in seeing him acted used to be a common method of affecting special
intellectuality. I hope this delusion--a gross and pitiful one as to
most of us--has almost absolutely died out. It certainly conferred a
very cheap badge of superiority on those who entertained it. It seemed
to each of them an inexpensive opportunity of worshipping himself on
a pedestal. But what did it amount to? It was little more than a
conceited and feather-headed assumption that an unprepared reader,
whose mind is usually full of far other things, will see on the
instant all that has been developed in hundreds of years by the
members of a studious and enthusiastic profession. My own conviction
is, that there are few characters or passages of our great dramatists
which will not repay original study. But at least we must recognize
the vast advantages with which a practised actor, impregnated by the
associations of his life, and by study--with all the practical and
critical skill of his profession up to the date at which he appears,
whether he adopts or rejects tradition--addresses himself to the
interpretation of any great character, even if he have no originality
whatever. There is something still more than this, however, in acting.
Every one who has the smallest histrionic gift has a natural dramatic
fertility; so that as soon as he knows the author's text, and obtains
self-possession, and feels at home in a part without being too
familiar with it, the mere automatic action of rehearsing and playing
it at once begins to place the author in new lights, and to give the
personage being played an individuality partly independent of, and
yet consistent with, and rendering more powerfully visible, the
dramatist's conception. It is the vast power a good actor has in this
way which has led the French to speak of creating a part when they
mean its being first played; and French authors are so conscious of
the extent and value of this co-operation of actors with them, that
they have never objected to the phrase, but, on the contrary, are