From the old half-religious
pantomimic and suggestive dances out of which the beginnings of the real
drama grew to the fully religious pantomimes of medieval ages and,
further on, to many silent mimic elements in modern performances, we
find a continuity of conventions which make the pantomime almost the
real background of all dramatic development. We know how popular the
pantomimes were among the Greeks, and how they stood in the foreground
in the imperial period of Rome. Old Rome cherished the mimic clowns, but
still more the tragic pantomimics. "Their very nod speaks, their hands
talk and their fingers have a voice." After the fall of the Roman empire
the church used the pantomime for the portrayal of sacred history, and
later centuries enjoyed very unsacred histories in the pantomimes of
their ballets. Even complex artistic tragedies without words have
triumphed on our present-day stage. "L'Enfant Prodigue" which came from
Paris, "Sumurun" which came from Berlin, "Petroushka" which came from
Petrograd, conquered the American stage; and surely the loss of speech,
while it increased the remoteness from reality, by no means destroyed
the continuous consciousness of the bodily existence of the actors.
Moreover the student of a modern pantomime cannot overlook a
characteristic difference between the speechless performance on the
stage and that of the actors of a photoplay.
Pages:
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149