The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-04-28

performance would compare, In It's aesthetic effect upon the spectator, with such 8 completely appointed presentation as I had witnessed at the Star. Would I have been constantly offended and disillusioned by the blank and meaningless curtains? or would that very blankness have concentrated my attention upon the players, and stimulated my imagination to environ them with greater and more satisfying scenery than the most skillful scenic artists in the world could produce?
 While had this problem under ad- visement, the April number of Har- per's Magazine came out, containing an inimitable and invaluable article on "Actors and Authors" by the great Coquelin. It was delightfully."- Illustrated, too; but-is not the case with most illustrated articles-one forgot the illustrations for the text. And among many other of the best sort of good things was the following i; "While do not believe in art outside of nature, on the stage l cannot admit nature without art. Everything ought to start from truth everything ought to tend toward the ideal. The repetition of reality is impossible Remember the magnifying power of the stage. The footlights exaggerate everything. They modify the laws of space and time. In the familiar anecdote of the peasant, the mounte- bank, and the squealing pig, the moun- tebank, the imitator, is applauded, while the peasant, with the real pig beneath his doublet, is hissed. Why is this SOP Because the trial is made on the stage; because the point of view is different according as one looks at things from the outside street or from the auditorium of a theatre. Que uoulez cous? Of course the peasants pig squealed very well; but he squealed without art"
 Here, then, is the two- headed ser mon, and the application. Mir. Irving brings the real pig on the staee-not, however, as regards the acting, but as regards the scenery. The result is detrimental to pure art. And the reason is easily seen. The imagina- tion of the audience, which, by the true idealizing art of the actor, is stim- ulated to expand and soar, is con- stantly getting bruised against the real walls and ceilings; is breaking it's shins over the real chairs and tables l; is getting collie from the real grown apples, Mir. Irving's scenery. in other words, suggests nothing, hints at nothing, insinuates nothing; no, 1t dumps the real thing down before you in its actual colors, forms and dimen- sions, and drives your poor snubbed imagination ignominiously out of court. If you cram facts down my throat, how can idealize? However, that which is fact of the stage is a falsehood on it, and rice rersa. Mr. Irving and Miss Terry do not con- verse on the stage as they would in my drawing room; but, by speaking in another key and pitch altogether, they produce the illusion of such con- versation. This is art. Why admit art into the Reclamation, and deny it and, what is worse, it is tedious and depressing. And the reason it is tedi- ous and depressing is that it gives the spectator nothing to do. He is con- demned to abject passivity. He is not allowed to enter into the performance to identify himself with tito CO., operate in it. There is no room for him there he is not wanted; the web has all been spun, and the pattern em- broidered upon it, and he can do noth- ing but look. And yet, surely, no truth is more sure in art than the best part of a great work of art is it's sug- gestive, stimulating quality-not the thing it actually succeeds in being, but the thing it makes the spectator Cor the listener, or reader, as the case may be), to imagine that it might be- come, and which accordingly, in virtue of the imaginative cooperation, it does become in the ideal artistic sense. It is of the essence of human nature to care for nothing intensely which it has not had some share in producing. And the dramatic performance, the orato- rio, or the novel, which is most deeply and lastingly successful, is the one in which allowance has been made for the qualification of this impulse to "bear a hand" of the audience. Art brings intimation of the infinite and immortal but, since no work of art can contain infinity or realize immor- tality, it must have the power to call forth the soul of him whom it ad- dresses. Only so can the miracle be achieved, and the infinite and immor- tai be brought into the world-not by the artist, nor by the spectator, but by the combination and interaction of the two.
 What is true of the actors art is also true, naufotis mutapdis, of the novelist and the musician. The elah-