ACTING V. INDIVIDUALITY.

Thames Star, Volume IX, Issue 3043, 15 November 1878, Page 1

ACTING V. INDIVIDUALITY.

' A reeentnumberof the London ;Bpec'-, . tator contains the Mowing pleasant; I 1 speculations on the effect personating ! characters has on. the characters of the,, - personators:— " It * has . now, aody thea t happened to an actor to play a part so well that the public never > cease to demaad it; and he himself has begun to I confess to an influence arising from the repetition which perplexed and worried his mind. We do not know if the saying attributed to Mrs Dion Boucicault istrue . or not, but it "exactly represents, cur point. Her representation 6f the dark • colleen' in the ' Colleeif Bawn' so charmed all London, and the piece, per*, haps the best melodrama ever written, to. have no genius in it, went on for hundreds of niehta, till at last the aotress declared that she must stop, that her brain was growing confused, and that ' she began to be uncertain whetheiLlbiC was ' acting the ' Colleen Bawn Tor" the ~ ' Colleen Bawn was acting Mrs - Boucicault.' We have heard American! say, that they believed that most perfect of actors, M£ Jefferson, who distinctly modified the better, by his ehdlesa repetitions of *£ip Van Winkle,' because greatly influened by so ; often playing the' part, and certainly it is difficult to conceive bow a man could create that character and then pass, his life in representing it without imbibing in some degree its essential qualities, the spirit . of .humorous tolerance, and sense of the puzzle of daily life. But one * wants 'direct evidence of that. Does Mr Irving, for example, find that when he has. been acting ' Hamlet' for fifty nights the tone of his own inner mind has ■ become more or less Hamletian f We suy less, because, of course, the chance of an influence of repulsion must always exist, and we can imagine an actor hating ambition more because he was every night a ' Richard 111.,' or growing graver because, forpaftof every day, he was Mereutio. Liston's incessant playing .of fools/helped, tin all human probability, to make of; him the depressed Evangelical he was; .and we .could hardly imagine Mr Irving less alive "jto the uselessness of religious formalism because he had played for forty nights as ' Louis XL' Could a man act' Frospero' every day for a year and not acquire something, hpweverflittle, of dignified serenity of mind, of the sense of. the power pos- . sessed.by the immaterial to rule material .circumstances? Or could he be Jakes for a year, and not tend to melancholy rejflectiveness ? It has often been remarked that men to whom life seems unreal, who have a sense of the historic elements in it -are the least dependable of mankind; and of all foibles, absence dependableness is the one most frequent, with an actor. May not that be increased by his half dubiety whether he is himself or that other man whom every night he seems, to a watching audience, to be ? Can Charles Mathews have separated himself entirely from the Sir Charles Coldstream of whom the little girl said she did not admire that Mr Matthews, he was so laay, and all though the play was only him- . self. Is Mr Jefferson ever quite sure, as he walks about, that Schneider is not at his heels ? That the long [ repetition of ■ a dramatic character will make certaiu physical mannerisms | cling to an actor for months, and even years after he has discontinued the per* formance, is quite certain—jus?watch Mr Sothern as Garrick—and why not mental mannerisms, too ? Was there no trace of Lady Macbeth's nature, no iron of resolve in Mrs Siddbns, even though she had. acted comedy, and especially that tragedy, so long that she could not get rid of her grandeur in private life, and appalled an unhappy Waiter with : „" You've brought me water, boy. I tufted " forbear.".. , ..!'-'