But those are only details, which the chief of the theatre attends to between snatches of conversation, never dropping for a moment his air, a little that of a philosopher, a little that of a Beau Nash. When, however, in the great scene where the images of the false gods are torn down, the mob on the stage tears with but little noise and no rage, Sir Herbert Tree is moved out of himself. In a moment he is on the stage with the command, "You must go mad!" and giving a workmanlike imitation of what he wants. The "supers" accordingly go mad and all is peace again, and there is assurance that the big scene will "go" as it should.
A curious study it was—the finishing touches being put on to a great London production. The final result must be such art as imitates Nature and yet creates illusion. Every detail has to be most carefully considered and revised again and again to fit harmoniously in with the whole scheme. The colour of a dress, the tint of a face, the shape of an eye, the placing of a flower or an ornament is changed and changed again until there is the harmony which apes perfection. Above all, the lights must be schemed—a little more purple, or green, or grey, or rose-red, or yellow; a softening here, a heightening there. A thousand-and-one combinations of light are tested until the right one is hit upon to suggest mystery, joy, sorrow, dawn, evening, superstition, cruelty, as the case may be. Much of the story the audience will read so clearly on the stage on the first night is written by the lights. The greatest trouble of the producer has been to get those lights right, not only for each scene, but for each minute of the scene, for with every phase of the play the lights must change.
It seems a monstrous task to the uninitiated. But during it all the producer at work is, as a rule (there are exceptional moments when the "supers" must go mad), quiet, chatty, willing and able to show the other side of his personality as a philosophical critic of the drama, its aims, its ethics.
"Yes, I work in a large frame.... Problem plays would not suit my canvas. (More purple now in that evening sky.) The object of the drama? Of course, to be amusing and to make people happy. That does not exclude tragedy. There is pleasure in tragedy, if it is lofty and not repulsive. We arrive at the same physical result through weeping and through laughing. (Those hands must all be held in the same way in the invocation. Remember it is a ritual!) Torture scenes on the stage? No, not if they are repulsive. But there are ways and ways. You can put blood trickling down the steps of a scene to suggest tragedy, and you can put blood trickling down the steps so as to suggest nausea. That second thing must not be. There must be nothing repulsive. (Give more of a pause there. And don't go near her. She must hold the stage for fifteen seconds.)
"Yes, I think the drama is growing in influence in England. We have a stronger drama than a decade ago. To-day the theatre is stronger in England than in any other part of the world. I say it deliberately. Stronger than in France, stronger than in America. And its influence grows. It is partly due, I think, to the decline of dogma. (Please, please, that music a little softer; but quicker too, brighter!) The stage's influence grows as dogma declines. What do I mean by dogma? Well, faith of the open-your-mouth-and-shut-your-eyes brand. But the stage must not have a pose nor a preach. We must be unconsciously ethical and proud of our craft. There's not enough pride in craftsmanship these days, not enough of the artist's spirit either in the artisan or in the artiste.
"Above all, if we are to be artistes we must be tolerant."
Then the time had come for Sir Herbert Tree to dress as the High Priest of Egypt. The two concluding acts of False Gods are coming, and in those two acts Sir Herbert Tree has to take part. The rehearsal afterwards misses the stimulus of his running comment and his suave sagacities. But it is still absorbingly interesting. Five minutes of high, emotional tragedy are sandwiched between discussions of lights, of dresses, of positions. When anything is not quite right the play is stopped, and voices fall from intensity to commonplace. Midnight approaches. Here and there a super, who has not quite enough of the artist's spirit to be able to take a pride and joy in doing his super's service of standing by and waiting, yawns. But the producer hammers and hammers away like a metal-worker fashioning a beautiful gate. With infinite multiplication of touches the production begins to take its shape.
At 1 a.m. the rehearsal is over. "Things are fairly satisfactory." It has lasted since 5 p.m. For three more days and nights the same task will be gone through, so that the "first night" may be perfect and the first-night audience may have no hint of the labour that perfection has cost.
It is all very fine; in a good producer's hands very artistic. But is it "dramatic art" in the full sense of the word? The question arises more insistently when the "production" is not that of a philosophical treatise in the form of a drama, which must be freely and splendidly illustrated if it is to "sell" at all, but of a Shakespeare play. Sir Herbert Tree is a great producer of Shakespeare; and he illustrates dramas of noble passion and lofty thought with the same elaborate care as he lavishes on a play like False Gods, or some "patriotic spectacle" of snippets and fustian.
There is another school of "producers" in London, aiming at strangeness, perhaps a little more than at simplicity. It is, in a sense, a school of revolt against elaborate production. I do not think that either school is destined to save or to condemn dramatic art.