304 Mr. Walter H. Pollock on Garrich as an Actor. [May 22, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, May 22, 1885. 



Sir William Bowman, Bart. LL.D. F.R.S. Manager and 

 Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Walter H. Pollock, Esq. M.A. 



Garrich as an Actor. 



The lecturer began by a brief reference to Garrick's brilliant place 

 amid a crowd of persons distinguished in all kinds of ways who 

 flourished at the same time with him, and to the brilliant career with 

 the main features of which his audience was no doubt acquainted. 

 He proposed to dwell not on them, but on the curious and minute 

 accounts of Garrick's acting in certain parts preserved by eye- 

 witnesses of skill and experience. Lichtenberg on Abel Drugger, on 

 Sir John Brute, and on Hamlet, was quoted in a translation, and his 

 account was compared with that given by Davies, the friend of 

 Johnson, who was an actor and a bookseller, a man of singular talent, 

 reading, and judgment, and the biographer of Garrick as well as the 

 author of a book full of interest called ' Dramatic Miscellanies,' fiiom 

 which many passages were quoted. Other authorities were referred 

 to in the same way and with the same kind of illustration that was 

 given to these two. Garrick's dramatic alterations of Shakspeare 

 were referred to and passages given from one of the worst of them, 

 the Borneo and Juliet. It was at the same time pointed out that 

 Garrick had done much for other plays of Shakspeare in the way of 

 restoring the original text to the stage. The lecturer concluded by 

 citint^ passages from the Garrick Correspondence, which seemed to 

 prove conclusively that Garrick was what we now call a " mannered " 

 actor— and he devoted the last part of his lecture to arguing that so- 

 called " mannerism," in other words individuality, is not necessarily 

 a bar to the faculty of impersonation of a very various kind ; that it 

 is, on the contrary, when allied with genius, in other arts as in acting, 

 the very quality which engages and keeps attention. " Out of being 

 nothing but yourself" the lecturer said, " nothing can come. Out of 

 being everything but yourself nothing can come. Genius hits the 

 mark between the two and commands success and admiration." 



[W. H. P.] 



