Jni
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 "Books by *Brander Matthews 
 BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 Shakspere as a Playwright 
 Moliere, His Life and His Works 
 
 ESSAYS AND CRITICISMS 
 French Dramatists of the igth Century 
 Pen and Ink, Essays on subjects of more 
 
 or less importance 
 
 Aspects of Fiction, and other Essays 
 The Historical Novel, and other Essays 
 Parts of Speech, Essays on English 
 The Development of the Drama 
 Inquiries and Opinions 
 The American of the Future, and other 
 
 Essays 
 
 Gateways to Literature, and other Essays 
 On Acting 
 A Book About the Theater
 
 A BOOK 
 ABOUT THE THEATER
 
 LE BALLET DE LA HEINE 
 
 A FRENCH COURT BALLET IN 
 
 THE EAULY SEVENTEENTH 
 
 CENTURY
 
 A BOOK 
 ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 BY 
 
 BRANDER MATTHEWS 
 
 PROFESSOR OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY; MEMBER 
 OF THE AMUR 1C Aii ACADEUY OF ABT8 AJI> LETTERS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1916
 
 COPTBIOHT, 1916, BT 
 
 CHARLES SCKIBNEB'S SONS 
 
 Published October. 1916
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 TO AUGUSTUS THOMAS 
 
 MY DEAK AUGUSTUS: 
 
 Let me begin by confessing my regret that I cannot 
 overhear your first remark when you receive this sheaf 
 of essays, many of which are devoted to the subordi- 
 nate subdivisions of the art of the stage. As it is, 
 I can only imagine your surprise at discovering that 
 this book, which contains papers dealing with certain 
 aspects of the theater rarely considered to be worthy 
 of criticism, is signed by the occupant of the earliest 
 chair to be established in any American university 
 specifically for the study of dramatic literature. I 
 fancy I can hear the expression of your wonder that 
 a sexagenarian professor should turn aside from his 
 austere analysis of the genius of Sophocles and of 
 Shakspere, of Moliere and of Ibsen, to discuss the 
 minor arts of the dancer and the acrobat, to chatter 
 about the conjurer and the negro minstrel, to consider 
 the principles of pantomime and the development of 
 scene-painting. But I am emboldened to hope that 
 your surprise will be only momentary, and that you 
 will be moved to acknowledge that perhaps there may 
 be some advantage to be derived from these devia- 
 tions into the by-paths of stage history. 
 
 You are rather multifarious yourself; "like Cerbe- 
 rus, you are three gentlemen at once"; you have been
 
 TO AUGUSTUS THOMAS 
 
 a reporter, you have published a novel, you have 
 painted pictures, you have delivered addresses and 
 you write plays, too. I think that you, at least, will 
 readily understand how a student of the stage may 
 like to stray now and again from the main road and to 
 ramble away from the lofty temple of dramatic art to 
 loiter for a little while in one or another of its lesser 
 chapels. And you, again, will appreciate my convic- 
 tion that these loiterings and these strollings may be 
 as profitable as that casual browsing about in a library 
 which is likely to enrich our memories with not a little 
 interesting information that we might never have 
 captured had we adhered to a rigorous and rigid course 
 of study. You will see what I mean when I declare 
 my belief that I have come back from these wander- 
 ings with an increased understanding of the theory of 
 the theater, and with an enlarged acquaintance with 
 its manifold manifestations. 
 
 Perhaps I ought to explain, furthermore, that these 
 excursions into the purlieus of the playhouse began 
 long, long ago. I gave a Punch and Judy show before 
 I was sixteen; I performed experiments in magic, I 
 blacked up as Tambo, I whitened myself as Clown, I 
 played the low-comedy part in a farce, and I attempted 
 the flying trapeze before I was twenty; and I was 
 not encouraged by the result of these early experiences 
 to repeat any of the experiments after I came of age. 
 I think it was as a spinner of hats and as the under- 
 man of a "brothers' act" that I came nearest to suc- 
 cess; at least I infer this from the fact may I mention 
 
 vi
 
 TO AUGUSTUS THOMAS 
 
 it without seeming to boast ? that with my partners 
 in this brothers' act, I was asked if I would care to 
 accept an engagement with a circus for the summer. 
 As to the merits of the other efforts I need say nothing 
 now; the rest is silence. When the cynic declared 
 that the critics were those who had failed in literature 
 and art, he overstated his case, as is the custom of 
 cynics. But it is an indisputable advantage for any 
 critic to have adventured himself in the practise of the 
 art to the discussion of which he is to devote himself; 
 he may have failed, or at least he may not have suc- 
 ceeded as he could wish; but he ought to have gained 
 a firmer grasp on the principles of the art than he would 
 have had if he had never risked himself hi the vain 
 effort. 
 
 With this brief word of personal explanation I step 
 down from the platform of the preface to let these 
 various essays speak for themselves. If they have 
 any message of any value, I feel assured in advance 
 that your friendly ear will be the first to interpret it. 
 And I remain, 
 
 Ever yours, 
 
 BRANDER MATTHEWS. 
 
 COLUMBIA UNIVEBSITY, 
 
 IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 
 
 Vll
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE SHOW BUSINESS 1 
 
 II. THE LIMITATIONS OF THE STAGE .... 17 
 
 III. A MORAL FROM A TOY THEATER .... 37 
 
 IV. WHY FIVE ACTS? 55 
 
 V. DRAMATIC COLLABORATION 77 
 
 VI. THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS AND THE Nov- 
 
 ELIZATION OF PlAYS 93 
 
 VII. WOMEN DRAMATISTS Ill 
 
 VIII. THE EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING . . . 127 
 
 IX. THE BOOK OF THE OPERA 153 
 
 X. THE POETRY OF THE DANCE 169 
 
 XI. THE PRINCIPLES OF PANTOMIME .... 185 
 
 XII. THE IDEAL OF THE ACROBAT 201 
 
 XIII. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF NEGRO-MINSTRELSY 217 
 
 XIV. THE UTILITY OF THE VARIETY-SHOW . . . 235 
 
 XV. THE METHOD OF MODERN MAGIC .... 251 
 
 ix
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XVI. THE LAMENTABLE TRAGEDY OF PUNCH AND 
 
 JUDY 271 
 
 XVII. THE PUPPET-PLAY, PAST AND PRESENT . . 287 
 
 XVIII. SHADOW-PANTOMIME, WITH ALL THE MODERN 
 
 IMPROVEMENTS 303 
 
 XIX. THE PROBLEM OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM 319
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Le ballet de la reine Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Upper half of Plate No. 1, the 'Miller and His Men' .... 40 
 
 A group of the principal characters from Pollock's juvenile 
 
 drama, the 'Miller and His Men' 42 
 
 Explosion of the mill. A back drop in the 'Miller and His Men' 46 
 
 Plate No. 7, the 'Miller and His Men' 48 
 
 Lower half of Plate No. 5, the 'Miller and His Men' .... 52 
 
 The Roman Theater at Orange 134 
 
 The multiple set of the French medieval stage 134 
 
 The set of the Italian comedy of masks 134 
 
 An outdoor entertainment in the gardens of the Pitti Palace in 
 
 Florence in the early sixteenth century 136 
 
 The set for the opera of 'Perse'e' (as performed at the Ope"ra in 
 
 Paris in the seventeenth century) 140 
 
 A prison (designed by Bibiena in Italy in the eighteenth century) 140 
 
 The screen scene of the 'School for Scandal' at Drury Lane in 
 
 1778 144 
 
 A landscape set 146 
 
 A set for the opera of 'Robert le Diable' 146 
 
 The set of the last act of the 'Garden of Allah' 148 
 
 A set for 'Medea' 148 
 
 XI
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING PAOH 
 
 The set of '(Edipe-Roi' (at the Th&tre Francais) 150 
 
 The set of the 'Return of Peter Grimm' 150 
 
 Scenes from Punch and Judy 274 
 
 Scenes from Punch and Judy (continued) 276 
 
 Roman puppets. Greek and Roman puppets. Puppet of Java . 290 
 
 A Sicilian marionette show 292 
 
 A Belgian puppet. A Chinese puppet theater. Puppet figure 
 
 representing the younger Coquelin 294 
 
 Puppets in Burma 296 
 
 The puppet play of Master Peter (Italian) 296 
 
 A Neapolitan Punchinella 300 
 
 The broken bridge. Plan showing the construction of a shadow- 
 picture theater. A Hungarian dancer (a shadow picture) . 308 
 
 Shadow Pictures. The return from the Bois de Boulogne. The 
 
 ballet. A regiment of French soldiers 310 
 
 Shadow Picture. The Sphinx I : Pharaoh passing in triumph . 312 
 
 Shadow Picture. The Sphinx II: Moses leading his people out 
 
 of Egypt 314 
 
 Shadow Picture. The Sphinx III: Roman warriors in Egypt . 316 
 
 Shadow Picture. The Sphinx IV: The British troops to-day . 318 
 
 xu
 
 I 
 
 THE SHOW BUSINESS
 
 THE SHOW BUSINESS 
 I 
 
 AT an interesting moment in Disraeli's picturesque 
 career in British politics he indulged in one of his strik- 
 ingly spectacular effects, in accord with his character- 
 istic method of boldly startling the somewhat sluggish 
 imagination of his insular countrymen; and in the next 
 week's issue of Punch there was a cartoon by Tenniel 
 reflecting the general opinion in regard to his theat- 
 rical audacity. He was represented as Artemus Ward, 
 frankly confessing that "I have no principles; I'm in 
 the show business." 
 
 The cartoon was good-humored enough, as Punch's 
 cartoons usually are; but it was not exactly compli- 
 mentary. It was intended to voice the vague distrust 
 felt by the British people toward a leader who did not 
 scrupulously avoid every possible opportunity to be 
 dramatic. And yet every statesman who was himself 
 possessed of constructive imagination, and who was 
 therefore anxious to stir the imaginations of those he 
 was leading, has laid himself open to the same charge. 
 Burke, for one, was accused of being frankly theatri- 
 cal; and Napoleon, the child of that French Revolution 
 which Burke combated with undying vigor, never hesi- 
 tated to employ kindred devices. When Napoleon 
 took the Imperial Crown from the hands of the Pope 
 
 3
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 to place it on his own head, and when Burke cast the 
 daggers on the floor of the House of Commons, they 
 
 / */ 
 
 were both proving that they were hi the show busi- 
 ness. So was Julius Caesar when he thrice thrust aside 
 the kingly crown; and so was Frederick on more than 
 one occasion. Even Luther did not shrink from the 
 spectacular if that could serve his purpose, as when he 
 nailed his theses to the door of the church. 
 
 If the statesmen have now and again acted as tho 
 they were in the show business, we need not be sur- 
 prised to discover that the dramatists have done it 
 even more often, in accord with their more intimate 
 relation to the theater. No one would deny that 
 Sardou and Boucicault were showmen, with a perfect 
 mastery of every trick of the showman's trade. But 
 this is almost equally true of the supreme leaders 
 of dramatic art, Sophocles, Shakspere, and Moliere. 
 The great Greek, the great Englishman, and the great 
 Frenchman, however much they might differ in their 
 aims and in their accomplishments, were alike in the 
 avidity with which they availed themselves of every 
 spectacular device possible to their respective theaters. 
 The opening passage of '(Edipus the King/ when the 
 chorus appeals to the sovran to remove the curse that 
 hangs over the city, is as potent on the eye as on the 
 ear. The witches and the ghost in 'Macbeth/ the 
 single combats and the bloody battles that embellish 
 many of Shakspere's plays are utilizations of the spec- 
 tacular possibilities existing in that Elizabethan play- 
 house, which has seemed to some historians of the 
 
 4
 
 drama to be necessarily bare of all appeal to the senses. 
 And in his l Amphitryon' Moliere has a succession of 
 purely mechanical effects (a god riding upon an eagle, 
 for example, and descending from the sky) which are 
 anticipations of the more elaborate and complicated 
 transformation scenes of the 'Black Crook' and the 
 1 White Fawn.' 
 
 At the end of the nineteenth century the two mas- 
 ters of the stage were Ibsen and Wagner, and both of 
 them were in the show business Wagner more openly 
 and more frequently than Ibsen. Yet the stern Scan- 
 dinavian did not disdain to employ an avalanch in 
 'When We Dead Awaken,' and to introduce a highly 
 pictorial shawl dance for the heroine of his 'Doll's 
 House.' As for Wagner, he was incessant in his search 
 for the spectacular, insisting that the music-drama 
 was the "art-work of the future," since the librettist- 
 composer could call to his aid all the other arts, and 
 could make these arts contribute to the total effect 
 of the opera. He conformed his practise to his princi- 
 ples, and as a result there is scarcely any one of his 
 music-dramas which is not enriched by a most elaborate 
 scenic accompaniment. The forging of the sword, the 
 ride of the Valkyries, the swimming of the singing 
 Rhinemaidens, are only a few of the novel and start- 
 ling effects which he introduced into his operas; and 
 in his last work, 'Parsival,' the purely spectacular ele- 
 ment is at least as ample and as varied as any that 
 can be found in a Parisian fairy-play or in a London 
 Christmas pantomime. And what is the 'Blue Bird' 
 
 5
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 of M. Maeterlinck, the philosopher-poet, who is also 
 a playwright, but a fairy-play on the model of those 
 long popular in Paris, the 'Pied de Mouton,' and the 
 'Biche au Bois'? It has a meaning and a purpose 
 lacking in its emptier predecessors; but its method is 
 the same as that of the uninspired manufacturers of 
 these spectacular pieces. 
 
 II 
 
 It is not without significance that our newspapers, 
 which have a keen understanding of the public taste, 
 are in the habit of commenting upon entertainments 
 of the most diverse nature under the general heading 
 of "Amusements." It matters not whether this en- 
 tertainment is proffered by Barnum and Bailey, or by 
 Weber and Fields, by Sophocles or by Ibsen, by Shak- 
 spere or by Moliere, by Wagner or by Gilbert and Sulli- 
 van, it is grouped with the rest of the amusements. 
 And this is not so illogical as it may seem, since the 
 primary purpose of all the arts is to entertain, even if 
 every art has also to achieve its own secondary aim. 
 Some of these entertainments make their appeal to 
 the intellect, some to the emotions, and some only to 
 the nerves, to our relish for sheer excitement and for 
 brute sensation; but each of them in its own way 
 seeks, first of all, to entertain. They are, every one 
 of them, to be included in the show business. 
 
 This is a point of view which is rarely taken by those 
 who are accustomed to consider the drama only in its 
 
 6
 
 THE SHOW BUSINESS 
 
 literary aspects, and who like to think of the dramatic 
 poet as a remote and secluded artist, scornful of all ad- 
 ventitious assistance, seeking to express his own vision 
 of the universe, and intent chiefly, if not solely, on 
 portraying the human soul. And yet this point of 
 view needs to be taken by every one who wishes to 
 understand the drama as an art, for the drama is inex- 
 tricably bound up with the show business, and to 
 separate the two is simply impossible. The theater is 
 almost infinitely various, and the different kinds of 
 entertainment possible in it cannot be sharply distin- 
 guished, since they shade into each other by almost 
 imperceptible gradations. Only now and again can we 
 seize a specimen that completely conforms to any one 
 of the several types into which we theoretically classify 
 the multiple manifestations of the drama. 
 
 Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Barnum and Bailey's 
 Greatest Show on Earth might seem, at first sight, to 
 stand absolutely outside the theater. But it is impos- 
 sible not to perceive the close kinship between the 
 program of the Barnum and Bailey show and the pro- 
 gram of the New York Hippodrome, since they have 
 the circus in common. At the Hippodrome, however, 
 we have at least a rudimentary play with actual dia- 
 log and with abundant songs and dances executed by 
 a charging squadron of chorus-girls; and in this aspect 
 its spectacle is curiously similar to the nondescript 
 medley which is popularly designated as a "summer 
 song-show." Now, the summer song-show is first 
 cousin to the so-called American "comic opera" so
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 different from the French opera comique. Even if it has 
 now fallen upon evil days, this American comic opera 
 is a younger sister of the sparkling ballad-opera of Gil- 
 bert and Sullivan, and of the exhilarating opera bouffe 
 of Offenbach, with its libretto by Meilhac and HaleVy. 
 We cannot fail to perceive that the librettos of Gil- 
 bert and of Meilhac and Halevy are admirable in them- 
 selves, that they would please even without the music 
 of Sullivan and Offenbach, and that they are truly 
 comedies of a kind. That is to say, the books of 
 'Patience' and ' Pinafore' do not differ widely in 
 method or in purpose from Gilbert's non-musical play 
 'Engaged'; and the books of the 'Vie Parisienne' and 
 the 'Diva' do not differ widely from Meilhac and 
 Hale"vy's non-musical play, 'Tricoche et Cacolet.' 
 'Engaged' and 'Tricoche et Cacolet' are farces or light 
 comedies, and we find that it is not easy to draw a 
 strict line of demarcation between light comedies of 
 this sort and comedies of a more elevated type. Gil- 
 bert was also the author of 'Sweethearts,' and of 
 'Charity,' and Meilhac and Hale*vy were also the au- 
 thors of 'Froufrou.' Still more difficult would it be 
 to separate sharply plays like 'Charity' and 'Frou- 
 frou' from the social dramas of Pinero and Ibsen, the 
 'Benefit of the Doubt,' for instance, and the 'Doll's 
 House/ Sometimes these social dramas stiffen into 
 actual tragedy, the 'Second Mrs. Tanqueray,' for ex- 
 ample, and 'Ghosts.' And more than one critic has 
 dwelt upon the structural likeness of the somber and 
 austere 'Ghosts' of Ibsen to the elevated and noble 
 
 s
 
 THE SHOW BUSINESS 
 
 '(Edipus the King' of Sophocles, even if the Greek 
 play is full of a serener poetry and charged with a 
 deeper message. 
 
 It is a far cry from Buffalo Bill's Wild West to the 
 'CEdipus' of Sophocles; but they are only opposite 
 ends of a long chain which binds together the hetero- 
 geneous medley of so-called "amusements." In the 
 eyes of every observer with insight into actual condi- 
 tions, the show business bears an obvious resemblance 
 to the United States, in that it is a vast territory 
 divided into contiguous States, often difficult to bound 
 with precision; and, like the United States, the show 
 business is, in the words of Webster, "one and indi- 
 visible, now and forever." There is indisputable profit 
 for every student of the art of the stage in a frank 
 recognition of the fact that dramatic literature is in- 
 extricably associated with the show business, and the 
 wider and deeper his acquaintance with the ramifica- 
 tions of the show business, the better fitted he is to 
 understand certain characteristics of the masterpieces 
 of dramatic literature. Any consideration of dramatic 
 literature, apart from the actual conditions of per- 
 formance, apart from the special theater for which 
 any given play was composed, and to the conditions 
 of which it had, perforce, to conform, is bound to be 
 one-sided, not to say sterile. The masterpieces of dra- 
 matic literature were all of them written to be per- 
 formed by actors, in a theater, and before an audience. 
 And these masterpieces of dramatic literature which 
 we now analyze with reverence, were all of them im- 
 
 9
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 mediately successful when represented by the per- 
 formers for whom they were written, and in the play- 
 houses to the conditions of which they had been 
 adjusted. 
 
 It is painfully difficult for the purely literary critic 
 to recognize the inexorable fact that there are no truly 
 great plays which failed to please the contemporary 
 spectators for whose delight they were devised. Many 
 of the plays which win success from time to time, 
 indeed, most of them, achieve only a fleeting vogue; 
 they lack the element of permanence; they have only 
 theatrical effectiveness; and they are devoid of abiding 
 dramatic value. But the truly great dramas estab- 
 lished themselves first on the stage; and afterward 
 they also revealed the solid qualities which we demand 
 in the study. They withstood, first of all, the ordeal 
 by fire before the footlights of the theater, and they 
 were able thereafter also to resist the touchstone of 
 time in the library. 
 
 When an academic investigator into the arid annals 
 of dogmatic disquisition about the drama was rash 
 enough to assert that, "from the standpoint of the 
 history of culture, the theater is only one, and a very 
 insignificant one, of all the influences that have gone 
 to make up dramatic literature," Mr. William Archer 
 promptly pointed out that this was "just about as 
 reasonable as to declare that the sea is only one, and a 
 very insignificant one, among the influences that have 
 gone to the making of ships." It is true, Mr. Archer 
 admitted, that there are "model ships and ships built 
 
 10
 
 THE SHOW BUSINESS 
 
 for training purposes on dry land; but they all more 
 or less closely imitate sea-going vessels, and if they 
 did not, we should not call them ships at all. ... The 
 ship-builder, in planning his craft, must know what 
 depths of water be it river, lake, or ocean she will 
 have to ply in, what conditions of wind and weather 
 she may reckon upon encountering, and what speed 
 will be demanded of her if she is to fulfil the purpose 
 for which she is destined. . . . The theater the actual 
 building, with its dimensions, structure, and scenic ap- 
 pliances is the dramatist's sea. And the audience 
 provides the weather." 
 
 Ill 
 
 Since the drama is irrevocably related to the theater, 
 all the varied ramifications of the show business have 
 their interest and their significance for students of the 
 stage. It is not too much to say that there is no form 
 of entertainment, however humble and however re- 
 mote from literature, which may not supply a useful 
 hint or two, now and again, to the historian of the 
 drama. For example, few things would seem farther 
 apart than the lamentable tragedy of Punch and Judy 
 and the soul-stirring plays of the Athenian dramatic 
 poets; and yet there is more than one point of con- 
 tact between these two performances. An alert ob- 
 server of a Punch-and-Judy show in the streets of 
 London can get help from it for the elucidation of a 
 problem or two which may have puzzled him in his 
 
 11
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 effort to understand the peculiarities of Attic tragedy. 
 Mr. Punch's wooden head, for example, has the same 
 unchanging expression which characterized the tower- 
 ing masks worn by the Athenian performers. In like 
 manner a nondescript hodgepodge of funny episodes, 
 interspersed with songs and dances, such as Weber 
 and Fields used to present in New York, may be util- 
 ized to shed light on the lyrical-burlesques of Aristoph- 
 anes as these were performed in Athens more than two 
 thousand years ago. 
 
 Perhaps even a third instance of this possibility of 
 explaining the glorious past by the humble present 
 may not be out of place. A few years ago Edward 
 Harrigan put together a variety-show sketch, called 
 the ' Mulligan Guards/ and its success encouraged him 
 to develop it into a little comic drama called the 
 'Mulligan Guards' Picnic,' which was the earliest of 
 a succession of farcical studies of tenement-house life 
 in New York, culminating at last in a three-act comedy, 
 entitled 'Squatter Sovereignty.' In this series of 
 humorous pieces Harrigan set before us a wide variety 
 of types of character, Irishmen of all sorts, Germans 
 and Italians, negroes and Chinamen, as these are 
 commingled in the melting-pot of the cosmopolitan 
 metropolis. These humorous pieces were the result of 
 a spontaneous evolution, and their author was wholly 
 innocent of any acquaintance with the Latin drama. 
 And yet, as it happened, Harrigan was doing for the 
 tenement-house population of New York very much 
 what Plautus had done for the tenement-house popula- 
 
 12
 
 THE SHOW BUSINESS 
 
 tion of Rome. A familiarity with the plays of the Latin 
 playwright could not but increase our appreciation of 
 the amusing pieces of the Irish-American sketcli- 
 writer; and a familiarity with the comic dramas of 
 Harrigan could not fail to be of immediate assistance 
 to us in our desire to understand the remote life which 
 Plautus was dealing with. 
 
 The plays of the Roman dramatist were deliberately 
 adapted from the Greek, and they therefore had an 
 avowedly literary source, whereas the immediate origin 
 of the plays performed in New York was only an un- 
 pretending sketch for a variety-show; but both of 
 these groups had the same flavor of veracity in their 
 reproduction of the teeming life of the tenements. 
 Humble as is the beginning of the 'Mulligan Guard' 
 series, at least as humble is the beginning of the im- 
 provised pieces of the Italians, the comedy of masks, 
 which Moliere lifted into literature in his 'Etourdi/ 
 and in his 'Fourberies de Scapin.' In the hands of the 
 Italians the comedy of masks was absolutely unliter- 
 ary, since it was not even written, and its performers 
 were not only comedians, but acrobats also. And here 
 the drama is seen to be impinging on the special sphere 
 of the circus just as it does again in the plays prepared 
 for the New York Hippodrome. It is more than prob- 
 able that this improvised comedy of the Italians is the 
 long development of a primitive semi-gymnastic, semi- 
 dramatic entertainment, given by a little group of 
 strollers, performing in the open market-place to please 
 the casual crowd that might collect. 
 
 13
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 Equally unpretending was the origin of the French 
 melodrama, which Victor Hugo lifted into literature 
 in his 'Hernani' and 'Ruy Bias.' It began in the 
 temporary theaters erected for a brief season hi one or 
 the other of the fairs held annually in different parts of 
 Paris. The performances in these playhouses were al- 
 most exactly equivalent to those in our variety-shows; 
 they were medleys of song and dance, of acrobatic 
 feats and of exhibitions of trained animals. As in 
 our own variety-shows, again, there were also little 
 plays performed from tune to time, at first scarcely 
 more than a framework on which to hang songs and 
 dances, but at last taking on a solider substance, until 
 finally they stiffened themselves into pathetic pieces 
 in three or more acts, capable of providing pleasure 
 for a whole evening. The humor was direct, and the 
 characters were painted in the primary colors; the 
 passions were violent, and the plots were arbitrary; 
 but the playwrights had discovered how to hold the 
 interest of their simple-minded spectators, and how to 
 draw tears and laughter at will. 
 
 In fact, the more minutely the history of the stage 
 is studied, the more clearly do we perceive that the be- 
 ginnings of every form of the drama are strangely un- 
 pretentious, and that literary merit is attained only in 
 the final stages of its development. Dramatic litera- 
 ture is but the ultimate evolution of that which in the 
 beginning was only an insignificant and unimportant 
 experiment in the show business; and it must always 
 remain intimately related to the show business, even 
 
 14
 
 THE SHOW BUSINESS 
 
 when it climbs to the lonely peaks of the poetic drama. 
 Whatever its value, and however weighty its message, 
 it is still to be commented upon under the head of 
 "amusements," for if it does not succeed in amusing, 
 it ceases to exist except in the library, and even there 
 only for special students. It lives by its immediate 
 theatrical effectiveness alone, even if it can survive 
 solely by its literary quality. 
 
 IV 
 
 Those who are in the habit of gaging the drama by 
 this literary quality only are prone to deplore the bad 
 taste of the public which flocks to purely spectacular 
 pieces. But this again is no new thing, and it does not 
 disclose any decline in the ability to appreciate the 
 best. A century ago in London, when Sarah Siddons 
 and John Philip Kemble were in the full plenitude of 
 their powers, and when they were performing the noblest 
 plays of Shakspere, they were thrust aside for a season 
 or two while the theater was given up to empty melo- 
 dramatic spectacles like ' Castle Specter' and the 'Cat- 
 aract of the Ganges.' It was horrifying to the lovers 
 of the drama that these great actors in those great 
 plays should have to give way to the attraction exerted 
 on the public by a trained elephant, or by an imitation 
 waterfall; but it is equally horrifying to be informed 
 that the theater in London for which Shakspere wrote 
 his masterpieces, and in which he himself appeared as 
 an actor, was also used for fencing-matches, and for 
 
 15
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 bull-baitings and bear-baitings, and that the theater in 
 Athens for which Sophocles wrote his masterpieces, 
 and in which he may have appeared as an actor, was 
 also used for the annual cock-fight. 
 
 So strong is the popular appreciation of spectacle 
 that the drama, the true theater as distinguished from 
 the mere show business, has always to fight for its 
 right to exist, and to hold its place in competition with 
 less intellectual and more sensational entertainments. 
 The playhouses of any American city are likely to have 
 a lean week whenever the circus comes to town, and 
 perhaps the chief reason why the most of them now 
 close in summer is to be sought not so much in the 
 frequent hot spells, as in the irresistible attraction ex- 
 erted by the base-ball games. The drama in Spain, 
 which flourished superbly in the days of Lope de 
 Vega and Calderon, sank into a sad decline when it 
 had to compete with the fiercer delights of the bull- 
 fight; and the drama in Rome was actually killed out 
 by the overpowering rivalry of the sports of the arena, 
 the combats of gladiators, and the matching of men 
 with wild beasts. What is known to the economists 
 as Gresham's Law, according to which an inferior cur- 
 rency always tends to drive out a superior, seems to 
 have an analog in the show business. 
 
 (1912.) 
 
 16
 
 n 
 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE STAGE
 
 FEW competent critics would dispute the assertion 
 that the drama, if not actually the noblest of the arts, 
 is at all events the most comprehensive, since it can 
 invoke the aid of all the others without impairing its 
 own individuality or surrendering its right to be con- 
 sidered the senior partner in any alliance it may make. 
 Poetry, oratory, and music, painting, sculpture, and 
 architecture, these the drama can take into its service, 
 with no danger to its own control. Yet even if the 
 drama may have the widest range of any of the arts, 
 none the less are its boundaries clearly defined. What 
 it can do, it does with a sharpness of effect and with 
 a cogency of appeal no other art can rival. But there 
 are many things it cannot do; and there are not a few 
 things that it can attempt only at its peril. Some of 
 these impossibilities and inexpediencies are psychologic 
 subtleties of character and of sentiment too delicate 
 and too minute for the magnifying lens of the theater 
 itself; and some of them are physical, too large hi 
 themselves to be compressed into the rigid area of 
 the stage. In advance of actual experiment, it is not 
 always possible for even the most experienced of the- 
 atrical experts to decide the question with certainty. 
 Moreover, there is always the audience to be reck- 
 
 19
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 oned with, and even old stagers like Henry Irving and 
 Victorien Sardou cannot foresee the way in which the 
 many-headed monster will take what is set before it. 
 When Percy Fitzgerald and W. G. Wills were prepar- 
 ing an adaptation of the ' Flying Dutchman' for Henry 
 Irving, the actor made a suggestion which the authors 
 immediately adopted. The romantic legend has for 
 its hero a sea-captain condemned to eternal life until 
 he can find a maiden willing to share his lot; and when 
 at last he meets the heroine she has another lover, who 
 is naturally jealous of the new aspirant to her hand. 
 The young rival challenges Vanderdecken to a duel, 
 and what Irving proposed was that the survivor of 
 the fight should agree to throw the body of his rival 
 into the sea, and that the waves should cast up the 
 condemned Vanderdecken on the shore, since the ill- 
 fated sailor could not avoid his doom by death at the 
 hand of man. This was an appropriate development 
 of the tale; it was really imaginative; and it would 
 have been strangely moving if it had introduced into it 
 a ballad on the old theme. But in a play performed 
 before us in a theater its effect was not altogether what 
 its proposer had hoped for, altho he presented it with 
 all his marvelous command of theatrical artifice. 
 
 The stage-setting Irving bestowed upon this episode 
 was perfectly in keeping with its tone. The spectators 
 saw the sandy beach of a little cove shut in by cliffs, 
 with the placid ocean bathed in the sunset glow. The 
 two men crossed swords on the strand; Vanderdecken 
 let himself be killed, and the victorious lover carried 
 
 20
 
 LIMITATIONS OF THE STAGE 
 
 his rival's body up the rocks and hurled it into the 
 ocean. Then he departed, and for a moment all was 
 silence. A shuddering sigh soon swept over the face 
 of the waters, and a ripple lapped the sand. Then a 
 little wave broke on the beach, and withdrew, rasping 
 over the stones. At last a huge roller crashed forward 
 and the sea gave up its dead. Vanderdecken lay high 
 and dry on the shore, and in a moment he staggered 
 to his feet, none the worse for his wounds. But un- 
 fortunately the several devices for accomplishing this 
 result, admirable as they were, drew attention each 
 of them to itself. The audience could not help wonder- 
 ing how the trick of the waves was being worked, and 
 when the Flying Dutchman was washed up by the 
 water, it was not the mighty deep rejecting Vander- 
 decken, again cursed with life, that the spectators per- 
 ceived, but rather the dignified Henry Irving himself, 
 unworthily tumbled about on the dust of his own 
 stage. In the effort to make visible this imaginative 
 embellishment of the strange story, its magic potency 
 vanished. The poetry of the striking improvement 
 on the old tale had been betrayed by its translation 
 into the material realities of the theater, since the 
 concrete presentation necessarily contradicted the ab- 
 stract beauty of the idea. 
 
 Here we find ourselves face to face with one of the 
 most obvious limitations of the stage that its power 
 of suggestion is often greater than its power of actual 
 presentation. There are many things, poetic and 
 imaginative, which the theater can accomplish, after 
 
 21
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 a fashion, but which it ventures upon only at imminent 
 peril of failure. Many things which are startlingly 
 effective in the telling are ineffective in the actual see- 
 ing. The mere mechanism needed to represent them 
 will often be contradictory, and sometimes even de- 
 structive. Perhaps it may be advisable to cite another 
 example, not quite so cogent as living's ' Vanderdecken/ 
 and yet carrying the same moral. This other example 
 will be found in a piece by Sardou, a man who knew 
 all the possibilities of the theater as intimately as 
 Irving himself, and who was wont to utilize them 
 with indefatigable skill. Indeed, so frequently did the 
 French playwright avail himself of stage devices, and 
 so often was he willing to rely upon them, that not a 
 few critics of our latter-day drama have been inclined 
 to dismiss him as merely a supremely adroit theatrical 
 trickster. 
 
 In his sincerest play, 'Patrie/ the piece which he 
 dedicated to Motley, and which he seems himself to 
 have been proudest of, Sardou invented a most pic- 
 turesque episode. The Spaniards are in possession of 
 Brussels; the citizens are ready to rise, and William 
 of Orange is coming to their assistance. The chiefs of 
 the revolt leave the city secretly and meet William at 
 night in the frozen moat of an outlying fort. A Span- 
 ish patrol interrupts their consultation, and forces them 
 to conceal themselves. A little later a second patrol 
 is heard approaching, just when the return of the first 
 patrol is impending. For the moment it looks as tho 
 the patriots would be caught between the two Spanish 
 
 22
 
 LIMITATIONS OF THE STAGE 
 
 companies. But William of Orange rises to the occa- 
 sion. He calls on his "sea-wolves"; and when the 
 second patrol appears, marching in single file, there 
 suddenly spring out of the darkness upon every Span- 
 ish soldier two fur-clad creatures, who throttle him, 
 bind him, and throw him into a hole in the ice of the 
 moat. Then they swiftly fill in this gaping cavity 
 with blocks of snow, and trample the path level above 
 it. And almost immediately after the sea-wolves have 
 done their deadly work and withdrawn again into 
 hiding, the first patrol returns, and passes all unsuspect- 
 ing over the bodies of their comrades a very practical 
 example of dramatic irony. 
 
 As it happened, I had read 'Patrie' some years be- 
 fore I had an opportunity to see it on the stage, and 
 this picturesque scene had lingered in my memory so 
 that in the theater I eagerly awaited its coming. 
 When it arrived at last I was sadly disappointed. The 
 sea-wolves belied their appetizing name; they irresisti- 
 bly suggested a group of trained acrobats, and I found 
 myself carelessly noting the artifices by the aid of which 
 the imitation snowballs were made to fill the trap- 
 door of the stage which represented the yawning hole 
 in the ice of the frozen moat. The thing told was pic- 
 turesque, but the thing seen was curiously unmoving; 
 and I have noted without surprise that in the latest 
 revival of 'Patrie' the attempt to make this episode 
 effective was finally abandoned, the sea-wolves being 
 cut out of the play. 
 
 23
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 n 
 
 In 'Patrie' as in 'Vanderdecken' the real reason for 
 the failure of these mechanical devices is that the plays 
 were themselves on a superior level to those stage- 
 tricks; the themes were poetic, and any theatrical 
 effect which drew attention to itself interrupted the 
 current of emotional sympathy. It disclosed itself in- 
 stantly as incongruous, as out of keeping with the ele- 
 vation of the legend in a word, as inartistic. A sim- 
 ilar effect, perhaps even more frankly mechanical, 
 would not be inartistic in a play of a lower type, and it 
 might possibly be helpful in a frankly spectacular 
 piece, even if this happened also to be poetic in intent. 
 In a fairy-play, a J eerie, as the French term it, we expect 
 to behold all sorts of startling ingenuities of stage- 
 mechanism, whether the theme is delightfully imagina- 
 tive, as in Maeterlinck's beautiful 'Blue Bird/ or crassly 
 prosaic, as in the 'Black Crook' and the 'White Fawn.' 
 
 In picturesque melodrama also, in the dramatization 
 of 'Ben Hur,' for example, we should be disappointed 
 if we were bereft of the wreck of the Roman galley, 
 and if we were deprived of the chariot race. These 
 episodes can be presented in the theater only by the 
 aid of mechanisms far more elaborate than those needed 
 for the scenes in 'Vanderdecken' and 'Patrie'; but 
 in 'Ben Hur' these mechanisms are not incongruous 
 and distracting as were the simpler devices of 'Van- 
 derdecken' and 'Patrie,' because the dramatization of 
 
 24
 
 LIMITATIONS OF THE STAGE 
 
 the romanticist historical novel is less lofty in its am- 
 bition, less imaginative, less ethereally poetic. In 
 'Vanderdecken' and in 'Patrie' the tricks seemed to 
 obtrude themselves, whereas in 'Ben HUT' they were 
 almost obligatory. In certain melodramas with more 
 modern stories in the amusing piece called the 
 'Round Up,' for example the scenery is the main at- 
 traction. The scene-painter is the real star of the 
 show. And there is no difficulty in understanding the 
 wail of the performer of the principal part in a piece of 
 this sort, when he complained that he was engaged to 
 support forty tons of scenery. "It's only when the 
 stage-carpenters have to rest and get their breath that 
 I have a chance to come down to the footlights and 
 bark for a minute or two." 
 
 A moment's consideration shows that this plaintive 
 protest is unreasonable, however natural it may be. 
 In melodramas like the 'Round Up' and 'Ben Hur,' as 
 in fairy-plays like the 'Blue Bird/ the acting is properly 
 subordinated to the spectacular splendor of the whole 
 performance. When we enter a theater to behold a 
 play of either of these types, we expect the acting to 
 be adequate, no doubt, but we do not demand the 
 highest type of histrionic excellence. What we do an- 
 ticipate, however, is a spectacle pleasing to the eye 
 and stimulating to the nerves. In plays of these two 
 classes the appeal is sensuous rather than intellectual; 
 and it is only when the appeal of the play is to the 
 mind rather than to the senses that merely mechanical 
 effects are likely to be disconcerting. 
 
 25
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 Mr. William Archer has pointed out that Ibsen in 
 'Little Eyolf/ has for once failed to perceive the strict 
 limitation of the stage when he introduced a flagstaff, 
 with the flag at first at half-mast, and a little later run 
 up to the peak. Now, there are no natural breezes in 
 the theater to flutter the folds of the flag, and every 
 audience is aware of the fact. This, then, is the di- 
 lemma: either the flag hangs limp and lifeless against 
 the pole, which is a flat spectacle, or else its folds are 
 made to flutter by some concealed pneumatic blast or 
 electric fan, which instantly arouses the inquiring curi- 
 osity of the audience. Here we find added evidence in 
 support of Herbert Spencer's invaluable principle of 
 Economy of Attention, which he himself applied only to 
 rhetoric, but which is capable of extension to all the 
 other arts and to no one of them more usefully than 
 to the drama. At any given moment a spectator in 
 the theater has only so much attention to bestow upon 
 the play being presented before his eyes, and if any 
 portion of his attention is unduly distracted by some 
 detail like either the limpness or the fluttering of a 
 flag then he has just so much less to give to the play 
 itself. 
 
 Very rarely, indeed, can we catch Ibsen at fault in a 
 technical detail of stage-management; he was extraor- 
 dinarily meticulous in his artful adjustment of the 
 action of his social dramas to the picture-frame stage 
 of our modern cosmopolitan theater. He was mar- 
 velously skilful in endowing each of his acts with a 
 background harmonious for his characters; and nearly 
 
 26
 
 LIMITATIONS OF THE STAGE 
 
 always was he careful to refrain from the employment 
 of any scenic device which might attract attention to 
 itself. He eschewed altogether the more violent spec- 
 tacular effects, altho he did call upon the stage man- 
 ager to supply an avalanch in the final act of 'When 
 the Dead Awaken'; but even this bold convulsion of 
 nature was less incongruous than might be expected, 
 since it was not exhibited until the action of the play 
 itself was complete. In fact, the avalanch might be 
 described as only a pictorial epilog. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The principle of sternly economizing the attention 
 of the audience can be violated by distractions far less 
 extraneous and far less extravagant than avalanches. 
 When Marmontel's forgotten tragedy of ' Cleopatra ' 
 was produced in the eighteenth century at the Theatre 
 Frangais, the misguided poet prevailed upon Vaucan- 
 son to make an artificial asp, which the Egyptian queen 
 coiled about her arm at the end of the play, thereby 
 releasing a spring, whereupon the beast raised its head 
 angrily and emitted a shrill hiss before sinking its fangs 
 into Cleopatra's flesh. At the first performance a 
 spectator, bored by the tediousness of the tragedy, 
 rose to his feet when he heard the hiss of the tiny ser- 
 pent: "I agree with the asp!" he cried, as he made 
 his way to the door. 
 
 But even if Vaucanson's skilful automaton had not 
 given occasion for this disastrous gibe, whatever atten- 
 
 27
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 tion the audience might pay to the mechanical means 
 of Cleopatra's suicide was necessarily subtracted from 
 that available for the sad fate of Cleopatra herself. 
 If at that moment the spectators noted at all the hiss- 
 ing snake, then they were not really in a fit mood to 
 feel the tragic death-struggle of "the serpent of old 
 Nile." A kindred blunder was manifest in a recent 
 sumptuously spectacular revival of 'Macbeth/ when 
 the three witches flew here and there thru the dim 
 twilight across the blasted heath, finally vanishing into 
 empty air. These mysterious flittings and disappear- 
 ances were achieved by attaching the performers of the 
 weird sisters to invisible wires, whereby they could be 
 swung aloft; the trick had been exploited earlier in 
 the so-called Flying Ballet, wherein it was a graceful 
 and amusing adjunct of the terpsichorean revels. But 
 in 'Macbeth' it emptied Shakspere's scene of its dra- 
 matic significance, since the spectator waited for and 
 watched the startling flights of the witches, and ad- 
 mired the dexterity with which their aerial voyages 
 were controlled; and as a result he failed to feel the 
 emotional importance of the interview between Mac- 
 beth and the withered croons, whose untoward greet- 
 ings were to start the villain-hero on his downward 
 career of crime. 
 
 In this same revival of 'Macbeth' an equally mis- 
 placed ingenuity was lavished on the apparition of 
 Banquo's ghost at the banquet. The gruesome spec- 
 ter was made mysteriously visible thru the temporarily 
 transparent walls of the palace, until at last he emerged 
 
 28
 
 LIMITATIONS OF THE STAGE 
 
 to take his seat on Macbeth's chair. The effect was 
 excellent in itself, and the spectators followed all the 
 movements of the ghost with pleased attention, more 
 or less forgetting Macbeth, and failing to note the 
 maddening effect of the apparition upon the seared 
 countenance of the assassin-king. In this revival of 
 'Macbeth' no opportunity was neglected to adorn the 
 course of the play with every possible scenic and me- 
 chanic accompaniment; and the total result of these 
 accumulated artificialities of presentation was to rob 
 one of Shakspere's most poetic tragedies of nearly all 
 its poetry, and to reduce this imaginative masterpiece 
 to the prosaic level of a spectacular melodrama. 
 
 Another of Shakspere's tragedies has become almost 
 impossible in our modern playhouses, because the 
 stage-manager does not dare to do without the spec- 
 tacular effects that the story seems to demand. Shak- 
 spere composed 'King Lear' for the bare platform-stage 
 of the Globe Theater, devoid of all ' scenery, and sup- 
 plied with only the most primitive appliances for sug- 
 gesting rain and thunder; and he introduced three 
 successive storm scenes, each intenser in interest than 
 the one that went before, until the culmination comes 
 in perhaps the sublimest and most pitiful episode in 
 all tragedy, when the mad king and his follower, who 
 is pretending to be insane, and his faithful fool are 
 together out in the tempest. At the original produc- 
 tion, three centuries ago, the three storms may have 
 increased in violence as they followed one another; 
 but at best the fierceness of the contending elements 
 
 29
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 could then be only suggested, and the rain and the 
 thunder were not allowed to divert attention away 
 from the agonized plight of the mad monarch. But 
 to-day the three storm scenes are rolled into one, and 
 the stage-manager sets out to manufacture a realistic 
 tempest in rivalry with nature. The mimic artillery of 
 heaven and the simulated deluge from the skies which 
 the producer now provides may excite our artistic ad- 
 miration for his skill, but they distract our attention 
 from the coming together of the characters so strangely 
 met in the midst of the storm. The more realistically 
 the tempest is reproduced the worse it is for the tragedy 
 itself; and in most recent revivals the full effect of the 
 painful story has been smothered by the sound and 
 fury of the man-made storm. 
 
 The counterweighted wires which permit the figures 
 of the Flying Ballet to soar over the stage and to float 
 aloft in the air, disturb the current of our sympathy 
 when they are employed to lend lightness to intangible 
 creatures like the weird sisters of Shakspere's tragedy; 
 but they have been more artistically utilized in two of 
 Shakspere's comedies to suggest the ethereality of 
 Puck and of Ariel. The action of the 'Midsummer 
 Night's Dream' takes place in fairy-land, and that of 
 the 'Tempest' passes in an enchanted island, and even 
 if we wonder for a moment how the levitation of these 
 airy spirits is achieved, this temporary distraction of 
 our attention is negligible in playful comedies like these 
 with all their scenes laid in a land of make-believe. 
 And yet it may be doubted whether even the 'Mid- 
 30
 
 LIMITATIONS OF THE STAGE 
 
 summer Night's Dream ' and the 'Tempest/ fairy- 
 plays as they are, do not on the whole lose more than 
 they gain from elaborate scenic and mechanical ad- 
 juncts. They are of poetry all compact, and the more 
 simply they are presented, the less obtrusive the scen- 
 ery and the less protruded the needful effects, the more 
 the effort of the producer is centered upon preserving 
 the ethereal atmosphere wherein the characters live, 
 move, and have their being, the more harmonious the 
 performance is with the pure fancy which inspired these 
 two delightful pieces, then the more truly successful 
 is the achievement of the stage-manager. 
 
 IV 
 
 On the other hand, of course, the scenic accompani- 
 ment of a poetic play, whether tragic or romantic or 
 comic, must never be so scant or so barren as to dis- 
 appoint the spectators. The stage-accessories must 
 be adequate and yet subordinate; they ought to re- 
 semble the clothes of a truly well-dressed woman, in 
 that they never call attention to themselves altho they 
 can withstand and even reward intimate inspection. 
 This delicate ideal of artistic stage-setting, esthetically 
 satisfying, and yet never flamboyant, was completely 
 attained in the production of 'Sister Beatrice/ at the 
 New Theater, due to the skill and taste of Mr. Hamilton 
 Bell. The several manifestations of the supernatural 
 might easily have been over-emphasized; but a fine 
 restraint resulted in a unity of tone and of atmosphere, 
 
 31
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 so subtly achieved that the average spectator carried 
 away the memory of more than one lovely picture with- 
 out having let his thoughts wander away to consider 
 by what means he had been made to feel the presence 
 of a miracle. 
 
 The special merit of this production of ' Sister Bea- 
 trice' lay in the delicate art by which more was sug- 
 gested than could well be shown. In the theater, more 
 often than not, the half is greater than the whole, and 
 what is unseen is frequently more powerful than what 
 is made visible. In Mr. Belasco's 'Darling of the 
 Gods/ a singularly beautiful spectacle, touched at 
 times with a pathetic poetry, the defeated samurais 
 are at last reduced to commit hara-kiri. But we were 
 not made spectators of these several self-murders; we 
 were permitted to behold only the dim cane-brake into 
 which these brave men had withdrawn, and to over- 
 hear each of them call out his farewell greetings to his 
 friends before he dealt himself the deadly thrust. If 
 we had been made witnesses of this accumulated self- 
 slaughter we might have been revolted by the brutal- 
 ity of it. Transmitted to us out of a vague distance 
 by a few scattered cries, it moved us like the inevita- 
 ble close of a truly tragic tale. 
 
 In the 'Aiglon' of M. Rostand, Napoleon's feeble son 
 finds himself alone with an old soldier of his father's 
 on the battle-field of Wagram; and in the darkness of 
 the night, and in the turmoil of a wind-storm the hys- 
 teric lad almost persuades himself that he is actu- 
 ally present at the famous fight, that he can hear the 
 
 32
 
 LIMITATIONS OF THE STAGE 
 
 shrieks of the wounded, and the groans of the dying, 
 and that he can see the hands and arms of the dead 
 stretched up from .the ground. This is all in the sickly 
 boy's fancy, of course, and yet in Paris the author 
 had voices heard, and caused hands and arms to be 
 extended upward from the edge of the back drop, thus 
 vulgarizing his own imaginative episode by the presen- 
 tation of a concrete reality. Not quite so inartistic as 
 this, and yet frankly freakish was the arrangement of 
 the closet scene between Hamlet and his mother, when 
 Sarah-Bernhardt made her misguided effort to imper- 
 sonate the Prince of Denmark. On the walls of the 
 room where Hamlet talks daggers to the queen there 
 were full-length, life-sized portraits of her two suc- 
 cessive husbands, and when Hamlet bids her look on 
 this picture, and on this, the portrait of Hamlet's 
 father became transparent, and in its frame the spec- 
 tators suddenly perceived the ghost. This is an ad- 
 mirable example of misplaced cleverness, of the search 
 for novelty for its own sake, of the sacrifice of the 
 totality of impression to a mere trick. 
 
 'Hamlet' is the most poetic of plays, and the 'Aiglon' 
 does its best to be poetic, and therefore the less overt 
 spectacle there may be in the performance of these 
 dramas the easier it will be for the spectator to focus 
 his attention on the poetry itself. Even more preten- 
 tiously poetic than the 'Aiglon' is 'Chantecler,' upon 
 which the ambitious author has also lavished a great 
 variety of stage-effects as tho he were not quite will- 
 ing to rely for success upon his lyrical exuberance. 
 
 33
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 In M. Rostand's 'Aiglon' and 'Chantecler/ as in 
 Sarah-Bernhardt's 'Hamlet/ there was to be observed 
 a frequent confusion of the merely theatric with the 
 purely dramatic a confusion to be found forty years 
 ago in Fechter's 'Hamlet.' That picturesque French 
 actor made over the English tragedy into a French 
 romantic melodrama; he kept the naked plot, and he 
 cut out all the poetry. He lowered Shakspere's play 
 to the level of the other melodramas in which he had 
 won success for instance, 'No Thorofare/ due to the 
 collaboration of Dickens and Wilkie Collins, or the 
 earlier 'Fils de la Nuit,' acted in Paris long before 
 Fechter appeared on the English-speaking stage. 
 
 The 'Son of the Night' was a pirate bold, personated, 
 of course, by Fechter, and in one act his long, low, 
 rakish craft with its black flag flying, skimmed across 
 the stage, cutting the waves, and dropping anchor close 
 to the footlights. The surface of the sea was rep- 
 resented by a huge cloth, and the incessant motion of 
 the waves was due to the concealed activities of a 
 dozen boys. The play had so long a run that the sea- 
 cloth was worn dangerously thin. At last at one per- 
 formance, a rent spread suddenly and disclosed a dis- 
 gusted boy, just as the pirate ship with the Son of the 
 Night on its deck was preparing to come about. Fech- 
 ter was equal to the emergency. "Man overboard!" 
 he cried, and, leaning over the bow of the boat, he 
 grabbed the boy by the collar and pulled him on deck. 
 Probably very few of the spectators noticed the mis- 
 hap, and if they had all observed it, what matter? A 
 
 34
 
 LIMITATIONS OF THE STAGE 
 
 laugh or two, more or less, during the performance of 
 a prosaic melodrama, is of little or no consequence. A 
 disconcerting accident like this in a play like the 'Son 
 of the Night' does not cut any vital current of sym- 
 pathy, for this is a quality to which the piece could 
 make no claim. But in a truly poetic play a mishap 
 of this sort would be a misfortune in that it might pre- 
 cipitate the interest and interrupt the harmony of at- 
 tention demanded by the imaginative drama itself. 
 (1912.) 
 
 35
 
 Ill 
 
 A MORAL FROM A TOY THEATER
 
 A MORAL FROM A TOY THEATER 
 
 I 
 
 IN 1881, when William Ernest Henley was hard put to 
 it to make a living, Sir Sidney Colvin kindly recom- 
 mended him for the editorship of the monthly Magazine 
 of Art. Among the contributors whom the new editor 
 called to his aid was Robert Louis Stevenson, and 
 among the contributions the latter made to the former's 
 magazine was the highly characteristic and self -revela- 
 tory essay, entitled 'A Penny Plain and Two Pence 
 Colored/ now included in the volume called ' Memories 
 and Portraits.' In this playful paper Stevenson makes 
 one of his many returns to his boyhood, whose moods 
 he could always recapture at will with the assistance of 
 that imaginative memory which was one of his special 
 gifts, and he was able to replevin from the dim limbo 
 of things half forgotten his longing delight in the toy 
 theater, the scenes for which and the necessary proper- 
 ties and the several characters themselves in then 1 suc- 
 cessive dresses were to be procured printed on very thin 
 cardboard, so that the proud possessor might cut them 
 out at will. If the youthful capitalist had accumu- 
 lated twopence, he could acquire these treasures al- 
 ready resplendent in their glowing hues; and yet 
 Stevenson held that the lad was happier who parted 
 with only a single penny, reserving the half of his for- 
 
 39
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 tune for the purchase of the paints wherewith he might 
 himself vivify this scenery and these properties, and so 
 cause his characters to start to life, emblazoned in the 
 bold colors which please the puerile mind. 
 
 These sheets of thin cardboard, with thin little pam- 
 phlets containing the text of the pieces to be performed 
 in the toy theater, were originally known as Skelt's 
 Juvenile Drama; and one Skelt seems to have been 
 its originator, probably in the early part of the nine- 
 teenth century. Apparently he parted with his pre- 
 cious stock in trade to one Park, who passed it on in due 
 season to one Webb, who transmitted it to one Red- 
 ington, until at last it descended to its present owner, 
 one B. Pollock, of 73 Hoxton Street, London, N. 
 Stevenson affected to think that Skelt's Juvenile 
 Drama had "become, for the most part, a memory"; 
 yet it survives now in the second decade of the twen- 
 tieth century as Pollock's Juvenile Drama, and Mr. 
 Pollock proclaims that he has republished some score 
 plays, and that he keeps them always in print, plain 
 and colored. He offers, furthermore, to supply " Drop 
 Scenes, Top Drops, Orchestras, Foot and Water Pieces, 
 Single Portraits, Combats Fours, Sixes, Twelves, 
 Sixteens Fairies, Horse Soldiers, Clowns, Rifles, An- 
 imals, Birds, Butterflies, Houses, Views, Ships, &c., 
 plain and colored, y$ sheet plain, Id sheet colored." 
 
 It is from the covers of "the book of the words" of 
 the 'Miller and His Men' that this enticing proclama- 
 tion is taken the 'Miller and His Men,' "adapted only 
 for Pollock's characters and scenes," and accompanied 
 
 40
 
 .22 h 
 IS 
 
 o g 
 
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 ri a 
 +3 a; 
 
 - Si 
 
 by 1) 
 
 <U 0) 
 
 ee -5 
 
 S t) 
 
 li 
 
 il
 
 A MORAL FROM A TOY THEATER 
 
 by "7 Plates characters, 11 Scenes, 3 Wings, Total 21 
 Plates." The persons of the drama and the scenes 
 wherein that drama is played out to its fiery end, are 
 all in the bolder manner of the Old Masters, who sought 
 the broadest effects, and who willingly neglected petty 
 details. How bold and how broad the manner and 
 the effects can best be judged by an honest transcrip- 
 tion from the final page of the book of words, wherein 
 the terse and tense dialog, single speech clashing with 
 single speech, is accompanied by stage directions for 
 the instruction of the Young Masters who are about 
 to produce the sublime spectacle: 
 
 Enter Grindorf left hand, plate 4. 
 
 Enter Karl and Friberg, swords drawn, plate 4, fallowed by 
 
 the Troops, right hand, plate 7. 
 Grindorf: Ha ! ha ! I have escaped you, have I ? 
 Karl: But you are caught in your own trap. 
 Grindorf: Spiller I Golotz ! Golotz ! I say ! 
 Count: Villain! you cannot escape us now! Surrender, or 
 instantly meet thy fate I 
 
 Grindorf: Surrender ! I have sworn never to descend from 
 this place alive ! 
 
 Enter Lothair, as Spiller, 3rd dress, left hand, plate 7. 
 Grindorf: Spiller, let my bride appear. 
 Exit Lothair. 
 
 Enter Kehnar, right hand, plate 1. 
 Enter Ravina with torch, plate 7. 
 
 Ravina: Before it is too late, restore Claudine to her father's 
 arms! 
 
 Grindorf: Never! 
 Ravina : Then I know my course ! 
 Enter Lothair with Claudine, left hand, plate 6. 
 41
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 Kehnar: My child! Ah, Grindorf, spare her! 
 Grindorf: Hear me, Count Friberg; if you do not withdraw 
 your followers, by my hand she dies ! 
 
 Count: Never, till thou art yielded to justice! 
 Grindorf: No more this to her heart ! 
 Lothair: And this to thine! 
 
 Exit Lothair and Claudine, and Grindorf. 
 
 Re-enter Grindorf and Lothair fighting, plate 6, fight and exit. 
 
 Grindorf to be put on wounded, plate 7. 
 
 Re-enter Lothair with Claudine, plate 6. 
 Lothair: Ravina, fire the train! 
 
 Scene changes to explosion, Scene 11, JVo. 9. 
 
 The words are striking and the actions are startling, 
 and it is no wonder that plate 7 and scene 11, No. 9, 
 filled with joy the heart of Robert Louis Stevenson 
 when he was a perfervid Scot of fourteen. In his manly 
 maturity, when he had risen to an appreciation of por- 
 traits by Raebum, and when he had sat at the feet of 
 that inspired critic of painting, his cousin, R. A. M. 
 Stevenson, he admitted that he had no desire to insist 
 upon the art of Skelt's purveyors. "Those wonderful 
 characters that once so thrilled our soul with their bold 
 attitude, array of deadly engines and incomparable cos- 
 tume, to-day look somewhat pallidly," he confessed 
 regretfully; "the extreme hard favor of the heroine 
 strikes me, I had almost said with pain; the villain's 
 scowl no longer thrills me like a trumpet; and the 
 scenes themselves, those once incomparable landscapes, 
 seem the efforts of a prentice hand. So much of fault 
 we can find; but, on the other side, the impartial critic 
 rejoices to remark the presence of a great unity of 
 
 42
 
 A MORAL FROM A TOY THEATER 
 
 gusto; of those direct claptrap appeals which a man 
 is dead and buriable when he fails to answer; of the 
 footlight glamor, the ready-made, barefaced, trans- 
 pontine picturesque, a thing not one with cold reality, 
 but how much dearer to the mind !" 
 
 II 
 
 "Transpontine" is a Briticism for which the equiva- 
 lent Americanism is "Bowery." The plays which 
 Skelt vended for the enjoyment of romantic youth were 
 not of his own invention, nor were they the work of his 
 hirelings; they were artfully simplified condensations 
 of melodramas long popular in London at the theaters 
 on the Surrey side of the Thames, and in New York 
 at the Bowery. In French's Standard Drama, the 
 Acting Edition, to be obtained in yellow covers for 
 fifteen cents, one may find "the 'Miller and His Men/ 
 a Melo-Drama in Two Acts, by F. Pocock, Esq., author 
 of the 'Robber's Wife/ 'John of Paris/ 'Hit or Miss/ 
 'Magpie and the Maid/ etc., with original casts, scene 
 and property plots, costumes, and all the stage business." 
 And the list of properties required for the final scene 
 helps to elucidate what may have been cryptic in the 
 dialog quoted from the compacted adaptation of Skelt : 
 
 Scene 4 : Slow match laid from stage in C. to mill. Lighted torch 
 for Ravina. Red fire and explosion 3 E. L. H. Wood crash 
 3 E. L. H. Six stuffed figures of robbers behind mill, L. H. 
 Eight guns, swords, and belts for hussars. Disguise cloak for 
 Lothair. Fighting swords for Lothair and Wolf. [Wolf is 
 evidently another name for Grindorf.] 
 43
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 Thus we see that the pleasant country of the Skelts 
 stretched from the Surrey side of the Thames to the 
 Bowery bank of the Hudson, and that the Skeltic 
 temperament was purely melodramatic, its bass notes 
 being transposed to adjust it to the clear treble of 
 boyhood. It is greatly to be regretted that no inquir- 
 ing scholar has yet devoted himself to the task of trac- 
 ing the history of English melodrama, as Professor 
 Thorndike has traced the history of English tragedy. 
 Of course, there have always been melodramatic plays 
 ever since the drama began to assert itself as an inde- 
 pendent form of art. There is a melodramatic ele- 
 ment in the 'Medea' of Euripides, as there is in the 
 'Rodogune' of Corneille; and in the Elizabethan the- 
 ater the so-called tragedy of blood is nothing if not 
 melodramatic. Yet the special form of English melo- 
 drama that flourished in the later years of the eighteenth 
 century and the earlier years of the nineteenth deserves 
 a more careful study than it has yet received. Appar- 
 ently it was due partly to a decadence of the native 
 type of drama represented by Lillo's 'George Barn- 
 well,' and partly to the stimulation received first from 
 the emotional pieces of the German Kotzebue, and 
 afterward from the picturesque pieces of the French 
 Pixe*re"court. And not to be neglected is the influence 
 immediately exerted on the popular plays of the latter 
 part of the period by the romances of Scott and of 
 Cooper. 
 
 Altho these plays were devoid of literary merit, of 
 style, of veracity of character delineation, of sincerity 
 
 44
 
 A MORAL FROM A TOY THEATER 
 
 of motive, they were not without theatrical effective- 
 ness or they could never have maintained them- 
 selves in the theater. As Sir Arthur Pinero has seen 
 clearly, "a drama which was sufficiently popular to 
 be transferred to the toy theaters was almost certain 
 to have a sort of rude merit in its construction. The 
 characterization would be hopelessly conventional, the 
 dialog bald and despicable but the situations would 
 be artfully arranged, the story told adroitly and with 
 spirit." In other words, the compounders of these 
 melodramas were fairly skilful in devising plots likely 
 to arouse and to sustain the interest of uncritical 
 audiences. Probably they were unfamiliar with Vol- 
 taire's assertion that the success of a play depends 
 mainly upon the choice of its story; and it is unlikely 
 that they had any knowledge of Aristotle's declaration 
 that plot is primarily more important than character; 
 but they accomplished their humble task as well as if 
 they had been heartened by these authorities. These 
 ingenious and ingenuous pieces were none of them con- 
 tributions to English dramatic literature, and they are 
 not enshrined in its annals; but they were effective 
 stage-plays, nevertheless, and they had, therefore, an 
 essential quality lacking in the closet-dramas which 
 Shelley and Byron were composing in those same 
 years. 
 
 45
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 III 
 
 In the illuminating lecture on Stevenson as a writer 
 of plays delivered by Sir Arthur Pinero in 1903 before 
 the members of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institu- 
 tion, the confessions contained in ' A Penny Plain and 
 Two Pence Colored' are skilfully employed to explain 
 Stevenson's flat failure as a playwright. Many of his 
 ardent admirers must have wondered why it was that 
 he adventured four times into dramatic authorship, 
 only to undergo a fourfold shipwreck. Yet Sir James 
 Barrie and Mr. John Galsworthy, essayists and novel- 
 ists at first, as Stevenson was, strayed successfully from 
 prose fiction into the acted drama. Was not Steven- 
 son as anxious for this theatrical triumph as any one 
 of these ? Was he not as richly dowered with dramatic 
 power, as inventive, as responsive to opportunity, as 
 ready to master a new craft ? Why, then, did he fail 
 where they have succeeded ? 
 
 For these baffling questions Sir Arthur Pinero has 
 an acceptable answer. Stevenson was unable to es- 
 tablish himself as a play-maker, first, because he did 
 not take the art of play-making seriously; he did not 
 put his full strength in it, mind and soul and body, 
 contenting himself when he was a man with playing 
 at play-making as he had played with his toy theater 
 when he was a boy. The second cause of his disap- 
 pointment as a dramatist was due to the abiding in- 
 fluence of this toy theater, and to the fact that the 
 
 46
 
 A MORAL FROM A TOY THEATER 
 
 pieces he attempted were planned in rivalry with the 
 'Miller and His Men/ and therefore that they were 
 hopelessly out of date before they were conceived. 
 (There is a third reason, not mentioned by Sir Arthur, 
 and yet suggesting itself irresistibly to any one who 
 knew the editor of the Magazine of Art personally; all 
 four of Stevenson's attempts at play-writing were made 
 in collaboration with Henley, who was the least 
 equipped by temper and by temperament for the prac- 
 tise of dramaturgy.) 
 
 Yet even if Stevenson had worked alone, and even 
 if he had taken the new art seriously, he could never 
 have won a place among the playwrights until he had 
 fought himself free from the sinuous coils of Skeltery. 
 In his youth he had saved his pence to purchase the 
 accessories of Skelt's Juvenile Drama with boyish de- 
 light in the acquisition of things longed for to be pos- 
 sessed at last. When he had purchased plate 7 and 
 scene 11, No. 9, he thought they were his possessions. 
 But, of a truth, he was their possession, even if he did 
 not know his slavery. As a man he was subdued to 
 what he had worked in as a boy; and when he wanted 
 to write plays of his own, he had no freedom to follow 
 the better models of his own day; he was a bondman 
 to Skelt, a thrall to Park, a minion to Webb, a chattel 
 to Redington and to Pollock. " What am I ? " he asked 
 in his self-revelatory essay, humorously exaggerating, 
 no doubt, yet subconsciously stating the exact truth; 
 "What am I? What are life, art, letters, the world, 
 but what my Skelt has made them? He stamped 
 
 47
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 himself upon my immaturity." And the impression 
 was then so deep that it could not be effaced in maturity. 
 The boy in Stevenson survived, instead of dying when 
 the man was born. 
 
 The art of play-writing, like the art of story-telling, 
 and, indeed, like all the other arts, demands both a 
 native gift and an acquired craft. Its basic principles 
 are the same ever since the drama began; but its im- 
 mediate methods vary at different times and in differ- 
 ent countries. While every artist must say what it is 
 given him to say, he can say it acceptably only by ac- 
 quiring the method of speech employed by his imme- 
 diate predecessors. However original he may prove 
 himself at the end, in the beginning he can only imitate 
 the methods and borrow the processes and avail him- 
 self of the practises which the elder craftsmen are em- 
 ploying successfully at the moment when he sets him- 
 self to learn their trade. He must to use the apt term 
 of the engineers he must keep himself abreast of 
 "state of the art." This is what the great dramatists 
 have ever done; Sophocles follows in the footsteps of 
 ^Eschylus, as Shakspere emulates Marlowe and Kyd, 
 and as Moliere went to school to the adroit and acro- 
 batic Italian comedians. These great dramatists were 
 perfectly content to begin by taking over the patterns 
 devised by their immediate predecessors in play- 
 making, even if they were soon to enlarge these pat- 
 terns and so modify them to suit their even larger needs. 
 
 Now, the state of the art when Stevenson turned to 
 the theater was in accord with the picture-frame stage 
 
 48
 
 A MORAL FROM A TOY THEATER 
 
 of today, with a single set to the act, and without the 
 soliloquies and the confidential asides to the audience 
 which may then have been proper enough on the apron- 
 stage of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 
 Even in the lower grade of playhouse, where rude and 
 crude melodramas were performed, the method and 
 the manner of the ' Miller and His Men' had long de- 
 parted. The pleasure that melodrama can give is 
 perennial; but its processes vary in accord with the 
 changing conditions of the theater. The door was 
 open for Stevenson to write melodrama, if he preferred 
 that species of play, and if he desired to varnish it 
 with literature as he was to varnish the police-novel 
 or mystery-story in the ' Wrecker/ But if he sought 
 to do this, he was bound to inform himself as to the 
 state of the art at the instant of composition. If he 
 shut his eyes to the changed conditions of the theater 
 since the 'Miller and His Men' had won a wide popu- 
 larity hi the playhouse, then he made an unpardonable 
 blunder, for the battle was lost before he could deploy 
 his forces. He might have been forewarned by the 
 failure of Charles Lamb in a like attempt. When 
 Lamb's Elizabethan imitation 'John Woodvil' was re- 
 jected for Drury Lane by John Philip Kemble as not 
 "consonant with the taste of the age"; its exasperated 
 author cried: "Hang on the age! I'll write for an- 
 tiquity!" But those who write for antiquity cannot 
 complain if they do not delight their contemporaries. 
 It is to his contemporaries, and not to antiquity or to 
 posterity, that every true dramatist has appealed. 
 
 49
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 IV 
 
 And as Stevenson might have taken warning from 
 the sad fate of Lamb, so he might have found his profit 
 in considering the happy fortune of Victor Hugo, who 
 also had a taste for melodrama. When the leader of 
 the French romanticists felt that it was incumbent 
 upon him to conquer the theater which the classicists 
 held as their last stronghold, he was swift to consider 
 the state of the art. He sought immediate success 
 upon the stage, and the most successful plays of that 
 period in France were the melodramas of Pixe*re"court, 
 and of his followers, and therefore Hugo sat himself 
 down to spy out the secrets of their craft. He made 
 himself master of their methods, and he put together 
 the striking and startling plots of l Hernani ' and ' Ruy 
 Bias' in strict accord with their formulas, certain that 
 he could varnish with literature their melodramatic 
 actions. So glittering was his varnish, so brilliant was 
 his metrical rhetoric, so glowing were his golden verses, 
 that he blinded the spectators and kept the most of 
 them from peering beneath at his arbitrary and arti- 
 ficial skeleton of supporting melodramatic structure. 
 To-day, after fourscore years, we can see just what it 
 is that Hugo did; and his plays, superb as they are in 
 their lyric adornment, stand revealed as frank melo- 
 dramas, lacking sincerity df motive and veracity of 
 character drawing. But when Hugo wrote them they 
 were in Kemble's phrase " consonant with the taste of 
 
 50
 
 A MORAL FROM A TOY THEATER 
 
 the age," and the best of them have not yet worn out 
 their welcome in the theater. 
 
 Stevenson did not heed the warning of Lamb, and 
 he did not profit by the example of Hugo. 'Deacon 
 Brodie' was born out of date; so was 'Admiral Guinea'; 
 and all the varnish of literature which the two collab- 
 orators applied externally and with loving solicitude 
 availed naught. It is due to his entanglement hi the 
 strangling coils of Skeltery that Stevenson did not take 
 the drama seriously. He seemed to have looked at it 
 as something to be tossed off lightly to make money in 
 the interstices of honest work. In his stories, long and 
 short, he strove for effect, no doubt, but he was bent 
 also on achieving sincerity and veracity. In his plays 
 he made little effort for either sincerity or veracity, so 
 far at least as his plot was concerned; and he thought 
 he could lift these concoctions to the level of literature 
 by the polish of his dialog, and by qualities applied on 
 the outside instead of being developed from the inside. 
 He seems to have believed that in the drama, at least, 
 he could attain beauty by constructing his ornament 
 instead of by ornamenting his construction, ignoring or 
 ignorant of the fact that in the drama, the construc- 
 tion, if only it be solid enough, and four square to all 
 the winds that blow, needs no ornament ajnd is most 
 impressive in its stark simplicity. 
 
 In his boyhood Goethe had also played with a toy 
 theater, and it was a puppet-show piece which first 
 called his attention to the mighty theme of his supreme 
 poem; but the great German poet, captivated as he 
 
 51
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 may have been by his youthful experience, was able in 
 his manhood to free himself from its shackles. He 
 came in time to have a profound insight into the prin- 
 ciples of dramatic art, and of the dramaturgic craft. 
 In his old age he talked about the theater freely and 
 frequently to Eckermann; and there are few of his 
 utterances which do not furnish food for reflection. 
 Here is one of them: 
 
 Writing for the stage is something peculiar; and he who 
 does not understand it had better leave it alone. Every one 
 thinks that an interesting fact will appear interesting on the 
 boards nothing of the kind I Things may be very pretty to 
 read, and very pretty to think about; but as soon as they are 
 put upon the stage the effect is quite different; and that which 
 has charmed us in the closet will probably fall flat on the boards. 
 . . . Writing for the stage is a trade that one must understand, 
 and requires a talent that one must possess. Both are uncom- 
 mon, and where they are not combined, we have scarcely any 
 good result. ' 
 
 That Stevenson had the native gift of the dramatist 
 is undisputable, and Sir Arthur Pinero in his lecture 
 was able to make this clear. But "writing for the 
 stage is also a trade that one must acquire"; and when 
 Stevenson sought to acquire it he apprenticed himself 
 to Skelt not to Sardou, to Redington and Pollock, not 
 to Augier and Dumas. 
 
 (1914.) 
 
 P. S. After the publication of this paper in Scrib- 
 ner's Magazine, a friendly reader in Great Britain was 
 
 52
 
 1 
 
 ta 
 o
 
 A MORAL FROM A TOY THEATER 
 
 kind enough to copy out for me this Skeltian lyric, 
 which appeared in the London Fun in 1868, and which 
 was probably rimed by Henry S. Leigh: 
 
 AN EARLY STAGE 
 
 Ah me ! since first, long, long ago, 
 
 I learned to love the British stage, 
 It has or I have altered so, 
 
 It scarce receives my patronage ! 
 Where are the villain's spangled tabs, 
 
 His cloak, his ringlets, and his belt ? 
 Where are his scowls, his growls, his stabs, 
 
 As shown of old by Park and Skelt ? 
 
 Once was I manager myself, 
 
 And played the 'Miller and his Men'; 
 My company ah, happy elf ! 
 
 I had no trouble with them then 
 They never sulked, forgot their lines, 
 
 Threw up their parts, or asked for "gelt" 
 For as the reader p'r'aps divines 
 
 I got them all of Park and Skelt. 
 
 I stuck them on, and cut them out, 
 
 I painted them with colors bright; 
 I scattered tinsel-specks about, 
 
 And made them things of beauty, quite 
 Not joys forever ne'ertheless, 
 
 They've vanished just as snowflakes melt. 
 None can restore the bliss, I guess, 
 
 I once derived from Park and Skelt. 
 
 How I revered the artist's skill 
 Who did my heroes represent 
 53
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 With scowls the very soul to thrill 
 With one leg straight and one leg bent ! 
 
 I loved his ladies full of grace, 
 
 And on their beauties fondly dwelt: 
 
 My first pictorial love could trace 
 Her pedigree to Park and Skelt. 
 
 Ah me ! 'tis many a year since I 
 
 Those dear old plates a penny plain 
 And two-pence colored did espy; 
 
 I ne'er shall see their like again I 
 The world's with disappointment rife, 
 
 And I have far too often felt 
 That actors now are less like life 
 
 Than those I bought of Park and Skelt ! 
 
 54
 
 IV 
 WHY FIVE ACTS ?
 
 WHY FIVE ACTS ? 
 I 
 
 IN the eighteenth century, both in England and in 
 France, every stately and ponderous tragedy and every 
 self-respecting comedy obeyed the obligation imposed 
 by long tradition and duly stretched itself out to the 
 full measure of five acts, no more and no less. It felt 
 bound thus to distend itself, even tho its theme might 
 be far too frail for so huge a frame, and even tho the 
 unfortunate author often found himself at his wit's 
 end to piece out his play's end. Any one who has had 
 occasion to read widely in the works of the eighteenth 
 century playwrights cannot fail to feel abundant sym- 
 pathy for the harassed poet who plaintively called 
 on Parliament to pass a law abolishing fifth acts al- 
 together. This unduly distressed dramatist was an 
 Englishman; but about the same time a Frenchman, 
 weary of contemplating the frequent emptiness of the 
 contemporary tragic stage, sarcastically remarked that, 
 after all, it must be very easy not to write a tragedy 
 in five acts. 
 
 Yet if tragedy was to be written at all, it had to have 
 five acts, since a smaller number would not seem pro- 
 portionate to a truly tragic subject. But why five 
 acts? Why has five the number sacred to the tragic 
 muse? Why did even the comic muse demand it? 
 
 57
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 Why does George Meredith, discussing comedy, de- 
 clare that "five is dignity with a trailing robe; whereas 
 one, or two, or three acts would be short skirts, and 
 degrading." Why not three acts, or seven ? Why was 
 it that any other number of acts was unthinkable or 
 at least never thought of? 
 
 Questions like these seem to have floated before the 
 mind of the Abbe" d'Aubignac, writing in the seven- 
 teenth century, and he came very near putting to 
 himself the query which serves as a title for this chap- 
 ter. "Poets have generally agreed that all Drammas 
 regularly should have neither more nor less than Five 
 Acts; and the Proof of this is the general observation 
 of it; but for the Reason, I do not know whether there 
 be any founded in Nature. Rhetorick has this advan- 
 tage over Poetry in the Parts of Oration, that the 
 Exord, Narration, Confirmation and Peroration are 
 founded upon a way of discoursing natural to all Men. 
 . . . But for the Five Acts of the Drammatick Poem, 
 they have not been framed upon any sound ground." 
 
 That the division of a drama into five parts was ac- 
 cepted in every civilized country as the only possible 
 division, seems very strange indeed, when we consider 
 that there is really no artistic justification for it, nor 
 any logical necessity. Like every other work of art 
 a play ought to have a single subject, a clearly defined 
 topic; in other words, it ought to have Unity of Action. 
 There is no denying that some of the greatest artists 
 have, now and again, been tempted to deal with two 
 themes at the same time, combining these as best they 
 
 58
 
 WHY FIVE ACTS? 
 
 could in a single work at the risk of leaving us a little 
 in doubt as to their intention; but in the immense ma- 
 jority of acknowledged masterpieces the interest is 
 carefully centered in a single object. In these mas- 
 terpieces the action is single and unswerving, sweeping 
 forward irresistibly to its inevitable end. 
 
 If, therefore, we accept the Unity of Action as a 
 general rule, binding upon all artists, we can hardly 
 deny that the most obviously natural arrangement 
 for the story is to set it forth in one act, without any 
 intermission or subdivision whatsoever a single action 
 in a single act. Yet it is the play in three acts which 
 we are bound to recognize at once as possessing the 
 ideal form, since it enables the dramatist to set apart 
 the three divisions, which Aristotle declared to be es- 
 sential to a well-constructed tragedy the beginning, 
 the middle, and the end each presented in an act of 
 its own. To put a play into more than three acts is 
 possible only by halving one or another of these three 
 essential parts. In a four-act play, the beginning may 
 be split into two acts; and in a five-act play the middle 
 may also be subdivided. 
 
 The logic of the three-act form, and the convenience 
 of it also, are so obvious that ever since the tyranny 
 of the Procrustean framework in five acts was abolished 
 in the middle years of the nineteenth century, prac- 
 tical playwrights of all countries have favored it more 
 and more. The young Dumas used it in his later plays, 
 and so did Ibsen, that consummate master of stage- 
 craft, emancipated from empty traditions, but profiting 
 
 59
 
 shrewdly by every available device of his immediate 
 predecessors. If the four-act form is also popular 
 to-day, this seems to be because the modern dramatist, 
 intending a play in three acts, finds himself forced by 
 sheer press of matter, to subdivide one of the essential 
 members, as Sir Arthur Pinero had to do in the 'Second 
 Mrs. Tanqueray' and Mr. Henry Arthur Jones in the 
 'Liars.' Even the opera, which liked the larger frame- 
 work of five acts when Scribe was writing librettos for 
 Hale*vy and Meyerbeer, is now content with only three, 
 since Wagner revealed his skill as a librettist. 
 
 It is true that Freytag, in his sadly old-fashioned 
 treatise on 'Technic of the Drama/ accepted without 
 cavil the five-act form, and even attempted to justify 
 it by asserting that there are in fact five divisions of a 
 tragic action. He symbolized the arrangement of a 
 drama in a pyramidal structure, declaring that it 
 ascends from the Introduction to the Climax, and then 
 descends to the Catastrophe. Obviously these are 
 only different terms for the beginning, the middle, and 
 the end. But he vainly imagined two other members, 
 the Rise, which intervenes between the Introduction 
 and the Climax, and the Fall, which he inserted be- 
 tween the Climax and the Catastrophe. Obviously, 
 again, this is an explanation after the event; and it 
 seems to have its origin solely in his acceptance of the 
 five-act form. And Freytag was forced to abandon his 
 own theory when he considered honestly certain of the 
 masterpieces of the modern drama. He admitted it 
 to be "impossible that the single acts should correspond 
 
 60
 
 WHY FIVE ACTS? 
 
 entirely to the five great divisions of the action." He 
 asserted that "in the Rising Action, the first stage was 
 usually in the first act, the last sometimes in the third; 
 of the Falling Action the beginning and the end were 
 sometimes taken in the third and fifth acts." Yet he 
 failed to see that if he made this admission, he cut the 
 ground from under his feet, and that there was no longer 
 any acceptable reason for his insistence upon the five- 
 act form. 
 
 Freytag had no doubt at all as to the necessity of 
 the division into five acts. He received it with blind 
 faith, as tho it had been prescribed by divine authority. 
 Yet if he had chosen to explore the early history of the 
 drama in his own tongue, he would have found Hans 
 Sachs sometimes extending his plays into six acts, and 
 even into seven. And if he had cared to consider the 
 drama of the Spaniards he would have seen that the 
 most of the plays of Calderon are in three acts a divi- 
 sion which the great dramatic poet of Spain had taken 
 over, as he had taken over so much else, from his mas- 
 terful predecessor, Lope de Vega. In his interesting 
 and illuminating little treatise on the art of writing 
 plays, Lope de Vega gave the credit of establishing the 
 three-act form to Virues. Plays had previously been 
 written in four acts; as Lope puts it pleasantly: "The 
 drama had gone on all fours, like a child, and truly it 
 was then in its infancy." 
 
 Freytag ignored or was ignorant of Hans Sachs and 
 Calderon. His mind was fixed on Goethe and on 
 Schiller, altho his vision also included Shakspere, upon 
 
 61
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 whom the two German poets had more or less modeled 
 themselves. The tradition of the five-act form might 
 not obtain in the earliest German drama, as it did not 
 obtain in the Spanish; but it was firmly established in 
 the later German drama, in the English, and in the 
 French. It is easy to see that the later Germans de- 
 rived it from the French and the English; but where 
 did the French and the English get it? Where could 
 they get it ? No such division existed in the medieval 
 drama, in the mysteries and in the miracle-plays, out 
 of which the drama of every modern language has been 
 developed. No such division existed in the Greek 
 drama, which has served as a standard and as a stimu- 
 lus to the drama of every modern literature. A Greek 
 tragedy was represented without any intermission in a 
 single, long unbroken act; and if a sequence of three 
 plays was sometimes performed, one after another, on 
 the same day, and dealing with successive periods of 
 the same story, this trilogy might suggest a division 
 into three parts. Nor is any hint of the duty of divid- 
 ing a tragedy into five parts to be discovered anywhere 
 in Aristotle. 
 
 II 
 
 And yet we must go back to the Greek theater if we 
 want to see why it is that the 'Femmes Savantes' of 
 Moliere and the 'School for Scandal' of Sheridan are 
 each of them in five acts. But it is not from a Greek 
 that we get the law that this division was obligatory 
 on all self-respecting dramatists; it is from a Roman, 
 
 62
 
 WHY FIVE ACTS? 
 
 writing at a time when the drama of his own language 
 had been ousted from the stage by pantomimic spec- 
 tacle and by gladiatorial combat. It is Horace, who, 
 in his epistle on the art of poetry, declares the neces- 
 sity of five acts: 
 
 Ne brevior, neu sit quinto production" actu 
 Fabula quae posci vult et spectata reponi. 
 
 Sir Theodore Martin rendered this in an English 
 rimed couplet, which does not completely convey the 
 meaning of the two Latin lines, but which will serve to 
 show the rigidity of the rule laid down by the Roman 
 poet: 
 
 Five acts a play must have, nor more nor less, 
 To keep the stage and have a marked success. 
 
 But this still leaves us groping in the dark. Why 
 did Horace declare this law ? What warrant had he ? 
 What put the idea into his head ? These are questions 
 answered by a French scholar, M. Weil; in one of his 
 ingenious and learned 'fitudes sur le Drame Antique,' 
 he explains that Horace derived much of his theory of 
 the poetic art from the Alexandrian critics, and more 
 particularly from the writings of a certain Neopto- 
 lemus of Parium. Probably the Alexandrian authors 
 of tragedy had been led to adopt a division into five 
 acts by following the example of Euripides, whose prac- 
 tise was not uniform, but who tended to reduce to 
 four the number of the lyric odes in his tragedies, thus 
 separating the purely dramatic passages into five parts. 
 
 63
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 In Athens the drama had been slowly evolved out 
 of the tragic songs; and in the surviving tragedies of 
 ^Eschylus, the earliest of the three great dramatic poets 
 of Greece, we discover that the choral odes are more 
 abundant than the dialog which carries on the plot. 
 In the extant plays of his mighty successor, Sophocles, 
 the drama is seen emerging triumphant, but the lyrical 
 passages are still frequent and important. In the later 
 pieces of Euripides, the third and most modern of the 
 Attic tragedians, we note that the drama has almost 
 wholly disengaged itself from the lyric out of which it 
 sprang. In ^Eschylus and in Sophocles the number of 
 choral odes and the number of episodes, of purely dra- 
 matic passages in dialog, is never fixed, varying from 
 play to play as the plot might demand. But in Eurip- 
 ides the choral odes are more detached from the drama; 
 beautiful in themselves, they seem to exist rather for 
 their own sake than in any integral relation to the play 
 itself. And apparently Euripides was far more inter- 
 ested in his play, in his plot, and in his characters, 
 than in these extraneous lyric passages, so he reduced 
 them to the lowest possible number, generally to four, 
 serving, so to speak, as exquisite interact music, sepa- 
 rating the pathetic play into five episodes in dialog. 
 
 The Alexandrian tragedians came long after Eurip- 
 ides, and to their sophisticated taste his pathetic and 
 emotional plays appealed far more than the austerer 
 and manlier masterpieces of his two great predeces- 
 sors. Apparently they accepted his form as final; they 
 may even have left out the choruses altogether; and 
 
 64
 
 WHY FIVE ACTS? 
 
 then their tragedies had five separate episodes in 
 other words, five acts. It is these lost Alexandrian 
 tragedies, composed in the decadent days of the Greek 
 drama, which seem to have served as the model for 
 Seneca, the eloquent rhetorician even tho he fre- 
 quently took over the theme and often more or less of 
 the structure of certain of the dramas of Euripides. 
 
 The tragedies of Seneca are to be considered rather 
 as dramatic poems than as poetic dramas, since they 
 were intended not really for performance by actors, 
 in a theater, before an audience, but for recitation by 
 a single elocutionist in a private house much as a 
 professional reader of our own time might recite un- 
 aided a more or less dramatic poem by Shelley or Byron 
 or Browning. Coming long after Horace, Seneca un- 
 hesitatingly accepted all of the restrictions insisted 
 upon by the Latin lyrist including the purely academic 
 limitation of the number of speakers taking part in any 
 dialog to three, a limitation absolutely absurd in a 
 poem not intended for actual acting and not forced to 
 conform to the accidental conditions of the Attic stage. 
 Obeying also the other rule which he found in Horace's 
 codification of the laws of dramatic poetry, the His- 
 pano-Roman rhetorician was careful always to cut up 
 his play into five parts. But he saw his profit in re- 
 taining the chorus, since this could be made to serve 
 as the appropriate mouthpiece for the elaborate pas- 
 sages of elocutionary splendor in which he delighted. 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that the Italian scholars 
 of the Renascence followed the precept of Horace and 
 
 65
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 the practise of Seneca. They were far more at home 
 in Latin than they were in Greek; and they could 
 hardly help reading into the literature of Athens what 
 they were already familiar with in the authors of 
 Rome. To them Seneca was as imposing as Sophocles, 
 and Horace was almost as weighty as Aristotle. So it 
 is that Scaliger and Minturno prescribe five acts, and 
 that Castelvetro (always more practical in his point 
 of view) points out that poets seem to have found the 
 five-act form most suitable. When an Italian scholar- 
 poet turned from criticism to creation, the tragedies he 
 conscientiously composed obeyed all the rules, and his 
 dramatic poems were as academic as those of Seneca, 
 in that they were intended not for production by pro- 
 fessional actors in a regular theater before spectators 
 who had paid their way in, but only for an occasional 
 performance by the author himself assisted by a few 
 of his friends before a little group of cultivated admirers 
 of antiquity, contemptuous of the real public. These 
 soulless dramatic poems, devised for declamation by 
 amateurs before a gathering of dilettants, are now 
 perceived to be merely literary curiosities, having little 
 connection with the real drama made for the regular 
 theater and its myriad-minded body of playgoers. 
 
 Just as the Italian dramatic poems were imitations 
 of Seneca, so the French dramatic poems, composed a 
 little later, were imitations of these Italians, and also 
 of Seneca, more or less indirectly. They were the imi- 
 tations of an imitation, aping the outward form of the 
 drama, but empty of all genuine dramatic spirit, arti- 
 
 66
 
 WHY FIVE ACTS? 
 
 ficial in passion and high-flown in rhetoric. And there 
 are early English attempts at this same sort of academic 
 tragedy, more imitative still, since we can see in them 
 the commingled influence of the French and of the 
 Italians immediately, and also of the remoter Seneca, 
 whom they revered as the exemplar of true tragedy. 
 Such a play is 'Gorboduc,' belauded by the scholarly 
 Sidney and even on one occasion acted, by main 
 strength. In all of these imitations, English and 
 French and Italian, we find the stately chorus abound- 
 ing in lofty rhetoric ; and we find also, and always, the 
 division into five acts. But in the folk-theater, which 
 the scholar-poets scorned, and out of which the living 
 drama was to be developed, there is no trace of any 
 division into acts. In the mysteries and the miracle- 
 plays, and in the chronicle-plays which grew out of 
 them, there are numberless episodes, each complete 
 in itself, and never combined artificially into acts. 
 The composer of any one of these folk-dramas con- 
 ceived his story as a continuous narrative shown in 
 action; and he gave no thought to the number of 
 divisions, of episodes, of separate scenes, or of acts 
 that it might seem to have. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Tragedy has ever been held to be more elevated than 
 comedy and more worthy; and comedy has continually 
 accepted the conditions appropriate to tragedy. Since 
 the dignity of tragedy demanded a division into five 
 
 67
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 acts, comedy was also subjected to the same rule; and 
 this was done in spite of the fact that the plays of Plau- 
 tus and Terence (composed long before Horace codi- 
 fied his advice to intending poets) were not divided 
 into acts, if we may judge by the earliest of the sur- 
 viving manuscripts. So it is that we find the scholarly 
 authors of the two earliest of English comedies, 'Ralph 
 Roister Doister' and 'Gammer Gurton's Needle/ 
 knowing what was expected of them, and giving the 
 five-act form to both of these amusing plays. But 
 these two comedies, almost contemporary as they are 
 with the academic and undramatic tragedy of 'Gor- 
 boduc/ are far superior to it in adaptability for actual 
 performance. They are not intended only to be re- 
 cited; they can be acted easily and profitably. As 
 we analyze them we see that the structural complexity 
 may be derived from the comic dramas of Plautus and 
 Terence, but that the inner spirit is that of the Eng- 
 lish folk-theater, of the robust medieval farce-writers, 
 of the unknown humorist who has left us the laugh- 
 able and veracious scene of Mak and the Shepherds. 
 
 Scholars as they were, the authors of these two com- 
 edies did not scorn the primitive plays of the plain 
 people of their own time. They did not despise the 
 unpretending folk-drama which was then pleasing the 
 populace; in fact, they took stock of it, and found their 
 profit in so doing. They saw that to be raised up to 
 the level of literature it needed only to be chastened 
 and stiffened. They accepted the living tradition of 
 play-making as it came down to them, and in accord 
 
 68
 
 WHY FIVE ACTS? 
 
 with this tradition they wrought their humorous fan- 
 tasies, adding the higher polish and the more adroit 
 plot which they had learned to appreciate in the Latin 
 comic dramatists. They accepted the native play, 
 bare as it was, and they enriched it by bestowing on it 
 as much as it could carry of the finer art of the Romans. 
 Thus it is that the authors of 'Ralph Roister Doister' 
 and of 'Gammer Gurton's Needle' may have pointed 
 out the path of progress to the author of the ' Comedy 
 of Errors,' whereas the authors of ' Gorboduc/ contemp- 
 tuously rejecting the folk-theater of then* own day, and 
 idly copying the classicist imitations of the Italians, 
 thereby relinquished whatever direct influence they 
 might have had upon the growth of tragedy in England. 
 Both 'Ralph Roister Doister' and 'Gammer Gur- 
 ton's Needle' were probably written for performance 
 by college boys, and they have not a little of the brisk 
 heartiness and of the broad horse-play to which we are 
 accustomed in the college pieces of to-day. It was for 
 performance at court that Lyly wrote the most of his 
 plays, which lack the vivacity and the liveliness dis- 
 tinguishing the two college comic dramas, but which 
 yet reveal a far better understanding of the drama than 
 was possessed by the authors of 'Gorboduc.' Lyly 
 again is careful to divide his plays into five acts. But 
 his contemporaries Greene and Peele, writing solely 
 for the professional playhouses, were bound by none 
 of the rules which might be expected in college or at 
 court. Whatever their own scholarly equipment, when 
 they wrote for the professional players, they followed 
 
 69
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 unhesitatingly the traditions of the contemporary- 
 theater. As playwrights they were the direct heirs of 
 the anonymous and ignorant devisers of the medieval 
 drama. They had a story to set on the stage; they 
 chose a succession of more or less effective episodes, 
 and they carelessly cast these into dialog, with little 
 thought of form or of construction. Never do their 
 plays contain matter enough for five full acts; and we 
 may be certain that no such framework was ever in 
 the mind of either of these dramatic poets. In the 
 original editions of their pieces we find no separation 
 into acts and scenes; and if this needless and mislead- 
 ing subdivision is found in later editions it is the doing 
 of misguided editors. 
 
 In what is accepted as the earliest edition of Kyd's 
 'Spanish Tragedy/ the most widely popular of all the 
 pre-Shaksperian plays, the text is actually divided into 
 four acts. But this division is not structural; it is 
 almost accidental, as tho it was an afterthought, in- 
 serted at the last moment into the copy intended for 
 the printer, and never in the mind of the playwright 
 himself when he was preparing the prompt-book for 
 the actors; and Shakspere, who followed Kyd in more 
 ways than one, apparently followed him in this also. 
 In the folio edition of his plays, published after his 
 death, a division into five acts has been made; but the 
 task has not been accomplished any too skilfully for 
 example, the second act of ' King John ' has but eighty 
 lines, and here the division is into four acts only. The 
 suggestion has been proffered that it was, perhaps, left 
 
 70
 
 WHY FIVE ACTS? 
 
 to the printers to do, the influence of Ben Jonson 
 having been powerful enough to establish the theory 
 that a self-respecting dramatist would never fail to 
 cast his tragedies in the five-act form. It is to be noted 
 also that no division into acts is to be found in the 
 quarto editions published in Shakspere's lifetime; and 
 this is very significant since these quartos seem to have 
 been piratical copies from shorthand notes taken sur- 
 reptitiously in the theater, thus recording the actual 
 conditions of performance. 
 
 It may be doubted whether Shakspere conceived his 
 plays in accordance with any such subdivisions. 
 Some of them, the ' Comedy of Errors' for one, which 
 can be acted in the space of an hour and a quarter, 
 are far too slight for so huge a framework. On the 
 other hand, the several appearances of Chorus punctu- 
 ate 'Henry V into five divisions, apparently an in- 
 tentional conformity to the Horatian rule. Of course, 
 there were generally several intermissions in the 
 Elizabethan performance of a play, altho the resulting 
 divisions were not necessarily five; and it is noteworthy 
 that Shakspere makes Jaques declare that man's life 
 had seven acts. 
 
 IV 
 
 The fact is that Shakspere was a professional play- 
 wright, and that he had no merely academic theories. 
 In composing his plays he followed unhesitatingly the 
 principles that had guided his immediate predecessors. 
 He was seeking ever to give the playgoing public what 
 
 71
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 it had been accustomed to enjoy in the theater, better 
 in degree, no doubt, but the same in kind. Like these 
 predecessors, he kept to the traditions inherited from 
 the medieval mysteries; and he thought in terms, not 
 of acts and of scenes, as a modern playwright is forced 
 to do, but of a continuous narrative shown in action. 
 In doing so he resembles Herodotus, whose history has 
 also been cut up by later editors, dividing it into nine 
 books, altho, as Professor Bury has reminded us, "such 
 divisions had not yet come into fashion" in the his- 
 torian's own day. There is no reason to suppose that 
 Shakspere would have approved of the attempt of the 
 editors of the folio to subdivide his plays, each into 
 five acts. There is every reason to suppose that he 
 would have been greatly annoyed if he could have 
 foreseen the way in which later editors have chosen 
 further to chop up the acts into an infinity of scenes. 
 Nowadays, we have been so accustomed to read 
 Shakspere in one or another of the trim and tidy mod- 
 ern editions, with a wanton division into acts and into 
 scenes, each of which indicates a change of place, and 
 each of which seems to suggest a change of scenery, 
 that it is only by a resolute effort of the will that we 
 are able to shake off the prepossessions derived from 
 this unfortunate and confusing presentation of his text. 
 Probably even to-day a majority of those who enjoy 
 reading Shakspere would be surprised to be told that 
 there is no warrant whatever for these alleged changes 
 of scene, and for these superabundant subdivisions of 
 his story. Many of these readers would be taken 
 
 72
 
 WHY FIVE ACTS? 
 
 aback by the unexpected discovery that all this cut- 
 ting up of Shakspere's text was the work of his com- 
 mentators, with Howe at the head of the procession. 
 Some of these readers would feel as tho they were de- 
 prived of a precious possession, if they had only an 
 edition in which all this useless machinery was swept 
 away. 
 
 And yet this is just the edition which is demanded 
 by the present state of Shaksperian scholarship, and 
 which is now made possible by our new understanding 
 of the Elizabethan theater, with its rude platform 
 thrust out into the yard, so different from our modern 
 theaters, in which the stage is withdrawn behind a 
 picture-frame. The Tudor platform-stage is wholly 
 unlike the picture-frame stage of to-day; but it is very 
 like the "pageant," or the scaffold on which the mys- 
 teries and miracle-plays were presented. It was to the 
 simple conditions of his semi-medieval theater that 
 Shakspere adjusted himself, rude as those conditions 
 may now appear to us who are accustomed to the sump- 
 tuous picturesqueness of our own luxuriant playhouses. 
 
 In accepting the theater as he found it, and in avail- 
 ing himself of all its possibilities, such as they were, 
 Shakspere showed his usual common sense. Only by 
 striving to reconstruct for ourselves in our mind's eye, 
 as it were, the playhouse where he plied his trade and 
 earned his living, can we come to any adequate appre- 
 ciation of his art, of his craftsmanship as a playwright, 
 of his dramaturgic skill. And in any honest effort to 
 understand how his mighty dramas were originally 
 
 73
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 produced by himself and by his fellow actors in the 
 round of the wooden Globe Theater, unroofed and 
 unlighted except by the dingy daylight of northern 
 Europe, we need always to keep fast in our mind the 
 fact that all preconceptions are false that may be de- 
 rived from our memory of latter-day performances in 
 theaters of a type which the Elizabethan dramatists 
 could not foresee, and of which the conditions are often 
 the exact opposite of those they accepted without hesi- 
 tation. That is to say, the most profitable way to re- 
 construct mentally the Tudor playhouse is to banish 
 from our minds every impression made by our modern 
 theater, with its elaborate complexity, and to study 
 out for ourselves the simple circumstances of perform- 
 ance in the Middle Ages. And as a first step toward 
 the proper standpoint, we must cast out our tradi- 
 tional belief that Shakspere always accepted the classi- 
 cist formula of five acts, proclaimed by Horace, and 
 employed by Seneca. That he did use it in one or two 
 plays seems indisputable, and he may very well have 
 employed it in a few others, but there is no reason to 
 suppose that he would have submitted himself any more 
 willingly to the rule of five acts than he did to the rule 
 of the three unities. 
 
 It may be doubted also whether not a few dramatists, 
 writing later than Shakspere, would not have done well 
 to claim the liberty he and Lope de Vega chose to 
 exercise at will. Racine, for one, had sadly to stretch 
 his 'AthahV to fill out the five-act framework which 
 he had blindly accepted, altho he had earlier limited 
 
 74
 
 WHY FIVE ACTS? 
 
 'Esther' to three acts. Schiller, for another, would 
 have gained a swifter compactness for his play if he 
 had left out the needless fifth act of his 'William Tell' 
 and rolled his fourth act into his third. Victor Hugo 
 had to manufacture a fourth act for his 'Ruy Bias,' so 
 slightly related to his main story that it was cut out 
 of the English adaptation acted by Fechter and Booth. 
 Ibsen, it may be added, composed his first tragedy, 
 'Catiline,' in three acts, altho it was in blank verse, 
 thus early revealing his characteristic independence 
 of tradition. 
 
 (1907.) 
 
 P. S. Since this paper was written I have found two 
 opinions as to the number of acts a play ought to have 
 which were unknown to me when I undertook the dis- 
 cussion. The first is in the 'Dasarupa,' the Hindu 
 treatise on the craft of play-making: "There are five 
 stages of the action which is set on foot by those that 
 strive after a result: Beginning, Effort, Prospect of 
 Success, Certainty of Success, Attainment of the Re- 
 sult." 
 
 The second is in the commentary made by Robert 
 Louis Stevenson during his methodical perusal of the 
 dramas of the elder Dumas. After reading 'Henri III 
 et sa Cour,' Stevenson declares that here in Dumas's 
 first piece "is the cloven foot; a fourth act that has 
 no part or lot in the play; a fourth act that is a mere 
 incubus and interruption that takes the eye off the 
 action, and between two spirited and palpitating scenes 
 
 75
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 interjects a damned sermon on the history of France. 
 Poor Tribonian had a sore job to make up the fifty 
 books of the Pandects; what was that to the labor of 
 a dramatist bent on filling his five acts? I go as far 
 as this: the natural division of the normal play is 
 four: Act I, exposition; Act II, the problem produced; 
 Act III, the problem argued; Act IV, the way out of 
 it." 
 (1916.) 
 
 76
 
 V 
 DRAMATIC COLLABORATION
 
 DRAMATIC COLLABORATION 
 I 
 
 IT is a significant fact that whenever and wherever the 
 drama has flourished most abundantly and most lux- 
 uriantly, we are certain to find a tendency to collab- 
 oration, to the partnership of two authors in the com- 
 position of one play. In England in the spacious days 
 of good Queen Bess, there is not only the famous asso- 
 ciation of Beaumont and Fletcher, but also a host of 
 other more or less temporary combinations, Fletcher 
 with Shakspere and Massinger, Dekker with Ben Jon- 
 son and with Middleton. In Spain Lope de Vega 
 joined forces with Montalvan and with others. In 
 France in the seventeenth century Moliere, once at 
 least called to his aid Corneille and Quinault; and in 
 France again in the nineteenth century we find Augier 
 working with Sandeau and with Foussier, Scribe work- 
 ing with Legouve, and with a score of others, while 
 Dumas the elder was encompassed by a cloud of col- 
 laborators, and Dumas the younger was wining on 
 more than one occasion to join various writers in the 
 plays which he included in the separate volumes of his 
 works, called by him the 'Theatre des Autres.' Then 
 also in France there was the long-continued alliance of 
 Meilhac and Hal6vy, to which we owe ' Froufrou' and 
 
 79
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 the ' Grand Duchess of Ge"rolstein ' ; and there was also 
 the almost equally interesting association of MM. 
 Caillavet and de Flers. Sardou had one ally in the 
 composition of 'Divorgons/ and another in the com- 
 position of ' Madame Sans Ge*ne.' In Great Britain in 
 recent years we have seen Sir James Barrie and Sir 
 Arthur Pinero unite in writing a book for music; Mr. 
 Bennett and Mr. Knoblauch unite in writing 'Mile- 
 stones'; Mr. Granville Barker and Mr. Laurence 
 Housman unite in writing ' Prunella.' And in the 
 United States there was a score of years ago the steady 
 collaboration of Mr. Belasco with the late H. C. De 
 Mille, to which we owe the 'Charity Ball' and the 
 'Wife'; and more recently Mr. Belasco also has col- 
 laborated with Mr. John Luther Long in writing 
 'Madame Butterfly/ and the 'Darling of the Gods.' 
 Mr. Augustus Thomas was once the partner of Mr. 
 Clay Greene; Mr. Bronson Howard composed one of 
 his latest plays, 'Peter Stuyvesant, Governor of New 
 Amsterdam,' in association with another American 
 man of letters; and Mr. Booth Tarkington and Mr. 
 Harry Leon Wilson were the co-authors of the 'Man 
 from Home' and of half a dozen other pieces. 
 
 While this prevalence of the practise of collaboration 
 in periods of dramatic productivity is significant, it is 
 equally significant that there is no corresponding prev- 
 alence of the practise of collaboration in novel-writing. 
 True it is that there are certain fairly well-known 
 partnerships in the history of prose fiction that of 
 Erckmann-Chatrain, in French, for instance, and that 
 
 80
 
 DRAMATIC COLLABORATION 
 
 of Besant and Rice in English. True it is that Dickens 
 and Wilkie Collins were joint authors of 'No Thoro- 
 fare/ and that Mark Twain and Charles Dudley 
 Warner were joint authors of the 'Gilded Age.' True 
 it is also, that novels have been written not only by 
 two partners, but by what can fairly be described as a 
 syndicate of associated authors, the 'King's Men' by 
 four, 'Six of One and Half a Dozen of the Other' by 
 six, and the 'Whole Family' by twelve (including Mr. 
 Howells and Mr. Henry James, Mrs. Mary E. Wilkins 
 Freeman, and Doctor Henry van Dyke). These freak- 
 ish conglomerates are sporadic only; they seem to be 
 little better than literary "stunts"; and even the union 
 of two writers in the production of a single novel is 
 far less frequently to be observed than the union of 
 two writers in the production of a single play. The 
 former is unusual, whereas the latter seems to be so 
 common as to excite no comment. 
 
 Now, there must be a reason for this difference. If 
 the playwrights find it advantageous to double up, 
 and the novelists do not discover any profit in putting 
 on double harness, there ought to be some evident ex- 
 planation. When we consider more carefully the es- 
 sentially different conditions of the art of prose fiction 
 and the art of play-writing, it is not difficult to perceive 
 fairly obvious reasons for the varying procedure of the 
 practitioners of these rival arts, which may seem so 
 much alike, but which are really so very different in 
 their methods and in their possibilities. 
 
 The French critic Joubert once asserted that "to 
 
 81
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 make in advance an exact and detailed plan is to de- 
 prive one's intellect of all the pleasures of novelty and 
 chance meeting during its execution; it is to make this 
 execution insipid, and in consequence impossible, in 
 works calling for enthusiasm and imagination." This 
 is an overstatement but it is not a misstatement of 
 a principle of composition which is fundamentally 
 sound in the writing of prose fiction, but which is 
 fundamentally unsound in the writing of plays. The 
 drama demands a well-built story, artfully put together, 
 while a novel need not have a coherent and compact 
 plot. Some great novels, Fielding's 'Tom Jones' for 
 one, and Turgenefs 'Smoke' for another, have each 
 of them a beautifully articulated structure, and so has 
 Mr. HoweUs's 'Rise of Silas Lapham,' to take a later 
 example. But other great novels are frankly more or 
 less haphazard in their movement, the 'Pickwick 
 Papers,' for instance, and 'Tartarin on the Alps,' and 
 'Huckleberry Finn.' And it is not too much to say 
 that only a very few novels attain to the severity of 
 structure, the regularity of action, the straightforward, 
 unswerving movement which we discover in the dramas 
 of a corresponding rank, and which can be achieved 
 only by making in advance the exact and detailed plan 
 that Joubert held to be fatal in works calling for en- 
 thusiasm and imagination. 
 
 Of course, the drama can utilize enthusiasm and 
 imagination quite as often and quite as abundantly 
 as can prose fiction, but it must use these precious 
 gifts with a discretion which is not imposed upon its 
 
 82
 
 DRAMATIC COLLABORATION 
 
 rival. In a novel enthusiastic imagination may lure 
 the story-teller into a host of by-paths not foreseen by 
 him when he set out on his journey; and while he is 
 adventuring himself in these by-paths, he may chance 
 to encounter characters of a diverting or an appealing 
 personality, whom it may amuse him to delineate, and 
 whom the readers of his book will be glad to welcome. 
 But in a drama the story-teller is debarred from these 
 wanderings from the straight and narrow road, and he 
 must, perforce, control his enthusiastic imagination, 
 compelling it to do its work within the rigid limits of 
 the artfully devised framework of the plot. 
 
 In other words, character is all-important in prose 
 fiction, and the ultimate fame of the novelist depends 
 upon his power of endowing his creatures with life, and 
 upon his ability to let them obey the laws of their 
 being before our eyes. This must the playwright also 
 achieve; but he has the added duty of relating his 
 characters intimately to the main action of his drama. 
 Now, the novelist is under no obligation of this sort; 
 he appeals not to a crowd seated before a stage, but to 
 the solitary reader in the study; and experience shows 
 that solitary readers do not insist upon the solidity 
 of structure in a novel which the same individuals 
 desire and demand when they betake themselves to the 
 theater. The novel-reader may be satisfied by char- 
 acters who do not know their own minds, and who are 
 merely exhibited and put through their paces, without 
 having any vital relation to the story, even if there is 
 anything which can fairly be called a story and in 
 
 83
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 some novels of high repute, in Sterne's ' Sentimental 
 Journey/ for example, and in Anatole France's 'His- 
 toire Contemporaine,' each of them extending over 
 several volumes, there is little or no story, no main 
 thread, no pretense of a plot. 
 
 n 
 
 Here, then, is the fatal difference between a novel 
 and a play; a novel may have a plot, but a plot is not 
 necessary, and it can get along with a minimum of 
 story; whereas a play must have a plot, skilfully articu- 
 lated, even if the skeleton is beautifully covered; it 
 must have a story peopled by persons knowing their 
 own minds, a story set in action by a dominating will, 
 which determines the successive episodes of the action. 
 As the making of a plot, as the putting together of 
 a supporting skeleton of action, calls for dexterity of 
 workmanship, for ingenuity of resource, for adroit- 
 ness of construction, for the most careful consideration 
 of the means whereby the end is to be obtained, two 
 heads are often better than one, because the partners 
 have to talk the thing out to its uttermost details be- 
 fore they decide upon the straight line which is the 
 shortest distance between two points. The technic 
 of play-making is more exacting than the technic of 
 novel-writing, and it requires imperatively the exact 
 and detailed plan which Joubert held to be hampering 
 to enthusiasm and imagination. Scott, for example, 
 as he tells us himself, began more than one of his novels 
 
 84
 
 DRAMATIC COLLABORATION 
 
 not knowing what he was going to put into it, and not 
 knowing from day to day, as he was writing, what his 
 ultimate goal would be. But no playwright, however 
 happy-go-lucky in his tendencies, has ever dared to 
 begin a play before he knew with absolute certainty 
 how he intended to end it. In the drama we insist 
 upon a straightforward and unswerving action; the 
 end is implied in the beginning, and the beginning is 
 only what that end makes necessary. 
 
 As the technic of the drama is exacting, it needs to 
 be acquired by a period of apprenticeship; and here is 
 another of the indisputable advantages of collabora- 
 tion. The more inexperienced of the two collaborators 
 is taken into the studio, so to speak, of the more expert, 
 and he thereby learns the secrets of stage-craft in the 
 best possible way, by applying them under the direction, 
 or at the suggestion and by the advice, of an older 
 practitioner, to whom they have become so familiar 
 that they are a second nature, as it were. 
 
 Collaboration is the best conceivable school for young 
 playwrights. It is impossible to overestimate the in- 
 fluence of Scribe's multiplied collaborations upon the 
 drama of France in the mid-years of the nineteenth 
 century; and almost as potent, because almost as wide- 
 spread, was the influence of the many collaborations 
 of the elder Dumas. Most of those who were the tem- 
 porary partners of Scribe and Dumas were subdued to 
 their more powerful associate, and contributed little 
 or nothing beyond their fundamental suggestions for 
 the several plays, and their incidental suggestions as 
 
 85
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 to details of the working-out. That is to say, most of 
 the plays signed by Scribe and Dumas in partnership 
 with others have a close similarity to the plays they 
 signed alone. But from this generalization we may 
 except 'Adrienne Lecouvreur' and 'Bataille de Dames/ 
 in which Scribe had Legouve* for a partner, and in which 
 we find a greater richness of character delineation than 
 in any of the pieces that Scribe composed alone, as we 
 find also a greater dexterity of construction than in 
 any of the pieces that Legouve* composed alone. 
 
 To the fact that ' Milestones' was written by Mr. 
 Arnold Bennett and Mr. Edward Knoblauch in con- 
 junction, and to the friendly discussion due to their 
 working together, we may credit the superior stage- 
 effectiveness of this play over the 'Kismet,' which Mr. 
 Knoblauch wrote alone, and over the 'Great Adven- 
 ture,' for which Mr. Bennett was solely responsible. 
 To the composition of 'Milestones' each of these two 
 authors, the American and the Englishman, brought 
 his special qualifications, each of them not only stimu- 
 lating but supplementing the other. So we find the 
 most famous French comedy of the nineteenth century, 
 the 'Gendre de M. Poirier,' a better piece of work, 
 more equably balanced than any play written alone by 
 either Augier or Sandeau. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to say that there is little 
 profit in a partnership for play-making when both of 
 the associates are equally inexpert, or when they were 
 both possessed of wrong notions about the art of the 
 drama. In the former case we have the blind leading 
 
 86
 
 DRAMATIC COLLABORATION 
 
 the blind, and the most lamentable example of this is 
 the long forgotten 'Ah Sin/ which Bret Harte and 
 Mark Twain combined to compose that C. T. Pars- 
 loe could impersonate the Heathen Chinee. In the 
 latter case we have not only the blind leading the 
 blind, but a perverseness in going the wrong way, in- 
 tensified by the complete sympathy between the two 
 associates; and the most lamentable example of this 
 is the ' Deacon Brodie ' of Robert Louis Stevenson and 
 William Ernest Henley, who not only were ignorant of 
 the modern technic of the drama, but who ignored it 
 of set purpose, deliberately going up a blind alley de- 
 spite the plain sign that there was no thorofare. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Yet Stevenson, at least, perceived clearly enough 
 what ought to be the more evident advantages of col- 
 laboration, that it focused "two minds together on the 
 stuff," thus producing "an extraordinarily greater rich- 
 ness of purview, consideration, and invention." Col- 
 laboration will probably always produce a greater 
 richness of invention, since each of the partners is 
 likely to stimulate the other, their two minds striking 
 sparks like flint and steel. But it can produce a greater 
 richness of consideration only when each is willing both 
 to yield and to oppose. Neither must yield too easily; 
 each of them must stand out for his own suggestions; 
 and each of them must insist on weighing and measur- 
 ing the suggestions of his ally. If they are too sympa- 
 
 87
 
 thetic, if their two hearts beat as one, then the advan- 
 tage of their having two heads is diminished. If the 
 two partners always think alike, then there will be no 
 greater richness of purview. 
 
 When a play composed by two of his friends failed 
 to find the success on the stage which had been antic- 
 ipated for it, Mr. Augustus Thomas made the shrewd 
 remark that the two authors had probably been "too 
 polite to each other" that is to say, that they had not 
 insisted upon criticising the successive suggestions 
 made by each in turn. On the other hand, the collab- 
 orators must be broad-minded enough not to resent 
 this necessary criticism. Like any other partnership, 
 collaboration is a ticklish experiment, and it can be 
 profitable only when the two partners are willing to 
 give and take. They need more than usual self-control ; 
 they must be able, each of them, to preserve his own 
 self-respect while full of regard for the self-respect of 
 the other. It is not surprising that the long collabora- 
 tions of Erckmann-Chatrain and of Meilhac and Hale" vy 
 finally came to a sudden end because of an abrupt 
 quarrel. That disagreement is likely to arise out of 
 the discussions inherent in any profitable literary part- 
 nership is evidenced by a retort credited to the younger 
 Dumas, who was a rather authoritative partner, and 
 who did not always succeed in keeping on good terms 
 with those whose plays he had bettered. A friend once 
 suggested a theme for a play, and invited the collab- 
 oration of Dumas. "But why should I wish to quarrel 
 with you?" was answer of the witty dramatist. 
 
 88
 
 DRAMATIC COLLABORATION 
 
 Perhaps the most remarkable instance of self-control 
 in all the long history of collaboration is that of Theo- 
 dore Barriere, the author of the once-famous play called 
 the 'Marble Heart/ one of the latest of whose pieces 
 (adapted by Augustin Daly as 'Alixe') was composed 
 in collaboration with his mother-in-law ! 
 
 Sometimes the breach between the two partners is 
 postponed until after the play is completed and pro- 
 duced. Charles Reade and Tom Taylor joined forces 
 in the composition of the long-popular comedy called 
 'Masks and Faces,' and after it had established itself 
 upon the stage, Charles Reade took its plot and its 
 characters and utilized them in his charming novel, 
 'Peg Woffington/ and as he had taken the liberty of 
 thus making a private profit out of the property of the 
 partnership, it is not to be wondered at that Tom Taylor 
 was distinctly displeased. But Charles Reade, altho 
 he collaborated with Tom Taylor, with Paul Merritt, 
 and with Dion Boucicault, was more or less deficient 
 in the courtesy and consideration that a man ought 
 to possess to fit him for partnership. When he allied 
 himself with Dion Boucicault in the writing of the 
 novel of 'Foul Play/ the collaborators quarreled so 
 violently that they felt themselves justified in prepar- 
 ing rival dramatizations of the story they had written 
 in conjunction, so that London playgoers had the op- 
 portunity of choosing between two different theatrical 
 adaptations of the same tale. 
 
 When the two partners are courteous to each other 
 but not too yielding, when they are sympathetic but 
 
 89
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 not too much alike in their characteristics and quali- 
 fications, when each of them supplements the weaker 
 points of the other, then collaboration ought to result 
 in plays of more variety of invention, and of more in- 
 genuity of construction than is likely to be possessed 
 by the average play due to a single mind. This much 
 must be admitted; and it is the final justification for 
 collaboration. But altho these partnerships in play- 
 making spread abroad a knowledge of the principles 
 of the art, and altho they raise the probable value of 
 the average play, it must be admitted also, and with 
 equal frankness, that the possibilities of collaboration 
 are sharply limited. 
 
 No single one of the mightiest masterpieces of dra- 
 matic literature, ancient and modern, is to be credited 
 to collaboration; and the only possible exception to 
 this sweeping statement would be urged by the critics 
 who hold that the 'Gendre de M. Poirier' of Augier 
 and Sandeau is the masterpiece of French comedy in 
 the nineteenth century. Those who have climbed to 
 the loftiest height of dramatic art have always done 
 so alone, sustained by enthusiasm and supported by 
 imagination. In spite of the greater "richness of 
 purview, consideration, and invention" that collabora- 
 tion undoubtedly bestows, the man of surpassing genius, 
 the great master of the drama, Sophocles or Shakspere 
 or Moliere, works best alone. It is true that he may 
 now and again take to himself an ally, as Shakspere 
 condescended to the assistance of Fletcher in 'Henry 
 VIII/ and as Moli6re invoked the aid of Corneille in 
 
 90
 
 DRAMATIC COLLABORATION 
 
 / but it is true also that these plays, written 
 in collaboration by Shakspere and by Moliere, are not 
 the plays which establish and confirm their fame. 
 Indeed, these plays are not even among the more im- 
 portant pieces of Shakspere and Moliere, and the rep- 
 utation of the authors would be no lower if these 
 plays had never come into existence. 
 
 It is by the comedies and tragedies which Shakspere 
 wrote alone that the Elizabethan stage is made glori- 
 ous, and not by the dramatic romances that go under 
 the joint names of Beaumont and Fletcher. It is by 
 the lyrical melodramas of which Victor Hugo was sole 
 author that we recall the Romanticist revolt in the 
 French theater in 1830, and immediately thereafter, 
 and not by the perfervidly passionate pieces that the 
 elder Dumas put together in partnership with a group 
 of now-forgotten auxiliaries. It is by the comedies 
 that Augier and the younger Dumas wrote, each of them 
 expressing himself hi his own fashion, that the drama 
 of France is illumined a score or more years later, and 
 not by the comedies in the composition of which Scribe 
 had the aid of an army of allies. 
 
 In any period of abundant fertility we can observe 
 growing together at the same time from the soil, a 
 fairly large number of trees rising above the under- 
 brush, and we can also perceive here and there a tree 
 of conspicuous eminence towering above these clumps 
 of average height. In the luxuriant forest of the 
 drama many of the trees of average height may be 
 ticketed with two names, but the monarchs of the 
 
 01
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 wood, those whose tops lift themselves high above 
 their neighbors these will be found to bear only single 
 signature. 
 
 (1914.) 
 
 92
 
 VI 
 
 THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS AND 
 THE NOVELIZATION OF PLAYS
 
 THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS AND THE 
 NOVELIZATION OF PLAYS 
 
 IN Professor Bliss Perry's admirably suggestive 'Study 
 of Prose Fiction/ he devotes one chapter to a careful 
 consideration of the essential distinctions between 
 prose fiction and the drama, in which he makes it 
 plain that "the novel and the play are not merely two 
 different modes of communicating the same fact or 
 truth," because "the different modes of presentation 
 really result in the communication of a different fact." 
 Professor Perry declares that the field of the dramatist 
 is marked off from that of the novelist "by the nature 
 of the artistic medium which each man employs," and 
 he asserts that the choice of a medium for presenting 
 his story and projecting his characters "depends wholly 
 upon the personality and training of the artist and the 
 nature of the fact or truth that he wishes to convey to 
 the public.". And he sums up by insisting that "a 
 novel is typically as far removed from a play as a bird 
 is from a fish, and that any attempt to transform one 
 into the other is apt to result in a sort of flying-fish, a 
 betwixt-and-between thing capable, indeed, of both 
 swimming and flying, but good at neither." In other 
 words, a dramatized novel or a novelized play is an 
 
 95
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 attempt to breed an amphibious creature which, as the 
 Irishman once defined it, "can't live on the land, and 
 dies in the water." 
 
 The difference between the novel and the play is 
 due to the inexorable fact that one is intended to be 
 read alone in the study, and that the other is intended 
 to be seen on the stage by a crowd; it ought to be ob- 
 vious to all who care to consider the question, and yet 
 there are many who fail to grasp the distinction, de- 
 ceived by the illusive but superficial similarities be- 
 tween the two forms, each of which contains a story 
 carried on by characters who take part in dialogs. 
 And as a result of this failure to apprehend the vital 
 differences between the two types of story-telling, the 
 narrative to be perused and the action to be witnessed, 
 our theaters have long been invaded by dramatized 
 novels, and our book-stores are now being besieged 
 by novelized plays. In many cases, if not in most of 
 them, the motive for the transformation is simply 
 commercial; and in view of the immediate gain to be 
 garnered, the artistic disadvantages of the procedure 
 are overlooked. If hundreds of thousands of readers 
 have found pleasure in following the footsteps of a 
 fascinating heroine thru the pages of a prose fiction, it 
 is possible always that hundreds of thousands of spec- 
 tators may be lured to behold her adventures when 
 they are set forth anew in a stage-play. And if a com- 
 pelling plot has drawn audiences night after night into 
 the theater, it is possible again that this plot may at- 
 tract book-buyers in equal numbers when it is retold 
 
 96
 
 NOVELS AND PLAYS 
 
 in a narrative for the benefit of those remote from the 
 playhouse, or reluctant to risk themselves within its 
 portals. Managers are ready to tempt the novelist 
 with the hope of a second crop of fame and fortune, 
 and publishers dangle the same golden bait before the 
 eyes of the dramatist. 
 
 Altho this effort to kill two birds with one stone is 
 more frequent of late than it used to be, it is not at all 
 new indeed it existed before the rise of prose fiction. 
 The dramatic poets of Greece borrowed episodes from 
 the earliest epic poets. Centuries later Shakspere laid 
 violent hands on Italian tales and on English romances. 
 On the other hand, while it must be admitted that the 
 dramatizing of novels has been far more prevalent in 
 the past than the novelizing of plays, this latter prac- 
 tise, suddenly popular in the twentieth century, was 
 not unknown in the centuries that preceded ours. For 
 example, Le Sage levied upon the Spanish playwrights 
 for many of the characters and the situations he needed, 
 for his rambling, picaresque novels, ' Gil Bias ' and its 
 sister stories. Another illustration can be found in 
 England earlier than any in France; and before the 
 play of 'Pericles/ which Shakspere seems to have 
 edited and improved, was printed and perhaps even 
 before it was performed, it was novelized by an obscure 
 writer named Wilkins, who was very probably the au- 
 thor of the original version of the straggling piece that 
 Shakspere revised. Thru the long years prose fiction 
 and the drama have struggled with each other for the 
 favor of the public, and each of them has always been 
 
 97
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 willing to borrow from its rival whenever it found 
 material fitted for its own special purpose. 
 
 II 
 
 But altho the dramatizing of novels was less uncom- 
 mon a century or two ago than the novelizing of plays, 
 neither was frequent and neither of them was in any 
 way prohibited by law. That is to say, the novel and 
 the play were held to be so different that the novelist 
 could not prevent the dramatist from borrowing his 
 stories, and the playwright could not forbid the writer 
 of prose fiction from taking over his plots. Even the 
 dramatizing of novels was so uncommon that the earlier 
 story-tellers were not moved to protest when they saw 
 their fictions employed by the playwrights; in fact, 
 they were often inclined to accept this as a compliment 
 to their original invention. Marmontel, for instance, 
 in the preface to a late edition of his 'Moral Tales/ 
 pointed with pride to the fact that one of these prose 
 narratives had been turned into a play, and suggested 
 complacently that there were other stories in his col- 
 lection worthy of the same fate. Tennyson bor- 
 rowed the story of his 'Dora' from Miss Mitford; and 
 Charles Reade had no scruple in making a play out 
 of Tennyson's poem. It must be admitted that Reade's 
 attitude was rather inconsistent, for he writhed in pain 
 when one of his own novels was cut into dialog and 
 put on the stage without his permission, and yet he 
 himself made plays out of novels by Anthony Trollope 
 
 98
 
 NOVELS AND PLAYS 
 
 and by Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett without asking 
 their leave, and without heed to their subsequent pro- 
 tests against his high-handed proceeding. Apparently, 
 when he was the aggressor he thought that he was 
 doing a service to his victims. 
 
 When Reade was guilty of this offense against the 
 developing literary morals of the nineteenth century, 
 he was probably within his legal rights, since the Brit- 
 ish law had not then advanced to the point of recog- 
 nizing the author's complete ownership of the fiction 
 he had created. This defect has been remedied at 
 last, and in the existing copyright and stage-right legis- 
 lation of Great Britain and the United States authors 
 are assumed to reserve to themselves every privilege 
 which they do not specifically deprive themselves of; 
 and they need no longer announce that they desire to 
 retain all rights for their own profit. Both in the British 
 code and in the American the novelist has now the sole 
 privilege of making a play out of his story, and the 
 dramatist has the sole privilege of making a novel out 
 of his play. Dramatization is a word of respectable 
 antiquity, and the corresponding word, novelization, 
 has now been legally recognized as a distinctive term. 
 The authors had felt a wrong when others could legally 
 make money out of a plot they had invented; and they 
 asserted a moral right to control their own works what- 
 ever might be the form of presentation. The progress 
 of legal reform was slow, as it usually is, but it was also 
 certain. The moral right has now become a legal right 
 of which the original author may avail himself or not, 
 
 99
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 as he pleases. He may, if he chooses, dramatize his 
 own novel and novelize his own play; or, if he prefers, 
 he can sell the permission to rehandle his material to 
 a professional playwright or to a professional story- 
 teller. 
 
 m 
 
 There is one peculiar distinction between the novel 
 and the play which Professor Bliss Perry did not em- 
 phasize. A novel may please long, and please many 
 when it is only a study of character, like the ' Crime of 
 Sylvestre Bonnard' of M. Anatole France, or when it is 
 only the record of a series of adventures and misadven- 
 tures passing before the eyes of the chief personage, 
 like the ' Huckleberry Finn' of Mark Twain. A play, 
 on the other hand, is likely to fail to please audiences 
 in the theater unless it sets before the spectators a 
 clearly defined struggle, a conflict of desires, a stark 
 assertion of the human will. That is to say, the drama 
 must deal with a struggle, and the novel need not. 
 The drama must be dynamic and the novel may be 
 static if these scientific terms may be employed with- 
 out pedantry. Therefore, while any play may be 
 novelized, with more or less chance of pleasing its new 
 public, if the task is skilfully accomplished, only those 
 novels can be successfully dramatized which happen 
 to present an essential struggle and to display the col- 
 lision of contending volitions. Any dramatization of 
 the 'Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard' or of 'Huckleberry 
 
 100
 
 NOVELS AND PLAYS 
 
 Finn,' of ' Gil Bias' or of the 'Pickwick Papers,' is fore- 
 doomed to failure, for these prose fictions do not con- 
 tain the stuff out of which a vital play could be made. 
 But 'Jane Eyre/ for example, and the 'Tale of Two 
 Cities/ and 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' do possess this neces- 
 sary dramatic element, and they can be made into plays 
 with a prospect of pleasing audiences in the theater. 
 
 Even when the novel chances to have the essential 
 struggle which the drama demands, the task of adapt- 
 ing it to the stage is not so easy as the non-expert sup- 
 poses. At first sight it may seem as if there ought to 
 be very little difficulty in turning a novel into a play. 
 There is a story ready-made, situations in abundance, 
 and characters endowed with the breath of life. Yet 
 as a matter of fact, it is harder to make a play out of 
 a novel than it is to write an original play. The 
 immediate danger before the theatrical adapter is that 
 he may be tempted to serve up the story merely as a 
 panorama of successive episodes instead of casting out 
 resolutely everything, however good in itself, which 
 does not bear directly upon the fundamental conflict. 
 This is one reason why the novelist had better leave 
 the work of dramatization to an experienced play- 
 wright, who will ruthlessly omit many an episode that 
 the story-teller could not bring himself to discard. In 
 fact, it is hard even for the expert adapter to disen- 
 tangle the special situations of a novel which alone are 
 available in a play, and he is often tempted to retain 
 much that he had better leave out. 
 
 Perhaps it is not too daring a paradox to suggest 
 
 101
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 that a prose fiction is most likely to be made into a 
 good play when the playwright has not read the book 
 he is dramatizing, but has only been told the story, so 
 that he is free to handle the situations afresh in accord 
 with the conditions of dramatic art, and free to discard 
 the special developments chosen by the novelist in 
 accord with the very different conditions of narrative 
 art. The best version of Mrs. Henry Wood's 'East 
 Lynne' is the French play, 'Miss Multon/ by Adolphe 
 Belot and Eugene Nus; and neither of the French col- 
 laborators knew any more about the English novel 
 than its bare story, which was told to one 'of them by a 
 French actress, who could read English. Now and 
 again a clever playwright, even when he has the dis- 
 advantage of complete familiarity with the novel, can 
 break loose from it and yet preserve its full flavor; and 
 this is what Mr. George M. Cohan was able to do in 
 the play wherein he presented the leading characters 
 of Mr. George Randolph Chester's 'Get-Rich-Quick- 
 Wallingford' in a set of situations very different from 
 those in the original story. 
 
 Thus we see that only a few novels are really fit to 
 be dramatized, and that even these are often drama- 
 tized ineffectively because the playwright has followed 
 the story-teller too closely instead of putting the plot 
 back into solution, so to speak, and letting it recrystal- 
 lize in dramatic form. The novelizer has a larger 
 liberty since every play contains a story and characters 
 capable of being transferred to prose fiction. But his 
 task has its equivalent danger, and the writer of the 
 
 102
 
 NOVELS AND PLAYS 
 
 narrative may be content merely to tread in the foot- 
 steps of the dramatist, and to do no more than write 
 out more amply the dialog and the stage business, 
 instead of reconceiving the plot afresh to tell it more 
 in accord with the divergent principles of the art of 
 prose fiction. The limitations of time to "the two 
 hours' traffic of the stage" compel the dramatist to 
 extreme compression; his dialogs must be far com- 
 pacter and more pregnant than is becoming in the more 
 leisurely novel, where the author can take all the time 
 there is. Moreover, the playwright often does no 
 more than allude to episodes which it would profit the 
 novelist to present in detail to his readers; and the 
 adroit novelizer will be quick to seize upon hints of 
 this sort to amplify into chapters containing interesting 
 material for which the original play supplied only the 
 most summary suggestion. 
 
 IV 
 
 The novelizing of plays is frequent and profitable in 
 America in these early years of the twentieth century; 
 and it had been attempted infrequently even in the 
 seventeenth century. Yet only one of these novelized 
 plays has succeeded in winning an honorable place for 
 itself in prose fiction. This is the charming tale of 
 theatrical life in the eighteenth century, 'Peg Woffing- 
 ton/ which Charles Reade made out of the comedy 
 of 'Masks and Faces/ written by him in collaboration 
 with Tom Taylor. Reade took the liberty of novel- 
 
 103
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 izing this comedy without asking Taylor's permission, 
 and even without consulting his collaborator; and all 
 the comment that need be made is that the procedure 
 was truly characteristic of Reade's lordly attitude to- 
 ward others an attitude taken by him on many other 
 occasions. But whatever injustice he did to his fellow 
 worker, he did none to the joint product of their in- 
 vention; he transmuted a play into a novel with due 
 appreciation of the demands of the other art, and he 
 produced a fascinating tale with a fascinating heroine, 
 which has been read by thousands who have had no 
 suspicion that Peg Woffington had originally figured in 
 a comedy. 
 
 Charles Reade was able to accomplish this feat be- 
 cause he was more skilful as a novelist than as a dram- 
 atist, altho he fancied himself rather as a maker of 
 plays than as a writer of stories. More than once did 
 he attempt to repeat this early success in winning two 
 prizes with the same horse. He took the 'Pauvres de 
 Paris' of Brisebarre and Nus the same play which 
 Dion Boucicault had adapted as the 'Streets of New 
 York' and made a version which he called 'Gold/ 
 under which name it had a few performances. He had 
 materially modified the French plot in his English play; 
 and he got still further away from Brisebarre and Nus, 
 when he novelized 'Gold,' and called it 'Hard Cash/ 
 a matter-of-fact romance. Later he dramatized this 
 novel of his, and the resulting play did not bear any 
 close resemblance to the 'Pauvres de Paris.' 
 
 Reade also collaborated a few years later with Henry 
 
 104
 
 NOVELS AND PLAYS 
 
 Pettitt in a piece called 'Singleheart and Double- 
 face/ which he promptly proceeded to novelize again 
 without consulting his partner. For this indelicacy, 
 swift vengeance followed, as the British novel, being 
 then unprotected by copyright in the United States, 
 was immediately dramatized by Messrs. George H. 
 Jessop and William Gill. It may be noted here casually 
 that another of Reade's romances, 'White Lies,' after- 
 ward dramatized by him, had been originally novelized 
 from a French play called the 'Chateau de Grantier,' 
 written by Auguste Maquet (the ally of Dumas in the 
 'Three Guardsmen' and 'Monte Cristo'). It is not a 
 little surprising that a man like Reade, who prided 
 himself on his originality, and who even went so far 
 as to accuse George Eliot of stealing his thunder, should 
 have been willing to call so frequently on the aid of col- 
 laborators, and to derive so much of his material from 
 foreign sources. 
 
 The only other author who has ventured to turn a 
 play into a novel, and then back into a play varying 
 widely from the original piece, is Sir James Barrie, and 
 what he did was not quite what Reade had done. Sir 
 James wrote a charming story, called the 'Little White 
 Bird,' and he found in his own prose fiction part of the 
 material out of which he was moved later to make a 
 charming play, called 'Peter Pan.' For reasons best 
 known to himself, but deplored by all who are inter- 
 ested in the progress of the English drama, Sir James 
 Barrie has chosen to publish only a few of his comedies. 
 Yet he met the demands of a multitude of readers by 
 
 105
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 borrowing from his fantastic piece a part of the material 
 which he made into a delightful tale, called ' Peter Pan 
 in Kensington Gardens.' These successive rehandlings 
 of an idea, first in prose fiction, then in dramatic form, 
 and finally again in prose fiction, were possible only 
 to a novelist who was also a dramatist to an author 
 who had mastered the secrets of two different methods 
 of story-telling, the method of the theater and the 
 method of the library. 
 
 V 
 
 The novelist-dramatist of this type is a comparatively 
 new figure in literature. Formerly there was a sharp 
 line of cleavage between the* man who wrote novels and 
 the man who wrote plays, altho one or the other might 
 be lured on occasion into a sporadic raid into the terri- 
 tory of the other. During three-quarters of the nine- 
 teenth century prose fiction reigned supreme in every 
 modern literature except that of France, and the novel- 
 ists were rather inclined to look down on the play- 
 wrights, and to dismiss the drama as an inferior form, 
 likely to be absolutely superseded by prose fiction. 
 But toward the end of the century there began to be 
 visible signs of an awakening interest in the drama, and 
 also of a slackening interest in prose fiction. The 
 novelists of the twentieth century, so far from holding 
 the drama to be an inferior form, are discovering that 
 it is at least a more difficult form, and therefore artisti- 
 cally more attractive. As a result of this discovery not 
 
 106
 
 NOVELS AND PLAYS 
 
 a few novelists have turned playwrights, taking the 
 pains to learn the principles of the more dangerous 
 art of play-making. Sir James Barrie in England, M. 
 Paul Hervieu in France, Herr Sudermann in Germany, 
 and Signor d'Annunzio in Italy may not have aban- 
 doned altogether the prose fiction in which they first 
 won fame, but at least they now devote the major part 
 of their energies to the drama. It may be recalled 
 that Clyde Fitch began his literary career as a writer 
 of short stories, and that Mr. Bernard Shaw originally 
 emerged to view as the author of a novel. 
 
 On the other hand, it must be noted as significant 
 that the playwrights are not tempted to turn novelists; 
 they seem to be satisfied with their own art as the more 
 exacting, and therefore the more interesting. M. Ros- 
 tand and M. Maeterlinck, Sir Arthur Pinero and Mr. 
 Henry Arthur Jones, Mr. William Gillette and Mr. 
 Augustus Thomas have not been lured from the drama 
 into prose fiction. The novel is a loose form which 
 makes only lax demands on its practitioners, and which 
 does not require an artist always to do his best. The 
 play has a severe technic, and it tolerates no careless- 
 ness of construction. The more gifted a story-teller 
 may be, and the more artistic, the more probable it is 
 that in the immediate future he will seek to express 
 himself in the drama, even if he is also moved now and 
 again to return to the easier path of prose fiction. 
 
 And this raises another interesting point. Now that 
 the drama is rising again into rivalry with prose 
 fiction, is not the playwright who allows his piece to 
 
 107
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 be novelized a traitor to his cause ? Is he not, in fact, 
 confessing that he esteems the play inferior to the 
 novel? Apparently this is the attitude taken by the 
 more prominent dramatists of the day; most of them 
 publish their plays to be read, and few of them allow 
 these plays to be novelized altho they might find a 
 superior profit if they descended to this. It is an un- 
 fortunate fact that the public which is eager to read 
 prose fiction is not so eager to read the drama. In the 
 dearth of dramatic literature in our language during 
 the nineteenth century, the public lost the habit of 
 reading plays, a habit possessed by the public of the 
 eighteenth century before the vogue of the novel had 
 been established in consequence of the overwhelming 
 popularity of Scott, followed speedily by that of 
 Dickens and Thackeray. 
 
 Yet there are signs that the general reader is slowly 
 recovering the ability to find pleasure in the perusal 
 of a play. The social dramas of Ibsen have, most of 
 them, been performed here and there in the theaters 
 of Great Britain and the United States; but they have 
 been read by thousands who have had no opportunity 
 to see them on the stage. So it is with the plays of 
 Mr. Bernard Shaw, most of which have also appeared 
 in our playhouses. So it is with the plays of M. 
 Maeterlinck, only a few of which have been produced in 
 the American theater. In time, it seems highly proba- 
 ble that the reading public will extend as glad a welcome 
 to a play by Mr. Galsworthy or by Mr. Booth Tark- 
 ington as to one of their novels. But this happy 
 
 108
 
 NOVELS AND PLAYS 
 
 state can be brought about only if the dramatists reso- 
 lutely refrain from novelizing their plays themselves, 
 and from authorizing novelization by others. 
 
 (1913.) 
 
 109
 
 VII 
 WOMEN DRAMATISTS
 
 WOMEN DRAMATISTS 
 I 
 
 To some of the more ardent advocates of the theory 
 that women are capable of rivaling men in every one 
 of the arts it is a little surprising, not to say discon- 
 certing, that there are so few female playwrights. The 
 drama is closely akin to the novel, since it is another 
 form of story-telling; and in the telling of stories women 
 have been abundantly productive from a time whereof 
 the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. And 
 as performers on the stage women have achieved in- 
 disputable eminence; in fact, acting is probably the 
 earliest of the arts (as possibly it is still the only one) 
 in which women have won their way to the very front 
 rank; and in the nineteenth century there were two 
 tragic actresses, Mrs. Siddons and Rachel, certainly 
 not inferior in power and in elevation to the most dis- 
 tinguished of tragic actors. Why is it, then, that 
 women story-tellers have not thrust themselves thru 
 the open stage door to become more effective compet- 
 itors of the men playwrights ? 
 
 Before considering this question, it may be well to 
 record that women playwrights have appeared sporadi- 
 cally both in French literature and in English. In 
 France Madeleine Be" j art, whose sister Moliere married, 
 
 113
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 was credited with the authorship of more than one 
 play; and in the last hundred years George Sand and 
 Mme. de Girardin brought out comedies and dramas, 
 several of which succeeded in establishing themselves 
 in the repertory of the Come*die-Franc,aise. In Eng- 
 land at one time or another plays of an immediate 
 popularity were produced by Mrs. Aphra Behn, Mrs. 
 Centlivre, and Mrs. Inchbald; and in America Mrs. 
 Bateman's 'Self/ and Mrs. Mowatt's 'Fashion' held 
 the stage for several seasons, while few of recent suc- 
 cesses in the New York theaters had a more delightful 
 freshness or a more alluring fantasy than Mrs. Gates's 
 'Poor Little Rich Girl/ and few of them have dealt 
 more boldly with a burning question than Miss Ford's 
 'Polygamy.' These examples of woman's competence 
 to compose plays with vitality enough to withstand the 
 ordeal by fire before the footlights are evidence that 
 if there exists any prejudice against the female drama- 
 tist it can be overcome. They are evidence, also, that 
 women are not debarred from the competition; and 
 fairness requires the record here that, when Mr. Win- 
 throp Ames proffered a prize for an American play, 
 this was awarded to a woman. 
 
 But to grant equality of opportunity is not to confer 
 equality of ability, and when we call the roll of the 
 dramatists who have given luster to French literature 
 and to English, we discover that this list is not en- 
 riched by the name of any woman. The fame of 
 George Sand is not derived from her contributions to 
 dramatic literature, and the contributions of Mrs. 
 
 114
 
 WOMEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Behn, Mrs. Centlivre, and Mrs. Inchbald, of Mrs. 
 Bateman and Mrs. Mowatt, entitle them to take rank 
 only among the minor playwrights of their own gen- 
 erations; and to say this is to say that their plays are 
 now familiar only to devoted specialists in the annals 
 of the stage, and that the general reader could not give 
 the name of a single piece from the pen of any one of 
 these enterprising ladies. In other words, the female 
 playwrights are so few and so unimportant that a con- 
 scientious historian of either French or English dra- 
 matic literature might almost neglect them altogether 
 without seriously invalidating his survey. Perhaps the 
 only English titles that are more than mere items in 
 a barren catalog are Mrs. Centlivre's ' Wonder' and 
 Mrs. Cowley's 'Belle's Stratagem'; and the French 
 pieces of female authorship which might protest against 
 exclusion are almost as few Mme. de Girardin's 'La 
 Joie fait Peur,' and George Sand's 'Marquis de Ville- 
 mer' and 'Mariage de Victorine.' 
 
 Indeed, the women playwrights of the past and of 
 the present might be two or three times more numerous 
 than they are, and two or three times more important 
 without even treading upon the heels of the male play- 
 makers. This is an incontrovertible fact; yet it is 
 equally indisputable that as performers in the theater 
 women are competitors whom men respect and with 
 whom they have to reckon, and that as story-tellers 
 women are as popular and as prolific as men. And here 
 we are brought back again to the question with which 
 this inquiry began : Why is it then that women have 
 
 115
 
 A BOOK' ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 not been as popular and as prolific in telling stories on 
 the stage? Why cannot they write a play as well as 
 they can act in it? 
 
 One answer to this question has been volunteered 
 by a woman who succeeded as an actress, and who did 
 not altogether fail as a dramatic poetess, altho she 
 came in later life to have little esteem for her earlier 
 attempts at play-writing. It is in her ' Records of a 
 Girlhood ' that Fanny Kemble expressed the conviction 
 that it was absolutely impossible for a woman ever to 
 be a great dramatist, because "her physical organiza- 
 tion" was against it. "After all, it is great nonsense 
 saying that intellect is of no sex. The brain is, of 
 course, of the same sex as the rest of the creature; 
 beside the original female nature, the whole of our 
 training and education, our inevitable ignorance of 
 common life and general human nature, and the vari- 
 ous experiences of existence from which we are debarred 
 with the most sedulous care, is insuperably against it" 
 that is, against the possibility of a really searching 
 tragedy, or of a really liberal comedy ever being com- 
 posed by a woman. To this rather sweeping denial of 
 of the dramaturgic gift to women Fanny Kemble added 
 an apt suggestion, that "perhaps some of the manly, 
 wicked queens, Semiramis, Cleopatra, could have 
 written plays but they lived their tragedies instead 
 of writing of them." 
 
 116
 
 WOMEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 II 
 
 At first sight it may seem as if one of Fanny Kemble's 
 assertions that no woman can be a dramatist because 
 of her inevitable ignorance of life and of the experi- 
 ences of existence from which she is debarred is dis- 
 proved by the undeniable triumphs of women in acting, 
 and by the indisputable victories won by women in 
 the field of prose fiction, achieved in spite of these ad- 
 mitted limitations. But on a more careful considera- 
 tion it will appear that as an actress woman is called 
 upon only to embody and to interpret characters con- 
 ceived by man with the aid of his wider and deeper 
 knowledge of life. And when we analyze the most 
 renowned of the novels by which women have attained 
 fame, we discover that the best of these deal exclu- 
 sively with the narrower regions of conduct, and with 
 the more restricted areas of life with which she is most 
 familiar as a woman, and that when she seeks to go 
 outside her incomplete experience of existence she soon 
 makes us aware of the gaps in her equipment. 
 
 One of the strongest stories ever written by a woman 
 is the 'Jane Eyre' of Charlotte Bronte; and the inex- 
 perience of the forlorn and lonely spinster is almost 
 ludicrously made manifest in her portrayal of Roches- 
 ter, a superbly projected figure, not sustained by in- 
 timate knowledge of the type to which he belongs. 
 Charlotte Bronte knew Jane Eyre inside and out; but 
 she did not know even the outside of Rochester. Be- 
 
 117
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 cause women are debarred with the most sedulous care 
 from various experiences of existence they can never 
 know men as men can know women. This is the basis 
 for the shrewd remark that in dealing with affairs of 
 the heart men novelists rarely tell all they know, 
 whereas women novelists are often tempted to tell 
 more than they know. Even women like George Eliot 
 and George Sand, who have more or less broken out 
 of bounds, are still more or less confined to their indi- 
 vidual associations with the other sex; and they lack 
 the inexhaustible fund of information about life which 
 is the common property of men. 
 
 Women have most satisfactorily displayed their 
 special endowment for fiction not in what must be 
 called the dramatic novel, not in soul-searching studies 
 like the 'Scarlet Letter' and 'Anna Kare*nine,' but 
 rather in less solidly supported inquiries into the inter- 
 relation of character and social convention, as in 'Pride 
 and Prejudice' and 'Castle Rackrent.' It would be 
 unfair to assert that Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen 
 are superficial; yet it is not unfair to say that they do 
 not explore deeply, and that they do not deal with 
 what Stevenson called the great passionate crises of 
 existence, "when duty and inclination come nobly to 
 the grapple." This is the essential struggle of the 
 drama; and the authoress of 'Jane Eyre' sought to 
 present it boldly, even if she was handicapped by in- 
 sufficient information; and this essential struggle was 
 what Charlotte Bronte herself missed in Jane Austen: 
 "The passions are perfectly unknown to her; she re- 
 
 118
 
 WOMEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 jects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy 
 sisterhood. What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves 
 flexibly, it suits her to study; but what throbs fast 
 and full, tho hidden, what the blood rushes thru, what 
 is the unseen seat of life, and the sentient target of 
 death this Miss Austen ignores." 
 
 Jane Austen spent her great gift on the carving of 
 cherry-stones, laboring with exquisite art to lift into 
 temporary importance the eternally unimportant; and 
 Charlotte Bronte, in her ampler endeavor, was ever 
 hampered by inadequacy of knowledge. George Eliot, 
 with wider opportunity than either of these predeces- 
 sors, profited by both of them and borrowed their 
 processes in turn; she was broader than they were, and 
 bolder in her attack on life; her effort is more strenu- 
 ously intellectual than theirs, and therefore a little 
 fatiguing, and this is perhaps why her vogue seems now 
 to be evaporating slowly. And when all is said, no 
 one of these clever story-tellers really attains to an 
 altitude of accomplishment where she can fairly be 
 considered as a competitor of the mighty masters of 
 prose fiction. No woman novelist is to be ranked 
 among the supreme leaders, worthy to stand by the 
 side of Cervantes and Fielding, Balzac and Tolstoi. 
 The merits of the women novelists are many and they 
 are beyond cavil; but no one of them has yet been 
 able to handle a large theme powerfully and to in- 
 terpret lif e with the unhasting and unresting strength 
 which is the distinguishing mark of the mightier mas- 
 ters of fiction. 
 
 119
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 III 
 
 Furthermore, we find in the works of female story- 
 tellers not only a lack of largeness in topic, but also a 
 lack of strictness in treatment. Their stories, even 
 when they charm us with apt portraiture and with 
 adroit situation, are likely to lack solidity of structure. 
 'Castle Rackrent/ an illuminating picture of human 
 nature in a special environment, is a straggling sequence 
 of episodes; ' Pride and Prejudice' is almost plotless, 
 when considered as a whole; and 'Romola' is ill- 
 proportioned and misshapen. No woman has ever 
 achieved the elaborate solidity of 'Tom Jones,' the 
 superb structure of the 'Scarlet Letter/ or the simple 
 unity of 'Smoke.' And here we come close to the most 
 obvious explanation of the dearth of female dramatists 
 in the relative incapacity of women to build a plan, 
 to make a single whole compounded of many parts, 
 and yet dominated in every detail by but one purpose. 
 
 The drama demands a plot, with a beginning, a 
 middle, and an end, and with everything rigorously 
 excluded which does not lead from the beginning thru 
 the middle to the end. The novel refuses to submit 
 itself to any such requirement; it can make shift to 
 exist without an articulated skeleton. There is little 
 or no plot, there is only a casual succession of more or 
 less unrelated incidents in 'Gil Bias' and 'Tristram 
 Shandy/ in the 'Pickwick Papers/ and in 'Huckle- 
 berry Finn.' The novel may be invertebrate and yet 
 
 120
 
 WOMEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 survive, whereas the play without a backbone is dead 
 which is biologic evidence that the drama is higher 
 in the scale of creation than prose fiction. 
 
 "The novel, as practised in English, is the perfect 
 paradise of the loose end," so Mr. Henry James once 
 pointed out, whereas "the play consents to the logic 
 of but one way, mathematically right, and with the 
 loose end as gross an impertinence on its surface and 
 as grave a dishonor as the dangle of a snippet of silk 
 or wool on the right side of a tapestry." The action 
 of a story may be what its writer pleases, and he can 
 reduce it to a minimum or embroider it at will with 
 airy arabesques of incessant digression; but the plot 
 of a play must be a straight line, the shortest distance 
 between two points, the point of departure and the 
 point of arrival. And it is because of this imperative 
 necessity for integrity of construction that the drama 
 is more difficult than prose fiction. Since a part of our 
 pleasure in any art is derived from our consciousness of 
 the obstacles to be overcome by the artist, and from 
 our recognition of the skill displayed by him in van- 
 quishing them, we have here added evidence in behalf 
 of the belief in the artistic superiority of the play over 
 the novel merely as a form of expression. 
 
 The drama may be likened to the sister art of archi- 
 tecture in its insistent demand for plan and propor- 
 tion. A play is a poor thing, likely to expire of inani- 
 tion, unless its author is possessed of the ability to 
 build a plot which shall be strong and simple and clear, 
 and unless he has the faculty of enriching it with abun- 
 
 121
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 dant accessories in accord with a scheme thought out 
 in advance and adhered to from start to finish. With 
 this constructive skill women seem to be less liberally 
 endowed than men; at least, they have not yet re- 
 vealed themselves as architects, altho they have won 
 a warm welcome as decorators a subordinate art for 
 which they are fitted by their superior delicacy and by 
 their keener interest in details. Much of the pervasive 
 charm of many of the cleverest novels of female author- 
 ship lies in the persistent ingenuity with which the 
 lesser points of character, of conduct, and of manners 
 are presented. In Jane Austen, in Maria Edgeworth, 
 and often also in George Eliot, we are delighted by 
 little miracles of observation, and by little triumphs 
 in the microscopic analysis of subtle and unsuspected 
 motives. But in these very books, the story, however 
 felicitously decorated, is not sustained by a severe 
 architectural framework. And it is this firm cer- 
 tainty of structure that the drama imperatively de- 
 mands. 
 
 In other words, women seem to be less often dowered 
 than men with what Tyndall called "scientific imagina- 
 tion," with the ability to put together a whole in which 
 the several parts are never permitted to distend a 
 disproportionate space. This scientific imagination is 
 essential to the playwright; and the novelist is fortunate 
 if he also possesses it, altho it is not essential to him. 
 A novel may be only a straggling succession of episodes; 
 a play must have fundamental unity. A novelist may 
 fire with a shot-gun and bring down his bird on the 
 
 122
 
 WOMEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 wing, whereas a playwright needs a rifle to arrest the 
 charging lion. 
 
 It is a significant fact that only once was George 
 Sand really triumphant as a dramatist, and that this 
 single success was won by the secret aid of the cleverest 
 of contemporary playwrights. She was passionately 
 devoted to the theater; she had many intimate friends 
 among the stage-folk; she delighted in private theatri- 
 cals; and she wrote a dozen or more plays, several of 
 them dramatized from her own stories. The sole play 
 which held its own on the stage in rivalry with the 
 best work of Augier and Dumas fits was the ' Marquis 
 de Villemer/ and it owed its more fortunate fate to 
 the gratuitous and unacknowledged collaboration of 
 Dumas fils. 
 
 For the author of the 'Mariage de Victorine/ the 
 author of the 'Dame aux Camelias' had a high esteem, 
 which he took occasion to express more than once in 
 his critical papers; and she regarded him with semi- 
 maternal affection, often inviting him to join the little 
 parties at Nohant. On one of his visits he heard her 
 say that she was intending to dramatize the 'Marquis 
 de Villemer/ but that she did not quite see her way 
 to compact its leisurely action in conformity with the 
 rigid restrictions of the stage. That evening he bor- 
 rowed a copy of the novel to take up to his own room; 
 and the next morning when he came down to the late 
 breakfast, he laid before her half a dozen sheets of 
 paper, whereon she found a complete scenario for her 
 guidance, an adroit division of her novel into acts and 
 
 123
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 scenes, needing only to be clothed with dialog. With 
 his intuitive understanding of the principles of play- 
 making, and with his masterly power of construction, 
 he had solved her problems for her and made it easy 
 for her to write the play. 
 
 Here is an unexampled kind of collaboration, since 
 the invention of the story, the creation of the char- 
 acters, the dialog to be spoken these were all due to 
 George Sand alone; but the concentrating of the in- 
 terest, the heightening of the personages of the narra- 
 tive to adjust themselves to the perspective of the 
 theater, the serried and irresistible momentum of the 
 action these were the contribution of Dumas, a free- 
 will offering to his old friend. The piece that she wrote 
 was hers and hers alone, and yet it had a dramatic 
 vitality lacking in all her other plays, because a man 
 had intervened at the right moment to provide the 
 architectural framework which the woman could not 
 have bestowed upon it, however felicitous she might 
 be in the decoration. 
 
 IV 
 
 Thus it is that we can supply two answers to the two 
 questions posed at the beginning of this inquiry: Why 
 is it that there are so few women playwrights? And 
 why is it that the infrequent plays produced by women 
 playwrights rarely attain high rank ? The explanation 
 is to be found in two facts: first, the fact that women 
 are likely to have only a definitely limited knowledge 
 
 124
 
 WOMEN DRAMATISTS 
 
 of life, and, second, the fact that they are likely also to 
 be more or less deficient in the faculty of construction. 
 The first of these disabilities may tend to disappear if 
 ever the feminist movement shall achieve its ultimate 
 victory; and the second may depart also whenever 
 women submit themselves to the severe discipline 
 which has compelled men to be more or less logical. 
 
 (1915.) 
 
 125
 
 vm 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING 
 
 ONLY recently have students of the stage seized the 
 full significance of the fact that dramatic literature is 
 always conditioned by the circumstances of the special 
 theater for which it was designed. They are at last 
 beginning to perceive that they need to know how a 
 play was originally represented by actors before an 
 audience and in a theater to enable them to appreciate 
 adequately the technical skill of the playwright who 
 composed it. The dramatist is subdued to what he 
 works in; and he can accomplish only that which is 
 possible in the particular playhouse for which his 
 pieces were destined. For the immense open air audi- 
 torium of ancient Athens, with its orchestra leveled 
 at the foot of the curving hillside whereon thousands 
 of spectators took then* places, the dramatic poet had 
 to select a simple story and to build massively. For the 
 unadorned platform of the Tudor theater, with its 
 arras pendent from the gallery above the stage, and 
 with its restless groundlings standing in the yard, 
 the playwright was compelled to heap up swift episodes 
 violent with action. For the eighteenth-century play- 
 house, with its apron projecting far beyond the line of 
 the curtain, the dramatist was tempted to revel in 
 
 129
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 ornate eloquence and in elaborate wit. And nowadays 
 the dramatic author utilizes skilfully all the manifold 
 resources of the twentieth-century picture-frame stage, 
 not only to give external reality to the several places 
 where his story is supposed to be laid, but also to lend 
 to these stage-sets the characteristic atmosphere de- 
 manded by his theme. 
 
 Merely literary critics, secluded in their studies, in- 
 tent upon the poetry of a play and desirous of deducing 
 its philosophy, rarely seek to visualize a performance 
 on the stage, and they are, therefore, inclined to be 
 disdainful of the purely theatrical conditions to which 
 its author has had, perforce, to adjust his work. As 
 a result they sometimes misunderstand the dramatic 
 poet's endeavors, and they often misinterpret his in- 
 tentions. On the other hand, purely theatrical critics 
 may be inclined to pay too much attention to stage- 
 arrangements, stage-business, and stage-settings, and 
 even on occasion to disregard the dramatist's message 
 and his power of creating character to consider his tech- 
 nic alone. And yet it can scarcely be denied that the 
 theatrical critics are nearer to the proper method of 
 approach than the literary critics who neglect the light 
 which a careful consideration of stage-conditions and 
 of stage-traditions may cast upon the masterpieces of 
 the drama. 
 
 Since all these masterpieces of the drama were de- 
 vised to be heard and to be seen rather than to be read, 
 the great dramatic poets have always been solicitous 
 about the visual appeal of their plays. They have ever 
 
 130
 
 EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING 
 
 been anxious to garnish their pieces with the utmost 
 scenic embellishment and the utmost spectacular ac- 
 companiment of the special kind that a play of that 
 particular type could profit by. In view of the im- 
 portance of this scenic embellishment and of its in- 
 fluence upon the methods of the successive playwrights, 
 there is cause for wonder that we have no satisfactory 
 attempt to tell the history of the art of the scene- 
 painter as this has been developed thru the long ages. 
 The materials for this narrative are abundant, even if 
 they still lie in confusion. Certain parts of the field 
 have been surveyed here and there; but no substan- 
 tial treatise has yet been devoted to this alluring in- 
 vestigation. The scholar who shall hereafter under- 
 take the task will need a double qualification ; he must 
 master the annals of painting in Renascence Italy, and 
 later in France and in England, and he must familiarize 
 himself with the circumstances of the theater at the 
 several periods when the art of the scene-painter made 
 its successive steps in advance. 
 
 It is partly because we have no manual covering 
 the whole field that we find so many unwarranted asser- 
 tions in the studies of the scholars who confine their 
 criticism to a single period of the development of the 
 drama. Partly also is this due to the fact that we are 
 each of us so accustomed to the theaters of our own 
 century and of our own country that we find it diffi- 
 cult not to assume similar conditions in the theaters 
 of other centuries and other countries. Thus the 
 Shaksperian commentators of the early eighteenth cen- 
 
 131
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 tury seem not to have doubted that the English play- 
 house in the days of Elizabeth was not unlike the Eng- 
 lish playhouse in the days of Anne; and as a result 
 they cut up the plays of Shakspere into acts and into 
 scenes, each supposed to take place in a different spot, 
 in accord with the eighteenth-century stage practise, 
 and absolutely without any justification from the 
 customs of the Tudor theater. This was the result 
 of looking back and of believing that the late sixteenth- 
 century stage must have resembled the early eigh- 
 teenth-century stage. We are now beginning to see 
 that, in any effort to recapture the methods of the 
 Elizabethan theater, we must first understand the 
 customs of the medieval stage, and then look for- 
 ward from that point. Of all places in the world the 
 playhouse is, perhaps, the most conservative, and the 
 most reluctant to relinquish anything which has proved 
 its utility in the past and which is accepted by the 
 public in the present; and many of the peculiarities 
 of the Tudor theater are survivals from the medieval 
 performances. 
 
 There are still to be found classical scholars who 
 accept the existence of a raised stage in the theater of 
 Dionysus at Athens, and even of painted scenery such 
 as we moderns know; and they find support in the as- 
 sertion of Aristotle that among the improvements due 
 to Sophocles was the introduction of "scenery." But 
 what did the Greek word in the text of Aristotle which 
 is rendered into English as "scenery" really mean? 
 At least, what did it connote to an Athenian ? Some- 
 
 132
 
 EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING 
 
 thing very different, we may be sure, from what the 
 term "scenery" connotes to us. Certainly, the physi- 
 cal conditions of the stageless Attic theater precluded 
 the possibilities of painted scenes such as we are now 
 familiar with. That there were no methods of rep- 
 resenting realistically, or even summarily, the locality 
 where the action is taking place is proved by the de- 
 tailed descriptions of these localities which the dramatic 
 poet was careful to put into the mouths of his charac- 
 ters whenever he wished the audience to visualize the 
 appropriate background of the action. We may be 
 assured that the dramatists would never have wasted 
 time in describing what the spectators had before their 
 eyes. Ibsen and Rostand and d'Annunzio are poets, 
 each in his own fashion, but their plays are devoid of 
 all descriptions of the special locality where the action 
 passes that task has been spared them by the labors 
 of the modern scene-painter working upon their specific 
 directions. 
 
 As there was no scenery in the Greek theater so 
 there was little or none in the Roman. M. Camille 
 Saint-Saens once suggested that certain airy scaffold- 
 ings in the Pompeian wall-paintings were perhaps de- 
 rived from scenic accessories. But this seems unlikely 
 enough; and the surviving Latin playhouses have a 
 wide and shallow stage closed in by a sumptuous archi- 
 tectural background, suggesting the front of a palace 
 with three portals, often conveniently utilized as the 
 entrances to the separate dwellings of the several char- 
 acters. Again, we may infer the absence of scenery 
 
 133
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 from the elaboration with which Plautus, for one, local- 
 izes the habitations of his leading characters. In 
 Rome, as in Athens, some kind of a summary indica- 
 tion of locality, some easily understood symbol, may 
 have been employed; but of scene-painting, as we 
 moderns know the art, there is not a trace. 
 
 II 
 
 It is not until we come to the mysteries of the Middle 
 Ages that we find the beginnings of the modern art, 
 and even here it is only a most rudimentary attempt 
 that we can discover. The mystery probably developed 
 earliest in France, as it certainly flourished there most 
 abundantly; and the French represented the drama- 
 tized Bible story on a long, shallow platform, at the 
 back of which they strung along a row of summary 
 indications of certain necessary places, beginning with 
 Heaven on the spectator's left, and ending with Hell 
 on his right, and including the Temple, the house of 
 the high priest and the palace of Herod. These neces- 
 sary places were called "mansions," and they served 
 to localize the action whenever this was deemed ad- 
 visable, the front of the platform remaining a neutral 
 ground which might be anywhere. But these man- 
 sions do not prove the existence of scene-painters; 
 they were very slight erections, a canopy over an altar 
 serving to indicate, the Temple, and a little portico 
 sufficing to represent a palace; and they were probably 
 built by house-carpenters and painted by house- 
 
 134
 
 The Roman Theater at Orange 
 From the model at the Paris Op6ra 
 
 The multiple set of the French medieval stage 
 From the model in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University 
 
 The set of the Italian comedy of masks
 
 EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING 
 
 painters, just as any boat which might be called for 
 would be constructed by the shipwrights. 
 
 And as we need not assume the forming of a guild 
 of scene-painters because of these mansions which 
 performed some of the functions of our modern scenery, 
 so also we must not assume it because the medieval 
 artisans invented a variety of elaborate spectacular 
 devices, flying angels, for example, and roaring flames 
 from Hell-Mouth. Even in the stageless and scene- 
 less Attic theater, there had been many mechanical 
 effects of one kind or another, especially in the plays 
 of Euripides the soaring dragon-chariot of Medea, 
 for instance, and the similar contrivance whereby a 
 god might descend from the skies. Mechanical tricks 
 even when they are most ingenious, do not imply the 
 aid of the scene-painter; and even to-day they are the 
 special task of the property-man, or of the master- 
 mechanic, altho the scene-painter's aid may be in- 
 voked also to make them more effective. That there 
 were property-makers in the Middle Ages admits of 
 no doubt, and also highly skilled artificers delighting 
 in the daring ingenuity of their inventions. There were 
 abundant properties, it may be noted, on the Eliza- 
 bethan stage, well-heads, thrones, and arbors; and 
 Henslow's diary records payment for a variety of such 
 accessories. But there is not in that invaluable docu- 
 ment a single entry indicating any payment for any- 
 thing equivalent to the work of the scene-painter. 
 
 Adroit as were the French mechanics who prepared 
 the abundant spectacular effects of the medieval mys- 
 
 135
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 teries, they were surpassed in skill by the Italian en- 
 gineers of the Renascence, who lent their aid to the 
 superb outdoor festivals wherein the expanding artis- 
 tic energy of the period was most magnificently dis- 
 played. Leonardo da Vinci did not disdain to design 
 machines disclosing a surprising fertility of resource. 
 It was from those outdoor spectacles of the Italians 
 that the French court-ballets are directly descended, 
 and also the English masks, which demanded the col- 
 laboration of Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson. But at 
 first the Italians got along without the aid of the yet 
 unborn scene-painter, and the inventions of the en- 
 gineer were carried out by the mechanic and the dec- 
 orator. Even as late as the seventeenth century a 
 magnificent spectacle presented in the garden of the 
 Pitti Palace in Florence relied mainly -upon the in- 
 genious engineer and scarcely at all upon the scene- 
 painter. It seems probable that it is here in Italy in 
 the Renascence, and at first as an accompaniment of 
 the outdoor spectacle, or of its indoor rival, that the 
 art of the actual scene-painter had its birth. The en- 
 gineers required the aid of the artists indeed, in those 
 days, when there was little specialization of function, 
 the engineers were almost always artists themselves, 
 capable of their own decoration. 
 
 In tune there would be necessary specialization, and 
 after a while certain artists came to devote themselves 
 chiefly to scene-painting, finding their immediate op- 
 portunity in the decoration of the operas, which then 
 began to multiply. The opera has always been aris- 
 
 136
 
 EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING 
 
 tocratic, expensive, and spectacular, and it continued 
 the tradition of the highly decorated open-air festivals. 
 In fact, it improved upon this tradition, in so far as 
 that was possible, and it achieved a variety of mechan- 
 ical effects scarcely less complicated than those which 
 charm our eyes to-day in 'Rheingold' and ' Parsifal.' 
 Thirty years ago the late Charles Nuitter, the archivist 
 of the Paris Ope"ra and himself a librettist of wide ex- 
 perience, drew my attention to Sabbatini's ' Practica di 
 fabricar scene e machini ne' teatri' (published in 1638), 
 and he assured me that the resources of the Ope>a did 
 not go beyond those which were at the command of the 
 Italians three centuries earlier. "They could do then," 
 he asserted, "almost everything that we can do now 
 here at the Ope*ra. For example, they could bring a 
 ship on the stage under full sail. We have only one 
 superiority over them: we have abundant light now, 
 we have electricity, and they were dependent on candles 
 and lamps." 
 
 Yet even in Italy in the Renascence the most pop- 
 ular form of the drama, the improvised play which we 
 call the comedy-of-masks, was performed in a tradi- 
 tional stage-setting representing an open square, 
 whereon only the back-cloth seems to have been the 
 work of the scene-painter, the sides of the stage being 
 occupied by four or more houses, two or three on each 
 side, often consisting of little more than a practicable 
 door with a practicable window over it, not made of 
 canvas, but constructed out of wood by the carpenter, 
 with the solidity demanded by the climbing feats of 
 
 137
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 the athletic comedians and by their acrobatic agility. 
 The traditional set of the comedy-of-masks conformed 
 to that recommended for the comic drama by Serlio, 
 in his treatise on architecture, published in 1545; but 
 it may be noted also that Serlio's suggested set for the 
 tragic drama was not dissimilar even if it were dis- 
 tinctly more dignified. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The opera seems to have been the direct descendant 
 of the court-ballet, known in England as the mask, 
 as that in its turn was derived from the open-air spec- 
 tacle of the Italian Renascence, such as survived in 
 Florence in the seventeenth century. In the begin- 
 ning the court-ballets of France, like the masks of Eng- 
 land, were not given in a theater with a stage shut off 
 by a proscenium arch, but in the ball-room or ban- 
 queting-hall of a palace. One end of this spacious 
 apartment, often but not always provided with a 
 raised platform, served as the stage whereon one or 
 more places, a mountain, for instance, and a grotto, 
 were represented, at first by the decorated machines of 
 the artistic engineers only, but afterward by the canvas 
 frames of scene-painters. The action of the court- 
 ballets or of the masks was not necessarily confined to 
 this stage, so to call it. The spectators were ranged 
 along the walls and under the galleries (if there were 
 any), leaving the main part of the hall bare; and the 
 performers descended frequently into this area, which 
 
 138
 
 EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING 
 
 was kept free for them, and which was better fitted for 
 their dances and processions and other intricate evo- 
 lutions than the scant and cluttered stage. 
 
 A twentieth-century analog to this sixteenth-century 
 practise can be seen in the spectacle presented in our 
 modern three-ringed circuses the 'Cleopatra/ for ex- 
 ample, which was the opening number on the Barnum 
 and Bailey program not long ago, where the Roman 
 troops and the Egyptian populace came down from the 
 stage and paraded around the arena. Bacon in his 
 essay on 'Masques,' used the word "scenery" as tho 
 he meant only decorated scaffolds, perhaps movable; 
 and his expression of desire for room "to be kept clear" 
 implies the use of the body of the hall for the maneu- 
 vers of the performers. Ludovic Celler, in his study of 
 1 Mise en scene au dix-septieme siecle ' in France, shows 
 that the action of the court-ballet was sometimes inter- 
 mitted that the spectators could join in the dancing, 
 as at an ordinary ball. In the earlier Italian open-air 
 festivals, and in the earlier French court-ballets there 
 was not even a proscenium sharply separating the 
 stage from the rest of the hall; but in England by the 
 time of Inigo Jones the advantage of a proscenium 
 had been discovered, and we have more than one of 
 the sketches which that skilful designer devised for 
 his masks. But even then this proscenium was not 
 permanent and architecturally conventionalized; it was 
 invented afresh for every successive entertainment, 
 and it was adorned with devices peculiar to that par- 
 ticular mask. Inigo Jones had also advanced to the 
 
 139
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 use of actual scenery, that is to say, of canvas stretched 
 upon frames and then painted. Mr. Hamilton Bell 
 believes it possible that the invention of grooves to 
 sustain wings and flats may be ascribed to Inigo or to 
 his assistant and successor, Webb. 
 
 Even in the Italian opera, where all the scenery was 
 due to the brush of the scene-painter, there was for a 
 long while a formal and monotonous regularity. 
 Whether the set was an interior or an exterior, a public 
 place or a hall in a palace, the arrangement was rec- 
 tangular, with a drop at the back and a series of wings 
 on either side equidistant from one another. This stiff 
 representation of a locality is preserved for us nowadays 
 in the toy-theaters which we buy for our children, 
 altho it is now seen on the actual stage only in certain 
 acts of old-fashioned operas. It lingers also in the 
 variety-shows, where it is the proper setting for many 
 items of their miscellaneous programs. 
 
 Altho the Italians had discovered perspective early 
 in the Renascence they utilized it on the stage timidly 
 at first, bestowing this rectangular regularity upon all 
 their sets, both architectural interiors or exteriors and 
 rural scenes, in which rigid wood-wings receded, dimin- 
 ishing in height to a landscape painted on the drop at 
 the back, thus leaving the whole stage free for the actors. 
 Not until the end of the seventeenth century did an 
 Italian scene-painter, Bibiena, venture to abandon the 
 balanced symmetry of the square set, and to slant his 
 perspective so as to present buildings at an acute angle, 
 thereby not only gaining a pleasing variety, but also 
 
 140
 
 The set for the opera of ' Persee ' (as performed at the 
 Opera in Paris in the seventeenth century) 
 
 A prison (designed by Bihiena in Italy in the 
 eighteenth century)
 
 EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING 
 
 enlarging immensely the apparent spaciousness of the 
 scene, since he was able to carry the eyes of the spec- 
 tator into vague distances, and to suggest far more 
 than he was able to display. This advance was accom- 
 panied by a more liberal use of stairways and platforms 
 "practicables" as the stage-phrase is that is to say, 
 built up by the carpenters so that the actors could go 
 from one level to another. Hitherto flights of steps 
 and balconies had been only painted, not being intended 
 for actual use by the performers. 
 
 A similar development took place also in the land- 
 scape scenes; the foreground was raised irregularly, so 
 that the persons of the play might climb up. Prac- 
 ticable bridges were swung across torrents, and the 
 earlier formality of pastoral scenes began to disappear. 
 Apparently the scene-painters were influenced at this 
 time by the landscape-painters, more especially by 
 Poussin. The interrelation of painting and scene- 
 painting, each in turn affecting the other, is far closer 
 than most historians of art have perceived. It is not 
 unlikely, for example, that Gainsborough and Con- 
 stable, who were the fathers of the Barbizon men, had 
 been stimulated by the stage-pictures of De Luther- 
 bourg. David Garrick profited by the innovating art 
 of De Lutherbourg, a pupil of Vanloo, who came to 
 England in 1771. Apparently it was De Lutherbourg 
 who invented " raking-pieces " as the scene-painters 
 term the low fragments of scenery which mask the in- 
 clines of mounds. To him also is credited the first 
 use of transparent scenes to reproduce the effect of 
 
 141
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 moonlight upon water, and to suggest the flames of 
 volcanoes. Thus to him must be ascribed the begin- 
 nings of that complicated realism by which our latter- 
 day scene-painters are enabled to create an appropriate 
 atmosphere for poetic episodes. 
 
 IV 
 
 The next step in advance, and one of the most im- 
 portant in the slow development of the scene-painter's 
 art, took place in France early in the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, and simultaneous with the romanticist move- 
 ment, which modified the aims and ambitions of the 
 artists as much as it did those of the poets. The 
 severe stateliness of the stage-set which was adequate 
 for the classicist tragedies of Racine and Voltaire, 
 generally a vague interior of an indefinite palace, stiff 
 and empty, was hopelessly unsuitable for the fiery 
 dramas of Victor Hugo and the elder Dumas. An 
 even greater opportunity for spectacular regeneration 
 was afforded, in these same early decades of the nine- 
 teenth century, by the bold and moving librettos which 
 Scribe constructed for Meyerbeer and Hale*vy at the 
 Ope"ra, and for Auber at the Ope"ra-Comique. The 
 exciting cause of the scenic complexities that we find 
 in Wagner's music-dramas can be discovered in these 
 librettos of Scribe's, from 'Robert the Devil' to the 
 'Africaine.' For one act of 'Robert the Devil,' that in 
 which the spectral nuns dance among the tombs under 
 the rays of the moon, Ciceri invented the most striking 
 
 142
 
 EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING 
 
 and novel setting yet exhibited on any stage a setting 
 not surpassed in poetic glamor by any since seen in the 
 theater, altho its eery beauty may have been rivaled by 
 one scene in the 'Source/ a ballet produced also at the 
 Ope"ra forty-five years ago a moon-lit tarn in a forest- 
 glade, with half-seen sylphs floating lightly over its 
 silvered surface. This exquisitely poetic set was im- 
 ported from Paris to New York and inserted in the 
 brilliant spectacle of the 'White Fawn.' 
 
 The ample effect of these scenes was made possible 
 only by the immense improvement in the illumination 
 of the stage due to the introduction of gas. Up to the 
 first quarter of the nineteenth century the stage- 
 decorator had been dependent upon lamps a few of 
 these arranged at the rim of the curving apron which 
 jutted out into the auditorium far beyond the pros- 
 cenium, and a few more hidden here and there in the 
 flies and wings. Early in the nineteenth century gas 
 supplanted oil; and a little later than the middle of the 
 century gas was powerfully supplemented by the cal- 
 cium light. Toward the end of the century gas in its 
 turn gave way to the far more useful electric light, 
 which could be directed anywhere in any quantity, 
 and which could be controlled and colored at will. It 
 was Henry Irving, more especially in his marvelous 
 mounting of a rather tawdry version of 'Faust,' who 
 revealed the delicate artistic possibilities of our mod- 
 ern facilities for stage illumination. 
 
 In France the romanticist movement of Hugo was 
 swiftly succeeded by the realistic movement of Balzac, 
 
 143
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 who was the earliest novelist to relate the leading per- 
 sonages of his studies from life to a characteristic 
 background and to bring out the intimate association 
 of persons and places. From prose fiction this evoca- 
 tion of characteristic surroundings was taken over by 
 the drama; and a persistent effort was made to have 
 the successive sets of a play suggestive and significant 
 in themselves, and also representative of the main 
 theme of the piece. The actors were no longer de- 
 pendent upon the "float," as the footlights were called; 
 they did not need to advance out on the apron to let 
 the spectators follow the changing expression of their 
 faces, and in time the apron was cut back to the line 
 of the proscenium, and the curtain rose and fell in a 
 picture-frame which cut the actors off from their prox- 
 imity to the audience a proximity forever tempting 
 the dramatic poet to the purely oratorical effects proper 
 enough on a platform. 
 
 When the modern play calls for an interior this in- 
 terior now takes on the semblance of an actual room. 
 Apparently the "box-set," as it is called, the closed-in 
 room with its walls and its ceiling, was first seen in 
 England in 1841, when 'London Assurance' was pro- 
 duced; but very likely it had earlier made its appear- 
 ance in Paris at the Gymnase. To supply a room with 
 walls of a seeming solidity, with doors and with win- 
 dows, appears natural enough to us, but it was a start- 
 ling innovation fourscore years ago. When the l School 
 for Scandal' had been originally produced at Drury 
 Lane in 1775, the library of Joseph Surface, where Lady 
 
 144
 
 "2 >> 
 
 C tH 
 
 oj g
 
 EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING 
 
 Teazle hides behind the screen, was represented by a 
 drop at the back, on which a window was painted, and 
 by wings set starkly parallel to this back-drop and 
 painted to represent columns. There were no doors; 
 and Joseph and Charles, Sir Peter and Lady Teazle, 
 walked on thru the openings between the wings, very 
 much as tho they were passing thru the non-existent 
 walls. To us, this would be shocking; but it was per- 
 fectly acceptable to English playgoers then; and to 
 them it seemed natural, since they were familiar with 
 no other way of getting into a room on the stage. 
 
 The invention of the box-set, of a room with walls 
 and ceilings, doors and windows, led inevitably to the 
 appropriate furnishing of this room with tangible tables 
 and chairs. Even in the eighteenth century the stage 
 had been very empty; it was adorned only with the 
 furniture actually demanded by the action of the drama; 
 and the rest of the furniture, bookcases and sideboards, 
 chairs and tables, was frankly painted on the wings 
 and on the back-drop by the side of the painted mantel- 
 pieces, the painted windows, and the painted doors. In 
 the plays of the twentieth century characters sit down 
 and change from seat to seat; but in the plays pro- 
 duced in England and in France before the first quarter 
 of the nineteenth century all the actors stood all the 
 tune or at least they were allowed to sit only under 
 the stress of dramatic necessity as in the fourth act 
 of 'Tartuffe,' for instance. In all of Moliere's com- 
 edies there are scarcely half a dozen characters who have 
 occasion to sit down; and this sitting-down is limited 
 
 145
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 to three or four of his more than thirty pieces. Now- 
 adays every effort is made to capture the external 
 realities of life. Sardou was not more careful in com- 
 posing his stage-sittings in his fashion than was Ibsen 
 in prescribing the scenic environment that he needed. 
 The author's minute descriptions of the scenes where 
 the action of the ' Doll's House' and of 'Ghosts' passes 
 prove that Ibsen had visualized sharply the precise 
 interior which was, in his mind, the only possible home 
 for the creatures of his imagination. And Mr. Belasco 
 has recently bestowed upon the winning personality 
 of his 'Peter Grimm' the exact habitation to which 
 that appealing creature would return in his desire to 
 undo after death what in life he had rashly commanded. 
 
 While the scene-painter of our tune is most often 
 called upon to realize the actual in an interior and to 
 delight us with a room the dominant quality of which 
 is that it looks as tho it was really lived in by the per- 
 sonages we see moving around in it, he is not confined 
 to those domestic scenes. There are other plays than 
 the modern social dramas; and these other plays make 
 other demands upon the artist. On occasion he has 
 to supply a gorgeous scenic accompaniment for the 
 Roman and Egyptian episodes of 'Antony and Cleo- 
 patra,' to suggest the blasted heath where Macbeth 
 may meet the weird sisters, and to call up before our 
 delighted eyes the placid charm of the Forest of Arden. 
 
 146
 
 A landscape set 
 Designed by F. Fontanesi in Italy in the eighteenth century 
 
 A set for the opera of ' Robert le Diable ' 
 At the Paris Opera
 
 EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING 
 
 The awkward and inconsistent sky-borders, strips of 
 pendent canvas wholly unsatisfactory as substitutes 
 for the vast depths of the starry heavens, he is able 
 to dispense with by lowering a little the hangings at 
 the top edge of the picture-frame, and by thus limiting 
 the upward gaze of the spectators, so that he can 
 forgo the impossible attempt to imitate the changing 
 sky. He can achieve an effect of limitless space, as in 
 the last act of the ' Garden of Allah' (which brings be- 
 fore us the endless vision of Sahara), by the use of a 
 cyclorama background, the drop being suspended from 
 a semicircular rod which runs around the top of the 
 stage, shutting in the view absolutely, and yet yielding 
 itself to a representation of sand and sky meeting afar 
 off on the faint horizon. 
 
 In the past half-century, and more especially since 
 the improvement of the electric light, scene-painting 
 has become very elaborate and very expensive. In- 
 stead of being kept in its proper place as the decora- 
 tion of the drama, as a beautiful accessory of the action, 
 it has often been pushed to the front, so as to attract 
 attention to itself, and thereby to distract attention 
 from the play which it was supposed to illuminate. 
 Sometimes Shakspere has been smothered in scenery, 
 and sometimes the art of the actor has been subordi- 
 nated to the art of the scene-painter. Now, it must 
 be admitted that nothing is too good for the master- 
 pieces of the drama, and that Sophocles no less than 
 Shakspere ought to be presented to the public with all 
 the pomp that his lofty themes and his marvelous 
 
 147
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 workmanship may demand. But the plays of the 
 mighty dramatic poets ought not to be used merely as 
 pegs on which to hang gorgeous apparel. After all, 
 the play's the thing; and whenever the scene-painter 
 and his invading partner, the stage-manager, are 
 prompted to oust the drama from its pre-eminence, and 
 to substitute an exhibition of their accessory arts, the 
 result is a betrayal of the playwright. 
 
 A well-known British art critic once told me that 
 when the curtain rose at a certain London revival of 
 'Twelfth Night/ and disclosed Olivia's garden, he sat 
 entranced at the beauty of the spectacle before his 
 eyes, with its subtle harmonies of color, so entranced, 
 indeed, that he found himself distinctly annoyed when 
 the actors came on the stage and began to talk. For 
 the moment, at least, he wished them away, as dis- 
 turbers of his esthetic delight in the lovely picture on 
 which his eyes were feasting. But even a stage-setting 
 as captivating as this might very well be justified if 
 it had been employed to fill a gap in the action, and to 
 buttress up the interest of an episode where the dram- 
 atist had allowed the appeal of his. story to relax. 
 Perrin, the manager of the Come"die-Frangaise thirty 
 years ago, declined to produce a French version of 
 ' Othello' because he found a certain dramatic empti- 
 ness in the scenes at Cyprus at the opening of the sec- 
 ond act, which he felt he would have to mask by the 
 beauty of spectacular decoration, too costly an ex- 
 pedient in his opinion for the finances of the theater 
 just then. 
 
 148
 
 The set of the last act of the 'Garden of Allah' 
 From the model in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University 
 
 A set for 'Medea' 
 Designed by Herr Gustav Lindemann
 
 EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING 
 
 It was Perrin, however, who produced the French 
 version of the '(Edipus the King' of Sophocles, and who 
 bestowed upon it a single set of wonderful charm and 
 power, at once dignified, appropriate, and beautiful 
 in itself. It represented an open space between a 
 temple and the palace of the ill-fated (Edipus, with an 
 altar in the center, and with the profile of another 
 temple projected against the distant sky and relieved 
 by the tall, thin outline of poplar-trees. The mo- 
 notony of this rectangular architectural construction 
 was avoided by placing all the buildings on a slant, 
 the whole elevation of the temple being visible on the 
 left of the spectators, whereas only a corner of the 
 colonnade of the palace on the right was displayed. 
 This set at the Th^atre-Frangais was the absolute an- 
 tithesis of the original scenic surroundings in the theater 
 of Dionysus more than two thousand years ago, when 
 the masterpiece of Sophocles had been performed in 
 the open-air orchestra, with only a hut of skins or a 
 temporary wooden building to serve as a background 
 for the bas-reliefs of the action. 
 
 So elaborate, complicated, and costly have stage- 
 sets become in the past half-century, that there are 
 already signs of the violent reaction that might be 
 expected. Mr. Gordon Craig, an artist of remarkable 
 individuality, has gone so far as to propose what is 
 almost an abolition of scene-painting. He seeks to 
 attain effects of massive simplicity by the use of un- 
 adorned hangings and of undecorated screens, thus 
 substituting vast spaces for the realistic details of the 
 
 149
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 modern scene-painter. No doubt, there are a few 
 plays for which this method of mounting would be ap- 
 propriate enough M. Maeterlinck's ' Intruder,' for one, 
 and his 'Sightless' for another, plays which are inde- 
 pendent of time and space, and in which the action 
 appears to pass in some undiscovered limbo. As yet 
 the advanced and iconoclastic theories of Mr. Craig 
 have made few adherents, the most notable being the 
 German, "Professor" Reinhardt, who lacks Mr. 
 Craig's fine feeling for form and color, and who is con- 
 tinually tempted into rather ugly eccentricities of de- 
 sign, being apparently moved by the desire to be differ- 
 ent from his predecessors rather than by the wish to 
 be superior to them. 
 
 VI 
 
 Interesting as are Mr. Craig's suggestions, and well- 
 founded as may be his protest against the excessive 
 ornamentation to which we are too prone nowadays, 
 there is no reason to fear that his principles will pre- 
 vail. The art of the scene-painter is too welcome, it 
 is too plainly in accord with the predilections of the 
 twentieth century, for it to be annihilated by the fiat 
 of a daring and reckless innovator. It will be wise 
 if the producers should harken to Mr. Craig's warn- 
 ings and curb their tendency to needless extravagance; 
 but we may rest assured that a return to the bareness 
 of the Attic theater or of the English theater in the 
 time of the Tudors is frankly unthinkable now that the 
 
 150
 
 The set of '(Edipe-Roi' (at the Theatre 
 
 The set of the 'Return of Peter Grimm' 
 From the model in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University
 
 EVOLUTION OF SCENE-PAINTING 
 
 art of scene-painting has been developed to its present 
 possibilities. In fact, the probability is rather that 
 the scene-painters will continue to enlarge the bound- 
 aries of their territory and to discover new means and 
 new methods of delighting our eyes by their evocations 
 of interesting places. 
 
 Perhaps they would be more encouraged to go on 
 and conquer new worlds if there was a wider recogni- 
 tion of the artistic value of their work. Altho De 
 Lutherbourg and Clarkson Stanfield won honorable 
 positions in the history of painting by their easel- 
 pictures, the art of scene-painting does not hold the 
 place in the public esteem that many of its practition- 
 ers deserve. The*ophile Gautier, often negligible as a 
 critic of the acted drama, was always worth listening 
 to when he turned to pictorial art; and he was frequent 
 in praise of the scene-painters of his time and of scene- 
 painting itself as a craft of exceeding difficulty and of 
 inadequate appreciation. Probably one reason why 
 the scene-painter has not received his due meed of 
 praise is because his work is not preserved. It exists 
 only during the run of the play which it decorates. 
 When the piece disappears from the boards, the scenes 
 which adorned it vanish from sight. They linger only 
 in the memory of those who happened to see this one 
 play and even then, in fact, only in the memory of 
 such spectators as have trained themselves to pay 
 attention to stage-pictures. For the scene-painter 
 there is no Luxembourg; still less is there any Louvre. 
 As Gautier sympathetically declared, "it is sad to think 
 
 151
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 that nothing survives of those masterpieces destined to 
 live a few evenings only, and disappearing from the 
 washed canvas to give place to other marvels, equally 
 fugitive. How much invention, talent, and genius may 
 be lost and not always leaving even a name !" 
 
 It is pleasant to know that at the Ope"ra in Paris a 
 formal order of the government has for now a half- 
 century prescribed the preservation of the original 
 models the little miniature sets which the scene- 
 painter submits for the approval of the manager and 
 the dramatist before he begins work upon the actual 
 scene. These models are always upon the same scale, 
 and in the gallery connected with the library of the 
 Ope"ra a dozen of these models are set up to be viewed 
 by visitors. Of course no tiny model, however cleverly 
 fashioned, can give the full effect of the scene which 
 has been conceived in terms of a huge stage; and yet 
 the miniature reproductions do not betray the scene- 
 painter as much as an engraving or a photograph often 
 betrays the painter. Whatever its limitations, and 
 they are obvious enough, the collection of models at 
 the Ope>a is at least an attempt to retard the oblivion 
 that The*ophile Gautier deplored, and to provide for 
 the scene-painter a substitute, however inadequate, 
 for the Louvre and the Luxembourg. 
 
 (1912.) 
 
 152
 
 IX 
 THE BOOK OF THE OPERA
 
 THE BOOK OF THE OPERA 
 
 A FEW years ago Punch had a satirical drawing rep- 
 resenting a British matron conveying a bevy of youth- 
 ful daughters to the French play in London. To a 
 friend who called her attention to the rather risky 
 atmosphere of the very Parisian comedy which they 
 were about to behold, the worthy mother promptly ex- 
 plained that she was not bringing her daughters to see 
 the play itself; she was bringing them to see only the 
 acting. Probably a great many opera-goers would 
 make a similar explanation if they were asked whether 
 they were interested in the book of the opera or only 
 in the music. They would be likely to protest that 
 they cared little or nothing for the libretto, and that 
 they were attracted solely by the score. But, as a 
 matter of fact, the opera-goers who might make this 
 reply would be self-deceived. Whether they are aware 
 of it or not, they are unlikely to be attracted to any 
 opera unless it happens to have an interesting story, 
 built up into a coherent and captivating plot. When 
 the libretto is unintelligible or uninteresting, the most 
 delightful music fails to allure them into the opera- 
 house. This is one of the reasons why the 'Magic 
 Flute/ which contains much of Mozart's most beautiful 
 
 155
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 melodic invention, is so rarely heard in our opera- 
 houses, and why it is so sparsely attended when it is 
 presented. The libretto of the 'Magic Flute' is dull 
 and ineffective, and even Mozart's genius proved unable 
 to overcome this initial handicap. 
 
 The ordinary opera-goer is likely to treat the libretto 
 with calm contempt. He is prone to assert that nobody 
 cares about the words, and he does not reflect that be- 
 hind and beneath the words is the supporting structure 
 of the story. After all, an opera is a play, it is a music- 
 drama, and the plot is as important in a play the words 
 of which are to be sung as in a play the words of which 
 are to be spoken. True it is, of course, that hi an 
 opera the words may not be heard distinctly, and per- 
 haps they need not be seized with certainty, since the 
 emotion they set forth is more amply conveyed by 
 the music. But the musician cannot express emotion 
 musically, unless there is emotion for him to express, 
 unless he has characters immeshed in a series of situa- 
 tions which evoke vivid and contrasting sentiments 
 for him to translate into music. As the music-drama 
 is a drama, it must obey the laws of the drama; it 
 must represent a conflict of contending desires; it 
 must be carried on by characters firm of purpose and 
 resolute hi achieving their several aims. These char- 
 acters must be sharply individualized and boldly con- 
 trasted; and the story in which they take part must 
 be at once strong and simple, calling for no elaborate 
 explanation and moving forward steadily and irresisti- 
 bly. It must have a lyric aspect, lending itself natu- 
 
 156
 
 THE BOOK OF THE OPERA 
 
 rally to song; and it ought also to afford opportunity 
 for the spectacular effects appropriate to the large 
 stage of the opera-house. 
 
 So contemptuous of the libretto is the ordinary 
 opera-goer that he rarely inquires as to the name of 
 the author of the book, altho he is generally familiar 
 with the name of the composer of the score. He may 
 or he may not be aware that Wagner was his own 
 librettist, and quite possibly he supposes that it is the 
 ordinary custom of the composers to write the words 
 for their own music. He knows that 'Carmen' was 
 composed by Bizet, and that the 'Huguenots' was com- 
 posed by Meyerbeer; but he would be greatly puzzled 
 if he was asked to name the librettists of these two 
 operas, the adroit playwrights who devised the skeletons 
 of dramatic action which sustained the composers and 
 provided them with ample opportunities for the exer- 
 cise of their melodic gift. As a matter of fact, the book 
 of 'Carmen' was written in collaboration by two of the 
 most distinguished French dramatists of the nine- 
 teenth century, Meilhac and Halevy, the authors of 
 'Froufrou' and of the librettos of Offenbach's 'Belle 
 Helene,' 'Grand Duchess of Gerolstein,' and 'Peri- 
 chole.' And the book of the 'Huguenots' was the 
 work of the master stage-craftsman, Scribe, the author 
 of 'Adrienne Lecouvreur' and of the 'Ladies' Battle/ 
 and of countless other plays performed in every mod- 
 ern language, and in all the countries of the world. 
 
 Bizet wrote other operas besides 'Carmen,' and if 
 these other operas have vanished from the stage, the 
 
 157
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 reason may be that the librettos to which they were 
 composed were not as ingenious and not as interesting 
 as the book of 'Carmen.' One of these forgotten op- 
 eras of Bizet's was a dramatization of the 'Fair Maid 
 of Perth/ and another was called the 'Pearl Fisher'; 
 but neither of these books was devised by Meilhac and 
 HaleVy. And Scribe was not only the librettist of the 
 'Huguenots' and of the 'Africaine' for Meyerbeer; he 
 also wrote the books of 'Fra Diavolo' and of 'Crown 
 Diamonds' for Auber, the book of the 'Dame Blanche' 
 for Boi'eldieu, and the book of the 'Juive' for HaleVy. 
 Indeed, it is evident that Wagner himself as a librettist 
 must be considered as a direct disciple of Scribe; cer- 
 tainly his book of the ' Flying Dutchman ' has its points 
 of resemblance with the books Scribe invented for 
 'Robert the Devil,' and for the 'Prophet.' Even the 
 libretto of Wagner's 'Master-Singers of Nuremberg/ 
 altho it is far richer in tone than any of Scribe's librettos 
 for Auber, is constructed in accord with principles al- 
 ready applied by the French playwright. In fact, the 
 influence of Scribe is patent thruout the long history of 
 opera in the nineteenth century; he was not only the 
 most prolific of librettists himself, but the operatic 
 formula he devised was borrowed by the best of the 
 librettists who followed him. Scribe was not the writer 
 of the books of 'Faust/ or of 'Rome'o et Juliet/ or of 
 'Aida/ but all these librettos were carefully built in 
 accord with the principles that he had practised for 
 half a century. 
 
 158
 
 THE BOOK OF THE OPERA 
 
 II 
 
 Probably the average opera-goer is contemptuous of 
 the libretto, because he thinks it is an easy task to write 
 the mere words of an opera. To him, no doubt, the 
 opera lives by its music, and by its music alone. But 
 there is really no warrant for this uncomplimentary 
 attitude. An opera is a music-drama, and if it is to 
 achieve success, wide-spread and long-lasting, its drama 
 must be as effective as its music. Experience proves 
 that, so far from being as easy as it seems, the construc- 
 tion of a satisfactory libretto is really a difficult feat, 
 to be achieved only by an expert in stage-craft. It is 
 no task to be confided to an amateur play-maker, to 
 a mere lyrist, ignorant of the art of the theater. First 
 of all, a satisfactory book must contain the skeleton of 
 a good play; and, second, this must be the special kind 
 of play which will not only inspire the musician, but 
 afford him a succession of special opportunities for the 
 exercise of his own art. The book of an opera must 
 be a good play; and more than once have we seen a 
 libretto deprived of its music and written out again 
 in prose for production in non-musical theaters. 
 'Carmen' is one example of this transformation. The 
 late Sir Henry Irving was so taken with Wagner's 
 'Flying Dutchman' that he had it made over into a 
 play for his own acting 'Vanderdecken.' 
 
 The book of an opera must be a good play, and there- 
 fore not a few successful operas have been composed 
 
 159
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 on plots which had already won approval as plays on 
 the stage. Indeed, many modern composers are so 
 convinced of the necessity that librettos shall be attrac- 
 tive in themselves that they are continually borrowing 
 popular plays to deck with melody. 'Salome"' and 
 'Pelle'as et Melisande,' 'Madam Butterfly' and 'Ca- 
 valleria Rusticana/ the 'Boheme' and the 'Tosca' 
 were all successful without music before they were set 
 to music to win a second success. The book of Verdi's 
 'Rigoletto' is based on Victor Hugo's drama, 'Le Roi 
 s' Amuse'; and oddly enough it was the operatic li- 
 bretto, rather than the original poetic drama, which 
 suggested the English play on the same theme, Tom 
 Taylor's blank-verse drama, the 'Fool's Revenge.' 
 Another of Verdi's librettos was borrowed from Hugo's 
 'Hermani', while his 'Traviata/ as we all know, is 
 taken from the play of the younger Dumas, long pop- 
 ular in America as 'Camille.' Two of Verdi's latest 
 operas had Shaksperian themes, 'Otello' and 'FalstaftV 
 It is instructive to note, so an American musical 
 critic once asserted, that of all Gounod's dozen operas, 
 "the only two which have survived are the two which 
 are derived from Goethe's 'Faust' and from Shak- 
 spere's 'Romeo and Juliet'"; and he added a reminder 
 that in these operas the music owes its success "not 
 only to the aid derived from its associations with a 
 favorite play, but also in part to the fact that .the 
 composer's creative imagination was fertilized by the 
 splendid opportunities for dramatic composition of- 
 fered by these plays. Gounod was moved by the joys 
 
 160
 
 THE BOOK OF THE OPERA 
 
 and woes of Margaret and of Juliet, and it is only un- 
 der the influence of deep feeling that such master-works 
 can be created." When Gounod set to music a poetic 
 play by Goethe, and when Verdi set to music a group 
 of characters created by Shakspere, the composers 
 might well be inspired by the poets; and they were 
 thus aided to attain the utmost of which they are capa- 
 ble as musicians. 
 
 But it may be doubted whether any musician could 
 find any really helpful inspiration in dramas of vulgar 
 violence, such as the 'Tosca' of Sardou, and the 
 ' Salome* ' of Oscar Wilde ; and it is extremely improbable 
 that the operas composed to such unworthy themes 
 will be able to achieve any durable popularity. In 
 plots of so coarse a character there is neither beauty 
 nor poetry, and the vogue of music-dramas having 
 subjects so debased is likely to be fleeting. On the 
 other hand, there was both poetry and beauty in the 
 original plays of 'Madam Butterfly' and 'Cavalleria 
 Rustieana,' and we need not be surprised if the operas 
 composed on these themes prove to have a long life in 
 the musical theaters. We may even go further and 
 suggest that there was a haunting and ethereal grace 
 about Maeterlinck's 'Pelle"as et Melisande' which 
 seemed almost to demand translation into the sister 
 art of music. 
 
 The two most effective French comedies of the eigh- 
 teenth century, the 'Barber of Seville' and the 'Mar- 
 riage of Figaro,' supplied librettos, one for Rossini and 
 the other for Mozart. We may be sure that sooner 
 
 161
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 or later some other composer, Italian or American or 
 German, will be tempted to undertake an opera based 
 on Fulda's 'Two Sisters/ in which there could not help 
 being a very effective part for the prima donna. And 
 sooner or later again some musician with an apprecia- 
 tion of humor and sentiment will be moved to take for 
 his libretto the comedy of ' Masks and Faces,' by Charles 
 Reade and Tom Taylor, generally known by the name 
 of its fascinating heroine, Peg Woffington. No doubt 
 there are not a few other modern plays in which com- 
 posers will discover musical possibilities. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The key to an understanding of the importance of 
 the libretto lies in the term Wagner used to describe 
 the art-work of the future; he called this a "music- 
 drama." The exclusive lover of music is tempted to 
 look down on opera because its music is contaminated 
 with drama; and for a similar reason, the exclusive 
 lover of the drama is not attracted to opera because 
 the drama is there more or less sacrificed to the music. 
 But there are many opera-goers who best relish music 
 and the drama when they are presented in conjunction. 
 In a music-drama of the highest type, in Wagner's 
 'Tannhaiiser,' for example, the music and the drama 
 are Siamese twins; they were brought forth at a single 
 birth. Each helps the other, and neither calls upon 
 the other for any undue sacrifice. They can be en- 
 joyed together better than they can be enjoyed apart, 
 
 162
 
 THE BOOK OF THE OPERA 
 
 since each depends upon the other; and united they 
 stand or fall. 
 
 Mr. H. T. Finck was not overstating the case when 
 he insisted that the ideal opera is one hi which the book 
 and the score are each of them of absorbing interest, 
 "and yet make a doubly deep impression when heard 
 together." The stories of ' Faust ' and of ' Carmen ' and 
 of 'Lohengrin' are delightful in themselves, merely 
 to read; and a musical expert can find pleasure in 
 playing the music from them on the piano. "Yet 
 how much more effective they are when we hear and 
 see music and play together on the stage." And then 
 the same writer goes on to point out that the best 
 "libretto is one which tells its story to the eye," as in 
 the case of ' Carmen/ for example. " No one with eyes 
 to see can fail, for instance, to follow the career of 
 ' Carmen/ from her flirtation with the young officer 
 to the scene before the bullring where he stabs her." 
 
 It was an acute French dramatic critic who once 
 asserted that "the skeleton of every good play is a 
 pantomime," and the assertion is more emphatically 
 true when applied to the skeleton of a libretto. In- 
 deed, as the words are rarely heard distinctly, and as 
 they are often in a foreign language, there is double 
 need of a story so clear and so straightforward that it 
 can be caught by the eye alone from the actions and 
 gestures and facial expressions of the performers with- 
 out the aid of the actual words. But the inventing 
 and the constructing of a plot of this seemingly simple 
 effectiveness is a task of extraordinary difficulty if 
 
 163
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 we may judge by the infrequency of its achievement. 
 And undoubtedly it is this difficulty which has led so 
 many musicians to compose their scores to books only 
 slightly altered from plays which had already an at- 
 tested popularity in the theater. By so doing it has 
 seemed to them that they were minimizing the risk of 
 finding their music handicapped by an ineffective story. 
 The danger in this case lies in the temptation to set 
 to music any play which may chance to be successful 
 without considering sufficiently whether it is really 
 worthy of the composer's labor. 
 
 There is another disadvantage also in this snatching at 
 successful plays to serve as opera-librettos. Most suc- 
 cessful plays nowadays deal with modern life, and they 
 may owe much of their success to the skill with which 
 the dramatist has been able to seize the external aspects 
 of reality. Now, it is an interesting question whether 
 a realistic piece of this sort can ever supply an entirely 
 satisfactory book for an opera, since music is emotional 
 and idealizing. To many persons the opera seems 
 singularly unreal, strangely remote from actual life. 
 Such persons are shocked that Tristan, for instance, 
 should sing for half an hour when he is dying from physi- 
 cal weakness. Tolstoy sided with those who take this 
 attitude, and he had no difficulty in showing up the 
 absurd unreality of an operatic performance, if one 
 insists upon applying to it the standard of our ordinary 
 existence, since we do not burst into song ordinarily 
 to express our every-day desires. Of course, there 
 would be no great difficulty in showing up the absurd 
 
 164
 
 THE BOOK OF THE OPERA 
 
 unreality of every other art, if the same standard is 
 insisted upon. No art can justify itself for a moment 
 unless we are willing to admit the essential conventions 
 which alone permit it to exist. 
 
 Tolstoy might as well have pointed out that sculp- 
 ture is ridiculous, since no human being is ever all of 
 one color, body and clothes, as a statue must be, 
 whether it is made of marble or of bronze. He could 
 have declared that painting is equally untrue to the 
 mere facts of life, since it represents nature absolutely 
 without motion, as when it depicts a field of waving 
 corn which does not really wave but stands fixed for- 
 ever. If Tolstoy or any one else refuses to accept the 
 conventions of any art, there is no possible reply, ex- 
 cept to make it clear to him that he is thereby de- 
 priving himself of the delight which that art can give. 
 A departure from the mere fact underlies every art; 
 and it is only because of that departure that the art 
 exists. By convention, that is to say, by tacit agree- 
 ment between the artist and the public, the artist is 
 allowed to deny certain of the facts of life in order to 
 provide the public with the specific pleasure which 
 only his art can afford. 
 
 In the Shaksperian drama the underlying conven- 
 tion is that the persons of the play belong to a race 
 of people who always express themselves poetically in 
 English blank verse. In opera this necessary agreement 
 requires us to concede the existence of men and women 
 to whom song is the natural means of communicating 
 all their sentiments and all their thoughts. If we are 
 
 165
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 willing to accept this implied contract, then there is no 
 absurdity in Tristan's singing with his dying breath, 
 since he belongs to a race of creatures who have no 
 other method of speech. If we are unwilling to be 
 parties to this agreement, if we deny the existence of 
 any such creatures, then there is nothing for us to do 
 but to keep out of the opera-house. It was this con- 
 vention which Tolstoy rejected, and by this rejection 
 he refused the enjoyment which the opera can give to 
 those who are satisfied to accept its conditions. 
 
 IV 
 
 But there is no denying that the imperative operatic 
 convention requires us to admit a very violent depar- 
 ture from the facts of life as we all know them. We 
 are now so accustomed to blank verse in Shakspere's 
 plays, tragic and comic, that we accept it almost 
 without noticing it. By long habit, we have come to 
 consider blank verse as "natural" in a poetic play, 
 especially when that play sets before us heroic figures 
 of the remote past. And here is the danger in the 
 operas which have been composed on books made out 
 of modern popular pieces, more or less realistic in their 
 atmosphere. The "naturalness" of the men and 
 women in these plays of to-day tends to draw atten- 
 tion to the "unnaturalness" of their customary use of 
 song to express their emotions. 
 
 This danger Wagner skilfully avoided in his later 
 music-dramas derived from the Nibelungen myth. 
 
 166
 
 THE BOOK OF THE OPERA 
 
 He set before us shadowy creatures involved in strange 
 intrigues far back in the legendary past and wholly 
 devoid of any modern or realistic suggestion. As Tris- 
 tan and Siegfried and Brunhild are all idealized per- 
 sons, taking part in poetic fictions, we are willing enough 
 to accept their exclusive use of song; and we recognize 
 at once the artistic inconsistency of Tolstoy's protest. 
 To beings so remote from our daily life, from our or- 
 dinary experience, the standard of fact cannot fairly 
 be applied. We acknowledge the full right of such 
 creatures to dwell eternally in the land of song alone. 
 But we are perhaps a little less willing to make this 
 acknowledgment when we find the composer asking 
 us to believe that men and women of our own time and 
 of our own country, the characters of the ' Girl of the 
 Golden West,' for example, or even some of those of 
 'Madam Butterfly,' should eschew the plain prose of 
 ordinary speech and insist on discussing their love- 
 affairs in the obviously "unnatural" medium of song. 
 That is to say, there is a striking incongruity between 
 musical expression and the realistic characters of most 
 modern plays. We enjoy the opera partly because it 
 is not "natural," not "real," in the ordinary meaning 
 of these words; and if the plot and the people are 
 aggressively modern and matter-of-fact, our attention 
 is necessarily called to the "unnaturahiess" of their 
 incessant vocalization. A certain remoteness from real 
 life, even a certain vaporous intangibility as to time 
 and place, seem to be a helpful element in our enjoy- 
 ment of a music-drama. 
 
 167
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 Perhaps it is due to this remoteness, to this unreality, 
 that the opera-goer is willing enough to have a story 
 end unhappily, altho the playgoer is now likely to be 
 painfully affected by a tragic ending. Whatever the 
 reason, it is a fact that most of our popular plays end 
 merrily in a church, while most of our popular operas 
 end sadly in a churchyard. The calculation has been 
 made that out of twoscore operas sung in New York 
 at the two opera-houses a season or so ago, only half 
 a dozen ended happily; the large majority of them cul- 
 minated in the death of the hero or of the heroine or 
 of both together. Music is a sister of poetry, and we 
 need not wonder that the musicians are likely to prefer 
 the opera-book which has a tragic catastrophe. 
 
 (1910.) 
 
 168
 
 X 
 
 THE POETRY OF THE DANCE
 
 THE POETRY OF THE DANCE 
 
 THE Greek of old was wise in his generation and poetic 
 as was his habit, when he imagined nine muses and 
 when he feigned that each of them was to watch over 
 a separate art, and to inspire those who might strive 
 to excel in this. It is true that nowadays we cannot 
 help feeling that the sister-muses of Tragedy and of 
 Comedy have been a little derelict to their duty, if 
 they are really responsible for all the plays of our time, 
 not a few of which seem to be sadly lacking in inspira- 
 tion. But of late another of the sacred nine appears 
 to have aroused herself out of her lethargy and to have 
 awakened to a fuller realization of her opportunity. 
 At least, there are many evidences now visible in the 
 United States that Terpsichore has been attending 
 strictly to business, and sending out travelers with 
 many diverse specimens of her wares. Indeed, there 
 has probably never been a time when so many different 
 varieties of the dance have been on exhibition before 
 the American people. It was once remarked by a 
 shrewd observer that there were only three kinds of 
 dancing, the graceful, the ungraceful, and the dis- 
 graceful. And in the United States we have had pre- 
 sented to us in the past few years specimens of all three 
 kinds. 
 
 171
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 In the middle of September, 1910, the Playground 
 Association of America held an outdoor session in 
 Van Cortlandt Park, in New York, and three hundred 
 persons, mostly children, took part in the exercises. 
 The most interesting feature of the program was a 
 series of national folk-dances executed by boys and 
 girls from the public schools. New York is the huge 
 melting-pot where all nationalities of Europe meet to 
 be fused into Americans; and these children were, 
 most of them, executing the dances of the countries 
 their parents had come from dances for which they 
 had, therefore, a traditional and hereditary predilec- 
 tion. German girls in the costumes of the Rhine, gave 
 a peasant dance to the simple tune of 'Ach, du lieber 
 Augustin'; and colored children, in perfect rhythm, 
 moved thru a reel to the music of the 'Suwanee River.' 
 The wild Hungarian czardas was carried off with a 
 splendid swing by men and women born on the banks 
 of the Danube; and an Irish quartet displayed their 
 agility and their precision of time-keeping in a four- 
 handed country-dance. And at the end, all the par- 
 ticipants in the several national dances took part in a 
 general harvest-dance. This was an effective spec- 
 tacle, possible only here in America, where representa- 
 tives of many peoples come to mingle, even tho each 
 of them retains a sentiment of loyalty to the old home 
 it has left forever. 
 
 Here in the open air, in a public park, at this meeting 
 of the Playground Association, there was this joyous 
 and wholesome revival of the folk-dances of a dozen 
 
 172
 
 THE POETRY OF THE DANCE 
 
 different races; and at the same time, in one or another 
 of half a score of the theaters of the great city, ill- 
 trained and half-clothed women were vainly capering 
 about the stage in doubtful efforts to suggest the Orien- 
 tal contortions of Salome*. These were, most of them, 
 consciously and deliberately inartistic, appealing di- 
 rectly to the baser instincts and to the lower curiosi- 
 ties of man. Nothing could have been in sharper con- 
 trast with the folk-dances of the foreign-born children, 
 which were gay and healthy and spontaneous. The 
 exercises in the park were examples of the kind of 
 dancing which cannot help being graceful, while most 
 of the performances in the theaters were specimens of 
 the kind of dancing which can fairly be described as 
 ungraceful, even if they cannot all of them be dis- 
 missed as disgraceful. While the folk-dances of the 
 children would fill the heart with a pure delight, the 
 sorry spectacle presented in some of the theaters was 
 not to be witnessed without a certain loss of self-respect; 
 it recalled the gross pantomimes of the later Roman 
 theater, righteously denounced by the Fathers of the 
 Church. 
 
 Yet it is only just to record that in other theaters 
 there were then other spectacles to make amends for 
 these sorry exhibitions. There were several interest- 
 ing attempts to recall the severe beauty of Greek danc- 
 ing. Lithe figures with free and floating draperies 
 sought to recapture the irreclaimable charm that lives 
 for us in the lovely Tanagra figurines, or that flits elu- 
 sively around the sides of Attic vases. Ambitious ef- 
 
 173
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 forts were made by one dancer and by another to trans- 
 late into step and posture and gesture the intangible 
 poetry of Shelley and the haunting music of Mendels- 
 sohn. Unfortunately, the result was rarely commen- 
 surate with the effort; and, in fact, a complete success 
 was not possible. The muse of dancing has no right 
 to endeavor to annex the territory of her sisters, who 
 are charged with the care of poetry and music. The 
 several arts are strongest when each remains strictly 
 within its own limitations. For example, program- 
 music is not yet assured of its welcome, and program- 
 dancing is far more difficult to follow with complete 
 comprehension. 
 
 And there was a further defect in these efforts to re- 
 vive the classic dances and to devise more modern 
 interpretations of poetry and music. Success, if pos- 
 sible at all, would be possible only to a highly trained 
 performer, mistress of every device of the terpsi- 
 chorean art and elaborately schooled in pantomimic 
 expression. Now, it is not unfair to say that no one 
 of the performers of these so-called classic dances had 
 undergone this severe schooling. No one of them had 
 the lightness, the ease, the perfect mastery of method, 
 the floating grace of the true dancer, who has been 
 taught from childhood, until all the tricks of the craft 
 are second nature. Without this arduous training any 
 one who attempts an ambitious display can scarcely 
 fail to reveal instantly the lamentable fact that she is 
 not mistress of the technic of the art she has undertaken 
 to practise. She does not know how to get her effects; 
 
 174
 
 THE POETRY OF THE DANCE 
 
 she does not even know what effects are possible. 
 She is almost certain to appear amateurish, and she 
 is likely to seem awkward also, not to say ungainly. 
 As Pope put it tersely: "Those move easiest who have 
 learned to dance." 
 
 These well-meant attempts to link dancing with 
 poetry and music could be entirely satisfactory only 
 to those who have given little consideration to dancing 
 as an art, or who have small opportunity to see any 
 really beautiful dancing. There is no wonder that 
 any effort to spiritualize dancing, to give it a soul, to 
 elevate it to the lofty level of the lyric, should be wel- 
 comed by those who have been disgusted by the ugly 
 and vulgar high-kicking of the so-called pony ballets. 
 The acrobatic contortions of these athletic performers 
 were wholly without charm, as unalluring as they were 
 violent. And equally unacceptable are the frequent 
 exhibitions of toe-dancing, sheer gymnastic feats, diffi- 
 cult, indeed, but essentially uninteresting. Of a truth, 
 these pony ballets on the one hand, and these toe- 
 dancers on the other, are exponents of eccentricity. 
 What they accomplish lies outside the true art of danc- 
 ing. It is not inspired by Terpsichore, and the sad- 
 dened muse must veil her face when she is forced to 
 behold these crude exhibitions of misplaced energy. 
 
 175
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 II 
 
 The true art of dancing is entirely free from all ap- 
 parent effort. No matter how difficult may be the 
 feat that is accomplished, it must seem easy. Every 
 gesture must be expressive, every movement must be 
 beautiful, every step must have ease and lightness and 
 grace. Forty years ago and more, the ' Black Crook' 
 brought to America three or four dancers trained in the 
 best schools of Europe Bonfanti and Betty Rigl, 
 Rita Sangalli and Morlacchi. One of this quartet, 
 Rita Sangalli, was afterward the chief dancer at the 
 Paris Opera, where she was followed in time by Rosita 
 Mauri, a dancer who added beauty of face and of form 
 to a masterly accomplishment. They were all gifted 
 pantomimists; they had all of them the perfection of 
 technic; they were all of them capable of the most 
 varied difficulties of the art; and they all of them van- 
 quished these difficulties with unobtrusive ease. They 
 had attained to that perfection of art, when the art 
 itself is hidden, and when only the consummate result 
 is visible. Each of them had absolute certainty of 
 execution, and each of them could float across the 
 stage the embodiment of grace, exquisite in its ethe- 
 real delicacy. 
 
 For those whose memories cannot recall the haunting 
 remembrance of the days that are gone there is abun- 
 dant compensation in the opportunity which has been 
 afforded of late to behold the dancing of Mile. Gene 
 
 176
 
 THE POETRY OF THE DANCE 
 
 and of Mile. Pavlova. They are, at least, the equal 
 of any of their predecessors, and it may be doubted 
 whether Taglioni or Fanny Elssler surpassed them in 
 mastery. They are the perfection of effortless ease; 
 altho they suggest only the lightness of the butterfly, 
 they have the steel strength of the gymnast. Behind 
 their marvelous and bewildering accomplishment there 
 is a native gift, rich and full; and there is also the 
 utmost rigor and perseverance in training. What they 
 are able to do with seeming spontaneity and with ap- 
 parent freedom is the result of indefatigable industry 
 and of merciless labor. 
 
 But tho this schooling sustains them, it is never 
 paraded indeed, it is scarcely perceived. There is 
 not the faintest suggestion of hard work about their 
 performances; there is nothing that hints at effort; 
 their art is able to conceal itself absolutely, and to 
 delight us only with the perfect result of their long 
 apprenticeship. Capable of the most obstinate feats of 
 strength and of agility, Mile. Gene*e and Mile. Pavlova 
 never "show off"; they are never guilty of parading a 
 difficulty for its own sake, and their conquest of tech- 
 nical obstacles serves only to support and intensify 
 the continuous suggestion of aerial elevation and of 
 ineffable lightness. It is to be noted, also, that as they 
 scorn the task of the mere gymnast, they do not wear 
 the scant costume of the acrobat; they are enveloped 
 in ample draperies, which fall into lines of beauty with 
 every movement. 
 
 Nothing more exquisite than their dancing has ever 
 
 177
 
 A .BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 been seen on the American stage. Theirs is the danc- 
 ing which is graceful which, indeed, is grace itself. 
 Here is the art at its utmost possibility, purged of all 
 its dross. When they are floating effortless thru space 
 we cannot help recalling the possibly apocryphal anec- 
 dote which records the visit of Emerson and Margaret 
 Fuller to the theater to see Fanny Elssler. They gazed 
 with increasing delight, until at last Margaret Fuller 
 could not contain her enthusiasm. She turned and 
 said: "Ralph, this is poetry !" To which the philoso- 
 pher is said to have responded: "Margaret, this is 
 religion ! " 
 
 Perfection is always rare, and there is now only one 
 Mile. Gene*e, and only one Mile. Pavlova, as there was 
 only one Rosita Mauri a quarter of a century ago. 
 It is a pity that the Danish dancer has had to appear 
 here in an ordinary musical show and not in a frame- 
 work more worthy of her and of her art, and better 
 fitted to display it. She has revealed herself only in 
 two or three entries de ballet, as the French term them 
 incidental dances; and she has not yet been seen here 
 in a ballet d'action, a complete story told in pantomime. 
 It was the poet, Francois Coppe*e, who devised the plot 
 of the 'Korrigane' for Rosita Mauri; and he had had 
 The*ophile Gautier as a predecessor in the preparation 
 of a ballet-libretto. All those who are interested in 
 every manifestation of the art of the drama, must find 
 pleasure hi the ballet d'action, with its adroit com- 
 mingling of dance and pantomime; it gives a delight 
 possible to no other form of the drama; and at its 
 
 178
 
 THE POETRY OF THE DANCE 
 
 best it is more closely akin to pure poetry. Being her 
 own manager, Mile. Pavlova has been seen in a series 
 of ballets more appropriate to her extraordinary gifts 
 than those in which Mile. Gene*e has been permitted to 
 appear. 
 
 m 
 
 There was one scene of the ' Source/ a ballet popular 
 at the Ope"ra in Paris during the exhibition of 1867, 
 which must linger in the memory of all who had the 
 good fortune to behold it a scene so beautiful that it 
 was borrowed for the 'White Fawn/ which was the 
 successor of the 'Black Crook' here in the United 
 States. It represented a silvery glade in the lone for- 
 est, with a mysterious lake, on the surface of which 
 the spirits of the springtime came forth to disport 
 themselves. It was a vision of airy grace and of haunt- 
 ing legend; and it is only one example of the poetic 
 possibilities of the contribution of dance and panto- 
 mime in a coherent story. It may be well to recall 
 the fact that the plots of these ballets d'action are often 
 strong enough to enable them to serve as the basis of 
 a libretto for an opera. It was a ballet of Scribe's, for 
 example, which was taken for the book of the 'Som- 
 nambula'; and the book of the favorite opera 'Mar- 
 tha' began its existence as a libretto for a ballet. 
 
 While the ballet d'action affords the fullest oppor- 
 tunity for the perfect art of dancers like Rosita Mauri 
 and Adeline Gene*e and Anna Pavlova, there are other 
 forms npt to be despised. Twenty-five years ago the 
 
 179
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 Italian Marenco brought out his stupendous 'Excel- 
 sior/ which was taken from Italy to Paris, then to 
 New York, and finally to London. 'Excelsior' was an 
 allegorical ballet; it represented the conflict of light 
 and darkness, of progress and superstition, of invention 
 and reaction. It filled a whole evening with spectacle 
 and glitter and movement. It lacked the poetic sim- 
 plicity of the 'Source' and of the 'Korrigane'; but it 
 had other qualities of its own. What set it apart from 
 all the ballets that had gone before was the subordina- 
 tion of the individual terpsichorean artist to the main 
 body. Marenco employed the best dancers to be found 
 in Italy, no doubt, but he did not rely on them so 
 much as on the intricate and ingenious handling of 
 the crowds of lesser dancers, by whom they were sur- 
 rounded. 
 
 The novelty of 'Excelsior' and of the two or three 
 gigantic Italian spectacles which were patterned upon 
 it 'Messalina' and 'Sieba' lay in the maneuvering 
 of the masses, in the extraordinary skill with which 
 squadrons of figures were made to charge across the 
 stage and combine and melt into one another most 
 unexpectedly and most delightfully. The whole stage 
 was a blaze of artfully contrasted colors, and it was 
 filled with a riot of motion and of glitter. And Marenco 
 made use of male dancers far more abundantly than 
 any of his predecessors, utilizing them to wear the 
 more somber colors, to suggest a sterner vigor, and to 
 emphasize a bolder contrast. He was responsible also 
 for another novelty, often employed by others since; 
 
 180
 
 THE POETRY OF THE DANCE 
 
 he increased the height of his swerving lines of dancers, 
 now and again, by mounting some of the figures on 
 stands, and by putting revolving globes and iridescent 
 banners into the hands of the men in the background. 
 It is the method of Marenco in 'Excelsior' which has 
 been followed in the often pleasing ballets of the Hip- 
 podrome in New York. Really good soloists are now 
 very scarce, even in Milan and in Vienna, long the 
 nurseries of the ballet; and there seem to be none too 
 many even in Petrograd, which has preserved and im- 
 proved upon the traditions of Paris and Milan. And 
 in the absence of accomplished soloists, the deviser of 
 the ballets at the Hippodrome has been compelled to 
 get along without them as best he could. He has been 
 forced to rely on the maneuvering of masses of girls, 
 possessed of only a rudimentary instruction in the ele- 
 ments of the terpsichorean art. In other words, he 
 has had to make up in quantity for the absence of 
 quality. But he has at his disposition an immense 
 stage, across which he could set his squadrons march- 
 ing and gliding and glittering. He could not count on 
 the skill of his principals who were not expert enough 
 to demand the attention of the spectators; but he 
 could seek striking effects of light and color in the cos- 
 tumes, as he moved his masses to and fro and as he 
 swung them together. If only there had been a little 
 better training for the more prominent performers, 
 the 'Four Seasons' would have been a most artistic 
 entertainment, in spite of the absence of any single 
 dancer of real distinction. 
 
 181
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 IV 
 
 The dearth of remarkable dancers is due to the in- 
 exorable fact that dancing is the most arduous of all 
 the arts; its technic is the most difficult to acquire. 
 Indeed, this technic can be acquired only in early youth, 
 when the muscles are flexible and when they can be 
 supplied at will. It is early hi her teens that a dancer 
 must begin her training if she aspires to eminence in 
 the art. This training is very severe, and it must 
 never be relaxed. Rubinstein used to say that if he 
 omitted his practise for a single day he noticed it in 
 his playing; if he omitted it two days his enemies 
 found it out; and if he omitted it three days even his 
 friends discovered it. The apprentice dancer can never 
 omit a single day of hard and uninteresting toil. In- 
 cessant application, during all the long years of youth, 
 is the price the ambitious beginner must pay for the 
 mastery of her art. She can have no vacations; she 
 can have few relaxations; she must keep herself con- 
 stantly in training; she must be prepared to surrender 
 many of the things which make life worth living. 
 And it is no wonder that so few have the courage to 
 persevere, and that there is only one Rosita Mauri, 
 only one Adeline Gene"e, and only one Anna Pavlova 
 hi a quarter of a century. It is no wonder that the 
 inventor of terpsichorean spectacles nowadays finds 
 himself compelled to get along as best he can without 
 a satisfactory soloist and to rely rather on his handling 
 of a mass of inadequately trained dancers. 
 
 182
 
 THE POETRY OF THE DANCE 
 
 But even if the highly accomplished soloist, absolute 
 mistress of all the possibilities of the art, is very rare, 
 there are certain forms of dancing which do not de- 
 mand this ultimate skill and which call for little more 
 than grace and ease and charm, combined with a 
 knowledge of the simpler steps. For example, the 
 Spanish Cannencita, whose portraits by Mr. Sargent 
 and by Mr. Chase now hang in the Luxembourg in 
 Paris and in the Metropolitan Museum in New York 
 Cannencita was not a skilful dancer; she had under- 
 gone no inexorable schooling; she glided thru only a 
 few elementary movements. But she made no effort; 
 she did not pretend to what was not in her power; 
 she was simple and unaffected. Her charm was not 
 in her singing or in her dancing; it was in her person- 
 ality, in the alluring and exotic suggestion of her 
 individuality. 
 
 Nor could anybody venture to assert that Miss Kate 
 Vaughan and Miss Letty Lind were dancers in the 
 same class with Mauri, Genee, and Pavlova; but then 
 they did not pretend to be. They knew only a few 
 steps of obvious simplicity, and they displayed no un- 
 expected dexterity. But the skirt-dance as they per- 
 formed it was a memory of delight, with its grace and 
 its 'ease, with its perfect rhythm and with the swish of 
 its clinging draperies. It had a fascination of its own, 
 quite different from the fascination of the more poetic 
 and ethereal ballet-dancing of Rita Sangalli and Rosita 
 Mauri. It was not of the stage exactly, but almost of 
 the drawing-room. It gave the same pleasure which 
 
 183
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 we felt when we were privileged to behold a court 
 minuet led by the late Mrs. G. H. Gilbert, who had 
 been a dancer in the days of her youth. There is one 
 perfect beauty of the best ballet-dancing and there 
 are other beauties of different kinds in the skirt-dancing 
 of the two Englishwomen and in the languorous sway- 
 ing of the Spanish gipsy. 
 
 Beauty of yet another order there was in an exhibi- 
 tion which was called a dance, perhaps because there 
 was no other word for it, but which demanded no skill 
 with the feet and which necessitated rather strength 
 in the arms. This was the luminous dance of Miss 
 Loie Fuller, when she swirled voluminous and pro- 
 longed draperies in lights that came from above and 
 from below, and from both sides lights that changed 
 by exquisite gradations from one tint to another, the 
 figure of the dancer spinning around, now slowly and 
 now swiftly, while her arms weaved fantastic circles 
 in the air, revealing unexpected combinations of color, 
 controlled by perfect taste. This may not have been 
 dancing, by any strict definition of the word, but it 
 was decorative, artistic, imaginative, and inexpressibly 
 beautiful. It supplied a glimpse of unsuspected de- 
 light; and probably Terpsichore would not disdain to 
 claim it for her own, however vigorously she might re- 
 pel the suggestion that she had any responsibility for 
 the violence of the toe-dances, for the vulgarity of the 
 pony ballet, or for the ungainly caperings which pre- 
 tend to recapture the free movements of the Greeks. 
 
 (1910-1915.) 
 
 184
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF PANTOMIME 
 
 IN his suggestive study of ancient and modern drama, 
 M. Emile Faguet dwells on the fact that the drama is 
 the only one of the arts which can employ to advantage 
 the aid of all the other arts. The muses of tragedy 
 and comedy can borrow narrative from the muse of 
 epic poetry and song from the muse of lyric poetry. 
 They can avail themselves of oratory, music, and 
 dancing. They can profit by the assistance of the 
 architect, the sculptor, and the painter. They can 
 draw on the co-operation of all the other arts without 
 ceasing to be themselves and without losing any of 
 their essential qualities. This was seen clearly by 
 Wagner, who insisted that his music-dramas were 
 really the art-work of the future, in that they were the 
 result of a combination of all the arts. Quite possibly 
 the Greeks had the same idea, since Athenian tragedy 
 has many points of similarity to Wagner's music- 
 drama; it had epic passages and a lyric chorus set to 
 music; it called for stately dancing against an archi- 
 tectural background. 
 
 But altho the muses of the drama may invoke the 
 help of their seven sisters, they need not make this 
 appeal unless they choose. They can give their per- 
 
 187
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 formances on a bare platform, or in the open air, and 
 thus get along without painting and architecture. 
 They can disdain the support of song and dance and 
 music. They can concentrate all their effort upon 
 themselves and provide a play which is a play and 
 nothing else. And this is what Ibsen has done in his 
 somber social-dramas. ' Ghosts,' for example, is inde- 
 pendent of anything extraneous to the drama. It is 
 a play, only a play, and nothing more than a play. 
 
 Yet it is possible to reduce the drama to an even 
 barer state than we find in Ibsen's gloomy tragedy in 
 prose. Ibsen's characters speak; they reveal them- 
 selves in speech; and it is by words that they carry 
 on the story. A story can be presented on the stage, 
 however, without the use of words, without the aid of 
 the human voice, by the employment of gesture only, 
 by pure pantomime. No doubt, the drama makes a 
 great sacrifice when it decides to do without that potent 
 instrument of emotional appeal, the human voice; and 
 yet it can find its profit, now and then, in this self- 
 imposed deprivation. Certain stories there are, not 
 many, and all of them necessarily simplified and made 
 very clear, which gain by being bereft of the spoken 
 word and by being presented only in the pantomime. 
 And these stories, simple as they must be, if they are 
 to be apprehended by sight alone without the aid of 
 sound, are, nevertheless, capable of supporting an 
 actual play with all the absolutely necessary elements 
 of a drama. 
 
 In hia interesting and illuminating volume on the 
 
 188
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF PANTOMIME 
 
 'Theory of the Theater/ Mr. Clayton Hamilton has a 
 carefully considered definition of a play. He asserts 
 that " a play is a story devised to be presented by ac- 
 tors on a stage before an audience." Perhaps it might 
 be possible to amend this by saying "in a theater/' 
 instead of "on a stage/' since we are now pretty cer- 
 tain that there was no stage in the Greek theater when 
 Sophocles was writing for it. But this is but a trifling 
 correction, and the definition as a whole is excellent. 
 It includes every possible kind of dramatic entertain- 
 ment, Greek tragedy and Roman comedy, medieval 
 farce and modern melodrama, the music-drama of 
 Wagner and the problem-play of Ibsen, the summer 
 song-show and the college boy's burlesque. Obviously 
 it includes the wordless play, the story devised to be 
 presented on a stage and before an audience by ac- 
 tors who use gesture only and who do not speak. 
 
 In forgoing the aid of words the drama is only re- 
 ducing itself to its absolutely necessary elements a 
 story, and a story which can be shown in action. It 
 is not quite true that the skeleton of a good play is 
 always a pantomime, since there are plays the plot 
 of which cannot be conveyed to the audience except 
 by actual speech. Yet some of the greatest plays have 
 plots so transparent that the story is clear, even if we 
 fail to hear what the actors are saying. It has been 
 asserted that if 'Hamlet/ for example, were to be per- 
 formed in a deaf-and-dumb asylum, the inmates would 
 be able to understand it and to enjoy it. They would 
 be deprived of the wonderful beauty of Shakspere's 
 
 189
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 verse, no doubt, and they would scarcely be able even 
 to guess at the deeper significance of the philosophy 
 which enriches the tragedy; but the story would un- 
 roll itself clearly before their eyes so that they could 
 follow the succession of scenes with adequate under- 
 standing. 
 
 With his customary shrewdness and his usual gift 
 of piercing to the center of what he was engaged in 
 analyzing, Aristotle more than four thousand years 
 ago saw the necessity of a neatly articulated plot. " If 
 you string together a set of speeches," he said, "expres- 
 sive of character and well finished in point of diction 
 and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic 
 effect nearly so well as with a play, which, however 
 deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artis- 
 tically constructed incidents." No broader statement 
 than this could be made as to the all-importance of the 
 story itself and pantomime is a story and nothing 
 else, a story capable of being translated by the actions 
 of the performers, without the aid of speech. Nor 
 need we suppose that a play without words is neces- 
 sarily devoid of poetry. There may be poetry in the 
 "set of speeches expressive of character and well fin- 
 ished in point of thought and diction"; but there may 
 be poetry also hi the theme itself, hi the actual story. 
 'Romeo and Juliet,' for example, is fundamentally 
 poetic in its theme, and it retains its poetic quality 
 even when it is made to serve as the libretto of an op- 
 era, as it would also retain this if it should be stripped 
 bare to be presented in pantomime. 
 
 190
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF PANTOMIME 
 
 In a recent work on the 'Essentials of Poetry/ Pro- 
 fessor William A. Neilson has made this clear: "Many 
 a drama is a genuine poetic creation, altho it may be 
 simple to the point of baldness in diction and exhibit 
 the fundamental qualities of poetry only in the char- 
 acterization and in the significance, proportion, and 
 verisimilitude of the plot." That is to say, the drama 
 can use two kinds of poetry, that which is internal and 
 contained in the plot, and that which is external and 
 confined to the language. It can employ 
 
 jewels five-words long, 
 That on the stretched forefinger of all Time 
 Sparkle forever. 
 
 But it can also attain poetry without the use of 
 superb and sonorous phrases and solely by its choice 
 of theme. This is what the poets have often felt, and 
 as a result French lyrists, like The*ophile Gautier and 
 Frangois Coppe"e, have not disdained to compose li- 
 brettos for pantomimic ballets, 'Giselle' and the 'Kor- 
 rigane.' One of the most successful of the recent 
 Russian ballets was simply a representation of Gau- 
 tier's poetic fantasy, 'One of Cleopatra's Nights.' 
 
 II 
 
 Perhaps because the pantomime contains only the 
 essential element of the drama action it has always 
 been a popular form of play; and it appears very 
 early in the history of the theater. Indeed, it seems 
 
 191
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 to be the sole type of play achievable by primitive man 
 if we may judge from observations made among 
 savages who are still in the earlier periods of social de- 
 velopment. Gesture precedes speech, and a panto- 
 mime was possible even before a vocabulary was de- 
 veloped. In the Aleutian Islands, for example, the 
 pantomime is the only form of play known. One of 
 the little plays of the islanders has been described. 
 It was acted by two performers only, one representing 
 a hunter, and the other a bird. The hunter hesitates 
 but finally kills the bird with an arrow; then he is 
 seized with regret that he has slain so noble a bird; 
 whereupon the bird revives and turns into a beautiful 
 woman who falls into the hunter's arms. This is the 
 simplest of stories, but it lends itself to effective act- 
 ing; it is capable of being interpreted adequately by 
 means of gesture alone; and it is just the kind of play 
 which would appeal to an Aleutian audience, being 
 wholly within their experience and their apprehension. 
 Pantomime flourished in Rome and in Constanti- 
 nople in the sorry years of the decline and fall of the 
 empire; and it was then low and lascivious. A great 
 part of the fierce hostility to the theater displayed by 
 the Fathers of the Christian Church was due to the 
 fact that the only drama of which they had any knowl- 
 edge was pantomime of a most objectionable character, 
 offensive in theme and even more offensive in presen- 
 tation. With the conversion of the empire to Chris- 
 tianity, pantomimes of this type, appealing only to 
 lewd fellows of the baser sort, was very properly pro- 
 
 192
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF PANTOMIME 
 
 hibited. But pantomime of another type sprang up 
 in the Middle Ages in the Christian churches to exem- 
 plify and to make visible to the ignorant congregations, 
 certain episodes of sacred history. In the Renascence 
 dumb-shows were represented before monarchs, at their 
 weddings and at their stately entrances into loyal 
 cities. And dumb-shows were often employed in the 
 Elizabethan stage, sometimes as prologs to the several 
 acts, as in 'Gorboduc/ for example, and sometimes 
 within the play itself, as in 'Hamlet/ 
 
 In the eighteenth century pantomime had a double 
 revival, in France and in England. In France, Noverre 
 elevated the ballet faction, that is to say, the story 
 told in pantomime and adorned with dances. Some- 
 times these ballets faction were in several acts, relying 
 for interest on the simple yet ingenious plot, and only 
 decorated, so to speak, with occasional dances. From 
 Noverre and from France the tradition of the panto- 
 mime with interludes of dancing, spread at first to 
 Italy and Austria, and later to Russia. 
 
 In England the development of pantomime was 
 upon different lines, due to the influence of the Italian 
 comedy-of-masks, with its unchanging figures of Pan- 
 taleone, Columbina, and Arlecchino. These figures 
 were still further simplified; and to Pantaloon, Colum- 
 bine, and Harlequin there was added the characteris- 
 tically British figure of the Clown. The most famous 
 impersonator of the clown was Grimaldi, whose mem- 
 oirs were edited by Charles Dickens. The mantle 
 of Grimaldi fell upon an American, G. L. Fox, whose 
 
 193
 
 greatest triumph, in the late sixties, was in a panto- 
 mime called 'Humpty-Durnpty' the riming prolog 
 of which was written by A. Oakey Hall (then Tweed's 
 mayor of New York). G. L. Fox and his brother, C. 
 K. Fox (who was the inventor of the comic scenes), had 
 been preceded in America by a family of French pan- 
 tomimists known as the Ravels; and they were followed 
 by the family known as the Hanlon-Lees, who had 
 originally been acrobats, and who appeared in a French 
 play, in which the other characters spoke while the 
 Hanlon-Lees expressed themselves only in gesture. 
 Here again Scribe had been before them, with his li- 
 bretto for the opera of ' Masaniello,' in which there is a 
 principal part for a pantomimic actress, Fenella. And 
 when the great French actor, Fre*de*ric Lemaitre, had 
 lost his voice by overstrain, Dennery wrote a play for 
 him, the 'Old Corporal/ in which he appeared as a 
 soldier of Napoleon's Old Guard, who had been stricken 
 dumb during the retreat from Russia. 
 
 This exploit of Fre"de*ric Lemaitre's is not as ex- 
 traordinary as it seems. A truly accomplished actor 
 ought to be able to forgo the aid of speech. Even in 
 our modern plays gesture is more significant than 
 speech. To place the finger on the lips is more effec- 
 tive than to say "Hush !" The tendency of the mod- 
 ern drama on our amply lighted picture-frame stage is 
 to subordinate the mere words to the expressive action. 
 In Mr. Gillette's ' Secret Service,' for example, the im- 
 pression is sometimes made rather by gesture than by 
 speech; and a large portion of the most effective scene, 
 
 194
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF PANTOMIME 
 
 that where the hero is wounded while he is sending a 
 telegraph message, is presented in pantomime with 
 little assistance from actual dialog. Similar effects 
 are to be found in many of Mr. Belasco's plays, espe- 
 cially in the 'Darling of the Gods.' In all good acting 
 the gesture precedes the word; and often the gesture 
 makes the word itself unnecessary, because it has suc- 
 ceeded in conveying the impression and in making 
 the full effect by itself, so that the spoken phrase lags 
 superfluous. 
 
 Ill 
 
 In France in the final decades of the nineteenth 
 century there was a wide-spread revival of interest in 
 pantomime, where the art had been dormant since the 
 days of Deburau. A society was formed for its en- 
 couragement, and a host of little wordless plays was 
 the result. The most ambitious effort was the 'Enfant 
 Prodigue/ a genuine comedy in three acts, by M. Michel 
 Carre*, with music by M. Alfred Wormser. This word- 
 less play on the perennially attractive theme of the 
 Prodigal Son proved to be the modern masterpiece of 
 pantomime. It was limpidly clear in its story; it was 
 'ingeniously put together in its plot; it combined humor 
 and pathos; and it was devoid of the acrobatic features 
 and of the slap-stick fun which have generally been 
 considered the inevitable accessories of pantomime. 
 We had brought before us the dull and prim home life 
 of old Pierrot and of his wife, and we were made to 
 
 195
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 behold the impatience of young Pierrot with this prim 
 dullness. We saw the Prodigal rob his father and go 
 forth in search of pleasure. In the second act we were 
 witnesses of the sad results of the pleasure young 
 Pierrot had sought superabundantly, and we discov- 
 ered that he had spent his money and that he was 
 capable of descending to marked cards to win more 
 gold to satisfy the caprices of the woman who had 
 fascinated him. We saw his return with his ill-gotten 
 gains after his charmer had been tempted to go off with 
 a wealthier man. And in the third act we were taken 
 back to the home of his broken-hearted parents; and 
 we witnessed the Prodigal's return, poverty-stricken, 
 disenchanted, and reformed. His mother takes him 
 to her arms; but his father is obdurate. Then we 
 hear the fife and drum afar off, and young Pierrot, if 
 he has lived unworthily for himself, can at least die 
 worthily for his country. So the old father relents and 
 bestows his blessing on the erring son as the boy goes 
 forth to war. 
 
 The art of the 'Enfant Prodigue' was at once deli- 
 cate and firm; and its popularity was not confined to 
 France. Here was a true play, moving to tears as well 
 as to laughter, holding the interest by a human story 
 of universal appeal. It was taken across the Channel 
 from Paris to London, and from London it was taken 
 across the ocean to New York. Augustin Daly, always 
 on the alert for novelty, brought it out at his own 
 theater, first with his own company, and then a little 
 later with a French company. Excellent as was the 
 
 196
 
 performance of the French company, two characters 
 were as well sustained by the American company. 
 Charles Leclercq appeared as old Pierrot, and he had 
 had in his youth experience in pantomime in England. 
 Mrs. G. H. Gilbert appeared as Mrs. Pierrot, and in 
 her youth she had been a ballet dancer, and had taken 
 part in pantomimes. To these two performers the 
 principles of the art of gesture were perfectly familiar; 
 and it was a constant delight to follow the dexterity 
 and the adequacy of their gestures. But Miss Rehan, 
 who appeared as the Prodigal Son, had had no panto- 
 mimic experience, and she was not able to acquire the 
 art offhand. In dozens of dramas she had revealed 
 herself as an actress, not only of great personal charm, 
 but also of great histrionic skill. Merely as an actress 
 she was incomparably superior to the impersonator of 
 the Prodigal Son in the French company; but merely 
 as a pantomimist she was inferior. More than once 
 she appeared as if she wanted to speak, failing because 
 she was deprived of voice. Her gestures seemed like 
 afterthoughts; they lacked spontaneity and inevita- 
 bility. She suggested at moments that she was a poor 
 dumb boy gasping for words. 
 
 Now, the convention underlying pantomime is that 
 we are beholding a story carried on by a race of beings 
 whose natural method of communicating information 
 and ideas is gesture just as the convention of opera 
 is that we are beholding a story carried on by a race 
 of beings whose natural method of communicating in- 
 formation and ideas is song. No such races of beings 
 
 197
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 ever existed; but we must admit the existence of such 
 races as a condition precedent to our enjoyment of 
 pantomime and of opera. The spectators must accept 
 the art as it is, and the performers must refrain from 
 any suggestion that they would speak if they could. 
 This underlying convention was viciously violated in 
 "Professor" Reinhardt's overpraised 'Sumurun/ when 
 the Hunchback gives a shriek of horror as he sees the 
 woman he loves in the arms of another man. It is 
 viciously violated again in the same play when Sumurun 
 and two attendants are heard singing. If Sumurun 
 can sing, why can she not speak? If the Hunchback 
 can shriek and sob audibly, why is he ordinarily re- 
 duced to mere gesture ? 
 
 'Sumurun' was provided with a plot devised by 
 Herr Freksa, and with music composed by Herr Hol- 
 laender; and it was produced by "Professor" Max 
 Reinhardt. The story was a little complicated, and 
 it lacked the transparent simplicity of the 'Enfant 
 Prodigue,' as it lacked also the broad humanity of the 
 French piece. Its chief claim to attention was that 
 it is an amusing spectacle, sensual as well as sensuous. 
 Its humor had a Teutonic heaviness in marked contrast 
 with the Gallic lightness of the 'Enfant Prodigue.' 
 "Professor" Reinhardt sought eccentricity rather than 
 originality, queerness rather than beauty. His effort 
 was directed to the achieving of something unexpected 
 and something different rather than to the attaining 
 of something good in itself, or of something poetic. 
 Esthetically, musically, dramatically the German pan- 
 
 198
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF PANTOMIME 
 
 tomime was pitiably inferior to the French; and yet so 
 potent and so permanent is the appeal of the wordless 
 play that 'Sumurun' pleased a host of younger play- 
 goers, not old enough to be able to recall the ' Enfant 
 Prodigue' or 'Humpty-Dumpty,' the Hanlon-Lees, or 
 the Ravels. 
 
 IV 
 
 'Sumurun/ like the 'Enfant Prodigue/ was sup- 
 ported by its music, which sustained the gestures and 
 which sometimes suggested more than gesture alone 
 can do. In the 'Enfant Prodigue/ for example, one 
 of the most amusing scenes is that in which the elderly 
 rich man tenders his affections to the charmer who has 
 fascinated the Prodigal Son. She insists upon marriage. 
 It would be difficult to convey this idea in pure panto- 
 mime. So she points to the fourth finger of the left 
 hand, and the orchestra plays the familiar Wedding 
 March, thus instantly conveying the idea. When she 
 goes off to get her bonnet, the elderly suitor repeats her 
 gesture, and the orchestra repeats the Wedding March, 
 whereupon he winks and shakes his head, giving us 
 clearly to understand that his intentions are strictly 
 dishonorable. 
 
 'Sumurun' is rather a spectacle than a play; and 
 therefore it makes comparatively little use of the con- 
 ventionalized gestures which may be described as the 
 accepted vocabulary of pantomime, and which have 
 been developed by the followers of Noverre in France 
 
 199
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 and in Italy. This vocabulary of gesture is only a 
 codification of the signs which we naturally make 
 shaking the head for "no," nodding for "yes," and 
 laying a finger on the lips for "hush !" The basis of 
 any such vocabulary must be the series of gestures by 
 the aid of which man has always expressed his emotions. 
 This is why the traditional gestures of theatrical pan- 
 tomime do not, and indeed cannot, differ greatly from 
 any natural sign language. The universality of this 
 pantomimic vocabulary was curiously evidenced forty 
 years ago when Morlacchi, the Italian dancer, married 
 Texas Jack, the American scout. She had been trained 
 in pantomime at La Scala, in Milan, and he had ac- 
 quired the sign language of the Plains Indians. And 
 they found that they could hold converse with each 
 other in pantomime, she using the Italian-French ges- 
 tures and he employing the gestures of the redskins. 
 (1912.) 
 
 200
 
 xn 
 
 THE IDEAL OF THE ACROBAT
 
 THE IDEAL OF THE ACROBAT 
 
 WHEN Huckleberry Finn went to the circus he sneaked 
 in under the tent when the watchman was absent. 
 He had money in his pocket, but he feared that he 
 might need this. "I ain't opposed to spending money 
 on circuses," he confessed, "when there ain't no other 
 way, but there ain't no use in wasting it on them." 
 In spite of the fact that he had not paid for his seat, 
 and that he was thereby released from the necessity 
 of getting his money's worth, he declared cheerfully 
 that " it was a real bully circus. It was the splendidest 
 sight that ever was, when they all come riding in, two 
 and two, a gentleman and a lady, side by side, the men 
 just in their drawers and undershirts, and no shoes 
 nor stirrups, and resting their hands on their thighs, 
 easy and comfortable . . . and every lady with a 
 lovely complexion, and perfectly beautiful, and look- 
 ing like a gang of real sure-enough queens. . . . And 
 then, one by one, they got up and stood, and went 
 a-weaving around the ring so gentle and wavy and 
 graceful, the men looking ever so tall and airy and 
 straight, with their heads bobbing and skimming along, 
 away up there under the tent roof, and every lady's 
 
 203
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 rose-leaf dress flapping soft and silky around her hips, 
 and she looking like the most loveliest parasol." 
 
 However much Huck was impressed by the Grand 
 Entry, he seems to have been more pleased by the sur- 
 prising act, traditionally known as 'Pete Jenkins/ and 
 never better described than by Mark Twain's youth- 
 ful hero. "And by and by a drunk man tried to get 
 into the ring said he wanted to ride; said he could 
 ride as well as anybody that ever was. They argued 
 and tried to keep him out, but he wouldn't listen, and 
 the whole show came to a standstill. Then the people 
 began to holler at him and make fun of him. ... So 
 then the ring-master he made a little speech, and said 
 he hoped there wouldn't be no disturbance, and if the 
 man would promise he wouldn't make no more trouble, 
 he would let him ride, if he thought he could stay on 
 the horse. . . . The minute he was on the horse he 
 began to rip and tear and jump and cavort around . . . 
 the drunk man hanging onto his neck, and his heels 
 flying in the air every jump. . . . But pretty soon he 
 struggled up astraddle and grabbed the bridle, a-reeling 
 this way and that; and the next minute he sprung up 
 and stood ! and the horse a-going like a house afire, too. 
 He just stood there, a-sailing around as easy and as 
 comfortable as if he warn't ever drunk in his life and 
 then he begun to pull off his clothes and sling them. 
 He shed them so thick they kind of clogged up the air, 
 and altogether he shed seventeen suits. And then, here 
 he was, slim and handsome, and dressed the grandiest 
 and prettiest you ever saw, and he lit into that horse and 
 
 204
 
 THE IDEAL OF THE ACROBAT 
 
 made him hum and finally skipped off and made his 
 bow and danced off to the dressing-room, and every- 
 body just a-howling with pleasure and astonishment. 
 Then the ring-master, he see how he had been fooled, 
 and he was the sickest ring-master you ever see, I 
 reckon. Why, it was one of his own men! He had 
 got up that joke all out of his own head, and never let 
 on to nobody!" 
 
 Yet in this enjoyment of a practical joke, dear to 
 every boy's heart, Huck did not fail to note that the 
 skilful rider who had pretended to be intoxicated, 
 stood up at last, "slim and handsome." Even Huck 
 Finn, neglected son of the town-drunkard, was quick 
 to respond to the appeal of the supple and well-pro- 
 portioned figure of the rider after the superimposed 
 clothing had been discarded, just as he had felt the 
 attraction of the varied colors and the graceful evolu- 
 tions of the Grand Entry. At bottom, it was the beauty 
 of the display that he appreciated most keenly. By the 
 side of this passage from Mark Twain's masterpiece 
 may be set a passage from Mr. Hamlin Garland's best 
 story, 'Rose of Butcher's Coolly,' in which we find re- 
 corded the impressions of a girl of about the same age, 
 the daughter of a hard-working Wisconsin farmer. 
 Rose had never seen a circus before, and even the 
 morning street parade fired her imagination. 
 
 "On they came, a band leading the way. Just be- 
 hind, with glitter of lance and shine of helmet, came a 
 dozen knights and fair ladies riding spirited chargers. 
 They all looked strange and haughty, and sneeringly 
 
 205
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 indifferent to the cheers of the people. The women 
 seemed small and firm and scornful, and the men rode 
 with lances uplifted, looking down at the crowd with 
 a haughty droop in their eyelids." Rose "did not 
 laugh at the clown jigging by in a pony-cart, for there 
 was a face between her and all that followed the face 
 of a bare-armed knight, with brown hair and a curling 
 mustache, whose proud neck had a curve in it as he 
 bent his head to speak to his rearing horse. . . . His 
 face was fine, like pictures she had seen." 
 
 In the afternoon Rose attended the performance in 
 the tent and "sat in a dream of delight as the band 
 began to play. . . . Then the music struck into a 
 splendid gallop and out from the curtained mysteries 
 beyond, the knights and ladies darted, two by two, 
 in glory of crimson and gold, and green and silver. At 
 their head rode the man with the brown mustache." 
 A little later "six men dressed in tights of blue and 
 white and orange ran into the ring, and her hero led 
 them. He wore blue and silver, and on his breast was 
 a rosette. He looked a god to her. His naked limbs, 
 his proud neck, the lofty carriage of his head, made 
 her shiver with emotion. They all came to her, lit 
 by the white radiance; they were not naked, they were 
 beautiful. . . . They invested their nakedness with 
 something which exalted them. They became objects 
 of luminous beauty to her, tho she knew nothing of art. 
 To see him bow and kiss his fingers to the audience was 
 a revelation of manly grace and courtesy." When at 
 last the show was over and Rose went out into the 
 
 206
 
 THE IDEAL OF THE ACROBAT 
 
 open air, "it seemed strange to see the same blue sky 
 arching the earth; things seemed exactly the same, 
 and yet Rose had grown older. She had developed 
 immeasurably in those few hours." As they looked 
 back at the tents, Rose knew that "something sweet 
 and splendid and mystical was passing out of her life 
 after a few hours' stay there. Her feeling of loss was 
 none the less real because it was indefinable to her." 
 
 She never saw this acrobat again, and after a little 
 while she knew that she did not want to see him. He 
 lingered in her memory, a vision from another world 
 than any she had ever dreamed a world of heroic 
 romance and of lofty idealism. "She began to live 
 for him, her ideal. She set him on high as a being to 
 be worshiped, as a man fit to be her judge. In the 
 days and weeks which followed she asked herself: 
 'Would he like me to do this?' When the sunset was 
 very beautiful, she thought of him. . . . Vast ambi- 
 tions began in her. . . . She would do something great 
 for his sake. ... In short, she consecrated herself to 
 him as to a king, and seized upon every chance to edu- 
 cate herself to be worthy of him." And while her soul 
 was thus expanding under the influence of this poetic 
 idealization of a manly figure revealed to her only for 
 two or three hours, all unconsciously she patterned her 
 movements upon his. She walked with a free stride, 
 and her body came to have the easy carriage of the 
 athlete. Later, when Rose had matured into a beauty 
 of her own, she confessed to an elder woman this senti- 
 mental awakening in her early girlhood ; and it became 
 
 207
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 evident to her friend that "the beautiful poise of the 
 head, and supple swing of the girl's body was in part 
 due to the suggestion of the man's perfect grace." 
 
 II 
 
 To the realistic imagination of the boy, Huck, the 
 circus was a fleeting spectacle of beauty; and to the 
 romantic imagination of the girl, Rose, it lingered long 
 as a dream of poetry. Young Americans, both of them, 
 living in these modern days when the human form, 
 male and female, is decorously dissembled and disguised 
 by ugly and complicated garments, they had been al- 
 lowed by the exceptional freedom of the circus to re- 
 capture something of the frank and innocent delight 
 of the Greeks in the beauty of the body, in its beauty 
 merely as a body, and not as the habitation of the mind 
 and the soul. Alert as the Greeks were to admire the 
 deeds of the mind no race ever more so they were 
 no less keen in their appreciation of the things of the 
 body. They were glad to crown the poet for his lyric 
 conquest, but they bestowed the laurel wreath also 
 on the athlete who had won to the front in the race. 
 The lofty nobility of their tragedy testifies to the 
 clarity of their intelligence; and the supreme power of 
 their sculpture is evidence of their loving study of the 
 human body, bearing itself in beauty, clad in few and 
 flowing garments which allowed the eye to follow the 
 free play of the muscles. 
 
 It is only in the circus or the gymnasium or the 
 
 208
 
 THE IDEAL OF THE ACROBAT 
 
 swimming-pool that we moderns are permitted to be- 
 hold what was a daily spectacle to the Greeks; and it 
 is because the circus preserves for us this occasional 
 privilege that it deserves to survive. The jocularities 
 of the clowns, the intricate evolutions of the trained 
 animals, the golden glitter of the gorgeous cavalcades 
 all these are but the casual accompaniments of the 
 essential privilege of the circus to present to us a suc- 
 cession of men and women, with their bodies in per- 
 fect condition, to exhibit to us that purely physical 
 beauty which we are ever in danger of overlooking 
 or even forgetting. These acrobats, slim and hand- 
 some, as Huck Finn found them, in their "shirts and 
 drawers," may display their daring and their grace, 
 standing on a circling steed or swinging from a flying 
 trapeze, revolving on a horizontal bar or building 
 themselves up into human pyramids on the bark of the 
 arena; but, except for the sake of variety, the way in 
 which they may choose to exhibit their skill and to show 
 themselves is unimportant. What is important is that 
 we may have the shifting spectacle of the human body 
 in the highest condition of physical efficiency, delight- 
 ing our eyes by obedience to the everlasting laws of 
 beauty. 
 
 While the Greeks had far more opportunities than 
 are vouchsafed to us moderns to behold the human body 
 exhibiting its strength and its skill in graceful play, 
 we have the advantage that many of the most effective 
 exercises are latter-day inventions. It seems unlikely 
 that the Athenians and the Spartans, even tho they 
 
 209
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 were horsemen, had attained to the art of bareback 
 riding; they may have bestraddled a saddleless steed, 
 but they had not learned how to stand on his back, 
 and to turn somersets in time with the stride of the 
 horse. It is, of course, possible that they were familiar 
 with this, but no sculpture and no vase-painting, no 
 anecdote hi the works of the prose-writers, and no line 
 of the lyrists survives to authorize us to believe it. 
 And it is fairly certain, also, that they lacked the hori- 
 zontal bar, which affords limitless possibilities to the 
 adventurous acrobat of our own times, both when it 
 is erected singly and when it is combined in sets of 
 three, either fixed in the arena or raised aloft in the au- 
 to produce the appearance of a remoter ethereality. 
 
 The trapeze has a name of Greek origin, and it was 
 possibly known to the Greeks. But the Greeks did 
 not foresee the full possibilities of the trapeze, since its 
 most startling utilization, the feat known as the Flying 
 Trapeze, was invented by the French acrobat, Leotard, 
 only a little later than the middle of the nineteenth 
 century. The Flying Trapeze is the ultimate achieve- 
 ment of acrobatic art, and it demands the utmost com- 
 bination of skilf ul strength and of easy grace. It was 
 a feat that the Greeks would have appreciated and en- 
 joyed, since it demanded and disclosed the perfection 
 of physical courage and of physical skill. Of late, the 
 Flying Trapeze has been complicated and doubled in 
 difficulty by the introduction of a second performer, 
 who at first makes the leap simultaneously with his 
 partner, and afterward separates from him and springs 
 
 210
 
 THE IDEAL OF THE ACROBAT 
 
 thru the air to the trapeze which his associate has just 
 abandoned, the pair thus floating past each other in 
 mid-air. In this more elaborated form the task is more 
 perilous, no doubt, and far less easy of accomplishment; 
 but it cannot be achieved with quite the same grace- 
 ful mastery as when a single performer seems to glide 
 ethereally from bar to bar, as tho it was impossible for 
 him to fall or to fail to catch his almost invisible sup- 
 port. This graceful mastery was the most marked 
 characteristic of Leotard, the original inventor of the 
 Flying Trapeze; and it may be doubted whether any 
 of those who have followed the path he traced thru 
 the air, and who have vanquished difficulties beyond 
 those which he conquered, have been able to outdo 
 him in the abiding essential of grace. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The overcoming of difficulty is one of the elements 
 of the pleasure which we take in any art, and part of 
 our enjoyment of a sonnet, for example, must be 
 ascribed to the apparent ease with which the poet is 
 able to express his thought, amply and completely, 
 within the rigid limitations of his fourteen lines, with 
 their prescribed arrangement of five or six rimes. 
 But our delight is diminished if we are made conscious 
 of the effort it has cost the artist to attain his aim. 
 Many a later performer on the Flying Trapeze let us 
 see that the feats he is attempting are so difficult that 
 they cannot be accomplished without obvious effort. 
 
 211
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 That is to say, we are made aware that the acrobat is 
 exhibiting a "stunt," and this is bad art. Difficulty 
 overcome is worth while only when it is overcome seem- 
 ingly without any strain, and when art is sufficient to 
 conceal itself. However difficult the artist's achieve- 
 ment may be, its charm is doubled if he can make it 
 appear to be easy. 
 
 It happens that I am able to bring his personal testi- 
 mony to the fact that this was the principle which 
 always governed Leotard himself. When -the French 
 gymnast paid his only visit to the United States, more 
 than forty years ago, he used to practise in a gymnasium 
 which I also frequented. He spoke no English, and I 
 had a little school-boy French, so that a certain in- 
 timacy sprang up. One day Le*otard asked me to 
 swing a trapeze for him, and he sprang off and caught 
 it with a single hand, and then as the second trapeze 
 returned he twisted and grasped the first trapeze again 
 with one hand. This evoked from me an immediate 
 exclamation of astonishment and admiration at the 
 startling conquest of difficulty, and it was followed by 
 the natural question why so extraordinary a feat had 
 never been exhibited in public. Leotard explained that 
 the leaps from trapeze to trapeze with the aid of one 
 hand only must be lopsided, since the body is inevitably 
 more or less twisted, and he added that as there was 
 an unavoidable and ungraceful wrenching of the per- 
 son, he had determined never to exhibit this feat in 
 public, difficult as it might be. 
 
 But altho Leotard was not willing to perform in 
 
 212
 
 THE IDEAL OF THE ACROBAT 
 
 public with only one hand, it was a most invaluable ex- 
 ercise in private. His ability to accomplish his leaps 
 thus handicapped gave him a redoubled confidence 
 when he was using both of his hands. That he was 
 right in resisting the temptation to startle the spec- 
 tators by a "stunt" of surprising difficulty is beyond 
 question. It could not be made to seem easy, and it 
 could not be accomplished with grace. Therefore it 
 was not fit for exhibition, even tho Le*otard might feel 
 sure that he could do it without risk of failure. Here 
 the French acrobat revealed himself as bound by the 
 eternal principles which underlie all the arts, that of 
 the acrobat no less than those of the painter and the 
 poet. There is lack of art in the performances of many 
 acrobats of remarkable skill, who attempt feats which 
 they are not always certain of achieving. Indeed, 
 they are sometimes willing to profit by this very un- 
 certainty. They fail the first time of trying, and even 
 the second, and these failures serve the purpose of ad- 
 vertising to the spectators the difficulty of the task 
 they have undertaken. Then the third time, or the 
 fourth, they succeed, whereupon they reap the unworthy 
 reward of applause from the unthinking. 
 
 The artist should never let us see his failures. If he 
 is not certain that he can perform what he promises, 
 then he had better refrain from the attempt. It was 
 in the same winter that Le*otard was in New York, in 
 the late sixties of the nineteenth century, that the 
 Hanlon Brothers paid one of their welcome visits to 
 America. The Hanlons they were then, and they 
 
 213
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 were acrobats pure and simple, altho later, when they 
 called themselves the Hanlon-Lees, they had become 
 pantomimists. As acrobats they held fast to the same 
 principles which governed Leotard in his performances. 
 They insisted upon certainty of execution; they never 
 failed to perform the feat they set out to accomplish, 
 and to perform it successfully the first time they at- 
 tempted it. And no matter how difficult the feat 
 might be, or how novel or how effective, if they could 
 not attain absolute certainty of execution, they re- 
 frained from setting it before the public. I was told 
 at the time that there were two or three surprising and 
 alluring exercises which the Hanlons had invented 
 themselves, which they practised laboriously and faith- 
 fully all that winter, and which they wisely refrained 
 from ever putting on their program because they were 
 never able to assure themselves of a uniformly successful 
 result. They could do any one of these feats four 
 times out of five, but the fifth time there would be a 
 miscalculation of energy, and the attempt would have 
 to be repeated. And they were unwilling to let the 
 public witness any performance of theirs which was 
 not perfect in its execution. 
 
 IV 
 
 Here again the modern acrobat, who is guided by a 
 real feeling for his art, is in accord with the principles 
 which the Greeks obeyed. In Attic tragedy, for ex- 
 ample, there are no exhibitions of violence, no scuffles, 
 
 214
 
 THE IDEAL OF THE ACROBAT 
 
 and no assassinations, and this is not so much because 
 the Greeks shrank from scenes of blood, as some critics 
 have vainly contended, but rather because the actors 
 in the Attic drama were raised on thick boots and were 
 topped by towering masks, which made it almost im- 
 possible for them to take part in episodes of vigorous 
 action, in hand-to-hand struggles, in murders before 
 the eyes of the spectators, without danger of displacing 
 the mask, and thereby distracting the attention of the 
 audience from the immediate purpose of the dramatic 
 poet. What could not be done gracefully the Greeks 
 refrained from attempting. The exhibition of diffi- 
 culty for the sake of difficulty, still more the failure to 
 accomplish a "stunt" for the sake of calling attention 
 to its difficulty these things the Greeks abhorred. 
 They would as surely have disapproved of the mis- 
 guided artifices of the acrobats who make a practise 
 of failing once or twice in order to multiply the immedi- 
 ate effect of their ultimate success as they would re- 
 prove the exhibition of a difficulty conquered for its 
 own sake. It is only in the best acrobatic perform- 
 ances that we moderns are privileged to perceive what 
 was a constant delight to the Greeks the beauty of the 
 human form, in its finest physical perfection, certain 
 of its strength and easy in its grace. 
 (1912.) 
 
 215
 
 XIII 
 
 THE DECLINE AND FALL OF 
 NEGRO-MINSTRELSY
 
 THE DECLINE AND FALL OF NEGRO-MINSTRELSY 
 
 OF all the varied and manifold kinds of theatrical en- 
 tertainment negro-minstrelsy is the only one which 
 is absolutely native to these States, and the only one 
 which could not have come into existence anywhere 
 else in the civilized world. Here in America alone has 
 the transplanted African been brought into intimate 
 contact with the transplanted European. Other na- 
 tions may have disputed our claim to the invention of 
 the steamboat and the telegraph, but negro-minstrelsy 
 is as indisputably due to American inventiveness as the 
 telephone itself. Here in the United States it had its 
 humble beginnings; here it expanded and flourished 
 for many years; from here it was exported to Great 
 Britain, where it established itself for many seasons; 
 from here it has made sporadic excursions into France 
 and into Germany; and here at last it has fallen into 
 a decline and a degeneracy and a decay which seem 
 to doom it to a speedy extinction. Its life was little 
 longer than that vouchsafed to man, threescore years 
 and ten, for it was born in the fifth decade of the nine- 
 teenth century, and in the second decade of the twen- 
 tieth it lingers superfluous on the stage, with none to 
 do it reverence. 
 
 219
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 Time was when the negro minstrels held possession 
 of three or four theaters in the single city of New York, 
 and when a dozen or more troops were traveling from 
 town to town; and now they have long ago surrendered 
 their last hall in the metropolis, and only a solitary 
 company winds its lonely way from theater to theater 
 thruout the United States. The few surviving prac- 
 titioners of the art are reduced to the presentation of 
 brief interludes in the all-devouring variety-shows, or 
 to the impersonation of sparse negro characters in 
 occasional comedies. The Skidmore Guards, who pa- 
 raded so gaily at Harrigan and Hart's, are disbanded 
 now these many years; Johnny Wild of joyous memory 
 is no more, and Sweatnam, bereft of his fellows in sable 
 drollery, is seen only in a chance comedy like 'Excuse 
 Me/ or the ' County Chairman.' George Christy and 
 Dan Emmett and Dan Bryant have gone and left only 
 fading memories of their breezy songs, their nimble 
 dances, and their flippant quips. Edwin Forrest and 
 Edwin Booth blacked up more than once, Joseph 
 Jefferson and Barney Williams besmeared themselves 
 with burnt cork on occasion; but it is not by these 
 darker episodes in their artistic careers that they are 
 now recalled, and the leading actors of to-day think 
 scorn of negro-minstrelsy whenever they deign to 
 give it a thought. And yet it must be noted frankly 
 that when The Lambs wanted to raise money for their 
 new club-house, they did not disdain the art of the 
 negro minstrel, and more than twoscore of them went 
 forth to conquer, willingly disguised in the uniform 
 
 220
 
 NEGRO-MINSTRELSY 
 
 blackness assumed long ago by George Christy and 
 Dan Bryant. 
 
 It is to be hoped that some devoted historian will 
 come forward before it is too late and tell us the his- 
 tory of this very special form of theatrical art, the only 
 one indigenous to our soil. Indeed, now that our 
 American universities are paying attention to the 
 drama, what more alluring theme for the dissertation 
 demanded of all candidates for the doctorate of philoso- 
 phy than an inquiry into the rise and fall of negro- 
 minstrelsy? In the late Laurence Hutton's conscien- 
 tious and entertaining volume on the ' Curiosities of the 
 American Stage,' there is a chapter in which the sub- 
 ject is treated historically, altho the chronicler wasted 
 much of his precious space in considering the succession 
 of sable characters in the regular drama Shakspere's 
 Othello, Southerne's Oroonoko, Bickerstaff's Mungo, 
 Boucicault's Pete (in the 'Octoroon'), Uncle Tom, 
 Topsy, Eliza, and their companions (in the undying 
 dramatization of Mrs. Stowe's story). These were all 
 parts in plays wherein white characters were prominent. 
 The first performer of a song-and-dance, that is of a 
 sketch in which the darky performer was sufficient 
 unto himself, and was deprived of any support from 
 persons of another complexion, seems to have been 
 "Jim Crow" Rice the title of whose lively lyric sur- 
 vives in the name bestowed upon the cars reserved for 
 colored folk on certain Southern railroads. Rice found 
 his pattern in an old negro who did a peculiar step after 
 he had sung to a tune of his own contriving: 
 
 221
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 Wheel about, turn about; 
 
 Do jus' so: 
 An* ebery time I turn about, 
 
 I jump Jim Crow. 
 
 Rice carried Jim Crow to England, and he made a 
 specialty of dandy darkies. But he was not the dis- 
 coverer of negro-minstrelsy, as we know it, altho he 
 blazed the trail for it. Indeed, it was quite probably 
 due to the influence of Rice and his darky dandies 
 that the negro minstrels confined their efforts to the 
 imitation of the town negro rather than of the plan- 
 tation negro, the field-hand of the Uncle Remus type. 
 Rice first impersonated Jim Crow in the late twenties, 
 and it was in the middle of the thirties that he went 
 to England. And it was in the early forties that Dan 
 Emmett, Frank Brower, Billy Whitlock, and Dick 
 Pelham happened to meet by accident in a New York 
 boarding-house, and amused themselves with songs 
 accompanied by the banjo, the tambourine, and the 
 bones. Pleased by the result of their exercises, they 
 appeared together at a benefit, and negro-minstrelsy 
 was born. At first there was no differentiation into 
 Interlocutors and End-men; they all took an equal 
 share in the more or less improvised dialog; they sang, 
 and they played, and they danced the 'Essence of 
 Old Virginny.' 
 
 Probably Emmett began early to provide new tunes 
 for them. He was the composer of 'Old Dan Tucker' 
 and the 'Boatman's Dance/ of 'Walk Along, John,' 
 and 'Early in the Morning/ and one walk-around 
 
 222
 
 NEGRO-MINSTRELSY 
 
 which he devised in the late fifties for Bryant's Min- 
 strels, 'Dixie/ was introduced by Mrs. John Wood 
 into a burlesque, which she was playing in New Or- 
 leans, just before the outbreak of the Civil War. The 
 sentiment and the tune took the fancy of the ardent 
 Louisianans, and they carried it with them into the 
 Confederate army, where it soon established itself as 
 the war-song of the South. And then when Richmond 
 had fallen at last, Lincoln ordered the bands of the 
 victorious army to play ' Dixie,' with the wise explana- 
 tion that as we had captured the Southern capital, 
 we had also captured the Southern song. And 'Dixie,' 
 which had begun life so humbly as a walk-around in 
 a minstrel-show in New York, bids fair to survive in- 
 definitely as the musical testimony to the fact that the 
 cruel war is over, and that these States are now one 
 nation. 
 
 II 
 
 It was only a year or two after the quartet of Em- 
 mett, Brower. Whitlock, and Pelham had shown the 
 possibilities of the new form of amusement that troops 
 of negro minstrels began to supply an entire evening's 
 amusement. The regulation First Part was devised 
 with its curving row of vocalists, instrumentalists, and 
 comedians. The dignified Interlocutor took his place 
 in the middle of the semicircle, and uttered the time- 
 honored phrase: "Gentlemen, be seated. We will 
 commence with the overture." Bones captured the 
 
 223
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 chair at one end, and Tambo pre-empted that on the 
 other; and they began their wordy skirmish with the 
 Middleman, in which that pompous presiding officer 
 always got the worst of it. This device for immediate 
 and boisterous laughter, this putting down of the 
 Middleman by the End-man, the negro minstrels ap- 
 pear to have borrowed from the circus, where the 
 clown is also permitted always to discomfit the stiff and 
 stately ring-master. 
 
 But altho the minstrels may have taken over this 
 effective trick from the circus, with which some of the 
 earlier performers had had intimate relations, the trick 
 itself is of remote antiquity. The side-splitting col- 
 loquy of the End-man with the Middleman may be 
 exactly like the interchange of merry jests between the 
 clown and the ring-master, yet it is far older than the 
 modern circus. It existed in Paris, for example, in 
 the sixteenth century, when the quack doctor was ac- 
 companied by his jack-pudding. Many of the dialogs 
 heard on the Pont-Neuf between Mondor and Tabarin 
 have been preserved, and the method is precisely that 
 of the dialogs between ring-master and clown, Inter- 
 locutor and End-man, even to the persistent repetition 
 of the question which contains the catch. "Master," 
 Tabarin would begin, "can you tell me which is the 
 more generous, a man or a woman?" And the quack 
 doctor would solemnly reply: "Ah, Tabarin, that is a 
 question which has been greatly debated by the phi- 
 losophers of antiquity, and they have been unable to 
 decide which is truly the more generous, a man or a 
 
 224
 
 NEGRO-MINSTRELSY 
 
 woman." Then Tabarin would briskly retort: "Never 
 mind the old philosophers. I can tell you." And with 
 great contempt the ponderous quack doctor would 
 return: "What, Tabarin, do you mean to say that you 
 can tell us which is the more generous, a man or a 
 woman." Tabarin promptly responded that he could. 
 "Then," asked Mondor, "pray do so. Which is the 
 more generous, a man or a woman?" And thereupon, 
 to the great disgust of Mondor, Tabarin would proffer 
 his ribald explanation. Unfortunately the explanation 
 he gave is frankly too ribald to be given here, for now- 
 adays we are more squeamish than the idlers who gath- 
 ered around the quack doctor's platform in Paris three 
 or four centuries ago. The dialogs of Mondor and 
 Tabarin were brief enough, but they often made up for 
 their brevity in their breadth. 
 
 This kind of catch-question was known in England, 
 under Elizabeth, as "selling a bargain," and it is not 
 infrequent in the plays of the time. It will be found 
 more than once in earlier plays of Shakspere; for ex- 
 ample, when his "clowns" (as the low-comedy char- 
 acters were then called) were allowed to run on at their 
 own sweet will. Not a little of the dialog of the two 
 Dromios is closely akin in its method to the interchange 
 of question and answer between the Interlocutor and 
 the End-man. We may be sure this method of evok- 
 ing laughter was employed also by the improvising 
 comedians of the Italian comedy-of-masks, with which 
 negro-minstrelsy has other points of resemblance. It 
 must have been popular with the wandering glee-men 
 
 225
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 of the rude Middle Ages; and now that negro-min- 
 strelsy is disappearing and now that our circuses have 
 burgeoned into three rings under a tent too vast for 
 any merely verbal repartees, it has not departed from 
 among us, since it still survives as the staple of the so- 
 called "sidewalk conversationalists" who swap per- 
 sonalities in our superabundant variety-shows. 
 
 We do not know with historic certainty how soon 
 the First Part crystallized into the form which has long 
 been traditional the opening overture, the catch- 
 questioning of End-man and Middleman, the comic 
 songs of Bones and Tambo in turn, the sentimental 
 ballads by the silver-throated vocalists, and the con- 
 cluding walk-around. The rest of the evening's enter- 
 tainment never took on any definite framework, altho 
 the final item on the program was likely to be a piece 
 of some length, often a burlesque of a serious drama 
 then popular, and this little play "enlisted the whole 
 strength of the company." Between the stately First 
 Part and the more pretentious terminating sketch, the 
 minstrels presented a variety of acts in which the sev- 
 eral members exhibited their specialities. A clog-dance 
 was always in order altho the mechanical precision 
 of this form of saltatorial exercise was wholly foreign 
 to the characteristics of the actual negroes whom the 
 minstrels were supposed to be representing. A stump- 
 speech was certain of a warm reception altho this 
 again departed from the true negro tradition, and, in 
 fact, often degenerated into frank burlesque, wholly 
 unrelated to the realities of life. Sketches, like those 
 
 226
 
 NEGRO-MINSTRELSY 
 
 which Rice had earlier composed for his own acting, 
 were likely to have a little closer relation to the genuine 
 darky. 
 
 Yet here again the negro minstrel was not avid of 
 overt originality. He was willing to find his profit in 
 the past and to translate into negro dialect any farce, 
 however ancient, which might contain comic situations 
 or humorous characters that could be twisted to suit 
 his immediate purpose. He seized upon the ingenious 
 plots of certain of the pantomimes brought to America 
 from France half a century ago by the Ravels. And 
 on occasion he went, unwittingly, still further afield 
 for his prey. There is in print, in a collection of so- 
 called Ethiopian drama, an amusing sketch, entitled 
 the 'Great Mutton Trial '; and the remote source of 
 this is to be sought in the oldest and best farce which 
 has survived in French literature. 'Maitre Pierre 
 Pathelin' is now acted occasionally by the Come'die- 
 Frangaise in Paris, in a version which preserves its 
 original flavor; but in the eighteenth century an adap- 
 tation, made by Brueys and Palaprat, and called the 
 ' Avocat Pathelin,' was popular. It was this later per- 
 version which served as the basis of an English farce, 
 entitled the 'Village Lawyer,' and the 'Great Mutton 
 Trial' is simply the 'Village Lawyer' transmogrified to 
 suit the bolder and more robust methods of the negro 
 minstrels. 
 
 227
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 III 
 
 And here we may discover the real reason why negro- 
 minstrelsy failed to establish itself. It neglected its 
 opportunity to devote itself primarily to its own pecu- 
 liar field the humorous reproduction of the sayings 
 and doings of the colored man in the United States. 
 To represent the negro in his comic aspects and in his 
 sentimental moods was what the minstrels pretended 
 to do; but the pretense was often only a hollow mock- 
 ery. Even the musical instruments they affected, the 
 banjo and the bones, were not as characteristic of the 
 field-hand, or even of the town darky, as the violin. 
 Indeed, the bones cannot be considered as in any way 
 special to the negro; they were familiar to Shakspere's 
 Bottom, who declared: "I have a reasonable good ear 
 in music; let us have the tongs and the bones." And 
 the wise recorder of the words and deeds of Uncle 
 Remus asserted that he had never listened to the 
 staccato picking of a banjo in the negro-quarters of 
 any plantation. 
 
 "I have seen the negro at work," so Harris once 
 stated, "and I have seen him at play; I have attended 
 his corn-shuckings, his dances, and his frolics; I have 
 heard him give the wonderful melody of his songs to 
 the winds; I have heard him give barbaric airs to the 
 quills" (that is to say, to the Pan-pipes) ; " I have heard 
 him scrape jubilantly on the fiddle; I have seen him 
 blow wildly on the bugle, and beat enthusiastically on 
 
 228
 
 NEGRO-MINSTRELSY 
 
 the triangle; but I have never heard him play on the 
 banjo." Mr. George W. Cable thereupon came for- 
 ward with his evidence to the effect that, altho the 
 banjo was to be found occasionally on a plantation, 
 it was far less frequently seen than the violin. It will 
 be noted that Harris was speaking of the Georgian 
 negro, and that Mr. Cable was talking about the negro 
 in Louisiana; and perhaps the true habitat of the banjo 
 is to be found farther north and near to the border 
 States. At any rate, there is a footnote to one of 
 Thomas Jefferson's 'Notes on Virginia' (published in 
 1784), which informs us that the instrument proper to 
 the slaves of the Old Dominion is "the banjar, which 
 they brought hither from Africa, and which is the origin 
 of the guitar, its chords being precisely the four lower 
 chords of the guitar." 
 
 Now and again some one negro minstrel did make a 
 serious study of a negro type; such a performer was 
 J. W. McAndrews, the "Watermelon Man." But the 
 most of them were content to be comic without any 
 effort to catch the special comicality of the darky; and 
 sometimes they strayed so completely from the path 
 as to indulge in songs in an alleged Irish brogue or in 
 a dislocated German dialect. Now, nothing could 
 well be conceived more incongruously inartistic than 
 a white man blacked up into the semblance of a ne- 
 gro, and then impertinently caroling an impudent Irish 
 lyric. Yet the general neglect of the opportunities 
 for a more accurate presentation of negro character- 
 istics is to be seen in the strange fact that the minstrels 
 
 229
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 failed to perceive the possible popularity of rag-time 
 tunes, and failed also to put the cake-walk on the 
 stage. Even at the height of its vogue in the mid years 
 of the nineteenth century, negro-minstrelsy did not 
 occupy its own field, and did not try to raise therein 
 the varied flowers of which they had the seed. 
 
 Instead of cultivating the tempting possibilities 
 which lay before them, and devoting themselves to a 
 loving delineation of the colored people who make up 
 a tenth of our population, they turned aside to devote 
 themselves to the spectacular elaboration of their orig- 
 inal entertainment. The clog-dances became most in- 
 tricate and more mechanical and thereby still more 
 remote from the buck-and-wing dancing of the real 
 negro. The First Part was presented with accompani- 
 ments of Oriental magnificence and of variegated 
 glitter. The chorus was enlarged; the musicians were 
 multiplied; the End-men operated in relays; and at 
 last the bass-drum which towered aloft over Haverly's 
 Mastodon Minstrels bore the boastful legend: "40. 
 Count Them. 40." And when the suspicious spec- 
 tator obeyed this command, he discovered to his sur- 
 prise that the vaunt was more than made good since 
 he had a full view of at least half a dozen performers 
 in addition to the promised twoscore. 
 
 At the apex of his inflated prosperity Haverly in- 
 vaded Germany with his mastodonic organization; 
 and one result of his visit was probably still further to 
 confuse the Teutonic misinformation about the Amer- 
 can type, which seems often to be a curious composite 
 
 230
 
 NEGRO-MINSTRELSY 
 
 photograph of the red men of Cooper, the black men 
 of Mrs. Stowe, and the white men of Mark Twain and 
 Bret Harte. And it was reported at the time that 
 another and more immediate result of this rash foray 
 beyond the boundaries of the English-speaking race 
 was that Haverly was, for a while, in danger of arrest 
 by the police for a fraudulent attempt to deceive the 
 German public, because he was pretending to present 
 a company of negro minstrels, whereas his performers 
 were actually white men ! 
 
 It should be recorded that while the vogue lasted, 
 there did come into existence sundry troops of minstrels 
 whose members were all of them actually colored men, 
 altho they conformed to the convention set by those 
 whom they were imitating and conscientiously dis- 
 guised themselves with burnt cork, to achieve the sable 
 uniformity temporarily attained by the ordinary negro 
 minstrels. Perhaps the most obvious parallel of the 
 blacking up of veritable colored men to follow the 
 example of the white men who pretended to imitate 
 the negro is to be found in the original performance of 
 ' As You Like It/ on the Elizabethan stage, when the 
 shaven boy-actor who impersonated Rosalind dis- 
 guised himself as a lad, and then had to pretend to 
 Orlando that he was a girl. 
 
 231
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 IV 
 
 For the decline and fall of negro-minstrelsy it is easy 
 to find more than one sufficient explanation. First of 
 all, it may have been due to its failure to devote itself 
 lovingly to the representation of the many peculiarities 
 of the negro himself. Second, it is possible that negro- 
 minstrelsy had an inherent and inevitable disqualifica- 
 tion for enduring popularity, in that it was exclusively 
 masculine and necessarily deprived of the potent at- 
 tractiveness exerted by the members of the more fas- 
 cinating sex. And in the third place, its program was 
 rather limited and monotonous, and therefore negro- 
 minstrelsy could not long withstand the competition of 
 the music-hall, of the variety-show, and of the comic 
 musical pieces, which satisfied more amply the exactly 
 similar taste of the public for broad fun commingled 
 with song and dance. 
 
 Whatever the precise cause may be, there is no deny- 
 ing that negro-minstrelsy is on the verge of extinction, 
 however much we may bewail the fact. It failed to 
 accomplish its true purpose, and it is disappearing, 
 leaving behind it little that is worthy of preservation 
 except a few of its songs. This, at least, it has to its 
 credit that it gave Stephen Collins Foster the chance 
 to produce his simple melodies. Perhaps we might 
 even venture to assert that the existence of negro- 
 minstrelsy is justified by a single one of these songs 
 by 'Old Folks at Home/ which has a wailing melan- 
 
 232
 
 NEGRO-MINSTRELSY 
 
 choly and an unaffected pathos, lacking in the earlier 
 and more saccharine 'Home, Sweet Home/ which the 
 English composer, Bishop, based on an old Sicilian 
 tune. After Foster came Root and Work, and 'My 
 Old Kentucky Home' was succeeded by 'Tramp, 
 Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching/ and by 
 'Marching thru Georgia ' which last lyric now shares 
 its popularity only with ' Dixie * as a musical relic of 
 the Civil War. 
 
 It would be pleasant to know whether it was one of 
 Foster's songs, and which one it may have been that 
 once touched the tender heart of Thackeray. " I heard 
 a humorous balladist not long since," the novelist re- 
 corded, "a minstrel with wool on his head, and an ultra 
 Ethiopian complexion, who performed a negro ballad 
 that I confess moistened these spectacles in a most 
 unexpected manner. They have gazed at dozens of 
 tragedy-queens dying on the stage and expiring in 
 appropriate blank verse, and I never wanted to wipe 
 them. They have looked up, with deep respect be it 
 said, at many scores of clergymen without being 
 dimmed, and behold ! a vagabond with a corked face 
 and a banjo, sings a little song, strikes a wild note, 
 which sets the heart thrilling with happy pity." 
 
 (1912.) 
 
 233
 
 XIV 
 THE UTILITY OF THE VARIETY-SHOW
 
 THE UTILITY OP THE VARIETY-SHOW 
 
 IN an advertisement issued by one of the huge depart- 
 ment stores of New York not long ago, the assertion 
 was made that the house had on sale "all the new 
 novelties." A purist in language might be moved to 
 protest that this proclamation was plainly tautological, 
 because it is the essential quality of every novelty to 
 be new. But even a purist in language, if he happens 
 also to be an honest observer of things as they are, 
 would be forced to admit that his supercilious cavil 
 had only a superficial justification, since, as a matter 
 of fact, there are many novelties which are not new, 
 and which, indeed, are venerably ancient. It was 
 Solomon, superabundantly married, and therefore in 
 an excellent position to acquire wisdom, who declared 
 that there is nothing new under the sun. Wireless 
 telegraphy is only a development of the signaling by 
 beacon-fires, which was practised by the Greeks and 
 which they employed to convey immediately to Greece 
 the glad tidings of the fall of Troy ; and moving-pictures 
 are only an ingenious amplification of the zoetrope of 
 our childhood. 
 
 The amusement-parks which sprang up all over the 
 United States in the early part of the twentieth cen- 
 
 237
 
 tury, in imitation of those at Coney Island, bear an 
 undeniable resemblance to the Foire Saint Laurent 
 and to the other fairs of Paris in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, and even the loud-voiced crier 
 who proclaims the merits of the several side-shows, 
 and who is now known as a "barker," bears a name 
 which is only a translation of that given to his forbears 
 two hundred years ago in France aboyeur. 
 
 The so-called cabaret-shows, prevalent in the larger 
 cities of the United States in the winter of 1911-1912, 
 were hailed as the very latest form of amusement, 
 combining as they did the solid pleasures of the table 
 with the ethereal delights of song-and-dance; and yet 
 Froissart is a witness that something very like the 
 cabaret-show was known in the Middle Ages, and 
 Gibbon has recorded its existence nearly a thousand 
 years earlier, at the court of Theodoric. Indeed, the 
 Romans, and the Greeks before them, had employed 
 performers of one sort or another to relieve the mo- 
 notony of their banquets. Gaditanian dancers were 
 popular thruout the wide realm of Rome, almost two 
 thousand years before Carmencita came from Cadiz 
 to warble and caper at midnight in the studios of 
 American painters, just before and just after the guests 
 had enjoyed the refreshments provided by their artistic 
 hosts. 
 
 As the cabaret-show is only another form of the well- 
 known "vaudeville supper," it must be relegated to 
 the class of novelties which are not new. And vaude- 
 ville itself is only the long familiar variety-show. It 
 
 238
 
 THE VARIETY-SHOW 
 
 may now be called by a new name, and many of those 
 who do not look behind a label may accept it as a new 
 thing; nevertheless it is very old, indeed. The name 
 "vaudeville" is an absurd misnomer, like so many 
 other terms due to our habit of careless borrowing from 
 other tongues. In French vaudeville originally desig- 
 nated a kind of topical song, bristling with pointed 
 gibes at the follies of the moment; and then in time it 
 took on another meaning, when it was used to describe 
 a light and lively farce interspersed with occasional 
 lyrics set to old-fashioned tunes. It is impossible to 
 say just how and why this French word, which had 
 two distinct meanings in its own language, should have 
 been imported into English to characterize improperly 
 a form of amusement which we had long known by the 
 admirably exact name of variety-show. The French 
 themselves call their own type of variety-show, at 
 which refreshments are served, a cafe-concert. Their 
 nickname for it is a beuglant, a place where there is 
 "howling" which seems to imply that they do not 
 expect too much melody from the singers, who appear 
 at these performances. In England an establishment 
 of this kind is called a music-hall ; and it was more than 
 half a century ago that Planche described their blatant 
 lyrics set to brazen tunes as "most music-hall, most 
 melancholy." 
 
 Whatever its name may be in the different parts of 
 the world, the entertainment is much the same. The 
 most frequent item on the program is the comic song, 
 often accompanied by a rudimentary dance. Some- 
 
 239
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 times it is in the martial staccato of Paulus's 'En reve- 
 nant de la reVue' which boosted General Boulanger 
 into a furious but fleeting political popularity. Some- 
 times it is the coonful melody of 'Under the Bamboo 
 Tree' or 'Dinah, the Moon am Shining.' Sometimes it 
 is an almost epileptic lyric, like ' Tarara-boom-de-ay/ 
 Sometimes a singer of a more delicate art, like Yvette 
 Guilbert, ventures upon songs of a more subtly senti- 
 mental appeal. There may be a swift succession of 
 solos, male singers and female alternating, those of the 
 most fame appearing latest, as is the practise in the 
 first part of the Parisian open-air cafe-chantant, the 
 Alcazar or the Ambassadeurs. There may be duets 
 or trios or quartets, serious or comic, decorously un- 
 adorned or diversified by dancing. There may be 
 songs to be interpreted by half a dozen performers, 
 accompanied by more or less dramatic action, like the 
 'Mulligan Guards,' which was the simple germ where- 
 from sprouted the long series of more and more elab- 
 orate Harrigan and Hart plays, delineating with keen 
 insight and with sympathetic humor the manifold 
 aspects of tenement-house life in 'New York, and pos- 
 sessing a rich flavor of fun curiously akin to that which 
 amuses us in the plays wherein Plautus had sketched 
 the tenement-house life in Rome two thousand years 
 ago. 
 
 While the song and the song-and-dance and the 
 song-and-parade may be the staple of the entertain- 
 ment, the variety-show justifies its name by the med- 
 ley of other exhibitions it presents. It delights in the 
 
 240
 
 THE VARIETY-SHOW 
 
 dance unaccompanied by the song; and in some of the 
 English music-halls, the Alhambra and the Empire in 
 London, the ballet is the foremost attraction, providing 
 an opportunity for the display of her dainty art to so 
 exquisite a dancer as Mile. Gene"e. In New York it 
 is now a refuge for the waifs and strays of vanishing 
 negro-minstrelsy. It is ready to welcome the wander- 
 ing conjurer and the strolling juggler. It extends its 
 hospitality to the acrobat, single or in groups, throwing 
 flipflaps on the stage, flying thru the air on a trapeze 
 or diving into the water in a tank. It acts as host to 
 the trainer of performing animals, dogs and cats, seals 
 and elephants. It lends its stage to the puppet-show 
 performer, to the sidewalk conversationalist, and to 
 the ventriloquist, with his pair of stolid figures seem- 
 ingly seated uncomfortably on his knees and actually 
 supported by his hands, while his adroit fingers manip- 
 ulate their mechanical mouths. 
 
 Of late, the variety-show has accepted the aid of the 
 exhibitors of moving-pictures, just as the exhibitors 
 of moving-pictures have invoked the casual assistance 
 of song-and-dance teams and of other vaudeville per- 
 formers to relieve the strain on the eyes of their spec- 
 tators. And the introduction of the cinematograph, 
 or the bioscope, or whatever it may be called, is, per- 
 haps, the only real novelty in our latter-day variety- 
 show. All the other performers are presenting feats 
 of a kind known to our remote ancestors, even if these 
 feats are now more skilfully presented. Animals were 
 put thru their paces hundreds of years ago; and per- 
 
 241
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 forming dogs and educated bears figure frequently in 
 the illuminations which decorate many a medieval 
 manuscript. There were tight-rope dancers in Alex- 
 andria and in Byzantium; there were contortionists in 
 Rome and in Greece, and the flexibility of these latter 
 is preserved for us in the vase-paintings which have 
 been replevined from the ashes of Pompeii and the 
 lava of Herculaneum. Quintillian tells us of the won- 
 derful feats of certain performers on the stage in his 
 day, "with balls, and of other jugglers whose dexterity 
 is such that one might suppose the things which they 
 throw from them to return of their own accord, and to 
 fly wheresoever they are commanded." The art of 
 modern magic has enlarged its boundaries by the aid 
 of the modern sciences of mechanics and physics, but 
 elementary sleights-of-hand were known to a remote 
 antiquity, and savages always had their medicine-men 
 and their marabouts, workers of primitive wonders to 
 strike awe into the souls of their unsophisticated be- 
 holders. The variety-show may have the variety it 
 vaunts itself as possessing; but to novelty it can lay 
 little claim. 
 
 II 
 
 The constituent elements of the variety-show as we 
 know it to-day have existed since a time whereof the 
 memory of man runneth not to the contrary to use 
 the old legal phrase. The appeal of almost every one 
 of these elements and of the variety-show as a whole 
 
 242
 
 THE VARIETY-SHOW 
 
 is ever to the eye and to the ear, to the senses rather 
 than to the emotions; and to the intellect it appeals 
 even more infrequently. Its primary purpose is to 
 afford a kaleidoscopic succession of contrasted amuse- 
 ments for the benefit of those who are easily satisfied 
 by glitter of spectacle, by incessant movement, and by 
 violent music. It is the ideal entertainment for that 
 redoubtable entity, the Tired Business Man, who 
 checks his brains with his overcoat, and who resents 
 having to witness anything in the theater which might 
 make him think. Not only does the variety-show 
 flourish because it is exactly adjusted to the unintellec- 
 tual and purely sensational likings of the Tired Busi- 
 ness Man and to the similar tastes of his fit mate, who 
 is fatigued because her life is idle and empty, but for 
 his benefit also, and for hers the summer song-show 
 and the alleged "comic opera" and the misnamed 
 "review" have been called into existence. Indeed, it 
 is obvious enough that most of our summer song-shows 
 and many of our "comic operas" and "reviews" are, 
 in reality, only more or less disguised variety-shows. 
 
 With facts as they are, there is never any excuse for 
 quarreling. The Tired Business Man is a fact; and it 
 is only fair that what he demands shall be supplied by 
 caterers to the cravings of the populace. But even 
 tho his name is legion, the Tired Business Man is to 
 be accepted only with contemptuous toleration. He 
 is to be endured only so long as he does not insist on 
 imposing his likings upon others who have a more 
 delicate perception,, and who are willing to bring their 
 
 243
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 brains with them when they take their places in the 
 theater. Even in the variety-show which seems often 
 to exist only for the pleasure of those who still linger 
 in what one of George Eliot's wise characters aptly 
 called "a puerile state of culture," nevertheless, we 
 can now and again discover signs of a longing for some- 
 thing less void of purpose than mere spectacle. For 
 example, it was in a variety-show that Mr. Belasco's 
 finely imaginative dramatization of Mr. Long's 'Ma- 
 dame Butterfly' was set before the American public 
 several years prior to its being adorned by the pathetic 
 music of Puccini for the benefit of opera-goers. 
 
 In fact, it is well to remember that the opera comique 
 of the French had its humble origin in the theater of 
 the Parisian fairs, where also we can discover the rude 
 beginnings of that crude form of melodrama which 
 Victor Hugo lifted into literature in 'Hernani' and 
 *Ruy Bias,' casting the cloth-of-gold of his splendid 
 lyricism over the arbitrarily articulated skeleton of 
 his violent action. It was an old negro-minstrel act, 
 representing the rehearsal of an amateur band, that 
 the Hanlon-Lees borrowed to amplify into a rough- 
 and-tumble pantomime for performance in a variety- 
 show in Paris; and this knockabout sketch proved to 
 be the stepping-stone which enabled them soon to 
 achieve the fantastic eccentricity of their 'Voyage en 
 Suisse,' performed in real theaters, first in Paris and 
 then in New York, to the joy of all who could appreciate 
 the perfection of their art as pantomimists. And, 
 once again, it was in a variety-show of the lowest class 
 
 244
 
 THE VARIETY-SHOW 
 
 that Denman Thompson first appeared as 'Josh Whit- 
 comb Among the Female Bathers/ a vulgar episode 
 of indelicate humor, wherein, however, was contained 
 the germ of that perennially popular play, the 'Old 
 Homestead/ which gave a pure pleasure to countless 
 thousands of theater-goers, season after season, for at 
 least a quarter of a century. 
 
 When we look back over the long annals of the 
 variety-show we cannot escape the conclusion that 
 here is its real opportunity, its true function, and its 
 necessary justification. For the most part, it supplies 
 a purely sensational amusement for the unthinking; 
 and yet it is continually serving as a nursery for the 
 actual theater. It is thus seen to be a proving ground 
 for the seeds of widely different dramatic species 
 op&ra comique and melodrama in France, the ballet 
 d'action in England, the rural play in the United States. 
 It is not always conscious of its possibilities, nor does 
 it always improve them to best advantage. Normally 
 it provides an entertainment appealing mainly to the 
 senses, often empty, and often unsatisfying because of 
 its monotony. But on occasion it is capable of grasp- 
 ing at higher things, and of encouraging artists who will 
 sooner or later outgrow its limitations and transfer 
 their activities to the theaters wherein audiences are 
 more eager for veracity of character portrayal. 
 
 245
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 III 
 
 On one side the variety-show intersects the ring of 
 the circus and the curving line of the First Part of 
 negro-minstrelsy, while on the other it impinges on the 
 sphere of the more literary drama. Its existence is 
 evidence that the show business is always the show 
 business, no matter how manifold and dissimilar its 
 manifestations may seem to be. The men and women 
 who have grown up in the regular theaters are a little 
 inclined to be scornfully jealous of the less highly 
 esteemed performers in the variety-show, even if they 
 themselves are occasionally tempted by the lure of 
 high pay for hard work to condescend to vaudeville 
 engagements. No doubt, the bill of fare set before us 
 more often than not in the variety-show justifies this 
 attitude on the part of the high priests of the more 
 legitimate drama; yet they ought to be broad-minded 
 enough to recognize merit wherever it may be found. 
 The late John Gilbert, best of Sir Peter Teazles, and 
 of Sir Anthony Absolutes, was not a little provoked 
 by the praise bestowed upon Harrigan and Hart and 
 their associates by Mr. Howells and by other critics 
 of the acted drama, who relished the peculiar flavor 
 of 'Squatter Sovereignty' and its companion plays. 
 Gilbert was puzzled to discover any reason why any 
 criticism whould be wasted on pieces which pretended 
 to be little more than variety-show sketches. But 
 Joseph Jefferson, a far more versatile comedian than 
 
 246
 
 THE VARIETY-SHOW 
 
 John Gilbert, was swift to discern merit, and he was 
 wholly free from toplofty condescension toward other 
 forms of the histrionic art than that in which he was 
 himself pre-eminent perhaps, because in his youth 
 he had often appeared as a burlesque actor, an experi- 
 ence which he gladly admitted to have been very valu- 
 able to him. After Jefferson had gone to see one of 
 the nondescript pieces at Weber and Fields's music-hall, 
 joyous spectacles commingled of song and dance, of 
 eccentric character and of sheer fun, he was loud in 
 his praise of the histrionic art displayed here and there 
 in the course of the performance, declaring without 
 hesitation that one episode, in which the two managers 
 took part, was simply the finest piece of comic acting 
 he had seen that whole winter. Probably the ordinary 
 playgoers, who had flocked to be amused by this loose- 
 jointed piece, took a somewhat apologetic attitude 
 toward the pleasure they had received; and probably 
 they supposed that their pleasure at the entertainment 
 offered to "them was due mainly to the pervading bus- 
 tle and dazzle of the kaleidoscopic show. But Jeffer- 
 son had a keener insight into the practise of the art 
 he adorned; and he recognized at once the sheer his- 
 trionic skill which lent the illusion of life to the fan- 
 tastic impossibility of the humorous situation. 
 
 Jefferson, one may venture to assert, would not have 
 been surprised if he had learned that an American 
 university professor of dramatic literature, whenever 
 he came to discuss the lyrical-burlesques of Aristoph- 
 anes, was in the habit of sending his whole class to 
 
 247
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 Weber and Fields that his students might see for them- 
 selves the nearest modern analog to the robust fantasies 
 of the great Greek humorist. Aristophanes was a 
 many-sided genius; as a lyric poet of ethereal elevation 
 he must be set by the side of Shelley; as a keen satirist 
 of contemporary fads and foibles he must be compared 
 with Rabelais; and as a fun-maker pure and simple, 
 as a comic playwright, willing and able to evoke un- 
 expected laughter by ludicrous antics, he reveals an 
 undeniable likeness to the adroit devisers of the hodge- 
 podge of humorous episodes represented with contagious 
 humor by Weber and Fields. And the heterogeneous 
 pieces which used to be produced by the two per- 
 formers who devote themselves to the dislocation of 
 the^English language were outgrowths of the variety- 
 show, from which, indeed, the two performers them- 
 selves were graduates. 
 
 It is this aspect of the variety-show, its supplying of 
 opportunities for artistic development to ambitious 
 performers, and its own spontaneous generation of dra- 
 matic forms capable of being lifted into literature 
 it is this aspect of the variety-show which would be 
 emphasized by any competent writer undertaking to 
 narrate its long and involved history. That no one 
 has yet written a history of the variety-show is as sur- 
 prising as that no one has yet written a history of 
 negro-minstrelsy. The materials for such a book are 
 accessible and abundant, since there are already richly 
 documented accounts of the fairs of Paris and of 
 London, in which the variety-show flourished centuries 
 
 248
 
 THE VARIETY-SHOW 
 
 ago. There are accounts of the English concert-halls 
 as they now exist and of the French cafe-concerts. The 
 historian will also be aided by the various treatises on 
 the ballet, and on the circus, and on the puppet-show, 
 with all of which forms of entertainment the variety- 
 show has always had intimate relations. 
 
 It may be that the future historian will be moved 
 to point out the superficial likeness between the variety- 
 show and the Sunday issues of certain American news- 
 papers. These Sunday newspapers are really maga- 
 zines that is to say, they occupy a position midway 
 between journalism and literature, just as the variety- 
 show occupies a position midway between the circus 
 and the theater. The magazine pages of these Sunday 
 newspapers set before their readers a very variegated 
 bill of fare; they provide photographs of recent events 
 which are the equivalent of the moving-pictures of 
 the variety-show; they contain short-stories which 
 are, in narrative, what the brief plays of the variety- 
 show are in dialog and action; they abound in anec- 
 dotes and in comic sayings which are closely akin to 
 the utterances of the sidewalk conversationalists of the 
 variety-show. And the variety-show itself is like 
 journalism, in that it is a modern combination of ele- 
 ments of the remotest antiquity, for altho the actual 
 newspaper is only two or three centuries old, there 
 were always channels by which news was conveyed to 
 the eager public. The men of Athens nearly two thou- 
 sand years ago were glad to hear and to tell some new 
 thing, and their wants were supplied, even if there was 
 
 249
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 in classical antiquity and in the Middle Ages no organ- 
 ization faintly anticipating the marvelous machinery 
 for collecting and distributing information possessed 
 by the newspapers of the twentieth century. 
 
 (1912.) 
 
 250
 
 XV 
 THE METHOD OF MODERN MAGIC
 
 THE METHOD OF MODERN MAGIC 
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHY, said Longfellow altho the remark 
 does not seem especially characteristic of this gentle 
 poet "is what biography ought to be." And in the 
 long list of alluring autobiographies, from Cellini's and 
 Gibber's, from Franklin's and Goldoni's, there are few 
 more fascinating than the ' Confidences of a Prestidigi- 
 tator' of Robert-Houdin. A hostile critic of Robert- 
 Houdin's career has recorded the fact if it is a fact 
 that Robert-Houdin once confided to a fellow magician 
 that his autobiography had been written for him by a 
 clever Parisian journalist; and it must be admitted 
 that not a few amusing French autobiographies have 
 not been the children of their putative parents for 
 instance, the memoirs of Vidocq, the detective. Yet 
 this is not as damaging an admission as it may seem 
 at first sight since the clever Parisian journalist may 
 have been little more than the amanuensis of the 
 prestidigitator, hired only to give literary form to the 
 actual recollections of his employer. Such a proceed- 
 ing would not deprive Robert-Houdin's autobiography 
 by its authenticity. It remains a classic, beloved by 
 all who joy in the delights of conjuring. Unfortunately 
 the hostile critic has gone further in his attack upon 
 
 253
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 Robert-Houdin's reputation, and he has succeeded in 
 showing that the renowned French conjurer claimed 
 as his own invention not a few illusions which had been 
 already exhibited by his predecessors in the art of de- 
 ception. 
 
 Yet this unjustified boasting does not invalidate 
 Robert-Houdin's title to be considered the father of 
 modern magic. Even if he was treading in the path 
 of those who had gone before, he attained at last to a 
 consistent theory of the art, far in advance of that held 
 by earlier magicians. Many of his marvels, and per- 
 haps more than one of the most striking of them, may 
 have been but improvements upon effects originally 
 contrived by others; yet every succeeding generation 
 can rise only by standing upon the shoulders of the 
 generations that went before, and it is justified in avail- 
 ing itself of all that these earlier generations may have 
 discovered and invented. Robert-Houdin tells us him- 
 self that he was greatly indebted to the Comte de Grisy, 
 whose stage-name was Torrini. In fact, Robert- 
 Houdin might be called a pupil of Torrini, as Mr. 
 John S. Sargent is a pupil of Carolus Duran. It was 
 upon Torrini's dignified simplicity as a magician that 
 Robert-Houdin modelled his own unpretending pres- 
 entation of his feats of magic. Apparently it was a 
 famous conjurer named Frikell, who first discarded 
 the cumbersome and glittering array of apparatus 
 which used to be displayed on the stage to dazzle the 
 eyes of the spectators; but this discarding of obtrusive 
 paraphernalia was not deliberate, being due only 
 
 254
 
 MODERN MAGIC 
 
 to the accidental destruction of Frikell's stage-furni- 
 ture by fire, whereby the performer was suddenly 
 forced to rely upon the less complicated experiments, 
 which could be exhibited without extraneous aid. 
 The abandoning of overt apparatus, which Frikell was 
 forced into by misfortune, Robert-Houdin adopted as 
 an abiding principle. He kept his stage as unencum- 
 bered as possible, altho, of course, he brought forward 
 from time to time the special objects necessary for the 
 illusions he was about to exhibit. 
 
 Not only did he perform on a stage which was in- 
 tended to resemble a drawing-room, he also eschewed 
 any other costume than that appropriate to a drawing- 
 room. Earlier performers had not hesitated to deck 
 themselves in Oriental apparel or in the flowing garb 
 of a medieval magician. Robert-Houdin was always 
 modern and never medieval; and he adopted this 
 attitude deliberately. He was the first to formulate 
 the fundamental principle of the modern art of magic 
 that a conjurer should be "an actor playing the part 
 of a magician." One of the foremost exponents of 
 modern magic, Mr. Maskelyne, notes that many con- 
 jurers strive only to play the part of some other con- 
 jurer; and it might be added that there are not a few 
 who fail entirely to see the necessity for playing a part 
 and who content themselves with a purposeless dis- 
 play of their misplaced dexterity. But the masters 
 of the art are men like Robert Heller and Buatier da 
 Kolta, who were accomplished comedians, each in his 
 own fashion, and who presented a succession of little 
 
 255
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 plays for a truly good experiment in magic is really 
 a diminutive drama. 
 
 It may be brief and simple a play in one act; or 
 it may be prolonged and complicated a play in three 
 or five acts. But like any other play it ought to pos- 
 sess a central idea and to have a definite plot. It 
 should tend straight toward its single conclusion, which 
 must be the logical development of all that has gone 
 before; that is to say, it must possess what the critics 
 of the drama term Unity of Action. It should have a 
 beginning, a middle, and an end, in accord with Aris- 
 totle's requirement for a tragedy. It must work up 
 to its culmination with a steadily increasing intensity 
 of interest. It must contain nothing not directly con- 
 tributory to the startling climax which is its surprising 
 and satisfying conclusion. It must not digress or dally 
 in by-paths, however entertaining these may be hi 
 themselves, but push onward to its inevitable finish. 
 It is only by conceiving of every one of his successive 
 experiments as a play, complete in itself and governed 
 by the inexorable laws of the drama, that the magician 
 can rise to the summit of his art. He is a conjurer 
 and a comedian at the same time, making his dexterity 
 the servant of his drama, and never for a single moment 
 allowing this dexterity to force itself upon the atten- 
 tion of the audience. Indeed, the one thing he ought 
 to conceal is his possession of any special gift in manip- 
 ulation. He should keep his audience ever guessing 
 as to the method of his apparent miracles. 
 
 256
 
 MODERN MAGIC 
 
 II 
 
 It is because Robert-Houdin was seemingly the first 
 conjurer to adopt these principles as his irrefragable 
 code of procedure that he is to be accepted as the f athef 
 of modern magic. He never allowed himself to parade 
 his skill in manipulating coins and cards at the risk of 
 distracting the attention of the spectators from the 
 central and culminating effect around which he had 
 constructed his plot. No doubt, he possessed dex- 
 terity in abundance, but it was subordinate to his 
 dramatic intent. No doubt, again, some of the de- 
 vices he used had sometimes been employed by a long 
 succession of his predecessors in conjuring. As a 
 matter of course he availed himself of all sorts of mere 
 tricks, of ingenious sleights, and of artful apparatus 
 that the conjurers who went before him had devised 
 for their own use long before he was born. An experi- 
 ment in magic to use the term that Mr. Maskelyne 
 prefers, is not a mere trick or at least it ought not to 
 be. It is not the exhibition of a device or of a sleight 
 or of an adroit mechanical apparatus. Rather is it 
 a coherent whole, direct in its development, no matter 
 how many subtleties of concealment and deception it 
 may employ in the course of its accomplishment. 
 
 Most amateurs in the art of magic, and also only 
 too many professional performers, place their reliance 
 mainly upon the trick itself the deceptive manipula- 
 tion or the novel apparatus and are satisfied to get 
 
 257
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 out of it what they can. They invent new methods of 
 changing a card or of making coins pass into a box, 
 overlooking the fact that these inventions are value- 
 less except as they may be utilized to facilitate the exe- 
 cution of one of those larger feats which only are fairly 
 to be entitled experiments in magic, and which are 
 distinguished always by the direct simplicity and the 
 straightforward unity of their plots. In fact, an ex- 
 periment hi magic must aim at that totality of effect, 
 that perfect subordination of the minor means to the 
 major end, which Poe insisted upon as the dominant 
 characteristic of the true short-story. And this total- 
 ity of effect can be achieved only by the rigorous ex- 
 clusion of everything which in any way contradicts 
 that central idea out of which the true short-story 
 must always be developed. Unity and totality, and a 
 rigorous obedience to what Herbert Spencer called the 
 Principle of Economy of Attention these are the essen- 
 tial elements in the presentation of a worthy experi- 
 ment in magic. 
 
 An intimate friend of the late Alexander Hermann, 
 the last of a long line of Hermanns who have been 
 eminent in the history of the art, has asserted that 
 Alexander Hermann was wont to insist that the con- 
 jurer must possess three qualifications for the practise 
 of his profession. The first of these is dexterity; the 
 second is dexterity; and the third is also dexterity. 
 Now, there is a sense in which this assertion is true; 
 but it may be easily misapprehended. A conjurer 
 needs to be dexterous, altho more than one master of 
 
 258
 
 MCXDERN MAGIC 
 
 modern magic, notably Robert Heller, has not been 
 pre-eminent in the possession of this qualification. 
 A moderate degree of dexterity is essential, and per- 
 haps more than a moderate degree; but dexterity is 
 not the prime requisite, which is rather the dramatic 
 instinct, or, perhaps, it had better be called the dram- 
 aturgic imagination, that can hit on a new idea and 
 build it up into a plot, and thus devise an experiment 
 in magic completely satisfactory to the artistic sense. 
 
 What the master of the magic art never forgets is 
 that dexterity is not an end in itself; it is only one of 
 the means by the aid of which the marvel may be 
 wrought. There are, to-day, performers of a surpass- 
 ing skill in the manipulation of cards and coins, capable 
 of feats which would have been the despair of Robert- 
 Houdin and of Robert Heller; and some of them are 
 so enamored of their own dexterity that in their eager- 
 ness for its exhibition they lose sight of unity and 
 totality. As a result of this lapse from the loftier 
 standards of their art they present a disconcerting 
 huddle of sleights of hand until the amazed spectators 
 lose all sense of progression, as these bewildering effects 
 tumble over one another without any attempt at 
 climax. Such a performance is an empty display of 
 difficulty conquered for its own sake; it is only a se- 
 quence of "stunts"; it is mere vanity and vexation of 
 spirit. It is like the favorite Scotch dish, the haggis, 
 which is said to supply only " confused feeding." 
 
 It is always interesting to note how the principles of 
 the arts have a certain relation, and how we can 
 
 259
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 constantly discover parallels in two wholly different 
 fields. This abuse of dexterity in the art of modern 
 magic is closely akin to the abuse of toe-dancing in 
 the art of the ballet. As the conjurer ought to have 
 dexterity at his command to serve when it is needed, 
 so the accomplished ballet-dancer ought to be able to 
 walk on her toes, when this feat will fit into the scheme 
 of the special dance she has undertaken to perform. 
 But for a dancer to confine herself to the executing of 
 a series of difficult steps involving nothing more than 
 toe-dancing is to circumscribe the range of her art 
 and to accept as the end what ought to be only the 
 means. Here again, we have a frank substitution of a 
 single "stunt" for the larger liberty accorded by a 
 more intelligent understanding of the true principles 
 of the art. The excessive toe-work of the dancer, like 
 the excessive dexterity of the conjurer, is at bottom 
 only what boys call "showing off"; and in the long run 
 even boys tire of this. To descend to showing off is 
 equivalent to the blunder common in bad architecture, 
 when we cannot help seeing that the artist has gone 
 afield to construct his ornament, instead of concen- 
 trating his effort on ornamenting his construction. 
 
 So far from permitting himself ever to show off, or 
 to invite attention to his own skill, the master of mod- 
 ern magic is careful always to conceal as far as possible 
 the method by which he accomplishes his wonders. 
 He utilizes at will and in conjunction ingenious appa- 
 ratus and manual dexterity, without ever calling the 
 attention of the spectators to either. He refrains even 
 
 260
 
 MODERN MAGIC 
 
 from turning up his sleeves or from passing for special 
 examination any of the objects he is employing, while 
 taking care to let it be seen accidentally that these ob- 
 jects are really above suspicion. Like the playwright 
 constructing a play, the composer of an experiment in 
 magic must ever keep in mind his audience; and he 
 must strive always to foresee the exact impression he 
 is making upon the spectators. Like the playwright, 
 the modern magician must so build up each of his ex- 
 periments that it seizes the attention of the spectators 
 early, that it arouses their interest, that it holds this 
 interest unrelaxed to the end, and that at last it satis- 
 fies while it surprises. This can be achieved only when 
 all the elements of the experiment, the idea itself, the 
 plot, the dexterous devices, and the ingenious apparatus 
 which may be necessary, are all so combined and con- 
 trolled and harmonized as to leave on the memory of 
 the audience a clear and consistent impression indeed, 
 an impression so sharp that a majority of those who 
 witnessed the experiment could describe it the next 
 day. 
 
 It is the disadvantage of the empty display of dex- 
 terity for its own sake that fails to leave this definite 
 deposit in the memory; and the spectators are quite 
 unable to recall the central effect. This is generally 
 because there was, in fact, no central effect for them to 
 seize, the performer having scattered his efforts, as tho 
 he were using a shot-gun instead of hitting the bull's- 
 eye with a single rifle-shot. The master of the art is 
 careful to economize the attention of his audience, to 
 
 261
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 focus it, so to speak, and to arrange his sequence of 
 effects so adroitly that, however multifarious and even 
 complicated may be the means whereby he is achiev- 
 ing his object, the result is attained so directly and so 
 simply that it can be apprehended by the spectators 
 readily and instantly. The experiment has been ex- 
 hibited as tho it were the easiest thing in the world, 
 even if it is at the same time perceived to be the most 
 impossible to account for. To arrive at this result the 
 performer must preserve an absolute simplicity of 
 manner; he presents himself as a gentleman amusing 
 himself by amusing other gentlemen, who have come 
 together at his invitation to be amused. 
 
 Ill 
 
 A gentleman amusing other gentlemen that should 
 be the ideal; and this ideal not only forbids any foolish 
 clowning and any trivial buffoonery on the part of the 
 performer, but it prohibits also any attempt on his 
 part to incite the gentlemen he is amusing to laugh at 
 any one of their own number who may have been kind 
 enough to lend a hat or a watch, or to come up on the 
 stage as a volunteer assistant by request. Nothing is 
 cheaper, and nothing is in worse taste, than for the 
 performer to make personal remarks about any mem- 
 ber of his audience or to hold any one of the spectators 
 up to ridicule. The conjurer is a comedian playing 
 the part of a modern magician, but he is not a low- 
 comedian, ready to get a laugh at any price and at 
 
 262
 
 MODERN MAGIC 
 
 the cost of any one else. He may be as pleasant as 
 he can, and even as humorous, but he can preserve his 
 own self-respect only by having due regard to the self- 
 respect of all those who have gathered to enjoy his 
 performance. Readers of Robert-Houdin's memoirs 
 will remember how one of the old-school performers used 
 to advertise that he would Eat a Man Alive, and how 
 he sprinkled flour and pepper and salt all over the 
 hapless creature who volunteered to be devoured, and 
 then proceeded to bite the finger of the disgusted and 
 unfortunate victim. This is "most tolerable and not 
 to be endured." 
 
 If a demand were to be made for a list of the books 
 likely to be the most useful to those who desire to 
 master the principles of the art of modern magic, one 
 would have to begin by recommending the preliminary 
 perusal of the autobiography of Robert-Houdin, from 
 which a host of useful hints may be gleaned. The 
 Frenchman tells us, for instance, how he once showed 
 off before Torrini and exhibited his manipulative skill 
 over a pack of cards, making a needless display of 
 dexterity, designed to dazzle the eyes of the spectators; 
 and how Torrini pointed out the futility and the dis- 
 advantage of this. Then it would be well to consult 
 the invaluable series of volumes on modern magic by 
 "Professor Hoffman" wherein the various tricks and 
 sleights and apparatus are described and illustrated. 
 These books contain what may be called the raw mate- 
 rial of the art, the processes which the magician can 
 employ at will in building up his larger experiments in 
 
 263
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 magic, each of which should be a complete play in it- 
 self. Finally, when the student has found out how 
 tricks can be done, he would do well to turn his atten- 
 tion to 'Our Magic,' by Mr. Maskelyne and his associ- 
 ate, Mr. David Devant. And from this logical treatise 
 he can learn how experiments in magic ought to be 
 composed. It is from this admirable discussion of the 
 basic principles of modern magic that several of the 
 points made in this essay have been borrowed. 
 
 Mr. Devant calls attention to the fact that new 
 tricks are common, new manipulative devices, new ex- 
 amples of dexterity, and new applications of science, 
 whereas new plots, new ideas for effective presentation, 
 are rare. He describes a series of experiments of his 
 own, some of which utilize again, but in a novel man- 
 ner, devices long familiar, while others are new both in 
 idea and in many of the subsidiary methods of execu- 
 tion. One of the most hackneyed and yet one of the 
 most effective illusions in the repertory of the conjurer, 
 is that known as the Rising Cards. The performer 
 brings forward a pack of cards, several of which are 
 drawn by members of the audience and returned to the 
 pack, whereupon at the command of the magician they 
 rise out of the pack, one after the other, in the order in 
 which they were drawn. In the oldest form in which 
 this illusion is described in the books on the art of 
 magic, the pack is placed in a case supported by a rod 
 standing on a base; and the secret of the trick lies in 
 this rod and its base. The rod is really a hollow tube, 
 and the base is really an empty box. The tube is 
 
 264
 
 MODERN MAGIC 
 
 filled with sand, on the top of which rests a leaden 
 weight, to which is attached a thread so arranged over 
 and under certain cards as to cause the chosen cards 
 to rise when it descends down the tube; and in putting 
 the cards into the case the conjurer releases a valve 
 at the bottom of the tube, so that the sand might 
 escape into the box, whereby the weight is lowered, 
 the thread then doing its allotted work, and the cards 
 ascending into view, no matter how far distant from 
 them the performer may be standing when he achieves 
 his miracle. 
 
 It seems likely that the invention of this primitive 
 apparatus may have been due to the fact that some 
 eighteenth-century conjurer happened to observe the 
 sand running out of an hour-glass, and set about to 
 find some means whereby this escape of sand could be 
 utilized in his art. The hollow rod, the escaping sand, 
 and the descending weight have long since been dis- 
 carded; but the illusion of the Rising Cards survives 
 and is now performed in an unending variety of ways. 
 The pack may be held in the hand of the performer, 
 without the use of any case; or it may be placed in a 
 glass goblet; or it may be tied together with a ribbon 
 and thus suspended from cords that swing to and 
 fro almost over the heads of the spectators, and how- 
 ever they may be isolated, the chosen cards rise obedi- 
 ently when they are bidden. The original effect sub- 
 sists, even tho the devices differ. 
 
 It was left for Mr. Devant to give a new twist to 
 this old illusion. For a full pack of playing-cards he 
 
 265
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 substituted ten cards two or three times larger than 
 playing-cards, and with the ten numerals printed or 
 painted in bold black. These] pasteboards are given 
 for examination, and so is a case into which they fit. 
 After they have been duly inspected they are put into 
 the case which is hung from chains. A clean slate is 
 also shown, and wrapped up and given to a spectator 
 to hold. Then three members of the audience are in- 
 vited to write each a number composed of three fig- 
 ures, and these three numbers are added by a fourth 
 spectator. The total is found to be written on the 
 slate; and then at the behest of the performer the 
 cards containing the figures of this total rise in proper 
 sequence out of the case. It may be noted that the 
 writing on the slate is also an old and well-worn de- 
 vice, and so is the method of making sure that the 
 total of the three numbers written by different persons 
 shall agree with that already concealed on the slate. 
 Yet these three familiar effects are here united in a 
 refreshingly novel experiment in magic, being now 
 fitted into a new plot. The devices themselves are old 
 enough, but Mr. Devant is entitled to full credit for 
 the new combination. 
 
 IV 
 
 The fundamental principles which Robert-Houdin 
 accepted and which he seems to have taken over from 
 Torrini, Messrs. Maskelyne and Devant have eluci- 
 dated in their philosophic disquisition, and yet in one 
 
 266
 
 MODERN MAGIC 
 
 particular their practise is not yet level with their 
 preaching. Before Robert-Houdin and Frikell, or at 
 least before Torrini, and even after these three artists 
 had set a better example, the majority of conjurers 
 filled the stage with gaudy apparatus and insisted on 
 its blazing with an unnecessary prodigality of lights. 
 One magician in the middle of the nineteenth century 
 came forward on a stage absolutely dark, and suddenly 
 fired a pistol, thereby lighting two hundred candles 
 arranged in pyramids behind him. Another hung his 
 stage with black velvet and adorned it with skulls. 
 Torrini and Robert-Houdin made an approach to the 
 unadorned simplicity of an actual drawing-room, altho 
 Robert-Houdin seems to have permitted himself a long 
 shelf at the back of his stage on which his various auto- 
 matic figures were assembled awaiting their summons 
 to take part in the program. Even Messrs. Maskelyne 
 and Devant are satisfied with a stage-setting which is 
 frankly only a stage-setting as stagy, in fact, as the 
 ordinary scenery to be seen in a variety-show. 
 
 Now, it may be admitted that a nondescript set of 
 this sort, vaguely Oriental, with arches and curtains, 
 and somewhat suggestive of comic opera, may not be 
 inappropriate when any one of the bolder illusions is to 
 be presented the Box Trick or the Aerial Suspension, 
 the Mystic Cabinet or the Talking Sphinx. Indeed, 
 a special set of scenery is often actually necessary for 
 the presentation of marvels depending mainly on op- 
 tics or mechanics. But for the first part of the pro- 
 gram, when the performer appears in ordinary evening- 
 
 267
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 dress, and when he is presenting himself as a gentleman 
 in a drawing-room, amusing other gentlemen, by means 
 of experiments in magic, every one of which may be 
 likened to a little play, why should not the stage-set 
 be that of a drawing-room, or of a bachelor's study, as 
 accurately reproduced as similar rooms are reproduced 
 in the modern comedies of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones 
 and Mr. Augustus Thomas? The set accepted by 
 Messrs. Maskelyne and Devant is devoid of the actu- 
 ality of a real room; it is fantastically stagy, and there- 
 fore it lacks both veracity and dignity. 
 
 Sooner or later some modern magician, in advance 
 over his rivals, will take this final step, and the curtain 
 will rise on a stage with a box-set realistically reproduc- 
 ing a handsome room, with all its decorations and hang- 
 ings and furniture in harmony, Jacobean in style, or 
 Chippendale, as the performer's preference may be. 
 There will be chairs and tables in then- proper places; 
 there will be book-cases, and window-boxes of flowers; 
 and perhaps there will be a cellaret, where the per- 
 former may procure any goblet or decanter he needs. 
 There will be a broad desk in the center, with its writing- 
 pad and its book-rack, and possibly its heap of maga- 
 zines and weekly papers. This set thus furnished will 
 look like a room that has really been lived in; it will 
 have a door in each of the side walls, and when the 
 curtain rises the stage will be empty. Then the door- 
 bell will ring, and the servant will enter at one door, 
 and, going across the stage to the other, he will admit 
 his master the master at last of the truly modern art 
 
 268
 
 MODERN MAGIC 
 
 of magic. The magician will give his hat and coat 
 to the servant, who will take them out, and who will 
 never appear on the stage again except in response to 
 the master's pressure on the electric button, ordinarily 
 used to summon a servant. And the magician will 
 present his succession of experiments in magic, utiliz- 
 ing only the objects which he may borrow from the 
 spectators, or which would naturally be found in a 
 gentleman's room. The apparent absence of all ap- 
 paratus, the naturalness of the environment, the easy 
 simplicity and the convincing reality of the back- 
 ground all these elements will coalesce to heighten 
 the effect of the marvels to be wrought by a comedian 
 playing the part of a magician. 
 
 (1912.) 
 
 269
 
 XVI 
 
 THE LAMENTABLE TRAGEDY OF 
 PUNCH AND JUDY
 
 THE LAMENTABLE TRAGEDY OF PUNCH AND 
 JUDY 
 
 WHEN we consider how cosmopolitan is the population 
 of these United States, and how freely we have drawn 
 upon all the races of Europe, it is very curious that 
 the puppet-show does not flourish in our American 
 cities as it flourishes in many of the towns on the other 
 side of the Western Ocean. The shrill squeak of 
 Punch is not infrequent in the streets of London 
 altho it may not now be heard as often as it was 
 a score of years ago. In Paris in the gardens of 
 the Tuileries and of the Luxembourg, and again in the 
 Champs-Elyse*es where the children congregate in the 
 afternoon, there are nearly half a dozen enclosures 
 roped off and provided with cane chairs so that spec- 
 tators, old and young, may be gladdened by the vision 
 of Polichinelle, and by the pranks of Guignol. Yet 
 even in Paris there are not now as many puppet-shows 
 as there were fifty years ago; and in Italy and in Ger- 
 many the traveler fails to find as frequent exhibitions 
 of this sort as he used to meet with in the years that 
 are gone. Apparently there is everywhere a waning 
 interest in the plays performed by the little troop of 
 personages animated by the thumb and fingers of the 
 
 273
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 invisible performer. And perhaps the declining vogue 
 of this diminutive drama in old Europe is one reason 
 why it has never achieved a wide popularity in young 
 America. 
 
 In France the puppet-show is stationary; it has its 
 fixed habitation and abode; and its lovers can easily 
 discover where to find it when they seek the specific 
 pleasure it alone can provide. In England the spec- 
 tacle of Punch and Judy is ambulatory; the blood- 
 thirsty hero and the bereaved heroine roam the streets 
 at large, and their arrival in any one avenue of traffic 
 can never be predicted with certainty. In the United 
 States poor Punch has never ventured to show his 
 face in the open street, seeking the suffrages of the 
 casual throng; he is not peripatetic but intermittent, 
 and he makes his appearances only in private houses, 
 and only when he is sent for specially to entertain the 
 children's party. Here in America Punch is still a 
 stranger to the broad public; he has an exotic flavor; 
 he suggests Dickens, somehow; and he must be wholly 
 unknown to countless thousands who would rejoice to 
 make his acquaintance and to laugh at his terrible 
 deeds. 
 
 His terrible deeds ! perhaps there is in these words 
 a possible explanation for the failure of Punch to win 
 favor among the descendants of the Puritans, who are 
 always inclined to apply severe moral standards of 
 conduct. Now, if we apply any moral standard at all 
 to the conduct of Mr. Punch, the result is simply ap- 
 palling, for the customary drama of which he is the sole 
 
 274
 
 Behind the scenes 
 
 Punch throws away the child 
 
 Punch, Judy, and their child 
 
 Punch quiets Judy
 
 PUNCH AND JUDY 
 
 hero sets before us a story of triumphant villainy, ade- 
 quately to be compared only with the dastardly history 
 of Richard III in Shakspere's melodramatic tragedy. 
 Mr. Punch is an accessory before the fact in the death 
 of his infant child, and when his devoted wife very nat- 
 urally remonstrates with him, he turns upon her with 
 invective and violence a violence which culminates 
 in assassination. Having once seen red and tasted 
 blood, he finds himself swiftly started upon a career 
 of crime. His total depravity tempts him to a startling 
 succession of hideous murders. He slays an inoffen- 
 sive negro, a harmless clown, and a worthy policeman. 
 Then he succeeds, by a simple trick, in hanging the 
 hangman himself. By his fatal assaults upon these 
 two officers of justice, the necessary policeman and the 
 useful hangman, Mr. Punch exhibits his contempt for 
 the majesty of the law. He stands forth, without a 
 shred of conscience, as a practical anarchist, rejecting 
 all authority. His hand is against every man and every 
 man's hand is against him. And having violated the 
 laws of this world, he finally discloses his callous con- 
 tempt for the punishment which ought to await him 
 in the next world; he has a hand-to-hand fight with the 
 devil himself a deadly struggle from which he emerges 
 victorious. And this is the end, which crowns the 
 work. 
 
 When we consider the several episodes of Mr. Punch's 
 abhorrent history, we are reluctantly forced to the con- 
 clusion that his story is even less informed with moral- 
 ity than that of Richard III. The crookbacked king 
 
 275
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 comes to a bad end at last; he meets with the just 
 retribution for his many misdeeds; and he falls before 
 the sword of Richmond. But Mr. Punch comes to a 
 good end, and so far as we may know, he lives happy 
 ever after, like the princes and princesses of the fairy- 
 tales. He may even marry again and have another 
 child, to be made away with in its turn. The more 
 we consider his misdeeds and his misadventures the 
 more shocking they are to our moral sense. Mr. 
 Punch appears as a monster of such hideous mien that 
 to be hated he needs but to be seen. This is how he 
 must appear to every one of us who applies a moral 
 standard to the drama, and who is willing to hold 
 every character in a play to a strict accountability for 
 his words and deeds. If we apply this moral standard 
 to the play of Punch and Judy, then that play must be 
 dismissed as profoundly and hopelessly immoral, carry- 
 ing ethical infection to all who are so unfortunate as 
 to be spectators at its performance. And more par- 
 ticularly, it is an absolutely unfit piece for the young, 
 whose immature minds need to be guarded against 
 everything which might tend to confuse the delicate 
 distinctions between right and wrong. 
 
 But, of course, we do not apply a moral standard to 
 the sayings and doings of Mr. Punch, for the plain and 
 sufficient reason that he is not a human being. He is 
 not a man and a brother, upon whom we may be 
 tempted to pattern ourselves. He is but a six-inch 
 puppet, a thing of shreds and patches, a wooden- 
 headed doll, vitalized for a moment only by the hand 
 
 276
 
 Punch on his steed 
 
 Punch teaches Jack Ketch how to 
 hang a man 
 
 Punch in prison 
 
 Punch kills the Devil
 
 PUNCH AND JUDY 
 
 concealed inside his flimsy body with its flaunting 
 colors. He is too fantastic, too impossible, too unreal, 
 too unrelated to any possible world, for us to feel called 
 upon to frown upon his misdeeds or to take them seri- 
 ously. He is a joke, and we know that he is a joke, 
 and all the children know that he is only a joke. Even 
 the youngest child is never tempted to believe in his 
 existence and to be moved to follow his example or 
 to imitate his dark deeds. The proof of the pudding 
 is in the eating; and the proof of a play is in the effect 
 it produces upon the spectators. We may question 
 whether any one of the millions of performances of 
 the lamentable tragedy of Mr. Punch has suggested 
 to a single father the fatal neglect of his offspring or 
 to a single husband the possibility of wife-murder. 
 And we may doubt whether any child, after witnessing 
 Mr. Punch's murderous combats with the policeman 
 and the devil, has ever felt any lessening of his respect 
 for those two time-honored guardians of law and order. 
 The plea of confession and avoidance which is here 
 set up for Punch and Judy is much the same as that 
 set up by Charles Lamb for the frolicsome Restora- 
 tion comedies. Lamb admitted that they were de- 
 gradingly immoral if you took them seriously and 
 accepted them as pictures of life. But he insisted that 
 they were not really amenable to this moral standard, 
 since they were plainly impossible in any world known 
 to man. Macaulay had no difficulty in showing that 
 Lamb was judging others by his clever and sophisti- 
 cated self. To Lamb the creatures of Wycherley and 
 
 277
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 Congreve might reveal manners and customs which 
 removed them from the sphere of recognizable human- 
 ity; but the majority of his fellow-spectators were not 
 so nimble-witted; they saw characters on the stage 
 personated by living performers, and they beheld these 
 characters shamelessly doing shameful things. Because 
 the persons in the play were represented by actual 
 human beings they seemed indisputably human; and 
 their deeds could not be considered as outside morality. 
 Yet the plea made by Lamb for the Restoration com- 
 edies has a certain validity when it is put forward in 
 behalf of Mr. Punch. He is not personated by an 
 actual human being; and even the least sophisticated 
 of juvenile spectators does not accept him as a fellow- 
 creature strictly amenable to the human code. 
 
 II 
 
 Historians of the Greek drama have often commented 
 on the fact that the Athenian actors wore towering 
 masks, and that thereby they were deprived of all facial 
 expression. In our snug modern theaters, with their 
 well-lighted stages, we follow with our eyes the shift- 
 ing emotions as these chase each other across the faces 
 of the actors; and this is one of our keenest pleasures 
 in the playhouse. In the huge theater of Dionysius at 
 Athens, with its ten or twenty thousand spectators, 
 seated tier on tier, along the curving hillside of the 
 Acropolis, the actor was too far removed from most 
 of the playgoers for any play of feature to be visible; 
 
 278
 
 PUNCH AND JUDY 
 
 and critics have commiserated the Attic dramatists 
 on their deprivation of this element of potent appeal. 
 Yet the question arises whether the Greek playwrights 
 were really the losers by this immobility of the actors' 
 faces; and we may be allowed to doubt that they were 
 when we recall the fact that the faces of Mr. Punch 
 and of Mrs. Judy, of the policeman and of the hang- 
 man, are also fixed once for all. The expression that 
 Mr. Punch wears when he is fondling the baby is, per- 
 force, the same which illuminates his face when he is 
 engaged in joyful combat with the devil, a foeman 
 worthy of his stick. Here the imagination of the spec- 
 tator comes to the rescue. The wooden head of Mr. 
 Punch is unchanging, no doubt; but those who gaze 
 entranced upon his marvelous doings never miss the 
 play of feature which they would expect if they were 
 part of the audience in a playhouse for grown-ups. 
 Quite possibly the Athenian spectators did not mind 
 the immobility of the masks their actors wore; indeed, 
 that very immobility may have been an incentive to 
 their imaginations. When the Greeks went to their 
 open-air theater, as when we gather around the tent- 
 like theater of Mr. Punch, they knew in advance, as 
 we also know, that the faces of the performers would 
 be unchanging; therefore they did not expect any 
 variety of expression; and probably they got along as 
 well without it as we do at a puppet-show. 
 
 There is another likeness between Attic tragedy and 
 Punch and Judy; there is a limitation in the number 
 of characters we are allowed to see at the same time. 
 
 279
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 As the hidden performer who operates all the figures 
 has only two hands, he can bring before us at any one 
 moment only Mr. Punch and one other of the several 
 characters. The fingers of the right hand animate 
 Mr. Punch, and the fingers of the left hand animate 
 in turn Mrs. Judy and the negro and the clown. At 
 Athens (for reasons which need not here be discussed) 
 the dramatist had the use of only three actors, even 
 tho these might each of them "double" and appear 
 as two or more of the successive characters of the play. 
 So it was that there were never more than three per- 
 sons taking part in any given episode of an Attic trag- 
 edy as there are never more than two persons taking 
 part in any given episode of Punch and Judy. In 
 the thumb-and-finger plays devised in Paris by M. 
 Lemercier de Neuville, he felt so severely the incon- 
 venience of his limitation to two characters that he 
 devised a kind of spiral-spring arrangement inside 
 the costumes of his little figures to hold up their 
 heads; and he prepared invisible supports jutting out 
 just below the flat ledge which forms the base of the 
 proscenium. Thus he was enabled to leave the figure 
 in sight, while he withdrew his hand to animate an- 
 other character. His Pupazzi, as he called them, were 
 clever caricatures of contemporary celebrities; and he 
 was ingenious enough sometimes to maneuver half a 
 dozen of them at once with his single pah- of hands, 
 four adjusted into the projecting rests, and two on his 
 fingers. 
 
 In the sumptuous puppet-show in the gardens of the 
 
 280
 
 PUNCH AND JUDY 
 
 Tuileries the same result is achieved by the employ- 
 ment of two or three manipulators, so that four or 
 even six figures may appear at once. This has greatly 
 enlarged the scope of the performance; and the man- 
 ager of this theater has very ambitious aims. He likes 
 to rearrange for his juvenile audience the most appro- 
 priate of the pieces which have won favor in the real 
 theaters, and to present these with all sorts of spec- 
 tacular adornments. He has even ventured to give 
 plays as elaborate as ' Around the World in Eighty 
 Days.' But it may be doubted whether this vaulting 
 ambition has not overleaped itself, and whether a 
 puppet-show does not gain rather than lose by re- 
 stricting its efforts within narrower limits. After all, 
 nothing so delights us at a puppet-show as the feats 
 which are most characteristic and least difficult of 
 accomplishment. We joy to behold one tiny figure 
 belaboring another with his solid club or to follow the 
 vicissitudes of a bout at single-stick, when both com- 
 batants thwack lustily at each other's wooden heads. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Yet this mention of M. Lemercier de Neuville's 
 Pupazzi, with their varied repertory of Aristophanic 
 commentaries on current events, and this memory of 
 the spectacular efforts exhibited in the gardens of the 
 Tuileries, suggest a possible explanation for the fact 
 that Punch and Judy have failed to find wide-spread 
 favor here in America and that they seem to be losing 
 
 281
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 their pristine popularity in England. There is a pitia- 
 ble monotony of program in all English-speaking 
 puppet-shows. They confine their repertory to the 
 single play which sets forth the deeds and misdeeds of 
 Mr. Punch. Now, in the Continent of Europe there 
 is no such monotony. Not only in the gardens of the 
 Tuileries but in the Champs-Elyse*es a young spec- 
 tator can sit thru performance after performance with- 
 out fear of having to witness the same piece. Punch 
 appears in only one drama, whereas his French rival, 
 Guignol, in his time plays many parts, with a host of 
 other characters to be his associates, some in one 
 piece and some in another. And the several plays 
 are adorned with a variety of scenery. Of course, there 
 cannot be a very wide range of subject; and always is 
 the stick a prominent feature in the miniature drama. 
 There are a certain number of traditional Guignol 
 pieces, handed down from generation to generation. 
 Some of these have been printed for the use of devoted 
 students of the drama, and some are to be had in little 
 pamphlets for the benefit of the happy French chil- 
 dren who may have had a puppet theater with its dozen 
 or more figures presented to them as a New Year's 
 gift. There is in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia 
 University the manuscript of half a dozen of these little 
 plays, written out (in all the license of his own simpli- 
 fied spelling) by the incomparable performer who was 
 in charge of the leading Guignol in the Champs-Elys6es 
 in 1867. 
 
 It is rather curious that the English puppet-show 
 
 282
 
 PUNCH AND JUDY 
 
 should have confined itself for now nearly a hundred 
 years to the unique Punch and Judy, when the puppet- 
 shows of other countries have a changing repertory. 
 It was a puppet performance of a German perversion 
 of Marlowe's 'Doctor Faustus' which first introduced 
 Goethe to the Faust legend. George Sand, unlike the 
 great German poet in most ways, was yet like him 
 in her delight in the puppet-show. In her country 
 place at Nohant, she had a tiny theater of her own 
 for which she dressed all the puppets, while her son 
 Maurice carved the heads, painted the scenery, devised 
 the plays, and improvised the dialog. Maurice Sand 
 it was, sometimes alone, but occasionally with the aid 
 of a friend, who manipulated the little figures and be- 
 stowed upon them a momentary vitality. His mother 
 persuaded him to write out a dozen of the more suc- 
 cessful of his little plays for puppets and to publish 
 them; and this volume, the 'The'atre des Marionnettes 
 a Nohant/ appeared in 1876. George Sand herself 
 wrote a delightful account of the humble beginnings 
 of this famous puppet-show, and described how there 
 came in time to be all sorts of ingenious improvements 
 for achieving spectacular effects. 
 
 She declared that the puppet-show is not what it 
 is vainly thought, because it demands an art of a 
 special kind, not only in the construction of the little 
 figures themselves, but more especially in the story 
 which these little figures are to interpret. She held 
 that the particular field of the puppet playwright- 
 performer was to be found in the dramatization of 
 
 283
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 protracted fantastic romances, abounding in comic 
 characters and in comic episodes and gratifying the 
 fundamental human liking for long-drawn tales of 
 adventure and for fantastic fairy-stories. She found 
 in her son's acted narratives a rest from reality, a re- 
 lease from the oppression of every-day life, an excur- 
 sion into a realm of fancy and of legend even if the 
 legend was itself a fanciful invention of the improvis- 
 ing performer. And she declared that she liked the 
 puppet playhouse in her own home, because it was a 
 domestic and fireside pleasure, which could be enjoyed 
 without the exertion imposed by a visit to a real 
 theater. Obviously she found as much delight in 
 being a spectator after having been a costumer as 
 her son did in being the author and operator of the 
 spectacle. 
 
 IV 
 
 There is one note to be made upon George Sand's 
 account of the slow development of the puppet-show 
 at Nohant, beginning as early as 1847. If you will 
 look at any set of Punch and Judy figures hung up 
 to-day in the toy store to tempt the eye of Young 
 America, you will discover alongside Mr. Punch and 
 Mrs. Judy, Jack Ketch and the Devil, a strange green 
 figure with huge jaws and double rows of white teeth. 
 This verdant beast has a body like all other Punch and 
 Judy figures, a loose cloth funnel to slip over the sleeve 
 of the operator; but its head suggests the head of an 
 
 284
 
 PUNCH AND JUDY 
 
 alligator, or of a crocodile, or of a dragon. Now, if 
 you will turn to the classic text of the English play of 
 Punch and Judy, edited with a learned introduction 
 and an abundance of scholarly annotation by John 
 Payne Collier at least, so it is believed, altho the 
 rare little book is anonymous you will find no men- 
 tion of any strange beast of this sort. Collier's text 
 of the play is adorned by two dozen illustrations, 
 etched by George Cruikshank, and in no one of these 
 plates will you discover any crocodile, or alligator, or 
 dragon. You will find Toby, the dog, who still sur- 
 vives in most of the few shows to be seen to-day in 
 the streets of London; and you will find Hector, the 
 gallant steed that Mr. Punch mounts with difficulty 
 and it is sad to have to record that Hector is no longer 
 in the service of Mr. Punch. In fact, one devoted ad- 
 mirer of puppet-shows, whose memory goes back 
 nearly fifty years, is ready to declare that he has never 
 laid eyes on Hector except in Cruikshank's illustra- 
 tions. But Mr. Punch, deprived of the privilege of 
 bestriding Hector, now enjoys the fiercer delight of 
 overcoming the green-eyed alligator. 
 
 Here we have a question of profound historic inter- 
 est. Whence came the strange beast with the wide 
 jaws ? And here is where George Sand's pleasant paper 
 is a very present help in time of need. She tells us 
 that her son besought her to make a green monster 
 for one of the earliest pieces he devised for her puppet- 
 figures. She did as she was bid, and she sacrificed a 
 pair of blue velvet slippers to provide the marvelous 
 
 285
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 creature with his gently smiling jaws. She draws at- 
 tention to the fact that the slippers were blue, and to 
 the further fact that nevertheless the strange beast 
 was always called the Green Monster. And here may 
 be the explanation of the historic mystery. The fame 
 of the puppets of Nohant was borne abroad; they 
 were talked about all thru France; and they were 
 discussed again and again in the Parisian newspapers. 
 What more likely than that one of the professional 
 puppet players should have seen the infinite possibili- 
 ties of the Green Monster, and should have perceived 
 its novel fascination for children? Thereupon he 
 borrowed it for his own performances. Certainly it is 
 that the Green Monster is a character in at least one 
 of the manuscript plays preserved in the Dramatic 
 Museum of Columbia University, and written out 
 half a century ago. Probably the Green Monster 
 strayed from the puppet-show of the Champs-Elyse'es 
 sooner or later to one of the toy stores of Paris at the 
 request of some boy who desired it for his own. When 
 the Green Monster had elected domicile in the stores 
 of Paris, he was soon appropriated by the toy-makers 
 of Germany for export to Great Britain and the United 
 States. 
 (1912.) 
 
 286
 
 XVII 
 THE PUPPET-PLAY, PAST AND PRESENT
 
 THE PUPPET-PLAY, PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 IN her charming and instructive account of the inge- 
 nious puppet-shows with which her son Maurice used 
 to amuse himself and her guests at Nohant half a cen- 
 tury ago, George Sand records the fact that the erudite 
 scholar, Magnan, who wrote a learned history of the 
 puppet-show from the remotest antiquity, did not dis- 
 criminate sharply between the two entirely different 
 kinds of little figures, both of which are carelessly called 
 puppets in English, and marionettes in French. One 
 class comprises these empty and flexible figures which 
 are animated by the thumb and two fingers of the per- 
 former who exhibits them by holding his hands above 
 his head, as in the 'Punch and Judy' show. The other 
 contains the larger dolls, suspended on wires (which 
 are supposed to be invisible) and manipulated by one 
 or more performers overhead, who give life to these 
 figures by jerking the various strings as the action of 
 the play may require. These last are the true marion- 
 ettes; and for the first we have, unfortunately, no dis- 
 tinctive name. It is greatly to be regretted that the 
 two very different types of puppets are not set apart 
 from each other satisfactorily by the contributor of 
 the article on marionettes in the latest edition of the 
 'Encyclopedia Britannica.' 
 
 289
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 Each of these two sorts of puppets has an interest 
 of its own; and each of them has its special and peculiar 
 relation to the drama. Both of them have a long and 
 honorable history, and can be traced back in the scanty 
 records of a remote antiquity; altho it seems more 
 likely that the true marionette the little figure moved 
 by wires from overhead is the older of the two, 
 antedating by many centuries the Punch and Judy fig- 
 ure, which owes its abrupt and awkward movements 
 to the human thumb and fingers. Both classes are 
 to be found to-day all over the world, not only in the 
 cities of civilization, but in unsuspected nooks and 
 corners on all the shores of all the seven seas. In 
 Turkey, for example, under the name of Karaguez, 
 there is a Punch and Judy of enormous popularity and 
 of doubtful decency, while in Siam there are marion- 
 ettes which perform religious plays of traditional ap- 
 peal. Apparently the puppet-show of one type or the 
 other satisfies in its fashion that dramatic instinct 
 which every people possesses in greater or less intensity. 
 
 Both kinds of puppet-show flourish in France, and 
 have there been lifted to a more elevated plane of art; 
 and both kinds retain their popularity in Italy, altho 
 in an humbler form. The French are inveterate art- 
 ists; and they are like the Greeks in desiring to do all 
 things decently and in order. The Italians have, per- 
 haps, a stronger native gift for the drama and they 
 are ready to enjoy a simpler and more primitive puppet- 
 play. It is from Italy that we who speak English 
 have derived our Punch and Judy. Mr. Punch is a 
 
 290
 
 ex 
 ex 
 
 a 
 
 CS 
 
 J4
 
 THE PUPPET-PLAY 
 
 direct descendant of that favorite figure of robust 
 Neapolitan farce, Pulcinella; and so is the French Poli- 
 chinelle. And in Italy to-day the true marionettes 
 have an even broader popularity than the Punch and 
 Judy figures. The Italians who have lately flocked to 
 America in their thousands, until New York now con- 
 tains more of them than Venice, have imported in the 
 original package the legendary puppet-show setting 
 forth the romantic stories of the Middle Ages and of 
 the early Renascence. We look upon Mr. Punch as 
 comic; but the Italians take their pleasure seriously 
 and the marionettes in their puppet-shows to be seen 
 in New York are truly heroic, and not infrequently 
 highly tragic. 
 
 In the interesting discussion of 'Medieval Story/ in 
 which Professor W. W. Lawrence of Columbia Univer- 
 sity has traced the influence of various ideals of the 
 Middle Ages upon our modern social organization, he 
 has a striking description of the marionette perform- 
 ances which the exiles of Italy have brought with them 
 to America. "Any one who walks thru the Italian 
 quarter of New York City in the evening may notice 
 over a doorway an illuminated sign, 'Theater of Mar- 
 ionettes.' If his curiosity tempts him inside, into the 
 low room crowded with enthusiastic spectators, he will 
 see, on a rude stage, a group of puppets almost as large 
 as life, representing knights and ladies, acting out a 
 little drama in response to the jerking of strings fast- 
 ened to then* arms, and of iron rods firmly fixed in 
 their heads. The warriors are gorgeously attired in 
 
 291
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 shining armor and plumed helmets; and the ladies 
 have wonderful costumes of bright colors, with a great 
 deal of embroidery and decoration. An Italian in 
 shirt-sleeves in the wings at the side of the stage 
 speaks their lines for them, with all the elocutionary 
 flourishes which he can command. Fiercely immobile 
 as to expression, but most active as to arms and legs, 
 these manikins march about, soliloquize, make love, 
 and debate in council. But it is their battles which 
 arouse the greatest enthusiasm among the audience; 
 and, indeed, these are fought in a way that is a joy to 
 see. Then it is that heroic deeds are done tin swords 
 resound upon tin armor, helmets are battered about 
 and knocked off, dust rises from the field, the valiant 
 dead fall in staring heaps. At such moments the spec- 
 tators can hardly restrain themselves from emotion, 
 yet the story is well known to them perhaps some 
 one sitting near by will volunteer to explain it, assert- 
 ing that he has known it ever since he was a boy and 
 that he has read it all in a book which he has at home, 
 called 'Reali di Franci.' It is a version of the old tale 
 of Charlemagne and his knights, which, after traveling 
 far from its native home in France, was taken up by 
 the Italian people many centuries ago, and made so 
 much their own that few heroes have been closer to 
 their hearts than Roland, or as they call him, Orlando. 
 Even in their homes in the New World they still cele- 
 brate him, so that the very newsboys in the streets of 
 modern America are keeping alive the heroic tradi- 
 tions of the age of Charlemagne." 
 
 292
 
 A Sicilian marionette show 
 From "By Italian Seas," by Ernest C. Peixotto
 
 THE PUPPET-PLAY 
 
 II 
 
 When we compare the account which Professor Law- 
 rence has here given of the Italian puppet-shows in 
 New York with the description of these same perform- 
 ances in their native land half a century ago, which we 
 findjn the 'Roba di Roma' of W. W. Story, the Ameri- 
 can sculptor-poet, we perceive that there has been 
 little modification of method in the past threescore 
 years. Story studied all sides of the Roman populace, 
 and he maintained that nothing was more character- 
 istically Italian than the marionette theater. He tells 
 us that the love for the acting of burattini [or puppets] 
 is universal among the lower classes thruout Italy, 
 and in some cities, especially in Genoa, no pains are 
 spared "in their costume, construction, and movement 
 to render them lifelike. They are made of wood, gen- 
 erally from two to three feet hi height, with very large 
 heads, and supernatural glaring eyes that never wink, 
 and are clad in all the splendor of tinsel, velvet, and 
 steel. Their joints are so flexible that the least weight 
 or strain upon them effects a dislocation, and they are 
 moved by wires attached to their heads and extremi- 
 ties. The largest are only about half the height of a 
 man, yet as the stage and all the appointments and 
 scenery are upon the same scale of proportion, the eye 
 is soon deceived, and accepts them as of life-size. But 
 if by accident a hand or arm of one of the wire-pullers 
 appears from behind the scenes or descends below the 
 
 293
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 hangings, it startles you by its portentous size; and 
 the audience hi the stage-boxes instead of reducing 
 the burattini to Lilliputians by contrast, as they lean 
 forward, become themselves Brobdingnagians, with 
 elephantine hands and heads." 
 
 Story insisted that there is nothing ludicrous to an 
 Italian audience in the performances of these diminutive 
 men and women. On the contrary, nothing is more 
 serious both to the spectators and to the unforeseen 
 operators. In fact, he declared, no human being could 
 be so serious as these tiny performers. "Their coun- 
 tenances are as solemn as death, and more unchanging 
 than the face of a clock. Their terrible gravity when, 
 with drooping heads and collapsed arms, they fix on 
 you their great goggle-eyes is at times ghastly. The 
 plays they perform are mostly heroic, romantic, and 
 historical. They stoop to nothing which is not start- 
 ling in incident, imposing hi style, and grandiose in 
 movement. And the Italian audience listens with a 
 grave and profound interest, as tho the performers were 
 not mere puppets, but actually the heroes they are sup- 
 posed to be. The inflated and extravagant discourse 
 of the characters is accepted at its face value; to the 
 spectators it is grand and noble. And the foreign vis- 
 itor must control any desire he may feel to smile at the 
 extraordinary spectacle he is witnessing, and at the 
 marvelous rodomontade he is hearing. To laugh out 
 loud at one of these heroic puppet-plays would be as 
 indecorous as to indulge in laughter during a church 
 
 service." 
 
 294
 
 THE PUPPET-PLAY 
 
 Incidental to the heroic dramas which the puppets 
 play are interludes of ballet-dancing like those which 
 are intercalated, more or less adroitly, into the grand 
 opera performed by full-grown men and women. The 
 Italians are born pantomimists, and they are accom- 
 plished dancers. Therefore, there is no reason for sur- 
 prise that human pantomime and human dancing are 
 imitated in the marionette theaters. There is reason 
 for surprise, however, that Story did not perceive 
 clearly the advantages possessed by the dancing pup- 
 pets over the dancers of more solid flesh and blood. 
 He found something comic in the pantomime of the 
 puppets, "whose every motion is effected by wires, who 
 imitate the gestures of despair with hands that can- 
 not shut, and, with a wooden gravity of countenance, 
 throw their bodies into terrible contortions to make 
 up for the lack of expression in the face." In mere 
 pantomime it is probable that the puppets would labor 
 under a serious disability, for if a performer cannot use 
 his voice, he needs facial expression to assist the ges- 
 tures by which only can he then convey his meaning 
 to the other performers and to the spectators.,, Per- 
 haps it is not too much to assert that the puppet-show 
 is not the proper place for pantomime. 
 
 Ill 
 
 We need not wonder that Story admitted their danc- 
 ing to be superior to their pantomime. Yet he failed 
 to appreciate the true cause of this superiority, and he 
 
 295
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 was inclined to comment upon the dancing of the 
 burattini in a somewhat satiric fashion. He tells us 
 how the principal dancer suddenly appears, "knocks 
 her wooden knees together, and jerking her head 
 about, salutes the audience with a smile quite as 
 artificial as we could see in the best trained of her 
 fleshly rivals." But this artificial smile must have 
 been fixed and permanent on the features of this dimin- 
 utive dancer or else the Roman-American essayist 
 merely imagined its presence. "Then, with a masterly 
 ease, after describing air-cirlces with her toes far higher 
 than her head and poising herself in impossible posi- 
 tions, she bounds or rather flies forward with super- 
 human lightness, performs feats of choreography to 
 awaken envy in Cerito and drive Elssler to despair, 
 and, poising on her pointed toe that disdains to touch 
 the floor, turns never-ending pirouettes on nothing at 
 all, till at last, throwing both her wooden hands for- 
 ward, she suddenly comes to a swift stop to receive 
 your applause." 
 
 This description is unsympathetic, and it induces 
 the surmise that the operator of the burattini at the 
 performance described was not a master of his art and 
 did not know how to profit by the possibilities of that 
 art. Yet one of Story's phrases serves to explain why 
 the suspended puppet is superbly qualified to excel in 
 ballet-dancing; that phrase is the one which credits 
 the dancing doll with "supernatural lightness." A 
 skilful operator of the wires which bestow life and 
 movement and grace, is able to imitate easily and ex- 
 
 296
 
 PQ
 
 THE PUPPET-PLAY 
 
 quisitely the most difficult feats of the human dancer. 
 If he is sufficiently adroit he robs his suspended fig- 
 ure of all awkwardness, and he dowers her with a float- 
 ing ethereality surpassing that attainable by any living 
 performer. Now, this floating ethereality is precisely 
 the quality which gives us most pleasure when we 
 are spectators at the performance of a really fine 
 ballet. It is the supreme art of the great dancer to 
 soar lightly aloft, seeming to spurn the stage and to 
 abide in the air. Only very rarely is this illusion pos- 
 sible to the merely human dancer; and when achieved 
 it is but fleeting. Yet this illusion is absolutely within 
 the control of the manipulator of the puppet-dancers. 
 He can make them execute feats of levitation, achieva- 
 ble only by the most marvelously gifted and by the 
 most arduously trained of human dancers. 
 
 Of course, the skilful performer must carefully avoid 
 swinging his tiny figures aimlessly thru the air. He 
 must limit the feats that he permits them to accom- 
 plish to those which can be actually accomplished by 
 human beings, altho he can do easily what the human 
 beings can achieve only with more or less obvious 
 effort, and he can impart a volatile elasticity a little 
 beyond the power of any human being however fav- 
 ored by Terpsichore. When 'Salome' was, for a 
 season, the sensation of the hour, it was produced by 
 Holden's marionettes; and it afforded a delightful 
 spectacle long to be remembered by all who had the 
 felicity of beholding it. Whatever of vulgarity or of 
 grossness there might be in the play itself, or in the 
 
 297
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 Dance of the Seven Veils, was purged away by the single 
 fact that all the performers were puppets. So dex- 
 terous was the manipulation of the unseen operator who 
 controlled the wires and strings which gave life to the 
 seductive Salome as she circled around the stage in 
 most bewitching* fashion, and so precise and accurate 
 was the imitation of a human dancer, that the recep- 
 tive spectator could not but feel that here at last the 
 play of doubtful propriety had found its only fit 
 stage and its only proper performer. The memory of 
 that exhibition is a perennial pleasure to all who pos- 
 sess it. A thing of beauty it was; and it abides in 
 remembrance as a joy forever. It revealed the art of 
 the puppet-show at its summit. And the art itself 
 was eternally justified by that one performance of the 
 highest technical skill and of the utmost delicacy of 
 taste. 
 
 If the most marvelous exploits of terpsichorean art, 
 almost inexecutable by the human toes and the human 
 legs of living dancers, are capable of reproduction by 
 puppets skilfully manipulated by the puller of the 
 wires and strings whereby the little figures are sus- 
 pended, so also are the dexterous feats of the juggler. 
 One of the specialties of the sole surviving puppet- 
 show of this sort in the Champs-Elyse"es is the per- 
 formance of a juggler who tosses aloft and catches in 
 turn a number of glittering balls. The delicate bal- 
 ancing of the tight-rope walker, with her frequent 
 pirouettes on her toes, and with her surprising summer- 
 sets, is also one of the exhibitions in which the puppet 
 
 298
 
 THE PUPPET-PLAY 
 
 can defy the rivalry of any living executant, however 
 skilful in the art. At the circus we feel that the tight- 
 rope dancer might fall, whereas at the puppet-show we 
 know with certainty that any fatal mishap is impossi- 
 ble. In Holden's marionette program the miniature 
 mimicry of humanity was carried to the utmost edge 
 of the possible; and no item on his bill of fare was more 
 delectable than the series of scenes in which the tra- 
 ditional Clown and Pantaloon played tricks on the 
 traditional Policeman, and in which they joined forces 
 in belaboring an inoffensive donkey. As the unfor- 
 tunate quadruped was also a puppet, there was no 
 painful strain on our sympathy. 
 
 IV 
 
 If a performance by puppets deprived ' Salome ' of its 
 vulgar grossness by removing it outside the arena of 
 humanity, so to speak, and by relegating it to an un- 
 real world beyond the strict diocese of the conscience, 
 so a performance by puppets of a passion-play or of 
 any other drama in which the Deity has perforce to 
 appear as a character, is thereby relieved of any tinc- 
 ture of irreverence. We no longer see a divine being 
 interpreted by a human being. We cannot help feel- 
 ing that all the persons in the play, whether they dwell 
 in heaven or on earth, are equally remote from our 
 common humanity. And therefore we need not be 
 surprised when we discover that the marionette has 
 long been allowed to appear in religious drama. In- 
 
 299
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 deed, it appears probable that the very name marion- 
 ette is directly derived from the name of the Virgin. 
 
 Very early in the history of the Christian Church 
 were the puppets permitted to perform passion-plays 
 and little dramas derived from the stories contained 
 both hi the New and the Old Testaments. In England 
 under Elizabeth and James religious puppet-shows of 
 this kind went wandering about the kingdom, taking 
 into the smallest villages an entertainment which would 
 afford to the rural inhabitants the same kind of pleasant 
 instruction which the dwellers in the larger towns had 
 in the more elaborate and long-drawn mysteries per- 
 formed by the trade-guilds on the Corpus Christi day. 
 That masterly rogue Autolycus in the 'Winter's Tale' 
 tells us that in his time he had been on the road with 
 "a motion of the Prodigal Son" and a motion was the 
 Elizabethan term for a marionette-exhibition. In like 
 manner one of the characters in Ben Jonson's 'Every 
 Man out of His Humor' speaks of "a new motion of 
 the city of Nineveh, with Jonas and the whale." Of 
 course, the puppet performers, like the grown-up actors, 
 did not long confine themselves to sacred themes; they 
 ventured also into contemporary history. A puppet 
 showman who appears in Ben Jonson's 'Bartholomew 
 Fair' tells us that a certain motion setting forth the 
 mysterious Gunpowder Plot, was " a get-penny." 
 
 Story described one puppet-play which he saw in a 
 little village on the main road from Rome to Naples, 
 and which had for its central figure Judas Iscariot. 
 But here again his attitude is unsympathetic, perhaps 
 
 300
 
 A Neapolitan Punchinella 
 From "By Italian Sas," by Ernest C. Pelxotto
 
 THE PUPPET-PLAY 
 
 because the performance was clumsy. "The kiss of 
 Judas, when, after sliding along the stage, he suddenly 
 turned with a sidelong jerk and rapped the other 
 wooden puppet's head with his own, as well as the sub- 
 sequent scene in which he goes out and hangs himself, 
 beggar description." Yet the expatriated American 
 spectator honestly recorded that the Italian spectators 
 "looked and listened with great gravity, seemed to be 
 highly edified, and certainly showed no signs of seeing 
 anything ludicrous in the performance." We may 
 venture the suggestion that even the sophisticated 
 sculptor-poet himself would have seen nothing ludi- 
 crous in this performance if the operator of Judas had 
 been as skilful as the operator of Salome in Holden's 
 marionettes. 
 
 A few years ago in Paris one of the younger poets 
 wrote a passion-play which was performed during Lent 
 by a company of dolls, designed and dressed in fit and 
 appropriate costumes by an artist friend familiar with 
 the manners and customs of the Holy Land. While 
 the wires were managed by expert hands, the words of 
 the dialog were spoken by the poet himself, and by 
 two or three other poets who came to his aid. This 
 must have been a seemly spectacle, and it won careful 
 consideration from more than one of the most eminent 
 dramatic critics of France. Here we may find a use- 
 ful suggestion for those who wish to see certain plays 
 by modem dramatic poets, in which the Deity is a 
 necessary character Rostand's 'Samaritaine,' for one, 
 and Hauptmann's 'Hannele,' for another. Many of 
 
 301
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 the devout have a natural repugnance to any perform- 
 ance on the stage (with its materialistic environment 
 and its often sordid conditions) which calls for the 
 impersonation of a divine being by an actor of ordinary 
 flesh and blood. Yet if these same plays were rever- 
 ently performed by marionettes the aroma of irrever- 
 ence would be removed. It might even be possible to 
 reproduce in the puppet-show not a little of the solemn 
 religious effect which is felt by all visitors to the passion- 
 play at Oberammergau. 
 
 (1912.) 
 
 302
 
 XVIII 
 
 SHADOW-PANTOMIME WITH ALL THE 
 MODERN IMPROVEMENTS
 
 SHADOW-PANTOMIME WITH ALL THE MODERN 
 IMPROVEMENTS 
 
 AN American ; improving on a suggestion of a French- 
 man, has declared that "language was given to man to 
 conceal his thoughts and to woman to express her 
 emotions." Unfortunately, language is so often in- 
 exact that even when it is sufficient to express emo- 
 tion, it is not precise enough even to conceal thought. 
 Sometimes a term is wholly devoid of truth, as when 
 we call a certain solid a "lead-pencil," which contains 
 no lead, and when we label a certain liquid "soda- 
 water," which contains no soda. Sometimes the term 
 is so vague that it may mean all things to all men. 
 Who, for example, would be bold enough to insist on 
 his own definition of "romanticism"? Sometimes 
 again the term covers two or three things which de- 
 mand a sharper differentiation. This is the case with 
 the compound word "shadow-pantomime." It is the 
 only name for three distinct things. 
 
 First, there is the representation by the dark pro- 
 file of the human hand upon a wall or a screen, of 
 human heads, and of animal figures, either by an adroit 
 arrangement of the fingers alone, or by the aid of ad- 
 justed shapes of cardboard, so as to suggest a hat on 
 
 305
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 the head and a pipe in the mouth and other needed 
 accessories; this primitive entertainment is sometimes 
 styled "shadowgraphy." 
 
 Second, there is the full-sized silhouette of a human 
 figure, due to the shadow cast by the body standing 
 before a lamp, and magnified or diminished as it ap- 
 proaches or recedes the spectators. This is the familiar 
 parlor amusement which Sir James Barrie cleverly 
 utilized with dramatic effect in the final act of his 
 'Professor's Love-Story/ when one of the characters, 
 standing outside a house, sees the black profiles of 
 other characters projected clearly on the drawn shade 
 of the window before which he is placed. 
 
 Then, thirdly, there is the true shadow-pantomime, 
 called by the French "Chinese shadows," ombres chi- 
 noises, in which the tiny figures, made either of flat card- 
 board or of metal, are exhibited behind a translucent 
 screen and before a strong light. This is by far the 
 most interesting and the most important of the three 
 widely different kinds of semi-dramatic entertainment, 
 often carelessly confounded together even in the special 
 treatises devoted to this humble art. In France these 
 Chinese shadows have been popular for more than 
 a hundred years, since it was in the eighteenth century 
 that the performer who took the name of S6raphin 
 established his little theater and won the favor of the 
 younger members of the royal family by his presenta- 
 tion of the alluring spectacle, the rudimentary little 
 piece, still popular with children, and still known by 
 its original title, the 'Broken Bridge.' 
 
 306
 
 SHADOW-PANTOMIME 
 
 It may not be fanciful to infer that the immediate 
 suggestion for this spectacle was derived from the 
 contemporary vogue of the silhouette itself, this por- 
 trait in solid black taking its name from the Frenchman 
 who was minister of finance in 1759. At all events, it 
 was in 1770 that Se*raphin began to amuse the children 
 of Paris; and it was more than a century thereafter 
 that M. Lemercier de Neuville elaborated his ingeni- 
 ously articulated Pupazzi noirs. It was a little later 
 still that Caran d'Ache delighted the more sophisticated 
 children of a larger growth, who were wont to assemble 
 at the Chat Noir, with the striking series of military 
 silhouettes resuscitating the mighty Napoleonic epic. 
 And it was at the Chat Noir again that Riviere re- 
 vealed the further possibilities latent in shadow-pan- 
 tomime, and to be developed by the aid of colored 
 backgrounds supplied by a magic lantern. Restricted 
 as the sphere of the shadow-pantomime necessarily 
 is, the native artistic impulse of the French has been 
 rarely better disclosed than by their surprising elabora- 
 tion of a form of amusement, seemingly fitted only to 
 charm the infant mind, into an entertainment satis- 
 factory to the richly developed esthetic sense of mature 
 Parisian playgoers. Just as the rustic revels of remote 
 villagers contained the germ out of which the Greeks 
 were able to develop their austere and elevating trag- 
 edy, and just as the modern drama was evolved in the 
 course of centuries out of the medieval mysteries, one 
 source of which we may discover in the infant Christ 
 in the cradle still displayed at Christmastide in Chris- 
 
 307
 
 tian churches thruout the world, so the simple Chinese 
 shadows of Se"raphin supplied the root on which Parisian 
 artists were able to graft their ingenious improvements. 
 The little spectacle proffered originally by SeYaphin 
 was frankly infantile in its appeal, and the 'Broken 
 Bridge' is as plainly adjusted to the simple likings of 
 the child as is the lamentable tragedy of Punch and 
 Judy or the puppet-show in which Polichinelle exhibits 
 his hump and his terpsichorean agility. The two arms 
 of the broken bridge arch over a little stream but fail 
 to meet in the center. A flock of ducks crosses leisurely 
 from one bank to the other. A laborer appears on the 
 left-hand fragment of the bridge and begins to swing 
 his pick to loosen stones at the end, and these fragments 
 are then seen to fall into the water. The figure of the 
 workman is articulated, or at least one arm is on a 
 separate piece and moves on a pivot so that a hidden 
 string can raise the pick and let it fall. The laborer 
 sings at his work; and in France he indulges in the tra- 
 ditional lyric about the Bridge of Avignon, where every- 
 body dances in a circle. Then a traveler appears on 
 the right-hand end of the bridge. He hails the laborer, 
 who is hard of hearing at first, but who finally asks 
 him what he wants. The traveler explains that he 
 wishes to cross and asks how he can do this. The 
 laborer keeps on picking away, and sings that "the 
 ducks and the geese they all swim over." The irri- 
 tated traveler then asks how far it is across, and the 
 laborer again sings, this time to the effect that "when 
 you're in the middle you're half-way over." Then 
 
 308
 
 The broken bridge 
 
 Reproduced by permission of Hachette & Co., Paris 
 Plan showing the construction of a shadow-picture theater 
 
 A Hungarian dancer. This explains the 
 mechanism of the shadow picture opposite 
 
 From a shadow picture by Lemercier de Neuville 
 
 A Hungarian dancer
 
 SHADOW-PANTOMIME 
 
 the traveler inquires how deep the stream may be, 
 and he gets the exasperating response in song, that 
 if he will only throw in a stone, he'll soon find the 
 bottom. This dialog bears an obvious resemblance 
 to that traditionally associated with the tune of the 
 'Arkansaw Traveler/ 
 
 Then a boatman appears, rowing his little skiff, his 
 backbone pivoted so that his body can move to and 
 fro. The traveler makes a bargain with him and is 
 taken across, after many misadventures, one of them 
 with a crocodile, which opens its jaws and threatens to 
 engulf the boat this amphibious beast having been 
 a recent addition to the original playlet, and probably 
 borrowed from the Green Monster not long ago added 
 to the group of Punch and Judy figures. And the ex- 
 citing conclusion of this entrancing spectacle displays 
 a most moral application of the principle of poetic 
 justice. The ill-natured laborer advances too far out 
 on his edge of the broken bridge, and detaches a large 
 fragment. As this tumbles into the water he loses 
 his footing and falls forward himself, only to be in- 
 stantly devoured by the crocodile, which disappears 
 with its unexpected prey, whereupon the placid ducks 
 and geese again swim over and the curtain falls. 
 
 II 
 
 There are a score of other little plays like the 'Broken 
 Bridge/ adroitly adjusted to the caliber of the juvenile 
 mind. In a British collection may be found a piece 
 
 309
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 representing a succession of appalling episodes supposed 
 to take place in a 'Haunted House/ and in a French 
 manual for the use of youthful amateurs may be dis- 
 covered a rudimentary version of Molidre's ' Imaginary 
 Invalid/ to be performed by silhouettes with articulated 
 limbs. Here again we perceive the inaccuracy of the 
 term "shadow-pantomime/' since the most of the 
 figures are not articulated, and, being motionless, they 
 are deprived of the freedom of gesture which is the es- 
 sential element of true pantomime. Moreover, they 
 are all made to take part in various dialogs, and this 
 again is a negation of the fundamental principle of 
 pantomime, which ought to be wordless. Here the 
 French term "Chinese shadows" is more exact and 
 less limiting than the English "shadow-pantomime." 
 It is perhaps a pity that the old-fashioned term 
 "gallanty-show," has not won a wider acceptance in 
 English. 
 
 The little pieces due to Se*raphin and his humble 
 followers in France and in England, devised to amuse 
 children only, were simple enough in plot, and yet they 
 were sufficient to suggest to admirers of this unpretend- 
 ing form of theatrical art plays of a more imposing pro- 
 portion. M. Paul Eudel, the art critic, has published 
 an amply illustrated volume in which he collected 
 the fairy-pieces, and the more spectacular melodramas 
 composed by his grandfather in the first quarter of 
 the nineteenth century, hi the dark days that preceded 
 Waterloo. And in the third quarter of the nineteenth 
 century, in the dark days that preceded Sedan, M. 
 
 310
 
 The return from the Bois de Boulogne 
 Four shadow pictures by Caran d'Ache 
 
 The ballet 
 From a shadow picture by Lemercier de Neuville 
 
 Reproduced by permission of Hachette & Co., Paris 
 
 A regiment of French soldiers 
 From a shadow picture by R. de La Neziere
 
 SHADOW-PANTOMIME 
 
 Lemercier de Neuville, relinquishing for a while the 
 Punch and Judy puppets which he called Pupazzi, and 
 which he had exhibited in a succession of gentle carica- 
 tures of Parisian personalities with a mildly Aristo- 
 phanic flavor of contemporary satire, turned to the 
 familiar Chinese shadows of his childhood and devised 
 what he called his Pupazzi noirs, animated shadows. 
 He also has issued a collection of these little pieces 
 with a full explanation of the method of performance 
 and with half a hundred illustrations, revealing all 
 the secrets of maneuvering the little figures. Indeed, 
 Lemercier de Neuville's manual is the most ample 
 which has yet appeared; and it is the most interesting 
 in that he was at once his own playwright, his own 
 designer of figures, and his own performer. 
 
 As the grandfather of M. Eudel had been more am- 
 bitious than Se*raphin, so Lemercier de Neuville was 
 more ambitious than the elder Eudel. And yet his 
 procedure was precisely that of his predecessors, and 
 he did not in any way modify the principles of the art. 
 All he did was to elaborate the performance by the use 
 of more scenery, of more spectacular effects, and of 
 more numerous characters. He introduced a company 
 of Spanish dancers, for example, and he did not hesi- 
 tate to throw on his screen the sable and serrated pro- 
 file of a long line of ballet dancers. He followed Eudel 
 in arranging a procession of animals, rivaling a circus 
 parade, many of them being articulated so that they 
 could make the appropriate movements of their jaws 
 and their paws. And he paid special attention to his 
 
 311
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 silhouette caricatures of contemporary celebrities, Zola 
 for one, and Sarah-Bernhardt for another. 
 
 Then the Franco-Russian draftsman, who called 
 himself Caran d'Ache, made a new departure and 
 started the art of the shadow-pantomime in a new 
 career. He called his figures "French shadows," 
 ombres fran^aises, and he surrendered the privilege of 
 articulating his figures so that they could move. At 
 least, he refrained from this except on rare occasions, 
 preferring the effect of immobility and relying mainly 
 upon a new principle not before employed by any of 
 his predecessors. He made a specialty of long lines 
 and of large masses of troops, not all on the same plane, 
 but presented in perspective. He chose also to forgo 
 the aid of speech and his figures were silent, except 
 when some officer called out a word of command, or 
 when a company of Cossacks rode past singing one of 
 the wailing lyrics of the Caucasus as melancholy as the 
 steppes. 
 
 One of the most attractive items on his program was 
 a representation of the return of vehicles and eques- 
 trians from the Bois de Boulogne in the afternoon. 
 Some of the figures were merely characteristic types 
 sharply seized and outlined with all the artist's mas- 
 terly draftsmanship, and some of them were well-known 
 personages easily recognizable by his Parisian spec- 
 tators Lesseps on horseback, for example, and Roche- 
 fort in an open cab. These successive figures were 
 simply pushed across the screen one after another, 
 each of them as motionless as a statue, the men fixed 
 
 312
 
 SHADOW-PANTOMIME 
 
 in one attitude, and the legs of the horses retaining 
 always the same position. This absence of animal 
 movement was, of course, a violation from the facts 
 of life, like that which permits the painter to depict 
 a breaking wave or a sculptor to model a running boy 
 at a single moment of the movement. Yet this 
 artistic conver aon was immediately acceptable since 
 the spectator received a simplified impression and his 
 attention was not distracted by the inevitable jerki- 
 ness of the limbs of the men and the beasts. 
 
 Caran d' Ache's masterpiece, however and it may 
 honestly be styled a masterpiece was not the ' Return 
 from the Bois de Boulogne' but his 'Epope*e,' his epic 
 evocation of the grand army of Napoleon. Single fig- 
 ures like the Little Corporal on horseback, and like 
 Murat and others of the Emperor's staff, he projected 
 with a fidelity and a veracity of accent worthy of 
 Detaille or even Meissonier. Yet fine as these single 
 figures might be, they were only what had been at- 
 tempted by earlier exponents of the art even if they 
 were more impressive than had been achieved by any 
 one of his predecessors. These single figures were 
 necessarily presented all on the same plane, and the 
 startling and successful innovation of the Franco- 
 Russian draftsmanship was his skilful use of perspec- 
 tive, a device which had not occurred to any of those 
 in whose footsteps he was following, even Lemercier 
 de Neuville having presented his ballet dancers in a 
 flat row. What Caran d'Ache did was to bring before 
 us company after company of the Old Guard, and troop 
 
 313
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 after troop of cuirassiers, their profiles diminishing in 
 height as the figures receded from the eye. He thus 
 attained to an effect of solidity and even of immensity, 
 far beyond anything ever before achieved by any earlier 
 exhibitor of shadows. He succeeded in suggesting 
 space, and of maneuvering before the astonished eyes 
 of the entranced spectators a vast mass of men under 
 arms, marching forward resolutely hi serried ranks to 
 victory or to death. 
 
 The late Jules Lemaitre, the most open-minded of 
 French dramatic critics, and the most hospitable in his 
 attitude toward the minor manifestations of theatric 
 art, has recorded that this Napoleonic epic of Caran 
 d'Ache communicated to him not only an emotion of 
 actual grandeur, but also the thrill of war itself. He 
 declared that "by the exactness of the perspective pre- 
 served in his long files of soldiers, Caran d'Ache gives 
 us the illusion of number and of a number immense and 
 indefinite. And by the automatic movement which 
 sets all his troops in action at once, he gives us the 
 illusion of a single soul, of a communal thought ani- 
 mating innumerable bodies and thereby he evokes 
 in us the impression of measureless power. . . . His 
 silent poem, with its sliding profiles is, I think, the 
 only epic in all French literature." And those who are 
 familiar with the other French efforts to attain to lyric 
 largeness, and who have had also the unforgetable 
 felicity of beholding Caran d' Ache's marvelous pro- 
 jection of the Napoleonic legend, will be prepared to 
 admit that Lemaitre did not overstate the case. 
 
 314
 
 SHADOW-PANTOMIME 
 
 III 
 
 What the Franco-Russian artist had done was to 
 reveal the alluring possibilities placed at the command 
 of the shadow-pantomimist by the ingenious employ- 
 ment of perspective; and there remained only one 
 more step to be taken for the final development of the 
 art to its ultimate capacity. This was the addition of 
 color; and this step was taken by an associate of 
 Caran d'Ache in the exhibitions given at the Chat Noir 
 Henri Riviere. Color could be added in two ways. 
 In the first place, the outlines of lanterns and of battle- 
 flags could be cut out, and slips of appropriately tinted 
 paper could be inserted in the openings so that the 
 light might shine thru. This relieved the monotony 
 of the uniformity of the sable figures, and added a note 
 of amusing gaiety. But this was an innovation of very 
 limited scope; and it could have been earlier utilized 
 in the flat figures of Lemercier de Neuville, for exam- 
 ple, if he had happened to think of it. Far wider in 
 its artistic possibilities was the second of Riviere's im- 
 provements. For the ordinary lamp which cast a 
 steady glow on the white screen whereon the profile 
 figures appeared, he substituted a magic lantern, the 
 painted slides of which enabled him to supply an ap- 
 propriately colored background. Then he went further 
 and employed two magic lanterns, superimposed; and 
 these enabled him to get the effect of "dissolving 
 views" whereby he could vary his background at will. 
 
 315
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 The immediate result of this ingenious improvement 
 was that the artist could bestow upon his shadow- 
 pantomime not a little of the richness of color which 
 delights our eyes in the stained glass of medieval 
 cathedrals. 
 
 Riviere was not only an inventor, he was also an 
 artist, richly gifted with imagination; and his imagina- 
 tion suggested to him at once the three or four themes 
 best fitted for treatment by his novel apparatus. One 
 of these was the 'Wandering Jew'; another was the 
 1 Prodigal Son'; and a third was the 'Temptation of 
 Saint Anthony' all legends of combined dramatic and 
 pictorial appeal. Yet the most effective of all the ex- 
 periments in this new form was due not to Riviere 
 himself but to the collaboration of two of his disciples, 
 M. Fragerolle and M. Vignola. This was the ' Sphinx,' 
 in which the artists most adroitly combined all the ad- 
 vantages of the original flat profiles, and of the long 
 files of figures in perspective such as Caran d'Ache had 
 employed, with varied backgrounds due to the aid of 
 the magic lantern first utilized by Riviere. Of all 
 human monuments no one has had so marvelous a 
 series of spectacles pass before its sightless eyes as the 
 Sphinx, reclining impassive at the edge of the desert, 
 and at the foot of the pyramids. Race after race has 
 descended into the valley of the Nile, and lingered for a 
 little space, a few centuries more or less, and departed 
 at last. Conqueror after conqueror has come and gone 
 again; and the Sphinx has kept its inscrutable smile. 
 
 M. Fragerolle composed the music and the words of 
 
 316
 
 PL, 
 
 r 
 W 
 
 11 
 
 g I 
 
 6 g 
 
 1 
 a 
 
 ~ 
 
 i i P 
 
 g G
 
 SHADOW-PANTOMIME 
 
 the stately chants which accompanied the exhibition 
 of the figures passing before the backgrounds, due to 
 the pencil and the palette of M. Vignola. By the aid 
 of the magic lantern the gigantic visage of the lion 
 with a woman's head towers aloft, permanent and im- 
 mutable, while the joyous procession of Egyptian 
 dancers and soldiers and priests celebrates the com- 
 pletion of the statue itself. Then we are witnesses 
 of the fierce invasion of the Assyrians, with the charge 
 of their chariots and their horsemen; and we behold 
 the rout of the natives while their capital burns in the 
 distance. Next we gaze at the departure of the Jews, 
 led by Moses and laden with the spoils of the Egyp- 
 tians. After the Hebrews have gone, Sesostris appears, 
 to be greeted by a glad outpouring of the populace. 
 Yet soon the Persians descend on Egypt, with their 
 castellated elephants and their immense hordes of 
 fighting men. Still the Sphinx looks down, immova- 
 ble and implacable; and the Greeks in turn take the 
 valley of the Nile for their own. One of their daugh- 
 ters, Cleopatra, floats past in her galley by night; and 
 in the morning she extends her hospitality to the 
 Roman, Caesar or Antony. And while the Latins are 
 the rulers of the land of Egypt, the Virgin and her Son 
 with the patient ass that bears a precious burden, 
 skirt the sandy waste, and go on their way to the Holy 
 Land, leaving the Sphinx behind them as they journey 
 forward in the green moonlight. After long centuries 
 the Arabs break in with their brilliant bands of horse- 
 men, and a little later the Crusaders come to give them 
 
 317
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 battle. More long centuries elapse and suddenly 
 Napoleon emerges at the head of the troops of the 
 French Republic. Then we have the Egypt of to-day, 
 with the British soldiers parading before the feet of 
 the Sphinx; and finally the recumbent statue appears 
 to us once more and for the last time, when the light 
 of the sun is going out, and the world is emptied of its 
 population again, and the ice is settling down on the 
 Sphinx, alone amid freezing desolation. And this last 
 vision is projected by the magic lantern, without the 
 aid of any profile figures, since man has ceased to be. 
 
 Here we have a true epic poem, simple yet grandiose, 
 and possible only to the improved shadow-pantomime 
 of France at the end of the nineteenth century even 
 if this art is only a logical evolution from the gallanty- 
 show of Se"raphin. "This humble black profile," said 
 Jules Lemaitre, "which had been thought fit at best 
 of a few comic effects to amuse little children only, 
 has been diversified and colored; it has been made 
 beautiful, serious, tragic; by the multiplication of the 
 devices it has been rendered capable of giving us a 
 powerful impression of collective life, and the artists 
 who have developed it have known how to make it 
 translate to our eyes the great spectacles of history 
 and the sweeping movement of multitudes." 
 
 (1912.) 
 
 318
 
 -o 2 
 
 I 
 
 **
 
 XIX 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM
 
 THE PROBLEM OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM 
 
 IT is now no longer in dispute that there has been in 
 the past score or two of years a striking revival of the 
 drama in the English language, and that there are 
 to-day British and American playwrights who write 
 plays which are worth while plays which are both 
 actable and readable plays which often deserve and 
 which sometimes even demand serious critical con- 
 sideration. This revival has necessarily resulted in 
 calling attention to the present condition of dramatic 
 criticism in Great Britain and in the United States. 
 In a period of dramatic productivity, dramatic criti- 
 cism has an indisputable function and is charged with 
 an undeniable duty, both to the aspiring play-makers 
 and to the main body of the playgoing public. We 
 cannot help asking ourselves whether our dramatic 
 critics rightly apprehend their function and whether 
 they properly discharge their duty; and to these press- 
 ing questions the most conflicting answers are returned. 
 Some there are who insist that it is hopeless to ex- 
 pect the desired outflowering of dramatic literature in 
 our language to take place so long as our dramatic 
 criticism is as inadequate, as incompetent, and as un- 
 
 321
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 satisfactory as they declare it to be. Others there are 
 who take a more tolerant view, holding the public itself 
 to be at fault for the existing state of things, and who, 
 therefore, believe that we are now getting dramatic 
 criticism quite as good as we deserve. Few there are 
 who venture to deny that there is room for improve- 
 ment altho no two of these agree in their suggestions 
 for bringing about a bettering of present conditions. 
 In the multitude of these counsellors there is darkness 
 and confusion. 
 
 Perhaps there is a dim possibility of dissipating a 
 little of this dark confusion by an analysis of the exact 
 content, which we discover in the term " dramatic criti- 
 cism/' and then by a further inquiry as to whether our 
 customary use of the term is not misleading. "Dra- 
 matic criticism" to most of us connotes the newspaper 
 reviewing of the nightly spectacles in our theaters. 
 Plainly this was the meaning of the term in the mind 
 of Mr. Howells years ago, when he declared that " our 
 dramatic criticism is probably the most remarkable 
 apparatus of our civilization" and that it "surpasses 
 that of other countries as much as our fire-department. 
 A perfectly equipped engine stands in every newspaper 
 office, with the steam always up, which can be manned 
 in nine seconds and rushed to the first theater where 
 there is the slightest danger of drama within five min- 
 utes; and the combined efforts of these tremendous 
 machines can pour a concentrated deluge of cold water 
 upon a play which will put out anything of the kind 
 at once." 
 
 322
 
 DRAMATIC CRITICISM 
 
 There is no denying that this use of the term by Mr. 
 Howells is supported by custom. Yet it is distinctly 
 unfortunate, for if the newspaper comment upon the 
 novelties of the stage is to be accepted as "dramatic 
 criticism," then what term have we left to describe 
 the more piercing and the more comprehensive dis- 
 cussion of the first principles of the art of play-making 
 which we find in Francisque Sarcey and in George 
 Henry Lewes, not to go back to Lessing and to Aris- 
 totle ? It is equally unfortunate that there is an equiva- 
 lent inaccuracy in bestowing the title of "literary criti- 
 cism" upon the newspaper comments upon the current 
 books, for if this journalistic summarizing is to be 
 accepted as "literary criticism," then what are we to 
 call the exquisite evaluation of favorite authors which 
 we find in Matthew Arnold and Sainte-Beuve? 
 
 Of course, it is always idle to protest against the 
 popular use or misuse of words and terms and phrases. 
 The people as a whole own the language, and have a 
 right to make it over and to modify the original mean- 
 ing of words. If popular usage chooses not to distin- 
 guish between two very different things, and to call 
 both of them " dramatic criticism," there is no redress, 
 and yet it is impossible to discuss the problem of dra- 
 matic criticism except by trying to separate the two 
 things thus confounded. Therefore, for the purpose 
 of this inquiry only, and without any hope of changing 
 the accepted usage, I make bold to suggest that "play- 
 reviewing" might be employed to describe the notices 
 written in the office of a newspaper, notices necessarily 
 
 323
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 prepared under pressure and under strict limitations 
 of time and space. 
 
 These newspaper notices are sometimes careless, 
 they are sometimes perfunctory, and they are sometimes 
 cruel; and occasionally they are careful, conscientious, 
 and clever, done with a dexterity worthy of high praise 
 when we consider all the conditions under which it is 
 displayed. But even at its best, play-reviewing can- 
 not attain to the level of true dramatic criticism, more 
 leisurely in its composition, larger in its scope, and more 
 discriminating in its choice of topic. The play-review- 
 ing of the daily journal is akin in aim to the book- 
 reviewing, which has for its purpose the swift considera- 
 tion of the volume in vogue at the moment. In our 
 morning and evening papers the book-reviewing and 
 the play-reviewing are both of them necessarily up-to- 
 date, in fact, up-to-the-last-minute. To be contem- 
 poraneous, instantly and necessarily and inexorably, 
 is their special quality and their immediate purpose; 
 it is the reason for then: existence and the excuse for 
 their being. 
 
 n 
 
 Here it may be well to cite again the oft-quoted con- 
 fession of the late Jules Lemaltre, writer of volume after 
 volume in which he discussed the leading men of let- 
 ters of his own time and of his own country: "Criti- 
 cism of our contemporaries is not criticism it is con- 
 versation." Now, conversation may be a very good 
 
 324
 
 DRAMATIC CRITICISM 
 
 thing; indeed, when it is as clear and as sparkling as 
 was Lemaitre's, it is an excellent thing; yet he was 
 right in admitting that it is not criticism, since it could 
 not but lack the touchstone of time, the perspective of 
 distance, the assured application of the eternal stand- 
 ards. And play-reviewing, like book-reviewing, can- 
 not be anything but conversation about our contem- 
 poraries. It may descend to chaff-like chatter about 
 the writers of the hour and to empty gossip about 
 their sayings and doings; or it may have the sterner 
 merits of brilliant conversation at its best. But it is 
 not really criticism in the finer sense of the word; it 
 cannot be; and one may go further and say that it 
 ought not to be, since true criticism is more or less out 
 of place in a newspaper because the direct object of 
 a newspaper is to present the news, with only the swift- 
 est of commentaries thereon. 
 
 The final distinction between literature and journal- 
 ism is to be sought in their diverging and irreconcilable 
 objects. The desire of the former is for permanence, 
 and the aim of the latter is the immediate impression. 
 When literature triumphs it is for all time more or 
 less. When journalism most completely achieves its 
 purpose its success is temporary, to be retained only 
 by iteration and reiteration, since it has for its target 
 the events of the fleeting moment. If we admit this 
 distinction between journalism and literature, we have 
 no difficulty in discovering journalism in many places 
 other than the daily and weekly papers; very properly 
 it fills the most of the space in the monthly magazines, 
 
 325
 
 and even in the quarterly reviews; and it abounds in 
 our book-stores, since only a small proportion of the 
 volumes which pour from the press every year possess 
 the combined substance and style, the solidity of mat- 
 ter and the delightfulness of manner which lift mere 
 writing up to the loftier level of literature. 
 
 On the other hand, we may find literature of inex- 
 pugnable quality, not only in the magazines, but also 
 now and again in the newspapers. Drake's ' American 
 Flag' and Kipling's 'Recessional' appeared in daily 
 journals, and so did the literary criticism of Sainte- 
 Beuve and the dramatic criticism of Lessing and of 
 Lemaitre. But these were but happy accidents, and 
 the great newspaper editor has rarely striven to make 
 his journal a persistent vehicle for the publication of 
 literature. He feels that this is foreign to his main 
 purpose, and he is content when his editorial articles, 
 and his news stories are vigorous and picturesque 
 clean, clear, and cogent in their English. He knows, 
 better than any one else, that it is not by its external 
 literary merits that newspaper-writing is to be judged. 
 What he wants above all else is the news, all the news, 
 and nothing but the news accompanied, of course, 
 by the obligatory comment this news may deserve. 
 He needs editorial writers, reporters, and correspon- 
 dents who are newspaper men, and not men of letters, 
 except in so far as these men of letters may have ac- 
 cepted the special conditions of newspaper work. 
 
 Now, criticism, whether literary or dramatic, is a 
 department of literature, dealing with the permanent, 
 
 326
 
 DRAMATIC CRITICISM 
 
 and having little to do with the temporary. It de- 
 mands qualifications very rarely united insight, equip- 
 ment, disinterestedness, and sympathy. So far from 
 being easy, criticism is quite as difficult as creation 
 more difficult, indeed, if we may judge by its greater 
 rarity. In a superbly creative period there are some- 
 times three or four distinguished poets, friendly rivals, 
 almost contemporaneous; and even at such a time 
 there is rarely more than one critic worthy to be com- 
 panioned with them. ^Eschylus and Sophocles and 
 Euripides followed one after the other; and hi time the 
 sole Aristotle came forward as their critic. Corneille 
 and Moliere and Racine labored side by side, and only 
 Boileau was competent to interpret and to encourage 
 them. 
 
 When it attains to the serene plane of Aristotle and 
 Boileau, of Lessing and Sainte-Beuve, criticism is 
 actually creation. "The critical faculty as applied to 
 the masterpieces of literature, and still more the critical 
 faculty as applied to the art of literature itself, is akin 
 to the creative faculty of the artist," so Professor Mac- 
 kail has told us. "It does not deal with letters as 
 something detached from life, but as the form or sub- 
 stance in which life is intelligibly presented. Its in- 
 terpretation is also creation." But the criticism of 
 dramatic literature which is also creation, is possible 
 only when the critical faculty is applied to the master- 
 pieces of dramatic literature; and nobody knows 
 better than the play-reviewer that masterpieces of 
 dramatic literature do not present themselves fre- 
 
 327
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 quently and that they cannot be acclaimed as master- 
 pieces until they have stood the test of time. And this 
 is why a critic-creator would be a little out of place 
 on the staff of a newspaper, daily or weekly, whether 
 he was assigned to deal with the drama or with liter- 
 ature at large. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The necessary task of the book-reviewer or of the 
 play-reviewer, is not criticism of the creative kind, 
 since for that he is always likely to lack material. His 
 task is humbler even if it is honorable; it is to report 
 upon the novelties of the day, and to inform the read- 
 ers of the newspaper as to the nature and the merits 
 of these novelties. His work is essentially reporting, 
 even if it is reporting of a special kind, calling for special 
 qualifications. The connection of the drama with the 
 show business is intimate, and it always has been. In 
 the long history of the theater there is no period with- 
 out its successful pieces, the appeal of which was mainly 
 sensuous to the eye and to the ear, rather than to the 
 emotions and to the intellect. While the drama is an 
 art, and perhaps the loftiest of the arts, the show 
 business is a trade. This is no new thing altho 
 ignorant idealists often declare it so to be, and altho 
 it may make itself a little more obvious at one time 
 than at another. What confronts us is the condition 
 of things as they are, not the theory of things as they 
 might be. 
 
 328
 
 DRAMATIC CRITICISM 
 
 There would be occupation for a dramatic critic, 
 who was also a creator, only if our theaters were pre- 
 senting in rapid succession a sequence of masterpieces, 
 tragedies of austere power, comedies of searching satire, 
 social dramas of piercing suggestion. But this is not 
 the case now here in the United States in the twentieth 
 century; and it never has been the case anywhere or 
 anywhen, not even in Weimar when Goethe dominated 
 the ducal theater. In our playhouses we are proffered 
 our choice of Shakspere and Ibsen, Pinero and Haupt- 
 mann, Henry Arthur Jones and Augustus Thomas, 
 Barrie and Gillette, Sardou and George M. Cohan; and 
 at the same time we are invited to choose between 
 'Trilby' and the 'Celebrated Case/ melodramas and 
 farces, summer song-shows and ultra-contemporary 
 reviews, alleged comic operas and terpsichorean spec- 
 tacles. Most of these latter exhibitions do not de- 
 mand or deserve criticism of any kind; but they need 
 to be reported upon like any other item in the news of 
 the day. 
 
 If this is the case, it might as well be recognized 
 frankly. There is always advantage in seeing things 
 as they are, in fronting the facts and in looking them 
 squarely in the face. Sooner or later some one of 
 those who are in charge of our metropolitan newspapers 
 will perceive the possibility of a change of method. 
 He will charge one of his staff with the supervision of 
 the theatrical news, the announcements of new plays, 
 and the personal gossip about the players; and he will 
 authorize this editor to send competent reporters to 
 
 329
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 all first performances, directed to report upon them as 
 they would report upon any other event of immediate 
 interest. He would warn these reporters that they 
 were strictly to consider themselves as reporters, and 
 that they were, therefore, to refrain from explicit 
 criticism. He would so select his men that a melo- 
 drama should be dealt with by a reporter who liked a 
 good melodrama, and that a summer song-show should 
 be described by a reporter who could find pleasure in 
 inoffensive and amusing spectacle. If this policy 
 should be adopted, and announced clearly and em- 
 phatically, probably most of the occasions for quarrel 
 between managers and editors would disappear; and 
 the immense majority of the readers of the daily paper 
 would be supplied with exactly the information they 
 would prefer. 
 
 Then, for the benefit of the smaller number who are 
 really interested in the drama as a serious art, the 
 editor-in-chief might avail himself of the fact that the 
 Sunday issue, while it is still a newspaper containing 
 the news of the preceding twenty-four hours, is also 
 a magazine, to be read in more leisurely fashion, and 
 therefore at liberty to treat timely topics with a larger 
 freedom. Here space could be found for genuine dra- 
 matic criticism by the most competent expert available. 
 This dramatic critic should have nothing whatever to 
 do with the news of the theaters, or with the first- 
 night play-reviewing. He should not be tired and 
 bored by having to go to the theater half a dozen times 
 a week, and by being forced to analyze plays which do 
 
 330
 
 DRAMATIC CRITICISM 
 
 not reward analysis. He would be expected to select 
 out of the current performances that one which prom- 
 ised to be most worthy of careful consideration, and 
 he would feel himself free to discuss this at such length 
 as it might seem to him to deserve. To him also should 
 be intrusted the more significant of the new books 
 upon the history of the theater, and upon the art of 
 the drama. In the summer (and also whenever at 
 any other season there might be a dearth of inspiring 
 topics), this dramatic critic would not be expected to 
 contribute, since he should never be called upon to 
 make bricks without straw. 
 
 Even in New York this method is not as new as it 
 may seem, and more than one metropolitan daily has 
 approximated to it, altho no one of them has com- 
 pletely detached the dramatic critic from the play- 
 reviewer and from the supervisor of theatrical gossip. 
 And it has long been adopted in certain of the Paris 
 newspapers. In the Temps, for example, when Sarcey 
 was its dramatic critic, there was a daily column of 
 theatrical announcements and of brief reports upon 
 first-night performances; and with this department of 
 the news of the theaters Sarcey had nothing to do, 
 and for it he had no responsibility. Then in the 
 ample space specially reserved for him in the issue of 
 every Sunday afternoon, he dealt with the dramatic 
 themes that seemed to him worth while. If a play 
 appeared to demand prolonged study, he might go to 
 see it two, or even three times, before he undertook to 
 formulate his opinion; and on occasion he would carry 
 
 331
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 over his detailed discussion of a very important drama 
 into the article of the following Sunday. On the other 
 hand, if no recent play seemed to him to deserve his 
 continued attention, he would devote himself to one 
 of the recent books about the theater or to a detailed 
 discussion of the proper interpretation of one of the 
 classics of the French drama kept constantly in the 
 repertory of the Come'die-FranQaise. 
 
 IV 
 
 The adoption of this method would relieve the dra- 
 matic critic from one of his existing disadvantages; 
 he would be released from criticising the pieces which 
 are beneath criticism. The literary critic, and even 
 the ordinary book-reviewer, never spends his time in 
 considering dime novels whereas the dramatic critic 
 is now called upon to waste many evenings in beholding 
 a play which is only the theatrical equivalent of a dime 
 novel. The immediate result of this futile and fa- 
 tiguing expenditure of energy is likely to be discouraging 
 and even enervating. If the dramatic critic could be 
 totally relieved from all contact with the show business 
 when the show business has only a casual connection 
 with the drama, it would tend to keep him fit for his 
 essential task. Under the present conditions it is no 
 wonder that the theatrical reviewer wearies of his task 
 and loses the gusto and the zest without which all 
 --work tends to degenerate into the perfunctory and the 
 mechanical. 
 
 332
 
 DRAMATIC CRITICISM 
 
 We need not fear that the first-night reporting would 
 be ill done if competent reporters were instructed that 
 they were not to consider themselves as critics, and that 
 it was their sole duty to report, as they would report 
 anything else, conscientiously and accurately. The 
 difficulty would not be in finding reporters able to dis- 
 charge this duty, it would be in the discovery of dra- 
 matic critics possessing the fourfold qualifications of 
 insight, equipment, disinterestedness, and sympathy, 
 which every critic must be endowed with whatever the 
 art he undertakes to anaylze. And the difficulty would 
 be increased by the fact that the dramatic critic needs 
 an understanding of three different arts, the art of 
 acting, the art of literature, and the art of the drama 
 of play-making as distinct from literature. 
 
 It would be idle to hope that even if this method 
 were adopted we should soon be able to develop in the 
 United States and in Great Britain a group of dra- 
 matic critics of the capacity and the quality of Les- 
 sing and Sarcey, of George Henry Lewes and William 
 Archer. Yet it is solely by the adoption of this method 
 that we can hope to provide the opportunity for the 
 appearance of the true dramatic critic, who can fit 
 himself for his finer work only by being set free from 
 the necessity of doing work quite unworthy of him, 
 altho necessary to the newspaper itself. And the de- 
 velopment of a group of dramatic critics of a higher 
 type than can be found to-day except possibly in a 
 scant half-dozen dailies and weeklies and monthlies 
 is a condition precedent to the development of our 
 
 333
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE THEATER 
 
 drama. Of course, these dramatic critics, whatever 
 their endowment, could give little help directly to the 
 dramatic authors, since it is a mistake to suppose that 
 the critic is capable of counselling the author, or that 
 he is charged with any such duty. Where the critic 
 can help is by disseminating knowledge about the dra- 
 matic art, and by raising the standard of appreciation 
 in the public at large that public which even the 
 mightiest dramatist has to please or else to fail of his 
 purpose. 
 
 (1915.) 
 
 334
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CA
 
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 DC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
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