INTKLLECTIJAL ACTING.
IT is possible that if the finest dramatic critic of the present day could for once see how Shakspeare acted the parts which his own mind had created, he would find it to be something widely dif- ferent, not only in execution, but in drift, from his own highest con- ception. The best modern dramatic school is far more intellectual and critical than is in any way consistent with a great dramatic
• era like that in which Shakspeare lived.. It is the aim of the highest actors in the modern school to have a consistent theory of the type of character which they wish to present,—to study the particular relations of each movement in the play to the evolution of that type of character, and thus to make the whole performance not only a complete picture, but a commentary on the general structure and significance of the artist's creation. Any one who has seen M. Pechter's treatment of Hamlet, or Mr. Maeread3r, or Miss Fawcett, in any of their greater parts, will admit at once that this intellectual atmosphere, either envelops or is intended to envelop all their per- formances. There are parts which they cannot adequately fit into their view of the character, and these they slur over, or obviously fail to render successfully ; there are others which first presented their own conception to them, and these they give with a force and insight that for the first time brings home to the audience a full conception of their meaning and power. For example, it is quite obvious that M. Fechter's study of the character of Hamlet brings into pro- .
Mmence the proud prince and the shrewd humour of the man of the world, and leaves in shadow that German speculativeness, that irresolute wavering of purpose, that inadequacy of the lax sensuous constitution to a stern and terrible purpose, on which Goethe has founded entirely his noble criticism of Hamlet. M. Fechter gives us little feeling that "a great action has been laid upon a soul unfit for the performance ;" that "an oak-tree has been planted in a costly jar which should have borne only pleasant flowers in its bosom, so that when the roots expand, the jar is shivered." But, on the other hand, he does give us the full force of that aristo- cratic scorn for the intellectual poverty of the plotters around Hamlet which Shakspeare certainly intended to express in all the scenes with Polonius, the King, Osric, and the rest, and which culminates in that interview with Rosencrantz and Gnildenstern, given by M. Fechter with such transcendent art, where the bitter contempt of the Prince is poured forth on the poor tools who have tried to play upon him as though he were "easier to be played on than a pipe." There is a vein of princely coldness in Hamlet, of the aristo- cratic feeling, that no claims of ordinary men, nay, none even of Ophelia herself, could be worthy for a moment to mar the development of a purpose belonging to an altogether higher and more royal sphere, which few would understand till they had heard M. Fechter's render- ing of the play, and especially of the coarse, contemptuous manner with which Hamlet replies to the King's questions about the body of Polonius. On the other hand, the dreaminess of Hamlet's mind, its natural relapse into the relaxation of reverie whenever it has been strung up to the tension of a purpose, his slightly self-conscious sensuousness of temperament, in short, all the relaxed side of his nature, is scarcely understood by M. Fechter at all, who pronounces the finest of the speculative soliloquies as if they were retained on the hard outside shell of his understanding, and had never penetrated any further.
We adduce M. Fechter's Hamlet, however, only as the most recent and most striking example of what we may call the intellectual school of acting, which identifies the part with a specific theory of its signi- ficance in the actor's own eyes : and we wish to point, out that this school necessarily has defects as well as great merits of its own. We feel pretty sure, at all events, that Shakspeare had no such cri- tical conception of his own great creations as the intellect of modern times has elaborated, often with great truth and subtlety, and we believe that it would have been inconsistent with the conditions of a productively dramatic age. When a great people naturally ex- press their own thoughts, and love to find them expressed, through a dramatic medium, they are not in the criticizing phase of national life. There is something childlike in the love of drama. It requires both the faculty so strong in children to "make belief very much," and also the incapacity equally strong in children to realize adequately an any form that which has not some external body presented to the senses. A nation is in the dramatic phase of its life when its imagination is at once eager, and yet so dependent on sensuous impressions, that it does not realize fictitious characters or concep- tions till it sees something that passes for them actually presented by living men and actions to the eye. Yet to any one who really thinks about it, this identification of great imaginative conceptions with a widely different class of living people,—of imaginative inte- rests with a widely different class of real interests,—of Cleopatra with the tawdry Egyptian costume in the green-room, and the vivid interest of the actress who impersonates her in the money taken at the door,— of Claudius and Gertrude with needy lodgings in Newman-street Ox- ford-street,—to such a person all the imaginative suppressions which are absolutely needful before any full sympathy with the spirit of the performance is possible, seem a greater feat by far than the effort of imagination requisite to realize the drama without any such helps. But assuredly this is not the true condition either of children's feel- ing, or of nations', and, least of all, of nations in the first bloom of their dramatic era. Then nothing seems to be so easy as this kind of make-belief. The imagination is called into activity by the senses without incurring any clanger of transgressing the prescribed limits. All the assumptions requisite for the self-delusion, are accepted as simply as by children transfiguring bricks into imaginary persons, and mud-pies into rare confectionary. And this is the true state of mind for full enjoyment of a national drama—a general incompetence to realize imaginative conceptions without some aid from the senses, and readiness to accept that aid without dwelling on intrusive elements.
And such, we take it, was the great dramatic age of Shakespeare. The whole country loved to see the rudest representations of imaginative stories, and yielded with the facility of children to the make-belief of wandering actors who piled the impossibilities of vulgar ignorance upon the top of the conventional impossi- bilities of the stage. It was to such actors that Shakspeare ad- dressed that celebrated passage in Hamlet, in which he descants on the townerier species of players who "tear a passion to tatters." But there is not the slightest sign that Shakspeare wished for more in the actor than what we may call good taste, to " suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature : for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first, and now,was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature ; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, its form and pressure." This is not a description of intellectual acting—of that acting, we mean, which strives to conceive character as a whole i relation to every word or action which is attributed to it—for this is entirely of later date, and would perhaps, to Shakspeare's mind, have savoured of far too much deference to the creation of any human imagination. It is an application simply of obvious common sense and judgment to acting, bidding actors try and give the manner in accordance with the meaning, rather than with the strength of the desire to produce an effect. The multitudes of doubts which modern critics have raised with respect to the mutual relations of different elements in the same character are not really proper to a dramatic age. They are the natural products of an age which tries to find a secondary intellec- tual interest in the drama besides the legitimate dramatic interest, which looks for implied theory and criticism as well as art, which loves an actor who betrays his own reflective subtlety as well as his power of catching the true spirit of the part. To the old school of actors the man who carried away his audience with the most complete sense of illusion, who required least help from the "make-believing" power of the spectators, was the best; to the new school, he who throws most additional light on the organic development of Shak- speare's genius.
Of course there is nothing but gain in the addition of an intellec- tual pleasure to an imaginative pleasure. Of course, if the new school of intellectual acting can produce as complete and unbroken an impression of the grandeur of the great works of art they pre- sent to us, the gain is double, for we do not hold that mere illusion is or can be the true object of dramatic art. The object is to inform the imagination, to pour into the audience as fully as possible the same conceptions which came from the creative mind of the poet,—not to make people suffer or rejoice under de- lusive impressions, as they would with the beings who haunt their dreams. The true aim, then, of a great actor should be, not to deceive, but to engrave his own deeper understanding of the poet on the minds of all who hear him ; and if he can best do this by a subtle intellet- tnal study of the characters they portray, that is the only path open to him. But it is well to remember that he has at least one great difficulty in pursuing this intellectual path. The more dis- tinctly he elaborates for himself the picture he wishes to deli- neate, the keener the outlines which he learns to assign to it, the more difficult it will become in the general way to identify himself with it. The picture of the true Hamlet must often hover before M. Fechter's imagination on the stage like a film blinding and ob- scuring for him the part lie has undertaken to perform. The more a great actor knows himself, and the more thoroughly he knows his part, the more unreal must seem the act of identifying himself with that part. To a lucid intellect that has called up before it a clear vision of Shakspeare's creations, the very clearness of this vision must be a new difficulty in attempting to speak and act in its name. Intellectual men want almost necessarily the mobility of mind which is the first requisite of an actor. From them, at least, the unrealities of the position cannot be concealed, however completely they are banished from the mind of the audience. A man Who has studied Hamlet till he sees how the weakness and the strength, the pliancy and the mettle, the meditative seriousness of his temperament and the shrewd aristocratic scorn are mingled in every scene, can scarcely imagine for a moment that he himself has any right to intrude on the acts of this distinct personality. Sometimes we can fancy that M. Fechter feels this so much that he repeats those of Hamlet's soliloquies with which he has least sympathy, by proxy, as it were, and with a kind of mental apology for repeating them at all. A highly intellectual actor requires the help of a certain dreaminess of temperament, of a certain power of confusing his own personal iden- tity with another's, in order to act perfectly his part. So strongly did Goethe feel this, that when he makes his hero, Wilhelm Meister, perform the character of Hamlet, he introduces a little aide-plot, for
the express purpose of throwing a general mist over the actor's sense of personality. He makes the person who acts the ghost of his father in intruder, instead of one of the regular band of actors,—a person whom Meister does not know, and in whose tones he fancies some resemblance to those of his own father, who is just dead. This rectifies the too intellectual character of the act of impersonation, and suffuses the whole effort with a sense of personal identity which, as Goethe saw, intellectual acting generally wants.
"He girded up his mind; and spoke that appropriate passage on the 'rouse sad wassel,' the heavy-headed revel' of the Danes, with suitable indifference; he had, like the audience, in thinking of it, quite forgotten the Ghost ; and he
started in real terror when Horatio cried out, 'Look, my lord, it comes He whirled violently round; and the tall, noble figure, the low inaudible tread, the light movement in the heavy-looking armour, made such an impression on him, that he stood as if transformed to stone' and could utter only in a half-voice his, 'Angels and ministers of grace defend us!' He glared at the form ; drew a deep breathing once or twice, and pronounced his address to the Ghost, in a manner so confused, so broken, so constrained, that the highest art could not
have hit the mark so well
"A deep effect was visible in the audience. The Ghost beckoned, the Prince followed him amid the loudest plaudits. The scene changed; and when the two bad reappeared, the Ghost, on a sadden, stopped, and turned round; by which means Hamlet came to be a little too close upon it. With a longing curiosity, he looked in at the lowered vizor, but except two deep-lying eyes, and a well-formed nose, he could discern nothing. Gazing timidly, he stood before the Ghost; but when the first bones issued from the helmet, and a somewhat hoarse, yet deep and penetrating voice pronounced the words, I am thy father's sprit,' Wilhelm, shuddering, started back some paces, and the audience shuddered with him. Each imagined that he knew the voice • Wilhelm thought he noticed in it some resemblance with his father's. These strange emotions and remembrances; the cariosity he felt about discovering his secret friend, the anxiety about offending him, even the theatric impropriety of coming too near him in the present situa• tion, all this affected Wilhelm with powerful and conflicting impulses. During the long speech of the Ghost, he changed his place so frequently ; he seemed so unsettled and perplexed, so attentive and so absent-minded, that his acting caused a universal admiration, as the Spirit caused a universal horror.
If this device were usually possible, it is very likely that the cri- tical and intellectual class of actors, of whom M. Fechter is the highest, as well as most recent, specimen, would give the finest pos- sible perfection to their art. But, as it is, the difficulty is likely to remain, that those who best understand their part are at many points least able to identify themselves with it ; since they stand, as it were, outside the character, knowing what it should be, know- ing that it is different from themselves, and being scarcely able to assume frankly even the fiction that they are to represent it.
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