ILLUSTRATIONS Stage of Theater built by Richelieu in Paris (1639) and occupied by Molière (1661-1673) .. Frontispiece 48 1 Plan of the Theater of Dionysus at Athens. Restoration of the Stage of the Roman Theater at [After a drawing by Paul Steck, from the model in the Li- Stage-sets of the Italian Comedy-of-Masks in Seventeenth 140 172 1[The plans were drawn by Albert D. Millar, Esq., on exactly the same scale, thus indicating the striking difference in size.] Interior of Drury Lane Theater, London (1808). [From an aquatint by Thomas Rowlandson. This theater Interior of the Fortune Theater, London (1599) [From the restoration by Walter H. Godfrey, Esq., after Restoration of the Stage on which a Passion-Play was [From the model belonging to Columbia University, New 192 238 292 Plan of the Passion-Play Stage at Valenciennes . 292 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA CHAPTER I THE STUDY OF THE DRAMA A history of the stage is no trivial thing to those who wish to study human nature in all shapes and positions. It is of all things the most instructive, to see not only the reflection of manners and characters at several periods, but the modes of making their reflection, and the manner of adapting it at those periods to the taste and disposition of mankind. The stage indeed may be considered as the republic of active literature, and its history as the history of that state. The great events of political history, when not combined with the same helps towards the study of the manners and characters of men, must be a study of an inferior nature. — EDMUND BURKE, Letter to Edmund. Malone. He therefore who is acquainted with the works which have pleased different ages and different countries, and has formed his opinion upon them, has more materials, and more means of knowing what is analogous to the mind of man, than he who is conversant only with the works of his own age or country. What has pleased, and continues to please, is likely to please again; hence are derived the rules of art, and on this immediate foundation they must ever stand. SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, Discourses on Painting. I WHEN we approach the study of the drama, we must begin by reminding ourselves that this art does not lie. wholly within the limit of literature, a fact which makes investigation into its principles at once more interesting and more difficult. The novel, the short-story, the epic, the lyric, the essay, can all of them be weighed and measured by purely literary tests; the drama can not. And here it has a certain resemblance to history on the one hand, and to oratory on the other. There are not a few historians highly esteemed by their fellows whose work, however scientific it may be, lacks art, and is deficient in those twin qualities of literature which we term structure and style. There are public speakers, able to move multitudes by their impassioned appeals, whose perfervid addresses when put into chill print seem empty and inflated. So there are playwrights of the past as well as of the present, many of whose pieces, although they may have pleased the vast majority of playgoers when they were performed in the theater, are now none the less quite unworthy of serious criticism when the attempt is made to analyze them from the standpoint of literature alone. The success achieved by these pieces on the stage itself is proof that they possessed theatrical effectiveness, — which is the first requisite of a good play. But even though they had this indispensable quality, they were not lifted up into literature by any mastery of structure, by any charm of style, by any grace of poetry, by any sincerity of treatment, or by any subtlety of psychology. Pieces of this kind are abundant in every period when the theater has been flourishing; but they are the mere journalism of the stage. They are for their own day only, not for all time. We may even go further and point out that a pantomime proves to us that there is at least one kind of play which can exist and achieve its purpose satisfactorily without the use of words, and thus without the aid of the most obvious element of literature. In a pantomime, we see a story told in action, by gestures only; and a few years ago an adroit and inventive French playwright composed a play without words, the "Prodigal Son," in which he showed that it was possible to make a pantomime very interesting to the spectators in the theater and to endow it with all the needed elements of the drama, especially pathos and humor. And the ingenious narratives in action devised of late for the moving-picture machines are equal evidence of the adequacy of pantomime to tell a dramatic story, either serious or comic, so clearly that every beholder can apprehend it at once. We may note also that while the drama does not 'lie wholly within the limits of literature, it is at liberty to call to its aid others of the arts, not only the art of the actor, with which the art of the playwright must ever be most intimately associated, but even the arts of the musician, of the painter, and of the sculptor. It can force each of these into its service whenever it wishes, and it can borrow from them any device it may need. Not without good reason did Wagner assert that the music-drama was "the art-work of the future," since the theater is the one place where the arts may all unite, each contributing its share to the harmony of the whole. Thus it is impossible to consider the drama profitably apart from the theater in which it was born and in which it reveals itself in its completest perfection. All the masterpieces of the dramatic art were planned and elaborated on purpose to be performed by actors, in a theater, and before an audience of the poet's contemporaries. The great dramas of the mighty masters, without a single exception, were intended to be played rather than to be read; they were prepared primarily for the stage, and only secondarily — if at all — for |