which the poet has created, and to do this he must at the first have
a full knowledge and understanding of them. This is in itself no easy
task. It requires much study and much labor of many kinds. Having then
acquired an idea, his intention to work it out into reality must be
put in force; and here new difficulties crop up at every further step
taken in advance. Now and again it suffices the poet to think and
write in abstractions; but the actor's work is absolutely concrete.
He is brought in every phase of his work into direct comparison with
existing things, and must be judged by the most exacting standards of
criticism. Not only must his dress be suitable to the part which he
assumes, but his bearing must not be in any way antagonistic to the
spirit of the time in which the play is fixed. The free bearing of
the sixteenth century is distinct from the artificial one of the
seventeenth, the mannered one of the eighteenth, and the careless
one of the nineteenth. And all this quite exclusive of the minute
qualities and individualities of the character represented. The voice
must be modulated to the vogue of the time. The habitual action of a
rapier-bearing age is different to that of a mail-clad one--nay, the
armor of a period ruled in real life the poise and bearing of the
body; and all this must be reproduced on the stage, unless the
intelligence of the audience, be they ever so little skilled in
history, is to count as naught.

It cannot therefore be seriously put forward in the face of such
manifold requirements that no Art is required for the representation
of suitable action. Are we to imagine that inspiration or emotion of
any kind is to supply the place of direct knowledge of facts--of skill
in the very grammar of craftsmanship? Where a great result is arrived
at much effort is required, whether the same be immediate or has been
spread over a time of previous preparation. In this nineteenth century