The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1907-10-27

the scene transporting within tho proscerium
frame 40 much more natural, no much more
like life that TO our modern ears nothing
but lifelike speech will be tolerated from the
players, and unconsciously We nave come
10 demand that IL shall still further fulfil
tho demands OF nuturalism and be speech
oouched ia prose. II the I'D time spouting
actor is dead. tho old time blank verse Is
archaic too. The drama has. in short.
become "a highly specialized art form. its
IDEAL being TO rcorsats reality as surely,
as wildly. as directly as possible. To that
end IT, divorces poetic speech as q conven-
ton false to life. az IL has divorced the
false exagaerations Of the actors.
Nor is this at all to say that h modern
drama IL only n photograph. or even that
IL cannot be In "A larger sense poetic. One
% the great achievements OF the nineteenth
century was TO strike the letters from prose.
Wordsworth dismissed the old eighteenth
century distinction between prose and verse
by declaring the difference TO rest upon ths
almost technical basis Of the absence or
presence of metrical beauty, That dis
tinction ~glorities the prose drama. New
man and Ruskin and Arnold and Pater
have taught US that prose may carry its
burden Of loyeliness no less than verse,
may have its own cadences and melody,
IL was Pater who said that music Ii the
ideal ar. because 1t is impossible in music
TO distinguish the form from the substance
or matter. the subject from the expression.
Now. the poetic drama is q divorce of the
form and the subject matter In ninety-nine
cases ont of a hundred. 90 seldom is the
subject matter sufficiently unworldly.
glorified. saturated with mystic or musical
feeling as 10 comport naturally with verse
In h mouths Of the characters. The
content. the subject matter Of the drama
to-day. is not a thing apart from life; it IL a
section of life where prose is spoken. and a
perfect welding OF form and substance de-
mands that prose be the form. That this
welding can he accomplished without loss
OF beauty in the mere speech The Great
Divide" sufficiently attests, a play In which
the spoken words at once fulfil the ideal
Of the modern naturalistic stage and the
ideal Of imaginative charm and verbal
cadence. And that the modern prose drama
nced not he and IL not a mere photograph
the works Of Ibsen and every playwr right
who has wrought from he idea. who has
had a criticism Of life" TO make, abundantly
prove. Life may still be treated POLITICALLY,
life may still be glorifed on the stage.
Only now it must he glorifed not by being
made something different from life, Some
thing apart and unreal; but something
first of all like life. a piece Of it. set ont
truthfully and considered for What may be
there over and above the more obvious as
poets. " is not the poetry in the blank
verse drama which We find. in our hearts,
embarrassing; it is the unreality. We are
no more literal minded than our fathers
we're But We rave been taught by the
evolution Of the stage. by the specialization
of the drama, the divorce between the art
OF playwriting and the art of verse making.
to look for one quality Of emotion from the
one art. and another quality from the other.
We are but following tho inevitable march
Of things and events. Why thsn should
we be ashamed?
Let us not be ashamed Let us go right
on enjoying A Grand Army Man more
than -Sappho and phaon" and not tell
ourselves we shouldn't. Let us say right
out that Percy MacKaye. a young American
of high ideals. ~steadfast adherence to his
best beliefs, courage. intelligence, fine
taste and imaginative quality, could far
better serve our stage and his own ideals
by giving us dramas of our own day In our
modern idiom. Let us not mind the scholas-
tic people. "praisers of what il old and ac-
c,Istomed at the expense of what is new;
who would never have discovered for them
selves the charm of any work, whether
new or old. who value what lie old in art or
literature for the conventional
authority that has gathered about it.
Let us not think that all verse is poetry
v,,ob - NJ NaaE.-asa ian', nv oil 80,
unpoetic. Let us not fancy that what we
don't like il good for us and what we do
like is therefore bad!
II would be a Pretty problem for some
student Of sesthetics to figure out what
share the growth of the music drama in
the past seventy-five or one hundred year.
has had uron the decline Of the drama in
verse. The opera. especially in this city.
is enormously pa%tronized. And the tragic
opera in especially popular. just as the
poetic tragedy used to lord it in interest
over the lighter forms Of verse playr.
Once upon a time. music was the spokes-
man Of the lighter moods. and the stage
looked after the grand passions. Now
there Is hardly a grand passion once set
down in heroic verse and mouthed by our
Garricks and Keans and FORESTS that is
not sung IN opera over the Sobblng wailing,
crashing harmonics of strings and wood
wind and ringing brass. How tame
seemed Mr.. MscKaye's love scene bet W
Sdppho and Phdon TO any one whose ears
carried the memory of the duet from the
second act Of Tristan und Isolde And
when his fisher folk entered singing their
hymn TO Poseidon, a hymn. by the way.
Of great effectiveness ana charm, AZ was
all Prof. Stanley's music for the play, did
IL not seem as il the ylay had at last reached
It's true medium. becoming orera? In the
poetic drama at its best there resides q
haunting unreality. "A moonDit potency
over the primal emotions. the vague places
Of the heart. closely akint to the elouuence
of music. The music of the verse indeed
is but a kind Of aria. This il very far from
the northumberland appeal Of the drama
as we know it to-day: but it IL correspond
ingly close TO modern opera. even to opera
since Gluck. Perhaps what "Sappho and
Phson" tries TO do Wagner achieves. Per-
haps the release Of the human spirit through
the biological emotions Cthere IL really no