A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre Read online

  THEORETICAL APPROACHES

  Definitions

  The terms “Naturalism” and “Realism” are particularly ambiguous. As critical labels they are also applied both to a broad category of art in general, and to specific movements in the novel and in drama that may be related, but are by no means identical. In addition, each term tends to be used more imprecisely than other literary or artistic designations, and both have been defined in various competing, even mutually exclusive ways.

  In part this is due to their derivation from common words that have themselves gathered a wide set of meanings over time. Indeed, each has one of the longer entries in dictionaries. For instance, (in English, at least) the word “natural” originally related to justice, which was “based upon innate moral feeling; instinctively felt to be right” and evolved into “operating in accordance with the ordinary course of nature”. This then acquired connotations of “in a state of nature, without spiritual enlightenment … physical existence, as opposed to what is spiritual, intellectual or fictitious … formed by nature, not artificial. …” (The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1973). Thus the word “nature” itself is a variable and highly loaded concept that carries a strong moralistic charge – one that was intensified by the nineteenth-century evolutionary theory of nature established by Darwin.

  The focus on external physical existence, as opposed to internal or spiritual experience, is associated with scientific observation, as opposed to a poetic or visionary view. That is to say, the word “nature” – or its derivative, “Naturalism” – inherently expresses a philosophy of existence, and sets up normative assumptions.

  “Naturalism” and “Realism” are frequently interpreted in the broadest sense as synonyms, referring to an objective portrayal of daily life that appears true to the spectator or reader’s actual experience. The commonly accepted criteria for a realistic work are that it deals with contemporary subjects, presented in a recognizable social context and stressing ordinary details that accurately reflect the way people of the time actually live, without editorializing or external commentary. But, like the common adjectives on which “Naturalism” and “Realism” are based, even this apparently simple formulation is inherently problematic.

  The whole notion of “objectivity” in literature is questionable. It implies a statement that is impersonal, therefore generally valid, and factual. Yet all art (even communally produced art) is an individual, frequently very individualistic expression – and to the degree that artists are products of their age, expressing standards set by their social environment, their work is less likely to appear “objective” in a later period. Indeed the benchmark for “truth” – that the depiction corresponds with a public perception of what is “real” – is in fact a conditional and continually changing criterion, a point illustrated (inadvertently) by a critic of the “well-made play”:

  In drama as in prose fiction, realism is wanted. Every man judges what is laid before him by his own experience. Resemblance to what he is acquainted with is the measure of excellence.

  (The Era, 1871)

  Qualities seen as “realistic” are also determined by conventions of communication or representation – and these too evolve. As Gordon Craig pointed out, in their own day leading actors such as the Kembles, followed by Edmund Kean, Macready, then Henry Irving, and Antoine, had each successively been hailed as “natural”, only for each to be dismissed in turn as “artificial” by the supporters of their successors. This led him to conclude that all were “examples of a new artificiality – the artificiality of naturalism” [The Art of the Theatre, 1909]. Alternatively a depiction may be “neutral” in the sense of non-judgmental (another connotation of “objective”), but this is almost always little more than a rhetorical strategy in pursuit of some specific agenda – as with an emphasis on “daily life”, which automatically challenges hierarchical views of society privileging the actions of governments and rulers (almost exclusively men).

  One method of bypassing such confusions and imprecision is to substitute a more technical word, which escapes the ideological weighting of common usage, as Erich Auerbach has done in borrowing “Mimesis” to describe his study of Realism in Western literature (1946). In his argument, the whole thrust of European prose writing from the Old Testament to Edmond and Jules de Gon-court, and to Virginia Woolf, is mimetic – even if the concept of “reality” itself takes different forms in successive periods. But, however useful this term “mimesis” may be for categorizing literary types on the widest level, in terms of theatre it is unhelpful. On the stage the physical presence of actors in fictive situations automatically simulates human and social interactions, and by definition acting is imitative. Thus all theatre is “mimetic” to some degree – but what Shakespeare understood by the requirement (voiced through Hamlet) that the stage “Hold the mirror up to Nature” is very different from the aims of nineteenth-century naturalistic playwrights.

  More narrowly, the terms “Naturalism” and “Realism” refer to a specific literary and theatrical movement. This emerged in the latter half of the nineteenth century, reaching its high point in the 1880s and 1890s, and was overtaken by other forms in the 1920s – although the general qualities it introduced are still reflected in the dominant mode of drama today. However, even when used in this specific sense there is still a wide divergence in meanings given to the two words. Generally critics attempt to distinguish between Naturalism and Realism, using each as a label for various qualities. For instance:

  Although naturalism in the arts shares the mimetic mode with realism, it takes more explicit cognizance of environment, not merely as a setting but as an element of the action of drama. In an essay on English naturalism [English Drama: Forms and Development, 1977] Raymond Williams summarizes: ‘In high naturalism the lives of the characters have soaked into their environment … Moreover, the environment has soaked into the lives’… If the key play of realism is Ibsen’s Ghosts, that of naturalism is Tolstoi’s peasant Power of Darkness, forbidden in Russia but played in Paris in 1886.

  (The Cambridge Guide to Theatre, 1992)

  At one extreme, Zola and his fellow naturalists saw in the teachings of science license to emphasize the sordid and mechanistic aspects of life to the exclusion of all else. Their thinking was shadowed by a somber view of life, which threw a blighting chill of determinism on all human conduct. At the opposite extreme, realists of the Spencer-Fiske persuasion saw in science a buoyantly optimistic assurance of the perfectibility of mankind.

  (Theodore W. Hatlen, Orientation to the Theater, 1972)

  Thus in one standard reference work Ibsen’s Ghosts is labeled a defining example of Realism – presumably because heredity is the crucial factor – in contrast to the environmental stress in Tolstoi’s Power of Darkness, which is seen as the essential quality of Naturalism. In the other the distinction is between pessimism and optimism, so that Ghosts is classified along with Tolstoi’s Power of Darkness as a classic instance of Naturalism.

  Leaving aside the contradictions, the effect is to subdivide a broad movement, emphasizing a single quality at the expense of other elements. It would seem more helpful – as well as being truer to the historical facts – to understand both “Naturalism” and “Realism” as applying to the movement as a whole. At the same time, taking advantage of the subtle distinction between the two words for greater critical precision, it would be logical to use “Naturalism” to refer to the theoretical basis shared by all the dramatists who formed the movement, and their approach to representing the world. “Realism” could then apply to the intended effect, and the stage techniques associated with it. Thus the same play might be both naturalistic and realistic, with each term describing a different aspect of the work.

  The historical context

  The primary influences on the naturalistic movement were Darwin’s evolutionary theories of biology (On the Origin of Species, 1859), Claude Bernard’s scientific observation of human physiology (Introdu
ction à l’étude de la médecine experimentale, 1865) and Karl Marx’s economic analysis of society (Das Kapital, 1867) – plus, somewhat later, Sigmund Freud’s work on psychology (On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena, with Charcot, 1893; The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900). It also reflected the emergence of materialistic capitalism and the rise of middle-class democracy. There is general agreement that the crucial factors inspiring Naturalism were the perceptions that all life, human as well as animal, is in a process of continual evolution, and that human behavior can be explained through scientific analysis. These new ideas led to the assumption that peoples’ character and personality are formed by a combination of heredity and their social environment, plus the value placed on the individual. This meant that ordinary citizens, including workers and the poor (who had traditionally played at best supporting or comic roles in literature, particularly drama) became the protagonists, and attention focussed on the family. Perhaps even more significant though less widely noted, naturalistic drama – which established itself in the 1880s and 1890s – coincided with the early women’s movement, the struggle for legal equality and voting rights. It also coincided with a new sense of national identity in Scandinavia, and with the liberation of the serfs in Russia. All this was directly reflected in naturalistic plays.

  Although this democratization of literary subject in itself was not new, Naturalism represented a significant change in treatment. From its first development, the novel had dealt with characters drawn from the common population: e.g. Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, Richardson’s Pamela. There had also been isolated examples on the eighteenth-century stage – George Lillo’s The London Merchant (1731), or in Germany Gotthold Lessing’s Miss Sara Sampson (1755) and in France Denis Diderot’s The Natural Son (1757, first performed 1771). But the characters in these earlier works are either picaresque (Defoe’s prostitute-protagonist; Fielding’s virtuous servant, who turns out to be nobly born), sentimental idealizations (Richardson’s virginal heroine) and moral exemplars (the “domestic tragedy” of Lillo, Lessing, or Diderot). By contrast, the naturalistic approach is overtly scientific, presenting characters as case studies in human behavior or social problems.

  These precursors were followed by others in the first half of the nineteenth century, who gradually built up the technical basis for naturalist drama. Diderot’s theories in particular remained influential throughout the period. Attacking the rigid neo-classical division between tragedy and comedy, he called for a “serious genre”, which would mix tears and laughter and deal with the conditions of ordinary life. Situations and characters with which the audience could identify would touch their sentiments, creating a moral effect. On a practical level, the development of the “well-made play” by Eugène Scribe was equally significant. His structural principles for introducing and developing interlinked dramatic situations, with a denouement that leads into the next situation, until all strands of the plot are neatly resolved in the conclusion, created an impression of logical coherence. Theatrically effective, this structuring rapidly became codified. It allowed Scribe to produce over 350 plays between 1813 and his death in 1861 – ranging from one-act vaudevilles to a new form of historical/political comedy. This explored the idea that great events can be the result of the most trivial incidents, which had the effect of bringing major social issues down to a human scale. Such a perspective was realistic, at least in intention, and his structure offered a basis for early naturalistic dramaturgy.

  The story usually turned upon some secret, of which the audience was aware, but of which the hero knew nothing until the truth was conveniently revealed at the critical moment (not unlike the Greek anagnorisis or recognition). In the judgement of the critic Francisque Sarcey, this was the scene à faire, or obligatory scene … Indeed, in his preface to La Haine [Hatred] Sardou confessed that he invented the scene à faire first, and then worked out his plot backwards. It is little wonder that characters and situations looked much the same from play to play. Yet it was an immensely successful arrangement, and well into the twentieth century the aspiring playwright could still have found rules for writing a well-made play as laid down by William Archer in his Play-Making: A Manual of Craftsmanship (1912) or, in America, by George Pierce Baker, director of the famous workshop at Harvard, in his Dramatic Technique (1919).

  (J. L. Styan, Modern Drama in Theory and Practice I, 1981)

  Scribe’s “well-made” techniques were widely imitated during the mid-nineteenth century. His plays were staged – and copied – throughout Europe, from England to Norway, where Ibsen staged several Scribean pieces during his early career as artistic director of the Norwegian Theatre in Christiana. The result was to substitute technique for substance. As one contemporary observer commented, describing the most popularly successful play on the French stage in 1875, Ferréol by Victorien Sardou, Scribe’s most direct successor:

  The charm with M. Sardou is not of a very high quality; he makes a play very much as he would a pudding; he has his well-tested recipes and his little stores of sugar and spice, from which he extracts with an unimpassioned hand exactly the proper quantity of each. The pudding is capital, but I can think of no writer of equal talent who puts so little of himself into his writing. Search M. Sardou’s plays through and you will not find a trace of personal conviction, of a moral emotion, of an intellectual temperament, of anything that makes the ‘atmosphere’ of a work. They seem to have been produced in a moral vacuum.

  (Henry James, “The Parisian Stage”, New York Tribune, 29 January 1876)

  Two years before Ibsen’s first naturalistic play, The Pillars of Society, this standardized fare epitomizes the style of drama that the naturalists were reacting against. Indeed, on one level Naturalism was as much an aesthetic revolt as a moral or social revolution. In the words of the most influential naturalistic director, Konstantin Stanislavsky:

  The founding of our new Moscow Art and Popular Theatre was in the nature of a revolution. We protested against the customary manner of acting, against theatricality, against bathos, against overacting, against the bad manner of production, against the habitual scenery, against the star system which spoiled the ensemble, against the light and farcical repertoire which was being cultivated on the Russian stage at that time.

  (My Life in Art, 1926)

  However, even among Scribe’s followers in France, there were some who also paved the way for change. The most significant of these were Emile Augier, whose exposure of bourgeois hypocrisy and the false moral values of French society in the middle decades of the century was grounded in an extremely detailed depiction of social minutiae; and Dumas fits, who focussed on the Demi-Monde: the title for one of his plays produced in 1855. Augier wrote his final play – a condemnation of marriages arranged for monetary reasons – in 1878, while Dumas’ last important play – which explored marital infidelity – appeared in 1876. Each added elements that were picked up in naturalistic drama, specifically the method of building up a social context for the characters, and the use of social outcasts to condemn a moralistic Establishment.

  In addition, in 1873 Émile Zola’s play Thérèse Raquin (an adaptation of his novel) reached the stage. It traces the adulterous passion of a housewife, which drives her to drown her invalid husband – then, consumed by guilt for the murder, she persuades her lover to join her in a suicide pact. Thérèse is presented as a victim of her background: trapped not only by an unsatisfying, repressive marriage and an impoverished lower middle-class existence, but also by her physical desires and rigid moral principles. However, structurally it still follows the mechanics of the well-made play; and the characters’ emotions are portrayed melodramatically, as in the stage direction describing Thérèse’s paroxysm of self-accusation for being a murderess:

  She is seized by spasms, totters towards the bed, tries to drag herself up by one of the curtains which she tears away, and comes to rest momentarily leaning against the wall, gasping and dreadful.


  Despite these stylistic flaws – which were exacerbated by exaggerated traditional acting of the original performance – Thérèse Raquin served as a model for naturalistic playwrights. The play failed on the stage. But its focus on a woman who destroys herself under the pressures of society, and its detailed treatment of psychological struggle become standard features of plays by Ibsen, Strindberg, or Brieux.

  In terms of stage presentation a further element was contributed by an English playwright, who had served a long apprenticeship as actor and stage manager: T. W. Robertson. Though in structure his work was also influenced by Scribe, Robertson’s own productions of his plays provided meticulously detailed reproductions of Victorian social habits, which won them the label of “cup-and-saucer drama”. The most significant of these were Society in 1865 and Caste in 1867 – titles that embody his characteristic subject, the class system, as well as indicating a proto-naturalistic emphasis on the social group rather than a single protagonist. Robertson’s choice of the most ordinary details as dramatic material, in place of overtly theatrical action and the grand gestures of Romantic acting, also helped to lay the groundwork for naturalism. It is well illustrated in the closing act of Caste, where the stage directions show precisely why such plays were designated “cup-and-saucer drama”:

  POLLY sets tea things …

  SAM motions approbation to POLLY, not wanting HAWTREE to remain … SAM cuts enormous slice of bread, and hands it on point of knife to HAWTREE. Cuts small lump of butter, and hands it on point of knife to HAWTREE, who looks at it through eye-glass, then takes it. SAM then helps himself. POLLY meantime has poured out tea in two cups, and one saucer for SAM, sugars them, and then hands cup and saucer to HAWTREE, who has both hands full. He takes it awkwardly, and places it on table. POLLY, having only one spoon, tastes SAM’S tea, then stirs HAWTREE’S, attracting his attention by doing so. He looks into his tea cup. POLLY stirs her own tea, and drops spoon into HAWTREE’s cup, causing it to spurt in his eye. He drops eye-glass and wipes his eyes …