Shadows of the Stage | Page 5

and every generation
contributes its number to the service of this art. The problem is one of
selection and embarkation. Of the true actor it may be said, as Ben
Jonson says of the true poet, that he is made as well as born. The finest
natural faculties have never yet been known to avail without training
and culture. But this is a problem which, in a great measure, takes care
of itself and in time works out and submits its own solution. The
anomaly, every day presented, of the young person who, knowing
nothing, feeling nothing, and having nothing to communicate except
the desire of communication, nevertheless rushes upon the stage, is felt
to be absurd. Where the faculty as well as the instinct exists, however,
impulse soon recognises the curb of common sense, and the aspirant
finds his level. In this way the dramatic profession is recruited. In this
way the several types of dramatic artist--each type being distinct and
each being expressive of a sequence from mental and spiritual
ancestry--are maintained. It is not too much to say that a natural law

operates silently and surely behind each seemingly capricious chance,
in this field of the conduct of life. A thoroughly adequate dramatic
stock-company may almost be said to be a thing of natural accretion. It
is made up, like every other group, of the old, the middle-aged, and the
young; but, unlike every other group, it must contain the capacity to
present, in a concrete image, each elemental type of human nature, and
to reproduce, with the delicate exaggeration essential to dramatic art,
every species of person; in order that all human life--whether of the
street, the dwelling, the court, the camp, man in his common joys and
sorrows, his vices, crimes, miseries, his loftiest aspirations and most
ideal state--may be so copied that the picture will express all its beauty
and sweetness, all its happiness and mirth, all its dignity, and all its
moral admonition and significance, for the benefit of the world. Such a
dramatic stock-company, for example (and this is but one of the
commendable products of the modern stage), has grown up and
crystallised into a form of refined power and symmetry, for the purpose
to which it is devoted, under the management of Augustin Daly. That
purpose is the acting of comedy. Mr. Daly began management in 1869,
and he has remained in it, almost continually, from that time to this.
Many players, first and last, have served under his direction. His
company has known vicissitudes. But the organisation has not lost its
comprehensive form, its competent force, and its attractive quality of
essential grace. No thoughtful observer of its career can have failed to
perceive how prompt the manager has been to profit by every lesson of
experience; what keen perception he has shown as to the essential
constituents of a theatrical troop; with what fine judgment he has used
the forces at his disposal; with what intrepid resolution and expeditious
energy he has animated their spirit and guided their art; and how
naturally those players have glided into their several stations and
assimilated in one artistic family. How well balanced, how finely
equipped, how distinctively able that company is, and what resources
of poetry, thought, taste, character, humour, and general capacity it
contains, may not, perhaps, be fully appreciated in the passing hour.
"Non, si male nunc, et olim sic erit." Fifty years from now, when
perchance some veteran, still bright and cheery "in the chimney-nook
of age," shall sit in his armchair and prose about the past, with what
complacent exultation will he speak of the beautiful Ada Rehan, so

bewitching as Peggy in The Country Girl, so radiant, vehement, and
stormily passionate as Katherine; of manly John Drew, with his
nonchalant ease, incisive tone, and crisp and graceful method; of noble
Charles Fisher, and sprightly and sparkling James Lewis, and genial,
piquant, quaint Mrs. Gilbert! I mark the gentle triumph in that aged
reminiscent voice, and can respect an old man's kindly and natural
sympathy with the glories and delights of his vanished youth. But I
think it is not necessary to wait till you are old before you begin to
praise anything, and then to praise only the dead. Let us recognise what
is good in our own time, and honour and admire it with grateful hearts.
* * * * *
NOTE.--At the Garrick club, London, June 26, 1885, it was my fortune
to meet Mr. Fladgate, "father of the Garrick," who was then aged 86.
The veteran displayed astonishing resources of memory and talked
most instructively about the actors of the Kemble period. He declared
John Philip Kemble to have been the greatest of actors, and said that his
best impersonations were Penruddock, Zanga, and Coriolanus.