To look at the performance of a play through thick glass or with
closed ears has much the same absurd effect that is produced by
also stopping the ears while at a ball and watching the apparently
objectless capering of the dancers, without the aid of musical
accompaniment. Diderot, in his _Lettre sur les sourds muets_, gives
his experience as follows:
"I used frequently to attend the theater and I knew by heart most
of our good plays. Whenever I wished to criticise the movements and
gestures of the actors I went to the third tier of boxes, for the
further I was from them the better I was situated for this purpose.
As soon as the curtain rose, and the moment came when the other
spectators disposed themselves to listen, I put my fingers into my
ears, not without causing some surprise among those who surrounded me,
who, not understanding, almost regarded me as a crazy man who had
come to the play only not to hear it. I was very little embarrassed by
their comments, however, and obstinately kept my ears closed as long
as the action and gestures of the players seemed to me to accord with
the discourse which I recollected. I listened only when I failed to
see the appropriateness of the gestures.. There are few actors capable
of sustaining such a test, and the details into which I could enter
would be mortifying to most of them."
It will be noticed that Diderot made this test with regard to the
appropriate gestural representation of plays that he knew by heart,
but if he had been entirely without any knowledge of the plot, the
difficulty in his comprehending it from gestures alone would have been
enormously increased. When many admirers of Ristori, who were wholly
unacquainted with the language in which her words were delivered,
declared that her gesture and expression were so perfect that they
understood every sentence, it is to be doubted if they would have been
so delighted if they had not been thoroughly familiar with the plots
of Queen Elizabeth and Mary Stuart. This view is confirmed by the case
of a deaf-mute, told to the writer by Professor FAY, who had prepared
to enjoy Ristori's acting by reading in advance the advertised play,
but on his reaching the theater another play was substituted and he
could derive no idea from its presentation. The experience of the
present writer is that he could gain very little meaning in detail out
of the performance at a Chinese theater, where there is much more
true pantomime than in the European, without a general notion of the
subject as conveyed from time to time by an interpreter. A crucial
test on this subject was made at the representation at Washington,
in April, 1881, of _Frou-Frou_ by Sarah Bernhardt and the excellent
French company supporting her. Several persons of special intelligence
and familiar with theatrical performances, but who did not understand
spoken French, and had not heard or read the play before or even seen
an abstract of it, paid close attention to ascertain what they could
learn of the plot and incidents from the gestures alone. This could be
determined in the special play the more certainly as it is not founded
on historic events or any known facts. The result was that from the
entrance of the heroine during the first scene in a peacock-blue
riding habit to her death in a black walking-suit, three hours or five
acts later, none of the students formed any distinct conception of the
plot. This want of apprehension extended even to uncertainty whether
_Gilberte_ was married or not; that is, whether her adventures were
those of a disobedient daughter or a faithless wife, and, if married,
which of the half dozen male personages was her husband. There were
gestures enough, indeed rather a profusion of them, and they were
thoroughly appropriate to the words (when those were understood) in
which fun, distress, rage, and other emotions were expressed, but in
no cases did they interpret the motive for those emotions. They were
the dressing for the words of the actors as the superb millinery
was that of their persons, and perhaps acted as varnish to bring out
dialogues and soliloquies in heightened effect. But though varnish can
bring into plainer view dull or faded characters, it cannot introduce
into them significance where none before existed. The simple fact was
that the gestures of the most famed histrionic school, the Comedie
Francaise, were not significant, far less self-interpreting, and
though praised as the perfection of art, have diverged widely
from nature. It thus appears that the absence of absolute
self-interpretation by gesture is by no means confined to the lower
grade of actors, such as are criticised in the old lines:
When to enforce some very tender part
His left hand sleeps by instinct on the heart;
His soul, of every other thought bereft,
Seems anxious only--where to place the left!
Without relying wholly upon the facts above mentioned, it will be
admitted upon reflection that however numerous and correct may be
the actually significant gestures made by a great actor in the
representation of his part, they must be in small proportion to the
number of gestures not at all significant, and which are no less
necessary to give to his declamation precision, grace, and force.
Significant gestures on the stage may be regarded in the nature of
high seasoning and ornamentation, which by undue use defeat their
object and create disgust. Histrionic perfection is, indeed, more
shown in the slight shades of movement of the head, glances of the
eye, and poises of the body than in violent attitudes; but these
slight movements are wholly unintelligible without the words uttered
with them. Even in the expression of strong emotion the same gesture
will apply to many and utterly diverse conditions of fact. The
greatest actor in telling that his father was dead can convey his
grief with a shade of difference from that which he would use if
saying that his wife had run away, his son been arrested for murder,
or his house burned down; but that shade would not without words
inform any person, ignorant of the supposed event, which of the four
misfortunes had occurred. A true sign language, however, would fully
express the exact circumstances, either with or without any exhibition
of the general emotion appropriate to them.
Even among the best sign-talkers, whether Indian or deaf-mute, it
is necessary to establish some _rapport_ relating to theme or
subject-matter, since many gestures, as indeed is the case in a
less degree with spoken words, have widely different significations,
according to the object of their exhibition, as well as the context.
Panurge (_Pantagruel_, Book III, ch. xix) hits the truth upon this
point, however ungallant in his application of it to the fair sex.
He is desirous to consult a dumb man, but says it would be useless
to apply to a woman, for "whatever it be that they see they do always
represent unto their fancies, and imagine that it hath some relation
to love. Whatever signs, shows, or gestures we shall make, or whatever
our behavior, carriage, or demeanor shall happen to be in their
view and presence, they will interpret the whole in reference to
androgynation." A story is told to the same point by Guevara, in his
fabulous life of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. A young Roman gentleman
encountering at the foot of Mount Celion a beautiful Latin lady, who
from her very cradle had been deaf and dumb, asked her in gesture what
senators in her descent from the top of the hill she had met with,
going up thither. She straightway imagined that he had fallen in love
with her and was eloquently proposing marriage, whereupon she at once
threw herself into his arms in acceptance. The experience of travelers
on the Plains is to the same general effect, that signs commonly used
to men are understood by women in a sense so different as to occasion
embarrassment. So necessary was it to strike the mental key-note
of the spectators by adapting their minds to time, place, and
circumstance, that even in the palmiest days of pantomime it was
customary for the crier to give some short preliminary explanation
of what was to be acted, which advantage is now retained by our
play-bills, always more specific when the performance is in a foreign
language, unless, indeed, the management is interested in the sale of
librettos.