A Book About the Theater Part 8

It is the method of Marenco in 'Excelsior' which has been followed in the often pleasing ballets of the Hippodrome in New York. Really good soloists are now very scarce, even in Milan and in Vienna, long the nurseries of the ballet; and there seem to be none too many even in Petrograd, which has preserved and improved upon the traditions of Paris and Milan. And in the absence of accomplished soloists, the deviser of the ballets at the Hippodrome has been compelled to get along without them as best he could. He has been forced to rely on the maneuvering of ma.s.ses of girls, possessed of only a rudimentary instruction in the elements of the terpsich.o.r.ean art. In other words, he has had to make up in quant.i.ty for the absence of quality. But he has at his disposition an immense stage, across which he could set his squadrons marching and gliding and glittering. He could not count on the skill of his princ.i.p.als who were not expert enough to demand the attention of the spectators; but he could seek striking effects of light and color in the costumes, as he moved his ma.s.ses to and fro and as he swung them together. If only there had been a little better training for the more prominent performers, the 'Four Seasons' would have been a most artistic entertainment, in spite of the absence of any single dancer of real distinction.

IV

The dearth of remarkable dancers is due to the inexorable fact that dancing is the most arduous of all the arts; its technic is the most difficult to acquire. Indeed, this technic can be acquired only in early youth, when the muscles are flexible and when they can be supplied at will. It is early in her teens that a dancer must begin her training if she aspires to eminence in the art. This training is very severe, and it must never be relaxed. Rubinstein used to say that if he omitted his practise for a single day he noticed it in his playing; if he omitted it two days his enemies found it out; and if he omitted it three days even his friends discovered it. The apprentice dancer can never omit a single day of hard and uninteresting toil. Incessant application, during all the long years of youth, is the price the ambitious beginner must pay for the mastery of her art. She can have no vacations; she can have few relaxations; she must keep herself constantly in training; she must be prepared to surrender many of the things which make life worth living.

And it is no wonder that so few have the courage to persevere, and that there is only one Rosita Mauri, only one Adeline Genee, and only one Anna Pavlova in a quarter of a century. It is no wonder that the inventor of terpsich.o.r.ean spectacles nowadays finds himself compelled to get along as best he can without a satisfactory soloist and to rely rather on his handling of a ma.s.s of inadequately trained dancers.

But even if the highly accomplished soloist, absolute mistress of all the possibilities of the art, is very rare, there are certain forms of dancing which do not demand this ultimate skill and which call for little more than grace and ease and charm, combined with a knowledge of the simpler steps. For example, the Spanish Carmencita, whose portraits by Mr. Sargent and by Mr. Chase now hang in the Luxembourg in Paris and in the Metropolitan Museum in New York--Carmencita was not a skilful dancer; she had undergone no inexorable schooling; she glided thru only a few elementary movements. But she made no effort; she did not pretend to what was not in her power; she was simple and unaffected. Her charm was not in her singing or in her dancing; it was in her personality, in the alluring and exotic suggestion of her individuality.

Nor could anybody venture to a.s.sert that Miss Kate Vaughan and Miss Letty Lind were dancers in the same cla.s.s with Mauri, Genee, and Pavlova; but then they did not pretend to be. They knew only a few steps of obvious simplicity, and they displayed no unexpected dexterity. But the skirt-dance as they performed it was a memory of delight, with its grace and its ease, with its perfect rhythm and with the swish of its clinging draperies. It had a fascination of its own, quite different from the fascination of the more poetic and ethereal ballet-dancing of Rita Sangalli and Rosita Mauri. It was not of the stage exactly, but almost of the drawing-room. It gave the same pleasure which we felt when we were privileged to behold a court minuet led by the late Mrs. G. H.

Gilbert, who had been a dancer in the days of her youth. There is one perfect beauty of the best ballet-dancing and there are other beauties of different kinds in the skirt-dancing of the two Englishwomen and in the languorous swaying of the Spanish gipsy.

Beauty of yet another order there was in an exhibition which was called a dance, perhaps because there was no other word for it, but which demanded no skill with the feet and which necessitated rather strength in the arms. This was the luminous dance of Miss Loie Fuller, when she swirled voluminous and prolonged draperies in lights that came from above and from below, and from both sides--lights that changed by exquisite gradations from one tint to another, the figure of the dancer spinning around, now slowly and now swiftly, while her arms weaved fantastic circles in the air, revealing unexpected combinations of color, controlled by perfect taste. This may not have been dancing, by any strict definition of the word, but it was decorative, artistic, imaginative, and inexpressibly beautiful. It supplied a glimpse of unsuspected delight; and probably Terpsich.o.r.e would not disdain to claim it for her own, however vigorously she might repel the suggestion that she had any responsibility for the violence of the toe-dances, for the vulgarity of the pony ballet, or for the ungainly caperings which pretend to recapture the free movements of the Greeks.

(1910-1915)

XI

THE PRINCIPLES OF PANTOMIME

THE PRINCIPLES OF PANTOMIME

I

In his suggestive study of ancient and modern drama, M. emile f.a.guet dwells on the fact that the drama is the only one of the arts which can employ to advantage the aid of all the other arts. The muses of tragedy and comedy can borrow narrative from the muse of epic poetry and song from the muse of lyric poetry. They can avail themselves of oratory, music, and dancing. They can profit by the a.s.sistance of the architect, the sculptor, and the painter. They can draw on the co-operation of all the other arts without ceasing to be themselves and without losing any of their essential qualities. This was seen clearly by Wagner, who insisted that his music-dramas were really the art-work of the future, in that they were the result of a combination of all the arts. Quite possibly the Greeks had the same idea, since Athenian tragedy has many points of similarity to Wagner's music-drama; it had epic pa.s.sages and a lyric chorus set to music; it called for stately dancing against an architectural background.

But altho the muses of the drama may invoke the help of their seven sisters, they need not make this appeal unless they choose. They can give their performances on a bare platform, or in the open air, and thus get along without painting and architecture. They can disdain the support of song and dance and music. They can concentrate all their effort upon themselves and provide a play which is a play and nothing else. And this is what Ibsen has done in his somber social-dramas.

'Ghosts,' for example, is independent of anything extraneous to the drama. It is a play, only a play, and nothing more than a play.

Yet it is possible to reduce the drama to an even barer state than we find in Ibsen's gloomy tragedy in prose. Ibsen's characters speak; they reveal themselves in speech; and it is by words that they carry on the story. A story can be presented on the stage, however, without the use of words, without the aid of the human voice, by the employment of gesture only, by pure pantomime. No doubt, the drama makes a great sacrifice when it decides to do without that potent instrument of emotional appeal, the human voice; and yet it can find its profit, now and then, in this self-imposed deprivation. Certain stories there are, not many, and all of them necessarily simplified and made very clear, which gain by being bereft of the spoken word and by being presented only in the pantomime. And these stories, simple as they must be, if they are to be apprehended by sight alone without the aid of sound, are, nevertheless, capable of supporting an actual play with all the absolutely necessary elements of a drama.

In his interesting and illuminating volume on the 'Theory of the Theater,' Mr. Clayton Hamilton has a carefully considered definition of a play. He a.s.serts that "a play is a story devised to be presented by actors on a stage before an audience." Perhaps it might be possible to amend this by saying "in a theater," instead of "on a stage," since we are now pretty certain that there was no stage in the Greek theater when Sophocles was writing for it. But this is but a trifling correction, and the definition as a whole is excellent. It includes every possible kind of dramatic entertainment, Greek tragedy and Roman comedy, medieval farce and modern melodrama, the music-drama of Wagner and the problem-play of Ibsen, the summer song-show and the college boy's burlesque. Obviously it includes the wordless play, the story devised to be presented on a stage and before an audience by actors who use gesture only and who do not speak.

In forgoing the aid of words the drama is only reducing itself to its absolutely necessary elements--a story, and a story which can be shown in action. It is not quite true that the skeleton of a good play is always a pantomime, since there are plays the plot of which cannot be conveyed to the audience except by actual speech. Yet some of the greatest plays have plots so transparent that the story is clear, even if we fail to hear what the actors are saying. It has been a.s.serted that if 'Hamlet,' for example, were to be performed in a deaf-and-dumb asylum, the inmates would be able to understand it and to enjoy it. They would be deprived of the wonderful beauty of Shakspere's verse, no doubt, and they would scarcely be able even to guess at the deeper significance of the philosophy which enriches the tragedy; but the story would unroll itself clearly before their eyes so that they could follow the succession of scenes with adequate understanding.

With his customary shrewdness and his usual gift of piercing to the center of what he was engaged in a.n.a.lyzing, Aristotle more than four thousand years ago saw the necessity of a neatly articulated plot. "If you string together a set of speeches," he said, "expressive of character and well finished in point of diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play, which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents." No broader statement than this could be made as to the all-importance of the story itself--and pantomime is a story and nothing else, a story capable of being translated by the actions of the performers, without the aid of speech.

Nor need we suppose that a play without words is necessarily devoid of poetry. There may be poetry in the "set of speeches expressive of character and well finished in point of thought and diction"; but there may be poetry also in the theme itself, in the actual story. 'Romeo and Juliet,' for example, is fundamentally poetic in its theme, and it retains its poetic quality even when it is made to serve as the libretto of an opera, as it would also retain this if it should be stripped bare to be presented in pantomime.

In a recent work on the 'Essentials of Poetry,' Professor William A.

Neilson has made this clear: "Many a drama is a genuine poetic creation, altho it may be simple to the point of baldness in diction and exhibit the fundamental qualities of poetry only in the characterization and in the significance, proportion, and verisimilitude of the plot." That is to say, the drama can use two kinds of poetry, that which is internal and contained in the plot, and that which is external and confined to the language. It can employ

jewels five-words long, That on the stretched forefinger of all Time Sparkle forever.

But it can also attain poetry without the use of superb and sonorous phrases and solely by its choice of theme. This is what the poets have often felt, and as a result French lyrists, like Theophile Gautier and Francois Coppee, have not disdained to compose librettos for pantomimic ballets, 'Giselle' and the 'Korrigane.' One of the most successful of the recent Russian ballets was simply a representation of Gautier's poetic fantasy, 'One of Cleopatra's Nights,'

II

Perhaps because the pantomime contains only the essential element of the drama--action--it has always been a popular form of play; and it appears very early in the history of the theater. Indeed, it seems to be the sole type of play achievable by primitive man--if we may judge from observations made among savages who are still in the earlier periods of social development. Gesture precedes speech, and a pantomime was possible even before a vocabulary was developed. In the Aleutian Islands, for example, the pantomime is the only form of play known. One of the little plays of the islanders has been described. It was acted by two performers only, one representing a hunter, and the other a bird.

The hunter hesitates but finally kills the bird with an arrow; then he is seized with regret that he has slain so n.o.ble a bird; whereupon the bird revives and turns into a beautiful woman who falls into the hunter's arms. This is the simplest of stories, but it lends itself to effective acting; it is capable of being interpreted adequately by means of gesture alone; and it is just the kind of play which would appeal to an Aleutian audience, being wholly within their experience and their apprehension.

Pantomime flourished in Rome and in Constantinople in the sorry years of the decline and fall of the empire; and it was then low and lascivious.

A great part of the fierce hostility to the theater displayed by the Fathers of the Christian Church was due to the fact that the only drama of which they had any knowledge was pantomime of a most objectionable character, offensive in theme and even more offensive in presentation.

With the conversion of the empire to Christianity, pantomimes of this type, appealing only to lewd fellows of the baser sort, was very properly prohibited. But pantomime of another type sprang up in the Middle Ages in the Christian churches to exemplify and to make visible to the ignorant congregations, certain episodes of sacred history. In the Renascence dumb-shows were represented before monarchs, at their weddings and at their stately entrances into loyal cities. And dumb-shows were often employed in the Elizabethan stage, sometimes as prologs to the several acts, as in 'Gorboduc,' for example, and sometimes within the play itself, as in 'Hamlet.'

In the eighteenth century pantomime had a double revival, in France and in England. In France, Noverre elevated the _ballet d'action_, that is to say, the story told in pantomime and adorned with dances. Sometimes these _ballets d'action_ were in several acts, relying for interest on the simple yet ingenious plot, and only decorated, so to speak, with occasional dances. From Noverre and from France the tradition of the pantomime with interludes of dancing, spread at first to Italy and Austria, and later to Russia.

In England the development of pantomime was upon different lines, due to the influence of the Italian comedy-of-masks, with its unchanging figures of Pantaleone, Columbina, and Arlecchino. These figures were still further simplified; and to Pantaloon, Columbine, and Harlequin there was added the characteristically British figure of the Clown. The most famous impersonator of the clown was Grimaldi, whose memoirs were edited by Charles d.i.c.kens. The mantle of Grimaldi fell upon an American, G. L. Fox, whose greatest triumph, in the late sixties, was in a pantomime called 'Humpty-Dumpty'--the riming prolog of which was written by A. Oakey Hall (then Tweed's mayor of New York). G. L. Fox and his brother, C. K. Fox (who was the inventor of the comic scenes), had been preceded in America by a family of French pantomimists known as the Ravels; and they were followed by the family known as the Hanlon-Lees, who had originally been acrobats, and who appeared in a French play, in which the other characters spoke while the Hanlon-Lees expressed themselves only in gesture. Here again Scribe had been before them, with his libretto for the opera of 'Masaniello,' in which there is a princ.i.p.al part for a pantomimic actress, Fenella. And when the great French actor, Frederic Lemaitre, had lost his voice by overstrain, Dennery wrote a play for him, the 'Old Corporal,' in which he appeared as a soldier of Napoleon's Old Guard, who had been stricken dumb during the retreat from Russia.

This exploit of Frederic Lemaitre's is not as extraordinary as it seems.

A truly accomplished actor ought to be able to forgo the aid of speech.

Even in our modern plays gesture is more significant than speech. To place the finger on the lips is more effective than to say "Hush!" The tendency of the modern drama on our amply lighted picture-frame stage is to subordinate the mere words to the expressive action. In Mr.

Gillette's 'Secret Service,' for example, the impression is sometimes made rather by gesture than by speech; and a large portion of the most effective scene, that where the hero is wounded while he is sending a telegraph message, is presented in pantomime with little a.s.sistance from actual dialog. Similar effects are to be found in many of Mr. Belasco's plays, especially in the 'Darling of the G.o.ds.' In all good acting the gesture precedes the word; and often the gesture makes the word itself unnecessary, because it has succeeded in conveying the impression and in making the full effect by itself, so that the spoken phrase lags superfluous.

III

In France in the final decades of the nineteenth century there was a wide-spread revival of interest in pantomime, where the art had been dormant since the days of Deburau. A society was formed for its encouragement, and a host of little wordless plays was the result. The most ambitious effort was the 'Enfant Prodigue,' a genuine comedy in three acts, by M. Michel Carre, with music by M. Alfred Wormser. This wordless play on the perennially attractive theme of the Prodigal Son proved to be the modern masterpiece of pantomime. It was limpidly clear in its story; it was ingeniously put together in its plot; it combined humor and pathos; and it was devoid of the acrobatic features and of the slap-stick fun which have generally been considered the inevitable accessories of pantomime. We had brought before us the dull and prim home life of old Pierrot and of his wife, and we were made to behold the impatience of young Pierrot with this prim dullness. We saw the Prodigal rob his father and go forth in search of pleasure. In the second act we were witnesses of the sad results of the pleasure young Pierrot had sought superabundantly, and we discovered that he had spent his money and that he was capable of descending to marked cards to win more gold to satisfy the caprices of the woman who had fascinated him.

We saw his return with his ill-gotten gains after his charmer had been tempted to go off with a wealthier man. And in the third act we were taken back to the home of his broken-hearted parents; and we witnessed the Prodigal's return, poverty-stricken, disenchanted, and reformed. His mother takes him to her arms; but his father is obdurate. Then we hear the fife and drum afar off, and young Pierrot, if he has lived unworthily for himself, can at least die worthily for his country. So the old father relents and bestows his blessing on the erring son as the boy goes forth to war.

The art of the 'Enfant Prodigue' was at once delicate and firm; and its popularity was not confined to France. Here was a true play, moving to tears as well as to laughter, holding the interest by a human story of universal appeal. It was taken across the Channel from Paris to London, and from London it was taken across the ocean to New York. Augustin Daly, always on the alert for novelty, brought it out at his own theater, first with his own company, and then a little later with a French company. Excellent as was the performance of the French company, two characters were as well sustained by the American company. Charles Leclercq appeared as old Pierrot, and he had had in his youth experience in pantomime in England. Mrs. G. H. Gilbert appeared as Mrs. Pierrot, and in her youth she had been a ballet dancer, and had taken part in pantomimes. To these two performers the principles of the art of gesture were perfectly familiar; and it was a constant delight to follow the dexterity and the adequacy of their gestures. But Miss Rehan, who appeared as the Prodigal Son, had had no pantomimic experience, and she was not able to acquire the art offhand. In dozens of dramas she had revealed herself as an actress, not only of great personal charm, but also of great histrionic skill. Merely as an actress she was incomparably superior to the impersonator of the Prodigal Son in the French company; but merely as a pantomimist she was inferior. More than once she appeared as if she wanted to speak, failing because she was deprived of voice. Her gestures seemed like afterthoughts; they lacked spontaneity and inevitability. She suggested at moments that she was a poor dumb boy gasping for words.

Now, the convention underlying pantomime is that we are beholding a story carried on by a race of beings whose natural method of communicating information and ideas is gesture--just as the convention of opera is that we are beholding a story carried on by a race of beings whose natural method of communicating information and ideas is song. No such races of beings ever existed; but we must admit the existence of such races as a condition precedent to our enjoyment of pantomime and of opera. The spectators must accept the art as it is, and the performers must refrain from any suggestion that they would speak if they could.

This underlying convention was viciously violated in "Professor"

Reinhardt's overpraised 'Sumurun,' when the Hunchback gives a shriek of horror as he sees the woman he loves in the arms of another man. It is viciously violated again in the same play when Sumurun and two attendants are heard singing. If Sumurun can sing, why can she not speak? If the Hunchback can shriek and sob audibly, why is he ordinarily reduced to mere gesture?

'Sumurun' was provided with a plot devised by Herr Freksa, and with music composed by Herr Hollaender; and it was produced by "Professor"

Max Reinhardt. The story was a little complicated, and it lacked the transparent simplicity of the 'Enfant Prodigue,' as it lacked also the broad humanity of the French piece. Its chief claim to attention was that it is an amusing spectacle, sensual as well as sensuous. Its humor had a Teutonic heaviness in marked contrast with the Gallic lightness of the 'Enfant Prodigue.' "Professor" Reinhardt sought eccentricity rather than originality, queerness rather than beauty. His effort was directed to the achieving of something unexpected and something different rather than to the attaining of something good in itself, or of something poetic. Esthetically, musically, dramatically the German pantomime was pitiably inferior to the French; and yet so potent and so permanent is the appeal of the wordless play that 'Sumurun' pleased a host of younger playgoers, not old enough to be able to recall the 'Enfant Prodigue' or 'Humpty-Dumpty,' the Hanlon-Lees, or the Ravels.

IV

'Sumurun,' like the 'Enfant Prodigue,' was supported by its music, which sustained the gestures and which sometimes suggested more than gesture alone can do. In the 'Enfant Prodigue,' for example, one of the most amusing scenes is that in which the elderly rich man tenders his affections to the charmer who has fascinated the Prodigal Son. She insists upon marriage. It would be difficult to convey this idea in pure pantomime. So she points to the fourth finger of the left hand, and the orchestra plays the familiar Wedding March, thus instantly conveying the idea. When she goes off to get her bonnet, the elderly suitor repeats her gesture, and the orchestra repeats the Wedding March, whereupon he winks and shakes his head, giving us clearly to understand that his intentions are strictly dishonorable.

'Sumurun' is rather a spectacle than a play; and therefore it makes comparatively little use of the conventionalized gestures which may be described as the accepted vocabulary of pantomime, and which have been developed by the followers of Noverre in France and in Italy. This vocabulary of gesture is only a codification of the signs which we naturally make--shaking the head for "no," nodding for "yes," and laying a finger on the lips for "hush!" The basis of any such vocabulary must be the series of gestures by the aid of which man has always expressed his emotions. This is why the traditional gestures of theatrical pantomime do not, and indeed cannot, differ greatly from any natural sign language. The universality of this pantomimic vocabulary was curiously evidenced forty years ago when Morlacchi, the Italian dancer, married Texas Jack, the American scout. She had been trained in pantomime at La Scala, in Milan, and he had acquired the sign language of the Plains Indians. And they found that they could hold converse with each other in pantomime, she using the Italian-French gestures and he employing the gestures of the redskins.

(1912.)

XII

THE IDEAL OF THE ACROBAT

THE IDEAL OF THE ACROBAT

I

When Huckleberry Finn went to the circus he sneaked in under the tent when the watchman was absent. He had money in his pocket, but he feared that he might need this. "I ain't opposed to spending money on circuses," he confessed, "when there ain't no other way, but there ain't no use in _wasting_ it on them." In spite of the fact that he had not paid for his seat, and that he was thereby released from the necessity of getting his money's worth, he declared cheerfully that "it was a real bully circus. It was the splendidest sight that ever was, when they all come riding in, two and two, a gentleman and a lady, side by side, the men just in their drawers and undershirts, and no shoes nor stirrups, and resting their hands on their thighs, easy and comfortable ... and every lady with a lovely complexion, and perfectly beautiful, and looking like a gang of real sure-enough queens.... And then, one by one, they got up and stood, and went a-weaving around the ring so gentle and wavy and graceful, the men looking ever so tall and airy and straight, with their heads bobbing and skimming along, away up there under the tent roof, and every lady's rose-leaf dress flapping soft and silky around her hips, and she looking like the most loveliest parasol."

However much Huck was impressed by the Grand Entry, he seems to have been more pleased by the surprising act, traditionally known as 'Pete Jenkins,' and never better described than by Mark Twain's youthful hero.

"And by and by a drunk man tried to get into the ring--said he wanted to ride; said he could ride as well as anybody that ever was. They argued and tried to keep him out, but he wouldn't listen, and the whole show came to a standstill. Then the people began to holler at him and make fun of him.... So then the ring-master he made a little speech, and said he hoped there wouldn't be no disturbance, and if the man would promise he wouldn't make no more trouble, he would let him ride, if he thought he could stay on the horse.... The minute he was on the horse he began to rip and tear and jump and cavort around ... the drunk man hanging onto his neck, and his heels flying in the air every jump.... But pretty soon he struggled up astraddle and grabbed the bridle, a-reeling this way and that; and the next minute he sprung up and stood! and the horse a-going like a house afire, too. He just stood there, a-sailing around as easy and as comfortable as if he warn't ever drunk in his life--and then he begun to pull off his clothes and sling them. He shed them so thick they kind of clogged up the air, and altogether he shed seventeen suits. And then, here he was, slim and handsome, and dressed the grandiest and prettiest you ever saw, and he lit into that horse and made him hum--and finally skipped off and made his bow and danced off to the dressing-room, and everybody just a-howling with pleasure and astonishment. Then the ring-master, he see how he had been fooled, and he was the sickest ring-master you ever see, I reckon. Why, it was one of his own men! He had got up that joke all out of his own head, and never let on to n.o.body!"

Yet in this enjoyment of a practical joke, dear to every boy's heart, Huck did not fail to note that the skilful rider who had pretended to be intoxicated, stood up at last, "slim and handsome." Even Huck Finn, neglected son of the town-drunkard, was quick to respond to the appeal of the supple and well-proportioned figure of the rider after the superimposed clothing had been discarded, just as he had felt the attraction of the varied colors and the graceful evolutions of the Grand Entry. At bottom, it was the beauty of the display that he appreciated most keenly. By the side of this pa.s.sage from Mark Twain's masterpiece may be set a pa.s.sage from Mr. Hamlin Garland's best story, 'Rose of Dutcher's Coolly,' in which we find recorded the impressions of a girl of about the same age, the daughter of a hard-working Wisconsin farmer.

Rose had never seen a circus before, and even the morning street parade fired her imagination.