I went between her and
the wall to see her face. It was quite vacant, but the body expressed
that she was waiting, waiting. Suddenly she threw up her hands and sped
across the room like a swallow. I never forgot it. She was very thin,
very pathetic, very young, and the movement was as poignant as it was
beautiful.
I saw another woman laugh with a face that had no gleam of laughter
anywhere--a face of pathetic and resigned grief.
My experiences convinced me that the actor must imagine first and
observe afterwards. It is no good observing life and bringing the result
to the stage without selection, without a definite idea. The idea must
come first, the realism afterwards.
Perhaps because I was nervous and irritable about my own part from
insufficient rehearsal, perhaps because his responsibility as lessee
weighed upon him, Henry Irving's Hamlet on the first night at the Lyceum
seemed to me less wonderful than it had been at Birmingham. At
rehearsals he had been the perfection of grace. On the night itself, he
dragged his leg and seemed stiff from self-consciousness. He asked me
later on if I thought the ill-natured criticism of his walk was in any
way justified, and if he really said "Gud" for "God," and the rest of
it.
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