Acting

A popular Italian comedy, "Troupes of the commedia dell'arte was very popular throughout Europe in the early 1600s.   They would work on makeshift stages and without scripts.  These companies, which included women actor's spread a new wave between the actor's and audiences.  Actor's improvised their own words and comic actions using a basic plot and character types, which created theatrical creativity and would capture the interest of the audience as a whole group.  This was so unlike the opera or literary theater, where the emphasis from the audience concentrated on a playwright's speeches or individual.  Scenic displays and literary concepts were not common, thus inspiring the art of acting. 

Theatergoers in England by the beginning of the 17th century learned how to distinguish Hamlet by actor-manager, Thomas Betterton.  This was accomplished by other productions of Shakespeare's plays.  Using different staging of familiar and classical plays sharpened spectator's senses.  Good acoustics were designed into theater halls to help performers to be heard differently and to have more subtle and natural reflections.  Visual details of a performance were easily perceived and critiqued with the introduction of indoor stage lighting.  Individual actor's faces and hands were then displayed by the indoor stage lighting. 

Charles Macklin and his student David Garrick became one of the first modern actors on the British stage in the 18th century.  Commedia-like farces and pantomime was Charles Macklin's background and why he was hired, based his character Shylock (a Jewish businessman in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice") on Jews in London.  Lifelike details of movement and speech were added to written text.  These details might not have been noticed 50 years earlier if not for the stage lighting, acoustic changes and other technologies. 

Under better lighting conditions and more plausibility, David Garrick continued natural acting.  Mimicry was brought to the stage through Garrick's practices of imitating facial expressions of actual people.  In his performance of Shakespeare's King Lear, Garrick used a crazed neighbor to reenact the accidental killing of his infant daughter.  Garrick never dropped his character during a performance and he would listen and react in character to all the dialogue around him.  Because of this, he was very popular with theatergoers. 

Denis Diderot, an 18th century French encyclopedist, became fascinated with Garrick who was on tour in Paris.  The actor feeling less emotion is what Diderot believed could achieve a more consistent and stronger performance. 

Diderot's essay "Le paradoxe sur le comedien" (1773; translated as "The Paradox of the Actor, "1883), compared to famous rivals who performed at the Comedie Francaise, Marie-Francoise Dumesnil and Hippolyte Clairon.  

Dumesnil believed it was an actor's responsibility to become the character and represented the so-called emotional school.  She was very uneven as an actor and normally coasted through a performance until a tragic point was reached.  She had emotional depth and tremendous power.  She made claims she new the secrets of great acting.  To find out who she was as a character, where she was and what she had done, Dumesnil would use prayer.  Alcohol stimulation was unfortunately a big part of her inspiration.  

Clarion claimed she created her characters through movement and speech and not from becoming them or playing them.  By rehearsing endlessly and perfecting the "look of emotions, she was able to develop a natural and reliable character.  She believed audiences applauded the actor, not the characters.   

By these two actors' comparison's, Diderot uncovered polarities of inspiration and technique. 

Problems of inspiration and expressiveness were not solved for other actors, however.  For example, any schools or treatises that were left behind seemed to be more philosophical than technical.  Actually with Garrick's natural school of acting disappeared after his death.  It was more of a fad with British audiences that was associated with the actor.  Basically, Garrick and the rest couldn't teach their techniques. 

In the 19th century emotional and anti-emotional acting styles of the great actors ran in cycles.  Actor's of one generation championed the first technique and then was replaced by a younger actor who championed a different technique, which happened in every country.  The romantic and emotive Edmund Kean followed Sarah Siddons, who followed Garrick and so on.  

The limelight gave way to the rise of gas lighting and then on to electricity.  More and more physical detail appeared on stage and costumes and scenic displays grew in complexity and size, which dwarfed the actor.

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