It is of course possible for the technically informed reader to imagine the wonderful and stirring scenes which form part of the play without visualizing them. It is, I contend, better to reserve Shakespeare for the study than to see him presented half-heartedly.
The merely archaic presentation of the play can be of interest only to those epicures who do not pay their shilling to enter the theatre. The contemporary theatre must make its appeal to the great public, and I hold that while one should respect every form of art, that art which appeals only to a coterie is on a lower plane than that which speaks to the world. Surely, it is not too much to claim that a truer and more vivid impression of a period of history can be given by its representation on the stage than by any other means of information. Though the archæologist with symbolic leanings may cry out, the theatre is primarily for those who love the drama, who love the joy of life and the true presentation of history. It is only secondarily for those who fulfil their souls in footnotes.[6]
I hold that whatever may tend to destroy the illusion and the people’s understanding is to be condemned. Whatever may tend to heighten the illusion and to help the audience to a better understanding of the play and the author’s meaning, is to be commended. Shakespeare and Burbage, Betterton, Colley Cibber, the Kembles, the Keans, Phelps, Calvert and Henry Irving, as artists, recognised that there was but one way to treat the play of Henry VIII. It is pleasant to sin in such good company.
I contend that Henry VIII. is essentially a realistic and not a symbolic play. Indeed, probably no English author is less “symbolic” than Shakespeare. “Hamlet” is a play which, to my mind, does not suffer by the simplest setting; indeed, a severe simplicity of treatment seems to me to assist rather than to detract from the imaginative development of that masterpiece. But I hold that, with the exception of certain scenes in “The Tempest,” no plays of Shakespeare are susceptible to what is called “symbolic” treatment. To attempt to present Henry VIII. in other than a realistic manner would be to ensure absolute failure. Let us take an instance from the text. By what symbolism can Shakespeare’s stage directions in the Trial scene be represented on the stage?
“A Hall in Blackfriars. Enter two vergers with short silver wands; next them two scribes in the habit of doctors.... Next them with some small distance, follows a gentleman bearing the purse with the great seal and a Cardinal’s hat; then two priests bearing each a silver cross; then a gentleman usher bareheaded, accompanied with a sergeant-at-arms bearing a silver mace; then two gentlemen bearing two great silver pillars; after them, side by side, the two Cardinals, Wolsey and Campeius; two noblemen with the sword and mace,” etc.
I confess my symbolic imagination was completely gravelled, and in the absence of any symbolic substitute, I have been compelled to fall back on the stage directions.
Yet we are gravely told by the writer of a recent article that “all Shakespeare’s plays” lend themselves of course to such symbolic treatment. We hear, indeed, that the National Theatre is to be run on symbolic lines. If it be so, then God help the National Theatre—the symbolists will not. No “ism” ever made a great cause. The National Theatre, to be the dignified memorial we all hope it may be, will owe its birth, its being and its preservation to the artists, who alone are the guardians of any art. It is the painter, not the frame-maker, who upholds the art of painting; it is the poet, not the book-binder, who carries the torch of poetry. It was the sculptor, and not the owner of the quarry, who made the Venus of Milo. It is sometimes necessary to re-assert the obvious.
Now there are plays in which symbolism is appropriate—those of Maeterlinck, for instance. But if, as has been said, Maeterlinck resembles Shakespeare, Shakespeare does not resemble Maeterlinck. Let us remember that Shakespeare was a humanist, not a symbolist.
The End
The end of the play of Henry VIII. once more illustrates the pageantry of realism, as prescribed in the elaborate directions as to the christening of the new-born princess.