III

We may, I think, divide the subject thus:

CHARACTER
A.—Its Essence{x.—The Dramatist’s setting out of it
{y.—Its truth to accepted type
{z.—The Player’s method of studying these two
B.—Reticence
C.—Art and Truth
THE PLAY
STAGE PERSPECTIVE
DUAL CONSCIOUSNESS
INDIVIDUALITY, AND THE KNOWLEDGE OF IT

IV
CHARACTER

A.—Its Essence

We think in abstractions, but we live in concretions. In real life an individual who is not in any way distinguishable from his fellows is but a poor creature after all and is not held of much account by anybody. That law of nature which makes the leaves of a tree or the units of any genus, any species, any variety all different—which in the animal or the vegetable world alike makes each unit or class distinguishable whilst adhering to the type—is of paramount importance to man. Tennyson has hammered all this out and to a wonderful conclusion in those splendid stanzas of In Memoriam LIV to LVI beginning “Oh yet we trust that somehow good” to “Behind the veil, behind the veil.” Let it be sufficient for us to know and accept that there can be endless individual idiosyncrasies without violation of type. To understand these is the study of character. The differentia of each individual is an endless and absorbing study, not given to all to master. Some at least of this mastery is a necessary part of the equipment of an actor. Now there is a common saying that “the eyebrow is the actor’s feature.” This is largely true; but there is a double purpose in its truth. In the first place the eyebrow is movable at will; a certain amount of exercise can give mobility and control. It can therefore heighten expression to a very marked degree. But in addition it, when in a marked degree, is the accompaniment of large frontal sinuses—those bony ridges above the eyebrows which in the terminology of physiognomy imply the power to distinguish minute differences, and so are credited with knowledge of “character”—the difference between one and another; divergences within a common type. With this natural equipment and the study which inevitably follows—for powers are not given to men in vain—the actor can by experience know types, and endless variants and combinations of the same. So can any man who has the quality. But the actor alone has to work out the ideas given to him by this study in recognisable material types and differentiated individual instances of the same type.

x

The dramatist having, whether by instinct or reason, selected his type has in the play to give him situations which can allow opportunity for the expression of his qualities; words in which he can expound the thoughts material to him in the given situations; and such hints as to personal appearance, voice and bearing as can assist the imagination of a reader. All these things must be consistent; there must be nothing which would show to the student falsity to common knowledge. “Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” has a large application in art, and specially in stage art. It is the ignorance or neglect of this eternal law which is to my mind the weakness of some writers. Instance Ibsen who having shown in some character an essential quality through one or two acts makes the after action of the character quite at variance with it. A similar fault weakens certain of the fine work of “Ian Maclaren” when he proceeds to explain away in a later story some perfectly consistent and understandable quality of mind or action in one of his powerful and charming character stories. No after-explanation can supersede the conviction of innate character.

y

Now a dramatist is at perfect liberty to choose any type he likes and to deal with his individual creations just as he chooses. There is no law against it; however ridiculous it may be, it makes no breach of any code in accepted morals. But he should at least be true to itself. It is by such qualities that posterity as well as the juries of the living judge. The track of literary progress is littered with wreckage from breaches of this truth.

Of this we may be sure: if a character have in itself opposing qualities which cannot be reconciled, then it can never have that unity which makes for strength. Therefore the actor who has to represent the abstract idea as a concrete reality must at the beginning understand the dramatist’s intention. He can by emphasis of one kind or another help to convey the dominant idea. There is an exact instance of this from Irving’s own work; one which at the same time illustrates how an actor, howsoever thoughtful and experienced he may be, can learn: For a good many years he had played Shylock to universal praise; then, all at once, he altered it. Altered it in the manner of utterances of the first words he speaks: “Three thousand ducats,—well.” He explained it to me when having noticed the change I asked him about it. He said that it was due to the criticism of a blind man—I think it was the Chaplain of the American Senate, Dr. Milburn.

“What did he say?” I asked. He answered with a thoughtful smile:

“He said: ‘I thought at first that you were too amiable. I seemed to miss the harsh note of the usurer’s voice!’ He was quite right! The audience should from the first understand, if one can convey it, the dominant note of a character!”

This was distinctly in accordance with his own theory; and he always remembered gratefully the man who so enlightened him. The incident illustrates one phase of “passing a character through one’s own mind.” When it has gone through this process it takes a place as an actual thing—a sort of clothing of the player’s own identity with the attributes of another. This new-seeming identity must have at first its own limitations; the clothing does not fit—somewhere too tight, elsewhere too loose. But at last things become easier. The individuality within, being of plastic nature, adapts itself by degrees to its surroundings. And then for purposes of external expression the mastery is complete.

Experience adds much to this power of mastery. When an actor has played many parts he learns to express the dominant ideas of various characters in simple form, so that each, through a sort of artistic metonymy, becomes a type. In fact, as he goes on studying fresh characters he gets a greater easiness of expression; he is not creating every time, but is largely combining things already created. This is true Art. The etymology of the word shows that its purpose is rather to join than to create. Were it not that each mind must create the units which have to be joined, histrionic art would not be primarily a creative art.

In Irving’s own words:

“It is often supposed that great actors trust to the inspiration of the moment. Nothing can be more erroneous. There will, of course, be such moments when an actor at a white heat illumines some passages with a flood of imagination (and this mental condition, by the way, is impossible to the student sitting in his arm-chair); but the great actor’s surprises are generally well weighed, studied, and balanced.... And it is this accumulation of such effects which enables an actor, after many years, to present many great characters with remarkable completeness.”

And again when he insists upon the intention of effect:

“It is necessary that the actor should learn to think before he speaks.... Let him remember, first that every sentence expresses a new thought, and, therefore, frequently demands a change of intonation; secondly, that the thought precedes the word. Of course, there are passages in which thought and language are borne along by the streams of emotion and completely intermingled. But more often it will be found that the most natural, the most seemingly accidental effects are obtained when the working of the mind is seen before the tongue gives it words.”

I well remember at one of our meetings in 1876 when after dinner we had some “recitations,” according to the custom of that time, Irving was very complimentary to my own work because I anticipated words by expression, particularly by the movement of my eyes.

z

So far, the study of natural types and the acceptance of the dramatist’s ideas. But next the actor has to learn how to show best the development of character. It is not to the purpose of a high-grade play that each character can be at the start as though labelled thus or thus. As the story unfolds itself the new situations bring into view qualities hitherto unknown; there has been heretofore no necessity for knowing them. Here it is that the dramatist must not make contradictions. He may show opposing qualities—such make the struggles of life and passions which it is the duty of the drama to portray; but the opposing forces, though they may clash, must not deny each other’s very existence. Honour and baseness do not synchronously coexist; neither do patriotism and treachery; nor truth and falshood; nor cruelty and compassion. If it be necessary in the struggles of good and bad—any of the common phases of human nature—in the same individual to show that now and again either dominates for a time, the circumstances must be so arranged as to show preponderating cause. If the dramatist keeps up to this standard all can go well. But if his work be crude and not in itself illuminative, the actor’s work becomes more complex and more difficult. He has in the manifold ways of his own craft to show from the first the possibilities of character which later on will have to be dealt with. He will have to suggest the faintest beginnings of things which later are to be of perhaps paramount importance.

This it is that Irving meant when he said that a character should be “sincere.” It must not be self-contradictory. He put this point very definitely:

“... the actor must before all things form a definite conception of what he wishes to convey. It is better to be wrong and consistent, than to be right, yet hesitating and uncertain.”

And thus it is that the actor’s skill can so largely supplement that of the dramatist. He must add whatever the other has omitted or left undone. He must make straight the path which is in common to himself, the dramatist, and the public. He must prepare by subtle means—not too obtrusive to be distracting to the present purpose, nor too slight to pass altogether unnoticed—the coming of something as yet below the horizon. If this be done with care—and care implies both study and premeditation—the sincerity of the character will from first to last be unimpaired.

B.—Reticence

On the other side of this phase of the Art of Acting is that fine undefinable quality of all art which is known as “reticence.” Restraint is almost as rare as passion. The “reticence” of the actor is perhaps its most difficult phase. For he has to express that which has in the others to be concealed; and if his expression be too marked, not only does the restraint cease to exist, but a wrong idea—that of concealment—is conveyed.

C.—Art and Truth

All these things are parts of an integral whole; they all go to the formation of an Art. Art is in itself only a part of the mechanism of truth. It is from the inner spirit that the outward seeming must derive. Rules and laws are but aids, restraints, methods of achievement; but it is after all to nature that the artist must look. In the words of Pope:

“These laws of old discover’d, not deviz’d,

Are nature still but nature methodiz’d.”

Irving put the idea thus:

“... merely to imitate is not to apply a similar method ... the greatest of all the lessons that Art can teach is this: that truth is supreme and eternal. No phase of art can achieve much on a false basis. Sincerity, which is the very touchstone of Art, is instinctively recognised by all.”

V
THE PLAY

The play as a whole is a matter of prime consideration for the actor, though it only comes into his province quâ actor in a secondary way. In the working of a theatre it is the province of the stage manager to arrange the play as an entity; the actor has to deal with it only with reference to his own scenes. But the actor must understand the whole scheme so as to realise the ultimate purpose; otherwise his limitations may become hindrances to this. Irving, who was manager as well as actor, puts the matter plainly from the more comprehensive point of view:

“It is most important that an actor should learn that he is a figure in a picture, and that the least exaggeration destroys the harmony of the composition. All the members of the company should work toward a common end, with the nicest subordination of their individuality to the general purpose.”

Here we have again the lesson of restraint—of reticence. There are also various other forms of the same need, to which he has at various times alluded. For instance, speaking of the presentation of a play he said:

“You want, above all things, to have a truthful picture which shall appeal to the eye without distracting the imagination from the purpose of the drama.”

In fact Irving took the broadest possible views of the aims and possibilities of his chosen art, and of the duties as well as of the methods of those who follow it. He even put it that the State had its duty with regard to the art of illusion:

“The mere study of the necessities and resources of theatre art—the art of illusion—should give the theatre as an educational medium a place in State economy. Just think for a moment: a comprehensive art effort which consolidates into one entity which has an end and object and purpose of its own, all the elements of which any or all of the arts and industries take cognisance—thought, speech, passion, humour, pathos, emotion, distance, substance, form, size, colour, time, force, light, illusion to each or all of the senses, sound, tone, rhythm, music, motion. Can such a work be undertaken lightly or with inadequate preparation? Why, the mere patience necessary for the production of a play might take a high place in the marvels of human effort.”

VI
STAGE PERSPECTIVE

One of the things on which Irving always insisted was a knowledge and understanding of stage perspective, and of its application in the practice not only of the art of the stage in its scenic and illusive aspect but of the art of acting:

“The perspective of the stage is not that of real life, and the result of seeming is achieved by means which, judged by themselves, would seem to be indirect. It is only the raw recruit who tries to hit the bull’s eye by point-blank firing and who does not allow for elevation and windage.”

In pointing out the necessity of speaking more loudly on the stage than in a room, he puts the same idea in a different and perhaps a broader way:

“This exaggeration applies to everything on the stage. To appear to be natural, you must in reality be much broader than natural. To act on the stage as one really would in a room would be ineffective and colourless.”

He never forgot—and never allowed any one else to forget—that the purpose of stage art is illusion. Its aim is not to present reality but its semblance; not to be, but to seem. He puts it thus:

“The function of art is to do and not to create—it is to make to seem, and not to make to be, for to make to be is the Creator’s work.”

He had before said:

“It must never be forgotten that all art has the aim or object of seeming and not of being, and to understate is as bad as to overstate the modesty or the efflorescence of nature.”

Thus we get the higher aim: to seem to be—but always in such wise that nature shall be worthily represented. Nature

“At once the end and aim and test of art.”

So Pope. Irving put the value nature as against the mere pretence thus:

“To be natural on the stage is most difficult, and yet a grain of nature is worth a bushel of artifice.... Nature may be overdone by triviality in conditions that demand exaltation.... Like the practised orator, the actor rises and descends with his sentiment, and cannot be always in a fine frenzy.”

How true this is; how consistent with eternal truth! Nature has her moods, why not man; has her means of expressing them, why not man also? Nature has her tones; and with these why may not the heart of man vibrate and express itself?

In this connection and with the same illustration—the orator compared with the actor—Irving put a new phase of the same idea:

“It matters little whether the actor sheds tears or not, so long as he can make his audience shed them; but if tears can be summoned at will and subject to his control it is true art to utilise such a power, and happy is the actor whose sensibility has at once such delicacy and discipline. In this respect the actor is like the orator. Eloquence is all the more moving when it is animated and directed by a fine and subtle sympathy which affects the spectator though it does not master him.”

VII
DUAL CONSCIOUSNESS

The last-mentioned utterance of Irving’s brings us at once to the deepest problem in the art of acting: the value and use of sensibility. Throughout his later life, from the time he first entered the polemics of his art, he held consistently to one theory. To him the main disputants were Diderot and Talma; any other was merely a supporter of the theory of either.

Diderot in his Paradox of Acting held that for good acting there must be no real feeling on the part of the actor:

“Extreme sensibility makes middling actors; middling sensibility makes the ruck of bad actors; in complete absence of sensibility is the possibility of a sublime actor.”

Irving’s comment on this theory is:

“The exaltation of sensibility in Art may be difficult to define, but it is none the less real to all who have felt its power.”

Talma[[1]] held quite the opposite view to that of Diderot. To him one of the first qualifications of an actor is sensibility, which indeed he considered the very source of imagination. To this quality, he held, there must be added intelligence:

[1]. When Irving began to consider this branch of the “true inwardness” of his work he was so much struck with the argument of Talma that he had it translated and inserted in The Theatre. This was easy of accomplishment, for with regard to that magazine he had only to ask.

As a matter of fact The Theatre at that time belonged to him. He had long considered it advisable that there should be some organ in which matters deeply concerning the stage could be set forth. He accordingly arranged with the late Mr. F. W. Hawkins, then a sub-editor of the Times, to take the work in hand. Hawkins had already by his work shown his interest in the stage; Irving had a high opinion of his “Life of Edmund Kean” and of his book on the French stage which he had then well in hand. He trusted Hawkins entirely; gave him a free hand, and never interfered with him in any possible way except to suggest some useful article of a neutral kind. He would never even give a hint of his own opinion regarding any one of his own profession, but kept studiously out of the theatrical party-politics of the day. Hawkins had his own views which he was perfectly well able to support; he could take care of himself. Irving was content that the magazine should exist, and footed the bills. Later on when the editorship was vacant Irving made a present of the whole thing to Clement Scott who said that he would like to see what he could do with it.

The Talma articles appeared in The Theatre for the 30th January and 6th and 13th February 1877. This was before I came to Irving. It was long afterwards when I read them.

In 1883 Walter Herries Pollock, then editor of the Saturday Review, a great friend of Irving, produced an edition of the Paradox of Acting to which Irving wrote a preface. In this he set out his own views in his comments on the work of Diderot.

“To form a great actor ... the union of sensibility and intelligence is required.”

Irving used his knowledge of the controversy to this effect:

“I do not recommend actors to allow their feelings to carry them away ...; but it is necessary to warn you against the theory, expounded with brilliant ingenuity by Diderot, that the actor never feels.... Has not the actor who can ... make his feelings a part of his art an advantage over the actor who never feels, but makes his observations solely from the feelings of others? It is necessary to this art that the mind should have, as it were, a double consciousness, in which all the emotions proper to the occasion may have full swing, while the actor is all the time on the alert for every detail of his method.... The actor who combines the electric force of a strong personality with a mastery of the resources of his art, must have a greater power over his audiences than the passionless actor who gives a most artistic simulation of the emotions he never experiences.”

The sentence printed in italics is a really valuable addition to the philosophy of acting. It is Irving’s own and is, as may be seen, a development or corollary of Talma’s conclusion. Talma required as a necessity of good acting both sensibility and intelligence. But Irving claimed that in the practice of the art they must exist and act synchronously. This belief he cherished, and on it he acted with excellent result. I have myself seen a hundred instances of its efficiency in the way of protective self-control; of conscious freedom of effort; of self-reliance; of confidence in giving the reins to passion within the set bounds of art.[[2]]

[2]. I have seen a good many times Irving illustrate and prove the theory of the dual consciousness in and during his own acting; when he has gone on with his work heedless of a fire on the stage and its quelling: when a gas-tank underneath the stage exploded and actually dispersed some of the boarding close to him, he all the time proceeding without even a moment’s pause or a falter in his voice. One other occasion was typical. During a performance of The Lyons Mail, whilst Dubose surrounded by his gang was breaking open the iron strong-box conveyed in the mail-cart the horses standing behind him began to get restive and plunged about wildly, making a situation of considerable danger. The other members of the murderous gang were quickly off the stage, and the dead body of the postillion rolled away to the wings. But Irving never even looked round. He went calmly on with his work of counting the billets de banque, whilst he interlarded the words of the play with admonitions to his comrades not to be frightened but to come back and attend to their work of robbing. Not for an instant did he cease to be Dubose though in addition he became manager of the theatre.

In speaking of other branches of the subject Irving said:

“An actor must either think for himself or imitate some one else.”

And again:

“For the purely monkey arts of life there is no future—they stand only in the crude glare of the present, and there is no softness for them, in the twilight of either hope or memory. With the true artist the internal force is the first requisite—the external appearance being merely the medium through which this is made known to others.”

VIII
INDIVIDUALITY, AND THE KNOWLEDGE OF IT

If an actor has to learn of others—often primarily—through his own emotions, it is surely necessary that he learn first to know himself. He need not take himself as a standard of perfection—though poor human nature is apt to lean that way; but he can accept himself as something that he knows. If he cannot get that far he will never know anything. With himself then, and his self-knowledge as a foothold, he may begin to understand others.[[3]]

[3]. As an instance of the efficacy of the method, let any one try to tell character by handwriting. It is very simple, after all. Let him take the strange writing, and after making himself familiar with it, measure it by himself, asking himself: “Under stress of what emotion would my own writing most nearly resemble that?” Let him repeat this with each sign of divergence from his own caligraphy: and in a short time he will be astonished with the result. So it is with all studies of character. Without any standard the task is impossible; but weigh each against your own self-knowledge and you at once begin to acquire comparative knowledge of simple qualities capable of being combined endlessly.

Γνῶθι σεαυτὸν Know thyself! It is, after all, the base of all knowledge—the foothold for all forward thought. Commenting on the speech of Polonius: “To thine own self be true,” Irving said:

“But how can a man be true to himself if he does not know himself? ‘Know thyself’ was a wisdom of the Ancients. But how can a man know himself if he mistrusts his own identity, and if he puts aside his special gifts in order to render himself an imperfect similitude of some one else?”