I 
 
PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
PROBLEMS OF THE 
 ACTOR 
 
 BY Ti.-t'^^^ 
 
 LOUIS CALVERT 
 
 91 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY 
 
 CLAYTON HAMILTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1918 
 
*^(i ^3"^ t 
 
 Copyright, 1918, 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 Published April, 1918 
 
 TMt QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS 
 RAHWAY, N. J. 
 
P/V"- 
 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 I HAVE been on the stage for more than 
 forty years. My profession and its 
 problems have been the principal inter- 
 est in my life. It is natural that such an 
 extended association with the theater should 
 yield certain technical theories on my art; 
 and, since I am nearing sixty, it is natural 
 that I should want to talk about them. I 
 do not regard any opinion I hold on the 
 subject of acting as infallible; I learn some- 
 thing new about my profession every day; 
 but there is one claim I make for the opinions 
 I state in this book: they are not hasty. 
 They have been two score years in taking 
 shape. 
 
 I have watched many young people start 
 their careers on the stage; I have seen some 
 of them rise to success, and others sink to 
 oblivion. It has seemed to me that the diffi- 
 culties each met, and the mistakes each was 
 
 V 
 
 442299 
 
vi PROLOGUE 
 
 likely to make were, in a general way, always 
 of the same character. They were the diffi- 
 culties and mistakes which all actors en- 
 counter. 
 
 In my own early days I remember I used to 
 wonder why it was not possible to guide my- 
 self somewhat by the experiences of others, as 
 I could have done in almost any other profes- 
 sion. I knew there was little doubt that 
 others had passed through the same trials 
 that I was passing through. Why had they 
 not left the story of their experiences to be 
 a guide for me? Why were there no tradi- 
 tions, no standards in my art, as there were 
 in every other art? Why did I, and every 
 other novice, have to begin in the dark and 
 carve out our own standards and traditions? 
 It seemed to me then, and seems to me now, 
 a great misfortune that there is no body of 
 literature on the actor's art to which the 
 novice might go for guidance. I do not 
 mean text-books on "elocution" (Heaven 
 forbid!) ; I mean books of opinion, books of 
 experience which might embody the enduring. 
 
PROLOGUE vii 
 
 time-tested traditions of our art. But there 
 is no such body of hterature; it has been 
 truly said that the art of the actor dies with 
 hiiTi. That is a great pity. Surely there are 
 some truths which he could bequeath to pos- 
 terity. 
 
 There is no lack of books dealing with the 
 lives of those in the actor's profession. But 
 few of them shed any light on the technique 
 by which the admired actors of the past rose 
 to high place. They are mostly pleasant, 
 chatty reminiscences of their personal lives, 
 whereas it is their professional lives that 
 are significant. We know a great deal of 
 Edwin Booth, for instance, as a popular idol 
 feted and revered by those in and out of 
 the profession; but we know very little of 
 Edwin Booth, the obscure, struggling youth 
 he must have been in the beginning. The 
 story and reasons for his unsung triumphs in 
 those lean years preceding his success would 
 be of infinitely more value to the profession 
 he loved so heartily than the glowing ac- 
 counts of his later triumphs. The young 
 
viii PROLOGUE 
 
 actor is not concerned so much with the 
 dizzy heights his predecessors reached as he 
 is in how they went about it to scale the 
 heights. It may be that the giants of the 
 past each reached the goal by a different road, 
 but surely it would be of advantage to the 
 beginner if he could have some knowledge 
 of each one. 
 
 However, in this little study, I have not 
 attempted an autobiographical account of my 
 early struggles in the profession, nor a story 
 of my experiences on the stage ; I have rather 
 tried to derive from my experiences some 
 truths which might be of service to the be- 
 ginning actor, to state as concretely as pos- 
 sible some of the simple principles which 
 bitter experience has made me believe are 
 sound. 
 
 On the other hand, I do not wish to be 
 suspected of formulating a technique of act- 
 ing. I should not attempt anything so pre- 
 sumptuous. I am sure I know too much 
 about the stage for that. 
 
 With regard to actual method, what is one 
 
PROLOGUE ix 
 
 man's meat is another's poison. In the de- 
 tails of his work, each actor must work out 
 his own salvation to a very great extent; he 
 must find his own technique, in a sense, since 
 it is the individual quality he is able to give 
 his work that must raise him above his fel- 
 lows. My sole purpose in this book, then, 
 is to assist the beginner in finding his own 
 technique. 
 
 In the light of my own career I have en- 
 deavored to inquire into some of the broad, 
 general laws which are constant in this ever- 
 changing craft of ours, and which must un- 
 derlie all effective work on the stage. There 
 are certainly in this craft, as in any other, 
 some simple essentials which every beginner 
 should know at the start, and which he can 
 learn from others. I thoroughly believe that 
 much depends upon the approach the young 
 actor makes to his work, the attitude he takes 
 toward his profession, the aims he strives 
 for. It would seem that an analysis of 
 some of the old-timer's experiences and 
 opinions might be helpful and stimulating 
 
X PROLOGUE 
 
 in starting the novice along the proper 
 road. 
 
 It is my firm belief that there are two 
 virtues to strive for; Simplicity and Truth. 
 I believe that as one grows in knowledge of 
 his craft, it becomes more and more difficult 
 to retain these blessed qualities. The great' 
 effort should be to remain simple, to acquire a 
 more intelligent and effective simplicity, as 
 we progress; for the more we learn of the in- 
 tricacies and subtleties of our craft, the more 
 likely we are to depart from the solid pri- 
 maries which must be the foundation of all 
 enduring work. 
 
 This belief I have tried to justify and ex- 
 plain in the pages that follow; and I have 
 tried to make clear what seem to me to be 
 the primaries from which we should never 
 depart. 
 
 In conclusion I wish to express my very 
 hearty appreciation of the assistance given 
 me by my young friend, Mr. Kenneth An- 
 drews, both in valuable suggestions as to 
 arrangement and other matters. Without 
 
PROLOGUE xi 
 
 his constant encouragement and help, I doubt 
 if I could have stuck to this book until I 
 had finished it, for I am a man of action, 
 not of words, and writing is new to me. I 
 wanted to put Mr. Andrews' name along with 
 mine on the title page, but he was too modest, 
 and would not let me. 
 
 Louis Calvert. 
 New York, 
 
 December, 1917. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Prologue v 
 
 IxTRODucTiox. By Clayton Hamilton . . . xvii 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. "I Know I Have It in Me ! " 3 
 
 Art Must Be an Absolute Mistress — Selling Our 
 Lives for a Price — Charlotte Cushman's Creed — Why 
 Do I Want to Be an Actor? — Indispensable Qualifica- 
 tions: Enthusiasm, "Humanity," Imagination, Voice, 
 Personal Appearance. 
 
 II. Entering the Profession 19 
 
 Competition in Actor's Profession No Keener than 
 in Any Other— " Pull " of Little Value— The Road 
 Company — The Evils of Endless Repetition — Stay- 
 ing on Broadway — How One-part Actors Are Devel- 
 oped — Actor and Manager Both Harmed by "Type" 
 Casting — The Stock Company — The Varied Experi- 
 ence It Provides — The Repertoire — No Star, No 
 Squirrel-in-a-Cage Routine, Team-work. 
 
 III. The Voice — the Instrument We Play ... 43 
 
 Seeming to Speak Naturally — The Handicap of a 
 Half-trained Voice — Our Voice: Our Point of Con- 
 tact with Our Public— The Dread of "Elocution"— 
 The Art of Concealing Art — Harry Lauder's Re- 
 markable Voice — Charles Kean's Stage Voice — The 
 Power of Tones — Saving the Voice — The Two Pri- 
 mary Tones — Distinct Utterance a Simple Achieve- 
 ment — Laughing Infectiously — Taste in Using One's 
 Technical Skill. 
 
 IV. Getting Inside One's Part ..... 61 
 
 Learning Words Before We Know Their Meaning 
 — Study the Character for Light on the Words, Not 
 the Words for Light on the Character — We Should 
 Know Our Part's Relation to the Whole— The Es- 
 sence of Illusory Impersonation — Dissolving Shylock 
 into His Component Parts — How An}- Character Can 
 
xiv CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Be Made to Reveal Itself from a Study of the 
 Lines— The Second Step: Becoming a Shy lock— The 
 Third Step: Thinking out Shylock in Wall Street 
 Terms— The Last Step: Associating Our New Self 
 with the Play as a Whole— This Formula Applies to 
 Plays Modern and Classical. 
 
 V. The Eye and the Hands 79 
 
 "Five-finger Exercises" Necessary for the Actor, 
 Too — Revealing the Unexpressed Emotions — Irving as 
 Becket— " One- Thing at a Time "—Doing Just Enough 
 — Coquelin's Peculiar Mannerism — When in Doubt Do 
 Nothing— The Set Gestures of the Good Old Days— 
 An Example of Splendid Repose — Saving Bits of 
 Business for Future Use — Gestures Grow from Char- 
 acter, Not from Lines — Heroic Gestures for Heroic 
 Plays — Never Let Them See too Much. 
 
 VI. The Art of Doing Nothing 96 
 
 One Actor Cannot Stand Alone — Supplementing the 
 Speeches of Others — Sweet Nell of Old Drury and 
 The Lady of Lyons — Team-work Will Cover a Mul- 
 titude of Sins — Pinero's Advice — Coaxing the Audi- 
 ence to Listen — Listening Through Long Speeches — 
 Know What You Are Going to Do When Silent — 
 Varying Our Reading — Miming Must Grow from 
 the Character — Retaining the Illusion of the First 
 Time— The Point, Thrust, and Lunge— Thinking Lines 
 —Giving the Audience a Rest— Little Things All 
 Count. 
 
 VII. The Emotions 121 
 
 All Acting Is Emotional, and All Actors Must Be 
 Capable of Projecting the Primary Emotions — Trick- 
 ing an Audience — Sir Herbert Tree's Finesse — In 
 Called Back — His Artifice in Trilby — In Jim the 
 Penman — His Wolsey's Falseness — We Must Draw 
 Our Interpretation Solely from the Author's Lines- 
 Tree's Shylock Saved by a Trick — Coquelin's Cyrano 
 Merely Make-believe — Ristori's Comment on Rachel 
 — Should We Literally Feel the Emotions We Por- 
 tray? — Irving's Opinion, and Ellen Terry's — Guiding 
 Oneself Through the Impassioned Speech — Crescendo 
 of Emotion — Beginning Gently — Nervousness Often 
 a Good Thing— Othello's Emotion— The "After- 
 swell" — Ignoring the Audience. 
 
CONTENTS XV 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 VIII. Making an Audience Laugh 152 
 
 Audience Must Be Taken into Partnership in 
 Comedy — The Comedian Must Sense His Audience — 
 Allowing for the Laugh — Letting the Audience Have 
 Its Head; Major Barbara — Making Them Save up 
 Their Laughter — There Can Be Too Much Laughter 
 in a Play — Shaw's Request — Remaining Unconscious 
 of Our Own Humor — To Be Infectious Any Emotion 
 Must Come from the Inside, Not from the Lines 
 Alone. 
 
 IX. " Futures " and the Paradox of the Amateur . 161 
 Brilliant Promise of the Beginner Often Unful- 
 filled — Lawrence Irving's Grotesque Early Work — 
 Henry Irving: a Prophet Without Honor in Man- 
 chester — Barry Sullivan's Disastrous Conservatism — 
 The Dangerous Transitional Stage Between the 
 Amateur and the Professional — The " Sufficiently 
 Unprofessional " Wisconsin Players — Acting is Danc- 
 ing in Shackles — Exchanging Intuition for Tech- 
 nique — The Moffat Company and Bunty Pulls the 
 Strings — Studied Simplicity and Acquired Natural- 
 Bess. 
 
 K 
 
 X. The Effect of Realistic Scenery and Lighting 
 
 ON the Actor 176 
 
 Work of the Actor Inextricably Interwoven with 
 That of the Producer, Scenic Artist, and Others — 
 Scenery Should Suggest not Copy Life, Should 
 Stimulate not Overfeed or Starve the Imagination — 
 The Ironworks in Galsworthy's Strife, " Real " and 
 Suggested — Granville Barker's Setting for Androcles 
 and the Lion: Proudly Crude and Frankly Primitive 
 — The Primary Purpose of All Scenery — Wlien the 
 Imaginative Artist, the Interior Decorator, and the 
 Landscape Gardener Clash — The Mechanical Ship 
 That Would Not Wreck and the Simpler Substitute — 
 How Actors Are Often Swamped by Scenery — The 
 Need of Co-ordination — The Terrors of Strange Fur- 
 niture — Many Plays Ruined by Lack of Method — 
 Lighting Which Blurs or Silhouettes the Faces of 
 the Actors — Natural Lighting — Distracting Lights — 
 Moonlight — Seeking the Impression of Reality, Not 
 Reality Itself. 
 
xvi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XI. Music and Costumes versus the Actor . . . 213 
 The Work of Each Specialist Should Be Blended 
 into a Coherent Whole — The Function of Costume — 
 Allowing for the Distraction of Striking Costumes — 
 The Play Must Be Always Supreme — Irving's Clash 
 with His Orchestra Leader — The Voice of the Actor 
 the Melody of the Piece, All Else the Accompaniment. 
 
 XII. The "Tone" of a Performance . . . .225 
 Where the Real Charm of a Charming Play Lies 
 — The Eleventh-hour Rescue of Kismet — Keeping 
 One's Comedy in Key — AVarfield's Rage in The 
 Music Master — Tad Mortimer's Rebellion in The 
 Thunderbolt — Wrong Emphasis Fatal for Othello 
 and Many of Shakespeare's Plays — How The Con- 
 cert Was Ruined in London — How to Insure Har- 
 mony of Tone — Actors Are Not Mechanics — Keeping 
 Close to the Primaries. 
 
 XIII. Traditions 243 
 
 " Lest We Forget "—The " Old-fashioned " Methods 
 
 of Ten or Twenty Years Ago — Methods Change, but 
 Art Is Constant — No Temple for the Precious Lore 
 of the Actor's Art — There Must Have Been Great Ac- 
 tors to Perform the Great Plays of the Past — The 
 Strong Appeal of the Old Method — Expressing Emo- 
 tion and Repressing Emotion — Gordon Craig, the 
 Passionate Dilettante — " Unattached " Cleverness. 
 
 XIV. The Art of Acting •. 257 
 
 Is Acting a Dependent, Imitative Art, or Is It 
 
 Creative? — Two Insignificant Plays, Rip Van Winkle 
 and The Music Master, Which Actors Made Enor- 
 mous Successes — The Folly of Comparing the Art of 
 the Actor with That of the Poet or Painter — When 
 a Play Is a Play — Why the Actor's Work Is Creative 
 and Not Imitative — The Place of the Actor's Art. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 TO quote that phrase so dear to after- 
 dinner speakers, — Mr. Louis Calvert 
 " needs no introduction " as an artist 
 of the theater; but there is, at least, a novel 
 pleasure in announcing his first appearance 
 as an author. 
 
 Any treatise on the art of acting de- 
 pends for its importance on the experience, 
 and consequent authority, of the man who 
 has prepared it. No other art, in its meth- 
 ods of employing means to the achievement 
 of an end, is so little understood by non- 
 practitioners.. The laws of play-making have 
 been codified most clearly by critics who have 
 never written plays, — like Aristotle, for ex- 
 ample, or — to cite a modern instance — Mr. 
 William Archer. The most serviceable text- 
 books of harmony and counterpoint have been 
 written, not by great musicians or composers, 
 but by humbler music-teachers. The ablest 
 explanations of the technical devices em- 
 ployed in painting, in sculpture, and in archi- 
 
 xvii 
 
xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 tecture have been made by men of letters, 
 whose actual practice of the art which formed 
 the subject of their study has been merely 
 incidental. But acting is the one art whose 
 fundamental principles are rarely, if ever, 
 appreciated by the layman. 
 
 It is not unfair to state that no " dramatic 
 critic" of the present time (and the writer 
 of this sentence is one among the many) 
 knows anything at all about the craftsman- 
 ship of acting. " Dramatic critics " are often 
 able to elucidate the problems of the play- 
 wright. Whether or not they happen to have 
 written plays, they are, at least, accustomed 
 to the processes of authorship: they can tell 
 a good play from a bad play, and can ex- 
 plain to the public the reason why one play 
 is worthy of consideration and another worthy 
 only of contempt. But, when it comes to 
 " criticising " actors, they can merely state 
 that they liked one performer and did not 
 like another, and cannot — in either case — ex- 
 plain the reason why. 
 
 In my entire association with the theater — 
 which stretches back over a period of fifteen 
 years — I have never met a man, however 
 cultured, whose opinions on the art of acting 
 
^. 
 
 INTRODUCTION xlx 
 
 ere of any value, unless he was himself an 
 actor, a stage-director, or a playwright; and, 
 , from conversations with my elders, I have 
 ' gathered evidence of only two laymen in the 
 ^Enghsh-speaking world whose appreciation 
 of this art could be regarded as authoritative. 
 One of these was George Henry Lewes, whose 
 treatise On Actors and the Art of Acting — 
 originally published in the early eighteen- 
 seventies — is still accepted as a standard work, 
 because no subsequent " dramatic critic " has 
 been able to transcend and supersede it. The 
 other was Professor Fleeming Jenkin, — the 
 friend and teacher of Robert Louis Stevenson 
 at the University of Edinburgh; but Jenkin 
 was noted as an amateur actor, and perhaps, 
 on this account, cannot rightly be regarded 
 ^ a non-practitioner. 
 
 *^n consequence of this condition, a discus- 
 ,m)n of the problems of the actor — to be at 
 all authoritative — must be written by an 
 actor, and not by a man of letters, — not 
 even by that special type of literary crafts- 
 man that is generally known as a " dramatic 
 critic." But the unfortunate fact remains, 
 and must frankly be admitted, that most 
 I actors cannot write. This is, of course, the 
 
XX INTRODUCTION 
 
 reason why the art of acting has been beg- 
 gared, in nearly every period, of adequate 
 description. The men who really understood 
 the fundamentals of the craft were tongue- 
 tied, and could not express themselves in 
 print. The little that I know about the art 
 of stage-projection — and I mention this detail 
 because it typifies the experience of many 
 other writers — has been taught me in the 
 storm and stress of actual rehearsals under 
 the direction of such actors as Henry Miller, 
 Richard Mansfield, and George M. Cohan; 
 yet I doubt if any of these admitted artists 
 of the theater could have summoned either 
 time or inclination or ability to impart to the 
 reading public, through the medium of print, 
 the lessons they have handed down, by word 
 of mouth, to many authors like myself. The 
 art of acting can be taught only by an actor; 
 but very few actors have been able, or even 
 willing, to convey their knowledge of the art 
 beyond the barrier of the footlights. 
 
 The author of the present treatise has been 
 prominent before the eyes of the theater- 
 going public of America since 1909, when 
 he was invited overseas to serve as classical 
 producer and one of the leading actors of the 
 
 1 
 
INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 New Theater, in New York, — that interesting 
 institution which failed only because the 
 monumental edifice which housed it more 
 nearly resembled a mausoleum than a mod- 
 ern playhouse. At the New Theater, from 
 1909 to 1911, Mr. Calvert appeared — as faith- 
 ful theater-goers will remember — in the fol- 
 lowing parts: The Grand Duke in The Cot-,, 
 tage in the Air, John Anthony in ^trjfe^^r 
 Peter Teazle in The School for l^candal, Al- 
 fred Thompsett in Don; Sir_Taby Belch in 
 Twelfth Night, Falstaff in The Merry Wives 
 of Windsor, James Mortimore in The Thun- 
 derbolt, Dr. Jiittner in Old Heidelberg, and 
 Sir Pitt Crawley in Vanity Fair, 
 
 After the collapse of the New Theater, Mr. 
 Calvert went back to London. In June, 
 1911, he apx)eared at the Savoy Theater as 
 Major Bagstock in Dornbey and Son; on June 
 27, he impersonated Simon Ingot in a gala 
 performance of David Garrick at His Maj- 
 esty's Theater; in September of the same 
 year, he played Mercutio in Fred Terry's 
 production of Romeo and Juliet; and, in 
 November, he appeared as Micawber in Wil- 
 kins Micawber. In the autumn of 1915, Mr. 
 Calvert returned to New York, to appear, 
 
xxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 first of all, in a play of brief duration called 
 The Bargain, Shortly afterward, he became 
 associated with Grace George in her am- 
 bitious and apparently successful season of 
 repertory at The Playhouse. In the spring 
 of 1916, Mr. Calvert contributed to the 
 celebration of the tercentenary of Shake- 
 speare's death by producing, at the Century 
 Theater, a notable rendition of The Tempest, 
 in which he also played the part of Prospero. 
 
 These activities — as actor and as stage- 
 director — have kept Mr. Calvert " on the 
 front page," so to speak, throughout the 
 last ten years; but the reading public may 
 need to be reminded of the long and arduous 
 experience which preceded these achievements 
 of his prime. 
 
 Louis Calvert was born in Manchester on 
 November 25, 1859. He comes of an old and 
 celebrated family of actors; and his mother, 
 Mrs. Charles Calvert, is remembered not only 
 as a very able actress but also as the author 
 of an interesting book of memoirs, entitled 
 Sixty-eight Years on the Stage. Louis Cal- 
 vert made his first appearance in 1878, at the 
 Theater Royal, Durban, in Natal. The next 
 year, he traveled from South Africa to Aus- 
 
INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 tralia and acted at the Theater Royal, Mel- 
 bourne. In 1880, he returned to England; 
 toured, for a time, with John Dewhurst, Miss 
 Wallis, and Osmond Tearle; and played a 
 " stock " season at Margate with Sarah 
 Thorne. Mr. Calvert's first appearance in 
 London was made at the Drury Lane Thea- 
 ter in 1886, in a piece called A Run of 
 Luck, The next year, he was engaged with 
 Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theater. Mr. 
 Calvert came to America for the first time 
 in 1887, and toured this country for two sea- 
 sons in support of Mrs. Langtry. 
 
 After his return to England, Mr. Calvert 
 organized in 1890 a company of his own and 
 produced, in the provinces, a large number of 
 Shakespeare's plays. Browning's A Blot in 
 the ^Scutcheon, Ibsen's Rosviersholm and An 
 Enemy of the People, and Goethe's Clavigo, 
 
 At Her Majesty's Theater, in London, in 
 1898, Mr. Calvert assisted Sir Herbert Tree 
 in producing Julius Ccesar and played the 
 part of Casca; and, the next year, he created 
 the character of Porthos in The Musketeers, 
 In 1899, he returned to the Lyceum Theater, 
 and appeared once more in the company of 
 Sir Henry Irving, as Billaud-Varennes in 
 
xxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 Robespierre. In 1900, he directed the first 
 EngHsh production of Cyrano de Bergerac, 
 with Sir Charles Wyndham in the leading 
 part. In 1901 he appeared, at the Globe 
 Theater, in Sweet Nell of Old Drury; and, at 
 the Comedy Theater, in 1904, he played the 
 part of Towzer in Sunday. 
 
 In 1905, when Vedrenne and Bark er initi- 
 ated their epoch-making series of experiments 
 at the Court Theater in Sloane Square, Mr. 
 Calvert was a prominent participant in their 
 undertakings. He created the parts of John 
 Broadbent in John Bull's Other Island and 
 the Waiter in You Never Can Tell; and — 
 after a brief interval at Wyndham's Theater 
 in a piece called Captain Drew on Leave — he 
 returned to the Court Theater to create the 
 part of Andrew Undershaft in Major Bar- 
 bara and to resume his original role in a " re- 
 vival " of John Bull's Other Island. 
 
 In the autumn of 1906, Mr. Calvert pro- 
 duced, at the New Theater in London, a suc- 
 cessful comic opera called Amasis. In 1907, 
 in conjunction with Frederic Harrison, he 
 presented Sweet Kitty Bellairs at the Hay- 
 market Theater, and appeared in the part of 
 Colonel Villiers. In 1908, at the St. James's 
 
INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 Theater, Mr. Calvert created the character 
 of James Mortimore in The Thunderbolt, — 
 a part which he was destined later to resume 
 at the New Theater in NTew York. During 
 the same year — 1908 — he appeared at the 
 Aldwych Theater as Captain Williams in 
 Paid in Full and at the Lyric Theater as 
 Pistol in Henry V. 
 
 In 1909, Mr. Calvert was seen, at His 
 Majesty's Theater, as David Ives in The 
 Dancing Girl; at the Lyric Theater, as Fal- 
 staff in King Henry IV [Part /]; at the 
 Royalty Theater, as Holt St. John in What 
 the Public Wants; and again at His Maj- 
 esty's Theater, as Peter Stockmann in An 
 Enemy of the People. 
 
 A momentary glance at the record which 
 has been reviewed in this hasty summary of 
 the career of Mr. Calvert should be sufficient 
 to convince the most skeptical of critics that 
 this " old-stager " is competent to talk about 
 the mainsprings of an art that, to most ob- 
 servers, has remained beyond the reach of 
 scientific searching. Mr. Calvert knows 
 whereof he speaks. For forty years, he has 
 been an actor; for nearly thirty years, he has 
 been a stage-director; and, during these ac- 
 
xxvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 cumulated decades, very few of the tricks of 
 his trade have escaped his observation. 
 
 If the writer of an introduction may speak 
 personally, without sacrifice of tact, I should 
 like to say that I have learned a great deal 
 about the craftsmanship of acting from a 
 studious perusal of this manuscript of Mr. 
 Calvert's. This book has clarified and codi- 
 fied many principles that seemed, in my own 
 mind, to be hovering upon the verge of for- 
 mulation. To the general reader, a bald and 
 crude confession of my honest wish that I 
 might have been endowed, by knowledge and 
 experience, to write this book myself may 
 seem extraneous; but such confessions are not 
 without significance for men whose lives are 
 spent in a sincere endeavor to understand and 
 to explain the problems of the arts. 
 
 Another point which seems to me remark- 
 able is the purely hterary value of this book 
 of Mr. Calvert's. He has written not only a 
 text-book of a craft that stands especially in 
 need of logical elucidation, but also a creative 
 and unconscious work in that most intimate 
 of literary genres which is labeled, in our 
 libraries, under the head of " autobiography." 
 Problems of the Actor may be recommended, 
 
INTRODUCTION xxvii 
 
 first of all, as a serviceable manual for those 
 apprenticed to the art of acting; but it is 
 interesting also to those whose sense of life ig 
 more insistent than their sense of the theater. 
 The sympathy, the kindliness, the humor, the 
 wisdom, the human understanding, and the 
 tact displayed by Mr. Calvert in the composi- 
 tion of this commentary on the technique of 
 an art to which the earnest efforts of nearly 
 half a century have been applied, appear — in 
 my opinion — to lift this unpretentious book 
 to the level of creative literature. Literature 
 may be defined as an adequate expression, on 
 the printed page, of a great love for a great 
 thing that has been felt by a great man. . . . 
 The after-dinner speaker is about to take 
 his seat. ..." Ladies and Gentlemen, — I 
 present to you an actor and an author, — Mr. 
 Louis Calvert. ..." 
 
 Clayton Hamilton. 
 
 New York City, 
 February, 1918. 
 
PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
CHAPTER I ' ._.... 
 
 " I KNOW I HAVE IT IN ME ! " 
 
 Art Must Be an Absolute Mistress — Selling Our Lives 
 for a Price — Charlotte Cushman's Creed — Why Do 
 I Want to Be an Actor? — Indispensable Qualifica- 
 tions: Enthusiasm^ "Humanity/' Imagination, Voice, 
 Personal Appearance. 
 
 THERE can be little doubt that a man's 
 ultimate position in the dramatic pro- 
 fession depends very largely upon the 
 motives he has when he enters it. I feel that 
 I have seen the truth of this demonstrated 
 over and over again. I believe I may state 
 as a fact, and not as the exhortation of an 
 idealist, that unless a man is drawn to the 
 art of acting for its own sake, unless he is 
 prepared to make great sacrifices for the 
 sake of his art, he can never attain genuine 
 success on the stage. If he vaguely proposes 
 to use the stage as a means of self-glorifica- 
 tion, as a means of selfish advancement, it is 
 
 3 
 
4 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 a simple truth that he will be incapable of 
 bringing into play those peculiar qualities of 
 sincere apj»lication and patient study which 
 aa:^ '.essential for any noteworthy progress. 
 Speaking from the most practical point of 
 view, it does not pay to spend one's hfe.in 
 an art, if we are not prepared to acknowledge 
 the supremacy of the art, to realize that art 
 is to be our master. Art: let it be understood 
 at the outset that I shall try to use this 
 much-abused word in its true sense ; or rather, 
 since it has been manhandled so promiscu- 
 ously, perhaps I should say that I shall try 
 to be consistent in my use of it. All acting 
 is not art, just as all painting is not art, nor 
 all writing; but when acting takes on the 
 imaginative, creative qualities (as all great 
 acting must do) it is art. Until the actor 
 does endow his work with these precious at- 
 tributes, no matter how skilful he may be, 
 he is a craftsman, not an artist. So we shall 
 speak now of the Craft of Acting, again of 
 the Art of Acting; for they are quite distinct. 
 We may analyze the technique or the craft of 
 
 I 
 
" I KNOW I HAVE IT IN ME ! " 5 
 
 the actor, but his art is above our analysis, 
 and it is only confusing — and a little un- 
 dignified — to use the higher-sounding word 
 for the humbler thing. For instance, no actor 
 has ever been a "master of his art"; he 
 has been a master of the technicalities only; 
 and he has made himself so with resolute 
 patience. Art, in its true sense, is infinite 
 and cannot be taught, and what cannot be 
 taught cannot be mastered. We must serve 
 our art, we must not try to make it serve us. 
 And if, by a blind devotion and enthu- 
 siasm and a desire and willingness to work in 
 order to perfect the "feeling" that is in us, 
 we do become famous at last, our reward is 
 much nobler and worth the great effort it 
 has cost. We shall have the satisfaction of 
 knowing that we have run straight, and that 
 is a consideration which looms much larger at 
 sixty than it does at twenty. The knowledge 
 that we owe our advancement to honest merit 
 and a sincere study of our craft will bring 
 a pleasure that the self-centered man never 
 attains. 
 
6 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 There are, it is true, thoroughly selfish men 
 who have reached what, for want of a better 
 name, we call Success. But those " success- 
 ful actors " are not the ones who are re- 
 membered long after their work is done. 
 They may have won a certain vogue by their 
 cleverness; but the enduring esteem of those 
 whose opinions count is founded upon a 
 broader, deeper base. How much better our 
 stage would be if we had more men like 
 Edwin Booth in the profession. No name, 
 in my opinion, is remembered with so much 
 reverence and affection as his. He was a. 
 man full of the kindest consideration for his 
 fellow actors, full of loyalty to the best in 
 his art. His fame rests upon these personal 
 qualities as well as upon his technical skill. 
 The great Ristori, also, was above pettiness, 
 above professional selfishness; and I regard 
 her as one of the greatest tragediennes I have 
 ever seen. But the rewards of selfishness are 
 pretty empty at best; and I do not believe 
 there is a single actor who has reached the 
 pinnacle of his ambition through unscrupu- 
 
" I KNOW I HAVE IT IN ME ! " 7 
 
 lous methods who does not regret, in his heart, 
 that he did not achieve it with clean hands. I 
 know men who have won this kind of success, 
 and they are not what I should call really 
 happy. The reward of their life-work is this 
 "success"; but of what use is it to them? 
 Was it worth spending a lifetime to win? 
 It is worth while to meditate on these simple 
 considerations in the dewy period when we 
 are preparing to sell our life for a price — a 
 period we all pass through. It is worth see- 
 ing to it that we are striving for something 
 we shall be glad to possess after the struggle 
 is finished. 
 
 *' Nought's had^ all's spent 
 Where our desire is got without content." 
 
 Charlotte Cushman, on her farewell night 
 at Booth's Theater in 1874, said: "To be 
 thoroughly in earnest, intensely in earnest in 
 all my thoughts and actions, became my single 
 idea; and I honestly believe herein lies the 
 secret of my success in life. I do not be- 
 lieve any great success in any art can be 
 achieved without it. I say this to the begin- 
 
8 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 ners in my profession; and I am sure all the 
 associates in my art, who have honored me 
 with their presence on this occasion, will in- 
 dorse what I say in this: Art is an abso- 
 lute mistress; she will not be coquetted with 
 or slighted; she requires the most entire self- 
 devotion, and she rewards with grand 
 triumphs." 
 
 Therefore I should advise anyone who is 
 thinking of taking up the stage as his life- 
 work to put himself, first of all, under a rigid 
 and honest examination; and that he discover 
 from whence springs his desire to become an 
 actor. If he has a general notion that the 
 actor's is a pleasant and varied life, and an 
 easy way to earn his bread and butter, he 
 should admit to himself that that is the rea- 
 son he feels drawn to the stage. This illu- 
 sion about the theater is not an unnatural one. 
 No profession, I venture to say, looks so easy 
 from the outside; but for anyone who, thus 
 lightly, joins the ranks of actors there is sure 
 to be an awakening eventually. I think the 
 most pathetic spectacles, in a profession that 
 
" I KNOW I HAVE IT IN ME! " 9 
 
 has its share of pathos, are the failures of 
 those who might have been successful and 
 content if they had followed other walks in 
 life for which their natural attributes fitted 
 them. But as actors they are failures, so 
 regarded by themselves and their friends, and 
 they will always be failures. It is surely 
 better, then, to weigh our natural advantages 
 and disadvantages at the beginning instead 
 of later. 
 
 Of course it is much easier to set a man 
 looking for natural aptitudes than it is to tell 
 him what they are and just which ones he 
 should possess if he is to succeed on the 
 stage. It is not possible to catalogue and 
 define, in such a matter, and it would be 
 most futile to attempt it. Indeed in all our 
 discussions of the various phases of the 
 actor's craft, let it be borne in mind that we 
 are not attempting to dogmatize; we are 
 attempting to reduce the actor's ci^ft to any 
 system of rules. That cai|||pPllfb done. You 
 cannot teach a person to he an actor as you 
 teach him to become a stenographer. The 
 
10 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 actor's real work begins where the stenog- 
 rapher's ends; for once the latter has mas- 
 tered the technicalities of shorthand and type- 
 writing, it is thereafter principally a question 
 of constant practice. But the actor uses 
 his technical groundwork merely as a founda- 
 tion. As he goes on into his profession his 
 progress depends not so much on his mastery 
 of the simple technique of using his hands 
 and feet, getting on and off the stage, throw- 
 ing out his voice, and the like (those rudi- 
 ments are taken for granted) ; but he must 
 depend more upon other higher qualities: 
 imagination, his sense of humor, his " per- 
 sonality." In acting, as in stenography or 
 anything else, the simple rudiments come with 
 practice, and only thus. But acting is a crea- 
 tive art, and of course the qualities which 
 enable an artist to create are above the rule 
 
 thumb. So in this chapter, and throughout 
 the book,^ ^we sh ^l],.^trive^o suggest, not 
 define, and ril(Bfc|p#Wmlate the beginner in 
 the development oT his own abilities. 
 
 There is one big attribute that a man either 
 
 «l|g|tl] 
 the 
 
"I KNOW I HAVE IT IN ME!" 11 
 
 does or does not start out with: that is En- 
 thusiam. I beheve Enthusiasna is the first 
 asset a man or woman should have in setting 
 out on the hazardous journey that is an actor's 
 hfe. I mean genuine enthusiasm for the art 
 of acting for its own sake. That is necessary. 
 There are many setbacks, many disheartening 
 pitfalls to be met, but enthusiasm can take 
 care of them. If the beginner can assure him- 
 self that he would be happier having tried and 
 failed to succeed as an actor than he could be 
 as a moderate success in any other line of 
 work, I believe he may feel that he has the 
 enthusiasm I speak of. There is a great 
 deal in being able to regard it all as a game 
 which we play for the love of it, a game to 
 which we give our best simply because we 
 like the sport. It is possible to go at the 
 difficulties as we would the hurdles on a race- 
 course, and clear them for the fun of it. 
 That can be done with enthusiasm, but not 
 without it; and it is the spirit one should be 
 pretty sure he can muster before he starts 
 out to be an actor. 
 
12 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 Another big attribute is what actors like 
 to call " humanity." This may sound like a 
 glittering generality, but in reality it is a 
 definite and concrete thing. It is a simple 
 fact that some people do have a certain warm 
 response and sympathy for the moods of 
 others, and some do not. Without this fac- 
 ulty, I do not believe a person can ever 
 touch the hearts of an audience. There is a 
 peculiar sensitive sympathy which brings a 
 great actor or actress close to an audience 
 in a theater, and it is not an accident; it is 
 a real and positive attribute of the person on 
 the stage. I should say that it corftes from a 
 consideration and sympathy for men and 
 women. Most successful actors that I know 
 are the kind of people who like then' fellow- 
 beings. They may not be conscious of it, or 
 admit it, but they do. They cannot help 
 feeling for and with other people. Humanity 
 seems the best term for it. It is akin to what 
 may be called artistic unselfishness, without 
 which, I am firmly convinced, no very great 
 success is attainable in a profession where 
 
« I KNOW I HAVE IT IN ME ! " 13 
 
 one must depend upon the appeal he is able 
 to make to the sensitive group -heart of an 
 audience. 
 
 I know a young actor who has a decided 
 gift of clever repartee. He has the knack 
 of turning phrases and playing with words; 
 there is always a keen adroit thrust to what 
 he says. He has found, it seems to me, that if 
 there is a touch of cynicism or an under-note 
 of cruelty in his mots they are more likely to 
 strike home. Of late this cynicism and this 
 cruelty have grown with him. In whatever 
 he says (to my ears) there is the hollow ring 
 of insincerity, it colors everything he says 
 now. It is having an effect on his work. He 
 tinges what he does on the stage with this 
 barbed cleverness; his work does not touch 
 hearts and warm them, it pricks them. The 
 audiences he plays before do not give him 
 their sympathy, they sense the superficiality 
 of any emotion he seeks to portray; and I 
 think it is largely because all his emotions in 
 real life are superficial. I firmly believe that 
 unless this young fellow takes hold of himself 
 
14 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 and tries to overcome his ironic habit of mind, 
 the poison will work down through his nature 
 until it will be utterly impossible for him to 
 hold and stir and move an audience. And 
 this will be because he has allowed his cynical 
 cleverness to eat away what I call humanity. 
 
 I feel a certain confidence in making this 
 prophecy about him — or about anyone of his 
 type — because I know an older actor in the 
 midst of his career who has failed to reach the 
 place his technical abihties could gain for him 
 simply because there is no cordiality, no 
 warmth, no humanity in the appeal he makes 
 to the public. He too has this verbal clever- 
 ness ; and he has allowed it to fester and spoil 
 his career in large measure. There is a subtle 
 affinity between an audience and an actor, 
 and because this man, in reality, lacks the 
 power — or rather has allowed himself to lose 
 the power — of feeling and suffering sincerely, 
 this affinity is broken, and he never succeeds 
 in making his audiences feel his emotions as 
 their own. 
 
 I am thinking, also, of an actress with 
 
" I KNOW I HAVE IT IN ME ! " 15 
 
 whom I was associated in my youth. She was 
 full of dramatic power, she had a thorough 
 mastery of technique; but her acting, brilliant 
 though it was, had a coldness and detachment 
 about it. She had few faults as an actress, 
 but one of them was fatal: she lacked the 
 power to attract the public. While she was 
 young her public forgave her many things, 
 but as she grew older, and lost the precious 
 bloom of youth, they turned away from her. 
 Eventually she retired from the stage in dis- 
 couragement, and was soon forgotten. I be- 
 lieve this failure of hers lay, not the least in 
 her work, but in herself. She herself was a 
 brilliant woman, but cold, quite unresponsive 
 to the gentler emotions of cordiality and sim- 
 ple warmness of heart. She pretended to no 
 love of humanity, indeed she seemed rather 
 to foster a certain disdain for mankind in 
 general. 
 
 I do not, for a moment, believe that the 
 germ of humanity had been absent from her 
 nature when she was young, but certainly she 
 had not allowed it to develop. Whether such 
 
16 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 an impalpable quality as humanity can be 
 deliberately cultivated may be a question, 
 but it is my opinion that it can be. We can, 
 by taking thought, guide ourselves in our 
 attitude toward others; and if we are to 
 reproduce faithfully real people and real emo- 
 tions as our life-work, it is essential that we 
 ;know people sympathetically, and like them, 
 and feel with them when they laugh or sigh. 
 In any case, it is such a vital qualification 
 for anyone who thinks of taking up the stage, 
 that it is worth serious thought and effort. 
 
 One should also be gifted with imagination; 
 and be possessed of a temperament that is 
 far from placid; while a sense. oLimmor is 
 indeed one of the prime requisites. If one 
 does not possess these germs in his composi- 
 tion, there seems httle doubt that he will be 
 more or less handicapped from the outset. 
 
 With regard to the more obvious require- 
 ments the voice, naturally, is the most impor- 
 tant. If there is any defect in it that cannot 
 be remedied, it is only wisdom to cast aside all 
 thoughts of the stage. Of course it may 
 
" I KNOW I HAVE IT IN ME ! " 17 
 
 have many defects, yet still be capable of be- 
 coming a powerful instrument through one's 
 diligence and hard work in perfecting it. A 
 great essential to the proper development and 
 management of the voice, too, is an eax-ioiL 
 musi c. I do not believe that a person who 
 does not possess a fairly good ear can ever 
 speak with any great effectiveness on the 
 stage. He cannot do it, I am very sure, with- 
 out a disproportionate amount of labor. The 
 natural speaking voice, after all, is full of 
 music; and it is as necessary, on the stage, to 
 speak at concert pitch as it is to sing at con- 
 cert pitch. One should be able to catch tones 
 of voice frpm others, and to give tones accu- 
 rately himself, or the quality of his speech 
 cannot be pleasing or attractive to an audi- 
 ence. 
 
 Physical fitness is also a point to consider. 
 The stage is not a place for a person who is 
 deformed — that is one of the limitations of 
 the art of the theater, and one of its misfor- 
 tunes. Cripples have become great painters, 
 great musicians, great writers; but the diffi- 
 
18 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 culties such a person must overcome on the 
 stage are, obviously, well-nigh insuperable. 
 On the other hand, I do not regard noticeable 
 physical attractiveness as one of the prime 
 requisites for a successful stage career. I 
 am not even sure that a handsome face and 
 figure are always helpful. There is a natural 
 temptation to depend too much on one's pres- 
 ence, and to disregard the development of 
 other, more enduring, qualities. I think a 
 reasonably healthy and pleasing appearance 
 is all one needs. 
 
 I do not mean that one who possesses all 
 of these indispensable primary qualifications, 
 even in a marked degree, has any open road 
 before him. I do not mean that they give 
 him any particular advantage, but simply that 
 they entitle him to enter the struggle — with- 
 out them he would be foolish to enter it at 
 all. Given, then, these general qualifications 
 one is faced with the vital problem of choos- 
 ing the door through which he is to enter his 
 profession. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 ENTERING THE PROFESSION 
 
 Competition in Actor's Profession No Keener than in 
 Any Other— "Pull" of Little Value— The Road 
 Company — The Evils of Endless Repetition — Stay- 
 ing on Broadway — How One-part Actors Are Devel- ^ 
 oped — Actor and Manager Both Harmed by " Type " 
 Casting — The Stock Company — The Varied Experi- 
 ence It Provides — The Repertoire — No Star, No 
 Squirrel-in-a-Cage Routine, Team-work. 
 
 I FEEL that I should remind anyone who 
 is ambitious to enter the dramatic profes- 
 sion that the purpose of this book is to en- 
 courage, not discourage. It is inevitable, as we 
 examine the conditions which prevail in the 
 theater, — and especially those which affect the 
 novice — that we should speak first of all of the 
 difficulties he may expect to meet. We should 
 not exaggerate those hardships nor paint too 
 dismaying a picture of them. It is well to 
 know the difficulties are there, and to know 
 something of their nature; but it is a mistake 
 
 19 
 
20 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 a 
 
 ■ '^ ^. to be frightened by them. If a man is to 
 succeed in any profession he must be pre- 
 pared to overcome innumerable obstacles. 
 The competition in the actor's profession is 
 keen, but no keener than in the lawyer's pro- 
 fession or the physician's profession. The 
 ■J secretof^success^^in this profession, as in any 
 yii^J^t^, is hard work properly directed. It is 
 not by ' any divine dispensation nor any in- 
 nate strain of unique genius that an actor 
 reaches success; to my mind the successful 
 "^ professional actor is a greater being than the 
 
 ^ ambitious amateur only by virtue of longer 
 experience and harder work. No matter 
 what the youngster might set his heart on 
 and go after, he would find a lot of others 
 after the same thing; and his chance of get- 
 ting it would be as good as theirs. The per- 
 son who succeeds in this profession is the one 
 who sets himself to master the t echnical 
 phases of his craft, and guides his course un- 
 swervingly by the principles which his study 
 proves are sound. 
 
 As a matter of fact, I think in the actor's 
 
ENTERING THE PROFESSION 21 
 
 profession, more perhaps than in any other, 
 the beginner starts on even terms with his 
 competitors. " Pull " and " influence " can 
 have little to do with progress on the stage. 
 The young man or woman who is pushed 
 along prematurely is only harmed. If a 
 young actor makes a failure in a part that is 
 too big for him, his path thereafter is much 
 harder than that of the man who plugs along . 
 in unimportant parts, many of which may be 
 unworthy of his ability; but which enable him 
 to rise eventually on his own merits. 
 
 I have often been asked for advice on the 
 best way to set about becoming an actor. It 
 is a question about which one hesitates to be 
 arbitrary, although to me there seems but 
 one answer possible. Before I state my 
 opinion, however, it might be profitable to 
 speak of the various possibilities which are 
 open. 
 
 Usually the first thing the novice pro- 
 poses is to go to New York and make the 
 rounds of the managers' offices looking for an 
 engagement. If one does this, he may sue- 
 
22 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 ceed in getting work in a road company or- 
 ganized to exploit some one particular play, 
 which has already made a success in the 
 metropolis. The majority of actors in this 
 country earn their living in companies of this 
 kind. They engage to play on the road for 
 an average of from thirty to forty weeks in 
 a season, and to give eight performances a 
 week. This means that they repeat their re- 
 spective parts over two or three hundred 
 times. After a man finds himself and gets 
 some sort of start in his career, such a life 
 is not without its compensations; but while 
 he's a fledgling, with everything to learn, it 
 is, in my opinion, worse than useless. 
 
 Of course the part which an unknown 
 would get would be very small, containing 
 only a few unimportant lines. One can learn 
 little about the art of acting by repeating 
 the same few lines three hundred times. In 
 spite of the best intentions in the world he 
 is likely to fall into the way of parroting 
 his lines, and going through the scanty stage 
 business he may have with scarcely a thought 
 
ENTERING THE PROFESSION 23 
 
 of its bearing on the play. Even with the 
 best of actors, this constant and endless repe- 
 tition is apt to become pretty mechanical. 
 Forbes-Robertson once told me, when he was 
 playing in The Passing of the Third Floor 
 Backj that the part was making him terribly 
 nervous. He said that once or twice he had 
 actually forgotten what act he was in at the 
 moment; and then, on coming to him.self, had 
 been amazed to find that his tongue was faith- 
 fully repeating the proper lines! And if the \ 
 constant repetition consequent to a long run 
 has such an effect on a finished artist like 
 Forbes-Robertson it is easy to imagine what 
 it might do to a man of tender experience. 
 
 The great Madame Ristori never played in 
 English until she was nearly seventy years 
 of age. She never really learned English 
 of course; that is she thought in Italian, 
 and learned the English words of her parts 
 by their sound. She was able to do most 
 effective work, great actress that she was, 
 but this practice of parroting had its dan- 
 gers. When she was supposed to say to Lord 
 
24 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 Burleigh, " Ah, remember Babbington's 
 bloody head, my old friend! " she said instead, 
 " Remember Babbington's head, my bloody 
 old friend!" This, of course, is an un- 
 usual case, but parroting of any kind is 
 dangerous. 
 
 As a young man I was touring in Eng- 
 land as Pierre Lorance in a play called Proofs 
 which was later produced in this country 
 under the name of A Celebrated Case, We 
 opened in Nottingham one Monday night, and 
 I believe it must have been about my two- 
 hundredth performance of the part. When I 
 came to the theater on Tuesday morning 
 there was a letter waiting for me. It began: 
 
 " My Dear Sir, 
 
 What have you been doing to yourself? I saw 
 you play this part three months ago and you were fine. 
 But now, I assure you, you are lamentable. I would 
 advise that you pull yourself together." 
 
 There was no signature or address. There 
 was no way of finding out who the writer 
 was. If there had been I might have sup- 
 posed that it was written by someone who 
 
 I 
 
ENTERING THE PROFESSION 25 
 
 wanted to impress me with his knowledge of 
 the stage. But I could see no reason for his 
 taking the trouble to write a letter to me ex- 
 cept an honest artistic resentment. I told 
 the manager of the theater about it and he 
 said: "The man's crazy. I was in front 
 last night and saw your performance. There 
 was nothing wrong with it that I could see." 
 But this did not satisfy me. I worried all 
 day trying to determine what the man could 
 have seen in my work which had so roused his 
 antagonism. Then, that evening, in the 
 second act where I came on in chains, having 
 been put into prison for the murder of my 
 wife (of which I was innocent), I caught 
 myself up in the middle of my speech. I 
 was saying something about the twelve long, 
 weary years I had worked on the roads and 
 inside the prison walls linked with thieves 
 and murderers . . . and suddenly I real- 
 ized that those words were meaning nothing 
 to me! I had grown to love the sound of 
 them, I had got far away from the poignant 
 tragedy in them, and was thinking only of 
 
26 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 the momentary effect the hnes might have. 
 Then I knew why my unknown friend had 
 tried to set me right. But my fault was due 
 to the long repetition of the part. This is 
 certainly not the sort of apprenticeship that 
 is of much value to the novice who is 
 eager to learn the fundamentals of his life- 
 work. 
 
 Another way of making a start is to re- 
 main permanently in New York and seek 
 engagements in the new plays which are 
 produced on Broadway each season. The 
 parts available will be mostly so-called " walk- 
 ing on " parts. One is given the privilege 
 of coming on the stage each night with the 
 "crowd of citizens" or the "other guests"; j 
 and of course there is a chance of securing a 
 small speaking part sooner or later. One may 
 remain with the play until the end of the 
 New York run, then cut himself adrift and 
 look for another part. But such a plan re- 
 quires sufficient money in hand to tide across 
 from one engagement to the next, which pe- 
 riods of " rest " may be of one week or 
 
ENTERING THE PROFESSION 27 
 
 many; and those weeks of idleness are valu- 
 able time thrown away. 
 
 There is another big danger in starting 
 in such a way as this. The young and un- 
 known applicant, when he does receive a 
 part, is engaged not because he has any par- 
 ticular ability for it but because his physical 
 appearance is more or less what is required. 
 If, in his first part of this kind, he does satis- 
 factory work the next one he is given is likely 
 to be of the same type. As his work becomes 
 known to the managers, they naturally asso- 
 ciate him with this particular type which he 
 has happened to fall into and do well. That 
 is the way one-part or " type " actors are 
 developed. Once a man gets definitely asso-, 
 ciated with a certain kind of part he is likely 
 to be doomed to play the same old part for 
 the rest of his life. This is a blessing for 
 the man who can play only one part well, but 
 it is hard for the man capable of doing other 
 things equally well. If a man is strong 
 enough he will fight his way out of the ruck, 
 but it takes a pretty strong effort and a 
 
28 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 great deal of courage and sacrifice often — 
 and the better the man is at his unwelcome 
 specialty, the harder it is for him to break 
 away from it. 
 
 From the actor's point of view there may 
 seem to be two sides to this special part 
 proposition, since it enables many an indif- 
 ferent actor to earn a good living who would 
 find himself hard put to it if he did not have 
 his specialty to carry him along. But from 
 the point of view of the author and the pro- 
 ducer there is only one side: the play always 
 suffers. Indeed this casting of plays with 
 types seems a great weakness in the system. 
 If the play calls for a butler the actor who 
 played butlers last season and the season be- 
 fore that is sent for. When he comes on 
 the stage he is a familiar figure to many in 
 the audience. They have seen him as a 
 butler time and time again. They know just 
 how he is going about it. They know just 
 the kind of a butler he is. Surely this can- 
 not but have a detrimental effect on the play. 
 The suggestion received by the audience, un- 
 
ENTERING THE PROFESSION 29 
 
 consciously perhaps, is that the old material 
 has been hashed up for them again. This 
 may be rather a trivial matter, but anything 
 that tends to suggest conventionality is cer- 
 tainly to be shunned when a new play is put 
 on. There are usually plenty who will see 
 conventionality in it anyway, always plenty 
 who will be looking for it; surely we should 
 do everything we can do beforehand to anti- 
 cipate this criticism. And, in any case, it is 
 unquestionably bad business policy to sug- 
 gest other plays while the new one is being 
 tried. The object is to make the play seem 
 as fresh and new as possible, and one good 
 way to defeat this object is to remind the 
 audience of the many other plays which have 
 contained, in general, the same set of char- 
 acters. But even from the point of view of 
 the actor this special type casting is very 
 unfortunate. It is deadening to the actor who 
 has his heart set on big things, in the first 
 place; in the second place, most one-part 
 actors find themselves out of date sooner or 
 later, the vogue for their special way of 
 
30 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 doing their special kind of part has waned, 
 and since no one thinks of them as anything 
 but what they have been doing all their lives, 
 they are fast relegated to the ranks of the 
 has-beens. 
 
 The beginner in the profession with no 
 experience of any kind who presents himself 
 to the New York manager can only expect 
 to be chosen because he " looks the part." I 
 certainly do not consider this the proper way 
 to make a beginning; that road does not 
 lead very far or very high in the actor's 
 profession. 
 
 These, then, are a few of the objections, to 
 the road company and the New York com- 
 pany. They would seem to condemn both as 
 avenues of advancement for the novice who 
 has his hopes set on the better things. Two 
 other possibilities are open: the Stock Com- 
 pany or the Repertoire Company. 
 
 In a stock company the novice has the 
 chance to play many different parts in a 
 year; though they may be small, they will 
 be widely varied, and each one can teach 
 
ENTERING THE PROFESSION 31 
 
 him something. He will have his chance as 
 rich man, poor man, beggar-man, and thief, 
 as old men and as young men. He is able 
 to study at close range and on a simpler 
 model the intricate mechanism which is the 
 theater. 
 
 In a stock company the observation one is 
 able to practise on actors of more experience 
 is most valuable. He can study the different 
 gaits, the variations of voice and gesture, 
 which the older heads use in their different 
 impersonations. The beginner is very re- 
 ceptive and very impressionable; if he does 
 not start in a stock company but in a one- 
 play company, where the star is playing one 
 part over and over, he is in danger of aping 
 the mannerisms of the star, and of having 
 his ideas of successful acting too strongly 
 flavored with the star's methods. In a stock 
 company, too, one learns to depend on him- 
 self, for the producer who directs a new 
 piece each week has no time to give his actors 
 much individual attention. The actor is left 
 to himself to a certain extent, and this in 
 
32 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 itself spurs him on. He gets a good stiff 
 training in learning his lines quickly, and 
 he acquires the faculty — a blessed one — of 
 /larruping himself into doing what he has 
 to do with directness and dispatch, for that 
 is the way things must be done in a stock 
 company if they are done at all. This ex- 
 perience does not put on a high polish, but 
 it may be depended upon to provide a good 
 grounding in the primaries of acting, and to 
 give a certain versatility. I believe a season, 
 or even two seasons, in stock is of the greatest 
 value at the outset of any career. 
 
 In many ways it would seem to be the 
 best place in which to make a beginning; 
 though it IS true the Repertoire possesses 
 some advantages that stock does not. The 
 work one does in a repertoire company is a 
 bit more thorough, a bit more finished; but 
 we learn lessons in stock that we cannot learn 
 anywhere else. Our experience there is more 
 elementary, and we should get the elementary 
 things first. But, in this country, there are 
 practically no repertoire companies to get 
 
ENTERING THE PROFESSION 33 
 
 into. There have been occasional sporadic 
 attempts to found them, and some of these 
 have met with gratifying success; as in the 
 case of Miss Grace George's Playhouse 
 Company, Robert Mantell's ShakespeariaiL. ^^7^ 
 Repertoire, and the Washington Square ^ 
 
 Players, who have a semi-repertoire policy. 
 As an accepted institution, however, the 
 Repertoire is not established and developed 
 to the extent that some of us, who have had 
 experience with it, could wish. 
 
 Such a company has a group of four to 
 six, and sometimes more, plays, each of which 
 they repeat at intervals. For a young actor 
 with a little experience in stock or elsewhere 
 it is no doubt the ideal place in which to 
 improve; whether it is the place to get the 
 first lessons is a question. The virtues of 
 such a company are apparent. Let us sup- 
 pose that they have a repertoire of eight 
 plays. One finishes his work on the Monday 
 night, and realizes that he might have acted 
 certain portions of his part much better. He 
 knows the same play will be repeated the 
 
34 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 following Monday night and he has a week in 
 which to practise, at odd moments, the im- 
 provements he wants to make. By the time 
 the next Monday night rolls around he has 
 been able to correct the faults he has found 
 in his performance and those the producer 
 has found. He is able to get some polish in 
 every part he plays under such conditions, 
 and he gets many of the benefits of a Stock 
 Company as well. But I think if one has 
 put himself through the mill of a stock 
 company first, he knows better what he is 
 trying to do, and the experience means more 
 to him. 
 
 In my youth I came to the conclusion that, 
 if I was to do any good, in my profession, 
 I must shut my eyes to the fact that money 
 was to be made by joining a one-play com- 
 pany, and open them to the fact that it was 
 in a company playing many pieces that I 
 could get the things that counted. Luckily, 
 there were plenty of such companies, and for 
 years I managed to be continually in one or 
 the other. With a lady named Miss Wallis 
 
ENTERING THE PROFESSION 35 
 
 I played in Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado 
 About Nothing, Measure for Measure, The 
 Lady of Lyons, As You Like It, and Adri- 
 enne Lecouvreur, With Osmond Tearle 
 (old playgoers will probably remember him 
 as the leading man at Wallack's Theater in 
 the eighties) I played in Macbeth, Hamlet, 
 Othello, Richard III, Money, London Assur- 
 ance, Colleen Bawn, and many others. So I 
 feel that I may speak with some knowledge 
 of what the Repertoire system means. 
 
 The work in Repertoire is not irksome. 
 The actor does not merely drag himself to 
 the theater to repeat what he has done the 
 day before. Each day it is something dif- ^^ 
 ferent, and the constant change keeps him 
 on the alert. Each day he plays a part that 
 has lain fallow for days; and if he is in 
 good professional health, he is anxious to 
 play it again and try improvements on it. 
 One gets away from the squirrel-in-a-cage 
 routine which is the great foe to keeping the 
 precious enthusiasm we must have if prog- 
 ress is to come. 
 
36 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 The young actor learns early, too, the 
 great value of team-work, and unfortunately 
 this great asset of the actor's craft is prac- 
 tically dead in America today. I happen 
 to know of only two instances where it is 
 kept ahve. There may be stock companies 
 here and there who have this esprit de corps, 
 this give and take; but the weekly change of 
 bill is sure to work against it. The mem- 
 bers of a Repertoire Company, however, have 
 generally been together for so long that 
 they understand the abilities and shortcom- 
 ings of each other, and each is ready to help 
 the other over the difficult places. Selfishness 
 is rarely found in such a company, because 
 everyone knows everyone else too well; and 
 when some over-ambitious brother tries to 
 force himself on the attention of the audi- 
 ence, at the expense of the play, he is likely 
 to be thoroughly discouraged. Generally it 
 is the rule in such companies, whether defi- 
 nitely expressed or not, that the less experi- 
 enced actor is to get as much consideration 
 as his superiors in the piece. It is on this 
 
ENTERING THE PROFESSION 37 
 
 principle that the success of a Repertoire 
 depends; for the balance and general excel- 
 lence of the productions must be relied upon 
 to make up for the lack of big names. Thus, 
 when Morocco speaks, the Portia will not do 
 anything to call attention to herself, but is 
 more likely to do all she can to help. When 
 Menas tempts Pompey to become master of 
 the world by cutting the throats of Caesar, 
 Lepidus, and Antony, the actor playing 
 Menas — though he has but two short scenes 
 — will have the chance to make his benevolent 
 proposition to the best of his ability. The 
 audience will not be distracted by the buf- 
 foonery of the actor playing Antony. It 
 was a distressing spectacle for me once, while 
 watching a company play this scene, to see 
 the man playing Antony pour wine over the 
 drunken Lepidus's head, merely to focus at- 
 tention on himself! The beginning actor is 
 free from such childish annoyances in a reper- 
 toire company. 
 
 Another advantage of Repertoire over 
 Stock is that, in the former there is no star. 
 
38 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 In the nature of the work, there cannot well 
 be one. Suppose, for instance, a company 
 has a program for the week as follows: 
 Monday, Hamlet; Tuesday, Romeo and 
 Juliet; Wednesday, A Midsummer Night's 
 Dream; Wednesday matinee. As You Like 
 It; Thursday, first part of Henry IV; Fri- 
 day, Julius Caesar; Saturday, Macbeth; and 
 Saturday matinee. The Merchant of Venice, 
 Under the star system it would be im- 
 possible to play such a varied program; 
 I know of no man living who could 
 play the principal role in each of these 
 plays. 
 
 In Jidius Caesar, for example, the three 
 great parts, Brutus, Cassius, and Antony, 
 should be played by actors of equal ability. 
 It would be ridiculous for one of them to 
 be played by a star, and the others by less 
 accomplished actors. Then in Falstaff we 
 have another star part which would probably 
 not suit a single one of the three principal 
 actors in Julius Caesar, while not one of the 
 four could play Bottom. Thus, to cast the 
 
ENTERING THE PROFESSION 39 
 
 week's program properly, all sorts and con- 
 ditions of actors would be required for the 
 leading roles. Indeed the whole of the com- 
 pany — those playing " responsible business " 
 — would have to be of star-caliber. 
 
 Many years ago — in 1874 or thereabouts 
 — I saw the Saxe-Meiningen Company at 
 Drury Lane in London. They were playing 
 Julius Caesar, and they had reached An- 
 tony's speech over the body of Caesar. Oc- 
 tavius, Caesar's servant, entered, and the dia- 
 logue was given: 
 
 Antony. You serve Octavius Caesar, do you not? 
 
 Servant. I do, Mark Antony. 
 
 Antony. Caesar did send for him to come to Rome. 
 
 Servant. He did receive his letters and is com- 
 ing, and bade me say by word of mouth. . . . Oh, 
 Caesar ! 
 
 As to the meaning of this cry, " Oh, 
 Caesar!", the Servant, on entering, cannot 
 but see the body of Caesar. His emotion, on 
 realizing that the greatest man in the world 
 lies lifeless on the ground, shakes him. He 
 endeavors to answer Antony as a servant; 
 
/ 
 
 40 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 but the sight is too much for him, and he 
 breaks down and cries out in anguish, " Oh, 
 Caesar! " 
 
 Since I knew the play I was expecting the 
 
 / outburst, but when it came it lifted me 
 
 / straight out of my seat. I can hear it ringing 
 
 / in my ears now after forty-odd years. The 
 
 art of it was perfect, it rang true, it was a 
 
 cry of anguish. I learned afterward that 
 
 the part of the Servant was played by one 
 
 of their best actors, who had several arduous 
 
 parts to perform, and who was willing to do 
 
 a small bit on some nights for the good of 
 
 the whole company. 
 
 I think it is worth while to mention this 
 little incident because it illustrates the kind 
 of spirit found in Repertoire Companies; 
 and it also contains a moral which every actor 
 may well carry with him through his novitiate. 
 It shows what can be done even with the 
 smallest part. This man gave the lines of 
 the Servant, few though they were, in such 
 a way that they carried real emotion, in 
 such a way that the insignificant character 
 
ENTERING THE PROFESSION 41 
 
 made a genuine contribution to the atmos- \ 
 phere and moving power of the play. In 
 the beginning the young actor receives parts 
 which often in his own opinion, and some- 
 times in reality, fall far below his abilities. 
 But however shallow a part may seem, it 
 will yield a " moment " or two if we search 
 carefully. There are a dozen ways of hand- 
 ing a man a letter, one of which is best 
 for the play; we can help the star into his 
 coat in many ways, one of which may add 
 just the right flavor to the scene. We can 
 make a distinct person of the tiniest sketch, 
 we can put individuality into the smallest 
 part if we try, and it is always worth while 
 to try. We should not judge a part by its 
 length, but by the possible " moments " there 
 may be in it. No part is so small but one, 
 can learn something from playing it. 
 
 So I should say that it is best to begin 
 either in a stock or a repertoire company 
 where we play parts which have usually been 
 tested by time, and which are thus more or 
 less standard material; where we work more 
 
42 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 than one vein of whatever abihty we have; 
 where we are kept close to the big funda- 
 mental principles which must govern effec- 
 tive work on the stage. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE VOICE— THE INSTRUMENT WE PLAY 
 
 Seeming to Speak Naturally — The Handicap of a Half- 
 trained Voice — Our Voice: Our Point of Contact 
 with Our Public— The Dread of " Elocution "—The 
 Art of Concealing Art — Harry Lauder's Remarkable 
 Voice — Charles Kean's Stage Voice — The Power of 
 Tones — Saving the Voice — The Two Primary Tones 
 — Distinct Utterance a Simple Achievement — Laugh- 
 ing Infectiously — Taste in Using One's Technical 
 Skill. 
 
 THE beginner is often told by the di- 
 rector not to strain and shout, but to 
 " speak naturally " ; and then when he 
 does speak naturally he is told that he cannot 
 be heard. This is a baffling paradox, and 
 one which everyone who takes up stage work 
 seriously is hkely to meet sooner or later. 
 As a matter of fact the natural speaking 
 voice is of little or no use on the stage, 
 and neither is the shout. The secret of it is 
 that a man should so train his voice that he 
 
 43 
 
44 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 has the range, and the pitch that is necessary, 
 but also the technique and the control which 
 enable him to seem to speak naturally. If 
 we are to be good actors we must train the 
 voice, and study its use, with the determina- 
 tion to make it the best instrument it is cap- 
 able of becoming. Often one is tempted to 
 stop half-way; to develop the voice just suf- 
 ficiently to pass muster and secure engage- 
 ments, but this seems most short-sighted. 
 The time is sure to come sometime when the 
 serious worker feels keenly the handicap of a 
 half -trained voice; when he realizes that, be- 
 cause of his early neglect of this vital part of 
 his equipment, he is unable to reach the posi- 
 tion to which his other proved qualities entitle 
 him. 
 
 No matter how much we know about the 
 art of acting, we must depend most of all 
 ^ upon our voice to express it to others. It 
 is our point of contact with the people who 
 give us our rating as an artist. That is why 
 it seems so strange that the study of proper 
 voice production is so ignored by actors of 
 
THE VOICE 45 
 
 the present. In the days of Kemble, Kean, 
 Macready, Phelps, Edwin Forrest, and the 
 others it was not so; the training of the 
 voice was given first consideration. Those 
 old giants realized that they must depend 
 upon their voice to carry them to greatness; 
 they realized, from what they saw others do, 
 that wonders could be accomplished by train- 
 ing; they devoted themselves to this great 
 primary as a matter of course. I once saw 
 Samuel Phelps play Wolsey and, on another 
 occasion, Malvolio. It was a good many 
 years ago, but I remember most vividly the 
 ease with which his splendid voice carried 
 ^very syllable of those exacting parts to every 
 part of the theater. It is the memory of his 
 thoroughly satisfying voice which remains 
 with me; it was a pleasure merely to listen 
 to him; and I am sure his mastery was only 
 gained by hard study and hard work, his 
 voice was pleasing and powerful and moving 
 because his use of it was governed by the 
 laws of the technique he had learned step 
 by step. 
 
46 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 It may be that one reason young actors of 
 the present shy at the cultivation of their 
 voices is because of the striving for reahsm 
 and naturalness which characterizes so much 
 of what we do in the theater today. We 
 are likely to hear a great deal more about con- 
 cealing our art than about the art we are to 
 conceal. The alert young " modern " apostle 
 of realism and naturalness has in mind the 
 sonorous tones and studied utterance of the 
 actors of the Old School, and imagines that 
 to be the dreadful result of any serious voice 
 training. But I think this idea is due to a 
 confusion of values — albeit a very natural 
 confusion. I do not think the old actors 
 of my youth went too far with their study, 
 rather they did not go far enough. Having 
 spent hard years to learn how to speak 
 excellently, they saw no reason for disguis- 
 ing their " elocution," they were more in- 
 clined to display it with pride. They re- 
 garded it more as a virtue than a fault to 
 speak ponderously and precisely. They sin- 
 cerely thought, too, that upon their shoul- 
 
THE VOICE 47 
 
 ders rested the burden of upholding the dig- 
 nity and beauty of the Enghsh language; 
 this was not a pose with them, they took it 
 quite seriously and labored most conscien- 
 tiously at their task. On the street, or in 
 the club, or in the shop the finished thespian 
 of those days was always the actor with the 
 trained voice, he could not be mistaken. But 
 it is for us of the present to go further 
 than they thought necessary. It is for us to 
 learn all they knew of voice production, and 
 correct intonation and inflection, but learn 
 also how to make it all seem perfectly ef- 
 fortless and natural. 
 
 In the reaction from the old school way 
 of doing things it has become rather the fash- 
 ion to despise the study of elocution alto- 
 gether; but there is no doubt in my mind 
 that it is still essential for the man or woman 
 whose life-work is acting. Stage effects do 
 not come by chance, they are the result of 
 studied effort. If an actor is to repeat night 
 after night the effect that has once won 
 applause, he must know how he got the 
 
48 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 effect in the first place, and he must know 
 the technical principles that underlie what he 
 did. Surely that can only come by study. 
 
 If the actor in vaudeville were as lax as 
 the actor in the regular theater, he would be 
 out of a job in a short time. Vaudeville 
 acting is a highly specialized form of enter- 
 tainment ; and success in it comes only to those 
 who have schooled themselves thoroughly in 
 its peculiar technique. For the twenty min- 
 utes or so they are on the stage in vaude- 
 ville, the entertainers must be well-nigh tech- 
 nically perfect. Consequently it is on the 
 vaudeville stage that we see what really can 
 be accomplished by voice training; it is there, 
 regrettably enough, that we are more likely 
 to find voices that are really trained. Forbes- 
 Robertson has been greatly admired for his 
 splendid voice — and justly so — but I do not 
 believe it is as good an instrument as, for 
 example, Harry Lauder's. And I believe 
 one of the biggest factors in Harry Lauder's 
 success is the consummate skill with which 
 he is able to use his voice. He gives the im- 
 
THE VOICE 49 
 
 pression of perfect spontaneity, perfect ease, 
 he appears to be "just talking"; but in any- 
 given performance he uses an astonishing 
 range of voice. The delectable, winning in- 
 flections which somehow cajole and stroke 
 an audience into just the warm mood he 
 wishes are not, I venture to say, so unstudied 
 as they seem. Night after night he deftly 
 touches the identical notes so expertly and 
 easily that it all seems the naive, almost ac- 
 cidental charm, of a delightful personality. 
 While all this admirable technique may be 
 second nature to him now, I venture to say 
 it came at the beginning only as the result of 
 careful and rigid training. Nature had given 
 him a pleasing and powerful voice, — whose 
 power is guided so well that few people real- 
 ize how great it is — but Lauder did not rest 
 on what nature had done for him, he did 
 not neglect the perfecting of his voice, the 
 control of it. To be endowed with natural 
 ability is one thing, to be able to use it prop- 
 erly is another. I have seen many a man 
 who lacked the natural advantages of his 
 
50 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 competitors distance them by dint of his hard 
 work. 
 / Charles Kean, for example, according to 
 ! my father, had a sort of chronic nasal cold. 
 At the cost of enormous effort he was able 
 to overcome it on the stage. But in his 
 everyday life, when there was no need for 
 his speaking carefully, he always sounded like 
 a man with hay fever. He was playing 
 Richard III once in golden armor. He was 
 standing in the wings waiting for his cue, 
 and turning to his wife said, " By dear, this 
 arbor is too heavy for addything. I really 
 bust have a suit of golded leather bade." 
 His cue came, and he stepped on the stage 
 \ and spoke his lines with perfect clearness. It 
 was training; and I imagine that Kean had 
 passed any number of other men in his youth 
 who had been far more generously dealt with 
 by nature. I 
 
 Totcs are most important, I think; and 
 tones can be cultivated, indeed they may be 
 said to be the result of cultivation in the case 
 of most actors; nature gave them the instru- 
 
THE VOICE 51 
 
 merit on which they play, but she did not teach 
 them how to play it. I beheve if anyone stops 
 and thinks of the moments when he has been 
 most deeply stirred in the theater he will be 
 surprised to find how often the effect had to 
 do with the tone of the actor's voice. It is 
 the tone of the voice, more often than any- 
 thing else, which makes a line powerful and! 
 moving on the stage; I am sure this has been; 
 true in my experience. Macready, by con- 
 centrating and practising on the one word 
 "murder," was finally able to speak it so 
 that the audience shuddered at the mere sound 
 he was able to give the two syllables. I 
 have heard an actor in the part of the ghost 
 in Hamlet give the lines, 
 
 **I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word 
 Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood . . . 
 
 in such a way that the word " freeze " did 
 freeze my young blood and send chills down 
 my youthful spine every time I listened to 
 him. 
 
 Range is one of the essentials also. An 
 
52 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 actor should be able to speak in about two 
 octaves, startling as this may sound. It is 
 not necessary, of course, in small parts; but 
 the strain on the voice of holding up a heavy 
 leading part through an entire evening is 
 much greater than we may realize when list- 
 ening to another do it. To be able to carry 
 such a part without fatigue the voice must 
 have flexibility; a few notes cannot stand 
 the long pressure. The trained voice hus- 
 bands itself by distributing the strain. 
 
 One learns to keep plenty of air in the 
 lungs, and to be sparing of breath. It is 
 not well to shout the roof off of the theater, 
 simply because one is able to do it. Such 
 a thing is only disagreeable to an audience. 
 I have heard people say of a certain actor 
 that they were sure they would take great 
 enjoyment in his acting if he did not make 
 so much noise about it. I am sure that 
 many people stayed away from this man's 
 performances because his shouting was so ir- 
 ritating to them, yet he very possibly sup- 
 posed that he was displaying great power. 
 
THE VOICE 53 
 
 He had a strong voice, and had lost sight of 
 the fact that the portrayal of strong emotion 
 was not at all a question of lung power. The 
 trained voice can always carry as far as that 
 of the shouter, and it is always much more 
 moving. 
 
 Broadly speaking there are two primary 
 tones from which one shades into the mani- 
 fold variety of which the human voice is 
 capable. These two are the sonorous and the 
 metallic. Both should be cultivated, I be- 
 lieve. Certain kinds of matter lend them- 
 selves to the deep, easy, sonorous treatment, 
 the lines may and should be dwelt upon; 
 other matter — in itself, perhaps, rather dull 
 — can often be carried by the sharp, incisive, 
 stimulating way of speaking which the me- 
 tallic quality of voice supplies. The mere 
 ring and tang of the voice may stir the au- 
 dience and keep them alert. Moments of 
 pathos may best be given in the softer tones 
 which are derived from the sonorous. Sar- 
 casm, bitterness, and the like lend themselves 
 to the tones whose primary is the metallic. 
 
54 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 In big parts both varieties are needed; and I 
 think every actor should cultivate them. Our 
 difficulty of defining and cataloguing, and 
 the apparent futility and folly of attempting 
 to do it, presents itself again, I realize fully, 
 in such a discussion as this. But it is only 
 by means of some such bald statement, that 
 we are able to glimpse the principles which 
 are underneath what we do. Let us realize 
 that in such an effort to put into concrete 
 form what is of necessity so ephemeral we 
 are only striving to suggest, not define. 
 
 The adroit husbanding of his energies 
 which a man learns by giving serious at- 
 tention to the cultivation of his voice en- 
 ables him to adjust his abilities to the re- 
 quirements of exacting parts. A good actor's 
 voice may seem to rise in power and in- 
 tensity in the moments of stress, but usually 
 it is only a seeming rise. He knows his 
 limitations and he begins the impassioned 
 speech at a low pitch. He knows how to 
 make his low tones carry effectively, he is 
 able to rest his lungs even in the heat of the 
 
THE VOICE 55 
 
 greatest climax. Then, in comparison, he 
 seems to be soaring in the crises. He has 
 learned to pause and breathe even when he 
 seems to be talking at top speed. Let us 
 suppose a man is to burst into the room and 
 announce, " The factory is in flames, they'll 
 all be killed! " He has presumably run all 
 the way from the fire, he is greatly excited, 
 quite out of breath, and the words come 
 tumbling out. But they do not actually 
 come tumbling out. He says, " The factory 
 . . . (pointing and gasping) ... in flames 
 . . . (gasp) . . . they'll all . . . (swallow) 
 ... be killed! " He has seemed to pour out 
 the words in a rush, but as a matter of fact, 
 he has taken as much time, and breathed as 
 regularly as if he had sat calmly in a chair 
 with his hat on his knees and made the an- 
 nouncement with the utmost deliberation. It 
 seems over-fastidious to regard such methods 
 as tricky, they are a part of that legitimate 
 technique of which we must avail ourselves in 
 simulating — not photographing — reality. 
 Very often, however, it is hard to under- 
 
56 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 stand an actor because his enunciation, rather 
 than his voice, is at fault. Certainly distinct 
 utterance is one of the prime requisites; and 
 it also is something which may be gained by 
 simple practice. After all it is one of the 
 simplest things in the world to learn to speak 
 correctly, to take thought and begin each 
 word properly and end each word properly; 
 and it is such a gratifying relief to an audi- 
 ence if they can hear, without straining, 
 everything an actor says. A little attention 
 to one's everyday conversation will often work 
 wonders. If one schools himself for a while 
 to speak a little more slowly, and to give, 
 each syllable its due, it is surprising how 
 naturally and rapidly his speech will clarify. 
 If we take care of the consonants the vowels 
 will take care of themselves,; though we sound 
 stilted and pedantic to ourselves at first, 
 this passes, and the habit of distinct speaking 
 becomes a fixed one, and is as hard as any 
 habit to break. While we are forming the 
 habit, too, we sound much more conspicuous 
 to ourselves than we do to anyone else. Ellen 
 
THE VOICE 57 
 
 Terry is one of the best speakers I have 
 ever heard, every syllable is clean-cut and 
 clear, yet I do not believe anyone would ever 
 accuse her of speaking primly or unnaturally. 
 I do not imagine her splendid enunciation 
 is a chance thing; I have no doubt she culti- 
 vated it until it became second nature to her. 
 The ability to laugh in an infectious way 
 on the stage is another important asset. I 
 have often heard actors lament the fact that 
 they did not have a good laugh; but most of 
 us would like to have many things without 
 paying for them. Anyone can train himself 
 to laugh in a variety of ways if he first has a 
 control over his voice, and is able to make it 
 do his bidding. There are several laughing 
 effects on the phonograph which would serve 
 as models, not to be slavishly imitated, but 
 used as guide posts. Such ejaculations as 
 those of anger, horror, grief, and sympathy 
 should be studied while one is in a malleable 
 state, before bad habits and false manner- 
 isms are acquired. In the beginning we tend 
 to take life as our model, later we are apt 
 
58 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 to put our reliance on the devices and tricks 
 of others — which, if we acquire them so, 
 can never be anything but devices and tricks 
 for us. I would suggest that a person start 
 by finding out how he himself expresses the 
 various emotions, what ejaculations come 
 most naturally to him, and then that he try 
 to express them accurately in his own way 
 and at will, and that he make sure he is able 
 to convey what he feels to others. 
 
 We may say, then, that our purpose is not 
 to speak naturally on the stage at all, but 
 If to make people think we are speaking natu- 
 rally, and that this comes as the result 
 of study and hard work. With it all, how- 
 ever, we should not lose sight of the danger 
 which frightens so many young actors away 
 from the study of voice cultivation altogether: 
 the danger of falling in love with our voice. 
 Henry Irving once said, " What a wonderful 
 actor AVenman would be if he didn't know 
 he'd got a voice." Certainly there is a great 
 danger of becoming infatuated with our 
 faultless diction, of taking excessive pride in 
 
THE VOICE 59 
 
 it, and of showing it off to the audience. 
 No good actor ever does that. He never lets 
 the audience think he is speaking beautifully, 
 only that he is speaking naturally and clearly. 
 If, when the audience is leaving the theater, 
 the comments are mostly in praise of the star's 
 voice, there has been something wrong with 
 his performance. Never have I heard Harry 
 Lauder's voice praised, all the praise has 
 been for his perfect work. An actor can be- 
 come the slave of his voice, whereas it should 
 be his slave. There is such a thing as taste in 
 using one's technical skill; the best-dressed 
 woman is the one who arranges her toilet 
 so that we notice her beauty and not her 
 gown. 
 
 It would seem that the wisest plan is to 
 steer a middle course between that of the 
 old actors who proudly displayed the me- 
 chanics of their art by constantly calHng 
 attention to their clear speech and tones, and 
 that of the new actor who is apt to disdain 
 the cultivation of speech and tones altogether. 
 Of the two, however, the latter is the more 
 
60 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 profitless; the road to Stardom is strewn with 
 the bones of many clever people who, in the 
 flush of easy success easily and early won, 
 scorned the humble drudgery of sound tech- 
 nique. But perhaps a word of caution 
 should be added. The stage proper, during 
 the performance, is not the place for experi- 
 menting and practising; that should, by all 
 means, be left in the study when one goes on 
 for a scene. We should forget our voice, 
 and hands, and feet while on the stage, and 
 fix the whole attention on living the char- 
 acter we may be playing. The true actor 
 can analyze his part and study its separate 
 requirements; but, when the time comes, he 
 can blend all into an indivisible whole. The 
 theater, when filled with an audience, is a 
 place of illusion ; and the actor who is thinking 
 of the mechanics of his work is shattering 
 illusion for himself and for those who are 
 watching him. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 GETTING INSIDE ONE'S PART 
 
 Learning Words Before We Know Their Meaning — 
 Study the Character for Light on the Words, Not 
 the Words for Light on the Character — We Should 
 Know Our Part's Relation to the Whole— The Es- 
 sence of Illusory Impersonation — Dissolving Shy- 
 lock into His Component Parts — How Any Character 
 Can Be Made to Reveal Itself from a Study of the 
 Lines — The Second Step: Becoming a Shylock — The 
 Third Step: Thinking out Shylock in Wall Street 
 Terms — The Last Step: Associating Our New Self 
 with the Play as a Whole — This Formula Applies to 
 Plays Modern and Classical. 
 
 THE quality of the performance we ulti- 
 mately give depends, to a very great 
 extent, upon the method we use in get- 
 ting into the character from the beginning. 
 In this, as in practically everything in our 
 craft, I believe in reducing the problem to 
 its simplest terms, in getting down to rock- 
 bottom truths. We are safe in saying that an 
 actor should analyze the character of every 
 
 61 
 
62 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 man he plays until the man, pure and simple, 
 stands before him. It is a mistake — and a 
 common one — to learn the words of the 
 character before we know why he speaks 
 them, and why he would not speak any 
 others. Over and over again, in the past, I 
 have fallen into the error of judging the 
 words on their face value, and of learning 
 them before I had the remotest idea of the 
 man who spoke them. I have memorized 
 the lines, added to them a certain idealization 
 of my own, and have taken pleasure in spout- 
 ing them for the sake of their own telling 
 qualities, rather than as a means of revealing 
 the nature of the man who was supposed to 
 be speaking them. Later, when the inevi- 
 table inconsistencies of my reading became 
 clear, I have had the greatest difficulty in 
 shaking myself free from the first impres- 
 sions, gained merely because I had begun at 
 the wrong end. 
 
 I remember a play in which I had the part 
 of an old family servant. I had been with 
 the family for most of my life, and though 
 
GETTING INSIDE ONE'S PART 63 
 
 the present head of it was a dissolute incom- 
 petent, I had a deep loyalty and even affec- 
 tion for him, because of his forebears. In a 
 fit of petulance he threatens to discharge me. 
 Then I have a long speech in which I tell 
 him of the years when I served his father and 
 his grandfather before him. I speak of the 
 great industry they built up, of what strong 
 men they were, and of how he is doing his 
 best to tear down what they had left in his 
 trust. My first inchnation was to give a 
 smashing delivery of this speech, to assail 
 him with my eloquence; but when I analyzed 
 the part, I found that this was wrong. I 
 found that, to be in key, the lines had to be 
 given more in sorrow than censure, almost 
 apologetically. A study of the lines, for 
 themselves, would not have revealed this; I 
 found it only after studying the lines for light 
 on the nature of the man who spoke them. 
 
 We should have some notion of the entire 
 play, before we begin the study of our own 
 part. If it is impossible to read the play, in 
 its entirety, we should at least hear it read; 
 
64 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 and the script we study should contain the 
 whole of the scenes in which we have a share. 
 Managers, however, have a way of giving the 
 actor a typed copy of his part from which 
 it is next to impossible for him to tell whether 
 he is supposed to be a taxicab driver or a 
 clergyman. His own lines are there, but 
 those of the other actors to whom he must 
 speak and reply are scantily represented by 
 cues — which consist sometimes of as many as 
 four words, and sometimes of one or two. 
 In the part I had in The Masquerader these 
 are some of the cues I was given to speak on: 
 
 Tchk, tchk, tchk ! 
 
 Yes sir. 
 
 Parliament yesterday. 
 
 His nerves, ma'am. 
 
 she almost did. 
 
 Wake up, sir. Your wife is here. 
 
 Ugh ! 
 
 A shave and fresh linen might improve appearances. 
 
 Oh! 
 
 Your order for the steel billets. 
 
 Ha, ha! 
 
 Oh, God! 
 
 With a " part " of this kind, the actor 
 
GETTING INSIDE ONE'S PART 65 
 
 gets a knowledge of the words before he has 
 any idea of what they are all about, before 
 he has any idea of the character of the man 
 he is to portray. And the man, the char- 
 acter, should come first, then his thoughts, 
 then his words. The words are the last thing 
 to be considered. They are the roof of the 
 structure one builds, and the solid foundation, 
 and the walls, should come first. For we 
 must know, not only those thoughts the char- 
 acter expresses, but also we must know the 
 thoughts he does not express. In life, we 
 put into words but a small fraction of the 
 thoughts which pass through our minds in 
 the course of the conversation. While the 
 other man is talking, we are turning over in 
 our brain a great many things which we 
 might reply, and we speak only of those 
 which seem to fit the occasion best. On 
 the stage, if our impersonation is to be life- 
 like, we must know the man we are playing 
 well enough to do the same. I regard this 
 as the very essence of illusory impersonation; 
 only thus can we gain depth, only thus can 
 
66 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 we impart the breath of hfe to our creation. 
 If the lines we speak represent the total of 
 our knowledge of the part we can only speak 
 as a parrot, our portrait can only be a sil- 
 houette. 
 
 To my mind the logical way to build up a 
 character portrayal is first to get a clear and 
 firm knowledge of the man, and to make his 
 thoughts my own; for it seems to me if we 
 are to learn the words intelligently, we must 
 know the thought that generates them, and 
 to know the thought that generates them, we 
 must know the character of the person who 
 generates the thoughts. Perhaps the best way 
 to make clear what I mean is to take a 
 character and analyze it, to take him into 
 our mental laboratory and dissolve him into 
 his component parts, which is what we should 
 always do with any part. 
 
 Let us take Shylock from The Merchant 
 of Venice and see if, by studying the lines he 
 speaks, we can realize the author's concep- 
 tion of the character. I am led to choose 
 Shylock because Shakespeare is accessible to 
 
GETTING INSIDE ONE'S PART 67 
 
 everyone, while this might not be true in the 
 ease of a modern play. Also, since we have 
 to deal with a representative of another time 
 and country, and with Ehzabethan blank 
 verse, the aspects of the problem are magni- 
 fied somewhat, we get them on a somewhat 
 larger scale, in clearer relief. But the prin- 
 ciples we follow and the methods we use 
 are quite as applicable to the study of a 
 present-day character. There is a danger, 
 however, in using so well-known a character 
 because tradition is liable to play a part in 
 our analysis. Shy lock has often been played 
 — and by great actors — as a man full of dig- 
 nity, and a great Jew; and one's natural 
 inclination is to follow in their footsteps. But 
 the thing we should do with Shylock, or with 
 any character new or old, is to follow the 
 author's reasoning with an unprejudiced 
 mind, and allow the character to expand 
 before us as the author wrote him, and not 
 take our interpretation second-hand from 
 anybody. 
 
 In the beginning Shylock enters with Bas- 
 
68 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 sanio. The dialogue goes to show, at first, 
 that Shylock is a shrewd business man, and 
 that he has an undisguised hate of the Chris- 
 tian. When he is invited to dinner to meet 
 Antonio, he rephes that he will buy and sell 
 with a Christian, but that he will not drink 
 or pray with one. Then follows his soliloquy. 
 Now in a soliloquy there is no hidden mean- 
 ing. The words stand for the absolute truth, 
 their face value is their real value. It is 
 used by the author as a means of quick expo- 
 sition of character, it is a convention granted 
 the author for putting into words the 
 thoughts of his character. And I have actu- 
 ally heard actors say.. " Yes, this is what he 
 says, but he doesn't mean it." In other 
 words this is what he says to himself, what 
 he is thinking, but it isn't really what he says 
 to himself or thinks! In his soliloquy, then, 
 Shylock says: 
 
 " How like a fawning publican he looks ! 
 I hate him for he is a Christian, 
 But more for that, in low simplicity, 
 He lends out money gratis and brings down 
 The rate of usance here with us in Venice." 
 
GETTING INSIDE ONE'S PART 69 
 
 In the first line, " How like a fawning pub- 
 lican he looks," we get a glimpse of Shy- 
 lock's mind. We know that Antonio is the 
 very antithesis of a " fawning publican," 
 since we have learned in an earlier scene that 
 he is a fine fellow, generous to a fault. Thus 
 at once we see that Shy lock's judgment is 
 distorted, at least so far as Antonio is con- 
 cerned. The next two lines show that Shy- 
 lock values money more highly than he does 
 his religion. The fact that Antonio is a 
 Christian is bad enough, but his methods of 
 interfering with Shylock's business of piling 
 up the ducats makes him, in the old Jew's 
 eyes, much more of a reprobate. 
 
 The lines, 
 
 ** If I can catch him once upon the hip 
 I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him/* 
 
 speak eloquently of Shylock's vengeful and 
 brooding disposition. 
 
 " He hates our sacred nation ; and he rails 
 E'en there where merchants most do congregate, 
 On me, my bargains^ and my well-won thrift. 
 Which he calls interest. Cursed be my tribe 
 If I forgive him." 
 
70 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 In this Shakespeare, like the painstaking 
 workman he is, dehberately underlines the 
 idea that Shylock's greed is a greater force 
 in his nature than his religion. He starts 
 with, " he hates our sacred nation," but 
 his penurious mind gets back promptly to 
 the deeper grievance: Antonio rails against 
 his " well- won thrift," and against his 
 " bargains." We feel that the oath, " cursed 
 be my tribe if I forgive him," is torn from 
 him, not because Shylock hates Antonio as 
 a Christian but as a business enemy. It 
 seems to me that Shakespeare has been most 
 careful to make this clear, and yet how often 
 has he been misunderstood. Thus, in the first 
 few lines, we get a clear thumb-nail sketch 
 of Shylock's character, and we know some- 
 thing of his relation to the rest of the 
 play. 
 
 Shylock is shown to us thus far as a cun- 
 ning, avaricious, malignant man; and we 
 find, as the play proceeds, that this prelimi- 
 nary outline is carefully filled in. His own 
 daughter, Jessica, confides to Launcelot 
 
GETTING INSIDE ONE'S PART 71 
 
 Gobbo that her home is a Hell. Later she 
 tells how Shylock has declared that he would 
 rather have Antonio's flesh than twenty times 
 the value of the sum owed him. Shakespeare 
 misses no opportunity to drive home the 
 cruelty and greed of Shylock's nature. When 
 the old rascal learns of his daughter's treach- 
 ery; and when he expresses love for his dead 
 wife, Leah, we are inclined to have a little 
 compassion; but his greed is likely to turn 
 our compassion to disgust. 
 He says, 
 
 " Go, Tubal, fee me an officer, bespeak him a fort- 
 night before. I'll have the heart of him if he forfeit, 
 for were he out of Venice I can make what merchandise 
 I will." 
 
 In other words, he means to kill Antonio, 
 not for the sake of religion, but that he may 
 be unhampered in his commercial opera- 
 tions. 
 
 To my mind this is the first step in the 
 study of a part like Shylock, classic or mod- 
 ern. From a study of the lines themselves we 
 get the primaries of his nature in hand. We 
 
72 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 find that he is a certain kind of a man, with 
 whom certain considerations will always come 
 first. And if the man we happen to be 
 playing is a Wall Street magnate, or a 
 bloated politician, or a crusty old land-grab- 
 bing rural tyrant, we can get at the primaries 
 of his nature in this way. 
 
 Then, being convinced that Shylock is an 
 avaricious, revengeful old usurer, the next 
 step is to get inside him, to become a Shylock. 
 In doing this I believe in fixing my mind 
 on the evil qualities in my own nature, in 
 locking up and forgetting the good. Here 
 again it is easier for me, always, to go back 
 to primary things. When I was a youngster, 
 I remember, there was a boy I did not like. 
 I saw him one day leaning peacefully against 
 a tree ; and I remember the cold-blooded way 
 in which I weighed the possibilities of slip- 
 ping up behind him and kicking him, and 
 making my escape. I daresay anyone can 
 recall such moments; and if one fixes his 
 mind on them, he can bring to the surface 
 those old primitive instincts which convention 
 
GETTING INSIDE ONE'S PART 73 
 
 has since tended to soften and iron out. If 
 we concentrate on such moods for a time, 
 it is amazing how clear the motives and the 
 psychology of a Shylock may become. By 
 exerting the will we can grasp the conception 
 of such a nature and hold it firmly in mind; 
 and the more clearly we grasp it, and the 
 more firmly we hold it, the better will be the 
 performance we shall ultimately give; for 
 this is the foundation and framework of the 
 structure we are building, and if we are un- 
 certain and wavering here the finished work 
 cannot be right. 
 
 As a third step we can forget that the 
 man we are studying is a character in a play. 
 We can get him out of the world of fiction 
 and into the real world about us; we can 
 think of him as a human being whom we 
 might meet in the street. In the case of 
 Shylock I should forget his medieval costume, 
 his Elizabethan speech, forget even his name. 
 I should give this second self of mine a new 
 name; I should call myself " Stingy" Smith, 
 the tightest man in town. People shrug 
 
•74 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 when I pass along the street, I am used to 
 being snubbed and insulted. This has had a 
 natural effect upon me; I am soured, I hate 
 them, every one of them. I take a bitter 
 satisfaction in gloating over the fact that 
 many of them are in my power. I have lent 
 many dollars to them (dollars, not ducats) ; 
 and I hold mortgages on much of their prop- 
 erty which I could foreclose if I wished. I 
 try, thus, to practise thinking — above all, 
 thinking — and walking, and gesticulating, 
 smiling, and shrugging as such a man would. 
 Then, from the book of the play, I think it 
 is a good plan to get the gist of the con- 
 versations in which Shylock takes part. This 
 is not the time to study the words as they 
 are written; but to read them over, and get 
 their general trend, then I should attempt 
 to read the part in the language that comes 
 most readily to my lips. 
 
 Let us suppose I have called Bassanio 
 " Brown." " Brown " has asked me to let 
 him have $3,000. Perhaps we should read 
 the dialogue something hke this: 
 
GETTING INSIDE ONE'S PART 75 
 
 You: So you want me to lend you three thousand? 
 
 Brown: Yes, for ninety days or so. 
 
 You (repeating, that there may be no mistake). 
 Three months. 
 
 Brown: Robinson will go security for me. 
 
 (The name Robinson fills you with hate, but you 
 cheek yourself.) 
 
 You (calmly) : Robinson, eh ? So Robinson will 
 back your bilLf^ 
 
 Brown : Right. What do you say ? 
 
 You (with a tinge of sarcasm) : Hm. Your friend 
 Robinson is a good man. 
 
 Brown: He certainly is. Do you know anything 
 against him.'^ 
 
 You (hastily) : Oh no, no, no. Lord no, not in the 
 least! I simply meant that his credit's good. I 
 meant his name to a bill should satisfy anyone. But 
 I'm a cautious man. I go slow. Robinson is a 
 shipper, and all he's got is in his ships. They're 
 likely to be wrecked, of course. Still, I think I'll 
 take a chance. 
 
 I think it will pay to continue this through 
 to the end. It may seem rather an indirect 
 way of going about it, but I am sure it will 
 be found that the idea we have formed of the 
 part will gain in vitahty and pliability, and 
 that we are much nearer what the author had 
 in mind. For we have again been simplify- 
 ing. We have been transmuting the pre- 
 
76 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 pared speeches of the character into our own 
 simpler vernacular, and his emotions have 
 become clearer in the light of our own emo- 
 tional experiences. 
 
 The last step in this preparation is to get 
 back into the atmosphere of the play, to as- 
 sociate this new self we have found with 
 the time and place and the other people 
 imagined by the dramatist. It may be ar- 
 gued that this sort of thing may be necessary 
 in a classical play but is superfluous with a 
 character of present-day life, since in such 
 a play the language is natural to start with. 
 But this, of course, is very far from true. 
 The playwright has carefully selected the 
 words for the actor to say. They are the 
 words which unfold the story as the author 
 wishes it unfolded, and which disclose the 
 character in the way he thinks compatible 
 with the economy of the play. We often 
 compress into a few lines what, in life, 
 we might take half an hour to say. If 
 three or four people are talking in a room, 
 one of them is likely to monopolize the con- 
 
GETTING INSIDE ONE'S PART 77 
 
 versation for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then 
 there may be a pause of many minutes before 
 the next word is spoken. That is natural 
 dialogue, but imagine such a scene on the 
 stage! So, in a modern part as well, 
 we must, I think, disrobe the lines of 
 all this polish and arbitrary arrangement 
 and dramatic sequence, just as we de- 
 prived Shylock of his wig and cadenced 
 verses. 
 
 Surely this is the logical way to build up 
 a character portrayal. It is undoubtedly 
 the course the author himself had to follow. 
 He thought of the man first — long before he 
 conceived " speeches " for him. Then he put 
 down words for his new creation, but in rather 
 crude form. Later he polished them into 
 shape, into appropriate prose or blank verse 
 as the case may be, and gave them to us as 
 we find them in the finished play. And as 
 the author, consciously or unconsciously, 
 stumbles first of all upon the crude elements 
 of his created characters, so we must deliber- 
 ately go searching for them; and, having 
 
78 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 found them, we must, after a fashion, re- 
 assemble them for ourselves if our work is to 
 be marked with confidence and grounded in 
 truth, as all truly artistic work must be. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 THE EYE AND THE HANDS 
 
 " Five-finger Exercises " Necessary for the Actor, Too 
 — Revealing the Unexpressed Emotions — Irving as 
 Becket — " One Thing at a Time " — Doing Just 
 Enough — Coquelin's Peculiar Mannerism — When in 
 Doubt Do Nothing — The Set Gestures of the Good 
 Old Days — An Example of Splendid Repose — Sav- 
 ing Bits of Business for Future Use — Gestures Grow 
 from Character^ Not from Lines — Heroic Gestures 
 for Heroic Plays — Never Let Them See too Much. 
 
 I HAVE been told by young actors that, 
 in their opinion, it is foohsh to bother 
 one's head about the mechanics and the 
 technique and the principle of what they do. 
 They say they feel restrained and self-con- 
 scious and stilted if they do this. They 
 want to forget that they are acting and de- 
 pend upon their innate artistic sense for 
 results. I suppose in no other profession 
 would this absurd attitude be met. The be- 
 ginning musician never dreams of plunging 
 
 79 
 
80 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 into the difficult compositions of the master 
 composers, until he has spent years in study 
 of the mere mechanics of his art. He starts 
 with finger exercises, then practices scales, 
 and at length tries very simple pieces. He 
 rises above, and forgets, his elementary les- 
 sons after a time, but he never thinks of try- | 
 ing to skip them. But on the stage, the 
 novice often chafes at the primary lessons, 
 and often scorns them altogether. But finger 
 exercises in the actor's art are just as essen- 
 tial as they are in the musician's; the me- 
 chanical, technical groundwork must be there, 
 but of course eventually we must become 
 unconscious of it. 
 
 In the last chapter we spoke of how the 
 actor, on the stage, must be able to let the 
 audience see that his character is thinking 
 thoughts and having emotions which are not 
 expressed in words. Also in many cases, we 
 convey many emotions to the audience, which 
 the other characters of the play are supposed 
 not to know about. And it is, to a large ex- 
 tent, with the eyes that such emotions are 
 
THE EYE AND THE HANDS 81 
 
 conveyed to the audience. These emotions, \ 
 it is apparent, are often as important as any 
 in the play, for they reveal the inner quali- 
 ties and the soul of the person we are playing. 
 Clearly in speaking of the use of the eyes on 
 the stage, it is impossible to be dogmatic and 
 arbitrary. The skilful use of the eye, how- 
 ever, adds enormously to the effectiveness of 
 one's performance, and until an actor is able 
 to use to advantage this potent w^eapon in his 
 equipment he can never achieve big results. 
 I was once forcibly impressed with how 
 very much can be accomplished by a mere 
 glance, while watching Irving play Becket 
 in Tennyson's play of that name. The King 
 had just offered him the Archbishopric of 
 York. Becket was Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer and a laymen when the offer was 
 made to him. It is, we all realize, a mo- 
 mentous crisis in the lives of the two friends, 
 the King and Becket. It is as though^ in 
 some vivid premonition, Becket realizes it 
 too. Irving, as Becket, listened to the pro- 
 posal in respectful silence. Then his eyes. 
 
82 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 for an instant, darted away from the King, 
 then back to him. In that glance was com- 
 pressed all the vague terror he felt, all the 
 ominous foreboding lest the appointment 
 would, in the end, sever their friendship, and 
 mean disaster. It was done with that look 
 of his eyes, merely that instant's flash; yet it 
 conveyed to me most powerfully the emotions 
 in the breast of Becket. It is the moment 
 which stands out in my memory of the per- 
 formance. Of course Irving had wonderful 
 eyes, or rather he had wonderful control over 
 them. I would not say that they were good 
 eyes for the stage, because they were so small ; 
 but he was able to use them with exceeding 
 skill. 
 
 There are one or two technical principles 
 which must govern the effective use of the 
 eyes, but the most important of aH is the one 
 which applies to so much of our work. We 
 must be immersed in the character tor be 
 able to feel these unexpressed emotions* That 
 is the starting point. Once the part is really 
 our own, these inner reactions cannot fail 
 
THE EYE AND THE HANDS 83 
 
 to be clear to us. The question for us, in 
 the present work, is to discover if there are 
 any general rules which we should follow in 
 attempting to impress upon the audience 
 these emotions which have revealed themselves 
 to us. 
 
 One rule there certainly is of universal 
 application. When an actor wants the audi- 
 ence to notice his eye, he should give them 
 nothing else to look at. He should not, for 
 instance, move his eyes and his head at the 
 same time. " One thing at a time " is a 
 good maxim to remember. If an actor is 
 to bestow a look of bitterness on a man he is 
 not facing, his natural inclination is to turn 
 and face him. But to do this might convey 
 nothing. The audience might very well miss 
 the expression of hatred entirely. I think 
 it is a good plan, in any situation of this 
 kind, to let our eyes seek the man before we 
 turn our head, to dart our black look at him 
 just the instant before we move the head. 
 There should be a flash, an instant's picture, 
 just enough to photograph the look on the 
 
84 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 minds of the audience. The time required 
 for this is infinitesimal. Irving's glance at 
 the King, which was as memorable as any- 
 thing else in the play, probably took but an 
 instant's time, but I got the expression 
 clearly; and I have no doubt it was because 
 he was very careful that for that instant he 
 should do nothing to distract attention from 
 his eyes. 
 
 Another thing to bear in mind is that, 
 in many cases, the eye the audience see is 
 not always the eye the other actors on the 
 stage see. This is a fact that is often ignored 
 by actors good and bad. Their eyes express 
 many vital things, but they forget that the 
 actors in the play are the ones who see these 
 expressions, instead of the audience. We 
 should not only know precisely what we can 
 do to reinforce our performance with our eyes, 
 but we should take every care to see that 
 each shade of feeling is registered unmistak- 
 ably on the people in the auditorium. 
 
 This, of course, does not mean grimacing 
 and glaring and rolling the eyes at the gal- 
 
, THE EYE AND THE HANDS 85 
 
 lery. In this, as in everything on the stage, 
 we should be frugal. We should find out just 
 how little is needed to register any effect. 
 And anything more than just enough is likely 
 to be a great deal too much. It is easy to 
 waste the eye on little things, whereas it is a 
 powerful medium which should be saved for 
 the big. It is an abiding principle with me 
 that we should save all we can of all our 
 powers for the big things. The less we 
 spend, the more we will have in reserve; 
 and the impression of reserve power cannot 
 fail to add power and confidence to our 
 work. 
 
 I once saw CoqueUn in Cyrano de Ber- 
 gerac; and I am not sure that he did not 
 carry this economy in the use of his eyes a 
 little too far for my personal enjoyment. 
 Certainly he had a most peculiar way of us- 
 ing them. He played most of the time with 
 his eyes shut, only opening them to emphasize 
 some particular point. He had, in a way, 
 discarded technique entirely. The impres- 
 sion his performance made on me was a mixed 
 
86 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 one. I did not know whether he had im- 
 pressed me as being bored with the part — 
 he had played it over a thousand times — or 
 whether he seemed to me merely affected. I 
 am sm^e that it was a most distracting man- 
 nerism. It shattered the illusion for me. He 
 may have done it because his eyes were weak 
 and could not stand the glare of the lights, 
 or he may have thought that his acting gained 
 power, since he was able to make more effec- 
 tive the few points he did accentuate by the 
 use of his eyes. I should admit that the 
 method, after all, attracted me in a way, but 
 after leaving the theater I came to the con- 
 clusion that it was merely the novelty of it 
 that had pleased. I did not consider the per- 
 formance a remarkable one for a man of his 
 reputation; I cannot conceive of such an en- 
 ergetic enthusiast as Cyrano going about with 
 his eyes closed. It is very likely, however, 
 that the performance I saw failed to do 
 Coquelin justice. He had played the part 
 so often; and the audience, I am sure, un- 
 derstood little French and were thus small 
 
THE EYE AND THE HANDS ,87 
 
 inspiration for him. But his method of using 
 his eyes illustrates our point. We should 
 jealously save our eye for the vital things, 
 though I do not think it is necessary to close 
 them. Such an obvious method calls atten- 
 tion to the mechanics of our art. 
 
 We should always, in striving for effects 
 and impressions, seek to conceal the means 
 by which we gain them. If an actor's ges- 
 tures are not perfectly natural to the actor 
 himself they are pretty likely to seem awk- 
 ward to him; and if they are awkward for 
 him, they will be noticed by the audience. 
 That is, the audience will be conscious of the 
 gesture itself, rather than of the impression 
 the actor wishes to create by it. Many young 
 actors seem to think that unless they are able 
 to do something with their hands, they will 
 be suspected of being amateurs; but the most 
 difficult thing in all the actor's art is the 
 faculty of doing nothing at the right time. 
 A good general rule to follow is: when in 
 doubt, do nothing; never make a gesture 
 until there is absolutely no doubt of its pro- 
 
88 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 priety in your own mind, wait until you are 
 compelled to make it. 
 
 This matter of the use of the hands has 
 undergone a great change as the art of the 
 actor has developed. In the days of Kemble 
 and Kean it was very different from what 
 it is today. Then every emotion had a set 
 gesture by which it should be expressed. 
 Gesturing was a canonized thing. A certain 
 position of the hands indicated pity, another 
 supphcation, another horror. Many of those 
 gestures today seem as meaningless as the 
 flourishes some pianists indulge in — raising 
 their hands high above the keyboard and the 
 like. In those days the hands and arms were 
 gracefully manipulated according to certain 
 definite laws, and the artist was known by 
 his ability to squeeze everything he did into 
 the rigid mould they provided him. Not 
 for a moment do I mean to condemn or 
 sneer, in the modern fashion, at those old 
 conventions. Then it was art. I have no 
 doubt that the conventions we have today 
 (and we have plenty of them) will, in the 
 
THE EYE AND THE HANDS 89 
 
 future, seem quite as quaint and futile. But 
 rightly or wrongly, we have grown away 
 from that set way of using our hands and 
 arms. We have been bringing the stage 
 closer to real life — as we suppose. I do 
 not think we can be sure that it is better 
 art, it is merely new methods applied to the 
 same art. It is merely a big change in point 
 of view. So it is from real life and feal 
 emotions, not from tradition, that an actor 
 must learn his gestures today. 
 
 One of the finest and most impressive il- 
 lustrations of the modern way of doing noth- 
 ing that I have ever seen, was in the play 
 Hindle Wakes, as it was given by Miss 
 Horniman's company in Manchester, Eng- 
 land. The son of the household had come in 
 when everybody else in the family had been 
 hours in bed. His father has come down- 
 stairs with a candle in one hand and a poker 
 in the other, evidently expecting to find a 
 burglar. But when the old gentleman finds 
 it is his son, he proceeds to give him a lec- 
 ture. He speaks in a low voice so as not to 
 
90 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 disturb the others who are asleep. The 
 father's speech is thirty or forty lines in 
 length, and throughout his delivery of it, the 
 actor playing the father stood perfectly still, 
 without making a single gesture. As the 
 quiet voice went on in the stillness, and the 
 old man stood motionless with the candle and 
 the poker in his hands, utterly unaware that 
 he had either, we got a sense of the intense 
 earnestness of the father, and the ominous 
 significance of the quiet scene. It is inter- 
 esting to speculate on what some actor of the 
 old school might have to say of such a scene 
 if he could rise from his grave and look in 
 upon it. To him, I am sure, it would not 
 be acting at all. But it is the w^ we do 
 things today. 
 
 We should be very cautious about adopting 
 gestures which we see others use. To do that 
 blindly stifles our creative originality. When 
 we see another actor do an effective bit of 
 business we can remember it and apply it 
 to our own work and make it our own; and 
 then, when it seems to fit our part, we can 
 
THE EYE AND THE HANDS 91 
 
 modify it to our needs and make use of it. 
 But before we do use such a gesture we 
 should be very sure that the gesture is our 
 own. I have saved a gesture for years be- 
 fore it seemed to me that I could use it with 
 propriety; I had seen an actor whom I ad- 
 mired make a certain gesture, and I was 
 strongly tempted several times to try it my- 
 self, yet I knew quite well that I should 
 simply be copying him if I did, I knew there 
 was no actual place for it in my performance. 
 But I did not forget the gesture; and when 
 I did finally employ it, it had become my 
 own. We should never force a gesture on 
 our character, it is better to wait until the 
 character forces a gesture on us. 
 
 It may be said that nowadays the ges- 
 tures grow from the character of the person 
 we represent, rather than from the lines he 
 speaks. Thus if we have assimilated the 
 character, the gestures are likely to follow 
 inevitably. It is a good plan to bend our 
 thought on the characteristics of the man we 
 are playing, to bend our thought on those 
 
92 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 habits of mind and conduct which make him 
 what he is and which differentiate him from 
 the other people in the play; then we need 
 not think of just how we are to move our 
 hands or shoulders, that knowledge will come 
 as a natural corollary to the solution we have 
 found of the problem. 
 
 Oddly enough, then, in a chapter which 
 sets out to examine the problem of gesturing 
 on the modern stage, we find that the best 
 way is to turn away from the problem of ges- 
 turing altogether. But if we really succeed 
 in making this point, we have accomplished 
 a great deal. If we have seen that there 
 can be nothing hard and fast about this phase 
 of the craft, because there is nothing hard 
 and fast about human nature, we have 
 touched upon a useful truth. If the young 
 actor sees that because he is supposed to be 
 angry there is no reason for his clenching his 
 fists, because some men would never clench 
 their fists, we may feel that we have made 
 our point. 
 
 In Shakespearian parts, and plays of the 
 
THE EYE AND THE HANDS 93 
 
 heroic, costume type generally, it is possible 
 to be a little Hiore dogmatic. Those " heroic " 
 parts, human though many of them are, are 
 /human in a magnified form. Their emotions 
 are thrown into high relief ; they are exag- 
 gerated according to the art-conventions of 
 the time. With them we must project our 
 emotions on a larger scale. Our gestures, 
 corresponding with the emotions expressed, 
 should be freer and, in a sense, more formal 
 in that we are guided, not by real life, but by 
 the artistic canons of the time in which the 
 plays were written. In plays of the old type 
 the arms should as a rule be moved from 
 the shoulder, I should say; while in modern 
 plays we work more from the elbow. Today* 
 we suggest more than we actually do on the 
 stage. We do just enough to register the 
 emotion, to inoculate the audience with 
 the right germ — and we stop there. But 
 in the past they were not content with that; 
 they strove, perhaps we may say, to visual- 
 ize the tempests of emotion which in reality 
 took place in the soul of the character. 
 
94 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 An actor can afford to be very careful 
 what he lets his audience see him do, and 
 he should strive never to let them see too 
 much. It is always surprising to find how 
 
 ^ quick an audienc e a re with thgir eye, how very 
 little is missed. Even when the attention is 
 riveted on an exciting scene, the sight of a 
 white handkerchief unexpectedly taken from 
 the pocket of an actor is enough to switch 
 the thought, for the moment, away from 
 the center of interest. Unless there is a defi- 
 
 / nite reason we should never move on another's 
 
 ^ speech. We should move on our own; and 
 the movement should come at the end of the 
 sense, at a natural break in the thought, not 
 in the middle of it. If we find it necessary 
 to cough, we should try to cough during 
 our own speech, when the audience are pay- 
 ing attention to us, rather than during the 
 other man's speech when they are giving their 
 attention to him. 
 
 So, after all, repose is what we should aim 
 r. for. With gesturing, as with almost every- 
 thing else, the less one does of it the better. 
 
THE EYE AND THE HANDS 95 
 
 Too many gestures are worse than too few.j 
 We should never make a big gesture where ^ 
 a little one will suffice; and we should never \ 
 use one at all unless it has a definite func-. \ 
 tion, and unless we take care to register itl \ 
 properly on the audience. Thought should i, 
 always precede our gestures, they should al-!*^ 
 ways grow from something inside. ; 
 
 These, I realize, are simple truisms of the 
 actor's craft. But it is the simple truths, 
 that everyone knows, that are apt to be taken 
 for granted and forgotten. Let me repeat 
 here that as we learn more and more about 
 the intricacies of our craft, we are more and 
 more in danger of forgetting the funda- 
 mentals upon which our knowledge is based. 
 The great task is to remain direct and simple 
 as we master the complexities and subtleties 
 of our craft. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 THE ART OF DOING NOTHING 
 
 One Actor Cannot Stand Alone — Supplementing the 
 Speeches of Others — Sweet Nell of Old Drury 
 and The Lady of Lyons — Team-work Will Cover 
 a Multitude of Sins — Pinero's Advice — Coaxing the 
 Audience to Listen — Listening Through Long Speeches 
 — Know What You Are Going to Do When Silent — 
 Varying Our Reading — Miming Must Grow from the 
 Character — Retaining the Illusion of the First Time 
 — The Point, Thrust, and Lunge — Thinking Lines — 
 Giving the Audience a Rest — Little Things All 
 Count. 
 
 THE art of doing nothing and the art 
 of listening on the stage are about as 
 important and about as difficult as any- 
 thing an actor has to do; for as long as he 
 is on the stage, he is contributing to or de- 
 tracting from the effect the play is making 
 on the audience, whether he is speaking or 
 not. As long as the curtain is up, some- 
 body is always speaking or something is al- 
 ways happening; and whatever is done, or 
 
 96 
 
THE ART OF DOING NOTHING 97 
 
 not done, in silence, is sure to have a good or 
 bad effect on the play. We never have noth- 
 ing to do on the stage. It is always our 
 business to make what the other fellow is do- 
 ing or saying as effective as we can. The 
 effect a play makes on an audience is a com- 
 posite thing. One actor cannot stand alone, 
 he cannot get along without the others, and 
 the others cannot get along without him. 
 Half of our work is to make our own speeches 
 effective, half of it is to make effective the 
 speeches of our associates in the piece. If 
 someone insults us on the stage that insult 
 will not carry much force with the audience 
 unless we show them that we have been in- 
 sulted. In real life we would try to give, 
 no sign of our chagrin, but on the stage we 
 rob the play of an effect if we conceal our 
 hurt feelings. We appear perhaps to take 
 the insult as we should on the street, but the 
 audience must see by some subtle movement 
 of the body or some flash in our eye, that 
 we have been hurt. 
 
 It may seem incredible, but I have known 
 
kA'' 
 
 98 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 actors and actresses so selfish, so inartistic, 
 that they would deliberately refrain from sup- 
 plementing another's speech in this way. I 
 remember once in England I was producing 
 a play called Sweet Nell of Old Drury in 
 which there was a war of wits between Nell 
 Gwynne, the orange girl, and Lady Castle- 
 maine. Lady Castlemaine is sadly worsted 
 \ in the conflict, and the actress who played 
 her, not liking this, remamed perfectly in- 
 different to the galling thrusts of sarcasm 
 she received. I tried to point out that she 
 was wrong, but she did not agree with me. 
 So I gave up remonstrating with her finally, 
 and told her to do it her own way, if she was 
 determined not to listen to advice. When 
 the dress rehearsal came I spoke to her 
 again after this scene. " I suppose," said I, 
 " you imagine you are going to make a big 
 hit in this part? I'm afraid I must tell you 
 for your own good that your performance is 
 going to be rather a colorless affair." Since 
 it was the dress rehearsal, she was worried 
 and nervous, as I had known she would be. 
 
THE ART OF DOING NOTHING 99 
 
 She asked me what was the matter with her 
 acting, and I rephed, " You should do as I 
 suggest and register the hits Nell Gwynne 
 makes on you." 
 
 She retorted, " I am not going to let that 
 woman see tha^t she is getting the best of 
 me!" 
 
 " I never intended that you should. I 
 only want you to let the audience see it," I 
 replied. 
 
 The truth of it dawned on her then, and 
 on the opening night she played the scene in 
 that way. The result was that she gave a 
 splendid performance. The audience were 
 interested not only in Nell Gwynne 's words, 
 but also in the effect of them on Lady Castle- 
 maine. Until they were satisfied on both 
 these counts the scene was incomplete. 
 
 In The Lady of Lyons there is another 
 good illustration of how one actor must de- 
 pend on another. Toward the end of that 
 sturdy old play, Claude Melnotte unmasks 
 the villain in a grand speech. The real 
 nature of the villain is revealed by the hero. 
 
100 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 to the great delight of the audience. I 
 recall an occasion on which this scene was 
 received with more ecstasy than usual. The 
 actor who was playing Melnotte was quite 
 elated, afterwards. " Well," he said to the 
 villain, " that was a fine round of applause 
 I got tonight, wasn't it? " 
 
 " Yes," was the reply, " we did get a good 
 
 one. 
 
 "We!" echoed the star. "Do you think 
 you had anything to do with it? " 
 
 The villain admitted that such had been his 
 impression. The hero stiffened a little, " You 
 flatter yourself," he said. 
 
 When the next performance came Claude 
 Melnotte unmasked his adversary in his fin- 
 est manner; but the latter, instead of acting 
 with the deepest mortification and rage, re- 
 mained perfectly still, quite impassive. The 
 round of applause which had begun as usual 
 took a sudden drop and died altogether. 
 Afterward the hero admitted that his fine 
 denunciation was no good unless the effect 
 of it on the villain was shown. I may add 
 
THE ART OF DOING NOTHING 101 
 
 that I was playing one of those parts, and 
 it was not the hero. 
 
 The value of this " team-work " in a com- 
 pany cannot be over-estimated. One actor 
 cannot stand alone. He must depend upon 
 his fellows to shade and emphasize his work. 
 It would be splendid if every actor should 
 realize that half of his work is the reading 
 of his own part, half of it is the " playing- 
 up " to the others. A scene simply cannot 
 make its effect through the efforts of one 
 actor; it must come through the concerted 
 effort of all the actors in the scene; and 
 these various efforts, must be blended the one 
 into the other. Anyone who goes to the 
 theater often has felt a scene building up 
 steadily and powerfully, only to be shattered 
 by the mere voice of some minor character, 
 perhaps, who is out of key, out of the mood, 
 of the whole. I once saw a repertoire com- 
 pany of average capacity give a performance 
 of Arnold Bennett's What the Public Wants. 
 I myself had taken part in Charles Hawtrey's 
 London production of the piece; but I real- 
 
102 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 ized very clearly that, as a complete work, 
 this repertoire production threw ours com- 
 pletely in the shade. The individual parts, 
 of course, were not played nearly so well as 
 they had been in London, but the ensemble 
 was infinitely better. The effect of the play, 
 as a whole, was much more clear-cut and 
 powerful than ours had been. This was 
 due to the superb team-work of the company. 
 They all devoted themselves to the play; they 
 forgot themselves, they all helped each other. 
 But there is not the least reason, that I can 
 see, why this team-work should be confined 
 to repertoire companies. The faculty of ren- 
 dering all possible aid to his fellows should 
 be cultivated by every actor as a matter of 
 course. 
 
 We always find, in any play, a certain 
 amount of necessary exposition, a certain 
 routine of stating the relations and conditions 
 upon which the story is based; and this ma- 
 terial in itself may not be particularly in- 
 teresting. We should expect these arid 
 stretches in every part we play, and it would 
 
THE ART OF DOING NOTHING 103 
 
 be well if we prepared ourselves to make an 
 extra effort through them. A striking case 
 in point is Sir Arthur Wing Pinero's The 
 Thunderbolt. In that fine play there is a 
 scene in which many of the characters sit 
 about a large table while two lawyers explain 
 to them the law governing the making of 
 wills. We were rehearsing the play at the 
 St. James Theater in London, and during 
 this bit Pinero stopped the rehearsal, and 
 said, " Ladies and gentlemen, I know this is 
 very prosaic and uninteresting to you, and 
 that it will be so to the audience; but it is 
 absolutely necessary, for the sake of what 
 is to come, that this be driven into their 
 minds. Now if you show by your attitude 
 that you are not interested in it, you may be 
 sure the audience will not be interested in 
 it either. So when you reach the more in- 
 teresting matter later on, which is founded 
 on this dry law business, you will be sur- 
 prised to find that you have lost your hold 
 on the audience and that they do not realize 
 what you are talking about. Therefore I 
 
104 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 beg of you to listen to this explanation of 
 the law, and to show by your attitude and 
 attention that the characters consider it of 
 vital importance to them. Then the audience 
 will listen to it, too." Into this sage advice 
 is packed a great truth, for the searching test 
 of the actor lies in his ability to keep the 
 audience alert and interested through what 
 is often mere routine preliminary exposition. 
 It is in the silent things he does here, and 
 indeed in the silent things he does through- 
 , out, that the actor proves himself; it is not in 
 V the powerful speech and powerful moment. 
 I have found that the " big " scenes are often 
 the easiest work I have had to do in an eve- 
 ning; they will, if they are genuine, almost 
 carry themselves. It is the things we do to 
 supplement our spoken words, and the spoken 
 words of others; the things we do through- 
 out (but especially toward the beginning) 
 to foment interest, that call out our best 
 resources. The successful actor is he who can 
 touch out and reinforce and make attractive 
 the less attractive portions of the play; just 
 
THE ART OF DOING NOTHING 105 
 
 as the successful lawyer is not the man who 
 sums up his case in a burst of oratory on the 
 last day of the trial, but the one who is able 
 to make the simple, prosaic facts on which 
 his argument is based burn their way, willy 
 nilly, into the minds of the jury. 
 
 The power of listening to the speech of 
 another in such a way that the audience are 
 coaxed to listen also, is one of the most di- 
 rect means by which we are able to burn the 
 simple prosaic facts of the play into the 
 minds of the audience; and it is a supremely 
 important branch of the actor's craft. 
 
 The first scene in Bernard Shaw's Major 
 Barbara is an amazing example of that au- 
 thor's bland disregard of convention. He 
 has a volume of comparatively uninteresting 
 facts to place before the audience before the 
 people of the play can be understood. Does 
 he devise some winning little incident to 
 start the play, some incident into which he 
 can unobtrusively insinuate this involved " ex- 
 position"? Not Shaw. Lady Britomart and 
 her son, Stephen, sit on a settee in the center 
 
106 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 of the stage, and for fifteen minutes or more 
 the actor playing Stephen must Hsten to an 
 exhaustive and detailed summary of the sit- 
 uation in the Undershaft family, past, pres- 
 ent, and future. Lady Britomart begins by 
 telling Stephen that he was twenty-four years 
 old the previous June; she goes on to sketch 
 the education and travel he has enjoyed, he 
 has been to Harrow and Cambridge, in India 
 and Japan. She then speaks of his sister 
 Sarah's engagement to " Cholly " Lomax, 
 who will be a milhonaire at thirty-five; she 
 tells him that his other sister, Barbara, is to 
 marry an impecunious professor of Greek; 
 she states the exact income of her own father; 
 then turns to a consideration of her husband, 
 Stephen's father. We learn that he is a 
 maker of munitions, that he was an illegiti- 
 mate son; that his name is not really Under- 
 shaft, but that that name was bestowed 
 upon him when he was adopted by his prede- 
 cessor in the office of president of the muni- 
 tions plant. We might suppose that this in- 
 formation was sufficient for Stephen, but 
 
THE ART OF DOING NOTHING 107 
 
 Lady Britomart has only begun. She says, 
 " Now be a good boy, Stephen, and hsten 
 to me patiently." And she launches off into 
 a long explanation of the Undershaft custom 
 of leaving the great industry in the hands 
 of a foundling, when one generation gives 
 way to the next. Throughout this long scene 
 Stephen has only a few perfunctory speeches; 
 for most of the time he must listen. A good 
 actor playing this part is able to point and 
 make more vital what Lady Britomart says, 
 by his appearance of rapt, and at times pain- 
 ful, attention; he makes it more amusing 
 by his tendency to be shocked at his mother's 
 blunt statements, he can keep in the picture, 
 and add vitality to the long speeches; though 
 it is true the scene is so brilliantly written 
 that the audience forgets the prosiness of the 
 facts themselves, forgets that nothing what- 
 ever is happening. 
 
 But an actor playing a scene of this kind 
 must know exactly how he is going to behave 
 while the other is speaking to him. It is a 
 grievous mistake to leave it to chance, as 
 
108 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 unfortunately a great many do. If he hap- 
 pens to be in just the right mood he may 
 fare well enough; but he cannot expect to be 
 always in the right mood. The workmanlike 
 thing, for anyone who is striving to fit him- 
 self for worth-while work on the stage, is 
 to study out for himself some sort of broad 
 technique for his listening, which will be a 
 guide — merely a general guide, of course — 
 for any part he may play. 
 
 Not that he should try to force himself to 
 do precisely the same things night after 
 night. Every actor should be able to vary 
 his performance slightly every night, other- 
 wise the monotony of his work would be fatal 
 to all freshness and spontaneity. We should 
 be able to try little variations of emphasis, 
 to show more emotion here on some nights, 
 and less there; we should try to give a comic 
 turn to a situation sometimes, and a pathetic 
 turn at others, to see which is more effective. 
 But we should always have some sort of guide 
 which will prevent us from going too far 
 afield. Our ship should always be firmly an- 
 
THE ART OF DOING NOTHING 109 
 
 chored; we may, and should, pay out more 
 rope some nights than others, but we should 
 always be very sure we are not adrift. 
 
 Years ago when I was associated with Sir 
 Charles Wyndham, he interrupted me at a 
 rehearsal and said, " But, see here, my boy, 
 you are not speaking the author's lines." I 
 replied that I knew I was not speaking the 
 exact text, but that I had the sense of it. 
 He took the occasion to give me a little lec- 
 ture. He impressed upon my mind the 
 absolute necessity of having the exact words 
 of the text in hand at the start. The time 
 would come when I should not find the sub- 
 stitute words coming easily, when I should 
 get involved in words, and stray from the 
 point, if I did not have, as a firm anchorage, 
 the original words the author had written. 
 Joseph Jefferson once said that there were 
 a thousand ways of playing one part; and 
 he must have found many of them for Rip 
 in Rip Van Winkle, or he could never have 
 played the part for years on end as he did. 
 I should imagine that David Warfield has 
 
 V 
 
110 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 his subtle variations for his impersonation of 
 The Music Master, by which he is able to 
 stimulate himself and freshen his perform- 
 ance from week to week. But no one will 
 doubt that both of these men started first 
 of all with a solid anchorage to which they 
 were sure they could always return. In the 
 silent portions of our parts — and the silent 
 are fully as important as the spoken, often — 
 we do not even have words to guide us and 
 keep us true. It must be apparent, then, how 
 necessary it is to devise a guide for ourselves 
 which will roughly govern us always. 
 
 Of course it would be stupid and presump- 
 tuous to lay down any hard and fast rules 
 in a matter which depends so much on the 
 individuality of the actor, and so much on 
 the various requirements of various parts. 
 In some cases we may achieve our end by re- 
 maining perfectly still with our eyes fixed 
 on the speaker, thus focusing attention on 
 him; sometimes it is better to obliterate our- 
 selves from the scene entirely; again it is the 
 listener who gives the real point and drive 
 
THE ART OF DOING NOTHING 111 
 
 to the other's speech, he may convey to the 
 audience by his expression of horror or pity 
 the depths of the suffering through which 
 the other is passing; and how often a Une 
 " gets a laugh," not because it is given in a 
 clever way by the actor who speaks it, but 
 because of the way it is received by the list- 
 ener ! In a tense scene the slightest movement 
 of the hand or head, even on the part of a 
 minor actor, is apt to take on a profound sig- 
 nificance in the eyes of those absorbed in the 
 play. An actor may mar the carefully- 
 wrought effect of a situation by a false move ; 
 or he may, by some simple gesture, enhance 
 the effect enormously. More than anything 
 else we do, perhaps, our mode of listening » 
 must grow directly from the particular char- 
 acter we are playing; for it is by our expres- 
 sion and gesture — our silent moments — that 
 we convey the actual thoughts of the char- 
 acter. Thus, in turning our attention to 
 this question of listening with effect, we must ' 
 deal more with principle than with method. 
 There seems little doubt that, unless we 
 
112 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 have founded our interpretation on some such 
 analysis as we outlined in an earlier chapter, 
 there will be difficulty in sustaining the proper 
 illusion through these silent moments. If our 
 miming is to be genuine, there must first be 
 a clear and firm knowledge of the character 
 we are playing; we must have forgotten our- 
 selves, and be immersed in the character as 
 we understand it. This seems almost self- 
 evident. If this is the case, and our minds 
 are fixed on the truth of the character as re- 
 vealed by our analysis, we may say in a broad 
 sense, it is not necessary to think much about 
 the specific movements with which we are to 
 attend and register what is said to us. These 
 will develop naturally from our knowledge, 
 they will not be tacked on, and we are not 
 likely to be so self-conscious in them. A cer- 
 tain mental discipline is implied in this, of 
 course; a discipline which will force us to 
 keep our minds unwaveringly on the char- 
 acter. As a step in finding the technique 
 which suits him best, every young actor, I 
 should say, would be repaid if he tried to 
 
THE ART OF DOING NOTHING 113 
 
 devise ways which will aid his concentration • 
 and make him proof against the distractions 
 that increasing familiarity with the part is 
 pretty apt to bring. Then, with this fixed 
 knowledge there should be the purpose — the 
 common one of all phases of our study — to 
 make what we do a simple and sincere ex- 
 pression of what we conceive the character to 
 be. Thus we are again driven back to pri- 
 mary things; as we strive to examine and 
 roughly codify this rather subtle and complex 
 business of listening we are led back to the 
 simple primary which had to do with cor- 
 rect part-study. No matter how finished 
 a performance we give, we find it essential 
 to keep intact the lines of communication back 
 to our base. 
 
 The real difficulty of listening with this 
 curious persuasive effect, I have always found 
 grows greater as the run of the play con- 
 tinues. The famiharity which is born of this 
 prolonged repetition, will, if care is not taken, 
 eventually kill the freshness of the words 
 we speak. The little touches by which we 
 
114 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 suggest the many thoughts behind the spoken 
 words, the nicely calculated hesitancies in the 
 delivery of them, are apt to become so worn 
 by constant use that they will be scarcely no- 
 ticeable. Of course we should always at- 
 tempt to forget that we have ever heard the 
 l/' 'words before, and that we are speaking our 
 own for the first time. This is an extremely 
 difficult thing to do, and it is not a thing to 
 leave to the will, it is a problem for our tech- 
 nique. The problem is that we know exactly 
 what is to be said to us by the other charac- 
 ters, yet must give the impression that we are 
 hearing it for the first time. We must give 
 the impression, too, that our answer is the 
 unstudied response to what we hear. In 
 real life we rarely have a glib answer on the 
 tip of our tongue. At the risk of seeming to 
 make a petty analysis of the obvious, let us 
 say that there are usually three steps: we 
 listen to what is said, we take an instant to 
 grasp its meaning, then out of the thousand 
 and one things we might say in reply, we se- 
 lect the words which fit the occasion best. 
 
 I 
 
THE ART OF DOING NOTHING 115 
 
 On the stage if we are to give the impression 
 that we are hearing a remark for the first 
 time, I am certain that each of these three 
 steps must be suggested. Of course it should 
 be most delicately done, but it should be done. 
 It is much like fencing. If a layman were 
 watching a fencing bout he would see two 
 men hopping about and lunging at each other 
 with the foils, and that is about all he would 
 see. But a trained eye would know at once 
 whether the fencers knew their business. 
 There are three distinct steps to an attack 
 in fencing. First the sword is pointed at the 
 opponent, then the arm is straightened, then 
 there is the forward lunge of the body. The 
 point, thrust, and lunge are necessary in 
 fencing; but the expert does the three things 
 in rapid succession, almost as one. He him- 
 self, no doubt, is scarcely conscious of the 
 separate steps, though in the beginning he had 
 to learn them one at a time. No one watching 
 him could detect the three movements, but if 
 the attack is to succeed properly they must 
 all be there. Yet significantly for our point 
 
116 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 the success of the attack depends upon the 
 conceahng of what is done, for if it is not 
 concealed the man attacked will know what 
 is coming and act accordingly. 
 
 There should be a point, thrust, and lunge 
 to every stage conversation; three distinct 
 steps blended into one. First the actor re- 
 ceives the words; second he "judges" them; 
 third he replies to them. Thus when another 
 character speaks to us there should be some 
 suggestion that we are taking in his meaning 
 as he goes along, some suggestion that we are 
 hearing his words for the first time. Next 
 there should be some sort of momentary hesi- 
 tation, as though we were forming our reply, 
 for the first time. Then we should give our 
 reply. But no one watching us should be 
 conscious of the three steps; as in the case of 
 the fencer our success depends upon the 
 conceahng of our technique. If we school 
 ourselves into this method — as the fencer 
 schools himself in his — so that it becomes 
 second nature to us, so that we ourselves are 
 scarcely conscious of the three separate steps, ■ 
 
THE ART OF DOING NOTHING 117 
 
 we overcome, to a great extent, the tendency 
 to '* parrot " our lines, which comes from long 
 repetition. I believe any actor could adopt 
 this method to advantage. 
 
 A qualification, however, should perhaps be 
 added. There are times when the listener 
 knows just what the end of the speech is to 
 be, and the audience is waiting for the re- 
 ply which they know will be of a certain kind ; 
 here the listener must give his answer almost 
 before the speech of the other is finished, and 
 it is evident our little formula does not apply. 
 But such a scene as this, where the speeches 
 often " overlap " each other, falls a little 
 outside the scope of the present discussion. 
 In such a scene there is really little listening 
 done, that is one actor does not do most of 
 the speaking while the other does most of 
 the listening, both actors may be said to play 
 first fiddle, while in this chapter we are con- 
 cerned with the trials of the second fiddler 
 who must listen for long periods to others 
 and yet, somehow, keep in his character and 
 sustain illusion. 
 
118 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 The whole question of effective listening 
 to more or less dull material, then, may be 
 said to resolve itself into the problem of sub- 
 merging oneself in the part and remaining 
 in it, throughout the dull, as well as the 
 spirited, portions of the play. I have found 
 that it helps me to do this if, during re- 
 hearsals, I can study out Hnes for myself to 
 think while the other characters are speaking; 
 and if I can force myself actually to think 
 them — the same lines — night after night, I 
 usually find it easier to keep my mind on the 
 story of the play, and on my connection with 
 it. The lines I do speak then are, in a way, 
 the outgrowth of my thought, and the effect 
 of the scene, speech by speech, upon me. It 
 seems to me that this, in theory at least, is 
 correct, for it tends to create for the actor 
 himself the conditions through which his char- 
 acter is supposed to be passing. 
 
 I believe, also, that if one can give the audi- 
 ence a rest from his character at times, he 
 adds greatly to his effectiveness. It seems 
 that some actors never learn the great value 
 
THE ART OF DOING NOTHING 119 
 
 of this ; they insist on thrusting themselves on 
 the attention even when another character 
 has the floor; but selfishness never pays, and 
 if we distract the attention of the audience 
 from what they want to hear, they only re- 
 sent the interference. If an actor uses his 
 discretion and takes himself out of a scene 
 as completely as he can — by turning his back, 
 or remaining perfectly still — when it is time 
 for him to speak again he comes to the audi- 
 ence with added freshness. But in doing 
 this, naturally, we ourselves must be sure that 
 our thoughts are not allowed to wander, that 
 we are in the scene though we may not appear 
 to be so to others. 
 
 There are a great many of these devices; 
 and they will undoubtedly occur to the per- 
 son who studies his part with the purpose 
 of making the dull moments live. He guards 
 against the tendency to slide over them in 
 his thinking, he studies over and over the 
 lines to which he must listen and makes them 
 meaningful to himself. If the author has 
 given him little to work on, he is able to 
 
120 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 delve into himself for the vitality that will 
 make his character live. He can invest the 
 prosiest bits with his own imagination, and 
 give a tinge to them that will shed light on 
 the character he is playing. I believe we even 
 come to welcome these uninteresting bits, for 
 in them it is our own originality that tells. 
 It not only brings satisfaction to tackle and 
 solve the harder portions of a part, but it has 
 a great deal to do with the impression our 
 evening's work is to make. For the audience, 
 on leaving the theater, think of an actor's 
 performance as a whole, they do not think 
 only of his great moments. Unconsciously 
 there is a flash back over the entire portrayal 
 he has given, the small things he did at the 
 beginning when they were first getting an 
 insight into his character, assemble them- 
 selves; and if the actor has been consistent 
 they feel the logic of it all. It pays, then, 
 to build conscientiously from first to last, to 
 spend as much energy on the arid stretches as 
 on the fertile. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 THE EMOTIONS 
 
 All Acting Is Emotional, and All Actors Must Be 
 Capable of Projecting the Primary Emotions — Trick- 
 ing an Audience — Sir Herbert Tree's Finesse — In 
 Called Back — His Artifice in Trilby — In Jim the Pen- 
 man — His Wolsey's Falseness — We Must Draw Our 
 Interpretation Solely from the Author's Lines — Tree's 
 Shylock Saved by a Trick — Coquelin's Cyrano Merely 
 Make-believe — Ristori's Comment on Rachel — Should 
 We Literally Feel the Emotions We Portray? — 
 Irving's Opinion, and Ellen Terry's — Guiding One- 
 self Through the Impassioned Speeph — Crescendo of 
 Emotion — Beginning Gently — Nervousness Often a 
 Good Thing— Othello's Emotion— The " After-swell " 
 — Ignoring the Audience. 
 
 IT may be said that all acting is emotional. 
 Of course there is a wide range in the 
 intensity of the emotion expressed in the 
 various scenes of any given play; but unless 
 a scene is expressive of some emotion of some 
 kind, it can scarcely be a dramatic scene. 
 Using the word emotion in this broad sense, 
 
 121 
 
122 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 I mean that any scene with the power of 
 quickening the pulse of the auditor — what- 
 ever be its appeal — is emotional. 
 
 Therefore it would seem indispensable that 
 every actor should have the power of express- 
 ing the primary emotions of grief, anger, fear, 
 despair, humor, love, desire, hope. He should 
 Tiave the power of projecting these emotions 
 over the footlights, which means that, in the 
 beginning, his own nature must respond to 
 them. The lack of this power has been the 
 explanation of many a failure in the profes- 
 sion. I have always believed that the extent 
 to which an actor moves and convinces his 
 audience is determined by his ability to por- 
 tray the deeper feelings, the hidden emotions, 
 the soul within and behind the words he 
 speaks. And the test comes in his ability to 
 give this portrayal purely and simply on his 
 own merits, with no accessories of make-up 
 and costume to aid him; simply by his power 
 of himself feeling the emotions of his part, | 
 and making the audience feel and appreciate 
 and believe in their genuineness. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 123 
 
 The actor who really moves audiences — 
 to laughter or tears — does not trick them; he 
 himself feels keenly the various emotions he 
 seeks to express, his task is to inoculate 
 his hearers with the same emotion; to do this 
 he resorts to technical methods which are cal- 
 culated to aid him in projecting his emo- 
 tions, but the great mistake often made by 
 the beginner is that he regards these tech- 
 nical devices as the whole of acting. He 
 regards acting as make-believe; and that is 
 an attitude of mind that the novice should rid 
 himself of as speedily as possible, for it is 
 inimical to the development of the more vital 
 faculty — that of really feeling the emotions 
 of his part. 
 
 I have known only one man who succeeded 
 on the stage without this faculty, that man 
 was Sir Herbert Tree. I should say that he 
 found it such an effort to put his soul into 
 the mood of his characters that he simply 
 did not bother to try it seriously. At a per- 
 formance, here and there, I have seen him 
 inject a certain amount of true feeling into 
 
124 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 his work, but this was rare; I am rather in- 
 clined to believe that he despised the primi- 
 tive and simple in most things artistic. In 
 my opinion, he reached his fame by means of 
 a wonderful finesse. He clung to this finesse 
 and superficial cleverness of his throughout 
 his career. In some characters this pro- 
 duced admirable results; in others, like Shy- 
 lock, Othello, Macbeth, and Wolsey, it did 
 not. It should be said that Tree came into 
 the profession at a time when actors consid- 
 ered that nothing but the bald, primitive emo- 
 tions was necessary. They paid too little 
 attention to the deft shading and the intimate 
 touches which make a character rounded and 
 individual. Tree, in playing Macari in Called 
 Back, for instance, illumined his impersona- 
 tion with little movements of the hands, he 
 twirled his mustache in the Italian manner 
 (Macari was an Italian), he flicked the ash 
 of his cigarette, and did countless other tiny 
 things which came as a revelation to the 
 actors and audiences of the time and which 
 were received with enthusiasm. It was his 
 
THE EMOTIONS 125 
 
 first great success and he did indeed give a 
 most lifelike picture of Macari. His facial 
 make-up was perfect, his facial play was per- 
 fect, his suggestion of callousness all combined 
 to make a tremendously vital performance. 
 
 The same was true of his Svengali in 
 Trilby, But when the stress of powerful 
 emotion came in this play he fell far below 
 the standard he had reached in the quieter 
 portions. We realized that he was circum- 
 venting the real thing by artifice. This was 
 illustrated in the death of his Svengali. He 
 had missed the fervor of the Jewish prayer 
 entirely, it seemed to me, in spite of the fact 
 that he had sought to make it impressive by 
 speaking it in Hebrew. Then when he came 
 to the moment of death, with the audience 
 clearly little moved, he fell across a table with 
 his head hanging over the edge, so that those 
 in the theater saw it upside down with the 
 eyes staring weirdly in death. This artifice 
 did succeed, and was regarded by many as 
 a piece of great acting! 
 
 In Jim the Penman he employed a peculiar 
 
126 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 little trick which disguised his lack of real 
 feeling. He was playing the Baron in that 
 piece, and when Jim lay dead in the chair 
 Tree had to make the audience realize that 
 he knew the forger was dead. The usual 
 actor would have looked into the face of the 
 dead man, and by means of his own facial 
 expression and gesture would have conveyed 
 his realization of the death. But Tree did 
 not use his face at all, he simply walked to 
 the dead body in the most callous, almost 
 unconcerned way, passed his hand over the 
 dead man's brow, and coolly wiped the death 
 sweat off his hand onto his coat. This pro- 
 ceeding made the audience shiver, as it was 
 designed to do; but though such pieces of 
 business are effective, anybody could do them, 
 and I do not think they can be called great 
 acting. 
 
 He carried this trickery into his interpreta- 
 tion of Shakespearian parts, and there its in- 
 appropriateness was plain. It was as though 
 he realized that he could not sound the depths 
 of emotion in those giant parts, and so took 
 
THE EMOTIONS 127 
 
 refuge in his finesse. His well-known device 
 of carrying an orange while playing Wolsey 
 was surely a grave error. When he first did 
 this I heard people praising him for his 
 cuteness — it was the one thing commented 
 upon in his performance. His idea was that 
 Wolsey kept the orange near his nostrils be- 
 cause the scent of human beings was so dis- 
 tasteful to him. Tree must have rooted this 
 idea out of some book on Wolsey, and it may 
 be that the real Wolsey did actually express 
 aversion for the common herd in this way; 
 but whether the orange is fact or fiction, it is 
 certainly true that in Shakespeare's Wolsey, 
 there is not the slightest suggestion of such a 
 man. Tree made this excessive fastidiousness 
 Wolsey's predominant trait, it was the one 
 thing dwelt upon wherever his performance 
 was discussed. From an artistic point of view 
 this was appalling, for Shakespeare's Wolsey 
 was a giant among men: a giant who, in his 
 fall from high place, showed qualities that 
 made of him a great tragic figure, a greater 
 man than he ever was at the zenith of his 
 
128 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 power. Whether Tree was incapable of 
 portraying the tremendous emotions of the 
 character is a question; but it is a simple mat- 
 ter of fact that he did not portray them, that 
 he circumvented them by means of this 
 orange device and others as questionable. 
 
 It may be said that he was led away by 
 the success of his little trickeries until he lost 
 sight of, and lost belief in, the profounder 
 things. This is indeed a danger which any 
 actor should realize. We are apt to be de- 
 ceived by a momentary success of some in- 
 genious little adornment we have added to 
 our performance, and forget that artistic 
 progress, in the last analysis, depends upon 
 the straightforward appeal we are able to 
 make. If we are able to add to the attrac- 
 tiveness and give point to this appeal by bits 
 of finesse, well and good. Indeed we should 
 make each part we play as individual as we 
 can. This is done, of course, by such devices 
 as Tree used. We cannot depend altogether 
 I upon the primitive unadorned emotions, but 
 ,we should never forget that these emotions 
 
THE EMOTIONS 129 
 
 should be the basis of everything. It is a 
 great mistake to substitute these external em- 
 bellishments for the real feeling. The two 
 must be judiciously blended. 
 
 Again I repeat that we must draw our 
 conception of any character from the au- 
 thor's lines; and we must resist the tempta- 
 tion to let it be colored by other knowledge 
 we may have. In the case of a character like 
 Wolsey, it is an artistic misdemeanor to go 
 to history for our idea of his nature. A play 
 is like a painting or a piece of sculpture, it 
 is what it is, it must be its own justification, 
 its own explanation. Shakespeare conceived 
 and created a clearly defined, consistent man 
 in Wolsey — whether he is the Wolsey of his- 
 tory or not. It is for the actor to play 
 Shakespeare's Wolsey, being guided alone by 
 Shakespeare's lines, otherwise the balance of 
 the play is certain to suffer. 
 
 The career of Tree provides a fruitful 
 theme for a discussion of this kind. Clever 
 man that he was, he never missed a chance 
 to appeal to the audience's love of novelty. 
 
130 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 But in many cases, there can be no doubt, his 
 cleverness spoiled his good work. I recall his 
 Shylock, in the great emotional scene with 
 Tubal where the old Jew runs the whole 
 gamut of hate, rage, and tears. But Tree in 
 the part left me quite cold. I beheve the 
 effect on the audience would have been negli- 
 gible also if the curtain had been brought 
 down upon the closing words of Shylock's 
 speech, as it customarily is. But Tree had 
 evolved a piece of business which he tacked 
 on at the end of the scene. He fell on his 
 knees before the threshold of Shylock's house, 
 and with agonized cries scraped ashes from 
 the ground and showered them over his head. 
 The touch electrified the audience; and the 
 scene, which up to this had been flat, was 
 awarded great applause. How different to 
 this were the Shylocks of both Booth and 
 Jrving! Those men drew upon nothing for 
 itheir effects except their magnificent power of 
 expressing great emotion. 
 
 Tree, when playing Hamlet, never got the 
 response other actors had received in his out- 
 
THE EMOTIONS 131 
 
 burst over the grave of Ophelia; but here too 
 he was able to cover his tracks and save him- 
 self. After the scene was finished, and when j,pj^A^ 
 the others had departed, he would return tb^l-^^^^,^^^^ 
 take a last mournful look at the dead body 
 of Ophelia; and this rarely failed to win 
 over the audience. And thus, throughout his 
 career, he concealed his natural shortcomings 
 by resorting to more or less ,^^trrlP^^"r^ but ^ 
 always clever, artifice. 
 
 I never felt that Tree was full of the emo- 
 tion his character was supposed to be feel- 
 ing. It never seemed to me that his inter- 
 pretation was coming from the inside. This 
 was the great fault with his work; and it 
 may be because of it that he is so often ac- 
 cused of insincerity and falseness. 
 
 I had some such feehng also about Coque- 
 lin's performance of Cyrano de Bergerac (to 
 which I referred in an earher chapter). It 
 seemed to me that Coquelin, with all his x 
 superb technique, was concerning himself 
 merely with the externals and superficialities, 
 the visible attributes of Cyrano, instead of 
 
132 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 feeling him. I had produced the play for 
 Sir Charles Wyndham, and knew what fine 
 possibilities there were in the part. Coquelin 
 never once moved me. I did not feel that he 
 ever put himself in Cyrano's place, but that 
 throughout he was playing at make-believe. 
 Whether one should actually feel the emo- 
 tions he portrays or merely simulate them has 
 always been a debatable matter. Ristori, in 
 contrasting the Italian and the French meth- 
 ods, says, " Rachel was a tragic genius of 
 France, but we followed two widely differ- 
 ent schools. We had two different modes of 
 expression. She could excite the greatest en- 
 thusiasm in her transports, so beautiful was 
 her diction, so statuesque her pose. In the 
 most passionate situations, however, her ex- 
 pression was regulated by the rules imposed 
 by the traditional French schools. We, on 
 the contrary, do not believe that in cul- 
 minating passion this self-possession is pos- 
 sible." Those were Ristori's words, but the 
 difference between the two is not so marked 
 as might appear on the surface. For my part 
 
 i 
 
THE EMOTIONS 133 
 
 I do not agree with the " rules imposed by 
 the French school"; but neither do I believe 
 that in " culminating passion " Ristori ever 
 lost her self-possession. She was, I think, 
 the greatest tragedienne I have ever seen. I 
 shall never forget her performance of Marie 
 Antoinette. Her rage was terrific, but the 
 next moment she was able to clasp her son to 
 her heart and speak in accents of the most 
 touching grief. To make this sharp transi- 
 tion of mood she must have retained great 
 control, after all. Ristori herself tells of what 
 I believe to be the only occasion on which her 
 passion carried her away to the extent that 
 she did not realize what she was doing. At 
 the end of her tremendous scene she advanced 
 several steps toward the audience and fell 
 exhausted near the footlights, and was only 
 saved from being burned by the presence of 
 mind of someone from the audience who 
 pushed her inanimate body out of danger. 
 
 But after all is it ever really possible for 
 an actor literally to feel the passions he por- 
 trays? There are times when he must ap- 
 
t 
 
 134 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 pear so blinded with rage that he must com- 
 mit murder; can that passion be hterally felt 
 by the actor? It seems to me that all pas- 
 |sion must be kept under a certain control 
 and within the pale of art. It is also 
 evident that to retain this control of 
 necessity grows more difficult as the actor 
 gains in his power of expressing great pas- | 
 sion. In the beginning it is easy to remain 
 master of our resources, because they are not 
 vast; but the actor who has trained his whole 
 being, his voice, his face, his muscles until 
 they are capable of great power, finds the 
 problem of control and discretion one which 
 requires a keen sense of dramatic values and 
 proportion, and a strong exertion of the will 
 at times to carry out what he knows is the 
 proper course. In the rehearsing we may do 
 in private it is perhaps well to give way to 
 uncontrolled passion to develop our powers 
 of expressing it; but while acting we must al- 
 ^ ways remain master of our resources. 
 
 An actor once told me that when he was 
 playing with the great Jefferson he was so 
 
THE EMOTIONS 135 
 
 affected by the brilliant man's work during 
 one of the scenes that his face was suffused 
 with tears. Jefferson called him into his 
 dressing-room after the act and said, " You 
 mustn't cry on the stage. Make your audi- 
 ence do that. If you do not control yourself 
 how can you expect to control your audience? " 
 The latter part of this advice no one can take 
 exception to, but always to repress one's tears 
 is another matter. Ellen Terry, in her fin- 
 est parts, wept copiously and so did her audi- 
 ence. She was able to allow herself to be 
 moved by the pathos of the story, yet to 
 control herself and her audience at the same 
 time. Jefferson was right and Miss Terry 
 was right, but because they were what they 
 were they got their effects in different 
 ways. 
 
 Guiding oneself through the impassioned 
 moment is much like striking the ball on the 
 golf links. I once asked a professional golfer, 
 James Braid, how much strength he used in 
 driving. " I hit as hard as I can," was his 
 innocent-sounding reply. With this advice I 
 
136 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 laid down several balls and whacked at them 
 for all I was worth. They shot to right and 
 left, straight up in the air, or went bounding 
 along the ground. Even those I did manage 
 to hit fair went only about a hundred yards. 
 Mr. Braid had neglected to tell me that he 
 held his club in a certain way, that he " ad- 
 dressed " the ball in a certain way, that he 
 apphed his full strength only at a carefully- 
 timed moment. He could indulge himself by 
 slamming the ball with all his strength be- 
 cause he knew his swing would be governed 
 by the technique he had drilled into himself. 
 Thus, indeed, it is with acting. Ristori 
 was able to throw her whole passionate soul 
 into her emotional scenes, because she knew 
 quite well her technique could not desert her. 
 It should be pointed out, too, that there 
 are ways and ways of throwing one's whole 
 soul into a strong speech. The speech of Con- 
 stance in King John is charged with intense 
 passion. She cries: 
 
 " Arm, arm, you Heavens, against these perjured kings! 
 A widow cries ! Be husband to me, Heavens ! " 
 
THE EMOTIONS 137 
 
 These two lines the actress may give with all 
 her power. Then come the lines: 
 
 " Let not the hours of this ungodly day 
 Wear out the days in peace; but ere sunset 
 Let armed discord 'twixt these perjured kings ! 
 Hear me ! Oh, hear me ! " 
 
 After pouring out those first two lines 
 in a flood of passion, the skilful actress would 
 pause, and appear transfixed ; she would make 
 a complete break. This would be thrilhng to 
 the audience, preparing them for what is to 
 follow; and the words, when they do come, 
 have acquired a deeper, more terrible signifi- 
 cance. And incidentally the actress has re- 
 gained control of herself. Then she speaks 
 again, substituting for the force of the pre- 
 ceding hnes an intensity which, in contrast, is 
 just as moving but which puts no tax on her 
 physical powers. She speaks each word 
 clearly and slowly, pausing often, thus: 
 
 " Let . . . not . . . the hours ... of this . . . un- 
 godly day ..." 
 
 And so on to the end, gradually increasing 
 both pace and power till "Hear me! Oh, 
 
138 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 hear me!" is given with enormous tragic 
 force. But an untrained actress would be 
 likely to attempt to keep up the whirlwind 
 of the beginning of the speech straight 
 through to the end. The result might well 
 be that she would " pump " her lungs and 
 exhaust her strength. 
 
 There is, also, a deeper technical principle 
 involved in such a delivery of such a speech: 
 that is the anticipation of emotion. When 
 Constance pauses before uttering her curse, 
 we are prepared for what is to come. In a 
 broader sense this anticipation apphes to a 
 play as a whole. In the early scenes of a 
 play all of the emotion should be of an in- 
 troductory, preparatory nature. In good 
 plays it is; and it is the actor's part to treat 
 the emotion in the early acts of a play from 
 that point of view. In Othello's speech in 
 the second act we get an example of this 
 foreshadowing: 
 
 " If I once stir or do but lift this arm the best of you 
 shall sink in my rebuke." 
 
 This speech indicates that Othello is cap- 
 
THE EMOTIONS 139 
 
 able of great emotion, though so far in the 
 play he has not displayed it. 
 
 On the other hand, in Shakespeare's play 
 Cymhelme a totally different technique is 
 used by the author, and consequently must be 
 used by the actor. Instead of foreshadowing 
 in this play, Shakespeare lets the emotion 
 of the heroine come as a surprise; for we do 
 not think of her as anything but a gentle crea- 
 ture, incapable of great transports, until the 
 moment of stress comes. We see Imogene, 
 the heroine, a gentle dainty lady, mild, and 
 kind. That is carried through consistently 
 with regard to her, until she looks on the body 
 of her murdered husband. Then her pent-up 
 fury and despair blaze forth. When I saw 
 this part played by Helen Faucit her out- 
 burst came as a glorious surprise to the audi- 
 ence because, in a way, we were quite un- 
 prepared for it. In a deeper sense, however, 
 we had been prepared for it by the skilful act- 
 ing. The mere fact that we were given the 
 gentler side of the character first acted as a 
 subtle preparation for the revelation of the 
 
140 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 other side, which came with all the more 
 force. Modjeska, when she played Odette^ 
 employed this method. In the first act we 
 have seen her as a dehghtful, witty hostess; 
 then comes the peculiar thrill, the strange 
 surprise when she cries, "Coward!" to her 
 husband at the end of the act. Thus we are 
 always preparing for the emotional moment; 
 but sometimes it is better to do it by fore- 
 shadowing, sometimes by arranging it as a 
 surprise. 
 
 The foregoing plainly implies, I think, that 
 the emotion in a play must be a matter of 
 crescendo of one kind or another. And since 
 ^ the play must be cumulative in its effect it 
 follows that the individual characters must 
 reveal their emotions with a certain cautiously 
 graded increase of intensity. Power of voice, 
 stirring action, suffering should be adjusted 
 to the rise of the play. They should not be 
 thrust into the early portions while the audi- 
 ence are becoming acquainted with the per- 
 sons, and while their interest is being fostered 
 and guided. If the author has written power 
 
THE EMOTIONS 141 
 
 into the first act he has handicapped his 
 actors. The strength of any play, if it is 
 written properly, lies in its chmax — usually 
 in the third or fourth act. All the power 
 possible must be concentrated into this climax. 
 The rise to it should be as gradual and gentle 
 as it is possible to have it while retaining the 
 interest. If there is passion in the first act 
 the actors should try to keep it in the realm 
 of suggestion; it should not be portrayed out- 
 right. That is, there should be a suggestion 
 about all strong acting in the earlier scenes 
 that things are brewing, that stronger clashes 
 are certain to come. The suffering and pas- 
 sion indicated in these preliminary scenes 
 should imply that the character is affected 
 more by the anticipation of what is likely to 
 come out of it all, than by what is actually 
 taking place. 
 
 The first act is, after all, explanatory and 
 introductory. The acting also should be ex- 
 planatory and introductory. The audience ? tP^ ' 
 are getting acquainted with the people in the 
 play; and until they know them and feel 
 
142 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 with them and for them they can never be 
 greatly stirred by their woes or joys. When 
 the curtain goes up the a udience a re thrown 
 into a strange world whose people are quite 
 strangers to them. Naturally at the begin- 
 ning of any play the audience are cold. They 
 are critical, waiting to see what they are to 
 get for the money they have spent. To ap- 
 peal to them successfully the author and the 
 actors must go gently. The characters should 
 be allowed to expand slowly so that the audi- 
 ence are not given too much to digest at once. 
 We should not be afraid of losing their in- 
 terest at the beginning of the first act. They 
 are quite ready to be interested — they hope 
 they haven't wasted their money — but first 
 they must understand; little things will in- 
 terest them if they are given time to grasp 
 them. I never believe much in using the 
 sledge hammer with an audience, or bluster- 
 ing at them, and putting in " punch " at the 
 start. That is likely to be merely confusing. 
 It is wisest to assume that any audience 
 will need warming up, and this cannot be 
 
THE EMOTIONS 143 
 
 / done in a huriy. They must be coaxed along. 
 When a man is frostbitten we do not pour 
 hot water on him, we rub him with ice. 
 We begin at his own temperature and gradu- 
 ally warm him back to normal. I think this 
 applies to an audience. By all means the 
 actors and the audience must start together 
 if they are to finish together. If the play 
 takes a leap at the rise of the curtain and 
 smashes along to the end of the first act, the 
 audience will be unable to keep up because 
 they have not received a fair start. When an 
 engine driver starts his train he doesn't jam 
 on full steam at once; if he did he would 
 probably jerk his engine off the rails. 
 
 I think it is often a good thing if a com- 
 pany is a little embarrassed and nervous at 
 the start of the evening. This self-conscious- 
 ness is a sort of sensitiveness; and the actors 
 are reaching out to their audience and seeking 
 a common ground. Also the audience can 
 sense the feeling of the actors, just as the 
 actors can sense the feeling of the audience; 
 and if the actor is inwardly quaking in his 
 
144 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 shoes the audience, in a subtle way, are flat- 
 tered and respond to it with their encourage- 
 ment and sympathy. I have seen, on the 
 other hand, an actor come on the stage with 
 such an air of offensive assurance that I 
 have taken a dishke to him at once. I have 
 been hypercritical of his work from the out- 
 set; he has had to struggle throughout the 
 performance against the prejudice his own 
 attitude had roused in me. 
 
 I shall never forget a certain performance 
 I took part in once. There were about four 
 hundred members of the theatrical profession 
 in the house, and just before I went on I 
 thought I was going to collapse with nervous- 
 ness. My knees knocked together and I 
 seemed to have lost all control over my 
 lips and tongue. I made a haggard attempt 
 to gather myself together and walked un- 
 steadily on the stage. Afterwards they told 
 me that I had never given such a splendid 
 performance in my life. The manager was 
 enthusiastic in his praise of my work; I 
 received hearty compliments from the rest of 
 
THE EMOTIONS 145 
 
 the company, and generous applause from 
 the audience. I beheve the reason for the 
 good impression I was able to make was the 
 caution with which I had begun; my nervous- 
 ness had caused me to take every means to 
 relieve the strain between the audience and 
 myself, to make sure that I had them with me 
 before I proceeded. Thus the crescendo of 
 the part was provided. 
 
 The necessity of allowing for, and prepar- 
 ing for, the big moments is illustrated by the 
 part of Othello. That part demands of the 
 actor, in the fourth and fifth acts, a power 
 of endurance, an intensity and rage of the 
 first magnitude; but it decidedly requires an 
 adherence to some of these technical prin- 
 ciples if the character is to be realized as 
 Shakespeare wrote him. I remember a per- 
 formance of this part in which the actor — 
 and a good one he was too in many parts — 
 threw all his reserves into the fray before he 
 reached the end of the third act, and had to 
 limp through the fourth and fifth acts hope- 
 lessly exhausted. 
 
146 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 He started in grand shape with the lines: 
 
 " Hold your hands. 
 Both you of my inclining, and the rest. 
 Were it my cue to fight, I should have known it 
 Without a prompter." 
 
 These he gave with grandeur and authority. 
 His speech to the Senate was full of martial 
 tones and vigor. And in the second act the 
 speech beginning: 
 
 " Now, by Heaven, 
 My blood begins my safer guides to rule. 
 And passion, having my best judgment collied. 
 Essays to lead the way. If I once stir 
 Or do but lift this arm, the best of you 
 Shall sink in my rebuke," 
 
 he delivered with such force and fire that 
 the audience rewarded him with great ap- 
 plause. 
 
 On reaching the great jealousy scene in 
 the third act he naturally tried to eclipse the 
 passion he had shown in act two. He charged 
 his lines with his greatest intensity, added to 
 it all the power of his lungs. The result was 
 that he shouted all his strength away, was 
 totally exhausted at the end, and was saved 
 
THE EMOTIONS 147 
 
 from collapse only by the timelj^ fall of a 
 merciful curtain. 
 
 j The audience applauded; but I think it was 
 more in kindness than in praise, for a man 
 close to me turned to his companion and 
 said, "Poor fellow, didn't he work hard?" 
 The curtain was kept down twenty minutes 
 in order, no doubt, to give the poor Othello 
 a chance to recover himself; but for the rest 
 of the play he was a beaten man, and though 
 he struggled manfully and though the audi- 
 ence, realizing the great effort he was mak- 
 ing, indulgently gave him every assistance 
 with their applause, the last two acts were 
 wretchedly given. And when the curtain fell 
 the audience dispersed more in sorrow than 
 in anger. This actor had a fine artistic tem- 
 perament, so fine possibly that he felt he 
 could not allow his art to associate with such 
 a humble mechanic as technique — and his art 
 suffered lamentably in consequence. a 
 
 His failure was due to the fact that he had 
 ignored the need of crescendo in the portrayal 
 of Othello's emotion. He would have seen 
 
148 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 otherwise that all the first act needed was 
 quiet dignity; that the speech in the second 
 beginning, 
 
 "If I once stir . . ." 
 
 required only a suggestion of restrained 
 power. The fury in the third act he would 
 have tempered with a certain amount of re- 
 straint, and not have punished his throat by 
 shouting constantly. If he had allowed him- 
 self to be led by these technical rules, his 
 natural abilities would have enabled him to 
 give a really good performance,- for he was 
 well-built, had a good voice, and was very 
 good-looking. 
 
 In Othello, though the climax of the fury 
 is reached in the third act, the intensity is 
 inexorably mounting higher and higher. The 
 terrible phase of passion that Othello has 
 passed through has weakened him physically 
 as well as mentally; and it is in this that we 
 are able to sense with fresh clearness the 
 depths through which he has passed. Indeed 
 all great emotion may be likened to a storm 
 
THE EMOTIONS 149 
 
 at sea. Just as a great storm leaves an after- 
 swell, so must an actor indicate, by his 
 reaction after the stress, how great the stress 
 has been. He must not, in other words, al- 
 low his emotion to vanish too rapidly. The 
 effect of a passionate outburst will be ruined 
 if the actor throws away the emotion en- 
 tirely as he passes into the next incident of 
 the play. 
 
 As an example of this after-swell we may 
 take Antony's speech over the dead body of 
 Caesar. His soliloquy finishes with a tre- 
 mendous outburst of rage. Then follows the 
 lines to the servant, 
 
 "You serve Octavius Caesar, do you not?" 
 
 This is an unemotional line; but in it, and 
 indeed through to the end, Antony continues 
 to show the effects of the preceding rage. 
 
 I remember Booth as Bertuccio in A Fool's 
 Revenge, In that part he had a similar 
 speech of rage. The rage itself was moving 
 enough, but Booth made it stronger by show- /. 
 ing carefully the after-effects of it. After 
 
150 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 pouring out the torrent of words, he paced 
 back and forth across the stage as though 
 to regain control of himself. He always 
 gave a peculiar little shudder and twist to his 
 body, which indicated eloquently that the rage 
 was still seething in his heart. It was at this 
 point that the audience were moved to ap- 
 plause; it was here that the situation was 
 brought home to them in its fullest force. It 
 was comparable with the ground swell after 
 the storm. If we had not seen that his rage 
 was still in him, after he had spoken the 
 words, the effect of his passion would have 
 been lost. 
 
 All of this, it seems to me, yields a simple 
 technical rule: -in emotional acting we must 
 be imbued with the emotion we express, we 
 must, to a certain extent, blind ourselves 
 to everything but those emotions. Only in 
 this way, it is clear, can we observe the va- 
 rious laws which we have, I hope, glimpsed 
 through this discussion. We must, that is 
 to say, be largely oblivious of the fact that 
 we are playing before an audience. I think 
 
THE EMOTIONS 151 
 
 it is quite possible to be utterly oblivious of 
 the people in the theater. In my younger 
 days when I toured England playing such 
 parts as Othello, Shy lock, Macbeth, etc., I 
 found that I was always able to do better 
 work when the audiences were small, so that 
 the interruptions in the way of applause were 
 few and far between. I have often found 
 myself literally forgetting that there were 
 an audience, and thoroughly soaking myself 
 in my impersonation. This can be done — 
 and profitably — in tragedy; but in comedy, 
 curiously enough, quite the opposite is true. 
 
 A 
 
 > 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 MAKING AN AUDIENCE LAUGH 
 
 Audience Must Be Taken into Partnership in Comedy 
 — The Comedian Must Sense His Audience — Allow- 
 ing for the Laugh — Letting the Audience Have Its 
 Head; Major Barbara — Making Them Save up Their 
 Laughter — There Can Be Too Much Laughter in a 
 Play — Shaw's Request — Remaining Unconscious of 
 Our Own Humor — To Be Infectious Any Emotion 
 Must Come from the Inside, Not from the Lines 
 Alone. 
 
 WHEREAS in tragedy it is often well 
 to ignore the audience so far as 
 possible, in comedy the actor must 
 take his audience into partnership. He must 
 always be conscious of them, and of their 
 changing moods. He has to lead them at 
 times and give them the rein at others. A 
 true comedian manages his audience as a 
 good rider manages a high-spirited horse. 
 And here again the principle of crescendo 
 applies. A comedian, if he is a good one, is 
 
 152 
 
MAKING AN AUDIENCE LAUGH 153 
 
 very careful to get on cordial terms with his 
 audience before he tries any of his clever 
 tricks. If a man playing an exaggerated 
 character part bursts on the stage and show- 
 ers his whole bag of tricks on his audience 
 in the first few minutes, he only succeeds 
 in making himself irritating. His antics are 
 regarded as simply grotesque and strained, 
 because the audience have not been made 
 acquainted with him beforehand. But if 
 he keeps a rein on his comedy until the third 
 act is in full swing, and then gets into full 
 swing, the audience are in full swing with him 
 and ready to laugh at anything he may do. 
 So often audiences will accept in the third 
 act what they would resent in the first. 
 
 There is great value in sensing an audi- 
 ence, of feeling keenly their mood, of feeling 
 their response to what we say. So it is 
 clearly essential that the actor must keep 
 control over himself, and over his audience 
 at the same time. Such a statement as this, 
 however, should not be misunderstood; it 
 does not mean that everything we do must 
 
154 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 be coldly calculated. A great comedian, 
 confident of his own powers and sure of 
 his audience, is able to play with abandon and 
 enthusiasm and sweep his auditors along with 
 him ; but before he does this he will make very 
 sure of his ground. I think the great come- 
 dian depends for this peculiar knowledge 
 partly upon that intuitive sensitiveness that 
 is part of the actor's temperament, but a 
 great deal more upon his mastery of tech- 
 nique. 
 
 For instance, if the audience laugh at the 
 end of A's speech, B must carefully time his 
 reply. He must not speak while the laugh 
 is going on, and he must not wait too long 
 for it to die. He must allow just enough 
 time for the laugh to reach its height, then 
 judiciously weave it into his next lines so 
 that there is no break, so that the enjoyment 
 does not subside entirely but is allowed to 
 taper off through his own speech. If there 
 is no laugh at the end of A's speech, as B 
 expects there will be, the latter must guard 
 against an awkward pa1S*?r* He may begin 
 
 '^v* * . 
 
 ^ 
 
MAKING AN AUDIENCE LAUGH 155 
 
 , his reply unobtrusively, in rather a low tone, 
 V and let his voice die if the laugh comes; then 
 when it is time to break into the laugh he 
 can repeat what he has said. 
 
 As an example of this, in Shaw's Major 
 Barbara, Barbara introduces Bill to her be- 
 trothed, Adolphus Cusins. The scene ends 
 with Bill's saying to Cusins, " You take my 
 tip, mate, stop her jaw, or you'll die afore 
 your time. Wore out, that's what you'll be, 
 wore out." Cusins is impressed. " I wonder," 
 he replies. But on the words " wore out " 
 Bill has left the stage, and his exit invariably 
 received a big laugh and applause. It is thus 
 impossible for the actor playing Cusins to 
 speak this comedy line, " I wonder," through 
 the storm of laughter ; he must wait until it is 
 dying down before he can speak. But that 
 does not mean that he cannot convey what he 
 is thinking, and thus preserve the continuity 
 of the scene. If Cusins rubs his chin reflec- 
 tively with his drum stick while the audience 
 are howling at Bill, this attitude of pained 
 perplexity may even add to the comedy ; then 
 
156 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 his words, " I wonder," come as the culmina- 
 tion of the doubt in his mind; and the scene 
 has been unbroken, though the audience have 
 had their way and laughed to their heart's 
 content. 
 
 In the same scene Cusins says to Under- 
 shaft, Barbara's father, " You will have to 
 choose between your rehgion and Barbara," 
 and the father replies, " So will you, my 
 friend. She will find out that that drum of 
 yours is hollow." (Cusins has taken to play- 
 ing the bass drum in the Salvation Army to 
 make an impression on Barbara.) Cusins re- 
 torts, " Father Undershaft, you are mis- 
 taken!" But sometimes the laugh came on 
 the word "hollow," sometimes it did not; 
 and Cusins was ready either way. He com- 
 menced his reply in a low tone, with " Father 
 Undershaft ..." and then stopped if the 
 audience laughed; if they did not he repeated 
 as though to give firmness and emphasis to 
 his words, "Father Undershaft! etc." There 
 are other ways of meeting such a situation, 
 but I believe this is the best. 
 
MAKING AN AUDIENCE LAUGH 157 
 
 In cases like the foregoing the audience have 
 been allowed to have their head more or less, 
 but there are times when it is far better to 
 hold them in check. There are times when it is 
 better to kill a laugh in order to get a bigger 
 one later. Sometimes we can deliberately kill 
 one, two, or even three laughs and force the 
 audience to bottle them up, until we reach a 
 more humorous point still when they all come 
 in an explosion of mirth that is worth a great 
 deal more than a dozen smaller laughs. We 
 may kill the laughs by hastening our reply, 
 or raising the voice, and generally speeding 
 up the scene so that the audience will repress 
 their laughter in order not to miss anything. 
 
 There is a great deal in being able to choose 
 the exact moment at which it is wise to break 
 into the audience's laughter. It is a great 
 mistake, as we have seen, to let the laugh die 
 away altogether; but we should also seek to 
 begin our speech just when the decline in the 
 intensity is beginning. We should break off 
 a bit of the laugh each time. Sir Charles 
 Wyndham once said to me, " Break off 
 
158 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 the end of the laughs, and the audience will 
 give you all the bits welded together into 
 one big laugh before the end of the play." 
 
 Extraordinary as it may seem there may 
 he too much laughter during a play's per- 
 formance. Shaw realized this when he put 
 up a notice in the theater while we were play- 
 ing John Bull's Other Island, begging the 
 audience not to laugh as it disturbed the prog- 
 ress of the play. This was ridiculed in the 
 papers, and put down to Shaw's eccentricity 
 and desire for advertisement; but I think 
 Shaw may have been perfectly serious. He 
 may have felt that constant laughter tended 
 to make the actors self-conscious; and this 
 is often true. Also, at Shaw's plays, there 
 are always a few in the audience who are 
 eager to show the keenness of their appre- 
 ciation of the Shavian wit, and who guffaw on 
 the slightest provocation or on no provoca- 
 tion at all. Many plays — Shaw's especially — 
 rely greatly on pace and tempo for their best 
 results, and constant laughter does disturb 
 this tempo. In the case of John Bull, Shaw's 
 
MAKING AN AUDIENCE LAUGH 159 
 
 notice had a curious effect. The audience 
 bore the admonition in mind and did refrain 
 from laughing during the whole of the first 
 act; but as the play proceeded they seemed 
 to forget all about it and made up for their 
 abstinence by laughing all the harder through 
 the other acts. ^ 
 
 It was Shaw, too, who taught me never 
 to show that I was enjoying my own jokes;/ 
 and the lesson should be taken to heart by 
 many and many of our comedians of today. 
 One can, in a subsconscious way, enjoy his 
 part, and be gratified at the way it is going; 
 but the moment he lets the audience realize 
 his pleasure his work is certain to deteriorate 
 in quahty. Again it is a question of art con- 
 ceahng art. The moment we let the audience 
 feel that we are seeing the humor of our ac- 
 tions they will lose interest; they like to feel 
 it is through their own cleverness that they 
 detect the comedy. This is governing the. 
 audience — letting it appear that we are un-' 
 conscious of the humor; and audiences love 
 to be governed in this way. I have heard of 
 
160 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 actors being told that, to make the play go 
 with a swing, they should laugh at each 
 other's jokes; and over and over again I have 
 seen an audience stop laughing, when this 
 was tried, and let the actors do it all. 
 
 In brief summary, then, it is wise in all 
 emotional parts to map out each act and ad- 
 just our reading to the general crescendo 
 of the play; to take every precaution that our 
 lungs are saved from " pumping " in the im- 
 passioned moments; to realize that all pas- 
 sion, if it is to be infectious, must come from 
 the inside, that the words alone cannot pro- 
 vide it; to remember that we should retain 
 control over our audiences, both in tragedy 
 and comedy, and conceal from them the art 
 which produces our artistic results. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 " FUTURES " AND THE PARADOX OF THE 
 AMATEUR 
 
 Brilliant Promise of the Beginner Often Unfulfilled — 
 Lawrence Irving's Grotesque Early Work — Henry 
 Irving: a Prophet Without Honor in Manchester — 
 Barry Sullivan's Disastrous Conservatism — The Dan- 
 gerous Transitional Stage Between the Amateur and 
 the Professional — The " Sufficiently Unprofessional " 
 Wisconsin Players — Acting Is Dancing in Shackles 
 — Exchanging Intuition for Technique — The Moffat 
 Company and Bunty Pulls the Strings — Studied Sim- 
 plicity and Acquired Naturalness. 
 
 I DO not think anyone can be long asso- 
 ciated with the theatrical profession with- 
 out becoming very cautious about form- 
 ing opinions on the future prospects of be- 
 ginners. In my salad days when the sprouts 
 of judgment were vigorous but green, I had 
 no hesitation in forecasting the careers of 
 others. But as time went on, and I saw how 
 easy it was to make mistakes I indulged less 
 
 161 
 
162 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 and less in this pleasant diversion. I think 
 as one gains in his knowledge of the actor's 
 art, he is more and more impressed with the 
 marvels which hard work and serious applica- 
 tion will accomplish. It is not so much the 
 / brilliant promise the beginner may show that 
 ^ determines his career; it is his unknown ca- 
 pacity for hard work, with the provision of 
 course that his hard work takes the properj 
 direction. Many a career has begun with 
 flourish, with every promise of big thin^ 
 ahead, and ended in mediocrity ; many anothei 
 has begun inconspicuously, and ended in a| 
 blaze of glory. 
 
 One man whose early work bore no trace 
 of his future success was Lawrence Irving. 
 When I first knew him he was very diligent, 
 he took immense pains; but there was a dis- 
 tortion about everything he did. I have often 
 seen him at rehearsal toiling away. He would 
 reach a certain point of excellence, and I 
 would feel like shouting, "Hold! Make 
 fast! " But on he would go. He would 
 overtrain himself, and end up with his whole 
 
" FUTURES " 163 
 
 conception out of focus, fantastic and un- 
 natural. His performances, at the beginning 
 of his career, reminded me of those grotesque 
 drawings by Cruikshank of Shakespearian 
 scenes, which were so admired in my youth. I 
 loathed them because I hated to have my idea 
 of Shakespeare's creations fogged by those 
 (to my eyes) mussy caricatures. Lawrence 
 living's performances had the same distress- 
 ing effect on my mind. He was floundering 
 about with his very clever brain, and his work 
 was invariably abnormal and overdone. I 
 saw very clearly that Lawrence Irving would 
 never make an actor, that he should stop at 
 once and get into something else before it 
 was too late. 
 
 But a few years later The Typhoon was 
 produced, and Irving played an important 
 part. Many and loud were the praises I 
 heard of his work. But I smiled to myself 
 and said that I knew exactly how he played 
 it. Many of my friends urged me to go and 
 see it, but I refused until one of them told me 
 that I did not know how he played it, but that 
 
164 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 I should see the play and receive a lesson. 
 I did go then, and I did receive a lesson. I 
 stood up and cheered him at the end of the 
 performance. He had harnessed his ideas and 
 his cleverness at last. His own judgment 
 had cried, " Hold! Make fast! " and he had 
 obeyed the order. It was a magnificent piece 
 of work. I had been entirely wrong about 
 him ; and after that I was much more reserved 
 with regard to my ideas of another's chance 
 of success. Lawrence Irving, unfortunately, 
 lost his life when the Empress of Ireland 
 went down in the St. Lawrence River in 
 1914. He was, there can be no doubt, on 
 the threshold of a brilliant career, and his 
 death was a genuine loss to the sta^e. 
 
 But such snap judgments on the abilities of 
 beginners may be the cause of a great deal 
 of injustice. Such a hasty condemnation on 
 the part of a group of people nearly drove 
 one actor out of Manchester. It was Henry 
 Irving, father of Lawrence. Here it was 
 indeed a case of a man returning to his own 
 country and finding himself without honor. 
 
" FUTURES " 165 
 
 I happened to be in Manchester at living's 
 first appearance there after having achieved 
 his fame in London. In his novitiate he had 
 been a member of the old stock company of 
 Manchester; and the local playgoers knew 
 him only as a member of that organization. 
 He had not been a great favorite with them. 
 I was at luncheon at the Brazenose Club of 
 the city when the subject of Irving came up. 
 The members of the club were all supposed 
 to be patrons or lovers of things artistic. 
 To my great surprise one gentleman re- 
 marked, " The idea of Irving coming here as 
 a star when we knew him in the old stock 
 days as a miserable actor. He may be good 
 enough for London, but he's not good enough 
 for Manchester." Perhaps as many as fifty 
 heard the remark, and of them all there 
 was not one dissenting voice. That attitude, 
 it was clear at Irving's opening night, was 
 not confined to the members of the club. 
 There seemed to be a widespread and violent 
 prejudice against him. To his great credit he 
 succeeded in overcoming this to a large ex- 
 
166 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 tent, but it might very well have forced him 
 into failure. Many of the Mancastrians ad- 
 mitted later that they had been wrong to feel 
 as they had. But here was the ghost of the 
 judgment they had formed years before come 
 to haunt Irving, who had been working with 
 all his energy, and with great success, to 
 overcome the very faults they had found with 
 him. For some, it is true, he never succeeded 
 in overcoming them. Many could never see 
 any good in his work because his peculiar 
 walk and utterance irritated them so they 
 were incapable of admiring his good points. 
 He never wholly conquered these faults, but 
 in spite of them he was a brilliant actor, as 
 his fame attests. 
 
 On the other hand, I have made mistakes, 
 ax\d seen others make them, with regard to 
 youths who showed all the promise imaginable 
 at the start. One of the most poignant in- 
 stances of this is referred to in my mother's 
 book, Siocty-eiglit Years on the Stage. It had 
 to do with the tragedian, Barry Sullivan. In 
 speaking of him she says: " There is no doubt 
 
« FUTURES " 167 
 
 that in his youth he was an admirable actor. 
 He had a fine presence and a powerful voice, 
 which he used from the lowest note to the 
 top of its compass. With the enthusiasm of 
 youth he had studied his parts inch by inch. 
 Every movement of the body, every inflection 
 of the voice was — studied! At that time he 
 was a success, and a great one, but there he 
 stopped. 
 
 " The years rolled by. Many blemishes of 
 the old school of acting were reformed not 
 'indifferently' but 'altogether'; but Barry 
 Sullivan stood still, a fatal thing to a student 
 of any art. He played Hamlet at forty-five 
 just as he had played him at twenty-eight. 
 The same stilted movements, the same mean- 
 ingless inflections had grown with age into 
 mere mechanism, for the youthful enthu- 
 siasm was no longer there. For many years 
 before his death London absolutely refused 
 to accept him. He tried once or twice, but 
 each attempt ended disastrously." 
 
 He failed, I believe, through over-confi- 
 dence. He had been content to rest on his 
 
168 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 laurels. But in his youth there would have 
 been few to predict that he would not be a 
 great actor. 
 
 In any career there is sure to come a turn- 
 ing point, when a man is either content to 
 plod along the path he knows well, or when 
 he realizes that he must put forth his best 
 energy and find a harder and better road if he 
 hopes to reach the goal of his ambition. It 
 is a transitional stage, while we are losing 
 the bold confidence of youth; when we be- 
 come conscious of the methods which have 
 been quite spontaneous. That is a dangerous 
 period; and the successful actor is the one 
 who can come through it still possessing his 
 spontaneity and confidence, yet having 
 learned to harness them and guide them de- 
 liberately instead of by instinct. 
 
 When I was about twenty-four years of 
 age I found myself in that wobbly state of 
 mind. My technique was being given to me 
 ready-made by the producer who insisted on 
 showing me how to do things without telling 
 me why. I was simply copying his methods. 
 
" FUTURES " 169 
 
 This was robbing me of all freedom in my 
 work ; I felt that what natural aptitude I had 
 was being smashed. The feeling I had had 
 for acting was slipping away from me. I 
 was unable to lose myself in the part I might 
 be playing. An old actress, whom I knew 
 quite well then, watched one of my rehearsals 
 critically, and told me afterwards that I had 
 mistaken my vocation, that I could never be 
 an actor, and that if I were wise I would 
 take her advice and get out of the profession. 
 I did not follow her advice, but it had the 
 effect of making me take my work and its 
 problems very seriously. I overcame that 
 lack of confidence in time; and now I believe 
 it was only a stage we all must expect to 
 pass through. 
 
 I believe there is a time in every career 
 where the amateur gives way to the profes- 
 sional; when the actor comes to regard acting, 
 not as an agreeable diversion, but as his busi- 
 ness in life. This season the "Wisconsin 
 Players," an amateur organization, appeared 
 at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York 
 
170 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 for a few performances. Mr. Ralph Block, 
 of the New York Tribune, made this com- 
 ment on their work : " The acting was excel- 
 lent and sufficiently unprofessional to achieve 
 the illusion of life that the sharp edges of the 
 trained actor are always successful in keeping 
 at arm's length." That was an interesting 
 comment, and no doubt true to a certain ex- 
 tent. But why is it that these inexperienced 
 young persons from the West apparently suc- 
 ceeded in doing with greater perfection what 
 we professional actors have spent our lives 
 in trying to learn? I believe the answer sug- 
 gests one of the paradoxes in the actor's pro- 
 fession. The spontaneity, freshness, direct- 
 ness, and unself-consciousness possessed by 
 the proficient amateur are the very qualities 
 which the professional seeks to gain by his 
 long study and experience; yet they are the 
 very qualities which that training tends in- 
 evitably to destroy! 
 
 All professional actors begin as amateurs 
 (whether they receive pay for their work or 
 not) ; and most of us have been praised, in 
 
" FUTURES " 171 
 
 our beginning days, for our spontaneity and 
 refreshing naturalness. Why do the " sharp 
 edges " creep in? Certain it is that there is 
 often a refreshing naturalness about an ama- 
 teur's work, and I think that is because his 
 work is perfectly natural; it is not studied. 
 But as the amateur goes on, and makes act- 
 ing his profession, he must learn to know 
 just how he gets his effects, he must be able 
 to repeat them unerringly. He comes to 
 know the innumerable mistakes he may make 
 and how serious they may be for him. He 
 sees that acting is not a parlor game but a 
 difficult mixture of science and art. He be- 
 comes appalled at the many shoals that lie in 
 his treacherous course. It is pretty difficult 
 through such a time to keep that beguiling 
 air of perfect confidence which the early 
 praise engendered. He is impressed with 
 the exacting laws of his calling. He is afraid 
 to let himself go. He, as an amateur, had 
 been dancing because it was fun, he had 
 danced with perfect freedom and fine aban- 
 don; now he realizes that acting is really 
 
172 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 dancing in shackles. It is a case of accepting 
 the rigorous hmits and doing the best he can 
 inside them. This is hard until he comes to 
 take the limits for granted. His charming 
 spontaneity is pretty sure to give way to 
 self -consciousness. And that is what I mean 
 by the transitional stage between the ama- 
 teur and the professional. Our young actor 
 must then set himself to recapture that first 
 fine furious rapture, which is where his real 
 initiation into the difficulties of his art is 
 given him. 
 
 I think, when a man becomes a professional 
 actor, he is constantly attempting to achieve, 
 by means of his technique and his art, what 
 as an amateur he achieved by his very lack 
 jof technique and art. He is trying to simu- | 
 late a lack of self -consciousness, which effort 
 in itself is enough to make him self-conscious! 
 As an amateur one's work is not self-con- 
 scious, because it is not a conscious thing; it is 
 a natural thing. The amateur pleases because 
 his work is direct and simple, but this sim- 
 plicity comes because his knowledge of the 
 
" FUTURES " 173 
 
 craft is direct and simple. It does not come 
 because his art is sound, but because he has 
 no art at all! As an amateur the young actor 
 knows a few simple rudiments of the actor's 
 art; and those few things he does sponta- 
 neously with no thought or knowledge of the 
 many other ways the same things might be 
 done. It is when an actor begins to do con- 
 sciously what he has been doing intuitively 
 that he runs the danger of losing the very 
 virtues which accounted for his early suc- 
 cesses. 
 
 I remember seeing the Moffat Company in 
 London. They had been playing in the 
 provinces of Scotland with no pretense of 
 being anything but what they were — a com- 
 pany of sincere amateurs. They brought 
 Bunty Pulls the Strings to London, and 
 carried that piece to a flattering success. They 
 were the veriest amateurs, every one of them; 
 but their total lack of mannerisms of all kinds, 
 their absorption in their play and the atmos- 
 phere this created, their perfect naturalness 
 and unstudied simplicity captivated London. 
 
174 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 They were hailed as great actors. But after 
 " Bunty" their popularity dwindled. Only 
 one member of that company has ever been 
 heard of since. That is, when they stopped 
 playing this little Scotch piece, which was 
 peculiarly their own, a picture of themselves 
 and their everyday life, they failed. When 
 they tried to do, by means of their technique, 
 what they had been accustomed to do quite 
 spontaneously, they brought themselves into 
 competition with the regular profession; and 
 their lack of solid training and experience was 
 quickly and disastrously shown. They be- 
 came self-conscious; they were unable to re- 
 tain, as their knowledge increased, the de- 
 lightful, unstudied simplicity which had first 
 opened the doors for them. 
 
 What was true of this company has been 
 true of many and many an actor, in a greater 
 or less degree. I believe it must be true — 
 in a greater or less degree — of all actors. 
 And for the beginning actor I believe there 
 is only one maxim which can guide him safely 
 through this critical time, and enable him to 
 
" FUTURES " 175 
 
 fulfil the bright x^romise he may show at ^ 
 the start. That maxim is the theme of this 1 
 little book: Simphcity must be our aim. The ^ 
 more we know the greater grows the danger 
 of losing that precious simplicity, that illu- 
 sion of life, which is the end and aim of all 
 our painfully-won knowledge. No actor can 
 be a master of his craft until he has spent 
 years in acquiring knowledge; and having 
 acquired it, has learned as well how to con- 
 ceal it from the audience and to appear as 
 natural as the unprofessional player. This 
 acquired naturalness is, in reality, infinitely 
 more effective theatrically than that of the 
 amateur — as is shown when the true profes- 
 sional and the amateur are placed side by side 
 — but no man can realize his fullest powers as^^ 
 an actor who does not strive to refine his 1 
 knowledge into an intelligent simplicity. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE EFFECT OF REALISTIC SCENERY 
 AND LIGHTING ON THE ACTOR 
 
 Work of the Actor Inextricably Interwoven with That 
 of the Producer, Scenic Artist, etc. — Scenery Should 
 Suggest not Copy Life, Should Stimulate not Over- 
 feed or Starve the Imagination — The Ironworks in 
 Galsworthy's Strife, " Real " and Suggested — Gran- 
 ville Barker's Setting for Androcles and the Lion: 
 Proudly Crude and Frankly Primitive — The Pri- 
 mary Purpose of All Scenery — When the Imagina- 
 tive Artist, the Interior Decorator, and the Landscape 
 Gardener Clash — The Mechanical Ship That Would 
 Not Wreck, and the Simpler Substitute — How Actors 
 Are Often Swamped by Scenery — The Need of Co- 
 ordination — The Terrors of Strange Furniture — Many 
 Plays Ruined by Lack of Method — Lighting Which 
 Blurs or Silhouettes the Faces of the Actors — Nat- 
 ural Lighting-^Distracting Lights — Moonlight — Seek- 
 ing the Impression of Reality, Not Reality Itself. 
 
 WHILE an actor is naturally con- 
 cerned primarily with the art of 
 conceiving the characters he plays 
 and of projecting them properly, so much de- 
 pends upon the mechanical accessories of the 
 
 176 
 
EFFECT OF REALISTIC SCENERY 177 
 
 stage production that it may be well to turn 
 our attention to that phase of the craft for 
 a time. The work of the actor is inextricably 
 interwoven with that of the producer, and the 
 scenic artist, and the others. Together they 
 are striving for a common end: the creation 
 of theatrical effects, if by theatrical effects 
 we mean those artistic illusions which are 
 the legitimate and unique province of the 
 theater. 
 
 These effects, as we have seen with regard 
 to the actor, come best when the attempt is 
 made not to copy life, but to suggest it. > This 
 great principle of stagecraft would surely 
 seem to imply that absolute realism in staging 
 is not, in itself, desirable. It is quite evi- 
 dent that the scenery and properties may be 
 too realistic and thus defeat their purpose; 
 instead of stimulating the imagination, they 
 may banish it by giving it nothing to do. 
 There is a tendency to regard absolute real- 
 lism as an end in itself, whereas it is properly 
 a means to an end. 
 
 If the scene is a grocery store, and the 
 
178 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 storekeeper, to make a point in the pla}^ 
 must ring up a purchase on the cash register, 
 he must have a cash register to ring it up on. 
 But the actual reahsm need not go much fur- 
 ther. It is not necessary to fill the stage 
 with real barrels and boxes and shelves of 
 canned goods and glass counters of candy. It 
 is only necessary to give the audience the 
 impression that all the things are on the stage. 
 The problem is to give them just enough to 
 suggest a grocery store, yet not give them 
 too much. There are simple ways of giving 
 the impression that there are many barrels 
 and boxes and shelves on the stage without 
 their actually being there. There are no 
 /bounds to illusion, while realism is limited 
 Iw the dimensions of the stage. 
 
 It is possible to make the audience imagine 
 that they are looking at a battle in which 
 thousands of people are taking part. It is 
 possible to suggest a labor riot in which 
 hundreds of laborers swarm around their em- 
 ployer's office. But these things could never 
 be put on the stage, no matter how many 
 
EFFECT OF REALISTIC SCENERY 179 
 
 thousands of dollars one were ready to spend. 
 The second scene of the second act of Gals- 
 worthy's Strife is in the ironworks. I saw 
 the play given once with splendid scenery in 
 which wherever possible the real article had 
 been provided. We had before us a railway 
 track, a wagon, a practical chimney, ware- 
 houses, windows that opened and closed, and 
 a great number of supernumeraries. It must 
 have cost thousands to stage this one scene. 
 The woodwork alone must have represented 
 the salary of a first-class actor. But to me 
 all this " realism " was a dead waste of time, 
 energy, and money; for I had seen the play 
 given before where this scene had been sug- 
 gested by a very old and worn back cloth. 
 The painting was faded, but it had been v/ell 
 done and still served to conjure up in the 
 imagination vast warehouses and towering 
 chimneys; there was a sense of great spaces 
 and immense power, and grim monotony, and 
 drifting smoke, which was quite lacking in 
 the " real " chimneys and windows of the 
 more expensive set. I do not know just how 
 
180 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 many supernumeraries were used in the mob 
 scene, but very few I am sure. The Hghts 
 were lowered and carefully manipulated, 
 which gave the effect that masses of men 
 were surging over the stage. In the former 
 case I had been impressed by the lavishness 
 of the production; I had admired the way 
 the crowds were moved about, and had real- 
 ized that the tracks and chimneys were very 
 realistic stage tracks and chimneys; but in 
 the latter case my imagination was warmed 
 and stirred, not dwarfed, and the consequent 
 illusion was infinitely better, while the ex- 
 pense of production was slight, quite negligi- 
 ble compared with the other. 
 
 On the other hand, I do not have much 
 admiration for stage settings which merely 
 challenge and baffle our imagination. I am 
 not among those who champion post-impres- 
 sionism in stage settings. In Bernard Shaw's 
 Androcles and the Lion there is a scene in a 
 jungle, and it is of course a question how this 
 jungle should best be indicated. In Granville 
 Barker's production of the play (a produc- 
 
EFFECT OF REALISTIC SCENERY 181 
 
 tion which was admirable in many respects) 
 this scene consisted of a painted drop cloth 
 at the bottom of which was a low-arched « 
 hole festooned with strips of green cloth — 
 that was all. It did not suggest a jungle 
 to my imagination. It looked to me for all 
 the world like a painted drop with a hole in 
 it festooned with strips of green cloth. I 
 merely punished and confused my imagina- 
 tion when I tried to make a jungle of it. I 
 think we recoil from the proudly crude and 
 frank primitive in art. Simplicity is alL:?ery__ 
 w^U^Jbirt^ crudityjs_^impl^^ For my 
 
 part, I do not believe in the rigorous asceti- _ 
 cism that starves the imagination as much 
 that is ultra-modern in staging does; that is 
 quite as bad as overfeeding it. 
 
 Where realism shall end and give way to 
 suggestion is, I believe, the problem of ef- 
 fective staging; and only by keeping un- 
 clouded the primary purpose of our stage 
 setting can we meet it properly. That pur- 
 pose must always be to supplement as defi- 
 nitely, yet as unobtrusively, as possible the 
 
182 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 work of the actor and the dramatist. The 
 test of any stage set is the impression it 
 makes on the imagination of the audience, 
 not in the comments they may make on the 
 magnificence or ingenuity of its construc- 
 tion. If it is absorbed by the play, good; if 
 it stands out on its own, had. This means 
 that we are working in the reahn of sugges- 
 tion and illusion rather than in the actual, 
 that our methods are those of the imagina- 
 tive painter rather than those of the me- 
 chanically skilled decorator; and that we 
 must be careful not to confuse the methods 
 of the two. It is possible to be too fantastic 
 (as in the case of Granville Barker's jungle) 
 and thus fail to convince; it is also possible 
 to be too realistic in minor points and thus 
 succeed merely in caUing attention to the 
 artificiality of the whole. 
 
 As an example of the latter I remember 
 seeing a garden scene once which at first 
 glance seemed a delightful piece of work. 
 It was a beautiful garden, but there was 
 something about it that was false. As I 
 
EFFECT OF REALISTIC SCENERY 183 
 
 looked at it there was no sense on my part 
 that I was looking at a garden. I was 
 simply admiring a most ornate bit of stage 
 decoration, an attractive bit of scene-painting. 
 This was certainly not the impression the 
 scenic artist had tried to produce; he had 
 been trying to create the illusion that we saw 
 a real garden before us, and he had failed. 
 I wondered why. Then I noticed that near 
 the footlights on each side of the stage was 
 a wing painted quite beautifully to represent 
 trees and flowers. Just behind the wings, on 
 each side of the stage, was an arch over 
 which the stage manager had trailed either 
 real flowers or very excellent imitations. I 
 am sure those " real " flowers were the secret 
 of the failure. They gave the painted wing 
 dead away. The wings themselves were really 
 more beautiful than the reahstic flowers, for 
 the former were fanciful and the latter actual. 
 To have the actual in juxtaposition with the\ 
 fanciful served to point out that the whole] 
 was an imitation; in other words, the imagi- 
 native artist and the landscape gardener had 
 
184 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 clashed and both had come to grief. Very- 
 likely the real flowers might have been ar- 
 ranged so that they could have aided the 
 illusion of the painted ones. There was a 
 point in this scene where realism could have 
 been shaded into suggestion, I have no doubt ; 
 but this fusion could not have been made by a 
 man who had set out to put a real garden 
 on the stage, only by the one who sought to 
 give the audience an impression of a real 
 garden; and how much simpler and more ar- 
 tistic, and less expensive, his work would 
 be. 
 
 I once knew a scene painter by the name of 
 Richard Douglas. I often used to drop 
 around to his paint-room and talk shop with 
 him. He had painted scenes all his life and 
 was full of experiences with managers good, 
 bad, and indifferent. He told me a little 
 tale one day which comes to mind as I write, 
 and which seems to indicate so clearly how 
 simplicity and suggestion may triumph over 
 elaborate realism. He had been called to a 
 theater a few days before the opening of a 
 
EFFECT OF REALISTIC SCENERY 185 
 
 play to — as it were — save the sinking ship, 
 for the play contained a difficult scene repre- 
 senting a ship tossed by a storm at sea. The 
 sea had been managed easily enough. They 
 had a " sea-cloth " and the effect of the storm 
 was procured by concealing stage-hands on 
 each side of the stage and having them send 
 wave after wave across the ocean by the sim- 
 ple expedient of shaking the cloth. The mini- 
 ature vessel was a marvel of engineer's skill. 
 By intricate contrivances, wheels, planes, a 
 huge steel pivot, and Heaven knows what else, 
 it was made to heave up and down, roll, and 
 turn, and give a very realistic idea of a ship 
 in distress. Everything had looked perfect, 
 but there was a flaw — the complicated ma- 
 chinery failed to work. So the management 
 in despair had called in Douglas; they had 
 sent for him on Tuesday and the perform- 
 ance was to be given on the following Friday. 
 Douglas went and took one look at the 
 ship, and came back to his little paint-shop. 
 The management had asked him frantically 
 if he thought he could fix things for them by 
 
186 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 Friday, he had rephed that he could do it in 
 forty-eight hours. And he did. He made 
 a rephea of the boat with strips of bamboo, 
 covered it with canvas and painted it to rep- 
 resent the ship; ten feet away it looked quite 
 as lifelike as the ingeniously contrived little 
 failure. At the bottom of his canvas-and- 
 bamboo ship Douglas left a hole large enough 
 for a man to get his shoulders through, and 
 then he fastened the boat to the sea-cloth. 
 A stage-hand got under the sea-cloth and put 
 his shoulders through the hole in the ship. 
 They had cut a trap-door in the stage for 
 him, which enabled him to stand at the re- 
 quisite depth. The result was perfect. The 
 mechanically prescribed twists and turns of 
 the original were as nothing compared with 
 the results accomplished by that man's shoul- 
 ders and his unfettered imagination. He 
 not only made it toss and roll and twist at 
 will, but he could even make it shudder as it 
 was struck by an unusually towering wave! 
 The original machinery which had cost two 
 thousand dollars was scrapped. The cost of 
 
EFFECT OF REALISTIC SCENERY 187 
 
 Douglas's device was well under one hundred 
 dollars ! 
 
 I remember another similar incident he used 
 to tell. In a certain pantomime, in the trans- 
 formation scene were eighteen large and 
 beautiful sea-shells which, at a given cue, 
 turned round and displayed eighteen beauti- 
 ful mermaids. The shells were to have been 
 turned by machinery, but it broke down and 
 the old-timer was hastily summoned. His 
 method of solving this difficulty was even 
 simpler. He merely had the shells fastened 
 to the backs of the girls playing the mermaids 
 and, at a given cue, they turned themselves 
 round! Both of these effects, done in the 
 simpler, less obtrusive way, were much more 
 impressive than anything the elaborate and 
 expensive mechanical devices could have pro- 
 duced even if they had worked. 
 
 Some years ago one of the daily papers 
 in London sent a letter to all the producers 
 in the city asking them if genuine antique 
 furniture would not add richness to the stage 
 scenes, and if it was not therefore greatly 
 
188 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 to be desired. Most producers were in favor 
 of it, but some were not, myself included. I 
 replied that so long as the furniture looked 
 real I preferred the imitation to the real, 
 for to have furniture that cost thousands 
 of dollars would require the greatest care 
 in the handling and would thus take 
 much longer to set and take away. Also the 
 imitation could be easily replaced if breakages 
 should occur, as they probably would. One 
 producer stated that he would welcome any 
 such gift and that he would be glad to state 
 its value and the name of the donor on the 
 program. Such an attitude seems to me the 
 result of a misconception of what we try to 
 do in the theater. Instead of calling the at- 
 tention of the audience to the " real " things 
 on the stage, are we not rather hoping to 
 make them forget the real and actual; are 
 we not using our properties to beguile their 
 fancy and to make them forget that they 
 are in a theater at all? How can this be done 
 if they are reminded that the room on the 
 stage has been furnished by So-and-so or if, 
 
EFFECT OF REALISTIC SCENERY 189 
 
 when the curtain goes up, they think of the 
 value and beauty of the tables and chairs 
 instead of the story that is being enacted 
 before them? On the stage the actor and 
 the play should always be supreme. The only 
 notice directly paid to the work of the scenic 
 artist and property man per se should come 
 from the trained few who realize that the 
 settings are skilfully contributing to the il- 
 lusion created by the actors. 
 
 How often this fact is lost sight of! How 
 often we allow ourselves to become blinded to 
 the fact that the scenic artist and the prop- 
 erty man, and the costume designer and the 
 electrician and the others are called in to 
 help the illusion of the play and for no other 
 reason. How often these people are allowed 
 to display their own prowess at the expense 
 of the actors whom they are supposed to be 
 helping. I saw this painfully demonstrated 
 in a Shakespearian play on Broadway not 
 many months ago. The company was headed 
 by a lady whose name is associated with the 
 best things in the theater and in her support 
 
190 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 were several others who hold high positions 
 in the profession. I went to the theater in 
 high hopes of seeing a memorable perform- 
 ance. But I was keenly disappointed. The 
 really splendid acting of the company was 
 swamped by the astounding scenery. In one 
 of the scenes most of the acting was done 
 on a peculiar bridge which somehow gave the 
 impression of being miles distant up the 
 stage. The dramatic effect of the hues 
 spoken from this strange perch can be im- 
 agined. One of the other scenes was a slop- 
 ing platform, and we had the uncomfortable 
 feeling that the actors were having difficulty 
 in keeping their feet. Still another scene was 
 ruined because the light at the back of the 
 stage was so brilliant that the actors' faces 
 were silhouetted against it in shadow. All 
 facial play was out of the question. It is 
 easy to imagine what became of Shakespeare's 
 lines. 
 
 I do not think the scenic artist was so 
 much to blame, in this case, as the producer. 
 The latter should have reahzed that the slop- 
 
EFFECT OF REALISTIC SCENERY 191 
 
 ing platform would make the actors' work 
 exceedingly difficult; and he certainly should 
 have known that to allow his artist to dis- 
 play his sense of blazing colors would be 
 distracting to the audience and fatal to the 
 play. The impression made by the perform- 
 ance was indicated in the remarks I heard 
 as I left the theater : " Wasn't the scenery 
 beautiful? " "I loved that wood scene — 
 and that inn too, with the touch of purple 
 in the walls." The inn had had purple walls, 
 and the sense of those purple walls had been 
 the strongest impression left on my mind. I 
 did not hear a single comment on the acting 
 of the company, and much of it had been su- 
 perb. But the actors had been working 
 against an enormous handicap and I felt 
 sorry for them — I was also deeply dissatis- 
 fied myself, for I had gone to see one of 
 Shakespeare's plays, not a blazing exhibition 
 of modern scenic art. I thought as I left 
 the theater of an old saying of Sydney 
 Smith's. He had had a very mean dinner in 
 a room whose decorations were gorgeous and 
 
192 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 faultless. " I would have preferred," he re- 
 marked, " a little less gilding and a little 
 more carving." 
 
 It may be that such brilliant fiascos as this 
 occur — and there are always two or three 
 every season — because the work of the dif- 
 ferent specialists is not co-ordinated and in- 
 telligently directed. I thoroughly believe that 
 all should co-operate, all should be in the 
 confidence of the producer; they should not 
 be allowed to do their work independently. 
 Many managers give orders for scenery and 
 costume and properties to firms or individuals 
 who execute them without having the faintest 
 idea of what the play is about! Asked why 
 he does this, the manager would probably 
 reply that the fewer the people who know 
 the nature of the play beforehand the less 
 danger there is of having somebody steal a 
 march on him by producing a similar play 
 ahead of him. Whether the manager is in 
 any very great danger of having the wind 
 taken out of his sails in this way I do not 
 know. But certainly endless confusion is 
 
EFFECT OF REALISTIC SCENERY 193 
 
 often caused by keeping the scenic artist and 
 the others ignorant of how their work is sup- 
 posed to apply to the whole. I have often 
 heard a costume designer complain at the 
 dress rehearsal that the color of the scenery 
 was damaging to the color scheme of his cos- 
 tumes. Very often this is true, and merely 
 because the two men have had no chance 
 to get together and compare notes and co- 
 ordinate their work. If a round table discus- 
 sion had been arranged everybody would have 
 been working in harmony with everyone else 
 from the start. 
 
 Indeed, I think that the first thing a 
 producer should do when he sets to work on 
 the mechanical accessories of the production 
 is to call a meeting of the scenic artist, the 
 costume designer, the electrician, the property 
 man, the carpenter, the musician, and the 
 stage managers and have the play read to 
 them. Then he should welcome the discus- 
 sion of its technical aspects which will follow 
 naturally enough if he does nothing to stop 
 it. He will encourage his assistants to discuss 
 
194 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 the play from their different points of view, 
 for it is astonishing how many really good 
 ideas may come out of such a discussion. I 
 once heard a stage carpenter at a meeting 
 of this kind make a suggestion of great 
 value. The play's first act required a large 
 exterior set and the second act required an- 
 other. In the opinion of the scenic artist 
 two sets would have to be built, and it would 
 have taken from ten to fifteen minutes to 
 change them. But the carpenter explained 
 that by painting the platforms and back drop 
 on their reverse sides the first set could be 
 turned about and made to serve for the 
 second. This advice was carried out and 
 the wait between the first and second acts 
 was actually reduced from ten or fifteen min- 
 utes to two. No one but the stage carpenter 
 would have understood that this could be 
 done. If he had not been at the meeting he 
 would have got his models from the scenic 
 artist and built the two sets according to 
 specifications. The cost to the management 
 would have been double, and a long wait 
 
EFFECT OF REALISTIC SCENERY 195 
 
 would have been necessary. Many a time 
 I have heard a stage carpenter grumblingly 
 explain how he could have built his sets with 
 half the labor and a fraction of the expense 
 if he had been informed in time just what 
 the entire requirements of the play were. 
 
 The lack of co-operation among producer, 
 actors, and scenic artist and the others fre- 
 quently is the cause of great hardship to the 
 actor; and I beheve it may be the partial 
 cause of the failure of many plays. The actor 
 studies his lines and perfects his part with 
 only a vague notion of what the stage set is 
 to be Uke; the scenic artist designs the seen* 
 ery with an even more vague notion of what 
 the actors are to do; the electrician arranges 
 his light with little regard for the principal 
 purpose of lights: the emphasizing and ac- 
 centuating of the actor's work. Is it sur- 
 prising that there are many clashes at dress 
 rehearsals, many disheartening obstacles for 
 the actor to meet — the more disheartening 
 because they are unnecessary? For surely 
 it would be a simple thing for the producer 
 
 4 
 
196 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 to give the actors, before rehearsals begin, the 
 exact dimensions of the stage on which they 
 are to play; and above all he should reahze 
 the importance of rehearsing with furniture of 
 the same size as that to be used in produc- 
 tion. He may not be able to get the actual 
 furniture at the start — though this can often 
 be done — but it would always be possible, and 
 is always supremely desirable, that the sub- 
 stitutes used be the same dimensions as the 
 real furniture is to be. It is something of a 
 shock for an actor, who has been rehearsing 
 with a chair whose seat is twenty inches from 
 the ground, to come on at the dress rehearsal 
 and drop into a chair only sixteen inches high. 
 It is enough to throw him off for the entire 
 evening. 
 
 The actor may have been rehearsing for six 
 weeks with a stock table of considerable size, 
 and he has found that he gets a rather good 
 effect by planting his elbows on the table and 
 leaning across toward the man facing him. 
 He comes on the stage at the dress rehearsal 
 and finds a beautiful antique where he has 
 
EFFECT OF REALISTIC SCENERY 197 
 
 grown accustomed to a broad and solid deal 
 table. He leans forward as per custom to 
 plant his elbows on it — and finds the table is 
 too small to permit the gesture. This, at a 
 dress rehearsal when he is naturally keyed up 
 nervously, is enough to strike terror into his 
 heart and jar all his carefully planned busi- 
 ness out of his head. For an actor comes to 
 the dress rehearsal in the highest pitch of 
 nervous excitement. He wishes to put the 
 final touches on his performance, and with a 
 fair chance would do so to the delight of the 
 producer. But after a few rebuffs like the 
 foregoing he is lucky if he remembers his 
 lines. I once heard a producer shout at an 
 actor, " Why, you don't even know your 
 words, sir!" "Well, give me a decent chair 
 to sit on, sir, and they'll all come back!" 
 the harassed actor replied angrily. It is 
 most disheartening when the actor has been 
 straining every energy for from three to six 
 weeks putting in the most delicate workman- 
 ship, if he comes to the dress rehearsal keyed 
 up for his final and best effort, and then finds 
 
198 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 himself thrown completely off his stride be- 
 cause the accessories have not been properly- 
 looked after. 
 
 Such mishaps are due to the lack of 
 ; method. They could be avoided by taking 
 a little trouble at the start, and securing the 
 real furniture and the real scenery which is 
 to be used, or having substitutes of the same 
 dimensions. When one reflects that the man 
 who backs a play often has many thousands 
 at stake, and when we think of the narrow 
 margin that often separates success from 
 failure, of the trifles that have again and 
 again determined a play's success or failure, 
 is it not surprising that these slipshod methods 
 are followed? It is only on the stage that 
 such laxity is tolerated; other businesses are 
 not conducted in any such manner. Not long 
 ago I heard a producer explain that the scen- 
 ery was not ready, but though it was sadly 
 needed, the scenic artist was too valuable 
 a man to quarrel with! The proper way to 
 handle these details surely would be to have 
 contracts with the scenic artists, and costum- 
 
EFFECT OF REALISTIC SCENERY 199 
 
 ers, and the rest, which should stipulate that 
 if the goods were not delivered by a certain 
 date there should be a forfeit for every day 
 lost. Then the dress rehearsal would put a 
 polish on the work done before and not tend 
 to tear it down. 
 
 I am quite aware that it is the custom to 
 try out new plays in small towns near New 
 York where they are poHshed up for their 
 metropolitan opening; but many of those 
 plays are never brought into New York, be- 
 ing unable to survive the ordeal of such a 
 try-out. After a disastrous first night in one 
 of these " dog- towns," author, producer, and 
 actors work frantically at cruelly high pres- 
 sure trying to whip the play into shape in a 
 week or so. How can painstaking and effi- 
 cient work be done under those hectic condi- 
 tions? There can be little doubt that many 
 plays are killed because they come up to the 
 dress rehearsal in a ragged, half -ready con- 
 dition; are harmed still more by the dress 
 rehearsal itself; and go to pieces on their first 
 night. If care could be taken to have a fin- 
 
200 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 ished dress rehearsal, by allowing the actors 
 to become familiar from the start with the 
 scenery and properties, a great many plays 
 might be saved. Certainly the opening per- 
 formance in New York could not fail to be 
 benefited if the out-of-town performance were 
 made as thorough and finished as possible; 
 and it would seem so simple to do this — by 
 giving the actor a fair chance to do his best. 
 I suppose one of the most common sources 
 of distress for the actor is injudicious light- 
 ing. As we have seen, the words spoken on 
 the stage derive much of their force from the 
 emphasis they receive from the facial expres- 
 sion of the actor. The lighting of any stage 
 set should be designed principally to throw 
 the actor's face into high relief, therefore to 
 enable him to register on the audience the 
 subtle movements of his eyes and the signifi- 
 cant and fleeting expressions that flit over his 
 face. If the actor's face is not clearly seen 
 throughout it is inevitable that his effective- 
 \ness be greatly diminished. But, as more and 
 more attention is paid to the creation of strik- 
 
EFFECT OF REALISTIC SCENERY 201 
 
 ing stage pictures and clever lighting effects, 
 we seem to forget that these should only serve 
 as a background for the actor, that the face of 
 the actor should be the high-light of any stage 
 picture. 
 
 In scenic design there is one kind of set 
 that is almost always the same wherever we 
 see it, that is the outdoor set. It is very 
 rarely that we find one that does not give 
 us the sky at the rear directly facing the audi- 
 ence. Naturally there must be more light 
 on the sky than on any other portion of the 
 scene, and with the sky at the rear the faces 
 of the actors who must play in front of it 
 cannot be in rehef ; they cannot be the high- 
 lights of the picture. If you should ask a 
 producer if a strong light at the back of an 
 actor is not, in general, a good thing he 
 would probably lay the question to your 
 stupidity. He might, to make his point clear, 
 hold a light behind and above his own head 
 to show you the effect. But it never seems 
 to occur to him that the bright sky at the 
 rear is doing precisely the same thing for his 
 
202 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 stage. Yet it is so easy to break the glare of 
 the sky with trees or houses so that the faces 
 of the actors are in light and not in shadow. 
 I recall a play which turned on a scene in 
 which a man stood at the rear and listened 
 in silence to an important conversation. The 
 light was mostly behind him and the color 
 of his face merged into that of the back 
 cloth. How were we to know that the words 
 he overheard had such tremendous signifi- 
 cance for him? It was impossible for us to 
 see the expression on his face at all; we 
 could not even be sure that he was listen- 
 ing to what the others were saying. If the 
 welfare of the play had been the first con- 
 sideration in the minds of the scenic designer 
 and electrician this error would never have 
 been made. Clearly they had been thinking 
 not of the events which were to take place 
 during the scene, but had bent their energies 
 to the making of a striking stage picture. 
 And with this mistaken motive it is easy for 
 the scenic artist to be captivated by an idea 
 which entails a brilliant flood of light at the 
 
EFFECT OF REALISTIC SCENERY 203 
 
 rear, and it is easy for the producer to be 
 beguiled by it. In the theater, however, the 
 eye is invariably attracted to the brightest 
 light; and it is sure to be damaging to the 
 play if the attention of the audience is lured 
 away to the back drop or the ceiling when 
 what they should be noticing always is the 
 actor on the stage. In my youth I used to 
 hear old actors say that they would sooner 
 play their best scenes in an oak chamber than 
 in any other set. They could never tell me 
 why ; but I have no doubt the reason was that 
 the closed-in scene was a better conveyor of 
 sound, and especially because the somber color 
 of the walls threw their facial expression into 
 clearer relief. 
 
 But even in interior sets the lighting is 
 often distracting. It may be said that usually 
 ceihngs are too light. In real life the ceiling 
 receives less reflected light than any other 
 portion of the room. In almost any room this 
 is true. The ceihng probably is painted a 
 lighter color than the rest of the room, but it 
 doesn't look so. Since the light of the win- 
 
204 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 dows misses it and it catches only the reflec- 
 tion of the hght, the white color (if it is 
 white) takes on a grayish tint, and too, most 
 ceilings have their tones dulled by time; so 
 the impression a room gives one is that the 
 floor and walls are light and the ceiling is in 
 shadow. To get this effect in the theater is 
 essential if we are to give the scene its 
 precious tinge of naturalness; and this can- 
 not be done if there is a dead white canopy 
 overhead reflecting its light on everything in 
 the room. If the scenic artist is asked why 
 he insists on painting his ceilings so light he 
 will doubtless answer, with truth, that that 
 is the way they are painted in real life; but 
 he forgets that the effects sought in the the- 
 ater must be contrived by artificial means, 
 and that he must aid the impression by paint- 
 ing his ceiling darker to enable the electri- 
 cian to suggest the shadows that normally 
 would be on it. 
 
 As a rule too little attention is paid to 
 natural lighting in scenic designing. The 
 artist certainly should always bear in mind, 
 
EFFECT OF REALISTIC SCENERY 205 
 
 when placing his shadows, where the sunhght 
 is supposed to be coming from, and some- 
 times this vastly important consideration 
 seems never to have crossed his mind. He 
 should paint his scene with the sun coming 
 from the right or left as best suits the design, 
 and it should be possible to arrange the light- 
 ing accordingly. If the sun is supposed to 
 be coming from the right, this should surely 
 be indicated by the scene painter as well as 
 the electrician. On the opposite side of the 
 room from the sun the colors should be some- 
 what subdued, though not crudely so, and 
 the light should be the reflected light we get 
 in nature. Footlights too should be used to 
 suggest reflected light only. Such observa- 
 tions as these seem almost too elementary to 
 be worth setting down, but the carelessness 
 of producers with regard to their lighting is 
 astonishing. I have in mind a scene which 
 contained a large French window at the rear. 
 At the end of one act I watched the sun set 
 through this window; and in the next act was 
 amazed to see it rise in precisely the same 
 
206 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 place. In a case of this kind there may not 
 be a dozen people in the audience who will 
 know just why they feel that something is 
 wrong, but a great many of them will have 
 the feeling that something is wrong, that 
 there is somehow an air of unreality, a false 
 theatricahty ; and such a feehng cannot fail 
 to be detrimental to the actors and the play. 
 
 As in so many things we do on the stage it 
 is very easy to be too clever and too ingenious 
 with our lights. It is so easy to make the 
 lighting effects more interesting than the 
 play, for the moment, and so rob it of the 
 attention it may sadly need if it is to suc- 
 ceed at all. The first act of a play which 
 ran on Broadway — for a time — showed a 
 room with a window at the back. Through 
 the window could be seen a row of houses 
 on the opposite side of the street. The time 
 was late afternoon, and as the sunlight grew 
 dimmer the lights in the distant windows 
 winked on one by one, as though the people 
 behind them were lighting up for the evening. 
 This spectacle held a peculiar fascination 
 
EFFECT OF REALISTIC SCENERY 207 
 
 for the audience. Gradually their attention 
 came to be fixed on the back drop. That is to 
 say, while the author was attempting to intro- 
 duce his characters, and state their relations 
 with each other, and to lay down the neces- 
 sary foundation for the play, the audience 
 were engrossed in a speculation as to where 
 the next light would appear on the back 
 drop and how the effect was managed. This 
 was, it seemed to me, very bad, because it ran 
 the risk of sacrificing the whole play for a 
 momentary theatrical effect which really had 
 not the slightest bearing on the story. The 
 whole of any play rests upon the preliminary 
 material that is given in the first act. Often 
 a mere sentence or two in the first act may 
 be the mainspring of powerful situations that 
 come later; and if these vital bits are missed 
 the subsequent acts lose much of their mean- 
 ing. The play in question was one of those 
 unexplained failures; it seemed to have every- 
 thing in its favor, but lasted only a week 
 or two. I should not insist that this blemish 
 in the first act accounted for the failure, but 
 
208 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 it is interesting to wonder how much it had 
 to do with it — interesting since the effect it- 
 self was quite delightful while it was going 
 on. 
 
 It should always be borne in mind that the 
 eye is much quicker than the ear. Anything 
 that catches the eye on the stage has a definite 
 effect; it either helps or harms the play, and 
 I believe a great deal of money is wasted 
 every theatrical season because, when plan- 
 ning our mechanical effects, we lose sight of 
 this fact. A mechanical effect is not justi- 
 fied because it is reahstic or ingenious. A 
 change of lights which merely indicates the 
 time of day is wrong. Unless there is some- 
 thing in the action or the hues referring to 
 the fact that evening is approaching, or the 
 sun is setting, or a storm is brewing it is 
 wrong to distract the attention of the audi- 
 ence from what is being said by contriving 
 such effects. Of course, often it can be ar- 
 ranged to dim the lights during some unim- 
 portant scene where the talk is not of much 
 moment; but it is, I think, far better to have 
 
EFFECT OF REALISTIC SCENERY 209 
 
 the characters refer to the change of light 
 in some way, thus making it a part of the 
 action, or else leave out the change altogether. 
 
 The question of shadows is another that is 
 always causing annoyance to actors and to 
 audiences. What illusion is possible for the 
 audience if they see an actor enter the door- 
 way at the rear of the stage and throw his 
 shadow over the church steeple supposed to 
 be in the village eight miles away? With 
 such a start as this for his scene, how is the 
 actor going to carry conviction? And the 
 way to avoid these shadows, so irritating to 
 both actor and audience, is so simple that 
 one hesitates to put it on paper. If the stand- 
 ard lights are placed at least nine feet high 
 the actor can pass beneath them, and not 
 between them and the back cloth! 
 
 To obtain natural lighting the light should 
 really fall on the stage from the front as well 
 as from the top and sides. But in most the- 
 aters, except in vaudeville houses where a 
 spot-light is thrown from the gallery, the only 
 front light is provided by the footlights. 
 
210 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 These can only be sparingly used or they 
 will conflict with the top and side lights. I 
 think the best way this front lighting can be 
 obtained is by placing a series of "baby 
 spots " in the balustrade of the first balcony; 
 and the light furnished by these, supplement- 
 ing those on the stage, will help greatly in 
 simulating natural lighting. I beheve Gran- 
 ville Barker used this device in his produc- 
 tion of A Midsummer Night's Dream, If 
 there is an unnatural luminance about the 
 stage there will be a sense on the part of the 
 audience, however undefined it may be, that 
 there is an unnaturalness, a theatricality, 
 about the performance. This sense places an- 
 other handicap on the play, makes the work 
 of the actor just that much more difficult. 
 
 The lighting of a scene at night where the 
 moon is supposed to provide the only illumi- 
 nation is another problem that has always 
 been a sore trial to the producer. Experience 
 has taught me that when such a scene opens 
 — supposing it is an interior set — the audi- 
 ence should see a dimly-lighted room. The 
 
EFFECT OF REALISTIC SCENERY 211 
 
 flood of moonlight will appear to give the 
 only light, but in reahty it is coming from 
 other sources. This must be done or the 
 actors are striving against hopeless odds. It 
 is frightfully irritating, after a time, to listen 
 to spoken lines and be unable to make out the 
 faces of the persons speaking them. The 
 actors must work against this natural irri- 
 tation, and it may take them the rest of the 
 evening to counteract the restlessness such 
 a scene may engender. So if it is impos- 
 sible to bring on some candles or otherwise 
 light the room by apparent means, I have 
 always found that it is best to resort to a 
 little artifice. After giving the audience time 
 to get the impression of a dim room, lighted 
 only by the reflected light of the moon, we 
 may assume that they have once more become 
 engrossed in the story of the play. Then the 
 electrician may be instructed to coax his lights 
 up gradually so that the room actually be- 
 comes lighter, but by such insensible degrees 
 that the audience, interested in what the 
 actors are doing, are quite unconscious of the 
 
212 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 change. I have tried this many times, and 
 not once have I heard of anyone in the audi- 
 ence detecting the little trick; not even those 
 connected with the stage. They may have 
 the vague impression, after a time, that the 
 room is brighter than they thought it was 
 at first; but any darkened room seems 
 brighter to us as we become accustomed to 
 it; and thus it may quite conceivably be that 
 this device adds to the impression of reality. 
 Indeed, it is this sort of " reality " only 
 that is worth striving foy. It is not enough 
 to put a real room on the stage, we must con- 
 sider the impression a real room makes on 
 us and attempt to reproduce the impression, 
 not the room. It is this subtler, and as a 
 rule simpler, realism which serves its pur- 
 pose — the purpose of supplementing the im- 
 pression of reality which the actors try to 
 give. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 MUSIC AND COSTUMES VERSUS THE 
 ACTOR 
 
 The Work of Each Specialist Should Be Blended into 
 a Coherent Whole — The Function of Costumes — Al- 
 lowing for the Distraction of Striking Costumes — The 
 Play Must Be Always Supreme — Irving's Clash with 
 His Orchestra Leader — The Voice of the Actor the 
 Melody of the Piece, All Else the Accompaniment. 
 
 A DRAMATIC production, as the two 
 preceding chapters indicate, is a com- 
 plete thing made up of many parts. 
 There are the actors, the play, the scenery, the 
 lights, the costumes, and sometimes the " in- 
 cidental " music. All of these parts, how- 
 ever, should be nicely calculated and measured 
 and fitted into the scheme. Each should be 
 kept in its proper place. The appeal which 
 we seek to make with any play should be a 
 clearly defined one, and all the accessories we 
 sunmion to assist in making this appeal 
 
 213 
 
214 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 should be rigidly shaped and subordinated 
 that they may contribute to the welfare of 
 the whole, and not disturb the balance by 
 focusing attention unduly upon themselves. 
 Helen Faucit says of the Germans : " Their 
 scenery is good, appropriate, harmonious, and 
 stands as it always should in subservience to 
 the plot and the human interest in the play: 
 it is so unostentatiously good that you never 
 think of it. So the costumes: you think you 
 see the persons represented, as all is in keep- 
 ing, so you never criticize what the characters 
 wear. You feel at once they looked or did 
 not look as they should, and give this sub- 
 ject no further heed. Being but accessories 
 at the best, they are very properly only 
 treated as such." This can scarcely be said 
 of our theater. 
 
 So often there seems no coherent theme in 
 our theatrical productions. The scenery is 
 beautiful, the lighting is clever, and the cos- 
 tumes are marvels of the dressmaker's art, 
 but there is no particular harmony among 
 them all. Each specialist has developed his 
 
MUSIC AND COSTUMES 215 
 
 own ideas; but there has been no unifying 
 hand to blend all into an intelligible and 
 coherent whole. This difficulty could be 
 partly met, I believe, if we employed a cos- 
 tume designer for modern as well as costume 
 plays. Most managers are content to deal 
 direct with costumers like Redfern or Madam 
 Frances; but it would seem to be much safer, 
 and less expensive in the end, to have a 
 special designer to work in harmony with the 
 scenic artist, so that there may be no clash 
 between the costumes and the settings. The 
 designer arranges the hangings and the 
 draperies so that they blend properly with 
 the tints of the walls and the furniture as 
 well as with the costumes. He may be de- 
 pended upon to plan his work so that these 
 accessories will merely tend to suggest the 
 atmosphere of the play without calling atten- 
 tion to themselves. 
 
 And this is the function of costumes: to 
 suggest the atmosphere of the play. If they 
 do more than this they injure more than they 
 help. The constant hmn and whisper of com- 
 
216 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 merit aroused by striking gowns on the stage 
 is not helpful. Again we should remind our- 
 selves that the play is the thing, and that it 
 cannot afford to share the attention which 
 should be paid it. The temptation to use 
 the stage as a milliner's shop or a costumer's 
 display room is one that some men seem 
 unable to resist. But not once, to my knowl- 
 edge, has this costly game ever made a play 
 a success. Aside from the question of ex- 
 pense it is just as detrimental to the play to 
 dress the actresses extravagantly as it is to 
 decorate the stage with elaborate and unusual 
 scenery. The more unobtrusive the costumes 
 can be, and still be correct, the better. Peo- 
 ple do not come to the legitimate theater to 
 see stunning gowns; if that is what they are 
 interested in, they will go to the reviews and 
 musical comedies where they are displayed 
 on a large scale. But in the legitimate 
 theater the prime interest must be the play 
 itself. 
 
 Some plays of course require striking cos- 
 tumes; but even in such cases we should 
 
MUSIC AND COSTUMES 217 
 
 realize that the notice these up-to-the-moment 
 creations are to attract will be extraneous. 
 We should arrange the play so that such no- 
 tice will not interfere with the concentration 
 of the audience on the story. The author, if 
 he is wise, will allow for the distraction cer- 
 tain to be caused by the entrance of an actress 
 in an unusual and stunning gown. He can 
 take care that the dialogue is of no real 
 consequence during such an entrance, so that 
 the audience may have a chance to take 
 in the dresses and then be ready for the play 
 to go on. That is, far from relying on the 
 smart costumes to pull our play to success, 
 we should regard them as a necessary dis- 
 Traction, which the play must overcome. 
 
 With regard to music also, it is often so 
 difficult to impress upon the mind of the musi- 
 cian that his music is meant to add a certain 
 quality to the performance, to be a modest 
 accompaniment, and nothing more. He finds 
 it hard to imderstand that the moment his 
 music is noticed for itself, it defeats the very 
 end for which it is written. The producer 
 
218 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 who knows what he wants explains what he 
 wants to the musician; and the musician, hav- 
 ing found out what the producer wants, either 
 goes and does it or tells the producer to get 
 someone else to do it. The musician may re- 
 gard himself as an artist in the highest sense 
 of the word and may consider that the work 
 required is far beneath his dignity. 
 
 This suggests a little story about Sir Ar- 
 thur Sullivan. He was at his piano one after- 
 noon thumping away at what seemed to be 
 the most elementary kind of a finger exercise. 
 It ran something like this: Tumpty tumpty 
 turn, Tumpty tumpty tay, Tumpty tumpty. 
 Tumpty tumpty tee, A friend entered and 
 listened with a shocked and grieved expres- 
 sion. 
 
 " Great Scott, Sullivan! " he cried. " What 
 are you doing? " 
 
 Sullivan rephed that it was a tune for his 
 next opera. 
 
 "Nonsense!" his friend remonstrated. 
 " You surely aren't going to put that child- 
 ish rubbish in ! " 
 
MUSIC AND COSTUMES 219 
 
 Sullivan only laughed and told him to wait 
 until he heard the opera. The opera was 
 The Sorcerer; and the music accompanied 
 Sir William Gilbert's words which begin: 
 
 " My name is Wellington Wells^ 
 Genius of magic and spells ..." 
 
 and the simple, jaunty, choppy music was 
 precisely what was needed. No one thought 
 of the music at all; all the interest was cen- 
 tered in the words, which was what Sullivan, 
 thorough artist that he was, desired. Sulli- 
 van was not only a great composer, of his 
 kind, but he was as well a technician who did 
 not scorn the simple when simplicity was re- 
 quired. He realized, in this instance, his 
 music was merely an accessory to Gilbert's 
 words. 
 
 Thus in the legitimate theater the words 
 are always supreme. I am aware that I have 
 repeated this often; but I wonder if it could 
 be repeated too often. In play after play 
 that we see, the words are crowded out and 
 choked down by a dozen other factors of the 
 
220 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 performance, all interesting enough in them- 
 selves, but not the play, not what the people 
 have come to the theater to see — and not 
 what they will send their friends to see. It 
 is something of an undertaking to provide an 
 audience with sufficient mental food, or suffi- 
 cient amusement, sufficient emotional stimu- 
 lation to fill, to their satisfaction, an entire 
 evening of their lives. Only by touching 
 their imagination deeply — and they cannot be 
 amused if their imagination is not touched — 
 can we do this. Never can their imagination 
 be touched if the play fails to provide illu- 
 sion, fails to disguise itself, fails to take the 
 audience out of themselves, and make them 
 forget the theater and themselves. Anything 
 that tends to crowd the words of the play 
 out of first place in the minds of those in the 
 theater, is interfering with this illusion, is 
 striking at the vitals of the play. No effort 
 should be spared, no sacrifice should be 
 shirked, to keep the spoken word supreme. 
 Music is a great art, and she has her own 
 temples where she is worshiped, but the 
 
MUSIC AND COSTUMES 221 
 
 legitimate theater is not one of them. When 
 she is called to help her sister art she should 
 come to serve; she should leave all thoughts 
 of self behind. 
 
 My mother, Mrs. Charles Calvert, in her 
 book, Siocty-eight Years on the Stage, says 
 that when she was playing in Boston in 
 the early fifties Rachel, the great French ac- 
 tress, and her French company, came to the 
 city. At her final performance, in addition 
 to the evening's bill, Rachel recited the 
 Marseillaise. " The band played so faintly 
 that you could only catch the beat, and 
 Rachel's words rose rhythmically above it. 
 After the first few lines she snatched a tri- 
 color and raised it proudly above her head, 
 as she cried, * Aux armes ! Aux armes ! ' 
 The effect was electrical ..." But this 
 powerful effect could never have been ob- 
 tained if the music of the orchestra had not 
 been subordinated to Rachel's voice, and to 
 the words of the song. It is possible that 
 the music of the Marseillaise is even greater 
 than the words; but in this case the words 
 
222 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 were more important and the music was 
 merely accessory. 
 
 I remember many years ago, when I was 
 filling an engagement with the late Henry 
 Irving, there was a passage at arms between 
 the orchestra leader and the chief. We were 
 rehearsing Lord Byron's Werner, This play 
 lent itself particularly to incidental music, 
 and Irving stopped at one rehearsal and said 
 to the conductor, "I'd like to give this 
 speech to music. See if you can have some- 
 thing ready for me next time." At the next 
 rehearsal the music was ready and Irving 
 tried his speech with it. But something was 
 wrong. " I don't like that music somehow," 
 said Irving. " I don't feel that it suits." 
 The orchestra leader saw nothing wrong 
 with it, himself, and told Irving so with 
 some emphasis. But Irving insisted that they 
 attempt to find what the matter was. " Let's 
 try it without the flute," he suggested. This 
 was done, and Irving gave his lines with it; 
 but still the music seemed out of place. Next 
 the cornet was omitted, but still the result 
 
MUSIC AND COSTUMES 223 
 
 was unsatisfactory. Then it was tried with- 
 out the trombone, still wrong. So they went 
 on, leaving out all of the other instruments 
 one at a time, until it came time to do with- 
 out the first violin. The music had been 
 written for the first viohn (the instrument 
 played by the orchestra leader himself) and 
 that artist objected strongly to remaining 
 silent. But the piece was tried without him, 
 and Irving found it to be exactly what he 
 wanted to supplement his speech. Loudly 
 did the orchestra leader expostulate with Irv- 
 ing, pointing out, with many flourishes of his 
 bow, that if the violin were cut out there was 
 nothing left of the music, since the melody 
 was gone. But Irving turned a deaf ear to 
 his lamentations. And Irving knew what 
 he was about. He knew that the secret of 
 writing music to accompany the voice is that 
 the voice takes the place of the melody. It 
 was a bit of a blow to the musician in this 
 case, for he had grown attached to his little 
 melody, but it had been out of place. If it 
 had been used it would have fought Irving's 
 
224 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 voice for first place, and thus would have 
 defeated the end for which it had been com- 
 posed. 
 
 And in this little incident lies the secret, 
 
 I believe, of mounting plays for production. 
 
 i The voice of the actor should always be re- 
 
 f garded as the melody; and scenery, lights, 
 
 I properties, costumes, and music are only 
 
 meant to supply the accompaniment. 
 
 h 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 THE " TONE " OF A PERFORMANCE 
 
 Where the Real Charm of a Charming Play Lies — The 
 Eleventh-hour Rescue of Kismet — Keeping One's 
 Comedy in Key — Warfield's Rage in The Music 
 Master — Tad Mortimer's Rebellion in The Thunder- 
 bolt — Wrong Emphasis Fatal for Othello and Many 
 of Shakespeare's Plays — How The Concert was 
 Ruined in London — How to Insure Harmony of 
 Tone — Actors Are Not Mechanics — Keeping Close to 
 the Primaries. 
 
 IN any production there should be, as 
 we have seen, a central theme to which 
 all factors should be made to contribute. 
 That is, the appeal of any play must be a lo-~ 
 calized one. A play must appeal to the sense 
 of the whimsical primarily, or the sense of 
 the tragic primarily, or the pathetic, or the 
 comic, or the absurd — there must be one 
 primary appeal to every play, there must not 
 be more than one, we cannot mix the appeal — 
 
 225 
 
226 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 that is, the primary appeal — without disaster. 
 There must, in other words, be an atmos* 
 ^^^here or tone to which the whole of any given 
 performance must be keyed. And this atmos- 
 phere counts much more with an audience 
 ^than skilled technique. It is the atmosphere,, 
 far more than the particular incidents of the 
 story, that remains in our senses after we 
 have left the theater. Most people have seen 
 a play and liked it immensely, tried to tell 
 the story to friends, and wondered, after a 
 recital of the unadorned skeleton of the ac- 
 tion, what there was in the play that was so 
 pleasing. We have, in such cases, been 
 charmed not by the story itself half so much 
 as by the peculiar atmosphere or tone the 
 actors were able to give the performance. 
 
 CMost plays can be played in one of many 
 ones; and often a great deal depends upon 
 the one sought for by the producer. This was 
 illustrated strikingly by the experience of 
 Oscar Asche when he produced Kismet in 
 London. Asche not only produced the play 
 but he also played the part of the Beggar 
 
THE " TONE " OF A PERFORMANCE 227 
 
 himself. Otis Skinner played the part in 
 America. Asche had rehearsed Kismet as a 
 tragic drama, the drama of a disappointed, 
 hungry life. His own part he had realized as 
 a serious study of an aged vagabond who, by 
 a peculiar series of circumstances, had his day. 
 In rehearsals he had put a poignant signifi- 
 cance into his recurring cry: "Alms, for the 
 love of Allah!" It typified the plaint and 
 prayer of a broken-hearted, disappointed old 
 man. But on the opening night of the play 
 his cry: "Alms, for the love of Allah!" 
 tickled the audience immensely, and they re- 
 warded it with hearty laughter. After re- 
 covering from his amazement, Asche, with a 
 splendid eye to the main chance, at once 
 shifted his whole reading of the part. He 
 tinged it with comedy, instead of pathos, and 
 thus altered the tone of the whole play. 
 Kismet is a sort of an Arabian Nights tale 
 and might have been played in several ways; 
 but the curious, fantastic, semi-humorous, 
 semi-tragic tone seemed, on experience, the 
 one which really carried the play to the 
 
228 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 hearts of the audience. For my part I am 
 sure that this humorous treatment was one 
 of the big factors in the success of the 
 piece. It gave a dehghtful whimsicahty to 
 the whole thing; so that even when the 
 Beggar sold his daughter to the Rich Man 
 the audience were amused at the old rascal 
 instead of being shocked, as Asche (and the 
 author perhaps) had supposed they would 
 be. I beheve if the play had been pro- 
 duced in the serious tone originally attempted 
 its success would have been doubtful. 
 
 It may be objected that such a proceed- 
 ing as Asche's is truckling to the mood of 
 the audience, at the expense of truth. I do 
 not think this is valid. To my mind it is 
 j rather finding truth under the stimulus of ^ 
 \ the audience's response. We are striving in 
 the production of any play to make the emo- 
 tions of the people in the play as real and 
 moving as possible to the people in the the- 
 ater. We are striving to shed upon the story 
 just the light which will impart the strongest 
 illusion to the characters and incidents in it. 
 
THE " TONE " OF A PERFORMANCE 229 
 
 That emphasis which proves on experience 
 to be the one that gives the highest degree of 
 veracity to the play is the correct one for the 
 play; and discovering this emphasis is dis- 
 covering truth, not sacrificing it. 
 
 I once played a part in Captain Drew on 
 Leave, I was a matter-of-fact, commonplace 
 husband who had allowed his home life to fall 
 into a dull routine. My wife was a young 
 and pretty woman who, since our two sons 
 had been away at school, found the home 
 rather uninspiring. As the husband I was 
 something of a gawk and the audience 
 laughed at everything I did. But in the last 
 act I realize that my wife has been captivated 
 by the dashing young Captain Drew. And 
 with this realization my part really turned 
 into one of pathos. In this lay a difficulty. 
 I had to take great care that the audience 
 did not come to regard me as too great a boor 
 in the early acts or they would refuse to take 
 me seriously in the pathetic scene at the end, 
 where I held out my hands to my wife, say- 
 ing simply, " Let's go up to Winchester and 
 
230 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 see the boys." I tried to keep this scene be- 
 fore me throughout the play; I tried to keep 
 my comedy within certain bounds, I tried to 
 have their amusement touched with affec- 
 tion, not contempt. This meant that this 
 thought had to govern the reading of aknost 
 every comedy line; and I do not believe I 
 ever failed to touch the hearts of the audi- 
 ence with the pathos at the end. But when 
 I left the company — as I had only been 
 loaned for a few weeks — the man who took 
 my place revelled so much in his comedy, 
 in acts one and two, that when the last act 
 came they refused to take him seriously, they 
 laughed at him uproariously and one of the 
 biggest moments in the play came to naught. 
 It seemed to me that he had allowed himself 
 to forget the atmosphere of the part; his 
 performance, highly amusing though it was, 
 was out of key with the proper tone of the 
 play. 
 
 I think this matter of keeping in key was 
 phrased most eloquently by the old stage 
 manager at the Lyceum in London. Faust 
 
THE " TONE " OF A PERFORMANCE 231 
 
 was in rehearsal and the Brocken scene had 
 been reached. This scene requires a con- 
 siderable number of supers and they were 
 laughing and joking with each other through 
 the somber scene, in bland disregard of the 
 effect they were supposed to make. The 
 stage manager stood it for a time, then 
 yelled indignantly, " 'Ere, 'ere, 'ere! Not 
 so 'appy, not so 'appy! You're not in 'Amp- 
 stead, you're in 'ell! " 
 
 iThe atmosphere of the play must dominate j 
 levery actor's work. It is a mistake to allow J 
 'clever bits of business to creep into one's \ 
 performance merely because they are cunning ) 
 and momentarily effective. Very frequently 
 a laugh may be obtained by pointing a line 
 with humor; but it is wrong to do it if the 
 laugh is out of keeping with the atmosphere 
 ^of the whole. Very frequently the actor 
 playing the part of the hero can color his 
 lines with sarcasm and deliver a body blow 
 to the villain; but if the hero is not the sort 
 of a man who resorts to sarcasm, if this will 
 mean a discord in his interpretation, he 
 
232 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 achieves a momentary effect at the expense 
 of something vastly more important. 
 
 David Warfield's performance in the 
 Miisic Master is a fine example of beautifully 
 sustained atmosphere. The rage of the 
 harmless little Music Master is done with 
 splendid artistry, kept perfectly in keep- 
 ing with the tone of the play. An ordinary 
 actor would doubtless have thrown all his 
 energy into that rage scene, used it as a 
 means of displaying his great power of voice 
 and range of emotional power, but Warfield 
 clung faithfully to his character. His rage, 
 intense and bitter as it is, still is the rage 
 of a gentle, timid man who realizes after all 
 how futile his anger is. Like a hurt child 
 Warfield impotently bangs some sheets of 
 music on the piano — and how infinitely more 
 moving and true that pathetic action is than 
 roaring and pacing and tearing the hair. This 
 was the work of a great artist, who was 
 subduing all to truth and simphcity. 
 
 The part of Tad Mortimer in Pinero's 
 The Thunderbolt required, I think, some 
 
THE " TONE " OF A PERFORMANCE 233 
 
 such treatment as this. Mortimer is a man 
 in middle age who has always been dominated 
 and bullied by his two elder brothers. For 
 the first half of the play we see him as a 
 meek, mild spirit accustomed to being over- 
 ridden by his relatives. But in the third act 
 he is driven to desperation by an attack made 
 by these brothers on his wife, and he con- 
 fronts them with a violent defiance. When 
 we played the piece in London George Alex- 
 ander played the part of Tad, and in this act 
 he threw all his emotional power into the 
 fray. He played the scene with as much 
 fury as the part of Cassius requires in the 
 quarrel scene with Brutus. This was surely 
 decidedly a case of falling completely out 
 of the atmosphere of the character. I dis- 
 cussed the matter with Alexander, but he 
 confronted me with the script and pointed 
 out that Pinero had written such stage di- 
 rections as " with fury " and " goaded to 
 desperation " ; but still I believe that the 
 fury should have been that of helpless, long- 
 suffering nature, the desperation of the sort 
 
234 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 that comes after injustice has been endured 
 supinely; and both should be expressed as 
 by a man unused to asserting himself, a man 
 a httle frightened at his own rage. This 
 would have kept the character consistent and 
 would not have been a false note. 
 
 Othello is a character which relies for its 
 effectiveness greatly upon the tone of the 
 actor's work. Shakespeare created a man 
 full of pride in his own powers, whose every 
 act is touched by the great underlying belief 
 he has in himself. His manner is grandiose, 
 and would be overbearing and offensive were 
 it not for his great dignity. Forbes-Robert- 
 son and Lewis Waller both played Othello 
 and failed to make any noteworthy success. 
 I believe the failure in both cases was due 
 to the fact that those actors played him from 
 the juvenile point of view. They made 
 Othello a lover; and consequently the real 
 tragedy of the story, indeed the point of it, 
 was lost. Othello, Lear, Macbeth, and Corio- 
 lanus are all tragedies of over-conceit, trage- 
 dies of the downfall of men who had an exag- 
 
THE " TONE " OF A PERFORMANCE 235 
 
 gerated belief in their power. They believe 
 themselves supermen, and the tragedy in each 
 play comes when, because of this, they are 
 hurled from their high place. If other quali- 
 ties are emphasized unduly in the playing of 
 these parts they lose their meaning, and fail- 
 ure is likely to result. The atmosphere of 
 such characters must be preserved at any 
 cost. 
 
 In speaking of Romeo and Juliet, Madame 
 Modjeska says: "It was my belief that in 
 that poetic scene Shakespeare had not in- 
 tended to give an impression of sensuousness. 
 These two children are unconscious of their 
 passion. They meet because they love, be- 
 cause they want to be together, to hear each 
 other's voices and to look in each other's 
 eyes and cherish and kiss or die. 
 
 " If they succumb to the natural law and 
 the calling of their southern blood it is not 
 done with premeditation. There is no neces- 
 sity either to remind the audience what has 
 just happened in Juliet's room by such natu- 
 ralistic effects as a disarranged bed or the 
 
236 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 turning of a key of a locked door at the 
 nurse's entrance or Romeo's lacing his jerkin, 
 and a dishevelled Juliet in a crepe de Chine 
 nightgown. Such details are cheap illustra- 
 tions and unworthy of a true artist." 
 
 It might be added that they are not only 
 " cheap illustrations " but may very well be 
 fatal to the play. They cloud the real story, 
 they destroy the directness of its appeal, 
 and mar its harmony; they interfere with the 
 focus of the production. 
 
 It may be said that we are splitting hairs 
 in such a discussion as this. It may be stated 
 that a theatrical production is not so frail 
 and delicate an affair as we may seem to 
 imply; that whereas a few trained fiouls may 
 feel such dissonances, the bulk of the audi- 
 ence, who come to be interested and amused, 
 will enjoy the story for itself, and that there 
 will be an end of it. But it seems to me 
 that the history of the stage is full of inci- 
 dents which prove that this subtle matter of 
 atmosphere will have its effect inexorably 
 with any play and with any audience. Two 
 
THE " TONE " OF A PERFORMANCE 237 
 
 cases occur to me. I am told that when The 
 Maneuvers of Jane, by Henry Arthur Jones, 
 was first produced in London it was treated 
 as light comedy. But as such it came peril- 
 ously near to ignominious failure. Rehears- 
 als were called for the morning; and on the 
 second night the comedy was greatly broad- 
 ened until it verged on farce. It is said that 
 this change saved the play. And the prin- 
 ciple worked conversely with that wonderful 
 Belasco production. The Concert. The 
 haunting butterfly atmosphere of that play 
 was ruined by the broad tone in which it was 
 played in London. In New York the treat- 
 ment had been so delicate that the coarseness 
 of the central situation was never apparent. 
 In London a different interpretation was 
 used; and the situation degenerated to coarse- 
 ness and vulgarity — and the play was not a 
 success in England. 
 
 / It is, then, for the producer to find the 
 
 [correct tone of any new play. He should, 
 
 it seems to me, have a round table discusX 
 
 sion with his company before rehearsals beginf 
 
 K^ 
 
 "^^^^^^-^ 
 
 
:^238 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 for the purpose of giving them a general no- 
 tion of what he conceives the atmosphere of 
 the play to be. He should make as clear as 
 lie can the particular emphasis he wishes to 
 give the piece, the tone of it, the way he 
 thinks the various strands of interest and 
 character can best be woven into a coher- 
 ent pattern. All of this preliminary talk 
 will prove of great help to the actors when 
 they come to study their parts. It gives 
 them a start in the right direction and stimu- 
 lates their thinking along the proper lines. 
 They have a general notion of the play to 
 begin with; and as they read their own lines 
 they cannot fail to apply them to the main 
 story as they conceive it. If their original 
 conception and the producer's are the same 
 a great deal of time and energy may be 
 saved. 
 
 I believe that if this harmony and smooth- 
 ness is to be imparted to a production by 
 the producer, there must be a certain har- 
 mony and smoothness in his relations with 
 the members of his company. The best 
 
I 
 
 THE " TONE " OF A PERFORMANCE 239 
 
 policy is surely for the producer to treat 
 the company as comrades who are working 
 with him for the success of the play. It is 
 understood, of course, that the ultimate au- 
 thority must rest with the producer, since it 
 is his job to co-ordinate the work of all; but 
 the days of the drill sergeant producer are 
 numbered. Shakespeare said, " It is excellent 
 to have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous 
 to use it like a giant." With regard to pro- 
 ducing the manager has all the power, but 
 it is not only tyrannous for him to use it 
 like a giant, it is absurd and fatal as a busi- 
 ness policy. The good producer's methods 
 are persuasive, not commanding. It is only 
 the foolish producer who thinks he knows 
 everything who will use the bludgeon; or 
 else it is the man who is aware of his limi- 
 tation, and who relies on bluster to avoid 
 being found out. The actor cannot do his 
 best unless he is allowed a free rein, to a 
 certain extent, in the working out of his 
 character. I do not believe in forcing a con- 
 ception of a part on an actor. It is rarely a 
 
240 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 good thing to force a man into a reading he 
 does not " feel " — that is uncongenial to him. 
 But if, instead of going at him rough-shod, 
 the producer requests him to try it the new 
 way once, he may often swing round him- 
 self. 
 
 It is wrong to regard the company as a 
 group of mechanics. If they are mechanics 
 no one is to blame for their being in the play 
 except the producer who engaged them. And 
 if they are treated as mechanics their work is 
 pretty apt to be mechanical. Unless they are 
 given freedom in the expression of what they 
 feel in their own way, so far as possible, how 
 can the producer expect their ultimate per- 
 formance to have much spontaneity and natu- 
 ralness about it? There are stars — so-called 
 • — who seem to prefer to surround themselves 
 with soulless mechanics presumably that their 
 own work may shine in contrast; but such a 
 policy does the ambitious star more harm 
 than good. In the case of a road company, 
 where the actors have been told to copy the 
 original company in every detail, the work is 
 
THE " TONE " OF A PERFORMANCE 241 
 
 mechanical, however clever the particular 
 actors may be; but in shaping up a new play 
 for its maiden performance the greatest pro= 
 ducer is the one who sets himself merely to 
 enable his actors to give better performances 
 than they have ever given before. That is 
 the surest way for the producer's own work 
 to prove successful. 
 
 That is, the well-being of the play must | 
 come first of all in the minds of every single ! 
 person connected with its production. That, 
 it would seem, is a simple and obvious pri- 
 mary upon which to base all our work — 
 but like so many simple, primary things it is 
 often forgotten, as each struggles to thrust 
 himself forward; forgetting, apparently, that 
 the success of the play is the only thing that 
 can bring advancement to those associated 
 with it! If we would keep our primaries in 
 mind! If we would keep in mind — what we 
 all know well enough — that the greatest ef- 
 fects of the producer's art, and the play- / 
 Wright's art, and the actor's art are simple' 
 effects whose great appeal lies in their sim- * 
 
242 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 plicity and truth! I think there would be 
 fewer failures. I believe in most failures 
 we will find that somewhere the primary 
 things were forgotten. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 TRADITIONS 
 
 Lest We Forget "—The " Old-fashioned " Methods of 
 Ten or Twenty Years Ago — Methods Change^ but Art 
 Is Constant — No Temple for the Precious Lore of the 
 Actor's Art — There Must Have Been Great Actors 
 to Perform the Great Plays of the Past — The Strong 
 Appeal of the Old Method — Expressing Emotion and 
 Repressing Emotion — Gordon Craig, the Passionate 
 Dilettante — " Unattached " Cleverness. 
 
 H 
 
 ANGING inconspicuously and rather 
 forlornly in the smoking-room of the 
 Cohan Theater in New York City is 
 a yellowish old lithograph on which are the 
 portraits (and very poor portraits they are!) 
 of a score or more of the famous actors of the 
 past. Booth is there, and the elder Sothern, 
 and Salvini, and Modjeska, and Kean, and 
 Irving, and many others. Mighty names they 
 were not so many years ago; men and women 
 who had touched the heart of nations with 
 their art, who had numbered their admirers 
 
 243 
 
244 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 by the thousands. And under their portraits 
 is the tragically significant legend: "Lest 
 We Forget!" The portraits of men and 
 women who a few short years ago were recog- 
 nized over the world as great artists, grouped 
 together over that humiliating legend in the 
 smoking-room of a theater! 
 
 I believe that the art of acting suffers more 
 from change of method than any other — with 
 the possible exception of the art of playwrit- 
 ing. The values are ever-shifting, ever new. 
 We strive in one generation to avoid the 
 very things we most sought to do in the pre- 
 ceding one. The methods which we regard 
 as the ultimate reach at the present time will 
 presumably be obsolete in ten or fifteen years. 
 Those actors who, in the seventies, were re- 
 ceived with open arms by an adoring public 
 would probably be laughed off the stage to- 
 day. The art of the actor is a most sensitive 
 one, susceptible to every influence varying 
 fads of fashion and thought may bring to 
 bear. It is on the stage that we find the 
 most faithful expression of the moods of 
 
TRADITIONS 245 
 
 thought which are peculiar to each genera- 
 tion; and which make each generation "mod- 
 ern " and those that have gone before " old- 
 fashioned." This may be the reason why we 
 know so little of the methods our forefathers 
 followed, why tradition pays so lamentably 
 small a part in shaping our work today. The 
 young actor is likely to take the attitude 
 that he must dehberately shut his eyes to 
 the old-fashioned ways, and model his work 
 on the methods of the successful actors of 
 his own time. To a certain extent this is very 
 true, of course, but only to a certain extent. 
 The novice should not lose sight of the 
 lact that after all it is not the art of the 
 Jactor that changes, it is only the method. 
 The material we work with is the same; 
 though each season or two we shape it ac- 
 cording to new patterns. The art of the 
 actor, the art of making stage people and 
 stage emotions real to those in the theater, 
 has never changed. We adapt ourselves to 
 the ever-changing tastes, but our end is al- 
 ways the same. Vogue has a profound influ- 
 
246 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 ence on the actor's methods; but it is wrong 
 to confuse vogue with art. It is a grievous 
 error — a great misfortune — that we pay so 
 little heed to the few traditions of our craft 
 which we have. It is a great pity that so 
 much of the past has been lost. Instead of 
 shaping our work and guiding our progress 
 by fixed standards which have grown up 
 through centuries — as the painter or the 
 sculptor does — we are constantly setting up 
 new standards; we are always beginning over 
 again. 
 
 This is partly true because of the constant 
 jchange in method (which is only superficial), 
 land partly because actors are a happy-go- 
 lucky lot. They allow the precious lore of 
 their profession to remain scattered over the 
 country in countless museums and libraries, 
 and private collections. They have never 
 taken the trouble to found a temple of their 
 own. The stage should have a library of its 
 own, a museum of its own, where the history 
 of the actor's art could be coherently pre- 
 served, and studied. In the library of the 
 
TRADITIONS 247 
 
 Players' Club of New York is the only note- 
 worthy collection of theater lore in this coun- 
 try; and while this collection is valuable and 
 interesting, it, of course, fails to cover the 
 ground in any comprehensive way. 
 
 How much of inestimable value for the 
 beginning actor there would be in such a 
 study, we can only guess. But the meager 
 facts we are able to glean from the past are 
 sufficient to tell us that there were in the 
 old days great actors of whom we know little 
 or nothing. In my youth I read everything 
 I could lay my hands on that related to 
 Shakespeare and his time; and I came to the 
 conclusion that the great plays would never 
 have been written had there not been a bril- 
 liant company of actors to perform them. 
 
 We know that in most cases Shakespeare 
 wrote with definite actors in mind. He was 
 closely associated with them and knew their 
 abihties to a nicety, no doubt. He could 
 never have written his great tragedies by 
 keeping any but exceedingly fine actors in 
 mind. It is too bad we cannot know the 
 
248 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 work of those actors, as we know the work 
 of Shakespeare. It is too bad that the actor 
 is denied such a classical standard of excel- 
 lence as that provided the playwright by 
 Shakespeare's plays. Some actors' names 
 have come down to us in association with 
 Shakespeare's time; we know there were ex- 
 cellent actors — Richard Burbage, WiUiam 
 Kemp, John Heming, Henry Condell, and 
 some others, but we know nothing of their 
 art. How, in that distant time, they went 
 about it to equip themselves for the inter- 
 pretation of the greatest dramas in the Eng- 
 lish language, we have not the remotest idea. 
 Their art, which must have been almost as 
 remarkable as Shakespeare's own, died with 
 them. 
 
 There are plenty of biographies of famous 
 actors of the past, but those tell mostly of 
 great triumphs, not of the methods that made 
 those triumphs possible. In the lives of 
 Edwin Booth, Henry Irving, and the many 
 others we may read, we get no sense of how 
 they acted, only of the great heights they 
 
TRADITIONS 249 
 
 reached. Ristori gives us some insight into 
 her technical methods; Joseph Jefferson, in 
 his long autobiography, writes a few pages 
 that are of great value. But there are only 
 a few oases in the desert. For the most part 
 these books are personal history; interesting 
 enough, but of little real help to the ambi- 
 tious beginner, who could probably be helped 
 so much had the giants of the past bequeathed 
 their wisdom to posterity. There is no doubt 
 that we would all be better actors for such 
 reading. Certainly it would seem that the 
 great artists who have attained enduring fame 
 were able to put a quality into their work 
 which we, of today, have lost. We never 
 hear today of ten thousand people swarming 
 around a hotel to bid farewell to a retiring 
 actress as they did to Charlotte Cushman. 
 We do have actors who are widely known and 
 regarded with a certain affection, but I do 
 not believe their admirers have ever tried 
 to draw their carriages through the streets, 
 as they did Modjeska's in Dublin. There 
 must have been something in the '' old-fash- 
 
250 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 ioned " way of acting that took a powerful 
 hold on the heart strings. It is a pity we 
 have no way of knowing what it was. 
 
 The vigor and power of the old way of 
 doing things was brought home to me when 
 I played Ives in The Dancing Girl, That 
 play was indicted by the critics as an old- 
 fashioned play. Old-fashioned or not, it did 
 make certain demands on the actor, called 
 out certain faculties, which modern plays 
 do not. I tried to play my part as it was 
 written, in key with the tone of the play. I 
 have never been so severely criticized in my 
 life. The press flayed me for my shockingly 
 antiquated methods. But I beheve I played 
 the part the way it was written, I believe I 
 allowed myself to be guided by the author's 
 reasoning. The strange thing about this ex- 
 perience was that in spite of the disfavor of 
 the critics, I never got such hearty applause 
 from any audience before or since! I do not 
 believe I ever played a part where I felt so 
 vividly the response of the audience. My in- 
 dividual performance seemed out of keeping 
 
TRADITIONS 251 
 
 with the rest of the play, I know, because Sir 
 Herbert Tree and his company, who played 
 the piece, attempted to bring it up-to-date 
 by applying modern methods of acting to it. 
 But it was not a modern play, and did not 
 lend itself to the modern way of acting. The 
 production was not a success; but I think it 
 very likely that it might have been, if it had 
 been played in the proper melodramatic key 
 for which it had been written, in which it had 
 been played with great success years before. 
 
 Something there was in that old technique 
 which found the hearts of the pubhc as we 
 rarely do today. The plays that have liveci^ 
 through the centuries all have tremendous 
 acting parts. They are parts which give the 
 actor great opportunities, but they also place 
 heavy demands upon him. Those demands 
 must have been met by the old actors, or the 
 plays would not have lived. How silly it is 
 therefore to deride the old schools of acting. 
 How unfortunate that we are not able to 
 benefit by their sound traditions. 
 
 I do not want to lay myself open to the 
 
252 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 charge of being out of date. I realize that 
 the restrained, simple way of expressing emo- 
 tion may be quite as artistic as the more 
 forceful method of the past. But I think 
 actors are likely to fall into the same fault 
 that some painters have done. I think there 
 is a tendency toward futurism and post-im- 
 pressionism in much of the very modern act- 
 ing. In both cases the aim is to achieve cer- 
 tain praiseworthy results unhampered by tra- 
 dition and technique. But before an actor 
 is justified in throwing technique to the 
 winds, he must know very well what he is 
 throwing away. I am sure that the attempt 
 to gain originality by relying on enthusiasm 
 and imagination is a dangerous course for 
 the young actor to follow. It is only the 
 master of technique who is able to rise above 
 it, and discard it as his guide. 
 
 The desire for originality has led many 
 worthy beings astray. Gordon Craig, with 
 his designs for stage settings, has won some 
 distinction on the Continent, especially in 
 Russia, where he is hailed as a great inno- 
 

 TRADITIONS 253 
 
 vator, a great creator. I have no desire to 
 deprecate his work, much of which is exceed- 
 ingly clever; but I think his achievement 
 would be much more noteworthy and endur- 
 ing (if he insists on working for the stage), 
 if he curbed his originality and directed it 
 more in accordance with the history and tra- 
 dition of the theater. In his writings he con- 
 tinually attacks the actor, evidently regard- 
 ing him as a superfluity. He says that if he 
 had his way all actors would wear masks that 
 they might not interfere with his great con- 
 ceptions. His place, I think, would be much 
 higher if he realized that his work, in itself, 
 has nothing in common with that of the actor. 
 It really has no place on the stage. He is a 
 clever dilettante whose work is designed for 
 the drawing-room, not the stage. 
 
 His design for Macbeth's castle is a case 
 in point. On the left side of the stage is 
 the castle stretching its gloomy length be- 
 fore us. It is a dismal, forbidding building, 
 the only relief to its bare walls being a suc- 
 cession of semicircular buttresses as plain 
 
254 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 and uninviting to the eye as the castle itself. 
 The bleak walls are unadorned. There are 
 steps which extend across the stage from 
 the castle to the opposite side, filling the pic- 
 ture. They also are innocent of adornment 
 of any kind. The impression given is one 
 of utter desolation. This was no doubt in- 
 tended by the designer to convey an impres- 
 sion of the atmosphere of tragedy, to pre- 
 pare us for the terrible events about to take 
 place. But this scene was Gordon Craig's 
 idea, not Shakespeare's. Shakespeare's de- 
 scription of the castle is as follows: 
 
 " This castle hath a pleasant seat. The air 
 Nimbly and sweetly commends itself 
 Unto our gentle senses. 
 
 This guest of summer, 
 The temple-haunting martlet, does approve 
 By his loved masonry that the Heaven's breath 
 Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, 
 Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird 
 Hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle; 
 Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed 
 The air is delicate." 
 
 I should consider this documentary proof 
 
TRADITIONS 255 
 
 that in this particular design at any rate 
 Craig had thrown aside a great deal more 
 than technique and tradition in the effort to 
 gain originality. I think, too, it illustrates 
 very well the excesses into which we are apt 
 to be led if our only purpose is to be ultra- 
 modern and original. Once we cast adrift 
 and depend upon our own cleverness to lead 
 us we are pretty sure to stray far from the 
 course. Craig's work, in this case, was not 
 attempting to interpret Shakespeare, or to 
 serve the welfare of the play. There was 
 nothing in the scene he imagined to supple- 
 ment the lines to be spoken by the actors. 
 His design stood alone and apart from the 
 play of Macbeth. It expressed one of Mr. 
 Craig's ideas; it did not express, or seek to 
 express anything else; it bore no connection 
 with Shakespeare's play and thus, as an in- 
 tegral part in the production of Macbeth, it 
 had no place. 
 
 So it is with acting. The moment we per- 
 mit ourselves to become blinded to the fact 
 that a play when performed on the stage is 
 
256 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 a composite, made up of several factors each 
 of which must be co-ordinated with the others, 
 we fall into just the mistake that Mr. Craig 
 did. We create, out of ourselves, a highly 
 original and possibly clever thing, but it has 
 no value for anyone except as a bit of original 
 cleverness. I think, at times, that the mod- 
 ern attitude toward acting is apt to en- 
 courage this sort of " unattached " clever- 
 ness; and I beheve a greater regard for the 
 in such cases; surely it has been creative art! 
 of what the experience of those who have 
 gone before has taught, would keep many an 
 impetuous young actor from making costly 
 indiscretions which mar his career and multi- 
 ply his difficulties. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 THE ART OF ACTING 
 
 Is Acting a Dependent^ Imitative Art^ or Is It Crea- 
 tive? — Two Insignificant Plays, Rip Van Winkle and 
 The Music Master, Which Actors Made Enormous 
 Successes — The Folly of Comparing the Art of the 
 Actor with That of the Poet or Painter — When a 
 Play Is a Play — Why the Actor's Work Is Creative 
 and Not Imitative — The Place of the Actor's Art. 
 
 1FEEL that before I conclude these ob- 
 servations I should say a word in de- 
 fense of the actor's art. I believe in 
 many quarters the actor is sadly misunder- 
 stood. He is likely to be regarded patroniz- 
 ingly by the members of other arts; he is 
 told that his art is an imitative one as con- 
 trasted with that of the painter and the 
 writer, which are creative. By many, even 
 in this day, the actor is regarded as a trouba- 
 dour or vagabond as he was in old English 
 times. It is strange that that prejudice 
 should chng to the actor. 
 
 257 
 
258 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 I believe — and of course I know there are 
 many who agree — that the art of the actor is 
 quite as dignified, quite as " creative," and 
 perhaps even more vital and potent than any- 
 other of the fine arts. But by many we are 
 considered disciples of a " minor " art because 
 it is pointed out that we must depend upon 
 the dramatic author for our material; that 
 we merely " imitate " or reproduce his con- 
 ceptions. Anyone who knows the real story 
 of a play's precarious journey to public favor, 
 knows how often that process is reversed: 
 knows how often the playwright relies on the 
 art of the actor to endow his characters with 
 life, knows how often a play, in the hands 
 of the actors, grows far beyond the concep- 
 tion of the author. In my own case I have 
 often been compelled to play characters which 
 have been quite impossible and absurd as the 
 author conceived them. I have felt that I 
 would sooner carry bricks up a ladder than 
 earn my living by perpetrating such trash 
 with pen and paper. I believe the faculties 
 I have brought to the " interpretation " of 
 
THE ART OF ACTING 259 
 
 such characters to be of a much higher order 
 than those the author employed in writing 
 them. I have had to tax my own powers to 
 the utmost to overcome the author's deficien- 
 cies. Surely my art has not been imitative 
 in such cases; surely it has been creative art! 
 The play of Bip Van Winkle is a case in 
 point. It was founded on a short story by 
 Washington Irving. As a short story it has 
 its place in the literature of this country; 
 but, as a play, it is remembered as a vehicle 
 used by Joseph Jefferson. It is common 
 knowledge that many actors had been struck 
 with the possibilities which a dramatization 
 of Washington Irving's story possessed. 
 They saw that it might provide a splendid 
 means for the exploitation of their art, they 
 felt that they could use the idea as a vehicle. 
 Many authors were commissioned to try their 
 hands at refashioning the story into a play; 
 but for a long time all their attempts were 
 unsuccessful. Jefferson then took it up; and 
 he actually failed in it at the start. But he 
 stuck to his guns and had it rewritten again 
 
260 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 and again. For years he worked at the play, 
 pohshing, rearranging, fitting it for his pur- 
 pose. At last he got it into shape so that 
 it did serve his purpose; that is to say, it 
 enabled him to display his art to the best 
 advantage. Millions flocked to see his per- 
 formance. The play was, in his hands, one 
 of the greatest successes in all the annals of 
 stage history; but Jefferson is dead now, and 
 the play lies on the shelf a lifeless, worthless 
 thing. It has no value as literature and is 
 quite dead as a play, requiring the genius of 
 a second Jefferson to give it life. 
 
 Nobody would dream of calling The Music 
 Master a great play; it is old-fashioned and 
 mechanical and false in many ways. But, us- 
 ing it as a model, David Warfield created one 
 of the most remarkable stage portraits of con- 
 temporary times. He was able to breathe 
 life into the dead words of the play. I do 
 not think it can justly be said that the art 
 of David Warfield was inferior to that of 
 Charles Klein! Here, then, are two great 
 successes which, as plays, are worthless. I 
 
THE ART OF ACTING 261 
 
 am not sure, but I do not believe that either 
 play has ever been published in standard 
 form. Surely it is clear that the actors, in 
 these two notable instances, supplied their 
 share of creative force. 
 
 There are hack actors, it is true, just as 
 there are hack authors, and hack painters. 
 But it is no more possible to place the art 
 of the writer above that of the actor, than it 
 is to place the art of the poet above that of 
 the painter. They are all creative arts; 
 though they may, on occasion, minister to 
 each other. If the poet chooses to take a 
 painter's picture and put on paper what the 
 painter has expressed on canvas, is the poet's 
 work any the less dignified, any the less 
 creative because he has taken the painter's 
 subject? Aren't the word pictures he paints 
 fully as individual as the oil pictures of the 
 painter? Doesn't the creation of such a poem 
 depend upon the same faculties as the crea- 
 tion of any of his other poems ? When Abbey 
 painted his gorgeous picture of Tennyson's 
 "Search for the Holy Grail" for the Bos- 
 
262 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 ton Public Library, did he lessen the value 
 of his work because he put on canvas what 
 Tennyson had put on paper? When the 
 actor with his art expresses on the stage what 
 the author has expressed on paper, he stands 
 in exactly the same relation to his author as 
 Abbey does to Tennyson. He is not imi- 
 tating any more than Abbey was imitating. 
 /He is merely accomplishing his artistic re- 
 Isults by means of a» different medium. 
 
 The case is even stronger for the actor, 
 because a play does not exist as a play until 
 it is performed on the stage. It may have 
 artistic value as a piece of literature, but 
 until it lives and breathes on the stage it is 
 not a play. A play — if it is really a play, 
 and not a story in the form of dialogue — is 
 constructed according to the peculiar require- 
 ments and conditions of the theater. It de- 
 pends for its effectiveness upon the emphasis 
 which only the theater can give. In reading a 
 play we can only imagine what it will be like, 
 in manuscript it is not a complete thing. And 
 a great many plays must be performed on the 
 
THE ART OF ACTING 263 
 
 stage before we can judge their value. Even 
 the most experienced managers and play- 
 readers insist that you never can tell, you 
 never can be sure of the success of any play. 
 This certainly means that the actor has his 
 important share in the creation of the play. 
 To say that his work is imitative is absurd. 
 
 Rostand wrote Cyrano de Bergerac, and 
 declared to the world that Coquehn was the 
 perfect embodiment of his creation. If we 
 accept the view that acting is merely a supine 
 imitation of the author's work, surely any 
 actor who wished to play Cyrano, in order 
 to give the best performance of the author's 
 conception, would imitate Coquelin. Anyone 
 knows that such a course would mean failure. 
 The actor who plays Cyrano today does not 
 bother his head about Coquelin's method, he 
 creates his own Cyrano; he expresses his own 
 conception — just as Rostand himself did in 
 the beginning. 
 
 And let Rostand select six great actors who 
 could play Cyrano, and let him talk to them 
 imtil he was black in the face explaining to 
 
264 PROBLEMS OF THE ACTOR 
 
 the minutest detail just how the part should 
 be played. Then let the six actors separate 
 and work out their character individually. 
 What would be the result? There would be 
 six different Cyranos, of course! There 
 would be just as much difference in them 
 as there was in the Hamlets of Booth, Irving, 
 Fechter, and Mounet-Sully! The reason for 
 this is not far to seek. Each actor must 
 ^create his characters according to his abilities. 
 
 This great play of Rostand's, as a play, is 
 quite useless until some qualified actor takes 
 it from its library shelf and, by his creative 
 power, gives it a new birth, a new lease of 
 life as a play. It would have a very short 
 stage-life if a poor actor attempted it. The 
 same is true of Hamlet. If Hamlet should 
 be produced in New York today with an ordi- 
 nary actor in the part, it would be pretty 
 promptly withdrawn, for it is only great act- 
 ing that will induce the public to see again aj 
 play they know so well. 
 
 And again if a well-known actor were se- 
 cured to play Hamlet, and told that he should 
 
t 
 
 41^ 
 THE ART OF ACTING 265 
 
 give a laithful copy of Booth's Hamlet, or 
 living's or anybody else's but his own, it is 
 easy to imagine what the result would be. 
 Every actor must express his own conceptioril 
 of any character, and must express it in his j 
 own way ; out of the imagination of the actor j 
 must grow the image that is to appeal to our ' 
 imagination. "^ 
 
 Acting in its true sense is as boundless in 
 its scope, as unfettered, as " creative " as 
 any of the other fine arts. I believe that the 
 art of Modjeska and Ristori, and Booth and 
 Irving cannot fairly be judged by a lower 
 aesthetic standard than the art of Whistler 
 or the art of Beethoven or the art of Goethe 
 or the art of Rodin. I sincerely hope that 
 this little book has shown that the art of the 
 actor calls into play the same imaginative 
 and creative faculties as the art of the painter 
 or the composer or the poet or the sculptor, 
 and that the beginner in the profession should 
 guide and judge his work by ideals as lofty 
 and exacting as theirs. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbey, E. A., 261-262 
 
 Accessories, stage, 176-212 
 
 Acting, art and craft, 3-4; art 
 and science, 171; change of 
 method, 244-247; defense of 
 the art, 257-265; literature 
 lacking, 246-247. See also 
 Art of acting 
 
 Actor, inability to write, xix- 
 XX; not a mechanic, 240 
 
 Adrienne Lecoiivrieiir, 35 
 
 After-swell, 149-150 
 
 Aldwych Theater, xxv 
 
 Alexander, George, 233 
 
 Amasis, xxiv 
 
 Amateur and professional, 
 168-175 
 
 Andrews, Kenneth, x-xi 
 
 Androcles and the Lion, 130 
 
 Anthony, John, xxi 
 
 Antonio, 68, 69, 70, 71 
 
 Antony, Mark, 39, 149 
 
 Applause, 151, 250 
 
 Aptitudes, 9 
 
 Arabian Nights tale, 227 
 
 Archer, William, xvii 
 
 Aristotle, xvii 
 
 Arms, 89, 93 
 
 Art, concealing, 46, 159, 175 
 
 Art of acting, v, xviii, 3-4; 
 history, 246 ; principles, 
 xxvi; teaching and writing, 
 xxix-xx; unchanging, 245- 
 247. /8'ee also Acting; Craft 
 of acting; Technique 
 
 Artifice, 125 
 
 Artistic sense, 79 
 
 As You Like It, 35 
 
 267 
 
 Asche, Oscar, 226-229 
 
 Assurance, 144, 167 
 
 Atmosphere of a play, 76, 225- 
 242; costumes and, 215-217 
 
 Audience, being oblivious to, 
 150-151; giving them a 
 rest, 118-119; evidence as 
 to "tone" of play, 226- 
 229; making them laugh, 
 152-160; managing, 152; 
 quickness with the eye, 94, 
 208; response, 250; sensing, 
 153; starting with, 142-143, 
 145 
 
 Australia, xxii-xxiii 
 
 Bagstock, Major, xxi 
 
 Bargain, The, xxii 
 
 Barker, Granville, xxiv, 180, 
 
 182, 210 
 Becket, 81 
 Beethoven, 265 
 Beginners, predicting future 
 
 prospects, 161-167 
 Beginning, possibilities, 21 
 Belasco, 237 
 Belch, Sir Toby, xxi 
 Bennett, Arnold, 101 
 Bertuccio, 149 
 Billaud-Varennes, xxiii 
 Biographies, 248 
 Block, Kalph, 170 
 Blot on the 'Scutcheon, A, 
 
 xxiii 
 Books, vii 
 Booth, Edwin, vii, 6, 130, 149, 
 
 243, 248, 264, 265 
 Boston, 221 
 
268 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Boston Public Library, 261- 
 
 262 
 Braid, James, 135 
 Brazenose Club, 165 
 Breath, 52, 55 
 Bridge, 190 
 
 Britomart, Lady, 105-107 
 Broadbent, John, xxiv 
 Broadway, staying on, 26- 
 
 30 
 Browning, Robert, xxiii 
 Bunty Pulls the Strings, 173 
 Burbage, Richard, 248 
 Byron, Lord, 222 
 
 Caesar, 39, 149 
 
 Caesar's servant, 39-40 
 
 Called Back, 124 
 
 Calvert, Louis, autobiographi- 
 cal, v-xi; biographical, xx- 
 xxvii; parts played, xxi- 
 
 XXV 
 
 Calvert, Mrs. Charles, xxii, 
 
 166, 221 
 Captain Drew on Leave, xxiv, 
 
 229-230 
 Caricatures, 163 
 Casca, xxiii 
 Castlemaine, Lady, 98 
 Ceiling, 203-204 
 Celebrated Case, A, 24 
 Century Theater, New York, 
 
 xxii 
 Chairs and tables, 196-198 
 Character, getting into, 61- 
 
 78; knowledge of, 91, 112, 
 
 129 
 Clavigo, xxiii 
 Cleverness, 256 
 Climax, 141 
 Cohan, George M., xx 
 Cohan Theater in New York, 
 
 243 
 Cold in the head, 50 
 Colleen Baivn, 35 
 Comedy, audience in, 152-160 
 Comedy Theater, London, xxiv 
 
 Company, producer and mem- 
 bers, 238-241 
 
 Competition, 20 
 
 Concealment of art, 46, 159, 
 175 
 
 Concentration, 72-75, 113 
 
 Concert, The, 237 
 
 Concerted effort, 101 
 
 Constance, 136 
 
 Control, 134-135, 137, 153 
 
 Conventionality in plays, 29 
 
 Conventions, 88 
 
 Conversation, 115, 116 
 
 Co-operation of managers and 
 stage specialists, 192, 193- 
 195 
 
 Coquelin, 263-264; use of eyes 
 in Cyrano, 85-87, 131, 132 
 
 Coriolanus, 234 
 
 Costume designers, 193, 215 
 
 Costumes, function, 215-217 
 
 Cottage in the Air, The, xxi 
 
 Condell, Henry, 248 
 
 Cough, 94 
 
 Court Theater, London, xxiv 
 
 Craft of acting, 3-4, 95, 105, 
 172-173. See also Tech- 
 nique 
 
 Craig, Gordon, 252-256 
 
 Crawley, Sir Pitt, xxi 
 
 Creative art, 257-259 
 
 Crescendo, 138-149, 152, 160 
 
 Critics, xviii 
 
 Cruikshank, 163 
 
 Cues, 64 
 
 Cushman, Charlotte, 7, 249 
 
 Cusius, 155. 
 
 Cymheline, 139 
 
 Cynicism, 13 
 
 Cyrano, 263-264 
 
 Cyrano de Bergerac, xxiv, 85, 
 131, 132, 263 
 
 Dancing Oirl, The, xxv, 250 
 David Garrick, xxi 
 Dewhurst, John, xxiii 
 Difficulties, v. 19 
 
INDEX 
 
 269 
 
 Dilettantism, 253 
 Distinctness of speech, 56 
 "Dog-towns," 199-200 
 Doing nothing, art of, 87, 96- 
 
 120 
 Domhey and Son, xxi 
 Don, xxi 
 
 Douglas, Richard, 184-187 
 Dramatic critics, xviii 
 Dress rehearsal, 197, 199-200 
 Drudgery, 60; see also Work 
 Drury Lane Theater, xxiii, 39 
 Dublin, 249 
 Dull moments, 119-120 
 Durban, xxii 
 
 Ear for music, 17 
 
 Earnestness, 7-8 
 
 Elementary lessons, 80 
 
 Elocution, vi, 46, 47 
 
 Emotions, 121-151 ; cumula- 
 tive, 140-141, 147, 148; defi- 
 nition, 121-122; expressing 
 mimicry, 22; eyes for con- 
 veying, 80-81, 82-83; feel- 
 ing, 123, 150; feeling and 
 simulating, 132; prepara- 
 tion for, 138, 139-140; re- 
 strained and expressed, 252 ; 
 unadorned, the basis of all, 
 128-129 
 
 Empress of Ireland (ship), 
 164 
 
 Enemy of the People, An, 
 xxiii, XXV 
 
 English language, 47 
 
 Entering the profession, 19- 
 42 
 
 Enthusiasm, 11 
 
 Enunciation, 56 
 
 Experiences, vi, viii 
 
 Exposition of play, routine, 
 102, 104 
 
 Expression, 122 
 
 Eyes, rule, 83; use, 79-87 
 
 Face of actor, 200, 202 
 
 Failures of actors, 8-9 
 Failures of plays, partial 
 
 cause, 195-198; primary 
 
 things, 241-242 
 Falstaff, xxi, xxv, 38 
 Fame, 5 
 Faust, 230-231 
 Faucit, Helen, 139, 214 
 Fechter, 264 
 Fencing, 115 
 Finesse, 124 
 Flexibility of voice, 52 
 Flowers, real and painted, 
 
 183-184 
 Fool's Revenge, A, 149 
 Forbes-Robertson, 23, 48, 234 
 Frances, Madam, 215 
 "Freeze," 51 
 French school, 132, 133 
 Fundamentals, 95 
 Furniture, stage, 187-188, 196- 
 
 198 
 "Futures," 161-167 
 Futurism, 252 
 
 Galsworthy, John, 179 
 Garden scene, 182-184 
 George, Grace, xxii, 33 
 Germans, 214 
 Gestures, 87-95 
 Ghost in Hamlet, 51 
 Gilbert, Sir William, 219 
 Glance, value of, 81-84 
 Globe Theater, London, xxiv 
 Goethe, xxiii, 265 
 Goff, 135-136 
 Grand Duke, xxi 
 Grocery store, 177-178 
 Gwynne, Nell, 98 
 
 Hamilton, Clayton, xxvii 
 Hamlet, 167, 264 
 Hamlet, 35, 264 
 Handkerchief, 94 
 Hands, use of, 87-95 
 Handsomeness, 18 
 Harrison, Frederic, xxiv 
 
270 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hawtrey, Charles, 101 
 
 Hay fever, 50 
 
 Haymarket Theater, xxiv 
 
 Hemming, John, 248 
 
 Henry V, xxv 
 
 Her Majesty's Theater, Lon- 
 don, xxiii 
 
 Heroic parts, 93 
 
 Hindle Wakes, 89 
 
 His Majesty's Theater, Lon- 
 don, xxi, xxv 
 
 Horniman, Miss, 89 
 
 Humanity, 12-16 
 
 Humor, 16, 159, 227-228 
 
 Ibsen, xxiii 
 
 Illusion, scenery, 178, 180, 
 182, 189 
 
 Imagination, 16, 220 
 
 Imitation, 258-259 
 
 Imogene, 139 
 
 Impersonation, essence of, 65 
 
 Individuality, ix 
 
 Ingot, Simon, xxi 
 
 Inn with the purple walls, 191 
 
 Insincerity, 13, 131 
 
 Interior scenes, 203-206 
 
 Iron works, 179-180 
 
 Irving, Sir Henry, xxiii, 58, 
 130, 243, 248, 264, 265; 
 Manchester experience, 164- 
 166; orchestra leader and, 
 222; use of eyes, 81-84 
 
 Irving, Lawrence, 162-164 
 
 Irving, Washington, 259 
 
 Ives, David, xxv, 250 
 
 Jealousy, 146 
 
 Jefferson, Joseph, 109, 134, 
 
 135, 249; Rip Van Winkle, 
 
 259-260 
 Jenkin, Fleeming, xix 
 Jim the Penman, 125 
 Jokes, one's own, 159 
 John Bull's Other Island, 
 
 xxiv, 158 
 Jones, Henry Arthur, 237 
 
 Julius Caesar, xxiii, 38-40 
 Jungle scenes, 180-181, 182 
 Jiittner, Dr., xxi 
 
 Kean, Charles, 243; voice, 50 
 
 Kemp, William, 248 
 
 Key. See "Tone." 
 
 King Henry IV, xxv 
 
 King John, 136 
 
 Kismet, 226-229 
 
 Klein, Charles, 260 
 
 Lady of Lyons, The, 35 
 Lauder, Harry, voice, 48, 59 
 Langtry, Mrs., xxiii 
 Laughter, 57, 231; killing an 
 
 audience's, 157; making an 
 
 audience laugh, 152-160; 
 
 sensitiveness to audience's, 
 
 154-155; too much, 158 
 Laws of acting, ix 
 Laws of play-making, xvii 
 Lear, 234 
 
 Lewis, George Henry, xix 
 Lighting effects, 190, 200-203, 
 
 205; natural, 209-210; too 
 
 ingenious, 206-209 
 Listening, art of, 96, 105, 108, 
 
 110, 111, 113, 117, 118 
 Literature, vi, vii, 246-247 
 Little things, 119-120 
 London Assurance, 35 
 Lorance, Pierre, 24 
 Low tones, 54-55 
 Lung power, 53, 138 
 Lyceum Theater, London, 
 
 xxiii, 230 
 Lyric Theater, xxv 
 
 Macari, 124, 125 
 Macbeth, 124, 234 
 Macbeth, 35, 255 
 Macbeth's castle, 253-254 
 Machinery, elaborate stage, 
 
 186, 187 
 Macready, 51 
 Major Barha/ra, xxiv, 105, 155, 
 
 156 
 
INDEX 
 
 271 
 
 I Malvolio, 45 
 
 Manchester, England, xxii, 
 89; Irving in, 164-166 
 
 MancBUvers of Jane, The, 237 
 
 Mansfield, Richard, xx 
 
 Mantell, Robert, 33 
 
 Margate, xxiii 
 
 Marie Antoinette, 133 
 
 Marseillaise, 221 
 
 Masquerader, The, 64 
 
 Measure for Measure, 35 
 
 Mechanics, 59, 60, 79, 80 
 
 Melbourne, xxiii 
 
 Melnotte, Claude, 100 
 
 Menas, 37 
 
 Merchant of Venice, 66-75 
 
 Mercutio, xxi 
 
 Mermaids and sea-shells, 187 
 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, The, 
 xxi 
 
 Metallic tone, 53 
 
 Method, change in, 244-247; 
 lack, in producers and man- 
 agers, 198 
 
 Micawber, xxi 
 
 Midsummer Nighfs Dream, A, 
 210 
 
 Miller, Henry, xx 
 
 Miming, 112 
 
 Modjeska, Madame, 140, 235- 
 236, 243, 249, 265 
 
 MoflFat Company, 173 
 
 Moments, 41 
 
 Money, 35 
 
 Moonlight, 210-211 
 
 Mortimer, James, xxi, xxv 
 
 Mortimer, Tad, 232-234 
 
 Motives, 3 
 
 Movement, 94, 111 
 
 Much Ado Ahout Nothing, 35 
 
 "Murder," 51 
 
 Music, costumes and, 213- 
 224; function, 217-222; Irv- 
 ing and, 222-224 
 
 Music Master, The, 110, 232, 
 260 
 
 Musketeers, The, xxiii 
 
 Natal, xxii 
 Natural speech, 43-60 
 Naturalness, 171-175 
 Neighborhood Playhouse, 169 
 Nervousness, 143-145, 197 
 New Theater, London, xxiv 
 New Theater, New York, xxi, 
 
 xxv 
 New York Company, 26-30 
 New York try-outs in small 
 
 towns, 199-200 
 Nottingham, 24 
 
 Oak chamber, 203 
 
 Observation, 31 
 
 Odette, 140 
 
 Old Heidelberg, xxi 
 
 Old-fashioned play, 250 
 
 Old school methods, 46, 47, 
 59, 250, 251 
 
 On Actors and the Art of Act- 
 ing, xix 
 
 One-part actors, 27-30 
 
 Ophelia, 131 
 
 Orange, 127 
 
 Orchestra leader, 222 
 
 Othello, 124, 138, 234; re- 
 quirements of the part, 145- 
 148 
 
 Othello, 35, 148 
 
 Outdoor scenes, 201 
 
 Paid in Full, xxv 
 
 Parrotting, 22-24, 66, 117 
 
 Part, enjoying one's own, 
 159; exact words, 109; get- 
 ting inside of one's, 61-78, 
 118; variations of perform- 
 ance, 108 
 
 Passing of the Third Floor 
 Back, The, 23 
 
 Passions, portraying, 133-135 
 
 Personal appearance, 17-18 
 
 Personality, 10 
 
 Phelps, Samuel, 45 
 
 Pinero, Sir A. W., 103, 232- 
 234 
 
272 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Pistol (part), xxv 
 
 Plays, atmosphere, 76; com- 
 posite, 256 ; notion of whole, 
 63; cause of failure, 195- 
 198; single appeal, 225 
 
 Players' Club, 247 
 
 Playhouse, The, New York, 
 xxii 
 
 Playhouse Company, 33 
 
 Playing-up, 101 
 
 Play-making, xvii 
 
 Point, thrust, and lunge, 115 
 
 Porthos, xxiii 
 
 Portia, 37 
 
 Possibilities, 21 
 
 Post-impressionism, 252 
 
 Prejudices about actors, 162- 
 166, 257 
 
 Primaries, x, 241-242 
 
 Producers' work, faults, 190, 
 192, 193; scenery and ac- 
 cessories, 176-212 
 
 Production, coherency needed, 
 213-215 
 
 Professionalism, 168-175 
 
 Proof, 24 
 
 Prospero, xxii 
 
 Pull, 21 
 
 Purple walls, 191 
 
 Purpose of the writer, ix 
 
 Qualifications, 3-18 
 
 Eachel, 132; Marseillaise, 221 
 
 Rage, 133, 148, 149, 232-234 
 
 Range of voice, 51-52 
 
 Realism, 46; scenery and 
 lighting, 176-212; subtler 
 effects, 212 
 
 Realizing a part, 73 
 
 Redfern, 215 
 
 Repertoire company, advan- 
 tages in beginning with, 32- 
 42 
 
 Repetition, dangers, 23-26, 
 113, 117 
 
 Replies, 114, 117; timing, 
 154-155 
 
 Repose, 94 
 
 Reserve power, 85 
 
 Restraint, 148, 252 
 
 Richard III, 35, 50 
 
 Rip Van Winkle, 109, 259 
 
 Ristori, 6, 23, 136, 249, 265; 
 
 quoted on conditions, 132, 
 
 133 
 Road company, 22-26 
 Robespierre, xxiv 
 Rodin, 265 
 Romeo and Juliet, xxi, 35, 
 
 235-236 
 Rosmersholm, xxiii 
 Rostand, 263-264 
 Routine exposition, 102, 104 
 Royalty Theater, xxv 
 Run of Luck, A, xxiii 
 Russia, 252 
 
 St. James's Theater, London, 
 xxiv, 103 
 
 St. John, Holt, xxv 
 
 Salvation Army, 156 
 
 Salvini, 243 
 
 Savoy Theater, London, xxi 
 
 Saxe-Meiningen Company, 39 
 
 Scenery, astounding, Broad- 
 way, 189-192; baffling, 180- 
 181; crudity, 181; outdoor 
 set, 201; realistic, effect, 
 176-212 
 
 Scenic artist, 177, 189, 193, 
 201 
 
 School for Scandal, The, xxi 
 
 Scotch play, 173-174 
 
 Sea-shells and merimaids, 
 187 
 
 Self-consciousness, 172 
 
 Self-examination, 8 
 
 Selfishness, 98, 119 
 
 Self-possession, 133 
 
 Sensitiveness, 143 
 
 Servant, part of, 62-63 
 
 Shadows, 209 
 
 Shakespeare, xxii, xxiii, 66, 
 70, 71, 247-248, 254-255 
 
INDEX 
 
 273 
 
 Shakespearian parts, 92-93, 
 
 126-129, 139 
 Shakespearian plays, 234- 
 
 236; Broadway, astounding 
 
 scenery, 189-192 
 Shaw, Bernard, 105, 155, 158, 
 
 180; wit of plays, 158 
 Ship in distress, 185-187 
 Shouting, 52 
 Shylock, 124, 130; study of 
 
 the character, 66-75 
 Silent work, 104, 110, 111 
 Simplicity, x, 173-175 
 Simplifying, 75-76 
 Sixty -eight Years on the 
 
 Stage, xxii, 166, 221 
 Sky, 201, 202 
 Sloping platform, 190 
 Small parts, 40-41 
 Smith, Sidney, 191 
 Soliloquy, 68 
 Sonorous tone, 53 
 Sorcerer, The, 219 
 Sothern, the elder, 243 
 South Africa, xxii 
 Speaking naturally, 43-60 
 Specialists, co-operation, 192, 
 
 193-195 
 Spontaneity, 170-175 
 Stage carpenter, 194-195 
 Stage-projection, xx 
 Stage setting. See Scenery. 
 Standards, vi, 246 
 Stars, 38, 240 
 Stevenson, R. L,, xix 
 Stock company, advantages in 
 
 beginning with, 30-32 
 Stockmann, Peter, xxv 
 Strife, xxi, 179 
 Success, 6-7, 168 
 Suggestion in scenery, 178, 
 
 181, 182 
 Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 218- 
 
 219 
 Sullivan, Barry, 166-168 
 Sully, Mounet, 264 
 Sunday, xxiv 
 
 Sunlight, 205 
 
 Supers, 230-231 
 
 Svengali, 125 
 
 Sweet Kitty Bellairs, xxiv 
 
 Sweet Nell of Old Drury, 
 
 xxiv, 98 
 Sympathy, 12 
 
 Tables and chairs, 196-198 
 
 Taste, 59 
 
 Teaching the art of acting, 
 
 XX 
 
 Team work, 36, 97-102, 241- 
 
 242 
 Tearle, Osmond, xxiii, 35 
 Tears, 135 
 
 Teazle, Sir Peter, xxi 
 Technique, viii, ix, 10, 15, 49, 
 
 55, 60, 79, 80, 85, 112, 114, 
 
 116, 123, 147, 168, 252 
 Temperament, 16 
 Tempest, The, xxii 
 Tennyson, 261-262 
 Terry, Ellen, 56-57, 135 
 Terry, Fred, xxi 
 Thinking, 74, 91, 95 
 Thompsett, Alfred, xxi 
 Thome, Sarah, xxiii 
 Thunderbolt, The, xxi, xxv, 
 
 103, 232-234 
 "Tone" of a performance, 
 
 225-242 
 Tones, 50-51 
 Towzer, xxiv 
 Traditions, vi, 243-256 
 Transitional stage, 172 
 Tree, Sir Herbert, xxiii, 251; 
 
 trickeries, 123-131 
 Tricks, 123-131 
 Trilhy, 125 
 Truisms, 95 
 Truth, X 
 Try-outs, 199-200 
 Turning points, 168-175 
 Ticelfth Night, xxi 
 Type actors, 27-30 
 Typhoon, The, 163 
 
274 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Undershaft, Andrew, xxiv, 156 
 
 Vanity Fair, xxi 
 Variations of performance, 
 
 108 
 Vaudeville, 48 
 Vedrenne, xxiv 
 Villiers, Colonel, xxiv 
 Voice, 16-17; cultivation, 43- 
 
 60; first place in the play, 
 
 224 
 
 Waiter (part), xxiv 
 "Walking on" parts, 26 
 Wallack's Theater, 35 
 Waller, Lewis, 234 
 Wallis, Miss, xxiii, 34 
 Warfield, David, 109-110, 
 
 232, 260-261 
 Washington Square Players, 
 
 33 
 
 Weeping, 135 
 
 Wenman, 58 
 
 Werner, 222 
 
 What the Public Wants, xxv, 
 101 
 
 Whistler, 265 
 
 Wilkins Micawher, xxi 
 
 Williams, Captain, xxv 
 
 Wisconsin Players, 169-170 
 
 Wolsey, 45, 124, 127, 129 
 
 Word,'8, exactly as written, 
 109; learning before study- 
 ing character, 62, 65; su- 
 premacy, 219-221 
 
 Work, 20, 50, 162 
 
 Writing, xix-xx 
 
 Wyndham, Sir Charles, xxiv, 
 109, 132, 157 
 
 Wyndham's Theater, xxiv 
 
 You Never Can Tell, xxiv 
 
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