THE NO PLAYS OF JAPAN.* WE who love the theatre
know that the time is ripe for the revival of poetical drama. At the moment the difficulty seems to be to hit upon a form in which we may crystallize our impulse.
For our poetic drama has certainly got to run concurrently with a realistic drama. Now the fault of the ordinary dramatic forms for the purposes of the poetic drama is that when a non- realistic drama is cast in these lines, however wild the plot, however improbable the characters, the audience unconsciously begin to miss realism. In plays which are consciously archaic or even in the Elizabethan drama we are every now and then brought back to earth by our longing for realism. The music of Juliet's love lyrics is made a little unreal to us by specula- tions as to whether a young girl really would speak so, whether any passionate lover could find similes so exact, phrases so musical. The form adopted by the writers of the Na plays
• The NS Plays of Japan. By Arthur Waley. London: Allen and Unwln. 118s. nct3 is one so formal that it rids us of this difficulty. The plays are performed upon a stage divided into two parts, inner and outer. Ballet plays a considerable part in them. There are practically no properties and no scenery ; the dress of the actors is, however, often magnificent and certain of them are masked, and because there are no properties the author need not hesitate to introduce into his drama boats, carriages, rooks, rivers, or trees as he pleases. Mr. Waley gives an admirable receipt for the writing of No plays in the introduction to his translations, fully describing the method of their composition. He gives directions as to where the lyrical passages are to be inserted, the most effective arrangement of alternate narration and action, and the general handling of the theme. This receipt is too long to summarize here, and it is necessary to have read one or two of Mr. Waley's translations of the plays themselves before it is possible for a reader to follow the explana- tions. Fortunately, however, Mr. Waley gives an admirable example of the method. He arranges the story of the Duchess of Mall as it would be adapted in the No form :- "Great simplification is necessary, for the N6 play corre- sponds in length to one act of our five-act plays, and has no space for divagations. The comic is altogether excluded, being reserved for the ky ?len or farces which are played as interludes between the N6. The persons need not be more than two—the Pilgrim, who will act the part of weld, and the Duchess, who will be shits or Protagonist. The chorus takes no part in the action, but speaks for the shire while she is miming the more engrossing parts of her role. The Pilgrim comes on to the stage and first pronounces in his Jidai or preliminary couplet, some Buddhist aphorism appropriate to the subject of the play. He then names himself to the audience thus (in prose) : ' I am a pilgrim from Rome. I have visited all the other shrines of Italy, but have never been to Loretto. I will journey once to the shrine of Loretto.' Then follows (in verse) the Song of Travel in which the Pilgrim describes the scenes through which he passes on his way to the shrine. While he is kneeling at the shrine, Shits (the Protagonist) comes on to the stage. She is a young woman dressed, contrary to the Italian fashion,' in a loose-bodied gown. She carries m her hand an unripe apricot. She calls to the Pilgrim and engages him in con- versation. He asks her if it were not at this shrine that the Duchess of Malfi took refuge. The young woman answers with a kind of eager exaltation, her words gradually rising from prose to poetry. She tells the story of the Duchess's flight, adding certain intimate touches which force the priest to ask abruptly, `Who is it that is speaking to me 1' And the girl shuddering (for it is hateful to a ghost to name itself) answers : Hazukashi ya 1 I am the soul of the Duke Ferdi- nand's sister, she that was once called Duchess of Malfi. Love still ties my soul . to the earth. Toburai tabi-tamaye I Pray for me, oh, pray for my release ! ' Here closes the first part of the play. In the second the young ghost, her memory quickened by the Pilgrim's prayers (and this is part of the medicine of salvation), endures again the memory of her final hours. She mimes the action of kissing the hand (vide Act IV., Scene 1), finds it very cold :
I fear you are not well after your travel. Oh ! horrible 1 What witchcraft doth he practise, that he hath left A dead man's hand here ?
And each successive scene of the torture is so vividly mimed that though it exists only in the Protagonist's brain, it is as real to the audience as if the figure of dead Antonio lay propped upon the stage, or as if the madmen were actually leaping and screaming before them. Finally she acts the scene of her own execution :
Heaven-gates are not so highly arched As princes' palacesthey that enter there
Must go upon the knees. (She kneels.)
Come, violent death, Serve for mandragora to make me sleep Go tell my brothers, when I am laid out, They then may feed in quiet. (She sinks her head and folds her hands.) The chorus, taking up the word ' quiet,' chant a phrase from
the Hokkelcy6 : Sangai ' In the Three Worlds there is no quietness or rest ' But the Pilgrim's prayers have been answered. Her soul has broken its bonds : is free to depart. The ghost recedes, grows dimmer and dimmer, till at last
use-ni-keri use-ni-keri it vanishes from sight."
This, surely, is a form of great interest. We ought to try our hands at it. First of all, university dramatic societies or the like ought to experiment in the acting of the Japanese plays which Mr. Waley has translated, and then we ought to see whether some form of the NO is not one of the new bottles into
which
we may conveniently put our new wine. As to the plays in the present volume, no one who knows Mr. Waley's work will need to be told that his translations are perfect. If I have given the impression that the book is interesting only from a technical point of view, let me hasten to correct an error.
Though the occasionally crabbed style of the No writers seldom gives this most perfect of translators the same opportunities as did the -Chinese Lyrists of his former volumes, still there is not one play of the many here rendered which is not a work of art as well as a possible model. A strange ideal and a highly specialized technique live for us. A world of new dramatic possibilities opens with this new rendering of an old intellectual drama. I cannot help believing that with its formality, its dances, its dumb-show, its lyrics, and its choruses, our modern writers might find something very much to their minds in the
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