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The Drama
The Art of Acting
by Irving, Henry
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ADDRESS
SESSIONAL OPENING
PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION
EDINBURGH
9 NOVEMBER 1891
I have chosen as the subject of the address with which I have the
honor to inaugurate for the second time the Session of the Edinburgh
Philosophical Institution, "The Art of Acting." I have done so, in the
first instance, because I take it for granted that when you bestow on
any man the honor of asking him to deliver the inaugural address, it
is your wish to hear him speak of the subject with which he is best
acquainted; and the Art of Acting is the subject to which my life has
been devoted. I have another reason also which, though it may, so far
as you are concerned, be personal to those of my calling, I think it
well to put before you. It is that there may be, from the point of
view of an actor distinguished by your favor, some sort of official
utterance on the subject. There are some irresponsible writers who
have of late tried to excite controversy by assertions, generally
false and always misleading, as to the stage and those devoted to the
arts connected with it. Some of these writers go so far as to assert
that Acting is not an Art at all; and though we must not take such
wild assertions quite seriously, I think it well to place on record at
least a polite denial of their accuracy. It would not, of course,
be seemly to merely take so grave an occasion as the present as an
opportunity for such a controversy, but as I am dealing with the
subject before you, I think it better to place you in full knowledge
of the circumstances. It does not do, of course, to pay too much
attention to ephemeral writings, any more than to creatures of the
mist and the swamp and the night. But even the buzzing of the midge,
though the insect may be harmless compared with its more poison-laden
fellows, can divert the mind from more important things. To disregard
entirely the world of ephemera, and their several actions and effects
were to deny the entirety of the scheme of creation.
I take it for granted that in addressing you on the subject of the Art
of Acting I am not, prima facie, encountering set prejudices; for
had you despised the Art which I represent I should not have had the
honor of appearing before you to-day. You will, I trust, on your part,
bear this in mind, and I shall, on my part, never forget that you are
members of a Philosophical Institution, the very root and basis of
whose work is to inquire into the heart of things with the purpose of
discovering why such as come under your notice are thus or thus.
The subject of my address is a very vast one, and is, I assure you,
worthy of a careful study. Writers such as Voltaire, Schlegel, Goethe,
Lessing, Charles Lamb, Hazlitt, and Schiller, have not disdained to
treat it with that seriousness which Art specially demands—which
anything in life requires whose purpose is not immediate and
imperative. For my own part I can only bring you the experience
of more than thirty years of hard and earnest work. Out of wide
experience let me point out that there are many degrees of merit, both
of aim, of endeavor, and of execution in acting, as in all things. I
want you to think of acting at its best—as it may be, as it can be,
as it has been, and is—and as it shall be, whilst it be followed by
men and women of strong and earnest purpose. I do not for a moment
wish you to believe that only Shakespeare and the great writers are
worthy of being played, and that all those efforts that in centuries
have gathered themselves round great names are worthy of your praise.
In the House of Art are many mansions where men may strive worthily
and live cleanly lives. All Art is worthy, and can be seriously
considered, so long as the intention be good and the efforts to
achieve success be conducted with seemliness. And let me here say,
that of all the arts none requires greater intention than the art
of acting. Throughout it is necessary to do something, and
that something cannot fittingly be left to chance, or the unknown
inspiration of a moment. I say "unknown," for if known, then the
intention is to reproduce, and the success of the effort can be
in nowise due to chance. It may be, of course, that in moments of
passionate excitement the mind grasps some new idea, or the nervous
tension suggests to the mechanical parts of the body some new form of
expression; but such are accidents which belong to the great scheme of
life, and not to this art, or any art, alone. You all know the story
of the painter who, in despair at not being able to carry out the
intention of his imagination, dashed his brush at the imperfect
canvas, and with the scattering paint produced by chance the very
effect which his brush guided by his skill alone, had failed to
achieve. The actor's business is primarily to reproduce the ideas of
the author's brain, to give them form, and substance, and color, and
life, so that those who behold the action of a play may, so far as
can be effected, be lured into the fleeting belief that they behold
reality. Macready, who was an earnest student, defined the art of the
actor "to fathom the depths of character, to trace its latent motives,
to feel its finest quivering of emotion, is to comprehend the thoughts
that are hidden under words, and thus possess one's-self of the actual
mind of the individual man"; and Talma spoke of it as "the union
of grandeur without pomp, and nature without triviality"; whilst
Shakespeare wrote, "the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to
nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the
very age and body of the time his form and pressure."
This effort to reproduce man in his moods is no mere trick of fancy
carried into execution. It is a part of the character of a strong
nation, and has a wider bearing on national life than perhaps
unthinking people are aware. Mr. Froude, in his survey of early
England, gives it a special place; and I venture to quote his words,
for they carry with them, not only their own lesson, but the authority
of a great name in historical research.
"No genius can dispense with experience; the aberrations of power,
unguided or ill-guided, are ever in proportion to its intensity, and
life is not long enough to recover from inevitable mistakes. Noble
conceptions already existing, and a noble school of execution which
will launch mind and hand at once upon their true courses, are
indispensable to transcendent excellence; and Shakespeare's plays were
as much the offspring of the long generations who had pioneered his
road for him, as the discoveries of Newton were the offspring of those
of Copernicus.
"No great general ever arose out of a nation of cowards; no great
statesman or philosopher out of a nation of fools; no great artist out
of a nation of materialists; no great drama, except when the drama was
the possession of the people. Acting was the especial amusement of the
English, from the palace to the village green. It was the result and
expression of their strong, tranquil possession of their lives, of
their thorough power over themselves, and power over circumstances.
They were troubled with no subjective speculations; no social problems
vexed them with which they were unable to deal; and in the exuberance
of vigor and spirit, they were able, in the strict and literal sense
of the word, to play with the materials of life." So says Mr. Froude.
In the face of this statement of fact set forth gravely in its place
in the history of our land, what becomes of such bold assertions as
are sometimes made regarding the place of the drama being but a poor
one, since the efforts of the actor are but mimetic and ephemeral,
that they pass away as a tale that is told? All art is mimetic; and
even life itself, the highest and last gift of God to His people, is
fleeting. Marble crumbles, and the very names of great cities become
buried in the dust of ages. Who then would dare to arrogate to any art
an unchanging place in the scheme of the world's development, or would
condemn it because its efforts fade and pass? Nay, more; has even the
tale that is told no significance in after years? Can such not stir,
when it is worth the telling, the hearts of men, to whom it comes as
an echo from the past? Have not those tales remained most vital and
most widely known which are told and told again and again, face to
face and heart to heart, when the teller and the listener are adding,
down the ages, strength to the current of a mighty thought or a mighty
deed and its record?
Surely the record that lives in the minds of men is still a record,
though it be not graven on brass or wrought in marble. And it were
a poor conception of the value of any art, if, in considering it, we
were to keep our eyes fixed on some dark spot, some imperfection, and
shut our eyes to its aim, its power, its beauty. It were a poor age
indeed where such a state of things is possible; as poor as that of
which Mrs. Browning's unhappy poet spoke in the bitterness of his
soul:
"The age culls simples,
With a broad clown's back turned broadly to the
glory of the stars."
Let us lift our faces when we wish to judge truly of any earnest work
of the hand or mind of man, and see it placed in the widest horizon
that is given to us. Poetry, painting, sculpture, music, architecture,
all have a bearing on their time, and beyond it; and the actor, though
his knowledge may be, and must be, limited by the knowledge of his
age, so long as he sound the notes of human passion, has something
which is common to all the ages. If he can smite water from the rock
of one hardened human heart—if he can bring light to the eye or
wholesome color to the faded cheek—if he can bring or restore in ever
so slight degree the sunshine of hope, of pleasure, of gayety, surely
he cannot have worked in vain. It would need but a small effort
of imagination to believe that that great wave theory, which the
scientists have proved as ruling the manifestations of light and
sound, applies also to the efforts of human emotion. And who shall
tell us the ultimate bounds of these waves of light and sound? If
these discernible waves can be traced till they fade into impalpable
nothingness, may we not think that this other, impalpable at the
beginning as they are at the end, can alone stretch into the
dimness of memory? Sir Joshua's gallant compliment, that he achieved
immortality by writing his name on the hem of Mrs. Siddons's garment,
when he painted her as the Tragic Muse, had a deeper significance than
its pretty fancy would at first imply.
Not for a moment is the position to be accepted that the theatre
is merely a place of amusement. That it is primarily a place of
amusement, and is regarded as such by its habitués, is of course
apparent; but this is not its limitation. For authors, managers, and
actors it is a serious employment, to be undertaken gravely, and of
necessity to be adhered to rigidly. Thus far it may be considered from
these different stand-points; but there is a larger view—that of the
State. Here we have to consider a custom of natural growth specially
suitable to the genius of the nation. It has advanced with the
progress of each age, and multiplied with its material prosperity.
It is a living power, to be used for good, or possibly for evil; and
far-seeing men recognize in it, based though it be on the relaxation
and pleasures of the people, an educational medium of no mean order.
Its progress in the past century has been the means of teaching to
millions of people a great number of facts which had perhaps otherwise
been lost to them. How many are there who have had brought home to
them in an understandable manner by stage-plays the costumes, habits,
manners, and customs of countries and ages other than their own;
what insight have they thus obtained into facts and vicissitudes of
life—of passions and sorrows and ambitions outside the narrow scope
of their own lives, and which yet may and do mould the destinies of
men. All this is education—education in its widest sense, for it
broadens the sympathies and enlarges the intellectual grasp.
And beyond this again—for these are advantages on the material
side—there is that higher education of the heart, which raises in the
scale of creation all who are subject to its sweetening influences. To
hold his place therefore amongst these progressing forces, the actor
must at the start be well endowed with some special powers, and by
training, reading, and culture of many kinds, be equipped for the work
before him. No amount of training can give to a dense understanding
and a clumsy personality certain powers of quickness and spontaneity;
and, on the other hand, no genius can find its fullest expression
without some understanding of the principles and method of a craft. It
is the actor's part to represent or interpret the ideas and emotions
which the poet has created, and to do this he must at the first have
a full knowledge and understanding of them. This is in itself no easy
task. It requires much study and much labor of many kinds. Having then
acquired an idea, his intention to work it out into reality must be
put in force; and here new difficulties crop up at every further step
taken in advance. Now and again it suffices the poet to think and
write in abstractions; but the actor's work is absolutely concrete.
He is brought in every phase of his work into direct comparison with
existing things, and must be judged by the most exacting standards of
criticism. Not only must his dress be suitable to the part which he
assumes, but his bearing must not be in any way antagonistic to the
spirit of the time in which the play is fixed. The free bearing of
the sixteenth century is distinct from the artificial one of the
seventeenth, the mannered one of the eighteenth, and the careless
one of the nineteenth. And all this quite exclusive of the minute
qualities and individualities of the character represented. The voice
must be modulated to the vogue of the time. The habitual action of a
rapier-bearing age is different to that of a mail-clad one—nay, the
armor of a period ruled in real life the poise and bearing of the
body; and all this must be reproduced on the stage, unless the
intelligence of the audience, be they ever so little skilled in
history, is to count as naught.
It cannot therefore be seriously put forward in the face of such
manifold requirements that no Art is required for the representation
of suitable action. Are we to imagine that inspiration or emotion of
any kind is to supply the place of direct knowledge of facts—of skill
in the very grammar of craftsmanship? Where a great result is arrived
at much effort is required, whether the same be immediate or has been
spread over a time of previous preparation. In this nineteenth century
the spirit of education stalks abroad and influences men directly
and indirectly, by private generosity and national foresight, to
accumulate as religiously as in former ages ecclesiastics and devotees
gathered sacred relics, all that helps to give the people a full
understanding of lives and times and countries other than their own.
Can it be that in such an age all that can help to aid the inspiration
and to increase direct knowledge is of no account whatever, because,
forsooth, it has a medium or method of its own? There are those who
say that Shakespeare is better in the closet than on the stage; that
dramatic beauty is more convincing when read in private than when
spoken on the stage to the accompaniment of suitable action. And yet,
if this be so, it is a strange thing that, with all the activity of
the new-born printing-press, Shakespeare's works were not known to the
reading public till the fame of the writer had been made on the stage.
And it is a stranger thing still, if the drama be a mere poetic form
of words, that the writer who began with Venus and Adonis, when he
found the true method of expression to suit his genius, ended with
Hamlet and The Tempest.
How is it, I ask, if these responsible makers of statements be
correct, that every great writer down from the days of Elizabeth, when
the drama took practical shape from the wish of the poets to render
human life in all its phases, have been desirous of seeing their
works, when written in dramatic form, represented on the stage—and
not only represented, but represented under the most favorable
conditions obtainable, both as to the fitness of setting and the
choice of the most skilled and excellent players? Are we to take it
that the poet, with his eye in a fine phrenzy rolling, sees all the
minute details of form, color, light, sound, and action which have
to be rendered complete on the stage? Is there nothing in what the
individual actor, who is gifted with fine sense and emotional power,
can add to mere words, however grand and rolling in themselves, and
whatsoever mighty image they may convey? Can it be possible that there
is any sane person who holds that there is no such thing as expression
in music so long as the written notes are correctly rendered—that the
musical expression of a Paganini or a Liszt, or that the voice of a
Malibran or a Grisi, has no special charm—nay more, that there is not
some special excellence in the instruments of Amati or Stradivarius?
If there be, we can leave to him, whilst the rest of mankind marvel
at his self-sufficient obtuseness, to hold that it was nothing but his
own imagination which so much influenced Hazlitt when he was touched
to the heart by Edmund Kean's rendering of the words of the remorseful
Moor, "Fool, fool, fool!" Why, the action of a player who knows how to
convey to the audience that he is listening to another speaking, can
not only help in the illusion of the general effect, but he himself
can suggest a running commentary on what is spoken. In every moment
in which he is on the stage, an actor accomplished in his craft can
convey ideas to the mind.
It is in the representation of passion that the intention of the actor
appears in its greatest force. He wishes to do a particular thing, and
so far the wish is father to the thought that the brain begins to work
in the required direction, and the emotional faculties and the whole
nervous and muscular systems follow suit. A skilled actor can count on
this development of power, if it be given to him to rise at all to the
height of a passion; and the inspiration of such moments may, now and
again, reveal to him some new force or beauty in the character which
he represents. Thus he will gather in time a certain habitual strength
in a particular representation of passion. Diderot laid down a theory
that an actor never feels the part he is acting. It is of course true
that the pain he suffers is not real pain, but I leave it to any one
who has ever felt his own heart touched by the woes of another to say
if he can even imagine a case where the man who follows in minutest
detail the history of an emotion, from its inception onward, is the
only one who cannot be stirred by it—more especially when his own
individuality must perforce be merged in that of the archetypal
sufferer. Talma knew that it was possible for an actor to feel to the
full a simulated passion, and yet whilst being swept by it to retain
his consciousness of his surroundings and his purpose. In his own
words—"The intelligence accumulates and preserves all the creations
of sensibility." And this is what Shakespeare means when he makes
Hamlet tell the players—"for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I
may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must beget a temperance that
may give it smoothness."
How can any one be temperate in the midst of his passion, lest it be
that his consciousness and his purpose remain to him? Let me say that
it is this very discretion which marks the ultimate boundary of an
Art, which stands within the line of demarcation between Art and
Nature. In Nature there is no such discretion. Passion rules supreme
and alone; discretion ceases, and certain consequences cease to be any
deterrent or to convey any warning. It must never be forgotten that
all Art has the aim or object of seeming and not of being; and that to
understate is as bad as to overstate the modesty or the efflorescence
of Nature. It is not possible to show within the scope of any Art the
entire complexity and the myriad combining influences of Nature.
The artist has to accept the conventional standard—the accepted
significance—of many things, and confine himself to the exposition of
that which is his immediate purpose. To produce the effect of reality
it is necessary, therefore, that the efforts of an artist should be
slightly different from the actions of real life. The perspective
of the stage is not that of real life, and the result of seeming
is achieved by means which, judged by themselves, would seem to be
indirect. It is only the raw recruit who tries to hit the bull's-eye
by point-blank firing, and who does not allow for elevation and
windage. Are we to take it for a moment, that in the Art of Acting,
of which elocution is an important part, nothing is to be left to the
individual idea of the actor? That he is simply to declaim the words
set down for him, without reference to the expression of his face,
his bearing, or his action? It is in the union of all the powers—the
harmony of gait and utterance and emotion—that conviction lies.
Garrick, who was the most natural actor of his time, could not declaim
so well as many of his own manifest inferiors in his art—nay, it
was by this that he set aside the old false method, and soared to the
heights in which, as an artist, he reigned supreme. Garrick personated
and Kean personated. The one had all the grace and mastery of the
powers of man for the conveyance of ideas, the other had a mighty
spirit which could leap out in flame to awe and sweep the souls of
those who saw and heard him. And the secret of both was that they best
understood the poet—best impersonated the characters which he drew,
and the passions which he set forth.
In order to promote and preserve the idea of reality in the minds of
the public, it is necessary that the action of the play be set in what
the painters call the proper milieu, or atmosphere. To this belongs
costume, scenery, and all that tends to set forth time and place other
than our own. If this idea be not kept in view there must be, or at
all events there may be, some disturbing cause to the mind of the
onlooker. This is all—literally all—that dramatic Art imperatively
demands from the paint room, the wardrobe, and the property shop;
and it is because the public taste and knowledge in such matters have
grown that the actor has to play his part with the surroundings and
accessories which are sometimes pronounced to be a weight or drag
on action. Suitability is demanded in all things; and it must, for
instance, be apparent to all that the things suitable to a palace are
different to those usual in a hovel. There is nothing unsuitable in
Lear in kingly raiment in the hovel in the storm, because such is here
demanded by the exigencies of the play: but if Lear were to be first
shown in such guise in such a place with no explanation given of the
cause, either the character or the stage-manager would be simply taken
for a madman. This idea of suitability should always be borne in mind,
for it is in itself a sufficient answer to any thoughtless allegation
as to overloading a play with scenery.
Finally, in the consideration of the Art of Acting, it must never be
forgotten that its ultimate aim is beauty. Truth itself is only an
element of beauty, and to merely reproduce things vile and squalid and
mean is a debasement of Art. There is apt to be such a tendency in
an age of peace, and men should carefully watch its manifestations. A
morose and hopeless dissatisfaction is not a part of a true national
life. This is hopeful and earnest, and, if need be, militant. It is a
bad sign for any nation to yearn for, or even to tolerate, pessimism
in its enjoyment; and how can pessimism be other than antagonistic
to beauty? Life, with all its pains and sorrows, is a beautiful and
a precious gift; and the actor's Art is to reproduce this beautiful
thing, giving due emphasis to those royal virtues and those stormy
passions which sway the destinies of men. Thus the lesson given by
long experience—by the certain punishment of ill-doing—and by the
rewards that follow on bravery, forbearance, and self-sacrifice, are
on the mimic stage conveyed to men. And thus every actor who is more
than a mere machine, and who has an ideal of any kind, has a duty
which lies beyond the scope of his personal ambition. His art must
be something to hold in reverence if he wishes others to hold it in
esteem. There is nothing of chance about this work. All, actors and
audience alike, must bear in mind that the whole scheme of the higher
Drama is not to be regarded as a game in life which can be played with
varying success. Its present intention may be to interest and amuse,
but its deeper purpose is earnest, intense, sincere.
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