VI STAGE PERSPECTIVE

One of the things on which Irving always insisted was a knowledge and understanding of stage perspective, and of its application in the practice not only of the art of the stage in its scenic and illusive aspect but of the art of acting:

“The perspective of the stage is not that of real life, and the result of seeming is achieved by means which, judged by themselves, would seem to be indirect. It is only the raw recruit who tries to hit the bull’s eye by point-blank firing and who does not allow for elevation and windage.”

In pointing out the necessity of speaking more loudly on the stage than in a room, he puts the same idea in a different and perhaps a broader way:

“This exaggeration applies to everything on the stage. To appear to be natural, you must in reality be much broader than natural. To act on the stage as one really would in a room would be ineffective and colourless.”

He never forgot—and never allowed any one else to forget—that the purpose of stage art is illusion. Its aim is not to present reality but its semblance; not to be, but to seem. He puts it thus:

“The function of art is to do and not to create—it is to make to seem, and not to make to be, for to make to be is the Creator’s work.”

He had before said:

“It must never be forgotten that all art has the aim or object of seeming and not of being, and to understate is as bad as to overstate the modesty or the efflorescence of nature.”

Thus we get the higher aim: to seem to be—but always in such wise that nature shall be worthily represented. Nature

“At once the end and aim and test of art.”

So Pope. Irving put the value nature as against the mere pretence thus:

“To be natural on the stage is most difficult, and yet a grain of nature is worth a bushel of artifice.... Nature may be overdone by triviality in conditions that demand exaltation.... Like the practised orator, the actor rises and descends with his sentiment, and cannot be always in a fine frenzy.”

How true this is; how consistent with eternal truth! Nature has her moods, why not man; has her means of expressing them, why not man also? Nature has her tones; and with these why may not the heart of man vibrate and express itself?

In this connection and with the same illustration—the orator compared with the actor—Irving put a new phase of the same idea:

“It matters little whether the actor sheds tears or not, so long as he can make his audience shed them; but if tears can be summoned at will and subject to his control it is true art to utilise such a power, and happy is the actor whose sensibility has at once such delicacy and discipline. In this respect the actor is like the orator. Eloquence is all the more moving when it is animated and directed by a fine and subtle sympathy which affects the spectator though it does not master him.”