French acting has always won and deserved admiration. There
is no doubt that one cause of its permanently high repute is the
absolute divorce in the French theatre of drama from spectacle.
Moliere stands to French literature in much the same relation as
Shakespeare stands to English literature. Moliere's plays are
constantly acted in French theatres with a scenic austerity which is
unknown to the humblest of our theatres. A French audience would
regard it as sacrilege to convert a comedy of Moliere into a
spectacle. The French people are commonly credited with a love of
ornament and display to which the English people are assumed to be
strangers, but their treatment of Moliere is convincing proof that
their artistic sense is ultimately truer than our own.
The mode of producing Shakespeare on the stage in Germany supplies an
argument to the same effect. In Berlin and Vienna, and in all the
chief towns of German-speaking Europe, Shakespeare's plays are
produced constantly and in all their variety, for the most part, in
conditions which are directly antithetical to those prevailing in the
West-end theatres of London. Twenty-eight of Shakespeare's
thirty-seven plays figure in the repertoires of the leading companies
of German-speaking actors.
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