A Sicilian marionette show From "By Italian Seas," by Ernest C. Peixotto
II
When we compare the account which Professor Lawrence has here given of the Italian puppet-shows in New York with the description of these same performances in their native land half a century ago, which we find in the 'Roba di Roma' of W. W. Story, the American sculptor-poet, we perceive that there has been little modification of method in the past threescore years. Story studied all sides of the Roman populace, and he maintained that nothing was more characteristically Italian than the marionette theater. He tells us that the love for the acting ofburattini[or puppets] is universal among the lower classes thruout Italy, and in some cities, especially in Genoa, no pains are spared "in their costume, construction, and movement to render them lifelike. They are made of wood, generally from two to three feet in height, with very large heads, and supernatural glaring eyes that never wink, and are clad in all the splendor of tinsel, velvet, and steel. Their joints are so flexible that the least weight or strain upon them effects a dislocation, and they are moved by wires attached to their heads and extremities. The largest are only about half the height of a man, yet as the stage and all the appointments and scenery are upon the same scale of proportion, the eye is soon deceived, and accepts them as of life-size. But if by accident a hand or arm of one of the wire-pullers appears from behind the scenes or descends below the hangings, it startles you by its portentous size; and the audience in the stage-boxes instead of reducing theburattinito Lilliputians by contrast, as they lean forward, become themselves Brobdingnagians, with elephantine hands and heads."
Story insisted that there is nothing ludicrous to an Italian audience in the performances of these diminutive men and women. On the contrary, nothing is more serious both to the spectators and to the unforeseen operators. In fact, he declared, no human being could be so serious as these tiny performers. "Their countenances are as solemn as death, and more unchanging than the face of a clock. Their terrible gravity when, with drooping heads and collapsed arms, they fix on you their great goggle-eyes is at times ghastly. The plays they perform are mostly heroic, romantic, and historical. They stoop to nothing which is not startling in incident, imposing in style, and grandiose in movement. And the Italian audience listens with a grave and profound interest, as tho the performers were not mere puppets, but actually the heroes they are supposed to be. The inflated and extravagant discourse of the characters is accepted at its face value; to the spectators it is grand and noble. And the foreign visitor must control any desire he may feel to smile at the extraordinary spectacle he is witnessing, and at the marvelous rodomontade he is hearing. To laugh out loud at one of these heroic puppet-plays would be as indecorous as to indulge in laughter during a church service."
A Belgian puppet A Chinese puppet theater Puppet figure representing the younger Coquelin
Incidental to the heroic dramas which the puppets play are interludes of ballet-dancing like those which are intercalated, more or less adroitly, into the grand opera performed by full-grown men and women. The Italians are born pantomimists, and they are accomplished dancers. Therefore, there is no reason for surprise that human pantomime and human dancing are imitated in the marionette theaters. There is reason for surprise, however, that Story did not perceive clearly the advantages possessed by the dancing puppets over the dancers of more solid flesh and blood. He found something comic in the pantomime of the puppets, "whose every motion is effected by wires, who imitate the gestures of despair with hands that cannot shut, and, with a wooden gravity of countenance, throw their bodies into terrible contortions to make up for the lack of expression in the face." In mere pantomime it is probable that the puppets would labor under a serious disability, for if a performer cannot use his voice, he needs facial expression to assist the gestures by which only can he then convey his meaning to the other performers and to the spectators. Perhaps it is not too much to assert that the puppet-show is not the proper place for pantomime.
III
We need not wonder that Story admitted their dancing to be superior to their pantomime. Yet he failed to appreciate the true cause of this superiority, and he was inclined to comment upon the dancing of theburattiniin a somewhat satiric fashion. He tells us how the principal dancer suddenly appears, "knocks her wooden knees together, and jerking her head about, salutes the audience with a smile quite as artificial as we could see in the best trained of her fleshly rivals." But this artificial smile must have been fixed and permanent on the features of this diminutive dancer—or else the Roman-American essayist merely imagined its presence. "Then, with a masterly ease, after describing air-circles with her toes far higher than her head and poising herself in impossible positions, she bounds or rather flies forward with superhuman lightness, performs feats of choreography to awaken envy in Cerito and drive Elssler to despair, and, poising on her pointed toe that disdains to touch the floor, turns never-ending pirouettes on nothing at all, till at last, throwing both her wooden hands forward, she suddenly comes to a swift stop to receive your applause."
This description is unsympathetic, and it induces the surmise that the operator of theburattiniat the performance described was not a master of his art and did not know how to profit by the possibilities of that art. Yet one of Story's phrases serves to explain why the suspended puppet is superbly qualified to excel in ballet-dancing; that phrase is the one which credits the dancing doll with "supernatural lightness." A skilful operator of the wires which bestow life and movement and grace, is able to imitate easily and exquisitely the most difficult feats of the human dancer. If he is sufficiently adroit he robs his suspended figure of all awkwardness, and he dowers her with a floating ethereality surpassing that attainable by any living performer. Now, this floating ethereality is precisely the quality which gives us most pleasure when we are spectators at the performance of a really fine ballet. It is the supreme art of the great dancer to soar lightly aloft, seeming to spurn the stage and to abide in the air. Only very rarely is this illusion possible to the merely human dancer; and when achieved it is but fleeting. Yet this illusion is absolutely within the control of the manipulator of the puppet-dancers. He can make them execute feats of levitation, achievable only by the most marvelously gifted and by the most arduously trained of human dancers.
Puppets in Burma The puppet play of Master Peter (Italian)
Of course, the skilful performer must carefully avoid swinging his tiny figures aimlessly thru the air. He must limit the feats that he permits them to accomplish to those which can be actually accomplished by human beings, altho he can do easily what the human beings can achieve only with more or less obvious effort, and he can impart a volatile elasticity a little beyond the power of any human being however favored by Terpsichore. When 'Salome' was, for a season, the sensation of the hour, it was produced by Holden's marionettes; and it afforded a delightful spectacle long to be remembered by all who had the felicity of beholding it. Whatever of vulgarity or of grossness there might be in the play itself, or in the Dance of the Seven Veils, was purged away by the single fact that all the performers were puppets. So dexterous was the manipulation of the unseen operator who controlled the wires and strings which gave life to the seductive Salome as she circled around the stage in most bewitching fashion, and so precise and accurate was the imitation of a human dancer, that the receptive spectator could not but feel that here at last the play of doubtful propriety had found its only fit stage and its only proper performer. The memory of that exhibition is a perennial pleasure to all who possess it. A thing of beauty it was; and it abides in remembrance as a joy forever. It revealed the art of the puppet-show at its summit. And the art itself was eternally justified by that one performance of the highest technical skill and of the utmost delicacy of taste.
If the most marvelous exploits of terpsichorean art, almost inexecutable by the human toes and the human legs of living dancers, are capable of reproduction by puppets skilfully manipulated by the puller of the wires and strings whereby the little figures are suspended, so also are the dexterous feats of the juggler. One of the specialties of the sole surviving puppet-show of this sort in the Champs-Elysées is the performance of a juggler who tosses aloft and catches in turn a number of glittering balls. The delicate balancing of the tight-rope walker, with her frequent pirouettes on her toes, and with her surprising summersets, is also one of the exhibitions in which the puppet can defy the rivalry of any living executant, however skilful in the art. At the circus we feel that the tightrope dancer might fall, whereas at the puppet-show we know with certainty that any fatal mishap is impossible. In Holden's marionette program the miniature mimicry of humanity was carried to the utmost edge of the possible; and no item on his bill of fare was more delectable than the series of scenes in which the traditional Clown and Pantaloon played tricks on the traditional Policeman, and in which they joined forces in belaboring an inoffensive donkey. As the unfortunate quadruped was also a puppet, there was no painful strain on our sympathy.
IV
If a performance by puppets deprived 'Salome' of its vulgar grossness by removing it outside the arena of humanity, so to speak, and by relegating it to an unreal world beyond the strict diocese of the conscience, so a performance by puppets of a passion-play or of any other drama in which the Deity has perforce to appear as a character, is thereby relieved of any tincture of irreverence. We no longer see a divine being interpreted by a human being. We cannot help feeling that all the persons in the play, whether they dwell in heaven or on earth, are equally remote from our common humanity. And therefore we need not be surprised when we discover that the marionette has long been allowed to appear in religious drama. Indeed, it appears probable that the very namemarionetteis directly derived from the name of the Virgin.
Very early in the history of the Christian Church were the puppets permitted to perform passion-plays and little dramas derived from the stories contained both in the New and the Old Testaments. In England under Elizabeth and James religious puppet-shows of this kind went wandering about the kingdom, taking into the smallest villages an entertainment which would afford to the rural inhabitants the same kind of pleasant instruction which the dwellers in the larger towns had in the more elaborate and long-drawn mysteries performed by the trade-guilds on the Corpus Christi day. That masterly rogue Autolycus in the 'Winter's Tale' tells us that in his time he had been on the road with "a motion of the Prodigal Son"—and amotionwas the Elizabethan term for a marionette-exhibition. In like manner one of the characters in Ben Jonson's 'Every Man out of His Humor' speaks of "a new motion of the city of Nineveh, with Jonas and the whale." Of course, the puppet performers, like the grown-up actors, did not long confine themselves to sacred themes; they ventured also into contemporary history. A puppet showman who appears in Ben Jonson's 'Bartholomew Fair' tells us that a certain motion setting forth the mysterious Gunpowder Plot, was "a get-penny."
Story described one puppet-play which he saw in a little village on the main road from Rome to Naples, and which had for its central figure Judas Iscariot. But here again his attitude is unsympathetic, perhaps because the performance was clumsy. "The kiss of Judas, when, after sliding along the stage, he suddenly turned with a sidelong jerk and rapped the other wooden puppet's head with his own, as well as the subsequent scene in which he goes out and hangs himself, beggar description." Yet the expatriated American spectator honestly recorded that the Italian spectators "looked and listened with great gravity, seemed to be highly edified, and certainly showed no signs of seeing anything ludicrous in the performance." We may venture the suggestion that even the sophisticated sculptor-poet himself would have seen nothing ludicrous in this performance if the operator of Judas had been as skilful as the operator of Salome in Holden's marionettes.
A Neapolitan PunchinellaFrom "By Italian Seas," by Ernest C. Peixotto
A few years ago in Paris one of the younger poets wrote a passion-play which was performed during Lent by a company of dolls, designed and dressed in fit and appropriate costumes by an artist friend familiar with the manners and customs of the Holy Land. While the wires were managed by expert hands, the words of the dialog were spoken by the poet himself, and by two or three other poets who came to his aid. This must have been a seemly spectacle, and it won careful consideration from more than one of the most eminent dramatic critics of France. Here we may find a useful suggestion for those who wish to see certain plays by modern dramatic poets, in which the Deity is a necessary character—Rostand's 'Samaritaine,' for one, and Hauptmann's 'Hannele,' for another. Many of the devout have a natural repugnance to any performance on the stage (with its materialistic environment and its often sordid conditions) which calls for the impersonation of a divine being by an actor of ordinary flesh and blood. Yet if these same plays were reverently performed by marionettes the aroma of irreverence would be removed. It might even be possible to reproduce in the puppet-show not a little of the solemn religious effect which is felt by all visitors to the passion-play at Oberammergau.
(1912.)
XVIIISHADOW-PANTOMIME WITH ALL THE MODERN IMPROVEMENTS
SHADOW-PANTOMIME WITH ALL THE MODERN IMPROVEMENTSI
AnAmerican; improving on a suggestion of a Frenchman, has declared that "language was given to man to conceal his thoughts—and to woman to express her emotions." Unfortunately, language is so often inexact that even when it is sufficient to express emotion, it is not precise enough even to conceal thought. Sometimes a term is wholly devoid of truth, as when we call a certain solid a "lead-pencil," which contains no lead, and when we label a certain liquid "soda-water," which contains no soda. Sometimes the term is so vague that it may mean all things to all men. Who, for example, would be bold enough to insist on his own definition of "romanticism"? Sometimes again the term covers two or three things which demand a sharper differentiation. This is the case with the compound word "shadow-pantomime." It is the only name for three distinct things.
First, there is the representation by the dark profile of the human hand upon a wall or a screen, of human heads, and of animal figures, either by an adroit arrangement of the fingers alone, or by the aid of adjusted shapes of cardboard, so as to suggest a hat on the head and a pipe in the mouth and other needed accessories; this primitive entertainment is sometimes styled "shadowgraphy."
Second, there is the full-sized silhouette of a human figure, due to the shadow cast by the body standing before a lamp, and magnified or diminished as it approaches or recedes the spectators. This is the familiar parlor amusement which Sir James Barrie cleverly utilized with dramatic effect in the final act of his 'Professor's Love-Story,' when one of the characters, standing outside a house, sees the black profiles of other characters projected clearly on the drawn shade of the window before which he is placed.
Then, thirdly, there is the true shadow-pantomime, called by the French "Chinese shadows,"ombres chinoises, in which the tiny figures, made either of flat cardboard or of metal, are exhibited behind a translucent screen and before a strong light. This is by far the most interesting and the most important of the three widely different kinds of semi-dramatic entertainment, often carelessly confounded together even in the special treatises devoted to this humble art. In France these Chinese shadows have been popular for more than a hundred years, since it was in the eighteenth century that the performer who took the name of Séraphin established his little theater and won the favor of the younger members of the royal family by his presentation of the alluring spectacle, the rudimentary little piece, still popular with children, and still known by its original title, the 'Broken Bridge.'
It may not be fanciful to infer that the immediate suggestion for this spectacle was derived from the contemporary vogue of the silhouette itself, this portrait in solid black taking its name from the Frenchman who was minister of finance in 1759. At all events, it was in 1770 that Séraphin began to amuse the children of Paris; and it was more than a century thereafter that M. Lemercier de Neuville elaborated his ingeniously articulatedPupazzi noirs. It was a little later still that Caran d'Ache delighted the more sophisticated children of a larger growth, who were wont to assemble at the Chat Noir, with the striking series of military silhouettes resuscitating the mighty Napoleonic epic. And it was at the Chat Noir again that Rivière revealed the further possibilities latent in shadow-pantomime, and to be developed by the aid of colored backgrounds supplied by a magic lantern. Restricted as the sphere of the shadow-pantomime necessarily is, the native artistic impulse of the French has been rarely better disclosed than by their surprising elaboration of a form of amusement, seemingly fitted only to charm the infant mind, into an entertainment satisfactory to the richly developed esthetic sense of mature Parisian playgoers. Just as the rustic revels of remote villagers contained the germ out of which the Greeks were able to develop their austere and elevating tragedy, and just as the modern drama was evolved in the course of centuries out of the medieval mysteries, one source of which we may discover in the infant Christ in the cradle still displayed at Christmastide in Christian churches thruout the world, so the simple Chinese shadows of Séraphin supplied the root on which Parisian artists were able to graft their ingenious improvements.
The little spectacle proffered originally by Séraphin was frankly infantile in its appeal, and the 'Broken Bridge' is as plainly adjusted to the simple likings of the child as is the lamentable tragedy of Punch and Judy or the puppet-show in which Polichinelle exhibits his hump and his terpsichorean agility. The two arms of the broken bridge arch over a little stream but fail to meet in the center. A flock of ducks crosses leisurely from one bank to the other. A laborer appears on the left-hand fragment of the bridge and begins to swing his pick to loosen stones at the end, and these fragments are then seen to fall into the water. The figure of the workman is articulated, or at least one arm is on a separate piece and moves on a pivot so that a hidden string can raise the pick and let it fall. The laborer sings at his work; and in France he indulges in the traditional lyric about the Bridge of Avignon, where everybody dances in a circle. Then a traveler appears on the right-hand end of the bridge. He hails the laborer, who is hard of hearing at first, but who finally asks him what he wants. The traveler explains that he wishes to cross and asks how he can do this. The laborer keeps on picking away, and sings that "the ducks and the geese they all swim over." The irritated traveler then asks how far it is across, and the laborer again sings, this time to the effect that "when you're in the middle you're half-way over." Then the traveler inquires how deep the stream may be, and he gets the exasperating response in song, that if he will only throw in a stone, he'll soon find the bottom. This dialog bears an obvious resemblance to that traditionally associated with the tune of the 'Arkansaw Traveler.'
The broken bridge Reproduced by permission of Hachette & Co., Paris Plan showing the construction of a shadow-picture theater A Hungarian dancer. This explains the mechanism of the shadow picture opposite A Hungarian dancer From a shadow picture by Lemercier de Neuville
Then a boatman appears, rowing his little skiff, his backbone pivoted so that his body can move to and fro. The traveler makes a bargain with him and is taken across, after many misadventures, one of them with a crocodile, which opens its jaws and threatens to engulf the boat—this amphibious beast having been a recent addition to the original playlet, and probably borrowed from the Green Monster not long ago added to the group of Punch and Judy figures. And the exciting conclusion of this entrancing spectacle displays a most moral application of the principle of poetic justice. The ill-natured laborer advances too far out on his edge of the broken bridge, and detaches a large fragment. As this tumbles into the water he loses his footing and falls forward himself, only to be instantly devoured by the crocodile, which disappears with its unexpected prey, whereupon the placid ducks and geese again swim over—and the curtain falls.
II
There are a score of other little plays like the 'Broken Bridge,' adroitly adjusted to the caliber of the juvenile mind. In a British collection may be found a piece representing a succession of appalling episodes supposed to take place in a 'Haunted House,' and in a French manual for the use of youthful amateurs may be discovered a rudimentary version of Molière's 'Imaginary Invalid,' to be performed by silhouettes with articulated limbs. Here again we perceive the inaccuracy of the term "shadow-pantomime," since the most of the figures are not articulated, and, being motionless, they are deprived of the freedom of gesture which is the essential element of true pantomime. Moreover, they are all made to take part in various dialogs, and this again is a negation of the fundamental principle of pantomime, which ought to be wordless. Here the French term "Chinese shadows" is more exact and less limiting than the English "shadow-pantomime." It is perhaps a pity that the old-fashioned term "gallanty-show," has not won a wider acceptance in English.
The little pieces due to Séraphin and his humble followers in France and in England, devised to amuse children only, were simple enough in plot, and yet they were sufficient to suggest to admirers of this unpretending form of theatrical art plays of a more imposing proportion. M. Paul Eudel, the art critic, has published an amply illustrated volume in which he collected the fairy-pieces, and the more spectacular melodramas composed by his grandfather in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, in the dark days that preceded Waterloo. And in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, in the dark days that preceded Sedan, M. Lemercier de Neuville, relinquishing for a while the Punch and Judy puppets which he calledPupazzi, and which he had exhibited in a succession of gentle caricatures of Parisian personalities with a mildly Aristophanic flavor of contemporary satire, turned to the familiar Chinese shadows of his childhood and devised what he called hisPupazzi noirs, animated shadows. He also has issued a collection of these little pieces with a full explanation of the method of performance and with half a hundred illustrations, revealing all the secrets of maneuvering the little figures. Indeed, Lemercier de Neuville's manual is the most ample which has yet appeared; and it is the most interesting in that he was at once his own playwright, his own designer of figures, and his own performer.
The return from the Bois de Boulogne Four shadow pictures by Caran d'Ache The ballet From a shadow picture by Lemercier de Neuville Reproduced by permission of Hachette & Co., Paris A regiment of French soldiers From a shadow picture by R. de La Nézière
As the grandfather of M. Eudel had been more ambitious than Séraphin, so Lemercier de Neuville was more ambitious than the elder Eudel. And yet his procedure was precisely that of his predecessors, and he did not in any way modify the principles of the art. All he did was to elaborate the performance by the use of more scenery, of more spectacular effects, and of more numerous characters. He introduced a company of Spanish dancers, for example, and he did not hesitate to throw on his screen the sable and serrated profile of a long line of ballet dancers. He followed Eudel in arranging a procession of animals, rivaling a circus parade, many of them being articulated so that they could make the appropriate movements of their jaws and their paws. And he paid special attention to his silhouette caricatures of contemporary celebrities, Zola for one, and Sarah-Bernhardt for another.
Then the Franco-Russian draftsman, who called himself Caran d'Ache, made a new departure and started the art of the shadow-pantomime in a new career. He called his figures "French shadows,"ombres françaises, and he surrendered the privilege of articulating his figures so that they could move. At least, he refrained from this except on rare occasions, preferring the effect of immobility and relying mainly upon a new principle not before employed by any of his predecessors. He made a specialty of long lines and of large masses of troops, not all on the same plane, but presented in perspective. He chose also to forgo the aid of speech and his figures were silent, except when some officer called out a word of command, or when a company of Cossacks rode past singing one of the wailing lyrics of the Caucasus as melancholy as the steppes.
One of the most attractive items on his program was a representation of the return of vehicles and equestrians from the Bois de Boulogne in the afternoon. Some of the figures were merely characteristic types sharply seized and outlined with all the artist's masterly draftsmanship, and some of them were well-known personages easily recognizable by his Parisian spectators—Lesseps on horseback, for example, and Rochefort in an open cab. These successive figures were simply pushed across the screen one after another, each of them as motionless as a statue, the men fixed in one attitude, and the legs of the horses retaining always the same position. This absence of animal movement was, of course, a violation from the facts of life, like that which permits the painter to depict a breaking wave or a sculptor to model a running boy at a single moment of the movement. Yet this artistic conversion was immediately acceptable since the spectator received a simplified impression and his attention was not distracted by the inevitable jerkiness of the limbs of the men and the beasts.
Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, ParisThe Sphinx I: Pharaoh passing in triumphFrom a shadow picture by Amédée Vignola
Caran d'Ache's masterpiece, however—and it may honestly be styled a masterpiece—was not the 'Return from the Bois de Boulogne' but his 'Epopée,' his epic evocation of the grand army of Napoleon. Single figures like the Little Corporal on horseback, and like Murat and others of the Emperor's staff, he projected with a fidelity and a veracity of accent worthy of Détaille or even Meissonier. Yet fine as these single figures might be, they were only what had been attempted by earlier exponents of the art—even if they were more impressive than had been achieved by any one of his predecessors. These single figures were necessarily presented all on the same plane, and the startling and successful innovation of the Franco-Russian draftsmanship was his skilful use of perspective, a device which had not occurred to any of those in whose footsteps he was following, even Lemercier de Neuville having presented his ballet dancers in a flat row. What Caran d'Ache did was to bring before us company after company of the Old Guard, and troop after troop of cuirassiers, their profiles diminishing in height as the figures receded from the eye. He thus attained to an effect of solidity and even of immensity, far beyond anything ever before achieved by any earlier exhibitor of shadows. He succeeded in suggesting space, and of maneuvering before the astonished eyes of the entranced spectators a vast mass of men under arms, marching forward resolutely in serried ranks to victory or to death.
The late Jules Lemaître, the most open-minded of French dramatic critics, and the most hospitable in his attitude toward the minor manifestations of theatric art, has recorded that this Napoleonic epic of Caran d'Ache communicated to him not only an emotion of actual grandeur, but also the thrill of war itself. He declared that "by the exactness of the perspective preserved in his long files of soldiers, Caran d'Ache gives us the illusion of number and of a number immense and indefinite. And by the automatic movement which sets all his troops in action at once, he gives us the illusion of a single soul, of a communal thought animating innumerable bodies—and thereby he evokes in us the impression of measureless power.... His silent poem, with its sliding profiles is, I think, the only epic in all French literature." And those who are familiar with the other French efforts to attain to lyric largeness, and who have had also the unforgetable felicity of beholding Caran d'Ache's marvelous projection of the Napoleonic legend, will be prepared to admit that Lemaître did not overstate the case.
Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, ParisThe Sphinx II: Moses leading his people out of EgyptFrom a shadow picture by Amédée Vignola
III
What the Franco-Russian artist had done was to reveal the alluring possibilities placed at the command of the shadow-pantomimist by the ingenious employment of perspective; and there remained only one more step to be taken for the final development of the art to its ultimate capacity. This was the addition of color; and this step was taken by an associate of Caran d'Ache in the exhibitions given at the Chat Noir—Henri Rivière. Color could be added in two ways. In the first place, the outlines of lanterns and of battle-flags could be cut out, and slips of appropriately tinted paper could be inserted in the openings so that the light might shine thru. This relieved the monotony of the uniformity of the sable figures, and added a note of amusing gaiety. But this was an innovation of very limited scope; and it could have been earlier utilized in the flat figures of Lemercier de Neuville, for example, if he had happened to think of it. Far wider in its artistic possibilities was the second of Rivière's improvements. For the ordinary lamp which cast a steady glow on the white screen whereon the profile figures appeared, he substituted a magic lantern, the painted slides of which enabled him to supply an appropriately colored background. Then he went further and employed two magic lanterns, superimposed; and these enabled him to get the effect of "dissolving views" whereby he could vary his background at will. The immediate result of this ingenious improvement was that the artist could bestow upon his shadow-pantomime not a little of the richness of color which delights our eyes in the stained glass of medieval cathedrals.
Rivière was not only an inventor, he was also an artist, richly gifted with imagination; and his imagination suggested to him at once the three or four themes best fitted for treatment by his novel apparatus. One of these was the 'Wandering Jew'; another was the 'Prodigal Son'; and a third was the 'Temptation of Saint Anthony'—all legends of combined dramatic and pictorial appeal. Yet the most effective of all the experiments in this new form was due not to Rivière himself but to the collaboration of two of his disciples, M. Fragerolle and M. Vignola. This was the 'Sphinx,' in which the artists most adroitly combined all the advantages of the original flat profiles, and of the long files of figures in perspective such as Caran d'Ache had employed, with varied backgrounds due to the aid of the magic lantern first utilized by Rivière. Of all human monuments no one has had so marvelous a series of spectacles pass before its sightless eyes as the Sphinx, reclining impassive at the edge of the desert, and at the foot of the pyramids. Race after race has descended into the valley of the Nile, and lingered for a little space, a few centuries more or less, and departed at last. Conqueror after conqueror has come and gone again; and the Sphinx has kept its inscrutable smile.
Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, ParisThe Sphinx III: Roman warriors in EgyptFrom a shadow picture by Amédée Vignola
M. Fragerolle composed the music and the words of the stately chants which accompanied the exhibition of the figures passing before the backgrounds, due to the pencil and the palette of M. Vignola. By the aid of the magic lantern the gigantic visage of the lion with a woman's head towers aloft, permanent and immutable, while the joyous procession of Egyptian dancers and soldiers and priests celebrates the completion of the statue itself. Then we are witnesses of the fierce invasion of the Assyrians, with the charge of their chariots and their horsemen; and we behold the rout of the natives while their capital burns in the distance. Next we gaze at the departure of the Jews, led by Moses and laden with the spoils of the Egyptians. After the Hebrews have gone, Sesostris appears, to be greeted by a glad outpouring of the populace. Yet soon the Persians descend on Egypt, with their castellated elephants and their immense hordes of fighting men. Still the Sphinx looks down, immovable and implacable; and the Greeks in turn take the valley of the Nile for their own. One of their daughters, Cleopatra, floats past in her galley by night; and in the morning she extends her hospitality to the Roman, Cæsar or Antony. And while the Latins are the rulers of the land of Egypt, the Virgin and her Son with the patient ass that bears a precious burden, skirt the sandy waste, and go on their way to the Holy Land, leaving the Sphinx behind them as they journey forward in the green moonlight. After long centuries the Arabs break in with their brilliant bands of horsemen, and a little later the Crusaders come to give them battle. More long centuries elapse and suddenly Napoleon emerges at the head of the troops of the French Republic. Then we have the Egypt of to-day, with the British soldiers parading before the feet of the Sphinx; and finally the recumbent statue appears to us once more and for the last time, when the light of the sun is going out, and the world is emptied of its population again, and the ice is settling down on the Sphinx, alone amid freezing desolation. And this last vision is projected by the magic lantern, without the aid of any profile figures, since man has ceased to be.
Here we have a true epic poem, simple yet grandiose, and possible only to the improved shadow-pantomime of France at the end of the nineteenth century—even if this art is only a logical evolution from the gallanty-show of Séraphin. "This humble black profile," said Jules Lemaître, "which had been thought fit at best of a few comic effects to amuse little children only, has been diversified and colored; it has been made beautiful, serious, tragic; by the multiplication of the devices it has been rendered capable of giving us a powerful impression of collective life, and the artists who have developed it have known how to make it translate to our eyes the great spectacles of history and the sweeping movement of multitudes."
(1912.)
Reproduced by permission of E. Flammarion, ParisThe Sphinx IV: The British troops to-dayFrom a shadow picture by Amédée Vignola
XIXTHE PROBLEM OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM
THE PROBLEM OF DRAMATIC CRITICISMI
Itis now no longer in dispute that there has been in the past score or two of years a striking revival of the drama in the English language, and that there are to-day British and American playwrights who write plays which are worth while—plays which are both actable and readable—plays which often deserve and which sometimes even demand serious critical consideration. This revival has necessarily resulted in calling attention to the present condition of dramatic criticism in Great Britain and in the United States. In a period of dramatic productivity, dramatic criticism has an indisputable function and is charged with an undeniable duty, both to the aspiring play-makers and to the main body of the playgoing public. We cannot help asking ourselves whether our dramatic critics rightly apprehend their function and whether they properly discharge their duty; and to these pressing questions the most conflicting answers are returned.
Some there are who insist that it is hopeless to expect the desired outflowering of dramatic literature in our language to take place so long as our dramatic criticism is as inadequate, as incompetent, and as unsatisfactory as they declare it to be. Others there are who take a more tolerant view, holding the public itself to be at fault for the existing state of things, and who, therefore, believe that we are now getting dramatic criticism quite as good as we deserve. Few there are who venture to deny that there is room for improvement—altho no two of these agree in their suggestions for bringing about a bettering of present conditions. In the multitude of these counsellors there is darkness and confusion.
Perhaps there is a dim possibility of dissipating a little of this dark confusion by an analysis of the exact content, which we discover in the term "dramatic criticism," and then by a further inquiry as to whether our customary use of the term is not misleading. "Dramatic criticism" to most of us connotes the newspaper reviewing of the nightly spectacles in our theaters. Plainly this was the meaning of the term in the mind of Mr. Howells years ago, when he declared that "our dramatic criticism is probably the most remarkable apparatus of our civilization" and that it "surpasses that of other countries as much as our fire-department. A perfectly equipped engine stands in every newspaper office, with the steam always up, which can be manned in nine seconds and rushed to the first theater where there is the slightest danger of drama within five minutes; and the combined efforts of these tremendous machines can pour a concentrated deluge of cold water upon a play which will put out anything of the kind at once."
There is no denying that this use of the term by Mr. Howells is supported by custom. Yet it is distinctly unfortunate, for if the newspaper comment upon the novelties of the stage is to be accepted as "dramatic criticism," then what term have we left to describe the more piercing and the more comprehensive discussion of the first principles of the art of play-making which we find in Francisque Sarcey and in George Henry Lewes, not to go back to Lessing and to Aristotle? It is equally unfortunate that there is an equivalent inaccuracy in bestowing the title of "literary criticism" upon the newspaper comments upon the current books, for if this journalistic summarizing is to be accepted as "literary criticism," then what are we to call the exquisite evaluation of favorite authors which we find in Matthew Arnold and Sainte-Beuve?
Of course, it is always idle to protest against the popular use or misuse of words and terms and phrases. The people as a whole own the language, and have a right to make it over and to modify the original meaning of words. If popular usage chooses not to distinguish between two very different things, and to call both of them "dramatic criticism," there is no redress, and yet it is impossible to discuss the problem of dramatic criticism except by trying to separate the two things thus confounded. Therefore, for the purpose of this inquiry only, and without any hope of changing the accepted usage, I make bold to suggest that "play-reviewing" might be employed to describe the notices written in the office of a newspaper, notices necessarily prepared under pressure and under strict limitations of time and space.
These newspaper notices are sometimes careless, they are sometimes perfunctory, and they are sometimes cruel; and occasionally they are careful, conscientious, and clever, done with a dexterity worthy of high praise when we consider all the conditions under which it is displayed. But even at its best, play-reviewing cannot attain to the level of true dramatic criticism, more leisurely in its composition, larger in its scope, and more discriminating in its choice of topic. The play-reviewing of the daily journal is akin in aim to the book-reviewing, which has for its purpose the swift consideration of the volume in vogue at the moment. In our morning and evening papers the book-reviewing and the play-reviewing are both of them necessarily up-to-date, in fact, up-to-the-last-minute. To be contemporaneous, instantly and necessarily and inexorably, is their special quality and their immediate purpose; it is the reason for their existence and the excuse for their being.
II
Here it may be well to cite again the oft-quoted confession of the late Jules Lemaître, writer of volume after volume in which he discussed the leading men of letters of his own time and of his own country: "Criticism of our contemporaries is not criticism—it is conversation." Now, conversation may be a very good thing; indeed, when it is as clear and as sparkling as was Lemaître's, it is an excellent thing; yet he was right in admitting that it is not criticism, since it could not but lack the touchstone of time, the perspective of distance, the assured application of the eternal standards. And play-reviewing, like book-reviewing, cannot be anything but conversation about our contemporaries. It may descend to chaff-like chatter about the writers of the hour and to empty gossip about their sayings and doings; or it may have the sterner merits of brilliant conversation at its best. But it is not really criticism in the finer sense of the word; it cannot be; and one may go further and say that it ought not to be, since true criticism is more or less out of place in a newspaper—because the direct object of a newspaper is to present the news, with only the swiftest of commentaries thereon.
The final distinction between literature and journalism is to be sought in their diverging and irreconcilable objects. The desire of the former is for permanence, and the aim of the latter is the immediate impression. When literature triumphs it is for all time—more or less. When journalism most completely achieves its purpose its success is temporary, to be retained only by iteration and reiteration, since it has for its target the events of the fleeting moment. If we admit this distinction between journalism and literature, we have no difficulty in discovering journalism in many places other than the daily and weekly papers; very properly it fills the most of the space in the monthly magazines, and even in the quarterly reviews; and it abounds in our book-stores, since only a small proportion of the volumes which pour from the press every year possess the combined substance and style, the solidity of matter and the delightfulness of manner which lift mere writing up to the loftier level of literature.
On the other hand, we may find literature of inexpugnable quality, not only in the magazines, but also now and again in the newspapers. Drake's 'American Flag' and Kipling's 'Recessional' appeared in daily journals, and so did the literary criticism of Sainte-Beuve and the dramatic criticism of Lessing and of Lemaître. But these were but happy accidents, and the great newspaper editor has rarely striven to make his journal a persistent vehicle for the publication of literature. He feels that this is foreign to his main purpose, and he is content when his editorial articles, and his news stories are vigorous and picturesque—clean, clear, and cogent in their English. He knows, better than any one else, that it is not by its external literary merits that newspaper-writing is to be judged. What he wants above all else is the news, all the news, and nothing but the news—accompanied, of course, by the obligatory comment this news may deserve. He needs editorial writers, reporters, and correspondents who are newspaper men, and not men of letters, except in so far as these men of letters may have accepted the special conditions of newspaper work.
Now, criticism, whether literary or dramatic, is a department of literature, dealing with the permanent, and having little to do with the temporary. It demands qualifications very rarely united—insight, equipment, disinterestedness, and sympathy. So far from being easy, criticism is quite as difficult as creation—more difficult, indeed, if we may judge by its greater rarity. In a superbly creative period there are sometimes three or four distinguished poets, friendly rivals, almost contemporaneous; and even at such a time there is rarely more than one critic worthy to be companioned with them. Æschylus and Sophocles and Euripides followed one after the other; and in time the sole Aristotle came forward as their critic. Corneille and Molière and Racine labored side by side, and only Boileau was competent to interpret and to encourage them.
When it attains to the serene plane of Aristotle and Boileau, of Lessing and Sainte-Beuve, criticism is actually creation. "The critical faculty as applied to the masterpieces of literature, and still more the critical faculty as applied to the art of literature itself, is akin to the creative faculty of the artist," so Professor Mackail has told us. "It does not deal with letters as something detached from life, but as the form or substance in which life is intelligibly presented. Its interpretation is also creation." But the criticism of dramatic literature which is also creation, is possible only when the critical faculty is applied to the masterpieces of dramatic literature; and nobody knows better than the play-reviewer that masterpieces of dramatic literature do not present themselves frequently and that they cannot be acclaimed as masterpieces until they have stood the test of time. And this is why a critic-creator would be a little out of place on the staff of a newspaper, daily or weekly, whether he was assigned to deal with the drama or with literature at large.
III
The necessary task of the book-reviewer or of the play-reviewer, is not criticism of the creative kind, since for that he is always likely to lack material. His task is humbler even if it is honorable; it is to report upon the novelties of the day, and to inform the readers of the newspaper as to the nature and the merits of these novelties. His work is essentially reporting, even if it is reporting of a special kind, calling for special qualifications. The connection of the drama with the show business is intimate, and it always has been. In the long history of the theater there is no period without its successful pieces, the appeal of which was mainly sensuous—to the eye and to the ear, rather than to the emotions and to the intellect. While the drama is an art, and perhaps the loftiest of the arts, the show business is a trade. This is no new thing—altho ignorant idealists often declare it so to be, and altho it may make itself a little more obvious at one time than at another. What confronts us is the condition of things as they are, not the theory of things as they might be.
There would be occupation for a dramatic critic, who was also a creator, only if our theaters were presenting in rapid succession a sequence of masterpieces, tragedies of austere power, comedies of searching satire, social dramas of piercing suggestion. But this is not the case now here in the United States in the twentieth century; and it never has been the case anywhere or anywhen, not even in Weimar when Goethe dominated the ducal theater. In our playhouses we are proffered our choice of Shakspere and Ibsen, Pinero and Hauptmann, Henry Arthur Jones and Augustus Thomas, Barrie and Gillette, Sardou and George M. Cohan; and at the same time we are invited to choose between 'Trilby' and the 'Celebrated Case,' melodramas and farces, summer song-shows and ultra-contemporary reviews, alleged comic operas and terpsichorean spectacles. Most of these latter exhibitions do not demand or deserve criticism of any kind; but they need to be reported upon like any other item in the news of the day.
If this is the case, it might as well be recognized frankly. There is always advantage in seeing things as they are, in fronting the facts and in looking them squarely in the face. Sooner or later some one of those who are in charge of our metropolitan newspapers will perceive the possibility of a change of method. He will charge one of his staff with the supervision of the theatrical news, the announcements of new plays, and the personal gossip about the players; and he will authorize this editor to send competent reporters to all first performances, directed to report upon them as they would report upon any other event of immediate interest. He would warn these reporters that they were strictly to consider themselves as reporters, and that they were, therefore, to refrain from explicit criticism. He would so select his men that a melodrama should be dealt with by a reporter who liked a good melodrama, and that a summer song-show should be described by a reporter who could find pleasure in inoffensive and amusing spectacle. If this policy should be adopted, and announced clearly and emphatically, probably most of the occasions for quarrel between managers and editors would disappear; and the immense majority of the readers of the daily paper would be supplied with exactly the information they would prefer.
Then, for the benefit of the smaller number who are really interested in the drama as a serious art, the editor-in-chief might avail himself of the fact that the Sunday issue, while it is still a newspaper containing the news of the preceding twenty-four hours, is also a magazine, to be read in more leisurely fashion, and therefore at liberty to treat timely topics with a larger freedom. Here space could be found for genuine dramatic criticism by the most competent expert available. This dramatic critic should have nothing whatever to do with the news of the theaters, or with the first-night play-reviewing. He should not be tired and bored by having to go to the theater half a dozen times a week, and by being forced to analyze plays which do not reward analysis. He would be expected to select out of the current performances that one which promised to be most worthy of careful consideration, and he would feel himself free to discuss this at such length as it might seem to him to deserve. To him also should be intrusted the more significant of the new books upon the history of the theater, and upon the art of the drama. In the summer (and also whenever at any other season there might be a dearth of inspiring topics), this dramatic critic would not be expected to contribute, since he should never be called upon to make bricks without straw.
Even in New York this method is not as new as it may seem, and more than one metropolitan daily has approximated to it, altho no one of them has completely detached the dramatic critic from the play-reviewer and from the supervisor of theatrical gossip. And it has long been adopted in certain of the Paris newspapers. In theTemps, for example, when Sarcey was its dramatic critic, there was a daily column of theatrical announcements and of brief reports upon first-night performances; and with this department of the news of the theaters Sarcey had nothing to do, and for it he had no responsibility. Then in the ample space specially reserved for him in the issue of every Sunday afternoon, he dealt with the dramatic themes that seemed to him worth while. If a play appeared to demand prolonged study, he might go to see it two, or even three times, before he undertook to formulate his opinion; and on occasion he would carry over his detailed discussion of a very important drama into the article of the following Sunday. On the other hand, if no recent play seemed to him to deserve his continued attention, he would devote himself to one of the recent books about the theater or to a detailed discussion of the proper interpretation of one of the classics of the French drama kept constantly in the repertory of the Comédie-Française.
IV
The adoption of this method would relieve the dramatic critic from one of his existing disadvantages; he would be released from criticising the pieces which are beneath criticism. The literary critic, and even the ordinary book-reviewer, never spends his time in considering dime novels—whereas the dramatic critic is now called upon to waste many evenings in beholding a play which is only the theatrical equivalent of a dime novel. The immediate result of this futile and fatiguing expenditure of energy is likely to be discouraging and even enervating. If the dramatic critic could be totally relieved from all contact with the show business when the show business has only a casual connection with the drama, it would tend to keep him fit for his essential task. Under the present conditions it is no wonder that the theatrical reviewer wearies of his task and loses the gusto and the zest without which all work tends to degenerate into the perfunctory and the mechanical.
We need not fear that the first-night reporting would be ill done if competent reporters were instructed that they were not to consider themselves as critics, and that it was their sole duty to report, as they would report anything else, conscientiously and accurately. The difficulty would not be in finding reporters able to discharge this duty, it would be in the discovery of dramatic critics possessing the fourfold qualifications of insight, equipment, disinterestedness, and sympathy, which every critic must be endowed with whatever the art he undertakes to analyze. And the difficulty would be increased by the fact that the dramatic critic needs an understanding of three different arts, the art of acting, the art of literature, and the art of the drama—of play-making as distinct from literature.
It would be idle to hope that even if this method were adopted we should soon be able to develop in the United States and in Great Britain a group of dramatic critics of the capacity and the quality of Lessing and Sarcey, of George Henry Lewes and William Archer. Yet it is solely by the adoption of this method that we can hope to provide the opportunity for the appearance of the true dramatic critic, who can fit himself for his finer work only by being set free from the necessity of doing work quite unworthy of him, altho necessary to the newspaper itself. And the development of a group of dramatic critics of a higher type than can be found to-day—except possibly in a scant half-dozen dailies and weeklies and monthlies—is a condition precedent to the development of our drama. Of course, these dramatic critics, whatever their endowment, could give little help directly to the dramatic authors, since it is a mistake to suppose that the critic is capable of counselling the author, or that he is charged with any such duty. Where the critic can help is by disseminating knowledge about the dramatic art, and by raising the standard of appreciation in the public at large—that public which even the mightiest dramatist has to please or else to fail of his purpose.
(1915.)