has itself preserved a true sense of meaning of art, will not submit to have placed before it in a drama the more accidental moods and opinions, the peculiar tendencies and the one-sided outlook of this or that individual, the expression of which is more appropriate to the lyric poet. It has a right to demand that in the course and final issue of the dramatic action, whether of tragedy or comedy, what is fundamentally reasonable and true should be vindicated. Being myself convinced of this I have in a previous passage given a place of first importance to the demand that the dramatic poet must in the profoundest sense make himself master of the essential significance of human action and the divine order of the world, and along with this of a power to unfold this eternal and essential foundation of all human characters, passions and destinies in its clarity as also in its vital truth. It is no doubt quite possible that a poet, in rising equal to this demand upon his powers of penetration and artistic achievement, may under particular circumstances find himself in conflict with the restricted and uncultured ideas of his age and nation. In such a case the responsibility for such a disunion does not rest with himself, but is a burden the public ought to carry. He has the single obligation to follow the lead of truth and his own compelling genius, the ultimate victory of which, provided it is of the right quality, is no less assured than that of ultimate truth itself universally. It is impossible to define closely the limits within which a dramatic poet is entitled to bring his actual personality before the public. I will therefore merely recall attention to the fact in a general way that in many periods of history dramatic poetry, no less than other kinds, is induced to disseminate with a vital impulse novel ideas upon politics, morals, poetry, religion, and the like. So early as Aristophanes we have polemics in those comedies of his youth against the domestic condition of Athens and the Peloponnesian war. Voltaire again frequently endeavours in his dramatic works to popularize his free thought principles. But above all worthy of notice is the effort of our Lessing in his "Nathan" to vindicate his ethical faith against the strait waistcoat of a blockish orthodoxy. In still more recent times too Goethe has in his earliest works challenged the prose of our German life and its defective views of art. Tieck has to some extent followed his lead in this respect. Where personal views of the above type are not only of superior worth, but are further not expressed in such deliberate separation from the action of the drama as to make the latter appear as a mere means for their exploitation, the claims of true art are not likely to suffer injury. If, however, the freedom of the composition is thereby impaired, though no doubt the poet may possibly produce no inconsiderable impression on the public by his introduction of his own predilections into his work; yet, however true they may be, if they are at the same time unable to coalesce with the work as an artistic whole the interest thereby aroused can only be limited to the matters thus handled; it is in fact no true artistic interest at all. The worst case of all is that, however, where a poet with similar deliberation seeks, out of pure flattery and in order to please, to give prominence to some popular prejudice which is entirely false. His sins of commission are in that case twofold, not merely against art, but truth no less.
(_ββ_) One further remark may be perhaps admitted in this connection to the effect that among the particular types of dramatic art a more limited measure of indulgence is permitted to tragedy than to comedy in this more free expatiation of the personality of the poet. In the latter type the contingency and caprice of individual self-expression is from the first agreeable to its main principle. Thus we find that Aristophanes frequently makes matters of immediate interest to his Athenian public the subject of his parabases. In portions of these he gives free utterance to his own views upon contemporary events and circumstances, and withal shrewd advice to his fellow citizens.
He is at other times concerned to defend himself from the attacks of political opponents and his artistic rivals. Indeed there are passages in which he deliberately eulogizes himself and his peculiarities.
2. THE EXTERNAL TECHNIQUE OF A DRAMATIC COMPOSITION Poetry, alone among the arts, completely dispenses with the sensuous medium of the objective world of phenomena. Inasmuch moreover as the drama does not interpret to the imaginative vision the exploits of the past, or express an ideal personal experience to mind and soul, but rather is concerned to depict an action in all the reality of its actual presence, it would fall into contradiction with itself if it were forced to remain limited to the means, which poetry, simply as such, is in a position to offer. The present action no doubt belongs entirely to the personal self, and from this point of view complete expression is possible through the medium of language. From an opposite one, however, the movement of action is towards objective reality, and it requires the complete man to express its movement in his corporeal existence, deed and demeanour, as well as the physiognomical expression of emotions and passions, and not only these on their own account, but in their effect on other men, and the reactions which are thereby brought into being. Moreover, in the display of individuality in its actual presence, we require further an external environment, a specific _locale_, in which such movement and action is achieved. Consequently dramatic poetry, by virtue of the fact that no one of these aspects can be permitted to remain in their immediate condition of contingency, but have all to be reclothed in an artistic form as phases of fine art itself, is compelled to avail itself of the assistance of pretty well all the other arts. The surrounding scene is to some extent, just as the temple is, an architectonic environment, and in part also external Nature, both aspects being conceived and executed in pictorial fashion. In this _locale_ the sculpturesque figures are presented with the animation of life, and their volition and emotional states are artistically elaborated, not merely by means of expressive recitation, but also through a picturesque display of gesture and of posture and movement, which, in its objective form, is inspired by the inward soul-life. In this respect we may have brought home to us a distinction which recalls a feature I have at an earlier stage indicated in the sphere of music as the opposition implied in the arts of declamation and melody. In other words, just as in declamatory music language in its spiritual signification is the aspect of most importance, to the characteristic expression of which the musical aspect is entirely subordinate, whereas the movement of melody is unfolded freely on its own account in its own specific medium, although it too is able to assimilate the content of language--so also dramatic poetry, on the one hand, avails itself of those sister arts merely as instrumental to a material basis and environment, out of which the language of poetry is in its free domination asserted as the commanding central focus, upon and around which all else really revolves. From the further point of view, however, that which in the first instance had merely the force of an assistant and accompaniment, becomes an object on its own account, and receives the appearance in its own domain of an essentially independent beauty. Declamation passes into song, action into the mimic of the dance, and scenery in its splendour and pictorial fascination itself puts forward a claim to artistic perfection.
In contrasting, then, a contrast frequently insisted upon, and more particularly in recent times, poetry in its simplicity with the external dramatic execution such as we have above described, we may continue the course of our review under the following heads of discussion.
_First,_ there is the dramatic poetry, whose object is to restrict itself to the ordinary ground of poetry, and consequently does not contemplate the theatrical representation of its productions.
_Secondly_, we have the genuine art of the theatre, to the extent that is in which it is limited to recitation, play of pose and action, under the modes in which the language of the poet is able throughout to remain the definitive and decisive factor.
_Lastly_, there is that type of reproduction, which admits the employment of every means of scenery, music and dance, and suffers the same to assert an independent position as against the dramatic language.
(_a_) _The Reading and Recitation of Dramatical Compositions._ The true sensuous medium or instrument of dramatic poetry is, as we have seen, not only the human voice and the spoken word, but the entire man, who not merely expresses emotions, ideas, and thoughts, but, as vitally absorbed in a concrete action, in virtue of all that he is influences the ideas, designs, the action and behaviour of others, experiences similar effects on himself, or maintains his independent opposition to them.
(_α_) In contrast to such a definite view, which is based upon the essential character of dramatic poetry itself, it is a feature of modern notions on the subject, particularly so among ourselves, to regard the organization of drama with a view to its theatrical reproduction as unessential and subsidiary, although as a fact all dramatic authors, even when they adopt this attitude of indifference and contempt, entertain the wish and hope to see their compositions on the stage. The result is that the greater number of more recent dramas are unable ever to find a stage, and the simple reason of this is that they are undramatical. We are not of course, therefore, in a position to deny that a dramatic composition may satisfy the conditions of genuine poetry in virtue of its intrinsic worth. What we affirm is that it is only to an action, the dramatic course of which is admirably adapted to theatrical representation, that we are to attribute such intrinsic dramatic worth. The best authority for such a statement is supplied by the Greek tragedies. It is true that we no longer see these on the contemporary stage, but they do nevertheless, if we regard the facts more closely, completely satisfy us to a real extent precisely on this ground that they were written without reserve for the theatre of their day. What has banished them from the theatre of today is not so much the character of their dramatic organization, which differs mainly from that of to-day in its employment of the chorus, as in the nature of national predilections and conditions, upon which for the most part, if we consider their content, they are based, and in which owing to the distance in which they are placed relatively to our own contemporary life we are unable now to feel ourselves at home. The malady of Philoctetes, for instance, the loathsome ulcer on his foot, his ejaculations and outcries, are as little likely to awaken the genuine interest of a modern audience as the arrows of Hercules, about which the main course of that drama revolves. In a similar way, though we may admit the barbaric cruelty of the human sacrifice in the Iphigeneia in Aulis and Tauris in an opera, we find it absolutely necessary in tragedy at any rate that this aspect should be wholly revised as Goethe has in fact done.
(_β_) The difference, however, thus indicated between ancient and modern customs, which effects the mere perusal of such works, no less than the complete and vital reproduction of them as a whole, has had the further effect of pointing out to us another by-way, in which poets to some extent deliberately fashion their work exclusively for the reader's perusal, and in a manner by which the difficulty above indicated no longer affects the character of such compositions. There are no doubt in this connection isolated points of view, which merely refer to features of external form, which are implied in the so-called knowledge of the stage, and an indifference as to which does not lessen the poetical worth of a dramatical production. To these belong, for example, the careful regulation of the scenic arrangements, that one scene can follow without difficulty after another, though it requires great alterations in the scenery, or that the actor is given sufficient time to make the necessary change of costume, or to recover from his previous exertions. A knowledge and aptitude of this nature is neither indicative of any poetical superiority or the reverse; they rather depend upon the naturally varying and conventional arrangements of the theatre. There are, however, other features relatively to which the poet, in order to be truly dramatical, must have the animated reproduction visibly present in its substance, must make his _dramatis personae_ speak and act conformably thereto, that is, in complete congruity with an actually present realization. Viewed in this light theatrical reproduction is a real test. For in the presence of the supreme court of appeal of a sound and artistic public the mere speeches and tirades of our so-called exquisite diction, if dramatic truth is not thereby asserted, will not hold water. There are periods, no doubt, in which the public also is corrupted by the culture it is the fashion so highly to praise, I mean by heads generally overstocked with the current opinions and fancies of the connoisseur and critic.
Let it however only retain its own essentially sterling commonsense, and it will only be satisfied in those cases where characters express themselves and act precisely as the reality of life no less than art demands and necessitates. If the poet, on the contrary, writes exclusively for the single reader he very readily gets no further than making his characters speak and behave much as they might do in an epistolary correspondence. If any one thus gives us the reasons for his aims and what he does, or unbares his heart in any other respect, instead of that which we should at once remark thereupon we get between the receipt of the letter and our immediate reply time for all kinds of reflection and idea. The imagination opens in this case a wide field of possibilities. In the _actually present_ speech and rejoinder we have to presuppose that as between man and man the volition and heart, the movement of feeling and decision are more direct, that in short the dialogue passes on without any such recourse to considerable reflection, but at once from soul to soul, as eye to eye, mouth to mouth, and ear to ear. Only in such a case the actions and speeches are expressed with life from the actual personality, who has no time left him to make a careful selection from one out of many possibilities. Under this view of the case it is not unimportant for the poet throughout his composition to keep his eye on the stage, which renders such a direct type of animation necessary. Nay, for myself I go to the length of maintaining that no dramatic work ought to be printed, but rather, as no doubt with the ancients, it should belong to the stage repertory in manuscript form,[21] and only receive quite an insignificant circulation. We should at least in that case limit very considerably the present superabundance of dramas, which it is possible possess the speech of culture, fine sentiments, excellent reflections, and profound thoughts, but which are defective in the very direction which makes a drama dramatical, that is, in the display of action, and the vital movement which belongs to it.
(_γ_) In the mere _perusal_ and _reading aloud_ of dramatic compositions we find a difficulty in deciding whether they are of a type which would produce the due effect from the stage. Even Goethe, whose experience of stage management in his later years was exceptional, was far from being dependable on this head, a result no doubt mainly due to the extraordinary confusion of our public taste, which is able to accept with approval almost anything and everything.
If the character and object of the _dramatis personae_ are on their own account great and substantive the manner of composition no doubt presents less difficulty. But as regards the motive force of interests, the various phases in the progress of the action, the suspended interest and development of situations, the just degree in which characters assert their effect on each other, the appropriate force and truth of their demeanour and speech--in all such respects the mere perusal unassisted by a theatrical performance can only in the rarest cases arrive at a reliable decision. Reading a work aloud is only under great qualification a further assistance. Speech in drama requires the presence of separate individuals. The delivery of _one voice_, however artistically it may adapt itself to different shades of tone in alternate or varying change is insufficient. Add to this the fact that in reading aloud we are throughout confronted with the difficulty whether on every occasion the persons speaking should be mentioned or not. Both alternations are equally open to objection. If the delivery is that of one voice the statement of the names of the characters speaking becomes an indispensable condition of intelligibility, but by doing so the expression of pathos throughout suffers violence. If, on the other hand, the delivery is vitally dramatic, and we are carried thereby into the actual situation, a further kind of contradiction can hardly fail to appear. For with the satisfaction of our sense of hearing that of sight puts forward a certain claim of its own. For when we listen to an action we desire to see the acting persons, their demeanour and surroundings; the eye craves for a completed vision, and finds instead before it merely a reciter, who sits or stands peacefully in a private house with company. Reading aloud or recitation is consequently always an unsatisfying compromise between the unambitious pretensions of private perusal, in which the aspect of realization is absent entirely and all is left to the imagination, and the complete theatrical presentation.
(_b_) _The Art of the Actor_ In conjunction with actual dramatic reproduction there is along with music a second practical art, namely, that of _acting_, the complete development of which belongs entirely to more recent times. Its principle consists in this, that while it summons to its assistance dramatic posture, action, declamation, music, dance, and scenery, it accepts as the predominant mark of its effort human speech and its poetical expression. And this is for poetry in its simplest significance the exclusively just relation. For if mere mimicry or song or dance once begin to assume an independent position of their own, poetry viewed as a fine and creative art is degraded to the position of an instrument, and loses its ascendancy over the in other respects accompanying arts. We will venture to point out a few characteristic distinctions in this connection.
(_α_) The primary phase of the art of acting is to be found among the Greeks. Here, as one aspect of the matter, the art of speech is affiliated with that of sculpture. The acting _dramatis personae_ stands before us as an objective figure in his entire bodily realization. In so far as here this statuesque figure is animated, assimilates and expresses the content of the poetry, enters into every movement of personal passion and at the same time asserts it through word and voice, this presentation is more animated and more spiritually transparent than any statue or picture.
As to this quality of living animation we may draw a distinction between two distinct ways of regarding it.
(_αα_) _First_, there is declamation in the sense of artistic speech.
Declamation was not carried far among the Greeks; intelligibility is here what is of most importance. We desire to recognize in the tone of the voice and in the quality of the recitations the characterization of soul-life in its finest shades and transitions, as also in its oppositions and contrasts, in short, in its entire concreteness.
The ancients, on the contrary, added a musical accompaniment to declamation, partly to emphasize rhythm, and in part to increase the modulation of the verbal expression. At the same time it is probable that the dialogue was either not at all or only very lightly accompanied. To the reproduction of the choruses, however, the lyric association of music was essential. It is highly probable that singing, by means of its more definite accentuation of the meaning of the language used in the choice strophes and antistrophes, made the same more intelligible; only under such an assumption can I myself understand how it was possible for a Greek audience to follow the choruses of either Æschylus or Sophocles. I admit that such choruses might not necessarily present to a Greek all the difficulties _we_ ourselves experience; at the same time I confess that, though I know the German language well and am not wholly destitute of imagination, German lyrics written in the same style, if declaimed from the stage, even with the full accompaniment of song, would still be far from wholly intelligible.
(_ββ_) A _further_ means of interpretation is supplied by the pose and movement of the body. In this respect it is worth noticing that with the Greeks the play of facial expression is entirely absent, by reason of the fact that their actors wore masks. The facial contour returned an unalterable sculpturesque image, the plastic outlines of which were as unable to assimilate the varied expression of particular states of soul, as to reproduce the acting characters, which fought through a pathos securely fixed and universal in the nature of its dramatic conflict, and neither deepened the substance of this pathos to the ideal intensity of our modern emotional life, nor suffered it to expand into all the particularization of the world of dramatic individualities now in vogue. The action was equally simple, for which reason we do not possess any tradition of famous Greek mimes. Sometimes the poet himself was actor; both Sophocles and Aristophanes are examples. To some extent the mere citizen, who was not strictly a professional actor at all, took a part in tragedy. As a set-off to such difficulties the choric songs were accompanied with the dance, a procedure which can only appear frivolous to us Germans in the view we generally take of the dance. With the Greeks it belonged as an essential feature to their theatrical performances.
(_γγ_) To summarize, then, we find that among the ancients not only was the poetical claim of language, and the intelligible expression of general emotional states, freely admitted, but also the external realization received the most complete elaboration by means of musical accompaniment and the dance. A concrete unity of this kind gives to the entire presentation a plastic character. What is spiritual is not on its own account idealized as part of a personal soul-life, nor is it expressed under such a mode of particularization; the main effect is to bring about its complete affiliation and reconciliation with the external aspect of sensuous appearance whose correspondent claim is equally recognized.
(_β_) In rivalry with music and the dance speech suffers injury, in so far as it ought to remain the _spiritual_ expression of spirit. Our modern art of the theatre has consequently succeeded in liberating itself from such features. The poet is by this means exclusively placed in a relation to the actor simply, who, by his declamation, play of facial expression, and posture, has to represent to vision the poetical work. This relation of the author to the external material is, however, in its contrast to other arts, quite unique. In painting and sculpture it is the artist himself, who executes his conceptions in colour, bronze, or marble; and although musical execution is dependent upon the hands and voices of others, yet the feature thus added, albeit, of course, the element of soul in the delivery ought not to be absent, is none the less, to a more or less degree, overwhelmingly mechanical technique and virtuosity.[22] The actor, on the contrary, appears before us in the entire personality which combines his bodily presence, physiognomy, voice, and so forth, and it is his function to coalesce absolutely with the character he portrays.
(_αα_) In this respect the poet has the right to demand of the actor that he enters with all his faculties into the part he receives, without adding thereto anything peculiar to himself, that, in short, he acts in complete consonance with the creative conception and means of its display supplied by the poet. The actor ought, in fact, to be the instrument upon which the author plays, an artist's brush which absorbs all colours and returns the same unchanged. Among the ancients this was more easily achieved for the reason that declamation, as above stated, was mainly restricted to clarity of meaning, and music looked after the aspect of rhythm, while masks concealed the faces, and, moreover, not much scope was left to the action. Consequently, the actor could without real difficulty conform in his delivery to a universal tragic pathos; and although too, in comedy, portraits of living people such as Socrates, Nicias, Creon, and so forth, had to be represented, in a real measure the masks reproduced characteristic traits with sufficient force, and further we should note that a detailed individualization was less necessary, inasmuch as the comic poets, as a rule, merely introduced such characters in order to represent general tendencies of the time.
(_ββ_) The position is different in the modern theatre. Here, to start with, we have no masks or musical accompaniment, but have instead of these the play of facial expression, the variety of pose, and a richly modulated style of declamation. For, on the one hand, human passions, even when they are expressed by the poet in a more general and typical characterization, have none the less to be asserted as part of an inner and personal life; and for the rest our modern characters receive, for the most part, a far more extended compass of particularization, the distinctively appropriate expression of which has in the same way to be placed before us with all the animation of present life. The characters of Shakespeare are, above all, entire men, standing before us in distinctively unique personality, so that we require of our actors that they, for their part, give us back the entire impression of such complete creations. There is no specific rôle here that does not require a definite kind of expression fitted to it, and which covers in fact every feature of its display, whether we regard that which we cannot see or that which we do, whether it be in the tone of the voice, the mode of delivery, gesticulation, or facial expression. For this reason, apart from the nature of the dialogue, the varied character of the pose and gesture, through every possible shade, receives an entirely new significance. In fact, the modern poet leaves to the actor self-expression here much that the ancients would have expressed in words. Take the example of the final scene of Wallenstein. The old Octavio has assisted materially in the downfall of Wallenstein. He finds him treacherously murdered by the machinations of Buttler, and at the very moment when the Countess Terzky makes the announcement that she has taken poison, an imperial letter arrives. Gordon, after reading the same, hands it to Octavio with a glance of reproach, adding the words, "To the Lord Piccolomini." Octavio is confounded, and, pained to the heart, glances heavenwards. That which Octavio experiences in this reward for a service, for the bloody issue of which he himself is mainly responsible, is in this passage not expressed in so many words, but is left solely to the gesture of the actor.
(_γγ_) Owing to demands of this kind made by our modern art of acting, poetry may, relatively to the material of its presentation, not unfrequently opens up difficulties unknown to the ancients. In other words, the actor, being the man he is, possesses, in respect to voice, figure, physiognomical expression, as everybody else, his native peculiarities, which he is compelled to set on one side, either owing to their incompatibility with a pathos of universal import and a really typical characterization, or to bring them into harmony with the more complete personalities of a type of poetry rich in its power of individualization.
Actors claim the title of artists, and receive all the honours of an artistic profession. According to our modern ideas, no taint of any sort, whether ethical or social, is implied in the fact of being a dramatic actor. This view is the right one. The profession demands conspicuous talent, intelligence, perseverance, energy, practice, knowledge, and, indeed, its highest attainment is impossible without the rare qualities of genius. The actor has not only to assimilate profoundly the spirit of the poet and the part he accepts, and to make his own individuality conform entirely to the same, both inwardly and outwardly; he has, over and above this, in many respects to supplement the part with his own creative insight, to fill in gaps, to discover modes of transition, and generally, by his performance, to interpret the poet by making visibly and vitally present and intelligible meanings which lie beneath the surface, or the less obvious touches of a master's hand.
(_c_) _The Theatrical Art which is more Independent of Poetical Composition_ Finally, we shall have that further, or _third_ aspect of the art in its actual employment, where it liberates itself from the exclusive precedency of articulate poetry, and accepts as an independent end what was previously, to a more or less extent, a mere accompaniment or instrument, and elaborates the same on its own account. To carry out this emancipation, music and the dance are quite as much essential features of the dramatic development as the art of the actor simply.
(_α_) In respect to this change in the art, there are broadly speaking two systems. The first, according to which the performer tends to be simply in spirit and body the living instrument of the poet, we have already referred to. The French, who make much of professional rôles[23] and schools, and are, as a rule, more typical in their theatrical representations, have shown an exceptional fidelity to this system in their tragedy and _haute comédie_. What we may define here as the position of the art of acting reversed consists in this, that the entire creation of the poet now tends to be purely an appendage or frame to and for the natural endowment, technical ability, and art of the actor. It is by no means uncommon to hear actors make the demand that poets should write expressly for them. The soul function of poetical composition is, in this view, to give the artist an opportunity to display and unfold in all its brilliance his emotional powers and art, to let us see the final outcome of his particular individuality. Among the Italians, the _commedia dell' arte_ belongs to this type. Here, no doubt, we have certain definite types of character such as those of the _arlecchino_, _dottore_, and the like, with appropriate situations and series of scenes; the more detailed execution is, however, almost entirely left to the discretion of the actors. Among ourselves, the dramatic pieces of Iffland and Kotzebue, and many others besides, though in large measure regarded as poetry, unimportant or even bad compositions, nevertheless offer such an opportunity for the creative powers of the actor, who is compelled to initiate and shape something from such generally sketchy and artificial productions, which on account of a vital and independent performance of this kind receives a unique interest exclusively united to one and no other artist. It is here, more especially, that we find our much belauded realistic effects are displayed, a style carried to such lengths that a mere mumble and whisper of articulate speech, quite impossible to follow, will pass as an admirable performance. In protest to such a style, Goethe translated Voltaire's "Tancred" and "Mahomet" for the Weimar stage, in order to compel its actors to drop this vulgar naturalism, and accustom themselves to a more noble exposition.
And this is invariably the case with the French, who, even in all the animation of the farce, always keep the audience in view, and throughout address themselves to it. As a matter of fact, mere realism and imitation of our everyday expression is as little exhaustive of the real problem as the mere intelligibility and clever use made of characterization. If an actor seeks to produce a really artistic effect in such cases, he will have to extend his powers to a genial virtuosity similar to that I have described already in a previous passage when referring to musical execution.[24] (_β_) A _second_ province belonging to the type under consideration is that of the modern _opera_, in the direction, at least, which it more and more is inclined to take. In other words, although in opera, generally speaking, the music is of most importance, which of course possesses a content in partnership with the poetry and the libretto, albeit it treats and executes the same freely as it thinks best, yet in more recent times, and particularly among ourselves, it has become increasingly an affair of luxurious display. It has carried its _accessoires_, in the splendour of its decorations, the pomp of its costumes, the completeness of its choruses and their grouping, to a degree of independence that throws all else into the shade. It was a magnificence of this kind, sufficiently criticized among ourselves, which Cicero long ago complains of when referring to Roman tragedy. In tragedy, where the poetry is always the most essential thing, such a lavish display of the sensuous side of things is no doubt not in its right place, although Schiller, in his "Maid of Orleans," shows a tendency here to run astray. In the opera, on the contrary, with its sensuous exuberance of song and the melodic, thundering chorus of voices and instruments, we may with more reason admit such an emphasized charm of external embellishment and display.
If the decorations are splendid, then the groups and processions, to give point to them, must be equally gorgeous, and everything else must be adapted to the same scale. The subject most suited to a sensuous luxuriance of this kind, which, no doubt, is always some indication of the decline of genuine art, is that part of the entire performance which inclines to the wonderful, fantastic, or fairy tale. Mozart, in his "Magic Flute," has supplied us with an example which is not too extravagant, and is worked out on completely artistic lines. At the