eigh does not believe in it.]

I do not believe in an Academy of Acting, because I do not believe that
the art of acting can be taught. The art of the actor is merely the
faculty or instinct for simulation that everybody possesses in a greater
or less degree. Every savage can simulate or imitate the cries of birds
and beasts. Every savage can cover himself with a skin and stalk a herd
of deer so disguised. But some savages do these things better than
others. Every child, when it wants to thoroughly enjoy itself, plays at
being something other than it really is. The girl takes a doll and plays
at being a mother. The boy puts on a paper cocked hat and plays at being
a soldier. We can all act more or less. Between Mr. Irving as _King
Lear_, and the beggar who shivers on your door-step and swears that his
wife and six children have not tasted food for a fortnight, the
difference is one of degree, not of kind. The Pharisees of Scripture
pretended to be what they were not, and got roundly denounced as
hypocrites for their pains. As a fact, they were only incipient actors.
The talk about teaching is, to my thinking, undiluted twaddle. The
inherent desire to simulate grows, or it does not grow. You cannot make
it grow. If a naturally awkward man can simulate the graces of a dancing
master, if a naturally graceful man can simulate the limp of a cripple
or the clumsiness of a hobbledehoy, if a comparative dwarf--like
Kean--can assume the majesty of a monarch, then he is an actor. You may
teach him to fence, and to dance, and to elocute till he is black in the
face; you will never teach him to play "Othello" unless he is an actor.
That fencing, dancing, and elocution are useful to the actor I do not
deny. But if he is an actor he will pick these things up for himself
easily enough under existing circumstances. A high development of the
faculty for simulation necessarily implies a corresponding development
in the faculty of observation. The actor sees, notes, and reproduces.
That is to say, he simulates. Moreover, being an artist, he only
reproduces just so much as is necessary. He need not study anatomy, and
walk a hospital, in order to indicate with a few graphic gestures the
cripple's limp. Equally he need not be a superb swordsman in order to
get through an effective stage combat. It is not absolutely essential
that he should be elevated to the peerage before being permitted to play
a duke. People talk about fencing, dancing, an