Practical Hints 
 
 on 
 Training for the Stage 
 
Uniform with this Volume 
 
 Practical Stage Directing for 
 
 Amateurs 
 
 A Handbook for Amateur.Managers 
 and Actors 
 
 By 
 
 Emerson Taylor 
 
 E. P. Dutton & Company 
 
Practical Hints on Training 
 for the Stage 
 
 By 
 v Agnes Platt 
 
 Author of "Practical Hints on Playwritlng," etc. 
 
 New York 
 
 E. P. Button & Company 
 681 Fifth Avenue 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1921, 
 BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 Ail Rights Reserved 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 THIS little book is merely an attempt to set 
 down certain points of view which I have 
 found helpful myself when coaching my stage 
 pupils, whether novices or actors of some ex- 
 perience, who come for help in the interpre- 
 tation of special roles. 
 
 I have always found that the greater the 
 actor, the more eager he is to have his work 
 pulled to pieces. A critic may be at fault, 
 but he does not take the trouble to criticize in 
 detail unless he feels that the actor is going 
 to be worth while, and that he has sufficient 
 power within him to attain success in the 
 end. It is for the actor himself to weigh the 
 criticisms he receives, and to try to compare 
 the effect his work has made on others with 
 the aim he had in mind. 
 
 If this book serves the purpose of awaken- 
 ing in the minds of my readers a desire for 
 
vi Foreword 
 
 criticism and an instinct of self-judgment, I 
 shall feel I have accomplished all that I set 
 out to achieve. 
 
 AGNES PLATT 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I THE WORK OF AN ACTOR. WHAT HE WILL 
 
 HAVE TO FACE, AND WHAT HE MAY ACHIEVE I 
 
 II How TO APPLY THE INCIDENTS OF DAILY LIFE 
 
 TO ONE'S WORK 13 
 
 III THE VOICE AND ITS POTENTIALITIES .... 22 
 
 IV THE Music OF THE VOICE: ITS NOTES, POWER 
 
 OF SUGGESTION AND MAGNETISM .... 41 
 
 V MOVEMENT AND FACIAL EXPRESSION .... 55 
 
 VI CHARACTER IN MOVEMENT 66 
 
 VII WORDS AND THEIR SPOKEN VALUE .... 79 
 
 VIII AUDIENCES 92 
 
 IX How TO "FEED" AND How TO BUILD UP . . 102 
 
 X METHODS OF CERTAIN FAMOUS ACTORS . . . 115 
 
 XI How TO SET ABOUT THE WORK OF GETTING AN 
 
 ENGAGEMENT 141 
 
 XII AND How TO BEHAVE WHEN IT is GOT . . 160 
 
Practical Hints 
 
 on 
 Training for the Stage 
 
PRACTICAL HINTS ON TRAINING 
 FOR THE STAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE WORK OF AN ACTOR. WHAT HE WILL 
 
 HAVE TO FACE AND WHAT HE MAY 
 
 ACHIEVE 
 
 THERE will always be a great deal of dis- 
 cussion as to whether acting is really an art. 
 To my mind no one who has seen the work 
 of a great actor can hesitate for a moment to 
 answer this question in the affirmative. Act- 
 ing is undoubtedly an art, and one which 
 needs so many qualities to achieve a full re- 
 sult that the wonder is, not that there are 
 so few great actors, but rather that there 
 should be so many. Like every other art, 
 it is possible to attain a certain degree of ex- 
 cellence without having genius, if one has ob- 
 servation, application and taste. I think it 
 is because of this that people are apt to say 
 1 
 
2 Training for the Stage 
 
 that acting is not an art, and also because 
 acting is, in most cases, more interpretative 
 than creative. But then, in the true sense 
 of the world, all art is interpretative. The 
 painter paints from life, the author writes 
 the lessons he has learnt from life. Even 
 the greatest work of the musician is his at- 
 tempt to speak in music the message life has 
 sent him. 
 
 What is creation, and how does it differ 
 from interpretation ? Both author and actor 
 interpret from the book of Nature according 
 to their lights. We may fancy that we have 
 original ideas, and that our work expresses 
 them, and it is certainly true that some of us 
 have infinitely more independence of outlook 
 than others; but it does not follow that be- 
 cause we are interpreting we are necessarily 
 laying aside our originality. On the con- 
 trary one needs great originality to interpret 
 with illumination ; for if one lacks originality 
 oneself, one will never be able to appreciate 
 the originality of others. An actor of com- 
 monplace mind can only give a commonplace 
 interpretation; but an actor of original mind 
 will cast the light of his own genius over the 
 
The Work of an Actor 3 
 
 work of his author, and by understanding to 
 the full the meaning of that author, and the 
 possibilities of his part, will make of the char- 
 acter he plays an outstanding bit of life, true 
 in itself, and true also in its relation to the 
 whole play. When reading an author's work 
 with a view to acting, one has got to see, not 
 only what the author has actually written, 
 but all that he wanted to convey and all that 
 he might have conveyed, had his genius been 
 of the first water. It is here that an actor 
 whose genius is of the first water supplies a 
 fuller and more satisfying interpretation, and 
 thereby raises his calling to the level of a 
 high art. 
 
 There is a constant feud between actors 
 and authors, due sometimes to a kind of 
 jealousy. An actor who approaches his work 
 with a grudge in his heart that the author 
 may get the credit of his brains is a man 
 who is not fitted for his profession. Per- 
 haps in no art is there so much risk of being 
 blamed for other people's faults as in the art 
 of acting. The critics themselves do not 
 always know how to apportion praise and 
 blame, and will slate an author for a fault 
 
4 Training for the Stage 
 
 which is due to the producer or to the in- 
 equality of the cast For this reason many 
 dramatic criticisms, even though true of the 
 ensemble, are unjust in detail. Unless you 
 have read the original text of a play it is 
 almost impossible, on viewing the production 
 of that play, to say where the work of the 
 author ends and the work of the producer 
 and the individual actors begins. The fact 
 is that author and actor are cooperating 
 or should be cooperating loyally to pro- 
 duce a common effect. United they stand, 
 divided they fall. 
 
 Even in so small a matter as that of for- 
 getting one's lines upon the stage the injustice 
 of stage conditions makes itself felt. It is 
 not the actor who "dries up" who seems in 
 fault, but his companion on the stage who, 
 because he has not received his cue, is un- 
 able to continue the dialogue. 
 
 The whole art of acting is the art of give 
 and take. You have to view your part in 
 relation to the whole, and it is a duty to re- 
 frain from making any special effect which is 
 going to distract the attention of the audi- 
 ence from other actors and concentrate it 
 
The Work of an Actor 5 
 
 upon yourself. No actor may look at his 
 part from a selfish point of view. He must 
 always be willing to give up his own tit-bit 
 if the well-being of the whole performance 
 demand it. 
 
 Moreover, from first to last, his own per- 
 sonal feelings must be rigorously set aside. 
 Whatever his private troubles or joys, he 
 must oust them from his mind completely 
 while doing his work. For the time being 
 he has to become an entirely different man. 
 He must learn to wait, he must learn to adapt 
 himself, he must learn to take sharp criti- 
 cism straight from the shoulder in front of 
 his fellow actors. He must learn to look on 
 his face and other attributes merely as as- 
 sets to his work, and must get rid, once and 
 for all, of all personal vanity. He must learn 
 that his own triumph will never be really 
 great unless it is shared by the other mem- 
 bers of the cast and above all by the author. 
 
 For many centuries the stage has been 
 looked upon as a sink of iniquity. Viewed 
 rightly, acting is essentially a profession 
 which brings out the best that is in us. An 
 actor depends for his success on a keenly de- 
 
6 Training for the Stage 
 
 veloped observation and sympathetic under- 
 standing of human character. He will never 
 succeed with audiences unless he has the fac- 
 ulty of making himself liked, which means 
 that he must rid himself of all such annoy- 
 ing traits as conceit, self-consciousness, ob- 
 stinacy, aggressiveness, irritability and 
 "swank"; for all these qualities leave their 
 mark on a man and show in his face and 
 manner. One will never please an audience 
 unless one has a great desire to please, and 
 this desire is not found in company with smug 
 self-satisfaction. 
 
 Suggestion plays a great part on the stage, 
 and unless an actor is himself sincere he will 
 never suggest sincerity in his work. Only 
 earnestness is convincing. Unless he is un- 
 selfish he will spoil the effect of many a scene 
 because he will grudge to his fellow actors in 
 that scene their predominance at certain vital 
 moments. Unless he is devoted to his work 
 he will never stand the nervous strain it en- 
 tails. Unless he carries the thought of his 
 work very close to his heart he will go 
 through life with his eyes shut and lose the 
 
The Work of an Actor 7 
 
 advantage of all the lessons which life alone 
 can teach. 
 
 Since, more than any other art, acting is 
 the representation of life by the living human 
 being, it is obvious that a study of life and 
 character is essential. To the actor, above 
 all men, every human trait should speak, 
 every vibration from his fellow beings tell 
 its own story. One must keep oneself al- 
 ways sensitive to the moods, needs and fail- 
 ings of others, and develop that sympathy 
 which is the surest understanding. 
 
 Above all, the actor must learn to sustain 
 the magnetic point of view. The rapport be- 
 tween actor and audience is very subtle and 
 far too little understood. There are two 
 ways of looking at everything, and to put 
 a wrong view before the audience is to take 
 upon oneself a great responsibility. An ac- 
 tor's mental philosophy is an important in- 
 gredient of his work. His whole art will be 
 tinged by his personal outlook. 
 
 So much by way of motto to this little 
 book. Now let us come down to practical 
 matters. What exactly is the life of an ac- 
 
8 Training for the Stage 
 
 tor? What does it demand from him, and 
 how is he going to make good? 
 
 Say that an actor is engaged for a part. 
 What happens? He is called to rehearsal, 
 where the producer gives him his instruc- 
 tions as to the positions he is to occupy on the 
 stage when speaking his lines. As the re- 
 hearsals progress, he is coached, more or less, 
 in the business of his part and the necessary 
 inflections. The first night comes. He does 
 his best. The piece may, or may not, be a 
 success. If it is, after a little more rehears- 
 ing for the various "cuts" which the first 
 night's performance has probably shown to 
 be necessary, his work, for some months to 
 come, will consist in playing his part with 
 probably little or no further rehearsing. 
 Many people think that this makes the ac- 
 tor's life an easy one. But you have got to 
 remember that the actor's hours take him on 
 duty when the rest of the world is enjoying 
 itself; that he is always subject to uncertainty, 
 since every audience differs, and "points" that 
 go well with one will fall flat with another; 
 and that, therefore, an actor never really en- 
 joys the nerve rest afforded by the routine 
 
The Work of an Actor 9 
 
 which forms an essential part of so many 
 occupations. 
 
 The whole work of an actor entails a pe- 
 culiar strain upon the nervous system. At 
 rehearsals he is continually being called up 
 and put through the discipline of a school- 
 boy. On the first night he is subject to an 
 ordeal which some people could not bring 
 themselves to face at all. And on each sub- 
 sequent performance, though the ordeal is 
 considerably less, still it is there, and makes 
 itself felt whenever any little trifle goes 
 wrong upon the stage. Remember, also, that 
 his hours are not those which make for 
 health. He cannot get his meals at normal 
 times, and he has to work at night in a way 
 that is exciting to the brain and detrimental 
 to healthy sleep. 
 
 I have merely spoken so far of the stress 
 of the work itself, but the greatest strain of 
 all consists in procuring that work. Actor's 
 engagements are all of a more or less pre- 
 carious nature. The run of a piece may last 
 for months, or it may come to an end after 
 a few nights, and the whole anxiety of finding 
 fresh work may begin all over again. It is 
 
10 Training for the Stage 
 
 this uncertainty which tells so heavily on the 
 nerves, far more than the actual nature of the 
 work. The ups and downs of an actor's 
 career demand a steady courage, a hopeful 
 spirit and a level brain. The one bright spot 
 is that, however dark things may seem, there 
 is always the hope that fortune will suddenly 
 appear, laden with smiles and favors. The 
 temperament that can look facts in the face 
 and say, "Well, any change, even for the 
 worse, is still a change, and as such, prefer- 
 able to monotony," is the temperament which 
 is suited to the stage. The spirit at the back 
 of such a temperament is the spirit strong 
 enough to hypnotize an audience. Such a 
 man has, in himself, the essence of magnet- 
 ism, the quality which is always going to win. 
 
 Some actors will tell you that the stage is 
 overcrowded. I think this means that, in 
 common with most other occupations, it is 
 besieged by a crowd of the wrong people. I 
 am personally beset by girls who say to me : 
 
 "I am no good in an office, I am no good 
 at housework, I am no good at anything; 
 therefore, the only thing to do is to go on the 
 stage. Please find me a part in London. I 
 
The Work of an Actor 11 
 
 would not mind if it were a small part, just 
 to begin, you know." 
 
 These people rouse my ire. I consider it 
 an insult to approach the stage from that 
 point of view. But if you have a real sense 
 of the stage, nothing on earth will keep you 
 from it. Men and women alike will throw 
 up comfortable berths and face any hardships 
 just for the sake of the joy acting brings to 
 them. Who shall say that they have not 
 their reward? Is success or failure just a 
 matter of pounds, shillings and pence? If 
 the struggle is hard, it is none the less inter- 
 esting, and a life of effort is infinitely better 
 than stagnation. 
 
 On the other hand, the life of an actor has 
 many compensations, such as cheery comrade- 
 ship, the feeling that it does not matter even 
 if you are poor because we have all been 
 through it, and, whatever we may be, we are 
 not snobs. It is our tradition that genius, to 
 be worth while, must always go through the 
 mill. Then even the fact that our engage- 
 ments are sometimes short may have its com- 
 pensating advantage. The one great draw- 
 back of the profession nowadays is that you 
 
12 Training for the Stage 
 
 often have to face the deadly repetition of 
 a long run ; yet, again, if an actor suffers from 
 this in one way, he gains in another. It gives 
 him the chance to put by money, so that he 
 no longer dreads a period of "resting"; and 
 if he is really fond of his work he can get 
 plenty of opportunities to relieve the tedium 
 of playing one character night after night by 
 offering to take part in charity matinees or 
 any of those trial performances which, rightly 
 handled, should add to his stage-craft. 
 Moreover, the cinema supplies an actor with 
 continual chances of fresh work. 
 
 Except in those rare cases where every- 
 thing goes persistently against an actor (cases 
 which one meets in every profession) an ac- 
 tor's life has many advantages, and its fas- 
 cination is undeniable. The great thing is 
 to go into it prepared to take what comes and 
 not to be daunted by obstacles. If a thing is 
 worth doing it is worth fighting for. If you 
 can take that point of view you are fitted for 
 the stage, because you have, at the back of 
 you, the strength of character which will give 
 you power over an audience. In short, you 
 have the greatest of all gifts Personality. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 HOW TO APPLY THE INCIDENTS OF ONE'S 
 DAILY LIFE TO ONE'S WORK 
 
 A STORY is told of Rachel, the great 
 French actress, which is very striking. One 
 day her younger sister rushed into her room, 
 white with horror, and cried out : 
 
 "Father's dead!" 
 
 Rachel screamed and fainted. When at 
 last consciousness returned to her, her first 
 words were : 
 
 "I must remember that scream." 
 
 And in the next big tragic part she played 
 she brought down the house when she 
 screamed and fainted. 
 
 I have told that tale to many who have 
 been shocked at what seemed to them the 
 callousness of the great actress. They were 
 wrong. Our art is a thing beyond us and 
 above us, which calls and we obey. Every- 
 thing that happens to us we put, consciously 
 or unconsciously, into our work; and that 
 13 
 
14 Training for the Stage 
 
 work stands or falls according to our power 
 of assimilating the real meaning even of the 
 most humdrum incidents of daily life. "He 
 that hath eyes to see, let him see," is a golden 
 maxim for the actor. Too often we go about 
 with our eyes shut, observing nothing. A 
 tree waves its branches in the wind, and we 
 take it as an every-day occurrence, while the 
 whole poetry of motion eludes us in those 
 softly moving leaves. A dog darts towards 
 us with loving cheeriness, and we brush him 
 aside and think: "What a nuisance! He 
 has muddied my clothes." If we watched, 
 instead, the exquisite movements of that dog, 
 the curving of his body, the delicate placing 
 of his paws, if we noted the glow of his eyes, 
 the stretching and relaxing of his lips, the 
 tones of his various barks and, above all, the 
 way he takes his breath when barking, we 
 should learn a great deal about the art of 
 acting. Dogs are born actors, and the tech- 
 nique of their art comes to them instinctively. 
 Many of us recognize this, but very few real- 
 ize that a dog is always thinking about some- 
 thing in his own doggy way, and that to watch 
 him when he is unconsciously expressing his 
 
The Incidents of Daily Life 15 
 
 thoughts is likely to be instructive. One can 
 see those thoughts pass through his brain. 
 
 I remember at the Zoo watching a couple 
 of young chimpanzees who were fondling one 
 another. I noticed that while they chattered 
 playfully and happily together, the corners 
 of the lips were kept well forward, and the 
 sounds they produced were softest music. 
 They were using what singers know as the 
 "forward tone." Then a quarrel arose be- 
 tween them. Taut went their snarling mus- 
 cles, their lips were drawn back sharply, and 
 their voices became shrill, harsh and unpleas- 
 ant to a degree. There was a wealth of in- 
 struction to a singer or actor in this little 
 scene, for the whole secret of musical and 
 dramatic voice-use was there apparent. The 
 lower animals are great instructors, both 
 morally and artistically, if we would only 
 watch them with humble hearts and try to 
 understand. No actor need go farther than 
 a dog's eyes for the kernel of facial ex- 
 pression. 
 
 The significance of sound is neglected here 
 in England. As a rule we may study music, 
 but it never enters our heads to reflect upon 
 
16 Training for the Stage 
 
 the different sounds which belong to the 
 every-day incidents of our customary life. 
 Yet such apparent trifles as the singing of 
 the kettle, the whisk of a broom over the 
 floor, the rattle of dust-pan and brush, the 
 clatter of the tongs, the soft, fine sounds as 
 the table-cloth is swished from the table, all 
 these apparent trifles act upon the nerves, 
 and if we meditate upon them, we gradually 
 find that we have got the key to a new king- 
 dom and that a thousand things are becoming 
 charged with meaning which before we 
 simply failed to notice. Sound speaks to the 
 imagination with a power the force of which 
 is perhaps not fully realized until our other 
 senses are dormant. During the daytime our 
 eyes seem the immediate windows of our 
 mind and keep us busy; but at night, when we 
 are lying awake in the dark, sound holds her 
 empire, and the slightest rustle for which we 
 cannot immediately account will send a thrill 
 of terror through our souls. When you are 
 sitting alone, tired and a little unhappy, won- 
 dering how to face the trifling troubles with 
 which this world is beset, have not you some- 
 times heard a little sound which touches a 
 
The Incidents of Daily Life 17 
 
 cho d, opens a little door in your brain, and 
 out pops a treasured memory, the thought 
 of some friend with whom that little sound 
 is associated; a bicycle bell, recalling a boy's 
 joy at the gift of his first bicycle; or the click 
 of your watch as you wind it up, reminding 
 you of an old man who once stood, with his 
 back to the fire, twisting the winder of his 
 watch as he talked to you, and called you his 
 "dear child." It is just one little thing which 
 brings before our eyes the whole picture. 
 
 Though we think we can all see, yet even 
 our faculty of seeing is capable, so to speak, 
 of infinite cultivation. It is one thing to 
 see ; another thing to notice ; and yet a third 
 thing to understand. Ask any of your friends 
 to describe some one you both know. How 
 much will that description really convey? 
 Shut your eyes and see with the "eye of the 
 brain" the eye of memory; and the first 
 thing of which you will be aware will be some 
 characteristic attitude of the man you want 
 to describe, some little habit or mannerism 
 which has remained in your memory as a sign- 
 manual of that man. That is where the gift 
 of observation comes in; it is not so much a 
 
18 Training for the Stage 
 
 question of observing everything as of select- 
 ing from what you observe the things that 
 matter. In other words, observation in itself 
 is nothing. One must discriminate and judge. 
 Accurately noted and tested observation is 
 the whole secret of correct interpretation. 
 
 It has often been said that art is a matter 
 of selection; this is perfectly true, and it is 
 with a view to making our selection vividly 
 individual that we must cultivate the habit 
 of seeing everything. So many people say 
 to me : 
 
 "I don't want to hear what other people 
 think, in case I only echo what they say." 
 
 This seems to me a short-sighted policy. 
 No wise person will express an opinion on a 
 subject that he does not understand, and you 
 cannot gain a true understanding of any sub- 
 ject unless you have looked at it from many 
 points of view. To hear the opinions of 
 others cannot hamper, but may probably do 
 good, and no one of real individuality need 
 fear undue influence. The danger for him 
 is that he may narrow down into self-opinion- 
 ated obstinacy. No one can afford to ignore 
 other people, least of all the actor, whose 
 
The Incidents of Daily Life 19 
 
 work it is to bring the character of others 
 into sympathetic being. 
 
 My advice to every actor would be that he 
 should try to get at the inner reasons of the 
 opinions and characteristics of all about him ; 
 never content himself with an obvious inter- 
 pretation and, above all, never condemn. 
 You can only learn if you put yourself in the 
 place of the person you are studying, and 
 feel, for the moment, all that secret longing 
 to be understood and not to be blamed, not 
 to have to blame yourself, which is buried in 
 the heart of every human being, but which is 
 only voiced at those sacred moments when 
 fate has broken down all barriers, and 
 brought us face to face with our bare soul. 
 We all make excuses for ourselves, for if we 
 did not we could not bear the scathing light 
 of self-condemnation. Let the actor studying 
 humanity start by seeing these excuses and 
 accepting them. Let him feel when dissect- 
 ing others as if he were himself being dis- 
 sected, and he will find at the bottom of 
 every heart the spark that is trying to fly 
 upwards; the touch of human nature which 
 is the soul of art, because it is the call of our 
 
20 Training for the Stage 
 
 common brotherhood. When he has taught 
 himself to look at others from this point of 
 view, he will quickly learn to summarize the 
 salient traits of any character he wishes to 
 present in such a way that his performance 
 will have so much impressionistic truth that 
 it will carry with it conviction. Even when 
 the balance of the play demands that he shall 
 bring out the ugliest qualities of the char- 
 acter he is playing, yet he can present them 
 in such a way that their very force will make 
 us feel the truth of the old saying that "evil 
 is merely the converse of good" and we shall 
 know that it is environment which is to blame, 
 and that humanity itself is not discredited 
 by this representation of a human being. 
 
 The small, the trifling, the weak; there are 
 two ways of looking at all these things, the 
 way that debases and the way that makes 
 clear the inner meaning. To be shown an 
 ignoble view of life this life which we hu- 
 man beings share is depressing to us all, 
 and to some natures it is even dangerous 
 There is nothing so immoral as to take a low 
 view of humanity, and when the stage lends 
 itself to such an outlook the result is morbid. 
 
The Incidents of Daily Life 21 
 
 Even when it is an actor's task to play a 
 character of a poor type, he can represent 
 the foibles of that character in such a way 
 that they will at least deserve the epithet 
 human. This he can best learn to do if he 
 studies the real human beings round about 
 him; casts aside the temptation to judge by 
 appearances and gets right down to the core 
 of things. If his judgment of real life is 
 good, his judgment as an actor will be good, 
 and his work will be of the type which helps 
 to ennoble the stage and to make of it that 
 which it preeminently should be an edu- 
 cation. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE VOICE AND ITS POTENTIALITIES 
 
 SINGERS speak of the "forward tone." It 
 is the goal of their desire to possess the "for- 
 ward tone," and they bend all their energies 
 to acquire it. Many and various are the 
 methods recommended to this end, and mul- 
 titudinous are the ways in which they attempt 
 to describe what the "forward tone" really 
 means. I think the simplest way is to re- 
 mind the student that when you want to 
 throw your voice to an exceptional distance, 
 you use a speaking trumpet. When you want 
 to make your own voice carry to a distance 
 without effort, the obvious method is to use 
 your mouth as a speaking trumpet by a little 
 manipulation of the lips. In the last chapter 
 I referred to the way in which certain lower 
 animals move the corners of the lips when 
 talking in their various animal tongues. 
 When they want to produce an offensive noise 
 or a noise signifying annoyance, they stretch 
 22 
 
The Voice 23 
 
 the lips back; but when friendly or affection- 
 ate, when pleading with or cajoling their 
 friends, they keep the corners of the lips well 
 forward, and so produce what is known as 
 the "forward tone." In other words, they 
 are using the mouth in the form of a trumpet; 
 and if the human being wishes to have a 
 round, beautiful tone, he must also use his 
 mouth in the form of a trumpet, so far as he 
 can without making grimaces. It is the cor- 
 ners of the lips that matter. Do not stretch 
 them back; get movement of the mouth by 
 acquiring power over the muscles that control 
 the center of each lip, so that they lift easily 
 from over the front teeth without stretching 
 away from the eye-teeth. Besides, this po- 
 sition makes the mouth look so much pret- 
 tier, and when the smile comes it is the more 
 striking because it is not continually sug- 
 gested by the habit of keeping the lips with 
 the corners drawn widely apart in a grinning 
 position. If the lips are lifted in the center 
 at the right times, and so kept well away 
 from the teeth, the tone will be pure and the 
 articulation clear. Nothing smothers articu- 
 lation like a lip pressed down upon the teeth. 
 
24 Training for the Stage 
 
 This muscular control can easily be acquired 
 by any one who will watch himself in the glass 
 for a few moments night and morning. 
 
 Another necessary rule in acquiring a pure, 
 round tone is to keep the tongue well hol- 
 lowed in the mouth; the tip and sides are 
 raised to the teeth very, very lightly, but the 
 center of the tongue should be hollowed 
 downwards, so that the back of the throat 
 can be clearly seen when the mouth is a little 
 open. If the student stands before a glass 
 and simply wills his tongue to lie down in this 
 position for a few moments night and morn- 
 ing, he will soon find that he acquires control 
 over the muscles of the tongue, and that it 
 takes this position of its own accord. By 
 this means a clear passage is allowed for the 
 sound; but when, as is too often the case, the 
 tongue is arched up like the back of an angry 
 cat, it is acting as a sponge and the tone has 
 to pass through it, which gives it that thick 
 sound we know as "woolly." It also helps 
 to bar the passage through the mouth and 
 drives the tone up through the nose, es- 
 pecially if the soft palate is at all relaxed. 
 
 Whether you are training as a singer or 
 
The Voice 25 
 
 an actor, your voice will never last unless you 
 use it as carefully and rightly in everyday life 
 as you do when singing or acting. Many 
 people who have ugly-speaking voices find 
 that they have a good singing tone, and these 
 people who have ugly speaking voices find 
 throats. They don't realize that as they can 
 get a beautiful tone when singing, it is ob- 
 vious they can equally easily get a beautiful 
 tone when speaking; that their ugly speaking 
 voice is simply owing to false usage, and that 
 this continual false usage must strain the 
 throat and bring in its train those evils which 
 always follow careless voice production. 
 Therefore, to these people I say emphat- 
 ically: Start your work of improvement on 
 the voice that you use every day. Don't 
 run away with the idea that for professional 
 use you can acquire a different organ. It is 
 the same organ differently used, and will 
 never last unless it is rightly used both pro- 
 fessionally and daily. 
 
 The higher notes of the speaking or sing- 
 ing voice are got by a tightening of the vocal 
 chords in much the same wry that the high 
 notes of a violin are got by the tightening of 
 
26 Training for the Stage 
 
 the violin string, and a continual use of these 
 high notes makes a continual strain upon the 
 vocal chords and muscles regulating them. 
 Not only these muscles but that other set of 
 muscles which lifts the larynx of the throat 
 are kept in use exhaustingly by the constant, 
 reiteration of high sound; and it is, there- 
 fore, obvious that to speak on a lower note is 
 infinitely more restful. 
 
 Many people have a nervous habit of tight- 
 ening up the muscles of the throat and even 
 those at the back of the neck when speaking, 
 especially if they talk rapidly and excitedly. 
 This nervous tension gives an edge to the 
 voice, which affects the nerves still more, and 
 so the evil increases and increases until the 
 shrill and raucous tone is an irritation to 
 themselves and to all about them. 
 
 Avoid undue strain of any sort. Speak 
 restfully at all times unless the exigencies of 
 the part you are playing demand otherwise. 
 
 The compass of the voice is one of its 
 greatest beauties, and the compass of the 
 speaking voice can be greatly increased by the 
 use of a very simple exercise. Go to the 
 piano, strike the middle E flat; speak a short 
 
The Voice 27 
 
 sentence on the tone corresponding to that 
 note, then strike the semi-tone below and re- 
 peat the same sentence, then the semi-tone be- 
 low again, and so on. Try this up and down 
 on each semi-tone for a few moments every 
 day until you have acquired the power of 
 speaking easily on your highest as well as on 
 your lowest tones. But be very sure that the 
 speech is easy; don't let there be any strain- 
 ing; just talk naturally and simply, and listen 
 to your own voice as you talk. Train your 
 own ear to be a sure judge of your own 
 utterance. 
 
 Louis Calvert, in his very interesting book, 
 Problems of an Actor, lays great stress upon 
 the importance of the consonants, and says 
 in effect : take care of the consonants, and the 
 vowels will take care of themselves. Now 
 I do not agree with this at all. I even go the 
 length of thinking that one of the reasons 
 why modern actors are indistinct is that too 
 much attention is paid to the consonants and 
 too little to the vowels. Consonants are im- 
 portant, it is true, but most people sound 
 their consonants correctly, whereas compara- 
 tively few use pure vowel sounds, though it 
 
28 Training for the Stage 
 
 is upon the vowels that we depend for the 
 music and the suggestion of our speech. 
 What is the meaning of the word "vowel"? 
 Vocal. Consonants are like gates shutting 
 off our tone, but on the vowels we can dwell 
 for a long or a short time as pleaseth us. 
 This gives us the power of varying the pace 
 at which we speak, and on this variety we 
 depend for our most valuable dramatic ef- 
 fects. Monotony of any sort is deadly, and 
 monotony of pace is the worst fault a speaker 
 can commit. It reduces all he says to a jog- 
 trot level. Besides, our vowels are so beau- 
 tiful; our "o" especially, so characteristic of 
 our race, rings out like a deep-toned bell. I 
 cannot think of any other language with just 
 its full, round sound. Its pure pronuncia- 
 tion, even here in England, is a sign-manual 
 of breeding. 
 
 Surely vowels are worthy of a little 
 trouble. Get into the habit of speaking every 
 vowel with its due attention in every-day life, 
 and you will soon find that people will com- 
 pliment you on the carrying quality of your 
 voice. If the vowels are jumped over and the 
 consonants given undue prominence, the voice 
 
The Voice 29 
 
 always sounds hard. It fails to carry, more- 
 over, because its traveling power depends on 
 the vowel that is on the vocal part of the 
 words. You cannot sustain tone on any con- 
 sonant without seeming affected or melodra- 
 matic. You depend for the even volume of 
 the voice almost entirely on a pure and well 
 delivered vowel. 
 
 Have you ever noticed how quick a dog is 
 to learn the value of a vowel sound? 
 Change a consonant, and it will not matter 
 to him; change a vowel, and he will fail to 
 understand you a very significant proof of 
 the importance of vowel sounds. 
 
 Evenness of volume is essential for good 
 stage work. A speaker who lets down his 
 little words so that they almost drop out of 
 hearing conveys a jerky effect. Think of the 
 tone of an organ, how it differs from that of 
 a piano in its sustaining quality, and learn to 
 sustain your tone so that every word you 
 speak is clearly heard, and not merely the 
 two or three opening words of a sentence. 
 
 Of course, one does not want to be af- 
 fected, but if my injunction to speak in daily 
 life with the same care that you would upon 
 
30 Training for the Stage 
 
 the stage be heeded, there will be no affecta- 
 tion in clear speech. People who speak care- 
 lessly in every-day life and assume a careful 
 utterance only for professional use always 
 seem affected, because they are making a 
 conscious effort the whole time they are on 
 the stage. When articulation is habitually 
 clear and the voice well used, correct speech 
 becomes so characteristic of the speaker that 
 it adds greatly to his personality. 
 
 The best way of acquiring pure vowel 
 sounds is to start by speaking those vowels 
 on which it is easiest to get the forward tone. 
 These are "u" (oo), the English "o" and the 
 foreign "o," which approximates to our "or." 
 Speak these, then dwell on the sound, pro- 
 longing it into a singing tone. Having done 
 this, say "ah" and try to get this in the same 
 "forward" way. In other words, try to 
 speak it with as little change as possible in 
 the position of the lips and mouth from the 
 position used in saying "or." Prolong the 
 "ah" into a singing tone. Go carefully over 
 these four sounds, sometimes singing, some- 
 times speaking them. Then take the other 
 
The Voice 31 
 
 pronunciations of "a" as in "an" and "rain." 
 Treat these in the same manner. Then take 
 u er" and the long "ee," then the short "e," 
 This last will be difficult to get, but you can 
 manage it if you put the "oo" sound in front. 
 For instance, take the word "wet" and dwell 
 a trifle on the "w," which is practically "oo." 
 That "oo" sound may be used to help with all 
 the vowels, as it is the most "forward" of 
 any. When you have grasped the idea, viz., 
 that every vowel has got to be spoken in the 
 "forward tone," or in other words, with as 
 little lapse as possible from the position of 
 the mouth, tongue and lips which is used to 
 pronounce the really "forward" vowels "oo," 
 "o" and "or," a little practice will soon make 
 perfect. Change from singing to speaking 
 when practicing, and if you have a difficulty 
 with any sound, say "or" and start all over 
 again until you can get it. 
 
 With regard to the consonants, there are 
 certain dramatic moments when they are very 
 important, chiefly when an effect of tension 
 is required. Much may be done by the way 
 in which the initial consonant is pronounced. 
 
32 Training for the Stage 
 
 A slight pause in front of the word, and 
 then a push of the consonant will give drama 
 to the word 
 
 He is Dead! 
 
 But nothing but melodrama will result from 
 an over-stressing of the final consonant 
 
 He is 
 
 The letter that starts the word may strike 
 the key of the whole word, but the letter 
 which finishes it should finish with the word. 
 Indeed for ordinary usage it might be better 
 if we English people bore in mind the rules of 
 euphony instinctive among the French and 
 Italians, and permitted that glide and liaison 
 in certain cases which give such a musical 
 charm to the Latin tongues. 
 
 Consonants really present little difficulty 
 provided one can acquire the knack of giving 
 the final consonant of a word sufficient im- 
 portance without clicking it off too sharply in 
 such a way that there seems to be a final "er" 
 at the end of the word. I have heard over- 
 careful speakers talk of "a greater deal" in- 
 
The Voice 33 
 
 stead of "a great deal" in their anxiety to 
 give the "t" in "great" its value. To my 
 mind that is a case where the foreign sense of 
 euphony would have prescribed a liaison. 
 Nothing is more irritating than to hear a final 
 consonant delivered with a click which prac- 
 tically amounts to an extra syllable. 
 
 But it is not enough merely to speak 
 clearly. The voice must express mood, feel- 
 ing, passion; and those qualities demand a 
 variety of tone. 
 
 To acquire this variety without becoming 
 stereotyped is a difficult matter. Words 
 learnt by heart and constantly repeated are 
 apt to become stale and stiff to the beginner, 
 and I find that for practice it is better to let 
 my pupils use any words which come spon- 
 taneously to their minds. Take each emotion 
 in turn ; let us say, for example, that you start 
 with Fear. You imagine to yourself that you 
 hear some noise for which you cannot ac- 
 count, and gradually you realize that the 
 sound implies a danger which is coming closer 
 and closer. To express this you say any 
 words that come into your head, as for in- 
 stance : 
 
34 Training for the Stage 
 
 "What's that? Was it thunder? No 
 it's not thunder! What can it be? I never 
 heard a noise like that what can it be? 
 The floor is shaking! Was that a house 
 falling down? The ground is rocking under 
 my feet! It is an earthquake! Oh, my 
 God!!" 
 
 Do not use the same words always or the 
 same idea ; vary it and vary also the intensity 
 of the emotion. Remember that an extreme 
 emotion is easier in a way to treat dramat- 
 ically than a commonplace one, which re- 
 quires delicacy and subtlety of expression to 
 pick it out from a dead level of dullness. 
 
 Take another emotion, say Love: 
 
 "My dear, I love you. I don't know how 
 to tell you; it is beyond words. When I 
 hear your footsteps, when I feel the touch of 
 your hand, it means so much to me that my 
 heart beats. I worship you !" 
 
 In this way practice tone after tone, until 
 by the mere use of tone, independently of 
 facial expression, movement or stage setting, 
 you can convey any feeling that you please. 
 
 A tone which it is most useful to acquire is 
 that clear whisper which the French call 
 
The Voice 35 
 
 "haleine sans voix" (breath without voice), 
 which means, of course, pure articulation 
 without tone. This is the type of speech 
 which deaf people hear with the greatest 
 ease. We all think we can whisper, but not 
 without a great deal of practice can we whis- 
 per loudly. Yet this knack, once acquired, 
 is extremely useful on the stage. It would 
 be impossible to play the murder scenes from 
 Macbeth effectively without it. 
 
 Another of the emotions which should al- 
 ways be included in practice is Excitement; 
 either the excitement of joy, or the excitement 
 of suspense; because it can only be conveyed 
 by rapid utterance. One often hears actors 
 on the stage let down the big climax of a 
 scene by slackening their pace just when it 
 ought to quicken. Nothing excites an audi- 
 ence so much as quick speech, but it is an art 
 to speak quickly and clearly, and it can only 
 be done if the vowel sounds are pure and 
 distinct. If you try to stress the consonants 
 alone when speaking quickly, you will tie your 
 tongue in knots ; but if the vowel sounds, how- 
 ever short, have their full value of articula- 
 tion, you can speak as quickly as you like and 
 
36 Training for the Stage 
 
 know that what you say will be heard. The 
 ordinary method of speaking quickly is to 
 jump the little words together in such a way 
 that it seems as though most of them were 
 swallowed, as they do not sound at all. This 
 is fatal; one must keep an even level of loud- 
 ness, making the big words ring out beyond 
 this again. 
 
 It is just as difficult to speak slowly as to 
 speak quickly, and the most necessary thing 
 of all is to make the audience hear what you 
 s\a\y. As they will have most difficulty in 
 doing this while your voice is strange to 
 them, it is well to speak the opening lines of 
 your part loudly, slowly and carefully. Later, 
 when the listeners have got used to your 
 voice, you can afford to hurry. 
 
 If only actors would learn to speak their 
 final words on a circumflex inflection ! Even 
 when the last word is a two-syllabled one 
 they speak both these syllables on a full 
 stop 
 
 This dear dear 
 
 England. 
 
 when surely it is obvious that the first of the 
 
The Voice 37 
 
 two should be on a higher note, and only the 
 very last drop down to an end 
 
 The whole secret of clear utterance lies in 
 this little matter, and many a dull voice would 
 become alive if only this one detail were care- 
 fully heeded. 
 
 Another frequent fault among English 
 speakers is that we emphasize too many 
 words. Although we often drop out our 
 little words (articles, prepositions, conjunc- 
 tions and even pronouns) , we hit every noun, 
 verb, adjective or adverb with an emphasis 
 which does not really ring out, but produces 
 a barrel-organny effect of grind, grind, grind. 
 This is one reason why English actors are 
 slow in speech and never acquire the pace of 
 the foreign stage. Shut your eyes and 
 imagine a Frenchman speaking. There will 
 be a rush of words and then the key word of 
 the whole sentence will ring out like a pistol 
 
38 Training for the Stage 
 
 shot. Shut your eyes and imagine an Italian 
 speaking, and you will be struck at once by 
 the difference of pace in his pronunciation of 
 the vowel sounds of words, even in one sen- 
 tence ; how quickly his liquid tongue slips over 
 some, and how caressingly he dwells on 
 others. It is this marked difference in the 
 length of the vowel sounds which gives the 
 peculiar music of Italian speech. An Italian, 
 with his innate sense of drama, uses this even 
 in every-day life. Both the Frenchman and 
 the Italian have such a sense of the impor- 
 tance of the key word in every sentence that 
 they make it stand out. So emphatic is it 
 that even if one does not gather the sense of 
 the other words, it carries the meaning of the 
 whole sentence home. But we plod labori- 
 ously through our sentences. No one word 
 stands out with the same vigor that a for- 
 eigner uses, yet our repeated emphases de- 
 feat their own object by familiarizing the ear 
 with the continually recurring effect of em- 
 phasis which is yet not strong enough really 
 to seize our attention. We all know that 
 English speech is more laborious than French 
 or Italian, and this is partly why. It is a 
 
The Vdce 39 
 
 pity, as in some ways our stage stands, to 
 my mind, in front of any other, especially in 
 the matter of careful detail. Yet that is 
 sometimes the root of the evil. We are apt 
 to overload our work with conscious effort, 
 and in that way to obscure or miss that quick 
 impression which drives home the one vital 
 and important truth. 
 
 If Englishmen made a greater study of 
 emotional changes of tone these faults in 
 their speech would die away. We think too 
 much of the words and too little of their 
 meaning; yet it is only the meaning that mat- 
 ters and the words are merely its servants. 
 That meaning can be expressed by emotional 
 tone alone, without articulate words, if the 
 actor has sufficient voice control. The cinema 
 is teaching our actors a great deal. It is 
 showing them the power of the eye, and how 
 facial expression can stand alone, without the 
 help of words. What I want to make clear 
 at the moment is that, just as the cinema has 
 taught us how much the face can express in- 
 dependently of words, so the speaking tone 
 has also a wide range which our actors have 
 not realized because we have not yet an art 
 
40 Training for the Stage 
 
 form on the stage in which the speaking voice 
 has to depend upon its tone alone, holding 
 an audience without the aid of words. The 
 wonderful resources of the voice have not yet 
 been fully realized. The whole art of tone- 
 painting is a closed book to many. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE MUSIC OF THE VOICE : ITS NOTES, POWER 
 OF SUGGESTION AND MAGNETISM 
 
 THERE is usually much character in a 
 voice. For my part, directly I hear any one 
 speak I feel that I know a very great deal 
 about the speaker. It is not always the most 
 honeyed tones that give pleasure; for they, 
 only too often, suggest insincerity. We are 
 apt to distrust any one whose tone is always 
 the same, because we feel it is assumed. It 
 is the subtle changes that reveal character, 
 and any one studying psychology should turn 
 his attention closely to the subject of voice 
 and its infinite detail: inflection, pronuncia- 
 tion, accent, music, intonation and variety. 
 Everything about a voice tells its story, and 
 that story is intricate and mainly to be read 
 by intuition, which is in itself the result of 
 sympathetic study. One ought to make one's 
 voice as musical as one can merely for the 
 sake of others, for an ugly voice will get upon 
 41 
 
42 Training for the Stage 
 
 the nerves of the listeners and in some cases 
 inflict real pain. 
 
 I had a blind friend once and wanted him 
 to allow a girl I knew to go and read to him. 
 
 "Oh!" he sard, "I couldn't; she has such a 
 rasping voice I" 
 
 He winced as he spoke. Blind as he was, 
 and fond of books as he was, he preferred to 
 forego the pleasure rather than endure the 
 torture that voice would have inflicted upon 
 him. 
 
 It is a torture. I know that when I am 
 very tired, over-worked, over-wrought in 
 every way, if I have to speak to any one with 
 a raucous voice I find it difficult to listen to 
 what is said because my mind shrinks from 
 the ugliness of the sound; and after such an 
 interview I feel more exhausted than after a 
 hard day's work. The nerve strain inflicted 
 on others by an ugly voice is incalculable, 
 and it is a duty for us all to make our voices 
 as musical as we can. A little thought and 
 care will do it; pure vowel sounds, consonants 
 clear and not over-accentuated, variety of 
 tone and musical inflections that is all. 
 These things can be acquired by practicing 
 
Suggestion and Magnetism 43 
 
 night and morning for a few moments, and 
 by a little thought all day and every day, 
 when chatting to our friends. "Musical in- 
 flection" that is the secret, and many people 
 will ask how this is to be acquired. The 
 answer lies in a nutshell keep your ears 
 open to the gifts which others have and say 
 to yourself: 
 
 "Now, what is it that makes So-and-So 
 speak so beautifully? Why do I come away 
 from a short chat soothed and encouraged? 
 It is not only what is said, but how it is said." 
 
 Then think what is the secret of that in- 
 tonation ? The voice rose and fell ; it tripped 
 musically down the scale, climbed up by min- 
 ute inflections. There was life and move- 
 ment in the tone, a thousand subtle shades 
 and gradations, difficult to express in words ; 
 but if we have listened with attention we can- 
 carry away a mental record, and that memory 
 will serve as a future model. 
 
 Listen to the majority of speakers; they 
 talk almost on one note and with one tone. 
 Break up that monotony. Remember that 
 variety of tone is got by a succession of the 
 tiniest differences. There is no question of 
 
44 Training for the Stage 
 
 the semi-tone interval between the notes of 
 the speaking voice; the degrees of its scale 
 are infinitely more minute. Listen! Listen 
 to everything and everybody. When you 
 meet a voice that seems to you full of char- 
 acter, copy it ; and, as you mimic, notice what 
 you are doing to get that tone ; how you are 
 placing your mouth, your lips, your tongue, 
 and what is happening in your throat. If it 
 is a raucous tone you are copying, you prob- 
 ably have to tighten up the muscles of the 
 throat and feel an unpleasant sense of strain. 
 If it is a beautiful tone, everything will be 
 easy; you will not be conscious of any sen- 
 sation in the throat, but you will feel the 
 air playing about your lips as the tone comes 
 forward. Mimic every one ; give your voice 
 all the practice possible in acquiring tone 
 sounds, and yqu will soon learn to control it 
 and to produce in every-day life exactly the 
 tone which is most characteristic of you and 
 of the thoughts and moods you wish to ex- 
 press. 
 
 All tone should be characteristic. Never 
 imitate even the most perfect model so 
 slavishly that you merely become its echo. 
 
Suggestion and Magnetism 45 
 
 Practice mimicry just as an exercise, and 
 choose fresh subjects as constantly as possi- 
 ble. You need not be limited to human 
 voices. Any sound of nature will serve for 
 practice. What you need is to acquire con- 
 trol of the resources of your own voice, and 
 once you have done that, if you have any 
 force of character, any initiative of your own, 
 that character and that initiative will take ad- 
 vantage of the control you have acquired and 
 use those resources to express your real self, 
 without any further conscious effort on your 
 part. In short, it will become second nature. 
 But until you have learnt by listening to the 
 voices of others and studying the intricate de- 
 tail of inflection and intonation in every voice 
 you hear, you will have no comprehension of 
 the power of the human voice or of the mean- 
 ing that lies stored there. 
 
 When speaking in dialect, inflection is even 
 more important than pronunciation. James 
 Welch used to say that if you spoke dialect 
 parts on the stage too correctly the audience 
 would not understand what you were saying, 
 and that the secret was to get the pronuncia- 
 tion of certain words correctly, especially in 
 
46 Training for the Stage 
 
 the opening lines, and always to keep the in- 
 flection characteristic. He contended, and I 
 think rightly, that too great exactitude de- 
 feated its own object. Every county has its 
 characteristic inflection. We all know the 
 inability of the Welsh to come down to a full 
 stop, and this sing-song is recognized as 
 Welsh immediately, even when there is no 
 accent discernible. In the same way inflec- 
 tion is important in handling character parts, 
 even more important than tone. It is, to my 
 mind, the surest test of breeding. A well- 
 bred pronunciation is easy enough to acquire ; 
 but a well-bred inflection is much more subtle, 
 in fact so subtle that many people are entirely 
 unaware of it. 
 
 Each foreign country has its inflection. 
 For many people broken English is broken 
 English, and serves for any broken English 
 part. But the inflection used by a French- 
 man, Italian and German, when speaking 
 English, differs. Again I can only say, as I 
 have already said, listen and imitate; imitate 
 every one and listen, not only to the pronun- 
 ciation of each word, but to the recurring 
 rhythm. When listening to the speech of 
 
Suggestion and Magnetism 47 
 
 another, separate in your mind the pronuncia- 
 tion of the words from the inflection of the 
 whole sentence, and form a clear idea of 
 each, independently of the other. People 
 from one district will differ in their pronun- 
 ciation of single words partly because they 
 will differ in class standing; but the character- 
 istic inflection will be audible in some form or 
 another in spite of class, in spite of educa- 
 tion, in spite of travel. It is inherent and 
 often ineradicable. 
 
 The way to catch an inflection is to hum it. 
 Omit the words and get the musical rhythm 
 of the spoken sentence. Do not run away 
 with the idea that only those with a musical 
 ear can catch this rhythm, and that only those 
 so gifted can copy inflection. This is not so. 
 The ear of the trained musician is accustomed 
 to the intervals of our musical scale; but, as 
 I have said before, the intervals of the speak- 
 ing voice are infinitely more subtle, and any 
 observer can note them and reproduce them 
 provided he has acquired control over his 
 voice. It is simply a matter of observation. 
 
 Character can be conveyed to the voice in a 
 thousand ways. All sorts of tones can be ac- 
 
48 Training for the Stage 
 
 quired by placing lips, tongue and teeth in 
 different relative positions. Just experiment. 
 Keep your upper lip down and take your 
 lower lip a little off your lower teeth. Now, 
 speak! What sort of voice do you get? 
 Hard and thin and discontented, suggestive 
 of the mood which your face expresses when 
 your mouth is in that position. Now keep 
 the lips a little together, and draw the corn- 
 ers back in a sort of artificial smile. Speak 
 like that! Your voice is sibilantly sweet, of 
 a thin quality, with no real heartiness behind 
 it; superficial and suave. Now draw the lips 
 a little back from the teeth and stretch them 
 into a smile, and you get a touch of hissing 
 which suggests the serpent. Clench the teeth 
 a little, tighten the muscles of the tongue so 
 that it is drawn back; pull down the lower 
 lip ; there is a menace in the tone ; your whole 
 face looks vindictive. Draw the tongue back 
 again, and keep the upper lip down ; tuck in 
 your under-lip. You growl in your throat 
 like a threatening lion ; and you look, not vin- 
 dictive, but dangerous. Then suppose you 
 were happy and eager; your lips would be a 
 little open, the corners forward; you would 
 
Suggestion and Magnetism 49 
 
 pant slightly and the tone would be breathless 
 and full of joyous expectation. In short, if 
 you act with your whole face so that the 
 mouth, that most expressive feature, falls 
 into line with the mood you are expressing, 
 the tone will follow of itself. Practice differ- 
 ent tones, but be quite sure they are coming 
 spontaneously, and that you are not contort- 
 ing your features. 
 
 People who are putting on an expression 
 so often get it in the eyes and upper part of 
 the face and neglect the lower part alto- 
 gether, which remains stiff and inexpressive. 
 These people will never hit the right tone un- 
 less they deliberately assume that tone. In 
 real life the mouth is the feature that gives 
 us away before any other, and expression con- 
 centrates there and in the eyes. In real life, 
 moreover, the tone always follows the ex- 
 pression as a matter of course. To what is 
 this due ? Simply to the fact that the nerves 
 and muscles of the throat and mouth and the 
 features of the face are under the dominance 
 of the emotions and influence the tone. A 
 born actor does this instinctively, and in 
 training for the stage it is essential that all 
 
50 Training for the Stage 
 
 emotion should dawn first in the eyes and on 
 the face, and the words and tone will follow 
 as a matter of course. 
 
 The quality of tone habitually used by 
 most people is indicative of their normal 
 character, and I have often marveled that 
 managers casting plays do not pay more heed 
 to the characteristic voices of the actors they 
 choose. They are guided by appearance, or 
 by the fact that they have seen the actor play 
 a similar part before. They are sensible 
 enough to know that a tall woman cannot 
 play a love scene with a short man, and that 
 it is better, if there are two young girls, that 
 their coloring should contrast. But they 
 never choose their cast with any idea of the 
 blend of the speaking voices. I remember 
 seeing one play The Wynmartins which 
 depended upon the struggle between two 
 women. The elder of the two had long 
 dominated the younger (her son's wife) , and 
 the interest of the play turned on the young 
 wife's struggle to cast off this tyranny and 
 live in her own way. The two women were 
 played by Agnes Thomas and Marie Temp- 
 est, and admirably played in many ways; yet 
 
Suggestion and Magnetism 51 
 
 there was far too little suggestion of fight be- 
 cause Miss Tempest's voice was so penetrat- 
 ing and vibrant in quality that one never felt 
 that Miss Thomas could have "downed" her. 
 Though I greatly admire Miss Thomas in 
 parts that suit her, when consulted about the 
 casting of this play, I strongly urged Lady 
 Tree for the part of the mother-in-law. She 
 had, to my mind, exactly the quality of voice 
 sweetly, sibilantly insistent which would 
 stand against Marie Tempest's. 
 
 Miss Tempest I consider the greatest act- 
 ress on our stage. In this play she had 
 to seem the under-dog until the last act, and 
 she subdued her manner, like the artist she is, 
 but she could not take that potent quality 
 entirely out of her voice, which was full, as 
 always, of her own personal magnetism. 
 Now Miss Thomas, also an extremely clever 
 actress, has rather an ordinary voice; it does 
 not linger in one's memory. Lady Tree, on 
 the other hand, has a very characteristic 
 voice. You cannot think of Lady Tree with- 
 out mentally hearing her voice, it is so ex- 
 pressive of her. This marked suggestion of 
 individuality in the tone was exactly what was 
 
52 Training for the Stage 
 
 needed to give point to the fact that Marie 
 Tempest was, in this play, writhing under her 
 domination. 
 
 The voice is the last thing a producer ever 
 really alters. He may hammer and hammer 
 at the cast until he gets the inflections he 
 wants, but he cannot charge a voice with mag- 
 netism unless that magnetism is in the individ- 
 ual. 
 
 Some women are quite clever actresses and 
 people say: 
 
 "Why is it she has not had her chance?" 
 
 Then perhaps her chance will come and 
 she fails. Why? Her acting is excellent; as 
 they say of dogs, it is "difficult to fault." She 
 is a handsome woman, and her speech is clear 
 and easily audible. What is the matter? 
 Simply that her voice lacks magnetism. It 
 may have variety of inflection, but it lacks 
 that subtle quality of tone which suggests a 
 personality vivid enough to keep the atten- 
 tion of the audience through the whole of a 
 long play. In the case of highly magnetic 
 temperaments, the voice is like a weather- 
 cock; it expresses every grade of health or 
 feeling. A face may flush, an eye brighten; 
 
Suggestion and Magnetism 53 
 
 but if the health is bad, the voice will lose its 
 ring. 
 
 Be sure that your voice is a just expression 
 of yourself. Don't pick up other people's 
 characteristics; don't be over-precise, or over- 
 conscious. If you have some fault of pro- 
 nunciation, practice carefully until you have 
 overcome it, but always finish your practice 
 by pouring out a flood of words, just for 
 speed and spontaneity; and always, when 
 practicing, speak words that come into your 
 head; don't learn set speeches, but make 
 them up as you go along. 
 
 James Welch was often accused of gag- 
 ging, and it was very hard on actors who had 
 to play with him, as they never knew, from 
 night to night, what he was going to say. But 
 he told me that that was how he kept himself 
 sane. You cannot play the same part for ten 
 years, as he played Guy de Vere in When 
 Knights were Bold, without the repetition 
 strongly affecting your nerves; but the fact 
 that he was wording his lines for himself, 
 night after night, kept them fresh. It was 
 like a stream of running water flowing 
 through the play. 
 
54 Training for the Stage 
 
 If you cannot get the right inflection in a 
 speech, just put the sense of the speech into, 
 your own words, and the inflection and 
 emphasis will come as a matter of course. 
 We are always our own best teachers and 
 are entitled to turn the light of our individ- 
 uality on to our work in any way we please, 
 provided that we do it for the sake of im- 
 proving the work and not with the view of 
 subordinating that work to our personal van- 
 ity. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 MOVEMENT AND FACIAL EXPRESSION 
 
 THE power of the eye! These words 
 should be ever present in the actor's mind, 
 for from the stage point of view the eye 
 should be the birthplace of the thought. Un- 
 less one sees each fresh chain of ideas dawn- 
 ing in the actor's eye before he speaks the 
 words embodying them, he will give the im- 
 pression that he is merely repeating a lesson 
 learnt by rote, and what he says will not seem 
 spontaneous, A steadfast gaze compels at- 
 tention, and if an actor's eye is steady and in- 
 telligent and conveys the thoughts he wishes 
 to convey as if they had just that moment 
 entered his mind, so that the illusion is well 
 sustained, he is sure to hold the attention of 
 his audience. Where the stage is concerned 
 the eye always comes first; audiences need to 
 be interested in what they see before they 
 will listen to what is said; and unless the 
 eye of the actor speaks to the eye of the 
 55 
 
56 Training for the Stage 
 
 audience the words he utters will not domi- 
 nate their intelligence. 
 
 In a previous chapter, I was speaking of 
 the expression in the eyes of dogs, and how 
 much an actor may learn from this. We all 
 know that dogs have speaking eyes, but have 
 you ever watched the mechanism of their ex- 
 pression? It consists in a constant use of the 
 eyelids and the balls of the eye. A dog will 
 never turn its head when turning the eye will 
 do instead; it moves the eye-ball without the 
 lids far more than we do, and it moves the 
 lids themselves in a variety of ways that 
 never seem to occur to us. As a matter of 
 fact, although we human beings drop our lids 
 over our eyes for sleep, or half-drop them to 
 shut out a straining light, or for looking 
 downwards, we keep them, in ordinary con- 
 versation, more or less in the same position. 
 Most people are unaware that they can ac- 
 quire further control of their eyelids. Artists 
 screw up the eyes to look at their pictures, 
 and some people half-shut their eyes when 
 laughing; but the majority of us lose half the 
 value of the eye because either the upper or 
 the lower lid sometimes both is habitually 
 
Movement and Expression 57 
 
 too far over the eye, which lessens its size and 
 brilliance. The expression, and I may add the 
 beauty, of many faces may be increased by 
 practicing an exercise which trains the eye- 
 lids to go back off the eye, making it seem 
 more liquid and alive. 
 
 The exercise is as follows: Stand in front 
 of the glass and look straight at your reflec- 
 tion with your normal gaze. If you put your 
 finger just below the eye it ought to bring 
 the lower lid down merely by reason of its 
 weight, but be careful not to pull the lid down 
 consciously, or it will come down too far. If 
 this fails to do the trick, make your eyes 
 start. Then, when the lids are well off the 
 eye and the eye-ball as prominent as you can 
 make it, try to relax the prominence of the 
 eye-ball without letting the lids go back to 
 their old place. Again, start with the eyes 
 normal and turn them down, down, down, 
 until you can see your own toes without let- 
 ting the upper lid fall over the eyes. Then 
 roll the eyes very very slowly round to the 
 right side and up, seeing the whole of the wall 
 to your right, without moving either upper 
 or lower lids. Roll the eyes then so that you 
 
58 Training for the Stage 
 
 Can see the ceiling, without letting the lower 
 lids come up, and complete the circle by see- 
 ing the wall all down the left side, until you 
 come back to the first position, with the eyes 
 looking straight in front, and both upper and 
 lower lids drawn back from the eyes to their 
 fullest extent, as they should be if this exer- 
 cise has been properly done. 
 
 It was an old rule of the stage to look just 
 above the eyes of the actor to whom you 
 were speaking, because this gave a more 
 open-eyed expression. We now sneer at the 
 old stage rules, but if you will try this trick 
 on your friends, looking not into the eyes, but 
 just to the point where the hair grows (or 
 should growl) at the top of the forehead, 
 you will find that they do not know that you 
 are not looking into their eyes; but directly 
 you do look into their eyes you will find that 
 your lids come down over your own eyes, 
 which, of course, has the effect of making 
 them look smaller. 
 
 The expression in dogs' eyes is chiefly due 
 to the variety of positions in which they place 
 their eyelids. When very appealing they 
 arch the upper lid tremendously; and nothing 
 
Movement and Expression 59 
 
 is more significant than the half-open eye of 
 a dog. If you drop the upper lid well over 
 the eye, getting a half-open effect with the 
 lower lid well down, you merely look sleepy. 
 But if you get a half-open effect by lowering 
 the upper lid a little and puckering up the 
 lower lid, you get a singularly sinister effect. 
 If through the slit thus left you can make the 
 eye gleam, you look triumphant malice per- 
 sonified. 
 
 We have all the muscles in our eyelids that 
 a dog has, but we have neglected them and 
 no longer use them as we might. 
 
 Of course it is always a mistake to grimace, 
 but, just as perfect grace depends on our 
 having every muscle of the body and limbs 
 under our control, so dramatic expression de- 
 pends on our having control of the muscles of 
 the face. Unless this control is disciplined, 
 the desire to move one set of muscles will, 
 nearly always, bring about an unconscious 
 use of another set of muscles at the same 
 time, so that with every movement we intend 
 to make, we make also an unnecessary one, 
 which very often spoils the grace of the 
 whole effect. The habit of grimacing is 
 
60 Training for the Stage 
 
 largely due to this automatic movement of 
 too many muscles of the face when we wish 
 to show expression. One of the surest ways 
 to gain control over our muscles is to prac- 
 tice the habit of withdrawing nervous force 
 when and where we please. The old Del- 
 sarte exercises are particularly useful for this 
 purpose. For instance, take the wrist of the 
 right hand in the left hand and let the right 
 hand hang limp. Then shake the left hand 
 up and down, as it is grasping the wrist; the 
 right hand will flop up and down with the 
 movement. Use the same idea with every 
 part of the body, withdrawing the nervous 
 force from every part in turn. This is an 
 invaluable knack to acquire, as it is the secret 
 of a really natural faint, or death fall. So 
 many actors throw themselves down, instead 
 of falling, and I have seen an actress, carried 
 across a stage insensible, whose toes were ob- 
 viously turning up with energy. 
 
 There is another reason why this is a use- 
 ful trick to practice, and that is, that if you 
 meet with an accident in real life which causes 
 you to fall, you are very much less likely to 
 hurt yourself if you have the knack of with- 
 
Movement and Expression 61 
 
 drawing the nervous force from your body 
 and falling limp. I once fell from the top 
 of an omnibus. It suddenly lurched, and 
 another passenger, falling against me, 
 knocked me over. I shall never forget the 
 green face of the conductor, who thought, of 
 course, that I must be seriously injured. 
 When he found that nothing was broken, and 
 that I got up and began to move off uncon- 
 cernedly, he showered after me a stream of 
 the most virulent abuse, as if it were my 
 fault ! The poor man expressed his real re- 
 lief by a flow of blasphemy which I have 
 never heard equaled. It was certainly an 
 amazing escape for me, and I attribute it en- 
 tirely to the fact that, directly I felt myself 
 falling, I remembered my Delsarte training 
 and "decomposed." I might have decom- 
 posed in another sense if I hadn't! 
 
 I am not a believer in set poses or gestures, 
 and I think that movement is very seldom 
 taught in the right way. The best plan is 
 to practice movement as I suggested practic- 
 ing tone. Take an emotion and speak any 
 words that come into your head, letting your 
 face and gesture express these words natur- 
 
62 Training for the Stage 
 
 ally, working up to climax. To get the 
 hands well under control a good plan is to 
 make them do ordinary every-day actions 
 without the actual objects which are usually 
 the reason for these actions. For instance, we 
 are all in the habit of making tea, pouring 
 it out, handing bread and butter, and so on. 
 Imagine the tea service, cups, plates, etc., and 
 go through all the actions of pouring out tea, 
 serving the visitors and helping yourself with- 
 out the actual objects. Go through the ac- 
 tions of brushing and dressing your hair, and 
 putting on your clothes, taking care that 
 every movement you make is really what it 
 would be if you were actually doing these 
 things. Test this Vy having the real articles 
 near, and comparing your actions when using 
 them with 4 your actions when you have 
 nothing to help you. In this way you will 
 learn control and train your eye as well as 
 your hand. From these small essays in pan- 
 tomime proceed to bigger things. Invent sit- 
 uations and play scenes by yourself, either 
 with or without the aid of words. But if you 
 use words, let them be those that come into 
 your head at the moment, and few in number. 
 
Movement and Expression 63 
 
 In short, practice as if you were acting for 
 the cinema, always bearing in mind that act- 
 ing for the stage must be broader, quicker 
 and more accentuated. 
 
 Whatever you do in real life, notice how 
 you do it, and when you are alone, try to re- 
 produce it. Above all, keep up your mim- 
 icry, and find out what it is, that, when we are 
 walking behind strangers, makes us know 
 whether they are young or old or middle- 
 aged, and what type of person they are. 
 
 A good stage walk is an important point in 
 an actor's equipment. The old stage rules 
 on this matter should not be neglected. 
 These were that upon entering one should 
 take one's first step with the foot which is 
 "up"; in other words, if you enter R., your 
 first step is made with your left foot; if you 
 enter L., with your right, and so on. When 
 crossing the stage take long steps, moving 
 from the hip and not the knee. Put the ball 
 of the foot down first and not the heel, and 
 avoid too springy a movement. If you have 
 to "take the stage," finish your walk with 
 the foot that is "up," and turn on the balls 
 of the feet. For instance, if you are cross- 
 
64 Training for the Stage 
 
 ing from R. to L., if you finish with your left 
 foot down and turn easily, using the balls of 
 the feet as pivots, you will find your right 
 foot pointing a little up stage, just where you 
 want it for your next movement. Another 
 old rule was that if you are talking to another 
 actor on the stage you stand with the weight 
 of the body on one foot or the other, not 
 poised between the two, and the foot that is 
 "up" a little forward. For instance, if you 
 are standing R.C., facing an actor L.C., you 
 would stand with the weight of the body 
 probably on the right foot, and the left foot, 
 which is "up," a little in advance. In this 
 way, although facing the man to whom you 
 are speaking, you show more of the face and 
 body than you would do if the right foot were 
 advanced when you were in this position. 
 
 These old stage rules are often deliberately 
 broken nowadays, and it is right that they 
 should be, because a disregard of rule and 
 regulation makes for variety. But one can- 
 not break a rule effectively unless that rule 
 has become second nature to one. 
 
 Poise, of course, is important to a graceful 
 carriage on the stage. I usually give certain 
 
Movement and Expression 65 
 
 wrestlers' poses as exercises for acquiring 
 this, and any one can make up such exercises 
 for himself. The important thing is to real- 
 ize that unless the subject of poise is under- 
 stood and the weight of the body in relation 
 to equilibrium duly considered, the actor's 
 movements will lack that sense of quiet as- 
 surance which is essential to the polish of a 
 performance. Any eccentric carriage stamps 
 an actor as a "type" and shuts him out from 
 impersonating anything but that type. 
 
 Freedom from self-consciousness, of 
 course, is essential. Whatever exercises you 
 may practice to acquire grace, forget all 
 about them when you are actually on the 
 stage. Unless an actor has the power of ab- 
 sorbing himself in the part he is playing to 
 such an extent that he moves and speaks in- 
 stinctively as that character would move and 
 speak, his work will never be convincing. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 CHARACTER IN MOVEMENT 
 
 ANY one who has studied the records of 
 past centuries must have been struck by the 
 fact that a certain type of attitude and ges- 
 ture is characteristic of each age. It is de- 
 termined partly by the costume of the age. 
 The position of a man's hands, for instance, 
 is affected by the position of his pockets. The 
 carriage of the head is greatly influenced by 
 the style and weight of the head-dress, and 
 the movement of the feet by the type of foot- 
 gear; or, in the case of women, by the breadth 
 or tightness of the skirt. In classic dress the 
 body was carried upright, and the sandaled 
 feet, having no heels, were not lifted very 
 far from the ground. You can tell from 
 the frescoes that the back leg was rather 
 dragged, the weight of the body being bal- 
 anced on the front leg. This type of gait, 
 with its exquisite, lithe languor, ready to 
 spring any moment into pantherlike activity, 
 66 
 
Character in Movement 67 
 
 is to be found among savage races, whose un- 
 shod feet cling to the ground as did those of 
 the old Greeks and Romans in their sandals. 
 In the middle ages the long points to the 
 shoes gave a different type of gait altogether, 
 and necessitated a rather straight lifting of 
 the heels ; while the Louis XV heels poise the 
 foot upon the toe, the pointed toe being char- 
 acteristic of the days when the minuet reigned 
 supreme. Farthingales obliged women to 
 carry their arms away from their sides, with 
 the elbows rounded outwards; as, if the arms 
 were flat to the sides, the farthingale would 
 have been knocked in. The panniers of the 
 Georgian age also kept the arms from the 
 sides, but in this case the arm was nearly 
 always bent, as it was the custom to carry a 
 fan, spy glass, snuff-box or other trinket. 
 The elbow sleeves, with the lace falling from 
 the elbow, showed off the arm to perfection 
 if it were bent at the elbow and the bare fore- 
 arm carried well to the front. The high 
 headdresses of this period necessitated an 
 erect carriage of the head and neck; yet I 
 have seen a Lady Teazle who, with a moun- 
 tain on her head, lolled it to one side in such 
 
68 Training for the Stage 
 
 a manner that, before the play was over, it 
 began to look absurd. 
 
 All these little details should be borne in 
 mind when playing what is professionally 
 known as a "costume part." However ob- 
 viously the differences of gait and movement 
 seem indicated by the costume, it is difficult 
 to change one's manner to fit a change of cos- 
 tume without a little practice. It is a useful 
 exercise for the student to imagine himself 
 garbed in the costumes of the various histori- 
 cal periods; then to think out and practice 
 the manner characteristic of each. 
 
 Many a Shakespearean production has 
 been spoilt for me because, although the 
 costumes were gorgeous in themselves, their 
 wearers had an air of discomfort in them, 
 the manner and material being at variance. 
 It is all very well to say that Shakespeare 
 should be played and spoken like life, but 
 what do we mean by this? Like our life of 
 the twentieth century? This was not the life 
 of Shakespeare's day, and those exquisite 
 blank verse lines were never written to be 
 chopped up into little bits, like the tabloid 
 talk of our present rapid age. Shakespeare 
 
Character in Movement 69 
 
 meant every word of those lines to tell; he 
 wrote them for actors who were going to play 
 on the stages of his time, with an open-roofed 
 auditorium and the audience distracted by the 
 talking of the nobles sitting on the stage. He 
 meant those lines to be given with such force 
 that they compelled attention, and he wrote 
 them with that end in view. It is "ridiculous" 
 to speak them "in kid gloves," as one might 
 say; they were not designed for the "talky- 
 talky" tone of the intimate theater. Shakes- 
 peare wrote of striking events befalling 
 heroic characters, and he poured all his own 
 great soul into his work. To speak them as 
 if they were the happenings of our humdrum 
 every day is to belittle them and belie their 
 author's intention. To my mind, a perform- 
 ance is convincing only if it is conceived on 
 a right scale; to apply the puny methods of 
 modern realism to Shakespeare seems to me 
 like sticking the square peg into the round 
 hole. But if you are going to speak blank 
 verse and wear costume with an endeavor to 
 get the Shakespearean atmosphere, you have 
 got to be familiar with both. Get into the 
 habit of speaking verse aloud until you can 
 
70 Training for the Stage 
 
 make it up for yourself spontaneously. 
 Think in blank verse ! It need not be good 
 verse, but let the metrical form become so 
 familiar to you that you can fall into it at 
 any time; then you will speak it as to the 
 manner born. In the same way, if you are 
 going to wear costume upon the stage, wear 
 that costume, or something very like it, in the 
 privacy of your own home for a week or two 
 beforehand. Get used to it. Then your 
 audience will have a chance of forgetting 
 your clothes and concentrating their atten- 
 tion upon you. Study the pictorial represen- 
 tations of the period of the play, but don't 
 make the mistake of overlarding your per- 
 formance with attitudes and gestures deliber- 
 ately copied from those pictures. If you do, 
 your work will lose all spontaneity and be- 
 come self-conscious and over-elaborated. 
 Get into the atmosphere of the period by at- 
 tention to its literature and art, and get used 
 to wearing the clothes. If you are really an 
 actor the rest will come of its own accord. 
 We often hear people speak of character 
 in handwriting, character in the lines of the 
 hand, character in physiognomy, but as a 
 
Character in Movement 71 
 
 rule we remain blind to the fact that there is 
 character in the whole carriage of the body 
 and in every movement of the head and 
 limbs. It is impossible for any one even to 
 sit in a chair without their attitude telling 
 some secret of their being to an observant 
 onlooker. It is not only our handwriting, 
 but the way we hold the pen, which tells its 
 tale; and nothing betrays mood more than 
 the movement of our hands, so light when 
 happy, so heavy with despair. 
 
 Actors studying character parts sometimes 
 do their best to indicate youth or age by 
 means of certain stereotyped trips and quav- 
 ers; but character in movement is a much 
 more subtle thing than this. It is not enough 
 to speak of "light-footed youth" and the 
 "lagging step of age." Whether our step be 
 elastic or stumbling is very largely a matter 
 of mood; and even the young, under the 
 stress of a crushing emotion, will walk with 
 leaden feet. 
 
 To make up one's mind that a certain car- 
 riage is suited to a part and to keep this un- 
 varied from beginning to end of a play is 
 short-sighted policy, and if the part be a long 
 
72 Training for the Stage 
 
 one, tends to get on the nerves of the 
 audience. In a matter of this sort it is, as 
 I said before with reference to dialect, a case 
 for a little discretion. Choose the right 
 moment to mark a characteristic movement, 
 leaving the rest of the performance a ques- 
 tion of degree according to the feeling of the 
 scene. 
 
 If you want to study character in relation 
 to movement make a point of noticing any 
 one behind whom you happen to be walking 
 in the street. Draw all the deductions you 
 can from their back view; then quicken your 
 pace and pass them, glancing quickly at their 
 face, and see how far your deductions are 
 borne out by what that face conveys to you. 
 
 I once asked Hermann Vezin how he ac- 
 quired his peculiar grace of carriage, for he 
 was like a living statue, like an old Greek god 
 come to life. He wore his Inverness cloak as 
 if it were a toga, and yet no one would ever 
 have dreamed of accusing him of pose or af- 
 fectation, so free from all self-consciousness 
 was he. He told me that he used to go to 
 museums and stand in front of beautiful 
 statues and frescoes, and let the poses "soak 
 
Character in Movement 73 
 
 into" him. He also told me that when he 
 was young, as he walked along the streets, he 
 had a habit of watching his reflection in the 
 shop windows, which enabled him to check 
 any fault of gait. He was a born mimic, 
 and I have suffered agonies when going about 
 with him because of his habit of mimicking 
 any peculiarity of carriage he came across. 
 It is very trying to pace Pall Mall side by 
 side with an elderly gentleman who will insist 
 on showing you how a lady in front lifts her 
 skirt and minces in her walk. 
 
 I referred in an earlier chapter to the fact 
 that, when we think of any of our friends 
 we see them in our mind's eye in some char- 
 acteristic attitude. So true is this that we 
 can hardly think of any one without recalling 
 the position and gesture which seem to epit- 
 omize the owner's personality. 
 
 Great writers frequently harp upon one 
 trait in a character which they wish to set 
 clearly before their readers, and some of 
 them represent that character as constantly 
 using a certain gesture, which epitomizes the 
 character. As an instance we may quote 
 Dickens, who draws Uriah Heep washing his 
 
74 Training for the Stage 
 
 hands, the hangman in Barnaby Rudge suck- 
 ing the head of his stick, and Jacques III in 
 The Tale of Two Cities with rapacious fore- 
 finger smoothing down his upper lip. If act- 
 ors took a hint from this and, when studying 
 a character, saw clearly the attitude and ges- 
 ture which seem to epitomize that character, 
 we should get more suggestive work upon the 
 stage. We frequently see the would-be 
 "character" actor, when playing an old man, 
 attend carefully to such irritating details as a 
 palsied head, shaking hands and quavering 
 voice, yet make the part merely a representa- 
 tion of senility in general, omitting the more 
 individual traits of that particular man. Old 
 age is not always palsied, and it does not 
 always speak in a cracked voice ; nor is their 
 mere age the most significant quality about 
 old people. For the honor of the human race 
 actors should know better than to content 
 themselves with such conventional devices. 
 
 When taking character parts the great 
 thing is to suggest the key-note of the char- 
 acter. If you are clear about this yourself 
 and have any power of conveying what you 
 yourself think to others, you will not fail in 
 
Character in Movement 75 
 
 filling in the outward details. But if the 
 inner meaning of the part is not clear to you, 
 if you are not perfectly sure in your own 
 mind of the type of human being you wish to 
 impersonate, all the mechanical aids of as- 
 sumed voice and studied gesture will fail to 
 help you to suggest a living image to the 
 minds of the audience. Details are all very 
 well, but essentials must come first; and unless 
 these essentials are right and clear and sig- 
 nificant, details merely serve to confuse and 
 obscure the impression the actor wishes to 
 create. On the other hand, if an actor, being 
 clear about the innate personality he wants 
 to represent, can see that personality in his 
 mind's eye in the attitude and with the man- 
 nerism which really epitomize it, and can re- 
 produce these, he will have a triumph. I am 
 not, of course, implying that he is to cling to 
 them from first to last of his performance, 
 but merely that he is to use them at the right 
 moments, so that the suggestion they convey 
 may go home to the minds of the audience, 
 who will then have grasped his intention and 
 will, unconsciously, aid him to carry it out* 
 Over-elaborate work is always a mistake ; be 
 
76 Training for the Stage 
 
 right about the essentials and leave them to 
 speak for themselves. If you have the in- 
 stinct of acting you will be the unconscious 
 instrument of your work, and will "get it 
 over the footlights," because all you do will 
 be instinctive and sincere. 
 
 Remember that the art of the stage is 
 largely a question of suggestion, and that 
 every trifling thing that happens on the stage 
 is apt to leave an impression on the audience, 
 which, once implanted, it is difficult to erad- 
 icate. For this reason little things are often 
 of the greatest importance ; but, on the other 
 hand, a multiplicity of detail, like an over- 
 stocked shop window, simply defeats its own 
 purpose and reduces everything to the level 
 of nothing. Too much gesture is irritating 
 and singularly ineffective. The actor who is 
 sure of his effect is the actor who never moves 
 without a purpose, so that the gesture, when 
 made, stands out by contrast with his habitual 
 stillness and seems, therefore, charged with 
 significance. It is a common fault of the 
 amateur to fidget and shift about. One of 
 the first things he has to learn is to keep still, 
 and above all never to move in such a 
 
Character in Movement 77 
 
 way as to distract the attention of the 
 audience from another actor upon the stage 
 when it is important that their eyes should 
 be focused upon this other actor. When 
 lines have to be spoken containing informa- 
 tion relative to the main end of the play in- 
 formation which it is important that the 
 audience shall understand and remember 
 it is an invariable rule of production that the 
 actors on the stage should keep as still as pos- 
 sible, so that nothing may distract attention 
 from the actual meaning of the words. As 
 I said in an earlier chapter, it is an unforgiv- 
 able sin to attract attention to oneself by 
 means of by-play when one's part is not im- 
 mediately prominent in the business of the 
 scene. It is just as important to know how 
 to efface yourself at the right moment as it 
 is to know how to rivet attention when oc- 
 casion demands. 
 
 Remember that everything to do with the 
 stage is effective by reason of contrast, and 
 that what you do will be infinitely more suc- 
 cessful if you do not try to do too much. 
 Vigor owes its value to the fact that it con- 
 trasts with repose, and for the zealous 
 
78 Training for the Stage 
 
 amateur repose is very often one of the most 
 difficult qualities to acquire. He wants to be 
 acting all the time and finds it hard to realize 
 that one must not consciously try to act, and 
 that one is only an actor, in the higher sense 
 of the word, when impersonation comes of 
 its own accord. The first and the most es- 
 sential of all lessons is to learn to sink one- 
 self. Think of the play first and foremost. 
 However proud you may be of your own part 
 in that play, your impersonation will only 
 prove of value if it takes its right place in 
 the scheme of the whole production. Your 
 part will stand out if you work for the value 
 of the scene, but if you think of yourself only 
 and try to give your part a prominence which 
 is detrimental to the balance and purpose of 
 the play, you will find yourself associated 
 with a failure, and will have produced on the 
 minds of the audience a sense of irritation 
 no less real because they may possibly be un- 
 able to say exactly to what it is due. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 WORDS AND THEIR SPOKEN VALUE 
 
 THE pronunciation and delivery of words 
 do not by any means exhaust the actor's re- 
 sponsibility towards the text he speaks. One 
 cannot deliver a line with a due sense of its 
 significance unless one has an innate and cul- 
 tivated instinct for the right word in the right 
 place. In the old days we used to say that 
 there was no need for an actor to be edu- 
 cated, and even went the length of implying 
 that education was detrimental to an actor 
 inasmuch as it was supposed to imbue him 
 with the acquired characteristics of a certain 
 class, and render him less adaptable. The in- 
 flux of Oxford and Cambridge men upon the 
 stage and the conspicuous success of the 
 O.U.D.S. as a training school for actors 
 have done much to break down this old preju- 
 dice, which sprang, I think, from the days 
 when to be an actor was to be practically a 
 social outcast, an injustice which naturally im- 
 79 
 
80 Training for the Stage 
 
 planted in the minds of actors a grudge 
 against the educated classes of society. 
 
 I have harped already in the earlier chap- 
 ters of this book upon the vital necessity for 
 a broad and tolerant understanding of all 
 types of human nature, but study of human 
 nature alone is not sufficient. It must be sup- 
 plemented by the study of books. The value 
 of words is an essential part of an actor's 
 mental equipment, for if he is deaf to the 
 literary flavor of the lines he speaks, he will 
 do them less than justice. Many actors find 
 it difficult to learn accurately. They get the 
 sense of the author's meaning, but they will 
 alter the position of the words and sometimes 
 the actual words themselves. I am not here 
 pleading for the author's ideal, which is that 
 every line of his text as he originally writes it 
 shall be delivered verbatim on the stage, be- 
 cause no one with any experience of the stage 
 could suppose that an author is necessarily 
 the best judge of the stage value of the lines 
 he writes. This depends on the author's ex- 
 perience, on the cast engaged for his play and 
 on other points. But I do want to make it 
 clear that, although it may be necessary for 
 
Words and Their Value 81 
 
 the producer to alter the wording of some of 
 an author's lines, it is unfair to the whole 
 production for the members of the cast arbi- 
 trarily to alter this wording again, merely to 
 accommodate the laziness of their own 
 memories. Accuracy of text, that is of the 
 text which is ultimately approved by the pro- 
 ducer, is merely a matter of common fairness 
 to the author, cast, management, audience 
 and every one concerned in the performance, 
 and it should be a point of honor among act- 
 ors to keep to this text as closely as they 
 possibly can. 
 
 But there are many cases in which it is im- 
 possible to do this, and some in which the 
 play does actually benefit by a transgression 
 of this law. There are certain actors, usually 
 comedians, whose own wit is so delightful 
 that good lines will spring to their lips spon- 
 taneously as the play progresses, and when 
 this is so it would be a pity to deprive the play 
 of the sparkle and freshness which such lines 
 introduce into the dialogue. It does not 
 necessarily follow, however, that every actor 
 with a knack of gagging improves the actual 
 dialogue of the play. There are only too 
 
82 Training for the Stage 
 
 many instances to the contrary. It is certain 
 that an actor's spontaneous lines will not be 
 of the right type unless he has himself a real 
 sense of the value of words. A joke depends 
 so much for its point upon the crispness of 
 its wording, and a line which is charged with 
 emotion is trebled in value if it consists mere- 
 ly of two or three poignant words. The 
 arrangement of the words of any sentence 
 will go far to make that sentence effective or 
 the reverse, and the relative value of every 
 word in every phrase is so essential in the 
 performance of a play that it should be one 
 of the first duties of an actor to study this 
 subject until he has mastered it thoroughly. 
 It often happens that some little thing will 
 go wrong upon the stage ; one of the actors 
 will dry up, and another will have to gag to 
 cover the hiatus. In cases of this sort a right 
 use of words is invaluable, and actors who 
 have this resource at their tongues 1 end will 
 be of service in an emergency. Stage life 
 seems, indeed, a continual round of emergen- 
 cies, and resourcefulness is of the utmost im- 
 portance. Some actors are unable to learn a 
 text with literal accuracy, and they continual- 
 
Words and Their Value 83 
 
 ly give wrong cues or cues which are not 
 worded exactly as they should be. In this 
 case the actor replying to the cue has on the 
 spur of the moment to re-word his reply; and 
 here again it is necessary that he should be 
 quick to choose the words which will best 
 meet the occasion. Especially is this the 
 case if the play is what we call a costume play, 
 the action of which takes place at a histori- 
 cal period, as in this case an actor who has 
 no sense of style may commit the mistake of 
 supplying a word which is unsuited to the 
 period. I remember watching with delight 
 Ellen Terry's exquisite performance of 
 Olivia in the dramatic version of The Vicar 
 of Wake field, when all of a sudden the illus- 
 ion was shattered for me because, as she was 
 arranging the dear old Vicar on the sofa, she 
 said: "Come along and let me make you 
 comfy I" To genius like Ellen Terry's much 
 may be forgiven ; but an error of that sort is 
 nevertheless an error, and the greater the 
 performance the more conspicuous the blem- 
 ish. 
 
 Costume plays, indeed, cannot be rightly 
 played unless the actor is acquainted with the 
 
84 Training for the Stage 
 
 style of phraseology which belonged to the 
 period about which the play is written. 
 When we are using words of a kind different 
 from those which we use in e very-day life we 
 are apt to show that they are unfamiliar to 
 us by delivering them in a stilted and self- 
 conscious way. It is not too much to say that 
 a costume play can only be convincingly 
 rendered if the actors playing in it are suffi- 
 ciently familiar with the literature of the 
 time to use words characteristic of the period 
 with ease. If an actor is not acquainted with 
 the meaning of the words he uses he is liable 
 at any moment to make some silly mistake if 
 his memory should be temporarily hazy. I 
 remember hearing one lady say: "Father, 
 will you shrove me?" She meant "shrive 
 me," but as she had not the least idea what 
 the word really implied and as she had at 
 some time or other heard of Shrove Tuesday, 
 which she associated with pancakes, the word 
 "shrove" came more easily to her lips. When 
 I ventured to point out the mistake she said : 
 "Oh, it's near enough." It may have been 
 for her ! 
 
 I remember feeling furious with the late 
 
Words and Their Value 85 
 
 Sir Herbert Tree because he would say 
 "Seneco" for Seneca from beginning to end 
 of one particular play; I do not know why, as 
 he was certainly the last man from whom one 
 would expect a mistake of this sort. Such 
 mistakes get on the nerves of anybody in the 
 audience who happens to know, and the only 
 safe way to avoid them is to be well read. 
 Nowadays we have a wave of Shakespearean 
 enthusiasm passing over Stageland, which is 
 certainly all to the good ; but as I listen to the 
 modern Shakespearean performance I cannot 
 help fancying that some of the actors are pat- 
 ting themselves on the back for getting 
 through the lines successfully. I have no 
 doubt whatever that they think them very 
 beautiful; but somehow I rather question 
 whether they understand their full meaning 
 or humanity. I think they look on them as 
 precious things much as the ordinary visitor 
 to a museum looks on the curiosities which 
 he is allowed to view in their glass cases. 
 This is the mental attitude of many people 
 where Shakespeare is concerned, and has also 
 been our attitude towards Ibsen, because we 
 are familiar with him in the stately English 
 
86 Training for the Stage 
 
 of William Archer's translation and know 
 little of the homely fun which characterizes 
 the original Norwegian. From this and 
 similar errors in the point of view spring, I 
 believe, the chief evils of what Americans call 
 the high-brow school. Evils there are with- 
 out a doubt, because the tendency of that 
 school is to put good work before us in such 
 a way that we see it as a thing apart from 
 our daily life, and are, therefore, unable to 
 assimilate with its beauties our sense of the 
 world around us. This is a mistake quite as 
 great as that of over-modernizing classics. 
 From the Greeks of old throughout the ages, 
 from the great Elizabethans to the really 
 earnest writers of our own day, we find that 
 the author of genius draws life as he sees 
 it in all its homely setting, embellished by 
 many a touch, both humorous and pathetic, 
 from his own personal experience ; and if the 
 picture which ultimately evolves from his pen 
 seems to us above our own estimate of com- 
 mon things, it is merely because with his more 
 searching vision he has seen what we have not 
 appreciated. It is a question of high lights 
 and relief; but never do we get a really great 
 
Words and Their Fatue 87 
 
 dramatist who draws characters devoid of 
 humanity or puts upon the stage a point of 
 view whose idealism is beyond all likeness to 
 the truth. Therefore, when studying the 
 works of the great masters, we must always 
 bear in mind the fact that what their charac- 
 ters say is the talk of those around the play- 
 wright, charged with the message and the 
 insight of his own penetrating brain. If 
 we play these characters u on stilts/ 1 if we 
 speak those lines as if we knew that we were 
 uttering words of wisdom beyond the ken of 
 common humanity, we lessen or destroy the 
 value of their message. It is just because, 
 however beautifully expressed, the lines of a 
 great writer have always in them the touch of 
 our common humanity, the understanding of 
 that which we all feel and that which we all 
 know, even though we may be unconscious 
 that we know it it is just because of this 
 that such lines are the utterance of genius and 
 that such plays last through the ages with 
 their vitality unimpaired. To approach these 
 plays with any feeling that they are beyond 
 common comprehension and concern things 
 outside life, to treat them, in fact, as objets 
 
88 Training for the Stage 
 
 de vertu and to trick out their performance 
 with artifice and eccentricity, is to my mind to 
 do a great wrong. The way to approach such 
 work is to become familiar, not only with the 
 work itself, but with all that concerns it; and 
 this can only be done if the actor devotes 
 himself to literary study. He will then gauge 
 the atmosphere too well to fall either into the 
 fault of aloofness or into the equal error of 
 jarring commonplace. 
 
 One often hears a producer call up an 
 actor for the delivery of a certain line. He 
 will say: "Don't be so precious," using the 
 word "precious," of course, to mean pedantic. 
 I am not aware that we use this word in this 
 sense nowadays in any other connection, but 
 the precieuses of the days of Louis XIV give 
 us an example of the word with the same 
 meaning. How it is that this use of the word 
 "precious" has survived upon our stage I do 
 not know and should be interested to hear. 
 But for whatever reason, it is constantly so 
 employed at rehearsals, and it has always 
 seemed to me expressive. It clearly conveys 
 the fact that the actor is too interested in the 
 value of the word as a literary curiosity, 
 
Words and Their Value 89 
 
 thinking of the word by itself apart from 
 its relation to the whole sentence. Now 
 when an actor is well read this does not 
 happen. When we have a full sense of the 
 value of words and are speaking a sentence 
 which is particularly well expressed, it is not 
 a single word which will strike us so much as 
 the balance of the whole sentence. The more 
 that sentence seems to us well chosen, the 
 greater will be the conviction with which we 
 shall speak it; and it is those actors who have 
 a sense of the value of words who speak their 
 lines with conviction, and so get the full 
 meaning of those words over the footlights 
 to the intelligence of the listening audience. 
 We are all crying out for a higher stand- 
 ard of play upon our modern stage, which we 
 feel has fallen into a bad way. Unfortunate- 
 ly, however, our intellectuals show a tend- 
 ency to form themselves into a coterie which 
 demands to be catered for apart from the 
 general public. This is a pity. The mission 
 of the stage is to promote good fellowship, 
 and anything that tends to separate audiences 
 into cliques is detrimental to the higher pur- 
 poses of acting. The goal for which we 
 
90 Training for the Stage 
 
 should all aim is to raise the general level of 
 the stage, and we can only do that if we all 
 contribute by putting into our work the best 
 that is in us. At present the managers are 
 usually blamed for everything; but surely the 
 fault lies a little with us all. The critics are 
 too inclined to shut their eyes to the actor's 
 point of view, and have not always that nice 
 sense of the technique of the actor's art which 
 alone can enable them to distinguish between 
 the work of the actor and the responsibility 
 of the dramatist himself. The public, in its 
 turn, is sometimes regardless of the financial 
 side of the matter, and is inclined to expect 
 the manager to take a speculative risk which 
 only a multi-millionaire could afford. Dra- 
 matists keep an ideal cast in their mind's eye 
 and are not always able to see that in deal- 
 ing with actors they are dealing with human 
 beings and must allow for human limitations. 
 Some of them, moreover, are apt to think 
 their own dialogue of more importance than 
 the actor's work, and do not give enough 
 chances for the art of acting to come into its 
 own. In other words, they give the actors 
 too much to say and too little to do. Never- 
 
Words and Their Value 91 
 
 theless the actors themselves are only too 
 often to blame, because some of them think 
 the lines of their parts are merely a vehicle 
 for emotional expression and concern them- 
 selves with the meaning of those lines with- 
 out a due appreciation of the care which goes 
 to the choosing of the words which shall 
 carry the full force of that meaning home. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 AUDIENCES 
 
 ALL audiences differ, and for an actor to 
 achieve success he must learn to develop a 
 sixth sense, an intuition which enables him to 
 feel with certainty the point of view which 
 any particular audience is likely to take. He 
 must be in touch with his audience from first 
 to last, and to accomplish this he must have a 
 real, though perhaps unconscious, sensitive- 
 ness for the needs and wishes of others. I 
 have purposely used the word u feel" because 
 it is a word we use professionally; we always 
 talk of "feeling" our audiences, as if we had 
 antennae sensitive to every unspoken thought 
 and subtle change. An actor who is worthy 
 of the name will vary his methods according 
 to his circumstances. The choice of cast will 
 affect his work; if he is playing with a weak 
 actor, he will use restraint; if with a strong 
 one, he will let himself go with considerably 
 more abandon. He will be guided by the bal- 
 
 92 
 
Audiences 93 
 
 ance of the play, and where he feels that the 
 author has overwritten a scene he will tone 
 it down; but if he feels that a scene is under- 
 written he will speak his lines with stress to 
 make up by emphasis of tone for the lack of 
 distinction in the wording. Directly he is in 
 front of an audience he will know in the main 
 to what type of people he is to play and will 
 underline what is likely to please and rein in 
 what is likely to be misunderstood. A really 
 good dramatic effect will be suppressed be- 
 fore some audiences for fear that it should 
 get a laugh, taking the leap from the sublime 
 to the ridiculous in their untutored imagina- 
 tions. The moment he is upon the stage an 
 actor must be sensitively aware of the 
 thoughts of the listening crowd before him; 
 he must study their point of view or he can 
 never gain dominance over them. 
 
 Now it is good for all of us to be obliged 
 to consider the point of view of those about 
 us. Perhaps there is no mental training more 
 valuable than that of being compelled to find 
 a mode of expression for that which we wish 
 to say, some sure way to convey our meaning 
 to brains of a different type from our own. 
 
94 Training for the Stage 
 
 I have heard actors express contempt for a 
 certain class of audience, but this is a mis- 
 take. One may take it for granted that in 
 every audience, however unresponsive the 
 majority may seem, there will be at least one 
 brain that understands, one spirit to whom it 
 is well worth while to give the best that is 
 in us. 
 
 There is a certain type of actor who, 
 through some kind of youthful conceit, is apt 
 to think it not worth while to take much 
 trouble except for a first night or for some 
 special occasion. And indeed, in these days 
 of long runs, an actor may be forgiven for 
 getting so stale in an oft-repeated part that 
 he becomes careless. If we can only bear in 
 mind the fact that life has a little way of 
 springing surprises on us and that at any 
 moment we may meet a brain that under- 
 stands, perhaps a little of this carelessness 
 might be kept in check. Some actors are apt 
 to think it not worth while to do any work 
 that is not well paid or done under flattering 
 auspices. I remember once, when I was re- 
 sponsible for a small charity concert, a young 
 actress who had promised her services failed 
 
Audiences 95 
 
 me at the last moment for no good reason at 
 all, and I asked a little amateur friend of 
 mine to take her place. It so happened that a 
 well-known man who had heard of the pro- 
 fessional actress turned up at the concert with 
 the purpose of seeing her, as it happened to 
 be given at a hall a few steps from his private 
 house. He saw instead my little amateur 
 friend, promptly offered her an engagement, 
 and she is now earning twenty-five pounds a 
 week. 
 
 Now this girl had a genuine feeling for 
 humanity in her heart, and that is why she 
 has proved successful on the stage. I am 
 strongly of the opinion that if we have the 
 type of character which turns up a mental 
 nose at any section of our fellow men we are 
 unfitted to do good work upon the stage. 
 
 Remember that not only is it the task of an 
 actor to play upon the feeling of his audience ; 
 he is also depending for his success upon their 
 sympathy, which he cannot expect to receive 
 unless he, in turn, is ready and able to give. 
 There are many moments, even in a success- 
 ful career, when we have to beg our audience 
 to be tolerant towards us. Our health is not 
 
96 Training for the Stage 
 
 always at its best, and we have to play many 
 a time under a disadvantage. On all these 
 occasions we hope for mercy, and in most 
 cases receive it; for though an audience can 
 be cruel, it is far more often kind. 
 
 No actor has a right to despise any portion 
 of that public from whom as a whole he re- 
 ceives so many favors. The public will 
 always respond if we make an appeal to its 
 sense of fair play. There is a story of Mile. 
 Mars, the great French actress, which pleases 
 me. She had been a favorite all her life, and 
 when she was getting old the management re- 
 vived certain plays in which she had made 
 successes in her youth that she might play 
 those parts once more before retiring. It 
 happened in one of these plays that she had 
 to say: 
 
 "Je suis jeune; je suis belle!" 
 
 The audience tittered. She quietly looked 
 up and said. 
 
 "Je suis Mademoiselle Mars." 
 
 The house came down with a round of ap- 
 plause. 
 
 Many of us nowadays have trained brains, 
 and we argue about psychology and dissect 
 
Audiences 97 
 
 our fellow human beings with subtlety and 
 understanding, but it is often the wrong sort 
 of understanding; it is cold, criti'cal and over- 
 emphatic of trifles. True comprehension is 
 an impressionistic sense of all the bigger pos- 
 sibilities of human nature, beside which de- 
 tails drop into their real insignificance. All 
 work for the stage has to be more or less im- 
 pressionistic, and no amount of careful detail 
 will build up a real bit of character drawing 
 if the main traits of the character have been 
 misunderstood. No man must be judged 
 by what he is; we must always bear in mind 
 what he might be. An actor who has the 
 power of eliminating unimportant circum- 
 stances and getting at essentials, and then, 
 afterwards, restoring those circumstances and 
 filling in each little detail, so that they fall 
 into their right places in proportion to the 
 value of the greater attributes, is an actor 
 whose work is going to have depth and value. 
 If his audience is of the intellectual type, he 
 may venture to give them what he actually 
 sees himself, but when dealing with an aver- 
 age audience he must adapt his own concep- 
 tion to their comprehension, and must set 
 
98 Training for the Stage 
 
 the important things before them with clear- 
 ness and assurance, which can sometimes only 
 be done if certain details are omitted. The 
 average brain can only take in one thing at 
 a time. To be clear one must often express 
 just a single thought and hammer at it, and 
 that is why impressionistic methods are fre- 
 quently the most effective for the stage. 
 
 It is all a matter of selection, and if an 
 actor has developed that sixth sense which 
 enables him to "feel" his audiences, right 
 selection will become instinctive to him. He 
 will give them what they want, and will leave 
 on their minds a clear image of all that they 
 need to understand without weakening the 
 effect of his work by an elaboration which 
 would merely bewilder. 
 
 Everything where the stage is concerned 
 must adjust itself to the conditions of the 
 stage; footlights, the size of the stage itself, 
 and the size of the auditorium all these 
 things must be taken into account. In a small 
 theater one need not raise one's voice to any 
 great extent, provided one's articulation is 
 clear. But in a large theater much more 
 volume of tone is required, and it is harder to 
 
Audiences 99 
 
 get a natural conversational effect. The 
 actor will again find himself obliged to adapt 
 his methods to circumstances. The easy, 
 rapid speech and delicate facial play which 
 would be effective enough in the one house, 
 will go for nothing in the other, where speech 
 must be slower, emphasis stronger and 
 gesture broader to get over the footlights. 
 In an intimate theater one can risk subtle by- 
 play, but on a bigger stage only broad effects 
 are obtainable, and some marked manner- 
 ism or bit of business must be used to make a 
 character stand out. For this reason also it 
 is necessary for an actor to be plastic. At 
 every turn of his career he will find that he is 
 obliged to adapt himself to circumstances. 
 
 There is another way in which he is ex- 
 pected to comply a tiresome way and one 
 which I, myself, think is greatly to the detri- 
 ment of the stage. When he is engaged as 
 an understudy he is expected to imitate his 
 principal, and in some cases this imitation is 
 driven to the point of minute mimicry. A 
 little time ago actors in touring companies 
 were, all too frequently, supposed to copy 
 even the voices of the London companies, a 
 
100 Training for the Stage 
 
 method which led to the propagation of the 
 mannerisms of popular stars. I am glad to 
 say that the evil of this custom so quickly 
 made itself felt that it is no longer rampant, 
 and where it is still to be found, I think it is 
 often due to the fact that some actors, being 
 naturally mimics, copy instinctively. From 
 whatever cause it springs, it is greatly to be 
 deplored, for it knocks all the spontaneity out 
 of acting and sometimes engenders faults 
 which are never afterwards thrown off. 
 
 Mimicry is admirable practice for the 
 actor, and I should certainly advise any one 
 going into the profession to do his best to 
 mimic those about him, especially when he 
 meets types that are likely to be useful for 
 the stage; but, though able to copy, he must 
 be careful that he only does so at will. It 
 must not become a habit or he will acquire 
 the knack of picking up all the intonations 
 and nervous ways which most irritate him 
 in others. 
 
 One golden rule for an actor is Always 
 listen to anything that others have to say 
 about you, no matter how unpleasant. As 
 
Audiences 101- 
 
 Hermann Vezin once said to me : "Stricture, 
 even from fools, sometimes does good." 
 
 If other people think certain things about 
 us, those things must be true of us from their 
 point of view. There is nothing in this world 
 so healthy as a good dressing-down. To the 
 credit of the profession be it said that actors 
 take this sort of thing, in the way of busi- 
 ness, with an admirable gratitude. One of 
 my truest friends to this day is that well- 
 known American actor, Frank Mills. In one 
 of my early criticisms I tore a performance 
 of his to ribbons and, instead of resenting 
 this, he promptly wrote me a letter asking 
 for more ! It is one thing to take a "slating" 
 in private, but it is very much harder to have 
 to endure this sort of thing in the presence of 
 one's fellow actors. Yet it may happen to 
 you at any rehearsal if you enter our cheer- 
 ful profession so be prepared I Think of 
 yourself merely as an instrument to be used 
 to get the best possible result for the good of 
 the whole play. Look at yourself im- 
 personally as a third person, and help the 
 producer to put that self through its paces. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 HOW TO U FEED" AND HOW TO BUILD UP 
 
 THE phrase u to feed" might well be in- 
 corporated in our daily speech, for the art 
 of "feeding" in its dramatic sense is inti- 
 mately connected with the art of living. We 
 mean by a "feeding" part one whose object 
 it is to bring out the salient traits in some 
 principal character and to serve as a recipient 
 of the joys and sorrows of that character. 
 All old plays had a subsidiary role called in 
 theatrical parlance "the confidant," as read- 
 ers of Sheridan's Critic will remember. A 
 well written "feeding" part eliminates the 
 necessity for soliloquies and proves useful as 
 a "pace-maker" to the audience by suggest- 
 ing to them the attitude they ought to take 
 towards the principal characters in the play. 
 The art of "feeding" is a difficult one and 
 is somewhat similar to the art of accom- 
 panying in music. All singers know that 
 their finest efforts may be ruined by a 
 
 102 
 
How to "Feed" 103 
 
 bad accompanist, and all actors know that a 
 good "feeder" turns the task of a star from 
 a labor into a joy. As in the case of the ac- 
 companist, the qualities that go to the mak- 
 ing of a good "feeder" are sympathy, pres- 
 ence of mind, quickness of judgment and dis- 
 crimination. He gets very little credit from 
 the general public, but his work is of vital 
 importance to the profession, and, what is 
 much to the point, he is always sure of steady 
 work. I remember hearing James Welch say 
 of the late Charles Allen: "Acting with him 
 is like playing ball. He is so quick at toss- 
 ing it back." Of course, what Welch meant 
 was that Charles Allen had the knack of 
 looking interested in everything that was said 
 to him the whole time he was on the stage, an 
 invaluable quality and in no way to be con- 
 founded with the habit of grimacing. I have 
 seen young actors, who have been told of the 
 importance of listening, pull so many faces 
 when any other actor was speaking that, in- 
 stead of increasing the interest of the scene, 
 they have simply distracted the attention of 
 the audience from the speaker, whose words 
 it was important they should hear. The art 
 
104 Training for the Stage 
 
 of listening is by no means the art of making 
 faces. It depends entirely on the steady and 
 interested expression in the eye, and in this 
 respect approximates more to the art of the 
 film-actor. 
 
 Once, when I was still writing as a dra- 
 matic critic, I devoted a special paragraph 
 to praise of an unknown actor who was play- 
 ing the part of the Clerk in the Trial Scene 
 of The Merchant of Venice. I still remem- 
 ber his face distinctly, and the quiet, earnest 
 expression in his eye as he listened to the 
 proceedings of the trial. He made you feel 
 that you must listen too. Of course this is 
 just a matter of suggestion. Every one 
 knows that if you stop in a street and stare 
 up at some particular roof a crowd will 
 quickly gather and stare at that roof too. 
 You have suggested to them that there must 
 be something there worth watching. This 
 exemplifies in a nutshell the art of listening 
 on the stage. If you listen to what the other 
 actors say to you as if it interested you, the 
 audience will take it for granted that it is 
 worth while to listen; but if your attention 
 obviously wanders, their attention will be apt 
 
How to "Feed" 105 
 
 to wander, especially if you do anything 
 which attracts it in too marked a manner to 
 yourself. "Do as you would be done by" is 
 an important maxim of conduct for the actor, 
 for everything on the stage is a matter of 
 give and take. 
 
 It is considered selfish to get above another 
 actor on the stage, as it obliges the other 
 actor to turn his face away from the audience 
 when speaking up towards you. Duologue 
 scenes should be played as much as possible 
 on a line. Some actors have an inveterate 
 habit of getting slightly above any one else 
 who may be playing with them. I remember 
 hearing my uncle, William Holman, say that 
 the only way to cure actors of this fault was 
 to stand right in front of them, as it imme- 
 diately obliged them to come down stage. 
 
 No matter how big a part may be, there 
 will be moments when it is "feeding" some 
 other part in the scene, and in this case, in- 
 stead of feeling impatient at the subordinate 
 position to which you have temporarily 
 lapsed, you should welcome it as a moment of 
 relief and contrast. In the building-up of a 
 big role you must snatch at every possible 
 
106 Training for the Stage 
 
 chance of variety, and indeed a variety of 
 varieties must be considered and cultivated 
 by all the means in your power. 
 
 In building-up a big part you have got to 
 eschew everything that makes for limitations. 
 It is essential to have a great variety of 
 movement and gesture, inflection, tone of 
 voice, mode of delivery, and above all 
 pace. Though a good stage walk may be an 
 asset, yet a man's walk is apt to vary with 
 the state of his emotions, and a subtle change 
 of gait will help to carry the scene home with 
 a dumb intensity more pregnant than any 
 spoken words. If a man is habitually grace- 
 ful, one sudden, awkward movement will 
 arrest the eye, and no beautiful pose will 
 touch our hearts so surely as the stumble and 
 lurch which great emotion forces from its 
 victim, who sways under its power like a 
 drunken man. 
 
 The same with gesture. Be graceful, be 
 decisive, be significant; but when occasion 
 calls, be clumsy. We lose control of our 
 physical being when our hearts arc wrung. 
 
 Last, and most important of all be care- 
 ful that your pace, tone and inflection are 
 
How to "Feed" 107 
 
 ever changing. A monotony of pace is sure 
 to produce a somnolent effect upon the 
 hearer. Nothing is so exciting as a rush 
 of words, nothing so solemn as retarded ut- 
 terance. If our interest is sufficiently aroused 
 we hang upon those slowly dropping words, 
 waiting for their message. 
 
 It is easy to cultivate changes of tone. 
 The fault of most of our speakers is that they 
 will not sacrifice the beauty of their voice 
 even for a moment, and by delivering all they 
 have to say in a uniformly beautiful tone 
 satiate our ears with a musical monotony. 
 Knock out the tone when you can and work 
 for contrast. 
 
 Dogs make a splendid audience on which 
 to practice intonation. As they do not 
 understand the actual words you utter, ex- 
 cept in the case of certain words with which 
 they are familiar, it is the tone and the tone 
 alone on which you must rely for your effect 
 when speaking to them at any length. Try 
 it. Stare into a corner of the room and sink 
 your voice to a terrified whisper. Your dog 
 will turn his head and look into the corner, 
 then get up and go to see what is the matter. 
 
108 Training for the Stage 
 
 Begin to speak tearfully, and he will sit at 
 your feet and whine with sympathy. Talk 
 lovingly to him and he will jump on to your 
 lap and kiss your face and lay his head upon 
 your breast like a happy child. Begin to talk 
 about fun and games, and he will dance with 
 delight. Lose your temper, and he will prick 
 up his ears, but he will know you are not in 
 a temper with him. If, however, any one else 
 speaks angrily to you, he will come out from 
 under the sofa and growl. It is all due to in- 
 tonation. Practice on your dog, and you will 
 soon learn the value of sound. 
 
 Besides the mere delivery of one's lines, 
 there are many effects which a clever actor 
 uses to build-up his part and make it more 
 convincing. Even in the delivery of the lines 
 themselves there are certain little tricks 
 which make for spontaneity. 
 
 I remember, when I was quite a school-girl, 
 having a holiday at the seaside. I went on 
 the Wednesday night to the theater to see 
 Drink; not at all the sort of play that one 
 would expect to appeal to a girl of my age 
 and type. Yet the marvel of Charles War- 
 ner's acting so held me that I went to every 
 
How to "Feed" 109 
 
 performance for the rest of the week, and 
 always, when I saw the play billed after- 
 wards, I turned up again to see it. 
 
 Warner had a little habit of stopping in 
 the middle of a sentence, repeating a word, 
 pausing, and then finishing, which conveyed 
 extraordinarily the impression that he was 
 expressing the thought that had that moment 
 come into his mind. Break up a sentence in 
 this way, and you will see how natural it 
 seems; but, of course, no device of this sort 
 can be used continually. 
 
 Ejaculations, also, increase the freshness 
 of one's speech. Maxine Elliot is an artist 
 in the use of ejaculation. "H'm, h'm!" for 
 "Yes," a shake of the head and a smile for 
 "No" any little characteristic touch of this 
 sort will give individuality to one's playing. 
 It is certainly necessary to seem at times as if 
 one were pausing to seek just the right word 
 to express one's thought, and nothing is so 
 torpid on the stage as the suggestion that 
 one has learnt one's lines by heart and is de- 
 livering them like a machine. 
 
 A few lines on make-up should certainly be 
 included in this attempt to summarize the 
 
110 Training for the Stage 
 
 many details which combine together to build 
 up a good performance. It is impossible to 
 lay down hard and fast rules with regard to 
 make-up because the actor's own personal ap- 
 pearance must be the deciding factor as to 
 what paints and shadings should be used. I 
 will, therefore, merely say this : that one can 
 seldom get a good effect from the use of one 
 grease-paint as a ground-work, and that it is 
 nearly always necessary to mix two or more 
 until one has achieved the desired result. In 
 short, consider your face a canvas and paint 
 on it, taking pains to smooth off the colors. 
 Merely to line with a lining pencil when a 
 "character" make-up is required is unsatis- 
 factory to a degree. The effect must be care- 
 fully considered with regard to high lights 
 and shading, and, above all, the size and 
 lighting of the theater must be taken into ac- 
 count. Never forget the back of the neck. I 
 have seen so many actors on the stage whose 
 make-up finishes on a line with the face, the 
 back of the neck being quite a different color. 
 A good stage laugh is an asset and can 
 easily be cultivated if you take care to de- 
 velop it from your natural laugh. To prac- 
 
How to "Feed" 111 
 
 tice ha-ha-ha-ing all the way up and down 
 the scale does no good at all. However 
 musical the result, it remains artificial. Try 
 first to get a little gurgle into your voice as 
 you speak. Let the joke gradually overcome 
 you until you are bound to burst into a laugh. 
 Having once succeeded in making yourself 
 laugh in this way, laugh again, finishing on a 
 higher note, and once again, ending on a 
 higher note still, until you can break into peal 
 after peal of laughter. The danger now will 
 be that, having once started, you won't be 
 able to stop ! If you can laugh like this, the 
 audience is bound to laugh with you. But 
 I want to emphasize the fact that to start 
 with your stage laugh must be on the lines of 
 your natural laugh. If your own laugh is 
 ugly never mind. Start practicing for a stage 
 laugh simply by trying to make yourself use 
 your own laugh whenever you please. 
 Having once acquired this knack, you can 
 then improve your own laugh and make it 
 more musical, and your stage laugh will 
 naturally become musical too. 
 
 I had an extremely ugly laugh as a girl, 
 and the first elocution teacher to whom I 
 
112 Training for the Stage 
 
 went tried to teach me to laugh by pronounc- 
 ing a series of musical ha-ha-ha's, I was told 
 to start high and come down the scale, which 
 seemed to me unnatural, for in real life I 
 always go up the scale when laughing, as I 
 fancy is usually the case. I then, of my own 
 accord, learnt a poem which amused me, and 
 as I tried to say it aloud I began to laugh 
 as I spoke until the laugh overpowered the 
 words, which became inaudible. After that 
 I quickly taught myself to laugh my own 
 laugh naturally, laughing whenever I pleased. 
 I cannot claim for it that it is a thing of 
 beauty even yet, but I am always told it is 
 infectious, and sometimes, when I have been 
 in an audience, my friends on the stage have 
 said afterwards that they knew I was there, 
 as they recognized my laugh ! 
 
 At a certain stage in the rehearsals pro- 
 ducers are in the habit of saying: 
 
 "Now I want to get the music of the lines." 
 The music of the lines Is a quality which 
 must never be forgotten. In this, as in every- 
 thing else, contrast is^the thing to bear in 
 mind; and the more musical your tone when 
 occasion allows, the more dramatic will be 
 
How to "Feed" 113 
 
 the effect of a change to a tone which is harsh 
 with emotion. 
 
 When trying to cultivate music in the 
 speaking voice be sure that it is your own 
 natural voice which you are using for your 
 experiments. When I was a school-girl and 
 my voice was settling down from child to 
 woman, I went through almost as marked a 
 change as that which boys undergo, because 
 my natural voice is a contralto, so often an 
 ugly duckling of a voice when it first begins 
 to settle. The result was, that at the ages 
 of fourteen and fifteen my speaking voice was 
 unchildlike, and my people objected to it. I 
 was told that it sounded grumpy. In a vain 
 attempt to brighten it I took to speaking on 
 too high a note, with the result that I began 
 to get varicose veins in the throat, and only 
 overcame the mischief by careful training 
 with that well-known voice-trainer, the late 
 Mrs. Emil Behnke. Therefore I say very em- 
 phatically when practicing use your natural 
 voice. If it is ugly, never mind. Directly 
 you begin to use it correctly and have ac- 
 quired the knack of the "forward tone," you 
 will find music beginning to creep into it until 
 
114 Training for the Stage 
 
 in time it rounds into harmony both on and 
 off the stage. 
 
 Whatever devices you may practice, re- 
 member that they must never be used unless 
 the part actually calls for them. To bring 
 in any stage effect for the sake of effect is 
 to insult the intelligence of your audience. 
 I remember one actress, whom I was coach- 
 ing for the part of Lady Teazle, begging me 
 to let her introduce a scream and faint. I 
 told her that I could see no suitable moment 
 for such a bit of business, but she only said: 
 
 "Oh! but I must introduce a scream and 
 faint! I did in that last play I played in, 
 and got such a round of applause." 
 
 Very likely ; but where acting is concerned, 
 though you may make a small, individual 
 triumph through the use of illegitimate ef- 
 fects, you can only do this at the sacrifice of 
 your professional honor. It is just a question 
 of what you most value a transitory success 
 or a lasting reputation. However commer- 
 cialized an art may be, the memory of its 
 financial magnates soon dies away; but cen- 
 turies will pass before we forget a Garrick 
 or a Siddons. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 METHODS OF CERTAIN FAMOUS ACTORS 
 
 OURS is supposed to be a profession which 
 develops our vanity to an abnormal degree. 
 The popular idea of an actor is a creature 
 who wears extraordinary clothes, who goes 
 about doing everything he can to focus at- 
 tention upon himself, and who is essentially 
 insincere in all the ways of his daily life. 
 Now this is absurd. Our whole work is of 
 a nature which obliges us to keep a constant 
 check upon and to criticize ourselves unspar- 
 ingly. Other professions demand only one 
 facet of brain and character; the other half 
 of the human being is free to relax in any 
 way he pleases. On the stage we are using 
 our very bodies as the vehicles of our pro- 
 fessional work, and every movement of those 
 bodies, every tone of our voice, every ten- 
 dency of our mind and character tells in our 
 work. The stage of *o-day is especially con- 
 cerned with the presentation of modern life, 
 115 
 
116 Training for the Stage 
 
 and the way we behave in our daily life sets 
 the standard of our work, because it influ- 
 ences our whole outlook and consequently 
 our impersonations at the theater. We have 
 to keep a watch on our most ordinary acts, 
 because if we pick up a bad habit we are 
 liable to reproduce it on the stage. 
 
 Our work is never finished. Night after 
 night we repeat and repeat a performance. 
 We cannot, as would an author or a painter, 
 finish our work and send it forth to the world 
 to be judged on its merits without further 
 effort on our part. We have to give our- 
 selves to the daily reproduction of our work, 
 and when we cease to do this that work dies. 
 Further, we have to be continually criticizing 
 ourselves, as if we relax for one day the per- 
 formance on that day may fall far below our 
 standard and do a great deal of harm. It is 
 essential for an actor to keep up to his level. 
 The whip is ever behind him, lashing him on. 
 Now to do this it is necessary to invite con- 
 tinual criticism, because we get used to our 
 own effects and soon become unable to judge 
 of the merit of a performance which we are 
 repeating nightly. I am myself "indifferent 
 
Methods of Famous Actors 117 
 
 honest," and in daily life I fear I am some- 
 times guilty of the courteous evasion when 
 asked for my opinion on subjects apart from 
 professional work; but I should never dream 
 of insulting any actor by withholding the 
 honest truth from him. Sharp as my criti- 
 cisms have often been, I have never met an 
 actor who resented them, and I am quite used 
 to being asked to view a performance again 
 and again that I may judge for myself 
 whether the improvements I have ventured 
 to suggest have been successfully incor- 
 porated. This is no special compliment to 
 me. It is merely the attitude which any actor 
 worth his salt takes as a matter of course 
 when a friend criticizes adversely, and the 
 greater the actor the more eager he is to 
 get every detail of his performance judged 
 by an impartial onlooker. We know we are 
 too near our own work to criticize it for our- 
 selves. Before rehearsals are over even the 
 producer and manager have got so used to 
 the play that they have "gone stale" and 
 can no longer rely on their judgment. For 
 this reason during the last week of rehearsals 
 we all welcome what we call a fresh eye, and 
 
118 Training for the Stage 
 
 any comment, no matter how scathing, will 
 be received with respect, conned, and when 
 possible accepted. When I was working for 
 James Welch, he used to like me to see the 
 show every week, and always after the per- 
 formance I had to detail to him every tiny 
 thing I had noticed, and he would make a 
 mental note of it all. 
 
 I remember the first occasion on which I 
 ever saw him. I had been writing as a critic 
 for some time, and to my joy one day I got 
 a letter from him speaking of my criticisms 
 and asking me to come and see him. The 
 run of Mr. Hopkinson had just started, and 
 down I went to the theater to see the show. 
 After the first act his secretary came along 
 and took me to Welch's dressing-room. 
 Welch stared when he saw me. 
 
 "Why," he said, "I thought you were a 
 big woman !" 
 
 At any rate I was quite as big as he was ! 
 Then we settled down to talk, and he asked 
 me what I thought of his Hopkinson. I said 
 that the scene with the Duchess was most 
 sympathetic. 
 
Methods of Famous Actors 119 
 
 "Sympathetic! Sympathetic!" he said. 
 "Hopkinson is an outsider!" 
 
 "Is he?" said I. "Right through the play? 
 Why, I thought from the shy way you tum- 
 bled down those steps at your first entrance 
 that he was one of those lovable, nervous 
 little men . . ." 
 
 I never finished the sentence. Welch 
 simply leaped from his chair. 
 
 "My God!" he cried; "then that entrance 
 of mine must be all wrong." 
 
 You see the point of view? Not for one 
 moment did he imply, not for one moment 
 did it enter his head, that my criticism might 
 be wrong. The mere fact that any one, no 
 matter who, even the biggest fool in the uni- 
 verse, could gather such an impression from 
 his entrance was enough for him. His point 
 of view was that it was up to him to play 
 Hopkinson in such a way that there could be 
 no possibility whatever of misconception as 
 to the type of man Hoppy was meant to be. 
 
 Now that is a great point of view. No 
 matter what qualities we may possess, the 
 brain which at a whisper of criticism looks 
 
120 Training for the Stage 
 
 first within itself for the cause of the fault is 
 the brain which is sound throughout. 
 
 I remember a similar instance with dear 
 old Hermann Vezin. He had been giving a 
 recital at Steinway Hall, and we came out of 
 the hall together. An exquisite creature in 
 sables came up and gushed all over him. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Vezin, you were wonderful 
 more wonderful than ever!" 
 
 Vezin whisked round to me. "Was I ?" he 
 said. 
 
 I was only a girl at the time. That did 
 not matter. He wanted to know. Not that 
 Vezin was in any way troubled by over- 
 modesty. He had, as all geniuses must have, 
 an appreciation of his own worth, and on 
 another occasion, when some one said to him : 
 
 "Oh ! Mr. Vezin, you are one of our great- 
 est English actors!'* 
 
 He turned quietly to me and said: "Where 
 are the others?" 
 
 The knowledge of his own power never 
 hampered Vezin's careful work. In fact that 
 work suffered from over-study on his part, 
 for his fault was that he would theorize 
 about acting instead of trusting to instinct. 
 
Methods of Famous Actors 121 
 
 Work up technique by all means, but when 
 you are playing forget your technique. Un- 
 less you can do this it has not become second 
 nature to you. Theorist as he was, Vezin 
 could do this when he liked, and what is 
 more, he had the knack of imparting tech- 
 nique to others. He was a splendid teacher, 
 and singularly free from personal manner- 
 isms; therefore one could learn of him for 
 years without fear of picking up tricks which 
 would give the training away. He was pains- 
 taking to a degree. I heard him badger one 
 poor pupil for a whole hour in the vain effort 
 to get a certain inflection out of him. At the 
 end of the lesson he said to the pupil: 
 "That will do for to-day. Come at eleven 
 
 to-morrow." 
 
 "What are we going to do then?" asked 
 the pupil. 
 
 "This over again," said Vezin. 
 
 Strange to say the next morning ':he pupil 
 was conspicuous by his absence, nor did he 
 ever come again. 
 
 Vezin was immune himself from personal 
 vanity, and it never entered his head that 
 other people could be less stoical. When you 
 
122 Training for the Stage 
 
 went to him for lessons you never knew what 
 might be your fate. You might think you 
 were lucky if you received your portion of 
 instruction uninterrupted except for the 
 timely comments of his parrot, who had a 
 knack of ejaculating "Scratch me!" at in- 
 opportune moments, and if your dramatic ef- 
 forts affected her too acutely she would say: 
 "Go to the devil !" But if you were not lucky 
 it would be a great deal worse than this, for 
 Vezin had a habit of admitting every one who 
 chanced to call, and often his little room 
 would be quite full of people listening open- 
 eyed to his monotonous reiteration of : 
 
 "Hence ; home, you idle creatures, get you 
 home;" and your more and more inane at- 
 tempts to copy him. They all stared at you 
 with a pitiless stare. Nobody seemed in the 
 least interested in you. All they wanted was 
 for you to hurry up and finish your lesson and 
 be gone, which you would have been thankful 
 to do, but Vezin continued inexorably till the 
 full hour was up. 
 
 His methods were wonderful. He was 
 great on the art of pause, and it is the key- 
 note of expression. A word doubles in im- 
 
Methods of Famous Actors 123 
 
 portance by aid of that little halt in front 
 of it, which serves to pick it out from the rest 
 of the sentence. Another of his great points 
 was constant variety. 
 
 "A fresh tone, please," he would say, "this 
 is fresh matter." 
 
 And so infinite were the changes of his 
 own wonderful voice that he seemed capable 
 of producing new intonations as a conjuror 
 produces rabbits from a silk hat. 
 
 The pause was not only used by him for 
 emphasis. It was also employed to indicate 
 the birth of a new thought in the brain before 
 it found utterance through the tongue. Yet 
 these pauses never seemed to make his per- 
 formance slow, for he had an admirable pace, 
 and nothing which adds to the life-like effect 
 of the performance ever seems to waste time 
 upon the stage. 
 
 Vezin had great control over his breath 
 and always advocated the practice of breath- 
 ing exercises with the care and attention that 
 an opera singer would devote to the subject. 
 I personally hold that breathing exercises 
 should be used with some amount of caution. 
 I remember once I went to take a class at a 
 
124 Training for the Stage 
 
 school, following another teacher whose zeal 
 for breathing exercises must have somewhat 
 outrun her discretion, for when I asked the 
 pupils to show me what they had been doing 
 they immediately started to inhale, and they 
 inhaled and they inhaled and they inhaled 
 until veins stood out on their foreheads and 
 they began to grow purple in the face. For 
 my part, I think that if you inhale gently 
 through the nose, hold the breath while you 
 mentally count four and then gently exhale; 
 then inhale again through the nose, hold the 
 breath again, then, as you exhale, count aloud 
 "One, two, three, four, five, six," holding the 
 breath between each number counted, you 
 will acquire quite as much control over the 
 breath as if you tried more complicated ex- 
 ercises, because the little stoppage of the 
 breath between the speaking of each num- 
 ber is the part of the exercise which is most 
 valuable. It teaches you to keep hold of the 
 breath you have taken, using it or not using 
 it at will, and this is the great secret of breath 
 control when speaking. It is not essential to 
 take a very deep breath ; in fact it is just as 
 bad a fault to take too much as to take too 
 
Methods of Famous Actors 125 
 
 little, because you don't know how to get rid 
 of the residue, but it is essential to measure 
 the breath you have taken, using for each 
 word just the quantity which is required by 
 the force with which that word is to be 
 spoken, and retaining the breath during any 
 little pause which you may wish to make be- 
 tween the words, should such a pause be nec- 
 essary before another breath can be taken. 
 
 Suppose, for instance, at a dramatic mo- 
 ment the striking of a clock was of vital im- 
 portance, and one of the characters had to 
 say: "The clock struck one." To say: 
 
 "The clock struck one" 
 
 with the breath escaping evenly is not ef- 
 fective. You have to say: 
 
 "The clock struck ONE." 
 
 The pause in front of the "one" is the 
 type of pause on which dear old Hermann 
 Vezin laid such stress as a means of giving 
 emphasis to the word which follows. You 
 could not take breath before the word "one" ; 
 you could not say: 
 
 "The clock struck v one." 
 That would be gaspy. You have to say: 
 
 "The clock struck " 
 
126 Training for the Stage 
 
 and hold the breath during the pause, speak- 
 ing the word "one" in a loud, decisive voice. 
 If the breath has not been held during the 
 pause there might be insufficient left to enable 
 the word "one" to ring out with the requisite 
 vigor. 
 
 I have often said that an actor's intelli- 
 gence shows in the way he takes his breath, 
 as so much depends on taking it in the right 
 place. You must mentally look ahead, har- 
 boring your resources and preparing for what 
 is to come. Both farce and drama depend on 
 the building-up of climax upon climax, and 
 this crescendo must be foreseen and allowed 
 for. If audiences only realized this they 
 might be more generous with their applause. 
 The great scene in Othello is often shorn of 
 one of its finest speeches, known in theatrical 
 circles as the "Pontic Sea" speech, because 
 Othellos who play this scene with passion are 
 apt to find it too exhausting. In the old days 
 this speech was almost always omitted. 
 Macready omitted it, and Vezin, who was 
 Macready's rival, was proud of the fact that 
 he could put it in. But he told me that if 
 any audience had failed to give him the round 
 
Methods of Famous Actors 127 
 
 of applause that he invariably got for the 
 speech that preceded it, he would not have 
 had the power to add the "Pontic Sea" 
 speech. That little pause, while the applause 
 rang forth, gave his lungs just time to recover 
 from the strain of the preceding lines. I 
 notice, however, that all the speeches are 
 given by modern Othellos. Query is this 
 because they get their applause? Is it be- 
 cause they are physically more vigorous than 
 actors of old; or is it could it possibly be 
 because they don't put the same passion into 
 the scene, and therefore don't find it so fa- 
 tiguing? I leave it to my readers to say 
 which. 
 
 Welch was always on the look-out for 
 types to mimic, and many a day, when we 
 have been walking along the streets together, 
 he has suddenly clutched my arm and said 
 excitedly: "Agnes Agnes! Look! Look!" 
 I have looked where he has pointed, and seen 
 some terrible specimen of tramphood sham- 
 bling down a side street. Off would go 
 Welch in pursuit. On would trudge our 
 quarry, and on would we follow, up court 
 and down alley, round posts and often into 
 
128 Training for the Stage 
 
 pubs, until Welch had steeped himself in the 
 peculiarities of his unsuspecting model. Then 
 we would proceed at a more leisurely pace to 
 the theater, where he would spend the next 
 hour shambling up and down, dictating letters 
 in the vilest Cockney, interspersed with swear 
 words. 
 
 He believed in studying humanity from the 
 life, and at one period he spent a large por- 
 tion of his time at the Marylebone Police 
 Court. I suspect also that not a little of his 
 money found its way into the collecting box 
 there. 
 
 He was curiously affected by the parts he 
 played, and while studying them seemed to 
 be obsessed by them to such an extent that 
 he almost became the very man. The whole 
 tone of his daily life reflected this obsession, 
 so that any one seeing him for the first time 
 when he was rehearsing a Cockney part 
 might be excused for saying, as one woman 
 said to me, "I am very disappointed in 
 James Welch. He is such a little Cockney." 
 As a matter of fact, Welch was an extremely 
 cultured man, a great reader, who loved 
 
Methods of Famous Actors 129 
 
 beautiful words with the love of a Robert 
 Louis Stevenson. 
 
 I have always had a great admiration for 
 the dramatic temperament of Miss Marie 
 Tempest. She assumes no pose and never 
 seems over-driven with work, maintaining 
 her mental equilibrium. As an artist she falls 
 instinctively into "the skin of her part," and 
 her work is earnest and accurate. In all the 
 time during which I have worked for her I 
 have never met with anything but kindness, 
 and she has shown me in every way delightful 
 consideration. If sympathy be, as I think it 
 is, a necessary quality of genius, she has it 
 unmistakably. She, again, is most intelligent 
 about her work, and very inventive of detail, 
 which, however, she is careful to keep in its 
 proper place as subordinate to the balance 
 and effect of the play as a whole. 
 
 It is rather difficult to describe her method. 
 She does not pose as one who has devoted 
 great thought to her work, but yet at each 
 rehearsal she adds some delicate and subtle 
 point until the picture of her whole perform- 
 ance is filled in and finished. One would 
 
130 Training for the Stage 
 
 never say of her work that it had been 
 thought out; one has the feeling that it "just 
 growed." Yet in reality it is built up of a 
 wealth of minute detail. I know no actress, 
 either here or abroad, who can represent a 
 conflict of two emotions as Marie Tempest 
 can. Her work is above all things subtle, 
 and as such is deserving of careful study by 
 dramatic students. 
 
 Ellen Terry's methods are always spon- 
 taneous. I have seen her play the same parts 
 time after time, but I have never seen her 
 play any duologue scene twice with exactly 
 the same movements and positions on the 
 stage. So far as details are concerned her 
 work is clearly to a certain extent due to the 
 inspiration of the moment, however much 
 thought may have been given to the study of 
 the character itself. For my part, I believe 
 in spontaneity, even in the matter of produc- 
 ing, when it is accompanied by genius. I 
 think that by trusting to the inspiration of 
 the moment one may often get a flashlight 
 thrown on the essentials so illuminating that 
 it more than compensates for any little im- 
 maturity in the details. 
 
Methods of Famous Actors 131 
 
 Many actors need to be taught the whole 
 business of a part. They learn by rote to 
 such an extent that when they are cast for 
 anything important you cannot be sure of the 
 result unless you have the luck to engage also 
 the producer who can give them the coaching 
 they require. 
 
 Duse is another actress whose work is 
 spontaneous to a degree, and in the old days 
 she eschewed make-up, with the strange re- 
 sult that she looked a different woman ac- 
 cording to whether you saw her close or from 
 afar. I saw her first from the back of the 
 dress circle and thought that she had gray 
 hair, but when I changed my place to the 
 front of the stalls I found that her hair was 
 dark with a curious gray lock right in the 
 front. The absence of make-up was sup- 
 posed to leave her features a better canvas 
 for facial expression; but as a matter of fact 
 I am rather doubtful whether this was ex- 
 actly the result attained. Again, those who 
 were very close had an advantage. From a 
 distance the fact that none of the features 
 were made to stand out by the use of cos- 
 metics rendered them all a little indistinct. 
 
132 Training for the Stage 
 
 For sheer facial expression on the stage, as 
 seen in the glare of the footlights, I think 
 the Pierrot's mask is hard to beat, for the 
 whitened face throws up the reddened mouth 
 and penciled eyes in marked relief, and those 
 features, of course, are the most poignant 
 where facial expression is concerned. 
 
 It was Duse who, by her powerful real- 
 istic method, opened the eyes of the English 
 to the fact that the footlights are merely a 
 fourth wall. I shall never forget her en- 
 trance in Magda. When Mrs. Patrick 
 Campbell played the part she stood posed 
 in the doorway, then with stately mien ad- 
 vanced. But one was hardly aware that Duse 
 was on the stage before she was right down 
 by the footlights, hugging her little sister in 
 her arms. I remember she played quite a 
 long portion of that first scene sitting in a 
 high-backed chair with her back to the audi- 
 ence, a chair that practically hid her from 
 view. 
 
 Her methods on the stage are so spon- 
 taneous that you feel sure they are due to in- 
 stinct, and not to that studied semblance of 
 the unstudied, with which some members of 
 
Methods of Famous Actors 133 
 
 the Manchester School have made us fa- 
 miliar. 
 
 If you can trust your cast, spontaneity is 
 the surest guide; but the "if" is menacing. 
 Since the presentation of a play is the weld- 
 ing together of the work of many human be- 
 ings, it is usually fairer to have a guiding 
 spirit in the shape of a good producer. That 
 that producer's word must be law goes with- 
 out saying, otherwise discord would prevail. 
 No producer is worth his salt if his methods 
 are hard and fast. He must know genius 
 when he sees it, and seeing it, must trust it. 
 The late Sir William Gilbert was perhaps the 
 most arbitrary producer ever known. He 
 coached and drilled his company to the small- 
 est detail; yet when he felt that the part he 
 had created was in good hands he stood aside 
 and let the genius of the actor have its way. 
 There is a story told of the late W. H. Ken- 
 dal. Gilbert had been particularly worrying 
 to him during a rehearsal, and at last Kendal 
 ventured on a remonstrance. 
 
 "You don't keep stopping my wife," he 
 said to Gilbert. 
 
134 Training for the Stage 
 
 "Your wife's an actor," was the emphatic 
 reply. 
 
 Many actors are at their worst at re- 
 hearsals; others are at their best. Some will 
 rehearse a dramatic scene on the verge of 
 melodrama, and then, when facing an audi- 
 ence, hit just the right note. Others will 
 under-play right to their -last limit. Some 
 actors give a wonderful first night and are 
 never so good again. Others need about a 
 month to work into their part. Certain ac- 
 tors have certain peculiarities. When play- 
 ing The Gay Lord Quex, Sir John Hare had 
 a habit, at a particular line in the big scene 
 with Sophy Fulgarney, of picking up a book 
 that lay on the table, turning it in his hand 
 and putting it down again. This action had 
 nothing whatever to do with the play, and 
 the book was merely there to give a natural 
 effect to the table. But one night it so hap- 
 pened that Props forgot to put the book on 
 the table. When Sir John Hare arrived at 
 that line there was no book for him to pick 
 up ; his memory failed him, and he had to be 
 prompted. This is a very natural thing to 
 happen, when actors are rehearsed, as they 
 
Methods of Famous Actors 135 
 
 are nowadays, with all the business cut and 
 dried. It may make for smoothness when 
 everything goes right; but if any little thing 
 goes wrong, it is obvious that this over-care- 
 ful preparation must lessen the actor's power 
 of resource. 
 
 Some producers greatly prefer an actor to 
 wait for the word of command and make no 
 attempt whatever to create a part himself. 
 Welch used to hate this, and when he found 
 that any of his company expected him to set- 
 tle every movement for them his language be- 
 came unprintable. He must have been very 
 worrying to his company, for however much 
 he might read a play before he started pro- 
 ducing it, he was apt to get fresh inspiration 
 at every fresh rehearsal, with the result that 
 the business was continually being changed. 
 All very well for him, because he could adapt 
 himself to any circumstances and nothing put 
 him out; but an ordeal for the actor whose 
 wit was less ready and whose position in the 
 profession less secure. 
 
 Vezin used to declaim against the modern 
 custom of supplying members of the cast 
 merely with their own parts and a few words 
 
136 Training for the Stage 
 
 to act as cues. He said that it was an insult 
 to the intelligence of an actor not to give him 
 a chance to study his part in connection with 
 the whole play. His own method of study 
 was peculiar. He never deliberately memor- 
 ized his own lines. He simply read the play 
 through and through and through until he 
 was saturated with it and could have recited 
 the whole thing from beginning to end. His 
 is undoubtedly the ideal method, but Vezin 
 was a man of high ideals, who lived for his 
 art and took it for granted that the welfare 
 of the whole production was the one thing 
 every honorable actor would consider. 
 
 I remember being greatly amused one day 
 when, at a rehearsal of Othello in which he 
 was playing the Moor, his Emilia happened 
 to be a lady who had recently played the part 
 with a well-known actor-manager. The fun 
 began when it came to the fifth act. 
 
 At Emilia's entrance here Vezin stood 
 quietly down R. with his shoulder turned to 
 the audience, facing up stage. Emilia came 
 rushing on to the center of the stage and 
 started her lines: 
 
Methods of Famous Actors 137 
 
 "O, my good lord, yonder" s foul murders 
 done." 
 
 "Am I to stand here?" she said. 
 "Yes," said Vezin. 
 She proceeded: 
 
 "O, the more angel she, 
 And you the blacker devil!" 
 
 "Am I still standing here?" said she. 
 "Yes," said Vezin. 
 
 "My husband? er Do I remain here?" 
 "Yes," said Vezin. 
 
 "M y husband say that she was false? er 
 Am I to play it all dead center?" 
 
 "Yes," said Vezin, "it is your scene." 
 
 Emilia's mouth opened. Her scene! 
 
 With Othello on the stage! Words failed 
 
 her. But that was Vezin's point of view. 
 
 He would no more have stolen the position 
 
138 Training for the Stage 
 
 of advantage on the stage which he felt be- 
 longed by rights to another actor than he 
 would have forged a check. It was simply 
 not his idea of common honesty. 
 
 I have said that on the English stage we 
 place possibly undue weight on the impor- 
 tance of detail, a fault which the late Sir 
 Henry Irving is supposed to have fostered, 
 but which was developed hot-foot by Sir Her- 
 bert Tree. We have one virtue, however, 
 for which I think we received too little credit 
 we use the whole of our stage, and we use 
 it naturally. This is one reason why action 
 is all important in our plays and why our 
 plays are therefore essentially plays where a 
 graceful, natural carriage and simple but ef- 
 fective use of gesture are very necessary. In 
 France the actors show themselves much 
 more conscious of their audiences. They 
 often stand in line and face the audience. 
 The action takes place to the front of the 
 stage and is subordinated to the speaking of 
 the words. This is the case, again, in Amer- 
 ica, where the producers keep the actors well 
 down stage, seldom setting a room as we do, 
 but usually having a center arch into a second 
 
Methods of Famous Actors 139 
 
 room or a vista down a garden or some other 
 device which will fill the stage and give a 
 broad effect while keeping the actual room in 
 which the action is concentrated narrowed 
 down to the front. 
 
 Line writing is highly esteemed in Amer- 
 ica, and this method of producing enables the 
 actors to speak their lines with great dis- 
 tinctness. The effect is not so restful or so 
 absolutely true to life as that which we 
 achieve, but for a certain style of play it is 
 possibly more effective. I believe myself that 
 one of the reasons why American plays are 
 not always such successes here as in their na- 
 tive land is that the English company does 
 not adapt itself to the subtle differences of 
 method required for the American business. 
 
 Holland has a very painstaking theater, 
 and Germany, when handling classics, a sense 
 of grandeur which often becomes stereo- 
 typed. Norway is curiously homely, and the 
 monosyllabic Norse tongue has a fascinating, 
 childish candor of its own. Spain has aban- 
 don and a certain rough fire which at times 
 degenerates into the frank naivete of the 
 Middle Ages. But Italy, to my mind, holds 
 
140 Training for the Stage 
 
 the palm. Her stage has the innate spon- 
 taneity of a race whose very life is drama. 
 It is as candid as the Norwegian, as witty as 
 the French, as classic as the German, as 
 natural as the English, as ingenious as the 
 American, and has, withal, a characteristic 
 fire. In Italy the great play is a thing of com- 
 paratively common occurrence, but, then, so 
 is the great actor. Where we leave off they 
 begin. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 HOW TO SET ABOUT THE WORK OF GETTING 
 AN ENGAGEMENT 
 
 GET to know people. It is difficult to make 
 one's way on the stage unless one has a 
 friend at Court to help one on. Beware of 
 advertisements. Beware of all agents ex- 
 cept the few who are guaranteed by those 
 wise in the profession. Traps for the un- 
 wary are manifold; and very serious may be 
 the fate of the tenderfoot who gets into 
 wrong hands. 
 
 A good amateur dramatic company is not 
 only a useful mode of training, but is often 
 a very straight road on to the stage. Es- 
 pecially helpful is the work undertaken by 
 many amateur societies of providing enter- 
 tainments for mission-halls at the East End 
 of London, as on these make-shift stages one 
 is denied the help of scenes and properties, 
 and has to make believe. Unforeseen hitches 
 will occur, and it brings out the resources of 
 141 
 
142 Training for the Stage 
 
 a young amateur to have to grapple with 
 these conditions. 
 
 I remember once, when a little A.D.C. 
 which I had formed among my pupils was 
 performing at an East End Mission Hall, an 
 amusing incident occurred. We were play- 
 ing Sydney Grundy's drama, A Fool's Para- 
 dise, and I was taking the part of the woman 
 who poisons her husband. At the end of the 
 play I get caught by the Doctor, who declares 
 that there is poison in the draught I have 
 poured out for my husband. I cry out "This 
 is not poison see!" and drink the draught 
 myself; then with a laugh of defiance make 
 my way in stately fashion to die discreetly 
 "off," in the wings. Well, after my mock- 
 ing curtsey I laid my hand upon the door only 
 to find, to my horror, that somebody had 
 bolted it on the outside. I started my laugh 
 all over again, and gravitated to the door R. 
 To my dismay, that was bolted too; so with 
 a final "ha! ha!" of mockery I fled across 
 the stage and as a last resource tried the 
 door L. That also was bolted! So I had to 
 go through my death agonies in front of the 
 audience and die C. This was all very well; 
 
Getting an Engagement 143 
 
 in fact I rather enjoyed it. But unfortun- 
 ately, my husand in the play had not been 
 listening, and when he now made his en- 
 trance, he fell over my feet and said "Oh, I 
 beg your pardon! What are you doing 
 there?" and the scene ended to yells of ap- 
 preciative laughter from the back benches. 
 
 We often had much to put up with at these 
 little mission halls, and our audiences, no 
 doubt, still more! But that we got a great 
 deal of useful experience is proved by the 
 fact that every member of that little com- 
 pany is either doing well on the stage or has 
 made a good marriage ! 
 
 Of course, the easiest way to get an in- 
 troduction to the stage is to go to a good 
 teacher, and by the excellence of your work 
 inspire that teacher with the firm belief that 
 your future success is going to be a good 
 advertisement for him. He will then see to 
 it for you. Certain agents, of course, are 
 thoroughly worth while if you can only per- 
 suade them that you yourself are worth while. 
 That is the trouble. It is no good telling 
 them so. They are all quite used to hearing 
 that. And it is no good trying to give them 
 
144 Training for the Stage 
 
 a specimen of your quality in the shape of a 
 recitation. They simply won't listen to you. 
 The days when a manager casting a play al- 
 lowed the applicants to recite to him are, in 
 the memory of the oldest of us, as a golden 
 dream. Nowadays a cast is chosen very 
 largely by its appearance, and some authors 
 are even greater sinners in this respect than 
 managers, because they have much less sense 
 of what can be done by make-up. As a mat- 
 ter of fact the appeal of the stage is so es- 
 sentially an appeal to the eye that appear- 
 ance is infinitely more important than the or- 
 dinary amateur is willing to admit. If a 
 man looks the part he is playing the audi- 
 ence is willing to believe that the whole credit 
 is due to his acting. But if a man does not 
 look that part, his acting has got to be super- 
 lative indeed to enable him to overcome the 
 impression his appearance has created. 
 
 The casting of a play is such a vital factor 
 in its success or failure that a manager cannot 
 be blamed for being afraid to trust any one 
 whose work in a similar part he has not ac- 
 tually seen; and this is one of the reasons 
 why an actor who has once made a success 
 
Getting an Engagement 145 
 
 in a marked character part will be condemned 
 for the rest of his life to play parts of that 
 type ; which sometimes, unfortunately, means 
 that if the part is of a type which is not often 
 found in plays, he will be denied a chance to 
 make good in other lines. This is the reason 
 why certain notable successes have brought in 
 their train years of inaction to the genius 
 which has created them. It is a crying evil, 
 and one of which every actor stands in dread. 
 Since appearance is so important on the 
 stage, it is obvious that the actor who wishes 
 to get on must bear it ever in mind; and 
 many a youngster has to deny himself what 
 he would far rather have for the sake of 
 keeping always a good appearance. Our 
 wardrobe is the specter that haunts our lives; 
 and when trying for a first engagement it is 
 advisable that the details of dress should be 
 carefully chosen. By this I do not mean 
 that you must dress extravagantly, and cer- 
 tainly I do not mean that you must dress ex- 
 aggeratedly. The days have long gone by 
 when the actress who turned up in the gay 
 plumage of the de.mi-monde was the actress 
 who was chosen. In the West End, at any 
 
146 Training for the Stage 
 
 rate, it is the tailor-made girl who gets the 
 first chance. Her clothes must not only be 
 well made, they must be tasteful and refined, 
 and she must wear them as if she were in the 
 habit of wearing good clothes, and as if she 
 belonged to that class of society where good 
 clothes are so much a matter of everyday 
 life that we have ceased to be conscious of 
 them. Hats, gloves and shoes are all im- 
 portant. A manager will take in every little 
 detail because he is used to considering the 
 effect of detail on the stage. 
 
 It is always a mistake to apply for an en- 
 gagement when there is nothing definitely 
 going. Even though one may have a letter 
 of introduction to a manager, it is far better 
 to keep it until one has found out that that 
 manager is about to cast a play either for 
 London or for a tour and has certain parts 
 vacant. In this case try to find out what these 
 parts are and the type of appearance that 
 will be required for them, and choose your 
 dress accordingly. A woman has a special 
 advantage this way, as by the height of her 
 heels and hat she can succeed in conveying 
 an impression of being short or tall. 
 
Getting an Engagement 147 
 
 Be very careful how you make up when 
 applying for an engagement. It is not always 
 necessary to make-up at all. If the com- 
 plexion is fresh, Nature unaided will create 
 the best impression. But when make-up is 
 used, let it be discreetly used, bearing in 
 mind the fact that what looks well on the 
 stage will look outre in daylight. So let the 
 touching-up be done with discretion. 
 
 We will suppose that the initial difficulty 
 of getting information that a cast is about 
 to be chosen has been overcome, and that the 
 aspirant has applied for an appointment and 
 has received a reply, naming the hour at 
 which he or she is to call. It is useless to 
 turn up without an appointment. It is worse 
 than useless to besiege a manager with con- 
 stant applications for appointments which he 
 is not likely to grant; as if he once forms the 
 impression that you are a nuisance he will 
 not see you at all. 
 
 We are supposing, however, that he has 
 consented to see you, and that you have re- 
 ceived a card telling you to call at the theater 
 at such and such an hour. You turn up at the 
 stage door and show your card to the stage 
 
148 Training for the Stage 
 
 door-keeper. Be very nice to the stage door- 
 keeper; he is a power in the land. Don't try 
 to tip him at the wrong moment, and don't, 
 whatever you do, let him see that you are 
 trying to be nice. Don't condescend. What- 
 ever his original social standing may have 
 been, he is by now at least your equal, and 
 probably very much your superior, in that 
 greatest of all sciences knowledge of human 
 nature ! I have many friends who are stage 
 door-keepers, and one of my most valued 
 friends is a stage carpenter. Never have I 
 felt prouder in my life then when the prop- 
 erty man at the Ambassadors Theater on the 
 first night of my management there said: 
 "May I shake hands, Miss Platt? I have 
 never known rehearsals go without a cross 
 word before!" 
 
 Apropos of the stage carpenter, Charlie 
 by name, and a shrewd North countryman, 
 it was once brought home to me that he was 
 really, as he often humorously remarked, one 
 of the most important members of the com- 
 pany. He happened to be away one after- 
 noon. On that occasion none of the doors 
 worked; the stage was set in the wrong way; 
 
Getting an Engagement 149 
 
 the stage cloth rucked up, and one of the ac- 
 tors tumbled. Something went wrong with 
 the property piano, and at the end of the per- 
 formance the star was in such a temper that 
 I had my eyes opened as never before to the 
 wealth of the English language. However 
 good a cast, however perfect the manage- 
 ment, it is not too much to say that the suc- 
 cess of the play can stand or fall by the head 
 carpenter, who, moreover, can give a novice 
 many a useful tip and prove indeed a friend 
 in need, or the reverse, as the case may be. 
 
 There is a story told of Wybert Rousby. 
 When playing King Lear once he fell foul of 
 the stage hands and abused them roundly for 
 not making the thunder loud enough. The 
 next night, when the scene on the heath com- 
 menced, he was more furious than ever, for 
 there was no thunder at all. When, however, 
 he opened his mouth to deliver the big speech, 
 
 "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks," 
 
 he found that there was no occasion to com- 
 plain of lack of thunder! The audience en- 
 joyed that performance a great deal more 
 
150 Training for the Stage 
 
 than he did, but not quite in the right spirit. 
 
 I feel as if I were wandering from my 
 point, but really I am not doing so, for what- 
 ever other advice, good or bad, this little 
 book may try to give, it should at least con- 
 tain these words of wisdom: "If you want 
 to get on on the stage, be nice to every one." 
 
 Now I have quite forgotten where I left 
 my aspirant. Waiting at the stage door, I 
 think. Dear me ! That reminds me of once, 
 long ago no, not so very long ago when I 
 went down to Wyndham's to see James 
 Welch. In the stage door-keeper's hutch sat 
 a fireman. He did not know me and he re- 
 fused to let me pass. I told him I had an 
 appointment. He said: 
 
 "Where's your letter?" 
 
 I had not got a letter, so he snorted and re- 
 sumed his reading. 
 
 After five minutes I said again: "I really 
 have an appointment." 
 
 He just snorted and resumed his reading. 
 
 "I really think Mr. Welch must be waiting 
 for me." 
 
 He snorted and resumed his reading. 
 
 After another five minutes I tried him in 
 
Getting an Engagement 151 
 
 another language two, three, four other 
 languages. He only snorted and resumed 
 his reading. 
 
 Then a small boy came along. 
 
 "Guv'nor says he is expecting a young lady. 
 Will you please show her into his dressing- 
 room and ask her to wait?" 
 
 The fireman snorted and resumed his read- 
 ing. So I said: 
 
 "If you please, I think / am the young 
 lady." 
 
 He laid down his paper and looked me up 
 and down. 
 
 "Younff lady!" he said, "YOUNG 
 LADY!!" and snorted and resumed his 
 reading. 
 
 Until Welch himself came along to fetch 
 me I had to remain outside. 
 
 However, this sort of thing does not often 
 happen, and it wouldn't have happened to me 
 then if I had had the sense to turn up in 
 decent clothes ; but as it was a filthy day and 
 as I knew Welch well, it did not occur to me 
 to dress for the guardian of the portal. 
 
 Well, we will suppose that you get past the 
 stage door-keeper and are shown, after wait- 
 
152 Training for the Stage 
 
 ing not more than two hours and thirty-five 
 minutes, into the manager's room. He will 
 probably be very nice to you, especially if 
 he does not mean to engage you. Make up 
 your mind before you go in that you will only 
 be allowed to speak three words, and that 
 those three words must be carefully chosen. 
 When it comes to the point you are sure to 
 forget what you have decided to say; but 
 provided you remember that you mus*t say 
 as little as possible that won't matter. Never 
 forget that managers are very busy people, 
 and that to win your way into their good 
 books you must be an adept at the art of 
 tabloid conversation. Don't tell them what 
 other people think of you. Directly they 
 look at you they will know what they think, 
 and that's the only thing that matters to 
 them. Don't make objections to anything 
 they say. Don't give them any chance to 
 think that you are going to be a nuisance, be- 
 cause a manager never tolerates any one 
 whom he thinks is going to be a nuisance, 
 and he has a little habit of thinking that most 
 people are going to be a nuisance. Unfor- 
 tunately, he has only too often good reason 
 
Getting an Engagement 153 
 
 for thinking so. Remember, if you arc nerv- 
 ous, he is nervy. Just stay quiet and let him 
 make up his own mind. If it is in your favor 
 all the better for you; if it is not, and you 
 waste his time trying to argue him into en- 
 gaging you, you are only prejudicing your 
 chances for another occasion. Smile, look 
 willing and able to do anything, and he will 
 come to the conclusion that though, of course, 
 you are no good at all, you may be the sort 
 of person whom he can successfully knock 
 into shape, and if he thinks that he will like 
 you, for, however managers may differ in 
 other ways, I have never known one who did 
 not cherish in his heart the belief that he 
 could coach a stone to act if he only liked to 
 try. He probably could! To the born 
 teacher there is nothing in this world so en- 
 joyable as teaching, and the quality that at- 
 tracts us all is malleability. 
 
 Managers are not running philanthropic 
 institutions, and the one thing that is not 
 likely to melt their hearts is a long history of 
 an actor's personal troubles. Success on the 
 stage is a question of magnetism, and when 
 we are weighed down with woe we are not 
 
154 Training for the Stage 
 
 magnetic. A manager wants a cast which 
 will induce an audience to come to his theater 
 again and again, and he knows that the self- 
 centered nature is not the type which attracts. 
 If you can leave on him the impression that 
 you are interesting he may give you a chance ; 
 but it is the reverse of probable that he will 
 find anything to interest him in a narrative 
 of your personal affairs. When choosing the 
 cast of a new play his thoughts are all en- 
 grossed with his own affairs, and he instinc- 
 tively resents any attempt to draw him away 
 from the matter in hand. Keep quiet. Let 
 him look at you and form his own conclu- 
 sions, and only answer when you are 
 spoken to. 
 
 Well, now, we will suppose that you have 
 followed up instructions to the letter and 
 that you have been engaged. You will be 
 given a contract, which you will sign after 
 you have read it. It ought to be the stan- 
 dard contract of the Actors' Trade Union, 
 and probably will be, and as you yourself are 
 about to become a member of the Actors' 
 Trade Union as soon as eligible, this, of 
 course, will be quite agreeable to you. We 
 
Getting an Engagement 155 
 
 will suppose that you are engaged to under- 
 study. You will be given a typescript of 
 your part, which you will probably read 
 through. It will consist of your own lines 
 with just a word or two of the previous lines 
 as cue, and will not give you any idea of the 
 play. You will have to wait till rehearsals 
 commence to find out what it is all about. 
 This does not matter, for it is never advis- 
 able to study a part until after the first re- 
 hearsal as, if you have formed pre-conceived 
 ideas of how that part should be played, it is 
 sometimes difficult to throw these ideas aside 
 and adapt yourself to the ideas of the pro- 
 ducer. Never try to commit a line to heart 
 until you have been told your position on the 
 stage when that line is spoken, so that the 
 business of the stage may be impressed upon 
 your mind in connection with the line when 
 the line is studied. Always carry a pencil to re- 
 hearsal, as the play will be altered during the 
 rehearsal, and every alteration must be care- 
 fully entered in the typescript, together with 
 notes of the positions and business. Exacti- 
 tude in these matters is important. A pro- 
 ducer will sometimes change his mind and at 
 
156 Training for the Stage 
 
 one rehearsal will alter a position which has 
 been settled at some previous rehearsal. This 
 cannot be helped, as it is very difficult to 
 judge of the exact value of a line until the 
 play is beginning to shape, and often little 
 alterations are necessary to keep the balance 
 true. It is a mistake to grumble, as some- 
 times the most important improvements have 
 been made in a play at the last minute, and 
 everything that is for the good of the play is 
 for the good of every one connected with that 
 play. Never forget what has been so often 
 insisted upon in these pages, namely, that 
 your own success depends entirely on that of 
 the whole production. 
 
 Certain actors have a habit of grumbling 
 in the wings during the progress of rehearsal, 
 of commenting on the work of the producer 
 and suggesting what they think would be 
 improvements. This whispering is very an- 
 noying to the producer, and a spirit of grum- 
 bling once set going in a cast may cause an 
 infinitude of mischief. Don't listen to these 
 people. If you are new to the profession 
 they will try to get hold of you, as they are 
 usually vain, and they will think that you, 
 
Getting an Engagement 157 
 
 being a novice, will be easy to impress. Be- 
 ware of them. However intent on his work a 
 producer may seem he has eyes at the back 
 of his head and ears in every nerve of his 
 body; and though you may be standing right 
 away in a corner, he will know what you are 
 doing and make a black mark in his mind 
 against you. Always wa<tch a rehearsal 
 quietly and attentively. If other members 
 of the cast speak to you, be polite, but do 
 not encourage conversation. If you do you 
 will lose the adv-an-tage of the finest training 
 you can ha^ve that of watching the shaping 
 of a play and the co-aching of a company. 
 
 One of my pupils, Miss Gladys Parnell, 
 got a remarkable chance, simply because of 
 her attention at rehearsals. She had had no 
 experien-ce, but I asked Arthur Bourchier to 
 give her a chance, and he very kindly offered 
 her a " walk-on" and the undeustudy of a 
 small part in The Morals of Mavcus, which 
 was going on at the Garrick. Miss Parnell 
 was so attentive at rehearsals that she at- 
 tracted the attention of the stage manager, 
 Sydney Valentine, and when the first tour 
 was sent out he asked her if she would like 
 
158 Training for the Stage 
 
 to go with it, to play the small part she had 
 understudied in town and understudy the 
 leading lady in the part of Carlatta. She ac- 
 cepted, and it so happened that the actress 
 playing Carlotta was wanted for a leading 
 part in town before the tour finished, and 
 Miss Parnell, who was then oaly sixteen and 
 who had never been on any stage before, was 
 given Carlotta to play for the rest of the 
 tour. She was, therefore, playing a leading 
 part on tour before she had been on the stage 
 three months, simply because she showed by 
 her quiet attention at rehearsals that she was 
 really earnest about her work. 
 
 I can tell you another story which is really 
 rather funny. I wrote to James Welch about 
 another pupil of mine also a novice. I 
 asked if he would give her the part of Ro- 
 wena in When Knights were Bold on tour. 
 Of course he replied tha*t he would see her 
 with pleasure. She went to the theater, ac- 
 companied by her mother, a dainty lady of 
 aristocratic bearing and exquisite snow-white 
 hair. It so happened that the girl stopped 
 in the passage to pick up a glove she had 
 dropped, and her mother entered Welch's 
 
Getting an Engagement 159 
 
 room alone. He looked a little surprised, but 
 he said: "I hear I am to give you the part 
 of Rowena. Here it is. Of course, anyone 
 Miss Platt sends. . . ." The girl came in 
 a moment later and explained. Jimmy told 
 me afterwards that his relief was boundless ! 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 . . . AND HOW TO BEHAVE WHEN IT IS GOT! 
 
 IT is not only your work upon the stage 
 which helps you to get on in the profession. 
 To an actor the art of living is every bit as 
 important as the art of acting. As a rule 
 actors talk too much ; our hours of work are 
 so different from the hours of the ordinary 
 citizen that we are apt to find ourselves in 
 our free moments thrown almost entirely on 
 our fellow professionals for company. More- 
 over, our work itself gives many opportuni- 
 ties for gossip because it is composed so large- 
 ly of intervals and waits. Then, when we 
 tour, there are train journeys, and one cannot 
 be thrown with a certain set of people for 
 weeks or months at a time without becoming 
 somewhat intimate with them, especially if 
 one has to share a dressing-room. * All these 
 things bring about a number of rapid and 
 often transitory friendships, similar to the in- 
 timacy, so quickly ended, of nurse and patient. 
 160 
 
How to Behave 161 
 
 Just as illness makes us ready to open our 
 hearts, so the nervous tension of rehearsals 
 and the close quarters of life at a theater to 
 say nothing of the exhilaration produced by 
 the actual performances tend to rouse in us 
 a somewhat abnormal mood, in which discre- 
 tion is often conspicuous by its absence. 
 Though the old social ban upon our profes- 
 sion has been very greatly removed, we are 
 still a race apart, and we have a little habit of 
 absorbing ourselves so much in our work that 
 we are apt at times to be dull company for 
 those who are not in the profession. We talk 
 a language of our own, and as we are haunted 
 by the need of getting fresh and fresh en- 
 gagements, we cannot keep the thought of 
 "shop" out of our minds. We pick up every 
 little bit of gossip about the stage because 
 our chances may depend on having all inside 
 knowledge. All this is a sufficient incentive 
 to gossip, accentuated by the fact that as we 
 are continually seeking fresh engagements, 
 we are always waiting about to see managers ; 
 and while we wait we talk. While we wait 
 for our scenes to come on at rehearsal we 
 are only too apt to talk, and when we leave 
 
162 Training for the Stage 
 
 rehearsal we usually wend our way to some 
 professional club where we talk again. In 
 fact we talk a great deal too much, and one 
 of the most important rules of conduct for 
 the novice entering the profession is to learn 
 to control his tongue. Remember that what- 
 ever you say will be repeated, and that when- 
 ever it is repeated it will be exaggerated, and 
 your name will be attached to it every time, 
 so that you may some day have to answer, 
 not only for what you have said but for what 
 some one has said that some one has said you 
 have said. Yet it does not do to seem un- 
 communicative. For an actor to get a repu- 
 tation of being stand-offish is fatal; and we 
 owe so much to the goodwill of our fellow 
 professionals that it is not too much to say 
 that such behavior would be ungrateful. You 
 must be cordial and sincere ; you must feel a 
 genuine interest in your companions, and you 
 must respond to their interest in yourself. 
 Talk therefore, and talk sincerely, and talk 
 frankly; but never give your inner heart 
 away, and, above all, never give information 
 about another which that other would not wish 
 you to give. There ! I am afraid that sounds 
 
Haw to Behave 163 
 
 rather preachy, but all who are old in the 
 profession will agree with me that it is good 
 advice, and it is much easier said than done. 
 I have said Be frank, and be grateful for 
 the interest that others take in you. But I 
 am afraid I must be very cynical and add 
 don't believe all they say! I remember the 
 case of a little friend of mine whto had been 
 understudying and was suddenly called upon 
 to play a par-t at a moment's notice. She was 
 somewhat new to the stage and nervous. 
 She had hardly entered the theater when one 
 of the other girls in the company descended 
 on her with a hearty invitation to share a 
 bottle of champagne. "You will need it, my 
 dear. It will steady your nerves." A few 
 minutes after, when she was wandering from 
 her friend's dressing-room to her own, she 
 was again stopped and a glass of port wine 
 was held out to her. Next she was given 
 balf a bottle of stout, and she was then of- 
 fered a whisky and soda, while her dresser 
 insisted on her taking Wincarnis. The re- 
 sult was that her performance made up in 
 audacity for what it lacked in coherence. 
 And her make-up ! The other girls had given 
 
164 Training for the Stage 
 
 her advice about it and she had taken it all ! 
 Her face looked like a rainbow seen through 
 a spotted veil. 
 
 If you have a particularly telling bit of 
 business, ten to one somebody will say, "I 
 shouldn't do that, my dear." If you are a 
 pretty girl you are sure to be told that your 
 make-up is unbecoming. On the other hand, 
 when you have steered your way through 
 these pitfalls and have got upon the stage, 
 you- will find that, understudy though you be, 
 the principals of the company will do all in 
 their power to assist you. They will whis- 
 per your lines ; they will cover your mistakes ; 
 they will hearten you with words of encour- 
 agement; and when the ordeal is over, they 
 will give you their cordial congratulations. 
 More than this, if they can put in a good 
 word for you with that management or any 
 other they will do so con amore* 
 
 Success on the stage depends much on per- 
 sonality; and experience goes to show that 
 success comes more surely to those who are 
 not always trying to snatch it. Go quietly 
 about your work and never commit a breach 
 of etiquette, for though we are considered 
 
How to Behave 165 
 
 Bohemians, we have our rules of caste, which 
 must be stringently observed. Don't force 
 yourself on the attention of an actor of 
 higher standing than your own. Wait. If 
 there is anything in you worth noticing he 
 will notice it for himself and seek you out 
 without your having to seek him. I have seen 
 a manager brush aside a crowd of clamorous 
 girls as if they were flies, and pick out the 
 one who stayed quietly by saying nothing. I 
 have seen a leading lady smile sweetly every 
 night for a week in answer to the voluble 
 greeting of an understudy who accompanied 
 her to the door of her dressing-room paying 
 her compliments and pressing attentions on 
 her. But at the end of the week the star 
 said to her dresser: "Keep that girl out of 
 my way." Don't intrude where you are not 
 wanted. It is a mistake. 
 
 Of course the social side of life is im- 
 portant to us, because if we have many 
 friends we bring a certain following to see 
 us when we are playing, and this is a clear 
 asset. Many a play is put on the stage with 
 insufficient financial backing, and if this play 
 is not an immediate success its fate may de- 
 
166 Training for the Stage 
 
 pend upon the nucleus of an audience brought 
 by the social connection of its cast. If it can 
 steer through its first weeks without financial 
 disaster it may develop into a success; but 
 those first weeks are a ticklish time for almost 
 every play, and it is often useful to have a 
 little private interest which will help to fill 
 the house during that period. An actor can- 
 not afford to live too retired a life. He must 
 achieve a certain measure of popularity both 
 on and off the stage, and for this purpose it 
 is well that he should belong to certain use- 
 ful and influential clubs. He must also know 
 how to behave in any class of society, and to 
 do this it is as well that he should acquire 
 the habits of society, and especially an ac- 
 quaintance with its latest fads and shibbo- 
 leths. On the other hand, excess of all kinds 
 is greatly to be deplored, because, apart from 
 any moral reason, he will soon find that that 
 sort of thing blunts his more delicate percep- 
 tions and renders him insensitive to those fine 
 touches and subtle distinctions on which the 
 artistic value of his work depends. 
 
 Of course it is essential for an actor to 
 look after his health, because his work is of 
 
How to Behave 167 
 
 a kind which tells upon the nerves. It is as 
 important to observe sound laws of hygiene 
 with reference to your daily life, as it is to 
 keep control of your nerves with reference 
 to the work itself. Argument is apt to run 
 high with regard to how far you should let 
 yourself go when playing a dramatic scene. 
 One school will say that an artist must always 
 "feel" what he is doing, and another will 
 maintain that the best work is done by the 
 man who, though realizing the emotional 
 value of the scene he is playing, never aban- 
 dons himself to that emotion, but simply sim- 
 ulates it. It seems to me that either extreme 
 would be equally inartistic. An actor who 
 believes that by lashing himself into a state 
 of hysteria he can achieve a great emotional 
 effect is only too apt to take the leap from 
 the sublime to the ridiculous, and by losing 
 control of himself lose also his power of con- 
 veying to others what he wishes to express. 
 James Welch, one of the greatest tragic ac- 
 tors I have even seen, when rehearsing for 
 "The Hooligan" or any other emotional part, 
 would come along to my rooms and go over 
 the lines until he had got so accustomed to 
 
168 Training for the Stage 
 
 them by constant repetition that he could 
 speak them without having his utterance im- 
 peded by sobs. I have known him, when first 
 reading aloud scenes of a pathetic nature, 
 stop with the tears running down his cheeks, 
 quite unable to continue speaking. His own 
 feeling was so great that it defeated its pur- 
 pose. He had to conquer this, but he re- 
 membered it, and when he had learnt to con- 
 trol it, his memory of it enabled him to re- 
 produce the effect of feeling. Of course the 
 intensity of our feeling on the stage varies 
 very much with our temperament, but I do 
 not think it follows that an actor need be 
 wrung to the heartstrings by the scene he is 
 playing so long as he has realized its full 
 emotional value when first studying the part. 
 His control of the technique of his art will 
 enable him to reproduce sufficient actual emo- 
 tion to ensure a result that is artistic and sin- 
 cere. It is often those who talk the most 
 who feel the least, and I am not inclined to 
 think that hysteria can ever take the place of 
 emotion. One seldom sees deep feeling sin- 
 cerely conveyed upon the stage, because it is 
 only great natures who understand it, and 
 
How to Behave 169 
 
 great natures are rare. When an artist like 
 Duse lifts her head and looks the anguish of 
 a broken heart, we don't need sobs and pants 
 and gasps and cries. Her eyes alone convey 
 something beyond words. 
 
 Macready was presumably a great actor, 
 but it is not necessary to adopt his method 
 of marching up and down, up and down, in 
 the wings like a caged lion, working himself 
 up into a state of nervous excitement before 
 he burst upon the stage. That sort of thing 
 is gone. If the power of a scene is not suf- 
 ficient to awaken in you the right mood di- 
 rectly you enter upon it, you are no actor. 
 But, of course, you must dedicate yourself to 
 great work by avoiding any foolish waste of 
 nervous energy. 
 
 It is a mistake for an actor to fuss about 
 his work or think it necessary to stimulate his 
 nerves unnaturally. Nervousness seems a 
 necessary adjunct of artistic ability, and, for 
 my part, I think it a pleasing one. My heart 
 goes out to the nervous temperament, es- 
 pecially when it is accompanied by real power. 
 I remember driving to Covent Garden with 
 Miss Perceval Allen when she was singing 
 
170 Training for the Stage 
 
 Brunhilde in The Ring. As we drew near 
 the theater and saw the queues waiting she 
 clutched my hand and said: "Are all those 
 people waiting to hear me sing, dear?" in 
 the tone of a frightened child. It is the right 
 spirit, and, whether acknowledged or not, I 
 think it is the spirit in which every artist faces 
 his work. But to assume the pose of nerves, 
 to call "temperament" an excuse for irrita- 
 bility, erratic behavior and self-indulgence, is 
 simply to cut the throat of one's own genius. 
 Be yourself; don't talk about yourself. 
 Don't try to impress other people with the 
 fact that you are something apart from the 
 common herd, because if you do, they will 
 simply dislike you for it, and when they get 
 a chance of finding fault with you, they will 
 make the most of it. 
 
 I remember hearing a pretty story. At a 
 well-known theatrical agent's in New York 
 there were a crowd of actresses assembled, 
 talking, posing, giving themselves airs, re- 
 counting their triumphs, hinting at their ad- 
 mirers. The door of the inner room opened, 
 and the greatest of American managers ap- 
 peared there. Every one stopped chatter- 
 
How to Behave 171 
 
 ing and pushed forward, eager to attract his 
 eye. Taking no notice of the finely dressed 
 poseuses, he beckoned with his finger to a 
 quiet little woman who had been sitting silent 
 in the corner. She rose and went into his 
 private room. She was Clara Morris, and 
 a few weeks later all New York rang with 
 her name. She became the greatest actress 
 America has ever had, and I believe she owed 
 her first chance largely to the fact that she 
 made no attempt to assert herself, having 
 so real a personality of her own that its quiet 
 power made itself felt without the need for 
 any assertion. If quietness be backed by 
 power it is the most telling quality an actor 
 can possess. Critics call it restraint. 
 
 But the power must be innate. Young ac- 
 tors sometimes shrink from anything effective 
 on the stage from the fear that it may be 
 melodramatic. The gist of the whole matter 
 lies in this: that if you have to assume an 
 emotion and lash yourself into an effect, that 
 effect is bound to seem melodramatic be- 
 cause it is forced; but if you have a tempera- 
 ment which is capable of deep feeling you 
 can express it without conscious effort, be- 
 
172 Training for the Stage 
 
 cause your face and eyes will express it for 
 you. Husband your resources. Don't strike 
 the top note too soon, or you get no climax. 
 The greater your control over your own 
 nerve, the greater is the suggestion of real 
 feeling. Nerves and feeling are not only two 
 different things; they are diametrically op- 
 posed to one another. The man who is 
 nerve-ridden sees everything with a twist. A 
 steady judgment is essential in any art, but it 
 is peculiarly so on the stage, where indi- 
 vidual effort can have no real value unless 
 sustained by the balance and proportion of 
 the whole. Of all artists the actor is the last 
 who can afford to waste his self-control. 
 
 Still less can he afford to run the risk of 
 getting a "swelled head." On the contrary, 
 he must always be his own most drastic and 
 unbiased critic. Talent is, after all, a small 
 thing. So many of us have talent nowadays,- 
 and yet so few of us do anything worth doing. 
 We are apt to cry out that this is because 
 the world is hard on us; that we have not 
 had a fair opportunity, and so on, and so on. 
 Any excuse will serve so that we do not blame 
 ourselves. I am not saying that there are no 
 
How to Behave 173 
 
 cases in the world which such excuses fit 
 justly enough ; but I do honestly believe that 
 as a rule the explanation must be sought not 
 in our circumstances but in ourselves. It is 
 not enough to have talent; we must have per- 
 severance, energy and grit. Whatever suc- 
 cess we achieve it must seem little to us be- 
 cause in our own minds we must always be 
 comparing our work with our ideal. 
 
 I want to close this book with a story which 
 I heard long ago and have never forgotten, 
 and I hope never shall forget. It is told of 
 Talma, the great French actor of the time of 
 the Revolution. One night, when he had 
 been playing one of his famous parts, some 
 friends who came behind to see him after- 
 wards said to him: 
 
 "You were greater than ever to-night." 
 
 "Oh no," he said, "I am not satisfied. I 
 don't do what I want to do with that last act. 
 Come and see me to-morrow. I will try to 
 be better to-morrow." 
 
 And on the morrow he was dead. 
 
 I can think of no better prayer to carry in 
 your heart all your life long than that your 
 work may be better every day I 
 
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