ACTORS.

Most people, I suppose, at one time or another in their lives, have felt

the charm of an actor's life, as they were free to fancy it, well-nigh

irresistible.

What is it to be a great actor? I say a great actor, because (I am sure)

no amateur ever fancied himself a small one. Is it not always to have

the best parts in the best plays; to be the central figure of every

group; to feel that attention is arrested the moment you come on the

stage; and (more exquisite satisfaction still) to be aware that it

is relaxed when you go off; to have silence secured for your smallest

utterances; to know that the highest dramatic talent has been exercised

to invent situations for the very purpose of giving effect to _your_

words and dignity to _your_ actions; to quell all opposition by the

majesty of your bearing or the brilliancy of your wit; and finally,

either to triumph over disaster, or if you be cast in tragedy, happier

still, to die upon the stage, supremely pitied and honestly mourned

for at least a minute? And then, from first to last, applause loud and

long--not postponed, not even delayed, but following immediately after.

For a piece of diseased egotism--that is, for a man--what a lot is this!

How pointed, how poignant the contrast between a hero on the boards

and a hero in the streets! In the world's theatre the man who is really

playing the leading part--did we but know it--is too often, in the

general estimate, accounted but one of the supernumeraries, a figure

in dingy attire, who might well be spared, and who may consider himself

well paid with a pound a week. _His_ utterances procure no silence.

He has to pronounce them as best he may, whilst the gallery sucks its

orange, the pit pares its nails, the boxes babble, and the stalls yawn.

Amidst, these pleasant distractions he is lucky if he is heard at all;

and perhaps the best thing that can befall him is for somebody to think

him worth the trouble of a hiss. As for applause, it may chance with

such men, if they live long enough, as it has to the great ones who have

preceded them, in their old age,

'When they are frozen up within, and quite

The phantom of themselves,

To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost

Which blamed the living man.'

The great actor may sink to sleep, soothed by the memory of the tears

or laughter he has evoked, and wake to find the day far advanced, whose

close is to witness the repetition of his triumph; but the great man

will lie tossing and turning as he reflects on the seemingly unequal war

he is waging with stupidity and prejudice, and be tempted to exclaim,

as Milton tells us he was, with the sad prophet Jeremy: 'Woe is me, my

mother, that thou hast borne me, a man of strife and contention!'

The upshot of all this is, that it is a pleasanter thing to represent

greatness than to be great.

But the actor's calling is not only pleasant in itself--it gives

pleasure to others. In this respect, how favourably it contrasts with

the three learned professions!

Few pleasures are greater than to witness some favourite character,

which hitherto has been but vaguely bodied forth by our sluggish

imaginations, invested with all the graces of living man or woman. A

distinguished man of letters, who years ago was wisely selfish enough to

rob the stage of a jewel and set it in his own crown, has addressed to

his wife some radiant lines which are often on my lips:

'Beloved, whose life is with mine own entwined,

In whom, whilst yet thou wert my dream, I viewed,

Warm with the life of breathing womanhood,

What Shakespeare's visionary eye divined--

Pure Imogen; high-hearted Rosalind,

Kindling with sunshine the dusk greenwood;

Or changing with the poet's changing mood,

Juliet, or Constance of the queenly mind.'

But a truce to these compliments.

'I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.'

It is idle to shirk disagreeable questions, and the one I have to ask is

this, 'Has the world been wrong in regarding with disfavour and lack of

esteem the great profession of the stage?'

That the world, ancient and modern, has despised the actor's profession

cannot be denied. An affecting story I read many years ago--in that

elegant and entertaining work, Lemprière's 'Classical Dictionary'--well

illustrates the feeling of the Roman world. Julius Decimus Laberius was

a Roman knight and dramatic author, famous for his mimes, who had

the misfortune to irritate a greater Julius, the author of the

'Commentaries,' when the latter was at the height of his power. Caesar,

casting about how best he might humble his adversary, could think of

nothing better than to condemn him to take a leading part in one of his

own plays. Laberius entreated in vain. Caesar was obdurate, and had his

way. Laberius played his part--how, Lemprière sayeth not; but he

also took his revenge, after the most effectual of all fashions, the

literary. He composed and delivered a prologue of considerable power, in

which he records the act of spiteful tyranny, and which, oddly enough,

is the only specimen of his dramatic art that has come down to us. It

contains lines which, though they do not seem to have made Caesar, who

sat smirking in the stalls, blush for himself, make us, 1,900 years

afterwards, blush for Caesar. The only lines, however, now relevant are,

being interpreted, as follow:

'After having lived sixty years with honour, I left my home this morning

a Roman knight, but I shall return to it this evening an infamous

stage-player. Alas! I have lived a day too long.'

Turning to the modern world, and to England, we find it here the popular

belief that actors are by statute rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars.

This, it is true, is founded on a misapprehension of the effect of 39

Eliz. chap. 4, which only provides that common players wandering abroad

without authority to play, shall be taken to be 'rogues and vagabonds;'

a distinction which one would have thought was capable of being

perceived even by the blunted faculties of the lay mind.[*]

[* Footnote: See note at end of Essay.]

But the fact that the popular belief rests upon a misreading of an Act

of Parliament three hundred years old does not affect the belief,

but only makes it exquisitely English, and as a consequence entirely

irrational.

Is there anything to be said in support of this once popular prejudice?

It may, I think, be supported by two kinds of argument. One derived

from the nature of the case, the other from the testimony of actors

themselves.

A serious objection to an actor's calling is that from its nature it

admits of no other test of failure or success than the contemporary

opinion of the town. This in itself must go far to rob life of dignity.

A Milton may remain majestically indifferent to the 'barbarous noise'

of 'owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs,' but the actor can steel

himself to no such fortitude. He can lodge no appeal to posterity. The

owls must hoot, the cuckoos cry, the apes yell, and the dogs bark on

his side, or he is undone. This is of course inevitable, but it is an

unfortunate condition of an artist's life.

Again, no record of his art survives to tell his tale or account for his

fame. When old gentlemen wax garrulous over actors dead and gone, young

gentlemen grow somnolent. Chippendale the cabinet-maker is more potent

than Garrick the actor. The vivacity of the latter no longer charms

(save in Boswell); the chairs of the former still render rest impossible

in a hundred homes.

This, perhaps, is why no man of lofty genius or character has ever

condescended to remain an actor. His lot pressed heavily even on so

mercurial a trifler as David Garrick, who has given utterance to the

feeling in lines as good perhaps as any ever written by a successful

player:

'The painter's dead, yet still he charms the eye,

While England lives his fame shall never die;

But he who struts his hour upon the stage

Can scarce protract his fame thro' half an age;

Nor pen nor pencil can the actor save--

Both art and artist have one common grave.'

But the case must be carried farther than this, for the mere fact that

a particular pursuit does not hold out any peculiar attractions for

soaring spirits will not justify us in calling that pursuit bad names.

I therefore proceed to say that the very act of acting, _i. e._, the art

of mimicry, or the representation of feigned emotions called up by sham

situations, is, in itself, an occupation an educated man should be slow

to adopt as the profession of a life.

I believe--for we should give the world as well as the devil its

due--that it is to a feeling, a settled persuasion of this sort, lying

deeper than the surface brutalities and snobbishnesses visible to

all, that we must attribute the contempt, seemingly so cruel and so

ungrateful, the world has visited upon actors.

I am no great admirer of beards, be they never so luxurious or glossy,

yet I own I cannot regard off the stage the closely shaven face of an

actor without a feeling of pity, not akin to love. Here, so I cannot

help saying to myself, is a man who has adopted a profession whose very

first demand upon him is that he should destroy his own identity. It is

not what you are, or what by study you may become, but how few obstacles

you present to the getting of yourself up as somebody else, that settles

the question of your fitness for the stage. Smoothness of face, mobility

of feature, compass of voice--these things, but the toys of other

trades, are the tools of this one.

Boswellites will remember the name of Tom Davies as one of frequent

occurrence in the great biography. Tom was an actor of some repute, and

(so it was said) read 'Paradise Lost' better than any man in England.

One evening, when Johnson was lounging behind the scenes at Drury (it

was, I hope, before his pious resolution to go there no more), Davies

made his appearance on his way to the stage in all the majesty and

millinery of his part. The situation is picturesque. The great and

dingy Reality of the eighteenth century, the Immortal, and the bedizened

little player. 'Well, Tom,' said the great man (and this is the

whole story), 'well, Tom, and what art thou to-night?' 'What art thou

to-night?' It may sound rather like a tract, but it will, I think, be

found difficult to find an answer to the question consistent with any

true view of human dignity.

Our last argument derived from the nature of the case is, that

deliberately to set yourself as the occupation of your life to amuse the

adult and to astonish, or even to terrify, the infant population of your

native land, is to degrade yourself.

Three-fourths of the acted drama is, and always must be, comedy, farce,

and burlesque. We are bored to death by the huge inanities of life. We

observe with horror that our interest in our dinner becomes languid. We

consult our doctor, who simulates an interest in our stale symptoms,

and after a little talk about Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet, and Dr. Merriman,

prescribes Toole. If we are very innocent we may inquire what night we

are to go, but if we do we are at once told that it doesn't in the least

matter when we go, for it is always equally funny. Poor Toole! to be

made up every night as a safe prescription for the blues! To make people

laugh is not necessarily a crime, but to adopt as your trade the making

people laugh by delivering for a hundred nights together another man's

jokes, in a costume the author of the jokes would blush to be seen

in, seems to me a somewhat unworthy proceeding on the part of a man of

character and talent.

To amuse the British public is a task of herculean difficulty and

danger, for the blatant monster is, at times, as whimsical and coy as a

maiden, and if it once makes up its mind not to be amused, nothing will

shake it. The labour is enormous, the sacrifice beyond what is demanded

of saints. And if you succeed, what is your reward? Read the lives of

comedians, and closing them, you will see what good reason an actor has

for exclaiming with the old-world poet:

'Odi profanum vulgus!'

We now turn to the testimony of actors themselves.

Shakespeare is, of course, my first witness. There is surely

significance in this. 'Others abide our question,' begins Arnold's fine

sonnet on Shakespeare--'others abide our question; thou art free.' The

little we know about our greatest poet has become a commonplace. It is

a striking tribute to the endless loquacity of man, and a proof how that

great creature is not to be deprived of his talk, that he has managed to

write quite as much about there being nothing to write about as he could

have written about Shakespeare, if the author of _Hamlet_ had been as

great an egoist as Rousseau. The fact, however, remains that he who has

told us most about ourselves, whose genius has made the whole civilized

world kin, has told us nothing about himself, except that he hated and

despised the stage. To say that he has told us this is not, I think, any

exaggeration. I have, of course, in mind the often quoted lines to be

found in that sweet treasury of melodious verse and deep feeling, the

'Sonnets of Shakespeare.' The 110th begins thus:

'Alas! 'tis true I have gone here and there,

And made myself a motley to the view,

Gor'd my own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,

Made old offences of affections new.'

And the 111th:

'O for my sake do thou with Fortune chide,

The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,

That did not better for my life provide

Than public means, which public manners breeds.

Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,

And almost thence my nature is subdued

To what it works on, like the dyer's hand.

Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed.'

It is not much short of three centuries since those lines were written,

but they seem still to bubble with a scorn which may indeed be called

immortal.

'Sold cheap what is most dear.'

There, compressed in half a line, is the whole case against an actor's

calling.

But it may be said Shakespeare was but a poor actor. He could write

_Hamlet_ and _As You Like It_; but when it came to casting the parts,

the Ghost in the one and old Adam in the other were the best he could

aspire to. Verbose biographers of Shakespeare, in their dire extremity,

and naturally desirous of writing a big book about a big man, have

remarked at length that it was highly creditable to Shakespeare that he

was not, or at all events that it does not appear that he was, jealous,

after the true theatrical tradition, of his more successful brethren of

the buskin.

It surely might have occured, even to a verbose biographer in his direst

need, that to have had the wit to write and actually to have written the

soliloquies in _Hamlet_, might console a man under heavier afflictions

than the knowledge that in the popular estimate somebody else spouted

those soliloquies better than he did himself. I can as easily fancy

Milton jealous of Tom Davies as Shakespeare of Richard Burbage.

But--good, bad, or indifferent--Shakespeare was an actor, and as such I

tender his testimony.

I now--for really this matter must be cut short--summon pell-mell all

the actors and actresses who have ever strutted their little hour on the

stage, and put to them the following comprehensive question: Is there in

your midst one who had an honest, hearty, downright pride and pleasure

in your calling, or do not you all (tell the truth) mournfully echo the

lines of your great master (whom nevertheless you never really cared

for), and with him

'Your fortunes chide,

That did not better for your lives provide

Than public means, which public manners breeds.'

They all assent: with wonderful unanimity.

But, seriously, I know of no recorded exception, unless it be Thomas

Betterton, who held the stage for half a century--from 1661 to 1708--and

who still lives, as much as an actor can, in the pages of Colley

Cibber's _Apology_. He was a man apparently of simple character, for he

had only one benefit-night all his life.

Who else is there? Read Macready's 'Memoirs'--the King Arthur of

the stage. You will find there, I am sorry to say, all the actor's

faults--if faults they can be called which seem rather hard necessities,

the discolouring of the dyer's hand; greedy hungering after applause,

endless egotism, grudging praise--all are there; not perhaps in the

tropical luxuriance they have attained elsewhere, but plain enough.

But do we not also find, deeply engrained and constant, a sense of

degradation, a longing to escape from the stage for ever?

He did not like his children to come and see him act, and was always

regretting--heaven help him!--that he wasn't a barrister-at-law. Look

upon this picture and on that. Here we have Macbeth, that mighty thane;

Hamlet, the intellectual symbol of the whole world of modern thought;

Strafford, in Robert Browning's fine play; splendid dresses, crowded

theatres, beautiful women, royal audiences; and on the other side, a

rusty gown, a musty wig, a fusty court, a deaf judge, an indifferent

jury, a dispute about a bill of lading, and ten guineas on your

brief--which you have not been paid, and which you can't recover--why,

''tis Hyperion to a satyr!'

Again, we find Mrs. Siddons writing of her sister's marriage:

'I have lost one of the sweetest companions in the world. She has

married a respectable man, though of small fortune. I thank God she is

off the stage.' What is this but to say, 'Better the most humdrum of

existences with the most "respectable of men," than to be upon the

stage'?

The volunteered testimony of actors is both large in bulk and valuable

in quality, and it is all on my side.

Their involuntary testimony I pass over lightly. Far be from me the

disgusting and ungenerous task of raking up a heap of the weaknesses,

vanities, and miserablenesses of actors and actresses dead and gone.

After life's fitful fever they sleep (I trust) well; and in common

candour, it ought never to be forgotten that whilst it has always been

the fashion--until one memorable day Mr. Froude ran amuck of it--for

biographers to shroud their biographees (the American Minister must

bear the brunt of this word on his broad shoulders) in a crape veil of

respectability, the records of the stage have been written in another

spirit. We always know the worst of an actor, seldom his best. David

Garrick was a better man than Lord Eldon, and Macready was at least as

good as Dickens.

There is however, one portion of this body of involuntary testimony

on which I must be allowed to rely, for it may be referred to without

offence.

Our dramatic literature is our greatest literature. It is the best thing

we have done. Dante may over-top Milton, but Shakespeare surpasses both.

He is our finest achievement; his plays our noblest possession; the

things in the world most worth thinking about. To live daily in his

company, to study his works with minute and loving care--in no spirit

of pedantry searching for double endings, but in order to discover their

secret, and to make the spoken word tell upon the hearts of man and

woman--this might have been expected to produce great intellectual if

not moral results.

The most magnificent compliment ever paid by man to woman is undoubtedly

Steele's to the Lady Elizabeth Hastings. 'To love her,' wrote he, 'is a

liberal education.' As much might surely be said of Shakespeare.

But what are the facts--the ugly, hateful facts? Despite this great

advantage--this close familiarity with the noblest and best in our

literature--the taste of actors, their critical judgment, always has

been and still is, if not beneath contempt, at all events far below

the average intelligence of their day. By taste, I do not mean taste in

flounces and in furbelows, tunics and stockings; but in the weightier

matters of the truly sublime and the essentially ridiculous. Salvini's

Macbeth is undoubtedly a fine performance; and yet that great actor,

as the result of his study, has placed it on record that he thinks the

sleep-walking scene ought to be assigned to Macbeth instead of to his

wife. Shades of Shakespeare and Siddons, what think you of that?

It is a strange fatality, but a proof of the inherent pettiness of

the actor's art, that though it places its votary in the very midst of

literary and artistic influences, and of necessity informs him of the

best and worthiest, he is yet, so far as his own culture is concerned,

left out in the cold--art's slave, not her child.

What have the devotees of the drama taught us? Nothing! it is we who

have taught them. We go first, and they come lumbering after. It was

not from the stage the voice arose bidding us recognise the supremacy of

Shakespeare's genius. Actors first ignored him, then hideously mutilated

him; and though now occasionally compelled, out of deference to the

taste of the day, to forego their green-room traditions, to forswear

their Tate and Brady emendations, in their heart of hearts they love

him not; and it is with a light step and a smiling face that our great

living tragedian flings aside Hamlet's tunic or Shylock's gaberdine

to revel in the melodramatic glories of _The Bells_ and _The Corsican

Brothers_.

Our gratitude is due in this great matter to men of letters, not to

actors. If it be asked, 'What have actors to do with literature and

criticism?' I answer, 'Nothing;' and add, 'That is my case.'

But the notorious bad taste of actors is not entirely due to their

living outside Literature, with its words for ever upon their lips, but

none of its truths engraven on their hearts. It may partly be accounted

for by the fact that for the purposes of an ambitious actor bad plays

are the best.

In reading actors' lives, nothing strikes you more than their delight

in making a hit in some part nobody ever thought anything of before.

Garrick was proud past all endurance of his Beverley in the _Gamester_,

and one can easily see why. Until people saw Garrick's Beverley, they

didn't think there was anything in the _Gamester_; nor was there, except

what Garrick put there. This is called creating a part, and he is the

greatest actor who creates most parts.

But genius in the author of the play is a terrible obstacle in the way

of an actor who aspires to identify himself once and for all with the

leading part in it. Mr. Irving may act Hamlet well or ill--and, for

my part, I think he acts it exceedingly well--but behind Mr. Irving's

Hamlet, as behind everybody else's Hamlet, there looms a greater Hamlet

than them all--Shakespeare's Hamlet, the real Hamlet.

But Mr. Irving's Mathias is quite another kettle of fish, all of Mr.

Irving's own catching. Who ever, on leaving the Lyceum, after seeing

_The Bells_, was heard to exclaim, 'It is all mighty fine; but that

is not my idea of Mathias'? Do not we all feel that without Mr. Irving

there could be no Mathias?

We best like doing what we do best: and an actor is not to be blamed for

preferring the task of making much of a very little to that of making

little of a great deal.

As for actresses, it surely would be the height of ungenerosity to blame

a woman for following the only regular profession commanding fame and

fortune the kind consideration of man has left open to her. For two

centuries women have been free to follow this profession, onerous and

exacting though it be, and by doing so have won the rapturous applause

of generations of men, who are all ready enough to believe that where

their pleasure is involved, no risks of life or honour are too great for

a woman to run. It is only when the latter, tired of the shams of life,

would pursue the realities, that we become alive to the fact--hitherto,

I suppose, studiously concealed from us--how frail and feeble a creature

she is.

Lastly, it must not be forgotten that we are discussing a question

of casuistry, one which is 'stuff o' the conscience,' and where

consequently words are all important.

Is an actor's calling an eminently worthy one?--that is the question. It

may be lawful, useful, delightful; but is it worthy?

An actor's life is an artist's life. No artist, however eminent, has

more than one life, or does anything worth doing in that life, unless

he is prepared to spend it royally in the service of his art, caring for

nought else. Is an actor's art worth the price? I answer, No!