∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[page 58, column 2, continued:]
The Drama.
A GOOD natured friend, who seems to labor under a very erroneous impression, that we have an idea of setting the North River on fire, has entirely misunderstood the meaning of our initial remarks on the Theatres. We desire first to disabuse his mind in respect to the incendiary motives with which he has charged us, and next, to assure him that we only meant that our remarks on the Theatre should apply to the consideration in which the Theatre has always been held by that portion of the community in England and America, whom the world call religious. The Theatre has long held an anomalous position among Englishmen. There is very little difference between Great Britain and America, in this respect, and our remarks are meant for both countries. The critic of the Mirror, asked the other day, “Are our Theatres worthy of support?” But that is not the important question. WHY ARE THEY NOT? is the great question. We said that the Theatre had not been a reputable profession since the time of Queen Elizabeth. This our friend disputes. But we cannot fix upon any point when it has been so considered. It was not in Dryden's time; it was not in Addison's; it was not in Garrick's; it was not in Sheridan's. Assuredly, it has not been since. In Garrick's time, the Church of Scotland expelled one of its ministers for writing a tragedy; an earl disowned his daughter for marrying a player, who was in other respects, an estimable man. There is not a clergyman in New York, who would dare to be seen in one of our Theatres, with his family. Yet clergymen go with their families to the Concert-room, and other places of purely idle amusement, without fear of reproach. In France, where the Drama is a national amusement, and the Theatres are partly supported from the public treasury, actors were long denied christian burial, and even Moliere, was refused this sacred rite by a churlish priest. There is a reason for the odium which attaches to the Theatre, and it is worth inquiring into. It is a very easy thing, but not always safe, to charge those with ignorance who happen to differ with you in opinion; or charge one with putting a match to the North River, when he only walked down to the shore to bathe his hands. We [page 59:] thought that our friend's magazine of mischief was stored with harder missiles than these cheap witticisms.
We cut the following seemingly just remarks on the drama from an essay on Landscape Painting in a late English publication.
“It will be acknowledged at once that, of all modes of rendering an imitation of an event, the stage possesses the greatest power. It has the advantage of uniting the concentrated capabilities of painting, poetry, and music. Instead of being limited, like painting, to the representation of one moment of time, and those incidents out of the many which took place only in such moment, the mind is prepared by a continued run of events, for the developement of some grand burst of tragedy — the poetry uttered by the choicest language of passion, the picture formed of living man, under the highest emotion, and relieved upon a back ground of music, rushing in harmonious surges, or gliding through thrilling melodies, from one appropriate and sustaining character of pathos to another, as the subject may demand.”
The difficulties of dramatic representation are owing to these very causes which the author considers its advantage. Poetry, music, and painting are entirely distinct arts, and can lend no aid to each other. If Ole Bul had been surrounded by a panorama of Niagara Falls in his late performance, wherein he aimed at conveying by sound, an idea of the cataract, he could never have succeeded in impressing his audience with an idea of the real scene — the eye would have been continually breaking in upon the abstraction of the ear. But the greatest disadvantage in dramatic representation, arises from the necessity of employing real men as actors, while all around them is artificial. The incongruity arising from this necessity will always prevent a perfect illusion, in a dramatic performance. The Greeks, by giving to the persons of their drama, the appearance of artificial men and women by covering their faces with masks, and rejecting all attempts at scenic illusion, produced effects of terror and mirth, which the modern stage, with all its aids, has never been able to accomplish. The Greek women were certainly nut more effeminate than the delicate ladies of our own time; yet we hear of no swoonings at our Theatres, such as took place in the time of A'sehylus; when, as Miss Barrett says,
“The women swooned to see so awful.”
Garrick played Hamlet in a bob-wig and laced coat, and produced an impression which none of his successors have been able to do, with all the aids of black velvet and glass beads. It would really be less offensive to good taste to see Hamlet personated by a player in a coat and pantaloons, than in the dress in which he is now presented. This being a thinking age, and a searching age. two thirds of any audience mnst feel the absurdity of dressing a Danish prince of the supposed time of Hamlet, in the fancy gear which actors generally wear. We have seen actresses personate Ophelia with tropical flowers in their hair in the mad scene. There is no reason why the stage should not be as perfect in its representations of nature and society as any other department of art. Macready wears a dress in Macbeth which all the wealth of Scotland could not have purchased in the days o the Thane of Cawdor. The barbarisms committed by Macbeth and his wife, are utterly repugnant to the refinement of their apparel. In the banquet scene the tables are generally set out with dishes of pine-apples and oranges; in a climate where carraways and pippins have never been heard of.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Notes:
This review was specifically rejected as being by Poe by W. D. Hull.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[S:0 - BJ, 1845] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Criticism - Literary (Briggs ?, 1845)