power to make you feel intensely; and that is precisely the final test
of a great dramatic artist.




SIR HENRY IRVING


As I watched, at the Lyceum, the sad and eager face of Duse, leaning
forward out of a box, and gazing at the eager and gentle face of Irving,
I could not help contrasting the two kinds of acting summed up in those
two faces. The play was "Olivia," W.G. Wills' poor and stagey version of
"The Vicar of Wakefield," in which, however, not even the lean
intelligence of a modern playwright could quite banish the homely and
gracious and tender charm of Goldsmith. As Dr. Primrose, Irving was
almost at his best; that is to say, not at his greatest, but at his most
equable level of good acting. All his distinction was there, his
nobility, his restraint, his fine convention. For Irving represents the
old school of acting, just as Duse represents the new school. To Duse,
acting is a thing almost wholly apart from action; she thinks on the
stage, scarcely moves there; when she feels emotion, it is her chief
care not to express it with emphasis, but to press it down into her
soul, until only the pained reflection of it glimmers out of her eyes
and trembles in the hollows of her cheeks. To Irving, on the contrary,
acting is all that the word literally means; it is an art of sharp,
detached, yet always delicate movement; he crosses the stage with
intention, as he intentionally adopts a fine, crabbed, personal, highly
conventional elocution of his own; he is an actor, and he acts, keeping
nature, or the too close resemblance of nature, carefully out of his