The principle of sternly economizing the attention of the audience can
be violated by distractions far less extraneous and far less extravagant
than avalanches. When Marmontel's forgotten tragedy of 'Cleopatra' was
produced in the eighteenth century at the Theatre Francais, the
misguided poet prevailed upon Vaucanson to make an artificial asp, which
the Egyptian queen coiled about her arm at the end of the play, thereby
releasing a spring, whereupon the beast raised its head angrily and
emitted a shrill hiss before sinking its fangs into Cleopatra's flesh.
At the first performance a spectator, bored by the tediousness of the
tragedy, rose to his feet when he heard the hiss of the tiny serpent: "I
agree with the asp!" he cried, as he made his way to the door.
But even if Vaucanson's skilful automaton had not given occasion for
this disastrous gibe, whatever attention the audience might pay to the
mechanical means of Cleopatra's suicide was necessarily subtracted from
that available for the sad fate of Cleopatra herself. If at that moment
the spectators noted at all the hissing snake, then they were not really
in a fit mood to feel the tragic death-struggle of "the serpent of old
Nile." A kindred blunder was manifest in a recent sumptuously
spectacular revival of 'Macbeth,' when the three witches flew here and
there thru the dim twilight across the blasted heath, finally vanishing
into empty air. These mysterious flittings and disappearances were
achieved by attaching the performers of the weird sisters to invisible
wires, whereby they could be swung aloft; the trick had been exploited
earlier in the so-called Flying Ballet, wherein it was a graceful and
amusing adjunct of the terpsichorean revels. But in 'Macbeth' it emptied
Shakspere's scene of its dramatic significance, since the spectator
waited for and watched the startling flights of the witches, and admired
the dexterity with which their aerial voyages were controlled; and as a
result he failed to feel the emotional importance of the interview
between Macbeth and the withered croons, whose untoward greetings were
to start the villain-hero on his downward career of crime.
In this same revival of 'Macbeth' an equally misplaced ingenuity was
lavished on the apparition of Banquo's ghost at the banquet. The
gruesome specter was made mysteriously visible thru the temporarily
transparent walls of the palace, until at last he emerged to take his
seat on Macbeth's chair. The effect was excellent in itself, and the
spectators followed all the movements of the ghost with pleased
attention, more or less forgetting Macbeth, and failing to note the
maddening effect of the apparition upon the seared countenance of the
assassin-king. In this revival of 'Macbeth' no opportunity was neglected
to adorn the course of the play with every possible scenic and mechanic
accompaniment; and the total result of these accumulated artificialities
of presentation was to rob one of Shakspere's most poetic tragedies of
nearly all its poetry, and to reduce this imaginative masterpiece to the
prosaic level of a spectacular melodrama.
Another of Shakspere's tragedies has become almost impossible in our
modern playhouses, because the stage-manager does not dare to do without
the spectacular effects that the story seems to demand. Shakspere
composed 'King Lear' for the bare platform-stage of the Globe Theater,
devoid of all scenery, and supplied with only the most primitive
appliances for suggesting rain and thunder; and he introduced three
successive storm scenes, each intenser in interest than the one that
went before, until the culmination comes in perhaps the sublimest and
most pitiful episode in all tragedy, when the mad king and his follower,
who is pretending to be insane, and his faithful fool are together out
in the tempest. At the original production, three centuries ago, the
three storms may have increased in violence as they followed one
another; but at best the fierceness of the contending elements could
then be only suggested, and the rain and the thunder were not allowed
to divert attention away from the agonized plight of the mad monarch.
But to-day the three storm scenes are rolled into one, and the
stage-manager sets out to manufacture a realistic tempest in rivalry
with nature. The mimic artillery of heaven and the simulated deluge from
the skies which the producer now provides may excite our artistic
admiration for his skill, but they distract our attention from the
coming together of the characters so strangely met in the midst of the
storm. The more realistically the tempest is reproduced the worse it is
for the tragedy itself; and in most recent revivals the full effect of
the painful story has been smothered by the sound and fury of the
man-made storm.
The counterweighted wires which permit the figures of the Flying Ballet
to soar over the stage and to float aloft in the air, disturb the
current of our sympathy when they are employed to lend lightness to
intangible creatures like the weird sisters of Shakspere's tragedy; but
they have been more artistically utilized in two of Shakspere's comedies
to suggest the ethereality of Puck and of Ariel. The action of the
'Midsummer Night's Dream' takes place in fairy-land, and that of the
'Tempest' passes in an enchanted island, and even if we wonder for a
moment how the levitation of these airy spirits is achieved, this
temporary distraction of our attention is negligible in playful comedies
like these with all their scenes laid in a land of make-believe. And yet
it may be doubted whether even the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' and the
'Tempest,' fairy-plays as they are, do not on the whole lose more than
they gain from elaborate scenic and mechanical adjuncts. They are of
poetry all compact, and the more simply they are presented, the less
obtrusive the scenery and the less protruded the needful effects, the
more the effort of the producer is centered upon preserving the ethereal
atmosphere wherein the characters live, move, and have their being, the
more harmonious the performance is with the pure fancy which inspired
these two delightful pieces, then the more truly successful is the
achievement of the stage-manager.