Theatre

“ I said, "is the accidental relish of a single night; whereas the essential and abiding pleasure of the theatre lies in foreknowledge. In relation to the characters in the drama, the audience are as gods looking before and after. Sitting in the theatre, we taste, for a moment, the glory of omniscience. With vision unsealed, we watch the gropings of purblind mortals after happiness, and smile at their stumblings, their blunders, their futile quests, their misplaced exultations, their groundless panics. ”

“ Moreover, in a theatre we must consider, not the marble of its pavements, not the boards of the stage, nor the columns of the back-scene, nay, nor yet the height of its gables, the splendour of its fretted roofs, the expanse of its tiers of seats; we need not call to mind that this place is sometimes the scene for the foolery of the mime, the dialogue of comedy, the sonorous rant of tragedy, the perilous antics of the rope-walker, the juggler's sleight of hand, the gesticulation of the dancer, with all the tricks of their respective arts that are displayed before the people by other artists. ”

“ At the theatre you used to see heroes, abandoned to depths of woe, making the stage re-echo with their wild cries, lamenting like women, weeping like children, and thus securing the applause of the audience. ”

“ The theatre brings to the art of drama concrete movement, concrete colour, and concrete final effectiveness: this, in all save a few minor particulars. The art of drama suffers, true enough, when the theatre, even at its finest, is challenged by it to produce the values intrinsic in its ghost of a dead king, or in its battle on Bosworth Field, or in its ship torn by the tempest, or in its fairy wood on midsummer night, or in its approaching tread of doom of the gods of the mountain. But for each such defeat it prospers doubly in the gifts that the theatre brings to it. ”

“ But the procession has reached the theatre, in which already there are ladies seated, and in a few moments the building is filled with an audience to which any orator would be proud to speak. There is music as the audience rustles and murmurs into its place with eager expectation. ”

“ Sitting on the edge of the rock, you can imagine the actors strutting out into the theatre below, and the acquiescent chorus chanting its surprise or horror, and almost see the bent shoulders and heads of the people filling the half-circle and leaning forward to catch each word of the play as it comes to them through the actors' masks. ”

“ I have never set foot inside a theatre myself, I am proud to say, nor attended even private theatricals before—such things are not in my line! But I can honestly assure you that I have rarely seen histrionic ability more consummate, or a dramatic performance more exceptionally complete in every respect, than that which it has been our truly enviable privilege to witness this evening! ”

“ All further attempt to describe the progress of this play, and its effect upon the minds of the spectators, we feel to be a mere impertinence. It seems indeed to ourselves, as in imagination we after eye it, a play within a play—where all is like romance. The audience, that theatre, the players, that "foremost man of all the world" speaking his own words; all is like the fabric of some vision seen before,—a shadowy recollection of some brilliant hour set apart from the dull stream of life, and that too, during a glorious epoch. ”

“ They had the true theatric instinct—the right theatre spirit. They were in their seats as soon as the opened doors would let them enter. The tuning of the fiddles was exquisite music to their ears—an essential part of the drama. Every moment was precious to them. They would as lief have missed the rising of the great curtain, sweeping upwards with ecstatic jerk into the flies, as have gone out before the last act, or worn their hats to spoil the delight of others. For them the Theatre held something of a sacred pleasure—the dear pleasaunce of populous cities. ”

“ A theatre, examined through the powerful medium employed by a person whose occupation is intimately associated with theatres, is as unlike a theatre, as it appears in the eyes of the outside public, as a drop of magnified Thames' water is unlike the apparently inorganic liquid that enters into the composition of almost everything we drink. ”

“ In the evening they go into the theatre, and see and hear the life of the day artificially put together, prettily set off, interwoven with a story, removed from reality by the masks, and brought near to it by manners In all this they take a childish delight, and again shout and clap, and make a noise. ”

“ The theatre, which embodies so distinctively the peculiar essence of play that its performances have appropriated the name, takes us in a couple of hours through the epitomised experience of many persons extending over many years in circumstances far removed from our individual lives. Poetry, novels, biographies, histories, painting, music, and all the forms of art perform for us this same function. ”

“ I could wish, for my part, that our theatre were as narrow as the wire of a rope-dancer, that so no inept fellow might dare to venture on it, instead of being, as it is, a place where every one discovers in himself capacity enough to flourish and parade. ”

“ The theatre, having ceased to form an integral part of our social life, has come to be the pastime of people with nothing better to do,—the floating population of our hotels, the shop-girl and her young man enjoying an evening out. The plays produced by the gentlemen who, I am told, control the stage in this country for the moment, are adapted to the requirements of an audience that, having no particular standard from which to judge the literary merits of a play, the training, accent, or talent of the actors, are perfectly contented so long as they are amused. ”

“ The theatre was fitted up with the taste of a people more essentially theatrical than any other in the world. For not merely the eye, but the tongue, is theatrical; and not merely the stage, but every portion of private life. ”

“ For in their eyes there shone only that place of adventure which delights the feet of the faithful, whether they tread the sands, or the stage, or the rough cobbles of Drury Lane. To the truly imaginative a theatre is a place of uncommon possibilities; our actors and actresses, and even our limelight-men, are not imaginative, and so, I suppose, they find it ugly. ”

“ The theatre is here, as well as there, the most powerful organ of the people’s life. It has the greatest influence, and ours stands high, very high, when one reflects in what different directions it must extend its influence. ”

“ Every Movement of the Theatre, by a skillful Poet, is communicated, as it were by Magic, to the Spectators, who weep, tremble, resent, rejoice, and are enflam'd with all the Variety of Passions, which actuate the several Personages of the Drama. ”

“ This difficulty is perpetually confronting one in the theatre. I confess, I find the theatre almost as disconcerting as the Literary Supplement for an analogous, though not identical, reason. In that case you have the bewildering spectacle of things unknown; in this, of tastes outgrown. One afternoon I saw a little play translated from the French, limpid in expression, simplicity itself in form, spare almost to austerity in its use of theatrical means. Not a word, not a situation, was emphasized. ”

“ But in the scale of emotion and excitement the theatre comes next to fighting, whether you be the author of the play or opera to be given for the first time before the greatest and most critical audience in the world, or the actor, or actress, or singer, who has not yet been heard or seen and of whom wonders are expected on the great night. ”

“ The theatre is about the only place where they can meet on common ground, at least in large bodies, and then, as we have already intimated, the theatre is something more than a place of amusement in their eyes. ”

“ The repertory of the theatre was one of the most dramatically romantic and sentimental ever known to France and the one of all others best fitted to turn a generation from sound reality to false and fantastic visions. ”

“ I have acquired the habit of late of patronizing the theatre that advertises a picture-play derived from some novel, old or new, and recounts, by means of the silent drama, a story worthy of repetition. ”

“ Perhaps no other theatre in the world could present so many noteworthy and exciting features—interesting from the nature of the events with which they were associated; and forming themselves a part of the remarkable political drama upon which the curtain has so recently fallen in sadness and gloom. ”

“ I must not forget to offer some little description of the opera, where, during my stay, through the politeness of Madame H——, I had free access to a private box.
This spacious and splendid theatre is lighted from above by an immense circular lustre of patent lamps. The form of this brilliant light is in the antique taste, and it is said to have cost two thousand pounds sterling. The effect which it produces in the body of the theatre, and upon the scenery, is admirable. It prevents the sight from being divided, and distracted by girandoles. ”

“ The theatre, which no gentleman ever entered, was their happy hunting-ground, the pieces being written expressly to suit them, so that what nourished on the boards was, as may be supposed, not precisely a classic taste. ”

“ But what principally caught my attention was—an itinerant theatre; where a tragedy, pantomime, and farce were all acted in the course of half an hour, and more of the dramatis personae murdered, than at either Drury Lane or Covent Garden in a whole evening. I have since seen many a play performed by the best actors in the world, but never have I derived half the delight from any that I did from this first representation. ”

“ All the world's a stage where are performed the worst of badly constructed plays--plays with neither unity nor sequence nor climax, but performed with absolute perfection. Why waste your time cursing the Adelphi, when, like the Duke, you can see the perfect art of the street? The railway porter's dialect is still convincing. The fat woman with her screaming children may enter at any minute, with her touches of wonderful realism. If you go to the theatre for acting you go to the wrong place! ”

“ The stage is the best mirror of human life; let me therefore recommend the oft use of a theatre as the most agreeable and easy method of making a polite and moral gentry, which would end in rendering the rest of the people regular in their behaviour and ambitious of laudable undertakings. ”

“ The phenomenal unnaturalness of acting is a thing discounted in the minds of most people by early visits to the theatre. They get used to the fantastic gestures, the flamboyant emotions, the weird mouthings, melodious snortings, agonising yelps, lip-gnawings, glaring horrors, and other emotional symbolism of the stage. ”

“ From seven till nine dramas are performed, then everybody is turned out and the house is refilled with a fresh audience for a music-hall entertainment—and nearly every evening the theatre is crammed to suffocation ”

“ It was only in the theatre that I lived. ”

“ We pour into the theatre of life in a great rabble, there are not enough entrances, gangways, rows or sections for this silly show. From top to bottom of the theatre few are satisfied with their seats. ”

“ My knowledge of the modern theatre is so very meagre that I never permit my wife or daughter to witness a play without previously ascertaining its character. The theatre is permitted to be a mere shop for gain, open to every huckster of immoral adventures,—jimcracks. ”

“ III. THE PLACE OF THE THEATRE I THE theatre stands in relation to drama much as the art gallery stands in relation to painting. Its aim is to set off drama in such surroundings and in such light as to bring it within the comfortable vision and agreeable scrutiny of the nomad public. To say that fine drama may produce an equal effect read as acted may be true or not as you choose, but so too a fine painting may produce an equal effect beheld in one’s library as in the Uffizi. ”

“ Our stages are revelations of dramatic completeness, sometimes presenting scenic pictures that challenge nature itself in their attractiveness, and at all times surrounding the actors of a play with accessories gorgeous and extensive enough to mystify as well as delight nine out of every ten patrons of the theatre. ”

“ And here it will be necessary to say a few words on the stage and on stage-illusion.
A theatre, in the widest sense of the word, is the general term for all places of amusement through the ear or eye, in which men assemble in order to be amused by some entertainment presented to all at the same time and in common. Thus an old Puritan divine says:—“Those who attend public worship and sermons only to amuse themselves, make a theatre of the church, and turn God's house into the devil's. ”

“ He had the sense of the theatre, a genuine instinct for those moments in the conflict of character to which the proper resources of the theatre can grant both added force and added refinement. It is not an uncommon assumption, especially among writers of fiction, that the drama by comparison is an art of coarse fibre, incapable, by reason of its limitations, of presenting the more intimate realities of character, or the more{214} delicate shades of feeling. The truth is that each art has its own force, its own refinement, and cannot borrow them of another. ”

“ An overflow performance is being given in the theatre to-day for the benefit of those people who could not gain admittance yesterday, and, through the open windows, we can hear the rhythmic chant of the chorus. ”

“ It is not with the stage performance that we are most concerned, but with that other play, quite out of sight of the audience in the little theatre that night, which is to us more interesting than the scenes they acted behind the footlights. ”