| “THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.” “ROMEO AND JULIET.” “HAMLET.” “KING LEAR.” |
III
SOME STAGE VERSIONS
A critical and genuine appreciation of the poet’s work imposes a reverence for the constructive plan as well as for the text. Why should a Shakespeare, whose cunning hand divined the dramatic sequence of his story, have it improved by a modern playwright or actor-manager? The answer will be: Because the modern experts are familiar with theatrical effects of a kind Shakespeare never lived to see. But if a modern rearrangement of Shakespeare’s plays is necessary to suit these theatrical effects, the question may well be discussed as to whether rearrangements with all their modern advantages are of more dramatic value than the perfect work of the master.
Among all innovations on the stage, perhaps the most far-reaching in its effect on dramatic construction was the act-drop. Elizabethan dramatists had to round off a scene to a conclusion, for there was no kindly curtain to cover retreat from a deadlock. The art of modern play-writing is to arrest the action suddenly upon a thrilling situation, and leave the characters between the horns of a dilemma. At a critical moment the act-drop comes down; and after the necessary interval goes up again, showing that the characters have in the meantime somehow got out of the difficulty. This leaves much to the fancy, but does not feed the imagination. This leading up to a terminal climax, a “curtain,” is but the appetite for the feast, and not the food itself. It assumes that the palate of the audience is depraved in its taste, and that it is one for which the best work is perhaps not best suited; but it is a form of art, and plays can be written after this form, and well written. Apart, however, from the question as to the theatrical gain of such a crude device as a “curtain,” Shakespeare wrote with consummate art to show the tide of human affairs, its flow and its ebb, and his constructive plan is particularly unsuited to the act-drop. Upon one of Shakespeare’s plays the curtain falls like the knife of a guillotine, and the effect is similar to ending a piece of music abruptly at its highest note, simply for the sake of creating some startling impression.
The way in which some modern managers, both here and in America, set about producing a play of Shakespeare’s seems to be as follows: Choose your play, and be sure to note carefully in what country the incidents take place. Having done this, send artists to the locality to make sketches of the country, of its streets, its houses, its landscape, of its people, and of their costumes. Tell your artists that they must accurately reproduce the colouring of the sky, of the foliage, of the evening shadows, of the moonlight, of the men’s hair and the women’s eyes; for all these details are important to the proper understanding of Shakespeare’s play. Send, moreover, your leading actor and actress to spend some weeks in the neighbourhood that they may become acquainted with the manners, the gestures, the emotions of the residents, for these things also are necessary to the proper understanding of the play. Then, when you have collected, at vast expense, labour, and research, this interesting information about a country of which Shakespeare was possibly entirely ignorant, thrust all this extraneous knowledge into your representation, whether it fit the context or not; let it justify the rearrangement of your play, the crowding of your stage with supernumeraries, the addition of incidental songs and glees, to say nothing of inappropriateness of costume and misconception of character, until the play, if it does not cease to be intelligible or consistent, thrives only by virtue of its imperishable vitality, or by its strength of characterization, and by its brilliancy of dialogue.
These are but a few of the inconsistencies consequent upon the rage for foisting foreign local colour into a Shakespearian play. But if the same amount of industry bestowed in ascertaining the manners and customs of foreign countries had been spent in acquiring a knowledge of Elizabethan playing, and in forming some notion of what was uppermost in Shakespeare’s mind when he wrote his plays, we should have had representations which, if possibly less pictorially successful, would have been more dramatic, more human, and more consistent.
To use a homely image, the question of the stage representation of Shakespeare’s plays is just the question of the foot and the shoe. Must we cut off a toe here, and slice off a little from the heel there; or stretch the shoe upon the last, and, if need be, even buy a new pair of shoes? It is not enough to say that modern audiences demand “curtain” and scenery for Shakespeare’s plays. No public demands what is not offered to it. Before demand can create supply, a sample of the new ware must be shown. Most modern playgoers are unaware of the methods of Elizabethan stage-playing, and therefore cannot condemn them as unsatisfactory. They may have heard something about old tapestry, rushes, and boards, but they have no reason to infer that our greatest dramatists were “thoroughly handicapped by the methods of representation then in vogue.”
It is indeed to be regretted that no scholar nor actor has thought it necessary to study the art of Shakespeare’s dramatic construction from the original copies. Some of our University men have written intelligently about Shakespeare’s characters and his philosophy, and one of them has done something more than this. But it is doubtful if any serious attention has been given yet to the way Shakespeare conducts his story and brings his characters on and off the stage, a matter of the highest moment, since the very life of the play depends upon the skill with which this is done. And how many realize that the art of Shakespeare’s dramatic construction differs fundamentally from that of the modern dramatist? In fact, a Pinero would no more know how to set about writing a play for the Elizabethan stage, in which the characters appear in the course of the story in twenty-six different localities during twenty-six years, than Shakespeare would know how to make twenty-six persons live their lives through a whole play in one room or on one day.