"Studying medicine."
"And you want to give up such a career, for one that is the hardest and the worst of all?"
"Yes."
All actors called their profession the "hardest and the worst" though they had such a good time of it. That was in order to frighten away aspirants.
John asked for private lessons in order that he might make his début. The director replied that he was now going to the country for the theatrical season was at an end, but he told John to come again on the 1st of September when the theatre opened, and the board of management came again to the town. That was a definite appointment and he saw his way clear.
When he went down the street, he walked with his eyes wide open, as though he gazed into a brilliant future; victory was already his; he felt its intoxicating eating fumes, and hurried, though with unsteady steps, down the street.
He said nothing to the doctor nor to any one else. He had still three months in front of him in which to train and prepare himself, but in secret, for he was shy and timid. He was afraid of annoying his father and the doctor, afraid of the whole town knowing that he thought himself capable of being an actor, afraid of his relatives' scorn, his friends' grimaces and efforts to dissuade him. This was the fruit of his education, the fear,—"What will people say?" His imagination made the act seem like a crime. It was certainly an interference with other people's peace of mind for relations and friends feel a shock, when they see a link torn out of the social chain. He felt it himself, and had to shake off the scruples of conscience.
For his début he had chosen the rôles of Karl Moor and Wijkander's Lucidor. This was no mere chance but perfectly logical. In both of these characters he had found the expression of his inner experience, and therefore he wished to speak with their tongues. He conceived of Lucidor as a higher nature undermined and ruined by poverty. A higher nature of course! In his enthusiasm for the theatre he felt again what he had felt when he had preached, and when he had revolted against the school prayers,[1] something of the proclaimer, the prophet, and the soothsayer.
What most of all elevated his ideas of the great significance of the theatre was the perusal of Schiller's essay, "The theatre regarded as an instrument of moral education." Sentences like the following show how lofty was the goal at which Schiller aimed. "The stage is the chief channel through which the light of wisdom descends from the better, thinking portion of the populace in order to spread its beneficent light over the whole state." "In this world of art we dream ourselves away from the real one, we find ourselves again, our feelings are roused, wholesome emotions stir our slumbering nature and drive our blood in swift currents. The unhappy here forget their own sorrows in watching those of others, the happy become sober, and the self-confident, reflective. The effeminate weakling is hardened into a man, the coarse and callous here begin to feel. And then finally,—what a triumph for thee O Nature, so often trodden down and so often re-arisen,—when men of all climates and conditions, casting away all fetters of convention and fashion, set free from the iron hand of fate, fraternising in one all-embracing sympathy, dissolved into one race, forget themselves and the world, and approach their heavenly origin. Each individual enjoys the delight of all, which is mirrored back to him strengthened and beautified from a hundred eyes, and his breast has only room for one aspiration,—to be a man!"
Thus wrote the young Schiller at twenty-five, and the youth of twenty subscribed it.