ABSTRACT
The modern French actors have seen the error; and some English actors have followed their example, and aimed at greater quietness and “naturalness.” The manner of a frightened Partridge can never have been at all like the manner of Hamlet. It is obvious that the naturalness required from Hamlet is very different from the naturalness of a Partridge; and Fielding made a great mistake in assimilating the representation of Garrick to the nature of a serving-man. Naturalness being truthfulness, it is obvious that a coat-and-waistcoat realism demands a manner, delivery, and gesture wholly unlike the poetic realism of tragedy and comedy; and it has been the great mistake of actors that they have too often brought with them into the drama of ordinary life the style they have been accustomed to in the drama of ideal life. Being a writer who constructs as well as destroys, the actor explains what real dramatic art is.
