The Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Or.) 1862-1899, 1885-11-13
HOW ACTORS MEMORIZE.
Their Trials and Disadvantages as Com
pared with Opera-Singers.

! pared with Opera-S1ngerS.
Memory, the faculty by which ideas
are retained in the mind, is the main
reliance of the actors, and the cultiva-
ton and use of this faculty is, to
say the least, very singular. The
singer in the opera, who also depends
on memory, has the advantage of the
actor; for instance, if Adelina Patti, in
her rendering of Violetta in LA Ira
viata," should, and the very best ar.
fists are liable to it, omit q few notes,
the tenor fail to reach the high Ceasily,
or the chorus get out OF time, one
wave of Sig. Arditis baton, and the
fault is hidden from the audience
Not so with the dramatic performer.
He has to speak plain English, and
there are no bars OF music or anything
to hide his imperfections, except he
has the voice of the prompter, which
in the majority of cases only makes
his imperfections still more prominent.
1t is, therefore, interesting to note the
different methods actors adopt to
study and retain their lines No man
can tell you more about the vagaries
of memory than a member of the sock
/ and buskin. In the first place there
are what are called ''quick studies''-
men or women who can memorize a
part quickly-but the very "quick
! study" as a rule can not retain-that
is, if he has studied a part quickly
and played it, if he is called upon to
repeat the same part after an III
terval of few months, OF
/ even weeks, he has to restudy it as
though it were an entirely new role.
| Then comes the "slow study'-those
who have to labor at it carefully and
patiently, word by word, line by line,
before they can utter the words "trip
pingly on the tongue but it is a sin
gular fact that the "slow study" as
a rule, is the pest actor. The Equick
study" is too sure, he can gabble out
|, the words with ease; in short, he is
parrot-like. Salvini, the great Italian
tragedian, once said, ''that nothing SO
spoiled dramatic entertainment as
when the actors appeared to antici-
pate the dialogue or the action The
slow one is nervous. To memoriZe
the words of his part has been hard
work; with him there is an effort to
retain them, and this very effort gives
him fire, and he acts his character with
an impulse which is, after all, the very
essence of the histrlonic art. To COM
NIT to memory long part-say, for
Iago is the longest in the legitimate
dramas no easy task. Aman play
ing that character has to recall to
what he has to say himself, but the
10 hxrO ~
ent of bearing in mind his own "adyice
to the players" of ''suiting the action
to the word, the word TO the action"
and the special observance that fol-
lows. Different actors have different
methods of committing their lines to
memory-one will keep in close seclu-
sion, locking himselfin a room to study;
another will study his part anywhere
and at any time, and it is not by any
means an uncommon occurrence for q
Thespian to be memorizing his lines
while he is talking to a friend.
The late Charles Thorne used
to boast of the fact OF hav-
ing studied some ofhis best parts while
walking along the streets. Th,re is
generalimpression that Shakespeare is
difficult to commit to memory, where
DIS llt Is 1tbE cttSltI Ulltti1 Hloil} OLlleE
authors, for there is musicalrhyth
in his language that is easily fixed up
on the recollection. Among the COM
paratively modern authors Bulwer is
far more difficult to memorize, but
there is no dramatic writer whose
works are as hard to memorize as
those of Knowles-for his blank verse,
beautiful as it is, is so cramped that
old and experienced actors dread to
study it. Actors have, by the con-
stant use of the memory, accomplish
ed some strange feats. Some twenty
years ago John Rider, in England, I'M
dertook to memoriZe the copy of a
London newspaper and recite it in
public, and he did it, reciting the whole
paper from beginning to end. The
comedy of '''The Game of Speculation"
was translated from the French, re-
hearsed, and produced at the Lyceum
theater in London in four days.
Charles Mathews, who played the
leading part, Affable Hawk, and who
is on the stage throughout four long
acts without hardly any intermission,
committed the character perfectly to
memory in twentyfour hours, or, to
make use of his own words after the
first night: 81 swallowed the whole
dose, and don't think spilled drop"
When the curtain rose on the first
production of ''Pizarro' the last act
of the drama was not written, and
Brinsley Sheridan wrote off the fifth
act in the green-room, the call-boy
taking it from him and then distribut-
ing it to the different actors as
the first four acts were being
played, to be studied by them
as best they could The exercise
of the thinking powers by mem
bers of the profession is at times some
thing wonderful, and it proves how
that organ, like any other, can be
trained and be relied upon. 1t hap
pens at times that an actor is called |
upon to enact a part at a very short
notice, and a character that he is to-
tally unacquainted with, and perhaps
ignorant of the very sense of the play
itself. Not long ago, in one of the up
town theaters in this city, an actor |
was brought to the theater at 7:3O at