puts his
loveliest poetry into their mouths. Look at Mr. Sothern when he gives
the soliloquy "To be or not to be," which we are accustomed to hear
spoken to the public in one or another of many rhetorical manners. Mr.
Sothern's Hamlet curls himself up in a chair, exactly as sensitive
reflective people do when they want to make their bodies comfortable
before setting their minds to work; and he lets you overhear his
thoughts. Every soliloquy of Shakespeare is meant to be overheard, and
just so casually. To render this on the stage requires, first, an
understanding of what poetry is; next, a perfect capacity of producing
by the sound and intonation of the voice the exact meaning of those
words and cadences. Who is there on our stage who has completely
mastered those two first requirements of acting? No one now acting in
English, except Julia Marlowe and Edward Sothern.

What these two players do is to give us, not the impression which we get
when we see and admire fine limitations, but the impression which we get
from real people who, when they speak in verse, seem to be speaking
merely the language of their own hearts. They give us every character in
the round, whereas with our actors we see no more than profiles. Look,
for contrast, at the Malvolio of Mr. Sothern. It is an elaborate
travesty, done in a disguise like the solemn dandy's head of Disraeli.
He acts with his eyelids, which move while all the rest of the face is
motionless; with his pursed, reticent mouth, with his prim and pompous
gestures; with that self-consciousness which brings all Malvolio's
troubles upon him. It is a fantastic, tragically comic thing, done with
rare calculation, and it has its formal, almost cruel share in the
immense gaiety of the piece. The play is great and wild, a mockery and a
happiness; and it is all seen and not interpreted, but the mystery of
it deepened, in the clown's song at the end, which, for once, has been
allowed its full effect, not theatrical, but of pure imagination.

So far I have spoken only of those first requirements, those elementary
principles of acting, which we ought to be able to take for granted;
only in England, we cannot. These once granted, the individual work of
the actor begins, his power to create with the means at his disposal.
Let us look, then, a little more closely at Miss Marlowe. I have spoken
of her Juliet, which is no doubt her finest part. But now look at her
Ophelia. It is not, perhaps, so gr