It is very evident that any man, be he an actor or no actor, can, with
money and with good taste, make what is technically termed a
production. There is, as an absolute matter of fact, no particular
credit to be attached to the making of a production. The real work of
the stage, of the actor, does not lie there. It is easy for us to
busy ourselves, to pass pleasantly our time, designing lovely scenes,
charming costumes, and all the paraphernalia and pomp of mimic
grandeur, whether of landscape or of architecture, the panoply of war,
or the luxury of royal courts. That is fun--pleasure and amusement.
No; the real work of the stage lies in the creation of a character. A
great character will live forever, when paint and canvas and silks and
satins and gold foil and tinsel shall have gone the way of all rags.
But the long, lone hours with our heads in our hands, the toil, the
patient study, the rough carving of the outlines, the dainty, delicate
finishing touches, the growing into the soul of the being we
delineate, the picture of his outward semblance, his voice, his gait,
his speech, all amount to a labour of such stress and strain, of such
loving anxiety and care, that they can be compared in my mind only to
a mother's pains. And when the child is born it must grow in a few
hours to completion, and be exhibited and coldly criticised. How
often, how often, have those long months of infinite toil been in
vain! How often has the actor led the child of his imagination to the
footlights, only to realise that he has brought into the world a
weakling or a deformity which may not live! And how often he has sat
through the long night brooding over the corpse of this dear figment
of his fancy! It has lately become customary with many actor-managers
to avoid these pangs of childbirth. They have determinedly declined
the responsibility they owe to the poet and the public, and have
instead dazzled the eye with a succession of such splendid pictures
that the beholder forgets in a surfeit of the sight the feast that
should feed the soul. This is what I am pleased to term talk versus
acting. The representative actors in London are much inclined in this
direction.