Members of gesticulative races are apt to think English players very wooden, because when representing British people our actors and actresses are much restrained in movement. A French or Italian critic can hardly appreciate some of the splendid "Stage Society" or Court Theatre performances, such, for instance, as that of The Voysey Inheritance, which could not have been surpassed in any theatre or country.
The offensive comparisons often, even generally, are based upon performances where our players are at a serious disadvantage. On what may be called neutral ground, such as Ibsen plays, we have held our own very well against any performances in London by Continental players; Miss Janet Achurch was a more characteristic Nora than Duse or Réjane; nor have we seen a Mrs Linden, Hedda Gabler or Hilda Wangle comparable with that of Miss Elizabeth Robins. There is no need to multiply instances.
English players do not represent certain foreign characters as well as do the foreigners. Is this surprising? They are handicapped, obviously. How often have we seen a French, German or Italian performance of an English play concerning English people? Was the great Eleonora as painfully truthful as Mrs Patrick Campbell in The Second Mrs Tanqueray? No one can deny that her companions were almost ludicrous to us. Can one imagine any foreign company able to present His House in Order without entirely destroying the stage illusion and losing the colour? There was a very fine performance at the St James's, with intense soberness of manner in important matters as a keynote.
It is largely a question of geography; the Englishman expresses rapture by the phrase "not half-bad" where the foreigner piles superlative on superlative of gush. It is our quality and our defect that we have a strange shyness, which prevents the exhibition of emotion for fear of ridicule. On our stage, as in our real life, the beloved son comes home from a long voyage, and, meeting his father, shakes hands a little warmly and says, "Hallo, governor!" or something poetic like that; whilst abroad the two men kiss one another and utter highly emotional phrases of rapture. Everyone knows that the feelings are equally deep in the two cases, but our cross-Channel critics doubt the depth of the English feeling, whilst our native players cannot do the kissing and hugging with an air of sincerity.
Now, when taking these facts into account we should be very careful in appraising the efforts of our own players. Not only ought we to avoid comparing select teams of foreign players with our own scratch companies, but also it is our duty to consider whether the strangers are appearing in plays better or worse than the average of our own, and we must take into account the fact that they are gaining from the advantage of novelty. Lastly, there remains the question how far they would appear to be better than ours if appearing on neutral ground.
It would be idle to assert that the average level of our acting is as good as it ought to be. Many theatres suffer severely from the lack of satisfactory stage-management; some from the determination of an actor-manager to be the central figure of every scene. Bitter complaints are uttered by young players about not receiving sufficient suggestions at rehearsal and finding that the stage-manager has so little authority that not only the leading players act as they chose, but even the smaller stars refuse successfully to obey him.
There is another point in Mr Bourchier's letter. He suggests that Mr Max Beerbohm is not competent to criticize actors because he is not a master of any branch of the difficult art of acting. This is a very foolish old fallacy. People who do work essentially ephemeral, such as acting, do it for those who are to witness it; and their merit is in direct proportion to their impression upon the audience, and they can have no effect upon anybody else. Actors, with trifling exceptions, do not form part of the audience. Critics do, and the actor seeks to affect the audience and the critics, and not the brother "pro." occasionally found in the auditorium.
The merit of his work lies entirely in affecting an audience in the way intended by the author. The technical devices adopted have nothing to do with the question. No doubt there is much technical knowledge involved in acting, but it must be remembered that it is all a means to an end. The cult of technique for itself is perilous to an art.
After all, the matter may be reduced to an absurdity. Would Mr Bourchier refuse to say that a man is well dressed, or a dinner ill cooked because he is (presumably) ignorant of the mysteries of the arts of tailoring and cooking? Moreover, some of us, perhaps even Mr Beerbohm, know a good deal about the technique of acting, even if we could not "make-up" Mr Bourchier to look like a costermonger. The actor must be very vain in his conceit who has not had valuable hints concerning his acting from the critics, unless he be one of those who, unlike Mr Bourchier, never read notices—yet often complain of an unfavourable one. The article called "Signor Borza on the English Theatre," which appears on page 252, should be considered in relation to these remarks.