Fragments; Some Forgotten Aspects of the Irish Question, Buddhism and Jainism, A National Theater [pp. 363-374]

APPLETONS' JO U7RNAL.
It may, we think, be taken for granted that
no amount of endowment would insure greater
attention to the arts by which the stage produces
its illusion of reality than has been shown by individual enterprise single-handed. It is the natural tendency of competition under our present
system that the projectors of novelties should
have a fair hearing. Supposing that a genius
should arise with the capacity for revolutionizing
scenic representation-say by abolishing footlights and applying electric lighting to stage purposes, or by developing hidden properties in the
illuminating power of wax-candles-he would be
much more likely to get an opportunity of trying his experiment from a private manager than
from the manager of a national theatre. The
utility of endowment begins only when perfection has been reached, and the potentialities of
invention have been exhausted. Even with a
view to the maintaining of advances already
made, to the conservation of progress, the private enterprise system is not altogether ineffective. We are not to suppose that when a new
line has been struck out, a new light seized and
successfully flourished, it serves its day unremarked by the purveyor for the future. There
are keen eyes at work to see that nothing with
which play-goers are pleased be allowed to
die.
Managers do not need to be encouraged by
bounties to pay attention to scenic accessories.
It pays them directly to do so. They have their
reward in well-filled theatres. There really is
only one respect in which subsidies might enable
them to raise stage representations above their
present level, that, namely, which was indicated
by Mr. Hare when he showed apropos of Mrs.
Pfeiffer's proposal that a national theatre was impracticable. The education of actors for their
profession might be endowed. There might be
a national school of acting.
Actors at present have few facilities for learning their art, and the result is only too apparent
upon the stage. Self-teaching succeeds only
with the very finest instincts, and such a multitude of performers are required for a stage representation that we can not expect all of them to
have those requisite gifts of nature without which
self-culture means loutishness and harsh eccentricity. Much of the crudeness which offends a
cultivated audience in our attempts to deal with
the poetic drama is referable to want of rudimentary training. Managers at present often
have no choice but to engage incapable performers, performers whom they know to be incapable,
and whose tones and movements inflict agony
upon them. No amount of training would in all
cases develop histrionic ambition into histrionic
faculty, but a properly organized school would in
all probability have the effect of producing a sufficient supply of competent players for the smaller parts. They might be cured of ungainly gestures, and they might be taught to speak blank
verse with good accent and good discretion.
If they had not the making of decent players in them, they might be stopped at the threshold.
Nor would the mediocre actors alone benefit
by a dramatic school, conducted by accomplished
professors. The few men and women of genius
would be saved much of the painful drudgery,
the weary process of trial and failure, by which
they now slowly build up the mastery of their
craft. The knowledge which, under the present
system of self-teaching, reaches them by accidental hints and discoveries, they might start
with from the beginning, and their genius would
be left free and unwasted to search out new
means of triumph.
It is at this point that public or private endowment might advantageously come to the assistance of private enterprise in theatrical matters. But we should deprecate any idea of patronizing a great profession like that of acting.
If a school of acting is, as we believe it is, a desirable thing, the initiative in establishing it ought
to come from actors themselves. They are perhaps more keenly alive to the need of it than any
outsiders. Why should they not combine and
organize a society of the members of their profession, as men of science have done, and painters? We have no doubt that if they did so, and
projected a college for the training of actors, they
would not appeal in vain for public help in setting the institution upon its legs. Such an institution might also become a central depository
for the knowledge which each generation contributes to the craft and mystery of representing
plays.
plays. New Quarterly Mlagazine.
A MODEL ART-CRITICISM.
[The "Athenaeum" recently described a new
picture by Rossetti-" The Lady at the Window ""a profoundly pathetic exposition of the motive of
a passage in Dante's' Vita Nuova,'" and permitted
itself to indulge in a strain of comment of which
the following sentences afford a good example: "The
profundity of the pity which is marked so distinctly
in the eyes and lips is in keeping with the deep sympathy of that womanhood which, although it has
ripened, is incomplete. This incompleteness, or
rather this physical and mental expectancy and insufficiency of self, is impressed by nature on the
sumptuous loveliness of the lady, and appears in the
suppressed languor of her broad eyelids, in the potentialities of passion rendered plain in the morbidezza
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