J.B.

Until the nineteenth century, nearly all tragedies were written in verse. Even at the beginning of the Victorian era, some dramatists, including Robert Browning, John Westland Marston, and Thomas Noon Talfourd, were still writing verse dramas.

The "New Dramas" that became prominent in the second half of the century introduced greater levels of realism while also probing important social issues. Verse dramas fell out of favor, but with the dawn of the twentieth century many poets attempted to return to the old format, albeit with a modern twist.

Following the lead of such writers as Edna St. Vincent Millay, the American poet Archibald MacLeish, attempted numerous verse dramas, at last penning a major hit with J.B., a dramatization of the Biblical story of Job that in 1959 won both the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Tony Award for Best Play.

In addition to taking inspiration from the Bible, the play also draws on Goethe's Faust, which is itself indebted to the Book of Job. After a dedication, Faust has a prelude in a theatre, in which a playwright, a director, and a comic actor have a discussion about the piece they are about to perform. Similarly, MacLeish begins J.B. with the following exchange:

MR. ZUSS:    This is it.

NICKLES:                    This is what?

MR. ZUSS:    Where they play the play, Horatio!

NICKLES:    Bare stage?

MR. ZUSS:                    Not in the least.

The old actor Mr. Zuss (whose name sounds suspiciously like Zeus) then takes on the role of God while his companion Nickles (or perhaps "Old Nick") plays Satan. This is similar to the Prologue in Heaven that Goethe provides for Faust in which Satan and God discuss a good man much as they do Job in the Bible, and of course in J.B. as well. MacLeish has the two actors put on masks and ascend to a platform before they set the scene for Job, now known as J.B.

Rather than being a figure from the distant past, J.B. is a successful American businessman with a large family, all of whom are thankful for what they have. In fact, the play even stages a traditional Thanksgiving meal, with J.B. carving a turkey for his family. His wife worries, though, that his gratitude in only superficial. She tells him:

                A child shows gratitude the way a woman

               Shows she likes a pretty dress --

               Puts it on and takes it off again --

               That's the way a child gives thanks:

               She tries the world on. So do you.

As in the Biblical story, J.B. then loses everything. His children are all killed, his body is afflicted by disease, and the whole world becomes a hellscape not unlike the earth after World War Two. J.B. is visited by three friends, like Job, but they are dressed like tramps who formerly were a clergyman, a doctor, and perhaps a historian.

Though the action of the play closely follows the Biblical story, MacLeish links it to his own audience, which had gone through a Great Depression, a global war, and even the nuclear annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It's a play that might be ripe for a revival in 2025.

BARS 2024

I’ve been in the United Kingdom for the 2024 conference of the British Association for Romantic Studies in Glasgow.

 

The conference kicked off on Tuesday with a talk by Michelle Levy on women writers and publishing. Though we often think of authors in the 18th and 19th centuries as selling their copyrights outright, Levy noted that this often was not the case. She gave particular attention to the poet Phillis Wheatley, who appears to have received half of the print run of her poems to sell herself for her own profit.

 

Next, I chaired a panel on Faustian Romanticism. Three speakers addressed how the Faust dramas of Christopher Marlowe and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe influenced British Romantic writers. Martin Potter discussed Faustian elements in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, while also addressing the E.T.A. Hoffmann short story “The Sandman.” Liz Wan talked about how William Godwin’s novel St. Leon could be read as a Faust story, and Maddy Potter addressed Faustian elements in both John Polidori’s The Vampyre and Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer.

 

Later in the afternoon, I went to a panel on P.B. Shelley, since multiple speakers were scheduled to address Shelley’s play The Cenci, with which I have a particular interest. Anna Mercer compared the play to Mary Shelley’s novel Valperga, which also features a Beatrice who suffers a horrible fate. She mentioned that Mary Shelley even quoted from her husband’s play in her journal long after he had died. Nora Crook later went into detail about the various manuscripts that the Shelleys might have had access to that discussed the story of Beatrice Cenci. She also drew parallels between the play and G.E. Lessing’s Emilia Galotti.

 

The final panel I attended on Tuesday was on remediating the supernatural. Natalie Tal Harries mentioned that Walter Scott collected books on witchcraft and demonology and justified his use of superstition in a note on his poem The Lady of the Lake. Orianne Smith also discussed Scott, focusing on his novel Guy Mannering, a book from which Sarah Siddons often performed readings after her retirement from the stage. The character of Meg Merrilies in the book became a favorite in stage adaptations of the novel. Haya Alwehaib spoke last, comparing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with The Arabian Nights. We then headed over to Glasgow City Chambers for a drinks reception in a beautiful setting.

 

Wednesday there was a plenary roundtable with Elizabeth Edwards, Craig Lamont, and Tim Fulford. My big activity for the day, though was chairing a session on Romanticism’s legacies in fantasy literature. Will Sherwood talked about William Blake’s influence on J.R.R. Tolkien, noting that while most people focus on how Tolkien’s work as a medievalist influenced his fiction, he was greatly influenced by Romantic writers as well. Annise Rogers discussed the Romantic legacy in Ben Aaronovitch’s fantasy series The Rivers of London. Jason Whittaker then spoke on the influence William Blake had on Glasgow’s own Alasdair Gray, who like Blake was both a writer and a visual artists. That evening, the conference banquet was held at Òran Mór, a restaurant in a former church that is graced by murals designed by Gray.

 

My own paper was scheduled for Thursday. I began the day at a panel on the Gothic. Samiha Begum discussed Ann Radcliffe, a writer who appears as a character in my own play The Mysteries of the Castle of the Monk of Falconara. Radcliffe, who was influenced by the paintings of Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa, was propelled to fame with her novel The Romance of the Forest and received 500 pounds for her next book, The Mysteries of Udolpho at a time at which the average royalty payment for a novel was only 80 pounds. Interestingly enough, gossip recorded by Anna Seward held that Radcliffe had written Joanna Baillie’s anonymously published Plays on the Passions. I was also interested to hear Jakob Lipski speak on the 1803 historical novel Thaddeus of Warsaw and Laura Eastlake discuss links between vampires and volcanos.

 

In my completely neutral, unbiased, unprejudiced opinion, however, my panel was the best. It began with Bethan Elliott discussing the plays of Baillie (not Radcliffe). She quoted from an 1804 letter Baillie wrote to fellow dramatist William Sotheby. Though Sotheby (who had not had the success on stage that Baillie achieved) urged her to focus on “reading” plays rather than “acting” plays, Baillie held that the qualities that make a play good for acting also make it good for reading. Baillie was not snobbish about how her plays were performed, either, and in 1810 wrote to Walter Scott about being pleased that one of her plays had been performed at a fair. The one play Baillie wrote that she did not think was fit for performance was The Martyr, but that was because of its religious subject matter, not because she didn’t deem it an “actable” piece.

 

My paper was on J.H. Amherst’s play The Death of Christophe King of Hayti. Its depiction of armed women was naturally interesting to the third panelist, Sarah Burdett, who has written extensively on that subject. Her paper was on stage adaptations actresses had written of the poems of Walter Scott. Sarah Smith, who was a favorite of Scott’s, wrote adaptations of both The Lay of the Last Minstrel and The Lady of the Lake performed at the Crow Street Theatre in Dublin. Eliza Macauley, an actress who had a difficult relationship with the Crow Street Theatre, wrote an adaptation of Scott’s Marmion that took a character who only appears in a single Canto of the poem and made her the center of the adapted drama.

 

On Friday, conference delegates could opt for a trip to New Lanark and the Falls of Clyde, which provided some very dramatic landscapes. All in all, it was a wonderful conference!

Shaw's Critique of Eugenics

A few years ago, Reinhard G. Mueller concluded that the playwright Bernard Shaw had an "ambivalent stance on eugenics." One of the dramatist's later plays, however, is fairly unequivocal in its condemnation of the eugenics movement.

Shaw, who believed in a Life Force that drove evolution, had warned people in previous plays like Man and Superman and Back to Methuselah that evolution needed to take its own course, free from conscious manipulation by governments or powerful authority figures

It was in his 1934 play The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles, however, that Shaw explicitly depicted a eugenic experiment, dramatizing its failure. In a preface to the play written the following year, he warned readers that just because he was depicting eugenicists, that did not mean he was one, stating he wanted to guard himself "against the assumption" he was "advocating the immediate adoption of" the methods he described in his comedy.

In the play, the character of Lady Farwaters refers to the practice of eugenics as "a little domestic experiment." Later, another inhabitant of the play's titular Unexpected Isles explicitly calls their selective breeding program "a eugenic experiment." This selective breeding produces four children raised collectively on their island home: Maya, Vashti, Janga, and Kanchin. The collective parents of the four need an outsider male to breed with Maya and Vashti, and they select a simple clergyman, who is nicknamed Iddy for his simple-mindedness.

The choice of a simpleton to intermarry with individuals selected for eugenic elevation might seem odd. As Pra (another one of the eugenicists) explains, though the children all "have artistic consciences, and would die rather than do anything ugly or vulgar or common, they have not between the whole four of them a scrap of moral conscience." Tending to biology alone, it turns out, is not enough. As Pra puts it, "biological chemists have not yet discovered either the gland that produces and regulates the moral conscience or the vitamins that nourish it."

In the play's second act, the simple clergyman shows moral advancement, but his two wives seem to be sinking into lethargy, and their brothers are no better. With some help from Pra, Iddy proposes the rest of humanity must be convinced to "live in a world of original ideas" instead of being governed by conventional belief. The problem is that most people are incapable of coming up with original ideas. Iddy's solution is to convince them to go along with the ideas of others. But what if they won't? The four eugenically created children all come up with the same answer: "Kill."

It is at this moment that an Angel descends to proclaim Judgment upon the world. The eugenic experiment is tolerated, until it turns to imposing its will upon the world through murder. The Judgment of the Angel is no less swift and fearsome, but the Angel comes not to force others to agree with the ideas of the eugenically enhanced, but instead to eliminate from the world all those who are useless. This includes the products of the eugenic experiment, who all begin talking like fascists, praising "flag" and "country" as well as the "soil" and "glory" of a new empire they plan to create.

The Angel proclaims, "The lives which have no use, no meaning, no purpose, will fade out." After the islanders hear about the effect of this Judgment on the rest of the British Empire, the eugenic children resume their proto-fascist tirade, rebelling against their elders and glorifying war, even war against heaven itself. After they exit, Lady Farwaters laments the fact that they have taught the children "everything except how to work for their daily bread." This should be a clue that the products of eugenics have no use, meaning, or purpose, and are destined to fade away, which is precisely what they do.

Iddy runs on terrified by the fact that Maya simply disappeared while in his arms, and her three siblings likewise vanish. The islanders who remain compare the disappearance of the children to the vanishing of Euphorion in the second part of Goethe's Faust, but instead of disappearing in highest flight, they vanish in boredom. This is where eugenics leads, and Pra predicts, "The coming race will not be like them."

In the Unexpected Isles, as in everywhere else, things never work out the way they are planned. Eugenics tries to plan life, but the play advises that we instead allow life to come to us. As in Shaw's Man and Superman and Back to Methuselah, those who try to bend nature to their will fail. The only way forward is to trust to the Life Force and prepare for whatever it may bring.

Goethe on the Theater

I recently wrote a post about beginning a translation of Nathan the Wise by G.E. Lessing. That's not the only German play I've tried to translate, though, and I've previously blogged about a translation I did of a song from Faust by J.W. Goethe.

At the rate I'm going, it will take me years to translate the whole of Faust, but I wanted to share some of my translation because it relates to Goethe's view of the German stage in his time. In the prelude to the play, Goethe shows a conversation amongst a director, a playwright, and a comic actor.

The director is most concerned with commerce rather than art. He asks the writer and actor what play they should do, not seeming to care much, so long as it pleases a paying audience. In a typical passage towards the beginning he says:

I very much want to please the crowd,

For as they live, they give us our living.

The posters are up, we've cried the play aloud

And everyone waits to see what play we're giving.

They're seated already, with expectant faces,

Wondering, now, what exactly our play is.

I know how to keep the people happy,

Though what this crowd expects no one knows.

Something to keep gramps there from feeling too nappy.

I bet he's seen some awful shows.

What shall we do that's fresh and new

And will have some meaning to it, too?

The writer, who is described as a dramatic poet, is an idealist. He wants nothing to do with the practicalities of the stage. Instead, he imagines a more exclusive drama that has spiritual meaning. He rails at the director, saying:

O do not talk to me about the crowd,

Or in an instant the spirit shall fly away!

For the masses, my head remains unbowed,

For they'd run for strudel soon as hear a play.

No, drive me to where heaven's silence is allowed,

Where only the poet and his friends can stay,

Where love and friendship our hearts unfold

And the Hand of God may our spirits mold!

The actor, who is described as a comedian, is even more cynical than the director. Still, he seems to understand what will make a good play. Bringing the playwright back to earth from his poetic flights of fancy, the actor asks:

Who will entertain the folks right here?

That's what they want, and they should get it.

A brave knave is the thing to fit it.

That's me, always ready to appear.

Who knows how to be pleasant and please,

Needs not be bitter about people's taste;

He wishes to bring in lots of fees,

By moving the masses with great haste.

Be only brave and master a smile,

Give into fantasy, and have a good cheer,

Believe, understand, and feel for a while,

But mark you well, with a laugh and a jeer.

The fact that the actor always does everything "with a laugh and a jeer" associates him with the character of Mephistopheles in the play proper, while the playwright's idealism makes him similar to Faust. Indeed, some productions double those roles in performance.

While I haven't completed the full translation, if you'd like to see more, please contact me. It would be great to see my translation of Faust actually performed!

There was a king in Thule...

J.W. Goethe's two-part poetic drama Faust is perhaps the greatest work of German Romanticism, which is why it's such a shame there aren't better translations of it.

A while back, I began writing my own translation of Faust, and I even posted my version of the Dedication to this blog. Perhaps my translation still leaves something to be desired, but I wanted to capture the raw power of the original.

Recently, I've been revisiting Faust, and I was stuck by the ballad Goethe has Gretchen sing in the scene entitled "Abend" or Evening. The song begins "Es war ein König in Thule" and tells the story of a king who lived in the mythical land of "Ultima Thule" at the northernmost edge of the world.

Thule has two syllables, making it rather tricky to rhyme in English. (What does one use? School-day?) No English translation of the ballad matches the simplicity and emotionality of Goethe's language. The verse is in trimeter, with an ABAB rhyme structure, and packs a great deal of meaning into a few simple words.

I decided to try my hand at translating the passage. English is rarely as concise as the language in the poem, but this is how I rendered it:

                    The King of Thule

               The King in Thule above

               Was true unto the grave,

               His dying Queen and Love

               A golden cup to him gave.

               He kept it always near,

               Grasped it at every meal;

               His eyes would swell and tear,

               For how it made him feel.

               And as he came to die,

               He gave away cities and land,

               All to his son on high,

               But he kept the cup in his hand.

               He sat with advisers all,

               The knights who followed him free,

               There in his ancestors' hall

               In the castle above the sea.

               But then he rose him up,

               And drank with the last of his blood,

               Then threw the holy cup

               Down into the raging flood.

               He saw it plunge and drink

               The waters that lapped at the shore,

               His heavy eyes did sink,

               He drank not one drop more.

I'm still not completely satisfied with it, but perhaps it's getting there....

Herr Tartüff

Molière's comedy Tartuffe has produced numerous adaptations, but perhaps few as original as F.W. Murnau's silent film Herr Tartüff.

Murnau is one of those directors who has always fascinated me. After serving in the German army during the First World War, he made the terrifying horror film Nosferatu, based on Bram Stoker's Dracula. He later filmed the innovative comedy The Last Laugh as well as his re-imagining of Tartuffe, before adapting for film what is probably an even more famous play, Goethe's Faust.

Herr Tartüff really is a reimagining, as it departs significantly from Molière's play. The film uses a framing device in which an old man is being slowly poisoned by his housekeeper. The old man's grandson comes for a visit, but gets thrown out for being a good-for-nothing actor. Being an actor, however, he is able to disguise himself and visit the house with a traveling cinema. He then shows a film based on Tartuffe and exposes the housekeeper's hypocrisy.

Because the silent film can't use Molière's witty dialogue, it has to find other ways to tell the story. I was mainly watching to see the scene in Act IV of the play where Orgon hides under a table while the hypocrite Tartuffe tries to seduce his wife. In the film, Orgon hides behind a curtain, and just when the hypocrite is about to make his move, he sees the husband's face in a reflection. Immediately, he resumes his pious act, and Orgon becomes more convinced of his friend's saintliness than ever before.

That just stretches the action out longer, though, as the film has another scene that takes place that night, where Orgon's wife Elmire goes even further with Herr Tartüff, this time in a room that contains a bed! The faithful maid Dorine forces Orgon to watch through a keyhole, though, and the impostor is unmasked.

Lil Dagover, who played the heroine in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, takes on the part of Elmire, and is stunning in the role. If you're interested, you can watch the whole film here.

Don Juan in Zoom

It's hard to feel thankful in this current pandemic, with hospitals filling up, theatres shuttered, and half the country ignoring the measures that might help us open up again as a society. However, I do want to give thanks to the Washington Stage Guild, for their production of Bernard Shaw's Don Juan in Hell that went live last night.

You can still watch the production on the theatre's YouTube channel, and it is very much worth watching. Nathan Whitmer plays the show's legendary lover, trapped in an infernal afterlife of stagnation. The short play was originally supposed to be a dream sequence in the mammoth Man and Superman, but when that show first opened at the Royal Court Theatre in 1905, management deemed it too long, and the entire third act was omitted.

Two years later, the Royal Court staged Shaw's dream sequence as its own one-act play, pairing it with another Shaw short, The Man of Destiny. Shaw wrote a program note for this production, explaining to the audience that hell is a state in which people are "given wholly to the pursuit of immediate individual pleasure, and cannot even conceive the passion of the divine will." Don Juan, unable to be satisfied by a life of self-indulgence, finds himself "suffering amid the pleasures of hell an agony of tedium."

At the beginning of the scene, Shaw calls for Mozart's music from the Don Juan opera Don Giovanni to be played. Next, Doña Ana enters. This is the woman Juan once dishonored, leading to a duel with her father. Emelie Faith Thompson plays the role brilliantly in the Washington Stage Guild production. She is shocked that she could be damned, and when she asks whom she can speak to in order to rectify the situation, Juan suggests she try the Devil. "In Hell," he tells her, "the Devil is the leader of the best society."

After much banter between the two, Doña Ana's father shows up, appearing as the statue of himself that dragged Don Juan off to hell at the end of Mozart's opera. The magnificent Bill Largess plays this role in the Washington Stage Guild production, remarking wittily of his form: "I am so much more admired in marble than I ever was in my own person that I have retained the shape the sculptor gave me."

All this is preliminary to the entrance of the great enemy of mankind himself, the Devil. Morgan Duncan is delightful in the role. The script calls for him to enter to some bizarre sounds in which "Mozart's music gets grotesquely adulterated with Gounod's" (presumably from Faust). The present production opts instead for "Night on Bald Mountain" by Mussorgsky, which was perhaps easier to find. 

The four-act Man and Superman generally does just fine without its third act, but has been performed successfully with it as well. Meanwhile, Don Juan in Hell has continued to have a life as a one-act of its own, and the current virtual production gives us a good idea why. Plus, the show is ideal for our current environment, where Zoom is fast becoming our modern-day equivalent of hell.

Faust 2.0

Last night I saw the Mabou Mines production of Faust 2.0 at 122 Community Center, formerly known as P.S. 122.

P.S. 122 first became a performance space in 1980, taking over the former home of Public School 122. It was always a dirty, dingy building where you could see magnificent theatre. I remember catching a great production of Bertolt Brecht's Saint Joan of the Stockyards there with a huge cast of young, fully committed actors.

A few years ago, the whole building was shut down to be extensively remodeled. Last night, I walked into the box office, which is now around the side of the building and fully handicapped accessible, rather than up the steep steps I remembered from before the renovation. The place was so... clean! Not a speck of dust or dirt to be seen.

The second part of Goethe's Faust is a notoriously difficult text, but this adaptation by Matthew Maguire ambitiously tries to pack as much of it into a brief time span as it can. The first scenes in the show are actually from the first part of Faust, where Mephistopheles makes a bet with God and then forms his pact with the melancholy Doctor Faust.

In the traditional version of the story, as told by Christopher Marlowe, Faust is given unlimited knowledge and power for 24 years, after which time he must surrender his body and soul to the devil. Goethe changes the bargain to Faust agreeing to give himself up if he ever lies down in inaction. As he says in the David Luke translation:

               If ever to the moment I shall say:
               Beautiful moment, do not pass away!
               Then you may forge your chains to bind me,
               Then I will put my life behind me,
               Then let them hear my death-knell toll,
               Then from your labours you'll be free,
               The clock may stop, the clock-hands fall,
               And time come to an end for me!

In German, the phrase that is supposed to bring about Faust's damnation is "Verweile doch, du bist so schön!" Literally it means "Stay there! You are so beautiful!" Maguire renders this as something like, "Stop, linger there a while." It might not be the most exact translation, but it captures the spirit, and is better than Walter Kaufmann's overly poetic "Abide, you are so fair" which has become something of a standard version.

After setting up the situation, Faust 2.0 launches into the second part of Goethe's massive dramatic poem. The first act of Faust Part Two deals with Faust and the Emperor, who is of course the Holy Roman Emperor of a Christian Europe, but in the Mabou Mines production, director Sharon Ann Fogarty portrays him as a classical ruler of the Roman Empire. He is played campily by Greg Mehrten, who appears on video screen. Most of the cast, in fact, appears only on screen, lending the production an air of artificiality that corresponds with the self-consciousness of the second part of Goethe's epic drama.

Faust 2.0 basically skips over the second act of Goethe, eliminating the Homunculus and the classically inspired Walpurgisnacht. Instead, we go to the magnificent third act where Faust brings back Helen of Troy, played here by Angelina Impellizzeri. She and Faust have a son, Euphorion, played by 7th grader Oliver Medlin. Goethe probably meant Euphorion to be based upon Lord Byron, whose youthful spirit flamed out in an early death, and the boy's destruction weighs heavily on his parents. Helen sinks down into Hades, and Faust (played rather feelingly in this moment by Benton Greene) becomes distraught.

After the death of his son, Faust turns to war, aiding the emperor in a battle against his rival, and then in the final act to attempting to improve the world by driving back the sea. At last achieving something he deems worth doing, Faust utters the forbidden phrase and dies. Paul Kandel, who plays Mephistopheles, is wonderful as he gloats over the fallen Faust, but he doesn't have the last laugh, as readers of Goethe know.

It isn't every day you get to see a production of Faust Part Two, so if you're interested in this modern reimagining, be sure to get your tickets.

Back from England

I'm back now from England, where I was visiting my sister for the holidays, but also got a chance to see some great theatre.

On Boxing Day, I went ice skating at Canary Wharf, and in the evening we had tickets to see Hadestown at the National Theatre. Unfortunately, the intimate show got a little lost in the larger space of the Olivier Theatre, though it was still nice to hear the music again live.

As I previously wrote, I visited the Foundling Museum the following day, where there was a small exhibit on the actress Kitty Clive. They also had on display a famous cartoon lampooning John Philip Kemble and the Old Price Riots. Portraying Kemble as "King John" it makes reference to an old nursery rhyme, stating:

        This is the Manager full of scorn,
        who rais'd the price to the people forlorn.
        & employed the Thief-taker shaven & shorn,
        that took John Bull with his buglehorn,
        who hissed the Cat engaged to squall,
        to the poor in the pigeon holes, over the Boxes.
        let to the Great that visit the House that Jack Built.

The House named in the rhyme is Covent Garden, which Kemble rebuilt at great expense, then raising the prices of tickets to recoup his investment. When protests broke out inside the theatre, Kemble hired thugs to enforce decorum, but that apparently didn't stop crowds from hissing the opera singer Angelica Catalani, the Cat in the poem.

Friday, we took the train out to Stratford-upon-Avon to see Timon of Athens. The play was done quite well, but I was mostly excited to see the hometown of William Shakespeare. I hadn't been to Stratford since the 1990s, and while I got to see Shakespeare's grave at Holy Trinity Church then, I missed seeing the Bard's birthplace. This time, the birthplace was at the top of my list of things to see. It was decked out for the holidays and quite a sight to see, as was Holy Trinity at night. I wandered about the graveyard, much to my sister's consternation, but it was incredibly picturesque.

We spent the night in Stratford, and in the morning visited the site of New Place. The house, which was once the grandest in Town, was bought by Shakespeare after he became successful, but its owner in the 18th century burned it down out of spite. So what is there to see now? Beautiful, beautiful gardens. Though New Place no longer looks like it did in Shakespeare's day, it is well worth seeing. It's also right near the Chaucer's Head Book Shop, where I picked up a couple of choice finds, and while you're in the neighborhood, make sure to also check out the Guild Chapel.

A little further away is Hall's Croft, where Shakespeare's daughter Susanna lived with her husband, the doctor John Hall. The building is remarkably well preserved, and also has a nice garden. It also had (appropriately enough) an exhibit on period medicine. Though Shakespeare never lived in the house, he was likely a frequent visitor. Walking around, you still get a sense of the type of atmosphere that surrounded Shakespeare in Stratford.

We had to get back to London for Sunday, though, when we had tickets to see Christopher Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Seeing the show by candlelight was a real treat. The following day (New Year's Eve) I visited the Tate Britain, where they had on display a portrait of Mary Ann Yates in Arthur Murphy's play The Orphan of China, itself a reworking of a zaju play by Ji Junxiang.

After welcoming in the New Year, we visited Kensington Palace, which had on display costumes from the recent film The Favourite. After touring the palace, we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, where I of course had to see the theatre collection. They had on view the Royal Patent which Charles II gave to Thomas Killigrew in 1662. That patent gave Killigrew a near monopoly on theatre produced in London, though he still had to compete with William Davenant, who had a similar patent.

I spent most of the following day in Greenwich, where (among other things) I toured the Queen's House, designed by Inigo Jones, who also designed masques during the Jacobean era. That night, we had tickets to see Danai Gurira's play The Convert at the Young Vic. I enjoyed the play thoroughly. However, the Young Vic is located dangerously across the street from The Bookshop Theatre, where I picked up a few more books to load down my luggage for the return trip.

The next day there was a trip to Pollock's Toy Shop, where I picked up the colored prints to make a toy theatre of Oliver Twist. I already have a modern toy theatre of another Charles Dickens novel, Great Expectations, but that is a modern design. These prints are facsimiles of actually 19th-century designs. When I will actually have time to build a toy theatre with them remains to be seen, but I'm glad I have them.

My final day in London was spent on another Dickensian errand: visiting the newly rediscovered portrait of the author at Philip Mould & Co. While on my way there, what did I pass but the site of the house where the actress Nell Gwyn once lived!

So it was a trip with many theatrical connections. It's good to be back, however, and now I need to settle in and do some writing. Happy New Year!

Faustus by Candlelight

I just got back from seeing Christopher Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus performed by candlelight at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in London.

The production has certain parallels with the version of Timon of Athens I saw on Friday in Stratford-upon-Avon, in that both took male-heavy plays and recast not just the leads but a number of the principal roles as women.

Jocelyn Jee Esien plays a quite feminine Faustus in this production. Is that Miss Faustus or Mrs. Faustus? Ahem, that's Doctor Faustus to you! Playing the role in a full dress and jewelry--and surrounded by books--Esien is 100% woman and 100% intellectual.

She summons up Pauline McLynn as Mephistopheles. Dressed in red and with flaming red hair, she wears a combination of an Elizabethan dress and tight-fitting trousers. This Mephistopheles has no problem pushing back at Faustus, and Esien's Faustus openly mocks her in return.

Wagner is played by Mandi Symonds, who also doubles as the Old Man (changed to an Old Woman) at the end of the play. Hers is a comparatively serious Wagner compared to some of the ones I have seen in the past. However, we don't get to see Wagner conjure demons in imitation of Faustus, or gain a comic follower of his (err... her) own.

Doctor Faustus has both an A and B text, but this version seems to hew more to the B text published in 1616. Personally, I tend to favor the A text, but this production does a good job of taking some of the goofier scenes from the B text and performing them with class. (I just hope no one had to sell their soul to do it!)

Elliston as Manager

I recently finished Christopher Murray's biography of the actor and theatre manager Robert William Elliston. It's amazing the number of things Elliston managed to accomplish, including in 1815, lighting the exterior, saloon, and part of the auditorium of the Olympic Theatre with gas lighting.

Frederick Albert Windsor had patented gas lighting in 1804, when it was first used to light the facade of the Lyceum Theatre. It was not until 1817 that gas lights were first used to illuminate a London stage. (The previous year, the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia had used gas lighting.)

So Elliston's illumination of the Olympic was a dubious first. He had greatly expanded a technology already in use, but not brought it to its full capability. The same could be said about many aspects of Elliston's management. He dragged the London theatre forward (sometimes kicking and screaming), but only so far.

Throughout his life, Elliston managed a number of theatres, both in and outside of London. Murray devotes one chapter to Elliston's management of the Birmingham Theatre Royal, where he attracted such luminary performers as Eliza O'Neill. According to Murray, hundreds of people had to be turned away from the theatre when O'Neill appeared, and many "settled for a glimpse of the adored actress coming or going at the Royal Hotel."

Later, when Elliston was managing the Theatre Royal at Drury Lane in London, he fared considerably poorer with dramatists than he did with actors. He tried to get Walter Scott and Thomas Moore to write plays for him, but both declined. Of course, he received unsolicited scripts from John Keats, Percy Shelley, and Leigh Hunt, and rejected them all. Alas, the tyranny of the slush pile is nothing new! Without a friend on the inside, even the best writers of the nineteenth century couldn't get their work taken seriously.

Elliston was managing Drury Lane when King George III died at the beginning of 1820. The sad event closed the theatres out of respect for the nation's mourning, but it also opened up a new possibility. Since the king had gone mad, no one had dared perform King Lear (for obvious reasons). Elliston rushed a production of Lear to the stage after the theatres were allowed to reopen in February. Though he for the most part followed the adaptation by Nahum Tate with its absurd happy ending, he did restore some of Shakespeare's text to the heath scene and to Lear's recognition of Cordelia.

The following year, Elliston gained notoriety for staging Lord Byron's play Marino Faliero without the author's permission. Again, Elliston rushed the piece into production, securing a copy of the play while it was still going to press and not even completing casting until a week before the show opened. Elliston had secured permission to perform the play from the Lord Chamberlain's office, so he legally had a right to do it whether Byron wanted him to or not. Alas, the controversy was not enough to sell tickets, and the play was ultimately deemed a financial and critical failure.

Later at Drury Lane, Elliston staged the first English-language version of Goethe's Faust. After a collapse in health (and finances) Elliston lost his lease on Drury Lane, but he did not give up on theatrical management. In 1827, he took over a theatre in Surrey, where he staged melodramas by popular writers like Edward Fitzball, William Thomas Moncrieff, and Douglas Jerrold. Elliston also staged the only play by Walter Scott to be performed in the writer's lifetime, The House of Aspen. As was the case with Marino Faliero, the production was without the author's permission.

Elliston is perhaps best known as an actor, a fine Romeo and the original Alvar in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Remorse. However, Murray makes a good case that Elliston's greatest achievements were not as a performer, but as a manager.

German Romanticism

The year 1789--when Parisian mobs stormed the Bastille, breaking into the prison than symbolized the old feudal order and setting its prisoners (and by extension, themselves) free--is an important marker in the history of Western civilization, as well as for Western drama. However, even before the outbreak of the French Revolution, the stirrings of a new outlook toward art began in Germany in the form of the so-called "Storm and Stress" movement. Friedrich Klinger gave the movement its name with his play Sturm und Drang (German for "Storm and Stress"), which premiered in Leipzig in 1777. The previous year, Klinger had submitted his play The Twins to a contest at a theatre in Hamburg, winning first prize and gaining an appointment at the Seyler Theatre Company. The Twins depicts a man who kills his weaker twin, claiming his brother will not allow him to fully develop his own nature. Whether or not Klinger actually embraced such a viewpoint, this type of thinking seemed something entirely new and different to audiences of the day.

In a Storm and Stress play like The Robbers by Friedrich Schiller, the action produces a series of spectacular events that seem beyond the realm of moral judgment. Schiller's villain, Franz Moor, tricks his father into disinheriting Franz's elder brother, Karl. Egged on by his libertine friend Spiegelberg (whose name indicates he is a mirror--"Spiegel"), Karl leads a band of robbers who wage war on civilization. In the forests of Bohemia, he urges his followers on to victory over a surrounding army, convincing them to fight rather than turn him over to the authorities in exchange for pardon. Karl then returns home to claim his promised bride, only to discover that Franz has imprisoned their father, who was long thought to be dead. During the final act of the play, recognitions and reversals happen with dizzying speed. Though the final moments of The Robbers suggest a return to the rule of law, the play's original audiences were more struck by its compelling action than any putative moral.

Like Schiller, the poet Johan Wolfgang von Goethe began as a Storm and Stress writer, penning such plays as Götz von Berlichingen and Egmont. Heavily influenced by Shakespeare, Egmont marks a turn toward a new style, one that celebrated powerful emotions and political freedom. This new movement, born around the same time as the French Revolution, came to be known as Romanticism. Instead of looking back just to the classics for inspiration, Romanticism valued the vernacular literature of the middle ages and the Renaissance, especially the tales of chivalry and adventure that had come to be known as Romances. No longer valuing just popular sentiment or cold reason, Romanticism sought to remake the world through powerful, intense feeling.

Feeling is never lacking in Schiller's mature Romantic plays Don Carlos, the Wallenstein Trilogy (Wallenstein's Camp, The Piccolomini, and Wallenstein's Death), and Mary Stuart. The plays' skepticism about any type of absolute values can be seen in their ambivalent relationship with religion. In Don Carlos, Catholicism is the symbol of repression while Protestantism represents liberation, while in Mary Stuart the roles of those two religions are reversed. Wallenstein, though it takes place during the religious wars of the seventeenth century, remains aloof from religious questions. Schiller seems less concerned with what people actually believe than with how those beliefs shape them as human beings.

Schiller's later plays, The Maid of Orleans, The Bride of Messina, and William Tell, all reflect the influence of his friend Goethe. Goethe's play Torquato Tasso romanticizes the life of the sixteenth-century Italian poet who--following a difficult relationship with his patron the Duke of Ferrara--was imprisoned in a madhouse. Though Goethe began the piece during his Storm and Stress period, he was ultimately able to reach a higher level of poetic sophistication in the play, marking his entrance into the new style of Romanticism. While working on Torquato Tasso, he was also engaged in writing the drama that would become his masterpiece. In 1808, he finally published the first part of his massive poetic drama Faust.

Faust, Part I is the archetypal Romantic drama. Instead of being divided into acts, the play simply has a succession of scenes, with each scene written in a different verse style. Goethe carefully matches the meter and rhyme scheme of each scene to the emotions he is trying to convey. The poetry reaches a crescendo during Walpurgis Night, when Faust joins a group of witches and fantastic beasts celebrating a Bacchanalia in the Harz Mountains. In a dream, Faust witnesses the wedding of the Fairy King and Queen, Oberon and Titania. The following scene, written entirely in prose, shows the gloomy letdown from the event, as Faust realizes he has forgotten his precious Gretchen, the woman he loves. With the aid of his demonic companion Mephistopheles, Faust rushes to free Gretchen from prison, only to find she prefers to die there and be redeemed in the next life rather than to live with Faust and lose her soul.

Other German Romantic playwrights include Johann Ludwig Tieck and Heinrich von Kleist. Like many Romantic writers, Tieck was enthralled by fairy tales. His play Puss in Boots stages the popular children's story in a meta-theatrical manner, with characters constantly commenting upon the action. Kleist was far unhappier, both in his life and his art. His tragedy Penthesilea gruesomely depicts the fatal love of an Amazon queen. Though Goethe thought Penthesilea could never be staged, he himself put on a production of Kleist's comedy The Broken Jug. Kleist's most famous play, The Prince of Homburg, was not staged until after the author's suicide in 1811

After completing Faust, Part I, Goethe underwent a conversion of sorts and renounced Romanticism. Faust, Part II, not published until the time of Goethe's death in 1832, embraces the classical world. Faust convinces the bankrupt Holy Roman Emperor he can raise all the funds he needs by claiming an ancient treasure that has been buried since classical times, hinting at a revival of Germany through an embrace of the values of ancient Greece. The play uses a classic five-act structure, and includes a re-staging of the Walpurgis Night scene, but this time with motifs from Greek and Roman mythology. The third act of the play is a virtual hymn to classicism in which Faust wins Helen of Troy.

Romanticism continued in Germany, in spite of Goethe's later turn toward classicism. Writing after Goethe's death in the 1830s, Georg Büchner gave a Romantic exploration of the French Revolution in Danton's Death. What matters in Büchner's vision of Romanticism is not so much what one's values are, but that individuals dedicate themselves to those values with their entire beings. Büchner's last drama, Woyzeck, left unfinished at the time of his death, looks forward to modernism and later became a staple of twentieth-century theatre.

Doctor Faustus' A and B Texts

According to the diary of Elizabethan theatre impresario Philip Henslowe, the Lord Admiral's Men borrowed four pounds on November 22, 1602 "to paye unto Wm Byrde & Samwell Rowle for their adicyones in doctor foists."

The first entries in Henslowe's diary to mention Christopher Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus come from 1594, the year after the playwright's death (supposedly in a tavern brawl over the reckoning of the bill). Another reference to the play comes from the Stationer's Register in 1592, which could indicate an intention to publish the play, but the earliest printed text of Doctor Faustus did not appear until 1604.

Scholars still dispute the nature of this text and its relationship to a later printing of Doctor Faustus in 1616. One popular theory holds that the 1604 printing--or "A Text" of the play--represents Marlowe's play before playwrights William Bird and Samuel Rowley provided the Admiral's Men with additions. The 1616 version--or "B Text" of the play--could be the revised version of Bird and Rowley.

Both the A and B texts begin with essentially the same prologue, though with a few minor changes in the B text. Faustus is then revealed in his study, becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the limits of human knowledge. He is tempted to try his hand at necromancy, conjuring spirits, and Good and Evil Angels offer him conflicting advice. The magicians Valdes and Cornelius enter and offer to teach him how to conjure.

The next few scenes also correspond in the two texts, with some minor discrepancies. Some scholars enter and question Faustus' servant Wagner, and then the doctor raises the mighty demon Mephistophilis. A comical scene provides an interlude where Wagner uses magic to cow a country bumpkin into serving him, and in the scene that follows Faustus seals his pact with the devil with a contract signed in blood.

This is where the two texts depart significantly. In the B Text, there is another comic scene featuring Robin (the clown that Wagner takes on as a servant in the previous scene) deciding to conjure with another young man named Dick. A corresponding scene appears in the A Text, but with Robin's associate named Rafe, and in the A Text the scene appears right before the goblet scene that follows Faustus' tricks on the Pope. Some editors who prefer the A Text transpose it earlier, generally to where it appears in B, but if the A Text is closer to Marlowe's intentions, then it would seem the playwright wanted to put off the comic business until later, focusing instead on Faustus.

When Faustus begins to doubt his decision, Lucifer himself appears and distracts him with a pageant of the Seven Deadly Sins. The B Text also adds another demon to this scene, Lucifer's companion Beelzabub. That way, the audience gets to see both the devil "And his dam, too." In both versions, a chorus follows (explicitly Wagner in the A Text). The B Text adds a considerable digression to the middle of this speech:

               He views the clouds, the planets, and the stars,
               The tropics, zones, and quarters of the sky,
               From the bright circle of the horned moon
               Even to the height of Primum Mobile;
               And, whirling round with this circumference
               Within the concave compass of the pole,
               From east to west his dragons swiftly glide
               And in eight days did bring him home again.
               Not long he stayed within his quiet house
               To rest his bones after his weary toil,
               But new exploits do hale him out again,
               And, mounted then upon a dragon's back,
               That with his wings did part the subtle air,

at which point the speech returns to the A Text, and Faustus proceeds to Rome.

The A Text provides a rather brief incident in Rome, in which Mephistophilis shows Faustus "a troupe of bald-pate friars / Whose summum bonum is in belly cheer." The B Text, however, adds that the feast is "In honour of the pope's triumphant victory" over the rival pope, Bruno. A lengthy scene follows, in which Bruno is humiliated, but ultimately freed. Both versions follow up Faustus' tricks in Rome with a corresponding comic scene. Though the two scenes have notable variations, they both show Robin and his companion playing a trick on a vintner, but then paying for their foolishness when Mephistophilis transforms them into animals.

A scene with Emperor Charles V follows, though the A Text adds this prologue:

               When Faustus had with pleasure ta'en the view
               Of rarest things and royal courts of kings,
               He stayed his course and so returned home,
               Where such as bear his absence but with grief--
               I mean his friends and near companions--
               Did gratulate his safety with kind words.
               And in their conference of what befell,
               Touching his journey through the world and air,
               They put forth questions of astrology,
               Which Faustus answered with such learned skill
               As they admired and wondered at his wit.
               Now is his fame spread forth in every land.
               Amongst the rest the emperor is one,
               Carolus the Fifth, at whose palace now
               Faustus is feasted 'mongst his noblemen.
               What there he did in trial of his art
               I leave untold, your eyes shall see performed.

The B-Text greatly enlarges the incident in the court of the emperor, stretching it out over several scenes and adding much business for the knight Faustus gives horns for his insult. The A-Text makes it clear, however, that Faustus' prank on the knight was done "not so much for the injury he offered me here in your presence as to delight you with some mirth." This runs directly counter to the spirit of revenge given to the sequence in the B Text. The prolonged comedy in the B-Text also makes the scene that follows, in which Faustus tricks a horse-courser, seem like a tad too much. Yet the B Text does not stop there. It add yet another comic scene with the horse-courser meeting Robin and Dick.

Both versions then have a scene where Faustus meets with the Duke and Duchess of Vanholt. The duchess craves fresh grapes, but it is the middle of winter, so acquiring fruit from the other side of the world is clearly out of the question. Faustus has Mephistophilis acquire grapes from the southern hemisphere, though, and the duke and duchess promise him a reward. After all that we've seen, the conjuring of some grapes seems a small matter, and the duchess's request a rather insignificant desire.

The B-Text clarifies that the duchess is pregnant, though, providing a motivation for her strong craving. It also has the comic characters enter into the scene, obscuring the reward Faustus is to receive. But how much reward does Faustus really need? And can he really find no greater use for his powers than getting grapes from Chile, which today is accomplished by common supermarkets? Perhaps the pettiness of the whole affair is precisely what Marlowe wanted to convey.

The action for the remainder of the play is similar in both versions, though the lines frequently differ substantially. Wagner expresses his concern that his master seems to be planning on dying soon, and a group of scholars convince Faustus to bring forth the image of Helen of Troy. An old man appears, warning Faustus to see the error of his ways, but he leaves still fearing for the magician's soul. Mephistophilis demands that Faustus renew the pact, which he does in return for having Helen as his paramour.

In the A Text, however, this is followed by the return of the old man, who finds himself tormented by demons for trying to save Faustus' soul. In spite of his bodily torments, which contrast strongly with the physical pleasure being enjoyed by Faustus, the old man remains resolute in his faith, declaring:

               Satan begins to sift me with his pride.
               As in this furnace God shall try my faith,
               My faith, vile hell, shall triumph over thee.
               Ambitious fiends, see how the heavens smiles
               At your repulse and laughs your state to scorn!
               Hence, hell! For hence I fly unto my God.

Faustus gets together with his fellow scholars once more on the night before he dies. This scene is brief and simple in the A-Text, but the B-Text crowds it with the return of Lucifer, Beelzebub, Mephistophilis, and the Good and Bad Angels. Faustus' final monologue is similar in both texts, but before the epilogue, the B-Text introduces one final scene where the scholars discover "Faustus' limbs, / All torn asunder by the hand of death."

My personal preference is for the A-Text, though both versions have much to recommend them. Directors would be wise, however, to examine the differences before taking the word of an editor who has conflated the texts with an eye toward comprehensiveness rather than with an eye toward production.

Marlowe's Mighty Line

Yesterday, I promised a blog post about Christopher Marlowe, the first truly great playwright of the Elizabethan stage.

Marlowe was born in the town of Canterbury, and in spite of his humble origins, he was allowed to attend Canterbury's King's School as a boy, learning Latin and Greek. Marlowe did so well in his studies, he received a scholarship to attend Corpus Christi College of Cambridge University. While there, he might have written Dido, Queen of Carthage, a rather academic play mingling mortals and humans on stage, containing plenty of literary allusions but not much plot.

As a student, Marlowe seems to have gotten caught up in the cloak-and-dagger world of Queen Elizabeth's secret police, headed by Sir Francis Walsingham. He stopped attending classes, and Cambridge University was going to refuse him a degree until the Queen's own Privy Council intervened, assuring university officials Marlowe had done "good service" to the government during his absence.

Marlowe moved to London, where in 1587 he took the theatre world by storm with his play Tamburlaine the Great. The play features a seemingly unstoppable conqueror who--like Marlowe--came from humble origins and rose to great heights. Similar to Gorboduc and The Spanish Tragedy, Marlowe's play was written in blank verse, but the poetry had a raw power the London stage had never before seen. The actor Edward Alleyne performed the title role and rocketed to fame along with the playwright. Marlowe then provided his star actor with a sequel (Tamburlaine the Great, Part II), which proved just as popular as the original. Later poets would praise the dramatist's hard-driving iambic pentameter as "Marlowe's mighty line."

Alleyne also starred in Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, which likewise has powerful and frequently shocking poetry. Marlowe continued to develop as a playwright with Edward II, a history play with a tightly constructed plot and somewhat more subtle characters than those of his earlier works. He turned to recent events with The Massacre at Paris about the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572.

Marlowe's most enduring play, Doctor Faustus, dramatizes a German legend about a scholar who makes a deal with the devil. The play's blending of comedy and tragedy in a grand struggle for the soul of mankind hearkens back to medieval morality plays, but in the new Protestant environment, Doctor Faustus drew attacks from religious zealots opposed to the theatre. One, William Prynne, claimed real devils had appeared on stage during a performance of the play.

Though details remain murky, sometime in 1593 Marlowe fell out of favor with Walsingham and his secret police. Marlowe had once lodged with fellow dramatist Thomas Kyd, and under torture Kyd claimed that some blasphemous writings found in his possession actually belonged to Marlowe. A warrant was issued for his arrest, but when Marlowe tried to turn himself in to authorities, he was told to come back when the Privy Council was meeting. Days later, he died in a tavern brawl, allegedly in a dispute over the bill. A coroner's report found he was stabbed above his right eye, killing him instantly.

What really happened, we may never know. What is clear is that Marlowe left a legacy of great plays that continue to be performed today.

Pepper's Ghost

The most recent issue of Theatre Notebook contains an interesting article by Russell Burdekin about the stage illusion known as Pepper's ghost.

Descriptions of this trick go back to the 16th century, when scientist, playwright, and general Renaissance man Giambattista della Porta wrote about it in his book Natural Magic. The effect was not popularized, however, until the 19th century, when Henry Dircks used it for a "Phantasmagoria" performance showing ghosts on stage.

Dircks was never able to sell his illusion technology to mainstream theatres, but his colleague John Pepper improved upon the technique and successfully marketed it to producers. He exhibited the illusion in a performance of Charles Dickens's novella The Haunted Man, in which he read the text and a series of ghosts appeared on the stage. Audiences were hooked, and the effect became known as "Pepper's Ghost" (much to the chagrin of Dircks).

Here's how the effect works:

Beneath the stage and out of view of the audience, an actor stands before a very bright spotlight. Initially, this was an oxy-hydrogen limelight lamp, though later on gas or electric lights could be used. The chamber with the actor would be lined with black cloth, so only the actor could be seen. Sometimes, a tilted mirror could reflect the image of the actor upward, toward the stage.

Projecting at an angle out from the front of the stage would be a large pane of glass. This would be kept as clean as possible so as not to be noticed by the audience. A patent by Dircks and Pepper suggests that the glass could remain below the stage, and only be brought out when it was time for the illusion. Lights on the stage would also have to be angled to illuminate the stage only, and not reflect off of the glass. Fortunately, lights in the theatre were generally dimmed for the ghost scene, anyway.

When the spotlight came on, illuminating the actor beneath the stage, the image of the performer would be reflected by the pane of glass angled out over the audience. To the spectators, a ghostly figure appeared to materialize on the stage itself. The actors on stage, of course, could not see this ghost, but they would react on cue as if they did. The effect was thrilling.

Pepper first licensed the technique in 1863 for a production of Faith, Hope, and Charity at The Britannia Theatre in London. The show ran for a year. The illusion became particularly popular in productions of Faust and A Christmas Carol, as well as John Barnett's opera The Mountain Sylph, where the title character would sometimes wear phosphorescent paint to increase the effect.

Though Pepper's Ghost might not be used much anymore, the illusion excited Victorian audiences for many years. The effect is a reminder that the 19th-century stage could be technologically quite sophisticated at times.

Making the Scene

In their book Making the Scene: A History of Stage Design and Technology in Europe and the United States, Oscar Brockett, Margaret Mitchell, and Linda Hardberger give a comprehensive view of the history of scenic design. The beautifully illustrated volume includes photographs of classical theatres, like this Hellenistic stage in Priene, Turkey:

It also has Renaissance scenic designs, like this illustration by Serlio for a comedy:

However, I want to talk about the books chapter on Neoclassicism and Romanticism. The authors use Mozart's opera The Magic Flute to demonstrate this rivalry of opposites. A key figure here is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who opened the Weimar Court Theatre in 1791.

Goethe first became known for writing pre-Romantic Sturm und Drang plays like Goetz von Berlichingen. He also wrote the greatest play of the Romantic Era, Faust, the first part of which was published in 1808. However, the style he developed at the Weimar Court Theatre came to be known as Weimar classicism. Here's a design he did for The Magic Flute in 1794:

The classical motifs are unmistakable, and the image's restraint is characteristic of Goethe's style. Not all neoclassical designers held with Goethe's simplicity, however. Consider this 1815 design by Karl Friedrich Schinkel done for the same Queen of the Night scene in The Magic Flute:

Everything is still perfectly ordered, balanced, and harmonized, but the lesson here seems to be that more is more.

When it came to excess, Romanticism could always do the neoclassical style one better. That pesky order went out the window, though, as emotion and drama reigned. In 1818, the Romantic scenic designer Simon Quaglio came up with this idea for a production of The Magic Flute at the Royal Theatre in Munich:

Movement replaces stasis, and feeling undoes balance. They're both lovely, but ultimately I prefer Quaglio's design.