Delphi complete works of.., p.440
Delphi Complete Works of Alphonse Daudet (Illustrated), page 440
Sometimes it happens that the troupe which came from Paris is not complete and is recruited from the local actors. In such cases the “star” proffers advice as to the proper method of interpreting the rôle, and does it with a charming affability due to his great superiority.
Sometimes he goes so far as to promise to use his influence with a Parisian manager. This often gives rise to strange disillusionings. The point of view is so different; the light of Paris is so bright, so pitiless in revealing defects!
Some one discovers at Bordeaux or Toulouse a wonderful jeune premier, a Delaunay at twenty. He is brought to Paris. He makes his début at the Théâtre-Français, and it is found, but too late, that he is a provincial Delaunay and will always remain one!
Paris is full of these actors, who are destined to shine only in peripatetic theatres. They should organize a company once and for all, find an experienced manager, and go hence never to return; for they are swallows whose return no one desires.
IV. THEATRICAL MOURNING.
Dialogue between two Orchestra Chairs.
“WHAT ‘S THE matter? Why do you crumple up that newspaper so angrily? Does the play bore you?”
“Faith, no, for I’m not listening to it. It’s this article I have just read, — one of the stereotyped articles that recur five or six times a year with the irritating monotony of a flat, sentimental refrain, as hackneyed and as false as the patriotic ballad with which Monsieur Cooper is just now torturing our ears. Oh! the idiotic sentimentalism, the misplaced enthusiasm, the judgment which limps and stumbles in all the ruts of the conventional!”
“But what is it all about?”
“B — , the actor, who has just lost his daughter and took part in a benefit performance two days after.”
“Oh, the poor man!”
“Bah! nonsense. You’re just like the reporter. You groan over the fate of that despairing father who goes upon the boards, paints his face, puts on a wig and a pasteboard forehead, to try and make us laugh on returning from a funeral at which he has wept so bitterly! Morbleu! if the fellow’s grief was so great as they say, who compelled him to reappear so soon?”
“His manager, probably, or his contract.”
“I don’t believe a word of it. What manager would be inhuman enough to deny a father the right to weep for his child a day or two, and force him to come on the stage with red eyes only partly wiped? And if by any chance there were such a manager, where would he find a court and judges to justify him? Judges are men, after all. Impassive law is not the only thing that occupies a seat among them. There is pity, too, — the fellow-feeling of man for man; and I cannot imagine that an actor who appeared at the bar, dressed in black, in the black that is much more dismal and solemn than that worn by lawyers, and who should say just this: ‘Messieurs, my daughter’s death was a great blow to me. It was impossible for me to return to the stage for a fortnight,’ — I cannot believe that such an unfortunate creature would be sentenced to pay a fine or to any sort of penalty, just because his voice refused to sing and his sorrow to be amusing.”
“In very truth, my dear fellow, you seem to me to be led astray by an excessive and unjust sensitiveness. It vexes you to see an author reappear on the stage so soon after the death of one of his nearest relations; but you do not cry out against the grocer at the street corner, who, on the day after his wife’s death, takes his place bright and early behind his counter, crushing sugar and grinding coffee with great courage. Why, some shopkeepers have actually made use of invitations to a funeral as advertisements; and do you think that the announcement, ‘His bereaved widow will continue the business,’ is an invention of the petty newspapers? However, without going so far as these extravagant exhibitions of selfishness, these instances of atrophy of the moral sense which the constant thought of money sometimes produces, the story of your actor is to some extent the story of all of us. One hardly has time to stoop over the friend, the relative, who has fallen, — for life is there, close on your heels, urging you on and crowding you; you must rise speedily, resume your place in the ranks, and march forward. That is why the crowds in large cities are so sad to contemplate. You rub elbows with despair, with recent mourning, visible in furtive tears behind long black veils; you hear nervous voices still trembling with imprecations or sobs; but they all hurry along none the less, mingle with the passing stream without pausing long at the gloomy shores where one can weep for one’s dead undisturbed. In the country it is even more striking. The land does not wait; the cattle require their daily pasturage. It is impossible to postpone ploughing or reaping, for the seasons change pitilessly. And so while the master, in the upper chamber of the farmhouse or the mill, feels his last hour draw nigh, the usual occupations are uninterrupted, the ploughs go forth, the cattle return, the laborers in the fields sow seeds which he will never see above the ground; and no sooner is he buried in the little village cemetery than his widow, her eyes swollen with weeping, sweeps the living-room, lights the fire, and prepares the noonday meal for the children and servants immediately after laying aside her ample funeral cloak.”
“What you say is true. But all the occupations you cite are manual, material, give employment to the physical being only. It is, in short, the stern law of toil imposed upon mankind ever since the world began to revolve. There is nothing offensive to me in the association of this idea of enforced labor with the idea of mourning. But in the actor’s profession there is an element of choice, of enjoyment, of uselessness, a constant display of militant vanity which seems incompatible with true grief. In fact, it is not a profession; it is an art.”
“Yes, it is an art; but be careful of your words. If the actor who appears on the stage on the day following a cruel bereavement ruffles your delicacy of sentiment and makes you long to hiss him vigorously in order to teach him discretion and propriety, what will you say of the writer whose necessities compel him to blacken paper under circumstances no less painful? Do you remember the ghastly yet eloquent scene in one of Balzac’s books, where Rubempré writes his horrible couplets by the light of the tapers gleaming about Coralie’s dead body? Perhaps it may seem to you a romantic invention. In that case, I can cite an example from real life, almost as brutal and cruel as that. I had in my hands recently the correspondence of one of the most illustrious writers of this age, who died a few years since. In one of those letters, written toward the close of his career, the poor great poet, condemned by fate to excessive, unremitting toil with his pen, compared himself to a carthorse that had ‘fallen in the shafts,’ and thinking of the heavy load he had been dragging for thirty years, he declared that he had never had the right to rest, to lay aside his task for one moment, ‘that even during the week when his mother died, he had written his feuilleton, and that that feuilleton paid the funeral expenses.’ — I confess that I shuddered when I read that sentence which I should not venture even to repeat, were it not that the letter from which it is taken is soon to appear with the whole of the poet’s correspondence. What impression does that letter make upon you? Will you vent your wrath upon that man also? I am sure not; and yet his case is identical with your actor’s. What distinction can you make between them? Why are they not equally entitled to your respect and your sympathy?”
There was one of those pauses which follow an unanswerable argument, and which we may compare to the failure of respiration caused by a blow with a fist on the chest. In a moment one of the two voices continued:
“Well, yes, I believe you are right! It may be that this actor, who acted on the day after his daughter’s funeral, was driven to it by one of the unnatural necessities of existence of which you were just speaking. But I wish that he need not be praised for his action; I would prefer not to read on every occasion this everlasting, tearful, hackneyed article which made me so angry and led up to our discussion: ‘Poor father! Courageous artist! To think that while he was making us laugh until our sides ached, he was thinking of his child and weeping inwardly!’ — Or this:
‘Unfortunate wife, brave-hearted actress, compelled to sing, to grimace, to sharpen with all her roguish wit the point of an obscene line, while she knows that her husband is in the death agony and is not sure of finding him alive when she returns home!’ — When one has read that stuff five times, ten times, in a year, how is one to avoid losing his temper? And if you knew the influence such articles have on actors, on those great children who are always longing to be stared at, who think of nothing but producing an effect or a sensation, and who strike attitudes everywhere, even under the most depressing circumstances! Deceived as to the public feeling, led astray too by the false glare of the stage to which their profession accustoms them, there comes a time when their idea of what honor requires is sadly distorted: ‘My daughter died yesterday. No matter; I promised to appear at this benefit, and appear I will. Professional duty before everything!’ — The truth is that the actor loves to act, that he cannot do without acting. Be assured that the poet when he wrote that terrible feuilleton of which the letter speaks, wrote it with difficulty, in a frenzy of grief, in a solitary room, made larger and colder by the absence of the loved one, where everything reminded him of his loss. The actor, on the other hand, when he is once on the stage, ‘in his goodman’s skin,’ as they say, has entirely forgotten his misfortune; he has forgotten it for a whole evening, in the intoxication of the brilliant light and the applause of the crowd. And it is just because I feel that he has forgotten it, because I feel that he has greatly enjoyed entertaining us, that, despite all your excellent arguments, there is something which wounds me in the lowest depths of my human ego in his too great haste to return to the boards. Moreover, all actors do not fall into this absurd and inhuman exaggeration of professional duty. For example, here is an anecdote that I once heard of the excellent Lafontaine, at the time of his charming evenings at the Gymnase; I cannot say that it is true, but it is entirely consistent with the character of the man, whom you knew as well as I. One evening, a few moments before it was time for him to go on the stage, Lafontaine received a despatch stating that his old father, who then lived in the suburbs of Paris, was seriously ill and wished to see him at once. In the twinkling of an eye the distracted actor, who was three fourths made up, unmade his face, dressed himself, left his dressing-room at full speed, and rushed down the stairs, deaf to the lamentations of stage manager and acting manager.
“‘Where are you going, you villain? The hall is full!’
“‘No matter, make an announcement, return the money, change your play.’
“‘But—’
“‘There is no but. You cannot force me to act with this knife through my heart. In the first place, I could not do it. I should be thinking all the time that my father was likely to die without seeing me. I should be quite capable of sobbing bitterly or running away in the middle of a scene.’
“In vain did they implore, threaten him with a lawsuit; it was all unavailing, the actor took flight, and the Gymnase did without him that evening. It seems to me that that incident confirms my opinion and condemns all those who do not behave as he did. Instead of stalking through the wings with a long face, heaving heart-breaking sighs, giving and receiving sympathetic clasps of the hand, inviting the whole staff, prompter included, to say, ‘My poor fellow!’ in accordance with the usual programme in such cases, Lafontaine went to embrace his father, perhaps saved himself from bitter remorse, and spared us poor devils the annoyance of reading in the newspapers the famous article: ‘Unfortunate son! Courageous artist! To think that, etc.’
“The charm of the story lies in the fact that Lafontaine, on reaching his destination, found his father playing his game of piquet with a neighbor, as he did every evening. When his son appeared the old man began to laugh, —
I gave you a fine fright, didn’t I, my boy? But what could I do? I felt horribly depressed, full of black thoughts; I longed to embrace you, and as I knew you were not acting — come, don’t scold me, but sit you down, and we’ll have a pleasant evening together.’”
I had not heard of this dénouement, but, no matter, I persist in the opinion that Lafontaine is a fine fellow and that he was quite right to do as he did.
V. STAGE-SETTING AND REHEARSALS.
1.
IN THE DAYS of Tartuffe and Le Misanthrope, it would have been very hard to arrange any sort of a stage-setting, with the double row of noblemen standing along both sides of the stage, encroaching upon it and throwing everything into confusion by going noisily in and out, sometimes too by practical jokes, as on the evening when a certain marquis in merry mood conceived the idea of taking with him, and installing in the reserved places, as many hunchbacks as he could find. Under such conditions, upon a stage so largely monopolized, the actors had no choice but to confine themselves to their acting and to their delivery, without seeking any considerable scenic effect. The author’s stage directions sufficed for that.
A dramatic writer now little known, Chapuzeau, a contemporary of Molière, tells us in a very interesting and very rare little book, in the chapter on Rehearsals, that “the author is always present and assists the actor if he falls into any error, if he does not grasp the meaning, if he departs from what is natural in voice or gesture, if he displays more fire than is fitting in passages which demand some fire. The intelligent actor too is at liberty to give advice at these rehearsals, without giving offence to his comrade, because the pleasure of the public is concerned.” We must believe that at that time actors were less sensitive than in our day; for, even though the pleasure of the public be never so much concerned, our theatrical characters rarely accord the right of criticism to a comrade.
As for leaving to the author alone the responsibility of staging his play, that was possible in Chapuzeau’s time, when it was simply a matter of “assisting the actor as to his voice or gesture;” but with all the complications of the modern stage, that has become very difficult, for the scenic perspective does not approach very closely that of life and requires special study.
Certain of our authors, however, arrange the stage-setting of their works themselves.
Monsieur Sardou, for example, sits in the manager’s seat and allows no one to come near him while he is directing his rehearsals. He comes with his play all mounted in his head. He knows beforehand when his characters will sit down, rise, cross the stage; he can tell the exact location of every property and whether a certain door should open out or in.
You feel that while writing his comedy he acted it, that he saw it at the same time that he composed it; and it is in fact most essential to consider the action as well as the words in an art in which the eyes are as good judges as the thought.
But all dramatic authors are not like Monsieur Sardou, who has given his life exclusively to the stage and knows all the nooks and corners of the trade. There are some whom the boards terrify; who, while they have a very clear and well-defined vision of what they have conceived, are unable to describe it so that others may understand and interpret it, and who lack assurance at rehearsals because they feel that they are awkward in expressing their ideas in gesticulation and declamation. And then there are suggestions to be made to the actors.
The excellent Chapuzeau speaks of it very unconcernedly; but it is more of a task than one would think “to assist the actor.”
In the first place, when the author is young and the work in question is one of his first, the rehearsals cause the curious intoxication which the sculptor or the painter feels as his sketch progresses, as his thought takes form and becomes a work. Everything seems beautiful, grand, to him. The actor must needs be a stutterer, and a terrible one at that, to prevent a débutant in dramatic writing from experiencing a sensation of pure enjoyment as he hears his prose or his verse declaimed.
Later, when experience has come, if he sees that the sentiments he has tried to express are disfigured by their interpretation, he is always somewhat embarrassed about mentioning that fact.
It is so disagreeable to say to a man who claims to know his business:
“You are mistaken; that’s not right.”
In such a case the actor has innumerable answers to make; he appeals to his experience, his familiarity with the public. He knows what takes and what does not take.
You are very fortunate if he does not close your mouth with some disgusting remark taken from the vocabulary of the wings, like that jeune premier, whom one of our friends requested to deliver more quietly an amorous speech which he failed to understand and spoiled by loud declamation.
“It isn’t possible,” the actor remonstrated. “I can never say that passage in that way; I haven’t it in my legs.”
He had not that passage in his legs! What answer can you make to such objections as that? The best way is to yield, unless you prefer to be confronted by a concentrated ill-humor, a determination to submit under protest, expressed by a drawing in of the lips, a stiff, conventional attitude, the nonchalant air of a man who seems to say: “I will do what you wish; but I wash my hands of all responsibility.”
Whereupon, if you distrust yourself ever so little, you are full of doubts and fears until the first performance has proved you to be right or wrong.
With a good stage manager beside him the author avoids all these annoyances; but a good stage manager is a very rare thing, for the post demands much flexibility and tact in addition to great scenic intelligence.
The audience, watching the performance of a play, has no suspicion of all the work required to stage and direct a plot that seems to it so natural. Not an intonation, not a gesture that has not been agreed upon beforehand, that does not form part of a carefully thought-out whole. The least important passages — that is the term applied to the going and coming across the stage — have been the subjects of long discussions.
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