art, it is not even the beginning of art;
but it is the foundation on which alone art can be built.

The other day, in "Ulysses," there was only one piece of acting that was
quite convincing: the acting of Mr. Brough as the Swineherd. It is a
small part and an easy part, but it was perfectly done. Almost any
other part would have been more striking and surprising if it had been
done as perfectly, but no other part was done as perfectly. Mr. Brough
has developed a stage-personality of his own, with only a limited range
of emotion, but he has developed it until it has become a second nature
with him. He has only to speak, and he may say what he likes; we accept
him after the first word, and he remains what that first word has shown
him to be. Mr. Tree, with his many gifts, his effective talents, all his
taste, ambition, versatility, never produces just that effect: he
remains interestingly aside from what he is doing; you see his brain
working upon it, you enjoy his by-play; his gait, his studied gestures,
absorb you; "How well this is done!" you say, and "How well that is
done!" and, indeed, you get a complete picture out of his representation
of that part: a picture, not a man.

I am not sure that melodrama is not the hardest test of the actor: it
is, at least, the surest. All the human emotions throng noisily
together in the making of melodrama: they are left there, in their naked
muddle, and they come to no good end; but there they are. To represent
any primary emotion, and to be ineffective, is to fail in the
fundamental thing. All actors should be sent to school in melodrama, as
all dramatic authors should learn their trade there.

THE PRICE OF REALISM

Modern staging, which has been carried in England to its highest point
of excellence, professes to aim at beauty, and is, indeed, often
beautiful in detail. But its real aim is not at the creation of
beautiful pictures, in subordination to the words and actions of the
play, but at supplementing words and actions by an exact imitation of
real surroundings. Imitation, not creation, is its end, and in its
attempt to imitate the general aspect of things it leads the way to the
substitution of things themselves for perfectly satisfactory indications
of them. "Real water" we have all heard of, and we know its place in the
theatre; but this is only the simplest form of this anti-artistic
endeavour to be real. Sir Henry Irving will use, for a piece of
decoration