 the primitive one of passing the hat. And this has been essentially the system of all theatres since the Elizabethans made the drama a commercial proposi- tion. It is only within the last twenty years that an- other system has begun to establish itself. What could be more like passing the hat than the ordinary commercial theatre's method of collecting its revenue? Those who come to the play pay more or less money at the door. They pay it before the perform- ance instead of afterward — that is the only difference. All the liabilities of hat-passing — uncertainty as to the size or generosity of the audience, utter servility to the clapping of hands, the social ostracism that attaches to entertainers who beg for their supper — these are pres- ent in full power in the ordinary commercial theatre. This theatre is suffering under the embarrassment ofj trying to force upon people something they haven'ti / asked for, instead of enjoying the dignity of supplying , them something they have demanded. Nor is the situation essentially changed if a part of the receipts are guaranteed in advance. A donor may promise a certain yearly amount to the troupe, but this does not cover the very large margin of income which determines success or failure, and which must be secured by hat-passing. The subscription system by which our opera-houses and some of our special theatres secure an advance income may be considered one form of subsidy. It is rarely complete. Opera-houses in Amer- ica and England must exploit stars and special operas of sensational qualities in order to make the ends meet. The subscription guarantee is quantitatively a help toward solving the problem. It does not qualita- f ,\i tively change the nature of the organisation. The subsidised theatres of Continental Europe are 260 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY somewhat different. They do not, like the ordinary commercial theatres of America, offer something un- known and unordered. Historically they are nothing but a private troupe hired for the entertainment of some king or noble. In this sense they are not social organisms at all. Actually, in these latter days, they have come to depend upon the general public, and have in many of their external characteristics approached the new form of theatre of which we shall later speak. Their public is more or less secure, and the economic equilibrium more or less constant. But they still de- pend upon a floating public and have as the kernel of their organisation that apartness from their public, and in a sense hostility to it, which is characteristic of any theatrical troupe which makes its living by passing the hat. I A theatre is a perfect social organism only when / it supplies to a responsible audience a commodity which I has been demanded by it. If the theatrical troupe is the author of its own being, and is ultimately responsi- ble for its success or downfall, it is in the position of a commercial speculator trying to force its commodity upon an unconvinced purchaser. Needless to say, in such a case the commodity is never exactly what the purchaser wants, and is often not what he wants at all. No artistic institution can live a full artistic life when it bears this relation to its audience. The sense of separation, the sense of hostility, is always there. The audience can observe the art ; it cannot naturally par- ticipate in it. It is only when the audience has de- manded the artistic commodity, when it is pledged to pay the bills, when it feels itself on trial for the suc- cess or failure of its work, that it begins that respon- sible participation which makes art live. THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 261 This ideal theatre, or something very nearly ap- proximating it, is now in operation on a large scale in Berlin. Other theatres, of essentially the same organ- isation but less highly developed, are springing up in England and America. The remarkable Berlin institution, which one would like to regard as a model for the future theatre in all lands, is the "Neue Freie Volksbuhne," or N ew Free Folk Stage. It is a theatre owned by its audience, who number more than 50,000. It gives the usual nightly and matinee performances of new and standard plays at a cost (to members) of about a mark apiece , — twenty-five cents a performance. The standard of | presentation is excellent, sometimes brilliant. Mediocre performances occur, but the average of acting is high. In addition to- its own theatre the society has made arrangements with twelve of the best theatres and opera- houses in Berlin for special evening or Sunday after- noon performances, at which it buys out the whole or part of the house, and supplies the seats to its members at the usual rate or near it. Far from receiving char- ity from the theatres so co-operating, it offers them a secure income for the performance in question — an ad- vantage they are only too glad to accept. So influ- ential has the system become that the New Free Folk Stage, together with other similar organisations, is near to dominating the whole Sunday afternoon theatre situ- ation, and has a powerful influence on the choice of plays. The New Free Folk Stage is not a charity. It is a business institution, made up very largely of work- ingmen and women who receive small wages, and it pays its own way to the last penny. It offers in its own theatre, not to speak of the affiliated houses, a four- 262 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY mark performance for one mark. How can it do this? The analysis of the situation on the economic side will be found in the following chapter. In general it is adequate to say that it accomplishes its results because it supplies its market instead of forcing it, answers its demand instead of trying to create it. It is a social organism, the two parts — theatre and audience — being parts of one indivisible whole. The middleman, organ- ising commercial entertainment, constantly endeavour- ing to raise the price, lower the cost, and pocket the \difference, has been eliminated. The 50,000 and more members pay a mark for yearly membership fee and fourteen marks for their tickets. In return they receive tickets for thirteen or fourteen plays and operas, assigned to them, largely according to their own choice, out of the repertory of the society itself and of the affiliated theatres. Tick- ets for further performances can be bought at low rates. This income, plus that from individual tickets (relatively few in number) and from the refreshment stands, pays the yearly expenses of the society, the salaries of the actors, the stage equipment and cos- tumes, the expenses of administration, and the rental of the theatre. The audience thus owns the institution which serves it. It demands in advance a certain programme of en- tertainment, within a stipulated cost and of a certain general nature. It feels its own responsibility in the result and the better appreciates what it receives be- cause it has made sacrifices for it. By indirect means and through its elected officers on the executive com- mittee, it controls or duly influences the choice of plays and the general conduct of the society. Most impor- tant of all, it has reduced the cost of its art to a THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 263 an der ncuett Treiett Oolksbiibttef Qr i9i2j)s = D . =^ (leues Volkstheater: etaBtr.anenbi ©ttlnbbetg., SBebeHno, SBittie SoM>elB5ngerfom3ble, Don Sftotf $aul Stutter BonbRcnJe, Sdjauf|>let von O($mibt>39onn SijaroS #oc!jjett, Sultffiiel Don ffleiumarcfjaia Sit ifflilbroit, Gdjaujplel son §. 3b[cn 3)08 ftonjert, Romiible Vint §erm. 8t$r 6rof ffljatoIaiS, XtagoMe ton Kic^arb Sef^fjofmann SRutter 5Jitt»8, 2>roma son grifc Stavnujagcn $?elben, KomBbie ton Scrntjatb St)aro Sic #ere, Stfiaufpicl bon 3tat$a Stbaner. (Urauffuljrunp,) Sec ftaiferiiBer, von Stennert unb pftmalbt. Sic SonntOB'SRadjinittagS-SSotfteaimflcn Begitmcn ojn 1. ©eptemBet tJorauSfteStUcb tittt folgeribcn ©tilctttt: Deutrdies Cheater: fenibcfllca, von $. v. Shift. KammerFplelhaus: erbgeift, obn 3. Bebetbib. ncues Komodienhaus Set rote Ccvrmmt, ©t&>u[plet von $. Slenjt u. 31- Oolbbul Cheater in der Koniggratzer StraBe: 2>lc 9b.nfran, Zrauctipttl von gtanj (SrtHparjer. Klelnes Cheater: _ SiaS Gtdjt Jdjetoet in blc ginfterntB, von Seo Solfton. Schillertheater Chartottenburg. Jtouia $einrid), von SBUbenbro4 Schillertheater 0: 3ot>! unb ©djraert, von Sad ©ugloiv. Crianon-Cheater: * Set Teliae Soubinel, »»" SKepmbte Sifion. ■ Deutrdies Opernfheater: gibclio, von SeeHoven. Ileues Cheater: ler SJoaeDjanbter, Dpetette von Setter. Cheater des Westens: ' SBiener Slut, Dvetette von C81 Sttaug. metropol-Cheater: loto.Soto, Saubebitte von SUgaub unb Gate. Sluftner-Soal: eijmbljonle.flonserte. Facsimile of the announcement of plays for the season 1912-13, of the New Free Folk Stage, Berlin. Showing the wide variety and excellent selection of plays offered. 264 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY minimum — not below the minimum, but to the point of elimination of waste. But in a still more literal sense than this it will presently be owning its theatre. The old theatre build- ing that has been leased for ten years has been out- grown. The society demands something new — not something "good enough," but the best there is to be had. Moreover, it must build this itself. Soon to be completed, it stands on the Biilow Platz, and will cost, including the price of the site, something more than 2,500,000 marks, or $600,000. Its auditorium will hold some 2,000 persons. Its stage contains a Dreh- biihne, two Schiebebuhnen, and all the space a theatre of such ambitions needs. How was money for all this raised? The answer is so illustrative of the methods of the society that it deserves to be given in some detail. First, out of the savings of the society the executive committee contrib- utes 10,000 marks to start things. Then it collects from each member 10 Pfennige on each mark regularly con- tributed for tickets or membership fee. This 10 per cent, (it amounts to less than 2% cents) is not a free- will gift; it is a business loan, upon which interest and compound interest is paid. The payments are punched upon the membership cards; after ten payments a member receives a stamp, after ten stamps a card which shows he has contributed ten marks. On this, as well as on any other contributions that are made, interest is paid at the rate of 5 per cent, (although not paid out in cash if the individual's loan is less than fifty marks). Free-will loans are taken in the same way, and there is some — although not much — giving of larger sums by philanthropists. When this sum, raised penny by penny, reached 500,000 marks, as it did THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 265 toward the end of 1912, the committee went to the Berlin city council and negotiated a loan of 2,000,000 marks, at the rather low interest of 4>y 2 per cent. Upon what security did the society borrow 2,000,- 000 marks? Upon no security except its future pros- pects. Even with the rise in Berlin real estate values the finished theatre could not possibly rank as adequate security upon a loan more than two-thirds its cost price. Berlin is already over-theatred, and such a building as that planned might not be easy to convert into cash. No, the city of Berlin had no idea of ever being obliged to foreclose its mortgage. For the Folk Theatre idea had come to Germany to stay. Interest on the loan will be paid out of the future receipts of the theatre which, with the support back of it, is perfectly secure. The principal will be paid back probably not more than one per cent, per annum. The stockholders will continue to receive interest and compound interest upon their loans, and will ultimately receive back the principal, though payment may be made partly in kind. There would be no possible ob- jection to this latter process, since the payment in terms of reduced theatre prices is a reduction on a desired commodity, and is therefore reducible to cold cash. But all these business arrangements are more or less temporary expedients. Essentially, the 50,000 members of the New Free Folk Stage are building their own theatre and paying for it. And they are building for the future. For as the principal is paid off, the interest lessens, the enlarged capacity brings in larger returns, and the expense of production continually de- creases ; the children of the present members will be receiving the benefits of the ten-pfennig pieces their fathers loaned the society. 266 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY In every real sense, then, the society owns and con- trols its theatre. That it does not exercise any direct influence over the actual administration is not incon- sistent with democratic ownership. The administration of an artistic activity must be autocratic. The auto- crat must not be held responsible for details at brief periods. The chief influence over him will be the direct, though modified, influence provided by the loss or gain in membership. The members are not, in the New Free Folk Stage, able directly and by themselves to cause the release of the artistic director. They are, by the constitution, given only a minority representation on the executive committee. The autocracy has worked successfully because the society happened to have a remarkably good autocrat. Whether this good fortune will continue, whether the society will not come to need a more direct democratic control corresponding to its increased intelligence and capability, is another matter. The causes for this sharp division between the own- ership and the administration dates back to the days of the society's predecessor in the early nineties. The whole story of the rise and growth of this institution, its struggles and hard-learned lessons, is so significant to the modern theatre movement that it deserves to be repeated in detail. It was in the spring of 1890, just after the "Freie Biihne" in Berlin had succeeded in giving modern, cen- sorised pieces under the "closed society" system, that the call went forth for the founding of a "Freie Folks- biihne," or a Free Folk Stage. If we may call the Freie Biihne the father of the movement, the German Social-Democracy was its mother. This political pa- riah, it must be remembered, had then just been freed from Bismarck's ban, under which, during the fifteen THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 267 years or so in which it was illegal to talk about Social- ism, let alone be a member of the movement, the party- had multiplied itself many times over. In 1890, rejoic- ing in its new freedom of speech, it must have shown many of the characteristics of a lanky boy in his first long trousers. Certain it is that there were no bones I made about the connection of the Free Folk Stage with ' the Socialist propaganda. Here was the first call to battle, as it went forth from the pen of Dr. Bruno Wille and appeared in the Berliner Volks-Blatt : "The theatre should be a source of exalted artistic enjoyment, of moral improvement, and of powerful in- tellectual stimulus in the dominant questions of the day. But it is, for the most part, degraded to the level of stale salon wit, polite literature, yellow-back reading matter, circus entertainment, and humorous weeklies. The stage has been subjugated by capitalism and the taste of the masses in all classes of society has been generally corrupted under the influence of various econ- omic conditions. In the meantime a certain portion of our people, stimulated and led by sincere poets, journalists, and public men, has freed itself from this corruption. Such poets as Tolstoy, Dostoievski, Zola, Ibsen and Kielland, as well as other German 'Realists,' have found a sounding-board in the working classes of Berlin. For this portion of the people the need exists not only to read, but also to see plays of their choice. But the public production of pieces in which there lives a revolutionary spirit usually runs aground on capitalism— which has no place for anything but box- office successes — or on the police censorship. These hindrances do not exist for the closed society. So the Free Stage has , succeeded in bringing to production 268 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY pieces of a propagandists character. But since, for economic reasons, membership in the Free Stage is for- bidden to the proletariat, it seems to me proper that a Free Folk Stage should be founded." The "closed society," be it noted, was the device resorted to in the early nineties and since, in Berlin, Paris, and London, for the production of plays of the new school which would not be risked by commercial managers or were forbidden by the official censorship. These were primarily the pieces of Ibsen, and later of Hauptmann, Sudermann, Shaw, and others, which rep- resented, above all else, two modern preoccupations, both looked upon with suspicion by the public and by the powers that were — the studying of sexual problems and the expression of the growing discontent among the labouring classes. Since public performance of these works was impossible, the persons interested acted them in private, with such actors as could be induced to vol- unteer, for the benefit of the members of the "closed" society, who defrayed the expenses. The societies, at first very limited and strictly closed, later became pros- perous and took in members at the theatre box-office (the membership fee being merely the usual price of admission) so that the institution became only an open evasion of the law. In the case of the Free Folk Stage the need was to give the banned pieces for a large public at the lowest possible expense. The plan was to rent a theatre for one Sunday afternoon a month, to beg or buy the serv- ices of the actors and actresses who were sufficiently interested, and to cut out every unnecessary expense. It was calculated that the cost per member would be something like fifty pfennigs, or twelve and a half cents, a performance. The new scheme caused newspaper THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 269 comment in many foreign countries, and raised a storm of protest in Berlin, where it was popularly known as the "Social-Democratic Theatre" for some months to come. The society came into being practically as planned. On July 29th the first general meeting elected its com- mittee, which included Dr. Wille and the late Otto Brahm, arch-apostle of realism. Wille was later made general director and the first performance of the soci- ety, Ibsen's "Pillars of Society," took place at the leased Ostend-Theater on October 19th. The formerly ridiculed scheme of Sunday afternoon performances was brilliantly successful, so successful that the com- mercial theatres soon took to the idea, and the society which gave it to .them suffered from the difficulty of finding actors for its own performances. It must be remembered that the working people who formed the membership of the Free Folk Stage were the first in Germany, outside of the litterati who belonged to the Freie Biihne, to accept the authors of the new dramatic school which has since been triumphant the world over. But not in vain had the daily press tagged the new society as a "Social-Democratic Theatre." The Berlin police took the charge seriously — as well they might, since it was perfectly true in spirit. Accordingly, early in the year 1891, they served notice on the committee that since the Free Folk Stage had been officially ad- judged a political organization, having an influence on public opinion, it would be treated like other political societies and forbidden to receive women members. (It was only some half a dozen years ago that women in Prussia were given the fundamental political right of assemblage.) The court trial, pressed at considerable expense, was fought out on the distinction to be drawn 270 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY between a political movement and the art which ex- presses it. Wille practically admitted in his defense that most of the plays given by the society were of a Socialistic tendency, but asserted that the Free Folk Stage was still an artistic society, since it worked solely with artistic means. The judge decided in his favour, and the Free Folk Stage was permitted to live. But not for long. For Dr. Wille, who had in that case been charged with being a Socialist, was now charged by the members with not being one. And since the new society was democratic in its structure and German workingmen have not many opportunities to exercise their power, the Free Folk Stage, in open conclave assembled, voted Wille out of the directorate. This was about two years after the foundation of the society. Wille, with customary energy, immediately founded a "New Free Folk Stage," which has contin- ued with brilliant success down to the present day. In this he sought to correct the fault which had caused the split in the old organisation. This fault had been not so much its democratic organisation, but its con- fusing of the legislative and executive branches. The executive, said Wille (in other words, himself), should be free of "any direct control by the mass of the mem- bership." If the membership was dissatisfied with his management, it could withdraw. The general member- ship was given only a minority representation on the executive committee, which was made practically self- perpetuating. In November, 1892, the new society gave its first performance — Goethe's "Faust" — in the Belle-Alliance Theater. Associated with Wille in the new venture were a number of the most able men in Berlin, men who have since become famous. There was Maximilian Har- THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 271 den, one of the ablest political writers in Germany; Ernst von Wolzogen, Erich Hartleben, and the brothers Kampfmeyer, now famous as dramatic authors ; Emil Lessing, later regisseur of the Deutsches and Lessing Theaters; and Victor Hollander, known to Americans as the composer of the "Sumurun" music. In the win- ter of 1893-94 the membership of the society increased three times over, because of the success of Hauptmann's "The Weavers," which, being forbidden public produc- tion by the censor because of its inflammatory effect on the labouring classes, could be seen only in a closed society. But the police took it hard, and in the fol- lowing autumn chose to take exception to a certain play called "Alone," and ordered that all pieces to be performed be first passed by the police censor. This would have robbed the society of half its reason for existence, and the case was again carried into the courts. It seemed like a deathblow and nearly half the membership voted to disband. It was with difficulty that Wille carried his compromise policy of keeping the society inactive until the trouble had blown over. So activities were practically suspended for a year. Then Dr. Wille, who must have been an excellent diplo- mat, drew victory out of defeat by personal visits to the judge and the police, making certain arrangements and agreements (not made public) by which the New Free Folk Stage was permitted to proceed unmolested. That the agreements were not compromises was proved by the continued performances of "The Weavers" and other pieces of equally revolutionary tenour. During all this time the society had been on the edge of failure for financial reasons. The difficulty came to a head in 1903, when, for lack of a ridicu- lously small sum of money, it was about to disband. 272 THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY This sum was supplied by private donations and the society straightway began a course of increasing pros- perity which has progressed steadily up to its present astonishing state. At this time there came over the society a new influence from outside which greatly changed its form and character. This influence was Max Reinhardt, who was just beginning his independent career as a pro- ducer with his performance of Wilde's "Salome" and Maxim Gorky's "A Night's Lodging" at the Kleines Theater. The special performances which he made for the society were continued after he took charge of the Deutsches, and their popularity immensely increased the society's membership. This suggested the new pol- icy, and similar arrangements were made with numerous other theatres, which were glad to assure large audi- ences for their matinee performances, even at low rates. The New Free Folk Stage began to give regular nightly performances in its own theatre, and the society took on the form it has at present, with the membership constantly increasing. The "flat rate" of fourteen marks for thirteen or fourteen performances yearly was found sufficient and will no doubt continue to be so. Two facts give the New Free Folk Stage universal significance in the question of theatre organisation. One was that it sprang up spontaneously out of an interest in life. An interest in art as such, unapplied to life and living, can never be of permanent upbuilding influence on an art. Art is, somehow or other, an expression oNife, as we have been told ever since critics began to lisp. And if we are not first interested in life we cannot possibly be interested in its expression. The real interest in life is that which would exist even if there were no art to stimulate or express it. That is THE THEATRE OF TO-DAY 273 o s at a e as C-. CD A3 a o a J* »-H O o, c .— H (U :3 05 o eo £ CO CO < CO a CO t-e •a c at c | •a "O a c s ■< o H - g- ^ to CO c/5 '3 In 2 S.sb 7 Is > «« *^ «s a: CO® &* I S -Si a) CD .a o o J3 Ss! 1-4 03 ^ K S © ® i r3 -i g;g W CJ K CJ en U V, o o fa h-l o w c$ ?3 n Hi PQ ■s r ^ H CD "* H H & ""ft P O cS tea & p p < H •rt-S C -5 &. *a o i3ri a