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It is this reflection which hinders me from hoping, with much confidence, that a reform in stage-management will lead to a really quieter and simpler way of acting. But might not the experiment be tried?
A playwright of my acquaintance, and a very remarkable playwright too, used to scribble the first drafts of his play in little notebooks, which he produced from his pocket whenever he had a moment to spare often on the top of an omnibus. Only when the first draft was complete did he proceed to set the scenes, as it were, and map out the stage-management.
Stage-management, which was necessarily neglected by the great Elizabethans, owing to the rudeness of their playhouses, was studied as an art by the great Greeks and held by them in high esteem. The dramatic poet was himself the producer, training the three actors, arranging the evolutions of the chorus, and accepting full responsibility for the perfection of the complete work of art.
The German entry was, on the whole, fairly imposing as a military display; but the stage-management was very bad, and one could not imagine that Napoleon's entry into Berlin had in any way resembled it. Nor could it be said to have equalled the entry of the Allied Sovereigns into Paris in 1814. German princelings in basket-carriages drawn by ponies did not add to the dignity of the spectacle.
At later performances, the author allowed the attempt to be made actually to represent certain phases of a retreat, with horse, foot and artillery on the stage all at once; and altho the stage-management was excellent in every way, perhaps the total effect was less than when the far larger possibilities of a great battle had been merely suggested to the spectators, their own imaginations evoking the possibilities of war more completely than any stage-manager could set it before them.
Lastly, there remains the question how far they would appear to be better than ours if appearing on neutral ground. It would be idle to assert that the average level of our acting is as good as it ought to be. Many theatres suffer severely from the lack of satisfactory stage-management; some from the determination of an actor-manager to be the central figure of every scene.
To be sure, there was an utter absence of stage-management, and all the 'traditions' were remarkable for their absence; but I fancy that the spirits of Siddons and Kemble, Macready and Garrick, looked down with kind approval upon these earnest young actors as they recited the matchless old words, moving to and fro in the quaint setting of trees and moonlight, with an orchestra of cooing doves and murmuring zephyrs.
It was only a chain of fantom towns and cities, made of painted wood and canvas; but while Catharine was there they were very real, seeming to have solid buildings, magnificent arches, bustling industries, and beautiful stretches of fertile country. No human being ever wrought on so great a scale so marvelous a miracle of stage-management.
We may perhaps admit, now that the crisis is over, that for us Belgians at least the temptation was great, and if our repeated experience of the enemy had not shown us that he is most dangerous when he dons the humanitarian garb, we might have been duped by this remarkable piece of stage-management.
There was a mystery about his appearance and his manner a sort of pride which seemed to say: "Don't try to know me, for I am not what I have been." He seemed broken, and devoid of ambition. At rehearsal he was very gentle and apathetic. Accustomed to playing Othello with stock companies, he had few suggestions to make about the stage-management. The part was to him more or less of a monologue.
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