The English manners of real life
are so negative and still as to present no visible or audible drama; and
drama is for hearing and for vision. Therefore our acting (granting that
we have any acting, which is granting much) has to create its little
different and complementary world, and to make the division of "art" from
Nature--the division which, in this one art, is fatal.
This is one simple and sufficient reason why we have no considerable
acting; though we may have more or less interesting and energetic or
graceful conventions that pass for art. But any student of international
character knows well enough that there are also supplementary reasons of
weight. For example, it is bad to make a conventional world of the
stage, but it is doubly bad to make it badly--which, it must be granted,
we do. When we are anything of the kind, we are intellectual rather than
intelligent; whereas outward-streaming intelligence makes the actor. We
are pre-occupied, and therefore never single, never wholly possessed by
the one thing at a time; and so forth.
On the other hand, Italians are expressive.
Pages:
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54