MALUERY.] GESTURES OF ACTORS. 309 
quainted with the language in which her words were delivered, declared 
that her gesture and expression were so perfect that they understood 
every sentence, it is to be doubted if they would have been so delighted 
if they had not been thoroughly familiar with the plots of Queen Eliz- 
abeth and Mary Stuart. This view is confirmed by the case of a deaf- 
mute, told to the writer by Professor FAY, who had prepared to enjoy 
Ristori’s acting by reading in advance the advertised play, but on his 
reaching the theater another play was substituted and he could derive no 
idea from its presentation. The experience of the present writer is that 
he could gain very little meaning in detail out of the performance at a 
Chinese theater, where there is much more true pantomime than in the 
European, without a general notion of the subject as conveyed from 
time to time by an interpreter. A crucial test on this subject was made 
at the representation at Washington, in April, 1881, of Frou-Frow by 
Sarah Bernhardt and the excellent French company supporting her. 
Several persons of special intelligence and familiar with theatrical per- 
formances, but who did not understand spoken French, and had not heard 
or read the play before or even seen an abstract of it, paid close atten- 
tion to ascertain what they could learn of the plot and incidents from 
the gestures alone. This could be determined in the special play the 
more certainly as it is not founded on historic events or any known 
facts. The result was that from the entrance of the heroine during the 
first scene in a peacock-blue riding habit to her death in a black walking- 
suit, three hours or five acts later, none of the students formed any dis- 
tinct conception of the plot. This want of apprehension extended even 
to uncertainty whether Gilberte was married or not; that is, whether her 
adventures were those of a disobedient daughter or a faithless wife, 
and, if married, which of the half dozen male personages was her hus- 
band. There were gestures enough, indeed rather a profusion of them, 
and they were thoroughly appropriate to the words (when those were 
understood) in which fun, distress, rage, and other emotions were 
expressed, but in no cases did they interpret the motive for those emo- 
tions. They were the dressing for the words of the actors as the superb 
millinery was that of their persons, and perhaps acted as varnish to 
bring out dialognes and soliloquies in heightened effect. But though 
varnish can bring into plainer view dull or faded characters, it cannot 
introduce into them significance where none before existed. The simple 
fact was that the gestures of the most famed histrionic school, the 
Comédie Frangaise, were not significant, far less self-interpreting, and 
though praised as the perfection of art, have diverged widely from 
nature. It thus appears that the absence of absolute self-interpretation 
by gesture is by no means confined to the lower grade of actors, such as 
are criticised in the old lines: 
When to enforce some very tender part 
His left hand sleeps by instinct on the heart; 
His soul, of every other thought bereft, 
Seems anxious only—where to place the left! 
