Our Stage and Its Critics / By "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

by Edward Fordham Spence

Thick-and-thin admirers of Duse, an actress of indisputable genius, used to praise her because she dispensed with the "make-up" that other players deem necessary. They saw in this a glorious fidelity to nature. Their position became a little ridiculous when, somewhat later, the actress—possibly in compliance with the advice of critical worshippers—adopted the ordinary devices of the stage and pressed into service the make-up box and even the aid of the wigmaker.

Presumably the change in policy was due to a more careful consideration of the optics of the stage. For it may be assumed that she "made up" in order to counteract the privative effects of the stage lights and appear neither more nor less beautiful and expressive to the public in the playhouse than to her friends in her drawing-room. This leads to the important paradox that in the theatre you must be artificial if you wish to appear natural; that on the stage, verisimilitude is greater truth than truth itself; or, to use the popular oxymoron, you must be "falsely true." In this respect the matter of "make-up" is only an instance of a general law prevailing in all matters theatrical.

Let no one think less of the players on account of it, for it is this fact that entitles the actor to speak of his art and not merely of his craft. It is because the player must select, eliminate, exaggerate, diminish and, in a word, modify his matter but may not be photographic, that he is entitled to call himself an artist.

The term "photographic" used in this sense is rather unfair, for the photographer has become an artist by recognizing the fact that he too must select, etc. No doubt "make-up" renders other services, and belongs to the artifices as well as the arts of the stage, since it has the advantage in some cases of rendering the plain beautiful—to the discomfiture of stage-door loafers, and, indeed, possesses an abominable democratic effect. Of course, too, it has legitimate value in effecting disguises, in changing young into old—its efforts in the contrary direction, as a rule, are ghastly failures—and in effecting transformations of the exterior of persons. However, "make-up," despite its mysteries, is but a small element in "the optics of the theatre," which term is here used largely—and inaccurately—in relation to all the phenomena covered by the paradox already mentioned.

The player, having counterbalanced with "make-up" the robbery effected by the stage illumination and also by the disadvantage of distance, has to turn himself to the adjustment of other matters. One is this—he must recognize that his author labours under similar conditions, and should not be "photographic."

When the dramatist in the dialogue has exaggerated the play of light and shade, bringing, indeed, legitimately for the sake of effect to his speeches, that energy of chiaroscuro which gives us a pleasure, somewhat distrustful in the pictures of Joseph Wright of Derby, the player must attune his manner in order to make it congruous with the highly seasoned conversation so that there being no clash of methods, no jarring will result.

Every change of convention on the part of the author demands a corresponding change in the actor. Clearly, he must speak verse differently from prose, though there are foes to poetry who beg him to break up the lines and defeat the efforts of the poet; and he must adopt a manner in a blank-verse tragedy unsuitable to a play by Mr Barrie. Moreover, he ought to aim at seeming natural in both. Here is the rub; he must aim at seeming, not being, natural. Obviously, one cannot deliver blank verse naturally; such, however, is the power of make-believe in the audience that if the dramatist and his company can engage the sympathy of the spectators, a fairy tale in rhymed lines, a tragedy in unrhymed verse, a melodrama with flatulent phrases, and a comedy seeking the most exact reproduction of modern life permissible may seem equally plausible, credible, natural.

It is to be noted, too, that the form of artificiality of truth varies not only with the type and quality of the drama but with the nature of the audience. Speaking of our times, one may say that a little greater vigour of contrast is desirable in the provinces than in town, and in the "B" towns than the "A," in the "C" than the "B," and goodness knows what violence is not needed in the "fit-up" shows. There are reasons for believing that our ancestors demanded a more full-blooded style of acting than is relished by their anaemic descendants, and it is possible that such a performance as convinced the eighteenth century of the genius of some of its players might cause laughter nowadays, though neither audience nor actors would deserve censure.

Within the time of even our younger critics there have been at least two tragedians who enjoyed an immense reputation save in town, but failed to win success in the West End of the Metropolis, though outside they held their own against the greatest favourites; and the London critics levelled at them the dreadful charge of "barn-storming"—a charge which some of us no doubt would make against several of the greatest tragedians in our proud records were they to appear to-day and act as in their own times.

It is a feature of the actor's art that its excellence is never absolute. An audience is entitled to say, "What care I how good he be if he seem not good to me?" A performance that does not move the spectators is not only a failure but to some extent a culpable failure, since the actor's art is more utterly ephemeral than any other—possibly by aid of gramophone, biograph, and the like some fairly effective records will be made in the future—but, this consideration apart, he may not even take heed for the morrow. At the moment his mission is to move the particular collection of people before him, and though they may be culpable for not being moved he will not be wholly blameless.