The soul of the moving picture (1924)

The Scene 43 scribed, at least by the words of the poet, and these are, so to speak, anchored in the harbor of his activity. If the art of the actor means "art seen through a temperament," there still remains the marginal latitude of the temperament, of the personality. Despite this latitude, however, it is unlikely that an actor will be minded to, or be able to, make such self-imposed use of his personality7 as would be subversive of the ends the poet himself had in mind. The contest, the dispute, the disagreement about the interpretation of a given role — we have but to think of the riddle of Hamlet or Mephistopheles — invariably revolves about the question of what the poet himself meant by it when he created it. The stage actor becomes the interpreter of the poetic purpose. The most important means at the disposal of the stage actor is the words, the lines he has to learn. The world in which he acts is relatively the same as the everyday world in which he lives when off the stage and going about his usual business. The northern actor makes but little use of gestures; they mean but little to him. Such concepts as he wishes to transmit to the spectator he feels should and must be transmitted through the aid of speech. Naturally, the stage actor does not speak in the restless, uncertain, and indistinct manner in which he speaks when off the stage. His