recites the speeches with a certain grace and intelligence,
will be untrue. The more intent he is upon the words, and the less
on the ideas that dictated them, the more likely he is to lay himself
open to the charge of mechanical interpretation. It is perfectly
possible to express to an audience all the involutions of thought,
the speculation, doubt, wavering, which reveal the meditative but
irresolute mind. As the varying shades of fancy pass and repass the
mirror of the face, they may yield more material to the studious
playgoer than he is likely to get by a diligent poring over the
text. In short, as we understand the people around us much better by
personal intercourse than by all the revelations of written words--for
words, as Tennyson says, "half reveal and half conceal the soul
within," so the drama has, on the whole, infinitely more suggestions
when it is well acted than when it is interpreted by the unaided
judgment of the student. It has been said that acting is an unworthy
occupation because it represents feigned emotions, but this censure
would apply with equal force to poet or novelist. Do not imagine that
I am claiming for the actor sole and undivided authority. He should
himself be a student, and it is his business to put into practice
the best ideas he can gather from the general current of thought with
regard to the highest dramatic literature. But it is he who gives body
to those ideas--fire, force, and sensibility, without which they would
remain for most people mere airy abstractions.

It is often supposed that great actors trust to the inspiration of the
moment. Nothing can be more erroneous. There will, of course, be such
moments, when an actor at a white heat illumines some passage with
a flash of imagination (and this mental condition, by the way, is
impossible to the student sitting in his arm-chair); but the great
actor's surprises are generally well weighed, studied, and balanced.
We know that Edmund Kean constantly practised before a mirror effects
which startled his audience by their apparent spontaneity. It is the
accumulation of such effects which enables an actor, after many years,
to present many great characters with remarkable completeness.

I do not want to overstate the case, or to appeal to anything that is
not within common experience, so I can confidently ask you whether a
scene in a great play has not been at some time vividly impressed on
your minds by the delivery of a single