Shakespeare and the Modern Stage; with Other Essays

a wiser appreciation of the theatrical capacities of Shakespeare's masterpieces than we who ar

fied the theatrical audiences, not only of Shakespeare's own day, but of the eighteenth century, during which Shakespeare was repeatedly performed; when one compares the simplicity of scenic mechanism in the past with its complexity in our own time, one can hardl

us, was never known to stray when he produced a great play by Shakespeare. In Shakespeare's day boys or men took the part of women, and how characters like Lady Macbeth and Desdemona were adequately rendered by youths beggars belief. But renderings in such conditions proved popular and satisfactory. Such a fact seems convi

his line of argument serves to confirm the suggested defect of imagination in the present generation. The well-known chorus before the first act of Henry V. is the evidence which is relied upon to show that Shakespeare wished his plays to be, in journalistic dialect, "magnificently st

of fire, that

st heaven o

r a stage, p

o behold the s

e warlike Harr

t of Mars; and

ounds, should fam

oyment. But par

ised spirits

thy scaffold

bject: can th

ds of France?

wooden O the

ight the air

ince a crook

ittle place

phers to this

aginary fo

n the girdle

ned two might

reared and ab

narrow ocean

mperfections wi

and parts di

imaginary

alk of horses, t

roud hoofs i' th

ughts that now mu

and there, jum

ccomplishment

n hour

rk should be treated on the stage as drama or spectacle. Nay, I go further, and assert that, as far

on, lies outside the range of the stage, especially the movement and action of life in its most glorious manifestations. Obvious conditions of space do not allow "two mighty monarchies" literally to be confined within the walls of a theatre. Obvious conditions of time cannot turn "the accomplishments of many years into an hour glass." Shakespeare is airing no private grievance. He is not complaining that his plays were in his own day inadequately upholstered in the theatre, or that the "scaf

ility. But the crucial point of the utterance is the warning that the illusion of the drama can only be rendered complete in the theatre by the working of the "imaginary forces" of the spectators. It is needful for them to "make imaginary puissance," if the play is to triumph. It is their "thou

mption that all the artistic genius in the world and all the treasure in the Bank of England were placed at the command of a theatrical manager in order to enable him to produce a great play on his stage supremely well from his own scenic point of view. Even then it would be

has little or no imagination to exercise, and he only tolerates a performance in the theatre when little or no demand is made on the exercise of the imaginative faculty. "The groundlings," said Shakespeare for all time, "are capable of [appreciating] nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise." They would be hugely delighted nowadays with a scene in which two real motor ca