Passion Play

“ To talk of the passion of a play being hidden by the paint, and of sentiment being killed by scenery, is mere emptiness and folly of words. A noble play, nobly mounted, gives us double artistic pleasure. ”

“ It is a gigantic labor, but it will be accomplished, nothing is needed save patience and an iron will! They will grow with their task. The increasing success of the Passion Play will teach them to understand how important it is that artistic interests should supersede all others. ”

“ Books and plays were not the only subjects of discussion; in the Blue Room letters from the absent were read to the company, verses were improvised and declaimed, plays were enacted, and delicately refined expressions were sought with which to clothe the sentiment and the passion of love. Great progress was made in the exercise of wit, and at times the Circle, excited by the clash of mind with mind, exhibited the effervescent joy of children at play when fun runs riot in the last moment of recess, before the bell rings to recall them to the schoolroom. ”

“ Play, which is much to be recommended to young people, especially to those who incline to be practical, and wish to look about in the world for themselves, could never, indeed, become a passion with me ”

“ They freely give reins to their feelings, untrammelled by considerations which beset more civilised men; and when passions have unrestrained play, gestures, which are the pantomime of passion, are born. ”

“ Passion, and passion in its profoundest, is not a thing demanding a palatial stage whereon to play its part. Down among the groundlings, among the beggars and rakers of the garbage, profound passion is enacted. And the circumstances that provoke it, however trivial or mean, are no measure of its power. In the present instance the stage is a scrubbed gun deck, and one of the external provocations a man-of-war's-man's spilled soup. ”

“ Her project we must very shortly describe as a design to write a series of plays, the chief object of which should be the delineation of all the higher passions of the human breast—each play exhibiting in the principal character some one great passion in all the stages of its development, from its origin to its final catastrophe; and in which, in order to produce the strongest moral effect, the aim should be the expression and delineation of just sentiments and characteristic truth, rather than of marvelous incident, novel situation, or beautiful and sublime thought. ”

“ THE PLAYING INFANT. Play on thy mother's bosom, babe, for in that holy isle The error cannot find thee yet, the grieving, nor the guile; Held in thy mother's arms above life's dark and troubled wave, Thou lookest with thy fearless smile upon the floating grave. Play, loveliest innocence!—Thee yet Arcadia circles round, A charmed power for thee has set the lists of fairy ground; Each gleesome impulse Nature now can sanction and befriend, Nor to that willing heart as yet the duty and the end. Play, for the haggard labor soon will come to seize its prey. ”

“ In many cases, indeed, our pleasure consists of a delicate blending of surprise with realized anticipation. We foresaw, and are pleased to recognize, the art of the whole achievement, while details which had grown dim to us give us each its little thrill of fresh admiration. Regarded in this aspect, a great play is like a great piece of music: we can hear it again and again with ever-new realization of its subtle beauties, its complex harmonies, and with unfailing interest in the merits and demerits of each particular rendering. ”

“ Making play, instead of ennobling work till through that the soul can play,—that is child's play. Finding spiritual deliverance in a there, in a "got-up" situation,—that is romanticism. And it is the representative error of nobly imagining youth. ”

“ Does it not contradict the conception of the reason and the dignity of beauty, which is nevertheless regarded as an instrument of culture, to confine it to the work of being a mere play? and does it not contradict the empirical conception of play, which can co-exist with the exclusion of all taste, to confine it merely to beauty?
But what is meant by a mere play, when we know that in all conditions of humanity that very thing is play, and only that is play which makes man complete and develops simultaneously his twofold nature? ”

“ Don't you see that the love-business is the play now? I have got to throw away all the sin-interest, all the Haxard situation, or keep them together as they are, and write a new play altogether, with the light, semi-comic motive of the love-business for the motive of the whole. ”

“ But this is the setting of my drama—the scenery of the play, not the play itself. It is its human contacts that give life its vivacity and intensity. And it is the ear and tongue that are the channels of the cheerful interplay of mind with mind. ”

“ Just as a man is more than his body, his speech, his dress, his movings to and fro in the scenes where he plays out his life, and even more than his deeds, so is a play more than the sum of all its parts. Every successful play, every great playlet, possesses a soul—a character, if you like—that carries a message to its audiences by means which cannot be analyzed. ”

“ Whoever objects to the youth of the parties in this play as ‘too unripe and crude’ to pluck the sweets of love, and wishes to see a first-love carried on into a good old age, and the passions taken at the rebound, when their force is spent, may find all this done in the Stranger and in other German plays, where they do things by contraries, and transpose nature to inspire sentiment and create philosophy. ”

“ Which of us is happy in this world? which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?' No wonder that with such a view of human life as that the next and last sentence should be, 'Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for the play is played out.' Yes! ”

“ Perhaps some day, when we are quite, quite ourselves again, I can explain some things so that you will not hate me very much. I hope this will not matter with your work, for—and this is not selfishness—I want your play to be a great success. ”

“ They will share the spirit of adventure in the matter of obtaining or contriving the most difficult things in the way of costumes, scenery, and properties. Their inventiveness will be quickened, their hands will grow skillful, and their triumphant enjoyment of success in these preliminary labors will stimulate them to greater success in the acting of the story. In this, they will be quick to appreciate hints—frequently to offer them—as to the best ways of expressing the meaning and spirit of the play, and work with them becomes an inspiration to all alike. ”

“ Before going further we must pause to consider the idea so often advanced that such enjoyment is peculiarly the prerogative of the higher senses. Is the pleasure which I feel when I inhale a perfume as much æsthetic as is the perception of beautiful colour? I think the case is like that of the common idea of play. From a psychological standpoint we recognise as such any act that is practised purely for its pleasurable effect, and sham occupation in the higher forms of play may be subjective. ”

“ The spirit of play and the spirit of youth travel hand in hand. If we allow the spirit of play to depart from our life, we lose our grip upon life itself. Every man and woman should cultivate and vigorously maintain a play spirit. ”

“ We must say to ourselves continually [10] when we imagine a character: ‘Have I given him the roots, as it were, of all faculties necessary for life?’ And only when one is certain of that may one give him the one faculty that fills the imagination with joy. I even doubt if any play had ever a great popularity that did not use, or seem to use, the bodily energies of its principal actor to the full. ”

“ And this association, though it may remove some of the more refined and aristocratic experiences of the reader, has a definite effect upon individual pleasure in the way of enrichment, and even reacts upon the play itself to shape its nature. A curious sort of sympathy is set up throughout an audience as it receives the skillful story of the playwright; common or crowd emotions are aroused, personal variations are submerged in a general associative feeling and the individual does not so much laugh, cry and wonder by himself as do these things sympathetically in conjunction with others. ”

“ As the great object here is to trace passion through all its varieties, and in every stage, many of which are marked by shades so delicate, that in much bustle of events they would be little attended to, or entirely overlooked, simplicity of plot is more necessary, than in those plays where only occasional bursts of passion are introduced, to distinguish a character, or animate a scene. ”

“ Well, go to him, and he will tell you that the way to make a play a success is to keep the playgoers interested in it from scene to scene, and the best way to do this is to tell them only a little of the story at one time. Now, sir, consider that this scene is the beginning of a comedy—maybe it will turn out a tragedy before we have done with it—but this is the first scene; keep your eyes and your ears open, and you will find it worth your while. By the Lord, there they come at last! Curse it! the girl is getting lovelier every day—every day! Such beauty is enough to make any man mad. ”

“ Those who have not this cursed love of play in their blood cannot understand it, but play is the only thing in the world in which I can become absorbed,--the only thing that can rid me of all sorts of thoughts which I never ought to entertain. ”

“ Alas! when we betake ourselves to our intellectual form of play, sitting quietly by the fire or lying prone in bed, we rouse many hot feelings for which we can find no outlet. Substitutes are not acceptable to the mature mind, which desires the thing itself; and even to rehearse a triumphant dialogue with one's enemy, although it is perhaps the most satisfactory piece of play still left within our reach, is not entirely satisfying, and is even apt to lead to a visit and an interview which may be the reverse of triumphant after all.
In the child's world of dim sensation, play is all in all. ”

“ Conceive the effect on the average young man and woman, while this heroine of the play is being tempted and approached before them; are not the priceless veils of maiden modesty torn, not from the body of the person on the stage, but from the souls of those who gaze at this awful spectacle? ”

“ Why do the enthusiasts rage and profess that it ought to be endowed? Well, upon reflection, one sees that there are two bodies of playgoers, both, no doubt, in search of pleasure: and, speaking very broadly, the one is the little group whose curiosity concerning life is almost entirely intellectual, and the other is the vast body of sensation-hunters, to whom the latest showy play, the newest musical comedy, the divorce case of the moment, the freak in vogue, are the means of real excitement—an excitement which they want to obtain with the minimum expenditure of time, trouble or thought. ”

“ It is the function by which all the finer activities of the organism, physical and psychic, may be developed and satisfied. Nothing, it has been said, is so serious as lust—to use the beautiful term which has been degraded into the expression of the lowest forms of sensual pleasure—and we have now to add that nothing is so full of play as love. Play is primarily the instinctive work of the brain, but it is brain activity united in the subtlest way to bodily activity. ”

“ The play is made deep, and the interest increased, to awaken his attention; he is carried on by degrees, and in the end comes to seek for amusement, and to find it only in those passions of anxiety, hope, and despair, which are roused by the hazard into which he has thrown the whole of his fortunes. ”

“ The general public demands a love-story, and insists that it shall be the main interest of the play. And every English playwright knows that to offer the public a pure love-story is the surest way of winning a popular success. He knows that if he treats of unlawful love he imperils his chances and tends to drive away whole classes—one may say, the great majority of playgoers. ”

“ Where shall we find a parallel to this in the drama of our day? The most striking contrast to it will be furnished by what we call a "realistic" play, which is a play devised upon the supposition that those who will attend its representation are not possessed of any imagination, but must be dazzled through their eyes and deafened through their ears, until the fatigue of the senses shall take the place of intellectual pleasure. ”

“ We now often really transform play into work; and our minds are so constituted that what is one person's work is another person's play. What a backwoodsman would call his horse-like labor, a foremost statesman may call his light of pleasure. How shall we define it? What is play or recreation?
Men differ, I think, on the definition of work and play more than on almost any other subject: differ in practice as much as in theory in regard to it. I have had the acquaintance, and I may say the friendship, of a man who lives, it is said, for nothing but recreation, or pleasure, or play. ”

“ Why not if play-acting amuses us? Perhaps we are not all contented with that amiable stranger, ourselves. Some other figure of the present or the past may seem more desirable as a friend. Is there any law of Nature which compels us to take one personality rather than another? Cannot you imagine a man or a woman living years of make-believe—play-acting always, if by play-acting they can discover a world more desirable than the one they live in? We speak of imagination as a rare gift. ”