Theater Pictorial: A History of World Theater as Recorded in Drawings, Paintings, Engravings, and Photographs [Reprint 2020 ed.] 9780520351714

Citation preview

Theater Pictorial

/\

George Altman Ralph Freud Kenneth Macgowan William Melnitz

THEA

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

PICTORIAL A History of World

Theater

as Recorded in Drawings} Engravings}

Paintings}

and Photographs

Berkeley and Los Angeles

29JJ

University

of California Press

Berkeley and Los

Angeles

California

o

Cambridge

University

London,

Copyright,

'953,

The Regents of the University

Manufactured

Press

England

by of California

in the United States of America

Designed by Adrian Wilson and John B. Goetz

Preface T h e past, like an inspired rhapsodist, fills the theater of everlasting generations with her harmony. SHELLEY T H I S IS the story of the theater, not the story of drama. It is the story of an

institution, not the story of a literature. It deals, first of all, with the dramatic impulse that we call "theater," and then with the forms it has used. There is, to begin with, the playhouse—from a dancing floor in Greece or a temple courtyard in E g y p t to the Paris Opera and Drury Lane, to Reinhardt's Grosses Schauspielhaus and "theater-in-the-round." Then comes what we call production—from the three-sided prisms on which the Greeks painted scenic suggestions, to the stage machines of the Renaissance and the sky-domes and the revolving and sliding and elevator stages of the German theater, from rushlights and gaslights to limelights and incandescent spots. T h e director—who was most important in the time of Aeschylus and is now important again—and the actor, and even the actor-manager, have their part in the story, but only as they break new paths or reach new heights by their artistry or their creative ideas. Without the playwright, the theater is not the theater; yet this is the story of the playwright only when he becomes the dramatist, when he pushes the theater ahead in a significant way. Our history is a history of the many things that make up the theater, not the history of just one of these. W e have tried to tell the story of the theater through pictures more than through words. These pictures are of many kinds. T h e oldest is a drawing by a caveman, the rarest record of the prehistoric theater. Otherwise, the primitive ways of the theater are illustrated by drawings and photographs of what savage tribes have done from 800 A.D. in Mexico to 1900 A.D. in the American Southwest and the South Seas. For E g y p t we have carvings on stone, and for the classical world a few ruins and the drawings of scholarly

restoration. With the Middle Ages and the Renaissance we enter the time when an artist shows us what the setting for a mystery play or the interior of a theater looked like. H e leaves us his sketches and plans. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries his paintings and engravings record stage scenes and famous players. Though photography is more than a century old, it provides a spotty record until 1900 and a full and atmospheric picture only since 1920. Today we have a wealth of scenic designs and theater plans to choose from, but we must still depend on astute guesses so far as Shakepeare's Globe theater is concerned. A s with all history, the arrangement of our material has been a sore problem. W e can be chronological only in the broadest sense. Sketches by a caveman and by an explorer of Indian territory a hundred years ago, as well as photographs of contemporary Balinese dancers, tell us how primitive man produced theater. T h e sequence from Egypt to Greece to Rome to Medieval Europe and to Renaissance Italy is clear and straight. After that we must dodge back and forth from country to country and, therefore, from century to century. Of the 516 illustrations almost 100 have never before appeared in any book on the theater; an additional 150 have not previously been published in England or America; many of the rest are from books now out of print and only accessible in libraries. W e are especially indebted to the Yale and Harvard library staffs for making source material available for photographic reproduction. For some areas that have been thoroughly illustrated—the Greek and Roman, for instance—we have included only a limited number of pictures. Also, we have put relatively less emphasis on the theater since 1920, when photographs began to be made with correct stage lighting and were widely published. Finally, we must explain for the benefit of the foreign reader, particularly the English reader, that we have used the word "producer" to signify the management of a production or of a theater, and not, as in England, the director who stages the play. W e have used "director" in the way that is common in the United States and Canada and the way that it is more widely used in motion pictures.

Contents I W O R L D SOURCES: 2 0 , 0 0 0 B.C. TO 1 9 5 0 A.D. Illustrations i to ^o

2

T H E MIDDLE AGES Illustrations 51

to 73

3 F R O M T H E RENAISSANCE TO T H E BAROQUE Illustrations y^f. to

J35

4 T H E C O M M E D I A D E L L ' A R T E AND ITS I N F L U E N C E A B R O A D Illustrations 136

to

182

5 G O E T H E , G A R R I C K , AND T H E BOX S E T : 1 7 5 0 — 1 8 5 0 Illustrations 183

to 2 3 3

6 HISTORICAL A C C U R A C Y — M E I N I N G E N E N S E M B L E — B E L A S C O Illustrations 234

to 268

REALISM

7 TOWARD A N E W STAGE FOR S H A K E S P E A R E — A N D REALISM P E R F E C T E D Illustrations 26g to 305

8 T H E N E W STAGECRAFT: A P P I A , C R A I G , AND REINHARDT Illustrations 306 to 354

9 E U R O P E A N D E V E L O P M E N T S SINCE W O R L D W A R I Illustrations 355

to 448

1 0 T H E N E W STAGECRAFT IN A M E R I C A Illustrations 44g to 489

1 1 A TECHNOLOGICAL POSTSCRIPT Illustrations

to 516

N O T E S AND CREDITS

INDEX

World Sources 10,000

B.C. to 19JO A.D.

THE THEATER is twenty-five hundred years old—if we mean by the theater a written drama played by actors on a specially arranged stage. But if we think of the essence of drama instead of its trappings, then we must go back to the Old Stone A g e to find its beginnings. Primitive man made theater before he made magic. T h e hunter dressed himself in the head and hide of an animal and imitated its movements as he closed in on his prey. W h e n he returned to camp, he put on his disguise again and acted out the drama of the hunt. Later on, the hunter gave the same kind of performance before the hunt. This was magic—"sympathetic magic,"—for it insured much game and good hunting. A n d it was an extension of theater. When primitive man invented agriculture, he continued to use magic and make theater. H e poured water from a tree or devised dances that were even more certain to bring rain. A s he came to depend on the fertility of nature, he began to invent gods and to impersonate them. T h e animal mask turned into the mask of deity. Rain gods are only a few of the celestial beings that the Pueblo Indians of the southwestern desert still mimic in their elaborate dance-dramas. Comic performances must have mingled with the religious impersonations of ancient man, for we find crude comedy among the primitive peoples of Africa, southeastern Asia, the Americas, and even Australia. Entertainment jostled religion. Modern drama and the modern theater stem back through Greek tragedy and Egyptian rituals to three religious concepts of ancient man. These were fertility rites, the initiation ceremonies by which the boy became a man, and the deification of culture heroes. Ritual dances dramatized the death of nature in the fall and its rebirth in the spring, often through the destruction and the resurrection of a local god. Even today in certain initiation ceremonies the boy appears to die and then return as a man. T h e stories of the deified culture heroes of Greece were chanted and danced at their graves. Some part of these three concepts animated the passion plays of Osiris in Egypt, of Adonis in Syria, of T h a m m u z in Babylonia, of Attis in Phrygia, and finally—and most importantly—of Dionysus in Greece. T h e theater has ancient roots in other countries than those of the eastern Mediterranean, and these roots, also, are magical, religious, and legendary. Today in China and Japan, in Tibet and India, in Turkey and Cambodia, in Java and Bali, gods, heroes, and witches still play their roles in popular and sacred drama, the mask and the dance still hold their ancient place. M a g i c has become theater—and theater, magic.

T h e theater begins in many places—under the sky and under a roof, in forest clearings and on the shores of the sea, in snow huts and in deep, dark caverns. O n a wall of the Cave of the Three Brothers in the French Pyrenees we find the oldest document in the history of the theater—this drawing, retouched in black, of a man disguised as an animal. M a d e 15,000 to 25,000 years ago, when glaciers still covered northern Europe, it shows a medicine man wearing the antlers and skin of a deer and probably taking part in some imitative animal pantomime designed to increase the supply of game. Today primitive peoples still honor and lure in similar fashion the wild animals they live upon. A hundred years ago the M a n d a n Indians "danced buffalo" on the Great Plains, as the Swiss artist Charles Bodmer recorded in the painting below.

Since Indian corn is more vital than meat in the economy of the Hopi and other Pueblo tribes of the Southwest, these people dramatize colorfully certain legends connected with agriculture. In the Great Serpent Drama, puppet snakes that symbolize floods try to destroy a miniature cornfield. Below, the snakes are overcome by Mudheads,

4

masked representations of the ancients who have supernatural power to cause the corn to grow. Besides such dramas, acted out in underground ceremonial rooms called kivas, the Pueblo Indians present numerous masked dances in the open air. Sometimes Christian symbols invade primitive fertility rites, as in the Corn Dance that the Taos Indians of N e w M e x i c o give in front of their magnificent adobe skyscraper built hundreds of years ago. T h e bower at the left is the resting place, in turn, of San Antonio, Santiago, and San Juan. T h e Indians of the North Pacific Coast from British C o l u m b i a to A l a s k a still use dramatic pantomime to gain supernatural power. In the Cannibal Society ceremonial of the K w a k i u t l a new initiate comes out of the m o u t h of the Raven—servant of the Great Cannibal Spirit—painted on the background. A t t e n d a n t s seize him by his neckring and bring h i m forward to show in pantomime the supernatural powers that he has acquired from the Cannibal Spirit.

The Indians of the North Pacific Coast use masks in curative rites. Here a medicine man of the Haida of British Columbia is dramatically exorcising evil spirits from the body of his patient.

Today, in upper N e w York State, Iroquois Indians prefer prophylactic treatment. Wearing horrific masks, they go from house to house frightening away disease with shock treatments before it can take lodgment in the human body.

T h e W a r Dance of the American Indians used dramatic pantomime as a martial stimulant. In the Charcoal Dance of the Osage the warriors were painted black from head to foot, a detail the artist has omitted. H e shows, however, the chief holding in one hand a war hatchet and in the other a fan made of an eagle's wing, while he boasts of one of his exploits. Such dances, exciting the young men to valor, were repeated for four days, and then the war party started out for combat. A s late as 1875, the natives of an island in Torres Strait, between Australia and N e w Guinea, initiated their youth in a ceremony in which culture heroes impersonated by Shark M e n in masks danced while the tribe sang of their adventures. Between the two Shark M e n a sort of stage manager guided them by means of a rope.

T h e use of masks is widespread today among the Negroes of Africa, and they serve both sacred and profane purposes. M o s t of them cover the face, but those in the picture above are worn on top of the head. T h e y represent ancestral or supernatural spirits in a women's ceremonial dance in Cameroon. W i t h the passion play of Osiris, deified ancestor of E g y p t , we pass from prehistoric and primitive origins of the drama to its beginnings among civilized peoples. T h e demise and resurrection of Osiris—forerunner of Dionysus—were symbolic of the death of nature in the autumn and its reawakening in the spring. This sculpture, carved about 1 3 0 0 B.C. at Abydos, where the most famous passion play was given, records a scene that may have been first enacted five thousand years ago. Below, we see Osiris' dead body with his wife-sister Isis at his head and, opposite her, a masked priest or king impersonating his son, the solar divinity Horus, who with a conjuring gesture reanimates his father.

A part of the many Egyptian plays dealt with Horus and his revenge upon Set, brother and murderer of Osiris. Above, in a drawing of a Ptolemaic relief, we see Horus, wearing the mask of a hawk, standing in a boat with Isis, and plunging a spear into Set, who has transformed himself into a hippopotamus. T h e king who reigned during the time of the play's performance attacks Set from the river bank. T h e play was probably written and staged by Imhotep, vizier of King Zoser about 2980 B.C.

T h e oldest plays that are produced today sprang from similar ceremonies at the tombs of the ancient Greeks, ancestral rites that were probably blended with the cult of Dionysus, god of fertility. By introducing spoken verse into the choric hymns, or dithyrambs, of the antic satyrs, the musician Arion laid the foundations of Greek drama in the seventh century B.C. In the following century, Thespis—dramatist as well as prototype of the actor—stepped out of the chorus to deliver "lines." When he brought his tragic choruses to Athens, they were soon transferred from the market to a circular and holy "dancing place" at the foot of a hill, and the hillside, scooped out like half a bowl, became the auditorium. Here Aeschylus introduced a second actor, and Sophocles a third. Soon the open side of the bowl was partly closed by a wooden hut, and in the

BSSWfffiSSSJHES®

x

fourth century the wooden structure became a stone building like that shown in the reconstruction, above, of the Theater of Lycurgus at Athens. In Hellenistic t i m e s — the last three centuries before the birth of Christ—tragedy declined, and the playing of the actors became livelier in the " N e w C o m e d y " that replaced Aristophanes. This changed the scene building completely. Instead of performing on the same level with the audience, the actors preferred to play on a raised stage to gain more effectiveness. In order to attain better sight lines the theater was given a much more intimate shape. It is significant that this new type of playhouse did not originate in Greece itself, but in Asia Minor, where no tradition hampered its evolution. One of the best preserved of these theaters, erected in Priene about 150 B.C., is shown in reconstruction below.

4

T h e Theater of Pompey, shown above in a reconstruction, was the first permanent stone theater built in Rome, approximately a hundred years later than Priene (55

B.C.).

In the Roman theater the auditorium was still semicircular in shape. T h e raised stage was low but extremely deep. T h e background was a richly colored architectural setting, several stories high, with curtained doors, and so overloaded with columns and statues larger than life that it must have been very difficult for the actors to hold their own against such visual distractions. T h e Romans did not confine their theatrical activities to their own country. For the benefit of their armed forces of occupation, they also built theaters in conquered territories from Portugal and England to Palestine. T h e most magnificent monument was erected in the first half of the second century A.D. in Gaul, in a city now called Orange. W e can still admire the ruins of the stately structure, depicted below in a reconstruction. This theater has been used for performances in our own day.

7

i f i p i i i i

Side b y side with the Greek tragedy of the classic period, Athenians saw the satiric comedies of Aristophanes and other writers, which preceded the " N e w C o m e d y " of Hellenistic times. Here, on a vase made in the fourth century B.C., is a burlesque of a mythological love scene. In addition to the richly ornamented Roman theaters, everywhere in smaller cities and in Rome itself primitive wooden platform-stages, raised on a few posts, served for popular farces. Below,

in

the

comedy scene " T h e N i b b l i n g of Dainties," we can see how a small table, a plate with fruit and pastry, and, as the only set-piece, an open door, were all the properties that the troupers needed. 18

'An y».».» !«.«»•• • « « . ' / » ».*».>»*• :" H i ! »• • > :*».' A ».» I. »»• ;• « • • • > . » •••

A b o v e , we have a scene for

« I l l ? " > * * ì - 2 1 •:•>•«>>». * '•¡MM i ; «,»«"?.» s

the first Viennese perform-

f,

ance of stein

in

Schiller's 1814;

Grillparzer's

Die

(The Ancestress)

Wallen-

below,

H

j«IPl 1 V4 Ì Ì a y ^ e É s k«*»*.* i *.«*.