problem, if we define the Shakespearian Drama as [P. 144] a fixed mimetic improvisation of the highest poetic worth.” [796W-{3-6/71}The Destiny of Opera: PW Vol. V, p. 143-144]
[797W-{3-6/71}The Destiny of Opera: PW Vol. V, p. 145]
[P. 145] “Certain it is, that Shakespeare withdrew very early from his business with the stage; for which we may easily account by the immense fatigue the rehearsing of his pieces must have cost him, as also by the despair of a genius that towered high above the ‘possibility’ of its surroundings. Yet the whole nature of this genius is explicable by nothing but that ‘possibility’ itself, which assuredly existed in the nature of the mime, and was therefore very rightly presupposed by the genius, and, taking all the cultural efforts of the human spirit in one comprehensive survey, we may regard it as in a certain sense the task bequeathed to Shakespeare’s aftercomers by the greatest Dramatist, to actually attain that highest possibility in the development of histrionic art.” [797W-{3-6/71}The Destiny of Opera: PW Vol. V, p. 145]
[798W-{3-6/71}The Destiny of Opera: PW Vol. V, p. 146-147]
[P. 146] {FEUER} “Here were two chief points of notice: firstly, that a great master’s music lent the doings of even poor dramatic exponents an ideal charm, denied to the most admirable of actors in the spoken play; secondly, that a true dramatic talent could so ennoble even entirely worthless music, as to move us with a performance inachievable by the selfsame talent in the recited drama. That this phenomenon must be accounted to nothing but the might of Music, was irrefutable. (…) Now, we have appealed to Shakespeare to give us, if possible, a glimpse into the nature, and more especially the method, of the genuine dramatist. Mysterious as we found the most part of this matter too, yet we saw that the poet was here entirely at one with the art of the mime; so that we now may call this mimetic art the life-dew wherein the poetic aim was to be steeped, to enable it, as in a magic transformation, to appear as the mirror of life. And if every action, even humblest incident of life displays itself, when reproduced by mimicry, in the transfiguring light and with the objective effect of a mirror-image (as is shown not only by Shakespeare, but by every other sterling playwright), in further course we shall have to avow that this mirror-image, again, displays [P. 147] itself in the transfiguration of purest ideality so soon as it is dipped in the magic spring of Music and held up to us as nothing but pure Form, so to say, set free from all the realism of Matter.” [798W-{3-6/71}The Destiny of Opera: PW Vol. V, p. 146-147]
[799W-{3-6/71}The Destiny of Opera: PW Vol. V, p. 150-151]
[P. 150] {FEUER} “What so chained our own great poets’ hopes to Music, was its being not only purest Form, but the most complete physical presentation of that Form; the abstract cypher of Arithmetic, the figure of Geometry, here steps before us in a shape that holds the Feeling past denial, to wit as Melody; and whereas the poetic diction of the written speech falls prey to every personal caprice of its reciter, the physical reproduction of this Melody can be fixed beyond all risk of error. What to Shakespeare was practically impossible, namely to be the mime of all his roles, the tone-composer achieves with fullest certainty, for from out his each executant musician he speaks to us directly. Here the transmigration of the poet’s soul into the body of the player takes place by laws of surest [P. 151] technique, and the composer giving the beat to a technically correct performance of his work becomes so entirely one with the executant that the nearest comparison
