A more serious drawback, to my mind, is that he is too great for many of his rôles, that he is out at elbow in them, so to speak. He himself has told us that the first duty of an actor is to fit his part, to be the character, to personate; and, it must be admitted, that in following this principle he has given proof of a versatility unsurpassed by Garrick himself: yet it would seem that the greater he has grown by study and thought, (with the growth of his years and of his fame,) it has become more and more difficult for him to squeeze himself into the smaller personalities he has had to represent upon the stage, to sink in them that magnetic individuality of his own which constitutes his power, and to which he owes his success. Just as that young actor called out “Burbadge” instead of “Richard,” we also, in Irving’s case, forget the rôle, and see only the actor; and the play assumes for us the character of an admirable lesson in the art of recitation.
Although he reverences the great actors who have preceded him, Irving takes but little note of tradition. His method is essentially individual to himself, and he does not hesitate to recommend this method to all members of his profession, even beginners.
It may be said to have three phases, involving three successive processes. First, a patient and conscientious study of the text: it is essential to understand the author’s meaning. When this has been mastered, you may trust to your instinct, to inspiration. Then, amongst the ideas thus discovered, you make your selection, of the good ones by a species of mental process which will enable you to reproduce them artificially at will.
Thus it is that Irving passes, smiling, by Diderot’s paradox about the actor. Diderot is right, of course, when he says that the actor does not abandon himself on the stage to the promptings of inspiration; but he is wrong in concluding that the whole business of acting is mechanical. As Talma well expressed it in speaking of his own case, the emotions represented by an actor, and communicated through him to us, are often worked up from old experiences really met with and stored by study as material. But shall we exact from him that he should have a real craving to deceive when he impersonates a hypocrite? or that he should be in love with the actress who has to enact a love scene with him? or thirst for blood when he accomplishes a stage murder? These violent and often contrary emotions—supposing, that is, that any one man should be capable of them—would paralyse the actor instead of inspiring him. We expect of him not that he should himself experience personally all these passions, but that he should understand and be able to portray them. What culture, though—what a combination of gifts, does this portrayal require and call into play! An actor may be in turn, painter, sculptor, poet, musician, psychologist, moralist, historian, and yet be inadequately equipped for his calling.
Does one go to the theatre to see life depicted upon the stage, or, on the contrary, to escape from life and forget it? Irving takes up a position half-way between the realist and that of the ultra-idealist. What one should see at the theatre is indeed life, but an intenser life, with emotions that are keener, a pulse that beats more quickly,—a life in which the potentialities of men and women are at their full, and in which there is a standard of good and evil to give a moral conclusion, a lesson in the art of living. “Get the working-man to go to the theatre,” he declares; there is no better way of keeping him out of the public-house. The theatre should be really a school, should teach the young how to live, and reconcile the weary and the sad to their existence, by setting before them the ideal poetic justice which hovers over their heads.
This is the substance of the great actor’s teaching, as set forth by him on many occasions,—I shall not say in defence of his profession: the theatre, he has declared proudly, no longer needs to be defended—but rather in glorification of it. Quite recently, in an address to the Royal Society, in February 1895, he demonstrated that acting was truly one of the Fine Arts. Taking a definition of Taine’s as his starting-point, he dealt with that great writer’s opinions on the same plane of thought, in a style that was no less brilliant than clear and concise. Irving has too keen an appreciation of beauty of form not to be conscious of the value lent to his ideas by his method of expressing them. If he was not a writer born, he has made himself a writer; his sentences are marked by a purity, a nobility, a lofty and serene simplicity which communicates to the reader the same spell his acting has wrought upon the spectator. His first lectures were full of good things, happy phrases and observations that set one thinking. In his later ones he has taken up the philosophy of his art, and has revealed the tireless ambition of an intelligence ever striving after higher things. To-day it has reached the summit. The royal decree, therefore, which entitled him “Sir Henry” in May 1895, could not have come at a more fitting moment. When this favour is bestowed on an official who has grown old in service, or on a major-general who can no longer mount a horse, the world takes no notice; this everyday distinction dazzles only “my lady’s” dressmaker and the tradesmen with whom she deals. In Irving’s case, it is an historical occasion, an epoch-making event. He is the first actor to be invested with the emblem of rank. What is for him a reality is a possibility for every actor. Thus he has raised them in being raised above them.
Irving seems to me—may I venture to say it without seeming unappreciative of the excellent and even great actors of whom our own country can boast?—to be pre-eminent in his art, the leader of his profession. He compels this admission by the beauty and unity of his life, by the splendid strength of his vocation, by the magnificent variety of his gifts, by his intelligent feeling for all the other arts and for the ideas which belong to the spirit of his time. And, on the other hand, by the slow growth, the gradual development of his talent, by his spirit of independence and initiative, tempered by regard for the past, he is one of the incarnations of his race, one of those men in whom to-day we may see most clearly the features of the English character. He has failed in nothing,—he has not even failed to make a fortune. And in respect to this, should anyone charge it against him as a fault, he has given his defence in a saying which I shall quote in conclusion as a finishing touch to his portrait:—“The drama must succeed as a business, if it is not to fail as an art.” And in truth, does Shakespeare cease to be Shakespeare because in Irving’s hand he is also a mine of gold?