Engel’s Ideas for a Theory of Acting

Extract

Among the multitude of writings about actors and acting which appeared in the 18th century all over Europe, Johann Jacob Engel's Ideen zu einer Mimik (1785-1786) merits special attention, at once as a pioneering attempt at a semiotics of acting and as a valuable source of information about the actual practice of contemporary actors and actresses. It takes the form of 44 letters (numbers 1-27 making up Volume I, numbers 28-44 Volume II). Despite its easy and apparently casual style, it is in fact a quite systematic analysis, even if it repeatedly disclaims the ambition to be exhaustive. It is difficult to account for the long neglect the work has suffered. When it first appeared, its importance was evidently recognized, since it was promptly translated into other languages, but it seems to have been soon forgotten.