In this perfect poetic setting the play went on with a stately
slowness--that yet was all too fast for the onlookers--and with the
perfection of finish that such actors naturally gave to their work
amidst surroundings by which they were at once stimulated and inspired.
Even the practical defects of the ruinous theatre were turned into
poetical advantages which made the tragic action still more real. The
woeful entrance of _Oedipus_ and the despairing retreat of _Jocasta_
were rendered the more impressive by momentary pauses in the broken
doorway--that emphasized by its wreck their own wrecked happiness; in
"Antigone" a touching beauty was given to the entry of the blind
_Tiresias_ by his slow approach from the distant side of the theatre,
led by a child through the maze of bushes and around the fallen
fragments of stone; and Mademoiselle Bartet (_Antigone_), unable to pass
by the door that should have been but was not open for her, made a still
finer exit by descending the steps at the side of the stage and
disappearing among the trees.
But the most perfect of those artistic utilizations of chance
accessories--which were the more effective precisely because they were
accidental, and the more appreciated because their use so obviously was
an inspiration--was the final exit of _Oedipus_: a departure "into
desert regions" that Mounet-Sully was able to make very literally real.
Over in the corner beside the "garden" exit, as I have said, was a
tangled growth of figs and pomegranates; and thence extending almost to
the stage was a light fringe of bushes growing along the base of the
rear wall among the fragments of fallen stone. It was through that
actual wilderness that _Oedipus_--crossing half the width of the
theatre--passed from the brilliant stage into shadow that grew deeper as
he advanced, and at last, entering the gap in the stone-work where once
the doorway had been, disappeared into the dark depth beyond.
An accident of the moment--the exhaustion of the carbons of the electric
lamps--gave to his exit a still keener dramatic intensity. The
footlights alone remained burning: flooding with a golden splendour the
stage and the great yellow wall, and from the wall reflected upward and
outward upon the auditorium; casting over the faces in the orchestra a
soft golden twilight, and a still fainter golden light over the more
remote hill-side of faces on the tiers--which rose through the golden
dusk, and vanished at last in a darkness that still seemed to be a
little softened by the faint suggestion of a golden haze.
Interest and light thus together were focused upon the climax of the
tragedy. Leaving the light, and with it love and hope and life, behind
him, _Oedipus_ descended the steps of the palace, leaning upon the
shoulder of a slave, and moved toward the thickening shadows. Watching
after him with a profoundly sorrowful intensity was the group upon the
stage: a gorgeous mass of warm colour, broken by dashes of gleaming
white and bathed in a golden glow. Slowly, painfully, along that rough
and troublous way, into an ever-deepening obscurity merging into
darkness irrevocable, the blinded king went onward toward the outer
wilderness where would be spent the dreary remnant of his broken days.
Feeling his way through the tangled bushes; stumbling, almost falling,
over the blocks of stone; at times halting, and in his desperate sorrow
raising his hands imploringly toward the gods whose foreordered curse
had fallen upon him because of his foreordered sin, he went on and on:
while upon the great auditorium there rested an ardent silence which
seemed even to still the beatings of the eight thousand hearts. And
when, passing into the black depths of the broken archway, the last
faint gleam of his white drapery vanished, and the strain relaxed which
had held the audience still and silent, there came first from all those
eager breasts--before the roar of applause which rose and fell, and
rose again, and seemed for a while to be quite inextinguishable--a
deep-drawn sigh.
X
"Antigone," played on the second evening--being a gentler tragedy than
"Oedipus," and conceived in a spirit more in touch with our modern
times--was received with a warmer enthusiasm. No doubt to the Greeks, to
whom its religious motive was a living reality, "Oedipus" was purely
awe-inspiring; but to us, for whom the religious element practically has
no existence, the intrinsic qualities of the plot are so repellent that
the play is less awe-inspiring than horrible. And even in Grecian times,
I fancy--human nature being the same then as now in its
substrata--"Antigone," with its conflict between mortals, must have
appealed more searchingly to human hearts than ever "Oedipus" could have
appealed with its conflict between a mortal and the gods. Naturally, we
are in closer sympathy with the righteous defiance of a man by a
woman--both before our eyes, passionately flaming with strong
antagonistic emotions--than we are with a man's unrighteous defiance of
abstract and invisible Fate.
As "Antigone" was given at Orange, the softening influences which had
subdued the harshness of "Oedipus" still farther were extended, making
its deep tenderness still deeper and more appealing. The inspersion of
music of a curiously penetrating, moving sort--composed by Saint-Saens
in an approximation to Grecian measures--added a poetic undertone to the
poetry of the situations and of the lines; and a greater intensity was
given to the crises of the play--an artistic reproduction of the effect
caused by the accident of the night before--by extinguishing the
electric lamps and so bringing the action to a focus in the mellow
radiance which came from the golden footlights and richly lighted the
stage.
The poetic key-note was struck in the opening scene: when _Antigone_ and
_Ismene_, robed all in white, entered together by the royal doorway and
stood upon the upper plane of the great stage, alone--and yet so filled
it that there was no sense of emptiness nor of lack of the ordinary
scenery. Again, the setting was not an imitation, but the real thing.
The palace from which the sisters had come forth rose stately behind
them. Beside the stage, the branches of the fig-tree waved lightly in
the breeze. In the golden glow of the footlights and against the golden
background the two white-robed figures--their loose vestments, swayed by
the wind, falling each moment into fresh lines of loveliness--moved with
an exquisite grace. And all this visible beauty reinforced with a moving
fervour the penetrating beauty of _Antigone's_ avowal of her love for
her dead brother--tender, human, natural--and of her purpose, born of
that love, so resolute that to accomplish it she would give her life.
[Illustration: SCENE FROM THE SECOND ACT OF "ANTIGONE"]
Again, the utter absence of conventional scenery was a benefit rather
than a disadvantage. When _Creon_ entered upon the upper plane, attended
by his gorgeous guard, and at the same moment the entrance of the chorus
filled the lower plane with colour less brilliant but not less strong,
the stage was full, not of things, but of people, and was wholly
alive. The eye was not distracted by painted scenery--in the ordinary
theatre a mechanical necessity, and partly excusable because it also
supplies warmth and richness of tone--but was entirely at the service of
the mind in following the dramatic action of the play. The setting being
a reality, there was no need for mechanism to conceal a seamy side; and
the colour-effects were produced by the actors themselves: whose
draperies made a superb colour-scheme of strong hues perfectly
harmonized, of gleaming white, of glittering golden embroideries--which
constantly was rearranged by the shifting of the groups and single
figures into fresh combinations; to which every puff of wind and every
gesture gave fresh effects of light and shade; and over which the golden
light shed always its warm radiance.
Of all those beautiful groupings, the one which most completely
fulfilled the several requirements of a picture--subject, composition,
colour, light-and-shade--was that of the fourth episode: the white-robed
_Antigone_ alone upon the upper plane, an animate statue, a veritable
Galatea; the chorus, a broad sweep of warm colour, on the lower plane;
the electric lights turned off, leaving the auditorium in
semi-obscurity, and concentrating light and thought upon the golden
beauty of the stage. With the entry of _Creon_ and his guards both the
dramatic and the picturesque demands of the situation were entirely
satisfied. In the foreground, a mass of strong subdued colour, were the
minor figures of the chorus; in the background, a mass of strong
brilliant color, were the minor figures of the guards; between those
groups--the subject proper--were _Creon_ and _Antigone_: their white
robes, flashing with their eager gestures and in vivid relief against
the rich background, making them at once the centre and the culmination
of the magnificent composition. And the beauty and force of such a
setting deepened the pathos and intensified the cruelty of the
alternately supplicating and ferocious lines.
There was, I regret to say, an absurd anticlimax to that noble scene.
_Antigone_, being recalled and made the centre of a volley of bouquets,
ceased to be _Antigone_ and became only Mademoiselle Bartet; and the
Greek chorus, breaking ranks and scampering about the stage in order to
pick up the leading lady's flowers, ceased to be anything serious and
became only ridiculous. For the moment French gallantry rose superior to
the eternal fitness of things, and in so doing partially destroyed one
of the most beautiful effects ever produced upon the stage. Even in the
case of minor players so complete a collapse of dignity would not easily
have been forgiven. In the case of players so eminent, belonging to the
first theatre in the world, it was unpardonable.