Sociology of film : studies and documents (1946)

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CHAPTER 3 The Elizabethan Theatre and the Modern Cinema 1 he sociologist who attempts to appreciate the universal audience of the modern cinema will do well to study historical audiences. Quae sint quaefuerint. . . . He will humbly, though perhaps not uncritically, and not without substantial reservations rely on the expert research of the historian. There exists, perhaps, no better analysis of the Elizabethan theatre than Professor Harbage's book on Shakespeare's Audience, published by the Columbia University Press in 1941. I am not at all certain whether this important study is well enough known to the general reader in this country. It has been difficult to maintain cultural relations with the U.S.A. in recent years and it is, perhaps, imperative for us to make ourselves familiar with a considerable number of outstanding books which shipping space, trade restrictions, or U-boats prevented us from reading. The process of sifting will last some time. Professor Harbage is fully aware of the inherent difficulty of any investigation of historical audiences — past and present. For he writes: 'If we could mingle with Shakespeare's audience reincarnate, its secret would prove no more penetrable than the secret of audiences now. What occurs within the minds and hearts of some thousand men and women is not casually revealed: an audience — almost any audience — is as difficult to appraise as the human race itself.'1 And yet in reading Professor Harbage one is inclined to believe that, under his guidance, we get a better knowledge of the theatre-going public in Shakespeare's time than we have so far been able to acquire of our contemporary cinema audiences. Certainly there was class antagonism in Shakespeare's London (Professor Harbage illustrates this admirably though he is not a Marxist), but in the theatres, he writes, 'the rights and privileges 1 Shakespeare's Audience, p. 3. 43