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Soul in the System: on Meaning and Mystique in Stanislavski and A. C. Bradley

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Abstract

Although literary criticism has moved on since the work of A. C. Bradley, his Shakespearian Tragedy (1904) is still regarded as the greatest achievement of the ‘biographical’ approach to dramatic characterization – and a reprint of that classic work, with a new introduction by John Russell Brown, has just appeared from Macmillan. But the teachings of his close contemporary Stanislavski remain more widely disseminated than disputed, though they spring from very similar assumptions and concerns. Alice Rayner, an assistant professor at University of California, Irvine, investigates what the writings of the two men had in common, how their insights and approaches can be mutually revealing – and how some of their underlying beliefs can be the cause of mystification.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

Notes and References

1. , Aristotle, Poetics, ed. and trans. Else, Gerald F. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967), p. 28 (39; 50b)Google Scholar.

2. Bradley, A. C., Shakespearean Tragedy (Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Co., Meridian Books, 1955; reprinted, St Martin's Press, 1904), p. 13Google Scholar.

4. Ibid., p. 12.

5. Ibid., p. 13.

6. Ibid., p. 29.

7. Ibid., p. 12.

8. Ibid., p. 21.

9. Stanislavski, Constantin, An Actor Prepares, trans. Reynolds, Elizabeth Hapgood (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1966), p. 19Google Scholar.

10. Ibid., p. 14.

11. Ibid., p. 15.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid., p. 14.

14. Ibid., p. 16.

15. Ibid., p. 21–2.

16. Bradley, p. 29.

17. Ibid., pp. 29–30.

18. Stanislavski, p. 27.

19. Bradley, p. 25–6.

20. Ibid., p. 308.

21. Ibid.