A Book About the Theater. Brander Matthews

      ILLUSTRATIONS

       Table of Contents

      Le ballet de la reine Frontispiece

      FACING PAGE

      Upper half of Plate No. 1, the 'Miller and His Men' 40

      A group of the principal characters from

       Pollock's juvenile drama, the 'Miller and His Men' 42

      Explosion of the mill. A back drop in the 'Miller and His Men' 46

      Plate No. 7, the 'Miller and His Men' 48

      Lower half of Plate No. 5, the 'Miller and His Men' 52

      The Roman Theater at Orange 134

      The multiple set of the French medieval stage 134

      The set of the Italian comedy of masks 134

      An outdoor entertainment in the gardens of

       the Pitti Palace in Florence in the early sixteenth century 136

      The set for the opera of 'Persée' (as

       performed at the Opéra in Paris in the seventeenth century) 140

      A prison (designed by Bibiena in Italy in the eighteenth century) 140

      The screen scene of the 'School for Scandal'

       at Drury Lane in 1778 144

      A landscape set 146

      A set for the opera of 'Robert le Diable' 146

      The set of the last act of the 'Garden of Allah' 148

      A set for 'Medea' 148

      The set of 'Œdipe-Roi' (at the Théâtre Français) 150

      The set of the 'Return of Peter Grimm' 150

      Scenes from Punch and Judy 274

      Scenes from Punch and Judy (continued) 276

      Roman puppets. Greek and Roman puppets. Puppet of Java. 290

      A Sicilian marionette show 292

      A Belgian puppet. A Chinese puppet theater.

       Puppet figure representing the younger Coquelin 294

      Puppets in Burma 296

      The puppet play of Master Peter (Italian) 296

      A Neapolitan Punchinella 300

      The broken bridge. Plan showing the construction of a

       shadow-picture theater. A Hungarian dancer (a shadow picture) 308

      Shadow Pictures. The return from the Bois de

       Boulogne. The ballet. A regiment of French soldiers 310

      Shadow Picture. The Sphinx I: Pharaoh passing in triumph 312

      Shadow Picture. The Sphinx II: Moses leading his people out of Egypt 314

      Shadow Picture. The Sphinx III: Roman warriors in Egypt 316

      Shadow Picture. The Sphinx IV: The British troops to-day 318

      I

       THE SHOW BUSINESS

      THE SHOW BUSINESS

       I

      At an interesting moment in Disraeli's picturesque career in British politics he indulged in one of his strikingly spectacular effects, in accord with his characteristic method of boldly startling the somewhat sluggish imagination of his insular countrymen; and in the next week's issue of Punch there was a cartoon by Tenniel reflecting the general opinion in regard to his theatrical audacity. He was represented as Artemus Ward, frankly confessing that "I have no principles; I'm in the show business."

      The cartoon was good-humored enough, as Punch's cartoons usually are; but it was not exactly complimentary. It was intended to voice the vague distrust felt by the British people toward a leader who did not scrupulously avoid every possible opportunity to be dramatic. And yet every statesman who was himself possessed of constructive imagination, and who was therefore anxious to stir the imaginations of those he was leading, has laid himself open to the same charge. Burke, for one, was accused of being frankly theatrical; and Napoleon, the child of that French Revolution which Burke combated with undying vigor, never hesitated to employ kindred devices. When Napoleon took the Imperial Crown from the hands of the Pope to place it on his own head, and when Burke cast the daggers on the floor of the House of Commons, they were both proving that they were in the show business. So was Julius Cæsar when he thrice thrust aside the kingly crown; and so was Frederick on more than one occasion. Even Luther did not shrink from the spectacular if that could serve his purpose, as when he nailed his theses to the door of the church.

      If the statesmen have now and again acted as tho they were in the show business, we need not be surprised to discover that the dramatists have done it even more often, in accord with their more intimate relation to the theater. No one would deny that Sardou and Boucicault were showmen, with a perfect mastery of every trick of the showman's trade. But this is almost equally true of the supreme leaders of dramatic art, Sophocles, Shakspere, and Molière. The great Greek, the great Englishman, and the great Frenchman, however much they might differ in their aims and in their accomplishments, were alike in the avidity with which they availed themselves of every spectacular device possible to their respective theaters. The opening passage of 'Œdipus the King,' when the chorus appeals to the sovran to remove the curse that hangs over the city, is as potent on the eye as on the ear. The witches and the ghost in 'Macbeth,' the single combats and the bloody battles that embellish many of Shakspere's plays are utilizations of the spectacular possibilities existing in that Elizabethan playhouse, which has seemed to some historians of the drama to be necessarily bare of all appeal to the senses. And in his 'Amphitryon' Molière has a succession of purely mechanical effects (a god riding upon an eagle, for example, and descending from the sky) which are anticipations of the more elaborate and complicated transformation scenes of the 'Black Crook' and the 'White Fawn.'

      At the end of the nineteenth century the two masters of the stage were Ibsen and Wagner, and both of them were in the show business—Wagner more openly and more frequently than Ibsen. Yet the stern Scandinavian did not disdain to employ an avalanche in 'When We Dead Awaken,' and to introduce a highly pictorial shawl dance for the heroine of his 'Doll's House.' As for Wagner, he was incessant in his search for the spectacular,