[i]PLAYS

ACTING AND MUSIC

A BOOK OF THEORY

BY

ARTHUR SYMONS

LONDON
CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD
1909

PREFACE

When this book was first published it contained a large amount ofmaterial which is now taken out of it; additions have been made, besidesmany corrections and changes; and the whole form of the book has beenremodelled. It is now more what it ought to have been from the first; whatI saw, from the moment of its publication, that it ought to have been: abook of theory. The rather formal announcement of my intentions which Imade in my preface is reprinted here, because, at all events, theprogramme was carried out.

This book, I said then, is intended to form part of a series, on whichI have been engaged for many years. I am gradually working my way towardsthe concrete expression of a theory, or system of æsthetics, of allthe arts.

In my book on "The Symbolist Movement [viii]in Literature" I made afirst attempt to deal in this way with literature; other volumes, now inpreparation, are to follow. The present volume deals mainly with thestage, and, secondarily, with music; it is to be followed by a volumecalled "Studies in Seven Arts," in which music will be dealt with ingreater detail, side by side with painting, sculpture, architecture,handicraft, dancing, and the various arts of the stage. And, as life toois a form of art, and the visible world the chief storehouse of beauty, Itry to indulge my curiosity by the study of places and of people. A bookon "Cities" is now in the press, and a book of "imaginary portraits" is tofollow, under the title of "Spiritual Adventures." Side by side with thesestudies in the arts I have my own art, that of verse, which is, after all,my chief concern.

In all my critical and theoretical writing I wish to be as littleabstract as possible, and to study first principles, not so much as theyexist in the brain of the theorist, but as they may be discovered, aliveand in [ix]effective action, in every achieved form of art.I do not understand the limitation by which so many writers onæsthetics choose to confine themselves to the study of artisticprinciples as they are seen in this or that separate form of art. Each arthas its own laws, its own capacities, its own limits; these it is thebusiness of the critic jealously to distinguish. Yet in the study of artas art, it should be his endeavour to master the universal science ofbeauty.

1903, 1907.

CONTENTS