THE PATH OF THE || 
 MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 ; By ALEXANDER BAKSHY
 
 UCSB UBKAIU
 
 THE PATH OF THE MODERN 
 
 RUSSIAN STAGE
 
 _c 
 
 X 
 

 
 The Path of the Modern 
 
 RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 By 
 
 ALEXANDER BAKSHY 
 
 With Twelve Pholeo Illustrations 
 
 JOHN W. LUCE & COMPANY 
 BOSTON, 1918.
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY 
 TURNBULL & SPEARS, EDINBURGH 
 
 .* 
 
 U33A-
 
 PREFACE 
 
 I WISH to record my sincere gratitude 
 to my friends, Mr A. B. Clinkscales, Mr 
 Paul Server, and Mr Lancelot Lawton, who 
 on various occasions have lent me their 
 invaluable assistance in keeping in check 
 what to me has proved a source of 
 perpetual annoyance my " pronounced 
 Russian accent." 
 
 My thanks are also due to Mr Rothay 
 Reynolds and Messrs Mills & Boon for 
 permission to reproduce a photograph of 
 Mme. Kommissarzhevsky, and to the Secre- 
 tary of the Society for the Promotion of 
 Hellenic Studies for a favour courteously 
 rendered. 
 
 A. B.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE v 
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 THE PATH OF THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. Historical Review .... 3 
 
 II. The Moscow Art Theatre . . 23 
 
 III. The Moscow Art Theatre (continued) . 38 
 
 IV. Kommissarzhevsky and Meyerhold . 54 
 V. Meyerhold (continued) ... 67 
 
 VI. Evereinov, Fokin, and Benois . . 77 
 
 VII. Conclusion ..... 89 
 
 VlACHESLAV IVANOV A POET PHILOSOPHER OF 
 
 MODERN RUSSIA 99 
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 
 
 I. Consulting the Cyclops and the Elephant 
 
 on Problems of Art . . . 123 
 
 II. The Spectator Sitting in Judgment . 141 
 
 III. Table of Forms of the Theatre . .196 
 
 A NOTE ON MR GORDON CRAIG'S THEORIES . 199 
 
 THE KlNEMATOGRAPH AS ART . . . 207 
 
 INDEX . . . . .,. 241
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 I. A. Chekhov's "THREE SISTERS" (Act 
 I.) on the Stage of the Moscow 
 Art Theatre ( x ) . . . frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 II. A Scene in " UNCLE VANIA " by A. 
 Chekhov, produced at the Moscow 
 Art Theatre (*) . . . . 17 
 
 III. The Moscow Art Theatre's staging of 
 
 "THE CHERRY ORCHARD" by A. 
 Chekhov (!) 25 
 
 IV. Characters from " THE BLUE BIRD " 
 
 by M. Maeterlinck (i) " SUGAR " ; 
 (2) " TIME " ; (3) " BREAD " ; the 
 production on the Stage of the 
 Moscow Art Theatre ... 33 
 
 V. VERA KOMMISSARZHEVSKY in " SISTER 
 BEATRICE " by M. Maeterlinck, as 
 produced by V. Meyerhold . . 49 
 
 VI. Sketch by N. Sapunov for Alexander 
 Block's " LITTLE BOOTH," produced 
 by V. Meyerhold at the Theatre of 
 V. Kommissarzhevsky ( 2 ) . . 65 
 
 VII. " ST PATRICK'S PURGATORY " on the 
 Stage of the Old-Time Theatre, 
 from an architectural design by 
 V. Shchuko ( 3 ) . . . .81
 
 x THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 VIII. THE THEATRE AT ATHENS . . 129 
 
 IX. A Typical Shakespearian Stage. [Re- 
 construction by V. E. ALBRIGHT] ( 4 ) 145 
 
 X. A. Chekhov's "THREE SISTERS" (Act 
 III.) on the Stage of the Moscow 
 Art Theatre (*) . . . . 161 
 
 XL " THE INSPECTOR-GENERAL " by 
 Nicholas Gogol, as produced at the 
 Moscow Art Theatre ( 5 ) . . 177 
 
 XII. An Italian Perspective Scenery of the 
 
 Seventeenth Century ( 6 ) . . 193 
 
 The Illustrations marked with figures are reproduced from 
 the following books : 
 
 (*) MOSKOVSKY KHUDOZHESTVENNY TEATR. Pieci Chekh- 
 ova. Albom " Solntsa Rossii." 
 
 (*) " APOLLON," 1914, No. 4. 
 
 ( 3 ) G. K. LUKOMSKY. Starinnie Teatri. 
 
 ( 4 ) THE SHAKSPERIAN STAGE. By V. E. Albright. New 
 York. 
 
 (*) MOSKOVSKY KHUDOZHESTVENNY TEATR. Izdanie 
 zhurnala " Rampa i Zhizn." 
 
 (') ARCHITECTURA CIVILIS. By Joseph Furttenbach. Ulm, 
 1628.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE modern developments of the stage 
 have been so complex and so intimately 
 connected with the actual conditions of 
 theatre-work that nothing but scholarly 
 research or practical knowledge of the stage 
 would seem to justify an author in venturing 
 before the public with his own ideas on the 
 subject. Yet neither of these require- 
 ments have I been able to fulfil. I have 
 carried out no independent historical re- 
 search, nor have I ever worked in the 
 theatre, which facts, perhaps, will hardly 
 need pointing out to competent readers. 
 If, however, in spite of these admissions, 
 I have the courage of laying down my views 
 on problems that engage the minds of so 
 many serious and thoroughly competent 
 workers, I do so only in the belief that the 
 ideas I set forth throw new light on vital 
 aspects of the theatre.
 
 xii THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 It is not for me to say whether or not 
 my conviction in this respect is fully war- 
 ranted. All I can advance in its justifica- 
 tion is that I have applied to the problem 
 of the theatre the principles which I have 
 formed in studying art in general, and 
 which, to my knowledge, have never been 
 adequately stated. Perhaps, I may go 
 further, and say that these principles rest 
 on certain philosophical conceptions, though 
 I am aware that by making this statement 
 I lay myself open to the grave charge of 
 " intellectualism," the deadliest sin that 
 the modern artist can conceive of. In 
 order to allay the suspicions of such 
 purists, it is necessary to explain with all 
 promptitude that at the root of my 
 theorizing lies the belief that the sense 
 of individuality, i.e. the perception of con- 
 tinuity and discontinuity, is the primary 
 factor which determines our attitude to- 
 wards the work of art, and, consequently, 
 as I maintain, the very form which this 
 work assumes. 
 
 This is not the place to enlarge upon the
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 philosophical significance of the principle 
 of individuality, as I personally conceive 
 it. Those of its aspects which come 
 nearest to the problem of the theatre, are 
 broadly indicated in the essay on Viache- 
 slav Ivanov. In the other essays of this 
 volume I endeavour to disclose the bearing 
 of this principle on the experience of 
 spatial forms, and to trace its influence 
 throughout the evolution of the theatre. 
 
 It will be noticed that I examine the 
 problem from the standpoint of the spec- 
 tator, and persistently lay stress on the 
 effect which the attitude of the spectator 
 produces on the form of art. This may 
 appear a truism needing no special emphasis 
 for those who hold that art is entirely a 
 subjective phenomenon. But, for my own 
 part, I do not share that theory, and my 
 insistence on the role of the spectator has 
 a different meaning and proceeds from 
 different reasons. Only a few points, how- 
 ever, in this most involved problem need 
 be stated here. 
 
 The spectator not merely experiences
 
 xiv THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 certain excitations which the work of art 
 may cause in him. He may be impressed 
 by its beauty or even ugliness, and yet 
 remain unconscious of its artistic nature. 
 It is only when he projects his sensations 
 and invests them with a reality that is in- 
 dependent of, and distinct from himself, 
 that the work he observes earns its title 
 to be regarded as " art." It follows that 
 the phenomenon of art arises neither in 
 the work itself, nor in the spectator, but 
 just between them, in that line of contact 
 and division, which is established by their 
 reaction the one upon the other. Stated 
 in other words, this means that a detached 
 observation of an object asserts its reality 
 for the spectator, or, what is the same, 
 brings out its form as an entity complete 
 in itself. But it is obvious that the object 
 viewed must possess certain properties that 
 would enable it to assert itself against the 
 spectator, and here the distinction between 
 a work of art and an ordinary object is made 
 manifest in the greater power with which 
 the former realizes its particular " self " in
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 the medium selected. Two conclusions 
 can be drawn from these definitions. First, 
 that what is termed an art work is only of 
 relative nature, differing from other objects 
 solely in degree and not in substance. And 
 second, that the usual opposition of " form " 
 and " subject " has no meaning in art, 
 since a " subject " can reach our artistic 
 consciousness only inasmuch as it assumes 
 a definite form. It is the subject, for in- 
 stance, that impresses us in the geometrical 
 drawing of a garden in Egyptian frescoes. 
 But in what way does it reveal itself to our 
 mind ? It does so in the peculiar com- 
 position of the drawing, which stands before 
 us as an independent spatial entity ex- 
 pressing a definite attitude of mind on the 
 part of the artist. 
 
 Since the form of a work of art is deter- 
 mined by the interaction between the work 
 itself and the spectator, it is futile to look 
 for specific forms of artistic expression, 
 unless both the medium used and the chang- 
 ing attitudes of the spectator are studied 
 in their mutual relationship. In the case
 
 xvi THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 of visual arts this line of contact and 
 division must of necessity realize itself 
 in space, asserting itself with the greater 
 power, the more sensitive is the beholder 
 to spatial forms. 
 
 If we now inquire into the nature of our 
 perception of space, we shall find it com- 
 posed of two elements extension and 
 colour. Both these elements contribute 
 to the effect of form as perceived by the 
 spectator, but the power of asserting their 
 boundaries against the latter is far more 
 effective in extension than it is in colour. 
 Line, surface and volume make us instantly 
 conscious of our position towards an object as 
 an independent entity. Not so with colour. 
 Normally, colour merely fills the boundaries 
 marked by extension, indicating the pres- 
 ence of some matter. It is only when it 
 ceases to be neutral and makes a direct 
 appeal to the eye by some peculiar quality 
 (intensity, combination, etc.) that it esta- 
 blishes itself as a form. In this case, it is 
 interesting to note, colour itself partakes 
 of the nature of extension, and we feel it
 
 INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 then as something tangible and materia- 
 lized in space. For that reason one would 
 be justified in saying that in visual arts the 
 perception of extension is the primary 
 factor that determines the form, or in- 
 dividual identity of a work. 
 
 These brief remarks indicate the stand- 
 point from which I approach the problem 
 of the theatre. As I see it, it is mainly a 
 problem of the relationship between the 
 stage and the auditorium, expressed in 
 terms of space. Moreover, I firmly be- 
 lieve that the history of theatrical forms 
 fully bears out the importance which I 
 attach to this relationship. Throughout 
 the ages of theatre-development, the posi- 
 tion of the spectator with regard to the 
 play produced, has been the chief factor 
 in fashioning the form of dramatic per- 
 formance. As this position was itself a 
 resultant of two forces one coming from 
 the spectator, and the other from the per- 
 formance the form created also assumed 
 two faces, one turned to the audience, 
 and the other to the stage. As seen by the
 
 xviii THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 spectator, theatre-performances have re- 
 solved themselves into a series of visual 
 impressions varying in the degree of spatial 
 discontinuity and, consequently, in the 
 degree of opposition between the world 
 portrayed (in its completeness, or separate 
 parts) and his own individuality. Re- 
 garded from the point of view of the stage, 
 performances have ranged themselves 
 according to the manner in which the 
 medium of the theatre, as such, was treated, 
 assuming presentational character when 
 the peculiar nature of the medium was 
 frankly admitted, and representational 
 character when the object was to conceal 
 that nature and create an illusion of an 
 entirely different world. But as visual 
 effects form the chief means of the art of 
 the theatre, both these methods presenta- 
 tion and representation had to be realized 
 in terms of space and were, thereby, of 
 necessity, -translated into the spatial forms 
 of continuity and discontinuity. 
 
 It is a priori evident that the combina- 
 tions arising out of the interaction of the
 
 INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 two moments just described must be com- 
 plex and manifold. To analyse them all 
 would take me far beyond the task I have 
 set out to fulfil in the present volume. So 
 that I have confined myself to indicating 
 the main forms of the theatre, illustrat- 
 ing them with examples taken from the 
 Russian, English and Greek theatres, of 
 the actual construction and working of 
 which I have a wider knowledge than of 
 the theatres of other countries. 
 
 In my examination I have pursued the 
 method of construing up the position of 
 the spectator and determining the nature 
 of the dramatic effect produced in each 
 particular case. I will readily admit that 
 the results I have thus obtained, are often 
 conjectural and open to the charge of 
 being interpreted in a too subjective 
 manner. But though in some cases my 
 conclusions may be lacking in complete 
 justification, this fact does not destroy my 
 conviction that the method adopted in 
 this study, provides a signal means of com- 
 prehending the nature of the theatre and
 
 xx THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 of gaining insight into the inner structure 
 of the phenomena which have hitherto 
 appeared as devoid of form and as defying 
 analysis. 
 
 However this may be, it would be hard 
 to expect that my views will meet with 
 immediate and universal acceptance. I 
 can foresee innumerable objections. But 
 I will deal only with one of them here, for 
 it has a direct bearing on the subject of my 
 essay, " The Path of the Modern Russian 
 Stage/' 
 
 Since the memorable visits of Russian 
 ballet and opera to this country, the main 
 achievement of the Russian stage has been 
 associated in the public mind with the 
 striking pictorial effects which the Russian 
 artists introduced in the methods of setting. 
 The reader may, therefore, be justly sur- 
 prised at rinding that the present volume 
 contains but scanty reference to the work 
 of those artists and the problems attaching 
 to the scenic use of pictorial element. It 
 will, probably, be argued that this gap is 
 due to the natural limitations of my method
 
 INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 which, it would seem, leaves outside its 
 scope the scenic significance of colour. 
 This conclusion, however, will not be 
 justified. Far from ignoring the import- 
 ance of colour, I believe that the theatre 
 will ever extend the use of colour-effects, 
 developing them along the lines suggested 
 by such students of mobile colour as Mr 
 Rimington and the late Scriabin. But 
 this circumstance will never be able to alter 
 the fact that as a power fashioning the 
 form of a theatrical performance, colour 
 will always remain subordinate to extension, 
 serving only to qualify the relationship 
 between the stage and the spectator by 
 giving form to secondary characteristics 
 of the play, such as style, character, etc. 
 It is significant that the domination of 
 the painter on the Russian stage started 
 with the first attempts at " stylisation " 
 initiated by Meyerhold with his flat, de- 
 corative scenery. The sway of colour in 
 ballet and opera has been due to the same 
 striving after style in representation, and 
 now that the idea of presentation, accord-
 
 xxii THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 ing to the specific nature of each medium 
 used, is gaming an ever increasing popu- 
 larity in drama, opera, and ballet, we see the 
 purely pictorial element gradually brought 
 down to its legitimate but quite subordinate 
 position. But despite the pictorial rule of 
 the last ten years, the main line of develop- 
 ment of the Russian stage has never swerved 
 from the fundamental problem oi form, in 
 the attempted solutions of which the 
 Russian theatre has scored its most con- 
 spicuous and most endurable triumphs. 
 For such reasons, I thought it unnecessary 
 to dwell in this volume on the scenic work 
 of Russian artists, reserving it for an 
 account of modern Russian painting, where, 
 in all propriety, it should be treated. 
 
 To speak of art aspects of the kine- 
 matograph may appear ludicrous in the 
 eyes of the modern artist, but I make no 
 apology for including here an essay on this 
 subject. The time is not far off when only 
 the blind will fail to see the immense artistic 
 possibilities of this much abused mechanical 
 device. Meanwhile, I am glad to note that
 
 INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 during the last three years which have 
 elapsed since my essay was written, the 
 progress made has completely vindicated 
 the principles which I then laid down as 
 the condition of artistic development of the 
 kinematograph. Thus, we have had ballets 
 and pantomimes (Reinhardt's " Miracle," 
 for instance) " featured " on the film, 
 whilst in Moscow, I have heard, a school of 
 kinema-acting has been established in which 
 actors are taught dramatic expression and 
 rhythmic movement according to Delsarte 
 and Dalcroze ! It is true, so far even 
 the best productions have shown little 
 appreciation of the real nature of the 
 medium, but the efforts made are in the 
 right direction and encourage the hope that 
 greater successes will soon follow.
 
 THE PATH OF THE 
 MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE
 
 THE PATH OF THE 
 MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HISTORICAL REVIEW 
 
 THE English public has been watching 
 these last few years the display of wonder- 
 ful theatrical wares which the Russian 
 dancers and singers have chosen to bring 
 over to this country. The spectacle has 
 been a startling revelation of the wealth 
 of artistic treasures possessed by Russia 
 that land of snow, and vodka, and down- 
 trodden " moujicks." Moreover, the wares 
 themselves have been dazzling with colours 
 that seemed to outshine everything of the 
 kind produced at home. The ballet, with 
 its feast of gorgeous scenery and rapturous 
 dancing, first introduced the modern 
 Russian stage to this country, and the 
 English public quickly abandoned itself
 
 4 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 to its Baksts, its Fokins, its Pavlovas, and 
 its Karsavinas. Next the opera came, and 
 the melodies of Moussorgsky, Rimsky- 
 Korsakov, and Borodin, and Chalia- 
 pin's remarkable impersonations captured 
 another corner in the public mind. The 
 last season of the Russian opera and 
 ballet at Drury Lane provided the latest 
 wonder : a cross, as it were, between 
 ballet and opera which resulted in the 
 bewildering production of " Le Coq d'Or." 
 Lastly, but for the unfortunate events 
 which since August 1914 have set the 
 world aflame, the English public would 
 have been given an opportunity of seeing 
 the performances of that renowned com- 
 pany of actors the Moscow Art Theatre. 
 This, however, was not to be. So, until 
 better times, the relations which began to 
 grow between the Russian and the English 
 stages are arrested in their development, 
 and the public of this country is left to 
 its own ingenuity to piece together what- 
 ever scattered impressions of the Russian 
 theatre it may have been able to form.
 
 HISTORICAL REVIEW 5 
 
 While admiring Russian productions, the 
 public seems to be completely in the 
 dark as to their mutual interdependence, 
 their inner significance and the bearing 
 they have on the development of the 
 theatre. Taken separately, as isolated 
 phenomena, the Russian productions that 
 have passed before the eyes of the 
 London audiences, have betrayed no 
 signs of their origin : of the history of the 
 various movements in Russia appertaining 
 to the theatre, their victories and their 
 defeats, and the great research and ex- 
 perimental work of which these productions 
 have been the crowning achievement. It 
 is my object in this essay to help to fill 
 in the design that will show the main lines 
 of progress and the forces at work in deter- 
 mining their direction. 
 
 It is a curious fact that the Russian 
 theatre which now, doubtless, stands in the 
 very first rank of contemporary national 
 theatres, is barely two hundred and fifty 
 years old. At the time when England had 
 already passed her zenith in the history
 
 6 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 of her theatre, Russia could boast only 
 of a not too numerous class of jesters and 
 jugglers, of miracle-plays which were few 
 in number and most crudely primitive in 
 execution, and of the school theatres at 
 Kiev, which were mere faint echoes of 
 Polish and Latin influences. 
 
 The proper stage appeared in Russia for 
 the first time only in the reign of Alexis 
 Mikhailovich. Foreign influences were 
 slowly spreading all over the country, 
 undermining the old customs and creating 
 new demands. The Tsar himself, after a 
 period of pious life accompanied by pro- 
 hibitions of every kind of popular amuse- 
 ment, gradually yielded to the natural 
 appeal of worldly distractions and decided 
 to have a theatre at his court. No Russian 
 actors being available, the actors had to 
 be obtained from abroad, and we have it 
 recorded that in 1660 Tsar Alexis personally 
 instructed an Englishman, Hebdon, to get 
 for him in foreign lands, to use his own 
 words, " carvers on wood and stone, glass 
 makers and masters of acting comedy."
 
 HISTORICAL REVIEW 7 
 
 This attempt, as well as another made 
 twelve years later, proved a failure. In the 
 latter case the Tsar's men at first succeeded 
 in securing the services of Velten, the 
 famous actor of the time, and Anna Poulsen, 
 the prima-donna of the Copenhagen 
 theatre. But the enquiries made by these 
 actors of their friends in Russia, as to 
 what life was like in that country, revealed 
 a state of things that was not altogether in- 
 viting. They were informed that foreigners, 
 if their services were valued by the authori- 
 ties, were never allowed to leave Muscovy, 
 and if found guilty of some offence, or if 
 they incurred the displeasure of the powers 
 that be, were in danger of being knouted 
 or sent to Siberia. Naturally, the over- 
 fastidious foreign actors refused the honour 
 of entertaining the Tsar. Fortunately for 
 the latter, as well as for the future of the 
 Russian theatre, there happened to live in 
 Moscow at that time a German pastor, one 
 Gregori, who volunteered to assist the Tsar 
 in creating a theatre. The coveted wish 
 was thus soon realized, and on October I7th,
 
 8 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 1672, the first recorded performance in 
 Russia was given before the Tsar and his 
 court in a specially built wooden hall. 
 Other productions followed, and the theatre 
 flourished for four years, until the death 
 of Tsar Alexis and the subsequent dis- 
 turbances in the life of the court put an 
 end to this interesting venture. 
 
 As regards Oregon's repertoire it is 
 remarkable that his plays were mostly 
 borrowed from the popular repertoire of 
 the German theatre of the generation 
 preceding his own, which, as is well known, 
 assimilated the plays and the methods of 
 the early English comedians. Thus the 
 " pickleherring," the familiar comic figure 
 of the mediaeval English theatre, advancing 
 via the German stage, found himself eventu- 
 ally installed on the boards of the newly- 
 born Russian theatre. Another echo of 
 the English drama we find in the produc- 
 tion of Tamburlaine a remote offspring of 
 Marlowe's famous tragedy. In addition 
 to foreign plays a few plays on Biblical 
 subjects, written by Russian writers, were
 
 HISTORICAL REVIEW 9 
 
 also produced, but, needless to say, they 
 were mere imitations of the established 
 type. 
 
 After a period of suspense following 
 upon the death of Tsar Alexis the theatre 
 was again brought to life in the reign 
 of Peter the Great. By this Tsar, the 
 theatre was regarded as one of the salient 
 features of the cultivated life of the West, 
 and he introduced it in Russia, together 
 with his other reforms, with the object of 
 civilizing his backward subjects. A special 
 theatre was built in Moscow and various 
 facilities, such as exemption from customary 
 toll on entering the Kremlin, were afforded 
 the people in order to spread more widely 
 the new form of entertainment. But this 
 effort was crowned with but a small measure 
 of success, mainly owing to the fact that 
 the German language in which the plays 
 were performed rendered them unintelligible 
 to the Russian audience, whilst the pieces 
 produced in Russian, as well as the acting 
 of the Russian players, seem to have 
 failed in satisfying even the not too exact-
 
 io THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 ing tastes of that time. The closing of 
 this theatre, however, did not put an end 
 to the drama in Russia. The initiative 
 passed into private hands, and particularly 
 amongst the upper classes, and at the 
 schools amateur theatricals became more 
 and more popular. 
 
 The determining factor in the planting 
 of the drama on Russian soil was the spread 
 of education which helped to create a 
 dramatic literature, cultivated actors, and 
 a receptive public. By the middle of the 
 eighteenth century we find all these three 
 elements fully in evidence, and since the 
 establishment of a theatre by Elizabeth, 
 daughter of Peter the Great, the theatre 
 in Russia may be said to have found its 
 feet. 
 
 The names of Fyodor Volkov and Ivan 
 Dmitrevsky stand particularly conspicu- 
 ous in that early period of the Russian 
 stage. The son of a provincial merchant, 
 Volkov was apprenticed to his step-father's 
 trade, and, while still in his youth, came 
 to St Petersburg. There he made acquaint-
 
 HISTORICAL REVIEW n 
 
 ance with the theatre which captured his 
 imagination to such a degree that on 
 returning home to Yaroslavle he immedi- 
 ately started a theatre of his own. His 
 enterprize was crowned with an instant 
 success which aroused interest in his work 
 amongst the more cultivated members of 
 the local nobility, and soon led to his being 
 called to the capital by the Empress herself. 
 He arrived there with his company, which 
 also included his friend Dmitrevsky, pleased 
 the Empress at his trial performance at 
 the Court, and with his actor-friends was 
 sent to the Cadet School to complete his 
 education. Thus the nucleus of the first 
 trained company of Russian actors was 
 formed, making possible the establishment 
 of a permanent Court theatre. Exceptional 
 intelligence and organizing gifts naturally 
 placed Volkov at the head of the company, 
 whilst his efforts to popularize the art he 
 loved so much, in the country have earned 
 him the name of " the father of the Russian 
 theatre." As an actor, however, Volkov 
 was less remarkable than his fellow-worker
 
 12 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 Dmitrevsky. A man of great intellect, of 
 broad and refined culture, and exceptional 
 dramatic genius, Dmitrevsky was the first 
 Russian to rise to the standard of acting 
 that was set up by the best representatives 
 of the European stage of his time. He 
 visited France and England and is said to 
 have been on friendly terms with Garrick. 
 Many legends have grown round his name 
 in Russia, but one of them, describing an 
 episode during his stay in England, has 
 all the air of verisimilitude. As the story 
 goes, at one of the dinner parties given by 
 Garrick the discussion turned to the ques- 
 tion of the actor's control over his body. 
 Garrick's own skill in this respect was 
 remarkable : at will he could make his 
 face blush or go pale, could burst into 
 laughter and immediately melt into tears. 
 While the guests were watching Garrick, 
 it was suddenly noticed that something 
 went wrong with Dmitrevsky : he was 
 trembling like a leaf, his lips were mutter- 
 ing some unintelligible words, and with a 
 blanched face he dropped motionless in his
 
 HISTORICAL REVIEW 13 
 
 chair. All rushed to help him, but Dmit- 
 revsky as quickly sprang to his feet and 
 stood laughing, heartily enjoying the suc- 
 cess of his trick. In his manner of acting 
 Dmitrevsky belonged to the French school, 
 and it was mainly through his influence 
 that the classic French repertoire was 
 established on the Russian stage. 
 
 As a luxury imported from abroad, for a 
 considerable period the Russian theatre was 
 naturally dominated by the foreign models 
 from which it was derived. So plays were 
 written after the classic style then in vogue, 
 and acting was couched in the traditions 
 of the contemporary foreign stage. Italian, 
 German, and French influences all left their 
 mark during this first period of the Russian 
 theatre, the period which lasted well into 
 the first half of the nineteenth century. 
 Only with the creation of a national 
 dramatic literature did the Russian theatre 
 begin to acquire a face that was peculiarly 
 its own. 
 
 Three authors laid the foundation of that 
 literature : Griboyedov, Gogol, and Ostrov-
 
 14 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 sky, who all represented successive grades 
 in the development of the Russian classic 
 repertoire. Griboyedov's contribution was 
 confined to the single play of " Sorrow from 
 Wisdom," which combined the most 
 poignant satire on the society of the time 
 with a picture of the spiritual drama of 
 an idealist placed in a world of human 
 monsters. The epigrammatic briskness of 
 its dialogue, the wonderful moulding of 
 its characters, and the general liveliness 
 of its action have made " Sorrow from 
 Wisdom " one of the most popular Russian 
 comedies. Still greater influence in the 
 Russian theatre belonged to Gogol's 
 " Getting Married " and " Inspector- 
 General." They both appeared in the 
 thirties of the last century and up to this 
 day have not lost a particle of their capti- 
 vating charm. Gogol's characters are taken 
 from a lower station of life than Griboye- 
 dov's, marking in this respect a continuous 
 democratization of the Russian drama, 
 but, if anything, they are even more strongly 
 and subtly wrought. " The Inspector-
 
 HISTORICAL REVIEW 15 
 
 General," in particular, may be regarded 
 as the greatest play in the Russian language 
 extant, so superb is the inner coherence of 
 its parts, and so profoundly fundamental 
 seem to be the innumerable human masks 
 revealed in the chiselled attitudes of its 
 characters. If Griboyedov and Gogol set 
 up the standard of literary and dramatic 
 perfection, it was left to Ostrovsky to 
 provide a varied and national repertoire. 
 Hitherto musical vaudeville and soul-tearing 
 melodrama had dominated the stage, but 
 Ostrovsky opened out a new epoch of the 
 Russian theatre when he introduced his 
 uncouth and rough world of petty officials, 
 tradesmen, and peasants, which he por- 
 trayed with painstaking realism, whilst yet 
 preserving a complete command of the 
 dramatic form. In this way the genre play 
 became established on the stage, where it 
 held sway right down to our own time, with 
 this difference, however, compared with the 
 time of Ostrovsky, that in the hands of his 
 followers it soon deteriorated into cheap 
 problem play and shallow anecdote.
 
 16 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 To complete this review of the dramatic 
 literature as we find it on the eve of this 
 century, mention should be made of 
 Sukhovo-Kobilin, Leo Tolstoy, Turgenev, 
 and Alexis Tolstoy. They all occupied 
 somewhat isolated positions amongst the 
 playwrights of their time, and their con- 
 tributions to the art of the drama were 
 few and sporadic. Sukhovo-Kobilin's fame 
 rests chiefly on his " Krechinsky's 
 Marriage," which, indeed, is a truly re- 
 markable piece of work. Its grotesque and 
 tragic humour, in conjunction with the 
 wonderful simplicity of its plot, recalls 
 the methods of Moliere and makes one 
 regret that the play is totally unknown 
 outside Russia. The two plays by Leo 
 Tolstoy, ' The Fruits of Culture " and 
 ' The Power of Darkness," together with 
 his posthumous play " The Live Corpse," 
 reveal the monumental workmanship, so 
 characteristic of this author. The first 
 two are the more powerful, and ' The 
 Fruits of Culture " is, perhaps, the best of 
 the three. Here is a case when incessant
 
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 HISTORICAL REVIEW 17 
 
 movement on the stage, continuous coming 
 in and out, is not a sham bustle introduced 
 by the stage-manager for the sake of realistic 
 suggestion, but is indissolubly bound up 
 with the life portrayed. Turgenev's plays 
 did not enjoy great popularity during the 
 period reviewed here, and for the simple 
 reason that their lyrical tone, their sub- 
 dued and gentle emotionalism, and their 
 subtle form made them virtually foreign 
 and unintelligible to the majority of actors 
 and playgoers. Only when the plays of 
 Chekhov, so kindred to Turgenev's in tone 
 and treatment, were firmly installed in 
 the popular favour by the efforts of the 
 Moscow Art Theatre, was Turgenev's claim 
 to recognition also unreservedly admitted. 
 Lastly, it remains to mention Count Alexis 
 Tolstoy's historical trilogy : ' The Death 
 of Ivan the Terrible," : ' Tsar Fyodor," and 
 " Tsar Boris " which together with Push- 
 kin's " Boris Godunov " form characteristic 
 specimens of poetic tragedy in the Russian 
 theatre. 
 
 Let us now turn to the position of the
 
 i8 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 stage and cast a cursory glance at its 
 development during that period, the 
 dramatic literature of which has just been 
 outlined. In the beginning of the last 
 century Russia had two State-controlled 
 theatres in Petrograd and Moscow. In 
 addition to these, there were theatres in 
 the provincial cities and numerous private 
 stages on the estates of wealthy land- 
 owners who kept companies of professional 
 actors selected from amongst their serfs and 
 compulsorily trained in the dramatic art. 
 There is no need to dwell here on the 
 terrible life of those unfortunate actors 
 and actresses, whose enforced education 
 made them doubly conscious of the iniquity 
 of their position. Suffice it to say, that 
 many of them achieved great distinction 
 on the Imperial stage, while still remaining 
 mere slaves. The two Imperial theatres 
 combined opera, ballet, and drama, and 
 most of the actors had to practise an 
 extreme versatility of talent which, in spite 
 of its manifest drawbacks, greatly helped 
 them in the acquisition of a complete
 
 HISTORICAL REVIEW 19 
 
 mastery of technique. So, notwithstanding 
 the lamentable poverty of its early reper- 
 toire, the Russian stage was never wanting 
 in talented individuals whose names have 
 since been ever famous. Such were Kara- 
 tigin and Mochalov, and particularly so 
 Schepkin, who from the humility of 
 slavery worked himself up to the high 
 position of principal actor on the Moscow 
 Imperial stage. Three distinct methods 
 of acting may be said to have been 
 personified in those three great actors. 
 The two elements of the actor's art which 
 Talma, the famous French tragedian, 
 following Diderot, defined as intelligence 
 and sensibility, found their ideal exponents 
 respectively in Karatigin and Mochalov. 
 All that intellect could bring to bear on the 
 creation of a part, whether in illuminating the 
 character, the situation, or the environment, 
 or whether in enabling the actor to make 
 full use of his skilful technique, formed the 
 striking distinction of the art of Karatigin. 
 On the other hand, temperament and 
 pathos, combined with the ability of com-
 
 20 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 pletely merging his own self in the character 
 presented, marked in a very high degree 
 the art of Mochalov. 
 
 Both these actors concerned themselves 
 mainly with the presentation of their own 
 parts. It was the special merit of Schepkin 
 that in addition to his exceptional power 
 of impersonation, which harmoniously 
 united both intelligence and sensibility, 
 he always strove to present not just single 
 characters, mutually detached and inde- 
 pendent, but the play as a \vhole, a unity 
 in which all parts bind and determine each 
 other. This practice of the principle of 
 ensemble, together with his bitter opposi- 
 tion to every kind of artificiality and 
 affectation in the manner of acting, set 
 its stamp on the work of the Moscow 
 Imperial Dramatic Theatre, the Small 
 Theatre, as it is generally called, which 
 during the days of Schepkin and long after 
 his death, became famous for the artistic 
 thoroughness of its productions and even 
 received the name of ' The Home of 
 Schepkin."
 
 HISTORICAL REVIEW 21 
 
 We shall see later on in what way 
 Schepkin's traditions have regained their 
 vital significance on the modern Russian 
 stage. Meanwhile, let it be pointed out 
 that by the end of last century these ideas 
 lost much of their former hold over the 
 actors, and this fact, coupled with the 
 prevalence of the cheap problem and genre 
 play, caused mechanical routine to set in 
 and the higher aspects of the dramatic 
 art to be disregarded. Not that there 
 was a complete lack of great actors. Mme 
 Savin, Davidov, and Varlamov at the 
 Alexandrivsky Theatre, in Petrograd, and 
 Mme Fedotov, Mme Ermolov, and Lensky 
 at the Moscow Small Theatre, were actors 
 of unusual magnitude, consummate masters 
 of their art, second to none of their prede- 
 cessors. But their striking individual gifts 
 were unable to save the stage from the 
 backslidings into which it had fallen. The 
 " model " Imperial stage, which until the 
 eighties maintained in both capitals a 
 State monopoly of dramatic presentation, 
 and was generally the leading stage in
 
 22 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 the country (for this reason I leave out- 
 side the scope of this review the work of 
 the provincial theatres), now no longer 
 satisfied the more cultivated classes of 
 playgoers. The general revival in the 
 domain of art and literature which marked 
 that period raised new demands and created 
 new standards of artistic perfection. Above 
 all, it helped to produce that critical state 
 of mind which could not rest content with 
 what seemed to exist only by dint of old- 
 established tradition. Of all the spheres of 
 artistic activity the theatre alone seemed 
 lacking in life and the true spirit of art. 
 A protest was inevitable in such conditions, 
 and it was boldly raised by the two men 
 who decided on launching the Moscow 
 Art Theatre.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE 
 
 WE are told by the chroniclers of the 
 Moscow Art Theatre how one summer day 
 in 1897 Constantine Sergey evich Alexeyev 
 and Vladimir Ivanovich Nemirovich- 
 Danchenko met at a restaurant and for 
 eighteen hours on end discussed the position 
 and the problems of the drama of their 
 day. They had never met before. One 
 was an amateur actor, the leader of a 
 company of other amateurs members of 
 the Society of Art and Literature, which 
 had distinguished itself by a number of 
 carefully staged productions. The other 
 was a successful playwright and a man of 
 letters, whose devotion to the drama led 
 him to the management of a school of 
 acting. The dissatisfaction with the state 
 of the Russian stage, which they both 
 strongly felt, brought them together on 
 
 23
 
 24 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 that eventful day in June of 1897, and 
 resulted in the establishment of the Moscow 
 Art Theatre, which, whatever its faults or 
 merits, has certainly fixed an epoch in the 
 theatre history of Russia. After a few 
 more meetings and discussions, a definite 
 programme was worked out and the zealous 
 reformers set themselves enthusiastically to 
 the task of carrying it out. 
 
 There were innumerable difficulties to 
 overcome. The first of them was the 
 problem of finding the necessary capital 
 not an easy thing in ordinary matters 
 and how much more so where artistic 
 enterprise is concerned. A number of 
 patrons were approached, and fortunately 
 a few were found willing to support the 
 venture. The sum collected was by no 
 means an overwhelming one something 
 over two thousand five hundred pounds in 
 all but the enthusiasm of the promoters 
 was of course a much greater asset. Next 
 the company was formed. The members 
 of the Society of Art and Literature and 
 the students of the Philharmonic School
 
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 P
 
 THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE 25 
 
 supplied the bulk of the company. 
 Amateurs and students ! A poor material, 
 one would think, to embark with on the 
 ambitious scheme of creating a reformed 
 theatre ! And yet when we look through 
 the list of names of the original company 
 we cannot suppress our wonder at the 
 number of those, who, since the " pre- 
 historic " days of 1897 have attained 
 popularity and even fame. Here we see 
 Alexeyev himself, whose stage-name of 
 Stanislavsky is a household word all over 
 the country. Then, Mme Lilin, Luzhsky, 
 Artem, and Sanin, from among his collabo- 
 rators at the Society, and Mme Knipper, 
 Mme Savitsky, Moskvin, and Meyerhold 
 from among the students of Nemirovich- 
 Danchenko all have distinguished them- 
 selves as actors, or have otherwise left 
 traces of their personality upon the 
 modern Russian stage. The capital found, 
 and the company formed, the next thing 
 was to settle upon a theatre. After much 
 hesitation and deliberation this problem 
 was also solved, a small theatre being taken
 
 26 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 to accommodate the new home of artistic 
 drama. It had been previously used as a 
 variety-stage, a fact rendered sufficiently 
 obvious by the lingering odour of wine 
 which filled it. 
 
 A year after the first meeting of Stanis- 
 lavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, re- 
 hearsals were started in the country, some 
 short distance from Moscow, where a friend 
 of the company lent them a shed. Before, 
 however, dealing with the ideas which 
 guided the new theatre in its work, a word 
 should be said on its organization. 
 
 At the head of the company stood 
 Nemirovich-Danchenko and Stanislavsky, 
 whose mutual relations were strictly defined 
 from the outset. Nemirovich-Danchenko 
 was given an absolute veto in all questions 
 of a literary nature, such as, for instance, 
 the choice of a play, the definition of its 
 meaning and characters, and the general 
 treatment of its parts. Stanislavsky, in 
 his turn, was given as absolute a veto in 
 all questions of an artistic nature, such as 
 setting, scenery, acting, etc. This strict
 
 THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE 27 
 
 division pf rights and duties was in itself 
 a source of strength to the theatre, having 
 enabled the two men to co-operate in the 
 common cause, now for over seventeen years, 
 without appreciable friction or discord. As 
 to the actors, they were also bound by 
 certain rules. Thus one of the main 
 principles of the company was that no one 
 could refuse to act a part offered him. It 
 may be said generally that this was not 
 an ordinary company of actors and actresses. 
 Their salaries were amazingly small, vary- 
 ing from thirty-five to fifty shillings a week, 
 and not a few of them had sacrificed much 
 better positions, solely that they might join 
 the new theatre. However, after four months 
 of hard work and innumerable rehearsals, 
 the Moscow Art and Popular Theatre, as 
 it was originally styled, opened its first 
 season with Count Alexis Tolstoy's tragedy 
 " Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich." 
 
 The first production proved an immedi- 
 ate success. The setting and mass-scenes 
 impressed the public by the richness of their 
 detail and the faithful representation of
 
 28 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 the period. After all the doubts and fears 
 with which the whole company was looking 
 forward to the first production, this definite 
 success at once relieved the strain of un- 
 certainty, and raised the premature hope 
 that the theatre was firmly established. 
 But disappointment came when it was least 
 expected. A number of new productions 
 which followed " Tsar Fyodor " in the usual 
 way of the repertoire system, and which 
 amongst other plays included Haupt- 
 mann's " Sunken Bell," and " The Merchant 
 of Venice," failed to catch the popular 
 sympathy, and takings slowly, but surely, 
 began to dwindle to such sums as nine or 
 ten pounds per evening. In addition, the 
 production of a play by Hauptmann entitled 
 " Hannele," on the preparation of which a 
 considerable sum of money had been spent, 
 was suddenly forbidden on the ground 
 that the ecclesiastical authorities objected 
 to some of its parts. It will be easily 
 understood what a feeling of depression set 
 in amongst the members of the theatre. 
 Fortunately, the production of the " Sea-
 
 29 
 
 gull" by Chekhov, two months after the 
 opening of the season, instantly changed 
 the whole situation. 'The Sea-gull" was 
 a tremendous success, and with two such 
 draws as this play and "Tsar Fyodor," the 
 Moscow Art Theatre began to feel firmer 
 ground under its feet. 
 
 The limits of this chapter do not permit 
 of my further quoting the facts illustrating 
 the external history of the Art Theatre. 
 Suffice it to say that gradually it was able 
 to overcome all the difficulties with which 
 it had to contend, and to establish itself 
 as the most popular theatre in Russia. 
 It is now housed in a commodious and 
 artistically decorated building and enjoys 
 well-deserved prosperity. Its annual visits 
 to Petrograd are a great feature in the life 
 of that city, as the enthusiasm with which 
 the Theatre is always received there, amply 
 testifies. The queues of anxious applicants 
 who two months before the actual per- 
 formances spend several days and nights 
 in the street in order to get their seats, 
 provides sufficient illustration of the
 
 30 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 interest taken in the work of the Art 
 Theatre. I well remember a dismal and 
 misty night a good many years ago, when, 
 with several hundreds of such enthusiasts, 
 I waited outside the booking office from 
 ten o'clock in the evening till two o'clock 
 next afternoon. And I was one of the more 
 fortunate ones, in that one kind soul who had 
 already waited for some twenty-four hours 
 offered to share with me the seats he was 
 entitled to buy, if I agreed to take his place 
 in the queue. But this was my only ex- 
 perience of the kind. On other occasions 
 I chose the easier, though perhaps the 
 more parasitic course, of leaving the pleasure 
 of the night duty to my more enthusiastic 
 friends. 
 
 This eager interest in the art of the 
 theatre is in itself a striking illustration of 
 the atmosphere in which the modern Russian 
 theatre has to carry on its work. It takes 
 time, of course, for a new theatre to 
 create and educate its own public, and 
 in not a few cases a new venture broke 
 down through lack of resources, before
 
 THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE 31 
 
 the ideas put forward found favour with 
 the public. But in Russia the playgoers 
 are certainly more receptive and more 
 alive to original work in the theatre than 
 they are in other countries, where the 
 public taste has been corrupted by the 
 demoralizing influence of unblushing com- 
 mercialism. In the case of the Moscow 
 Art Theatre, the purer and more artistic 
 atmosphere prevailing in Russia was one 
 of the chief factors that assured its success 
 at the time when, still uncertain of its own 
 powers, it embarked on a new and seemingly 
 revolutionary path. 
 
 Let us now examine more closely the 
 principles which the Art Theatre gradually 
 evolved in the course of its development. 
 
 The essential feature of the new theatre 
 was embodied in its peculiar name " The 
 Moscow Art Theatre." Why an "Art" 
 theatre ? one may ask. One does not 
 hear of " art painting " or "art music." 
 Music or painting can be good or bad, 
 but " art music " ! The words seem 
 simply to be redundant. Yet there was
 
 32 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 sense in the appellation. A reference has 
 already been made to the conditions pre- 
 vailing on the Russian stage towards the 
 end of last century. These conditions 
 betrayed a state of provincial crudity, 
 and were characterized by slovenliness 
 and vulgarity of detail pretending to be 
 realistic, which, singularly enough, flourished 
 side by side with an exhibition of real 
 dramatic genius on the part of a few gifted 
 actors of the old school. The backslidings 
 of this kind were so obnoxious to the 
 taste of the better educated and more 
 cultivated members of the public that 
 drastic reform seemed to be urgently 
 needed. The forms the new dramatic art 
 was to assume, appeared, for the moment, 
 perfectly clear : there was modern litera- 
 ture free and unrestricted in its por- 
 trayal of the world that corresponded to 
 the intellectual and artistic demands of 
 the modern man, and the drama, which 
 was then considered but a branch of that 
 literature, could have no other object save 
 that of creating the same world on the
 
 THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE 33 
 
 boards of the theatre. Thus " Art " in 
 the first place meant fidelity to the object 
 represented, or, in the conditions of dram- 
 atic representation, a complete subordin- 
 ation of the methods of production to the 
 subject of the play as this would exist out- 
 side the stage. 
 
 This general method, however, admitted 
 of a variety of special forms. What 
 peculiar features constitute the idea of 
 reality ? The simplest and the most natural 
 answer would be : reality is what we see 
 in real life, for is it not for this reason that 
 we call it " real " ? Once our material sur- 
 roundings are faithfully reproduced, once 
 the actors no longer act their parts but 
 live in them, completely merged in the 
 characters they represent, the stage is no 
 longer a stage : it is transmuted into the 
 world portrayed in the play. This tempt- 
 ing theory was enthusiastically adopted 
 by the Art Theatre, the leaders of which 
 had already had occasion of seeing how it 
 worked in practice. Only a few years 
 before they launched their theatre, the
 
 34 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 famous German company of the Meiningen 
 actors, under the leadership of Cronegk, 
 had paid a visit to Moscow and startled 
 the public by the extraordinary realistic 
 effects it was able to produce, both in the 
 setting and the method of acting. With 
 this example in their mind the Art Theatre 
 boldly proclaimed the gospel of naturalism 
 as the only road to salvation and proceeded 
 eagerly to emulate Cronegk. A few illus- 
 trations from their productions of this 
 period will enable us to see to what length 
 the new creed was carried. 
 
 We all remember the time-honoured three 
 cloths with painted ornaments, pictures and 
 fireplaces, which in the unsophisticated 
 days of our youth represented a house 
 which served equally well to accommo- 
 date the characters of all periods and all 
 countries. From the naturalistic standpoint 
 this, of course, was not to be thought of, 
 and so in the Art Theatre we were given a 
 room broken up into a number of more or 
 less independent parts, with a view of 
 other real rooms seen through the doors,
 
 THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE 35 
 
 and even with realistic suggestions ol the 
 stories above. Besides being nearer to 
 " real life " this arrangement afforded 
 special advantages for grouping the actors 
 in different places, and introducing a greater 
 variety. Needless to say, every setting 
 on the stage of the Art Theatre faithfully 
 reproduced the architecture, furniture, 
 dress, and all other features of the period 
 concerned. To achieve this accuracy the 
 Art Theatre spared no efforts, as can be 
 judged from the fact that special missions 
 were sent to Rome when " Julius Caesar " 
 was produced, to Silesia when " The Carrier 
 Henschel " by Hauptmann was staged, and 
 to various parts of Russia whenever a 
 play possessed a semblance of local 
 " colour." For some plays even local 
 dialects were specially studied. With this 
 fidelity to " nature," one will hardly be 
 surprised to learn that rain on the Art 
 stage did make the actors wet, that water- 
 falls were no sham imitation, or that 
 specially embossed and painted papier- 
 mache lining produced a perfect illusion of
 
 36 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 mud. In the same way, walls, cornices, and 
 doors were made of their proper materials 
 or suitable substitutes. And there were 
 innumerable tiny articles on the tables 
 and shelves to give the impression of the 
 actual environment in which people lived. 
 
 If we turn to the method of acting we 
 find a similar thing. All affectation in the 
 manner of speech or acting was rigorously 
 suppressed. Principal characters were 
 deprived of all the artificial glamour, with 
 which the conventional stage surrounds 
 them in order to emphasize their im- 
 portance. On the other hand, the 
 secondary parts and the masses in which 
 the leading members of the company had 
 to appear, were raised to the same level 
 as the central characters. A complete 
 unity of the life portrayed, sustained 
 throughout the play, and in this way a 
 perfect ensemble of acting, running with- 
 out a hitch, became the watchword of the 
 Art Theatre. 
 
 It is important not to confuse the two 
 methods of acting just described. The
 
 THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE 37 
 
 naturalistic method tended to reduce the 
 contrasts between what was the principal 
 and the secondary, the climax and the 
 moments leading up to it, to the dead 
 level of the mean, and agreed ill with 
 many of the plays produced, particularly 
 of the classical repertoire opposed to 
 naturalism. On the contrary, the method 
 of ensemble which the Art Theatre em- 
 ployed, revealed undreamed of possibilities 
 in co-ordinated acting and has since be- 
 come one of the most valuable means in 
 representing (and I lay special stress on 
 this word) the world pictured in the play.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE (continued] 
 
 THE consistent faithfulness in the external 
 form which guided the Art Theatre during 
 the first period of its existence, soon under- 
 went an important evolution. The change 
 was brought about by the unusual char- 
 acter and form of the plays by Chekhov, 
 which with unprecedented daring dis- 
 carded the age-long conventions of the 
 theatre. The merit for bringing Chekhov 
 on to the stage belongs mainly to Nem- 
 irovich-Danchenko, who perceived in his 
 plays the spiritual significance and the 
 freedom of treatment that were the avowed 
 object of the Art Theatre. How far 
 Nemirovich-Danchenko was carried by his 
 enthusiasm for Chekhov will be seen from 
 the fact that he was on the point of refusing 
 the prize which the Academy awarded him 
 for his play " The Price of Life," arguing
 
 THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE 39 
 
 that it should in all justice have been con- 
 ferred upon Chekhov's " Sea-gull." It was 
 also his faith in Chekhov that enabled him 
 to bring over to his side Stanislavsky, who 
 in the beginning was loath to share his 
 friend's enthusiasm. There were, however, 
 other circumstances which spoke strongly 
 against producing Chekhov. 
 
 ' The Sea-gull," the play selected by the 
 Art Theatre, had already been played at 
 the Alexandrinsky Theatre in Petrograd, 
 with Vera Kommissarzhevsky in the lead- 
 ing part, but the reception it had there was 
 most discouraging. In fact, never before 
 in the whole history of the Alexandrinsky 
 Theatre had its portly walls witnessed such 
 an outburst of indignation. The play was 
 booed and hissed, and the poor and suffering 
 author had to flee to the warm Crimea to 
 find solace for his outraged feelings. But as 
 the adage says, he who dares will succeed, 
 and the Art Theatre proved its mettle by 
 securing for " The Sea-gull " the success it 
 deserved. With this and the four other plays 
 by Chekhov, "Uncle Vania," " Ivanov,"
 
 40 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 ' The Three Sisters," and " The Cherry 
 Orchard," which it produced during its 
 lifetime, the Moscow Art Theatre has for 
 ever bound the name of Chekhov with its 
 own, and it may with equal justice be said 
 that Chekhov as dramatist stands as much 
 by the Art Theatre as does the Art Theatre 
 by Chekhov. Now, what are the peculiar 
 features of Chekhov's plays ? 
 
 The characteristic that distinguishes 
 them at the very first glance is the com- 
 plete lack of dramatic plot, or " action " as 
 it is called. They are static in their very 
 nature, presenting nothing but mere scenes 
 of life. Again, the life itself as represented 
 in these plays, is infinitely removed from 
 the life usually shown on the stage. It has 
 no marked contrasts of light and shade, 
 and its human beings are made up of 
 elements that completely disagree with the 
 traditional recipes of the dramatic craft. 
 No garb of the types established in the 
 genre-play, not to mention melodrama, 
 could possibly fit Chekhov's heroes with 
 their complex and strikingly individual
 
 THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE 41 
 
 features. This static nature of Chekhov's 
 plays, together with the subtle drawing 
 of his characters, was further enhanced by 
 the special traits of the class of the Russian 
 people which he depicted in his pieces. 
 For various historical reasons, which I 
 need not dwell upon here, the Russian 
 " intelligentia " of the time of Chekhov 
 presented, in its greatest part at least, a 
 class of weak-willed individuals, handi- 
 capped in applying their gifts to the so- 
 lution of practical problems by the peculiar 
 social and political conditions prevalent at 
 the time, and for this reason mostly given 
 to introspection and dreaming, that helped 
 to relieve the soul. Despair and pessimism 
 born of aimless life, and the pursuit of 
 dreamy idealism in the hope of finding 
 refuge from depressing environment, con- 
 cealed innumerable elements of personal 
 tragedy which, in the irresistible and un- 
 alterable flow of events, approached even 
 the ancient tragedy of fate. It is not 
 surprising, therefore, that Chekhov chose 
 and crystallized dramatic plots out of this
 
 42 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 world. Drama did not develop there ; it 
 simply assumed gradually more distinct 
 and visible forms in the process of 
 emerging from the chaos of the surround- 
 ing atmosphere. Thus the atmosphere, 
 itself, the very tone, became the char- 
 acteristic feature of Chekhov's plays. To 
 be faithful to Chekhov, meant faithfulness 
 to his atmosphere. But how was this to 
 be suggested by the naturalistic methods 
 
 oo / 
 
 which the Art Theatre employed ? The 
 appearance of things as they are is full of 
 contrasts and tends to arouse opposing 
 sentiments. To Chekhov's atmosphere, 
 however, unity of impression was essential, 
 and this could be achieved only by one 
 method the method of selection. 
 
 Now, selection may mean dropping 
 details, and then it imports simplification. 
 Or selection may also mean choosing a 
 definite idea or sentiment and dropping all 
 that is alien to it, then it denotes style. 
 As is obvious, style is not opposed to 
 naturalism taken in its broad sense. I 
 do not refer in this case to historical style,
 
 THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE 43 
 
 which is a recognized province of naturalism, 
 but to style as the result of preponder- 
 ance given to some peculiar feature. This 
 can easily be brought out even in the 
 ordinary naturalistic world, and the only 
 problem would then be to ascertain the 
 exact feature, the cue to the style. 
 
 With regard to Chekhov's plays, the Art 
 Theatre found the tone of their atmosphere 
 in the peculiar key of their dialogue and the 
 continuity of their action, which produce 
 an incessant flow of movements and words, 
 all couched in subdued tones and, owing 
 to the lack of contrasts, all clinging to each 
 other in one slow and continuous stream. 
 The musical character of Chekhov's atmo- 
 sphere is suggested by the author himself, 
 who often employs musical sounds in order 
 to produce the necessary impression. The 
 Art Theatre only further developed the 
 same feature when it introduced chirping 
 of crickets, trampling of horses going over 
 a bridge in the distance, and such like 
 devices, and though it was much ridiculed 
 for these " tricks," it seems to me that all
 
 44 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 such sneers and opposition were merely due 
 to a lack of understanding of the peculiar 
 dramatic form fostered by the Art Theatre. 
 To the same group of productions in which 
 the lyrical atmosphere of the " interieur " 
 formed the chief tone of the play, belong a 
 few stagings of Turgenev's plays. Particu- 
 larly remarkable was " A Month in the 
 Country," in which the musical effect of 
 the dialogue was further enhanced by the 
 exquisite scenery painted by Dobuzhinsky. 
 The two principles of production de- 
 scribed above marked the first period of 
 the Art Theatre. Simple copying of nature 
 (faithfulness in the external form) and 
 selective copying of nature (faithfulness in 
 revealing the predominant feature, the style) 
 were both applied to a number of produc- 
 tions of Ibsen which, naturalistic though 
 they were, prepared the ground for a new 
 departure in the methods of the Art Theatre. 
 It was the time when symbolism in literature 
 gradually established itself in the popular 
 favour and numerous attempts were made 
 to do away with realistic staging. The
 
 THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE 45 
 
 Art Theatre also yielded to the general 
 tendency, and in a number of productions 
 tried to discover new forms. Thus in 
 Knut Hamsun's " At the Gates of the 
 Kingdom " an experiment was tried of 
 reducing the scenery and the accessories 
 down to the barest minimum, after the 
 method of the " conventional staging " 
 so-called. In Andreyev's " Life of Man " 
 simplification was served in a somewhat 
 naturalistic garb. Whilst the volatile sym- 
 bolism of Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird" was 
 presented even without much simplification, 
 the method adopted being that described 
 above as selective copying of nature, or style : 
 that is to say, the poetic world pictured by 
 Tyltyl and Mytyl was realized on the stage 
 in all its entirety as seen by a child, but, of 
 course, through the eyes of a grown-up. 
 
 This symbolistic reaction, however, was 
 but a passing craze inevitable in the evolu- 
 tion of the Art Theatre, but little char- 
 acteristic of its achievement. I shall deal 
 at a greater length with the problem of 
 conventional and symbolical staging when
 
 46 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 I describe the work of Meyerhold. For 
 the moment I shall restrict myself only to 
 the following observation. Notwithstand- 
 ing all its vacillations during this period 
 the Art Theatre remained ever faithful to 
 that principle of " faithfulness " which it 
 proclaimed at the beginning of its career. 
 From the casual external, through the 
 specific external, " faithfulness " passed to 
 the casual spiritual. Whatever symbolical 
 plays this theatre produced, it always 
 attempted to present them as mere psycho- 
 logical problems. Psychological interpre- 
 tation became the object which the Art 
 Theatre set itself to attain. 
 
 The evolution of " faithfulness " did not 
 stop at this. Once the inner, the spiritual 
 world became the centre of interest, it 
 required only another step to make one 
 look for a body with which to clothe the 
 soul. Psychological features, crystallized 
 into characters, now began to be regarded 
 as the central points from which reality 
 issued, and which shed their light on the 
 matter enveloping them. Thus, the fourth
 
 THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE 47 
 
 stage, the stage of " artistic realism," so 
 called, was reached, marking the com- 
 pletion of the circle of " faithfulness." Its 
 outward expression it found in realistic 
 simplification on the basis of character, 
 which had the effect of plastic moulding 
 of individual character on the background 
 of neutral and also simplified environment. 
 It is in this sense that the canons of scenic 
 art left by Schepkin may be said to have 
 been brought to life again by Stanislavsky 
 and his collaborators. 
 
 Having traced the evolution of the 
 Moscow Art Theatre, it is opportune now to 
 point out what it actually stands for, what 
 its significance is with regard to the general 
 problem of the theatre. There will be no 
 difficulty in recognizing the basic principle 
 which lay at the foundation of all the 
 experiments of the Art Theatre, tacitly 
 admitted as the natural and the only 
 artistic form of the theatre. This principle 
 was representation. The object of the 
 theatre was understood not to present a 
 play through the medium of the stage, but
 
 48 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 to represent it as an independent entity 
 existing side by side with the observing 
 audience. The subject of the play was 
 considered as a. picture of some definite 
 world perfectly complete in itself and 
 needing only a faithful reproduction to 
 become a living world on the stage. Of 
 the tw r o elements of the theatre, the stage 
 and the audience, the second operated 
 merely as some superfluous attachment 
 making itself felt only through the necessity 
 of providing for it the huge window of the 
 stage through which it could get a glimpse 
 of the world enacted. This admission of 
 a barrier dividing the theatre into two 
 independent parts, was the actual factor 
 which determined the whole course of the 
 Art Theatre's activity. If illusionism in 
 the way of representation was to be carried 
 to its furthest limits, if, in addition, the 
 illusory world thus created was to exist 
 entirely by its own means, detached from, 
 and independent of, the spectator, I can see 
 no reason why the Art Theatre should be 
 reproached, as it has often been, for such
 
 1 
 
 I 
 
 51 
 
 06 
 
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 3 3 
 
 -a 
 a o
 
 THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE 49 
 
 alleged tricks as the so-called " fourth 
 wall," i.e. a row of furniture placed along 
 the footlights, or its crickets, frogs, and 
 " such like baggage," which were intended 
 only to make living nature speak for itself. 
 To refute the case of the Moscow Art 
 Theatre it is necessary to prove that 
 representation is not the object of the 
 theatre, or that it must not be objective, 
 or, lastly, that it must not be naturalistic- 
 ally-objective. 
 
 Without going into the argument at this 
 instant, I will only point out that the 
 subsequent development of the Russian 
 theatre, following in the direction opposite 
 to the methods of the Art Theatre, passed 
 through all the indicated grades of reaction, 
 taking them in the reversed order : first, 
 objectivism in the symbolical garment, then 
 subjectivism, and, finally, presentation, as 
 a method entirely opposed to illusionism 
 of any kind. 
 
 There are a few minor points which are 
 invariably brought out when the work of 
 the Art Theatre is discussed. I shall deal
 
 50 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 with them briefly before I pass to other 
 Russian theatres. The first is the relation 
 between the stage-director and the actor. 
 It will be remembered that the Art Theatre 
 laid special stress on ensemble-acting, which 
 demanded a centralization of all the direct- 
 ing powers in the hands of a single man : 
 the stage-director. To what use these 
 powers were put by Stanislavsky was made 
 manifest by the extraordinary unity of 
 acting in his theatre. Yet complaints were 
 often made that this system of stage- 
 dictatorship suppressed the actor's indi- 
 viduality and lowered the standard of 
 acting. Now, an unrestricted individuality, 
 guided mainly by its own ideas and impulses, 
 may be a great asset in other theatres, but 
 it certainly has no place in a theatre of 
 objective representation, where it would be 
 opposed to its fundamental principle. As 
 to the assertion that individual direction 
 lowers the standard of acting, this is easily 
 answered by the remarkable fact that, in 
 spite of its dictatorship, the Art Theatre 
 has given Russia some of her finest actors,
 
 THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE 51 
 
 as for instance Kachalov and Moskvin, who, 
 before they joined the Art Theatre, had 
 been merely young and obscure provincial 
 actors. 
 
 The other problem raised by the Art 
 Theatre must be familiar to the English 
 public. The system of long-run plays is 
 practically unknown in Russia. Its only 
 indication may be found, however strange 
 it may appear, in the practice of the Art 
 Theatre. The extraordinary thoroughness 
 of its productions, involving expenditure 
 of money on a most lavish scale and necessi- 
 tating innumerable rehearsals (some plays 
 were rehearsed for over a year before they 
 were produced) , had the unexpected effect of 
 reducing its repertoire to a few more or less 
 popular plays. It is obvious, that, were 
 the Art Theatre's methods to spread to 
 other theatres, long-run plays would become 
 an inevitable consequence. On the other 
 hand, in Russia, particularly in the pro- 
 vinces, the theatre-going public is too 
 small to draw upon for a long-run produc- 
 tion. Thus we see in the practical condi-
 
 52 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 tions of theatrical work a serious obstacle 
 raised against the Art Theatre's methods. 
 
 I have reserved to the end of my remarks 
 on the Art Theatre Mr Craig's interesting 
 appearance on its stage as the producer of 
 " Hamlet." The production had a some- 
 what mixed reception in Russia, though 
 one must not lose sight of the fact that 
 the conditions which obtained on the Art 
 stage were not the most favourable for a 
 successful realization of Mr Craig's ideas. 
 There are, doubtless, points of similarity 
 between the theories of Mr Craig and those 
 of Stanislavsky. One is that both of them 
 profess the cult of the stage-director, Mr 
 Craig going even as far as to proclaim the 
 puppet a superior actor to the man. There 
 are, however, other points which divide the 
 two. In contrast to Stanislavsky's partial- 
 ity to naturalism Mr Craig affects a liking 
 for a kind of super-naturalism, which is not 
 always even symbolical. In fact, in Mr 
 Craig's opposition to naturalism, it is the 
 voice of a mystic and philosopher, it seems 
 to me, rather than that of an artist that
 
 THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE 53 
 
 we hear. Again, we know what Stanis- 
 lavsky's guiding principle was representa- 
 tion, whereas Mr Craig's position on this 
 point has never been made quite clear, 
 his thought always vacillating between the 
 desire of representing a higher, super- 
 natural world, for which he designs his 
 cyclopic scenic effects, and the desire of 
 presenting his message to the audience on 
 the Elizabethan apron stage. It is not 
 surprising, therefore, that Stanislavsky's 
 theatre, coached in naturalistic traditions, 
 failed to do full justice to Mr Craig's idea 
 of staging " Hamlet " in the terms of a 
 supernatural conflict between the powers 
 of good and evil. Nor were his ideas of 
 screen-scenery sufficiently worked out in 
 detail, nor tested in practice, to admit of 
 their adequate realization on the Art stage. 
 Taken on the whole, the production of 
 " Hamlet " should be viewed as an ex- 
 tremely interesting experiment, inconclusive, 
 however, owing to the peculiar conditions 
 in which it was carried out.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 KOMMISSARZHEVSKY AND MEYERHOLD 
 
 THE tentative efforts of the Moscow Art 
 Theatre to discover new forms beyond the 
 naturalistic, provide a favourable ground 
 for a clearer understanding of the work 
 accomplished by its principal opponent, 
 the theatre of Vera Kommissarzhevsky in 
 Petrograd. A few words about the great 
 actress whose name the theatre bore should 
 serve as an introduction to our analysis. 
 If you ask the modern Russian for the 
 name of an actress who impressed her 
 image most on the present generation, he 
 will unhesitatingly answer : Vera Kom- 
 missarzhevsky. The sympathy which this 
 actress was able to evoke in the public, 
 often verged on the border of a cult. Her 
 power of impersonation was great. But 
 infinitely greater still was the appeal of 
 her own personality. What charm it had,
 
 KOMMISSARZHEVSKY & MEYERHOLD 55 
 
 it is difficult to define. She was not pretty, 
 and yet she was fascinating. But, if any- 
 thing, it was her voice that charmed most. 
 Deep and ringing, it seemed to throb with 
 some mystic fervour, to carry some pro- 
 phetic message of the other world. Was 
 there a man or a woman who did not fall 
 a victim to her enchantment ? For my 
 own part, I can recollect no other impression 
 of the stage which could rival in force the 
 image of " Hilda " which Kommissarzhevsky 
 created in " The Master Builder " by 
 Ibsen. The theatrical career of this actress 
 was, unfortunately, too brief. She began it 
 on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre 
 in Petrograd, where she immediately be- 
 came the favourite of the public. Then 
 followed the years of eager attempts to 
 find new forms, when she ventured to 
 start a theatre of her own, and invited 
 Meyerhold to be her stage-director. The 
 venture was not a complete success in the 
 material sense, and Kommissarzhevsky went 
 on a tour in the country, which brought 
 her eventually to Tashkend, in Central
 
 56 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 Asia. There, while buying a carpet in the 
 market, she contracted an infectious dis- 
 ease and shortly afterwards died, still in 
 the full blossom of her powers. 
 
 Kommissarzhevsky's association with 
 Meyerhold can easily be understood. The 
 mystic leanings of her temperament found 
 little scope for self-expression in the 
 dramatic forms which prevailed on the 
 Russian stage at the time. Meyerhold's 
 ideas of a new theatre seemed to answer 
 her own aspirations, and thus the union 
 was effected. 
 
 I had occasion to mention Meyerhold as 
 one of the students of Nemirovich-Dan- 
 chenko's school who joined the Art Theatre 
 company on its formation. After some 
 three years of work with the company, 
 Meyerhold left it, dissatisfied with the 
 methods followed by Stanislavsky, and 
 went on a tour in the provinces, endeavour- 
 ing to discover new methods of producing 
 plays of the modern repertoire. In 1902 
 we find him again at the Art Theatre 
 as the head of its experimental branch,
 
 KOMMISSARZHEVSKY & MEYERHOLD 57 
 
 which was known as " The Studio Theatre." 
 A year's work, however, in that theatrical 
 laboratory brought Meyerhold to the con- 
 clusion that naturalistic methods were in- 
 artistic in themselves and utterly unsuitable 
 for the production of symbolical or more 
 or less abstract plays. A new and more 
 independent stage became necessary for the 
 application of the principle thus established, 
 and severing connection with Stanislavsky, 
 Meyerhold joined the theatre of Vera Kom- 
 missarzhevsky. 
 
 What were the new ideas proclaimed by 
 Meyerhold ? In the literature on the 
 theatre they have since been defined as 
 " stylisation " and ' conventionalism." 
 Though appropriate in themselves, these 
 terms, in my opinion, fail to indicate the 
 fundamental difference which distinguished 
 the new movement from the Moscow Art 
 Theatre. This, I consider, was not so 
 much an opposition between realism and 
 conventionalism as that between the ob- 
 jective method of representation and the 
 subjective one. The Art Theatre placed
 
 58 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 the centre of gravity of the production 
 on the stage, Meyerhold transferred it to 
 the audience. It would have made scarcely 
 an atom of difference to the adequacy and 
 completeness of the Art Theatre's perform- 
 ance, if the audience had been entirely 
 removed. On the other hand, the very 
 life would have been taken out of Meyer- 
 hold's productions if they had been sub- 
 jected to the same experiment. Having, 
 so to speak, taken sides with the audience, 
 Meyerhold was simply bound by the very 
 nature of his position to reject the natural- 
 istic method. It was no longer a question 
 of picking and choosing whatever one liked 
 out of a complete reproduction of the 
 world on the stage, but rather of evoking a 
 fuller vision of the world by showing a 
 glimpse of it on the boards. To this 
 subjective vision held by the audience, the 
 stage production had to appeal, and with 
 this vision it was indissolubly bound up. 
 And in this way the ideas of " convention- 
 alism" and " stylisation " came into being. 
 There is a good deal of misconception
 
 KOMMISSARZHEVSKY & MEYERHOLD 59 
 
 prevalent with regard to the inner 
 significance of these terms. They were 
 coined to denote something departing from 
 the methods of the realistic school, which 
 were supposed to give the only adequate 
 representation of real life. But, as must 
 have been made clear by the previous 
 remarks, all forms of the theatre, as well 
 as of art in general, derive their significance 
 from the attitude taken up by the spectator. 
 So far as " stylisation " and " conventional- 
 ism " are concerned they are not more 
 conventional, in the strict sense of the 
 word, than realism itself. The Russian 
 name for " conventionalism " is " con- 
 ditionalism," and in this form it at once 
 reveals its true nature. This may be 
 expressed in a few words : " certain 
 premises admitted, corresponding conclu- 
 sions must needs be drawn." If one agrees 
 to assign certain powers to various cards, 
 or chess figures, or mathematical symbols, 
 or government officials, the combinations 
 which may arise in the course of play, or 
 calculation, or political strife, would be
 
 60 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 neither arbitrary, nor unreal they would 
 be merely " conditional." In the same 
 way, if one attempts to view the world 
 from some peculiar standpoint according 
 to the sentiment or attitude of mind that 
 dominates one at the moment, or is one's 
 individual peculiarity or national char- 
 acteristic, the vision of the world one 
 obtains is as real and inevitable in its 
 logic as, say, is the indisputable fact that 
 the sky looks dark after the sun has set. 
 In other words, " conventionalism " means 
 an admission of legitimacy of various 
 other standpoints besides the objectively- 
 realistic, which latter is also a convention 
 only supposed to be a natural one. This 
 admission of convention is further qualified 
 in " stylisation," which subjects all the sen- 
 timents or ideas, embodied in a work of art, 
 to the control of one guiding sentiment or 
 principle chosen. This method accepted, 
 the success of a theatrical production will 
 depend on the sensitiveness evinced by the 
 producer in discovering the leading senti- 
 ment of the play represented, and by his
 
 KOMMISSARZHEVSKY & MEYERHOLD 61 
 
 cleverness in finding the forms that would 
 appropriately express that sentiment. The 
 task is by no means an easy one, as has 
 unfortunately too often been proved by 
 many who have ventured to tackle it 
 before they had acquired the necessary 
 qualifications. Meyerhold stands out in 
 this respect as the producer who showed 
 the utmost sensibility in revealing the 
 spirit of the work performed. 
 
 Let us now trace the course followed by 
 Meyerhold in order that we may see what 
 new forms of dramatic art were evolved 
 by him, and how they actually originated. 
 
 The convention adopted by Meyerhold 
 during the first period of his work was drawn 
 mainly from the character of Maeterlinck's 
 dramas which at that time particularly 
 engaged his attention. The object of 
 Maeterlinck in his plays is to reveal the 
 inner mysteries of life by making the 
 audience experience them as actual facts. 
 His ambition is to break down the barrier 
 between the stage and the audience and 
 cause the performance to become a kind of
 
 62 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 religious service in which the individuality 
 of the spectator merges into some sublime 
 vision of the inner world. The solution of 
 this problem offered by Meyerhold does 
 great credit to his sense of theatrical form. 
 He staged Maeterlinck's dramas on one 
 plane, i.e. he reduced the depth of the stage 
 to a narrow band close to the footlights and 
 placed the actors against flat decorative 
 scenery, aiming thereby to dematerialize 
 the stage and to merge the action of the 
 play in the sway of emotions felt by the 
 audience. 
 
 Though the use of flat setting was by 
 no means a new discovery, its application 
 by Meyerhold is remarkable for the under- 
 standing of the psychological nature of flat 
 surfaces which it so strikingly revealed. 
 Nothing is so capable of destroying the 
 opposition between the spectator and the 
 object observed as the perception of a flat 
 surface. It was this peculiar fact that 
 helped Meyerhold in uniting the audience 
 and the stage, and in creating a genuine 
 mystic atmosphere. In addition to this
 
 KOMMISSARZHEVSKY & MEYERHOLD 63 
 
 visual effect, other devices were used to bring 
 out the main sentiment of Maeterlinck's 
 plays. Thus, the latent dialogue so-called, 
 i.e. the inner attitudes accompanying the 
 external action, was made manifest by 
 plastic movements of the performers and 
 by the cold and metallic diction denuded 
 of the ordinary emotional intonation. 
 
 But whilst endeavouring to realize on 
 the stage the " style " of Maeterlinck's plays, 
 Meyerhold could not fail to perceive that 
 in some respects the convention adopted 
 by him clashed with another which he yet 
 dimly conceived, namely, the convention 
 of the stage. Placing the bodies of the 
 actors, which were in relief, against flat 
 decorative screens, seemed to exemplify 
 one of the incongruities thus produced, 
 and Meyerhold was soon led to recognize 
 that the method of setting in low relief 
 with decorative painting of scenery is 
 opposed to the very spirit of the stage as 
 we have it. Further, he began to see 
 that the pictorial appeal of the decorative 
 scenery had an adverse effect on the unity
 
 64 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 of impression, distracting the attention of 
 the audience from the acting. On the 
 other hand, the position of the actor now 
 acquired in his eyes an importance which 
 it had not possessed before. The actor 
 came to be regarded now as the central 
 element of the play, an element which 
 was to occupy the very foremost place 
 in the performance. The figure of the 
 actor had to stand out like a statue, 
 focussing upon itself the whole stress and 
 power of expression. This idea, labelled 
 with the name of " statuesqueness," was 
 hailed as a successor to the method of low 
 relief, bringing in its train a series of further 
 interesting developments. One of them 
 loomed particularly large in the dramatic 
 criticisms of the time, though neither 
 Meyerhold nor any of his followers actually 
 attempted its realization. 
 
 It was formulated by the poet Fyodor 
 Sologub as " the theatre of a single will," 
 and by another poet, Viacheslav Ivanov, 
 as " the theatre of congregate action." 
 The idea lying at the root of this movement
 
 KOMMISSARZHEVSKY & MEYERHOLD 65 
 
 was simple enough. The theatre, it was 
 argued, is capable of revealing the inner 
 mysteries of life and of arousing religious 
 sentiment. These, however, can never 
 attain to their highest intensity so long 
 as the audience remains merely a passive 
 observer. The example of the early Greek 
 theatre and the mediaeval mystery-plays 
 provides the form in which the audience 
 not merely listens to what is proceeding on 
 the stage, but itself takes an active part 
 in the performance. The theatre, united 
 into one whole, thus becomes a temple, 
 with the stage as a sacrificial altar, serv 
 ing as a medium of religious purification. 
 A parallel is instantly suggested by the 
 drama of Maeterlinck. There is, however, 
 this difference between the two : whereas 
 in the case of Maeterlinck the audience 
 is made to merge and abandon its indi- 
 viduality in the world represented on the 
 boards, the Russian theorists endeavoured 
 to bring the stage over to the audience. 
 
 The connection between these theories 
 and Meyerhold's ideas of statuesque staging
 
 66 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 followed from the assumption that the 
 actor a real human being freed from the 
 bondage of decorative scenery shared with 
 the audience the task of realizing the sub- 
 ject of the play, the one in action, the other 
 in imagination. It required only a further 
 step to make the actor come down from 
 the stage and draw the audience into the 
 ecstasy of religious performance. It will, 
 perhaps, be fitting in this connection just 
 to remark that similar developments, though 
 somewhat different in their origin, were 
 carried out in Germany, where Dr Georg 
 Fuchs, of the Munich theatre, worked out 
 the theory of statuesque staging, and Max 
 Reinhardt made some interesting experi- 
 ments in reviving the forms of the Greek 
 theatre. Whether these actually influenced 
 Meyerhold and the Russian stage, I am 
 not prepared here to say.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 MEYERHOLD (continued) 
 
 THE evolution of Meyerhold's ideas did not 
 stop at " statuesqueness." While still in 
 the process of working out a new form of the 
 theatre out of the struggle of conflicting 
 " styles," Meyerhold had to sever his ties 
 with the theatre of Kommissarzhevsky, and 
 after a lapse of two years, he transferred 
 his experimental work to the stage of the 
 Imperial Alexandrinsky Theatre. At the 
 time the fact caused much surprise in the 
 public mind. It was difficult to reconcile 
 oneself to the sight of the recognized leader 
 of the advanced movement appearing on 
 the stage that was the very embodiment 
 of. tradition and conservative spirit. And 
 yet the change was only a natural con- 
 sequence of the ideas formulated before. 
 As will be remembered, the actor came to 
 be regarded by Meyerhold as the main 
 
 67
 
 68 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 vehicle of dramatic expression. This 
 necessarily involved a recognition of tech- 
 nique, of school. And it was the continuity 
 of tradition and the mastery of technique 
 that distinguished the old and brilliant 
 school of actors of the Alexandrinsky 
 Theatre. No compunction could have, 
 therefore, been felt by Meyerhold in 
 transferring his activity to the new sur- 
 roundings, more particularly as he was 
 given a free hand in carrying out his 
 experiments. 
 
 His ideas by that time reached a new 
 stage of development. The immense im- 
 portance of the actor having been un- 
 reservedly admitted, the next step was to 
 recognize " acting," i.e. frank and con- 
 sistent exhibition of the actor's dexterity 
 as the only artistic form of playing. 
 This at once transformed the whole aspect 
 of the dramatic performance. Instead of 
 attempting to give a representation (ob- 
 jective or subjective) of the world set out 
 in the play, an agent-intermediary in the 
 shape of the actor was introduced between
 
 MEYERHOLD 69 
 
 the play and the audience, to present 
 the piece through his natural prism of 
 ' theatricality." The new standpoint im- 
 mediately brought to the forefront a number 
 of the fundamental problems of the theatre. 
 One of the most important amongst them 
 was the problem of proscenium. Out of 
 the general problem of the relationship 
 between the stage and the audience which, 
 in the productions of Maeterlinck's plays, 
 seemed to find its solution in a practical 
 destruction of the stage as an independent 
 entity, and which in the succeeding short 
 period suggested a tendency towards a 
 transformation of the auditorium into an 
 orchestra, as this was known in the Greek 
 theatre out of this general problem the 
 pioblem of the proscenium came to the 
 front as its specific theatrical expression. 
 No difficulty was present in solving it on the 
 basis of the new principle of presentation. 
 If the stage and the audience were to be 
 united, it was perfectly clear that the only 
 medium through which this union could 
 be brought about was the actor, and the
 
 70 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 only place wherein it could be effected 
 was the proscenium. 
 
 There was, however, this difference be- 
 tween the union by means of the actor 
 and the proscenium, and that attempted 
 in Meyerhold's earlier productions. Then, 
 the object was to transform the theatre 
 into a temple or a convent-cell. Now, 
 special stress was laid on the peculiar 
 features of the theatre as the theatre. 
 Illusionism, both of the subjective and the 
 objective variety, was to be mercilessly 
 swept out from the precincts of the stage, 
 which was to be reinstated in its ancient 
 rights, as the place where undisguised 
 " theatricality " reigns free and unashamed. 
 
 But it will be asked whether this strange 
 " theatricality," which seems to have been 
 so utterly discredited by absurd conven- 
 tional gestures and poses, and false affec- 
 tation of speaking, is really capable of 
 infusing any fresh blood in the theatre. 
 The answer is that there is theatricality 
 and theatricality. As understood by 
 Meyerhold it stands, in the first place,
 
 MEYERHOLD 71 
 
 for " spectacle " or " show," i.e. a pre- 
 sentation of a play which is always to 
 remain merely a play on the boards of 
 the stage. In the second place, theatri- 
 cality stands for the two methods of acting 
 which follow from the nature of show : 
 the mask and the grotesque. 
 
 Once the actor is put in the position of 
 a magician, at the pointing of whose wand 
 things are suddenly transformed into 
 wondrous beings, he cannot but use his 
 power to its utmost limits in endeavouring, 
 by every movement of his body, every 
 change in the intonation of his voice, 
 every expression of his face, to convey to 
 the spectator the innumerable aspects of 
 humanity and the world at large, which 
 are hidden in the familiar types and 
 expressions. The mask is, therefore, a 
 schematized and abstract feature, fixed 
 by the actor in some visual image. It may 
 be stereotyped or more fluid ; it may also 
 be made up of some material as in the 
 Greek theatre, or it may be expressed in 
 the acting itself.
 
 72 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 As to the grotesque, the use of this 
 method is confined to a somewhat narrower 
 sphere. It resolves itself into a perpetual 
 play of contrasts following upon each other. 
 Sublimity and triviality, beauty and ugli- 
 ness, joy and sorrow, courage and cowardice, 
 are all interwoven in a fantastic pattern 
 as were the flowers and human figures 
 on the walls of Roman grottoes. The 
 mediaeval stalls and the Italian Commedia 
 dell' arte of the sixteenth and seventeeth 
 centuries are the best known examples of the 
 theatres in which the principle of the 
 " show," together with its derivative forms 
 of the mask and the grotesque, was most 
 completely realized. It is not surprising for 
 this reason, that the watchword of the new 
 movement has become : " Back to the 
 Booth and the Commedia dell' arte." 
 
 Meyerhold and his followers go even as 
 far as to accept unreservedly the method 
 of improvisation practised by the Com- 
 media dell' arte. In this Italian theatre, 
 the play was reduced to a mere scenario 
 in which only the general outlines of the
 
 MEYERHOLD 73 
 
 plot were indicated, whilst the dialogue 
 was improvised by the actors themselves. 
 No doubt there are great advantages in 
 this method, if the actors prove themselves 
 capable of the task. But there is sufficient 
 evidence in the history of the theatre to 
 show that in the majority of cases the actors, 
 when left entirely to themselves, never rose 
 above the commonplace and hackneyed, 
 and those who did, like Shakespeare and 
 Moliere, by this very fact joined themselves 
 to the ranks of literary men. Besides, 
 even in the Commedia dell' arte real im- 
 provisation was frequently replaced by 
 incessant and entirely inappropriate re- 
 petition of the turns which found particular 
 favour. The fully legitimate desire of 
 clearing the stage of all literary influences 
 has led Meyerhold to hardly justifiable 
 extremes, which, I am sure, practical ex- 
 perience will compel him, if it has not 
 done so already, to admit. 
 
 Certain qualifications must also be made 
 with regard to the use of the mask and 
 the grotesque in the Commedia dell' arte.
 
 74 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 The mask in this instance did serve as an 
 elementary image, fixed and immovable, 
 or as a certain formula of various types 
 and aspects of the humanity of those days. 1 
 But the wide horizon of transcendental 
 realities, which pleases us most in the 
 masks, could have hardly existed for the 
 Italian audiences of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury. It is scarcely to be imagined that 
 the theatre-goers of that period could have 
 been alive to the multiplicity of masks in 
 one individual, their fascinating succession 
 one after another, the doubles they serve to 
 produce, and the abstract, flattening effect 
 they have on the very images they em- 
 body, as in the poetic " Little Booth," 
 by Alexander Block, where Pierrot has a 
 double Harlequin and dreams of Columbine 
 as a " paste-board " maiden of his heart. 
 Also the grotesque and the monstrous 
 were taken at that time in a much simpler 
 
 1 It is only in this abstract sense that one may speak 
 of the use of the mask in the Commedia dell' arte. In the 
 material sense of the word the mask was used in the con- 
 temporary "masked comedy" of A. Beolco (Ruzzante), 
 which, however, had only a slight influence on the 
 Italian theatre.
 
 MEYERHOLD 75 
 
 spirit than Meyerhold would have us take 
 them now. In this case, as in that of 
 the mask, the higher irony, the " trans- 
 cendental buffoonery," to use the words 
 of Schlegel, are, of course, only the legacy 
 bequeathed to us by the German roman- 
 ticists of the early nineteenth century. 
 Our appreciation of these theatrical forms 
 depends, not on their past, but on the 
 demands of our own spirit, which they 
 are capable of satisfying. 
 
 As to the actual productions by Meyer- 
 hold, in which the above principles have 
 been put to a test, I have to restrict myself 
 to a few brief remarks. Two landmarks 
 may be noted in his development along 
 the lines described. Strange as it may 
 appear, the first refers to the early period 
 when Meyerhold had just joined the theatre 
 of Kommissarzhevsky. The play produced 
 was Block's " Little Booth," already men- 
 tioned, in which a pathetic story is 
 related of ^Pierrot's languorous love for 
 the beautiful, ever feminine Columbine, 
 who now assumes the image of death, and
 
 76 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 now of a paste-board maiden. After the 
 manner of the romanticists, an author 
 is introduced into the action, who inter- 
 polates puerile remarks, whilst the whole 
 play is enfolded in an atmosphere at once 
 mystic and grotesque. It happened thus 
 that, by a happy coincidence, the style of 
 this play, which was the main concern with 
 Meyerhold at that time, embodied that very 
 essence of theatricality which later became 
 for him the style of the stage, as it were. 
 The other landmark was Moliere's " Don 
 Juan," produced at the Alexandrinsky 
 Theatre in 1910. Here the principles of 
 the show were frankly and consciously 
 admitted, the play being set up as a brilliant 
 spectacle displayed before the audience. 
 Full lights were maintained in the hall, 
 and an additional reminder of the fact 
 that this was merely a staged spectacle, 
 was provided by the presence on the stage 
 of little Arabs who, in the fashion of the 
 time of le Roi Soleil, drew curtains and 
 waited on the actors.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 EVEREINOV, FOKIN, AND BENOIS 
 
 I NOW pass to another representative of 
 the same school as Meyerhold, whose name 
 has already been brought before the 
 eyes of the English public. Evereinov 
 succeeded Meyerhold at the Theatre of 
 Kommissarzhevsky after the attempts at 
 conventional staging, having described a 
 complete cycle of development, reached the 
 point from which one road led to theatri- 
 cality and the other to further forms of 
 illusionism. Playing on the imagination 
 of the audience was the form of repre- 
 sentation adopted by Meyerhold, and was 
 followed by Evereinov in his theory of 
 " monodrama." 
 
 If the object in producing a play was 
 to convince the spectator that what was 
 happening on the stage was only a part of 
 himself and his real life, there seemed to 
 
 77
 
 78 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 be no reason why the spectator should not 
 be convinced that it is he himself who lives 
 and acts in the world represented. The 
 only question was how to produce this 
 effect, and here Everei'nov's conception of 
 " monodrama " was advanced as its possible 
 solution. The usual form of the drama, 
 argued Evereinov, in which each char- 
 acter lives as he actually is and appears 
 to himself, compels the spectator to live 
 simultaneously through the experience of 
 all the characters presented. Both the 
 hero and the villain, with all their con- 
 flicting emotions, have to be followed 
 sympathetically at one and the same time. 
 As a consequence, the attention of the 
 spectator is continually drawn in opposite 
 directions, and he naturally feels himself 
 an outsider. What if the whole plot was 
 staged as viewed by the principal character, 
 the other characters and the environment 
 changing in their appearance with the 
 change of his sentiment and attitude ? 
 Would not this introduce a unity into the 
 play and help to bridge the stage and
 
 EVEREINOV, FOKIN, AND BENOIS 79 
 
 the auditorium ? The protagonist, who, to 
 make things clearer, might be called " Ego," 
 would conduct the spectator through all 
 his vicissitudes as his invisible " alter ego," 
 his double, and the illusion of reality would 
 therefore be raised to the highest pitch. 
 
 Such was Evereinov's theory, and within 
 the narrow limits of subjective illusionism, 
 it doubtless presented an original develop- 
 ment. There is, however, this fatal con- 
 tradiction concealed in it, that whilst 
 invoking the spectator's power of imagin- 
 ation, in which sense it is subjective, it is 
 compelled to base itself mainly on the 
 realistic scenic effects, such as are pio- 
 vided by various lighting and musical de- 
 vices, which illustrate the changing moods 
 and standpoints of the protagonist. This 
 carries illusionism even further back than 
 the chirping crickets, croaking frogs, 
 curtains blown by the wind, and other 
 mechanical tricks of the Moscow Art 
 Theatre. The whole thing seems to be re- 
 duced to the level of a popular children's 
 game, in which one child, standing in front,
 
 8o THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 makes a speech, whilst another behind, 
 with arms slipped under the arms of the 
 first, illustrates the speech by appropriate 
 gestures. The game is very amusing and, 
 I am afraid, Everemov's monodrama, if 
 realized on the stage, would have a similar 
 effect, instead of creating a complete illusion 
 of reality as desired by the producer. 1 
 
 It is difficult to establish a link be- 
 tween Everemov's monodrama and his later 
 theories of " theatricality." The guiding 
 principle, apparently, was the idea of 
 spectacular display which in monodrama 
 revealed itself in the prominence given to 
 purely visual effects, and which later was 
 generalized into the dictum : " The word 
 plays a subordinate part in the theatre. 
 
 Curiously enough, some of the " monodramatic " 
 effects advocated by Evereinov, have for long been 
 stock-in-trade of the kinema, the audiences of which, for 
 example, are treated to the illusion of a moving motor 
 car at a " stand-still," while stationary houses appear to 
 be flying swiftly into distance. However, as far as my 
 own experience goes, I have never, in such circum- 
 stances, been under the impression that it was I who was 
 seated in the car and the hero of all the extraordinary 
 adventures which kinema cars are in the habit of under- 
 going.
 
 EVEREINOV, FOKIN, AND BENOIS 81 
 
 We hear more by eyes than by ears. Ergo 
 literature must not dominate the stage 
 but must play second-fiddle to the inde- 
 pendent art of the theatre." Evereinov's 
 " theatricality," however, is not quite 
 equivalent to the art of the theatre. It 
 embraces a much wider range of human 
 activities, originating, actually, in life itself 
 and ascending thence to its highest ex- 
 pression on the stage. By theatricality 
 he understands the power of seeming trans- 
 formation which he believes to be deeply 
 rooted in the human character. To appear 
 what one is not, to transform life into a 
 continuous performance, is the ideal which 
 should be set up by humanity and which, 
 in his opinion, is being trampled upon by 
 the prosaic, common, and distasteful people 
 of our day. 
 
 It hardly enters into the scope of this 
 essay to criticize this far-reaching theory. 
 As set forth in Evereinov's writings it is 
 just a specimen of drawing-room philosophy, 
 with the familiar clap-trap about the 
 commonness of things common, which is
 
 82 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 rather too stale in the year. And in a 
 country like this, with its superb speci- 
 mens of theatricality, such as the Salva- 
 tion Army and the pompous proceedings of 
 various official bodies, to quote only one 
 or two familiar examples, it would have 
 neither the interest of novelty, nor the 
 attraction of an original form. Moreover, 
 it is plain that Evere'inov preaches his 
 theatricality with all the deadly earnest of 
 a real zealot, and thus inadvertently gives 
 all the show away. How much more in- 
 spiring it is to see the proverbial Roman 
 augurs meet and pass by with a smile on 
 their lips ! 
 
 Of Evereinov's productions it mast be 
 said that his method of monodrama has 
 only partially been tested on the stage. 
 But his work in the Old-Time and Merry 
 theatres, in which he endeavoured to re- 
 vive the features, as well as the plays, of 
 the Mediaeval stalls, presented considerable 
 interest both in the historic and the theat- 
 rical sense. Together with Meyerhold's 
 productions in the " House of Intermedia,"
 
 EVEREINOV, FOKIN, AND BENOIS 83 
 
 and the activity of other cabaret and 
 burlesque stages in Petrograd and Moscow, 
 such as " The Distorted Mirror " and " The 
 Bat," it marks the latest phase of the 
 theatrical development in Russia along 
 the lines of the comical grotesque. 
 
 I have yet to make a passing reference 
 to the effect which the ideas, evolved on the 
 dramatic stage, produced on the Russian 
 ballet and opera. The performances of the 
 Russian dancers in London were not an 
 isolated phenomenon free from connection 
 with the rest of the theatrical life of the 
 country. On the contrary, they were only 
 a ramification of the tree planted and 
 nurtured on the dramatic stage. The new 
 spirit in the ballet introduced by Fokin 
 was an echo of the principles of conven- 
 tional staging which Meyerhold had earlier 
 proclaimed and developed in the theatre 
 of Kommissarzhevsky. With naturalism in 
 scenery and setting finally discarded, the 
 ballet productions followed the drama in 
 adopting " style " as a form of artistic 
 convention determining both dancing and
 
 84 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 scenery. What distinguished Fokin's appli- 
 cation of this method from that pursued 
 by Meyerhold, was due mainly to the 
 difference in the temperament of the two 
 men. Meyerhold in his productions in- 
 clined towards the mystical and kindred 
 experiences. The disposition of Fokin, on 
 the other hand, showed more in the direction 
 of the elementary emotions of love and 
 passion, only refracted through a prism of 
 exotic exuberance and sensuality. 
 
 This also explains the prominence given 
 in the ballet to purely pictorial effects, 
 in scenery, as well as in dancing, which 
 helped to saturate the atmosphere with 
 exotic vapours, and generally stimulated 
 the appeal to the senses, so essential in 
 such a plastic art as dancing. As a re- 
 action against, this infatuation with the 
 pictorial style, a movement has lately 
 developed advocating a return to the classi- 
 cal dancing which relies more on the con- 
 ventional stage symbolism of movement 
 and the professional virtuosity of the per- 
 former than on the emotional expressive-
 
 EVEREINOV, FOKIN, AND BENOIS 85 
 
 ness and style of the setting. It hardly 
 requires to be pointed out that in this case, 
 as before, we find a strict analogy to the 
 theories of theatricality now advocated on 
 the dramatic stage. 
 
 Less notable and still less independent 
 have been the stage developments in the 
 opera, although there have been a number 
 of productions in which interesting attempts 
 have been made to depart from the routine 
 forms of setting and ensemble. The most 
 conspicuous example of originality of 
 staging in the opera has been provided by 
 the production of " Le Coq d'Or," the opera 
 by Rimsky Korsakov, which by the in- 
 genuity of Alexander Benois, an eminent 
 painter and historian of art, was trans- 
 formed into a fascinating ballet. 
 
 It will be remembered that in this pro- 
 duction singing was divorced from the 
 actual performers and confined to an im- 
 movable chorus placed on two flights of 
 steps on both sides of the stage. Acting, 
 on the other hand, was entrusted to dancers, 
 who illustrated, in plastic forms, the words
 
 86 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 and music of their singing counterparts. 
 Many have wondered at the meaning of this 
 division. Was it used merely for the sake 
 of greater efficiency in singing and acting ? 
 I doubt it. There were certain features 
 in the production which make it clear that 
 the main idea was to give a grotesque 
 spectacle. Notwithstanding Benois's often- 
 proclaimed opposition to every kind of 
 insincerity on the stage, theatricality is 
 the spirit which pervaded his creation. 
 There was no attempt on his part to dis- 
 guise the fact that he used an artificial 
 device with the special object of enhancing 
 the scenic effect of the action. Clearly, 
 the expedient had nothing to do with the 
 demands of realism or the style of the plot. 
 It was purely and frankly theatrical. It is 
 another matter how far it was successful. 
 
 Allowing for the restrictions imposed 
 on the producer by the form of opera, I 
 think " Le Coq d'Or " fell short of the high 
 mark set up by the producer. No doubt 
 he was impelled by a laudable desire of 
 reviving the method used in the Roman
 
 EVEREINOV, FOKIN, AND BENOIS 87 
 
 pantomimes, but this fact could not save 
 him from landing in grave artistic con- 
 tradictions. Thus we saw the chorus, 
 openly placed on the stage, with the 
 evident object of acting as chorus, lose 
 its independent position as soon as the 
 audience learnt to overlook the discrepancy, 
 and to regard the dancers as the actual 
 singers. If this was the desired effect why 
 was the chorus brought out on the stage 
 at all ? Would it not have been much 
 more consistent to hide it out of sight of 
 the audience, as was done in the case of 
 the orchestra, so that the singing should 
 appear as a mere accompaniment to the 
 movements of the dancers, or even as 
 coming direct from the latter ? But no, 
 the chorus was on the stage, clearly be- 
 fore our eyes, and yet unable to vindicate 
 itself as a necessary element in the opera. 
 It seems to me that in this undefined and 
 purposeless use of chorus the producer 
 approached a problem of paramount im- 
 portance. In the Greek theatre, chorus, 
 so long as it was used, served as a link
 
 88 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 between the stage and the audience. It 
 disappeared in the later centuries when 
 the stage became entirely detached from 
 the spectator, but during the time of its 
 existence in the Greek theatre it fulfilled 
 the definite function of a connecting link. 
 This function lies in the nature of chorus, 
 and it is a matter of regret that Benois did 
 not venture to face the problem therein 
 involved, instead of which he preferred to go 
 only halfway, satisfied with the extent of 
 originality already achieved and with the in- 
 disputable quaintness and poignancy of its 
 effect enhanced, as this was, by the conscious 
 use of grotesque scenery and acting. 
 
 There is a wide field in Russia for progress 
 in operatic productions. Almost every big 
 Russian city has an opera house, whilst 
 Petrograd has three and Moscow two. 
 An enterprise which deserves mention in 
 this connection is the Theatre of Musical 
 Drama in Petrograd, distinguished for the 
 extreme thoroughness of its productions and, 
 as far as I can judge, following along the 
 lines explored by the Moscow Art Theatre.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 WITH this, my task of indicating the main 
 lines of development in the modern Russian 
 stage is drawing to a close. It remains 
 only to state afresh the guiding principles 
 which have revealed themselves in the 
 course of this evolution and to try and show 
 their bearing on the general problem of 
 the theatre. 
 
 It is commonly believed that it is pos- 
 sible to have such a thing as the Ideal 
 Theatre. All the theatrical reformers will 
 tell you that the improvements they in- 
 troduce are a step towards its realization. 
 But is this contention borne out by the 
 history of the theatre, which, presumably, 
 should have indicated the lines along which 
 this progress has been taking place ? On 
 the contrary, instead of one line of develop- 
 ment, leading to a definite goal, we find
 
 go THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 at least two main lines and quite a number 
 of secondary ones which all go in different 
 and even opposed directions. I will admit 
 that this is characteristic not only of the 
 theatre, since in every art one can find 
 opposing objects and tendencies. But in 
 my opinion it only proves that there is 
 no such thing as a standard form of art, 
 and therefore my contention that theat- 
 rical evolution has revealed no unifying 
 principle remains unimpaired. 
 
 However, let the facts speak for them- 
 selves. Take the Greek theatre. It origi- 
 nated in actual life (whether in religious 
 ceremonies, or something else, is of no 
 importance in this connection). The actor 
 and the spectator were fused in the same 
 person. But gradually a division set in. 
 The spectator now only looked on and the 
 actor acted. Only the chorus in the 
 orchestra, from which the actor sprang 
 up, remained a spectator and an actor at 
 one and the same time, thus still calling to 
 mind the time when acting had not yet been 
 divorced from life. But the process of
 
 CONCLUSION 91 
 
 division went on. The chorus disappeared 
 and the audience was left face to face 
 with the actor on the stage. Up to this 
 point the evolution, therefore, was from 
 acting as a moment in real life, to acting as 
 a spectacle. Both principles involved had 
 their realization in the theatre, and to say 
 that one stood for the true theatre and 
 the other for a false one, is simply beside 
 the point. But the evolution did not stop 
 at this. In the Greek theatre the stage 
 remained a stage and the actors merely 
 presented their plays to the audience. The 
 Romans, however, made a further step in 
 dividing the spectator from the actor. 
 The stage building was enlarged, and for 
 the first time an attempt was made to 
 enclose the play within the borders of 
 the stage. In other words, the play was 
 represented. Now, who can say that 
 representation was a higher form of the 
 theatre than presentation ? They both 
 corresponded to the relationship established 
 between the actor and the spectator, 
 and could anybody show the reason why
 
 92 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 it should be standardized ? Then, again, 
 we see the principle of presentation carried 
 through the Middle Ages down to our own 
 time, first in the Italian, then in the 
 French and English theatres, varied by the 
 presentation of the mask, as in Italy, or 
 of the character, as in England. Next, in 
 our own age, we see representation revived 
 and passing through various stages. 
 
 Here it would be more convenient, for 
 the purposes of illustration, to take the 
 modern Russian theatre. 
 
 In the Moscow Art Theatre representation 
 was understood as objective illusionism 
 sought first in the external form, then in 
 the unity of the tone and atmosphere, 
 then in psychological interpretation, and 
 lastly in the moulding of characters, that, 
 remaining realistic, was couched in broad 
 and monumental forms. Throughout all 
 these experiments the stage was regarded 
 as completely detached from the audience, 
 and the world represented was to exist 
 by its own means. 
 
 Another form of representation was
 
 CONCLUSION 93 
 
 suggested by Evere'inov with his mono- 
 drama. I called it subjective illusionism 
 because the spectator was desired to feel 
 himself as if he were acting on the stage. 
 But the stage itself remained self-complete 
 and needed no assistance from the spec- 
 tator in creating the illusion. 
 
 Then we come to Meyerhold. He found 
 the traditional theatre developing along 
 the line : theatre-spectacle, representation, 
 objectivism. He started with an opposi- 
 tion to objectivism in representation, 
 replacing it by subjective representation 
 (style, conventionalism, etc.). By so 
 doing he invoked the participation of the 
 spectator and undermined the theatre as 
 a spectacle. We saw the consequence of 
 this in Meyerhold's attempts to realize 
 a theatre of action, that is, a theatre 
 in which all are actors. The first period 
 of Meyerhold's work can therefore be de- 
 scribed as aiming at representation, more in 
 imagination than in reality, of a certain 
 vision of the world, in which representation 
 the audience takes active part and thus
 
 94 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 tends to form a theatre of action. The 
 obstacles met with in carrying out this 
 idea led to a reversion of the object itself. 
 Since it was found difficult to transform 
 a performance into an episode of real life, 
 the idea presented itself to the producer 
 to try the opposite effect, i.e. to transform 
 an episode of real life into a performance. 
 " Here in the theatre," it was said, " we 
 are spectators and actors. Let us admit 
 this fact and make the best of it." So 
 theatricality was proclaimed and with it 
 the theatre once again returned to the 
 principle of presentation. 
 
 To sum up, then, it may be asked 
 which of these principles provides the 
 means whereby the ideal theatre could 
 be realized ? My answer is : none, or all. 
 It all depends upon what we look for in 
 the theatre. Demands vary with the time, 
 and the only safe criterion rests with the 
 demands of the modern man, the attitude 
 of our own time. As between the theatre 
 of action and the theatre-spectacle the 
 choice which the modern man would make
 
 CONCLUSION 95 
 
 is pretty certain. We have grown too 
 critical and too self - conscious to sur- 
 render ourselves willingly to the minis- 
 trations of actors and authors, no matter 
 how profound or how clever they may 
 be. Our way of living may be good 
 or bad, but we are not likely to ask the 
 actor that he should fashion it for our- 
 selves. This privilege has been granted 
 only to politicians, perhaps, on the principle : 
 " Leave our souls in peace and devil take 
 the hindmost." This, of course, would 
 not apply to the members of some order 
 of "The Blue Moon," or "The Square 
 Circle," or the initiates of some esoteric 
 brotherhood of " Smiling Osiris," who would 
 joyfully acquiesce in all the tasks that the 
 theatrical ingenuity of their sublime masters 
 might impose on them. They would simply 
 be asking for it. But I deal with ordinary 
 mortals, and these, I believe, would most 
 vigorously resent any attempt on the part 
 of the theatre at meddling with their lives. 
 Though by no means all of us are great 
 thinkers, we form in the theatre a com-
 
 96 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 munity of sages looking at, and listening 
 to, what the wise men of the impersonat- 
 ing profession are able to show us. I am 
 sure that, for our part, most of us could 
 show those impersonators many a mystery 
 and trick in our own humble vocations. 
 
 If, then, the theatre-spectacle is what 
 the modern man wants, in which form 
 should it be given him ? Representation 
 or presentation ? This, some people believe, 
 is the question. No question at all. If a 
 thing is represented well, it gives me pleasure 
 to see what it is and how it was reproduced 
 on the stage. If it is presented well, I am 
 pleased none the less. The whole point is 
 in the right use of the medium, which is 
 tantamount to saying that the form must 
 be adequate to the subject, and both must 
 carry conviction. Naturalism in the external 
 form will not appeal to me because my in- 
 tellect is sufficiently trained to see that it is 
 no more than ankle-deep. But give me the 
 feeling of a reality existing independently 
 of, and detached from, me as a spectator, 
 and I may contemplate it with all the
 
 CONCLUSION 97 
 
 enthusiasm which it is worth. Or again, 
 if you attempt to represent a thing that 
 does not admit of complete materialization 
 on the stage, I am prepared to lend you 
 the aid of my imagination and fly with 
 you to the far-away realms wherein symbolic 
 realities or mere Platonic ideas abide. Be 
 only careful to do your part really well 
 since to drop down from the dizzy altitude 
 of a couple of feet is a most distressing 
 spectacle. 
 
 Lastly, you want to be in a theatre, as 
 at home to show how exceedingly clever 
 you are at your craft, and how wonderful 
 is the world hidden in every line of your 
 body, every intonation of your voice, every 
 " mask " you create and I am with you 
 as wholeheartedly now as I was before. 
 Even more so, as a multiplicity of worlds, 
 reduced to their elementary forms, is 
 more appealing and more instructive to 
 me than the complete unity of single 
 worlds, which engaged your mind in the 
 work of representation. 
 
 And there it is. Let the theatre bring
 
 98 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 out all the possibilities of art latent in it, 
 and the future will not begrudge them 
 recognition. They all tend to the realiza- 
 tion of the Ideal Theatre each in its own 
 way, pursuing its own ideal. 1 
 
 1 The following Russian books were consulted in the 
 composition of the above essay : 
 
 B. VARNEKE. Istoria Russkavo Teatra (two parts). 
 MOSKOVSKY KHUDOZBESTVENNY TEATR. Izdanie 
 zhurnala, " Rampa i Zhizn." 
 V. MEYERHOLD. O Teatre. 
 N. EVREINOV. Teatr, kak takovoy. 
 
 ,, Vvedenie v monodramu. 
 
 Teatr dlia sebia (Part I.).
 
 VIAGHESLAV IVANOV
 
 VIAGHESLAV IVANOV 
 
 A POET-PHILOSOPHER OF MODERN RUSSIA 
 
 To the outside observer Russia always 
 seems to partake of the nature of the 
 Sphinx she presents a baffling, problematic 
 combination of elements, simple and familiar 
 in themselves, yet always resulting in 
 strange and unintelligible effects. The 
 uninitiated European could read but one 
 answer to the riddle. " Russia," he has 
 said with an air of finality, as though 
 disposing of the problem to his complete 
 satisfaction, " Russia is properly a country 
 of the East the remote, intangible East, 
 enshrouded in impenetrable veils of obscur- 
 ity and mystery, standing always for some- 
 thing dim, inscrutable, and wholly incom- 
 prehensible, for certain peculiar modes of 
 thought that defy translation into the 
 clear, rational forms of the Western 
 intellect." 
 
 101
 
 102 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 And not only the European but the 
 Russian himself, in his recurring moods 
 of intense self-realization, has been too 
 ready to insist on the essential difference, 
 the definite line of demarcation, which 
 separates the Russian spirit from that of 
 the Western world. 
 
 Yet the problem of the Russian soul 
 as stated in these terms betrays, on the 
 one hand, a lack of memory and, on the 
 other, a faulty logic. Two important 
 facts seem to be little appreciated, even 
 when they are not completely lost sight 
 of. The modern European, a product 
 of the commercial and industrial develop- 
 ments of the last few centuries, is too 
 preoccupied with the Present to pay much 
 attention to the Past. If he cared to 
 probe somewhat deeper than usual into 
 the spiritual worlds of ancient Greece and 
 Egypt, upon whose labours our modern 
 civilization so firmly rests, he would, 
 perhaps, be as much startled by the 
 " Eastern " aspect of their primordial 
 wisdom as he is to-day when dealing with
 
 VIACHESLAV IVANOV 103 
 
 the problem of Russia. On the other 
 hand, remote as Russia is from modern 
 Europe as remote as the middle ages are 
 from our own time she is now making 
 rapid strides to bring herself into line with 
 the rest of the civilized world that is to 
 complete the process of industrialization 
 which will ultimately leave her as devoid 
 of her present wrappings of mysticism as 
 it left Germany of her erstwhile " national " 
 romanticism. The mysticism of Russian 
 thought is nothing but a certain process 
 of continued introspection carried into the 
 deepest recesses of the human spirit. The 
 prevalence of this contemplative mood, 
 which has been caused by the reaction of 
 certain economic and political conditions 
 upon different classes of the Russian nation, 
 has made this feature a kind of national 
 characteristic. But it is after all merely 
 a question of quantity or number and not 
 of quality or essence. We have only to 
 consider the personality and teaching of 
 Friedrich Nietzsche, perhaps one of the 
 most remarkable spiritual phenomena in
 
 104 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 the history of the Western world, to be 
 led to the conviction that whatever the 
 accumulated riches of Western culture may 
 be (and Nietzsche symbolized in himself 
 the distinctive features of the West as few 
 thinkers have) there does not exist any 
 real obstacle which could hide the mysteries 
 of human personality from the patient 
 researches of an earnest intellect. Thus the 
 peculiar significance of the Russian mind, 
 with all its inherited wealth of spiritual 
 experience and vicissitude, garnered from 
 the ancient world by Byzantine Christianity, 
 is not impenetrable to the observer provided 
 he has succeeded in overcoming the shallow 
 rationalism of our own time. One thing 
 Russia can justly claim to her credit. 
 In the moral and intellectual struggles of 
 her sons she agonizes for the rest of the 
 world. This vicarious suffering is not so 
 much the virtue of Russia as it is the short- 
 coming of the other nations, who have 
 sacrificed their spiritual birthright on the 
 altar of commercialism. And for this 
 reason, if for no other, the Western world
 
 VIACHESLAV IVANOV 105 
 
 would receive a new and vital stimulus if 
 it followed more closely and with a greater 
 sympathy the spiritual life of the Russian 
 people. 
 
 It is sufficient to refer to Russian litera- 
 ture to be instantly impressed by the fervent 
 spirit which pervades most of its standard 
 creations. In the works of Tolstoy and 
 Dostoyevsky the eternal problems of life 
 are formulated with such a broadness of 
 vision, and faced with such boldness, that 
 even the sceptical West has been compelled 
 to recognize in them a new spiritual force 
 carrying a message of profound significance 
 and opening new, heretofore unfamiliar, 
 vistas of the world. A greater acquaintance 
 with the past and present of Russian 
 thought would reveal to the modern 
 European that Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky 
 by no means exhaust the wells of Russian 
 intellectual activity. Towering nearly as 
 high as these two, though in a realm 
 different from theirs, there stands the 
 original figure of Vladimir Soloviev, the 
 poet, the visionary, and the philosopher of
 
 exceptional acumen, and following in his 
 footsteps is seen the group of younger 
 writers, all eager questioners oi the 
 mysteries of life, amongst whom Merezh- 
 kovsky, Rozanov, and Ivanov stand out 
 as the most gifted and the most arresting. 
 Whatever our attitude toward religion and 
 mysticism may be, it is impossible to deny 
 that this group of authors has made clear 
 to us some new aspects of the world, of 
 which before we had been but dimly 
 conscious. 
 
 Selecting Viacheslav Ivanov for the 
 subject of the present essay, I do so not 
 only for reasons of personal sympathy, but 
 also because, in my opinion, he is a typical 
 and, at the same time, original representa- 
 tive of modern intellectual Russia. 
 
 Ivanov is a poet and a thinker, who 
 embodies his profound revelations in a 
 form that is austere and majestic and yet 
 instinct with a singularly intimate and 
 compelling beauty. His genius is generally 
 known only to the elect, for the involved 
 and archaic form he affects in his poetry,
 
 VIACHESLAV IVANOV 107 
 
 and the depth of his thought render him 
 virtually unintelligible to the multitude. 
 Of all the devotees of Symbolism in Russia 
 he is the most interesting and perhaps the 
 most important, since in his poems and 
 essays he has created new values and 
 opened a vista of new realities. 
 
 Realities or " realiora," as he prefers to 
 call them the eternal absolutes of human 
 life these are the objects of his poetic 
 vision. Need we argue with him as to 
 whether these absolutes do actually exist, 
 or whether the}' are merely the creations 
 of a self-confident mind, projected upon 
 the world of its own thought ? The dis- 
 tinction is not essential. Whether they 
 exist or not, one thing is beyond doubt : 
 they are absolutes for the human mind 
 human absolutes, so to speak realities of 
 which we are profoundly conscious when- 
 ever we venture to peer into the innermost 
 depths of our own soul. A thousand 
 generations have experienced and pro- 
 claimed them. To the human mind they 
 seem to partake of a reality kindred with
 
 io8 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 Time and Space. Within the circum- 
 scribed limits of our understanding we 
 cannot help seeing the universe presented 
 in their terms, resolved into them, as it 
 were, as we see it resolved into the terms 
 of space and time. So let us not question 
 the poet and the visionary on the ground 
 of " fact " for the essential fact lies in 
 the message. But what -is the message 
 of Ivanov ? To give an adequate idea of 
 his teaching would not be possible within 
 the scope of a short essay, so that I 
 must confine myself to stating funda- 
 mental principles. 
 
 Through the medium of Ivanov's philo- 
 sophy the world is seen as the resultant of 
 two opposing principles, which have been 
 slowly evolving themselves in the cosmic 
 development of the Universe. As I am 
 trying to penetrate their nature a grand 
 and startling picture is revealed to my 
 imagination. 
 
 It seems as though the flood of time rolls 
 back and we hear once more the vast and 
 ever-growing sound of wonder which was
 
 VIACHESLAV IVANOV 109 
 
 thrilling the Earth in her dreamy rotation 
 round the central body of the nebula, 
 which enveloped her like a veil. Once 
 again we seem to perceive the dramatic 
 moment when the veil was rent and the 
 awakened Earth stood revealed, resplen- 
 dent in her garment of light. She gazed 
 in awe upon the glowing mass of the Sun, 
 hardly distinguished yet, for it was little 
 more radiant than herself, and from her be- 
 wildered soul burst forth a sound a single 
 word which she was just learning to utter, 
 a word which resounded and trembled to 
 the uttermost depths of space " Thou." 
 ' Thou " she repeated, gazing spell-bound 
 at her mother-Sun, unable as yet to grasp 
 the full significance of her new position. 
 Then the truth rushed in upon her then 
 she felt how intolerable was the burden of 
 separate existence, how overwhelming the 
 consciousness of her identity, and she 
 would fain have withdrawn again into 
 the bosom of her mother to swoon and 
 lose herself once more in the languid, 
 boundless whole.
 
 no THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 In the same way it seems as though we 
 can hear the eternal " Thou " as it is uttered 
 in one grand, swelling harmony by all the 
 myriads of cosmic intelligences, who, spring- 
 ing into existence, stand aghast at finding 
 themselves so suddenly separated from the 
 world by an abysmal and impassable gulf. 
 And then, as the ages rolled on, Man 
 appeared, and he, too, gazed in a great 
 wonder at the world, repeating the awful 
 syllable " Thou," crying it to the soft, 
 sweet Earth, to the near, dim Moon, to the 
 distant, brilliant Sun, and to the whole 
 of the majestic Universe, which he feared 
 and loved and worshipped, praying and 
 seeking in agony of spirit the unattain- 
 able boon of oblivion of merging his 
 finite being into the infinite life of the 
 One, as the raindrop melts into the shining 
 sea. But in spite of this insatiable longing, 
 this unceasing prayer, Man found the gulf 
 growing ever wider and deeper, until in 
 the process of time there came another 
 change. By slow degrees he became con- 
 scious of some deep and thrilling music
 
 VIACHESLAV IVANOV in 
 
 rising within him. He closed his eyes to 
 the world and turned them in upon himself, 
 listening enthralled to this strange and 
 unknown rhythm of the soul. Suddenly a 
 cry of unspeakable joy burst from his 
 bosom. " I," shouted the Man in rapture, 
 " I am ! " " Thou, the Sun, Universe, 
 God Thou hast existed from all time 
 now I am born I stand before Thee an 
 equal no longer shall my head bow in 
 terror before Thee I fear Thee not I am 
 free ! " And so Man challenged the Uni- 
 verse and measured his strength against 
 it. But again and again would the power 
 of his pride faint within him and he would 
 taste the bitterness of failure and defeat. 
 
 Woman was his companion in life, and to 
 her the wild strugglings and longings of his 
 spirit seemed strange and alien. She found 
 herself unable to join him in his revolt, 
 for she was not yet entirely severed from 
 the Earth, from the sublime sweep of its 
 movements which throbbed and palpitated 
 through every particle of her being. By 
 her proximity to Man she was able partially
 
 112 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 to sway and conquer his mind, and to 
 communicate to him the stream of universal 
 life which flowed through her. Thus Man 
 at times would relinquish the independence 
 he had won in asserting the power of his 
 " I," in order to submit to the omnipotent 
 and all-embracing ' Thou." But again 
 and again has he returned to the strife, 
 creating new and ingenious fortifications, 
 building higher and more powerful barriers, 
 but the " Thou " has always followed close 
 upon him, and the most he could do was 
 to delay and postpone his inevitable defeat. 
 It is thus that I picture the general 
 meaning and evolution of the fundamental 
 principles which Ivanov sees as the basis 
 of life. Perhaps this visual conception of 
 their revealment somewhat reflects my own 
 sympathy with man's struggle for self- 
 assertion, which is rather antagonistic to 
 Ivanov's ideas. But apart from this sub- 
 jective valuation the principles themselves 
 have been set out as they are conceived 
 by Ivanov. Expressing them in a less alle- 
 gorical form, I may say that Ivanov starts
 
 VIACHESLAV IVANOV 113 
 
 from the antithesis of unity and multiplicity, 
 Nature and Man, " Thou and I," which he 
 symbolises in the Greek myths of Apollo 
 and Dionysus. Nietzsche was the first to 
 indicate the importance of the distinction 
 between these two deities, which in its 
 application to art he defined as " the two 
 art-worlds of dreamland and drunkenness." 
 Ivanov, however, takes the antithesis as 
 the basis for the whole of his system, 
 reducing it on the one side to its first 
 principles, and amplifying it on the other 
 with all the wealth of human experience 
 which was gained through and in Christi- 
 anity. Apollo for him is not only god of 
 dreamland, but a god personifying the 
 power of contemplative vision in memory. 
 Through memory we affirm ourselves. 
 Through memory which retains for us 
 the image of the eternal past, the life of 
 humanity and the Universe, we are able 
 to contemplate the world in general, and 
 works of art in particular, as distinct and 
 external verities. Through memory we can 
 compare and distinguish, dramatize and
 
 114 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 expand, until our hearts throb with the 
 heart-beats of the Eternal, and our minds 
 respond to the infinite and harmonious 
 rhythm and measure of the world. Thus 
 in Apollo we exalt our microcosm to the 
 Olympic attitude of contemplation, where 
 it is able to embrace and absorb, partially 
 at least, the immeasurable expanses of the 
 macrocosm. Developing Ivanov's concep- 
 tion of Apollo, we can, however, come to 
 an even higher form of the Apollonian 
 principle. " Individuation " humanity 
 our temporary independence and segrega- 
 tion from the life of the Cosmos regarded, 
 as it is by so many thinkers as some- 
 thing altogether imaginary and deceptive 
 reveals, from the Apollonian standpoint, 
 its primordial significance and eternal value. 
 " The human " is that peculiar expression 
 of Being which we have won for ourselves 
 during our incessant struggle to emerge 
 from the oblivion of the all-gulfing Universe. 
 Shall we lightly relinquish this priceless 
 boon ? Shall we not rather strive with all 
 the power of knowledge and understanding
 
 VIACHESLAV IVANOV 115 
 
 to grapple to our souls these " shadows " 
 and " shells " of the Realities which we 
 are thought to be ? Thus the human 
 microcosm becomes the highest form of 
 conscious reality, not only because it is a 
 miraculous identity through which even 
 the chaos of the Inane and the Unknown 
 finds form and law, but also because it is 
 " ours," because it is " human." 
 
 But if my personal sympathies rest 
 entirely with Apollo, such is not the atti- 
 tude of Ivanov. Apollonian as of necessity 
 he is, his vision is nevertheless strained to 
 pierce the mysterious impenetrability of the 
 Dionysian world. Like Nietzsche he is 
 captivated by its spontaneity, by its intoxi- 
 cation, by the orgiastic ecstasy and funda- 
 mental actuality of its manifestations. But 
 he goes further. Beyond the exaltation, 
 the fierce elemental transport of its joys, 
 he sees the tragic face of Reality itself. 
 Here is waged the eternal strife of Becoming 
 and Being. The world seems to suffer from 
 its very identity. Aflame with an insati- 
 able desire, it yearns for destruction, sacri-
 
 fice, pain, all the terror and madness of 
 existence in order the better to feel the dual 
 nature of its being, to feel that it is and that 
 it is not, to taste at the same time of life 
 and death, of existence and non-existence, 
 of consciousness and oblivion. And when 
 the inevitable moment comes, and the en- 
 raptured world abandons itself to the last 
 abnegation, though destroyed it rises again, 
 athirst for life and beauty and love. Thus 
 the face of Dionysus, the tragic god of 
 suffering, sacrifice, and resurrection is ever 
 revealed in the heart of the world. 
 
 Such is Ivanov's conception of Dionysus. 
 In his monograph on " The Hellenic Religion 
 of the Suffering God," he tries to prove 
 that such was the conception of the ancient 
 Greeks a contention which is greatly at 
 variance with the prevailing view, shared 
 even by Nietzsche, of the uniform, har- 
 monious nature of Dionysus. Ivanov, how- 
 ever, does not stop here. He develops 
 his principle one stage further, arriving 
 at a conclusion which may appear at 
 first sight particularly 'startling. He sees
 
 VIACHESLAV IVANOV 117 
 
 Dionysus as Christ. Here the Pagan and 
 Christian philosophies are reconciled. Un- 
 expected as this conclusion may appear, 
 it is neither arbitrary nor baseless. There 
 are many different aspects of Christ, and at 
 least one of them that of the Catholic 
 religion, sanctifying and deifying the flesh, 
 the materia has many points in common 
 with the conception of Ivanov. The 
 common elements of suffering, sacrifice, 
 and resurrection, indicate further points of 
 similarity between Christ and Dionysus. 
 It is true that such a conception of Christ 
 lacks many of the human attributes which 
 are usually associated with him. But for 
 Ivanov there is nothing divine in the human 
 which is only illusionary and relative. 
 God to him is the Dionysus of suffering 
 and love. But Christ is the God of suffer- 
 ing and love. It follows then that Christ 
 is Dionysus. 
 
 But however enamoured Ivanov appears 
 to be of the tragic mask of Dionysus, he 
 is not entirely under its dominion. He 
 has listened too much and too long to the
 
 n8 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 enchanting wisdom of Apollo, to be able 
 to surrender himself entirely to the oblivion 
 and the bottomless abysses of the Dionysian 
 chaos. He is ever peering into their depths, 
 with his eyes fixed upon their innermost 
 mysteries, and yet what he sees is not the 
 real orgiastic chaos of elements, but only 
 a reflection of it in the Apollonian mirror. 
 This mirror may be conceived as having 
 two distinct forms. The one is colourless 
 and bright, and reflects only the world of 
 external forms, transparent and unsub- 
 stantial, as though the qualities had been 
 abstracted and only the proportions left. 
 The other is sombre in colour, and the 
 world which it reflects is also transparent, 
 but heavy and metallic, resounding faintly 
 like the low melodious singing of silver 
 the muffled voice of Reality. It is in the 
 revelations of the dark mirror that Ivanov 
 sees the Dionysian world. There he sees 
 the face of the world's tragedy, upon which, 
 to use his own metaphor, no man may look 
 with naked vision and escape the fate of 
 Eurypylus, who was overwhelmed with
 
 VIACHESLAV IVANOV 119 
 
 madness after he had gazed upon the 
 awful image of Dionysus in the ark, which 
 he received from Cassandra as his share of 
 the spoils after the siege of Troy. Thus it 
 is through the purifying medium of Apollo 
 that Ivanov can look upon the horror of 
 Dionysus, and likewise it is to Apollo 
 that he chiefly owes his wonderful poetry, 
 the exquisite perfection, balance, and form 
 of his hymns in honour of Dionysus. These 
 classical poems, conforming so strictly to 
 the highest canons of Apollonian art, could 
 never have been inspired alone by the 
 vehement and terrible self-abandon of 
 Dionysus. And if I have to conclude this 
 note with a definite verdict, will it not 
 be just to infer that, in the case of the 
 personality and teaching of Ivanov, both 
 these great deities have an equal claim 
 to recognition ? As with Ivanov, so with 
 humanity, Apollo and Dionysus are mutu- 
 ally interdependent and co-eternal. They 
 are the two primordial forces whose 
 resultant is Existence, and through their 
 boundless activities and interactions,
 
 120 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 through the birth of suns and planets, 
 the rise and fall of empires and civiliza- 
 tions, through all the joys and sorrows, 
 the glory and shame, the triumph and 
 despair of life, the soul of Man is slowly 
 evolving and perfecting itself. Who then 
 shall judge between these two great prin- 
 ciples the gods of negation and affirma- 
 tion ; the unhuman and the human ; 
 Dionysus and Apollo ?
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE 
 THEATRE
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE 
 THEATRE 
 
 CONSULTING THE CYCLOPS AND THE 
 ELEPHANT ON PROBLEMS OF ART 
 
 THERE is a curious Russian expression : 
 " smotri v-6ba," i.e. " look out with 
 both eyes," and another : " vosmi glaza 
 v-rooki," i.e. " take your eyes in your 
 hands." They both look simple enough, 
 and such they really are when used 
 in popular speech. But their apparent 
 simplicity conceals a depth of wisdom 
 that far transcends their usual meaning. 
 Indeed, how often do we realize what it 
 means to look with both eyes ? Would 
 the world appear the same if we, like the 
 fabulous Cyclops, had only one eye ? Or 
 again, would the things around us look 
 different if we carried our eyes in our hands, 
 
 123
 
 124 
 
 just as some species of fish which have 
 their visual organs at the end of long 
 tentacles ? 
 
 These are no idle speculations for the 
 lover of curiosities and riddles. They 
 deal with the fundamental problems of 
 space, which most people either overlook, 
 or ignore. It will, therefore, be not 
 altogether useless to try and disclose the 
 hidden significance of these questions, and 
 all the more so, as the results of our 
 inquiry will enable us to throw some 
 light on the complicated problem of space 
 in the theatre. 
 
 Most people talk of space as if it were 
 nothing but a combination of properties 
 governed by the formulae of Euclid. They 
 know that there are planes and volumes, 
 or, as the more learned amongst them 
 would put it, planes have two dimensions 
 and volumes three, and having understood 
 as much, they are content to leave the 
 matter in the hands of those who are 
 supposed to know all about it. These, 
 doubtless, do know a great deal. The
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 125 
 
 mathematician, for instance, may explain 
 that besides the space of Euclid there are 
 the spaces of Lobachevsky and Riman, in 
 which the sum of the angles of a triangle 
 can be more than two right angles or 
 less, and parallel lines can meet ; though 
 he may also add that, after all, it matters 
 very little, and we can go about our 
 business just as before without fear of 
 running into the man to whom we owe 
 money, at the end of the street, should 
 we perchance be walking on the onfe 
 side of it and he on the other ; provided, 
 of course, that we take sufficient care 
 not to catch his eye. And many other 
 interesting things the mathematician could 
 tell us. Nor would the philosopher be 
 less instructive. From him we would 
 hear many exciting theories about what 
 space actually is : whether it is an inde- 
 pendent reality, or a form of thought, or 
 a mere sensation developed in man dur- 
 ing the endless process of evolution. The 
 physiologist, for his part, may enlarge 
 on the construction and working of the
 
 126 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 eye, remarking, perhaps, as Helmholtz 
 did, that if this apparatus had been 
 produced by an optician, the purchaser 
 would be justified in immediately return- 
 ing it to the maker and even using strong 
 language. As to the joint working of 
 the two-eye-system, he may say that the 
 scientists themselves have yet been unable 
 to agree on its explanation. At any rate, 
 there are some who maintain that we see all 
 objects double, except the one we fix with 
 our eyes. If we are not aware of the fact, 
 it only proves how absent-minded we are. 
 
 However, with all their interesting 
 theories, none of these learned men will 
 ever tell us one thing : that is, how 
 we actually feel space and how it affects 
 our experience of the world. It is only 
 when we turn to the ancient thinkers, 
 such, for instance, as Pythagoras, that we 
 see men, for whom space was not a mere 
 abstract idea, but a living reality eternally 
 present before the human consciousness 
 and impressing itself upon man with all 
 the multitude of its forms.
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 127 
 
 Of the people who actually feel space, 
 who respond to every form it assumes, 
 who may be said to breathe with their 
 eyes, we should expect the artists to 
 possess a greater knowledge of its nature 
 than is granted to anybody else. But here 
 we have a case of peculiar professional 
 blindness. The painter sees the world 
 differently from the sculptor ; the sculptor 
 differently from the architect ; the archi- 
 tect differently from both the others ; and 
 none of them seem to be able to embrace 
 the visible world in all its entirety. 
 
 On more than one occasion I have 
 heard painters say that they cannot bear 
 to look in a stereoscope : the sight of 
 innumerable planes was repugnant to their 
 artistic feeling. And I can well understand 
 them. Sensitive to the nature of their 
 medium, they have completely submitted 
 to the form of visual perception it has 
 imposed upon them, and so the flat surface 
 of a painting has become for them the 
 only form of space worth noticing. It is 
 true, the history of painting knows of
 
 128 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 numerous attempts at mastering the 
 effect of depth and even the stereoscopic 
 effect of space. The artists, bent on re- 
 presenting objects as we ordinarily see 
 them, tried every means at their disposal 
 to create the impression of things standing 
 out from their background. In this the}' 
 often succeeded, but, alas ! at the price 
 of sacrificing the picture as an independent 
 entity. For two distinct moments are 
 involved in the representation of stereo- 
 scopic space : the moment of realism, 
 of faithful reproduction in portraying the 
 world around us, which, as a principle, 
 has no absolute artistic significance, either 
 in the positive or the negative sense ; 
 and the moment of discontinuity, of 
 breaking up space into innumerable 
 planes, which, on the contrary, has the 
 most decisive bearing on the artistic use 
 of a medium both as regards the formal 
 nature of the latter, and the inner meaning 
 which the ideas conceived in terms of 
 space must of necessity carry. 
 
 Continuity and discontinuity of space
 
 i 
 -< 
 
 H 
 
 i 
 P
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 129 
 
 these are the two fundamental forms 
 of man's perception which stand for two 
 distinct kinds of human experience and 
 symbolize two opposite conceptions of 
 the world. 
 
 A concrete example will help to illus- 
 trate this statement. Without touching 
 here upon the theory of vision, let us 
 imagine for the moment that through 
 some unfortunate accident we are able 
 to see with one eye only. Those who 
 have had this unpleasant experience 
 will agree that in this " monocular " 
 position our sensation of space will differ 
 materially from the ordinary one. We 
 shall find, for instance, that our sense 
 of distance has become considerably 
 weakened, whilst surrounding objects will 
 seem to fuse into one continuous mass, 
 If we took two long pencils and held 
 them freely at arm's length, their points 
 would show a somewhat persistent ten- 
 dency to frustrate any efforts in bringing 
 them together. But probably the most 
 striking experience of all we should get on 
 i
 
 130 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 venturing out into the street in the dusk 
 or evening, when subdued light would 
 no longer help us in judging distance 
 by the contrasts of illumination. There, as 
 we walk, we should suddenly discover that 
 the street itself moves straight against 
 us, with its houses, railings, and passers- 
 by flowing in one incessant stream and 
 suddenly growing in size the moment we 
 approach them, and with the lamp-posts, 
 in particular, springing up before our eyes 
 when we least expect them. Speaking 
 from personal experience, I may say that 
 this sensation of continuity is not in 
 the least amusing. Rather is it apt to 
 depress our mind by the feeling of loss 
 of individuality, which overtakes us amidst 
 the numberless objects clinging to us on 
 all sides, giving no elbow-room for free 
 movement, drawing us in to dissolve and 
 merge in their inane mass. 
 
 What a relief it is after this experience to 
 be able to see with both eyes ! It seems as 
 if the spirit of reason has suddenly descended 
 upon the weltering chaos. At once we feel
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 131 
 
 that we are no longer a part of an indefinite 
 and unwieldy conglomeration of objects, but 
 stand opposed to them all independent 
 individualities and masters of our move- 
 ments and actions. Moreover, the things 
 we see, begin to tear themselves off from 
 ihe background which has been envelop- 
 ing them, and step forward, each by itself, 
 -each distinct from the others, and holding 
 its own place. Their clear-cut masses, so 
 unlike their former vague and shapeless 
 contours, make us feel measure and rhythm 
 in the world, revealing the power of dis- 
 continuity as the formative principle of 
 reality. 
 
 There is, however, a definite limit 
 placed on the power of our vision in 
 shaping and individualizing the ambience. 
 Whilst marking a circle round ourselves 
 in our position of beholders, and singling 
 out likewise the objects in our immediate 
 vicinity, the binocular mechanism of our 
 vision fails to break up the continuity 
 of the objects lying farther away. The 
 experiments carried out by the physiolo-
 
 132 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 gists, have determined the boundaries of 
 the sphere within which our sight is 
 capable of the stereoscopic effect. The 
 radius of this sphere has been calculated 
 at about 500 yards. Beyond it there 
 begins the region of the monocular vision, 
 since the distance dividing the eyes of 
 man is too small to form the angle suffi- 
 cient for breaking up the fused planes of 
 the more distant objects. 
 
 In this respect the bigger animals, such 
 as the elephant, must be considered more 
 fortunate. They seem to possess the 
 visual apparatus which should enable 
 them to carry the individualizing power 
 of discontinuity to the extent greatly sur- 
 passing the capacity of the human eyesight. 
 It has always puzzled me to find out 
 how these big animals see the surround- 
 ing world. Are they more inclined to 
 the asserting of their individuality than 
 are the smaller animals ? Does the greater 
 clearness of form which the objects must 
 assume in their vision, help them only in 
 sighting their friends and enemies, or does
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 133 
 
 their individual detachment make them 
 feel lost and lonesome, since much greater 
 spiritual powers are needed for rejoicing in 
 one's isolation, than are granted even to the 
 wisest animals ? Naturally, I could never 
 answer these questions. But while ponder- 
 ing over them, I came upon the idea 
 of an optical device, which seemed to 
 bring me nearer to their solution. At the 
 time (this happened some eight years 
 back) I was greatly pleased with my 
 invention and speculated joyfully on the 
 results its application would bring in a 
 number of important problems. To my 
 disappointment, however, I soon dis- 
 covered that I had been anticipated in 
 this by no less a man than Helmholtz 
 who, as long ago as 1857, had designed 
 an apparatus on exactly the same lines 
 as mine. So, not without regret, I must 
 concede the priority to Helmholtz's " tele- 
 stereoscope " (as he christened his device), 
 and will make use of his invention to 
 illustrate my argument. As to the appli- 
 cation of the stereoscopic principle in the
 
 134 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 wider field of sciences, alas ! it was 
 not I who discovered the planetoid 
 " Stereoscopia ! " 
 
 I have quoted the Russian expression : 
 " Take your eyes in your hands." With 
 the help of the tele-stereoscope we are 
 actually enabled to do so. In this apparatus 
 the difficulty in having our eyes spaced so 
 closely together, is overcome by the use 
 of four mirrors, two facing the eyes, and 
 two sliding in a frame and facing the 
 object to be seen. By means of this 
 arrangement the angle, at which we see 
 the object, can be increased to any size 
 desirable, and, as a result, the power of 
 seeing things stereoscopically is extended 
 to the farthest limits open to our vision. 
 
 I need not dwell again on the startling 
 experience of observing the world split 
 up into innumerable independent entities. 
 Nor do I claim for the binocular mechanism 
 of our sight that it is the only factor in 
 forming our perceptions of continuity and 
 discontinuity in the world. These are 
 rooted in the very depth of our nature
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 135 
 
 and continually reveal themselves in a 
 number of ways. Of far greater import- 
 ance to my mind is the fundamental 
 unity of our perceptions of space with 
 the wider experiences formed within our 
 spirit in the process of its crystalization. 
 In a number of arts, which includes the 
 theatre, space forms the medium by 
 means of which the artist conveys his 
 conceptions to the observer. Is it not 
 essential, for this reason, to keep clearly 
 in mind the exact nature of the properties 
 with which we are dealing, and to realize 
 to the fullest extent their inner signi- 
 ficance ? The problem of painting, for 
 instance, would be greatly simplified were 
 it always understood that the stereoscopic 
 effect in a picture makes us see not the 
 picture as a whole but as many separate 
 objects represented, whilst at the same 
 time compelling us to wrestle with the 
 perception of the picture's flat surface, 
 which is forced on us by our looking 
 at it with both eyes. Again, linear and 
 atmospheric perspective, as well as relief
 
 136 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 obtained by chiaroscuro, do not disrupt 
 the unity of a painting, even when this is 
 viewed at a close distance, if they are kept 
 within reasonable limits. On the other 
 hand, the artist's attempt at suggesting 
 depth becomes purposeless when the paint- 
 ing is fixed permanently at a distance lying 
 on the border of binocular vision, since 
 in that case all the objects seen, includ- 
 ing the painting, will be drowned in one 
 continuous space. The fact to be always 
 borne in mind in considering problems 
 of art is the relationship established be- 
 tween the work viewed and the beholder. 
 In this relationship the perceptions of 
 space obtained by the latter play the 
 leading part, and by the sympathetic 
 influence they exercise on the kindred 
 experiences rooted even more deeply in 
 our psychic, instantly and firmly fashion 
 our attitude towards the object before 
 us. 
 
 Raising the problem above its particular 
 form, as expressed in terms of space, let 
 us inquire into the forms of relationship
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 137 
 
 possible between man and a work of visual 
 art. 
 
 At the outset we can distinguish two 
 basic attitudes on the part of man. He 
 may either be engaged in creating the 
 work, or he may observe it from the 
 outside. So long as his creative activity 
 is spontaneous, his work is only a part of 
 himself, or, in other words, the artist and 
 the work are one. But the moment he 
 stops and takes a view of the product of 
 his exertions, he detaches it from his 
 own personality and sees it possessed of 
 independent life. Every man combines 
 in himself both the actor and the be- 
 holder, with this qualification that in the 
 professional artist the predominant role 
 belongs to the actor, whilst in the " pro- 
 fessional " spectator it belongs to the 
 beholder in him. I will venture to state 
 here, without sustaining it by argument, 
 that art as art exists only for the beholder, 
 whether he be the artist or the spectator, 
 which is tantamount to saying that the 
 work of art ceases to be " of art " as soon
 
 138 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 as it is no longer felt as distinct from, and 
 opposed to, the personality of the man who 
 comes in contact with it. Whether it 
 be the physical or the mental eye that we 
 turn on the work, turn it we must to 
 be justified in using the term " art." 
 And with this we find the moment of 
 discontinuity introduced again in our 
 argument. 
 
 So far we have established two mutually 
 opposed entities : the beholder and the 
 work of art. But the latter need not 
 be a complete unity. Behind the barrier 
 which invests it with its artistic nature 
 and singles it out as an independent 
 verity, there may exist forms that are 
 conflicting and disrupted, provided they 
 remain within the boundaries marked by 
 the original division from the beholder. 
 Being a reality, that is a world in itself, 
 the work of art may speak either by the 
 voice of its own material, or by copying 
 the voices of other materials. In the 
 first case the statement embodied in the 
 work will be presented to the observer,
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 139 
 
 in the second represented. But no exact 
 parallelism exists between these two forms 
 of statement, and the moments of con- 
 tinuity and discontinuity. The preponder- 
 ance of the one or the other of these 
 two moments depends entirely upon the 
 nature of the medium, and that of the 
 subject stated. The important fact to 
 be noticed is that the picture of a 
 world placed before the spectator may be 
 either continuous or discontinuous, and is 
 therefore capable of evoking two opposite 
 groups of experiences : one standing for 
 spontaneity, religious ecstasy and devotion, 
 the sense of cosmic unity, and emotions of 
 similar character, which tend to create 
 the feeling of a monistic world fused into 
 one integral whole ; and the other group 
 of experiences which stand for clear- 
 consciousness, the sense of differentiation 
 and individuality, the distinctness of 
 form and the aloofness of the observing 
 personality from the ambience, and cause 
 the perception of an atomistic world, a 
 world of numberless centred units standing
 
 140 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 mutually opposed and asserting themselves 
 against each other. 
 
 It may appear to the reader that the 
 abstract character of the above definitions 
 renders them practically pointless when 
 applied to concrete phenomena of art. 
 I hope, however, that the following 
 analysis of the various forms which have 
 been revealed to us in the history of the 
 theatre will show that it is not so. It 
 is surprising indeed to observe how the 
 forms of theatre architecture and the stage 
 have been continuously adapting them- 
 selves to changes in the attitude of the 
 spectator towards the performance. Else- 
 where I have shown the dependence of 
 these forms on the use of the methods 
 of presentation and representation. It is 
 necessary now to examine them in the 
 light of the broader principle of continuity 
 and discontinuity.
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 141 
 
 II 
 THE SPECTATOR SITTING IN JUDGMENT 
 
 THE history of the theatre presents 
 no uniform development of any definite 
 principle. In different countries and in 
 different periods the theatre swayed from 
 one form to another, sometimes creating 
 new methods, sometimes repeating what 
 had been done before. For this reason it 
 would be a vain attempt to try and 
 trace the bearing on the theatre of the 
 principles of continuity and discontinuity, 
 if in reviewing the various forms of the 
 theatre I faithfully followed the chrono- 
 logical order of their origin. A better 
 plan suggests itself to me of grouping the 
 historical data according to the principle 
 which they illustrate. 
 
 As it happens, the initial stages of the 
 history of the theatre provide the most 
 perfect example of the significance of the 
 principle of continuity, and thus enable
 
 142 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 me to follow to some extent the historical 
 order of theatrical forms. 
 
 If we define the nature of the theatre 
 as performance in action, expressing a 
 certain sentiment or idea in forms whose 
 significance is fixed by an accepted con- 
 vention, we shall have to start the history 
 of the theatre from a somewhat later 
 stage than that usually taken. Indeed, 
 what was there of the theatrical nature 
 in the spontaneous outbursts of feeling, 
 which accompanied the early religious 
 and popular festivals, so long as they 
 remained haphazard and personal, and 
 carried no meaning to anybody but the 
 performer himself ? One would be as 
 much justified in calling theatrical the 
 " performance " of a lover in the outburst 
 of passion, or of a praying man kneeling 
 before a holy image. Obviously, " per- 
 forming " must be distinguished from 
 other activities of life by something that 
 is peculiar to itself, and this peculiarity 
 is its form. So only when the form of 
 performing became detached from the
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 143 
 
 usual expressions of living activity, and 
 acquired a significance of its own, may it 
 be said that the art of the theatre came 
 into being. 
 
 In this stage it made itself apparent 
 in the public life of Greece, in the various 
 public ceremonies in which a special sym- 
 bolical meaning was attached to the ritual. 
 But the moment of performing was par- 
 ticularly marked in the annual festivals of 
 Dionysus and, owing to their popularity 
 and importance, it was soon able to 
 develop into their most prominent feature. 
 The popular procession with which these 
 festivals usually began, and the prepon- 
 derating position of the chorus in the 
 arly performances, helped to link together 
 the actor and the spectator in one body 
 of participants in the religious ceremony. 
 The dialogue between the chorus and its 
 leader was not a thing outside the actual 
 life of the audience, but formed a part 
 of that life. There was no question of 
 presenting or representing a story. The 
 story was simply acted as something real
 
 144 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 in itself, just as the marriage ceremony, 
 whatever rites or even acted scenes may 
 accompany it, always remains a fact of 
 real life, and never a spectacle, a show. 
 
 So, in the early Greek performances 
 we have a form of the theatre in 
 which the identity of the performance 
 with real life established a unity between 
 the audience and the performance. Two 
 moments characterized this unity. The 
 moment of reality, or objectivity, expressed 
 in the participation of the audience in 
 the performance ; and the moment of 
 action, as opposed to observation, which 
 not only contributed to the unity of 
 the audience and the performance, but 
 also tended to unite all the performers 
 and the actual surroundings into one con- 
 tinuous whole. On the other hand, the 
 fact must not be lost sight of that at that 
 stage of the Greek theatre, acting, as such, 
 was always subordinate to the nature of 
 the ceremony, and by its own power was 
 capable only of a slight influence on the 
 forms of relationship established amongst
 
 A TYPICAL SHAKESPEARIAN STAGE. 
 
 [Reconstruction by V. E. ALBRIGHT]
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 145 
 
 the participants of the performance. For 
 this reason, it would be wrong to lay great 
 stress on the visual impressions of unity, 
 as other factors must have played a 
 much more determining part. Only in the 
 instances, in which acting led to a state 
 of general ecstacy, as it did in the orgi- 
 astic rituals performed at the Eleusinian 
 Mysteries, the wild self-abandonment of 
 those acting, and the sense of unity with 
 elemental nature which it created, must, 
 doubtless, have been accompanied by, and 
 partly due to, a greatly weakened percep- 
 tion of form in space. It must be borne 
 in mind that the discontinuous effect of 
 binocular vision, as well as the power of 
 seeing things clearly, is possible only when 
 our eyes are converged on a definite object. 
 Whereas in a state of excitement man 
 naturally gazes straight ahead, and, there- 
 fore, gains the sensation of an unbroken 
 flow of space in which all objects merge 
 diffused and formless. 
 
 Another form of unity between the 
 audience and the performance developed 
 
 K
 
 146 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 during the next, the classical period of the 
 Greek theatre. The change was brought 
 about by the construction of an amphi- 
 theatre around the orchestra, which had 
 an immediate effect of introducing division 
 in the ranks of those who took part in 
 the festival. The chorus, and the actors 
 who soon evolved from its midst, became 
 the only actual performers, whilst the 
 part of the audience was confined to 
 the position of mere passive observers. 
 As the theatrical performances were losing 
 their religious character, the tie which 
 bound together the audience and the 
 performers in the fact of actual life, 
 became ever weaker, and eventually dis- 
 appeared entirely, having given place to 
 a new and different form of unity. The 
 reality of religious life was superseded 
 by the reality of theatrical life, which was 
 impressed upon the minds both of the 
 -audience and the performers by the very 
 character of the Greek theatre-building. 
 
 Let us examine more closely the rela- 
 tionships between the performer and the
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 147 
 
 spectator which were thus formed. Taking 
 the performance as a whole, we find that 
 the Greek theatre knew no opposition 
 between the real world in which was 
 the audience whilst in the theatre, and 
 the world of the play produced. The 
 latter world was presented to the public 
 in the terms of the former. The method 
 of the Greek staging is usually described 
 as conventional. This conventionalism, 
 however, was of a specific nature. It 
 was determined not so much by the 
 subject of the plays produced, as by 
 the method of theatrical presentation. 
 Simplification and " stylisation " as 
 methods of interpreting plays were 
 unknown in the Greek theatre. The 
 only conventions, imposed by the subject, 
 may be found in such devices as the use 
 of cathurnae in order to distinguish gods 
 and heroes from personages of lower ranks, 
 and of certain symbolical attributes which 
 always accompanied certain characters, 
 though even these may be looked upon 
 as greatly determined by the method of
 
 148 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 presentation. The more fundamental con- 
 ventions of the Greek stage must be 
 ascribed entirely to this latter method. 
 The use of masks, the restricted number 
 of actors, the architectural scenery and 
 the curious device of " ekkyklema " v/ere 
 all due to the peculiar nature of the Greek 
 theatre. Nothing, perhaps, proves this so- 
 clearly as the last mentioned device. In 
 complete agreement with the architeciui al 
 unity between the stage and the rest ot 
 the theatre, the Greeks never attempted 
 to represent the interior of a building, 
 The action on the stage was always set 
 outside some palace or temple, or in rural 
 scenery. But the plots of some plays 
 demanded a setting inside the building, 
 and this difficulty was overcome by means 
 of the " ekkyklema." A platform was 
 rolled out through the central door in 
 the background, and arranged on it was 
 the scene supposed to have taken place 
 within the walls of the building painted on 
 the panels. The actors on the ekkyklema 
 stood in fixed poses, for example, in a scene
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 149 
 
 of murder, as this is done in the modern 
 tableaux vivants, and having displayed 
 the picture, came down on to the stage to 
 continue the play. 
 
 The extreme conventionality of the 
 ekkyklema stands in such a striking 
 contrast to the modern ideas of realistic 
 representation that some scholars have 
 been led to deny its very existence in the 
 Greek theatre, contending that a device, 
 so crude and unnatural, could not have 
 possibly been tolerated by the refined 
 Attic audience. It seems to me, however, 
 that nothing could conform so naturally 
 and so artistically to the Greek notion of 
 the theatre, as this " crude " method of 
 irank theatricality. 
 
 It establishes beyond doubt the feature 
 which, in the case of the mask and 
 other Greek conventions, admits of more 
 plausible explaining away on the ground 
 of realistic considerations. The cumulative 
 evidence of these conventional methods, 
 viewed in the light of the relation- 
 ship between the audience and the per-
 
 150 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 formance as a whole, proves most con- 
 clusively that the Greeks recognized no 
 other form of producing plays except that 
 of presentation. 
 
 A few remarks on the architecture of 
 the Greek theatre will help to bring out 
 some further important features of the 
 ancient drama. 
 
 There are many disputed points about 
 the actual construction of the Greek 
 theatre. The archaeological data are so 
 scanty that theories entirely opposed to 
 each other have had eminent followers 
 in the scientific world. The stage, in 
 particular, has been the subject of a 
 keen controversy. Dorpfeld, for instance, 
 maintained that in all Greek theatres 
 the actors and the chorus performed to- 
 gether in the orchestra, whilst the stage 
 served only as a background. This theory 
 finds few supporters now, and not being an 
 archaeologist myself, I think I shall be on 
 safe ground if I accept the authoritative 
 opinion of A. E. Haigh, whose book on 
 " The Attic Theatre " is remarkable for its
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 151 
 
 wealth of information and the author's 
 insight into the peculiar character of the 
 Greek drama. 
 
 I will quote a passage from this book 
 so as to enable the reader to picture in 
 his imagination the character of the visual 
 impressions which the ancient, spectator 
 must have experienced : 
 
 ' The general conception of a Greek 
 theatre was that of a building with a 
 circular dancing-place in the centre, and 
 with tiers of seats arranged round two- 
 thirds of the ring, while the remaining 
 side was occupied by the stage. The 
 result was that all the spectators had 
 an equally good view of the orchestra, 
 while many of them had only a very 
 poor view of the stage. This arrangement 
 was no doubt quite natural at first, when 
 the chorus was still the most con- 
 spicuous feature in the drama. But it 
 may seem remarkable that it should have 
 been retained in later times. We should 
 remember, however, that ancient theatres 
 were built, not only for the drama, but
 
 152 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 also for choral and musical competitions 
 of the most various kinds. Among the 
 Greeks these latter were held solely in 
 the orchestra, and had nothing to do 
 with the stage. As they far exceeded 
 the dramatic performances in number, it 
 was essential in a Greek theatre that 
 every member of the audience should 
 have a clear and direct view of the 
 orchestra ; the view on to the stage was 
 a matter of secondary importance. In 
 Roman theatres the case was different. 
 Here all performances, choral, musical, 
 and dramatic, were transferred to the 
 stage ; the orchestra was given up to the 
 spectators. The arrangements were, there- 
 fore, considerably modified. The orchestra 
 and auditorium were reduced in size to 
 a semicircle. The consequence was that 
 the stage became a much more prominent 
 object and that all the spectators had a 
 fairly good view of it." (" The Attic 
 Theatre," by A. E. Haigh, p. 82.) 
 
 The first fact, therefore, to be borne 
 in mind, is that the Greek theatre was
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 153 
 
 not the best adapted for performances 
 on the stage. Its construction, however, 
 had a determining effect on the character 
 of the Greek drama. Subordinating the 
 stage in point of importance to the rest 
 of the building, it compelled the Greeks 
 to regard the performance merely as an 
 episode of theatrical life, which excluded 
 the very idea of an opposition between 
 the world on the stage and the world in 
 the auditorium. 
 
 But if this architectural feature helped 
 to create the outward unity of the 
 theatrical world, it was also responsible 
 for breaking up this world from within. 
 So long as the chorus was predominant 
 in the drama, its central position in the 
 orchestra served to maintain the bond 
 which lingered from the time when the 
 audience and the chorus had formed one 
 body of performers. Later, when acting 
 on the stage became the main point of in- 
 terest, the attitude of the audience became 
 purely spectacular and, as a result, the 
 acting, from the point of view of
 
 154 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 the observer, acquired an independent 
 existence. This segregation of the actor 
 was further enhanced by the view he 
 presented from the proscenium. 
 
 The Greek proscenium formed a plat- 
 form which, during the classical period, 
 was low and moderately wide (five and 
 fifteen feet respectively) and, later, became 
 higher and narrower. Unlike the Roman 
 theatre, where the widening of the stage 
 was accompanied by a reduction in the 
 size of the orchestra, and served to divide 
 the stage from the audience, in the Greek 
 theatre these changes in the width and 
 height were due to the gradual disapppear- 
 ance of the chorus, and had no effect on 
 the presentational character of the per- 
 formance. They may also be neglected in 
 considering the visual effect of acting on 
 the Greek stage. 
 
 Let us now picture to ourselves in- 
 numerable circular tiers packed with 
 gazers and sloping down to the orchestra 
 in which a small group of men (twelve 
 to fifteen in number) is seen fused with
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 155 
 
 the ground and the surrounding audience, 
 forming together a living coating of a 
 huge section of a cone. At the front 
 side of this cone there cuts into it a 
 long and narrow platform, limited by a 
 rising backwall with architectural mould- 
 ings and painted architectural scenery. A 
 few figures are seen on the platform. 
 They stand silhouetted against the wall 
 with their forms detached and carved 
 out like statues. There are few objects 
 around them. Every fold of their dress, 
 every line of their masks, every moulding 
 of the backwall, stand out clearly in the 
 glaring daylight. Side by side with the 
 blended masses of the spectators, they 
 are like solitary rocks torn from the 
 shore and washed by the sea. Though 
 with the spectator in his familiar sur- 
 roundings of a theatre, they yet rise 
 above him, wrought into independent 
 beings and endowed with some inner power 
 that draws them closer to each other or 
 drives apart. Even when they present 
 ordinary men they seem to ennoble them,
 
 156 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 to bestow upon them some grace of 
 divinity. 
 
 To what an extent these visual im- 
 pressions must have fitted in with the 
 ideal character of the Greek drama, and 
 its style of acting will be seen from the 
 following illuminating remarks by A. E. 
 Haigh in his book quoted above : 
 
 " The world of Greek tragedy was an 
 ideal world of heroes and demigods, whose 
 nature was grander and nobler than that 
 of human beings. The realistic portrayal 
 of ordinary human passions was foreign 
 to the purpose of the Greek tragedy. . . 
 To be in harmony with this elevation of 
 tone it was necessary that the acting 
 should be dignified and self-restrained. 
 Violent movements were usually avoided. 
 A certain statuesque simplicity and grace- 
 fulness of pose accompanied the gestures 
 of the tragic actor. On the long and 
 narrow stage the figures were arranged in 
 picturesque and striking groups, and the 
 successive scenes in the play presented 
 to the eye of the spectator a series of
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 157 
 
 artistic tableaux. The representations of 
 tragic scenes and personages in ancient 
 works of art are characterized by a dignity 
 and a repose which call to mind the 
 creations of the scuptor." (" The Attic 
 Theatre," p. 277.) 
 
 It is a curious fact, well illustrating the 
 suggestive power of form on the stage, 
 that the method of statuesque staging, 
 when applied in the Russian theatre by 
 Meyerhold, provided a starting point for 
 an attempted revival of the Greek tradi- 
 tions. In this case, however, the detached 
 and statuesque actor was believed to be 
 able to bridge the barrier dividing the 
 world of the play from the world of the 
 audience, and so to establish the unity 
 of action which characterized the early 
 Greek theatre. The mistake of Meyerhold 
 and his followers was in confusing the 
 early forms of the Greek drama, in which 
 the unity was achieved by the identity 
 of the performance with the actual 
 (religious) life of the spectator, with the 
 later forms, in which the spectator was
 
 158 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 already divorced from the performer, 
 though united with him in the reality of 
 theatrical life. 
 
 In this latter unity the statuesque form 
 of staging doubtless played an important 
 part, though in the Greek theatre, owing 
 to its peculiar architectural construction, 
 in a lesser degree, perhaps, than in 
 other theatres of presentation, such as 
 the Mediaeval processional " pageant " and 
 the Elizabethan theatre. 
 
 We know of two forms, the stationary 
 and the processional, in which miracles 
 and moralities were produced in England 
 during the Middle Ages. Though closely 
 related by their common origin from the 
 liturgical play, and, possibly, by the fact 
 that the same actors may have performed 
 in both, I think, the stationery and the 
 processional forms must have differed 
 much more widely than this is suggested 
 by their modern titles. 
 
 Leaving the discussion of this difference 
 until a later stage of my examination of 
 theatrical forms, I will only remark that
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 159 
 
 in the stationary method of production 
 the performance was more of the represen- 
 tational nature, whilst in the processional 
 pageant it was distinctly presentational. 
 The element of the processional perform- 
 ance was a waggon which carried a 
 platform and a booth. As the action in 
 miracles demanded numerous localized set- 
 tings, a number of waggons, with separate 
 companies of actors in each, was used to 
 present successively the various moments 
 of the story. In Chester, York, Lincoln 
 and other places, where these per- 
 formances were organized by the town 
 authorities, the waggons passed from 
 one street to another, repeating at each 
 " station " their particular episode of the 
 play. Scaffolds, possibly movable, were 
 occasionally set up when an additional 
 platform was required to distinguish one 
 place of action from another within a 
 single episode, but as a rule performance 
 was confined to the waggon. Some sort 
 of seating accommodation was, apparently, 
 provided at the main " station," where
 
 160 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 the Mayor and other officials watched 
 the spectacle, but it stands to reason that, 
 with the waggons passing from street to 
 street, in most cases the people had to 
 range themselves round the waggon. 
 
 If we now picture to ourselves the 
 actual conditions of these performances, 
 we shall have to admit that it would be 
 difficult to imagine anything less suitable 
 for producing effects of the representational, 
 i.e. illusionistic character. The waggon 
 stood in the midst of real houses, and 
 was surrounded by a crowd of spectators. 
 The semblance of a building on the waggon, 
 with scanty properties inside it and on 
 the platform in front, was barely sufficient 
 to indicate the place of the action, and 
 could not possibly transform the stage 
 into something complete in itself, a world 
 of its own, as it were. Added to this, 
 there was the bridging effect of the 
 playing of actors, whose clear-cut figures 
 on a bare platform made them look as 
 if they had just jumped thereon from the 
 watching crowd, whilst the necessity of
 
 v: 
 
 W 
 
 5
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 161 
 
 conveying the story by means only of 
 their own acting, compelled them to 
 explain and present the play to the spec- 
 tator, and thus maintain an uninterrupted 
 contact between him and the stage. In fine, 
 the natural surroundings, the closeness of 
 the audience, the simplicity and conven- 
 tionalism of setting, and the prominence 
 of the actor, all combined to produce the 
 effect of a frank theatrical display, which 
 excluded the very possibility of a barrier 
 dividing the performance from the real 
 world in which the audience lived. In 
 considering the pageant play there is even 
 no need to take it in the processional 
 form described above. Single waggon 
 performances were much more frequent 
 than processional cycles, and formed the 
 principal unit of the Mediaeval English 
 theatre. Their greater popularity also 
 explains the fact that the Elizabethan 
 theatre was modelled on the lines of the 
 single pageant stage as that appeared in 
 inns and courtyards, and not on those 
 of the processional play, much less so of
 
 162 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 the stationary one with its distinct repre- 
 sentational character. 
 
 Our knowledge of the Elizabethan stage 
 is mostly conjectural, and there is still 
 a great divergence of opinion as to its 
 precise construction and working. Its 
 main features, however, have been made 
 sufficiently clear. In the Globe, the 
 Fortune, and a few other theatres of 
 which we have reliable information, the 
 stage building was not concealed behind 
 the proscenium arch as we see it in the 
 modern theatre, but was clearly in the 
 sight of the audience, forming an integral 
 part of the theatre building as a whole. 
 The stage platform (the " apron " stage, 
 as it has been called since) extended 
 some twenty feet into the auditorium, 
 and at its farthest end had a shallow 
 recess which, most probably, was divided 
 from the outer platform by a curtain. 
 
 Without going into arguments upon 
 the use of the method of presentation on 
 the Elizabethan stage, since this use is 
 universally admitted, I will only try to
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 163 
 
 indicate the connection which existed be- 
 tween this method and the position of 
 the spectator. Too much importance, it 
 seems to me, is being attached to the 
 conventional character of the Elizabethan 
 setting. Some authors explain this con- 
 ventionalism by the extraordinary power 
 of imagination, which they believe the 
 Shakespearian audience possessed and 
 had to exercise in cases of extreme incon- 
 gruity in the properties on the stage. 
 Whether this incongruity, as, for instance, 
 the presence of trees in the place which 
 was supposed to represent a room, did 
 actually exist, is a matter of argument 
 and conjecture. But the important point 
 is that even a greater fidelity to realism 
 in setting would not have destroyed the 
 fundamental convention which lay at 
 the basis of the Elizabethan stage. This 
 " convention " was the reality of per- 
 formance as performance, and it rested 
 not on any power of imagination, but on 
 its exact opposite the sense of actuality. 
 What matter, whether the location and
 
 164 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 character of the scene were indicated by 
 announcements on sign-boards, or were 
 suggested more directly by realistic pro- 
 perties on the inner stage ? The fact 
 that these properties were just stage 
 properties and nothing else, was too 
 patent to permit of any illusions as to 
 what was proceeding on the stage. Indeed, 
 we should be doing injustice to the 
 intelligence of the Elizabethan audiences 
 if we thought them capable of enter- 
 taining such illusions in the face of reality 
 which clearly contradicted them. One of 
 the constituents of that reality, the 
 architectural unity of the stage with the 
 rest of the theatre building, has already 
 been noticed. The other constituent, con- 
 sequent upon the former, was no less 
 decisive in its bearing on the effect of 
 performance. It should be remembered 
 that the essential condition of every kind 
 of illusionism is the existence of a dis- 
 tinctive atmosphere enveloping the world 
 of the play. But in the Elizabethan 
 theatre the atmosphere permeating the
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 165 
 
 stage was that of the auditorium, and 
 not of the play, since most of the action 
 took place on the unpropertied outer 
 stage, projected far into the yard, whilst 
 the properties on the inner stage formed 
 merely a background standing by itself 
 and detached from the actor. The latter, 
 therefore, was necessarily seen in the 
 statuesque guise, which further contributed 
 to the theatrical unity of the audience 
 and the performer, just as a group of men, 
 each one distinct and independent, would 
 feel themselves united on a common 
 ground when brought together in familiar 
 surroundings. The bridging effect of the 
 undisguised " theatrical ground " should 
 not, however, be confused with the 
 complete fusion of the spectator, the 
 actor, and the play in one continuous 
 world of action. The same statuesque 
 appearance of the actor, which by its 
 realism contributed to the theatrical unity, 
 also served to emphasize the essential 
 difference between the actor and the 
 spectator. The part of the former was
 
 166 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 to act, and of the latter to look on. The 
 distance which divided the two and deter- 
 mined the statuesque effect, ensured this 
 distribution of parts by keeping always 
 clear before the mind of the spectator his 
 distinctiveness from, and opposition to, the 
 personality of the actor. 
 
 It would be beyond the scope of the 
 present cursory review were I to enter 
 into discussion of further characteristics 
 of the Elizabethan, and particularly the 
 Shakespearian, stage. The problem of 
 presentation of character, as distinct 
 from presentation of situation, seems to be 
 particularly engaging, but I have to leave 
 it until another opportunity may occur. 
 I must adopt the same course also with 
 regard to the early forms of the theatres 
 in Italy, Spain, and France, in this case 
 mainly for the reason that my knowledge 
 of the actual conditions of performances in 
 those national theatres is too deficient to 
 permit of my embarking on so serious a 
 task as construing up the visual impres- 
 sions of their audiences.
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 167 
 
 The forms of unity between the audience 
 and the performance, which have been 
 examined so far, may be classed in two 
 groups which are related by one common 
 feature the identity of the performance 
 with the real life of the audience. When 
 the performance was a part of the religious 
 life of the audience, as in the early Greek 
 theatre and, probably, in the church 
 mystery-plays, the unity between the 
 world of the play enacted and that of 
 the audience was complete, and spectator 
 and actor were fused in one person. As 
 the theatre freed itself from its bond with 
 religion, the reality of the theatre as a 
 place for performing asserted itself ever 
 more strongly, leading to a division between 
 the actor and the spectator. We had 
 examples of this ' theatrical " form of 
 real life in the classical Greek theatre, 
 the Mediaeval processional pageant, and 
 the Elizabethan theatre. I now have to 
 refer to the third form of unity : the 
 unity in make-believe, in illusion. 
 
 It is a characteristic fact that the idea
 
 i68 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 of this kind of unity is entirely modern 
 in its origin. The ancient theatres never 
 occupied themselves with the problem of 
 bridging the stage and the auditorium, 
 as these were bridged in the very forms 
 of their architectural construction. Only 
 since a barrier was raised between the 
 spectator and the actor by the intro- 
 duction of the Italian picture-frame stage, 
 did the loss of the former unity begin to 
 be felt with an ever-increasing force. It 
 was natural that in the theatre so divided 
 solution was sought in various devices 
 capable of disguising the fundamental parti- 
 tion. Three methods have suggested them- 
 selves to the producer : (i) the audience 
 and the performance could be united 
 above the theatre, as it were, by creating 
 an illusion of another world temporarily 
 holding sway within the theatrical walls ; 
 (2) they could be joined in the auditorium 
 by bringing the actors over the stage to 
 act amongst the audience ; (3) lastly, they 
 could be brought together on the stage by 
 gulling the spectator into a belief that he
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 169 
 
 himself was living in the world of the play. 
 These methods have been best illustrated 
 by Meyerhold's stagings on one plane, Rein- 
 hardt's productions in amphitheatres, and 
 Evreinov's monodrama. As regards the 
 Russian experiments, they are dealt with 
 at length in the essay on the Russian 
 stage, so that only a few further remarks 
 need be made here. 
 
 In Meyerhold's productions the stage 
 as an independent reality ceased to exist. 
 The flat background close to the foot- 
 lights and the grouping of actors in a 
 line tended to destroy the materialistic 
 appearance of objects and transformed 
 the stage into a world of visionary images. 
 In this world continuity reigned supreme, 
 linking and tying all the objects in one 
 span of space. Facing it in the darkened 
 hall of the theatre was the audience, 
 which could see but little around itself 
 to provide a realistic contrast and so 
 confine the spiritualized images to a fixed 
 location in the building. With their 
 imagination aroused and their eyes riveted
 
 170 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 on the flat scenic world, the spectators 
 were no longer capable of maintaining 
 their attitude of mere onlookers. The 
 sense of continuity between themselves 
 and the images in front of them was 
 bound to arise. And so the stage and 
 the audience became blended in the 
 visionary world which seemed to lift them 
 above the reality of their theatrical 
 existence. 
 
 It will be observed that in this form of 
 staging the play is not presented in the 
 conditions of theatrical reality, but is 
 represented to the point of complete 
 illusion. The spectator is united both 
 with the performance as a whole, and 
 the performer as its constituent part. 
 Not that this effect was always or com- 
 pletely achieved in Meyerhold's produc- 
 tions (the obstacles of the theatrical 
 reality made this well-nigh impossible), 
 but the method did carry in itself the 
 possibility of its realization, and from 
 the point of view assumed in this study, 
 I think, I shall be justified in classing
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 171 
 
 Meyerhold's method as a characteristic 
 form of theatrical unity in terms of sub- 
 jective representation. 
 
 From flat decorative scenery, through 
 statuesque isolation, to congregate action 
 in the orchestra such was the line of de- 
 velopment along which Meyerhold was 
 proceeding during the first period of his 
 work. He had hardly approached its last 
 stage, however, when he turned off to the 
 method of presentation, endeavouring to 
 obtain unity in the undisguised fact of 
 a theatrical spectacle rather than in 
 elaborate attempts at substituting for the 
 reality of a theatre an illusion of some 
 other reality. But the thread of repre- 
 sentational unity left off by Meyerhold 
 was taken up by Reinhardt, who carried 
 it further, exploring new avenues in the 
 theatrical realm and obtaining results of 
 abiding interest. 
 
 The original contribution made by Rein- 
 hardt to the modern development of the 
 theatre is confined mainly to those of his 
 productions in which he attempted to do
 
 172 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 away with the stage and thus establish a 
 more intimate contact between the actor 
 and the audience. But interesting as his 
 staging of " Oedipus Rex " and " The 
 Miracle " were, they clearly showed that 
 Reinhardt himself had a somewhat con- 
 fused idea of the dramatic effect he was 
 striving to realize. With Reinhardt, as 
 with Meyerhold, the starting point for the 
 new departure was provided by the con- 
 ception of the Greek orchestra. It seems 
 that in the opinion of Reinhardt the in- 
 timate atmosphere which pervaded the 
 Greek theatre was produced by bringing the 
 performer and the spectator into a direct, 
 indeed, into an almost physical, contact. 
 Hence it followed, that given the same con- 
 tact in the modern theatre, the audience and 
 the play would be immediately united. This 
 condition of unity, Reinhardt believed, he 
 had found in transferring the acting from 
 the stage to the arena of a circus. 
 
 Now, to appreciate the actual effect he 
 was able to produce by this shifting of the 
 stage, we have to consider the theatrical
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 173 
 
 elements which were involved in his ex- 
 periment. 
 
 To begin with the idea of unity as realized 
 in the Greek theatre, we find Reinhardt 
 basing himself on a conception which, 
 as I have shown earlier, is essentially 
 wrong. Of the two forms evolved by the 
 Greeks, the unity of actual life (the theatre 
 of action), and the unity of theatrical life 
 (the theatre of presentation), he apparently 
 admitted only the first. But in inter- 
 preting it he again failed to grasp the 
 central fact that this unity was achieved 
 not so much by the contact of the performer 
 with the audience, as by the fundamental 
 identity of the subject of the play and the 
 performance itself, with the religious life 
 of the spectator. It follows, therefore, 
 that complete intimacy could be restored 
 to the theatre only by making performance 
 a part of general religious ritual. But 
 as the character of religious actuality was 
 never evident in Reinhardt's productions 
 (nor could it in all justice be expected to 
 be found there) , the result was that the gap
 
 174 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 between the actor and the spectator was 
 bridged by him more in appearance than 
 in reality. To find some common ground 
 on which the desired union could be effected, 
 Reinhardt had to resort to illusionism, sub- 
 stituting for the plane of religious actuality, 
 in which the audience and the actors of the 
 early Greek theatre freely and naturally 
 came into contact, the plane of an illusory 
 world represented by scenery and acting in 
 such a way as to induce the spectator to 
 believe that he himself formed a part of 
 that world. This characteristic basis of 
 Reinhardt's method is in itself a striking 
 proof of the sterile and decadent nature of 
 all such attempts at whipping up enfeebled 
 emotion by administering powerful doses 
 of an illusionary stimulant. 
 
 The above remarks indicate the points 
 of difference between the Greek theatre 
 and Reinhardt's productions. But dramatic 
 effects must be appraised independently of 
 their ties with the past, and the effect of 
 unity obtained by Reinhardt is fully entitled 
 to be discussed on its own merits.
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 175 
 
 In Reinhardt's productions the spectator 
 is placed in a direct contact with the per- 
 formers, and this causes him to be drawn into 
 the atmosphere of the play. The union is 
 effected in two forms : first, by leaving the 
 spectator in the position of a mere observer, 
 which is the main form, and second, by 
 bringing him almost to the verge of acting. 
 When merely observing the action of the 
 play, Reinhardt's spectator can be likened 
 to a member of a crowd watching a street 
 accident. As in the latter case, he is clearly 
 conscious of opposition between himself and 
 the actual heroes of the scene observed. 
 But whereas in the street crowd the onlooker 
 is face to face with real life, in a Rein- 
 hardt's performance the world of the play 
 remains imaginary, whilst the spectator is 
 transformed into a member of a real crowd 
 living in that world and witnessing the 
 events there proceeding. The effect of 
 unity in this case is, therefore, based not 
 so much on an illusion of reality of the play 
 enacted, as, if I may say so, on an illusion 
 of " reality of onlooking." This circum-
 
 176 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 stance serves to explain the use of the 
 second means employed by Reinhardt in 
 bridging the actors and the audience. The 
 reality of his being an onlooker in a crowd 
 is brought to the mind of the spectator 
 by the scenic transformation of the audi- 
 torium into a part of the general setting. 
 After what -had been said before on the 
 significance of various perceptions of space, 
 there will be no difficulty in understanding 
 the suggestive power which both these 
 means bring to bear on the spectator. 
 Thus, the first element in the impression 
 of unity is contributed by the fused masses 
 of spectators in the amphitheatre. The 
 architectural unity of the latter with the 
 arena, made manifest by the setting, sup- 
 plies another link. On the other hand, 
 the detached figures of the performers, 
 together with the marked forms of the 
 architectural scenery both in the arena and 
 the auditorium, qualify the elements of 
 unity as those operating within a realistic, 
 i.e., objectively present and inwardly dis- 
 continuous world. The last qualification,
 
 3 
 
 1 
 
 X 
 
 U 
 
 w 
 
 
 ffi
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 177 
 
 however, is apt to lose much of its restric- 
 tive force in the case of those scenes in which 
 the arena itself becomes crowded with 
 performers. The continuity of the amphi- 
 theatre is then extended from end to end 
 of the theatrical building, and the audience, 
 drawn into the whirl of action on the arena, 
 is lifted, so to speak, to the state of " poten- 
 tial actors," which brings the performance 
 almost to the verge of the theatre of action. 
 That this limit is never crossed in Rein- 
 hardt's productions, as it was in the early 
 period of the Greek orchestra, and that 
 the potential actor fails to convert his 
 worked up energy into a kinetic action, 
 is entirely due to the inner contradiction of 
 Reinhardt's method, which is hidden in 
 its substitution of make-belief emotionalism 
 for the religious actuality characteristic 
 of the true theatre of action. 
 
 The illusion of unity which Everemov 
 set out to attain by means of his " mono- 
 drama " is of a somewhat different nature. 
 It is suggested that by representing the 
 subjective experiences of the leading 
 
 M
 
 178 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 character, styled " Ego " (which, by the 
 way, would mean his continuous presence 
 on the stage, and would, therefore, con- 
 siderably restrict the choice of subjects 
 admitting of such treatment), the spec- 
 tator will be led to identify himself 
 with his actions and feelings, and so 
 will be, as it were, transferred bodily 
 on to the stage. Granting that this 
 effect can be obtained (and, personally, 
 I incline to doubt such possibility), the 
 world of the play, which will be facing 
 the spectator, will be either opposed to 
 him in its elements, i.e. discontinuous, 
 or embracing him in its unity, i.e. con- 
 tinuous. Accordingly, the staging will be 
 either extending in depth, or it will be flat. 
 But here we come to the forms of space on 
 the stage, which are imbued with their 
 own significance and are bound to influence 
 the premissed unity with the play. How 
 Evreinov proposes to deal with them I do 
 not know, but it is clear that the possible 
 combinations may contain a number of 
 counter-effects neutralizing one another,
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 179 
 
 and to try and analyse them here on mere 
 hypothetical grounds would be a thankless 
 and unprofitable task. 
 
 In the forms of the theatre so far re- 
 viewed the world of the spectator and 
 that of the play were brought into unity 
 either by bringing the play down into 
 the actual life of the spectator, or by 
 lifting the latter up into the illusory 
 reality of the play. The history of the 
 theatre shows, however, a number of 
 forms which aimed at attaining the exactly 
 opposite effect. The world of the play 
 was set off as a thing complete in itself, 
 whilst the spectator was kept rigorously 
 outside as a mere onlooker who chanced 
 to be present during the progress of events 
 on the stage. It may be said that only 
 in the modern theatre has this method 
 of representation found its complete 
 realization, but the tendency in this 
 direction was manifest throughout history. 
 Its earliest indications can be traced 
 in the Roman theatre which, though 
 based on the theatre of the Greeks, soon
 
 i8o THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 departed from their traditions. The 
 changes introduced by the Romans in 
 the theatre construction have already 
 been mentioned. The orchestra was 
 reduced in size and was used to accom- 
 modate spectators. The stage, now 
 brought nearer to the audience, was 
 enlarged and lowered ; it had a roof and 
 a front curtain (whether either of these 
 was present in the Greek theatre is still 
 a matter of guess-work), and, altogether, 
 gained in prominence and completeness. 
 These constructional changes, though 
 unable to destroy the architectural unity 
 of the theatre building entirely, must, 
 doubtless, have considerably weakened it 
 and, coupled with elaborate and realistic 
 settings, were bound to tell in the general 
 effect of dramatic performance. At all 
 events, the features here described provide 
 sufficient evidence of a pronounced tendency 
 towards representation that marked the 
 Roman stage. 
 
 Another early example of this method 
 I see in the Mediaeval stationary play. It
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 181 
 
 was performed in a ring arranged, it is 
 believed, in the same way as the preserved 
 Cornish rounds. The audience was seated 
 in a narrow amphitheatre, or simply on 
 the ground, whilst in the round itself 
 there were set up a number of scaffolds 
 standing for various buildings and 
 localities. As the plot of the miracle was 
 unfolded, the action passed from one 
 place in the ring to another, being per- 
 formed on the scaffolds when properties 
 were required to specify the action, and 
 on the ground when no such specification 
 seemed necessary. 
 
 In studying the nature of the stationary 
 performance we are, at the outset, able 
 to draw some interesting inferences from 
 the fact that it originated from the 
 liturgical play. In church mysteries and 
 miracles, just as in the early Dionysian 
 festivals, the moment of " spectacle " 
 was practically absent. The play formed 
 part and parcel of religious ritual and 
 was looked upon as completely real in 
 itself. Only gradually, mainly owing to
 
 182 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 the presence of comical scenes, the 
 liturgical play assumed the character of 
 a show, and it was then that it passed 
 to the market-place. The spectator and 
 the actor became clearly separated, but 
 the play itself still retained its religious 
 atmosphere and still formed a world 
 distinct from ordinary life. When miracles 
 began to be produced in rounds, the 
 church arrangement of acting in sedes 
 and plateae was faithfully reproduced in 
 the method of acting on scaffolds and 
 the ground. 1 So, what in church was a 
 part of the general ritual, in which all 
 those present took an intimate part, here 
 in the round became a world in itself 
 clearly detached from the world of the 
 audience. This point will be made even 
 more evident if we take into consideration 
 that the stage, i.e. the ring, had no points 
 of contact with the audience, either as 
 a part of one architectural whole, or as 
 an arena the theatrical nature of which 
 would need no demonstration. 
 
 1 Cf. Chambers' " The Medieval Stage," v. ii. p. 136.
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 183 
 
 On the contrary, it was clearly marked 
 off against the auditorium, which was 
 practically neutral, as a place complete 
 in itself and entirely bound up with the 
 world of the play. The degree of 
 illusionism possible in the stationary 
 performances is, of course, not to be 
 compared with the achievements of the 
 modern stage, but it was sufficient to 
 draw a line dividing the play and the 
 audience. Even the conventional setting, 
 which in the pageant play, by contrast 
 with realistic surroundings, helped to 
 produce the effect of a set-up show, must 
 have appeared here as a consistent and 
 real representation of some strange world. 
 As against this, there must be admitted 
 that the method of acting tended in the 
 opposite direction, the prologue and the 
 addresses to the audience creating a link 
 where the form of the stage enforced a 
 division. It cannot, therefore, be said 
 that performances in the rounds were 
 completely representational, but the pres- 
 ence in them of the latter element seems
 
 184 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 to have been markedly evident, whilst in 
 the pageant performances representation 
 was entirely absent. It should only be 
 added, in order to complete the character- 
 istic of the stationary play, that opposed 
 though the ring, with its play-atmosphere, 
 was to the audience, within itself it pre- 
 sented a picture of a fragmentary world 
 which greatly differed from the continuous, 
 fusing atmosphere which enveloped per- 
 formers in the church mysteries. Accord- 
 ingly the audience watching the stationary 
 play was being induced to take up the 
 attitude of mere observation, whilst in 
 the church the continuous unity amongst 
 the actors tended to spread to the 
 spectators and draw them into the per- 
 formance. 
 
 With this I will take leave of history 
 and pass to the forms which the desire 
 of keeping the stage completely self-suffi- 
 cient has assumed in our own time. Their 
 best illustration will again be found in 
 Russia where the Moscow Art Theatre 
 has been able to attain the heights of re-
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 185 
 
 presentation never reached in any other 
 country. Without needlessly repeating 
 what has been stated elsewhere I will only 
 try to answer the following two questions : 
 (i) How does the spectator in the Art 
 Theatre stand with relation to the play as 
 a whole, and (2) with relation to the in- 
 dividual elements that form that whole ? 
 
 The Italian picture-frame stage had 
 already provided the Art Theatre with the 
 initial division between the stage and 
 the auditorium. But before the advent of 
 naturalism the conventional scenery and 
 the lime-light conspicuousness of leading 
 characters were still able to maintain a 
 certain link with the audience. It was 
 necessary, therefore, to sweep away the 
 old traditions in setting, and to impart 
 unity and atmosphere to the acting, in 
 order that the play on the stage should 
 be facing the spectator as an independent 
 whole existing in accordance with its own 
 laws. The naturalistic method employed 
 by the Art Theatre supplied the means for 
 realizing the first object. Step by step,
 
 i86 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 starting with faithful reproduction of 
 realistic details, the Art Theatre concluded 
 by abolishing the footlights and intro- 
 ducing the so-called " fourth wall." 
 Similarly, in the way of acting, the 
 characters were jealously kept within the 
 strict boundaries imposed by the tone 
 and atmosphere of the play. Ensemble 
 became the watchword, and nothing was 
 considered so offensive as the position of a 
 figure pushed out to the front and torn 
 from its naturalistic background. It is 
 interesting to note that during its initial 
 period of development the Art Theatre 
 endeavoured to obtain unity on the stage 
 by the somewhat mechanical means of 
 overcrowding the scenes whenever there 
 was the slightest opportunity. It was 
 for this reason, it seems to me, that mass 
 scenes were at first so popular with the 
 Art Theatre. They helped to fill the 
 stage and join together its otherwise 
 scattered elements. When, later on, as 
 in Chekhov's plays, more subtle means of 
 creating a tone were worked out, the
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 187 
 
 Art Theatre began to admit, in an ever 
 growing degree, a certain disjunction of 
 characters, a discontinuity which eventu- 
 ally brought it to the method of staging 
 so characteristically marked in its produc- 
 tion of " The Inspector-General." Here 
 the characters acquired a sculpturesque 
 relief which seemed to expand the stage 
 and transform each figure into a world in 
 itself. 
 
 The two questions formulated above can 
 now be answered thus : (i) the spectator 
 in the Art Theatre stands opposed to 
 the play which is represented as a world 
 objectively given and entirely determined 
 by its own laws ; (2) the unity of this 
 world is that of tone and atmosphere, 
 whilst within it shows a marked tendency 
 towards subdivision and discontinuity. 
 
 With equal force the last definitions 
 may be applied to realism in general. 
 What distinguishes the realistic method 
 from every other method is not so much 
 its fidelity to nature, as its striving to 
 produce the illusion of an objective world
 
 i88 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 opposed to the spectator and inwardly 
 spilt up into innumerable self-centred 
 entities. 
 
 As objective existence on the stage is 
 conceivable only in terms of naturalism, 
 every other form of illusionism must, of 
 necessity, be subjective, i.e. it must in- 
 voke the spectator's power of imagination. 
 Subjectivism, therefore, implies a certain 
 intimate contact between the stage and the 
 audience and, as has been demonstrated 
 in the case of Meyerhold's, Evreinov's 
 and Reinhardt's productions, actually leads 
 to various forms of unity. One can con- 
 ceive, however, of a form of subjective 
 representation which would be based on 
 the perception of discontinuity. This would 
 happen in a case in which the nature 
 of the symbolical realities, subjectively 
 realized on the stage, would demand an 
 observing or contemplative attitude on 
 the part of the spectator. Just as in real 
 life, so in the world of our visions we can 
 assert our inner self against the realities 
 which are revealed to our spirit. We
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 189 
 
 mentally embrace and encompass the 
 realm in which they abide, and in so far 
 they are part of ourselves, but we project 
 them outward and hold them up before 
 our vision so that we may peer into their 
 nature and observe the interplay of their 
 activities. In the theatre of subjective 
 representation the nature of the illusionary 
 world may be such as to destroy our sense 
 of individuality and dissolve us entirely 
 in our vision (Meyerhold, Reinhardt), or 
 it may definitely mark a line between 
 ourselves and the images that are called 
 forth in us. The latter effect will, evi- 
 dently, be achieved when our projected 
 images and we ourselves are localized in 
 space. But localization means discon- 
 tinuity, and so the three-dimensional 
 space, particularly, as stereoscopically per- 
 ceived, becomes the ideal form in which 
 our position with regard to the stage is 
 made manifest to our senses. 
 
 Perhaps the nearest approach to this 
 effect will be found in the method of 
 staging advocated by Mr Gordon Craig.
 
 igo THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 His theories of the theatre, as I had 
 occasion to remark, are not a little con- 
 fusing, but looking deeper into the general 
 conceptions which underlie them, I think, 
 we shall perceive just this desire to set 
 up a world of spiritual beings unravelling 
 their inner nature before the observing 
 spectator. It is worth noticing with what 
 persistence Mr Gordon Craig strives to 
 emphasize the form of objects on the stage, 
 and how intent he is to produce the effect 
 of an infinite expanse in which figures and 
 objects stand out like lonely monuments 
 in a wild desert. This feature also throws 
 some light on his preaching of simplified 
 forms. Like other followers of the method 
 of subjective representation he endeavours 
 to create the illusion of true reality by 
 an appeal to the spectator's imagination. 
 But he differs from them in that he leaves 
 the spectator completely conscious of his 
 position in the auditorium (hence Mr 
 Craig's sympathy with the early theatres 
 of presentation), whilst he creates the 
 atmosphere of spirituality by simplifying
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 191 
 
 the appearance of things to the point 
 where they become transformed into 
 abstract entities. In this way he com- 
 bines subjective illusionism on the stage 
 with the sense of actuality in the audi- 
 torium, and welds them into one whole in 
 the spectator's vision of a fragmentary 
 world of spiritual realities. 
 
 Whilst discussing the forms of dis- 
 continuity in the theatre I cannot 
 help mentioning the perspective stage 
 employed in Italy during the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries. I am entirely 
 ignorant of the way in which this stage 
 was used by the Italians, and the effects 
 it served to produce. But when I look 
 at the old drawings, such as Serlio's and 
 Furttenbach's, I clearly perceive that in 
 these abstract architectural surroundings 
 the human figure becomes a small but 
 self-centred unit, opposed to every other 
 figure or object, and that so long as it 
 remains within the limits of this monu- 
 mental world, this latter stands before 
 the spectator as an independent entity
 
 192 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 composed of innumerable self-detached 
 elements. It is a source of regret that 
 the modern producers, in search of signifi- 
 cant forms for the method of representa- 
 tion, have completely overlooked the 
 signal expressiveness of the early per- 
 spective stage. 
 
 I do not propose to discuss here the 
 relative value of the various forms of the 
 theatre, reviewed in this essay. There 
 is, however, one aspect of the problem 
 which has a direct bearing on the 
 questions discussed, and should, therefore, 
 be pointed out. 
 
 In art, just as in the ordinary walks of 
 life, nothing succeeds like success. What- 
 ever means the artist may employ, it is 
 by the final effect that he will be judged. 
 Nevertheless, or rather because of that, it 
 is the means that justify the end, and not 
 the reverse. As applied to the theatre, 
 this resolves itself into the principle : 
 those forms of the theatre are justified 
 which are able to realize the effect they set 
 themselves to produce. But is it not true
 
 An Italian Perspective Scenery of the Seventeenth Century. 
 
 [From J. FURTTENBACH'S " Architect-lira Civilis" ULM, 1628]
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 193 
 
 that every medium has its limitations, 
 and that the theatre likewise can yield no 
 more than its natural properties will allow ? 
 However skilful the producer may be, if 
 he strains the resources of the theatre 
 beyond their natural limit, the effect is 
 bound to be false, and nothing is more 
 intolerable in art than inward falsity. 
 The method of objective illusionism has 
 been particularly criticized on this score, 
 and its efforts to transform the stage into 
 something that is entirely unlike the stage 
 have been considered its greatest offence 
 against the principles of art. There is 
 much in this charge which cannot be gain- 
 said, though the natural capacity of the 
 stage to undergo transformation is far from 
 being as restricted as is believed by many. 
 But what is still more important, a new 
 theatrical medium has sprung up amongst 
 us, which does away even with these re- 
 strictions. The much abused kinemato- 
 graph has come to show us the way IP 
 which we can obtain a complete command 
 of space. The " hussy " is still in her 
 
 N
 
 194 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 teens, but that she will grow up into a 
 lady of charming manners and refined 
 taste is, to my mind, beyond doubt. We 
 shall see then the problems which engage 
 the modern theatre restated in new terms 
 and solved on new lines. I can foresee 
 three of the forms which will thus be 
 evolved. The form of objective representa- 
 tion, in which the spectator will watch 
 the world of real life as if he were 
 invisibly present in the events portrayed. 
 The form of subjective representation in 
 which he will contribute his imaginative 
 faculties to creating the illusion of con- 
 ventional reality. And, lastly, the form 
 of presentation in which the kinemato- 
 graphic picture will be just a moving 
 picture displayed on the theatrical wall in 
 front of the theatrical audience. The 
 perception of space on which these forms 
 will depend will accordingly vary from 
 the complete stereoscopic and, therefore, 
 discontinuous effect in the first form, to 
 the flat and continuous effect on the 
 *' stage," and the realistic and discon-
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 195 
 
 tinuous effect in the auditorium, in the 
 last form. There will be no complete con- 
 tinuity and no " theatre of action " in the 
 kinematograph, as the position of the 
 spectator, the actor and the play will 
 be strictly denned as against each other. 
 For such reason, if for no other, I parti- 
 cularly welcome this new development of 
 the art of the theatre, and I do so the 
 more willingly, because I am a convinced 
 spectator, jealous of my own personality, 
 and eager to watch a spectacle, but never 
 to act in somebodv else's show.
 
 196 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 III 
 TABLE OF FORMS OF THE THEATRE 1 
 
 A. FORMS OF UNITY IN THE THEATRE 
 
 i. The audience and the play united 
 through the identity of the play with 
 
 real life. 
 / 
 
 (a) Objective unity in action : audience 
 
 actors ; the world of action 
 continuous. 
 
 (Theatre of action : the early 
 Greek theatre, religious plays.) 
 
 (b) Objective unity in observation : 
 
 audience spectators ; performance 
 theatrical reality ; audience united 
 
 1 The classification of theatre-forms here given does 
 not attempt to record all the forms revealed through- 
 out history. Being analytical in its nature, i.e. pro- 
 ceeding from certain abstract conceptions, it is justified 
 inasmuch as it succeeds in bringing ^out the elements 
 and the main types of forms of the theatre.
 
 LIVING SPACE AND THE THEATRE 197 
 
 with the play, but opposed to each 
 character. 
 
 (Theatre of presentation : the 
 Mediaeval stage, the Shakespearian 
 theatre.) 
 
 2. The audience and the play united 
 in the illusory world of the play 
 (subjective unity in representation) 
 Audience part actors. 
 
 (a) The illusory world continuous 
 
 (Meyerhold's staging of Maeterlinck, 
 Reinhardt) . 
 
 (b) The illusory world realistically 
 
 discontinuous (Evreinov's " mono- 
 drama "). 
 
 B. FORMS OF DISUNITY IN THE 
 THEATRE. 
 
 The audience and the play stand opposed. 
 
 i. The illusory world discontinuous (ob- 
 jective representation in the Moscow
 
 198 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 Art Theatre ; subjective representa- 
 tion in Mr Gordon Craig's method of 
 staging). 
 
 2. The illusory world continuous (presenta- 
 tion in flat kinematograph pictures).
 
 A NOTE ON MR GORDON 
 CRAIG'S THEORIES
 
 A NOTE ON MR GORDON 
 CRAIG'S THEORIES 
 
 No one will deny Mr Craig artistic genius 
 or striking individuality. He feels the 
 shortcomings of the modern theatre and 
 intuitively, as an artist, conceives the forms 
 in which it would find a loftier and more 
 perfect expression. He has failed, however, 
 to reconcile his many and various sym- 
 pathies and antipathies in a clear and 
 harmonious theory. Perhaps, personally, 
 he does not require one, trusting entirely 
 to his own sense of what is true art in 
 the theatre. But, unfortunately, the shame- 
 ful indifference of the English public has 
 given him practically no chance of testing 
 his ideas on a proper scale, and still keeps 
 them in the state of abstract moulds which 
 may, presumably, require considerable re- 
 shaping before they are found perfectly 
 adapted to the nature of the material 
 
 201
 
 202 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 worked upon. This fact creates a strange 
 position : the artist has to be judged not 
 by his actual work but by the views he 
 holds, which, obviously, is most abnormal. 
 But as views, whoever holds them, exer- 
 cise their own influence and have an in- 
 dependent existence, it becomes necessary 
 for the critic to subject them to an im- 
 partial examination, and to bring out their 
 essential elements when these happen to 
 be enfolded in a tissue of conflicting 
 thoughts. 
 
 The confusion of Mr Craig's ideas will 
 be seen from the following quotation : 
 " As I have written elsewhere the Theatre 
 will continue its growth and actors will 
 continue for some years to hinder its 
 development. But I see a loophole by 
 which in time the actors can escape from 
 the bondage they are in. They must 
 create for themselves a new form of acting, 
 consisting for the main part of symbolical 
 gesture. To-day they impersonate and 
 interpret ; to-morrow they must repre- 
 sent and interpret ; and the third day
 
 MR GORDON CRAIG'S THEORIES 203 
 
 they must create. By this means style 
 may return. To-day the actor imper- 
 sonates a certain being. He cries to the 
 audience : ' Watch me ; I am now pre- 
 tending to be so and so, and I am now 
 pretending to do so and so/ and then he 
 proceeds to imitate as exactly as possible 
 that which he has announced he will 
 indicate. For instance he is Romeo. He 
 tells the audience that he is in love, and 
 he proceeds to show it by kissing Juliet. 
 This, it is claimed, is a work of art ; it is 
 claimed for this that it is an intelligent 
 way of suggesting thought. Why why, 
 that is just as if a painter were to draw 
 upon the wall a picture of an animal with 
 long ears and then write under it, ' This is 
 a donkey.' The long ears make it plain 
 enough, one would think, without the 
 inscription, and any child of ten does as 
 much. The difference between the child of 
 ten and the artist is that the artist is he 
 who by drawing certain signs and shapes 
 creates the impression of a donkey ; and 
 the greater artist is he who creates the
 
 204 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 impression of the whole genus of donkey, 
 the spirit of the thing." (" On the Art of 
 the Theatre," p. 61-62.) In another part 
 of his book Mr Craig says : "In England 
 we find a clever actor laughing at his part 
 and himself, and winking all the time at 
 the audience, horrified least he may be 
 taken seriously. . . . Here in Moscow 
 they risk the blunder and achieve the 
 distinction of being the best set of actors 
 upon the European stage." (Ibid., p. 135.) 
 The last quotation seems to indicate that 
 Mr Craig is opposed to any display of 
 " acting " (" winking," " mockery " as he 
 styles it), and is heart and soul with the 
 earnestness of the Moscow company who 
 seem to live in their parts. In the terms 
 used in this book he takes his stand with 
 representation against presentation. Then 
 we see that in the forms of representation 
 he strongly denounces naturalism, whilst 
 favouring symbolism. But here we come 
 to the crucial point. What is Mr Craig's 
 symbolism ? Judging by his writings it is 
 a form of spiritualism in which symbols are
 
 MR GORDON CRAIG'S THEORIES 205 
 
 not mere generalizations of the concrete 
 facts but are themselves living realities. 
 At the same time he often speaks of 
 symbolism as merely a method of artistic 
 simplification, which is, of course, an alto- 
 gether different thing. Now spiritualism, 
 pure and simple, makes no claim to any 
 specific form of its realization in the 
 theatre. Apart from the theatre of action 
 in which it can hold an unrestricted sway, 
 in the theatre-spectacle spiritualism can be 
 realized in scenic forms by the methods 
 both of representation (either objective or 
 subjective) and of presentation. The same 
 applies to simplification, the use of which 
 also is not restricted to any of the 
 two methods mentioned. How are we 
 then to understand Mr Craig's opposition 
 of creative or symbolical acting to imper- 
 sonation and interpretation ? If he sees 
 the object of the theatre in giving life on 
 the stage to spiritual realities, this can 
 surely be done only by impersonation. If 
 on the other hand, the object lies in reduc- 
 ing manifold impressions of life to some
 
 206 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 essential simplified forms, then, as surely, 
 the actor does not create but merely in- 
 terprets. In addition to this we find Mr 
 Craig often expressing sympathy with the 
 old English and Italian theatres which, 
 we know, exclusively employed the method 
 of presentation. Small wonder that as a 
 result of all this confusion of principles, 
 Mr Craig's conception of theatrical produc- 
 tion can be called anything but clear. Yet, 
 in spite of its theoretical obscurity, there is 
 sound sense and a clear message in the 
 vision of the theatre which hovers before 
 the mind of Mr Craig. Elsewhere I attempt 
 to translate it into clear terms of the 
 theatre -grammar, reconciling in the con- 
 crete and particular instance what in its 
 theoretical form was a mass of contradic- 
 tions. Thus it is only in concrete realiza- 
 tion and not in theory that Mr Craig's 
 vision of a new theatre can find its true 
 justification.
 
 THE KINEMATOGRAPH AS ART
 
 THE KliNEMATOGRAPH AS ART 1 
 
 THE wonderful popularity enjoyed by the 
 kinematograph during the last decade has 
 been for a long time a subject of eager 
 discussion in those circles which have the 
 interests of the theatre at heart. The 
 various groups of art-workers connected 
 with the theatre, such as the dramatists, 
 the actors, and the artists, are directly 
 involved in the problem, and it is interesting 
 to note how different has been the attitude 
 revealed toward it by each of these sections. 
 The artists, perhaps the most cultured of 
 these three groups from the standpoint of 
 art, have simply ignored the kinematograph 
 as something so crude and inartistic as to 
 be unworthy of serious notice. It is true 
 a few genuine attempts have been made at 
 reform, but for several reasons, of which 
 
 1 The above essay was originally published in the 
 American quarterly, The Drama, and is repioduced 
 here with a few slight alterations.
 
 2io THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 the principal was that the artists failed to 
 comprehend the real nature of the medium, 
 they all proved a complete failure. 
 
 The attitude of the majority of the 
 actors has been much more condescending. 
 Those amongst them who have generally 
 concerned themselves very little with mat- 
 ters of art have accepted the kinematograph 
 with the docile humility that is accorded 
 to all things of the natural order. They 
 have transferred to the new invention 
 whatever knowledge of drama they had 
 gained on the legitimate stage, in addition 
 to which they supplied only one new 
 feature an extreme exaggeration in 
 mimicry and action, which they held to 
 be the chief peculiarity of moving pictures. 
 On the other hand, the more advanced 
 members of the theatrical profession, those 
 who have really been anxious to propagate 
 and establish on the stage the principles 
 of vital art, however much they may have 
 diverged in their interpretation of them, 
 at once realized the danger which threatened 
 the drama from the encroachment of the
 
 THE KINEMATOGRAPH AS ART 211 
 
 modern kinematograph theatres, and did 
 not hesitate to proclaim a most resolute 
 opposition in an endeavour to protect 
 their art from being contaminated by this 
 " vulgar mechanical device." 
 
 Thus we see those sections of the com- 
 munity, for whom art has been an object 
 of vital faith, have rejected the kinemato- 
 graph as a medium devoid of any artistic 
 qualities. But it would be wrong to infer 
 that it has always lacked faithful champions. 
 Strange as it may appear, these have come 
 from the group which is furthest removed 
 from the actuality of the problems of the 
 theatre, namely the dramatists. As might 
 be expected, the only fault the " littera- 
 teurs " have been able to detect in moving 
 pictures has been found in the plot, and 
 as a consequence they have set themselves 
 the task of remedying it. With an enviable 
 ease they began to pour out elaborate 
 philosophical dramas, mystery plays, 
 tragedies, " literary " melo-dramas, and 
 what not, in order to demonstrate what 
 41 artistic " possibilities had been lying dor-
 
 212 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 mant in the neglected and abused kine- 
 matograph. Once they found that the 
 theatre was no longer held in popular 
 esteem, they had no compunction in erecting 
 their rostrum on the picture-screen, the 
 more so as this, in their opinion, served 
 at once to achieve two objects the 
 popularization of the drama and the eleva- 
 tion of moving pictures to a higher artistic 
 level. I need only mention such names as 
 Gabriel D'Annunzio and Leonid Andreyev 
 to show what resolute and self-confident 
 arch-priests of literature have undertaken 
 the task of reforming the moving-picture 
 play. But though their attempts have raised 
 a whole host of arguments and contro- 
 versies amongst all interested in the theatre, 
 there can be little doubt that failure must be 
 the inevitable result of their efforts. Their 
 defence of the pictures is as inherently wrong 
 as is the opposition of artists and actors, 
 since both are the outcome of a complete 
 failure to understand the peculiar nature of 
 the kinematograph as a medium of art. 
 But if the dramatists' defence leaves us
 
 THE KINEMATOGRAPH AS ART 213 
 
 entirely unmoved, as coming virtually 
 from " outsiders," we cannot but deplore 
 the opposition on the side of those who 
 ought to be the first and foremost exponents 
 of the new art of moving pictures. For 
 there is an artistic future for the kinemato- 
 graph a future as great as any form of 
 artistic drama can hope to attain. We 
 may ignore the criticisms of those who are 
 sufficiently advanced to condemn as utter 
 vulgarity the modern moving pictures as 
 well as photographs, gramophones, and most 
 other products of the over-resourceful 
 mechanical genius of our time. These well- 
 intentioned dilletantes are only victims of 
 the prevailing artistic conventions, and 
 have no standard of their own to discrimin- 
 ate between what is art and what is not. 
 The future of the kinematograph does not 
 rest with them. It depends upon those en- 
 lightened and liberal lovers of art who can 
 see beyond the conventions of the moment, 
 who possess a range of sympathies which 
 is already wide enough to embrace such 
 divergent revelations of art as, for example,
 
 214 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 the static art of Egypt, the decorativeness 
 of Eastern art, and the rudimentality of 
 Sezanne and Van Goch, or referring strictly 
 to the domain of drama, the ancient tragedy, 
 the puppet show and the productions of 
 modern reformers. Theirs is the task of 
 creating the canons and standards, and 
 eventually, of course, the conventions of the 
 art of the kinematograph, and of building 
 up a tradition that will, in due course, pass 
 through the period when it is merely 
 fashionable to attain finally the state of 
 an acknowledged form of artistic expression. 
 
 It is with the object of securing a more 
 sympathetic attitude for this, at the present 
 time so much discredited, medium that I 
 venture, however conscious of the heresy, 
 to advance a plea for the kinematograph as 
 a vehicle of real art-expression. 
 
 Much has been said in the Press about 
 the issues involved in the problem of 
 moving pictures : their special appeal to 
 the masses ; their competition with the 
 theatre ; whether they are to supersede 
 the latter or whether they are doomed to
 
 THE KINEMATOGRAPH AS ART 215 
 
 be merely a transient fashion and eventu- 
 ally disappear ; their artistic crudity, i.e. 
 whether they are a reversal to the methods 
 of the Booth and whether they indicate 
 the birth of a new democratic art ; and 
 many other similar questions. With these 
 issues I am little concerned in this article. 
 Without wishing to detract from their 
 interest and importance, I hold that they 
 leave entirely aside the most essential 
 factor of the problem the peculiar nature 
 of the medium which alone should form 
 the basis of its possible artistic application. 
 Before, however, I am able to enter upon a 
 discussion of this problem, there has to be 
 cleared away a number of popular mis- 
 conceptions, held, alas ! with such tenacity 
 as to make one despair whether any argu- 
 ments against them will ever prevail. In 
 the sphere of ideas as that of biology it 
 would seem that the lowest forms are the 
 most tenacious of life. 
 
 One of the first duties of the critic is 
 discrimination. However, so far as the 
 kinematograph is concerned, the criticisms
 
 216 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 so liberally hurled at it from all sides have 
 been little distinguished by this character. 
 Two entirely distinct things have been 
 persistently confused by all critics the 
 kinematograph as a medium, and the kine- 
 matograph theatre as we know it at the 
 present time. That the second is below 
 criticism indeed, something coarse, crude, 
 and altogether ugly can be easily and un- 
 reservedly admitted. But to deduce from 
 this fact, as is often done, the impossi- 
 bility of an artistic kinematograph would 
 betray lack of logic and imagination. It is 
 evident, in the first place, that many draw- 
 backs of the modern kinema-drama are in 
 no way connected with the kinematograph 
 as a peculiar medium of dramatic expres- 
 sion. To take, for instance, the vulgar 
 realism of moving pictures which is so much 
 complained of. Is it a peculiar feature of 
 the kinematograph ? The students of the 
 theatre will agree that naturalism as vulgar 
 as this had been reigning on the legitimate 
 stage long before the kinematograph was 
 ever able to compete with it. The pictures
 
 THE KINEMATOGRAPH AS ART 217 
 
 simply followed along the beaten track, 
 bringing to logical absurdity what the 
 legitimate drama, not endowed with the 
 infinite resourcefulness of its competitor, 
 could only pursue half-way. 
 
 It is unnecessary to dwell upon the many 
 similar drawbacks of the kinematograph. 
 I am not so much concerned with what 
 it actually is as with what it might be. 
 The problem that really matters may be 
 stated in the words : is the kinematograph 
 a medium capable of artistic achievement 
 in the two fields that make up the art of 
 the stage, the dramatic and the pictorial ? 
 The answer to this question necessarily 
 involves a discussion of the vexed question 
 of mechanical art. However reluctant I 
 am to touch upon this controversy, so 
 much abused and of so little profit to 
 anyone concerned, I am unable to avoid it 
 altogether. So bowing my will before the 
 inevitable, I shall try to dispose of it in the 
 briefest possible manner. 
 
 It is often contended that automatic 
 mechanism can never attain to anything
 
 218 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 like artistic perfection, and that conse- 
 quently there is no artistic future for the 
 kinematograph. 
 
 It is obvious that the whole argument 
 stands or falls by the definition of " mechan- 
 ism." But this definition is never stated 
 in anything like exact terms. That there 
 are no absolutely automatic mechanisms 
 hardly needs pointing out. They all must 
 be controlled by human power at one 
 moment or another, and what is still more 
 important, they are all products of human 
 intelligence, and whatever forces there may 
 be involved in their working, these forces 
 are brought together by the action of 
 human thought which, compressed and 
 wound up like a spring, constitutes their 
 actual prime-mover throughout the whole 
 process of their working. The problem is 
 thus reduced to the definition of that degree 
 of independence from immediate human 
 control and power which mechanism, as 
 such, can possess. This, however, is so 
 indeterminate that we see similar kinds 
 of action, in one case styled mechanical,
 
 THE KINEMATOGRAPH AS ART 219 
 
 and in another case highly individual. 
 Who will doubt, for instance, that the 
 action of an organ played at a concert is 
 individual, and that of a locomotive engine 
 mechanical ? (I pass over the contro- 
 versial question of the piano-player). And 
 yet it cannot be disputed that the second 
 requires as much skill and personal control 
 as the first. Let it be noted, the point 
 of the argument is not whether their work is 
 art or not art, but whether it is mechanical 
 or non-mechanical. I maintain that there 
 is no real distinction between the one and 
 the other, and that both can be made to 
 serve artistic ends if properly used. 
 
 One more example of the prevailing con- 
 fusion of thought on this subject. The 
 gramophone is admittedly a mechanical 
 contrivance. So is the telephone. Yet no 
 one, listening through the telephone to an 
 opera, ever says that the music one 
 hears is a mechanical production. The sole 
 difference, however, that exists between 
 this music and its record on the gramo- 
 phone, is that the gramophone fixes only
 
 220 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 one stage of the process the vibrations of 
 the membrane and allows one at will to 
 " switch on," so to speak, the flow of sound, 
 whilst the telephone receives and transmits 
 the sound in one continuous process. 
 
 The above two examples show not only 
 how vague is the popular use of the term 
 " mechanical," but reveal also the elements 
 that go to make up the significance of this 
 term. These elements are : (i) complexity 
 of mechanism, (2) the number of inter- 
 mediate stages, and (3) the period of time 
 between the application of human power 
 and the appearance of the effect. It is only 
 necessary to rid the mind of prejudice for a 
 moment, to be able to see that not a single 
 one of these elements is in any way incom- 
 patible with artistic work and achievement. 
 And if at the present time mechanical 
 methods of production under our com- 
 mercial system have served to destroy 
 whatever artistic feeling there has been 
 in the producer, this speaks not against 
 the mechanical method as such, but against 
 the way it is used in our time.
 
 THE KINEMATOGRAPH AS ART 221 
 
 Now let us examine the problem itself. 
 Let us first endeavour to realize what is 
 the peculiar nature of the kinema-drama, 
 and then we shall be able to see how far 
 this " mechanical " medium lends itself to 
 artistic expression. 
 
 Perhaps it is one of the most startling 
 facts about the kinematograph productions 
 that the actors who, at the present time, 
 play for the pictures are all members of 
 the legitimate dramatic profession. Their 
 attainments on the theatre stage need not 
 be discussed in this instance, but it stands 
 beyond dispute that of kinema-acting they 
 understand very little indeed. The kinema- 
 drama raises some of the most fundamental 
 problems of art. But what do they know 
 of them ? Are they aware that the kine- 
 matograph play is the most abstract form 
 of the pantomime ? Do they realize that 
 if there is any stage on which the laws of 
 movement should reign supreme, it is the 
 kinematograph stage ? If they did, they 
 would not have monopolized the kinemato- 
 graph play, but would have left it to the
 
 222 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 dancers, clowns, and acrobats who do know 
 something about the laws of movement. 
 By no means do I presume that dancers 
 and clowns are necessarily artists. But 
 movement is their natural element, and it 
 is also movement that constitutes the real 
 nature of the kinematograph. The patrons 
 and devotees of present-day pictures may 
 boast of their " wonderful realistic effects," 
 but this popular conception only betrays the 
 complete failure to grasp this one salient 
 fact, that viewed from the standpoint of 
 the drama, just as from many other stand- 
 points of which more will be said later on, 
 the kinematograph is essentially and pre- 
 eminently dynamic. 
 
 It is necessary at this point to realize 
 the effect of picture-plays if this principle 
 of pure movement was recognized through- 
 out. " Rolling eyes " and wild gesticula- 
 tion would be abolished. Sham " natural " 
 talking would give place to mimicry and 
 gesture, free and eloquent. Movement of 
 actors would no longer imitate actual life 
 but would synthetically express it in the
 
 THE KINEMATOGRAPH AS ART 223 
 
 peculiar laws of rhythmic motion. Panto- 
 mimes, harlequinades, and ballets would 
 take the place of the present-day melo- 
 dramas and comical pictures, thus giving an 
 adequate expression to the wordless nature 
 of the medium. Would it be possible, 
 then, to argue that there is no art in the 
 Mnematograph ? So far as the dramatic 
 aspect is concerned this, at any rate, would 
 constitute a most decisive step in the 
 direction of art. And other advances would 
 immediately follow once the fundamental 
 principle was firmly established. 
 
 It is often contended that the presence 
 in bodily form of the actor in the play is the 
 sine-qua-non of artistic drama. This view is 
 held both by those who believe in realism 
 on the stage and by those who do not. The 
 attitude of the latter is particularly droll. 
 After disposing of all the realistic mummery, 
 they cling to the last citadel of " the true 
 to nature " gospel of art the bodily shell 
 of the actor. Why, is it not his personality 
 that really matters ? And is that expressed 
 only in the frail body of the actor ? To the
 
 224 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 spectator of some artistic culture it is in 
 a sense irrelevant whether the acting on the 
 stage is performed by living persons, by 
 dolls, or by kinematograph shadows. The 
 effect in each case must necessarily be 
 different, but only in so far as the artistic 
 properties of each of these media of drama 
 differ from each other. Their absolute 
 artistic value remains unaffected by their 
 being animate or inanimate. In fact, it 
 is open to argument, whether man is at all 
 suitable as a medium of dramatic art as 
 is the contention of Mr Gordon Craig and 
 others. But we need not go so far. In 
 the case of kinema-drama we do not 
 dispense with the actor. We dispense only 
 with his body. Perhaps those who cannot 
 reconcile themselves to this fact will find 
 comfort in reflecting upon the time when 
 poets were gradually led to recognize that 
 singing a poem in person is not the only 
 way of rendering the artistic beauties of 
 the composition. In our age of reduplica- 
 tion, to the list of arts which already resort 
 to this process (poetry, music, lithography,
 
 THE KINEMATOGRAPH AS ART 225 
 
 etching) we now add the sacred art of the 
 theatre. It is a process of natural develop- 
 ment, and it would be sheer stupidity on 
 our part if we continued to ignore it or to 
 notice only its outward features. Just as 
 it did not degrade the profession of the 
 painter when he realized the artistic possi- 
 bilities of lithography, so it will not degrade 
 the modern actor if he makes full use of 
 the new medium which human ingenuity 
 has placed at his command. The real and 
 the only problem for him is to find out 
 what actually constitutes the peculiar pro- 
 perties of the medium, and how these 
 properties should be managed to achieve 
 the highest artistic effect. The fact that 
 the problem can be solved only by practice 
 and experiment, and that present-day 
 kinematograph practice has produced, in 
 the artistic sense, some most appalling 
 results, must not be taken as proof of the 
 inartistic nature of the medium itself. 
 The truth of this statement has been 
 shown above as applied to the playing of 
 actors. It will be seen that it is equally
 
 226 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 true applied to the pictorial element of 
 stage production. 
 
 The peculiar optical effects of the kine- 
 matograph are a resultant of two processes : 
 the photographic process of making the 
 film, and the process of projecting the film 
 on to the screen. 
 
 What artistic possibilities do these pro- 
 cesses possess ? 
 
 There is no need to enter, in this instance, 
 upon a discussion of photography as art. 
 Its shortcomings as a medium and the 
 triteness of the average photographic work 
 can hardly be disputed. But only prejudice 
 can deny it any artistic quality whatever. 
 The magnificent work so often found at 
 various photographic exhibitions proves 
 beyond doubt that photography and art 
 are not so incompatible as some of our 
 purists would like us to believe. 
 
 The same is the case with kinema- 
 photography. So long as it remains in 
 the hands of mere operators and chemists, 
 so long will its pictorial value be on a 
 par with the artistic conceptions held by
 
 THE KINEMATOGRAPH AS ART 227 
 
 these craftsmen. And this can hardly be 
 wondered at, seeing that the nature of the 
 new medium, to be properly understood, 
 requires such a culture of mind as is seldom 
 met with even amongst professional ex- 
 ponents of art. 
 
 The problem presented is no less than 
 that of determining the exact degree of sig- 
 nificance attaching to the various dramatic 
 and pictorial forms of the medium. 
 
 At the outset there must be stated one 
 important fact. The kinematograph has at 
 its command two distinct ways of producing 
 plays : the two-dimensional production on 
 the ordinary screen, and the three-dimen- 
 sional production by means 01 different 
 stereoscopic devices and of the kine- 
 plastikon. Too much stress cannot be 
 laid upon this distinction. Its importance 
 is enormous since in the two forms of 
 space of two and of three dimensions we 
 obtain two aspects of the world which are 
 opposed to each other in their very elements. 
 
 Without repeating the arguments dis- 
 cussed elsewhere in this volume, I will
 
 228 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 only state that the setting on the stage 
 may either emphasize the reality and 
 independence of the world portrayed, or 
 it may suggest its unity with the spectator. 
 It achieves the first effect by enclosing the 
 action within the architectural boundaries 
 of the stage and by creating the percep- 
 tion of figures and objects isolated in space. 
 It achieves the second effect by destroying 
 the opposition of the architectural forms 
 of the stage and the amphitheatre, and by 
 drowning the forms of objects in the visual 
 continuity that tends towards the percep- 
 tion of a single plane. 
 
 With certain qualifications, the same 
 principles obtain in the kinematograph, 
 determining its dramatic and pictorial pre- 
 sentment. Compared with the legitimate 
 stage or painting on flat surfaces, the 
 command of space possessed by the kine- 
 matograph is infinitely greater than theirs. 
 As it is able to discriminate between the 
 different methods of pictorial presentation, 
 it is certainly obliged to do so. Unlike 
 the others, it can afford to be logical. Its
 
 THE K1NEMATOGRAPH AS ART 229 
 
 pictures on the ordinary screen are already 
 as flat as paintings. But it would only 
 gain in effect, and would reveal the inner 
 monistic nature of the two-dimensional 
 space, if it were more consistent and elimin- 
 ated every atom of natural relief. Play of 
 lines and colours is all that is required 
 on the flat screen, and if properties of the 
 medium have, as everybody believes now- 
 adays, any importance in the achievement 
 of artistic effect, then it is obvious that 
 the kinematograph can only gain by con- 
 sistent application of flat setting to pictures 
 on the ordinary screen. 
 
 On the other hand, to represent the 
 world as distinct from the spectator and 
 individualized within itself, the method of 
 three-dimensional staging affords both the 
 actor and the pictorial artist an unlimited 
 scope for new and altogether original 
 artistic achievements. 
 
 The stagings of Mr Gordon Craig, for 
 instance, unfetter and expand the stage. 
 They are not theatrical in the narrow sense 
 of the word. They purport to create on the
 
 230 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 boards a world of their own one entirely 
 distinct from the stage world, however far, 
 at the same time, it may be removed 
 from the realistic. But the stage is only a 
 stage, and the space on it has its well- 
 known limitations. The case with the 
 stereoscopic kinematograph is different. Its 
 command of space is practically boundless. 
 It can create another world and place it 
 before the eyes of the audience that they 
 may watch it with admiration, sympathy, or 
 disdain. The stereoscopic kinematograph, 
 in the hands of real artists, could raise even 
 realistic drama (in its worldless form, of 
 course) to its proper position as representing 
 the world objectively stated and watched 
 from outside. 
 
 As to the pictorial artist, both the plane 
 and the stereoscopic moving picture open 
 before him a new field for artistic develop- 
 ment. It would be impossible at the 
 present stage of the kinematograph to 
 discuss in detail the multifarious problems 
 arising out of the application of this new 
 process. Only practical experience could
 
 THE KINEMATOGRAPH AS ART 231 
 
 give satisfactory answers to many of the 
 questions. But there are some general 
 features of the kinema-pictorial process, 
 which already allow of analysis and 
 discussion. 
 
 The most important of them is the 
 dynamic character of the kinematograph. 
 In addition to the third dimension, which 
 the kinematograph provides by stereoscopic 
 projection, it possesses yet another co- 
 ordinate time. How does this element 
 enter into the pictorial and plastic arts ? 
 We know the Egyptians answered this 
 question by discarding the notion itself. 
 Instead of transient time they imparted 
 to their immovable, frigid productions a 
 spirit of eternity. The Greek, the Renais- 
 sance, and most modern artists tried to 
 give the impression of movement by arrang- 
 ing the elements of a picture or a statue 
 in such a way that the eye had to travel 
 over the production and, by following the 
 contortions of the muscles of a moving animal 
 or man, gained the desired impression. 
 A further, though hardly successful, step
 
 232 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 was made by Picasso and other cubists. 
 Instead of attempting representation of 
 movement, they simply assumed that the 
 longer it takes you to disentangle their re- 
 buses, the greater is the impression of time. 
 And so it really is, for boredom increases 
 in the geometrical progression. Lastly, we 
 have the most wonderful solution which 
 the futurists give us. Time, they would 
 give us to understand, is just like an opera- 
 hat. Squeeze it into one moment, as you 
 squeeze the hat by inadvertently sitting on 
 it, and everything will come right. They 
 call this " fluency of the body," or " viewing 
 the world under the aspect of the fourth 
 dimension," which, whatever else can be 
 said of it, sounds at least very impressive. 
 Now the kinematograph is the first 
 medium by which one can deal with time 
 squarely and fairly without recourse to 
 such tricks (however " square " they may 
 be) as the cubist or futurist make use of. 
 Is that not in itself a sufficient reason why 
 artists should at once take up this unique 
 opportunity ?
 
 Thus, following the distinction stated 
 above, we shall have two branches of this 
 mobile art : the flat screen kinematograph 
 the realm of the flat-surface artist, and 
 the stereoscopic kinematograph, the realm 
 of the sculptor the thinker in form and 
 colour. At present, the only indications 
 of this future mobile art are found in 
 the best theatrical productions, such, for 
 instance, as the exquisite stagings of the 
 Russian ballets by Bakst, Anisfeld, Golovin, 
 and their designs for costumes in particular, 
 since in the varying combinations of lines 
 and colours on the background of the 
 scenery there lies the basis of the mobile 
 art. 
 
 It is necessary at this point and in the 
 light of the foregoing opinions to consider 
 what position the artist will occupy in 
 future kinematograph productions. In the 
 stereoscopic kinematograph he already has 
 at his command nearly all he can desire. 
 It is true, the life-colours are yet wanting, 
 but an artist can obtain a real colour-tone 
 from black and white. Also he can tone
 
 234 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 the film just as he pleases, so that after all 
 he is not entirely deprived of colour. 
 Otherwise the stereoscopic kinema-photo- 
 graphy leaves hardly anything to be desired. 
 It gives a facsimile reproduction, colour 
 excepted, of the actual scene. If, then, 
 the legitimate stage affords scope for the 
 application of artistic talent, the stereo- 
 scopic kinematograph has the additional 
 advantage of a much greater command of 
 space than the stage. 
 
 The problems of photography in the 
 one-plane kinematograph are somewhat 
 different. They are akin to those met 
 with in other arts dealing with the flat 
 surface ; on the other hand, they are 
 naturally distinguished from them in so 
 far as they all depend on the mobile con- 
 ditions of the kinematograph. The influ- 
 ence of these conditions on other artistic 
 effects can be judged from the fact that 
 in moving pictures we are seldom able to 
 fix our attention on one given position for 
 any considerable length of time. This being 
 so, the criteria of art applied to the moving
 
 THE KINEMATOGRAPH AS ART 235 
 
 pictures must be obviously different from 
 those applied, say, to paintings or prints. 
 The laws of composition, for instance, can 
 not possibly be the same as in the latter 
 cases. What they are I will not here 
 attempt to define, but an artist who took 
 up the kinematograph would find that such 
 laws do exist and, gradually, by experiment 
 and practice, he would subject them to 
 his control. At present, our ideas on 
 mobile composition are so undeveloped and 
 so crude, that posterity will hardly be able 
 to believe that they could ever have 
 obtained. It is only necessary to remind 
 ourselves of the revolution started in this 
 field by Jacque Dalcroze with his rythmic 
 gymnastics. It is still open to an artist* 
 to give it a worthy counterpart in fixing 
 it on the film. 
 
 In this connection the attempts made 
 by Mr A. Wallace Rimington in England, 
 and M. Scriabin, the well-known com- 
 poser, in Russia, to create a new art of 
 colour-music, are of interest. Mr Rimington 
 has already given us a detailed exposition of
 
 236 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 his theory, and a descriptor! of the colour 
 organ, the instrument he specially invented 
 for this purpose. As to Scriabin's achieve- 
 ments, unfortunately death has put an 
 untimely end to his experiments, and thus 
 we have been deprived of detailed informa- 
 tion concerning the actual results obtained. 
 However, there can be little doubt that 
 this new form of art will have a great 
 future, and that in one way or another it 
 will become one of the most essential com- 
 ponents of the artistic kinematograph. 
 
 The second kinema-photographic problem 
 is akin to the question of ordinary photo- 
 graphic prints. Line drawing being ex- 
 cluded by the nature of photography as 
 'we at present know it, the problem is how 
 to achieve the best results with a medium 
 similar in character to the wash. The 
 problem lies not so much with the lighting 
 of models as with the production of the 
 film and projection on the screen. Greater 
 artistic effect would, probably, be achieved 
 on a screen of more solid consistency than 
 those now in vogue, and having a grained
 
 THE K1NEMATOGRAPH AS ART 237 
 
 surface, such, for instance, as would be 
 provided by a white plastered wall. Next, 
 the lights and shades on the film should 
 also give more concentrated, solid, and flat 
 masses, thus obviating unnecessary details, 
 often so annoyingly conspicuous. The 
 silhouette picture-film, a method of treat- 
 ment, little popular with the modern kine- 
 matograph, but possessing wonderful possi- 
 bilities, should be mentioned in this 
 connection. For fairy-tales, grotesque and 
 sentimental stories, hardly anything could 
 be better suited. 
 
 In conclusion, let me recapitulate the 
 principal points. The artistic failure of the 
 modern kinematograph is due solely to lack 
 of understanding of the peculiar properties 
 of this medium. The latter is dynamic 
 throughout. Expression of the rhythmic- 
 ally moving body must be the only law 
 of the actor, expression of the rhythmically 
 moving form and colour the only law of 
 the pictorial artist. 
 
 The actor must cease ignoring the dumb 
 nature of the kinematograph in performing
 
 238 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 " realistic " plays. Pantomime and ballet 
 are the only forms open to him. He can 
 achieve greatly varying psychological effects 
 by staging his plays in two or three dimen- 
 sions. The silhouette is the form of acting 
 where the one plane principle of staging 
 finds its complete expression. 
 
 The pictorial artist must discriminate 
 between the flat-screen and the stereo- 
 scopic kinematograph-projection. With the 
 first he must try to eliminate all relief, to 
 evolve the colour value of black and white, 
 and to make the screen as good an artistic 
 medium as that provided by paper. With 
 the second, he must solve the complicated 
 problem of planes and volumes which this 
 stereoscopic form of projection places before 
 him. In application to both methods he 
 must evolve the formulae of mobile com- 
 position and mobile colour. 
 
 So much for the actor and the artist. 
 
 Above all, however, the kinematograph 
 needs men of genius, of deep insight and 
 great spiritual culture. More than the 
 theatre, it is a synthetic form of art, as both
 
 THE KINEMATOGRAPH AS ART 239 
 
 the dramatic and the pictorial arts con- 
 stitute the basic elements of its nature. 
 To be raised from its present state of 
 degradation it requires men, who would 
 combine in themselves the talent for 
 dramatic and pictorial presentation with 
 the wisdom of sages and seers. It requires 
 that clear-consciousness without which there 
 is no real personality and no individual 
 perception of the world. 
 
 Art being the revelation of the human 
 spirit in everything capable of expressing 
 it, the only condition with which it must 
 of necessity comply, is the use of the 
 medium in accordance with its nature. 
 So the kinematograph will rise to the 
 level of art when men of great intelli- 
 gence and insight express themselves in 
 forms determined by the natural properties 
 of this new medium. Everything seems to 
 indicate that we shall not have long to 
 wait.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Alexandrinsky Theatre, The (of 
 Petrograd), 21, 39, 55, 67, 68 
 Alexeyev (Stanislavsky), 23, 25 
 Alexis Mikhailovich, Tsar, 6-8 
 A Month in the Country, 44 
 Andreyev, Leonid, 45, 212 
 Anisfeld, 233 
 Artem, 25 
 At the Gates of the Kingdom, 45 
 
 B 
 
 Bakst, 233 
 
 Bat, The (of Moscow), 83 
 Benois, Alexander, 85-86 
 Block, Alexander, 74, 75 
 Blue Bird, The, 45 
 Boris Godunov, 17 
 
 Carrier Henschel, The, 35 
 Chekhov, Anton, 17, 29, 38-43, 
 
 1 86 
 
 Cherry Orchard, The, 40 
 Commedia dell' arte, 72, 73, 74 
 Coqd'Or, Le, 4, 85, 86 
 Craig, Gordon, 52, 53, 189-191, 
 
 197, 201-206, 224, 229 
 Cronegk, 34 
 
 D 
 
 Dalcroze, xxiii, 235 
 D'Annunzio, Gabriel, 212 
 Davidov, 21 
 Dsath of Ivan the Terrible, The, 
 
 '7 
 
 Delsarte, xxiii 
 Diderot, 19 
 
 Distorted Mirror, The (of Petro- 
 grad), 83 
 
 Dmitrevsky, Ivan, 10, II, 12 
 Dobuzhinsky, 44 
 Don Juan, 76 
 Dostoyevsky, 105 
 
 Elizabethan Theatre, 161-166, 
 
 167, 196 
 
 Elizabeth, Tsarina, 10 
 Ermolov, Mme, 21 
 Euclid, 124 
 Evreinov, N., 77-82, 93, 169, 
 
 177-178, 188, 197 
 
 Fedotov, Mme, 21 
 Fokin, 83, 84 
 Fruits of Culture, The, 1 6 
 Fuchs, Georg, 66 
 Furttenbach, Joseph, 191 
 
 G 
 
 Garrick, David, 12 
 
 Getting Married, 14 
 
 Gogol, 13, 14, 15 
 
 Golovin, 233 
 
 Greek Theatre, 65, 69, 87, 88, 
 
 90, 143-158, 167, 172-174, 
 
 196 
 
 Gregori, 7, 8 
 Griboyedov, 13, 14, 15 
 
 H 
 
 Haig, A. E., 150 
 Hamlet, 53 
 Hamsun, Knut, 45 
 
 241
 
 242 THE MODERN RUSSIAN STAGE 
 
 Hannele, 28 
 Hebdon, John, 6 
 Helmholtz, 126, 133 
 Houptmann, 28, 35 
 House of Intermedia, The (of 
 Petrograd), 82 
 
 Ibsen, 44, 55 
 
 Inspector-General, The, 14, 187 
 Italian Theatre, 72, 73, 74, 166, 
 
 168, 191 
 Ivanov, 39 
 Ivanov, Viacheslav, 64, 101-120 
 
 J 
 Julius Casar, 35 
 
 K 
 
 Kachalov, 51 
 Karatigin, 19 
 Knipper, Mme, 25 
 Kommissarzhevsky, Vera, 39, 
 
 54-56 
 Krechtnskyfs Marriage, 1 6 
 
 Lensky, 21 
 
 Life of Man, The, 45 
 
 Lilin, Mme, 25 
 
 Little Booth, The, 74. 75 
 
 Live Corpse, The, 16 
 
 Lobachevsky, 125 
 
 Luzhsky, 25 
 
 II 
 
 Maeterlinck, M., 45, 61, 62, 63, 
 
 65, 69, 197 
 Marlow, 8 
 
 Master Builder, The, 55 
 Mediaeval Theatre, 72, 158-161, 
 
 167, 180-184, 196 
 Meiningen Company, 34 
 Merchant of Venice, The, 28 
 Merezhkovsky, 106 
 
 Merry Theatre, The (of Petro- 
 grad), 82 
 
 Meyerhold, Vsevolod, xxi, 25, 
 46, 55-76, 77, 82, 83, 84, 93- 
 94, 169-171, 188, 189, 197 
 
 Miracle, The, xxiii, 172 
 
 Mochalov, 19 
 
 Moliere, 16, 73, 76 
 
 Moscow Art Theatre, The, 4, 17, 
 22, 23-53, 56, 57, 58, 79, 88, 
 92, 184-187, 197, 204 
 
 Moscow Imperial Dramatic 
 Theatre, The, 20, 21 
 
 Moskvin, 25, 51 
 
 N 
 
 Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vladi- 
 mir, 23, 25, 26, 38, 56 
 Nietzsche, 103, 104, 113 
 
 O 
 
 CEdipus Rex, 172 
 Old-Time Theatre, The (of Petro- 
 grad), 82 
 Ostrovsky, 13, 15 
 
 Peter the Great. 9 
 Philharmonic School, The (of 
 
 Moscow), 24 
 Picasso, 232 
 Poulsen, Anna, 7 
 Power of Darkness, The, 16 
 Price of Life, The, 38 
 Pushkin, 17 
 Pythagoras, 126 
 
 R 
 
 Reinhardt, Max, xxiii, 66, 169, 
 
 171-177, 188, 189, 197 
 '. Riman, 125 
 
 Rimington, Wallace, xxi, 235 
 1 Rimsky-Korsakov, 85 
 
 Roman Theatre, 87, 91, 179-180 
 
 Rozanov, 106
 
 INDEX 
 
 243 
 
 Sanin, 25 
 
 Savin, Mme, 21 
 
 Savitsky, Mme, 25 
 
 Schepkin, 19, 20, 47 
 
 Scriabin, xxi, 235, 236 
 
 Sea-gull, The, 29, 39 
 
 Serlio, 191 
 
 Sezanne, 214 
 
 Shakespeare, 73 
 
 Society of Art and Literature, 
 
 The (of Moscow), 23, 24, 25 
 Sologub, Fyodor, 64 
 Soloviev, Vladimir, 105 
 Sorrow from Wisdom, The, 14 
 Stanislavsky, Constantine (Alex- 
 
 eyev), 23, 25, 26, 39, 47, 50, 
 
 52. 53. 56, 57 
 
 Studio Theatre, The (of Mos- 
 cow), 57 
 
 Sukhovo-Kobilin, 1 6 
 
 Sunken Bell, The, 28 
 
 Talma, 19 
 
 7amburlaine, 8 
 
 Theatre of Musical Drama, The 
 
 (of Petrograd), 88 
 Three Sisters, The, 40 
 Tolstoy, Alexis, 16, 17, 27 
 Tolstoy, Leo, 16, 105 
 Tsar Boris, 1J 
 Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich, 17, 27, 
 
 29 
 Turgenev, 16, 17, 44 
 
 U 
 Uncle Vania, 39 
 
 V 
 
 Van-Goch, 214 
 Varlamov, 21 
 Velten, 7 
 Volkov, Fyodor, 10, II
 
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