It is often supposed that great actors trust to the inspiration of the
moment. Nothing can be more erroneous. There will, of course, be
such moments, when an actor at a white heat illumines some passage
with a flash of imagination (and this mental condition, by the way, is
impossible to the student sitting in his armchair); but the great
actor's surprises are generally well weighed, studied, and balanced.
We know that Edmund Kean constantly practised before a mirror effects
which startled his audience by their apparent spontaneity. It is the
accumulation of such effects which enables an actor, after many years,
to present many great characters with remarkable completeness.
I do not want to overstate the case, or to appeal to anything that is
not within common experience, so I can confidently ask you whether a
scene in a great play has not been at some time vividly impressed on
your minds by the delivery of a single line, or even of one forcible
word. Has not this made the passage far more real and human to you
than all the thought you have devoted to it? An accomplished critic
has said that Shakespeare himself might have been surprised had he
heard the "Fool, fool, fool!" of Edmund Kean. And though all actors
are not Keans, they have in varying degree this power of making a
dramatic character step out of the page, and come nearer to our hearts
and our understandings.
After all, the best and most convincing exposition of the whole art of
acting is given by Shakespeare himself: "To hold, as 'twere, the
mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own
image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."
Thus the poet recognised the actor's art as a most potent ally in the
representations of human life. He believed that to hold the mirror up
to nature was one of the worthiest functions in the sphere of labour,
and actors are content to point to his definition of their work as the
charter of their privileges.