Nothing could be more characteristically English than the circumstances
which gave rise the other day to the singular question, “Is acting an
art?” There was a practical issue, whether the Royal Academy of Dramatic
Art was or was not entitled to exemption under an Act of 1843 from the
payment of rates. Sir John Simon argued it, of course, as a practical
question. He dealt with custom and precedent and authority, dictionary
definitions and judicial decisions. He had to keep one eye on æsthetics
and the other on the rates. This is our traditional English way. We
“drive at practice.” Nevertheless, this question whether acting is an
art is really one of pure æsthetics, and is in no way affected by any
decision of the Appeal Committee of the London County Council.
You cannot answer it until you have made up your mind what you mean
by art. Sir John Simon seems to have suggested that art was something
“primarily directed to the satisfaction of the æsthetic sense.” But is
there any such thing as a special “æsthetic sense”? Is it anything more
than a name for our spiritual reaction to a work of art, our response
to it in mind and feeling? And are we not arguing in a circle when we
say that art is what provokes the response to art? Perhaps it might
amuse, perhaps it might irritate, perhaps it might simply bewilder the
Appeal Committee of the London County Council to tell them that art
is the expression of intuitions. They might reply that they cannot
find intuitions in the rate-book, and that the Act of 1843 is silent
about them. Yet this is what art is, and you have to bear it in mind
when you ask, “Is the actor an artist?” Art is a spiritual activity,
and the artist’s expression of his intuitions (the painter’s “vision,”
the actor’s “conception” of his part) is internal; when he wishes to
externalize his expression, to communicate it to others, he has to use
certain media—paint and canvas, marble and brick, musical notes, words
and gestures. But it is the spiritual activity, the intuition-expression,
that makes the artist. The medium is no part of his definition.
And yet, I suggest, it is the peculiarity of the actor’s medium that has
often withheld from him, at any rate with unthinking people, his title to
rank as an artist. He is his own medium, his own paint and canvas, his
own brick and marble. The works of other artists, the picture, the poem,
the sonata, have an independent life, they survive their authors; the
actor’s works are inseparable from his actual presence, and die with him.
Hence a certain difficulty for the unsophisticated in distinguishing
the artist from what the philosophers call the empirical man; the Edmund
Kean whose genius is illuminating and revitalizing Shylock from the
Edmund Kean who is notoriously fond of the bottle and who has lately got
into trouble with an alderman’s wife. The physique, the temperament, of
the empirical man furnish the medium for the artist. He arrives at the
theatre in a taxi, or his own Rolls-Royce, smoking a big cigar, every
inch of him a man of to-day; the next moment he is pretending to be an
old mad King of Britain. This confusion is behind Johnson’s “fellow who
claps a hump on his back and calls himself Richard the Third.” It leaves
out of account the imaginative side of him, the artist. Johnson might
just as well have dismissed Shakespeare as a “fellow who supposed a hump
clapped on the back of one of his fancies, which he calls Richard the
Third.” Lamb raised another objection, that the bodily presence of the
actor materialized, coarsened, the finer elements of the part—hid from
sight “the lofty genius, the man of vast capacity, the profound, the
witty, accomplished Richard.” The medium, in other words, is a hindrance
to the art, not so much a medium as a nuisance.
These are the objections of ignorance or of whim. Certainly the
peculiarity of his medium imposes peculiar restrictions on the actor. If
the painter lacks a certain pigment he can get it at the colour-man’s.
If the composer needs a certain _timbre_ he can add the necessary
instrument to his orchestra. All the quarries are open to the architect.
But no “make up” box will furnish a resonant voice to a shrill-piped
actor or make Garrick six feet high. An actress may be at the height
of her powers, and yet too old to play Juliet. Sir Henry Irving’s
physical oddities went far to ruin some of his impersonations. But these
limitations of the medium do not affect the actor’s status as an artist.
They only restrict the range in which he may exercise his art.
And can it be gainsaid that what he exercises is true art, a spiritual
activity, the expression of his intuitions? People, comparing his work
with the “creations” of the playwright, are apt to speak of him as
a mere “interpreter.” He has his words given him, they say, and his
significant acts prescribed for him in advance. The truth is, “creation”
and “interpretation” are figurative terms; it would be quite reasonable
to interchange them. Shakespeare “interprets” life by giving form to it,
by piecing together, say, certain scraps of actual observation along with
the image of his fancy into the character of Falstaff. With the printed
words and stage-directions as data, the actor re-imagines Falstaff,
brings his own temperament and feelings and sympathetic vision to the
service of Shakespeare’s indications, and “creates” the living, moving
man. True, the processes are at different stages, and may be of different
importance. Shakespeare has intuited and expressed life, the actor has
intuited and expressed Shakespeare. But both expressions are art.
And note that while Shakespeare “created” Falstaff, no playgoer has
ever seen or ever will see Shakespeare’s Falstaff. For the image formed
in Shakespeare’s mind has always on the stage to be translated for us
in terms of other minds which can never be identical with his—is, in
fact, “re-created” by each actor in turn. It is the actor who converts
the “cold print” of the text into vivid, concrete life. Life! that is
the secret of the actor’s “following,” a much more notable fact in the
world of the theatre than the “following” of this or that playwright.
The actor, like all who, in Buffon’s phrase, “_parlent au corps par
le corps_,” expresses a temperament, a personality, himself; imposes
himself on his part and on us. People “follow” a favourite actor in all
his impersonations because his art gives them more pleasure than the
playwright’s, or because his art must be added to the playwright’s before
they will care about that.
When I say “people” I don’t mean “littery gents.” The typical playgoer
prefers life to literature. He is as a rule no great reader. Nor are
the actors. There has always been a certain coolness between the men
of letters and the actors—their temperaments are so opposed. I have
quoted from Lamb. Anatole France said much the same thing of the Comédie
Française— “_Leur personne efface l’œuvre qu’ils représentent._” Views
like these merely express a preference for one art over another. They
do not contest the actor’s right to rank as an artist. That, to speak
rigorously, is a rank held by many people “for the duration”—_i.e._,
while and whenever they express their intuitions. But it would be
impolitic to insist on this strict view. The rate-payers’ list might be
seriously affected and much uneasiness occasioned to the Appeal Committee
of the London County Council.