A PLAY is said to he well or ill acted in proportion to the sical illusion produced. Whether such illusion in any case be perfect, is not the question. The approach to it, we are told, is, wheor appears wholly unscious of the presence of spectators. In tragedy -- in all which is to affect the feelings -- this undivided attention to his stage business, seems indispensable. Yet it is, in fact, dispensed with every day by our cleverest tragedians; and while these refereo an audience, in the shape of rant or se, are not too frequent or palpable, a suffit quantity of illusion for the purposes of dramatiterest may be said to be produced in spite of them. But, tragedy apart, it may be inquired whether, iain characters in edy, especially those which are a little extravagant, or whivolve some notinant to the moral se is not a proof of the highest skill in the edian when, without absolutely appealing to an audience, he keeps up a tacit uanding with them; and makes them, unsciously to themselves, a party in the se. The utmost y is required in the mode of doing this; but we speak only of the great artists in the profession.
The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to feel in ourselves, or to plate in another, is, perhaps, cowardice. To see a coward doo the life upon a stage would produything but mirth. Yet we most of us remember Jack Bannisters cowards. Could any thing he mreeable, more pleasant? We loved the rogues. How was this effected but by the exquisite art of the actor in a perpetual sub-insinuation to us, the spectators, even iremity of the shaking fit, that he was not half such a coward as we took him for? We saw all the on symptoms of the malady upon him; the quivering lip, the c khe teeth chattering; and could have sworn "that man was frightened." But we fot all the while -- or kept it almost a secret to ourselves -- that he never once lost his self-possession; that he let out by a thousand droll looks aures -- meant at us, and not at all supposed to be visible to his fellows in the se, that his fiden his own resources had never once deserted him. Was this a genuine picture of a coward? or not rather a likeness, which the clever artist trived to palm upon us instead of an inal; while we secretly ived at the delusion for the purpose of greater pleasure, than a menuine terfeiting of the imbecility, helplessness, and utter self-desertion, which we know to he itants of cowardi real life, could have given us?
Why are misers so hateful in the world, and so endurable oage, but because the skilful actor, by a sort of sub-reference, rather than direct appeal to us, disarms the character of a great deal of its odiousness, by seeming to engage our passion for the insecure tenure by which he holds his money bags and parts? By this subtle vent half of the hatefulness of the character -- the self-closeness with whi real life it coils itself up from the sympathies of men -- evaporates. The miser bees sympathetic; i.e. is no genuine miser. Here again a diverting likeness is substituted for a very disagreeable reality.
Spleen, irritability -- the pitiable infirmities of old men, which produly pain to behold in the realities, terfeited upon a stage, divert not altogether for the ic appeo them, but in part from an inner vi that they are being acted before us; that a likeness only is going on, and not the thing itself. They please by being done uhe life, or beside it; not to the life. When Gatty acts an old man, is he angry ind