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the British, are always surprised and puzzled when we
learn, as we may do any day if we come within reach of such
information, that French actors are often scandalized by what they
consider the indecency of the English stage, and that French actresses
who desire a greater license in appealing to the sexual instincts than the
French stage allows them, learn and establish themselves on the
English stage. The German and Russian stages are in the same relation
to the French and perhaps more or less all the Latin stages. The reason
is that, partly from a want of respect for the theatre, partly from a sort
of respect for art in general which moves them to accord moral
privileges to artists, partly from the very objectionable tradition that the
realm of art is Alsatia and the contemplation of works of art a holiday
from the burden of virtue, partly because French prudery does not
attach itself to the same points of behavior as British prudery, and has a
different code of the mentionable and the unmentionable, and for many

other reasons the French tolerate plays which are never performed in
England until they have been spoiled by a process of bowdlerization;
yet French taste is more fastidious than ours as to the exhibition and
treatment on the stage of the physical incidents of sex. On the French
stage a kiss is as obvious a convention as the thrust under the arm by
which Macduff runs Macbeth through. It is even a purposely
unconvincing convention: the actors rather insisting that it shall be
impossible for any spectator to mistake a stage kiss for a real one. In
England, on the contrary, realism is carried to the point at which
nobody except the two performers can perceive that the caress is not
genuine. And here the English stage is certainly in the right; for
whatever question there arises as to what incidents are proper for
representation on the stage or not, my experience as a playgoer leaves
me in no doubt that once it is decided to represent an incident, it will be
offensive, no matter whether it be a prayer or a kiss, unless it is
presented with a convincing appearance of sincerity.
OUR DISILLUSIVE SCENERY.
For example, the main objection to the use of illusive scenery (in most
modern plays scenery is not illusive; everything visible is as real as in
your drawing room at home) is that it is unconvincing; whilst the
imaginary scenery with which the audience provides a platform or
tribune like the Elizabethan stage or the Greek stage used by Sophocles,
is quite convincing. In fact, the more scenery you have the less illusion
you produce. The wise playwright, when he cannot get absolute reality
of presentation, goes to the other extreme, and aims at atmosphere and
suggestion of mood rather than at direct simulative illusion. The theatre,
as I first knew it, was a place of wings and flats which destroyed both
atmosphere and illusion. This was tolerated, and even intensely enjoyed,
but not in the least because nothing better was possible; for all the
devices employed in the productions of Mr. Granville Barker or Max
Reinhardt or the Moscow Art Theatre were equally available for Colley
Cibber and Garrick, except the intensity of our artificial light. When
Garrick played Richard II in slashed trunk hose and plumes, it was not
because he believed that the Plantagenets dressed like that, or because
the costumes could not have made him a XV century dress as easily as

a nondescript combination of the state robes of George III with such
scraps of older fashions as seemed to playgoers for some reason to be
romantic. The charm of the theatre in those days was its makebelieve. It
has that charm still, not only for the amateurs, who are happiest when
they are most unnatural and impossible and absurd, but for audiences as
well. I have seen performances of my own plays which were to me far
wilder burlesques than Sheridan's Critic or Buckingham's Rehearsal;
yet they have produced sincere laughter and tears such as the most
finished metropolitan productions have failed to elicit. Fielding was
entirely right when he represented Partridge as enjoying intensely the
performance of the king in Hamlet because anybody could see that the
king was an actor, and resenting Garrick's Hamlet because it might
have been a real man. Yet we have only to look at the portraits of
Garrick to see that his performances would nowadays seem almost as
extravagantly stagey as his costumes. In our day Calve's intensely real
Carmen never pleased the mob as much as the obvious fancy ball
masquerading of suburban young ladies in the same character.
HOLDING THE MIRROR UP TO NATURE.
Theatrical art begins as the holding