Brown, a taxpayer of to-day, with an address in the
London Postal Directory, and a pretty taste in claret



104 DRAMA AND LIFE

and cigars. This fact will for ever prevent you from
absolutely realising x. It may even do so in some
obvious physical way (" His weak, white, genteel
hands, and the shape of his stomach," said Tolstoy,
on his visit to Siegfried, " betrayed the actor "). But,
even though your disguise be perfect, the fact that the
soul within you is not the soul of Lear — or rather, not
the soul of Shakespeare as projected in Lear — but the
soul of Mr. Brown must for ever mark off a measur-
able distance between x and your impersonation. The
measure of that distance is, inversely, the measure
of your success in the part. On the other hand,
your reality (the Mr. Brown in you), while it prevents
you from fully and satisfactorily representing x —
that is to say, coinciding with the spectator's mental
image of your part — will give you the great advantage
over that vague, pale image of definiteness and sub-
stance. What is lost in harmony and perfect propriety
of conception is gained in precision and intensity of
effect — provided always that your personality is not
absolutely at variance with the spectators' conception.
You are able to offer him a real man for an imaginary
one.
