Part 4 (2/2)

Auberon. Ah, when the French give their mind to that--!

Amicia. Nevertheless they struck me as recruits to an interesting cause, which as yet (the house was so empty) could confer neither money nor glory. They had the air, poor things, of working for love.

Auberon. For love of what?

Amicia. Of the whole little enterprise--the idea of the Theatre Libre.

Florentia. Gracious, what you see in things! Don't you suppose they were paid?

Amicia. I know nothing about it. I liked their shabbiness--they had only what was indispensable in the way of dress and scenery. That often pleases me: the imagination, in certain cases, is more finely persuaded by the little than by the much.

Dorriforth. I see what Amicia means.

Florentia. I'll warrant you do, and a great deal more besides.

Dorriforth. When the appointments are meagre and sketchy the responsibility that rests upon the actors becomes a still more serious thing, and the spectator's observation of the way they rise to it a pleasure more intense. The face and the voice are more to the purpose than acres of painted canvas, and a touching intonation, a vivid gesture or two, than an army of supernumeraries.

Auberon. Why not have everything--the face, the voice, the touching intonations, the vivid gestures, the acres of painted canvas, _and_ the army of supernumeraries? Why not use bravely and intelligently every resource of which the stage disposes? What else was Richard Wagner's great theory, in producing his operas at Bayreuth?

Dorriforth. Why not, indeed? That would be the ideal. To have the picture complete at the same time the figures do their part in producing the particular illusion required--what a perfection and what a joy! I know no answer to that save the aggressive, objectionable fact. Simply look at the stage of to-day and observe that these two branches of the matter never do happen to go together. There is evidently a corrosive principle in the large command of machinery and decorations--a germ of perversion and corruption. It gets the upperhand--it becomes the master. It is so much less easy to get good actors than good scenery and to represent a situation by the delicacy of personal art than by ”building it in” and having everything real. Surely there is no reality worth a farthing, on the stage, but what the actor gives, and only when he has learned his business up to the hilt need he concern himself with his material accessories. He hasn't a decent respect for his art unless he be ready to render his part as if the whole illusion depended on that alone and the accessories didn't exist. The acting is everything or it's nothing. It ceases to be everything as soon as something else becomes very important. This is the case, to-day, on the London stage: something else is very important. The public have been taught to consider it so: the clever machinery has ended by operating as a bribe and a blind.

Their sense of the rest of the matter has gone to the dogs, as you may perceive when you hear a couple of occupants of the stalls talking, in a tone that excites your curiosity, about a performance that's ”splendid.”

Amicia. Do you ever hear the occupants of the stalls talking? Never, in the _entr'actes_, have I detected, on their lips, a criticism or a comment.

Dorriforth. Oh, they say ”splendid”--distinctly! But a question or two reveals that their reference is vague: they don't themselves know whether they mean the art of the actor or that of the stage-carpenter.

Auberon. Isn't that confusion a high result of taste? Isn't it what's called a feeling for the _ensemble?_ The artistic effect, as a whole, is so welded together that you can't pick out the parts.

Dorriforth. Precisely; that's what it is in the best cases, and some examples are wonderfully clever.

Florentia. Then what fault do you find? Dorriforth. Simply this--that the whole is a pictorial whole, not a dramatic one. There is something indeed that you can't pick out, for the very good reason that--in any serious sense of the word--it isn't there.

Florentia. The public has taste, then, if it recognizes and delights in a fine picture.

Dorriforth. I never said it hadn't, so far as that goes. The public likes to be amused, and small blame to it. It isn't very particular about the means, but it has rather a preference for amus.e.m.e.nts that I believes to be ”improving,” other things being equal. I don't think it's either very intelligent or at all opinionated, the dear old public it takes humbly enough what is given it and it doesn't cry for the moon. It has an idea that fine scenery is an appeal to its n.o.bler part, and that it shows a nice critical sense in preferring it to poor. That's a real intellectual flight, for the public.

Auberon. Very well, its preference is right, and why isn't that a perfectly legitimate state of things?

Dorriforth. Why isn't it? It distinctly _is!_ Good scenery and poor acting are better than poor scenery with the same sauce. Only it becomes then another matter: we are no longer talking about the drama.

Auberon. Very likely that's the future of the drama, in London--an immense elaboration of the picture.

Dorriforth. My dear fellow, you take the words out of my mouth.

An immense elaboration of the picture and an immense sacrifice of everything else: it would take very little more to persuade me that that will be the only formula for our children. It's all right, when once we have buried our dead. I have no doubt that the scenic part of the art, remarkable as some of its achievements already appear to us, is only in its infancy, and that we are destined to see wonders done that we now but faintly conceive. The probable extension of the mechanical arts is infinite. ”Built in,” forsooth! We shall see castles and cities and mountains and rivers built in. Everything points that way; especially the const.i.tution of the contemporary mult.i.tude. It is huge and good-natured and common. It likes big, unmistakable, knock-down effects; it likes to get its money back in palpable, computable change. It's in a tremendous hurry, squeezed together, with a sort of generalized gape, and the last thing it expects of you is that you will spin things fine.

You can't portray a character, alas, or even, vividly, any sort of human figure, unless, in some degree, you do that. Therefore the theatre, inevitably accommodating itself, will be at last a landscape without figures. I mean, of course, without figures that count. There will be little ill.u.s.trations of costume stuck about--dressed manikins; but they'll have nothing to say: they won't even go through the form of speech.

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