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THEATRICAL_RANTING

                                              August 18, 2006
   
   The canon takes aim at the stage.
   
From "Don Quixote" (1605-1615)
Part 1, Chapter XLVIII, p. 443:
   
   ' " If it's no secret that all or at least most of these      
   fashionable plays, both the purely fictional ones and         
   those based on historical fact, are so much stuff and         
   nonsense, higgledy-piggledy hodgepodges, and yet the          
   masses love them, and think they're splendid creations        
   when they're the very opposite, and the authors who           
   write them and the actors who perform them say that it        
   can't be done otherwise because that's how people want        
   them and they wouldn't have them any other way, and that      
   plays which are properly structured and plotted as art        
   demands are only good for the half-a-dozen intelligent        
   people who understand them, and all the rest are left in      
   the dark about their subtleties, and that it's better to      
   earn a living from the many than approval from the few        
   -- then all of that is exactly what would happen with my      
   book, and after burning the midnight oil to make sure I       
   observed all those rules I've been mentioning I'd end up      
   like that proverbial tailor who sewed for nothing and         
   provided the thread himself."                                 
                                                                 
   'And although on occasions I've tried to persuade the         
   impresarios that they're wrong about all this, and that       
   they'd attract larger audiences and gain more credit by       
   putting on works of art rather than balderdash, they're       
   so wedded to their own opinions that no amount of             
   argument or evidence can make them change their minds.        
   I recall that one day I said to one of these stubborn         
   people:                                                       
                                                                 
   ' "You tell me this: don't you remember that a few years
   ago three tragedies written by a famous Spanish poet were
   performed in this country, and that they were so good
   they delighted, surprised and amazed all those who went
   to see them, both the simple-minded and the wise, both
   the riff-raff and the élite, and that those    
   three plays alone made more money for the players than
   the best thirty that have been produced since?"
                                                                 
   '"I'm sure you must be referring," said the impresario,       
   "to _Isabella_, _Phyllis_, and _Alexandra_."                  
                                                                 
   '" ... So it isn't the masses who are to blame for demanding
   rubbish, but rather those who aren't capable of providing
   them with anything else. ...


                                            QUIXAND


    The three tradgedies named (_Isabella_,
    _Phyllis_, and _Alexandra_) were written by
    Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola, (1581-1584)

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