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It's the death of an actor to play to big populations that don't understand his language. It's nothing then but the gros moyens; all his delicacy perishes. However, they'll understand you." "Perhaps I shall be too affected," she said. "You won't be more so than Garrick or Mrs. Siddons or John Kemble or Edmund Kean. They understood Edmund Kean.
I do not believe in an Academy of Acting, because I do not believe that the art of acting can be taught. The art of the actor is merely the faculty or instinct for simulation that everybody possesses in a greater or less degree. Every savage can simulate or imitate the cries of birds and beasts. Every savage can cover himself with a skin and stalk a herd of deer so disguised.
We have seen this gifted actor in Sir Christopher Curry in Old Dornton diffuse a glow of sentiment which has made the pulse of a crowded theatre beat like that of one man; when he has come in aid of the pulpit, doing good to the moral heart of a people. We have seen some faint approaches to this sort of excellence in other players.
Diderot, in that same century, observed that the truest actor is one who does not feel his part at all, but produces his effects by intellectual effort and intelligent observation. Behind the figure on the stage, torn with passion or rollicking with mirth, there must always be the cool and unemotional mind which directs and governs and controls.
Had the dream been an ordinary one, and he not an actor in it, it might have passed swiftly from his memory; but inasmuch as the conduct imputed to him was so natural, and the expressions he was made to utter so characteristic, he could not but regard it as a vision far more significant and important than a mere freak of the brain during a moment of slumber.
In the meantime, we did not forget our duty; and though we had a better comedy going, in which Johnson was chief actor, we betook ourselves in good time to our separate and allotted posts, and waited the awful drawing up of the curtain.
My boy, tell me, did you ever in all your life see a lovelier imitation of a perfectly rotten actor? There's an artist for you. Who is he, anyway? Where'd he come from?" Merton Gill again listened; he was merely affecting to busy himself with a fork. It was good acting. "I don't know," replied Henshaw. "Some of the crowd last night said he was just an extra that Baird dug up on the lot here.
Since she could not unravel the tangle, she must take care not to re-enter it. She could protest sincerely against Miss Bartlett's insinuations. But though she had avoided the chief actor, the scenery unfortunately remained. Charlotte, with the complacency of fate, led her from the river to the Piazza Signoria.
Amid laughter, now that it was seen that nothing serious had happened, the wreckage was cleared away, and the German actor, and his partner in the rural love scene, were assisted to their feet. "Are you hurt?" asked Mr. Pertell, anxiously, when quiet had in a measure been restored. "Only my feelings iss hurted!" replied Mr. Switzer, with an odd look on his round, fat face.
What an actor! thought Ferval, at the transformation. "Would the good gentleman please ?" The girl plucked at her father's arm imploringly. With her grave, cold expression she answered the other's salutation and fixed him with her wonderful eyes so inquiringly that Ferval began a hasty explanation. "English was rarely spoken here ... and then the pleasure of the music!"
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