VII DUAL CONSCIOUSNESS

The last-mentioned utterance of Irving’s brings us at once to the deepest problem in the art of acting: the value and use of sensibility. Throughout his later life, from the time he first entered the polemics of his art, he held consistently to one theory. To him the main disputants were Diderot and Talma; any other was merely a supporter of the theory of either.

Diderot in his Paradox of Acting held that for good acting there must be no real feeling on the part of the actor:

“Extreme sensibility makes middling actors; middling sensibility makes the ruck of bad actors; in complete absence of sensibility is the possibility of a sublime actor.”

Irving’s comment on this theory is:

“The exaltation of sensibility in Art may be difficult to define, but it is none the less real to all who have felt its power.”

Talma [1] held quite the opposite view to that of Diderot. To him one of the first qualifications of an actor is sensibility, which indeed he considered the very source of imagination. To this quality, he held, there must be added intelligence:

1. When Irving began to consider this branch of the “true inwardness” of his work he was so much struck with the argument of Talma that he had it translated and inserted in The Theatre. This was easy of accomplishment, for with regard to that magazine he had only to ask.

As a matter of fact The Theatre at that time belonged to him. He had long considered it advisable that there should be some organ in which matters deeply concerning the stage could be set forth. He accordingly arranged with the late Mr. F. W. Hawkins, then a sub-editor of the Times, to take the work in hand. Hawkins had already by his work shown his interest in the stage; Irving had a high opinion of his “Life of Edmund Kean” and of his book on the French stage which he had then well in hand. He trusted Hawkins entirely; gave him a free hand, and never interfered with him in any possible way except to suggest some useful article of a neutral kind. He would never even give a hint of his own opinion regarding any one of his own profession, but kept studiously out of the theatrical party-politics of the day. Hawkins had his own views which he was perfectly well able to support; he could take care of himself. Irving was content that the magazine should exist, and footed the bills. Later on when the editorship was vacant Irving made a present of the whole thing to Clement Scott who said that he would like to see what he could do with it.

The Talma articles appeared in The Theatre for the 30th January and 6th and 13th February 1877. This was before I came to Irving. It was long afterwards when I read them.

In 1883 Walter Herries Pollock, then editor of the Saturday Review, a great friend of Irving, produced an edition of the Paradox of Acting to which Irving wrote a preface. In this he set out his own views in his comments on the work of Diderot.

“To form a great actor ... the union of sensibility and intelligence is required.”

Irving used his knowledge of the controversy to this effect:

“I do not recommend actors to allow their feelings to carry them away ...; but it is necessary to warn you against the theory, expounded with brilliant ingenuity by Diderot, that the actor never feels.... Has not the actor who can ... make his feelings a part of his art an advantage over the actor who never feels, but makes his observations solely from the feelings of others? It is necessary to this art that the mind should have, as it were, a double consciousness, in which all the emotions proper to the occasion may have full swing, while the actor is all the time on the alert for every detail of his method.... The actor who combines the electric force of a strong personality with a mastery of the resources of his art, must have a greater power over his audiences than the passionless actor who gives a most artistic simulation of the emotions he never experiences.”

The sentence printed in italics is a really valuable addition to the philosophy of acting. It is Irving’s own and is, as may be seen, a development or corollary of Talma’s conclusion. Talma required as a necessity of good acting both sensibility and intelligence. But Irving claimed that in the practice of the art they must exist and act synchronously. This belief he cherished, and on it he acted with excellent result. I have myself seen a hundred instances of its efficiency in the way of protective self-control; of conscious freedom of effort; of self-reliance; of confidence in giving the reins to passion within the set bounds of art. [2]

2. I have seen a good many times Irving illustrate and prove the theory of the dual consciousness in and during his own acting; when he has gone on with his work heedless of a fire on the stage and its quelling: when a gas-tank underneath the stage exploded and actually dispersed some of the boarding close to him, he all the time proceeding without even a moment’s pause or a falter in his voice. One other occasion was typical. During a performance of The Lyons Mail, whilst Dubose surrounded by his gang was breaking open the iron strong-box conveyed in the mail-cart the horses standing behind him began to get restive and plunged about wildly, making a situation of considerable danger. The other members of the murderous gang were quickly off the stage, and the dead body of the postillion rolled away to the wings. But Irving never even looked round. He went calmly on with his work of counting the billets de banque, whilst he interlarded the words of the play with admonitions to his comrades not to be frightened but to come back and attend to their work of robbing. Not for an instant did he cease to be Dubose though in addition he became manager of the theatre.

In speaking of other branches of the subject Irving said:

“An actor must either think for himself or imitate some one else.”

And again:

“For the purely monkey arts of life there is no future—they stand only in the crude glare of the present, and there is no softness for them, in the twilight of either hope or memory. With the true artist the internal force is the first requisite—the external appearance being merely the medium through which this is made known to others.”