THE THEATRE
THE gentle hope expressed a month ago has not been fulfilled. There is no pretext for discussing acting this month; there was none last month, and the boards flourish, so I have no reason to believe that any sudden change in the contemporary theatre will bring anything like acting to the stage next month.
In The Theatre Advancing (which is published by Little, Brown & Co.) Gordon Craig has chosen to illuminate the things of the stage by flashes of lightning and because Mr. Craig understands and loves the theatre I have turned to him for some guidance on this subject. What do we want of our actors? The truth? A dangerous quality, which we may not recognize and which, if it happens to be a small truth, will give us very little satisfaction. Nature? But we already have the Belasco tradition. Interest? But the good mind is capable of interesting itself in such a variety of useless things.
We want beauty and we want ecstasy, and we are not getting much of either. "I ask only for the liberation of the actor," says Mr. Craig, "that he may develop his own powers, and cease from being the marionette of the playwright." Perhaps our actors and actresses are getting the kind of plays they deserve; but the chance is that a few of them could create where they now imitate, could give us passion instead of emotion, and character instead of the little play of characteristics which makes up the acting of the contemporary stage.
Miss Elsie Ferguson is playing in Sacred and Profane Love, the play which Arnold Bennett made badly out of The Book of Carlotta. (The book and the play are both published, by Doran, in this country, and the reader who wishes to understand how passion degenerates into emotion on the stage may well compare the two.) For an act Miss Ferguson presents the high qualities of beauty and of creative intelligence, and her virtuosity of voice and posture and movement has almost the power of magic to hold the audience in a spell. Thereafter Miss Ferguson, being skilfully led by her playwright to everything ordinary and tawdry in the drama, very prop-
