19th Century Actor Autobiographies | Page 6

the part that I started for the
city, and in less than a week, by industriously ransacking the theatrical
wardrobe establishments for old leather and mildewed cloth and by
personally superintending the making of the wigs, each article of my
costume was completed; and all this, too, before I had written a line of
the play or studied a word of the part.
This is working in an opposite direction from all the conventional
methods in the study and elaboration of a dramatic character, and
certainly not following the course I would advise any one to pursue. I
merely mention the out-of-the-way, upside-down manner of going to
work as an illustration of the impatience and enthusiasm with which I
entered upon the task, I can only account for my getting the dress ready
before I studied the part to the vain desire I had of witnessing myself in
the glass, decked out and equipped as the hero of the Catskills.
I got together the three old printed versions of the drama and the story
itself. The plays were all in two acts. I thought it would be an
improvement in the drama to arrange it in three, making the scene with
the spectre crew an act by itself. This would separate the poetical from
the domestic side of the story. But by far the most important alteration
was in the interview with the spirits. In the old versions they spoke and
sang. I remembered that the effect of this ghostly dialogue was
dreadfully human, so I arranged that no voice but Rip's should be heard.
This is the only act on the stage in which but one person speaks while
all the others merely gesticulate, and I was quite sure that the silence of
the crew would give a lonely and desolate character to the scene and
add its to supernatural weirdness. By this means, too, a strong contrast
with the single voice of Rip was obtained by the deathlike stillness of
the "demons" as they glided about the stage in solemn silence. It
required some thought to hit upon just the best questions that could be
answered by a nod and shake of the head, and to arrange that at times
even Rip should propound a query to himself and answer it; but I had
availed myself of so much of the old material that in a few days after I
had begun my work it was finished.

In the seclusion of the barn I studied and rehearsed the part, and by the
end of summer I was prepared to transplant it from the rustic realms of
an old farmhouse to a cosmopolitan audience in the city of Washington,
where I opened at Carusi's Hall under the management of John T.
Raymond. I had gone over the play so thoroughly that each situation
was fairly engraved on my mind. The rehearsals were therefore not
tedious to the actors; no one was delayed that I might consider how he
or she should be disposed in the scene. I had by repeated experiments
so saturated myself with the action of the play that a few days seemed
to perfect the rehearsals. I acted on these occasions with all the point
and feeling that I could muster. This answered the double purpose of
giving me freedom and of observing the effect of what I was doing on
the actors. They seemed to be watching me closely, and I could tell by
little nods of approval where and when the points hit.
I became each day more and more interested in the work; there was in
the subject and the part much scope for novel and fanciful treatment. If
the sleep of twenty years was merely incongruous, there would be room
for argument pro and con; but as it is an impossibility, I felt that the
audience would accept it at once, not because it was an impossibility,
but from a desire to know in what condition a man's mind would be if
such an event could happen. Would he be thus changed? His identity
being denied both by strangers, friends, and family, would he at last
almost accept the verdict and exclaim, "Then I am dead, and that is a
fact?" This was the strange and original attitude of the character that
attracted me.
In acting such a part what to do was simple enough, but what not to do
was the important and difficult point to determine. As the earlier scenes
of the play were of a natural and domestic character, I had only to draw
upon my experience for their effect, or employ such conventional
methods as myself and others had used before in characters of that ilk.
But from the moment Rip meets the spirits of Hendrik Hudson and his