Shakespeare has long since failed to hold his own against modern staging, and the possibility of bringing more taste, skill, and naturalness into the art of the scene-painter does not remove the difficulty, but rather increases it. When a dramatist is not on the spot to rewrite his play to suit the altered conditions of mounting, the question then arises as to whether the play or the scenery is the thing of most value. Mr. Sargent does not ask leave to repaint Raphael’s canvas because the draperies in which the Italian artist has clothed his divine figures are conventional ones. The advocates for modernism demand that new wine shall be put into old bottles. No doubt there are some old stone jars that will bear the strain, in the same way as there are some old plays which will stand a good deal of decoration; but the business of the producer is to know what kind of decoration is becoming to the art of the dramatist, and what is derogatory to it. Mr. Craig’s art may help us to derive additional pleasure from the theatre, but will it help us to understand Shakespeare’s tragedies? If not, let him make his experiments on the plays of some less gifted dramatist. The inappropriateness of scenery for Shakespeare lies, mainly, in its unreality, and Mr. Craig tries to make it still more unreal. Such properties, or scenes, as were in use in the poet’s lifetime were suggestive of immediate, and not remote, objects, because what is distant in place and time has less actuality than what is near at hand. To see in an Elizabethan playhouse built-up doors, windows, caverns, arbours, ramparts, ladders, prepared the minds of the audience for action, and brought the actors into closer touch with life.
Now, Mr. Craig’s art resembles that of Turner. He has a sense of beauty and restraint, with a poet’s insight into the meaning of landscape and atmosphere which stamps him as an artist, and distinguishes him at once from the scene-painter of Globe Alley. With him, as with Turner, it is the sun that is the centre of the universe. His passion is for airy landscape, unsullied by the presence of the concrete; and Turner’s palaces, boats, and men seem shadowy things beside the splendour of Turner’s sunshine. But the central interest of drama is human, and it is necessary that the figures on the stage should appear larger than the background, or let the readers of Shakespeare remain at home. To see Mr. Craig’s “rectangular masses illuminated by a diagonal light” while the poet’s characters walk in a darkened foreground, is not, I venture to think, to enjoy the “art of the theatre.” There must be some sane playgoers who still wish to see in the playhouse Juliet smile upon Romeo, and Othello frown on Iago. “What a piece of work is man!” says the poet; but there is no room for man in Mr. Craig’s world.
It is because Mr. Craig’s art exposes to view a background which is effective and suggestive apart from the needs of drama, that it fails in its purpose. Had he studied the methods of Rembrandt, instead of those of Turner, something practical for the stage might have been forthcoming. With Rembrandt, whether it is a windmill, a temple, or a man, it is always the object, not the landscape, that arrests attention. The light coming from the front, and not from the side, first illuminates the objects before reaching the background. The spectator, as it were, turns on a bull’s-eye lantern, and is thus able to see the story written on the men’s faces. Then the artist contrives that the mind shall pass by an easy transition from the faces to the more sombre background. But unless this transition is gradual and the background is sombre, interest in figures is proportionally weakened.
Now, Mr. Roger Fry’s sympathetic appreciation of Mr. Gordon Craig’s designs for “Macbeth” may predispose his readers to believe that they form a suitable background for a representation of Shakespeare’s tragedy. Some years ago I saw Mr. Craig’s production of “Acis and Galatea,” followed by a masque. It was a stagery of great beauty, and seemed to initiate new possibilities. But then both were musical entertainments which gained appreciably by a picturesque background. The action never clashed with the quaint setting. Unlike the demands of tragedy, the representation made no direct appeal to the reason, and no obvious attempt to purify the emotions. Its main business was to delight the eye.
Mr. Craig, in his foreword to the printed catalogue of his exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, remarks that the designs and models “speak for themselves.” This admission is a merit if the designs are intended for book illustrations. A picture which arrests the attention and stirs the imagination gives a pleasurable and legitimate emotion when it does not clash with the emotions aroused by the poet or the actor. Mr. Fry tries to answer this criticism, but not altogether successfully, since it must be remembered that Shakespeare, in his day, had no other way of approaching his audience except through the actors, and so he was obliged to construct his plays with this means in view. It is only necessary to quote from Mr. Craig’s notes to his sketches to show that the poet and the designer do not always pull together, and that it is doubtful if Mr. Craig’s scenery is more appropriate than any other kind of scenery when it is used as a background for a Shakespearian play.
“No. 2.—The aim of the designer has been to conceive some background which would not offend whilst these lines were being spoken.”
But eight lines further on Macbeth says: “Liar and slave!” This arouses quite another kind of emotion from that of “To-morrow and to-morrow,” etc., and one for which Mr. Craig’s scene is not suitable.
“No. 3.—... So I conducted the lady to her bedroom, which is hung with red, and altogether a mysterious room, the only fresh thing being the sunlight which comes in....”
There are three movements in this scene which stir varying emotions. The entrance of the lady with the letter, the return of the husband, the arriving of Duncan. The last two incidents are more dramatic than the first one; but Mr. Craig never allows the spectator to forget the bed, the window, the light, and the letter. By the way, is it not moonlight which comes in at the window?