All this class of pleasures inspires me with the same nausea as I feel at the sight of rich plum-cake or sweetmeats; I prefer the driest bread of common life.
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English Clergyman, Essayist, Wit
I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American Novelist, Playwright
The theatre, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history, because the medium has a kindred movement to that of real life, though an artificial setting and form.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have—by disrupting that order—a way of surprising.
—Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) Czech Dramatist, Statesman
I adore the theater and I am a painter. I think the two are made for a marriage of love. I will give all my soul to prove this once more.
—Marc Chagall (1889–1985) Russian-born French Painter, Graphic Artist
The stage is a concrete physical place which asks to be filled, and to be given its own concrete language to speak. I say that this concrete language, intended for the senses and independent of speech, has first to satisfy the senses, that there is a poetry of the senses as there is a poetry of language, and that this concrete physical language to which I refer is truly theatrical only to the degree that the thoughts it expresses are beyond the reach of the spoken language. These thoughts are what words cannot express and which, far more than words, would find their ideal expression in the concrete physical language of the stage. It consists of everything that occupies the stage, everything that can be manifested and expressed materially on a stage and that is addressed first of all to the senses instead of being addressed primarily to the mind as is the language of words…creating beneath language a subterranean current of impressions, correspondences, and analogies. This poetry of language, poetry in space will be resolved precisely in the domain which does not belong strictly to words…Means of expression utilizable on the stage, such as music, dance, plastic art, pantomime, mimicry, gesticulation, intonation, architecture, lighting, and scenery…The physical possibilities of the stage offers, in order to substitute, for fixed forms of art, living and intimidating forms by which the sense of old ceremonial magic can find a new reality in the theater; to the degree that they yield to what might be called the physical temptation of the stage. Each of these means has its own intrinsic poetry.
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French Actor, Drama Theorist
The drama’s laws, the drama’s patrons give, for we that live to please, must please to live.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Poet, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist
We live in what is, but we find 1,000 ways not to face it. Great theatre strengthens our faculty to face it.
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American Novelist, Playwright
A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event, an action involving human beings, is more arresting than any comment that can be made upon it.
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American Novelist, Playwright
To treat a “big” subject in the intensely summarized fashion demanded by an evening’s traffic of the stage when the evening, freely clipped at each end, is reduced to two hours and a half, is a feat of which the difficulty looms large.
—Henry James (1843–1916) American-born British Novelist, Writer
Free speech means the right to shout ‘theatre’ in a crowded fire.
—Abbie Hoffman (1936–89) American Political Activist, Anarchist
The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.
—Denis Diderot (1713–84) French Philosopher, Writer
Many plays, certainly mine, are like blank cheques. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American Novelist, Playwright
By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more and not merely to spend our feelings.
—Arthur Miller (1915–2005) American Playwright, Essayist
Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a woman when in fact she is my mother, that this person is a chambermaid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that this well-dressed young man is rich when he is really a penniless adventurer, or that if I do this such and such a result will follow when in fact it results in something very different. All good drama has two movements, first the making of the mistake, then the discovery that it was a mistake.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
Good drama must be drastic.
—Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German Man of Letters, Critic
A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is an ability to articulate human relationships.
—Gore Vidal (1925–48) American Novelist, Essayist, Journalist, Playwright
For my part, I confess I seldom listen to the players: one has so much to do, in looking about and finding out one’s acquaintance, that, really, one has no time to mind the stage. One merely comes to meet one’s friends, and show that one’s alive.
—Frances Burney (1752–1840) English Satirical Novelist, Diarist, Playwright
I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.
—Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) Czech Dramatist, Statesman
The stage is life, music, beautiful girls, legs, breasts, not talk or intellectualism or dried-up academics.
—Harold Clurman (1901–80) American Theater Director, Drama Critic
In a good play every speech should be as fully flavored as a nut or apple.
—John Millington Synge (1871–1909) Irish Playwright, Poet
The unencumbered stage encourages the truth operative in everyone. The less seen, the more heard. The eye is the enemy of the ear in real drama.
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American Novelist, Playwright
If a playwright tried to see eye to eye with everybody, he would get the worst case of strabismus since Hannibal lost an eye trying to count his nineteen elephants during a snowstorm while crossing the Alps.
—James Thurber
I had learned to have a perfect nausea for the theatre: the continual repetition of the same words and the same gestures, night after night, and the caprices, the way of looking at life, and the entire rigmarole disgusted me.
—Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American Dancer, Choreographer
The theatre is supremely fitted to say: “Behold! These things are.” Yet most dramatists employ it to say: “This moral truth can be learned from beholding this action.”
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American Novelist, Playwright
There was a time when all these things would have passed me by, like the flitting figures of a theatre, sufficient for the amusement of an hour. But now, I have lost the power of looking merely on the surface.
—Lydia Maria Child (1802–80) American Abolitionist, Writer
A playwright is the litmus paper of the arts. He’s got to be, because if he isn’t working on the same wave length as the audience, no one would know what in hell he was talking about. He is a kind of psychic journalist, even when he’s great.
—Arthur Miller (1915–2005) American Playwright, Essayist
For the theatre one needs long arms; it is better to have them too long than too short. An artiste with short arms can never, never make a fine gesture.
—Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923) French Actress
The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
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