IMPERSONATION
The aim here should be to lose one's self in the part. To subordinate one's tones, gestures, and manners, and to live the character for the time being, requires no mean ability. Impersonation calls for imagination, insight, concentration, and adaptability. The impersonator must be all at it, and at it all, during the whole time he is impersonating the character.
"To fathom the depths of character," said Macready, the distinguished English actor, "to trace its latent motives, to feel its finest quiverings of emotion, to comprehend the thoughts that are hidden under words, and thus possess one's self of the actual mind of the individual man, is the highest reach of the player's art, and is an achievement that I have discerned but in few. Kean—when under the impulse of his genius he seemed to clutch the whole idea of the man—was an extraordinary instance among those possessing the faculty of impersonation."
Where dialect is used it should be closely studied from life. Stage representations of foreign character are not always trustworthy models.