nor those who make a profession of it could tell us how Duse was following out her own ancient maxim by destroying the thing they love. Rather despairingly, under the shield of Morris Gest, rather tenderly, for physical energy has ebbed while the ardour of her intelligence remains, she struck at the foundations of the theatre and tore to little shreds the cheap little fabric we call acting. I am not sufficiently acquainted with the acting of Continental Europe to see her relation to the classic French or the classic (or, say, Moscow Art Theatre) Russian actors. But her relation to our own is simple; it is a created, and ours a constructed acting, it is living and ours is galvanic. I do not say hers is living in the sense that it is realistic and has no tricks, for the first of these claims is irrelevant and the second untrue. I mean only that the method and the tricks as well, the chosen gesture, gait, and intonation, grow out of a specific, intelligent conception of the nature of the play and of the character presented. Grow, and are not applied externally; exist because they grow.
I have not yet seen the important pieces of the Stanislawsky repertoire; but even in The Mistress of the Inn their devotion to the theatre was obvious. They believe in the theatre and when they are on the stage they act in relation to each other. What ruined The Lady from the Sea was that the relation of person to person on the stage, the relation of all the characters to place and time were left in chaos. Without harmonious settings, without a cast acting in her own style, later even without plays adequate to her temper and intelligence, Duse played against the theatre—against its unity, against its power to create illusion. It happens that for the greater part of her career Duse has been checked by an actress who seemed actually to live by the illusion she was herself creating. The effect of Duse on the theatre has again and again been nullified by the radiance of Bernhardt; that is perhaps the explanation of how the theater happened to survive the presence of the qualities Mr Young admirably singles out, "her imagination and culture and wise humanity and beautiful grace of spirit." For all of them have been directed against the theatre as we know it; and if, as I fervently hope, Duse can still inspire a hundred actors and actresses with her spirit, we shall need a new theatre to give them scope and the justification of Duse's own method will come when it will be no longer required, when there will be genius to work for the theatre, and not against.
