The first thing one notices in her acting, when one is free to watch it
coolly, is the way in which she subordinates effects to effect. She has
her crescendos, of course, and it is these which people are most apt to
remember, but the extraordinary force of these crescendos comes from the
smooth and level manner in which the main part of the speaking is done.
She is not anxious to make points at every moment, to put all the
possible emphasis into every separate phrase; I have heard her glide
over really significant phrases which, taken by themselves, would seem
to deserve more consideration, but which she has wisely subordinated to
an overpowering effect of ensemble. Sarah Bernhardt's acting always
reminds me of a musical performance. Her voice is itself an instrument
of music, and she plays upon it as a conductor plays upon an orchestra.
One seems to see the expression marks: piano, pianissimo, largamente,
and just where the tempo rubato comes in. She never forgets that art is
not nature, and that when one is speaking verse one is not talking
prose. She speaks with a liquid articulation of every syllable, like one
who loves the savour of words on the tongue, giving them a beauty and an
expressiveness often not in them themselves. Her face changes less than
you might expect; it is not over-possessed by detail, it gives always
the synthesis. The smile of the artist, a wonderful smile which has
never aged with her, pierces through the passion or languor of the part.
It is often accompanied by a suave, voluptuous tossing of the head, and
is like the smile of one who inhales some delicious perfume, with
half-closed eyes. All through the level perfection of her acting there
are little sharp snaps of the nerves; and these are but one indication
of that perfect mechanism which her art really is. Her finger is always
upon the spring; it touches or releases it, and the effect follows
instantaneously. The movements of her body, her gestures, the expression
of her face, are all harmonious, are all parts of a single harmony. It
is not reality which she aims at giving us, it is reality transposed