ABSTRACT
In the Paradoxe , Diderot presents his view on acting as sharply opposed to that exposed in the book against which he takes issue: Garrick ou les acteurs anglois (hereafter cited as Garrick ) by Michel Sticotti. While Premier champions judgement and lack of sensibility as the basis of great acting, the author of the Garrick has foolishly pleaded the cause of sensibility. This neat contrast, which was later defined by William Archer (1888: 11) in his study on the psychology of acting as the dispute between the emotionalist and anti-emotionalist positions, constitutes the backbone of the Paradoxe ’s contentions. And yet, looking closely into the Garrick and its sources reveals the extent of Diderot’s mistaken assumptions and grants a more subtle and truthful rendition of the so-called emotionalist position. As a parallel to his dispute against the Garrick , Premier makes reference to two other eighteenth-century essays on the art of the actor: ‘the question I am diving into was once before started between a middling man of letters, Rémond de Sainte-Albine, and a great actor, Riccoboni. The man of letters pleaded the cause of sensibility; the actor took up my case’ (Diderot, 1883: 83). Here Diderot refers respectively to Le Comédien by Rémond de Sainte-Albine, first published in 1747, and to L’Art du théâtre by François Riccoboni, published in 1750. François Riccoboni’s book is called upon to testify of the correctness of Premier ’s theory, while Le Comédien is confined to representing, alongside the Garrick , the fallacious argument that Premier sets out to refute.
