It is to a public far larger, far more real and genuine than this,
that you will one day have to appeal. It is in their presence that
you will finish your education. The final school for the actor is his
audience; they are the necessary complement to the exercise of his
art, and it is by the impression he produces on them that he will
ultimately stand or fall; on their verdict, and on their verdict
alone, will his success or failure as an artist depend. But, if you
have followed carefully, assiduously, the course of instruction now
open to you, when the time has arrived for you to face an audience you
will start with a very considerable handicap in your favour. If you
have learnt to move well and to speak well, to be clear in your
enunciation and graceful in your bearing, you are bound to arrest at
once the attention of any audience, no matter where it may be, before
whom you appear. Obvious and necessary as are these two acquirements
of graceful bearing and correct diction, they are not so generally
diffused as to cease to be remarkable. Consequently, however modest
your beginning on the stage, however short the part you may be called
upon to play, you should find immediately the benefit of your
training. You may have to unlearn a certain amount, or rather to
mould and shape what you have learnt to your new conditions, but if
you have been well grounded in the essential elements of an actor's
education, you will stand with an enormous advantage over such of your
competitors as have waited till they go into a theatre to learn what
can be acquired just as well, better, more thoroughly, outside it.
It has been my object to deal generally with the actor's calling, a
calling, difficult and hazardous in character, demanding much
patience, self-reliance, determination, and good temper. This last is
not one of its least important demands on your character. Remember
that the actor is not in one sense of the word an independent artist;
it is his misfortune that the practice of his art is absolutely
dependent on the fulfilment of elaborate external conditions. The
painter, the musician, so long as they can find paint and canvas, ink
and paper, can work at their art, alone, independent of external
circumstances. Not so the actor. Before he can act, the theatre, the
play, scenery, company, these requisites, not by any means too easy to
find, must be provided. And then it is in the company of others, his
colleagues, that his work has to be done. Consequently patience, good
temper, fairness, unselfishness are qualities be will do well to
cultivate, and he will lose nothing, rather gain, by the exercise of
them. The selfish actor is not a popular person, and, in my
experience, not as a rule a successful one. "Give and take," in this
little world of the theatre, and you will be no losers by it.
Learn to bear failure and criticism patiently. They are part of the
actor's lot in life. Critics are rarely animated by any personal
hostility in what they may write about you, though I confess that when
one reads an unfavourable criticism, one is inclined to set it down to
anything but one's own deserving. I heard a great actor once say that
we should never read criticisms of ourselves till a week after they
were written--admirable counsel--but I confess I have not yet reached
that pitch of self-restraint that would enable me to overcome my
curiosity for seven days. It is, however, a state of equanimity to
look forward to. In the meantime, content yourself with the
recollection that ridicule and damning criticism have been the lot at
some time in their lives of the most famous actors and actresses, that
the unfavourable verdict of to-day may be reversed to-morrow. It is
no good resenting failure; turn it to account rather; try to
understand it, and learn something from it. The uses of theatrical
adversity may not be sweet, but rightly understood they may be very
salutary.
Do not let failure make you despond. Ours is a calling of ups and
downs; it is an advantage of its uncertainty that you never know what
may happen next; the darkest hour may he very near the dawn. This is
where Bohemianism, in the best sense of the term, will serve the
actor. I do not mean by Bohemianism chronic intemperance and
insolvency. I mean the gay spirit of daring and enterprise that
greets failure as graciously as success; the love of your own calling
and your comrades in that calling, a love that, no matter what your
measure of success, will ever remain constant and enduring; the
recognition of the fact that as an actor you but consult your own
dignity in placing your own calling as a thing apart, in leading such
a life as the necessities of that calling may demand; and choosing
your friends among those who regard you for yourself, not those to
whom an actor is a social puppet, to be taken up and dropped as he
happens for the moment to be more or less prominent in the public eye.
If this kind of Bohemianism has some root in your character, you will
find the changes and chances of your calling the easier to endure.