The Stage

IN these warm summer days, when musical matters usually present but few points of interest, the critic who has closely followed the course of musical events during the preceding winter and spring may be allowed to feel that his vacation-time has come. This year, to be sure, the all-devouring Jubilee has come upon us, and loudly claims our attention by roar of artillery, clash of anvils, and the sound of

many trumpets. But at the time of writing this, the many-headed monster has not yet run its allotted course, and we shall calmly await its dying gasp, or perhaps we should rather say its victorious apotheosis, before we venture to express an opinion as to its virtues and vices. In the mean time we shall take occasion to say a few words on another subject which custom has brought within the musical critic’s province, and which is always more or less intimately connected with musical affairs, namely, the theatre.

Now that the old Puritanical notions about the immorality and wickedness of all sorts of theatrical representations have but few advocates, and that the theatre is regarded generally as after all an innocent and often instructive amusement, we shall indulge in a little, perhaps incoherent, chit-chat about some of the imperfections and abuses in our theatres, glad to be able to say at the outset that the shortcomings of our stage are by far oftener sins against art than against morality.

One of the most striking faults in our dramatic entertainments is bad elocution. From those actors who do the leading business in our best stock companies down to the blood-and-thunder villains and persecuted saints at our lowest variety theatres, our actors one and all seem possessed with an invincible determination to throw heavy stress upon the wrong part of almost every sentence. We remember to have heard last winter one of our very best stock actors, a gentleman of great talent, refined perceptions, and a conscientious, painstaking artist, say, “ If I had but SERVED my God with HALF the zeal I SERVED my king, he ” (very small “ he”) would not,” etc. Of course such actors as Edwin Forrest, Edwin Booth, William Warren, Joseph Jefferson, and a few others, do not come within this category, but we think that among the stock companies in Boston and New York, the actors with whom this is not a besetting fault can be counted on the fingers of one hand. There is also a surprising unanimity in the manner in which they will ignore all the important words and accentuate the unimportant ones. Nine actors out of ten will, in a given passage, make precisely the same mistakes. This points to the existence of some more definite cause than the mere want of any high degree of artistic culture among them, and we are inclined to rank this distressing eccentricity of emphasis with many of the old stage traditions which are gradually losing their hold upon the general style of acting, such as the old stage walk, the conventional manner of leaving the stage, and some other theatrical peculiarities, to which the tragic stage especially still pertinaciously clings. Our actors of genteel comedy are happily almost entirely free from many of these traditional absurdities, and when they are called upon to act in tragedy, as they usually are some few times in the winter, on benefit nights or during the engagement of some famous tragic star, it is refreshing to notice how much more naturally and humanly they deport themselves than those actors who have been brought up to tragic or sensational business. We remember noticing last winter, when an eminent tragedian was playing an engagement at one of our leading comedy theatres, how creditably most of the stock actors got through their parts, but there was one heroic individual who had but recently become a member of the company, having just left a theatre where the tragic muse was more exclusively cultivated. He had only an unimportant part, but it was edifying to see how he strutted about in his buskins, with what a tyrannical scowl and what gnashing and grinding of teeth he would bid a friend welcome, and with what pent-up emotions of bitter hatred and thwarted vengeance he glared at the phlegmatic attendant of whom he ordered a goblet of wine. “ Any one could see that he was an actor,” as our friend Partridge said. But this gasping and grinding of teeth, these acrobafic contortions in walking, are now happily rare, though the putting an emphasis on the right word in a sentence seems to be a thing which actors as yet cannot and will not do. This false accentuation is no doubt a remnant of the old traditional singsong which at one time was considered to be the indispensable accompaniment to blank verse in the heroic drama, and which once excited such violent partisanship on the stage of the Comedie Fran5ai.se in Paris. This metrical declamation, which is not without its merits in the mouth of an accomplished artist, becomes uncomfortably ludicrous when not well done ; and when it is transplanted into the prose drama, we get something that is neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring.

Another point that we often notice with dismay in our theatres is the utter disregard to the characteristic dressing of women on the stage. We have by dint of long experience got accustomed to seeing Rosina, a young lady, it is to be supposed, rather delicately brought up by a jealous guardian, prepared to run away with Almaviva in a thunder-storm with a small black lace shawl for her only outer garment, and shod in the prettiest possible little paper-soled slippers without any overshoes. We are no longer shocked at seeing Amina enter the count’s chamber in a becomingly cut white tarlatan dress, which seems to have been ingeniously fashioned so as to be both a comfort and an ornament to the fair wearer under almost any other circumstances than in going to bed. Rosina was probably in a great hurry to run away, and young ladies under the influence of that violent passion known as first love are, especially in fiction, proverbially indifferent to such trifles as wet feet or colds in the head ; Amina has had several songs and a fatiguing duet in the first act, and being besides in a troubled state of mind, may be excused for going to bed and practising somnambulism in a costume at once resembling a peignoir and a balldress. Besides, he who objects to nonsense in any form in an Italian opera will get himself into a pretty peck of troubles if he rides his hobby too hard. But when we see gallant knights of the sixteenth or seventeenth century, glittering in armor, gold braid, and spangles, on the most intimately respectful terms with fair damsels and stately matrons habited according to fashions ranging chronologically from about the year 1865 to the last Paris mode-plates, we confess to a certain sense of incongruity that makes us eye the manager’s announcements of “ gorgeous mise-en-scène, new and appropriate costumes ! ” with feelings closely akin to distrust. When the action of the drama is carried back into classical or mythological times, this defect is to a certain extent remedied, and the tunicopallium makes a becoming and graceful costume even to our modern eyes, although at times it may dangerously suggest the “ statty of a lady hin bathin’,” so much admired in the Vatican by an illustrious cockney. But neither the stola nor the tunicopallium (there exists some confusion in our theatre wardrobes between the Roman and the Grecian garment) could counteract the modernizing effect of the portentous waterfall that we have seen appended to Vergilia’s head. We have said that in the classical dramas the dresses of our women were generally better chosen and often fully as becoming as in those plays where the scene is laid in mediæval times. Strangely enough, the reverse is the case with the men. Most of the noble Romans on our stage, when enveloped in the toga, bear a painful resemblance to those shivering, white-sheeted figures that one may see crawling up the beach toward the bathing-houses any day during the season at Boulogne-sur-mer. When our classical actor lays aside tire toga in the supposed privacy of his own apartment, and displays his stalwart form in all the glory of a tunic and pink fleshings with a general appearance of having forgotten to put on his collar, then, perhaps from the force of association, perhaps from some inherent quality in the modern physique and bearing that does not lend dignity to the antique costume, we must confess to finding him incomplete without some such accompaniment as a flying trapeze, a balancing-pole or other instrument of acrobatic torture. In fact his resemblance to a circus-rider is too intense to be overlooked. We have never yet seem a Roman soldier on the stage with his sword at his right side, though all the authorities unite in telling us that it was so worn in ancient times.

The mise-en-scène at our theatres is in general very poor, though there are a few worthy exceptions. We have often pitied poor Don Giovanni at his solitary banquet in the last act, and admired the stoical indifference or the polite assumption of relish with which he would wipe his mustache after each tiny mouthful of cold tongue and each sip of aerated toast-water or cider. It has sometimes seemed almost unnaturally cruel in Donna Elvira not to have accepted his jovial invitation (poor Don ! jovial even over cold tongue and toastwater) se ti piace, mangia con me, if only for the sake of companionship. But we have seen cases where most ludicrous situations have been brought about simply by the most impudently culpable neglect of stage directions. We have seen the sextett, Sola, Sola, in Don Giovanni, sung in what was to all appearance a baronial ball of rather cheerful aspect, instead of the bujo loco mentioned in the text. The audience must have been at a loss to understand how the various couples happened to meet so inopportunely in a room that evidently belonged to none of them, unless, indeed, it were the public parlor of a hotel. The apotheosis of persecuted heroines in the fifth act is a scenic effect that seems to be still the despair of stage mechanists as well as the terror of any but the most Confidingly imaginative audience. But as playwriters often insist upon the souls of their virtuous heroines going visibly to heaven, and as human mechanism is necessarily imperfect, we suppose that the beatified spirits must continue, as of yore, to wing their jerky flight toward the realms of bliss in what might be called a sort of aerial stage-walk. But we do not see why the asperities of even paste-board clouds should necessitate the wearing of high-heeled boots by the attendant angels.

One of the most lamentable shortcomings of our stage is the poorness of our ballet. Most of our solo dancers deserve rather the name of contortionists than of dancers ; and we are sorry to see that our public seems to appreciate what is difficult rather than what is graceful. Good dancing rises to the dignity of a fine art, and in the hands (or feet) of real artists like Mademoiselle Morlacchi or Mademoiselle Betty Rigl, it becomes an æsthetic entertainment of a very high order ; but nowa-

days, the acrobatic school of dancing has wellnigh put all grace to flight, and we see little else than strained, unnatural postures and what appears to be a desire to show how far the tibial and peroneal muscles may be stretched without snapping. Very few of our dancers have even a respectable amount of ballon, that india-rubber-like quality that gives the dancer the appearance of dancing two or three feet above the level of the stage, and which is one of the most difficult parts of the art to acquire. As for our corps de ballet, they are one and all beneath criticism.