Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/101

, it may seem that all his dramatic work is lacking in ordinary stage effect, but to this criticism one can only reply that his plays were written to attain a naturalness of style and a simplicity of mode which only Irish players have so far realised for us. In many cases they have been written to be acted in the open air by a company of boys, without scenery or any elaborate fittings, and this too has affected the form into which they are thrown. Beyond this it is with the Indian drama as with the song; it tends, as may tell, to a fluidity of movement, with no attempt at what we may call a dramatic pattern in the play. There is no bid for a curtain, no holding up of the moment of suspense, in order to force a sensation.

A page of a Hindoo travel-book by the late Sholanauth Chunder may be borrowed to show what kind of theatre it was that Rabindranath had to count upon at home when he began his play-writing. The scene was the courtyard of a Brindabun shrine, which recalls the old galleried innyards such as the house at Southwark, where Elizabethan plays were acted.