Whilst we are on the subject of these creations of the poets and the
actors, do you understand how important is discipline on the stage?
How can an actor be away from this earth, moving before you in the
spirit he has conjured up, only to be dragged back to himself and his
actual surroundings of canvas and paint and tinsel and limelights by
some disturbing influence in the audience or on the stage? If you
want the best, if you love the art, foster it. It is worthy of your
gentlest care and your kindest, tenderest thought. Your silence is
often more indicative of appreciation than your applause. The actor
does not need your applause in order to know when you are in sympathy
with him.
He feels very quickly whether you are antagonistic or friendly. He
cares very little for the money, but a great deal for your affection
and esteem. Discipline on the stage has almost entirely disappeared,
and year after year the exercise of our art becomes more difficult. I
am sorry to say some newspapers are, unwittingly perhaps, largely
responsible for this. When an editor discharges a member of his force
for any good and sufficient reason--and surely a man must be permitted
to manage and control his own business--no paper will publish a
two-column article, with appropriate cuts, detailing the wrongs of the
discharged journalist, and the hideous crime of the editor! Even an
editor--and an editor is supposed to be able to stand almost
anything--would become weary after a while; discipline would cease,
and your newspapers would be ill-served. Booth, Jefferson, and other
actors soon made up their minds that the easiest road was the best for
them. Mr. Booth left the stage management entirely to Mr. Lawrence
Barrett and others, and Mr. Jefferson praised everybody and every
thing. But this is not good for the stage. My career on the stage is
nearly over, and until, shortly, I bid it farewell, I shall continue
to do my best; but we are all doing it under ever-growing
difficulties. Actors on the stage are scarce, actors off the stage,
as I have demonstrated, I hope, are plentiful. Life insurance
presidents--worthy presidents, directors, and trustees--have been so
busy acting their several parts in the past, and are in the present so
busy trying to unact them, men are so occupied from their childhood
with the mighty dollar, the race for wealth is so strenuous and
all-entrancing, that imagination is dying out; and imagination is
necessary to make a poet or an actor; the art of acting is the
crystallisation of all arts. It is a diamond in the facets of which
is mirrored every art. It is, therefore, the most difficult of all
arts. The education of a king is barely sufficient for the education
of the comprehending and comprehensive actor. If he is to satisfy
every one, he should possess the commanding power of a Caesar, the
wisdom of Solomon, the eloquence of Demosthenes, the patience of Job,
the face and form of Antinous, and the strength and endurance of
Hercules.