Temperament
The psychological treatment of characters depends and is influenced in no slight degree by temperament. The character the student is about to study has its peculiar atmosphere of mind and body, which unconsciously dictates and regulates its actions from head to foot. The most important temperaments are:—
1. The optimistic temperament, embracing impulsive, warm-hearted, sanguine, easily-pleased, tender, ambitious dispositions.
2. The pessimistic temperament, embracing nervous, timid, sensitive, overwrought, peevish, unstable, irritable, depressed, neurotic, restless, dissatisfied, cynical, morbid, self-conscious dispositions.
3. The artistic temperament, embracing extravagant, sympathetic, imaginative, languid, reckless, turbulent, excitable, hot-tempered, brooding dispositions.
4. The commercial temperament, which embraces the phlegmatic, lymphatic, enigmatic dispositions.
Now, the first way of approaching a new study is to consider what characteristics it possesses, and to what class of temperament it belongs, and, when this is decided, the student asks himself, what gesture will be the most symbolic and eloquent of that temperament?
This method, conscientiously adhered to, will provide a safe and firm groundwork for the beginner.
With judgment and sense, he will soon be able to place his character in its right niche, and to plan his actions in accordance, even if he has never seriously studied gesture. The movements of an open-hearted, liberal man are usually large, free, and liberal. He opens his arms widely for an embrace. He gives you his hand in greeting warmly, and with frank, cordial pressure. His eyes shine clear and steady below a benevolent forehead. His walk, with its free, steady swing, is the index of his generous and kindly disposition.
Now contrast him with the mean man, the usual type of which is pinched in physical delineation, action, expression, and thought. His hair grows sparsely on a skull, screwed as grimly to his face as the upper section of a bicycle bell to the lower. His eye is squeezed in a narrow slit of socket, roves backwards and forwards like a marble in a puzzle-box. His mouth is withered in bitter antagonism for his fellow-men. To catch a generous smile upon his colorless lips is to surprise a sunbeam at midnight.
Of course, there are many shades in the scale between these extremes of the very liberal man and the very mean one, and the artist who is imitating the thrifty soul must remember the infinitesimal points of difference which distinguish him alike from the benevolent and avaricious.
And, in the wide margin of temperaments, an artist must be careful not to label and pigeon-hole his characters as if they were bottles of physic, for in the complex nature of one man there may be vast contradictions, just as in many good medicines there is a minute quantity of poison, so a disposition may be tinted with qualities not at all worthy of admiration.
There are occasions when the most impulsive becomes cold and hesitating, the most affectionate cruel, the most benevolent calculating, and the most patient, hot-tempered and passionate.