Broadway Babylon Read Online Free PDF Page B

stations, and as the vehicle started to move, Edwin suddenly dropped his valise to seize a tall young man by the coat collar as he fell off the platform. Edwin hauled him up to safety. The grateful youth, recognizing the celebrity, exclaimed, “That was a narrow escape, Mr. Booth.” The youth was Abraham’s son Robert Lincoln.
    Q : What is a thespian?
    A : It’s now a generic word for actor. But Thespis of Icaria (or Icarus) was an actual Greek actor who made his stage bow at a dramatic festival honoring the god Dionysus over 2,500 years ago and won the laurel-leaf crown. To honor this deity of wine and revelry, audiences attended plays while under the influence—even though Greek plays (and later, Roman ones) began in the morning.
    Greeks called an actor “the answerer,” for he responded to the chorus. Our word “hypocrite” evolved from the Greek for acting, that is, playing a part. Greek moralists often criticized actors for telling
lies
—that is, saying lines. Thespis is considered the first individualistic actor. He shifted the emphasis away from the chorus and onto the actor. He focused on tragedies and created characterization. He accustomed Greeks to plots and conflict, where previously they’d listened to recitations.
    Q : Who was the first playwright?
    A : The earliest playwright whose work has survived is Aeschylus (525?–456 B.C.E.). He reportedly wrote some 22 tetralogies, of which four complete parts of some four-parters, three quarters of one, and a few assorted fragments of others remain. Aeschylus was the first of Greek tragedy’s Big Three; Sophocles and Euripides were more inclined to challenge theatrical conventions. However, before Aeschylus, Greek plays featured one actor, who played several parts in turn. This playwright initiated writing for two actors and the chorus—young Sophocles added a third actor.
    Aeschylus also reduced the chorus from 50 to 12, added simple properties (“props”) and painted backdrops, and introduced oratorio into drama.
    Q : How big was the Greek influence on (our) theater?
    A : It can be gauged by such words of Greek origin as: theater, drama, tragedy, comedy, also scene, episode, character, dialogue, music, mime, and chorus. Athenians called a producer “choregos,” a provider of the chorus. Over the millennia, “choregos” became associated more with chorus lines and the dance. In the first half of the twentieth century choreographers were usually known as dance directors. Unlike modern producers, those of ancient Greece weren’t in it for the money. Wealthier citizens were tapped to produce plays at dramatic festivals, a nonprofit honor viewed as a civic duty.
    Q : Who was the first theatergoer among English-speaking rulers?
    A : Charles II (c. 1660–1685) was the first to attend public performances. Elizabeth I (c. 1558–1603) was a theatrical devotee but didn’t go public with her pleasures. From 1649 to 1660, Britain was without a monarch, ruled by Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans, religious fundamentalists who abolished the theater.
    Q : When did actors first get into trouble in the US?
    A : In 1665, three actors in the American colonies—in Accomac County, Virginia (named after Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen)—were arrested for putting on a play.
Ye Beare and Ye Cubbe
was written by one of the trio, which was acquitted. Christianity generally frowned on plays; any entertainment not devised or controlled by the Church was suspect. Also, European Puritans didn’t move to America so much for religious freedom—which they usually had at home—as for the ability to impose their minority religious views on others.
    P.S.Virginia was less fanatical than several other colonies, hence the acquittal on the potentially grave charge of mounting a play.
    Q : We know that colonial America, influenced by the Puritans, was anti-theater. Did this change after independence?
    A : Some. Henry Ward Beecher was a famous preacher and pamphleteer in 1870s America.