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Updated: June 24, 2025
Palmer, the manager, assured him that he did not possess the advantages requisite for success on the stage. Bernard spoke with bitter truthfulness of the trials and sorrows of an actor's life. Other friends drew attention to the brilliant prospect open to the successful painter. Young Lawrence gave way at last.
'The best in this kind are but shadows, says Theseus of the actors in the Midsummer Night's Dream, and there are many similar allusions in the literature of the day. These sonnets evidently belonged to the series in which Shakespeare discusses the nature of the actor's art, and of the strange and rare temperament that is essential to the perfect stage-player.
Yet, humble as was the edifice, it possessed an excellent company of actors and actresses, including old Morris, who was the associate of Garrick, in the very outset of that great actor's career, at Goodrhan's Fields. The stage boxes were appropriated to the President and Vice-President, and were each of them decorated with emblems, trophies, etc.
The historical mule was a melo-dramatic quadruped, prone to startling humanity by erratic leaps, and wild plunges, much shaking of his stubborn head, and lashing out of his vicious heels; now and then falling flat and apparently dying a la Forrest: a gasp a squirm a flop, and so on, till the street was well blocked up, the drivers all swearing like demons in bad hats, and the chief actor's circulation decidedly quickened by every variety of kick, cuff jerk, and haul.
Even so, the actor's nature was so strong in him that he deemed it his duty to envelop his distress, genuine as it was, in a conventional tragic mask. As he entered, he paused, cast an ominous glance around the work-room, at the table covered with work, his little supper waiting for him in a corner, and the two dear, anxious faces looking up at him with glistening eyes.
Even so, the actor's nature was so strong in him that he deemed it his duty to envelop his distress, genuine as it was, in a conventional tragic mask. As he entered, he paused, cast an ominous glance around the work-room, at the table covered with work, his little supper waiting for him in a corner, and the two dear, anxious faces looking up at him with glistening eyes.
Nor should he trust to the actor's invention and spontaneous sense of appropriateness. He ought to write down the pantomime whenever it adds energy or clearness to the dialogue; when it binds the parts of the dialogue together; when it consists in a delicate play that is not easily divined; and almost always he ought to write it down in the opening of a scene.
There is only one line in all the old plays worthy thy attention, "I forget the rest!" "Well," said our hero, answering in the same jocular vein, "I confess I have 'the actor's high ambition. It is astonishing how my heart beat when Richard cried out, 'Come bustle, bustle! Yes, Pepper, avaunt! "'A thousand hearts are great within my bosom."
Our system of divesting the actor's face of a mask, on which the many expressions appropriate to his dramatic character might be moulded into one permanent and unchanging expression, is favourable only to a partial and inharmonious effect; it is fit for nothing but a monologue, where all the attention may be directed to some great master of ideal mimicry.
It occurs to me that he may be killing her, perhaps has killed her already; I am alarmed and about to get up when the key clicks in the lock again and Solem emerges. He does not run, but walks back the way he came, down to the veranda of my own house. There he hangs the actor's raincoat where it hung before, and emerges again. But this time he is naked.
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