The Changing Drama: Contributions and Tendencies

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H. Holt, 1914 - 321 páginas

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Página 132 - A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents ; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents — he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no...
Página 164 - It is in the restless and anatomizing casuistry with which men seek the justification of Beatrice, yet feel that she has done what needs justification ; it is in the superstitious horror with which they contemplate alike her wrongs and their revenge, that the dramatic character of what she did and suffered consists.
Página 151 - Tis a great mistake in us to believe the French present no part of the action on the stage; every alteration or crossing of a design, every new-sprung passion and turn of it is a part of the action, and much the noblest, except we conceive nothing to be action till the players come to blows...
Página 200 - ... of the sheets half out, and looks at them. Next she goes over and seats herself in the arm-chair beside the stove, with the packet in her lap. Presently she opens the stove door, and then the packet.] HEDDA [throws one of the quires into the fire and whispers to herself]. Now I am burning your child, Thea! — Burning it, curly-locks!
Página 277 - Whatever pleasure there may be in seeing crimes punished and virtue rewarded, yet, since wickedness often prospers in real life, the poet is certainly at liberty to give it prosperity on the stage. For if poetry has an imitation of re_ality, how are its laws broken by exhibiting the world in its true form? The stage may sometimes gratify our wishes ; but if it be truly the " mirror of life, " it ought to show us sometimes what we are to expect.
Página 22 - The great artist is he who goes a step beyond the demand, and, by supplying works of a higher beauty and a higher interest than have yet been perceived, succeeds after a brief struggle with its strangeness, in adding this fresh extension of sense to the heritage of the race.
Página 93 - To set before the public no cut-and-dried codes, but the phenomena of life and character, selected and combined, but not distorted, by the dramatist's outlook, set down without fear, favor, or prejudice, leaving the public to draw such poor moral as nature may afford.
Página 315 - ... and bibliographies with outlines, of half a dozen pages or less each, of the more important plays of twenty-four Continental dramatists. While intended to be used in connection with a reading of the plays themselves, the book has an independent interest. I2mo. $1.50 net. Prof. William Lyon Phelps, of Yale: ". . . One of the most useful works on the contemporary drama. . . . Extremely practical, full of valuable hints and suggestions.
Página 222 - ... covered with autumn foliage. An oval table, with a cover on it, and surrounded by chairs, stands well forward. In front, by the wall on the right, a wide stove of dark porcelain, a high-backed arm-chair, a cushioned footrest, and two foot-stools. A settee, with a small round table in front of it, fills the upper right-hand corner. In front, on the left, a little way from the wall, a sofa.
Página 139 - Now character determines men's qualities, but it is by their actions that they are happy or the reverse. Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions. Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy; and the end is the chief thing of all.

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