Shakespeare and the Modern Stage | Page 8

same relation as
Shakespeare stands to English literature. Molière's plays are constantly
acted in French theatres with a scenic austerity which is unknown to the
humblest of our theatres. A French audience would regard it as
sacrilege to convert a comedy of Molière into a spectacle. The French
people are commonly credited with a love of ornament and display to
which the English people are assumed to be strangers, but their
treatment of Molière is convincing proof that their artistic sense is
ultimately truer than our own.
The mode of producing Shakespeare on the stage in Germany supplies
an argument to the same effect. In Berlin and Vienna, and in all the
chief towns of German-speaking Europe, Shakespeare's plays are
produced constantly and in all their variety, for the most part, in
conditions which are directly antithetical to those prevailing in the
West-end theatres of London. Twenty-eight of Shakespeare's
thirty-seven plays figure in the répertoires of the leading companies of
German-speaking actors.
The currently accepted method of presentation can be judged from the
following personal experience. A few years ago I was in the
Burg-Theater in Vienna on a Sunday night--the night on which the
great working population of Vienna chiefly take their recreation, as in
this country it is chiefly taken by the great working population on
Saturday night. The Burg-Theater in Vienna is one of the largest
theatres in the world. It is of similar dimensions to Drury Lane Theatre
or Covent Garden Opera-house. On the occasion of my visit the play
produced was Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. The house was
crowded in every part. The scenic arrangements were simple and

unobtrusive, but were well calculated to suggest the Oriental
atmosphere of the plot. There was no music before the performance, or
during the intervals between the acts, or as an accompaniment to great
speeches in the progress of the play. There was no making love, nor
any dying to slow music, although the stage directions were followed
scrupulously; the song "Come, thou Monarch of the Vine," was sung to
music in the drinking scene on board Pompey's galley, and there were
the appointed flourishes of trumpets and drums. The acting was
competent, though not of the highest calibre, but a satisfactory level
was evenly maintained throughout the cast. There were no conspicuous
deflections from the adequate standard. The character of whom I have
the most distinct recollection was Enobarbus, the level-headed and
straight-hitting critic of the action--a comparatively subordinate part,
which was filled by one of the most distinguished actors of the
Viennese stage. He fitted his part with telling accuracy.
The whole piece was listened to with breathless interest. It was acted
practically without curtailment, and, although the performance lasted
nearly five hours, no sign of impatience manifested itself at any point.
This was no exceptional experience at the Burg-Theater. Plays of
Shakespeare are acted there repeatedly--on an average twice a
week--and, I am credibly informed, with identical results to those of
which I was an eye-witness.
VIII
It cannot be flattering to our self-esteem that the Austrian people
should show a greater and a wiser appreciation of the theatrical
capacities of Shakespeare's masterpieces than we who are
Shakespeare's countrymen and the most direct and rightful heirs of his
glorious achievements. How is the disturbing fact to be accounted for?
Is it possible that it is attributable to some decay in us of the
imagination--to a growing slowness on our part to appreciate works of
imagination? When one reflects on the simple mechanical contrivances
which satisfied the theatrical audiences, not only of Shakespeare's own
day, but of the eighteenth century, during which Shakespeare was
repeatedly performed; when one compares the simplicity of scenic

mechanism in the past with its complexity in our own time, one can
hardly resist the conclusion that the imagination of the theatre-going
public is no longer what it was of old. The play alone was then "the
thing." Now "the thing," it seems, is something outside the
play--namely, the painted scene or the costume, the music or the dance.
Garrick played Macbeth in an ordinary Court suit of his own era. The
habiliments proper to Celtic monarchs of the eleventh century were left
to be supplied by the imagination of the spectators or not at all. No
realistic "effects" helped the play forward in Garrick's time, yet the
attention of his audience, the critics tell us, was never known to stray
when he produced a great play by Shakespeare. In Shakespeare's day
boys or men took the part of women, and how characters like Lady
Macbeth and Desdemona were adequately rendered by youths beggars
belief. But renderings in such conditions proved popular and
satisfactory. Such a fact seems convincing testimony, not to the ability
of Elizabethan or Jacobean boys--the nature of boys is a