The actor should understand that the author
can be of use to him; the author, on his side, should believe that the
actor can be of service to the author, and sometimes in ways which only
a long and severe training in the actor's trade can discover.
The first author with whom I had to deal, at a critical point in my
progress as an actress, was Charles Reade, and he helped me enormously.
He might, and often did, make twelve suggestions that were wrong; but
against them he would make one that was so right that its value was
immeasurable and unforgettable.
It is through the dissatisfaction of a man like Charles Reade that an
actress _learns_--that is, if she is not conceited. Conceit is an
insuperable obstacle to all progress. On the other hand, it is of little
use to take criticism in a slavish spirit and to act on it without
understanding it. Charles Reade constantly wrote and said things to me
which were not absolutely just criticism; but they directed my attention
to the true cause of the faults which he found in my performance, and
put me on the way to mending them.
A letter which he wrote me during the run of "The Wandering Heir" was
such a wonderful lesson to me that I am going to quote it almost in
full, in the hope that it may be a lesson to other actresses--"happy in
this, they are not yet so old but they can learn"; unhappy in this, that
they have never had a Charles Reade to give them a trouncing!
Well, the letter begins with sheer eulogy.
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