they pronounced their fentences well in one fpeech, they will be fure to pronounce every speech in the fame manner, be the fubftance or fense of it ever fo different from that of the firft. We have at present an actress among us who has the fecret of affecting an audience beyond moft people, in places where the poet has meant to touch them to the heart, with the diftrefs of the character fhe plays; fhe is not contented with this praise when she has room to deferve it, but will be attempting to make every paffage fhe fpeaks, even the most indifferent, moving and affecting; and because he has been told that there is a peculiar beauty in her manner of fheding tears, the would, by her own good will, be always crying.

Every tender paffage appears to her to be the fame thing, of whatever character it makes a part; and we have the mortification to find the mischief spreading wide among the reft of the people of the fame houfe. Whoever has of late attended the tragedies there, cannot but have perceived that the men are getting into the fame melancholy turn. 'Tis in vain that the poets have made tenderneffes of a thoufand kinds, they have but one manner of expreffing them all; they fhew only the foftness and diftrefs of their part, when there is requir'd a force and dignity, even in the forrow that is confeffed in it; they are wafting their fighs to us, when they ought to be expreffing the feverest transports of their rage and vengeance, together with their grief; and they lament and bemoan themfelves like fhepherds who have loft a lamb, when the poet meant that they fhould grieve like exil'd kings, whose subjects fuffered under ufurping tyrants. Others

Others we have among the actors of fome credit and character at prefent, who have a great deal of feeling coupled with very little judgment, and who confequently can never find the art of moderating, with any degree of propriety, the emotions which the redundance of this good quality throws them into. The actors of this fort are frequently very feverely blam'd for faults which the excefs only of what is right in itself occafion in them: they are ever carrying too far the expreffion of the principal paffion they are to feel; they employ all that vehemence and ardour, which is neceffary and laudable in the more interefting parts of the character, into every fcene tho' ever fo indifferent; and facrifice truth and reason, in an idle hope of giving an unnatural energy to their acting.

However violent the love of Torrifmond may be for the fair Leonora, that heroe, when fpeak-. ing to his friends and confidents, tho' he has occafion to mention his paffion to them, is not to raife himself to all that tranfport and energy which it is proper he should use when fpeaking to the queen of Arragon, or when avowing his love in the face of his infolent and haughty rival.

The highest instance which perhaps the world ever faw of the ufe of that judicious moderation of the paffions, according to the variation of the circumftances of the part, (the want of which we have fo much reafon to lament on the English ftage,) was that which fome years ago charm'd the French audiences for a long fucceffion of nights, in the character of Penelope.

There is no doubt but a fettled melancholy ought to be a peculiar characteristic of that dif trefs'd princefs; fhe is very judiciously thrown by

the

the author into a ftate of forrow till the very hour of Ulyffes's return; yet, as the circumftances of her misfortunes differ in the feveral parts of the play, the judicious actress who perform'd this favourite part perceived that there might be great merit in moderating her griefs infenfibly, as the occafions of them leffen'd. The nearer that play approaches toward a conclufion, the more the terrors of Penelope abate, and the more her forrow ought to abate alfo in the first act fhe has the absence of a husband and that of an only fon to lament; but in the fecond, her fon is reftor'd to her; and, foon after the return of Telemachus, The receives certain information that Ulyffes himself is alfo living; her grief therefore is to diminish all the way as the caufes of it are taken off; and, in fine, it is not to be fuppofed that her despair fhould exprefs itself in the fame manner when she has nothing to fear but the infidelity of her hufband, as when she supposed him dead.

The younger players are more apt to be guilty of the fault we have been mentioning, as oppofite to this excellence, than those who better underftand their profeffion; but even these latter very often fall into one that is little lefs abfurd; that is, when there is any affecting circumstance that concerns the character they reprefent, they do not take the pains to regulate the fenfation they have of it, by the nature of the character that is fupposed to feel it, but give us, inftead of that, the manner in which themselves would have felt it.

The character of Marcia in Cato, tho' a very fine one as deliver'd from the hands of the author, has been very feldom represented to us in its native beauty; the actreffes have not felt the different

emotions of love of their admirer and love of their country, as Cato's daughter would have felt them, but as themselves would; and have therefore mifs'd all the noble ftruggles that the author has painted to us between thofe two paffions: fome who have reprefented this character have given up wholly to love and tenderness, others to patriotifm and the care and concern for the dangers of their country; the one fet have made love wholly triumph over patriotism, which is abfurd in the daughter of Cato; and the other have made patriotifm wholly triumph over love, which is equally abfurd in the mistress of fo amiable a prince as Juba.

According to their manner of playing, this Roman lady is either wholly devoted to love, or elfe fhe has no fenfe of it at all; and by this means they either make their character a Roman without that univerfal paffion, the love of her country, or else an unnaturally frozen mistress, where every paffion fubmits to reafon and reflexion: what we fee is not the Marcia whom Addifon drew equally virtuous and tender; diftracted at the thought of the approaching ruin of her country, and at the fame time pining for a lover with all the merit fhe could wish to find in man; at a time when to indulge a paffion of that kind were monftrous, when to be happy were to be criminal.

If the play of thofe actors who are tolerably well acquainted with the nature of their profeffion is not always juft and true, what an infinity of contradictions and abfurdities does one observe in the performance of thofe who are but young upon the stage; and efpecially of those who have wanted education, or opportunities of converfing among people in high life, whose charac-.

ters

ters alone are like thofe which they are to represent upon the stage. We have feen an eminent inftance of this want of deportment in a young fellow famous for one of the qualities neceffary to a player, affurance, and rais'd by that fole me rit to the honour of performing Hamlet on one of our ftages. It will not be neceffary to give many inftances of the idea this young man had of the deportment of a prince, after we have mention'd that to prepare himself for the famous foliloquy in that character which begins with, To be, or not to be, that is the question; at the end of the fecond line he took occafion to unload one of his noftrils, by blowing it upon the floor, while he held a finger against the other; and after fupplying the bufinefs of a handkerchief, by wiping that finger on his breeches, went very deliberately on with the speech.

Of the Care that ought to be taken perfectly to implant the Parts of a Play in the Actor's Memory, in order to its being play'd with Truth.

T

HE farther we advance in the examina

tion of the art of performing dramatic writings on the flage, the more we find that a spirit of discernment, and a piercing judgment are neceffary, among other qualifications, to every perfon who would become famous in it. We fhould also remember, at the fame time, how faithful, and how manageable the memory of the players ought to be; fince it is never to be faulty, or to leave them in want of what to fay; nor is it, on the the other hand, ever to be fuffer'd to be fo vi