[i]PLAYS
[i]PLAYS
1
ACTING AND MUSIC
A BOOK OF THEORY
BY
ARTHUR SYMONS
LONDON
CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD
1909
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To Maurice Maeterlinck in friendship and admiration
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PREFACE
When this book was first published it contained a large amount of material which is now taken out of it;
additions have been made, besides many corrections and changes; and the whole form of the book has been
remodelled. It is now more what it ought to have been from the first; what I saw, from the moment of its
publication, that it ought to have been: a book of theory. The rather formal announcement of my intentions
which I made in my preface is reprinted here, because, at all events, the programme was carried out.
This book, I said then, is intended to form part of a series, on which I have been engaged for many years. I am
gradually working my way towards the concrete expression of a theory, or system of \u00e6sthetics, of all the arts.
In my book on "The Symbolist Movement [viii]in Literature" I made a first attempt to deal in this way with
literature; other volumes, now in preparation, are to follow. The present volume deals mainly with the stage,
and, secondarily, with music; it is to be followed by a volume called "Studies in Seven Arts," in which music
will be dealt with in greater detail, side by side with painting, sculpture, architecture, handicraft, dancing, and
the various arts of the stage. And, as life too is a form of art, and the visible world the chief storehouse of
beauty, I try to indulge my curiosity by the study of places and of people. A book on "Cities" is now in the
press, and a book of "imaginary portraits" is to follow, under the title of "Spiritual Adventures." Side by side
with these studies in the arts I have my own art, that of verse, which is, after all, my chief concern.
ACTING AND MUSIC
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In all my critical and theoretical writing I wish to be as little abstract as possible, and to study first principles,
not so much as they exist in the brain of the theorist, but as they may be discovered, alive and in [ix]effective
action, in every achieved form of art. I do not understand the limitation by which so many writers on \u00e6sthetics
choose to confine themselves to the study of artistic principles as they are seen in this or that separate form of
art. Each art has its own laws, its own capacities, its own limits; these it is the business of the critic jealously
to distinguish. Yet in the study of art as art, it should be his endeavour to master the universal science of
beauty.
1903, 1907.
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CONTENTS
[xi]
INTRODUCTION
An Apology for Puppets
3
PLAYS AND ACTING
Nietzsche on Tragedy
11
Sarah Bernhardt
17
Coquelin and Moli\u00e8re
29
R\u00e9jane
37
Yvette Guilbert
42
Sir Henry Irving
52
Duse in Some of Her Parts
60
Annotations
77
M. Capus in England
93
A Double Enigma
100
DRAMA
Professional and Unprofessional
109
Tolstoi and Others
115
Some Problem Plays
124
"Monna Vanna" [xii]
137
The Question of Censorship
143
A Play and the Public
148
The Test of the Actor
152
The Price of Realism
162
On Crossing Stage to Right
167
The Speaking of Verse
173
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Plays Acting and Music, by Arthur Symons.
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Plays, Acting and MusicA Book Of Theory by Symons, Arthur, 1865-1945
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