Yet the hand is only a part of the mechanism. Its soul is in the eye, which combines in partnership and signifies calm, candor, liberality, love, gentleness, meditation, resentment, boldness, defiance, wrath, and fear, in complete accord with its dumb component.
The nostrils inflate in scorn, the head is proudly raised in dignity or joy, and meekly bowed in humility; bent forward in shame, squarely upright, with firm compressed features, for determination and will power.
The artist must never be tempted to sacrifice his cultured discretion in a portrayal. For instance, to give the cockney the musician’s hand, or the priest the bookmaker’s wink, the sly housebreaker anxious to escape notice the loud, boisterous guffaw of the countryman, is to be guilty of the most insensate blunders.
Action and gesture should be skilled and practiced handmaidens to the brain that molds the idea, and their service must be winged to respond.
“True ease in action comes from art, not chance,
As they move easiest who have learnt to dance.”
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.