How is the disturbing fact to be accounted for? Is it
possible that it is attributable to some decay in us of the
imagination--to a growing slowness on our part to appreciate works of
imagination? When one reflects on the simple mechanical contrivances
which satisfied the theatrical audiences, not only of Shakespeare's
own day, but of the eighteenth century, during which Shakespeare was
repeatedly performed; when one compares the simplicity of scenic
mechanism in the past with its complexity in our own time, one can
hardly resist the conclusion that the imagination of the theatre-going
public is no longer what it was of old. The play alone was then "the
thing." Now "the thing," it seems, is something outside the
play--namely, the painted scene or the costume, the music or the
dance.
Garrick played Macbeth in an ordinary Court suit of his own era. The
habiliments proper to Celtic monarchs of the eleventh century were
left to be supplied by the imagination of the spectators or not at
all. No realistic "effects" helped the play forward in Garrick's time,
yet the attention of his audience, the critics tell us, was never
known to stray when he produced a great play by Shakespeare.
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