{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_13928/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_13928","id":"gutenberg_13928","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13928","summary":null,"tags":["Actors","Category: Art","Category: Music","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Plays/Films/Dramas","Music -- History and criticism","Theater"],"text":"PLAYS\nACTING AND MUSIC\n\nA BOOK OF THEORY\n\nBY\nARTHUR SYMONS\n\n\nLONDON\n\n\n1909\n\n\n\n_To Maurice Maeterlinck in friendship and admiration_\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nWhen this book was first published it contained a large amount of\nmaterial which is now taken out of it; additions have been made, besides\nmany corrections and changes; and the whole form of the book has been\nremodelled. It is now more what it ought to have been from the first;\nwhat I saw, from the moment of its publication, that it ought to have\nbeen: a book of theory. The rather formal announcement of my intentions\nwhich I made in my preface is reprinted here, because, at all events,\nthe programme was carried out.\n\nThis book, I said then, is intended to form part of a series, on which I\nhave been engaged for many years. I am gradually working my way towards\nthe concrete expression of a theory, or system of \u00e6sthetics, of all the\narts.\n\nIn my book on \"The Symbolist Movement in Literature\" I made a first\nattempt to deal in this way with literature; other volumes, now in\npreparation, are to follow. The present volume deals mainly with the\nstage, and, secondarily, with music; it is to be followed by a volume\ncalled \"Studies in Seven Arts,\" in which music will be dealt with in\ngreater detail, side by side with painting, sculpture, architecture,\nhandicraft, dancing, and the various arts of the stage. And, as life too\nis a form of art, and the visible world the chief storehouse of beauty,\nI try to indulge my curiosity by the study of places and of people. A\nbook on \"Cities\" is now in the press, and a book of \"imaginary\nportraits\" is to follow, under the title of \"Spiritual Adventures.\" Side\nby side with these studies in the arts I have my own art, that of verse,\nwhich is, after all, my chief concern.\n\nIn all my critical and theoretical writing I wish to be as little\nabstract as possible, and to study first principles, not so much as they\nexist in the brain of the theorist, but as they may be discovered, alive\nand in effective action, in every achieved form of art. I do not\nunderstand the limitation by which so many writers on \u00e6sthetics choose\nto confine themselves to the study of artistic principles as they are\nseen in this or that separate form of art. Each art has its own laws,\nits own capacities, its own limits; these it is the business of the\ncritic jealously to distinguish. Yet in the study of art as art, it\nshould be his endeavour to master the universal science of beauty.\n\n1903, 1907.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nAn Apology for Puppets                    3\n\n\nPLAYS AND ACTING\n\nNietzsche on Tragedy                     11\n\nSarah Bernhardt                          17\n\nCoquelin and Moli\u00e8re                     29\n\nR\u00e9jane                                   37\n\nYvette Guilbert                          42\n\nSir Henry Irving                         52\n\nDuse in Some of Her Parts                60\n\nAnnotations                              77\n\nM. Capus in England                      93\n\nA Double Enigma                         100\n\n\nDRAMA\n\nProfessional and Unprofessional         109\n\nTolstoi and Others                      115\n\nSome Problem Plays                      124\n\n\"Monna Vanna\"                           137\n\nThe Question of Censorship              143\n\nA Play and the Public                   148\n\nThe Test of the Actor                   152\n\nThe Price of Realism                    162\n\nOn Crossing Stage to Right              167\n\nThe Speaking of Verse                   173\n\nGreat Acting in English                 182\n\nA Theory of the Stage                   198\n\nThe Sicilian Actors                     213\n\n\nMUSIC\n\nOn Writing about Music                  229\n\nTechnique and the Artist                232\n\nPachmann and the Piano                  237\n\nPaderewski                              258\n\nA Reflection at a Dolmetsch Concert     268\n\nThe Dramatisation of Song               277\n\nThe Meiningen Orchestra                 284\n\nMozart in the Mirabell-Garten           290\n\nNotes on Wagner at Bayreuth             297\n\n\nConclusion: A Paradox on Art            315\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n\n\n\nAN APOLOGY FOR PUPPETS\n\n\nAfter seeing a ballet, a farce, and the fragment of an opera performed\nby the marionettes at the Costanzi Theatre in Rome, I am inclined to ask\nmyself why we require the intervention of any less perfect medium\nbetween the meaning of a piece, as the author conceived it, and that\nother meaning which it derives from our reception of it. The living\nactor, even when he condescends to subordinate himself to the\nrequirements of pantomime, has always what he is proud to call his\ntemperament; in other words, so much personal caprice, which for the\nmost part means wilful misunderstanding; and in seeing his acting you\nhave to consider this intrusive little personality of his as well as the\nauthor's. The marionette may be relied upon. He will respond to an\nindication without reserve or revolt; an error on his part (we are all\nhuman) will certainly be the fault of the author; he can be trained to\nperfection. As he is painted, so will he smile; as the wires lift or\nlower his hands, so will his gestures be; and he will dance when his\nlegs are set in motion.\n\nSeen at a distance, the puppets cease to be an amusing piece of\nmechanism, imitating real people; there is no difference. I protest that\nthe Knight who came in with his plumed hat, his shining sword, and flung\nback his long cloak with so fine a sweep of the arm, was exactly the\nsame to me as if he had been a living actor, dressed in the same\nclothes, and imitating the gesture of a knight; and that the contrast of\nwhat was real, as we say, under the fiction appears to me less ironical\nin the former than in the latter. We have to allow, you will admit, at\nleast as much to the beneficent heightening of travesty, if we have ever\nseen the living actor in the morning, not yet shaved, standing at the\nbar, his hat on one side, his mouth spreading in that abandonment to\nlaughter which has become from the necessity of his profession, a\nnatural trick; oh, much more, I think, than if we merely come upon an\nalways decorative, never an obtrusive, costumed figure, leaning against\nthe wall, nonchalantly enough, in a corner of the coulisses.\n\nTo sharpen our sense of what is illusive in the illusion of the puppets,\nlet us sit not too far from the stage. Choosing our place carefully, we\nshall have the satisfaction of always seeing the wires at their work,\nwhile I think we shall lose nothing of what is most savoury in the feast\nof the illusion. There is not indeed the appeal to the senses of the\nfirst row of the stalls at a ballet of living dancers. But is not that a\ntrifle too obvious sentiment for the true artist in artificial things?\nWhy leave the ball-room? It is not nature that one looks for on the\nstage in this kind of spectacle, and our excitement in watching it\nshould remain purely intellectual. If you prefer that other kind of\nillusion, go a little further away, and, I assure you, you will find it\nquite easy to fall in love with a marionette. I have seen the most\nadorable heads, with real hair too, among the wooden dancers of a\ntheatre of puppets; faces which might easily, with but a little of that\ngood-will which goes to all falling in love, seem the answer to a\nparticular dream, making all other faces in the world but spoilt copies\nof this inspired piece of painted wood.\n\nBut the illusion, to a more scrupulous taste, will consist simply in\nthat complication of view which allows us to see wood and wire imitating\nan imitation, and which delights us less when seen at what is called the\nproper distance, where the two are indistinguishable, than when seen\nfrom just the point where all that is crudely mechanical hides the\ncomedy of what is, absolutely, a deception. Losing, as we do, something\nof the particularity of these painted faces, we are able to enjoy all\nthe better what it is certainly important we should appreciate, if we\nare truly to appreciate our puppets. This is nothing less than a\nfantastic, yet a direct, return to the masks of the Greeks: that learned\nartifice by which tragedy and comedy were assisted in speaking to the\nworld with the universal voice, by this deliberate generalising of\nemotion. It will be a lesson to some of our modern notions; and it may\nbe instructive for us to consider that we could not give a play of\nIbsen's to marionettes, but that we could give them the \"Agamemnon.\"\n\nAbove all, for we need it above all, let the marionettes remind us that\nthe art of the theatre should be beautiful first, and then indeed what\nyou will afterwards. Gesture on the stage is the equivalent of rhythm in\nverse, and it can convey, as a perfect rhythm should, not a little of\nthe inner meaning of words, a meaning perhaps more latent in things.\nDoes not gesture indeed make emotion, more certainly and more\nimmediately than emotion makes gesture? You may feel that you may\nsuppress emotion; but assume a smile, lifted eyebrows, a clenched fist,\nand it is impossible for you not to assume along with the gesture, if\nbut for a moment, the emotion to which that gesture corresponds. In our\nmarionettes, then, we get personified gesture, and the gesture, like all\nother forms of emotion, generalised. The appeal in what seems to you\nthese childish manoeuvres is to a finer, because to a more intimately\npoetic, sense of things than the merely rationalistic appeal of very\nmodern plays. If at times we laugh, it is with wonder at seeing humanity\nso gay, heroic, and untiring. There is the romantic suggestion of magic\nin this beauty.\n\nMaeterlinck wrote on the title-page of one of his volumes \"Drames pour\nmarionettes,\" no doubt to intimate his sense of the symbolic value, in\nthe interpretation of a profound inner meaning of that external nullity\nwhich the marionette by its very nature emphasises. And so I find my\npuppets, where the extremes meet, ready to interpret not only the\n\"Agamemnon,\" but \"La Mort de Tintagiles\"; for the soul, which is to\nmake, we may suppose, the drama of the future, is content with as simple\na mouthpiece as Fate and the great passions, which were the classic\ndrama.\n\n\n\n\nPLAYS AND ACTING\n\n\n\n\nNIETZSCHE ON TRAGEDY\n\n\nI have been reading Nietzsche on the Origin of Tragedy with the delight\nof one who discovers a new world, which he has seen already in a dream.\nI never take up Nietzsche without the surprise of finding something\nfamiliar. Sometimes it is the answer to a question which I have only\nasked; sometimes it seems to me that I have guessed at the answer. And,\nin his restless energy, his hallucinatory, vision, the agility of this\nclimbing mind of the mountains, I find that invigoration which only a\n\"tragic philosopher\" can give. \"A sort of mystic soul,\" as he says of\nhimself, \"almost the soul of a M\u00e6nad, who, troubled, capricious, and\nhalf irresolute whether to cede or fly, stammers out something in a\nforeign tongue.\"\n\nThe book is a study in the origin of tragedy among the Greeks, as it\narose out of music through the medium of the chorus. We are apt to look\non the chorus in Greek plays as almost a negligible part of the\nstructure; as, in fact, hardly more than the comments of that \"ideal\nspectator\" whom Schlegel called up out of the depths of the German\nconsciousness. We know, however, that the chorus was the original\nnucleus of the play, that the action on which it seems only to comment\nis no more than a development of the chorus. Here is the problem to\nwhich Nietzsche endeavours to find an answer. He finds it, unlike the\nlearned persons who study Greek texts, among the roots of things, in the\nvery making of the universe. Art arises, he tells us, from the conflict\nof the two creative spirits, symbolised by the Greeks in the two gods,\nApollo and Dionysus; and he names the one the Apollonian spirit, which\nwe see in plastic art, and the other the Dionysiac spirit, which we see\nin music. Apollo is the god of dreams, Dionysus the god of intoxication;\nthe one represents for us the world of appearances, the other is, as it\nwere, the voice of things in themselves. The chorus, then, which arose\nout of the hymns to Dionysus, is the \"lyric cry,\" the vital ecstasy; the\ndrama is the projection into vision, into a picture, of the exterior,\ntemporary world of forms. \"We now see that the stage and the action are\nconceived only as vision: that the sole 'reality' is precisely the\nchorus, which itself produces the vision, and expresses it by the aid of\nthe whole symbolism of dance, sound, and word.\" In the admirable phrase\nof Schiller, the chorus is \"a living rampart against reality,\" against\nthat false reality of daily life which is a mere drapery of\ncivilisation, and has nothing to do with the primitive reality of\nnature. The realistic drama begins with Euripides; and Euripides, the\ncasuist, the friend of Socrates (whom Nietzsche qualifies as the true\ndecadent, an \"instrument of decomposition,\" the slayer of art, the\nfather of modern science), brings tragedy to an end, as he substitutes\npathos for action, thought for contemplation, and passionate sentiments\nfor the primitive ecstasy. \"Armed with the scourge of its syllogisms,\nan optimist dialectic drives the music out of tragedy: that is to say,\ndestroys the very essence of tragedy, an essence which can be\ninterpreted only as a manifestation and objectivation of Dionysiac\nstates, as a visible symbol of music, as the dream-world of a Dionysiac\nintoxication.\" There are many pages, scattered throughout his work, in\nwhich Pater has dealt with some of the Greek problems very much in the\nspirit of Nietzsche; with that problem, for instance, of the \"blitheness\nand serenity\" of the Greek spirit, and of the gulf of horror over which\nit seems to rest, suspended as on the wings of the condor. That myth of\nDionysus Zagreus, \"a Bacchus who had been in hell,\" which is the\nfoundation of the marvellous new myth of \"Denys l'Auxerrois,\" seems\nalways to be in the mind of Nietzsche, though indeed he refers to it but\nonce, and passingly. Pater has shown, as Nietzsche shows in greater\ndetail and with a more rigorous logic, that this \"serenity\" was but an\naccepted illusion, and all Olympus itself but \"intermediary,\" an escape,\nthrough the \u00e6sthetics of religion, from the trouble at the heart of\nthings; art, with its tragic illusions of life, being another form of\nescape. To Nietzsche the world and existence justify themselves only as\nan \u00e6sthetic phenomenon, the work of a god wholly the artist; \"and in\nthis sense the object of the tragic myth is precisely to convince us\nthat even the horrible and the monstrous are no more than an \u00e6sthetic\ngame played with itself by the Will in the eternal plenitude of its\njoy.\" \"The Will\" is Schopenhauer's \"Will,\" the vital principle. \"If it\nwere possible,\" says Nietzsche, in one of his astonishing figures of\nspeech, \"to imagine a dissonance becoming a human being (and what is man\nbut that?), in order to endure life, this dissonance would need some\nadmirable illusion to hide from itself its true nature, under a veil of\nbeauty.\" This is the aim of art, as it calls up pictures of the visible\nworld and of the little temporary actions of men on its surface. The\nhoofed satyr of Dionysus, as he leaps into the midst of these gracious\nappearances, drunk with the young wine of nature, surly with the old\nwisdom of Silenus, brings the real, excessive, disturbing truth of\nthings suddenly into the illusion; and is gone again, with a shrill\nlaugh, without forcing on us more of his presence than we can bear.\n\nI have but touched on a few points in an argument which has itself the\necstatic quality of which it speaks. A good deal of the book is\nconcerned with the latest development of music, and especially with\nWagner. Nietzsche, after his change of sides, tells us not to take this\npart too seriously: \"what I fancied I heard in the Wagnerian music has\nnothing to do with Wagner.\" Few better things have been said about music\nthan these pages; some of them might be quoted against the \"programme\"\nmusic which has been written since that time, and against the false\ntheory on which musicians have attempted to harness music in the shafts\nof literature. The whole book is awakening; in Nietzsche's own words, \"a\nprodigious hope speaks in it.\"\n\n\n\n\nSARAH BERNHARDT\n\n\nI am not sure that the best moment to study an artist is not the moment\nof what is called decadence. The first energy of inspiration is gone;\nwhat remains is the method, the mechanism, and it is that which alone\none can study, as one can study the mechanism of the body, not the\nprinciple of life itself. What is done mechanically, after the heat of\nthe blood has cooled, and the divine accidents have ceased to happen, is\nprecisely all that was consciously skilful in the performance of an art.\nTo see all this mechanism left bare, as the form of the skeleton is left\nbare when age thins the flesh upon it, is to learn more easily all that\nis to be learnt of structure, the art which not art but nature has\nhitherto concealed with its merciful covering.\n\nThe art of Sarah Bernhardt has always been a very conscious art, but it\nspoke to us, once, with so electrical a shock, as if nerve touched\nnerve, or the mere \"contour subtil\" of the voice were laid tinglingly on\none's spinal cord, that it was difficult to analyse it coldly. She was\nPh\u00e8dre or Marguerite Gautier, she was Adrienne Lecouvreur, F\u00e9dora, La\nTosca, the actual woman, and she was also that other actual woman, Sarah\nBernhardt. Two magics met and united, in the artist and the woman, each\nalone of its kind. There was an excitement in going to the theatre;\none's pulses beat feverishly before the curtain had risen; there was\nalmost a kind of obscure sensation of peril, such as one feels when the\nlioness leaps into the cage, on the other side of the bars. And the\nacting was like a passionate declaration, offered to some one unknown;\nit was as if the whole nervous force of the audience were sucked out of\nit and flung back, intensified, upon itself, as it encountered the\nsingle, insatiable, indomitable nervous force of the woman. And so, in\nits way, this very artificial acting seemed the mere instinctive,\nirresistible expression of a temperament; it mesmerised one, awakening\nthe senses and sending the intelligence to sleep.\n\nAfter all, though R\u00e9jane skins emotions alive, and Duse serves them up\nto you on golden dishes, it is Sarah Bernhardt who prepares the supreme\nfeast. In \"La Dame aux Cam\u00e9lias,\" still, she shows herself, as an\nactress, the greatest actress in the world. It is all sheer acting;\nthere is no suggestion, as with Duse, there is no canaille\nattractiveness, as with R\u00e9jane; the thing is plastic, a modelling of\nemotion before you, with every vein visible; she leaves nothing to the\nimagination, gives you every motion, all the physical signs of death,\nall the fierce abandonment to every mood, to grief, to delight, to\nlassitude. When she suffers, in the scene, for instance, where Armand\ninsults her, she is like a trapped wild beast which some one is\ntorturing, and she wakes just that harrowing pity. One's whole flesh\nsuffers with her flesh; her voice caresses and excites like a touch; it\nhas a throbbing, monotonous music, which breaks deliciously, which\npauses suspended, and then resolves itself in a perfect chord. Her\nvoice is like a thing detachable from herself, a thing which she takes\nin her hands like a musical instrument, playing on the stops cunningly\nwith her fingers. Prose, when she speaks it, becomes a kind of verse,\nwith all the rhythms, the vocal harmonies, of a kind of human poetry.\nHer whisper is heard across the whole theatre, every syllable distinct,\nand yet it is really a whisper. She comes on the stage like a miraculous\npainted idol, all nerves; she runs through the gamut of the sex, and\nends a child, when the approach of death brings Marguerite back to that\ndeep infantile part of woman. She plays the part now with the accustomed\nease of one who puts on and off an old shoe. It is almost a part of her;\nshe knows it through all her senses. And she moved me as much last night\nas she moved me when I first saw her play the part eleven or twelve\nyears ago. To me, sitting where I was not too near the stage, she might\nhave been five-and-twenty. I saw none of the mechanism of the art, as I\nsaw it in \"L'Aiglon\"; here art still concealed art. Her vitality was\nequal to the vitality of R\u00e9jane; it is differently expressed, that is\nall. With R\u00e9jane the vitality is direct; it is the appeal of Gavroche,\nthe sharp, impudent urchin of the streets; Sarah Bernhardt's vitality is\nelectrical, and shoots its currents through all manner of winding ways.\nIn form it belongs to an earlier period, just as the writing of Dumas\nfils belongs to an earlier period than the writing of Meilhac. It comes\nto us with the tradition to which it has given life; it does not spring\ninto our midst, unruly as nature.\n\nBut it is in \"Ph\u00e8dre\" that Sarah Bernhardt must be seen, if we are to\nrealise all that her art is capable of. In writing \"Ph\u00e8dre,\" Racine\nanticipated Sarah Bernhardt. If the part had been made for her by a poet\nof our own days, it could not have been brought more perfectly within\nher limits, nor could it have more perfectly filled those limits to\ntheir utmost edge. It is one of the greatest parts in poetical drama,\nand it is written with a sense of the stage not less sure than its sense\nof dramatic poetry. There was a time when Racine was looked upon as\nold-fashioned, as conventional, as frigid. It is realised nowadays that\nhis verse has cadences like the cadences of Verlaine, that his language\nis as simple and direct as prose, and that he is one of the most\npassionate of poets. Of the character of Ph\u00e8dre Racine tells us that it\nis \"ce que j'ai peut-\u00eatre mis de plus raisonnable sur le th\u00e9\u00e2tre.\" The\nword strikes oddly on our ears, but every stage of the passion of Ph\u00e8dre\nis indeed reasonable, logical, as only a French poet, since the Greeks\nthemselves, could make it. The passion itself is an abnormal, an insane\nthing, and that passion comes to us with all its force and all its\nperversity; but the words in which it is expressed are never\nextravagant, they are always clear, simple, temperate, perfectly precise\nand explicit. The art is an art exquisitely balanced between the\nconventional and the realistic, and the art of Sarah Bernhardt, when she\nplays the part, is balanced with just the same unerring skill. She seems\nto abandon herself wholly, at times, to her \"fureurs\"; she tears the\nwords with her teeth, and spits them out of her mouth, like a wild beast\nravening upon prey; but there is always dignity, restraint, a certain\nremoteness of soul, and there is always the verse, and her miraculous\nrendering of the verse, to keep Racine in the right atmosphere. Of what\nwe call acting there is little, little change in the expression of the\nface. The part is a part for the voice, and it is only in \"Ph\u00e8dre\" that\none can hear that orchestra, her voice, in all its variety of beauty. In\nher modern plays, plays in prose, she is condemned to use only a few of\nthe instruments of the orchestra: an actress must, in such parts, be\nconversational, and for how much beauty or variety is there room in\nmodern conversation? But here she has Racine's verse, along with\nRacine's psychology, and the language has nothing more to offer the\nvoice of a tragic actress. She seems to speak her words, her lines, with\na kind of joyful satisfaction; all the artist in her delights in the\ntask. Her nerves are in it, as well as her intelligence; but everything\nis coloured by the poetry, everything is subordinate to beauty.\n\nWell, and she seems still to be the same Ph\u00e8dre that she was eleven or\ntwelve years ago, as she is the same \"Dame aux Cam\u00e9lias.\" Is it reality,\nis it illusion? Illusion, perhaps, but an illusion which makes itself\ninto a very effectual kind of reality. She has played these pieces until\nshe has got them, not only by heart, but by every nerve and by every\nvein, and now the ghost of the real thing is so like the real thing that\nthere is hardly any telling the one from the other. It is the living on\nof a mastery once absolutely achieved, without so much as the need of a\nnew effort. The test of the artist, the test which decides how far the\nartist is still living, as more than a force of memory, lies in the\npower to create a new part, to bring new material to life. Last year, in\n\"L'Aiglon,\" it seemed to me that Sarah Bernhardt showed how little she\nstill possessed that power, and this year I see the same failure in\n\"Francesca da Rimini.\"\n\nThe play, it must be admitted, is hopelessly poor, common,\nmelodramatic, without atmosphere, without nobility, subtlety, or\npassion; it degrades the story which we owe to Dante and not to history\n(for, in itself, the story is a quite ordinary story of adultery: Dante\nand the flames of his hell purged it), it degrades it almost out of all\nrecognition. These middle-aged people, who wrangle shrewishly behind the\njust turned back of the husband and almost in the hearing of the child,\nare people in whom it is impossible to be interested, apart from any\nfine meanings put into them in the acting. And yet, since M. de Max has\nmade hardly less than a creation out of the part of Giovanni, filling\nit, as he has, with his own nervous force and passionately restrained\nart, might it not have been possible once for Sarah Bernhardt to have\nthrilled us even as this Francesca of Mr. Marion Crawford? I think so;\nshe has taken bad plays as willingly as good plays, to turn them to her\nown purpose, and she has been as triumphant, if not as fine, in bad\nplays as in good ones. Now her Francesca is lifeless, a melodious\nimage, making meaningless music. She says over the words, cooingly,\nchantingly, or frantically, as the expression marks, to which she seems\nto act, demand. The interest is in following her expression-marks.\n\nThe first thing one notices in her acting, when one is free to watch it\ncoolly, is the way in which she subordinates effects to effect. She has\nher crescendos, of course, and it is these which people are most apt to\nremember, but the extraordinary force of these crescendos comes from the\nsmooth and level manner in which the main part of the speaking is done.\nShe is not anxious to make points at every moment, to put all the\npossible emphasis into every separate phrase; I have heard her glide\nover really significant phrases which, taken by themselves, would seem\nto deserve more consideration, but which she has wisely subordinated to\nan overpowering effect of ensemble. Sarah Bernhardt's acting always\nreminds me of a musical performance. Her voice is itself an instrument\nof music, and she plays upon it as a conductor plays upon an orchestra.\nOne seems to see the expression marks: piano, pianissimo, largamente,\nand just where the tempo rubato comes in. She never forgets that art is\nnot nature, and that when one is speaking verse one is not talking\nprose. She speaks with a liquid articulation of every syllable, like one\nwho loves the savour of words on the tongue, giving them a beauty and an\nexpressiveness often not in them themselves. Her face changes less than\nyou might expect; it is not over-possessed by detail, it gives always\nthe synthesis. The smile of the artist, a wonderful smile which has\nnever aged with her, pierces through the passion or languor of the part.\nIt is often accompanied by a suave, voluptuous tossing of the head, and\nis like the smile of one who inhales some delicious perfume, with\nhalf-closed eyes. All through the level perfection of her acting there\nare little sharp snaps of the nerves; and these are but one indication\nof that perfect mechanism which her art really is. Her finger is always\nupon the spring; it touches or releases it, and the effect follows\ninstantaneously. The movements of her body, her gestures, the expression\nof her face, are all harmonious, are all parts of a single harmony. It\nis not reality which she aims at giving us, it is reality transposed\ninto another atmosphere, as if seen in a mirror, in which all its\noutlines become more gracious. The pleasure which we get from seeing her\nas Francesca or as Marguerite Gautier is doubled by that other pleasure,\nnever completely out of our minds, that she is also Sarah Bernhardt. One\nsometimes forgets that R\u00e9jane is acting at all; it is the real woman of\nthe part, Sapho, or Zaza, or Yanetta, who lives before us. Also one\nsometimes forgets that Duse is acting, that she is even pretending to be\nMagda or Silvia; it is Duse herself who lives there, on the stage. But\nSarah Bernhardt is always the actress as well as the part; when she is\nat her best, she is both equally, and our consciousness of the one does\nnot disturb our possession by the other. When she is not at her best, we\nsee only the actress, the incomparable craftswoman openly labouring at\nher work.\n\n\n\n\nCOQUELIN AND MOLI\u00c8RE: SOME ASPECTS\n\n\nTo see Coquelin in Moli\u00e8re is to see the greatest of comic actors at his\nbest, and to realise that here is not a temperament, or a student, or\nanything apart from the art of the actor. His art may be compared with\nthat of Sarah Bernhardt for its infinite care in the training of nature.\nThey have an equal perfection, but it may be said that Coquelin, with\nhis ripe, mellow art, his passion of humour, his touching vehemence,\nmakes himself seem less a divine machine, more a delightfully faulty\nperson. His voice is firm, sonorous, flexible, a human, expressive,\namusing voice, not the elaborate musical instrument of Sarah, which\nseems to go by itself, c\u00e2line, cooing, lamenting, raging, or in that\nwonderful swift chatter which she uses with such instant and deliberate\neffect. And, unlike her, his face is the face of his part, always a\ndisguise, never a revelation.\n\nI have been seeing the three Coquelins and their company at the Garrick\nTheatre. They did \"Tartuffe,\" \"L'Avare,\" \"Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme,\"\n\"Les Pr\u00e9cieuses Ridicules,\" and a condensed version of \"Le D\u00e9pit\nAmoureux,\" in which the four acts of the original were cut down into\ntwo. Of these five plays only two are in verse, \"Tartuffe\" and \"Le D\u00e9pit\nAmoureux,\" and I could not help wishing that the fashion of Moli\u00e8re's\nday had allowed him to write all his plays in prose. Moli\u00e8re was not a\npoet, and he knew that he was not a poet. When he ventured to write the\nmost Shakespearean of his comedies, \"L'Avare,\" in prose, \"le m\u00eame\npr\u00e9jug\u00e9,\" Voltaire tells us, \"qui avait fait tomber 'le Festin de\nPierre,' parce qu'il \u00e9tait en prose, nuisit au succ\u00e8s de 'l'Avare.'\nCependant le public qui, \u00e0 la longue, se rend toujours au bon, finit par\ndonner \u00e0 cet ouvrage les applaudissements qu'il m\u00e9rite. On comprit alors\nqu'il peut y avoir de fort bonnes com\u00e9dies en prose.\" How infinitely\nfiner, as prose, is the prose of \"L'Avare\" than the verse of \"Tartuffe\"\nas verse! In \"Tartuffe\" all the art of the actor is required to carry\nyou over the artificial jangle of the alexandrines without allowing you\nto perceive too clearly that this man, who is certainly not speaking\npoetry, is speaking in rhyme. Moli\u00e8re was a great prose writer, but I do\nnot remember a line of poetry in the whole of his work in verse. The\ntemper of his mind was the temper of mind of the prose-writer. His\nworldly wisdom, his active philosophy, the very mainspring of his plots,\nare found, characteristically, in his valets and his servant-maids. He\nsatirises the miser, the hypocrite, the bas-bleu, but he chuckles over\nFrosine and Gros-Ren\u00e9; he loves them for their freedom of speech and\ntheir elastic minds, ready in words or deeds. They are his chorus, if\nthe chorus might be imagined as directing the action.\n\nBut Moli\u00e8re has a weakness, too, for the bourgeois, and he has made M.\nJourdain immortally delightful. There is not a really cruel touch in the\nwhole character; we laugh at him so freely because Moli\u00e8re lets us\nlaugh with such kindliness. M. Jourdain has a robust joy in life; he\ncarries off his absurdities by the simple good faith which he puts into\nthem. When I speak of M. Jourdain I hardly know whether I am speaking of\nthe character of Moli\u00e8re or of the character of Coquelin. Probably there\nis no difference. We get Moli\u00e8re's vast, succulent farce of the\nintellect rendered with an art like his own. If this, in every detail,\nis not what Moli\u00e8re meant, then so much the worse for Moli\u00e8re.\n\nMoli\u00e8re is kind to his bourgeois, envelops him softly in satire as in\ncotton-wool, dandles him like a great baby; and Coquelin is without\nbitterness, stoops to make stupidity heroic, a distinguished stupidity.\nA study in comedy so profound, so convincing, so full of human nature\nand of the art-concealing art of the stage, has not been seen in our\ntime. As Mascarille, in \"Les Pr\u00e9cieuses Ridicules,\" Coquelin becomes\ndelicate and extravagant, a scented whirlwind; his parody is more\nsplendid than the thing itself which he parodies, more full of fine\nshow and nimble bravery. There is beauty in this broadly comic acting,\nthe beauty of subtle detail. Words can do little to define a performance\nwhich is a constant series of little movements of the face, little\nintonations of the voice, a way of lolling in the chair, a way of\nspeaking, of singing, of preserving the gravity of burlesque. In\n\"Tartuffe\" we get a form of comedy which is almost tragic, the horribly\nserious comedy of the hypocrite. Coquelin, who remakes his face, as by a\nprolonged effort of the muscles, for every part, makes, for this part, a\ngreat fish's face, heavy, suppressed, with lowered eyelids and a secret\nmouth, out of which steals at times some stealthy avowal. He has the\nmovements of a great slug, or of a snail, if you will, putting out its\nhead and drawing it back into its shell. The face waits and plots, with\na sleepy immobility, covering a hard, indomitable will. It is like a\ndrawing of Daumier, if you can imagine a drawing which renews itself at\nevery instant, in a series of poses to which it is hardly necessary to\nadd words.\n\nI am told that Coquelin, in the creation of a part, makes his way\nslowly, surely, inwards, for the first few weeks of his performance, and\nthat then the thing is finished, to the least intonation or gesture, and\ncan be laid down and taken up at will, without a shade of difference in\nthe interpretation. The part of Ma\u00eetre Jacques in \"L'Avare,\" for\ninstance, which I have just seen him perform with such gusto and such\ncertainty, had not been acted by him for twenty years, and it was done,\nwithout rehearsal, in the midst of a company that required prompting at\nevery moment. I suppose this method of moulding a part, as if in wet\nclay, and then allowing it to take hard, final form, is the method\nnatural to the comedian, his right method. I can hardly think that the\ntragic actor should ever allow himself to become so much at home with\nhis material; that he dare ever allow his clay to become quite hard. He\nhas to deal with the continually shifting stuff of the soul and of the\npassions, with nature at its least generalised moments. The comic actor\ndeals with nature for the most part generalised, with things palpably\nabsurd, with characteristics that strike the intelligence, not with\nemotions that touch the heart or the senses. He comes to more definite\nand to more definable results, on which he may rest, confident that what\nhas made an audience laugh once will make it laugh always, laughter\nbeing a physiological thing, wholly independent of mood.\n\nIn thinking of some excellent comic actors of our own, I am struck by\nthe much greater effort which they seem to make in order to drive their\npoints home, and in order to get what they think variety. Sir Charles\nWyndham is the only English actor I can think of at the moment who does\nnot make unnecessary grimaces, who does not insist on acting when the\ndifficult thing is not to act. In \"Tartuffe\" Coquelin stands motionless\nfor five minutes at a time, without change of expression, and yet\nnothing can be more expressive than his face at those moments. In\nChopin's G Minor Nocturne, Op. 15, there is an F held for three bars,\nand when Rubinstein played the Nocturne, says Mr. Huneker in his\ninstructive and delightful book on Chopin, he prolonged the tone, \"by\nsome miraculous means,\" so that \"it swelled and diminished, and went\nsinging into D, as if the instrument were an organ.\" It is that power of\nsustaining an expression, unchanged, and yet always full of living\nsignificance, that I find in Coquelin. It is a part of his economy, the\neconomy of the artist. The improviser disdains economy, as much as the\nartist cherishes it. Coquelin has some half-dozen complete variations of\nthe face he has composed for Tartuffe; no more than that, with no\ninsignificances of expression thrown away; but each variation is a new\npoint of view, from which we see the whole character.\n\n\n\n\nR\u00c9JANE\n\n\nThe genius of R\u00e9jane is a kind of finesse: it is a flavour, and all the\ningredients of the dish may be named without defining it. The thing is\nParisian, but that is only to say that it unites nervous force with a\nwicked ease and mastery of charm. It speaks to the senses through the\nbrain, as much as to the brain through the senses. It is the feminine\nequivalent of intellect. It \"magnetises our poor vertebrae,\" in\nVerlaine's phrase, because it is sex and yet not instinct. It is sex\ncivilised, under direction, playing a part, as we say of others than\nthose on the stage. It calculates, and is unerring. It has none of the\nvulgar warmth of mere passion, none of its health or simplicity. It\nleaves a little red sting where it has kissed. And it intoxicates us by\nits appeal to so many sides of our nature at once. We are thrilled, and\nwe admire, and are almost coldly appreciative, and yet aglow with the\nresponse of the blood. I have found myself applauding with tears in my\neyes. The feeling and the critical approval came together, hand in hand:\nneither counteracted the other: and I had to think twice, before I could\nremember how elaborate a science went to the making of that thrill which\nI had been almost cruelly enjoying.\n\nThe art of R\u00e9jane accepts things as they are, without selection or\ncorrection; unlike Duse, who chooses just those ways in which she shall\nbe nature. What one remembers are little homely details, in which the\nshadow, of some overpowering impulse gives a sombre beauty to what is\ncommon or ugly. She renders the despair of the woman whose lover is\nleaving her by a single movement, the way in which she wipes her nose.\nTo her there is but one beauty, truth; and but one charm, energy. Where\nnature has not chosen, she will not choose; she is content with whatever\nform emotion snatches for itself as it struggles into speech out of an\nuntrained and unconscious body. In \"Sapho\" she is the everyday \"Venus\ntoute enti\u00e8re \u00e0 sa proie attach\u00e9e,\" and she has all the brutality and\nall the clinging warmth of the flesh; vice, if you will, but serious\nvice, vice plus passion. Her sordid, gluttonous, instructed eyes, in\nwhich all the passions and all the vices have found a nest, speak their\nown language, almost without the need of words, throughout the play; the\nwhole face suffers, exults, lies, despairs, with a homely sincerity\nwhich cuts more sharply than any stage emphasis. She seems at every\nmoment to throw away her chances of effect, of ordinary stage-effect;\nthen, when the moment seems to have gone, and she has done nothing, you\nwill find that the moment itself has penetrated you, that she has done\nnothing with genius.\n\nR\u00e9jane can be vulgar, as nature is vulgar: she has all the instincts of\nthe human animal, of the animal woman, whom man will never quite\ncivilise. There is no doubt of it, nature lacks taste; and woman, who is\nso near to nature, lacks taste in the emotions. R\u00e9jane, in \"Sapho\" or in\n\"Zaza\" for instance, is woman naked and shameless, loving and suffering\nwith all her nerves and muscles, a gross, pitiable, horribly human\nthing, whose direct appeal, like that of a sick animal, seizes you by\nthe throat at the instant in which it reaches your eyes and ears. More\nthan any actress she is the human animal without disguise or evasion;\nwith all the instincts, all the natural cries and movements. In \"Sapho\"\nor \"Zaza\" she speaks the language of the senses, no more; and her acting\nreminds you of all that you may possibly have forgotten of how the\nsenses speak when they speak through an ignorant woman in love. It is\nlike an accusing confirmation of some of one's guesses at truth, before\nthe realities of the flesh and of the affections of the flesh.\nScepticism is no longer possible: here, in \"Sapho,\" is a woman who\nflagellates herself before her lover as the penitent flagellates himself\nbefore God. In the scene where her lover repulses her last attempt to\nwin him back, there is a convulsive movement of the body, as she lets\nherself sink to the ground at his feet, which is like the movement of\none who is going to be sick: it renders, with a ghastly truth to\nnature, the abject collapse of the body under overpowering emotion.\nHere, as elsewhere, she gives you merely the thing itself, without a\ndisturbing atom of self-consciousness; she is grotesque, she is what you\nwill: it is no matter. The emotion she is acting possesses her like a\nblind force; she is Sapho, and Sapho could only move and speak and think\nin one way. Where Sarah Bernhardt would arrange the emotion for some\nthrilling effect of art, where Duse would purge the emotion of all its\nattributes but some fundamental nobility, R\u00e9jane takes the big, foolish,\ndirty thing just as it is. And is not that, perhaps, the supreme merit\nof acting?\n\n\n\n\nYVETTE GUILBERT\n\nI\n\n\nShe is tall, thin, a little angular, most winningly and girlishly\nawkward, as she wanders on to the stage with an air of vague\ndistraction. Her shoulders droop, her arms hang limply. She doubles\nforward in an automatic bow in response to the thunders of applause, and\nthat curious smile breaks out along her lips and rises and dances in her\nbright light-blue eyes, wide open in a sort of child-like astonishment.\nHer hair, a bright auburn, rises in soft masses above a large, pure\nforehead. She wears a trailing dress, striped yellow and pink, without\nornament. Her arms are covered with long black gloves. The applause\nstops suddenly; there is a hush of suspense; she is beginning to sing.\n\nAnd with the first note you realise the difference between Yvette\nGuilbert and all the rest of the world. A sonnet by Mr. Andr\u00e9\nRaffalovich states just that difference so subtly that I must quote it\nto help out my interpretation:\n\n  If you want hearty laughter, country mirth--\n    Or frantic gestures of an acrobat,\n  Heels over head--or floating lace skirts worth\n    I know not what, a large eccentric hat\n  And diamonds, the gift of some dull boy--\n    Then when you see her do not wrong Yvette,\n  Because Yvette is not a clever toy,\n    A tawdry doll in fairy limelight set ...\n  And should her song sound cynical and base\n    At first, herself ungainly, or her smile\n  Monotonous--wait, listen, watch her face:\n    The sufferings of those the world calls vile\n  She sings, and as you watch Yvette Guilbert,\n  You too will shiver, seeing their despair.\n\nNow to me Yvette Guilbert was exquisite from the first moment.\n\"Exquisite!\" I said under my breath, as I first saw her come upon the\nstage. But it is not merely by her personal charm that she thrills you,\nthough that is strange, perverse, unaccountable.\n\nIt is not merely that she can do pure comedy, that she can be frankly,\ndeliciously, gay. There is one of her songs in which she laughs,\nchuckles, and trills a rapid flurry of broken words and phrases, with\nthe sudden, spontaneous, irresponsible mirth of a bird. But where she is\nmost herself is in a manner of tragic comedy which has never been seen\non the music-hall stage from the beginning. It is the profoundly sad and\nessentially serious comedy which one sees in Forain's drawings, those\nrapid outlines which, with the turn of a pencil, give you the whole\nexistence of those base sections of society which our art in England is\nmainly forced to ignore. People call the art of Forain immoral, they\ncall Yvette Guilbert's songs immoral. That is merely the conventional\nmisuse of a conventional word. The art of Yvette Guilbert is certainly\nthe art of realism. She brings before you the real life-drama of the\nstreets, of the pot-house; she shows you the seamy side of life behind\nthe scenes; she calls things by their right names. But there is not a\ntouch of sensuality about her, she is neither contaminated nor\ncontaminating by what she sings; she is simply a great, impersonal,\ndramatic artist, who sings realism as others write it.\n\nHer gamut in the purely comic is wide; with an inflection of the voice,\na bend of that curious long thin body which seems to be embodied\ngesture, she can suggest, she can portray, the humour that is dry,\nironical, coarse (I will admit), unctuous even. Her voice can be sweet\nor harsh; it can chirp, lilt, chuckle, stutter; it can moan or laugh, be\ntipsy or distinguished. Nowhere is she conventional; nowhere does she\nresemble any other French singer. Voice, face, gestures, pantomime, all\nare different, all are purely her own. She is a creature of contrasts,\nand suggests at once all that is innocent and all that is perverse. She\nhas the pure blue eyes of a child, eyes that are cloudless, that gleam\nwith a wicked ingenuousness, that close in the utter abasement of\nweariness, that open wide in all the expressionlessness of surprise. Her\nna\u00efvet\u00e9 is perfect, and perfect, too, is that strange, subtle smile of\ncomprehension that closes the period. A great impersonal artist,\ndepending as she does entirely on her expressive power, her dramatic\ncapabilities, her gift for being moved, for rendering the emotions of\nthose in whom we do not look for just that kind of emotion, she affects\none all the time as being, after all, removed from what she sings of; an\nartist whose sympathy is an instinct, a divination. There is something\nautomatic in all fine histrionic genius, and I find some of the charm of\nthe automaton in Yvette Guilbert. The real woman, one fancies, is the\nslim bright-haired girl who looks so pleased and so amused when you\napplaud her, and whom it pleases to please you, just because it is\namusing. She could not tell you how she happens to be a great artist;\nhow she has found a voice for the tragic comedy of cities; how it is\nthat she makes you cry when she sings of sordid miseries. \"That is her\nsecret,\" we are accustomed to say; and I like to imagine that it is a\nsecret which she herself has never fathomed.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nThe difference between Yvette Guilbert and every one else on the\nmusic-hall stage is precisely the difference between Sarah Bernhardt\nand every one else on the stage of legitimate drama. Elsewhere you may\nfind many admirable qualities, many brilliant accomplishments, but\nnowhere else that revelation of an extraordinarily interesting\npersonality through the medium of an extraordinarily finished art.\nYvette Guilbert has something new to say, and she has discovered a new\nway of saying it. She has had precursors, but she has eclipsed them. She\nsings, for instance, songs of Aristide Bruant, songs which he had sung\nbefore her, and sung admirably, in his brutal and elaborately careless\nway. But she has found meanings in them which Bruant, who wrote them,\nnever discovered, or, certainly, could never interpret; she has\nsurpassed him in his own quality, the _macabre_; she has transformed the\nrough material, which had seemed adequately handled until she showed how\nmuch more could be done with it, into something artistically fine and\ndistinguished. And just as, in the brutal and _macabre_ style, she has\ndone what Bruant was only trying to do, so, in the style, supposed to be\ntraditionally French, of delicate insinuation, she has invented new\nshades of expression, she has discovered a whole new method of\nsuggestion. And it is here, perhaps, that the new material which she has\nknown, by some happy instinct, how to lay her hands on, has been of most\nservice to her. She sings, a little cruelly, of the young girl; and the\nyoung girl of her songs (that _demoiselle de pensionnat_ who is the\nheroine of one of the most famous of them) is a very different being\nfrom the fair abstraction, even rosier and vaguer to the French mind\nthan it is to the English, which stands for the ideal of girlhood. It\nis, rather, the young girl as Goncourt has rendered her in \"Ch\u00e9rie,\" a\ncreature of awakening, half-unconscious sensations, already at work\nsomewhat abnormally in an an\u00e6mic frame, with an intelligence left to\nfeed mainly on itself. And Yvette herself, with her bright hair, the\nsleepy gold fire of her eyes, her slimness, her gracious awkwardness,\nher air of delusive innocence, is the very type of the young girl of\nwhom she sings. There is a certain malice in it all, a malicious\ninsistence on the other side of innocence. But there it is, a new\nfigure; and but one among the creations which we owe to this \"comic\nsinger,\" whose comedy is, for the most part, so serious and so tragic.\n\nFor the art of Yvette Guilbert is of that essentially modern kind which,\neven in a subject supposed to be comic, a subject we are accustomed to\nsee dealt with, if dealt with at all, in burlesque, seeks mainly for the\nreality of things (and reality, if we get deep enough into it, is never\ncomic), and endeavour to find a new, searching, and poignant expression\nfor that. It is an art concerned, for the most part, with all that part\nof life which the conventions were intended to hide from us. We see a\nworld where people are very vicious and very unhappy; a sordid,\nmiserable world which it is as well sometimes to consider. It is a side\nof existence which exists; and to see it is not to be attracted towards\nit. It is a grey and sordid land, under the sway of \"Eros vann\u00e9\"; it is,\nfor the most part, weary of itself, without rest, and without escape.\nThis is Yvette Guilbert's domain; she sings it, as no one has ever sung\nit before, with a tragic realism, touched with a sort of grotesque\nirony, which is a new thing on any stage. The _rouleuse_ of the Quartier\nBr\u00e9da, praying to the one saint in her calendar, \"Sainte Galette\"; the\n_so\u00fblarde_, whom the urchins follow and throw stones at in the street;\nthe whole life of the slums and the gutter: these are her subjects, and\nshe brings them, by some marvellous fineness of treatment, into the\nsphere of art.\n\nIt is all a question of _m\u00e9tier_, no doubt, though how far her method is\nconscious and deliberate it is difficult to say. But she has certain\nquite obvious qualities, of reticence, of moderation, of suspended\nemphasis, which can scarcely be other than conscious and deliberate. She\nuses but few gestures, and these brief, staccato, and for an immediate\npurpose; her hands, in their long black gloves, are almost motionless,\nthe arms hang limply; and yet every line of the face and body seems\nalive, alive and repressed. Her voice can be harsh or sweet, as she\nwould have it, can laugh or cry, be menacing or caressing; it is never\nused for its own sake, decoratively, but for a purpose, for an effect.\nAnd how every word tells! Every word comes to you clearly, carrying\nexactly its meaning; and, somehow, along with the words, an emotion,\nwhich you may resolve to ignore, but which will seize upon you, which\nwill go through and through you. Trick or instinct, there it is, the\npower to make you feel intensely; and that is precisely the final test\nof a great dramatic artist.\n\n\n\n\nSIR HENRY IRVING\n\n\nAs I watched, at the Lyceum, the sad and eager face of Duse, leaning\nforward out of a box, and gazing at the eager and gentle face of Irving,\nI could not help contrasting the two kinds of acting summed up in those\ntwo faces. The play was \"Olivia,\" W.G. Wills' poor and stagey version of\n\"The Vicar of Wakefield,\" in which, however, not even the lean\nintelligence of a modern playwright could quite banish the homely and\ngracious and tender charm of Goldsmith. As Dr. Primrose, Irving was\nalmost at his best; that is to say, not at his greatest, but at his most\nequable level of good acting. All his distinction was there, his\nnobility, his restraint, his fine convention. For Irving represents the\nold school of acting, just as Duse represents the new school. To Duse,\nacting is a thing almost wholly apart from action; she thinks on the\nstage, scarcely moves there; when she feels emotion, it is her chief\ncare not to express it with emphasis, but to press it down into her\nsoul, until only the pained reflection of it glimmers out of her eyes\nand trembles in the hollows of her cheeks. To Irving, on the contrary,\nacting is all that the word literally means; it is an art of sharp,\ndetached, yet always delicate movement; he crosses the stage with\nintention, as he intentionally adopts a fine, crabbed, personal, highly\nconventional elocution of his own; he is an actor, and he acts, keeping\nnature, or the too close resemblance of nature, carefully out of his\ncomposition.\n\nWith Miss Terry there is permanent charm of a very natural nature, which\nhas become deliciously sophisticated. She is the eternal girl, and she\ncan never grow old; one might say, she can never grow up. She learns her\npart, taking it quite artificially, as a part to be learnt; and then, at\nher frequent moments of forgetfulness, charms us into delight, though\nnot always into conviction, by a gay abandonment to the self of a\npassing moment. Irving's acting is almost a science, and it is a science\nfounded on tradition. It is in one sense his personality that makes him\nwhat he is, the only actor on the English stage who has a touch of\ngenius. But he has not gone to himself to invent an art wholly personal,\nwholly new; his acting is no interruption of an intense inner life, but\na craftsmanship into which he has put all he has to give. It is an art\nwholly of rhetoric, that is to say wholly external; his emotion moves to\nslow music, crystallises into an attitude, dies upon a long-drawn-out\nword. He appeals to us, to our sense of what is expected, to our\naccustomed sense of the logic, not of life, but of life as we have\nalways seen it on the stage, by his way of taking snuff, of taking out\nhis pocket-handkerchief, of lifting his hat, of crossing his legs. He\nhas observed life in order to make his own version of life, using the\nstage as his medium, and accepting the traditional aids and limitations\nof the stage.\n\nTake him in one of his typical parts, in \"Louis XI.\" His Louis XI. is a\nmasterpiece of grotesque art. It is a study in senility, and it is the\ngrotesque art of the thing which saves it from becoming painful. This\nshrivelled carcase, from which age, disease, and fear have picked all\nthe flesh, leaving the bare framework of bone and the drawn and cracked\ncovering of yellow skin, would be unendurable in its irreverent copy of\nage if it were not so obviously a picture, with no more malice than\nthere is in the delicate lines and fine colours of a picture. The figure\nis at once Punch and the oldest of the Chelsea pensioners; it distracts\none between pity, terror, and disgust, but is altogether absorbing; one\nwatches it as one would watch some feeble ancient piece of mechanism,\nstill working, which may snap at any moment. In such a personation,\nmake-up becomes a serious part of art. It is the picture that magnetises\nus, and every wrinkle seems to have been studied in movement; the hands\nact almost by themselves, as if every finger were a separate actor. The\npassion of fear, the instinct of craft, the malady of suspicion, in a\nfrail old man who has power over every one but himself: that is what Sir\nHenry Irving represents, in a performance which is half precise\nphysiology, half palpable artifice, but altogether a unique thing in\nart.\n\nSee him in \"The Merchant of Venice.\" His Shylock is noble and sordid,\npathetic and terrifying. It is one of his great parts, made up of pride,\nstealth, anger, minute and varied picturesqueness, and a diabolical\nsubtlety. Whether he paws at his cloak, or clutches upon the handle of\nhis stick, or splutters hatred, or cringes before his prey, or shakes\nwith lean and wrinkled laughter, he is always the great part and the\ngreat actor. See him as Mephistopheles in \"Faust.\" The Lyceum\nperformance was a superb pantomime, with one overpowering figure\ndrifting through it and in some sort directing it, the red-plumed devil\nMephistopheles, who, in Sir Henry Irving's impersonation of him, becomes\na kind of weary spirit, a melancholy image of unhappy pride, holding\nhimself up to the laughter of inferior beings, with the old\nacknowledgment that \"the devil is an ass.\" A head like the head of\nDante, shown up by coloured lights, and against chromolithographic\nbackgrounds, while all the diabolic intelligence is set to work on the\ncheap triumph of wheedling a widow and screwing Rhenish and Tokay with a\ngimlet out of an inn table: it is partly Goethe's fault, and partly the\nfault of Wills, and partly the lowering trick of the stage.\nMephistopheles is not really among Irving's great parts, but it is among\nhis picturesque parts. With his restless strut, a blithe and aged\ntripping of the feet to some not quite human measure, he is like some\nspectral marionette, playing a game only partly his own. In such a part\nno mannerism can seem unnatural, and the image with its solemn mask\nlives in a kind of galvanic life of its own, seductively, with some\nmocking suggestion of his \"cousin the snake.\" Here and there some of the\nold power may be lacking; but whatever was once subtle and insinuating\nremains.\n\nShakespeare at the Lyceum is always a magnificent spectacle, and\n\"Coriolanus,\" the last Shakespearean revival there, was a magnificent\nspectacle. It is a play made up principally of one character and a\ncrowd, the crowd being a sort of moving background, treated in\nShakespeare's large and scornful way. A stage crowd at the Lyceum always\ngives one a sense of exciting movement, and this Roman rabble did all\nthat was needed to show off the almost solitary splendour of Coriolanus.\nHe is the proudest man in Shakespeare, and Sir Henry Irving is at his\nbest when he embodies pride. His conception of the part was masterly; it\nhad imagination, nobility, quietude. With opportunity for ranting in\nevery second speech, he never ranted, but played what might well have\nbeen a roaring part with a kind of gentleness. With every opportunity\nfor extravagant gesture, he stood, as the play seemed to foam about him,\nlike a rock against which the foam beats. Made up as a kind of Roman\nMoltke, the lean, thoughtful soldier, he spoke throughout with a slow,\ncontemptuous enunciation, as of one only just not too lofty to sneer.\nRestrained in scorn, he kept throughout an attitude of disdainful pride,\nthe face, the eyes, set, while only his mouth twitched, seeming to chew\nhis words, with the disgust of one swallowing a painful morsel. Where\nother actors would have raved, he spoke with bitter humour, a humour\nthat seemed to hurt the speaker, the concise, active humour of the\nsoldier, putting his words rapidly into deeds. And his pride was an\nintellectual pride; the weakness of a character, but the angry dignity\nof a temperament. I have never seen Irving so restrained, so much an\nartist, so faithfully interpretative of a masterpiece. Something of\nenergy, no doubt, was lacking; but everything was there, except the\nemphasis which I most often wish away in acting.\n\n\n\n\nDUSE IN SOME OF HER PARTS\n\nI\n\n\nThe acting of Duse is a criticism; poor work dissolves away under it, as\nunder a solvent acid. Not one of the plays which she has brought with\nher is a play on the level of her intelligence and of her capacity for\nexpressing deep human emotion. Take \"The Second Mrs. Tanqueray.\" It is a\nvery able play, it is quite an interesting glimpse into a particular\nkind of character, but it is only able, and it is only a glimpse. Paula,\nas conceived by Mr. Pinero, is a thoroughly English type of woman, the\nnice, slightly morbid, somewhat unintelligently capricious woman who has\n\"gone wrong,\" and who finds it quite easy, though a little dull, to go\nright when the chance is offered to her. She is observed from the\noutside, very keenly observed; her ways, her surface tricks of emotion,\nare caught; she is a person whom we know or remember. But what is\nskin-deep in Paula as conceived by Mr. Pinero becomes a real human\nbeing, a human being with a soul, in the Paula conceived by Duse. Paula\nas played by Duse is sad and sincere, where the Englishwoman is only\nirritable; she has the Italian simplicity and directness in place of\nthat terrible English capacity for uncertainty in emotion and huffiness\nin manner. She brings profound tragedy, the tragedy of a soul which has\nsinned and suffered, and tries vainly to free itself from the\nconsequences of its deeds, into a study of circumstances in their ruin\nof material happiness. And, frankly, the play cannot stand it. When this\nwoman bows down under her fate in so terrible a spiritual loneliness,\nrealising that we cannot fight against Fate, and that Fate is only the\ninevitable choice of our own natures, we wait for the splendid words\nwhich shall render so great a situation; and no splendid words come. The\nsituation, to the dramatist, has been only a dramatic situation. Here is\nDuse, a chalice for the wine of imagination, but the chalice remains\nempty. It is almost painful to see her waiting for the words that do\nnot come, offering tragedy to us in her eyes, and with her hands, and in\nher voice, only not in the words that she says or in the details of the\naction which she is condemned to follow.\n\nSee Mrs. Patrick Campbell playing \"The Second Mrs. Tanqueray,\" and you\nwill see it played exactly according to Mr. Pinero'a intention, and\nplayed brilliantly enough to distract our notice from what is lacking in\nthe character. A fantastic and delightful contradiction, half gamine,\nhalf Burne-Jones, she confuses our judgment, as a Paula in real life\nmight, and leaves us attracted and repelled, and, above all, interested.\nBut Duse has no resources outside simple human nature. If she cannot\nconvince you by the thing in itself, she cannot disconcert you by a\nparadox about it. Well, this passionately sincere acting, this one real\nperson moving about among the dolls of the piece, shows up all that is\nmechanical, forced, and unnatural in the construction of a play never\nmeant to withstand the searchlight of this woman's creative\nintelligence. Whatever is theatrical and obvious starts out into sight.\nThe good things are transfigured, the bad things merely discovered. And\nso, by a kind of na\u00efvet\u00e9 in the acceptance of emotion for all it might\nbe, instead of for the little that it is, by an almost perverse\nsimplicity and sincerity in the treatment of a superficial and insincere\ncharacter, Duse plays \"The Second Mrs. Tanqueray\" in the grand manner,\ndestroying the illusion of the play as she proves over again the\nsupremacy of her own genius.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nWhile I watch Duse's Magda, I can conceive, for the time, of no other.\nRealising the singer as being just such an artist as herself, she plays\nthe part with hardly a suggestion of the stage, except the natural\nwoman's intermittent loathing for it. She has been a great artist; yes,\nbut that is nothing to her. \"I am I,\" as she says, and she has lived.\nAnd we see before us, all through the play, a woman who has lived with\nall her capacity for joy and sorrow, who has thought with all her\ncapacity for seeing clearly what she is unable, perhaps, to help doing.\nShe does not act, that is, explain herself to us, emphasise herself for\nus. She lets us overlook her, with a supreme unconsciousness, a supreme\naffectation of unconsciousness, which is of course very conscious art,\nan art so perfect as to be almost literally deceptive. I do not know if\nshe plays with exactly the same gestures night after night, but I can\nquite imagine it. She has certain little caresses, the half awkward\ncaresses of real people, not the elegant curves and convolutions of the\nstage, which always enchant me beyond any mimetic movements I have ever\nseen. She has a way of letting her voice apparently get beyond her own\ncontrol, and of looking as if emotion has left her face expressionless,\nas it often leaves the faces of real people, thus carrying the illusion\nof reality almost further than it is possible to carry it, only never\nquite.\n\nI was looking this afternoon at Whistler's portrait of Carlyle at the\nGuildhall, and I find in both the same final art: that art of perfect\nexpression, perfect suppression, perfect balance of every quality, so\nthat a kind of negative thing becomes a thing of the highest\nachievement. Name every fault to which the art of the actor is liable,\nand you will have named every fault which is lacking in Duse. And the\nart of the actor is in itself so much a compound of false emphasis and\nevery kind of wilful exaggeration, that to have any negative merit is to\nhave already a merit very positive. Having cleared away all that is not\nwanted, Duse begins to create. And she creates out of life itself an art\nwhich no one before her had ever imagined: not realism, not a copy, but\nthe thing itself, the evocation of thoughtful life, the creation of the\nworld over again, as actual and beautiful a thing as if the world had\nnever existed.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\n\"La Gioconda\" is the first play in which Duse has had beautiful words to\nspeak, and a poetical conception of character to render; and her acting\nin it is more beautiful and more poetical than it was possible for it to\nbe in \"Magda,\" or in \"The Second Mrs. Tanqueray.\" But the play is not a\ngood play; at its best it is lyrical rather than dramatic, and at its\nworst it is horrible with a vulgar material horror. The end of \"Titus\nAndronicus\" is not so revolting as the end of \"La Gioconda.\" D'Annunzio\nhas put as a motto on his title-page the sentence of Leonardo da Vinci:\n\"Cosa bella mortal passa, e non d'arte,\" and the action of the play is\nintended as a symbol of the possessing and destroying mastery of art and\nof beauty. But the idea is materialised into a form of grotesque horror,\nand all the charm of the atmosphere and the grace of the words cannot\nredeem a conclusion so inartistic in its painfulness. But, all the same,\nthe play is the work of a poet, it brings imagination upon the stage,\nand it gives Duse an opportunity of being her finest self. All the words\nshe speaks are sensitive words, she moves in the midst of beautiful\nthings, her whole life seems to flow into a more harmonious rhythm, for\nall the violence of its sorrow and suffering. Her acting at the end, all\nthrough the inexcusable brutality of the scene in which she appears\nbefore us with her mutilated hands covered under long hanging sleeves,\nis, in the dignity, intensity, and humanity of its pathos, a thing of\nbeauty, of a profound kind of beauty, made up of pain, endurance, and\nthe irony of pitiable things done in vain. Here she is no longer\ntransforming a foreign conception of character into her own conception\nof what character should be; she is embodying the creation of an\nItalian, of an artist, and a creation made in her honour. D'Annunzio's\ntragedy is, in the final result, bad tragedy, but it is a failure of a\nfar higher order than such successes as Mr. Pinero's. It is written with\na consciousness of beauty, with a feverish energy which is still energy,\nwith a sense of what is imaginative in the facts of actual life. It is\nwritten in Italian which is a continual delight to the ear, prose which\nsounds as melodious as verse, prose to which, indeed, all dramatic\nprobability is sacrificed. And Duse seems to acquire a new subtlety, as\nshe speaks at last words in themselves worthy of her speaking. It is as\nif she at last spoke her own language.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\nDumas fils has put his best work into the novel of \"La Dame aux\nCam\u00e9lias,\" which is a kind of slighter, more superficial, more\nsentimental, more modern, but less universal \"Manon Lescaut.\" There is a\ncertain artificial, genuinely artificial, kind of nature in it: if not\n\"true to life,\" it is true to certain lives. But the play lets go this\nhold, such as it is, on reality, and becomes a mere stage convention as\nit crosses the footlights; a convention which is touching, indeed, far\ntoo full of pathos, human in its exaggerated way, but no longer to be\nmistaken, by the least sensitive of hearers, for great or even fine\nliterature. And the sentiment in it is not so much human as French, a\nfactitious idealism in depravity which one associates peculiarly with\nParis. Marguerite Gautier is the type of the nice woman who sins and\nloves, and becomes regenerated by an unnatural kind of self-sacrifice,\ndone for French family reasons. She is the Parisian whom Sarah Bernhardt\nimpersonates perfectly in that hysterical and yet deliberate manner\nwhich is made for such impersonations. Duse, as she does always, turns\nher into quite another kind of woman; not the light woman, to whom love\nhas come suddenly, as a new sentiment coming suddenly into her life, but\nthe simple, instinctively loving woman, in whom we see nothing of the\ndemi-monde, only the natural woman in love. Throughout the play she has\nmoments, whole scenes, of absolute greatness, as fine as anything she\nhas ever done: but there are other moments when she seems to carry\nrepression too far. Her pathos, as in the final scene, and at the end of\nthe scene of the reception, where she repeats the one word \"Armando\"\nover and over again, in an amazed and agonising reproachfulness, is of\nthe finest order of pathos. She appeals to us by a kind of goodness,\nmuch deeper than the sentimental goodness intended by Dumas. It is love\nitself that she gives us, love utterly unconscious of anything but\nitself, uncontaminated, unspoilt. She is Mlle. de Lespinasse rather than\nMarguerite Gautier; a creature in whom ardour is as simple as breath,\nand devotion a part of ardour. Her physical suffering is scarcely to be\nnoticed; it is the suffering of her soul that Duse gives us. And she\ngives us this as if nature itself came upon the boards, and spoke to us\nwithout even the ordinary disguise of human beings in their intercourse\nwith one another. Once more an artificial play becomes sincere; once\nmore the personality of a great impersonal artist dominates the poverty\nof her part; we get one more revelation of a particular phase of Duse.\nAnd it would be unreasonable to complain that \"La Dame aux Cam\u00e9lias\" is\nreally something quite different, something much inferior; here we have\nat least a great emotion, a desperate sincerity, with all the\nthoughtfulness which can possibly accompany passion.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nDumas, in a preface better than his play, tells us that \"La Princesse\nGeorges\" is \"a Soul in conflict with Instincts.\" But no, as he has drawn\nher, as he has placed her, she is only the theory of a woman in conflict\nwith the mechanical devices of a plot. All these characters talk as\nthey have been taught, and act according to the tradition of the stage.\nIt is a double piece of mechanism, that is all; there is no creation of\ncharacter, there is a kind of worldly wisdom throughout, but not a\nglimmer of imagination; argument drifts into sentiment, and sentiment\nreturns into argument, without conviction; the end is no conclusion, but\nan arbitrary break in an action which we see continuing, after the\ncurtain has fallen. And, as in \"F\u00e9dora,\" Duse comes into the play\nresolved to do what the author has not done. Does she deliberately\nchoose the plays most obviously not written for her in order to extort a\ntriumph out of her enemies? Once more she acts consciously, openly,\nmaking every moment of an unreal thing real, by concentrating herself\nupon every moment as if it were the only one. The result is a\nperformance miraculous in detail, and, if detail were everything, it\nwould be a great part. With powdered hair, she is beautiful and a great\nlady; as the domesticated princess, she has all the virtues, and\nhonesty itself, in her face and in her movements; she gives herself with\na kind of really unreflecting thoughtfulness to every sentiment which is\nhalf her emotion. If such a woman could exist, and she could not, she\nwould be that, precisely that. But just as we are beginning to believe,\nnot only in her but in the play itself, in comes the spying lady's maid,\nor the valet who spies on the lady's maid, and we are in melodrama\nagain, and among the strings of the marionettes. Where are the three\nstages, truth, philosophy, conscience, which Dumas offers to us in his\npreface as the three stages by which a work of dramatic art reaches\nperfection? Shown us by Duse, from moment to moment, yes; but in the\npiece, no, scarcely more than in \"F\u00e9dora.\" So fatal is it to write for\nour instruction, as fatal as to write for our amusement. A work of art\nmust suggest everything, but it must prove nothing. Bad imaginative work\nlike \"La Gioconda\" is really, in its way, better than this unimaginative\nand theoretical falseness to life; for it at least shows us beauty,\neven though it degrades that beauty before our eyes. And Duse, of all\nactresses the nearest to nature, was born to create beauty, that beauty\nwhich is the deepest truth of natural things. Why does she after all\nonly tantalise us, showing us little fragments of her soul under many\ndisguises, but never giving us her whole self through the revealing\nmedium of a masterpiece?\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\n\n\"F\u00e9dora\" is a play written for Sarah Bernhardt by the writer of plays\nfor Sarah Bernhardt, and it contains the usual ingredients of that\nparticular kind of sorcery: a Russian tigress, an assassination, a\nsuicide, exotic people with impulses in conflict with their intentions,\ngood working evil and evil working good, not according to a\nphilosophical idea, but for the convenience of a melodramatic plot. As\nartificial, as far from life on the one hand and poetry on the other, as\na jig of marionettes at the end of a string, it has the absorbing\nmomentary interest of a problem in events. Character does not exist,\nonly impulse and event. And Duse comes into this play with a desperate\nresolve to fill it with honest emotion, to be what a woman would really\nperhaps be if life turned melodramatic with her. Visibly, deliberately,\nshe acts: \"F\u00e9dora\" is not to be transformed unawares into life. But her\nacting is like that finest kind of acting which we meet with in real\nlife, when we are able to watch some choice scene of the human comedy\nbeing played before us. She becomes the impossible thing that F\u00e9dora is,\nand, in that tour de force, she does some almost impossible things by\nthe way. There is a scene in which the blood fades out of her cheeks\nuntil they seem to turn to dry earth furrowed with wrinkles. She makes\ntriumphant point after triumphant point (her intelligence being free to\nact consciously on this unintelligent matter), and we notice, more than\nin her finer parts, individual movements, gestures, tones: the attitude\nof her open hand upon a door, certain blind caresses with her fingers as\nthey cling for the last time to her lover's cheeks, her face as she\nreads a letter, the art of her voice as she almost deliberately takes us\nin with these emotional artifices of Sardou. When it is all over, and we\nthink of the Silvia of \"La Gioconda,\" of the woman we divine under Magda\nand under Paula Tanqueray, it is with a certain sense of waste; for even\nPaula can be made to seem something which F\u00e9dora can never be made to\nseem. In \"F\u00e9dora\" we have a sheer, undisguised piece of stagecraft,\nwithout even the amount of psychological intention of Mr. Pinero, much\nless of Sudermann. It is a detective story with horrors, and it is far\ntoo positive and finished a thing to be transformed into something not\nitself. Sardou is a hard taskmaster; he chains his slaves. Without\nnobility or even coherence of conception, without inner life or even a\nrecognisable semblance of exterior life, the piece goes by clockwork;\nyou cannot make the hands go faster or slower, or bring its mid-day into\nagreement with the sun. A great actress, who is also a great\nintelligence, is seen accepting it, for its purpose, with contempt, as a\nthing to exercise her technical skill upon. As a piece of technical\nskill, Duse's acting in \"F\u00e9dora\" is as fine as anything she has done. It\ncompletes our admiration of her genius, as it proves to us that she can\nact to perfection a part in which the soul is left out of the question,\nin which nothing happens according to nature, and in which life is\nfigured as a long attack of nerves, relieved by the occasional interval\nof an uneasy sleep.\n\n\n\n\nANNOTATIONS BY THE WAY\n\nI. \"PELL\u00c9AS AND M\u00c9LISANDE\"\n\n\n\"Pell\u00e9as and M\u00e9lisande\" is the most beautiful of Maeterlinck's plays,\nand to say this is to say that it is the most beautiful contemporary\nplay. Maeterlinck's theatre of marionettes, who are at the same time\nchildren and spirits, at once more simple and more abstract than real\npeople, is the reaction of the imagination against the wholly prose\ntheatre of Ibsen, into which life comes nakedly, cruelly, subtly, but\nwithout distinction, without poetry. Maeterlinck has invented plays\nwhich are pictures, in which the crudity of action is subdued into misty\noutlines. People with strange names, living in impossible places, where\nthere are only woods and fountains, and towers by the sea-shore, and\nancient castles, where there are no towns, and where the common crowd of\nthe world is shut out of sight and hearing, move like quiet ghosts\nacross the stage, mysterious to us and not less mysterious to one\nanother. They are all lamenting because they do not know, because they\ncannot understand, because their own souls are so strange to them, and\neach other's souls like pitiful enemies, giving deadly wounds\nunwillingly. They are always in dread, because they know that nothing is\ncertain in the world or in their own hearts, and they know that love\nmost often does the work of hate and that hate is sometimes tenderer\nthan love. In \"Pell\u00e9as and M\u00e9lisande\" we have two innocent lovers, to\nwhom love is guilt; we have blind vengeance, aged and helpless wisdom;\nwe have the conflict of passions fighting in the dark, destroying what\nthey desire most in the world. And out of this tragic tangle Maeterlinck\nhas made a play which is too full of beauty to be painful. We feel an\nexquisite sense of pity, so impersonal as to be almost healing, as if\nour own sympathy had somehow set right the wrongs of the play.\n\nAnd this play, translated with delicate fidelity by Mr. Mackail, has\nbeen acted again by Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Mr. Martin Harvey, to the\naccompaniment of M. Faur\u00e9's music, and in the midst of scenery which\ngave a series of beautiful pictures, worthy of the play. Mrs. Campbell,\nin whose art there is so much that is pictorial, has never been so\npictorial as in the character of M\u00e9lisande. At the beginning I thought\nshe was acting with more effort and less effect than in the original\nperformance; but as the play went on she abandoned herself more and more\nsimply to the part she was acting, and in the death scene had a kind of\nquiet, poignant, reticent perfection. A plaintive figure out of\ntapestry, a child out of a nursery tale, she made one feel at once the\nremoteness and the humanity of this waif of dreams, the little princess\nwho does know that it is wrong to love. In the great scene by the\nfountain in the park, Mrs. Campbell expressed the supreme\nunconsciousness of passion, both in face and voice, as no other English\nactress could have done; in the death scene she expressed the supreme\nunconsciousness of innocence with the same beauty and the same\nintensity. Her palpitating voice, in which there is something like the\nthrobbing of a wounded bird, seemed to speak the simple and beautiful\nwords as if they had never been said before. And that beauty and\nstrangeness in her, which make her a work of art in herself, seemed to\nfind the one perfect opportunity for their expression. The only actress\non our stage whom we go to see as we would go to see a work of art, she\nacts Pinero and the rest as if under a disguise. Here, dressed in\nwonderful clothes of no period, speaking delicate, almost ghostly words,\nshe is herself, her rarer self. And Mr. Martin Harvey, who can be so\nsimple, so passionate, so full of the warmth of charm, seemed until\nalmost the end of the play to have lost the simple fervour which he had\nonce shown in the part of Pell\u00e9as; he posed, spoke without sincerity,\nwas conscious of little but his attitudes. But in the great love scene\nby the fountain in the park he had recovered sincerity, he forgot\nhimself, remembering Pell\u00e9as: and that great love scene was acted with\na sense of the poetry and a sense of the human reality of the thing, as\nno one on the London stage but Mr. Harvey and Mrs. Campbell could have\nacted it. No one else, except Mr. Arliss as the old servant, was good;\nthe acting was not sufficiently monotonous, with that fine monotony\nwhich is part of the secret of Maeterlinck. These busy actors occupied\nthemselves in making points, instead of submitting passively to the\npassing through them of profound emotions, and the betrayal of these\nemotions in a few, reticent, and almost unwilling words.\n\n\n\n\nII. \"EVERYMAN\"\n\n\nThe Elizabethan Stage Society's performance of \"Everyman\" deserves a\nplace of its own among the stage performances of our time. \"Everyman\"\ntook one into a kind of very human church, a church in the midst of the\nmarket-place, like those churches in Italy, in which people seem so much\nat home. The verse is quaint, homely, not so archaic when it is spoken\nas one might suppose in reading it; the metre is regular in heat, but\nvery irregular in the number of syllables, and the people who spoke it\nso admirably under Mr. Poel's careful training had not been trained to\nscan it as well as they articulated it. \"Everyman\" is a kind of\n\"Pilgrim's Progress,\" conceived with a daring and reverent imagination,\nso that God himself comes quite naturally upon the stage, and speaks out\nof a clothed and painted image. Death, lean and bare-boned, rattles his\ndrum and trips fantastically across the stage of the earth, leading his\ndance; Everyman is seen on his way to the grave, taking leave of Riches,\nFellowship, Kindred, and Goods (each personified with his attributes),\nescorted a little way by Strength, Discretion, Beauty, and the Five\nWits, and then abandoned by them, and then going down into the grave\nwith no other attendance than that of Knowledge and Good Deeds. The\npathos and sincerity of the little drama were shown finely and\nadequately by the simple cloths and bare boards of a Shakespearean\nstage, and by the solemn chanting of the actors and their serious,\nunspoilt simplicity in acting. Miss Wynne-Matthison in the part of\nEveryman acted with remarkable power and subtlety; she had the complete\ncommand of her voice, as so few actors or actresses have, and she was\nable to give vocal expression to every shade of meaning which she had\napprehended.\n\n\n\n\nIII. \"FAUST\" AT THE LYCEUM\n\n\nIn the version of \"Faust\" given by Irving at the Lyceum, Wills did his\nbest to follow the main lines of Goethe's construction. Unfortunately he\nwas less satisfied with Goethe's verse, though it happens that the verse\nis distinctly better than the construction. He kept the shell and threw\naway the kernel. Faust becomes insignificant in this play to which he\ngives his name. In Goethe he was a thinker, even more than a poet. Here\nhe speaks bad verse full of emptiness. Even where Goethe's words are\nfollowed, in a literal translation, the meaning seems to have gone out\nof them; they are displaced, they no longer count for anything. The\nWalpurgis Night is stripped of all its poetry, and Faust's study is\nemptied of all its wisdom. The Witches' Kitchen brews messes without\nmagic, lest the gallery should be bewildered. The part of Martha is\nextended, in order that his red livery may have its full \"comic relief.\"\nMephistopheles throws away a good part of his cunning wit, in order that\nhe may shock no prejudices by seeming to be cynical with seriousness,\nand in order to get in some more than indifferent spectral effect.\nMargaret is to be seen full length; the little German soubrette does her\nbest to be the Helen Faust takes her for; and we are meant to be\nprofoundly interested in the love-story. \"Most of all,\" the programme\nassures us, Wills \"strove to tell the love-story in a manner that might\nappeal to an English-speaking audience.\"\n\nNow if you take the philosophy and the poetry out of Goethe's \"Faust,\"\nand leave the rest, it does not seem to me that you leave the part which\nis best worth having. In writing the First Part of \"Faust\" Goethe made\nfree use of the legend of Dr. Faustus, not always improving that legend\nwhere he departed from it. If we turn to Marlowe's \"Dr. Faustus\" we\nshall see, embedded among chaotic fragments of mere rubbish and refuse,\nthe outlines of a far finer, a far more poetic, conception of the\nlegend. Marlowe's imagination was more essentially a poetic imagination\nthan Goethe's, and he was capable, at moments, of more satisfying\ndramatic effects. When his Faustus says to Mephistopheles:\n\n  One thing, good servant, let me crave of thee,\n  To glut the longing of my heart's desire:\n  That I may have unto my paramour\n  That heavenly Helen which I saw of late;\n\nand when, his prayer being granted, he cries:\n\n  Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,\n  And burned the topless towers of Ilium?\n\nhe is a much more splendid and significant person than the Faust of\nGoethe, who needs the help of the devil and of an old woman to seduce a\nyoung girl who has fallen in love with him at first sight. Goethe, it is\ntrue, made what amends he could afterwards, in the Second Part, when\nmuch of the impulse had gone and all the deliberation in the world was\nnot active enough to replace it. Helen has her share, among other\nabstractions, but the breath has not returned into her body, she is\nglacial, a talking enigma, to whom Marlowe's Faustus would never have\nsaid with the old emphasis:\n\n  And none but thou shalt be my paramour!\n\nWhat remains, then, in Wills' version, is the Gretchen story, in all its\ndetail, a spectacular representation of the not wholly sincere\nwitchcraft, and the impressive outer shell of Mephistopheles, with, in\nSir Henry Irving's pungent and acute rendering, something of the real\nsavour of the denying spirit. Mephistopheles is the modern devil, the\ndevil of culture and polite negation; the comrade, in part the master,\nof Heine, and perhaps the grandson and pupil of Voltaire. On the Lyceum\nstage he is the one person of distinction, the one intelligence; though\nso many of his best words have been taken from him, it is with a fine\nsubtlety that he says the words that remain. And the figure, with its\nlightness, weary grace, alert and uneasy step, solemnity, grim laughter,\nremains with one, after one has come away and forgotten whether he told\nus all that Goethe confided to him.\n\n\n\n\nIV. THE JAPANESE PLAYERS\n\n\nWhen I first saw the Japanese players I suddenly discovered the meaning\nof Japanese art, so far as it represents human beings. You know the\nscarcely human oval which represents a woman's face, with the help of a\nfew thin curves for eyelids and mouth. Well, that convention, as I had\nalways supposed it to be, that geometrical symbol of a face, turns out\nto be precisely the face of the Japanese woman when she is made up. So\nthe monstrous entanglements of men fighting, which one sees in the\npictures, the circling of the two-handed sword, the violence of feet in\ncombat, are seen to be after all the natural manner of Japanese warfare.\nThis unrestrained energy of body comes out in the expression of every\nmotion. Men spit and sneeze and snuffle, without consciousness of\ndignity or hardly of humanity, under the influence of fear, anger, or\nastonishment. When the merchant is awaiting Shylock's knife he trembles\nconvulsively, continuously, from head to feet, unconscious of everything\nbut death. When Shylock has been thwarted, he stands puckering his face\ninto a thousand grimaces, like a child who has swallowed medicine. It is\nthe emotion of children, naked sensation, not yet clothed by\ncivilisation. Only the body speaks in it, the mind is absent; and the\nbody abandons itself completely to the animal force of its instincts.\nWith a great artist like Sada Yacco in the death scene of \"The Geisha\nand the Knight,\" the effect is overwhelming; the whole woman dies before\none's sight, life ebbs visibly out of cheeks and eyes and lips; it is\ndeath as not even Sarah Bernhardt has shown us death. There are moments,\nat other times and with other performers, when it is difficult not to\nlaugh at some cat-like or ape-like trick of these painted puppets who\ntalk a toneless language, breathing through their words as they whisper\nor chant them. They are swathed like barbaric idols, in splendid robes\nwithout grace; they dance with fans, with fingers, running, hopping,\nlifting their feet, if they lift them, with the heavy delicacy of the\nelephant; they sing in discords, striking or plucking a few hoarse notes\non stringed instruments, and beating on untuned drums. Neither they nor\ntheir clothes have beauty, to the limited Western taste; they have\nstrangeness, the charm of something which seems to us capricious, almost\noutside Nature. In our ignorance of their words, of what they mean to\none another, of the very way in which they see one another, we shall\nbest appreciate their rarity by looking on them frankly as pictures,\nwhich we can see with all the imperfections of a Western\nmisunderstanding.\n\n\n\n\nV. THE PARIS MUSIC-HALL\n\n\nIt is not always realised by Englishmen that England is really the\ncountry of the music-hall, the only country where it has taken firm\nroot and flowered elegantly. There is nothing in any part of Europe to\ncompare, in their own way, with the Empire and the Alhambra, either as\nplaces luxurious in themselves or as places where a brilliant spectacle\nis to be seen. It is true that, in England, the art of the ballet has\ngone down; the prima ballerina assoluta is getting rare, the primo uomo\nis extinct. The training of dancers as dancers leaves more and more to\nbe desired, but that is a defect which we share, at the present time,\nwith most other countries; while the beauty of the spectacle, with us,\nis unique. Think of \"Les Papillons\" or of \"Old China\" at the Empire, and\nthen go and see a fantastic ballet at Paris, at Vienna, or at Berlin!\n\nAnd it is not only in regard to the ballet, but in regard also to the\n\"turns,\" that we are ahead of all our competitors. I have no great\nadmiration for most of our comic gentlemen and ladies in London, but I\nfind it still more difficult to take any interest in the comic gentlemen\nand ladies of Paris. Take Marie Lloyd, for instance, and compare with\nher, say, Marguerite Deval at the Scala. Both aim at much the same\neffect, but, contrary to what might have been expected, it is the\nEnglishwoman who shows the greater finesse in the rendering of that\nsmall range of sensations to which both give themselves up frankly. Take\nPolin, who is supposed to express vulgarities with unusual success.\nThose automatic gestures, flapping and flopping; that dribbling voice,\nwithout intonation; that flabby droop and twitch of the face; all that\nsoapy rubbing-in of the expressive parts of the song: I could see no\nskill in it all, of a sort worth having. The women here sing mainly with\ntheir shoulders, for which they seem to have been chosen, and which are\nundoubtedly expressive. Often they do not even take the trouble to\nexpress anything with voice or face; the face remains blank, the voice\ntrots creakily. It is a doll who repeats its lesson, holding itself up\nto be seen.\n\nThe French \"revue,\" as one sees it at the Folies-Berg\u00e8re, done somewhat\nroughly and sketchily, strikes one most of all by its curious want of\nconsecution, its entire reliance on the point of this or that scene,\ncostume, or performer. It has no plan, no idea; some ideas are flung\ninto it in passing; but it remains as shapeless as an English pantomime,\nand not much more interesting. Both appeal to the same undeveloped\ninstincts, the English to a merely childish vulgarity, the French to a\nvulgarity which is more frankly vicious. Really I hardly know which is\nto be preferred. In England we pretend that fancy dress is all in the\ninterests of morality; in France they make no such pretence, and, in\ndispensing with shoulder-straps, do but make their intentions a little\nclearer. Go to the Moulin-Rouge and you will see a still clearer\nobject-lesson. The goods in the music-halls are displayed so to speak,\nbehind glass, in a shop window; at the Moulin-Rouge they are on the open\nbooths of a street market.\n\n\n\n\nM. CAPUS IN ENGLAND\n\n\nAn excellent Parisian company from the Vari\u00e9t\u00e9s has been playing \"La\nVeine\" of M. Alfred Capus, and this week it is playing \"Les Deux Ecoles\"\nof the same entertaining writer. The company is led by Mme. Jeanne\nGranier, an actress who could not be better in her own way unless she\nacquired a touch of genius, and she has no genius. She was thoroughly\nand consistently good, she was lifelike, amusing, never out of key;\nonly, while she reminded one at times of R\u00e9jane, she had none of\nR\u00e9jane's magnetism, none of R\u00e9jane's exciting naturalness.\n\nThe whole company is one of excellent quality, which goes together like\nthe different parts of a piece of machinery. There is Mme. Marie\nMagnier, so admirable as an old lady of that good, easy-going,\nintelligent, French type. There is Mlle. Lavalli\u00e8re, with her brilliant\neyes and her little canaille voice, vulgarly exquisite. There is M.\nNum\u00e8s, M. Guy, M. Guitry. M. Guitry is the French equivalent of Mr. Fred\nKerr, with all the difference that that change of nationality means. His\nslow manner, his delaying pantomine, his hard, persistent eyes, his\nuninflected voice, made up a type which I have never seen more\nfaithfully presented on the stage. And there is M. Brasseur. He is a\nkind of French Arthur Roberts, but without any of that extravagant\nenergy which carries the English comedian triumphantly through all his\nabsurdities. M. Brasseur is preposterously natural, full of aplomb and\nimpertinence. He never flags, never hesitates; it is impossible to take\nhim seriously, as we say of delightful, mischievous people in real life.\nI have been amused to see a discussion in the papers as to whether \"La\nVeine\" is a fit play to be presented to the English public. \"Max\" has\ndefended it in his own way in the _Saturday Review_, and I hasten to say\nthat I quite agree with his defence. Above all, I agree with him when\nhe says: \"Let our dramatic critics reserve their indignation for those\nother plays in which the characters are self-conscious, winkers and\ngigglers over their own misconduct, taking us into their confidence, and\ninviting us to wink and giggle with them.\" There, certainly, is the\noffence; there is a kind of vulgarity which seems native to the lower\nEnglish mind and to the lower English stage. M. Capus is not a moralist,\nbut it is not needful to be a moralist. He is a skilful writer for the\nstage, who takes an amiable, somewhat superficial, quietly humorous view\nof things, and he takes people as he finds them in a particular section\nof the upper and lower middle classes in Paris, not going further than\nthe notion which they have of themselves, and presenting that simply,\nwithout comment. We get a foolish young millionaire and a foolish young\nperson in a flower shop, who take up a collage together in the most\ncasual way possible, and they are presented as two very ordinary people,\nneither better nor worse than a great many other ordinary people, who\ndo or do not do much the same thing. They at least do not \"wink or\ngiggle\"; they take things with the utmost simplicity, and they call upon\nus to imitate their bland unconsciousness.\n\n\"La Veine\" is a study of luck, in the person of a very ordinary man, not\nmore intelligent or more selfish or more attractive than the average,\nbut one who knows when to take the luck which comes his way. The few,\nquite average, incidents of the play are put together with neatness and\nprobability, and without sensational effects, or astonishing curtains;\nthe people are very natural and probable, very amusing in their humours,\nand they often say humorous things, not in so many set words, but by a\nclever adjustment of natural and probable nothings. Throughout the play\nthere is an amiable and entertaining common sense which never becomes\nstage convention; these people talk like real people, only much more\n\u00e0-propos.\n\nIn \"Les Deux Ecoles\" the philosophy which could be discerned in \"La\nVeine,\" that of taking things as they are and taking them comfortably,\nis carried to a still further development. I am prepared to be told that\nthe whole philosophy is horribly immoral; perhaps it is; but the play,\ncertainly, is not. It is vastly amusing, its naughtiness is so na\u00efve, so\ntactfully frank, that even the American daughter might take her mother\nto see it, without fear of corrupting the innocence of age. \"On peut\ntr\u00e8s bien vivre sans \u00eatre la plus heureuse des femmes\": that is one of\nthe morals of the piece; and, the more you think over questions of\nconduct, the more you realise that you might just as well not have\nthought about them at all, might be another. The incidents by which\nthese excellent morals are driven home are incidents of the same order\nas those in \"La Veine,\" and not less entertaining. The mounting, simple\nas it was, was admirably planned; the stage-pictures full of explicit\ndrollery. And, as before, the whole company worked with the effortless\nunanimity of a perfect piece of machinery.\n\nA few days after seeing \"La Veine\" I went to Wyndham's Theatre to see a\nrevival of Sir Francis Burnand's \"Betsy.\" \"Betsy,\" of course, is adapted\nfrom the French, though, by an accepted practice which seems to me\ndishonest, in spite of its acceptance, that fact is not mentioned on the\nplay-bill. But the form is undoubtedly English, very English. What\nvulgarity, what pointless joking, what pitiable attempts to serve up old\nimpromptus r\u00e9chauff\u00e9s! I found it impossible to stay to the end. Some\nactors, capable of better things, worked hard; there was a terrible air\nof effort in these attempts to be sprightly in fetters, and in rusty\nfetters. Think of \"La Veine\" at its worst, and then think of \"Betsy\"! I\nmust not ask you to contrast the actors; it would be almost unfair. We\nhave not a company of comedians in England who can be compared for a\nmoment with Mme. Jeanne Granier's company. We have here and there a good\nactor, a brilliant comic actor, in one kind or another of emphatic\ncomedy; but wherever two or three comedians meet on the English stage,\nthey immediately begin to checkmate, or to outbid, or to shout down one\nanother. No one is content, or no one is able, to take his place in an\norchestra in which it is not allotted to every one to play a solo.\n\n\n\n\nA DOUBLE ENIGMA\n\n\nWhen it was announced that Mrs. Tree was to give a translation of\n\"L'Enigme\" of M. Paul Hervieu at Wyndham's Theatre, the play was\nannounced under the title \"Which?\" and as \"Which?\" it appeared on the\nplacards. Suddenly new placards appeared, with a new title, not at all\nappropriate to the piece, \"C\u00e6sar's Wife.\" Rumours of a late decision,\nor indecision, of the censor were heard. The play had not been\nprohibited, but it had been adapted to more polite ears. But how? That\nwas the question. I confess that to me the question seemed insoluble.\nHere is the situation as it exists in the play; nothing could be\nsimpler, more direct, more difficult to tamper with.\n\nTwo brothers, Raymond and G\u00e9rard de Gourgiran, are in their country\nhouse, with their two wives, Giselle and L\u00e9onore, and two guests, the\nold Marquis de Neste and the young M. de Vivarce. The brothers surprise\nVivarce on the stairs: was he coming from the room of Giselle or of\nL\u00e9onore? The women are summoned; both deny everything; it is impossible\nfor the audience, as for the husbands, to come to any conclusion. A shot\nis heard outside: Vivarce has killed himself, so that he may save the\nreputation of the woman he loves. Then the self-command of L\u00e9onore gives\nway; she avows all in a piercing shriek. After that there is some\nunnecessary moralising (\"L\u00e0-bas un cadavre! Ici, des sanglots de\ncaptive!\" and the like), but the play is over.\n\nNow, the situation is perfectly precise; it is not, perhaps, very\nintellectually significant, but there it is, a striking dramatic\nsituation. Above all, it is frank; there are no evasions, no sentimental\nlies, no hypocrisies before facts. If adultery may not be referred to on\nthe English stage except at the Gaiety, between a wink and a laugh, then\nsuch a play becomes wholly impossible. Not at all: listen. We are told\nto suppose that Vivarce and L\u00e9onore have had a possibly quite harmless\nflirtation; and instead of Vivarce being found on his way from L\u00e9onore's\nroom, he has merely been walking with L\u00e9onore in the garden: at midnight\nremember, and after her husband has gone to bed. In order to lead up to\nthis, a preposterous speech has been put into the mouth of the Marquis\nde Neste, an idiotic rhapsody about love and the stars, and I forget\nwhat else, which I imagine we are to take as an indication of Vivarce's\nsentiments as he walks with L\u00e9onore in the garden at midnight. But all\nthese precautions are in vain; the audience is never deceived for an\ninstant. A form of words has been used, like the form of words by which\ncertain lies become technically truthful. The whole point of the play:\nhas a husband the right to kill his wife or his wife's lover if he\ndiscovers that his wife has been unfaithful to him? is obviously not a\nquestion of whether a husband may kill a gentleman who has walked with\nhis wife in the garden, even after midnight. The force of the original\nsituation comes precisely from the certainty of the fact and the\nuncertainty of the person responsible for it. \"C\u00e6sar's Wife\" may lend\nher name for a screen; the screen is no disguise; the play; remains what\nit was in its moral bearing; a dramatic stupidity has been imported into\nit, that is all. Here, then, in addition to the enigma of the play is a\nsecond, not so easily explained, enigma: the enigma of the censor, and\nof why he \"moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.\" The play,\nI must confess, does not seem to me, as it seems to certain French\ncritics, \"une pi\u00e8ce qui tient du chef-d'oeuvre ... la trag\u00e9die des\nm\u00e2itres antiques et de Shakespeare.\" To me it is rather an insubstantial\nkind of ingenuity, ingenuity turning in a circle. As a tragic episode,\nthe dramatisation of a striking incident, it has force and simplicity,\nthe admirable quality of directness. Occasionally the people are too\neager to express the last shade of the author's meaning, as in the\nconversation between Neste and Vivarce, when the latter decides to\ncommit suicide, or in the supplementary comments when the action is\nreally at an end. But I have never seen a piece which seemed to have\nbeen written so kindly and so consistently for the benefit of the\nactors. There are six characters of equal importance; and each in turn\nabsorbs the whole flood of the limelight.\n\nThe other piece which made Saturday evening interesting was a version of\n\"Au T\u00e9l\u00e9phone,\" one of Antoine's recent successes at his theatre in\nParis. It was brutal and realistic, it made just the appeal of an\naccident really seen, and, so far as success in horrifying one is\nconcerned, it was successful. A husband hearing the voice of his wife\nthrough the telephone, at the moment when some murderous ruffians are\nbreaking into the house, hearing her last cry, and helpless to aid her,\nis as ingeniously unpleasant a situation as can well be imagined. It is\nbrought before us with unquestionable skill; it makes us as\nuncomfortable as it wishes to make us. But such a situation has\nabsolutely no artistic value, because terror without beauty and without\nsignificance is not worth causing. When the husband, with his ear at\nthe telephone, hears his wife tell him that some one is forcing the\nwindow-shutters with a crowbar, we feel, it is true, a certain\nsympathetic suspense; but compare this crude onslaught on the nerves\nwith the profound and delicious terror that we experience when, in \"La\nMort de Tintagiles\" of Maeterlinck, an invisible force pushes the door\nsoftly open, a force intangible and irresistible as death. In his acting\nMr. Charles Warner was powerful, thrilling; it would be difficult to\nsay, under the circumstances, that he was extravagant, for what\nextravagance, under the circumstances, would be improbable? He had not,\nno doubt, what I see described as \"le jeu simple et terrible\" of\nAntoine, a dry, hard, intellectual grip on horror; he had the ready\nabandonment to emotion of the average emotional man. Mr. Warner has an\nirritating voice and manner, but he has emotional power, not fine nor\nsubtle, but genuine; he feels and he makes you feel. He has the quality,\nin short, of the play itself, but a quality more tolerable in the\nactor, who is concerned only with the rendering of a given emotion, than\nin the playwright, whose business it is to choose, heighten, and dignify\nthe emotion which he gives to him to render.\n\n\n\n\nDRAMA\n\n\n\n\nPROFESSIONAL AND UNPROFESSIONAL\n\n\nLast week gave one an amusing opportunity of contrasting the merits and\nthe defects of the professional and the unprofessional kind of play.\n\"The Gay Lord Quex\" was revived at the Duke of York's Theatre, and Mr.\nAlexander produced at the St. James's Theatre a play called \"The Finding\nof Nancy,\" which had been chosen by the committee of the Playgoers' Club\nout of a large number of plays sent in for competition. The writer, Miss\nNetta Syrett, has published one or two novels or collections of stories;\nbut this, as far as I am aware, is her first attempt at a play. Both\nplays were unusually well acted, and therefore may be contrasted without\nthe necessity of making allowances for the way in which each was\ninterpreted on the stage.\n\nMr. Pinero is a playwright with a sharp sense of the stage, and eye for\nwhat is telling, a cynical intelligence which is much more interesting\nthan the uncertain outlook of most of our playwrights. He has no breadth\nof view, but he has a clear view; he makes his choice out of human\nnature deliberately, and he deals in his own way with the materials that\nhe selects. Before saying to himself: what would this particular person\nsay or do in these circumstances? he says to himself: what would it be\neffective on the stage for this particular person to do or say? He\nsuggests nothing, he tells you all he knows; he cares to know nothing\nbut what immediately concerns the purpose of his play. The existence of\nhis people begins and ends with their first and last speech on the\nboards; the rest is silence, because he can tell you nothing about it.\nSophy Fullgarney is a remarkably effective character as a\nstage-character, but when the play is over we know no more about her\nthan we should know about her if we had spied upon her, in her own way,\nfrom behind some bush or keyhole. We have seen a picturesque and amusing\nexterior, and that is all. Lord Quex does not, I suppose, profess to be\neven so much of a character as that, and the other people are mere\n\"humours,\" quite amusing in their cleverly contrasted ways. When these\npeople talk, they talk with an effort to be natural and another effort\nto be witty; they are never sincere and without self-consciousness; they\nnever say inevitable things, only things that are effective to say. And\nthey talk in poor English. Mr. Pinero has no sense of style, of the\nbeauty or expressiveness of words. His joking is forced and without\nideas; his serious writing is common. In \"The Gay Lord Quex\" he is\ncontinually trying to impress upon his audience that he is very\naudacious and distinctly improper. The improprieties are childish in the\ninnocence of their vulgarity, and the audacities are no more than\ntrifling lapses of taste. He shows you the interior of a Duchess's\nbedroom, and he shows you the Duchess's garter, in a box of other\ncuriosities. He sets his gentlemen and ladies talking in the allusive\nstyle which you may overhear whenever you happen to be passing a group\nof London cabmen. The Duchess has written in her diary, \"Warm\nafternoon.\" That means that she has spent an hour with her lover. Many\npeople in the audience laugh. All the cabmen would have laughed.\n\nNow look for a moment at the play by the amateur and the woman. It is\nnot a satisfactory play as a whole, it is not very interesting in all\nits developments, some of the best opportunities are shirked, some of\nthe characters (all the characters who are men) are poor. But, in the\nfirst place, it is well written. Those people speak a language which is\nnearer to the language of real life than that used by Mr. Pinero, and\nwhen they make jokes there is generally some humour in the joke and some\nintelligence in the humour. They have ideas and they have feelings. The\nideas and the feelings are not always combined with faultless logic into\na perfectly clear and coherent presentment of character, it is true. But\nfrom time to time we get some of the illusion of life. From time to time\nsomething is said or done which we know to be profoundly true. A woman\nhas put into words some delicate instinct of a woman's soul. Here and\nthere is a cry of the flesh, here and there a cry of the mind, which is\ngenuine, which is a part of life. Miss Syrett has much to learn if she\nis to become a successful dramatist, and she has not as yet shown that\nshe knows men as well as women; but at least she has begun at the right\nend. She has begun with human nature and not with the artifices of the\nstage, she has thought of her characters as people before thinking of\nthem as persons of the drama, she has something to say through them,\nthey are not mere lines in a pattern. I am not at all sure that she has\nthe makings of a dramatist, or that if she writes another play it will\nbe better than this one. You do not necessarily get to your destination\nby taking the right turning at the beginning of the journey. The one\ncertain thing is that if you take the wrong turning at the beginning,\nand follow it persistently, you will not get to your destination at all.\nThe playwright who writes merely for the stage, who squeezes the breath\nout of life before he has suited it to his purpose, is at the best only\nplaying a clever game with us. He may amuse us, but he is only playing\nping-pong with the emotions. And that is why we should welcome, I think,\nany honest attempt to deal with life as it is, even if life as it is\ndoes not always come into the picture.\n\n\n\n\nTOLSTOI AND OTHERS\n\n\nThere is little material for the stage in the novels of Tolstoi. Those\nnovels are full, it is true, of drama; but they cannot be condensed into\ndramas. The method of Tolstoi is slow, deliberate, significantly\nunemphatic; he works by adding detail to detail, as a certain kind of\npainter adds touch to touch. The result is, in a sense, monotonous, and\nit is meant to be monotonous. Tolstoi endeavours to give us something\nmore nearly resembling daily life than any one has yet given us; and in\ndaily life the moment of spiritual crisis is rarely the moment in which\nexternal action takes part. In the drama we can only properly realise\nthe soul's action through some corresponding or consequent action which\ntakes place visibly before us. You will find, throughout Tolstoi's work,\nmany striking single scenes, but never, I think, a scene which can bear\ndetachment from that network of detail which has led up to it and which\nis to come out of it. Often the scene which most profoundly impresses\none is a scene trifling in itself, and owing its impressiveness partly\nto that very quality. Take, for instance, in \"Resurrection,\" Book II.,\nchapter xxviiii., the scene in the theatre \"during the second act of the\neternal 'Dame aux Cam\u00e9lias,' in which a foreign actress once again, and\nin a novel manner, showed how women died of consumption.\" The General's\nwife, Mariette, smiles at Nekhludoff in the box, and, outside, in the\nstreet, another woman, the other \"half-world,\" smiles at him, just in\nthe same way. That is all, but to Nekhludoff it is one of the great\ncrises of his life. He has seen something, for the first time, in what\nhe now feels to be its true light, and he sees it \"as clearly as he saw\nthe palace, the sentinels, the fortress, the river, the boats and the\nStock Exchange. And just as on this northern summer night there was no\nrestful darkness on the earth, but only a dismal, dull light coming from\nan invisible source, so in Nekhludoff's soul there was no longer the\nrestful darkness, ignorance.\" The chapter is profoundly impressive; it\nis one of those chapters which no one but Tolstoi has ever written.\nImagine it transposed to the stage, if that were possible, and the\ninevitable disappearance of everything that gives it meaning!\n\nIn Tolstoi the story never exists for its own sake, but for the sake of\na very definite moral idea. Even in his later novels Tolstoi is not a\npreacher; he gives us an interpretation of life, not a theorising about\nlife. But, to him, the moral idea is almost everything, and (what is of\nmore consequence) it gives a great part of its value to his \"realism\" of\nprisons and brothels and police courts. In all forms of art, the point\nof view is of more importance than the subject-matter. It is as\nessential for the novelist to get the right focus as it is for the\npainter. In a page of Zola and in a page of Tolstoi you might find the\nsame gutter described with the same minuteness; and yet in reading the\none you might see only the filth, while in reading the other you might\nfeel only some fine human impulse. Tolstoi \"sees life steadily\" because\nhe sees it under a divine light; he has a saintly patience with evil,\nand so becomes a casuist through sympathy, a psychologist out of that\npity which is understanding. And then, it is as a direct consequence of\nthis point of view, in the mere process of unravelling things, that his\ngreatest skill is shown as a novelist. He does not exactly write well;\nhe is satisfied if his words express their meaning, and no more; his\nwords have neither beauty nor subtlety in themselves. But, if you will\nonly give him time, for he needs time, he will creep closer and closer\nup to some doubtful and remote truth, not knowing itself for what it is:\nhe will reveal the soul to itself, like \"God's spy.\"\n\nIf you want to know how, daily life goes on among people who know as\nlittle about themselves as you know about your neighbours in a street or\ndrawing-room, read Jane Austen, and, on that level, you will be\nperfectly satisfied. But if you want to know why these people are happy\nor unhappy, why the thing which they do deliberately is not the thing\nwhich they either want or ought to do, read Tolstoi; and I can hardly\nadd that you will be satisfied. I never read Tolstoi without a certain\nsuspense, sometimes a certain terror. An accusing spirit seems to peer\nbetween every line; I can never tell what new disease of the soul those\npitying and unswerving eyes may not have discovered.\n\nSuch, then, is a novel of Tolstoi; such, more than almost any of his\nnovels, is \"Resurrection,\" the masterpiece of his old age, into which he\nhas put an art but little less consummate than that of \"Anna Karenina,\"\ntogether with the finer spirit of his later gospel. Out of this novel a\nplay in French was put together by M. Henry Bataille and produced at the\nOd\u00e9on. Now M. Bataille is one of the most powerful and original\ndramatists of our time. A play in English, said to be by MM. Henry\nBataille and Michael Morton, has been produced by Mr. Tree at His\nMajesty's Theatre; and the play is called, as the French play was\ncalled, Tolstoi's \"Resurrection.\" What Mr. Morton has done with M.\nBataille I cannot say. I have read in a capable French paper that \"l'on\nest heureux d'avoir pu applaudir une oeuvre vraiment noble, vraiment\npure,\" in the play of M. Bataille; and I believe it. Are those quite the\nwords one would use about the play in English?\n\nThey are not quite the words I would use about the play in English. It\nis a melodrama with one good scene, the scene in the prison; and this is\ngood only to a certain point. There is another scene which is amusing,\nthe scene of the jury, but the humour is little more than clowning, and\nthe tragic note, which should strike through it, is only there in a\nparody of itself. Indeed the word parody is the only word which can be\nused about the greater part of the play, and it seems to me a pity that\nthe name of Tolstoi should be brought into such dangerous companionship\nwith the vulgarities and sentimentalities of the London stage. I heard\npeople around me confessing that they had not read the book. How\nterrible must have been the disillusion of those people, if they had\never expected anything of Tolstoi, and if they really believed that\nthis demagogue Prince, who stands in nice poses in the middle of\ndrawing-rooms and of prison cells, talking nonsense with a convincing\ndisbelief, was in any sense a mouthpiece for Tolstoi's poor simple\nlittle gospel. Tolstoi according to Captain Marshall, I should be\ninclined to define him; but I must give Mr. Tree his full credit in the\nmatter. When he crucifies himself, so to speak, symbolically, across the\ndoor of the jury-room, remarking in his slowest manner: \"The bird\nflutters no longer; I must atone, I must atone!\" one is, in every sense,\nalone with the actor. Mr. Tree has many arts, but he has not the art of\nsincerity. His conception of acting is, literally, to act, on every\noccasion. Even in the prison scene, in which Miss Ashwell is so good,\nuntil she begins to shout and he to rant, \"and then the care is over,\"\nMr. Tree cannot be his part without acting it.\n\nThat prison scene is, on the whole, well done, and the first part of it,\nwhen the women shout and drink and quarrel, is acted with a satisfying\nsense of vulgarity which contrasts singularly with what is meant to be\na suggestion of the manners of society in St. Petersburg in the scene\npreceding. Perhaps the most lamentable thing in the play is the first\nact. This act takes the place of those astounding chapters in the novel\nin which the seduction of Katusha is described with a truth, tact,\nfrankness, and subtlety unparalleled in any novel I have ever read. I\nread them over before I went to the theatre, and when I got to the\ntheatre I found a scene before me which was not Tolstoi's scene, a\nfoolish, sentimental conversation in which I recognised hardly more than\na sentence of Tolstoi (and this brought in in the wrong place), and, in\nshort, the old make-believe of all the hack-writers for the stage,\ndished up again, and put before us, with a simplicity of audacity at\nwhich one can only marvel (\"a thing imagination boggles at\"), as an\n\"adaptation\" from Tolstoi. Tolstoi has been hardly treated by some\ntranslators and by many critics; in his own country, if you mention his\nname, you are as likely as not to be met by a shrug and an \"Ah,\nmonsieur, il divague un peu!\" In his own country he has the censor\nalways against him; some of his books he has never been able to print in\nfull in Russian. But in the new play at His Majesty's Theatre we have,\nin what is boldly called Tolstoi's \"Resurrection,\" something which is\nnot Tolstoi at all. There is M. Bataille, who is a poet of nature and a\ndramatist who has created a new form of drama: let him be exonerated.\nMr. Morton and Mr. Tree between them may have been the spoilers of M.\nBataille; but Tolstoi, might not the great name of Tolstoi have been\nleft well alone?\n\n\n\n\nSOME PROBLEM PLAYS\n\nI. \"THE MARRYING OF ANN LEETE\"\n\n\nIt was for the production of such plays as Mr. Granville Barker's that\nthe Stage Society was founded, and it is doing good service to the drama\nin producing them. \"The Marrying of Ann Leete\" is the cleverest and most\npromising new play that I have seen for a long time; but it cannot be\nsaid to have succeeded even with the Stage Society audience, and no\nordinary theatrical manager is very likely to produce it. The author, it\nis true, is an actor, but he is young; his play is immature, too crowded\nwith people, too knotted up with motives, too inconclusive in effect. He\nknows the stage, and his knowledge has enabled him to use the stage for\nhis own purposes, inventing a kind of technique of his own, doing one or\ntwo things which have never, or never so deftly, been done before. But\nhe is something besides all that; he can think, he can write, and he\ncan suggest real men and women. The play opens in the dark, and remains\nfor some time brilliantly ambiguous. People, late eighteenth-century\npeople, talk with bewildering abruptness, not less bewildering point;\nthey, their motives, their characters, swim slowly into daylight. Some\nof the dialogue is, as the writer says of politics, \"a game for clever\nchildren, women, and fools\"; it is a game demanding close attention. A\ncourtly indolence, an intellectual blackguardism, is in the air; people\nwalk, as it seems, aimlessly in and out, and the game goes on; it fills\none with excitement, the excitement of following a trail. It is a trail\nof ideas, these people think, and they act because they have thought.\nThey know the words they use, they use them with deliberation, their\nhearts are in their words. Their actions, indeed, are disconcerting; but\nthese people, and their disconcerting actions, are interesting, holding\none's mind in suspense.\n\nMr. Granville Barker has tried to tell the whole history of a family,\nand he interests us in every member of that family. He plays them like\nchessmen, and their moves excite us as chess excites the mind. They\nexpress ideas; the writer has thought out their place in the scheme of\nthings, and he has put his own faculty of thinking into their heads.\nThey talk for effect, or rather for disguise; it is part of their keen\nsense of the game. They talk at cross-purposes, as they wander in and\nout of the garden terrace; they plan out their lives, and life comes and\nsurprises them by the way. Then they speak straight out of their hearts,\nsometimes crudely, sometimes with a na\u00efvet\u00e9 which seems laughable; and\nthey act on sudden impulses, accepting the consequences when they come.\nThey live an artificial life, knowing lies to be lies, and choosing\nthem; they are civilised, they try to do their duty by society; only, at\nevery moment, some ugly gap opens in the earth, right in their path, and\nthey have to stop, consider, choose a new direction. They seem to go\ntheir own way, almost without guiding; and indeed may have escaped\nalmost literally out of their author's hands. The last scene is an\nadmirable episode, a new thing on the stage, full of truth within its\nown limits; but it is an episode, not a conclusion, much less a\nsolution. Mr. Barker can write: he writes in short, sharp sentences,\nwhich go off like pistol-shots, and he keeps up the firing, from every\ncorner of the stage. He brings his people on and off with an\nunconventionality which comes of knowing the resources of the theatre,\nand of being unfettered by the traditions of its technique. The scene\nwith the gardener in the second act has extraordinary technical merit,\nand it has the art which conceals its art. There are other inventions in\nthe play, not all quite so convincing. Sometimes Mr. Barker, in doing\nthe right or the clever thing, does it just not quite strongly enough to\ncarry it against opposition. The opposition is the firm and narrow mind\nof the British playgoer. Such plays as Mr. Barker's are apt to annoy\nwithout crushing. The artist, who is yet an imperfect artist, bewilders\nthe world with what is novel in his art; the great artist convinces the\nworld. Mr. Barker is young: he will come to think with more depth and\nless tumult; he will come to work with less prodigality and more mastery\nof means. But he has energy already, and a sense of what is absurd and\nhonest in the spectacle of this game, in which the pawns seem to move\nthemselves.\n\n\n\n\nII. \"THE LADY FROM THE SEA\"\n\n\nOn seeing the Stage Society's performance of Ibsen's \"Lady from the\nSea,\" I found myself wondering whether Ibsen is always so unerring in\nhis stagecraft as one is inclined to assume, and whether there are not\nthings in his plays which exist more satisfactorily, are easier to\nbelieve in, in the book than on the stage. Does not the play, for\ninstance, lose a little in its acceptance of those narrow limits of the\nfootlights? That is the question which I was asking myself as I saw the\nperformance of the Stage Society. The play is, according to the phrase,\na problem-play, but the problem is the problem of all Ibsen's plays:\nthe desire of life, the attraction of life, the mystery of life. Only,\nwe see the eternal question under a new, strange aspect. The sea calls\nto the blood of this woman, who has married into an inland home; and the\nsea-cry, which is the desire of more abundant life, of unlimited\nfreedom, of an unknown ecstasy, takes form in a vague Stranger, who has\ntalked to her of the seabirds in a voice like their own, and whose eyes\nseem to her to have the green changes of the sea. It is an admirable\nsymbol, but when a bearded gentleman with a knapsack on his back climbs\nover the garden wall and says: \"I have come for you; are you coming?\"\nand then tells the woman that he has read of her marriage in the\nnewspaper, it seemed as if the symbol had lost a good deal of its\nmeaning in the gross act of taking flesh. The play haunts one, as it is,\nbut it would have haunted one with a more subtle witchcraft if the\nStranger had never appeared upon the stage. Just as Wagner insisted upon\na crawling and howling dragon, a Fafner with a name of his own and a\nconsiderable presence, so Ibsen brings the supernatural or the\nsubconscious a little crudely into the midst of his persons of the\ndrama. To use symbol, and not to use it in the surprising and inevitable\nway of the poet, is to fall into the dry, impotent sin of allegory.\n\n\n\n\nIII. \"THE NEW IDOL\"\n\n\nIt was an interesting experiment on the part of the Stage Society to\ngive a translation of \"La Nouvelle Idole,\" one of those pieces by which\nM. Fran\u00e7ois de Curel has reached that very actual section of the French\npublic which is interested in ideas. \"The New Idol\" is a modern play of\nthe most characteristically modern type; its subject-matter is largely\nmedical, it deals with the treatment of cancer; we are shown a doctor's\nlaboratory, with a horrible elongated diagram of the inside of the human\nbody; a young girl's lungs are sounded in the doctor's drawing-room;\nnearly every, character talks science and very little but science. When\nthey cease talking science, which they talk well, with earnestness and\nwith knowledge, and try to talk love or intrigue, they talk badly, as if\nthey were talking of things which they knew nothing about. Now,\npersonally, this kind of talk does not interest me; it makes me feel\nuncomfortable. But I am ready to admit that it is justified if I find\nthat the dramatic movement of the play requires it, that it is itself an\nessential part of the action. In \"The New Idol\" I think this is partly\nthe case. The other medical play which has lately been disturbing Paris,\n\"Les Avari\u00e9s,\" does not seem to me to fulfil this condition at any\nmoment: it is a pamphlet from beginning to end, it is not a satisfactory\npamphlet, and it has no other excuse for existence. But M. de Curel has\nwoven his problem into at least a semblance of action; the play is not a\nmere discussion of irresistible physical laws; the will enters into the\nproblem, and will fights against will, and against not quite\nirresistible physical laws. The suggestion of love interests, which come\nto nothing, and have no real bearing on the main situation, seems to me\na mistake; it complicates things, things which must appear to us so very\nreal if we are to accept them at all, with rather a theatrical kind of\ncomplication. M. de Curel is more a thinker than a dramatist, as he has\nshown lately in the very original, interesting, impossible \"Fille\nSauvage.\" He grapples with serious matters seriously, and he argues\nwell, with a closely woven structure of arguments; some of them bringing\na kind of hard and naked poetry out of mere closeness of thinking and\ncloseness of seeing. In \"The New Idol\" there is some dialogue, real\ndialogue, natural give-and-take, about the fear of death and the horror\nof indestructibility (a variation on one of the finest of Coventry\nPatmore's odes) which seemed to me admirable: it held the audience\nbecause it was direct speech, expressing a universal human feeling in\nthe light of a vivid individual crisis. But such writing as this was\nrare; for the most part it was the problem itself which insisted on\noccupying our attention, or, distinct from this, the too theatrical\ncharacters.\n\n\n\n\nIV. \"MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION\"\n\n\nThe Stage Society has shown the courage of its opinions by giving an\nunlicensed play, \"Mrs. Warren's Profession,\" one of the \"unpleasant\nplays\" of Mr. George Bernard Shaw, at the theatre of the New Lyric Club.\nIt was well acted, with the exception of two of the characters, and the\npart of Mrs. Warren was played by Miss Fanny Brough, one of the\ncleverest actresses on the English stage, with remarkable ability. The\naction was a little cramped by the smallness of the stage, but, for all\nthat, the play was seen under quite fair conditions, conditions under\nwhich it could be judged as an acting play and as a work of art. It is\nbrilliantly clever, with a close, detective cleverness, all made up of\nmerciless logic and unanswerable common sense. The principal characters\nare well drawn, the scenes are constructed with a great deal of\ntheatrical skill, the dialogue is telling, the interest is held\nthroughout. To say that the characters, without exception, are ugly in\ntheir vice and ugly in their virtue; that they all have, men and women,\nsomething of the cad in them; that their language is the language of\nvulgar persons, is, perhaps, only to say that Mr. Shaw has chosen, for\nartistic reasons, to represent such people just as they are. But there\nis something more to be said. \"Mrs. Warren's Profession\" is not a\nrepresentation of life; it is a discussion about life. Now, discussion\non the stage may be interesting. Why not? Discussion is the most\ninteresting thing in the world, off the stage; it is the only thing that\nmakes an hour pass vividly in society; but when discussion ends art has\nnot begun. It is interesting to see a sculptor handling bits of clay,\nsticking them on here, scraping them off there; but that is only the\ninterest of a process. When he has finished I will consider whether his\nfigure is well or ill done; until he has finished I can have no opinion\nabout it. It is the same thing with discussion on the stage. The subject\nof Mr. Shaw's discussion is what is called a \"nasty\" one. That is\nneither here nor there, though it may be pointed out that there is no\nessential difference between the problem that he discusses and the\nproblem that is at the root of \"The Second Mrs. Tanqueray.\"\n\nBut Mr. Shaw, I believe, is never without his polemical intentions, and\nI should like, for a moment, to ask whether his discussion of his\nproblem, taken on its own merits, is altogether the best way to discuss\nthings. Mr. Shaw has an ideal of life: he asks that men and women should\nbe perfectly reasonable, that they should clear their minds of cant, and\nspeak out everything that is in their minds. He asks for cold and clear\nlogic, and when he talks about right and wrong he is really talking\nabout right and wrong logic. Now, logic is not the mainspring of every\naction, nor is justice only the inevitable working out of an equation.\nHumanity, as Mr. Shaw sees it, moves like clockwork; and must be\nregulated as a watch is, and praised or blamed simply in proportion to\nits exactitude in keeping time. Humanity, as Mr. Shaw knows, does not\nmove by clockwork, and the ultimate justice will have to take count of\nmore exceptions and irregularities than Mr. Shaw takes count of. There\nis a great living writer who has brought to bear on human problems as\nconsistent a logic as Mr. Shaw's, together with something which Mr. Shaw\ndisdains. Mr. Shaw's logic is sterile, because it is without sense of\ntouch, sense of sight, or sense of hearing; once set going it is\nwarranted to go straight, and to go through every obstacle. Tolstoi's\nlogic is fruitful, because it allows for human weakness, because it\nunderstands, and because to understand is, among other things, to\npardon. In a word, the difference between the spirit of Tolstoi and the\nspirit of Mr. Shaw is the difference between the spirit of Christ and\nthe spirit of Euclid.\n\n\n\n\n\"MONNA, VANNA\"\n\n\nIn his earlier plays Maeterlinck invented a world of his own, which was\na sort of projection into space of the world of nursery legends and of\nchildish romances. It was at once very abstract and very local. There\nwas a castle by the sea, a \"well at the world's end,\" a pool in a\nforest; princesses with names out of the \"Morte d'Arthur\" lost crowns of\ngold; and blind beggars without a name wandered in the darkness of\neternal terror. Death was always the scene-shifter of the play, and\ndestiny the stage-manager. The people who came and went had the blind\ngestures of marionettes, and one pitied their helplessness. Pity and\nterror had indeed gone to the making of this drama, in a sense much more\nliteral than Aristotle's.\n\nIn all these plays there were few words and many silences, and the words\nwere ambiguous, hesitating, often repeated, like the words of peasants\nor children. They were rarely beautiful in themselves, rarely even\nsignificant, but they suggested a singular kind of beauty and\nsignificance, through their adjustment in a pattern or arabesque.\nAtmosphere, the suggestion of what was not said, was everything; and in\nan essay in \"Le Tr\u00e9sor des Humbles\" Maeterlinck told us that in drama,\nas he conceived it, it was only the words that were not said which\nmattered.\n\nGradually the words began to mean more in the scheme of the play. With\n\"Aglavaine et S\u00e9lysette\" we got a drama of the inner life, in which\nthere was little action, little effective dramatic speech, but in which\npeople thought about action and talked about action, and discussed the\nmorality of things and their meaning, very beautifully.\n\n\"Monna Vanna\" is a development out of \"Aglavaine et S\u00e9lysette,\" and in\nit for the first time Maeterlinck has represented the conflicts of the\ninner life in an external form, making drama, while the people who\nundergo them discuss them frankly at the moment of their happening.\n\nIn a significant passage of \"La Sagesse et la Destin\u00e9e,\" Maeterlinck\nsays: \"On nous affirme que toutes les grandes trag\u00e9dies ne nous offrent\npas d'autre spectacle que la lutte de l'homme contre la fatalit\u00e9. Je\ncrois, au contraire, qu'il n'existe pas une seule trag\u00e9die o\u00f9 la\nfatalit\u00e9 r\u00e8gne r\u00e9ellement. J'ai beau les parcourir, je n'en trouve pas\nune o\u00f9 le h\u00e9ros combatte le destin pur et simple. Au fond, ce n'est\njamais le destin, c'est toujours la sagesse, qu'il attaque.\" And, on the\npreceding page, he says: \"Observons que les po\u00e8tes tragiques osent tr\u00e8s\nrarement permettre au sage de para\u00eetre un moment sur la sc\u00e8ne. Ils\ncraignent une \u00e2me haute parce que les \u00e9v\u00e9nements la craignent.\" Now it\nis this conception of life and of drama that we find in \"Monna Vanna.\"\nWe see the conflict of wisdom, personified in the old man Marco and in\nthe instinctively wise Giovanna, with the tragic folly personified in\nthe husband Guido, who rebels against truth and against life, and loses\neven that which he would sacrifice the world to keep. The play is full\nof lessons in life, and its deepest lesson is a warning against the too\nready acceptance of this or that aspect of truth or of morality. Here is\na play in which almost every character is noble, in which treachery\nbecomes a virtue, a lie becomes more vital than truth, and only what we\nare accustomed to call virtue shows itself mean, petty, and even\ncriminal. And it is most like life, as life really is, in this: that at\nany moment the whole course of the action might be changed, the position\nof every character altered, or even reversed, by a mere decision of the\nwill, open to each, and that things happen as they do because it is\nimpossible, in the nature of each, that the choice could be otherwise.\nCharacter, in the deepest sense, makes the action, and there is\nsomething in the movement of the play which resembles the grave and\nreasonable march of a play of Sophocles, in which men and women\ndeliberate wisely and not only passionately, in which it is not only the\ncry of the heart and of the senses which takes the form of drama.\n\nIn Maeterlinck's earlier plays, in \"Les Aveugles,\" \"Int\u00e9rieur,\" and even\n\"Pell\u00e9as et M\u00e9lisande,\" he is dramatic after a new, experimental fashion\nof his own; \"Monna Vanna\" is dramatic in the obvious sense of the word.\nThe action moves, and moves always in an interesting, even in a telling,\nway. But at the same time I cannot but feel that something has been\nlost. The speeches, which were once so short as to be enigmatical, are\nnow too long, too explanatory; they are sometimes rhetorical, and have\nmore logic than life. The playwright has gained experience, the thinker\nhas gained wisdom, but the curious artist has lost some of his magic. No\ndoubt the wizard had drawn his circle too small, but now he has stepped\noutside his circle into a world which no longer obeys his formulas. In\ncasting away his formulas, has he the big human mastery which alone\ncould replace them? \"Monna Vanna\" is a remarkable and beautiful play,\nbut it is not a masterpiece. \"La Mort de Tintagiles\" was a masterpiece\nof a tiny, too deliberate kind; but it did something which no one had\never done before. We must still, though we have seen \"Monna Vanna,\"\nwait, feeling that Maeterlinck has not given us all that he is capable\nof giving us.\n\n\n\n\nTHE QUESTION OF CENSORSHIP.\n\n\nThe letter of protest which appeared in the _Times_ of June 30, 1903,\nsigned by Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Meredith, and Mr. Hardy, the three highest\nnames in contemporary English literature, will, I hope, have done\nsomething to save the literary reputation of England from such a fate as\none eminent dramatic critic sees in store for it. \"Once more,\" says the\n_Athen\u00e6um_, \"the caprice of our censure brings contempt upon us, and\nmakes, or should make, us the laughing-stock of Europe.\" The _Morning\nPost_ is more lenient, and is \"sincerely sorry for the unfortunate\ncensor,\" because \"he has immortalised himself by prohibiting the most\nbeautiful play of his time, and must live to be the laughing-stock of\nall sensible people.\"\n\nNow the question is: which is really made ridiculous by this ridiculous\nepisode of the prohibition of Maeterlinck's \"Monna Vanna,\" England or\nMr. Redford? Mr. Redford is a gentleman of whom I only know that he is\nnot himself a man of letters, and that he has not given any public\nindication of an intelligent interest in literature as literature. If,\nas a private person, before his appointment to the official post of\ncensor of the drama, he had expressed in print an opinion on any\nliterary or dramatic question, that opinion would have been taken on its\nown merits, and would have carried only the weight of its own contents.\nThe official appointment, which gives him absolute power over the public\nlife or death of a play, gives to the public no guarantee of his fitness\nfor the post. So far as the public can judge, he was chosen as the\ntypical \"man in the street,\" the \"plain man who wants a plain answer,\"\nthe type of the \"golden mean,\" or mediocrity. We hear that he is honest\nand diligent, that he reads every word of every play sent for his\ninspection. These are the virtues of the capable clerk, not of the\npenetrating judge. Now the position, if it is to be taken seriously,\nmust require delicate discernment as well as inflexible uprightness. Is\nMr. Redford capable of discriminating between what is artistically fine\nand what is artistically ignoble? If not, he is certainly incapable of\ndiscriminating between what is morally fine and what is morally ignoble.\nIt is useless for him to say that he is not concerned with art, but with\nmorals. They cannot be dissevered, because it is really the art which\nmakes the morality. In other words, morality does not consist in the\nfacts of a situation or in the words of a speech, but in the spirit\nwhich informs the whole work. Whatever may be the facts of \"Monna Vanna\"\n(and I contend that they are entirely above reproach, even as facts), no\none capable of discerning the spirit of a work could possibly fail to\nrealise that the whole tendency of the play is noble and invigorating.\nAll this, all that is essential, evidently escapes Mr. Redford. He\nlicenses what the _Times_ rightly calls \"such a gross indecency as 'The\nGirl from Maxim's.'\" But he refuses to license \"Monna Vanna,\" and he\nrefuses to state his reason for withholding the license. The fact is,\nthat moral questions are discussed in it, not taken for granted, and\nthe plain man, the man in the street, is alarmed whenever people begin\nto discuss moral questions. \"The Girl from Maxim's\" is merely indecent,\nit raises no problems. \"Monna Vanna\" raises problems. Therefore, says\nthe censor, it must be suppressed. By his decision in regard to this\nplay of Maeterlinck, Mr. Redford has of course conclusively proved his\nunfitness for his post. But that is only one part of the question. The\nquestion is: could any one man be found on whose opinion all England\nmight safely rely for its dramatic instruction and entertainment? I do\nnot think such a man could be found. With Mr. Redford, as the _Times_\nputs it, \"any tinge of literary merit seems at once to excite his worst\nsuspicions.\" But with a censor whose sympathies were too purely\nliterary, literary in too narrow a sense, would not scruples of some\nother kind begin to intrude themselves, scruples of the student who\ncannot tolerate an innocent jesting with \"serious\" things, scruples of\nthe moralist who must choose between Maeterlinck and d'Annunzio,\nbetween Tolstoi and Ibsen? I cannot so much as think of a man in all\nEngland who would be capable of justifying the existence of the\ncensorship. Is it, then, merely Mr. Redford who is made ridiculous by\nthis ridiculous episode, or is it not, after all, England, which has\ngiven us the liberty of the press and withheld from us the liberty of\nthe stage?\n\n\n\n\nA PLAY AND THE PUBLIC\n\n\nJohn Oliver Hobbes, Mrs. Craigie, once wrote a play called \"The Bishop's\nMove,\" which was an attempt to do artistically what so many writers for\nthe stage have done without thinking about art at all.\n\nShe gave us good writing instead of bad, delicate worldly wisdom instead\nof vague sentiment or vague cynicism, and the manners of society instead\nof an imitation of some remote imitation of those manners. The play is a\ncomedy, and the situations are not allowed to get beyond the control of\ngood manners. The game is after all the thing, and the skill of the\ngame. When the pawns begin to cry out in the plaintive way of pawns,\nthey are hushed before they become disturbing. It is in this power to\nplay the game on its own artificial lines, and yet to play with pieces\nmade scrupulously after the pattern of nature, that Mrs. Craigie's\nskill, in this play, seems to me to consist.\n\nHere then, is a play which makes no demands on the pocket handkerchief,\nto stifle either laughter or sobs, but in which the writer is seen\ntreating the real people of the audience and the imaginary people of the\nplay as if they were alike ladies and gentlemen. How this kind of work\nwill appeal to the general public I can hardly tell. When I saw \"Sweet\nand Twenty\" on its first performance, I honestly expected the audience\nto burst out laughing. On the contrary, the audience thrilled with\ndelight, and audience after audience went on indefinitely thrilling with\ndelight. If the caricature of the natural emotions can give so much\npleasure, will a delicate suggestion of them, as in this play, ever mean\nvery much to the public?\n\nThe public in England is a strange creature, to be studied with wonder\nand curiosity and I am not sure that a native can ever hope to\nunderstand it. At the performance of a recent melodrama, \"Sweet Nell of\nOld Drury,\" I happened to be in the last row of the stalls. My seat was\nnot altogether well adapted for seeing and hearing the play, but it was\nadmirably adapted for observing the pit, and I gave some of my attention\nto my neighbours there. Whenever a foolish joke was made on the stage,\nwhen Miss Julia Neilson, as Nell, the orange girl, stuttered with\nlaughter or romped heavily across the stage, the pit thrilled and\nquivered with delight. At every piece of clowning there was the same\nresponsive gurgle of delight. Tricks of acting so badly done that I\nshould have thought a child would have seen through them, and resented\nthem as an imposition, were accepted in perfect good faith, and gloated\nover. I was turning over the matter in my mind afterwards, when I\nremembered something that was said to me the other day by a young\nSwedish poet who is now in London. He told me that he had been to most\nof the theatres, and he had been surprised to find that the greater part\nof the pieces which were played at the principal London theatres were\nsuch pieces as would be played in Norway and Sweden at the lower class\ntheatres, and that nobody here seemed to mind. The English audience, he\nsaid, reminded him of a lot of children; they took what was set before\nthem with ingenuous good temper, they laughed when they were expected to\nlaugh, cried when they were expected to cry. But of criticism,\npreference, selection, not a trace. He was amazed, for he had been told\nthat London was the centre of civilisation. Well, in future I shall try\nto remember, when I hear an audience clapping its hands wildly over some\nbad play, badly acted: it is all right, it is only the children.\n\n\n\n\nTHE TEST OF THE ACTOR\n\n\nThe interest of bad plays lies in the test which they afford of the\ncapability of the actor. To what extent, however, can an actor really\ncarry through a play which has not even the merits of its defects, such\na play, for instance, as Mr. Henry Arthur Jones has produced in \"The\nPrincess's Nose\"? Mr. Jones has sometimes been mistaken for a man of\nletters, as by a distinguished dramatic critic, who, writing a\ncomplimentary preface, has said: \"The claim of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones's\nmore ambitious plays to rank as literature may have been in some cases\ngrudgingly allowed, but has not been seriously contested.\" Mr. Jones\nhimself has assured us that he has thought about life, and would like to\ngive some representation of it in his plays. That is apparently what he\nmeans by this peroration, which once closed an article in the\n_Nineteenth Century_: \"O human life! so varied, so vast, so complex, so\nrich and subtle in tremulous deep organ tones, and soft proclaim of\nsilver flutes, so utterly beyond our spell of insight, who of us can\ngovern the thunder and whirlwind of thy ventages to any utterance of\nharmony, or pluck out the heart of thy eternal mystery?\" Does Mr. Jones,\nI wonder, or the distinguished critic, really hear any \"soft proclaim of\nsilver flutes,\" or any of the other organ effects which he enumerates,\nin \"The Princess's Nose\"? Does anyone \"seriously contest\" its right not\nto \"rank as Literature\"? The audience, for once, was unanimous. Mr.\nJones was not encouraged to appear. And yet there had been applause,\nprolonged applause, at many points throughout this bewildering evening.\nThe applause was meant for the actors.\n\nIf Mr. Jones had shown as much tact in the construction of his play as\nin the selection of his cast, how admirable the play would have been! I\nhave rarely seen a play in which each actor seemed to fit into his part\nwith such exactitude. But the play! Well, the play began as a comedy,\ncontinued as a tragedy, and ended as a farce. It came to a crisis every\nfive minutes, it suggested splendid situations, and then caricatured\nthem unintentionally, it went shilly-shallying about among the emotions\nand sensations which may be drama or melodrama, whichever the handling\nmakes them. \"You see there is a little poetical justice going about the\nworld,\" says the Princess, when she hears that her rival, against whom\nshe has fought in vain, has been upset by Providence in the form of a\nmotor-car, and the bridge of her nose broken. The broken nose is Mr.\nJones's symbol for poetical justice; it indicates his intellectual\nattitude. There are many parts of the play where he shows, as he has so\noften shown, a genuine skill in presenting and manipulating humorous\nminor characters. As usual, they have little to do with the play, but\nthey are amusing for their moment. It is the serious characters who will\nnot be serious. They are meant well, the action hovers about them with\nlittle tempting solicitations, continually offering them an opportunity\nto be fine, to be genuine, and then withdrawing it before it can be\ngrasped. The third act has all the material of tragedy, but the material\nis wasted; only the actress makes anything of it. We know how Sullivan\nwill take a motive of mere farce, such words as the \"O Captain Shaw!\" of\n\"Iolanthe,\" and will write a lovely melody to go with it, fitting his\nmusic to the feeling which the words do but caricature. That is how Miss\nIrene Vanbrugh handled Mr. Jones's unshapen material. By the\nearnestness, sincerity, sheer nature, power, fire, dignity, and gaiety\nof her acting, she made for us a figure which Mr. Jones had not made.\nMr. Jones would set his character in some impossible situation, and Miss\nVanbrugh would make us, for the moment, forget its impossibility. He\nwould give her a trivial or a grotesque or a vulgar action to do, and\nshe would do it with distinction. She had force in lightness, a vivid\nmalice, a magnetic cheerfulness; and she could suffer silently, and be\nsincere in a tragedy which had been conceived without sincerity. If\nacting could save a play, \"The Princess's Nose\" would have been saved.\nIt was not saved.\n\nAnd the reason is that even the best of actors cannot save a play which\ninsists on defeating them at every turn. Yet, as we may realise any day\nwhen Sarah Bernhardt acts before us, there is a certain kind of frankly\nmelodramatic play which can be lifted into at all events a region of\nexcited and gratified nerves. I have lately been to see a melodrama\ncalled \"The Heel of Achilles,\" which Miss Julia Neilson has been giving\nat the Globe Theatre. The play was meant to tear at one's\nsusceptibilities, much as \"La Tosca\" tears at them. \"La Tosca\" is not a\nfine play in itself, though it is a much better play than \"The Heel of\nAchilles.\" But it is the vivid, sensational acting of Sarah Bernhardt\nwhich gives one all the shudders. \"The Heel of Achilles\" did not give me\na single shudder, not because it was not packed with the raw material of\nsensation, but because Miss Julia Neilson went through so many trying\nexperiences with nerves of marble.\n\nI cannot help wondering at the curious lack of self-knowledge in actors.\nHere is a play, which depends for a great deal of its effect on a scene\nin which Lady Leslie, a young Englishwoman in Russia, promises to marry\na Russian prince whom she hates, in order to save her betrothed lover\nfrom being sent to Siberia. The lover is shut in between two doors,\nunable to get out; he is the bearer of a State secret, and everything\ndepends on his being able to catch the eleven P.M. train for Berlin. The\nRussian prince stands before the young Englishwoman, offering her the\nkey of the door, the safety of her lover, and his own hand in marriage.\nNow, she has to express by her face and her movements all the feelings\nof astonishment, horror, suspense, love, hatred, distraction, which such\na situation would call up in her. If she does not express them the scene\ngoes for nothing. The actress stakes all on this scene. Now, is it\npossible that Miss Julia Neilson really imagined herself to be capable\nof rendering this scene as it should be rendered? It is a scene that\nrequires no brains, no subtle emotional quality, none of the more\nintellectual merits of acting. It requires simply a great passivity to\nfeeling, the mere skill of letting horrors sweep over the face and the\nbody like drenching waves. The actress need not know how she does it;\nshe may do it without an effort, or she may obtain her spontaneity by an\nelaborate calculation. But to do it at all she must be the actress in\nevery fibre of her body; she must be able to vibrate freely. If the\nemotion does not seize her in its own grasp, and then seize us through\nher, it will all go for nothing. Well, Miss Neilson sat, and walked, and\nstarted, and became rigid, and glanced at the clock, and knelt, and fell\nagainst the wall, and cast her eyes about, and threw her arms out, and\nmade her voice husky; and it all went for nothing. Never for an instant\ndid she suggest what she was trying to suggest, and after the first\nmoment of disappointment the mind was left calmly free to watch her\nattempt as if it were speculating round a problem.\n\nHow many English actresses, I wonder, would have been capable of dealing\nadequately with such a scene as that? I take it, not because it is a\ngood scene, but because it affords so rudimentary a test of the capacity\nfor acting. The test of the capacity for acting begins where words end;\nit is independent of words; you may take poor words as well as fine\nwords; it is all the same. The embodying power, the power to throw open\none's whole nature to an overcoming sensation, the power to render this\nsensation in so inevitable a way that others shall feel it: that is the\none thing needful. It is not art, it is not even the beginning of art;\nbut it is the foundation on which alone art can be built.\n\nThe other day, in \"Ulysses,\" there was only one piece of acting that was\nquite convincing: the acting of Mr. Brough as the Swineherd. It is a\nsmall part and an easy part, but it was perfectly done. Almost any\nother part would have been more striking and surprising if it had been\ndone as perfectly, but no other part was done as perfectly. Mr. Brough\nhas developed a stage-personality of his own, with only a limited range\nof emotion, but he has developed it until it has become a second nature\nwith him. He has only to speak, and he may say what he likes; we accept\nhim after the first word, and he remains what that first word has shown\nhim to be. Mr. Tree, with his many gifts, his effective talents, all his\ntaste, ambition, versatility, never produces just that effect: he\nremains interestingly aside from what he is doing; you see his brain\nworking upon it, you enjoy his by-play; his gait, his studied gestures,\nabsorb you; \"How well this is done!\" you say, and \"How well that is\ndone!\" and, indeed, you get a complete picture out of his representation\nof that part: a picture, not a man.\n\nI am not sure that melodrama is not the hardest test of the actor: it\nis, at least, the surest. All the human emotions throng noisily\ntogether in the making of melodrama: they are left there, in their naked\nmuddle, and they come to no good end; but there they are. To represent\nany primary emotion, and to be ineffective, is to fail in the\nfundamental thing. All actors should be sent to school in melodrama, as\nall dramatic authors should learn their trade there.\n\n\n\n\nTHE PRICE OF REALISM\n\n\nModern staging, which has been carried in England to its highest point\nof excellence, professes to aim at beauty, and is, indeed, often\nbeautiful in detail. But its real aim is not at the creation of\nbeautiful pictures, in subordination to the words and actions of the\nplay, but at supplementing words and actions by an exact imitation of\nreal surroundings. Imitation, not creation, is its end, and in its\nattempt to imitate the general aspect of things it leads the way to the\nsubstitution of things themselves for perfectly satisfactory indications\nof them. \"Real water\" we have all heard of, and we know its place in the\ntheatre; but this is only the simplest form of this anti-artistic\nendeavour to be real. Sir Henry Irving will use, for a piece of\ndecoration meant to be seen only from a distance, a garland of imitation\nflowers, exceedingly well done, costing perhaps two pounds, where two\nor three brushes of paint would have supplied its place more\neffectively. When d'Annunzio's \"Francesca da Rimini\" was put on the\nstage in Rome, a pot of basil was brought daily from Naples in order\nthat it might be laid on the window-sill of the room in which Francesca\nand Paolo read of Lancelot and Guinevere. In an interview published in\none of the English papers, d'Annunzio declared that he had all his stage\ndecorations made in precious metal by fine craftsmen, and that he had\ndone this for an artistic purpose, and not only for the beauty of the\nthings themselves. The gesture, he said, of the actor who lifts to his\nlips a cup of finely-wrought gold will be finer, more sincere, than that\nof the actor who uses a gilded \"property.\"\n\nIf so, I can but answer, the actor is no actor, but an amateur. The true\nactor walks in a world as real in its unreality as that which surrounds\nthe poet or the enthusiast. The bare boards, chairs, and T-light, in the\nmidst of which he rehearses, are as significantly palaces or meadows to\nhim, while he speaks his lines and lives himself into his character, as\nall the real grass and real woodwork with which the manager will cumber\nthe stage on the first night. As little will he need to distinguish\nbetween the gilt and the gold cup as between the imaginary characters\nwho surround him, and his mere friends and acquaintances who are\nspeaking for them.\n\nThis costly and inartistic aim at reality, then, is the vice of the\nmodern stage, and, at its best or worst, can it be said that it is\nreally even what it pretends to be: a perfectly deceptive imitation of\nthe real thing? I said once, to clinch an argument against it, by giving\nit its full possible credit, that the modern staging can give you the\nhour of the day and the corner of the country with precise accuracy. But\ncan it? Has the most gradual of stage-moons ever caught the miraculous\nlunar trick to the life? Has the real hedgerow ever brought a breath of\nthe country upon the stage? I do not think so, and meanwhile, we have\nbeen trying our hardest to persuade ourselves that it is so, instead of\nabandoning ourselves to a new, strange atmosphere, to the magic of the\nplay itself.\n\nWhat Mr. Craig does is to provide a plain, conventional, or darkened\nbackground for life, as life works out its own ordered lines on the\nstage; he gives us suggestion instead of reality, a symbol instead of an\nimitation; and he relies, for his effects, on a new system of lighting\nfrom above, not from below, and on a quite new kind of drill, as I may\ncall it, by which he uses his characters as masses and patterns,\nteaching them to move all together, with identical gestures. The eye is\ncarried right through or beyond these horizons of canvas, and the\nimagination with it; instead of stopping entangled among real stalks and\npainted gables.\n\nI have seen nothing so imaginative, so restful, so expressive, on the\nEnglish stage as these simple and elaborately woven designs, in patterns\nof light and drapery and movement, which in \"The Masque of Love\" had a\nnew quality of charm, a completeness of invention, for which I would\nhave given all d'Annunzio's golden cups and Mr. Tree's boats on real\nThames water.\n\nHere, for once, we see the stage treated in the proper spirit, as\nmaterial for art, not as a collection of real objects, or the imitation\nof real objects. Why should not the visible world be treated in the same\nspirit as the invisible world of character and temperament? A fine play\nis not the copy of an incident or the stenography of a character. A\npoetical play, to limit myself to that, requires to be put on the stage\nin such a way as to suggest that atmosphere which, if it is a true poem,\nwill envelop its mental outlines. That atmosphere, which is of its\nessence, is the first thing to be lost, in the staging of most poetical\nplays. It is precisely what the stage-manager, if he happens to have the\nsecret of his own art, will endeavour most persistently to suggest. He\nwill make it his business to compete with the poet, and not, after the\nmanner of Drury Lane, with the accidents of life and the vulgarities of\nnature.\n\n\n\n\nON CROSSING STAGE TO RIGHT\n\n\nIf you look into the actors' prompt-books, the most frequent direction\nwhich you will find is this: \"Cross stage to right.\" It is not a mere\ndirection, it is a formula; it is not a formula only, but a universal\nremedy. Whenever the action seems to flag, or the dialogue to become\nweak or wordy, you must \"cross stage to right\"; no matter what is wrong\nwith the play, this will set it right. We have heard so much of the\n\"action\" of a play, that the stage-manager in England seems to imagine\nthat dramatic action is literally a movement of people across the stage,\neven if for no other reason than for movement's sake. Is the play weak?\nHe tries to strengthen it, poor thing, by sending it out walking for its\nhealth.\n\nIf we take drama with any seriousness, as an art as well as an\nimprovisation, we shall realise that one of its main requirements is\nthat it should make pictures. That is the lesson of Bayreuth, and when\none comes away, the impression which remains, almost longer than the\nimpression of the music itself, is that grave, regulated motion of the\nactors. As I have said elsewhere, no actor makes a gesture which has not\nbeen regulated for him; there is none of that unintelligent haphazard\nknown as being \"natural\"; these people move like music, or with that\nsense of motion which it is the business of painting to arrest. But\nhere, of course, I am speaking of the poetic drama, of drama which does\nnot aim at the realistic representation of modern life. Maeterlinck\nshould be acted in this solemn way, in a kind of convention; but I admit\nthat you cannot act Ibsen in quite the same way.\n\nThe other day, when Mme. Jeanne Granier's company came over here to give\nus some lessons in acting, I watched a little scene in \"La Veine,\" which\nwas one of the telling scenes of the play: Guitry and Brasseur standing\nface to face for some minutes, looking at their watches, and then\nwaiting, each with a single, fixed expression on his face, in which the\nwhole temperament of each is summed up. One is inclined to say: No\nEnglish actor could have done it. Perhaps; but then, no English\nstage-manager would have let them do it. They would have been told to\nmove, to find \"business,\" to indulge in gesture which would not come\nnaturally to them. Again, in \"Tartuffe,\" when, at the end, the hypocrite\nis exposed and led off to prison, Coquelin simply turns his back on the\naudience, and stands, with head sullenly down, making no movement; then,\nat the end, he turns half-round and walks straight off, on the nearer\nside of the stage, giving you no more than a momentary glimpse of a\nconvulsed face, fixed into a definite, gross, raging mood. It would have\ntaken Mr. Tree five minutes to get off the stage, and he would have\nwalked to and fro with a very multiplication of gesture, trying on one\nface, so to speak, after another. Would it have been so effective, that\nis to say, so real?\n\nA great part of the art of French acting consists in knowing when and\nhow not to do things. Their blood helps them, for there is movement in\ntheir blood, and they have something to restrain. But they have realised\nthe art there is in being quite still, in speaking naturally, as people\ndo when they are really talking, in fixing attention on the words they\nare saying and not on their antics while saying them. The other day, in\nthe first act of \"The Bishop's Move\" at the Garrick, there is a Duchess\ntalking to a young novice in the refectory of a French abbey. After\nstanding talking to him for a few minutes, with only such movements as\nwould be quite natural under the circumstances, she takes his arm, not\nonce only but twice, and walks him up and down in front of the\nfootlights, for no reason in the world except to \"cross stage to right.\"\nThe stage trick was so obvious that it deprived the scene at once of any\npretence to reality.\n\nThe fact is, that we do not sufficiently realise the difference between\nwhat is dramatic and what is merely theatrical. Drama is made to be\nacted, and the finest \"literary\" play in the world, if it wholly fails\nto interest people on the stage, will have wholly failed in its first\nand most essential aim. But the finer part of drama is implicit in the\nwords and in the development of the play, and not in its separate small\ndetails of literal \"action.\" Two people should be able to sit quietly in\na room, without ever leaving their chairs, and to hold our attention\nbreathless for as long as the playwright likes. Given a good play,\nFrench actors are able to do that. Given a good play, English actors are\nnot allowed to do it.\n\nIs it not partly the energy, the restless energy, of the English\ncharacter which prevents our actors from ever sitting or standing still\non the stage? We are a nation of travellers, of sailors, of business\npeople; and all these have to keep for ever moving. Our dances are the\nmost vigorous and athletic of dances, they carry us all over the stage,\nwith all kinds of leaping and kicking movements. Our music-hall\nperformers have invented a kind of clowning peculiar to this country, in\nwhich kicking and leaping are also a part of the business. Our\nmelodramas are constructed on more movable planes, with more formidable\ncollapses and collisions, than those of any other country. Is not, then,\nthe persistent English habit of \"crossing stage to right\" a national\ncharacteristic, ingrained in us, and not only a matter of training? It\nis this reflection which hinders me from hoping, with much confidence,\nthat a reform in stage-management will lead to a really quieter and\nsimpler way of acting. But might not the experiment be tried? Might not\nsome stage-manager come forward and say: \"For heaven's sake stand still,\nmy dear ladies and gentlemen, and see if you cannot interest your\naudience without moving more than twice the length of your own feet?\"\n\n\n\n\nTHE SPEAKING OF VERSE\n\n\nWas there ever at any time an art, an acquired method, of speaking\nverse, as definite as the art and method of singing it? The Greeks, it\nhas often been thought, had such a method, but we are still puzzling in\nvain over their choruses, and wondering how far they were sung, how far\nthey were spoken. Wagner pointed out the probability that these choruses\nwere written to fixed tunes, perhaps themselves the accompaniment to\ndances, because it can hardly be believed that poems of so meditative a\nkind could have themselves given rise to such elaborate and not\napparently expressive rhythms. In later times there have been stage\ntraditions, probably developed from the practice of some particular\nactor, many conflicting traditions; but, at the present day, there is\nnot even a definite bad method, but mere chaos, individual caprice, in\nthe speaking of verse as a foolish monotonous tune or as a foolishly\ncontorted species of prose.\n\nAn attempt has lately been made by Mr. Yeats, with the practical\nassistance of Mr. Dolmetsch and Miss Florence Farr, to revive or invent\nan art of speaking verse to a pitch sounded by a musical instrument. Mr.\nDolmetsch has made instruments which he calls psalteries, and Miss Farr\nhas herself learnt and has taught others, to chant verse, in a manner\nbetween speaking and singing, to the accompaniment of the psaltery. Mr.\nYeats has written and talked and lectured on the subject; and the\nexperiment has been tried in the performances of Mr. Gilbert Murray's\ntranslation of the \"Hippolytus\" of Euripides. Here, then, is the only\ndefinite attempt which has been made in our time to regulate the speech\nof actors in their speaking of verse. No problem of the theatre is more\nimportant, for it is only by the quality of the verse, and by the\nclearness, beauty, and expressiveness of its rendering, that a play of\nShakespeare is to be distinguished, when we see it on the stage, from\nany other melodrama. \"I see no reason,\" says Lamb, in the profoundest\nessay which has ever been written on the acting of drama, \"to think that\nif the play of Hamlet were written over again by some such writer as\nBanks or Lillo, retaining the process of the story, but totally omitting\nall the poetry of it, all the divine features of Shakespeare, his\nstupendous intellect; and only taking care to give us enough of\npassionate dialogue, which Banks or Lillo were never at a loss to\nfurnish; I see not how the effect could be much different upon an\naudience, nor how the actor has it in his power to represent Shakespeare\nto us differently from his representation of Banks or Lillo.\" It is\nprecisely by his speaking of that poetry, which one is accustomed to\nhear hurried over or turned into mere oratory, that the actor might, if\nhe were conscious of the necessity of doing it, and properly trained to\ndo it, bring before the audience what is essential in Shakespeare. Here,\nin the rendering of words, is the actor's first duty to his author, if\nhe is to remember that a play is acted, not for the exhibition of the\nactor, but for the realisation of the play. We should think little of\nthe \"dramatic effect\" of a symphony, in which every individual note had\nnot been given its precise value by every instrument in the orchestra.\nWhen do we ever, on the stage, see the slightest attempt, on the part of\neven the \"solo\" players, to give its precise value to every word of that\npoetry which is itself a not less elaborate piece of concerted music?\n\nThe two great dangers in the speaking of verse are the danger of\nover-emphasising the meaning and the danger of over-emphasising the\nsound. I was never more conscious of the former danger than when I heard\na lecture given in London by M. Silvain, of the Com\u00e9die Francaise, on\nthe art of speaking on the stage.\n\nThe method of M. Silvain (who, besides being an actor, is Professor of\nDeclamation at the Conservatoire) is the method of the elocutionist, but\nof the elocutionist at his best. He has a large, round, vibrating voice,\nover which he has perfect command. \"M. Silvain,\" says M. Catulle\nMend\u00e8s, \"est de ceux, bien rares au Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Fran\u00e7ais, qu'on entend m\u00eame\nlorsqu'ils par lent bas.\" He has trained his voice to do everything that\nhe wants it to do; his whole body is full of life, energy, sensitiveness\nto the emotion of every word; his gestures seem to be at once\nspontaneous and calculated. He adores verse, for its own sake, as a\nbrilliant executant adores his violin; he has an excellent contempt for\nprose, as an inferior form. In all his renderings of verse, he never\nforgot that it was at the same time speech, the direct expression of\ncharacter, and also poetry, a thing with its own reasons for existence.\nHe gave La Fontaine in one way, Moli\u00e8re in another, Victor Hugo in\nanother, some poor modern verse in yet another. But in all there was the\nsame attempt: to treat verse in the spirit of rhetoric, that is to say,\nto over-emphasise it consistently and for effect. In a tirade from\nCorneille's \"Cinna,\" he followed the angry reasoning of the lines by\ncounting on his fingers: one, two, three, as if he were underlining the\nimportant words of each clause. The danger of this method is that it is\napt to turn poetry into a kind of bad logic. There, precisely, is the\ndanger of the French conception of poetry, and M. Silvain's method\nbrings out the worst faults of that conception.\n\nNow in speaking verse to musical notes, as Mr. Yeats would have us do,\nwe are at least safe from this danger. Mr. Yeats, being a poet, knows\nthat verse is first of all song. In purely lyrical verse, with which he\nis at present chiefly concerned, the verse itself has a melody which\ndemands expression by the voice, not only when it is \"set to music,\" but\nwhen it is said aloud. Every poet, when he reads his own verse, reads it\nwith certain inflections of the voice, in what is often called a\n\"sing-song\" way, quite different from the way in which he would read\nprose. Most poets aim rather at giving the musical effect, and the\natmosphere, the vocal atmosphere, of the poem, than at emphasising\nindividual meanings. They give, in the musician's sense, a \"reading\" of\nthe poem, an interpretation of the poem as a composition. Mr. Yeats\nthinks that this kind of reading can be stereotyped, so to speak, the\npitch noted down in musical notes, and reproduced with the help of a\nsimple stringed instrument. By way of proof, Miss Farr repeated one of\nMr. Yeats' lyrics, as nearly as possible in the way in which Mr. Yeats\nhimself is accustomed to say it. She took the pitch from certain notes\nwhich she had written down, and which she struck on Mr. Dolmetsch's\npsaltery. Now Miss Farr has a beautiful voice, and a genuine feeling for\nthe beauty of verse. She said the lines better than most people would\nhave said them, but, to be quite frank, did she say them so as to\nproduce the effect Mr. Yeats himself produces whenever he repeats those\nlines? The difference was fundamental. The one was a spontaneous thing,\nprofoundly felt; the other, a deliberate imitation in which the fixing\nof the notes made any personal interpretation, good or bad, impossible.\n\nI admit that the way in which most actors speak verse is so deplorable\nthat there is much to be said for a purely mechanical method, even if it\nshould turn actors into little more than human phonographs. Many actors\ntreat verse as a slightly more stilted kind of prose, and their main aim\nin saying it is to conceal from the audience the fact that it is not\nprose. They think of nothing but what they take to be the expression,\nand when they come to a passage of purely lyric quality they give it as\nif it were a quotation, having nothing to do with the rest of the\nspeech. Anything is better than this haphazard way of misdoing things,\neither M. Silvain's oratory or the intoning into which Mr. Yeats' method\nwould almost certainly drift. But I cannot feel that it is possible to\ndo much good by a ready-made method of any kind. Let the actor be taught\nhow to breathe, how to articulate, let his voice be trained to express\nwhat he wants to express, and then let him be made to feel something of\nwhat verse means by being verse. Let him, by all means, study one of Mr.\nYeats' readings, interpreted to him by means of notes; it will teach\nhim to unlearn something and to learn something more. But then let him\nforget his notes and Mr. Yeats' method, if he is to make verse live on\nthe stage.\n\n\n\n\nGREAT ACTING IN ENGLISH\n\n\nWhy is it that we have at the present moment no great acting in England?\nWe can remember it in our own time, in Irving, who was a man of\nindividual genius. In him it was the expression of a romantic\ntemperament, really Cornish, that is, Celtic, which had been cultivated\nlike a rare plant, in a hothouse. Irving was an incomparable orchid, a\nthing beautiful, lonely, and not quite normal. We have one actress now\nliving, an exception to every rule, in whom a rare and wandering genius\ncomes and goes: I mean, of course, Mrs. Patrick Campbell. She enchants\nus, from time to time, with divine or magical improvisations. We have\nactresses who have many kinds of charm, actors who have many kinds of\nuseful talent; but have we in our whole island two actors capable of\ngiving so serious, so intelligent, so carefully finished, so vital an\ninterpretation of Shakespeare, or, indeed, of rendering any form of\npoetic drama on the stage, as the Englishman and Englishwoman who came\nto us in 1907 from America, in the guise of Americans: Julia Marlowe and\nEdward Sothern?\n\nThe business of the manager, who in most cases is also the chief actor,\nis to produce a concerted action between his separate players, as the\nconductor does between the instruments in his orchestra. If he does not\nbring them entirely under his influence, if he (because, like the\nconductor of a pot-house band, he himself is the first fiddle) does not\nsubordinate himself as carefully to the requirements of the composition,\nthe result will be worthless as a whole, no matter what individual\ntalents may glitter out of it. What should we say if the first fiddle\ninsisted on having a cadenza to himself in the course of every dozen\nbars of the music? What should we say if he cut the best parts of the\n'cellos, in order that they might not add a mellowness which would\nslightly veil the acuteness of his own notes? What should we say if he\nrearranged the composer's score for the convenience of his own\norchestra? What should we say if he left out a beautiful passage on the\nhorn because he had not got one of the two or three perfectly\naccomplished horn-players in Europe? What should we say if he altered\nthe time of one movement in order to make room for another, in which he\nwould himself be more prominent? What should we say if the conductor of\nan orchestra committed a single one of these criminal absurdities? The\nmusical public would rise against him as one man, the pedantic critics\nand the young men who smoke as they stand on promenade floors. And yet\nthis, nothing more nor less, is done on the stage of the theatre\nwhenever a Shakespeare play, or any serious work of dramatic art, is\npresented with any sort of public appeal.\n\nIn the case of music, fortunately, something more than custom forbids:\nthe nature of music forbids. But the play is at the mercy of the\nactor-manager, and the actor-manager has no mercy. In England a serious\nplay, above all a poetic play, is not put on by any but small,\nunsuccessful, more or less private and unprofessional people with any\nsort of reverence for art, beauty, or, indeed, for the laws and\nconditions of the drama which is literature as well as drama. Personal\nvanity and the pecuniary necessity of long runs are enough in themselves\nto account for the failure of most attempts to combine Shakespeare with\nshow, poetry with the box-office. Or is there in our actor-managers a\nlack of this very sense of what is required in the proper rendering of\nimaginative work on the stage?\n\nIt is in the staging and acting, the whole performance and management,\nof such typical plays of Shakespeare as \"Hamlet,\" \"Romeo and Juliet,\"\nand \"Twelfth Night\" that Mr. Sothern and Miss Marlowe have shown the\nwhole extent of their powers, and have read us the lesson we most\nneeded. The mission of these two guests has been to show us what we have\nlost on our stage and what we have forgotten in our Shakespeare. And\nfirst of all I would note the extraordinary novelty and life which they\ngive to each play as a whole by their way of setting it in action. I\nhave always felt that a play of Shakespeare, seen on the stage, should\ngive one the same kind of impression as when one is assisting at \"a\nsolemn music.\" The rhythm of Shakespeare's art is not fundamentally\ndifferent from that of Beethoven, and \"Romeo and Juliet\" is a suite,\n\"Hamlet\" a symphony. To act either of these plays with whatever\nqualities of another kind, and to fail in producing this musical rhythm\nfrom beginning to end, is to fail in the very foundation. Here the music\nwas unflawed; there were no digressions, no eccentricities, no sacrifice\nto the actor. This astonishing thing occurred: that a play was presented\nfor its own sake, with reverence, not with ostentation; for\nShakespeare's sake, not for the actor-manager's.\n\nAnd from this intelligent, unostentatious way of giving Shakespeare\nthere come to us, naturally, many lessons. Until I saw this performance\nof \"Romeo and Juliet\" I thought there was rhetoric in the play, as well\nas the natural poetry of drama. But I see that it only needs to be\nacted with genius and intelligence, and the poetry consumes the\nrhetoric. I never knew before that this play was so near to life, or\nthat every beauty in it could be made so inevitably human. And this is\nbecause no one else has rendered, with so deep a truth, with so\nbeautiful a fidelity, all that is passionate and desperate and an\necstatic agony in this tragic love which glorifies and destroys Juliet.\nThe decorative Juliet of the stage we know, the lovely picture, the\n_ingenue_, the prattler of pretty phrases; but this mysterious, tragic\nchild, whom love has made wise in making her a woman, is unknown to us\noutside Shakespeare, and perhaps even there. Mr. Sothern's Romeo has an\nexquisite passion, young and extravagant as a lover's, and is alive. But\nMiss Marlowe is not only lovely and pathetic as Juliet; she is Juliet. I\nwould not say that Mr. Sothern's Hamlet is the only Hamlet, for there\nare still, no doubt, \"points in Hamlet's soul unseized by the Germans\nyet.\" Yet what a Hamlet! How majestical, how simple, how much a poet\nand a gentleman! To what depth he suffers! How magnificently he\ninterprets, in the crucifixion of his own soul, the main riddles of the\nuniverse! In \"Hamlet,\" too, I saw deeper meanings than I had ever seen\nin the play when it was acted. Mr. Sothern was the only quite sane\nHamlet; his madness is all the outer coverings of wisdom; there was\nnothing fantastic in his grave, subdued, powerful, and piteous\nrepresentation, in which no symbol, no metaphysical Faust, no figment of\na German brain, loomed before us, but a man, more to be pitied and not\nless to be honoured than any man in Elsinore. I have seen romantic,\ntragic, exceptional Hamlets, the very bells on the cap of \"Fortune's\nfool.\" But at last I have seen the man himself, as Shakespeare saw him\nliving, a gentleman, as well as a philosopher, a nature of fundamental\nsincerity; no melancholy clown, but the greatest of all critics of life.\nAnd the play, with its melodrama and its lyrical ecstasy, moved before\none's eyes like a religious service. How is it that we get from the\nacting and management of these two actors a result which no one in\nEngland has ever been able to get? Well, in the first place, as I have\nsaid, they have the odd caprice of preferring Shakespeare to themselves;\nthe odd conviction that fidelity to Shakespeare will give them the best\nchance of doing great things themselves. Nothing is accidental,\neverything obeys a single intention; and what, above all, obeys that\nintention is the quality of inspiration, which is never absent and never\nuncontrolled. Intention without the power of achievement is almost as\nlamentable a thing as achievement not directed by intention. Now here\nare two players in whom technique has been carried to a supreme point.\nThere is no actor on our stage who can speak either English or verse as\nthese two American actors can. It is on this preliminary technique, this\npower of using speech as one uses the notes of a musical instrument,\nthat all possibility of great acting depends. Who is there that can give\nus, not the external gesture, but the inner meaning, of some beautiful\nand subtle passage in Shakespeare? One of our actors will give it\nsonorously, as rhetoric, and another eagerly, as passionate speech, but\nno one with the precise accent of a man who is speaking his thoughts,\nwhich is what Shakespeare makes his characters do when he puts his\nloveliest poetry into their mouths. Look at Mr. Sothern when he gives\nthe soliloquy \"To be or not to be,\" which we are accustomed to hear\nspoken to the public in one or another of many rhetorical manners. Mr.\nSothern's Hamlet curls himself up in a chair, exactly as sensitive\nreflective people do when they want to make their bodies comfortable\nbefore setting their minds to work; and he lets you overhear his\nthoughts. Every soliloquy of Shakespeare is meant to be overheard, and\njust so casually. To render this on the stage requires, first, an\nunderstanding of what poetry is; next, a perfect capacity of producing\nby the sound and intonation of the voice the exact meaning of those\nwords and cadences. Who is there on our stage who has completely\nmastered those two first requirements of acting? No one now acting in\nEnglish, except Julia Marlowe and Edward Sothern.\n\nWhat these two players do is to give us, not the impression which we get\nwhen we see and admire fine limitations, but the impression which we get\nfrom real people who, when they speak in verse, seem to be speaking\nmerely the language of their own hearts. They give us every character in\nthe round, whereas with our actors we see no more than profiles. Look,\nfor contrast, at the Malvolio of Mr. Sothern. It is an elaborate\ntravesty, done in a disguise like the solemn dandy's head of Disraeli.\nHe acts with his eyelids, which move while all the rest of the face is\nmotionless; with his pursed, reticent mouth, with his prim and pompous\ngestures; with that self-consciousness which brings all Malvolio's\ntroubles upon him. It is a fantastic, tragically comic thing, done with\nrare calculation, and it has its formal, almost cruel share in the\nimmense gaiety of the piece. The play is great and wild, a mockery and a\nhappiness; and it is all seen and not interpreted, but the mystery of\nit deepened, in the clown's song at the end, which, for once, has been\nallowed its full effect, not theatrical, but of pure imagination.\n\nSo far I have spoken only of those first requirements, those elementary\nprinciples of acting, which we ought to be able to take for granted;\nonly in England, we cannot. These once granted, the individual work of\nthe actor begins, his power to create with the means at his disposal.\nLet us look, then, a little more closely at Miss Marlowe. I have spoken\nof her Juliet, which is no doubt her finest part. But now look at her\nOphelia. It is not, perhaps, so great a triumph as her Juliet, and\nmerely for the reason that there is little in Ophelia but an image of\nsome beautiful bright thing broken. Yet the mad scene will be remembered\namong all other renderings for its edged lightness, the quite simple\npoetry it makes of madness; above all, the natural pity which comes into\nit from a complete abandonment to what is essence, and not mere\ndecoration, in the spoiled brain of this kind, loving and will-less\nwoman. She suffers, and is pitifully unaware of it, there before you,\nthe very soul naked and shameless with an innocence beyond innocence.\nShe makes the rage and tenderness of Hamlet towards her a credible\nthing.\n\nIn Juliet Miss Marlowe is ripe humanity, in Ophelia that same humanity\nbroken down from within. As Viola, in \"Twelfth Night\" she is the woman\nlet loose, to be bewitching in spite of herself; and here again her art\nis tested, and triumphs, for she is bewitching, and never trespasses\ninto jauntiness on the one hand, or, on the other, into that modern\nsentiment which the theatre has accustomed itself to under the name of\nromance. She is serious, with a calm and even simplicity, to which\neverything is a kind of child's play, putting no unnecessary pathos into\na matter destined to come right in the end. And so her delicate and\nrestrained gaiety in masquerade interprets perfectly, satisfies every\nrequirement, of what for the moment is whimsical in Shakespeare's art.\n\nNow turn from Shakespeare, and see what can be done with the modern\nmake-believe. Here, in \"Jeanne d'Arc,\" is a recent American melodrama,\nwritten ambitiously, in verse which labours to be poetry. The subject\nwas made for Miss Marlowe, but the play was made for effect, and it is\nlamentable to see her, in scenes made up of false sentiment and\ntheatrical situations, trying to do what she is ready and able to do;\nwhat, indeed, some of the scenes give her the chance to be: the little\npeasant girl, perplexed by visions and possessed by them, and also the\npeasant saint, too simple to know that she is heroic. Out of a play of\nshreds and patches one remembers only something which has given it its\nwhole value: the vital image of a divine child, a thing of peace and\nlove, who makes war angelically.\n\nYet even in this play there was ambition and an aim. Turn, last of all,\nto a piece which succeeded with London audiences better than\nShakespeare, a burlesque of American origin, called \"When Knighthood was\nin Flower.\" Here too I seemed to discern a lesson for the English stage.\nEven through the silly disguises of this inconceivable production,\nwhich pleased innocent London as it had pleased indifferent New York,\none felt a certain lilt and go, a touch of nature among the fool's\nfabric of the melodrama, which set the action far above our steady\npractitioners in the same art of sinking. And, above all, a sense of\nparody pierced through words and actions, commenting wittily on the\nnonsense of romance which so many were so willing to take seriously. She\nwas a live thing, defiantly and gaily conscious of every absurdity with\nwhich she indulged the babyish tastes of one more public.\n\nAn actor or actress who is limited by talent, personality, or preference\nto a single kind of _r\u00f4le_ is not properly an artist at all. It is the\ncurse of success that, in any art, a man who has pleased the public in\nany single thing is called upon, if he would turn it into money, to\nrepeat it, as exactly as he can, as often as he can. If he does so, he\nis, again, not an artist. It is the business of every kind of artist to\nbe ceaselessly creative, and, above all, not to repeat himself. When I\nhave seen Miss Marlowe as Juliet, as Ophelia, and as Viola, I am\ncontent to have seen her also in a worthless farce, because she showed\nme that she could go without vulgarity, lightly, safely, through a part\nthat she despised: she did not spoil it out of self-respect; out of a\nrarer self-respect she carried it through without capitulating to it.\nThen I hear of her having done Lady Teazle and Imogen, the Fiammetta of\nCatulle Mend\u00e8s and the Salome of Hauptmann; I do not know even the names\nof half the parts she has played, but I can imagine her playing them\nall, not with the same poignancy and success, but with a skill hardly\nvarying from one to another. There is no doubt that she has a natural\ngenius for acting. This genius she has so carefully and so subtly\ntrained that it may strike you at first sight as not being genius at\nall; because it is so much on the level, because there are no fits and\nstarts in it; because, in short, it has none of the attractiveness of\nexcess. It is by excess that we for the most part distinguish what seems\nto us genius; and it is often by its excess that genius first really\nshows itself. But the rarest genius is without excess, and may seem\ncolourless in his perfection, as Giorgione seems beside Titian. But\nGiorgione will always be the greater.\n\nI quoted to an old friend and fervent admirer of Miss Marlowe the words\nof Bacon which were always on the lips of Poe and of Baudelaire, about\nthe \"strangeness in the proportions\" of all beauty. She asked me, in\npained surprise, if I saw anything strange in Miss Marlowe. If I had\nnot, she would have meant nothing for me, as the \"faultily faultless\"\nperson, the Mrs. Kendal, means nothing to me. The confusion can easily\nbe made, and there will probably always be people who will prefer Mrs.\nKendal to Miss Marlowe, as there are those who will think Mme. Melba a\ngreater operatic singer than Mme. Calv\u00e9. What Miss Marlowe has is a\ngreat innocence, which is not, like Duse's, the innocence of wisdom, and\na childish and yet wild innocence, such as we might find in a tamed wild\nbeast, in whom there would always be a charm far beyond that of the\ndomestic creature who has grown up on our hearth. This wildness comes to\nher perhaps from Pan, forces of nature that are always somewhere\nstealthily about the world, hidden in the blood, unaccountable,\nunconscious; without which we are tame christened things, fit for\ncloisters. Duse is the soul made flesh, R\u00e9jane the flesh made Parisian,\nSarah Bernhardt the flesh and the devil; but Julia Marlowe is the joy of\nlife, the plenitude of sap in the tree.\n\nThe personal appeal of Mr. Sothern and of Miss Marlowe is very\ndifferent. In his manner of receiving applause there is something almost\nresentful, as if, being satisfied to do what he chooses to do, and in\nhis own way, he were indifferent to the opinion of others. It is not the\nactor's attitude; but what a relief from the general subservience of\nthat attitude! In Miss Marlowe there is something young, warm, and\nengaging, a way of giving herself wholly to the pleasure of pleasing, to\nwhich the footlights are scarcely a barrier. As if unconsciously, she\nfills and gladdens you with a sense of the single human being whom she\nis representing. And there is her strange beauty, in which the mind and\nthe senses have an equal part, and which is full of savour and grace,\nalive to the finger-tips. Yet it is not with these personal qualities\nthat I am here chiefly concerned. What I want to emphasise is the\nparticular kind of lesson which this acting, so essentially English,\nthough it comes to us as if set free by America, should have for all who\nare at all seriously considering the lamentable condition of our stage\nin the present day. We have nothing like it in England, nothing on the\nsame level, no such honesty and capacity of art, no such worthy results.\nAre we capable of realising the difference? If not, Julia Marlowe and\nEdward Sothern will have come to England in vain.\n\n\n\n\nA THEORY OF THE STAGE\n\n\nLife and beauty are the body and soul of great drama. Mix the two as you\nwill, so long as both are there, resolved into a single substance. But\nlet there be, in the making, two ingredients, and while one is poetry,\nand comes bringing beauty, the other is a violent thing which has been\nscornfully called melodrama, and is the emphasis of action. The greatest\nplays are melodrama by their skeleton, and poetry by the flesh which\nclothes that skeleton.\n\nThe foundation of drama is that part of the action which can be\nrepresented in dumb show. Only the essential parts of action can be\nrepresented without words, and you would set the puppets vainly to work\non any material but that which is common to humanity. The permanence of\na drama might be tested by the continuance and universality of its\nappeal when played silently in gestures. I have seen the test applied.\nCompanies of marionette players still go about the villages of Kent,\nand among their stock pieces is \"Arden of Feversham,\" the play which\nShakespeare is not too great to have written, at some moment when his\nright hand knew not what his left hand was doing. Well, that great\nlittle play can hold the eyes of every child and villager, as the\npuppets enact it; and its power has not gone out of it after three\ncenturies. Dumb show apes the primal forces of nature, and is\ninarticulate, as they are; until relief gives words. When words come,\nthere is no reason why they should not be in verse, for only in verse\ncan we render what is deepest in humanity of the utmost beauty. Nothing\nbut beauty should exist on the stage. Visible beauty comes with the\nballet, an abstract thing; gesture adds pantomime, with which drama\nbegins; and then words bring in the speech by which life tries to tell\nits secret. Because poetry, speaking its natural language of verse, can\nlet out more of that secret than prose, the great drama of the past has\nbeen mainly drama in verse. The modern desire to escape from form, and\nto get at a raw thing which shall seem like what we know of the outside\nof nature, has led our latest dramatists to use prose in preference to\nverse, which indeed is more within their limits. It is Ibsen who has\nseemed to do most to justify the use of prose, for he carries his\npsychology far with it. Yet it remains prose, a meaner method, a\nlimiting restraint, and his drama a thing less fundamental than the\ndrama of the poets. Only one modern writer has brought something which\nis almost the equivalent of poetry out of prose speech: Tolstoi, in \"The\nPowers of Darkness.\" The play is horrible and uncouth, but it is\nilluminated by a great inner light. There is not a beautiful word in it,\nbut it is filled with beauty. And that is because Tolstoi has the vision\nwhich may be equally that of the poet and of the prophet. It is often\nsaid that the age of poetry is over, and that the great forms of the\nfuture must be in prose. That is the \"exquisite reason\" of those whom\nthe gods have not made poetical. It is like saying that there will be\nno more music, or that love is out of date. Forms change, but not\nessence; and Whitman points the way, not to prose, but to a poetry which\nshall take in wider regions of the mind.\n\nYet, though it is by its poetry that, as Lamb pointed out, a play of\nShakespeare differs from a play of Banks or Lillo, the poetry is not\nmore essential to its making than the living substance, the melodrama.\nPoets who have written plays for reading have wasted their best\nopportunities. Why wear chains for dancing? The limitations necessary to\nthe drama before it can be fitted to the stage are but hindrances and\ndisabilities to the writer of a book. Where can we find more spilt\nwealth than in the plays of Swinburne, where all the magnificent speech\nbuilds up no structure, but wavers in orchestral floods, without\nbeginning or ending? It has been said that Shakespeare will sacrifice\nhis drama to his poetry, and even \"Hamlet\" has been quoted against him.\nBut let \"Hamlet\" be rightly acted, and whatever has seemed mere\nlingering meditation will be recognised as a part of that thought which\nmakes or waits on action. If poetry in Shakespeare may sometimes seem to\ndelay action, it does but deepen it. The poetry is the life blood, or\nruns through it. Only bad actors and managers think that by stripping\nthe flesh from the skeleton they can show us a more living body. The\noutlines of \"Hamlet\" are crude, irresistible melodrama, still\nirresistible to the gallery; and the greatness of the play, though it\ncomes to us by means of the poetry, comes to us legitimately, as a\ngrowth out of melodrama.\n\nThe failure, the comparative failure, of every contemporary dramatist,\nhowever far he may go in one direction or another, comes from his\nneglect of one or another of these two primary and essential\nrequirements. There is, at this time, a more serious dramatic movement\nin Germany than in any other country; with mechanicians, like Sudermann,\nas accomplished as the best of ours, and dramatists who are also poets,\nlike Hauptmann. I do not know them well enough to bring them into my\nargument, but I can see that in Germany, whatever the actual result, the\nendeavour is in the right direction. Elsewhere, how often do we find\neven so much as this, in more than a single writer here and there?\nConsider Ibsen, who is the subtlest master of the stage since Sophocles.\nAt his best he has a firm hold on structural melodrama, he is a\nmarvellous analyst of life, he is the most ingenious of all the\nplaywrights; but ask him for beauty and he will give you a phrase,\n\"vine-leaves in the hair\" or its equivalent; one of the clich\u00e9s of the\nminor poet. In the end beauty revenged itself upon him by bringing him\nto a no-man's land where there were clouds and phantasms that he could\nno longer direct.\n\nMaeterlinck began by a marvellous instinct, with plays \"for\nmarionettes,\" and, having discovered a forgotten secret, grew tired of\nlimiting himself within its narrow circle, and came outside his magic.\n\"Monna Vanna\" is an attempt to be broadly human on the part of a man\nwhose gift is of another kind: a visionary of the moods. His later\nspeech, like his later dramatic material, is diluted; he becomes, in the\nconventional sense, eloquent, which poetry never is. But he has brought\nback mystery to the stage, which has been banished, or retained in\nexile, among phantasmagoric Faust-lights. The dramatist of the future\nwill have more to learn from Maeterlinck than from any other playwright\nof our time. He has seen his puppets against the permanent darkness,\nwhich we had cloaked with light; he has given them supreme silences.\n\nIn d'Annunzio we have an art partly shaped by Maeterlinck, in which all\nis atmosphere, and a home for sensations which never become vital\npassions. The roses in the sarcophagus are part of the action in\n\"Francesca,\" and in \"The Dead City\" the whole action arises out of the\nglorious mischief hidden like a deadly fume in the grave of Agamemnon.\nSpeech and drama are there, clothing but not revealing one another; the\nspeech always a lovely veil, never a human outline.\n\nWe have in England one man, and one only, who has some public claim to\nbe named with these artists, though his aim is the negation of art. Mr.\nShaw is a mind without a body, a whimsical intelligence without a soul.\nHe is one of those tragic buffoons who play with eternal things, not\nonly for the amusement of the crowd, but because an uneasy devil capers\nin their own brains. He is a merry preacher, a petulant critic, a great\ntalker. It is partly because he is an Irishman that he has transplanted\nthe art of talking to the soil of the stage: Sheridan, Wilde, Shaw, our\nonly modern comedians, all Irishmen, all talkers. It is by his\nastonishing skill of saying everything that comes into his head, with a\nspirit really intoxicating, that Mr. Shaw has succeeded in holding the\nstage with undramatic plays, in which there is neither life nor beauty.\nLife gives up its wisdom only to reverence, and beauty is jealous of\nneglected altars. But those who amuse the world, no matter by what\nmeans, have their place in the world at any given moment. Mr. Shaw is a\nclock striking the hour.\n\nWith Mr. Shaw we come to the play which is prose, and nothing but\nprose. The form is familiar among us, though it is cultivated with a\nmore instinctive skill, as is natural, in France. There was a time, not\nso long ago, when Dumas fils was to France what Ibsen afterwards became\nto Europe. What remains of him now is hardly more than his first \"fond\nadventure\" the supremely playable \"Dame aux Cam\u00e9lias.\" The other plays\nare already out of date, since Ibsen; the philosophy of \"Tue-l\u00e0!\" was\nthe special pleading of the moment, and a drama in which special\npleading, and not the fundamental \"criticism of life,\" is the dramatic\nmotive can never outlast its technique, which has also died with the\ncoming of Ibsen. Better technique, perhaps, than that of \"La Femme de\nClaude,\" but with less rather than more weight of thought behind it, is\nto be found in many accomplished playwrights, who are doing all sorts of\ninteresting temporary things, excellently made to entertain the\nattentive French public with a solid kind of entertainment. Here, in\nEngland, we have no such folk to command; our cleverest playwrights,\napart from Mr. Shaw, are what we might call practitioners. There is Mr.\nPinero, Mr. Jones, Mr. Grundy: what names are better known, or less to\nbe associated with literature? There is Anthony Hope, who can write, and\nMr. Barrie who has something both human and humourous. There are many\nmore names, if I could remember them; but where is the serious\nplaywright? Who is there that can be compared with our poets or our\nnovelists, not only with a Swinburne or a Meredith, but, in a younger\ngeneration, with a Bridges or a Conrad? The Court Theatre has given us\none or two good realistic plays, the best being Mr. Granville Barker's,\nbesides giving Mr. Shaw his chance in England, after he had had and\ntaken it in America. But is there, anywhere but in Ireland, an attempt\nto write imaginative literature in the form of drama? The Irish Literary\nTheatre has already, in Mr. Yeats and Mr. Synge, two notable writers,\neach wholly individual, one a poet in verse, the other a poet in prose.\nNeither has yet reached the public, in any effectual way, or perhaps\nthe limits of his own powers as a dramatist. Yet who else is there for\nus to hope in, if we are to have once more an art of the stage, based on\nthe great principles, and a theatre in which that art can be acted?\n\nThe whole universe lies open to the poet who is also a dramatist,\naffording him an incomparable choice of subject. Ibsen, the greatest of\nthe playwrights of modern life, narrowed his stage, for ingenious\nplausible reasons of his own, to the four walls of a house, and, at his\nbest, constrained his people to talk of nothing above their daily\noccupations. He got the illusion of everyday life, but at a cruel\nexpense. These people, until they began to turn crazy, had no vision\nbeyond their eyesight, and their thoughts never went deep enough to need\na better form for expression than they could find in their newspapers.\nThey discussed immortal problems as they would have discussed the\nentries in their ledger. Think for a moment how the peasants speak in\nthat play of Tolstoi's which I have called the only modern play in\nprose which contains poetry. They speak as Russians speak, with a\ncertain childishness, in which they are more primitive than our more\ncivilised peasants. But the speech comes from deeper than they are\naware, it stumbles into a revelation of the soul. A drunken man in\nTolstoi has more wisdom in his cups than all Ibsen's strange ladies who\nfumble at their lips for sea-magic.\n\nAnd as Tolstoi found in this sordid chaos material for tragedy which is\nas noble as the Greeks' (a like horror at the root of both, a like\nradiance at both summits), so the poet will find stories, as modern as\nthis if he chooses, from which he can take the same ingredients for his\nart. The ingredients are unchanging since \"Prometheus\"; no human agony\nhas ever grown old or lost its pity and terror. The great plays of the\npast were made out of great stories, and the great stories are repeated\nin our days and can be heard wherever an old man tells us a little of\nwhat has come to him in living. Verse lends itself to the lifting and\nadequate treatment of the primary emotions, because it can render them\nmore as they are in the soul, not being tied down to probable words, as\nprose talk is. The probable words of prose talk can only render a part\nof what goes on among the obscure imageries of the inner life; for who,\nin a moment of crisis, responds to circumstances or destiny with an\nadequate answer? Poetry, which is spoken thought, or the speech of\nsomething deeper than thought, may let loose some part of that answer\nwhich would justify the soul, if it did not lie dumb upon its lips.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SICILIAN ACTORS\n\nI\n\n\nI have been seeing the Sicilian actors in London. They came here from\nParis, where, I read, \"la passion para\u00eet d\u00e9cidement,\" to a dramatic\ncritic, \"avoir partout ses inconvenients,\" especially on the stage. We\nare supposed to think so here, but for once London has applauded an\nacting which is more primitively passionate than anything we are\naccustomed to on our moderate stage. Some of it was spoken in Italian,\nsome in the Sicilian dialect, and not many in the English part of the\naudience could follow very closely the words as they were spoken. Yet so\nmarvellously real were these stage peasants, so clear and poignant their\ngestures and actions, that words seemed a hardly needless accompaniment\nto so evident, exciting, and absorbing a form of drama. It was a new\nintoxication, and people went, I am afraid, as to a wild-beast show.\n\nIt was really nothing of the kind, though the melodrama was often very\ncrude; sometimes, in a simple way, horrible. But it was a fierce living\nthing, a life unknown to us in the North; it smouldered like the\nvolcanoes of the South. And so we were seeing a new thing on the stage,\nrendered by actors who seemed, for the most part, scarcely actors at\nall, but the real peasants; and, above all, there was a woman of genius,\nthe leader of the company, who was much more real than reality.\n\nMimi Aguglia has studied Duse, for her tones, for some of her attitudes;\nher art is more nearly the art of R\u00e9jane. While both of these are great\nartists, she is an improviser, a creature of wild moods, of animal\nenergies, uncontrolled, spontaneous. She catches you in a fierce caress,\nlike a tiger-cat. She gives you, as in \"Malia,\" the whole animal,\nsnarling, striking, suffering, all the pangs of the flesh, the emotions\nof fear and hate, but for the most part no more. In \"La Folfaa\" she can\nbe piquant, passing from the naughty girl of the first act, with her\ndelicious airs and angers, her tricks, gambols, petulances, to the\nsoured wife of the second, in whom a kind of bad blood comes out,\nturning her to treacheries of mere spite, until her husband thrusts her\nbrutally out of the house, where, if she will, she may follow her lover.\nHere, where there is no profound passion but mean quarrels among\nmiserable workers in salt-mines, she is a noticeable figure, standing\nout from the others, and setting her prim, soubrette figure in motion\nwith a genuine art, quite personal to her. But to see her after the\nSantuzza of Duse, in Verga's \"Cavalleria Rusticana,\" is to realise the\ndifference between this art of the animal and Duse's art of the soul.\nAnd if one thinks of R\u00e9jane's \"Sapho,\" the difference is hardly less,\nthough of another kind. I saw Duse for the first time in the part of\nSantuzza, and I remember to this day a certain gentle and pathetic\ngesture of her apparently unconscious hand, turning back the sleeve of\nher lover's coat over his wrist, while her eyes fasten on his eyes in a\ngreat thirst for what is to be found in them. The Santuzza of Mimi\nAguglia is a stinging thing that bites when it is stepped on. There is\nno love in her heart, only love of possession, jealousy, an unreasonable\nhate; and she is not truly pathetic or tragic in her furious wrestle\nwith her lover on the church steps or in her plot against him which\nsends an unanticipated knife into his heart.\n\nYet, in the Mila di Codra of d'Annunzio's \"Figlia di Jorio\" she has\nmoments of absolute greatness. Her fear in the cave, before Lazaro di\nRoio, is the most ghastly and accurate rendering of that sensation that,\nI am sure, has been seen on any stage. She flings herself upright\nagainst a frame of wood on which the woodcarver has left his tools, and\nas one new shudder after another sets her body visibly quaking, some of\nthe tools drop on the floor, with an astonishing effect on the nerves.\nHer face contracts into a staring, hopeless grimace, as if about to\nutter shrieks which cannot get past her lips. She shivers slowly\ndownwards until she sinks on her rigid heels and clasps her knees with\nboth arms. There, in the corner, she waits in twenty several anguishes,\nwhile the foul old man tempts her, crawling like a worm, nearer and\nnearer to her on the ground, with gestures of appeal that she repels\ntime after time, with some shudder aside of her crouched body, hopping\nas if on all fours closer into the corner. The scene is terrible in its\nscarcely thinkable distress, but it is not horrible, as some would have\nit to be. Here, with her means, this actress creates; it is no mean copy\nof reality, but fear brought to a kind of greatness, so completely has\nthe whole being passed into its possession.\n\nAnd there is another scene in which she is absolute in a nobler\ncatastrophe. In her last cry before she is dragged to the stake, \"La\nfiamma e bella! la fiamma e bella!\" d'Annunzio, I have no doubt, meant\nno more than the obvious rhetoric suited to a situation of heroism. Out\nof his rhetoric this woman has created the horror and beauty of a\nsupreme irony of anguish. She has given up her life for her lover, he\nhas denied and cursed her in the oblivion of the draught that should\nhave been his death-drink, her hands have been clasped with the wooden\nfetters taken off from his hands, and her face covered with the dark\nveil he had worn, and the vile howling crowd draws her backward towards\nher martyrdom. Ornella has saluted her sister in Christ; she, the one\nwho knows the truth, silent, helping her to die nobly. And now the\nwoman, having willed beyond the power of mortal flesh to endure an\nanguish that now flames before her in its supreme reality, strains in\nthe irrationality of utter fear backward into the midst of those\nclutching hands that are holding her up in the attitude of her death,\nand, with a shiver in which the soul, succumbing to the body, wrings its\nlast triumph out of an ignominious glory, she cries, shrieking, feeling\nthe flames eternally upon her: \"La fiamma e bella! la fiamma e bella!\"\nand thereat all evil seems to have been judged suddenly, and\nobliterated, as if God had laughed once, and wiped out the world.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nSince Charles Lamb's essay \"On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, considered\nwith reference to their fitness for stage representation,\" there has\nbeen a great deal of argument as to whether the beauty of words,\nespecially in verse, is necessarily lost on the stage, and whether a\nwell-constructed play cannot exist by itself, either in dumb show or\nwith words in a foreign language, which we may not understand. The\nacting, by the Sicilian actors, of \"La Figlia di Jorio,\" seemed to me to\ndo something towards the solution of part at least of this problem.\n\nThe play, as one reads it, has perhaps less than usual of the beauty\nwhich d'Annunzio elaborates in his dramatic speech. It is, on the other\nhand, closer to nature, carefully copied from the speech of the peasants\nof the Abruzzi, and from what remains of their folk-lore. The story on\nwhich it is founded is a striking one, and the action has, even in\nreading, the effect of a melodrama. Now see it on the stage, acted with\nthe speed and fury of these actors. Imagine oneself ignorant of the\nlanguage and of the play. Suddenly the words have become unnecessary;\nthe bare outlines stand out, perfectly explicit in gesture and motion;\nthe scene passes before you as if you were watching it in real life; and\nthis primitively passionate acting, working on an action so cunningly\ncontrived for its co-operation, gives us at last what the play, as we\nread it, had suggested to us, but without complete conviction. The\nbeauty of the speech had become a secondary matter, or, if we did not\nunderstand it, the desire to know what was being said: the playwright\nand his players had eclipsed the poet, the visible action had put out\nthe calculated cadences of the verse. And the play, from the point of\nview of the stage, had fulfilled every requirement, had achieved its\naim.\n\nAnd still the question remains: how much of this success is due to the\nplaywright's skill or to the skill of the actors? How is it that in\nthis play the actors obtain a fine result, act on a higher level, than\nin their realistic Sicilian tragedies? D'Annunzio is no doubt a better\nwriter than Capuana or Verga, and his play is finer as literature than\n\"Cavalleria Rusticana\" or \"Malia.\" But is it great poetry or great\ndrama, and has the skilful playwright need of the stage and of actors\nlike these, who come with their own life and ways upon it, in order to\nbring the men and women of his pages to life? Can it be said of him that\nhe has fulfilled the great condition of poetic drama, that, as Coleridge\nsaid, \"dramatic poetry must be poetry hid in thought and passion--not\nthought or passion disguised in the dress of poetry?\"\n\nThat is a question which I am not here concerned to answer. Perhaps I\nhave already answered it. Perhaps Lamb had answered it when he said, of\na performance of Shakespeare in which there were two great actors, that\n\"it seemed to embody and realise conceptions which had hitherto assumed\nno distinct shape,\" but that, \"when the novelty is past, we find to our\ncost that instead of realising an idea, we have only materialised and\nbrought down a fine vision to the standard of flesh and blood.\" If that\nis true of Shakespeare, the greatest of dramatic poets, how far is it\nfrom the impression which I have described in speaking of d'Annunzio.\nWhat fine vision was there to bring down? what poetry hid in thought or\npassion was lost to us in its passage across the stage?\n\nAnd now let us consider the play in which these actors have found their\nfinest opportunity for abandoning themselves to those instincts out of\nwhich they have made their art. \"Malia,\" a Sicilian play of Capuana, is\nan exhibition of the witchcraft of desire, and it is justified against\nall accusation by that thrill with which something in us responds to it,\nadmitting: This is I, myself, so it has been given to me to sin and to\nsuffer. And so, if we think deeply enough we shall find, in these\nsinning, suffering, insatiable beings, who present themselves as if\nnaked before us, the image of our own souls, visible for once, and\nunashamed, in the mirror of these bodies. It is we, who shudder before\nthem, and maybe laugh at the extravagance of their gestures, it is\nourselves whom they are showing to us, caught unawares and set in\nsymbolical action. Let not the base word realism be used for this\nspontaneous energy by which we are shown the devastating inner forces,\nby which nature creates and destroys us. Here is one part of life, the\nsource of its existence: and here it is shown us crude as nature,\nabsolute as art. This new, living art of the body, which we see\nstruggling in the clay of Rodin, concentrates itself for once in this\nwoman who expresses, without reticence and without offence, all that the\npoets have ever said of the supreme witchcraft, animal desire, without\npassion, carnal, its own self-devouring agony. Art has for once\njustified itself by being mere nature.\n\nAnd, here again, this play is no masterpiece in itself, only the\noccasion for a masterpiece of acting. The whole company, Sig. Grasso and\nthe others, acted with perfect unanimity, singly and in crowds. What\nstage-crowd of a hundred drilled and dumpish people, as we see it at our\nbig theatres, has ever given us that sense of a real, surging crowd as\nthe dozen or so supers in that last struggle which ends the play? But\nthe play really existed for Aguglia, and was made by her. R\u00e9jane has\ndone greater things in her own way, in her own way she is a greater\nartist. But not even R\u00e9jane has given us the whole animal, in its\nself-martyrdom, as this woman has given it to us. Such knowledge and\ncommand of the body, and so frank an abandonment to its instinctive\nmotions, has never been seen on our stage, not even in Sada Yacco and\nthe Japanese. They could outdo Sarah in a death-scene, but not Aguglia\nin the scene in which she betrays her secret. Done by anyone else, it\nwould have been an imitation of a woman in hysterics, a thing\nmeaningless and disgusting. Done by her, it was the visible contest\nbetween will and desire, a battle, a shipwreck, in which you watch\nhelplessly from the shore every plank as the sea tears if off and\nswallows it. \"I feel as if I had died,\" said the friend who was with me\nin the theatre, speaking out of an uncontrollable sympathy; died with\nthe woman, she meant, or in the woman's place.\n\nOur critics here have for the most part seen fit, like the French critic\nwhom I quoted at the beginning, to qualify their natural admiration by a\nhesitating consciousness that \"la passion para\u00eet decidement avoir\npartout ses inconvenients.\" But the critic who sets himself against a\nmagnetic current can do no more than accept the shock which has cast him\ngently aside. All art is magnetism. The greatest art is a magnetism\nthrough which the soul reaches the soul. There is another, terrible,\nauthentic art through which the body communicates its thrilling secrets.\nAnd against all these currents there is no barrier and no appeal.\n\n\n\n\nMUSIC\n\n\n\n\nON WRITING ABOUT MUSIC\n\n\nThe reason why music is so much more difficult to write about than any\nother art, is because music is the one absolutely disembodied art, when\nit is heard, and no more than a proposition of Euclid, when it is\nwritten. It is wholly useless, to the student no less than to the\ngeneral reader, to write about music in the style of the programmes for\nwhich we pay sixpence at the concerts. \"Repeated by flute and oboe, with\naccompaniment for clarionet (in triplets) and strings _pizzicato_, and\nthen worked up by the full orchestra, this melody is eventually allotted\nto the 'cellos, its accompaniment now taking the form of chromatic\npassages,\" and so forth. Not less useless is it to write a rhapsody\nwhich has nothing to do with the notes, and to present this as an\ninterpretation of what the notes have said in an unknown language. Yet\nwhat method is there besides these two methods? None, indeed, that can\never be wholly satisfactory; at the best, no more than a compromise.\n\nIn writing about poetry, while precisely that quality which makes it\npoetry must always evade expression, there yet remain the whole definite\nmeaning of the words, and the whole easily explicable technique of the\nverse, which can be made clear to every reader. In painting, you have\nthe subject of the picture, and you have the colour, handling, and the\nlike, which can be expressed hardly less precisely in words. But music\nhas no subject, outside itself; no meaning, outside its meaning as\nmusic; and, to understand anything of what is meant by its technique, a\ncertain definite technical knowledge is necessary in the reader. What\nsubterfuges are required, in order to give the vaguest suggestion of\nwhat a piece of music is like, and how little has been said, after all,\nbeyond generalisations, which would apply equally to half a dozen\ndifferent pieces! The composer himself, if you ask him, will tell you\nthat you may be quite correct in what you say, but that he has no\nopinion in the matter.\n\nMusic has indeed a language, but it is a language in which birds and\nother angels may talk, but out of which we cannot translate their\nmeaning. Emotion itself, how changed becomes even emotion when we\ntransport it into a new world, in which only sound has feeling! But I am\nspeaking as if it had died and been re-born there, whereas it was born\nin its own region, and is wholly ignorant of ours.\n\n\n\n\nTECHNIQUE AND THE ARTIST\n\n\nTechnique and the artist: that is a question, of interest to the student\nof every art, which was brought home to me with unusual emphasis the\nother afternoon, as I sat in the Queen's Hall, and listened to Ysaye and\nBusoni. Are we always quite certain what we mean when we speak of an\nartist? Have we quite realised in our own minds the extent to which\ntechnique must go to the making of an artist, and the point at which\nsomething else must be superadded? That is a matter which I often doubt,\nand the old doubt came back to my mind the other afternoon, as I\nlistened to Ysaye and Busoni, and next day, as I turned over the\nnewspapers.\n\nI read, in the first paper I happen to take up, that the violinist and\nthe pianist are \"a perfectly matched pair\"; the applause, at the\nconcert, was even more enthusiastic for Busoni than for Ysaye. I hear\nboth spoken of as artists, as great artists; and yet, if words have any\nmeaning, it seems to me that only one of the two is an artist at all,\nand the other, with all his ability, only an executant. Admit, for a\nmoment, that the technique of the two is equal, though it is not quite\npossible to admit even that, in the strictest sense. So far, we have\nmade only a beginning. Without technique, perfect of its kind, no one is\nworth consideration in any art. The rope-dancer or the acrobat must be\nperfect in technique before he appears on the stage at all; in his case,\na lapse from perfection brings its own penalty, death perhaps; his art\nbegins when his technique is already perfect. Artists who deal in\nmaterials less fragile than human life should have no less undeviating a\nsense of responsibility to themselves and to art. But the performance\ncomes afterwards, and it is the performance with which we are concerned.\nOf two acrobats, each equally skilful, one will be individual and an\nartist, the other will remain consummately skilful and uninteresting;\nthe one having begun where the other leaves off. Now Busoni can do, on\nthe pianoforte, whatever he can conceive; the question is, what can he\nconceive? As he sat at the piano playing Chopin, I thought of Busoni, of\nthe Bechstein piano, of what fingers can do, of many other extraneous\nthings, never of Chopin. I saw the pianist with the Christ-like head,\nthe carefully negligent elegance of his appearance, and I heard\nwonderful sounds coming out of the Bechstein piano; but, try as hard as\nI liked, I could not feel the contact of soul and instrument, I could\nnot feel that a human being was expressing himself in sound. A task was\nmagnificently accomplished, but a new beauty had not come into the\nworld. Then the Kreutzer Sonata began, and I looked at Ysaye, as he\nstood, an almost shapeless mass of flesh, holding the violin between his\nfat fingers, and looking vaguely into the air. He put the violin to his\nshoulder. The face had been like a mass of clay, waiting the sculptor's\nthumb. As the music came, an invisible touch seemed to pass over it; the\nheavy mouth and chin remained firm, pressed down on the violin; but the\neyelids and the eyebrows began to move, as if the eyes saw the sound,\nand were drawing it in luxuriously, with a kind of sleepy ecstasy, as\none draws in perfume out of a flower. Then, in that instant, a beauty\nwhich had never been in the world came into the world; a new thing was\ncreated, lived, died, having revealed itself to all those who were\ncapable of receiving it. That thing was neither Beethoven nor Ysaye, it\nwas made out of their meeting; it was music, not abstract, but embodied\nin sound; and just that miracle could never occur again, though others\nlike it might be repeated for ever. When the sound stopped, the face\nreturned to its blind and deaf waiting; the interval, like all the rest\nof life probably, not counting in the existence of that particular soul,\nwhich came and went with the music.\n\nAnd Ysaye seems to me the type of the artist, not because he is\nfaultless in technique, but because he begins to create his art at the\npoint where faultless technique leaves off. With him, every faculty is\nin harmony; he has not even too much of any good thing. There are times\nwhen Busoni astonishes one; Ysaye never astonishes one, it seems natural\nthat he should do everything that he does, just as he does it. Art, as\nAristotle has said finally, should always have \"a continual slight\nnovelty\"; it should never astonish, for we are astonished only by some\nexcess or default, never by a thing being what it ought to be. It is a\nfashion of the moment to prize extravagance and to be timid of\nperfection. That is why we give the name of artist to those who can\nstartle us most. We have come to value technique for the violence which\nit gives into the hands of those who possess it, in their assault upon\nour nerves. We have come to look upon technique as an end in itself,\nrather than as a means to an end. We have but one word of praise, and we\nuse that one word lavishly. An Ysaye and a Busoni are the same to us,\nand it is to our credit if we are even aware that Ysaye is the equal of\nBusoni.\n\n\n\n\nPACHMANN AND THE PIANO\n\nI\n\n\nIt seems to me that Pachmann is the only pianist who plays the piano as\nit ought to be played. I admit his limitations, I admit that he can play\nonly certain things, but I contend that he is the greatest living\npianist because he can play those things better than any other pianist\ncan play anything. Pachmann is the Verlaine of pianists, and when I hear\nhim I think of Verlaine reading his own verse, in a faint, reluctant\nvoice, which you overheard. Other players have mastered the piano,\nPachmann absorbs its soul, and it is only when he touches it that it\nreally speaks its own voice.\n\nThe art of the pianist, after all, lies mainly in one thing, touch. It\nis by the skill, precision, and beauty of his touch that he makes music\nat all; it is by the quality of his touch that he evokes a more or less\nmiraculous vision of sound for us. Touch gives him his only means of\nexpression; it is to him what relief is to the sculptor or what values\nare to the painter. To \"understand,\" as it is called, a piece of music,\nis not so much as the beginning of good playing; if you do not\nunderstand it with your fingers, what shall your brain profit you? In\nthe interpretation of music all action of the brain which does not\ntranslate itself perfectly in touch is useless. You may as well not\nthink at all as not think in terms of your instrument, and the piano\nresponds to one thing only, touch. Now Pachmann, beyond all other\npianists, has this magic. When he plays it, the piano ceases to be a\ncompromise. He makes it as living and penetrating as the violin, as\nresponsive and elusive as the clavichord.\n\nChopin wrote for the piano with a more perfect sense of his instrument\nthan any other composer, and Pachmann plays Chopin with an infallible\nsense of what Chopin meant to express in his mind. He seems to touch the\nnotes with a kind of agony of delight; his face twitches with the actual\nmuscular contraction of the fingers as they suspend themselves in the\nvery act of touch. I am told that Pachmann plays Chopin in a morbid\nway. Well, Chopin was morbid; there are fevers and cold sweats in his\nmusic; it is not healthy music, and it is not to be interpreted in a\nrobust way. It must be played, as Pachmann plays it, somnambulistically,\nwith a tremulous delicacy of intensity, as if it were a living thing on\nwhose nerves one were operating, and as if every touch might mean life\nor death.\n\nI have heard pianists who played Chopin in what they called a healthy\nway. The notes swung, spun, and clattered, with a heroic repercussion of\nsound, a hurrying reiteration of fury, signifying nothing. The piano\nstormed through the applause; the pianist sat imperturbably, hammering.\nWell, I do not think any music should be played like that, not Liszt\neven. Liszt connives at the suicide, but with Chopin it is a murder.\nWhen Pachmann plays Chopin the music sings itself, as if without the\nintervention of an executant, of one who stands between the music and\nour hearing. The music has to intoxicate him before he can play with it;\nthen he becomes its comrade, in a kind of very serious game; himself,\nin short, that is to say inhuman. His fingers have in them a cold magic,\nas of soulless elves who have sold their souls for beauty. And this\nbeauty, which is not of the soul, is not of the flesh; it is a\nsea-change, the life of the foam on the edge of the depths. Or it\ntransports him into some mid-region of the air, between hell and heaven,\nwhere he hangs listening. He listens at all his senses. The dew, as well\nas the raindrop, has a sound for him.\n\nIn Pachmann's playing there is a frozen tenderness, with, at moments,\nthe elvish triumph of a gnome who has found a bright crystal or a\ndiamond. Pachmann is inhuman, and music, too, is inhuman. To him, and\nrightly, it is a thing not domesticated, not familiar as a household cat\nwith our hearth. When he plays it, music speaks no language known to us,\nhas nothing of ourselves to tell us, but is shy, alien, and speaks a\nlanguage which we do not know. It comes to us a divine hallucination,\nchills us a little with its \"airs from heaven\" or elsewhere, and breaks\ndown for an instant the too solid walls of the world, showing us the\ngulf. When d'Albert plays Chopin's Berceuse, beautifully, it is a\nlullaby for healthy male children growing too big for the cradle.\nPachmann's is a lullaby for fairy changelings who have never had a soul,\nbut in whose veins music vibrates; and in this intimate alien thing he\nfinds a kind of humour.\n\nIn the attempt to humanise music, that attempt which almost every\nexecutant makes, knowing that he will be judged by his success or\nfailure in it, what is most fatally lost is that sense of mystery which,\nto music, is atmosphere. In this atmosphere alone music breathes\ntranquilly. So remote is it from us that it can only be reached through\nsome not quite healthy nervous tension, and Pachmann's physical\ndisquietude when he plays is but a sign of what it has cost him to\nventure outside humanity, into music. Yet in music this mystery is a\nsimple thing, its native air; and the art of the musician has less\ndifficulty in its evocation than the art of the poet or the painter.\nWith what an effort do we persuade words or colours back from their\nvulgar articulateness into at least some recollection of that mystery\nwhich is deeper than sight or speech. Music can never wholly be detached\nfrom mystery, can never wholly become articulate, and it is in our\nignorance of its true nature that we would tame it to humanity and teach\nit to express human emotions, not its own.\n\nPachmann gives you pure music, not states of soul or of temperament, not\ninterpretations, but echoes. He gives you the notes in their own\natmosphere, where they live for him an individual life, which has\nnothing to do with emotions or ideas. Thus he does not need to translate\nout of two languages: first, from sound to emotion, temperament, what\nyou will; then from that back again to sound. The notes exist; it is\nenough that they exist. They mean for him just the sound and nothing\nelse. You see his fingers feeling after it, his face calling to it, his\nwhole body imploring it. Sometimes it comes upon him in such a burst of\nlight that he has to cry aloud, in order that he may endure the ecstasy.\nYou see him speaking to the music; he lifts his finger, that you may\nlisten for it not less attentively. But it is always the thing itself\nthat he evokes for you, as it rises flower-like out of silence, and\ncomes to exist in the world. Every note lives, with the whole vitality\nof its existence. To Swinburne every word lives, just in the same way;\nwhen he says \"light,\" he sees the sunrise; when he says \"fire,\" he is\nwarmed through all his blood. And so Pachmann calls up, with this\nghostly magic of his, the innermost life of music. I do not think he has\never put an intention into Chopin. Chopin had no intentions. He was a\nman, and he suffered; and he was a musician, and he wrote music; and\nvery likely George Sand, and Majorca, and his disease, and Scotland, and\nthe woman who sang to him when he died, are all in the music; but that\nis not the question. The notes sob and shiver, stab you like a knife,\ncaress you like the fur of a cat; and are beautiful sound, the most\nbeautiful sound that has been called out of the piano. Pachmann calls it\nout for you, disinterestedly, easily, with ecstasy, inevitably; you do\nnot realise that he has had difficulties to conquer, that music is a\nthing for acrobats and athletes. He smiles to you, that you may realise\nhow beautiful the notes are, when they trickle out of his fingers like\nsinging water; he adores them and his own playing, as you do, and as if\nhe had nothing to do with them but to pour them out of his hands.\nPachmann is less showy with his fingers than any other pianist; his\nhands are stealthy acrobats, going quietly about their difficult\nbusiness. They talk with the piano and the piano answers them. All that\nviolence cannot do with the notes of the instrument, he does. His art\nbegins where violence leaves off; that is why he can give you fortissimo\nwithout hurting the nerves of a single string; that is why he can play a\nrun as if every note had its meaning. To the others a run is a flourish,\na tassel hung on for display, a thing extra; when Pachmann plays a run\nyou realise that it may have its own legitimate sparkle of gay life.\nWith him every note lives, has its own body and its own soul, and that\nis why it is worth hearing him play even trivial music like\nMendelssohn's \"Spring Song\" or meaningless music like Taubert's Waltz:\nhe creates a beauty out of sound itself and a beauty which is at the\nroot of music. There are moments when a single chord seems to say in\nitself everything that music has to say. That is the moment in which\neverything but sound is annihilated, the moment of ecstasy; and it is of\nsuch moments that Pachmann is the poet.\n\nAnd so his playing of Bach, as in the Italian Concerto in F, reveals\nBach as if the dust had suddenly been brushed off his music. All that in\nthe playing of others had seemed hard or dry becomes suddenly luminous,\nalive, and, above all, a miracle of sound. Through a delicacy of\nshading, like the art of Bach himself for purity, poignancy, and\nclarity, he envelops us with the thrilling atmosphere of the most\nabsolutely musical music in the world. The playing of this concerto is\nthe greatest thing I have ever heard Pachmann do, but when he went on to\nplay Mozart I heard another only less beautiful world of sound rise\nsoftly about me. There was the \"glittering peace\" undimmed, and there\nwas the nervous spring, the diamond hardness, as well as the glowing\nlight and ardent sweetness. Yet another manner of playing, not less\nappropriate to its subject, brought before me the bubbling flow, the\nromantic moonlight, of Weber; this music that is a little showy, a\nlittle luscious, but with a gracious feminine beauty of its own. Chopin\nfollowed, and when Pachmann plays Chopin it is as if the soul of Chopin\nhad returned to its divine body, the notes of this sinewy and feverish\nmusic, in which beauty becomes a torture and energy pierces to the\ncentre and becomes grace, and languor swoons and is reborn a winged\nenergy. The great third Scherzo was played with grandeur, and it is in\nthe Scherzos, perhaps, that Chopin has built his most enduring work. The\nBarcarolle, which I have heard played as if it were Niagara and not\nVenice, was given with perfect quietude, and the second Mazurka of Op.\n50 had that boldness of attack, with an almost stealthy intimacy in its\nsecret rhythms, which in Pachmann's playing, and in his playing alone,\ngives you the dance and the reverie together. But I am not sure that the\nEtudes are not, in a very personal sense, what is most essential in\nChopin, and I am not sure that Pachmann is not at his best in the\nplaying of the Etudes.\n\nOther pianists think, perhaps, but Pachmann plays. As he plays he is\nlike one hypnotised by the music; he sees it beckoning, smiles to it,\nlifts his finger on a pause that you may listen to the note which is\ncoming. This apparent hypnotism is really a fixed and continuous act of\ncreation; there is not a note which he does not create for himself, to\nwhich he does not give his own vitality, the sensitive and yet\ncontrolling vitality of the medium. In playing the Bach he had the music\nbefore him that he might be wholly free from even the slight strain\nwhich comes from the almost unconscious act of remembering. It was for a\nprecisely similar reason that Coleridge, in whose verse inspiration and\nart are more perfectly balanced than in any other English verse, often\nwrote down his poems first in prose that he might be unhampered by the\nconscious act of thought while listening for the music.\n\n\"There is no exquisite beauty,\" said Bacon in a subtle definition,\n\"which has not some strangeness in its proportions.\" The playing of\nPachmann escapes the insipidity of that beauty which is without\nstrangeness; it has in it something fantastically inhuman, like fiery\nice, and it is for this reason that it remains a thing uncapturable, a\nthing whose secret he himself could never reveal. It is like the secret\nof the rhythms of Verlaine, and no prosodist will ever tell us why a\nline like:\n\n  Dans un palais, soie et or, dans Ecbatane,\n\ncan communicate a new shiver to the most languid or the most experienced\nnerves. Like the art of Verlaine, the art of Pachmann is one wholly of\nsuggestion; his fingers state nothing, they evoke. I said like the art\nof Verlaine, because there is a singular likeness between the two\nmethods. But is not all art a suggestion, an evocation, never a\nstatement? Many of the great forces of the present day have set\nthemselves to the task of building up a large, positive art in which\neverything shall be said with emphasis: the art of Zola, the art of Mr.\nKipling, in literature; the art of Mr. Sargent in painting; the art of\nRichard Strauss in music. In all these remarkable men there is some\nsmall, essential thing lacking; and it is in men like Verlaine, like\nWhistler, like Pachmann, that we find the small, essential thing, and\nnothing else.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\n\n  The sounds torture me: I see them in my brain;\n  They spin a flickering web of living threads,\n  Like butterflies upon the garden beds,\n  Nets of bright sound. I follow them: in vain.\n  I must not brush the least dust from their wings:\n  They die of a touch; but I must capture them,\n  Or they will turn to a caressing flame,\n  And lick my soul up with their flutterings.\n\n  The sounds torture me: I count them with my eyes,\n  I feel them like a thirst between my lips;\n  Is it my body or my soul that cries\n  With little coloured mouths of sound, and drips\n  In these bright drops that turn to butterflies\n  Dying delicately at my finger tips?\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nPachmann has the head of a monk who has had commerce with the Devil, and\nit is whispered that he has sold his soul to the diabolical instrument,\nwhich, since buying it, can speak in a human voice. The sounds torture\nhim, as a wizard is tortured by the shapes he has evoked. He makes them\ndance for his pleasure, and you hear their breath come and go, in the\nswell and subsiding of those marvellous crescendoes and diminuendoes\nwhich set the strings pulsating like a sea. He listens for the sound,\nlistens for the last echo of it after it is gone, and is caught away\nfrom us visibly into that unholy company.\n\nPachmann is the greatest player of the piano now living. He cannot\ninterpret every kind of music, though his actual power is more varied\nthan he has led the public to suppose. I have heard him play in private\na show-piece of Liszt, a thunderous thing of immense difficulty,\nrequiring a technique quite different from the technique which alone he\ncares to reveal to us; he had not played it for twenty years, and he\nplayed it with exactly the right crackling splendour that it demanded.\nOn the rare occasions when he plays Bach, something that no one of our\ntime has ever perceived or rendered in that composer seems to be evoked,\nand Bach lives again, with something of that forgotten life which only\nthe harpsichord can help us to remember under the fingers of other\nplayers. Mozart and Weber are two of the composers whom he plays with\nthe most natural instinct, for in both he finds and unweaves that dainty\nweb of bright melody which Mozart made out of sunlight and Weber out of\nmoonlight. There is nothing between him and them, as there is in\nBeethoven, for instance, who hides himself in the depths of a cloud, in\nthe depths of wisdom, in the depths of the heart. And to Pachmann all\nthis is as strange as mortal firesides to a fairy. He wanders round it,\nwondering at the great walls and bars that have been set about the\nfaint, escaping spirit of flame. There is nothing human in him, and as\nmusic turns towards humanity it slips from between his hands. What he\nseeks and finds in music is the inarticulate, ultimate thing in sound:\nthe music, in fact.\n\nIt has been complained that Pachmann's readings are not intellectual,\nthat he does not interpret. It is true that he does not interpret\nbetween the brain and music, but he is able to disimprison sound, as no\none has ever done with mortal hands, and the piano, when he touches it,\nbecomes a joyous, disembodied thing, a voice and nothing more, but a\nvoice which is music itself. To reduce music to terms of human\nintelligence or even of human emotion is to lower it from its own\nregion, where it is Ariel. There is something in music, which we can\napprehend only as sound, that comes to us out of heaven or hell, mocking\nthe human agency that gives it speech, and taking flight beyond it. When\nPachmann plays a Prelude of Chopin, all that Chopin was conscious of\nsaying in it will, no doubt, be there; it is all there, if Godowsky\nplays it; every note, every shade of expression, every heightening and\nquickening, everything that the notes actually say. But under Pachmann's\nmiraculous hands a miracle takes place; mystery comes about it like an\natmosphere, an icy thrill traverses it, the terror and ecstasy of a\nbeauty that is not in the world envelop it; we hear sounds that are\nawful and exquisite, crying outside time and space. Is it through\nPachmann's nerves, or through ours, that this communion takes place? Is\nit technique, temperament, touch, that reveals to us what we have never\ndreamed was hidden in sounds? Could Pachmann himself explain to us his\nown magic?\n\nHe would tell us that he had practised the piano with more patience than\nothers, that he had taken more trouble to acquire a certain touch which\nis really the only way to the secret of his instrument. He could tell\nyou little more; but, if you saw his hands settle on the keys, and fly\nand poise there, as if they had nothing to do with the perturbed,\nlistening face that smiles away from them, you would know how little he\nhad told you. Now let us ask Godowsky, whom Pachmann himself sets above\nall other pianists, what he has to tell us about the way in which he\nplays.\n\nWhen Godowsky plays he sits bent and motionless, as if picking out a\npattern with his fingers. He seems to keep surreptitious watch upon\nthem, as they run swiftly on their appointed errands. There is no errand\nthey are not nimble enough to carry without a stumble to the journey's\nend. They obey him as if in fear; they dare not turn aside from the\nstraight path; for their whole aim is to get to the end of the journey,\nhaving done their task faultlessly. Sometimes, but without relaxing his\nlearned gravity, he plays a difficult game, as in the Paganini\nvariations of Brahms, which were done with a skill as sure and as\nsoulless as Paganini's may have been. Sometimes he forgets that the\nnotes are living things, and tosses them about a little cruelly, as if\nthey were a juggler's balls. They drop like stones; you are sorry for\nthem, because they are alive. How Chopin suffers, when he plays the\nPreludes! He plays them without a throb; the scholar has driven out the\nmagic; Chopin becomes a mathematician. In Brahms, in the G Minor\nRhapsody, you hear much more of what Brahms meant to do; for Brahms has\nset strange shapes dancing, like the skeletons \"in the ghosts'\nmoonshine\" in a ballad of Beddoes; and these bodiless things take shape\nin the music, as Godowsky plays it unflinchingly, giving it to you\nexactly as it is, without comment. Here his fidelity to every outline of\nform becomes an interpretation. But Chopin is so much more than form\nthat to follow every outline of it may be to leave Chopin out of the\noutline.\n\nPachmann, of all the interpreters of Chopin, is the most subtle, the one\nmost likely to do for the most part what Chopin wanted. The test, I\nthink, is in the Third Scherzo. That great composition, one of the\ngreatest among Chopin's works, for it contains all his qualities in an\nintense measure, might have been thought less likely to be done\nperfectly by Pachmann than such Coleridge in music, such murmurings out\nof paradise, as the Etude in F Minor (Op. 25, No. 2) or one of those\nMazurkas in which Chopin is more poignantly fantastic in substance, more\nwild and whimsical in rhythm, than elsewhere in his music; and indeed,\nas Pachmann played them, they were strange and lovely gambols of\nunchristened elves. But in the Scherzo he mastered this great, violent,\nheroic thing as he had mastered the little freakish things and the\ntrickling and whispering things. He gave meaning to every part of its\ndecoration, yet lost none of the splendour and wave-like motion of the\nwhole tossing and eager sea of sound.\n\nPachmann's art, like Chopin's, which it perpetuates, is of that\npeculiarly modern kind which aims at giving the essence of things in\ntheir fine shades: \"la nuance encor!\" Is there, it may be asked, any\nessential thing left out in the process; do we have attenuation in what\nis certainly a way of sharpening one's steel to a very fine point? The\nsharpened steel gains in what is most vital in its purpose by this very\nparing away of its substance; and why should not a form of art strike\ndeeper for the same reason? Our only answer to Whistler and Verlaine is\nthe existence of Rodin and Wagner. There we have weight as well as\nsharpness; these giants fly. It was curious to hear, in the vast\nluminous music of the \"Rheingold,\" flowing like water about the earth,\nbare to its roots, not only an amplitude but a delicacy of fine shades\nnot less realised than in Chopin. Wagner, it is true, welds the lyric\ninto drama, without losing its lyrical quality. Yet there is no perfect\nlyric which is made less by the greatness of even a perfect drama.\n\nChopin was once thought to be a drawing-room composer; Pachmann was once\nthought to be no \"serious artist.\" Both have triumphed, not because the\ntaste of any public has improved, but because a few people who knew have\nwhispered the truth to one another, and at last it has leaked out like a\nsecret.\n\n\n\n\nPADEREWSKI\n\n\nI shall never cease to associate Paderewski with the night of the\nJubilee. I had gone on foot from the Temple through those packed, gaudy,\nnoisy, and vulgarised streets, through which no vehicles could pass, to\na rare and fantastic house at the other end of London, a famous house\nhospitable to all the arts; and Paderewski sat with closed eyes and\nplayed the piano, there in his friend's house, as if he were in his own\nhome. After the music was over, someone said to me, \"I feel as if I had\nbeen in hell,\" so profound was the emotion she had experienced from the\nplaying. I would have said heaven rather than hell, for there seemed to\nbe nothing but pure beauty, beauty half asleep and dreaming of itself,\nin the marvellous playing. A spell, certainly, was over everyone, and\nthen the exorciser became human, and jested deliciously till the early\nmorning, when, as I went home through the still garrulous and peopled\nstreets, I saw the last flutter of flags and streamers between night and\ndawn. All the world had been rioting for pleasure in the gross way of\npopular demonstrations; and in the very heart of this up-roar there had\nbeen, for a few people, this divine escape.\n\nNo less magical, soothing, enchanting was the apparition, in Queen's\nHall, ten years later, of this unchanged creature with the tortured\nBurne-Jones face, level and bewildering eyes, the web of gold hair still\npoised like a halo. Beauty grew up around him like a sudden, exuberant\ngrowth, more vigorous and from a deeper root than before. I realised,\nmore than ever, how the musician had always been the foundation of the\nvirtuoso. I have used the word apparition advisedly. There is something,\nnot only in the aspect of Paderewski, which seems to come mysteriously,\nbut full of light, from a great distance. He startles music into a\nsurprised awakening.\n\nThe art of Paderewski recalls to me the art of the most skilled and the\nmost distinguished of equilibrists, himself a Pole, Paul Cinquevalli.\nPeople often speak, wrongly, of Paderewski's skill as acrobatic. The\nword conveys some sense of disparagement and, so used, is inaccurate.\nBut there is much in common between two forms of an art in which\nphysical dexterity counts for so much, and that passionate precision to\nwhich error must be impossible. It is the same kind of joy that you get\nfrom Cinquevalli when he juggles with cannon-balls and from Paderewski\nwhen he brings a continuous thunder out of the piano. Other people do\nthe same things, but no else can handle thunder or a cannon-ball\ndelicately. And Paderewski, in his absolute mastery of his instrument,\nseems to do the most difficult things without difficulty, with a\nscornful ease, an almost accidental quality which, found in perfection,\nmarvellously decorates it. It is difficult to imagine that anyone since\nLiszt has had so complete a mastery of every capacity of the piano, and\nLiszt, though probably even more brilliant, can hardly be imagined with\nthis particular kind of charm. His playing is in the true sense an\ninspiration; he plays nothing as if he had learned it with toil, but as\nif it had come to him out of a kind of fiery meditation. Even his\nthunder is not so much a thing specially cultivated for its own sake as\na single prominent detail in a vast accomplishment. When he plays, the\npiano seems to become thrillingly and tempestuously alive, as if brother\nmet brother in some joyous triumph. He collaborates with it, urging it\nto battle like a war-horse. And the quality of the sonority which he\ngets out of it is unlike that which is teased or provoked from the\ninstrument by any other player. Fierce exuberant delight wakens under\nhis fingers, in which there is a sensitiveness almost impatient, and\nunder his feet, which are as busy as an organist's with the pedals. The\nmusic leaps like pouring water, flood after flood of sound, caught\ntogether and flung onward by a central energy. The separate notes are\nnever picked out and made into ornaments; all the expression goes to\npassage after passage, realised acutely in their sequence. Where others\ngive you hammering on an anvil, he gives you thunder as if heard through\nclouds. And he is full of leisure and meditation, brooding thoughtfully\nover certain exquisite things as if loth to let them pass over and be\ngone. And he seems to play out of a dream, in which the fingers are\nsecondary to the meaning, but report that meaning with entire felicity.\n\nIn the playing of the \"Moonlight\" sonata there was no Paderewski, there\nwas nothing but Beethoven. The finale, of course, was done with the due\nbrilliance, the executant's share in a composition not written for\nmodern players. But what was wonderful, for its reverence, its\nperfection of fidelity, was the playing of the slow movement and of the\nlittle sharp movement which follows, like the crying and hopping of a\nbird. The ear waited, and was satisfied in every shade of anticipation;\nnothing was missed, nothing was added; the pianist was as it were a\nfaithful and obedient shadow. As you listened you forgot technique, or\nthat it was anybody in particular who was playing: the sonata was\nthere, with all its moonlight, as every lover of Beethoven had known\nthat it existed.\n\nBefore the Beethoven there had been a \"Variation and Fugue on an\noriginal theme,\" in which Paderewski played his own music, really as if\nhe were improvising it there and then. I am not sure that that feeling\nis altogether to the credit of the music, which, as I heard it for the\nfirst time, seemed almost too perilously effective, in its large\ncontrasts, its Liszt-like succession of contradictory moods. Sound was\nevoked that it might swell and subside like waves, break suddenly, and\ndie out in a white rain of stinging foam. Pauses, surprises, all were\ndelicately calculated and the weaver of these bewildered dreams seemed\nto watch over them like a Loge of celestial ingenuity.\n\nWhen the actual Liszt came, the interminable Sonata in B minor, in which\nthe sugar and the fire are so strangely mixed, it was as if Paderewski\nwere still playing his own music. If ever there was a show piece for\nthe piano, this was it, and if ever there was a divine showman for it,\nit was Paderewski. You felt at once the personal sympathy of the great\npianist for the great pianist. He was no longer reverential, as with\nBeethoven, not doing homage but taking part, sharing almost in a\ncreation, comet-like, of stars in the sky. Nothing in the bravura\ndisconcerted or even displeased him, no lack of coherence or obviousness\nin contrasts disturbed him; what was loud, boisterous, explosive, he\ntossed about as in a colossal game, he bathed luxuriously in what was\nluscious in the melodies, giving them almost more than their real worth\nby the delighted skill with which he set them singing. A more\nastonishing, a more convincing, a more overwhelming tour de force could\nhardly be achieved on the piano: could an eruption of Vesuvius be more\nspectacularly magnificent?\n\nLiszt's music for the piano was written for a pianist who could do\nanything that has ever been done with the instrument, and the result is\nnot so wholly satisfactory as in the ease of Chopin, who, with a\nsmaller technique, knew more of the secret of music. Chopin never\ndazzles, Liszt blinds. It is a question if he ever did full justice to\nhis own genius, which was partly that of an innovator, and people are\nonly now beginning to do justice to what was original as well as fine in\nhis work. How many ideas Wagner caught from him, in his shameless\ntransfiguring triumphant way! The melody of the Flower-Maidens, for\ninstance, in \"Parsifal,\" is borrowed frankly from a tone-poem of Liszt\nin which it is no more than a thin, rocking melody, without any of the\nmysterious fascination that Wagner put into it. But in writing for the\npiano Liszt certainly remembered that it was he, and not some unknown\nperson, who was to play these hard and showy rhapsodies, in which there\nare no depths, though there are splendours. That is why Liszt is the\ntest rather of the virtuoso than of the interpreter, why, therefore, it\nwas so infinitely more important that Paderewski should have played the\nBeethoven sonata as impersonally as he did than that he should have\nplayed the Liszt sonata with so much personal abandonment. Between those\nlimits there seems to be contained the whole art of the pianist, and\nPaderewski has attained both limits.\n\nAfter his concert was over, Paderewski gave seven encores, in the midst\nof an enthusiasm which recurs whenever and wherever he gives a concert.\nWhat is the peculiar quality in this artist which acts always with the\nsame intoxicating effect? Is it anything quite normal in his fingers, or\nis it, in the image of a brilliant and fantastic writer on music in\nAmerica, Mr. James Huneker, a soul like the soul of Belus, \"the Raphael\nof the piano,\" which, \"suspended above him, like a coat of many colors,\"\nmesmerises the audience, while he sits motionless, not touching the\nnotes?\n\nIs Paderewski after all a Belus? Is it his many coloured soul that\n\"magnetises our poor vertebras,\" in Verlaine's phrase, and not the mere\nskill of his fingers? Art, it has been said, is contagious, and to\ncompel universal sympathy is to succeed in the last requirements of an\nart. Of what difference is it whether, like Keats, he perpetuates his\npersonal magnetism in a stanza, or, like Paderewski, sheds it, like a\nperfume, for that passing moment which is all the eternity ever given to\nthe creator of beautiful sounds?\n\n\n\n\nA REFLECTION AT A DOLMETSCH CONCERT\n\n\nThe interpreter of ancient music, Arnold Dolmetsch, is one of those rare\nmagicians who are able to make roses blossom in mid-winter. While music\nhas been modernising itself until the piano becomes an orchestra, and\nBerlioz requires four orchestras to obtain a pianissimo, this strange\nman of genius has quietly gone back a few centuries and discovered for\nhimself an exquisite lost world, which was disappearing like a fresco\npeeling off a wall. He has burrowed in libraries and found unknown\nmanuscripts like a savant, he has worked at misunderstood notations and\nfound out a way of reading them like a cryptogrammatist, he has first\nfound out how to restore and then how to make over again harpsichord,\nand virginals, and clavichord, and all those instruments which had\nbecome silent curiosities in museums.\n\nIt is only beginning to be realised, even by musical people, that the\nclavecin music of, for instance, Bach, loses at least half its charm,\nalmost its identity, when played on the modern grand piano; that the\nexquisite music of Rameau and Couperin, the brilliant and beautiful\nmusic of Scarlatti, is almost inaudible on everything but the\nharpsichord and the viols; and that there exists, far earlier than these\nwriters, a mass of English and Italian music of extreme beauty, which\nhas never been spoiled on the piano because it has never been played on\nit. To any one who has once touched a spinet, harpsichord, or\nclavichord, the piano must always remain a somewhat inadequate\ninstrument; lacking in the precision, the penetrating charm, the\ninfinite definite reasons for existence of those instruments of wires\nand jacks and quills which its metallic rumble has been supposed so\nentirely to have superseded. As for the clavichord, to have once touched\nit, feeling the softness with which one's fingers make their own music,\nlike wind among the reeds, is to have lost something of one's relish\neven for the music of the violin, which is also a windy music, but the\nmusic of wind blowing sharply among the trees. It is on such instruments\nthat Mr. Dolmetsch plays to us; and he plays to us also on the lute, the\ntheorbo, the viola da gamba, the viola d'amore, and I know not how many\nvarieties of those stringed instruments which are most familiar to most\nof us from the early Italian pictures in which whimsical little angels\nwith crossed legs hold them to their chins.\n\nMr. Dolmetsch is, I suppose, the only living man who can read lute-music\nand play on the lute, an instrument of extraordinary beauty, which was\nonce as common in England as the guitar still is in Spain. And, having\nmade with his own hands the materials of the music which he has\nrecovered from oblivion, he has taught himself and he has taught others\nto play this music on these instruments and to sing it to their\naccompaniment. In a music room, which is really the living room of a\nhouse, with viols hanging on the walls, a chamber-organ in one corner,\na harpsichord in another, a clavichord laid across the arms of a chair,\nthis music seems to carry one out of the world, and shut one in upon a\nhouse of dreams, full of intimate and ghostly voices. It is a house of\npeace, where music is still that refreshment which it was before it took\nfever, and became accomplice and not minister to the nerves, and brought\nthe clamour of the world into its seclusion.\n\nGo from a concert at Dolmetsch's to a Tschaikowsky concert at the\nQueen's Hall. Tschaikowsky is a debauch, not so much passionate as\nfeverish. The rushing of his violins, like the rushing of an army of\nlarge winged birds; the thud, snap, and tingle of his strange orchestra;\nthe riotous image of Russian peasants leaping and hopping in their\ncountry dances, which his dance measures call up before one; those sweet\nsolid harmonies in which (if I may quote the voluptuous phrase of a\nwoman) one sets one's teeth as into nougat; all this is like a very\nmaterial kind of pleasure, in which the senses for a moment forget the\nsoul. For a moment only, for is it not the soul, a kind of discontented\ncrying out against pleasure and pain, which comes back distressingly\ninto this after all pathetic music? All modern music is pathetic;\ndiscontent (so much idealism as that!) has come into all modern music,\nthat it may be sharpened and disturbed enough to fix our attention. And\nTschaikowsky speaks straight to the nerves, with that touch of\nunmanliness which is another characteristic of modern art. There is a\nvehement and mighty sorrow in the Passion Music of Bach, by the side of\nwhich the grief of Tschaikowsky is like the whimpering of a child. He is\nunconscious of reticence, unconscious of self-control. He is unhappy,\nand he weeps floods of tears, beats his breast, curses the daylight; he\nsees only the misery of the moment, and he sees the misery of the moment\nas a thing endless and overwhelming. The child who has broken his toy\ncan realise nothing in the future but a passionate regret for the toy.\n\nIn Tschaikowsky there is none of the quieting of thought. The only\nhealing for our nerves lies in abstract thought, and he can never get\nfar enough from his nerves to look calmly at his own discontent. All\nthose wild, broken rhythms, rushing this way and that, are letting out\nhis secret all the time: \"I am unhappy, and I know not why I am unhappy;\nI want, but I know not what I want.\" In the most passionate and the most\nquestioning music of Wagner there is always air; Tschaikowsky is\nsuffocating. It is himself that he pities so much, and not himself\nbecause he shares in the general sorrow of the world. To Tristan and\nIsolde the whole universe is an exultant and martyred sharer in their\nlove; they know only the absolute. Even suffering does not bring\nnobility to Tschaikowsky.\n\nTo pass from Wagner to Tschaikowsky, from \"Parsifal\" to the Pathetic\nSymphony, is like passing from a church in which priests are offering\nmass to a hut in which peasants are quarrelling, dancing, and making\nlove. Tschaikowsky has both force and sincerity, but it is the force and\nsincerity of a ferocious child. He takes the orchestra in both hands,\ntears it to pieces, catches up a fragment of it here, a fragment of it\nthere, masters it like an enemy; he makes it do what he wants. But he\nuses his fist where Wagner touches with the tips of his fingers; he\nshows ill-breeding after the manners of the supreme gentleman. Wagner\ncan use the whole strength of the orchestra, and not make a noise: he\nnever ends on a bang. But Tschaikowsky loves noise for its own sake; he\nlikes to pound the drum, and to hear the violins running up and down\nscales like acrobats. Wagner takes his rhythms from the sea, as in\n\"Tristan,\" from fire, as in parts of the \"Ring,\" from light, as in\n\"Parsifal.\" But Tschaikowsky deforms the rhythms of nature with the\ncaprices of half-civilised impulses. He puts the frog-like dancing of\nthe Russian peasant into his tunes; he cries and roars like a child in a\nrage. He gives himself to you just as he is; he is immensely conscious\nof himself and of his need to take you into his confidence. In your\ndelight at finding any one so alive, you are inclined to welcome him\nwithout reserve, and to forget that a man of genius is not necessarily\na great artist, and that, if he is not a great artist, he is not a\nsatisfactory man of genius.\n\nI contrast him with Wagner because it seems to me that Wagner, alone\namong quite modern musicians, and though indeed he appeals to our nerves\nmore forcibly than any of them, has that breadth and universality by\nwhich emotion ceases to be merely personal and becomes elemental. To the\nmusicians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, music was an art\nwhich had to be carefully guarded from the too disturbing presence of\nemotion; emotion is there always, whenever the music is fine music; but\nthe music is something much more than a means for the expression of\nemotion. It is a pattern, its beauty lies in its obedience to a law, it\nis music made for music's sake, with what might be called a more\nexclusive devotion to art than that of our modern musician. This music\naims at the creation of beauty in sound; it conceives of beautiful sound\nas a thing which cannot exist outside order and measure; it has not yet\ncome to look upon transgression as an essential part of liberty. It does\nnot even desire liberty, but is content with loving obedience. It can\nexpress emotion, but it will never express an emotion carried to that\nexcess at which the modern idea of emotion begins. Thus, for all its\nsuggestions of pain, grief, melancholy, it will remain, for us at least,\nhappy music, voices of a house of peace. Is there, in the future of\nmusic, after it has expressed for us all our emotions, and we are tired\nof our emotions, and weary enough to be content with a little rest, any\nlikelihood of a return to this happy music, into which beauty shall come\nwithout the selfishness of desire?\n\n\n\n\nTHE DRAMATISATION OF SONG\n\n\nAll art is a compromise, in which the choice of what is to be foregone\nmust be left somewhat to the discretion of nature. When the sculptor\nforegoes colour, when the painter foregoes relief, when the poet\nforegoes the music which soars beyond words and the musician that\nprecise meaning which lies in words alone, he follows a kind of\nnecessity in things, and the compromise seems to be ready-made for him.\nBut there will always be those who are discontented with no matter what\nfixed limits, who dream, like Wagner, of a possible, or, like Mallarm\u00e9,\nof an impossible, fusion of the arts. These would invent for themselves\na compromise which has not yet come into the world, a gain without loss,\na re-adjustment in which the scales shall bear so much additional weight\nwithout trembling. But nature is not always obedient to this too\nautocratic command. Take the art of the voice. In its essence, the art\nof the voice is the same in the nightingale and in Melba. The same note\nis produced in the same way; the expression given to that note, the\nsyllable which that note renders, are quite different things. Song does\nnot in itself require words in order to realise even the utmost of its\ncapacities. The voice is an instrument like the violin, and no more in\nneed of words for its expression than the violin. Perhaps the ideal of\nsinging would be attained when a marvellous voice, which had absorbed\ninto itself all that temperament and training had to give it, sang\ninarticulate music, like a violin which could play itself. There is\nnothing which such an instrument could not express, nothing which exists\nas pure music; and, in this way, we should have the art of the voice,\nwith the least possible compromise.\n\nThe compromise is already far on its way when words begin to come into\nthe song. Here are two arts helping one another; something is gained,\nbut how much is lost? Undoubtedly the words lose, and does not the\nvoice lose something also, in its directness of appeal? Add acting to\nvoice and words, and you get the ultimate compromise, opera, in which\nother arts as well have their share and in which Wagner would have us\nsee the supreme form of art. Again something is lost; we lose more and\nmore, perhaps for a greater gain. Tristan sings lying on his back, in\norder to represent a sick man; the actual notes which he sings are\nwritten partly in order to indicate the voice of a sick man. For the\nsake of what we gain in dramatic and even theatrical expressiveness, we\nhave lost a two-fold means of producing vocal beauty. Let us rejoice in\nthe gain, by all means; but not without some consciousness of the loss,\nnot with too ready a belief that the final solution of the problem has\nbeen found.\n\nAn attempt at some solution is, at this moment, being made in Paris by a\nsinger who is not content to be Carmen or Charlotte Corday, but who\nwants to invent a method of her own for singing and acting at the same\ntime, not as a character in an opera, but as a private interpreter\nbetween poetry and the world.\n\nImagine a woman who suggests at the same time Sarah Bernhardt and Mrs.\nBrown-Potter, without being really like either; she is small,\nexuberantly blonde, her head is surrounded by masses of loosely twisted\nblonde hair; she has large grey eyes, that can be grave, or mocking, or\npassionate, or cruel, or watchful; a large nose, an intent, eloquent\nmouth. She wears a trailing dress that follows the lines of the figure\nvaguely, supple to every movement. When she sings, she has an old,\nhigh-backed chair in which she can sit, or on which she can lean. When I\nheard her, there was a mirror on the other side of the room, opposite to\nher; she saw no one else in the room, once she had surrendered herself\nto the possession of the song, but she was always conscious of that\nimage of herself which came back to her out of the mirror: it was\nherself watching herself, in a kind of delight at the beauty which she\nwas evoking out of words, notes, and expressive movement. Her voice is\nstrong and rich, imperfectly trained, but the voice of a born singer;\nher acting is even more the acting of a born actress; but it is the\ntemperament of the woman that flames into her voice and gestures, and\nsets her whole being violently and delicately before you. She makes a\ndrama of each song, and she re-creates that drama over again, in her\nrendering of the intentions of the words and of the music. It is as much\nwith her eyes and her hands, as with her voice, that she evokes the\nmelody of a picture; it is a picture that sings, and that sings in all\nits lines. There is something in her aspect, what shall I call it?\ntenacious; it is a woman who is an artist because she is a woman, who\ntakes in energy at all her senses and gives out energy at all her\nsenses. She sang some tragic songs of Schumann, some mysterious songs of\nMaeterlinck, some delicate love-songs of Charles van Lerberghe. As one\nlooked and listened it was impossible to think more of the words than of\nthe music or of the music than of the words. One took them\nsimultaneously, as one feels at once the softness and the perfume of a\nflower. I understood why Mallarm\u00e9 had seemed to see in her the\nrealisation of one of his dreams. Here was a new art, made up of a new\nmixing of the arts, in one subtly intoxicating elixir. To Mallarm\u00e9 it\nwas the more exquisite because there was in it none of the broad general\nappeal of opera, of the gross recognised proportions of things.\n\nThis dramatisation of song, done by any one less subtly, less\ncompletely, and less sincerely an artist, would lead us, I am afraid,\ninto something more disastrous than even the official concert, with its\nrigid persons in evening dress holding sheets of music in their\ntremulous hands, and singing the notes set down for them to the best of\ntheir vocal ability. Madame Georgette Leblanc is an exceptional artist,\nand she has made an art after her own likeness, which exists because it\nis the expression of herself, of a strong nature always in vibration.\nWhat she feels as a woman she can render as an artist; she is at once\ninstinctive and deliberate, deliberate because it is her natural\ninstinct, the natural instinct of a woman who is essentially a woman, to\nbe so. I imagine her always singing in front of a mirror, always\nrecognising her own shadow there, and the more absolutely abandoned to\nwhat the song is saying through her because of that uninterrupted\ncommunion with herself.\n\n\n\n\nTHE MEININGEN ORCHESTRA\n\n\nOther orchestras give performances, readings, approximations; the\nMeiningen orchestra gives an interpretation, that is, the thing itself.\nWhen this orchestra plays a piece of music every note lives, and not, as\nwith most orchestras, every particularly significant note. Brahms is\nsometimes dull, but he is never dull when these people play him;\nSchubert is sometimes tame, but not when they play him. What they do is\nprecisely to put vitality into even those parts of a composition in\nwhich it is scarcely present, or scarcely realisable; and that is a much\nmore difficult thing, and really a more important thing, for the proper\nappreciation of music, than the heightening of what is already fine, and\nobviously fine in itself. And this particular quality of interpretation\nhas its value too as criticism. For, while it gives the utmost value to\nwhat is implicitly there, there at least in embryo, it cannot create out\nof nothing; it cannot make insincere work sincere, or fill empty work\nwith meaning which never could have belonged to it. Brahms, at his\nmoments of least vitality, comes into a new vigour of life; but Strauss,\nplayed by these sincere, precise, thoughtful musicians shows, as he\nnever could show otherwise, the distance at which his lively spectre\nstands from life. When I heard the \"Don Juan,\" which I had heard twice\nbefore, and liked less the second time than the first, I realised\nfinally the whole strain, pretence, and emptiness of the thing. Played\nwith this earnest attention to the meaning of every note, it was like a\ntrivial drama when Duse acts it; it went to pieces through being taken\nat its own word. It was as if a threadbare piece of stuff were held up\nto the full sunlight; you saw every stitch that was wanting.\n\nThe \"Don Juan\" was followed by the Entr'acte and Ballet music from\n\"Rosamunde,\" and here the same sunlight was no longer criticism, but\nrather an illumination. I have never heard any music more beautifully\nplayed. I could only think of the piano playing of Pachmann. The faint,\ndelicate music just came into existence, breathed a little, and was\ngone. Here for once was an orchestra which could literally be overheard.\nThe overture to the \"Meistersinger\" followed, and here, for the first\ntime, I got, quite flawless and uncontradictory, the two impressions\nwhich that piece presents to one simultaneously. I heard the unimpeded\nmarch forward, and I distinguished at the same time every delicate\nimpediment thronging the way. Some renderings give you a sense of\nsolidity and straightforward movement; others of the elaborate and\nvarious life which informs this so solid structure. Here one got the\ncomplete thing, completely rendered.\n\nI could not say the same of the rendering of the overture to \"Tristan.\"\nHere the notes, all that was so to speak merely musical in the music,\nwere given their just expression; but the something more, the vast heave\nand throb of the music, was not there. It was \"classical\" rendering of\nwhat is certainly not \"classical\" music. Hear that overture as Richter\ngives it, and you will realise just where the Meiningen orchestra is\nlacking. It has the kind of energy which is required to render\nBeethoven's multitudinous energy, or the energy which can be heavy and\ncloudy in Brahms, or like overpowering light in Bach, or, in Wagner\nhimself, an energy which works within known limits, as in the overture\nto the \"Meistersinger.\" But that wholly new, and somewhat feverish,\noverwhelming quality which we find in the music of \"Tristan\" meets with\nsomething less than the due response. It is a quality which people used\nto say was not musical at all, a quality which does not appeal certainly\nto the musical sense alone: for the rendering of that we must go to\nRichter.\n\nOtherwise, in that third concert it would he difficult to say whether\nSchumann, Brahms, Mozart, or Beethoven was the better rendered. Perhaps\none might choose Mozart for pure pleasure. It was the \"Serenade\" for\nwind instruments, and it seemed, played thus perfectly, the most\ndelightful music in the world. The music of Mozart is, no doubt, the\nmost beautiful music in the world. When I heard the serenade I thought\nof Coventry Patmore's epithet, actually used, I think, about Mozart:\n\"glittering peace.\" Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, and Beethoven all seemed\nfor the moment to lose a little of their light under this pure and\ntranquil and unwavering \"glitter.\" I hope I shall never hear the\n\"Serenade\" again, for I shall never hear it played as these particular\nplayers played it.\n\nThe Meiningen orchestra is famous for its wind, and when, at the first\nconcert, I heard Beethoven's Rondino for wind instruments, it seemed to\nme that I was hearing brass for the first time as I had imagined brass\nought to sound. Here was, not so much a new thing which one had never\nthought possible, as that precise thing which one's ears had expected,\nand waited for, and never heard. One quite miraculous thing these wind\nplayers certainly did, in common, however, with the whole orchestra. And\nthat was to give an effect of distance, as if the sound came actually\nfrom beyond the walls. I noticed it first in the overture to \"Leonore,\"\nthe first piece which they played; an unparalleled effect and one of\nsurprising beauty.\n\nAnother matter for which the Meiningen orchestra is famous is its\ninterpretation of the works of Brahms. At each concert some fine music\nof Brahms was given finely, but it was not until the fourth concert that\nI realised, on hearing the third Symphony, everything of which Brahms\nwas capable. It may be that a more profound acquaintance with his music\nwould lead me to add other things to this thing as the finest music\nwhich he ever wrote; but the third Symphony certainly revealed to me,\nnot altogether a new, but a complete Brahms. It had all his intellect\nand something more; thought had taken fire, and become a kind of\npassion.\n\n\n\n\nMOZART IN THE MIRABELL-GARTEN\n\n\nThey are giving a cycle of Mozart operas at Munich, at the Hof-Theater,\nto follow the Wagner operas at the Prinz-Regenten-Theatre; and I stayed,\non my way to Salzburg, to hear \"Die Zauberfl\u00f6te.\" It was perfectly\ngiven, with a small, choice orchestra under Herr Zumpe, and with every\npart except the tenor's admirably sung and acted. Herr Julius Zarest,\nfrom Hanover, was particularly good as Papageno; the Eva of \"Die\nMeistersinger\" made an equally good Pamina. And it was staged under Herr\nvon Possart's direction, as suitably and as successfully, in its\ndifferent way, as the Wagner opera had been. The sombre Egyptian scenes\nof this odd story, with its menagerie and its pantomime transformation,\nwere turned into a thrilling spectacle, and by means of nothing but a\nlittle canvas and paint and limelight. It could have cost very little,\ncompared with an English Shakespeare revival, let us say; but how\ninfinitely more spectacular, in the good sense, it was! Every effect was\nsignificant, perfectly in its place, doing just what it had to do, and\nwithout thrusting itself forward for separate admiration. German art of\nto-day is all decorative, and it is at its best when it is applied to\nthe scenery of the stage. Its fault, in serious painting, is that it is\ntoo theatrical, it is too anxious to be full of too many qualities\nbesides the qualities of good painting. It is too emphatic, it is meant\nfor artificial light. If Franz Stuck would paint for the stage, instead\nof using his vigorous brush to paint nature without distinction and\nnightmares without imagination on easel-canvases, he would do, perhaps\nrather better, just what these scene-painters do, with so much skill and\ntaste. They have the sense of effective decoration; and German art, at\npresent, is almost wholly limited to that sense.\n\nI listened, with the full consent of my eyes, to the lovely music, which\nplayed round the story like light transfiguring a masquerade; and now,\nby a lucky chance, I can brood over it here in Salzburg, where Mozart\nwas born, where he lived, where the house in which he wrote the opera is\nto be seen, a little garden-house brought over from Vienna and set down\nwhere it should always have been, high up among the pinewoods of the\nCapuzinerberg. I find myself wondering how much Mozart took to himself,\nhow much went to his making, in this exquisite place, set in a hollow of\ngreat hills, from which, if you look down upon it, it has the air of a\nlittle toy town out of a Noah's Ark, set square in a clean, trim,\nperfectly flat map of meadows, with its flat roofs, packed close\ntogether on each side of a long, winding river, which trails across the\nwhole breadth of the plain. From the midst of the town you look up\neverywhere at heights; rocks covered with pine-trees, beyond them hills\nhooded with white clouds, great soft walls of darkness, on which the\nmist is like the bloom of a plum; and, right above you, the castle, on\nits steep rock swathed in trees, with its grey walls and turrets, like\nthe castle which one has imagined for all the knights of all the\nromances. All this, no doubt, entered into the soul of Mozart, and had\nits meaning for him; but where I seem actually to see him, where I can\nfancy him walking most often, and hearing more sounds than elsewhere\ncome to him through his eyes and his senses, in the Mirabell-Garten,\nwhich lies behind the palace built by an Archbishop of Salzburg in the\nseventeenth century, and which is laid out in the conventional French\nfashion, with a harmony that I find in few other gardens. I have never\nwalked in a garden which seemed to keep itself so reticently within its\nown severe and gracious limits. The trees themselves seem to grow\nnaturally into the pattern of this garden, with its formal alleys, in\nwhich the birds fly in and out of the trellised roofs, its square-cut\nbushes, its low stone balustrades, its tall urns out of which droop\ntrails of pink and green, its round flower-beds, each of a single\ncolour, set at regular intervals on the grass, its tiny fountain\ndripping faintly into a green and brown pool; the long, sad lines of\nthe Archbishop's Palace, off which the brown paint is peeling; the whole\nsad charm, dainty melancholy, formal beauty, and autumnal air of it. It\nwas in the Mirabell-Garten that I seemed nearest to Mozart.\n\nThe music of Mozart, as one hears it in \"Die Zauberfl\u00f6te,\" is music\nwithout desire, music content with beauty, and to be itself. It has the\nfirm outlines of D\u00fcrer or of Botticelli, with the same constraint within\na fixed form, if one compares it with the Titian-like freedom and\nsplendour of Wagner. In hearing Mozart I saw Botticelli's \"Spring\"; in\nhearing Wagner I had seen the Titian \"Scourging of Christ.\" Mozart has\nwhat Coventry Patmore called \"a glittering peace\": to Patmore that\nquality distinguished supreme art, and, indeed, the art of Mozart is, in\nits kind, supreme. It has an adorable purity of form, and it has no need\nto look outside those limits which it has found or fixed for itself.\nMozart cares little, as a rule, for what he has to express; but he\ncares infinitely for the way in which he expresses everything, and,\nthrough the mere emotional power of the notes themselves, he conveys to\nus all that he cares to convey: awe, for instance, in those solemn\nscenes of the priests of Isis. He is a magician, who plays with his\nmagic, and can be gay, out of mere pleasant idleness, fooling with\nPapagenus as Shakespeare fools in \"Twelfth-Night.\" \"Die Zauberfl\u00f6te\" is\nreally a very fine kind of pantomime, to which music lends itself in the\nspirit of the thing, yet without condescending to be grotesque. The duet\nof Papagenus and Papagena is absolutely comic, but it is as lovely as a\nduet of two birds, of less flaming feather. As the lovers ascend through\nfires and floods, only the piping of the magic flute is heard in the\norchestra: imagine Wagner threading it into the web of a great\norchestral pattern! For Mozart it was enough, and for his art, it was\nenough. He gives you harmony which does not need to mean anything\noutside itself, in order to be supremely beautiful; and he gives you\nbeauty with a certain exquisite formality, not caring to go beyond the\nlines which contain that reticent, sufficient charm of the\nMirabell-Garten.\n\n\n\n\nNOTES ON WAGNER AT BAYREUTH\n\nI. BAYREUTH AND MUNICH\n\n\nBayreuth is Wagner's creation in the world of action, as the\nmusic-dramas are his creation in the world of art; and it is a triumph\nnot less decisive, in its transposition of dream into reality. Remember\nthat every artist, in every art, has desired his own Bayreuth, and that\nonly Wagner has attained it. Who would not rather remain at home,\nreceiving the world, than go knocking, humbly or arrogantly, at many\ndoors, offering an entertainment, perhaps unwelcome? The artist must\nalways be at cautious enmity with his public, always somewhat at its\nmercy, even after he has conquered its attention. The crowd never really\nloves art, it resents art as a departure from its level of mediocrity;\nand fame comes to an artist only when there is a sufficient number of\nintelligent individuals in the crowd to force their opinion upon the\nresisting mass of the others, in the form of a fashion which it is\nsupposed to be unintelligent not to adopt. Bayreuth exists because\nWagner willed that it should exist, and because he succeeded in forcing\nhis ideas upon a larger number of people of power and action than any\nother artist of our time. Wagner always got what he wanted, not always\nwhen he wanted it. He had a king on his side, he had Liszt on his side,\nthe one musician of all others who could do most for him; he had the\nnecessary enemies, besides the general resistance of the crowd; and at\nlast he got his theatre, not in time to see the full extent of his own\ntriumph in it, but enough, I think, to let him die perfectly satisfied.\nHe had done what he wanted: there was the theatre, and there were his\nworks, and the world had learnt where to come when it was called.\n\nAnd there is now a new Bayreuth, where, almost as well as at Bayreuth\nitself, one can see and hear Wagner's music as Wagner wished it to be\nseen and heard. The square, plain, grey and green Prinz-Regenten Theatre\nat Munich is an improved copy of the theatre at Bayreuth, with exactly\nthe same ampitheatrical arrangement of seats, the same invisible\norchestra and vast stage. Everything is done as at Bayreuth: there are\neven the three \"fanfaren\" at the doors, with the same punctual and\nirrevocable closing of the doors at the beginning of each act. As at\nBayreuth, the solemnity of the whole thing makes one almost nervous, for\nthe first few minutes of each act; but, after that, how near one is, in\nthis perfectly darkened, perfectly quiet theatre, in which the music\nsurges up out of the \"mystic gulf,\" and the picture exists in all the\necstasy of a picture on the other side of it, beyond reality, how near\none is to being alone, in the passive state in which the flesh is able\nto endure the great burdening and uplifting of vision. There are thus\nnow two theatres in the world in which music and drama can be absorbed,\nand not merely guessed at.\n\n\n\n\nII. THE LESSON OF PARSIFAL\n\n\nThe performance of \"Parsifal,\" as I saw it at Bayreuth, seemed to me the\nmost really satisfying performance I had ever seen in a theatre; and I\nhave often, since then, tried to realise for myself exactly what it was\nthat one might learn from that incarnation of the ideas, the theoretical\nideas, of Wagner. The music itself has the abstract quality of Coventry\nPatmore's odes. I cannot think of it except in terms of sight. Light\nsurges up out of it, as out of unformed depths; light descends from it,\nas from the sky; it breaks into flashes and sparkles of light, it\nbroadens out into a vast sea of light. It is almost metaphysical music;\npure ideas take visible form, humanise themselves in a new kind of\necstasy. The ecstasy has still a certain fever in it; these shafts of\nlight sometimes pierce the soul like a sword; it is not peace, the peace\nof Bach, to whom music can give all he wants; it is the unsatisfied\ndesire of a kind of flesh of the spirit, and music is but a voice.\n\"Parsifal\" is religious music, but it is the music of a religion which\nhad never before found expression. I have found in a motet of Vittoria\none of the motives of \"Parsifal,\" almost note for note, and there is no\ndoubt that Wagner owed much to Palestrina and his school. But even the\nsombre music of Vittoria does not plead and implore like Wagner's. The\noutcry comes and goes, not only with the suffering of Amfortas, the\ndespair of Kundry. This abstract music has human blood in it.\n\nWhat Wagner has tried to do is to unite mysticism and the senses, to\nrender mysticism through the senses. Mr. Watts-Dunton has pointed out\nthat that is what Rossetti tried to do in painting. That mysterious\nintensity of expression which we see in the faces of Rossetti's latest\npictures has something of the same appeal as the insatiable crying-out\nof a carnal voice, somewhere in the depths of Wagner's latest music.\n\nIn \"Parsifal,\" more perhaps than anywhere else in his work, Wagner\nrealised the supreme importance of monotony, the effect that could be\ngained by the incessant repetition of a few ideas. All that music of\nthe closing scene of the first act is made out of two or three phrases,\nand it is by the finest kind of invention that those two or three\nphrases are developed, and repeated, and woven together into so splendid\na tissue. And, in the phrases themselves, what severity, what bareness\nalmost! It is in their return upon themselves, their weighty reiterance,\nthat their force and significance become revealed; and if, as Nietzsche\nsays, they end by hypnotising us, well, all art is a kind of hypnotic\nprocess, a cunning absorption of the will of another.\n\n\"Parsifal\" presents itself as before all things a picture. The music,\nsoaring up from hidden depths, and seeming to drop from the heights, and\nbe reflected back from shining distances, though it is, more than\nanything I have ever heard, like one of the great forces of nature, the\nsea or the wind, itself makes pictures, abstract pictures; but even the\nmusic, as one watches the stage, seems to subordinate itself to the\nvisible picture there. And, so perfectly do all the arts flow into one,\nthe picture impresses one chiefly by its rhythm, the harmonies of its\nconvention. The lesson of \"Parsifal\" is the lesson that, in art, rhythm\nis everything. Every moment in the acting of this drama makes a picture,\nand every movement is slow, deliberate, as if automatic. No actor makes\na gesture, which has not been regulated for him; there is none of that\nunintelligent haphazard known as being \"natural\"; these people move like\nmusic, or with that sense of motion which it is the business of painting\nto arrest. Gesture being a part of a picture, how should it but be\nsettled as definitely, for that pictorial effect which all action on the\nstage is (more or less unconsciously) striving after, as if it were the\ntime of a song, or the stage direction: \"Cross stage to right\"? Also,\nevery gesture is slow; even despair having its artistic limits, its\nreticence. It is difficult to express the delight with which one sees,\nfor the first time, people really motionless on the stage. After all,\naction, as it has been said, is only a way of spoiling something. The\naim of the modern stage, of all drama, since the drama of the Greeks,\nis to give a vast impression of bustle, of people who, like most people\nin real life, are in a hurry about things; and our actors, when they are\nnot making irrelevant speeches, are engaged in frantically trying to\nmake us see that they are feeling acute emotion, by I know not what\nrestlessness, contortion, and ineffectual excitement. If it were once\nrealised how infinitely more important are the lines in the picture than\nthese staccato extravagances which do but aim at tearing it out of its\nframe, breaking violently through it, we should have learnt a little, at\nleast, of what the art of the stage should be, of what Wagner has shown\nus that it can be.\n\nDistance from the accidents of real life, atmosphere, the space for a\nnew, fairer world to form itself, being of the essence of Wagner's\nrepresentation, it is worth noticing how adroitly he throws back this\nworld of his, farther and farther into the background, by a thousand\ntricks of lighting, the actual distance of the stage from the\nproscenium, and by such calculated effects, as that long scene of the\nGraal, with its prolonged movement and ritual, through the whole of\nwhich Parsifal stands motionless, watching it all. How that solitary\nfigure at the side, merely looking on, though, unknown to himself, he is\nthe centre of the action, also gives one the sense of remoteness, which\nit was Wagner's desire to produce, throwing back the action into a\nreflected distance, as we watch someone on the stage who is watching it!\n\nThe beauty of this particular kind of acting and staging is of course\nthe beauty of convention. The scenery, for instance, with what an\nenchanting leisure it merely walks along before one's eyes, when a\nchange is wanted! Convention, here as in all plastic art, is founded on\nnatural truth very closely studied. The rose is first learned, in every\nwrinkle of its petals, petal by petal, before that reality is\nelaborately departed from, in order that a new, abstract beauty may be\nformed out of those outlines, all but those outlines being left out.\nAnd \"Parsifal,\" which is thus solemnly represented before us, has in it,\nin its very essence, that hieratic character which it is the effort of\nsupreme art to attain. At times one is reminded of the most beautiful\ndrama in the world, the Indian drama \"Sakuntala\": in that litter of\nleaves, brought in so touchingly for the swan's burial, in the old\nhermit watering his flowers. There is something of the same universal\ntenderness, the same religious linking together of all the world, in\nsome vague enough, but very beautiful, Pantheism. I think it is beside\nthe question to discuss how far Wagner's intentions were technically\nreligious: how far Parsifal himself is either Christ or Buddha, and how\nfar Kundry is a new Magdalen. Wagner's mind was the mind to which all\nlegend is sacred, every symbol of divine things to be held in reverence;\nbut symbol, with him, was after all a means to an end, and could never\nhave been accepted as really an end in itself. I should say that in\n\"Parsifal\" he is profoundly religious, but not because he intended, or\ndid not intend, to shadow the Christian mysteries. His music, his\nacting, are devout, because the music has a disembodied ecstasy, and the\nacting a noble rhythm, which can but produce in us something of the\nsolemnity of sensation produced by the service of the Mass, and are in\nthemselves a kind of religious ceremonial.\n\n\n\n\nIII. THE ART OF WAGNER\n\n\nIn saying, as we may truly say, that Wagner made music pictorial, it\nshould be remembered that there is nothing new in the aim, only in the\ncontinuity of its success. Haydn, in his \"Creation,\" evoked landscapes,\ngiving them precision by an almost mechanical imitation of cuckoo and\nnightingale. Trees had rustled and water flowed in the music of every\ncomposer. But with Wagner it may be said that the landscape of his music\nmoves before our eyes as clearly as the moving scenery with which he\ndoes but accentuate it; and it is always there, not a decor, but a\nworld, the natural world in the midst of which his people of the drama\nlive their passionate life, and a world in sympathy with all their\npassion. And in his audible representation of natural sounds and natural\nsights he does, consummately, what others have only tried, more or less\nwell, to do. When, in the past at least, the critics objected to the\nrealism of his imitative effects, they forgot that all other composers,\nat one time or another, had tried to be just as imitative, but had not\nsucceeded so well in their imitations. Wagner, in his painting, is the\nTurner of music. He brings us nature, heroically exalted, full of fiery\nsplendour, but nature as if caught in a mirror, not arranged, subdued,\ncomposed, for the frame of a picture. He is afraid of no realism,\nhowever mean, because he has confidence in nature as it is, apprehended\nwith all the clairvoyance of emotion.\n\nBetween the abyss of the music, out of which the world rises up with all\nits voices, and the rocks and clouds, in which the scenery carries us\nonward to the last horizon of the world, gods and men act out the brief\nhuman tragedy, as if on a narrow island in the midst of a great sea. A\nfew steps this way or that will plunge them into darkness; the darkness\nawaits them, however they succeed or fail, whether they live nobly or\nignobly, in the interval; but the interval absorbs them, as if it were\nto be eternity, and we see them rejoicing and suffering with an\nabandonment to the moment which intensifies the pathos of what we know\nis futile. Love, in Wagner, is so ecstatic and so terrible, because it\nmust compass all its anguish and delight into an immortal moment, before\nwhich there is only a great darkness, and only a great darkness\nafterwards. Sorrow is so lofty and so consoling because it is no less\nconscious of its passing hour.\n\nAnd meanwhile action is not everything, as it is for other makers of\ndrama; is but one among many modes of the expression of life. Those long\nnarratives, which some find so tedious, so undramatic, are part of\nWagner's protest against the frequently false emphasis of action. In\nWagner anticipation and memory are seen to be often equally intense with\nthe instant of realisation. Siegfried is living with at least as\npowerful and significant a life when he lies under the trees listening\nto the song of the birds as when he is killing the dragon. And it is for\nthis that the \"motives,\" which are after all only the materialising of\nmemory, were created by Wagner. These motives, by which the true action\nof the drama expresses itself, are a symbol of the inner life, of its\npreponderance over outward event, and, in their guidance of the music,\ntheir indication of the real current of interest, have a spiritualising\neffect upon both music and action, instead of, as was once thought,\nmaterialising both.\n\nWagner's aim at expressing the soul of things is still further helped by\nhis system of continuous, unresolved melody. The melody which\ncircumscribes itself like Giotto's _O_ is almost as tangible a thing as\na statue; it has almost contour. But this melody afloat in the air,\nflying like a bird, without alighting for more than a moment's swaying\npoise, as the notes flit from strings to voice, and from voice to wood\nand wind, is more than a mere heightening of speech: it partakes of the\nnature of thought, but it is more than thought; it is the whole\nexpression of the subconscious life, saying more of himself than any\nperson of the drama has ever found in his own soul.\n\nIt is here that Wagner unites with the greatest dramatists, and\ndistinguishes himself from the contemporary heresy of Ibsen, whose only\ntoo probable people speak a language exactly on the level of their desks\nand their shop-counters. Except in the \"Meistersinger,\" all Wagner's\npersonages are heroic, and for the most part those supreme sublimations\nof humanity, the people of legend, Tannhauser, Tristan, Siegfried,\nParsifal, have at once all that is in humanity and more than is hi\nhumanity. Their place in a national legend permits them, without\ndisturbing our critical sense of the probability of things, a superhuman\npassion; for they are ideals, this of chivalry, that of love, this of\nthe bravery, that of the purity, of youth. Yet Wagner employs infinite\ndevices to give them more and more of verisimilitude; modulating song,\nfor instance, into a kind of chant which we can almost take for actual\nspeech. It is thus the more interesting to note the point to which\nrealism conducts him, the limit at which it stops, his conception of a\nspiritual reality which begins where realism leaves off.\n\nAnd, in his treatment of scenery also, we have to observe the admirable\ndexterity of his compromises. The supernatural is accepted frankly with\nalmost the childish popular belief in a dragon rolling a loathly bulk\npainfully, and breathing smoke. But note that the dragon, when it is\nthrown back into the pit, falls without sound; note that the combats are\nwithout the ghastly and foolish modern tricks of blood and disfigurement;\nnote how the crowds pose as in a good picture, with slow gestures, and\nwithout intrusive individual pantomime. As I have said in speaking of\n\"Parsifal,\" there is one rhythm throughout; music, action, speech, all\nobey it. When Br\u00fcnnhilde awakens after her long sleep, the music is an\nimmense thanksgiving for light, and all her being finds expression in a\ngreat embracing movement towards the delight of day. Siegfried stands\nsilent for I know not what space of time; and it is in silence always,\nwith a wave-like or flame-like music surging about them, crying out of\nthe depths for them, that all the lovers in Wagner love at first sight.\nTristan, when he has drunk the potion; Siegmund, when Sieglinde gives\nhim to drink; Siegfried, when Br\u00fcnnhilde awakens to the world and to\nhim: it is always in the silence of rapture that love is given and\nreturned. And the gesture, subdued into a gravity almost sorrowful (as\nif love and the thought of death came always together, the thought of\nthe only ending of a mortal eternity), renders the inmost meaning of the\nmusic as no Italian gesture, which is the vehemence of first thoughts\nand the excitement of the senses, could ever render it. That slow\nrhythm, which in Wagner is like the rhythm of the world flowing onwards\nfrom its first breathing out of chaos, as we hear it in the opening\nnotes of the \"Ring,\" seems to broaden outwards like ripples on an\ninfinite sea, throughout the whole work of Wagner.\n\nAnd now turn from this elemental music, in which the sense of all human\nthings is expressed with the dignity of the elements themselves, to all\nother operatic music, in which, however noble the music as music (think\nof Gluck, of Mozart, of Beethoven!), it is for the most part fettered to\na little accidental comedy or tragedy, in which two lovers are jealous,\nor someone is wrongly imprisoned, or a libertine seduces a few women.\nHere music is like a god speaking the language of savages, and lowering\nhis supreme intellect to the level of their speech. The melodious voice\nremains, but the divine meaning has gone out of the words. Only in\nWagner does God speak to men in his own language.\n\n\n\n\nCONCLUSION\n\n\n\n\nA PARADOX ON ART\n\n\nIs it not part of the pedantry of letters to limit the word art, a\nlittle narrowly, to certain manifestations of the artistic spirit, or,\nat all events, to set up a comparative estimate of the values of the\nseveral arts, a little unnecessarily? Literature, painting, sculpture,\nmusic, these we admit as art, and the persons who work in them as\nartists; but dancing, for instance, in which the performer is at once\ncreator and interpreter, and those methods of interpretation, such as\nthe playing of musical instruments, or the conducting of an orchestra,\nor acting, have we scrupulously considered the degree to which these\nalso are art, and their executants, in a strict sense, artists?\n\nIf we may be allowed to look upon art as something essentially\nindependent of its material, however dependent upon its own material\neach art may be, in a secondary sense, it will scarcely be logical to\ncontend that the motionless and permanent creation of the sculptor in\nmarble is, as art, more perfect than the same sculptor's modelling in\nsnow, which, motionless one moment, melts the next, or than the dancer's\nharmonious succession of movements which we have not even time to\nrealise individually before one is succeeded by another, and the whole\nhas vanished from before our eyes. Art is the creation of beauty in\nform, visible or audible, and the artist is the creator of beauty in\nvisible or audible form. But beauty is infinitely various, and as truly\nbeauty in the voice of Sarah Bernhardt or the silence of Duse as in a\nface painted by Leonardo or a poem written by Blake. A dance, performed\nfaultlessly and by a dancer of temperament, is as beautiful, in its own\nway, as a performance on the violin by Ysaye or the effect of an\norchestra conducted by Richter. In each case the beauty is different,\nbut, once we have really attained beauty, there can be no question of\nsuperiority. Beauty is always equally beautiful; the degrees exist only\nwhen we have not yet attained beauty.\n\nAnd thus the old prejudice against the artist to whom interpretation in\nhis own special form of creation is really based upon a\nmisunderstanding. Take the art of music. Bach writes a composition for\nthe violin: that composition exists, in the abstract, the moment it is\nwritten down upon paper, but, even to those trained musicians who are\nable to read it at sight, it exists in a state at best but half alive;\nto all the rest of the world it is silent. Ysaye plays it on his violin,\nand the thing begins to breathe, has found a voice perhaps more\nexquisite than the sound which Bach heard in his brain when he wrote\ndown the notes. Take the instrument out of Ysaye's hands, and put it\ninto the hands of the first violin in the orchestra behind him; every\nnote will be the same, the same general scheme of expression may be\nfollowed, but the thing that we shall hear will be another thing, just\nas much Bach, perhaps, but, because Ysaye is wanting, not the work of\nart, the creation, to which we have just listened.\n\nThat such art should be fragile, evanescent, leaving only a memory which\ncan never be realised again, is as pathetic and as natural as that a\nbeautiful woman should die young. To the actor, the dancer, the same\nfate is reserved. They work for the instant, and for the memory of the\nliving, with a supremely prodigal magnanimity. Old people tell us that\nthey have seen Descl\u00e9e, Taglioni; soon no one will be old enough to\nremember those great artists. Then, if their renown becomes a matter of\ncharity, of credulity, if you will, it will be but equal with the renown\nof all those poets and painters who are only names to us, or whose\nmasterpieces have perished.\n\nBeauty is infinitely various, always equally beautiful, and can never be\nrepeated. Gautier, in a famous poem, has wisely praised the artist who\nworks in durable material:\n\n  Oui, l'oeuvre sort plus gelle\n  D'une forme au travail\n  Rebelle,\n  Vers, marbre, onyx, \u00e9mail.\n\nNo, not more beautiful; only more lasting.\n\n  Tout passe. L'art robuste\n  Seul \u00e0 l'\u00e9ternit\u00e9.\n     Le buste\n  Survit \u00e0 la cit\u00e9.\n\nWell, after all, is there not, to one who regards it curiously, a\ncertain selfishness, even, in this desire to perpetuate oneself or the\nwork of one's hands; as the most austere saints have found selfishness\nat the root of the soul's too conscious, or too exclusive, longing after\neternal life? To have created beauty for an instant is to have achieved\nan equal result in art with one who has created beauty which will last\nmany thousands of years. Art is concerned only with accomplishment, not\nwith duration. The rest is a question partly of vanity, partly of\nbusiness. An artist to whom posterity means anything very definite, and\nto whom the admiration of those who will live after him can seem to\npromise much warmth in the grave, may indeed refuse to waste his time,\nas it seems to him, over temporary successes. Or he may shrink from the\ncontinuing ardour of one to whom art has to be made over again with the\nsame energy, the same sureness, every time that he acts on the stage or\ndraws music out of his instrument. One may indeed be listless enough to\nprefer to have finished one's work, and to be able to point to it, as it\nstands on its pedestal, or comes to meet all the world, with the\ndemocratic freedom of the book. All that is a natural feeling in the\nartist, but it has nothing to do with art. Art has to do only with the\ncreation of beauty, whether it be in words, or sounds, or colour, or\noutline, or rhythmical movement; and the man who writes music is no more\ntruly an artist than the man who plays that music, the poet who composes\nrhythms in words no more truly an artist than the dancer who composes\nrhythms with the body, and the one is no more to be preferred to the\nother, than the painter is to be preferred to the sculptor, or the\nmusician to the poet, in those forms of art which we have agreed to\nrecognise as of equal value.\n\n\n\n\nBY THE SAME WRITER\n\n\nPoems (Collected Edition in two volumes), 1902.\n\nAn Introduction to the Study of Browning, 1886, 1906.\n\nAubrey Beardsley, 1898, 1905.\n\nThe Symbolist Movement in Literature, 1899, 1908.\n\nCities, 1903.\n\nStudies in Prose and Verse, 1904.\n\nA Book of Twenty Songs, 1905.\n\nSpiritual Adventures, 1905.\n\nThe Fool of the World, and Other Poems, 1906.\n\nStudies in Seven Arts, 1906.\n\nWilliam Blake, 1907.\n\nCities of Italy, 1907.","title":"Plays, Acting and Music: A Book Of Theory","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":55434}