THE DRAMA

Addresses by

HENRY IRVING

With a Frontispiece By Whistler

[Illustration]

CONTENTS

 I. The Stage as it is

 II. The Art of Acting

 III. Four Great Actors

 IV. The Art of Acting

LECTURE

SESSIONAL OPENING

PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION

EDINBURGH

8 NOVEMBER 1881

THE STAGE AS IT IS. 

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, You will not be surprised that, on this interesting occasion, I haveselected as the subject of the few remarks I propose to offer you, "The Stage as it is. " The stage--because to my profession I owe itthat I am here, and every dictate of taste and of fidelity impels meto honor it; the stage as it is--because it is very cheap and emptyhonor that is paid to the drama in the abstract, and withheld from thetheatre as a working institution in our midst. Fortunately there isless of this than there used to be. It arose partly from intellectualsuperciliousness, partly from timidity as to moral contamination. Toboast of being able to appreciate Shakespeare more in reading him thanin seeing him acted used to be a common method of affecting specialintellectuality. I hope this delusion--a gross and pitiful one as tomost of us--has almost absolutely died out. It certainly conferred avery cheap badge of superiority on those who entertained it. It seemedto each of them an inexpensive opportunity of worshipping himself ona pedestal. But what did it amount to? It was little more than aconceited and feather-headed assumption that an unprepared reader, whose mind is usually full of far other things, will see on theinstant all that has been developed in hundreds of years by themembers of a studious and enthusiastic profession. My own convictionis, that there are few characters or passages of our great dramatistswhich will not repay original study. But at least we must recognizethe vast advantages with which a practised actor, impregnated by theassociations of his life, and by study--with all the practical andcritical skill of his profession up to the date at which he appears, whether he adopts or rejects tradition--addresses himself to theinterpretation of any great character, even if he have no originalitywhatever. There is something still more than this, however, in acting. Every one who has the smallest histrionic gift has a natural dramaticfertility; so that as soon as he knows the author's text, and obtainsself-possession, and feels at home in a part without being toofamiliar with it, the mere automatic action of rehearsing and playingit at once begins to place the author in new lights, and to give thepersonage being played an individuality partly independent of, andyet consistent with, and rendering more powerfully visible, thedramatist's conception. It is the vast power a good actor has in thisway which has led the French to speak of creating a part when theymean its being first played; and French authors are so conscious ofthe extent and value of this co-operation of actors with them, thatthey have never objected to the phrase, but, on the contrary, areuniformly lavish in their homage to the artists who have created onthe boards the parts which they themselves have created on paper. 

I must add, as an additional reason for valuing the theatre, thatwhile there is only one Shakespeare, and while there are comparativelyfew dramatists who are sufficiently classic to be read with closeattention, there is a great deal of average dramatic work excellentlysuited for representation. From this the public derive pleasure. Fromthis they receive--as from fiction in literature--a great deal ofinstruction and mental stimulus. Some may be worldly, some social, some cynical, some merely humorous and witty, but a great deal of it, though its literary merit is secondary, is well qualified to bringout all that is most fruitful of good in common sympathies. Now, itis plain that if, because Shakespeare is good reading, people were togive the cold shoulder to the theatre, the world would lose all thevast advantage which comes to it through the dramatic faculty in formsnot rising to essentially literary excellence. As respects the otherfeeling which used to stand more than it does now in the way of thetheatre--the fear of moral contamination--it is due to the theatre ofour day, on the one hand, and to the prejudices of our grandfathers onthe other, to confess that the theatre of fifty years ago or less didneed reforming in the audience part of the house. All who have readthe old controversy as to the morality of going to the theatre arefamiliar with the objection to which I refer. But the theatre of fiftyyears ago or less was reformed. If there are any, therefore, as I fearthere are a few, who still talk on this point in the old vein, letthem rub their eyes a bit, and do us the justice to consider not whatused to be, but what is. But may there be moral contamination fromwhat is performed on the stage? Well, there may be. But so there isfrom books. So there may be at lawn tennis clubs. So there may be atdances. So there may be in connection with everything in civilizedlife and society. But do we therefore bury ourselves? The anchoritessecluded themselves in hermitages. The Puritans isolated themselves inconsistent abstinence from everything that anybody else did. And thereare people now who think that they can keep their children, and thatthose children will keep themselves in after life, in cotton wool, soas to avoid all temptation of body and mind, and be saved nine-tenthsof the responsibility of self-control. All this is mere phantasy. Youmust be in the world, though you need not be of it; and the best wayto make the world a better community to be in, and not so bad a placeto be of, is not to shun, but to bring public opinion to bear uponits pursuits and its relaxations. Depend upon two things--that thetheatre, as a whole, is never below the average moral sense of thetime; and that the inevitable demand for an admixture, at least, ofwholesome sentiment in every sort of dramatic production brings theruling tone of the theatre, whatever drawback may exist, up to thehighest level at which the general morality of the time can truly beregistered. We may be encouraged by the reflection that this is truerthan ever it was before, owing to the greater spread of education, theincreased community of taste between classes, and the almost absolutedivorce of the stage from mere wealth and aristocracy. Wealth andaristocracy come around the stage in abundance, and are welcome, as inthe time of Elizabeth; but the stage is no longer a mere appendage ofcourt-life, no longer a mere mirror of patrician vice hanging at thegirdle of fashionable profligacy as it was in the days of Congreve andWycherley. It is now the property of the educated people. It hasto satisfy them or pine in neglect And the better their demands thebetter will be the supply with which the drama will respond. This being not only so, but seen to be so, the stage is no longerproscribed. It is no longer under a ban. Its members are no longerpariahs in society. They live and bear their social part likeothers--as decorously observant of all that makes the sweet sanctitiesof life--as gracefully cognizant of its amenities--as readilyrecognized and welcomed as the members of any other profession. AmI not here your grateful guest, opening the session of thisphilosophical and historic institution? I who am simply an actor, an interpreter, with such gifts as I have, and such thought as Ican bestow, of stage plays. And am I not received here with perfectcordiality on an equality, not hungrily bowing and smirking forpatronage, but interchanging ideas which I am glad to express, andwhich you listen to as thoughtfully and as kindly as you would tothose of any other student, any other man who had won his wayinto such prominence as to come under the ken of a distinguishedinstitution such as that which I have the honor to address? I do notmince the matter as to my personal position here, because I feel itis a representative one, and marks an epoch in the estimation inwhich the art I love is held by the British world. You have had manydistinguished men here, and their themes have often been noble, butwith which of those themes has not my art immemorial and perpetualassociations? Is it not for ever identified with the noblest instinctsand occupations of the human mind? If I think of poetry, must I notremember how to the measure of its lofty music the theatre has inalmost all ages set the grandest of dramatic conceptions? If I thinkof literature, must I not recall that of all the amusements by whichmen in various states of society have solaced their leisure andrefreshed their energies, the acting of plays is the one that hasnever yet, even for a day, been divorced from literary taste andskill? If I meditate on patriotism, can I but reflect how grandly theboards have been trod by personifications of heroic love of country?There is no subject of human thought that by common consent is deemedennobling that has not ere now, and from period to period, beenillustrated in the bright vesture, and received expression from theglowing language of theatrical representation. And surely it isfit that, remembering what the stage has been and must be, I shouldacknowledge eagerly and gladly that, with few exceptions, the publicno longer debar themselves from the profitable pleasures of thetheatre, and no longer brand with any social stigma the professors ofthe histrionic art. Talking to an eminent bishop one day, I said tohim, "Now, my Lord, why is it, with your love and knowledge of thedrama, with your deep interest in the stage and all its belongings, and your wide sympathy with all that ennobles and refines ournatures--why is it that you never go to the theatre?" "Well, " saidhe, "I'll tell you. I'm afraid of the _Rock_ and the _Record_. " Ihope soon we shall relieve even the most timid bishop--and my rightreverend friend is not the most timid--of all fears and tremorswhatever that can prevent even ministers of religion from recognizingthe wisdom of the change of view which has come over even the mostfastidious public opinion on this question. Remember, if you please, that the hostile public opinion which has lately begun so decisivelyto disappear, has been of comparatively modern growth, or at leastrevival. The pious and learned of other times gave their countenanceand approbation to the stage of their days, as the pious and learnedof our time give their countenance and approbation to certainperformances in this day. Welcome be the return of good sense, goodtaste, and charity, or rather justice. No apology for the stage. Noneis needed. It has but to be named to be honored. Too long the worldtalked with bated breath and whispering humbleness of "the poorplayer. " There are now few poor players. Whatever variety of fortuneand merit there may be among them, they have the same degrees ofprosperity and respect as come to members of other avocations. Therenever was so large a number of theatres or of actors. And theirtype is vastly improved by public recognition. The old days whengood-for-nothings passed into the profession are at an end; and theold Bohemian habits, so far as they were evil and disreputable, havealso disappeared. The ranks of the art are being continually recruitedby deeply interested and earnest young men of good education andbelongings. Nor let us, while dissipating the remaining prejudicesof outsiders, give quarter to those which linger among playersthemselves. There are some who acknowledge the value of improvedstatus to themselves and their art, but who lament that there are nowno schools for actors. This is a very idle lamentation. Every actorin full employment gets plenty of schooling, for the best schoolingis practice, and there is no school so good as a well-conductedplayhouse. The truth is, that the cardinal secret of success in actingare found within, while practice is the surest way of fertilizingthese germs. To efficiency in the art of acting there should come acongregation of fine qualities. There should be considerable, though not necessarily systematic, culture. There should be delicateinstincts of taste cultivated, consciously, or unconsciously, to adegree of extreme and subtle nicety. There should be a power, at oncerefined and strong, of both perceiving and expressing to othersthe significance of language, so that neither shades nor masses ofmeaning, so to speak, may be either lost or exaggerated. Above all, there should be a sincere and abounding sympathy with all that is goodand great and inspiring. That sympathy, most certainly, must be underthe control and manipulation of art, but it must be none the lest realand generous, and the artist who is a mere artist will stop short ofthe highest moral effects of his craft. Little of this can be got in amere training school, but all of it will come forth more or less fullyarmed from the actor's brain in the process of learning his art bypractice. For the way to learn to do a thing is to do it; and inlearning to act by acting, though there is plenty of incidental harddrill and hard work, there is nothing commonplace or unfruitful. 

What is true of the art is true also of the social life of the artist. No sensational change has been found necessary to alter his statusthough great changes have come. The stage has literally lived downthe rebuke and reproach under which it formerly cowered, while itsprofessors have been simultaneously living down the prejudices whichexcluded them from society. The stage is now seen to be an elevatinginstead of a lowering influence on national morality, and actors andactresses receive in society, as do the members of other professions, exactly the treatment which is earned by their personal conduct. And so I would say of what we sometimes hear so much about--dramaticreform. It is not needed; or, if it is, all the reform that is wantedwill be best effected by the operation of public opinion upon theadministration of a good theatre. That is the true reforming agency, with this great advantage, that reforms which come by public opinionare sure, while those which come without public opinion cannot berelied upon. The dramatic reformers are very well-meaning people. Theyshow great enthusiasm. They are new converts to the theatre, most ofthem, and they have the zeal of converts. But it is scarcely accordingto knowledge. These ladies and gentlemen have scarcely studied theconditions of theatrical enterprise, which must be carried on as abusiness or it will fail as an art. It is an unwelcome, if not anunwarrantable intrusion to come among our people with elaborateadvice, and endeavor to make them live after different fashions fromthose which are suitable to them, and it will be quite hopeless toattempt to induce the general body of a purely artistic class to makelouder and more fussy professions of virtue and religion than otherpeople. In fact, it is a downright insult to the dramatic professionto exact or to expect any such thing. Equally objectionable, andequally impracticable, are the attempts of Quixotic "dramaticreformers" to exercise a sort of goody-goody censorship over theselection and the text of the plays to be acted. The stage has beenserving the world for hundreds, yes, and thousands of years, duringwhich it has contributed in pure dramaturgy to the literature ofthe world its very greatest master-pieces in nearly all languages, meanwhile affording to the million an infinity of pleasure, all moreor less innocent. Where less innocent, rather than more, the cause haslain, not in the stage, but in the state of society of which it wasthe mirror. For though the stage is not always occupied with its ownperiod, the new plays produced always reflect in many particularsthe spirit of the age in which they are played. There is a story ofa traveller who put up for the night at a certain inn, on the door ofwhich was the inscription--"Good entertainment for man and beast. " Hishorse was taken to the stable and well cared for, and he sat downto dine. When the covers were removed he remarked, on seeing his ownsorry fare, "Yes, this is very well; but where's the entertainment forthe man?" If everything were banished from the stage except thatwhich suits a certain taste, what dismal places our theatres would be!However fond the play-goer may be of tragedy, if you offer him nothingbut horrors, he may well ask--"Where's the entertainment for the manwho wants an evening's amusement?" The humor of a farce may not seemover-refined to a particular class of intelligence; but there arethousands of people who take an honest pleasure in it. And who, afterseeing my old friend J. L. Toole in some of his famous parts, andhaving laughed till their sides ached, have not left the theatre morebuoyant and light-hearted than they came? Well, if the stage hasbeen thus useful and successful all these centuries, and still isproductive; if the noble fascination of the theatre draws to it, as weknow that it does, an immortal poet such as our Tennyson, whom, I cantestify from my own experience, nothing delights more than the successof one of the plays which, in the mellow autumn of his genius, he hascontributed to the acting theatre; if a great artist like Tadema isproud to design scenes for stage plays; if in all departments of stageproduction we see great talent, and in nearly every instance greatgood taste and sincere sympathy with the best popular ideals ofgoodness; then, I say, the stage is entitled to be let alone--thatis, it is entitled to make its own bargain with the public without thecensorious intervention of well-intentioned busybodies. These do notknow what to ban or to bless. If they had their way, as of coursethey cannot, they would license, with many flourishes and muchself-laudation, a number of pieces which would be hopelesslycondemned on the first hearing, and they would lay an embargo for veryinsufficient reasons on many plays well entitled to success. It is notin this direction that we must look for any improvement that is neededin the purveying of material for the stage. Believe me, the rightdirection is public criticism and public discrimination. I say sobecause, beyond question, the public will have what they want. So far, that managers in their discretion, or at their pleasure, can force onthe public either very good or very bad dramatic material is an utterdelusion. They have no such power. If they had the will they couldonly force any particular sort of entertainment just as long as theyhad capital to expend without any return. But they really have not thewill. They follow the public taste with the greatest keenness. If thepeople want Shakespeare--as I am happy to say they do, at least at onetheatre in London, and at all the great theatres out of London, toan extent unprecedented in the history of the stage--then they getShakespeare. If they want our modern dramatists--Albery, Boucicault, Byron, Burnand, Gilbert, or Wills--these they have. If they wantRobertson, Robertson is there for them. If they desire opera-bouffe, depend upon it they will have it, and have it they do. What then doI infer? Simply this: that those who prefer the higher drama--in therepresentation of which my heart's best interests are centred--insteadof querulously animadverting on managers who give them somethingdifferent, should, as Lord Beaconsfield said, "make themselves into amajority. " If they do so, the higher drama will be produced. But if wereally understand the value of the drama, we shall not be too rigid inour exactions. The drama is the art of human nature in picturesqueor characteristic action. Let us be liberal in our enjoyment of it. Tragedy, comedy, historical-pastoral, pastoral-comical--rememberthe large-minded list of the greatest-minded poet--all are good, ifwholesome--and will be wholesome if the public continue to take thehealthy interest in theatres which they are now taking. The worsttimes for the stage have been those when play-going was left prettymuch to a loose society, such as is sketched in the Restorationdramatists. If the good people continue to come to the theatre inincreasing crowds, the stage, without losing any of its brightness, will soon be good enough, if it is not as yet, to satisfy the best ofthem. This is what I believe all sensible people in these times see. And if, on the one hand, you are ready to laugh at the old prejudiceswhich have been so happily dissipated; on the other hand, howearnestly must you welcome the great aid to taste and thought andculture which comes to you thus in the guise of amusement. Let me putthis to you rather seriously; let me insist on the intellectual andmoral use, alike to the most and least cultivated of us, of thisart "most beautiful, most difficult, most rare, " which I stand hereto-day, not to apologize for, but to establish in the high placeto which it is entitled among the arts and among the amelioratinginfluences of life. Grant that any of us understand a dramatist betterfor seeing him acted, and it follows, first, that all of us will bemost indebted to the stage at the point where the higher and moreethereal faculties are liable in reading to failure and exhaustion, that is, stage-playing will be of most use to us where the mindrequires help and inspiration to grasp and revel in lofty moral orimaginative conceptions, or where it needs aid and sharpening toappreciate and follow the niceties of repartee, or the delicaciesof comic fancy. Secondly, it follows that if this is so with theintellectual few, it must be infinitely more so with the unimaginativemany of all ranks. They are not inaccessible to passion and poetry andrefinement, but their minds do not go forth, as it were, to seek thesejoys; and even if they read works of poetic and dramatic fancy, whichthey rarely do, they would miss them on the printed page. To them, therefore, with the exception of a few startling incidents of reallife, the theatre is the only channel through which are ever broughtthe great sympathies of the world of thought beyond their immediateken. And thirdly, it follows from all this that the stage is, intellectually and morally, to all who have recourse to it, thesource of some of the finest and best influences of which they arerespectively susceptible. To the thoughtful and reading man it bringsthe life, the fire, the color, the vivid instinct, which are beyondthe reach of study. To the common indifferent man, immersed, as arule, in the business and socialities of daily life, it brings visionsof glory and adventure, of emotion and of broad human interest. Itgives glimpses of the heights and depths of character and experience, setting him thinking and wondering even in the midst of amusement. Tothe most torpid and unobservant it exhibits the humorous in life andthe sparkle and finesse of language, which in dull ordinary existenceis stupidly shut out of knowledge or omitted from particular notice. To all it uncurtains a world, not that in which they live and yetnot other than it--a world in which interest is heightened whilst theconditions of truth are observed, in which the capabilities of men andwomen are seen developed without losing their consistency to nature, and developed with a curious and wholesome fidelity to simple anduniversal instincts of clear right and wrong. Be it observed--and Iput it most uncompromisingly--I am not speaking or thinking of anyunrealizable ideal, not of any lofty imagination of what might be, butof what is, wherever there are pit and gallery and foot-lights. Moreor less, and taking one evening with another, you may find supportfor an enthusiastic theory of stage morality and the high tone ofaudiences in most theatres in the country; and if you fancy that itis least so in the theatres frequented by the poor you make a greatmistake, for in none is the appreciation of good moral fare moremarked than in these. 

In reference to the poorer classes, we all lament the wide prevalenceof intemperate drinking. Well, is it not an obvious reflection thatthe worst performance seen on any of our stages cannot be so bad asdrinking for a corresponding time in a gin-palace? I have pointed thiscontrast before, and I point it again. The drinking we deplore takesplace in company--bad company; it is enlivened by talk--bad talk. Itis relished by obscenity. Where drink and low people come togetherthese things must be. The worst that can come of stage pandering tothe corrupt tastes of its basest patrons cannot be anything like this, and, as a rule, the stage holds out long against the invitation topander; and such invitations, from the publicity and decorum thatattend the whole matter, are neither frequent nor eager. A sort ofdecency sets in upon the coarsest person in entering even the roughesttheatre. I have sometimes thought that, considering the liability todescend and the facility of descent, a special Providence watchesover the morals and tone of our English stage. I do not desire toovercharge the eulogy. There never was a time when the stage had notconspicuous faults. There never was a time when these were not freelyadmitted by those most concerned for the maintenance of the stageat its best. In Shakespeare, whenever the subject of the theatre isapproached, we perceive signs that that great spirit, though it hada practical and business-like vein, and essayed no impossibleenterprises, groaned under the necessities, or the demands of apublic which desired frivolities and deformities which jarred upon thepoet-manager's feelings. As we descend the course of time we find thateach generation looked back to a supposed previous period when tasteranged higher, and when the inferior and offensive peculiarities ofthe existing stage were unknown. Yet from most of these generationswe inherit works as well as traditions and biographical recollectionswhich the world will never let die. The truth is that the immortalpart of the stage is its nobler part. Ignoble accidents and interludescome and go, but this lasts on forever. It lives, like the human soul, in the body of humanity--associated with much that is inferior, andhampered by many hindrances--but it never sinks into nothingness, andnever fails to find new and noble work in creations of permanent andmemorable excellence. Heaven forbid that I should seem to cover, evenwith a counterpane of courtesy, exhibitions of deliberate immorality. Happily this sort of thing is not common, and although it has hardlybeen practised by any one who, without a strain of meaning can beassociated with the profession of acting, yet public censure, notactive enough to repress the evil, is ever ready to pass a sweepingcondemnation on the stage which harbors it. Our cause is a good one. We go forth, armed with the luminous panoply which genius has forgedfor us, to do battle with dulness, with coarseness, with apathy, with every form of vice and evil. In every human heart there gleamsa bright reflection of this shining armor. The stage has no lights orshadows that are not lights of life and shadows of the heart. To eachhuman consciousness it appeals in alternating mirth and sadness, andwill not be denied. Err it must, for it is human; but, being human, itmust endure. The love of acting is inherent in our nature. Watch yourchildren play, and you will see that almost their first consciouseffort is to act and to imitate. It is an instinct, and you can nomore repress it than you can extinguish thought. When this instinctof all is developed by cultivation in the few, it becomes a wonderfulart, priceless to civilization in the solace it yields, the thought itgenerates, the refinement it inspires. Some of its latest achievementsare not unworthy of their grandest predecessors. Some of its youngestdevotees are at least as proud of its glories and as anxious topreserve them as any who have gone before. Theirs is a gloriousheritage! You honor it. They have a noble but a difficult, andsometimes a disheartening, task. You encourage it. And no word ofkindly interest or criticism dropped in the public ear from friendlylips goes unregarded or is unfertile of good. The universal study ofShakespeare in our public schools is a splendid sign of the departureof prejudice, and all criticism is welcome; but it is acting chieflythat can open to others, with any spark of Shakespeare's mind, themeans of illuminating the world. Only the theatre can realize to usin a life-like way what Shakespeare was to his own time. And it is, indeed, a noble destiny for the theatre to vindicate in these laterdays the greatness which sometimes it has seemed to vulgarize. It hasbeen too much the custom to talk of Shakespeare as nature's child--asthe lad who held horses for people who came to the play--as a sort ofchance phenomenon who wrote these plays by accident and unrecognized. How supremely ridiculous! How utterly irreconcilable with the granddimensions of the man! How absurdly dishonoring to the great age ofwhich he was, and was known to be, the glory! The noblest literaryman of all time--the finest and yet most prolific writer--the greateststudent of man, and the greatest master of man's highest gift oflanguage--surely it is treason to humanity to speak of such an one asin any sense a commonplace being! Imagine him rather, as he musthave been, the most notable courtier of the Court--the most perfectgentleman who stood in the Elizabethan throng--the man in whosepresence divines would falter and hesitate lest their knowledge ofthe Book should seem poor by the side of his, and at whom even queenlyroyalty would look askance, with an oppressive sense that here wasone to whose omnipotent and true imagination the hearts of kings andqueens and peoples had always been an open page! The thought of such aman is an incomparable inheritance for any nation, and such a man wasthe actor--Shakespeare. Such is our birthright and yours. Such thesuccession in which it is ours to labor and yours to enjoy. ForShakespeare belongs to the stage for ever, and his glories mustalways inalienably belong to it. If you uphold the theatre honestly, liberally, frankly, and with wise discrimination, the stage willuphold in future, as it has in the past, the literature, the manners, the morals, the fame, and the genius of our country. There must havebeen something wrong, as there was something poignant and lacerating, in prejudices which so long partly divorced the conscience of Britainfrom its noblest pride, and stamped with reproach, or at leastdepreciation, some of the brightest and world-famous incidents of herhistory. For myself, it kindles my heart with proud delight tothink that I have stood to-day before this audience--known for itsdiscrimination throughout all English-speaking lands--a welcome andhonored guest, because I stand here for justice to the art to which Iam devoted--because I stand here in thankfulness for the justice whichhas begun to be so abundantly rendered to it. If it is metaphoricallythe destiny of humanity, it is literally the experience of an actor, that one man in his time plays many parts. A player of any standingmust at various times have sounded the gamut of human sensibilityfrom the lowest note to the top of its compass. He must have banquetedoften on curious food for thought as he meditated on the subtlerelations created between himself and his audiences, as they havewatched in his impersonations the shifting tariff--the ever gliding, delicately graduated sliding-scale of dramatic right and wrong. He mayhave gloated, if he be a cynic, over the depths of ghastly horror, orthe vagaries of moral puddle through which it may have been hisduty to plash. But if he be an honest man, he will acknowledge thatscarcely ever has either dramatist or management wilfully biassed theeffect of stage representation in favor of evil, and of his audienceshe will boast that never has their mind been doubtful--never has theirtrue perception of the generous and just been known to fail, or evento be slow. How noble the privilege to work upon these finer--thesefinest--feelings of universal humanity! How engrossing the fascinationof those thousands of steady eyes, and sound sympathies, and beatinghearts which an actor confronts, with the confidence of friendshipand co-operation, as he steps upon the stage to work out in actionhis long-pent comprehension of a noble master-piece! How rapturous thesatisfaction of abandoning himself, in such a presence and with suchsympathizers, to his author's grandest flights of thought and noblestbursts of emotional inspiration! And how perpetually sustainingthe knowledge that whatever may be the vicissitudes and even thedegradations of the stage, it must and will depend for its constanthold on the affection and attention of mankind upon its loftier work;upon its more penetrating passion; upon its themes which most deeplysearch out the strong affections and high hopes of men and women;upon its fit and kindling illustration of great and vivid liveswhich either have been lived in noble fact or have deserved to endureimmortally in the popular belief and admiration which they havesecured. 

 "For our eyes to see! Sons of wisdom, song, and power, Giving earth her richest dower, And making nations free-- A glorious company!

 "Call them from the dead For our eyes to see! Forms of beauty, love, and grace, 'Sunshine in the shady place, ' That made it life to be-- A blessed company!"

ADDRESS

TO THE STUDENTS

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HARVARD

30TH MARCH 1885

THE ART OF ACTING

I. 

THE OCCASION. 

I am deeply sensible of the compliment that has been paid, not so muchto me personally as to the calling I represent, by the invitation todeliver an address to the students of this University. As an actor, and especially as an English actor, it is a great pleasure to speakfor my art in one of the chief centres of American culture; for ininviting me here to-day you intended, I believe, to recognize thedrama as an educational influence, to show a genuine interest in thestage as a factor in life which must be accepted and not ignored byintelligent people. I have thought that the best use I can make of theprivilege you have conferred upon me is to offer you, as well as Iam able, something like a practical exposition of my art; for itmay chance--who knows?--that some of you may at some future time bedisposed to adopt it as a vocation. Not that I wish to be regardedas a tempter who has come among you to seduce you from your presentstudies by artful pictures of the fascinations of the footlights. ButI naturally supposed that you would like me to choose, as the theme ofmy address, the subject in which I am most interested, and to whichmy life has been devoted; and that if any students here should everdetermine to become actors, they could not be much the worse forthe information and counsel I could gather for them from a tolerablyextensive experience. This subject will, I trust, be welcome to all ofyou who are interested in the stage as an institution which appealsto the sober-minded and intelligent; for I take it that you have nolingering prejudice against the theatre, or else I should not behere. Nor are you disposed, like certain good people, to object to thetheatre simply as a name. These sticklers for principle would neverenter a playhouse for worlds; and I have heard that in a famous cityof Massachusetts, not a hundred miles from here, there are persons towhom the theatre is unknown, but who have no objection to see a playin a building which is called a museum, especially if the vestibuleleading to the theatre should be decorated with sound moral principlesin the shape of statues, pictures, and stuffed objects in glass cases. 

When I began to think about my subject for the purpose of thisaddress, I was rather staggered by its vastness. It is really a matterfor a course of lectures; but as President Eliot has not proposed thatI should occupy a chair of dramatic literature in this University, and as time and opportunity are limited, I can only undertake to putbefore you, in the simplest way, a few leading ideas about dramaticart which may be worthy of reflection. And in doing this I have thegreat satisfaction of appearing in a model theatre, before a modelaudience, and of being the only actor in my own play. Moreover, I amstimulated by the atmosphere of the Greek drama, for I know that onthis stage you have enacted a Greek play with remarkable success. So, after all, it is not a body of mere tyros that I am addressing, butactors who have worn the sock and buskin, and declaimed the speecheswhich delighted audiences two thousand years ago. 

Now, this address, like discourses in a more solemn place, fallsnaturally into divisions. I propose to speak first of the Art ofActing; secondly, of its Requirements and Practice; and lastly of itsRewards. And, at the outset, let me say that I want you to judge thestage at its best. I do not intend to suggest that only the playsof Shakespeare are tolerable in the theatre to people of tasteand intelligence. The drama has many forms--tragedy, comedy, historical-pastoral, pastoral-comical--and all are good when their aimis honestly artistic. 

II. 

THE ART OF ACTING. 

Now, what is the art of acting? I speak of it in its highest sense, asthe art to which Roscius, Betterton, and Garrick owed their fame. Itis the art of embodying the poet's creations, of giving them flesh andblood, of making the figures which appeal to your mind's eye in theprinted drama live before you on the stage. "To fathom the depths ofcharacter, to trace its latent motives, to feel its finest quiveringsof emotion, to comprehend the thoughts that are hidden under words, and thus possess one's-self of the actual mind of the individualman"--such was Macready's definition of the player's art; and to thiswe may add the testimony of Talma. He describes tragic acting as "theunion of grandeur without pomp and nature without triviality. " Itdemands, he says, the endowment of high sensibility and intelligence. 

"The actor who possesses this double gift adopts a course of studypeculiar to himself. In the first place, by repeated exercises, heenters deeply into the emotions, and his speech acquires the accentproper to the situation of the personage he has to represent. Thisdone, he goes to the theatre not only to give theatrical effect to hisstudies, but also to yield himself to the spontaneous flashes of hissensibility and all the emotions which it involuntarily produces inhim. What does he then do? In order that his inspirations may not belost, his memory, in the silence of repose, recalls the accent ofhis voice, the expression of his features, his action--in a word, thespontaneous workings of his mind, which he had suffered to havefree course, and, in effect, everything which in the moments ofhis exaltation contributed to the effects he had produced. Hisintelligence then passes all these means in review, connectingthem and fixing them in his memory to re-employ them at pleasure insucceeding representations. These impressions are often so evanescentthat on retiring behind the scenes he must repeat to himself whathe had been playing rather than what he had to play. By this kind oflabor the intelligence accumulates and preserves all the creations ofsensibility. It is by this means that at the end of twenty years (itrequires at least this length of time) a person destined to displayfine talent may at length present to the public a series of charactersacted almost to perfection. "

You will readily understand from this that to the actor the well-wornmaxim that art is long and life is short has a constant significance. The older we grow the more acutely alive we are to the difficulties ofour craft. I cannot give you a better illustration of this fact than astory which is told of Macready. A friend of mine, once a dear friendof his, was with him when he played Hamlet for the last time. Thecurtain had fallen, and the great actor was sadly thinking that thepart he loved so much would never be his again. And as he took off hisvelvet mantle and laid it aside, he muttered almost unconsciouslythe words of Horatio, "Good-night, sweet Prince;" then turning to hisfriend, "Ah, " said he, "I am just beginning to realize the sweetness, the tenderness, the gentleness of this dear Hamlet!" Believe me, thetrue artist never lingers fondly upon what he has done. He is everthinking of what remains undone: ever striving toward an ideal it maynever be his fortune to attain. 

We are sometimes told that to read the best dramatic poetry is moreeducating than to see it acted. I do not think this theory is verywidely held, for it is in conflict with the dramatic instinct, whicheverybody possesses in a greater or less degree. You never met aplaywright who could conceive himself willing--even if endowed withthe highest literary gifts--to prefer a reading to a playgoingpublic. He thinks his work deserving of all the rewards of print andpublisher, but he will be much more elated if it should appeal to theworld in the theatre as a skilful representation of human passions. In one of her letters George Eliot says: "In opposition to most peoplewho love to _read_ Shakespeare, I like to see his plays acted betterthan any others; his great tragedies thrill me, let them be actedhow they may. " All this is so simple and intelligible, that it seemsscarcely worth while to argue that in proportion to the readiness withwhich the reader of Shakespeare imagines the attributes of the variouscharacters, and is interested in their personality, he will, as arule, be eager to see their tragedy or comedy in action. He will thenfind that very much which he could not imagine with any definitenesspresents new images every moment--the eloquence of look and gesture, the by-play, the inexhaustible significance of the human voice. Thereare people who fancy they have more music in their souls than was evertranslated into harmony by Beethoven or Mozart. There are others whothink they could paint pictures, write poetry--in short, do anything, if they only made the effort. To them what is accomplished by thepractised actor seems easy and simple. But as it needs the skill ofthe musician to draw the full volume of eloquence from the writtenscore, so it needs the skill of the dramatic artist to develop thesubtle harmonies of the poetic play. In fact, to _do_ and not to_dream_, is the mainspring of success in life. The actor's art is toact, and the true acting of any character is one of the most difficultaccomplishments. I challenge the acute student to ponder over Hamlet'srenunciation of Ophelia--one of the most complex scenes in all thedrama--and say that he has learned more from his meditations than hecould be taught by players whose intelligence is equal to his own. Topresent the man thinking aloud is the most difficult achievement ofour art. Here the actor who has no real grip of the character, butsimply recites the speeches with a certain grace and intelligence, will be untrue. The more intent he is upon the words, and the lesson the ideas that dictated them, the more likely he is to lay himselfopen to the charge of mechanical interpretation. It is perfectlypossible to express to an audience all the involutions of thought, the speculation, doubt, wavering, which reveal the meditative butirresolute mind. As the varying shades of fancy pass and repass themirror of the face, they may yield more material to the studiousplaygoer than he is likely to get by a diligent poring over thetext. In short, as we understand the people around us much better bypersonal intercourse than by all the revelations of written words--forwords, as Tennyson says, "half reveal and half conceal the soulwithin, " so the drama has, on the whole, infinitely more suggestionswhen it is well acted than when it is interpreted by the unaidedjudgment of the student. It has been said that acting is an unworthyoccupation because it represents feigned emotions, but this censurewould apply with equal force to poet or novelist. Do not imagine thatI am claiming for the actor sole and undivided authority. He shouldhimself be a student, and it is his business to put into practicethe best ideas he can gather from the general current of thought withregard to the highest dramatic literature. But it is he who gives bodyto those ideas--fire, force, and sensibility, without which they wouldremain for most people mere airy abstractions. 

It is often supposed that great actors trust to the inspiration of themoment. Nothing can be more erroneous. There will, of course, be suchmoments, when an actor at a white heat illumines some passage witha flash of imagination (and this mental condition, by the way, isimpossible to the student sitting in his arm-chair); but the greatactor's surprises are generally well weighed, studied, and balanced. We know that Edmund Kean constantly practised before a mirror effectswhich startled his audience by their apparent spontaneity. It is theaccumulation of such effects which enables an actor, after many years, to present many great characters with remarkable completeness. 

I do not want to overstate the case, or to appeal to anything that isnot within common experience, so I can confidently ask you whether ascene in a great play has not been at some time vividly impressed onyour minds by the delivery of a single line, or even of one forcibleword. Has not this made the passage far more real and human to youthan all the thought you have devoted to it? An accomplished critichas said that Shakespeare himself might have been surprised had heheard the "Fool, fool, fool!" of Edmund Kean. And though all actorsare not Keans, they have in varying degree this power of making adramatic character step out of the page, and come nearer to our heartsand our understandings. 

After all, the best and most convincing exposition of the whole artof acting is given by Shakespeare himself: "To hold, as 'twere, themirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her ownimage, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. "Thus the poet recognized the actor's art as a most potent ally in therepresentation of human life. He believed that to hold the mirror upto nature was one of the worthiest functions in the sphere of labor, and actors are content to point to his definition of their work as thecharter of their privileges. 

III. 

PRACTICE OF THE ART. 

The practice of the art of acting is a subject difficult to treat withthe necessary brevity. Beginners are naturally anxious to know whatcourse they should pursue. In common with other actors, I receiveletters from young people many of whom are very earnest in theirambition to adopt the dramatic calling, but not sufficiently alive tothe fact that success does not depend on a few lessons in declamation. When I was a boy I had a habit which I think would be useful to allyoung students. Before going to see a play of Shakespeare's I used toform--in a very juvenile way--a theory as to the working out of thewhole drama, so as to correct my conceptions by those of the actors;and though I was, as a rule, absurdly wrong, there can be no doubtthat any method of independent study is of enormous importance, notonly to youngsters, but also to students of a larger growth. Without it the mind is apt to take its stamp from the first forcibleimpression it receives, and to fall into a servile dependence upontraditions, which, robbed of the spirit that created them, are aptto be purely mischievous. What was natural to the creator is oftenunnatural and lifeless in the imitator. No two people form the sameconceptions of character, and therefore it is always advantageous tosee an independent and courageous exposition of an original ideal. There can be no objection to the kind of training that imparts aknowledge of manners and customs, and the teaching which pertains tosimple deportment on the stage is necessary and most useful; but youcannot possibly be taught any tradition of character, for that has nopermanence. Nothing is more fleeting than any traditional method ofimpersonation. You may learn where a particular personage used tostand on the stage, or down which trap the ghost of Hamlet's fathervanished; but the soul of interpretation is lost, and it is this soulwhich the actor has to re-create for himself. It is not mere attitudeor tone that has to be studied; you must be moved by the impulse ofbeing; you must impersonate and not recite. 

There has always been a controversy as to the province of naturalismin dramatic art. In England it has been too much the custom, Ibelieve, while demanding naturalism in comedy, to expect a falseinflation in tragedy. But there is no reason why an actor shouldbe less natural in tragic than in lighter moods. Passions vary inexpression according to moulds of character and manners, but theirreality should not be lost even when they are expressed in the heroicforms of the drama. A very simple test is a reference to the recordsof old actors. What was it in their performances that chieflyimpressed their contemporaries? Very rarely the measured recitation ofthis or that speech, but very often a simple exclamation that deeplymoved their auditors, because it was a gleam of nature in the midstof declamation. The "Prithee, undo this button!" of Garrick, wasremembered when many stately utterances were forgotten. In our day thecontrast between artificial declamation and the accents of nature isless marked, because its delivery is more uniformly simple, and anactor who lapses from a natural into a false tone is sure to findthat his hold upon his audience is proportionately weakened. But therevolution which Garrick accomplished may be imagined from the storytold by Boswell. Dr. Johnson was discussing plays and players withMrs. Siddons, and he said: "Garrick, madam, was no declaimer; therewas not one of his own scene-shifters who could not have spoken 'To beor not to be' better than he did; yet he was the only actor I ever sawwhom I could call a master, both in tragedy and comedy, though Iliked him best in comedy. A true conception of character and naturalexpression of it were his distinguished excellences. "

To be natural on the stage is most difficult, and yet a grain ofnature is worth a bushel of artifice. But you may say--what is nature?I quoted just now Shakespeare's definition of the actor's art. Afterthe exhortation to hold the mirror up to nature, he adds the pregnantwarning: "This overdone or come tardy off, though it make theunskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the censure ofwhich one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. "Nature may be overdone by triviality in conditions that demandexaltation; for instance, Hamlet's first address to the Ghost liftshis disposition to an altitude far beyond the ordinary reaches of oursouls, and his manner of speech should be adapted to this sentiment. But such exaltation of utterance is wholly out of place in the purelycolloquial scene with the Gravedigger. When Macbeth says, "Go, bid thymistress, when my drink is ready, she strike upon the bell, " he wouldnot use the tone of

 "Pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or Heaven's cherubim, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind. "

Like the practised orator, the actor rises and descends with hissentiment, and cannot always be in a fine phrenzy. This varietyis especially necessary in Shakespeare, whose work is essentiallydifferent from the classic drama, because it presents every mood ofmind and form of speech, commonplace or exalted, as character andsituation dictate: whereas in such a play as Addison's _Cato_, everybody is consistently eloquent about everything. 

There are many causes for the growth of naturalism in dramatic art, and amongst them we should remember the improvement in the mechanismof the stage. For instance, there has been a remarkable development instage-lighting. In old pictures you will observe the actors constantlystanding in a line, because the oil-lamps of those days gave such anindifferent illumination that everybody tried to get into what wascalled the focus--the "blaze of publicity" furnished by the "float" orfootlights. The importance of this is illustrated by an amusing storyof Edmund Kean, who one night played _Othello_ with more than hisusual intensity. An admirer who met him in the street next day wasloud in his congratulations: "I really thought you would have chokedIago, Mr. Kean--you seemed so tremendously in earnest. " "In earnest!"said the tragedian, "I should think so! Hang the fellow, he was tryingto keep me out of the focus. "

I do not recommend actors to allow their feelings to carry themaway like this; but it is necessary to warn you against the theoryexpounded with brilliant ingenuity by Diderot, that the actor neverfeels. When Macready played Virginius, after burying his beloveddaughter, he confessed that his real experience gave a new force tohis acting in the most pathetic situations of the play. Are we tosuppose that this was a delusion, or that the sensibility of the manwas a genuine aid to the actor? Bannister said of John Kemble that hewas never pathetic because he had no children. Talma says that whendeeply moved he found himself making a rapid and fugitive observationon the alternation of his voice, and on a certain spasmodic vibrationwhich it contracted in tears. Has not the actor who can thus makehis feelings a part of his art an advantage over the actor who neverfeels, but who makes his observations solely from the feelings ofothers? It is necessary to this art that the mind should have, as itwere, a double consciousness, in which all the emotions proper to theoccasion may have full swing, while the actor is all the time on thealert for every detail of his method. It may be that his playing willbe more spirited one night than another. But the actor who combinesthe electric force of a strong personality with a mastery of theresources of his art must have a greater power over his audiencesthan the passionless actor who gives a most artistic simulation of theemotions he never experiences. 

Now, in the practice of acting, a most important point is the studyof elocution; and in elocution one great difficulty is the use ofsufficient force to be generally heard without being unnaturally loud, and without acquiring a stilted delivery. The advice of the old actorswas that you should always pitch your voice so as to be heard by theback row of the gallery--no easy task to accomplish without offendingthe ears of the front of the orchestra. And I should tell you thatthis exaggeration applies to everything on the stage. To appear to benatural, you must in reality be much broader than nature. To act onthe stage as one really would in a room, would be ineffective andcolorless. I never knew an actor who brought the art of elocution togreater perfection than the late Charles Mathews, whose utterance onthe stage appeared so natural that one was surprised to find when nearhim that he was really speaking in a very loud key. There is a greatactor in your own country to whose elocution one always listens withthe utmost enjoyment--I mean Edwin Booth. He has inherited this gift, I believe, from his famous father, of whom I have heard it said, thathe always insisted on a thorough use of the "instruments"--by which hemeant the teeth--in the formation of words. 

An imperfect elocution is apt to degenerate into a monotonousuniformity of tone. Some wholesome advice on this point we find in the_Life of Betterton_. 

"This stiff uniformity of voice is not only displeasing to the ear, but disappoints the effect of the discourse on the hearers; first, byan equal way of speaking, when the pronunciation has everywhere, inevery word and every syllable, the same sound, it must inevitablyrender all parts of speech equal, and so put them on a very unjustlevel. So that the power of the reasoning part, the lustre andornament of the figures, the heart, warmth, and vigor of thepassionate part being expressed all in the same tone, is flat andinsipid, and lost in a supine, or at least unmusical pronunciation. Sothat, in short, that which ought to strike and stir up the affections, because it is spoken all alike, without any distinction or variety, moves them not at all. "

Now, on the question of pronunciation there is something to be said, which, I think, in ordinary teaching is not sufficiently considered. Pronunciation on the stage should be simple and unaffected, but notalways fashioned rigidly according to a dictionary standard. No lessan authority than Cicero points out that pronunciation must varywidely according to the emotions to be expressed; that it may bebroken or cut, with a varying or direct sound, and that it serves forthe actor the purpose of color to the painter, from which to draw hisvariations. Take the simplest illustration, the formal pronunciationof "A-h" is "Ah, " of "O-h" "Oh;" but you cannot stereotype theexpression of emotion like this. These exclamations are words of onesyllable, but the speaker who is sounding the gamut of human feelingwill not be restricted in his pronunciation by the dictionary rule. It is said of Edmund Kean that he never spoke such ejaculations, but always sighed or groaned them. Fancy an actor saying thus, "MyDesdemona! Oh, [)o]h, [)o]h!" Words are intended to express feelingsand ideas, not to bind them in rigid fetters. The accents of pleasureare different from the accents of pain, and if a feeling is moreaccurately expressed, as in nature, by a variation of sound notprovided for by the laws of pronunciation, then such imperfect lawsmust be disregarded and nature vindicated. The word should be the echoof the sense. 

The force of an actor depends, of course, upon his physique; and it isnecessary, therefore, that a good deal of attention should be given tobodily training. Everything that develops suppleness, elasticity, andgrace--that most subtle charm--should be carefully cultivated, andin this regard your admirable gymnasium is worth volumes of advice. Sometimes there is a tendency to train the body at the expense ofthe mind, and the young actor with striking physical advantagesmust beware of regarding this fortunate endowment as his entirestock-in-trade. That way folly lies, and the result may be too dearlypurchased by the fame of a photographer's window. It is clear thatthe physique of actors must vary; there can be no military standardof proportions on the stage. Some great actors have had to struggleagainst physical disabilities of a serious nature. Betterton had anunprepossessing face; so had Le Kain. John Kemble was troubled witha weak, asthmatic voice, and yet by his dignity, and the force ofhis personality, he was able to achieve the greatest effects. In somecases a super-abundant physique has incapacitated actors from playingmany parts. The combination in one frame of all the gifts of mind andall the advantages in person is very rare on the stage; but talentwill conquer many natural defects when it is sustained by energy andperseverance. 

With regard to gesture, Shakespeare's advice is all-embracing. "Suitthe action to the word, the word to the action, with this specialobservance that you over-step not the modesty of nature. " And herecomes the consideration of a very material part of the actor'sbusiness--by-play. This is of the very essence of true art. It is morethan anything else significant of the extent to which the actor hasidentified himself with the character he represents. Recall the scenesbetween Iago and Othello, and consider how the whole interest of thesituation depends on the skill with which the gradual effect of thepoisonous suspicion instilled into the Moor's mind is depicted in lookand tone, slight of themselves, but all contributing to the intensityof the situation. One of the greatest tests of an actor is hiscapacity for listening. By-play must be unobtrusive; the studentshould remember that the most minute expression attracts attention:that nothing is lost, that by-play is as mischievous when it isinjudicious as it is effective when rightly conceived, and that whiletrifles make perfection, perfection is no trifle. This lesson wasenjoined on me when I was a very young man by that remarkable actress, Charlotte Cushman. I remember that when she played Meg Merrilies Iwas cast for Henry Bertram, on the principle, seemingly, that an actorwith no singing voice is admirably fitted for a singing part. It wasmy duty to give Meg Merrilies a piece of money, and I did it after thetraditional fashion by handing her a large purse full of coin of therealm, in the shape of broken crockery, which was generally used infinancial transactions on the stage, because when the virtuous maidenrejected with scorn the advances of the lordly libertine, and threwhis pernicious bribe upon the ground, the clatter of the brokencrockery suggested fabulous wealth. But after the play Miss Cushman, in the course of some kindly advice, said to me: "Instead of giving methat purse don't you think it would have been much more natural ifyou had taken a number of coins from your pocket, and given me thesmallest? That is the way one gives alms to a beggar, and it wouldhave added to the realism of the scene. " I have never forgotten thatlesson, for simple as it was, it contained many elements of dramatictruth. It is most important that an actor should learn that he isa figure in a picture, and that the least exaggeration destroys theharmony of the composition. All the members of the company shouldwork towards a common end, with the nicest subordination of theirindividuality to the general purpose. Without this method a play whenacted is at best a disjointed and incoherent piece of work, insteadof being a harmonious whole like the fine performance of an orchestralsymphony. The root of the matter is that the actor must before allthings form a definite conception of what he wishes to convey. It isbetter to be wrong and be consistent, than to be right, yet hesitatingand uncertain. This is why great actors are sometimes very bad or verygood. They will do the wrong thing with a courage and thoroughnesswhich makes the error all the more striking; although when they areright they may often be superb. It is necessary that the actor shouldlearn to think before he speaks; a practice which, I believe, is veryuseful off the stage. Let him remember, first, that every sentenceexpresses a new thought and, therefore, frequently demands a changeof intonation; secondly, that the thought precedes the word. Of coursethere are passages in which thought and language are borne along bythe streams of emotion and completely intermingled. But more oftenit will be found that the most natural, the most seemingly accidentaleffects are obtained when the working of the mind is seen before thetongue gives it words. 

You will see that the limits of an actor's studies are very wide. Tomaster the technicalities of his craft, to familiarize his mindwith the structure, rhythm, and the soul of poetry, to be constantlycultivating his perceptions of life around him and of all thearts--painting, music, sculpture--for the actor who is devoted tohis profession is susceptible to every harmony of color, sound, andform--to do this is to labor in a large field of industry. But allyour training, bodily and mental, is subservient to the two greatprinciples in tragedy and comedy--passion and geniality. Genialityin comedy is one of the rarest gifts. Think of the rich unction ofFalstaff, the mercurial fancy of Mercutio, the witty vivacity andmanly humor of Benedick--think of the qualities, natural and acquired, that are needed for the complete portrayal of such characters, and youwill understand how difficult it is for a comedian to rise to sucha sphere. In tragedy, passion or intensity sweeps all before it, andwhen I say passion, I mean the passion of pathos as well as wrathor revenge. These are the supreme elements of the actor's art, which cannot be taught by any system, however just, and to which alleducation is but tributary. 

Now all that can be said of the necessity of a close regard for naturein acting applies with equal or greater force to the presentation ofplays. You want, above all things, to have a truthful picture whichshall appeal to the eye without distracting the imagination from thepurpose of the drama. It is a mistake to suppose that this enterpriseis comparatively new to the stage. Since Shakespeare's time there hasbeen a steady progress in this direction. Even in the poet's day everyconceivable property was forced into requisition, and his own senseof shortcomings in this respect is shown in _Henry V. _ when heexclaims:--

 "Where--O for pity!--we shall much disgrace With four or five most vile and ragged foils The name of Agincourt. "

There have always been critics who regarded care and elaboration inthe mounting of plays as destructive of the real spirit of the actor'sart. Betterton had to meet this reproach when he introduced scenery inlieu of linsey-woolsey curtains; but he replied, sensibly enough, thathis scenery was better than the tapestry with hideous figures workedupon it which had so long distracted the senses of play-goers. Hemight have asked his critics whether they wished to see Ophelia playedby a boy of sixteen, as in the time of Shakespeare, instead of abeautiful and gifted woman. Garrick did his utmost to improve themechanical arts of the stage--so much so, indeed, that he paid hisscene-painter, Loutherbourg, £500 a year, a pretty considerable sumin those days--though in Garrick's time the importance of realism incostume was not sufficiently appreciated to prevent him from playingMacbeth in a bagwig. To-day we are employing all our resources toheighten the picturesque effects of the drama, and we are still toldthat this is a gross error. It may be admitted that nothing is moreobjectionable than certain kinds of realism, which are simply vulgar;but harmony of color and grace of outline have a legitimate sphere inthe theatre, and the method which uses them as adjuncts may claim tobe "as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. "For the abuse of scenic decoration, the overloading of the stage withornament, the subordination of the play to a pageant, I have nothingto say. That is all foreign to the artistic purpose which shoulddominate dramatic work. Nor do I think that servility to archæology onthe stage is an unmixed good. Correctness of costume is admirableand necessary up to a certain point, but when it ceases to be "aswholesome as sweet, " it should, I think, be sacrificed. You perceivethat the nicest discretion is needed in the use of the materialswhich are nowadays at the disposal of the manager. Music, painting, architecture, the endless variations of costume, have all to beemployed with a strict regard to the production of an artisticwhole, in which no element shall be unduly obtrusive. We are open tomicroscopic criticism at every point. When _Much Ado about Nothing_was produced at the Lyceum, I received a letter complaining of thegross violation of accuracy in a scene which was called a cedar-walk. "Cedars!" said my correspondent, --"why, cedars were not introducedinto Messina for fifty years after the date of Shakespeare's story!"Well, this was a tremendous indictment, but unfortunately thecedar-walk had been painted. Absolute realism on the stage is notalways desirable, any more than the photographic reproduction ofNature can claim to rank with the highest art. 

IV. 

THE REWARDS OF THE ART. 

To what position in the world of intelligence does the actor's artentitle him, and what is his contribution to the general sum ofinstruction? We are often told that the art is ephemeral; that itcreates nothing; that when the actor's personality is withdrawn fromthe public eye he leaves no trace behind. Granted that his art createsnothing; but does it not often restore? It is true that he leavesnothing like the canvas of the painter and the marble of the sculptor, but has he done nought to increase the general stock of ideas? Theastronomer and naturalist create nothing, but they contribute much tothe enlightenment of the world. I am taking the highest standard ofmy art, for I maintain that in judging any calling you should considerits noblest and not its most ignoble products. All the work that isdone on the stage cannot stand upon the same level, any more than allthe work that is done in literature. You do not demand that your poetsand novelists shall all be of the same calibre. An immense amount ofgood writing does no more than increase the gayety of mankind; butwhen Johnson said that the gayety of nations was eclipsed by the deathof Garrick, he did not mean that a mere barren amusement had lost oneof its professors. When Sir Joshua Reynolds painted Mrs. Siddons asthe Tragic Muse, and said he had achieved immortality by putting hisname on the hem of her garment, he meant something more than a prettycompliment, for her name can never die. To give genuine and wholesomeentertainment is a very large function of the stage, and without thatentertainment very many lives would lose a stimulus of the highestvalue. If recreation of every legitimate kind is invaluable to theworker, especially so is the recreation of the drama, which brightenshis faculties, enlarges his vision of the picturesque, and by takinghim for a time out of this work-a-day world, braces his sensibilitiesfor the labors of life. The art which does this may surely claim toexercise more than a fleeting influence upon the world's intelligence. But in its highest developments it does more; it acts as a constantmedium for the diffusion of great ideas, and by throwing new lightsupon the best dramatic literature, it largely helps the growthof education. It is not too much to say that the interpreters ofShakespeare on the stage have had much to do with the widespreadappreciation of his works. Some of the most thoughtful students ofthe poet have recognized their indebtedness to actors, while formultitudes the stage has performed the office of discovery. Thousandswho flock to-day to see a representation of Shakespeare, which is theproduct of much reverent study of the poet, are not content to regardit as a mere scenic exhibition. Without it Shakespeare might have beenfor many of them a sealed book; but many more have been impelledby the vivid realism of the stage to renew studies which otheroccupations or lack of leisure have arrested. Am I presumptuous, then, in asserting that the stage is not only an instrument of amusement, but a very active agent in the spread of knowledge and taste? Someforms of stage work, you may say, are not particularly elevating. True; and there are countless fictions coming daily from the handsof printer and publisher which nobody is the better for reading. Youcannot have a fixed standard of value in my art; and though thereare masses of people who will prefer an unintelligent exhibition toa really artistic production, that is no reason for decrying thetheatre, in which all the arts blend with the knowledge of history, manners, and customs of all people, and scenes of all climes, toafford a varied entertainment to the most exacting intellect. I haveno sympathy with people who are constantly anxious to define theactor's position, for, as a rule, they are not animated by a desire topromote his interests. "'Tis in ourselves that we are thus and thus;"and whatever actors deserve, socially or artistically, they are sureto receive as their right. I found the other day in a well-circulatedlittle volume a suggestion that the actor was a degraded being becausehe has a closely-shaven face. This is, indeed, humiliating, and Iwonder how it strikes the Roman Catholic clergy. However, there areactors who do not shave closely, and though, alas! I am not one ofthem, I wish them joy of the spiritual grace which I cannot claim. 

It is admittedly unfortunate for the stage that it has a certainequivocal element, which, in the eyes of some judges, is sufficientfor its condemnation. The art is open to all, and it has to bear thesins of many. You may open your newspaper, and see a paragraph headed"Assault by an Actress. " Some poor creature is dignified by that titlewho has not the slightest claim to it. You look into a shop-window andsee photographs of certain people who are indiscriminately describedas actors and actresses though their business has no pretence to beart of any kind. 

I was told in Baltimore of a man in that city who was so diverted bythe performance of Tyrone Powar, the popular Irish comedian, that helaughed uproariously till the audience was convulsed with merriment atthe spectacle. As soon as he could speak, he called out, "Do be quiet, Mr. Showman; do'ee hold your tongue, or I shall die of laughter!" Thisidea that the actor is a showman still lingers; but no one with anyreal appreciation of the best elements of the drama applies thisvulgar standard to a great body of artists. The fierce light ofpublicity that beats upon us makes us liable, from time to time, todissertations upon our public and private lives, our manners, ourmorals, and our money. Our whims and caprices are discanted on withapparent earnestness of truth, and seeming sincerity of conviction. There is always some lively controversy concerning the influence ofthe stage. The battle between old methods and new in art is wagedeverywhere. If an actor were to take to heart everything that iswritten and said about him, his life would be an intolerable burden. And one piece of advice I should give to young actors is this: Do notbe too sensitive; receive praise or censure with modesty and patience. Good honest criticism is, of course, most advantageous to an actor;but he should save himself from the indiscriminate reading of amultitude of comments, which may only confuse instead of stimulating. And here let me say to young actors in all earnestness: Beware of theloungers of our calling, the camp followers who hang on the skirts ofthe army, and who inveigle the young into habits that degrade theircharacter, and paralyze their ambition. Let your ambition be everprecious to you, and, next to your good name, the jewel of your souls. I care nothing for the actor who is not always anxious to rise tothe highest position in his particular walk; but this ideal cannot becherished by the young man who is induced to fritter away his time andhis mind in thoughtless company. 

But in the midst of all this turmoil about the stage, one fact standsout clearly: the dramatic art is steadily growing in credit with theeducated classes. It is drawing more recruits from those classes. Theenthusiasm for our calling has never reached a higher pitch. There isquite an extraordinary number of ladies who want to become actresses, and the cardinal difficulty in the way is not the social deteriorationwhich some people think they would incur, but simply their inabilityto act. Men of education who become actors do not find that theireducation is useless. If they have the necessary aptitude--the inborninstinct for the stage--all their mental training will be of greatvalue to them. It is true that there must always be grades in thetheatre, that an educated man who is an indifferent actor can neverexpect to reach the front rank. If he do no more than figure in thearmy at Bosworth Field, or look imposing in a doorway; if he neverplay any but the smallest parts; if in these respects he be nobetter than men who could not pass an examination in any branch ofknowledge--he has no more reason to complain than the highly-educatedman who longs to write poetry, and possesses every qualification--savethe poetic faculty. There are people who seem to think that onlyirresistible genius justifies any one in adopting the stage as avocation. They make it an argument against the profession that manyenter it from a low sphere of life, without any particular fitness foracting, but simply to earn a livelihood by doing the subordinate andmechanical work which is necessary in every theatre. And so men andwomen of refinement--especially women--are warned that they must dothemselves injury by passing through the rank and file during theirterm of probation in the actors' craft. Now, I need not remind youthat on the stage everybody cannot be great, any more than studentsof music can all become great musicians; but very many will do soundartistic work which is of great value. As for any question of conduct, Heaven forbid that I should be dogmatic; but it does not seem to melogical that while genius is its own law in the pursuit of a nobleart, all inferior merit or ambition is to be deterred from the samepath by appalling pictures of its temptations. 

If our art is worth anything at all, it is worth the honest, conscientious self-devotion of men and women who, while they may notachieve fame, may have the satisfaction of being workers in a callingwhich does credit to many degrees of talent. We do not claim to beany better than our fellows in other walks of life. We do not askthe jester in journalism whether his quips and epigrams are alwaysdictated by the loftiest morality; nor do we insist on knowing thatthe odor of sanctity surrounds the private lives of lawyers andmilitary men before we send our sons into law and the army. Itis impossible to point out any vocation which is not attended bytemptations that prove fatal to many; but you have simply to considerwhether a profession has in itself any title to honor, and then--ifyou are confident of your capacity--to enter it with a resolve to doall that energy and perseverance can accomplish. The immortal part ofthe stage is its nobler part. Ignoble accidents and interludes comeand go, but this lasts on forever. It lives, like the human soul, in the body of humanity--associated with much that is inferior, andhampered by many hindrances; but it never sinks into nothingness, andnever fails to find new and noble work in creations of permanent andmemorable excellence. And I would say, as a last word, to the youngmen in this assembly who may at any time resolve to enter the dramaticprofession, that they ought always to fix their minds upon the highestexamples; that in studying acting they should beware of prejudicedcomparisons between this method and that, but learn as much aspossible from all; that they should remember that art is as varied asnature, and as little suited to the shackles of a school; and, aboveall, that they should never forget that excellence in any art isattained only by arduous labor, unswerving purpose, and unfailingdiscipline. This discipline is, perhaps, the most difficult of alltests, for it involves the subordination of the actor's personality inevery work which is designed to be a complete and harmonious picture. Dramatic art nowadays is more coherent, systematic, and comprehensivethan it has sometimes been. And to the student who proposes to fillthe place in this system to which his individuality and experienceentitle him, and to do his duty faithfully and well, ever strivingafter greater excellence, and never yielding to the indolence that isoften born of popularity--to him I say, with every confidence, thathe will choose a career in which, if it does not lead him to fame, he will be sustained by the honorable exercise of some of the bestfaculties of the human mind. 

And now I can only thank you for the patience with which you havelistened while, in a slight and imperfect way, I have dwelt with someof the most important of the actor's responsibilities, I have been anactor for nearly thirty years, and what I have told you is the fruitof my experience, and of an earnest and conscientious belief that thecalling to which I am proud to belong is worthy of the sympathy andsupport of all intelligent people. 

ADDRESS

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

26 JUNE 1886

ADDRESS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 

When I was honored by the request of your distinguishedVice-Chancellor to deliver an address before the members of thisgreat University, I told him I could only say something about my owncalling, for that I knew little or nothing about anything else. I trust, however, that this confession of the limitations ofmy knowledge will not prejudice me in your eyes, members as youare--privileged members I may say--of this seat of learning. In an agewhen so many persons think they know everything, it may afford a notunpleasing variety to meet with some who know that they know nothing. 

I cannot discourse to you, even if you wished me to do so, of therespective merits of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; for if Idid, I should not be able to tell you anything that you do not knowalready. I have not had the advantage--one that very few of themembers of my profession in past, or even in present times haveenjoyed--of an University education. The only _Alma Mater_ I ever knewwas the hard stage of a country theatre. 

In the course of my training, long before I had taken, what I maycall, my degree in London, I came to act in your city. I have a verypleasant recollection of the time I passed here, though I am sorryto say that, owing to the regulation which forbade theatricalperformances during term time, I saw Oxford only in vacation, whichis rather like--to use the old illustration--seeing _Hamlet_ with thepart of Hamlet left out. There was then no other building availablefor dramatic representations than the Town Hall. I may, perhaps, beallowed to congratulate you on the excellent theatre which you nowpossess--I do not mean the Sheldonian--and at the same time to expressa hope that, as a more liberal, and might I say a wiser, _régime_allows the members of the University to go to the play, they will notreceive any greater moral injury, or be distracted any more from theirstudies, than when they were only allowed the occasional relaxation ofhearing comic songs. Macready once said that "a theatre ought to bea place of recreation for the sober-minded and intelligent. " I trustthat, under whatsoever management the theatre in Oxford may be, itwill always deserve this character. 

You must not expect any learned disquisition from me; nor even in themodified sense in which the word is used among you will I venture tostyle what I am going to say to you a lecture. You may, by the way, have seen a report that I was cast for _four_ lectures; but I assureyou there was no ground for such an alarming rumor; a rumor quite asalarming to me as it could have been to you. What I do propose is, tosay to you something about four of our greatest actors in the past, each of whom may be termed the representative of an important periodin the Annals of our National Drama. In turning over the leaves ofa history of the life of Edmund Kean, I came across the followingsentence (the writer is speaking of Edmund Kean as having restoredNature to the stage): "There seems always to have been thisalternation between the Schools of Nature and Art (if we may so termthem) in the annals of the English Theatre. " Now if for _Art_ I may beallowed to substitute _Artificiality_, which is what the author reallymeant, I think that his sentence is an epitome of the history of ourstage; and it struck me at once that I could not select anything moreappropriate--I will not say as a text, for that sounds as if I weregoing to deliver a sermon--but as the _motif_, or theme of the remarksI am about to address to you. The four actors of whom I shall attemptto tell, you something--Burbage, Betterton, Garrick, and Kean--werethe _four_ greatest champions, in their respective times, on the stageof Nature in contradistinction to Artificiality. 

When we consider the original of the Drama, or perhaps I should sayof the higher class of Drama, we see that the style of acting mustnecessarily have been artificial rather than natural. Take the GreekTragedy, for instance: the actors, as you know, wore masks, and had tospeak, or rather intone, in a theatre more than half open to the air, and therefore it was impossible they could employ facial expression, or much variety of intonation. We have not time now to trace at lengththe many vicissitudes in the career of the Drama, but I may say thatShakespeare was the first dramatist who dared to rob Tragedy of herstilts; and who successfully introduced an element of comedy whichwas not dragged in by the neck and heels, but which naturally evolveditself from the treatment of the tragic story, and did not violate theconsistency of any character. 

It was not only with regard to the _writing_ of his playsthat Shakespeare sought to fight the battle of Nature againstArtificiality. However naturally he might write, the affected ormonotonous _delivery_ of his verse by the actors would neutralize allhis efforts. The old rhyming ten-syllable lines could not but lead toa monotonous style of elocution, nor was the early blank verse muchimprovement in this respect; but Shakespeare fitted his blank verse tothe natural expression of his ideas, and not his ideas to the trammelsof blank verse. 

In order to carry out these reforms, in order to dethrone Artifice andAffectation, he needed the help of actors in whom he could trust, and especially of a leading actor who could interpret his greatestdramatic creations; such a one he found in Richard Burbage. 

Shakespeare came to London first in 1585. Whether on this, his firstvisit, he became connected with the theatres is uncertain. At anyrate it is most probable that he saw Burbage in some of his favoritecharacters, and perhaps made his acquaintance; being first employedas a kind of servant in the theatre, and afterwards as a player ofinferior parts. It was not until about 1591-1592, that Shakespearebegan to turn his attention seriously to dramatic authorship. For fiveyears of his life we are absolutely without any evidence as to whatwere his pursuits. But there can be little doubt that during thisinterval he was virtually undergoing a special form of education, consisting rather of the study of human nature than that of books, and was acquiring the art of dramatic construction--learnt better ina theatre than anywhere else. Unfortunately, we have no record of theintercourse between Shakespeare and Burbage; but there can be littledoubt that between the dramatist, who was himself an actor, and theactor, who gave life to the greatest creations of his imagination, andwho, probably, amazed no less than delighted the great master by thevividness and power of his impersonations, there must have existed aclose friendship. Shakespeare, unlike most men of genius, was no badman of business; and, indeed, a friend of mine, who prides himselfupon being a practical man, once suggested that he selected the partof the Ghost in _Hamlet_ because it enabled him to go in front of thehouse between the acts and count the money. Burbage was universallyacknowledged as the greatest tragic actor of his time. In BartholomewFair, Ben Jonson uses Burbage's name as a synonym for "the bestactor"; and Bishop Corbet, in his _Iter Boreale_, tells us that hishost at Leicester--

 "when he would have said King Richard died, And call'd, 'A horse! A horse!' he, Burbage, cried, "

In a scene, in which Burbage and the comedian Kemp (the J. L. Tooleof the Shakespearean period) are introduced in _The Return fromParnassus_--a satirical play, as you may know, written by some ofthe Members of St. John's College, Cambridge, for performanceby themselves on New Year's Day, 1602--we have proof of the highestimation in which the great tragic actor was held. Kemp says to thescholars who are anxious to try their fortunes on the stage: "But bemerry, my lads, you have happened upon the most excellent vocationin the world for money; they come north and south to bring it to ourplayhouse; and for honors, who of more report than _Dick Burbage_and _Will Kempe_; he is not counted a gentleman that knows not _DickBurbage_ and _Will Kempe_; there's not a country wench that candance 'Sellenger's Round, ' but can talke of _Dick Burbage_ and _WillKempe_. "

That Burbage's fame as an actor outlived his life may be seen from thedescription given by Flecknoe:--

"He was a delightful Proteus, so wholly transforming himself into hispart, and putting off himself with his clothes, as he never (not somuch as in the 'tiring house) assumed himself again until the play wasdone.... He had all the parts of an excellent orator, animating hiswords with speaking, and speech with acting, his auditors being nevermore delighted than when he spake, nor more sorry than when he heldhis peace. Yet even then he was an excellent actor still, neverfailing in his part when he had done speaking, but with his looks andgestures maintaining it still to the height. "

It is not my intention, even if time permitted, to go much into theprivate life of the four actors of whom I propose to speak. Verylittle is known of Burbage's private life, except that he was married;perhaps Shakespeare and he may have been drawn nearer together by thetie of a common sorrow; for, as the poet lost his beloved son Hamletwhen quite a child, so did Burbage lose his eldest son Richard. Burbage died on March 13th, 1617, being then about 50 years of age:Camden, in his _Annals of James I. _, records his death, and calls hima second Roscius. He was sincerely mourned by all those who lovedthe dramatic art; and he numbered among his friends Shakespeare, BenJonson, Beaumont, and Fletcher, and other "common players, " whosenames were destined to become the most honored in the annals ofEnglish literature. Burbage was the first great actor that Englandever saw, the original representative of many of Shakespeare's noblestcreations, among others, of Shylock, Richard, Romeo, Hamlet, Lear, Othello, and Macbeth. We may fairly conclude Burbage's acting to havehad all the best characteristics of Natural, as opposed to Artificialacting. The principles of the former are so clearly laid down byShakespeare, in Hamlet's advice to the players, that, perhaps, Icannot do better than to repeat them:--

 Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-show and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod; pray you, avoid it. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor; suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. 

When we try to picture what the theatre in Shakespeare's time waslike, it strikes us that it must have been difficult to carry outthose principles. One would think it must have been almost impossiblefor the actors to keep up the illusion of the play, surrounded as theywere by such distracting elements. Figure to yourselves a crowd offops, chattering like a flock of daws, carrying their stools in theirhands, and settling around, and sometimes upon the stage itself, withas much noise as possible. To vindicate their importance in their owneyes they kept up a constant jangling of petty, carping criticism onthe actors and the play. In the intervals of repose which they allowedtheir tongues, they ogled the ladies in the boxes, and made a pointof vindicating the dignity of their intellects by being always mostinattentive during the most pathetic portions of the play. In frontof the house matters were little better: the orange girls going to andfro among the audience, interchanging jokes--not of the most delicatecharacter--with the young sparks and apprentices, the latter crackingnuts or howling down some unfortunate actor who had offended theirworships; sometimes pipes of tobacco were being smoked. Picture allthis confusion, and add the fact that the female characters of theplay were represented by shrill-voiced lads or half-shaven men. Imagine an actor having to invest such representatives with all thegirlish passion of a Juliet, the womanly tenderness of a Desdemona, or the pitiable anguish of a distraught Ophelia, and you cannot butrealize how difficult under such circumstances _great_ actingmust have been. In fact, while we are awe-struck by the wonderfulintellectuality of the best dramas of the Elizabethan period, wecannot help feeling that certain subtleties of acting, elaborateby-play, for instance, and the finer lights and shades of intonation, must have been impossible. Recitation rather than impersonation wouldbe generally aimed at by the actors. 

Thomas Betterton was the son of one of the cooks of King Charles I. He was born in Tothill Street, Westminster, about 1635, eighteenyears after the death of Burbage. He seems to have received a faireducation; indeed, but for the disturbing effect of the Civil War, hewould probably have been brought up to one of the liberal professions. He was, however, apprenticed to a bookseller, who, fortunatelyfor Betterton, took to theatrical management. Betterton was abouttwenty-four years old when he began his dramatic career. For upwardsof fifty years he seems to have held his position as the foremostactor of the day. It was fortunate, indeed, for the interests of theDrama that so great an actor arose at the very time when dramatic arthad, as it were, to be resuscitated. Directly the Puritans (who hatedthe stage and every one connected with it as heartily as theyhated their Cavalier neighbors) came into power, they abolished thetheatres, as they did every other form of intellectual amusement;and for many years the Drama only existed in the form of a few vulgar"Drolls. " It must have been, indeed, a dismal time for the people ofEngland; with all the horrors of civil war fresh in their memory, themore than paternal government allowed its subjects no other amusementthan that of consigning their neighbors to eternal damnation, and ofselecting for themselves--by anticipation--all the best reserved seatsin heaven. When the Restoration took place, the inevitable reactionfollowed: society, having been condemned to a lengthened period of aninvoluntary piety--which sat anything but easily on it--rushed intothe other extreme; all who wanted to be in the fashion professed butlittle morality, and it is to be feared that, for once in a way, theirpractice did not come short of their profession. Now was the timewhen, instead of "poor players, " "fine gentlemen" condescended towrite for the stage; and it may be remarked that as long as theliterary interests of the theatre were in their keeping, the tone ofthe plays represented was more corrupt than it ever was at any otherperiod of the history of the Drama. It is something to be thankfulfor, that at such a time, when the highly-flavored comedies ofWycherley and Congreve were all the vogue, and when the monotonousprofligacy of nearly all the characters introduced into those playswas calculated to encourage the most artificial style of acting--itwas something, I say, to be thankful for, that at such a time, Betterton, and one or two other actors, could infuse life intothe noblest creations of Shakespeare. Owing, more especially, toBetterton's great powers, the tragedy of _Hamlet_ held its own inpopularity, even against such witty productions as _Love for Love_. Itwas also fortunate that the same actor who could draw tears as Hamlet, was equally at home in the feigned madness of that amusing rakeValentine, or in the somewhat coarse humor of Sir John Brute. Bycharming the public in what were the popular novelties of the day, hewas able to command their support when he sought it for a noblerform of Drama. He married an actress, Mrs. Saunderson, who was onlyinferior in her art to her husband. Their married life seems tohave been one of perfect happiness. When one hears so much of theprofligacy of actors and actresses, and that they are all such avery wicked lot, it is pleasant to think of this couple, in an ageproverbial for its immorality, in a city where the highest in rank setan example of shameless licence, living their quiet, pure, artisticlife, respected and beloved by all that knew them. 

Betterton had few physical advantages. If we are to believe AntonyAston, one of his contemporaries, he had "a short, thick neck, stoopedin the shoulders, and had fat, short arms, which he rarely liftedhigher than his stomach. His left hand frequently lodged in hisbreast, between his coat and waistcoat, while with his right hand heprepared his speech. " Yet the same critic is obliged to confess that, at seventy years of age, a younger man might have _personated_ butcould not have _acted_, Hamlet better. He calls his voice "low andgrumbling, " but confesses that he had such power over it that he couldenforce attention even from fops and orange-girls. I dare say youall know how Steele and Addison admired his acting, and howenthusiastically they spoke of it in _The Tatler_. The latter writeseloquently of the wonderful agony of jealousy and the tendernessof love which he showed in _Othello_, and of the immense effect heproduced in _Hamlet_. 

Betterton, like all really great men, was a hard worker. Pepys saysof him, "Betterton is a very sober, serious man, and studious, andhumble, following of his studies; and is rich already with what hegets and saves. " Alas! the fortune so hardly earned was lost in anunlucky moment: he entrusted it to a friend to invest in a commercialventure in the East Indies which failed most signally. Betterton neverreproached his friend, he never murmured at his ill-luck. The friend'sdaughter was left unprovided for; but Betterton adopted the child, educated her for the stage, and she became an actress of merit, andmarried Bowman, the player, afterwards known as "The Father of theStage. "

In Betterton's day there were no long runs of pieces; but, had hislot been cast in these times, he might have been compelled to perform, say, _Hamlet_ for three hundred or four hundred nights: for the rightsof the majority are entitled to respect in other affairs besidespolitics, and if the theatre-going public demand a play (and ourlargest theatres only hold a limited number) the manager dare notcause annoyance and disappointment by withdrawing it. 

Like Edmund Kean, Betterton may be said to have died upon the stage;for in April, 1710, when he took his last benefit, as Melantius, inBeaumont and Fletcher's _Maid's Tragedy_ (an adaption of which, by theway, was played by Macready under the title of _The Bridal_, ) he wassuffering tortures from gout, and had almost to be carried to hisdressing-room; and though he acted the part with all his old fire, speaking these very appropriate words:--

 "My heart And limbs are still the same, my will as great, To do you service, "

within forty-eight hours he was dead. He was buried in the Cloistersof Westminster Abbey with every mark of respect and honor. 

I may here add that the censure said to have been directed againstBetterton for the introduction of scenery is the prototype of thatcry, which we hear so often nowadays, against over-elaboration inthe arrangements of the stage. If it be a crime against good tasteto endeavor to enlist every art in the service of the stage, and toheighten the effect of noble poetry by surrounding it with the mostbeautiful and appropriate accessories, I myself must plead guilty tothat charge; but I should like to point out that every dramatist whohas ever lived, from Shakespeare downwards, has always endeavored toget his plays put upon the stage with as good effect and as handsomeappointments as possible. 

Indeed, the Globe Theatre was burned down during the first performanceof _King Henry VIII. _, through the firing off of a cannon whichannounced the arrival of King Henry. Perhaps, indeed, some mightregard this as a judgment against the manager for such an attempt atrealism. 

It was seriously suggested to me by an enthusiast the other day, thatcostumes of his own time should be used for all Shakespeare's plays. Ireflected a little on the suggestion, and then I put it to him whetherthe characters in _Julius Cæsar_ or in _Antony and Cleopatra_ dressedin doublet and hose would not look rather out of place. He answered, "He had never thought of that. " In fact, difficulties almostinnumerable must invariably crop up if we attempt to represent playswithout appropriate costume and scenery, the aim of which is torealize the _locale_ of the action. Some people may hold that payingattention to such matters necessitates inattention to the acting; butthe majority think it does not, and I believe that they are right. What would Alma-Tadema say, for instance, if it were proposed to himthat in a picture of the Roman Amphitheatre the figures should bepainted in the costume of Spain? I do not think he would see the pointof such a noble disregard of detail; and why should he, unless what isfalse in art is held to be higher than what is true?

Little more than thirty years were to elapse between the death ofthe honored Betterton and the appearance of David Garrick, who wasto restore Nature once more to the stage. In this comparativelyshort interval progress in dramatic affairs had been all backward. Shakespeare's advice to the actors had been neglected; earnestpassion, affecting pathos, ever-varying gestures, telling intonationof voice, and, above all, that complete identification of themselvesin the part they represented--all these qualities, which haddistinguished the acting of Betterton, had given way to noisyrant, formal and affected attitudes, and a heavy stilted style ofdeclamation. Betterton died in 1710, and six years after, in 1716, Garrick was born. About twenty years after, in 1737, Samuel Johnsonand his friend and pupil, David Garrick, set out from Lichfield ontheir way to London. In spite of the differences in their ages, andtheir relationship of master and pupil, a hearty friendship had sprungup between them, and one destined, in spite of Johnson's occasionalresentment at the actor's success in life, to last till it was endedby the grave. Much of Johnson's occasional harshness and almostcontemptuous attitude towards Garrick was, I fear, the result of theconsciousness that his old pupil had thoroughly succeeded in life, and had reached the highest goal possible in the career which he hadchosen; while he himself, though looked up to as the greatest scholarof his time, was conscious, as he shows us in his own diary, of howmuch more he might have done but for his constitutional indolence. 

Garrick's family was of French origin, his father having come over toEngland during the persecution of the Huguenots in 1687, and on hismother's side he had Irish blood in his veins; so that by descent hewas a combination of French, English, and Irish, a combination by nomeans unpromising for one who was going to be an actor. 

On reaching London, Garrick enrolled his name in Lincoln's Inn, andwas looking about him to see what would turn up, when the news of hisfather's death reached him. There is no doubt that, if Garrick hadconsulted his own wishes only, he would at once have gone upon thestage. But fortunately, perhaps, for his future career, he could notbear to grieve his mother's heart by adopting at once, and at sucha time when she was crushed with some sorrow for her great loss, acalling which he knew she detested so heartily. 

Within a year Mrs. Garrick followed to the grave the husband whom shenever ceased to mourn, and David had nothing more to face than theprejudice of his brother, Peter, and of his sisters, if he shouldresolve ultimately to adopt the profession on which his heart wasfixed. 

It was not, however, till nearly three years after, in 1741, thatGarrick, determined to take the decisive step, first feeling his wayby playing Chamont in _The Orphan_, and Sir Harry Wildair, at Ipswich, where he appeared under the name of Mr. Lydall; and under this samename, in the same year, he made his first appearance at Goodman'sFields Theatre, in the part of Richard III. His success wasmarvellous. Considering the small experience he had had, no actor evermade such a successful _début_. No doubt by waiting and exercising hispowers of observation, and by studying many parts in private, he hadto a certain extent, matured his powers. But making allowance forall his great natural gifts, there is no denying that Garrick, in oneleap, gained a position which, in the case of most other actors, hasonly been reached through years of toil. He seems to have charmed allclasses: the learned and the ignorant, the cultured and the vulgar;great statesmen, poets, and even the fribbles of fashion were allnearly unanimous in his praise. The dissentient voices were so fewthat they were drowned in the clamor of applause. Quinn might snarland growl; and Horace Walpole, who seems to have grown alarmed atso much of the incense of praise finding its way to the nostrils ofanother, might give vent to a few feeble sneers; such as when he said, "I do not mention the things written in his praise because he writesmost of them himself. " But the battle was won. Nature in the placeof Artificiality, Originality in the place of Conventionality, hadtriumphed on the stage once more. 

Consternation reigned in the home at Lichfield when the news arrivedthat brother David had become a play-actor; but ultimately the familywere reconciled to such degradation by the substantial results of theexperiment. Such reconcilements are not uncommon. Some young man ofgood birth and position has taken to the stage; his family, who couldnot afford to keep him, have been shocked, and in pious horror havecast him out of their respectable circle; but at last success hascome, and they have managed to overcome their scruples and prejudicesand to profit by the harvest which the actor has reaped. 

Garrick seems to have continued playing under the name of Lydall fortwo months, though the secret must have been an open one. It was nottill December the second, the night of his benefit, that he was atlast announced under his own name; and henceforward his career wasone long triumph, checkered, indeed, by disagreements, quarrels andheart-burnings (for Garrick was extremely sensitive), caused, for themost part, by the envy and jealousy which invariably dog the heels ofsuccess. 

Second-rate actors, like Theophilus Gibber, or gnats such as Murphy, and others, easily stung him. He was lampooned as "The Sick Monkey"on his return to the stage after having taken a much needed rest. But discretion and audacity seemed to go hand-in-hand, and theself-satisfied satirizer generally over-shoots the mark. Garrick wasever ready with a reply to his assailants; when Dr. Hill attacked hispronunciation, saying that he pronounced his "i's" as if they were"u's, " Garrick answered--

 "If 'tis true, as you say, that I've injured a letter, I'll change my note soon, and I hope for the better. May the just right of letters as well as of men, Hereafter be fixed by the tongue and the pen. Most devoutly I wish that they both have their due, And that _I_ may be never mistaken for _U_. "

Comparing Garrick with Betterton, it must be remembered that he wasmore exposed to the attacks of envy from the very universality ofhis success. Never, perhaps, was there a man in any professionwho combined so many various qualities. A fair poet, a most fluentcorrespondent, an admirable conversationalist, possessing a personof singular grace, a voice of marvellous expressiveness, and adisposition so mercurial and vivacious as is rarely found in anyEnglishman, he was destined to be a great social as well as a greatartistic success. He loved the society of men of birth and fashion; heseems to have had a more passionate desire to please in private eventhan in public, and almost to have justified the often quoted coupletin Goldsmith's "Retaliation. "

 "On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting, 'Twas only that when he was off he was acting. "

Some men, envious of the substantial fortune which he realized byalmost incessant hard work, by thorough good principle with regardto money, and by a noble, not a paltry, economy, might call him mean;though many of them knew well, from their own experience, that hisnature was truly generous--his purse, as well as his heart, ever opento a friend, however little he might deserve it. Yet they sneeredat his want of reckless extravagance, and called him a miser. Thegreatest offender in this respect was Samuel Foote, a man of greataccomplishments, witty, but always ill-natured. It is difficult tospeak of Foote's conduct to Garrick in any moderate language. Mr. Forster may assert that behind Foote's brutal jests there alwayslurked a kindly feeling; but what can we think of the man who, constantly receiving favors from Garrick's hand, could never speak ofhim before others without a sneer; who the moment he had received theloan of money or other favor for which he had cringed, snarled--I willnot say like a dog, for no dog is so ungrateful--and snapped at thehand which had administered to him of its bounty. When this man, who had never spared a friend, whose whole life had been passed inmaligning others, at last was himself a victim of a vile and cruelslander, Garrick forgot the gibes and sneers of which Foote had madehim so often the victim, and stood by him with a noble devotion ashonorable to himself as it was ill-deserved by its object. Time wouldnot suffice, had I as many hours as I have minutes before me, to tellyou of all the acts of generosity that this mean man, this niggardlyactor, performed in his lifetime. One characteristic anecdote willsuffice. When Whitfield was building his Tabernacle in Tottenham CourtRoad, he employed one of the carpenters who worked for Garrick atDrury Lane. Subscriptions for the Tabernacle do not seem to havecome in as fast as they were required to pay the workmen, so that thecarpenter had to go to Garrick to ask for an advance. When pressed forhis reason he confessed that he had not received any wages from Mr. Whitfield. Garrick made the advance asked for, and soon after quietlyset out to pay a visit to Mr. Whitfield, when, with many apologies forthe liberty he was taking, he offered him a five hundred pound banknote as his subscription towards the Tabernacle. Considering thatGarrick had no particular sympathy with Nonconformists, this actionspeaks as much for his charity as a Christian as it does for hisliberality as a man. 

Perhaps Richard III. Remained Garrick's best Shakesperean character. Of course he played Cibber's version and not Shakespeare's. In fact, many of the Shakesperean parts were not played from the poet's owntext, but Garrick might have doubted whether even his popularitywould have reconciled his audiences to the unadulterated poetry of ourgreatest dramatist. 

Next to Richard, Lear would seem to have been his best Shakespereanperformance. In Hamlet and Othello he did not equal Betterton; andin the latter, certainly from all one can discover, he was infinitelysurpassed by Edmund Kean. In fact Othello was not one of his greatparts. But in the wide range of characters which he undertook, Garrickwas probably never equalled. A poor actor named Everard, who was firstbrought out as a boy by Garrick, says: "Such or such an actor in theirrespective _fortes_ have been allowed to play such or such a partequally well as him; but could they perform Archer and Scrub likehim? and Abel Drugger, Ranger, and Bayes, and Benedick; speak his ownprologue to _Barbarossa_, in the character of a country-boy, and in afew minutes transform himself in the same play to _Selim_? Nay, in thesame night he has played _Sir John Brute_ and the _Guardian, Romeo_and _Lord Chalkstone, Hamlet_ and _Sharp, King Lear_ and _Fribble, King Richard_ and the _Schoolboy_! Could anyone but himself attemptsuch a wonderful variety, such an amazing contrast of character, andbe equally great in all? No, no, no! Garrick, take the chair. "

Garrick was, without doubt, a very intense actor; he threw himselfmost thoroughly into any part that he was playing. Certainly we knowthat he was not wanting in reverence for Shakespeare; in spite of theliberties which he ventured to take with the poet's text, he lovedand worshipped him. To Powell, who threatened to be at one time aformidable rival, his advice was, "Never let your Shakespeare be outof your hands; keep him about you as a charm; the more you read him, the more you will like him, and the better you will act. " As to hisyielding to the popular taste for pantomime and spectacle, he mayplead a justification in the words which his friend Johnson put intohis mouth in the Prologue that he wrote for the inauguration of hismanagement at Drury Lane:--

 "The Drama's laws the Drama's patrons give, And we, who live to please, must please to live. "

We must remember how much he did for the stage. Though his alterationsof Shakespeare shock us, they are nothing to those outrages committedby others, who deformed the poet beyond recognition. Garrick madeShakespeare's plays once more popular. He purged the actors, for atime at least, of faults that were fatal to any high class of drama, and, above all, he gradually got rid of those abominable nuisances(to which we have already alluded), the people who came and took theirseats at the wings, on the stage itself, while the performance wasgoing on, hampering the efforts of the actors and actresses. The stagewould have had much to thank Garrick for if he had done nothing morethan this--if only that he was the first manager who kept the audiencewhere they ought to be, on the other side of the footlights. 

In his private life Garrick was most happy. He was fortunate enoughto find for his wife a simple-minded, loyal woman, in a quarter whichsome people would deem very unpromising. Mrs. Garrick was, as iswell-known, a celebrated _danseuse_, known as Mademoiselle Violette, whose real name was Eva Maria Weigel, a Viennese. A more affectionatecouple were never seen; they were not blessed with children, but theylived together in the most uninterrupted happiness, and their housewas the scene of many social gatherings of a delightful kind. Mrs. Garrick survived her celebrated husband, and lived to the ripe age ofninety-eight, retaining to the very last much of that grace and charmof expression which had won the actor's heart. 

Time will not allow me to dwell on the many points of interestin Garrick's career; all of which are to be found in Mr. PercyFitzgerald's _Life of Garrick_. On returning to London after a visitto the Spensers at Althorp in January, 1779, he was struck down bya fatal attack of his old malady, the gout, and died at the age ofsixty-three. 

He was buried in Westminster Abbey with ceremonies as imposing as evergraced the funeral of a great man. The pall-bearers were headed by theDuke of Devonshire and the Earl Spenser, while round the grave therewere gathered such men as Burke and Fox, and last, not least, his oldfriend and tutor, Samuel Johnson, his rugged countenance streamingwith tears, his noble heart filled with the sincerest grief. The wordsso often quoted, artificial though they may seem, came from that heartwhen, speaking of his dear Davy's death, he said that it "had eclipsedthe gayety of nations. "

Garrick's remarkable success in society, which achieved for him aposition only inferior to that he achieved on the stage, is the bestanswer to what is often talked about the degrading nature of theactor's profession. Since the days of Roscius no contempt for actorsin general, or for their art, has prevented a great actor fromattaining that position which is accorded to all distinguished in whatare held to be the higher arts. 

Nearly nine years after the death of Garrick, on November 4th, 1787, ayoung woman, who had run away from home when little more than a childto join a company of strolling players, and who, when that occupationfailed, earned a scanty living as a hawker in the streets of London, gave birth, in a wretched room near Gray's Inn, to an illegitimatechild. This woman was Nancy Carey, the grand-daughter of Henry Carey, the author of the "National Anthem. " She was the great-grand-daughterof George Saville, Marquis of Halifax, whose natural son Henry Careywas. A compassionate actress, Miss Tidswell, who knew the father ofthe child, Aaron Kean, gave her what assistance she could. Poor Nancewas removed to her father's lodgings, near Gray's Inn, and there, onthe day before mentioned, Edmund Kean was born. 

Three months after his birth his mother deserted him, leaving him, without a word of apology or regret, to the care of the woman who hadbefriended her in her trouble. When he was but three years old he wasbrought, amongst a number of other children, to Michael Kelly whowas then bringing out the opera of _Cymon_ at the Opera House in theHaymarket, and, thanks to his personal beauty, he was selected forthe part of Cupid. Shortly afterwards he found his way to Drury Lane, where the handsome baby--for he was little more--figured among theimps in the pantomime. Taught here the tricks of the acrobat, he hadat four years old acquired such powers of contortion that he was fitto rank as an infant phenomenon. But the usual result followed: thelittle limbs became deformed, and had to be put in irons, by meansof which they regained that symmetry with which nature had at firstendowed them. Three years afterwards, in March, 1794, John Kemble wasacting Macbeth at Drury Lane; and, in the "cauldron scene, " he engagedsome children to personate the supernatural beings summoned by thewitches from that weird vessel. Little Edmund with his irons was thecause of a ridiculous accident, and the attempt to embody the ghostlyforms was abruptly abandoned. But the child seems to have beenpardoned for his blunder, and for a short time was permitted by themanager to appear in one or two children's parts. Little did thedignified manager imagine that the child--who was one of hiscauldron of imps in _Macbeth_--was to become, twenty years later, hisformidable rival--formidable enough to oust almost the representativeof the Classical school from the supremacy he had hitherto enjoyed onthe Tragic stage. In Orange Court, Leicester Square, where Holcroft, the author of _The Road to Ruin_, was born, Edmund Kean receivedhis first education. Scanty enough it was, for it had scarcely begunbefore his wretched mother stepped in and claimed him; and, after herre-appearance, his education seems to have been of a most spasmodiccharacter. Hitherto, the child's experience of life had been hardenough. When only eight years of age he ran away to Portsmouth, andshipped himself on board a ship bound to Madeira. But he found hisnew life harder than that from which he had escaped, and, by dint offeigning deafness and lameness, he succeeded in procuring his removalto an hospital at Madeira, whence, the doctors finding his caseyielded to no remedies, the authorities kindly shipped him again toEngland. He insisted on being deaf and lame: indeed, so deaf that ina violent thunder-storm he remained perfectly unmoved, explaining hiscomposure by declaring that he could not hear any noise at all. FromPortsmouth he made his way on foot to London. On presenting himselfat the wretched lodgings where his mother lived, he found that she hadgone away with Richardson's troupe. Penniless and half-starving, hesuddenly thought of his uncle, Moses Kean, who lived in Lisle Street, Leicester Square, a queer character, who gained a precarious living bygiving entertainments as a mimic and ventriloquist. The uncle receivedhis nephew warmly enough, and seems to have cultivated, to the best ofhis ability, the talent for acting which he recognized at once inthe boy. Edmund again enjoyed a kind of desultory education, partlycarried on at school and partly at his uncle's home, where he enjoyedthe advantage of the kind instructions of his old friend, MissTidswell, of D'Egville, the dancing master, of Angelo, the fencingmaster, and of no less a person than Incledon, the celebrated singer, who seems to have taken the greatest interest in him. But the vagrant, half-gypsy disposition, which he inherited from his mother, couldnever be subdued, and he was constantly disappearing from his uncle'shouse for weeks together, which he would pass in going about from oneroadside inn to another, amusing the guests with his acrobatic tricks, and his monkey-like imitations. In vain was he locked up in rooms, theheight of which from the ground was such as seemed to render escapeimpossible. He contrived to get out somehow or other, even at the riskof his neck, and to make his escape to some fair, where he would earna few pence by the exhibition of his varied accomplishments. Duringthese periods of vagabondism he would live on a mere nothing, sleepingin barns, or in the open air, and would faithfully bring back hisgains to Uncle Moses. But even this astounding generosity, appealing, as it must have done, to the uncle's sentiments, could not appeasehim. His uncle went so far, apparently with the concurrence of MissTidswell, as to place round the boy's neck a brass collar with theinscription, "This boy belongs to No. 9 Lisle Street; please bring himhome. " His wandering propensities being for a time subdued, we findthe little Edmund again engaged at Drury Lane, and delighting theactors in the green-room by giving recitations from _Richard III. _, probably in imitation of Cooke; and, on one occasion, among hisaudience was Mrs. Charles Kemble. During this engagement he playedArthur to Kemble's King John and Mrs. Siddon's Constance, and appearsto have made a great success. Soon after this, his uncle Mosesdied suddenly, and young Kean was left to the severe but kindlyguardianship of Miss Tidswell. We cannot follow him through all thevicissitudes of his early career. The sketch I have given of his earlylife--ample details of which may be found in Mrs. Hawkins's _Life ofEdmund Kean_--will give you a sufficient idea of what he must haveendured and suffered. When, years afterwards, the passionate love ofShakespeare, which, without exaggeration, we may say he showed almostfrom his cradle, had reaped its own reward in the wonderful successwhich he achieved, if we find him then averse to respectableconventionality, erratic, and even dissipated in his habits, let usmercifully remember the bitter and degrading suffering which he passedthrough in his childhood, and not judge too harshly the great actor. Unlike those whose lives we have hitherto considered, he knew none ofthe softening influences of a home; to him the very name of mother, instead of recalling every tender and affectionate feeling, was butthe symbol of a vague horror, the fountain of that degradation anddepravation of his nature, from which no subsequent prosperity couldever redeem it. 

For many years after his boyhood his life was one of continualhardship. With that unsubdued conviction of his own powers, whichoften is the sole consolation of genius, he toiled on and bravelystruggled through the sordid miseries of a strolling player's life. The road to success lies through many a thorny course, across many adreary stretch of desert land, over many an obstacle, from which thefainting heart is often tempted to turn back. But hope, and the senseof power within, which no discouragements can subdue, inspire thestruggling artist still to continue the conflict, till at last courageand perseverance meet with their just reward, and success comes. Theonly feeling then to which the triumphant artist may be tempted is oneof good-natured contempt for those who are so ready to applaud thosemerits which, in the past, they were too blind to recognize. EdmundKean was twenty-seven years old before his day of triumph came. 

Without any preliminary puffs, without any flourish of trumpets, onthe evening of the 26th January, 1814, soaked through with the rain, Edmund Kean slunk more than walked in at the stage-door of Drury LaneTheatre, uncheered by one word of encouragement, and quite unnoticed. He found his way to the wretched dressing-room he shared in commonwith three or four other actors; as quick as possible he exchanged hisdripping clothes for the dress of Shylock; and, to the horror ofhis companions, took from his bundle a _black_ wig--the proof of hisdaring rebellion against the great law of conventionality, whichhad always condemned Shylock to red hair. Cheered by the kindness ofBannister and Oxberry, the latter of whom offered him a welcome glassof brandy and water, he descended to the stage dressed, and peepedthrough the curtain to see a more than half-empty house. Dr. Drurywas waiting at the wings to give him a hearty welcome. The boxes wereempty, and there were about five hundred people in the pit, and a fewothers "thinly scattered to make up a show. " Shylock was the part hewas playing, and he no sooner stepped upon the stage than the interestof the audience was excited. Nothing he did or spoke in the part wasdone or spoken in a conventional manner. The simple words, "I will beassured I may, " were given with such effect that the audience burstinto applause. When the act-drop fell, after the speech of Shylockto Antonio, his success was assured, and his fellow-actors, who hadavoided him, now seemed disposed to congratulate him; but he shrankfrom their approaches. The great scene with Tubal was a revelation ofsuch originality and of such terrible force as had not probably beenseen upon those boards before. "How the devil so few of them couldkick up such a row was something marvellous!" naïvely remarkedOxberry. At the end of the third act every one was ready to pay courtto him; but again he held aloof. All his thoughts were concentrated onthe great "trial" scene, which was coming. In that scene thewonderful variety of his acting completed his triumph. Trembling withexcitement, he resumed his half-dried clothes, and, glad to escape, rushed home. He was in too great a state of ecstasy at first to speak, but his face told his wife that he had realized his dream--that hehad appeared on the stage of Drury Lane, and that his great powershad been instantly acknowledged. With not a shadow of doubt as to hisfuture, he exclaimed, "Mary, you shall ride in your carriage;" andtaking his baby boy from the cradle and kissing him, said, "andCharley, my boy, you shall go to Eton, "--and he did. 

The time when Edmund Kean made his first appearance in London wascertainly favorable for an actor of genius. For a long while thenational theatre had been in a bad way; and nothing but failure hadhitherto met the efforts of the Committee of Management, a committeewhich numbered among its members Lord Byron. When the other membersof the committee, with a strange blindness to their own interests, proposed that for the present, Kean's name should be removed fromthe bills, Byron interested himself on his behalf: "You have a greatgenius among you, " he said, "and you do not know it. " On Kean's secondappearance the house was nearly doubled. Hazlitt's criticism hadroused the whole body of critics, and they were all there to sit injudgment upon the newcomer. His utter indifference to the audience wonhim their respect, and before the piece was half over the sentenceof the formidable tribunal was in his favor. From that moment Keanexercised over his audiences a fascination which was probably neverexercised by any other actor. Garrick was no doubt his superior inparts of high comedy; he was more polished, more vivacious--his mannermore distinguished, and his versatility more striking. In such partsas Coriolanus or Rolla, John Kemble excelled him: but in Shylock, in Richard, in Iago, and, above all, in Othello, it may be doubtedwhether Edmund Kean ever had an equal. As far as one can judge--nothaving seen Kean one's-self--from the many criticisms extant, writtenby the most intellectual men, and from the accounts of those whosaw him in his prime, he was, to my mind--be it said without anydisparagement to other great actors--the greatest genius that ourstage has ever seen. Unequal he may have been, perhaps often so, butthere were moments in his acting which were, without exaggeration, moments of inspiration. Coleridge is reported to have said that to seeKean act was "like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning. " Thisoften-quoted sentence embodies perhaps the main feature of EdmundKean's greatness as an actor; for, when he was impersonating theheroes of our poet, he revealed their natures by an instant flash oflight so searching that every minute feature, which by the ordinarylight of day was hardly visible, stood bright and clear before you. The effect of such acting was indeed that of lightning--it appalled;the timid hid their eyes, and fashionable society shrank from suchheart-piercing revelations of human passion. Persons who had schooledthemselves to control their emotion till they had scarcely anyemotion left to control, were repelled rather than attracted by Kean'srelentless anatomy of all the strongest feeling of our nature. In SirGiles Overreach, a character almost devoid of poetry, Kean's actingdisplayed with such powerful and relentless truth the depths of acruel, avaricious man, baffled in all his vilest schemes, that theeffect he produced was absolutely awful. As no bird but the eagle canlook without blinking on the sun, so none but those who in thesacred privacy of their imaginations had stood face to face with themightiest storms of human passion could understand such a performance. Byron, who had been almost forced into a quarrel with Kean by theactor's disregard of the ordinary courtesies of society, could notrestrain himself, but rushed behind the scenes and grasped the hand ofthe man to whom he felt that he owed a wonderful revelation. 

I might discant for hours with an enthusiasm which, perhaps, only anactor could feel on the marvellous details of Kean's impersonations. He was not a scholar in the ordinary sense of the word, though Heavenknows he had been schooled by adversity, but I doubt if there ever wasan actor who so thought out his part, who so closely studied with theinward eye of the artist the waves of emotion that might have agitatedthe minds of the beings whom he represented. One hears of him duringthose early years of struggle and privation, pacing silently alongthe road, foot-sore and half-starved, but unconscious of his ownsufferings, because he was immersed in the study of those greatcreations of Shakespeare's genius which he was destined to endow withlife upon the stage. When you read of Edmund Kean as, alas! he waslater on in life, with mental and physical powers impaired, think ofthe description those gave of him who knew him best in his earlieryears; how amidst all the wildness and half-savage Bohemianism, whichthe miseries of his life had ensured, he displayed, time after time, the most large-hearted generosity, the tenderest kindness of whichhuman nature is capable. Think of him working with a concentratedenergy for the one object which he sought, namely, to reach thehighest distinction in his calling. Think of him as sparing no mentalor physical labor to attain this end, an end which seemed ever fadingfurther and further from his grasp. Think of the disappointments, thecruel mockeries of hope which, day after day, he had to encounter;and then be harsh if you can to those moral failings for which hismisfortunes rather than his faults were responsible. If you areinclined to be severe, you may console yourselves with the reflectionthat this genius, who had given the highest intellectual pleasure tohundreds and thousands of human beings, was hounded by hypocriticalsanctimoniousness out of his native land; and though, two yearsafterwards, one is glad to say, for the honor of one's country, acomplete reaction took place, and his reappearance was greeted withevery mark of hearty welcome, the blow had been struck from whichneither his mind or his body ever recovered. He lingered uponthe stage, and died at the age of forty-six, after five years ofsuffering--almost a beggar--with only a solitary ten-pound noteremaining of the large fortune his genius had realized. 

It is said that Kean swept away the Kembles and their Classical schoolof acting. He did not do that. The memory of Sarah Siddons, tragicqueen of the British stage, was never to be effaced, and I wouldremind you that when Kean was a country actor (assured of his ownpowers, however unappreciated), resenting with passionate pride theidea of playing second to "the Infant Roscius, " who was for a timethe craze and idol of the hour, "Never, " said he, "never; I will playsecond to no one but John Kemble!" I am certain that when hisbetter nature had the ascendency no one would have more generouslyacknowledged the merits of Kemble than Edmund Kean. It is idle to saythat because his style was solemn and slow, Kemble was not one of thegreatest actors that our stage has produced. It is only those whosenatures make them incapable of approbation or condemnation in artisticmatters without being partisans, who, because they admire Edmund Kean, would admit no merit in John Kemble. The world of art, thank Heaven, is wide enough for both, and the hearts of those who truly love artare large enough to cherish the memory of both as of men who did noblework in the profession which they adorned. Kean blended the Realisticwith the Ideal in acting, and founded a school of which WilliamCharles Macready was, afterwards, in England, the foremost disciple. 

Thus have we glanced, briefly enough, at four of our greatest actorswhose names are landmarks in the history of the Drama in England, thegreatest Drama of the world. We have seen how they all carried out, bydifferent methods perhaps, but in the same spirit, the principle thatin acting Nature must dominate Art. But it is Art that must interpretNature; and to interpret the thoughts and emotions of her mistressshould be her first object. But those thoughts, those emotions, mustbe interpreted with grace, with dignity and with temperance; andthese, let us remember, Art alone can teach. 

ADDRESS

SESSIONAL OPENING

PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION

EDINBURGH

9 NOVEMBER 1891

THE ART OF ACTING

I have chosen as the subject of the address with which I have thehonor to inaugurate for the second time the Session of the EdinburghPhilosophical Institution, "The Art of Acting. " I have done so, in thefirst instance, because I take it for granted that when you bestow onany man the honor of asking him to deliver the inaugural address, itis your wish to hear him speak of the subject with which he is bestacquainted; and the Art of Acting is the subject to which my life hasbeen devoted. I have another reason also which, though it may, so faras you are concerned, be personal to those of my calling, I think itwell to put before you. It is that there may be, from the point ofview of an actor distinguished by your favor, some sort of officialutterance on the subject. There are some irresponsible writers whohave of late tried to excite controversy by assertions, generallyfalse and always misleading, as to the stage and those devoted to thearts connected with it. Some of these writers go so far as to assertthat Acting is not an Art at all; and though we must not take suchwild assertions quite seriously, I think it well to place on record atleast a polite denial of their accuracy. It would not, of course, be seemly to merely take so grave an occasion as the present as anopportunity for such a controversy, but as I am dealing with thesubject before you, I think it better to place you in full knowledgeof the circumstances. It does not do, of course, to pay too muchattention to ephemeral writings, any more than to creatures of themist and the swamp and the night. But even the buzzing of the midge, though the insect may be harmless compared with its more poison-ladenfellows, can divert the mind from more important things. To disregardentirely the world of ephemera, and their several actions and effectswere to deny the entirety of the scheme of creation. 

I take it for granted that in addressing you on the subject of the Artof Acting I am not, _prima facie_, encountering set prejudices; forhad you despised the Art which I represent I should not have had thehonor of appearing before you to-day. You will, I trust, on your part, bear this in mind, and I shall, on my part, never forget that you aremembers of a Philosophical Institution, the very root and basis ofwhose work is to inquire into the heart of things with the purpose ofdiscovering why such as come under your notice are thus or thus. 

The subject of my address is a very vast one, and is, I assure you, worthy of a careful study. Writers such as Voltaire, Schlegel, Goethe, Lessing, Charles Lamb, Hazlitt, and Schiller, have not disdained totreat it with that seriousness which Art specially demands--whichanything in life requires whose purpose is not immediate andimperative. For my own part I can only bring you the experienceof more than thirty years of hard and earnest work. Out of wideexperience let me point out that there are many degrees of merit, bothof aim, of endeavor, and of execution in acting, as in all things. Iwant you to think of acting at its best--as it may be, as it can be, as it has been, and is--and as it shall be, whilst it be followed bymen and women of strong and earnest purpose. I do not for a momentwish you to believe that only Shakespeare and the great writers areworthy of being played, and that all those efforts that in centurieshave gathered themselves round great names are worthy of your praise. In the House of Art are many mansions where men may strive worthilyand live cleanly lives. All Art is worthy, and can be seriouslyconsidered, so long as the intention be good and the efforts toachieve success be conducted with seemliness. And let me here say, that of all the arts none requires greater intention than the artof acting. Throughout it is necessary to _do_ something, andthat something cannot fittingly be left to chance, or the unknowninspiration of a moment. I say "unknown, " for if known, then theintention is to reproduce, and the success of the effort can bein nowise due to chance. It may be, of course, that in moments ofpassionate excitement the mind grasps some new idea, or the nervoustension suggests to the mechanical parts of the body some new form ofexpression; but such are accidents which belong to the great scheme oflife, and not to this art, or any art, alone. You all know the storyof the painter who, in despair at not being able to carry out theintention of his imagination, dashed his brush at the imperfectcanvas, and with the scattering paint produced by chance the veryeffect which his brush guided by his skill alone, had failed toachieve. The actor's business is primarily to reproduce the ideas ofthe author's brain, to give them form, and substance, and color, andlife, so that those who behold the action of a play may, so far ascan be effected, be lured into the fleeting belief that they beholdreality. Macready, who was an earnest student, defined the art of theactor "to fathom the depths of character, to trace its latent motives, to feel its finest quivering of emotion, is to comprehend the thoughtsthat are hidden under words, and thus possess one's-self of the actualmind of the individual man"; and Talma spoke of it as "the unionof grandeur without pomp, and nature without triviality"; whilstShakespeare wrote, "the purpose of playing, whose end, both at thefirst and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up tonature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and thevery age and body of the time his form and pressure. "

This effort to reproduce man in his moods is no mere trick of fancycarried into execution. It is a part of the character of a strongnation, and has a wider bearing on national life than perhapsunthinking people are aware. Mr. Froude, in his survey of earlyEngland, gives it a special place; and I venture to quote his words, for they carry with them, not only their own lesson, but the authorityof a great name in historical research. 

"No genius can dispense with experience; the aberrations of power, unguided or ill-guided, are ever in proportion to its intensity, andlife is not long enough to recover from inevitable mistakes. Nobleconceptions already existing, and a noble school of execution whichwill launch mind and hand at once upon their true courses, areindispensable to transcendent excellence; and Shakespeare's plays wereas much the offspring of the long generations who had pioneered hisroad for him, as the discoveries of Newton were the offspring of thoseof Copernicus. 

"No great general ever arose out of a nation of cowards; no greatstatesman or philosopher out of a nation of fools; no great artist outof a nation of materialists; no great drama, except when the drama wasthe possession of the people. Acting was the especial amusement of theEnglish, from the palace to the village green. It was the result andexpression of their strong, tranquil possession of their lives, oftheir thorough power over themselves, and power over circumstances. They were troubled with no subjective speculations; no social problemsvexed them with which they were unable to deal; and in the exuberanceof vigor and spirit, they were able, in the strict and literal senseof the word, to play with the materials of life. " So says Mr. Froude. 

In the face of this statement of fact set forth gravely in its placein the history of our land, what becomes of such bold assertions asare sometimes made regarding the place of the drama being but a poorone, since the efforts of the actor are but mimetic and ephemeral, that they pass away as a tale that is told? All art is mimetic; andeven life itself, the highest and last gift of God to His people, isfleeting. Marble crumbles, and the very names of great cities becomeburied in the dust of ages. Who then would dare to arrogate to any artan unchanging place in the scheme of the world's development, or wouldcondemn it because its efforts fade and pass? Nay, more; has even thetale that is told no significance in after years? Can such not stir, when it is worth the telling, the hearts of men, to whom it comes asan echo from the past? Have not those tales remained most vital andmost widely known which are told and told again and again, face toface and heart to heart, when the teller and the listener are adding, down the ages, strength to the current of a mighty thought or a mightydeed and its record?

Surely the record that lives in the minds of men is still a record, though it be not graven on brass or wrought in marble. And it werea poor conception of the value of any art, if, in considering it, wewere to keep our eyes fixed on some dark spot, some imperfection, andshut our eyes to its aim, its power, its beauty. It were a poor ageindeed where such a state of things is possible; as poor as that ofwhich Mrs. Browning's unhappy poet spoke in the bitterness of hissoul:

 "The age culls simples, With a broad clown's back turned broadly to the glory of the stars. "

Let us lift our faces when we wish to judge truly of any earnest workof the hand or mind of man, and see it placed in the widest horizonthat is given to us. Poetry, painting, sculpture, music, architecture, all have a bearing on their time, and beyond it; and the actor, thoughhis knowledge may be, and must be, limited by the knowledge of hisage, so long as he sound the notes of human passion, has somethingwhich is common to all the ages. If he can smite water from the rockof one hardened human heart--if he can bring light to the eye orwholesome color to the faded cheek--if he can bring or restore in everso slight degree the sunshine of hope, of pleasure, of gayety, surelyhe cannot have worked in vain. It would need but a small effortof imagination to believe that that great wave theory, which thescientists have proved as ruling the manifestations of light andsound, applies also to the efforts of human emotion. And who shalltell us the ultimate bounds of these waves of light and sound? Ifthese discernible waves can be traced till they fade into impalpablenothingness, may we not think that this other, impalpable at thebeginning as they are at the end, can alone stretch into thedimness of memory? Sir Joshua's gallant compliment, that he achievedimmortality by writing his name on the hem of Mrs. Siddons's garment, when he painted her as the Tragic Muse, had a deeper significance thanits pretty fancy would at first imply. 

Not for a moment is the position to be accepted that the theatreis merely a place of amusement. That it is primarily a place ofamusement, and is regarded as such by its _habitués_, is of courseapparent; but this is not its limitation. For authors, managers, andactors it is a serious employment, to be undertaken gravely, and ofnecessity to be adhered to rigidly. Thus far it may be considered fromthese different stand-points; but there is a larger view--that of theState. Here we have to consider a custom of natural growth speciallysuitable to the genius of the nation. It has advanced with theprogress of each age, and multiplied with its material prosperity. It is a living power, to be used for good, or possibly for evil; andfar-seeing men recognize in it, based though it be on the relaxationand pleasures of the people, an educational medium of no mean order. Its progress in the past century has been the means of teaching tomillions of people a great number of facts which had perhaps otherwisebeen lost to them. How many are there who have had brought home tothem in an understandable manner by stage-plays the costumes, habits, manners, and customs of countries and ages other than their own;what insight have they thus obtained into facts and vicissitudes oflife--of passions and sorrows and ambitions outside the narrow scopeof their own lives, and which yet may and do mould the destinies ofmen. All this is education--education in its widest sense, for itbroadens the sympathies and enlarges the intellectual grasp. And beyond this again--for these are advantages on the materialside--there is that higher education of the heart, which raises in thescale of creation all who are subject to its sweetening influences. Tohold his place therefore amongst these progressing forces, the actormust at the start be well endowed with some special powers, and bytraining, reading, and culture of many kinds, be equipped for the workbefore him. No amount of training can give to a dense understandingand a clumsy personality certain powers of quickness and spontaneity;and, on the other hand, no genius can find its fullest expressionwithout some understanding of the principles and method of a craft. Itis the actor's part to represent or interpret the ideas and emotionswhich the poet has created, and to do this he must at the first havea full knowledge and understanding of them. This is in itself no easytask. It requires much study and much labor of many kinds. Having thenacquired an idea, his intention to work it out into reality must beput in force; and here new difficulties crop up at every further steptaken in advance. Now and again it suffices the poet to think andwrite in abstractions; but the actor's work is absolutely concrete. He is brought in every phase of his work into direct comparison withexisting things, and must be judged by the most exacting standards ofcriticism. Not only must his dress be suitable to the part which heassumes, but his bearing must not be in any way antagonistic to thespirit of the time in which the play is fixed. The free bearing ofthe sixteenth century is distinct from the artificial one of theseventeenth, the mannered one of the eighteenth, and the carelessone of the nineteenth. And all this quite exclusive of the minutequalities and individualities of the character represented. The voicemust be modulated to the vogue of the time. The habitual action of arapier-bearing age is different to that of a mail-clad one--nay, thearmor of a period ruled in real life the poise and bearing of thebody; and all this must be reproduced on the stage, unless theintelligence of the audience, be they ever so little skilled inhistory, is to count as naught. 

It cannot therefore be seriously put forward in the face of suchmanifold requirements that no Art is required for the representationof suitable action. Are we to imagine that inspiration or emotion ofany kind is to supply the place of direct knowledge of facts--of skillin the very grammar of craftsmanship? Where a great result is arrivedat much effort is required, whether the same be immediate or has beenspread over a time of previous preparation. In this nineteenth centurythe spirit of education stalks abroad and influences men directlyand indirectly, by private generosity and national foresight, toaccumulate as religiously as in former ages ecclesiastics and devoteesgathered sacred relics, all that helps to give the people a fullunderstanding of lives and times and countries other than their own. Can it be that in such an age all that can help to aid the inspirationand to increase direct knowledge is of no account whatever, because, forsooth, it has a medium or method of its own? There are those whosay that Shakespeare is better in the closet than on the stage; thatdramatic beauty is more convincing when read in private than whenspoken on the stage to the accompaniment of suitable action. And yet, if this be so, it is a strange thing that, with all the activity ofthe new-born printing-press, Shakespeare's works were not known to thereading public till the fame of the writer had been made on the stage. And it is a stranger thing still, if the drama be a mere poetic formof words, that the writer who began with _Venus and Adonis_, when hefound the true method of expression to suit his genius, ended with_Hamlet_ and _The Tempest_. 

How is it, I ask, if these responsible makers of statements becorrect, that every great writer down from the days of Elizabeth, whenthe drama took practical shape from the wish of the poets to renderhuman life in all its phases, have been desirous of seeing theirworks, when written in dramatic form, represented on the stage--andnot only represented, but represented under the most favorableconditions obtainable, both as to the fitness of setting and thechoice of the most skilled and excellent players? Are we to take itthat the poet, with his eye in a fine phrenzy rolling, sees all theminute details of form, color, light, sound, and action which haveto be rendered complete on the stage? Is there nothing in what theindividual actor, who is gifted with fine sense and emotional power, can add to mere words, however grand and rolling in themselves, andwhatsoever mighty image they may convey? Can it be possible that thereis any sane person who holds that there is no such thing as expressionin music so long as the written notes are correctly rendered--that themusical expression of a Paganini or a Liszt, or that the voice of aMalibran or a Grisi, has no special charm--nay more, that there is notsome special excellence in the instruments of Amati or Stradivarius?If there be, we can leave to him, whilst the rest of mankind marvelat his self-sufficient obtuseness, to hold that it was nothing but hisown imagination which so much influenced Hazlitt when he was touchedto the heart by Edmund Kean's rendering of the words of the remorsefulMoor, "Fool, fool, fool!" Why, the action of a player who knows how toconvey to the audience that he is listening to another speaking, cannot only help in the illusion of the general effect, but he himselfcan suggest a running commentary on what is spoken. In every momentin which he is on the stage, an actor accomplished in his craft canconvey ideas to the mind. 

It is in the representation of passion that the intention of the actorappears in its greatest force. He wishes to do a particular thing, andso far the wish is father to the thought that the brain begins to workin the required direction, and the emotional faculties and the wholenervous and muscular systems follow suit. A skilled actor can count onthis development of power, if it be given to him to rise at all to theheight of a passion; and the inspiration of such moments may, now andagain, reveal to him some new force or beauty in the character whichhe represents. Thus he will gather in time a certain habitual strengthin a particular representation of passion. Diderot laid down a theorythat an actor never feels the part he is acting. It is of course truethat the pain he suffers is not real pain, but I leave it to any onewho has ever felt his own heart touched by the woes of another to sayif he can even imagine a case where the man who follows in minutestdetail the history of an emotion, from its inception onward, is theonly one who cannot be stirred by it--more especially when his ownindividuality must perforce be merged in that of the archetypalsufferer. Talma knew that it was possible for an actor to feel to thefull a simulated passion, and yet whilst being swept by it to retainhis consciousness of his surroundings and his purpose. In his ownwords--"The intelligence accumulates and preserves all the creationsof sensibility. " And this is what Shakespeare means when he makesHamlet tell the players--"for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as Imay say, whirlwind of your passion, you must beget a temperance thatmay give it smoothness. "

How can any one be temperate in the midst of his passion, lest it bethat his consciousness and his purpose remain to him? Let me say thatit is this very discretion which marks the ultimate boundary of anArt, which stands within the line of demarcation between Art andNature. In Nature there is no such discretion. Passion rules supremeand alone; discretion ceases, and certain consequences cease to be anydeterrent or to convey any warning. It must never be forgotten thatall Art has the aim or object of seeming and not of being; and that tounderstate is as bad as to overstate the modesty or the efflorescenceof Nature. It is not possible to show within the scope of any Art theentire complexity and the myriad combining influences of Nature. The artist has to accept the conventional standard--the acceptedsignificance--of many things, and confine himself to the exposition ofthat which is his immediate purpose. To produce the effect of realityit is necessary, therefore, that the efforts of an artist should beslightly different from the actions of real life. The perspectiveof the stage is not that of real life, and the result of seemingis achieved by means which, judged by themselves, would seem to beindirect. It is only the raw recruit who tries to hit the bull's-eyeby point-blank firing, and who does not allow for elevation andwindage. Are we to take it for a moment, that in the Art of Acting, of which elocution is an important part, nothing is to be left to theindividual idea of the actor? That he is simply to declaim the wordsset down for him, without reference to the expression of his face, his bearing, or his action? It is in the union of all the powers--theharmony of gait and utterance and emotion--that conviction lies. Garrick, who was the most natural actor of his time, could not declaimso well as many of his own manifest inferiors in his art--nay, itwas by this that he set aside the old false method, and soared to theheights in which, as an artist, he reigned supreme. Garrick personatedand Kean personated. The one had all the grace and mastery of thepowers of man for the conveyance of ideas, the other had a mightyspirit which could leap out in flame to awe and sweep the souls ofthose who saw and heard him. And the secret of both was that they bestunderstood the poet--best impersonated the characters which he drew, and the passions which he set forth. 

In order to promote and preserve the idea of reality in the minds ofthe public, it is necessary that the action of the play be set in whatthe painters call the proper _milieu_, or atmosphere. To this belongscostume, scenery, and all that tends to set forth time and place otherthan our own. If this idea be not kept in view there must be, or atall events there may be, some disturbing cause to the mind of theonlooker. This is all--literally all--that dramatic Art imperativelydemands from the paint room, the wardrobe, and the property shop;and it is because the public taste and knowledge in such matters havegrown that the actor has to play his part with the surroundings andaccessories which are sometimes pronounced to be a weight or dragon action. Suitability is demanded in all things; and it must, forinstance, be apparent to all that the things suitable to a palace aredifferent to those usual in a hovel. There is nothing unsuitable inLear in kingly raiment in the hovel in the storm, because such is heredemanded by the exigencies of the play: but if Lear were to be firstshown in such guise in such a place with no explanation given of thecause, either the character or the stage-manager would be simply takenfor a madman. This idea of suitability should always be borne in mind, for it is in itself a sufficient answer to any thoughtless allegationas to overloading a play with scenery. 

Finally, in the consideration of the Art of Acting, it must never beforgotten that its ultimate aim is beauty. Truth itself is only anelement of beauty, and to merely reproduce things vile and squalid andmean is a debasement of Art. There is apt to be such a tendency inan age of peace, and men should carefully watch its manifestations. Amorose and hopeless dissatisfaction is not a part of a true nationallife. This is hopeful and earnest, and, if need be, militant. It is abad sign for any nation to yearn for, or even to tolerate, pessimismin its enjoyment; and how can pessimism be other than antagonisticto beauty? Life, with all its pains and sorrows, is a beautiful anda precious gift; and the actor's Art is to reproduce this beautifulthing, giving due emphasis to those royal virtues and those stormypassions which sway the destinies of men. Thus the lesson given bylong experience--by the certain punishment of ill-doing--and by therewards that follow on bravery, forbearance, and self-sacrifice, areon the mimic stage conveyed to men. And thus every actor who is morethan a mere machine, and who has an ideal of any kind, has a dutywhich lies beyond the scope of his personal ambition. His art mustbe something to hold in reverence if he wishes others to hold it inesteem. There is nothing of chance about this work. All, actors andaudience alike, must bear in mind that the whole scheme of the higherDrama is not to be regarded as a game in life which can be played withvarying success. Its present intention may be to interest and amuse, but its deeper purpose is earnest, intense, sincere.