ABSTRACT
Two hundred and fifty years separate these two comments, yet in both these instances a similar distinction is being drawn between a performance where the actor inhabits the role and one where the focus is more on the actor’s technical brilliance, which rather than serving the demands of the role is therefore to some degree at the expense of the role. Theophilus Cibber was clearly ridiculing Drugger by making the part a vehicle for a display of stock-in-trade antics. Callow is criticised for using the role of Face for a bravura exhibition of his accomplishments which engages only with the surface requirements of the part
rather than imaginatively entering inside the character in ways that would encourage an audience to engage its imaginative sympathies too. Cibber and Callow instruct their respective audiences precisely how to read and judge the roles they are playing; the performance does not in either case become an imaginative journey into the psychological potential of the role undertaken jointly by actor and spectator. The actor in both cases trades on a known stage persona, which keeps to the forefront of the audience’s awareness his status as actor. It might be supposed here that this would be markedly in keeping with Jonson’s metatheatrical strategies within the plays, particularly respecting Callow’s interpretation of Face. But Jonson’s method is to trap audiences into a sudden (often deeply metaphysical) perception of the extent to which performance and role play permeate all aspects of human exchange; he is not inviting audiences to see his play as an escapist fantasy designed to reveal the actors’ expertise. It is not until we meet Face in the final act as Jeremy that we appreciate how consummate an actor Face, the character, really is. If the actor invites us to admire his personal excellence at carrying off the mechanics of the part from the moment we first meet Face, then the increasingly sinister and challenging aspects of Jonson’s portrayal are never properly registered: it is a difference between display and discovery (and discovery was a favoured term for Jonson). Acting for Jonson meant impersonation to the fullest degree; none of his disguised characters is ever detected till they choose to reveal themselves and then it is the totality of the disguise (voice, accent, vocabulary, dress, manner, deportment, posture) that is commented on; admiration for the metamorphosis is invariably coloured by awe and shades of fear. Tiberius would not be the dire threat to everyone’s security in Rome if his acting were overt: it is the total credibility of his performances that lures his victims to disaster. It is essential for Polish’s design to resolve the action of TheMagnetic Lady to her advantage that Placentia appear healthy of body and mind to Lady Loadstone’s intense scrutiny. The truly ridiculous figures in Jonsonian comedy are invariably those like Bobadil or Overdo who cannot sustain their chosen role; the mask slips and reveals the sorry truth beneath. Callow played a man juggling with masks; but the masks were too clearly apparent, revealing not perhaps a sorry truth but an overly self-conscious actor beneath.
