Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Part 1 Introduction
- Part 2 Performance and context
- 1 Actors and acting
- 2 The show business economy, and its discontents
- 3 Victorian and Edwardian stagecraft
- 4 Music for the theatre
- 5 Victorian and Edwardian audiences
- 6 Performing identities
- Part 3 Text and context
- Select bibliography
- Index
- Series List
3 - Victorian and Edwardian stagecraft
techniques and issues
from Part 2 - Performance and context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- Part 1 Introduction
- Part 2 Performance and context
- 1 Actors and acting
- 2 The show business economy, and its discontents
- 3 Victorian and Edwardian stagecraft
- 4 Music for the theatre
- 5 Victorian and Edwardian audiences
- 6 Performing identities
- Part 3 Text and context
- Select bibliography
- Index
- Series List
Summary
When we think of the Victorian theatre's staging techniques, two complementary tendencies come to mind, which stand out in the requirements indicated by the stage directions in the acting editions of the scripts. One is spectacle, and in particular, the kind of effect described vividly in 1881 by Percy Fitzgerald in The World Behind the Scenes:
All will recall in some elaborate transformation scene how quietly and gradually it is evolved. First the “gauzes” lift slowly one behind the other - perhaps the most pleasing of all scenic effects - giving glimpses of “the Realms of Bliss,” seen beyond in a tantalizing fashion. Then is revealed a kind of half-glorified country, clouds and banks, evidently concealing much. Always a sort of pathetic and at the same time exultant strain rises, and is repeated as the changes go on. Now we hear the faint tinkle - signal to those aloft on “bridges” to open more glories. Now some of the banks begin to part slowly, showing realms of light, with a few divine beings - fairies - rising slowly here and there. More breaks beyond and fairies rising, with a pyramid of these ladies beginning to mount slowly in the centre. Thus it goes on, the lights streaming on full, in every colour and from every quarter, in the richest effulgence. In some of the more daring efforts, the femmes suspendues seem to float in the air or rest on the frail support of sprays or branches of trees. While, finally, perhaps, at the back of all, the most glorious paradise of all will open, revealing the pure empyrean itself, and some fair spirit aloft in a cloud among the stars, the apex of all. Then all motion ceases; the work is complete; the fumes of crimson, green, and blue fire begin to rise at the wings; the music bursts into a crash of exultation, and possibly to the general disenchantment, a burly man in a black frock steps out from the side and bows. Then to [a] shrill whistle the first scene of the harlequinade closes in, and shuts out the brilliant vision.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
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