hind the figure on
the stage, torn with passion or rollicking with mirth, there must
always be the cool and unemotional mind which directs and governs and
controls. This same theory was both held and practised by the late
Benoit Constant Coquelin. To some extent it was the theory of Garrick
and Fechter and Edwin Booth; though it was rejected by the two Keans,
and by Edwin Forrest, who entered so throughly into the character which
he assumed, and who let loose such tremendous bursts of passion that
other actors dreaded to support him on the stage in such parts as
Spartacus and Metamora.

It is needless to say that a girl like Adrienne Lecouvreur flung
herself with all the intensity of her nature into every role she
played. This was the greatest secret of her success; for, with her,
nature rose superior to art. On the other hand, it fixed her dramatic
limitations, for it barred her out of comedy. Her melancholy, morbid
disposition was in the fullest sympathy with tragic heroines; but she
failed when she tried to represent the lighter moods and the merry
moments of those who welcome mirth. She could counterfeit despair, and
unforced tears would fill her eyes; but she could not laugh and romp
and simulate a gaiety that was never hers.

Adrienne would have been delighted to act at one of the theaters in
Paris; but they were closed to her through jealousy. She went into the
provinces, in the eastern part of France, and for ten years she was a
leading lady there in many companies and in many towns. As she
blossomed into womanhood there came into her life the love which was to
be at once a source of the most profound interest and of the most
intense agony.

It is odd that all her professional success never gave her any
happiness. The life of the actress who traveled from town to town, the
crude and coarse experiences which she had to undergo, the disorder and
the unsettled mode of living, all produced in her a profound disgust.
She was of too exquisite a fiber to live in such a way, especially in a
century when the refinements of existence were for the very few.

She speaks herself of "obligatory amusements, the insistence of men,
and of love affairs." Yet how could such a woman as Adrienne Lecouvreur
keep herself from love affairs? The motion of the stage and its mimic
griefs satisfied her only while she was actually upon the boards. Love
offered her an emotional excitement that endured and that was always
changing. It wa