46 LITERATURE AND DRAMA 



scriptions of a great actor, and it is this feeling which prompts 

 the publication of the following notes on Mrs. Siddons' acting 

 made by an eye-witness of ability and true artistic feeling. 



The public of to-day are perhaps hardly aware of the height 

 to which the art of acting may rise. Yet those who have been 

 familiar with the creations of Rachel and Salvini will not only 

 credit the assertion that the genius of Mrs. Siddons in repre- 

 senting the characters of Murphy, Lillo, Southerne, and Otway, 

 was greatly superior to that of the writers, but that, even when 

 representing Shakespeare, she supplied much which enriched the 

 conceptions of the poet. To-day we often speak of an actor as 

 the mere interpreter of Shakespeare. We are apt to imagine 

 that there is some one Hamlet or Lady Macbeth, a creature of 

 Shakespeare's brain, an eidolon which the actor must of necessity 

 endeavour to represent, his success being measured by the ap- 

 proach which he makes to this unattainable ideal. Those, how- 

 ever, who have seen the acting of the last thirty years in Paris 

 will know that this view of the actor's province is far from true 

 when he interprets even the best modern authors. They know 

 that an actor, when he receives the manuscript, has to create 

 his part in the sense of conceiving a complete human being 

 who, under the given circumstances, employs the words which 

 the author has supplied. They know that no critic could, by 

 reading a play, evolve a portrait of the man whom an original 

 actor will represent as the embodiment of some new part. They 

 know that each new actor of real merit recreates the persons 

 of the older drama, sending traditions to the winds and pro- 

 ducing a new person on the stage using the old words, but with 

 marvellous differences of manner, voice, gesture, and intention. 

 They know that there is not merely one good way of representing 

 a great part, but as many ways as there are great actors. Each 

 actor is bound so to fashion his conception that his own physical 

 attributes and mental powers will lend themselves to its execu- 

 tion, and thus the great parts on the French stage have bound 

 up with them a long series of portraits each representing the 

 creation of a separate actor all the creations good and to be 

 judged of on their own merits, not by reference simply to the 

 mind of the author. 



In small parts, and in the lower walks of the art, the English 



