actors it is a serious employment, to be undertaken gravely, and of
necessity to be adhered to rigidly. Thus far it may be considered from
these different stand-points; but there is a larger view--that of the
State. Here we have to consider a custom of natural growth specially
suitable to the genius of the nation. It has advanced with the
progress of each age, and multiplied with its material prosperity.
It is a living power, to be used for good, or possibly for evil; and
far-seeing men recognize in it, based though it be on the relaxation
and pleasures of the people, an educational medium of no mean order.
Its progress in the past century has been the means of teaching to
millions of people a great number of facts which had perhaps otherwise
been lost to them. How many are there who have had brought home to
them in an understandable manner by stage-plays the costumes, habits,
manners, and customs of countries and ages other than their own;
what insight have they thus obtained into facts and vicissitudes of
life--of passions and sorrows and ambitions outside the narrow scope
of their own lives, and which yet may and do mould the destinies of
men. All this is education--education in its widest sense, for it
broadens the sympathies and enlarges the intellectual grasp.
And beyond this again--for these are advantages on the material
side--there is that higher education of the heart, which raises in the
scale of creation all who are subject to its sweetening influences. To
hold his place therefore amongst these progressing forces, the actor
must at the start be well endowed with some special powers, and by
training, reading, and culture of many kinds, be equipped for the work
before him. No amount of training can give to a dense understanding
and a clumsy personality certain powers of quickness and spontaneity;
and, on the other hand, no genius can find its fullest expression
without some understanding of the principles and method of a craft. It
is the actor's part to represent or interpret the ideas and emotions