Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory

Arthur Symons

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• Publié par: nivir
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 98
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Plays, Acting and Music, by Arthur Symons This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Plays, Acting and Music A Book Of Theory Author: Arthur Symons Release Date: November 2, 2004 [EBook #13928] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLAYS, ACTING AND MUSIC *** Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Leah Moser and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team. [i] PLAYS ACTING AND MUSIC A BOOK OF THEORY BY ARTHUR SYMONS LONDON CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD 1909 [ii] [iii] [iv] [v] [vi] To Maurice Maeterlinck in friendship and admiration [vii] PREFACE When this book was first published it contained a large amount of material which is now taken out of it; additions have been made, besides many corrections and changes; and the whole form of the book has been remodelled. It is now more what it ought to have been from the first; what I saw, from the moment of its publication, that it ought to have been: a book of theory. The rather formal announcement of my intentions which I made in my preface is reprinted here, because, at all events, the programme was carried out. This book, I said then, is intended to form part of a series, on which I have been engaged for many years. I am gradually working my way towards the concrete expression of a theory, or system of æsthetics, of all the arts. [viii] In my book on "The Symbolist Movement in Literature" I made a first attempt to deal in this way with literature; other volumes, now in preparation, are to follow. The present volume deals mainly with the stage, and, secondarily, with music; it is to be followed by a volume called "Studies in Seven Arts," in which music will be dealt with in greater detail, side by side with painting, sculpture, architecture, handicraft, dancing, and the various arts of the stage. And, as life too is a form of art, and the visible world the chief storehouse of beauty, I try to indulge my curiosity by the study of places and of people. A book on "Cities" is now in the press, and a book of "imaginary portraits" is to follow, under the title of "Spiritual Adventures." Side by side with these studies in the arts I have my own art, that of verse, which is, after all, my chief concern. In all my critical and theoretical writing I wish to be as little abstract as possible, and to study first principles, not so much as they exist in the brain of the theorist, but as they may be discovered, alive and in effective action, in every achieved form of art. I do not understand the limitation by which so many writers on æsthetics choose to confine themselves to the study of artistic principles as they are seen in this or that separate form of art. Each art has its own laws, its own capacities, its own limits; these it is the business of the critic jealously to distinguish. Yet in the study of art as art, it should be his endeavour to master the universal science of beauty. 1903, 1907. [x] [ix] CONTENTS [xi] INTRODUCTION An Apology for Puppets 3 PLAYS AND ACTING Nietzsche on Tragedy Sarah Bernhardt Coquelin and Molière Réjane Yvette Guilbert Sir Henry Irving Duse in Some of Her Parts Annotations M. Capus in England A Double Enigma DRAMA Professional and Unprofessional Tolstoi and Others Some Problem Plays "Monna Vanna" The Question of Censorship A Play and the Public The Test of the Actor The Price of Realism On Crossing Stage to Right The Speaking of Verse Great Acting in English A Theory of the Stage The Sicilian Actors MUSIC On Writing about Music Technique and the Artist Pachmann and the Piano Paderewski A Reflection at a Dolmetsch Concert The Dramatisation of Song The Meiningen Orchestra Mozart in the Mirabell-Garten Notes on Wagner at Bayreuth Conclusion: A Paradox on Art [1] 11 17 29 37 42 52 60 77 93 100 [xii] 109 115 124 137 143 148 152 162 167 173 182 200 213 229 232 237 258 268 277 284 290 297 315 INTRODUCTION [3] [2] AN APOLOGY FOR PUPPETS After seeing a ballet, a farce, and the fragment of an opera performed by the marionettes at the Costanzi Theatre in Rome, I am inclined to ask myself why we require the intervention of any less perfect medium between the meaning of a piece, as the author conceived it, and that other meaning which it derives from our reception of it. The living actor, even when he condescends to subordinate himself to the requirements of pantomime, has always what he is proud to call his temperament; in other words, so much personal caprice, which for the most part means wilful misunderstanding; and in seeing his acting you have to consider this intrusive little personality of his as well as the author's. The marionette may be relied upon. He will respond to an indication without reserve or revolt; an error on his part (we are all human) will certainly be the fault of the author; he can be trained to perfection. As he is painted, so will he smile; as the wires lift or lower his hands, so will his gestures be; and he will dance when his legs are set in motion. Seen at a distance, the puppets cease to be an amusing piece of mechanism, imitating real people; there is no difference. I protest that the Knight who came in with his plumed hat, his shining sword, and flung back his long cloak with so fine a sweep of the arm, was exactly the same to me as if he had been a living actor, dressed in the same clothes, and imitating the gesture of a knight; and that the contrast of what was real, as we say, under the fiction appears to me less ironical in the former than in the latter. We have to allow, you will admit, at least as much to the beneficent heightening of travesty, if we have ever seen the living actor in the morning, not yet shaved, standing at the bar, his hat on one side, his mouth spreading in that abandonment to laughter which has become from the necessity of his profession, a natural trick; oh, much more, I think, than if we merely come upon an always decorative, never an obtrusive, costumed figure, leaning against the wall, nonchalantly enough, in a corner of the coulisses. To sharpen our