ACTING AS ART
Nothing could be more characteristically English than the circumstances which gave rise the other day to the singular question, “Is acting an art?” There was a practical issue, whether the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art was or was not entitled to exemption under an Act of 1843 from the payment of rates. Sir John Simon argued it, of course, as a practical question. He dealt with custom and precedent and authority, dictionary definitions and judicial decisions. He had to keep one eye on æsthetics and the other on the rates. This is our traditional English way. We “drive at practice.” Nevertheless, this question whether acting is an art is really one of pure æsthetics, and is in no way affected by any decision of the Appeal Committee of the London County Council.
You cannot answer it until you have made up your mind what you mean by art. Sir John Simon seems to have suggested that art was something “primarily directed to the satisfaction of the æsthetic sense.” But is there any such thing as a special “æsthetic sense”? Is it anything more than a name for our spiritual reaction to a work ofart, our response to it in mind and feeling? And are we not arguing in a circle when we say that art is what provokes the response to art? Perhaps it might amuse, perhaps it might irritate, perhaps it might simply bewilder the Appeal Committee of the London County Council to tell them that art is the expression of intuitions. They might reply that they cannot find intuitions in the rate-book, and that the Act of 1843 is silent about them. Yet this is what art is, and you have to bear it in mind when you ask, “Is the actor an artist?” Art is a spiritual activity, and the artist’s expression of his intuitions (the painter’s “vision,” the actor’s “conception” of his part) is internal; when he wishes to externalize his expression, to communicate it to others, he has to use certain media—paint and canvas, marble and brick, musical notes, words and gestures. But it is the spiritual activity, the intuition-expression, that makes the artist. The medium is no part of his definition.
And yet, I suggest, it is the peculiarity of the actor’s medium that has often withheld from him, at any rate with unthinking people, his title to rank as an artist. He is his own medium, his own paint and canvas, his own brick and marble. The works of other artists, the picture, the poem, the sonata, have an independent life, they survive their authors; the actor’s works are inseparable from his actual presence, and die with him. Hence a certain difficulty for the unsophisticated indistinguishing the artist from what the philosophers call the empirical man; the Edmund Kean whose genius is illuminating and revitalizing Shylock from the Edmund Kean who is notoriously fond of the bottle and who has lately got into trouble with an alderman’s wife. The physique, the temperament, of the empirical man furnish the medium for the artist. He arrives at the theatre in a taxi, or his own Rolls-Royce, smoking a big cigar, every inch of him a man of to-day; the next moment he is pretending to be an old mad King of Britain. This confusion is behind Johnson’s “fellow who claps a hump on his back and calls himself Richard the Third.” It leaves out of account the imaginative side of him, the artist. Johnson might just as well have dismissed Shakespeare as a “fellow who supposed a hump clapped on the back of one of his fancies, which he calls Richard the Third.” Lamb raised another objection, that the bodily presence of the actor materialized, coarsened, the finer elements of the part—hid from sight “the lofty genius, the man of vast capacity, the profound, the witty, accomplished Richard.” The medium, in other words, is a hindrance to the art, not so much a medium as a nuisance.
These are the objections of ignorance or of whim. Certainly the peculiarity of his medium imposes peculiar restrictions on the actor. If the painter lacks a certain pigment he can get it at the colour-man’s. If the composer needs a certaintimbrehecan add the necessary instrument to his orchestra. All the quarries are open to the architect. But no “make up” box will furnish a resonant voice to a shrill-piped actor or make Garrick six feet high. An actress may be at the height of her powers, and yet too old to play Juliet. Sir Henry Irving’s physical oddities went far to ruin some of his impersonations. But these limitations of the medium do not affect the actor’s status as an artist. They only restrict the range in which he may exercise his art.
And can it be gainsaid that what he exercises is true art, a spiritual activity, the expression of his intuitions? People, comparing his work with the “creations” of the playwright, are apt to speak of him as a mere “interpreter.” He has his words given him, they say, and his significant acts prescribed for him in advance. The truth is, “creation” and “interpretation” are figurative terms; it would be quite reasonable to interchange them. Shakespeare “interprets” life by giving form to it, by piecing together, say, certain scraps of actual observation along with the image of his fancy into the character of Falstaff. With the printed words and stage-directions as data, the actor re-imagines Falstaff, brings his own temperament and feelings and sympathetic vision to the service of Shakespeare’s indications, and “creates” the living, moving man. True, the processes are at different stages, and may be of different importance. Shakespeare has intuited and expressed life, the actor hasintuited and expressed Shakespeare. But both expressions are art.
And note that while Shakespeare “created” Falstaff, no playgoer has ever seen or ever will see Shakespeare’s Falstaff. For the image formed in Shakespeare’s mind has always on the stage to be translated for us in terms of other minds which can never be identical with his—is, in fact, “re-created” by each actor in turn. It is the actor who converts the “cold print” of the text into vivid, concrete life. Life! that is the secret of the actor’s “following,” a much more notable fact in the world of the theatre than the “following” of this or that playwright. The actor, like all who, in Buffon’s phrase, “parlent au corps par le corps,” expresses a temperament, a personality, himself; imposes himself on his part and on us. People “follow” a favourite actor in all his impersonations because his art gives them more pleasure than the playwright’s, or because his art must be added to the playwright’s before they will care about that.
When I say “people” I don’t mean “littery gents.” The typical playgoer prefers life to literature. He is as a rule no great reader. Nor are the actors. There has always been a certain coolness between the men of letters and the actors—their temperaments are so opposed. I have quoted from Lamb. Anatole France said much the same thing of the Comédie Française— “Leur personne efface l’œuvre qu’ils représentent.” Views like these merelyexpress a preference for one art over another. They do not contest the actor’s right to rank as an artist. That, to speak rigorously, is a rank held by many people “for the duration”—i.e., while and whenever they express their intuitions. But it would be impolitic to insist on this strict view. The rate-payers’ list might be seriously affected and much uneasiness occasioned to the Appeal Committee of the London County Council.