CHAPTER XIII

TRADITIONS

"Lest We Forget "—The

Old-fashioned

Methods of Ten or Twenty Years Ago-Methods Change, but Art Is Constant-No Temple for the Precious Lore of the Actor's Art-There Must Have Been Great Actors to Perform the Great Plays of the Past-The Strong Appeal of the Old Method-Expressing Emotion and Repressing Emotion-Gordon Craig, the Passionate Dilettante-“ Unattached" Cleverness.

ANGING inconspicuously and rather

H forlornly in the smoking-room of the

Cohan Theater in New York City is a yellowish old lithograph on which are the portraits (and very poor portraits they are!) of a score or more of the famous actors of the past. Booth is there, and the elder Sothern, and Salvini, and Modjeska, and Kean, and Irving, and many others. Mighty names they were not so many years ago; men and women who had touched the heart of nations with their art, who had numbered their admirers

by the thousands. And under their portraits is the tragically significant legend: "Lest We Forget!" The portraits of men and women who a few short years ago were recognized over the world as great artists, grouped together over that humiliating legend in the smoking-room of a theater!

I believe that the art of acting suffers more from change of method than any other-with the possible exception of the art of playwriting. The values are ever-shifting, ever new. We strive in one generation to avoid the very things we most sought to do in the preceding one. The methods which we regard as the ultimate reach at the present time will presumably be obsolete in ten or fifteen years. Those actors who, in the seventies, were received with open arms by an adoring public would probably be laughed off the stage today. The art of the actor is a most sensitive one, susceptible to every influence varying fads of fashion and thought may bring to bear. It is on the stage that we find the most faithful expression of the moods of

thought which are peculiar to each generation; and which make each generation "mod

ern

" and those that have gone before “oldfashioned." This may be the reason why we know so little of the methods our forefathers followed, why tradition pays so lamentably small a part in shaping our work today. The young actor is likely to take the attitude that he must deliberately shut his eyes to the old-fashioned ways, and model his work on the methods of the successful actors of his own time. To a certain extent this is very true, of course, but only to a certain extent.

The novice should not lose sight of the fact that after all it is not the art of the actor that changes, it is only the method. The material we work with is the same; though each season or two we shape it according to new patterns. The art of the actor, the art of making stage people and stage emotions real to those in the theater, has never changed. We adapt ourselves to the ever-changing tastes, but our end is always the same. Vogue has a profound influ

ence on the actor's methods; but it is wrong to confuse vogue with art. It is a grievous error a great misfortune-that we pay so little heed to the few traditions of our craft which we have. It is a great pity that so much of the past has been lost. Instead of shaping our work and guiding our progress by fixed standards which have grown up through centuries-as the painter or the sculptor does-we are constantly setting up new standards; we are always beginning over again.

This is partly true because of the constant change in method (which is only superficial), and partly because actors are a happy-golucky lot. They allow the precious lore of their profession to remain scattered over the country in countless museums and libraries, and private collections. They have never taken the trouble to found a temple of their The stage should have a library of its own, a museum of its own, where the history of the actor's art could be coherently preserved, and studied. In the library of the

own.

Players' Club of New York is the only noteworthy collection of theater lore in this country; and while this collection is valuable and interesting, it, of course, fails to cover the ground in any comprehensive way.

How much of inestimable value for the beginning actor there would be in such a study, we can only guess. But the meager facts we are able to glean from the past are sufficient to tell us that there were in the old days great actors of whom we know little or nothing. In my youth I read everything I could lay my hands on that related to Shakespeare and his time; and I came to the conclusion that the great plays would never have been written had there not been a brilliant company of actors to perform them.

We know that in most cases Shakespeare wrote with definite actors in mind. He was closely associated with them and knew their abilities to a nicety, no doubt. He could never have written his great tragedies by keeping any but exceedingly fine actors in mind. It is too bad we cannot know the