The actor has to be observant of his playing, to regulate its effects, his gestures, and his exclamations, to see that they are correct, to keep his mind on the scene, to recollect his part. All this critical work is incompatible with sincere emotion. When a person is really moved, when he feels some great woe, while he may indeed sink upon a chair as the actor does in the scene, he does not keep watch of his attitude while falling or think how to make it expressive and harmonious, but gives himself wholly up to his trouble.
The nine comedians whom I interrogated were unanimous in declaring that Diderot's thesis can not be sustained, and that the actor on the stage always feels, in some degree at least, the emotions of his character. I have been told that other comedians are of a contrary opinion—the elder Coquelin professes not to feel anything of the kind; but I have not conversed with M. Coquelin, and can not verify this assertion. Madame Bartet, of the Comédie Française, says, in writing: "Certainly I feel the emotions of the characters I represent, but by sympathy, not on my own account. I am not, indeed, moved before my audience is, but my emotion is of the same kind as theirs, and is only preceded by it. The extent of the emotion varies on different days, and very much according to my moral and physical condition; and to feel nothing, as happens sometimes, but rarely, is very depressing."
Replies from other actors are to a like effect. M. Worms, of the Comédie Française, says that at certain periods when he is playing scenes of passion or tenderness, the eyes of his comrade are moistened, and that those who do not enter into sympathy with their parts are generally themselves without feeling. M. Mounet Sully and his brother Paul Mounet hold that the art of the comedian consists in this very capability of realizing the emotions of his part with the intensity of actual life; and that on those days when he is without emotions he fails to attain the desired power. The power of realization diminishes, however, if the piece is repeated too many times in too rapid succession, as in M. Paul Mounet's case after the fiftieth representation.
It must be admitted that some actors, as, for instance, Sarah Bernhardt, may become such virtuosos in their parts as to become complete masters of their organisms, and produce the emotions at will.
The emotion of a part does not constitute all of it. A character lives in a piece, mingles in its action, and has his interests, ideas, and characteristics—a personality, in short, the development of which depends on the talent of the author. The actor who plays a part, especially one who creates it, should undergo a metamorphosis, and forget his own personality for a few hours, to put on a borrowed personality. Madame Bartet enters so thoroughly
