Eric Bentley Quotes & Sayings

What then is the difference between film and theatre? Or should one not rather ask: what are the differences? Let us be content wi th the reply that the screen has two dimensions and the stage three, that the screen presents photographs and the stage living actors. All the subtler differences stem from these. The camera can show us all sorts of things
from close-ups of insects to panoramas of prairies
which the stage cannot even suggest, and it can move from one to another with much more dexterity than any conceivable stage. The stage, on the other hand, can be revealed in the unsurpassable beauty of three-dimensional shapes, and the stage actor establishes between himself and his audience a contact real as electricity. — Eric Bentley

Like dreams, farces show the disguised fulfillment of repressed wishes. — Eric Bentley

A play has two authors, the playwright and the actor. — Eric Bentley

Fashion, which elevates the bad to the level of the good, subsequently turns its back on bad and good alike. — Eric Bentley

If melodrama is the quintessence of drama, farce is the quintessence of theatre. Melodrama is written. A moving image of the worldis provided by a writer. Farce is acted. The writer's contribution seems not only absorbed but translated ... One cannot imagine melodrama being improvised. The improvised drama was pre-eminently farce. — Eric Bentley

Geography is about maps, but biography is about chaps. — Eric Bentley

Ours is the age of substitutes: instead of language, we have jargon: instead of principles, slogans: and, instead of genuine ideas, bright ideas. — Eric Bentley

If one truly has lost hope, one would not be on hand to say so. — Eric Bentley

Literature deals with morality but does not necessarily, does not, qua literature, help you to be more moral, either by precept or example. It makes you more aware. Which is to say that it makes you more human by making life more, not less, difficult. When you become more aware, the area of moral choice is widened. You can be a better man; you can also be a worse. Literature will not determine which. It is the equivalent of neither grace nor good works. — Eric Bentley