Shadow play

“ When you have finished constructing the cut-out 222shadow figures, your next problem will be making the scenery. Composition and pattern are extremely important in shadow pictures, for nothing in the world reveals the fascination of dark and light more than the shadow play. If you can recall the beauty of the landscape in a heavy winter snowstorm when the branches and trunks of the trees are velvety black against masses of white, you can appreciate this. Every tree has a characteristic silhouette which everyone recognizes. ”

“ He watches every movement and gesture of the actors. He guides the actors who cannot see their shadows, because they are so close to the screen. If he understands pattern and rhythm he can direct their movements so that every movement of the shadow play will be beautiful. The reader begins his part at the second rehearsal. He can give an introduction and carry the story on between the acts, or he can read as the play is being given. The reader may be a girl or a boy and should be chosen for a rich, well-modulated voice, dramatic sense, and ability to enunciate distinctly. ”

“ Magic lanterns mounted on wheels and images projected on screens of smoke make ghost shadow plays—Robertson “resurrects” Louis XVI—Théâtre Robert Houdin, Paris, 1845, Polytechnic Institution, London, 1848 and Nazi Army, 1940—all use magic shadows for supernatural effects.
The tongue-twisting word, Phantasmagoria, stands for a certain type of light and shadow show popular immediately after the French Revolution. It marked a definite throwback in the story of magic shadows. ”

“ There are certain people who go about stealthily measuring the shadows of strong men. They sell these shadow measuring lines to the architects.
Gradually the superstitious fear of shadows passed. In the place of this fear came an interest in using shadows for entertainment. This may have been suggested by the shadows that fell on the walls of the sacred tent while the priests within were performing the holy rites.
Shadow plays originated in the Orient and are known in every Eastern country. ”

“ With shadow plays, as with puppet performances, the readers should not be professional actors, for their very way of speaking invariably mimics the mannerisms of the man. The limited movements of the shadows, however, suffer from this and also the gestures of the marionettes which have a wider range but which do not in the least resemble the customary stage gestures. Talented dilettantes with good taste are more apt to strike the right note. ”

“ We know that the clever showman, Powell, used motions or shadows in his Old Creation of the World with the Addition of Noah’s Flood, in 1641. More than a century later Chinese shadow plays came under royal favor in France. There they have been changed and adapted in many ways. The modern French shadow plays are pretentious, with many scenes and numerous characters. All the countries of Europe have made some use of the cut-out shadow figures. ”

“ Dark have been my forebodings, standing first on one foot and then on the other, through the night hours, preyed upon by visions, holding my eyelids open by my will, while strange thoughts like vultures over their carrion, wheeling about above me, assail me, tear me with their beaks and talons. Dark looms the cloud bank through the black portals of the river. The fog holds the bleared eyes of the morning. And I, stiff with watching, suspect some evil. Some foul play is in the mountains, stalking in the shadows of the dawn. ”

“ When the night came again and shadows moved
As the moon through the ice-flower stared and roved,
And that unyielding Shadow came again.
That Shadow came again unseen and caught
The children as they sat listening in vain,
Their starved hearts failing ere the Shadow removed.
And when the new morn stepped from the same cold East
They lay unawakening in the barren light,
Their song and their imaginations bright,
Their pains and fears and all bewilderment ceased.... ”

“ If these Shadows, fresh from counting-houses and cobweb-covered chambers, wherein sat men faded and wan, as the colourless walls around them, if they had been the Shadow only of this listening mortal, they could hardly have presented a more realistic picture of his life in the past than they did in their report of others. ”

“ Follow fast the stars, the little brethren of the sky; and like a huge bolster of fog the Shadow scales the ramparts of the dawn. We are lost in the blur of doom, and the long sleep of the missing months is heavy upon our eyelids. We rail not at the coward Sun-God who fled fearing the Shadow, but creep noiselessly to the caves. Our shields are cast aside, unloosed are our stone hatchets, and the fire lags low on the hearth. Without, the Shadow has swallowed the earth; the cry of our hounds stilled as by the hand of snow. The Shadow rolls into our caves; our brain is benumbed by its caresses ”

“ Sometimes, late at night, even after a long day of play—those violent and never-pausing exertions that we call play, in boyhood—I would still try to read, hiding the light, until my eyes closed in spite of me. ”

“ I like this player. It played well. It did not give up.
It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a screen.
That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep in the dream of a game.
Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexible. And less terrifying than staring at the reality behind the screen.
They used to hear voices. Before players could read. Back in the days when those who did not play called the players witches, and warlocks. And players dreamed they flew through the air, on sticks powered by demons.
What did this player dream? ”

“ That is for those who sit in the outer circles. The music of the many-toned Opera of Life envelops and absorbs the soul of the stranger,—teaching him that the acting behind the Curtain is not all a mimicry of the Real, but in truth a melodrama of visible, tangible, sentient life, which must endure through many thousand scenes until that Shadow, who is stronger than Love, shall put out the lights, and ring down the vast and sable Curtain. And thus dreaming, thou findest thyself again in the streets, whitened by the moon! Lights, fairies, kings, and captains are gone. ”

“ When the curtain is down, when the theatre is empty and dark, then, perhaps, the real play begins; the play that no audience sees, that is only acted out to our own breaking, beating hearts, unsuspected and unknown to the world around! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then one of them drew aside the curtains of the bed, and the window-curtains not having been yet drawn, the king beheld the white glimmering night outside, struggling with the heaps of darkness that tried to quench it; and the heavens full of stars, flashing and sparkling like live jewels. The other Shadow went towards the fire and vanished in it.
Scores of Shadows immediately began an insane dance all about the room; disappearing, one after the other, through the uncovered window, and gliding darkly away over the face of the white snow; for the window looked at once on a field of snow. ”

“ Can you guess how many puppets belong to his set? Count the characters in your favorite plays. If you take a long play like Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, and include a great band of fairies, there will scarcely be more than fifty characters. This showman has from sixty to one hundred and twenty shadows in his set. He must know just where every one is placed so that he can put his hand upon it the moment it is needed. He must also please people of many different tastes, therefore he must be able to give serious plays ”

“ There is gasping struggle, glaring failure—maniac despair. For over my Valley rolls The Shadow, a giant thing, moving with the weight of mountains. And you stare at it, you feel it; you scream, you pray, you weep; you hold up your hands to your God, you grow mad; but the Shadow moves like Time, like the sun, and the planets in the sky. It rolls over you, and it rolls on; and then you cry out no more.
It is that way in my Valley. The Shadow is the Shadow of Death. ”

“ He repeated this several times.”489 Becq de Fouquières restores a beautiful antique picture of a Greek hiding play. One little fellow presses his eyes shut while two others hurry to hide themselves. In Siam “Hide-and-Seek” is called “Looking for the Axe,” and is oftenest played in the twilight because dark, impenetrable corners are more abundant then.490 There is added weirdness, too, in the half light, and the shock of surprise on suddenly coming upon the hidden object is stronger, bringing the players more in touch with the emotional life. The objects to be hidden are of various kinds. ”

“ Nothing now was left but the Shadow, and on that my eyes were intently fixed, till again eyes grew out of the Shadow,—malignant, serpent eyes. And the bubbles of light again rose and fell, and in their disordered, irregular, turbulent maze, mingled with the wan moonlight. ”

“ Came a voice low calling, calling me to come
⁠To my lonely sleeping, leaving work and play.
With sad, mournful glances do I look to see
⁠If a heart should loving pause and turn aside
From the happy circles and then come to me,
⁠Sighing, “Do not leave us—still with us abide.”
No! they still are playing, chatting in a ring,
⁠Eager voices seeking other games to know. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance of the drama of familiar life. The shadow of my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over the shadow paper. It is all symbolic, and as a symbol the physicist leaves it. ”

“ Before going to sleep at night it is easy to call up all sorts of faces and forms before the dosed eyes and play with them, but as soon as the wearied consciousness lets slip the sense of being the cause of it all, we shrink from these phantoms, and playful illusion takes a serious turn. ”

“ Here, spread wide open, is a part of the magical Land of Fire, the wonderland of the good and peaceful Ember Fairies. A golden gate gives entrance to it. Shining pathways lead through its bright gardens. Its skies are warm and glowing. Here, decked with flaming banners, stands the home of the good Prince Ember—his fairy Palace of Good Cheer. Here moves the beautiful Shadow Princess, in trailing garments of rose and amethyst. Here she may be seen in her dance of joy and ecstasy followed by her faithful band of Shadows. ”

“ The question respecting the illusion-working character of playful activity is much more difficult to meet, if the psychical processes of the playing subject are kept in view, and the inquiry is pressed as to whether the actual sham quality of the play is reflected in his mental states.675 Here it must be emphasized that actual consciousness of fulfilling a merely ideal purpose, of being engaged in sham occupation, is not at all essential to imitative play, and is wanting altogether in experimentation and fighting plays. ”

“ The illusion is nevertheless perfect, because the spectator misjudges the distances as long as he does not see anything in the neighborhood of the screen. But if the eye falls upon a woman playing the piano directly below the picture, the illusion is destroyed. He sees on the screen enormous giants whose hands are as large as half the piano player, and the normal reactions which are the spring for the enjoyment of the play are suppressed. ”

“ The moon playing upon silent waters, the sun casting deepening shadows in the woods, a twinkling campfire, starlight dancing on ruffled waters—all provided the first pageantries of light and shadow. The first eclipse of the sun seen by man was the most thrilling and terrifying light and shadow show of that era, a premiere never rivalled by Hollywood’s best.
From the beginning of the record of human aspiration men had the urge to create representations of life. ”

“ And yet, it sometimes happens, not often, and not even to all, that a shadow falls over the scene and blots out all its comeliness, and then ensues a flare, a lightning flash, and we see all—no longer beautiful, but infinitely ghastly. ”

“ It will be long before you trick me again, for, lest you should try to give me some fresh proof of your cleverness, I have prepared for you the darkness of this prison chamber. In it no Shadow can have power, can work magic. ”

“ Just as the male shape approached the female, the dark Shadow started from the wall, all three for a moment wrapped in darkness. When the pale light returned, the two phantoms were as if in the grasp of the Shadow that towered between them; and there was a blood-stain on the breast of the female; and the phantom male was leaning on its phantom sword, and blood seemed trickling fast from the ruffles, from the lace; and the darkness of the intermediate Shadow swallowed them up,—they were gone. ”

“ I reflected in a moment, that if this were indeed a shadow, it was useless to look for the object that cast it in any other direction than between the shadow and the moon. I looked, and peered, and intensified my vision, all to no purpose. I could see nothing of that kind, not even an ash-tree in the neighbourhood. Still the shadow remained; not steady, but moving to and fro, and once I saw the fingers close, and grind themselves close, like the claws of a wild animal, as if in uncontrollable longing for some anticipated prey. ”