xcept in broad farce, where the principal ingredient
being humor, animal spirits and a grotesque imagination, which are of no
particular age, come strongly into play, comedy appears to me decidedly
a more mature and complete result of dramatic training than tragedy. The
effect of the latter may, as I myself exemplified, be tolerably achieved
by force of natural gifts, aided but little by study; but a fine
comedian _must_ be a fine artist; his work is intellectual, and not
emotional, and his effects address themselves to the critical judgment
and not the passionate sympathy of an audience. Tact, discretion, fine
taste, are quite indispensable elements of his performance; he must be
really a more complete actor than a great tragedian need be. The
expression of passion and emotion appears to be an interpretation of
nature, and may be forcibly rendered sometimes with but little beyond
the excitement of its imaginary experience on the actor's own
sensibility; while a highly educated perfection is requisite for the
actor who, in a brilliant and polished representation of the follies of
society, produces by fine and delicate and powerful delineations the
picture of the vices and ridicules of a highly artificial civilization.

Good company itself is not unapt to be very good acting of high comedy,
while tragedy, which underlies all life, if by chance it rises to the
smooth surface of polite, social intercourse, agitates and disturbs it
and produces even in that uncongenial sphere the rarely heard discord of
a natural condition and natural expression of natural feeling.

Of my performance of Mrs. Oakley I have but one recollection, which is
that of having once, while acting it with my father, disconcerted him to
such a degree as to compel him to turn up the stage in an uncontrollable
fit of laughter. I remember the same thing happening once when I was
playing Beatrice to his Benedict. I have not the least notion what I did
that struck my father with such irrepressible merriment, but I suppose
there must have been something in itself irresistibly ludicrous to him,
toward whom my manner was habitually respectfully deferential (for our
intercourse with our parents, though affectionate, was not familiar, and
we seldom addressed them otherwise than as "sir" and "ma'am"), to be
pelted by me with the saucy sallies of Beatrice's mischievous wit, or
pummeled with the grotesque outbursts of poor Mrs. Oakley's jealous
fury.

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