“We are told that Shakespeare's plays were generally performed in barns and that no great trouble was taken over the production. The constant changes of scene which, incidentally, seem the sign of a decadent art rather than one which is progressing, were shown by placards with the inscription: "A Forest," "A Prison," and so on. Within this conventional setting the onlooker's imagination was free to follow the actions of the various characters who were animated by passions drawn from nature, and that was enough for him. So-called innovations are gratefully seized on as an excuse for poverty of invention and in the same way, the long descriptive passages that so overburden modern novels are a sign of sterility, for it is obviously easier to describe a dress or the outward appearance of an object than to trace the subtle development of a character or portray the emotions of the heart.”

9 April 1856 (p. 313)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 11, 2025. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We are told that Shakespeare's plays were generally performed in barns and that no great trouble was taken over the pro…" by Eugène Delacroix?

Eugène Delacroix50

French painter 1798–1863

Related quotes

“To change your mind and to follow him who sets you right is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Remember that to change thy opinion and to follow him who corrects thy error is as consistent with freedom as it is to persist in thy error. (Long translation)
VIII, 16
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VIII

“[T]he sure sign of a shlock media product is that it is drawn not from life but from previous media products.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Holocaust' (The Observer, September 10, 1978)
Essays and reviews

“But how can the characters in a play guess the plot? We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even the audience. We are on the stage. To play well the scenes in which we are "on" concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

The World's Last Night (1952)

“He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

The reference is to Charles Townshend (1725–1767)
First Speech on the Conciliation with America (1774)

“The amazing number of species; their curious forms, so infinitely varied, and yet so nearly and gradually approximating through an endless series of transitions from one species to another; the diversity of structure observable in those parts which afford generic characters, added to the wonderful changes in form which they undergo, with their surprising economy - are circumstances which contribute to render them objects of most curious speculation to the philosopher. And although the study of every class of animals is most indisputably attended with peculiar advantages, yet we shall venture to affirm, that is from a knowledge of the characters, metamorphoses, and various modes of life, this little animals are destined to pursue, that [the natural philosopher] will obtain a more intimate acquaintance with the great laws of nature, and veneration for the Great Creator of all, that can be derived from the contemplation of any other class in nature.”

William Elford Leach (1790–1836) English zoologist and marine biologist

As quoted in Entomology https://archive.org/stream/CUbiodiversity1121039#page/646/mode/2up/search/creator (1816), Volume 8 of the first American edition of Sir David Brewster's Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, p. 646.