Speaking Impersonations
Speaking impersonations are more difficult to achieve successfully, for in them, as a rule, the artist has no regalia to depend upon. His hair, his face, his voice, his limbs, his fingers are his only aids, but these are more than sufficient for the talented and skilled performer. His voice is as elastic as his features in power of mimicry.
He should be clean-shaven, but with a plentiful crop of hair, which he can arrange and manipulate as he wishes with a mere twirl or pat of the hand, and these must be sympathetic and convincing expressions of his every movement. “There is no more expression in the back of the hand than in the back of the head,” yet of what subtle demonstrations is it not capable?
A whole epitome of human emotions may be demonstrated by the gradual unfolding of the flexible, sensitive fingers. The first finger raised, and intelligence and meaning begin to develop. The palms upturned, the shoulders uplifted, and the head slightly bent, and you see the suave helplessness typical of the Frenchman.
The arms flung outward, with the palms parallel, and the fingers falling naturally, indicate sentiments of affection, welcome, and cordial invitation. Stretched farther away, with fingers distended, and you have entreaty, desire, passionate pleading, and supplication. The wrists upturned, the fingers crooked, and grasping, and we see the personification of rage and avarice, while the raising of the open hand, what horror it indicates!
Yet the hand is only a part of the mechanism. Its soul is in the eye, which combines in partnership and signifies calm, candor, liberality, love, gentleness, meditation, resentment, boldness, defiance, wrath, and fear, in complete accord with its dumb component.
The nostrils inflate in scorn, the head is proudly raised in dignity or joy, and meekly bowed in humility; bent forward in shame, squarely upright, with firm compressed features, for determination and will power.
The artist must never be tempted to sacrifice his cultured discretion in a portrayal. For instance, to give the cockney the musician’s hand, or the priest the bookmaker’s wink, the sly housebreaker anxious to escape notice the loud, boisterous guffaw of the countryman, is to be guilty of the most insensate blunders.
Action and gesture should be skilled and practiced handmaidens to the brain that molds the idea, and their service must be winged to respond.
“True ease in action comes from art, not chance,
As they move easiest who have learnt to dance.”