THE ART OF ACTING


I have chosen as the subject of the address with which I have the
honor to inaugurate for the second time the Session of the Edinburgh
Philosophical Institution, "The Art of Acting." I have done so, in the
first instance, because I take it for granted that when you bestow on
any man the honor of asking him to deliver the inaugural address, it
is your wish to hear him speak of the subject with which he is best
acquainted; and the Art of Acting is the subject to which my life has
been devoted. I have another reason also which, though it may, so far
as you are concerned, be personal to those of my calling, I think it
well to put before you. It is that there may be, from the point of
view of an actor distinguished by your favor, some sort of official
utterance on the subject. There are some irresponsible writers who
have of late tried to excite controversy by assertions, generally
false and always misleading, as to the stage and those devoted to the
arts connected with it. Some of these writers go so far as to assert
that Acting is not an Art at all; and though we must not take such
wild assertions quite seriously, I think it well to place on record at
least a polite denial of their accuracy. It would not, of course,
be seemly to merely take so grave an occasion as the present as an
opportunity for such a controversy, but as I am dealing with the
subject before you, I think it better to place you in full knowledge
of the circumstances. It does not do, of course, to pay too much
attention to ephemeral writings, any more than to creatures of the
mist and the swamp and the night. But even the buzzing of the midge,