A Book About the Theater Part 13

What the Franco-Russian artist had done was to reveal the alluring possibilities placed at the command of the shadow-pantomimist by the ingenious employment 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 a.s.sociate 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 s.h.i.+ne 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 example, if he had happened to think of it. Far wider in its artistic possibilities was the second of Riviere's improvements. For the ordinary lamp which cast a steady glow on the white screen whereon the profile figures appeared, he subst.i.tuted a magic lantern, the painted slides of which enabled him to supply an appropriately 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. 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 gla.s.s of medieval cathedrals.

Riviere was not only an inventor, he was also an artist, richly gifted with imagination; and his imagination 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 '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 experiments 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 advantages 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 pa.s.s before its sightless eyes as the Sphinx, reclining impa.s.sive 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 s.p.a.ce, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, Paris_ The Sphinx III: Roman warriors in Egypt From a shadow picture by Amedee Vignola]

M. Fragerolle composed the music and the words of the stately chants which accompanied the exhibition of the figures pa.s.sing 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 immutable, while the joyous procession of Egyptian dancers and soldiers and priests celebrates the completion of the statue itself. Then we are witnesses of the fierce invasion of the a.s.syrians, with the charge of their chariots and their hors.e.m.e.n; 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 Egyptians. 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, immovable and implacable; and the Greeks in turn take the valley of the Nile for their own. One of their daughters, 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 a.s.s 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 hors.e.m.e.n, and a little later the Crusaders come to give them 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 rec.u.mbent 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 Seraphin. "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 mult.i.tudes."

(1912.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, Paris_ The Sphinx IV: The British troops to-day From a shadow picture by Amedee Vignola]

XIX

THE PROBLEM OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM

THE PROBLEM OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM

I

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 consideration. 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 criticism 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 pressing questions the most conflicting answers are returned.

Some there are who insist that it is hopeless to expect 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 unsatisfactory 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 improvement--altho no two of these agree in their suggestions for bringing about a bettering of present conditions. In the mult.i.tude of these counsellors there is darkness and confusion.

Perhaps there is a dim possibility of dissipating a little of this dark confusion by an a.n.a.lysis of the exact content, which we discover in the term "dramatic criticism," and then by a further inquiry as to whether our customary use of the term is not misleading. "Dramatic 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 "surpa.s.ses 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 minutes; 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."

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 discussion 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 Aristotle? It is equally unfortunate that there is an equivalent inaccuracy in bestowing the t.i.tle of "literary criticism" 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 meaning of words. If popular usage chooses not to distinguish 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 dramatic 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 prepared under pressure and under strict limitations of time and s.p.a.ce.

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 cannot 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-reviewing of the daily journal is akin in aim to the book-reviewing, which has for its purpose the swift consideration 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 contemporaneous, instantly and necessarily and inexorably, is their special quality and their immediate purpose; it is the reason for their existence and the excuse for their being.

II

Here it may be well to cite again the oft-quoted confession of the late Jules Lemaitre, writer of volume after volume in which he discussed the leading men of letters of his own time and of his own country: "Criticism of our contemporaries is not criticism--it is conversation."

Now, conversation may be a very good 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 a.s.sured application of the eternal standards. And play-reviewing, like book-reviewing, cannot be anything but conversation about our contemporaries. 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 swiftest of commentaries thereon.

The final distinction between literature and journalism 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 s.p.a.ce in the monthly magazines, 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 matter 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 inexpugnable 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 correspondents who are newspaper men, and not men of letters, except in so far as these men of letters may have accepted the special conditions of newspaper work.

Now, criticism, whether literary or dramatic, is a department of literature, dealing with the permanent, and having little to do with the temporary. It demands qualifications very rarely united--insight, equipment, 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 sometimes 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 companioned with them. aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides followed one after the other; and in 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 Mackail has told us.

"It does not deal with letters as something detached from life, but as the form or substance in which life is intelligibly presented. Its interpretation is also creation." But the criticism of dramatic literature which is also creation, is possible only when the critical faculty is applied to the masterpieces of dramatic literature; and n.o.body knows better than the play-reviewer that masterpieces of dramatic literature do not present themselves frequently and that they cannot be acclaimed as masterpieces 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 a.s.signed to deal with the drama or with literature at large.

III

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 readers 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 without 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.

There would be occupation for a dramatic critic, who was also a creator, only if our theaters were presenting 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 Hauptmann, 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 terpsich.o.r.ean spectacles. Most of these latter exhibitions do not demand 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 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 melodrama 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 emphatically, 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 fas.h.i.+on, and therefore at liberty to treat timely topics with a larger freedom. Here s.p.a.ce could be found for genuine dramatic 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 a.n.a.lyze plays which do not reward a.n.a.lysis. He would be expected to select out of the current performances that one which promised 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 completely 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 s.p.a.ce 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 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 cla.s.sics of the French drama kept constantly in the repertory of the Comedie-Francaise.

IV

The adoption of this method would relieve the dramatic 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 fatiguing 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.

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 discharge this duty, it would be in the discovery of dramatic critics possessing the fourfold qualifications of insight, equipment, disinterestedness, and sympathy, which every critic must be endowed with whatever the art he undertakes to a.n.a.lyze. 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 dramatic critics of the capacity and the quality of Lessing 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 development 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 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 dramatic 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.