m from the dead
For our eyes to see!
Forms of beauty, love, and grace,
'Sunshine in the shady place,'
That made it life to be--
A blessed company!"

ADDRESS

TO THE STUDENTS

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HARVARD

30TH MARCH 1885

THE ART OF ACTING

I.

THE OCCASION.

I am deeply sensible of the compliment that has been paid, not so much
to me personally as to the calling I represent, by the invitation to
deliver an address to the students of this University. As an actor,
and especially as an English actor, it is a great pleasure to speak
for my art in one of the chief centres of American culture; for in
inviting me here to-day you intended, I believe, to recognize the
drama as an educational influence, to show a genuine interest in the
stage as a factor in life which must be accepted and not ignored by
intelligent people. I have thought that the best use I can make of the
privilege you have conferred upon me is to offer you, as well as I
am able, something like a practical exposition of my art; for it
may chance--who knows?--that some of you may at some future time be
disposed to adopt it as a vocation. Not that I wish to be regarded
as a tempter who has come among you to seduce you from your present
studies by artful pictures of the fascinations of the footlights. But
I naturally supposed that you would like me to choose, as the theme of
my address, the subject in which I am most interested, and to which
my life has been devoted; and that if any students here should ever
determine to become actors, they could not be much the worse for
the information and counsel I could gather for them from a tolerably
extensive experience. This subject will, I trust, be welcome to all of
you who are interested in the stage as an institution which appeals
to the sober-minded and intelligent; for I take it that you have no
lingering prejudice against the theatre, or else I should not be
here. Nor are you disposed, like certain good people, to object to the
theatre simply as a name. These sticklers for principle would never
enter a playhouse for worlds; and I have heard that in a famous city
of Massachusetts, not a hundred miles from here, there are persons to
whom the theatre is unknown, but who have no objection to see a play
in a building which is called a museum, especially if the vestibule
leading to the theatre should be decorated with sound moral principles
in the shape of statues, pictures