A play is said to be well or ill acted in proportion to the scenical
illusion produced. Whether such illusion can in any case be perfect,
is not the question. The nearest approach to it, we are told, is, when
the actor appears wholly unconscious of the presence of spectators.
In tragedy--in all which is to affect the feelings--this undivided
attention to his stage business, seems indispensable. Yet it is, in
fact, dispensed with every day by our cleverest tragedians; and while
these references to an audience, in the shape of rant or sentiment,
are not too frequent or palpable, a sufficient quantity of illusion
for the purposes of dramatic interest may be said to be produced in
spite of them. But, tragedy apart, it may be inquired whether, in
certain characters in comedy, especially those which are a little
extravagant, or which involve some notion repugnant to the moral
sense, it is not a proof of the highest skill in the comedian when,
without absolutely appealing to an audience, he keeps up a tacit
understanding with them; and makes them, unconsciously to themselves,
a party in the scene. The utmost nicety is required in the mode of
doing this; but we speak only of the great artists in the profession.
The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to feel in ourselves,
or to contemplate in another, is, perhaps, cowardice. To see a coward
_done to the life_ upon a stage would produce anything but mirth.
Yet we most of us remember Jack Bannister's cowards. Could any thing
be more agreeable, more pleasant? We loved the rogues. How was
this effected but by the exquisite art of the actor in a perpetual
sub-insinuation to us, the spectators, even in the extremity of the
shaking fit, that he was not half such a coward as we took him for? We
saw all the common symptoms of the malady upon him; the quivering lip,
the cowering knees, the teeth chattering; and could have sworn "that
man was frightened." But we forgot all the while--or kept it almost a
secret to ourselves--that he never once lost his self-possession; that
he let out by a thousand droll looks and gestures--meant at _us_, and
not at all supposed to be visible to his fellows in the scene, that
his confidence in his own resources had never once deserted him. Was
this a genuine picture of a coward? or not rather a likeness, which
the clever artist contrived to palm upon us instead of an original;
while we secretly connived at the delusion for the purpose of greater
pleasure, than a more genuine counterfeiting of the imbecility,
helplessness, and utter self-desertion, which we know to be
concomitants of cowardice in real life, could have given us?
Why are misers so hateful in the world, and so endurable on the stage,
but because the skilful actor, by a sort of sub-reference, rather than
direct appeal to us, disarms the character of a great deal of its
odiousness, by seeming to engage _our_ compassion for the insecure
tenure by which he holds his money bags and parchments? By this subtle
vent half of the hatefulness of the character--the self-closeness
with which in real life it coils itself up from the sympathies of
men--evaporates. The miser becomes sympathetic; _i.e._ is no genuine
miser. Here again a diverting likeness is substituted for a very
disagreeable reality.
Spleen, irritability--the pitiable infirmities of old men, which
produce only pain to behold in the realities, counterfeited upon a
stage, divert not altogether for the comic appendages to them, but in
part from an inner conviction that they are _being acted_ before us;
that a likeness only is going on, and not the thing itself. They
please by being done under the life, or beside it; not _to the life_.
When Gatty acts an old man, is he angry indeed? or only a pleasant
counterfeit, just enough of a likeness to recognise, without pressing
upon us the uneasy sense of reality?
Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, may be too natural. It was the
case with a late actor. Nothing could be more earnest or true than the
manner of Mr. Emery; this told excellently in his Tyke, and characters
of a tragic cast. But when he carried the same rigid exclusiveness of
attention to the stage business, and wilful blindness and oblivion of
everything before the curtain into his comedy, it produced a harsh and
dissonant effect. He was out of keeping with the rest of the _Personæ
Dramatis_. There was as little link between him and them as betwixt
himself and the audience. He was a third estate, dry, repulsive, and
unsocial to all. Individually considered, his execution was masterly.
But comedy is not this unbending thing; for this reason, that the same
degree of credibility is not required of it as to serious scenes. The
degrees of credibility demanded to the two things may be illustrated
by the different sort of truth which we expect when a man tells us a
mournful or a merry story. If we suspect the former of falsehood in
any one tittle, we reject it altogether. Our tears refuse to flow at a
suspected imposition. But the teller of a mirthful tale has latitude
allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth. 'Tis the
same with dramatic illusion. We confess we love in comedy to see an
audience naturalised behind the scenes, taken in into the interest
of the drama, welcomed as by-standers however. There is something
ungracious in a comic actor holding himself aloof from all
participation or concern with those who are come to be diverted by
him. Macbeth must see the dagger, and no ear but his own be told of
it; but an old fool in farce may think he _sees something_, and by
conscious words and looks express it, as plainly as he can speak, to
pit, box, and gallery. When an impertinent in tragedy, an Osric, for
instance, breaks in upon the serious passions of the scene, we approve
of the contempt with which he is treated. But when the pleasant
impertinent of comedy, in a piece purely meant to give delight, and
raise mirth out of whimsical perplexities, worries the studious man
with taking up his leisure, or making his house his home, the same
sort of contempt expressed (however _natural_) would destroy the
balance of delight in the spectators. To make the intrusion comic,
the actor who plays the annoyed man must a little desert nature; he
must, in short, be thinking of the audience, and express only so much
dissatisfaction and peevishness as is consistent with the pleasure of
comedy. In other words, his perplexity must seem half put on. If he
repel the intruder with the sober set face of a man in earnest, and
more especially if he deliver his expostulations in a tone which in
the world must necessarily provoke a duel; his real-life manner will
destroy the whimsical and purely dramatic existence of the other
character (which to render it comic demands an antagonist comicality
on the part of the character opposed to it), and convert what was
meant for mirth, rather than belief, into a downright piece of
impertinence indeed, which would raise no diversion in us, but rather
stir pain, to see inflicted in earnest upon any unworthy person. A
very judicious actor (in most of his parts) seems to have fallen into
an error of this sort in his playing with Mr. Wrench in the farce of
Free and Easy.
Many instances would be tedious; these may suffice to show that comic
acting at least does not always demand from the performer that strict
abstraction from all reference to an audience, which is exacted of
it; but that in some cases a sort of compromise may take place, and
all the purposes of dramatic delight be attained by a judicious
understanding, not too openly announced, between the ladies and
gentlemen--on both sides of the curtain.