A
Glimpse of Theater History
Naturalism can be thought of as a more extreme form of Realism; it is similar to Realism in that it is based on the belief that ultimate reality is discoverable only through the five senses (empiricism).
The main spokesman for naturalism was Emile Zola, who wrote mostly novels, but sought to reform the play as well. He felt the theatre was fifty years behind the novel and was a victim of worn-out conventions, in his; words, "the last citadel of falsehood." The real enemy of naturalism was not Romanticism, but the well-made play. Zola loathed the distortion of psychology which was "necessary" to create sympathy for a character in the well-made arrangement of exposition, intrigue, complications and satisfying resolution. In it's place, Zola advocated plays which would avoid the complications and startling reversals typical of the l9th Century and substitute the depiction of human beings caught in the coils of fate.
The prefaces to his plays are essays on Naturalism (esp. especially Therese Raquin ) and there is also a collection of his essays per se published as Naturalism in the Theatre (1881). He said things like.
|
For Zola, subjects appropriate to naturalism could be:
| 1] those based on scientific findings, in which the
playwright establishes real character and allows them to interact
according to "inevitable laws of heredity and environment,"
and 2] those which faithfully record events observed in real life. Of this kind Zola states. "Instead of imagining an adventure, complicating it, preparing stage surprises, which from scene to scene will bring it to a final conclusion, one simply takes from life the history of a being, or of a group of beings, Whose acts one faithfully records ." |
From the Preface to Therese Raquin: "There should no longer be any school, no more formulas, no standards of any sort; there is only life itself, an immense field Where each may study and create as he likes..." Hence, a dramatist should be aloof and never allow his own prejudices to intrude, but only observe, record and experiment with the sole aim of demonstrating the truth. Therefore, a playwright should be allowed to treat any subject which would allow arriving at the truth. Of course, Therese Raquin seems to modern eyes anything but naturalistic. It appears to us to be quite a melodramatic story about love and murder and betrayal, and suicide brought on by conscience. Based on his novel of the same name, it is a in a way, a kind of grim morality play. Some contemporary critics had called the novel "garbage," and challenged him to put it on the stage. Wanting, as he said, to experiment with constructing a play without the "usual intrigue," he took up the challenge. Using "time" as the real antagonist, Zola has a pair of lovers commit murder in order to be together. The catalytic event is, of course the murder of Camille. The focus is ostensibly on the nature of the consciences of Laurent and Therese. In the third act--perhaps the most interesting of the lot--we see the mounting remorse of the two conspirators. But the final scene is sheer melodrama: Mme. Raquin enters, overhears their confession of Camille's murder and is stricken with paralysis. The last act returns to exploration of their consciences and it is conscience and exposure, that drive them to their suicides. The play ran only nine performances. Still revived from time to time, its appeal to modern audiences--if there is any--is probably based more on the play's intrigue rather than what Zola believed to be its inexorability.
Eight years after Therese Raquin, he wrote (I think rather chillingly),
| "I am waiting for someone to put a man of flesh on the stage, taken from reality, scientifically analyzed, and described without one lie. I am waiting for someone to rid us of fictitious characters, of these symbols of virtue and vice which have no worth as human data. I am waiting for environment to determine the characters and the characters to act according to the logic of facts combined with logic of their own disposition." |
In practice, naturalism usually spotlighted some of the more degraded aspects of lower class life. Why? Zola was greatly influenced by Claude Bernard's Introduction to Experimental Medicine (1865), a study of the effects of environment on bodily organs and changes in body chemistry on behavior. In Zola's The Experimental Novel he tried to apply Bernard's methods to literature. He compared the writer to the doctor, who seeks the causes of disease so that he can cure it-not hiding infection, but bringing it into the open where it can be examined. In like manner, the dramatist should seek out social ills and reveal them so they can be corrected. (Let's hear another round for Hegel.)
Zola was hardly the only theorist with something to say about the nature of Naturalism.
Maxim Gorki, for example, opined,
| "The characters of the drama should act independently of the volition of the dramatist in accordance with the law of their individual natures and social environment; they must follow the inspiration of their own destiny, and not that of any other destiny arbitrarily imposed by the author. They must be driven by their own inner impulses, create the incidents and episodes…and direct the course of the play, being permitted to act in harmony with their own contradictory natures, interests, and passions." |
Zola's successor as theoretical spokesperson for naturalism was the less well known Jean Jullien (1854-1919). His play The Serenade was introduced by the Théâtre Libre in 1887. It is a prime example of rosserie, that is, plays dealing with corrupt, morally bankrupt characters who seem to be respectable, "smiling, smiling, damned villains..." Jullien gave us the famous apothegm defining naturalism in his The Living Theatre (1892):
| "A play is a slice of life put onstage with art." |
He goes on to say that "...our purpose is not to create laughter, but thought." He felt that the story of a play does not end with the curtain which is, he says, "only an arbitrary interruption of the action which leaves the spectator free to speculate about what goes on beyond..." .
And there are a number playwrights, some often overlooked, who contributed greatly to the movement, some consciously, some unconsciously, among whom are Ibsen and Strindberg.
Ludwig Anzengruber (1834-89) Anzengruber's plays were not highly regarded during his lifetime, but during the 1890's they were considered important forerunners of Naturalism. Noted for his use of dialect and peasant themes and stories, Anzengruber had, like Moliere and many others, worked as a strolling player catering to rural audiences, so, in his case, his plays frequently reflect their earthy tastes. His significant naturalistic plays were 1] The Kirchfield Priest (1870), the story of a young, idealistic minister who is slandered and removed from his church by the dogmatic churchmen of his congregation and the local dignitaries because of his hiring of a pretty young girl; and 2] The Fourth Commandment (1877) [Honor the Sabbath and keep it holy]. In this opus, the youth of a village are oppressed by their elders and the 4th commandment in a precursor of that recent dance movie set in Utah... that, ironically for its origins, ended up a Broadway musical, Footloose.
Henri Becque ( 1837-99) Whereas Zola holds that what goes on in
life should go on the stage, Becque knew that art is by its nature selective;
i.e. not everything that happens in life should go on the stage. Becque
believed the dramatist should conceal the selective processes while enhancing
the illusion that there was no selection made but that reality in toto
was presented. Every element of a play should contribute to the effect
of vivid life. There should be no superfluous moment, no extraneous word
or deed. The work must be reduced to absolute essentials while giving
the impression of photographic realism. (This is little more than a reassertion
of Ockham's razor, not to mention Aristotle, but as is often the case
in theatre as in other kinds of history, this ancient idea is revolutionary.)
His best work was The Vultures (1882), the story of the Vigneron
family which begins with a quite leisurely portrait of a seemingly pleasant
family. The story takes a sudden and very naturalistic turn when the head
of the household dies of a heart attack. As is often the case in real
life, there was not warning--no foreshadowing--of this catastrophe. Once
the pater familias is out of the way, the survivors are left to the mercy
of the vultures in a dramatic illustration of Darwin's law of survival
of the fittest.
August Strindberg (1849-1912) was very much a part of the Paris cultural scene in the 1880's and '90's, where he encountered Zola's essays around 1883, whence came his Experimental Theatre and his early "naturalistic tragedies" The Father (1887); Miss Julie (1888); Comrades (1888); and The Creditors (1888). He moved on to other forms declaring, "To me falls the task of bridging the gap between naturalism and supra-naturalism by proclaiming that the latter is only a development of the former." His recognition of the reality of the subconscious and it's new found scientific basis (Freud was to write The Interpretation of Dreams while Strindberg was completing To Damascus and The Dream Play) led Strindberg to studies of hypnotism and the power of suggestion (Charcot and Bernheim) and provided, ultimately, a link to his later work in The Dream Play (1900-1, produced 1907) and early explorations of what was to become full-blown Expressionism in The Spook Sonata (1908). In good scientific fashion, he engaged in a sort of "ruthless introspection," applying the scientific method to himself.
Gerhart Hauptmann, (1862-1946) Nobel Prize winner in 1912, began his rich and varied dramatic output with two extraordinary examples of Naturalism: Vor Sonnenaufgang (Before Sunrise) and Die Webern (The Weavers). Like Strindberg before him, he moved on to explore other dramatic forms as well as modes of thought and many other literary forms in his sixty-five year career.
Without the practitioners who translated the aesthetic into practical stagecraft, the movement would not have flourished.
Some Related links:
André Antoine
(1858-1943) and the Théâtre
Libre
Otto
Brahm (1856-1912) and Die Freie Bühne
Constantin
Stanislavski and the Moscow Art Theatre
Independent Theatre Movement
David Belasco