Pictorial Shakespeare, 1880-1890 - eTheses Repository - University ...

Harley Granville-Barker, whose dismissal of the
eighteen-eighties has been quoted, wrote in an essay on
W.S.Gilbert of the manner in which the British theatre
underwent a "disciplining" to rescue it from "a state of slovenly
chaos", and listed those responsible as being Irring,
the Bancrofts and Kendala, Hare, Wyndham, Sydney (?rundy~ "and
most particularly, Pinero and Gilbert"^. Without dwelling
upon the question of Ibsen's influence, it is possible-to
discern in the fashionable theatre of the eightesa-eighties
the tensions that underlie the best dramatic writing of the
ensuing decades* She problem was not simply that of reconciling
"Tragedy" with modern dress, but of relating undeniable
advances in the technoiques of stage presentation to the
alarming lack of good plays. There was some contradiction
between the qualities that had made actors respectable, and
had given authors influence and money, and the inability of
the stage to cope with what was considered "poetic material"*
But in one respect the meticulous realism of staging was
allied to the ambitions of poetic playwrights. Plays conceived
- as Tennyson's evidently were - to be a series of tableaux
and poetic speeches set apart from the action of the play,
were symptoms of a common understanding of "effectiveness".
Poetry in character was conceived by the etage-manager and by
the poet as being static - the telling pose or speech, the
thrilling suspension of motion. In 1881 The Stage offered
guidance on "Stage Pictures' and 'Calls'", the arrangement
of which it claimed to be "one of the most delicate and trying
tasks of stage-management":
To intensifya particular climax forming a
picture in which each character takes a
different attitude, though at the same time
one exemplifying the dominant idea, or a portion
of it, is a task to fulfill which successfully
taxes the imagination, ingenuity and general
perception of effect of the person responsible
for it...
The same article instructs the actor that "during an outburst
of applause the most sculptural rigidity capable in the human
form should toe maintained in the exact moment which induced
the interruption" (19 August 1881).
The idea of the actor as a figure in a pictorial composition
is by no means a new one. It is possible,however, that