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A PLAY is said to he well or ill acted in proportion to the sical illusion produced. Whether such illusion in any case be perfect, is not the question. The approach to it, we are told, is, wheor appears wholly unscious of the prese<bdo>?９9ｌｉｂ?</bdo>nce of spectators. In tragedy -- in all which is to affect the feelings -- this undivided attention to his stage business, seems indispensable. Yet it is, in fact, dispensed with every day by our cleverest tragedians; and while these refereo an audience, in the shape of rant or se, are not too frequent or palpable, a suffit quantity of illusion for the purposes of dramatiterest may be said to be produced in spite of them. But, tragedy apart, it may be inquired whether, iain characters in edy, especially those which are a little extravagant, or whivolve some notinant to the moral se is not a proof of the highest skill in the edian when, without absolutely appealing to an audience, he keeps up a tacit uanding with them; and makes them, unsciously to themselves, a party in the se. The utmost y is required in the mode of doing this; but we speak only of the great artists in the profession.The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to feel in ourselves, or to plate in another, is, perhaps, cowardice. To see a coward doo the life upon a stage would produything but mirth. Yet we most of us remember Jack Bannisters cowards. Could any thing he mreeable, mor<tt></tt>e pleasant? We loved the rogues. How was this effected but by the exquisite art of the actor in a perpetual sub-insinuation to us, the spectators, even iremity of the shaking fit, that he was not half such a coward as we took him for? We saw all the on symptoms of the malady upon him; the quivering lip, the c khe teeth chattering; and could have sworn "that man was frightened." But we fot all the while -- or kept it almost a secret to ourselves -- that he never once lost his self-possession; that he let out by a thousand droll looks aures -- meant at us, and not at all supposed to be visible to his fellows in the se, that his fiden his own resources had never once deserted him. Was this a genuine picture of a coward? or not rather a likeness, which the clever artist trived to palm upon us instead of an inal; while we secretly ived at the delusion for the purpose of greater pleasure, than a menuine terfeiting of the imbecility, helplessness, and utter self-desertion, which we know to he itants of cowardi real life, could have given us?
Why are misers so hateful in the world, and so endurable oage, but because the skilful actor, by a sort of sub-reference, rat藏书网her than direct appeal to us, disarms the character of a great deal of its odiousness, by seeming to engage our passion for the insecure tenure by which he holds his money bags and parts? By this subtle vent half of the hatefulness of the character -- the self-closeness with whi real life it coils itself up from the sympathies of men -- evaporates. The miser bees sympathetic; i.e. is no genuine miser. Here again a diverting likeness is substituted for a very disagreeable reality.
Spleen, irritability -- the pitiable infirmities of old men, which produly pain to behold in the realities, terfeited upon a stage, divert not altogether for the ic appeo them, but in part from an inner vi that they are being acted before us; that a likeness only is going on, and not the thing itself. They please by being done uhe life, or beside it; not to the life. When Gatty acts an old man, is he angry indeed?, or only a pleasant terfeit, just enough of a likenise, without pressing upon us the uneasy sense of reality?
edians, paradoxical as it may seem, may be too natural. It was the case with a late actor. Nothing could be more ear or true than the manner of Mr. Emery; this told excellently in his Tyke, and characters of a tragic cast. But when he carried the same rigid exclusiveness of attention to the stage business, and wilful blindness and oblivion of everything before the curtain into his edy, it produced a harsh and dissonant effect. He was out of keeping with the rest of the Personae Dramatis. There was as little liween him and them as betwixt himself and the audience. He was a third estate, dry, repulsive, and unsocial to all. Individually sidered, his execution was masterly. But edy is not this unbending thing for this reason, that the same degree of credibility is not required of it as to serious ses. The degrees of credibility demao the two things may be illustrated by the different sort of truth which we expect when a man tells us a mournful or a merry story. If we suspect the former of falsehood in any otle, we reject it altogether. Our tears refuse to flow at a suspected imposition. But the teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are tent with less than absolute truth. `Tis the same with dramatic illusion. We fess we love in edy to see an audieuralised behind the ses, taken in into the i of the drama, weled as by-standers however. There is something ungracious in a ic actor holding himself, aloof from all participation or with those who are e to be diverted by him. Macbeth must see the dagger, and no ear but his owold of it; but an old fool in farce may think he sees something, and by scious words and looks express it, as plainly as he speak, to pit, box, and gallery. When an imperti in tragedy, an Osric, for instance, breaks in upon the serious passions of the se, rove of the pt with which he is treated. But when the pleasant imperti of edy, in a piece purely meant to give delight, and raise mi>?</a>rth out of whimsical perplexities, worries the studious man with taking up his leisure, or making his house his home, the same sort of pt expressed (however natural) would destroy the balance of delight in the spectators. To make the intrusion ic, the actor who plays the annoyed man must a little desert nature; he must, in short, be thinking of the audience, and express only so much dissatisfa and peevishness as is sistent with the pleasure of edy. In other words, his perplexity must seem half put on. If he repel the intruder with the sober set face of a man in ear, and more especially if he deliver his expostulations in a tone whi the world must necessarily provoke a duel; his real-life manner will destroy the whimsical and purely dramatic existence of the other character (which to re ic demands an antagonist icality on the part of the character opposed to it), and vert what was meant for mirth, rather than belief, into a dht piepertinendeed, which would raise no diversion in us, but rather stir pain, to see inflicted in ear upon any unworthy person. A very judicious actor (in most of his parts) seems to have fallen into an error of this sort in his playing with Mr. Wren the farce of Free and Easy.
Many instances would be tedious; these may suffice to show that ic ag at least does not always demand from the performer that strict abstra from all refereo an audience, which is exacted of it; but that in some cases a sort of promise may take place, and all the purposes of dramatic delight attain by a judicious uanding, not too openly announced, between the ladies alemen -- on both sides of the curtain.
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