[Illustration: Chatham Street Theater]
_Chatham Street Theater, New York City, N. Y., where Robert G.
Ingersoll was baptized in 1836 by his father, the Rev. John Ingersoll,
who temporarily preached at the theatre, his church having been
destroyed by fire_.
_Question_. What place does the theatre hold among the arts?
_Answer_. Nearly all the arts unite in the theatre, and it is the
result of the best, the highest, the most artistic, that man can do.
In the first place, there must be the dramatic poet. Dramatic
poetry is the subtlest, profoundest, the most intellectual, the
most passionate and artistic of all. Then the stage must be
prepared, and there is work for the architect, the painter and
sculptor. Then the actors appear, and they must be gifted with
imagination, with a high order of intelligence; they must have
sympathies quick and deep, natures capable of the greatest emotion,
dominated by passion. They must have impressive presence, and all
that is manly should meet and unite in the actor; all that is
womanly, tender, intense and admirable should be lavishly bestowed
on the actress. In addition to all this, actors should have the
art of being natural.
Let me explain what I mean by being natural. When I say that an
actor is natural, I mean that he appears to act in accordance with
his ideal, in accordance with his nature, and that he is not an
imitator or a copyist--that he is not made up of shreds and patches
taken from others, but that all he does flows from interior fountains
and is consistent with his own nature, all having in a marked degree
the highest characteristics of the man. That is what I mean by
being natural.
The great actor must be acquainted with the heart, must know the
motives, ends, objects and desires that control the thoughts and
acts of men. He must be familiar with many people, including the
lowest and the highest, so that he may give to others, clothed with
flesh and blood, the characters born of the poet's brain. The
great actor must know the relations that exist between passion and
voice, gesture and emphasis, expression and pose. He must speak
not only with his voice, but with his body. The great actor must
be master of many arts.
Then comes the musician. The theatre has always been the home of
music, and this music must be appropriate; must, or should, express
or supplement what happens on the stage; should furnish rest and
balm for minds overwrought with tragic deeds. To produce a great
play, and put it worthily upon the stage, involves most arts, many
sciences and nearly all that is artistic, poetic and dramatic in
the mind of man.
_Question_. Should the drama teach lessons and discuss social
problems, or should it give simply intellectual pleasure and furnish
amusement?
_Answer_. Every great play teaches many lessons and touches nearly
all social problems. But the great play does this by indirection.
Every beautiful thought is a teacher; every noble line speaks to
the brain and heart. Beauty, proportion, melody suggest moral
beauty, proportion in conduct and melody in life. In a great play
the relations of the various characters, their objects, the means
adopted for their accomplishment, must suggest, and in a certain
sense solve or throw light on many social problems, so that the
drama teaches lessons, discusses social problems and gives intellectual
pleasure.
The stage should not be dogmatic; neither should its object be
directly to enforce a moral. The great thing for the drama to do,
and the great thing it has done, and is doing, is to cultivate the
imagination. This is of the utmost importance. The civilization
of man depends upon the development, not only of the intellect,
but of the imagination. Most crimes of violence are committed by
people who are destitute of imagination. People without imagination
make most of the cruel and infamous creeds. They were the persecutors
and destroyers of their fellow-men. By cultivating the imagination,
the stage becomes one of the greatest teachers. It produces the
climate in which the better feelings grow; it is the home of the
ideal. All beautiful things tend to the civilization of man. The
great statues plead for proportion in life, the great symphonies
suggest the melody of conduct, and the great plays cultivate the
heart and brain.
_Question_. What do you think of the French drama as compared with
the English, morally and artistically considered?
_Answer_. The modern French drama, so far as I am acquainted with
it, is a disease. It deals with the abnormal. It is fashioned
after Balzac. It exhibits moral tumors, mental cancers and all
kinds of abnormal fungi,--excrescences. Everything is stood on
its head; virtue lives in the brothel; the good are the really bad
and the worst are, after all, the best. It portrays the exceptional,
and mistakes the scum-covered bayou for the great river. The French
dramatists seem to think that the ceremony of marriage sows the
seed of vice. They are always conveying the idea that the virtuous
are uninteresting, rather stupid, without sense and spirit enough
to take advantage of their privilege. Between the greatest French
plays and the greatest English plays of course there is no comparison.
If a Frenchman had written the plays of Shakespeare, Desdemona
would have been guilty, Isabella would have ransomed her brother
at the Duke's price, Juliet would have married the County Paris,
run away from him, and joined Romeo in Mantua, and Miranda would
have listened coquettishly to the words of Caliban. The French
are exceedingly artistic. They understand stage effects, love the
climax, delight in surprises, especially in the improbable; but
their dramatists lack sympathy and breadth of treatment. They are
provincial. With them France is the world. They know little of
other countries. Their plays do not touch the universal.
_Question_. What are your feelings in reference to idealism on
the stage?
_Answer_. The stage ought to be the home of the ideal; in a word,
the imagination should have full sway. The great dramatist is a
creator; he is the sovereign, and governs his own world. The
realist is only a copyist. He does not need genius. All he wants
is industry and the trick of imitation. On the stage, the real
should be idealized, the ordinary should be transfigured; that is,
the deeper meaning of things should be given. As we make music of
common air, and statues of stone, so the great dramatist should
make life burst into blossom on the stage. A lot of words, facts,
odds and ends divided into acts and scenes do not make a play.
These things are like old pieces of broken iron that need the heat
of the furnace so that they may be moulded into shape. Genius is
that furnace, and in its heat and glow and flame these pieces,
these fragments, become molten and are cast into noble and heroic
forms. Realism degrades and impoverishes the stage.
_Question_. What attributes should an actor have to be really
great?
_Answer_. Intelligence, imagination, presence; a mobile and
impressive face; a body that lends itself to every mood in appropriate
pose, one that is oak or willow, at will; self-possession; absolute
ease; a voice capable of giving every shade of meaning and feeling,
an intuitive knowledge or perception of proportion, and above all,
the actor should be so sincere that he loses himself in the character
he portrays. Such an actor will grow intellectually and morally.
The great actor should strive to satisfy himself--to reach his own
ideal.
_Question_. Do you enjoy Shakespeare more in the library than
Shakespeare interpreted by actors now on the boards?
_Answer_. I enjoy Shakespeare everywhere. I think it would give
me pleasure to hear those wonderful lines spoken even by phonographs.
But Shakespeare is greatest and best when grandly put upon the
stage. There you know the connection, the relation, the circumstances,
and these bring out the appropriateness and the perfect meaning of
the text. Nobody in this country now thinks of Hamlet without
thinking of Booth. For this generation at least, Booth is Hamlet.
It is impossible for me to read the words of Sir Toby without seeing
the face of W. F. Owen. Brutus is Davenport, Cassius is Lawrence
Barrett, and Lear will be associated always in my mind with Edwin
Forrest. Lady Macbeth is to me Adelaide Ristori, the greatest
actress I ever saw. If I understood music perfectly, I would much
rather hear Seidl's orchestra play "Tristan," or hear Remenyi's
matchless rendition of Schubert's "Ave Maria," than to read the
notes.
Most people love the theatre. Everything about it from stage to
gallery attracts and fascinates. The mysterious realm, behind the
scenes, from which emerge kings and clowns, villains and fools,
heroes and lovers, and in which they disappear, is still a fairyland.
As long as man is man he will enjoy the love and laughter, the
tears and rapture of the mimic world.
_Question_. Is it because we lack men of genius or because our
life is too material that no truly great American plays have been
written?
_Answer_. No great play has been written since Shakespeare; that
is, no play has been written equal to his. But there is the same
reason for that in all other countries, including England, that
there is in this country, and that reason is that Shakespeare has
had no equal.
America has not failed because life in the Republic is too material.
Germany and France, and, in fact, all other nations, have failed
in the same way. In the sense in which I am speaking, Germany has
produced no great play.
In the dramatic world Shakespeare stands alone. Compared with him,
even the classic is childish.
There is plenty of material for plays. The Republic has lived a
great play--a great poem--a most marvelous drama. Here, on our
soil, have happened some of the greatest events in the history of
the world.
All human passions have been and are in full play here, and here
as elsewhere, can be found the tragic, the comic, the beautiful,
the poetic, the tears, the smiles, the lamentations and the laughter
that are the necessary warp and woof with which to weave the living
tapestries that we call plays.
We are beginning. We have found that American plays must be American
in spirit. We are tired of imitations and adaptations. We want
plays worthy of the great Republic. Some good work has recently
been done, giving great hope for the future. Of course the realistic
comes first; afterward the ideal. But here in America, as in all
other lands, love is the eternal passion that will forever hold
the stage. Around that everything else will move. It is the sun.
All other passions are secondary. Their orbits are determined by
the central force from which they receive their light and meaning.
Love, however, must be kept pure.
The great dramatist is, of necessity, a believer in virtue, in
honesty, in courage and in the nobility of human nature. He must
know that there are men and women that even a God could not corrupt;
such knowledge, such feeling, is the foundation, and the only
foundation, that can support the splendid structure, the many
pillared stories and the swelling dome of the great drama.
--_The New York Dramatic Mirror_, December 26, 1891.