Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: n THE PICTORIAL STAGE The elevation of the element of setting to an importance coordinate with that of the elements of character and action, which has rendered the contemporary drama more visual in its appeal than the drama of any earlier period, was occasioned by the combination of two causes, one of which was artistic and the other scientific, yet both of which tended toward that end which is the aim of every epoch-making revolution — namely, a return to nature. The first, or artistic, cause of the revolution in the drama had already been at work for a long time in the other arts to which the drama is allied. If we review the history of any of the arts which represent human beings, we shall notice that the one feature which distinguishes most clearly their ancient from their modern manifestations is the growing importance which has been bestowed in modern times upon the element of setting. Ancient art projects its figures abstractly, out of place, out of time; modern art projects them concretely, in a particular place, at a particular time. Even in imagination we cannot localize the Venus of Melos; we are forced to look upon her with no sense of where or when. But we know that Saint-Gaudens's Farragut is standing on the bridge of a ship and peering forward into the wind to direct the course of its progress; and we know that his Lincoln in Chicago has just risen from a chair upon the platform at a public assembly and is about to address the audience before him. The same distinction may be noted between ancient and modern painting. There is no background at all to the figures in Pompeiian frescoes; we see a dozen Cupids dancing, but we derive no idea whether they are dancing on the greensward or on a marble floor. Even in the great age of Italian painting the backgroun...