Representative arts will represent everything they can, including
themselves. The theatre likes to show an image of its own life, life
behind the scenes, actors acting on the stage, audiences listening,
applauding, or interrupting in front. Hence the plays within plays which
Shakespeare found so alluring. It was a comparatively simple problem of
technique in his time because of the simplicity of the “platform” stage
and of the Elizabethan playhouse.
A standing audience, as his for the most part was, is obviously easier to
represent than a seated audience; it is just a crowd of “citizens” like
any other stage crowd. The only important question for the stage-manager
was the relative position of the mimic players and the mimic public.
Clearly your mimic players must be seen by the real public, or what
becomes of your play within a play? The position of your mimic public
must have been more or less dependent on their importance in the action.
But, I take it, the Elizabethan arrangement, in any case, must have been
of a pre-Raphaelite symmetry. I presume the play scene in _Hamlet_ must
have taken place in the lower part of the permanent erection at the back
of the stage and that the mimic public was ranged down each side of the
stage. The old arrangement has remained essentially unaltered. The mimic
players are generally shown in some raised, arcaded terrace at the back
of the stage; the King and Queen face Hamlet and Ophelia (in profile
with respect to the real public) in front. It would obviously never do
to let Hamlet and the King face the performers in the rear and so turn
their backs on the real public, for the whole point of the scene is the
effect of the mimic play on the King and on Hamlet watching the King.
But I do not, for my part, see why more might not be made out of this
“psychologic” effect by an arrangement which placed the mimic players
nearer the front of the actual stage, on one side, so that the King might
be turned full-face towards us as he watched them. If the King were
played by an actor of the first importance (which he seldom or never is),
with a gift of facial play, we may be sure that this would be done.
There is a somewhat similar scene in the first act of _Cyrano de
Bergerac_. The chief centre of attraction here is not the mimic play
itself, but the behaviour of the audience, disturbed by Cyrano’s
interruption of the players. That is why I think that Coquelin’s
arrangement with the players on one side and the audience in profile
was better than Mr. Loraine’s, with the players in the rear and the
mimic audience turning its back to the real one. But it is a point of
comparative insignificance. As it was the old playhouse and the old
standing audience that was being represented, the stage-management was
essentially as simple as that of the play-scene in _Hamlet_.
So soon, however, as you come to represent the very different modern
“picture” stage and the modern seated audience you see at once that
the problem becomes immensely more difficult. Accordingly you find a
revolution in the method of treating a play within a play. I do not know
whether the Guitrys invented it or Reinhardt or whoever, but certainly
the most conspicuous illustration we have had of it has been presented by
the Guitrys. It is something much more than a mechanical change; it is
psychological as well. The mimic stage, the stage of the play within the
play, now occupies the whole of the actual stage, and the mimic audience
is identified with the real audience.
We saw this startling innovation first in _Pasteur_. Pasteur is supposed
to be addressing a meeting of the French Academy of Medicine. His rostrum
is at the footlights, and he addresses _us_, the real audience. _We_ have
to suppose ourselves the Academy of Medicine. To help us to this illusion
one or two actors are scattered about the house, who interrupt, argue
with Pasteur, and are personally answered by him. We find ourselves,
in fact, at once listening to a debate, as real audience, and, in the
thick of it, taking part in it, as supposed audience. There is a French
proverb which says you cannot both join in a procession and look out
of the window; but this experience upsets it. The result is a curious
blend of sensations; you feel yourself both spectator and actor, _at_ a
play and _in_ a play. But there is no doubt that the effect is much more
vivid and exciting than that which would have attended the mere spectacle
of Pasteur addressing a crowd upon the stage itself. You have, by the
way, exactly the same effect in Mr. Galsworthy’s _Skin Game_, where an
auctioneer addresses us, the public, who are supposed to represent the
competing purchasers.
A still more striking instance has been seen in _L’Illusioniste_. Here
the first act shows the stage of a music-hall and presents three actual
“turns.” We, the actual audience, become the music-hall audience, and
again there are actors scattered among us to help the illusion. They are
addressed by the conjurer and answer him; a lady in a box throws him
ardent glances which are returned with interest. But one of the “turns,”
an act by acrobatic clowns, has absolutely nothing to do with the play;
it is there purely for its own interest, a substantive performance.
This shows, what we knew before, that revolutions run to excess. We are
so engrossed by the clowns that we are tempted to forget what we are
there for, to see a play. Anyhow, it is a most amusing innovation, this
conversion of the actual stage into an imaginary stage within the play,
and of the actual public into an imaginary public taking part in the
play. It is a real enrichment of stage resources.
But there are obvious dangers. One I have just pointed out, the danger of
introducing irrelevancies for their own intrinsic interest, which tend to
impair the artistic unity of the play. Another is the danger of applying
this method to cases (as in _Hamlet_ and _Cyrano_) where the real centre
of interest is not the mimic play but the mimic audience. Imagine the
whole stage given up to the _Mouse Trap_, with the front row of stalls
occupied by the courtiers, and Hamlet and Ophelia in one box watching the
King and Gertrude in the opposite box! That is an extreme instance, which
traditional respect for Shakespeare will probably save us from; but some
ambitious producer will probably try this game with some modern play, and
then I predict disaster.