said Johnson. This plan of action on the part of the actor's detractors leads up to the interrogatory heading of this article: Is the Actor Illiterate? A most convincing answer to this question lies in the fact that William Shakspere himself was a member of this belittled calling. The writings of the Immortal Bard might have been lost for all time but for the thoughtful care of two actors, who, in "loving kindness for their dear master and friend," collected and arranged his manuscripts in proper form, their labors resulting in the first folio edition of 1623. The names of the self-appointed executors of Shakspere's great literary estate were John Heminge and Henrie Condell. On assuming their sacred charge they wrote as follows: "It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to have bene wished that the Authore himselfe had lived to have set forth, and overseene his owne writings. But since it hath bene ordain'd otherwise and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends the office of their care and paine, to have collected and published them, and so to have published them, as where (before) you were abused with diverse stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors, that expos'd them: even those are now offered to your view, cured, and perfect in their limbs, and all the rest absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them. . . . We have but collected them, and done an office to the dead to procure his orphans, guardians; without ambition either of self-profit or fame: onely to keepe the memory of so worthy a Friend and Fellow alive as was our Shakespear." Though Shakspere is a shining proof that the actor is not illiterate, the proposition can be demonstrated without him. The history of the English-speaking stage shows that actors have been noted for literary attainments. I will cite a few illustrations only from the various periods: BEN JONSON, Contemporaneous with Shakspere, and considered his equal by many in his time. THOMAS BETTERTON, born 1635, author of eight plays. COLLEY CIBBER, 1671-1757, poet laureate of England, who revised several of Shakspere's works and originated eighteen successful dramatic productions, including the famous "She Would and She Would Not." CHARLES MACKLIN, 1697-1797, author of "Suspicious Husband," "Love à la Mode," "The Man of the World," etc. JAMES QUIN and BARTON BOотн, fellow-actors with Macklin, while having no plays to their credit, were men of recognized literary worth. SHERIDAN KNOWLES, 1784-1862. "The Love Chase," and "Virginius." His best known plays are "The Hunchback," T. W. ROBERTSON, 1829-1871, author of "Caste," "School," etc. 'William E. Burton's published correspondence with Edgar A. Poe resulted in the complete defeat of the poet, who brought the contention to an abrupt close with: "It serves me right. I should have known better than to have bandied words with a profane stage player." As Poe's parents were both actors this slur was disrespectful, to say the least. William Cullen Bryant, the one-time friend of Poe, took such an Coming to our own time, we find a gratifyingly large contingent of author-actors, such as Lawrence Barrett, Henry Irving, James A. Herne, Wilson Barrett, A. W. Pinero, Augustus Thomas, H. V. Esmond, Brandon Thomas, David Belasco, and William Gillette. James A. Herne, whose lamented death occurred so recently, had some points in his career similar to Charles Macklin, whose epitaph was "This is the Jew That Shakspere drew." Macklin wrote the best comedy of his time, "The Man of the World," in which he was unequalled as Sir Pertinax MacSycophant. Herne wrote the best comedy-drama of our time, "Shore Acres," in which he was unequalled as Nathaniel Berry. It may be here noticed that actors who have "created" parts - that is, who have played leading rôles in their own plays - have generally been acknowledged as the best interpreters of those characters. For instance, Sheridan Knowles in "The Hunchback"; Dion Boucicault in "The Shaughraun"; Charles Mathews in "Used Up "; Wilson Barrett in "The Sign of the Cross," "Claudian," and "The Silver King"; Molière as Tartuffe; and many other stage people whose work cannot be said to have raised the question "Is the Actor Illiterate?" Sir Walter Scott placed the art of the actor above all others. He wrote: "I know of no calling that so purifies one's character. Thomas Betterton must have been one of the noblest men that ever lived, and if anything could reconcile me to old age it is the reflection that I have seen the rising as well as the setting of the sun of Mrs. Siddons. God bless the stage and its people." Impartial observers of present-day players will admit that they are men of intellect and refinement, and students on whom the badge of illiteracy cannot be consistently placed. The very nature of their profession precludes the possibility of ignorant actors winning the laurel. Intellectual discernment, if not education, is essential for the proper interpretation of the author's thoughts. The parrot actor is generally relegated to the rear rank. A man of limited brain capacity may become a successful stage critic, in the popular acceptance of the term, but not a successful stage exponent. It is easy for the facetious critic to tear down in a single sitting the structure which the actor has spent weeks of studious preparation to erect. The pen is mightier than the buskin. interest in the trouble that he lost his temper over it. He praised Burton for his forbearance and denounced Poe as a "cad and a bully." Burton started "The Gentleman's Magazine" in 1837. In 1839 he associated Edgar A. Poe with him in control. In 1845 he consolidated with Graham in a publication that became "Graham's Magazine." If actors were the untutored barbarians described by certain writers, public patronage would be withdrawn from the theatre; every drama would become a farce; and Shakspere an abomination. Imagine a company of stupid, uneducated Thespians trying to produce one of the plays of the immortal bard! Charles Dickens said that "some writers labor under the impression that their mission is to amuse the reading public at the expense of the player. Their pens are steeped in ridicule, though their wit seldom entertains anybody but themselves." The scurrilous style of some alleged critics causes a suspicion that if they should depart from their accustomed methods and treat the actor seriously, the managing editor would quickly call for their resignations. Fortunately, such men do not represent the many fair-minded newspaper writers of which this country is justly proud. The standard of the theatrical profession cannot be measured by those alleged actors the height of whose ambition is to pose on public thoroughfares. Real actors have neither the time nor the inclination for such statuesque displays. They confine their acting to the stage. For more than three centuries the dramatic literature of the world has been largely furnished by actors. The greatest play of any time, with the single exception of the Sheridan era-from Ben Jonson, Shakspere, Molière, down to T. W. Robertson, Dion Boucicault, and Augustus Thomas has been written by an actor. The actor Shakspere invented so many new words, that since the time when "learning triumphed o'er her barbarous foes" no clerical denunciator of the stage and its people has been able to denounce them without using the very words coined by the illiterate stage player. Doran says: "The actors of Shakspere's time were of grave and sober behavior and men of high character." The modern actor may be a man of the world, but he is none the less devoted to the calling of which the immortal master wrote: - "These, our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and STUART ROBSON. MOSES COIT TYLER. EVER since his death at the very close of the century which ironically and pathetically enough he was not permitted to reach, much less to cover, in his great "History of American Literature," I have been hoping that some qualified person would see fit to pay the ungrudging tribute which the life and labors of Prof. Moses Coit Tyler so well deserve. But the months have gone by, and little has been added to the naturally hasty notices of the man and his books furnished, with their usual celerity, by the newspapers and the literary journals. It is to be presumed that an elaborate memorial by some relative or friend is contemplated, and I am far from supposing that there is any special call for me to attempt the intermediate rôle of providing an appreciative essay of the kind just indicated; but my gratitude to Prof. Tyler and my admiration of his services to American literature and scholarship are so hearty that I trust they will be accepted as a sufficient excuse for pages which I am, in all literalness, impelled to write. Of the personality of the man himself I shall say little, because, unfortunately, I know little of it. Most of us, at one time or another, have experienced the irony and untowardness of fate in being kept, by narrow intervals of time and space, from ever standing in the presence of people we had long desired to meet, and who, we had reason to know, would not be displeased to meet us. Such was my fate with regard to Prof. Tyler. We were once near enough meeting to have adjoining seats assigned us at a lunch table, but my seat was by accident left empty. Nor could I imagine that the pathetic wish he once expressed in a letter, that I should find it possible to seek him out at his home before his days for welcoming friends should be over forever, was based upon as deep a sense of the frailty and uncertainty of life as he must. have had when he wrote. Thus it is that I know of Prof. Tyler's noble and genial personality only through the reports of his friends and through a few letters, although I am in one particular at least a literary heir or legatee of his, since, when his health began finally to fail, the volume on American literature which he had engaged to write for Mr. Gosse's series, "Literatures of the World," was turned over to my less skilful hands. But although this paper must perforce deal with Prof. Tyler as scholar and writer rather than as teacher and man, it will not be amiss to give readers who do not care to consult their encyclopædias an outline of his uneventful, but not uninteresting or undiversified, life.' Moses Coit Tyler was born of good New England stock, as the far from meaningless phrase runs, at Griswold, Connecticut, August 2, 1835. If his fame ever increases sufficiently to make it requisite that pupils should memorize his place of birth, they will perhaps use as a mnemonic the fact that Griswold is also the name of the man whose pioneer work for American literature Prof. Tyler was destined to continue and far surpass who has deservedly received much harsh criticism, but whose unflagging zeal for American culture in the day of small things merits generous recognition in our own more mature epoch. But it is with the son of Capt. Elisha Tyler and Mary Greene, his wife, that we have to deal, and not with the Rev. Rufus W. Griswold, the much-anathematized biographer of Edgar Allan Poe. a man While he was still very young Prof. Tyler's parents settled in Michigan, where he received the training that enabled him to enter the University of that State in 1853. His Eastern connections, however, were still strong enough to draw him back to Yale, where he graduated in 1857. In view of the services of Yale to early American literature, through the work of Trumbull, Barlow, Dwight, and others, it seems to be a most fitting coincidence that the two men to whose labors students of American literature owe probably their largest debt of gratitude — Prof. Tyler and Mr. Stedman - should both be alumni of that institution. It would have been still more fitting could either of them have accepted the chair said to have been offered by their alma mater; as this could not be, we must content ourselves with felicitating Yale, in this her bicentennial year, upon scholarly work in behalf of American literature that has not always received its full reward of praise. After graduating, young Tyler studied theology at Yale and Andover, and in due time and with entire propriety, in consideration of his Connecticut associations, became a Congregational clergyman, the church at Owego, New York, being his first charge. From 1860 to 1862 he was a pastor at Poughkeepsie; but here his health broke down, mainly from 'I have been much assisted in this connection by an article on Prof. Tyler furnished by his colleague, Prof. J. W. Jenks, of Cornell, to "The Michigan Alumnus" for March, 1901. |