The paradox of acting Author:Denis Diderot Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: group of children who play at ghofts in a graveyard at dead of night, armed with a white fheet on the end of a broomftick, and fending forth from its fhelter hol... more »low groans to frighten wayfarers. The First. Juft fo, indeed. Now with Dumefnil it is a different matter : fhe is not like Clairon. She comes on the ftage without knowing what fhe is going to fay ; half the time fhc does not know what fhe is faying : but fhe has one fublime moment. And pray, why fhould the actor be different from the poet, the painter, the orator, the mufician ? It is not in the ftrefs of the firft burft that characteriftic traits come out; it is in moments of ftillnefs and felf-command ; in moments entirely unexpedted. Who can tell whence thefe traits have their being ? They are a fort of infpiration. They come when the man of genius is hovering between nature and his (ketch of it, and keeping a watchful eye on both. The beauty of infpiration, the chance hits of which his work is full, and of which the fudden appearance ftartles himfelf, Mile. Dumefhil was born in 1713 — not, as M. de Manne fays in his La Troupe de Voltaire, in 1711. She came to Paris from the provinces in 1737, and made her firft appearance at the Francais in the fame year as Clytemneftra in Ipbigenie en Aulide. She was admitted the following year, left the ftage in 1776, and died in year XI. of the Republic. have an importance, a fuccefs, a furenefs very different from that belonging to the firft fling. Cool reflection muft bring the fury of enthufiafm to its bearings. The extravagant creature who lofes his felf-con- trol has no hold on us; this is gained by the man who is felf-controlled. The great poets, efpecially the great dramatic poets, keep a keen watch on what is going on, both in the phyfical and the moral world...« less