ABSTRACT
It seems to me that the Theatre has nearly always longed to be “natural,” that the playwrights, actors and scene-painters, have nearly always struggled to free themselves from being “theatrical.” Even in the eighteenth century, when most things gloried in a sumptuous artificiality gorgeous in silver gilt, there appears a master who attempts to make all things “natural” again; and yet Molière’s plays seem to us to-day anything but natural, and their ancient manner of representation strikes us as very artificial. Not for one but for many centuries men have crowned their chosen
playwright for that he was more “natural” than his fellows, yet the plays of Shakespeare no longer strike us as “natural”; even Robertson with his Caste and Ours,1 which were looked upon as very natural a few years ago, and their manner of representation quite like life, to-day seem antiquated, somewhat artificial. There are some who go so far as to say that the earlier plays of Sir
Arthur Pinero and the later plays by Mr. Shaw have grown artificial. Scene-painting, too. A hundred years ago Clarkson Stanfield2 in England
was painting scenery which amazed the critics by its “natural” appearance, and that, too, after they had known the work of de Loutherbourg;3 and soon Stanfield was looked on as unnatural, for Telbin the Elder4 gave them what they asserted was very Nature itself; and yet hardly have they said so before they eat their words, turn their backs on Telbin, and find true Nature in Hawes Craven,5 only to put him away a little later for Harker, who “at last paints Nature for us.”6
