The Theatre of Max Reinhardt
Book Description
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 Excerpt: ..."the time." The vehemence of life which Moliere put into his valets was in Moliere himself and of his time, or it would not have appeared as vehemence of life. You cannot copy the vehemence o...
MoreThis historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 Excerpt: ..."the time." The vehemence of life which Moliere put into his valets was in Moliere himself and of his time, or it would not have appeared as vehemence of life. You cannot copy the vehemence of life of one age and make it appear the vehemence of life of your age. It is sheer stupidity to say you can. An idea of the formation and working of the Moliere stage may be gathered from the following passage taken from Karl Mantzius' notable work:--"Whether this development of stage decoration has been a reform of dramatic art, and whether we may be certain that the modern theatre, with all its perfection in the way of picturesque effects, ingenious mechanisms, and magnificent light, idealises the ideal stage, is a great question. Who knows whether we shall not some day prefer to return to a stage which affords the best conditions for seeing and hearing the art of the author naked and undisguised rather than to go on developing a decorative scenery which seems more calculated to throw a veil over the defects of both...." It was during the Italian age of complicated scenery that the stage took the shape which it has nowadays. "It was no longer a projecting platform surrounded by the audience on three sides. It was a separate space, an enormous square box, the first wall of which had been removed, and in the inside of which the plays were presented to the spectators like pictures against a background.... France soon adopted the Italian system, which supplanted both the French platform stage and le decor simultane; even plays which seemed written and calculated for the latter form of stage were now performed with the simple, regular, and invariably recurring scenes: 'a street,' 'a public place,' or 'a classical colonnade' and 'a forest'; and in ...
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