Reflexions 
 
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 1 Introduction by 
 HENRY IRVING 
 
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 THE LIBRARY OF THE 
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POU BOL Cea EONS 
 of the 
 
 Dramatic Museum 
 OF COLUMBAN NIVMER SD doy 
 
 IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK 
 
 Second Series 
 
 Papers on Acting: 
 
 I. 
 
 Il. 
 
 III. 
 
 LV. 
 
 ‘THE ILLUSION OF THE First ‘TIME IN 
 ACTING. By William Gillette. With an 
 introduction by George Arliss. 
 
 (ART AND THE ACTOR.” By Constant Co- 
 quelin. Translated by Abby Langdon 
 Alger. With an introduction by Henry 
 James. 
 
 ‘Mrs. SIppDONs AS Lapy MACBETH AND 
 QUEEN KATHARINE.’ By H. C. Fleeming 
 Jenkin. With an introduction by Brander 
 Matthews. 
 
 ‘REFLEXIONS ON AcTING. By ‘Talma. 
 With an introduction by Sir Henry Irv- 
 ing; and a review by H. C. Fleeming 
 Jenkin. 
 
PAPERS ON ACTING 
 
 IV 
 
 Reflexions on the Actor’s Art 
 
 BY 
 
 TALMA 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 Sir Henry Irvine 
 
 AND A REVIEW BY 
 
 H. C. Freeminc JENKIN 
 
 Printed for the 
 
 Dramatic Museum of Columbia University 
 in the City of New York 
 MCMXV 
 
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COPYRIGHT IQI5 BY 
 DRAMATIC MUSEUM OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 
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 _ Reflexions on the Actor’s Art by Talma 
 
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 at any time, which will not excite con- 
 troversy; but I think one of the few 
 is, that the influence of the drama today 1s 
 wider than it ever was. There is a vast 
 increase of playgoers; the intellectual in- 
 terest in the stage is steadily growing; and 
 there is a general conviction that the actor 
 is placed in a position of trust which he can- 
 not worthily fill without a strong sense of 
 responsibility. Dramatic artists, as a rule, 
 speak for themselves. Their work is con- 
 stantly before the public, and it is judged 
 on its merits. None the less is there a want 
 of a permanent embodiment of the principles 
 of our art; a kind of vade mecum of the 
 actor’s calling, written by one of themselves, 
 and by an artist universally recognized as a 
 competent expositor. Such a work, in my 
 opinion, is Talma’s essay on the actor's art, 
 the following translation of which was orig- 
 inally published in the Theater of 1877 at 
 my suggestion. 
 No one can read Talma’s subtle yet sim- 
 
 | XEW things can be said about the stage 
 
 I 
 
ple description of the qualities and the course 
 of study essential to the actor, without a con- 
 viction that acting is one of the most fascin- 
 ating of the arts. To the actor the whole 
 field of human nature is open. Whether in 
 the ideal world of the stage or in the actual 
 world of social intercourse, his mind is con- 
 tinually accumulating impressions which be- 
 come a part of his artistic being. This ex- 
 perience is common to the students of other 
 arts, but the actor has this advantage, that 
 all he learns is embodied in his own per- 
 sonality, not translated thru some medium, 
 like the painter’s canvas or the novelist’s 
 page. At the same time, this purely personal 
 art is subjected to the most severe tests. It 
 is easier to detect a flaw in an actor’s imper- 
 sonation than an improbability in a book. 
 The man enacts the character before many 
 —a false intonation jars immediately upon 
 the ear, an unnatural look or gesture is 
 promptly convicted by the eye. ‘The co-oper- 
 ation of sensibility and intelligence of which 
 Talma speaks, has thus to be conducted 
 under the most exacting conditions. There 
 must be no suggestion of effort. The essence 
 of acting is its apparent spontaneity. Per- 
 
 2 
 
fect illusion is attained when every effect 
 seems to be an accident. If the declamation 
 is too measured, the sense of truth is at once 
 impaired; if, on the other hand, it falls only 
 the shadow of a shade below the level of 
 appropriate expression, the auditor's sym- 
 pathy is instantly checkt. “The union of 
 grandeur without pomp, and nature without 
 triviality,” is of all artistic ideals the most 
 difficult to attain; and with this goal before 
 him no actor can feel that his art is a play- 
 
 thing. 
 The end of all acting is “to hold the mir- 
 ror up to Nature.” Different actors have 
 
 different methods, but that is their common 
 purpose which can be accomplisht only by 
 the closest study and observation. Acting, 
 like every other art, has a mechanism. No 
 painter, however great his imaginative 
 power, can succeed in pure ignorance of the 
 technicalities of his art; and no actor can 
 make much progress till he has mastered a 
 certain mechanism which is within the scope 
 of patient intelligence. Beyond that, is the 
 sphere in which a magnetic personality exer- 
 cises a power of sympathy which is irresist- 
 ible and indefinable. That is great acting; 
 
 3 
 
but tho it is inborn, and cannot be taught, 
 it can be brought forth only when the actor 
 is master of the methods of his craft. 
 
 I am conscious that no words of mine can 
 add any weight to the lessons which are set 
 forth with such earnestness and brilliance in 
 Talma’s pages; but I venture to emphasize 
 them by two golden rules. Let the student 
 remember, first, that every sentence expresses 
 a new thought, and therefore frequently de- 
 mands a change of intonation; secondly, that 
 the thought precedes the word. ‘The actor 
 should have the art of thinking before he 
 speaks.” Of course there are passages in 
 which thought and language are borne along 
 by the stream of emotion, and completely in- 
 termingled. But more often it will be found 
 that the most natural, the most seemingly 
 accidental effects are obtained when the work- 
 ing of the mind is visible before the tongue 
 gives it words. 
 
 | Henry Irvine. 
 (March, 1883.) 
 
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Reflexions on the 
 Actor’ s Art 
 
 HAVE no pretension to be an au- 
 | thor; all my studies have been directed 
 
 towards my calling, the object of which 
 is to afford at once pleasure and instruc- 
 tion. Tragedy and Comedy, the one by 
 the portraiture of virtue and crime, the 
 other by the exposure of vice or folly, in- 
 terest us, or make us laugh, while they cor- 
 rect and instruct. Associated with great 
 authors, actors are to them more than 
 translators. A translator adds nothing to 
 the ideas of the author he translates. The 
 actor, putting himself faithfully in the place 
 of the personage he represents, should per- 
 fect the idea of the author of whom he is 
 the interpreter. One of the greatest misfor- 
 tunes of our art is, that it dies, as it were, 
 with us, while all other artists leave behind 
 them monuments of their works. The talent 
 of the actor, when he has quitted the stage, 
 exists no longer, except in the recollection 
 of those who have seen and heard him. This 
 
 À 
 
consideration should impart additional 
 weight to the writings, the reflexions, and 
 the lessons which great actors have left; and 
 these writings may become still more useful 
 if they are commented upon and discust by 
 actors who obtain celebrity in our day. 
 Doubtless it is this motive which has induced 
 the editors of the ‘Mémoires Dramatiques’ 
 to request me to add to the notice of Lekain 
 some reflexions on his talent and on the art 
 which he illustrated. 
 
 Lekain had no master. || Every actor 
 ought to be his own tutor. If he has not in 
 himself the necessary faculties for expressing 
 the passions, and painting characters, all the 
 lessons in the world cannot give them to him. 
 Genius is not acquired. This faculty of cre- 
 ating is born with us; but if the actor pos- 
 sesses it, the counsel of persons of taste may 
 then guide him; and as there is in the art of 
 reciting verse a part in some degree mechan- 
 ical, the lessons of an actor profoundly 
 versed in his art may save him much study 
 and time. 
 
 Lekain, from the commencement of his 
 career, met with great success. His début 
 lasted seventeen months. One day, after 
 
 8 
 
he had performed at Court, Louis XV. said, 
 “This man has made me weep,—lI, who 
 never weep!” ‘This illustrious suffrage pro- 
 cured his admission to the Comédie-Fran- 
 caise. Before appearing with it he had ac- 
 quired some reputation at private theaters. 
 It was in one of these that Voltaire first saw 
 and noticed him, and there commenced his 
 connection with that great man. 
 
 The system of declamation then in vogue 
 was a sort of sing-song psalmody, which had 
 existed from the very birth of the theater. 
 Lekain,—subjected, in spite of himself, to 
 the influence of example,—felt the necessity 
 of breaking his shackles and the pedantic 
 rules by which the theater was bound. He 
 dared to utter for the first time on the stage 
 the true accents of nature. Filled with a 
 strong and profound sensibility, and a burn- 
 ing and communicative energy, his action, 
 at first impassioned and irregular, pleased 
 the young, who were enchanted by his ardor 
 and the warmth of his delivery, and, above 
 all, were moved by the accents of his pro- 
 foundly tragic voice. The admirers of 
 the ancient psalmody criticized him severely, 
 nicknaming him ‘the bull.” They did not 
 
 b 
 
find in him that pompous declamation, that 
 chiming and measured declamation, in which 
 a profound respect for the cesura and the 
 rime made the verses always fall in regular 
 cadence. His march, his movements, his at- 
 titudes, his action had not that liveliness, 
 those graces of our fathers, which then con- 
 stituted a fine actor, and which the Marcels 
 of the age taught to their pupils in initiating 
 them in the beauties of the minute. Lekain, 
 a plain plebian, a workman in a goldsmith’s 
 shop, had not, it is true, been brought up on 
 the laps of queens, as Baron said actors 
 ought to be; but nature, a still more noble 
 instructress, had undertaken the charge of 
 revealing her secrets to him. In time he suc- 
 ceeded in overcoming the bad taste which his 
 inexperience had at first naturally thrown 
 into his acting. He learnt to master its vi- 
 vacity and regulate its movements, yet at first 
 he dared not entirely abandon the cadenced 
 song which was then regarded as the ideal 
 of the art of declamation, and which the 
 actor preserved even in the burst of pas- 
 sion. 
 
 It was to this false taste that we must at- 
 tribute the little progress which costume had 
 
 10 
 
made in the time of Lekain. There is no 
 doubt that he regarded fidelity in costume as 
 a very important matter. We discover it in 
 the efforts he made to render it less ridic- 
 ulous than it was at that period. In fact, 
 truth in the dresses, as in the decorations, 
 contributes greatly to theatrical illusion, and 
 transports the spectator to the age and the 
 country in which the personages represented 
 lived. This fidelity, too, furnishes the actor 
 with the means of giving a peculiar physiog- 
 nomy to each of his characters. But a rea- 
 son still more cogent makes me consider as 
 highly culpable the actors who neglect this 
 part of their art. The theater ought to of- 
 fer to youth in some measure a course of 
 living history; and does not this negligence 
 give him entirely false notions of the habits 
 and manners of the personages whom the 
 tragedy resuscitates? I remember well that 
 in my early years, on reading history, my 
 imagination always represented to itself the 
 princes and the heroes whom I had seen at 
 the theater. I figured to myself Bayard ele- 
 gantly drest in a chamois-colored coat, with- 
 out a beard, and powdered and frizzled like 
 a petit maitre of the eighteenth century. 
 
 II 
 
Caesar I pictured to myself highly buttoned 
 up in a fine white satin coat, his long, flowing 
 locks fastened with rosettes of ribbon. If 
 in those days an actor occasionally approxi- 
 mated to the antique dress, the simplicity of 
 it was lost in a profusion of ridiculous em- 
 broidery, and I fancied that silks and velvets 
 were as common at Athens and Rome as at 
 Paris and London. Statues, monuments, and 
 ancient MSS. adorned with miniatures, ex- 
 isted then as well as now; but they were not 
 consulted. It was the time of the Bouchers 
 and the Van Loos, who took care not to fol- 
 low the example of Raphael and Poussin in 
 the arrangements of their draperies. It was 
 only when David appeared that painters and 
 sculptors, especially the younger of them, oc- 
 cupied themselves, under his inspiration, 
 with these researches. Connected with most 
 of them, and feeling the utility this study 
 might have for the theater, I applied myself 
 to it with no common zeal; in my own way 
 I became a painter. I had many obstacles 
 and prejudices to overcome, but success at 
 last crowned my efforts, and without fearing 
 an accusation of presumption I may say that 
 my example has had a great influence over 
 
 12 
 
all the theaters of Europe. Lekain could 
 not have surmounted so many difficulties; the 
 time had not come. Would he have dared to 
 risk naked arms, the antique sandals, hair 
 without powder, long draperies, and woolen 
 stufis? Such a toilet would have been re- 
 garded as very offensive, not to say indecent. 
 Lekain did all that was possible; he ad- 
 vanced the first step, and what he dared to 
 do emboldened us to do still more. 
 
 Actors ought at all times to take nature 
 for a model, to make it the constant object 
 of their studies. Lekain felt that the bril- 
 liant colors of poetry served only to give 
 more grandeur and majesty to the beauties 
 of nature. He was not ignorant that per- 
 sons deeply affected by the stronger passions, 
 or overwhelmed with great grief, or vio- 
 lently agitated by great political interests, 
 have a more elevated and ideal language,— 
 yet this language is still that of nature. It 
 is, therefore, this nature—noble, animated, 
 agerandized, but at the same time simple— 
 which ought to be the constant object of the 
 studies of the actor, as well as of the poet. 
 I have frequently heard persons of authority 
 state that tragedy is not in nature, and this 
 
 13 
 
idea has been repeated without reflexion 
 until it has become a kind of maxim. The 
 world, occupied with other objects, has not 
 sufficiently studied all the workings of the 
 passions. It judges too lightly, and indiffer- 
 ent authors and actors, who pay but little 
 attention to their art, serve to accredit this 
 error. But let us examine any of the impas- 
 sioned or political characters of Corneille 
 and Racine. How often their language is at 
 once simple and elevated! How pathetic 
 and natural is Voltaire when he is inspired 
 by a passion! It is not the negligence and 
 carelessness of a vulgar conversation that 
 we find in the beautiful scenes of those great 
 poets. It is the simple language, the aggran- 
 dized but exact expression, of nature itself. 
 Let us examine from every point of view the 
 exposition and dénouement of Rotrou’s ‘Ven- 
 ceslas, the fifth act of ‘Rodogune’ and 
 ‘Cinna,’ the part of Horatius, the scenes of 
 Agamemnon and Achilles, the parts of Joad, 
 Œdipe, the two Brutuses, César, the parts of 
 Phèdre, Andromaque, Hermione, &c. | 
 defy any person to give them a finer or more 
 natural form of expression. Take away the 
 rime, and all these personages would have 
 
 14 
 
exprest themselves in the same manner as in 
 real life. It is the same with some actors 
 who have adorned the French stage, as Le- 
 kain, Mlle. Dumesnil, Molé and Monvel. 
 It was only by a faithful imitation of truth 
 and nature that they succeeded in creating 
 those powerful emotions in an enlightened 
 nation which still exist in the recollection of 
 those who heard them. It must, however, be 
 confest that, amongst the great actors of all 
 countries, only a few have sought after this 
 truth. Molière, and Shakspere before him, 
 had given excellent lessons to their brethren, 
 the one in his ‘Impromptu de Versailles’ and 
 the other in ‘Hamlet.’ How comes it, then, 
 that in spite of the advice of these two great 
 masters, and no doubt, of that of many of 
 their contemporaries, the false system of 
 pompous declamation had been established 
 in almost all the theaters of Europe, and 
 proclaimed as the sole type of theatrical imi- 
 tation? It is because truth in all art is what 
 is most difficult to find and seize. The statue 
 of Minerva exists in the block of marble, but 
 the chisel of Phidias alone can discover it. 
 This faculty has been given to very few 
 
 15 
 
actors; and mediocrity, being in the major- 
 ity, has laid down the law. 
 
 I may here be permitted to make an ob- 
 servation which has been suggested to me 
 by the great event of the Revolution, for its 
 violent crises, of which I was a witness, have 
 often served me as a study. The man of the 
 world and the man of the people, so opposite 
 in their language, frequently express the 
 great agitations of the mind in the same way. 
 The one forgets his social manners, the 
 other quits his vulgar fancies. The former 
 descends to nature, the latter remounts to it. 
 Each puts off the artificial man to become 
 natural and true. The accent of each will be 
 the same in the violence of the same passions 
 or the same sorrows. Picture to yourself a 
 mother intently looking on the empty cradle 
 of a child she had just lost; a sort of stupid- 
 ity in the features, a few tears flowing down 
 her cheeks at distant intervals, piercing cries 
 and convulsive sobs bursting forth from time 
 to time,—these will represent the sorrow of 
 a woman of the people the same as that of a 
 duchess. Suppose, again, a man of the peo- 
 ple and a man of the court to have both 
 fallen into a violent fit of jealousy or ven- 
 
 16 
 
geance; these two men, so different in their 
 habits, will be the same in their frenzy; they 
 will present in their fury the same expres- 
 sion: their looks, their features, their actions, 
 their attitudes, their movements will assume 
 all at once a terrible, grand, and solemn 
 character, worthy in both of the pencil of the 
 painter and the study of the actor. And, 
 perhaps, even the delirium of passion may 
 inspire the one as well as the other with one 
 of those words,—one of those sublime ex- 
 pressions,—which the poet would conceive. 
 The great movements of the soul elevate 
 man to an ideal nature, in whatever rank 
 fate may have placed him. The Revolution, 
 which brought so many passions into play, 
 has had popular orators who have astonisht 
 all by sublime traits of untutored eloquence, 
 and by an expression and accent which Le- 
 kain would not have been ashamed of. 
 Lekain felt that the art of declamation did 
 not consist in reciting verse with more or less 
 emphasis, but that this art might be made to 
 impart a sort of reality to the fictions of the 
 stage. To attain this end it is necessary that 
 the actor should have received from nature 
 an extreme sensibility and a profound intel- 
 
 17 
 
ligence, and Lekain possest these qualifica- 
 tions in an eminent degree. Indeed, the 
 strong impressions which actors create on the 
 stage are the result only of the alliance of 
 these two essential faculties. I must explain 
 what I mean by this. To my mind, sensi- 
 bility is not only that faculty which an actor 
 possesses of being moved himself, and of af- 
 fecting his being so far as to imprint on his 
 features, and especially on his voice, that 
 expression and those accents of sorrow which 
 awake all the sympathies of the art and ex- 
 tort tears from auditors. I include in it the 
 effect which it produces, the imagination of 
 which it is the source,—not that imagination 
 which consists in having reminiscences, so 
 that the object seems actually present (this, 
 properly speaking, is only memory) but that 
 imagination which, creative, active and pow- 
 erful, consists in collecting in one single ficti- 
 tious object the qualities of several real ob- 
 jects, which associates the actor with the in- 
 spirations of the poet, transports him back 
 to the past, and enable him to look on at 
 the lives of historical personages or the im- 
 passioned figures created by genius,—which 
 reveals to him, as tho by magic, their phys- 
 
 18 
 
iognomy, their heroic stature, their lan- 
 guage, their habits, all the shades of their 
 character, all the movements of their soul, 
 and even their singularities. I also call sen- 
 sibility that faculty of exaltation which agi- 
 tates an actor, takes possession of his senses, 
 shakes even his very soul, and enables him 
 to enter into the most tragic situations, and 
 the most terrible of the passions, as if they 
 were his own. ‘The intelligence which ac- 
 companies sensibility judges the impressions 
 which the latter has made us feel; it selects, 
 arranges them, and subjects them to calcula- 
 tion. If sensibility furnishes the objects, the 
 intelligence brings them into play. It aids us 
 to direct the employment of our physical and 
 intellectual forces,—to judge between the 
 relations and connections which connect the 
 poet and the situation or the character of the 
 personages, and sometimes to add the shades 
 that are wanting, or that language cannot 
 express,—to complete, in fine, their expres- 
 sion by action and physiognomy. 
 
 It may be conceived that such a person 
 must have received trom nature a peculiar 
 organization for sensibility, that common 
 property of our being. Every one possesses 
 
 ur 
 
it in a greater or less degree. But in the 
 man whom nature has destined to paint the 
 passions in their greatest excesses, to give 
 them all their violence, and show them in 
 all their delirium, one may perceive that it 
 must have a much greater energy; and, as all 
 our emotions are intimately connected with 
 our nerves, the nervous system in the actor 
 must be so mobile and plastic as to be moved 
 by the inspirations of the poet as easily as 
 the Aeolian harp sounds with the least breath 
 of air that touches it. 
 
 If the actor is not endowed with a sensi- 
 sibility at least equal to that of any of his 
 audience he can move therh but very little. 
 It is only by an excess of sensibility that he 
 can succeed in producing deep impressions, 
 and move even the coldest souls. The power 
 that raises must be greater than the power 
 raised. This faculty ought ever to exist in 
 the actor—T will not say greater or stronger 
 than in the poet who conceived the move- 
 ment of the soul reproduced on the stage— 
 but more lively, more rapid, and more pow- 
 erful. The poet or the painter can wait for 
 the moment of inspiration to write or to 
 paint. In the actor, on the contrary, it must 
 
 20 
 
be commanded at any moment, at his will. 
 That it may be sudden, lively, and prompt, 
 he must possess an excess of sensibility. Nay, 
 more, his intelligence must always be on the 
 watch, and, acting in concert with his sensi- 
 bility, regulate its movement and effects; for 
 he cannot, like the painter and the poet, 
 efface what he does. 
 
 Therefore, between two persons destined 
 for the stage, one possessing the extreme 
 sensibility I have defined, and the other a 
 profound intelligence, I would without ques- 
 tion prefer the former. He might fall into 
 some errors, but his sensibility would inspire 
 him with those sublime movements which 
 seize upon the spectator and carry delight to 
 the heart. The superior intelligence of the 
 other would render him cold and regular. 
 The one would go beyond your expectations 
 and your ideas; the other would only accom- 
 plish them. Your mind would be deeply 
 stirred by the inspired actor; your judgment 
 alone would be satisfied by the intelligent 
 actor. The inspired actor will so associate 
 you with the emotions he feels that he will 
 not leave you even the liberty of judgment; 
 the other, by his prudent and irreproachable 
 
 21 
 
acting, will leave your faculties at liberty to 
 reason on the matter at your ease. The for- 
 mer will be the personage himself, the latter 
 only an actor who represents that personage. 
 Inspiration in the one will frequently supply 
 the place of intelligence; in the other the 
 combinations of intelligence will supply only 
 feebly the absence of inspiration. To form 
 a great actor, like Lekain, the union of sen- 
 sibility and intelligence is required. 
 
 The actor who possesses this double gift 
 adopts a course of study peculiar to himself. 
 In the first place, by repeated exercises, he 
 enters deeply into the emotions, and his 
 speech acquires the accent proper to the situ- 
 ation of the personage he has to represent. 
 This done, he goes to the theater not only to 
 give theatrical effect to his studies, but also 
 to yield himself to the spontaneous flashes of 
 his sensibility and all the emotions which it 
 involuntarily produces in him. What does 
 he then do? In order that his inspirations 
 may not be lost, his memory, in the silence 
 of repose, recalls the accent of his voice, the 
 expression of his features, his action,—in a 
 word, the spontaneous workings of his mind, 
 which he had suffered to have free course, 
 
 22 
 
and, in effect, everything which in the mo- 
 ments of his exaltation contributed to the 
 effect he had produced. His intelligence then 
 passes all these means in review, connecting 
 them and fixing them in his memory, to re- 
 employ them at pleasure in succeeding repre- 
 sentations. These impressions are often so 
 evanescent that on retiring behind the scenes 
 he must repeat to himself what he had been 
 playing rather than what he had to play. By 
 this kind of labor the intelligence accumu- 
 lates and preserves all the creations of sen- 
 sibility. It is by this means that at the end 
 of twenty years (it requires at least this 
 length of time) a person destined to display 
 fine talent may at length present to the pub- 
 lic a series of characters acted almost to per- 
 fection. Such was the course which Lekain 
 constantly took, and which must be taken by 
 every one who has the ambition to excel on 
 the stage. The whole of his life was de- 
 voted to this kind of study, and it was only 
 during the last five or six years of his life, 
 béparen 177207) 1772 -and\1778, that he 
 reaped his fruit: It was then that his fertile 
 sensibility raised him to the tragic situations 
 he had to paint, and his intelligence enabled 
 
 43 
 
him to display all the treasures he had 
 amassed. It was then that his acting was 
 fixt on such bases, and was so subservient to 
 his will, that the same combinations and the 
 same effect presented themselves without 
 study. Accent, inflexions, action, attitudes, 
 looks, all were reproduced at every represen- 
 tation with the same exactness, the same 
 vigor; and if there was any difference be- 
 tween one representation and another, it was 
 always in favor of the last. Sensibility and 
 intelligence, therefore, are the principal 
 faculties necessary to an actor. Yet these 
 alone will not suffice. Apart from memory, 
 which is his indispensable instrument, and 
 stature and features adapted to the character 
 he has to play, he must have a voice that can 
 be modulated with ease, and at the same time 
 be powerful and expressive. I need scarcely 
 add that a good education, the study of his- 
 tory—(not so much the events as the man- 
 ners of the people, and the particular charac- 
 ter of historical personages)—-and even 
 drawing, ought to add grace and strength to 
 the gifts of nature. 
 
 It will be well understood that I here 
 speak only of tragedy. Without entering 
 
 24 
 
into the question whether it is more difficult 
 to play tragedy or comedy, I will say that 
 to arrive at perfection in either, the same 
 moral and physical faculties are required, 
 only I think the tragedian ought to possess 
 more power and sensibility. The comedian 
 does not require the same energy; the imag- 
 ination in him has less scope. He represents 
 beings whom he sees every day—beings of 
 his own class. Indeed, with very few excep- 
 tions, his task is confined to the representa- 
 tions of folly and ridicule, and to painting 
 passions in his own sphere of life, and, conse- 
 quently, more moderate than those which 
 come within the domain of tragedy. It is, 
 if I may so express it, his own nature which, 
 in his imitations, speaks and acts; whereas 
 the tragic actor must quit the circle in which 
 he is accustomed to live, and plunge into the 
 regions where the genius of the poet has 
 placed and clothed in ideal forms the beings 
 conceived by him or furnisht by history. He 
 must preserve these personages in their 
 grand proportions, but at the same time he 
 must subject their elevated language to nat- 
 ural accents and true expression; and it is 
 this union of grandeur without pomp, and 
 
 25 
 
nature without triviality—this union of the 
 ideal and the true, which is so difficult to 
 attain in tragedy. I shall, perhaps, be told 
 that a tragic actor has a much greater liberty 
 in the choice of his means of offering to the 
 public objects whose types do not exist in 
 society, while the same public can easily de- 
 cide whether the comedian furnishes an exact 
 copy of his model. I would reply that the 
 passions are of all ages. Society may weaken 
 their energy, but they do not the less exist 
 in the soul, and every spectator is a compe- 
 tent judge from his own feelings. With re- 
 gard to the great historical characters, the 
 enlightened public can easily judge of the 
 truth of the imitation. It will therefore ap- 
 pear from what I have laid down that the 
 moral faculties ought to have more force 
 and intensity in the tragic than in the comic 
 actor. 
 
 As to the physical qualities, it is evident 
 that the pliability of the features and the ex- 
 pression of the physiognomy ought to be 
 stronger, the voice more full, more sonorous, 
 and more profoundly articulate in the tragic 
 actor, who stands in need of certain combina- 
 tions and more than ordinary powers to per- 
 
 26 
 
form from the beginning to the end with 
 the same energy a part in which the author 
 has frequently collected in a narrow com- 
 pass, and in the space of two hours, all the 
 movements, all the agitations, which an im- 
 passioned being can feel only in the course 
 of a long life. I repeat, however, that not 
 fewer qualities, tho of a different kind, are 
 required in a great comedian than in a great 
 tragic actor; each has need of being initiated 
 into the mysteries of nature, the inclinations, 
 the weaknesses, the extravagances of the 
 human heart. 
 
 When we consider all the qualities neces- 
 sary to form an excellent tragic actor, all the 
 gifts which nature should have bestowed 
 upon him, can we be surprised that they are 
 so rare? Amongst the majority of those 
 who go on the stage, one has penetration, but 
 his soul is cold as ice. Another possesses 
 sensibility, but intelligence is wanting. One 
 possesses both these requisites, but in so 
 slight a degree, that it is as if he did not 
 possess them at all; his acting is character- 
 ized neither by energy, expression, nor con- 
 fidence, and is without color; sometimes he 
 speaks in a loud and sometimes in a low key, 
 
 27 
 
quickly or slowly, as if by chance. Another 
 has received from nature all these gifts, but 
 his voice is harsh, dry and monotonous, and 
 totally incapable of expressing the passions; 
 he weeps without drawing tears from others; 
 he is affected and his audience is unmoved. 
 One has a sonorous and touching voice, but 
 his features are disagreeable; his stature and 
 form have nothing heroic in them. In short, 
 the requisites for a really great actor are 
 so many, and so seldom united in the same 
 person, that we ought not to be surprised at 
 finding them appear at such long intervals. 
 
 It must be confessed that Lekain had 
 some faults; but in literature and in the arts 
 of imitation genius is rated in proportion to 
 the beauties it creates. Its imperfections 
 form no part of its fame, and would be for- 
 gotten if they were not allied to noble aspi- 
 rations. Nature had refused to Lekain some 
 of the advantages which the stage demands. 
 His features had nothing noble in them; his 
 physiognomy was common, his figure short. 
 But his exquisite sensibility, the movement 
 of an ardent and impassioned soul, the 
 faculty he possessed of plunging entirely 
 into the situation of the personage he repre- 
 
 28 
 
sented, the intelligence, so delicately fine, 
 which enabled him to perceive and produce 
 all the shades of the character he had to 
 paint—these embellisht his irregular fea- 
 tures and gave him an inexpressible charm. 
 His voice was naturally heavy, and by no 
 means flexible. It was to some extent what 
 is called a veiled voice, but that very veil 
 imparted to it, defective as it was in some 
 respects, vibrations which went to the bottom 
 of the hearer’s soul. However, by dint of 
 application, he contrived to overcome its 
 stiffness, to enrich it with all the accents of 
 passion, and to render it amenable to all the 
 delicate inflexions of sentiment. He had, in 
 fact, studied his voice as one studies an in- 
 strument. He knew all its qualities and all 
 its defects. He passed lightly over the 
 harsh to give fuller effect to the vibrations 
 of the harmonious chords. His voice, on 
 which he essayed every accent, became a rich- 
 keyed instrument, from which he could draw 
 forth at pleasure every sound he stood in 
 need of. And such is the power of a voice 
 thus formed by nature attuned by art, that it 
 affects even the foreigner who does not un- 
 derstand the words. Frenchmen who are 
 
 raed 
 
totally unacquainted with English have been 
 affected even to tears by the accents of the 
 touching voice of Miss O’Neil. 
 
 At the commencement of his career, Le- 
 Kain, like all young actors, gave way to bois- 
 terous cries and violent movement, believing 
 that in this way he triumpht over difficul- 
 ties. In time, however, he felt that of all 
 monotonies that of the lungs was the most 
 unsupportable; that tragedy must be spoken, 
 not howled; that a continual explosion fa- 
 tigues without appealing; and that only when 
 it is rare and unexpected can it astonish and 
 move. He felt, in fine, that the auditor, 
 shockt by the ranting on the stage, forgets 
 the personage represented, and pities or con- 
 demns the actor. Thus Lekain, often fa- 
 tigued in long and arduous scenes, took care 
 to conceal from the public the violence of his 
 efforts, and at the very moment when his 
 powers were nearly exhausted they seemed 
 to possess all their strength and vigor. 
 
 Lekain has been reproacht for having 
 been heavy in his recitation. This defect 
 was natural. He was slow, calm, and reflect- 
 ing. Besides, Voltaire, whose actor he pe- 
 culiarly was, would not, perhaps, have read- 
 
 30 
 
ily consented to sacrifice the pomp and har- 
 mony of his verse to a more natural tone. 
 He wisht him to be energetic, and as he had 
 deckt out tragedy a little the actor was 
 obliged to follow in the track of the poet. 
 Again, in the days of Lekain, a period so 
 brilliant from the genius of its writers and 
 philosophers, all the arts of imitation had 
 fallen into a false and mannered taste, and 
 Lekain, perhaps, thought himself sufficiently 
 rich in all his gifts and attainments to make 
 a slight concession to the bad taste of his 
 days. Yet his style, at first slow and ca- 
 denced, by degrees became animated, and 
 from the moment he gained the high region 
 of passion he astonisht by his sublimity. 
 Notwithstanding the bad taste alluded to, 
 there existed in society at that time, and 
 among the friends of Voltaire, a great 
 number of persons whose ideas in matters 
 of art were more correct, and their advice 
 was of great service to Lekain. Voltaire, 
 also, tho he was a very indifferent actor, 
 even when he played in his own pieces, pos- 
 sest a good theatrical knowledge of the 
 stage; this he communicated to Lekain, who 
 profited by it. During one of the actor’s 
 
 31 
 
visits to Ferney Voltaire made him totally 
 change his manner of playing Genghis-Khan, 
 in the ‘Orphan of China.’ On his return to 
 Paris it was the first character he played. 
 The audience, astonisht at the change, 
 was for a long time undecided whether to 
 praise or blame the performance. They 
 could not but think that the actor was indis- 
 posed. ‘There was nothing of the turbulance 
 or the trickery which had previously pro- 
 cured him so much applause in the same 
 part. It was only after the fall of the cur- 
 tain that the audience felt that Lekain was 
 right. Public opinion was formed instan- 
 taneously, and by an electrical movement it 
 manifested itself in long and loud applause. 
 “What's the matter?” asked Lekain of Rou- 
 geot, a servant of the theater. “It’s ap- 
 plause, monsieur; they are at length of your 
 way of thinking.” 
 
 Experience had taught Lekain that all the 
 silly combinations of mediocrity, the con- 
 trast of sounds, and ranting and raving 
 might evoke great applause and many 
 bravos; but it conferred no reputation. The 
 lovers of noise and vociferation fancy their 
 souls are wooed, while only their ears are 
 
 32 
 
stunned. There is a certain number of 
 artists, connoisseurs, and intelligent persons 
 who are sensible only to what is true and 
 conformable to nature. These persons do 
 not like much noise, and it is upon their 
 opinion that an actor’s reputation depends. 
 Lekain despised those plaudits which tor- 
 ment and often distract an actor. He re- 
 solved to study only that part of the public 
 which was worth pleasing. He rejected all 
 the charlatanism of his art, and produced a 
 true effect; he always discarded the claptraps 
 which so many others seek to discover. He 
 was, consequently, one of the actors the least 
 appreciated in his day, but he was the most 
 admired by competent judges, and he ren- 
 dered tragedy more familiar without depriv- 
 ing it of its majestic proportions. 
 
 He knew how to regulate all his move- 
 ments and all his actions. He regarded this 
 as a very essential part of his art. For ac- 
 tion is language in another form. [If it is 
 violent or hurried, the carriage ceases to be 
 noble. Thus, while other actors were thea- 
 trical kings only, in him the dignity did not 
 appear to be the result of effort, but the 
 simple effect of habit. He did not raise his 
 
 33 
 
shoulders or swell his voice to give an order. 
 He knew that men in power had no need of 
 such efforts to make themselves obeyed, and 
 that in the sphere they occupy all their words 
 have weight and all their movements au- 
 thority. Lekain displayed superior intelli- 
 gence and great ability in the varied styles 
 of his recitation, which was slow or rapid, 
 as circumstances required; and his pauses 
 were always full of deep significance. There 
 are, in fact, certain circumstances in which it 
 is necessary to solicit one’s self before we 
 confide to the tongue the emotions of the 
 soul or the calculations of the mind. The 
 actor, therefore, must have the art of think- 
 ing before he speaks, and by introducing 
 pauses he appears to meditate upon what 
 he is about to say. But his physiognomy 
 must correspond also with the suspensions 
 of his voice. His attitudes and features 
 must indicate that during these moments of 
 silence his soul is deeply engaged; without 
 this his pauses will seem rather to be the 
 result of defective memory than a secret 
 of his art. 
 
 There are also situations in which a per- 
 son strongly moved feels too acutely to wait 
 
 34 
 
the slow combination of words. The senti- 
 ment that overpowers him escapes in mute 
 action before the voice is able to give it ut- 
 terance. The gesture, the attitude, and the 
 look ought, then, to precede the words, as the 
 flash of the lightning precedes the thunder. 
 The display adds greatly to the expression, 
 as it discovers a mind so profoundly im- 
 bued that, impatient to manifest itself, it has 
 chosen the more rapid signs. These arti- 
 fices contribute what is properly called by- 
 play, a most essential part of the theatrical 
 art, and most difficult to acquire, retain, and 
 regulate well. It is by this means that the 
 actor gives to his speech an air of truth, and 
 takes from it all appearance of measured 
 speaking. 
 
 There are also situations in which a per- 
 son transported by the violence of feeling 
 finds at once all the expression he wishes. 
 The words come to his lips as rapidly as 
 the thoughts to his mind; they are born with 
 them, and succeed each other without inter- 
 ruption. The mind of the actor, then, ought 
 to be hurried and rapid; he must even con- 
 ceal from the audience the effort he makes to 
 prolong his breath. This effort he must 
 
 35 
 
make, since the slightest interruption or the 
 slightest pause would destroy the illusion, 
 because the mind would seem to participate 
 in this pause. Besides, passion does not 
 follow the rules of grammar; it pays but 
 little respect to colons, and semi-colons, and 
 full stops, which it displaces without any 
 ceremony. 
 
 Lekain had a long illness a few years be- 
 fore his death, and it was to this illness that 
 he owed the perfect development and re- 
 fining of his talents. This may appear 
 strange, but it is literally true. There are 
 violent crises and certain disorders in the 
 animal economy which often excite the nerv- 
 ous system and give the imagination an in- 
 conceivable impetus. The body suffers, but 
 the mind is active. Persons stricken down 
 by illness have astonisht us by the vivacity 
 of their ideas; others remember things com- 
 pletely forgotten; others seem to pierce the 
 veil which hangs between them and the fu- 
 ture. Perhaps Chénier was not wrong in 
 saying that “Heaven gives prophetic accents 
 to the dying.”’ 
 
 When the illness passes away something of 
 the excess of sensibility always remains im- 
 
 36 
 
printed on the nervous system; the emotions 
 are more profound, and all our sensations 
 acquire more delicacy. It would seem as if 
 these shocks purified and renewed our being; 
 and this was the effect which his illness had 
 upon Lekain. The inaction to which he had 
 been reduced became of service to him; his 
 rest was that of labor. Genius does not al- 
 ways require exercise, and, like the gold 
 mine, it forms and perfects itself in silence 
 and repose. 
 
 He reappeared on the stage after a long 
 absence. The audience, instead of having to 
 show indulgence to a man enfeebled by suf- 
 fering, saw him, as it were, ascend from the 
 tomb with a more perfect intelligence, seem- 
 ingly clothed with a purer, more perfect 
 existence. It was then that he rejected what 
 his intelligence disapproved. ‘There were no 
 more cries, no more efforts of the lungs, no 
 more of those ordinary griefs, no more of 
 those vulgar tears, which lessen and degrade 
 the personage. His voice, at once pleasant 
 and sonorous, had acquired new accents and 
 vibrations which found responsive chords in 
 every heart; his tears were heroic and pene- 
 trating, his acting—full, profound, pathetic, 
 
 37 
 
and terrible—roused and moved even the 
 most insensible of his hearers. 
 
 It was also at this latter period of his life, 
 having acquired a greater knowledge of the 
 passions, and having himself perhaps wit- 
 nest deep anguish, he was the better able to 
 paint it; and if he frequently, to express 
 great sorrow, suffered his melancholy and 
 dolorous voice to escape thru sobs and tears, 
 often, too, in the highest degree of moral 
 suffering, his voice changed; it became veiled 
 and uttered only inarticulate sounds of woe. 
 His eyes appeared dull with sorrow, and 
 shed no tears, which seemed to be chased 
 back on the heart. Admirable artifice! drawn 
 from nature, and more calculated to move 
 the soul than tears themselves; for in real 
 life, while we pity those who weep, we feel, 
 at least, that tears are a relief to them; but 
 how much more is our pity excited at the 
 sight of the unfortunate being whom the ex- 
 cess of deep despair deprives of voice to ex- 
 press his suffering, and of tears to relieve 
 him. 
 
 Lekain was the creature of passion; he 
 never loved but to madness; and, it is said, 
 he hated in the same manner. He whose 
 
 38 
 
soul is not susceptible to the extremes of pas- 
 sion will never rise to excellence as an actor. 
 In the expression of the passions there are 
 many shades which cannot be devined and 
 which the actor cannot paint until he has felt 
 them himself. The observations which he 
 has made on his own nature serve at once 
 for his study and example; he interrogates 
 himself on the impressions his soul has felt, 
 on the expression they imprinted upon his 
 features, on the accents of his voice in the 
 various states of feeling. He meditates on 
 these, and clothes the fictitious passions with 
 these real forms. I scarcely know how to 
 confess that, in my own person, in any cir- 
 cumstance of my life in which I experienced _ 
 deep sorrow, the passion of the theater was 
 so strong in me that, altho opprest with real 
 sorrow, and disregarding the tears I shed, I 
 made, in spite of myself, a rapid and fugi- 
 tive observation on the alteration of my 
 voice, and on a certain spasmodic vibration 
 which it contracted as I wept; and, I say it, 
 not without some shame, I even thought 
 of making use of this on'the stage, and, in- 
 deed, this experiment on myself has often 
 been of service to me. 
 
 39 
 
The contrarieties, the sorrows, and mel- 
 ancholy reflexions which an actor may apply 
 to the personage he represents, in exciting 
 his sensibility, place him in the degree of 
 agitation necessary for the development of 
 his faculties. Lekain thus found, in his 
 own passions, display for his talents. As to 
 the odious characters and vile passions, of 
 which the type was not in him—for no man 
 was more honorable than Lekain — he 
 painted them by analogy. In fact, amongst 
 the irregular passions which disgrace hu- 
 manity, there are some which possess points 
 of contact with those which ennoble it. Thus, 
 the sentiment of a lofty emulation enables 
 us to divine what envy may feel; the just 
 resentment of wrongs shows us in miniature 
 the excess of hatred and vengeance. Re- 
 serve and prudence enable us to paint dissim- 
 ulation. The desires, the torments, and the 
 jealousies of love enable us to conceive all 
 its frenzies and initiate us in the secret of its 
 crimes. 
 
 These combinations, these comparisons, 
 are the result of a rapid and imperceptible 
 labor of sensibility, united with intelligence, 
 which secretly operates on the actor as on 
 
 40 
 
the poet, and which reveals to them what is 
 foreign to their own nature—the viler pas- 
 sions of guilty and corrupted minds. ‘Thus 
 Milton, a man of austere probity, and so 
 full of the divine power, created the person- 
 age of Satan. Corneille, the simplest and 
 the worthiest of men, created Phocas and 
 Felix; Racine, Nero and Narcissus. Vol- 
 taire has painted the effects of fanaticism 
 with a frightful truth; and Ducis, whose 
 taste was simple, and whose life was relig- 
 ious, painted, in Albufar, in traits of fire, all 
 the transports of incestuous love. 
 
 These terminate my hasty reflexions on 
 Lekain and our art. I have thrown them 
 together without order; but I hope, in the 
 quietude of silence and repose, to resume the 
 subject, and give, for the use of my success- 
 ors, the result of a long experience in a 
 career devoted entirely to the advancement 
 of the beautiful art I love so deeply. 
 
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REVIEW 
 
 R. IRVING, in his preface to this 
 
 M remarkable essay, calls it a kind 
 of vade-mecum of the actor’s 
 
 calling, written by one of themselves, and 
 by an artist universally recognized as a 
 competent expositor; ‘a permanent em- 
 bodiment of the principles of our art.” 
 We may then start with every confidence 
 that we have here a true explanation of the 
 manner in which a great actor works. Let 
 us listen to his words. “Every actor,’ says 
 Talma, “ought to be his own tutor. If he 
 has not in himself the necessary faculties for 
 expressing the passions and painting charac- 
 ters, all the lessons in the world cannot give 
 them to him. The faculty of creating is 
 born with us; but if the actor possesses it the 
 counsel of persons of taste may then guide 
 him; and as there is in the art of reciting 
 verse a part in some degree mechanical, the 
 lessons of an actor profoundly versed in 
 his art may save him much study and time.” 
 Here, we take it, is the truth, the whole 
 truth, and nothing but the truth as to dra- 
 
 45 
 
matic teaching. A man may be taught to 
 speak and move well and suitably; then, if 
 he has genius, he may in twenty years teach 
 himself to act, and during the process he 
 may be much helpt by the counsel of persons 
 of taste. And how is he to know whether 
 he has the necessary genius? Talma an- 
 swers, “sensibility” and “intelligence” are 
 the two faculties pre-eminently required, but 
 under the general heading of sensibility he 
 includes much. He puts almost contemptu- 
 ously on one side ‘the faculty which an actor 
 possesses of being moved himself and of 
 affecting his being so far as to imprint on 
 his features, and especially on his voice, that 
 expression and those accents of sorrow which 
 awake sympathy and extort tears.’ No 
 doubt the actor must have this kind of sen- 
 sibility; but to this extent sensibility is not 
 rare. It may sometimes be recognized in 
 amateurs acting for the first time; and we 
 take it that no moderately successful actor, 
 even on a second-rate provincial stage, ever 
 wanted sensibility to this extent. Let us 
 call it, for the purpose of future reference, 
 sensibility in the first degree, and then pass 
 to what Talma further requires and still 
 
 46 
 
calls sensibility—namely, that imagination 
 which enables the actor to look on the lives 
 of historical personages, or the impassioned 
 figures created by genius, which reveals to 
 him as tho by magic their physiognomy, their 
 heroic stature, their language, their habits, 
 all the shades of their character, all the 
 movements of their soul, and even their 
 singularities. We begin to feel that sensi- 
 bility in the second degree is more difficult 
 of attainment, and here it is well to remark 
 that Talma does not place this faculty under 
 the heading of “intelligence.” He does not 
 tell the actor that he must understand his 
 author. This insight which he so justly ac- 
 quires is to be a matter of feeling. The rev- 
 elation comes by magic, not logic. Fanny 
 Kemble says, in perfect accord with Talma, 
 perception rather than reflexion reaches the 
 aim proposed. It is the absence of this sen- 
 sibility in the second degree that makes 
 many ordinary fairly good actors so insuf- 
 ferably bad in great parts. Probably they 
 understand the words they speak, and have 
 a vague notion of what the person they rep- 
 resent may be supposed to feel, but they have 
 no insight into heroic thought or feeling; 
 
 47 
 
and, says Talma, ‘if the actor is not en- 
 dowed with a sensibility at least equal to that 
 of any of his audience, he can move them 
 but very little.” Too often our actors have 
 less of this sensibility than many of those 
 who hear them. Why then, it may be asked, 
 do not audience and actors change places? 
 Because the sensitive hearers lack sensibility 
 in the third degree—for Talma has not done 
 with this word yet. He includes in this term 
 “the faculty of exaltation which agitates an 
 actor, takes possession of his senses, shakes 
 even his very soul, and enables him to enter 
 into the most tragic situations and the most 
 terrible of the passions as if they were his 
 own.” 
 
 Now, not one of the audience, which con- 
 demn the second-rate actor in a great part 
 because they have more sensibility than he 
 has, will be found capable of the kind of 
 exaltation here described. We think that 
 here Talma has confused or blended two 
 very different faculties under one name. To 
 feel and to express were one to the great 
 actor, but the vast majority of mankind is, 
 we think, denied the gift of expressing emo- 
 tion. And here it seems to us that Talma 
 
 48 
 
misses the very point which distinguishes the 
 actor from other artists. All artists must 
 have this sensibility he demands, but the 
 form which each naturally employs to ex- 
 press his emotion determines whether he 
 shall be author, painter, musician or actor. 
 Under the influence of this ‘‘exaltation’’ the 
 actor finds the tone, the look, the gesture 
 required to express the feeling with which 
 he is inspired, and this gift is, to some 
 extent, possest by all actors who can earn 
 their bread. This is the faculty which is 
 trained by stage practice. And here we 
 may again refer for support to ‘Notes on 
 some of Shakspere’s Plays,’ by F. A. Kem- 
 ble. Speaking with the authority of tradi- 
 tion in a great family she says, “There is a 
 specific comprehension of effect and the 
 means of producing it, which in some persons 
 is a distinct capacity, and this forms what 
 actors call the study of their profession.” 
 And altho Talma mixt up expression and 
 feeling when endeavoring in a brief way to 
 write an analytical account of his own art, 
 he takes precisely this view of study. Here 
 is his method. ‘The actor who possesses 
 this double gift’ [sensibility and intelli- 
 
 49 
 
gence] “adopts a course of study peculiar to 
 himself. In the first place, by repeated exer- 
 cises he enters deeply into the emotions, and 
 his speech acquires the accent proper to the 
 situation of the personage he has to repre- 
 sent. This done, he goes to the theater not 
 only to give theatrical effect to his studies, 
 but also to yield himself to the spontaneous 
 flashes of his sensibility and all the emotions 
 which it voluntarily produces in him. What 
 does he then do? In order that his inspira- 
 tions may not be lost, his memory, in the 
 silence of repose, recalls the accent of his 
 voice, the expression of his features, his 
 action—in a word, the spontaneous workings 
 of his mind which he had supposed to have 
 free course, and, in effect, everything which 
 in the moments of his exaltation contributed 
 to the effect he had produced. His intelli- 
 gence thus passes all these means in review, 
 connecting them and fixing them in his mem- 
 ory, to re-employ them at pleasure in suc- 
 ceeding representations.” This passage ex- 
 presses better than anything we have ever 
 read what the actor’s study really should be. 
 After a certain amount of preparation, he 
 yields in a state of exaltation to impulse; sug- 
 
 50 
 
gestions crowd upon him; tones, cries, ges- 
 tures, expressions, actions, are created. The 
 exaltation is extreme, and these moments 
 when he is alone, and the god works in him 
 may be those of keenest pleasure. But this 
 state is succeeded by a calm and critical 
 mood, in which the true artist chooses, re- 
 jects, and groups the partial effects obtained 
 so as to produce one great and consistent 
 whole. In this work, he will be greatly aided 
 if he has a sympathetic friend of sound 
 judgment—Talma’s ‘person of taste”— 
 whose counsel he may take. Those who 
 know what this study means are driven 
 almost to distraction when they hear an 
 actor—perhaps a great actor—compli- 
 mented on being able to remember the words 
 of his part. But, on the other hand, it must 
 be almost as galling when a great actor is 
 told that he really understands his author’s 
 meaning. One great charm in this essay by 
 Talma lies in the total absence of this con- 
 temptible worship of the human understand- 
 ing—a very good thing in its way, tho one 
 of but small importance in mere art. To 
 Talma intelligence meant a sound critical 
 faculty, not logical, but perceptive, enabling 
 
 SI 
 
its possessor to keep what was good in art 
 and reject that which was less good. We 
 find in this essay a clear solution of the ques- 
 tion continually askt, whether the actor really 
 feels what he is acting. Talma, as we un- 
 derstand him, only felt the emotion once in 
 its full intensity—that is to say, at the mo- 
 ment of creation during the solitary re- 
 hearsal. Subsequently the effect was pro- 
 duced by the aid of memory; but the body is 
 so constituted that if by the aid of memory 
 we perfectly reproduce a tone or cry, that 
 tone or cry brings back simultaneously a close 
 reproduction of the feeling by which it was 
 first created. Thus to act a great part a 
 man must be capable of real greatness. As 
 Talma says: “He will never rise to excellence 
 as an actor whose soul is not susceptible of 
 the extremes of passion.” And yet the rep- 
 resentation night after night of these great 
 feelings may come to be almost mechanical, 
 or, rather, the feelings of the actor can be 
 almost mechanically reawakened by the ex- 
 cellence of his own art. Thus in describing 
 Lekain at his best period, when his art was 
 ripe, he says: ‘Accent, inflexions, actions, 
 attitudes, looks, all were reproduced at every 
 
 52 
 
representation with the same exactness, the 
 same vigor; and if there was any difference 
 between one representation and another, it 
 was always in favor of the last.”  Spon- 
 taneity is an admirable gift, but you cannot 
 be spontaneous a second time. Spontaneous 
 movements are right and necessary at the 
 moment of creation, but are wholly out of 
 place before an audience. 
 
 Talma liked good scenery and correct 
 dresses, but one feels that if he were alive 
 now, he might say, faut de la vertu, pas trop 
 n'en faut. His remarks on truth and nature 
 are true and natural. He points out, taught 
 by the scenes he had witnest during the 
 Reign of Terror, that “the man of the world 
 and the man of the people, so opposite in 
 their language, frequently express the great 
 agitations of the mind in the same way,” and 
 that ‘the great movements of the soul ele- 
 vate man to an ideal nature in whatever rank 
 fate may have placed him.” While, how- 
 ever, he recommends the observation of pas- 
 sion in others, it is clear that he never con- 
 descended to mimicry. Some talent for 
 mimicry is very common among actors, and 
 is indeed a useful accomplishment, especially 
 
 12 
 
in the lower walks of the profession: but no 
 man can ever hope to play Coriolanus by 
 mimicking some ‘statesman. 
 
 Talma’s chief observations were made 
 upon himself. He attended to his own 
 tones, his own fact, when in real grief; he is 
 half ashamed and half proud of having 
 done so. We imagine that all artists are 
 alike on this point, and that in this fact lies 
 a certain compensation for the exact keen- 
 ness of their feelings. They suffer more 
 than any other men, and get more good 
 from suffering. Talma observed that an 
 emotion truly exprest moved an audience 
 which did not understand the words. Most 
 people would attribute this to gesture; but 
 he, rightly as we think, considered the effect 
 as due to the voice, and as an instance he 
 speaks of Miss O’Neil moving Frenchmen 
 who did not understand her to tears. The 
 point is a curious one, for we have observed 
 that a foreigner can judge artistic truth in 
 acting with fair success when he is wholly 
 incapable of appreciating any little niceties 
 of accent or elocution. Thus too we allow 
 foreigners to act on our stage who cannot 
 speak one word so as to be acceptable to our 
 
 54 
 
ears in English. Yet their tones will bring 
 tears almost as readily as if they spoke with 
 English tongues. We believé that this ad- 
 mits of explanation; but the theory would de- 
 mand too much space to be developed here. 
 Let all those who are interested in acting 
 read Talma’s essay; and then, if they wish 
 for a little amusement, they may turn to the 
 ‘Actor’s Art, by Mr. Gustave Garcia. 
 Talma tells his readers what a great actor 
 must learn, Mr. Garcia explains what small 
 actors can be taught and do learn. 
 
 55 
 
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NOTES 
 
 EKAIN (1729-1778 was the fore- 
 most tragic actor of France in his 
 generation as Talma was the fore- 
 most tragic actor of the succeed- 
 
 ing generation. He owed to the friendly 
 admiration of Voltaire his admission into 
 the Comédie-Française when he was only 
 twenty-one. He had against him certain 
 physical disadvantages; and he had in 
 his favor a rich, warm voice, which he cul- 
 tivated assiduously until it became a supple 
 instrument for rendering passion. At Vol- 
 taire’s suggestion he was invited to Potsdam 
 by Frederick the Great. To him and to 
 Mlle. Clairon were due two important re- 
 forms in the French theater,—the striking 
 advance in the propriety of costuming and 
 the clearing of the stage of the Theatre 
 Francais of the mob of courtiers who had 
 until then been privileged to occupy seats in 
 close proximity to the actors. 
 
 Talma (1763-1826) spent a part of his 
 youth in England; and he made his first ap- 
 pearance at the Théatre Francais in 1787, 
 when he was twenty-four. He excelled in 
 the chief characters of French classicist tra- 
 gedy; and he gave them an external verisimil- 
 itude by donning flowing white robes de- 
 
 59 
 
signed for him by his friend David, the 
 painter. During the French revolution he 
 became intimate with Napoleon I, retaining 
 this friendship even after the establishment 
 of the Empire. When Napoleon went to 
 meet the Czar at Erfurt in 1808 he took 
 with him alma and others of the Comédie- 
 Française, telling him that they were to per- 
 form “before a parterre of Kings.” He sur- 
 vived to behold the beginnings of the Ro- 
 manticist revolt which was to overthrow the 
 rigorous code of the Classicists, and both 
 Victor Hugo and the elder Dumas have re- 
 corded the admiration they felt for his skill 
 as an actor. 
 
 The autobiography of Lekain edited by 
 his son first appeared in Paris in the 
 year X. When the volume was included in 
 1825 in a series of dramatic memoirs, there 
 was prefixt to it a paper entitled ‘Reflexions 
 on Lekain and on the Actor’s Art, by 
 Talma. This essay revealed the fact that 
 Talma had thought profoundly about the art 
 which he brilliantly adorned; and that he 
 was able to present his thoughts skilfully. 
 The significance and the importance of what 
 Talma had written was immediately recog- 
 nized; and in all later French discussion of 
 the principles and the practice of the his- 
 trionic art, the words of the great French 
 tragedian were frequently cited. 
 
 60 
 
At the suggestion of Sir Henry Irving, 
 whose position at the head of the British 
 stage was as undisputed as had been Talma’s 
 leadership in the French theater, the essay 
 was translated by some person unknown and 
 publisht in 1877 in a British monthly, the 
 Theater. From this magazine the anony- 
 mous translation was reprinted as a pam- 
 phlet, entitled ‘Talma on the Actor’s Art,’ 
 which was issued in 1883, with a preface by 
 Sir Henry Irving. This publication brought 
 the paper to the attention of the English- 
 speaking public for the first time; and its 
 own merits and the eulogy bestowed upon 
 it by Irving evoked a host of reviews in the 
 British and American periodicals of the 
 time. | 
 
 As might be expected most of these 
 ephemeral criticisms were valueless. One of 
 them, however, that which appeared in the 
 Saturday Review, was a solid contribution 
 to the subject. It was written by a life-long 
 student of the theory and practise of the art 
 of acting,—Fleeming Jenkin, professor of 
 engineering in the University of Edinburgh. 
 He was a man of varied intellectual interests, 
 —as must be well known to all those who 
 may have read the memoir affectionately 
 written by his former pupil, Robert Louis 
 Stevenson. This brief biography was pre- 
 pared as an introduction to the two volumes 
 
 61 
 
in which the literary and scientific papers of 
 Fleeming Jenkin were collected. These vol- 
 umes were publisht in London in 1887 by 
 Longmans, Green and Co.; and they re- 
 plevined from the swift oblivion of the back- 
 number two articles on the acting of Mrs. 
 Siddons and this review of Talma’s essay. 
 It is by the kind permission of Mrs. Fleem- 
 ing Jenkin and of Longmans, Green and Co. 
 that this paper is here printed as a most use- 
 ful commentary on both Talma and Irving. 
 The discussion of the principles and the 
 practise of his art by an artist who can ana- 
 lize his instinctive and intuitive processes is 
 always useful to all who seek to inquire into 
 the secrets of the craft; but these analyses 
 tend to the undue consideration of technic 
 and they are vital only where the artist hap- 
 pens also to possess range as well as depth 
 of vision. This double qualification is 
 Talma’s as obviously as it was also Samson’s 
 and Coquelin’s. On the other hand Mrs. 
 Siddons and Salvini, mighty as they were in 
 the impersonation of great characters, were 
 incompetent to analize these very parts; and 
 Mrs. Siddons’ essay on Lady Macbeth is as 
 empty as Salvini’s paper on Othello. ~ 
 Talma has luminously indicated what an 
 actor must do to make himself master of a 
 part; and it is interesting to supplement this 
 with the account of his own method of get- 
 
 62 
 
ting inside the skin of a character which 
 Coquelin once gave to an interviewer :— 
 “When I have to create a part, I begin by 
 reading the play with the greatest attention 
 five or six times. First, I consider what po- 
 sition my character should occupy, on what 
 plane in the picture I must put him. Then I 
 study his psychology, knowing what he 
 thinks, what he is morally. I deduce what 
 he ought to be physically, what will be his 
 carriage, his manner of speaking, his ges- 
 ture. These characteristics once decided, I 
 learn the part without thinking about it fur- 
 ther; then, when I know it, I take up my 
 man again and, closing my eyes, I say to him, 
 ‘Recite this for me.’ Then I see him deliv- 
 ering the speech, the sentence I askt him for; 
 he lives, he speaks, he gesticulates before 
 me; and then I have only to imitate him.” 
 
 B. M. 
 
 63 
 
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