.jpg)
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, from "Rules for Actors" (1803, 1824)
Translated by John Oxenford
As director of the Weimar Court Theatre, in his "Rules for Actors" Goethe (1749–1832) emphasized the importance of natural grace in body movement.
35. First of all, the player must consider that he should not only imitate nature but also portray it ideally, thereby, in his presentation, uniting the true with the beautiful.
36. Therefore the actor must have complete control over each part of his body so that he may be, able to use each limb freely, harmonically, and gracefully, in accord with the expression called for.
37. The body should be carried in the following manner: the chest up, the upper half of the arms to the elbows somewhat close to the torso, the head slightly turned toward the person to whom one is speaking. But this should be done only slightly so that three quarters of the face is always turned to the audience.
38. For the actor must always remember that he is on the stage for the sake of the audience.
39. Nor should actors play to each other as if no third person were present. This would be a case of misunderstood naturalness. They should never act in profile nor turn their backs to the spectators. If it is done in the interest of the characterization or out of necessity, then let it be done with discernment and grace.
40. One should also take care never to speak in an upstage direction, but always toward the audience. For the actor must always be conscious of two elements, namely, of the person with whom he is engaged in conversation, and of the spectators. Rather than turn the head completely, the eyes should be moved.
41. It is an important point that when two are acting together, the speaker should always move upstage, while the one who has stopped speaking should move slightly downstage. If this advantageous shifting is carried out with skill—and through practice it can be done with great ease—then the best effect is achieved for the eye as well as for the intelligibility of the declamation. An actor who masters this will produce a very beautiful effect when acting with others who are equally trained. He will have a great advantage over those who do not observe this rule.
42. If two persons speak with each other, the one who stands on the left should be careful not to approach too closely the one on the right. The person of higher social scale (women, elders, noblemen) always occupies the right side. Even in everyday life a certain distance is kept from a person who is respected. The opposite betrays a lack of education. The actor should show himself to be an educated person and therefore very closely observe this rule. Whoever stands at the right should insist on his prerogative and not allow himself to be driven toward the wings; rather should he stand still, signalling with the left hand to the obtrusive person to move away.
43. A beautiful contemplative pose (for a young man for instance): the chest and the entire body erect and up, the feet in the fourth dance position, the head somewhat inclined to one side, the eyes fixed to the ground, with both arms hanging loosely.
44. The actor should never carry a cane, for the free motion of the hands and arms must be assured.
45. To be avoided: the newfangled fashion of hiding one hand behind the lapel of the coat.
46. It is very improper to have one hand on top of the other or have them resting on the stomach, or to stick one or even both into the vest.
47. The hand itself should never form a fist, nor should it be pressed flat against the thigh (as soldiers do). Some of the fingers should be a little bent, others straight; under no circumstance should they be kept stiff.
48. The two middle fingers should always stay together; the thumb, index and little finger should be somewhat bent. In this manner the hand is in its proper position and ready for any movement.
49. The upper half of the arm should always be somewhat close to the torso; it should move to a much lesser degree than the lower half which should have the greatest agility. For, if I raise my arms just slightly when the talk concerns common things only, then much more effect is produced if I raise it on high. If I do not conform my gestures to the weaker accents of my speech, then I shall not have sufficient strength for the stronger accents, thereby losing all gradation of effect.
50. Nor should the hands return to their rest position prior to the conclusion of the speech, and then only gradually, just as the speech is being concluded.
51. The movement of the arms should be done in sequence. First the hand should be moved, then the elbow, and finally the entire arm. It should never be lifted suddenly, for any movement in disregard of the sequence would result in ugly stiffness.
52. It is of great advantage for the beginner to keep his elbows close to his torso so that he may thereby gain control over this part of the body. Even in his daily life the beginning actor should exercise by consistently holding his arms bent back and even bound back when he is alone. While walking or in moments of leisure, the player should keep his fingers constantly in motion.
53. Descriptive gestures with the hand should be made but sparingly, though they cannot be omitted altogether.…
55. Descriptive gestures cannot be avoided, but they must be made in an unpremeditated manner.…
57. One should be very careful not to cover the face or body while moving the hands.
58. If I must extend the hand, and the right is not expressly prescribed, I can extend the left hand as well, for there is no right or left on the stage. One must always try not to destroy the pictorial composition by an awkward position. If I am forced, however, to extend the right hand, and I am so placed that I have to pass my hand across my body, then I should rather step back a little and extend it so that I show my entire front to the audience.
59. The player should consider on which side of the stage he is standing so that he can adapt his gestures accordingly.
60. Whoever stands on the right side should act with his left hand, and vice versa, so that the chest be covered as little as possible.
61. Even in emotional scenes, when both hands are in action, consideration has to be given to the preceding paragraphs.
62. For this very purpose and that the chest be in full view of the spectator, it is advisable that the actor on the right side places his left foot forward, while the actor on the left has his right foot forward.…
65. In order to acquire pantomimic skill and to make his arms supple, the beginner will draw great advantage from trying to convey his role to another person purely by means of pantomime and without words; for this will force him to choose the most suitable gestures.
66. In order to acquire an easy and appropriate movement of the feet, boots should never be worn during rehearsals.
67. The actor, especially the one who has to play lovers and other light parts, should keep a pair of slippers on stage in which to rehearse, and he will soon notice the good results.
68. In rehearsal nothing should be tolerated that could not also occur in performance.
69. The actresses should lay aside their small purses.
70. No actor should rehearse in his overcoat, but have the hands and arms free, as in the play. For the coat not only prevents him from making the appropriate gestures, but forces him to assume wrong ones which he will mechanically repeat in performance.
71. In rehearsal the actor should make no movement that is not appropriate to the part.
72. He who sticks his hand in his bosom during the rehearsal of a tragic part is in danger of reaching for an opening in his armor during the performance.
73. A very coarse blunder to be avoided: if the seated actor, raising himself slightly, pulls his chair forward after he has seized it by passing his hands between the thighs. This is an offense not only against the ideal of beauty, but still more against propriety.
74. The actor should not produce a handkerchief on the stage, nor blow his nose or spit. It is terrible, within the sphere of a work of art, to be reminded of such physical necessities. To take care of an emergency, one should always carry a small handkerchief, which is now in fashion anyway.…
82. The stage and the auditorium, the actors and the spectators, together represent the theatrical entity.
83. The stage is to be regarded as a figureless tableau for which the actor supplies the figure.
84. Hence, one should never act too close to the wings.
85. Nor should one step under the proscenium arch. This is the greatest fault, for the figure leaves the very space in which it makes a composite whole with the scenery and the other players.
86. An actor standing alone on the stage should remember that he is called to fill out the stage with his presence, and this so much the more when the attention is focused solely upon him.
87. As the augurs with their staffs divided the heavens into various areas, the actor, in his mind, can divide the stage into various spaces which for experiment can be represented on paper by rhombic areas. The stage floor then becomes a sort of checkerboard. The actor can determine which square he will enter on. He can note these on paper and is then certain that, in emotional scenes, he will not inartistically rush back and forth, but will join the beautiful with the meaningful.
88. Whoever makes his entrance for a soliloquy from an upstage wing does well to move diagonally so that he reaches the opposite side of the proscenium. Diagonal movements are in general very pleasing.
89. He who comes downstage from the rearmost wing to join a person already standing on the stage, should not walk parallel with the wings, but should move slightly toward the prompter.
Originally, the choir of singing, dancing, masked young men who performed in ancient Greek tragedy and comedy. Treated in tragedy as a "character" within the story, the chorus often represents aggrieved groups (old men, foreign slaves, victims of the plague). The chorus berates, implores, advises, harasses, pursues, and sometimes even helps and commiserates with the main characters, but mostly bears witness to their doings and sayings. In Old Comedy, the chorus serves at times as the mouthpiece for the poet. It gradually disappeared from tragedy and comedy, but many attempts have been made to revive some version of it, notably during the Italian and English Renaissance, under Weimar Classicism, and by such twentieth-century playwrights as Jean Anouilh, T.S. Eliot, and Michel Tremblay. The singing and dancing chorus appears today most commonly in musical theatre, opera, and operetta.
The oldest state-funded theatre company still in existence. The company was formed at the command of King Louis XIV in 1680, through the amalgamation of the two remaining French-language troupes in Paris, one of which was Molière's. Called the Comédie Française to distinguish it from the Italian company then resident in the capital (see commedia dell'arte), it was granted a monopoly on the performance of French drama. It is a symbol today of national conservatism.
Originally a genre of virtuoso solo performance invented by the ancient Romans. It is usually used today to refer to a type of spectacular entertainment that emerged in London at the beginning of the eighteenth century, featuring commedia dell'arte characters, magical special-effects wizardry, music, dance, and fantastical episodic plots. It remained very popular into the nineteenth century, when it picked up certain features of melodrama and developed into the form it usually takes today, the "Christmas Panto," which involves some audience participation, often of children. Also used in the sense of "to enact silently," or mime.
A Latin architectural term derived from the Greek proskenion, the front-most section of the theatre building (sk¯en¯e) as it developed in the post-Classical, Hellenistic period. During the Renaissance, when theatres were built indoors, artificial lighting, perspective painting, and changeable scenery were adopted in scenography. To hide the scene-shifting equipment and lighting instruments from view of the spectators, a single archway was constructed at the front of the acting area. (The first proscenium of this type was built for the Teatro Farnese in 1618.) Stages on which a pictorial illusion is created with the help of a three- or four-sided border or frame are called "proscenium arch," or "picture-frame" theatres, and they reached their heyday during the nineteenth century, the age of realism.
A widespread movement in art and culture, beginning in the later eighteenth century, that aimed to throw off the shackles of neoclassicism. Rejecting all rules and rational principles, Romantic art emphasized feeling, stark contrasts, extreme or abnormal psychological states, as well as the inner world of dreams, fantasies, and the supernatural. Natural and untutored "genius" was prized over technical mastery, untamed and "sublime" nature over civilization. Some Romantic poets did produce works for the stage, such as Goethe, Schiller, Byron, and Shelley, but Romanticism in the theatre more often took the form of violently emotional acting, particularly the kind made famous by Edmund Kean. Romanticism also manifested itself throughout nineteenth-century theatre in melodrama and Gothic plays, with their intense villains, brooding heroes, spooky vampires, and dark medieval castles.
German for "Storm and Stress." A literary movement that took its name from the title of an F.M. von Klinger play of 1776, and which was one of the earliest manifestations of Romanticism. It is associated particularly with the work of Goethe and Schiller.
Plural of tableau, French for painting or picture. It is used in drama to refer to a visually pleasing and emotionally compelling arrangement of actors' bodies on stage. First recommended for wide use by theorist and playwright Denis Diderot in the eighteenth century, such consciously contrived stage pictures did gain prominence in the centuries that followed, particularly in melodrama, which often called for them in the stage directions.
A Greek word believed to mean "song of the goat-singers". Originating in the sixth century b.c.e., tragedy is the oldest dramatic genre and remains for many the "highest" form of poetry. Our knowledge of it derives mainly from the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, as well as from the little we know about the manner of its performance. Our understanding of it has also been shaped by Aristotle, whose description of Athenian tragedy in his Poetics remains a touchstone for tragic theory and practice to this day. According to Aristotle, tragedy is the imitation of an organically unified, serious action in which the plot, or arrangement of incidents, elicits the audience's pity and fear and then effects a catharsis, or purgation, of these and similar emotions. Tragic plots generally take the protagonist from a condition of good fortune to bad, often to his or her destruction, involve mental and/or physical suffering, and ideally take place within families, usually of a socially elevated or prominent type (royal families, for example). In Aristotle's view the most effective tragic plots also involve a simultaneous "reversal and recognition," a moment when the character's fortune turns for the worse, and when he or she is suddenly able to grasp a truth that was unavailable before. Tragedy has been reconceived by every subsequent age that has practiced it, beginning in the Renaissance. In the seventeenth century, it was reinvented according to the principles of neoclassicism; in the eighteenth according to those of the Enlightenment ("middle-class" or "bourgeois tragedy"). Romanticism in turn created its own tragic forms, often inspired by Shakespeare.
The style of playwriting, acting, and scenography associated with the Weimar Court Theatre during the late eighteenth century, when Schiller and Goethe were playwrights-in-residence and artistic directors there. Following their Sturm und Drang periods, both adopted an approach to writing and staging plays that was noted for its greater fidelity to Classical Greek culture than was common in neoclassicism.