At the first night of Mr. E.H. Sothern's _Hamlet_, in the fall of 1900, I
had just settled back in my chair to listen to the reading of the soliloquy
on suicide, when a woman behind me whispered to her neighbor, "Oh look!
There are two fireplaces in the room!" My attention was distracted, and the
soliloquy was spoiled; but the fault lay with the stage-manager rather than
with the woman who spoke the disconcerting words. If Mr. Sothern was to
recite his soliloquy gazing dreamily into a fire in the centre of the room,
the stage-manager should have known enough to remove the large fireplace on
the right of the stage.
Mme. Sarah Bernhardt, when she acted _Hamlet_ in London in 1899, introduced
a novel and startling effect in the closet scene between the hero and his
mother. On the wall, as usual, hung the counterfeit presentments of two
brothers; and when the time came for the ghost of buried Denmark to appear,
he was suddenly seen standing luminous in the picture-frame which had
contained his portrait. The effect was so unexpected that the audience
could look at nothing else, and thus Hamlet and the queen failed to get
their proper measure of attention.
These two instances show that the necessity of economising the attention of
an audience is just as important to the stage-manager as it is to the
dramatist and the actor. In the main, it may be said that any unexpected
innovation, any device of stage-management that is by its nature startling,
should be avoided in the crucial situations of a play. Professor Brander
Matthews has given an interesting illustration of this principle in his
essay on _The Art of the Stage-Manager_, which is included in his volume
entitled _Inquiries and Opinions_. He says:
The stage-manager must ever be on his guard against the danger
of sacrificing the major to the minor, and of letting some
little effect of slight value in itself interfere with the true
interest of the play as a whole. At the first performance of Mr.
Bronson Howard's _Shenandoah_, the opening act of which ends
with the firing of the shot on Sumter, there was a wide window
at the back of the set, so that the spectators could see the
curving flight of the bomb and its final explosion above the
doomed fort. The scenic marvel had cost time and money to
devise; but it was never visible after the first performance,
because it drew attention to itself, as a mechanical effect, and
so took off the minds of the audience from the Northern lover
and the Southern girl, the Southern lover and the Northern girl,
whose loves were suddenly sundered by the bursting of that fatal
shell. At the second performance, the spectators did not see the
shot, they only heard the dread report; and they were free to
let their sympathy go forth to the young couples.
Nowadays, perhaps, when the theatre-going public is more used to elaborate
mechanism on the stage, this effect might be attempted without danger. It
was owing to its novelty at the time that the device disrupted the
attention of the spectators.
But not only novel and startling stage effects should be avoided in the
main dramatic moments of a play. Excessive magnificence and elaborateness
of setting are just as distracting to the attention as the shock of a new
and strange device. When _The Merchant of Venice_ was revived at Daly's
Theatre some years ago, a scenic set of unusual beauty was used for the
final act. The gardens of Portia's palace were shadowy with trees and
dreamy with the dark of evening. Slowly in the distance a round and yellow
moon rose rolling, its beams rippling over the moving waters of a lake.
There was a murmur of approbation in the audience; and that murmur was just
loud enough to deaden the lyric beauty of the lines in which Lorenzo and
Jessica gave expression to the spirit of the night. The audience could not
look and listen at the self-same moment; and Shakespeare was sacrificed for
a lime-light. A wise stage-manager, when he uses a set as magnificent, for
example, as the memorable garden scene in Miss Viola Allen's production of
_Twelfth Night_, will raise his curtain on an empty stage, to let the
audience enjoy and even applaud the scenery before the actors enter. Then,
when the lines are spoken, the spectators are ready and willing to lend
them their ears.
This point suggests a discussion of the advisability of producing
Shakespeare without scenery, in the very interesting manner that has been
employed in recent seasons by Mr. Ben Greet's company of players. Leaving
aside the argument that with a sceneless stage it is possible to perform
all the incidents of the play in their original order, and thus give the
story a greater narrative continuity, it may also be maintained that with a
bare stage there are far fewer chances of dispersing the attention of the
audience by attracting it to insignificant details of setting. Certainly,
the last act of the _Merchant_ would be better without the mechanical
moonrise than with it. But, unfortunately, the same argument for economy of
attention works also in the contrary direction. We have been so long used
to scenery in our theatres that a sceneless production requires a new
adjustment of our minds to accept the unwonted convention; and it may
readily be asserted that this mental adjustment disperses more attention
than would be scattered by elaborate stage effects. At Mr. Greet's first
production of _Twelfth Night_ in New York without change of scene, many
people in the audience could be heard whispering their opinions of the
experiment,--a fact which shows that their attention was not fixed entirely
upon the play itself. On the whole, it would probably be wisest to produce
Shakespeare with very simple scenery, in order, on the one hand, not to dim
the imagination of the spectators by elaborate magnificence of setting,
and, on the other, not to distract their minds by the unaccustomed
conventions of a sceneless stage.
What has been said of scenery may be applied also to the use of incidental
music. So soon as such music becomes obtrusive, it distracts the attention
from the business of the play: and it cannot be insisted on too often that
in the theatre the play's the thing. But a running accompaniment of music,
half-heard, half-guessed, that moves to the mood of the play, now swelling
to a climax, now softening to a hush, may do much toward keeping the
audience in tune with the emotional significance of the action.
A perfect theatrical performance is the rarest of all works of art. I have
seen several perfect statues and perfect pictures; and I have read many
perfect poems: but I have never seen a perfect performance in the theatre.
I doubt if such a performance has ever been given, except, perhaps, in
ancient Greece. But it is easy to imagine what its effect would be. It
would rivet the attention throughout upon the essential purport of the
play; it would proceed from the beginning to the end without the slightest
distraction; and it would convey its message simply and immediately, like
the sky at sunrise or the memorable murmur of the sea.