speaking with reference to him and to others like
him it would perhaps be well if those persons who write criticisms upon
the stage would come to a definite conclusion upon this point and
finally understand that an actor must produce his effects on the instant
by something that he does and is, and not by rhetoric and elocution, and
therefore that he should not be expected to repeat every word of every
part, or to be a translator of somebody else, but that he must be
himself. If we want the full, literal text of Shakespeare we can stop at
home and read it. What we want of the actor is that he should give
himself; and the true actor does give himself. The play is the medium. A
man who acts Romeo must embody, impersonate, express, convey, and make
evident what he knows and feels about love. He need not trouble himself
about Shakespeare. That great poet will survive; while if Romeo, being
ever so correct, bores the house, Romeo will be damned. Jefferson is an
actor who invariably produces effect, and he produces it by
impersonation, and by impersonation that is poetic and human.

Jefferson's performance of Acres conspicuously exemplifies the
principles that have been stated here. He has not hesitated to alter the
comedy of _The Rivals_, and in his alteration of it he has improved it.
Acres has been made a better part for an actor, and a more significant
and sympathetic part for an audience. You could not care particularly
for Acres if he were played exactly as he is written. You might laugh at
him, and probably would, but he would not touch your feelings. Jefferson
embodies him in such a way that he often makes you feel like laughing
and crying at the same moment, and you end with loving the character,
and storing it in your memory with such cherished comrades of the fancy
as Mark Tapley and Uncle Toby. There is but little human nature in Acres
as Sheridan has drawn him, and what there is of human nature is coarse;
but as embodied by Jefferson, while he never ceases to be comically
absurd, he becomes fine and sweet, and wins sympathy and inspires
affection, and every spectator is glad to have seen him and to remember
him. It is not possible to take that sort of liberty with every author.
You can do it but seldom with Shakespeare; never in any but his juvenile
plays. But there are authors who can be improved by that process, and
Sheridan--in _The Rivals_, not in _The School for Scandal_--is one of
them. And anyway, since it