New York, June 5, 1888.
MR. PRESIDENT, Ladies and Gentlemen: I have addressed, or annoyed, a
great many audiences in my life and I have not the slightest doubt that
I stand now before more ability, a greater variety of talent, and more
real genius than I ever addressed in my life.
I know all about respectable stupidity, and I am perfectly acquainted
with the brainless wealth and success of this life, and I know, after
all, how poor the world would be without that divine thing that we call
genius--what a worthless habitation, if you take from it all that genius
has given.
I know also that all joy springs from a love of nature. I know that all
joy is what I call Pagan. The natural man takes delight in everything
that grows, in everything that shines, in everything that enjoys--he has
an immense sympathy with the whole human race.
Of that feeling, of that spirit, the drama is born. People must first be
in love with life before they can think it worth representing. They
must have sympathy with their fellows before they can enter into their
feelings and know what their heart throbs about. So, I say, back of the
drama is this love of life, this love of nature. And whenever a country
becomes prosperous--and this has been pointed cut many times--when a
wave of wealth runs over a land,--behind it you will see all the sons
and daughters of genius. When a man becomes of some account he is worth
painting. When by success and prosperity he gets the pose of a victor,
the sculptor is inspired; and when love is really in his heart, words
burst into blossom and the poet is born. When great virtues appear, when
magnificent things are done by heroines and heroes, then the stage is
built, and the life of a nation is compressed into a few hours, or--to
use the language of the greatest--"turning the accomplishment of many
years into an hour-glass"; the stage is born, and we love it because we
love life--and he who loves the stage has a kind of double life.
The drama is a crystallization of history, an epitome of the human
heart. The past is lived again and again, and we see upon the stage,
love, sacrifice, fidelity, courage--all the virtues mingled with all the
follies.
And what is the great thing that the stage does? It cultivates the
imagination. And let me say now, that the imagination constitutes the
great difference between human beings.
The imagination is the mother of pity, the mother of generosity, the
mother of every possible virtue. It is by the imagination that you are
enabled to put yourself in the place of another. Every dollar that has
been paid into your treasury came from an imagination vivid enough
to imagine himself or herself lying upon the lonely bed of pain, or
as having fallen by the wayside of life, dying alone. It is this
imagination that makes the difference in men.
Do you believe that a man would plunge the dagger into the heart of
another if he had imagination enough to see him dead--imagination enough
to see his widow throw her arms about the corpse and cover his face with
sacred tears--imagination enough to see them digging his grave, and to
see the funeral and to hear the clods fall upon the coffin and the sobs
of those who stood about--do you believe he would commit the crime?
Would any man be false who had imagination enough to see the woman that
he once loved, in the darkness of night, when the black clouds were
floating through the sky hurried by the blast as thoughts and memories
were hurrying through her poor brain--if he could see the white flutter
of her garment as she leaped to the eternal, blessed sleep of death--do
you believe that he would be false to her? I tell you that he would be
true.
So that, in my judgment, the great mission of the stage is to cultivate
the human imagination. That is the reason fiction has done so much good.
Compared with the stupid lies-called history, how beautiful are the
imagined things with painted wings. Everybody detests a thing that
pretends to be true and is not; but when it says, "I am about to
create," then it is beautiful in the proportion that it is artistic, in
the proportion that it is a success.
Imagination is the mother of enthusiasm. Imagination fans the little
spark into a flame great enough to warm the human race; and enthusiasm
is to the mind what spring is to the world. .
Now I am going to say a few words because I want to, and because I have
the chance.
What is known as "orthodox religion" has always been the enemy of the
theatre. It has been the enemy of every possible comfort, of every
rational joy--that is to say, of amusement. And there is a reason for
this. Because, if that religion be true, there should be no amusement.
If you believe that in every moment is the peril of eternal pain--do
not amuse yourself. Stop the orchestra, ring down the curtain, and be as
miserable as you can. That idea puts an infinite responsibility upon the
soul--an infinite responsibility--and how can there be any art, how can
there be any joy, after that? You might as well pile all the Alps on one
unfortunate ant, and then say, "Why don't you play? Enjoy yourself."
If that doctrine be true, every one should regard time as a kind of
dock, a pier running out into the ocean of eternity, on which you sit
on your trunk and wait for the ship of death--solemn, lugubrious,
melancholy to the last degree.
And that is why I have said joy is Pagan. It comes from a love of
nature, from a love of this world, from a love of this life. According
to the idea of some good people, life is a kind of green-room, where you
are getting ready for a "play" in some other country.
You all remember the story of "Great Expectations," and I presume you
have all had them. That is another thing about this profession of acting
that I like--you do not know how it is coming out--and there is this
delightful uncertainty.
You have all read the book called "Great Expectations," written, in
my judgment, by the greatest novelist that ever wrote the English
language--the man who created a vast realm of joy. I love the
joy-makers--not the solemn, mournful wretches. And when I think of the
church asking something of the theatre, I remember that story of "Great
Expectations." You remember Miss Haversham--she was to have been
married some fifty or sixty years before that time--sitting there in the
darkness, in all of her wedding finery, the laces having turned yellow
by time, the old wedding cake crumbled, various insects having made
it their palatial residence--you remember that she sent for that poor
little boy Pip, and when he got there in the midst of all these horrors,
she looked at him and said, "Pip, play!" And if their doctrine be true,
every actor is in that situation.
I have always loved the theatre--loved the stage, simply because it has
added to the happiness of this life. "Oh, but," they say, "is it moral?"
A superstitious man suspects everything that is pleasant. It seems
inbred in his nature, and in the nature of most people. You let such a
man pull up a little weed and taste it, and if it is sweet and good, he
says, "I'll bet it is poison." But if it tastes awful, so that his
face becomes a mask of disgust, he says, "I'll bet you that it is good
medicine."
Now, I believe that everything in the world that tends to make man
happy, is moral. That is my definition of morality. Anything that bursts
into bud and blossom, and bears the fruit of joy, is moral.
Some people expect to make the world good by destroying desire--by a
kind of pious petrifaction, feeling that if you do not want anything,
you will not want anything bad. In other words, you will be good
and moral if you will only stop growing, stop wishing, turn all your
energies in the direction of repression, and if from the tree of life
you pull every leaf, and then every bud--and if an apple happens to get
ripe in spite of you, don't touch it--snakes!
I insist that happiness is the end--virtue the means--and anything
that wipes a tear from the face of man is good. Everything that gives
laughter to the world--laughter springing from good nature, that is the
most wonderful music that has ever enriched the ears of man. And let me
say that nothing can be more immoral than to waste your own life, and
sour that of others.
Is the theatre moral? I suppose you have had an election to-day. They
had an election at the Metropolitan Opera House for bishops, and they
voted forged tickets; and after the election was over, I suppose they
asked the old question in the same solemn tone: "Is the theatre moral?"
At last, all the intelligence of the world admits that the theatre is a
great, a splendid instrumentality for increasing the well-being of man.
But only a few years ago our fathers were poor barbarians. They only
wanted the essentials of life, and through nearly all the centuries
Genius was a vagabond--Art was a servant. He was the companion of the
clown. Writers, poets, actors, either sat "below the salt" or devoured
the "remainder biscuit," and drank what drunkenness happened to leave,
or lived on crumbs, and they had less than the crumbs of respect. The
painter had to have a patron, and then in order to pay the patron, he
took the patron's wife for Venus--and the man, he was the Apollo! So the
writer had to have a patron, and he endeavored to immortalize him in a
preface of obsequious lies. The writer had no courage. The painter,
the sculptor--poor wretches--had "patrons." Some of the greatest of the
world were treated as servants, and yet they were the real kings of the
human race.
Now the public is the patron. The public has the intelligence to see
what it wants. The stage does not have to flatter any man. The actor now
does not enroll himself as the servant of duke or lord. He has the great
public, and if he is a great actor, he stands as high in the public
estimation as any other man in any other walk of life.
And these men of genius, these "vagabonds," these "sturdy vagrants" of
the old law--and let me say one thing right here: I do not believe
that there ever was a man of genius that had not a little touch of the
vagabond in him somewhere--just a little touch of chaos--that is to
say, he must have generosity enough now and then absolutely to forget
himself--he must be generous to that degree that he starts out without
thinking of the shore and without caring for the sea--and that is that
touch of chaos. And yet, through all those years the poets and the
actors lacked bread. Imagine the number of respectable dolts who felt
above them. The men of genius lived on the bounty of the few, grudgingly
given.
Now, just think what would happen, what we would be, if you could blot
from this world what these men have done. If you could take from the
walls the pictures; from the niches the statues; from the memory of man
the songs that have been sung by "The Plowman"--take from the memory of
the world what has been done by the actors and play-writers, and this
great globe would be like a vast skull emptied of all thought.
And let me say one word more, and that is as to the dignity of your
profession.
The greatest genius of this world has produced your literature. I am not
now alluding simply to one--but there has been more genius lavished upon
the stage--more real genius, more creative talent, than upon any
other department of human effort. And when men and women belong to a
profession that can count Shakespeare in its number, they should feel
nothing but pride.
Nothing gives me more pleasure than to speak of
Shakespeare--Shakespeare, in whose brain were the fruits of all thoughts
past, the seeds of all to be--Shakespeare, an intellectual ocean toward
which all rivers ran, and from which now the isles and continents of
thought receive their dew and rain.
A profession that can boast that Shakespeare was one of its members, and
that from his brain poured out that mighty intellectual cataract--that
Mississippi that will enrich all coming generations--the man that
belongs to that profession--should feel that no other man by reason of
belonging to some other, can be his superior.
And such a man, when he dies--or the friend of such a man, when that man
dies--should not imagine that it is a very generous and liberal thing
for some minister to say a few words above the corpse--and I do not want
to see this profession cringe before any other.
One word more. I hope that you will sustain this splendid charity. I do
not believe that more generous people exist than actors. I hope you will
sustain this charity. And yet, there was one little thing I saw in
your report of last year, that I want to call attention to. You had
"benefits" all over this country, and of the amount raised, one hundred
and twenty-five thousand dollars were given to religious societies and
twelve thousand dollars to the Actors' Fund--and yet they say actors are
not Christians! Do you not love your enemies? After this, I hope that
you will also love your friends.