The anciens agents English Morris Dance

Sommaire

• The anciens agents English Morris Dance

  Jt is the observation of an elegant writer that disquisitions concerning the manners and
  conduct of our species in early times, or indeed at any time, are always curious at least
  and amusing. An investigation of the subject before us, if completely and successfully
  performed, would serve to fill up a chasm in the history of our popular antiquities; but
  this must not be expected. The culpable indifference of historical writers to private manners,
  and more especially to the recreations and amusements of the common people, has
  occasioned the difficulties that always attend enquiries of this nature, many of which are
  involved in impenetrable darkness; whilst others can only receive illustration from detached
  and scattered facts accompanied by judicious inferences and opinions.

  par Francis Douce
• The enemies of tradition

  Lazy actors (and most actors are more or less lazy, according to whether they are
  Englishmen, Frenchmen or Germans,) want the theatre to go on doing the same old
  thing that it has always done year after year, and are always telling the enthusiasts
  that what was good enough for John Kemble or Talma or Schroder is good enough for
  them. They only make use of these names because they know nothing about the men. If
  they enquired they would find that these were the very men who were the enthusiasts
  of their times, and that these were the very men that worked to preserve the ancient
  traditions of the stage, but who were helpless to fight against the stupidity of the lazy
  actors of their generation.

  par Jan van Holt
• Two stage characters

  The passion of love developes itself on the stage In various ways, and
  every different species of dramatic production has a peculiar kind of
  Stage Lover. The tragedy lover is addicted to the very inconvenient
  practice of loving above his station, and he is continually going about
  asking the woods, the. groves, the valleys, and the hills why he was
  " lowly born," a question which the said woods, groves, valleys, and
  hills are not in the habit of answering.

  par Gilbert á Beckett
• Flammarion and Croce

  Creation is too complicated for anybody to understand It, (and this is
  still being proved) but its voice is at least so clear and so simple that
  nobody can fail to understand what it is saying. You have only got to
  look around to understand the voice of Nature; but ferret about, dig,
  enquire, search, put two and two together, compare, and go on inces«
  santly with the study of creation and you will only get further away
  from any solution.

  par Allen Carric
• Psychology and the Drama

  So long as people continue to believe that drama can be revealed
  through psychology, so long the theatre will remain where it has
  been for the last hundred years. This dependence upon psychology is
  characteristic of men who have turned their art Into a business.
  It shows plainly that they realize the importance of quick returns.

  par John Semar
• The architecture and costume of Shakespeare’s plays

  Jn the Italian Group we find that with two exceptions—Othello and the Two Gentlemen
  of Verona —there is nothing In the text of any of them indicative of time other than
  that of the period at which Shakespere wrote them. In Othello there is a scene laid in
  Cyprus, which is never acted, consisting of these six lines.

  par E.W. Godwin
• Mallarmé and the new drama

  Qne night I ventured to ask him what new work he was producing. "A drama", he replied with visible pride.

  par Allen Carric
• The germans

  The Germans are always interesting and I find myself always thinking and writing about
  them. I know them a little; their energy is superb, their sense of economy first class;
  they waste neither time, space nor money; they understand these three things. In one
  thing only do they forget to use economy and in that thing they run riot, become spendthrifts
  and are altogether quite unseemly.

  par John Balance