THE OUTLOOK by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 3, 1904

THE OUTLOOK

By Editor

WHAT IS THE OBJECTION TO THE THEATER?

Before the awful Chicago theater fire had occurred, it was announced that this editorial (begun in last week's issue) would be republished from the Sunday School Times of nineteen years ago. The following letter from a Chicago pastor, received just as this issue is closing, is of timely significance: "The Iroquois Theater horror has shaken our city as it is seldom stirred by any interest. The theater question, morally considered, has become a living question with hundreds of Christian people who frequent such places. Several have intimated to me that they should never go again,—not solely through fear, but through an awakened conscience. Not only in Chicago, but the country over, the hour is ripe for gentle and tactful dealing with theater-going Christians."

In his merging of his personality in simulation, as a very essential of his profession, or of his "art," the actor's profession or art differs from that of any other. There is nothing like it in the true mission, or in the best work, of any other honest or reputable profession. There is nothing akin to it in any other approved sphere of art. A man may describe evil, or portray it, in literature, in poetry, in music, in painting, in sculpture, without putting himself into that show of evil; without merging his personality in another personality; but in the art of the actor he who would portray the tyrant, the murderer, the adulterer, the seducer, or the betrayer of a sacred trust, must strive to think and feel and speak and act as if he were himself this very evil-doer. Shakespeare himself seems to recognize the essential unworthiness of such an art, when he makes Hamlet say:—

"Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wann'd, Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!"

Even if truly noble characters are, in exceptional instances, represented by leading actors on the stage, it may be said, unqualifiedly, that rarely if ever has an eminent actor or actress in modern times made or rested a reputation on the portrayal of a truly noble character (not including in this estimate, of course, the exceptional remnant of the original religious drama in the Passion Play of Ober Ammergau). And if a man or a woman tries at one time to seem better and at another time to seem worse than his or her real self, the tendency of such acting as a whole must inevitably be toward the lower rather than toward the higher standard, since it is always easier to go down hill than to go up. If in the Passion Play, for example, the same man were to assume in alternation the diverse characters of Jesus and Judas, the effect of his acting would be more likely to give a show of Judas than of Jesus in his face and bearing, if not indeed in his character.

A recent English writer computes that Mr. Henry Irving has committed at least fifteen thousand murders on the stage, while Mr. Barry Sullivan has added at least two thousand more stage murders than this to his list; that Mr. Charles Wyndham has been divorced from twenty-eight hundred wives—on the stage; that Mrs. Bancroft has in the same public place been "foully betrayed," or abducted thirty-two hundred times; that Miss Ada Cavendish has been "betrayed, deserted, or abducted," fifty-six hundred times; and so on, all along the list of popular actors. Can any intelligent person, any person of refined sensibilities, or with a fair knowledge of psychological laws and influences, believe for one moment that the deliberate and purposeful indulgence in simulated evil to the extent here indicated has had no effect in deadening the moral nature of the actor to the enormity of the offenses simulated or dallied with?

To be a great actor (and surely the actor's profession is seen at its best in the persons of its greatest representatives, not its poorer), the real self must be merged or lost in the simulated self during all the time of acting—whether before the public or in preparatory rehearsals. The good self of the actor's personality must for the time being be lost in the evil self of the character acted. And what an effect is this! The greater the actor, the completer the transference of self, and the profounder the evil!

Hear Charlotte Brontë's graphic but terrible description of the peerless Rachel's acting in the part of Phèdre: "For a while—a long while—I thought it was only a woman, tho a unique woman, who moved in might and grace before this multitude. By and by I recognized my mistake. Behold! I found upon her something neither of woman nor of man; in each of her eyes sat a devil. These evil forces bore her through the tragedy, kept up her feeble strength—for she was but a frail creature; and as the action rose and the stir deepened, how wildly they shook her with the passion of the pit! They wrote Hell on her straight, haughty brow. They tuned her voice to the note of torment. They writhed her regal face to a demonic mask. Hate and Murder and Madness incarnate she stood."

And this is a woman's tribute of praise for a woman's rarest success in the art and profession of an actor. Would any true and pure woman intelligently crave the power of such a hellish transformation of self as this? crave it for herself, or for one whom she loved and honored? Can any pure and true man or woman intelligently approve as a life profession the actor's endeavor after such power of transformation hellward?

Is there wonder, then, that all along through the ages there have been indications of well-founded hostility to, and an abhorrence of, the profession of an actor, even among those who themselves approved and sustained the theater itself? Among the ancient Spartans, only an alien or a slave could be degraded to an actor's profession. Solon denounced that profession in ancient Greece, as "tending, by its simulation of false character, and by its expression of sentiment not genuine or sincere, to corrupt the integrity of human dealings." Under the Roman Republic, he who pursued the profession of an actor "became in the eye of the law infamis [disreputable] and incapable of holding any honorable office." Under the Roman Empire also the legal ban was still upon the actor, as satirized by Tertullian, when he said: "What perversity! They love whom they abuse; they depreciate whom they approve; they magnify the art; they mark with infamy the artist. What a condemnation, that one should be vilified on account of those things through which he is held to win merit. Aye, and what a confession of the evil of the thing it is, that its doers, even when most accepted, are not left without the mark of infamy." And so with only varying degrees of difficulty down to the present day, the professional actor, even when most honored as an actor, has had to struggle for a full moral recognition as worthy according to his personal worth.

There are worthy men and women in the actor's profession; but not one of them is in a worthy profession. No pure or noble man or woman ought to be in a profession which demands a life of simulation and of un-selfing. No pure or noble man or woman who is outside of that profession ought to give countenance or support to the institution of the theater which demands these lives of simulation and un-selfing. Even to enter the doors of a public theater for the witnessing of the performances of professional actors is to give such, unjustifiable countenance and support.—S. S. Times.