“To hold the mirror up to Nature.”

Shakespeare.

I.Assignment

Write a notice of one of the plays now on the local stage.

II.Explanation

To keep its readers informed of the character of the plays being presented at local theaters is one of the functions of the newspaper. If the play is a classic, only the quality of the acting need be discussed. If it is new, the notice should also include a description of the play and of its merit. Fortunately, this can always be determined by one simple test—a test suggested by no less a critic than William Shakespeare: Does it hold the mirror up to nature? Does it give, in other words, an accurate picture of life? The stage, it may be added, always has been and is now infested by many so-called plays which are not plays at all, but mere conglomerations of more or less (usually less) moral and amusing jokes and antics. The events which some of them depict could occur neither on the earth, in the sky above the earth, nor in the waters underneath the earth. From others it would be impossible to cut out any character or scene without improving the whole. They fill the theater with people and the manager’s pocket-book with money, but they are not plays.

III.Models

I

The Melting Pot comes to New York with a Chicago indorsement and the authority lent by the name of Mr. Israel Zangwill, as author. Mr. Zangwill’s theme is that the United States is a crucible in which all the races and nationalities of the world are to be fused into one glorious people.

As a play The Melting Pot has the intellectual tone to be expected from Mr. Zangwill. It also has really poetic touches. In humor it is less successful. In dramatic construction it is faulty, as are so many of the contemporary plays which try to teach or preach something.

The play brings back to New York after a long absence that excellent actor, Mr. Walker Whiteside.—Metcalfe in Life (abbreviated).7

II

Of David Copperfield, Dickens’s favorite among his own works, there have been dramatizations almost innumerable. The latest, called the Highway of Life, by Louis N. Parker, author of Pomander Walk and Disraeli, has been done with extreme reverence for the text and with an elaborate scenic investiture that would have made glad the heart of the novelist, enamored as he was of the theater.

It was to have been the autumn offering at His Majesty’s in London, with Sir Herbert Tree doubling as Micawber and Dan’l Peggotty. The war caused a change of plans, so the first performance on any stage took place at Wallack’s in New York. Lennox Pawle, Mr. Parker’s son-in-law, realized a long-cherished ambition to step forth as Micawber. Fresh from his multimillionaire of The Money Makers, came Emmet Corrigan for Dan’l Peggotty. Betsey Trotwood fell to Eva Vincent. The Lieblers were especially happy in their selection of a Mrs. Micawber in the person of Maggie Holloway Fisher. She spent days digging out and fashioning the costume she wears, and no one ever murdered a song more successfully than she at David’s dinner-party. An astonishingly faithful imitation of her languishing airs is given by Philip Tonge, when, as Traddles, he reads Micawber’s letter. J.V. Bryant, the Copperfield, and Vernon Steele, the Steerforth, are both English. O.P. Heggie deserves more than a passing word of commendation for the things he refrains from doing as Uriah Heep. He is not forever going through that waterless washing of the hands.

There are ten different sets of scenery in The Highway of Life, all charming or effective as the case may be. For the background of Mr. Wickfield’s garden at Canterbury we have a glimpse of the famous cathedral, and from Betsey Trotwood’s domain we get a view of the chalk cliffs and downs at Dover. A happy conceit throws shadow pictures of the principal characters upon a sheet as they cross the stage just before the first curtain rises.—Matthew White, Jr., in Munsey’s (abbreviated).8

IV.Notes and Queries

1. What is the subject of each paragraph in ModelI?
2. Explain the function of each sentence in ModelI.
3. Discuss the meaning and etymology of the following terms: Chicago indorsement; theme; crucible; fuse; contemporary.
4. Who is Israel Zangwill?
5. Tell the story of David Copperfield.
6. Why does Matthew White not tell it?
7. Discuss the uses of the apostrophe.
8. Discuss the meaning and etymology of: dramatization; extreme; elaborate; investiture; novelist; enamored; theater; doubling; ambition; sets.
9. What is the subject of each paragraph in ModelII?
10. Find at least two metaphors in the models.

V.Gathering Material

Material for this exercise may be secured in three places:

1. At the theater.
2. At a school play.
3. By reading, in case there is no chance to see a play, one of the following:
   • Fitch, W.C. Barbara Frietchie, or Nathan Hale.
   • Gilbert, W.S. The Mikado, or Pinafore.
   • Goldsmith, O. She Stoops to Conquer.
   • Maeterlinck, Maurice. The Bluebird.
   • Phillips, Stephen. Ulysses.
   • Shakespeare, W. Any play.
   • Shaw, G.B. CÆsar and Cleopatra.
   • Sheridan, R.B. The Rivals, or The School for Scandal.
   • Tarkington, Booth. The Man from Home.

VI.Organization

From the following list of paragraph topics, select those which are best worth discussing in connection with the play which you desire to review.

Select those about which you can get the fullest information.

1. The Four W’s.
2. The Story.
3. The Theme.
4. Poetry.
5. Humor.
6. Construction.
7. Philosophy.
8. The Actors.
9. The Scenery.
10. Character Portrayal.

If the play is noteworthy for its poetry, its wit, or its philosophy, these should be illustrated by one or two quotations. If the chief interest is in the story, tell the story. If its strength is derived from the skill of the actors, from the setting, or from character portrayal, devote your attention to a clear exposition of these phases of the play. Do not permit your notice to be shorter than I nor longer than II.

VII.Suggested Time Schedule

VIII.A Shakespeare Program

If, for any reason, it seems unwise to send pupils to a play, they might be requested (1) to present the following program, or some modification of it, as typical of Shakespeare’s best work, and (2) to write notices or critiques thereon. It is perhaps unnecessary to add that no more profitable or delightful exercise can be devised for a class.

1. Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Music.
2. Antony’s Oration (with mob).
3. Songs from As You Like It.
4. Quarrel of Brutus and Cassius.
5. The Seven Ages of Man.
6. Hamlet’s Soliloquy.
7. The Trial Scene from The Merchant of Venice.
8. Songs from Various Plays.
9. The Rude Mechanicals, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

IX.Memorize

THE ART OF ACTING

Hamlet. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but, if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.

First Player. I warrant your honour.

Hamlet. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o’erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature’s journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

First Player. I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us, sir.

Hamlet. O, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that’s villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, ActIII, Scene2.
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