SIR HENRY IRVING
Ellen Terry was in disagreement with both Coquelin aîné and Irving on the question of "feeling a part." The two latter claimed that the best results were obtained by a cold reasoning performance of a part, while Ellen Terry maintained that anger must be real anger, hate real hate, and love real love.
If she were really mad as Ophelia or Lady Macbeth, it is just as well that the madness is only assumed for the moment. That most polished actor, Coquelin, not only did not feel the passion of his part, but he conveyed no emotion to his hearers, save admiration for his technical skill: laughter might be evoked by his mimicry, but tears refused to flow at the sight of his misfortunes. Tact is the great artist, in life as in music, or in painting or sculpture, or architecture. He who touches you wins your sympathy, even though his handling be not quite perfect.
Sargent, in his painted story of the religions, excites no religious emotion, but Thouron does in the Flaming Heart.
One other point about Irving—was he a great artist despite his mannerisms, or partly because of them? An actor without mannerisms is like a musician without hair. Irving may have assumed his peculiar gait and speech, just as Puvis de Chavannes divested his designs of academic forms and replaced them by archaic inaccuracies, to impress, not only the people, but the connoisseurs. The hero of a drama or a tragedy is not expected to be a conventional or commonplace character, unless Ibsen creates him. There is an extreme range and variety of personalities in Shakespeare's plays, but they are all marked men. If Irving had invented a change in mannerism—one for Lear, one for Becket, and one for Macbeth—he would have freed himself from the criticism of the objectors. But his speech and his
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