I sometimes think : essays for the young people / by Stephen Paget.

  • Stephen Paget
Date:
1916
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: I sometimes think : essays for the young people / by Stephen Paget. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    might be very good: for you might get a pleasant sense that you were reading it with moving illustra¬ tions. The ordinary theatrical films cannot give you this sense. They are surprisingly clever. Only, the better they are, the more you want to have the real thing: to hear the voices, to see the players them¬ selves. You cannot be properly thrilled by the best of heroines tied to a stake, nor by the worst of villains with a revolver: she is shrieking at the top of her voice—look at the size of her mouth—but where is the shriek ? He fires—look at the smoke— but where is the bang? You are mildly excited : but you are not so excited as you ought to be : you know, all the time, that you are not at the play: you are at an optical illusion, looking with more or less interest at a scientific toy. Give me leave to hammer at this point: for I want to make it clear to you and to myself. First, let us be agreed that a play on the stage is worth a thousand plays on the screen : for it is the real thing: it is real voices, living presences: the interpreters are there, as real as real can be. The artifices and conventions of play-acting do not spoil the reality of the play: it is only unimaginative minds which are baulked by them. A good play, well acted, satisfies and educates something in us which nothing else can reach. Call it the imagination, or the emotions, or whatever you like: the love of a good play is too old and too natural to care what name you give to it. A play
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