otherwise that all the first act needed was

quiet dignity; that the speech in the second beginning,

required only a suggestion of restrained power. The fury in the third act he would have tempered with a certain amount of restraint, and not have punished his throat by shouting constantly. If he had allowed himself to be led by these technical rules, his natural abilities would have enabled him to give a really good performance, for he was well-built, had a good voice, and was very good-looking.

In Othello, though the climax of the fury is reached in the third act, the intensity is inexorably mounting higher and higher. The terrible phase of passion that Othello has passed through has weakened him physically as well as mentally; and it is in this that we are able to sense with fresh clearness the depths through which he has passed. Indeed all great emotion may be likened to a storm

at sea. Just as a great storm leaves an afterswell, so must an actor indicate, by his reaction after the stress, how great the stress has been. He must not, in other words, allow his emotion to vanish too rapidly. The effect of a passionate outburst will be ruined if the actor throws away the emotion entirely as he passes into the next incident of the play.

As an example of this after-swell we may take Antony's speech over the dead body of Caesar. His soliloquy finishes with a tremendous outburst of rage. Then follows the lines to the servant,

"You serve Octavius Caesar, do you not?"

This is an unemotional line; but in it, and indeed through to the end, Antony continues to show the effects of the preceding rage.

I remember Booth as Bertuccio in A Fool's Revenge. In that part he had a similar speech of rage. The rage itself was moving enough, but Booth made it stronger by showing carefully the after-effects of it. After

moved to ap

pouring out the torrent of words, he paced back and forth across the stage as though to regain control of himself. He always gave a peculiar little shudder and twist to his body, which indicated eloquently that the rage was still seething in his heart. It was at this point that the audience were plause; it was here that the situation was brought home to them in its fullest force. It was comparable with the ground swell after the storm. If we had not seen that his rage was still in him, after he had spoken the words, the effect of his passion would have been lost.

All of this, it seems to me, yields a simple technical rule: in emotional acting we must be imbued with the emotion we express, we must, to a certain extent, blind ourselves to everything but those emotions. Only in this way, it is clear, can we observe the various laws which we have, I hope, glimpsed through this discussion. We must, that is to say, be largely oblivious of the fact that we are playing before an audience. I think

it is quite possible to be utterly oblivious of the people in the theater. In my younger days when I toured England playing such parts as Othello, Shylock, Macbeth, etc., I found that I was always able to do better work when the audiences were small, so that the interruptions in the way of applause were few and far between. I have often found myself literally forgetting that there were an audience, and thoroughly soaking myself in my impersonation. This can be doneand profitably-in tragedy; but in comedy, curiously enough, quite the opposite is true.

CHAPTER VIII

MAKING AN AUDIENCE LAUGH

Audience Must Be Taken into Partnership in Comedy -The Comedian Must Sense His Audience-Allowing for the Laugh-Letting the Audience Have Its Head; Major Barbara-Making Them Save up Their Laughter-There Can Be Too Much Laughter in a Play Shaw's Request-Remaining Unconscious of Our Own Humor-To Be Infectious Any Emotion Must Come from the Inside, Not from the Lines Alone.

W

'HEREAS in tragedy it is often well to ignore the audience so far as possible, in comedy the actor must take his audience into partnership. He must always be conscious of them, and of their changing moods. He has to lead them at times and give them the rein at others. A true comedian manages his audience as a good rider manages a high-spirited horse. And here again the principle of crescendo applies. A comedian, if he is a good one, is

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