Little Masterpieces of Autobiography, Volume 6

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Doubleday, Page, 1908
 

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Page 85 - Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature...
Page 119 - I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano ; A stage, where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one.
Page 178 - His was the spell o'er hearts Which only acting lends, — The youngest of the sister arts, Where all their beauty blends : For ill can poetry express Full many a tone of thought sublime, And painting, mute and motionless, Steals but a glance of time. But by the mighty actor brought, Illusion's perfect triumphs come — Verse ceases to be airy thought, And sculpture to be dumb.
Page 81 - Kean constantly practised before a mirror effects which startled his audience by their apparent spontaneity. It is the accumulation of such effects which enables an actor, after many years, to present many great characters with remarkable completeness.
Page 85 - With regard to gesture, Shakespeare's advice is all-embracing. ' Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance that you over-step not the modesty of nature.' And here comes the consideration of a very material part of the actor's business — by-play. This is of the very essence of true art. It is more than anything else significant of the extent to which the actor has identified himself with the character he represents.
Page 112 - Tis now struck twelve; get tHEe to bed, Francisco. FRANCISCO For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter coLd, And I am sick at heart.
Page 16 - The methods by which actors arrive at great effects vary according to their own natures; this renders the teaching of the art by any strictly defined lines a difficult matter. There has lately been a discussion on the subject, in which many have taken part, and one quite notable debate between two distinguished actors, one of the English and the other of the French stage.1 These gentlemen, though they differ entirely in their ideas, are, nevertheless, equally right.
Page 107 - Richelieu," but which were really the easy things in acting, and in "Richelieu" (in my opinion) not especially well done. In "Hamlet" Henry Irving did not go to the audience. He made them come to him. Slowly but surely attention gave place to admiration, admiration to enthusiasm, enthusiasm to triumphant acclaim. I have seen many Hamlets — Fechter, Charles Kean, Rossi...
Page 85 - It is necessary to this art that the mind should have, as it were, a double consciousness, in which all the emotions proper to the occasion may have 84 full swing, while the actor is all the time on the alert for every detail of his method.
Page 84 - I do not recommend actors to allow their feelings to carry them away like this; but it is necessary to warn you against the theory expounded with brilliant ingenuity by Diderot, that the actor never feels. When Macready played Virginius, after burying his beloved daughter, he confessed that his real experience gave a new force to his acting in the most pathetic situations of the play. Are we to suppose that this was a delusion, or that the sensibility of the man was a genuine aid to the actor?

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