I
At an interesting moment in Disraeli's picturesque career in British
politics he indulged in one of his strikingly spectacular effects, in
accord with his characteristic method of boldly startling the somewhat
sluggish imagination of his insular countrymen; and in the next week's
issue of _Punch_ there was a cartoon by Tenniel reflecting the general
opinion in regard to his theatrical audacity. He was represented as
Artemus Ward, frankly confessing that "I have no principles; I'm in the
show business."
The cartoon was good-humored enough, as _Punch's_ cartoons usually are;
but it was not exactly complimentary. It was intended to voice the vague
distrust felt by the British people toward a leader who did not
scrupulously avoid every possible opportunity to be dramatic. And yet
every statesman who was himself possessed of constructive imagination,
and who was therefore anxious to stir the imaginations of those he was
leading, has laid himself open to the same charge. Burke, for one, was
accused of being frankly theatrical; and Napoleon, the child of that
French Revolution which Burke combated with undying vigor, never
hesitated to employ kindred devices. When Napoleon took the Imperial
Crown from the hands of the Pope to place it on his own head, and when
Burke cast the daggers on the floor of the House of Commons, they were
both proving that they were in the show business. So was Julius Caesar
when he thrice thrust aside the kingly crown; and so was Frederick on
more than one occasion. Even Luther did not shrink from the spectacular
if that could serve his purpose, as when he nailed his theses to the
door of the church.
If the statesmen have now and again acted as tho they were in the show
business, we need not be surprised to discover that the dramatists have
done it even more often, in accord with their more intimate relation to
the theater. No one would deny that Sardou and Boucicault were showmen,
with a perfect mastery of every trick of the showman's trade. But this
is almost equally true of the supreme leaders of dramatic art,
Sophocles, Shakspere, and Moliere. The great Greek, the great
Englishman, and the great Frenchman, however much they might differ in
their aims and in their accomplishments, were alike in the avidity with
which they availed themselves of every spectacular device possible to
their respective theaters. The opening passage of 'OEdipus the King,'
when the chorus appeals to the sovran to remove the curse that hangs
over the city, is as potent on the eye as on the ear. The witches and
the ghost in 'Macbeth,' the single combats and the bloody battles that
embellish many of Shakspere's plays are utilizations of the spectacular
possibilities existing in that Elizabethan playhouse, which has seemed
to some historians of the drama to be necessarily bare of all appeal to
the senses. And in his 'Amphitryon' Moliere has a succession of purely
mechanical effects (a god riding upon an eagle, for example, and
descending from the sky) which are anticipations of the more elaborate
and complicated transformation scenes of the 'Black Crook' and the
'White Fawn.'
At the end of the nineteenth century the two masters of the stage were
Ibsen and Wagner, and both of them were in the show business--Wagner
more openly and more frequently than Ibsen. Yet the stern Scandinavian
did not disdain to employ an avalanche in 'When We Dead Awaken,' and to
introduce a highly pictorial shawl dance for the heroine of his 'Doll's
House.' As for Wagner, he was incessant in his search for the
spectacular, insisting that the music-drama was the "art-work of the
future," since the librettist-composer could call to his aid all the
other arts, and could make these arts contribute to the total effect of
the opera. He conformed his practise to his principles, and as a result
there is scarcely any one of his music-dramas which is not enriched by a
most elaborate scenic accompaniment. The forging of the sword, the ride
of the Valkyries, the swimming of the singing Rhinemaidens, are only a
few of the novel and startling effects which he introduced into his
operas; and in his last work, 'Parsival,' the purely spectacular element
is at least as ample and as varied as any that can be found in a
Parisian fairy-play or in a London Christmas pantomime. And what is the
'Blue Bird' of M. Maeterlinck, the philosopher-poet, who is also a
playwright, but a fairy-play on the model of those long popular in
Paris, the 'Pied de Mouton,' and the 'Biche au Bois'? It has a meaning
and a purpose lacking in its emptier predecessors; but its method is the
same as that of the uninspired manufacturers of these spectacular
pieces.