The Noh Plays of Japan Read Free Page B

hide his feet; his knees and back must not be bent, his body must be poised gracefully. As regards the way he holds himself—if he bends back, it looks bad when he faces the audience; if he stoops, it looks bad from behind. But he will not look like a woman if he holds his head too stiffly. His sleeves should be as long as possible, so that he never shows his fingers.
    APPARITIONS
    Here the outward form is that of a ghost; but within is the heart of a man.
    Such plays are generally in two parts. The beginning, in two or three sections, should be as short as possible. In the second half the shite (who has hitherto appeared to be a man) becomes definitely the ghost of a dead person.
    Since no one has ever seen a real ghost * from the Nether Regions, the actor may use his fancy, aiming only at the beautiful. To represent real life is far more difficult.
    If ghosts are terrifying, they cease to be beautiful. For the terrifying and the beautiful are as far apart as black and white.
    CHILD PLAYS
    In plays where a lost child is found by its parents, the writer should not introduce a scene where they clutch and cling to one another, sobbing and weeping...
    Plays in which child-characters occur, even if well done, are always apt to make the audience exclaim in disgust, "Don't harrow our feelings in this way!"
    RESTRAINT
    In representing anger the actor should yet retain some gentleness in his mood, else he will portray not anger but violence.
    In representing the mysterious (y Å« gen) he must not forget the principle of energy.
    When the body is in violent action, the hands and feet must move as though by stealth. When the feet are in lively motion, the body must be held in quietness. Such things cannot be explained in writing but must be shown to the actor by actual demonstration.
    It is above all in "architecture," in the relation of parts to the whole, that these poems are supreme. † The early writers created a "form" or general pattern which the weakest writing cannot wholly rob of its beauty. The plays are like those carved lamp-bearing angels in the churches at Seville; a type of such beauty was created by a sculptor of the sixteenth century that even the most degraded modern descendant of these masterpieces retains a certain distinction of form.
    First comes the jidai or opening-couplet, enigmatic, abrupt. Then in contrast to this vague shadow come the hard outlines of the waki's exposition, the formal naming of himself, his origin and destination. Then, shadowy again, the "song of travel," in which picture after picture dissolves almost before it is seen.
    But all this has been mere introduction—the imagination has been quickened, the attention grasped in preparation for one thing only—the hero's entry. In the "first chant," in the dialogue which follows, in the successive dances and climax, this absolute mastery of construction is what has most struck me in reading the plays.
    Again, Noh does not make a frontal attack on the emotions. It creeps at the subject warily. For the action, in the commonest class of play, does not take place before our eyes, but is lived through again in mimic and recital by the ghost of one of the participants in it. Thus we get no possibility of crude realities; a vision of life indeed, but painted with the colors of memory, longing or regret.
    In a paper read before the Japan Society in 1919 I tried to illustrate this point by showing, perhaps in too fragmentary and disjointed a manner, how the theme of Webster's "Duchess of Malfi" would have been treated by a Noh writer. I said then (and the Society kindly allows me to repeat those remarks):
    The plot of the play is thus summarized by Rupert Brooke in his "John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama": "The Duchess of Malfi is a young widow forbidden by her brothers, Ferdinand and the Cardinal, to marry again. They put a creature of theirs, Bosola, into her service as a spy. The Duchess loves and marries Antonio, her steward, and