ABOUT PLAY-ACTING
I
I have a project to suggest. But first I will write a chapter ofintroduction.
I have just been witnessing a remarkable play, here at the Burg Theatrein Vienna. I do not know of any play that much resembles it. In fact,it is such a departure from the common laws of the drama that the name'play' doesn't seem to fit it quite snugly. However, whatever else itmay be, it is in any case a great and stately metaphysical poem, anddeeply fascinating. 'Deeply fascinating' is the right term: for theaudience sat four hours and five minutes without thrice breakinginto applause, except at the close of each act; sat rapt andsilent--fascinated. This piece is 'The Master of Palmyra.' It is twentyyears old; yet I doubt if you have ever heard of it. It is by Wilbrandt,and is his masterpiece and the work which is to make his name permanentin German literature. It has never been played anywhere except in Berlinand in the great Burg Theatre in Vienna. Yet whenever it is put on thestage it packs the house, and the free list is suspended. I know peoplewho have seem it ten times; they know the most of it by heart; they donot tire of it; and they say they shall still be quite willing to go andsit under its spell whenever they get the opportunity.
There is a dash of metempsychosis in it--and it is the strength of thepiece. The play gave me the sense of the passage of a dimly connectedprocession of dream-pictures. The scene of it is Palmyra in Roman times.It covers a wide stretch of time--I don't know how many years--and inthe course of it the chief actress is reincarnated several times: fourtimes she is a more or less young woman, and once she is a lad. Inthe first act she is Zoe--a Christian girl who has wandered across thedesert from Damascus to try to Christianise the Zeus-worshipping pagansof Palmyra. In this character she is wholly spiritual, a religiousenthusiast, a devotee who covets martyrdom--and gets it.
After many years she appears in the second act as Phoebe, a graceful andbeautiful young light-o'-love from Rome, whose soul is all for theshows and luxuries and delights of this life--a dainty and capriciousfeather-head, a creature of shower and sunshine, a spoiled child, buta charming one. In the third act, after an interval of many years, shereappears as Persida, mother of a daughter who is in the fresh bloom ofyouth. She is now a sort of combination of her two earlier selves: inreligious loyalty and subjection she is Zoe: in triviality of characterand shallowness of judgement--together with a touch of vanity indress--she is Phoebe.
After a lapse of years she appears in the fourth act as Nymphas,a beautiful boy, in whose character the previous incarnations areengagingly mixed.
And after another stretch of years all these heredities are joined inthe Zenobia of the fifth act--a person of gravity, dignity, sweetness,with a heart filled with compassion for all who suffer, and a handprompt to put into practical form the heart's benignant impulses.
There are a number of curious and interesting features in this piece.For instance, its hero, Appelles, young, handsome, vigorous, in thefirst act, remains so all through the long flight of years covered bythe five acts. Other men, young in the first act, are touched with grayin the second, are old and racked with infirmities in the third; in thefourth, all but one are gone to their long home, and this one is a blindand helpless hulk of ninety or a hundred years. It indicates that thestretch of time covered by the piece is seventy years or more. Thescenery undergoes decay, too--the decay of age assisted and perfected bya conflagration. The fine new temples and palaces of the second actare by-and-by a wreck of crumbled walls and prostrate columns,mouldy, grass-grown, and desolate; but their former selves are stillrecognisable in their ruins. The ageing men and the ageing scenerytogether convey a profound illusion of that long lapse of time: theymake you live it yourself! You leave the theatre with the weight of acentury upon you.
Another strong effect: Death, in person, walks about the stage in everyact. So far as I could make out, he was supposably not visible to anyexcepting two persons--the one he came for and Appelles. He used variouscostumes: but there was always more black about them than any othertint; and so they were always sombre. Also they were always deeplyimpressive and, indeed, awe-inspiring. The face was not subjected tochanges, but remained the same first and last--a ghastly white. To mehe was always welcome, he seemed so real--the actual Death, not aplay-acting artificiality. He was of a solemn and stately carriage; andhe had a deep voice, and used it with a noble dignity. Wherever therewas a turmoil of merry-making or fighting or feasting or chaffing orquarreling, or a gilded pageant, or other manifestation of ourtrivial and fleeting life, into it drifted that black figure with thecorpse-face, and looked its fateful look and passed on; leaving itsvictim shuddering and smitten. And always its coming made the fussyhuman pack seem infinitely pitiful and shabby, and hardly worth theattention of either saving or damning.
In the beginning of the first act the young girl Zoe appears by somegreat rocks in the desert, and sits down exhausted, to rest. Presentlyarrive a pauper couple stricken with age and infirmities; and they beginto mumble and pray to the Spirit of Life, who is said to inhabit thatspot. The Spirit of Life appears; also Death--uninvited. They are(supposably) invisible. Death, tall, black-robed, corpse-faced, standsmotionless and waits. The aged couple pray to the Spirit of Life for ameans to prop up their existence and continue it. Their prayer fails.The Spirit of Life prophesies Zoe's martyrdom; it will take place beforenight. Soon Appelles arrives, young and vigorous and full of enthusiasm:he has led a host against the Persians and won the battle; he is the petof fortune, rich, honoured, believed, 'Master of Palmyra'. He has heardthat whoever stretches himself out on one of those rocks there and asksfor a deathless life can have his wish. He laughs at the tradition, butwants to make the trial anyway. The invisible Spirit of Life warns him!'Life without end can be regret without end.' But he persists: let himkeep his youth, his strength, and his mental faculties unimpaired, andhe will take all the risks. He has his desire.
From this time forth, act after act, the troubles and sorrows andmisfortunes and humiliations of life beat upon him without pity orrespite; but he will not give up, he will not confess his mistake.Whenever he meets Death he still furiously defies him--but Deathpatiently waits. He, the healer of sorrows, is man's best friend: therecognition of this will come. As the years drag on, and on, and on, thefriends of the Master's youth grow old; and one by one they totterto the grave: he goes on with his proud fight, and will not yield. Atlength he is wholly alone in the world; all his friends are dead; lastof all, his darling of darlings, his son, the lad Nymphas, who dies inhis arms. His pride is broken now; and he would welcome Death, if Deathwould come, if Death would hear his prayers and give him peace. Theclosing act is fine and pathetic. Appelles meets Zenobia, the helper ofall who suffer, and tells her his story, which moves her pity. By commonreport she is endowed with more than earthly powers; and since hecannot have the boon of death, he appeals to her to drown his memoryin forgetfulness of his griefs--forgetfulness 'which is death'sequivalent'. She says (roughly translated), in an exaltation ofcompassion:
'Come to me!
Kneel; and may the power be granted me To cool the fires of this poor tortured brain, And bring it peace and healing.'
He kneels. From her hand, which she lays upon his head, a mysteriousinfluence steals through him; and he sinks into a dreamy tranquility.
'Oh, if I could but so drift Through this soft twilight into the night of peace, Never to wake again!
(Raising his hand, as if in benediction.)
O mother earth, farewell! Gracious thou were to me. Farewell! Appelles goes to rest.'
Death appears behind him and encloses the uplifted hand in his. Appellesshudders, wearily and slowly turns, and recognises his life-longadversary. He smiles and puts all his gratitude into one simple andtouching sentence, 'Ich danke dir,' and dies.
Nothing, I think, could be more moving, more beautiful, than this close.This piece is just one long, soulful, sardonic laugh at human life. Itstitle might properly be 'Is Life a Failure?' an
d leave the five actsto play with the answer. I am not at all sure that the author meant tolaugh at life. I only notice that he has done it. Without putting intowords any ungracious or discourteous things about life, the episodes inthe piece seem to be saying all the time, inarticulately: 'Note whata silly poor thing human life is; how childish its ambitions, howridiculous its pomps, how trivial its dignities, how cheap itsheroisms, how capricious its course, how brief its flight, how stingyin happinesses, how opulent in miseries, how few its prides, howmultitudinous its humiliations, how comic its tragedies, how tragicits comedies, how wearisome and monotonous its repetition of its stupidhistory through the ages, with never the introduction of a new detail;how hard it has tried, from the Creation down, to play itself upon itspossessor as a boon and has never proved its case in a single instance!'
Take note of some of the details of the piece. Each of the five actscontains an independent tragedy of its own. In each act someone'sedifice of hope, or of ambition, or of happiness, goes down in ruins.Even Appelles' perennial youth is only a long tragedy, and his life afailure. There are two martyrdoms in the piece; and they are curiouslyand sarcastically contrasted. In the first act the pagans persecute Zoe,the Christian girl, and a pagan mob slaughters her. In the fourth actthose same pagans--now very old and zealous--are become Christians, andthey persecute the pagans; a mob of them slaughters the pagan youth,Nymphas, who is standing up for the old gods of his fathers. No remarkis made about this picturesque failure of civilisation; but thereit stands, as an unworded suggestion that civilisation, even whenChristianised, was not able wholly to subdue the natural man in thatold day--just as in our day the spectacle of a shipwrecked Frenchcrew clubbing women and children who tried to climb into the lifeboatssuggests that civilisation has not succeeded in entirely obliteratingthe natural man even yet. Common sailors a year ago, in Paris, at afire, the aristocracy of the same nation clubbed girls and women out ofthe way to save themselves. Civilisation tested at top and bottom both,you see. And in still another panic of fright we have this sametough civilisation saving its honour by condemning an innocent man tomultiform death, and hugging and whitewashing the guilty one.
In the second act a grand Roman official is not above trying to blastAppelles' reputation by falsely charging him with misappropriatingpublic moneys. Appelles, who is too proud to endure even the suspicionof irregularity, strips himself to naked poverty to square the unfairaccount, and his troubles begin: the blight which is to continue andspread strikes his life; for the frivolous, pretty creature whom hebrought from Rome has no taste for poverty and agrees to elope witha more competent candidate. Her presence in the house has previouslybrought down the pride and broken the heart of Appelles' poor oldmother; and her life is a failure. Death comes for her, but is willingto trade her for the Roman girl; so the bargain is struck with Appelles,and the mother is spared for the present.
No one's life escapes the blight. Timoleus, the gay satirist of thefirst two acts, who scoffed at the pious hypocrisies and money-grubbingways of the great Roman lords, is grown old and fat and blear-eyed andracked with disease in the third, has lost his stately purities, andwatered the acid of his wit. His life has suffered defeat. Unthinkinglyhe swears by Zeus--from ancient habit--and then quakes with fright; fora fellow-communicant is passing by. Reproached by a pagan friend of hisyouth for his apostasy, he confesses that principle, when unsupported byan assenting stomach, has to climb down. One must have bread; and 'thebread is Christian now.' Then the poor old wreck, once so proud of hisiron rectitude, hobbles away, coughing and barking.
In that same act Appelles give his sweet young Christian daughter andher fine young pagan lover his consent and blessing, and makes themutterly happy--for five minutes. Then the priest and the mob come, totear them apart and put the girl in a nunnery; for marriage betweenthe sects is forbidden. Appelles' wife could dissolve the rule; and shewants to do it; but under priestly pressure she wavers; then, fearingthat in providing happiness for her child she would be committing a sindangerous to her own, she goes over to the opposition, and throws thecasting vote for the nunnery. The blight has fallen upon the youngcouple, and their life is a failure.
In the fourth act, Longinus, who made such a prosperous and enviablestart in the first act, is left alone in the desert, sick,blind, helpless, incredibly old, to die: not a friend left in theworld--another ruined life. And in that act, also, Appelles' worshippedboy, Nymphas, done to death by the mob, breathes out his last sigh inhis father's arms--one more failure. In the fifth act, Appelles himselfdies, and is glad to do it; he who so ignorantly rejoiced, only fouracts before, over the splendid present of an earthly immortality--thevery worst failure of the lot!
II
Now I approach my project. Here is the theatre list for Saturday, May 7,1898, cut from the advertising columns of a New York paper:
(graphic here)
Now I arrive at my project, and make my suggestion. From the look ofthis lightsome feast, I conclude that what you need is a tonic. Send for'The Master of Palmyra.' You are trying to make yourself believe thatlife is a comedy, that its sole business is fun, that there is nothingserious in it. You are ignoring the skeleton in your closet. Send for'The Master of Palmyra.' You are neglecting a valuable side of yourlife; presently it will be atrophied. You are eating too much mentalsugar; you will bring on Bright's disease of the intellect. You need atonic; you need it very much. Send for 'The Master of Palmyra.' Youwill not need to translate it; its story is as plain as a procession ofpictures.
I have made my suggestion. Now I wish to put an annex to it. And thatis this: It is right and wholesome to have those light comedies andentertaining shows; and I shouldn't wish to see them diminished. Butnone of us is always in the comedy spirit; we have our graver moods;they come to us all; the lightest of us cannot escape them. These moodshave their appetites--healthy and legitimate appetites--and there oughtto be some way of satisfying them. It seems to me that New York oughtto have one theatre devoted to tragedy. With her three millions ofpopulation, and seventy outside millions to draw upon, she can affordit, she can support it. America devotes more time, labour, money andattention to distributing literary and musical culture among the generalpublic than does any other nation, perhaps; yet here you find herneglecting what is possibly the most effective of all the breeders andnurses and disseminators of high literary taste and lofty emotion--thetragic stage. To leave that powerful agency out is to haul theculture-wagon with a crippled team. Nowadays, when a mood comes whichonly Shakespeare can set to music, what must we do? Read Shakespeareourselves! Isn't it pitiful? It is playing an organ solo on ajew's-harp. We can't read. None but the Booths can do it.
Thirty years ago Edwin Booth played 'Hamlet' a hundred nights in NewYork. With three times the population, how often is 'Hamlet' played nowin a year? If Booth were back now in his prime, how often could heplay it in New York? Some will say twenty-five nights. I will say threehundred, and say it with confidence. The tragedians are dead; but Ithink that the taste and intelligence which made their market are not.
What has come over us English-speaking people? During the first half ofthis century tragedies and great tragedians were as common with us asfarce and comedy; and it was the same in England. Now we have not atragedian, I believe, and London, with her fifty shows and theatres,has but three, I think. It is an astonishing thing, when you come toconsider it. Vienna remains upon the ancient basis: there has been nochange. She sticks to the former proportions: a number of rollickingcomedies, admirably played, every night; and also every night at theBurg Theatre--that wonder of the world for grace and beauty and richnessand splendour and costliness--a majestic drama of depth and seriousness,or a standard old tragedy. It is only within the last dozen years thatmen have learned to do miracles on the stage in the way of grand andenchanting scenic effects; and it is at such a time as this that we havereduced our scenery mainly to different breeds of parlours and varyingaspects of furniture and rugs. I think we must have a Burg in New York,and B
urg scenery, and a great company like the Burg company. Then, witha tragedy-tonic once or twice a month, we shall enjoy the comedies allthe better. Comedy keeps the heart sweet; but we all know that thereis wholesome refreshment for both mind and heart in an occasionalclimb among the solemn pomps of the intellectual snow-summits built byShakespeare and those others. Do I seem to be preaching? It is out ofmy line: I only do it because the rest of the clergy seem to be onvacation.