30 THE DANGER OF ERRING. must receive every prompting of genuine inspi ration. Here, however, when the artist has schooled himself out of rant and pantomimic trick, and every other prominent vice of the stage, he needs all the aid of a just and critical judgment; he is in danger of erring in one of several directions. Leaning to the safe side, as he deems it, of a just exposition of his author, avoiding the grossness of mere stage-effects, and adhering strictly to his text in a merely faithful enunciation of its words, the actor fails of truth and Nature, ceases to personate, and sinks into a mere elocutionist and declaimer. "Words, words, words" form the sum and substance of his performance. But the heart and soul, of which the words were meant to be the medium, are not there. No aspiration of ardor do we hear, no tremulous tone of heartfelt emotion, no sob bursting from the overcharged bosom, no unconscious attitude of passion do we see, no intuitive power in word, look, or action flashing sympathy to the soul of the spectator, no ecstasy of the whole man. But instead of these qualities, so essential to a proper dramatic effect, we have the chilly attributes of paraded precision and heartless formality in action and utterance. High-sounding and measured declamation swells out the text-correct and distinct, it may be, indeed, as to the words, but deadened to every effect of spirit and expression. In such counter DRAMATIC EXPRESSION. 31 feit presentment of human passion the art "whose end both at the first and now was and is to hold the mirror up to Nature," falls down to the monotonous delivery of a sermonized lecture or the recitation of a school-boy's task. The actor who under such circumstances imagines he is adhering to Nature because he is not tearing a passion to tatters, has formed but a low conception of the province of the stage, which is to hit off life itself, and to use language but as a means to this end. The true delineator, in order to give proper effect to premeditated speech, must observe and employ the grace, fitness, and power of utterance which mark the flow of thought and rush of feeling when language springs from the event and circumstance of every-day life. He who would fill others with the fervor of his own feelings must be able to mark his language with the elements of expressive vocality and incisive and vehement utterance. Thus only can be expressed the workings of the soul when distracted with conflicting passions or driven to despair and madness by outrageous fortune. Every thought of the mind, every passion of the soul, has its peculiar quality of voice and its appropriate mode of utterance. Dramatic expression, of all the forms of speech, requires a profound knowledge of such natural effects, as well as the practical ability to employ them. Truly, from the Shakespearian view, the office of dramatic reading or recitation is no slight affair. It demands a clear expression of every 32 TRICKS OF PERSONAL HABIT. word, the music of impassioned feeling in every tone, and the reality of life in every look and action; and along with all a marked individuality of character, emanating from the conceptions of the performer, but divested of his personality. By such means only can the hearer be transported from the ignorant present of actual surrounding life into an ideal world of remotest time and space. The personal traits of the speaker or reader of Shakespeare when obtruded on our notice are always offensive, because they break up the beautiful illusion which the drama was meant to create. No such falling off, however, is so chilling, perhaps ridiculous, as when the great historical or ideal hero of a piece descends into the "tricks of habit" by which we recognize the individual in his relations to daily life. Individuality is a trait inseparable from the efforts of genius, and, chastened and subdued into its proper place and kept subordinate to the display of the author, it is always a source of pleasure. But the cant of the times about naturalness, originality, and creative power on the stage has gone nigh to tempt the player to such a style of personation as appropriates both the stage and Shakespeare to himself, and swallows them up in the inordinate self-esteem of the individual. Another and a very different theory of acting is exhibited by those performers who wish, as it were, to inspire the author, instead of being inspired by him, and to add all manner of stage A TRUE IDEA OF NATURE. 33 effects to sustain, as it were, the character and the writer. Players of this class are prone to the fault of taking a character in Shakespeare as they would an outline or sketch prescribed in a pantomime, which the ingenuity of the performer is to fill up, and consider language merely the vehicle for the display of "stage-business," as it is technically termed. Hence arise those melodramatic attitudes, groupings, and tableaux with which modern acting abounds, and which go to make up the attraction of some individual celebrity. From such a perverted and vitiated dramatic taste arise those unnaturally natural, familiar, and coarse effects which dispel all illusions and destroy all ideal harmony. The term Nature is one of vast comprehension. It has widely different meanings, according to the mental character of the individual who makes use of it. Nature in a picture is, with one man, nothing but "Dutch boors, candlesticks, and cabbages;" with another it is all nymphs, temples, and wreathing garlands, dancing satyrs and hovering cupids. A true idea of Nature-Nature heightened by the inspiring touch of ideal beauty and perfection-plain, sincere Nature, raised to its own highest capability by the hand of genius, may be found in an evening scene by Claude, where actual objects, faithfully portrayed, are grouped anew, mellowed into the dim golden dusk of twilight, and tinged with colors in the very act of fading into the coming gloom of night. In vain do we look for Nature in mere bald с 34 SHAKESPEARE'S IDEA OF A MAN. and harsh reality. The landscape of crag and brake and sluggish pool is naught for pictorial art till we can look on it in the flush of sunrise or in the lingering glow of sunset. In vain do we look for Nature in the narrow scope of the mere individual. Divest the man of his representative relation to all humanity, and what is he worth to the sculptor, the painter, or the poet? He sinks into an unshapely mass, or a personal portrait for a parlor wall, or a fit subject for a pasquinade. How different from Shakespeare's idea of a man, as uttered by the lips of Hamlet when he pours out his filial admiration of the person and presence of his father! See, what a grace was seated on this brow; A fitting illustration of Shakespeare's ideal of dramatic action, its truth to Nature, and the importance of language as its prime element, may be found in Troilus and Cressida (Act I., Scene iii.— the Grecian camp before Agamemnon's tent), where he shows us plainly his contempt for the unnatural and barbarous style of presentation which was a prevalent and deforming feature of the acting of his own time: |