In my assiduous reading of the classics, the chief places were held
among the Greeks by the masculine and noble figures of Hector,
Achilles, Theseus, Oedipus; among the Scots by Trenmor, Fingal,
Cuchullin; and among the Romans by Caesar, Brutus, Titus, and Cato.
These characters influenced me to incline toward a somewhat bombastic
system of gesticulation and a turgid delivery. My anxiety to enter to
the utmost into the conceptions of my authors, and to interpret them
clearly, disposed me to exaggerate the modulations of my voice like
some mechanism which responds to every touch, not reflecting that the
abuse of this effort would bring me too near to song. Precipitation
in delivery, too, which when carried too far destroys all distinctness
and incisiveness, was due to my very high impressionability, and to
the straining after technical scenic effects. Thus, extreme vehemence
in anger would excite me to the point of forgetting the fiction, and
cause me to commit involuntarily lamentable outbursts. Hence I
applied myself to overcome the tendency to singsong in my voice, the
exuberance of my rendering of passion, the exclamatory quality of my
phrasing, the precipitation of my pronunciation, and the swagger of my
motions.
I shall be asked how the public could abide me, with all these
defects; and I answer that the defects, though numerous, were so
little prominent that they passed unobserved by the mass of the
public, which always views broadly and could be detected only by the
acute and searching eye of the intelligent critic. I make no pretence
that I was able to correct myself all at once. Sometimes my
impetuosity would carry me away, and not until I had come to mature
age was I able to free myself to any extent from this failing. Then I
confirmed myself in my opinion that the applause of the public is not
all refined gold, and I became able to separate the gold from the
dross in the crucible of intelligence. How many on the stage are
content with the dross!