Scene 3, that the action advances again. But this, and the previous
scenes, if acted with animation and rapidly spoken by all the characters concerned, would not take up much time, and could be declaimed with effect. The stage fashion of making the Friar stolidly indifferent to the unexpected complication that has arisen through Tybalt's death is not only undramatic, but inconsistent with the text. A heavy responsibility lies on him, and his position is full of difficulty and danger. The scene that follows shows us Capulet fixing a day for the marriage of Juliet with Paris, and the father's words--
"I thinke she will be rulde In all respects by _me_: nay, more, I doubt it not,"
have a significance, and render the parting of the lovers in the next scene highly dramatic. In the poem and novel, Juliet, before parting with Romeo, proposes to accompany him disguised as his servant; about the best thing she could do. After a good deal of arguing on both sides the idea is abandoned as impracticable. Shakespeare prefers his lovers to discourse about the nightingale. Romeo being gone, the mother enters to announce to the wife her betrothal to Paris, and the early day of marriage. The news is sprung upon her with terrible abruptness, though the audience have been in the secret from the first, and Juliet has hardly time to protest against "this sudden day of joy" before the father enters to complete her discomfiture by his torrents of abuse. Capulet's varnish of good manners entirely disappears in this scene, and his coarse nature is exposed in all its ugliness. But in the emergency of this tragic moment, as Professor Dowden points out, does Juliet leap into womanhood, and realize her position and responsibilities as a wife, and in the following lines Shakespeare touches the first note of highest tragedy in the play: that of the mind's suffering as opposed to the mere tragedy of incident--
"O God, o Nurse, how shall this be preuented? My husband is on earth, my faith in heauen; How shall that faith returne againe to earth, Unlesse that husband send it me from heauen By leauing earth? comfort me, counsaile me."
I am curious to learn on what grounds these thrilling words are omitted in the Irving-version. To me they are the climax of the scene and of the play so far as it has progressed. They mark the turning-point in Juliet's moral nature. They enable us to forgive her any indiscretions of which she may previously have been guilty. From this point onwards all is calm in Juliet's breast, because there is no infirmity of purpose,
"If all else faile, my self have power to die."
As the shadows fall across the path of the lovers, so do they over that of the Friar.
"O _Iuliet_, I already know thy greefe, It straines me past the compasse of my wits,"
is his greeting in the next scene. A "desperate preventive" to shame or death is decided upon, and then follows what is perhaps the most dramatic episode in the whole play. We are shown Capulet's household busy with the preparations for the marriage-feast, and the father, now bent on having a "great ado," hastily summoning "twenty cunning Cookes"--the consequence possibly of Juliet's threatened opposition to his wishes. Juliet enters to feign submission and beg forgiveness, which enables the father to indulge in another despotic freak by hastening the day of marriage, heedless of all the inconvenience it may cause. Juliet retires to her chamber, and Capulet goes to prepare Paris against to-morrow. Then comes Juliet's terrible ordeal, the undertaking "of a thing like death," which is all the more terrible because it must be done alone. This scene is often overacted on the stage. Our Juliets do far too much "stumping and frumping" about. I once saw the "potion-scene" acted with dramatic intelligence by an actress quite unknown to fame. When Juliet lays her dagger on the table, the actress took up the vial, and, standing motionless in the centre of the stage, spoke the lines in a hurried, low whisper, conveying the impression of reflection as well as the need for discretion. At the words,
"O looke, me thinks I see my Cozins Ghost,"
she sank on one knee, and, raising the right arm with a quick movement, pointed into space, the eye following the hand, a very simple but telling gesture. The words, "Stay, _Tybalt_, stay!" were not given with a scream, but in a tone of alarm and entreaty, followed immediately by the drinking of the potion, as if to suggest Juliet's desire to come to Romeo's rescue. The whole scene was acted in less than two minutes. The vision of Tybalt's ghost pursuing Romeo for vengeance, an incident not to be found in the originals, shows the touch of the master dramatist. We feel the need of some immediate incentive to nerve Juliet to raise the vial to her lips; and what more effectual than that of her overwrought imagination picturing to herself the husband in danger.
While the poor child lies prostrate upon her bed in the likeness of death, we are shown the dawn of the morning, the rousing and bustle of the household; we hear the bridal march in the distance, the sound coming nearer every moment; the Nurse knocking at Juliet's chamber-door; her awful discovery; the entrance of the parents; the filling of the stage by the bridal party, led by the Friar; the wailing, and wringing of the hands as the first quarto directs; the changing of the sound of instruments to that of melancholy bells, of solemn hymns to sullen dirges, of bridal flowers to funeral wreaths. All this is thrilling in conception, and yet the episode as conceived by Shakespeare is never represented on the stage. Why are the Capulet scenes omitted, those which are dovetailed to the "potion scene," and make it by contrast so terribly tragic? The accentuation here of Capulet's tyranny, of his sensuality, his brutal frankness, his indifference to every one's convenience but his own, his delight in exacting a cringing obedience from all about him, are designed by the dramatist to move us with deep pity for Juliet's sufferings, and by emphasizing its necessity to save the "potion scene" from the danger of appearing grotesque. But Shakespeare's method of dramatic composition, that of uniting a series of short scenes with each other in one dramatic movement, will not bear the elaboration of heavy stage sets, and with the demand for carpentry comes the inducement for mutilation. At the Shakespeare Reading Society's recital of this play, given recently under my direction at the London Institution, these scenes were spoken without delay or interruption, and with but one scene announced, and the interest and breathless attention they aroused among the audience convinced me that my conception as to the dramatic treatment of them was the right one. Until these scenes are restored to the acting version, Shakespeare's tragedy will not be seen on the stage as he conceived it; and when they are restored, their dramatic power will electrify the house, and twentieth-century dilettantism will lose its influence among playgoers. The comic scene between Peter and the Musicians should also be restored. It comes in as a welcome relief after the intensity of the previous scenes, and is, besides, a connecting link with the comedy in the earlier part of the play.
The last act can be briefly dealt with. We anticipate the final catastrophe, though we do not know by what means it will be brought about. It is carried out, as it should be, effectively but simply. The children have loved and suffered, let them die easily and quickly. Romeo's costume in exile is described in the poem as that of a merchant venturer, which is certainly a more appropriate dress than the conventional black velvet of the stage. After hearing the fatal news, which provokes the boy to mutter, "Is it even so?" in the Lyceum version is inserted the stage-direction, "_He pauses, overcome with grief_." But as there is no similar stage-direction in the originals, the actor may, without violation to the author's intentions, pause _before_ the words are spoken. The blow is too sudden, too cruel, too overwhelming to allow of any immediate response in words. The colour would fly from Romeo's face, his teeth grip his under lip, his eyes gleam with a look of frenzy, _looks_ that "import some misadventure," but there is no action and no sound for a while, and afterwards only a muttering. The stillness of Romeo's desperation is very dramatic. There is nothing, in my opinion, unnatural in Romeo's description of the Apothecary's shop. All sorts of petty details float before our mental vision when the nerves are over-wrought, but the actor should be careful not to accentuate the description in any way; it is but introductory to the dominant words of the speech,
"And if a man did need a poyson now."
As Juliet's openly acknowledged lover, Paris occupies too prominent a place in the play to be lightly dismissed, and so he is involved in the final catastrophe. In Brooke's poem, Romeo, before dying, prays to Heaven for mercy and forgiveness, and the picture of the boy kneeling by his wife's side, with her hand clasped in his, pleading to his Redeemer to--
"Take pity on my sinnefull and my poore afflicted mynde!"
would, on the stage, have been a supremely pathetic situation. But Shakespeare's stern love of dramatic truth rejects it. In Romeo's character he strikes but one note, love--and love as a passion. Love is Romeo's divinity, physical beauty his deity. The assertion that--
"In nature there's no blemish but the mind, None can be call'd deform'd but the unkind,"
would have sounded in Romeo's ears profanation. When he first sees Juliet he will by touching hers make _blessed_ his rude hand, and when he dies he will seal the doors of breath "with a _righteous_ kiss." To the Friar he cries:
"Do thou but close our hands with holy words, Then loue-deuouring death do what he dare. It is inough I may but call her _mine_."
And "love-devouring death" accepts the challenge, but the agony of death does not "countervail the exchange of joy" that one short minute gives him in her presence. Here Shakespeare's treatment of the love-episode differs from that of Brooke's in his tolerance for the children's love, though it be carried out in defiance of the parents' wishes, and in his recognition that love, so long as it be strong as death, has an ennobling and not a debasing influence on character: we are made to feel that it is better for Romeo to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. For the hatred of the two houses Shakespeare shows no tolerance. Juliet's death is carried out with the greatest simplicity, and within a few moments of her awakening. There is neither time for reflection nor lamentation; the watch has been roused, and is heard approaching. She has hardly kissed the poison from her dead husband's lips before they enter the churchyard, and nothing but the darkness of the night screens from them the sight of the steel that Juliet plunges into her breast. It is the presence of the watch, almost within touch of her, that goads her to lift the knife, just as it is the vision of Tybalt's ghost pursuing Romeo that nerves her to drink the potion. The dramatist's intention is clearly indicated in the stage-directions of the two quartos and the folio, but the Irving-version retains in this last scene the modern stage-directions.
Professor Dowden is of opinion "that it were presumptuous to say that had Shakespeare been acquainted with the earlier form of the story (in which Juliet wakes before Romeo dies), he would not have altered his ending." But an ending of this kind is inartistic. It is bringing the axe down twice instead of once. It is introducing a new complication and a new movement at a moment when none is wanted. The catastrophe should be and always is, by Shakespeare, carried out with simplicity and directness. After Juliet's death other watchmen enter with the Friar in custody, while from afar we hear for the third and last time the cries of the citizens:
"Downe with the Capulets, downe with the Mountagues!"
the only child of each of the two rival houses lying dead before the spectators. Nature had done her best to effect a reconciliation, but man thwarted her in her purpose. Then the Prince and the heads of the two houses enter and learn for the first time that
"_Romeo_ there dead, was husband to that _Iuliet_, And she there dead, that's _Romeo's_ faithfull wife."
Well may the Prince say--
"_Capulet, Montague_, See what a scourge is laide upon your hate That heauen finds means to kill your joyes with loue."
All this last scene is full of animation, and presents a fine opportunity for the _regisseur_. I am obliged to use the French word, for we have no similar functionary in this country. Our public is sufficiently indifferent to the welfare of dramatic art to allow its leading actors to be their own stage-managers and often their own authors. As a consequence the public gets no English plays worthy of being called plays, and no guarantee that a dead author's intentions shall be respected. Human nature has its prejudices, and the actor is seldom to be found who can look at a play from any other point of view than in relation to the prominence of his own part in it. It is owing to the despotism of the actor on the English stage, and consequently to the star system, that I attribute the mutilation of Shakespeare's plays in their representation. The closing scene of this play might be made very effective in action. The crowd hurrying with "bated breath" to the spot; its horror at the sight of the dead children, who for all it knows are murdered; its amazement at finding they are man and wife; the Prince's stern rebuke; the bowed grief and shame of Montague and Capulet; the reconciliation of the bereaved parents, and joining of hands across the dead bodies. The Irving-version omits all but the entrance of the citizens with Montague, Capulet, and the Prince, who at once ends the play with the couplet--
"For neuer was a Storie of more wo Than this of _Iuliet_ and her _Romeo_."
But if the Prince hears no story, he and those who enter with him cannot be aware that Romeo and Juliet are man and wife, or that they died by their own hands, and are not victims to an act of treachery. Then why open your play with the quarrel of the two houses if you do not intend to show them reconciled? Why not follow the Cumberland acting-version, and take out the crowd scenes altogether? It is a more intelligible proceeding than this compromise of the Irving-version.
Criticized as classical tragedy, the play of "Romeo and Juliet" is a veritable hotch-potch. It seems to defy the laws of criticism. The characters at one moment talk in the highest poetical language, and at another in the most commonplace colloquy. Nothing can well seem more inconsistent than to put into the mouth of Capulet these words--
"Death lies on her like an untimely frost, Upon the sweetest flower of all the field."
Bombast goes side by side with poetry; passion with pantomime. Yet, as Lessing says, "Plays which do not observe the classical rules, must yet observe rules of some kind if they are to please;" and Shakespeare sought to establish rules in accordance with the national taste, his first aim being the combination of the serious and the ludicrous. Vigorous characterization, a vital and varied movement, and the skilful handling of scenes well calculated to stir the emotions of an audience, make "Romeo and Juliet" an acting play of enduring interest.
In conclusion, I hold that no stage-version of "Romeo and Juliet" is consistent with Shakespeare's intentions which does not give prominence to the hatred of the two houses and retain intact the three "crowd scenes"--the one at the opening of the play, the second in the middle, and the third at the end. To represent only the love episode is to make that episode far less tragic, and therefore less dramatic.
"HAMLET."[12]
In comparing the acting-edition of "Hamlet" with the authorized text of the Globe edition, I find that it is shorter by 1,191 lines, and omits the characters of Voltemand, Cornelius, Reynaldo, a gentleman, and Fortinbras. Such a modification should, perhaps, exclude the acting-editions from being classed as the same play with either the folio or second quarto. It is a question whether 1,200 lines can be taken out of any Shakespearian play without defeating the poet's dramatic intentions; but if it is necessary to shorten a play to this extent in order to make it suitable for the stage, so important an alteration should not, surely, be left entirely to the discretion of the actor, but should be the work of Shakespearian scholars, assisted by the advice of the dramatic profession. One would think that Shakespeare's world-famed greatness as a dramatist should make all his plays so valued by his countrymen that any alteration in their stage representation which had not been sanctioned by the highest authorities would be repudiated. But, unfortunately, it is not so. That the omission of some of the characters in the acting-edition of "Hamlet" has not impaired Shakespeare's dramatic conception of the play is at least a matter of doubt. In the second quarto we have a play constructed for the purpose of showing us types of character contrasted one with the other. Strong men, weak men, old men, fond women, all living and moving under the influence of a destiny that is not of their own seeking. We have also a Danish court in which a terrible crime has been committed, and over which an avenging angel is hovering with drawn sword waiting to descend on the head of the guilty one; and, because the influence of good in this court is too weak to conquer the evil, the sword falls on the good as well as on the evil, on the weak as well as on the strong. Something is rotten in the State of Denmark; no one there is worthy to rule; the kingdom must be taken away and given to a stranger. It is the play as an epitome of life which is interesting the mind of Shakespeare, and not the career of one individual, even though the whole play be influenced by the actions of that individual. Look at the first quarto and we find a proof of this. Mutilated as that version is, care has been taken to avoid confusing the story of the play. Everything relating to Fortinbras is kept in the quarto, because Fortinbras has to appear like Richmond in "Richard III.," as the hero who will restore peace and order to the distracted kingdom. This much-abused quarto has 557 lines less than the modern acting edition, of which 254 are not in that edition, although they are in the second quarto (or rather have a meaning equivalent to lines in the second quarto), showing clearly that it is possible to shorten the text in more ways than one. The first quarto comes nearer to Shakespeare's dramatic conception of the play than the modern stage version, because the latter, by omitting some of the persons represented, and also many of the lines which reveal the weaker side of Hamlet's character, have altered the story of the play, and placed the part of Hamlet in a different aspect to the one conceived by the author.
I will now compare French's acting-edition of "Hamlet," scene by scene, with the Globe edition. The Globe edition contains all the lines of the second quarto and the folio. It adheres to the text, but not to the stage-directions. For reading purposes, perhaps, the alterations which have been made in the latter may be justified to some extent as a necessity, yet for the acting-edition it would have been better to copy the originals. There are alterations made to the stage-directions in the first scene. Horatio, Marcellus, and the Ghost are shown to enter a line later in the Globe edition than is marked in the quarto or folio. But the attention of an audience is better sustained if the entrances of characters, especially of the Ghost, is not anticipated, and also if the dialogue is not interrupted by pauses for entrances and exits.
In comparing the text, I find that lines 69 to 125 of the Globe edition are omitted in the acting-edition. But these lines explain to the audience why Marcellus, Bernardo, and Horatio are engaged in this same "strict and most observant watch." Marcellus and Bernardo are not common sentries. They are gentlemen and scholars, who are on duty as soldiers for this particular occasion. Lines 140 to 142 I should also like to see inserted, because they are needed to explain the words which follow--
"We do it wrong, being so majestical, To offer it this show of violence."
On the stage these words are spoken, but no violence is shown towards the Ghost. Besides, the business of striking at the Ghost is a fine invention of the author to assist the imagination to realize it is a spirit. I am sorry lines 157 to 165 are omitted, because not only are they beautiful in themselves, but also appropriate, for they help to give solemnity to the scene. The omission of the last four lines of the scene leaves it unfinished. Altogether seventy-one lines have been cut out of the first scene, but the first quarto retains most of them.
The stage-directions at the head of the second scene, both in the Globe edition and folio, place Hamlet's name after the Queen's, to indicate the order to be observed by the actors when they come on to the stage. In the second quarto, however, Hamlet's name comes last. As he has an antipathy to the King, and is displeased with his mother, it is not likely he would be much in the company of either, not even on State occasions, for Hamlet regards the King as a usurper. I would venture to suggest, then, that Hamlet should enter last of all, from another doorway to that used by the King and his train, having his hat and cloak in his hand, as if he had come to take leave of the Court before starting for Wittenberg.
Passing on now to the fourth scene, I notice that in the acting-edition the last five lines of the scene have been cut out, including that expressive one--
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."
I do not myself sympathize with this cutting out the end of scenes, as is done so persistently in every acted play of Shakespeare's. It is inartistic, because it is done to allow the principal actor to leave the stage with applause. Besides, it creates a habit, with actors, of trying to make points at the end of scenes, whether it is necessary or not, and this distorts the play and delays its progress.
In the fifth scene the line--
"O horrible, horrible, most horrible"--
spoken by the Ghost, is marked in the acting-edition to be spoken by Hamlet. Such an alteration is unwarranted by the text. The first quarto, by making Hamlet exclaim "O God" after the Ghost has said "O horrible," gives indication that the words "O horrible" were spoken on the Elizabethan stage by the Ghost.
An alteration has also been made in the Ghost's last line, which to some may appear a trivial matter. The folio attaches the word "Hamlet" to the "Adieu," and puts a colon between it and the words "Remember me," showing thereby that a slight pause should be made before these two last words are spoken, in order to make them more impressive; and the first quarto gives the same reading. French's acting-version, however, tacks the name on to the "Remember me." Cumberland's version gives the reading of the second quarto, which I think the best--
"Adieu, adieu, adieu, Remember me."
The omission in all the stage-versions of Hamlet's lines addressed to the Ghost, beginning "Ha, ha, boy!" "Hic et ubique?" "Well said, old Mole!" is, I think, not judicious, because it causes some actors to misconceive Shakespeare's intention in this scene. One can hardly read the authorized text without feeling that Hamlet is here shown as a young man, or, perhaps, a "boy," as his mother calls him, in the first quarto, thrown into the intensest excitement. His delicate, nervous temperament has undergone a terrible shock from the interview with the Ghost, yet, owing to the absence of these lines, our Hamlets on the stage finish this scene with the most dignified composure. From the first act 217 lines have been omitted in French's acting-edition.
In the beginning of the second act the scene between Polonius and Reynaldo is left out in all the acting-versions. It is a very amusing scene, and in my opinion gives a better insight into the character of Polonius than any of the others. If it were inserted I believe it would become popular with the audience, and we find it retained in the first quarto. The second scene is called "_A Room in the Castle_" both in the Globe and acting editions. Might it not be an exterior scene? It is true that Polonius remarks "Here in the lobby," but the line next to this in the first quarto suggests that he is pointing to some place off the scene, for he adds "There let Ophelia walk," and Ophelia is on the stage. An exterior scene would, in my opinion, give more meaning to the words "Will you walk out of the air, my lord?" and to Hamlet's speech, "This most excellent canopy the air," etc. The scene of a palace garden or cloister could be well introduced in a play so full of interiors. It would add to the interest of the scene if Hamlet took advantage of the early entrance in the quarto and in the folio. For Hamlet to catch sight of Polonius hurrying the King and Queen off the scene would account for his suspicions and explain his rudeness to Polonius. Lines 374 to 378, Globe edition, are omitted in the acting-edition, but should surely be inserted, because they are needed to explain why Hamlet's reception of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern when they first enter, differs from that of the Players. I have always thought that the Hamlets of our stage, not being familiar with the context, mistake Shakespeare's intention. I gather from the omitted lines that Hamlet should warmly welcome the players, and take them by the hand.
At line 381, in the Globe edition, Polonius is marked to enter and speak on the stage the line "Well be with you, gentlemen." In the acting-edition he is marked to speak this "_without_" (to whom? certainly not to the players; Polonius would not have addressed them in such terms), and to enter at a cue lower down the page. The alteration is an instance of what I consider the wrong principle adopted in making stage-versions. The actors have preferred thinking Shakespeare wrong to using a little ingenuity to meet his stage-directions. They have said: "It will never do to have Polonius stand still saying nothing while Hamlet is making fun of him to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, so he must speak his line off the stage." Would it not have shown more consideration for the author's text to make Polonius enter where directed, and then find something for him to do after he is on the stage? For instance, he might enter from a side entrance, as if summoned by the sound of the trumpet, move hastily towards the back of the stage, where the new-comers would arrive, and greet Hamlet, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, as he passes them, with the words, "Well be with you, gentlemen."
The wording in the acting-version of the stage-direction, "_Enter four or five_ Players _and two_ Actresses," is questionable. Perhaps it is not a matter of great consequence, unless the period chosen for representation be the Elizabethan one, and I would suggest that this is the most appropriate period for the play, because to adopt an early Danish period is contradictory to the text, and overloads the piece with material foreign to the author's intentions. Shakespeare's thoughts were not in Denmark when he wrote this play.
Hamlet's recitation of Priam's slaughter in the acting-version has been cut down from thirteen to three lines, and I venture to think unwisely. Hamlet has chosen these lines because they express in biting words his contempt for the King, his uncle, and the audience should become aware of this by the marked emphasis Hamlet lays on each epithet applied to Pyrrhus.
I am sorry that Hamlet's line to the Player, "He's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or else he sleeps," has been cut out. Besides being a fine hit at Polonius, it is an instructive piece of sarcasm. Playgoers in the twentieth century need as much to be told the truth as those in the sixteenth.
In Cumberland's acting version the editor has inserted the stage-direction--"_pointing to Hamlet_"--before Polonius speaks his line, "Look whether he hath not changed colour," etc. I believe this is the right reading, although it is not the one usually adopted on the stage. If Polonius had been speaking the words to Hamlet with reference to the player he surely would have inserted the words "my lord." Besides, these manifestations of grief are more likely to arouse sympathy in Polonius coming from the "mad" Hamlet than from the actor, whose business it was to simulate emotion. By the way, the skill of this play-actor seems to have been underrated on our stage. Actors are always considered at liberty to rant the part, but from Hamlet's description of his performance he should be an executant of considerable ability. It is curious that in Oxberry's acting-edition the first half of Hamlet's closing soliloquy is omitted, and he begins at the line, "I have heard that guilty creatures," etc.; showing that even a great actor such as Edmund Kean could take some unpardonable liberties with his author. Two hundred and thirty-eight lines have been omitted from the second act of the stage-version.
The first scene in the third act is called in French's acting-edition, "_A Room in the Castle as prepared for the Play_," and in Cumberland's, "_A Hall in the Palace, Theatre in the Background_." But the interview between Ophelia and Hamlet should take place in the lobby spoken of by Polonius, the play being acted later in the day. It would add to the interest of the scene if the actor impersonating Hamlet availed himself of the position marked in the second quarto for his entrance, and actually saw the King and Polonius concealing themselves. Was not this Shakespeare's intention?
I notice, in Hamlet's soliloquy, that the folio has the expression, "the _poor_ man's contumely." As the Globe edition, and, indeed, all the modern editions, retain the expression "proud," used in the second quarto, I suppose that the "poor man's contumely" is not considered a legitimate expression. It is curious, however, that the first quarto has an expression somewhat similar in meaning, "The rich man cursed of the poor." In "Twelfth Night," also, a play written not long before "Hamlet," Olivia says: "O world, how apt the poor are to be proud!"
In the scene with Ophelia and Hamlet, both in French's and Cumberland's acting-version, Hamlet is marked to exit after the word "Farewell," and to re-enter again directly afterwards, thus conveying the impression that he returns in order to give more force to his reproaches. These stage-directions are not to be found in either of the quartos or yet in the folio, and I can find no foundation for them in the text. They seem to me to be an unnecessary interruption in a solemn scene, and to interfere with its impressiveness. Hamlet is dismissing Ophelia to a nunnery, and the word "Farewell" is added to impress her with the necessity of her going. She must leave him, not he her. It is, indeed, a subtle touch of Shakespeare's that Ophelia here should think Hamlet's intense feeling and earnestness was madness, for the Prince was "hoist with his own petard," having previously assumed madness for the purpose of breaking off his engagement with her, "made in honourable fashion, with almost all the holy vows of heaven." After the exit of Polonius and the King, the stage-direction in the acting version is: "_Enter_ Hamlet _and_ First Player." The Globe edition makes this the beginning of another scene, and where changes of scene take place in a theatre it would be correct to make an alteration, for the scene in the text is a banqueting hall and the time night. The stage-direction of the second quarto gives, "_Enter_ Hamlet _and three of the_ Players," and that of the folio, "_Enter_ Hamlet _and two or three of the_ Players." Hamlet, therefore, should not enter, as he does now, with only one player.
I should like to make a remark in passing on Hamlet's expression, "trippingly on the tongue." If Burbage's company spoke Shakespeare's lines in this way, I believe the longer plays could be acted in three hours. The late Mr. Brandram's recitals showed how much more effective Shakespeare's lines can be made when spoken "trippingly on the tongue," and that the enjoyment of the public depends more upon the appropriate rendering of the text than upon the scenic accessories.
The stage-direction in the folio for the entrance of the court to see the play reads: "_Enter_ King, _etc., with his guard carrying torches_." It is a pity, I think, that these directions are not inserted in our acting versions. It would make a pretty picture for the stage to be darkened, and to have the mimic play acted by torchlight.
The "_dumb-show_" is omitted in all the stage-versions, and is not represented on the stage, but I think the play-scene is imperfectly realized by leaving it out. The Queen's reply to Hamlet's question, "Madame, how like you the play?" and the King's inquiry, "Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in it?" would have a deeper significance with it represented; for evidently the poisoning in the "_dumb show_" has made no impression on the Queen, but a very marked one on the King, and Hamlet's reply, "poison in jest," assumes quite a different meaning. Besides, Hamlet's words, "The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge," shows that he already has become convinced of the King's guilt before the appearance of Lucianus--and how, except by means of the "_dumb show_"? I believe, too, that if it were represented, then the mistake many actors fall into of making a climax at the lines, "He poisons him in the garden," etc., and speaking them to the King, and not to his courtiers, would be corrected. There seems no justification for Hamlet making a climax of these lines. It is anticipating the King's exit, which is the last thing Hamlet would wish for. He tells the court that it shall see "_anon_" how the murderer will marry the wife of Gonzago, and the King defeats his nephew's purpose by stopping the play. Hamlet's most dramatic line in this scene, one at which a point might be legitimately made, is cut out in the acting-version. Ophelia says, "The King rises." Then Hamlet exclaims, "What! frighted with _false_ fire!" Also the Queen's remark to her husband, "How fares my lord?" has been omitted. The words have some value as evidence of the Queen's ignorance of the King's crime. If she knew of it the question was unnecessary.
"_Exit Horatio_" is the stage-direction in the acting-edition, after Hamlet's words, "Come, some music;" but there is no similar stage-direction in either the second quarto or folio. Later on, in the acting-edition, comes the direction: "_Enter_ Horatio _with_ Recorders." In the second quarto it is, "_Enter the Players with recorders_," and in the folio, "_Enter one with a recorder_." It seems just possible that Hamlet's lines--
"Ah! ha! come, some music; come, the recorders. For if the King like not the tragedy, Why, then, belike he likes it not, perdy"--
may not be said to Horatio at all, but to one of the players who may be hanging about the stage waiting for instructions after the sudden interruption of the performance. He would then retire, and send some of his fellows with recorders. In French's acting-edition the words, "To withdraw with you," are altered to "So withdraw with you," after which comes the rather curious stage-direction, "_Exeunt_ Horatio _and_ Recorders." There are no such directions in the quartos or folio. A recorder is not a person, but a musical instrument. From indications in the first quarto, Horatio should remain on the stage until the end of the scene, for Hamlet says, "Good-night, Horatio," to which Horatio replies, "Good-night unto your lordship."
The third scene in the Globe edition is the second scene in the acting-version. French's edition contains the King's long soliloquy, and omits Hamlet's entrance. Cumberland's edition omits both. I think that to omit Hamlet's entrance in this scene is to interfere with Shakespeare's dramatic construction. Its omission breaks an important link between the closet scene and the play scene, and prevents the audience fully realizing the consequences of Hamlet's clemency. Shakespeare shows us Hamlet wishing to take the King's life at three different periods during the play, but the King's craft and Hamlet's conscience stand in the way; for the Ghost's word must first be challenged; then the mother's wishes must be respected; while the King's prayers must not be interrupted; and when the next opportunity occurs the wrong man is killed. This is the sequence of the story, and it should not be broken; even the compiler of the first quarto knew this, for all three incidents are made prominent in his text. But our stage Hamlets try to tone down the inconsistencies and imperfections of the character; they exploit his sentiments, but do not show his inclinations. Hamlet wants to kill the King, notwithstanding that his sensitive nature instinctively rebels against the deed. A student, a controversialist, and a moralist, what has he to do with revenge or murder? But Hamlet, regardless of his own temperament, thinks only of his duty to his father.
Passing now to the third scene, which is the fourth in the Globe edition, I find that after the exit of the Ghost no less than 52 lines have been cut out, and their omission has caused actors to introduce stage-business which is contradictory to the text. Many Hamlets show an emotional tenderness towards the Queen which would be quite out of place if all the text were spoken. Look at the fierce satire expressed in lines 190 onwards! Hamlet in his self-constituted office "as scourge and minister" cannot caress his mother or hold her in his arms as is now done by actors. However much she may solicit his sympathy, his reply is: "I must be cruel only to be kind." I should like to see inserted in the acting-edition the fine lines of Hamlet to the Queen--
"Forgive me this my virtue, For in the fatness of these pursy times Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg, Yea, curb and woo, for leave to do him good."
From the third act 216 lines have been omitted.
The fourth act on the stage sometimes begins with the fifth scene, Globe edition, but very often the first and the third scenes are acted. These scenes seem to belong to the third act. They take place the same night, and are a continuation of the closet scene, for in the first quarto and folio the Queen is not marked to go off, but the King to enter after Hamlet's exit. Between the fourth and fifth scenes a pause can well take place to allow of Laertes' return from France. This addition to the third act would make it very long, unless the Hamlet and Ophelia scene were made part of the second act, bringing down the curtain on the words, "Madness in great ones must not unwatched go." Two objections to this suggestion, however, can be urged owing to the lapse of a day between the second and third acts, and the bringing together of Hamlet's two long soliloquies. But an interval is only needed to show that time has been allowed to prepare the play, and, therefore, can come as well after the scene with Ophelia as before; and a good actor would surmount the difficulty of the two soliloquies by varying the delivery of each. This revision of act-intervals would make the construction of the play resemble more that of the first quarto, which, for acting purposes, is certainly the better version of the two. Moreover, in the folio there appear no divisions beyond the second act, nor any indications in the text to show where Shakespeare may have wished another pause to come in the representation.
In the first scene of the fourth act, Globe edition, the Queen, speaking of Hamlet, says:
"To draw apart the body he hath killed, O'er whom his very madness, like some ore Among a mineral of metals base, Shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done."
These lines are omitted in the acting-versions. Perhaps, if they were inserted, many actors might consider it necessary to show more concern for the death of Polonius than has hitherto been the stage practice.
The fifth scene, Globe edition, is the second scene in French's, and the fourth in Cumberland's. I think it would add to the dignity of Horatio's character if, as directed in the second quarto, the Queen and Horatio entered with "a gentleman," who brings news of Ophelia's mental derangement. Horatio is not a servant, nor even a gentleman-in-waiting; but a visitor from Wittenberg. The Queen, having lost her son, would naturally seek the society of his bosom friend. The stage-direction in the first quarto for Ophelia's entrance should be noticed; I should like to see it inserted in the acting-edition: "_Enter_ Ophelia _playing on a lute, with her hair hanging down, singing_." This, no doubt, is how she appeared on Burbage's stage. I can imagine Ophelia entering as if she were wandering about the corridors of the palace singing and muttering to herself unconscious of what she was saying, where she was going, or to whom she was speaking; the imbecility of a pretty young girl who had been, at one time, fond of her songs as of her sewing. In the acting-edition the stage-direction for the second entrance describes her as being "_fantastically dressed with straws and flowers_," but there is no similar direction in the quartos or folio. Ophelia has very little time allowed her to go anywhere, and certainly not beyond the palace precincts, where she might not find straws or daisies. Shakespeare may have intended the flowers to be imaginary ones to which she refers that the audience may anticipate her ramble beyond the palace to make garlands in the meadows. Songs were rarely sung on the stage unaccompanied, and it must be remembered that Ophelia was a court lady, more accustomed to handle the lute than to pick wildflowers. The third scene of the fourth act, being the fifth scene in the Globe edition, I have never seen acted on the stage. The omission is, perhaps, not important, except that the spectators are left ignorant as to the cause of Hamlet's return. From the fourth act 303 lines have been omitted in the acting-version.
Coming now to the fifth act, the stage-direction for Ophelia's burial, both in the Globe and acting-editions, is as follows: "_Enter_ Priests, _etc., in Procession, the corpse of_ Ophelia, Laertes, _and_ Mourners _following_, King, Queen, _their Trains, etc._" This direction is hardly consistent with Hamlet's description, "Such maimed rites." I should prefer the direction in the first quarto: "_Enter_ King _and_ Queen, Laertes _and other_ Lords, _with a_ Priest _after the coffin_." The absence of religious ceremony should attract the attention of the audience as much as it does Hamlet's. I should like to see only _one_ Priest present, and the coffin borne by soldiers or villagers, not by monks or nuns. It is often the stage practice for the Priest to stand over the grave with a book in his hand and intone his lines (replies to Laertes' questions) as if they were part of the burial service. A rather erroneous conception of Shakespeare's churlish Priest, who objects to the funeral taking place on sacred ground, and refuses even to approach the grave.
In the first quarto, at the words "What's he that conjures so," is written the stage-direction, "Hamlet _leaps in after_ Laertes," and I find that Oxberry's edition has the same direction, only inserted a little lower down. I presume, therefore, that the elder Kean did actually leap into the grave. Our modern Hamlets would object to this business as undignified, and perhaps it is; but, at the same time, Hamlet's public apology to Laertes in the last scene requires some marked movement of his in this scene. He owns himself that he was in a towering passion. Laertes may handle Hamlet roughly, but not till Hamlet has interfered with him.
None of our stage Hamlets appear in the churchyard in any change of costume. From the familiar way in which the clown talks to Hamlet, and Hamlet's declaration, "Behold, 'tis I, Hamlet, the Dane," I imagine that Shakespeare intended Hamlet to be dressed in some disguise in this scene. When Hamlet, writing to the King, says, "Naked and alone," he may not only mean unarmed, but stripped of his fine clothes, so that it would not be inappropriate for him to appear at the grave in some common sailor's dress. In the second scene in this act Hamlet says, "With my sea-gown scarf'd about me," a line that also would furnish some excuse for change of costume. Both in the first quarto and the folio the lines, "This is mere madness," etc., are spoken by the King. The acting-edition follows the second quarto, and gives the lines to the Queen. The King had good reason to impress upon others the belief that Hamlet is mad; and when the villagers hear the taunt they should shun the lunatic.
The second scene is divided in the stage-version; and now that it has become the custom to lower the curtain for each change of scene, I would suggest that the churchyard-scene be changed at once to the hall where the duel takes place. The forcing of this duel upon Hamlet by the King would be better shown by the King and all the court coming down to Hamlet than Hamlet's going to them. It is the difference between his going to meet death and death coming to him.
In this second scene of the acting-edition there is a line of the King's omitted, which, perhaps, if it were inserted, would cause an alteration in the stage-business connected with it. The King says: "Give me the cups," showing that more than one cup is brought to the King, one of them, probably, containing the poison. In this cup the King places his jewel, to insure Hamlet's drinking out of it. On the stage it is the common practice to use only one cup, and to imagine that the pearl contains the poison.
I have before expressed my regret that the play should end at Hamlet's death. Shakespeare would have considered the play unfinished, and even the partisans of stage effect would lose nothing by the introduction of Fortinbras. The distant sound of the drum, the tramp of soldiers, the gradual filling of the stage with them, the shouts of the crowd outside, the chieftain's entrance fresh from his victories, and the tender, melancholy young prince, dead in the arms of his beloved friend, are material for a fine picture, a strong dramatic contrast. Life in the midst of death! Was not this Shakespeare's conception? From the last act 219 lines have been omitted.
* * * * *
The acting-editions of Shakespeare's plays are worth examining by students in order to ascertain how far they are consistent with the author's intention. Since the chronological order of the plays has been fixed with more or less certainty, the study of Shakespeare has become much easier, and his dramatic and poetical conceptions are more accurately realized than they ever were before. The time has now come when our acting-editions could be profitably revised. Eminent actors may prefer, perhaps, arranging versions from their own study of the text, but there must always exist a standard version for general use in the profession. I should like to see existing a playbook of "Hamlet" which has been altered and shortened by a joint board of actors and scholars. It should have a carefully written introduction describing minutely the play as it is believed the author conceived it. There should also be a short sketch of the persons represented, with hints to the actor where to look in omitted passages for glimpses of character; besides notes on obscure passages, unfamiliar expressions, and different readings; and a description of costume and scenery most appropriate to the play. Such a book might be the beginning of a new era for the Shakespearian drama on our stage, and, by stimulating actors to study their parts from an artistic point of view, and less from a theatrical one, it would enable the public to appreciate Shakespeare in the only place where he can be properly understood, and that is the theatre.
"KING LEAR."[13]
When I opened the newspapers to read the criticisms on a recent performance of "King Lear," and found that the first comments made were in praise of the costumes, the scenery, and the music, then I knew that once more Shakespeare and tragedy had failed to assert themselves in the English Theatre. Charlotte Bronte, the novelist, who was educated in Brussels, and saw Rachel in one of her greatest impersonations, once astounded a London dinner-party by saying that the English knew nothing about tragedy. In her diary she writes: "I have twice seen Macready act, once in 'Macbeth' and once in 'Othello.' It is the fashion to rave about his splendid acting; anything more false and artificial, less genuinely impressive than his whole style, I could scarcely have imagined. The fact is the stage system is altogether hollow nonsense. They act farces well enough; the actors comprehend their parts and do justice to them. They comprehend nothing about tragedy or Shakespeare, and it is a failure. I said so, and by so saying produced a blank silence, a mute consternation." Unfortunately, Charlotte Bronte's reproach still remains true. Perhaps, had she continued to protest, the public would then have recognized the truth of her remarks. As it was, she never again referred to the subject. Like most of our literary men and women, then and now, she preferred to remain discreetly silent upon all matters connected with Shakespeare and the stage.
Last night, in a London theatre, Charlotte Bronte's words were forcibly brought back to my mind. I have once seen a great rendering of the part of Lear, but it was given by an Italian, Signor Rossi. I have seen the whole play correctly rendered, with every character a vivid realization of the poet's conception, but this was at a performance in the Court Theatre at Munich. For thirty years I have been a constant playgoer, and seen the best art this country can produce, but never can I say that I have seen English tragedy on the English stage. The cause is not far to seek. We have actors in abundance, and some of them creative artists; yet we have no tragic actors, because we have no school in which to develop them. Until we can set apart a theatre for the exclusive use of classical drama and its interpreters, we cannot hope to have tragedy finely acted. A tragedy in verse is the severest test of the artist's powers, of his physical flexibility in voice and face, of his training and sensibility. When, therefore, I heard who was going to essay the greatest tragic role that has ever been written, the result was a foregone conclusion: exit Shakespeare and enter the Producer.
Yes! He is the hero of the moment, as all our newspapers have told us, only it is unfortunate, in the interests of art, that to the praise there should have been added no discernment. Macaulay has said that the sure sign of the general decline of an art is the frequent occurrence, not of deformity, but of misplaced beauty, and whatever beauty has been put into the production is undoubtedly misplaced. We can accept accuracy in scenery and costume when the play itself is historically accurate--that is to say, when it has been written to show the difference between two periods as that of British and Norman, or when it defines some distinctive characteristic of race relating to its morals or manners. But what is there in "King Lear" that suggests such a remote period as 800 B.C.? We are told in the programme that Shakespeare purposely removes the story from Christian times to give the tragedy its proper setting in "a remote age of barbarism, when man in wanton violence was at war with Nature." The story, however, belongs to one of the popular fables of European literature. Like "Cinderella," it was in all probability transplanted into our country from a foreign source. In its application it is universal, and marks no special epoch or nationality, nor is there in the story or its characters anything out of keeping with a Christian age. Have there been no ungrateful daughters, no adulterers, no bastards, no tyrants, no jealous lovers since the years B.C.? The motive for crime remains pretty much the same to-day as it did before the Christian era, and will continue to remain the same until the economic conditions of human existence are readjusted. It is contrary to history and experience to suppose that in Shakespeare's time dramatists deliberately aimed at illustrating not only the customs but also the morals of a barbaric age. If we do not to-day tear out the eyes of our enemy, it is because we have discovered some less clumsy way of revenging our injuries. But because our manners are more refined, it does not follow that our morals are purer. The story of "King Lear," as Shakespeare has set it forth, is one that may happen to-day in any kingdom and any home. This is what the producer has failed to grasp, and why his scenes and costumes do not illustrate his play.
Throughout the performance the spectators' eyes are at variance with the spoken words. Did the early Britons have stocks? Were there such persons as marshals, heralds, knights, drums, and colours? Did beldames walk the villages, and were there wakes and fairs in market-towns? Why was fish eaten on Fridays? Had "Bessy" crossed the bourn? How did the ballads become known a thousand years before they were written? Needlessly is the attention distracted by these anachronisms which upset the spectator's equanimity in a play that is pulsating with ever-living human emotion. Then, again, costume is an essential adjunct in drama, as an indication of character. We know at a glance a man's rank, his wealth, and his taste, by the aid of his clothes, provided always that we are familiar with the period in which the apparel was worn. But put the men into bath-sheets or into night-shirts, and we cannot tell the master from the servant. As a fact the producer has put all his characters into dressing-gowns--showy ones, doubtless--while the hair of the men is as long as that of the women. In vain do we seek among these sexless creatures for our familiar characters, to know who is who. Where is the king, the earl, the peasant, the knave, the soldier, the civilian? There are slight distinctions in the costumes worn by these characters, but to the uninitiated they are meaningless. Infinite variety in character and situation is created by the author, and none shown by the producer owing to the choice of an archaic period. How the spectator longs for sight of the fool's cap, bells and bauble, of the herald's tabard, and the knight's armour; to see a girl as a girl, and a man as a man, and to know which is the lady and which the queen!
* * * * *
A country squire, whose hobby was horses, once told me that although at twenty he thought himself a good judge of a thoroughbred, after fifty more years of experience he hesitated a long while in determining a nag's good points. It is the same with the student of Shakespeare; the oftener he has read one of the poet's plays, and the more study he has given to it, the longer he hesitates to criticize. The art of the dramatist is too thorough and too subtle to be lightly discussed. To all stage-managers who wish to mend or improve Shakespeare I say: "Hands off! Produce this play as it is written or leave it alone. Don't take liberties with it; the man who does that does not understand his own limitations!" Let us uphold that there is but one rule to be followed when it becomes necessary to shorten one of the poet's plays; and that is to omit lines, but never an entire scene. Shakespeare, of all his contemporaries, unless it be Ford, gave to his dramas--especially to his later ones--unity of design; so that each scene has a relation to the whole play. But in the preparation of this stage-version of "King Lear" it must be admitted that no rule, no method, no love, nor respect has been shown; and, what is the least pardonable fault, no knowledge is apparent. Scenes and passages have been torn out of the play, just as children might tear up bank-notes, regardless of the value of the parts to the whole. No matter if the story to modern minds is unintelligible, the characters incoherent, and the ethics of the play unconvincing, the management presumes that, as everything in "King Lear" took place among the early Britons, eight hundred years before Christ, only the costumes and scenery of the producer can be expected to elucidate the barbarities of the play or its people.
Stowed away in an odd corner of the drama, Shakespeare generally introduces some words to indicate his point of view, and, in regard to "King Lear," his view is thus expressed:
"EDMUND: This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune [often the surfeit of our own behaviour], we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion ... and all that we are evil in, by divine thrusting on" (Act I., Scene 2).
And Shakespeare repeats the warning in "Coriolanus":
"The gods be good unto us!... No, in such a case the gods will not be good unto us," etc. (Act V., Scene 4).
Now, unfortunately, Edmund's speech is omitted from the stage-version, so that the playgoer who does not know his Shakespeare misses the irony of the terrible tragedy he is called upon to witness. The poet wishes us to understand that if a community leaves to the care of the gods man's responsibility to his fellow-men, instead of taking that responsibility upon itself, then life will go on to-day--and does go on--just as it did in the age of Elizabeth. All through the play Shakespeare denies omnipotence to man's self-made gods. Edmund has good looks, intelligence, and good intentions (Act I., Scene 2). The community, however, in which he lives decides that because he is an illegitimate child these gifts shall not be profitably employed for the good of the State or for the benefit of the individual who possesses them. Edmund therefore becomes embittered, and revenges himself upon that community. Goneril, Regan, and Cornwall, being vicious in mind and self-seeking, make use of Edmund's abilities to serve their own ends, by which means the catastrophe in the death of Cordelia and Lear is brought about, together with the deaths of the plotters. But Kent, Albany, Gloucester, and Edgar believe that all their misfortunes are brought about by the gods. Well, perhaps they are, if we admit that by the gods is meant society's instinct for self-preservation, which compels it to rebel against bad laws and bad conventions. Unfortunately, however, history shows that a community can live too much in awe of its self-imposed gods, who overrule natural instinct, and encourage ignorance and folly, when a nation soon perishes, and is wiped out of existence.
It has been said that the putting out of Gloucester's eyes is an artistic mistake on Shakespeare's part. I hold that it is a necessary incident in the play, and that the dramatist has shown the reason for it. Cordelia has set foot in the country with her French soldiers, determined to regain the kingdom for her father, and Gloucester, whom Cornwall regards as belonging to his own faction, is conniving with Cordelia. Now had Gloucester been a common soldier, Cornwall could have put him to death as a traitor (Act III., Scene 7); but the offender being an earl, Cornwall dare not do this, so he puts out the old man's eyes to prevent him reading Cordelia's despatches. He is blinded, moreover, in sight of the audience, that Cornwall may be seen receiving his death-wound. And even the fact that Regan and Goneril were capable of acting so inhumanly towards Gloucester makes Lear's plight more desperate, and therefore more pathetic. Yet Shakespeare never makes his characters suffer without giving them compensations, and the meeting and reconciliation between the blind Gloucester and his son is one of the most touching incidents in the play. That this reconciliation was omitted in representation suggests that the ugly incident of putting out Gloucester's eyes was retained merely as a piece of sensationalism, and, if so, it merits severe condemnation.
Shakespeare has often been blamed for being intolerant to democracy, and this is in part a well-founded reproach, but it was a fault of the age and not of the man. Still, in "King Lear" the dramatist abundantly proves his sympathy with the hard lot of the poor. For this reason the play preaches no pessimism. Lear, Gloucester, and Edgar are the happier for the troubles they experience. Such hardships as they endure are brought upon themselves by their own shortcomings; but these hardships are mitigated by the gain to their moral natures of a fellow-sympathy for the sufferings of those who have done no wrong, and by an appreciation of the injustice done towards those whose miseries are created through the selfishness of the rich. Lear, who has ruled a country as a despot for half a century, discovers for the first time in his life that--
"Through tattered clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furred gowns hide all."
Having exposed himself to feel what wretches feel, he knows, as he has never known before, how the heart of a desolate father can crave for the love of a gentle daughter. To prison he can cheerfully go with her,
"To pray and sing and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies,"
because now he is no longer himself in the wrong, but the one who is wronged. And the blind Gloucester, also, is happy in his misery, because for the first time he can say:
"Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man;-- that will not see Because he does not feel, feel your power quickly; So distribution should undo excess, And each man have enough."
This is Shakespeare's message to the aristocracy to-day, and yet all this is cut out by the actor-manager who seems to imagine that these sentiments are barbaric, and only represent the opinions of men who lived some three thousand years ago.
The omissions in this stage-version are in a great measure due to carelessness in the study of the play. The right point of view from which to present this colossal tragedy on the stage has been missed, and the stage-manager having allowed his actors to take up half the evening in drawling out the words of the first two acts, the blue pencil has been used for the remaining three with a freedom and ignorance which never should have been sanctioned.
* * * * *
"_Matinees_ every Wednesday and Saturday." These words appear on all printed bills announcing the performance of "King Lear." They go far to explain why the play fails to represent tragedy either in its emotion or terror, and why it sends playgoers back to their homes as cold and indifferent to human suffering as it left them. What is offered to the public is a kinematograph show; walking figures who gesticulate and utter human sounds; puppets who mechanically move through their parts conscious that the business must be done all over again within a few hours. Does an actor honestly think that he can impersonate Lear's hysterical passion, madness, and death, twice in a day, and day by day, and that he can do this efficiently together with all his other duties of management? That he may wish to do so is intelligible, but that the public should sanction it and the critics tolerate it is strange indeed. That the exigencies of modern theatrical management impose these conditions is beside the question. A less exacting play might have been chosen instead of distorting one of Shakespeare's masterpieces. Salvini, whose reputation as a tragedian is universally acknowledged, refused to act Othello more than three times in a week, and never on two consecutive days; and those who saw his moving performance must admit that it was a physical impossibility for him to do otherwise. A man does not suffer the tortures of jealousy without physical and mental prostration; and the actor endures a very heavy strain when he seeks to simulate an emotion which has not been aroused in a natural way.
The actor, however, not only fails to reproduce the emotions of Lear, he never even shows us the outside of the man. We look in vain about the stage to find the King; instead we see a decrepit, commonplace old man, though Lear is neither the one nor the other. He should resemble an English hunting "squarson," a man overflowing with vitality, who is as hale and active at eighty as he was at forty; a large-hearted, good-natured giant, with a face as red as a lobster. He is one of the spoilt children of nature, spoilt by reason of his favoured position in life. Responsible to no one, he thinks himself omnipotent. No one but Lear must be "fiery," no one but him unreasonable or contrary. In the crushing of this strong, unyielding, but lovable personality lies the drama of the play: this is what an Elizabethan audience went to the Globe Playhouse to see. But how can the story be told when a Lear comes on the stage, who at his _first_ appearance is broken-down and half-witted? Where is the purpose or the art in showing us such a helpless creature being ill-treated by his own kindred? Yet Lear boasts of his physical strength; and how skilfully the dramatist has planned the entrance, so as to accentuate the virility of the man! The play opens with prose, and the first line of verse is spoken by the King, so that the change of rhythm may the better call attention to his entrance. Those who saw Signor Rossi, in the part, dart on to the stage, and with a voice of commanding authority utter the words--
"_Attend_ the lords of France and Burgundy, Gloster"--
recognized the Lear of Shakespeare. This single line, as by a flash of lightning, revealed the impetuosity and imperious disposition of the King, and prepared us for the volcanic disturbance that followed the thwarting of his will. Another thing, overlooked by all our English actors, is the necessity for Lear to come on the stage with Cordelia. On her first appearance she should be seen with her father in affectionate companionship, so as to balance with the last scene, where she is carried on in his devoted arms. Lear's division of his kingdom among his three daughters is not so eccentric a proceeding as the critics would make out. The King needs an excuse for giving the largest portion to his youngest child, and he thinks the most plausible reason is a public acknowledgment of the bond of affection between them. But Cordelia's sense of modesty and self-respect have not been taken into account, and Lear, who never tolerates a rebuff, in a moment of temper upsets all his pre-arranged plans, with disastrous consequence to himself and others. All this animated drama is omitted in the present performance, because Lear, on his first entrance, fails to give the keynote to the character or to the tragedy. Lear, in fact, is never seen on the stage, but only a Piccadilly actor who assumes the part, divested of frock coat and top hat.
The title-role, unfortunately, is not the only part which has been wrongly cast. With the exception of Goneril and Regan, every character has been falsified and distorted. This is not due to want of ability in the actors, but to their physical limitations and to deficiency in training. Their reputations have been won in modern plays, and they seem quite unable to give expression to character when the medium of speech is verse. To those who think more about the actor than about the character he represents this is perhaps not a matter of much moment, but it is one of considerable importance to the play, since with all great dramatists the incidents are evolved by the characters; and if the men and women we see on the stage are not those that Shakespeare drew, his incidents are apt to appear ill-timed and ridiculous. After the title-role the most serious misconception of character is in the part of Edmund, the man whose wits control the movement of the drama. He is an offspring of the Italian Renaissance, a portrait of Machiavel's Prince, whose merit consists in his mental and physical fitness. He should be the handsomest man in the play, the most alert, the most able; he is a victim neither to sentimentality nor to self-deception, and he is fully capable of turning the weakness of others to his own advantage. It is impossible to hate the well-bred young schemer, because he is too clever, and his dupes are too silly. Unfortunately, the actor who is cast for this important part is quite unsuited for it. Another brilliant part which has suffered badly at the hands of its interpreter is Edgar, a character in which the Elizabethans delighted, because of its variety and the scope it allows for effective character-impersonation. The actor has to assume four parts--Edgar, an imbecile beggar, a peasant, and a knight-errant, and each of these characters should be a distinct creation; but the actor gave us nothing but a modern young man making himself unintelligibly ridiculous. Even more disastrous was the casting of the part of the fool, that gentle, frail lad who perishes from exposure to the storm, a child with the wisdom of a child, which is often the profoundest wisdom. Then a lady with a majestic figure cannot represent the little Cordelia, and she should not have been given the part. Of course the obvious retort to this kind of criticism is that the play must be cast from a company selected for repertory work, most of which, perhaps, will be modern. London managers, also, impose actors on the public because they have a London reputation, and this creates a monopoly which becomes a tyranny upon art. Whether the artist is suited or not for the part, he must be put into it, for box-office considerations.
To sum up. For the first time in the history of our stage the theatre is put under the management of a literary director, presumably with a view to bringing scholarly intelligence to bear upon the exponents of drama; but the result to the public, in so far as "King Lear" is concerned, is that it gets quite the most chaotic interpretation of the poet's work that it has ever been my misfortune to see represented on the stage. What is the reason? Has the director, like the fly, walked into the spider's parlour, or, in other words, into the network of theatrical commercialism, to find his artistic soul silenced and himself bound? Time perhaps will show us!
IV
THE NATIONAL THEATRE
THE REPERTORY THEATRE. THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE SOCIETY. SHAKESPEARE AT EARL'S COURT. THE STUDENTS' THEATRE. THE MEMORIAL SCHEME.
IV
A NATIONAL THEATRE
THE REPERTORY THEATRE.[14]
The anxiety of dramatic critics to explain "the scant success" of Mr. Frohman's Repertory Theatre has created a large amount of paper argument, of more or less doubtful value, and now Mr. William Archer has added his view to that of others, and concludes his remarks with some practical advice to those who, in his opinion, are entitled to be regarded as "some of our ablest dramatists." The nature of this advice, however, is not only curious, but startling, when we recall the reception that was given to Ibsen's plays on their first appearance in this country, and remember that Mr. Archer was their warmest defender. Regardless of this defence, he now contends that "it is a grave misfortune for any writer, but it is a disaster for the dramatist, to get into the habit of despising popular taste and thinking that he has only himself to please in his writings."[15] But those who take their dramatic art seriously, and who wish their plays to have more than an ephemeral existence, cannot possibly accept this advice. They will recognize that the highest aim of a dramatist is to create a work valuable for all time, and that the most intimate knowledge of the moods and vagaries of playgoers cannot outweigh the smallest fault in the art of dramatic construction or character drawing. The conscientious artist repudiates the interference of public opinion with the expression of his art; he does not try to follow popular taste, but seeks to control and direct it. "The public," says George Sand, "is no artist; I will not tell you that we must please it, but we must win it. It winces, but gets over it." This is the advice Mr. Archer should have tendered to English playwrights, and let us hope it is the advice he meant to tender them. Nature has nowhere resigned her prerogative to the demands of popular taste, nor should the artist abandon his privileges. There is no record of a poet or musician having created a masterpiece through pandering to the "groundlings." Mozart, on completing an opera, would say: "I shall gain but little by this, but I have pleased myself, and that must be my recompense." It was Schiller who wrote: "My submission to the public convenience does not extend so far that I can allow any holes in my work and mutilate the characters of men." And Goethe exclaimed: "Nothing is more abhorrent to a reasonable man than an appeal to the majority." Lessing has said: "I have no objection to criticism condemning an artist, but it must not contaminate him. He must continue his work knowing that he is happier than his detractors." And Lessing points the moral in adding: "Genius is condemned to utter only absurdities when it is unfaithful to its mission." Bernard Shaw and Granville Barker, two of the able dramatists to whom Mr. Archer tenders his advice, have won "the ear of their contemporaries" equally with the more popular writers, Barrie and Maugham, and this they have done by the production of one or two plays which did not reach their hundredth performance. Euripides was none the less famous, as a dramatist, because the Athenian playgoers disliked his opinions and banished him from their midst. In fact, a dramatist is only great when he is able to dispense with the requirements of popular taste; nor will he be satisfied with the knowledge that his play leaves some definite impression upon an audience unless it be that particular impression which belongs to tragedy, or comedy, or history, or pastoral drama, or conversational comedy.
Let it be, then, frankly admitted that a dramatist cannot both live in advance of the opinions of his audience and also reflect them. It is very well for Mr. Archer to talk about the vessel which does not float, but his illustration is surely less obvious than he imagines. A Noah's Ark will float on the ocean to-day as easily as it did in the days of the Flood, but no modern shipbuilder now would risk his reputation in constructing such a boat on the plea that it remains above water. Will the vessel weather the storms? Will it outlive its competitors? These are the vital questions in the art of both shipbuilding and playwriting.
Mr. Archer seems to forget that there is a prejudice among audiences as well as among individuals, and that every period of life has its own peculiar notions. Sometimes playgoers will receive an author's brightest comedy with coldness. The burden of Charles Lamb's reflections was--that the audience of his day came to the theatre to be complimented on its goodness. "The Stranger," "The Castle Spectre," and "George Barnwell," are specimens of the dramatic bill of fare which then found favour. On the other hand, the comic dramatists tried to disparage purity in men and women, and the sparkle of their comedies is unwholesome. In the opinion of many sober minds the dramatic literature of the Restoration is a blot upon our national history, while the gloomy productions that delighted the sentimental contemporaries of Charles Lamb are offences against dramatic art. At neither period was the drama national, in so far as it was representative of the tastes of all classes. Congreve and Wycherly wrote for the fashionable, while the admirers of Lillo's and Lewis's moral dramas were chiefly respectable shopkeepers. It was in Shakespeare's day that the nobility and groundlings together resorted to the playhouse, constituting themselves at once the patrons and pupils of the drama. The Elizabethan playgoer had no desire to bias the judgment of the dramatist. It left him free to represent life vividly and truly. It even encouraged him to be studious of the playgoer's profit as well as of his pleasure. But the playgoers of the Restoration, and of the period that immediately succeeded it, were intolerant of all views but their own. They regarded with disfavour plays which did not uphold their notions of amusement and morality. They called upon the dramatist to accept the opinion of his public, in these matters, as being superior to his own. As a consequence, the drama suffered in the attempt made to reconcile principles that are in themselves inconsistent, and the judgment of the audience was in no sense a criterion of merit in a play. This explains why some good plays have been coldly received on their first appearance. "She Stoops to Conquer" would have failed but for the presence in the theatre of Dr. Johnson and his friends; Sheridan's "Rivals," an even more brilliant comedy, did not secure a fair hearing on its first performance. Of Diderot's comedy, the "Pere de Famille," its author gives us the following information:
"And why did this piece, which nowadays fills the house before half-past four, and which the players always put up when they want a thousand crowns, have so lukewarm a welcome at first?"
"... If I did not succeed at first it was because the style was new to the audience and actors; because there was a strong prejudice, still existing, against what people call tearful comedy; because I had a crowd of enemies at court, in town, among magistrates, among Churchmen, among men of letters."
"And how did you incur so much enmity?"
"Upon my word, I don't know, for I have not written satires on great or small, and I have crossed no man on the path of fortune and dignities. It is true that I was one of the people called Philosophers, who were then viewed as dangerous citizens, and on whom the Government let loose two or three subalterns without virtue, without insight, and, what is worse, without talent....
"To say nothing of the fact that these philosophers had made things more difficult for poets and men of letters in general, and that it was no longer possible to make oneself distinguished by knowing how to turn out a madrigal or a nasty couplet."[16]
This argument applies as forcibly to what goes on in the theatre in London to-day as it did in Paris nearly two hundred years ago. Perhaps, however, enough has been said to discount the suggestion that popular opinion is in any way responsible for the making of a good play.
M. Claretie once expressed a doubt if Englishmen quite understood the limitations of the French National Theatre; because when the Comedie Francaise visited London in 1893, the Press (including Mr. Archer) ridiculed the intention of the director to give a more classical programme than English taste demanded, presumably forgetting that the selection of plays should be judged by an academic standard. The Comedie Francaise visited the Metropolis with a repertory apparently designed to illustrate the whole range of French dramatic literature, and yet, at the bidding of an exacting and ignorant public, it was called upon, without a protest from the critics, to withdraw the masterpieces of Moliere and Racine in favour of the modern drama; nor was it to the dignity of the Theatre Francaise that its members consented to humour the caprices of playgoers, and condescended to bid for popularity when popularity meant bad taste and a craving for "stars." But the director, having entered into an arrangement with commercial gentlemen for commercial purposes, unexpectedly found himself compelled to forfeit his academic position, and to place his theatre on a level with a commercial playhouse. Fortunately the surrender did not serve its purpose. General dissatisfaction was expressed with the visit of the Comedie Francaise. The speculator lost his money, the playgoer did not see his "star," and the student heard no masterpieces.
Now, presumably, there is this difference between a National Theatre and a Repertory Theatre, that the object of the former is to keep before the public the best plays of the country, and those of other countries, and to give occasional performances of new plays of rare excellence and dignity. The Repertory Theatre, on the other hand, as we understand it in England, has for its task the exploiting of the new school of dramatists; of those men who have advanced ideas about their art and of the purpose it should serve. It is essentially, therefore, a theatre of experiment. If this is the case, and a manager such as Mr. Frohman cares to finance the undertaking, he can hardly be credited with considering the scheme in the light of a business speculation, nor would those dramatists who were invited to provide plays for this Repertory Theatre be expected to supply Mr. Frohman with the same class of work that they would submit to the ordinary theatrical manager. Here, evidently, is the opportunity, and the only opportunity a dramatist can get in this country, of providing a bill of fare capable of nourishing the weak intellects and the weaker susceptibilities of an audience. Looked at from this standpoint, it may be contended that no new play was produced under the Frohman Repertory management which did not advance the cause of dramatic art by adding to the knowledge of its author, to the experience of its actors, and to the education of the audience. "Misalliance" was a brilliant satire on modern society, one of the ripest conversational plays that Mr. Shaw's genius has yet produced; one in which the dramatist's observation probes deeper, and his wisdom and philosophy, as revealed in the play of character, are as subtle and less personal than anything Mr. Shaw, perhaps, has achieved hitherto in domestic drama. Why, then, are we now told that this play failed to attract, and with whom does the fault rest--is it with the author or his public? There was no insufficiency of "go," of wit, of raillery, of originality, or novelty; but there was, none the less, one thing wanting that to a modern audience is an unpardonable omission, and that is flattery. Society, as it lives to-day, under the maternal wing of the old lady in Stable Yard, expects to be humoured at the theatre, and to be complimented, not on its goodness, but on its vices. "Paint us as black as the devil," it says to the dramatist, "but don't dare to admit that we are a penny the worse because we are black!" And this menace is equivalent to demanding that an author shall take men and women at their own valuation, and ignore the hidden motives and forces which control human conduct. A very few strokes of the pen, a little falsification in character-drawing, and "Misalliance" could have been made an acceptable play; but there was a writer holding the pen who was inexorable. Mr. Shaw drew life as he saw it, and left the public to approve or not as it liked. But if London rejected "Misalliance," this did not kill the play; it is no more dead than Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro" is dead because on its first appearance Vienna sneered at the work of one whose talent outshone that of its own musicians. The Viennese winced and got over their dislike; in the same way Londoners will come to think well of "Misalliance." It is true that we are indebted to its author for at least one popular success, which future historians of the stage will declare was an epoch-making play, being the first of its kind to arrest the attention of the man-in-the-street, and bring him into the theatre to listen to nothing more exciting than a "talk." But the success of "John Bull's Other Island," so far as the public was concerned, had less to do with the merits of the play than the demerits of the audience. The City man woke up one morning to find himself famous, as he thought, and hugely enjoyed his notoriety. What did it matter if a company promoter was silly and cunning so long as he was always amusing and successful! This, as they thought, was the profound wisdom that Mr. Shaw meant to preach to the world! What a strange instance of egotistical vanity! And when the same play was performed in Dublin, the enjoyment of the audience was no less marked, but with this difference--that the laughter was all against Broadbent and not with him. Whether the Englishman was successful or not, he was a "fathead," because no Irishman was silly enough to put his pocket before his politics or to prefer his neighbour's omniscience to his own. Yet this play is not the less virile and wholesome because company-promoters think themselves flattered by it. It is not Mr. Shaw pandering to his audience, but vanity looking at itself in the looking-glass.
Of that other "failure," "The Madras House," Mr. Archer admits that he found a good deal in the play to interest him, and it is difficult to believe that the author of "The Voysey Inheritance" had not something fresh and inspiring to tell his audience. There are some subjects which do not admit of being treated in drama in a way to enlist general favour. No thinker would argue that "Troilus and Cressida" was written by Shakespeare with a view to its surpassing the popularity of "Hamlet." It is sufficient if the author has treated his subject in a way consistent with the laws of nature and probability. For the critics to assume, as they do, that the author is not conscious of the dramatic limitations imposed upon him by the choice of his subject is an impertinence. As Voltaire once said in defence of a play: "We cannot do all that our friends advise. There are such things as necessary faults. To cure a humpbacked man of his hump we should have to take his life. My child is humpbacked, but otherwise it is quite well." Indeed, Mr. Barker's time will be better employed in educating his critics than in re-writing his play. Nor must it be forgotten that Mr. Barker was hardly out of his teens when he wrote "The Marrying of Ann Leete," a comedy that has not yet received the attention it deserves. Fortunately it has been printed and published, and will undoubtedly again be seen on the stage; for the play has unusual possibilities for a stage-manager with constructive imagination and poetic sensibility, and there is not now wanting in London an audience capable of appreciating a work of the kind in the spirit in which it is conceived. This comedy was undoubtedly inspired by the art of Maeterlinck at the time when the Belgian dramatist was writing such plays as "The Interlude." But where Maeterlinck fails Mr. Barker succeeds. With the poet the disjointed dialogue and constant repetition of the monosyllable becomes a mannerism, and is never convincing. Mr. Barker's method is a nearer approach to reality. He has chosen his characters with more care to give point to their abrupt method of speech, and with no little art. In a country house remote from the world, among people who are well bred if not well read, who give more time to sport and cards than to books, and who have little power to express themselves except in unfinished sentences, is unfolded a domestic tragedy of wonderful power and sadness. And in this lies the weirdness and fascination of the play--that no word of the story is related by the characters, and only from fragments of conversation, apparently trivial and unimportant, does the spectator gradually bit by bit piece together and arrange for himself the puzzle of these people's existence. This comedy, then, is an experiment to try and show the inner life of a family exactly as it might be learnt by a neighbour who was not personally known to any of its members, and it is a very remarkable achievement.
To sum up. Let us be honest with ourselves and to others over this question of the Repertory Theatre, and drop the business side of the matter, which is not the vital one. Let us admit that we can easier spare from the ranks of our dramatists men like Barrie and Maugham than Shaw and Barker; for while the former seek to amuse us (for which we are grateful), the latter hold forth a hand to help us out of the ditch. Nor is it better for us to laugh with Messrs. Barrie and Maugham than to accept the proffered hand, leap out, and walk forward with the preachers.
THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE SOCIETY.
The Elizabethan Stage Society was founded with the object of reviving the masterpieces of the Elizabethan drama upon the stage for which they were written, so as to represent them as nearly as possible under the conditions existing at the time of their first production--that is to say, with only those stage appliances and accessories which were usually employed during the Elizabethan period. "Everything," said Sir Walter Scott, "beyond correct costume and theatrical decorum" is foreign to the "legitimate purposes of the drama," and it is on this principle that the work of the Society is based.
Although the actual life of the Elizabethan Stage Society began in 1895 it may be said to have had its origin as far back as 1881, when a performance of the first quarto of "Hamlet" was given in St. George's Hall, London, in Elizabethan costume, and without scenery. The play was acted continuously, and lasted two hours. Here, then, probably for the first time since Shakespeare's day, was reality given to Shakespeare's words: "The two hours' traffic of our stage." The success of this performance fully justified the experiment. It was generally admitted by those present that the absence of scenery did not lessen the interest, and that with undivided attention being given to the play and to the acting, a fuller appreciation and keener enjoyment of Shakespeare's tragedy became possible.
This performance was followed by others of a similar nature, and with the same results, and the advantage of representing the Elizabethan drama under the conditions it was written to fulfil being thus demonstrated, the idea was suggested of building a stage after the Elizabethan model, yet it was not until 1893 that this long cherished scheme was carried into effect. In the autumn of that year the interior of the Royalty Theatre, Soho, was converted into as near a resemblance of the old Fortune Playhouse as was possible in a roofed theatre. The play acted was "Measure for Measure," and in commenting upon this revival the _Times_ said: "The experiment proved at least that scenic accessories are by no means as indispensable to the enjoyment of a play as the manager supposes"; and a professor of literature at one of our London colleges wrote: "I don't think I was ever more interested--nay, fascinated--by a play upon the stage, and now I shall ever think the cutting up into scenes and acts a useless cruelty and an utter spoiling of the story." A regularly constituted society was now formed, and among the first to subscribe were Mr. and Mrs. Edmund Gosse, Sir Walter Besant, Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, Com. Walter Crane, Professor Israel Gollancz, Professor Hales, Sir Sidney Lee, W. H. Thornycroft, Esq., R.A., Miss Swanwick, the Hon. Lionel Tollemache, and Lady Ritchie. At the performance of "Twelfth Night" at the Middle Temple in 1897 His Majesty King Edward, then Prince of Wales, was present as a Bencher of the Inn.
At the annual meeting of the Society in 1899, Sir Sidney Lee, the Chairman, said: "Speaking as one who has studied the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries with some attention, both on and off the stage, I have never witnessed the simple, unpretentious representation of a great play by this Society without realizing more of the dramatic spirit and intention than I found it possible to realize when reading it in the study."
Of the Society's more recent revivals, the interest aroused by the old morality play, "Everyman," both in London and in many towns throughout the country, and in America, was very marked. The last play given by the Society under the present direction was "Troilus and Cressida."
LIST OF THE SOCIETY'S PERFORMANCES.
1893. "Measure for Measure" Royalty Theatre, London.
1895. "Twelfth Night" Burlington Hall.
" "Comedy of Errors" Gray's Inn Hall.
1896. Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus" St. George's Hall.
" "Two Gentlemen of Verona" Merchant Taylors' Hall.
1897. "Twelfth Night" Middle Temple Hall.
" Scenes from "Arden of Feversham" and "Edward III." St. George's Hall.
" "Tempest" Egyptian Hall, Mansion House.
" " Goldsmiths' Hall.
1898. Beaumont and Fletcher's "Coxcomb" Inner Temple Hall.
" Middleton and Rowley's "Spanish Gipsy" St. George's Hall.
" Ford's "Broken Heart" St. George's Hall.
" Ben Jonson's "Sad Shepherd" Courtyard, Fulham Palace.
" "Merchant of Venice" St. George's Hall.
1899. Ben Jonson's "Alchemyst" Apothecaries' Hall.
" Swinburne's "Locrine" St. George's Hall.
" Calderon's "Life's a Dream" St. George's Hall. (Edward Fitzgerald's translation)
" Kalidasa's "Sakuntala" Botanical Gardens. (Translated from the Sanscrit)
" "Richard II." Lecture Theatre, University of London.
1900. Moliere's "Don Juan" Lincoln's Inn Hall. (Acted in English)
" "Hamlet" (First Quarto) Carpenters' Hall.
" Milton's "Samson Agonistes" Lecture Theatre, Victoria and Albert Museum.
" Schiller's "Wallenstein" Lecture Theatre, University of (Coleridge's translation) London.
" Scott's "Marmion" Lecture Theatre, University of London.
1901. Morality Play "Everyman" The Charterhouse, London.
" "Henry V." Lecture Theatre, University of London.
1902. Ben Jonson's "Alchemyst" Cambridge Summer Meeting.
1903. "Twelfth Night" Lecture Theatre, University of London.
" Marlowe's "Edward II." Oxford Summer Meeting.
1904. "Much Ado about Nothing" London School Board Evening Schools.
1905. "The First Franciscans" St. George's Hall.
" "Romeo and Juliet" Royalty Theatre, London.
1906. "The Good Natur'd Man" Cambridge Summer Meeting.
1907. "The Temptation of Agnes" Coronet Theatre, London.
" "The Merchant of Venice" Fulham Theatre.
1908. "Measure for Measure" Gaiety Theatre, Manchester.
" " " Stratford-on-Avon Festival.
" "The Bacchae of Euripides" Court Theatre, London. (Gilbert Murray's translation)
" "Samson Agonistes" Lecture Theatre, Burlington Gardens. (Milton Tercentenary Celebration)
" Ditto Owen's College, Manchester.
1909. "Macbeth" Fulham Theatre, London.
1910. "Two Gentlemen of Verona" His Majesty's Theatre.
" " " Gaiety Theatre, Manchester.
1911. "Jacob and Esau," and Little Theatre, London. Scenes from "Edward III."
" Schiller's "Wallenstein" Oxford Summer Meeting.
" "The Alcestes of Euripides" Imperial Institute. (Francis Hubback's translation)
1912. Kalidasa's "Sakuntala" Cambridge Summer Meeting.
" "Troilus and Cressida" The King's Hall, Covent Garden.
1913. " " Stratford-on-Avon Festival.
SHAKESPEARE AT EARL'S COURT.[17]
The obsolete but picturesque phrase "Ye Olde" has perhaps something fascinating in it to the modern aesthetic temperament, but it would be just as well if those responsible for educating public opinion at Earl's Court about matters relating to the Elizabethan stage did not misapply the words. To the Elizabethan the Globe was a new building; there was nothing "olde" about it. What, then, the authorities mean is the Old Globe Playhouse, a definition that can mislead no one. There are some merits attached to the design, but also several errors, notably, on the stage, in the position of the traverse, in that of the staircases, and in the use made of the side boxes as approaches to the stage. These are details which are not of interest to the general public, and it is not necessary now to dwell upon them, though exception might be taken to the movement of the costumed figures who are supposed to impersonate the "groundlings."
The programme tells us that the vagaries of the groundlings are drawn from Dekker's "The Guls Horn-Booke," a satirical pamphlet published in Shakespeare's time, which can no more be seriously accepted as criticism than can a description in _Punch_ of a modern theatrical performance. The evidence of foreigners visiting London in the seventeenth century gives a very different impression to that which Dekker chose to admit; and we are told of the staid and decorous attitude of those playgoers frequenting the Fortune, and of the stately dignity of the representations given at the Blackfriars. The handling of these incidents in the auditorium at Earl's Court have the appearance of being planned by one who is only superficially acquainted with the period and not in sympathy with the conditions of theatrical representation then in vogue--a circumstance to be regretted at an exhibition which was ostensibly organized to raise funds for a memorial to Shakespeare. Apparently it is forgotten that between 1590 and 1610 the finest dramatic literature which the world perhaps ever has known was being written in London, a coincidence which is inconceivable were the staging so crude and unintelligent as that which is shown us at Earl's Court. Everything there appears to have been done on the assumption that 300 years ago there was a less amount of brain power existing among dramatists, actors, and audience than there is found among them to-day, while the reverse argument is nearer to the truth, for a Shakespearian performance at the Globe on Bankside was then a far more stimulating and intellectual achievement than it is on the modern stage to-day.
To illustrate this point it is only necessary to witness one of the "excerpts" presented at Earl's Court, the one called "The Tricking of Malvolio." Now, we may presume that attention is invited to the talents of the chief actor by the publicity given to his name, for on one small printed page it is "starred" five times in capital letters against the parts he impersonates. We can find no record of a similar keenness for publicity in any Elizabethan actor. But unfortunately this is the least remarkable illustration of modesty at Earl's Court, and it is impossible to suppose that so many mistakes could have been crammed into a single scene of "Twelfth Night" by anyone who had carefully read the play. Of Shakespeare's plays it was said, in his own day, that they erred from being too life-like, and that in consequence they lacked art; that is to say, there was nothing theatrical about them. The persons he put on the stage, in their speech, costume, and manner, so exactly resembled those the audience recognized in the town that it was difficult to believe that the characters had not been transferred from the street to the stage. Now, in "Twelfth Night" the central figure in the story, and the one round which all the other characters revolve, is Olivia, a young lady who is plunged in the deepest grief by the loss, first of her father, and then of her only brother, and we are told that because of this grief--
"The element itself, till seven years heat, Shall not behold her face at ample view; But, like a cloistress, she will veiled walk And water once a day her chamber round With eye-offending brine."
We may presume, therefore, that, as in the custom of Elizabethan times, Olivia is dressed in the deepest mourning, and wears a black veil to hide her sorrowing face. Next in social importance, in Olivia's house, comes her uncle, Sir Toby, who, as a blood relation--for Olivia's father may have been his brother--also wears black, and, being a knight, should wear velvet or silk, and a gold order. He is out of humour with his niece for the way she parades her grief and shuts herself away from all company. To relieve the monotony of his existence he brings a fellow-knight into the house, calls back the clown who had run away out of sheer boredom, and gives himself up to eating, drinking, and singing. Maria, who marries Sir Toby at the end of the play, is a lady by birth and breeding, attending on the Countess, and, therefore, as one of the household, is dressed in black, and so also are the servants, including Fabian and Malvolio. These latter would all wear black cloth liveries, and Malvolio, in addition, a braided steward's gown, not unlike that worn by a beadle, with a badge on his arm showing his mistress's coat of arms, and a plated neck-chain, as a symbol of his office. It will be seen at once what a shock it would be to Olivia's sense of propriety, in view of her recent bereavement, for her steward to turn up unexpectedly in coloured stockings, especially when she had reason to believe that he had more regard and compassion for her sorrow than anyone else in the house, because of his staid and solemn demeanour. It is not unlikely, besides, that Malvolio, in anticipation of his certain promotion to the ranks of the aristocracy by his marriage with Olivia, had donned, in addition to yellow stockings, some rich costume, put on in imitation of those fashionable young noblemen at court who wore silk scarves crossed above and below the knee, since without the costume his own cross-gartering would not have been in keeping. And indeed in anticipation of his social advancement he alluded to this change of costume in his soliloquy, "sitting in my state ... in my branched _velvet_ gown." Here, then, was Malvolio appearing before the Countess in a "get up" that was not so much comic as audacious in its daring imitation of the only man suitable in rank to marry a rich countess--that is, an earl.
The environment, then, of the play is this: a house of mourning against which all its inmates are in rebellion with the exception of the Countess and Malvolio; the latter, who is a time-server, seizing his opportunity to ingratiate himself with his mistress by his pious and correct behaviour and the sternness with which he suppresses mirth within the house. All this information Shakespeare gives us in the text of the play, and yet how does the actor avail himself of this knowledge? Malvolio, the Countess's head flunkey, so to speak, appears not in the costume of a servant, but as if he were the best dressed person in the house. Had he been a peer of the realm and the Lord High Treasurer, his apparel, with one exception, could not have been more correct. Like Prince Hamlet, he is in black velvet, doublet, and trunks, and wears a magnificent black velvet gown reaching to his ankles, a gold chain and a gold order! Incongruous and impossible as this costume is for the character who has to wear it, an element of burlesque is added to it by the conical hat, a yard high, which never could have rested on any human head outside of a Drury Lane pantomime! Of course, when this initial error is made in the costume of the character impersonated by the leading actor, it is not surprising to find other mistakes made in regard to the costumes of those who appear on the scene. Sir Toby is not in black, nor does he wear his order of knighthood, but appears in a leather jerkin and stuffed breeches, as if he were an innkeeper! Not only is Maria not in black, but she is not even attired as one who is by birth a lady, attending on the Countess, since she wears the dress of a kitchen-maid; nor yet is Fabian in black; while the Countess herself appears in a yellow dress, that being a colour Maria tells us "she abhors," and without a veil, her face beaming with smiles, as if she were the happiest creature in the comedy! What would any modern author say if such liberties were taken with his play? But equally unintelligent is the reading of the text. For Malvolio to say that when he is Olivia's husband he will ask for his kinsman "Toby," is to miss the humour of the situation. It is the pleasure of being able to call Sir Toby a "kinsman" that is flattering to Malvolio's vanity; while in the same scene the one word in Olivia's letter (of Maria's composition) which is captivating and convincing to Malvolio's credulity is unnoticed by the actor. Malvolio's doubts as to whom the letter is written are entirely set at rest when he comes to the words, "let me see thee a _steward_ still." From the moment he gets sight of the word "steward," everything becomes as clear as daylight to him, so that when he appears in his velvet suit before Olivia, and cross-gartered--which does not mean the cross-gartering of the brigand in Italian Opera, as the impersonator imagines--his assurance carries everything before him, and makes him turn every remark of the Countess to his own advantage, and this self-deception is kept up with unflagging animation, until he flings his final words at his tormentors: "Go, hang yourselves _all_! You are idle, _shallow_ things: _I_ am not of _your_ element; you shall know _more_ hereafter." But this rendering of the scene entirely misses fire at Earl's Court.
It would be ungracious and invidious, under the circumstances, to indulge in criticism of this kind without examining into the origin of the errors we have tried to point out. They are nearly all traditional. The actor is not the real culprit. If one appealed to him for an explanation, his answer would be, "What is good enough for Sir Herbert Tree is good enough for me," and Sir Herbert Tree might say, "What was good enough for Macready satisfies me." In the production of Shakespeare on the modern stage our actor-managers show originality and novelty. In the interpretation of Shakespeare's characters, and in the intelligent reading of his text, there seems to be no progress made and no individuality shown. In these matters we are still in the middle of the eighteenth century, the most artificial age in the history of Shakespearian drama. As a consequence, Shakespeare's plays are not taken seriously by actors of to-day. To them his characters are theatrical types which are not supposed to conform to the conditions that govern human beings in everyday life. They do not recognize that Shakespeare's art and his characters were as true to the life of his day as is the art of Shaw or Galsworthy to our own. Yet because the construction of his play is unsuited to the modern stage, therefore it is contended that Shakespeare is a bad constructor of plays, and any liberties may be taken in the matter of reconstruction that are convenient to the producer. And because his plays are written in verse, a medium we do not now use in modern drama, therefore it may be spoken in a way no human being ever did or could speak his thoughts. So it comes that there is always an apology on the actor's lips for "Shakespeare's shortcomings" whenever the actor wants to take liberties with this author. It is Shakespeare who is always in the wrong, and never the actor. Ask the actress who impersonates Olivia why she is not wearing a black dress, and she replies without a moment's hesitation that black is not becoming to her, as if it were an impertinence on Shakespeare's part to expect her to wear black. The havoc that is made with the characterization and story is of no consequence. "Oh, hang Shakespeare!" was what a popular Shakespearian actor once said to the present writer. That is the normal feeling of many actors towards Shakespeare's plays, and one which will continue unless public opinion can be roused to a sense of its responsibilities and insists that a more reverent and loyal treatment shall be bestowed on the work of the world's greatest poet and dramatist.
Unpleasant and ungracious as these remarks may appear to those who look to the Earl's Court Exhibition as a means for raising money for a national theatre, they are not unnecessary. From all parts of the country visitors, comprising many teachers and their scholars, come to this exhibition expecting to receive a correct impression of Shakespeare's playhouse and of the Elizabethan method of staging plays. But what they see cannot inspire them with confidence or belief that dramatic art at that time, both in its composition and expression, was at its high-water mark. This is because the spirit and the intellect of Elizabethan times are wanting. These qualities do not appear in modern actors nor in their productions. There is nothing to be seen but the restlessness of our own stage-methods, which no more fit the Elizabethan stage than would the Elizabethan methods fit the modern stage. In another of the excerpts given at Earl's Court, which is entitled the "Enchantment of Titania," the costumes, business, and action of the proscenium stage are wholly reproduced on the open platform. In Shakespeare's time the actors did not scamper all over the stage and in and out of the private boxes while they were saying their lines, nor was music played during their speeches. Then, again, the stage-management of the scenes from "The Merchant of Venice" in the poverty and meanness of their appointments and costumes is a libel on the old Globe representation. It is only necessary to consult the stage-directions in the first folio to recognize the fact. Bassanio then came on to the stage dressed like one of the Queen's noblemen, with three or four servants. At Earl's Court he comes on unattended in a pair of patched leather boots and worn suit, looking more like a bandit than a nobleman. There is no indication given of his superior rank to which so much importance was attached in Shakespeare's time. Indeed, those who are anxious to revive an interest in Elizabethan staging, and who urge its claim for recognition, are justified in making their protest against this travesty of Shakespearian drama.
A STUDENTS' THEATRE.[18]
1. _Miss Rosina Filippi's Project._
This project, advocated by one who is herself an able exponent of dramatic art, both as an actress and a teacher, is worthy of careful consideration, nor can Miss Filippi's strictures on actors and managers be read with indifference or passed over in silence. It is asserted that acting is no longer a profession, but a business, and that it will continue to be a business until the actors themselves take the necessary steps to give their calling the status of a profession. This is true, because even if the public can be roused to demand that acting shall be treated as an art, it cannot manufacture artists, nor control the choice of the talent which is submitted to its judgment. Miss Filippi believes, moreover, that the thinking portion of the British playgoer is beginning to learn that English theatres need "something" before they can rank in reputation with those on the Continent, an assumption which cannot be denied; although Miss Filippi will hardly expect that all well-wishers of the drama will agree with her as to what that "something" should be. In this, indeed, lies the difficulty, for the divergence of opinion among actors on questions connected with dramatic art is so bewildering that both the public and the profession become indifferent to the controversy from mere weariness.
The question for consideration at the moment is the "Students' Theatre," and whether Miss Filippi's project is one more practical and more promising than the many rival suggestions now claiming attention and support from the public; and here, at least, there is room for criticism. In the first place, it may be doubted how far the public would support the theatre by buying stalls, even at the reduced price of 4s., in order to see students act plays which can be seen acted elsewhere under more favourable conditions. Let a novice be ever so well coached, yet the ordeal of facing a theatre full of human beings who all stare at him from the auditory deprives him of the power to control and move that audience. This is a drawback which can only be removed by long practice. Then, as a rule, youth possesses too eager and confident a temperament to appreciate the meaning of restraint. Students must wonder what chances they get by acting in a theatre where no reputations are allowed to be made, no personal ambition can be gratified, and no names may be inserted in the programme! And after reading about these severe impositions, which are to give artistic stability to the "Students' Theatre," it is a comfort to be told by Miss Filippi that it is not her intention "to serve the interests of any particular set of faddists, but to present good plays by a picked company of young actors." Let us hope, then, that Miss Filippi does not intend to limit her players to those who are students in the ordinary sense of the word. And, indeed, might not the co-operation be obtained of those artists who, being temporarily out of an engagement, would be willing to join Miss Filippi's enterprise in support of the cause she advocates, which is, in effect, a devotion to art for art's sake, and the still more praiseworthy desire to obtain for the art of acting some public recognition of what constitutes the standard of excellence? Such a combination of forces, under artistic control, would have far-reaching results.
And, after all, it should be possible for those actors who claim to take their art seriously to agree upon a certain standard of qualification which should be considered indispensable to everyone wishing to become an actor. The late Sir Henry Irving in a speech once said: "I think there is but one way to act, and that is by impersonation. We hear the expression 'character-acting.' I maintain that all acting is character-acting--at any rate, it ought to be." But we live in an age when personality is valued by the public at 50 per cent. more than is the talent of impersonation. As a consequence, it becomes more and more the practice among managers and dramatic authors to select actors for parts for which they are naturally fitted by age, face, voice, and temperament, with the result that the character is played by one who succeeds tolerably well, and even may excel in certain scenes, in the only part in which he is ever likely to excel. Yet such a one is not an actor at all in the legitimate sense of the word, and if he is without vocal or physical flexibility, he is limited to the business of impersonating his own personality. Then if he happens to appear in a play which becomes a success, he may hope to continue acting his own personality throughout the English-speaking towns of the two hemispheres for a run of four, or even seven, years, after which he will have the pleasure of "resting" until another part can be found for him as much like himself as was the last one. And while this method of casting plays has the advantage of distributing more equally the chances of an engagement in a profession which has always a larger supply of actors than is required, it has the distinct disadvantage of depriving the character actor of the opportunity of learning his art.
Now, it is evident that Miss Filippi's object in forming her "Students' Theatre" comes very near in its aim to the one the character-actors should have in view, that of removing the attention of playgoers from personality, and concentrating it on the art of impersonation. And this is an art which no novice can hope to excel in. The training for this kind of art requires a long apprenticeship, and the actor cannot hope to reach the topmost height as an impersonator until he has had many years of experience on the boards. In fact, he will have passed into the meridian of life before he can become a fine character-actor. May it not, then, be put forth as a practical proposition that Miss Filippi and her youthful enthusiasts should join forces with the character-actors, and try to run a theatre with some small public endowment for a common cause? In this way there would be a possibility of the public being attracted, and willing to pay for its seats, having the assurance that both talent and experience would be seen at the "Students' Theatre."
The initial difficulty in such a scheme would, of course, be the admission of candidates, whether students or actors. And while it would be essential to ask for the willing co-operation of those actors who already possessed undoubted reputations as character-actors, a test qualification would have to be found which would inspire confidence both in the public and in the profession, that those who were elected members had in them the necessary material for the art of impersonating character. In fact, the reputation of the theatre should be built upon the knowledge that only those who had passed the test qualification were admitted to the rights of membership. The following kind of test might be tried, perhaps, to ascertain the ability of the candidate as an impersonator. He might appear before twelve of the members, and during the space of half an hour, without leaving the platform, impersonate three different characters all of the same type. If the candidate wishes to qualify for juvenile parts, then he must satisfy his judges that he is able to impersonate three young men who may have some resemblance to each other in appearance, but who are all different in character, in voice, and in deportment, or he may decide to be judged by his impersonation of middle-aged city clerks, bumpkins, or pedants; but in every case he should be able to satisfy his judges that he can show three distinct characters of the same type. In this way mere vocal dexterity, mimicry, and "make-up," would not insure election. The best character-acting is, of necessity, limited in its extent. The "light" comedian cannot and should not appear as the "heavy" father, nor the lean beggar as the fat boy. Some actors can include a larger range of parts in their repertory than others. But the real test of character-acting is in having the ability to reproduce subtle shades of characterization in certain recognized types.
In putting forth this plea for an enlargement of the scope of the proposed "Students' Theatre" it is hoped that, by some such suggestion, the difficulties in raising the necessary funds for the endowment which Miss Filippi at present experiences, may disappear. There is no doubt that the money would be forthcoming as soon as the public had a scheme presented to it which was the "something" needed. And the profession, on its side, should remember that, while it has established many associations to protect its business interests, it has not yet thought it worth while to devote either time or money to the by no means unnecessary part of a professional career, which shall provide actors with the opportunity of perfecting themselves in the study of their art.
2. _Mr. Gordon Craig's Sketches._
Shakespeare has long since failed to hold his own against modern staging, and the possibility of bringing more taste, skill, and naturalness into the art of the scene-painter does not remove the difficulty, but rather increases it. When a dramatist is not on the spot to rewrite his play to suit the altered conditions of mounting, the question then arises as to whether the play or the scenery is the thing of most value. Mr. Sargent does not ask leave to repaint Raphael's canvas because the draperies in which the Italian artist has clothed his divine figures are conventional ones. The advocates for modernism demand that new wine shall be put into old bottles. No doubt there are some old stone jars that will bear the strain, in the same way as there are some old plays which will stand a good deal of decoration; but the business of the producer is to know what kind of decoration is becoming to the art of the dramatist, and what is derogatory to it. Mr. Craig's art may help us to derive additional pleasure from the theatre, but will it help us to understand Shakespeare's tragedies? If not, let him make his experiments on the plays of some less gifted dramatist. The inappropriateness of scenery for Shakespeare lies, mainly, in its unreality, and Mr. Craig tries to make it still more unreal. Such properties, or scenes, as were in use in the poet's lifetime were suggestive of immediate, and not remote, objects, because what is distant in place and time has less actuality than what is near at hand. To see in an Elizabethan playhouse built-up doors, windows, caverns, arbours, ramparts, ladders, prepared the minds of the audience for action, and brought the actors into closer touch with life.
Now, Mr. Craig's art resembles that of Turner. He has a sense of beauty and restraint, with a poet's insight into the meaning of landscape and atmosphere which stamps him as an artist, and distinguishes him at once from the scene-painter of Globe Alley. With him, as with Turner, it is the sun that is the centre of the universe. His passion is for airy landscape, unsullied by the presence of the concrete; and Turner's palaces, boats, and men seem shadowy things beside the splendour of Turner's sunshine. But the central interest of drama is human, and it is necessary that the figures on the stage should appear larger than the background, or let the readers of Shakespeare remain at home. To see Mr. Craig's "rectangular masses illuminated by a diagonal light" while the poet's characters walk in a darkened foreground, is not, I venture to think, to enjoy the "art of the theatre." There must be some sane playgoers who still wish to see in the playhouse Juliet smile upon Romeo, and Othello frown on Iago. "What a piece of work is man!" says the poet; but there is no room for man in Mr. Craig's world.
It is because Mr. Craig's art exposes to view a background which is effective and suggestive apart from the needs of drama, that it fails in its purpose. Had he studied the methods of Rembrandt, instead of those of Turner, something practical for the stage might have been forthcoming. With Rembrandt, whether it is a windmill, a temple, or a man, it is always the object, not the landscape, that arrests attention. The light coming from the front, and not from the side, first illuminates the objects before reaching the background. The spectator, as it were, turns on a bull's-eye lantern, and is thus able to see the story written on the men's faces. Then the artist contrives that the mind shall pass by an easy transition from the faces to the more sombre background. But unless this transition is gradual and the background is sombre, interest in figures is proportionally weakened.
* * * * *
Now, Mr. Roger Fry's sympathetic appreciation of Mr. Gordon Craig's designs for "Macbeth" may predispose his readers to believe that they form a suitable background for a representation of Shakespeare's tragedy. Some years ago I saw Mr. Craig's production of "Acis and Galatea," followed by a masque. It was a stagery of great beauty, and seemed to initiate new possibilities. But then both were musical entertainments which gained appreciably by a picturesque background. The action never clashed with the quaint setting. Unlike the demands of tragedy, the representation made no direct appeal to the reason, and no obvious attempt to purify the emotions. Its main business was to delight the eye.
Mr. Craig, in his foreword to the printed catalogue of his exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, remarks that the designs and models "speak for themselves." This admission is a merit if the designs are intended for book illustrations. A picture which arrests the attention and stirs the imagination gives a pleasurable and legitimate emotion when it does not clash with the emotions aroused by the poet or the actor. Mr. Fry tries to answer this criticism, but not altogether successfully, since it must be remembered that Shakespeare, in his day, had no other way of approaching his audience except through the actors, and so he was obliged to construct his plays with this means in view. It is only necessary to quote from Mr. Craig's notes to his sketches to show that the poet and the designer do not always pull together, and that it is doubtful if Mr. Craig's scenery is more appropriate than any other kind of scenery when it is used as a background for a Shakespearian play.
"No. 2.--The aim of the designer has been to conceive some background which would not offend whilst these lines were being spoken."
But eight lines further on Macbeth says: "Liar and slave!" This arouses quite another kind of emotion from that of "To-morrow and to-morrow," etc., and one for which Mr. Craig's scene is not suitable.
"No. 3.--... So I conducted the lady to her bedroom, which is hung with red, and altogether a mysterious room, the only fresh thing being the sunlight which comes in...."
There are three movements in this scene which stir varying emotions. The entrance of the lady with the letter, the return of the husband, the arriving of Duncan. The last two incidents are more dramatic than the first one; but Mr. Craig never allows the spectator to forget the bed, the window, the light, and the letter. By the way, is it not moonlight which comes in at the window?
"No. 11.--This is known as the 'Murder Scene.' I hope it is vast enough...."
It is not the vastness of the scene, nor the huge door leading to the little room where Duncan lies murdered, which can show the terror in Macbeth's soul at the thought of what he has done, and this terror is the central idea of the scene.
"No. 16.--... As it is there is great need for scenery, and therefore the better the scenery the better for the play...."
These words might be interpreted thus: "The more of Gordon Craig's scenery the better, because Shakespeare and his actors are very little good without it." But this is not at all what a producer should say.
"... Her progress is a curve; she seems to come from the past into the present and go away into the future...."
Shakespeare makes Lady Macbeth come from her bedroom to speak a soliloquy about past events, and then sends her back to her bedroom. But Mr. Craig seeks to impose another idea upon the attention of the audience, which is not Shakespeare's idea at all.
"No. 17.--... As the sleeping woman descends the stairway with her lamp, she feels her way with her right hand, touching each figure, lighting them as she passes ... and when she has gone from the scene all life has gone from the figures--once more they have become cold history...."
A pretty idea, but absolutely at variance with the text. Shakespeare restates in this scene what led to the undoing of this unhappy but fascinating woman. Before the murder it was the material side of things only that appealed to Lady Macbeth. She thought it was as impossible for a murdered man to come out of his grave to torment his murderers as it was for a man who died a natural death. The dim consciousness that somehow she was mistaken begins to prove too great a strain for her energetic little brain. It was also her misfortune, because not her fault, that she was without imagination. She was a devoted wife, and possessed sweet and gracious manners; and Shakespeare, in this last scene, in which she appears before the spectators, asks them to pity her because of all that she is now suffering. But what has this throbbing emotion, aroused by the author, to do with these "dead kings and queens" in the cold statuary which has been superimposed by the artist?
Mr. Gordon Craig seems to think that Shakespearian representation at the present moment is unsatisfactory, because of our miserable theatres, with their low proscenium and unimaginative scenery, which cannot suggest immensity! Shakespeare would tell us that the fault lies in our big scenic stages and our voiceless, dreary acting; and two men with such different ideas about the theatre are not likely to prove successful in collaboration.
THE MEMORIAL SCHEME.[19]
"_Doesn't that only prove how little important we regard the drama as being, and how little seriously we take it, if we won't even trouble ourselves to bring about decent civil conditions for its existence._"--HENRY JAMES.
Does the present scheme appeal to the nation? Will it supply the higher needs of the nation's drama? These are questions on which light should be thrown. Personally I should like to see every theatre in the country a national one, only the claims of the actor-manager and the syndicates stand in the way. Certain it is that the imagination of the public has not yet been touched by this Whitehall scheme; but then the executive committee has not made the best of its opportunity. It is two years and three months now since the first appeal for funds was made, and so far the response has not been encouraging. In March, 1909, the scheme was launched and priced at half a million of sovereigns; we are now within five years of April, 1916, and the total amount of money raised for the project is about L10,000, excluding the gift of L70,000 given by Sir Carl Meyer, and the amount raised by entertainments. Unfortunately, the cost of collecting this L10,000 has been very considerable, although it is not possible to quote the exact amount, because no accounts have been published during the three years the executive has been in office. In fact, the attitude adopted by the executive towards the general committee is what most calls for explanation.
HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT.
The movement began so far back as the year 1900. It was then proposed by myself to present to the London County Council a petition for the grant of a site for the erection of a memorial in the form of the old Globe Playhouse, so as to perpetuate for the benefit of posterity the kind of stage with which Shakespeare was so long and intimately associated. The outcome of this proposal, which remained in abeyance during the anxious period of the war, was a meeting organized by T. Fairman Ordish, F.S.A., and held in the hall of Clifford's Inn on "Shakespeare Day," 1902. The chair was taken by Mr. Frederic Harrison, and two resolutions were passed by the meeting, one establishing the London Shakespeare Commemoration League, the other recommending that the proposed memorial of the model Globe Playhouse should be considered by the committee of the League. It was ultimately found, however, that a structure of the kind could not be erected in a central position in London owing to the County Council's building restrictions. In the following year an interesting development arose in connection with the League in the formation of a provisional committee for a London Shakespeare Memorial. The movement was made possible by the generous gift of Mr. Richard Badger to the London County Council of the sum of L2,500 to form the nucleus of a fund for the erection of a statue, and the Council offered a site, if sufficient funds could be collected to insure a worthy memorial. The League then formed a provisional committee composed of a number of influential people, among whom were eight members of their own council, including the President, the late Dr. Furnivall. But the idea of a statue was not the only scheme offered for the provisional committee's deliberations. Some were in favour of a "Shakespeare Temple" to "serve the purposes of humane learning, much in the same way as Burlington House has served those of natural science." This suggestion, however, called forth a protest, and on February 27, 1905, a letter appeared in the _Times_ in which it was stated that "any museum which could be formed in London would be a rubbish heap of trivialities." The letter was signed by J. M. Barrie, Professor A. C. Bradley, Lord Carlisle, Sir W. S. Gilbert, Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mr. Maurice Hewlett, the Earl of Lytton, Dr. Gilbert Murray, Lord Onslow, Sir A. W. Pinero, Sir Frederick Pollock, Mr. A. B. Walkley, and Professor W. Aldis Wright. On the next day was held a public meeting at the Mansion House, with the Lord Mayor presiding. No special mention of a statue was made, nor of a "Shakespeare Temple," while Mr. Bram Stoker pointed out the difficulties and expense of a National Theatre. On the proposition of Dr. Furnivall, seconded by Sir H. Beerbohm Tree, the following resolution was passed:
"That the meeting approves of the proposal for a Shakespeare Memorial in London, and appoints a general committee, to be further added to, for the purpose of organizing the movement and determining the form of a memorial."
On this general committee I was asked to serve and was duly elected.
On Thursday, July 6, 1905, the general committee was summoned to the Mansion House to receive the report of the special committee appointed to consider the various proposals. This committee, which was elected by the general committee, was as follows: Lord Alverstone, Lord Avebury, Lord Reay, Sir Henry Irving, Sir R. C. Jebb, Sir E. Maunde Thompson, Mr. F. R. Benson, Mr. S. H. Butcher, Mr. W. L. Courtney, Mr. Walter Crane, Dr. F. J. Furnivall, Sir G. L. Gomme, Mr. Anthony Hope Hawkins, Mr. Bram Stoker, Dr. A. W. Ward.
The recommendation made by this committee, which was unanimously adopted, was that "the form of the memorial be that of an architectural monument including a statue." But it was also recommended, if funds permitted, as a possible subsidiary project, "the erection of a building in which Shakespeare's plays could be acted without scenery." This part of the scheme met with strong opposition from some members of the general committee, and Sir Herbert Tree, as representing the dramatic profession, declared that he could not, and would not, countenance it.
Finally, by the narrow majority of one vote (that of the chairman, Lord Reay) it was decided that this part of the report should be dropped, as well as the proposal to use, as a site, a space near the new London County Hall, recommended for its proximity to the locality of the old Globe playhouse.
On March 5, 1908, the general committee were again summoned to the Mansion House to receive the further recommendations of the executive committee after their consultation with an advisory committee consisting of seven persons, five of whom were members of the Royal Academy. The meeting confirmed the recommendation that a statue be erected in Park Crescent, Portland Place, at a cost of not less than L100,000, and an additional L100,000, if collected, "to be administered by an international committee for the furtherance of Shakespearian aims." What was remarkable to me about this meeting was the small attendance. There could not have been more than two dozen persons present. I believe I was the only one there to raise a debate on the report, and, my objections being ignored, letters from me appeared the next day in the _Times_ and the _Daily News_ attacking the constitution of the committee selected to approve of the design. Among those chosen there was not one Shakespearian scholar, no poet, and no dramatist. What, then, would be the effect upon the designers of having to submit their models to a committee of this kind? Instead of the artists giving their faculties full play to produce some original and great piece of sculpture worthy of Shakespeare's genius, they would be striving to design something specially suited to meet the limited and, perhaps, prejudiced ideas of their judges (the professional experts), while the general committee, responsible to the public for the National Memorial, would be handing over its duties to an academy which had never shown any special appreciation of the poet and his plays; for, so far as my experience goes, there never has been a Shakespearian picture exhibited on the walls of the Royal Academy which was not, as to costume and in idea, a burlesque of the dramatist's intentions, always excepting those painted by Seymour Lucas, R.A., who, strange to say, was not one of the judges selected.
But it soon became evident from correspondence in the newspapers that the project of a statue in Portland Place did not satisfy the wishes of a very large number of influential men, and of a very important section of the public. Accordingly, a public meeting took place at the Lyceum Theatre, under the presidency of Lord Lytton, on Tuesday May 19, 1908, when a resolution was carried in favour of a National Theatre as a memorial to Shakespeare. Steps were then taken to amalgamate the existing Shakespeare Memorial Committee with the National Theatre Committee. A new executive was nominated, and again, for the third time, the general committee was summoned on March 23, 1909, to receive and sanction the report, which recommended the raising by subscription of L500,000 to build and endow a theatre in which Shakespeare's plays should be acted for at least one day in each week.
This, then, is the history of the movement, we may almost call it of the conflict, which for seven years centred round the great event that is to happen in 1916. And, alas! this scheme, like all the others, is now found to be impracticable, because the amount of money asked for is far more than the country is able to give. The executive did not grasp the fact that there is so large a demand made upon the public's purse to fight political battles and to fill the Government treasury, that half a million of money cannot now be raised both to build and endow a theatre. The executive is obsessed with the notion that you cannot have a National Theatre without building a new theatre, while as a fact you cannot have it without an endowment. It is by protecting the art of the actor, so that the poet's words and characters may be finely interpreted, that the memory of Shakespeare can be best honoured.
THE EXECUTIVE'S REPORT.
We now have to consider what seems to me to be the chief flaw in the National Theatre scheme as it is at present initiated, and that is the report which was brought before the general committee on March 23, 1909, and which was accepted by them, but not without protest--at least, from myself. The Lord Mayor's "parlour" was crowded with at least a hundred men and women, consisting of the general and provisional committees of the two rival schemes, now amalgamated, all of whom were meeting together for the first time; and it was evident to me that with the exception of the executive, those present had little idea of what they were called upon to do, or were aware that they were conferring powers upon the executive as to the management of our National Theatre which, when once granted, made it impossible for the general committee to reopen any point, to revise their decisions, or to alter them. It is true that the executive stated in their report "that the time had not arrived for framing statutes in a form which could be considered final," but so far as the general committee was concerned what they once sanctioned they could not withdraw. On the other hand, what modifications or additions the executive afterwards made in the report should naturally have come again before the general committee for its approval, a point overlooked or ignored by the executive, as will appear later on. But the fact is that the report is a mistake, and should never have been passed by the general committee, for it either states too much or too little, and can please nobody. Since the executive had decided that they must purchase a site and build a new theatre (an altogether unnecessary proceeding, in my opinion), it would have been better to report on this part of the scheme first, and to leave the question of management for future discussion; for the financial question alone might well have received more careful consideration. As the report now stands, subscribers are not protected in any way. The executive may begin building whenever they choose, and incur debts, and mortgage both land and building as soon as they possess either. They can spend on bricks and mortar all the money they receive to the extent of L250,000, without putting by a penny towards the endowment fund. In fact, no precautions have been taken to avoid a repetition of the disaster that befell the building of the English Opera House, which soon afterwards became the Palace Music-Hall.
But more inexplicable still are the clauses referring to the management of the theatre, to which, unfortunately, the general committee have pledged themselves. We have decided that "the supreme controlling authority of the theatre" shall be a body of governors who will number about forty, but apparently their "supreme control" is limited to nominating seven of their number as a standing committee, some of whom, and under certain eventualities all of whom, may be elected for life. This standing committee, however, is to hand over all that is vital in the management of a theatre to a director over whom it has no control beyond either confirming all he does or dismissing him, so that the National Theatre in reality becomes a one-man's hobby. So long as the director is clever enough to humour four out of the seven members of the standing committee, he can run the theatre for the amusement of himself and his friends. He may choose the plays, arrange the programmes, engage and dismiss the artistes, and can even produce all the plays himself; the only thing he cannot do is to act in them; and yet so little have the framers of the report grasped the realities of the situation that, in their other clauses, they refer to the governors dispensing pensions and honorary distinctions on the actors, forgetting that the unfortunate players are the servants of their servant the director, who can dismiss them three days before the honours and pensions become due, so that even in dispensing favours the voice of the director is supreme. As the report stands at present confirmed there is no elasticity allowed to the standing committee to give permanency to those parts of the director's management which are evidently successful and efficient, and to restrict and finally abolish what is unsatisfactory. There is no choice between dismissing the director, or tolerating his defects for the sake of what he does well. But the director should be the chairman of the standing committee; he should have power to engage the producers of the plays, because more than one is wanted; and each producer should be given sole control over the cast and the staging of the play for which he is specially engaged. Then in the case of failure there would be always a remedy. Producers, authors, and actors who showed that they were unskilful in the work they were called upon to do would not be again invited to help in the performances of the National Theatre; but in regard to those who had shown exceptional talent, steps would be taken to gradually add them to the permanent staff, while the fact that the director was chairman of the standing committee would add to the dignity and importance of the artistes' engagements, and would insure respect and fair treatment for their labours. As the position is now, no talent can come into the theatre except at the will of one person, who would occupy no higher post there than that of a salaried official. This means that outside talent, however admirable of its kind, would never be seen in our National Theatre if it is not to the liking of the director; and it may be taken for granted, as the clause now stands, that no artist would accept dismissal from the director without appealing to the standing committee, hoping to prejudice the director in its eyes, and thus to create friction between the standing committee and its director.
Now, in regard to the choice of new plays. Here the standing committee apparently has the final word, which, as a fact, has no real value attached to it, because all new plays have first to be reported upon (that is, recommended) by the director and the literary manager, and if a new play is chosen against the wishes of the director, its fate is none the less sealed, since he has sole control over the casting of the play and its production. But before a new play can be produced at the National Theatre it ought to be submitted to the opinion of the three parties interested in its production. Experts know that a dramatic success depends upon (1) the quality of the play, (2) the ability of the actors who interpret the play, (3) the intelligence or taste of the audience; therefore the play, to be fairly judged, should be read before a tribunal consisting of the director, two dramatists (who have contributed plays to the repertory), two of the theatre's leading actors, and two members of the standing committee. Authors would then know that their work would be judged by experts representing every department of the theatre.
Then there is the question of what plays, other than new ones, should be included in the repertory. Here, again, the choice rests with the director, and if his taste is not catholic, what confusion he will make of it! For instance, are such plays classical as "Still Waters Run Deep," "The Road to Ruin," and "Black-Eyed Susan"? In one sense I think they are, because they represent the best examples of types of English plays at a certain period. But some men might not think so. It is too large a question for one man to handle.
The fault, then, of the constitution of the National Theatre, as it is at present framed, is that all the direction of what is vital to the dignity and permanency of the institution is put under the control of one man, when no single person can possibly have the knowledge and experience to cover so large a variety of work. Discrimination has not been shown between what is required of a Repertory Theatre and a National Theatre. The former is purely an experimental theatre, where courage and freedom is an advantage in a director. We look upon him as the pioneer to revolutionize existing conventions which have had their day and lost their use. He is an innovator, and we forgive his failures for the sake of his successes. Far different is the position of the National Theatre. Its mission is not to make experiments, but to assimilate the talent which has already been tried and found deserving, and to rescue from oblivion good plays for the permanent use of the community. Besides, its proceedings must be carried on with decorum. It has State functions and duties to consider; it has all shades of political and religious differences to take into consideration. One mistake might alienate the support of Royalty or of the Government; of Parliament, of the Clergy, or of the Democracy. Surely the direction of such an institution can be more efficiently carried on by a committee than by an individual!
Now, I sympathize with a National Theatre as a memorial to Shakespeare, because I think the highest honour that can be rendered to our poet-dramatist is to provide English actors--and Shakespeare was himself an actor--with a permanent home where dramatic art as an art can be recognized and encouraged; and a National Theatre can give dignity to the dramatic profession and inspire emulation among its members by conferring upon them honours and rewards, provided always that the actors are the servants of the institution and not of a salaried official in that institution. Personally, I do not care to see Shakespeare acted in a modern theatre, and I do not think his plays can ever have justice done to them in such a building. But, none the less, I look upon a National Theatre as an imperative need if the drama is to flourish, and I believe, if Shakespeare were living to-day, he would say so too. The executive of the present Memorial, to my mind, made a false start by concentrating public attention on the building as the primary object, instead of on the institution, and then by ignoring the claims of the dramatic profession to recognition. The labour, the anxiety, the expense of providing the public with plays in this country has been hitherto, and is still, borne by our actor-managers. They at present are the people's favourites, and all have individually a large public following. It was but just to these men to ask them to come into the scheme as honorary members of the institution, in the hope that they would associate themselves with those parts and plays of more than ordinary merit which undoubtedly have a claim to be admitted into the repertory of a National Theatre, and with which they individually were specially identified. But while I appreciate the wisdom and justice of inviting those gentlemen who have hitherto borne the burden of theatrical management to contribute the best of their talent to the stage of a National Theatre, I fail to see the advantage of their help on the executive. However eminent as an expert a man may be, his use on the executive entirely depends on the confidence he inspires among his fellow-councillors, and it is only necessary to read the names of those who constitute the executive to realize that there is no possibility of any one personality dominating the council. As a consequence, the committee breaks up into groups whose aims are more political than practical. The second urgent matter for consideration by the executive was the provincial Repertory Theatre. Where is the advantage of a National Theatre in London unless there are existing at least six Repertory Theatres in the provinces which may serve as training grounds for actors and for the experiments of dramatists? Every encouragement, then, should have been given to our leading municipalities to interest themselves in raising money to endow local Repertory Theatres, and the executive of the London Memorial would be doing more good to the cause of drama by spending the interest of its capital in helping these local theatres to come into existence than by wasting their money in the way they are doing at the present time. Indeed, it seems as if the only hope of a National Theatre becoming a reality will consist in the assurance that the capital already raised shall be set apart for the endowment fund, and that only the interest of this capital shall be available for expenditure by the executive committee.
INDEX
Acheson, Mr. Arthur, on "Troilus and Cressida," 100
Act-drop, the, 119
Acting and stage illusion, 7; rapid delivery, 17; Heywood on, 19; as a business, 217; character acting, 219 _et seq._
Actors: Elizabethan, 8, 9, 20, 21; prosperity and position of, 22; apprentices, 24; qualities of, 24; in double parts, 25; relations between authors and, 44; hired players, 45; Elizabethan, and the construction of Shakespeare's plays, 51, 53; elocution of, 56
Actors, English: and English tragedy, 177; personality of, 219
Agincourt, representation of, 48
"All is True," 87
Alleyne, Edward, 79
Apprentices, actors', 24
Archer, Mr. William, and popular taste in drama, 193 _et seq._
Bacon and the writing of drama, 39
Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, 38
Badger, Mr. Richard, 229
Barker, Mr. Granville, 194, 202
Barrie, Mr. J. M., 195
Bell's edition of Shakespeare, 51, 58
Blackfriars Theatre, 45, 68, 115, 208
Boy actors in women's parts, 9
Boyle, Robert, and "Henry VIII.," 93
Brandram, Samuel, 166
Bronte, Charlotte: and a high forehead, 137; and English tragedy, 176
Brooke, Arthur, 133, 151
Browning, Robert, on "Henry VIII.," 93
Brydges, Mary, 110
Burbage, Richard, as actor, 20, 86, 166
Busino's visit to the Fortune Playhouse, 13
Capell, Edward, as Shakespeare editor, 37, 44
"Castle Spectre, The," 196
"Cesario," 39
Chapel Royal, children of the, 45
Chapman, George: and "Troilus and Cressida," 100 _et seq._; opponent of Shakespeare, 102
Character-acting, 219 _et seq._
Chorus, the, 12
Christians, Marlowe's, and Shakespeare's Jew, 69 _et seq._
Claretie, M., 198
Clowns, 21
Coleridge, S. T., on "Henry VIII.," 89
Collier, J. P., on the effect of theatrical absence of scenery on dramatic poetry, 8
Comedie Francaise, the, visit to London, 198
"Comedy of Errors," 31, 42
Congreve, William, 196
Craig, Mr. Gordon: sketches, 222; inappropriateness of his scenery for Shakespeare, 222; comparison with Turner, 223; criticism of his art, 223; designs for "Macbeth," 224-227; his "Acis and Galatea," 224
"Curtain" in theatres, 120
Curtain Theatre, 7, 111, 115
"Cynthia's Revels," 21
Davenant, Sir William, 144
Dekker, Thomas: as player, 103; "Gul's Horn-Booke," 208
Diderot's "Pere de Famille," 197
Digges, Leonard, on a Shakespeare performance, 13
Dolby's "British Theatre," 53
Dowden, Edward, 145, 147, 153
Drake, Dr., on "Henry VIII.," 88
Dramatists and the public, 194 _et seq._
Dramatists: the Elizabethan, and the contemporary theatre, 5, 10; topical plays, 15; moral aim, 16; and the printing of plays, 18; supervision of acting, 25; Puritans and, 26; relations between, and actors, 44
Duncan (in "Macbeth"), 62
Earl's Court: Shakespeare at, 208; staging at, 209; "The Tricking of Malvolio," 209; star actor, 209; "Twelfth Night," 210; performances misleading, 215; "Enchantment of Titania," 216; "The Merchant of Venice," 216; a travesty of Shakesperian drama, 216
Edwards, Thomas, 91
Elizabeth, Queen, 62, 63; Lord Essex and, 108-112
Elizabeth's, Queen, Chapel, boys for, 10
Elizabethan Stage Society, the, 203; its origin, 204; "Measure for Measure," 205; "Twelfth Night," 205; list of plays performed (1893-1913), 206-207
Elocution: of Elizabethan actors, 19, 56; modern, in Shakespeare acting, 57, 58, 59
Elze, Dr. Karl, on "Henry VIII.," 91
Emerson, R. W. on "Henry VIII.," 91
Emphasis, faulty, in rendering Shakespeare, 59
English Opera House (now Palace Music Hall), 235
Essex, Earl of, 101; in "Troilus and Cressida," 108-112
Euripides, 195
"Everyman," 206
Falstaff: Sir John Oldcastle as, 112; effect of character of, on Shakespeare's position, 115
Faustus legend, 68
Field, Nathan, 21; anecdote of, 23
Filippi's, Miss Rosina, project for a students' theatre, 216
Flecknoe, Richard, on the drama after Shakespeare's death, 16
Fletcher, John, and authorship of "Henry VIII.," 92
Fleury, M., 79
Folk-songs, Elizabethan, 44
Ford, John, 180
Fortune Theatre, 11, 12, 13, 40, 205, 208
Frohman's, Mr., Repertory Theatre, 193, 199
Fry's, Mr. Roger, appreciation of Mr. Gordon Craig, 224
Furnivall, Dr. F. J., 38, 229
Garrick, David: as exponent of Shakespeare, 5; version of "Romeo and Juliet," 140
"George Barnwell," 196
Gervinus, G. G.: on "Henry VIII.," 90; on "Troilus and Cressida," 107
Globe players' rights in "Troilus and Cressida," 116
Globe Playhouse, memorial in form of, 228, 231
Globe Theatre, 7, 11, 45, 48, 54, 57, 58, 68, 86, 98, 102, 104, 115, 116, 180
Globe Theatre at Earl's Court, 208
Goethe, 194
Gonzalo dialogue in "The Tempest," 55
"Gorbuduc," 40
Gosson, Stephen, 21
Gray's Inn, 42
Green, J. R., on Queen Elizabeth and Mary Stuart, 63
Greene, Robert, "Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay," 79
Greenwich Palace, 40
Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O., on the Shakespearian theatre, 7, 11
"Hamlet": clown referred to, 22; early quartos, 31, 47; breaks in, 42; stage directions in first quarto, 50, 53, 54; alterations, 54, 160; acting edition and Globe edition, 156; omissions, 156, 157, 161-175; Fortinbras, 157; French's acting edition and Globe edition compared, 158 _et seq._; stage directions, 159; entrance of Hamlet, 159; Cumberland's version, 160, 163, 164, 168, 171; the period of the play, 163; Oxberry's edition, 164; the Dumb Show, 166; the exit of the King, 167; changes suggested, 170; Ophelia and flowers, 172; her burial, 173; the poison cups, 174; the conclusion, 175; suggestions for an authoritative acting version, 175; performance of first quarto, 204
Hart, H. C., 112
Heine, Heinrich, on Shylock, 69
Heminge and Condell: and the first folio, 32; and divisions in the plays, 41; and "Henry VIII.," 87; and "Troilus and Cressida," 99
"Henry IV.," 115; epilogue to Part II., 101
"Henry V.": choruses, 7, 40; the early quarto, 48; produced, 115
"Henry VIII.": the authorship of, 85 _et seq._; earliest mention of, 86; criticisms, 88 _et seq._; stage directions, 94; summary of the arguments as to its genuineness, 96
Henslowe's "Diary," 15
Hertzberg, Professor, on "Henry VIII.," 90
Heywood, Thomas: on the English stage, 13; in defence of acting, 19; of plays, 27; reply to the Puritans, 107
Historical dramas disapproved, 45
Homer, Chapman and Shakespeare renderings, 100
Hugo, Victor, on "Henry VIII.," 89
Impersonation in acting, 219
Ireland in Elizabethan drama, 16
Irving, Sir Henry: as Shylock, 71; on acting, 219
Jew: Shakespeare's, 70; Christian ideas of, 73. _See also_ Shylock
"Jew of Malta, The," Marlowe's, 72, 80
"John Bull's Other Island," 200
Johnson, Dr.: on Shakespeare, 36, 38; and continuous performance, 43; on "Henry VIII.," 88; and "She Stoops to Conquer," 197
Jones, Inigo, 18, 96, 141
Jonson, Ben: and double story in plays, 14; and simplicity of representation, 17; and a good tragedy, 19; a "poet with principle," 23; and Latin comedy, 40; and "Sejanus," 41, 102; "Poetaster," allusion to Shakespeare in, 100 _et seq._; relations with Shakespeare, 102; "Every Man Out of His Humour," 112; and Inigo Jones's scenery, 141
"Julius Caesar," 13
Kean, Edmund: delivery of, 58; and Hamlet, 164
Kemp the clown, 21, 22, 24
"King John," 39
"King Lear": breaks in, 41; Steevens's comment on dialogue, 56; Rossi's rendering, 177; its period, 178; its modern production, 179; anachronisms and costumes, 179; excisions, 181, 184; Edmund's speech, 181; the putting out of Gloucester's eyes, 182; sympathy with poor, 183; its modern dramatic presentation, 185-189; misrepresentation of Lear, 186; and of Edmund, 188
"King's Company, The," 9, 27
Knight, Charles, 94
Lady Macduff, 61
Lamb, Charles, 196
Lee, Sir Sidney, 205
"Leicester's, Lord, Servants," 9
Lessing, G. E., 155, 194
Lewis, L. D., 196
Lillo, George, 196
London Corporation and theatres, 25
London County Council and Shakespeare Memorial, 228, 229
London life in Elizabethan drama, 15
London Shakespeare Commemoration League, 229
London theatres, seventeenth century, 13
Lord Chamberlain's company, 9, 12
Lorkin, Thomas, 86
"Love's Labour's Lost," 42
Lucas, Mr. Seymour, R.A., 232
"Lucrece," 113
Lyceum Theatre, 71
"Macbeth": perfect in design, 13; breaks in, 41; Bell's criticism of, 52; Garrick's version of, 52; when written, 68; Mr. Gordon Craig's designs for, 224-227
Macbeth, Lady: the character of, 61 _et seq._; Mrs. Siddons as, 61; her femininity, 65; the character misunderstood, 68; part overacted, 69
Macready, W. C., and the ladder, 43; Charlotte Bronte on his acting, 176
"Madras House, The," 201
Maeterlinck, M., 202
Malone, Edmund, as Shakespeare editor, 37
Marlowe, Christopher: "Barabas," 72, 80, 84; Jews and Christians in "Rich Jew of Malta" and "Merchant of Venice," 78; "Faustus," 80; and Christianity, 79-81
"Marrying of Ann Leete, The," 202
Marston, John, 103
Mary Stuart, 62, 63
Massinger, Philip, 93
Maugham, W. S., 195
"Measure for Measure," revival of, 205
"Merchant of Venice": breaks in, 42, 43; the early quarto, 47; story of the play, 123-133; the Prince of Morocco, 126; the Prince of Arragon, 128; the trial scene as now acted, 131. _See also_ Shylock
"Misalliance," Shaw's, 199
Moneylenders in plays, 75
Mozart, W. A., 194, 200
Munich, Court Theatre, 177
Music in the Elizabethan theatre, 11
Nash, Thomas, "The Isle of Dogs," 112
National theatre, a, 198
New Shakespeare Society, 94
Noblemen and the maintenance of actors, 9
Oldcastle, Sir John, 112
Opinion, change of, effect on plays, 70
Ordish, Mr. T. Fairman, 228
"Othello," 13
Othello, Nathan Field as, 21
Painter, William, 133
Perfall, Baron, 18
"Pericles," 31
Personality in acting, 219
Playgoers, intolerant, 196
Plays, Elizabethan: not divided into acts, 11; lost, 15
Pollard, Mr. A. W., 98
Pope, Alexander: as Shakespeare editor, 33; and "The Tempest," 55
Popular taste in drama, 194
Portia, 81
Portland Place for Shakespeare Memorial, 231, 232
"Prattle," 57
Prompters, 24
Puritans, the: and actors, 21; and theatres, 25
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 112
Reformation, the, 68, 69
Renaissance, the, 69
Repertory theatre, the, 193; and a national theatre, 198
Restoration, the, drama, 196
"Richard II.," political significance of, 112
Robinson, Dick, 21
Roderick, Richard, on "Henry VIII.," 91
"Romeo and Juliet": second edition of, 31; breaks in, 41; early quarto, 47, 49; Garrick's version, 53; earliest acting version, 53; Shakespeare's prologue and change in the motive, 134; stage representation, 135; story of the play, 135-155; hostilities between the two houses, 135, 156; Rosaline's character, 137; Irving acting version, 137, 141, 146, 147, 151, 153, 155; Mercutio, 138; Capulet's character, 139; Garrick's version, 140; "balcony scene," 140; Shakespeare as Benvolio, 144; the Friar, 146; Juliet as wife, 147; her part overdone on stage, 148; scenes omitted, 149; "potion scene," 150; the catastrophe, 153; Cumberland version, 155; mixed nature of the play, 155
Rose Theatre, 40, 112
Rossi, Signor, as King Lear, 177, 187
Rowe's, Nicholas, edition of Shakespeare, 33
Royalty Theatre, Soho, 205
Ruskin, John, on poets and their courage, 5
Salvini as Othello, 127, 185
Sand, George, on popular taste, 194
Scenery: disadvantages of, 7; Mr. Gordon Craig's designs, 222-227
Schiller, J. C. F. von, 194
Schlegel on "Henry VIII.," 88
"Sejanus," 41, 102
Shakespeare: and contemporary representation, 3; effect of absence of theatrical scenery, 8; avoids interruptions in his plays, 12; and double story in plays, 14; interludes, 15; representations of to-day, 18; and acting, 20; and extemporization, 22; opinion of his comedies, 26; dramas to-day and discrepancies, 31; mistakes of editors, 31; plays published in his lifetime, 31; the early quartos, 31; the first folio, 32; divisions in the plays, 32, 41-44; Rowe's edition, 33; Pope's edition, 34; Steevens's edition, 36; Capell's edition, 37; Malone's edition, 37; Shakespeare as dramatic writer, 39; arrangement of characters, 41; plays without intervals, 43; need of re-editing without divisions, 44; his income, 45, 96; dramas ahead of his day, 46; interpretation of his plays, 46; acting versions (the quartos), 47; Bell's edition of 1773, 51; interference with his dramatic intentions, 53; shortening of plays, 54; faulty elocution in modern rendering, 57; causes of present-day want of appreciation, 59; need to edit the early quartos for acting, 60; actors interpret to suit change of opinions, 71; writes of plays and not of masques, 96; satire, 107; his affinities as reflected in his plays, 107; political allusions, 112; innovations of the stage, 119; how modern representations are produced, 120; contrast between Shakespeare and modern drama, 122; and prologues, 134; his tact, 145; the star actor and mutilation of the plays, 154; acting editions and the author's intentions, 175; authoritative acting versions suggested, 175; should be produced as written, 180; Shakespeare and democracy, 183; as revised at Earl's Court, 208-216; as rendered to-day, 214. _See also under the names of the separate plays_
Shakespeare Memorial Scheme: raising of funds, 227, 228; history of the movement, 228-233; the executive's report, 233-240
Shakespeare statue, projected, 231
"Shakespeare Temple," 229
Shaw, Mr. G. Bernard, 194; his "Misalliance," 199; "John Bull's Other Island," 200
Sheridan's "The Rivals," 197
Shore, Emily, on "Henry VIII.," 89
"Shylock": controversy, 48; Heine on, 69; the character of, 70 _et seq._; as usurer, 72, 75; paraphrase of the character, 73; as an old man, 125; the worsting of, 132
Siddons, Mrs.: and Lady Macbeth, 46, 61; and rendering of Shakespeare, 58
Sidney, Sir Philip, and scenery of plays, 6
"Silas Marner," George Eliot's, 125
Simpson, Richard, 108, 114
Spedding, James, on "Henry VIII.," 92
Stage: the Elizabethan, and its contemporary dramatists, 3; ignorance concerning the relations between the theatre and the dramatists, 14; quality of the performances, 5; colour, 6; scenes, 6; disadvantages of scenery, 7; construction of theatres, 10; quality of the plays, 13; performance continuous, 14, 43; Flecknoe on changes after Shakespeare, 16; length of performance, 17; opposition, 25; educational value, 27; "business" on, 50; movement on, 95. _See also_ Theatre
Stage: the modern, and Shakespeare, 119; how plays are now produced, 120
"Stage Player's Complaint," 57
Stationers' Register, the, 15, 98
Steevens, George: as Shakespeare editor, 36; comment on "King Lear," 56
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 18
"Stranger, The," 196
Students' theatre, a, 216
Swinburne, A. C., on "Henry VIII.," 93
Symonds, J. A., on the Elizabethan theatre, 7, 9
"Tempest, The," 41; the Gonzalo dialogue, 55
Tennyson, Lord, on the authorship of "Henry VIII.," 92
Theatre, National: as Shakespeare Memorial, 230, 232-240; its proposed management, 235-240
Theatre, the repertory, 193; and a national theatre, 198; a students' theatre, 216
Theatres: Elizabethan, construction and small size of, 10; musical interludes, 11, 40; length of performance, 17; the City Corporation and, 25; the Puritans and, 25. _See also_ Stage
Theatres, English and Continental, 217
Tragedy, English, and the English stage, 176, 177
Tree Sir Herbert, 214, 231
"Troilus and Cressida": early quarto, 47; the mystery of, 98, 115, 116; in the first folio, 99; Jonson and, 100 _et seq._; Chapman and, 100 _et seq._; dislike of the play, 106; its satire, 107; and the Earl of Essex, 108-112; when written, 113, 114; Troy story in, 113; the word used in, 114; Globe players' rights in, 115
Troy story in "Troilus and Cressida," and in "Lucrece," 113
"Twelfth Night": constructive art in, 39; revival of, 205; mistakes in, at Earl's Court, 210-213; traditional errors, 214
"Two Gentlemen of Verona," 40
Ulrici on "Henry VIII.," 90
Valentine, 39
Venetian theatre in 1605, 12
Viola, 39
"Voysey Inheritance, The," 201
Ward, Dr. A. W., 73, 106
Webster, John, 11
Women players, effect of their introduction, 61
Women's parts, boy actors for, 9
Wotton, Sir Henry, 86
Wycherley, William, 196
THE END
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
Footnotes:
[1] Part of a paper read before the Elizabethan Literary Society, November 1, 1893.
[2] _The National Review_, August, 1890.
[3] See "The Topical Side of the Elizabethan Drama" in the Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, 1887.
[4] The first three articles of this chapter appeared in _The Nation_, March, 1912.
[5] Sir Sidney Lee, "Dictionary of National Biography."
[6] See quotation on p. 21.
[7] _The Westminster Review_, January, 1909.
[8] _The New Age_, September 15, 1910.
[9] _The New Age_, November 28, 1912.
[10] Part of a paper read before the _New Shakspere Society_ in June, 1887.
[11] Read at the meeting of the _New Shakspere Society_, Friday, April 12, 1889.
[12] Read before the _New Shakspere Society_, June 10, 1881; published in the _Era_, July 2, 1881.
[13] _The New Age_, September, 1909.
[14] _The New Age_, November, 1910.
[15] _Fortnightly Review_, October, 1910, "The Theatrical Situation," by William Archer.
[16] "The Paradox of Acting," translated by Walter Herries Pollock.
[17] _The New Age_, August 22, 1912.
[18] _The Nation_, August, 1912.
[19] _The New Age_, June, 1911.
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Transcriber's Notes:
Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
Punctuation has been corrected without note.
The following misprints have been corrected: "reponsibilities" corrected to "responsibilities" (Page 26) "Shakespeares's" corrected to "Shakespeare's" (page 152) "Shakepeare" corrected to "Shakespeare" (Index)
Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original.
End of Project Gutenberg's Shakespeare in the Theatre, by William Poel