Читать книгу The Greatest German Classics (Vol. 1-14) - Various - Страница 1474

If lovers and friends of art wish fully to enjoy a creation of any kind, they delight in it as a whole, are permeated by the unity with which the artist has endowed it. To a person, on the other hand, who wishes to discuss such productions theoretically, to assert something about them, and therefore, to inform and instruct, discrimination becomes a duty. We believed we were fulfilling that duty in considering Shakespeare first as a poet in general, and then comparing him with the ancient and the most modern poets. And now we wish to complete our design by considering him as a dramatist.

Shakespeare's name and worth belong to the history of poetry; but it is doing an injustice to all the dramatists of earlier and later ages to present his entire merit as belonging to the history of the theatre.

A person of universally acknowledged talent may make a doubtful use of his endowments. Not everything produced by such a superior mind is done in the most perfect way. Thus Shakespeare belongs essentially to the history of poetry; in the history of the theatre he figures only accidentally. Because we can admire him unqualifiedly in the first, we must in the latter take into consideration the conditions to which he submitted and not extol those conditions as either virtues or models.

We distinguish closely allied forms of poetic creation, which, however, in a vivid treatment often merge into each other: the epic, dialogue, drama, stage play, may be differentiated. An epic requires oral delivery to the many by a single individual; dialogue, speech in private company, where the multitude may, to be sure, be listeners; drama, conversation in actions, even though perhaps presented only to the imagination; stage play, all three together, inasmuch as it engages the sense of vision and may be grasped under certain conditions of local and personal presence.

It is in this sense that Shakespeare's productions are most dramatic; he wins the reader by his mode of treatment, of disclosing man's innermost life; the demands of the stage appear unessential to him, and thus he takes an easy course, and, in an intellectual sense, we serenely follow him. We transport ourselves with him from one locality to another; our imagination supplies all the intermediate actions that he omits; nay, we are grateful to him for arousing our spiritual faculties in so worthy a fashion. By producing everything in theatrical form, he facilitates the activity of the imagination; for we are more familiar with the "boards that mean the world" than with the world itself, and we may read and hear the most singular things and yet feel that they might actually take place before our eyes on the stage; hence the frequent failure of dramatizations of popular novels.

Strictly speaking, however, nothing is dramatic except that which strikes the eye as symbolic—an important action which betokens one still more important. That Shakespeare could attain this height too is evidenced in the scene where the son and heir takes the crown from the side of the father slumbering on his deathbed, places it on his own head, and struts off with it.[2] But these are only episodes, scattered jewels separated by much that is undramatic. Shakespeare's whole mode of procedure finds something unaccommodating in the actual stage; his great talent is that of an epitomist, and since poets are, on the whole, epitomists of Nature, we must here, too, acknowledge Shakespeare's great merit; only we deny, at the same time, and that to his credit, that the stage was a worthy sphere for his genius. It is precisely this limitation of the stage, however, which causes him to restrict himself.

But he does not, like other poets, select particular materials for particular works; he makes an idea the central point and refers the earth and the universe to it. As he condenses ancient and modern history, he can utilize the material of every chronicle, and often adheres to it literally. Not so conscientiously does he proceed with the tales, as Hamlet attests. Romeo and Juliet is more faithful to tradition; yet he almost destroys its tragic content by the two comic figures, Mercutio and the nurse, probably presented by two popular actors—the nurse undoubtedly acted by a man. If we examine the structure of the play very closely, we notice that these two figures and the elements touching them, appear only as farcical interludes, which, with our love of the logical and harmonious, must strike us as intolerable.

But Shakespeare is most marvelous when he adapts and recasts plays already in existence. We can institute a comparison in the case of King John and Lear; for the older dramas are still extant. But in these instances, likewise, he is again rather a poet than a dramatist.

But let us, in conclusion, proceed to the solution of the riddle. The imperfection of the English stage has been represented to us by well-informed men. There is not a trace of those requirements of realism to which we have gradually become used through improvements in machinery, the art of perspective, the wardrobe, and from which it would be difficult to lead us back into the infancy of those beginnings, to the days of a stage upon which little was seen, where everything was only indicated, where the public was satisfied to assume the chamber of the king lying behind a green curtain, the trumpeter who sounded the trumpet always at a certain spot, and many like things. Who at present would permit such assumptions? Under those conditions Shakespeare's plays were highly interesting tales, only they were recited by a number of persons, who, in order to make somewhat more of an impression, were characteristically masked as the occasion demanded, moved about, came and went, but left it to the spectator's imagination to fancy at will paradise and palaces on the empty stage.

How, indeed, did Schröder achieve the great credit of putting Shakespeare's plays upon the German stage but by epitomizing the epitomizer? Schröder confined himself entirely to what was effective; he discarded everything else, indeed, even much that was essential, when it seemed to him that the effect upon his nation, upon his time, would be impaired. Thus it is true, for example, that by omitting the first scene of King Lear he changed the character of the piece; but he was right, after all, for in that scene Lear appears so ridiculous that one can not wholly blame his daughters. The old man awakens our pity, but we have no sympathy for him, and it is sympathy that Schröder wished to arouse as well as abhorrence of the two daughters, who, though unnatural, are not absolutely reprehensible.

In the old play which is Shakespeare's source, this scene is productive, in the course of the play, of the most pleasing effects. Lear flees to France; daughter and son-in-law, in some romantic caprice, make a pilgrimage, in disguise, to the seashore, and encounter the old man, who does not recognize them. Here all that Shakespeare's lofty, tragic spirit has embittered is made sweet. A comparison of these dramas affords ever renewed pleasure to the lover of art.

In recent years, however, the notion has crept into Germany that Shakespeare must be presented on the German stage word for word, even if actors and audience should fairly choke in the process. The attempts, induced by an excellent, exact translation,[3] would not succeed anywhere—a fact to which the Weimar stage, after honest and repeated efforts, can give unexceptionable testimony. If we wish to see a Shakespearean play, we must return to Schröder's adaptation; but the dogma that, in representing Shakespeare, not a jot or tittle may be omitted, senseless as it is, is constantly being reechoed. If the advocates of this view should retain the upper hand, Shakespeare would in a few years be entirely driven from the German stage. This, indeed, would be no misfortune; for the solitary reader, or the reader in company with others, would experience so much the purer delight.

The attempt, however, in the other direction, on which we have dilated above, was made in the arrangement of Romeo and Juliet for the Weimar stage. The principles upon which this was based, we shall set forth at the first opportunity, and it will perhaps then be recognized why that arrangement—the representation of which is by no means difficult, but must be carried out artistically and with precision—had no success on the German stage. Similar efforts are now in progress, and perhaps some result is in store for the future, even though such undertakings frequently fail at the first trial.