At the heart of dramatic presentation stands the actor, imitating a person in a fictional situation in such a way as to hold the continuous attention of the audience in the unfolding circumstances. This holding of attention is dramatic illusion. Whether that illusion is an imitation of contemporary life, historical life, or mythical life, the action and characters must achieve a level of reality sufficient to involve us. For the children who say, “I believe in fairies,” Tinkerbell has become real. The means may be conventional and symbolic or contextual and descriptive; the effect must be an “illusion of reality.” Ultimately, we must reconstruct what that “illusion” signified and how it was achieved in order to visualize the acting of a period.
The understanding that the actor has with the audience about the relation of dramatic experience to life will determine the significance of the illusion. The common understanding that they, actor and audience, have about the characters and stories will affect the means at the actor’s disposal for creating the illusion. Consider a simple stage movement. An actor turns his back on the audience. In the context of the Théâtre-Libre or the Moscow Art Theatre this movement emphasizes the convention of the fourth wall and the illusion of the unpresent audience. The same movement employed in Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme is a deliberate artifice introduced for comic effect. Not the fixed forms, but their function and context shape the illusion of reality. Not the intent, but the created image, determines the significance of that illusion. The aim may be one, but the manifestations are many.
When an illusion of reality becomes differentiated sharply, it eventuates in a style. Not being an arithmetic total of absolute qualities, style does not remain constant. It is a dynamic interplay of many impulses brought to a point of crystallization by the creative genius of the actor. Such a complex, if distinctive and appealing enough, itself becomes an impulse for further creative activity. What we often term “formal acting” is a previous means of creating illusion which has coalesced into a fixed form imitable by later generations. Some of the impulses that led the commedia dell’arte to create a Harlequin, a Franca Trippa, and a Dottore were “realistic”; that is, the activities of Italian daily life helped to refine the stage figure. Gradually the types became stock and finally ossified so that they responded less to the impulses of contemporary life and more to the tradition from which they were derived. Perfection and variation of old roles rather than the invention of new devices and characteristics became the custom. By the time these figures came to the hand of Marivaux they had, through the loss of much of their original force, become somewhat precious and self-conscious. Illusion of reality was still achieved, but it was a new kind of illusion, less robust, more sophisticated, less aware of the cry of the street, more attuned to the repartee of the drawing room. Then the acting became “formal,” that is, traditional, conventional, “objective.” But from the germination of the improvised drama to the “decadence” of Marivaux, commedia acting went through several styles. To visualize the style of any single period we have to study a cross section of its theatrical and social conditions.
Of these conditions there are five which provide the principal clues to an understanding of the Globe acting style. First, there are general intellectual tendencies reflected in the theory and practice of Elizabethan rhetoric. Next, there is the theatrical tradition handed down to the Lord Chamberlain’s men. Thirdly, and continuing the foregoing material, there are the playing conditions under which the company operated. Fourthly, there is the conception of human character and behavior held by society. Lastly, and perhaps most important, there are the playing materials themselves, the characters and actions with which the actors were provided. Cumulatively, the study of these conditions supplies an understanding of the means at the Globe actors’ disposal for creating their “illusion of reality” and, through it, offers an insight into the significance of that illusion.
I. THE RELATION OF TUDOR RHETORIC TO ELIZABETHAN ACTING
Rhetoric played a vital role in the education and life of the Elizabethan man. From its study he could learn all that was known of the art and techniques of oral and written communication. Scholars of the school of formal acting have insisted that seventeenth century works on rhetorical delivery reflect an image of Elizabethan acting. Usually the actor is considered the transmitter, the rhetorician the receiver of influence. This contention has been disputed, as I have pointed out. For the moment, however, let us suppose that there was some connection between oratory and acting. What then does rhetoric teach us of Elizabethan acting? To answer this question Bertram Joseph relies principally upon Bulwer’s double study Chirologia and Chironomia (1644), a late work. But, since we have been considering acting as a dynamic art, it would be well to examine the evidence of sixteenth and early seventeenth century manuals of rhetoric.
Compassed under the heading of rhetoric in the sixteenth century were three of the five parts of classical rhetoric. Inventio and dispositio had been transferred to logic, particularly in the Ramist scheme. Elocutio, memoria, and pronuntiatio remained. However, memoria or the art of memory was generally, though not entirely, ignored. Of the two remaining parts that made up sixteenth century rhetoric, elocutio, or the art of eloquence, and pronuntiatio, or the art of speech and gesture, the former received the almost undivided attention of Elizabethan writers.
Before 1610 only Thomas Wilson in The Art of Rhetorique (1553) and Abraham Fraunce in The Arcadian Rhetorike (1588) treat the art of pronunciation separately. The other writers,[8] except for occasionally defining the term or citing an example, or describing the qualities of a good voice, omit the subject entirely. Even Wilson and Fraunce treat it in summary fashion.
Wilson defines the two parts of the subject, voice and gesture. A praiseworthy voice is “audible, strong, and easie, & apte to order as we liste.” Before an audience orators should start speaking softly, “use meete pausying, and being somewhat heated, rise with their voice, as the tyme & cause shal best require” (Sig. Gg1r). For those with poor voices, attention to diet, practice in singing, and imitation of good speakers are the means of improvement. Gesture, which is a “comely moderacion of the countenaunce, and al other partes of mans body,” should agree with the voice. Altogether, the orator should be cheerful, poised, and moderate in deportment (Sig. Gg2r).
The entire section sets up standards for good pronunciation, but it does not specifically show how they are met. The standards place emphasis on comeliness and grace, on a harmony of speech, gesture, and matter. The actual manner of delivery shall be “as the tyme & cause shal best require.”