The Lower Depths: A Drama in Four Acts

The Lower Depths: A Drama in Four Acts

De profundis ad te clamavi. In this phrase, with his penchant for epitome, the late James Huneker summarized the masterpiece of Russias single living master of the drama, Maxim Gorky, as he saw it in Berlin under the German title of Nachtasyl or Night Lodging. Na Dnye is the Russianliterally On the Bottom. Partly because The Lower Depths is a more faithful rendering of the original than Night Lodging and partly because it implies so vividly the plays keynote as the shrewd Huneker detected it beneath a guise alien to both Russian and English, the title adopted by Laurence Irving for the British version has been preferred for its introduction to American audiences by the company which discovered it and first set it on its stage in Moscow, December 31 (our calendar), 1902. In The Lower Depths more than in any other single play throughout its history, the Moscow Art Theatre concentrates its dramatic ideals and methods, its esthetic theory and practice, and through the production of this play it most emphatically justifies its artistic faith in spiritual or psychological realism as a dramatic medium of expression. The plays of Tchekhoff, of course, serve the same ends, but no single one of them does so quite as richly as does Gorkys masterpiece. At the hands of Stanislavsky and his associates, The Lower Depths draws much of its convincing power from its unusual use of and dependence on the channels of expression which are peculiar to the art of the theatre. It is almost wholly independent of drama as literature. Less than any play I know, is it possible to imagine its potential effect in the theatre from a reading of its printed lines. [Pg iv]In my book, The Russian Theatre, I have thus analyzed this factor: ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 52468
Author: Gorky, Maksim
Release Date: Jul 1, 2016
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Sayler, Oliver M., 1887-1958

Translator: Covan, Jenny