PLAYS WITHIN PLAYS
Representative arts will represent everything they can, including themselves. The theatre likes to show an image of its own life, life behind the scenes, actors acting on the stage, audiences listening, applauding, or interrupting in front. Hence the plays within plays which Shakespeare found so alluring. It was a comparatively simple problem of technique in his time because of the simplicity of the “platform” stage and of the Elizabethan playhouse.
A standing audience, as his for the most part was, is obviously easier to represent than a seated audience; it is just a crowd of “citizens” like any other stage crowd. The only important question for the stage-manager was the relative position of the mimic players and the mimic public. Clearly your mimic players must be seen by the real public, or what becomes of your play within a play? The position of your mimic public must have been more or less dependent on their importance in the action. But, I take it, the Elizabethan arrangement, in any case, must have been of a pre-Raphaelite symmetry. I presume the play scene inHamletmust have takenplace in the lower part of the permanent erection at the back of the stage and that the mimic public was ranged down each side of the stage. The old arrangement has remained essentially unaltered. The mimic players are generally shown in some raised, arcaded terrace at the back of the stage; the King and Queen face Hamlet and Ophelia (in profile with respect to the real public) in front. It would obviously never do to let Hamlet and the King face the performers in the rear and so turn their backs on the real public, for the whole point of the scene is the effect of the mimic play on the King and on Hamlet watching the King. But I do not, for my part, see why more might not be made out of this “psychologic” effect by an arrangement which placed the mimic players nearer the front of the actual stage, on one side, so that the King might be turned full-face towards us as he watched them. If the King were played by an actor of the first importance (which he seldom or never is), with a gift of facial play, we may be sure that this would be done.
There is a somewhat similar scene in the first act ofCyrano de Bergerac. The chief centre of attraction here is not the mimic play itself, but the behaviour of the audience, disturbed by Cyrano’s interruption of the players. That is why I think that Coquelin’s arrangement with the players on one side and the audience in profile was better than Mr. Loraine’s, with the players in the rear and the mimic audience turning its back to the real one. But it is apoint of comparative insignificance. As it was the old playhouse and the old standing audience that was being represented, the stage-management was essentially as simple as that of the play-scene inHamlet.
So soon, however, as you come to represent the very different modern “picture” stage and the modern seated audience you see at once that the problem becomes immensely more difficult. Accordingly you find a revolution in the method of treating a play within a play. I do not know whether the Guitrys invented it or Reinhardt or whoever, but certainly the most conspicuous illustration we have had of it has been presented by the Guitrys. It is something much more than a mechanical change; it is psychological as well. The mimic stage, the stage of the play within the play, now occupies the whole of the actual stage, and the mimic audience is identified with the real audience.
We saw this startling innovation first inPasteur. Pasteur is supposed to be addressing a meeting of the French Academy of Medicine. His rostrum is at the footlights, and he addressesus, the real audience.Wehave to suppose ourselves the Academy of Medicine. To help us to this illusion one or two actors are scattered about the house, who interrupt, argue with Pasteur, and are personally answered by him. We find ourselves, in fact, at once listening to a debate, as real audience, and, in the thick of it, taking part in it, as supposed audience.There is a French proverb which says you cannot both join in a procession and look out of the window; but this experience upsets it. The result is a curious blend of sensations; you feel yourself both spectator and actor,ata play andina play. But there is no doubt that the effect is much more vivid and exciting than that which would have attended the mere spectacle of Pasteur addressing a crowd upon the stage itself. You have, by the way, exactly the same effect in Mr. Galsworthy’sSkin Game, where an auctioneer addresses us, the public, who are supposed to represent the competing purchasers.
A still more striking instance has been seen inL’Illusioniste. Here the first act shows the stage of a music-hall and presents three actual “turns.” We, the actual audience, become the music-hall audience, and again there are actors scattered among us to help the illusion. They are addressed by the conjurer and answer him; a lady in a box throws him ardent glances which are returned with interest. But one of the “turns,” an act by acrobatic clowns, has absolutely nothing to do with the play; it is there purely for its own interest, a substantive performance. This shows, what we knew before, that revolutions run to excess. We are so engrossed by the clowns that we are tempted to forget what we are there for, to see a play. Anyhow, it is a most amusing innovation, this conversion of the actual stage into an imaginary stage within the play, and of the actual public into an imaginary public takingpart in the play. It is a real enrichment of stage resources.
But there are obvious dangers. One I have just pointed out, the danger of introducing irrelevancies for their own intrinsic interest, which tend to impair the artistic unity of the play. Another is the danger of applying this method to cases (as inHamletandCyrano) where the real centre of interest is not the mimic play but the mimic audience. Imagine the whole stage given up to theMouse Trap, with the front row of stalls occupied by the courtiers, and Hamlet and Ophelia in one box watching the King and Gertrude in the opposite box! That is an extreme instance, which traditional respect for Shakespeare will probably save us from; but some ambitious producer will probably try this game with some modern play, and then I predict disaster.