Essays In Dramatic Criticism - With Impressions Plays (1898) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. SOME ESSENTIALS OF THE ACTOR'S ART. My friend Mr. Joseph Holland is a delightful walking demonstration of so much in the art of acting, that I hope he will allow me to put his name at the top of this essay as a pattern into which I may weave the threads of my discourse. If, when I stop work, the reader is unable clearly to distinguish the outlines of the figure, I am willing to have him believe that it is the fault of the weaver and not of the pattern. Mr. Holland has the first requisite for the actor's art?sensibility, or an instinctive feeling for histrionic effects. Therefore is he a good actor without being a great one. Were he the latter he would have added to his sensibility an acute and vigorous intellectuality: he would not be playing this year in farce, however good, but in high comedy or in tragedy. In all presentations of the actoi's art, save the very highest, it is indeed temperament or sensibility which is most important. Many clever people have failed upon the stage and have found their failure utterly inexplicable, because they could not or would not recognize this basal principle. On the other band, many people of the most ordinary intellect have succeeded on the stage because they possessed this temperament or feeling. Such people, provided they are not absolutely stupid, can be taught to act j ust as anybody above the level of a crftin can be taught the elements of drawing and of carpentry. Thackeray saw this very clearly, and in the character of Miss Fotheringay has described, in his own inimitable manner, the process by which a person who possesses this temperament in even a slight degree may achieve stage success. In " Pendennis" he writes: "Bows was a singular wild man of no small talents and humor. Attracted first by Miss Fother- ingay'...