MR HENRY IRVING ON THE STAGE.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2429, 18 January 1882, Page 4

MR HENRY IRVING ON THE STAGE.

Mr Henry Irving delivered the opening address of the session of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, in the Music Hull, Edinburgh, and spoke on " The Stage as it is." He maintained that no apology for tho was needed. It bad but to be named to bo , honored. There never was so large a number of theatres or of actors as now ; and their type was vastly improved by public recognition. As to dramatic reform, Mr Irving said it was not needed ; or if it was, all the reform that was wanted would be beet effected by the operation of publio opinion upon the administration of a good theatre. So far from managers forcing on the publio either very good or very bad dramatic materials they really had not the will. They followed the publio taste with tho greatest keenness. If the people wanted Shakspere, then they got Bhakspere. If they want»d Byron, Albsry, Gilbert, Burnand, and SulliT»n, then Byron, Albery, Gilbert, Burnand, and Sullivan they had. If they wanted Boberteon, Bobertson was there for them. If they desired opera bouffe, depend upon it they would have it. Those who preferred the higher drama—in the representation of which his heart's best interests ' were centred—instead of querulously animadverting on managers who* gave them something different, should, as Lord Beaconsfield said, " make themselves into a majority." If they did so, the higher drama would be produced. In continuing his discourse Mr Irving observed that to boast of being able to appreciate Shakespeare more in reading him than in seeing him aoted used to be a common method of affecting special intellectuality. But the pitiful delusion has mostly died out. It conferred a aheap badge of superiority on those who entertained it. It seemed to each of them an inexpensive opportunity of worship, ping himself on a pedestal. But what did it amount to ? It was little more than a conoited and feather-headed assumption that an unprepared reader, whose mind is usually full of far other things, will see on the instant all that has been developed in hundreds of years by the members of a studious and enthusiastic profession. Mr Irving's own oonviotion is that there are few characters or passages of our great dramatists which will not repay original study. But at least, he continued, ■wo must reoognue the vast advantages with -whioh a praotised aotor, impregnated by tho associations of his life and by study—with all tho praotioal and critical skill of his profession up to the date at whioh he appears—whether he adopts or rejects tradition, addresses himself to the interpretation of any great character, even if he have no originality whatever. There is something still more than this, however, in aoting. Every one who has the smallest hiatrionio gift has a natural dramatic fertility, so that as soon as he knows the author's text and obtains self-possession, and feels at home in a part without being too familiar with it, the mere automatic action of rehearsing and playing it at once begins to place the author in new lights, and to give the personage being played an individuality partly independent of, and yet consistent with, and Tendering more powerfully visible the dramatist's conception. It is the vast power a good aotor has in this way which has led the JFrench to speak of creating a part when they mean its being first played; and French authors are so conscious of the extent and value of this oo operation of aotors with them that they have never objected to the phrase, but, on the contrary, are uniformly lavish in their homage to the artists who have created on the boards the parts whioh they themselves have oreated on paper. Mr Irving went on to observe that while there is but one Shakespeare, and there are but comparatively few 3 dramatists _ sufficiently classic to be read with close attention, there is a good deal of average dramatio work excellently suited for representation. From this the publio derive pleasure as well as instruction and mental stimulus. So it is plain that if, beoause Shakespeare is good reading, people were to give the cold shoulder to the theatre, the world would lose all the vast advantage which oomes to it through the dramatio faoulty in forms not rising to essentially literary excellence. As to the fear of moral contamination, the theatre of fifty years ago did sometimes need reforming in the audience part of the house. Bat it has been reformed, and if there is moral contamination from what is performed on the stage, so there is from books, so there may be at lawn tennis, clubs, and at danoea. But do we, therefore, bury ourselves ? The theatre, as a whole, is never below the average moral sense of the time; and this is truer now than ever it was before. The stage is no longer a mere appendage of court life, but the property of the eduoated people. It must satisfy them or pine in negleot. This being so, the stage is no longer proscribed. Its members are no longer pariahs in society. Was his appearance in their town not a sign of that ? He felt his position as a representative one, and it marked an epooh in the estimation in whioh the art he loved was held by the British* world. Referring to the lament that there were no schools for aotors, Mr Irving said the oomplaint -was idle. Praotioe was their sohool. They should have a sincere and absorbing sympathy with all that is good and great and inspiring. Mr Irving went on to dwell on the adaptability of the theatre to the prevailing wants and taste of the time, and concluded with a fine peroration pioturing the actor's pleasure in abandoning himself to his author's grandest flights of thought and noblest burst of emotional enthusiasm.