PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR. By Louis Calvert. Simpkin. 7s.
This is a book which can be thoroughly recommended not only to every amateur but to every professional actor and theatre-lover. It is full of the most uncommon sense, and although Mr. Calvert has decided opinions on voice-training, gesture, team-work, scenery, dressing, music, and producing, he does not lay down the law with the evidence of inexperience, but reasons his position from point to point with a quietness that is far more impressive and convincing. Mr. Calvert has also done more than he probably set out to do. The book is, in the first instance, a guide for the young actor or would-be actor, giving him a good deal of wise advice on the technical side of his craft. But in doing this Mr. Calvert has written a book which should be read by every theatre-goer, since it will increase his appreciation of the theatre enormously by opening his mind to detail of which he was, in all probability, completely unaware, although more or less conscious of its cumulative effect. After reading Mr. Calvert's book he will find himself itching to go immediately to the nearest playhouse and regard the drama being enacted there with what he will feel are new eyes; and since the standard of acting and of drama generally is dependent largely upon the level of intelligence of its audience, Mr. Calvert's book will be as beneficial to the theatre when studied by the ordinary public as when studied by the actor. Finally, this book is an attempt to put the actor again in his proper position as the pillar of the drama. On this point I am in absolute agreement with Mr. Calvert. Plays are conceivable in which the actor may be no more than an instrument in the orchestra. I think they will be written, but I have yet to see them. But in the plays of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans the actor is first in importance, and scenery, dressing, music, and everything else must be used simply as a background and a subsidiary to him. Moreover Mr. Calvert makes a claim—which is also made by the late Mr. H. B. Irving in an introduction—to the consideration of the actor in his highest moments as a creative artist. This claim, in my opinion, Mr. Calvert makes good, and if there are any people to-day who still cherish the old superstition that the actor is merely a sort of clever but shallow showman, then unless they are bigoted beyond the reach of intelligence this book will dispel it once for all.
W. J. TURNER
THE FINE ARTS
War-pictures at Burlington House
ONE would have hesitated to predict success for a set of commissioned war pictures: meaning success in the sense of excellence. In commissioning any painting or piece of sculpture with a dictated subject there is always the danger that the subject will be uncongenial to the artist, that it may have no connection with his own intimate experience. This is one of the disadvantages of portrait painting. The artist is supposed to be capable and desirous of depicting all kinds of characters, not to speak of flattering them. The novelist and dramatist are more fortunate. People are anxious to avoid and also tired of their revelations. But Mr. Horatio Bottomley still expects the Poet Laureate to boom out the appropriate ode.
Besides the general objection there was the further feeling that the war was a sufficient preoccupation in itself, and a disagreeable one of such a kind that deliberately to set out to make contemporaneous art about it would be not only superfluous but almost profane. It would amount to gloating. The war was a foul and dirty job that had to be gone through with, and the experience of concentrating on this was enough. It was not without good reason that immediately following the war the most popular forms of art were the Revue and the Russian Ballet.
Again, one rather grudges the large sums of State money spent on war-pictures when one thinks of the comparatively small expenditure on art in peace-time. And those two rich and influential patrons who started the ball rolling with large contributions, did they before the war, will they now after the war, patronise art extensively and seriously? The motive may have been sound, but it was in all probability very mixed.