that any method of independent study is of enormous importance, not
only to youngsters, but also to students of a larger growth.
Without it the mind is apt to take its stamp from the first forcible
impression it receives, and to fall into a servile dependence upon
traditions, which, robbed of the spirit that created them, are apt
to be purely mischievous. What was natural to the creator is often
unnatural and lifeless in the imitator. No two people form the same
conceptions of character, and therefore it is always advantageous to
see an independent and courageous exposition of an original ideal.
There can be no objection to the kind of training that imparts a
knowledge of manners and customs, and the teaching which pertains to
simple deportment on the stage is necessary and most useful; but you
cannot possibly be taught any tradition of character, for that has no
permanence. Nothing is more fleeting than any traditional method of
impersonation. You may learn where a particular personage used to
stand on the stage, or down which trap the ghost of Hamlet's father
vanished; but the soul of interpretation is lost, and it is this soul
which the actor has to re-create for himself. It is not mere attitude
or tone that has to be studied; you must be moved by the impulse of
being; you must impersonate and not recite.

There has always been a controversy as to the province of naturalism
in dramatic art. In England it has been too much the custom, I
believe, while demanding naturalism in comedy, to expect a false
inflation in tragedy. But there is no reason why an actor should
be less natural in tragic than in lighter moods. Passions vary in
expression according to moulds of character and manners, but their
reality should not be lost even when they are expressed in the heroic
forms of the drama. A very simple test is a reference to the records
of old actors. What was it in their performances that chiefly