University of Virginia Library

Now, first of all, if once you choose the Stage
For your profession, see that night and day
You “magnify your office”—with St. Paul.—
Let no man slight your calling unrebuked:
Aye, and no woman either; there are those
—Oh, I have met them,—met them many a time!—
There are fair English ladies even now
Who looking back towards eras long since dead
Scoff at the Stage, and ask what worthy thing
“Came out of Nazareth,”—or Drury Lane!
They will quote Mrs. Browning; who declared—
Somewhere in her letters—that it needs no high
Imagination to enjoy the Stage:
Nay, that its strong enjoyment seems to imply
A low imagination, unrefined
And coarse and unideal and commonplace.
These arguers you must meet, and meet them full.
Be frank at first; confess that there is truth
(Much—yes, too much) in what they do affirm.
The Stage has been degraded: doubt it not:
Degraded by the public just as much
As it has lowered the public:—own it quite.
But then go on to say, with emphasis:—

“Of all professions that a man can choose
And can pursue before the face of God
In holy humble earnest,—looking up
Straight from his furrow of labour unto Him,—
Of all these callings there has never been
One that can be pursued more holily,
Or more in deadliest earnest, than the Stage.
Why, what is worship?”—so you next will urge—
“In what does worship lie? Most surely in
Pure depth of feeling, earnestness of soul,
Exalted passion of spirit, ardent life.
These on the Stage you have,—more strongly there
Than elsewhere; and such feeling leads to God.
Why, you yourselves”—pursue your argument—
“You yourselves would confess that deep delight,
Strong passion, ever lift the soul on high,
Gifting the wingless with superb new wings
And adding to the wingful fiery force
Of rustling plumage:—you would say no doubt
That God is found not only in a Church
But in the deep green fragrant woods as well
And in the gold-starred meadows, and beside
The foaming white unfathomable sea.
A man can worship—so you would admit—
While riding, hunting,—or while steering hard
A Yorkshire coble over crests of waves,
Or even while fighting.—Good. I claim the same
Fair liberal judgment for the Stage, and say
That when man's spirit is most exalted, man
Is nearest to his Maker.”—You can quote
In full pursuance of your argument
That noble sonnet Matthew Arnold gave
To Rachel; in his vision seeing her
Sick and dejected on an August day
In Paris—the white walls ablaze with heat—
Making her carriage stop before the door
Of the French Theatre,—and gazing hard,
Her swift eyes full of tears, at that strange fane
Wherein the passion of her life was spent.
Now she was dying; Paris, stricken by heat,
Was quite deserted: but the woman came—
The mighty actress came (my reverence
For a true actor or actress is so large
I never speak in thought the name of one
Without in thought uncovering my brow)—
The actress came and with her dying eyes,
Alone with her own spirit and with God,
Yearned o'er the place where most of all her soul
Had been endowed with superhuman might,
Exalted and exultant most of all,—
The place that was to her a temple indeed,—
Temple, and altar of the living God.

Of all strange incidents half-sad, half-sweet,
I know no sadder, sweeter, than this pause
Of dying Rachel at her Theatre,—
There summing up in one swift dream, perhaps,
Before she left this world to give account
To God of all her acting, her whole life;—
Hearing again the mighty applause ring forth
And feeling once again the elastic boards
Bend at her footfall: seeing again the crowds,
The Theatre “lined with human intellect”
(As Mrs. Siddons said of that first night
When she flamed forth and triumphed),—seeing again
In one strange awful great unfathomed glimpse
The tiers of seats, the faces,—ere she turned
To act her last part with no hand to applaud
Save only God's:—This story you should quote
To show the people how divinely great
Acting may be when a great spirit acts.

And that word “acting” leads me to the next
Thought that I would most earnestly impress
And stamp into your soul,—yes, “acting” indeed!
“Acting!”—just so. O foolish people, ye
Say “acting,” and ye think that “acting” means
Just that and nothing more; a dressing up
As children do to play at soldiers; or
A shy at Amateur Theatricals!

“O fools and slow of heart” do ye not know
That acting is just living: nothing more
And nothing less,—no actor ever yet
Was great, but he was great, potentially,
In life as well as acting: yes, Stage tears
Come from the heart, if they be there at all
In any spirit-moving potency.
The heart must weep, before the eyes can weep;
The soul must suffer, ere the breast can pant
And tremble: what we see upon the Stage
Must first be learned by thought and suffering;—
I speak of course of acting worth the name.

Acting not worth the name—there's plenty such!—
Has made men think that acting is unreal—
Acting as such,—as this poor weak stuff is.
But this is not the case: there is no life
So full of life intensified and great
And real and deep and vivid and sublime
As that the actor lives, if he be true
To his own calling, and the voice within.

Consider, too, the comfort of the thing
Besides the glory of it,—how divine
After a snow-clad wind-tossed London day
(Or just a foggy dreary London day)
To have the Stage for refuge, and the warmth
And light; and, wonderful and most of all,
The quick electric rush of sympathy
That passes through a crowd in unison.
I never acted yet but I have felt
The better for it,—though I may have been
Ill and depressed and saddened through the day.
The acting woke me up, the electric thrill
Rushed through me, and I have surpassed myself
Sometimes when feeling up to the very hour
Of acting so forlorn and sad and weak
That never a word—I thought—could pass my lips.