supremacy of genius, a scholar, in whose early death a poet and
philosopher was lost, says of Shakespeare: "He sat pensive and alone
above the hundred-handed play of his imagination." And Fanny Kemble,
in her journal, describes a conversation upon the stage, in the
tomb-scene of "Romeo and Juliet", where she, as Juliet, says to Mr.
Romeo Keppel, "Where the devil is your dagger?" while all the tearful
audience are lost in the soft woe of the scene.

This is very much opposed to the general theory of acting, and the
story is told with great gusto of a boy who was sent to see Garrick,
we believe, and who was greatly delighted with the fine phrasing and
swagger of a supernumerary, but could not understand why people
applauded such an ordinary bumpkin as Garrick, who did not differ a
whit from all the country boobies he had ever seen. It is insisted
that the actor must persuade the spectator that he is what he seems to
be, and this is gravely put as the first and final proof of good
acting.

This is, however, both a false view of art and a false interpretation
and observation of experience. Shakespeare, through the mouth of
Hamlet, tells the players to "hold the mirror up to nature"--that is,
to represent nature. For what is the dramatic art, like all other
arts, but a representation? If it aims to deceive the eye--if it tries
to juggle the senses of the spectator--it is as trivial as if a
painter should put real gold upon his canvas instead of representing
gold by means of paint; or as if a sculptor should tinge the cheeks of
his statue to make it more like a human face. We have seen tin pans so
well represented in painting that the result was atrocious. For, if
the object intended is really a tin pan, and not the pleasure produced
by a conscious representation of one, then why not insert the