Here, as elsewhere, she gives you merely the thing itself, without a
disturbing atom of self-consciousness; she is grotesque, she is what you
will: it is no matter. The emotion she is acting possesses her like a
blind force; she is Sapho, and Sapho could only move and speak and think
in one way. Where Sarah Bernhardt would arrange the emotion for some
thrilling effect of art, where Duse would purge the emotion of all its
attributes but some fundamental nobility, Réjane takes the big, foolish,
dirty thing just as it is. And is not that, perhaps, the supreme merit
of acting?




YVETTE GUILBERT

I


She is tall, thin, a little angular, most winningly and girlishly
awkward, as she wanders on to the stage with an air of vague
distraction. Her shoulders droop, her arms hang limply. She doubles
forward in an automatic bow in response to the thunders of applause, and
that curious smile breaks out along her lips and rises and dances in her
bright light-blue eyes, wide open in a sort of child-like astonishment.
Her hair, a bright auburn, rises in soft masses above a large, pure
forehead. She wears a trailing dress, striped yellow and pink, without
ornament. Her arms are covered with long black gloves. The applause
stops suddenly; there is a hush of suspense; she is beginning to sing.

And with the first note you realise the difference between Yvette