agonizing feelings of maternal affection to gush into my eyes."
As a set-off against the above statement, we have Cumberland's description of Mrs. Siddons coming off the stage in the full flush of triumph—having harrowed her audience with emotion—and walking up to the mirror in the green room to survey herself with perfect composure.
We imagine there is no law to be laid down on the subject of the amount of feeling an actor really puts into the part he is enacting. It must vary. Conventionality must, with the greatest of them, now and then take the place of emotion; or, as Talma expresses it, the "Métier must now and then take the place of Le vrai."
We know the story of how once, when Garrick was playing King Lear, Johnson and Murphy kept up an animated conversation at the side-wing during one of his most important scenes. When Garrick came over the stage, he said, "You two talk so loud you destroy all my feelings." "Prithee," replied Johnson, "do not talk of feelings; Punch has no feeling"—a remark which is borne out by another account of Garrick as Lear rising from the dead body of his daughter Cordelia, where he had been convulsing the audience with sobs, running into the green-room gobbling like a turkey to amuse Kitty Clive and Mrs. Abington.
Mrs. Siddons is said to have made the statement that, after playing the part of Lady Macbeth for thirty years, she never read it over without discovering in it something new. In her Remarks, however, on the character, left amongst her memoranda, we do not find any particular depth or originality in her conception, and we doubt if she ever improved much on her first ideal.
