WAS Sir Henry Irving a great actor? Possibly; there is abundant testimony, little evidence. The testimony of Englishmen is to be received with caution, for Irving was an Englishman; that of Americans with greater caution, for the same reason. The narrowest provincialism in the world is that of great cities, and London is the greatest city. What London says all England repeats; and America affirms it on oath. It is understood, as a matter of course, that in the judgment of England the best English actor, writer or artist is the best in the world. If one has conquered his way to the foremost place in the approval of a small London clique, not, in the case of an actor, exceeding a half-dozen men promoted to power by a process of selection with which ability has had nothing to do, one has conquered half the world. It would be easy to name the half-dozen who made Henry Irving’s fame and set it sailing o’er the seas with bellying canvas and flag apeak. On this side no one ever demanded the ship’s papers. This is Echoland, home of the ditto-maniac. We are freemen, but not bigoted ones.
For aught I know Irving may have been as good an actor as his countrymen who saw him thought him. Nay, he may have been half as good as my countrymen who did not see him think him. I myself saw him play only two or three times. He was not then a good actor, but that was a long time before his death; judgment from the fading memory of a performance decades ago would hardly do. Wherein, then, lies excuse of this present infervency—this cry qui vive at the outpost of the camp? Herein. Not only were Irving’s credentials defective; there is a strong presumption that the defect was irreparable—that they “certificate a sham.” This defect was racial. The English are, if not an unemotional, an undemonstrative people. When sad the Englishman does not weep, when pleased he does not laugh. Anger him and he will neither stamp nor tear his hair; startle him and he jumps not an inch. His conversation is destitute of vivacity and unaided by gesticulation. His face does not light up when he deems it his duty to smile. His transports of affection are moderated to the seemly ceremony of shaking hands; though he is said sometimes to kiss his grandmother if she is past seventy and will let him. Removed from his brumous environment, the English human being becomes in time accessible to light and heat—penetrable by the truth that all manifestation of emotion and sentiment is not necessarily vulgar; but in the tight little isle Stolidity holds her immemorial sway without other change in the administrative function than occasional substitution of the stare of deprecation for the stare of complacency.
To suppose that great actors can come of a race like that is to trifle with the laws of nature. Acting is preëminently the art of expression—expression of the sentiments and emotions by speech, look, gesture, movement—in every way that one person can address the eye and ear of another. It requires the acutest and alertest sensibilities, faculties all responsive to subtle stirs of feeling. Are these English characteristics? Clearly not; they are those of the peoples that (in England) are despised as “volatile,” “garrulous,” “excitable”—the French and Italians, for examples, who have produced the only really good actors of modern times. Our own actors are better than the English, but not good; one sees better acting about a dining-table in Paris than has ever been seen on the stage of London or New York—excepting when it is held by players in whose veins is the fire of Southern suns, whose nerves dance to the rhythmic beat of Mediterranean ripples and
keep, with Capri’s sunny fountains,
Perpetual holiday.
One pale globule of our cold Teutonic blood queers the whole performance. For German, English and American actors society should provide “homes,” with light employment, good plain food and, when they keep their mouths shut and their limbs quiet, thunders of artificial applause.
II
Few respectable shams are to me more distasteful than the affectation of delight in the performance of an actor who speaks his lines in a tongue unknown to the audience, as did sometimes the late Signor Rossi in the rôle of “Otello.” It is of the essence and validity of acting that it address the understanding through the ear as well as the eye. The tones of an actor’s voice, however pleasing, do not address the understanding at all without intelligible words; they are no more than the notes of a violin—the pleasure they give is purely sensual, and the speaker might as well articulate no words at all. A play, or a part in a play, performed in unfamiliar speech is hardly better than a pantomime, and those who profess to find in it an intellectual gratification—well, they may be very estimable persons, for aught I know.
It is not enough, in order to enjoy “Othello” or “Hamlet,” that the audience have a general familiarity with the part; their knowledge of it must be minute and precise. They must know of what particular sentiment a facial expression is the visible exponent; of what particular word a gesture is the accompaniment. Else how can they know that the look is natural, the motion impressive? If one had memorized the part verbatim, and the meaning of every word, the accidental omission of a sentence would break the chain, and all that the eye should afterward report of the passage would be meaningless. How shall you know that the actor “suits the action to the word” if you know not the word? To a mind ignorant of Italian the “Otello” of Signor Rossi may have been a noble exercise in guessing; as acting it can have had no value.