Part 3

The stage was much like that which we know, but though built in pleasant enough proportions was too simply decorated to be striking. The settings were so unobtrusive that at the end of a scene one could hardly say whether the framing had been good or bad, which I thought a pity, for one was in this manner robbed of a subject for conversation. The effects were obtained chiefly by the lighting, but unfortunately this was kept uniform throughout each scene, and thus one lost the pleasure of admiring the agility of the electrician, who nowadays, is, with his switches, as great a virtuoso as an organist with his stops. The most noticeable difference was the stage being only about two-thirds the size of ours, the reason for it that the actors were not people, but puppets, rather smaller than human beings.

I have always regarded these dolls as a mistake, for they must needs be anonymous, and how can one tell if the acting is good if one does not know the name of the performers? I think too, that if one is to have puppets at all, they should be either grotesque or fairy-like, and these were neither, resembling instead those early Egyptian or Indian sculptures we have so far out-distanced, or those Byzantine paintings, which, once thought beautiful, would look so oddly on the walls of Burlington House. I must confess that their movements were graceful, their deftness above that of any human being, but not more so than one could imagine human beings capable of. They were actuated, not by strings, but by some invisible power, and everything they did seemed to be of such happy invention that one felt they had all nature at their command to use. But I detected a grave error in the way the fairfusser made the words issue from their lips, for they did not speak at all like actors, but simply and swiftly, as we all try to do in real life, and it is not for that we go to the theatre. Their speeches were so cadenced that they dwelt in the ear like a harmony in music, which is contrary to all experience, so that the characters did not seem like men ennobled, but, rather, fleshly embodiments of the thought or feeling it was their purpose to express. One enthusiast, eager to convert me, quoted to me the words of some foreign actress of our time:[9] “To save the Theatre, the Theatre must be destroyed, the actors and actresses must all die of the plague. They poison the air, they make art impossible,” which is cruel and absurd, and in any case should not have come from an actress. For these semblances of mankind by their remoteness banished all the accidental things which make a play realistic and warmly human, and all the personal emotion which makes us feel for an actor, and applaud him for the pain he has gone through. But we cannot feel for a puppet, or applaud him, even if he has played King Lear, for we know his sufferings were not real.

[9] Eleonora Duse (Ed.).

These plays were always made entirely by one man――for this fairfusser actually had one or two disciples――who directed each movement, whether of single persons or crowds, either tumultuous, or in the dances, which met with much applause, though they seemed to me even less comprehensible than some of the later Russian ballets which were lately in vogue for a short time. I was told he was always very careful about the ‘rhythmic order’ of the piece, whatever that may mean, and its groupings. All was done first on a little model, which in the end became a record repeated on the larger scale. For the voices he took human beings, going over and over each phrase until he got exactly the tone he wanted, and these he recorded, timing them afterwards with the movements, so that the whole play went, as it were, by clockwork. Thus there was nothing spontaneous about it, and this is a fault, since art, according to many serious philosophers, is a kind of game, and thus, surely, if any notion of being drilled creeps in, the pleasure evaporates.

The same man also, as a rule, wrote the words, which did not remain in my memory because I understood them so little, seeing that they dealt with thoughts and feelings which in our day we take small notice of. That this must be so is easy to see; for every age concerns itself with a different relation of man to what is outside him. We are now, to be sure, beginning to do what they were doing,[10] in dealing with man’s relation to man’s idea of what he is; that is, so to say in the plain words of Albertus Magnus, seeking “the causation of causes in the causes of things.” But these plays bewildered me, as I own without shame, for would not Dr. Johnson himself have been adrift at a play by Signor Pirandello? And since there was so much I could not fathom, I should only impart a false twist to the meaning however much I tried to give a true account.

[10] In 2,100 O. S.

But I fear these plays disordered me, for the unnatural is a sort of poison, and I have never since been able to feel real pleasure at any drama of to-day even in the best theatres in Paris, New York, or London. Indeed I have almost conceived an aversion from our stage; and it is only the importunities of my friends that make me go to a play once or twice in a year, so as not to seem unsociable. If the choice is left to me, we go to the English version of a French farce, for these are usually free from any meaning at all: and if one expects nothing, one cannot be disappointed.

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes:

――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.

――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.