CLAUDIO VICENTINI - Acting Archives

227 Pages·2012·2.03 MB·English

CLAUDIO VICENTINI

THEORY OF ACTING
From Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century

MARSILIO & ACTING ARCHIVES

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Theory of Acting
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Marsilio & Acting Archives
Original Title: La teoria della recitazione. Dall’antichità al Settecento
© 2012 by Marsilio Editori s.p.a.® Venezia

Theory of Acting. From Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century
English translation by R. Bates (ch. I-III) and A. Weston (Introduction, ch. IV-VIII and Epilogue)
Online publication by kind concession of Marsilio Editori
© 2012 by Acting Archives
Acting Archives Essays. AAR Supplement 19
Napoli. December 2012
ISSN 2039-9766

Front Cover: François Boucher, Harpagon et La Flèche
© Courtesy of Rijksmuseum-Stichting Amsterdam
INDEX

9 INTRODUCTION

15 ACTING THEORY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
Divine Possession. Alteration and Contagion 15; Development of Dramatic Forms. Acting
as a Specialized Activity 18; Emotional Tension and Frenzy. Persistence of Ion’s Doctrine
21; Moderation and Self-Control. The Emergence of the Character 23; The New Form of
Emotional Involvement 24; The Actor’s Art and the Orator’s 27; The Use of Emotion
29; Emotion and Expression 31; The Techniques of Identification 33; Control and
Perfection of Expression 35; Possibility of an Anti-Emotional Theory 37

40 FROM THE CHURCH FATHERS TO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Theatre as a Source of Irrational Impulses 40; The Condemnation of Christian Authors
41; The New Image of Acting 45; The Humanist Ennobling of Theatre 46; Humanist
Experiments and Court Performances 48; Professional Actors and the Commedia
all’Improvviso 52; The Revival of Religious Opposition and the Actor’s New Status 56

62 THE EARLY ITALIAN TREATISES AND THE THEORETICAL ACTING MODEL
The Academicians Establish the First Rules of Acting. Giraldi Cintio’s Discorsi 62; Angelo
Ingegneri. Stage Characters as Reality Perfected 65; Leone de’ Sommi’s Dialoghi and Theory
Based on Stage Experience 68; The Writings of Pier Maria Cecchini 72; The Theoretical
Model of Acting. Flaminio Scala and the Decline of the Early Treatises 73

77 THE WORLD OF ORATORY. PERRUCCI, GRIMAREST AND GILDON
The Theatre Controversy 77; The Horizons of Oratory 79; Recitation: the Mysterious
Difference 84; The New Treatises. Andrea Perrucci, Recitation, Oratory and Commedia
all’Improvviso 88; Experience, Rules and the Insufficiency of Actio 91; Grimarest 95;
Gildon 99

108 THE BIRTH OF EMOTIONALISM
The Dramaturgic Function of Recitation 108; Natural Recitation 114; The Beginnings of
Emotionalism 117; Luigi Riccoboni. Acting by Improvisation 122; First Formulation of
the Emotionalist Theory 125; Criticism of Riccoboni. Reform of the Code and Franz
Lang’s Treatise 133; Jean-Baptiste Du Bos 139

143 THE CRITIQUE OF ACTING AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF EMOTIONALISM.
D’AIGUEBERRE, CIBBER, AARON HILL AND RÉMOND DE SAINTE-ALBINE
D’Aigueberre and the Founding of the Critique of Acting 143; Cibber’s Autobiography and
Garrick’s and Foote’s Essays 147; Aaron Hill 152; Rémond de Sainte-Albine’s Treatise
155; The Functions of Technique 160; The Problems of Emotionalism 163
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168 ANTIEMOTIONALISM. ANTOINE-FRANÇOIS RICCOBONI, LESSING, DIDEROT
English Versions of Le Comédien 168; Antoine-François Riccoboni’s L’art du Théâtre 170;
Lessing’s project 175; Sticotti and Diderot 181; Artistic Creation 184; The Paradoxe and
Its Reasoning. The Characteristics of Sensibility 186; Real Life-Theatre Difference. Actors
and Characters 190; The Problems of the Paradoxe 192

194 THE END OF CENTURY DEBATE. ENGEL, BOSWELL AND TOURON
The Late Eighteenth Century: a Profusion of Treatises 194; The Work of the Author, the
Creation of the Actor 196; Performing the Part. Study, Observation and Imitation 198;
The Function of Sentiment 204; Engel’s Treatise 206; Boswell and the Levels of
Interiority 2011; Touron 214

219 EPILOGUE

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THEORY OF ACTING
The present research would have been impossible without the help of a great number of
people who thoroughly deserve my warmest thanks. The collaboration of all those working
on Acting Archives Catalogue, the international archive and catalogue of treatises on acting
(www.actingarchives.it) compiled by the Università di Napoli “L’Orientale”, has been a sine
qua non in acquiring material, documents and information of every kind. Present editors are
Laura Ricciardi and Barbara Valentino. A number of invaluable personal details of the
biographies of British actors of the 1730s were very generously provided by Ines Aliverti.
Angela De Lorenzis undertook important research at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris,
while Giovanna Buonanno, Alda Terracciano and Barbara Valentino procured reproductions
of English treatises most of which from the British Library in London. The whole text has
been reread by and exhaustively discussed with Lorenzo Mango, and I am particularly
grateful to him for his very precise observations and the intense and ongoing exchange of
ideas on theories and techniques of acting at all stages of my work. Richard Bates and Anita
Weston produced a lively and confident English version of the text, and I owe particular
thanks to Anita Weston for the care and passion she put into the final overhauling of the
entire translation. Lastly, heartfelt thanks to Marsilio Editori for including La teoria della
recitazione in their catalogue and authorizing the online publication of the English version.

The various chapters of the present English version appeared separately in the “Essays”
Section of Acting Archives (www.actingarchives.it): Chapter I, AAR Supplement 1, April
2011; Chapter II, AAR Supplement 2, April 2011; Chapter, III, AAR Supplement 3, April
2011; Chapter IV, AAR Supplement 4, April 2011; Chapter V, AAR Supplement 5, April
2011; Chapter VI, AAR Supplement 14, February 2012; Chapter VII, AAR Supplement 16,
May 2012; Chapter VIII, AAR Supplement 17, May 2012.
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INTRODUCTION

In 1554 a dramatist and intellectual of some note at the court of Ercole II d’Este
in Ferrara, Giovan Battista Giraldi Cintio, published his considerable Discorso intorno
al comporre delle commedie e delle tragedie. This included a number of short considerations
on acting which if read nowadays would seem relatively insignificant, at least at first
sight. Their historical importance, however, is enormous, and reopened the discourse
on the art of acting after a thousand years of silence.
It is of course possible that unknown material has yet to emerge from some
archive. At the same time, the fact of the putative material having remained
undiscovered for so long, of interest to practically no-one across the centuries, is
significant and intriguing in itself.
In classical antiquity the art of acting was the object of study and reflection. We
know of the existence of documents on the subject which are no longer extant, while
a dialogue of Plato’s which has come down to us is entirely dedicated to the subject.
In Roman treatises on oratory the art of the actor is often cited as a model for
aspiring lawyers or politicians; the fathers of the Church, on the other hand, were
later to make shrewd comments on its corrupting or directly demonic power.
And then silence for some ten centuries. Certainly, even after Giraldi Cintio the
subject was hardly in everyone’s mouth. For the rest of the sixteenth century
theoretical debate was virtually inexistent, or limited to the Italian area, and the
seventeenth would seem to have ignored it. Then suddenly, literally, it exploded. In
the eighteenth century articles, essays, and interventions on the art of the actor
appeared by the score as acting took on the dimensions of an independent art form.
It imposed itself as an object of study within the culture of the age, demanding an
analysis of its regulating principles which was met with an energy and subtlety of
theoretical elaboration destined to develop for the whole of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries through to the present day.
The development of the theory of acting, then, at least in the western world, was
marked by a singular discontinuity unlike that of the other arts: literature, music, and
painting. More curiously perhaps, its development appears to be disconnected from
the development of acting itself. Acting had certainly not disappeared during the
thousand years of silence surrounding the art of the actor – the extraordinary period
of aphasia which lasted approximately from the sixth to the sixteenth century.
Accounts of performances in the early middle ages are few and far between, but we
know of very elaborate forms of European theatre in the centuries immediately
following which clearly required technically-skilful actors. Moreover, when acting
theory began to resurface in Italy in the mid sixteenth century, theatre had for some
decades been experimentally studied in schools, academies and courts as part of the
rediscovery of classical culture, resulting in an impressive corpus of works on
playwriting and the use of the stage and scenery. A timid interest in acting itself was
only evinced some time later.

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The situation in other European countries was very similar. During the
Elizabethan period London theatres were packed out, Shakespeare staged his plays,
and figures like Burbage became celebrities: but acting, as far as we know, was light
years away from theoretical scrutiny or reflection of any kind. It was never so much
as consistently recorded or reviewed, to the extent that we know nothing about the
means, forms and techniques used by Shakespearean actors.
When Corneille’s Le Cid was so well-received in France in 1637, various critics
expressed doubt as to the work’s intrinsic value, attributing its success to the skill of
the actors, Montdory and Mlle. Villiers. The public flocked to performances by
Molière’s company, while Racine gave an interpretative hand to the famous Mlle.
Champmeslé when she played his characters – but the first French treatise on acting
only appeared at the beginning of the new century, and it was later still before criteria
were defined to distinguish the art of the actor from cognate activities.
To review the history of acting from Greek and Roman antiquity through to the
eighteenth century, then, implies unpicking, or attempting to unpick, some of these
knots. This has to be predicated on one general consideration. The whole history of
the theatre, as opposed to simply acting, has grey areas – or perhaps, more precisely,
gaping black holes which seem to have escaped even the perception of
contemporaries, at no pains to analyze, theorize about, or in many cases even
document them. It was scholars of later centuries who identified these blind spots in
seeking to explain the curious lack of information on questions of maximum
importance. One example regarding Elizabethan theatre construction and spatial
organization of the stage is a case in point. All our knowledge of it rests,
astonishingly, on a rough sketch made by a Dutch traveller, and all historiographic
research can do is construct and deconstruct a series of hypotheses already
deconstructed at source by embarrassing uncertainty.
The explanation for the lack of any contemporary documentation or analysis
might seem obvious enough: clearly it was a sheer lack of interest in questions which,
for reasons entirely our own, we happen to find significant. But the explanation
won’t hold. An impresario building a theatre could hardly fail to be interested in the
materials, acoustics, viewing angles, seating-plan, entrances, and the positioning and
layout of the stage, just as the public would have a vested interest in seating and view
of the stage, and strong opinions as to the various actors’ merits, etc. It is hardly
feasible, in a word, that they would pay to stand for hours watching a performance
unless it held their full attention.
Enjoying a performance, of course, is one thing and treating it as an object of
study quite another. In the latter case it becomes a phenomenon to analyze,
rationalize, and record – and do so, moreover, according to criteria meeting the
requirements of scholars three- or four-hundred years in the future. All this depends
not on the interest assigned to a specific issue by its contemporaries, nor its intensity
and importance for them, but on the cultural configurations of the time, which select
some phenomena for precise methodological study and not others.
Every culture, in every period, has its silent zones: much-visited, perfectly
interesting loci which, however, elicit no fever of documentation or consistent and
systematic research. They are rarely recognized by their contemporaries, but they
exist. No-one today would deny the importance we ascribe to a view, whether
breathtaking or simply curious. Every hotel demands a sea- or mountain-view
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