The practice of the art of acting is a subject difficult to treat with
the necessary brevity. Beginners are naturally anxious to know what
course they should pursue. In common with other actors, I receive
letters from young people many of whom are very earnest in their
ambition to adopt the dramatic calling, but not sufficiently alive to
the fact that success does not depend on a few lessons in declamation.
When I was a boy I had a habit which I think would be useful to all
young students. Before going to see a play of Shakespeare's I used to
form--in a very juvenile way--a theory as to the working out of the
whole drama, so as to correct my conceptions by those of the actors;
and though I was, as a rule, absurdly wrong, there can be no doubt
that any method of independent study is of enormous importance, not
only to youngsters, but also to students of a larger growth. Without
it the mind is apt to take its stamp from the first forcible
impression it receives, and to fall into a servile dependence upon
traditions, which, robbed of the spirit that created them, are apt to
be purely mischievous. What was natural to the creator is often
unnatural and lifeless in the imitator. No two people form the same
conceptions of character, and therefore it is always advantageous to
see an independent and courageous exposition of an original ideal.
There can be no objection to the kind of training that imparts a
knowledge of manners and customs, and the teaching which pertains to
simple deportment on the stage is necessary and most useful; but you
cannot possibly be taught any tradition of character, for that has no
permanence. Nothing is more fleeting than any traditional method or
impersonation. You may learn where a particular personage used to
stand on the stage, or down which trap the ghost of Hamlet's father
vanished; but the soul of interpretation is lost, and it is this soul
which the actor has to re-create for himself. It is not mere attitude
or tone that has to be studied; you must be moved by the impulse of
being; you must impersonate and not recite.