The Project Gutenberg EBook of Plays, Acting and Music, by Arthur Symons

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Title: Plays, Acting and Music
A Book Of Theory

Author: Arthur Symons

Release Date: November 2, 2004 [EBook #13928]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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PLAYS
ACTING AND MUSIC

A BOOK OF THEORY

BY
ARTHUR SYMONS

LONDON

1909

_To Maurice Maeterlinck in friendship and admiration_

PREFACE

When this book was first published it contained a large amount of
material which is now taken out of it; additions have been made, besides
many corrections and changes; and the whole form of the book has been
remodelled. It is now more what it ought to have been from the first;
what I saw, from the moment of its publication, that it ought to have
been: a book of theory. The rather formal announcement of my intentions
which I made in my preface is reprinted here, because, at all events,
the programme was carried out.

This book, I said then, is intended to form part of a series, on which I
have been engaged for many years. I am gradually working my way towards
the concrete expression of a theory, or system of aesthetics, of all the
arts.

In my book on "The Symbolist Movement in Literature" I made a first
attempt to deal in this way with literature; other volumes, now in
preparation, are to follow. The present volume deals mainly with the
stage, and, secondarily, with music; it is to be followed by a volume
called "Studies in Seven Arts," in which music will be dealt with in
greater detail, side by side with painting, sculpture, architecture,
handicraft, dancing, and the various arts of the stage. And, as life too
is a form of art, and the visible world the chief storehouse of beauty,
I try to indulge my curiosity by the study of places and of people. A
book on "Cities" is now in the press, and a book of "imaginary
portraits" is to follow, under the title of "Spiritual Adventures." Side
by side with these studies in the arts I have my own art, that of verse,
which is, after al