A NOTE UPON CHAPTERS XX. AND XXI. OF THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE
By Harley Granville-Barker
Dr. Chambers’ work (and if ever a book deserved the dignified term, this does) forms a magnificent museum of facts about the Elizabethan stage. Thousands of specimens are ranged through the chapters, each in its place, each, it would seem, correctly and adequately labelled. An achievement indeed, and a benefit to be conferred upon generations of scholars, who will need no other authority. But, accepting the facts, one may yet question here and there Dr. Chambers’ application of them. With the magnanimity of true learning, he gives one every chance to. For he scorns special pleading, comes charily to conclusions, opens every path by which the reader may reach his own.
I have but to deal with the two chapters upon the staging of plays in the theatres, though a glance will be needed besides at the preceding one upon staging at Court. To those students, however, for whom the plays and their artistry are the heart of the whole matter—and it is at least arguable that they are—these chapters must be the most important in the book. The greater the pity that they cannot be acclaimed the best. But the trouble is that no art lends itself wholly to scientific methods of criticism and research, and the art of the theatre least of any. For its ways are irrational, and the livelier parts of it are not to be ticketed and put in a museum. These lines upon lines of print that call themselves plays are but inadequate records of the full effect that author and actor conspired to produce. Dr. Chambers, as aforesaid, assembles his specimens, tests them, dissects them, compares them, does all that a right-minded man can be expected to do with them. It is nothing short of scandalous that they should not yield their every secret to the treatment. But they will not. And to make matters worse, we have here the art of the theatre at its wilfullest—as it survived and
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