l in England are employed outside the theatre in France.
Gesture and facial expression, except so far as mechanically due to
emotion, are entirely conventional, though some of the conventions are
so old as to have become second nature.

Most people are unaware how largely they adopt the conventions; this
unconscious adoption in the end has turned the conventional into the
natural. It is the study of this conventional-natural which enables the
mime to accomplish remarkable feats; combining it with simple
descriptive movements, and a few of the gestures still purely
conventional in England, Signor Rossi, in _A Pierrot's Life_, was able
to delight our audiences by his dumb-show narration of the complicated
tale of the two pigeons, and Signora Litini in the same piece showed
with subtlety a whole gamut of emotions. Miss Genee, at the Empire,
without uttering a sound, used to be more eloquent than many of our
players with whole lengths of dialogue. To a great extent Duse
fascinates most playgoers by her plastic art, since they do not
understand her speech.

Now, to employ to its full extent the art of the mime in conjunction
with spoken speech would be absurd. The light and shade in the speech of
the most "natural" actor--say, Mr Charles Hawtrey--is violently
exaggerated on account of the peculiar acoustics of the theatre; amongst
other things, the player has to address those far off in the galleries
as well as those close to in the stalls, and therefore his work requires
a series of compromises like that of a piano-tuner anxious to avoid
"wolves" or a politician eager to win votes. Moreover, on account of the
lack of speech the plastic art of the mime involves great exaggeration
in the conventional-natural gestures and also in the movements and
facial expression intended to represent those mechanically caused by
emotion.

It is therefore necessary for the actor to mime in a modified and
restrained fashion, abandoning, of course, all the still purely
conventional and showing much moderation in the rest. When he nicely
combines expression by the voice with expression by face, gesture and
pose the result is very valuable. Few can do this, and the failure is
nearly always in respect of gesture, which is misused or insufficiently
employed. A study of the great statues and pictures, and such works as
those of Sir Charles Bell, Lavater, Duchesne, Gratiolet and Darwin has
enabled the mime to collect a series of rules for the exp