Historical.

The controversy is entirely modern. The ancients, so far as I can discover, had no Diderot. They have left us a few anecdotes and remarks (to be quoted hereafter)^[1] all tending to show that the emotional theory held the field unquestioned. Far more explicit and weighty are the utterances of Shakespeare, who, as it seems to me, went to the root of this matter and has said what might well have been the last words upon it. But in his time there was no controversy. The emotional theory, under due restrictions was accepted as self–evident. It was in France, about the middle of last century, that the present dispute arose.

In 1747, Remond (or Rémond) de Sainte–Albine, one of the editors of the Mercure de France, published a treatise called Le Comédien. It discussed in a rambling and unsystematic fashion the qualifications necessary for an actor, together with certain questions of technique. M. Remond was an emotionalist, thorough–going and unashamed. He writes as though the need for 'sensibility' had never been called in question. His effort is to determine the precise admixture of 'understanding', 'sensibility', and 'fire' requisite for the perfect actor; but the idea of altogether banishing sensibility never enters his head. The following extract from his table of contents is sufficient to show that he carried his emotionalism to the verge of absurdity:—

'Livre II: Section I.

'Chapitre I.—La gaieté est absolument nécessaire aux Comédiens, dont

l'emploi est de nous faire rire.

'Chap. II.—Quiconque n'a point l'âme élevée, représente mal un héros.

'Chap. III.—Si toutes les personnes de Théâtre ont besoin de sentiment,

celles qui se proposent de nous faire répandre des larmes, ont plus besoin que les autres de la partie du sentiment, désignée communément sous le nom d'entrailles.

'Chap. IV.—Les personnes nées pour aimer devroient avoir seules le

privilège de jouer les rôles d'Amans.

Such propositions as these appear to me, I confess, not only to touch, but to overshoot, the verge of absurdity;^[2] yet I hesitate to dismiss contemptuously a book which Lessing mentions with respect.

Near the close of his Paradoxe, Diderot remarks:—'For the rest, the question I am diving into was once before started between a middling man of letters, Remond de Sainte-Albine, and a great actor, Ricoboni. The man of letters pleaded the cause of sensibility; the actor took up my case. The story is one which has only just come to my knowledge.'^[3] It is evident that Diderot speaks from hearsay, not having himself seen the documents; and I think he confounds Luigi Riccoboni the father with François Riccoboni the son. The father, who alone could be called a great actor, was an uncompromising emotionalist. He published in London, in 1725, a poem entitled Dell' Arte Rappresentativa: Capitoli Sei, dedicated 'A Sua Eccellenza My Lord Chesterfield.' He was too intent on his triple rhymes to make his doctrine very clear or exhaustive; but on the question of sensibility the following passage is perfectly explicit:—

Per seguitare il naturale instinto

E moversi senz' Arte or che s' ha a fare

Scordare i quatro membri, e forse il quinto,

Che è la Testa; ma si ben cercare

Di sentire la cosa, che ci esponi,

Che si creda esser tuo l' altrui affare

D' Amor, di Sdegno, o Gelosia li sproni

Se al Cor tu provi, o s' anco pur sarai

Qual Orreste invasato da Demoni;

E l'Amore, e lo Sdegno sentirai,

E Gelosia, e Belzebu germani,

Senz' Arte braccia, e gambe moverai.

Ed io scommetterei, e piedi, e mani,

Che un sol non troverai, che ti censuri

Fra tutti quanti li fidei Christiani

Se con il Cuore i tuoi moti misuri.^[4]

Again, in his Pensées sur la Déclamation, Riccoboni warns the orator not to work up tears, but to make no effort to repress them if they arise naturally.^[5] ' Sentir ce que l'on dit,' he says emphatically, ' voilà les tons de l'âme. '^[6] François Riccoboni, on the other hand, after due protestations of perfect filial respect, takes liberty of flatly contradicting his father. In his book called L'Art du Théâtre^[7] he maintains the necessity of absolutely repressing the physical symptoms of emotion. He gives two reasons: the difficulty of governing the voice, and the impossibility of passing from one passion to another with the rapidity required under the artificial conditions of the stage. 'S'il tombe une seule larme de vos yeux,'^[8] he says, 'des sanglots involontaires vous embarrasseront le gosier, et il vous sera impossible de proférer un seul mot sans des hocquets ridicules. Si vous devez alors passer subitement à la plus grande colère, cela vous sera-t-il possible? Non, sans doute.' In these arguments Diderot is clearly, though incompletely, anticipated. It appears that Riccobini's work was written before Sainte—Albine's, though published later; otherwise he might have gone into the question more fully. He seems to have published a second treatise on the same subject some years later, but I have not been able to procure it. As Diderot professes to have no personal knowledge of Riccoboni's productions, they do not enter into the genealogy of his ideas.

Paradox begets paradox; and we could scarcely have a wilder paradox than the assertion that none but a magnanimous man can act magnanimity, and that lovers alone can do justice to a love—scene. Sainte—Albine's budget of paradoxes was the direct progenitor of Diderot's, though there are two intermediate stages in the pedigree. Three years after Le Comédien appeared in Paris, an anonymous Englishman published an adaptation of it under the title of The Actor: a Treatise on the Art of Playing.^[9] The book has generally been attributed to Aaron Hill, the adaptor of Voltaire's Zaïre, Alzire, and Mérope;^[10] but as the sequel, published in 1755, is expressly stated to be 'written by the Author of the former,' and contains allusions to events which occurred after Aaron Hill's death,^[11] this attribution must be incorrect. Whoever the author may have been, he made as little as possible of his obligations to Sainte—Albine, mentioning them in such ambiguous terms that their true nature seems to have escaped notice from that day to this. As a matter of fact, the whole theoretical portion of The Actor is simply translated from Le Comédien. For example, the chapter—headings quoted above are literally reproduced, as as the arguments they summarise. The adaptation, however, is, if not an abler, at least a more entertaining book than the original. Sainte—Albine dealt far more in precept than in example. Indeed he is curiously chary of anecdote and illustration. The adaptor, on the other hand, lost no opportunity of pointing his moral by references to the plays and actors of his own day—Quin, Garrick, Barry, Mossop, Macklin; Mrs. Cibber, Mrs. Pritchard, Peg Woffington, and Kitty Clive. We are indebted to him for some of our clearest information as to the methods of the 'palmy days.' In 1755, as I have said, a sequel or second edition was published, under the same title. It professed to be 'A New Work. . . .Adapted to the Present State of the Theatres,' but was in truth a mere recapitulation of the former argument, with some new anecdotes inserted. Though his use of Sainte—Albine's work showed a deficiency in psychological acumen as well as in literary ethics, the nameless writer ('an author unknown to you, and who shall ever remain so') was certainly no fool. He was well read; he wrote a very fair style; and, theories apart, he was an excellent critic of acting.

Here the matter may be said to have rested for fourteen years, until, in 1769, Antonio Fabio Sticotti, who seems to have been an actor of the Italian company in Paris,^[12] bethought him to re—adapt into French the English adaptation of Sainte—Albine's work. Sticotti, however, seems to have had no suspicion that The Actor was not entirely original. The fact that he makes no mention of Sainte—Albine might possibly be due to an underhand design of giving his book a false air of novelty; but in that case he would certainly have taken some pains to lessen the similarity between the two treatises. As it is, Garrick, ou les Acteurs Anglois bears the most evident marks of its descent: a similar design, similar theories, similar arguments. For instance, the four chapter—headings quoted on p. 13 are replaced by the following, unnumbered, but in the same order:—

'De la Gaieté nécessaire à l'Acteur Comique.'^[13]

'De la Noblesse d'ame nécessaire à l'Acteur Tragique.'

'De la Tendresse.

'Du Penchant à l'Amour.'

Sticotti, indeed, gave most of his attention to the anecdotic side of his English original, translating many anecdotes, and (foot—notes) adding parallel cases from French stage history. Thuse Sainte—Albine himself might not at the first glance have recognised in Garrick a grandson of his own Comédien. Amid all changes, however, his emotional extravagances were faithfully reproduced; and it is to these that we owe the anti—emotional extravagances of Diderot and his followers.^[14] In a letter to Mdlle. Jodin, dated some years before the appearance of Garrick, we find Diderot expressing himself a convinced emotionalist. 'Si, quand vous êtes sur le théâtre,' he writes, 'vous ne croyez pas être seule, tout est perdu. . . . Un acteur qui n'a que du sens et du jugement est froid; celui qui n'a que de la verve et de la sensibilité est fou. C'est un certain tempérament de bon sens et de chaleur qui fait l'homme sublime; et sur la scène et dans le monde, celui qui montre plus qu'il ne sent, fait rire au lieu de toucher.' After this, we can scarcely be wrong in attributing the extreme anti—emotionalism of his later position to the reaction begotten by emotionalist excesses.

Sticotti's work became highly popular. At least three editions were published in three consecutive years, and a German translation appeared in 1771. The German translator may have been put on the track of the booklet by a somewhat elaborate criticism of its theories contributed by Diderot, in 1770, to Monsieur Grimm's Correspondance.^[15] 'Un homme illustre dans les Lettres,^[16]' says Sticotti in his preface, 'aimé autant qu'estimé pour sa politesse et l'humanité de ses sentimens, a bien voulu m'avouer que mon livre lui avoit fait naître de bonnes idées. Je conviens que s'il m'eût été permis de les employer, j'aurois été certain de réunir tous les suffrages de mes Lecteurs.' Little did he think that Diderot's 'good ideas,' which, with polite contempt perhaps, he insisted on keeping to himself, ran in flat contradiction to the whole tenor of his book. The made 'good copy,' however, for Grimm's princely clients, and the essay contributed to the Correspondance contains the entire gist of the subequent Paradoxe.

It was probably in 1773 that Diderot remodelled his essay in the form of a dialogue, adding new anecdotes and instances, but in no way modifying his theoretical position. An allusion to a miraculous actress playing, at seventeen, the heaviest tragic parts, is taken to refer to Mdlle. Raucourt, who made her first appearance September 23, 1772. It has since been discovered that, like other Infant Phenomena, she had remained stationary at sweet seventeen for several years. There are allusions, also, to events which occurred in 1776 and in 1778; so that Diderot must evidently have retouched it, perhaps more than once. As was his habit with many of his writings (Le Neveu de Rameau is a notable instance) he took no steps to publish it. The draft of 1770 was first printed as part of Grimm's Correspondance between 1812 and 1814. The completed Paradoxe did not see the light till 1830.