Certainly some years ago Mr Gordon Craig experimentally, in a curious piece called Sword or Song, presented at the Shaftesbury, gave suggestions in the supernatural that deserved attention, and in a broad way showed the possibility of arriving at striking stage effects by suggestion rather than actual depiction. It is, indeed, the fault of our play-mounters that they are too precise about dotting "i's" and crossing "t's," and like the pet photographers of amateurs they show too much detail.
Years ago, on the first night of Hansel und Gretel at Daly's—what a delightful first night!—for a while the effect of the troops of angels on the stairs was quite charming—for a while—but, alas! the stage grew lighter, gauzes were raised, and then we saw plainly the young women of the chorus, with big wings, and could identify face after face, recollecting this young lady as formerly a peasant boy in one comic opera, and that as a village maiden in another, and so on. What a "give away," to use a common effective phrase!
The last prodigious production of Faust? Well, what thinking person can swallow the devil and the electric sparks from the sword, the wine drawn from the table, the comicalities of the witches' kitchen, or be moved by the Brocken scenes? It is very well to say that Goethe intended and expected his drama to be put on the stage, though this can hardly apply to the second part. Even if he did he cannot have expected such material matters to be treated as of serious importance—of such importance that, as represented, his great drama seems chiefly contrived to lead up to spectacular effects, plus a seduction story occasionally hurt by needlessly plain phrases.
It may be said that this is the jam used to induce us to swallow the powder; but really there is so much jam and so little powder that the benefit of the dose is doubtful. To be just to Sir Herbert Tree—his Faust sinned no more in the matter than did the Lyceum setting; perhaps even a little less. Certainly there is rather more Goethe in the matter than Wills introduced.
It may be said that Shakespeare's plays were intended for the stage, and that he introduced "ghosts," as in Hamlet, Macbeth and Richard III.; possibly he believed in them. Yet, so far as one can judge from such knowledge as we have of the stage as he knew it and its resources, the treatment of his ghosts must have been really quite conventional and scenically unimpressive. There was some gain in this, for the more directly the ghost business is effective the more the attention of the audience is drawn to it; though the interest of the scene is not in the ghost but the effect it produces on the other characters; the case is one that may be summed up in the phrase quoted for us by Bacon—the better the worse.
[CHAPTER V ]
PLAYS OF PARTICULAR TYPES
[Unsentimental Drama ]
It was suggested long ago that all the conceivable tunes would soon have been written, and possibly, if for "conceivable" one substitutes the word "obvious," there was truth in the suggestion. On the other hand experience breeds in us the belief that composers of genius could go on inventing novel melodies for centuries to come. Things have been happening lately, and threaten soon to occur again, which appear to show that our popular dramatists imagine that there are no new plots or subjects open to them. It is said that one playwright is busily engaged upon a novel version of La Dame aux Camellias which is to be distinguished from Dumas' novel and drama by the fact that the heroine is chaste and does nothing worse than "a bit of flirting." It is to be hoped that Dumas will never hear of this astounding impudent perversion of his play. Perhaps ere now he has become hardened by the fact that the Duse has represented Marguerite as a creature of exquisite purity.
Moreover, it is alleged that somebody is going to write another version of Faust—presumably the pantomime edition by Wills is copyright. In addition, it appears that Mr Stephen Phillips has concocted an adaptation of The Bride of Lammermoor in which the story and characters are vastly improved. Alas, poor Scott! On top of all this we hear of countless adaptations on the market, so that the ignorant wonder whether our dramatists are played out.