Doubtless no one would dissent from Hamlet's dictum that the purpose of
playing is "to hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature"; but this
statement is so exceedingly simple that it is rather difficult to
understand. What special kind of mirror did that wise dramatic critic have
in mind when he coined this memorable phrase? Surely he could not have
intended the sort of flat and clear reflector by the aid of which we comb
our hair; for a mirror such as this would represent life with such sedulous
exactitude that we should gain no advantage from looking at the reflection
rather than at the life itself which was reflected. If I wish to see the
tobacco jar upon my writing table, I look at the tobacco jar: I do not set
a mirror up behind it and look into the mirror. But suppose I had a magic
mirror which would reflect that jar in such a way as to show me not only
its outside but also the amount of tobacco shut within it. In this latter
case, a glance at the represented image would spare me a more laborious
examination of the actual object.
Now Hamlet must have had in mind some magic mirror such as this, which, by
its manner of reflecting life, would render life more intelligible. Goethe
once remarked that the sole excuse for the existence of works of art is
that they are different from the works of nature. If the theatre showed us
only what we see in life itself, there would be no sense at all in going to
the theatre. Assuredly it must show us more than that; and it is an
interesting paradox that in order to show us more it has to show us less.
The magic mirror must refuse to reflect the irrelevant and non-essential,
and must thereby concentrate attention on the pertinent and essential
phases of nature. That mirror is the best that reflects the least which
does not matter, and, as a consequence, reflects most clearly that which
does. In actual life, truth is buried beneath a bewilderment of facts. Most
of us seek it vainly, as we might seek a needle in a haystack. In this
proverbial search we should derive no assistance from looking at a
reflection of the haystack in an ordinary mirror. But imagine a glass so
endowed with a selective magic that it would not reflect hay but would
reflect steel. Then, assuredly, there would be a valid and practical reason
for holding the mirror up to nature.
The only real triumph for an artist is not to show us a haystack, but to
make us see the needle buried in it,--not to reflect the trappings and the
suits of life, but to suggest a sense of that within which passeth show.
To praise a play for its exactitude in representing facts would be a
fallacy of criticism. The important question is not how nearly the play
reflects the look of life, but how much it helps the audience to understand
life's meaning. The sceneless stage of the Elizabethan _As You Like It_
revealed more meanings than our modern scenic forests empty of Rosalind and
Orlando. There is no virtue in reflection unless there be some magic in the
mirror. Certain enterprising modern managers permit their press agents to
pat them on the back because they have set, say, a locomotive on the stage;
but why should we pay two dollars to see a locomotive in the theatre when
we may see a dozen locomotives in the Grand Central Station without paying
anything? Why, indeed!--unless the dramatist contrives to reveal an
imaginable human mystery throbbing in the palpitant heart--no, not of the
locomotive, but of the locomotive-engineer. That is something that we could
not see at all in the Grand Central Station, unless we were endowed with
eyes as penetrant as those of the dramatist himself.
But not only must the drama render life more comprehensible by discarding
the irrelevant, and attracting attention to the essential; it must also
render us the service of bringing to a focus that phase of life it
represents. The mirror which the dramatist holds up to nature should be a
concave mirror, which concentrates the rays impinging on it to a luminous
focal image. Hamlet was too much a metaphysician to busy his mind about the
simpler science of physics; but surely this figure of the concave mirror,
with its phenomenon of concentration, represents most suggestively his
belief concerning the purpose of playing and of plays. The trouble with
most of our dramas is that they render scattered and incoherent images of
life; they tell us many unimportant things, instead of telling us one
important thing in many ways. They reveal but little, because they
reproduce too much. But it is only by bringing all life to a focus in a
single luminous idea that it is possible, in the two hours' traffic of the
stage, "to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very
age and body of the time his form and pressure."
An interesting instance of how a dramatist, by holding, as it were, a
concave mirror up to nature, may concentrate all life to a focus in a
single luminous idea is afforded by that justly celebrated drama entitled
_El Gran Galeoto_, by Don José Echegaray. This play was first produced at
the Teatro Español on March 19, 1881, and achieved a triumph that soon
diffused the fame of its author, which till then had been but local, beyond
the Pyrenees. It is now generally recognised as one of the standard
monuments of the modern social drama. It owes its eminence mainly to the
unflinching emphasis which it casts upon a single great idea. This idea is
suggested in its title.
In the old French romance of Launcelot of the Lake, it was Gallehault who
first prevailed on Queen Guinevere to give a kiss to Launcelot: he was thus
the means of making actual their potential guilty love. His name
thereafter, like that of Pandarus of Troy, became a symbol to designate a
go-between, inciting to illicit love. In the fifth canto of the _Inferno_,
Francesca da Rimini narrates to Dante how she and Paolo read one day, all
unsuspecting, the romance of Launcelot; and after she tells how her lover,
allured by the suggestion of the story, kissed her on the mouth all
trembling, she adds,
Galeotto fu'l libro e chi lo scrisse,
which may be translated, "The book and the author of it performed for us
the service of Gallehault." Now Echegaray, desiring to retell in modern
terms the old familiar story of a man and a woman who, at first innocent in
their relationship, are allured by unappreciable degrees to the sudden
realisation of a great passion for each other, asked himself what force it
was, in modern life, which would perform for them most tragically the
sinful service of Gallehault. Then it struck him that the great Gallehault
of modern life--_El Gran Galeoto_--was the impalpable power of gossip, the
suggestive force of whispered opinion, the prurient allurement of evil
tongues. Set all society to glancing slyly at a man and a woman whose
relation to each other is really innocent, start the wicked tongues
a-babbling, and you will stir up a whirlwind which will blow them giddily
into each other's arms. Thus the old theme might be recast for the purposes
of modern tragedy. Echegaray himself, in the critical prose prologue which
he prefixed to his play, comments upon the fact that the chief character
and main motive force of the entire drama can never appear upon the stage,
except in hints and indirections; because the great Gallehault of his story
is not any particular person, but rather all slanderous society at large.
As he expresses it, the villain-hero of his drama is _Todo el
mundo_,--everybody, or all the world.
This, obviously, is a great idea for a modern social drama, because it
concentrates within itself many of the most important phases of the
perennial struggle between the individual and society; and this great idea
is embodied with direct, unwavering simplicity in the story of the play.
Don Julián, a rich merchant about forty years of age, is ideally married to
Teodora, a beautiful woman in her early twenties, who adores him. He is a
generous and kindly man; and upon the death of an old and honored friend,
to whose assistance in the past he owes his present fortune, he adopts into
his household the son of this friend, Ernesto. Ernesto is twenty-six years
old; he reads poems and writes plays, and is a thoroughly fine fellow. He
feels an almost filial affection for Don Julián and a wholesome brotherly
friendship for Teodora. They, in turn, are beautifully fond of him.
Naturally, he accompanies them everywhere in the social world of Madrid; he
sits in their box at the opera, acting as Teodora's escort when her husband
is detained by business; and he goes walking with Teodora of an afternoon.
Society, with sinister imagination, begins to look askance at the
triangulated household; tongues begin to wag; and gossip grows. Tidings of
the evil talk about town are brought to Don Julián by his brother, Don
Severo, who advises that Ernesto had better be requested to live in
quarters of his own. Don Julián nobly repels this suggestion as insulting;
but Don Severo persists that only by such a course may the family name be
rendered unimpeachable upon the public tongue.
Ernesto, himself, to still the evil rumors, goes to live in a studio alone.
This simple move on his part suggests to everybody--_todo el mundo_--that
he must have had a real motive for making it. Gossip increases, instead of
diminishing; and the emotions of Teodora, Don Julián, and himself are
stirred to the point of nervous tensity. Don Julián, in spite of his own
sweet reasonableness, begins subtly to wonder if there could be, by any
possibility, any basis for his brother's vehemence. Don Severo's wife, Doña
Mercedes, repeats the talk of the town to Teodora, and turns her
imagination inward, till it falters in self-questionings. Similarly the
great Gallehault,--which is the word of all the world,--whispers
unthinkable and tragic possibilities to the poetic and self-searching mind
of Ernesto. He resolves to seek release in Argentina. But before he can
sail away, he overhears, in a fashionable cafe, a remark which casts a slur
on Teodora, and strikes the speaker of the insult in the face. A duel is
forthwith arranged, to take place in a vacant studio adjacent to Ernesto's.
When Don Julián learns about it, he is troubled by the idea that another
man should be fighting for his wife, and rushes forthwith to wreak
vengeance himself on the traducer. Teodora hears the news; and in order to
prevent both her husband and Ernesto from endangering their lives, she
rushes to Ernesto's rooms to urge him to forestall hostilities. Meanwhile
her husband encounters the slanderer, and is severely wounded. He is
carried to Ernesto's studio. Hearing people coming, Teodora hides herself
in Ernesto's bedroom, where she is discovered by her husband's attendants.
Don Julián, wounded and enfevered, now at last believes the worst.
Ernesto seeks and slays Don Julián's assailant. But now the whole world
credits what the whole world has been whispering. In vain Ernesto and
Teodora protest their innocence to Don Severo and to Doña Mercedes. In vain
they plead with the kindly and noble man they both revere and love. Don
Julián curses them, and dies believing in their guilt. Then at last, when
they find themselves cast forth isolate by the entire world, their common
tragic loneliness draws them to each other. They are given to each other by
the world. The insidious purpose of the great Gallehault has been
accomplished; and Ernesto takes Teodora for his own.