, and stuffed objects in glass cases.

When I began to think about my subject for the purpose of this
address, I was rather staggered by its vastness. It is really a matter
for a course of lectures; but as President Eliot has not proposed that
I should occupy a chair of dramatic literature in this University,
and as time and opportunity are limited, I can only undertake to put
before you, in the simplest way, a few leading ideas about dramatic
art which may be worthy of reflection. And in doing this I have the
great satisfaction of appearing in a model theatre, before a model
audience, and of being the only actor in my own play. Moreover, I am
stimulated by the atmosphere of the Greek drama, for I know that on
this stage you have enacted a Greek play with remarkable success. So,
after all, it is not a body of mere tyros that I am addressing, but
actors who have worn the sock and buskin, and declaimed the speeches
which delighted audiences two thousand years ago.

Now, this address, like discourses in a more solemn place, falls
naturally into divisions. I propose to speak first of the Art of
Acting; secondly, of its Requirements and Practice; and lastly of its
Rewards. And, at the outset, let me say that I want you to judge the
stage at its best. I do not intend to suggest that only the plays
of Shakespeare are tolerable in the theatre to people of taste
and intelligence. The drama has many forms--tragedy, comedy,
historical-pastoral, pastoral-comical--and all are good when their aim
is honestly artistic.

II.

THE ART OF ACTING.

Now, what is the art of acting? I speak of it in its highest sense, as
the art to which Roscius, Betterton, and Garrick owed their fame. It
is the art of embodying the poet's creations, of giving them flesh and
blood, of making the figures which appeal to your mind's eye in the
printed drama live before you on the stage. "To fathom the depths of
character, to trace its latent motives, to feel its finest quiverings
of emotion, to comprehend the thoughts that are hidden under words,
and thus possess one's-self of the actual mind of the individual
man"--such was Macready's definition of the player's art; and to this
we may add the testimony of Talma. He describes tragic acting as "the
union of grandeur without pomp and nature without triviality." It
demands, he says, the endowment of high sensibility and intelligence.

"The actor who possesses this double gift adopts a course of stu