HOW NOT TO ACT
To quote Mr. Arliss again, and I know no better authority:
"It is impossible to maintain absolute reality while writing a good play. It is quite feasible if you are content to write a bad play. If you cannot get drama and realism at the same time, as you seldom can, then there is nothing to do but to discard the realism and hang on to the drama. But it must be real at the time, under the illusion of the theater."
Or as William Winter wrote of Booth:
"He left nothing to chance. There was no heedless, accidental quality in his art. There was neither hesitation, uncertainty, excess nor error. The perfection of his acting lay in the perfect control that he exercised over his powers—his complete understanding of himself, his minute and thorough perception of cause and effect on the stage, and his consummate skill in deducing the one from the other. He acted with the ease that makes the observer oblivious of the effort and the skill which alone can produce such effects of illusion and enjoyment.
"He did not adopt the foolish theory that the true art of acting consists in doing upon the stage exactly what people do in actual life. He
"He did not adopt the foolish theory that the true art of acting consists in doing upon the stage exactly what people do in actual life. He
[117]
