Shorter Notices
We Saw Him Act. A Symposium edited by H. A. Sainsbury. (Hurst and Blackett. 2 Is.) We Saw Him Act. A Symposium edited by H. A. Sainsbury. (Hurst and Blackett. 2 Is.) THIS handsome volume is devoted to the art of Sir Henry Irving. Describing each of the parts he played during the whole of his stage career, it gives the accounts and impressions of one, or more, eye-witnesses. From an amorphous welter of eulogy and comment one clear fact stands out : Irving was a genius. In detailed analysis most of the contributors to this symposium are weak: but to one who never saw him it would seem that his quality lay first in an extraordinary power of imagination, which he was able almost mesmerically to make real before his audience. Irving could project into the theatre, with a terrifying intensity, his own vision of the character he was playing. Athough several good judges insist that he was a character actor, he had such personal force that every part lived in terms of himself. With most character actors the opposite happens ; it is hard to tell who they are without the aid of the programme. Irving's acting at its best must have had something in common with the playing of Paderewski, becoming the vehicle of an overpowering personality. There can be no doubt at all of the effect he produced on those who saw him, and it is this impress, rather than any objective criticism, that gives these testimonies their interest. Some of them, indeed, -are revealing in a way their authors can hardly have intended. They tell us little about Irving, but much about those who wrote them.
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