by the other. When she is not at her best, we
see only the actress, the incomparable craftswoman openly labouring at
her work.

COQUELIN AND MOLIERE: SOME ASPECTS

To see Coquelin in Moliere is to see the greatest of comic actors at his
best, and to realise that here is not a temperament, or a student, or
anything apart from the art of the actor. His art may be compared with
that of Sarah Bernhardt for its infinite care in the training of nature.
They have an equal perfection, but it may be said that Coquelin, with
his ripe, mellow art, his passion of humour, his touching vehemence,
makes himself seem less a divine machine, more a delightfully faulty
person. His voice is firm, sonorous, flexible, a human, expressive,
amusing voice, not the elaborate musical instrument of Sarah, which
seems to go by itself, caline, cooing, lamenting, raging, or in that
wonderful swift chatter which she uses with such instant and deliberate
effect. And, unlike her, his face is the face of his part, always a
disguise, never a revelation.

I have been seeing the three Coquelins and their company at the Garrick
Theatre. They did "Tartuffe," "L'Avare," "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme,"
"Les Precieuses Ridicules," and a condensed version of "Le Depit
Amoureux," in which the four acts of the original were cut down into
two. Of these five plays only two are in verse, "Tartuffe" and "Le Depit
Amoureux," and I could not help wishing that the fashion of Moliere's
day had allowed him to write all his plays in prose. Moliere was not a
poet, and he knew that he was not a poet. When he ventured to write the
most Shakespearean of his comedies, "L'Avare," in prose, "le meme
prejuge," Voltaire tells us, "qui avait fait tomber 'le Festin de
Pierre,' parce qu'il etait en prose, nuisit au succes de 'l'Avare.'
Cependant le public qui, a la longue, se rend toujours au bon, finit par
donner a cet ouvrage les applaudissements qu'il merite. On comprit alors
qu'il peut y avoir de fort bonnes comedies en prose." How infinitely
finer, as prose, is the prose of "L'Avare" than the verse of "Tartuffe"
as verse! In "Tartuffe" all the art of the actor is required to carry
you over the artificial jangle of the alexandrines without allowing you
to perceive too clearly that this man, who is certainly not speaking
poetry, is speaking in rhyme. Moliere was a great prose writer, but I do
not remember a line of poetry in the whole of his work in verse. The
temper of his mi