Three Plays

Three Plays

I wanted not to write an introduction to these three plays, but circumstances are too strong for me. Yet, after all, what is to be said but, to the public, Here they are; like them, and, to the critics, Here they are; fall on them? But apparently this is not enough. I must think of something else. There was a happy time when I was a critic myself. I, too, have lived in that Arcady. What nights were then! Red-letter nights when the play was bad, and in one short hour, standing on the body of the dramatist, I had delivered my funeral oration; black-letter nights when the play was good, and it took six hours of solid pushing, myself concealed by the fellows person, to place him fairly in the sun. The years slip away. Yet even now I have something of my old style. Here, lest you should think I am boasting, is my Hamlet. Yes, by the enterprise of The Saturday Review, I was present on that historic first night. For, lately, this paper stimulated its readers, with promise of reward, to imagine themselves there as critics, and I brushed up my old black doublet and went with the others. Interested, you know, in this young provincial dramatist; hoping against hope that here at last was the.... [x]However, luckily the play was a bad one, and (proud am I to say it) I won the prize. So much for Mr.Shakespeare. I differ from him (as you were about to say) in that I prefer to see my plays printed, and he obviously preferred to see his acted. People sometimes say to me: How beautifully [xii]Mary Brown played that part, and wasnt John Smiths creation wonderful, and how tremendously grateful you must be. She did; it was; I am. The more I see of actors and actresses at rehearsals (and it is only at rehearsals of your own plays that you can see them at all, or learn anything of their art), by so much the more do I admire, am I amazed by, their skill. There are heights and depths and breadths and subtleties in acting, still more in producing, of which the casual playgoer, even the regular playgoer if he only sees the stage from the front, knows nothing. But the fact remains that, to the author, the part must always seem better than the player. That great actor John Smith may create the part of Yorick, but the author created it first, and created it, to his own vision, every bit as much in flesh and blood as did, later, the actor. You may read the plays here, and say that this or the other character does not live, meaning by this that you are unable to visualise him, unable to imagine for yourself, granted the circumstance, a person so acting, so reacting. WellIf it be so, so it is, you know; it is very easy not to be a great artist; I have failed. But do not believe that, because a character does not live for you, therefore it does not live for the author. While we are writing, how can we help seeing the fellow? We shut our eyes, and he is there; we open them, and he is there; we dip our pen into the ink-pot, and he is waiting on the edge for us. We shake him out on to the paper.... Ah, but now he is dead, you say. Well, well, he lived a moment before. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 60167
Author: Milne, A. A. (Alan Alexander)
Release Date: Aug 24, 2019
Format: eBook
Language: English