ode in long-lined stanzas, drawing back the attention of the audience to the substance of what has just passed, and illustrating it by recapitulatory moral reflections and poetical or historical allusions." * Shakespeare's choruses, on the contrary, confine themselves to explaining the action, and to supplementing by their commentaries the inadequacy of the representation, or to narrating what the poet necessarily made take place behind the scenes; they fulfil in fact the office of prologues, which would be a much fitter name for them. Whether chorus or prologue, the fragments quoted above from "Henry V." contain interesting revelations of the material poverty of the stage in the days of Shakespeare. There were then no shifting scenes or movable decorations, and a board was hung up, stating in large letters in what place the scene lay. As Sir Philip Sidney has already told us : "You shall have Asia of the one side and Africa of the other, and so many other under-kingdoms, that the player, when he cometh in, must ever begin with telling where he is, or else the tale will not be conceived. Now ye shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden." This poverty of theatrical furniture would raise a smile on the part of our authors of the present day, who, aided by the stage manager, show themselves such adepts in the movement of the most complicated machinery; but it was in reality favourable to art. Experience and reason agree in showing that it is in the face of feeble material help that the poetical resources unfolded by genius are greatest. When it depends solely and entirely upon the poet to create the illusion, and to take the hearts of his audience captive, his talent must evidently be more keenly stimulated than when he partly relies upon the ingenuity and the purse of the So clearly is this the case, as hardly to admit manager. * Warton's "History of English Poetry." F of any divergence of opinion theoretically; and if in the present day managers of theatres expend enormous sums in putting plays upon the stage, they do so simply in order to satisfy the false taste of the public, and please the eye at the expense of the mind; but the defence of truer principles has never been wanting, and the French dramatic critic of the day, M. Francisque Sarcey, actively keeps up the campaign of common sense. The historian of the English stage, Payne Collier, truly says:— "It is a fortunate circumstance for the poetry of our old plays that painted movable scenery was then unknown; the imagination of the auditor only was appealed to, and we owe to the absence of painted canvas many of the finest descriptive passages in Shakespeare. The introduction of scenery gives the date to the commencement of the decline of our dramatic poetry." ("History of Dramatic Poetry," Vol. III.) Hallam, in commenting on this remark, enforces it in his usual clear and incisive style : "Even in this age," he writes, "the prodigality of our theatre in its peculiar boast, scene-painting, can hardly keep pace with the creative powers of Shakespeare. It is well that he did not live when a manager was to estimate his descriptions by the cost of realizing them on canvas, or we might never have stood with Lear on the cliffs of Dover, or amidst the palaces of Venice with Shylock and Antonio. The scene is perpetually changed in our old drama precisely because it was not changed at all." (Hallam's "Literature of Europe," Vol. III., Chap. 6.) Kreyssig ventures further, and in speaking of “Antony and Cleopatra," he rejoices not only at the want of scenery which obliged the poet to concentrate in the *The Greeks, it is true, required a magnificent setting to their dramatic representations, but these, it must be remembered, were great religious fêtes, given once a year with great solemnity. And, moreover, the splendour of the scene was always of an ideal and conventional character, quite the reverse of the material and realistic display now aimed at. Queen of Egypt all the fascination she exercised upon every one within her reach, but also at the then usual custom of the part being played by a young boy. Under such barren conditions as these, the only possible seductive charms were those of poetry, unaided by the powerful natural ally to be found in the throat and shapely shoulders of a beautiful prima donna.* The most elegant turn given to the subject is by an American commentator of Shakespeare, Rev. H. N. Hudson. As a shepherd of souls he is desirous of making his literary criticism subserve a moral or religious purpose, and says "It is to the poverty of the old stage that we owe in part the immense riches of the Shakespearian Drama, since it was thereby put to the necessity of making up for the defect of sensuous impression by working on the rational, moral, and imaginative forces of the audience. And undoubtedly the modern way of glutting the senses with a profusion of showy and varied dress and scenery, has struck, as it must always strike, a dead palsy on the legitimate processes of Gothic art. So that here we have a forcible illustration of what is often found true, that men cannot get along because there is nothing to hinder them. For in respect of the moral and imaginative powers it may be justly affirmed that we are often assisted most when not assisted, and that the right way of helping us on is by leaving us unhelped. That the soul may find and use her wings, nothing is so good as the being left where there is little for the feet to get hold of and rest upon."† In those days of youthful strength and simplicity, the imagination of the people was as active as that of the poet. As yet unsurfeited with scenic splendoursof which the sensuous pomp dazzles the eye, but blunts the powers of the mind, and makes them languid and exacting,—the pleasures of illusion, to which both nations and individuals in their childhood are so keenly sensitive, could be provided for them at small material cost. * "Vorlesungen über Shakespeare," Vol. I., p. 448. of any divergence of opinion theoretically; and if in the present day managers of theatres expend enormous sums in putting plays upon the stage, they do so simply in order to satisfy the false taste of the public, and please the eye at the expense of the mind; but the defence of truer principles has never been wanting, and the French dramatic critic of the day, M. Francisque Sarcey, actively keeps up the campaign of common sense. * The historian of the English stage, Payne Collier, truly says: "It is a fortunate circumstance for the poetry of our old plays that painted movable scenery was then unknown; the imagination of the auditor only was appealed to, and we owe to the absence of painted canvas many of the finest descriptive passages in Shakespeare. The introduction of scenery gives the date to the commencement of the decline of our dramatic poetry." ("History of Dramatic Poetry," Vol. III.) Hallam, in commenting on this remark, enforces it in his usual clear and incisive style: "Even in this age," he writes, "the prodigality of our theatre in its peculiar boast, scene-painting, can hardly keep pace with the creative powers of Shakespeare. It is well that he did not live when a manager was to estimate his descriptions by the cost of realizing them on canvas, or we might never have stood with Lear on the cliffs of Dover, or amidst the palaces of Venice with Shylock and Antonio. The scene is perpetually changed in our old drama precisely because it was not changed at all." (Hallam's "Literature of Europe," Vol. III., Chap. 6.) Kreyssig ventures further, and in speaking of "Antony and Cleopatra," he rejoices not only at the want of scenery which obliged the poet to concentrate in the *The Greeks, it is true, required a magnificent setting to their dramatic representations, but these, it must be remembered, were great religious fêtes, given once a year with great solemnity. And, moreover, the splendour of the scene was always of an ideal and conventional character, quite the reverse of the material and realistic display now aimed at. Queen of Egypt all the fascination she exercised upon every one within her reach, but also at the then usual custom of the part being played by a young boy. Under such barren conditions as these, the only possible seductive charms were those of poetry, unaided by the powerful natural ally to be found in the throat and shapely shoulders of a beautiful prima donna.* The most elegant turn given to the subject is by an American commentator of Shakespeare, Rev. H. N. Hudson. As a shepherd of souls he is desirous of making his literary criticism subserve a moral or religious purpose, and says "It is to the poverty of the old stage that we owe in part the immense riches of the Shakespearian Drama, since it was thereby put to the necessity of making up for the defect of sensuous impression by working on the rational, moral, and imaginative forces of the audience. And undoubtedly the modern way of glutting the senses with a profusion of showy and varied dress and scenery, has struck, as it must always strike, a dead palsy on the legitimate processes of Gothic art. So that here we have a forcible illustration of what is often found true, that men cannot get along because there is nothing to hinder them. For in respect of the moral and imaginative powers it may be justly affirmed that we are often assisted most when not assisted, and that the right way of helping us on is by leaving us unhelped. That the soul may find and use her wings, nothing is so good as the being left where there is little for the feet to get hold of and rest upon."† In those days of youthful strength and simplicity, the imagination of the people was as active as that of the poet. As yet unsurfeited with scenic splendours— of which the sensuous pomp dazzles the eye, but blunts the powers of the mind, and makes them languid and exacting, the pleasures of illusion, to which both nations and individuals in their childhood are so keenly sensitive, could be provided for them at small material cost. * “Vorlesungen über Shakespeare,” Vol. I., p. 448. "Shakespeare: his Life, Art, and Characters," Vol. I., p. 160. |