Note 12 — THE NEW ART OF THE THEATRE

Three of his designs introducing three different aspects of his work have been here reproduced. The model for Maeterlinck's The Seven Princesses is an example of an attempt to present the essential significant structure of a setting in the simplest way conceivable and by so doing to stimulate the imagination of the spectator to create for itself the imaginative environment of the play. His design for a room in Belmont for The Merchant of Venice shows a great round window framed in the heavy molding of Mantegna and the pale, clear sky of Northern Italy. The scene for Good Gracious Annabelle is a corridor in an hotel. This scene is a typical example of a more or less abstract rendering of a literal scene. It was designed primarily with the idea of giving as many different exits and entrances as possible, in order that the action of the drama might be swift and varied.[12]