intelligent and best educated part of the audience take the movies
seriously. Here is one of the marvels of modern times; something that has
captured the public as it never was captured before. And yet most of us
look at it as a huge joke, or as something intended to entertain the
populace, at which we, too are graciously pleased to be amused. It might
mend matters if we could have every day in some reputable paper a column
of readable serious stuff about the current movie plays--real criticism,
not simply the producer's "blurb."
Possibly, too, a partnership between the legitimate stage and the movie
may be possible and I shall devote to a somewhat wild scheme of this sort
the few pages that remain to me. To begin with, the freedom enjoyed by the
Elizabethan dramatists from the limitations imposed by realistic scenery
has not been sufficiently insisted upon as an element in their art. Theirs
was a true _drame libre_, having its analogies with the present attempts
of the vers-librists to free poetry from its restrictions of rhyme and
metre. But while the tendency of poetry has always been away from its
restrictions, the _mise-en-scene_ in the drama has continually, with the
attempts to make it conform to nature, tightened its throttling bands on
the real vitality of the stage.
Those who periodically wonder why the dramatists of the Elizabethan
age--the greatest productive period in the history of the English
stage--no longer hold the stage, with the exception of Shakespeare, and
who lament that even Shakespeare is yielding his traditional place, have
apparently given little thought to this loss of freedom as a contributing
cause. While the writers of _vers libre_ have so far freed themselves that
some of them have ceased to write poetry at all, it is a question whether
the scenic freedom of the old dramatists may not have played such a vital
part in the development of their art, that they owed to it at least some
of their pre-eminence.
Shakespeare's plays, as Shakespeare wrote them, read better than they act.
Hundreds of Shakespeare-lovers have reached this conclusion, and many more
have reached it than have dared to put it into words. The reason is, it
seems to me, that we can not, on the modern stage, enact the plays of
Shakespeare as he intended them to be acted--as he really wrote them.
If we compare an acting edition of any of the plays with the text as
presented by any good editor, this becomes increasingly clear. Shakespeare
in his original garb, is simply impossible for the modern stage.
The fact that the Elizabethan plays were given against an imaginary
back-ground enabled the playwright to disregard the old, hampering unity
of place more thoroughly than has ever been possible since his time. His
ability to do so, was the result not of any reasoned determination to set
his plays without "scenery," but simply of environment. As the scenic art
progressed, the backgrounds became more and more realistic and less and
less imaginary. The imagination of the audience, however, has always been
more or less requisite to the appreciation of drama, as of any other art.
No stage tree or house has ever been close enough to its original to
deceive the onlooker. He always knows that they are imitations, intended
only to aid the imagination, and his imagination has always been obliged
to do its part. In Shakespeare's time the imagination did all the work;
and as imaginary houses and trees have no weight, the services of the
scene-shifter were not required to remove them and to substitute others.
The scene could be shifted at once from a battlefield in Flanders to a
palace in London and after the briefest of dialogues it could change again
to a street in Genoa--all without inconveniencing anyone or necessitating
a halt in the presentation of the drama. Any reflective reader of
Shakespeare will agree, I think, that this ability to shift scenes, which
after all, is only that which the novelist or poet has always possessed
and still possesses, enables the dramatist to impart a breadth of view
that was impossible under the ideas of unity that governed the drama of
the Ancients. Greek tragedy was drama in concentration, a tabloid of
intense power--a brilliant light focussed on a single spot of passion or
exaltation. The Elizabethan drama is a view of life; and life does not
focus, it is diffuse--a congeries of episodes, successive or
simultaneous--something not re-producible by the ancient dramatic methods.
Today, while we have not gone back to the terrific force of the Greek
unified presentation, we have lost this breadth. We strive for it, but we
can no longer reach it because of the growth of an idea that realism in
_mise-en-scéne_ is absolutely necessary. Of course this idea has been
injurious to the drama in more ways than the one that we are now
considering. The notable reform in stage settings associated with the
names of Gordon Craig, Granville Barker, Urban, Hume and others, arises
from a conviction that _mise-en-scéne_ should inspire and reflect a
mood--should furnish an atmosphere, rather than attempt to reproduce
realistic details. To a certain extent these reforms also operate to
simplify stage settings and hence to make a little more possible the quick
transitions and the play of viewpoint which I regard as one of the glories
of the Elizabethan drama. This simplification, however, is very far from a
return to the absolute simplicity of the Elizabethan setting. Moreover, it
is doubtful whether the temper of the modern audience is favorable to a
great change in this direction. We live in an age of realistic detail and
we must yield to the current, while using it, so far as possible, to gain
our ends.
This being the case, it is certainly interesting to find that, entirely
without the aid or consent of those who have at heart the interests of the
drama, a new dramatic form has grown up which caters to the utmost to the
modern desire for realistic detail--far beyond the dreams of ordinary
stage settings--and at the same time makes possible the quick transitions
that are the glory of the Elizabethan drama. Here, of course, is where we
make connection with the moving picture, whose fascinating realism and
freedom from the taint of the footlights have perhaps been sufficiently
insisted upon in what has been already said. In the moving picture, with
the possibility of realistic backgrounds such as no skill, no money, no
opportunity could build up on the ordinary stage--distant prospects,
marvels of architecture, waving trees and moving animals--comes the
ability of passing from one environment to another, on the other side of
the globe perhaps, in the twinkling of an eye. The transitions of the
Elizabethan stage sink into insignificance beside the possibilities of the
moving-picture screen. Such an alternation as is now common in the film
play, where two characters, talking to each other over the telephone, are
seen in quick succession, would be impossible on the ordinary stage. The
Elizabethan auditor, if his imagination were vivid and ready, might
picture such a background of castle or palace or rocky coast as no
photographer could produce; but even such imagination takes time to get
under way, whereas the screen-picture gets to the brain through the retina
instantly.
It is worth our while, I think, to consider whether this kind of scenery,
rich in detail, but immaterial and therefore devoid of weight, could not
be used in connection with the ordinary drama. There are obstacles, but
they do not appear insuperable. The ordinary moving-picture, of course, is
much smaller than the back drop of a large stage. Its enlargement is
merely a matter of optical apparatus. Wings must be reduced in number and
provided each with its own projection-machine, or replaced with drops
similarly provided. Exits and entrances must be managed somewhat
differently than with ordinary scenery. All this is surely not beyond the
power of modern stagecraft, which has already surmounted such obstacles
and accomplished such wonders. The projection, it is unnecessary to say,
must be from behind, not from before, to avoid throwing the actors'
shadows on the scenery. There must still, of course, be lighting from the
front, and the shadow problem still exists, but no more than it does with
ordinary scenery. Its solution lies in diffusing the light. No spotlight
could be used, and its enforced absence would be one of the incidental
blessings of the moving scene.
The advantages of this moving-picture scenery would be many and obvious.
Prominent among them of course are fidelity to nature and richness of
detail. The one, however, on which I desire to lay stress here is the
flexibility in change of scene that we have lost with the introduction of
heavy material "scenery" on our stages. This flexibility would be regained
without the necessity of discarding scenery altogether and going back to
the Elizabethan reliance on the imagination of the audience.
Of course, moving scenery would not be required or desired in all dramatic
productions--only in those where realistic detail combined with perfect
flexibility and rapidity of change in scene seems to be indicated. The
scenery should of course be colored, and while we are waiting for the
commercial tri-chroic picture with absolutely true values, we may get
along very well with the di-chroic ones, such as those turned out with the
so-called Kinemacolor process. Those who saw the wonderful screen
reproduction of the Indian durbar, several years ago, will realize the
possibilities.
And more than all else, may we not hope that these new backgrounds may
react on the players who perform their parts in front of them? Not
necessarily; for we have seen that it does not always do so in the present
movie play. But I am confident that the change will come. Little by little
the necessities of the case are developing actors who act naturally. One
may pose in a canoe on a painted rapid; but how can he do so in the real
water course, where every attitude, every play of the muscles must be
adapted to the real propulsion of the boat?
In short, the movie may ultimately require its presenters to be real, and
so may come a school of realism in acting that may have its uses on the
legitimate stage also.
Who will be the first manager to experiment with this new adjunct to the
art of the stage?
A WORD TO BELIEVERS[17]
[17] Address at the closing session of the Church School of
Religious Instruction, St. Louis.
People may be divided into a great many different classes according to
their attitude toward belief and beliefs--toward the meaning and value of
belief in general--toward their own beliefs and those of their neighbors.
We have the man who does not know what "belief" means, and who does not
care; the man whose idea of its meaning is perverse and wrong; the man who
thinks his own beliefs are important and those of his neighbors are
unimportant; the man who thinks it proper to base belief on certain
considerations and not on others--the man, for instance, who will say he
believes that two plus two equals four, but can not believe in the
existence of God because the grounds for such belief can not be stated in
the same mathematical symbols. These are only a few of the classes that
might be defined, using this interesting basis of classification. But
before we can take up the question of instruction in the church's beliefs,
about which I have been asked to address you this evening, we must
recognize the existence of these classes, and possibly the fact that you
yourselves are not all in accord in the way in which you look at the
subject.
What I shall say is largely personal and you must not look upon me as
representing anybody or anything. I may even fail to agree with some of
the instruction that you have received in this interesting and valuable
course. But I do speak, of course, as one who loves our church and as a
loyal and I hope a thoughtful layman.
First, what is belief? We surely give the word a wide range of values. A
man says that he believes in his own existence, which the philosopher
Descartes said was the most sure thing in the world--"_Cogito, ergo sum_."
He also says that he believes it will rain to-morrow. What can there be in
common between these two acts of faith? Between a certainty and a fifty
per cent chance, or less? This--that a man is always willing to act on his
beliefs; if not, they are not beliefs within the meaning of this address.
If you believe it will rain, you take an umbrella. Your doing so is quite
independent of the grounds for your belief. There may really be very
little chance of its raining; but it is your belief that causes your
action, no matter whether it is justified or not. You could not act more
decisively if you were acting on the certainty of your own existence. It
is this willingness to act that unifies our beliefs--that gives them
value. If I heard a man declare his belief that a fierce wild animal was
on his track, and if I then saw him calmly lie down and go to sleep on the
trail, I should know that he was either insane or a liar.
I have intimated above that belief may or may not be based on mathematical
certainty. Fill up a basket with black and white pebbles and then draw out
one. Let us create a situation that shall make it imperative for a person
to declare whether a black or a white pebble will be drawn. For instance,
suppose the event to be controlled by an oriental despot who has given
orders to strike off the man's head if he announces the wrong color. Of
course, if he has seen that only white pebbles went into the basket he
says boldly "White." That is certainty. But suppose he saw one black
pebble in the mass. Does he any the less say "White"? That one black
pebble represents a tiny doubt; does it affect the direction of his
enforced action? Suppose there were two black pebbles; or a handful.
Suppose nearly half the pebbles were black? Would that make the slightest
difference about what he would do? If you judge a man's belief by what he
does, as I think you should do, that belief may admit of a good deal of
doubt before it is nullified. Are your beliefs all based on mathematical
certainties? I hope not; for then they must be few indeed.
That many of our fellow men have a wrong conception of belief is a very
sad fact. The idea that it must be based on a mathematical demonstration
of certainty, or even that it must be free from doubt is surely not
Christian. Our prayers and our hymns are full of the contrary. We are
beset not only by "fightings" but by "fears"--"within; without;" by "many
a conflict, many a doubt"; we pray to be delivered from this same doubt.
The whole body of Christian doctrine is permeated with the idea that the
true believer is likely to be beset by doubts of all kinds, and that it is
his duty, despite all this, to believe.
And yet there are many who will not call themselves Christians so long as
they can not construct a rigid demonstration of every Christian doctrine.
There are many thoughtful men who call themselves Agnostics just because
they can not be mathematically sure of religious truth. Some of these men
are better Christians than many that are so named. That they hold aloof
from Christian fellowship is due to their mistaken notion of the nature of
belief. The more is the pity. Now let us go back for a moment to our
basket of pebbles. We have seen that the action of the guesser is based to
some extent on his knowledge of the contents of the basket. In other
words, he has grounds for the belief by which his act is conditioned.
Persons may act without grounds; it may be necessary for them so to do.
Even in this case there may be a sort of blind substitute for belief. A
man, pursued by a bear, comes to a fork in the road. He knows nothing
about either branch; one may lead to safety and one to a jungle. But he
has to choose, and choose at once; and his choice represents his bid for
safety. There is plenty of action of this sort in the world; if we would
avoid the necessity for it we must do a little preliminary investigation;
and if we can not find definitely where the roads lead, we may at least
hit upon some idea of which is the safest.
But with all our investigation we shall find that we must rely in the end
on our trust in some person; either ourselves or someone else. Even the
certainty of the mathematical formula depends on our confidence in the
sanity of our own mental processes. The man who sees the basket filled
with white pebbles must trust the accuracy of his eyesight. If he relies
for his information on what someone else told him, he must trust not only
that other's eyesight, but his memory, his veracity, his friendliness. And
yet one may be far safer in trusting another than in relying on his own
unaided powers. _Securus judicat orbis terrarum_, says the old Latin. "The
world's judgment is safe." We have learned to modify this, for we have
seen world judgments that are manifestly incorrect. The world thought the
earth was flat. It thought there were witches, and it burned them. Here
individuals simply followed one another like sheep; and all, like sheep,
went astray. But where there is a real, independent judgment on the part
of each member of a group, and all agree, that is better proof of its
correctness than most individual investigations could furnish. My watch,
of the best make and carefully regulated, indicates five o'clock, but if I
meet five friends, each of whom tells me, independently, that it is six, I
conclude that my watch is wrong. There was never a more careful scientific
investigation than that by which a French physicist thought he had
established the existence of what he called the "N ray"--examined its
properties and measured its constants. He read paper after paper before
learned bodies as his research progressed. He challenged the interest of
his brother scientists on three continents. And yet he was entirely wrong:
there never was any "N ray." The man had deceived himself. The failure of
hundreds to see as he did weighed more than his positive testimony that he
saw what he thought he saw. Here as elsewhere our view of what may be the
truth is based on trust. If you trust the French physicist, you will still
believe in the "N ray." Creeds, we are told, are outworn, and yet we are
confronted, from birth to death, with situations that imperiously require
action of some sort. Every act that responds must be based on belief of
some kind. Creeds are only expressions of belief. The kind of Creed that
_is_ outworn (and this is doubtless what intelligent persons mean when
they make this statement) is the parrot creed, the form of words without
meaning, the statement of belief without any grounds behind it or any
action in front of it. For this the modern churchman has no use.
And if he desires to avoid the parrot creed, he must surely inform himself
regarding the meaning of its articles and the grounds on which they are
held. More; he must satisfy himself of the particular meaning that they
have for him and the personal grounds on which he is to hold them. This is
the reason why such a course as that which you complete to-night is
necessary and valuable. I have heard instruction of this kind deprecated
as likely to bring disturbing elements into the mind. One may doubtless
change from belief to skepticism by too much searching. It used to be a
standing joke in Yale College, when I was a student there, that a
well-known professor reputed to be an Atheist, had been perfectly orthodox
until he had heard President Porter's lectures on the "Evidences of
Christianity." But seriously, this objection is but another phase of the
fallacy at which we have already glanced--that doubts are fatal to belief.
I am certain that the professor in question might have examined in detail
every one of President Porter's "Evidences," and found them wanting, only
to discover clearer and stronger grounds of belief elsewhere--in his mere
confidence in others, perhaps. Or he might have turned pragmatist and
believed in Christianity because it "worked"--a valid reason in this case
doubtless, but not always to be depended on; because the Father of Lies
sometimes makes things "work" himself--at least temporarily.
But if examining into the grounds of his belief makes a man honestly give
up that belief, then I bid him God-speed. I may weep for him, but I cannot
help believing that he stands better with his Maker for being honest with
himself than if he had gone on with his parrot belief that meant
absolutely nothing. I can not feel that the Aztecs who were baptized by
the followers of Cortes were any more believers in Christianity after the
ceremony than they were before. It seems to me, however that a Christian,
examining faithfully the grounds of his belief, will usually have that
belief strengthened, and that a churchman, examining the doctrines of the
church will be similarly upheld.
Not that church instruction should be one-sided. The teaching that tends
to make us believe that every intelligent man thinks as we do reacts
against itself. It is like the unfortunate temperance teaching that
represents the liking for wine as always acquired. When the pupil comes to
taste wine and finds that he likes it at once, he concludes that the whole
body of instruction in the physiology of alcohol is false and acts
accordingly. When a boy is taught that there is nothing of value beyond
his own church, or nothing of value outside of Christianity, he will think
less of his church, and less of Christianity when he finds intelligent,
upright, lovable outsiders. I look back with horror on some of the books,
piously prepared under the auspices of the S.P.C.K. in London, that I used
to take home from Sunday School. In them we were told that a good man
outside the church was worse than a bad man in it. If that was not the
teaching in the book, it was at least the form in which it took lodgment
in my boyish brain. Thank God it never found permanent foothold there.
Instead, I hold in my memory the Eastern story of God's rebuke to Abraham
when he expelled the Fire Worshipper from his tent. "Could you not bear
with him for one hour? Lo! I have borne with him these forty years!"
I have always thought that a knowledge of what our neighbors believe is an
excellent balance-wheel to our own beliefs and that our own beliefs, so
balanced, will be saner and more restrained. It would be well, I think, if
we could have a survey of the world's religions, setting down in parallel
columns all the faiths of mankind. If this is too great a task we might
begin with a survey of Christianity, set down in the same way. I believe
that the results of such a survey might surprise us, showing, as I think
it would do, the many fundamentals that we hold in common and the trivial
nature of some of the barriers that appear to separate us.
In your course, just completed, you have had such a survey, I doubt not,
of the beliefs of our own beloved church. Where her divines have differed,
you have had the varying opinions spread before you. You have not been
told that the mind of every churchman has always been a replica of the
mind of every other churchman. Personally, I feel grateful that this has
not been the case. As I say my creed and begin "I believe in God, the
Father Almighty," I realize that the aspect of even such a basic belief as
this, is the same in no two minds; that it shifts from land to land and
from age to age. I know that God, as he is, is past human knowledge and
that until we see Him face to face we can not all mean just the same thing
when we repeat this article of belief. But I realize also that this is not
due to the mutability of the Almighty but to man's variability. The Gods
of St. Jerome, of Thomas Carlyle and of William James are different; but
that is because these men had different types of minds. Behind their human
ideas stands God himself--"the same yesterday, to-day and forever." So we
may go through the creed; so we may study, as you have been doing, the
beliefs of the church. Everywhere we see the evidences of the working,
upon fallible human minds of a dim appreciation of something beyond full
human knowledge--