SOME OF OUR ACTORS.
IT is often claimed that the acting of the present day is more genuine and natural than that of former generations, and that the modern stage, breaking up the old conventional models, has sent the actor to nature instead of tradition for his authority and inspiration. But it is a great mistake to confound the "free-and-easy" style of our day with that which we call "nature,"—a style immeasurably inferior to that consummate art which conceals art, and which was once the grace and glory of the stage. It is not enough for the dramatic art to imitate nature. "Let us have on the stage men and women just as we find them off the stage," is the current demand. Art is not imitation. If it were merely that, a wax figure in a pea-jacket would be finer than the Greek Slave.
"I have met," said a veteran poet in my hearing once, "a good many actors who could spell, some who could write, but very few who could read." A finished delivery is rare, indeed—that nice and accurate lodgment of emphasis, with the proper inflections, giving each word its due prominence and relation to every other. It illuminates the author and sets his meaning, as it were, on a hill; it renders even indifferent passages luminous, eloquent, and full of expression. Those who have heard Ellen Tree read "She never told her love," will know what I mean.
A "pre-Raphaelite realism," in the nonsensical cant in fashion with some people, is claimed for the modern actors, which the elder schools did not exhibit. What is this "realism?" When, a few years ago, Matilda Heron was turning the heads of the town, we all heard extravagant praise of her realism, her "truth," her "fidelity to nature." Yet the stage never saw a more artificial actor, intensely elaborate, full of poses, and full of mannerisms. We found her out in time, and she is now coldly neglected. She lacked the old-time professional art. She was only successful in a few rôles in which her peculiar talent and individuality had scope; her triumphs were measured by the range of her genius and limited by the incompleteness of her art. Her Camille was a great success, because she really employed in it a very consummate art—unfortunately, however, it was borrowed. For a hundred nights, she watched a famous Parisian actress in the part, and reproduced every detail of her model's business.
There is trickery enough in many modern reputations. Suppose that I am small, that I am wiry, that my voice is thin and poor but I discover I can beat all the world in laughing and crying. I have a
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