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

by Edward Fordham Spence

Now, nobody thinks a whit the worse or less of Mr Forbes Robertson's Othello because he played no tricks with his striking aquiline nose; and the idea that he would have gained anything by flattening it with a bit of silk thread is absurd. What he would have gained would have been a feeling of physical inconvenience during the quiet passages, and terror during the tremendous scenes of passion at the thought that the string might snap.

There are photographs of other noses, built up with nose-paste or, preferably, with "toupee" paste; one is of Falstaff, another of Shylock, and there is also one called "the Professor." In each case the whole nose looks wooden; it may be suggested that in an ordinary way movements of the nose do not play much of a part in expressing emotions, yet we have phrases about swelling nostrils and turning up one's nose that possess some foundation in fact. Further, one can hardly render the nose a dead thing without, to some extent, effecting the mobility of other features. Probably the built-up nose of Coquelin as Cyrano de Bergerac will be thrown in my face; it must, however, be remembered, that apart from his large elastic mouth Coquelin's face was rather wooden, and he relied for expression chiefly on voice, mouth, gesture and movement. No doubt in this particular character there is a necessity, and, therefore, a justification for a built-up nose; but more than one actor has failed to fight successfully against the artificial proboscis of Cyrano.

Used as more than a counteracting or embellishing contrivance, "make-up" is curiously ineffective. Many Napoleons have appeared on the stage, only one of them by a writer capable of even suggesting the distinguishing qualities of the man of genius. In most cases there have been advance paragraphs about the pictures, miniatures, statues, statuettes, medallions, bas-reliefs, etc., consulted by the actor, and concerning the contrivances of the wigmaker, even the bootmaker and tailor. What has been the outcome? Merely that for half-a-minute people have said: "What a clever make-up," and for the rest of the time one has been no more content to accept the player as Jupiter Scapin than if he had washed his face, brushed his hair and acted in his dress clothes.

Does Mr Cavendish Morton think players were really worse off before the latest refinements in make-up were invented? Some of the greatest acting triumphs of the world were accomplished when the players dressed their parts absurdly, trusting almost exclusively to their own powers.

One is forced to wonder to what extent covering the face with the mass of muck hinders the actor in his work. People can be trained to endure it, but it would be interesting to see the difference in the performance of a given part by an actor with an elaborate make-up—false nose, etc.—and by the same actor without. Mr Arthur Bourchier, when growing a beard for the purpose of playing Henry VIII., stated that he would have been embarrassed by a sham beard. Can it be that the triumph that we sometimes see, of the actress over the actor, is partly due to the fact that she reduces make-up to the minimum?

No one denies the necessity for make-up. When young players have to represent old people it is their duty to take advantage of the advice of experts such as Mr Morton, and every one may find valuable hints in his book. The really important fact is that all should be warned against such a proposition as lies in the hideous sentence, "Is not half the battle won when one perfectly physically realizes the character to be impersonated?"

[Gesture ]

Some years ago, at one of the theatrical clubs, the existence of which is one of the many tokens of the great interest at present taken in the drama, Mr Alfred Robbins, a very able, highly esteemed critic, gave a lecture upon "The Value of Ballet in Dramatic Art," which was illustrated charmingly. For, in order to show how a story could be interpreted without words, Miss Genée, the brilliant dancer, ably assisted by Miss D. Craske, represented the ballet scene from Nicholas Nickleby, between the infant phenomenon and the Indian.

There was no little discussion afterwards upon the question whether the art of miming, one of the two main elements of the ballet, is or can be serviceable to the ordinary stage. Several seemed to have the opinion that the art of dumb show is almost useless to the player, the argument being that, as far at least as modern comedies are concerned, so little gesture is used on the stage that training in the mode of employing it is superfluous. The introduction of trouser pockets was said to have destroyed the need for gesture. In such views lie certain dangerous fallacies.

The actor who thinks that by mode of speech and facial display, and without carefully calculated gesture, he can carry through a part in a modern comedy probably is misled by the thought that the English are more sober in gesture than the Latin races: and his contempt for the work of the mime is based on a belief that certain purely conventional gestures, inapplicable save in wordless scenes, constitute the whole materials of the mime's art. The mime certainly has a kind of dumb language with a limited vocabulary, understood, unfortunately, by few English people save those connected with the stage; part of his silent speech has never crept into the common language; yet to sneer at it as conventional is wrong, it is merely a case of certain conventional gestures not having been generally adopted, and therefore remaining unintelligible to the world.