Quotes on Actors and Acting
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115. Actors/Acting; Ouch!!!
"She no more thought of the play out of which her part was taken, than a shoemaker thinks of the skin, out of which the piece of leather, of which he is making a pair of shoes, is cut."
Boswell: Life
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243. Actors/Acting
Johnson: "Colley Cibber once consulted me as to one of his birth-day Odes, a long time before it was wanted. I objected very freely to several passages. Cibber lost patience, and would not read his Ode to an end. When we had done with criticism, we walked over to Richardson's, the author of Clarissa, and I wondered to find Richardson displeased that I 'did not treat Cibber with more respect.' Now, Sir, to talk of respect for a player!" (smiling disdainfully.) Boswell: "There, Sir, you are always heretical: you never will allow merit to a player." Johnson: "Merit, Sir! what merit? Do you respect a rope-dancer, or a ballad singer?" Boswell: "No, Sir, but we respect a great player, as a man who can conceive lofty sentiments, and can express them gracefully." Johnson: "What, Sir, a fellow who claps a lump on his back, and a lump on his leg, and cries 'I am Richard the Third'? Nay, Sir, a ballad singer is a higher man, for he does two things; he repeats and he sings: there is both recitation and musick in his performance: the player only recites." Boswell: "My dear, Sir! you may turn anything into ridicule. I allow, that a player of farce is not entitled to respect; he does a little thing: but he who can represent exalted characters, and touch the noblest passions, has very respectable powers; and mankind have agreed in admiring great talents for the stage. We must consider, too, that a great player does what very few are capable to do: his art is a very rare faculty. Who can repeat Hamlet's soliloquy, 'To be, or not to be,' as Garrick does it?" Johnson: "Any body may. Jemmy (a boy about eight years old, who was in the room,) will do it as well in a week." Boswell: "No, no, Sir: and as a proof of the merit of great acting, and of the value which mankind has set upon it, Garrick has got a hundred thousand pounds." Johnson: "Is getting a hundred thousand pounds a proof of excellence? That has been done by a scoundrel commissary."
Boswell: Life
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290. Actors and Acting
Johnson, indeed, had thought more upon the subject of acting than might generally be supposed. Talking of it one day to Mr. Kemble, he said, "Are you, Sir, one of those enthusiasts who believe yourself transformed into the very character you represent?" Upon Mr. Kemble's answering that he had never felt so strong a persuasion himself; "To be sure not, Sir, (said Johnson;) the thing is impossible. And if Garrick really believed himself to be that monster, Richard the Third, he deserved to be hanged every time he performed it."
Boswell: Life
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324. Actors and Acting
When I asked him, "Would not you, sir, start as Mr. Garrick does, if you saw a ghost?" He answered, "I hope not. If I did, I should frighten the ghost."
Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
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914. Actors/Acting; Diversion
"At all other assemblies, he that comes to receive delight will be expected to give it; but in the theatre nothing is necessary to the amusement of two hours, but to sit down and be willing to be pleased."
Johnson: Idler #25 (October 7, 1758)
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915. Actors/Acting
"The appearance and retirement of actors are the great events of the theatrical world; and their first performances fill the pit with conjecture and prognostication, as the first actions of a new monarch agitate nations with hope and fear."
Johnson: Idler #25 (October 7, 1758)
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917. Actors/Acting; Criticism
"If in an actor there appears an utter vacancy of meaning, a frigid equality, a stupid languor, a torpid apathy, the greatest kindness that can be shown him is a speedy sentence of expulsion."
Johnson: Idler #25 (October 7, 1758)
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919. Actors/Acting; Criticism; Writing
"The art of the writer, like that of the player, is attained by slow degrees. The power of distinguishing and discriminating comick characters, or of filling tragedy with poetical images, must be the gift of nature, which no instruction nor labour can supply; but the art of dramatick disposition, the contexture of the scenes, the involution of the plot, the expedients of suspension, and the strategems of surprise, are to be learned by practice; and it is cruel to discourage a poet for ever, because he has not from genius what only experience can bestow."
Johnson: Idler #25 (October 7, 1758)
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