brilliant impressions are to be made on the audience of the evening. The rehearsal at a theatre, I have been told, is enough to chill the enterprise of the most able or ambitious artist that ever trod the stage.
Happy those actors who live where they can see something of the face of Nature every day! If they can get out to the fields, or upon a common for even half an hour, it is the best kind of exhilaration. A walk in the Park is good; or a game at romps with the children in a garden, if there is one; or an hour’s gardening: but the evening comes very soon after so late a rising and term of study; and there is little time for anything between.
As for the wear and tear of the next few hours, everybody sees what it must be; and no description can magnify the impression of it. Mere publicity is wear and tear; and here the intellect has to work intensely under the concentrated gaze of a crowd. In the presence of everything that can agitate the nerves, the brain must produce its greatest achievements; and a severer trial, for the hour, of physical and intellectual power can hardly be conceived. Of all the nonsense that is talked by people who pretend to judge other people’s business, none is more extreme than that which treats the actor’s or opera-singer’s work as frivolous, slight, and of no account. It would be less exhausting if the work were either solitary,—as that of the great orator’s,—or sustained by hearty fellowship with a group of fellow-labourers. The great actor has the disadvantage of partial dependence on the ability of comrades, who not only discourage him more or less by their inferiority, but cannot be more than adventitious associates. It is well if even a bare good understanding can be kept with them by forbearance and generosity. The green-room may be often a very merry, and a very instructive place; but it can scarcely be a happy one to anybody but an occasional visitor.—If the exhaustion is not too great, the actor is in the mood for an exciting supper, where wine, and praise, and good fellowship with admirers end his day with more or less moral intoxication, though the physical one may be avoided.
So much for the external appearance of this mode of life. To judge of the effect on the welfare of the individual, we must look a little deeper.
As far as my intercourses have led me to any understanding of the matter, it seems to me that there are two theories of this profession which cannot be too clearly distinguished from each other, for the sake of the welfare of its members, and the morality of society.
According to the one theory, the performer’s point of view lies outside of and above the part he or she is to represent. He is to study it intellectually, and so to invest his imagination in it, as to act and speak as he is certain a real being would have acted and spoken under the circumstances. He throws all his convictions, both of experience and imagination into his part, being the more, instead of the less, himself for this diligent use of his faculties and means. According to the other theory, the performer’s point of view lies within the part he assumes. He must be in the very mood of passion to be represented, and must lose himself in the imaginary scene and circumstances. The difference between these two views is a very serious matter indeed, as I once had occasion to perceive, when conversing with a very eminent member of the college of critics.
A particular case being under discussion, this learned personage began lamenting the irreconcilable requirements of social life in England and art,—operatic and dramatic. The highest attainment in art demands a mood of passion as lasting as the professional life; whereas, English social life requires respectable marriage, or a respectable single life. Now, marriage is the immediate extinguisher of the capacity for passion; and besides, the gifted individual who can attain the heights of art must presently discover the inferiority of his or her mate, and must find marriage a yoke, under which power must continually decline—and so forth. There is, my informant added, no other way of pursuing art with the highest success than surrendering the passionate nature to a succession of attachments,—and so forth. Thus only can the variety and power of expression be preserved till the time has arrived for quitting the stage. Such was the insoluble problem of dramatic art.
I ventured to ask what was to be done, if this were true;—which should give way, our daily human life, with its natural succession and discipline of affections, and its sweet and solemn sanctions, or the life of the stage, with its eternal childhood (according to the critic) of passions. Of course, the critic was of opinion that art could never die out: and I need not add that my opinion was, and is, that human life will hold its natural course, perpetually maturing, rather than lapsing into inferior stages of experience. The critic supposed I therefore gave up art. Not so. I believe that art is long, and that life is long too; and that there is no reason why they should not live on together, each helping the other. What I do not believe is, that true art can ever require the perpetuating of one stage of human experience beyond its natural limits, to the destruction of the individual, and the injury of both the character and reputation of art.
As for the other view, there is fact enough in its favour to save the necessity of argument. The name of Mrs. Siddons alone would suffice to shame the bad doctrine of the oracular critic. Mrs. Siddons, looking after her children’s clothes and lessons at home, and devoting herself to her husband’s comfort and will and pleasure, certainly thrilled and transported an audience quite as effectively as any lady who has since hesitated to marry, because she could not rise to the height of her professional ambition otherwise than by a succession of love-affairs. It would be insulting to mention the names of living persons in such a connection; but we may safely ask, whether among the greatest artists of our time, we have not seen devoted husbands and wives, and performers who were always thinking more of their art than of themselves, without pretending to the heroism of going to perdition for it.
This difference of view is entertained to a sufficient extent to require thus much notice in