I am not of those who look upon the bond linking audience and actor as a mercenary contract, for the hours during which the latter yields his quantum of strength and spirit to the former for so much coin, and there is an end. Were I, unhappily, possessed by such a morbid feeling, I could no longer act, the spell would be broken. It is true, I might constrain bone and sinew to administer to my necessities, and continue to barter these with the public for bread; but the inspiring spirit would be away, sunk past recall. Severed from the sympathies of those it wrought for, it would cease to lighten upon the scene, which the power of enlisting those sympathies alone redeems from contempt.
But it is not so, as every well-constituted mind will avouch. Preference, and a constant expression of favour from his auditory, necessarily beget a kind feeling in return: the actor is aware also that he is not always in a condition to fulfil his part of the bond; illness, low spirits, crosses, losses, or any of "the thousand ills that flesh is heir to," rob the mind of its elasticity, and the body of its power; yet rarely does the disappointed auditor turn on the favourite and act the clamorous creditor.
Even in very extreme cases, what a spirit of forbearance have we seen exhibited, what positive sympathy have we felt extended in our own time to cherished players! It is at such moments that, more exposed, as he is, to immediate censure, and more helpless than any other of the servants of the public, he also feels himself more especially, more kindly considered, and, if possessed of a kindly heart, cannot fail to be touched by the feeling.
After illness or prolonged absence too, it is in the electric burst of welcome, the enthusiastically prolonged cheer of gratulation, and in the genuine pleasure sparkling from hundreds of uplifted ardent eyes, that the man who devotes himself to win the player's meed receives his brief, his shadowy it may be, but his inspiring triumph, accompanied by the assurance that he is closely linked with the kindest feelings of those who for the scene are subject to his thrall.
And when at length the hour of farewell comes, it is in the anxious pause, the breathless attention, yet more impressive than all other species of homage, that "the poor player," about to be "heard no more," reads the assurance that on the many young fresh hearts now subject to his art he has indelibly engraven his name, often to be pleasantly recalled in after hours, perhaps of pain and worldly care.
It is in the hope of gaining this living record he seeks consolation for the absence of all other less perishable fame: expecting, hoping nothing from posterity, he has a stronger claim upon the kindness of his contemporaries, for whom alone he lives, and the feeling is reciprocal: hence it is that these repay him with a superabundance of present regard, to soften to him the consciousness of the oblivion to which his memory is inevitably consigned, however great his genius, and however ardent its longings "after immortality."