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Italicized text is delimited with _underlines_. +Footnotes are collected at the end, and are indicated by brackets, +thusly: [3]. + + +Library of +Little Masterpieces +In Forty-four Volumes + +AUTOBIOGRAPHY + +Edited by +GEORGE ILES + +VOLUME XXXVI + + + + +PREFACE + +A good play gives us in miniature a cross-section of life, heightened +by plot and characterisation, by witty and compact dialogue. Of +course we should honour first the playwright, who has given form to +each well knit act and telling scene. But that worthy man, perhaps at +this moment sipping his coffee at the Authors' Club, gave his drama +its form only; its substance is created by the men and women who, with +sympathy, intelligence and grace, embody with convincing power the +hero and heroine, assassin and accomplice, lover and jilt. For the +success of many a play their writers would be quick to acknowledge a +further and initial debt, both in suggestion and criticism, to the +artists who know from experience on the boards that deeds should he +done, not talked about, that action is cardinal, with no other words +than naturally spring from action. Players, too, not seldom remind +authors that every incident should not only be interesting in itself, +but take the play a stride forward through the entanglement and +unravelling of its plot. It is altogether probable that the heights +to which Shakespeare rose as a dramatist were due in a measure to his +knowledge of how a comedy, or a tragedy, appears behind as well as in +front of the footlights, all in an atmosphere quite other than that +surrounding a poet at his desk. + +This little volume begins with part of the life story of Joseph +Jefferson, chief of American comedians. Then we are privileged to +read a few personal letters from Edwin Booth, the acknowledged king of +the tragic stage. He is followed by the queen in the same dramatic +realm, Charlotte Cushman. Next are two chapters by the first +emotional actress of her day in America, Clara Morris. When she bows +her adieu, Sir Henry Irving comes upon the platform instead of the +stage, and in the course of his thoughtful discourse makes it plain +how he won renown both as an actor and a manager. He is followed by +his son, Mr. Henry Brodribb Irving, clearly an heir to his father's +talents in art and in observation. Miss Ellen Terry, long Sir Henry +Irving's leading lady, now tells us how she came to join his company, +and what she thinks of Sir Henry Irving in his principal roles. The +succeeding word comes from Richard Mansfield, whose untimely death is +mourned by every lover of the drama. The next pages are from the hand +of Tommaso Salvini, admittedly the greatest Othello and Samson that +ever trod the boards. A few words, in closing, are from Adelaide +Ristori, whose Medea, Myrrha and Phaedra are among the great +traditions of the modern stage. From first to last this little book +sheds light on the severe toil demanded for excellence on the stage, +and reveals that for the highest success of a drama, author and artist +must work hand in hand. + + + +Contents + +JOSEPH JEFFERSON +How I came to play "Rip Van Winkle." +The art of acting. +Preparation and inspiration. +Should an actor "feel" his part? +Learning to act. +Playwrights and actors. +The Jefferson face. + +EDWIN BOOTH +To his daughter when a little girl. +To his daughter on her studies and on ease of manner. +On thoroughness of education. +On Jefferson's autobiography. +On the actor's life. +Lawrence Barrett's death. +His theatre in New York in prospect. +As to his brother, John Wilkes Booth, the slayer of Lincoln. +Advice to a young actor. + +CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN +As a child a mimic and singer. +First visits to the theatre. +Plays Lady Macbeth, her first part. +To a young actress. +To a young mother. +Early griefs. +Art her only spouse. +Farewell to New York. + +CLARA MORRIS +Recollections of John Wilkes Booth. +The murder of President Lincoln. +"When, in a hunt for a leading man for Mr. Daly, + I first saw Coghlan and Irving." + +SIR HENRY IRVING +The stage as an instructor. +Inspiration in acting. +Acting as an art: how Irving began. +Feeling as a reality or a semblance. +Gesture: listening as an art: team-play on the stage. + +HENRY BRODRIBB IRVING +The calling of the actor. +Requirements for the stage. +Temptations of the stage. +Acting is a great art. +Relations to "society." +The final school is the audience. +Failure and success. + +ELLEN TERRY +Hamlet--Irving's greatest part. +The entrance scene in "Hamlet." +The scene with the players. +Irving engages me. +Irving's egotism. +Irving's simplicity of character. + +RICHARD MANSFIELD +Man and the Actor. +All men are actors. +Napoleon as an actor. +The gift for acting is rare. +The creation of a character. +Copy life! +Self criticism. +Discipline imperative. +Dramatic vicissitudes. +A national theatre. +Training the actor. + +TOMMASO SALVINI +First appearance. +A father's advice. +How Salvini studied his art. +Faults in acting. +The desire to excel in everything. +A model for Othello. +First visit to the United States. +In Cuba. +Appearance in London. +Impressions of Irving's Hamlet. +The decline of tragedy. +Tragedy in two languages. +American critical taste. +Impressions of Edwin Booth. + +ADELAIDE RISTORI +First appearances. +Salvini and Rossi. +Appears as Lady Macbeth. +As manager. +First visit to America. +Begins to play in English. + + + +JOSEPH JEFFERSON + +[William Winter, the dramatic critic of the New York _Tribune_, in +1894 wrote the "Life and Art of Joseph Jefferson," published by the +Macmillan Company, London and New York. He gives an account of +Jefferson's lineage, and then says: + +"In Joseph Jefferson, fourth of the line, famous as Rip Van Winkle, +and destined to be long remembered by that name in dramatic history, +there is an obvious union of the salient qualities of his ancestors. +The rustic luxuriance, manly vigour, careless and adventurous +disposition of the first Jefferson; the refined intellect, delicate +sensibility, dry humour, and gentle tenderness of the second; and the +amiable, philosophic, and drifting temperament of the third, reappear +in this descendant. But more than any of his ancestors, and more than +most of his contemporaries, the present Jefferson is an originator in +the art of acting.... Joseph Jefferson is as distinct as Lamb among +essayists, or George Darley among lyrical poets. No actor of the past +prefigured him, ... and no name, in the teeming annals of modern art, +has shone with a more tranquil lustre, or can be more confidently +committed to the esteem of posterity." + +The Autobiography of Joseph Jefferson, copyright, 1889, 1890, by the +Century Company, New York, was published 1891. From its chapters, by +permission, have been taken these pages.--ED.] + + + +HOW I CAME TO PLAY RIP VAN WINKLE + +The hope of entering the race for dramatic fame as an individual and +single attraction never came into my head until, in 1858, I acted Asa +Trenchard in "Our American Cousin"; but as the curtain descended the +first night on that remarkably successful play, visions of large type, +foreign countries, and increased remuneration floated before me, and I +resolved to be a star if I could. A resolution to this effect is +easily made; its accomplishment is quite another matter. + +Art has always been my sweetheart, and I have loved her for herself +alone. I had fancied that our affection was mutual, so that when I +failed as a star, which I certainly did, I thought she had jilted me. +Not so. I wronged her. She only reminded me that I had taken too +great a liberty, and that if I expected to win her I must press my +suit with more patience. Checked, but undaunted in the resolve, my +mind dwelt upon my vision, and I still indulged in day-dreams of the +future. + +During these delightful reveries it came up before me that in acting +Asa Trenchard I had, for the first time in my life on the stage, +spoken a pathetic speech; and though I did not look at the audience +during the time I was acting--for that is dreadful--I felt that they +both laughed and cried. I had before this often made my audience +smile, but never until now had I moved them to tears. This to me +novel accomplishment was delightful, and in casting about for a new +character my mind was ever dwelling on reproducing an effect where +humour would be so closely allied to pathos that smiles and tears +should mingle with each other. Where could I get one? There had been +many written, and as I looked back into the dramatic history of the +past a long line of lovely ghosts loomed up before me, passing as in a +procession: Job Thornberry, Bob Tyke, Frank Ostland, Zekiel Homespun, +and a host of departed heroes "with martial stalk went by my watch." +Charming fellows all, but not for me, I felt I could not do them +justice. Besides, they were too human. I was looking for a +myth--something intangible and impossible. But he would not come. +Time went on, and still with no result, + +During the summer of 1859 I arranged to board with my family at a +queer old Dutch farmhouse in Paradise Valley, at the foot of Pocono +Mountain, in Pennsylvania. A ridge of hills covered with tall +hemlocks surrounds the vale, and numerous trout-streams wind through +the meadows and tumble over the rocks. Stray farms are scattered +through the valley, and the few old Dutchmen and their families who +till the soil were born upon it; there and only there they have ever +lived. The valley harmonised with me and our resources. The scene +was wild, the air was fresh, and the board was cheap. What could the +light heart and purse of a poor actor ask for more than this? + +On one of those long rainy days that always render the country so dull +I had climbed to the loft of the barn, and lying upon the hay was +reading that delightful book "The Life and Letters of Washington +Irving." I had gotten well into the volume, and was much interested +in it, when to my surprise I came upon a passage which said that he +had seen me at Laura Keene's theater as Goldfinch in Holcroft's comedy +of "The Road to Ruin," and that I reminded him of my father "in look, +gesture, size, and make." Till then I was not aware that he had ever +seen me. I was comparatively obscure, and to find myself remembered +and written of by such a man gave me a thrill of pleasure I can never +forget. I put down the book, and lay there thinking how proud I was, +and ought to be, at the revelation of this compliment. What an +incentive to a youngster like me to go on. + +And so I thought to myself, "Washington Irving, the author of 'The +Sketch-Book,' in which is the quaint story of Rip Van Winkle." Rip +Van Winkle! There was to me magic in the sound of the name as I +repeated it. Why, was not this the very character I wanted? An Ameri +can story by an American author was surely just the theme suited to an +American actor. + +In ten minutes I had gone to the house and returned to the barn with +"The Sketch-Book." I had not read the story since I was a boy. I was +disappointed with it; not as a story, of course, but the tale was +purely a narrative. The theme was interesting, but not dramatic. The +silver Hudson stretches out before you as you read, the quaint red +roofs and queer gables of the old Dutch cottages stand out against the +mist upon the mountains; but all this is descriptive. The character +of Rip does not speak ten lines. What could be done dramatically with +so simple a sketch? How could it he turned into an effective play? + +Three or four bad dramatisations of the story had already been acted, +but without marked success, Yates of London had given one in which the +hero dies, one had been acted by my father, one by Hackett, and +another by Burke. Some of these versions I had remembered when I was +a boy, and I should say that Burke's play and performance were the +best, but nothing that I remembered gave me the slightest +encouragement that I could get a good play out of any of the existing +materials. Still I was so bent upon acting the part that I started +for the city, and in less than a week, by industriously ransacking the +theatrical wardrobe establishments for old leather and mildewed cloth +and by personally superintending the making of the wigs, each article +of my costume was completed; and all this, too, before I had written a +line of the play or studied a word of the part. + +This is working in an opposite direction from all the conventional +methods in the study and elaboration of a dramatic character, and +certainly not following the course I would advise any one to pursue. +I merely mention the out-of-the-way, upside-down manner of going to +work as an illustration of the impatience and enthusiasm with which I +entered upon the task, I can only account for my getting the dress +ready before I studied the part to the vain desire I had of witnessing +myself in the glass, decked out and equipped as the hero of the +Catskills. + +I got together the three old printed versions of the drama and the +story itself. The plays were all in two acts. I thought it would be +an improvement in the drama to arrange it in three, making the scene +with the spectre crew an act by itself. This would separate the +poetical from the domestic side of the story. But by far the most +important alteration was in the interview with the spirits. In the +old versions they spoke and sang. I remembered that the effect of +this ghostly dialogue was dreadfully human, so I arranged that no +voice but Rip's should be heard. This is the only act on the stage in +which but one person speaks while all the others merely gesticulate, +and I was quite sure that the silence of the crew would give a lonely +and desolate character to the scene and add its to supernatural +weirdness. By this means, too, a strong contrast with the single +voice of Rip was obtained by the deathlike stillness of the "demons" +as they glided about the stage in solemn silence. It required some +thought to hit upon just the best questions that could be answered by +a nod and shake of the head, and to arrange that at times even Rip +should propound a query to himself and answer it; but I had availed +myself of so much of the old material that in a few days after I had +begun my work it was finished. + +In the seclusion of the barn I studied and rehearsed the part, and by +the end of summer I was prepared to transplant it from the rustic +realms of an old farmhouse to a cosmopolitan audience in the city of +Washington, where I opened at Carusi's Hall under the management of +John T. Raymond. I had gone over the play so thoroughly that each +situation was fairly engraved on my mind. The rehearsals were +therefore not tedious to the actors; no one was delayed that I might +consider how he or she should be disposed in the scene. I had by +repeated experiments so saturated myself with the action of the play +that a few days seemed to perfect the rehearsals. I acted on these +occasions with all the point and feeling that I could muster. This +answered the double purpose of giving me freedom and of observing the +effect of what I was doing on the actors. They seemed to be watching +me closely, and I could tell by little nods of approval where and when +the points hit. + +I became each day more and more interested in the work; there was in +the subject and the part much scope for novel and fanciful treatment. +If the sleep of twenty years was merely incongruous, there would be +room for argument pro and con; but as it is an impossibility, I felt +that the audience would accept it at once, not because it was an +impossibility, but from a desire to know in what condition a man's +mind would be if such an event could happen. Would he be thus +changed? His identity being denied both by strangers, friends, and +family, would he at last almost accept the verdict and exclaim, "Then +I am dead, and that is a fact?" This was the strange and original +attitude of the character that attracted me. + +In acting such a part what to do was simple enough, but what not to do +was the important and difficult point to determine. As the earlier +scenes of the play were of a natural and domestic character, I had +only to draw upon my experience for their effect, or employ such +conventional methods as myself and others had used before in +characters of that ilk. But from the moment Rip meets the spirits of +Hendrik Hudson and his crew I felt that all colloquial dialogue and +commonplace pantomime should cease. It is at this point in the story +that the supernatural element begins, and henceforth the character +must be raised from the domestic plane and lifted into the realms of +the ideal. + +To be brief, the play was acted with a result that was to me both +satisfactory and disappointing. I was quite sure that the character +was what I had been seeking, and I was equally satisfied that the play +was not. The action had neither the body nor the strength to carry +the hero; the spiritual quality was there, but the human interest was +wanting. The final alterations and additions were made five years +later by Dion Boucicault. + +"Rip Van Winkle" was not a sudden success. It did not burst upon the +public like a torrent. Its flow was gradual, and its source sprang +from the Hartz Mountains, an old German legend, called "Carl the +Shepherd," being the name of the original story. The genius of +Washington Irving transplanted the tale to our own Catskills. The +grace with which he paints the scene, and, still more, the quaintness +of the story, placed it far above the original. Yates, Hackett, and +Burke had separate dramas written upon this scene and acted the hero, +leaving their traditions one to the other. I now came forth, and +saying, "Give me leave," set to work, using some of the +before-mentioned tradition, mark you. Added to this, Dion Boucicault +brought his dramatic skill to bear, and by important additions made a +better play and a more interesting character of the hero than had as +yet been reached. This adaptation, in my turn, I interpreted and +enlarged upon. It is thus evident that while I may have done much to +render the character and the play popular, it has not been the work of +one mind, but both as its to narrative and its dramatic form has been +often moulded, and by many skilful hands. So it would seem that those +dramatic successes that "come like shadows, so depart," and those that +are lasting, have ability for their foundation and industry for their +superstructure. I speak now of the former and the present condition +of the drama. What the future may bring forth it is difficult to +determine. The histrionic kaleidoscope revolves more rapidly than of +yore and the fantastic shapes that it exhibits are brilliant and +confusing; but under all circumstances I should be loath to believe +that any conditions will render the appearance of frivolous novices +more potent than the earnest design of legitimate professors. + + + +THE ART OF ACTING + +Acting has been so much a part of my life that my autobiography could +scarcely be written without jotting down my reflections upon it, and I +merely make this little preparatory explanation to apologise for any +dogmatic tone that they may possess, and to say that I present them +merely as a seeker after truth in the domain of art. + +In admitting the analogy that undoubtedly exists between the arts of +painting, poetry, music, and acting, it should be remembered that the +first three are opposed to the last, in at least the one quality of +permanence. The picture, oratorio, or book must bear the test of +calculating criticism, whereas the work of an actor is fleeting: it +not only dies with him, but, through his different moods, may vary +from night to night. If the performance be indifferent it is no +consolation for the audience to hear that the player acted well last +night, or to be told that he will act better to-morrow night; it is +this night that the public has to deal with, and the impression the +actor has made, good or bad, remains as such upon the mind of that +particular audience. + +The author, painter, or musician, if he be dissatisfied with his work, +may alter and perfect it before giving it publicity, but an actor +cannot rub out; he ought, therefore, in justice to his audience, to be +sure of what he is going to place before it. Should a picture in an +art gallery be carelessly painted we can pass on to another, or if a +book fails to please us we can put it down. An escape from this kind +of dulness is easily made, but in a theatre the auditor is imprisoned. +If the acting be indifferent, he must endure it, at least for a time. +He cannot withdraw without making himself conspicuous; so he remains, +hoping that there may be some improvement as the play proceeds, or +perhaps from consideration for the company he is in. It is this +helpless condition that renders careless acting so offensive. + + + +PREPARATION AND INSPIRATION + +I have seen impulsive actors who were so confident of their power that +they left all to chance. This is a dangerous course, especially when +acting a new character. I will admit that there are many instances +where great effects have been produced that were entirely spontaneous, +and were as much a surprise to the actors who made them as they were +to the audience who witnessed them; but just as individuals who have +exuberant spirits are at times dreadfully depressed, so when an +impulsive actor fails to receive his inspiration he is dull indeed, +and is the more disappointing because of his former brilliant +achievements. + +In the stage management of a play, or in the acting of a part, nothing +should be left to chance, and for the reason that spontaneity, +inspiration, or whatever the strange and delightful quality may be +called, is not to be commanded, or we should give it some other name. +It is, therefore, better that a clear and unmistakable outline of a +character should be drawn before an actor undertakes a new part. If +he has a well-ordered and an artistic mind it is likely that he will +give at least a symmetrical and effective performance; but should he +make no definite arrangement, and depend upon our ghostly friends +Spontaneity and Inspiration to pay him a visit, and should they +decline to call, the actor will be in a maze and his audience in a +muddle. + +Besides, why not prepare to receive our mysterious friends whether +they come or not? If they fail on such an invitation, we can at least +entertain our other guests without them, and if they do appear, our +preconceived arrangements will give them a better welcome and put them +more at ease. + +Acting under these purely artificial conditions will necessarily be +cold, but the care with which the part is given will at least render +it inoffensive; they are, therefore, primary considerations, and not +to be despised. The exhibition, however, of artistic care does not +alone constitute great acting. The inspired warmth of passion in +tragedy and the sudden glow of humour in comedy cover the artificial +framework with an impenetrable veil: this is the very climax of great +art, for which there seems to be no other name but genius. It is +then, and then only, that an audience feels that it is in the presence +of a reality rather than a fiction. To an audience an ounce of genius +has more weight than a ton of talent; for though it respects the +latter, it reverences the former. But the creative power, divine as +it may be, should in common gratitude pay due regard to the +reflective; for Art is the handmaid of Genius, and only asks the +modest wages of respectful consideration in payment for her valuable +services. A splendid torrent of genius ought never to be checked, but +it should be wisely guided into the deep channel of the stream, from +whose surface it will then reflect Nature without a ripple. Genius +dyes the hues that resemble those of the rainbow; Art fixes the +colours that they may stand. In the race for fame purely artificial +actors cannot hope to win against those whose genius is guided by +their art; and, on the other hand, Intuition must not complain if, +unbridled or with too loose a rein, it stumbles on the course, and so +allows a well-ridden hack to distance it. + + + +SHOULD AN ACTOR "FEEL" HIS PART + +Much has been written upon the question as to whether an actor ought +to feel the character he acts, or be dead to any sensations in this +direction. Excellent artists differ in their opinions on this +important point. In discussing it I must refer to some words I wrote +in one of my early chapters: + +"The methods by which actors arrive at great effects vary according to +their own natures; this renders the teaching of the art by any +strictly defined lines a difficult matter." + +There has lately been a discussion on the subject, in which many have +taken part, and one quite notable debate between two distinguished +actors, one of the English and the other of the French stage [Henry +Irving and Mons. Coquelin]. These gentlemen, though they differ +entirely in their ideas, are, nevertheless, equally right. The method +of one, I have no doubt, is the best he could possibly devise for +himself; and the same may be said of the rules of the other as applied +to himself. But they must work with their own tools; if they had to +adopt each other's they would be as much confused as if compelled to +exchange languages. One believes that he must feel the character he +plays, even to the shedding of real tears, while the other prefers +never to lose himself for an instant, and there is no doubt that they +both act with more effect by adhering to their own dogmas. + +For myself, I know that I act best when the heart is warm and the head +is cool. In observing the works of great painters I find that they +have no conventionalities except their own; hence they are masters, +and each is at the head of his own school. They are original, and +could not imitate even if they would. + +So with acting, no master-hand can prescribe rules for the head of +another school. If, then, I appear bold in putting forth my +suggestions, I desire it to be clearly understood that I do not +present them to original or experienced artists who have formed their +school, but to the student who may have a temperament akin to my own, +and who could, therefore, blend my methods with his preconceived +ideas. + +Many instructors in the dramatic art fall into the error of teaching +too much. The pupil should first be allowed to exhibit his quality, +and so teach the teacher what to teach. This course would answer the +double purpose of first revealing how much the pupil is capable of +learning, and, what is still more important, of permitting him to +display his powers untrammeled. Whereas, if the master begins by +pounding his dogmas into the student, the latter becomes environed by +a foreign influence which, if repugnant to his nature, may smother his +ability. + +It is necessary to be cautious in studying elocution and +gesticulation, lest they become our masters instead of our servants. +These necessary but dangerous ingredients must be administered and +taken in homeopathic doses, or the patient may die by being +over-stimulated. But, even at the risk of being artificial, it is +better to have studied these arbitrary rules than to enter a +profession with no knowledge whatever of its mechanism. Dramatic +instinct is so implanted in humanity that it sometimes misleads us, +fostering the idea that because we have the natural talent within we +are equally endowed with the power of bringing it out. This is the +common error, the rock on which the histrionic aspirant is oftenest +wrecked. Very few actors succeed who crawl into the service through +the "cabin windows"; and if they do it is a lifelong regret with them +that they did not exert their courage and sail at first "before the +mast." + +Many of the shining lights who now occupy the highest positions on the +stage, and whom the public voice delights to praise, have often +appeared in the dreaded character of omnes, marched in processions, +sung out of tune in choruses, and shouted themselves hoarse for Brutus +and Mark Antony. + +If necessity is the mother of invention, she is the foster-mother of +art, for the greatest actors that ever lived have drawn their early +nourishment from her breast. We learn our profession by the +mortifications we are compelled to go through in order to get a +living. + +The sons and daughters of wealthy parents who have money at their +command, and can settle their weekly expenses without the assistance +of the box office, indignantly refuse to lower themselves by assuming +some subordinate character for which they are cast, and march home +because their fathers and mothers will take care of them. Well, they +had better stay there! + +But whether you are rich or poor, if you would be an actor begin at +the beginning. This is the old conventional advice, and is as good +now in its old age as it was in its youth. All actors will agree in +this, and as Puff says, in the _Critic_, "When they do agree on the +stage the unanimity is wonderful." Enroll yourself as a "super" in +some first-class theatre, where there is a stock Company and likely to +be a periodical change of programme, so that even in your low degree +the practice will be varied. After having posed a month as an +innocent English rustic, you may, in the next play, have an +opportunity of being a noble Roman. Do the little you have to do as +well as you can; if you are in earnest the stage-manager will soon +notice it and your advancement will begin at once. You have now made +the plunge, the ice is broken; there is no more degradation for you; +every step you take is forward. + +A great American statesman said, "There is always plenty of room at +the top." So there is, Mr. Webster, after you get there. But we must +climb, and climb slowly too, so that we can look back without any +unpleasant sensations; for if we are cast suddenly upon the giddy +height our heads will swim and down we shall go. Look also at the +difficulties that will beset you by beginning "at the top." In the +first place, no manager in his senses will permit it; and if he did, +your failure--which is almost inevitable--not only will mortify you, +but your future course for some time to come will be on the downward +path. Then, in disgust, sore and disheartened, you will retire from +the profession which perhaps your talents might have ornamented if +they had been properly developed. + + + +JOSEPH JEFFERSON IN MONTREAL + +PLAYWRIGHTS AND ACTORS + +In May, 1886, Mr. Jefferson paid a visit to Montreal, and greatly +enjoyed a drive through Mount Royal Park and to _Sault au Recollet_. +That week he appeared in "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Cricket on the +Hearth." Speaking of Boucicault, who dramatised Rip, he said to the +editor of this volume: "Yes, he is a consummate retoucher of other +men's work. His experience on the stage tells him just what points to +expand and emphasise with most effect. No author seated at his desk +all his life, without theatrical training, could ever have rewritten +Rip with such success. Among modern plays I consider 'The Scrap of +Paper' by Victorien Sardou to be the most ingenious of all. If Sardou +only had heart he would be one of the greatest dramatists that ever +lived. Had he written 'The Cricket on the Hearth,' Caleb Plummer +instead of being patient, resigned and lovable would have been filled +with the vengeful ire of a revolutionist." + +With regard to Shakespeare Mr. Jefferson said: + +"'Macbeth' is his greatest play, the deepest in meaning, the best knit +from the first scene to the last. While 'Othello' centres on +jealousy, 'Lear' on madness, 'Romeo and Juliet' on love, 'Macbeth' +turns on fate, on the supernal influences which compel a man with good +in him to a murderous course. The weird witches who surround the +bubbling caldron are Fates." + +Recalling his early days on the boards he remarked: "Then a young +actor had to play a varied round of parts in a single season. +To-night it would be farce, to-morrow tragedy, the next night some +such melodrama as 'Ten Nights in a Bar-room.' This not only taught an +actor his business, it gave him a chance to find out where his +strength lay, whether as Dundreary, Hamlet, or Zeke Homespun." + + + +THE JEFFERSON FACE + +One of Mr. Jefferson's company that season was his son, Mr. Thomas +Jefferson. When I spoke of his remarkable resemblance to the +portraits of President Jefferson, I was told: + +"If physiognomy counts for anything, all the Jeffersons have sprung +from one stock; we look alike wherever you find us. The next time you +are in Richmond, Virginia, I wish you to notice the statue of Thomas +Jefferson, one of the group surrounding George Washington beside the +Capitol. That statue might serve as a likeness of my father. When +his father was once playing in Washington, President Jefferson, who +warmly admired his talents, sent for him and received him most +hospitably. When they compared genealogies they could come no nearer +than that both families had come from the same county in England." + +Montreal has several highly meritorious art collections: these, of +Course, were open to Mr. Jefferson. He was particularly pleased with +the canvases of Corot in the mansion of Sir George Drummond. That +afternoon another collector showed him his gallery and pointed to a +portrait of his son, for the three years past a student of art in +Paris. Mr. Jefferson asked: "How can you bear to be parted from him +so long?" + +He could be witty as well as kind in his remarks. A kinswoman in his +company grumbled that the Montreal _Herald_ had called her nose a +poem. + +"No, my dear," was his comment, "it's not a poem, but a stanza, +something shorter." + +On Dominion Square I showed him the site occupied by the Ice Palace +during the recent Winter Carnival; on the right stood a Methodist +Church, on the left the Roman Catholic Cathedral. He remarked simply: +"So there's a coolness between them!" + + + +EDWIN BOOTH + +[Mr. William Winter's "Life and Art of Edwin Booth" is indispensable +to a student of the American stage. Here are two paragraphs chosen +from many as illuminating: + +"The salient attributes of Booth's art were imagination, insight, +grace, intense emotion, and melancholy refinement. In Hamlet, +Richelieu, Othello, Iago, Lear, Bertuccio, and Lucius Brutus they were +conspicuously manifest. But the controlling attribute,--that which +imparted individual character, colour and fascination to his +acting,--was the thoughtful introspective habit of a stately mind, +abstracted from passion and suffused with mournful dreaminess of +temperament. The moment that charm began to work, his victory was +complete. It was that which made him the true image of Shakespeare's +thought, in the glittering halls of Elsinore, on its midnight +battlements, and in its lonely, wind-beaten place of graves. + +"Under the discipline of sorrow, and through years that bring the +philosophic mind, Booth drifted further and further away from things +dark and terrible, whether in the possibilities of human life or in +the world of imagination. That is the direction of true growth. In +all characters that evoked his essential spirit--in characters which +rested on spiritualised intellect, or on sensibility to fragile +loveliness, the joy that is unattainable, the glory that fades, and +the beauty that perishes--he was peerless. Hamlet, Richelieu, Faust, +Manfred, Jacques, Esmond, Sydney Carton, and Sir Edward Mortimer are +all, in different ways, suggestive of the personality that Booth was +fitted to illustrate. It is the loftiest type that human nature +affords, because it is the embodied supremacy of the soul, and because +therein it denotes the only possible escape from the cares and +vanities of a transitory world." + +The letters which follow are from "Edwin Booth: Recollections by his +daughter, Edwina Booth Grossman, and Letters to Her and to His +Friends." Copyright, 1894, Century Company, New York.--ED.] + + + +TO HIS DAUGHTER + +BOOTH'S THEATER, +NEW YORK, November 15, 1871. + +MY OWN DEAR DAUGHTER: + +I arrived here last night, and found your pretty gift awaiting me. +Your letter pleased me very, very much in every respect, and your +little souvenir gave me far more delight than if it were of real gold. +When you are older you will understand how precious little things, +seemingly of no value in themselves, can be loved and prized above all +price when they convey the love and thoughtfulness of a good heart. +This little token of your desire to please me, my darling, is +therefore very dear to me, and I will cherish it as long as I live. +If God grants me so many years, I will show it you when you are a +woman, and then you will appreciate my preference for so little a +thing, made by you, to anything money might have bought. God bless +you, my darling! ... + +God bless you again and again! Your loving father. + + + +TO HIS DAUGHTER + +CHICAGO, March 2, 1873. + +MY DEAR BIG DAUGHTER: + +Your last letter was very jolly, and made me almost happy. Pip (the +dog) is yelping to write to you, and so is your little brother, St. +Valentine, the bird; but I greatly fear they will have to wait another +week, for, you know, I have to hold the pen for them, and I have +written so many letters, and to-day my hand is tired. + +Don't you think it jollier to receive silly letters sometimes than to +get a repetition of sermons on good behaviour? It is because I desire +to encourage in you a vein of pleasantry, which is most desirable in +one's correspondence, as well as in conversation, that I put aside the +stern old father, and play papa now and then. + +When I was learning to act tragedy, I had frequently to perform comic +parts, in order to acquire a certain ease of manner that my serious +parts might not appear too stilted; so you must endeavour in your +letters, in your conversation, and your general deportment, to be easy +and natural, graceful and dignified. But remember that dignity does +not consist of over-becoming pride and haughtiness; self-respect, +politeness and gentleness in all things and to all persons will give +you sufficient dignity. Well, I declare, I've dropped into a sermon, +after all, haven't I? I'm afraid I'11 have to let Pip and the bird +have a chance, or else I'11 go on preaching till the end of my letter. +You must tell me what you are reading now, and how you progress in +your studies, and how good you are trying to be. Of that I have no +fear. I doubt if I shall get to Philadelphia in June; so do not +expect me until school breaks up and then--"hey for Cos Cob" and the +fish-poles! When I was last there the snow was high above our knees; +but still I liked it better than the city .... + +Love and kisses from your grim old father. + + + +TO HIS DAUGHTER + +April 23, 1876. + +MY DARLING DAUGHTER, + +... When I was at Eton (I don't refer now to the dinner-table) my +Greek and Latin were of such a superior quality that had it not been +for an unforeseen accident I would have carried off all the honours. +The accident lay in this: I never went to school there except in +dreams. How often, ah! how often have I imagined the delights of a +collegiate education! What a world of never-ending interest lies open +to the master of languages! + +The best translations cannot convey to us the strength and exquisite +delicacy of thought in its native garb, and he to whom such books are +shut flounders about in outer darkness. I have suffered so much from +the lack of that which my father could easily have given me in youth, +and which he himself possessed, that I am all the more anxious you +shall escape my punishment in that respect; that you may not, like me, +dream of those advantages which others enjoy through any lack of +opportunity or neglect of mine. Therefore, learn to love your Latin, +your French, and your English grammar; standing firmly and securely on +them, you have a solid foothold in the field of literature.... + +Think how interesting it will be hereafter to refer to your journal, +and see the rapid development, not only of your mind, but of your +moral growth; only do not fail to record all your shortcomings; they +will not stand as reproaches, but as mere snags in the tortuous river +of your life, to be avoided in succeeding trips farther down the +stream. They beset us all along the route, from the cradle to the +grave, and if we can only see them we can avoid many rough bumps. + +God bless my darling! + +PAPA. + + + +TO HIS DAUGHTER + +CHICAGO, October 9, 1886 + +... I am glad to know that baby has begun to crawl; don't put her on +her feet too soon; consider her legs a _la bow_.... I closed my first +week here with two enormous houses. A hard week's work has greatly +tired me.... Jefferson called and left with me the manuscript of his +reminiscences, which he has been writing. So far as he has written +it, it is intensely interesting and amusing, and well written in a +free and chatty style; it will be the best autobiography of any actor +yet published if he continues it in its present form. I sent you some +book notices from Lawrence Hutton's clippings for me.... In the +article I send to-day you will see that I am gently touched up on the +point of the "old school"; my reference was not to the old style of +acting, but the old stock theatre as a school--where a beginner had +the advantage of a great variety of experience in farces, as well as +tragedies and comedies, and a frequent change of programme. There is +no "school" now; there is a more natural style of acting, perhaps, but +the novice can learn nothing from long runs of a single play ... + + + +TO HIS DAUGHTER + +NEW YORK, January 5, 1888, + +... As for God's reward for what I have done, I can hardly appreciate +it; it is more like punishment for misdeeds (of which I've done many) +than grace for good ones (if I've done any). Homelessness is the +actor's fate; physical incapacity to attain what is most required and +desired by such a spirit as I am a slave to. If there be rewards, I +am certainly well paid, but hard schooling in life's thankless lessons +has made we somewhat of a philosopher, and I've learned to take the +buffets and rewards of fortune with equal thanks, and in suffering all +to suffer--I won't say nothing, but comparatively little. Dick +Stoddard wrote a poem called "The King's Bell," which fits my case +exactly (you may have read it) . He dedicated it to Lorimer Graham, +who never knew an unhappy day in his brief life, instead of to me, who +never knew a really happy one. You mustn't suppose from this that I'm +ill in mind or body: on the contrary, I am well enough in both; nor am +I a pessimist. I merely wanted you to know that the sugar of my life +is bitter-sweet; perhaps not more so than every man's whose experience +has been above and below the surface.... Business has continued +large, and increases a little every night; the play will run two weeks +longer. Sunday, at four o'clock, I start for Baltimore, arriving +there at ten o'clock.... + +To-morrow, a meeting of actors, managers, and artists at breakfast, to +discuss and organise, if possible, a theatrical club[1] like the +Garrick of London.... + + + +TO HIS DAUGHTER + +DETROIT, April 04, 1890. + +... Yes; it is indeed most gratifying to feel that age has not +rendered my work stale and tiresome, as is usually the case with +actors (especially tragedians) at my time. Your dear mother's fear +was that I would culminate too early, as I seemed then to be advancing +so rapidly. Somehow I can't rid myself of the belief that both she +and my father helped me. But as for the compensation? Nothing of +fame or fortune can compensate for the spiritual suffering that one +possessing such qualities has to endure. To pass life in a sort of +dream, where "nothing is but what is not"--a loneliness in the very +midst of a constant crowd, as it were--is not a desirable condition of +existence, especially when the body also has to share the "penalty of +greatness," as it is termed. Bosh! I'd sooner be an obscure farmer, +a hayseed from Wayback, or a cabinetmaker, as my father advised, than +the most distinguished man on earth. But Nature cast me for the part +she found me best fitted for, and I have had to play it, and must play +it till the curtain falls. But you must not think me sad about it. +No; I am used to it, and am contented. + +I continue well, and act with a vigour which sometimes surprises +myself, and all the company notice it, and comment upon it. I'm glad +the babes had a jolly birthday. Bless 'em! Love for all. + +PAPA. + + + +TO HIS DAUGHTER + +THE PLAYERS, NEW YORK, +March 22, 1891. + +DEAR DAUGHTER: + +I'm in no mood for letter-writing to-day. The shock (of Mr. Lawrence +Barrett's death) so sudden and so distressing, and the gloomy, +depressing weather, entirely unfit me for the least exertion--even to +think. Hosts of friends, all eager to assist poor Mrs. Barrett, seem +helpless in confusion, and all the details of the sad business seem to +be huddled on her ... + +General Sherman's son, "Father Tom," as he is affectionately called by +all the family and the friends of the dear old General, will attend. +He was summoned from Europe recently to his father's deathbed, and he +happens to be in time to perform services for his father's friend, +poor Lawrence. After the services to-morrow, the remains and a few +friends will go direct to Cohasset for the burial--Tuesday--where +Barrett had only two weeks ago placed his mother, removed from her New +York grave to a family lot which he had recently purchased at +Cohasset. He had also enlarged his house there, where he intended to +pass his old age in privacy. Doctor Smith was correct in his +assertion that the glandular disease was incurable, and the surgical +operation would prolong life only a year or so; the severe cold +produced pneumonia; which Barrett's physicians say might have been +overcome but for the glandular disease still in the blood. Mrs. +Barrett knew from the first operation that he had at most a year or so +to live, and yet by the doctor's advice kept it secret, and did +everything to cheer and humour him. She's a remarkable woman. She +has been expecting to be suddenly called to him for more than a year +past, yet the blow came with terrible force. Milly, Mr. Barrett's +youngest daughter, and her husband, came last night.... When I saw +Lawrence on Thursday he was in a burning fever and asked me to keep +away for fear his breath might affect me, and it pained him to talk. +He pulled through three acts of "De Mauprat" the night before, and +sent for his wife that night. His death was very peaceful, with no +sign of pain. A couple of weeks ago he and I were to meet General +Sherman at dinner: death came instead. To-night Barrett had invited +about twenty distinguished men to meet me at Delmonico's, and again +the grim guest attends.... + +My room is like an office of some state official; letters, telegrams, +and callers come every moment, some on business, many in sympathy. +Three hours have elapsed since I finished the last sentence, and I +expect a call from Bromley before I retire. A world of business +matters have been disturbed by this sudden break of contracts with +actors and managers, and everything pertaining to next season, as well +as much concerning the balance of the present one, must be rearranged +or cancelled. I, of course, am free; but for the sake of the company +I shall fulfil my time, to pay their salaries, this week here; and +next week in Brooklyn, as they were engaged by Barrett for my +engagement. After which they will be out of employment for the +balance of the season... + +PAPA. + + + +TO MISS EMMA F. CARY +SAINT VALENTINE'S DAY, 1864. + +MY DEAR FRIEND: + +A little lull in the whirl of excitement in which my brain has nearly +lost its balance affords me an opportunity to write to you. It would +be difficult to explain the many little annoyances I have been +subjected to in the production of "Richelieu," but when I tell you +that it far surpasses "Hamlet," and exceeds all my expectations, you +may suppose that I have not been very idle all this while. I wish you +could see it. + +Professor Peirce[2] has been here, and he will tell you of it. It +really seems that the dreams of my past life--so far as my profession +is concerned--are being realised. What Mary and I used to plan for my +future, what Richard and I used laughingly to promise ourselves in +"our model theatre," seems to be realised--in these two plays, at +least. As history says of the great cardinal, I am "too fortunate a +man not to be superstitious," and as I find my hopes being fulfilled, +I cannot help but believe that there is a sufficient importance in my +art to interest them still; that to a higher influence than the world +believes I am moved by I owe the success I have achieved. Assured +that all I do in this advance carries, even beyond the range of my +little world (the theatre), an elevating and refining influence, while +in it the effect is good, I begin to feel really happy in my once +uneasy sphere of action. I dare say I shall soon be contented with my +lot. I will tell you this much: I have been offered the means to a +speedy and an ample fortune, from all parts of the country, but prefer +the limit I have set, wherein I have the power to carry out my wishes, +though "on half pay," as it were.... + +Ever your friend, + +EDWIN BOOTH. + + + +TO MISS EMMA F. CARY +[Three weeks after the assassination by his brother, John Wilkes +Booth, of President Lincoln.] +Saturday, May 6, 1865. + +MY DEAR FRIEND: + +I've just received your letter. I have been in one sense unable to +write, but you know, of course, what my condition is, and need no +excuses. + +I have been, by the advice of my friends, "cooped up" since I arrived +here, going out only occasionally in the evening. My health is good, +but I suffer from the want of fresh air and exercise. + +Poor mother is in Philadelphia, about crushed by her sorrows, and my +sister, Mrs. Clarke, is ill, and without the least knowledge of her +husband, who was taken from her several days ago, with Junius. + +My position is such a delicate one that I am obliged to use the utmost +caution. Hosts of friends are staunch and true to me. Here and in +Boston I feel safe. What I am in Philadelphia and elsewhere I know +not. All I do [know] of the above named city is that there is one +great heart firm and faster bound to me than ever. + +Sent in answer to dear Mary's [his wife's] prayers--I faithfully +believe it. She will do what Mary struggled, suffered, and died in +doing. My baby, too, is there. Now that the greatest excitement is +over, and a lull is in the storm, I feel the need of that dear angel; +but during the heat of it I was glad she was not here. + +When Junius and Mr. Clarke are at liberty, mother will come here and +bring Edwina [his daughter] to me. I wish I could see with others' +eyes; all my friends assure me that my name shall be free, and that in +a little while I may be where I was and what I was; but, alas! it +looks dark to me. + +God bless you all for your great assistance in my behalf; even dear +Dick aided me in my extremity, did he not? + +Give my love to all and kisses to George. + +... I do not think the feeling is so strong in my favour in +Philadelphia as it is here and in Boston. I am not known there. Ever +yours. + + + +TO MR. NAHUM CAPEN + +[In response to an inquiry regarding his brother, John Wilkes Booth.] +WINDSOR HOTEL, NEW YORK, +July 28, 1881. + +DEAR SIR: + +I can give you very little information regarding my brother John. I +seldom saw him since his early boyhood in Baltimore. He was a +rattle-pated fellow, filled with quixotic notions. + +While at the farm in Maryland he would charge on horseback through the +woods, "spouting" heroic speeches with a lance in his hand--a relic of +the Mexican war--given to father by some soldier who had served under +Taylor. We regarded him as a good-hearted, harmless, though +wild-brained, boy, and used to laugh at his patriotic froth whenever +secession was discussed. That he was insane on that one point no one +who knew him well can doubt. When I told him that I had voted for +Lincoln's reelection he expressed deep regret, and declared his belief +that Lincoln would be made king of America; and this I believe, drove +him beyond the limits of reason. I asked him once why he did not join +the Confederate army. To which he replied, "I promised mother I would +keep out of the quarrel, if possible, and I am sorry that I said so." +Knowing my sentiments, he avoided me, rarely visiting my house, except +to see his mother, when political topics were not touched upon--at +least in my presence. He was of a gentle, loving disposition, very +boyish and full of fun--his mother's darling--and his deed and death +crushed her spirit. He possessed rare dramatic talent, and would have +made a brilliant mark in the theatrical world. This is positively all +that I know about him, having left him a mere school-boy, when I went +with my father to California in 1852. On my return in 1856 we were +separated by professional engagements, which kept him mostly in the +South while I was employed in the Eastern and Northern states. + +I do not believe any of the wild, romantic stories published in the +papers concerning him; but of course he may have been engaged in +political matters of which I know nothing. All his theatrical friends +speak of him as a poor crazy boy, and such his family think of him. I +am sorry I can afford you no further light on the subject. Very truly +yours, + + + +ADVICE TO A YOUNG ACTOR + +[TO WALTER THOMAS] +NEW YORK, August 28, 1889. + +MY DEAR MR. THOMAS: + +I was surprised to learn that your engagement with Mr. Barrett is +terminated, and am sorry for the cause, although I believe the result +will be to your advantage. Your chances for promotion will be better +in a company that is not confined to so limited a repertoire as mine, +in which so few opportunities occur for the proper exercise of +youthful talent. A frequent change of role, and of the lighter +sort--especially such as one does not like forcing one's self to use +the very utmost of his ability in the performance of--is the training +requisite for a mastery of the actor's art. + +I had seven years' apprenticeship at it, during which most of my +labour was in the field of comedy--"walking gentleman," burlesque, and +low comedy parts--the while my soul was yearning for high tragedy. I +did my best with all that I was cast for, however, and the unpleasant +experience did me a world of good. Had I followed my own bent, I +would have been, long ago, a "crushed tragedian." + +I will, as you request, give you a line to Mr. Palmer, and I hope you +may obtain a position that will afford you the necessary practice. +With best wishes. Truly yours, + +EDWIN BOOTH. + + + +CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN + + + +[Charlotte Cushman, a native of Boston, died in that city in 1876. No +actress ever excelled her as Meg Merrilies, Queen Katherine, and Lady +Macbeth. On the morning following her death, Mr. William Winter wrote +in the New York _Tribune_:-- + +... Charlotte Cushman was not a great actress merely, but she was a +great woman. She did not possess the dramatic faculty apart from +other faculties and conquer by that alone: but having that faculty in +almost unlimited fulness, she poured forth through its channel such +resources of character, intellect, moral strength, soul, and personal +magnetism as marked her for a genius of the first order, while they +made her an irresistible force in art. When she came upon the stage +she filled it with the brilliant vitality of her presence. Every +movement that she made was winningly characteristic. Her least +gesture was eloquence, Her voice, which was soft or silvery, or deep +or mellow, according as emotion affected it, used now and then to +tremble, and partly to break, with tones that were pathetic beyond +description. These were denotements of the fiery soul that smouldered +beneath her grave exterior, and gave iridescence to every form of art +that she embodied. Sometimes her whole being seemed to become +petrified in a silent suspense more thrilling than any action, as if +her imagination were suddenly inthralled by the tumult and awe of its +own vast perceptions." + +Her frlend, Emma Stebbins, the sculptor, edited a memorial volume, +"Charlotte Cushman: Her Letters and Memories of Her Life," published +in 1878. By permission of the publishers and owners of the copyright, +Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, the pages that follow are +offered.--ED.] + + + +AS A CHILD A MIMIC AND SINGER + +On one occasion [wrote Miss Cushman] when Henry Ware, pastor of the +old Boston Meeting House, was taking tea with my mother, he sat at +table talking, with his chin resting in his two hands, and his elbows +on the table. I was suddenly startled by my mother exclaiming, +"Charlotte, take your elbows off the table and your chin out of your +hands; it is not a pretty position for a young lady!" I was sitting +in exact imitation of the parson, even assuming the expression of his +face. + +Besides singing everything, I exercised my imitative powers in all +directions, and often found myself instinctively mimicking the tones, +movement, and expression of those about me. I'm afraid I was what the +French call _un enfant terrible_--in the vernacular, an awful child! +full of irresistible life and impulsive will; living fully in the +present, looking neither before nor after; as ready to execute as to +conceive; full of imagination--a faculty too often thwarted and warped +by the fears of parents and friends that it means insincerity and +falsehood, when it is in reality but the spontaneous exercise of +faculties as yet unknown even to the possessor, and misunderstood by +those so-called trainers of infancy. + +This imitative faculty in especial I inherited from my grandmother +Babbit, born Mary Saunders, of Gloucester, Cape Ann. Her faculty of +imitation was very remarkable. I remember sitting at her feet on a +little stool and hearing her sing a song of the period, in which she +delighted me by the most perfect imitation of every creature belonging +to the farmyard. + + + +FIRST VISITS TO THE THEATRE + +My uncle, Augustus Babbit, who led a seafaring life and was lost at +sea, took great interest in me; he offered me prizes for proficiency +in my studies, especially music and writing. He first took me to the +theatre on one of his return voyages, which was always a holiday time +for me. My first play was "Coriolanus," with Macready, and my second +"The Gamester," with Cooper and Mrs. Powell as Mr. and Mrs. Beverley. +All the English actors and actresses of that time were of the Siddons +and Kemble school, and I cannot but think these early impressions must +have been powerful toward the formation of a style of acting afterward +slowly eliminated through the various stages of my artistic career. + +My uncle had great taste and love for the dramatic profession, and +became acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. William Pelby, for whom the +original Tremont Theatre was built. My uncle being one of the +stockholders, through him my mother became acquainted with these +people, and thus we had many opportunities of seeing and knowing +something of the fraternity. + +About this time I became noted in school as a reader, where before I +had only been remarkable for my arithmetic, the medal for which could +never be taken from me. I remember on one occasion reading a scene +from Howard Payne's tragedy of "Brutus," in which Brutus speaks, and +the immediate result was my elevation to the head of the class to the +evident disgust of my competitors, who grumbled out, "No wonder she +can read, she goes to the theatre!" I had been before this very shy +and reserved, not to say stupid, about reading in school, afraid of +the sound of my own voice, and very unwilling to trust it; but the +greater familiarity with the theatre seemed suddenly to unloose my +tongue, and give birth as it were to a faculty which has been the +ruling passion ever since. + + + +PLAYS LADY MACBETH, HER FIRST PART + +With the Maeders I went [in 1836, when twenty years of age] to New +Orleans, and sang until, owing perhaps to my youth, to change of +climate, or to a too great strain upon the upper register of my voice, +which, as his wife's voice was a contralto, it was more to Mr. +Maeder's interest to use, than the lower one, I found my voice +suddenly failing me. In my unhappiness I went to ask counsel and +advice of Mr. Caldwell, the manager of the chief New Orleans theatre, +He at once said to me, "You ought to be an actress, and not a singer." +He advised me to study some parts, and presented me to Mr. Barton, the +tragedian of the theatre, whom he asked to hear me, and to take an +interest in me. + +He was very kind, as indeed they both were; and Mr. Barton, after a +short time, was sufficiently impressed with my powers to propose to +Mr. Caldwell that I should act Lady Macbeth to his Macbeth, on the +occasion of his (Barton's) benefit. Upon this is was decided that I +should give up singing and take to acting. My contract with Mr. +Maeder was annulled, it being the end of the season. So enraptured +was I with the idea of acting this part, and so fearful of anything +preventing me, that I did not tell the manager I had no dresses, until +it was too late for me to be prevented from acting it; and the day +before the performance, after rehearsal, I told him. He immediately +sat down and wrote a note of introduction for me to the tragedienne of +the French Theatre, which then employed some of the best among French +artists for its company. This note was to ask her to help me to +costumes for the role of Lady Macbeth, I was a tall, thin, lanky girl +at that time, about five feet six inches in height. The Frenchwoman, +Madame Closel, was a short, fat person of not more than four feet ten +inches, her waist full twice the size of mine, with a very large bust; +but her shape did not prevent her being a very great actress. The +ludicrousness of her clothes being made to fit me struck her at once. +She roared with laughter; but she was very good-natured, saw my +distress, and set to work to see to how she could help it. By dint of +piecing out the skirt of one dress it was made to answer for an +underskirt, and then another dress was taken in in every direction to +do duty as an overdress, and so make up the costume. And thus I +essayed for the first time the part of Lady Macbeth, fortunately to +the satisfaction of the audience, the manager, and all the members of +the company. + + + +TO A YOUNG ACTRESS [PART OF A LETTER] + +... I should advise you to get to work; all ideal study of acting, +without the trial or opportunity of trying our efforts and conceivings +upon others, is, in my mind, lost time. Study while you act. Your +conception of character can be formed while you read your part, and +only practice can tell you whether you are right. You would, after a +year of study in your own room, come out unbenefited, save in as far +as self-communion ever must make us better and stronger; but this is +not what you want just now. Action is needed. Your vitality must in +some measure work itself off. You must suffer, labour, and wait, +before you will be able to grasp the true and the beautiful. You +dream of it now; the intensity of life that is in you, the spirit of +poetry which makes itself heard by you in indistinct language, needs +work to relieve itself and be made clear. I feel diffident about +giving advice to you, for you know your own nature better than any one +else can, but I should say to you, get to work in the best way you +can. + +All your country work will be wretched; you will faint by the way; but +you must rouse your great strength and struggle on, bearing patiently +your cross on the way to your crown! God bless you and prosper your +undertakings. I know the country theatres well enough to know how +utterly alone you will be in such companies; but keep up a good heart; +we have only to do well what is given us to do, to find heaven. + +I think if you have to wait for a while it will do you no harm. You +seem to me quite frantic for immediate work; but teach yourself quiet +and repose in the time you are waiting. With half your strength I +could bear to wait and labour with myself to conquer fretting. The +greatest power in the world is shown in conquest over self. More life +will be worked out of you by fretting than all the stage-playing in +the world. God bless you, my poor child. You have indeed troubles +enough; but you have a strong and earnest spirit, and you have the +true religion of labour in your heart. Therefore I have no fears for +you, let what will come. Let me hear from you at your leisure, and be +sure you have no warmer friend than I am and wish to be,... + +I was exceedingly pleased to hear such an account of your first +appearance. You were quite right in all that was done, and I am +rejoiced at your success. Go on; persevere. You will be sure to do +what is right, for your heart is in the right place, your head is +sound, your reading has been good. Your mind is so much better and +stronger than any other person's whom I have known enter the +profession, that your career is plain before you. + +But I will advise you to remain in your own native town for a season, +or at least the winter. You say you are afraid of remaining among +people who know you. Don't have this feeling at all. You will have +to be more particular in what you do, and the very feeling that you +cannot be indifferent to your audience will make you take more pains. +Beside this, you will be at home, which is much better for a time; for +then at first you do not have to contend with a strange home as well +as with a strange profession. I could talk to you a volume upon this +matter, but it is difficult to write. At all events I hope you will +take my counsel and remain at home this winter. It is the most +wretched thing imaginable to go from home a novice into such a theatre +as any of those in the principal towns. + +Only go on and work hard, and you will be sure to make a good +position. With regard to your faults, what shall I say? Why, that +you will try hard to overcome them. I don't think they would be +perceived save by those who perhaps imagine that your attachment for +me has induced you to join the profession. I have no mannerisms, I +hope; therefore any imitation of me can only be in the earnest desire +to do what you can do, as well as you can. Write to me often; ask of +me what you will; my counsel is worth little, but you shall command it +if you need it. + + + +TO A YOUNG MOTHER + +[FROM A LETTER] + +... All that you say about your finding your own best expression in +and through the little life which is confided to you is good and true, +and I am so happy to see how you feel on the subject. I think a +mother who devotes herself to her child, in watching its culture and +keeping it from baleful influences, is educating and cultivating +herself at the same time. No artist work is so high, so noble, so +grand, so enduring, so important for all time, as the making of +character in a child, You have your own work to do, the largest +possible expression. No statue, no painting, no acting, can reach it, +and it embodies each and all the arts, Clay of God's fashioning is +given into your hands to mould to perfectness. Is this not something +grand to think of? No matter about yourself--only make yourself +worthy of God's sacred trust, and you will be doing His work--and that +is all that human beings ought to care to live for. Am I right? + + + +EARLY GRIEFS. ART HER ONLY SPOUSE + +[FROM A LETTER TO A FRIEND] + +There was a time, in my life of girlhood, when I thought I had been +called upon to bear the very hardest thing that can come to a Woman. +A very short time served to show me, in the harder battle of life +Which was before me, that this had been but a spring storm, which was +simply to help me to a clearer, better, richer, and more productive +summer. If I had been spared this early trial, I should never have +been so earnest and faithful in my art; I should have still been +casting about for the "counterpart," and not given my entire self to +my work, wherein and alone I have reached any excellence I have ever +attained, and through which alone I have received my reward. God +helped me in my art isolation, and rewarded me for recognising him and +helping myself. This passed on; and this happened at a period in my +life when most women (or children, rather) are looking to but one end +in life--an end no doubt wisest and best for the largest number, but +which would not have been wisest and best for my work, and so for +God's work, for I know he does not fail to set me his work to do, and +helps me to do it, and helps others to help me. (Do you see this +tracing back, and then forward, to an eternity of good, and do you see +how better and better one can become in recognising one's self as a +minister of the Almighty to faithfully carry out our part of His great +plan according to our strength and ability?) 0 believe we cannot live +one moment for ourselves, one moment of selfish repining, and not be +failing him at that moment, hiding the God-spark in us, letting the +flesh conquer the spirit, the evil dominate the good. + +Then after this first spring storm and hurricane of young +disappointment came a lull--during which I actively pursued what +became a passion,--my art. Then I lost my younger brother, upon whom +I had begun to build most hopefully, as I had reason. He was by far +the cleverest of my mother's children. He had been born into greater +poverty than the others; he received his young impressions through a +different atmosphere; he was keener, more artistic, more impulsive, +more generous, more full of genius. I lost him by a cruel accident, +and again the world seem to liquefy beneath my feet, and the waters +went over my soul. It became necessary that I should suffer bodily to +cure my heart-bleed. I placed myself professionally where I found and +knew all my mortifications in my profession, which seemed for the time +to strew ashes over the loss of my child-brother (for he was my child, +and loved me best in all the world), thus conquering my art, which, +God knows, has never failed me--never failed to bring me rich +reward--never failed to bring me comfort. I conquered my grief and +myself. Labour saved me then and always, and so I proved the eternal +goodness of God. I digress too much; but you will see how, in looking +back to my own early disappointments, I can recognise all the good +which came out of them, and can ask you to lay away all repinings with +our darling, and hope (as we must) in God's wisdom and goodness, and +ask him to help us to a clearer vision and truer knowledge of his +dealings with us; to teach us to believe that we are lifted up to him +better through our losses than our gains. May it not be that heaven +is nearer, the passage from earth less hard, and life less seductive +to us, in consequence of the painless passing of this cherub to its +true home, lent us but for a moment, to show how pure must be our +lives to fit us for such companionship? And thus, although in one +sense it would be well for us to put away the sadness of this thought +if it would be likely to enervate us, in another sense, if we consider +it rightly, if we look upon it worthily, we have an angel in God's +house to help us to higher and purer thinkings, to nobler aspirations, +to more sublime sacrifices than we have ever known before. + + + +FAREWELL TO NEW YORK + +[In 1874 Miss Cushman bade farewell to New York at Booth's Theatre, +after a performance as Lady Macbeth. William Cullen Bryant presented +an ode in her honour. In the course of her response Miss Cushman +said:] + +Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks, but I thank you. +Gentlemen, the heart has no speech; its only language is a tear or a +pressure of the hand, and words very feebly convey or interpret its +emotions. Yet I would beg you to believe that in the three little +words I now speak, 'I thank you,' there are heart depths which I +should fail to express better, though I should use a thousand other +words. I thank you, gentlemen, for the great honour you have offered +me. I thank you, not only for myself, but for my whole profession, to +which, through and by me, you have paid this very grateful compliment. +If the few words I am about to say savour of egotism or vainglory, you +will, I am sure, pardon me, inasmuch as I am here only to speak of +myself. You would seem to compliment me upon an honourable life. As +I look back upon that life, it seems to me that it would have been +impossible for me to have led any other. In this I have, perhaps, +been mercifully helped more than are many of my more beautiful sisters +in art. I was, by a press of circumstances, thrown at an early age +into a profession for which I had received no special education or +training; but I had already, though so young, been brought face to +face with necessity. I found life sadly real and intensely earnest, +and in my ignorance of other ways of study, I resolved to take +therefrom my text and my watchword. To be thoroughly in earnest, +intensely in earnest in all my thoughts and in all my actions, whether +in my profession or out of it, became my one single idea. And I +honestly believe herein lies the secret of my success in life. I do +not believe that any great success in any art can he achieved without +it.... + + + +CLARA MORRIS + +[Clara Morris, Mrs. Frederick C. Harriott, is a native of Toronto, +Canada. Her remarkable powers as an emotional actress, early in +evidence, gave her for years the foremost place at Daly's Theatre, and +the Union Square Theatre, New York. Among the parts in which she +achieved distinction were Camille, Alixe, Miss Multon, Corn in +"Article 47," and Mercy Merrick in "The New Magdalen." Since her +retirement from the stage Clara Morris has proved herself to be a +capital writer, shedding the light of experience on the difficulties +of dramatic success. One of her books, "Life on the Stage," +copyright, 1901, by Clara Morris Harriott and the S. S. McClure +Company, New York, by permission, has furnished this episode.--Ed.] + + + +SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF JOHN WILKES BOOTH + +In glancing back over two crowded and busy seasons, one figure stands +out with clearness and beauty. In his case only (so far as my +personal knowledge goes), there was nothing derogatory to dignity or +to manhood in being called beautiful, for he was that bud of splendid +promise blasted to the core, before its full triumphant +blooming--known to the world as a madman and an assassin, but to the +profession as "that unhappy boy"--John Wilkes Booth. + +He was so young, so bright, so gay--so kind. I could not have known +him well; of course, too--there are two or three different people in +every man's skin; yet when we remember that stars are not generally in +the habit of showing their brightest, their best side to the company +at rehearsal, we cannot help feeling both respect and liking for the +one who does. + +There are not many men who can receive a gash over the eye in a scene +at night, without at least a momentary outburst of temper; but when +the combat between Richard and Richmond was being rehearsed, Mr. Booth +had again and again urged Mr. McCollom (that six-foot tall and +handsome leading-man, who entrusted me with the care of his watch +during such encounters) to come on hard! to come on hot! hot, old +fellow! harder-faster! He'd take the chance of a blow--if only they +could make a hot fight of it! + +And Mr. McCollom, who was a cold man, at night became nervous in his +effort to act like a fiery one--he forgot he had struck the full +number of head blows, and when Booth was pantingly expecting a +thrust, McCollom, wielding his sword with both hands, brought it down +with awful force fair across Booth's forehead; a cry of horror rose, +for in one moment his face was masked in blood, one eyebrow was +cleanly cut through--there came simultaneously one deep groan from +Richard and the exclamation: "Oh, good God! good God!" from Richmond, +who stood shaking like a leaf and staring at his work. Then Booth, +flinging the blood from his eyes with his left hand, said as genially +as man could speak: " That's all right, old man! never mind me--only +come on hard, for God's sake, and save the fight!" + +Which be resumed at once, and though he was perceptibly weakened, it +required the sharp order of Mr. Ellsler, to "ring the first curtain +bell," to force him to bring the fight to a close a single blow +shorter than usual. Then there was a running to and fro, with ice and +vinegar-paper and raw steak and raw oysters. When the doctor had +placed a few stitches where they were most required, he laughingly +declared there was provision enough in the room to start a restaurant. +Mr. McCollom came to try to apologise--to explain, but Booth would +have none of it; be held out his hand, crying: "Why, old fellow, you +look as if you had lost the blood. Don't worry--now if my eye had +gone, that would have been bad!" And so with light words he tried to +set the unfortunate man at ease, and though he must have suffered much +mortification as well as pain from the eye--that in spite of all +endeavours would blacken--he never made a sign. + +He was, like his great elder brother, rather lacking in height, but +his head and throat, and the manner of their rising from his +shoulders, were truly beautiful, His colouring was unusual--the ivory +pallor of his skin, the inky blackness of his densely thick hair, the +heavy lids of his glowing eyes were all Oriental, and they gave a +touch of mystery to his face when it fell into gravity--but there was +generally a flash of white teeth behind his silky moustache, and a +laugh in his eyes. + +I played the Player-Queen to my great joy, and in the "Marble Heart" I +was one of the group of three statues in the first act. We were +supposed to represent Lais, Aspasia, and Phryne, and when we read the +cast I glanced at the other girls (we were not strikingly handsome) +and remarked, gravely: "Well, it's a comfort to know that we look so +like the three beautiful Grecians." + +A laugh at our backs brought us around suddenly to face Mr. Booth, who +said to me: + +"You satirical little wretch, how do you come to know these Grecian +ladies? Perhaps you have the advantage of them in being all beautiful +within?" + +"I wish it would strike outward then," I answered. "You know it's +always best to have things come to the surface!" + +"I know some very precious things are hidden from common sight; and I +know, too, you caught my meaning in the first place. Good night!" and +he left us. + +We had been told to descend to the stage at night with our white robes +hanging free and straight, that Mr. Booth himself might drape them as +we stood upon the pedestal. It really is a charming picture--that of +the statues in the first act. Against a backing of black velvet the +three white figures, carefully posed, strongly lighted, stand out so +marble-like that when they slowly turn their faces and point to their +chosen master, the effect is uncanny enough to chill the looker-on. + +Well, with white wigs, white tights, and white robes, and half +strangled with the powder we had inhaled in our efforts to make our +lips stay white, we cautiously descended the stairs we dared not +talk, we dared not blink our eyes, for fear of disturbing the coat of +powder-we were lifted to the pedestal and took our places as we +expected to stand. Then Mr. Booth came--such a picture in his Greek +garments as made even the men exclaim at him--and began to pose us. +It happened one of us had very good limbs, one medium good, and the +third had, apparently, walked on broom-sticks. When Mr. Booth +slightly raised the drapery of No. 3 his features gave a twist as +though he had suddenly tasted lemon-juice, but quick as a flash he +said: + +"I believe I'11 advance you to the centre for the stately and wise +Aspasia"--the central figure wore her draperies hanging straight to +her feet, hence the "advance" and consequent concealment of the +unlovely limbs. It was quickly and kindly done, for the girl was not +only spared mortification, but in the word "advance" she saw a +compliment and was happy accordingly. Then my turn came. My arms +were placed about Aspasia, my head bent and turned and twisted--my +upon my breast so that the forefinger touched my chin--I felt I was a +personified simper; but I was silent and patient, until the +arrangement of my draperies began--then I squirmed anxiously. + +"Take care--take care!" he cautioned. "You will sway the others if +you move!" But in spite of the risk of my marble makeup I faintly +groaned: "Oh dear! must it be like that?" + +Regardless of the pins in the corner of his mouth he burst into +laughter, and, taking a photograph from the bosom of his Greek shirt, +he said: "I expected a protest from you, Miss, so I came +prepared--don't move your head, but just look at this." + +He held the picture of a group of statuary up to me. "This is you on +the right. It's not so dreadful; now, is it?" And I cautiously +murmured: "That if I wasn't any worse than that I wouldn't mind." + +And so we were all satisfied, and our statue scene was very +successful. Next morning I saw Mr. Booth come running out of the +theatre on his way to the telegraph office at the corner, and right in +the middle of the walk, staring about him, stood a child--a small +roamer of the stony streets, who had evidently got far enough beyond +his native ward to arouse misgivings as to his personal safety, and at +the very moment he stopped to consider matters Mr. Booth dashed out of +the stage-door and added to his bewilderment by capsizing him +completely. + +"Oh, good lord! Baby, are you hurt?" exclaimed Mr. Booth, pausing +instantly to pick up the dirty, tousled small heap and stand it on its +bandy legs again. + +"Don't cry, little chap!" And the aforesaid little chap not only +ceased to cry, but gave him a damp and grimy smile, at which the actor +bent towards him quickly, but paused, took out his handkerchief, and +first carefully wiping the dirty little nose and mouth, stooped and +kissed him heartily, put some change in each freckled paw, and +continued his run to the telegraph office. + +He knew of no witness to the act. To kiss a pretty, clean child under +the approving eyes of mamma might mean nothing but politeness, but +surely it required the prompting of a warm and tender heart to make a +young and thoughtless man feel for and caress such a dirty, forlorn +bit of babyhood as that. + +Of his work I suppose I was too young and too ignorant to judge +correctly, but I remember well hearing the older members of the +company express their opinions. Mr. Ellsler, who had been on terms of +friendship with the elder Booth, was delighted with the promise of his +work. He greatly admired Edwin's intellectual power, his artistic +care; but "John," he cried, "has more of the old man's power in one +performance than Edwin can show in a year. He has the fire, the dash, +the touch of strangeness. He often produces unstudied effects at +night. I question him: 'Did you rehearse that business to-day, John?' +He answers: + +'No; I didn't rehearse it, it just came to me in the scene and I +couldn't help doing it, but it went all right didn't it?' Full of +impulse just now, like a colt, his heels are in the air nearly as +often as his head, but wait a year or two till he gets used to the +harness and quiets down a bit, and you will see as great an actor as +America can produce!" + +One morning, going on the stage where a group were talking with John +Wilkes, I beard him say: "No; oh, no: There's but one Hamlet to my +mind--that's my brother Edwin. You see, between ourselves, he is +Hamlet--melancholy and all!" + + + +THE MURDER OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN + +That was an awful time, when the dread news came to us. We were in +Columbus, Ohio. We had been horrified by the great crime at +Washington. My room-mate and I had, from our small earnings, bought +some black cotton at a tripled price, as all the black material in the +city was not sufficient to meet the demand; and as we tacked it about +our one window, a man passing told us the assassin had been +discovered, and that he was the actor Booth. Hattie laughed, so she +nearly swallowed the tack that, girl-like, she held between her lips, +and I after a laugh, told him it was a poor subject for a jest, and we +went in. There was no store in Columbus then where play-books were +sold, and as Mr. Ellsler had a very large and complete stage library, +he frequently lent his books to us, and we would hurriedly copy out +our lines and return the book for his own use. On that occasion he +was going to study his part first and then leave the play with us as +he passed, going home. We heard his knock. I was busy pressing a bit +of stage finery. Hattie opened the door, and then I heard her +exclaiming: "Why--why--what!" I turned quickly. Mr. Ellsler was +coming slowly into the room. He is a very dark man, but be was +perfectly livid then--his lips even were blanched to the whiteness of +his cheeks. His eyes were dreadful, they were so glassy and seemed so +unseeing. He was devoted to his children, and all I could think of as +likely to bring such a look upon his face was disaster to one of them, +and I cried, as I drew a chair to him: "What is it? Oh, what has +happened to them?" + +He sank down--he wiped his brow--he looked almost stupidly at me; +then, very faintly, he said: "You--haven't--heard--anything?" + +Like a flash Hattie's eyes and mine met. We thought of the supposed +ill-timed jest of the stranger. My lips moved wordlessly. Hattie +stammered: "A man--he--lied though--said that Wilkes Booth--but he did +lie--didn't he?" and in the same faint voice Mr. Ellsler answered +slowly: "No--no! he did not lie--it's true!" + +Down fell our heads, and the waves of shame and sorrow seemed fairly +to overwhelm us; and while our sobs filled the little room, Mr. +Ellsler rose and laid two playbooks on the table. Then, while +standing there, staring into space, I heard his far, faint voice +saying: "So great--so good a man destroyed, and by the hand of that +unhappy boy! my God! my God!" He wiped his brow again and slowly left +the house, apparently unconscious of our presence. + +When we resumed our work--the theatre had closed because of the +national calamity--many a painted cheek showed runnels made by bitter +tears, and one old actress, with quivering lips, exclaimed: "One woe +doth tread upon another's heels, so fast they follow!" but with no +thought of quoting, and God knows, the words expressed the situation +perfectly. + +Mrs. Ellsler, whom I never saw shed a tear for any sickness, sorrow, +or trouble of her own, shed tears for the mad boy, who had suddenly +become the assassin of God's anointed--the great, the blameless +Lincoln. + +We crept about, quietly. Every one winced at the sound of the +overture. It was as if one dead lay within the walls--one who +belonged to us. + +When the rumours about Booth being the murderer proved to be +authentic, the police feared a possible outbreak of mob feeling, and a +demonstration against the theatre building, or against the actors +individually; but we had been a decent, law-abiding, well-behaved +people--liked and respected--so we were not made to suffer for the +awful act of one of our number. Still, when the mass-meeting was held +in front of the Capitol, there was much anxiety on the subject, and +Mr. Ellsler urged all the company to keep away from it, lest their +presence might arouse some ill-feeling. The crowd was immense, the +sun had gloomed over, and the Capitol building, draped in black, +loomed up with stern severity and that massive dignity only attained +by heavily columned buildings. The people surged like waves about the +speaker's stand, and the policemen glanced anxiously toward the not +far away new theatre, and prayed that some bombastic, revengeful +ruffian might not crop up from this mixed crowd of excited humanity to +stir them to violence. + +Three speakers, however, in their addresses had confined themselves to +eulogising the great dead. In life Mr. Lincoln had been abused by +many--in death he was worshipped by all; and these speakers found +their words of love and sorrow eagerly listened to, and made no harsh +allusions to the profession from which the assassin sprang. And then +an unknown man clambered up from the crowd to the portico platform and +began to speak, without asking any one's permission. He had a +far-reaching voice--he had fire and go. + +"Here's the fellow to look out for!" said the policemen; and, sure +enough, suddenly the dread word "theatre" was tossed into the air, and +every one was still in a moment, waiting for--what? I don't know what +they hoped for--I do know what many feared; but this is what he said: +"Yes, look over at our theatre and think of the little body of men and +women there, who are to-day sore-hearted and cast down; who feel that +they are looked at askant, because one of their number has committed +that hideous crime! Think of what they have to bear of shame and +horror, and spare them, too, a little pity!" + +He paused. It had been a bold thing to do--to appeal for +consideration for actors at such a time. The crowd swayed for a +moment to and fro, a curious growling came from it, and then all heads +turned toward the theatre. A faint cheer was given, and afterward +there was not the slightest allusion made to us--and verily we were +grateful. + +That the homely, tender-hearted "Father Abraham"--rare combination of +courage, justice, and humanity--died at an actor's hand will be a +grief, a horror, and a shame to the profession forever; yet I cannot +believe that John Wilkes Booth was "the leader of a band of bloody +conspirators." + +Who shall draw a line and say: here genius ends and madness begins? +There was that touch of--strangeness. In Edwin it was a profound +melancholy; in John it was an exaggeration of spirit--almost a +wildness. There was the natural vanity of the actor, too, who craves +a dramatic situation in real life. There was his passionate love and +sympathy for the South--why, he was "easier to be played on than a +pipe." + +Undoubtedly he conspired to kidnap the President--that would appeal to +him; but after that I truly believe he was a tool--certainly he was no +leader. Those who led him knew his courage, his belief in Fate, his +loyalty to his friends; and, because they knew these things, he drew +the lot, as it was meant he should from the first. Then, half mad, he +accepted the part Fate cast him for--committed the monstrous crime, +and paid the awful price. And since + + God moves in a mysterious way + His wonders to perform, + +we venture to pray for His mercy upon the guilty soul who may have +repented and confessed his manifold sins and offences during those +awful hours of suffering before the end came. + +And "God shutteth not up His mercies forever in displeasure!" We can +only shiver and turn our thoughts away from the bright light that went +out in such utter darkness. Poor, guilty, unhappy John Wilkes Booth! + + + +WHEN IN MY HUNT FOR A LEADING MAN FOR MR. DALY I FIRST SAW COGHLAN AND +IRVING + +[From "Life of a Star" copyright by the S. S. McClure Company, New +York, 1906.] + +When the late Mr. Augustin Daly bestowed even a modicum of his +confidence, his friendship, upon man or woman, the person so honoured +found the circulation of his blood well maintained by the frequent and +generally unexpected demands for his presence, his unwavering +attention, and sympathetic comprehension. As with the royal +invitation that is a command, only death positive or threatening could +excuse non-attendance; and though his friendship was in truth a +liberal education, the position of even the humblest confidant was no +sinecure, for the plans he loved to describe and discuss were not +confined to that day and season, but were long, daring looks ahead; +great coups for the distant, unborn years. + +The season had closed on Saturday. Monday I was to sail for England, +and early that morning the housemaid watched for the carriage. My +landlady was growing quivery about the chin, because I had to cross +alone to join Mr. and Mrs. James Lewis, who had gone ahead, My mother +was gay with a sort of crippled hilarity that deceived no one, as she +prepared to go with me to say good bye at the dock, while little Ned, +the son of the house, proudly gathered together rug, umbrella, +hand-bag, books, etc., ready to go down with us and escort my mother +back home--when a cab whirled to the door and stopped. + +"Good heaven!" I cried, "what a blunder! I ordered a carriage; we +can't all crowd into that thing!" + +Then a boy was before me, holding out one of those familiar summoning +half-sheets, with a line or two of the jetty-black, impishly-tiny, +Daly scrawls--and I read: "Must see you one minute at office. Cabby +will race you down. Have your carriage follow and pick you up here. +Don't fail! A. DALY." + +Ah, well! A. Daly--he who must be obeyed--had me in good training. I +flung one hand to the mistress, the other to the maid in farewell, +pitched headlong into the cab, and went whirling down Sixth Avenue and +across to the theatre stage-door, then upstairs to the morsel of space +called by courtesy the private office. + +Mr. Daly nonchalantly held out his band, looked me over, and said: +"That's a very pretty dress--becoming too--but is it not too easily +soiled? Salt water you know is--" + +"Oh," I broke in, "it's for general street wear--my travelling will be +done in nightdress, I fancy." + +"Ah, bad sailor, eh?" he asked, as I stood trembling with impatience. + +"The worst! But you did not send for me to talk dress or about my +sailing qualities?" + +"My dear," he said suavely, "your temper is positively rabid." Then +he glanced at the clock on his desk and his manner changed. He said +swiftly and curtly: "Miss Morris, I want you to go to every theatre in +London, and--" + +"But I can't!" I interrupted, "I have not money enough for that and my +name is not known over there!" + +He frowned and waved his hand impatiently. "Use my name, then, or ask +courtesy from E. A. Sothern. He crosses with you and you know him. +But mind, go to every reputable theatre, and," impressively, "report +to me at once if you see any leading man with exceptional ability of +any kind." + +I gasped. It seemed to me I heard the leaden fall of my heart. "But +Mr. Daly, what a responsibility! How on earth could I judge an actor +for you?" + +He held up an imperative band. "You think more after my own manner +than any other person I know of. You are sensitive, responsive, quick +to acknowledge another's ability, and so are fitted to study London's +leading men for me!" + +I was aghast, frightened to the point of approaching tears! Suddenly +I bethought me. + +"I'11 tell Mr. Lewis. He is there already you know, and let him judge +for you." + +"Lewis? Good Lord! He has no independence! He'd see in an actor +just what he thought I wanted him to see! I tell you, I want you to +sort over London's leading men, and, if you see anything exceptional, +secure name and theatre and report to me. Heavens knows, two long +years have not only taught me that you have opinions, but the courage +of them!" + +Racing steps came up the stairs, and little Ned's voice called: "Miss +Clara. Miss Clara, We are here!" + +I turned to Mr. Daly and said mournfully: + +"You have ruined the pleasure of my trip." + +"Miss Morris, that's the first untruth you ever told me. Here, +please" and he handed me a packet of new books. + +"Thanks!" I cried and then flew down the stairs. Glancing up, I saw +him looking earnestly after me. "Did you speak?" I asked hurriedly. + +"That gown fits well--don't spoil it with sea-water!" + +And half-laughing, half-vexed, but wholly frightened at the charge +laid upon me, I sprang into the carriage, to hold hands with mother +all the way down to the crowded dock. + +One day I received in London this note from Mr. Augustin Daly: + +"MY DEAR MISS MORRIS: I find no letter here. Impatiently, A. D." + +And straightway I answered: + +"MY DEAR MR. DALY: I find no actor here. Afflictedly, C. M." + +And lo, on my very last night in London, after our return from Paris, +I found the exceptional leading man. + +Ten days later, on a hot September morning, I was hurling myself upon +my mother in all the joy of home-coming when I saw leaning against the +clock on the mantel the unmistakable envelope, bearing the impious +black scriggle that generally meant a summons. I opened it and read: +"Cleaners in full possession here--look our for soap and pails, and +report directly at box-office--don't fail! A. DALY." + +I confess I was angry, for I was so tired and the motion of the +steamer was still with me, and besides my own small affairs were of +more interest to me just then than the greater ones of the manager. +However, my two years of training held good. In an hour I was picking +my way across wet floors, among mops and pails toward the sanity and +dry comfort of Mr. Daly's office. He held my hands closely for a +moment, then broke out complainingly: "You've behaved nicely, +haven't you? Not a single line sent to tell what you were seeing, +doing, thinking?" + +"I beg your pardon--I distinctly remember sending you a line." He +scowled blackly. I went on: "I thought your note to me was meant as a +model, so I copied it carefully." + +Formerly this sort of thing had kept us at daggers drawn, but now he +only laughed, and shaking his hand impatiently to and fro, said: "Stop +it! ah, stop it! So you could not find even one leading man worth +while, eh?" + +"Yes--just one!" + +"Then why on earth didn't you write me?" + +"Couldn't--I only found him on our last night in London." + +Mr. Daly's face was alight in a moment. He caught up a scrap of paper +and a pencil, and, after the manner of the inexperienced interviewer, +began: "What's he like?" + +"Tall, flat-backed, square-shouldered, free-moving, and wears a long +dress-coat--that shibboleth of a gentleman--as if that had been his +custom since ever he left his mother's knee." + +Mr. Daly ejaculated "good!" at each clause, and scribbled his impish +small scribble on the bit of paper which rested on his palm. + +"What did he do?" he asked eagerly. + +"He didn't do," I answered lucidly. + +"What do you mean, Miss Morris?" + +"What I say, Mr. Daly." + +"But if the man doesn't do anything, what is there remarkable about +him?" + +"Why, just that. It was what he didn't do that produced the effect." + +"A-a-ah," said Mr. Daly, with long-drawn satisfaction, scribbling +rapidly. "I understand, and you thought, miss, that you could not +judge an actor for me! What was the play?" + +"Bulwer's 'Money,' and Marie Wilton was superb as--" + +"Never mind Marie Wilton," he interrupted impatiently, writing, "but +Alfred Evelyn is such an awful prig." + +"Isn't he?" I acquiesced, "but this actor made him human. You see, +Mr. Daly, most Evelyns are like a bottle of gas-charged water: +forcibly restrained for a time, then there's a pop and a bang, and in +wild freedom the water is foaming thinly over everything in sight. +This man didn't kowtow in the early acts, but was curt, cold, showing +signs of rebellion more than once, and in the big scene, well--!" + +"Yes?" asked Mr. Daly eagerly. + +"Well, that was where he didn't do. He didn't bang nor rave nor work +himself up to a wild burst of tears!" ("Thank God!" murmured Mr. Daly +and scribbled fast.) "He told the story of his past sometimes +rapidly, sometimes making a short, absolute pause. When he reached +the part referring to his dead mother, his voice fell two tones, his +words grew slower, more difficult, and finally stopped. He left some +of his lines out entirely--actually forcing the people to do his work +in picturing for themselves his sorrow and his loss--while he sat +staring helplessly at the floor, his closed fingers slowly tightening, +trying vainly to moisten his dry lips. And when the unconsciously +sniffling audience broke suddenly into applause, he swiftly turned his +head aside, and with the knuckle of his forefinger brushed away two +tears. Ah, but that knuckle was clever! His fingertips would have +been girly-girly or actory, but the knuckle was the movement of a man, +who still retained something of his boyhood about him." + +Mr. Daly's gray, dark-lashed eyes were almost black with pleased +excitement as he asked: "What's his name?" + +"Coghlan--Charles Coghlan." + +"Why, he's Irish?" + +"So are you--Irish-American," I answered defensively, pretending to +misunderstand him. + +"Well, you ought to be Irish yourself!" he said sternly. + +"I did my best," I answered modestly. "I was born on St. Patrick's +Day!" + +"In the mornin'?" he asked. + +"The very top of it, sor!" + +"More power to you then!" at which we both laughed, and I rose to go. + +As I picked up my sunshade, I remarked casually: "Ah, but I was glad +to have seen, for once at least, England's great actor." + +"This Coghlan?" + +"Good gracious, no!" + +"What, there is another, and you have not mentioned him--after my +asking you to report any exceptional actor you saw?" + +"I beg your pardon, sir. You asked me to report every exceptional +leading man. This actor's leading man's days are past. He is a star +by the grace of God's great gifts to him, and his own hard work." + +"Well!" snapped Mr. Daly. "Even a star will play where money enough +is offered him, will he not?" + +"There's a legend to that effect, I believe.' + +"Will you favour me, Miss Morris, with this actor's name?" + +"Certainly. He is billed as Mr. Henry Irving." + +Mr. Daly looked up from his scribbling. "Irving? Irving? Is not he +the actor that old man Bateman secured as support for his daughters?" + +"Yes, that was the old gentleman's mistaken belief; but the public +thought differently, and laboured with Papa Bateman till it convinced +him that his daughters were by way of supporting Mr. Irving." + +A grim smile came upon the managerial lips as be asked. "What does he +look like?" + +"Well, as a general thing, I think he will look wonderfully like the +character he is playing. Oh, don't frown so! He--well, he is not +beautiful, neither can I imagine him a pantaloon actor, but his face +will adapt itself splendidly to any strong character make-up, whether +noble or villainous." Mr. Daly was looking pleased again. I went on: +"He aspires, I hear, to Shakespeare, but there is one thing of which I +am sure. He is the mightiest man in melodrama to-day!" + +"How long did it take to convince you of that, Miss Morris? One +act--two--the whole five acts?" + +"His first five minutes on the stage, sir. His business wins applause +without the aid of words, and you know what that means." + +Again that elongated "A-a-ah!" Then, "Tell me of that five minutes," +and he thrust a chair toward me. + +"Oh," I cried, despairingly, "that will take so long, and will only +bore you. + +"Understand, please, nothing under heaven that is connected with the +stage can ever bore me." Which statement was unalloyed truth. + +"But, indeed," I feebly insisted, only to be brought up short with the +words, "Kindly allow me to judge for myself." + +To which I beamingly made answer: "Did I not beg you to do that months +ago?" But he was growing vexed, and curtly commanded: + +"I want those first five minutes--what he did, and how he did it, and +what the effect was, and then"--speaking dreamily--"I shall know--I +shall know." + +Now at Mr. Daly's last long-drawn-out "A-a-ah," anent Mr. Irving's +winning applause without words, I believed an idea, new and novel, had +sprung into his mind, while his present rapt manner would tell anyone +familiar with his ways that the idea was rapidly becoming a plan. I +was wondering what it could be, when a sharp "Well?" startled me into +swift and beautiful obedience, + +"You see, Mr. Daly, I knew absolutely nothing of the story of the play +that night. 'The Bells' were, I supposed, church-bells. In the first +act the people were rustic--the season winter--snow flying in every +time the door opened. The absent husband and father was spoken of by +mother and daughter, lover and neighbour. Then there were +sleigh-bells heard, whose jingle stopped suddenly. The door +opened--Mathias entered, and for the first time winter was made truly +manifest to us, and one drew himself together instinctively, for the +tall, gaunt man at the door was cold-chilled, just to the very marrow +of his bones. Then, after general greetings had been exchanged, he +seated himself in a chair directly in the centre of the stage, a mere +trifle in advance of others in the scene, and proceeded to remove his +long leggings. He drew a great coloured handkerchief and brushed away +some clinging snow; then leaning forward, with slightly tremulous +fingers, he began to unfasten a top buckle. Suddenly the trembling +ceased, the fingers clenched hard upon the buckle, the whole body +became still, then rigid--it seemed not to breathe! The one sign of +life in the man was the agonisingly strained sense of hearing! His +tortured eyes saw nothing. Utterly without speech, without feeling, +he listened--breathlessly listened! A cold chill crept stealthily +about the roots of my hair, I clenched my hands hard and whispered to +myself: 'Will it come, good God, will it come, the thing he listens +for?' When with a wild bound, as if every nerve and muscle had been +rent by an electric shock, he was upon his feet; and I was answered +even before that suffocating cry of terror--'The bells! the +bells!'--and under cover of the applause that followed I said: +'Haunted! Innocent or guilty, this man is haunted!' And Mr. Daly, I +bowed my head to a great actor, for though fine things followed, you +know the old saying, that 'no chain is stronger than its weakest +link.' Well I always feel that no actor is greater than his +carefulest bit of detail." + +Mr. Daly's pale face had acquired a faint flush of colour, "Thank +you!" he said, with real cordiality, and I was delighted to have +pleased him, and also to see the end of my troubles, and once more +took up the sun-shade. + +"I think an actor like that could win any public, don't you?" + +"I don't know," I lightly answered. "He is generally regarded as an +acquired taste." + +"What do you mean?" came the sharp return. + +"Why, you must have heard that Mr. Irving's eccentricities are not to +be counted upon the fingers of both hands?" + +Mr. Daly lifted his brows and smiled a contented smile: "Indeed? And +pray, what are these peculiarities?" + +"Oh, some are of the figure, some of movement, and some of delivery. +A lady told me over there that he could walk like each and every +animal of a Noah's ark; and people lay wagers as to whether London +will force him to abandon his elocutionary freaks, or he will force +London to accept them. I am inclined to back Mr. Irving, myself." + +"What! What's that you say? That this fine actor you have described +has a marked peculiarity of delivery--of speech?" + +"Marked peculiarities? Why, they are murderous! His strange +inflections, his many mannerisms are very trying at first, but be +conquers before--" + +A cry stopped me--a cry of utter disappointment and anger! Mr. Daly +stood staring at his notes a moment, then he exclaimed violently: +"D--n! d--n! oh, d--n!!!" and savagely tore his scribbled-on paper +into bits and flung them on the floor. + +Startled at his vexation, convulsed with suppressed laughter at the +infantile quality of his profanity, I ventured, in a shaking voice, "I +think I'd better go?" + +"I think you had!" be agreed curtly; but as I reached the door he said +in his most managerial tone: "Miss Morris, it would be better for you +to begin with people's faults next time--" + +But with the door already open I made bold to reply: "Excuse me, Mr. +Daly, but there isn't going to be any next time for me!" + +And I turned and fled, wondering all the way home, as I have often +wondered since, what was the plan that went so utterly agley that day? +Mr. Coghlan he engaged after failing in his first effort, but that +other, greater plan; what was it? + + + +SIR HENRY IRVING + +[On November 24, 1883, Henry Irving closed his first engagement in New +York. William Winter's review appeared next morning in the _Tribune_, +It is reprinted in his book, "Henry Irving," published by G. J. +Coombes, New York, 1889. Mr. Winter said: "Mr. Irving has +impersonated here nine different men, each one distinct from all the +others. Yet in so doing he has never ceased to exert one and the same +personal charm, the charm of genialised intellect. The soul that is +within the man has suffused his art and made it victorious. The same +forms of expression, lacking this spirit, would have lacked the +triumph. All of them, indeed, are not equally fine. Mr. Irving's +'Mathias' and 'Louis XI,' are higher performances than his 'Shylock' +and 'Dorincourt,' higher in imaginative tone and in adequacy of +feeling and treatment. But, throughout all these forms, the drift of +his spirit, setting boldly away from conventions and formalities, has +been manifested with delightful results. He has always seemed to be +alive with the specific vitality of the person represented. He has +never seemed a wooden puppet of the stage, bound in by formality and +straining after a vague scholastic ideal of technical correctness." + +Mr. Irving's addresses, "The Drama," copyright by the United States +Book Company, New York, were published in 1892. They furnish the +pages now presented,--abounding on self-revelation,--ED.) + + + +THE STAGE AS AN INSTRUCTOR + +To boast of being able to appreciate Shakespeare more in reading him +than in seeing him acted used to be a common method of affecting +special intellectuality. I hope this delusion--a gross and pitiful +one to most of us--has almost absolutely died out. It certainly +conferred a very cheap badge of superiority on those who entertained +it. It seemed to each of them an inexpensive opportunity of +worshipping himself on a pedestal. But what did it amount to? It was +little more than a conceited and feather-headed assumption that an +unprepared reader, whose mind is usually full of far other things, +will see on the instant all that has been developed in hundreds of +years by the members of a studious and enthusiastic profession. My +own conviction is that there are few characters or passages of our +great dramatists which will not repay original study. But at least we +must recognise the vast advantages with which a practised actor, +impregnated by the associations of his life, and by study--with all +the practical and critical skill of his profession up to the date at +which he appears, whether he adopts or rejects tradition--addresses +himself to the interpretation of any great character, even if he have +no originality whatever. There is something still more than this, +however, in acting. Every one who has the smallest histrionic gift +has a natural dramatic fertility; so that as soon as he knows the +author's text, and obtains self-possession, and feels at home in a +part without being too familiar with it, the mere automatic action of +rehearsing and playing it at once begins to place the author in new +lights, and to give the personage being played an individuality partly +independent of, and yet consistent with, and rendering more powerfully +visible, the dramatist's conception. It is the vast power a good +actor has in this way which has led the French to speak of creating a +part when they mean its first being played, and French authors are as +conscious of the extent and value of this cooperation of actors with +them, that they have never objected to the phrase, but, on the +contrary, are uniformly lavish in their homage to the artists who have +created on the boards the parts which they themselves have created on +paper. + + + +INSPIRATION IN ACTING + +It is often supposed that great actors trust to the inspiration of the +moment. Nothing can be more erroneous. There will, of course, be +such moments, when an actor at a white heat illumines some passage +with a flash of imagination (and this mental condition, by the way, is +impossible to the student sitting in his armchair); but the great +actor's surprises are generally well weighed, studied, and balanced. +We know that Edmund Kean constantly practised before a mirror effects +which startled his audience by their apparent spontaneity. It is the +accumulation 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 is +not within common experience, so I can confidently ask you whether a +scene in a great play has not been at some time vividly impressed on +your minds by the delivery of a single line, or even of one forcible +word. Has not this made the passage far more real and human to you +than all the thought you have devoted to it? An accomplished critic +has said that Shakespeare himself might have been surprised had he +heard the "Fool, fool, fool!" of Edmund Kean. And though all actors +are not Keans, they have in varying degree this power of making a +dramatic character step out of the page, and come nearer to our hearts +and our understandings. + +After all, the best and most convincing exposition of the whole art of +acting is given by Shakespeare himself: "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." +Thus the poet recognised the actor's art as a most potent ally in the +representations of human life. He believed that to hold the mirror up +to nature was one of the worthiest functions in the sphere of labour, +and actors are content to point to his definition of their work as the +charter of their privileges. + + + +ACTING AS AN ART. HOW IRVING BEGAN + +The practice of the art of acting is a subject difficult to treat with +the necessary brevity. Beginners are naturally anxious to know what +course they should pursue. In common with other actors, I receive +letters from young people many of whom are very earnest in their +ambition to adopt the dramatic calling, but not sufficiently alive to +the 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 all +young students. Before going to see a play of Shakespeare's I used to +form--in a very juvenile way--a theory as to the working out of the +whole 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 doubt +that any method of independent study is of enormous importance, not +only to youngsters, but also to students of a larger growth. Without +it the mind is apt to take its stamp from the first forcible +impression it receives, and to fall into a servile dependence upon +traditions, which, robbed of the spirit that created them, are apt to +be purely mischievous. What was natural to the creator is often +unnatural and lifeless in the imitator. No two people form the same +conceptions of character, and therefore it is always advantageous to +see an independent and courageous exposition of an original ideal. +There can be no objection to the kind of training that imparts a +knowledge of manners and customs, and the teaching which pertains to +simple deportment on the stage is necessary and most useful; but you +cannot possibly be taught any tradition of character, for that has no +permanence. Nothing is more fleeting than any traditional method or +impersonation. You may learn where a particular personage used to +stand on the stage, or down which trap the ghost of Hamlet's father +vanished; but the soul of interpretation is lost, and it is this soul +which the actor has to re-create for himself. It is not mere attitude +or tone that has to be studied; you must be moved by the impulse of +being; you must impersonate and not recite. + + + +FEELING AS A REALITY OR A SEMBLANCE + +It is necessary to warn you against the theory expounded with +brilliant ingenuity by Diderot that the actor never feels. When +Macready played Virginius, after burying his beloved daughter, he +confessed that his real experience gave a new force to his acting in +the most pathetic situations of the play. Are we to suppose that this +was a delusion, or that the sensibility of the man was a genuine aid +to the actor? Bannister said of John Kemble that he was never +pathetic because he had no children. Talma says that when deeply +moved he found himself making a rapid and fugitive observation on the +alternation of his voice, and on a certain spasmodic vibration which +it contracted in tears. Has not the actor who can thus make his +feelings a part of his art an advantage over the actor who never +feels, but who makes his observations solely from the feelings of +others? It is necessary to this art that the mind should have, as it +were, a double consciousness, in which all the emotions proper to the +occasion may have full swing, while the actor is all the time on the +alert for every detail of his method. It may be that his playing will +be more spirited one night than another. But the actor who combines +the electric force of a strong personality with a mastery of the +resources of his art must have a greater power over his audiences than +the passionless actor who gives a most artistic simulation of the +emotions he never experiences. + + + +GESTURE. LISTENING AS AN ART. TEAM-PLAY ON THE STAGE + +With regard to gesture, Shakespeare's advice is all-embracing. "Suit +the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special +observance that you overstep not the modesty of nature." And here +comes the consideration of a very material part of the actor's +business--by-play. This is of the very essence of true art. It is +more than anything else significant of the extent to which the actor +has identified himself with the character he represents. Recall the +scenes between Iago and Othello, and consider how the whole interest +of the situation depends on the skill with which the gradual effect of +the poisonous suspicion instilled into the Moor's mind is depicted in +look and tone, slight of themselves, but all contributing to the +intensity of the situation. One of the greatest tests of an actor is +his capacity for listening. By-play must be unobtrusive; the student +should remember that the most minute expression attracts attention, +that nothing is lost, that by-play is as mischievous when it is +injudicious as it is effective when rightly conceived, and that while +trifles make perfection, perfection is no trifle. This lesson was +enjoined on me when I was a very young man by that remarkable actress, +Charlotte Cushman. I remember that when she played Meg Merrilies I +was cast for Henry Bertram, on the principle, seemingly, that an actor +with no singing voice is admirably fitted for a singing part. It was +my duty to give Meg Merrilies a piece of money, and I did it after the +traditional fashion by handing her a large purse full of the coin of +the realm, in the shape of broken crockery, which was generally used +in financial transactions on the stage, because when the virtuous maid +rejected with scorn the advances of the lordly libertine, and threw +his pernicious bribe upon the ground, the clatter of the broken +crockery suggested fabulous wealth. But after the play Miss Cushman, +in the course of some kindly advice, said to me: "Instead of giving +me that purse, don't you think it would have been much more natural if +you had taken a number of coins from your pocket, and given me the +smallest? That is the way one gives alms to a beggar, and it would +have added to the realism of the scene." I have never forgotten that +lesson, for simple as it was, it contained many elements of dramatic +truth. It is most important that an actor should learn that he is a +figure in a picture, and that the least exaggeration destroys the +harmony of the composition. All the members of the company should +work toward a common end, with the nicest subordination of their +individuality to the general purpose. Without this method a play when +acted is at best a disjoined and incoherent piece of work, instead of +being a harmonious whole like the fine performance of an orchestral +symphony. + + + +HENRY BRODRIBB IRVING + +[Henry Brodribb Irving, son of the late Sir Henry Irving, was born in +London in 1870. His first appearance on the stage was at the Garrick +Theatre, London, in "School," when twenty-one. In 1906 he toured with +success throughout the United States, appearing in plays made +memorable by his father, "The Lyons Mail," "Charles I.," and "The +Bells." Mr. Irving distinctly inherits Sir Henry Irving's ability +both as an actor and as a thoughtful student of acting as an art. In +1905 he gave a lecture, largely autobiographical, to the Academy of +Dramatic Art in London. It appeared in the _Fortnightly Review_, May, +1905, and is republished by Small, Maynard & Co., Boston, in +"Occasional Papers. Dramatic and Historical" by Mr. Irving. By his +kindness, and that of his publishers, its pages are here drawn +upon.--ED.] + + + + + +THE CALLING OF AN ACTOR + +I received, not very long ago, in a provincial town, a letter from a +young lady, who wished to adopt the stage as a profession but was +troubled in her mind by certain anxieties and uncertainties. These +she desired me to relieve. The questions asked by my correspondent +are rather typical questions-questions that are generally asked by +those who, approaching the stage from the outside, in the light of +prejudice and misrepresentation, believe the calling of the actor to +be one morally dangerous and intellectually contemptible; one in which +it is equally easy to succeed as an artist and degenerate as an +individual. She begins by telling me that she has a "fancy for the +stage," and has "heard a great many things about it." Now, for any +man or woman to become an actor or actress because they have a "fancy +for the stage" is in itself the height of folly. There is no calling, +I would venture to say, which demands on the part of the aspirant +greater searching of heart, thought, deliberation, real assurance of +fitness, reasonable prospect of success before deciding to follow it, +than that of the actor. And not the least advantage of a dramatic +school lies in the fact that some of its pupils may learn to +reconsider their determination to go on the stage, become convinced of +their own unfitness, recognise in time that they will be wise to +abandon a career which must always be hazardous and difficult even to +those who are successful, and cruel to those who fail. Let it be +something far sterner and stronger than mere fancy that decides you to +try your fortunes in the theatre. + +My correspondent says she has "heard a great many things about the +stage." If I might presume to offer a piece of advice, it would be +this: Never believe anything you hear about actors and actresses from +those who are not actually familiar with them. The amount of +nonsense, untruth, sometimes mischievous, often silly, talked by +otherwise rational people about the theatre, is inconceivable were it +not for one's own personal experience. It is one of the penalties of +the glamour, the illusion of the actor's art, that the public who see +men and women in fictitious but highly exciting and moving situations +on the stage, cannot believe that when they quit the theatre, they +leave behind them the emotions, the actions they have portrayed there. +And as there is no class of public servants in whom the public they +serve take so keen an interest as actors and actresses, the wildest +inventions about their private lives and domestic behaviour pass as +current, and are eagerly retailed at afternoon teas in suburban +drawing-rooms. + + + +REQUIREMENTS FOR THE STAGE + +Now, the first question my correspondent asks me is this: "Does a +young woman going on the stage need a good education and also to know +languages?" To answer the first part of the question is not, I think, +very difficult. The supremely great actor or actress of natural +genius need have no education or knowledge of languages; it will be +immaterial whether he or she has enjoyed all the advantages of birth +and education or has been picked up in the streets; genius, the +highest talent, will assert itself irrespective of antecedents. But I +should say that any sort of education was of the greatest value to an +actor or actress of average ability, and that the fact that the ranks +of the stage are recruited to-day to a certain extent from our great +schools and universities, from among classes of people who fifty years +ago would never have dreamed of entering our calling, is one on which +we may congratulate ourselves. Though the production of great actors +and actresses will not be affected either one way or the other by +these circumstances, at the same time our calling must benefit in the +general level of its excellence, in its fitness to represent all +grades of society on the stage, if those who follow it are picked from +all classes, if the stage has ceased to be regarded as a calling unfit +for a man or woman of breeding or education, + +The second question this lady asks me is this: + +"Does she need to have her voice trained, and about what age do people +generally commence to go on the stage?" The first part of this +question as to voice training touches on the value of an Academy of +Acting. Of the value--the practical value--of such an institution +rightly conducted there can be no doubt. That acting cannot be taught +is a well-worn maxim and perhaps a true one; but acting can be +disciplined; the ebullient, sometimes eccentric and disordered +manifestations of budding talent may be modified by the art of the +teacher; those rudiments, which many so often acquire painfully in the +course of rehearsal, the pupils who leave an academy should be masters +of and so save much time and trouble to those whose business it is to +produce plays. The want of any means of training the beginner, of +coping at all with the floods of men and women, fit and unfit, who are +ever clamouring at the doors of the theatre, has been a long-crying +and much-felt grievance. The establishment of this academy should go +far to remove what has been by no means an unjust reproach to our +theatrical system. As to the age at which a person should begin a +theatrical career, I do not think there is any actor or actress who +would not say that it is impossible to begin too early--at least, as +early as a police magistrate will allow. That art is long and life +short applies quite as truthfully to the actor's as to any other art, +and as the years go on there must be many who regret that they did not +sooner decide to follow a calling which seems to carry one all too +quickly through the flight of time. + + + +TEMPTATIONS ON THE STAGE + +My correspondent also asks me a question which I shall answer very +briefly, but which it is as well should be answered; She writes, "Are +there many temptations for a girl on the stage, and need she +necessarily fall into them?" Of course there are such temptations on +the stage, as there must be in any calling in which men and women are +brought into contact on a footing of equality; perhaps these +temptations are somewhat intensified in the theatre. At the same +time, I would venture to say from my own experience of that branch of +theatrical business with which I have been connected--and in such +matters one can only speak from personal experience--that any woman +yielding to these temptations has only herself to blame, that any +well-brought-up, sensible girl will, and can, avoid them altogether, +and that I should not make these temptations a ground for dissuading +any young woman in whom I might be interested from joining our +calling. To say, as a writer once said, that it was impossible for a +girl to succeed on the stage without impaired morals, is a statement +as untrue as to say that no man can succeed as a lawyer unless he be a +rogue, a doctor unless he be a quack, a parson unless be be a +hypocrite. + +To all who intend to become actors and actresses, my first word of +advice would be--Respect this calling you have chosen to pursue. You +will often in your experience hear it, see it in print, slighted and +contemned. There are many reasons for this. Religious prejudice, +fostered by the traditions of a by no means obsolete Puritanism, is +one; the envy of those who, forgetting the disadvantages, the +difficulties, the uncertainty of the actor's life, see only the glare +of popular adulation, the glitter of the comparatively large salaries +paid to a few of us--such unreasoning envy as this is another; and the +want of sympathy of some writers with the art itself, who, unable to +pray with Goethe and Voltaire, remain to scoff with Jeremy Collier, is +a third. There are causes from without that will always keep alive a +certain measure of hostility towards the player. As long as the +public, in Hazlitt's words, feel more respect for John Kemble in a +plain coat than the Lord Chancellor on the Woolsack, so long will this +public regard for the actor provoke the resentment of those whose +achievements in art appeal less immediately, less strikingly, to their +audience. But if they would only pause to consider, surely they might +lay to their souls the unction that the immediate reward of the actor +in his lifetime is merely nature's compensation to him for the +comparative oblivion of his achievements when he has ceased to be. +Imagine for one moment Shakespeare and Garrick contemplating at the +present moment from the heights the spectacle of their fame. Who +would grudge the actor the few years of fervid admiration he was +privileged to enjoy, some one hundred and fifty years ago, as compared +with the centuries of living glory that have fallen to the great poet? + +Sometimes you may hear your calling sneered at by those who pursue it. +There are few professions that are not similarly girded at by some of +their own members, either from disappointment or some ingrained +discontent. When you hear such detraction, fix your thoughts not on +the paltry accidents of your art, such as the use of cosmetics and +other little infirmities of its practice, things that are obvious +marks for the cheap sneer, but look rather to what that art is capable +of in its highest forms, to what is the essence of the actor's +achievement, what he can do and has done to win the genuine admiration +and respect of those whose admiration and respect have been worth the +having. + + + +ACTING IS A GREAT ART + +You will read and hear, no doubt, in your experience, that acting is +in reality no art at all, that it is mere sedulous copying of nature, +demanding neither thought nor originality. I will only cite in reply +a passage from a letter of the poet Coleridge to the elder Charles +Mathews, which, I venture to think, goes some way to settle the +question. "A great actor," he writes, "comic or tragic, is not to be +a mere copy, a fac-simile, but an imitation of nature; now an +imitation differs from a copy in this, that it of necessity implies +and demands a difference, whereas a copy aims at identity and what a +marble peach on the mantelpiece, that you take up deluded and put down +with a pettish disgust, is compared with a fruit-piece of Vanhuysen's, +even such is a mere copy of nature, with a true histrionic imitation. +A good actor is Pygmalion's statue, a work of exquisite art, animated +and gifted with motion; but still art, still a species of poetry." So +writes Coleridge. Raphael, speaking of painting, expresses the same +thought, equally applicable to the art of acting. "To paint a fair +one," he says, "it is necessary for me to see many fair ones; but +because there is so great a scarcity of lovely women, I am constrained +to make use of one certain ideal, which I have formed to myself in my +own fancy." So the actor who has to portray Hamlet, Othello, +Macbeth--any great dramatic character--has to form an ideal of such a +character in his own fancy, in fact, to employ an exercise of +imagination similar to that of the painter who seeks to depict an +ideal man or woman; the actor certainly will not meet his types of +Hamlet and Othello in the street. + +But, whilst in your hearts you should cherish a firm respect for the +calling, the art you pursue, let that respect be a silent and modest +regard; it will be all the stronger for that. I have known actors and +actresses who were always talking about their art with a big A, their +"art-life," their "life-work," their careers and futures, and so on. +Keep these things to yourselves, for I have observed that eloquence +and hyper-earnestness of this kind not infrequently go with rather +disappointing achievement. Think, act, but don't talk about it. And, +above all, because you are actors and actresses, for that very reason +be sincere and unaffected; avoid rather than court publicity, for you +will have quite enough of it if you get on in your profession; the +successful actor is being constantly tempted to indiscretion. Do not +yield too readily to the blandishments of the photographer, or the +enterprising editor who asks you what are the love scenes you have +most enjoyed playing on the stage, and whether an actor or actress can +be happy though married. Be natural on the stage, and be just as +natural off it; regard the thing you have to do as work that has to be +done to the best of your power; if it be well done, it will bring its +own reward. It may not be an immediate reward, but have faith, keep +your purpose serious, so serious as to be almost a secret; bear in +mind that ordinary people expect you, just because you are actors and +actresses, to be extraordinary, unnatural, peculiar; do your utmost at +all times and seasons to disappoint such expectations. + + + +RELATIONS TO "SOCIETY" + +To the successful actor society, if he desire it, offers a warm and +cordial welcome. Its members do not, it is true, suggest that he +should marry with their daughters, but why should they? An actor has +a very unattractive kind of life to offer to any woman who is not +herself following his profession. What I mean is that the fact of a +man being an actor does not debar him from such gratification as he +may find in the pleasures of society. And I believe that the effect +of such raising of the actor's status as has been witnessed in the +last fifty years has been to elevate the general tone of our calling +and bring into it men and women of education and refinement. + +At the same time, remember that social enjoyments should always be a +secondary consideration to the actor, something of a luxury to be +sparingly indulged in. An actor should never let himself be beguiled +into the belief that society, generally speaking, is seriously +interested in what he does, or that popularity in drawing-rooms +connotes success in the theatre. It does nothing of the kind. Always +remember that you can hope to have but few, very few friends or +admirers of any class who will pay to see you in a failure; you will +be lucky if a certain number do not ask you for free admission to see +you in a success. + + + +THE FINAL SCHOOL IS THE AUDIENCE + +It is to a public far larger, far more real and genuine than this, +that you will one day have to appeal. It is in their presence that +you will finish your education. The final school for the actor is his +audience; they are the necessary complement to the exercise of his +art, and it is by the impression he produces on them that he will +ultimately stand or fall; on their verdict, and on their verdict +alone, will his success or failure as an artist depend. But, if you +have followed carefully, assiduously, the course of instruction now +open to you, when the time has arrived for you to face an audience you +will start with a very considerable handicap in your favour. If you +have learnt to move well and to speak well, to be clear in your +enunciation and graceful in your bearing, you are bound to arrest at +once the attention of any audience, no matter where it may be, before +whom you appear. Obvious and necessary as are these two acquirements +of graceful bearing and correct diction, they are not so generally +diffused as to cease to be remarkable. Consequently, however modest +your beginning on the stage, however short the part you may be called +upon to play, you should find immediately the benefit of your +training. You may have to unlearn a certain amount, or rather to +mould and shape what you have learnt to your new conditions, but if +you have been well grounded in the essential elements of an actor's +education, you will stand with an enormous advantage over such of your +competitors as have waited till they go into a theatre to learn what +can be acquired just as well, better, more thoroughly, outside it. + +It has been my object to deal generally with the actor's calling, a +calling, difficult and hazardous in character, demanding much +patience, self-reliance, determination, and good temper. This last is +not one of its least important demands on your character. Remember +that the actor is not in one sense of the word an independent artist; +it is his misfortune that the practice of his art is absolutely +dependent on the fulfilment of elaborate external conditions. The +painter, the musician, so long as they can find paint and canvas, ink +and paper, can work at their art, alone, independent of external +circumstances. Not so the actor. Before he can act, the theatre, the +play, scenery, company, these requisites, not by any means too easy to +find, must be provided. And then it is in the company of others, his +colleagues, that his work has to be done. Consequently patience, good +temper, fairness, unselfishness are qualities be will do well to +cultivate, and he will lose nothing, rather gain, by the exercise of +them. The selfish actor is not a popular person, and, in my +experience, not as a rule a successful one. "Give and take," in this +little world of the theatre, and you will be no losers by it. + +Learn to bear failure and criticism patiently. They are part of the +actor's lot in life. Critics are rarely animated by any personal +hostility in what they may write about you, though I confess that when +one reads an unfavourable criticism, one is inclined to set it down to +anything but one's own deserving. I heard a great actor once say that +we should never read criticisms of ourselves till a week after they +were written--admirable counsel--but I confess I have not yet reached +that pitch of self-restraint that would enable me to overcome my +curiosity for seven days. It is, however, a state of equanimity to +look forward to. In the meantime, content yourself with the +recollection that ridicule and damning criticism have been the lot at +some time in their lives of the most famous actors and actresses, that +the unfavourable verdict of to-day may be reversed to-morrow. It is +no good resenting failure; turn it to account rather; try to +understand it, and learn something from it. The uses of theatrical +adversity may not be sweet, but rightly understood they may be very +salutary. + +Do not let failure make you despond. Ours is a calling of ups and +downs; it is an advantage of its uncertainty that you never know what +may happen next; the darkest hour may he very near the dawn. This is +where Bohemianism, in the best sense of the term, will serve the +actor. I do not mean by Bohemianism chronic intemperance and +insolvency. I mean the gay spirit of daring and enterprise that +greets failure as graciously as success; the love of your own calling +and your comrades in that calling, a love that, no matter what your +measure of success, will ever remain constant and enduring; the +recognition of the fact that as an actor you but consult your own +dignity in placing your own calling as a thing apart, in leading such +a life as the necessities of that calling may demand; and choosing +your friends among those who regard you for yourself, not those to +whom an actor is a social puppet, to be taken up and dropped as he +happens for the moment to be more or less prominent in the public eye. +If this kind of Bohemianism has some root in your character, you will +find the changes and chances of your calling the easier to endure. + + + +FAILURE AND SUCCESS + +Do not despond in failure, neither be over-exalted by success. +Remember one success is as nothing in the history of an actor's +career; he has to make many before he can lay claim to any measure of +fame; and over-confidence, an inability to estimate rightly the value +of a passing triumph, has before now harmed incalculably many an actor +or actress. You will only cease to learn your business when you quit +it; look on success as but another lesson learnt to be turned to +account in learning the next. The art of the actor is no less +difficult, no less long in comparison with life, than any other art. +In the intoxicating hour of success let this chastening thought have +some place in your recollection. + +When you begin work as actors or actresses, play whenever you can and +whatever you can. Remember that the great thing for the actor is to +be seen as often as possible, to be before the public as much as he +can, no matter how modest the part, how insignificant the production. +It is only when an actor has reached a position very secure in the +public esteem that he can afford, or that it may be his duty, to be +careful as to what he undertakes. But before such a time is reached +his one supreme object must be to get himself known to the public, to +let them see his work under all conditions, until they find something +to identify as peculiarly his own; he should think nothing too small +or unimportant to do, too tiresome or laborious to undergo. Work well +and conscientiously done must attract attention; there is a great deal +of lolling and idleness among the many thoughtless and indifferent +persons who drift on to the stage as the last refuge of the negligent +or incompetent. + +The stage will always attract a certain number of worthless recruits +because it is so easy to get into the theatre somehow or other; there +is no examination to be passed, no qualification to be proved before a +person is entitled to call himself an actor. And then the life of an +actor is unfortunately, in these days of long runs, one that lends +itself to a good deal of idleness and waste of time, unless a man or +woman be very determined to employ their spare time profitably. For +this reason, I should advise any actor, or actress, to cultivate some +rational hobby or interest by the side of their work; for until the +time comes for an actor to assume the cares and labours of management, +he must have a great deal of time on his hands that can be better +employed than in hanging about clubs or lolling in drawing-rooms. At +any rate, the actor or actress who thinks no work too small to do, and +to do to the utmost of his or her ability, who neglects no opportunity +that may be turned to account--and every line he or she speaks is an +opportunity--must outstrip those young persons who, though they may be +pleased to call themselves actors and actresses, never learn to regard +the theatre as anything but a kind of enlarged back-drawing-room, in +which they are invited to amuse themselves at an altogether inadequate +salary. + +In regard to salary, when you start in your profession, do not make +salary your first consideration; do not suffer a few shillings or a +pound or two to stand between you and work. This is a consideration +you may keep well in mind, even when you have achieved some measure of +success. Apart from the natural tendency of the individual to place a +higher value on his services than that attached to them by others, it +is often well to take something less than you ask, if the work offered +you is useful. Remember that the public judge you by your work, they +know nothing and care little about what is being paid you for doing +it. To some people their own affairs are of such supreme importance +that they cannot believe that their personal concerns are unknown to, +and unregarded by, the outside world. The intensely personal, +individual character of the actor's work is bound to induce a certain +temptation to an exaggerated egotism. We are all egotists, and it is +right that we should be, up to a point. But I would urge the young +actor or actress to be always on the watch against developing, +especially in success, an extreme egotism which induces a selfishness +of outlook, an egregious vanity that in the long run weakens the +character, induces disappointment and discontent, and bores to +extinction other persons. + +I would not for one moment advise an actor never to talk "shop"; it is +a great mistake to think that men and women should never talk in +public or private about the thing to which they devote their lives; +people, as a rule, are most interesting on the subject of their own +particular business in life. Talk about the affairs of the theatre +within reason, and with due regard to the amenities of polite +conversation, but do not confuse the affairs of the theatre, broadly +speaking, with your own. The one is lasting, general; the other +particular and fleeting. "_Il n'y a pas de l'homme necessaire_" [No +man is indispensable]. Many persons would be strangely surprised if +they could see how rapidly their place is filled after they are gone, +no matter how considerable their achievement. It may not be filled in +the same way, as well, as fittingly, but it will be filled, and +humanity will content itself very fairly well with the substitute. +This is especially true of the work of the actor. He can but live as +a memory, and memory is proverbially short. + + + +ELLEN TERRY + +[In the autumn of 1883, during Henry Irving's fist engagement in New +York, Ellen Terry played a round of characters as his leading lady. +In the _Tribune_, Mr. William Winter said: "Miss Ellen Terry's Portia +is delicious. Her voice is perfect music. Her clear, bell-like +elocution is more than a refreshment, it is a luxury. Her simple +manner, always large and adequate, is a great beauty of the art which +it so deftly conceals. Her embodiment of a woman's loveliness, such +as, in Portia, should he at once stately and fascinating and inspire +at once respect and passion, was felicitous beyond the reach of +descriptive phrases." Then, on her appearance in "Much Ado About +Nothing:" "She permeates the raillery of Beatrice with an +indescribable charm of mischievous sweetness. The silver arrows of +her pungent wit have no barb, for evidently she does not mean that +they shall really wound. Her appearance and carriage are beautiful, +and her tones melt into music. There is no hint of the virago here, +and even the tone of sarcasm is superficial. It is archness playing +over kindness that is presented here." On her Ophelia, Mr. Winter +remarks: "Ophelia is an image, or personification of innocent, +delirious, feminine youth and beauty, and she passes before us in the +two stages of sanity and delirium. The embodiment is fully within +Miss Terry's reach, and is one of the few unmistakably perfect +creations with which dramatic art has illumined literature and adorned +the stage." + +By permission the following pages have been taken from "Ellen Terry's +Memoirs," copyright by the S. S. McClure Company, 1908. All rights +reserved. ED.) + + + +HAMLET--IRVING'S GREATEST PART + +When I went with Coghlan to see Henry Irving's Philip I was no +stranger to his acting. I had been present with Tom Taylor, then +dramatic critic of the _Times_, at the famous first night at the +Lyceum, in 1874, when Henry put his fortune--counted, not in gold, but +in years of scorned delights and laborious days, years of constant +study and reflection, of Spartan self-denial and deep melancholy--when +he put it all to the touch "to win or lose it all." This is no +exaggeration. Hamlet was by far the greatest part that he had ever +played or ever was to play. If he had failed--but why pursue it? He +could not fail. + +Yet, the success on the first night at the Lyceum, in 1874, was not of +that electrical, almost hysterical splendour which has greeted the +momentous achievements of some actors. The first two acts were +received with indifference. The people could not see how packed they +were with superb acting--perhaps because the new Hamlet was so simple, +so quiet, so free from the exhibition of actors' artifices which used +to bring down the house in "Louis XI" and in "Richelieu," but which +were really the easy things in acting, and in "Richelieu" (in my +opinion) not especially well done. In "Hamlet" Henry Irving did not +go to the audience; he made them come to him. Slowly, but surely, +attention gave place to admiration, admiration to enthusiasm, +enthusiasm to triumphant acclaim. + +I have seen many Hamlets,--Fechter, Charles Kean, Rossi, Friedrich +Haase, Forbes-Robertson, and my own son, Gordon Craig, among +them,--but they were not in the same hemisphere! I refuse to go and +see Hamlets now. I want to keep Henry Irving's fresh and clear in my +memory until I die. + + + +THE BIRMINGHAM NIGHT + +When he engaged me to play Ophelia in 1878, he asked me to go down to +Birmingham to see the play, and that night I saw what I shall always +consider the perfection of acting. It had been wonderful in 1874; in +1878 it was far more wonderful. It has been said that when he had the +"advantage" of my Ophelia his Hamlet "improved." I don't think so; he +was always quite independent of the people with whom he acted. + +The Birmingham night he knew I was there. He played--I say it without +vanity--for me. We players are not above that weakness, if it be a +weakness. If ever anything inspires us to do our best, it is the +presence in the audience of some fellow-artist who must, in the nature +of things, know more completely than any one what we intend, what we +do, what we feel. The response from such a member of the audience +flies across the footlights to us like a flame. I felt it once when I +played Olivia before Eleonora Duse. I felt that she felt it once when +she played Marguerite Gautier for me. + +When I read "Hamlet" now, everything that Henry did in it seems to me +more absolutely right even than I thought at the time. I would give +much to be able to record it all in detail, but--it may be my +fault--writing is not the medium in which this can be done. Sometimes +I have thought of giving readings of "Hamlet," for I can remember +every tone of Henry's voice, every emphasis, every shade of meaning +that he saw in the lines and made manifest to the discerning. Yes, I +think I could give some pale idea of what his Hamlet was if I read the +play! + +"Words, words, words!" What is it to say, for instance, that the +cardinal qualities of his Prince of Denmark were strength, delicacy, +distinction? There was never a touch of commonness. Whatever he did +or said, blood and breeding pervaded it. + + + +THE ENTRANCE SCENE IN "HAMLET" + +His "make-up" was very pale, and this made his face beautiful when one +was close to him, but at a distance it gave him a haggard look. Some +said he looked twice his age. + +He kept three things going at the same time--the antic madness, the +sanity, the sense of the theatre. The last was to all that he +imagined and thought what, in the New Testament, charity is said to be +to all other virtues. + +He was never cross or moody--only melancholy. His melancholy was as +simple as it was profound. It was touching, too, rather than defiant. +You never thought that he was wantonly sad and enjoying his own +misery. + +He neglected no _coup de theatre_ [theatrical artifice] to assist him, +but who notices the servants when the host is present? + +For instance, his first entrance as Hamlet was what we call, in +theatrical parlance, very much "worked up." He was always a +tremendous believer in processions, and rightly. It is through such +means that royalty keeps its hold on the feeling of the public and +makes its mark as a figure and a symbol. Henry Irving understood +this. Therefore, to music so apt that it was not remarkable in +itself, but a contribution to the general excited anticipation, the +court of Denmark came on to the stage. I understood later on, at the +Lyceum, what days of patient work had gone to the making of that +procession. + +At its tail, when the excitement was at fever-heat, came the solitary +figure of Hamlet, looking extraordinarily tall and thin, The lights +were turned down--another stage trick--to help the effect that the +figure was spirit rather than man. + +He was weary; his cloak trailed on the ground. He did not wear the +miniature of his father obtrusively round his neck! His attitude was +one which I have seen in a common little illustration to the +"Reciter," compiled by Dr. Pinch, Henry Irving's old schoolmaster. +Yet, how right to have taken it, to have been indifferent to its +humble origin! Nothing could have been better when translated into +life by Irving's genius. + +The hair looked blue-black, like the plumage of a crow; the eyes +burning--two fires veiled, as yet, by melancholy. But the appearance +of the man was not single, straight, or obvious, as it is when I +describe it, any more than his passions throughout the play were. I +only remember one moment when his intensity concentrated itself in a +straightforward unmistakable emotion, without side-current or back +water. It was when he said: + +The play's the thing +Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King + +and, as the curtain came down, was seen to be writing madly on his +tablets against one of the pillars. + +"0 God, that I were a writer!" I paraphrase Beatrice with all my +heart. Surely a writer could not string words together about Henry +Irving's Hamlet and say nothing, nothing. + +"We must start this play a living thing," he used to say at +rehearsals, and he worked until the skin grew tight over his face, +until he became livid with fatigue, yet still beautiful, to get the +opening lines said with individuality, suggestiveness, speed, and +power: + +_Bernardo_: Who's there? +_Francisco_: Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself. +_Bernardo_: Long live the king! +_Francisco_: Bernardo? +_Bernardo_: He. +_Francisco_: You come most carefully upon your hour. +_Bernardo_: 'Tis now struck twelve: get thee to bed, Francisco. +_Francisco_: For this relief much thanks: 't is bitter cold. + +And all that he tried to make others do with these lines he himself +did with every line of his own part. Every word lived. + +Some said: "Oh, Irving only makes 'Hamlet' a love poem!" They said +that, I suppose, because in the nunnery scene with Ophelia he was the +lover above the prince and the poet. With what passionate longing his +hands hovered over Ophelia at her words, "Rich gifts wax poor when +givers prove unkind!" + + + +THE SCENE WITH THE PLAYERS + +His advice to the players was not advice. He did not speak it as an +actor. Nearly all Hamlets in that scene give away the fact that they +are actors and not dilettanti of royal blood. Henry defined the way +he would have the players speak as an order, an instruction of the +merit of which he was regally sure. There was no patronising flavour +in his acting here, not a touch of "I'11 teach you how to do it." He +was swift, swift and simple--pausing for the right word now and again, +as in the phrase "to hold as 't were the mirror up to nature." His +slight pause and eloquent gesture, as the all embracing word "nature" +came in answer to his call, were exactly repeated unconsciously, years +later, by the Queen of Roumania (Carmen Sylva). She was telling us +the story of a play that she had written. The words rushed out +swiftly, but occasionally she would wait for the one that expressed +her meaning most comprehensively and exactly, and, as she got it, up +went her hand in triumph over her head--"Like yours in Hamlet," I told +Henry at the time. + + + +IRVING ENGAGES ME ON TRUST + +The first letter that I ever received from Henry Irving was written on +the 20th of July, 1878, from 15A Grafton Street, the house in which he +lived during the entire period of his Lyceum management. + +DEAR MISS TERRY: I look forward to the pleasure of calling upon you +on Tuesday next at two o'clock, + +With every good wish, believe me, Yours sincerely, + +HENRY IRVING. + +The call was in reference to my engagement as Ophelia. Strangely +characteristic I see it now to have been of Henry that he was content +to take my powers as an actress more or less on trust. A mutual +friend, Lady Pollock, had told him that I was the very person for him; +that "All London" (a vile but convenient phrase) was talking of my +Olivia; that I had acted well in Shakespeare with the Bancrofts; that +I should bring to the Lyceum Theatre what players call "a personal +following." Henry chose his friends as carefully as he chose his +company and his staff. He believed in Lady Pollock implicitly, and he +did not--it is possible that he could not--come and see my Olivia for +himself. + +I was living in Longridge Road when Henry Irving came to see me. Not +a word of our conversation about the engagement can I remember. I did +notice, however, the great change that had taken place in the man +since I had last met him in 1867. Then he was really very +ordinary-looking--with a moustache, an unwrinkled face, and a sloping +forehead. The only wonderful thing about him was his melancholy. +When I was playing the piano, once, in the green room at the Queen's +Theatre, he came in and listened. I remember being made aware of his +presence by his sigh--the deepest, profoundest, sincerest sigh I ever +heard from any human being. He asked me if I would not play the piece +again. The incident impressed itself on my mind, inseparably +associated with a picture of him as he looked at thirty--a picture by +no means pleasing. He looked conceited, and almost savagely proud of +the isolation in which he lived. There was a touch of exaggeration in +his appearance, a dash of Werther, with a few flourishes of Jingle! +Nervously sensitive to ridicule, self-conscious, suffering deeply from +his inability to express himself through his art, Henry Irving in 1867 +was a very different person from the Henry Irving who called on me at +Longridge Road in 1878. In ten years he had found himself, and so +lost himself--lost, I mean, much of that stiff, ugly +self-consciousness which had encased him as the shell encases the +lobster. His forehead had become more massive, and the very outline +of his features had altered. He was a man of the world, whose +strenuous fighting now was to be done as a general--not, as hitherto, +in the ranks. His manner was very quiet and gentle. "In quietness +and confidence shall be your strength," says the psalmist. That was +always like Henry Irving. + +And here, perhaps, is the place to say that I, of all people, can +perhaps appreciate Henry Irving least justly, although I was his +associate on the stage for a quarter of a century, and was on terms of +the closest friendship with him for almost as long a time. He had +precisely the qualities that I never find likable. + + + +IRVING'S EGOTISM + +He was an egotist, an egotist of the great type, never "a mean +egotist," as he was once slanderously described; and all his faults +sprang from egotism, which is, after all, only another name for +greatness. So much absorbed was he in his own achievement that he was +unable or unwilling to appreciate the achievements of others. I never +heard him speak in high terms of the great foreign actors and +actresses who from time to time visited England. It would be easy to +attribute this to jealousy, but the easy explanation is not the true +one. He simply would not give himself up to appreciation. Perhaps +appreciation is a wasting though a generous quality of the mind and +heart, and best left to lookers-on who have plenty of time to develop +it. + +I was with him when he saw Sarah Bernhardt act for the first time. +The play was "Ruy Blas," and it was one of Sarah's bad days. She was +walking through the part listlessly, and I was angry that there should +be any ground for Henry's indifference. The same thing happened years +later when I took him to see Eleonora Duse. The play was +"Locandiera," to which she was eminently unsuited, I think. He was +surprised at my enthusiasm. There was an element of justice in his +attitude toward the performance which infuriated me, but I doubt if he +would have shown more enthusiasm if he had seen her at her best. + +As the years went on he grew very much attached to Sarah Bernhardt, +and admired her as a colleague whose managerial work in the theatre +was as dignified as his own; but of her superb powers as an actress I +don't believe he ever had a glimmering notion! + +Perhaps it is not true, but, as I believe it to be true, I may as well +state it: It was never any pleasure to him to see the acting of other +actors and actresses. Salvini's Othello I know he thought +magnificent, but he would not speak of it. + + + +IRVING'S SIMPLICITY OF CHARACTER + +How dangerous it is to write things that may not be understood! What +I have written I have written merely to indicate the qualities in +Henry Irving's nature which were unintelligible to me, perhaps because +I have always been more woman than artist. He always put the theatre +first. He lived in it, he died in it. He had none of my bourgeois +qualities--the love of being in love, the love of a home, the dislike +of solitude. I have always thought it hard to find my inferiors. He +was sure of his high place. In some ways he was far simpler than I. +He would talk, for instance, in such an ignorant way to painters and +musicians that I blushed for him. But was not my blush far more +unworthy than his freedom from all pretentiousness in matters of art? + +He never pretended. One of his biographers had said that he posed as +being a French scholar. Such a thing, and all things like it, were +impossible to his nature. If it were necessary, in one of his plays, +to say a few French words, he took infinite pains to learn them, and +said them beautifully. + +Henry once told me that in the early part of his career, before I knew +him, he had been hooted because of his thin legs. The first service I +did him was to tell him that they were beautiful, and to make him give +up padding them. + +"What do you want with fat, podgy, prize-fighter legs!" I +expostulated. + +I brought help, too, in pictorial matters. Henry Irving had had +little training in such matters; I had had a great deal. Judgment +about colours, clothes, and lighting must be trained. I had learned +from Mr. Watts, from Mr. Goodwin, and from other artists, until a +sense of decorative effect had become second nature to me. + +Praise to some people at certain stages of their career is more +developing than blame. I admired the very things in Henry for which +other people criticised him. I hope this helped him a little. + + + +RICHARD MANSFIELD + +[Richard Mansfield, one of the great actors of his time, was born in +Heligoland, then a British Possession, in 1857. He prepared himself +for the East Indian civil service, then studied art, and opened a +studio in Boston. He was soon attracted to the stage, and began +playing minor parts in comic opera, displaying marked ability from the +first. His versatility took him all the way from the role of Koko in +the "Mikado," to Beau Brummel and Richard III. His success soon +enabled him to assemble a company of his own; as its manager he +produced with memorable effect "Cyrano de Bergerac," "Henry V.," and +"Julius Caesar." He died in 1907, a few weeks after a striking +creation of "Peer Gynt." A biography of Mr. Mansfield by Mr. Paul +Wilstach is published by C. Scribner's Sons, New York. + +Mr. Mansfield's article on "Man and the Actor," which appeared in the +_Atlantic Monthly_, May, 1906, copyright by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., +Boston, is here given almost in full by the kind permission of the +publishers and of Mrs. Richard Mansfield. It is in effect an +autobiographical revelation of the artist and the man.--ED.] + + + +MAN AND THE ACTOR + + I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano, + A stage where every man must play a part. + +Shakespeare does not say "may" play a part, or "can" play a part, but +he says _must_ play a part; and he has expressed the conviction of +every intelligent student of humanity then and thereafter, now and +hereafter. The stage cannot be held in contempt by mankind; because +all mankind is acting, and every human being is playing a part. The +better a man plays his part, the better he succeeds. The more a man +knows of the art of acting, the greater the man; for, from the king on +his throne to the beggar in the street, every man is acting. There is +no greater comedian or tragedian in the world than a great king. The +knowledge of the art of acting is indispensable to a knowledge of +mankind, and when you are able to pierce the disguise in which every +man arrays himself, or to read the character which every man assumes, +you achieve an intimate knowledge of your fellow men, and you are able +to cope with the man, either as he is, or as he pretends to be. It +was necessary for Shakespeare to be an actor in order to know men. +Without his knowledge of the stage, Shakespeare could never have been +the reader of men that he was. And yet we are asked, "Is the stage +worth while?" + + + +NAPOLEON AS ACTOR + +Napoleon and Alexander were both great actors--Napoleon perhaps the +greatest actor the world has ever seen. Whether on the bridge of +Lodi, or in his camp at Tilsit; whether addressing his soldiers in the +plains of Egypt; whether throwing open his old gray coat and saying, +"Children, will you fire on your general?" whether bidding farewell to +them at Fontainebleau; whether standing on the deck of the +_Bellerophon_, or on the rocks of St. Helena--he was always an actor. +Napoleon had studied the art of acting, and he knew its value. If the +power of the eye, the power of the voice, the power of that +all-commanding gesture of the hand, failed him when he faced the +regiment of veterans on his return from Elba, he was lost. But he had +proved and compelled his audience too often for his art to fail him +then. The leveled guns fell. The audience was his. Another crown +had fallen! By what? A trick of the stage! Was he willing to die +then? to be shot by his old guard? Not he! Did he doubt for one +moment his ability as an actor. Not he! If he had, he would have +been lost. And that power to control, that power to command, once it +is possessed by a man, means that that man can play his part anywhere, +and under all circumstances and conditions. Unconsciously or +consciously, every great man, every man who has played a great part, +has been an actor. Each man, every man, who has made his mark has +chosen his character, the character best adapted to himself, and has +played it, and clung to it, and made his impress with it. I have but +to conjure up the figure of Daniel Webster, who never lost an +opportunity to act; or General Grant, who chose for his model William +of Orange, surnamed the Silent. You will find every one of your most +admired heroes choosing early in life some admired hero of his own to +copy. Who can doubt that Napoleon had selected Julius Caesar? For, +once he had founded an empire, everything about him was modelled after +the Caesarean regime. Look at his coronation robes, the women's +gowns--the very furniture! Actors, painters, musicians, politicians, +society men and women, and kings and queens, all play their parts, and +all build themselves after some favourite model. In this woman of +society you trace the influence of the Princess Metternich. In +another we see her admiration (and a very proper one) for Her +Britannic Majesty. In another we behold George Eliot, or Queen Louise +of Prussia, or the influence of some modern society leader. But no +matter who it is, from the lowest to the highest, the actor is +dominant in the human being, and this trait exhibits itself early in +the youngest child. Everywhere you see stage-craft in one form or +another. If men loved not costumes and scenery, would the king be +escorted by the lifeguards, arrayed in shining helmets and +breastplates, which we know are perfectly useless in these days when a +bullet will go through fifty of them with ease? The first thing a man +thinks of when he has to face any ordeal, be it a coronation or an +execution, is, how am I going to look? how am I to behave? what manner +shall I assume? shall I appear calm and dignified, or happy and +pleased? shall I wear a portentous frown or a beaming smile? how shall +I walk? shall I take short steps or long ones? shall I stoop as if +bowed with care, or walk erect with courage and pride? shall I gaze +fearlessly on all about me, or shall I drop my eyes modestly to the +ground? If man were not always acting, he would not think of these +things at all, he would not bother his head about them, but would walk +to his coronation or his execution according to his nature. In the +last event this would have to be, in some cases, on all fours. + +I stretch my eyes over the wide world, and the people in it, and I can +see no one who is not playing a part; therefore respect the art of +which you are all devotees, and, if you must act, learn to play your +parts well. Study the acting of others, so that you may discover what +part is being played by others. + + + +THE GIFT FOR ACTING IS RARE + +It is, therefore, not amazing that everybody is interested in the art +of acting, and it is not amazing that every one thinks he can act. +You have only to suggest private theatricals, when a house party is +assembled at some country house, to verify the truth of the statement. +Immediately commences a lively rivalry as to who shall play this part +or that. Each one considers herself or himself best suited, and I +have known private theatricals to lead to lifelong enmities. + +It is surprising to discover how very differently people who have +played parts all their lives deport themselves before the footlights. +I was acquainted with a lady in London who had been the wife of a peer +of the realm, who had been ambassadress at foreign courts, who at one +time had been a reigning beauty, and who came to me, longing for a new +experience, and implored me to give her an opportunity to appear upon +the stage. In a weak moment I consented, and as I was producing a +play, I cast her for a part which I thought she would admirably +suit-that of a society woman. What that woman did and did not do on +the stage passes all belief. She became entangled in her train, she +could neither sit down nor stand up, she shouted, she could not be +persuaded to remain at a respectful distance, but insisted upon +shrieking into the actor's ears, and she committed all the gaucheries +you would expect from an untrained country wench. But because +everybody is acting in private life, every one thinks he can act upon +the stage, and there is no profession that has so many critics. Every +individual in the audience is a critic, and knows all about the art of +acting. But acting is a gift. It cannot be taught. You can teach +people how to act acting--but you can't teach them to act. Acting is +as much an inspiration as the making of great poetry and great +pictures. What is commonly called acting is acting acting. This is +what is generally accepted as acting. A man speaks lines, moves his +arms, wags his head, and does various other things; he may even shout +and rant; some pull down their cuffs and inspect their finger nails; +they work hard and perspire, and their skin acts. This is all easily +comprehended by the masses, and passes for acting, and is applauded, +but the man who is actually the embodiment of the character he is +creating will often be misunderstood, be disliked, and fail to +attract. Mediocrity rouses no opposition, but strong individualities +and forcible opinions make enemies. It is here that danger lies. +Many an actor has set out with an ideal, but, failing to gain general +favour, has abandoned it for the easier method of winning popular +acclaim. Inspiration only comes to those who permit themselves to be +inspired. It is a form of hypnotism. Allow yourself to be convinced +by the character you are portraying that you are the character. If +you are to play Napoleon, and you are sincere and determined to be +Napoleon, Napoleon will not permit you to be any one but Napoleon, or +Richard III. Richard III., or Nero Nero, and so on. He would be a +poor, miserable pretence of an actor who in the representation of any +historical personage were otherwise than firmly convinced, after +getting into the man's skin (which means the exhaustive study of all +that was ever known about him), that he is living that very man for a +few brief hours. And so it is, in another form, with the creation or +realisation of the author's, the poet's, fancy. In this latter case +the actor, the poet actor, sees and creates in the air before him the +being he delineates; he makes him, he builds him during the day, in +the long hours of the night; the character gradually takes being; he +is the actor's genius; the slave of the ring, who comes when he calls +him, stands beside him, and envelops him in his ghostly arms; the +actor's personality disappears; he is the character. You, you, and +you, and all of you, have the right to object to the actor's creation; +you may say this is not your conception of Hamlet or Macbeth or Iago +or Richard or Nero or Shylock--but respect his. And who can tell +whether he is right or you are right? He has created them with much +loving care; therefore don't sneer at them--don't jeer at them--it +hurts! If you have reared a rosebush in your garden, and seen it bud +and bloom, are you pleased to have some ruthless vandal tear the +flowers from their stem and trample them in the mud? And it is not +always our most beautiful children we love the best. The parent's +heart will surely warm toward its feeblest child. + + + +THE CREATION OF A CHARACTER + +It is very evident that any man, be he an actor or no actor, can, with +money and with good taste, make what is technically termed a +production. There is, as an absolute matter of fact, no particular +credit to be attached to the making of a production. The real work of +the stage, of the actor, does not lie there. It is easy for us to +busy ourselves, to pass pleasantly our time, designing lovely scenes, +charming costumes, and all the paraphernalia and pomp of mimic +grandeur, whether of landscape or of architecture, the panoply of war, +or the luxury of royal courts. That is fun--pleasure and amusement. +No; the real work of the stage lies in the creation of a character. A +great character will live forever, when paint and canvas and silks and +satins and gold foil and tinsel shall have gone the way of all rags. + +But the long, lone hours with our heads in our hands, the toil, the +patient study, the rough carving of the outlines, the dainty, delicate +finishing touches, the growing into the soul of the being we +delineate, the picture of his outward semblance, his voice, his gait, +his speech, all amount to a labour of such stress and strain, of such +loving anxiety and care, that they can be compared in my mind only to +a mother's pains. And when the child is born it must grow in a few +hours to completion, and be exhibited and coldly criticised. How +often, how often, have those long months of infinite toil been in +vain! How often has the actor led the child of his imagination to the +footlights, only to realise that he has brought into the world a +weakling or a deformity which may not live! And how often he has sat +through the long night brooding over the corpse of this dear figment +of his fancy! It has lately become customary with many actor-managers +to avoid these pangs of childbirth. They have determinedly declined +the responsibility they owe to the poet and the public, and have +instead dazzled the eye with a succession of such splendid pictures +that the beholder forgets in a surfeit of the sight the feast that +should feed the soul. This is what I am pleased to term talk versus +acting. The representative actors in London are much inclined in this +direction. + + + +COPY LIFE + +The student may well ask, "What are we to copy, and whom are we to +copy?" Don't copy any one; don't copy any individual actor, or his +methods. The methods of one actor--the means by which he +arrives--cannot always be successfully employed by another. The +methods and personality of one actor are no more becoming or suitable +or adapted to another than certain gowns worn by women of fashion +simply because these gowns are the fashion. In the art of acting, +like the art of painting, we must study life--copy life! You will +have before you the work of great masters, and you will learn very +much from them--quite as much what to avoid as what to follow. No +painting is perfect, and no acting is perfect. No actor ever played a +part to absolute perfection. It is just as impossible for an actor to +simulate nature completely upon the stage as it is impossible for the +painter to portray on canvas the waves of the ocean, the raging storm +clouds, or the horrors of conflagration. + +The nearer the artist gets to nature, the greater he is. We may +admire Rubens and Rembrandt and Vandyke and Gainsborough and Turner, +but who will dare to say that any one of their pictures is faultless? +We shall learn much from them all, but quite as much what to avoid as +what to emulate. But when you discover their faults, do not forget +their virtues. Look, and realise what it means to be able to do so +much, And the actor's art is even more difficult! For its execution +must be immediate and spontaneous. The word is delivered, the action +is done, and the picture is painted! Can I pause and say, "Ladies and +gentlemen, that is not the way I wanted to do this, or to say that; if +you will allow me to try again, I think I can improve upon it?" + + + +SELF-CRITICISM + +The most severe critic can never tell me more, or scold me more than I +scold myself. I have never left the stage satisfied with myself. And +I am convinced that every artist feels as I do about his work. It is +the undoubted duty of the critic to criticise, and that means to blame +as well as to praise; and it must be confessed that, taking all things +into consideration, the critics of this country are actuated by +honesty of purpose and kindliness of spirit, and very often their work +is, in addition, of marked literary value. Occasionally we will still +meet the man who is anxious to impress his fellow citizens with the +fact that he has been abroad, and tinctures all his views of plays and +actors with references to Herr Dinkelspiegel or Frau Mitterwoorzer; or +who, having spent a few hours in Paris, is forced to drag in by the +hair Monsieur Popin or Mademoiselle Fifine. But as a matter of fact, +is not the interpretation of tragedy and comedy by the American stage +superior to the German and French?--for the whole endeavour in this +country has been toward a closer adherence to nature. In France and +in Germany the ancient method of declamation still prevails, and the +great speeches of Goethe and Schiller and Racine and Corneille are to +all intents and purposes intoned. No doubt this sounds very fine in +German and French, but how would you like it now in English? + +The old-time actor had peculiar and primitive views as to elocution +and its uses. I remember a certain old friend of mine, who, when he +recited the opening speech in "Richard III.," and arrived at the line +"In the deep bosom of the ocean buried," suggested the deep bosom of +the ocean by sending his voice down into his boots. Yet these were +fine actors, to whom certain young gentlemen, who never saw them, +constantly refer. The methods of the stage have completely changed, +and with them the tastes of the people. The probability is that some +of the old actors of only a few years ago would excite much merriment +in their delineation of tragedy. A very great tragedian of a past +generation was wont, in the tent scene in "Richard III.," to hold a +piece of soap in his mouth, so that, after the appearance of the +ghosts, the lather and froth might dribble down his chin! and he +employed, moreover, a trick sword, which rattled hideously; and, what +with his foam-flecked face, his rolling eyes, his inarticulate groans, +and his rattling blade, the small boy in the gallery was scared into a +frenzy of vociferous delight! + +Yet, whilst we have discarded these somewhat crude methods, we have +perhaps allowed ourselves to wander too far in the other direction, +and the critics are quite justified in demanding in many cases greater +virility and force. The simulation of suppressed power is very useful +and very advisable, but when the fire-bell rings the horses have got +to come out, and rattle and race down the street, and rouse the town! + + + +DISCIPLINE IMPERATIVE + +Whilst we are on the subject of these creations of the poets and the +actors, do you understand how important is discipline on the stage? +How can an actor be away from this earth, moving before you in the +spirit he has conjured up, only to be dragged back to himself and his +actual surroundings of canvas and paint and tinsel and limelights by +some disturbing influence in the audience or on the stage? If you +want the best, if you love the art, foster it. It is worthy of your +gentlest care and your kindest, tenderest thought. Your silence is +often more indicative of appreciation than your applause. The actor +does not need your applause in order to know when you are in sympathy +with him. + +He feels very quickly whether you are antagonistic or friendly. He +cares very little for the money, but a great deal for your affection +and esteem. Discipline on the stage has almost entirely disappeared, +and year after year the exercise of our art becomes more difficult. I +am sorry to say some newspapers are, unwittingly perhaps, largely +responsible for this. When an editor discharges a member of his force +for any good and sufficient reason--and surely a man must be permitted +to manage and control his own business--no paper will publish a +two-column article, with appropriate cuts, detailing the wrongs of the +discharged journalist, and the hideous crime of the editor! Even an +editor--and an editor is supposed to be able to stand almost +anything--would become weary after a while; discipline would cease, +and your newspapers would be ill-served. Booth, Jefferson, and other +actors soon made up their minds that the easiest road was the best for +them. Mr. Booth left the stage management entirely to Mr. Lawrence +Barrett and others, and Mr. Jefferson praised everybody and every +thing. But this is not good for the stage. My career on the stage is +nearly over, and until, shortly, I bid it farewell, I shall continue +to do my best; but we are all doing it under ever-growing +difficulties. Actors on the stage are scarce, actors off the stage, +as I have demonstrated, I hope, are plentiful. Life insurance +presidents--worthy presidents, directors, and trustees--have been so +busy acting their several parts in the past, and are in the present so +busy trying to unact them, men are so occupied from their childhood +with the mighty dollar, the race for wealth is so strenuous and +all-entrancing, that imagination is dying out; and imagination is +necessary to make a poet or an actor; the art of acting is the +crystallisation of all arts. It is a diamond in the facets of which +is mirrored every art. It is, therefore, the most difficult of all +arts. The education of a king is barely sufficient for the education +of the comprehending and comprehensive actor. If he is to satisfy +every one, he should possess the commanding power of a Caesar, the +wisdom of Solomon, the eloquence of Demosthenes, the patience of Job, +the face and form of Antinous, and the strength and endurance of +Hercules. + + + +DRAMATIC VICISSITUDES + +The stage is not likely to die of neglect anywhere. But at this +moment it cannot be denied that the ship of the stage is drifting +somewhat hither and thither, Every breath of air and every current of +public opinion impels it first in one direction and then in another, +At one moment we may be said to be in the doldrums of the English +society drama, or we are sluggishly rolling along in a heavy ground +swell, propelled by a passing cat's paw of revivals of old melodramas. +Again we catch a very faint northerly breeze from Ibsen, or a +southeaster from Maeterlinck and Hauptmann. Sometimes we set our +sails to woo that ever-clearing breeze of Shakespeare, only to be +forced out of our course by a sputter of rain, an Irish mist, and half +a squall from George Bernard Shaw; but the greater part of the time +the ship of the stage is careering wildly under bare poles, with a man +lashed to the helm (and let us hope that, like Ulysses, he has cotton +wool in his ears), before a hurricane of comic opera. We need a +recognised stage and a recognised school. America has become too +great, and its influence abroad too large, for us to afford to have +recourse to that ancient and easy method of criticism which decries +the American and extols the foreign. That is one of those last +remnants of colonialism and provincialism which must depart forever. + + + +A NATIONAL THEATRE + +What could not be done for the people of this land, were we to have a +great and recognised theatre! Consider our speech, and our manner of +speech! Consider our voices, and the production of our voices! +Consider the pronunciation of words, and the curious use of vowels! +Let us say we have an established theatre, to which you come not only +for your pleasure, but for your education. Of what immense advantage +this would be if behind its presiding officer there stood a board of +literary directors, composed of such men as William Winter, Howells, +Edward Everett Hale, and Aldrich, and others equally fine, and the +presidents of the great universities. These men might well decide how +the American language should be spoken in the great American theatre, +and we should then have an authority in this country at last for the +pronunciation of certain words. It would finally be decided whether +to say fancy or fahncy--dance or dahnce--advertisement or +advertysement, and so with many other words; whether to call the +object of our admiration "real elegant"--whether we should say "I +admire" to do this or that, and whether we should say "I guess" +instead of "I think." And the voice! The education of the American +speaking voice is, I am sure all will agree, of immense importance. +It is difficult to love, or to continue to endure, a woman who shrieks +at you; a high-pitched, nasal, stringy voice is not calculated to +charm. This established theatre of which we dream should teach men +and women how to talk; and how splendid it would be for future +generations if it should become characteristic of American men and +women to speak in soft and beautifully modulated tones! + +These men of whom I have spoken could meet once a year in the great +green-room of this theatre of my imagination, and decide upon the +works to be produced--the great classics, the tragedies and comedies; +and living authors should be invited and encouraged. Here, again, we +should have at last what we so badly need, an encouragement for men +and women to write poetry for the stage. Nothing by way of the +beautiful seems to be written for us to-day, but perhaps the +acknowledgment and the hall-mark of a great theatre might prove an +incentive. + + + +TRAINING THE ACTOR + +The training of the actor! To-day there is practically none. Actors +and actresses are not to be taught by patting them on the shoulders +and saying, "Fine! Splendid!" It is a hard, hard school, on the +contrary, of unmerciful criticism. And he is a poor master who seeks +cheap popularity amongst his associates by glossing over and praising +what he knows to be condemnable. No good result is to be obtained by +this method, but it is this method which has caused a great many +actors to be beloved, and the public to be very much distressed. + +As for the practical side of an established theatre, I am absolutely +convinced that the national theatre could be established in this +country on a practical and paying basis; and not only on a paying +basis, but upon a profitable basis. It would, however, necessitate +the investment of a large amount of capital. In short, the prime cost +would be large, but if the public generally is interested, there is no +reason why an able financier could not float a company for this +purpose. But under no circumstances must or can a national theatre, +in the proper use of the term, be made an object of personal or +commercial profit. Nor can it be a scheme devised by a few +individuals for the exploitation of a social or literary fad. The +national theatre must be given by the people to the people, and be +governed by the people. The members of the national theatre should be +elected by the board of directors, and should be chosen from the +American and British stage alike, or from any country where English is +the language of the people. Every inducement should be offered to +secure the services of the best actors; by actors, I mean actors of +both sexes; and those who have served for a certain number of years +should be entitled to a pension upon retirement. + +It is not necessary to bother with further details; I only mention +this to impress the reader with the fact that the national theatre is +a practical possibility. From my personal experience I am convinced +that serious effort upon the American stage meets with a hearty +endorsement. + + + +TOMMASO SALVINI + +[During his American tour of 1882-1883, Salvini played in Boston. One +of his auditors, Henry James, the distinguished novelist, in the +_Atlantic Monthly_ for March, 1883, gave a detailed criticism of the +performances. Of Salvini's Othello he said: + +... "What an immense impression--simply as an impression--the actor +makes on the spectator who sees him for the first time as the turbaned +and deep-voiced Moor! He gives us his measure as a man: he acquaints +us with that luxury of perfect confidence in the physical resources of +the actor which is not the most frequent satisfaction of the modern +play-goer. His powerful, active, manly frame, his noble, serious, +vividly expressive face, his splendid smile, his Italian eye, his +superb, voluminous voice, his carriage, his ease, the assurance he +instantly gives that he holds the whole part in his hands and can make +of it exactly what he chooses,--all this descends upon the spectator's +mind with a richness which immediately converts attention into faith, +and expectation into sympathy. He is a magnificent creature, and you +are already on his ride. His generous temperament is contagious; you +find yourself looking at him, not so much as an actor, but as a +hero.... The admirable thing in this nature of Salvini's is that his +intelligence is equal to his material powers, so that if the +exhibition is, as it were, personal, it is not simply physical. He +has a great imagination: there is a noble intention in all he does. + +The pages which now follow, taken from Salvini's Autobiography, are +presented with the permission of his publishers, the Century Company, +New York.--ED.] + + + +FIRST APPEARANCE + +The Bon and Berlaffa Company, in which my father was engaged, +alternated in its repertory between the comedies of Goldoni and the +tragedies of Alfieri. + +One evening the "Donne Curiose" by Goldoni was to be given, but the +actor who was to take the harlequin's part, represented in that piece +by a stupid slave called Pasquino, fell sick a few hours before the +curtain was to rise. The company had been together for a few days +only, and it was out of the question to substitute another play. It +had been decided to close the theatre for that night, when Berlaffa +asked: + +"Why couldn't your Tom take the part?" My father said that there was +no reason why he shouldn't, but that Tom had never appeared in public, +and he didn't know whether he had the courage. + +The proposition was made to me, and I accepted on the spot, influenced +to no little extent by a desire to please the managers, who in my eyes +were people of great importance. Within three hours, with my iron +memory, I had easily mastered my little part of Pasquino, and, putting +on the costume of the actor who had fallen ill, I found myself a +full-fledged if a new performer. I was to speak in the Venetian +dialect; that was inconvenient for me rather than difficult, but at +Forte, where we were, any slip of pronunciation would hardly be +observed. + +It was the first time that I was to go on the stage behind the +dazzling footlights, the first time that I was to speak in an +unaccustomed dialect, dressed up in ridiculous clothes which were not +my own; and I confess that I was so much frightened that I was tempted +to run back to my dressing-room, to take off my costume, and to have +nothing more to do with the play. But my father, who was aware of my +submissive disposition toward him, with a few words kept me at my +post. + +"For shame!" said he; "a man has no right to be afraid." A man! I +was scarce fourteen, yet I aspired to that title. + +The conscript who is for the first time under fire feels a sense of +fear. Nevertheless, if he has the pride of his sex, and the dignity +of one who appreciates his duty, he stands firm, though it be against +big will. So it was with me when I began my part. When I perceived +that some of Pasquino's lines were amusing the audience, I took +courage, and, like a little bird making its first flight, I arrived at +the goal, and was eager to try again. As it turned out, my actor's +malady grew worse, so that he was forced to leave the company, and I +was chosen to take his place. + +I must have had considerable aptitude for such comic parts as those of +stupid servants, for everywhere that we went I became the public's +Benjamin. I made the people laugh, and they asked for nothing better. +All were surprised that, young and inexperienced as I was, I should +have so much cleverness of manner and such sureness of delivery. My +father was more surprised than anybody, for he had expected far less +of my immaturity and total lack of practice. It is certain that from +that time I began to feel that I was somebody. I had become useful, +or at least I thought I had, and, as a consequence, in my manner and +bearing I began to affect the young man more than was fitting in a +mere boy. I sought to figure in the conversation of grown people, and +many a time I had the pain of seeing my elders smile at my remarks. +It was my great ambition to be allowed to walk alone in the city +streets; my father was very loath to grant this boon, but he let me go +sometimes, perhaps to get a sample of my conduct. I don't remember +ever doing anything at these times which could have displeased him; I +was particularly careful about it, since I saw him sad, pensive, and +afflicted owing to the misfortune which had befallen him, and soon be +began to accord me his confidence, which I was most anxious to gain. + + + +A FATHER'S ADVICE + +Often he spoke to me of the principles of dramatic art, and of the +mission of the artist. He told me that to have the right to call +one's self an artist one must add honest work to talent, and he put +before me the example of certain actors who had risen to fame, but who +were repulsed by society on account of the triviality of their +conduct; of others who were brought by dissipation to die in a +hospital, blamed by all; and of still others who had fallen so low as +to hold out their hands for alms, or to sponge on their comrades and +to cozen them out of their money for unmerited subscriptions--all of +which things moved me to horror and deep repugnance. It was with good +reason that my father was called "Honest Beppo" by his fellows on the +stage. The incorruptibility and firmness of principle which he +cultivated in me from the time that I grew old enough to understand +have been my spur and guide throughout my career, and it is through no +merit of my own that I can count myself among those who have won the +esteem of society; I attribute all the merit to my father. He was con +scientious and honest to a scruple; so much so that of his own free +will he sacrificed the natural pride of the dramatic artist, and +denounced the well-earned honour of first place in his own company to +take second place with Gustavo Modena, whose artistic merit he +recognised as superior to his own, in order that I might profit by the +instruction of that admirable actor and sterling citizen. My father +preferred his son's advantage to his own personal profit. + + + +HOW SALVINI STUDIED HIS ART + +The parts in which I won the most sympathy from the Italian public +were those of Oreste in the tragedy of that name, Egisto in "Merope," +Romeo in "Giulietta e Romeo," Paolo in "Francesca da Rimini," Rinaldo +in "Pia di Tolommei," Lord Bonfield in "Pamela," Domingo in the +"Suonatrice d 'Arpa," and Gian Galeazzo in "Lodovico il Moro." In all +these my success was more pronounced than in other parts, and I +received flattering marks of approval. I did not reflect, at that +time, of how great assistance to me it was to be constantly surrounded +by first-rate artists; but I soon came to feel that an atmosphere +untainted by poisonous microbes promotes unoppressed respiration, and +that in such an atmosphere soul and body maintain themselves healthy +and vigorous. I observed frequently in the "scratch" companies, which +played in the theatres of second rank young men and women who showed +very notable artistic aptitude, but who, for lack of cultivation and +guidance, ran to extravagance, overemphasis, and exaggeration. Up to +that time, while I had a clear appreciation of the reasons for +recognising defects in others, I did not know how to correct my own; +on the other hand, I recognised that the applause accorded me was +intended as an encouragement more than as a tribute which I had +earned. From a youth of pleasing qualities (for the moment I quell my +modesty), with good features, full of fire and enthusiasm, with a +harmonious and powerful voice, and with good intellectual faculties, +the public deemed that an artist should develop who would distinguish +himself, and perhaps attain eminence in the records of Italian art; +and for this reason it sought to encourage me, and to apply the spur +to my pride by manifesting its feeling of sympathy. By good fortune +I had enough conscience and good sense to receive this homage at its +just value. I felt the need of studying, not books alone, but men and +things, vice and virtue, love and hate, humility and haughtiness, +gentleness and cruelty, folly and wisdom, poverty and opulence, +avarice and lavishness, long-suffering and vengeance--in short, all +the passions for good and evil which have root in human nature. I +needed to study out the manner of rendering these passions in +accordance with the race of the men in whom they were exhibited, in +accordance with their special customs, principles, and education; I +needed to form a conception of the movement, the manner, the +expressions of face and voice characteristic of all these cases; I +must learn by intuition to grasp the characters of fiction, and by +study to reproduce those of history with semblance of truth, seeking +to give to every one a personality distinct from every other. In +fine, I must become capable of identifying myself with one or another +personage to such an extent as to lead the audience into the illusion +that the real personage, and not a copy, is before them. It would +then remain to learn the mechanism of my art; that is, to choose the +salient points and to bring them out, to calculate the effects and +keep them in proportion with the unfolding of the plot, to avoid +monotony in intonation and repetition in accentuation, to insure +precision and distinctness in pronunciation, the proper distribution +of respiration, and incisiveness of delivery. I must study; study +again; study always. It was not an easy thing to put these precepts +into practice. Very often I forgot them, carried away by excitement, +or by the superabundance of my vocal powers; indeed, until I had +reached an age of calmer reflection I was never able to get my +artistic chronometer perfectly regulated; it would always gain a few +minutes every twenty-four hours. + + + +FAULTS IN ACTING + +In my assiduous reading of the classics, the chief places were held +among the Greeks by the masculine and noble figures of Hector, +Achilles, Theseus, Oedipus; among the Scots by Trenmor, Fingal, +Cuchullin; and among the Romans by Caesar, Brutus, Titus, and Cato. +These characters influenced me to incline toward a somewhat bombastic +system of gesticulation and a turgid delivery. My anxiety to enter to +the utmost into the conceptions of my authors, and to interpret them +clearly, disposed me to exaggerate the modulations of my voice like +some mechanism which responds to every touch, not reflecting that the +abuse of this effort would bring me too near to song. Precipitation +in delivery, too, which when carried too far destroys all distinctness +and incisiveness, was due to my very high impressionability, and to +the straining after technical scenic effects. Thus, extreme vehemence +in anger would excite me to the point of forgetting the fiction, and +cause me to commit involuntarily lamentable outbursts. Hence I +applied myself to overcome the tendency to singsong in my voice, the +exuberance of my rendering of passion, the exclamatory quality of my +phrasing, the precipitation of my pronunciation, and the swagger of my +motions. + +I shall be asked how the public could abide me, with all these +defects; and I answer that the defects, though numerous, were so +little prominent that they passed unobserved by the mass of the +public, which always views broadly and could be detected only by the +acute and searching eye of the intelligent critic. I make no pretence +that I was able to correct myself all at once. Sometimes my +impetuosity would carry me away, and not until I had come to mature +age was I able to free myself to any extent from this failing. Then I +confirmed myself in my opinion that the applause of the public is not +all refined gold, and I became able to separate the gold from the +dross in the crucible of intelligence. How many on the stage are +content with the dross! + + + +THE DESIRE TO EXCEL IN EVERYTHING + +My desire to improve in my art had its origin in my instinctive +impulse to rise above mediocrity--an instinct that must have been born +in me, since, when still a little boy, I used to put forth all my +energies to eclipse what I saw accomplished by my companions of like +age. When I was sixteen, and at Naples, there were in the +boarding-house, at two francs and a half a day, two young men who were +studying music and singing, and to surpass them in their own field I +practised the scales until I could take B natural. Later on, when the +tone of my voice; had lowered to the barytone, impelled always by my +desire to accomplish something, I took lessons in music from the +Maestro Terziani, and appeared at a benefit with the famous tenor +Boucarde, and Signora Monti, the soprano, and sang in a duet from +"Belisaria," the aria from "Maria di Rohan,"and "La Settimana +d'Amore," by Niccolai; and I venture to say that I was not third best +in that triad. But I recognised that singing and declamation were +incompatible pursuits, since the method of producing the voice is +totally different, and they must therefore be mutually harmful. +Financially, I was not in a condition to be free to choose between the +two careers, and I persevered of necessity in the dramatic profession. +Whether my choice was for the best I do not know; it is certain that +if my success had been in proportion to my love of music, and I have +reason to believe that it might have been, I should not have remained +in obscurity. + + + +A MODEL FOR OTHELLO + +[In 1871, Salvini organised a company for a tour in South America, On +his way thither he paused at Gibraltar, and gainfully.] + +At Gibraltar I spent my time studying the Moors. I was much struck by +one very fine figure, majestic in walk, and Roman in face, except for +a slight projection of the lower lip. The man's colour was between +copper and coffee, not very dark, and he had a slender moustache, and +scanty curled hair on his chin. Up to that time I had always made up +Othello simply with my moustache, but after seeing that superb Moor I +added the hair on the chin, and sought to copy his gestures, +movements, and carriage. Had I been able I should have imitated his +voice also, so closely did that splendid Moor represent to me the true +type of the Shakespearian hero. Othello must have been a son of +Mauritania, if we can argue from Iago's words to Roderigo: "He goes +into Mauritania"; for what else could the author have intended to +imply but that the Moor was returning to his native land? + + + +FIRST TRIP TO THE UNITED STATES + +After a few months of rest [after the South American tour], I resolved +to get together a new company, selecting those actors and actresses +who were best suited to my repertory. The excellent Isolina Piamonti +was my leading lady; and my brother Alessandro, an experienced, +conscientious, and versatile artist, supported me. An Italian +theatrical speculator proposed to me a tour in North America, to +include the chief cities of the United States, and although I +hesitated not a little on account of the ignorance of the Italian +language prevailing in that country, I accepted, influenced somewhat +by my desire to visit a region which was wholly unknown to me. +Previous to crossing the ocean I had several months before me, and +these served me to get my company in training. + +My first impressions of New York were most favourable. Whether it was +the benefit of a more vivifying atmosphere, or the comfort of the +national life, or whether it was admiration for that busy, +industrious, work-loving people, or the thousands of beautiful women +whom I saw in the streets, free and proud in carriage, and healthy and +lively in aspect, or whether it was the thought that these citizens +were the great-grandchildren of those high-souled men who had known +how to win with their blood the independence of their country, I felt +as if I had been born again to a new existence. My lungs swelled more +freely as I breathed the air impregnated with so much vigour and +movement, and so much liberty, and I could fancy that I had come back +to my life of a youth of twenty, and was treading the streets of +republican Rome. With a long breath of satisfaction I said to myself: +"Ah, here is life!" Within a few days my energy was redoubled. A +lively desire of movement, not a usual thing with me, had taken +possession of me in spite of myself. Without asking myself why, I +kept going here and there, up and down, to see everything, to gain +information; and when I returned to my rooms in the evening, I could +have set out again to walk still more. This taught me why Americans +are so unwearied and full of business. Unfortunately I have never +mastered English sufficiently to converse in that tongue; had I +possessed that privilege, perhaps my stay in North America would not +have been so short, and perhaps I might have figured on the English +stage. What an enjoyment it would have been to me to play Shakespeare +in English! But I have never had the privilege of the gift of +tongues, and I had to content myself with my own Italian, which is +understood by but few in America. This, however, mattered little; +they understood me all the same, or, to put it better, they caught by +intuition my ideas and my sentiments. + +My first appearance was in "Othello." The public received a strong +impression, without discussing whether or not the means which I used +to cause it were acceptable, and without forming a clear conception of +my interpretation of that character, or pronouncing openly upon its +form. The same people who had heard it the first night returned on +the second, on the third, and even on the fourth, to make up their +minds whether the emotions they experienced resulted from the novelty +of my interpretation, or whether in fact it was the true sentiment of +Othello's passions which was transmitted to them--in short, whether it +was a mystification or a revelation. By degrees the public became +convinced that those excesses of jealousy and fury were appropriate to +the son of the desert, and that one of Southern blood must be much +better qualified to interpret them than a Northerner. The judgment +was discussed, criticised, disputed; but in the end the verdict was +overwhelmingly in my favour. When the American has once said "Yes," +he never weakens; he will always preserve for you the same esteem, +sympathy, and affection. After New York I travelled through a number +of American cities--Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburg, Washington, +and Boston, which is rightly styled the Athens of America, for there +artistic taste is most refined. In Boston I had the good fortune to +become intimately acquainted with the illustrious poet, Longfellow, +who talked to me in the pure Tuscan. I saw, too, other smaller +cities, and then I appeared again in New York, where the favour of the +public was confirmed, not only for me, but also for the artists of my +company, and especially for Isolina Piamonti, who received no +uncertain marks of esteem and consideration. We then proceeded to +Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Toledo, and that pleasant +city, Detroit, continuing to Chicago, and finally to New Orleans. + + + +IN CUBA + +From New Orleans we sailed to Havana, but found in Cuba civil war, and +a people that had but small appetite for serious things, and was +moreover alarmed by a light outbreak of yellow fever. One of my +company was taken down with the disease, but I had the pleasure of +seeing him recover, Luckily he had himself treated by Havanese +physicians, who are accustomed to combat that malady, which they know +only too well. Perhaps my comrade would have lost his life under the +ministrations of an Italian doctor. In the city of sugar and tobacco, +too, it was "Othello" which carried off the palm. Those good +manufacturers of cigars presented me on my benefit with boxes of their +wares, which were made expressly for me, and which I dispatched to +Italy for the enjoyment of my friends. In spite of the many +civilities which were tendered to me, in spite of considerable money +profit, and of the ovations of its kind-hearted people, I did not find +Cuba to my taste. Sloth and luxury reign there supreme. + + + +APPEARANCE IN LONDON + +In Paris I found a letter from the Impresario Mapleson, who proposed +that I should go to London with an Italian company, and play at Drury +Lane on the off-nights of the opera. I was in doubt for a +considerable time whether to challenge the verdict of the British +public; but in two weeks after reaching Italy, by dint of telegrams I +had got together the force of artists necessary, and I presented +myself with arms and baggage in London, in the spring of 1875. + +Hardly had I arrived, when I noticed the posting, on the bill-boards +of the city, of the announcement of the seventy-second night of +"Hamlet" at the Lyceum Theatre, with Henry Irving in the title-role. +I had contracted with Mapleson to give only three plays in my season, +"Othello," "The Gladiator," and "Hamlet," the last having been +insisted upon by Mapleson himself, who, as a speculator, well knew +that curiosity as to a Comparison would draw the public to Drury Lane. + + + +IMPRESSIONS OF IRVING'S "HAMLET" + +I was very anxious to see the illustrious English artist in that part, +and I secured a box and went to the Lyceum. I was recognised by +nobody, and remaining as it were concealed in my box, I had a good +opportunity to satisfy my curiosity. I arrived at the theatre a +little too late, so that I missed the scene of Hamlet in presence of +the ghost of his father, the scene which in my judgment contains the +clue to that strange character, and from which all the synthetic ideas +of Hamlet are developed. I was in time to hear only the last words of +the oath of secrecy. I was struck by the perfection of the +stage-setting. There was a perfect imitation of the effect of +moonlight, which at the proper times flooded the stage with its rays +or left it in darkness. Every detail was excellently and exactly +reproduced. The scene was shifted, and Hamlet began his allusions, +his sallies of sarcasm, his sententious sayings, his points of satire +with the courtiers, who sought to study and to penetrate the +sentiments of the young prince. In this scene Irving was simply +sublime. His mobile face mirrored his thoughts. The subtle +penetration of his phrases, so perfect in shading and incisiveness, +showed him to be a master of art. I do not believe there is an actor +who can stand beside him in this respect, and I was so much impressed +by it, that at the end of the second act I said to myself, "I will not +play Hamlet! Mapleson can say what he likes, but I will not play it"; +and I said it with the fullest resolution. In the monologue, "To be +or not to be," Irving was admirable; in the scene with Ophelia he was +deserving of the highest praise; in that of the Players he was moving, +and in all this part of the play he appeared to my eyes to be the most +perfect interpreter of that eccentric character. But further on it +was not so, and for the sake of art I regretted it. From the time +when the passion assumes a deeper hue, and reasoning moderates +impulses which are forcibly curbed, Irving seemed to me to show +mannerism, and to be lacking in power, and strained, and it is not in +him alone that I find this fault, but in nearly all foreign actors. +There seems to be a limit of passion within which they remain true in +their rendering of nature; but beyond that limit they become +transformed, and take on conventionality in their intonations, +exaggeration in their gestures, and mannerism in their bearing. I +left my box saying to myself: "I too can do Hamlet, and I will try +it!" In some characters Irving is exceptionally fine. I am convinced +that it would be difficult to interpret Shylock or Mephistopheles +better than he. He is most skilful in putting his productions on the +stage; and in addition to his intelligence he does not lack the power +to communicate his counsels or his teachings. Withal he is an +accomplished gentleman in society, and is loved and respected by his +fellow-citizens, who justly look upon him as a glory to their country. +He should, however, for his own sake, avoid playing such pants as +Romeo and Macbeth, which are not adapted to his somewhat scanty +physical and vocal power. + + + +THE DECLINE OF TRAGEDY + +The traditions of the English drama are imposing and glorious! +Shakespeare alone has gained the highest pinnacle of fame in dramatic +art. He has had to interpret him such great artists as Garrick, +Kemble, Kean, Macready, Siddons, and Irving; and the literary and +dramatic critics of the whole world have studied and analysed both +author and actor. At present, however, tragedy is abandoned on almost +all the stages of Europe. Actors who devote themselves to tragedy, +whether classical romantic, or historical, no longer exist. +Society-comedy has overflowed the stage, and the inundation causes the +seed to rot which more conscientious and prudent planters had sown in +the fields of art. It is desirable that the feeling and taste for the +works of the great dramatists should be revived in Europe, and that +England, which is for special reasons, and with justice, proud of +enjoying the primacy in dramatic composition, should have also worthy +and famous actors. I do not understand why the renown and prestige of +the great name of Garrick do not attract modern actors to follow in +his footsteps. Do not tell me that the works of Shakespeare are out +of fashion, and that the public no longer wants them. Shakespeare is +always new--so new that not even yet is he understood by everybody, +and if, as they say, the public is no longer attracted by his plays, +it is because they are superficially presented. To win the approval +of the audience, a dazzling and conspicuous _mise-en-scene_ does not +suffice, as some seem to imagine, to make up deficiency in +interpretation; a more profound study of the characters represented is +indispensable. If in art you can join the beautiful and the good, so +much the better for you; but if you give the public the alternative, +it will always prefer the good to the beautiful. + + + +TRAGEDY IN TWO LANGUAGES + +In 1880 the agent of an impresario and theatre-owner of Boston came to +Florence to make me the proposal that I should go to North America for +the second time, to play in Italian supported by an American company. +I thought the man had lost his senses. But after a time I became +convinced that he was in his right mind, and that no one would +undertake a long and costly journey simply to play a joke, and I took +his extraordinary proposition into serious consideration and asked him +for explanations. + +"The idea is this," the agent made answer; "it is very simple. You +found favour the last time with the American public with your Italian +company, when not a word that was said was understood, and the +proprietor of the Globe Theatre of Boston thinks that if he puts with +you English-speaking actors, you will yourself be better understood, +since all the dialogues of your supporters will be plain. The +audience will concern itself only with following you with the aid of +the play-books in both languages, and will not have to pay attention +to the others, whose words it will understand." + +"But how shall I take my cue, since I do not understand English? And +how will your American actors know when to speak, since they do not +know Italian?" + +"Have no anxiety about that," said the agent. "Our American actors +are mathematicians, and can memorise perfectly the last words of your +speeches, and they will work with the precision of machines." + +"I am ready to admit that," said I, "although I do not think it will +be so easy; but it will in any case be much easier for them, who will +have to deal with me alone, and will divide the difficulty among +twenty or twenty-four, than for me, who must take care of all." + +The persevering agent, however, closed my mouth with the words, "You +do not sign yourself 'Salvini' for nothing!" He had an answer for +everything, he was prepared to convince me at all points, to persuade +me about everything, and to smooth over every difficulty, and he won a +consent which, though almost involuntary on my part, was legalised by +a contract in due form, by which I undertook to be at New York not +later than November 05, 1880, and to be ready to open at Philadelphia +with "Othello" on the 29th of the same month. + +I was still dominated by my bereavement, and the thought was pleasant +to me of going away from places which constantly brought it back to my +mind. Another sky, other customs, another language, grave +responsibilities, a novel and difficult undertaking of uncertain +outcome--I was willing to risk all simply to distract my attention and +to forget. I have never in my life been a gambler, but that time I +staked my artistic reputation upon a single card. Failure would have +been a new emotion, severe and grievous, it is true, but still +different from that which filled my mind. I played, and I won! The +friends whom I had made in the United States in 1873, and with whom I +had kept up my acquaintance, when they learned of the confusion of +tongues, wrote me discouraging letters. In Italy the thing was not +believed, so eccentric did it seem. I arrived in New York nervous and +feverish, but not discouraged or depressed. + +When the day of the first rehearsal came, all the theatres were +occupied, and I had to make the best of a rather large concert-hall to +try to get into touch with the actors who were to support me. An +Italian who was employed in a newspaper office served me as +interpreter in cooperation with the agent of my Boston impresario. +The American artists began the rehearsal without a prompter, and with +a sureness to be envied especially by our Italian actors, who usually +must have every word suggested to them. My turn came, and the few +words which Othello pronounces in the first scene came in smoothly and +without difficulty. When the scene with the Council of Ten came, of a +sudden I could not recall the first line of a paragraph, and I +hesitated; I began a line, but it was not that; I tried another with +no better success; a third, but the interpreter told me that I had +gone wrong. We began again, but the English was of no assistance to +me in recognising which of my speeches corresponded to that addressed +to me, which I did not understand. I was all at sea, and I told the +interpreter to beg the actors to overlook my momentary confusion, and +to say to them that I should be all right in five minutes. I went off +to a corner of the hall and bowed my head between my hands, saying to +myself, "I have come for this, and I must carry it through." I set +out to number mentally all the paragraphs of my part, and in a short +time I said. "Let us begin again." + +During the remainder of the rehearsal one might have thought that I +understood English, and that the American actors understood Italian, +No further mistake was made by either side; there was not even the +smallest hesitation, and when I finished the final scene of the third +act between Othello and Iago, the actors applauded, filled with joy +and pleasure. The exactitude with which the subsequent rehearsals of +"Othello," and those of "Hamlet," proceeded was due to the memory, the +application, and the scrupulous attention to their work of the +American actors, as well as to my own force of will and practical +acquaintance with all the parts of the play, and to the natural +intuition which helped me to know without understanding what was +addressed to me, divining it from a motion, a look, or a light +inflection of the voice. Gradually a few words, a few short phrases, +remained in my ear, and in course of time I came to understand +perfectly every word of all the characters; I became so sure of myself +that if an actor substituted one word for another I perceived it. I +understood the words of Shakespeare, but not those of the spoken +language. + +In a few days we went to Philadelphia to begin our representations. +My old acquaintances were in despair. To those who had sought to +discourage me by their letters others on the spot joined their +influence, and tried everything to overthrow my courage. I must admit +that the nearer came the hour of the great experiment, the more my +anxiety grew and inclined me to deplore the moment when I had put +myself in that dilemma. I owe it in a great degree to my cool head +that my discouraging forebodings did not unman me so much as to make +me abandon myself wholly to despair. Just as I was going on the +stage, I said to myself: "After all, what can happen to me? They +will not murder me. I shall have tried, and I shall have failed; that +is all there will be to it, I will pack up my baggage and go back to +Italy, convinced that oil and wine will not mix. A certain contempt +of danger, a firm resolution to succeed, and, I am bound to add, +considerable confidence in myself, enabled me to go before the public +calm, bold, and secure. + +The first scene before the palace of Brabantio was received with +sepulchral silence. When that of the Council of Ten came, and the +narration of the vicissitudes of Othello was ended, the public broke +forth in prolonged applause. Then I said to myself, "A good beginning +is half the work." At the close of the first act, my adversaries, who +were such solely on account of their love of art, and their belief +that the two languages could not be amalgamated, came on the stage to +embrace and congratulate me, surprised, enchanted, enthusiastic, +happy, that they had been mistaken, and throughout the play I was the +object of constant demonstrations of sympathy. + + + +AMERICAN CRITICAL TASTE + +From Philadelphia we went to New York where our success was confirmed. +It remained for me to win the suffrages of Boston, and I secured them, +first having made stops in Brooklyn, New Haven, and Hartford. When in +the American Athens I became convinced that that city possesses the +most refined artistic taste. Its theatrical audiences are serious, +attentive to details, analytical--I might almost say scientific--and +one might fancy that such careful critics had never in their lives +done anything but occupy themselves with scenic art. With reference +to a presentation of Shakespeare, they are profound, acute, subtle, +and they know so well how to clothe some traditional principle in +close logic, that if faith in the opposite is not quite unshakable in +an artist, he must feel himself tempted to renounce his own tenets. +It is surprising that in a land where industry and commerce seem to +absorb all the intelligence of the people, there should be in every +city and district, indeed in every village, people who are competent +to discuss the arts with such high authority. The American nation +counts only a century of freedom, yet it has produced a remarkable +number of men of high competence in dramatic art. Those who think of +tempting fortune by displaying their untried artistic gifts on the +American stage, counting on the ignorance or inexperience of their +audience, make a very unsafe calculation. The taste and critical +faculty of that public are in their fulness of vigour. Old Europe is +more bound by traditions, more weary, more blase, in her judgment, not +always sincere or disinterested. In America the national pride is +warmly felt, and the national artists enjoy high honour. The +Americans know how to offer an exquisite hospitality, but woe to the +man who seeks to impose on them! They profess a cult, a veneration, +for those who practise our art, whether of their own nation or +foreign, and their behaviour in the theatre is dignified. I recall +one night when upon invitation I went to see a new play in which +appeared an actor of reputation. The play was not liked, and from act +to act I noticed that the house grew more and more scanty, like a +faded rose which loses its petals one by one, until at the last scene +my box was the only one which remained occupied. I was more impressed +by this silent demonstration of hostility than I should have been if +the audience had made a tumultuous expression of its disapproval. The +actors were humiliated and confounded, and as the curtain fell an +instinctive sentiment of compassion induced me to applaud. + + + +IMPRESSIONS OF EDWIN BOOTH + +The celebrated actor Edwin Booth was at this time in Baltimore, a city +distant two hours from the capital. I had heard so much about this +superior artist that I was anxious to see him, and on one of my off +nights I went to Baltimore with my impresario's agent. A box had been +reserved for me without my knowledge, and was draped with the Italian +colours. I regretted to be made so conspicuous, but I could not fail +to appreciate the courteous and complimentary desire to do me honour +shown by the American artist. It was only natural that I should be +most kindly influenced toward him, but without the courtesy which +predisposed me in his favour he would equally have won my sympathy by +his attractive and artistic lineaments, and his graceful and +well-proportioned figure. The play was "Hamlet." This part brought +him great fame, and justly; for in addition to the high artistic worth +with which he adorned it, his elegant personality was admirably +adapted to it, His long and wavy hair, his large and expressive eye, +his youthful and flexible movements, accorded perfectly with the ideal +of the young prince of Denmark which now obtains everywhere. His +splendid delivery, and the penetrating philosophy with which he +informed his phrases, were his most remarkable qualities. I was so +fortunate as to see him also as Richelieu and Iago, and in all three +of these parts, so diverse in their character I found him absolutely +admirable. I cannot say so much for his Macbeth, which I saw one +night when passing through Philadelphia. The part seemed to me not +adapted to his nature. Macbeth was an ambitious man, and Booth was +not. Macbeth had barbarous and ferocious instincts, and Booth was +agreeable, urbane, and courteous. Macbeth destroyed his enemies +traitorously--did this even to gain possession of their goods--while +Booth was noble, lofty-minded, and generous of his wealth. It is thus +plain that however much art he might expend, his nature rebelled +against his portrayal of that personage, and he could never hope to +transform himself into the ambitious, venal, and sanguinary Scottish +king. + +I should say, from what I heard in America, that Edwin Forrest was the +Modena of America. The memory of that actor still lives, for no one +has possessed equally the power to give expression to the passions, +and to fruitful and burning imagery, in addition to which he possessed +astonishing power of voice. Almost contemporaneously a number of most +estimable actors have laid claim to his mantle; but above them all +Edwin Booth soared as an eagle. + +After a very satisfactory experience in Baltimore, I returned for the +third time to New York, and gave "Othello," "Macbeth," and "The +Gladiator," each play twice, and made the last two appearances of my +season in Philadelphia. After playing ninety-five times in the new +fashion, I felt myself worn out, but fully satisfied with the result +of my venturesome undertaking. When I embarked on the steamer which +was to take me to Europe, I was escorted by all the artists of the +company which had cooperated in my happy success, by my friends, and +by courteous admirers, and I felt that if I were not an Italian I +should wish to be an American. + + + +ADELAIDE RISTORI + +[George Henry Lewes, in his book on "Actors and the Art of Acting," +published by Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1878, says: + +"I must repeat the expression of my admiration for Ristori as a +distinguished actress; if not of the highest rank, she is very high, +in virtue of her personal gifts, and the trained skill with which +these gifts are applied. The question naturally arises, why is her +success so great in certain plays and so dubious in others? It is of +little use to say that Lady Macbeth and Adrienne Lecouvreur are beyond +her powers; that is only restating the fact. Can we not trace both +success and failure to one source? In what is called the ideal +drama, constructed after the Greek type, she would be generally +successful, because the simplicity of its motives and the +artificiality of its structure, removing it from beyond the region of +ordinary experience, demand from the actor a corresponding +artificiality. Attitudes, draperies, gestures, tones, and elocution +which would be incongruous in a drama approaching more closely to the +evolutions of ordinary experience, become, in the ideal drama, +artistic modes of expression; and it is in these that Ristori displays +a fine selective instinct, and a rare felicity of organisation." + +"Memoirs and Artistic Studies of Adelaide Ristori," rendered into +English by G. Mantellini, with a biographical appendix by L. D. +Ventura, was published and copyrighted by Doubleday, Page & Co., New +York, 1907. The chapters of that volume afford the pages which +follow. The Artistic Studies comprise detailed histrionic +interpretations of the chief roles of Ristori: Mary Stuart, Queen +Elizabeth, Lady Macbeth, Medea, Myrrha and Phedra.--ED.] + + + +FIRST APPEARANCES + +WHEN twelve years old, I was booked with the famous actor and manager, +Giuseppe Moncalvo, for the roles of a child. Soon after, owing to my +slender figure, they made me up as a little woman, giving me small +parts as maid. But they soon made up their minds that I was not +fitted for such parts. Having reached the age of thirteen and +developed in my figure, I was assigned several parts as second lady. +In those days they could not be too particular in small companies. At +the age of fourteen, I had to recite the first part among the young +girls and that of the leading lady alternately, like an experienced +actress. It was about this time, in the city of Novara (Piedmont) +that I recited for the first time the "Francesca da Rimini" of Silvio +Pellico. Though I was only fifteen my success was such that soon +afterward they offered me the parts of leading lady with encouragement +of advancement. + +My good father, who was gifted with a great deal of sense, did not +allow his head to be turned by such offers. Reflecting that my health +might suffer from being thrown so early into the difficulties of stage +life he refused these offers and accepted a more modest place, as +_ingenue_, in the Royal Company, under the auspices of the King of +Sardinia and stationed during several months of the year at Turin. It +was managed by the leading man, the most intelligent and capable among +the stage managers of the time. The advice of this cultured, though +severe man, rendered his management noteworthy and sought after as +essential to the making of a good actor. + +Among the members of the company shone the foremost beacon-lights of +Italian art, such as Vestri, Madame Marchionni, Romagnoli, Righetti, +and many others who were quoted as examples of dramatic art, as well +as Pasta, Malibran, Rubini, and Tamburini in the lyric art, + +My engagement for the part of _ingenue_ was to have lasted three +years, but, after the year, I was promoted to the parts of the first +lady, and in the third year, to the absolute leading lady. + +To such unhoped-for and flattering results I was able to attain, by +ascending step by step through the encouragement and admonition of my +excellent teacher, Madame Carlotta Marchionni, a distinguished +actress, and the interest of Gaetano Bazzi who also had great +affection for me. It was really then that my artistic education +began. It was then that I acquired the knowledge and the rules which +placed me in a position to discern the characteristics of a true +artist. I learned to distinguish and to delineate the comic and the +dramatic passions. My temperament caused me to incline greatly toward +the tender and the gentle. + +However, in the tragic parts, my vigour increased. I learned to +portray transitions for the sake of fusing the different contrasts; a +capital but difficult study of detail, tedious at times, but of the +greatest importance. The lamentations in a part where two extreme and +opposing passions are at play, are like those which in painting are +called "chiaro-oscuro," a blending of the tones, which thus portrays +truth devoid of artifice. + +In order to succeed in this intent, it is necessary to take as model +the great culture of art, and also to be gifted with a well-tempered +and artistic nature. And these are not to be confined to sterile +imitation, but are for the purpose of accumulating the rich material +of dramatic erudition, so that one may present oneself before the +audiences as an original and artistic individuality. + +Some people think that distinction of birth and a perfect education +will render them capable of appearing upon the stage with the same +facility and nonchalance with which one enters a ball-room, and they +are not at all timid about walking upon the boards, presuming that +they can do it as well as an actor who has been raised upon them. A +great error! + +One of the greatest difficulties that they meet is in not knowing how +to walk upon a stage, which, owing to the slight inclination in con +struction, easily causes the feet to totter, particularly if one is a +beginner, and especially at the entrances and exits. I myself +encountered this difficulty. Though I had dedicated myself to the art +from my infancy and had been instructed with the greatest care every +day of my life by my grandmother, at the age of fifteen my movements +had not yet acquired all the ease and naturalness necessary to make me +feel at home upon the stage, and certain sudden turns always +frightened me. + +When I began my artistic apprenticeship, the use of diction was given +great importance, as a means of judging an actor. At that time the +audience was critical and severe. + +In our days, the same audience has become less exacting, less +critical, and does not aim to improve the artist, by counting his +defects. According to my opinion, the old system was best, as it is +not in excessive indulgence and solely by considering the good +qualities, without correcting the bad ones, that real artists are +made. + +It is also my conviction that a person who wishes to dedicate himself +to the stage should not begin his career with parts of great +importance, either comic, dramatic, or tragic. The interpretation +becomes too difficult for a beginner and may harm his future career: +first, the discouragement over the difficulties that he meets; +secondly, an excessive vanity caused by the appreciation with which +the public apparently honours him. Both these sentiments will lead +the actor, in a short time, to neglect his study. On the other hand, +by taking several parts, he becomes familiar with the means of +rendering his part natural, thus convincing himself that by +representing correctly characters of little importance, he will be +given more important ones later on. Thus it will come about that his +study will be more careful. + + + +SALVINI AND ROSSI + +One of the greatest of the living examples of the school of realism is +my illustrious fellow artist, Signor Tommaso Salvini, with whom, for a +number of years, I had the fortune to share the fatigues and the +honours of the profession which I also shared with Ernesto Rossi. The +former was and is still admired. His rare dramatic merits have +nothing of the conventional, but owe their power to that spontaneity +which is the most convincing revelation of art. The wealth of +plasticity which Salvini possesses, is in him, a natural gift. +Salvini is the true exponent of the Italian dramatic art + + + +APPEARS AS LADY MACBETH + +In the month of June, 1857, we began to rerehearse "Macbeth," at +Covent Garden, London, It had been arranged for our company by Mr. +Clarke, and translated into most beautiful Italian verse by Giulio +Carcano. The renowned Mr. Harris put it on the stage according to +English traditions. The representation of the part of Lady Macbeth, +which afterward became one of my favourite roles, preoccupied me +greatly, as I knew only too well what kind of comparisons would be +made. The remembrance of the marvellous creation of that character as +given by the famous Mrs. Siddons and the traditional criticisms of the +press, might have rendered the public very severe and difficult to +please. + +I used all my ability of interpretation to reveal and transmit the +most minute intentions of the author. To the English audience it +seemed that I had really incarnated that perfidious but great +character of Lady Macbeth, in a way that surpassed all expectations. + +We had to repeat the drama for several evenings, always producing a +most profound impression upon the minds of the audience, particularly +in the grand sleep-walking scene. So thoroughly had I entered into +the nature of Lady Macbeth, that during the entire scene my pupils +were motionless in their orbit, causing me to shed tears. To this +enforced immobility of the eye I owe the weakening of my eyesight. +From the analytical study which I shall give of this diabolical +character [at the close of her Memoirs] the reader can form for +himself an idea of how much its interpretation cost me (particularly +in the final culminating scene), in my endeavour to get the right +intonation of the voice and the true expression of the physiognomy. + + + +AS MANAGER + +My exceptionally good health never abandoned me through my long and +tiresome journeys, though unfortunately I never was able to accustom +myself to voyaging by sea. All through those rapid changes I acquired +a marvellous store of endurance. That sort of life infused in me +sufficient energy to lead me through every kind of hardship with the +resolution and authority of a commanding general. All obeyed me. +None questioned my authority owing to my absolute impartiality, being +always ready, as I was, either to blame or correct him who did not +fulfil his obligations, also to praise without any distinction of +class those who deserved it. I almost always met with courtesy among +the actors under my direction, and if any one of them dared to trouble +our harmony, he was instantly put to his proper place by the firmness +of my discipline. + +The artistic management of the plays was left to me in all its +details. Every order and every disposition came from me directly. I +looked after all matters large and small, the things that every actor +understands contribute to making the success of a play. + +Concerning my own personal interests, they were in charge of a private +manager. + +I am proud to say that my husband was the soul of all my undertakings. +As I speak of him, my heart impels me to say that he ever exercised +upon me and my professional career the kindest and most benevolent +influence. It was he who upheld my courage, whenever I hesitated +before some difficulty; it was he who foretold the glory I should +acquire, he who pointed out to me the goal, and anticipated everything +in order that I should secure it. Without his assistance I never +should have been able to put into effect the daring attempt of +carrying the flag of Italian dramatic art all over the globe. + + + +FIRST VISIT TO AMERICA + +During the month of September, 1866, for the first time in my life, I +crossed the ocean on my way to the United States, where I remained +until May 17th of the following year. It was in the elegant Lyceum +Theatre of New York that I made my debut, on the 20th of September, +with "Medea." I could not anticipate a more enthusiastic reception +than the one I was honoured with. I felt anxious to make myself known +in that new part of the world, and let the Americans hear me recite +for the first time, in the soft and melodic Italian language. I knew +that in spite of the prevailing characteristics of the inhabitants of +the free country of George Washington, always busy as they are in +their feverish pursuit of wealth, that the love for the beautiful and +admiration for dramatic art were not neglected. During my first +season in New York I met with an increasing success, and formed such +friendly relations with many distinguished and cultured people that +time and distance have never caused me to forget them. While writing +these lines I send an affectionate salutation to all those who in +America still honour me with their remembrance. + + + +BEGINS TO PLAY IN ENGLISH + +I made my fourth trip to London in 1873. Not having any new drama to +present and being tired of repeating the same productions, I felt the +necessity of reanimating my mind with some strong emotion, of +discovering something, in a word, the execution of which had never +been attempted by others. + +At last I believed I had found something to satisfy my desire. The +admiration I had for the Shakespearean dramas, and particularly for +the character of Lady Macbeth, inspired me with the idea of playing in +English the sleeping scene from "Macbeth," which I think is the +greatest conception of the Titanic poet. I was also induced to make +this bold attempt, partly as a tribute of gratitude to the English +audiences of the great metropolis, who had shown me so much deference. +But how was I going to succeed? ... I took advice from a good friend +of mine, Mrs. Ward, the mother of the renowned actress Genevieve Ward. +She not only encouraged my idea, but offered her services in helping +me to learn how to recite that scene in English. + +I still had some remembrance of my study of English when I was a girl, +and there is no language more difficult to pronounce and enunciate +correctly, for an Italian. I was frightened only to think of that, +still I drew sufficient courage even from its difficulties to grapple +with my task. After a fortnight of constant study, I found myself +ready to make an attempt at my recitation. However, not wishing to +compromise my reputation by risking a failure, I acted very +cautiously. + +I invited to my house the most competent among the dramatic critics of +the London papers, without forewarning them of the object and asked +them kindly to hear me and express frankly their opinion, assuring +them that if it should not be a favourable one, I would not feel badly +over it. + +I then recited the scene in English, and my judges seemed to be very +much pleased. They corrected my pronunciation of two words only, and +encouraged me to announce publicly my bold project. The evening of +the performance, at the approach of that important scene, I was +trembling! ... The enthusiastic reception granted me by the audience +awakened in me all vigour, and the happy success of my effort +compensated me a thousandfold for all the anxieties I had gone +through. This success still increased my ambitious aspirations, and I +wished to try myself in even a greater task. + +I aimed at no less a project than the impersonation of the entire role +of Lady Macbeth in English, but such an arduous undertaking seemed so +bold to me that I finally gave up the idea and drove away from my mind +forever the temptation to try it. + + + +THE ACTOR +VALEDICTORY STANZAS TO J. P. KEMBLE, +JUNE, 1817, BY THOMAS CAMPBELL. + +His was the spell o'er hearts +Which only Acting lends-- +The youngest of the sister arts, +Which all their beauty blends: +For ill can Poetry express +Full many a tone of thought sublime, +And Painting, mute and motionless, +Steals but a glance of time, +But by the mighty actor brought, +Illusion's perfect triumphs come-- +Verse ceases to be airy thought, +And Sculpture to be dumb. + +_______________________________ +Endnotes: +[1] This took the form as "The Players"; its home, 16 Grammercy Park, +New York, was a gift from Mr. Booth. It had long been his residence, +and there he passed away. +[2] The late Professor Peirce, professor of mathematics in Harvard +University, father of Professor James Mills Peirce. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext of [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies + diff --git a/1702.zip b/1702.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b43b4b3 --- /dev/null +++ b/1702.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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