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A Book About the Theater
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Matthews, Brander, 1852-1929
- Language:
- English
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource : multiple file formats
- Place of Publication:
- Salt Lake City, UT : Project Gutenberg,
- Summary:
- "A Book About the Theater" by Brander Matthews is a collection of essays written in the early 20th century. The work examines various aspects of theatrical arts and offers insights on the intricacies of the theater, from dramatic structure to performance techniques. Matthews, a professor of dramatic literature, brings both academic rigor and personal experience to his analysis, addressing topics that range from spectacle in theater to the nature of audience engagement. At the start of the book, Matthews sets the stage for his exploration by reflecting on the show business, tying it to historical figures like Disraeli and discussing their more theatrical approaches to politics. He emphasizes the integral relationship between drama and spectacle, asserting that all forms of entertainment, including theater, are ultimately about amusement. Through anecdotes and examples from various forms of theatrical expression, he begins to establish his thesis that understanding the art of the stage requires not only an appreciation of dramatic literature but also an awareness of its performance context and the evolving dynamics of audience engagement. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
- Contents:
- The show business
- The limitations of the stage
- A moral from a toy theater
- Why five acts?
- Dramatic collaboration
- The dramatization of novels and the novelization of plays
- Women dramatists
- The evolution of scene-painting
- The book of the opera
- The poetry of the dance
- The principles of pantomime
- The ideal of the acrobat
- The decline and fall of the negro-minstrelsy
- The utility of the variety-show
- The method of modern magic
- The lamentable tragedy of Punch and Judy
- The puppet-play, past and present
- Shadow-pantomime, with all the modern improvements
- The problem of dramatic criticism.
- Credits:
- Produced by Chris Curnow, Ernest Schaal, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
- Notes:
- Reading ease score: 48.4 (College-level). Difficult to read.
- Release date is 2011-07-20
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