ndividuality is
restrained from interfering with the due proportion of the performance.

While it is the duty of the stage-manager to handle all the elements in
his control so as to make the performance as perfect as possible, his
most important function is to direct the actors themselves, to see that
they read their lines intelligently, with just the emphasis requisite at
that given moment in the unfolding of the story of the play, and to
advise them as to the gestures and movements which should tell this
story almost as plainly as the words themselves. Some actors scarcely
ever need a hint at rehearsal, reading their speeches naturally the
first time and finding for themselves the appropriate
byplay,--"business," as technical phrase terms it. Other actors, in no
wise inferior in power of personation, need to be guided and stimulated
by advice; even if not inventive themselves, they may be swift to take a
hint and to wring from it all its effectiveness. Rachel, probably the
greatest actress of the last century, felt herself lost without the
tuition of Samson, a comic actor himself, but a teacher of force,
originality and taste. Mrs. Siddons, again, owed some of her most
striking effects to her brother, John Philip Kemble. It was Kemble who
devised for her, and for himself, the new reading and the business now
traditional in the trial scene of 'Henry VIII,' where the _Queen_ at bay
lashes _Wolsey_ with the lines beginning:

Lord Cardinal, to you I speak--

Kemble suggested that the _Queen_ should pause, after the first two
words, as tho making up her mind what she should say. While she
hesitates, the other cardinal, _Campeius_, thinking himself addrest by a
lady, steps forward. The _Queen_, seeing this, waves him aside with an
imperious gesture, which sweeps forward to _Wolsey_, at whom she hurls
the next words,

To _you_ I speak!

and then the rest of the fiery speech pours forth like scorching lava.

If the older plays, either tragedies or comedies, seem to us sometimes
richer in detail than the more modern pieces, we shall do well to
remember that these earlier dramas have profited by the accretions of
business and of unexpected readings due to the unceasing endeavor of
several generations of actors and of stage-managers. The plays of
Shakspere that are most frequently performed, the comedies of Moliere
also, have accumulated a mass of traditions, of one kind or another,
some of these being of hoary