less of the players on account of it, for it is this
fact that entitles the actor to speak of his art and not merely of his
craft. It is because the player must select, eliminate, exaggerate,
diminish and, in a word, modify his matter but may not be photographic,
that he is entitled to call himself an artist.

The term "photographic" used in this sense is rather unfair, for the
photographer has become an artist by recognizing the fact that he too
must select, etc. No doubt "make-up" renders other services, and belongs
to the artifices as well as the arts of the stage, since it has the
advantage in some cases of rendering the plain beautiful--to the
discomfiture of stage-door loafers, and, indeed, possesses an abominable
democratic effect. Of course, too, it has legitimate value in effecting
disguises, in changing young into old--its efforts in the contrary
direction, as a rule, are ghastly failures--and in effecting
transformations of the exterior of persons. However, "make-up," despite
its mysteries, is but a small element in "the optics of the theatre,"
which term is here used largely--and inaccurately--in relation to all
the phenomena covered by the paradox already mentioned.

The player, having counterbalanced with "make-up" the robbery effected
by the stage illumination and also by the disadvantage of distance, has
to turn himself to the adjustment of other matters. One is this--he must
recognize that his author labours under similar conditions, and should
not be "photographic."

When the dramatist in the dialogue has exaggerated the play of light and
shade, bringing, indeed, legitimately for the sake of effect to his
speeches, that energy of chiaroscuro which gives us a pleasure, somewhat
distrustful in the pictures of Joseph Wright of Derby, the player must
attune his manner in order to make it congruous with the highly
seasoned conversation so that there being no clash of methods, no
jarring will result.

Every change of convention on the part of the author demands a
corresponding change in the actor. Clearly, he must speak verse
differently from prose, though there are foes to poetry who beg him to
break up the lines and defeat the efforts of the poet; and he must adopt
a manner in a blank-verse tragedy unsuitable to a play by Mr Barrie.
Moreover, he ought to aim at seeming natural in both. Here is the rub;
he must aim at seeming, not being, natural. Obviously, one cannot
deliver blank verse naturally; such