Omaha daily bee., 1922-02-26

/ VINO nave round not rhahcspcdfe .
stage but the modern picture stage
inadequate, THE Lear OF Shake
spear cannot be acted said Charles
Lamb. 'fhe actor might more cas-
i ly propose 10 personala the satan
OF Milton upon a stage, or one OF
| Michael Angeles terrible figures."
That neither Milton nor Michael An
| gelo created with reference TO the
stage as an executive instrument
seems not 10 have occurred 20 Lamb.
Emerson event once TO see the
Hamlet OF a famed performer, the
pride OF The English stage" and all
that he "then heard" or subsequent
ly remembered was the princes
question 10 the ghost;
What may this mean
That thou, dead corpse, again IN COM
plsts steel
Rsyisits thus tho giimpsss Of the
moon
Tho poetic "magicr OF the lines
spoiled the Illusions of the green
room." but I'm one respect We are
more fortunate than even the great
est OF the elder critics. conceiying
the picture stage 10 be a trtnmph
OF theatric art. they despised the
simpler stage for which shake
speare wrote. Coleridge called II
"a naked room hung with n blan-
ket." We now realize that the plays
OF Shakespeare can be produced on
the picture stage only by vitality
mutilating the text and quite de-
stroyng their artistic integrity. and
we have found reason 10 believe that
tho Elizabethan stnge was an In
strument OF peculiar beauty and po-
tency.
Mr.. Rosenberg quotes. as all his
predecessors have quoted, Shake
peare's apology" for his stage In
the prologue OF Henry ""
Can this cockpit hold
Tho yastic fields OF FraneeT or may
within this wooden o the very
That did alright the air at Asin-
But he omts the subsequent APP
peal to the audience that IL lend
itself TO the magic Of poetic drama.
On the modern stage King Henry
enters on a horse which more or less |
behaves himself. Shakespeares
method was far different:
Think when We talk Of horses that
YOU see them
Printing their proud hoofs T. tn re-
ceving earthT . I
For tits ybur thoughts that now must
deck our kings.
The appeal in brief, was made di-
rectly to the imagination or the
hearer, by means Of verbal enchant-
ment and heroic action. The "illu-
sions" Of the modern stage mad as
little to do with Shakespeare's artls-
tic purpose as with Miltons satan
or the sculptures Of Michael Angelo.
Whereas the 10th century stigma
tized the Elizabethan stage as
small" bare" and crude, we
know that il was large and fur-
nished with all needful appliances.
THE stage of the Fortune was as wide
as that OF the Century theater.
Sbakespeare's stage at the Globe was
furnished with traps, machinery Tor
manipulating fairies and goddesses
in the air-even with piped steam
for clouding the evanishment OF
Prospero's "masque Of spirits" Mr..
Rosenberg says that in the tercen-
tenary production OF THE Tempest
at the Century theater in 1915
Shakespeare's text was rewritten
and the action laid out by line and
level to suit our mean intelligence
The fact is that, except for the ex-
cision of a few lines now generally |
unintelligible, the text was spoken
entire, in its proper order, and the |
action conducted approximately as
Shakespeare intended-all for the |
first time in 800 years.
The purpose was not at all archae
illogical. but wholly artistic. CRIT
les of the type of Lamb and Cole
ridge recognized the fact that Shake
speare's appeal was primarily to the
Imagination. Goethe even perceived
the superiority Of stage upon
which 1.-The play runs its proper
course, full of passion and unhln-
dered, and no one has leisure TO
ponder localities Yet one and all /
baked at the seemingly inevitable
conclusion that the best executive
instrument" for Shakespeare's plays
was the instrument for which they
were written. In 1910 the New the
ater produced THE Winters Tale"
on an Elizabethan stage, making its
greatest Shakespearean success both |
with critics and public. For the
tercentenary celebration the Drama
society chose THE Tempest" as the !
play which has suffered most from
the pictorial stage, and which /
most fully illustrates the technical
resources at Shakespeare's COM
mand. Whereas the prestige
company and all the resources of the
modern theater secured only 13 per-
formances for his mutilated version
OF this play, the Drama society pro-
duction numbered 35 performances,
witnessed by $4,000 spectators.
1t is a demonstrable fact that
Shakespeare's theater was identical
in principle with the theaters OF the
great Spaniards and the great
Greeks-an unframed stage, unen-
numbered with scenery, upon which
the illusion of actuality was created
by the poets lines, the actors art.
The time may come when even lit
erary critics will realize that the
plastic as opposed to the pic
ture' stage is the most effective in
strument for poetic drama-and. in
the case of plays written for such
a.. ,1r,fv, yv>1n n,t