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CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THIS BOOK IS ONE OF A 
 COLLECTION MADE BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 183,4-1919 
 
 AND BEQUEATHED TO 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
THE 
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF ACTING 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 ENGLISH DRAMATISTS OF TO-DAY. 
 
 HENRY IRVING : Actor and Manager. 
 
 ABOUT THE THEATRE : Essays and 
 Studies. 
 
MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 A STUDY 
 
 IN THE 
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF ACTING 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM ARCHER 
 
 LONDON 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK : 15 EAST le"" STREET 
 1888 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
n^ 
 
 TS-^ 
 
 / 
 
 4 ^- h L L 
 
 PRINTED BV 
 SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Introductory i 
 
 II. Historical 12 
 
 III. The ' Paeadoxe "' 20 
 
 IV. ' StjNT Lacryils Rerum' . . . . ••37 
 V. ' Et Mentem Mo rt alia Tango nt' . . .76 
 
 VI. The Life School . . 98 
 
 VII. The Passion of Laughter 105 
 
 VIII. Nature's Cosmetics . . . . , . . 116 
 
 IX. ' Autosuggestion ' and ' Innervation ' . . 133 
 
 X. The Brownie^ of the Brain ,, 150 
 
 XI. ' Damnable Iteration ' 173 
 
 XII. The Spur- of the Moment. " 177 
 
 XIII. To Resume 19S 
 
 Appendix . ,. 211 
 
 Key to References 225 
 
 Index 228 
 
"^^ MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 To the average intellect, nothing is so alluring as a 
 paradox. The reason is simple : in accepting a para- 
 dox, the average intellect feels that it has risen above 
 the average. Any fool can believe what is possible 
 and probable, but it demands no ordinary gifts, 
 whether mental or spiritual, to believe what is absurd. 
 How ' many an old philosophy ' has been based, like 
 an inverted pyramid, on an almost imperceptible 
 point of paradox ! How many a world-embracing 
 creed has sprung from a tiny contradiction in terms ! 
 What is a miracle, indeed, but a paradox in action ? 
 He who has seen a table dancing a hornpipe, or 
 an elderly gentleman reclining on the ceiling in- 
 stead of on the sofa, naturally feels a certain supe- 
 riority over the humdrum folk who have seen no 
 miracles save those of Mr. Maskelyne. And if it 
 seems a distinguished thing to believe a paradox, 
 what must it be to invent one ? Surely the summit 
 of human ambition. 
 
 B 
 
MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Oxberjy, 
 p. 223 
 
 The Voice, 
 X. J^o. 3 
 
 L'Artetle 
 Comidien, 
 p. 24 
 
 The paradoxes of philosophy generally prove, on 
 analysis, to be contradictions in terms ; those of art, 
 on the other hand, are more often truisms turned 
 inside out This I believe to be a fair description of 
 Diderot's celebrated Paradoxe sur le ComMien. It 
 undoubtedly contains a great deal of truth ; but in 
 so far as it is true it is not paradoxical. The paradox 
 is brought in, sometimes in the shape of sheer over- 
 statement, more often by means of a little nimble 
 jugglery with ambiguous terms and misleading ana- 
 logies. In his arguments from analogy, Diderot does 
 not rise to the fine frenzy of some of his fellow- 
 theorists. ' We no more think feeling a necessary 
 ingredient in acting,' cries one, ' than we should deem 
 it expedient for a painter, after he had finished a like- 
 ness upon the canvas, to represent the heart, liver, 
 brains, and the internal formation, on the back of it' 
 Another — this time an American — executes a still 
 more surprising feat of logical legerdemain. *? Did 
 Rosa Bonheur,' he asks, with withering emphasis, ' feel 
 like a horse-fair when she painted her great picture 
 on that subject ? . Or did Longfellow feel like " foot- 
 prints on the sands of time " when he wrote that line 
 of the Psabn of Life ? ' Diderot would no doubt 
 admit that the zeal of these disciples outruns their 
 discretion ; yet they merely burlesque some of his 
 own arguments. 
 
 Not even the firmest believer in Diderot — not even 
 M. Coquelin, who says, ' Je tiens que ce paradoxe est 
 la verity m^me ' — will deny that the philosopher 
 founded his doctrine on slender evidence. A few 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 anecdotes, of doubtful interpretation, are all that he 
 advances in support of it, and Grimm expressly tells 
 us that for years before he formulated his theory he 
 had gone but rarely to the theatre. ' Able as he was,' 
 a distinguished actress writes to me, ' Diderot, both in 
 his Paradoxe and elsewhere, spoke without that inti- 
 mate knowledge which only actors of the highest 
 order can possess.' For a fruitful discussion of the 
 points at issue, the interlocutors should be, not, as in 
 Diderot's dialogue, a dogmatic ' First ' and a docile 
 ' Second,' (but a trained psychologist and an expe- 
 rienced and versatile actor) Mr. H. D. Traill, in his 
 New Lucian, has given imaginary effect to this idea 
 in a suggestive dialogue between George Henry Lewes 
 and David Garrick. Had these two men ever met in 
 the flesh, with a stenographer behind the screen, their 
 colloquy would certainly have been luminous, if not 
 conclusive. Yet the evidence of one actor, though it 
 were Garrick himself, is obviously insufficient. ( There.. 
 a re excep tional temperaments as_well__as_^cepJ:jor).al 
 talents, and no one man is entitled to make a dogma 
 of his own ej^enences and methods^ We want to 
 arrive'^aTthgla^ws'wIucE'govern the average or typical 
 niimetic temperament ; and to this end we must study 
 as large a circle as possible of individual cases. 
 Imagine David Hume in the green-room of Garrick's 
 Drury Lane, with a royal commission to cross-examine 
 His Majesty's Servants severally and collectively, and 
 you have a nearer approach to the ideal conditions of 
 inquiry. 
 
 The discussion is not of the first importance ; but 
 
MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 since it has been started, and has led (in my judg- 
 ment) to much false logic and empty paradox- 
 mongering, I have long thought that, in the interests 
 of ' lucidity,' a careful investigation should be at- 
 tempted. I am but an amateur psychologist, and 
 the reasonings contained in the following pages may 
 often stand in need of revision ; but at least I have 
 brought together a far larger body of evidence than 
 has hitherto been presented. 
 
 My endeavour has been to collect, both from 
 biographical records and from the communications of 
 living artists, the views and experiences of ' actors of 
 the highest order.' I believe, however, that not only 
 ' actors of the highest order,' but every intelligent 
 artist who studies himself and others, has a right to 
 be heard upon the questions at issue. I have there- 
 fore drawn no invidious distinction between the 
 greater and the lesser lights of the theatrical firma- 
 ment, but have accepted for what it is worth every 
 ray of illumination that has reached me. Diderot 
 might object that his theory applies only to the 
 greatest actors ; that he does not deny that second- 
 rate actors feel and depend on feeling ; nay, that he 
 expressly affirms it If we define the great actor as 
 ' he who does not feel,' all controversy is of course at 
 an end, for Diderot is safe in the inexpugnable fortress 
 of a circular argument. But if we define the great 
 actor as ' he who powerfully affects his audiences ' ; 
 if we learn that many of the greatest actors (in this 
 sense) confess to feeling acutely, and are observed by. 
 themselves and others to exhibit many symptoms of 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 acute feeling, some of which are quite involuntary, 
 and are of no direct use in heightening the illusion ; 
 if we discover that in all grades of the art the majority 
 of players find by experience that they tend to pro- 
 duce a better effect when they play from the heart 
 than when they play from the head alone ; if we can 
 find, in certain laws of mental and physical action 
 and reaction, a rational explanation of this tendency ; 
 and if we can ascertain with tolerable clearness the 
 artistic checks and limitations to which it must be 
 subjected — then, surely, we shall have made a con- 
 siderable breach even in the irregular and baffling 
 bastions of Diderot's position. To this end we should 
 hear not only Hamlet but the Player King, not only 
 Romeo and Juliet but Friar Laurence and the Fiery 
 Tybalt. ^ 
 
 The Editor of Longmaiis Magazine most court- 
 eously did all in his power to further my inquiry, 
 and considerable portions of the present work first 
 appeared in the numbers of that Magazine for 
 January, February, and March 1 888, under the title 
 of The Anatomy of Acting. 
 
 In setting about the investigation, my first effort 
 was, of course, to get rid of ambiguities. To ask, ' Do 
 you feel in acting ? ' or ' Do you identify yourself with 
 the characters you represent ? ' or ' Do you find sensi- 
 bility an advantage or a disadvantage ? ' would only 
 be to obscure the issue. It would have required a 
 whole treatise to define, with anything like precision, 
 the meaning I proposed to attach to these phrases, 
 
MASKS OR FACES t 
 
 and I could not reasonably expect my obliging in- 
 formants to study a disquisition on psychology. More- 
 over, even if I had succeeded in defining my terms, 
 it would have been folly to expect in the general run 
 of actors such habits of minute and accurate intro- 
 spection as would enable them to give a lucid and 
 trustworthy account of their experience. How, then, 
 could I hope to arrive at practical results? Clearly, 
 by confining my queries to outward symptoms, while 
 reserving to myself the task of interpretation. A tear, 
 a blush, or a tremor is an external, visible, sensible 
 fact ; an instance of presence or absence of mind is a 
 subject for ordinary testimony ; a device or process for 
 gaining a particular artistic end can be observed and 
 described like any other action or series of actions. It 
 was to these external details that I directed my in- 
 formants' attention. I neither expected nor desired, 
 of course, that they should refrain from stating their 
 own inferences and interpretations, but it was the facts 
 themselves with which I was chiefly concerned. These 
 once collected in sufficient numbers, I trusted that 
 by' comparing, classifying, and interpreting them I 
 might throw some light on the mental processes in- 
 volved in mimetic art. 
 
 The interrogatory which I originally issued will 
 be found in the Appendix. Subsequent experience 
 showed that it was not so aptly wo^ed and arranged 
 as it might have bten ; nevertheless it served its pur- 
 pose. My own criticisms on it are implied in the 
 alterations I made when preparing the French ver- 
 sion (also reprinted in the Appendix), for which I am 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 indebted to my friend Miss Blanche J. Taylor, of 
 Paris. 
 
 How comes it, the reader may ask, since the ques- 
 tions were translated into French, that the experiences 
 of living French actors are so meagrely represented ? 
 In explaining this, I shall be able to answer incident- 
 ally one or two objections to my method of inquiry. 
 
 As I could scarcely expect the leading artists of 
 France to be at the pains of answering an interroga- 
 tory issued by an unknown Englishman, I forwarded 
 to M. Francisque Sarcey a proof of my pamphlet, 
 expressing a hope that he would call attention to it 
 in his feuilleton in Le Temps. M. Sarcey, to whom 
 my name was not quite unknown, met this request 
 with a polite but firm refusal. ' Je regarde le procdd^,' 
 he wrote, ' qui est am^ricain, comme fScheux i la 
 critique et a Fart' I made no attempt, of x:ourse, to 
 alter M. Sarcey's determination, but I respectfully 
 laid before him my own view of the ' proc^dd' It was 
 this : The inquiry has no bearing whatever on criti- 
 cism, which is concerned with the effect produced, not 
 with the phenomena accompanying its production.(^ If 
 an actor can convincingly represent emotion, the critic, 
 as a critic, need not inquire whether he experiences 
 or mechanically simulates iti But criticism is one 
 thing, the psychology of art another ; and to this the 
 question at, issue belongs. It is more curious than 
 important, granted ; but several eminent men, from 
 Diderot to Mr. Irving, have held it worth discussion, 
 so that an attempt to inquire into it systematically 
 
MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 can scarcely be altogether idle. Nor is it quite with- 
 out practical importance. Sensibility can be culti- 
 vated or it can be crushed, like any other gift of 
 nature. It is quite conceivable that a young actor 
 may help or hinder the due development of his powers 
 by starting with a right or with a wrong theory as 
 to the artistic value of real emotion. Idiosyncracy, 
 indeed, will generally deterniine his theory, but sheer 
 intellectual conviction may not be without its effect. 
 
 It is true — and this may have been in M. Sarcey's 
 mind — that by concentrating attention on individual 
 symptoms of emotion the spectator may become 
 insensible to the whole emotional impression of a 
 performance. He ' cannot see the wood for trees.' 
 While in the thick of my inquiry, I was conscious 
 that this preoccupation displaced my point of view, 
 so to speak, and interfered with my normal recep- 
 tiveness. In my own case, the effect has already 
 quite worn off; and I can scarcely fear (or hope) that 
 the reader of the following pages will find his mental 
 attitude towards the stage seriously or permanently 
 affected by the considerations they suggest If this 
 book were in the hands of every playgoer, if the 
 questions it discusses were vividly present to the 
 minds of any large percentage of an average audience, 
 then indeed my inquiry might be ' ficheux a la 
 critique et a I'art' Such a disaster, I own, would 
 have its consolations for me, if not for M. Sarcey. 
 The fear of it, at any rate, does not disturb my sleep 
 o' nights. 
 
 Repulsed by M. Sarcey, I applied to another 
 
INTRODUCTORY 9 
 
 distinguished Parisian critic, but he too declined to 
 assist me. I do not mention his name, because the 
 reasons he gave were more frank than flattering to 
 the artists whose work he criticises. He did not 
 
 believe, he said, t hat my inquiry would lead to any 
 trttstworthylreiuTtrb ecausefew actors had the intelli- 
 gence, and none {ETsin cerity, to answerj B:ia3JULiesticins,. 
 afight: Thia obJeiclTon'has ^eenurged in more than 
 one quarter; indeed Diderot himself advances it. 
 ' You may prove my theory to demonstration,' he 
 says, ' and a great actor will decline to acknowledge 
 it ; it is his secret. A middling actor or a novice is 
 sure to contradict you flatly.' The experience of 
 actors gained in the course of my investigation leads 
 me to dissent entirely from Diderot and my Parisian 
 correspondent. My questions were answered, whether 
 verbally or in writing, always, I believe, with perfect 
 sincerity, and generally, I am sure, with perfect in- 
 telligence. When it happened that a question was 
 misunderstood, the fault, as a rule, was mine rather 
 than my informant's. Some, of course, answered with 
 more insight, more precision, in short more ability, 
 than others ; but I seldom received a reply that was 
 altogether beside the mark. Many artists to whom 
 I sent my ' catechism ' lacked time or inclination to 
 respond ; but of those who favoured me with their 
 experience not one proved deficient either in intelli- 
 gence or in earnestness. On the latter point, of course, 
 my opinion must be taken for what it is worth, 
 sincerity being, in the nature of things, incapable of 
 proof. I had now and then to allow for the ' personal 
 
MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 equation,' but of wilful insincerity I discovered no 
 trace. Where, indeed, is the motive for it? Once 
 upon a time there might have been a tacit conspiracy 
 among actors to keep what Diderot calls ' their secret ' 
 and prevent the outside public from suspecting the 
 hollowness of their emotional displays. If this trick 
 of the trade was ever practised, it has obviously broken 
 down. Great actors — a few, but a very respectable 
 few— proclaim the ' secret ' to the four winds of heaven ;: 
 middling actors, so far from 'flatly contradicting' 
 Diderot, are found to swear by him. Diderot himself 
 has made insensibility honourable. It is an unmis- 
 takable distinction to belong to the intellectual few 
 who act from the brain alone. If there is any motive 
 for insincerity, it now operates in Diderot's favour ; 
 but, though constantly on my guard, I discovered 
 no trace of wilful deception in either sense. My 
 informants even resisted the temptations to levity 
 which, I admit, were offered them. 
 
 The attitude of M. Sarcey and his colleague 
 convinced me that there was little hope of obtaining 
 answers from the leading artists of Paris. Accord- 
 ingly I did not issue my French interrogatory. Only 
 , one or two stray copies of it found their way across 
 the Channel. 
 
 As loose quotation too often introduces confusion 
 and error into arguments of this nature, I have in 
 almost all cases given exact references to my autho- 
 rities. I have also done my best to trace anecdotes 
 to their sources, and to avoid the more or less garbled 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 u 
 
 forms which they are apt, in course of time, to assume. 
 In this I have not always succeeded. Anecdote- 
 tracking is a difficult sport, and those who have most 
 experience of it will most readily excuse an occasional 
 failure to follow up the true scent. I do not pretend 
 to have ransacked thoroughly the theatrical literature 
 even of England and France for evidence upon the 
 points under discussion. A complete collection of 
 the documents in the case -would fill ten volumes 
 rather than one. All I can hope to have accomplished 
 is a fairly representative selection of anecdotes and 
 opinions. Where no reference is given, the reader 
 will please understand me to draw upon manuscript 
 authorities in my own possession — either notes of 
 interviews or written answers to my printed questions. 
 In quoting from the Paradoxe I have always referred 
 to Mr. Walter Herries Pollock's useful translation, 
 but I have in some cases given my own rendering of 
 Diderot's text, for the sake either of brevity or of 
 literalness. I am further indebted to Mr. Pollock for 
 allowing me to make use of his copy of Sticotti's very 
 rare booklet, the peg on which the Paradoxe is hung. 
 After a careful search for less cumbrous expres- 
 sions, I have been forced to fall back upon the terms 
 ' emotionalist ' and ' anti-emotionalist ' to indicate the 
 contending parties in this dispute. They are pain- 
 fully clumsy ; but the choice seemed to lie between 
 them and still clumsier circumlocutions. 
 
 Ltmdon : 
 Chatto 6* 
 
 1883 
 
MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 Post, pp. 
 41. 78, 167 
 
 CHAPTER ir. 
 
 HISTORICAL. 
 
 The controversy is entirely modem. The ancients, 
 so far as I can discover, had no Diderot. They have 
 left us a few anecdotes and remarks (to be quoted 
 hereafter) all tending to show that the emotional 
 theory held the field unquestioned. Far more explicit 
 and weighty are the utterances of Shakespeare, who, 
 as it seems to me, went to the root of this matter 
 and has said what might well have -been the last 
 words upon it But in his time there was no con- 
 troversy. The emotional theory, under due restric- 
 tions, was accepted as self-evident It was in France, 
 about the middle of last century, that the present 
 dispute arose. 
 
 In 1747, Remond (or Remond) de Sainte-Albine, 
 one of the editors of the Mercure de France, published 
 a treatise called Le ConiMien. It discussed in a 
 rambling and unsystematic fashion the qualifications 
 necessary for an actor, together with certain questions 
 of technique. M. Remond was an emotionalist, 
 thorough-going and unashamed. He writes as though 
 the need for ' sensibility ' had never been called in 
 question. His effort is to determine the precise 
 
HISTORICAL 
 
 13 
 
 admixture of ' understanding,' ' sensibility,' and ' fire ' 
 requisite for the perfect actor ; but the idea of alto- 
 gether banishing sensibility never enters his head. 
 The following extract from his table of contents is 
 sufficient to show that he carried his emotionalism to 
 the verge of absurdity : — 
 
 'LiVRE II.: Section I. 
 
 ' Chapitre I. — La gaietd est absolument ndcessaire aux 
 Com^diens, dont I'emploi est de nous faire rire. 
 
 ' Chap. 1 1. — Quiconque n'a point I'^me dievde, reprd- 
 sente mal un h6ros. 
 
 ' Chap. III. — Si toutes les personnes de Theatre ont 
 besoin de senthnent, celles qui se proposent de 
 nous faire repandre des larmes, ont plus besoin 
 que les autres de la partie du sentiment, d&ignde 
 commundment sous le nom d'entrailles. 
 
 ' Chap. IV. — Les personnes ndes pour aimer de- 
 vroient avoir seules le privilege de jouer les r61es 
 d'Amans. 
 
 Such propositions as these appear to me, I confess, 
 not only to touch, but to overshoot, the verge of 
 absurdity ; yet I hesitate to dismiss contemptuously 
 a book which Lessing mentions with respect. 
 
 Near the close of his Paradoxe, Diderot remarks : — 
 ' For the rest, the question I am diving into was once 
 before started between a middling man of letters, 
 Remond de Sainte-Albine, and a great actor, Ric- 
 coboni. The man of letters pleaded the cause of 
 sensibility ; the actor took up my case. The story 
 is one which has only just come to my knowledge.' 
 
14 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Capitolo 
 Secando 
 
 Paris, 1738 
 P. 20 
 
 It is evident that Diderot speaks from hearsay, not 
 having himself seen the documents ; and I think Jhe 
 confounds Luigi Riccoboni the father with Frai^gois 
 Riccoboni the son. The father, who alone could be 
 called a great actor, was an uncompromising emo- 
 tionalist He published in London, in 1725, a poem 
 entitled DelP Arte Rappresentativa : Capitoli Sei, 
 dedicated ' A Sua Eccellenza My Lord Chesterfield.' 
 He was too intent on his triple rhymes to make his 
 doctrine very clear or exhaustive ; but on the question 
 of sensibility the following passage is perfectly ex- 
 plicit : — 
 
 Per seguitare il naturale instinto 
 
 E moversi senz' Arte or che s' ha a fare 
 Scordare i quatro membrij; e forse il quinto, 
 Che h la Testa ; ma si ben cercare 
 Di sentire la cosa, che ci esponi, 
 Che si creda esser tuo 1' altrui afFare. 
 D' Amor, di Sdegno, o Gelosia li sproni 
 Se al Cor tu provi, o s' anco pur sarai 
 Oual Orreste invasato da Demoni ; 
 E I'Amore, e lo Sdegno sentirai, 
 E Gelosia, e Belzebu germani, 
 Senz' Arte braccia, e gambe moverai. 
 Ed io scommetterei, e piedi, e mani, 
 Che un sol non troverai, che ti censuri 
 Fra tutti quanti li fidei Christian! 
 Se con il Cuore i tuoi moti misuri. 
 
 Again, in his Penshs sur la Declamation, Riccoboni 
 warns the orator not to work up tears, but to make 
 no effort to repress them if they arise naturally. 
 ' Sentir ce que Von dit' he says emphatically, ' voila 
 les tons de rdtne.' Frangois Riccoboni, on the other 
 hand, after due protestations of perfect filial respect. 
 
HISTORICAL 
 
 IS 
 
 takes the liberty of flatly contradicting his father. In 
 ras book called L'Art du Theatre he maintains the 
 necessity of absolutely repressing the physical sym- 
 ptoms of emotion. He gives two reasons : the diffi- 
 culty of governing the voice, and the impossibility of 
 -passing from one passion to another with the rapidity 
 required under the artificial conditions of the stage./ 
 ' S'il tombe una seule larme de vos yeux,' he says, 
 ' des sanglots involontaires vous embarrasseront ' le 
 gosier, et il vous sera Impossible de profi^rer un seul 
 mot sans des hocquets ridicules. Si vous devez alors 
 passer subitement a la plus grande colere, cela vous 
 sera-t-il possible ? Non, sans doute.' In these argu- 
 ments Diderot is clearly, though incompletely, anti- 
 cipated. It appears that Riccoboni's work was written 
 before Sainte-Albine's, though published later ; other- 
 wise he might have gone into the question more fully. 
 He seems to have published a second treatise on the 
 same subject some years later, but I have not been 
 able to procure it. As Diderot professes to have no 
 personal knowledge of Riccoboni's productions, they 
 do not enter into the genealogy of his ideas. 
 
 Paradox begets paradox ; and we could scarcely 
 have a wilder paradox than the assertion that none 
 but a magnanimous man can act magnanimity, and 
 that lovers alone can do justice to a love-scene. 
 Sainte-Albine's budget of paradoxes was the direct 
 progenitor of Diderot's, though there are two inter- 
 mediate stages in the pedigree. Three years after 
 Le ComMien appeared in Paris, an anonymous Eng- 
 lishman published an adaptation of it under the title 
 
i6 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 London, 
 1750 
 
 Linve,f. 2 
 
 Feb. P, 
 1749-50 
 
 of The Actor: a Treatise on the Art of Playing. 
 The book has generally been attributed to Aaron 
 Hill, the adaptor of Voltaire's Zaire, Alsire, and 
 M^rope; but as the sequel, published in 1755, is 
 expressly stated to be 'written by the Author of 
 the former,' and contains allusions to events which 
 occurred after Aaron Hill's death, this attribution must 
 be incorrect. Whoever the author may have been, he 
 made as little as possible of his obligations to Sainte- 
 Albine, mentioning them in such ambiguous terms that 
 their true nature seems to have escaped notice from 
 that day to this. As a matter of fact, the whole theo- 
 retical portion of The Actor is simply translated from 
 Le ComMien. For example, the chapter-headings 
 quoted above are literally reproduced, as well as the 
 arguments they summarise. The adaptation, however, 
 is, if not an abler, at least a more entertaining book than 
 the original. Sainte-Albine dealt far more in precept 
 than in example. Indeed he is curiously chary of 
 anecdote and illustration. The adaptor, on the other 
 hand, lost no opportunity of pointing his moral by 
 references to the plays and actors of his own day — 
 Quin, Garrick, Barry, Mossop, Macklin ; Mrs. Gibber, 
 Mrs. Pritchard, Peg Woffington, and Kitty Clive. We 
 are indebted to him for some of our clearest informa- 
 tion as to the methods of the ' palmy days.' In 175S, 
 as I have said, a sequel or second edition was pub- 
 lished, under the same title. It professed to be ' A 
 New Work. . . . Adapted to the Present State of the 
 Theatres,' but was in truth a mere recapitulation 
 of the former argument, with some new anecdotes 
 
HISTORICAL 
 
 17 
 
 inserted. Though his use of Sainte-Albine's work 
 showed a deficiency in psychological acumen as well 
 as in literary ethics, the nameless' writer (' an author 
 unknown to you, and who shall ever remain so ') was 
 certainly no fool. He was well read ; he wrote a very 
 fair style ; and, theories apart, he was an excellent 
 critic of acting. 
 
 Here the matter miy be said to have rested for 
 fourteen years, until, in 1769, Antonio Fabio Sticotti, 
 who seems to have been an actor of the Italian com- 
 pany in Paris,* bethought him to re-adapt into French 
 the English adaptation of Sainte-Albine's work. 
 Sticotti, however, seems to have had no suspicion that 
 The Actor was not entirely original. The fact that 
 he makes no mention of Sainte-Albine might possibly 
 be due to an underhand design of giving his book a 
 false air of novelty ; but in that case he would cer- 
 tainly have taken some pains to lessen the similarity 
 between the two treatises. As it is, Garrick, ou les 
 Acteurs Anglois bears the most evident marks of its 
 descent: a similar design, similar theories, similar 
 arguments. For instance, the four chapter-headings 
 quoted on p. 1 3 are replaced by the following, unnum- 
 bered, but in the same order : — 
 
 ' De la Gaiety necessaire a I'Acteur Comique.' 
 
 ' De la Noblesse d'ame necessaire a I'Acteur 
 Tragique.' 
 
 ^ De la Tendresse. 
 
 ' Du Penchant a I'Amour.' 
 
 Sticotti, indeed, gave most of his attention to the 
 ' On the Sticotti family, see Campardon, ii. p. 144. 
 
 C 
 
 Ed. 1770, 
 //. 128-145 
 
MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 anecdotic side of his English original, translating 
 many anecdotes, and (in foot-notes) adding parallel 
 cases from French stage history. Thus Sainte-Albine 
 himself might not at the first glance have recog- 
 nised in Garrick a grandson of his own CotnMien. 
 Amid all changes, however, his emotional extrava- 
 gances were faithfully reproduced ; and it is to 
 these that we owe the anti-emotional extravagances 
 
 Assizat, 
 xix. p. 387 
 
 Ass^zat, 
 viii. p. 339 
 
 Ed. 1770, 
 
 of Diderot and his followers. In a letter to Mdlle. 
 Jodin, dated some years before the appearance of 
 Garrick, we find Diderot expressing himself a con- 
 vinced emotionalist. ' Si, quand vous etes sur le thea- 
 tre,' he writes, ' vous ne croyez pas etre seule, tout est 
 perdu. . . . Un acteur qui n'a que du sens et du juge- 
 ment est froid ; celui qui n'a que de la verve et de la 
 sensibility est fou. C'est un certain temp^rarnent de 
 bon sens et de chaleur qui fait I'homme sublime ; et 
 sur la scene et dans le monde, celui qui montre plus 
 qu'il ne sent, fait rire au lieu de toucher.' After this, 
 we can scarcely be wrong in attributing the extreme 
 anti-emotionalism of his later position to the reaction 
 begotten by emotionalist excesses. 
 
 Sticotti's work became highly popular. At least 
 three editions were published in three consecutive years, 
 and a German translation appeared in 1771. The 
 German translator may have been put on the track of 
 the booklet by a somewhat elaborate criticism of its 
 theories contributed by Diderot, in 1770, to Monsieur 
 Grimm's Correspondance. ' Un homme illustre dans les 
 Lettres,* ' says Sticotti in his preface, ' aim6 autant 
 ♦ Monsieur Diderot. — [Sticotti's note]. 
 
HISTORICAL 19 
 
 qu'estimd pour sa politesse et rhumanit^ de ses 
 sentimens, a bien voulu m'avouer que mon livre lui 
 avoit fait nattre de bonnes idhs. Je conviens que s'il 
 m'etlt itt permis de les employer, j'aurois Hi certain de 
 reunir tous les suffrages de mes Lecteurs.' Little did 
 he think that Diderot's ' good ideas,' which, with polite 
 contempt perhaps, he insisted on keeping to himself, 
 ran in flat contradiction to the whole tenor of his 
 book. They made ' good copy,' however, for Grimm's 
 princely clients, and the essay contributed to the 
 Correspondance contains the entire gist of the sub- 
 sequent Paradoxe. 
 
 It was probably in 1773 that Diderot remodelled 
 his essay in the form of a dialogue, adding new anec- 
 dotes and instances, but in no way modifying his 
 theoretical position. An allusion to a miraculous 
 actress playing, at seventeen, the heaviest tragic parts, 
 is taken to refer to Mdlle. Raucourt, who made her 
 first appearance September 23, 1772. It has since 
 been discovered that, like other Infant Phenomena, 
 she had remained stationary at sweet seventeen for 
 several years. There are allusions, also, to events 
 which occurred in 1776 and in 1778 ; so that Diderot 
 must evidently have retouched it, perhaps more than 
 once. As was his habit with many of his writings 
 (Ze Neveu de Rameau is a notable instance) he 
 took no steps to publish it. The draft of 1770 was 
 first printed as part of Grimm's Correspojidance 
 between 1812 and 18 14. The completed Paradoxe 
 did not see the light till 1830. 
 
MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE ' PARADOXE.' 
 
 The dialogue, as a form of exposition, has this dis- 
 advantage, that it stimulates the pugnacious, or, more 
 politely speaking, the chivalrous instinct in human 
 nature. One of the disputants invariably goes as a 
 lamb to the slaughter, and his pre-arranged massacre 
 cannot but stir our sympathy. Thus a feeling of 
 antagonism to the writer's argument is aroused by 
 the very form. There is a cat-and-mouse cruelty 
 about the Socratic method against which our sense of 
 justice, nay, of humanity, rebels. 
 
 In few expository dialogues — I need not, surely, 
 insist on the distinction between an exposition in 
 form of argument and a merely fanciful or satirical 
 colloquy — in few expository dialogues do we feel 
 itfae imperfection of the form more keenly than in 
 Diderot's Paradoxe. One of its chief paradoxes 
 is that the second speaker is practically dumb':' 
 He now and then bleats forth a semi-articulate ob- 
 jection ; but he evidently knows that he is there 
 to be slaughtered, and is anxious to get the opera- 
 tion over as soon as possible. Acting upon Grimm's 
 favourite maxim, 'Ne vous expliquez point si vous 
 
THE 'PARADOXE' 
 
 voulez vous entendre,' he never thinks of demand- 
 ing that unpleasant preliminary to all fruitful de- 
 bate : a definition of terms. Why, then, does 
 Diderot, who must have known (none better) that 
 Grimm's maxim was a mere pleasantry, ensconce 
 himself behind it in order to enjoy an empty triumph 
 over an imaginary opponent ? For the very reason, 
 I suspect, that he was not satisfied with his own argu- 
 ment. That he believed himself right in the main is 
 not for a moment doubtful ; but re-reading his hasty 
 sketch of 1770, he felt, I think, the lack of system in 
 his ideas, and chose at once to disguise and to excuse 
 it by recasting the little treatise in dialogue form. 
 He says himself, ' I have not yet arranged my ideas 
 logically.' To have undertaken a systematic psycho- 
 logy of acting would have led him too far afield. 
 He probably did not think the subject worth the 
 trouble. Besides, he wanted to kill two birds with 
 one stone : to refute the heresies of Sticotti (or rather 
 of Sainte-Albine) and to hint at the absurdities of 
 French classic tragedy. That the latter object was 
 present to his mind no one can doubt who reads the 
 Paradoxe carefully, in connection with Diderot's 
 other writings on the drama. He was a ' naturalist ' 
 (I do not mean a Zolaist) born out of due time. He 
 foresaw the modern drama and he believed in it, 
 though his own attempts to realise it were not 
 encouraging. When we find him, then, as in the 
 Paradoxe, assuming throughout that the personages 
 of the stage must necessarily be 'magnified and non-V 
 natural men,' can we help suspecting him of laughing 
 
 Rclluck, 
 /. 8 
 
 Morley, i. 
 
 A 328 
 
MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Pollock, 
 
 p. 12 
 
 in his sleeve ? Yet that is the groundwork of his 
 whole contention, so far as it can be reduced to any 
 sort of unity. Agamemnon and Orestes, Cleopatra 
 and Agrippina, according to his own illustration, are 
 like thfe ghosts which children manufacture with the 
 aid of a sheet, a broomstick, and a gruff voice. These 
 spectres neither move, speak, nor think like men ; 
 why should they weep like men ? That is the gist of 
 the argument, and so far it is logical enough ; though 
 it is not quite clear that a certain thrill of real emotion 
 might not help the actor to rise to the ' magnified 
 and non-natural ' emotion of his personage. But 
 supposing this thesis absolutely right, what does it 
 amount to ? Not a fundamental principle of art, but 
 a commentary (not to say a satire) upon French 
 
 Pollock, 
 p. Z9 
 
 tragedy. And no one, I think, knew this better than 
 Diderot. How else are we to read such a passage as 
 this ?— 
 
 ' Le Second : C'est que peut-etre Racine et Cor- 
 neille, tout grands hommes qu'ils ^talent, n'ont rien 
 fait qui vaille. 
 
 Le Premier : Quel blaspheme ! Qui est-ce qui 
 oserait le prof^rer ? qui est-ce qui oserait y applaudir ? ' 
 
 He was sincere in his admiration for Corneille 
 and Racine, but Lessing himself had scarcely a lower 
 opinion of the form in which they worked. 
 
 I know not how better to display the multitudinous 
 meanings which Diderot attributes to 'sensibility' 
 than by taking the place of ' The Second ' speaker and 
 interjecting a few comments upon the main positions 
 
THE ' PARADOXE' 
 
 23 
 
 of ' The p-irst.' My quotations shall be accurate so 
 far as they go ; if the reader suspects me of doing 
 Diderot injustice in wrenching them from their con- 
 text, he can satisfy himself by referring to the original. 
 
 The First : ' How should Nature without Art 
 make a great actor, since nothing happens on the 
 stage exactly as in nature ? ' 
 
 The Second : Granted ; but no one has ever 
 argued that Nature without Art, or sensibility without 
 training, is sufficient to make a great actor, a good 
 actor, or any sort of actor at all. The emotionalists 
 to a man — Sainte-Albine, the nameless Englishman, 
 and Sticotti-fcinsist strongly on the need for technical 
 accomplishment!^ 
 
 The First : ' What I require of a great actor is 
 penetration and no sensibility ; the art of imitating 
 everything, or, in other words, the same aptitude for 
 every sort of character and part.' 
 
 The Second : (No doubt the ideal actor (the 
 unattainable ideal) is the man who has a perfect apti- 
 tude for every conceivable character — ' a soft mass of 
 sculptor's clay,' as M. Coquelin puts it, ' capable of 
 assuming at will any form.' But what you have to 
 prove is that the lack of sensibility in himself will 
 assist him in imitating the manifestations of sensibility 
 in his characters, and in affecting the sensibilities of 
 his audience. ' 
 
 The First : ' It is not in the stress of the first 
 burst that characteristic traits present themselves. . . . 
 He who comes upon the stage without having his 
 whole action arranged and marked out will be a 
 
 Pollock, 
 t- 5 
 
 Pollock, 
 f. 7 
 
 M. Coque- 
 lin, 
 
 Harper's 
 Magazine, 
 Ixxiv. p. 
 
 Pollock, 
 p. 12 
 
 Pollock, 
 p. 96 
 
MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 beginner all his life. Or if, endowed with intrepidity, 
 confidence, and spirit, he relies on his quickness of 
 wit and the habit of his calling, he will carry you 
 away with his fire and fury, and you will applaud him 
 as an expert in painting may smile at a free sketch 
 where all is indicated and nothing defined.' 
 
 The Second rLHere we come upon one of the 
 most frequent forms in which ' sensibility ' is held to 
 manifest itself — to wit, a tendency to rely on the 
 inspiration of the moment. It is clear that, whether 
 wise or unwise, this is possible only within very narrow 
 limits. In any properly rehearsed play it can apply 
 to nothing but facial expression, gesture, and tones of 
 the voice ; or if to positions and ' business,' then only 
 in scenes in which the player has the stage practically 
 to himself When two or more persons are playing 
 together, their movements can no more be determined 
 on the spur of the moment than can the movements 
 of a watch-wheel. Each is part of a mechanism 
 which the least lack of precision will put out of gear. 
 Only among amateurs, or in the veriest ' scratch ' per- 
 formances, is this rule neglected, and then not from 
 any trust in the virtues of sensibility, but simply from 
 bad stage-management. Diderot admirably states 
 the object of rehearsal to be ' the striking of a balance 
 between the different talents of the actors, so as to 
 establish a general unity in the playing.' This is its 
 final function ; but its first and more obvious purpose 
 is merely to put each of the cog-wheels in its proper 
 place. The watch must be pieced together before it 
 can be regulated. 
 
 Pollock, 
 P 27 
 
THE 'PARADOXE' 
 
 25 
 
 The details which it is possible to leave to inspira- 
 tion are, doubtless, of vast importance, and, as we 
 shall see, the practice of different actors in admitting 
 or excluding the suggestions of the moment varies 
 very widely. But we shall also see that absolute pre- 
 regulation of even the minutest gestures is quite con- 
 sistent with genuine feeling — that is, with the presence 
 in the actor's own organism of the physical symptoms 
 of the emotion he is seeking to express. 
 
 The First : ' These plaintive and sorrowful tones, 
 drawn from the very depth of a mother's heart . . . 
 are these not the result of true feeling ? Are these 
 not the very inspiration of despair ? Not at all ; and 
 the proof is that they are measured, that they form 
 part of a system of declamation, that, raised or lowered 
 by the twentieth part of a quarter of a tone, they ring 
 false.' 
 
 The Second : Precisely ; but is it not the skilful 
 use of that delicate imaginative mechanism called 
 ' sensibility ' which enables the great actress to adjust 
 her vocal cords to this subtle nicety of tone ? 
 
 The First : At the close of a performance ' The 
 actor is tired, you are sad. He has had exertion 
 without feeling, you feeling without exertion. Were 
 it otherwise, the player's lot would be the most 
 wretched on earth ; but he is not the person he repre- 
 sents ; he plays it, and plays it so well that you think 
 he is the person ; the illusion is all on your side ; he 
 knows well enough that he is not the person.' 
 I The Second : Another purely imaginary phase 
 jof sensibility — a tendency to become absolutely 
 
 Post, cliop. 
 xii. 
 
 Post, p. 208 
 
 Pollock, 
 p. 17 
 
 Post, p. 159 
 
26 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 \ 
 
 Johnson 
 
 and 
 
 Kemble, 
 
 Boswell, i 
 p. 243 
 
 Boswell, 
 p. 46 
 
 J 
 
 incarnate in your character, so as to undergo all his/ 
 emotions in their fullest acuteness. Not even Sainte-[ 
 Albine has argued that this is either advisable or 
 possible ; yet it is one of the absurdities which the 
 anti-emotionalists are fondest of setting up and knock- 
 ing down again. ' " Are you, sir [Dr. Johnson asked 
 John Philip Kemble], one of those enthusiasts who be- 
 lieve yourself transformed into the very character you 
 
 - represent ? " Upon Mr. Kemble's answering that he 
 had never felt so strong a persuasion himself ; " To 
 be sure not, sir (said Johnson ;) the thing is impos- 
 sible. And if Garrick really believed himself to be 
 that monster, Richard the Third, he deserved to be 
 hanged every time he performed it" ' 
 
 Diderot's psychology of the audience is surely as 
 false as his psychology of the actor. Here Johnson 
 was in advance of him. ' Nay, you know,' he said, 
 ' nobody imagines that he [the player] is the charac- 
 ter he represents. They say " See Garrick ! how he , 
 looks to-night ! See how he'll clutch the dagger ! " : 
 That is the buz of the theatre.' There is no absolute 
 illusion on either side. Salvini knows as well as the 
 public, and the public knows as well as Salvini, that 
 he is not Othello. Were it otherwise, we could no 
 more endure to see the tragedy than he to act it. 
 
 ^he emotionalist position is that both actor and 
 audience should yield themselves up to the illu- \ 
 sion to a certain extent ; the anti-emotionalist ' 
 position is that the actor will more easily and cer- 
 tainly beget illusion in the audience if he remains 
 entirely free from it himself. \' These, I take it, are 
 
THE 'PARADOXE' 
 
 Salvini 
 Post, p. 145 
 
 Pollock, 
 p. 17 
 
 the opposing theses. To disprove or ridicule a theory 
 which no one has advanced — a theory which implies 
 an absolute transmigration of soul from Richard to 
 Garrick, from Othello to Salvini — is to darken counsel 
 by words without relevance. Salvini, indeed, uses the 
 word ' transmigration,' but he uses it in a figurative, 
 not in a literal and, so to speak, supernatural sense. 
 
 ^HE First (emphatically) : ' Extreme sensibility 
 makes middling actors ; middling sensibility makes the 
 ruck of bad actors ; a complete absence of sensibility 
 
 ; paves the way for the sublime actor. '\ 
 
 The Second : This, at least, is explicit and pre- 
 cise. But beware. Monsieur le Premier ! It is rash 
 for a disputant of your nimbleness to tether himself 
 to a dogma. The chain may gall you ere long. 
 
 The First : ' If this or that actor or actress were 
 as deeply moved as people imagine, do you suppose 
 one would think of casting an eye round the boxes, 
 another of smiling to someone at the wing, and almost 
 all of speaking straight at the pit ? ' Do you suppose 
 that the call-boy would have to interrupt a hearty fit 
 of laughter in the green-room, to tell the laugher that 
 the time has come for him to go on and stab himself? ' 
 The Second : These, you tell me, are common 
 incidents of the player's calling ? So be it. And they 
 indicate absence of sensibility ? Quite so. Are we 
 to understand, then, that the majority of actors are 
 
 .'sublime'? Even at the Theitre-Frangais in 1770 
 
 ' ' Parler au parterre.' I am not sure that this does not refer to the 
 practice of interrupting the play to address the audience, noticed in so 
 many anecdotes. 
 
 Pollock, 
 A 31 
 
28 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 one would rather expect to find the majority ' mid- 
 dling ' along with a fair percentage of the unmistak- 
 ably 'bad.' Now middling actors, according to the 
 dogma, owe their mediocrity to ' extreme sensibility,' 
 while ' middling sensibility ' is the bane of ' the ruck 
 of bad actors.' Hence it ensues that in any given 
 company two or three ' sublime ' players at most 
 should be capable of giving the above-mentioned 
 proof of insensibility, while the majority should be 
 subject to those errors and weaknesses which arise 
 from sensibility, whether middling or extreme. In 
 short, the dogma and the argument do not dovetail. 
 One or other must be abandoned ; and, for my part, I 
 think the argument the fitter to survive. It is quite 
 true that many actors can recognise their friends in 
 the boxes ; quite true that many can indulge in bye- 
 play of all sorts, unnoticed (more or less) by the audi- 
 ence ; quite true that many a player has broken off a 
 burst of laughter in the green-room to go and give 
 himself the happy despatch on the stage. But of 
 these truths we have an obvious explanation, involving 
 no paradox. It is simply that the ruck of middling 
 and bad actors perform their parts mechanically, 
 not feeling, not even understanding them ; While, on 
 the other hand, there is no reason why actors who 
 feel, be they good, bad, or indifferent, should not at 
 the same time have all their wits about them. i 
 
 Post, chap. We shall find hereafter that many of the greatest 
 
 actors remain intent on their character throughout the 
 whole of a performance, even when absent from the 
 stage, and though not, of- course, unconscious of their 
 
THE 'PARADOXE' 
 
 29 
 
 laudience, are neither able nor willing to distinguish 
 1 individuals in front of the house. Sarah Siddons was 
 one of these concentrated players ; Tommaso Salvini is 
 another. According to the dogma, then, Siddons and 
 Salvini should be, not the greatest in their respective 
 spheres, but at best a pair of mediocrities. Is the 
 dogma false ? Or is the world deluded ? 
 
 The First : ' When Ines de Castro was first per- 
 formed, the pit burst out laughing at the point where 
 the children appear. Mile. Duclos, who played Ines, 
 apostrophised the laughers indignantly : " Ris done, 
 sot parterre, au plus bel endroit de la piece. . . ." 
 Quinault-Dufresne plays the part of Severus in Poly- 
 eucte. Sent by the Emperor Decius to persecute the 
 Christians, he confides to a friend his real feelings with 
 regard to that calumniated sect Common sense re- 
 quires that this confidence . . . should be uttered in 
 a low tone. The pit calls to him, " Plus haut ! " He 
 replies to the pit, " Et vous, messieurs, plus bas ! " . . . 
 Caillot is playing Le D^serteur. ... At the very mo- 
 ment of his agony, when he is on the point of being 
 dragged to execution, he notices that the chair on 
 which he will have to lay down the fainting Louise is 
 badly placed, and he rearranges it while singing in 
 a moribund voice, " Mes yeux vont se fermer sans 
 avoir vu Louise." ' . . . Lekain, as Ninias, enters his 
 father's tomb, and there cuts his mother's throat He 
 comes forth with blood-stained hands, horror-stricken, 
 wild-eyed, quivering. . . . Yet seeing a diamond drop 
 which has fallen from an actress's ear, he pushes it 
 ' Misquoted in the original. 
 
 Mrs. 
 Siddons 
 and Salvinij 
 
 Post, pp. 
 139. 145 
 
 Pollock 
 A 46 
 
 Mile. 
 Duclos 
 
 Quinault- 
 Dufresne 
 
 Caillot 
 
 Pollock, 
 f.%7 
 
 Lekain 
 Pollock, 
 t- 47 
 
3° 
 
 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 with his foot towards the wing. And these actors 
 feel? Impossible!' 
 
 The Second : Concerning the first two anec- 
 dotes : is a sudden revulsion of feeling a phenomenon 
 undreamt of in your psychology? Even supposing 
 that to ' feel ' a part necessarily implied a somnambu- 
 listic absorption in it (a quite gratuitous supposition), 
 can we not conceive Duclos and Quinault to have 
 been wakened from their trance by the interruptions 
 of the pit, and to have vented the irritability of ' the 
 sleeper awakened ' in the first phrases that sprang to 
 their lips ? Their very audacity indicates that they 
 were not acting in cold blood, but were in a measure 
 beside themselves. As for Caillot and Lekain, their 
 actions afford simple instances of the manifold activity 
 of consciousness at any given moment. / Why should 
 stage emotion be supposed to absorb all a man's facul- 
 ties, when the most poignant emotion in real life does 
 nothing of the sort ?) On the contrary, it will often 
 sharpen our senses in every direction, producing, not 
 anaesthesia, but hyperaesthesia. We all know how 
 memory registers the smallest details of any scene 
 which has witnessed a crisis in our lives, as Fagin, in 
 the dock, ' counted the iron spikes before him, and 
 wondered how the head of one had been, broken off, 
 and whether they would mend it or leave it as it 
 was.' We know how, even under the first shock of 
 a great catastrophe, men are often found to attend 
 with mechanical punctiliousness to the minutest trifles 
 of everyday existence. The man who has determined 
 to jump off Waterloo Bridge at midnight will wind 
 
 7' 
 
 Post,*. i6i 
 
THE 'PARADOXE' 
 
 up his watch as usual at eleven o'clock ; and if he 
 chance to see a sixpenny-piece on the pavement of 
 Wellington Street, he will, in all probability, stoop and 
 pick it up. The actual Ninias, had he found a jewel 
 lying in his path, would probably have picked it up 
 and put it in his pocket. Men led to execution have 
 been known to be very particular about details of their 
 dress, or to borrow an umbrella from the sheriff lest 
 they should catch cold. Sir Thomas More jested with 
 the headsman. Charles II., with the death-rattle in 
 his throat, apologised to his courtiers for taking such 
 an unconscionable time to die. All these persons 
 may be presumed to have felt their situation deeply, 
 and no situation can be more absorbing than that of 
 a man in the jaws of death. We shall find many 
 instances in the sequel of divided mental activity. In 
 the meantime, I submit that Lekain's adroitness in 
 saving the jewel does not prove him to have been in- 
 sensible to the terror of the situation, any more than 
 William Tell's dexterity in splitting the apple proves 
 him to have been indifferent to the fate of his son. 
 
 No array of examples of presence of mind will 
 practically further the anti-emotionalists' case. They 
 should rather bring forward instances in which an 
 actor's total absorption in his part has placed him 
 at the mercy of accidents, and has thus injured the 
 desired effect These, unfortunately, are not so easily 
 discovered. 
 
 The First : ' A sure way to play in a petty, mean 
 style, is to play your own character. Suppose you are 
 a tartuffe, a miser, a misanthrope ; you may play the 
 
MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 part well enough, but you will not come near the 
 poet's creation ; for that is the Tartuffe, the Miser, the 
 Misanthrope.' 
 
 The Second : What has this to do with sensi- 
 bility, in any conceivable sense of the term? Sensi- 
 bility comes into play through imaginative sympathy ; 
 and no one, however great a hypocrite or miser, can 
 have any sort of sympathy with Tartuffe or Har- 
 pagon. Egoism is of the essence of evil. The hypo- 
 crite lives upon the uprightness of others, the miser 
 upon their generosity ; and every additional hypocrite 
 and miser is a victim the less and a competitor the 
 more. They are not even influenced by the motives 
 which induce felons to form offensive and defensive 
 alliances. Each would like nothing better than to 
 have a monopoly of his own vice. They are the 
 Ishmaels of the social system. Vices of sensuality 
 establish a freemasonry among their devotees, but 
 hypocrisy and avarice serve only to isolate and 
 harden. 
 
 A conscious hypocrite, even if it were possible 
 that the triumphs and defeats of his patron saint 
 should touch his ' sensibility,' would be the last to 
 reveal the ^mysteries of his craft and of his soul 
 by playing Tartuffe. To do so would be, not to 
 assume, but to throw away, a mask; and his mask 
 is his stock-in-trade. An unconscious hypocrite, if 
 naturally unctuous in manner (which by no means 
 follows), might have a peculiar facility for entering 
 into the skin of Tartuffe. John Palmer, the first and 
 perhaps the greatest Joseph Surface, was commonly 
 
THE 'PARADOXE' 
 
 33 
 
 known as ' Plausible Jack.' In a dispute with 
 Sheridan, he began in his oily and rotund manner, 
 ' If you could but see my heart, Mr. Sheridan 1 ' when 
 the playwright-manager cut him short with the re- 
 mark, ' Why, Jack, you forget that I wrote it ! ' But 
 Palmer's success in Joseph Surface had nothing to 
 do with ' sensibility.' (_No one thinks of engaging a 
 murderer to play Macbeth, not because his sensibility 
 would lead him to act ' in a petty, mean style,' but 
 because the very idea is an absurdity.] To argue that 
 Mr. Willard is not necessarily a villain because he plays 
 the villain so well, or that his ' Spider ' would not be 
 so good as it is were he himself a swell-mobsman, is 
 simply to insult our intelligence. Only in the lowest 
 stages of dramatic culture does anyone think of con- 
 founding the actor's ethics with those of his personage. 
 There is a legend of a backwoodsman becoming so 
 incensed with the villainy of lago that he drew his 
 revolver and shot, or shot at, the actor. It is said, 
 too, that Provost, who played Napoleon's gaoler. Sir 
 Hudson Lowe, at the Porte Saint-Martin, had to be 
 escorted home from the theatre lest the infuriated 
 gods should fall upon him and lynch him. These 
 savages of the backwoods or the boulevards are the 
 persons who require to have it proved to them that a 
 hypocrite will not make the best Tartuffe or a miser 
 the best Harpagon. The old lady who left Edmund 
 Kean a handsome legacy on seeing his Othello, and 
 revoked it after his performance of the contemptible 
 Luke in Massinger's City Madam, might also have 
 learnt something from Diderot's argument. 
 
 D 
 
 Dorar:, 
 t- 142 
 
 Provost, 
 
 Coquelln, 
 p. 30 
 
 Haiukins, 
 i. f. 259 
 
34 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Post, f. 92 
 
 Pollock, 
 A 63 
 
 Whether a lover will make the best Romeo is 
 another and somewhat more rational question, to be 
 considered hereafter. 
 
 I shall not dispute Diderot's demonstration of the 
 inconveniences of too much sensibility in private life. 
 It is scarcely to the purpose ; for the idiosyncracy 
 which makes a man stammer and hesitate in impro- 
 vising a declaration of love on his own account, may 
 be the very thing to aid him in lending fervour and 
 conviction to a mimic declaration, the words of which 
 are supplied by Shakespeare or Alfred de Musset. 
 Neither do I insist upon the fact, which Diderot's 
 actor-disciples should lay to heart, that his theory is 
 based upon a hearty contempt for their calling. ' In 
 society,' he says, ' unless they are buffoons, I find 
 actors polished, caustic, cold, proud, dissipated, pro- 
 fuse, selfish, alive to our absurdities rather than 
 touched by our misfortunes ; unmoved at the sight of 
 a melancholy incident or at the recital of a pathetic 
 story; pariahs, vagabonds, slaves of the great; with- 
 out conduct, without friends, without any of the holy 
 and tender ties which associate us in the pains and 
 pleasures of another, who in turn shares our own. I 
 have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, I do not 
 remember to have seen one weep. What do they 
 do, then, with the sensibility they arrogate, and are 
 supposed to possess ? Do they leave it on the stage 
 at their exit to take it up again at their next 
 entrance ? ' Here we have again the contradiction 
 pointed out above. If this be a fair description of 
 
THE 'PARADOXE' 35 
 
 actors in general, what comes of the dogma that 
 extreme sensibility makes middling actors and mid- 
 dling sensibility the ruck of bad actors ? We are now 
 assured that actors as a class are devoid of sensibility ; 
 how comes it, then, that actors as a class are not 
 ' sublime ' ? This, however, is not essential. Diderot's 
 theory may be right though his arguments are in- 
 consistent. What I have sought to show is that his 
 reasoning breaks down, or at least straggles off and 
 loses itself, for lack of a definition of terms. He does 
 not know clearly either what he himself is maintaining, 
 or what he is arguing against. He is proving, half 
 the time, that sensibility is mischievous, while the 
 other half he devotes to showing that it does not 
 exist. 
 
 We have seen that he attributes to sensibility four " 
 leading phases : — 
 
 '^ i. A tendency to do without study and to rely on 
 momentary inspiration. 
 
 ii. A tendency to become incarnate in your per- 
 sonage, to live in it and in it alone, to feel all its 
 emotions and endure all its agonies. 
 
 iii. A tendency to somnambulistic absorption in 
 the business of the scene, making consciousness for 
 the moment one and indivisible. 
 
 iv. A tendency to express your own moral nature, 
 instead of assuming and exhibiting the character 
 created by the playwright. ) 
 
 At last, however, in a rash moment, Diderot is 
 actually betrayed into defining 'sensibility,' and at 
 once the debate is practically at an end. ' Sensibility,' Poihck, 
 
 n 2 /■ 5° 
 
36 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 so the definition runs, ' ... is that disposition which 
 accompanies organic weakness, mobility of the dia- 
 phragm, vivacity of the imagination, delicacy of the 
 nerves, which inclines one to . . . loss of self-control, 
 to exaggeration, to contempt, to disdain, to obtuseness 
 to the true, the good, and the beautiful, to injustice, 
 to madness.' Sensibility, then, is a morbid habit of 
 mind and body, which must interfere, not with acting 
 alone, but with all healthy art whatsoever. This is 
 self-evident. Any criticism of such a conclusion is 
 futile. But how about the definition ? Supposing 
 such a multitude of effects — I have only quoted half 
 of them — to arise from one cause, can we fairly call 
 that cause sensibility ? Hysteria, surely, is a much 
 apter name for the disease. Substituting this term, 
 then, we read Diderot's thesis as follows : — ' The 
 great actor must not be hysterical.' Agreed. But 
 where is the paradox ? 
 
 ' Ne lui demandez pas,' says M. Paul Janet of 
 Diderot, ' des oeuvres m^ditees, compos6es avec art, 
 Sorites avec gout, lides dans toutes leurs parties. . . , 
 Ce ne sont jamais que des fragments, des lueurs ^cla- 
 tantes, mais passageres, d'admirables improvisations : 
 mais tout ce qui est raisonnement suivi, liaison 
 d'id^es, enchainement syst^matique de propositions, 
 enfin construction rdguliere et equilibree, est chose 
 inconnue pour cet esprit fumeux oii tout est sans 
 cesse i I'^tat de bouillonnement et de fermentation.' 
 
 Nineteenth 
 Century, 
 ix. p. 69s 
 
'SUNT LACRYMAi RE RUM' 
 
 37 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 'SUNT LACRYM^ RERUM.' 
 CUd "-',1-' =--'.' ^ 
 The first two sections of my interrogatory are, I 
 think, the most essential. They take us to the very 
 kernel of the matter. 
 
 There are certain simple emotions which tend to 
 •express themselves directly and unmistakably in 
 changes of the physical organs. The chief of these 
 are grief and joy (with all their subdivisions), rage, 
 terror, and shame. The more complex emotions have 
 no such proper and instant symptoms. Love and 
 hatred, jealousy and envy, for example, are rather 
 attitudes of mind than individual emotions. They 
 may have their appropriate facial expressions, but a 
 very slight effort of will suffices to smooth even these 
 away ; whereas we all know how hard it is to repress 
 the physical manifestations of grief or terrorT) The 
 complex and, so to speak, habitual emotions utter 
 themselves from time to time through the medium of 
 the simple emotions. Love, it is needless to say, will 
 .run the whole gamut of grief and joy; hatred, in the 
 Dresence of the hated object, will burst forth- in the 
 form of rage. (Xhus the physical effects of the simple 
 emotions may be regarded as the raw material of 
 
38 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 expression ; whence it follows that the reproduction 
 of these physical effects must be the very groundwork 
 of the actor's art. And of the simple emotions, grief 
 in all its phases is, to the actor, by far the most im- 
 portanO I do not mean that life is a vale of tears, 
 and that the stage, in holding as 'twere the mirror 
 up to nature, must therefore be more intimately con- 
 cerned with weeping than with laughter. Something 
 might be said for this view of the matter, but I do 
 not intend to say it What I mean is that, with the 
 exception of terror, which is of comparatively rare 
 occurrence, no emotion manifests itself so directly, so 
 inevitably, and so peculiarly as grief Joy is much 
 more easily repressed, and much more various in its 
 symptoms ; therefore it calls for less absolute fidelity 
 of imitation. We take it for granted much more 
 readily than grief Great joy, indeed, will often bor- 
 row its expression from grief, but not so grief from 
 joy, unless it passes over into positive madness. To 
 look at the matter from another point of view, do we 
 not see that from the days of Thespis downwards the 
 gift of pathos has been regarded as the actor's highest 
 endowment, the representation of pity, sorrow, and 
 despair as his worthiest task ? It is often said that 
 every low comedian aspires to play Macbeth ; in other 
 words, everyone instinctively recognises that it is a. 
 much simpler and more trivial task to make the un- 
 skilful laugh than to make the judicious grieve. Soma 
 years ago, on the occasion of one of Mr. Toole's 
 numerous appearances in the witness-box, the judge^ 
 intending a compliment, maladroitly remarked that 
 
'SUNT LACRYM^ RE RUM' 
 
 39 
 
 I 
 
 1/ 
 
 he was sure no one had ever wept while Mr. Toole 
 was on the stage. ' I am very sorry to hear it, my 
 lord ' was the comedian's reply ; and indeed his lord- 
 ship's pleasantry showed a strange ignorance not only 
 of human nature in general but of Mr. Toole's art in Mr. Toole 
 particular. To sum the matter up, then, the rendering 
 . of grief and its kindred shades of emotion is univer- 
 sally accepted as the highest problem of the actor's 
 craft ; and the question, ' How may this rendering 
 be best effected ? ' is the central point of the whole 
 discussion. 
 
 There is no doubt that the imagination can in 
 some cases so act on the physical organism as to pro- 
 duce in a more or less acute degree the characteristic 
 Symptoms of grief ; while, on the other hand, these 
 symptoms may to some extent be imitated by the 
 direct action of the will upon the muscles, with little 
 or no aid from the imagination. Which method is 
 the better calculated to work on the sympathies of a 
 theatrical audience ? ' The latter,' say Diderot and his 
 adherents ; ' The former,' his adversaries retort. I 
 have tried, therefore, to ascertain, first, whether the 
 tendency of the imagination to act on the lachrymal 
 glands and the muscles of the throat is general or 
 exceptional ; secondly, whether the actors in whom 
 this tendency exists have found it help or hinder their 
 efforts to speak to the hearts of their hearers. For 
 this, I need scarcely say, is the one ultimate test. 
 Whatever may be the case with the other arts, its 
 immediate effect upon the average audience is the 
 be-all and end-all of acting. Nothing is absolutely 
 
 \L^ 
 
40 
 
 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 right or wrong, artistic or inartistic. If real tears 
 help to move the average audience, they are right and 
 artistic ; if they tend to cast a damp over the house, 
 they are inartistic and Vi^rong. 
 
 My first question, then, was this : — 
 
 In moving situations, do tears come to your eyes ? Do they 
 come unbidden ? Can you call them up and repress them at 
 will ? In delivering pathetic speeches does your voice break of 
 its own accord ? Or do you deliberately simulate a broken voice ? 
 Supposing that, in the same situation, you on one night shed 
 real tears and speak with a genuine ' lump in your throat,' and 
 on the next night simulate these affections without physically 
 experiencing them : on which occasion should you expect to 
 produce the greater effect upon your audience ? 
 
 All testimony, old and new, agrees in asserting 
 that, whatever their artistic value, real tears are 
 habitually and copiously shed upon the stage. The 
 ancients are at one both as to their reality and as to 
 their artistic value. Hackneyed though it be, the in- 
 evitable passage from Horace must lead the way : — 
 
 Horace 
 
 Ars 
 Podiica, 
 I. 101-T03 
 
 Con ing~ 
 ton's trans, 
 (1870) 
 
 Ut ridentibus adrident, ita flentibus adsunt ^ 
 Humani vultus. Si vis me flere, dolendum est 
 Primum ipsi tibi ; tunc tua me infortunia la;dent 
 
 Smiles are contagious ; so are tears ; to see 
 Another sobbing, brings a sob from me. 
 No, no, good Peleus ; set the example, pray, 
 And weep yourself, then weep pei-haps I may. 
 
 Some critics have maintained that the maxim 
 is not addressed to actors but to tragic poets. If so, 
 Horace has certainly expressed himself with less than 
 
 • Or ' adflent.' 
 
' S UNT LA CR YM^ RER UM ' 
 
 41 
 
 Horatian lucidity ; and there can be little doubt that 
 even if he had not the stage actually in his nlin-' he 
 would without hesitation have extended the prin...'ple 
 to mimetic art. 
 
 The orators are still more emphatic ; and oratory 
 is sufficiently analogous to acting to give their opinions 
 great weight. Judging by mere antecedent proba- 
 bility, one would not be surprised to find them in the 
 anti-emotionalist camp. However important self- 
 control may be to the actor, it must be doubly so 
 to the forensic orator. If, then, the symptoms of 
 1 emotion, physically experienced, are inconsistent with 
 ! perfect self-control, one would expect to find Cicero 
 I and Quintilian insisting on absolute insensibility. /The 
 I fact that their precepts take the opposite direction 
 seems to show that the clouding of the eyes does not 
 necessarily involve the clouding of the brain./ 
 
 First let us hear Cicero : — ' Nor is it possible,' he 
 says, ' for the hearer to grieve, or hate, or fear, or to be 
 moved to commiseration and tears, unless the emotions 
 which the speaker wishes to communicate are deeply 
 impressed upon himself, and stamped on his own 
 bosom in characters of fire. . . . Never, I assure you, 
 have I endeavoured to excite in the judges the emo- 
 tions of grief, commiseration, envy or hatred, without 
 becoming sensibly touched myself with the passions 
 I wished to communicate to them. . . . And do not 
 suppose it something extraordinary and wonderful 
 for the speaker to be so often subjected to the violent 
 excitement of grief, and anger, and every other passion 
 of the mind, especially in the interests of strangers ; 
 
42 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 for there is an emotional power in the sentiments and 
 topics themselves which supersedes the necessity of all . 
 simulation and falsehood. . . . What can be more 
 unreal than poetry, than fable, than the creations of 
 the drama? Yet often in this fictitious scene I have 
 marked the eyes of the actor flashing fire through his 
 mask when declaiming these lines : — 
 
 What ! did you then dare to spurn him from you ? 
 
 Or to enter Salamis without him ? 
 
 Did you not dread the aspect of his father ? 
 
 . . . Then subduing his voice to the tone of com- 
 miseration, he proceeded mournfully, and in seeming 
 
 tears : — 
 
 Whom, in extremest age and penury, 
 You cruelly have lacerated, robbed 
 Of children, and of 1! "e, regardless of 
 Your brother's der.h, re^.^^r "I'ess of the child, 
 The little child comriii,.'(.ed m your charge. 
 
 If the actor who had to decLira these verses daily 
 could not do so effectually without an emotion of 
 sorrow, can you suppose \.\rJc Pacuvius himself, when 
 composing them, was in an indifferent and listless 
 state of mind ? ' The phrase ' flens et lugens dicere 
 videbatur,' here translated ' he proceeded mournfully 
 and in seeming tears,' does not appear to me to bear 
 quite that interpretation. The word ' seeming ' con- 
 flicts with the general tenor of the passage ; better 
 Latinists than I must determine whether the incon- 
 sistency is due to Cicero or to his translator. 
 
 ■(^Quintilian, again, is very explicit on the subject of 
 stage tears, while he speaks with no less conviction than 
 Cicero of the rhetorical value of emotion physically 
 
 Quintilian 
 
'SUNT LACRYM^ RERUM' 
 
 43 
 
 experienced : — ' The great secret ... for moving the 
 passions is to be moved ourselves ; for the imitation of 
 grief, anger, indignation, will often be ridiculous, if our 
 words and countenance alone conform to the emotion, 
 not our heart . . . Wherefore, when we wish to attain 
 verisimilitude in emotion, let us put ourselves in the 
 place of those who really suffer ; and let our speech 
 proceed from the very state of mind which we wish 
 to induce in the judge. Will he grieve who hears 
 me declaim unmoved ? . . . Will he weep who sees 
 me dry-eyed ? . . . But how shall we be affected, our 
 emotions not being at our command ? This, too, I 
 shall try to explain. What the Greeks call ^avTaalas, 
 we call visiones ; whereby the images of things absent 
 are so represented to the mind, that we seem to see 
 them with our eyes, and to have them present before 
 us. Whoever shall have conceived these thoroughly, 
 will have complete power over his emotions. ... I 
 have often seen histrions and actors, on laying aside 
 their masks after some mournful scene, continue to 
 shed tears. If, then, the mere pronouncing of another's 
 words can thus beget unreal emotions, what should 
 not we effect, who ought to think our own words, and 
 to be moved on behalf of our clients ? . . . I have 
 often been moved, not only to tears, but to pallor and 
 every symptom of grief ) 
 
 The often-cited anecdotes of Polus and .^sopus 
 will come in at a later stage of our inquiry. For the 
 present, I need only note that these passages from 
 Cicero and Quintilian seem to represent the general 
 opinion of the antique world upon mimetic tears and 
 
 De Institu- 
 tione Ora~ 
 toria, vi. 2 
 
 1/ 
 
 Post, fp. 
 
 78, 167 
 
44 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 their value. I do not pretend to have ransacked the 
 classics for utterances on the subject, but we are justi- 
 fied in supposing, I think, that if any Greek or Roman 
 had anticipated Diderot, the anti-emotionalists would 
 not have failed, long ere this, to appeal in triumph 
 to his authority. For my part, I lay no great stress 
 on the evidence of antiquity. The conditions of 
 acting, and even of oratory, have altered too much 
 to justify us in accepting as infallible the maxims of 
 classic theorists. The passages quoted above prove 
 that real tears were habitually shed on the antique 
 scene, and that Cicero and Quintilian believed in their 
 artistic value. I do not allege that their authority 
 is conclusive. We cannot receive with blind humility 
 the doctrines in vogue in a city where the theatre was 
 overtowered by the amphitheatre. 
 
 Shakespeare's utterances on the subject of mimetic 
 emotion are familiar to everyone. As I have said 
 before, they s£em tome to sum up the _ subject, and 
 as my argument proceeds I shall have to quote them 
 for the ten-thousandth time. For the present, I need 
 only mention them to recall their purport, at any rate, 
 to the reader's memory. 
 
 The records of the stage, it may almost be said, 
 are tear-stained on every page. We have ample and 
 unquestionable evidence that many of the greatest 
 artists frequently, if not habitually, wept in pathetic 
 situations. To go at once to the greatest of all, we 
 read in Tom Davies, who had the best opportunities 
 for observation, that ' In some very affecting scenes, 
 Garrick and Mrs. Gibber have worked themselves up 
 
 Shake- 
 speare, 
 
 Hamlet, ii. 
 2, andm. z 
 
 Garrick 
 and Mrs. 
 Cibber, 
 Davies, Hi. 
 P-7S 
 
'SUNT LACRYM^ RE RUM' 
 
 45 
 
 •to the shedding of tears, especially in the parts of 
 '• Lear and Cordelia.' Garrick's most formidable rival 
 ' was Spranger Barry, and the part in which their 
 rivalry culminated was Romeo. Here is the account 
 of Barry's death-scene given by that excellent critic 
 the anonymous author of The Actor : ' His sensibility 
 gets the better of his articulation ; his grief takes effect 
 upon the organs of his voice ; and the very tone of it 
 is altered : it is broken, hoarse, and indistinct. We 
 give the applause to this consummate piece of playing 
 that it deserves (we see nature triumphing over what 
 art would direct') and we give it a praise which 
 art, without this strong appearance of nature, never 
 could deserve.' Charles Reade, if we may believe the 
 same writer, was justified in making the famous tear 
 roll down Peg Woffington's cheek. ' Mrs. Woffing- 
 ton,' he says, ' has great sensibility ; and she has, 
 more than most players of either sex, given a loose 
 to nature in the expressing it ; to this she owed the 
 greatest part of her fame as an actress ; and in this 
 she always excelled, when her private passions did 
 not interfere.' Garrick's famous criticism of Mrs. 
 Pritchard, whose commanding genius is attested by 
 Churchill and Johnson, among a host of lesser critics, 
 shows that she not only wept, but wept immoderately. 
 ' Her scenes of grief were tiresomely blubbering,' he 
 said to Tate Wilkinson. As for Mrs. Siddons, though 
 she belonged to a school we should not have been 
 surprised to find dry-eyed, we have her own testimony 
 to the ' bitter tears of rage, disappointment, betrayed 
 confidence, and baffled ambition ' which ' gushed into 
 
45 
 
 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 Crabh 
 Jiobiftson, 
 Hi. f. 19 
 
 Dibdin, 
 p. 190 
 
 her eyes ' in the part of Constance — one of her very 
 greatest Fanny Kelly, in her ' Dramatic Recollec- 
 tions ' (a sort of lecture which she used to deliver), 
 related that when, as a child, she played Arthur in 
 King John, ' her collar was wet with Mrs. Siddons' 
 tears.' Mr. Siddons, it may be added, took an irre- 
 verently prosaic view of his wife's emotion. ' Do you 
 know,' he said to the Rev. Dr. Mackenzie, minister 
 of Portpatrick, ' that small beer is good for crying ? 
 The day that my wife drinks small beer, she cries 
 amazingly ; she is really pitiful. But if I was to give 
 her porter, or any stronger liquor, she would not be 
 worth a farthing.' It is to be feared that Mr. Siddons 
 was indulging in a joke at the expense of his clerical 
 friend. 
 
 Fanny Kemble, if not so great an actress as her 
 aunt, was a keen observer. She bears witness to the 
 reality of her own tears in a passage to be quoted in 
 another place. Still more interesting is her account of 
 the emotional idiosyncracy of Miss O'Neill, that living 
 embodiment of womanly pathos, who, according to 
 Talma, drew tears from Frenchmen who knew no 
 English by the mere magic of her voice. ' She had a 
 rare endowment for her especial range of characters,' 
 says Fanny Kemble, 'in an easily excited superficial 
 sensibility, which caused her to cry, as she once said to 
 me, " buckets full," and enabled her to exercise the (to 
 most men) irresistible influence of a beautiful woman in 
 tears. The power (or weakness) of abundant weeping 
 without disfigurement is an attribute of deficient rather 
 than excessive feeling. In such persons the tears are 
 
 Farmy ..X 
 Kemble ^^* 
 
 Post.f. 151 
 
 Miss 
 
 O'Neill 
 
 JR^Jiexiont 
 
 Record of a 
 Girlhood, 
 ii. p. 20 
 
'SUNT LACRYM^ RE RUM 
 
 47 
 
 poured from their crystal cups without muscular dis- 
 tortion of the rest of the face. In proportion to the 
 violence or depth of emotion, and the acute or profound 
 sensibility of the temperament, is the disturbance 
 of the countenance. In sensitive organisations, the 
 muscles round the nostrils and lips quiver and are 
 distorted, the throat and temples swell, and a gri- 
 mace, which but for its miserable significance would 
 be grotesque, convulses the whole face. . . . Women 
 of the temperament I have alluded to above, have 
 fountains of lovely tears behind their lovely eyes, and 
 their weeping, which is indescribably beautiful, is 
 comparatively painless, and yet pathetic enough to 
 challenge tender compassion.' In this very curious 
 analysis there is no doubt a great deal of justice. 
 It is particularly interesting in its bearing upon the 
 quantitative relation (so to speak) of mimetic to real 
 emotion. 
 
 In French dramatic records there is sometimes 
 a difficulty in distinguishing between the figurative 
 and the literal use of the word ' larmes.' A critic 
 will often talk of an actor's ' larmes ' when he is 
 evidently thinking merely of his pathetic power in 
 general, and does not mean expressly to affirm that 
 at any given moment he shed actual tears. I have 
 come across many instances, however, in which there 
 is no ambiguity. Of the great actress, for example, 
 who was trained by Racine to create the chief of his 
 heroines, Lemazurier writes as follows : — ' II n'dtait 
 pas ndcessaire de r^peter k Mad. Champmesld ce 
 pr^cepte de Boileau, 
 
 Post, f. 20I 
 
 Mile. 
 
 Champ- 
 
 mesl6 
 
 Lema- 
 zurier, it. 
 f. 72 
 
MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 II faut dans la douleur, que vous vous abaissiez ; 
 Pour m'arracher des pleurs, il faut que vous pleuriez. 
 
 Sa sensibilite dtait naturelle et vraie ; quelque force 
 d'esprit que Ton e(it, quelque violence que Ton se fli, 
 il fallait partager sa douleur, et pleurer avec elle.' 
 Lemazurier, it is true, could not speak as an eye- 
 witness, but he was a careful writer who would not 
 have expressed himself thus explicitly without good 
 authority. Dorat, on the other hand, wrote as an 
 eye-witness of Duclos, Adrienne Lecouvreur's chief 
 rival : — ' Ses larmes ^toient belles, sa douleur tou- 
 chante, sa figure vraiment tragique : elle pleuroit k 
 tort et a travers ; mais enfin elle pleuroit, et e'en 6toit 
 assez pour dmouvoir le Spectateur.' Sticotti, in a note 
 to his Garrick, declares that ' Dufrene, la Gaussin, 
 Mile. Qyuinault] jouant la sceur du Glorieux, versoient 
 des pleurs ; notre ame reconnoissante se plait encore 
 k s'en retracer les charmes.' Quinault-Dufresne was 
 the greatest actor of his time, the French Quin ; Mile. 
 Gaussin was the original Zaire ; and Mile. Quinault 
 was one of the most famous members of a famous 
 family. Rachel, I suspect, was apt to. have more fire 
 than moisture in her eyes. It is related that on her 
 death-bed she told her sister Sarah that she had 
 been thinking over and trying to elaborate the part 
 of Pauline in Polyeucte, adding pathetically, ' Pour 
 6tudier il faut penser et pleurer, mais je ne vols plus 
 que des fant6mes qui fuient' This is sufficient to 
 prove that she was by no means the emotionless 
 creature who, according to Diderot, has alone the 
 right to be ' sublime ' ; but tears shed in study or 
 
 Mile. 
 Duclos 
 Dorat, 
 Priface, 
 P- 1-7 
 
 Ed. T770, 
 p. 149 
 
 Rachel 
 
 Noussaye, 
 P- 335 
 
'SUNT LACRYMJE RERUM' 
 
 49 
 
 rehearsal are not the same thing as tears shed in the 
 moment of the performance. Frdd^rick Lemaitre, 
 with all his faults, was undoubtedly one of the great- 
 est of great actors, and of him Victor Hugo wrote, 
 in a note on Ruy Bias : ' Et puis, partout, a travers 
 les dclairs ^blouissants de.son jeu, M. Fr^ddrick a 
 des' larmes, de ces vpaies larmes qui font pleurer les 
 autres, de ces larmes dont parle Horace : 
 
 Si ^^s me flere, dolendum est 
 Primum ipsi tibi ; ' 
 
 and Frederick himself mentions, among the great 
 qualities of his comrade Madame Dorval, ' ses larmes 
 qui d^bordaient rdellement du coeur.' 
 
 Adelaide Neilson, I am assured by several ob- 
 servers, used to weep profusely both at rehearsal and 
 during performance. Charlotte Cushman was not a 
 woman one would suppose inclined to the melting 
 mood ; yet her biographer, Mrs. Clement, says of her 
 performance of Mrs. Haller in The Stranger, ' So 
 much did Miss Cushman herself enter into the spirit of 
 the part, that I have, on more than one occasion, seen 
 Cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks.' 
 
 Mr. Toole in his recently published Reminiscences 
 says of Benjamin Webster, the creator of Triplet : 
 ' His Luke Fielding in The Willow Copse was full of 
 his peculiar genius for domestic drama. It had one 
 scene that was pathetic in the extreme. I have 
 cried at it myself, and I never knew him play it 
 without the tears streaming down his cheeks. It 
 is the scene where the supposed dishonour of his 
 
 E 
 
 F. Le- 
 maitre 
 
 Madame 
 Dorval, 
 SouvenirSt 
 p. 99 
 
 Miss 
 Neilson 
 
 Miss 
 Cushman 
 
 Charlotte 
 Cuslimarit 
 p. i66 
 
 B. Webster 
 
so 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 -■']■ 
 
 1/ 
 
 daughter is made manifest to him. " Come with me, 
 we have no longer a place among the honest and the 
 good," were, I think, the words which take hira off 
 from among the neighbours and friends before whom 
 the disgrace of his child had been pronounced.' 
 
 I pass now to the observations and experiences 
 of living artists. Among those who are in the habit 
 of playing pathetic parts the proclivity to tears is 
 almost universal. As to their precise artistic value, 
 opinions are a good deal divided ; but I find no one 
 in whom they tend to arise asserting that they should 
 be altogether repressed. Ht is upon the question how 
 far they may safely be indulged without endangering 
 self-control that authorities differ. Almost everyone 
 admits that at the commencement of his stage career 
 (the stiff frigidity of the amateur being once over- 
 come) the emotion of a part has often tended to run 
 away with him ; but I can find no case in which this 
 has been corrected by a deliberate effort to eradicate 
 the habit of feeling. It has simply been left to ex- \ 
 perience and practice to establish that due balance I 
 of the faculties which begets a temperance in the i 
 very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of passion.'^ I 
 
 As I gave precedence to David Garrick among 
 the actors of the past, no one will wonder to find me 
 Saivini place Tommaso Salvini in the post of honour among 
 
 living artists. To attempt any ' order of merit ' 
 among my other informants would be invidious and 
 absurd ; but Salvini's world-wide reputation entitles 
 him to a priority which will scarcely be contested. 
 
 He delivers himself with no less emphasis than 
 
'SUNT LACRYMjE RERUM' 51 
 
 authority. ' If you do not weep in the agony of 
 grief,' he writes, 'if you do not blush with shame, 
 if you do not glow with love, if you do not trenible 
 with terror, if your eyes do not become bloodshot 
 with rage, if, in short, you yourself do not intimately 
 experience whatever befits the diverse characters 
 and passions you represent, you can never thoroughly 
 transfuse into the hearts of your audience the senti- 
 ment of the situation/J Such an utterance from such 
 an actor is of itself sufficient to prove that the anti- 
 emotionalist theory, whatever truth it may contain, 
 is not of universal application. The actor who is by 
 constitution or conviction a disciple of Diderot may 
 produce very great effects, but it is certain that some, 
 at least, of the sublimest possibilities of theatrical art 
 can be achieved by an actor who utterly rejects the 
 philosopher's doctrine. 
 
 As a corollary to Salvini's dictum, let me quote an 
 anecdote which he related to me during his last visit 
 to London (February 1 884). It occurred in the course 
 of a conversation on the subject of the Paradoxe. ' See, 
 I shall tell you a story,' he said. ' In La Morte Civile 
 I always weep, and greatly. Now, there is in Rio 
 Janeiro a newspaper editor, Senhor de Castro, a big, 
 bearded man, with gold spectacles — proprio un' uomo 
 serio ! — who is famous for his lack of feeling. They 
 say he buried his wife without a tear — I do not know, 
 but they say so. He saw La Miorte Civile, and after 
 the curtain fell he came upon the stage. Behold ! on 
 each side of his nose there was a great wet furrow, 
 and as he laid his hand upon my shoulder I could feel 
 
S3 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 that it was twitching and trembling. And next day 
 every one in Rio Janeiro went about saying : " He 
 has made De Castro weep ! What a triumph ! " ' 
 Then Salvini added : ' As to French tragedy, how- 
 ever, I can understand Diderot's theory. I now 
 rarely appear in it Orosmane is as a ghost after 
 Othello.' 
 
 'The performance of a moving situation,' Mrs. 
 Bancroft writes, ' without the true ring of sensibility 
 in the actor, must fail to affect any one. . . . An 
 emotional break in the voice must be brought about 
 naturally, and by a true appreciation of the senti- 
 ment, or what does it become ? I can only compare 
 it to a bell with a wooden tongue — it makes a sound, 
 but there it ends. I cannot simulate suffering with- 
 out an honest sympathy with it ... I hold that 
 without great nervous sensibility no one can act 
 pathos. ... It is impossible to feel the sentiments 
 one has to utter, and but half the author's meaning 
 can be conveyed. It is a casket with the jewel 
 absent. . . . The voice in emotion must be prompted 
 by the heart ; and if that is " out of tune and harsh," | 
 why, then, indeed, the voice is "like sweet bells? 
 jangled." Art should help nature, but nature must\ 
 help art. They are twin sisters, and should go hand I 
 in hand, but nature must be the firstborn. I was I 
 once much impressed by a small child's criticism. 
 He watched for a long time silently and attentively a 
 'scene of great emotional interest between two people. 
 When asked what he thought of it, he answered, " I 
 like that one best." "Why?" "She speaks like 
 
'SUNT LACRYM^ RERUM 53 
 
 telling the truth, and the other speaks like telling 
 lies." What criticism can be finer than this ? One 
 was acting straight from the heart, the other from not 
 even next door but one to it.' To give this anecdote 
 its full value v/e should of course have positive evi- 
 dence that the one was in tears, the other dry-eyed 
 and unmoved. For obvious reasons such evidence is 
 unattainable ; but Mrs. Bancroft, watching the scene 
 doubtless from close at hand, and certainly with the 
 keen eye of a mistress of the craft, is a scarcely less 
 trustworthy witness than the artists themselves. Mr., Mr. 
 Bancroft fully agrees with his accomplished wife as 
 to the advantage possessed by an actor whose nerves 
 and muscles sensitively respond to the touch of his 
 imagination ; and no one who has seen Mr. Bancroft's 
 irresistibly pathetic performance of Triplet will hesi- 
 tate to admit that he speaks with authority. He 
 'adds that any counter-irritant which tends to dissipate 
 the energy of the imagination is certain to interfere 
 with the effect. For instance, he avows that amid 
 the excitement of his farewell performance at the 
 Haymarket he could not enter so thoroughly into the 
 part of Triplet as to do himself full justice. 
 ( Mr. and Mrs. Kendal are strongly of opinion that Mr. and 
 the emotional effect they produce upon their audience Kendai 
 varies in accordance with the greater or less emotional \^ 
 effect experienced by them in their own persons. 
 The difference between parts they like and parts 
 they do not like is that in the former they fall easily 
 and naturally under the sway of the appropriate 
 amotion, while in the latter they have to work them- 
 
 ^ 
 
54 ■■' MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 selves up to it. ' We should all be great artists,' says 
 Mrs. Kendal, ' if we could choose each night the part 
 we feel in a humour for.' Could anything contra- 
 dict more flatly the theory of the musical-box actor 
 who, having once wound himself up, can switch on at 
 will any tune in his whole repertory, and reel it off 
 without missing the twang of a single note ? Mrs. 
 Kendal confesses herself very prone to tears on the 
 stage, even to the detriment of her make-up. She 
 mentions as an instance of the kind of speech which 
 she can never utter without real tears and a very real 
 break in the voice, that saying of Kate Verity in The 
 Squire, where she bums the relics of Thomdyke's 
 courtship, and holds her hands to the flame : ' A 
 lucky thing that Christie made such a bright fire for 
 me — {shivermg) — and yet it's cold. Ah, I suppose 
 heat never comes from burnt love-letters.' No one 
 who remembers this play will contend that Mrs. 
 Kendal's emotion failed to move the audience. 
 
 This is perhaps the fittest place in which to 
 quote some suggestive remarks on the value of stage- 
 tears by a critic I greatly esteem : — ' An obtrusively 
 lachrymose performance,' he writes, 'tends to shock 
 rather than to move me, and I think most people 
 would say the same. It is such emotion as is not 
 
 expressed by tears and sobs — shame, despair, pity 
 
 or even the exquisite expression of a quite opposite 
 
 order of emotion — wonder, love pure and simple, or 
 
 even joy — that brings tears to my eyes and sends 
 
 I cold shivers down my spine. For example, in the 
 
'SUNT LACRYMJE RE'RUM' 55 
 
 second act of The Squire there was much emotion 
 that could be expressed only by sobs and tears, and 
 was so expressed by Mrs. Kendal, most admirably j 
 yet the two moments of the play that have remained 
 in my memory and will always remain there are 
 (i) Kate Verity's confession to Thorndyke in the first 
 act ' [the confession which causes Thorndyke, when 
 left alone on the stage, to drink ' Baby's health ! ' 
 — in milk] ' and (2) her sinking into a chair in Act 
 III. exclaiming "All the troubles of all the world 
 upon one little head " — in neither of which is the 
 emotion one that could possibly be expressed by the 
 signs you choose.' There is much truth in this 
 ";'criticism. I am inclined to think that the actual 
 ! shedding of tears is not, in itself, particularly effec- 
 itive, and that we Anglo-Saxons of this generation 
 ^are perhaps less apt than our ancestors and ances- 
 ■ tresses — less apt, too, than some of our continental 
 neighbours — to be moved by the ' summer tempest ' 
 of sorrow. My correspondent goes too far in argu- 
 ing that mere sobs and tears are never moving. 
 In a naturally pathetic situation which, in Bottom's 
 phrase, ' asks some tears in the true performing of it,' 
 a woman's weeping, even though it be of the con- 
 vulsive kind described by Fanny Kemble, will always 
 give the sorrow its crown of sorrow. If my corre- 
 spondent was unmoved by Mrs. Kendal's tears in the 
 third act of The Squire, that may have been owing to 
 what I take to be the essential falsity of much of the 
 sentiment in that particular scene. As a general rule, 
 however, unrestrained weeping is a mark of passivity, 
 
S6 MASK'S OR FACES? 
 
 whereas it is activity in one form or another that 
 most deeply interests and moves us. One of the 
 most touching of all phases of activity is the success- 
 ful repression of tears. Triplet's exit speech, for 
 example, in the first act of Masks and Faces would 
 be ruined by the overflow of even a single tear- 
 drop. ' Madam,' he says, 'you have inspired a son of 
 Thespis with dreams of eloquence ; you have tuned to 
 a higher key a poet's lyre ; you have tinged a painter's 
 
 existence with brighter colours ; and — and God 
 
 in heaven bless you, Margaret Woiifington.' This 
 should clearly be spoken with a tremor of the voice 
 and a quiver of the lip, showing that tears are 
 near the surface and are only restrained by the poor 
 fellow's sense of manly dignity. Similar cases could 
 be cited in hundreds. They swarm in Shakespeare. 
 The best instance of all, perhaps, is that wonderful 
 snatch of dialogue in the fourth act oi Julius Ccesar : 
 
 Cassius. Of your philosophy you make no use, 
 If you give place to accidental evils. 
 
 Brutus. No man bears sorrow better : — Portia is dead. 
 
 Cassius. Ha 1 Portia ! 
 
 Brutus. She is dead. 
 
 Cassius. How 'scaped I killing when I crossed you so ? . . . 
 
 Brutus. . . . With this she fell distract, 
 And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire. 
 
 Cassius. And died so ? 
 
 Brutus. Even so. 
 
 Cassius. O ye immortal gods ! 
 
 Here, of course, the effort of repression can be simu- 
 lated in cold-blood ; but, if my observation does not 
 mislead me, it is precisely in such passages that the 
 
'SUNT LACRYMM RE RUM* 
 
 57 
 
 y. 
 
 ear most quickly detects and rejects even the most 
 delicate art of the mechanical performer. 
 J Again, there is a distinction to be drawn between 
 j emotion belonging strictly to the character and emo- 
 
 ■ tion which comes, as it were, from outside. The 
 player is both a participator in the action and a spec- 
 
 , tator. He looks before and after ; he cannot divest 
 ' his mind of a knowledge of the past and future ; 
 
 ■ the irony of things, which is, by hypothesis, concealed 
 \ from the personage he represents, is patent to him. 
 I Thus many speeches which, to the character uttering 
 'i them, seem unemotional and even insignificant, are in 
 
 the eyes of the audience and of the player charged 
 { with pathetic meaning. There is a famous instance in 
 
 ■ Racine's Iphig^nie en Aulide, where Iphig^nie, little 
 . dreaming of her doom, questions her father as to the 
 ' pompous sacrifice which Calchas is preparing : — 
 
 Iphighiie. Verra-t-on k I'autel votre heureuse famille ? 
 
 Agamemnon. Helas ! 
 
 Iphigenie. Vous vous taisez ! 
 
 Agamemnon. Vous y serez, ma fiUe. 
 
 Nay more, the mere literary perfection of a speech 
 may give it, for some natures, a moving quality. For 
 example, there are many passages in Chaucer, Words- 
 worth, Tennyson, and other poets — passages of no 
 particular emotional significance — which I, for my 
 part, would not undertake to read aloud without a 
 tremor of the voice and an unwonted moisture of the 
 eye. Actors as a class, I suspect, are not keenly 
 susceptible to this form of emotional influence, but 
 there must be cases in which it makes itself felt. In 
 
 Act ii. ■£ 
 
S8 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 the part of Minnie Gilfillian in Sweet Lavender Mr. 
 Pinero has placed several of those speeches which 
 seem to me to acquire an emotional quality from their 
 mere verbal charm. For example : — 
 
 Minnie. But, Clem dear, I wish you'd do something to, 
 please me. 
 
 Clement [seizing her hands). I'll do anything. 
 
 Minnie. Anything but marry me. [Seriously) Well, don't 
 wait for Uncle Geofifrey's return, but write to him, to Paris, and 
 tell him how you adore — my hated rival. Uncle Geoff is a 
 bachelor, but married men and bachelors are manufactured 
 by the same process — Love^Clem — and he'll understand. Tell 
 him all, and say that the girh-you have lost your treacherous 
 heart to has won one staunch friend — Minnie Gilfillian. 
 
 Another instance, to compare great things with 
 small, is Gretchen's soliloquy in Faust : — 
 
 Du heber Gott ! was so ein Mann 
 Nicht alles, alles denken kann ! 
 Beschamt nur steh' ich vor ihm da, 
 Und sag" zu alien Sachen ja. 
 Bin doch ein arm unwissend Kind, 
 Begreife nicht was er an mir find't 
 
 It would clearly be wrong for Iphigenie, or Minnie 
 Gilfillian, or/Gretchen to bedew these speeches with 
 tears ; but I conceive that sensitiveness to such ex- 
 traneous emotional stirrings would have to be quite 
 abnormal before it could injuriously affect an artist's 
 performance. In many declamatory passages it might 
 impart a vibration to the voice, the effect of which 
 could only be for good. 
 
 Much more might be said of this distinction be- 
 tween what may be called intrinsic and extrinsic feeling 
 
'SUNT LACRYM^ RE RUM' 
 
 S9 
 
 (■ — the feeling to which an actor is subject in so far as 
 I he is identified with his character, and the feeling to 
 j which he is subject precisely because such identifica- 
 tion is necessarily incomplete. One form of extrinsic 
 feeling which must of course be overcome is the awe 
 with which great actors have been known to inspire 
 their fellow-performers, to such a pitch as to destroy 
 their self-mastery. Charles Young, Macready, and 
 even the great John Philip himself, confess to having 
 been so overcome by the acting of Mrs. Siddons as 
 to be unable for the moment to carry on the business 
 of the scene. ' Would you not. Sir,' said Boswell to 
 Johnson, ' start as Mr. Garrick does, if you saw a 
 ghost ?, ' ' I hope not,' replied Johnson ; ' if I did, I 
 should frighten the ghost' If the majesty of buried 
 Denmark was ever ' frighted from his propriety ' by 
 the acting of his son, that emotion was evidently 
 not only extrinsic but very much out of place. I 
 fear, however, that the players of to-day are but little 
 exposed to this danger. 
 
 ■ ' I shed tears on the stage every night when my 
 " personage " weeps,' says Madame Sarah Bernhardt 
 ' Tears always come to my eyes,' writes Miss Gene- 
 vieve Ward, ' in a moving situation, but seldom run 
 over. Sometimes they are unbidden, and sometimes 
 I work up to them. I have been obliged when study- 
 ing a part (Constance in Ktn£- John, for instance) to 
 stop owing to the tears and sobs, and would not 
 have attempted to play it until I could control my 
 feelings. I find that I feel much more when alone 
 
 V 
 
 Young', 
 Campbell, 
 i. p. 205 
 Macready, 
 Remi- 
 niscences, 
 i- P- 54 
 Kemble, 
 Boswell, 
 iv. p. 243 
 Boswelly 
 V. p. 38 
 
 Sarah 
 Bernhardt, 
 The Star, 
 July 14, 
 1888 
 
 Miss Ward 
 
6o 
 
 MASJsTS OR FACES f 
 
 u 
 
 Miss 
 Anderson 
 
 than before my audience — then I must make them 
 feel — control myself to control them. J I have, not 
 found that it made any difference witB my audience 
 .whether I actually shed tears or not — very few see the 
 real tear — they /e^/ the pathos of the situation, and do 
 good part of the acting themselves. '\ Miss Mary An- 
 derson's experience tallies curiously%ith this. While 
 quite a young girl, and before she had any intention of 
 going on the stage, Miss Anderson made the acquain- 
 tance of a lady of morbidly lachrymose temperament, 
 who induced in her a horror of this Mrs. Gummidge- 
 like weakness. She therefore deliberately schooled 
 herself in the repression of tears, without any thought 
 of their good or evil effect in acting. The consequence 
 is that neither on nor off the stage do her tears flow 
 very copiously ; but they none the less rise to her 
 eyes and make themselves felt in her voice. I have 
 myself seen Miss. Anderson's eyes very distinctly 
 suffused at the /point in The Winter's Tale where 
 Perdita bids Florizel farewell : — 
 
 This dream of mine 
 Being now awake, I'll queen it no inch further, 
 But milk my ewes and weep ; 
 
 and I may add that the thrill of voice with which she 
 spoke these lines (on this particular occasion, at any 
 rate) seemed to me singularly just. Miss Anderson, 
 however, like Miss Ward, feels a part more acutely 
 when not in presence of the audience. ' In my own 
 room at night,' she says, ' when all the house is quiet, 
 I weep and laugh with the character I happen to be 
 studying.' M. Coquelin related to me an anecdote of 
 
'SUNT LACRYM^ RERUM' 
 
 61 
 
 Mile. Mars, to the effect that she was one day found 
 by a friend bathed in tears, and being asked the 
 reason, answered, ' Je juge de mes larmes.' We find 
 Rachel, too, writing to her instructor, Samson, ' J'ai 
 ^tudid mes sanglots (dans le quatrifeme acte de Phe- 
 dre), je n'ose pas me vanter pour la seconde repre- 
 sentation, mais je suis sdre qu'ils me viennent' Miss 
 Anderson will scarcely admit that in her midnight 
 vigils with Juliet or Hermione she is testing her tears 
 and selecting her sobs. Miss Alma Murray tells me 
 that in reading aloud at home or before a private 
 audience she is very apt to break down under stress- 
 of emotion, but that on the stage, though tears come 
 to her eyes and her voice breaks, she has never felt 
 any danger of losing her self-control. Thus Miss 
 Ward, Miss Anderson, and Miss Murray agree in 
 holding that the mere sight of the footlights tends 
 to beget that ' temperance ' on which Hamlet insists. 
 Miss Janet Achurch expresses herself very much to 
 the same effect ' I have often cried bitterly while re- 
 hearsing a part,' she writes, ' and yet been dry-eyed on 
 the first. performance. Over-nervousness, I suppose, 
 as in playing the part afterwards the tears have come 
 back.' 
 
 Here let me cite the testimony of Miss Clara 
 Morris, an American actress who is declared by 
 excellent judges to possess, along with some un- 
 fortunate mannerisms, a rare and individual genius of 
 the emotional order. Miss Morris has never appeared 
 in England, but several English critics who have seen 
 her have concurred in, and even outdone, the eulogies , 
 
 Mile. Mars 
 
 Rachel, 
 U Hey Hi, 
 p. 26 
 
 Miss Alma 
 Murray 
 
 Miss 
 Achurcb 
 
 Miss Clara 
 Morris 
 
62 
 
 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 Th£ Voice, 
 X. No. 3 
 
 of her countrymen. 'You must feel,' she writes,' or 
 all the pretty and pathetic language in the world 
 won't make other people feel. I never go on the 
 stage but that about four o'clock in the afternoon I 
 begin to suffer. My hands get cold as ice, my face 
 gets hot, and I am in a nervous tremor, because I 
 am afraid I won't cry in the play. I do everything 
 to get my feelings thoroughly aroused. Then I only 
 have to look out for th6 other danger and keep from 
 being overcome myself. All the tremolo and false 
 sobs in the world will never take the place of real 
 emotion. Of course, after such an emotional effort I 
 cannot throw the whole effect off, and my poor nerves 
 suffer.' Miss Morris's theory of art evidently differs 
 from that of Talma, who, according to Samson, ' se 
 declarait mecontent d'un succ^s qui lui avait cout^ 
 trop de fatigue.' It appears that Miss Morris has 
 permanently endangered her health by acting at too 
 high pressure, and this, no doubt, shows either a 
 morbid temperament or deficient technical training. 
 At the same time the thrilling effects she produces 
 are beyond question, however extravagant the price 
 she pays for them. 
 
 ' Yes,' writes Mr. Wilson Barrett, ' tears come to 
 my eyes unbidden when I am acting at my best 
 With an effort I can repress them, but if I am not 
 sufficiently in my part for them to come uncalled, no 
 power of mine can bring them. If one night I have 
 to simulate what I felt the night before,'! should 
 certainly expect the effect to be lessened. . . . But 
 mere feeling unguided by art is seldom, if ever, 
 
 Talma, 
 
 L'Art 
 TMitral, 
 f. 176 
 
 Mr. Wilson 
 Barrett 
 
'SUNT LACRYM^ RERUM' 
 
 63 
 
 efFective. Art without feeling is better than that, but 
 feeling with art is better than both. The most sensi- 
 tive organisation, coupled with the highest art, makes 
 the greatest actor. In America you will hear the 
 remark, " Yes, he's a fine artist, but he has no mag- 
 netism." In London you will hear people say, " Yes, 
 he's a capital actor, but somehow he never touches 
 me." The meaning is the same ; the fine artist is 
 watched and admired, and often he will get the most 
 praise. He has not stirred the emotions of his 
 audience, and they have had ample time to watch his 
 art But the actor who feels deeply and guides his 
 emotions by his art will draw to see him hundreds to 
 the other's units.' 
 
 ' Whether tears do or do not readily come to the 
 eyes,' writes Mr. Beerbohm Tree, ' will depend upon 
 the mere physical development of the individual. 
 Some people have sensitive lachrymal glands, which 
 may be affected by the simple test of the onion — 
 apply the vegetable and the tears will flow. Others, 
 again, have not this physical sensitiveness. It is, 
 therefore, only possible to speak from personal expe- 
 rience. Tears do undoubtedly rise ■ to my eyes in 
 moving situations, perhaps less readily on the stage 
 than in private contemplation. I do not believe that 
 any emotion can be satisfactorily portrayed outside 
 iinless the inside emotion exists also ; and I think 
 that the effect upon an audience will generally be in 
 proportion to the power of self-excitation possessed 
 by the actor — given, of course, equal advantages in 
 the way of physique, voice, &c.' Mr. Tree then goes 
 
 Mr. Beer- \ 
 bohm Tree 
 
 ^/ 
 
64 
 
 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 on to remark that the use of acquired knowledge, 
 technique, training, canons of art, and so forth, is 
 simply to enable the imagination to work without let 
 or hindrance — to adjust and oil the machinery through 
 which it must give itself utterance. 
 
 Mr. John Clayton,' whose Hugh Trevor in All for 
 Her is remembered as one of the most pathetic 
 creations of our time, assures me that if tears do not 
 rise spontaneously to his eyes the effect of his acting 
 is distinctly diminished. There are passages in All 
 for Her which he has never been able to play without 
 profound emotion — lines which he can scarcely quote 
 in ordinary talk without a tremor in his voice ; and 
 in these passages (as many playgoers well remember) 
 he used to produce upon his audience that highest 
 emotional effect which is expressed, not in immediate 
 applause, but in absorbed, breathless, tearful silence. 
 Mn Hermann Vezin is equally decided in his opinion. 
 Tears come readily to his eyes in pathetic situations, 
 and when they fail to come he is conscious of a 
 diminished hold upon his audience. He adds that 
 Charles Kean, with whom he was long and intimately 
 connected, used to paraphrase Churchill's couplet, and 
 say, ' You must feel yourself, or you'll never make 
 
 ' Mr. Clayton was the first actor (with one exception) who re- 
 sponded to my request for aid in this investigation, and my talk with 
 him in his dressing-room at Toole's Theatre (where he was then 
 playing) was one of the pleasantest and most instructive of many 
 pleasant and instructive interviews. When the above lines first ap- 
 peared he was yet among us, and we had every reason to hope that 
 the best part of his career, as a manager if not as an actor, lay before 
 him. I cannot place him among actors of the past. He will live for 
 many a Jay to come in the kindly recollection of thousands. 
 
'SUNT LACRYMM RERUM' 
 
 6S 
 
 your audience feel.' Mr. Vezin remarks, however, 
 that the natural breaking of the voice sometimes 
 occurs apart from tears. He mentions an actress of 
 great pathetic power who can produce the most 
 moving tones with perfectly dry eyes ; but this he 
 regards as an exception to. the ruJe. 
 
 ' I have often shed tears in sympathetic situations,' 
 writes Mr. Henry Howe, an excellent actor, and one 
 of the last survivors of a great school, "especially 
 when aided by the sensibility of the artist who is 
 acting with me. For instance, in the last scene of 
 Cltarles I., when Huntley leads the children to their 
 mother, I invariably shed tears at the point where 
 Miss Terry, also with tears in her eyes, asks Huntley 
 if the children know of their father's fate. Again, 
 when the King takes leave of Huntley, previous to 
 going to execution, Mr. Irving copiously sheds tears. 
 ... I have often been told by those who have wit- 
 nessed the scene that there was scarcely a dry eye in 
 the house.' No one who was near the stage on the 
 first night of The Amber Heart can doubt the reality 
 of Miss Ellen Terry's tears. In the second act they 
 literally streamed down her cheeks, while her whole 
 frame was shaken with weeping. Her emotion was 
 not, of course, uncontrollable, but for the moment it 
 was uncontrolled ; and I may add that the effect 
 upon the audience was instant and intense. 
 
 ' In moving situations,' writes Miss Bateman (Mrs. 
 Crowe), ' if real tears do not come to my eyes I do 
 not truly feel what I am acting, nor can I im- 
 press my audience to the same extent when I feign 
 
 F 
 
 Mr. Henr 
 Howe 
 
 Mr. Irvino" 
 
 Miss Ellen 
 Terry 
 
 Miss 
 Bateman 
 
66 
 
 MASKS OR FACES f- 
 
 Mr. Lionel 
 Brough 
 
 emotion as when I really feel it I have acted the 
 part of Leah for twenty-four years, and the tears 
 always come to my eyes when the little child says 
 " My name is Leah." ' Miss Isabel Bateman expresses 
 herself to the same effect. 
 
 Mr. Lionel Brough, who, though best known as 
 a comic actor, has every claim to be heard on the 
 question of pathos, writes as follows : ' In moving 
 situations I always cry. I can't help it My voice 
 goes of its own accord. In a certain pathetic scene 
 of a melodrama, which I played in Liverpool with 
 Miss Phillis Hill, we used^ every night to agree "not to 
 make fools of ourselves," as we called it ; and every 
 night there would be mutual recriminations at the 
 end of the scene, as, '' I thought you promised me 
 you wouldn't cry ? " Answer, in the same tearful 
 voice (with all the make-up washed off) : " So did 
 you, stupid." But neither of us ever regretted the 
 tears, or the way in which the scene went with the 
 audience. If ever I play a pathetic scene with a 
 child (and in most cases with a woman) I am sure to 
 cry. With men, not so ; as in any domestic trouble 
 of my own I should endeavour to restrain my tears 
 in telling my sorrows to a man, but should give them 
 free vent in the presence of the other sex. I don't 
 think an actor ever can be said to play pathos pro- 
 perly unless he feels it' Those who have seen Mr. 
 Brough's admirable performance of the old cab-owner 
 in Retiring will realise the value of his observations. 
 
 Several of my informants are undecided in their 
 evidence, and of these I may take Mr. Forbes 
 
 Mr. Forbes 
 Robertson 
 
'SUNT LACRYMM RERUM' 67 
 
 Robertson as a typical example. ' Tears come to my 
 eyes,' he writes, ' but not unbidden. Neither would . 
 I let my voice break of its own accord. I feel all 
 emotional scenes, under favourable conditions, very 
 strongly, but I never dare let myself go. Neverthe- 
 less I like to persuade myself that I am, for the time 
 being, the person I am playing ; to surrender myself 
 to the passion of the moment, and only to know my- 
 self, as it were, sufficiently to prevent breaking down. 
 .. . . Phelps often shed tears. On one occasion Phelps 
 when I was playing with him in an emotional scene, 
 being young and much affected at his acting and my 
 own emotions, I got beyond my own control. Phelps 
 afterwards warned me, and admitted that he might 
 easily be carried away by an affecting scene did he 
 not keep a strict watch on himself On the whole, 
 I think, Mr. Forbes Robertson may be said to take 
 the emotional side, though he dwells more than 
 some of his comrades on the necessity for keeping a 
 tight rein on the feelings. One of the few decided 
 disbelievers in emotion is Mr. Frank Harvey, who 
 writes as follows: 'The late Mademoiselle Beatrice, Miie. 
 with whom I was long associated, moved her audi- 
 ence to tears to a painful degree ; but she felt little J 
 emotion herself On the other hand, when acting 
 with the late Miss Neilson, I have seen real tears Miss 
 streaming down her cheeks, but I don't think she 
 moved her audience any more.' Miss Neilson's 
 extreme susceptibility to emotion seems to have 
 been quite incommensurate with her power of pro- 
 ducing pathetic effect. But then no one supposes 
 
 F 2 
 
 Neilson 
 
68 
 
 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 j 
 Mr. Pmero 
 
 Mr. B. 
 (iould 
 
 John Ryder 
 
 that an actress's command over her audience is pro- 
 portionate to the mere quantity of her tears. 
 
 The most resolute upholder of the non-emotional 
 theory with whom I have come in contact is Mr. A. 
 W. Pinero, whose keen intelligence and wide know- 
 ledge of the stage, both as actor and author, must give 
 his opinions exceptional weight He does not deny 
 that tears are shed, but he argues that "they are not a 
 true sign of feeling, and that actors deceive themselves 
 in supposing that they are. With a week's practice, 
 he says, anyone can learn to produce tears at will. ' 
 You have only to 'breathe, not through the nose, but j 
 through the closed throat ' — that is, as I understand j 
 it, to produce mechanically the globus hystericus. That J 
 thoughtful young actor Mr. Bernard Gould makes a 
 similar assertion. ' I have frequently,' he writes, ' found 
 it possible at a moment's notice, and without any 
 (even simulated) affecting surroundings, to force tears 
 into the eyes by merely speaking in a mechanically- 
 produced broken voice.' This is a curious testimony ■ 
 to the intimate connection between the muscles of the ' 
 throat and lachrymal glands. Mr. Pinero proceeds to 
 maintain that in many actors the habit of thus ' pump- 
 ing up ' tears becomes a second nature, and almost 
 a disease. He mentions a well-known actress who 
 could read you a comic poem, weeping copiously all 
 the time ; and a popular actor who, even in private 
 life, could scarcely relate an ordinary incident, such as 
 having seen a horse fall in the street, without being 
 bathed in tears. Miss Wallis, who studied acting 
 under the late John Ryder, gives me a curious case 
 
'SUNT LACRYM^ RERUM' 
 
 69 
 
 ! in point She once expressed to her instructor her 
 wonder at the way in which an actress much in vogue 
 at the time managed to turn on tears wherever there 
 was the slightest excuse for them. ' Look at me, my 
 dear,' Mr. Ryder replied ; and instantly she saw a tear 
 gather in his eye and roll slowly down his cheek ! 
 
 Another strong argument of Mr. Pinero's is that, 
 in a part with which he is quite familiar, an actor will 
 often produce a powerful effect upon his audience in 
 total unconsciousness of what he is doing ; just as 
 some people will read aloud whole pages of a book, 
 intelligently enough to all appearance, and will sud- 
 denly wake up to the fact that their thoughts have 
 been absent, and that they do not know a single word 
 they have been reading. Of this Miss Mary Ander- 
 son relates a curious instance. After the fourth act 
 of Romeo and Juliet, one night, her maid began to 
 unfasten her dress in order to put on the white 
 draperies of the Tomb scene. ' Don't do that,' said 
 Miss Anderson ; ' I have to play the Potion scene 
 yet ' ; and it took some time to convince her that she 
 had not only just played it, but had played (as her 
 comrades assured her, and as the applause of the audi- 
 ence showed) with unusual effect. I could adduce 
 several similar cases. It is said that Mr. and Mrs. 
 Alfred Wigan, having made some mistake in a cue 
 at the end of an important scene, actually played the 
 whole scene over again in blissful unconsciousness of 
 their blunder. John Ireland relates how poor Reddish, 
 when his faculties were failing, played Posthumus for his 
 benefit under the full conviction that he was playing 
 
 Miss 
 Anderson 
 
 Mr, and 
 Mrs. Wigan 
 
 Reddish- 
 Ireland, 
 A 58 
 
70 
 
 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 Mr. Toole 
 
 Romeo ! ' I congratulated him on his being enough 
 recovered to perform. Yes, sir, replied he, I shall 
 perform, and in the garden scene I shall astonish you ! 
 — In the garden scene, Mr. Reddish ? — I thought you 
 were to play Posthumus — No, sir, I play Romeo. . . 
 At the time appointed he set out for the Theatre. The 
 gentleman who went with him . . . told me that his 
 mind was so imprest with the character of Romeo, 
 he was reciting it all the way. . . . When the time 
 came for his appearance, they pushed him on the 
 stage, fearing he would begin with a speech of Romeo. 
 With the same expectation I stood in the pit . . . 
 The instant he came in sight of the audience his 
 recollection seemed to return ... he made the bow 
 of modest respect, and went through the scene much 
 better than I had ever before seen him. On his return 
 to the green-room the image of Romeo returned to 
 his mind.' We have here a real ' paradox of acting ' ; 
 but I doubt whether such freaks of consciousness 
 can be made to tell either for or against Diderot's 
 argument. 
 
 was 
 
 ' No audience, in my opinion,' says Mr. Toole, 
 LS ever made to weep unless the actor had wept, or 
 could weep, at what touched the audience. At the 
 same time, an actor must be able to control himself 
 That is the real turning-point of the whole discus- 
 sion. The anti-emotionalists from Diderot, or rather 
 from Francois Riccoboni, onwards, assume that real 
 emotion is inconsistent with self-control ; whereas the 
 emotionalists argue*'(as I think, justly) that the accom- 
 
'SUNT LACRYMJS RERUM' 
 
 71 
 
 plished actor is he who, in the moment of performance, 
 can freely utilise the subtle action of the imagination 
 upon the organs of expression, without running the 
 least risk of its overmastering him. The illustration 
 given by Mr. Lawrence Barrett in a recent ' interview ' 
 is very much to the point Mr. Barrett says : (jn my 
 opinion the prime requisites of an actor are sensibility 
 and imagination. But he must have these under 
 perfect control. The moment that they become his 
 masters instead of his servants, he ceases to be an 
 artist J Mr. Booth and I were discussing this point the 
 other day, and he gave this illustration. A friend in- 
 vites you out to take a drive behind two high-spirited 
 horses, that can go in, say 2.30. He speeds them 
 along at, perhaps, a three-minute gait, and you admire 
 his control of them. Presently the horses get fuller 
 of spirit, their enthusiasm is communicated to the 
 driver. He lets them out, nay, he even urges them 
 on to their fastest pace, but he doesn't lose control 
 over them. If he did they would soon be running 
 away with him. You see the delight in his face, the 
 eagerness to get the best out of his animals, you 
 appreciate and enjoy his excitement, which is com- 
 municated to you, but you have confidence that he 
 remains master. So it is with acting. CThe actor's 
 powers and feelings will sometimes carry him along 
 faster than at others, but he must always keep a 
 strong hand over them.'') To the same effect writes 
 Miss Clara Morris, '^s to really losing oneself in 
 a part, that will not do : it is worse to be too sympa- 
 thetic than to have too much art."\ I must cry in my 
 
 Barrett, ly^ 
 Nov York 
 Tribune, 
 December 
 18, 1887 
 
 Mr. Edwin 
 Booth 
 
 Miss Clara 
 
 Morris, 
 
 Matthews 
 
 and 
 
 Button, 
 
 V, p. 224 
 
72' 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 WaJker 
 
 £d. I7S5, 
 f. 82 
 
 Powell, 
 
 Evtrard, 
 
 P-S 
 
 Hannetaire 
 
 emotional roles and feel enough to ciy, but I must not 
 allow myself to become so affected as to mumble my 
 words, to redden my nose, or to become hysterical.' 
 
 Some actors (a very small percentage) do un- 
 doubtedly suffer from their inability to keep their 
 feelings properly in check. Of Walker, a tragedian of 
 some note, though chiefly remembered as the original 
 Macheath in the Beggar's Opera, the author of The 
 Actor writes : — ' His ruin was that his sensibility con- 
 tinually ran away with him ; . . . the blood was in his 
 face before the time, his whole person was disordered, 
 and unless people knew the part, they could not find 
 out for what ; for the vehemence of his feeling took 
 away his utterance. Vox faucibus hasit, and he could 
 not speak articulately.' The same writer tells of a Mr. 
 Berry, whose excessive sensibility injured his playing 
 in all parts save that of Adam, in As You Like It, 
 where it stood him in good stead. ' I remember a 
 great tragedian, Powell,' says Cape Everard, ' perform- 
 ing the part of Jaffier, and when he said, 
 
 I have not wrong'd thee — by these tears I have not, 
 
 his feelings were so great that they choaked his utter- 
 ance, his articulation was lost, his face was drowned 
 in tears. — The audience from these causes, not under- 
 standing what he said, the effect was of course lost. 
 When Garrick, in the same part, spoke the same line, 
 every eye in the house dropt a tear! If he did not 
 feel himself he made everybody else feel.' 
 
 Servandoni d'Hannetaire, again, who published a 
 book of Observations sur I' Art du Com^dien in 1776, 
 
SUNT LACRYM^ RE RUM' 
 
 73 
 
 quotes the younger Riccoboni's remarks on the danger .Ante, p. 15 
 
 of tears, and then adds, ' Bien des Acteurs, comme 
 
 nous, ont €t€ obliges d'abandonner le genre pathdtique 
 
 par rapport k cette pente excessive k I'attendrissement 
 
 et au trop de facility a rdpandre des larmes.' Since 
 
 M. d'Hannetaire avers that this was his own case, we 
 
 have no reason to doubt him ; but it is certainly rarer 
 
 than he seems to suppose. The exaggeration which 
 
 y/e call ' ranting ' is, indeed, common enough, but that 
 
 is. due, not to excess of uricontrolled sensibility, but to 
 
 imperfect technical training and defective taste. Many 
 
 artists, as we have seen, concur in holding that the 
 
 mere presence of the audience is sufficient to beget the 
 
 necessary self-command, and M. d'Hannetaire is the 
 
 only player I ever heard of who was forced by a too . 
 
 copious flux of tears either to abandon the stage or to 
 
 confine himself to comic characters. 
 
 It is obvious that even a consummate artist may, 
 on occasion, be carried beyond himself to the detri- 
 ment of the desired effect. An anecdote of Mold, 
 quoted in Assezat's notes to the Paradoxe, affords a via. p. 346 
 case in point Lemercier was so much charmed with 
 Mold's acting one evening that he rushed to congra- MoM 
 tulate him. Mold replied that he was not pleased 
 with his own performance, and had not affected the 
 audience as much as usual. ' Je me suis trop livrd,' 
 he said, 'je n'dtais plus maitre de moi ; j'dtais entre 
 si vivement dans la situation que j'dtais le person- 
 nage meme, et que je n'dtais plus I'acteur qui le joue ; 
 j'ai dtd vrai comme je le serais chez moi, mais pour 
 I'optique du thd&tre, il faut I'etre autrement.' He 
 
74 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 M. Paul 
 
 Mounet, 
 
 Revue 
 
 iTArt 
 
 Drama- 
 
 tiqve, V. 
 
 p. 291 
 
 M, Lam- 
 bert 
 
 begged Lemercier to come and see him again when 
 the piece was repeated. Lemercier did so, taking his 
 station at the wing, and as Mold passed him to go 
 on the stage he whispered, 'Je suis bien maitre de 
 moi, vous allez voir.' Lemercier declares that, as 
 Mold predicted, he produced a much greater effect on 
 the second occsision than on the first The brothers 
 Mounet, the leading tragedians of the contemporary- 
 French stage, both convinced champions of the emo- 
 tional theory, are subject to occasional failures of 
 self-control. Paul Mounet, of the Odeon, admits that 
 he now and then yields to a delicious ' intoxication ' 
 of feeling ; but returning sobriety brings with it self- 
 criticism and dissatisfaction. The aforesaid Mold 
 summed up in a single phrase the true artistic prin- 
 ciple. ' Au thditre,' he used to say, ' il faut livrer son 
 coeur et garder sa tete.' M. Albert Lambert pere, a 
 highly esteemed actor of the Oddon, expresses himself 
 in almost identical terms. ' Comme principe gdndral 
 sur mon art,' he writes, ' j'ai celui-ci : Le cceur ckaud, la 
 tite froide. J'entends par cceur : les facultds cdrdbrales, 
 qui peuvent conserver la sensibilitd a I'dtat ardent, qui 
 savent appeler les larmes par un simple effort de 
 volontd : les suffocations, les angoisses, toutes les 
 affres de la douleur, soit en souvenir des situations 
 semblables vues ou eprouvdes dans la vie, soit par 
 I'identification voulue avec le personnage qu'on re- 
 prdsente. Par t^U froide : le pouvoir directeur tou- 
 jours en dveil, une esp^ce d'instinct de conservation 
 artistique qui, dans la plus affolde des explosions, salt 
 la diriger selon les lois d'un art appris et mdditd.' 
 
'SUNT LACRYM^ RERUM' 75 
 
 Finally, let me quote from J. J. Engel's Ideen zu einer Berlin. 
 Mimik, the views of a veiy penetrating critic of last ^^ ^~ 
 century, who, though not an actor himself, was for 
 some years a manager, and lived in hourly communion 
 with actors. ' Actors,' he says, ' all speak of feeling, Engei 
 "and think that they are certain to play excellently 
 if . . . they fill themselves with the enthusiasm of 
 their subject. I can cite only one (but he certainly 
 the greatest) actor I have known, our Eckhofto wit, Eckhof 
 who, neither in regard to declamation nor to action, 
 relied on feeling alone ; but rather in the moment of 
 performance kept himself in hand so as not to fall 
 into an excess of feeling, and, from lack of self- 
 command, play with defective truth, expression, har- 
 mony, and finish. ... I know actors who can in a 
 single moment fill their eyes with tears. . . . Happy 
 he who possesses this gift, and knows how to govern 
 it wisely ; for a falling tear is often, unquestionably, 
 of excellent effect ; but to heat the fancy to such ^ 
 a degree that its suggestions become as moving as 
 reality itself, seems to me a dangerous course. . ■. . 
 Real emotions too easily take possession of the whole ' 
 heart and obstruct or distort the utterance they are 
 designed to intensify.' If this tendency be so potent 
 in any particular case that it must at all costs be 
 eradicated, then, doubtless, the player should school 
 himself to automatism. But to make automatism an 
 imperative ideal for all is like condemning the whole 
 world to total abstinence because one man in ten 
 thousand is a dipsomaniac. 
 
76 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Pollock, 
 p. i6 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 'ET MENTEM MORTALIA TANGUNT.' 
 
 ' Tears,' say the upholders of Diderot, ' are no trust- ) 
 worthy sign of feeling. An onion or a grain of sand ' 
 will call them up just as readily as the agony of Alkestis 
 or the woes of Ophelia. The practised actor can pro- 
 duce them mechanically if he thinks it worth while, 
 and with some the habit of producing them for any 
 reason, or no reason, becomes a disease. The Master 
 himself permits his ideal actor to weep, so long as he 
 has arranged beforehand "the precise moment at which 
 to produce his handkerchief, the word, the syllable at 
 which his tears must flow." ' Are there no cases, then 
 in which we can prove that the actor is really feeling 
 in his own person something similar in kind, if not 
 equal in degree, to the emotion he is representing ? It 
 was the object of my second question to elicit evidence 
 on this point. The original wording (as the reader 
 may see by turning to the Appendix) was not quite 
 accurate. This is how I should have put the point : — 
 
 When Macready played Virginius shortly after the death 
 of a favourite daughter, the thought of her, as he confessed, 
 mingled with, and intensified, his mourning for Virginia. Have 
 you any analogous experience to relate .' ' Has a personal 
 
^ET MENTEM MORTALIA TANGUNT^ 77 
 
 I emotion (whether recent or remote) influenced your acting in 
 j a situation which tended to revive it ? If so, was the influence, 
 
 in your opinion, for good or ill? And what was the effect 
 
 upon the audience ? 
 
 (.Personal emotion may influence acting in two ways. 
 The actor may consciously or unconsciously note 
 > the external manifestations of his feeling while it is 
 ' actually upon him (Talma and Rachel are said to have 
 : noted them consciously), and then may voluntarily 
 reproduce or mimic them on the stage without again 
 experiencing the slightest emotion, just as he might 
 mimic the gesture or accent of some totally indifferent 
 person.') This process, as a writer in the Westminster 
 Review has remarked, 'substantially squares with 
 Wordsworth's canon of poetic composition — that it is 
 emotion recollected in tranquillity.' The next ques- 
 tion bears upon this point, not the question now before 
 us. (What I here wanted to get at was the direct 
 influence of real and present personal emotion upon 
 acting.) I wanted to learn how far, and with what 
 effect, personal sorrow tends to mingle with the imagi- 
 nary woes of the theatre. If we find that actors who 
 profess to '^feel ' recognise no essential distinction, but 
 at most a mere difference of degree between purely 
 mimetic emotion and personal sorrow revived by the 
 similarity of their mimic to their real situation, then, 
 surely, we shall be justified in concluding that mimetic 
 emotion, and personal emotion belong to the same 
 order of mental phenomena, however much they may 
 differ in poignancy and persistency. 
 
 The classical case in point is that of the Greek 
 
 / 
 
 Post, pp. 
 98, 99 
 
 N. S. vol. 
 Ixxi. p. ss 
 
 Polu^ 
 
78 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Dettio- 
 sihenes, 
 xxviii. 
 
 Noctes 
 Attica, 
 ■uii. 5 
 
 Pollock, 
 p.T.a] 
 
 a. p. 159 
 
 Edmund 
 Kean 
 
 actor Polus, declared by Plutarch to have been un- 
 equalled in his craft Aulus Gellius is our authority 
 for the anecdote. ' Polus, therefore,' he says, ' clad in 
 the mourning habit of Electra, took from the lomb 
 the bones and urn of his son, and as if embracing 
 Orestes, filled the place, not with the image and imita- 
 tion, but with the sighs and lamentations of unfeigned 
 sorrow. Therefore, when a fable seemed to be repre- 
 sented, real grief was displayed.' This anecdote is 
 often loosely cited with the addition that the actor's 
 unwonted fervour produced an unwonted effect upon 
 the audience. Even Diderot seems to have fallen 
 into this error. Aulus Gellius says nothing what- 
 ever about the effect on the audience. The anec- 
 dote shows that a protagonist whom the Athenians 
 reckoned great believed in the good effect of real 
 emotion on the stage, and did not shrink from an 
 extravagant device for securing the genuine article. 
 It proves " only this and nothing more.' 
 
 In Barry Cornwall's Life of Edmund Kean we 
 find a strange instance of the deliberate and calculated 
 infusion of personal feeling into a theatrical situation. 
 One of the great little man's most striking successes 
 was achieved in Maturin's tragedy of Bertram. ' The 
 benediction " God bless the child," ' says his biographer, 
 ' for which Kean obtained so much applause, had been 
 previously uttered a hundred times over his own son 
 Charles. He repeated it so often, and so fervently, 
 that he became touched by the modulation of his own 
 voice ; which, under the before-mentioned circum- 
 stances, acquired a tenderness " beyond the reach of 
 
Everard, 
 f-4 
 
 '£T MENTEM MORTAUA TANGUNT' 79 
 
 art.'" This elaborate working-up and dragging-in 
 of paternal feeling tallies, in a sense, with both emo- 
 tionalist and anti-emotionalist theory. Diderot would 
 greatly have approved of the hundredfold rehearsal, 
 but would have held the utilisation of ' Charles his 
 son ' an unworthy lapse into sensibility. The truly 
 great actor, according to his theory, would have 
 lavished his blessings just as fervently on a chair or 
 a coal-box. And here, I grant, Diderot might have 
 claimed the authority of Garrick, if we may believe Ganick, 
 one of Cape Everard 's anecdotes. Everard, then a 
 hoy, was playing Thomas, Duke of Clarence, in the 
 second part of King Henry IV. After the first 
 rehearsal, Garrick called him ' into the Great Green 
 Room ; Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. Yates, and many others, 
 the first performers there. He told me that I spoke 
 the part extremely well, only one line he wished me 
 to give with a little more feeling. I said, " Oh yes, 
 sir, I intend to do so at night" He caught at my 
 expression as if lightning had shot athwart him ! — 
 " At night 1 " says he, " why, can you speak or play 
 better at night than in the morning} . . . Then, sir, 
 you are no actor ! I suppose, too, you could give 
 Romeo's, or Jaffier's speech, of 
 
 Oh woman, woman, lovely, charming woman ! 
 
 with more softness and feeling if you addressed it to 
 Mrs. Yates there, than you could to this marble slab?'" 
 The boy owned the soft impeachment ; whereupon 
 Garrick continued, ' Then, you are no actor I If you 
 cannot give a speech, or make love to a table, chair, 
 
8o 
 
 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 Macready 
 
 Remi- 
 nisccnces, 
 a. pf. 358, 
 363 
 
 or marble, as well as to the finest woman in the world, 
 you are not, nor ever will be a great actor ! ' u 
 
 Macready's daughter Nina died on February 24, 
 1850. On November 14 he notes: 'Acted Virginius. 
 ... I kept my mind on the part, and acted it; cer- 
 tainly, never better. The audience was extraordi- 
 narily excited. ... In the second act my thoughts 
 so fixed upon my blessed Nina that my emotion 
 nearly overpowered me.' Again, on January 3, 1851, 
 he writes : ' Acted Virginius, one of the most brilliant 
 and powerfiil performances of the character I have 
 ever given. I did indeed " gore my own thoughts " to 
 do it, for my own Katie was in my mind, as in one 
 part the tears streamed down my cheeks ; and, in 
 another, she who is among the blest, beloved one ! 
 Such is a player's mind and heart ! Called.' In these 
 cases there can surely be no doubt that Macready did 
 feel. The mimic situation reopened a real and recent 
 wound, and the personal sorrow reinforced the mimic 
 emotion, both together acting potently upon his phy- 
 sical organism. Nor can there be any doubt that he 
 believed the effect upon his acting to be for good, and 
 that the enthusiasm of the audience gave him valid 
 ground for this belief Note that, on the first occa- 
 sion, his emotion ' nearly overpowered him.' Nearly, 
 but not quite, for he was a consummate artist ; and 
 so long as it did not quite carry him away he had 
 nothing to reproach himself with. On the contrary, 
 ' the audience was extraordinarily excited.' 
 
 Miss Helen Faucit (Lady Martin) relates a similar 
 event in her own experience. A few days after learn- 
 
 Lady 
 Martin 
 
'ET MENTEM MORTALIA TANGUNT' 8i 
 
 Shake- 
 speare s 
 Female 
 Characters^ 
 f. 130 
 
 ing of the death of her dearly-loved sister, she had to 
 appear at a benefit (sorely against her will) in some 
 scenes from Romeo and Juliet. It was represented to 
 her that the charity would suffer by her failure to per- 
 form, and she resolved to make the effort. * I got on 
 very well,' she writes, ' in the scene with the Friar. 
 There was despair in it, but nothing that in any way 
 touched upon my own trial. My great struggle was 
 in Juliet's chamber when left alone. Then her deso- 
 lation, her loneliness, became mine, and the rushing 
 tears would have way. Happily the fearful images 
 presented to Juliet's mind of what is before her in the 
 tomb soon, sent softer feelings away ; but how glad I 
 was when the fancied sight of Tybalt's ghost allowed 
 the grief that was in my heart to find vent in a wild 
 cry of anguish as well as horror ! ' This passage is 
 particularly interesting because it lays stress on the 
 analogy between the real and the mimic situation, 
 showing how the sorrow in Miss Faucit's heart at 
 once rushed into the channel provided for it by 
 Juliet's lonely anguish. 
 
 Perhaps the most touching instance on record of 
 the mingling of personal with mimetic emotion is to 
 be found in Legouve's account of a midnight rehearsal 
 of Adrienne Lecouvreur, very shortly before its produc- 
 tion. Legouve himself, Regnier, Maillard, and Rachel 
 had remained behind all the rest, when Rachel pro- 
 posed that they should go over the fifth act once more. 
 No sooner had she commenced than Legouv6 was 
 struck by the intense and unusual pathos in Rachel's 
 voice. She played the whole scene with heartrending 
 
 G 
 
 Soixante 
 Arts de 
 Souvenhs, 
 . ii, p. 228 
 
82 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 power, and the three auditors were visibly moved. 
 After it was over Rachel sat silent in a corner of the 
 green-room, still weeping and shaken by nervous 
 tremors. Legouvd went up to her and said : ' Ma chere 
 amie, vous avez joud ce cinqui^me acte comme vous 
 ne le jouerez jamais de votre vie ! ' ' Je le crois,' she 
 replied, ' et savez-vous pourquoi ? . . . Ce n'est pas 
 sur Adrienne que j'ai pleur6, c'est sur moi ! Un je ne 
 sais quoi m'a dit tout a coup que je mourrais jeune 
 comme elle ; il m'a sembM que j'dtais dans ma propre 
 chambre, a ma derniere heure, que j'assistais a ma 
 propre mort. Aussi lorsqu'a cette phrase "Adieu 
 triomphes du theatre ! Adieu ivresses d'un art que 
 j'ai tant aim6 " vous m'avez vu verser des larmes 
 v6ritables, c'est que j'ai pense avec d6sespoir, que le 
 temps emporterait toute trace de ce qui aura ^te mon 
 talent, et que bientdt — il ne resterait plus rien de celle 
 qui fut Rachel ! ' This anecdote reminds one of the 
 extreme emotion displayed by the American actor 
 Thomas A. Cooper (the pupil of William Godwin), in 
 acting Wolsey, at a time when his fame and fortune 
 were on the wane. Tears coursed down his cheeks 
 in the scene with Cromwell, and those who knew him 
 best believed that he was overcome by the analogy 
 between Wolsey's situation and his own. 
 
 We are indebted to M. Coquelin, curiously enough, 
 for one of the most interesting of the anecdotes bear- 
 ing on this point. One morning, in the spring of 1 849, 
 he says, R^gnier was crossing the Pont des Arts with 
 his little daughter. The child ran away from him ; 
 he chased her, caught her, lifted her up, and kissed 
 
 Ludlow, 
 /■ 371 
 
 KSgnier 
 
 LArt et le 
 
 Comidien, 
 
 f.31 
 
'ET MENTEM MORTALIA TANGUNT' 83 
 
 her, 'd'un mouvement admirable de paternity heureuse.' 
 ' Bravo ! ' said someone behind them', applauding as if 
 in the theatre; and, turning, the comedian recognised 
 Emile Augier. Borrowing the words of Henri IV. 
 when found playing with his children, Rdgnier said : 
 ' Etes-vous p^re, Monsieur I'Ambassadeur ? ' and they 
 passed on laughing. Three months afterwards, Augier 
 stood with R^gnier at the little girl's grave. He was 
 then giving the final touches to his Gabrielle, and on 
 returning from the cemetery he added to Julien's part 
 in the fifth act, the lines : 
 
 Nous n'existons vraiment que par ces petits 6tres 
 Qui dans tout notre coeur s'^tablissent en maitres. 
 Qui prennent notre vie et ne s'en doutent pas, 
 Et n'ont qu'k vivre heureux potu: n'^tre point ingrats. 
 
 ' Et ces vers, si charmants et si vrais, 4 quelque temps 
 de la, le pere lui-meme les disait sur la sc^ne, impo- 
 sant comme artiste silence k ses douleurs, ou plutdt, 
 par une espece de courage propre k notre art, les 
 p^trissant avec celles de son rdle pour en faire une 
 creation admirable.' It seems to me that in admitting 
 the good effect of this ' kneading together ' of real 
 with imagined feeling, M. Coquelin practically aban- 
 dons his anti-emotionalist position. 
 
 ' Macready's experience,' writes Signor Salvini, Saivini 
 ' has also been mine. One evening, in Le Marbrier 
 by Alexandre Dumas pere, I had to play the part of 
 a father who has lost his daughter. That very even- 
 ing, my own daughter, three years old, lay on her 
 death-bed ! My tears choked my voice, and my sobs 
 went so directly to the heart of the audience that their 
 
84 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Ristori 
 
 Mr. Clay- 
 ton 
 
 Miis Isabel 
 Bateman 
 
 enthusiasm was intense.' ' Many and many a time,' 
 writes Salvini's countrywoman and sister-artist Ristori, 
 ' in sustaining the part of a daughter who loses her 
 parents or of a mbther who sees her sons in the grasp 
 of death, my tears have bhnded me, and I have felt 
 my heart bursting with sorrow. I have occasionally 
 been so overcome by the analogy between a fictitious 
 situation and an event in my own life, that I have 
 had to put forth all my strength in order to retain my 
 self-control, and have not always entirely succeeded ! 
 The effects obtained under such mental conditions 
 are naturally stronger because they are truer.' Diderot 
 meets with short shrift at the hands of the great 
 Italians. 
 
 Most of my informants, however, who have anything 
 to say on this point, agree that a too recent sorrow is 
 hurtful. Mr. John Clayton went from the deathbed of 
 his father to play in a similar scene, and utterly broke 
 down. In other cases in which a stage situation has 
 recalled a recent personal trouble, the effect upon his 
 acting was bad, as he did not dare to let himself go. 
 It will be remembered that during the historic run of 
 Hamlet zXtiiQ Lyceum in 1874-75, Mr. H. L. Bate- 
 man, the manager, died. His daughter. Miss Isabel 
 Bateman, was playing Ophelia to Mr. Irving's Hamlet, 
 and had to resume the part after a veiy short inter- 
 mission. ' The effect of the real experience,' Miss 
 Bateman writes, ' was anything but beneficial to my 
 performance. In my effort for self-control I believe I 
 never acted so badly ; it remains in my memory as a 
 terrible nightmare, and I have had a horror of the 
 
'ET MENTEM MORTALIA TANGUNT' 
 
 85 
 
 Mr. John 
 Coleman 
 
 part ever since.' When we think of such speeches as 
 ' I would give you some violets, but they withered all 
 when my father died,' we can easily conceive what a 
 terrible ordeal this must have been. ' On the other 
 hand,' Miss Bateman continues, ' my acting has been 
 greatly influenced for good by real but more remote 
 sorrows.' ' The death of a beloved female relative,' 
 writes Mr. John Coleman, an actor trained in the 
 school of Macready, ' affected me so much that while 
 playing Hamlet, soon afterwards, I was carried quite 
 beyond myself in the scene of Ophelia's funeral, and 
 overcome by an attack of semi-hysterical emotion. 
 Although I have no personal knowledge or recollec- 
 tion of the effect upon the audience, I was assured 
 that both actors and audience were very much 
 excited by the occurrence.' It is curious that Mr. 
 Coleman and Macready should use the same word/ 
 ' excited,' to indicate the effect upon an audience of 
 a performance in which personal sorrow intensified 
 the mimic emotion of the scene. The difference 
 between the two cases is that, whereas Macready 
 himself observes and reports the excitement of the 
 audience, Mr. Coleman confesses that he was too 
 much carried away to observe anything. I take it 
 that Mr. Coleman does not consider the ' excitement ' 
 he created an artistically desirable effect. It is certain 
 that where a player (in Macready's phrase) is too 
 obviously ' goring his own thoughts,' the effect cannot 
 but be crudely painful, like that of a bull-fight or of 
 a gladiatorial display. Yet the fact that powerful 
 
86 
 
 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 Mrs. 
 Kendal 
 
 effects, however undesirable, have been and can be 
 produced under these circumstances, is a sufficient 
 disproof of Diderot's argument that real emotion on 
 the stage is of necessity ' paltry and weak,' meagre 
 and unconvincing. 
 
 Two very distinguished actresses have been good 
 enough to communicate to me experiences which 
 exactly illustrate the influence upon acting of recent 
 and of more remote personal sorrow. Even in her 
 early girlhood — from the age of sixteen onwards — 
 Miss Madge Robertson used to play the part of Lady 
 Isabel Carlyle (afterwards Madame Vigne) in a dra- 
 matic version of East Lynne. She used to mourn 
 over the dying child without knowing what sorrow 
 meant. Then she became Mrs. Kendal ; and, in the 
 loss of her first child, she learned to sympathise only 
 too vividly with the distracted mother of the play. 
 East Lynne was at this time vastly popular, especially 
 with Saturday-night audiences ; and on a Saturday 
 evening, less than a fortnight after her bereavement, 
 Mrs. Kendal had to play Lady Isabel before a crowded 
 audience at Hull. Everything, even to the name of 
 the child, reminded her of her loss ; and in the third 
 act her emotion became so heartrending that she was 
 utterly overpowered by it, and the curtain had to be 
 dropped before the end of the act The effect upon 
 the audience was electrical and thrilling. A woman 
 stood up in the pit and cried, ' No more ! no more ! ' 
 But it was not an effect which, either as a woman or 
 an artist, Mrs. Kendal could bring herself to repeat. 
 She got through the last act as best she might, and 
 
'ET MENTEM MORTAUA TANGUNT' 
 
 87 
 
 ' As an instance of that mingling of the grotesque with the tragic 
 which makes such a motley web of life, I may mention that Mrs. 
 Kendal remembers vividly the broad Yorkshire accent of the child who 
 played little Willie. His last words were : ' A cannut see yu or eear 
 yur voice. A can oanly eear the singin' of those voices in the shinin' 
 garden. Theear ! Theear ! ' 
 
 Mrs. 
 Bancroft 
 
 from that day to this has never reappeared in East 
 Lynne} 
 
 This was an instance in which acute and present 
 personal sorrow absorbed rather than reinforced the 
 mimic emotion, and changed the imagined heroine's 
 imagined agony into real torture for the real woman. 
 We come. now to a case in which the memory of a 
 more remote sorrow has aided in the production of 
 an effect, the pathos of which must be fresh in the 
 minds of thousands of playgoers. Mrs. Bancroft 
 writes as follows : ' When a circumstance on the stage 
 strikes home, reminding me of a great grief, a domes- 
 tic sorrow, or a grievous wrong, it must for the time 
 being cause a feeling of pain which of necessity gives 
 an impetus to my acting. I can well sympathise with 
 Macready, and understand how the loss of a loved 
 child would affect his acting in Virginius. . . . When 
 I played the Vicar's wife in The Vicarage, I had to 
 deliver a particular speech which always affected me 
 deeply : " God gave me a little child ; but then, when 
 all was bright and beautiful, God took His gift away," 
 &c. The remembrance of the death of my own child 
 was revived in these words. My heart was full of his 
 image, and my tears came in tribute to his memory. 
 I could not have stopped them if I had tried.' No 
 one, surely, will maintain that Mrs. Bancroft deceives 
 
MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 Miss Ward 
 
 Mr. Wilson 
 Barrett 
 
 herself in supposing that she was feeling with her cha- 
 racter — that is to say, was going through in her own 
 person something very like the mental experience 
 (with its physical accompaniments) attributed by the 
 author to Mrs. Haygarth. ' The effect upon my audi- 
 ence,' Mrs. Bancroft continues — and no one who saw 
 The Vicarage need be reminded of this — ' was that 
 not a heart amongst them did not feel with me. Their 
 silence spoke volumes, and their tears told me of their 
 sympathy.' 
 
 Miss Genevieve Ward, though doubtful as to the 
 artistic effect of personal emotion, has no doubt as to 
 its tendency to mingle with the emotion of the scene. 
 ' Many sad experiences in my life,' she writes, ' have 
 helped to intensify my feelings on the stage, even 
 though not strictly analogous ; but I have not found 
 that it made any difference in the effect upon my 
 audience. The influence on myself was to make me 
 suffer, not only from the sorrow, but from the effort to 
 control my feelings and keep them within the bounds 
 of the situation. I have seen a young actress, whose 
 pathos rarely touched her audience, perform one night 
 under the influence of the deepest sorrow, tears rolling 
 down her cheeks freely, and sobs breaking her voice. 
 Yet the audience was quite as unmoved as on other 
 occasions in the same situation.' This proves, what 
 is sufficiently obvious, that emotion alone, without the 
 faculty of dramatic expression, will not make itself 
 felt across the footlights ; and the proof of this fact is 
 mistaken by some supporters of Diderot for the proof 
 of his theory. Mr. Wilson Barrett mentions several 
 
'ET ME NT EM MORTALIA TANGUNT' 
 
 89 
 
 l^ 
 
 analogous cases to the one just quoted. ' I have seen 
 an emotional novice,' he writes, ' drown herself in 
 tears. Evidently she has been torn with emotion, but, 
 beyond the tears, there has been absolutely no outward 
 and visible sign of this inward and spiritual suffering. 
 I have again and again held a mirror to a young actor, 
 and when he has evidently been feeling deeply, his 
 face, to his astonishment, has borne a peaceful, placid 
 smile-' uh^L^^^ merely shows that the use of inward 
 emotion is to reinforce, not to supplant, outward ex- 
 pression. No one has ever doubted that the actor 
 must be able to_express what he feels,"'or feelirig will 
 avail him nothing. The question at issue is whether 
 1 he ou ght, o^qughiLDjQtj_to_feeLBiiaLlie_expxess.es.y 
 Returning to the special subject of personal emo- 
 tion, I am glad to be able to cite the experience of 
 two actors who (as I can vouch from my own obser- 
 vation) have been most successful in mastering and 
 moving the vast audiences of East End and suburban 
 theatres. In the West End Mr. George Conquest is 
 chiefly known as a pantomimist, but he is also a melo- 
 dramatic actor of rare intensity. He, like Macready, 
 has had to appear in a situation reminding him of 
 the loss of a beloved daughter ; and he, too, felt his 
 personal sorrow mingle with his mimic emotion. ' I 
 think,' he writes, ' the influence may have been good 
 while the situation applied, but afterwards it distracted 
 the mind from the true object of the drama.' Mr. J. 
 H. Clynds, again, gives me his experience as fol- 
 lows : — ' I was one night playing Hamlet during a 
 short starring engagement, while my father lay dead 
 
 Mr. Con- 
 quest 
 
 Mr. Clynds 
 
90 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 at home ; and during the whole of the first act the tears 
 were literally streaming down my face. At the line 
 " My father ! — methinks I see my father ! " it was only 
 with the greatest effort that I could proceed. . . . The 
 audience knew nothing of the (to me) sad event, and 
 what effect was created I was too much engrossed to 
 observe ; but it was afterwards conveyed to me that 
 it was a matter of general comment that night, " What 
 ' wonderful pathos the Hamlet possessed, and what a 
 voice of tears ! " ' In answer to my first question Mr. 
 Clynds writes, ' It has always made itself felt to me 
 that I produce a greater effect with real tears and the 
 genuine lump in the throat than when these affections 
 are not physically experienced ' ; and Mr. Clynds, I 
 repeat, is an actor to whose strong hold upon large 
 popular audiences I can myself bear witness. Now, 
 if real feeling on the stage were, as many anti-emo- 
 tionalists contend, absolutely and essentially ineffec- 
 tive, it certainly would not tell at the Grecian and the 
 Adelphi any more than at the Lyceum. I would 
 therefore lay stress on the testimony of Mr. Conquest 
 and Mr. Clynds as showing that, whatever its artistic 
 value, real sorrow does mingle with mimic emotion, 
 and (to state the case in the most guarded terms) at 
 least does not annul the desired effect. 
 
 The remaining answers to this question must be 
 briefly summarised. Among the artists who assure 
 me that personal sorrows have influenced their act- 
 ing, and, as they believe, for good, I may mention M. 
 Albert Lambert pere, Mr. Wilson Barrett, Mr. Forbes 
 Robertson, Miss Wallis, Miss Maud Milton, Miss 
 
V 
 
 ,'V 'ET MENTEM MORTALIA TANGUAT' 91 
 
 Dorothy Dene, Mr. Leonard Boyne, and Mr. Leonard 
 Outram. Mr. Outram writes, 'The public has fre- 
 quently been agreeably surprised by the sudden ac- 
 cession of pathetic power in an actor or actress who 
 has for the first time in a happy life encountered a 
 domestic affliction.' Mr. Herbert Standing, again, 
 sends me the following note : — ' I have been playing 
 Triplet in Masks and Faces lately, and in the scene 
 where he speaks of his starving children I could not 
 but think of my motherless little ones. I always got 
 the right feeling and the " lump in the throat," along 
 with the appreciation of the audience.' 
 
 Many of my informants, happily, have no ex- 
 perience of the effect of personal sorrow upon art. 
 Others say that their domestic griefs are ' too sacred ' 
 to be ' used ' on the stage ; meaning, I presume, that 
 in a situation recalling any private sorrow, they would 
 make a deliberate effort to forget or ignore the ana- 
 logy. This implies a curious mental state or faculty, 
 of no importance, however, to our present inquiry. 
 The purport of this section, let me repeat, is 
 ■ primarily to prove that actual emotion is felt on the 
 stage, and only in the second place to test its artistic 
 value. My object has been to rebut the assertion 
 that what actors describe and think of as ' feeling ' is 
 merely a state of nervous excitement not in the least 
 resembling the emotional condition they have to por- 
 tray. [ I have shown that the actor does, in some cases, 
 indubitably feel with his character, the imagined emo- 
 tion happening to coincide with a real emotion in 
 his real life.] It is pretty clear, too, I think, from the 
 
92 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Ante, p. 38 
 
 Ed. 175s, 
 A 196 
 
 Pollock, p. 
 48 
 
 (answers I have quoted, that the effect upon the actor 
 of this mingling of real with imagined emotion differs 
 in degree rather than in kind from the effect of the 
 imagined emotion, pure and simple, to which my first 
 question referred. If so, is there not at least a very- 
 strong probability that the artists who say that they 
 ' feel ' are not deceiving themselves, and that, in the 
 particular order of emotions in question, the imagina- 
 tion can, and does, beget in the actor's mind and body 
 a condition more or less analogous to that of the 
 character he represents ? ) 
 
 Sorrow is not, of course, the only emotion which 
 may transfuse itself from the real man or woman into 
 the imaginary personage, though for the reasons in- 
 dicated above it is by far the most important. Joy 
 will be dealt with in a later chapter ; in the meantime 
 let me say a few words as to love, hate, and their 
 kindred sentiments. 
 
 We have seen how Sainte-Albine, followed by his 
 English adaptor, and by Sticotti, asserted roundly 
 that ' Les personnes ndes pour aimer devroient avoir 
 seules le privilege de jouer les roles d'Amans.' An 
 obvious corollary to this principle is that only an 
 actor and actress who are positively in love with each 
 other can do justice to Romeo and Juliet ; the author 
 of The Actor even going so far as to assert, with 
 refreshing cynicism, 'that husband and wife have 
 seldom been observed to play the lovers well upon 
 the stage.' Diderot, of course, rebuts the extravagant 
 assumption that stage lovers must be lovers in reality, 
 
'ET MENTEM MORTALIA TANGUNT' 93 
 
 ■y 
 
 and his remarks on the subject led me, in my first 
 interrogatory, to put a question as to the effect of 
 personal ' likes and dislikes ' upon acting. 
 
 The general tenor of the answers was precisely 
 what I anticipated. Unlike the simple emotions, 
 love and hatred do not manifest themselves in cha- 
 racteristic and unmistakable external' symptoms. 
 They are emotional attitudes rather than individual 
 emotions. Personal feelings of this sort, then, can but 
 little help or hinder dramatic expression, any influ- 
 ence they may possibly possess being quite indirect^./ 
 Dramatic annals, it is true, abound in anecdotes of 
 lovers throwing exceptional fervour into love-scenes, 
 and even of haters giving treble force to passages of 
 invective. In most of these cases, however, there is 
 probably a lurking fallacy of observation. Spectators 
 who know, believe, or suspect that a certain personal 
 relation exists between two artists, are apt to see 
 ' confirmation strong ' in trifles light as air, and to 
 make much of differences which are imperceptible 
 to the uninitiated. More than any other members 
 of society (princes, perhaps, excepted), actors and 
 actresses are the favourite playthings of gossip. To 
 see beneath the mask, to discover personal warmth 
 in mimic caresses and personal bitterness in mimic 
 scorn, gives the theatrical busybody a sense of supe- 
 riority. The wish is so apt to beget the thought that 
 we cannot accept such evidence without suspicion. 
 
 One of the most famous instances of lovers ex- 
 celling in a drama of love is thus quaintly related 
 by the brothers Parfaict : — ' Le mercredi premier 
 
 Baron jiin. 
 and Mile. 
 Desmares, 
 
94 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Hhtoire du 
 Thiatre- 
 Fran^ais, 
 xiv. p. 3C7 
 
 Lerna- 
 zurier^ 
 i. f. 120 
 
 Gueulleiiey 
 p. 20 
 
 Lekain, 
 Talmat 
 P- 73 
 
 Juin [1703], les com^diens remirent au Theatre la 
 Tragddie-Ballet de Psyche, de M. Moliere, qui eut 
 vingt neuf representations. . . . Ce qui contribua 
 beaucoup au succes de cette remise, c'est que . . . 
 I'Actrice qui reprdsentoit le personnage de Psyche 
 (Mademoiselle Desmares) et I'Acteur qui jouoit celui 
 de I'Amour (M. Baron, fils) quoiqu' excellens tous 
 deux, se surpasserent encore dans ces deux rdles ; on 
 dit qu'ils ressentoient Fun pour I'autre la plus vive 
 tendresse, et que leurs talens supdrieurs ne furent 
 employes que pour marquer avec plus de precision 
 les sentimens de leurs cceurs.' It is said that the 
 fervour of Psyche's passion for Cupid was so obvious 
 as to lead to explanations between the actress and 
 her ' amant en titre,' the Due d'Orldans, which resulted 
 in her giving the prince his dismissal and installing 
 the actor in his stead. A less pleasant anecdote in 
 connection with this play is to the effect that the 
 playing of Cupid and Psyche led to an intrigue 
 between the elder Baron and Mile, (or, as we should 
 say, Madame) Moliere, the wife of his benefactor. 
 
 Cases in which lovers have played love scenes 
 are, of course, as plentiful as blackberries in dramatic 
 annals ; but it is less easy to find trustworthy evidence 
 that they played them either exceptionally well or 
 exceptionally ill. Lekain, towards the close of his 
 career, fell madly in love with a lady who was not an 
 actress. Whenever he was to play a love scene he 
 made her take her stand at the wing, and addressed 
 to her the raptures intended by the poet for his 
 heroine. A popular Juliet has told me that an old 
 
'ET MENTEM MORTALIA ' TANGUNT' 95 
 
 lady of her acquaintance used to say to her, ' Ah, you 
 young people may be all very well, but I saw Charles 
 Kean and Ellen Tree play Romeo and Juliet the 
 evening before their marriage, and I shall never again 
 see the Balcony Scene done as they did it' Even 
 supposing the old lady to have been a competent 
 critic, I fear her memory must have deceived her. 
 Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean, ' by an odd but accidental 
 coincidence,' says their official biographer, played The 
 Honeymoon the evening after their marriage. Had 
 they played Romeo and Juliet the evening before, the 
 coincidence would have been still more quaint, and 
 he could scarcely have failed to notice it. 
 
 Cases are not uncommon in which personal hatred 
 and emulation have added zest to scenes of recrimi- 
 nation and invective. The central incident of Scribe 
 and Legouv^'s Adrienne Lecouvreur is, if not histori- 
 cal, at least legendary. The Duchesse de Bouillon, 
 who was doing her best to supplant Adrienne in the 
 affections of the Mardchal de Saxe, happened one 
 evening to be seated in a stage box while her rival 
 was playing Phedre. The actress saw her, and turn- 
 ing away from her confidant, hurled at the head of 
 the great lady the lines : — 
 
 Je sais mes perfidies, 
 CEnone, et ne suis point de ces femmes hardies, 
 Qui, goiitant dans le crime une tranquille paix, 
 Ont su se faire un front qui ne rougit jamais. 
 
 The public, it is said, recognised the application, and 
 applauded it. We read of Rachel, too, that in the 
 part of Marie Stuart in Lebrun's tragedy of that 
 
 Mr. and 
 Mrs. C. 
 Kean 
 
 Cole, i. 
 t- 334 
 
 Adrienne 
 Lecouvreur 
 
 Lema- 
 zurlcr, a. 
 p. 292 
 
 Rachel, 
 
 Houssaye, 
 p. 151. 
 
96 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 name, she played flatly and without inspiration until, 
 iij the scene with Elizabeth, she stood face to face 
 with an actress whom a hostile clique were trying 
 to exalt into rivalry with her. Then she suddenly 
 threw off her languor and played the scene with such 
 intensity that the unhappy Elizabeth ' ^tonn^e et 
 confondue, reculait d'dpouvante. . . . Ce fut une verve 
 incroyable, une passion qui allait jusqu'au ddlire.' It 
 swept her rival from her path at once and for ever. 
 These cases of hatred touch our argument more 
 nearly than those of love. Hatred, uttering itself in 
 the form of rage, presents far more active and charac- 
 teristic external symptoms than belong to any form 
 of the tender passion ; so that a personal predisposi- 
 tion to anger may very well assist and intensify its 
 mimetic presentation. 
 
 Among the artists of to-day I find it generally 
 agreed that an extreme dislike for any fellow-actor 
 might, in spite of themselves, influence their playing 
 for ill, whatever might be the supposed relation of 
 their respective characters. One artist, however, 
 pleads guilty to having entered with peculiar gusto 
 into the nightly task of baffling and finally checkmat- 
 ing a fellow-artist of extremely unsympathetic private 
 character ; while, on the other hand, a well-known 
 actor says, ' I never played Claude Melnotte better 
 than to the Pauline of Miss So-and-so, whom I de- 
 tested.' One or two actresses admit, theoretically, 
 that they would feel constrained and ill at ease in 
 playing Juliet to a Romeo who stood to them in 
 a nearer relation than one of ordinary esteem 
 
'ET MENTEM MORTALIA TANGUNT' g; 
 
 and courtesy. It would seem like wearing their 
 heart upon their sleeve, and making a show of the 
 sanctities of life. But, with a few reservations and 
 exceptions, the general answer to this question is that 
 personal feeling towards a fellow-artist makes but 
 little difference, while the fellow-artist's talent and 
 earnestness make all the difference in the world. 
 I add earnestness, because talent, though the main 
 thing, is not the whole secret. A bad actor, it is 
 said, may sometimes be easy to play to, and a good 
 actor difficult. I have been much struck by a remark 
 of Miss Alma Murray's, to the effect that in playing 
 to an actor who is languid and uninterested one is 
 forced, in order to keep oneself up to the emotion of 
 the scene, mentally to act the other part as well, of 
 course at the cost of great exertion. Diderot's clock- 
 work actor would certainly have the advantage of 
 being exempt from this necessity. 
 
 In sum, then, there is no reason to deny that 
 lovers have often played love-scenes well (though 
 according to Diderot, they had no business to do so), 
 and still less can we doubt that real love has often 
 grown out of the mimic passion of the scene. But 
 whereas it is evident that personal sorrow may, and 
 often does, lend exceptional truth and intensity to 
 mimic pathos, there is no convincing proof that 
 personal love ever reinforces, in any perceptible de- 
 gree, the utterance of stage-love. And the reason 
 is — pardon the reiteration— that love, unlike sorrow, 
 has no simple and characteristic physical expression 
 to which the nerve-centres require to be attuned. 
 
 H 
 
 iC^ 
 
 Miss Alma 
 Mvirray 
 
98 
 
 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 Talma, 
 
 R^Jitxioni 
 surLekain^ 
 /■ 74 
 
 VArt et It 
 ComMien, 
 f. 27. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE LIFE SCHOOL. 
 
 Let us now compare with personal emotion revived 
 by the mimic situation, that ' emotion recollected in 
 tranquillity ' of which some great artists are known to 
 have made use. Talma is the classic case in point. 
 ' A peine oserai-je dire,' he says, ' que moi-meme 
 dans une circonstance de ma vie oil j'dprouvai un 
 chagrin profond, la passion du theatre ^tait telle en 
 moi, qu'accabl^ d'une douleur bien rdelle, au milieu 
 des larmes que je versais, je fis malgre moi une 
 observation rapide et fugitive sur I'alt^ration de 
 ma voix et sur une certaine vibration spasmodique 
 qu'elle contractait dans les pleurs ; et, je le dis non 
 sans quelque honte, je pensais machinalement a m'en 
 servir au besoin ; et en effet cette experience sur moi- 
 meme m'a souvent 6td tr^s-utile.' M. Coquelin states, 
 on I know not what authority, that this ' circumstance ' 
 in Talma's life was the death of his father. 
 
 In scenes of emotion in real life, whether you are a parti- 
 cipant in them (e.g. the death-bed of a relative) or a casual on- 
 looker (e.g. a street accident), do you consciously note effects 
 for subsequent use on the stage ? Or can you ever trace an 
 effect used on the stage to some phase of such a real-life experi- 
 ence automatically registered in your memory ? 
 
THE LIFE SCHOOL 
 
 99 
 
 I have been told of Rachel (but have failed to 
 find the authority for the anecdote) that one of her 
 greatest effects in Comeille's Horacev^^s studied from 
 life. Overhearing a chance conversation one day, she 
 learned of the unexpected death of a dear friend. 
 She uttered a cry, and staggered half-fainting to a 
 chair ; but at the same moment it struck her that this 
 was the' very tone and action required for the cry of 
 ' H^las ! ' when Camille learns of the death of her 
 lover. She studied and rehearsed the passage in this 
 new light, making it one of her most famous effects. 
 
 ' I have seen in Mrs. Siddons,' says Boaden, ' hun- 
 dreds of touches caught by herself from the real 
 
 world — 
 
 She is a great observer, and she looks 
 Quite through the deeds of men. 
 
 It is commonly deemed no slight ordeal to have her 
 steady gaze bent upon you, as she sits, too willingly, 
 silent a long time in society. Nor is this the result 
 of prudence or reserve, for she has a sound under- 
 standing, and is well read — it is her choice : to observe 
 is her mental discipline.' ' Kean,' writes Alfred Bunn, 
 ' sat up all night in a room opposite the Debtor's 
 Door of the Old Bailey, to catch a full view of the 
 deaths of the Cato Street conspirators ; and as he 
 was going on the stage in the evening, he said to me, 
 " I mean to die like Thistlewood to-night ; I'll imitate 
 every muscle of that man's countenance." ' Macready 
 told Lady Pollock that he ' once in a dream saw and 
 heard definitely and distinctly a friend lately dead, 
 who came to address to him words of admonition. 
 
 Rachel 
 
 Mrs. 
 Siddons, 
 
 Life of 
 Mrs. 
 Siddons, 
 ii. p. i8o 
 
 E. Kean, 
 BuiiH, ii. 
 p. 208 
 
 Macready, 
 
 Macready 
 as I knew 
 him, p. It 
 
MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Remi- 
 niscences, 
 i. p. lOS 
 
 He woke in extraordinary emotion, and the image of 
 this man filled his mind for long afterwards. When- 
 ever he was to act Hanilet, he summoned up the 
 passion of that dream.' Macready himself relates 
 that the recollection of a prisoner on trial at Carlisle 
 ' vainly attempting to preserve his composure under 
 the consciousness of guilt ' greatly aided him in 
 ' giving reality to the emotion of the agonised Mente- 
 vole ' in Jephson's Julia, or the Italian Lover. Studies' 
 of madness are very common. Macready, when quite 
 a young man, visited an asylum in Glasgow, and ' took 
 from thence,' he says, ' lessons . . . that in after years 
 added to the truth of my representations.' Again, 
 when preparing to play I.ear, he notes in his diary 
 (August 31, 1832), 'Went to Bedlam. . . . Nerves not 
 able to bear it ; came away.' Fru Hedvig Winter- 
 hjelm, one of the leading actresses of Scandinavia, 
 tells me that she has gone through a systematic study 
 of madness, and has been ' struck by the few and 
 slight touches required to produce the most terrible 
 effects.' Miss Ellen Terry, before her first performance 
 of Ophelia, payed a long visit to Banstead Asylum. 
 
 Many actors deny that they ever note the effects 
 upon themselves or others of moments of high excite- 
 ment. ' I am not so cold-blooded,' writes Mr. Dion 
 Boucicault ; and several other artists answer to the 
 same effect. , The majority of my informants, however, 
 admit that the actor's habit of mind prompts him, as 
 he goes through life, to seize upon and treasure up 
 details which may be of use in his art / though this 
 seems often to occur without any distinct act of will. 
 
 Remi- 
 niscences, 
 i. p. 188 
 
 Remi- 
 Tfiscences, 
 i. p. 344 
 
 Fm Win- 
 terhjelm 
 
 Miss EUen 
 Terry 
 
 Mr. Bouci- 
 cault 
 
THE LIFE SCHOOL 
 
 lor 
 
 ' A thousand times,' writes Salvini, ' I have availed 
 myself of emotions experienced in real life, adapting 
 them to the personage and situation.' ' Malgrd moi,'' 
 M. Albert Lambert writes, ' quelle que soit la douleur 
 que j'dprouve, je vois tous, j'entends tout, je note tout, 
 et cela ne diminue pas mon Amotion. On n'a pas 
 qu'une case dans le cerveau. II me semble que cela 
 doit arriver i tout le monde, k moins d'avoir uri cer- 
 veau incomplet' 'There have been events,' writes 
 Mrs. Bancroft, ' which have so impressed me that 
 when opportunity offered I have reproduced them.' 
 , ' As a casual onlooker,' writes Miss Isabel Bate- 
 man, ' I have noted effects of real emotion, and 
 stored them up for possible use.' Mr. Lionel Brough 
 holds that ' all scenes in real life are impressed 
 on the mind of the real actor, and if occasion requires 
 he will try to reproduce them.' Mr. John Drew, 
 the excellent light comedian of Daly's company, 
 writes as follows : ' I have consciously noted facts in 
 real life for future use, but have never yet had oppor- 
 tunity to put them in practice. I have been able, 
 however, to trace effects made to certain incidents 
 automatically registered in my memory, though at 
 the time of using them I fancied them imaginary or 
 invented.' Miss Dorothy Dene is conscious of study- 
 ing effects of real emotion in which she herself 
 participates ; ' but,' she adds, ' it is quite against my 
 will.' Similarly, Miss Janet Achurch writes : ' It is 
 impossible for me to help it. Everything that comes, 
 or ever has come, into my own life, or under my 
 observation, I find myself utilising ; and in scenes of 
 
 Salvini 
 
 M. Lam- 
 bert 
 
 Mrs. 
 Bancroft 
 
 Miss Isabel 
 Bateman 
 
 Mr. Lionel 
 Brough 
 
 Mr. John 
 Drew 
 
 Miss 
 
 Dorothy 
 
 Dene 
 
 Miss 
 Achurch 
 
MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Miss Maud 
 Milton 
 
 real personal suffering I have had an under-conscious- 
 ness of taking mental notes all the time. It is not a 
 pleasant feeling.' ' I often trace an effect used on the ' 
 stage,' Miss Maud Milton writes, ' to some real ex- 
 perience of my own automatically registered in my 
 memory. I think, she adds — and the remark is most 
 suggestive — ' that good works of fiction by students 
 of human nature have a great influence on our con- 
 ception of stage-character and on our methods of 
 expressing emotion.' If this be so (and it seems 
 highly probable) one cannot but wonder whether the 
 faults of some actors may not be due to false con- 
 ceptions of life and nature gathered from bad works 
 of fiction. 
 
 Lastly, let me cite a remarkable instance in which 
 a casual but very impressive real-life experience has 
 been utilised on the stage — as my informant believes, 
 with good effect. ' In the streets of Cardiff,' writes 
 Mr. Leonard Boyne, ' I once saw an Italian stab 
 another fatally. I was on the opposite side of the 
 road, and I gave a yell or scream and rushed to take 
 the knife. That incident is always vividly before my 
 eyes when I see Tybalt stab Mercutio ; and I have 
 ever since, when playing Romeo, used the " yell." I 
 have noticed a dead silence come over the house im- 
 mediately, as if something beyond mere acting had 
 happened. One of the audience told me the scream 
 was so effective that he thought the man was actually 
 stabbed, and he was completely carried away by the 
 scene.' This seems at first sight like a perfect example 
 of ' emotion recollected in tranquillity.' But can Mr. 
 
 Mr. Leon- 
 ard Bovne 
 
THE UFE SCHOOL 
 
 103 
 
 - Boyne reproduce the cry, with certainty of effect, in 
 perfectly cold blood ? Does he not depend upon the 
 emotional tension of the scene to attune him for the 
 effort? I confess to a doubt whether Talma (who 
 explicitly rejects Diderot's theory) could reproduce in 
 perfect tranquillity the ' spasmodic vibration ' of voice 
 which he originally owed to overmastering emotion. 
 There is nothing in his own account of the matter 
 to show that he could. Even the poet, though he 
 seldom writes under the first stress of passion or pain, 
 must summon up a certain ' fine frenzy ' before he can 
 recollect, or, as Mr. Browning would say, ' recapture,' 
 his grief or rapture. As the Westminster reviewer 
 aptly puts it, ' What comes of being entirely tranquil, 
 let the bulk of Wordsworth's own verse testify.' 
 
 What, then, is the upshot of this part of our 
 inquiry? (There can be no doubt that emotional 
 experience, and the study of emotion in others, are 
 of the greatest value to actors.) If this were not so, 
 the mimetic art would not be mimetic. ) Even those 
 of my informants who deny this are probably more 
 dependent than they think on the unconscious action 
 of their memory in registering real-life effects. Has 
 not M. Sarcey recently been lamenting the passing 
 away of the good old days of histrionic Bohemianism, 
 urging that in their present state of domesticated re- 
 spectability, actors and actresses are too much exempt 
 from those crises of passion and rapture and despair 
 which are necessary to the perfecting of their art ? 
 But whereas there is ample evidence of the tendency 
 of personal feeling to mingle with scenic emotion of 
 
 Rijiexions 
 surLekain, 
 p. 40 
 
 A- 
 
I04 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 similar quality — as the, vibration of one string will 
 induce sympathetic vibrations in another tuned to the 
 same pitch — there is comparatively little evidence of 
 a tendency to store up in the memory particular 
 ebullitions of personal emotion, and no evidence 
 whatever that these ebullitions can be convincingly 
 reproduced in cold blood. This the anti-emotionalists 
 must prove — or rather they must prove that the 
 ebullitions cannot be convincingly reproduced except 
 in cold blood — before the case of Talma avails them 
 one iota. 
 
THE PASSION OF LAUGHTER 
 
 los 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 THE PASSION OF LAUGHTER. 
 
 Joy, in the civilised adult at any rate, has no such 
 immediate and characteristic expression as grief or 
 terror. The most stoical among us will scarcely re- 
 ceive a crushing blow without exhibiting some out- 
 ward sign of dejection; but the best of good tidings 
 (after, perhaps, a single exclamation of surprise) will 
 hardly ruffle our outward calm. A state of high 
 spirits, however, has certain characteristic symptoms, 
 the chief of which is a proneness to laughter. Ac- 
 cording to Darwin, ' Laughter seems primarily to have 
 been the expression of mere joy or happiness ' ; and 
 though it has become in a measure specialised as the 
 expression of that complex emotion which we term 
 amusement, it still, to some extent, fulfils its primary 
 function. There is, therefore, a just instinct in the 
 popular antithesis of ' laughter and tears ' as the 
 characteristic expressions of joy and grief Having 
 inquired into the tendency of imagined sorrow to 
 affect the physical organism, I was anxious similarly 
 to test the action of imagined joy, and in order to 
 do so I was compelled to treat laughter as its proper 
 expression. At the same time, overestimating, 
 
 Expression 
 of the 
 Emotions, 
 p. 198 
 
io6 
 
 MASKS OR FACES?' 
 
 perhaps, the degree in which laughter has become 
 specially associated with amusement, I conceived that 
 to treat it as a general manifestation of high spirits 
 would lead to misunderstanding; consequently I 
 framed my questions thus : — 
 
 In scenes of laughter (for instance, Charles Surface's part in 
 the Screen Scene, or Lady Teazle's part in the quarrel with Sir 
 Peter), do you feel genuine amusement ? Or is your merriment 
 entirely assumed ? Have you ever laughed on the stage until the 
 tears ran down your face ? or been so overcome with laughter 
 as to have a difficulty in continuing your part ? And in either 
 of these cases, what has been the effect upon the audience ? 
 
 To this section a note was appended explaining 
 that it did not refer to laughter caused by chance 
 blunders or other unrehearsed incidents, but solely to 
 that which forms part of the business of the play. 
 
 The answers somewhat surprised me. For reasons 
 to be stated presently, I anticipated that there would 
 be as great a preponderance of testimony against the 
 reality of stage -laughter as for the reality of stage- 
 tears. As a matter of fact, the evidence is pretty 
 evenly balanced, but deflects, if anything, on the side 
 of reality. Were we to include among the affirmative 
 answers those which attribute genuine stage-laughter 
 to the reaction of the spectators' hilarity upon the per- 
 former, the ' ayes ' would have it by a large majority. 
 Of this class of answer, the following, from Mr. W. 
 Mr. Vernon j^_ Vemon, is a good specimen. ' I have often,' he 
 writes, ' felt genuine amusement in a scene, and an 
 exhilaration of spirits caught (doubtless) from an 
 unusually responsive audience, which has visibly 
 reacted and produced the best possible effect. In 
 
THE PASSION OF LAUGHTER 
 
 107 
 
 comedy the actor is more alive to his audience's 
 humour than in tragedy. The effect is instantaneous, 
 and a good-tempered house evokes the best qualities 
 of a comedian by placing him on good terms with 
 himself.' Many other artists practically echo Mr. Mr. Toole 
 Vernon, and must be classed as undecided. Mr. 
 Toole, for example, says, in his recently published 
 Reminiscences, ' Yes, I enjoy a rollicking farce. I 
 laugh with the audience, and get carried away by 
 the fun of it.' The contagion of laughter from an 
 appreciative pit must certainly be potent ; so much 
 so, indeed, that one actor tells me he has often had 
 to pinch himself or otherwise inflict physical pain in 
 order to repress this sympathetic hilarity. But it is 
 not the hilarity referred to in my questions. What 
 I wished to ascertain was whether the humour of a 
 laughter-scene, unaided by the enjoyment of the 
 audience, is apt to take such hold upon the player as 
 to make him laugh without any effort of will. The 
 two forms of laughter — laughter from sympathy with 
 the character, and laughter from sympathy with the 
 audience — must always tend to coalesce ; yet I be- 
 lieve that an observant artist must be able, up to a 
 certain point, to distinguish between them. 
 
 ' To me,' writes Signor Salvini, ' it is more diiificult Saivini 
 ' to compass mirth than sorrow. I have almost always 
 [ wept from real grief upon the stage, but I have never 
 : laughed with conscious enjoyment. And in truth my 
 ! simulated laughter has never transfused itself into 
 ! the audience, which has remained insensible to my 
 ' gaiety.' There is nothing Surprising in this confes- 
 
io8 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 ; sion, unless it be its frank simplicity ; and that can 
 surprise none but those who insist on regarding 
 actors, not as serious and self-respecting artists, but 
 as mere childish and morbidly egoistic triflers. Many 
 actors who are not, like Salvini, exclusive devotees 
 
 , of the ' grave cothurnate Muse ' agree with him in de- 
 
 ■ daring their own stage-laughter ' an artificial effort.' 
 Among those who hold this view I may mention Mr. 
 
 : and Mrs. Kendal, Mr. Boucicault, Mr. Pinero, Mr. John 
 Drew, and Mr. Wenman — all of them comedians 
 
 , whose mirth, whether real or assumed, has awakened 
 thousandfold reverberations in many a crowded 
 theatre. I have little doubt, however, that even they, 
 
 ' if the point were specially suggested to them, would 
 
 . allow a certain effect to contagion from the audience. 
 On the other hand, many witnesses of no less 
 authority maintain that their laughter is frequently, 
 if not always, unforced. On such a question no one, 
 surely, has a better right to be heard than Mrs. JohE( 
 Wood. ' I am always genuinely amused,' she writes^ 
 ' when I act a comic character, and my laughter is 
 
 ' frequently spontaneous. ... I have noticed that any 
 point that is made spontaneously always has an 
 electric effect upon the audience, if it is in perfect 
 harmony with the scene.' Take, now, the testimony 
 of Mr. Lionel Brough. ' In playing parts like Tony 
 Lumpkin, I feel that I am Tony Lumpkin, and feel 
 myself " full of laughter." I don't remember ever 
 laughing until tears ran down my face, but with a 
 good audience I have laughed and enjoyed myself as 
 
 , much as if I had been in the real situations.' The 
 
 Mrs. John 
 Vi'ood 
 
 Mr. Lionel 
 Brough 
 
THE PASSION OF LAUGHTER 109 
 
 phrase I have italicised indicates that Mr. Brough 
 is to some extent dependent on reaction from the 
 audience. Indeed, this may be taken for granted in 
 all cases ; though the ideal actor of the anti-emotion- 
 alists should by rights be ready, if necessary, to reel off 
 his thoroughly-mastered lesson before ' a churchyard 
 full of gravestones ' — to quote John Ryder's graphic 
 description of an irresponsive house. Macready, while 
 forming his Drury Lane company, wrote to Henry Com.pton, 
 Compton asking his opinion of a certain light come- ^' ^°° 
 dian whom he thought of engaging. ' He has some 
 fun,' replied Compton, ' which I think does not amount 
 to enjoyment I never saw him carried away by the 
 exuberance of his spirits.' Had Macready been a 
 believer in Diderot, he would have taken this as a 
 strong recommendation ; but Compton (himself a de- 
 lightful comedian) clearly designed it as a reproach. 
 ' My heart is as much in laughter as in emotion,' Mrs. Mrs. 
 Bancroft writes. 'Without a keen enjoyment of a ^"'=™' 
 comic situation my laughter would be empty — a 
 hollow imitation. All acting must be an assumption 
 at the start, but as I grow and advance with the play 
 I become more and more influenced by its argument, 
 and therefore more absorbed in it. ... I have laughed 
 on the stage till I cried, but not as a rule. All 
 emotions should be guided by discretion, or one would 
 be in constant hysterics.' As Mrs. Bancroft's irresist- 
 ible laugh is certainly not the least of her gifts, this 
 testimony is extremely valuable. Mrs. Bancroft also 
 tells how Mr. H. J. Byron, who had of course studied 
 her talent very carefully, could detect in her laughter 
 
MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 Mr. Gole- 
 man 
 
 states of feeling of which she herself was scarcely 
 conscious. He would come round after the perfor- 
 mance and ask, 'Are you not well to-night?' 'Yes, 
 quite well,' Mrs. Bancroft (then Miss Marie Wilton) 
 would reply. ' There was something the matter with 
 your laugh,' he would say — and on reflection Mrs. 
 Bancroft would admit (what she had before scarcely 
 realised) that some petty annoyance had been pre- 
 occupying her mind. So minute are the differences 
 between what is absolutely true in art, and what (to 
 the delicate sense) is perceptibly false ! 
 
 Mr. John Coleman sends me some interesting notes 
 on this point. He is all for the reality of laughter 
 in such passages as the Screen Scene. ' I have 
 often gone on the stage,' he writes, ' very nervous and 
 depressed, but have forgotten all my troubles by the 
 time I have arrived at the Screen Scene, and have 
 entered thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. I 
 am always physically exhausted at the end of the 
 scene, and a little angry with myself for liking such a 
 cad as Charles proves himself to be in this particular 
 situation.' Mr. Coleman has a curious and very 
 plausible theory as to the origin of the extraordi- 
 nary ' Kch 1 ' (like the sound of a saw) with which, 
 according to stage tradition. Sir Peter Teazle and 
 Charles Surface accompany the backward jerk of their 
 thumbs to indicate the presence of the little French 
 milliner behind the screen. Mr. Coleman believes 
 that the original Sir Peter and Charles (King and 
 Gentleman Smith) must have been very good laughers 
 ^nd that the absurd sound now considered indispens- 
 
THE PASSION OF LAUGHTER 
 
 •III 
 
 Farrea 
 
 able must have originated in the mechanical imitation 
 by inferior actors of their explosions of ill-suppressed 
 merriment. It is certainly difficult to guess what 
 sound in nature can have suggested the ' Kch 1 ' of 
 the traditional Charles. Mr. Coleman, too, relates 
 a half-pathetic anecdote to show, as he says, 'how 
 nearly akin laughter is to hysteria.' William Farren, 
 the celebrated Sir Peter Teazle, Lord Ogleby, and 
 Grandfather Whitehead, made his last appearance on 
 the stage at Sheffield, under Mr. Coleman's manage- 
 ment ' He had suffered from paralysis of the vocal cord, 
 so that his articulation was imperfect and frequently 
 unintelligible. Notwithstanding, he looked noble and 
 distinguished, and emitted flashes of his old fire. His 
 character was Sir Peter, and the Joseph was a veteran 
 actor who had been a captain in the army, and had 
 acted with Kean. When the two old gentlemen com- 
 menced to laugh about the " little French milliner," 
 the audience laughed with them at first. Encouraged 
 by this, they went on and on till they became quite 
 hysterical (producing a somewhat similar effect on the 
 audience) and at last collapsed altogether. In vain 
 the prompter prompted ; in vain Lady Teazle urged 
 them to go on ; deuce a word could they utter, good, 
 bad, or indifferent, until Charles spoke without, and 
 sent the servant to get Sir Peter off.' 
 
 We must go to France for other instances of 
 inextinguishable laughter arising out of the business 
 of the scene. It is recorded of Mile. Desmares, on 
 the authority of Lesage, that she would often interrupt 
 the action of a comedy ' pour ceder a une folle envie ■ 
 
 Mile. 
 
 Desmares, 
 Lema- 
 zurler, it. 
 p. 162 
 
MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 M. Lam- 
 bert 
 
 de rire.' Now Desmares was one of the best sou- 
 brettes of her time, and so popular that the pubhc 
 used to applaud even these extravagant accesses of 
 mirth. M. Lambert p^re writes : — ' Je me suis amus6 
 pour mon compte beaucoup apr^s m'etre bien mis 
 dans la situation et j'ai r^ussi, grice a ce moyen, a 
 trouver des effets comiques inattendus, maintenu par 
 cette bonne humeur entrainde et entrainante qui se 
 communique aussi vivement que le baillement. Je 
 dois avouer, pourtant, qu'une fois je me suis pris moi- 
 meme et qu'une id^e si burlesque m'empoigna dans 
 une situation comique dont j'avais tir^ de grands effets, 
 que je ris de telle fagon qu'il me fallut quitter la 
 scene — mais je commen9ais le thdatre k cette 6poque 
 et n'^tais pas maitre de moi suffisamment' 
 
 Many other artists — I may name Mr. Clayton, 
 Mr. Beerbohm Tree, Mr. Wilson Barrett, Miss Alma 
 Murray, Miss Wallis, Mrs. Chippendale, and Miss 
 Genevieve Ward — believe that stage-laughter is often 
 genuine ; and this, as I have said, was at first a sur- 
 prise to me. Every theatre-goer must have noticed 
 the comparative rarity of good laughter on the stage. 
 Tolerable pathos is far commoner than even mode- 
 rately convincing merriment — so it seems to me, at 
 any rate, and (I find) to many other observers. I 
 imagined that the explanation of this lay in the very 
 nature of laughter. Its causes and conditions are still 
 moot questions, but I found all theorists agree in 
 regarding suddenness and unexpectedness of impres- 
 sion as an almost essential factor in its production. 
 Hobbes puts this very strongly in a well-known 
 
 ^ 
 
THE PASSION OF LAUGHTER 113 
 
 passage. ' Forasmuch,' he says, ' as the same Thing 
 is no more ridiculous when it groweth stale or usual, 
 whatever it be that moveth Laughter it must be new 
 and unexpected. ... I may therefore conclude that 
 the Passion of Laughter is nothing else but sudden 
 Glory arising from a sudden Conception of some Emi- 
 nency in ourselves, by Comparison with the Infirmity 
 of others, or with our own formerly.' This analysis, 
 though obviously incomplete, is generally held to 
 be correct in its insistance on novelty as an import- 
 ant element in the ludicrous. Diggory, indeed, had 
 laughed ' these twenty years ' at Mr. Hardcastle's 
 story of the grouse in the gun-room, but it may have 
 been part of ' the constant service of the antique 
 world ' to suffer no amount of custom to stale a 
 patron's jest. Now, the jests of the stage, whether 
 they lie in dialogue or in situation, are necessarily 
 familiar to the performer ; and in this fact I thought 
 I had found a reason for the infrequency of natural, 
 stage-laughter. But the answers I have just sum- 
 marised show that stage-laughter may be, and often 
 is, perfectly natural, in the sense of being produced! 
 by no deliberate simulative effort. Hence I conclude, | 
 on the one hand, that merriment retains, in almost | 
 unimpaired activity, its original function as a safety- \ 
 valve for mere high spirits, not necessarily connected ' 
 with any ludicrous idea ; and, on the other hand, that 
 the things which tickle our risible muscles need by no 
 means be ' new and unexpected.' Everyday experi- 
 ence, indeed, is sufficient to show that ' the dearest 
 jokes are the auldest jokes.' Which of us has not 
 
 I 
 
 Humtin 
 Nature, 
 chap. ix. 
 par. 13 
 
114 MASKS OR FACES? ^ ■^^- ^^-"^ 
 
 ^ 7^ /— 
 
 laughed a hundred times at Falstaff and at Dogberry, 
 
 though we may know by heart every word they utter ? 
 
 Which of us can refrain from laughing when some 
 
 passage of arms between Boswell and Johnson flashes 
 
 upon the memory — the colloquy about the baby in 
 
 the tower, for example ? or when we think of Sam 
 
 Weller's skirmish with Mr. Justice Stareleigh, or of 
 
 Jos Sedley's heroism on the eve of Waterloo? A 
 
 few moments ago, gome accident recalled to my mind 
 
 that sublime translation from Heine's Wallfahrt nach 
 
 Kevlaar in an Anglo-German guide-book to the 
 
 Rhine : — 
 
 Many came hither on crutches 
 
 Who now dance so stealthy, 
 Many now play on the viol 
 
 Who formerly were not healthy — 
 
 and though it has been a joy to me for years, I laugh 
 as I write it down. Age, indeed, is the chief merit of 
 some witticisms. We laugh at them because we have 
 been in the habit of doing so since our childhood ; we 
 should now be puzzled to say where the humour comes 
 in. Why, then, should not a comedian laugh in the 
 most hackneyed situations ? To an actor of mobile 
 midriff, it may well be more difficult to restrain 
 laughter in scenes whose humour depends on his gravity 
 than to summon it up when the action requires it. If 
 this be so, we may probably find an explanation of the 
 rarity of good laughers on the stage in the simple fact 
 that good laughers are no less rare in real life. We all 
 know men or women who are celebrated for a particu- 
 larly pleasant or hearty laugh, just as they might be for 
 
THE PASSION OF LAUGHTER 115 
 
 any other uncommon physical charm. The ordinary 
 laugh of the ordinary man, if not unpleasant, is apt 
 to be trivial, and a laugh which would not specially 
 annoy us in real life may become exasperating when 
 transported to the stage. Thus, what with unskilfully 
 simulated laughter and unpleasant natural laughter, 
 the merriment of the scene becomes, as a whole, 
 unconvincing. It is only exceptionail artists who 
 either simulate laughter to perfection or are happily 
 endowed by nature with musical and infectious glee. 
 
n6 MASK'S OR FACES? 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 nature's cosmetics. 
 
 The muscles of the throat and even the lachrymal 
 glands are more or less under the control of the will. 
 However strong a probability we may establish, it is 
 impossible absolutely to prove, in any given instance, 
 that tears in the eyes or in the voice are the result of 
 emotion. But can we find no symptoms of emotion 
 which are utterly beyond the control of the will, and 
 cannot possibly be simulated ? If such symptoms of 
 real emotion are found commonly to accompany the 
 imagined emotion of the stage, will they not prove a 
 very close analogy, at least, between the two pheno- 
 mena ? 
 
 Blushing and pallor precisely fulfil these require- 
 ments. If we could hear (for instance) of any Rosa- 
 lind who blushes at the line ' Alas the day ! what shall 
 I do with my doublet and hose?' and turns pale 
 when she hears of Orlando's wound, this would prove 
 a curious degree of what may be called physical 
 identification with the character, for the very reason 
 that the actress could not possibly produce these 
 changes by any voluntary effort. Physiological 
 records may furnish cases of a power to blush and 
 
NA TURE 'S COSMETICS 1 1 7 
 
 blench at will ; but even if these exist (they have 
 not come to my knowledge) we can only regard such 
 a faculty as a freak of nature, much more abnormal 
 than (for example) the power of moving their ears 
 which some people possess. I have heard of, and 
 seen, ap instance in which a distinguished actor pro- 
 duces, by a mechanical device, a sudden and very 
 striking pallor, which is of great value in one particular 
 situation. But this effect depends upon morbid phy- 
 sical conditions, and does not in the least invalidate 
 the general principle that changes of colour are be- 
 yond the control of the will. In Mr. Gilbert's Comedy 
 and Tragedy y where Clarice breaks off her improvisa- 
 tion in an agony of dread, which is mistaken by the 
 onlookers for part of her performance, Dr. Choquart 
 alone exclaims, 'This is not acting. Her colour comes 
 and goes ! ' As a medical man, the worthy doctor 
 knows that these functions of the ' vaso-motor system ' 
 are quite involuntary, and accordingly concludes 
 (rightly enough, as it happens) that Clarice's agony is 
 real. But had he examined into the matter a little 
 more closely, he might not have been so confident. 
 He would have found that imagined emotion may, 
 and often does, approach so nearly to reality as to be 
 accompanied by the very same symptoms, though 
 probably in a minor degree. Of this the answers 
 to the following question leave, I think, no possible 
 doubt : — 
 
 Do you ever blush (involuntarily) when representing bashful- 
 ness, modesty, or shame.' or turn pale in scenes of terror? or . 
 have you observed these physical manifestations in other artists ? 
 
MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 On this question I have two remarks to make. 
 The first is, that when I formulated it I had neither 
 tead of nor observed cases of blushing and pallor on 
 the stage. I must have come across one or two of 
 the anecdotes to be quoted presently, but they had 
 made no impression upon me. The question was 
 entirely the result of an a priori process of reasoning. 
 If my hypothesis as to the nature of mimetic emo- 
 tion was the true one, these symptoms must certainly 
 accompany it ; but when I issued my interrogatory I 
 was unaware of any positive evidence on the point. 
 Thus the emotional theory, as I understand it, led me 
 to a prediction, or rather anticipation, which subse- 
 quent inquiry has amply justified. 
 
 Secondly, it seems worth while to note that in 
 the original edition of my interrogatory the word 
 ' involuntarily ' was omitted, so that this was not a 
 leading but a ^wleading question. Almost all my 
 informants misunderstood its purpose, and, thinking 
 to contradict my theory, unconsciously confirmed it. 
 Supposing me to refer to voluntary changes of colour, 
 they assured me that no one can blush and turn pale 
 at will, and that at best it would be useless, since the 
 changes would be practically invisible to the audience 
 by reason of the actor's make-up. But the great 
 majority of them (at least three-fourths) added either 
 that they themselves involuntarily change colour, or 
 that they have seen others do so ; which was precisely 
 the point I aimed at. 
 
 First among the witnesses to pallor as a possible 
 effect of mimic emotion, I may place one who, if not 
 
NATURE'S COSMETICS 
 
 119 
 
 a great actor, was at least a competent observer — 
 
 William Shakespeare, to wit. He tells us how the 
 
 First Player could 
 
 Farce his soul so to his own conceit 
 That at her working all his visage wann'd ; 
 
 and he evidently thinks no worse of the nameless 
 tragedian for ' feeling his part ' to this degree. It is 
 surely not too rash to conjecture that he had seen in 
 Burbage or Alleyn the changes of countenance which 
 he attributes to the ' master ' of the strolling company. 
 As to Betterton, unquestionably one of the greatest 
 actors that ever trod the boards, we find it positively 
 averred that he not only changed colour but produced 
 a great effect by so doing. The author of The 
 Laureat, or, the Right Side of Colley Cibber, Esq., 
 writes as follows : — ' I have lately been told by a 
 Gentleman who has frequently seen Mr. Betterton per- 
 form this part of Hamlet, that he has observ'd his 
 Countenance (which was naturally ruddy and sanguin) 
 in this Scene of the fourth Act, where his Father's 
 Ghost appears, thro' the violent and sudden Emotions 
 of Amazement and Horror, turn instantly on the Sight 
 of his Father's Spirit, as pale as his Neckcloath, when 
 every Article of his Body seem'd to be affected with 
 a Tremor inexpressible ; so that, had his Father's 
 Ghost actually risen before him, he could not have 
 been seized with more real Agonies ; and this was felt 
 so strongly by the Audience, that ' the Blood seemed 
 to shudder in their Veins likewise, and they in some 
 Measure partook of the Astonishment and Horror, 
 with which they saw this excellent Actor affected.' 
 
 Shake- 
 speare 
 
 Betterton 
 
 1740, /). 31 
 
MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Baron 
 
 Dorat, 
 t- 47 
 
 The following anecdote of Baron, the Betterton 
 of France, would be still more valuable if we could 
 altogether believe it ; but I admit that it verges oil 
 the marvellous : — ' Baron, apr^s sa retraite, qui fut de 
 plus de vingt anndes, remonta sur la Scene ; elle etoit 
 alors en proie a des Ddclamateurs boursoufflds qui 
 mugissoient des vers au lieu de les rdciter. II ddbuta 
 par le rdle de Cinna. Son entrde sur le Theatre, 
 noble, simple et majestueuse, ne fut point goutde par 
 un Public accoutumd a la fougue des Acteurs du 
 temps ; mais lorsque dans le Tableau de la Conjura- 
 tion, il vint a ces beaux vers : 
 
 Vous eussiez vu leurs yeux s'enflammer de fureur, 
 Et dans un meme instant, par un effet contraire, 
 Leur front palir d'horreur, et rougir de colore, 
 
 on le vit palir et rougir successivement. Ce passage 
 si rapide fut senti par les Spectateurs. La Cabale 
 frdmit, et se tut' It is possible, to be sure, that the 
 habit of ' forcing his soul to his conceit ' may have 
 begotten in Baron an excessive mobility of the vaso- 
 motor system, placing it, in effect, under the control 
 of his will. In that case, this particular incident could 
 not be cited as a proof that the actor was, at the 
 moment, under the influence of emotion ; but, on the 
 other hand, such a faculty can only have arisen from 
 the frequency of emotional changes of colour, gene- 
 rating in the vessels of the skin a peculiar, not to say 
 unique, sensitiveness. 
 
 The flush of fury is not so directly germane to 
 our argument as the blush of shame, for it can be 
 mechanically produced ; yet the following note upon 
 
NATURE'S COSMETICS 
 
 Barry's Othello surely does not describe a mere mus- 
 cular forcing of blood to the head : — ' When Shake- 
 speare puts in the mouth of his enraged Moor . . . 
 this great and soldier-like expression — 
 
 Had all his hairs been lives, 
 My great revenge had stomach for them all — 
 
 we see Mr. Barry redden through the very black 
 of his face ; his whole visage becomes inflamed, his 
 eyes sparkle with successful vengeance, and ' he 
 seems to raise himself above the ground while he 
 pronounces it' 
 
 As to pallor, again, this passage from Davies' 
 Dramatic Miscellanies is very much to the point ; and 
 Davies, let me repeat, had excellent facilities for ob- 
 servation : ' Mrs. Siddons, very lately, in the third 
 act of the Fair Penitent, was so far affected with 
 assuming the mingled passions of pride, fear, anger, 
 and conscious guilt, that I might appeal to the spec- 
 tators, whether, in spite of the rouge which the actress 
 is obliged to put on, some paleness did not show itself 
 in her countenance. I think, too, that Mrs. Gibber, 
 Mrs. Yates, Mrs. Crawford, and Miss Younge have 
 given the same proof of consummate feeling in scenes 
 of a similar nature.' 
 
 Writing of her first appearance as Juliet, Fanny 
 Kemble tells how the part gradually took possession 
 of her. In the first scene she was self-conscious and 
 inaudible ; in the next, the ball-room scene, she be- 
 gan to forget herself; in the third, the balcony-scene, 
 she had done so entirely. ' For aught I knew,' she 
 continues, ' I was Juliet ; the passion I was uttering 
 
 Barry. 
 
 The Actor^ 
 I7S5. P- 9 
 
 Hi. p. 58 
 
 Mrs. 
 Siddons 
 
 Mrs. 
 Cibber, 
 Mrs. Yates, 
 &c. 
 
 Fanny 
 Kemble 
 
 Record of ct 
 Girlhood^ 
 
 a, p. 60 
 
MASKS OR FACES?- 
 
 Lady 
 Martin 
 
 Shake- 
 speare's 
 Female 
 Characters, 
 t- 437 
 
 sending hot waves of blushes all over my neck and 
 shoulders, while the poetry sounded like music to me 
 as I spoke it' Fanny Kemble was then a beginner ; 
 but she repeatedly avers that a hot blush always 
 ' bepainted her cheek ' in the Balcony Scene. Miss 
 Helen Faucit, one of the most accomplished artists of 
 her day, bears emphatic testimony, not only to the 
 fact of changing colour, but to its artistic value : — 
 ' The abuse of cosmetics on the French stage,' she 
 writes, 'which was then [1845] habitual, has since 
 been carried in many instances to excess upon our 
 own. When the skin is covered with what is, in effect, 
 a painted mask, the colour, which under strong emo- 
 tion would come and go, is hidden under it, and the 
 natural expression of the countenance destroyed.' 
 Whence proceeds the deadness of a too much made- 
 up face, if not from the suppression of the natural 
 play of colour? Though we may not, as a rule, be 
 actively conscious of its presence, its absence neces- 
 sarily makes itself felt. 
 
 Among the actors of to-day there is little conflict 
 of opinion on the subject of pallor. Salvini's evidence 
 is included in his answer to my first question ; but he 
 adds that few actors have the power of so completely 
 entering ' into the skin ' of their characters. Ristori de- 
 clares unhesitatingly that she both blushes and grows 
 pale in accordance with the emotion she is portraying. 
 Many artists who have never observed blushes on 
 the stage have seen lips and cheeks turn white under 
 the make-up, or have been told that their own coun- 
 tenances blench, in scenes of terror. ' I have never 
 
 Ante, p. 51 
 
 Ristori 
 
NATURE'S COSMETICS 
 
 123 
 
 known my colour come and go, nor have I ever noticed 
 it in any player,' writes Mr. Forbes Robertson ; and 
 Mr. Dion Boucicault notes with decision, ' No, never 
 — don't believe in it' These are almost the only 
 thoroughgoing sceptics on the subject of pallor. 
 Others (among whom I may mention Mr. and Mrs. 
 Bancroft and Mr. and Mrs. Kendal) admit that they 
 have noticed it, but regard it as exceptional. Mrs. 
 Kendal remarks that she once produced a very con- 
 vincing eiifect of pallor in the Screen Scene in The 
 School for Scandal, but as that was due to a mouse 
 running up the back of the screen, it is scarcely a 
 case in point. Many, on the other hand, assert that 
 the ' wanning ' of the visage is a common and even 
 habitual accompaniment of imagined terror and 
 kindred emotions. Among these I may name Mr. 
 Clayton, Mr. Beerbohm Tree, Mr. Wilson Barrett, 
 Mr. Augustus Harris, Miss Genevieve Ward, Miss 
 Bateman, Miss Achurch, Miss Dorothy Dene, and 
 Miss Maud Milton. Mr. John Coleman writes, ' I 
 have never known an artist, male or female, accus- 
 tomed to the higher range of art, who was not subject 
 to these, outward manifestations of the inward emo- 
 tions ' ; and an experience of forty years, in close 
 association with most of the leading actors of that 
 period, certainly entitles Mr. Coleman to speak with 
 authority. ' I often turn pale,' writes Miss Isabel 
 Bateman, ' in scenes of terror or great excitement. I 
 have been told this many times, and I can feel myself 
 getting very cold and shivering and pale in thrilling 
 situations.' ' When I am playing rage or terror,' Mr. 
 
 Mrs. 
 Kendal 
 
 Mr. Cole- 
 man 
 
 Miss Isabel 
 Bateman 
 
124 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Mr. Lionel 
 Brough 
 
 Fra 
 
 Winter- 
 
 hjelm 
 
 Mi5s Kate 
 Rorke 
 
 Lionel Brough writes, ' I believe I do turn pale. My 
 mouth gets dry, my tongue cleaves to my palate. In 
 Bob Acres, for instance (in the last act), I have to 
 continually moisten my mouth or I should become 
 inarticulate. I have to " swallow the lump," as I call 
 it' This testimony to the effect even of comic terror 
 is extremely curious. 
 
 As to blushing, the evidence is less conclusive ; 
 and the reason is not far to seek. Laughter may or 
 may not be ' a passion of sudden glory,' but blushing 
 is certainly an effulgence of sudden shame. A care- 
 fully rehearsed humiliation or embarrassment neces- 
 sarily tends to lose the vividness which whips the 
 blood tingling to the cheeks. Blushing, too, depends 
 on a certain delicacy of the skin which is probably 
 not fostered by the habitual use of cosmetics. Never- 
 theless, several of my informants allow that they 
 either blush themselves or have seen others blush. 
 ' On the stage,' writes Fru Winterhjelm, ' I blush and 
 turn pale according to the situation. It is therefore 
 my custom to " make up " so lightly as to allow the 
 natural colours to show through ; and this, I have 
 noticed, produces the strongest effect on the audience.' 
 Miss Isabel Bateman, for instance, writes : ' I remem- 
 ber Miss Kate Rorke's blush in Delicate Ground — a 
 charming flush that suddenly covered her face, and 
 gave wonderful reality to the scene.' In the few 
 months during which my attention has been specially 
 directed to this point, I have myself noted several 
 unmistakable cases of blushing on the stage. In 
 the third act of The Railroad of Love, for example, 
 
NATURE'S COSMETICS 
 
 125' 
 
 I am very much deceived if a warm flush does not 
 overspread Miss Ada Rehan's face at certain points 
 of the boudoir-door scene between Valentine Osprey 
 and Lieutenant Everett One case of pallor, too, I 
 witnessed distinctly, and that in no less a person than 
 — ^M. Coquelin 1 It was in the scene in Les Surprises 
 du Divorce, in which Henri Duval learns that his hated 
 ex-mother-in-law has, by a horrible freak of fortune, 
 become his step-grandmother-in-law. M. Coquelin 
 threw into his rendering of this scene an almost tragic 
 intensity, and his pallor at the moment of the awful 
 discovery struck me forcibly. Still, I should not have 
 ventured to bring it forward in evidence, had not my 
 observation been confirmed by that of another spec- 
 tator who asked me, without any suggestion on my 
 part, whether I had noticed Coquelin turn pale at that 
 particular point. Mr. John Drew, again, notes that 
 he has ' known a good effect produced by the sudden, 
 angry flushing of the face after a blow administered 
 on it.' It might be argued that this flush was a direct 
 result of the blow itself, apart from any emotional 
 process in its recipient ; but if so the buffet must have 
 been unpleasantly realistic. 
 
 My next question was simply a following-up of 
 the same hne of thought : — 
 
 A distinguished actor informs me that he is in the habit of 
 perspiring freely while acting ; but that the perspiration varies, 
 not so much with the physical exertion gone through, as with 
 the emotion experienced. On nights when he was not ' feeling 
 the part,' he has played Othello ' without turning a hair,' though 
 his physical effort was at least as great as on nights when he 
 was bathed in perspiration. Does your experience tally with 
 
 Miss Ada 
 Rehan 
 
 M. 
 Coquelin 
 
 Mr. Jolin 
 Drew 
 
126 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Expression 
 of the 
 Rttii'tions, 
 P- 73 
 
 this? Do you find the fatigue , of playing a part directly pro- 
 portionate to the physical exertion demanded by it ? or dependent 
 on other causes ? 
 
 The pores of the skin are still more completely 
 beyond voluntary control than the capillary vessels 
 which govern the complexion. We are accustomed 
 to think of perspiration as attendant upon high tem- 
 perature and violent bodily exertion ; but everyone 
 has also heard of, if not felt, the ' cold sweat ' of terror. 
 A like phenomenon accompanies even the most pas- 
 sive bodily agony and many other forms of intense 
 feeling. ' When a man suffers from an agony of pain,' 
 says Darwin, ' the perspiration often trickles down 
 his face ; and I have been assured by a veterinary 
 surgeon that he has frequently seen drops falling 
 from the belly, and running down the inside of 
 the thighs of horses, and from the bodies of cattle, 
 when thus suffering. He has observed this, when 
 there has been no struggling which would account for 
 
 the perspiration So it is with extreme fear ; 
 
 the same veterinary has often seen horses sweating 
 from this cause ; as has Mr. Bartlett with the rhino- 
 ceros ; and with man it is a well-known symptom. 
 The cause of perspiration bursting forth in these cases 
 is quite obscure.' Suppose, then, that an actor plays 
 the same part on two successive evenings, the tem- 
 perature and his physical exertion being the same in 
 both cases : if on the one night he plays mechanically 
 and without perspiration, while on the other night he 
 ' feels the part ' and perspires freely, this fact surely 
 helps us to understand the precise condition of mind 
 
NATURE'S COSMETICS 
 
 127 
 
 and body which he designates as ' feeling.' Since 
 mere intellectual exertion has no tendency to pro- 
 duce perspiration, the emotionless actor of Diderot's 
 ideal should perspire in exact proportion to the 
 temperature and to his physical effort. If this is not 
 usually the case, it at least follows that few actors 
 come up to the said ideal. 
 
 Unless the point were specially suggested to them, 
 actors would scarcely think of putting on record their 
 experience in this respect. Thus the evidence to be 
 gathered from theatrical biography is meagre. Here, 
 however, is a curiously apt case in point : ' Acted 
 leisurely,' writes Macready (December 6, 1833),' with- 
 out inspiration or perspiration ; still, I seemed to pro- 
 duce an effect on the audience, but I was not iden- 
 tified with Werner.' When Henderson first played 
 Hamlet at Bath, says his biographer, he discarded his 
 predecessor's velvet suit and dressed in black cloth. 
 ' Extreme agitation occasioned a perspiration. The 
 coat was wet as if it had been " immersed in the ocean." 
 The performance ended, Hamlet resigned his habit to 
 the keeper of the wardrobe, who received it with as- 
 tonishment and horror, hung it to the fire, lifted up both 
 hands and exclaimed "... Heaven bless us all ! . . . 
 They may talk of Muster Lee, and Muster Lee, and 
 Muster Lee, but Muster Lee is nothing to this man — 
 for what they call perspiration." A person present ob- 
 served that the severest critics must acknowledge the 
 young gentleman had played the character with great 
 warmth, if not with spirit.' There are countless proofs, 
 indeed, of the physical exhaustion attendant upon 
 
 Macready 
 Reminis- 
 cences, i. 
 P- 395 
 
 Hender- 
 son, 
 
 Ireland, 
 p. 70 
 
 Ante, f. 6z 
 
128 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 emotional acting. Mrs. Siddons, for instance, robust ( 
 as she was, was frequently prostrated by her bursts 
 of passion. As an example, let me quote a curious 
 account given by Macready of her collapse after play- 
 ing Arpasia in Rowe's Tamerlane. ' In the last act,' he 
 says, ' when, by order of the tyrant, her lover Monesis 
 is strangled before her face, she worked herself up to 
 such a pitch of agony, and gave such terrible reality 
 to the few convulsive words she tried to utter, as she 
 sank a lifeless heap before her murderer, that the 
 audience for a few moments remained in a hush of 
 astonishment, as if awe-struck ; they then clamoured 
 for the curtain to be dropped, and insisting on the 
 manager's appearance, received from him, in answer 
 to their vehement inquiries, the assurance that Mrs. 
 Siddons was alive, and recovering from the temporary 
 indisposition that her exertions had caused. They 
 were satisfied as regarded her, but would not suffer 
 the performance to be resumed. As an instance of 
 the impression this great actress made on individuals 
 who might be supposed insensible, from familiarity, 
 to the power of acting, Holman turned to my father, 
 when Mrs. Siddons had fallen, and looking aghast 
 in his face, said : '' Macready, do I look as pale as 
 you ? " ' It is incredible that Mrs. Siddons in this 
 instance was acting in cold blood, or that her ex- 
 haustion was due to the mere physical and intellectual 
 effort of playing Arpasia, who appears in only three 
 acts out of the five. 
 
 Among contemporary artists I find a more general 
 agreement on the point suggested by this question 
 
NATURE'S COSMETICS 
 
 129 
 
 than on almost any other. I may even say that all 
 my informants, with one exception, who have had 
 much experience of emotional parts are absolutely 
 unanimous. 'One is never so exhausted as when 
 , acting well,' says Mr. Bancroft. ' Playing with the 
 , brain,' says Miss Alma Murray, ' is far less fatiguing 
 ' than playing with the heart. An adventuress taxes 
 ' the physique far less than a sympathetic heroine. 
 Muscular exertion has comparatively little to do 
 with it.' ' On a bitterly cold night in America,' writes 
 Mr. Wilson Barrett, ' when the thermometer has been 
 1 5° below zero, and I have stood shivering at the 
 wings waiting for my entrance in Hamlet, I have been 
 in a profuse perspiration before I had half finished 
 a scene.' ' Emotion while acting,' writes Mr. Howe, 
 ' will induce perspiration much more than physical 
 exertion. I always perspired profusely while acting 
 Joseph Surface, which requires little or no exertion.' 
 Similarly, Mr. Herbert Standing writes, ' I have had 
 the honour of playing in The Man of the World with 
 the late Samuel Phelps, and have seen him, while 
 sitting quietly in his chair, bathed in perspiration.' 
 ' Emotion and perspiration,' says Salvini, 'go together. 
 There are characters which call for scarcely any 
 physical exertion, and which are nevertheless most 
 fatiguing : for example the part of Corrado in La 
 Morte Civile! ' Ce qui brise,' says M. Albert Lambert 
 — and this is the one opinion that runs counter to my 
 argument — ' ce sont les coleres non pens^es, les cris 
 froids, les declamations oiseuses, a c6t6 du sujet et 
 en dehors de la nature.' That these should be very 
 
 K 
 
 Mr. Ban- 
 croft 
 
 Miss Alma 
 Murray 
 
 Mr. Wilson 
 Barrett 
 
 Mr. Howe 
 
 Phelps 
 Salvini 
 
 Mr. 
 Lambert 
 
ISO 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Mr. Forbes 
 Robertson 
 
 Mr. 
 Clayton 
 
 Mr. 
 Coleman 
 
 fatiguing to the actor, as well as to the audience, 
 is comprehensible enough ; but M. Lambert further 
 reniarks that by keeping ' le coeur chaud, la tete 
 froide ' the actor escapes exhaustion. ' I suffer from 
 fatigue,' writes Mr. Forbes Robertson, ' in proportion 
 to the amount of emotion I may have been called 
 upon to go through, and not from physical exertion.' 
 Mr. Clayton told me that after playing Hugh Trevor, 
 a part which demands no unusual muscular strain, he 
 has been so exhausted that he has lain down on the 
 floor of his dressing-room and said to his dresser, 
 ' Don't come near me for an hour ! ' feeling as though 
 he had been thrashed all over. ' Though I have 
 played Othello,' writes Mr. Coleman, ' ever since I 
 was seventeen (at nineteen I had the honour of acting 
 the Moor to Macready's lago), husband my resources 
 as I may, this is the one part, the part of parts, which 
 always leaves me physically prostrate. I have never 
 been able to find a pigment that would stay on my 
 face, though I have tried every preparation in existence. 
 Even the titanic Edwin Forrest told me that he was 
 always knocked over in Othello, and I have heard 
 Charles Kean, Phelps, Brooke, Dillon, say the same 
 thing. On the other hand I have frequently acted 
 Richard III. without turning a hair.' It is evident 
 that the exceptionally exhausting quality of Othello 
 does not lie in the physical effort it demands. Ham- 
 let, Macbeth, and Richard III. must at least equal it 
 in that. On the other hand, I think we can have no 
 difficulty in recognising a peculiar poignancy in the 
 emotions of ' the great brute gladiator ' as Mr. Traill 
 
NATURE'S COSMETICS 
 
 131 
 
 calls him, ' fast in the toils of lago Retiarius,' which 
 (according to my theory) amply explains the over- 
 whelming effect. More than any other of the great 
 Shakespearean characters (except perhaps King Lear) 
 Othello must be played with the heart rather than the 
 head. His head, in truth, was not his strong point 
 
 One or two of my informants are inclined to 
 attribute perspiration and consequent fatigue to ge- 
 neral nervousness rather than to the special emotion 
 of a particular character. They dwell on the fact 
 that the nervous excitement of a first night is a noted 
 sudorific. This argument would be of great weight 
 if the symptom were confined to first nights and 
 other peculiarly nervous occasions. But we have no 
 reason for supposing that the actor referred to in my 
 question — Mr. Hermann Vezin — was more nervous 
 one night than another ; unless, indeed, we choose to 
 argue in a circle and describe as ' nervousness ' the 
 very condition of mind and body which enables a 
 player to enter into the emotions of his part It is 
 true that some great actors have confessed to feeling 
 a certain nervousness, amounting almost to stage- 
 fright, every time they faced the public ; but they 
 have always added that, the first plunge once over, 
 this sensation passes off. We may readily admit 
 that nervousness (in the ordinary sense of the term) 
 heightens the tendency to perspiration on special 
 occasions ; but it cannot account for the whole phe- 
 nomenon. 
 
 The following observation of Frangois Riccoboni's 
 may be quoted as the most plausible anti-emotionalist 
 
 Mr. Vezin 
 
 F. Ricco- 
 boni 
 
 K 2 
 
132 
 
 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 /.'Art du 
 y/iMtre 
 (1750),/. 41 
 
 argument on this point which has come under my 
 notice : — ' Je ne dis pas qu'en jouant les morceaux de 
 grande passion I'Acteur ne ressente une Amotion tres- 
 vive, c'est m^me ce qu'il y a de plus fatiguant au 
 Th^&tre. Mais cette agitation vient des efforts qu'on 
 est obligd de faire pour peindre une passion que Ton 
 ne ressent pas, ce qui donne au sang un mouvement 
 extraordinaire auquel le Comddien peut etre lui-meme 
 tromp6, s'il n'a pas examine avec attention la veritable 
 cause d'oii cela provient' Unless this chapter has en- 
 tirely failed in its purpose, I think it establishes a fair 
 probability that ' the comedian ' may be right in his 
 self-analysis, and Riccoboni wrong. 
 
 ' But hold ! ' say the anti-emotionalists, shifting 
 their ground to what may be called Diderot's second 
 position ; ' we do not deny that some, many, even 
 most actors may exhibit symptoms of emotion which 
 cannot be mechanically simulated. Our point is that 
 the greatest artists do not feel on the stage, and would 
 not be great if they did.' Then Betterton, Baron, 
 Mrs. Siddons, and Salvini must be relegated to ' the 
 ruck of middling actors ' ? That were a paradox 
 indeed. 
 
'AUTOSUGGESTION' AND 'INNERVATION' 133 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 'AUTOSUGGESTION' AND 'INNERVATION.' 
 
 ' I HATE to dissemble when I need not,' says Gatty 
 to her sister Ariana in Etherege's She Would if She 
 Could; ' 'twould look as affected in us to be reserved 
 now we are alone, as for a player to maintain the 
 character she acts in the tiring-room.' Madam Gatty 
 was an anti-emotionalist by instinct. She had not 
 considered whether it be necessary or desirable for 
 the player to attain and preserve a certain emotional 
 level before and during the performance of an arduous 
 part It is to this point that the following groups of 
 questions refer : — 
 
 G. H. Lewes relates how Macready, as Shylock, used to 
 shake a ladder violently before going on for the scene with 
 Tubal, in order to get up ' the proper state of white heat ' ; also, 
 how Liston was overheard ' cursing and spluttering to himself, 
 as he stood at the side scene waiting to go on in a scene of 
 comic rage.' Have you experienced any difficulty in thus 
 ' striking twelve at once ' ? If so, how do you overcome it ? 
 
 It used to be said of a well-known actor that he put on in 
 the morning the character he was to play at night ; that on days 
 when he was to play Richard III. he was truculent, cynical, and 
 cruel, while on days when he was to play Mercutio or Benedick 
 he would be all grace, humour, and courtesy. Are you con- 
 scious of any such tendency in yourself? or have you observed 
 
 Actors and 
 Acting, p. 
 38 
 
134 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 it in others ? In the green-room, between the acts, have you 
 any tendency to preserve the voice and manner of the character 
 you are playing? or have you observed such a tendency in 
 others ? 
 
 Expression 
 of the \ 
 
 jEmotions, 
 
 Philosophic 
 des Sdionen 
 
 (1887) 
 
 May 8, 
 1767 
 
 Macready and Listen, it may be said, could not 
 affect their emotional states by shaking a ladder and 
 spluttering, these being merely mechanical devices for 
 producing extreme muscular mobility. This argu- 
 ment, however, ignores the undoubted tendency of 
 outward expression to react upon emotion. ' He who 
 gives way to violent gestures,' says Darwin, ' will in- 
 crease his rage ; he who does not control the signs 
 of fear will experience fear in a greater degree. . . . 
 Even the simulation of an emotion tends to arouse it 
 in our minds.' Eduard von Hartmann, ' the Philo- 
 sopher of the Unconscious,' gives to this principle the 
 hybriS name of ' autosuggestion ' and treats it as one 
 of the central secrets of acting. Lessing too, though 
 he would probably have rebelled at the word, was 
 familiar with the thing. He discusses in his Ham- 
 burgische Drainaturgie the respective merits of the 
 actor who has feeling (Empfindung) but little power 
 of expression, and the actor who has great power of 
 expression but no feeling. The latter he declares, 
 very naturally, to be the more useful of the two. By 
 merely imitating the emotional expression of others 
 ' he will attain to a sort of feeling, in virtue of the law 
 that those modifications of the soul which produce 
 certain changes of the body, can, conversely, be pro- 
 duced through the medium of these changes. This 
 sort of feeling cannot, certainly, have the persistence 
 
'AUTOSUGGESTION' AND 'INNERVATION' 135 
 
 and fire of that which takes its rise in the soul ; yet 
 in the moment of performance it is powerful enough 
 to bring about in some measure those involuntary- 
 physical changes from whose presence we can, alone 
 infer with certainty the presence of the inward emo- 
 tion. Suppose that such an actor has to express the 
 utmost fury of wrath, and suppose that he does not 
 even understand his part sufficiently to know the 
 reason of this fury. . . . If he has merely learnt to 
 imitate correctly the most obvious symptoms of rage 
 as expressed by an actor of native feeling — the hasty 
 tread, the stamping foot, the rough voice, now scream- 
 ing, now choking, the play of the eyebrows, the 
 quivering lips, the grinding teeth — if he can imitate 
 these things correctly, I say (and that may be done 
 by a mere effort of will), then a dim feeling of wrath 
 will infallibly seize upon his soul, which, in turn, will 
 react upon his body and produce those changes which 
 do not depend upon our will alone. ... In short, he 
 will appear to be really enraged, when in truth he is 
 nothing of the sort, and does not even understand " the 
 motive and the cue for passion.'" Lessing, I need 
 scarcely point out, was a thorough-going emotionalist. 
 This principle of ' autosuggestion ' explains Mac- 
 ready's practice, and the similar devices of other actors. 
 It is of course conceivable that Macready may have 
 kept his mind perfectly calm while he worked up the 
 muscular tremor of fury ; but the supposition is diffi- 
 cult. The most intimate correlations can by practice 
 be overcome, just as a juggler can keep five balls in 
 the air with his right hand while with his left he plays 
 
136 
 
 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 Expression 
 of the 
 Emotions^ 
 p. ii6 
 
 ' Home, sweet Home ' upon the concertina. Diderot 
 would tell us that Macready ought to have performed 
 a similar feat, biit there is no evidence that he did 
 perform it. ' There is reason to suspect,' says Darwin 
 again, ' that the muscular system requires some short 
 preparation, or some degree of innervation, before 
 being brought into strong action.' Macready's primary- 
 object, no doubt, was to mobilise his muscles, but he 
 probably knew very well that in doing so he mobilised 
 his mind. 
 
 There is abundant testimony to the difficulty of 
 ' striking twelve at once,'- and many methods of over- 
 coming it are on record. It is recorded of Baron that 
 before going on the stage in a scene of high excite- 
 ment, ' il se battait les flancs pour se passionner ; il 
 apostrophait avec aigreur et injuriait tous ceux qui se 
 presentaient i lui, valets et camarades de I'un et de 
 I'autre sexe, et il appelaitcela "respecter le parterre.'" 
 Sticotti states the same fact in a different form. 
 ' Baron dans la coulisse,' he says, ' se p^ndtroit deja 
 des choses qu'il alloit dire ; il paroissoit hors de lui- 
 meme ; il s'interrogeoit, il gdmissoit, il parloit aux 
 autres de sa triste situation, comme si elle etlt tti bien 
 veritable, et dans cet ^tat, il entroit sur la sc^ne ; ce 
 principe excellent est peu suivi des Acteurs m^diocres.' 
 This was practically the system of Macready ; and 
 theatrical tradition tells of an actor-manager who car- 
 ried the same method to a length which neither Baron 
 nor Macready thought necessary. When going on in 
 a particular situation of great excitement, he used 
 to work himself up by kicking the property-man ; it 
 
 Baron 
 
 Diction' 
 
 naire 
 
 Larousse, 
 
 art, 
 
 ' Baron ' 
 
 Garrick, 
 ed. 1770. 
 j». 63 
 
'AUTOSUGGESTION' AND 'INNERVATION' 137 
 
 being understood that he should afterwards apologise 
 and give the fellow a shilling. One night, when the 
 house was very bad, the property-man planted him- 
 self at the wing to receive the accustomed kicking ; 
 but the canny actor-manager restrained himself, say- 
 ing as he passed him by, ' Not to-night, Barkins ; the 
 treasury won't stand it' This gentleman's respect for 
 the property-man varied in the inverse ratio of his 
 respect for the pit. 
 
 Many of my informants admit that, though they 
 do not shake ladders or kick property-men, they adopt 
 mechanical means of less violence in order to work 
 themselves up before an excited entrance. They 
 mumble to themselves through their clenched teeth, 
 snap their fingers, hold up their hands and shake 
 them rapidly with a loose wrist, or ' stand rigidly and 
 rock the body to and fro with gradually increasing 
 nerve-tension.' Mr. Arthur Cecil informed me that 
 Phelps used always to stand muttering to himself be- pheips 
 fore making his entrance. One night, during the run 
 of The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Gaiety, Phelps 
 lost his way in the intricate passages between his 
 dressing-room and the stage, and was not to be found 
 when his cue was given. The ' wait ' was becoming 
 noticeable, when Mr. George Belmore, who happened 
 to be standing at the wing, bethought him to imitate 
 the muttered thunder which used to announce the 
 actor's approach. He thus kept the audience in the 
 belief that the delay was an intentional effect, until 
 the missing Falstaff was rescued from the labyrinth. 
 In hand-to-hand combats such as the death-struggle 
 
138 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Phelps and 
 Macready 
 
 of Macbeth or of Richard, tragedians have been 
 known to hurl the most horrible curses at each other 
 under their breath. When Phelps first encountered 
 Macready on the battlements of Dunsinane, he was 
 astonished to hear the older tragedian overwhelm 
 him with savage obloquy. Thinking that no offence 
 he could possibly have committed could justify such 
 treatment, he responded in kind, and ' gave as good 
 as he got' Great was his surprise when, at the end 
 of the play, Macready thanked him cordially for the 
 spirited way in which he had played up to him in 
 the combat. In a recent revival of Durmis's-Antony, 
 Paul Mounet and Madame Tessandier had recourse 
 to this device : ' lis avaient intercal6 dans une scene 
 des jurons, des injures que le public n'entendait pas, 
 mais avec lesquels lis se fouettaient les nerfs ; ils 
 emporterent la scene dans un mouvement de passion 
 ^chevelde qui dlectrisa la salle.' There is a passage in 
 Jio^ Roy where the bold outlaw, captured and pinioned, 
 stands writhing and foaming at the mouth, while the 
 other characters on the stage are singing the ' Tramp 
 Chorus.' In this scene Mr. J. B. Howard, the Rob 
 Roy of the modern Scotch stage, was in the habit 
 of indulging in such copious expletives, that an old 
 dresser in the Edinburgh Theatre Royal, who used to 
 be sent on among the ' supers,' begged Mrs. Wyndham 
 to assign her a place on the stage as far as possible 
 from Rob Roy, ' for the language he used made her 
 flesh creep.' Since then, Mr. Howard has learnt to 
 do his swearing in Italian. 
 
 As a rule,' however, mental concentration, rather 
 
 Mounet 
 
 and 
 
 Tessandier, 
 
 Revue 
 
 d'Art 
 
 Drama- 
 
 tigue, 
 
 March I, 
 
 1887 
 
 Mr. J. B. 
 Howard 
 
'AUTOSUGGESTION' AND 'INNERVATION' 139 
 
 I than any physical device, is resorted to in order to 
 j overcome the difficulty of ' striking twelve at once.' 
 i A favourite and of course a very obvious method is 
 j to stand at the wing and drink in every word of the 
 ' dialogue leading up to the difficult entrance, in order 
 j to become impregnated with the- spirit of the situa- 
 , tion. This was the method adopted by Mrs. Siddons, 
 as she herself tells us in a very curious study of the 
 character of Constance in King John : — ' ... If the 
 representative of Constance,' she writes, ' shall ever 
 forget, even behind the scenes, those disastrous events 
 which impel her to break forth into the overwhelming 
 effusions of wounded friendship, disappointed ambi- 
 tion, and maternal tenderness, upon the first moment 
 of her appearance in the third Act, when stunned with 
 terrible surprise she exclaims, — 
 
 Gone to be married — gone to swear a peace ! 
 
 False blood to false blood joined — gone to be friends ! 
 
 if, I say, the mind of the actress for one moment 
 wanders from these distressing events, she must in- 
 evitably fall short of that high and glorious colouring 
 which is indispensable to the painting of this magni- 
 ficent portrait. . . . Whenever I was called upon to 
 personate the character of Constance, I never, from 
 the beginning of the play to the end of my part in 
 it, once suffered my dressing-room door to be closed, 
 I in order that my attention might constantly be fixed 
 t on these distressing events which, by this means, I 
 i could plainly hear going on upon the stage, the terrible 
 I effects of which progress were to be represented by 
 ; me. ' Moreover, I never omitted to place myself, with 
 
 Mrs. 
 Siddons 
 
 Campbell^ 
 i. p. 213 
 
I40 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Arthur in my hand, to hear the word, when, upon 
 the reconciliation of England and France, they enter 
 the gates of Anglers to ratify the contract of marriage 
 between the Dauphin and the Lady Blanche ; because 
 the sickening sounds of that march would usually 
 cause the bitter tears of rage, disappointment, be- 
 trayed confidence, baffled ambition, and, above all, the 
 agonizing feelings of maternal affection, to gush into 
 my eyes. In short, the spirit of the whole drama took 
 possession of my mind and frame, by my attention 
 being incessantly riveted to the passing scenes. . . . 
 I have no doubt that the observance of such circum- 
 stances, however irrelevant they may appear upon 
 a cursory view, were \sic\ powerfully aidant in the 
 representations of those expressions of passion in 
 the remainder of this scene, which have been only in 
 part considered.' It is perhaps worth noting that in 
 the Tubal scene, to which the anecdote of Mac- 
 ready refers, no such process of ' abstraction,' as Mrs. 
 Siddons calls it, is possible, Shylock's entrance follow- 
 ing immediately upon a few words of trivial conversa- 
 tion between Salanio and Salarino. Mrs. John Wood 
 writes as follows : — ' I once had a lesson that taught 
 me the value of this concentration of mind, and I 
 have never forgotten it. The character I was playing 
 was a wild, uncouth, ragged creature, who was devoted 
 to the villain of the piece, he being the only person 
 who had ever bestowed upon her a kindly thought. 
 For this he became her idol. She watched his words 
 and footsteps, and aided him innocently in his acts of 
 villainy. At last she fancies that he loves the heroine, 
 
 Mrs. John 
 Wood 
 
'-AUTOSUGGESTION' AND 'INNERVATION' 141 
 
 '^and, in her jealousy, imagines his love returned. Sh« 
 follows him ; he meets the lady of his love ; and she 
 -overhears him pour forth his passion. She does not 
 wait to hear the heroine's reply, but rushes at her like 
 a very tigress. The audience waited breathlessly for 
 this supreme moment of the girl's fury, and the scene 
 ended in a most pathetic manner, the sympathy of the 
 public being greatly excited on this poor creature's 
 behalf I used conscientiously to listen to the preced- 
 ing scene, and by so doing was really worked up to the 
 right pitch of excitement when my cue came. One 
 night, several of the company, convulsed with laughter, 
 took off my attention by telling me of a great joke 
 t:hey were going to play off upon an unfortunate actor 
 in the next piece. This thoughtlessness ruined my 
 scene.- I could not act up to the situation. I did not 
 feel it No amount of art can make up for the want 
 of one real touch of nature. I then found out that 
 they must be combined to produce an electrical effect 
 upon your audience.' Miss Ellen Wallis, who has Miss 
 certainly done more than any other living actress to 
 keep alive in the provinces the traditions of poetic 
 drama, instances Isabella's entrance in the last act of 
 Measure for Measure as a case in which she has found 
 great difficulty in 'striking twelve at once.' Like 
 Mrs. Siddons, she stations herself at the wing and 
 listens intently to the opening speeches of the scene — 
 the Duke's compliments to Angelo — thus working up 
 her indignation for the great outburst of ' Justice, O 
 royal Duke ! ' with which she flings herself at his feet. 
 The effort of concentrating the attention is sometimes 
 
 Wallis 
 
142 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Mrs. 
 Kendal 
 
 Mr. Ban- 
 croft 
 
 Miss Ward 
 
 Talma 
 L Art die 
 ComddUn, 
 
 no less valuable in lowering than in heightening the 
 vitality. Mrs. Kendal tells me that, in order to induce 
 in the lines of her face, and in her whole person, the 
 stony rigidity of Claire in TAe Ironmaster, she has 
 often shut herself up in her dressing-room and delibe- 
 rately fixed her mind upon all the ' old, unhappy, far- 
 off things ' she could think of — the pains, losses, and 
 disappointments of her life. Mr. Bancroft makes a 
 similar statement with regard to the part of Orloff in 
 Diplomacy. He used to prepare himself for the great 
 ' scene of the three men ' by the very process em- 
 ployed by Mrs. Kendal. Miss Genevieve Ward, again, 
 writes : — ' I find no difficulty in " striking twelve at 
 once " in passionate or mirthful scenes ; but before 
 death-scenes I wish to be some time alone. My 
 vitality is so strong that for quiet scenes I need to 
 get my nerves under complete control.' 
 
 On the other hand we have anecdotes (though I 
 can find but few) of great actors whose extraordinary 
 natural mobility of mind and body enabled them to 
 perform astonishing feats in the way of ' striking 
 twelve at once.' A noteworthy instance is related by 
 M. Coquelin. ' Talma,' he says, ' jouait Hamlet un , 
 soir. En attendant son tour, il causait dans la coulisse \ 
 avec un ami ; I'avertisseur le voit souriant, distrait, ; 
 s'approche :; — " Monsieur Talma, cela va ^tre a vous ! " 
 — " Cast bien, c'est bien, j'attends ma rdplique." Sa 
 scene, la sc^ne du spectre, devait commencer dans la 
 coulisse m^me et le spectateur entendre Talma avant 
 de le voir. II continue sa causerie, tres-gai, la r^plique 
 arrive, il serre la main de son interlocuteur, et, le 
 
'AUTOSUGGESTION' AND 'INNERVATION' 143 
 
 sourire encore aux l^vres, cette main amicale dans la 
 sienne, 
 
 .... Fuis, spectre ^pouvantabie I 
 
 at I'ami recule, effard, et le frisson tombe dans la salle ! ' 
 Garrick, in private society, would often give the Dagger 
 Soliloquy from Macbeth at a moment's notice. It 
 is reported of Kean and of Rachel that they vi'ould 
 at one moment be laughing and joking behind the 
 scenes, and at the next moment on the stage, raving 
 with Lear or writhing with Phedre ; while they had 
 equal facility in stilling the ground-swell of passion at 
 the end of a trying scene. Even of Mrs. Siddons Sir 
 Walter Scott relates a similar story. In a drawing- 
 room one day, wishing to illustrate a peculiarity in 
 John Philip Kemble's manner, she placed herself in 
 the attitude of an Egyptian statue — her knees toge- 
 ther, her feet turned a little inward, her elbows close 
 to her sides, her hands folded and held upright with 
 the palms pressed together — and in this attitude 
 ' proceeded to recite the curse of King Lear on his 
 undutiful offspring in a manner which made hair rise 
 and ilesh creep.' On the other hand, it is said of 
 Salvini (who, by the way, speaks strongly of the ne- 
 cessity for ' innervation ') that during a visit to America 
 he was asked one evening to give a short scene from 
 the last act of Othello, but refused, on the ground that 
 ' it would be impossible for him to present it acceptably 
 without going through the entire play.' 
 
 I need scarcely say that none of my informants 
 confesses to ' putting on in the morning the character 
 he is to play at night.' That is simply a joke current 
 
 Garrick 
 
 Mrs. 
 SiddoQS 
 
 Scoft^ i. p, 
 813 
 
 Salvini 
 
 The Voice, 
 X. No. 3 
 
144 
 
 MAS^S OR FACES f 
 
 Mossop, 
 Doran, iu 
 P- 353 
 
 Mr. Walter 
 Lacy 
 
 Bancroft^ 
 i. f. 421 
 
 among the supporters of a certain tragedian, who, 
 unhappily, played Richard too often for their comfort. 
 There is a similar legend about Mossop, who was said 
 to ■ order his dinner according to the part he had to 
 act : sausages and Zanga, rump-steaks and Richard, 
 pork-chops and Pierre, veal cutlets and Barbarossa.' 
 The same practice is attributed, on his own authority, 
 to Mr. Walter-Lacy, an actor of some eminence in his 
 day, who has now retired from the stage. ' Speaking 
 of some of his own performances,' says Mr. Bancroft, 
 ' he thus related his different methods of dining : 
 " When I played Bluff Hall, sir (Henry of England), 
 I drank brown porter and dined off British beef ; but 
 if I had to act the Honourable Tom Shuffleton, I 
 contented myself with a delicate cutlet and a glass 
 of port which resembled a crushed garnet, and then 
 sallied on to the stage with the manners of a gentle- 
 man and the devil-me-care air of a man about town ! " ' 
 This method of tempering the gastric juices might be 
 indefinitely refined upon. Mr. Irving ought to dine 
 on devilled kidneys before playing Mephistopheles. 
 When Macbeth is in the bill, haggis should reek on 
 the tragedian's board, and hasty-pudding should put 
 him i' the vein for Lear. 
 
 But if no one ' puts on in the morning the cha- 
 racter he is to play at night,' almost everyone who] 
 is accustomed to highly emotional or even strongly 
 marked characters admits the desirability of (so to 
 speak) keeping the thread unbroken from first to last. 
 ' My long experience of the stage,' says Macready, 
 ' has convinced me of the necessity of keeping, on the' 
 
 Macreadyj 
 
 Reminis- 
 cences, i. 
 f. 115 
 
^AUTOSUGCnSTION' AND 'INNERVATION' "145 
 
 day of exhibition, the mind as intent as possible on 
 the subject of the actor's portraiture, even to the very 
 moment of his entrance on the scene.' And again : 
 • Talma would dress some time before [the commence- 
 ment of the performance] and make the peculiarities 
 of his costume familiar to him ; at the same time that 
 he thereby possessed himself more with the feeling of 
 his character. I thought the practice so good, that I 
 frequently adopted it, and derived great benefit from 
 it.' Burbage, according to Fleckno, was ' a delightful 
 Proteus, so wholly transforming himself into his parts, 
 . and putting off himself with his cloaths, as he never 
 (not so much as in the tyring-house) assumed himself 
 again until the play was done.' Anthony Aston tells 
 us \i!as.f Better ton y {torn, the Time he was dress'd to 
 the End of the Play, kept his Mind in the same Tem- 
 perament and Adaptness, as the present Character 
 required.' Salvini finds two or three hours of mental 
 concentration an essential preliminary to entering 
 with full conviction on such parts as Othello, Hamlet, 
 or Saul ; and the ' transmigration,' as he calls it, once 
 effected, endures unbroken throughout the play. 
 Junius Brutus Booth who, in the maturity of his 
 powers, was undoubtedly a magnificent actor, used 
 to indulge in more than Salvini's two or three hours 
 mental concentration. ' Whatever part he had to 
 personate,' writes Mr. Edwin Booth (and that excel- 
 lent tragedian evidently approves his father's practice), 
 ' he was from the time of its rehearsal until he slept 
 at night imbued with its very essence. If Othello 
 was billed for the evening, . . . disregarding the fact 
 
 L 
 
 Talma, 
 
 Reminis- 
 ceTices, i, 
 /). 238 
 
 Burbage, 
 
 Malone, 
 Hi. f, 185 
 
 Betterton, 
 Aston, f. s 
 
 Salvini 
 
 J. B. Booth, 
 
 Matthews 
 and 
 Hutton, 
 Hi. /. 100 
 
-146 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Macready 
 and C, 
 Kea-n 
 
 that Shakespeare's Moor was a Christian, he would 
 mumble sentences from the Koran. ... If Shylock 
 was to be his part at night, he was a Jew all day ; 
 and if in Baltirhore at the time, he would pass hours 
 with a learned Israelite, who lived near by, discussing 
 Hebrew history!' The tendency to retain in the 
 green-room the manner and voice of the character 
 one is assuming appears to be common enough. ' I 
 observed this tendency in Macready,' writes Mr. 
 John Coleman, ' and Charles Kean had the same 
 peculiarity in a less degree.' Mr. Kendal, too, 
 used to notice this habit in Charles Kean and 
 thought it an affectation. So it was, no doubt ; 
 but the affectation may have arisen, not from vanity, 
 but from deliberate artistic purpose. Mr. Kendal 
 himself admits that between the acts of such a play 
 as The Ironmaster, in which he leaves the stage 
 and returns to it in high emotion, he would not 
 willingly lapse into levity, because it would cost him 
 unnecessary trouble to regain the right pitch of feel- 
 ing. Many actors assure me that it is common for 
 tragedians to shut themselves up in their dressing- 
 rooms between the acts of a play, and to reassume 
 their personage immediately on being called, some- 
 times even timing their walk from the dressing-room 
 door to the wing, so as to be able to step upon the 
 stage without a moment's pause. M. Albert Lambert 
 writes : — ' J'ai quelquefois conserve les allures et les 
 grimaces typiques de quelques personnages, de ma 
 loge au foyer, et du foyer k la sc^ne. Par exemple 
 pour Louis XI je conseryais tant que je pouvais son 
 
 M. Lam- 
 bert 
 
^AUTOSUGGESTION^ AnD 'INNERVATION' 147 
 
 sourire faux et sarcastique, son regard d'acier ; pour 
 Louis XIV son grand air impassible ; pour Alceste 
 son front rembruni et sa moue mdcontente \ pour 
 Tartuffe sa marche glissante, son ceil ^teint, demi- 
 voil^, son sourire onctueux et son geste officiant ; pour 
 Harpagon sa grimace inqui^te et nerveuse. Mais 
 seulement parce que ces masques sont historiques, 
 universels, et qu'il faut les apporter justes devant les 
 yeux du public' Between Othello's exit and re- 
 entrance in the third act Mr. John Coleman would 
 always prowl up and down behind the scenes like a 
 wild animal, the stage being kept clear in order that 
 he might be safe from interruption. ' I always endea- 
 vour,' writes Mr. Wilson Barrett, ' to get a short time 
 to myself, in my dressing-room, to think over my 
 character and work myself into it, so to speak. It is 
 a trouble and annoyance to me to converse on any 
 subject while waiting to commence my work. I have 
 noticed the same thing in other actors.' Miss Wallis 
 tells me that between the acts of a heavy part she 
 always retires to her dressing-room and maintains 
 absolute silence, not speaking even to her maid if 
 she can help it. 
 
 ' Silence was the order my mother had given as 
 the rule for my dressing-room,' writes Lady Martin 
 — ' no talk to take my thoughts' from the work I had 
 in harid.' ' I was taken by my aunt early to the 
 theatre,' Fanny Kemble writes, 'and there in my 
 dressing-room sat through the entire play, when I 
 was not on the stage, with some piece of tapestry or 
 needlework, with which, during the intervals of my 
 
 Mr. 
 Coleman 
 
 Mr. Wilson 
 Barrett 
 
 Miss 
 Wallis 
 
 Lady 
 Martin, 
 Shake- 
 speare's 
 Female 
 Characters^ 
 f. I2S 
 Fanny 
 Kemble, 
 Record of a 
 Girlhood, 
 it. p, 69 
 
148 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Ristori 
 
 tragic sorrows, I busied my fingers ; my thoughts 
 being occupied with the events of my next scene and 
 the various effects it demanded.' Miss Wallis relates 
 how she once visited Ristori in her dressing-room be- 
 tween the acts of Maria Stuarda, immediately after 
 the scene between Mary and ElizabetL The great 
 actress received her, as it were, enthroned, and, though 
 perfectly cordial, never once throughout the interview- 
 relaxed her queenly bearing. , ' Affectation ! ' the 
 reader may say ; but again I add, affectation with 
 an artistic purpose. ' Such an exaggeration,' Ristori 
 writes to me, ' as identifying oneself all day with the 
 character to be performed at night belongs to the 
 conventions of the old school. My father, an experi- 
 enced actor, who trained me for the stage, used to 
 impress upon me that I should be melancholy for a 
 whole day before playing a pathetic part — but I never 
 acted up to his precepts. The true artist, indeed, 
 before attacking an important part, will avoid all 
 frivolous distractions ; but he need not meditate on 
 mortality or weep like Heraclitus.' Let me mention 
 in passing that Ristori, in her recently published 
 Memoirs, professes herself so thorough an emotionalist 
 that she never could ' feel ' the passage where Mary 
 Stuart pleads guilty to the murder of Damley, be- 
 cause her historical studies had convinced her that 
 this was a mistake on Schiller's part and that Mary 
 was innocent ! 
 
 These citations appear to me to prove conclusively i 
 that many distinguished actors have a difficulty in) 
 flinging themselves at one bound into the passion of) 
 
 Etudes et 
 Souvcnirsi 
 A 8s 
 
'AUTOSUGGESTION' AND 'INNERVATION' 145 
 
 a scene, and find it advantageous to keep themselves 
 more or less completely in touch with their personage 
 during the whole time of performance. On the other 
 hand, there is no reason to doubt that some tem- 
 peraments require less ' innervation,' to use Darwin's 
 word, than others, or that, with a few, an infinitesimal 
 space of time suffices. It is to be remembered", how- 
 ever, that if the keeping up of a character behind the 
 scenes may be due to affectation, the total dropping 
 of it may, in some cases, be no less affected. There is a 
 motive (the avoidance of ridicule) for the latter affec- 
 tation ; none, except the artistic motive, for the former. 
 ' Le veritable acteur,' says M. Coquelin, ' est tou- 
 jours pr^L II peut prendre son r61e k n'importe quel 
 moment, et susciter immddiatement I'impression qu'il 
 desire.' I think there is ample evidence that the 
 veritable actor, in this sense, is a rare bird. 
 
15CT ' MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE BROWNIES OF THE BRAIN. 
 
 The real paradox of acting, it seems to me, resolves 
 itself into the paradox of dual consciousness. If it 
 were true that the actor could not experience an 
 emotion without absolutely yielding up his whole 
 soul to it, then Diderot's doctrine, though still a little 
 overstated, would be right in the main. But the 
 mind is not so constituted. If the night of the 
 murder of Duncan had been a fit time for psycho- 
 logical argument, MTacduff might safely have moved 
 an amendment to Macbeth's proposition : 
 
 Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, 
 Loyal and neutral in a moment ? No man. 
 
 There are many ' brownies,' as Mr. Stevenson 
 puts it, in the actor's brain, and one of them may be 
 agonising with Othello, while another is criticising 
 his every tone and gesture, a third restraining him 
 from strangling lago in good earnest, and a fourth 
 wondering whether the play will be over in time to 
 let him catch his last train. I was anxious to obtain 
 authentic illustrations of this double, triple, and qua- 
 druple action of the mind, and to that end framed the 
 following question : — 
 
THE B'ROWNIES OF TBE BRAIN 
 
 ISI 
 
 Can you give any examples of the two or more strata of 
 consciousness, or lines of thought, which must co-exist in your 
 mind while acting? In other words, can you describe and 
 illustrate how one part of your mind is given up' to your 
 character, while another part is criticising minutely your own 
 gestures and intonations, and a third, perhaps, is watching the 
 audience, or is busied with some pleasant or unpleasant recol- 
 lection or anticipation in your private life ? 
 
 It has been objected that the phrase 'must co- 
 exist ' begs the question ; but is there really any 
 question to beg ? I looked upon the double action 
 of the brain as a matter of universal experience, a 
 thing to be assumed just as one assumes that the 
 normal man has two legs. I did not regard it as a 
 tendency peculiar to actors, but common to all men. 
 It seemed to me, however, that acting must beget 
 special forms of this multiple activity, and I hoped to 
 obtain some clear and convincing illustrations of it 
 
 Fanny Kemble's self-analysis deserves to rank as 
 the classic passage on this point : — ' The curious part 
 of acting, to me, is the sort of double process which 
 the mind carries on at once, the combined operation 
 of one's faculties, so to speak, in diametrically oppo- 
 site directions ; for instance, in that very last scene 
 of Mrs. Beverley, while I was half dead with crying 
 in the midst of the real grief, created by an entirely 
 unreal cause, I perceived that my tears were falling 
 like rain all over my silk dress, and spoiling it ; and 
 I calculated and measured most accurately the space 
 that my father would require to fall in, and moved 
 myself and my train accordingly in the midst of the 
 anguish I was to feign, and absolutely did endure. 
 
 Fanny 
 Kemble, 
 
 Record of a 
 Girlhood, 
 iup. 103 
 
152. 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Xfattkews 
 and 
 HuiioH, »; 
 
 It is this watchful faculty (perfectly prosaic and 
 commonplace in its nature), which never deserts me 
 while I am uttering all that exquisite passionate 
 poetry in Juliet's balcony scene, while I feel as if my 
 own soul was on my lips, and my colour comes and 
 goes with the intensity of the sentiment I am ex- 
 pressing ; which prevents me from falling over my 
 train, from setting fire to myself with the lamps 
 placed close to me, from leaning upon my canvas 
 balcony when I seem to throw myself all but over it' 
 No less interesting is Miss Clara Morris's account 
 of her triple consciousness : — ' There are, when I am 
 on the stage,' she writes, ' three separate currents of 
 thought in my mind ; one in which I am keenly 
 alive to Clara Morris, to all the details of the play, 
 to the other actors and how they act, and to the 
 audience ; another about the play and the character 
 I represent ; and, finally, the thought that really 
 gives me stimulus for acting. For instance, when I 
 repeat such and such a line it fits like words to music 
 to this underthought, which may be of some dead 
 friend, of a story of Bret Harte's, of a poem, or may 
 be even some pathetic scrap from a newspaper.' 
 Miss Morris is here speaking of parts which from 
 frequent repetition have lost their first effect upon 
 her. Her account of her method of working up 
 emotion will be found on a later page. 
 
 Another excellent witness to the same effect is 
 Paul Mounet, of the Od^on, who has described to 
 M. Larcher ' le d^doublement qui s'op^re en lui 
 quand il est en sc^ne : il y a en lui quelqu'un qui le. 
 
 Pest, p. 17s 
 
 M. Paul 
 Mounet, 
 
 Rnue 
 dArt Dra- 
 matique^ 
 March i, 
 1888 
 
THE BROWNIES OF THE BRAIN 
 
 1S3 
 
 regarde et I'^coute : alors il joue vdritablement de lui- 
 m^me, comme un musicien joue de son instrument 
 Quelquefois I'artiste s'emporte : tautre le voit, mais 
 il se laisse griser d^licieusement en sa compagnie. 
 Ces jours-li, il ddpasse la mesure et rent're mdcontent 
 dans la coulisse. Mais s'il est rest6 maitre de lui, s'il 
 s'est fait plaisir a lui-m^me, il est s(ir de I'effet qu'il a 
 produit : il a tribmphd du public parce qu'il a triom- 
 phd de lui-m6me.' M. Mounet's comrade M. Albert 
 Lambert writes: — 'J'ai connu un artiste ne jouant 
 qu'avec la sensibility et une Amotion que ne dominait 
 pas toujours I'Art, s'apercevoir au plus fort d'une 
 scene, que sa femme causait avec le pompier de ser- 
 vice, s'en plaindre tout bas a son partner et continuer 
 sa scene dans le m^me mouvement et dans la m^fne- 
 Amotion. J'ai quelquefois ^coutd " chanter mes effets," 
 mais ceci c'est la corde raide, un seul faux pas et Ton 
 glisse.' 
 
 There is an anecdote of Talma, after a scene of 
 violent emotion, meeting his dresser at the wing and 
 proceeding to abuse him roundly for not having 
 polished his boots ; the implication being that he 
 had noticed the man's remissness while at the height 
 of his passion. An actor who once played Horatio 
 to a very famous Hamlet tells me that in the last act 
 he felt the shoulder of his cloak quite wet with the, 
 tragedian's tears at the line ' What ! the fair Ophelia,' 
 yet that Hamlet's first remark on leaving the scene 
 was, ' That damned organ was playing too loud all 
 the time ! ' Such instances could be cited by the 
 score. Indeed I have already quoted several of them 
 
 M. 
 Lambert 
 
 Talma, 
 Lardin 
 
 Ante, pp. 
 =9.71 
 
!S4- 
 
 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 Mr. Bouci- 
 cault 
 
 in speaking of self-control, which is nothing but a 
 
 ' manifestation of this dual consciousness. 
 
 ^ Many actors — a surprising number, indeed — seem, 
 to be quite unaware of any double action of the minc^. 
 Some resent the suggestion, as thoi^gh it implied carej- 
 lessness or unconscientiousness on their part Others 
 simply reply that the actor should be ' absorbed ' in 
 his character, and seem powerless to analyse the state 
 they describe as absorption. Others, again, relate 
 curious incidents of the freaks of consciousness or of 
 memory which occur in the course of long runs. Mr. 
 Dion Boucicault, for example, states that when he 
 has been playing a part for many months his mind 
 is always occupied with other matters during the 
 performance ; ' and this to such an extent that when, 
 desiring for some special reason to act my best, I 
 
 ' turn my thoughts upon my part, I forget the words, 
 and, to recover them, feel obliged to think of some- 
 thing else.' Interesting as it is, this experience is not 
 what I wanted to get at Here the playing of the 
 part has become quite automatic, leaving the mind 
 free to occupy itself as best it may. The very com- 
 plex movements of piano-playing have been known 
 (says Dr. Carpenter) to become so purely automatic 
 as to be performed in sleep ; and many pianists who 
 know a piece of music thoroughly by heart will go 
 wrong when they attempt to play with the notes be- 
 
 . fore them. There is sometimes a difficulty, of course, 
 in distinguishing between automatic action and the- 
 conscious or sub-conscious mental activity to which 
 my question refers. 
 
THE BROWNIES OF THE BRAIN 
 
 i'55. 
 
 Miss Isabel 
 Bateman 
 
 Mr. L. 
 Outiam 
 
 Here is a case in which this difficulty presents 
 itself. ' Not long ago,' writes Miss Isabel Bateman, 
 'I had to give a recitation after the play, and, feeling 
 rather anxious about it, I found myself repeating the 
 poem (a long one) during the third act of the play. 
 I went through the whole recitation while acting my 
 part, not only repeating the words, but calling to 
 mind the different effects I wished to produce. I 
 confess this with a feeling of guilt, but I don't think 
 anyone can have noticed a difference in my playing.' 
 The question here is : Had Miss Bateman played her 
 part so long as to have reached the automatic stage ? 
 If not, this is a most curious instance of dual action. 
 Mr. Leonard Outram informs me that, in playing 
 James Ralston in the third act of Jim the Penman, 
 where Mrs. Ralston cross-questions her husband as to 
 the cause of his nervous excitement, he finds himself 
 reading, with full comprehension, odds and ends from 
 a newspaper which he happens to have in his hand. 
 Here again one would like to know how often Mr. 
 Outram has played the part ; but the passage is one 
 of such complexity that it would certainly take a very 
 long time to render the playing of it quite automatic. 
 ' When working in earnest,' writes Mr. Forbes 
 Robertson, ' I can only admit two strata, so to speak : 
 one stratum, the part, the. creature I am for the time ; 
 the other, that part of my mind which circumstances • 
 and the surroundings compel me to giv6 up to all 
 things coming under the head of mechanical execu- 
 tion. I have experienced the other strata after a long 
 run, and always fight against them, for I know they . 
 
 Mr, Forbes 
 Robertson 
 
IS6- 
 
 MASKS OR FACES r 
 
 Miss 
 Achurch 
 
 Salvinu 
 
 only mean that my work is getting mechanical.' 
 Even more to the point is the following reply from 
 Miss Janet Achurch : ' The only double line of 
 thought I like to have on the stage is a mental criti- 
 cism on my own performance : " I got that exclamation 
 better than last night," or " I'm sure I'm playing this 
 scene slower than usual," and so on. I suppose no 
 one can help doing this ; but any thought that comes 
 to my mind outside my part I always stamp out as 
 quickly as possible.' This is precisely the form of 
 experience I wished to get at. Salvini, on the other 
 hand, declares that the careful self-criticism to which 
 he subjects himself is strictly confined to moments of 
 reflection after the performance is over. It may be 
 questioned whether this does not imply an under- 
 current of involuntary and unconscious self-criticism 
 running parallel with the action. The most mira- 
 culous memory will scarcely reproduce a cry or an 
 intonation so clearly as to allow of its effect being ; 
 estimated to a nicety. An instinctive sense of ap- 
 proval or disapproval must surely accompany its 
 actual utterances. 
 
 Some artists who profess themselves unconscious 
 of any double action of the mind unintentionally bear 
 witness to its existence. ' There is no better sponge 
 for one's tears,' says an actor of great pathetic power, 
 ' than the sight of an overfed noodle asleep in the 
 stalls ' ; and a very distinguished actress confesses 
 to having ' played at ' a peculiarly stolid and stony 
 woman of fashion whom she observed among the 
 audience, determined to move her or perish in the 
 
THE BROWNIES OF THE BRAIN 157 
 
 attempt Here we have clearly an attitude of mind 
 quite inconsistent with ' absorption ' in the obvious . 
 sense of the word. Another leading actor mentions a ' 
 curious circumstance which bears upon this point. If 
 a momentary uneasiness causes him to make some 
 slight gesture not essential to his part — for instance, 
 if a twinge of neuralgia leads him to put his hand to 
 his brow — he will often make the same gesture at the 
 same point on the following night, without the recur- 
 rence of its cause : whereupon he immediately won- 
 ders why he did so, and recalls, by a distinct effort 
 of thought, the sensation of the previous evening. In 
 this case, what I have called the critical part of the 
 actor's mind is evidently watching the executant part 
 with great intentness. Another mode of conscious- 
 ness which manifests itself in many actors may be 
 called commercial rather than critical. ' I know 
 people,' writes Mr. J. B. Howard, of Edinburgh, ' who, 
 while on the stage, can count a well-filled house, and 
 sum up the cash almost to a fraction.' This faculty 
 seems to be not uncommon. 
 
 I am indebted to Miss Wallis for two most inter- Miss 
 
 WalEs 
 
 esting illustrations of dual activity of mind. In a 
 large provincial town, one day, she was advertised to 
 appear as Juliet. A few hours before the time of the 
 performance, her little daughter was taken suddenly 
 and seriously ill. She sent to the theatre to say 
 that she could not possibly appear ; but, the doctor 
 assuring her that the child was in no immediate 
 danger, she eventually determined not to disappoint 
 the public. Never, she says, did she enter more 
 
ij'8 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 thoroughly into the part, and never did she play it 
 with greater effect She was strung up by excite- 
 ment to a higher emotional pitch than she could 
 ordinarily attain. And all the time the best part of her 
 mind was with her child. Messengers were passing 
 to and fro all the evening between her hotel and the 
 theatre, and the bulletins, fortunately, were reassuring. 
 She came out of the ordeal exhausted in body and 
 mind, and would naturally be very loth to go through 
 it again. Such an experience proves that two modes 
 of intense activity may co-exist in the mind, each 
 being, no doubt, resolvable into several subdivisions, 
 if the memory could but reproduce them with suffi- 
 cient distinctness. In the second case related by Miss 
 Wallis a purely intellectual process of some complexity 
 accompanied the performance of an exacting emo- 
 tional scene. She was playing the title-part in Mr. 
 Wills's Ninon at the Crystal Palace, where she had 
 never appeared before. The moment she uttered her 
 first speech she was conscious of a distracting echo in 
 the theatre. She felt that if it were to continue she 
 could scarcely get through her part, and she set to 
 work to discover the right pitch of voice for this 
 oddly-constructed building. She was somewhat con- 
 soled, before long, to find that the audience seemed 
 unconscious of the reverberation, but she noticed that 
 her fellow-actors were quite bewildered by it Ob- 
 serving closely the effects produced by her comrades, 
 and experimenting with her own voice, she at last hit 
 on the right pitch, but not until the first act was nearly 
 over. We have here a complex process of observa- 
 
THE BROWNIES OF TH£ BRAIN 
 
 159 
 
 tion and reasoning running parallel with the playing 
 of an arduous emotional scene. I should add that 
 this was Miss Wallis's first appearance on the stage 
 after a long period of rest, so that her performance of 
 Ninon, so far from being automatic, must have involved 
 a considerable effort of memory and attention. ' And 
 a vivid emotional process,' Miss Wallis herself would 
 add ; but it is not essential to this part of my argu- 
 ment to determine whether the executant mode of 
 mental activity, in any particular instance, is or is not 
 informed by emotion. 
 
 \ This may be the fittest place to point out that the 
 :double or treble strata of consciousness afford a simple 
 solution of one of the favourite anti-emotionalist 
 difficulties. If the tragedian felt with Orestes or 
 CEdipus, cries Diderot, ' his lot would be the most 
 ; wretched on earth.' That he should feel with them 
 as much as the spectator feels with them would 
 clearly not involve a chronic state of ' wretchedness '; 
 for the fact that we take positive pleasure in the 
 most poignant imaginary woes, though a paradox, is 
 ; also a commonplace. It is the foundation and justi- 
 fication of tragedy. But it is quite possible that the 
 tragedian should habitually feel with his character 
 far more vividly than the average spectator — that he 
 should feel to the extent of actual unmetaphoric suf- 
 fering — and yet should not be 'the most wretched' 
 of men. Severe suffering on one mental plane is 
 quite consistent with perfect contentment, nay, with 
 absolute beatitude, on another. Happiness and misery 
 reside in the deeps of consciousness ; the upper strata 
 
 Ante, p. 2S 
 
i6o MASKS OR FACES r 
 
 are of small account I have a three months' holi- 
 day ; I put money in my purse and take passage for 
 Naples in an Orient steamer. We encounter a capful 
 of wind in the Bay of Biscay, and I am prostrated by 
 seasickness for fifty or sixty hours. I probably suffer 
 more agony than consumption or cancer could inflict 
 in a similar space of time ; yet I am not really miser- 
 able ; my fundamental consciousness is one of de- 
 lighted anticipation ; for 
 
 I shall see, before I die, 
 The palms and temples of the South. 
 
 Conversely, the maxim ' Let us eat and drink, for 
 to-morrow we die' is the veriest mockery unless we 
 put a liberal interpretation on ' to-morrow.' Treat it 
 prosaically — place our death-warrant in our napkin— 
 and a banquet fit for Lucullus will have small savour 
 in our nostrils. So may it be with the actor. The 
 surface of his consciousness may be tormented and 
 tempest-tossed while the depths are unruffled. It 
 may even be that the more really and acutely he 
 suffers — the more thoroughly he merges himself in 
 his part — the greater may be his fundamental hap- 
 piness ; for he knows that he is triumphing, and 
 his spirit is glad. I am far from arguing that 
 mimetic woes ever attain, or ought to attain, the 
 full poignancy of the real miseries they represent. 
 All I wish to point out is that actors may quite 
 well undergo states of feeling which may fairly be de- 
 scribed as suffering — genuine and acute suffering 
 
 without being on that account the most miserable 
 of men. 
 
THE BROWNIES OF THE BRAIN 
 
 l6i 
 
 Another section of my interrogatory was designed 
 to throw further light on this question of double 
 consciousness, especially with reference to Diderot's 
 assumption that to ' feel ' a part implies absolute and, 
 so to speak, helpless absorption in it. 
 
 Diderot tells how Lekain, in a scene of violent emotion, saw Lekain 
 art actress's diamond earring lying on the stage, and had Ants, f. 29 
 presence of mind enough to kick it to the wing instead of 
 treading on it. Can you relate any similar instances of pre- 
 sence of mind ? And should you regard them as showing that 
 the actor is personally unmoved by the situation in which he is 
 figuring? , 
 
 The anecdote of Lekain is regarded by the anti- 
 emotionalists as a tower of strength ; but its founda- 
 tions are sadly insecure. Not that there is any reason 
 to doubt the fact. On the contrary, similar incidents 
 have come within the experience of every artist. 
 It is the interpretation that is more than doubtful. 
 Intense emotion, as I have already suggested, will Ante, p. ^o 
 often act upon the mind, not as chloroform but 
 rather as curari. It places all the faculties on the 
 alert, and stimulates every function of mind and 
 body. The apathy of mere dejection may beget that 
 relaxation of the nerves which places us at the mercy 
 of trifling accidents ; the excitement of violent "feeling 
 has. rather the opposite effect. So far as the incident 
 of the diamond is concerned, Lekain might even have 
 been labouring under the whole emotion of the real 
 Ninias ; much more may he have, been experiencing 
 the similar though less poignant emotional state — 
 the agony con sordino — begotten by the imagination. 
 
 M 
 
1 62 
 
 MASKS OR FACES?- 
 
 A few of the artists whom I have consulted — I 
 may mention Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Kendal, and Mr. Clayton — hold that in certain crises 
 of extreme emotional exaltation, an actor would be 
 incapable of such presence of mind as that of Lekain. 
 This, however, is a theoretical opinion rather than a 
 statement founded on positive experience. I am in- 
 formed of a score of instances in which jewels — even 
 stage-jewels — have been adroitly rescued, but no one 
 has related a single case in which the merest trin- 
 ket has been sacrificed to the passion of the scene. 
 My informants, moreover, are almost unanimous in 
 holding that presence of mind in face of trifling 
 misadventures by no means proves that the actor is 
 personally unmoved. ' In a like case,' Mr. Forbes 
 Robertsoa very aptly remarks, ' the second stratum 
 of my mind would act for me without interfering with 
 the first.' Mr. Beerbohm Tree takes precisely the 
 view of the diamond anecdote which I have suggested 
 above. He holds that Lekain's action may be just 
 as rationally explained on the hypothesis of extreme 
 emotional tension as on that of perfect placidity. 
 Mr. Tree tells of an analogous case within his own 
 experience, in which a young actress, of highly emo- 
 tional temperament, exhibited even greater presence 
 of mind. She was grovelling at the feet of a stony- 
 hearted inquisitor, praying desperately for the life of 
 someone dear to her, when a diamond fell from her 
 hair. She noted where it lay, put her left hand to 
 her brow for a moment, and then let it fall, as though 
 in the lassitude of despair, precisely upon the stray 
 
 Mr. Forbes 
 Robertson 
 
 Mr. Beer- 
 bohm Tree 
 
THE BROWNIES OF THE BRAIN 
 
 163 
 
 jewel. The gesture was so appropriate that the 
 audience suspected nothing, and the effect of the 
 passage was, if anything, heightened. Yet there is 
 not the smallest reason to suppose that this lady — 
 a convinced emotionalist — was, on this occasion only, 
 simulating in cold blood the violent emotion of the 
 scene. 
 
 Salvini tells me that on one occasion, while play- 
 ing Orosmane in Zaire, he suddenly felt, in 'the 
 middle of the fourth act, that the belt which sustained ' 
 his Turkish trousers had given way. Horror of hor- 
 rors ! What was to be done ? As if in an access 
 of passion, he dashed at a tiger-skin which covered 
 the divan and swathed it round his body. The public 
 ' non fece motto,' and in this improvised kilt he 
 finished the act. ' I was told,' he says, ' that I had 
 never played the scene with greater intensity of rage, 
 irony and despair.' ' I never lose my presence of 
 mind,' writes Miss Bateman (Mrs. Crowe). ' I was 
 once acting with a gentleman who played my lover, 
 and in his death agonies his wig came off. Luckily 
 I wore a long mantle, and was able to hide the mis- 
 hap by throwing a corner of it over the gentleman's 
 head. Dozens of such accidents have happened to 
 me, and I don't remember once failing to meet the 
 emergency.' An extreme case of adroitness under 
 difficulties is related by an actor of great experience. 
 He was playing the very stormy love-scene in Peril, 
 which ends in the lover chasing the unwilling fair 
 one round and round the room. The lady wore a 
 girdle of large and costly artificial pearls, and, just 
 
 Salvini 
 
 Miss 
 Bateman 
 
1 64 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 as this culminating point was reached, the string 
 broke, scattering the pearls all over the stage. ' We 
 finished the scene,' writes my informant, ' without any 
 hesitation or any change of business, and neither of 
 us crushed a single pearl. This shows that we had 
 not lost our senses — that's all.' I should add that the 
 hero of this dramatic egg-dance is, on the whole, an 
 anti-emotionalist ; but the incident is none the less a 
 striking example of dual activity of mind. 
 
 Historical instances of presence of mind are simply 
 innumerable. Baron, in Le Comte d' Essex, noticing 
 in the course of his scene with Cecil that his garter 
 had come unfastened, heightened the effect of con- 
 tempt at which he was aiming by coolly stooping 
 to tie it without pausing in his speech. Brizard, a 
 great tragedian of last century, was playing an heroic 
 part when the plumes of his casque caught fire. He 
 remained unconscious of the accident until the audi- 
 ence called his attention to it, when, without interrupt- 
 ing his declamation, he calmly took off the burning 
 headpiece and handed it to his confidant What the 
 confidant did, history saith not. Such anecdotes as 
 these meet us at every turn, but as they seem to me 
 to afford no evidence, one way or another, as to the 
 actor's emotional state, I do not think them worth 
 collecting. More to the point, perhaps, are the com- 
 mon anecdotes of actors interpolating personal asides 
 to their fellow-performers in scenes of high emotion. 
 Diderot gives an elaborate instance of this in the shape 
 of a conjugal quarrel between an actor and actress, 
 carried on under cover of a scene between Eraste and 
 
 Baron, 
 
 Levia- 
 zurier, 
 t- 95 
 
 Brizard, 
 
 Lema- , 
 zw'ier, i, 
 t- 173 
 
 Pollock, p. 
 38 
 
THE BROWNIES OF THE BRAIN 165 
 
 l-ucile in Le D/pt'i A moureux. How Diderot should 
 be in a position to report their asides he does not 
 explain, and in the absence of sucl^ explanation we 
 cannot help suspecting the episode to be imaginary. 
 But supposing it genuine, and supposing (a difficult 
 admission) that Molifere's dialogue was as effectively 
 delivered as Diderot represents it to have been, we 
 must still remember that the scene is not one which 
 could in any case make great claims upon the emo- 
 tions of the performers. More credible and more to 
 the purpose is>an anecdote of Garrick, which I find in 
 the Monthly Mirror for 1807. 'A medical gentleman New 
 of eminence,' it appears, once remarked to ' Tom King p'"z' 
 the comedian,' that Garrick must have suffered greatly Garrick 
 from ' the exertion of his feelings.' ' Pooh ! ' replied 
 the original Sir Peter Teazle, ' he suffer from his feel- 
 ings ! Why, Sir, I was playing with him one night 
 in Lear, when, in the middle of a most passionate and 
 afflicting part, and when the whole house was drowned 
 in tears, he turned his head round to me, and putting 
 his tongue in his cheek, whispered ' Damme, Tom, it II 
 do ! So much for stage feejing.' A precisely similar 
 story is told of Edmund Kean when playing Brutus Edmund 
 to the Titus of his son Charles in Howard Payne's 
 tragedy of Brutus. ' The strong interest of the play,' cou, i. p. 
 says Charles Kean's biographer, ' combined with the ^^^ 
 natural acting of father and son, completely subdued 
 the audienGSr They sat suffused in tears during the 
 last pathetic interview, until Brutus, overpowered by 
 his emotions, falls on the neck of Titus, exclaiming in 
 a burst of agony, "Embrace thy wretched father"; 
 
1 66 
 
 MASKS OR FACES?' 
 
 when they broke forth into the relief of loud and 
 prolonged peals of approbation. Edmund Kean then 
 whispered in his son's ear, " Charley, we are doing 
 the trick." ' These anecdotes are so exactly alike as to 
 arouse a suspicion that the second may be nothing but 
 the first revamped, according to a principle familiar to 
 students of (theatrical) comparative mythology. The 
 incidents themselves, however, are so probable that'] 
 both may quite well be genuine. But do they prove 
 that Garrick and Kean were unmoved ? Surely not I 
 The executant section or stratum of their minds may/ 
 have been wrung with emotion, while the observant 
 section, conscious of the success thus attained, found 
 a safety-valve for its excitement in a hurried whisper 
 of self-congratulation. ' My cousin, John Mason,' 
 writes Fanny Kemble, ' the first time he acted Romeo 
 with me, though a very powerful muscular young man, 
 whispered to me as he carried my corpse down the 
 stage with a fine semblance of frenzy, "Jove, Fanny, 
 you are a lift ! " ' There is a clear distinction be- 
 tween this playful whisper and the exultant asides of 
 Garrick and Kean. Mr. Mason, in all probability, 
 was really unmoved, and therefore,, according to 
 Diderot, possessed the first qualification for a ' sub- 
 lime ' actor. How many of my readers, I wonder, 
 have so much as heard his name ? 
 
 The anti-emotionalists, as I have remarked before, 
 should let presence of mind alone, and rather adduce 
 instances of the evil effects of that absence of mind 
 which they hold to be one of the manifestations of 
 ' sensibility.' Unfortunately for their argument, the 
 
 John 
 Mabon, 
 
 Record of a 
 Girlhood, 
 H. p. 28 
 
 AniSf /■ 3^ 
 
THE BROWNIES OF THE BRAIN 
 
 167 
 
 total absorption in one mode of feeling which numbs 
 the intellect and deadens the sense is of very rare 
 occurrence in real life, and still rarer, of course, on the 
 stage. If this were not so, we should hear every 
 day of some mediocre Othello strangling his lago, 
 or some second-rate Juliet stabbing herself in sad 
 earnest. The classical case in point is the manslaughter 
 (or slave-slaughter) committed by the Roman actor 
 ^sopus, as set forth by Plutarch in his Life of 
 Cicero : — ' Yet it is reported notwithstanding, that for 
 his [Cicero's] gesture and pronunciation, having the 
 selfesame defects of nature at the beginning, which 
 Demosthenes had, to reforme them, he carefully studied 
 to counterfeit Roscius, an excellent Comedian, and 
 yEsope also a player of Tragedies. Of this jEsope men 
 write, that he playing one day Atreus part upon a 
 stage (who determined with himselfe how he might be 
 revenged on his brother Thyestes) a servant by chance 
 having occasion to runne suddenly by him, he forget- 
 ting himselfe, striving to shew the vehement passion 
 and furie of this king, gave him such a blow on his 
 head with the scepter in his hand, that he slue him 
 dead in the place.' Francois Riccoboni's comment on 
 this incident is conceived in such a nobly antique spirit 
 that I cannot forbear quoting it : — ' Pourquoi ne tua-t- 
 il jamais,' he asks^ ' aucun des Comddiens qui jouoient 
 avec lui ? C'est que la vie d'un Esclave n'etoit rien, 
 mais qu'il ^toit obligd de respecter celle d'un Citoyen. 
 Sa fureur n'etoit done pas si vraye, puisqu'elle laissoit 
 i sa raison toute la liberty du choix, Mais en 
 Comddien habile il saisit I'occasion que'le hasard lui 
 
 ^sopus, 
 
 North's 
 transla- 
 tion, ed. 
 1631,/. 861 
 
 I^ A rt du. 
 Tkidire, 
 p. 40 
 
1 68 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Pollock. 
 J>. 107 
 
 pr^sentoit.' There is no paltry humanitarianism about 
 Riccoboni. Like many another actor, he doubtless 
 deplored the pettifogging laws which forbid the 
 occasional slaying of a ' super ' when the situation 
 demands, or the ■ super ' deserves, his quietus. The 
 affair (to speak seriously) was doubtless a pure acci- 
 dent, like many other ' true tragedies ' in the annals of 
 the stage ; or else it was a case of temporary insanity. 
 Diderot, as in duty bound, declares .(Esopus to have 
 been but a middling actor. Two generations of 
 Romans thought otherwise ; but their judgment was 
 no doubt biassed by the fact that they had seen 
 him. 
 
 Instances of helpless, somnambulistic absorption, 
 such as would lead an actor to trample a valuable 
 jewel under foot, are scarcely to be found. Two 
 famous tragedians of the early French stage, Mondory ! 
 and Montfleury, are both said to have died of their 
 reckless self-abandonment to violent passion — the for- 
 mer out-Heroding Herod in La Mariamne by Tristan 
 I'Hermite, the latter playing Oreste in the original 
 production of Racine's Andromaque. Both anec- 
 dotes, however, seem to be entirely apocryphal. Less 
 doubtful is a fine instance of non-absorption afforded 
 by the stately and stilted Beaubourg. In the character 
 of Horace, he was pursuing Mile. Duclos, as Camille, 
 with sword upraised to kill her. In her haste to 
 escape she tripped and fell ; whereupon Beaubourg 
 politely took off his helmet with one hand, helped 
 her with the other to rise, and handed her gallantly 
 off the stage, as a preliminary to assassinating her 
 
 Mondory 
 and Mont- 
 fleury 
 
 Lema- 
 zta ier, i, 
 
 J'P- 422. 
 426, 126 
 
 Beaubourg 
 
THE BROWNIES OF THE BRAIN 
 
 169 
 
 behind the scenes. Holman, according to Reynolds, 
 once gave himself up so rashly to the torrent, tempest, 
 and whirlwind of his passion, that he missed his 
 footing and fell headlong over the footlights into 
 the midst of the astonished fiddlers. This cata- 
 strophe, however, was due to the unusual slope of a 
 very small country stage. Mrs. Siddons, speaking 
 to Reynolds, said, ' My brother John, in his most 
 impetuous bursts, is always careful to avoid any 
 discomposure of his dress or deportment ; but in 
 the whirlwind of passion, I lose all thought of such 
 matters ' ; and Boaden says quaintly, ' When Mrs. 
 Siddons quitted her dressing-room, I believe she left 
 there the last thought about herself Never did I 
 see her eye wander from the business of the scene — 
 no recognisance of the most noble of her friends ex- 
 changed the character for the individual.' Rachel, 
 like John Kemble, remained perfectly conscious of 
 every fold in her robe ; yet Fanny Kemble assures us 
 that ' her wonderful fainting exclamation of " O, mon 
 cher Curiace ! " lost none of its poignant pathos ' on 
 that account. ' Criticising a portrait of herself in that 
 scene, she said to the painter, " Ma robe ne fait pas 
 ce pli-la ; elle fait, au contraire, celui-ci." The artist, 
 inclined to defend his picture, asked her how, while 
 she was lying with her eyes shut and feigning utter 
 insensibility, she could possibly tell anything about 
 the plaits of her dress. " Allez-y voir," replied Rachel ; 
 and the next time she played Camille, the artist was 
 able to convince himself by more careful observation 
 that she was right.' 
 
 Holman, 
 
 Reynolds, 
 ii. _^. 76 
 
 Kemble 
 and Mrs. 
 Siddons, 
 
 Mar.ready^ 
 i. p. 149 
 
 Boaden, ii. 
 f. 289 
 
 Rachel 
 
 Record of a 
 Girlhood, 
 ii, p. 12 
 
170 
 
 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 Post,}. 190 
 
 Miss 
 O'Neill, 
 Macready 
 as I knew 
 him, p, 29 
 
 Lady- 
 Martin, 
 
 Shake- 
 speare's 
 PeiTiaU 
 Charac- 
 ters, p. 115 
 
 On the other hand, 1 shall quote in the next 
 chapter an extraordinary instance of absorption in 
 a part which Fanny Kemble relates from her own 
 experience. ' Miss O'Neill,' said Macready to Lady 
 Pollock, ' was a remarkable instance of self-abandon- 
 ment in acting. She forgot everything for the time 
 but her assumed character. She was an entirely 
 modest woman ; yet in acting with her I have been 
 nearly smothered with her kisses.' From the time of 
 ^sopus downwards, however, I can find only one 
 authentic instance of absorption carried to a danger- 
 ous pitch. It is recorded in Lady Martin's delightful 
 series of autobiographical criticisms. Describing her 
 first performance of Juliet, she writes : — ' When the 
 time came to drink the potion, there was none ; for 
 the phial had been crushed in my hand, the frag- 
 ments of glass were eating their way into the tender 
 palm, and the blood was trickling down in a little 
 stream over my pretty dress. This had been for some 
 time apparent to the audience, but the Juliet knew' 
 nothing of it, and felt nothing, until the red stream 
 arrested her attention. . . . This never occurred again, 
 because they ever afterwards gave me a wooden phial.' 
 On this occasion Miss Faucit would no doubt have 
 trampled on the Koh-i-noor had it lain in her path ; 
 but then she was a child of thirteen, and it was her 
 first appearance on any stage. 
 
 Before leaving this branch of my subject, let me 
 illustrate by three anecdotes three different degrees of 
 dramatic absorption. The first (related by Mr. John 
 Coleman, who was present on the occasion) goes to 
 
THE BROWNIES OF THE BRAIN 171 
 
 show that some artists are apt on occasion to yield 
 themselves up with painful completeness to the illusion 
 of the scene. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean were one -'Mrs. c. 
 night playing The Gamester at Belfast. It was their 
 benefit ; the house was crowded, and the play went 
 electrically. It closes with a piece of ' business ' said 
 to have been invented by Mrs. Siddons. After the 
 death of Beverley, Jarvis and Charlotte attempt to 
 lead Mrs. Beverley away ; but she turns at the door, 
 and, as the curtain falls, flings herself in an agony of 
 grief upon the body of her husband. On this parti- 
 cular evening Mrs. Kean had become so absorbed in 
 her part that she could not shake off the illusion even 
 when the play was over, and astonished the bystanders 
 by vehemently shaking her husband as he lay on his 
 pallet-bed, and crying piteously, ' Oh, my Charley ! — 
 my poor darling — you are not dead ; say you are not 
 dead ! ' ' Deuce a bit, my darling ! ' responded Kean. 
 ' But tell me so — tell me so, Charley ! ' 'I am telling 
 you so, Nelly ; but there, there — come and get dressed 
 for Violante.' ' Good gracious ! ' exclaimed Mrs. 
 Kean, immediately recovering herself, ' it's wonderful 
 I should have forgot about The Wonder ; Servant, 
 ladies and gentlemen ! ' And so, with a stately curt- 
 sey, she made her way to her dressing-room. 
 
 My second illustration is more ambiguous. In 
 the fifth act of Othello, while Emilia is knocking at 
 the door, and the Moor, in anguish of soul, is half 
 rueing the deed he has but half done, a celebrated 
 tragedian is in the habit of seizing a moment, when 
 he is concealed from the audience by the curtain of 
 
172 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Desdemona's bed, to drink a glass of water held in 
 readiness for him by his servant ! In some act&rs 
 such a device might fairly be taken as a sign of callous- 
 ness. The particular artist in question, however, is 
 an uncompromising emotionalist in theory, and, as I 
 have ample grounds for believing, in practice as well. 
 The just conclusion to be drawn, it seems to me, is that 
 the accomplished artist, even in the very tempest and 
 whirlwind of passion, retains sufficient self-mastery to 
 neglect no means of economising or reinforcing his 
 physical resources. 
 
 The third anecdote takes us to the opposite end 
 of the scale, illustrating that sublime perfection of 
 self-command which belongs to the actor of Diderot's 
 ideal. Some years agb an old playgoer went to see a 
 popular drama in which a, very popular actor played 
 an heroic part He noticed that the popular actor not 
 only shouted very loud, but kept on changing his key 
 in an eccentric fashion. Shortly afterwards he met 
 one of the supernumeraries, whom he happened to 
 know, and they fell to discussing the play. ' What 
 did you think of Mr. So-and-So ? ' asked the super. 
 ' Magnificent ! ' replied the old playgoer, diplomatic- 
 ally ; ' but why does he shout in such different keys ? ' 
 ' Oh, don't you know the reason of that, sir ? ' answered 
 the super. ' That's to keep the men up to their work. 
 When he changes his key it's to show that the lime- 
 light isn't on him ! ' If the Paradoxe were anything 
 more than a paradox, this actor should be among the 
 greatest of his age. 
 
'DAMNABLE ITERATION' 173 
 
 .CHAPTER XL 
 •damnable iteration.' 
 
 A NECESSARY corollary to the an ti -emotionalist 
 theory — and Diderot was not the man to shrink from 
 it — is that long runs, far from being the bane of art, 
 must be its salvation. He speaks with admiration of 
 a Neapolitan company which was drilled until the 
 actors were ' dpuis^s de la fatigiie de ces repetitions 
 multipli^es, ce que nous appelons biases,' and then 
 performed for six months on end, ' while the Sovereign 
 and his subjects enjoyed the highest pleasure that 
 can be obtained from stage-illusion.' Since Diderot 
 had thus committed himself, I was forced to put the 
 following question, though the subject has been so 
 often thrashed out of late that I could not hope to 
 elicit any very novel or interesting evidence : — 
 
 With reference to long runs : does frequent repetition induce 
 callousness to the emotions of a part? Do you continue to 
 improve during a certain number of representations and then 
 remain stationary, or deteriorate ? Or do you go on elaborating 
 a part throughout a long run? Or do you improve in some 
 respects and deteriorate in others ? 
 
 The general tenor of the answers was a foregone 
 conclusion. My informants are almost unanimous in 
 
 Pollock, 
 
 p. 82 
 
174 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Miss 
 Bateman 
 
 Miss Ward 
 
 holding the long-run system noxious. Some suffer 
 more than others from the frequent repetition of a 
 part ; some are more alive than others to the element 
 of novelty afforded by the changing audiences ; some 
 have a greater tendency than others to keep on 
 working at and developing a part, studying new re- 
 finements and attempting improved effects ; but all 
 agree that there is a limit even to these alleviations 
 of the evil, and that ultimately they either deteriorate 
 or have to make a painful effort to keep up to the 
 tnark, No one who has ever seen a play after its 
 fiftieth consecutive night will have any doubt on this 
 point. Some artists, indeed, assert that the emotional 
 passages of a part never grow stale to them, though 
 they admit that in lighter scenes their playing suffers. 
 ' If I really feel a part,' writes Miss Bateman, ' I never 
 get tired of it' Miss Genevieve Ward believes in the 
 possibility of improvement throughout a long run, 
 but admits that after playing Forget-me-not more 
 than 500 times, she ' passed through a period of 
 apathy, lasting several months.' One or two other 
 artists add qualifying circumstances to their con- 
 demnation of long runs, but no one seriously defends 
 them. 
 
 The truth is that Diderot had no means of study- 
 ing long runs and their effect He cites from hearsay 
 the Neapolitan practice, but he probably never saw a 
 piece which had been played, by the same players, 
 more than a score or so of times, and these not con- 
 secutive, but spread over months or years. Had he 
 seen La Tosca on its 99th night or Our Boys on its 
 
'DAMNABLE ITERATION' 
 
 I7S 
 
 999th night, he would probably have suppressed the 
 passage as to ' the highest pleasure that can be ob- 
 tained from stage-illusion.' The true anti-emotionalist 
 position as to long runs should be, not that they are 
 positively beneficial, but that an actor who is an 
 automaton from the first suffers less than one who 
 begins by playing from the heart and gradually 
 hardens into automatism. At the same time (as we 
 have already seen in the case of laughter), it is easy 
 to overrate the tendency of mere repetition to deaden 
 the sensibilities. An inordinate number of consecutive 
 repetitions is necessarily mischievous. ' In order to 
 obtain the right mood,' says Miss Clara Morris, ' after 
 the part has become so familiar that the woes of the 
 personage cease to affect me, I am obliged to resort 
 to outside influence ; that is, I indulge in the luxury 
 of grief by thinking over somebody else's woes, and 
 when everything else fails, I think that I am dead 
 and then I cry for myself ! ' No one can go through 
 the same series of emotions six times in a week (or 
 seven or eight times in the case of matinees) for a 
 series of months or years without becoming jaded. 
 But with proper intervals of rest and change, a great 
 artist (of this there is plentiful proof) can enter into 
 the emotions of Othello and Juliet even unto seventy 
 times seven. ' After feeling a part intensely on one 
 night,' says Miss Wallis, ' the reaction makes it im- 
 possible to enter into it thoroughly on the following 
 evening. Therefore an alternation of parts, and 
 especially of such parts as Juliet and Rosalind — 
 tragedy and comedy — is a blessed, and even essential. 
 
 An/e, p. 
 "3 
 
 Matthews 
 and 
 
 Hutton, V. 
 p. 224 
 
 Miss 
 W allis 
 
1/6 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Lady 
 Martin, 
 
 Shake- 
 spcre's 
 Female 
 Charac- 
 tcj-s, /. i8l 
 
 relief.' The system of every well-regulated theatre, 
 in every country save England and America, provides' 
 for the necessary rest and change, and it is only of 
 late years in our own country that the ' 5C)Oth con- 
 secutive performance' has become the one goal of 
 managerial ambition. ' Repetition, certainly, had no 
 effect,' writes Lady Martin, ' in making the [potion-] 
 scene less vivid to my imagination. The last time f 
 played Juliet, which was in Manchester in 1871, I 
 fainted on the bed at the end of it, so much was 
 I overcome with the reality of the " thick-coming 
 fancies." ' But then Lady Martin had never played 
 Juliet five hundred, or even fifty, times in succession. 
 Nor has Salvini worn his Othello threadbare in this 
 reckless fashion. 
 
THE SPUR OF THE MO'MENT 
 
 177- 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT. 
 
 It is generally assumed that the actor who, by nature 
 or training, is superior to the foibles of sensibility, will 
 have every smallest detail of his playing regulated in 
 advance, even to the motion of a finger or the raising 
 of an eyebrow. On the other hand, a tendency to 
 rely on momentary impulse is one of the protean 
 forms of sensibility discussed in the Paradoxe. There- 
 fore I formulated the following questions : — 
 
 Do you ever yield to sudden inspirations of accent or gesture 
 occurring in the moment of performance ? And are you able to 
 note, 'and subsequently reproduce, such inspirations? Have 
 you ever produced a happy efTect by pure chance or by mistake, 
 and then incorporated it permanently in your performance ? 
 
 In my chapter on the Paradoxe I have discussed 
 the limitations placed upon momentary impulse by 
 the fact that the actor is part of a complex mechanism 
 ■which would be brought to a standstill by any great 
 irregularity in the action of one of its wheels. These 
 limits are wide enough, however, to admit of very 
 important variations, and it is interesting to study the 
 practice of different artists in admitting or excluding 
 the suggestions of the moment, 
 
 N 
 
 Ante, p. 24 
 
178 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 London^ 
 
 1754. PP- 
 xiv-xx 
 
 In an ' Introductory Discourse ' to the second 
 English edition of Luigi Riccoboni's General History 
 of the Stage we find some curious details as to the 
 methods of the great actors of last centuiy. The 
 writer is anonymous, but the date, the style, and the 
 fact of his anonymity suggest that he may have been 
 none other than the -author of The Actor. He em- 
 phatically recommends the English actors of his time 
 to imitate the variety of the Italians. ' With us,' he 
 says, ' the same Scene is always, played in the same 
 Manner, not only by the same Actor, but by every 
 Actor who performs it : We know, therefore, before it 
 comes, all that we are to admire. Perhaps there never 
 was a greater or a juster Piece of Action upon the 
 Theatre of any Country, than that consummate Player 
 Mr. Barry threw into his character of the- Earl of 
 Essex, when his Wife fell into a Swoon, and he was 
 going to Execution ; but 'twas every Night the same. 
 In this Manner also that beautiful, though perhaps 
 not proper, Attitude of Romeo at the Tomb, is always 
 the same, not only in Mr. Barry and in Mr. Garrick, 
 every Time each plays, but 'tis the same in both. 
 [This probably refers to Romeo's then traditional 
 gesture of threatening Paris with the crowbar.] On 
 the contrary, let an Italian please ever so greatly once 
 in his Scene, he never courts a second Applause by 
 the same Attitude . . . these People having that true 
 Enthusiasm to conceive themselves really the Persons 
 they represent ... In the Tragedy of Boadicea, 
 which but for this cloying Repetition would certainly 
 have pleased more than nine Nights, we had an 
 
 Barry 
 
 Garrick 
 
 The Actor, 
 
 (1755) A 
 283 
 
THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT 
 
 m 
 
 Instance of the Fault in the greatest player in the 
 World. . . . Mr. Garrick, in the character of Dumnorix 
 in this Play, drew his Sword on the first Night in the 
 midst of a Prayer ; and full of the Uprightness of his 
 Cause, brandished it in the Face of Heavens It was 
 disputed whether this were proper; but there could 
 be no Dispute whether a Repetition of it could be 
 proper ; that was impossible. The Suddenness of a 
 virtuous Emotion might excuse him once in doing it ; 
 hvX nothing could justify the cold Repetition.' Mrs. 
 Cibber and Mrs. Pritchard this critic praises for their 
 variety — also, ' that new Actress named before, who, 
 tho' always the same haughty, jealous, fond Hermione, 
 never was twice indebted to the same Set of Attitudes 
 and Gestures to express that Excellence.' This ' new 
 actress ' I take to have been a Mrs. Gregory. 
 
 Davies, on the other hand, asserts that Garrick, 
 • of all players he ever knew, gave the greatest variety 
 to action and deportment ' ; citing as an unaccount- 
 able exception to this rule the constant uniformity of 
 his action at the close of the Play Scene in Hamlet, 
 At the lines 
 
 For some must watch, while some must sleep : 
 Thus runs the world away, 
 
 ' it was his constant practice to pull out a white 
 handkerchief, and, walking about the stage, to twirl it 
 round with vehemence.' It is said (though I can cite 
 no good authority) that he always gave the hand- 
 kerchief three twirls, and that it was once noted as an 
 innovation that he twirled it a fourth time. His per- 
 sonal theory, given under his own hand and seal, not 
 
 N 2 
 
 Mrs. 
 Cibber 
 and Mrs. 
 Pritchard 
 
 Garrick, 
 
 Dramatic 
 MisceU 
 lanies, Hi. 
 p. 96 
 
I So 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Mile. 
 Clairon, 
 
 Gar rick's 
 Corre^pori' 
 dence,, i. 
 P- 359 
 
 only left room for, but insisted on, the inspiration of 
 the moment. ' What shall I say to you, my dear 
 friend, about the " Clairon " ? ' he writes to Sturz in 
 1 769, ' Your dissection of her is as accurate as if you 
 had opened her alive ; she has everything that art 
 and a good understanding, with great natural spirit, 
 can give her. But then I fear (and I only tell you 
 my fears and open my soul to you) the heart has none 
 of those instantaneous feelings, that life-blood, that 
 keen sensibility, that bursts at once from genius, and, 
 like electrical fire, shoots through the veins, marrow, 
 bones and all, of every spectator. Madame Clairon is 
 so conscious and certain of what she can do, that she 
 never, I believe, had the feelings of the instant come 
 upon Tier unexpectedly ; but I pronounce that the 
 greatest strokes of genius have been unknown to the 
 actor himself, till circumstances, and the warmth of 
 the scene, has sprung the mine as it were, as much 
 to his own surprise, as that of the audience. Thus I 
 make a great difference between a great genius and a 
 good actor. The first will always realise the feelings 
 of his character, and be transported beyond himself; 
 while the other, with great powers, and good sense, 
 will give great pleasure to an audience, but never 
 
 Horace, 
 
 Epist. a. 
 
 Pectus inaniter angit, 
 Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet 
 Ut magus. 
 
 I have with great freedom communicated my ideas of 
 acting, but you must not betray me, my good friend ; 
 the Clairon would never forgive me, though I called 
 
THE SPUR- OF THE MOMENT 
 
 I8i 
 
 her an excellent actress, if I did not swear by all the 
 Gods she was the greatest genius too.' 
 
 That this passage expresses Girrick's deliberate Garr)ok 
 and enduring opinion, I am led to believe by a piece 
 of evidence whose value the reader must estimate 
 for himself. In the British Museum Library there is 
 a copy of D'Hannetaire's Observations sur lArt du PaHs.ijyS 
 ComMien bearing the book-plate of ' T. Jolley, Esq., 
 F.S.A.' On its title-page is written, doubtless in 
 Mr. Jolley's hand, the words ' Garrkk's copy ' ; and I 
 find that Mr. Jolley bought it for two shillings at the 
 sale of Garrick's library in 1823. In discussing the 
 question of inspiration, D'Hannetaire observes : — P- 4$ 
 ' Un bon maitre, loin de jamais diversifier la maniere 
 de rendre les diffdrens morceaux d'une Trag^die ou 
 d'une Com^die, les ddbitera toujours invariablement 
 de meme, au bout de dix ans, comme au bout de deux 
 heures.' Opposite this passage, in the margin, the 
 word ' wrong ' is faintly pencilled ; and four pages 
 further on, where D'Hannetaire remarks, ' qu'il n'est f. 49 
 qu'une maniere de bien dire, de bien reciter,' the same 
 annotator interjects ' wrong again.' There is only one 
 other marginal note in the book : where the author 
 describes a dogmatic theorist on acting, the same hand p. 70 
 has pencilled ' \M\acklin's \CH\aracterl the bracketed 
 letters having been cut away in binding. Now, I 
 have very little doubt that these are Garrick's annota- 
 tions. Making allowance for the difference between 
 a fine pen and a blunt pencil, I think the handwriting 
 greatly resembles his. The antecedent probabilities, 
 too, seem to me very strong. No one but an actor 
 
l83 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 would be likely to contradict D'Hannetaire on such 
 a seemingly trifling point of theory ; and we know from 
 the letter to Sturz. quoted above, that in 1769 Garrick 
 held the opinion which (if I am right in my assump- 
 tion) we now find him reiterating some time between 
 1776 and his death in 1779. The pencilled notes 
 are certainly not in the same writing as ' Garrick's 
 copy ' on the fly-leaf ■ and there is every reason to 
 suppose, I think, that the book passed from Mr. Jolley's 
 library to the Museum, without coming into other 
 hands. The fact that part of one of the notes was 
 cut off in binding before Mr. Jolley's book-plate was 
 affixed to the cover, excludes the supposition that any 
 reader at the Museum (in defiance of the regulations) 
 can have recorded his private sentiments on the 
 national property. The matter is of no great import- 
 ance, for an opinion so deliberately expressed as that 
 in the letter to Sturz can scarcely have been the whim 
 of a moment Yet, if I am right in my conjecture, 
 Garrick's emphatic contradiction of two remarks and 
 two only in D'Hannetaire's 487 pages of theory, proves 
 that the artistic value of spontaneity was habitually 
 and vividly present to his mind. 
 
 The criticism of Clairon in the letter to Sturz raises 
 the question : Which of the rival queens of the French 
 stage did Garrick most admire ? the frigid, measured, 
 automatic Clairon, or the fiery, spontaneous, daemonic 
 Dumesnil? These two actresses are held up by 
 Diderot as types of what a great artist ought and 
 ought not to be. ' Quel jeu plus parfait que celui de 
 la Clairop ? ' he asks. ' . , . Elle sait, par coeur tous 
 
 Clairon 
 
 and 
 
 Dumesnil 
 
 Pollock, 
 pp. 9-12 
 
THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT 
 
 183 
 
 les details de son jeu comme tous les mots de son 
 rdle. ... II n'en est pas de la Dumesnil ainsi que 
 de la Clairon. Elle monte sur les planches sans 
 -savoii- ce qu'elle dira ; la moitid du temps, elle ne 
 salt ce qu'elle dit ; mais il vient un moment sublime.' 
 Upon this passage Talma remarks, 'J'avoue que 
 je prefere le jeu sublime au jeu parfait' It was 
 Dumesnil who, at the height of her frenzy in the 
 part of Cldopatre, made the whole parterre (a stand- 
 ing pit no doubt) recoil several paces 'par un 
 mouvement d'horreur, aussi vif que spontand.' It 
 was she, too, who first dared to run on the French 
 tragic scene. Playing the part of a mother whose 
 son is threatened with death, she actually ran across 
 the stage to ward off the fatal blow. Until then, says 
 Lemazurier, ' on marchait plus ou moins vite sur le 
 theatre ; nlais personne ne croyait possible d'y courir.' 
 The effect was probably unrehearsed, and it took the 
 audience by storm. Now, which of these great 
 actresses did Garrick prefer ? ' Dumesnil,' says 
 Boaden in his life of Mrs. Siddons, ' was the explosive 
 heroine, the Clairon the profound calculator of all her 
 effects ' ; and he adds that Garrick gave the palm to 
 Clairon. Lemazurier, on the other hand, declares posi- 
 tively that Dumesnil was his favourite and that he said 
 of Clairon, ' Elle est trop actrice.' Lemazurier does not 
 state his authority, but the remark accords so exactly 
 
 • with the whole tone of the letter to Sturz that we can 
 have little hesitation in accepting it as genuine. Fanny 
 Kemble, too, states that Garrick described Clairon as 
 
 .the greatest actress of her age, but said of Dumesnil 
 
i84 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Record of a 
 Girlhood^ 
 711. p. 91 
 
 zurier, ii. 
 p. 200 
 
 Garrick 
 
 Mr. . 
 Jefferson 
 
 Mr. Irving 
 
 that in her he forgot the actress and saw only Phedre, 
 Rodogune and Hermione. She does not give her 
 authority for this statement, which may very likely 
 have been a tradition in her family. Voltaire, accord- 
 ing to Lemazurier, was also at heart of the Dumesnil 
 faction : — ' II ne balan^a jamais a lui accorder la pr6- 
 f^rence qu'elle mdritait, et s'il donna plus de louanges 
 k Mile. Clairon, c'est qu'ii ne pouvait se passer d'elle 
 dans ses ouvrages, et qu'il redoutait son caractere, 
 tandis qu'il ^tait bien silr de n'avoir rien i craindre 
 de Mile. Dumesnil' It appears, then, that some re- 
 spectable judges preferred the spontaneous sublimity 
 of Dumesnil to the calculated correctness of Diderot's 
 ideal Clairon. 
 
 How are we to reconcile the sameness Garrick is 
 said to have exhibited in certain cases with the spon- 
 taneity he certainly approved ? Why, very easily — 
 he accepted the inspirations of the moment, he did not 
 rely upon them. It may fairly be doubted whether 
 Dumesnil herself ever went on the stage without 
 knowing clearly what she intended to do, though she 
 may have been less scrupulous than Clairon in carry- 
 ing out her exact intentions. Joseph Jefferson, the in- 
 comparable Rip van Winkle, once remarked to Miss 
 Mary Anderson that inspiration produces the great- 
 est effects on the stage, but that one cannot afford 
 to wait for it, and must therefore have everything 
 regulated in advance in case it should not come. 
 He hitaself, therefore, has his ' business ' prearranged 
 down to pulling off each finger of a glove at a given 
 word of a given speech. I may add that Mr. Irving, 
 
THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT 
 
 I8S 
 
 who has gone forth to battle with M. Coquelin on this 
 very subject of inspiration, is himself (as I am assured 
 on all hands) scrupulous in repeating night after night 
 every minutest detail of attitude and gesture. 
 
 An often-quoted saying of Baron's places him 
 clearly on the side of spontaneity. ' Les regies,' he 
 said, ' d^fendent d'dlever les bras au-dessus de la tete ; 
 mais si la passion les y porte, ils feront bien. La 
 passion en salt plus que les regies.' This chimes with 
 the well-known anecdote of Voltaire tying the hands 
 of a novice with pack-thread to restrain her exube- 
 rance of gesture, but applauding when an irresistible 
 impulse of passion forced her to burst her bonds. It 
 is said of Lekain, on the other hand, that ' ses gestes 
 dtaient toujours les m^mes ; appret6s, compassds et 
 mesurds g^omdtriquement ; que sur chacun de ses 
 roles, il les avait scrupuleusement notds en marge ; 
 qu'il passait la matinde a les dtudier devant une glace, 
 et que quiconque lui avait vu jouer un r61e, pouvait 
 annoncer, scene par scene, tous les gestes dont il y 
 ferait constamment usage.' Lemazurier throws doubt 
 on this statement, arguing that, were it true, Lekain 
 would have been a bad actor ; but what ' would have 
 been ' must yield before what ' was.' Anthony Aston 
 tells us of Mrs. Verbruggen that ' she was all Art, 
 and her Acting all acquir'd, but dress'd so nice, it 
 look'd like Nature. There was not a Look, a Motion, 
 but what were all design'd ; and these at the same 
 Word, Period, Occasion, Incident, were every Night, 
 in the same Character, alike j and yet all sat charm- 
 ingly easy on hen' Mrs. Verbruggen, better known 
 
 Baron, 
 
 Lema- 
 zurier, 
 P- 97 
 
 L.ekain 
 
 Lenta'- 
 xurier, i. 
 f. 362 
 
 Aston, f.iS 
 
i86 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Charlotte 
 Cushman 
 
 Charlotte 
 Cushman^ 
 t- IS 
 
 as Mrs. Mountfort, was one of the first actresses of 
 her time. ' She was Mistress of more variety of 
 Humour,' says Gibber, ' than I ever knew in any one 
 Woman Actress.' 
 
 Dramatic records abound in instances of great 
 effects produced-' on the spur of the moment' One of 
 the most remarkable, certainly, is Charlotte Cushman's 
 creation Meg Merrilies. In the season 1840-41, she 
 was an unknown ' utility ' actress at the Park Theatre, 
 New York. Braham, the great tenor, was appearing 
 as Harry Bertram in Guy Mannering, when one day 
 Mrs. Chippendale, who played Meg Merrilies, fell ill. 
 The- part was handed to Miss Cushman about midday, 
 the intention being that she should read it When 
 the evening arrived, however, she knew it by heart. 
 'Study, dress, &c. had to be the inspiration of the 
 moment She had never especially noticed the part 
 .... but as she stood at the side-scene, book in 
 hand, a;waiting her moment of entrance, her ear caught 
 the dialogue going on upon the stage between two of 
 the gypsies, in which one says to the other, alluding 
 to her, " Meg — why, she is no longer what she was ; 
 she doats," &c. . . . With the words a vivid flash of 
 insight struck upon her brain. . . . She gave herself 
 with her usual concentrated energy of purpose to this 
 conception, and flashed at once upon the stage in 
 the startling, weird, and terrible manner which we all 
 so well remember : Braham afterwards came to her 
 dressing-room and said, " Miss Cushman, I have come 
 to thank you for the most veritable sensation I have 
 I experienced for a long time. I give you my word 
 
THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT 
 
 187 
 
 Lady 
 Martin, 
 
 Shake- 
 spear^ s ■ 
 Pemale 
 CharaC' 
 ten, p. 205 
 
 when I turned and saw you in that first scene, I felt 
 a cold chill run all over me. Where have you learned 
 to do anything like that ? " ' Afterwards, no doubt, 
 Miss Cushman greatly elaborated the character, which 
 was the chief triumph of her career ; but the effect 
 of her first performance proves that 'la fureur du 
 premier jet ' is not always to be despised. 
 
 A most interesting case of momentary inspiration 
 is recorded by Lady Martin, in her account of the 
 first performance of The Lady of Lyons : — ' As I re- 
 called to Claude, in bitter scorn, his glowing descrip- 
 tion of his Palace by the Lake of Como, I broke into 
 a paroxysm of hysterical laughter, which came upon 
 me, I suppose, as the natural relief from the inten- 
 sity of the mingled. feelings of anger, scorn, wounded 
 pride and outraged love, by which I found myself 
 carried away. The effect upon the audience was 
 electrical because the impulse was genuine. But well 
 do I remember Mr. Macready's remonstrance with me 
 for yielding to it. It was too daring, he said ; to have 
 failed in it might have ruined the scene (which was 
 true). No one, moreover, should ever, he said, hazard 
 an unrehearsed effect. I could only answer that I , 
 could not help it ; that this seemed the only way for 
 my feelings to find vent ; and if the impulse seized 
 me again, again, I feared, I must act the scene in the 
 same way. And often as I have played Pauline, 
 never did the scene fail to bring back the same burst '• 
 of hysterical emotion ; nor, so far as I know, did any 
 of my critics regard my yielding to it as out of place, 
 .or otherwise than true to nature.' 
 
MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 Macready 
 
 Macready 
 as I knew 
 him, pp. 
 27. 50 
 
 i, /. 180 
 
 Macready 
 
 Macready's rebuke to Miss Faucit is quite in cha- 
 racter ; for Macready was perhaps the chief of a host 
 of actors who disprove Diderot's assumption that 
 ' feeling ' and ' study ' are things incompatible. He was 
 an uncompromising believer in real emotion — of that 
 we have had ample proof — and his great intelligence, 
 combined with his almost morbid habit of introspec- 
 tion, gives his judgment unquestionable weight ' In 
 reading, as in acting,' he said to Lady Pollock, ' intense 
 feeling must move the performer ; any interruption 
 that checks the feeling, destroys the power ' ; and in 
 the same delightful book we are told that he gave 
 up the idea of teaching elocution ■" with the conviction 
 that no man could teach feeling ; and to teach the 
 rest without that, would only be to engraft his own 
 manner upon another.' Yet this double-dyed emo- 
 tionalist was never tired of insisting on the necessity 
 for diligent study and minute elaboration of ' tones, 
 attitudes and looks.' He praises these methods in 
 other artists ; his diary abounds in evidence that he 
 practised them himself; and independent testimony 
 from a score of different sources represents him to 
 have been a very martinet, both to himself and others, 
 in his insistance on exact pre-arrangement of effects. 
 What becomes, then, of the supposed antagonism 
 between sensibility and study ? 
 
 A curious passage in the Correspondence and Table- 
 Talk of Benjamin Robert Haydon bears directly on 
 the point under discussion. Haydon, says his son, 
 ' was once induced by one of the family to go and 
 see Macready in Lear. He sat out the first act and 
 
THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT 
 
 189 
 
 then went away, saying he could not stand any more 
 of it. He afterwards ridiculed the whole thing, com- 
 paring Macready tea machine wound up to go through 
 a certain representation, and every night in the same 
 part performing exactly the same movements and 
 making exactly the same noises. Edmund Kean, he 
 maintained, never played the same part twice in the 
 same way. The same thing was true, he also said, of 
 Mrs. Siddons. Of John Kemble the machine theory 
 was always true. Haydon had studied Edmund 
 Kean, from his first appearance in Richard III., in all 
 his great parts in his best days. Mr. Lewes, who 
 allows that he only saw Kean in his later and feebler 
 days, asserts, on the other hand, that Kean never 
 trusted to " the inspiration of the moment." This is 
 probably true of Kean's later period, when his intem- 
 perate habits obscured his fine genius, and he could no 
 longer rely upon the advent of the divine afflatus at 
 the right instant. But Edmund Kean (as he remem- 
 bered him) and Mrs. Siddons were Haydon's faith.' 
 The value of this passage lies in Haydon's assertion 
 that the acting of Kean and Mrs. Siddons used to 
 vary from night to night Such variety, as I have 
 tried to show, is not at all inconsistent with that 
 assiduous study which George Henry Lewes was 
 right in declaring to have been characteristic of Kean. 
 As for Macready, it is hard to understand how, by 
 seeing him once in one act of Lear, Haydon could 
 discover that he was always the same. It is true 
 that he was scrupulous in the pre-regulation of all 
 such details as belong to stage-management, but his 
 
 B. Kean 
 
 Mrs. Sid- 
 dons 
 Kemble 
 
 Actors and 
 Acting, 
 p. 7 
 
190 
 
 MASKS OR' FACES? 
 
 Fanny 
 Kemble 
 
 Record of a 
 Girlhood, 
 ii. p. 85 
 
 diaries contain abundant evidence tliat throughout his 
 career he never (in stage slaiig) ' put a part to bed,' 
 but was always restlessly experimenting with a view 
 to self-improvement. 
 
 Mjacready said of Fanny Kemble that she ' did 
 not know the rudiments of her profession '; and if 
 self-control be one of the rudiments the following 
 confession proves that, as she herself puts it, he 
 was ' not far wrong.' ' In the last scene [of Venice 
 Preserved]^ she writes, ' where poor Belvidera's brain 
 gives way under her despair, and she fancies herself 
 digging for her husband in the earth, and that she at 
 last recovers and seizes him, I intended to utter a 
 piercing scream ; this I had not of course rehearsed, 
 not being able to scream deliberately in cold blood, so 
 that I hardly knew, myself, what manner of utterance 
 I should find for my madness. But when the evening 
 came, I uttered shriek after shriek without stopping, 
 and rushing off the stage ran all round the back of 
 the scenes, and was pursuing my way, perfectly un- 
 conscious of what I was doing, down the stairs that- 
 led out into the street, when I was captured and 
 brought back to my dressing-room and my senses.' 
 This is an excellent instance both of an unrehearsed 
 effect and of inartistic, somnambulistic absorption ; 
 foir Miss Kemble seems to have had precisely the 
 characteristics which Diderot ascribes to Dumesnil. 
 Her inability to rehearse a scream in cold blood con- 
 trasts with Rachel's careful ' study of her sobs.' Yet 
 Rachel, too, seems to have been to some extent de- 
 pendent, in spite of herself, on momentary inspiration. 
 
 Ante, p. 6i 
 Rachel 
 
THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT 
 
 191 
 
 She was apt to play badly for the first few nights of 
 a new creation ; and on such occasions she said to 
 Houssaye, ' J'enrage, car je me sens enchainde.' ' Mais 
 tout a coup,' Houssaye continues, ' le dieu I'emportait 
 et elle ^clatait en jniracles.' 
 
 Almost all the artists whom I have personally 
 consulted allow that within due limits they readily 
 avail themselves of inspiration, and most condemn as 
 false in principle the too rigorous sameness, even down 
 to the movement of a particular finger at a particular 
 word, which a few actors laboriously cultivate. Many 
 very happy effects have certainly been suggested by 
 the spirit of the scene and produced on the spur of 
 the moment — perhaps never to be reproduced. ' The 
 late Mrs. Charles Kean told me,' writes Mr. Frank 
 Harvey, ' that while playing at the Princess's Theatre 
 she once made a great, sensation in a moment of 
 nervous excitement, and afterwards could not even 
 remember what she had done, far less reproduce it' 
 Salvini is emphatic in his assertion that the finest 
 effects are often unpremeditated, and that such in- 
 spirations can sometimes be seized and reproduced. 
 As to the respective merits of study and inspiration, 
 he expresses himself in almost the identical words 
 used by Garrick in his criticism of Clairon. I am 
 assured by several observers that Salvini varies very 
 much in his ' business ' from night to night, even- to 
 •the extent of delivering a particular speech now 
 up the stage, now down, standing one night, sitting 
 the next, and on the third, perhaps, lolling on a 
 divan. Robson, too (as I learn on. the. authority 
 
 La C'^vti' 
 ISO 
 
 Mrs. C. 
 Kean 
 
 Salvini 
 
 Antc^p.i^Q 
 
 Robson 
 
192 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Mrs, 
 Bancroft 
 
 Mr. Vezin 
 
 of his widow), was very erratic in his movements on 
 the stage. _. 
 
 ' I have often,' writes Mrs. Bancroft, ' been inspired 
 to introduce on the spur of the moment a new gesture 
 or a new reading of certain lines. . . . The voice must 
 be guided by the feelings and love of the subject. 
 Emotion has a wide range, and the heart can produce 
 many notes. These I play upon as the fit seizes me. 
 Mr. Bancroft adds that on the first night of Sweet- 
 hearts Mrs. Bancroft spoke Jenny Northcott's last line 
 with a delicate pathos of intonation which she never 
 afterwards entirely ' recaptured.' Mr. Hermann Vezin, 
 both in theory and in practice, leaves a wide margin 
 for variation in gesture. One gesture, he says, is true 
 to your way of feeling the situation on one nighty 
 another on another. He condemns, for instance, the 
 three solemn taps on the brow with which Charles 
 Kean always preluded the line, ' In my mind's eye, 
 Horatio ' ; and he relates some curious examples of 
 Frdd^rick Lemaitre's variability in this respect. ' Je 
 suis capable,' writes M. Albert Lambert, ' quelque em- 
 poignd que je sois par la situation, de me rappeler 
 Taccent que j'ai trouvd, mais pas toujours de le repro- 
 duire ; et c'est alors que je m'aper^ois que la seule 
 vraie sensibility trouve la corde vibrante de I'effet. 
 Le hasard m'a servi souvent, et I'inspiration de mes 
 camarades aussi ; et i ce propos, le plus grand des 
 plaisirs est de jouer la comedie avec de grands comd- 
 diens — ^j'entends des penseurs, et non des acteurs. 
 Leurs regards, leurs silences, leurs pens6es vous 
 donnent des rdpliques myst^rieuses et de soudaines 
 
 M, Lam- 
 bert 
 
THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT 
 
 193 
 
 inspirations.' Of M. Mounet Sully, again, M. Larcher, 
 founding, evidently, on personal confessions, writes, 
 ' II est en ^tat d'improvisation constante.' Mr. Beer- 
 bohm Tree, at the commencement of his career, used 
 to force himself always to make a given gesture 
 at a given word, but was taught by experience to 
 regard the practice as useless and embarrassing. Mr. 
 Clayton related to me an amusing yet really valuable 
 instance of inspiration. Salome, in Dandy Dick, has 
 just read from the Times the paragraph announcing 
 the Dean's munificent offer of 1,000/. to the Minster 
 Restoration Fund ' on condition that seven other 
 donors come forward, each with the like sum.' ' And 
 will they ? ' cries Sheba eagerly ; whereupon the Dean, 
 who has been standing with his back to the audience, 
 turns with an unctuous yet sickly smile, and replies, 
 ' My darling — times are bad, but one never knows.' 
 This smile was an inspiration. For some time after 
 the production of the play Mr. Clayton used to speak 
 the line gravely and meditatively, without producing 
 any effect. One evening the smile — a really admir- 
 able trait — came to his lips almost before he knew 
 what he was doing. The audience rose to it imme- 
 diately, and from that day forward the speech, thus 
 accentuated, remained one of the most successful in 
 the piece. A somewhat similar story is told of Mr. 
 John Hare. He was playing the bibulous Baron 
 Croodle on the first night of The Money-spinner, when 
 by chance a champagne-cork was heard to pop behind 
 the scenes. Mr. Hare had the presence of mind to 
 let his face light up with an expression of rapturous 
 
 O 
 
 M.Mounet, 
 
 Revue 
 aArt Dra- 
 matique, 
 March i, 
 1887 
 
 Mr. Beer- 
 bohm Tree 
 
 Mr. 
 Clayton 
 
 Mr. John 
 Hare 
 
194 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 anticipation ; and the result was so good that the 
 incident was afterwards repeated every evening. 
 
 On the whole, there is every reason to believe 
 that, within due limits, momentary impulse plays an 
 important and legitimate part upon the stage. But 
 it is none the less evident that the actor who ' trusts 
 to inspiration ' in the sense of going on the stage 
 unprepared and uncertain of his own intentions, de- 
 serves the v.ery hardest things that MM. Diderot and 
 Coquelin can say of him. I may pick up a five- 
 pound note in the street to-morrow ; but I should be 
 a fool to leave my purse at home on the chance. 
 
TO RESUME 195 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 TO RESUME. 
 
 In ordering this discussion, I have had a double diffi- 
 culty to contend with, as the reader may by this time 
 have discovered to his cost. In the first place, there 
 were two questions at issue — a question of fact and a 
 question of theory : do actors feel ? and ought they 
 to feel ? In the second place, I had not the advantage 
 of starting from an unencumbered base and building 
 up my theory in my own way by a straightforward 
 synthesis of evidence. The issue had been obscured 
 (as it seemed to me) by rash overstatements on both 
 sides, and by a general failure to recognise and define 
 the comparatively few points on which rational dis- 
 pute was possible. Thus my exposition was neces- 
 sarily mingled with controversy, and I fear the mixture 
 has not tlioroughly clarified. If exhaustion have not 
 supervened, upon the reader's . bewilderment, a brief 
 recapitulation may help him to find his bearings. 
 
 Acting is of all the arts the most purely imitative. 
 In this respect it stands at the opposite pole from 
 music, with sculpture, painting, poetry, in intermediate 
 positions. Music deals almost entirely in what may 
 be called sound-patterns, which have no prototypes 
 
 02 
 
196 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 in external nature. Poetry, and indeed all literary- 
 art, leans in the same direction. Its matter may or 
 may not be imitative ; its medium must be a more 
 or less rhythmic succession of sounds, which does 
 not depend for its attractiveness on its resemblance 
 to anything under the sun. Painting, in these latter 
 days, tends more and more to the condition of colour- 
 music, the very vocabularies of the two arts being, it 
 appears, interchangeable. Even sculpture, without 
 entirely deserting its function, may present a mere 
 arabesque of curves and surfaces. But acting is 
 imitative or it is nothing. It may borrow from all 
 the arts in turn — from the arts of speech, of song, 
 of colour, of form ; but imitation is its differentia. 
 Acting is imitation ; when it ceases to be imitation it 
 ceases to be actmg and becomes something else — 
 oratory perhaps, perhaps ballet-dancing or posturing. 
 Everyone knows that the actor is not necessarily a 
 mere copyist of nature ; he may sing, for example, or 
 he may talk alexandrines ; but he must always pre- 
 serve a similarity in dissimilarity; he must always 
 imitate, though we may permit him to steep his 
 imitation, so to speak, in a more or less conventional 
 atmosphere. ' He plays naturally,' or, in other words, 
 ' He imitates well,' is our highest formula of praise 
 even for the operatic tenor or the French tragedian, 
 who may not deliver a single word or tone exactly as 
 it would be uttered in real life. 
 
 The actor, then, is a man who, through the medium 
 of his own body, imitates the manners and the pas- 
 sions of other men. We are all actors in rudiment. 
 
TO RESUME 
 
 197 
 
 ;, the tendency to such imitation being part of the me- 
 chanism of animated nature. That is why the stage 
 
 Js besieged by incompetent aspirants, tne general 
 tendency being easily mistaken for special aptitude. 
 
 '.Conversely, I believe, that is why some theorists seek 
 
 ^ to exclude acting from the dignity of art They 
 
 iignore the amount of labour and thou ght required to 
 l^transmute, not only the general tendency, but even a 
 ■ very s pecial aptitude, imp accomplished mastery. ^ 
 I By far the greater part of the imitation of man by 
 'man which takes place off the stage is totally un- 
 concerned with emotion. In real life the emotions of 
 others are precisely what we do not imitate. A child 
 learns to speak, to walk, to sing by imitating its 
 elders: it wails before its eyes are fairly opened to 
 the world. We are all conscious of a tendency to 
 mimic the tics and mannerisms of our neighbours — 
 their gait, their voice, their accent f but the mere 
 muscular copying of emotional manifestations never 
 "occurs, except for purposes of ridicule The grief 
 'or laughter of another may seize and overniaster 
 'us, throygh the action of sympathy, though we may 
 know nothing of its cause ; but this is not imitation : 
 it is infection. It may be said that all imitation 
 'which is not absolutely deliberate partakes of the 
 Phature of infection. True ; but the infection of feeling 
 iias this peculiarity, that it is not imitative. We weep 
 our own tears, we laugh our own laughter, without 
 the smallest conscious or unconscious tendency to 
 "reproduce the particular forms which these paroxysms 
 I assume in the person who has 'set us off.'' Therefore 
 
198 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 I think there is a clear distinetion between mimicking 
 tricks or habi^ and yielding to emotional contagion. 
 Roughly speaking, the one is an affair of the surface, 
 the other of the centres. 
 
 The manners and passions of his fellow-men form, 
 as we have seen, the actor's province. Over part of 
 this domain unemotional imitation will carry him 
 safely. The reproduction of manners, in themselves, 
 is effected by a mere extension of that instinct which 
 makes children the ' sedulous apes ' of their elders, 
 and causes some of us, even in maturity, to stammer 
 after conversing with a stammerer and to wink and 
 twitch after seeing a victim to St Vitus's dance. In 
 all characters there is a greater or less element of 
 manner, so that in all characters this instinct of mere 
 
 ^imitation is brought into play. A large part of every 
 impersonation is, and must be, as mechanical as the 
 putting on of a wig or the fainting of crows'-feet 
 under th e eyes. But comparatively few dramatic 
 
 "characters consist of manners alone. It is passion 
 that interests and moves ns ; thorpfnrp i-bp rpp rrv-_ 
 duction of passion is the actor's highest and most 
 essenTiil ta sk. B y what methods, then, can this 
 reproduction be most fitly accomplished ? 
 
 The exte rnaLjnanlfest ati o ns of p? ggir^ri r-r^ris jcf^ on 
 anal ysis, of changes in the face, the limbs ^_or the 
 organs of spe ech, many of which can be mechanica lly 
 imitated with more or less precision, just as one can 
 imituLe Llie l im p of a uipple ui a n Iiishi iijui's bruKu er 
 For ex ample, we can all contort our f aces into the 
 semblance of weeping, we can smile and laugh at will 
 
TO RESUME 199 
 
 (though the voluntary laugh is apt to be a lugubrious 
 effort), we can sob, we can tremble, we can gnash and 
 grind the teeth, not quite convincingly perhaps, but 
 so that an observer can easily guess what emotion we 
 are simulating. On the other hand, some of the 
 symptoms of those passions which tend to express 
 themselves immediately, forcibly, and unmistakably 
 — the passions of grief and joy, terror and fury — 
 cannot be imitated by the mere action of the will 
 upon the muscles and tissues. No one can blush and 
 turn pale at will ; some actors, as we have seen reason 
 to believe, can shed te ars at a moment's notice and 
 without any real or imaginary cause ; but this faculty 
 is not common, and is the result of long practice. 
 These involuntary symptoms, however, are of such a 
 nature as to be almost imperceptible on the stage. 
 If the more obvious traits are vividly reproduced, a 
 theatrical audience is ready enough to take tears, . 
 blushes, and pallor upon trust. It is undeniable, > 
 then, that for the practical purposes of dramatic pre- \ 
 sentation, the symptoms of passion can be mechani- 
 cally mimicked with tolerable precision, and there is 
 no reason to doubt that exceptional artists have 
 attained astonishing skill in such mimicry. 
 
 It is certain, however, that the faculty of mecha- 
 nically mimicking the ebullitions of passion with 
 anything like deceptive precision is a very rare one. 
 We have seen that our innate mimetic tendency does 
 not generally exercise itself upon these phenomena ; 
 perhaps for no more recondite reason than that they 
 are of exceptional occurrence and do not force them- 
 
MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 selves on our observation with the importunacy of 
 habitual actions. Be this as it may, it is clear that 
 the mechanical mimicking of passions on the stage is 
 not, like the niimicking of manners, a mere extension 
 of an inborn instinct On the other hand, we have 
 also seen that the paroxysms of passion tend to com- 
 municate themselves to those not primarily affected, 
 through that subtle contagion which we call sym- 
 pathy. Little Mabel breaks her favourite doll and 
 howls piteously over the remains. Her elder brother. 
 Jack, though his sex and his years raise him far above 
 the weakness of doll-worship, nay, though he may 
 have a dim sense of Rochefoucauldian satisfaction in 
 Mabel's misfortune, will very probably yell in con- 
 cert, as lustily as though the sorrow were his own. 
 He certainly does not suffer anything like Mabel's 
 agony of soul ; in a sense he cannot properly be said 
 to suffer at all ; and still less can it be maintained that 
 he deliberately mimics his sister. All we can say is 
 that by the mysterious action of sympathy Mabel's 
 grief acts upon Jack's nerve-centres and begets in 
 them a condition so analogous to her own that it 
 results in similar outward manifestations. The dif- 
 ference between the two states might be tested by 
 the exhibition of a counter-irritant A chocolate- 
 cream will probably dry Jack's eyes as if by magic, 
 while a wilderness of lollipops will leave Mabel in- 
 consolable. In this sympathetic contagion we have 
 an instrument provided by nature for supplying the 
 deficiencies of our power of mechanical mimicry in 
 respect to the subtler symptoms of passion. The 
 
TO RESUME 201 
 
 poet — say, Shakespeare — fecundates the imagination 
 of the actor — say Salvini — so that it bodies forth the 
 great passion-quivering phantom of Othello. In the 
 act of representation this phantom is, as it were, 
 superimposed upon the real man. The phantom 
 Othello suffers, and the nerve-centres of the man 
 Salvini thrill in response. The blood courses through 
 his veins, his eyes are clouded with sorrow or blaze 
 with fury, his lips tremble, the muscles of his throat 
 contract, the passion of the moment informs him to 
 the finger-tips, and his portrayal of a human soul in 
 agony is true to the minutest detail. His suffering 
 may stand to Othello's in the quantitative relation 
 of Jack's grief to Mabel's ; but, so far as it goes, it 
 cannot be called other than real. 
 
 The anti-emotionalists would have the actor ab- 
 jure, at any rate in the moment of perfqrmance, the 
 aid of this sympathetic contagion. ^ is too dearly 
 bought, they argue. The accomplished player should 
 be able mechanically to mimic all symptoms of emo- 
 tion which are of any use in creating illusion in the 
 audience, and he must run no risk of becoming ex- 
 travagant, inarticulate, or feeble, by reason of the too 
 vehement disturbance of his own nerve-centres. The 
 emotionalists, as I understand their position, maintain 
 that the mechanical mimicry of feeling, even at its 
 best, lacks the clear ring of truth, and that in yield- 
 ing to the sympathetic contagion the accomplished 
 actor does not in reality run any of the risks on which 
 their opponents are so fond of dwelling. 
 
 The two questions, then, which we have had to 
 
MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 consider in this discussion — do actors feel ? and 
 ought they to feel ? — may be restated thus : Do 
 actors habitually yield to the sympathetic contagion ? 
 and do the greatest actors — those who have most 
 powerfully affected their audiences — admit or reject 
 this method ? 
 
 Chapters 
 i., it., Hi. 
 
 Chap, iv. 
 
 My first three chapters were purely preliminary. 
 I described the methods of investigation I had pur- 
 sued ; traced, historically, the genesis of Diderot's 
 Paradoxe ; and tried to narrow the issue by analysing 
 the different meanings attributed in the Paradoxe to 
 the term ' sensibility,' and rejecting some of them as 
 unfair or irrelevant. The investigation proper began 
 with the fourth chapter. In it we found that the 
 shedding of tears — one of the most palpable sym- 
 ptoms of pathetic emotion — is common, and even 
 habitual, on the stage. We learned from Cicero and 
 Quintilian that the Roman actors frequently wept ; 
 and we ascertained, in most cases on unimpeachable 
 evidence, that tears have been shed on the stage by 
 Garrick, Mrs. Gibber, Barry, Peg Woffington, Mrs. 
 Pritchard, Mrs. Siddons, Miss O'Neill, Miss Fanny 
 Kemble, Mile. Ghampmesl6, Mile. Duclos, Quinault- 
 Dufresne, Mile. Gaussin, Fr^d^rick Lemaitre, Madame 
 Dorval, Miss Neilson, Charlotte Cushman, Samuel 
 Phelps, Benjamin Webster, Salvini, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Bancroft, Mr. and Mrs. Kendal, Mr. Irving, Miss 
 Ellen Teriy, Madame Sarah Bernhardt, Miss Mary 
 Anderson, Miss Alma Murray, Miss Achurch, Miss 
 Clara Morris, Mr. Wilson Barrett, Mr. Beerbohm 
 
TO RESUME 
 
 203 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Tree, Mr. John Clayton, Mr. Hermann Vezin, Mr. 
 Howe, Miss Bateman, Mr. Lionel Brough, and several 
 others. It would not have cost much trouble to 
 extend this list almost indefinitely, but it seems to 
 me sufificient as it stands, both in numbers and in 
 authority. The frequency of real weeping on the 
 stage being thus established, I had next to admit 
 th at tears can, i n certain cases, be mechanically p ro- 
 duced, and that the y do not, therefore, affo rd conclu - 
 s ive evidence of any particular emotional s tate. In 
 order to show that they are not, as a rule, so falla- 
 cious as the anti-emotionalists argue, and at the same 
 time to prove that there is a close analogy between 
 personal and mimetic emotion, I collected, in my fifth 
 chapter, numerous instances of the mingling aj3d'(in 
 M. Coquelin's phrase) ' kneading together ' of the two 
 states, which we found to coalesce indistinguishably, 
 sometimes to the advantage, sometimes to the detri- 
 ment, of the actor's performance. On the other hand, 
 in Chapter Six, we found scanty evidence _of any 
 ten dency t o mimic in co Mblood jarticular ebu llitions 
 of emotion, wheth er observed or expe rienced, andn^ 
 proof whatever th at unemotional mi micry is more 
 effective than emotional acting. In the following 
 
 .J- 
 
 ^hap, vi. 
 
 Chap, vii. 
 
 chapter, treatmg of laughter as the characteristic 
 expression of joyful emotion, and thus the natural 
 antithesis to tears, we found a rather wide divergence 
 of testimony. Some actors declare themselves highly 
 susceptible to the contagion of their character's mirth, 
 others (of no less authority) are equally positive in 
 asserting their laughter to be always a deliberate 
 
 :*^f 
 
204 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 simulative effort. I confess xnyself unable to suggest 
 , any satisfactory reason why the contagion of merri- 
 ment should be less potent and universal than the con- 
 tagion of tears. Can it be that there is a pessimistic 
 bias in human nature, rendering men, on the average, 
 less prone to joyous than to mournful emotion ? 
 
 Here let me interrupt this recapitulation to point 
 out a fact which is apt to be overlooked. In the 
 course of my interviews with the leading artists of 
 to-day, I have more than once mentioned, say, to X. 
 — an emphatic emotionalist — that a fellow-artist, Z., 
 had declared Ijimself of the same opinion ; v^^here- 
 upon X. woulc^ shrug his (or her) shoulders scepti- 
 cally and remark, ' Oh, Z. ! — I don't believe he ever 
 felt anything in his life ! ' The doubt in these cases 
 sprang from the common error of thinking that 
 , sensitiveness to what we have called the imagina- 
 tive contagion presupposes unusual sensibility in the 
 ordinary affairs of life. A little consideration will 
 show us that the fact is not so. The executioner in 
 Thackeray blubbered over The Sorrows of Werther ; 
 and no one will deny that this is a touch of nature. 
 To take an example from real life, Macaulay, who 
 met his personal sorrows in no unmanly spirit, could 
 weep by the hour over a trashy novel. We must 
 all have known people, stoical enough in their own 
 troubles, and perhaps even hard-hearted towards the 
 sufferings of others, who would yet become maudlin 
 over the imagined sorrows of a personage in fiction 
 or on the stage. Thus the actor who owns himself 
 affected by the emotions of his character — the super- 
 
TO RESUME 
 
 20^ 
 
 imposed phantom of his imagination — does not there- 
 by lay any claim to exceptional tenderness of heart , 
 in the ordinary relations of life. In that respect, I 
 imagine, actors are very much Hke other men. Diderot, 
 as we have seen, found them ' caustic, cold, selfish, Aji^e, f. 34 
 alive to our absurdities rather than touched by our 
 misfortunes.' This character certainly does not apply 
 to the players of our nation and time, whose large 
 and ready charity proves that ' they know what 'tis to 
 pity and be pitied.' But even if Diderot were abso- 
 lutely just in his general assertion of the heartless- 
 ness of actors, we shduld still have no difficulty in 
 believing them susceptible to emotional contagion 
 from the phantoms of their imagination. 
 
 Continuing my summary, I pass to Chapter ^'^^- ^"'* 
 Eight. Herewe ascertained that three symptoms of 
 acute feeling, which are utterly beyond the control 
 of the will — blushingj^ pallor, and perspi ration — com- 
 monly, and even habitually, accompany the stage- 
 emotion of the greatest artists. In this, it seems to y^ 
 me, we have proof positive that mimetic emotion is 
 not, as some people argue, a state of mere vague 
 unspecialised excitement, but is closely analogous to 1 
 the emotion of real life. In the next chapter we ''''"^■^' '^' 
 inquired into the practice, attributed to several great 
 artists, of mechanically mobilising the nerve-centres 
 by means of that reaction from external manifesta- 
 tions of passion which Hartmann describes as ' auto- 
 suggestion.' This proceeding, in various forms, we 
 found to be fairly common ; while the habit of mental 
 concentration upon a part during, and even for some 
 
206 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 time before, the period of performance, proved to be 
 still more general. The rationale of these practices 
 is obvious enough. The one assists the actor to 
 clothe himself, as it were, in the phantom of his 
 imagination, and to keep himself thoroughly en- 
 veloped in it ; the other heightens the sensitiveness 
 of his organism to contagion from the emotions of 
 
 Chaf. X. his personage. The next chapter was devoted to 
 an inquiry into the multiplex action of the mind 
 whereby the accomplished actor is enabled to remain 
 master of himself even in the very paroxysm of 
 passion. I was able to adduce many cases in which 
 double and treble strata of mental activity were 
 clearly distinguishable, but very few examples of that 
 total and somnambulistic absorption in a part which 
 the anti-emotionalists assume to be the normal 
 
 Chap. xi. condition of the emotional actor. The .succeeding 
 chapter touched upon the question of long runs. We 
 saw reason, on the one hand, to reject Diderot's 
 opinion that an actor must gain by reiterating a 
 character until his playing becomes entirely auto- 
 matic, and to believe, on the other hand, that an 
 actor may repeat a character indefinitely without 
 degenerating into automatism, if only he takes care 
 to allow himself proper intervals of rest and change 
 between the performances of any one part. Finally, 
 
 Chap. xii. in Chapter Twelve, we ' Reasoned high Of fate, free 
 will, foreknowledge absolute ' — I trust the reader will 
 not complete the quotation, adding ' And found no 
 end, in wandering mazes lost' We learned that 
 some actors are artistic Calvinists, insisting on rigor- 
 
TO RESUME 
 
 207 
 
 ous predestination of every detail of position, attitude, 
 gesture, and inflexion ; while others, the Arminians 
 of the stage, leave a wide margin for impulse, 
 spontaneity, free-will. The latter sect is probably 
 the more numerous and influential ; but we also 
 ascertained that the ' foreknowledge absolute ' of the 
 necessitarians is by no means inconsistent with the 
 keenest susceptibility to the emotional influence of 
 their characters. 
 
 At the very outset of this inquiry, I insisted on the 
 distinction between the simple or primary emotions 
 — grief, joy, terror, &c. — and the secondary or com- 
 plex and habitual emotions — love, hatred, jealousy, 
 &c. — which have no immediate and characteristic 
 outward symptoms, and are rather to be called atti- 
 tudes of mind. No one denies, I think, that the 
 primary emotions of an imagined character do in fact 
 tend to communicate themselves to the nerve-centres 
 of the actor, and to affect his organs of expression, 
 Let me add, parenthetically, that it is surely illogical 
 to deny the ' reality ' of this mimetic emotion, since 
 all emotion, except that which arises from instant 
 physical pleasure or pain, is due to the action of the 
 imagination upon the nerve-centres. This, however, j-J 
 is a mere question of nomenclature. . Be it real or 
 unreal, this mimetic emotion tends, in the great majo- 
 rity of cases, to come into play ; and the actor who 
 avails himself of it clearly works on the line of least 
 resistance. The anti-emotionalists must prove that 
 this straightforward course is beset with the most 
 
 Ante, p. 37 
 
 V 
 
208 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Antcf. 25 
 
 fatal pitfalls ere they can hope to induce actors to 
 follow the roundabout route, repressing the action of 
 the imagination and cultivating mechanical mimicry. 
 I have tried to show that the pitfalls from which 
 the anti-emotionalists recoil are either quite imagi- 
 nary or easily to be avoided. On the other hand, 
 the more we look into the matter, the less are we 
 inclined to believe that even the greatest virtuoso 
 of mechanical mimicry can attain to the subtle and 
 absolute truth of imitation which is possible to the 
 actor who combines artistically controlled sensibility 
 with perfect physical means of expression. ' Raised 
 or lowered by the twentieth part of the quarter of a 
 tone,' says Diderot, rhe utterances of feeling itring 
 false.V But is it not just the intervention of imagi- 
 native sympathy that enables the actor to produce 
 and reproduce this delicately true vibration ? There 
 is no doubt that the imagination can readily bring 
 about minute yet expressive changes, muscular and 
 vascular, which the unaided action of_tlieL-Hrill_is 
 powerless to effect. Blushing and pallor are the 
 ^chief of these, but there must be many others. Dar- 
 win notes that when two dogs fight together in play 
 (that is, when they imagine and act the emotion of 
 anger) their hair at once bristles up, just as in actual 
 warfare. This is a type of many similar phenomena 
 in the human economy. And it must not be supposed 
 that these minute changes do not contribute appre- 
 ciably to the illusion. We may not consciously note 
 a blush, a sudden pallor, a particular quiver of the 
 lip, distension of the nostril, or corrugation of the 
 
 y 
 
 Expression 
 of the 
 Emotions, 
 p. 102 
 
TO RESUME 209 
 
 brow ; but they produce their effect nevertheless. 
 Mr. Kendal once suggested to me what I think a 
 luminous illustration of the difference between me- 
 chanically simulated and imaginatively experienced 
 emotion. ' A sign-painter,' he said, ' takes a pot of 
 crude vermilion, and daubs the red coat of the Duke 
 of Wellington or the Marquis of Granby. It is un- 
 deniably red, and yet somehow it is all wrong. But 
 look into a red robe painted by Rossetti or Holman 
 Hunt, and you wiU find it composed of a hundred 
 different hues, which blend, at the proper distance, 
 into a true and living whole.' To translate the illus- j 
 tration into musical terms, a mechanically mimicked \^' 
 utterance of emotion is like a note without its har- 
 monics. The analogy may be fanciful, but I do not 
 think it is wholly misleading. 
 
 In the foregoing pages there are, no doubt, errors 
 of analysis and of inference which have escaped my 
 ken. On the other hand, no one knows better than 
 I that the subject of mimetic emotion is full of 
 subtleties and intricacies into which I have not 
 penetrated. Some day, perhaps, a better-equipped 
 psychologist may thread the maze to its inmost 
 recesses. Meanwhile, in taking leave of what has 
 been to me a fascinating inquiry, I cannot but hope 
 that it may aid the contending forces in a lingering 
 and somewhat futile controversy to arrive at a clearer 
 understanding of the true points at issue than they 
 have hitherto attained. If each party fully realised 
 its own and its adversaries' position, I believe a treaty 
 
 p 
 
MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 of peace would veiy soon be signed. It was drafted 
 by Shakespeare three centuries ago, when, through 
 the mouth of Prince Hamlet, he counselled the 
 players of his day to acquire and beget a temperance 
 even in the very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of 
 passion. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 QUESTIONS ON THE ART OF ACTING, 
 
 FORMULATED ON BEHALF OF THE EDITOR OF 'LONGMANS' 
 MAGAZINE,' 
 
 BY WILLIAM ARCHER. 
 
 FOREWORD. 
 
 A FRIENDLY Controversy between M. Coquelin and Mr. 
 Henry Irving has recently revived a discussion started by 
 Diderot in his Paradoxe sur le Comidien. ' To feel, or 
 not to feel ? — that is the question.' Diderot and M. Coquelin 
 maintain that ' sensibility ' is the bane of acting ; that even 
 in the storm and whirlwind of passion an actor must be 
 cool, calm, and collected ; that he must simulate 
 
 Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect, 
 A broken voice. 
 
 and so forth ; but that his eyes must in reality be dry, and 
 that the break in his voice must be simply ' put on ' like his 
 wig or his rouge. In short, Diderot flatly contradicts the 
 Horatian maxim thus rendered by Churchill — 
 
 But, spite of all the criticising elves, 
 
 Those who would make us feel must feel themselves. 
 
 Mr. Irving, on the other hand, maintains (and he claims the 
 great authority of Talma on his side) that sensibility is the 
 
MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 prime requisite of great acting. ' The actor,' he says, ' 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 experi- 
 ences.' And again : ' If tears be produced at the actor's 
 will and under his control, they are true art ; and happy is 
 the actor who numbers them among his gifts.' Some writers 
 on the subject have drawn a distinction between the concep- 
 tion and the execution of a character, admitting that sensi- 
 bility may aid the actor to conceive and elaborate a part, 
 but arguing that it must be strictly repressed during the 
 performance. Other shades and refinements of opinion 
 need not be enumerated here. 
 
 What is clearly essential to any fruitfal discussion of the 
 subject is a wide collection of the individual experiences of 
 actors and actresses. Diderot's argument was purely a priori, 
 though he eked it out with a few scraps of anecdote. Mr. 
 Irving and M. Coquelin rely almost entirely on their own 
 experiences ; and the opinions of only two actors, however 
 distinguished, cannot be conclusive, especially when they 
 contradict each other. No attempt has hitherto been made 
 to compare the experiences of any considerable number of 
 dramatic artists ; yet such a comparison must surely form 
 the basis of all profitable argument. 
 
 The editor of Longmans' Magazine has commissioned 
 me to collect and systematise the views on this matter of the 
 leading actors and actresses of the day. I have accordingly 
 drawn up a series of questions bearing upon what I conceive 
 to be the true point at issue ; and I confidently appeal to 
 the courtesy of my readers to assist me in an inquiry, the 
 result of which can scarcely fail to be of interest to all who 
 care for dramatic art. I have ventured to add one or two 
 questions which do not bear directly upon the subject of 
 Diderot's Paradoxe but are of importance in connection 
 
QUESTIONS ON THE ART OF ACTING 213- 
 
 with other points in the theory of acting. This species of 
 cutand-dried interrogatory, however, is at best an unsatis- 
 factory mode of eliciting information, and I beg that those 
 artists who are kind enough to respond to my request will 
 not hold themselves bound to answfer these questions and 
 no more, but will use the utmost freedom in giving me their 
 views and experiences. It will naturally add to the value of 
 opinions and anecdotes if I am allowed to attach names 
 to them ; but I shall scrupulously observe any condition to 
 the contrary. 
 
 I am aware that no one actor or actress can possibly 
 answer a// the following questions from personal experience^ 
 but I believe that everyone will find some points suggested 
 on which he (or she) can throw light. 
 
 If any artist who may have been inadvertently omitted 
 from my list will favour me with his (or her) name and 
 address, I will at once forward a question-form to be filled 
 up. 
 
 In moving situations, do tears come to your eyes ? Do 
 they come unbidden ? Can you call them up and repress 
 them at will ? In delivering pathetic speeches does your 
 voice break of its own accord? Or do you deliberately 
 simulate a broken voice ? Supposing that, in the same 
 situation, you on one night shed real tears and speak with a 
 genuine ' lump in your throat,' and on the next night simu- 
 late these affections without physically experiencing them : 
 on which occasion should you expect to produce the greater 
 effect upon your audience ? 
 
 'When Macready played Virginius, after burying- his 
 loved daughter, he confessed that his real experience gave a ?' 
 new force to his acting in the most pathetic situations of 
 
 > 
 
214 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 the play.' Have you any analogous experience to relate ? 
 Has a personal sorrow (whether recent or remote) ever in- 
 fluenced your acting in a situation which recalled the painful 
 circumstances to your mind ? If so, was the influence, ia 
 your opinion, for good or for ill ? And what was the effect 
 upon the audience ? 
 
 III. 
 
 In scenes of laughter (for instance, Charles Surface's part 
 in the screen scene, or Lady Teazle's part in the quarrel 
 with Sir Peter), do you feel genuine amusement ? Or is 
 your merriment entirely assumed? Have you ever laughed 
 on the stage until the tears ran down your face? or been so 
 overcome with laughter as to have a difBculty in continuing 
 your part ? And in either of these cases, what has been the 
 effect upon the audience ? [N.B. — These questions do not 
 refer to laughter caused by chance blunders or other unre- 
 hearsed incidents, but solely to laughter which forms part of 
 the business of the play. A question as to laughter of the 
 former kind will be found in Section XI.] 
 
 IV. 
 
 Do you ever blush when representing bashfulness, 
 modesty, or shame ? or turn pale in scenes of terror ? or 
 grow purple in the face in scenes of rage ? or have you ob- 
 served these physical manifestations in other artists ? On 
 leaving the stage after a scene of terror or of rage, can you 
 at once repress the tremor you have been exhibiting, and 
 restore your nerves and muscles to their normal quietude ? 
 
 V. 
 
 A distinguished actor informs me that he generally per- 
 spires freely while acting, but that the perspiration varies, 
 not so much with the physical exertion gone through as with 
 the emotion experienced. On nights when he was not 
 ' feeling the part,' he has played Othello ' without turning a 
 
QUESTIONS ON THE ART OF ACTING 215 
 
 hair,' though his physical effort was at least as great as on 
 nights when he was bathed in perspiration. Does your ex- 
 perience tally with this ? Do you' find the fatigue of playing 
 a part directly proportionate to the physical exertion de- 
 manded by it ? or dependent on other causes ? 
 
 VI. 
 
 Have you ever played a comic part when labouring 
 under severe sorrow or mental depression? If so, have you 
 produced less effect than usual upon the audience ? or more 
 effect ? Have you ever played a tragic part while enjoying 
 abnormal exhilaration of spirits ? If so, how has your 
 playing been affected ? 
 
 VII. 
 
 It used to be said of a well-known actor that he put on 
 in the morning the character he was to play at night : that 
 on days when he was to play Richard III. he was truculent, 
 cynical, and cruel, while on days when he was to play 
 Mercutio and Benedick he would be all grace, humour, and 
 courtesy. Are you conscious of any such tendency in your- 
 self? or have you observed it in others? In the green-room, 
 between the acts, have you any tendency to preserve the 
 voice and manner of the character you are playing? or have 
 you observed such a tendency in others ? 
 
 VIII. 
 
 G. H. Lewes relates how Macready, as Shylock,' used to 
 shake a ladder violently before going on for the scene with 
 Tubal, in order to get up ' the proper state of white heat ' ; 
 also how Liston was overheard ' cursing and spluttering to 
 himself, as he stood at the side scene waiting to go on in a 
 scene of comic rage.' Have you experienced any difficulty 
 in thus ' striking twelve at once ' ? If so, how do you over- 
 come it ? 
 
2i6 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 IX. 
 
 Can you give any examples of the two or more strata 
 of consciousness, or lines of thought, which must co-exist 
 in your mind while acting ? Or, in other words, can you 
 describe and illustrate how one part of your mind is intent 
 on the character, while another part is watching the 
 audience, and a third (perhaps) given up to some pleasant 
 or unpleasant recollection or anticipation in your private 
 life? 
 
 Does your personal feeling (such as love, hatred, respect, 
 scorn) towards the actor or actress with whom you happen 
 to be playing affect your performance ? If so, in what way ? 
 Should you play Romeo better if you were in love with your 
 Juliet than if she were quite indifferent to you ? And if you 
 happened to dislike or despise her, how would that influence 
 your acting ? 
 
 XI. 
 
 Diderot tells how Lekain, in a scene of violent emotion, 
 saw an actress's diamond ear-ring lying on the stage, and 
 had presence of mind enough to kick it to the wing instead 
 of treading on it. Can you relate any similar instances of 
 presence of mind ? And should you regard them as showing 
 that the actor is personally unmoved by the situation in 
 which he is figuring ? Have you ever suffered from inability 
 to control laughter at some chance blunder or unrehearsed 
 incident ? And do you find less or greater difficulty in con- 
 trolling it when you are absorbed in a part than when you 
 are comparatively unmoved ? Are you apt to be thrown off 
 the rails (so to speak) by trifling sounds among the audience 
 (a cough or a sneeze), or by slight noises which reach your 
 ear from behind the scenes, or from the street ? 
 
QUESTIONS ON THE ART OF ACTING 217 
 
 XII. 
 
 With reference to long runs : Does frequent repetition 
 induce callousness to the emotions of a part ? Do you con- 
 tinue to improve during a certain number of representations 
 and then remain stationary or deteriorate ? Or do you go 
 on elaborating a part throughout a long run ? Or do you 
 improve in some respects and deteriorate in others ? In 
 your own opinion, do you act better on (say) the tenth .night 
 than on the first ? and on the fiftieth than on the tenth ? Do 
 the emotions of a part ' grip ' you more forcibly on one night 
 than on another ? If so, is there any corresponding differ- 
 ence in your 'grip ' on your audience? [This is a re-state- 
 ment in more general terms of the last question in Section I.] 
 Have you ever over-rehearsed a part, as an athlete over- 
 trains ? Have you ever played a part until it has become 
 nauseous to you ? If so, have you noticed any diminution 
 of its effect upon your audience ? 
 
 XIII. 
 
 In scenes of emotion in real life, whether you are a 
 participant in them (e.g. the death-bed of a relative) or a 
 casual on-looker (e.g. a street accident), do you consciously 
 note effects for subsequent use on the stage ? Or can you 
 ever trace an effect used on the stage to some phase of 
 such a real-life experience automatically registered in your 
 memory ? 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Do you ever yield to sudden inspirations of accent or 
 gesture occurring in the moment of performance ? And are 
 you able to note and subsequently reproduce such inspira- 
 tions ? Have you ever produced a happy effect by pure 
 chance or by mistake, and then incorporated it permanently 
 in your performance ? 
 
2l8 
 
 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 XV. 
 
 Do you act with greater satisfaction to yourself in 
 characters which are consonant with your own nature (as 
 you conceive it) than in characters which are dissonant and 
 perhaps antipathetic ? And in which class of characters 
 have you met with most success? Does your liking or dis- 
 like for— your belief or disbelief in — a play as a whole affect 
 your acting in it ? 
 
 . XVI. 
 
 Do you ever find yourself disturbed and troubled by the 
 small conventions of the stage ? In other words, is the 
 thread of your emotion broken by the necessity for ' asides, 
 or for giving a stage kiss instead of a real one, a stage buffet 
 instead of a genuine knock-down blow? In the fight in 
 Macbeth or Richard III., do you feel hampered by the 
 necessity for counting the cuts and thrusts ? Or in flinging 
 away the goblet in Hamlet, are you disturbed by having 
 to aim it so that it maybe caught by the prompter? Is your 
 hilarity at a stage banquet more convincing to the audience 
 when the champagne is real than when you are quaffing 
 toast and water ? 
 
 In the conception and make-up of a ' character-part,' do 
 you generally (or do you ever) imitate some individual whom 
 you have seen and studied ? Or do you piece together a 
 series of observations, reproducing this man's nose, that 
 man's whiskers, the gestures and mannerisms of a third, 
 the voice and accent of a fourth ? Or do you construct a 
 purely imaginary figure, no single trait of which you can 
 refer to any individual model ? 
 
QUESTIONS SUR L'ART DU COMtDIEN 219 
 
 QUESTIONS SUR L'ART DU COMEDIEN, 
 
 FORMULEES A LA PEMANDE DU DIRECTEUR DE 
 
 'LONGMANH' magazine; 
 PAR WILLIAM ARCHER. 
 
 A VANT-PROPOS. 
 
 Un debat amical qui s'est elev^ recemment entre M. 
 Coquelin et M. Irving a raviv^ la discussion jadis provoquee 
 par Diderot dans son Paradoxe sur le Comedien. Etre 
 ou n'etre pas 6mu? voila la question. Diderot et M, 
 Coquelin affirment que la sensibilite est la perte de I'acteur; 
 qu'au sein meme des orages et des tourbillons de la passion, 
 I'acteur doit raster froid, calme, et maitre de lui : qu'il doit 
 simuler et les larmes et la voix brisee par I'emotion, etc. etc. 
 mais qu'en rdalit6 ses yeux doivent rester sees et que le 
 brisement de sa voix doit etre tout aussi emprunte que sa 
 perruque et son rouge. En resum6, Diderot contredit abso- 
 lument la maxime d'Horace : 
 
 Si vis me flere, dolendum est 
 Primum ipsi tibi. 
 
 D'un autre cote, M. Irving soutient (et il s'appuie sur la 
 grande autorite de Talma) que la sensibility est le principal 
 element du talent d'un grand acteur. ' L'acteur,' dit-il, ' qui 
 reunit la puissance communicative d'une forte individuality 
 avec la possession pleine et entifere de toutes les ressources 
 de son art, doit avoir une plus grande prise sur son auditoire ■ 
 que I'acteur sans passion qui simule avec art les emotions 
 qu'il n'a jamais ^prouvees.' Et encore : ' Si un acteur a le 
 pouvoir de verser des larmes a son gr^, il a un des secrets du 
 
220 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 grand art, et heureux est celui qui possfede ce don precieux.' 
 Quelques ^crivairis ont etabli une distinction entre la concep- 
 tion et {'execution d'un role, reconnaissant que la sensibility 
 peut aider un acteur k concevoir et k elaborer son person- 
 nage, mais ajoutant qu'elle doit etre strictement reprim^e k 
 la representation. Nous n'enumdrerons pas ici toutes les 
 nuances et les distinctions subtiles qui peuvent exister k ce 
 sujet. 
 
 Pour qu'une discussion sur ces points interessants soit 
 fructueuse, I'essentiel est de r^unir en grand nombre les 
 resultats de I'experience personnelle des acteurs et des 
 actrices. La thfese soutenue par Diderot n'dtait qu'une argu- 
 mentation A priori, bien qu'il I'ait ' illustree ' 9a et la de 
 quelques anecdotes. M. Irving et M. Coquelin s'en rap- 
 portent presque entibrement k leur propre experience ; et 
 d'ailleurs, I'opinion de deux acteurs seulement, si distingues 
 qu'ils soient, ne saurait etre concluante, surtout quand ils se 
 contredisent 1 On n'a point essayd jusqu'ici de recueillir et 
 de comparer les experiences d'un grand nombre d'acteurs, 
 et pourtant c'est cette comparaison seule qui pourrait fournir 
 la base d'un debat profitable. 
 
 Le directeur de Longmans' Magazine m'a charge de 
 recueillir les idees emises sur ce sujet par les acteurs et 
 actrices le plus en evidence aujourd'hui, et d'en tirer une 
 conclusion. En consequence, j'ai rassembl^ une serie de 
 questions portant sur ce que je considfere comme le veritable 
 point en litige, et je fais appel avec confiance k la courtoisie 
 de mes lecteurs pour m'aider dans une enquete dont Ic 
 resultat ne peut manquer d'etre fort interessant pour tous 
 ceux qui se soucient d'art dramatique. Je me suis aventure 
 k ajouter une ou deux questions qui n'ont pas un rapport 
 direct avec le Paradoxe de Diderot, mais qui ne sont pas 
 sans importance dans la question de I'art du comedian. 
 Cette sorte d'interrogatoire, si sec et si bref, ne saurait gtre 
 qu'une fagon fort peu satisfaisante d'obtenir des informations, 
 
QUESTIONS SUR L'ART DU COMilDIEN 221 
 
 et je demande aux artistes qui seront assez bons pour re- 
 pondre k ma requete, de ne pas limiter leur r^ponse aux 
 questions pos6es, mais d'user de la plus grande liberty 
 en me communiquant leurs vues et leurs sentiments. Je 
 n'ai pas besoin de dire que s'il m'est perrais d'ajouter des 
 noms aux opinions et anecdotes qui me seront ainsi confines, 
 elles prendront une valeur toute nouvelle ; n^anmoins je me 
 conformerai scrupuleusement k toute injonction en sens con- 
 traire. 
 
 Je sais fort bien qu'aucun acteur ou actrice ne peut 
 repondre d'aprfes une experience personnelle k toutes les 
 questions suivantes ; mais je crois que tous y trouveront 
 quelques points sur lesquels il leur sera ais6 de jeter de la 
 lumifere. 
 
 Si quelque acteur oublid sur ma liste veut bien m'envoyer 
 son nom et son adresse, je lui ferai parvenir imm^diatement 
 ■un de ces questionnaires k remplir. 
 
 I. 
 
 Dans les situations emouvantes, les larmes vous viennent- 
 elles aux yeux ? Les appelez-vous et les refoulez-vous k 
 volonte ? Dans les tirades pathetiques, votre voix se brise- 
 t-elle malgre vous ? Ou bien simulez-vous, de propos de- 
 libere, une voix bris^e ? Supposons que dans une meme 
 situation, vous versiez un soir de vraies larmes et parliez 
 avec une reelle contraction de la gorge, et que le jour suivant 
 vous simuliez ces phenomfenes sans les ^prouver : dans 
 laquelle de ces deux occasions pensez-vous produire le plus 
 d'effet sur votre auditoire ? 
 
 II. 
 
 Quand I'acteur Macready, aprfes la mort d'une fille bien 
 aimee, joua le role de Virginius, il avoua que le souvenir de 
 cette enfant lui faisait verser de brtllantes larmes dans les 
 
222 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 parties les plus pathetiques du drame. Avez-vous jamais 
 fait une experience analogue ? Votre jeu s'est-il jamais res- 
 senti d'un chagrin (soit recent, soit ancien) personnellement 
 6prouv^, dans une situation qui vous en rappelait les tristes 
 circonstances ? L'^motion eprouv^e 6tait-elle, oui ou non, 
 i I'avantage de votre jeu? Et quel en 6tait I'effet sur 
 I'auditoire ? 
 
 III. 
 
 Quand, dans la vie reelle, vous vous ^tes trouve dans une 
 situation emouvante (au lit de mort d'un parent, par exem- 
 ple) ou, par occasion, temoin d'un accident, en notez-vous 
 sciemment les efiFets et les details afin d'en faire plus tard 
 et de sang-froid usage k la scbne ? Ou bien avez-vous 
 jamais remarqud que vous vous soyez servi i la scbne d'un 
 souvenir de la vie reelle, enregistr^ inconsciemment par 
 votre m^moire ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 Dans les scenes provoquant le rire, vous amusez-vous 
 pour votre compte ? Ou bien votre gaiety est-elle entibre- 
 ment affectde ? Avez-vous jamais ri jusqu'aux larmes sur la 
 scfene ? Et dans I'un ou I'autre de ces cas, quel a ^te I'effet 
 produit sur I'auditoire ? (N.B. — II n'est pas question ici du 
 rire provoqu6 par certaines meprises ou autres incidents 
 imprevus, mais uniquement du rire qui fait partie de la trame 
 de la pifece.) 
 
 V. 
 
 Vous est-il arrive de rougir involontairement en repre- 
 sentant la timiditd, la modestie, ou la honte ? de palir dans 
 une scfene d'^pouvante ? ou bien avez-vous remarqu6 ces 
 signes ext^rieurs chez d'autres artistes ? 
 
 VI. 
 
 Un acteur distingu^ me dit que gdndralement il transpire 
 abondamment pendant la representation ; mais que la trans- 
 
QUESTIONS SUR L'ART DU COmAdIEN iij, 
 
 piration varie beaucoup, non pas tant selon le degr6 de 
 mouvement qu'il se donne, que selon le degr6 d'^motion 
 qu'il ressent. Les soirs de representation oil il ' ne sent pas 
 son role,' il joue Othello sans mouiller un fil, quoique reffort 
 physique soit alors au moins aussi grand que les' soirs oil il 
 est baign^ de sueur. Votre propre experience est-elle 
 d'accord avec la sienne ? La fatigue que vous occasionnent 
 certains roles est-elle en proportion directe avec les efforts 
 physiques qu'ils exigent, ou bien depend- elle des emotions 
 que vous eprouvez ? 
 
 VII. 
 
 G. H. Lewes raconte que Macready, dans le role de 
 Shylock, avait I'habitude de secouer une 6chelle avec 
 violence avant d'entrer en scfene avec Tubal, de fa9on \ 
 s'echauffer au degr6 voulu. II raconte aussi qu'on surprit 
 une fois I'acteur Listen jurant, temp^tant tout seul dans 
 une des coulisses avant une scfene de fureur comique. Avez- 
 vous jamais trouve qu'il flit difficile d'arriver d'un bond k 
 I'effet voulu ? En ce cas, comment surmontez-vous cette 
 dif5cult6 ? 
 
 VIII. 
 
 On raconte malicieusement d'un acteur bien connu qu'U 
 s'identifiait dfes le matin avec le personnage qu'il devait jouer 
 le soir ; quand il devait jouer Richard III, il ^tait feroce, 
 cynique et cruel ; tandis que, lorsqu'il devait jouer Mercutio 
 ou Benedick, il etait tout grace, tout entrain et amabilite. 
 Avez-vous senti chez vous pareille tendance ? L'avez-vous 
 observ^e chez d'autres ? Au foyer, pendant les entr'actes, 
 etes-vous port6 a garder le ton et Failure du personnage que 
 vous repr^sentez? Avez-vous remarqu^ cette dispostion 
 chez d'autres acteurs ? 
 
 IX. 
 
 Pourriez-vous donner quelques exemples d'un ^tat d'esprit 
 ou deux courants d'id6es, et meme davantage, se superposant 
 
224 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 dans votre ime, y coexistent avec la preoccupation de votre 
 role ? En precisant da vantage, pouvez-vous decrire com- 
 ment il vous 'est arrive de donner une part de vos facultes 
 mentales aux emotions de votre role, tandis que d'autre 
 part vous critiquiez minutieusement vos gestes et vos intona- 
 tions, tout en vous rendant compte de Feffet que votre jeu 
 produisait sur I'auditoire ? 
 
 X. 
 
 Diderot raconte que Lekain, dans une scfene d'emotion 
 violente, vit sur les planches la boucle d'oreille en diamant 
 d'une actrice, et qu'il eut la presence d'esprit de I'envoyer 
 d'un coup de pied vers I'un des portants de la scfene plutot 
 que de I'^craser sous son pied. Pourriez-vous donner un 
 exemple similaire de presence d'esprit ? Et regarderiez-vous 
 ceci comme prouvant que I'acteur est reste froid malgre 
 Femotion qu'il simule ? 
 
 XI. 
 
 Quant aux roles que vous avez longtemps jou6s : Avez- 
 vous remarque que cette repetition constante vous conduisait 
 k I'insensibilite ? Faites-vous, pendant un certain nombre 
 de representations, des progrbs, jusqu'k ce que, parvenu 
 k un certain point, vous sentiez vos progrfes s'arreter 
 ou meme une decadence se produire ? Ou perfectionnez- 
 vous de jour en jour votre role pendant une longue serie de 
 representations ? 
 
 XII. 
 
 Cedez-vous parfois a de soudaines inspirations de geste 
 ou d'accent qui vous arrivent lorsque vous etes en scbne ? 
 Etes-vous capable de noter et de reproduire ensuite ces 
 inspirations ? Avez-vous jamais produit, par pur hasard ou 
 par meprise, d'heureux effets que vous avez ensuite incorpores 
 k votre jeu d'une fagon permanente ? 
 
KEY TO REFERENCES 225 
 
 KEY TO REFERENCES. 
 
 [ This is not a complete list of authorities, hut merely a table of those titles 
 which have been abbreviated in the foregoing pages in order to save marginal 
 space. ] 
 
 Assezat = ' CEuvres Completes de D. Diderot. . . . Notices, Notes &c. . . .' 
 Par J. Ass&at. Paris, 1875-77. 
 
 Aston = ' A Brief Supplement to Colley Gibber, Esq ; his Lives of the late 
 famous Actors and Actresses.' By Anthony, Vulg6 Tony, Aston. 
 London, 1747 or 1748. 
 
 Bancroft = ' Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft On and Off the Stage.' Written by 
 Themselves. London) r888. 
 
 Boaden = ' Memoirs of Mrs. Siddons. ' By James Boaden, Esq. Second 
 edition. London, 1831. 
 
 ^oiw?// = ' Boswell's Life of Johnson.' Edited by George Birkbeck Hill, 
 D.C.L. Oxford, 1887. 
 
 Bunn - ' The St^e, both Before and Behind the Curtain.* By Alfred Bunn. 
 London, 1840. 
 
 Campardon=' Les ComMiens du Roi de la Troupe Italienne.' Par E. Cam- 
 pardon. Paris, 1880. 
 
 Campbell = ' \Me of Mrs. Siddons.' By Thomas CampbelK London, 1834. 
 
 Charlotte Cushpian = ' Chaxlotte Cushman.' By Clara Erskine Clement. 
 
 (American Actor Series. ) London {no date). 
 Cole = 'The Life and Theatrical Times of Charles Kean, F.S.A.' By John 
 
 William Cole. London, 1859. 
 
 Compton =' Memoir of Henry Compton.' Edited by Charles and Edward 
 Compton. London, 1879. 
 
 Coquelin = ''L'^tt at le Comedien.' Par C. Coquelin. Paris, 1880. 
 
 Q 
 
226 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 Crahb Robinson = ' Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of H. Crabb 
 Robinson.' Edited by T. Sadler. London, 1869. 
 
 Davies = ' Dramatic Miscellanies, consisting of Critical Observations on several 
 Plays of Shakespeare.' By T. Davies. London, 1784. 
 
 D'Heylli= 'V^€aA, d'apres sa Colrespondance.' Par Georges d'Heylli 
 Paris, 1882. 
 
 Diidtn='Aar\sls of the Edinburgh Stage.' By James C. Dibdin. Edin- 
 burgh, 1 888. 
 
 Doran = ' Annals of the English Stage from Thomas Betterton to Edmund 
 Kean.' By Dr. Doran, F.S.A. Edited by Robert W. Lowe. London, 
 1887. 
 
 Dorat=''L& Declamation Theatrale; Poeme didactique.' [Par C. J. Dorat.] 
 Paris, 1766. 
 
 Everard= ' Memoirs of an unfortunate Son of Thespis ; being a Sketch of the 
 Life of Edward Cape Everard, Comedian.' Edinburgh, 1818. 
 
 GueuHeiie = ' Actenia et Actrices du Temps Passe. . . . Notices.' Par C. 
 
 GueuUette. Paris, 1881. 
 ^<za//5zKj='TheLifeof Edmund Kean.' By F. W. Hawkins. London, 1S69. 
 Jloussaye =' ha. Comedienne.' Par Ars^ne Houssaye. Paris, 1884. 
 
 Ireland =' 'Letters and Poems by the late Mr. John Henderson, with Anec- 
 dotes of his Life.' By John Ireland. London, 1786. 
 
 Zo?-;^!" = Lardin's Preface to Diderot's ' Paradoxe ' in the ' Bibliotheque 
 
 Nationale.' 
 Le}aazurier=' OaXeTie Historique des Acteurs du Theatre-Fran9ais, depuis 
 
 1600 jusqu'k nos jours.' Par P. D. Lemazurier. Paris, 1810. 
 
 Lowe = • A Bibliographical Account of English Theatrical Literature. By 
 Robert W. Lowe. London, 1888. 
 
 Ludlow ==' 'Dra.ma.tic Life as I found it.' By N. M. Ludlow. St. Louis, 
 
 1880. 
 il/aiTT-fa^ =' Macready's Reminiscences, and Selections from his Diaries and 
 
 Letters.' Edited by Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart. London, 1S75. 
 
 Malone = Malone's Historical Account of the English Stage, in Prolegomena 
 to Variorum Shakespeare. London, 1 82 1. 
 
 Matthews and Hutton = ' Actors and Actresses of Great Britain and the United 
 States, from the Days of David Garrick to the Present Time.' Edited by 
 Brander Matthews and Lawrence Hutton. New York [no date). 
 
KEY TO REFERENCES 227 
 
 jl^r/iy =' Diderot and the Encyclopaedists.' By John Morley. London, 
 1878. 
 
 Noctes Attica = Beloe's Translation. London, 1795. 
 
 0*fe>-r)/ =' Oxberry's Dramatic Biography and Histrionic Anecdotes.' Lon- 
 don, 1825 to 1827^ 
 
 Polbck = ' The Paradox of Acting, translated with Annotations from Diderot's 
 
 " Paradoxe sur le Comedien.'" By Walter Henries Pollock. With a 
 
 Preface by Henry Irving. London, 1 883. 
 Reynolds = ' The Life and Times of Frederick Reynolds. ' Written by Himself. 
 
 London, 1826. 
 Scott = Miscellaneous Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott Edinburgh, 1846. 
 
 (See also 'Quarterly Review,' xxxiv. p. 216, June 1826.) 
 Talma = ' Reflexions sur Lekain et I'Art Th^atral.' Paris, 1856. 
 TAe Voice =' The Voice ' (Newspaper). New York, March 1888. 
 
22? 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ACH 
 
 ACHURCH, Miss Janet, 6i, loi, 
 
 123, 156, 202 
 Alleyn, Edward, 119 
 Anderson, Miss Mary, 60, 61, 69, 
 
 184, 202 
 ^sopus, 167 
 Aston, A., 14s, 185 
 Augier, E., 83 
 Aulus Gellius, 78 
 
 Bancroft, Mrs., 52, 87, loi, 109, 
 
 123, 162, 192, 202 
 Bancroft, S. B., 53, 123, 129, 142, 
 
 144, 162, 192, 202 
 Baron, E. (fils), 94 
 Baron, M. (p^re), 94, 120, 132, 
 
 136, 164, 185 
 Barrett, Lawrence, 71 
 Barrett, Wflson, 63, 88, 90, 112, 
 
 . 123, 129, 147, 202 
 Barry, Spranger, 16, '45, 121, 178, 
 
 202 
 Bateman, Miss, 65, 123, 163, 174, 
 
 202 
 Bateman, H. L., 84 
 Bateman, Miss Isabel, 66, 84, loi, 
 
 123, 124, iss 
 
 132. HS 
 183 
 
 CAS 
 Beatrice, Mile., 67 
 Beaubourg, 168 
 Belmore, G., 137 
 Bernhardt, Sarah, 59, 202 
 Berry, — , 72 
 Betterton, Thomas, 119, 
 Boaden, James, 99, 169, 
 Boileau, 47 
 Bonheur, Rosa, 2 
 Booth, Edwin, 71, 145 
 Booth, J. B., 145 
 
 Boucicault, Dion, 100, 108, 123, 154 
 Bouillon, Duchesse de, 95 
 Boyne, L., 91, 102 
 Braham, John, 186 
 Brizard, 164 
 Brough, Lionel, 66, loi, 108, 124, 
 
 202 
 Brooke, G. V., 130 
 Browning, Robert, 103 
 Bunn, Alfred, 99 
 Burbage, Richard, 119, 145 
 Byron, H. J., 109 
 
 Caillot, 29 
 Carpenter, Dr., 154 
 Castro, Senhor de, 51 
 
INDEX 
 
 229 
 
 CEC 
 Cecil, Arthur, 137 
 ChampinesI^, Mile., 47, 202 
 Charles II., 31 
 Chesterfield, Lord, 14 
 Chippendale, Mrs., 112, 186 
 Churchill, C, 45, 64 
 Cibber, CoUey, 186 
 Cibber, Mrs., 16,44, 121, 179,202 
 Cicero, 41, 202 
 Clairon, Mile., 180, 182, 191 
 Clayton, John, 64, 84, 112, 123, 
 
 130, 162, 202 
 Clive, Kitty, 16 
 Clement, Mrs., 49 
 Clynds, J. H., 89 
 Coleman, J., 85, up, 123, 130, 
 
 146, 147, 170 
 Compton, H., 109 
 Conquest, G., 89 
 Cooper, T. A., 82 
 Coquelin, C. (ain^), 2, 23, 60, 82, 
 
 98, 125, 142, 149, 185, 193, 203 
 Corneille, P. , 22, 99 
 Cornwall, Barry, 78 
 Crawford, Mrs., 121 
 Crowe, Mrs. {see Bateman, Miss) 
 Cushman, Charlotte, 49, 186, 202 
 
 Darwin, Charles, 105, 126, 134, 
 
 136, 208 
 Davies, T., 44, 121, 179 
 Demosthenes, 167 
 Dene, Miss Dorothy, 91, loi, 123 
 Desmares, Mile., 94, III 
 Diderot, Denis, 2, 9, 18, 20, 39, 
 
 SO, 70, 76, 86, 92, 150, 159, 
 
 161, 164, 173, 182, 190, 193, 
 
 202, 204, 206, 208 
 Dillon, Charles, 130 
 
 HEN 
 Dorat, C. J., 49 
 Dorval, Mme., 49, 202 
 Duclos, Mile., 29, 48, 168, 202 
 Dumas, A. (pke), 83, 138 
 
 EcKHOF, 75 
 Engel, J. J., 75 
 Etherege, Sir G., 133 
 Everard, C, 72, 79 
 
 Farren, W., Ill 
 
 Faucit, Miss Helen, 80, 122, 147, 
 
 170, 176, 187 , 
 F^Iix, Rachel [see Rachel) 
 F^lix, Sarah, 48 
 Fleckno, R., 145 
 Forrest, Edwin, 130 
 
 Garrick, David, 3, 16, 26, 44, 45, 
 
 50, 59. 72. 79. 143. 165, 178, 
 
 181, 184, 191, 202 
 Gaussin, Mile., 48, 202 
 Gilbert, W. S., 112 
 Godwin, W., 32 
 Gould, B., 68 
 Gregory, Mrs., 179 
 Grimm, F. M., 3, 18, 20 
 
 Hannetaire, S. d', 72, 181 
 Hare, J., 193 
 Harris, A., 123 
 Hartmann, E. von, 134, 205 
 Harvey, F., 67, 191 
 Haydon, B. R., 188 
 Heine, H., 114 
 Henderson, John, 127 
 
230 
 
 MASKS OR FACES? 
 
 HIL 
 
 Hill, Aaron, 1 6 
 Hill, Miss Phillis, 66 
 Hobbes, Thomas, II2 
 Holman, J. G., 128, 169 
 Horace, 40, 49 
 Houssaye, A., 191 
 Howard, J. B., 138, 157 
 Howe, H., 65, 129, 202 - 
 Hugo, v., 49 
 Hume, David, 3 
 Hunt, Holman, 209 
 
 Ireland, J., 69 
 
 Irving, Henry, 7, 65, 84, 144, 184, 
 202 
 
 MOR 
 Lacy, W., 144 
 Lambert, A., 74, 90, loi, 112, 129, 
 
 146. 153. 192 
 Larcher, F., 152, 193 
 Lebrun, P. A., 95 
 Lecouvreur, Adrienne, 48, 95 
 Lee, John, 127 
 Legouve, E., 81, 95 
 Lekain, 29, 94, 161, 185 
 Lemaltre, F., 49, 192, 202 
 Lemazurier, P. D., 47, 183 
 Lemercier, N., 73 
 Lesage, III 
 
 Lessing, G. E., 13, 22, 134 
 Lewes, G. H., 3, 189 
 Listen, John, 133 
 Longfellow, H. W., 2 
 
 Janet, P., 36 
 
 Jefferson, J., 184 
 
 Jodin, Mile., 18 
 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 26, 45, 59, 
 
 114 
 JoUey, T., 184 
 
 Kean, Edmund, 33, 78, 99, 143, 
 
 165, 189 
 Kean, Charles, 64, 78, 95, 130, 
 
 146, 165, 171, 192 
 Kean, Mrs. Charles, 95, 171, 191 
 Kelly, Fanny, 46 
 Kemble, Fanny, 46, 53, 121, 147, 
 
 151, 166, 169, 183, 190, 202 
 Kemble, J. P., 26, 59, 143, 169, 189 
 Kendal, Mrs., 53, 55, 86, 108, 123, 
 
 142, 162, 202 
 Kendal, W. H., 53, 123, 146, 162, 
 
 202, 209 
 King, T., no, 165 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 204 
 Mackenzie, Rev. Dr., 46 
 Macklin, C, 16, :8i 
 Macready, W. (senr. ), 128 
 Macready, W. C, 59, 76, 80, 85, 
 
 99, 109, 127, 128, 133, 135, 138, 
 
 140, 144, 146, 17°. 187, 1S8, 
 
 190 
 Maillard, 81 
 Mars, Mile., 61 
 
 Martin, Lady {see Faucit, Helen) 
 Maskelyne, J. N., I 
 Mason, J., 166 
 Maturin, C. R.,78 
 Milton, Miss Maud, 90, 102, 
 
 123 
 Mol^, 73 
 
 Moli^re, Mile., 94 
 Mondbry, 168 
 Montfleury, 168 
 More, Sir T., 31 
 
INDEX 
 
 231 
 
 MOR 
 Morris, Miss Clara, 61, 71, 152, 
 
 175, -202 
 Mossop, H., 16, 144 
 Mounet, Paul, 74,' 138, 152 
 Mounet, Sully, 74 
 Mountfort, Mrs. {see Verbruggen, 
 
 Mrs.) 
 Murray, MLss Alma, 61, 97, 112, 
 
 129, 202 
 Musset, A. de, 34 
 
 Neilson, Adelaide, 49, 67, 202 
 
 O'Neill, Miss, 46, 170, 202 
 Outram, L., 91, 155 
 
 PAcuvrns, 42 
 
 Palmer, John, 32 
 
 Pinero, A. W., 58, 68, 108 
 
 Phelps, Samuel, 67, 129, 130, 137, 
 
 138, 202 
 Plutarch, 167 
 Pollock, Lady, 99, 188 
 Pollock, W. H., II 
 Polus, 78 
 Powell, W., 72 
 Pritchard, Mrs., 16, 45, 79, 179, 
 
 202 
 Provost, 33 
 
 QuiN, James, 16, 48 
 Quinault, Mile., 48 
 Quinault-Dufresne, 29, 48, 202 
 Qiiintilian, 42, 202 
 
 SID 
 
 Rachel, 48, 61, 77, 81, 95, 99, 
 143, 169, 190 
 
 Racine, 22, 47', 57 
 
 RauCourt, Mile., 19 
 
 Reade, C, 45 
 
 Reddish, S., 69 
 
 Regnier, 81, 82 ' 
 
 Rehan, Miss A., 125 
 
 Reynolds, F., 169 
 
 Riccoboni, F., 14, 70, 73, 131, 167 
 
 Riccoboni, L., 14, 178 
 
 Ristori, Adelaide, 84, 122, 148 
 
 Robertson, Forbes, 67, 90, 123, 
 130, 155, 162 
 
 Robertson, Miss Madge {see Ken- 
 dal, Mrs.) 
 
 Robson, F., 191 
 
 Rorke, Miss K., 124 
 
 Roscius, 167 
 
 Rossetti, D. G., 209 
 
 Ryder, John, 68, 109 
 
 Saint-Albine, R. de, 12, 15, 17, 
 
 21, 23, 26, 92 
 Salvini, Tommaso, 26, 29, JD, 83, 
 
 loi, 107, 122, 129, 132, 143, 
 
 14s, 156, 163, 176, 191, 201, 
 
 202 
 Samson, 61, 62 
 Sarcey, Francisque, 7, 103 
 Scott, Sir W., 143 
 Scribe, E., 95 
 Shakespeare, W., 12, 34, 44, 56, 
 
 119, 201, 210 
 
 Sheridan, R. B., 33 
 
 Siddons, Mrs., 29, 45, 46, 59, 99, 
 
 121, 128, 132, 139, 143, 169, 
 
 171, 189, 202 
 Siddons, Mr., 46 
 
232 
 
 MASKS OR FACES f 
 
 SMI 
 Smith, William, no 
 Standing, H., 91, 129 
 Stevenson, R. L., 150 
 Sticotti, A. F., II, 17, 21, 23, , 
 
 92 
 Sturz, -^, 180 
 Sully, Mounet [see Mounet) 
 
 Talma, 46, 62, 77, 98, 103, 142, 
 
 145. 153. 183 
 Taylor, Miss B. J., 7 
 Terry, Miss E., 65, 100, 202 
 Tessandier, Mme. , 138 
 Thackeray, W. M., 204 
 Toole, J. L., 38, 49, 70, 107 
 Traill, H. D., 3, 130 
 Tree, Ellen [see Kean, Mrs. Charles) 
 Tree, H. Beerbohm, 63, 112, 123, 
 
 162, 193, 202 
 Tristan I'Hermite, 168 
 
 YOU 
 Vezin, Hermann, 64, 131, 192, 202 
 Voltaire, 16, 184, 185 
 
 Walker, T., 72 
 
 Wallis, Miss E., 68, 90, 112, 141, 
 
 147, 148, 157, 175 
 Ward, Miss Genevieve, 59, 88, 112, 
 
 123, 142, 174 
 Webster, B., 49, 202 , 
 Wenman, T. E., 108 
 Wigan, Mr. and Mrs. A., 69 
 Wilkinson, Tate, 45 
 Willard, E. S., 33 
 Wilton, Miss Marie (see Bancroft, 
 
 Mrs.) 
 Winterhjelm, Fru H., 100, 124 
 Woffington, Peg, 16, 45, 202 
 Wood, Mrs. John, 108, 140 
 Wordsworth, W., 77, 103 
 Wyndham, Mrs. R. H., 138 
 
 Verbruggen, Mrs., 185 
 Vernon, W. H., 106 
 
 Yates, Mrs., 79, 121 
 Young, C. M., 59 
 Young, Mrs., 121 
 
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