Mystery play

“ Sidney Clarke's concise monograph in 'The Miracle Play in England' is another of the long and interesting series of antiquarian volumes for popular reading issued by the same publishing house. The author briefly sketches the rise and growth of the 'Miracle' or 'Mystery' play in Europe and in England; and gives an account of the series or cycle of these curious religious dramas—the forerunners of the modern secular play—performed at York, Wakefield, Chester, Coventry, and other towns in the middle ages. ”

“ Seekers after mystery will not find it here, for there is nothing that is inscrutable. Merely the people laughing or crying as the play proceeds, spontaneous in their approval of the triumph of right over wrong, absorbed in the clash of evil and good,—the same theatre material that has served [4] to amuse and attract mankind for the last two thousand years. ”

“ Mystery plays were afterwards divided into three classes, though the generic term Mysteries, meaning all three, is generally used. In the Mysteries, Biblical events were principally used; Miracle plays were obtained from the legends of the saints; and the last, Moralities, allegorical stories of a moral character not essentially taken from the Bible, or from the legends of the saints, comprised the third heading. The Mysteries were for several centuries known on the Continent before they were performed in England. ”

“ I have always had a lot of fun writing mystery plays, although a well-built mystery drama represents a staggering amount of hard work. The formula is a very exact and very exacting one, and in addition to its mechanical difficulties the author must not only create an interest in who committed the crime, but, if he hopes for success, he must make them fear that some one character dear to them is guilty. ”

“ Truly, the sheriff's language seems hardly too strong, when he says that none but fools dispraised his spectacle.
These secular shows never attained the popularity of the old Mystery Plays. That mysterious halo of attraction which always invests the forbidden undoubtedly heightened the reputed charm of the never-more-to-be-seen sacred pageants, and led people to continually depreciate the value of all entertainments offered as substitutes for them. ”

“ While we have none of the remains of the actual plays of the Thirteenth Century, there is no doubt that an excellent idea of their form and content can be gathered from the English mystery plays, that have recently been edited in modern form and which serve to show the characteristics of the various cycles. ”

“ That the puppets themselves did not speak, I had already decided; that of themselves they did not move, I also conjectured; but, then, how came it all to be so pretty, and to look just as if they both spoke and moved of themselves? and where were the lights, and the people that managed the deception? These enigmas perplexed me the more, as I wished to be at the same time among the enchanters and the enchanted, at the same time to have a secret hand in the play, and to enjoy, as a looker-on, the pleasure of illusion. ”

“ In fine, that which lacks both plot and action, and offers, in lieu of lusty characters, four gray ghosts, is not a play but an edifying exposé of the pitfalls and snares into which a romancist might be expected to stumble when he dons the habit of a playwright. ”

“ The forcing of the secret from her by a group of people who have become suspicious of her inexplicable knowledge of their lives and affairs for generations back, lifts the play to its supreme climax, which is followed instantly by another course of mounting action, in the effort of these people to decide what to do with the secret once they have possessed it. ”

“ We watch the flow and ebb of life and death—the great drama that forever holds the stage, where players act their parts and disappear; the great drama in which all must act—ignorant and learned, idiotic and insane—without rehearsal and without the slightest knowledge of a part, or of any plot or purpose in the play. ”

“ While it is possible to write a most enthralling novel of mystery or a detective short-story which suddenly, at the very last moment, may disclose the trick by which it has all been built up, such a thing is not successfully possible in a playlet. You must not conceal the identity of anyone of your characters from the audience. Conceal his identity from every other character and you may construct a fine playlet, but don't conceal his motive from the audience. ”

“ But that beautiful materialism of the ancient theatre charmed not as the mystery of ours,—a mystery too delicate to suffer the eye of Day;—a mystery wrought by fairies who dare only toil by night. One sunbeam would destroy the charm of this dusky twilight world. ”

“ Experience shows us that dramatic interest is entirely distinct from mere curiosity, and survives when curiosity is dead. Though a skilfully-told story is not of itself enough to secure long life for a play, it materially and permanently enhances the attractions of a play which has other and higher claims to longevity. Character, poetry, philosophy, atmosphere, are all very good in their way; but they all show to greater advantage by aid of a well-ordered fable. ”

“ From the fact that "the difficulty becomes greater the nearer we approach to reality," it further follows that the higher the form of drama, the more probable is it that the demands of truth and the requirements of dramatic effect may be found to clash. In melodrama, the curtain falls of its own accord, so to speak, when the handcuffs are transferred from the hero's wrists to the villain's. In an adventure-play, whether farcical or romantic, when the adventure is over the play is done. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The illusion, I tell you, sir, which we've got to create for the audience....
THE LEADING MAN. With our acting.
THE MANAGER. The illusion of a reality.
THE FATHER. I understand; but you, perhaps, do not understand us. Forgive me! You see ... here for you and your actors, the thing is only—and rightly so ... a kind of game....
THE LEADING LADY (interrupting indignantly) . A game! We're not children here, if you please! We are serious actors.
THE FATHER. I don't deny it. What I mean is the game, or play, of your art, which has to give, as the gentleman says, a perfect illusion of reality. ”

“ The first is, "Action in the drama is thus seen to be not mere movement or external agitation; it is the expression of a will which knows itself." Paradoxical as it may seem, action that is dramatic is not "action," as the word is commonly understood. Physical activity is not considered at all; the action of a play is not acting, but plot—story. Does the story move—not the bodies of the actors, but the merely mental recounting of the narrative? As the French state the principle in the form of a command, "Get on with the story! Get on!" This is one-half of the playwright's action-problem. ”

“ We see every day that a mere story-play--a play which appeals to us solely by reason of the adroit stimulation and satisfaction of curiosity--very rapidly exhausts its success. No one cares to see it a second time; and spectators who happen to have read the plot in advance, find its attraction discounted even on a first hearing. But if we jump to the conclusion that the skilful marshalling and development of the story is an unimportant detail, which matters little when once the first-night ordeal is past, we shall go very far astray. ”

“ The paradox of dramatic theory is this: while our aim is, of course, to write plays which shall achieve immortality, or shall at any rate become highly popular, and consequently familiar in advance to a considerable proportion of any given audience, we are all the time studying how to awaken and to sustain that interest, or, more precisely, that curiosity, which can be felt only by those who see the play for the first time, without any previous knowledge of its action. ”

“ One author of distinction, M. Hervieu, has actually made the experiment of presenting an enigma--he calls the play L'Enigme--and reserving the solution to the very end. We know from the outset that one of two sisters-in-law is unfaithful to her husband, and the question is--which? The whole ingenuity of the author is centred on keeping the secret, and the spectator who does not know it in advance is all the time in the attitude of a detective questing for clues. He is challenged to guess which of the ladies is the frail one ”

“ Some of the spectators sat on benches in front of the platform, and all the windows looking into the courtyard were filled with people, just as the windows overlooking that market-place in York were crowded, when miracle plays were acted long ago. And just as some of those plays began with the coming of a herald to explain what was going to take place, so this play of Everyman began with the appearance of a messenger or doctor. ”

“ 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 makers of plays, your grace, often have but a small part in our own contrivances. Many a time have I devised a play in the spirit of comedy, but it is ever the characters themselves who spin the plot. ”

“ By serial dramatic play is meant a dramatic game which is taken up day after day for a considerable period, until it becomes a continued story. The children who engage in this sort of play are, of course, getting a much finer intellectual stimulus than those who play entirely in a desultory and disconnected fashion. Not all children have the capacity to sustain games of this sort. ”

“ For the bucolic mind, or, in simple language, the rustic, loves neither ambiguity nor plot. Such as these come to the theatre not to confuse his brains—if he has some—with mystery on the unravelling of a plot. ”

“ The thing that gives dignity and value to any play is to be found just here: a distinctive theme, which is over and above the interest of story-plot, sinks into the consciousness of the spectator or reader, and gives him stimulating thoughts about life and living long after he may have quite forgotten the fable which made the framework for this suggestive impulse of the dramatist. ”

“ This is true, no doubt, and the contemporary method of beginning a story like the opening of a play with long dialogues between characters that are strangers to the reader, is one among the many signs that, so far as securing illusion goes, there is a real retrogression in fictive art. A play, of course, must open in this way, but in an acted play the characters come bodily before the audience as real flesh and blood. ”

“ If it be a tragedy, the fall spells catastrophe, and is more abrupt and eye-compelling. If comedy be the form, then the unknotting means a happy solution of all difficulties. But in either case, the chief business of this final part of the play would appear to be the rounding out of the fable, the smoothing off of corners, and the production of an artistic effect of finish and finality. If any part of the story be incomplete in plot, it will be in all probability that which has to do with the subplot, if there be one, or with the fates of subsidiary characters. ”

“ You have all heard that impressive dictum that some particular theatrical display, although moving, interesting, and continually entertaining from start to finish, was for occult technical reasons "not a play," and in the same way you are continually having your appreciation of fiction dashed by the mysterious parallel condemnation, that the story you like "isn't a novel." ”

“ Summarizing the differences which go to make drama distinctive as a story-telling form and distinguish it from other story molds: a play in contrast with fiction tells its tale by word, act and scene in a rising scale of importance, and within briefer time limits, necessitating a far more careful selection of material, and a greater emphasis upon salient moments in the handling of plot; and because of the device of act divisions, with certain moments of heightened interest culminating in a central scene and thus gaining in tension and intensity by this enforced method of compression and stress ”

“ Do you like surprises that make your eyes open wide? Sustained excitement and strange scenes that compel you to read on page after page with unflagging interest? Something that lifts you out of your world of care and business, and transports you to another land, clime, and scenes? Then don’t fail to read
The Mystery of the Ravenspurs. It is a romantic tale of adventure, mystery and amateur detective work, with scenes laid in England, India, and the distant and comparatively unknown Thibet. ”

“ Mystery is not young, not pretty, though still of an average candle-light passability; but she does such miracles in her own behalf, that, one of these days, when she dies, they'll be amazed to find an old woman in her bed, distantly like her. She was an actress once, I shouldn't wonder, and had a Mystery attendant on herself. Perhaps, Compact Enchantress will live to be a Mystery, and to wait with a shawl at the side-scenes, and to sit opposite to Mademoiselle in railway carriages, and smile and talk subserviently, as Mystery does now. ”

“ We must not, however, forget that action itself is language. What is called the action of a play is simply a story told by the movements of the players. But when we see a man stabbed, or a woman kissed, our curiosity is excited. ”