II

Mr. Ben Greet, in his sceneless performances of Shakespeare during recent

seasons, has reminded us of some of the main physical features of the

Elizabethan theatre; and the others are so generally known that we need

review them only briefly. A typical Elizabethan play-house, like the Globe

or the Blackfriars, stood roofless in the air. The stage was a projecting

platform surrounded on three sides by the groundlings who had paid

threepence for the privilege of standing in the pit; and around this pit,

or yard, were built boxes for the city madams and the gentlemen of means.

Often the side edges of the stage itself were lined with young gallants

perched on three-legged stools, who twitted the actors when they pleased or

disturbed the play by boisterous interruptions. At the back of the platform

was hung an arras through which the players entered, and which could be

drawn aside to discover a set piece of stage furnishing, like a bed or a

banqueting board. Above the arras was built an upper room, which might

serve as Juliet's balcony or as the speaking-place of a commandant supposed

to stand upon a city's walls. No scenery was employed, except some

elaborate properties that might be drawn on and off before the eyes of the

spectators, like the trellised arbor in _The Spanish Tragedy_ on which the

young Horatio was hanged. Since there was no curtain, the actors could

never be "discovered" on the stage and were forced to make an exit at the

end of every scene. Plays were produced by daylight, under the sun of

afternoon; and the stage could not be darkened, even when it was necessary

for Macbeth to perpetrate a midnight murder.

In order to succeed in a theatre such as this, the drama was necessarily

forced to be a Drama of Rhetoric. From 1576, when James Burbage built the

first play-house in London, until 1642, when the theatres were formally

closed by act of Parliament, the drama dealt with stately speeches and with

high astounding terms. It was played upon a platform, and had to appeal

more to the ears of the audience than to their eyes. Spectacular elements

it had to some extent,--gaudy, though inappropriate, costumes, and stately

processions across the stage; but no careful imitation of the actual facts

of life, no illusion of reality in the representment, could possibly be

effected.

The absence of scenery forced the dramatists of the time to introduce

poetic passages to suggest the atmosphere of their scenes. Lorenzo and

Jessica opened the last act of _The Merchant of Venice_ with a pretty

dialogue descriptive of a moonlit evening, and the banished duke in _As You

Like It_ discoursed at length upon the pleasures of life in the forest. The

stage could not be darkened in _Macbeth_; but the hero was made to say,

"Light thickens, and the crew makes wing to the rooky wood." Sometimes,

when the scene was supposed to change from one country to another, a chorus

was sent forth, as in _Henry V_, to ask the audience frankly to transfer

their imaginations overseas.

The fact that the stage was surrounded on three sides by standing

spectators forced the actor to emulate the platform orator. Set speeches

were introduced bodily into the text of a play, although they impeded the

progress of the action. Jacques reined a comedy to a standstill while he

discoursed at length upon the seven ages of man. Soliloquies were common,

and formal dialogues prevailed. By convention, all characters, regardless

of their education or station in life, were considered capable of talking

not only verse, but poetry. The untutored sea-captain in _Twelfth Night_

spoke of "Arion on the dolphin's back," and in another play the sapheads

Salanio and Salarino discoursed most eloquent music.

In New York at the present day a singular similarity to Elizabethan

conventions may be noted in the Chinese theatre in Doyer Street. Here we

have a platform drama in all its nakedness. There is no curtain, and the

stage is bare of scenery. The musicians sit upon the stage, and the actors

enter through an arras at the right or at the left of the rear wall. The

costumes are elaborate, and the players frequently parade around the stage.

Long speeches and set colloquies are common. Only the crudest properties

are used. Two candlesticks and a small image on a table are taken to

represent a temple; a man seated upon an overturned chair is supposed to be

a general on a charger; and when a character is obliged to cross a river,

he walks the length of the stage trailing an oar behind him. The audience

does not seem to notice that these conventions are unnatural,--any more

than did the 'prentices in the pit, when Burbage, with the sun shining full

upon his face, announced that it was then the very witching time of night.

The Drama of Rhetoric which was demanded by the physical conditions of the

Elizabethan stage survived the Restoration and did not die until the day of

Addison's _Cato_. Imitations of it have even struggled on the stage within

the nineteenth century. The _Virginius_ of Sheridan Knowles and the

_Richelieu_ of Bulwer-Lytton were both framed upon the Elizabethan model,

and carried the platform drama down to recent times. But though traces of

the platform drama still exist, the period of its pristine vigor terminated

with the closing of the theatres in 1642.

When the drama was resumed in 1660, the physical conditions of the theatre

underwent a material change. At this time two great play-houses were

chartered,--the King's Theatre in Drury Lane, and the Duke of York's

Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Thomas Killigrew, the manager of the

Theatre Royal, was the first to introduce women actors on the stage; and

parts which formerly had been played by boys were soon performed by

actresses as moving as the great Elizabeth Barry. To William Davenant, the

manager of the Duke's Theatre, belongs the credit for a still more

important innovation. During the eighteen years when public dramatic

performances had been prohibited, he had secured permission now and then to

produce an opera upon a private stage. For these musical entertainments he

took as a model the masques, or court celebrations, which had been the most

popular form of private theatricals in the days of Elizabeth and James. It

is well known that masques had been produced with elaborate scenic

appointments even at a time when the professional stage was bare of

scenery. While the theatres had been closed, Davenant had used scenery in

his operas, to keep them out of the forbidden pale of professional plays;

and now in 1660, when he came forth as a regular theatre manager, he

continued to use scenery, and introduced it into the production of comedies

and tragedies.

But the use of scenery was not the only innovation that carried the

Restoration theatre far beyond its Elizabethan prototype. Play-houses were

now regularly roofed; and the stage was artificially lighted by lamps. The

shifting of scenery demanded the use of a curtain; and it became possible

for the first time to disclose actors upon the stage and to leave them

grouped before the audience at the end of an act.

All of these improvements rendered possible a closer approach to

naturalness of representment than had ever been made before. Palaces and

flowered meads, drawing-rooms and city streets, could now be suggested by

actual scenery instead of by descriptive passages in the text. Costumes

became appropriate, and properties were more nicely chosen to give a flavor

of actuality to the scene. At the same time the platform receded, and the

groundlings no longer stood about it on the sides. The gallants were

banished from the stage, and the greater part of the audience was gathered

directly in front of the actors. Some traces of the former platform system,

however, still remained. In front of the curtain, the stage projected into

a wide "apron," as it was called, lined on either side by boxes filled with

spectators; and the house was so inadequately lighted that almost all the

acting had to be done within the focus of the footlights. After the curtain

rose, the actors advanced into this projecting "apron" and performed the

main business of the act beyond the range of scenery and furniture.

With the "apron" stage arose a more natural form of play than had been

produced upon the Elizabethan platform. The Drama of Rhetoric was soon

supplanted by the Drama of Conversation. Oratory gradually disappeared, set

speeches were abolished, and poetic lines gave place to rapid repartee.

The comedy of conversation that began with Sir George Etherege in 1664

reached its culmination with Sheridan in a little more than a hundred

years; and during this century the drama became more and more natural as

the years progressed. Even in the days of Sheridan, however, the

conventions of the theatre were still essentially unreal. An actor entered

a room by walking through the walls; stage furniture was formally arranged;

and each act terminated with the players grouped in a semicircle and bowing

obeisance to applause. The lines in Sheridan's comedies were

indiscriminately witty. Every character, regardless of his birth or

education, had his clever things to say; and the servant bandied epigrams

with the lord.

It was not until the nineteenth century was well under way that a decided

improvement was made in the physical conditions of the theatre. When Madame

Vestris assumed the management of the Olympic Theatre in London in 1831 she

inaugurated a new era in stage conventions. Her husband, Charles James

Mathews, says in his autobiography, "There was introduced that reform in

all theatrical matters which has since been adopted in every theatre in the

kingdom. Drawing-rooms were fitted up like drawing-rooms and furnished with

care and taste. Two chairs no longer indicated that two persons were to be

seated, the two chairs being removed indicating that the two persons were

_not_ to be seated." At the first performance of Boucicault's _London

Assurance_, in 1841, a further innovation was marked by the introduction of

the "box set," as it is called. Instead of representing an interior scene

by a series of wings set one behind the other, the scene-shifters now built

the side walls of a room solidly from front to rear; and the actors were

made to enter, not by walking through the wings, but by opening real doors

that turned upon their hinges. At the same time, instead of the formal

stage furniture of former years, appointments were introduced that were

carefully designed to suit the actual conditions of the room to be

portrayed. From this time stage-settings advanced rapidly to greater and

greater degrees of naturalness. Acting, however, was still largely

conventional; for the "apron" stage survived, with its semicircle of

footlights, and every important piece of stage business had to be done

within their focus.

The greatest revolution of modern times in stage conventions owes its

origin directly to the invention of the electric light. Now that it is

possible to make every corner of the stage clearly visible from all parts

of the house, it is no longer necessary for an actor to hold the centre of

the scene. The introduction of electric lights abolished the necessity of

the "apron" stage and made possible the picture-frame proscenium; and the

removal of the "apron" struck the death-blow to the Drama of Conversation

and led directly to the Drama of Illusion. As soon as the picture-frame

proscenium was adopted, the audience demanded a picture to be placed within

the frame. The stage became essentially pictorial, and began to be used to

represent faithfully the actual facts of life. Now for the first time was

realised the graphic value of the curtain-fall. It became customary to ring

the curtain down upon a picture that summed up in itself the entire

dramatic accomplishment of the scene, instead of terminating an act with a

general exodus of the performers or with a semicircle of bows.

The most extraordinary advances in natural stage-settings have been made

within the memory of the present generation of theatre-goers. Sunsets and

starlit skies, moonlight rippling over moving waves, fires that really

burn, windows of actual glass, fountains plashing with real water,--all of

the naturalistic devices of the latter-day Drama of Illusion have been

developed in the last few decades.