and live cleanly lives. All Art is worthy, and can be seriously
considered, so long as the intention be good and the efforts to
achieve success be conducted with seemliness. And let me here say,
that of all the arts none requires greater intention than the art
of acting. Throughout it is necessary to _do_ something, and
that something cannot fittingly be left to chance, or the unknown
inspiration of a moment. I say "unknown," for if known, then the
intention is to reproduce, and the success of the effort can be
in nowise due to chance. It may be, of course, that in moments of
passionate excitement the mind grasps some new idea, or the nervous
tension suggests to the mechanical parts of the body some new form of
expression; but such are accidents which belong to the great scheme of
life, and not to this art, or any art, alone. You all know the story
of the painter who, in despair at not being able to carry out the
intention of his imagination, dashed his brush at the imperfect
canvas, and with the scattering paint produced by chance the very
effect which his brush guided by his skill alone, had failed to
achieve. The actor's business is primarily to reproduce the ideas of
the author's brain, to give them form, and substance, and color, and
life, so that those who behold the action of a play may, so far as
can be effected, be lured into the fleeting belief that they behold
reality. Macready, who was an earnest student, defined the art of the
actor "to fathom the depths of character, to trace its latent motives,
to feel its finest quivering of emotion, is to comprehend the thoughts
that are hidden under words, and thus possess one's-self of the actual
mind of the individual man"; and Talma spoke of it as "the union
of grandeur without pomp, and nature without triviality"; whilst
Shakespeare wrote, "the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to
nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the