Plays, Acting and Music

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Plays, Acting and Music

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Plays, Acting and Music, by Arthur Symons This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Plays, Acting and Music A Book Of Theory
Author: Arthur Symons
Release Date: November 2, 2004 [EBook #13928]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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PLAYS ACTING AND MUSIC
A BOOK OF THEORY
BY ARTHUR SYMONS
LONDON
1909

To Maurice Maeterlinck in friendship and admiration

PREFACE
When this book was first published it contained a large amount of material which is now taken out of it; additions have been made, besides many corrections and changes; and the whole form of the book has been remodelled. It is now more what it ought to have been from the first; what I saw, from the moment of its publication, that it ought to have been: a book of theory. The rather formal announcement of my intentions which I made in my preface is reprinted here, because, at all events, the programme was carried out.
This book, I said then, is intended to form part of a series, on which I have been engaged for many years. I am gradually working my way towards the concrete expression of a theory, or system of ?sthetics, of all the arts.
In my book on "The Symbolist Movement in Literature" I made a first attempt to deal in this way with literature; other volumes, now in preparation, are to follow. The present volume deals mainly with the stage, and, secondarily, with music; it is to be followed by a volume called "Studies in Seven Arts," in which music will be dealt with in greater detail, side by side with painting, sculpture, architecture, handicraft, dancing, and the various arts of the stage. And, as life too is a form of art, and the visible world the chief storehouse of beauty, I try to indulge my curiosity by the study of places and of people. A book on "Cities" is now in the press, and a book of "imaginary portraits" is to follow, under the title of "Spiritual Adventures." Side by side with these studies in the arts I have my own art, that of verse, which is, after all, my chief concern.
In all my critical and theoretical writing I wish to be as little abstract as possible, and to study first principles, not so much as they exist in the brain of the theorist, but as they may be discovered, alive and in effective action, in every achieved form of art. I do not understand the limitation by which so many writers on ?sthetics choose to confine themselves to the study of artistic principles as they are seen in this or that separate form of art. Each art has its own laws, its own capacities, its own limits; these it is the business of the critic jealously to distinguish. Yet in the study of art as art, it should be his endeavour to master the universal science of beauty.
1903, 1907.

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
An Apology for Puppets 3
PLAYS AND ACTING
Nietzsche on Tragedy 11
Sarah Bernhardt 17
Coquelin and Molière 29
Réjane 37
Yvette Guilbert 42
Sir Henry Irving 52
Duse in Some of Her Parts 60
Annotations 77
M. Capus in England 93
A Double Enigma 100
DRAMA
Professional and Unprofessional 109
Tolstoi and Others 115
Some Problem Plays 124
"Monna Vanna" 137
The Question of Censorship 143
A Play and the Public 148
The Test of the Actor 152
The Price of Realism 162
On Crossing Stage to Right 167
The Speaking of Verse 173
Great Acting in English 182
A Theory of the Stage 198
The Sicilian Actors 213
MUSIC
On Writing about Music 229
Technique and the Artist 232
Pachmann and the Piano 237
Paderewski 258
A Reflection at a Dolmetsch Concert 268
The Dramatisation of Song 277
The Meiningen Orchestra 284
Mozart in the Mirabell-Garten 290
Notes on Wagner at Bayreuth 297
Conclusion: A Paradox on Art 315

INTRODUCTION

AN APOLOGY FOR PUPPETS
After seeing a ballet, a farce, and the fragment of an opera performed by the marionettes at the Costanzi Theatre in Rome, I am inclined to ask myself why we require the intervention of any less perfect medium between the meaning of a piece, as the author conceived it, and that other meaning which it derives from our reception of it. The living actor, even when he condescends to subordinate himself to the requirements of pantomime, has always what he is proud to call his temperament; in other words, so much personal caprice, which for the most part means wilful misunderstanding; and in seeing his acting you have to consider this intrusive little personality of his as well as the author's. The marionette may be relied upon. He will respond to an indication without