New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1919-02-16
By Ralph Block

by T\dlpn BLOCK
Mrs. Fiske demolshes a lusty and
thriving delusion. Mrs. Fske will go
on acting and the delusion will rise
again formidable and threatening after
being nightly slain, and doubtless will
long survive her. But the panorama Of
the battle IS itself sufficient.
g The classic theory of acting is the
delusion The classic theory of acting
is the classic theory of everything else,
permanent denial that personality is
more important than anything else in
the world. The classic theory is the
one the stage in America is now going
on, the belief that the chiefest business
OF the actor is to respect his material
to reside within its limits, giving it
the fullest amplitude of emergence as it
is, but never allowing himself to over
top it by any robustious Imagination
and energy of his own. The type-the
actor who plays a broker because he
looks like broker, the actor who plays
a detective because he has big feet
and hands like Virginia ham--is the
logical conclusion of the classic theory.
They are the complete image of respect
for the material. George Moore re-
marked once insultingly that actors
can never be artists in the first sense
because they only initiate the world,
they never create one. By the classic
theory he was right. Gordon Craig
takes the theory at it's full value and
would replace the actors with marion
cites. 1t is an acceptable consistency,
at least.
1t goes rather deeply into the ques-
ton of what the stage is. If the stage
is merely a literary arena, the pro-
scenium only rostrum for giving
sound to written words, then the cas-
sic theory is correct. But it is fatuous
to suppose that the stage can be so
easily circumscribed. The playwright
is less than half Of its basis, the actor
less than third. Impose upon these
the painter, the carpenter, the director,
the stage manager, the box Office and
the banker and it is somewhere near
the structure on which the stage act
ually rests. Measured by this reality
the classic theory is painfully meagre
and thin.
The classicists will accept this ap-
praisal in part; it is amazing to see
how they will balk at going the full
distance. Is it possible to envisage
Mrs. Fiske playing opposite Jacques
Copeau in "Tartufe"? NJ. Copeau
loses little opportunity of enriching
his productions. He is himself q cap
able and skilled actor, but finally
classicist, who always remains with
strict virtue inside the boundary of in
depreciation. He accepts without quail
ifcation the belief that the part has
already been 'made''-it is for him to
present it faithfully, automatically.
The result is a delightfully."- cool and
limpid work Of art, piece in a frame,
done with its proper values and per
spectives. But it never thrusts itself
out of the frame, never assails its au-
ciences with the roughness and crude
vigor of which life is at every moment
capable.
It is true that this is 80 far from
what Mrs. Fiske accomplishes that
these two seem like beings from a
different world. And for that matter.
they are. The crowd likes to spend
itself talking about Mrs. Fishes
spersonality," the amateur critics de-
plore her as an actress and concede
her as a person. The crowd is right
and the critics are wrong as they
always are.
Mrs. Fiske has two facts powerfully
IN her favor, one of them to her ad-
vantage only by the degree OF her pos
session, and the other one by the fact
that few other actors have it at all
She is, to begin with, skilled in the
various elementary instruments of the
art of representation. She violates q
good many of the rules good many
times, but her violation has the merit
of being after knowledge rather than
before. 1t is not the same kind of
violation as marks the actor who blase-
~ carries a thin cigarette case under
the impression that it distinguishes
him as a gentleman.
But this is only one possession
There are dozens OF actors who are
learned in such facts and we'll qualified
by that most primitive Of qualities
the mimetic and adaptive, to acquire
such tricks as they have not yet pickec
up. So far it is the classicist's theory
which Mrs. Fiske backs and strength
ems The rest Of her, her sometimes
masculine vigor, her impotence with
the very stuff Of such trickery, he,
rather large and energetic disregard
OF the limitations the mere playwright,