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“Symbols in Silence”: Edward Gordon Craig and the Engraving of Wordless Drama

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2013

Jennifer Buckley
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Extract

In his book On the Art of the Theatre (1911), Edward Gordon Craig recounted seeing a sign on the stage door at the Munich Künstlertheater that momentarily made him think he had discovered “heaven.” “Sprechen Streng Verboten” (speaking strictly forbidden), it read. So eager was he to find comrades who shared his radical vision of a wordless drama that Craig had misread an ordinary request for backstage silence as a ban on onstage speech. Although he sadly admitted that the German theatre was not as advanced as he had hoped, Craig insisted that the sign contained the “clue” to a modern theatrical renaissance—one he believed himself fully prepared to begin, if only someone else would provide the funds.

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Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , May 2013 , pp. 207 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 2013

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References

Endnotes

1. Craig, Edward Gordon, On the Art of the Theatre (London: William Heinemann, 1911), 131Google Scholar.

2. Le Boeuf, Patrick, “On the Nature of Edward Gordon Craig's Über-Marionette,” New Theatre Quarterly 26.2 (2010): 102–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Senelick, Laurence, Gordon Craig's Moscow “Hamlet”: A Reconstruction (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1982)Google Scholar; Halpern, Richard, Shakespeare among the Moderns (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 239–45Google Scholar.

3. Taxidou, Olga, “The Mask”: A Periodical Performance by Edward Gordon Craig (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998)Google Scholar; Lavender, Andy, Hamlet in Pieces: Shakespeare Reworked by Peter Brook, Robert Lepage, Robert Wilson (London: Nick Hern Books, 2001), 30–4Google Scholar; Innes, Christopher, “Puppets and Machines of the Mind: Robert Lepage and the Modernist Heritage,” Theatre Research International 30.2 (2005): 124–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Aronson, Arnold, Looking into the Abyss: Essays on Scenography (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), esp. 5–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baugh, Christopher, Theatre, Performance, and Technology: The Development of Scenography in the Twentieth Century (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 46–61Google Scholar; and Howard, Pamela, What Is Scenography? 2d ed. (New York: Routledge, 2009), 182Google Scholar.

5. For a scathing critique, see Simonson, Lee, The Stage Is Set (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1932), 309–50Google Scholar.

6. On the merit of Craig's engravings, which differ greatly from those of his first teachers, see Garrett, Albert, A History of British Wood Engraving (Tunbridge Wells, Kent: Midas Books, 1978), 44–7Google Scholar; and Selborne, Joanna, British Wood-Engraved Book Illustration, 1904–1940: A Break with Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 29–31, 104–9Google Scholar. Wood engraving and woodcutting are both forms of relief printing, but the methods and results of the two processes differ. Craig sometimes used the two terms interchangeably.

7. Craig, Edward Gordon, Scene (London: Oxford University Press, 1923)Google Scholar, 19.

8. Innes, Christopher, Edward Gordon Craig: A Vision of Theatre (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998)Google Scholar, 4. Other critics discuss Craig's woodcuts and engravings without analyzing how the medium shaped his theatre work. See Bablet, Denis, Edward Gordon Craig (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1966), 33–5Google Scholar; and Senelick, 4, 99. Maria Ines Aliverti brings welcome attention to the role of print in Craig's career, but her comments are general and she does not suggest that wood engraving materially influenced Craig's theatre theory and practice. See Aliverti, “History and Histories in Edward Gordon Craig's Written and Graphic Work,” in Performing the Matrix: Mediating Cultural Performance, ed. Wagner, Meike and Ernst, Wolf-Dieter (Munich: ePodium, 2008), 201–22Google Scholar. Taxidou also rightly places print at the center of Craig's work, but her argument concerns The Mask itself, not the wood engravings that frequently appeared in its pages.

9. The term “kinetic stage” is used in Aliverti, 218, and in Eynat-Confino, Irène, Beyond the Mask: Gordon Craig, Movement, and the Actor (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), 101–18Google Scholar. Craig published etchings related to the “Scene” project in 1923 (see note 7).

10. On Aristotle's struggle to define drama as a poetic type, see Bennett, Benjamin, All Theater Is Revolutionary Theater (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 13–26Google Scholar. On the “historical drifting apart of text and theatre,” see Lehmann, Hans-Thies, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Jürs-Munby, Karen (London: Routledge, 2006)Google Scholar, 46; and Fischer-Lichte, Erika, “The Avant-Garde and the Semiotics of the Antitextual Gesture,” in Contours of the Theatrical Avant-Garde, ed. Harding, James M. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 79–95Google Scholar. For an extensive historical account, see Peters, Julie Stone, Theatre of the Book, 1480–1880: Print, Text, and Performance in Europe (Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar. For a theorization of the dramatic text informed by performance studies, see Worthen, W. B., “Drama, Performativity, and Performance,” PMLA 113.5 (1998): 1093–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Worthen, W. B., “Antigone's Bones,” TDR: The Drama Review 52.3 (2008): 10–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. Marinetti, F. T., Critical Writings, ed. Berghaus, Günter, trans. Thompson, Doug (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006)Google Scholar, 204; and Artaud, Antonin, The Theater and Its Double, trans. Richards, Mary Caroline (New York: Grove Press, 1958)Google Scholar, 37.

12. The term “retheatricalization” is used in Fischer-Lichte, Erika, The Show and the Gaze of Theatre: A European Perspective, ed. and trans. Riley, Jo (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1997), 115–32Google Scholar.

13. Craig, On the Art of the Theatre, 154.

14. Fisher, James, “‘The Colossus’ versus ‘Master Teddy’: The Bernard Shaw/Edward Gordon Craig Feud,” Shaw 9 (1989): 199–221Google Scholar.

15. J[ohn] S[emar] [Craig, Edward Gordon and Lees, Dorothy Nevile], “The Commedia dell'arte or Professional Comedy,” The Mask 3.7–9 (1911): 101Google Scholar; Hutton, Edward [Edward Gordon Craig], “The Real Drama in Spain,” The Mask 1.1 (1908): 5–8Google Scholar; and J[an] v[an] H[olt] [Craig, Edward Gordon], “Foreign Notes,” The Mask 1.2 (1908): 21Google Scholar.

16. The drawings for The Steps appear in Craig, Edward Gordon, Towards a New Theatre: Forty Designs for Stage Scenes, with Critical Notes by the Inventor, Edward Gordon Craig (London: J. M. Dent; and New York: E. P. Dutton, 1913), 41–5Google Scholar.

17. On The Steps, see Innes, Edward Gordon Craig, 138–41; and Bablet, 82–5.

18. [Craig, Edward Gordon], “Geometry,” The Mask 1.1 (1908): 1–2, at 2Google Scholar.

19. John Semar [Craig, Edward Gordon], “To Mr Andrew Carnegie,” The Mask 1.3–4 (1908): 72–4Google Scholar, at 74.

20. Craig, Edward Gordon, “Memories of Isadora Duncan,” The Listener 47.1214 (5 June 1952): 913–14Google Scholar. On Duncan's influence, see Innes, Edward Gordon Craig, 113–16; and Eynat-Confino, 62–71.

21. Serlio, Sebastiano, Libro primo d'architettura and Il secondo libro di perspettiva (Venice: unattributed, [1560])Google Scholar, EGC Fol. 156 (1–2) Rés., Fonds Edward Gordon Craig, Département des Arts du Spectacle, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

22. Eynat-Confino and Innes report that the woodcuts inspired Craig, but they focus on “Scene” itself, not on Craig's use of Serlio. Both plausibly add Manfred Semper's Handbuch der Architektur as a source for “Scene.” See Eynat-Confino, 112; and Innes, Edward Gordon Craig, 177–8.

23. Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture, vol. 1, Books I–V of Tutte l'opere d'architettura et prospetiva, ed. and trans. Hart, Vaughan and Hicks, Peter (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996)Google Scholar, 80. Craig's 1560 Italian edition of Serlio is paginated differently from the French–Italian 1545 edition of Books I and II that Vaughan and Hicks present.

24. Craig later dated these notes on the first flyleaf: “My first notes for ‘Scene’ 1906 / the etchings were made in 1907 / the book made in 1923.” Underlining and strikethroughs in original.

25. This description of “Scene” is dated 9 February 1907 in Craig's hand. Much of this text was printed in Craig, Edward Gordon, “Motion. Being the Preface to the Portfolio of Etchings,” The Mask 1.10 (1908): 185–6Google Scholar, at 186. Ellipses in original.

26. Edward Gordon Craig, “Serlio 1st version 23 August 1933,” 2, EGC MS B 123, Fonds Edward Gordon Craig.

27. Oliver, Julius [Edward Gordon Craig], “Design for a Stage Scene,” The Mask 1.2 (1908)Google Scholar: facing p. 8.

28. Craig, Edward Gordon, “Design for Scene,” The Mask 1.5 (1908)Google Scholar: facing p. 91.

29. Eynat-Confino, 115.

30. Edward Gordon Craig, “Scene, First version, not published” (1921), EGC MS B 52, 51r–53, Fonds Edward Gordon Craig.

31. Hamilton, James, Wood Engraving and the Woodcut in Britain c. 1890–1990 (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1994)Google Scholar, 19.

32. Several of the blocks, dated 1907–8, are housed in the Fonds Edward Gordon Craig. An autograph note on one of the Serlio flyleaves reads, “Woodcutting was too slow for me to manage & to get down (April–May 1907).” In 1907 Craig made a series of copperplate etchings in order to finish the job quickly. He published the etchings in the book Scene (1923). In 1908, Craig returned to wood-engraving his “Scene.” The prints published in The Mask were taken either from these blocks or from clichés made from them. See Craig, Edward [A.], Gordon Craig: The Story of His Life (New York: Limelight Editions, 1985), 238–9Google Scholar.

33. [E. A.] Craig, facing p. 232.

34. Craig, Scene, 19.

35. Craig later worked with carpenters to build a model of “Scene.” See [E. A.] Craig, 233.

36. Harry Kessler recounts in his diaries how Craig damaged his working relationship with Reinhardt. See Kessler, Journey to the Abyss: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler, 1880–1918, ed. and trans. Easton, Laird M. (New York: Knopf, 2011), 347–8Google Scholar.

37. On Craig's identification with Hamlet and his resentment of his mother, who married after the separation, see [E. A.] Craig, esp. 91, 110, and 258.

38. These comments appear in a transcription of the conversation. EGC MS B 25, Fonds Edward Gordon Craig; quoted in Senelick, 66.

39. Craig, true only to his own inconsistent character, also told Stanislavsky that “Shakespeare's ideas are in the words” and that the actors needed only to speak them clearly for the play to succeed. Ibid., quoted in Senelick, 78.

40. Edward Gordon Craig, Cahier de mise en scène pour Hamlet, EGC MS B 24, Fonds Edward Gordon Craig; Hazlitt, William, The Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, 2d ed. (London: Taylor & Hessey, 1818), 113Google Scholar.

41. [E. A.] Craig, 239.

42. L. M. Newman reports that these “Black Figures” were made of poplar or pear and that most measured 2–12 millimeters thick and 250–270 millimeters tall, though the Hamlet figures were smaller. Craig usually engraved on end-grain boxwood or holly; the Black Figures were fashioned out of soft wood, but he used engraving tools. Because of this, and because many of the Figures were later engraved on hardwood, I call them engravings. L. M. Newman, “Introduction,” in Craig, Edward Gordon, Black Figures: 105 Reproductions with an Unpublished Essay (Wellingborough: Christopher Skelton; Chalbury, Oxford: Senecio Press, 1989)Google Scholar, 19.

43. For the approximate date on which each Black Figure was designed and cut, see Craig, Black Figures, 146–60.

44. See Senelick, 67–8. On the use of the Black Figures and maquettes on model stages used to prepare the MAT production, see Senelick, 101–3, 114.

45. Edward Gordon Craig, “Wood-Engraving and the Theatre,” The Graphic, 23 December 1922, 956, quoted in Newman, 20.

46. Craig, Edward Gordon, Woodcuts, and Some Words (London: J. M. Dent, 1924)Google Scholar, 3.

47. Senelick, 100–2.

48. Craig, Edward Gordon, “The Actor and the Über-Marionette,” The Mask 1.2 (1908): 3–15Google Scholar, quotes at 9, 8, 5, 11. See also Craig, On the Art of the Theatre, 12.

49. Kessler often mixed them up. See Kessler, The Correspondence of Edward Gordon Craig and Count Harry Kessler, 1903–1937, ed. Newman, L. M. (London: W.S. Maney for the Modern Humanities Research Association and the Institute for Germanic Studies, University of London, 1995)Google Scholar, 146.

50. Newman, 20.

51. Craig, Black Figures, 33. Craig's spelling of the term “Über-marionette” varied.

52. For accounts of Bewick's work that stress the differences between his techniques and those of Craig and his contemporaries, see Selborne, 21-3; and Hamilton, 35–7.

53. This is a judgment Craig extended to the cinema: “We do not think it is an art at all.” [Edward Gordon Craig], review of Lindsay, Vachel, The Art of the Moving Picture, The Mask 8.2 (1918–19): 8Google Scholar. See also [Craig, Edward Gordon], “The Cinematograph,” The Mask 8.7 (1918–19)Google Scholar: 28.

54. Photographs of the MAT model stage are reproduced in Senelick, 85–107.

55. Craig, Woodcuts, and Some Words, 1.

56. Craig commented on Bewick in “A Lost Collaboration,” The Mask 14.3 (1928): 130–1Google Scholar, at 130.

57. Newman, 19.

58. Harley Granville-Barker, “The Theatre Exhibition in Manchester,” Manchester Guardian, 30 October 1922, 12, quoted in Newman, 26.

59. Edward Gordon Craig, Cahier de mise en scène pour Hamlet, EGC MS B 24, Fonds Edward Gordon Craig.

60. Kessler, Journey to the Abyss, 566–7; Easton, Laird M., The Red Count: The Life and Times of Harry Kessler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002)Google Scholar, 139.

61. Kessler hoped for a French edition featuring a translation by André Gide, but it never appeared. See Kessler, Correspondence, 129.

62. For a recent reading of the Cranach Press Hamlet as Craig's “aesthetic revenge,” see Garber, Marjorie, “A Tale of Three Hamlets or Repetition and Revenge,” Shakespeare Quarterly 61.1 (Spring 2010): 28–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 39.

63. Ibid., 104–9.

64. Craig preferred the short First Quarto of Hamlet, but Kessler had planned on using the Folio text until the scholar John Dover Wilson convinced him that the Second Quarto was more authentic; Kessler, Correspondence, 193 n. 51, 241–2. Thus, the English version of the Cranach Press Hamlet is a notable work of textual scholarship as well as of fine printing: it presents the first modern Q2, edited and annotated by Dover Wilson.

65. I refer to the 1930 English edition. The 1929 German edition, which Craig and Kessler found problematic, differs from it in several ways. See The Book as a Work of Art: The Cranach Press of Count Harry Kessler, ed. Brinks, John Dieter (Berlin: Triton Verlag; Williamstown, MA: Chapin Library, Williams College, 2005)Google Scholar.

66. Adela Spindler Roatcap has stated that Craig's illustrations function as a wordless version of Hamlet, but she does so only in passing and in the most general terms. See Roatcap, “Designing Literature; The Book as Theatre: The Cranach Press Hamlet,” Fine Print 14.1 (January 1988): 26–33Google Scholar. Eric T. Haskell has noted that Craig's engravings are “intended to retell the tale” of Hamlet, but he does not connect their “narrativity” to Craig's vision of a wordless drama. See Haskell, “Drawn to the Page: Hamlet and Illustration as Interpretation,” in “Theatre East and West Revisited,” ed. Davis, Carol, special issue, Mime Journal (2002–3): 104–23Google Scholar, at 106. Stephen Orgel has suggested that Craig's illustrations “sometimes . . . seem in control” of the typography, but like Haskell, he does not address Craig's theatre theory in detail. Furthermore, Orgel sees “the book of the play as a performance,” a conflation of page and stage that misconstrues Craig's uses of and investment in print. See Orgel, “The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole,” Shakespeare Quarterly 58.3 (2007): 290–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 310.

67. Craig, Woodcuts, and Some Words, 1–2.