MR IRVING ON THE STAGE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume X, Issue 1, 7 January 1893, Page 17

MR IRVING ON THE STAGE.

The editor of the Nineteenth Centuty has hit u|s>n quite a novel idea. He has actually got somebody to write about the drama who knows something about it—in fact, no less a person than Mr Henry Irving, who deals with ‘Some Misconceptions about the Stage,' and says several things of interest. THE ENGLISH AND FRENCH STYLES. Mr Irving is by no means inclined to agree in the common opinion (that is, of persons who are not actors) that theie is no such thing as good dramatic elocution on the English stage. When we are asked why we do not recite our Shakespeare as we would Racine, we may well rub our eyes in wonder. ‘ Those days are past, Floranthe !' The classic correctness of Racine’s verse —which the French beliere none but a Frenchman can understand—is wholly opposed to the free dom of that of Shakespeare, which therefore requires a totally different method of delivery. Although the march of Shakespeare’s verse should be most delicately preserved, it is ‘ flat burglary ’ to demand for it the recitation of Racine. Only bad actors ami schoolboys support this dreadful practice. The greatest French actors have shaken off the trammels of tradition, and have adopted a more natural delivery of tragic verse. ‘ There is not a scene-shifter, madam,' said Dr. Johnson to Mrs Siddons, ‘ who could not recite “ To be or not to be ” better than Mr Garrick. His excellence was in the interpretation of nature and true conception of character. There lies the secret of the actor's success. Garrick supplanted the dull declaiming of Quin, as did afterwards Edmund Kean the deciaimers o his -lay. Recitation, no matter with what spirit it may be delivered, is but a bastard substitute for truthful interpietation of Shakespeare’s verse. In the expression of character, rhythm is subordinate to dramatic significance.

and except in the most rhetorical passages, every sentence should be expressed as a new thought, and every thought with a varied intonation. TABLEAU OR DRAMA. Mr Irving deals with the question of accessories and scenery, and maintains that the great actors and managers of the past would undoubtedly have compassed the magnificence of the Lyceum revivals if they could. Shakes, peare himself yearned for better conditions than those of his own day :— Where —O for pity !—we shall much disgrace With four or live most vile and ragged foils The name of Agincourt.

And Mr Irving points out that Garrick spent a great deal of money on scenes and ‘ sets ’ as elaborate as they con Id lamade in his time. But Mr Irving is quite at one with his critics in thinking that ‘ the play’s the thing,’ and not the costumes and dresses ; and he gives the following illustration. ‘ 1 remember,’ he says, ‘ with keen pleasure a performance of the “ Merchant of Venice,” which the Lyceum Company gave at West Point before the chivalry of Young America. Never did actors play to a more alert or enthusiastic audience, aud never did actors respond with more fervour to stimulating sympathy. And yet we acted in Elizabethan dress, the conventional dress of Shakespeare, and we had no scenery whatever—a board with the name of the supposed scene chalked upon it. “ A Street,” “ Portia's House,” and so forth, being, as in olden time, the only pictorial aid to the imagination.

Moreover, he points out that the Lyceum • Hamlet and ‘ Merchant of Venice’ were mounted with comparative sim plicity, and were quite as successful and effective as any of the series.

Mr Irving ‘rounds on’ the novelists, poets, dramatic Clitics, and others who have lately been scoffing at the stage and all who are concerned with it in this country, in a very spirited fashion. I have been accused of treating criticism of the stage in a pontificial spirit; but there is so much infallibility abroad

that the actor is in no daneer of suffering from odious comparisons. Mr Barlow is, 1 am told, a minor poet, and >n his character he naturally deplon** the absence of * appreciation nt poetry in the public* Then he suggests that art is vani-hing from the stage because we are in process of being • democratised.’ Incapacity to speak Shakespeare will. I suppose, culminate some day in manhood suffrage. Mr Barlow devotes a page to trivalitiesconcerning wbatap »ears to have been a uniquely bad mannered audience at a French play, and then deduces the conclusion that they demonstrate ‘ our lack of artistic instinct.’ These things are unworthy of notice, except as illustrations of the boundless comprehensiveness which distinguishes the casual critic of the drama. The popular taste for the theatre is heterogeneous. It is gratified in some ways which, perhaps, are no more artistic than certain novels not dignified with the name of literature, though having thousands of readers. I am not aware that this phenomenon is peculiar to this country. But, when I survey the extensive area of theatrical enterpri-e, I see a great deal of admirable talent. Loth in the drama and its interpreters, and a very large measure of public appreciation for artistic effort. Nobody except Mr Bulow suggests that the prosperity of the music ball is a stigma on the theatre. Under no conditions can there exist more than a limited number of theatres in which dramatic art, properly so called, can be said to be paramount. There are many places of entertainment, excellent of their kind, from which the genuine art of the stage must be dissociated. But in this limited number of theatres may be seen plays, destitute, it is true, of the pessimism of or the moral squalor of Zola, yet abounding in delicate observation and broad views of humanity. They are comparatively few, perhaps ; but a wide experience of dramatic authorship has taught me that to write a good play is one of the most difficult achievements, and demands a combination of talent, thought, and patience not often surpassed by the novelists who have been telling us, somewhat supertluously, why they do not work in a medium which is absolutely strange to them.