Claudio Vicentini_Antiemotionalism

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THEORY OF ACTINGVII

ANTIEMOTIONALISMANTOINE-FRANOIS RICCOBONI, LESSING, DIDEROT*

1.English Versions of Le Comedien 2.Antoine-Franois Riccobonis LArt du Thtre3.Lessings Project 4.Sticotti and Diderot 5.Artistic Creation 6.The Paradoxe and Its

Reasoning. The Characteristics of Sensibility 7.Real Life-Theatre Difference. Actors and Characters8.The Problems of the Paradoxe

1. English Versions of Le ComdienIn 1750 Rmond de Sainte-Albines Le Comdien was known in England as an

anonymous work entitled The Actor. Now attributed to John Hill, the translationdomesticated the original with examples of actors and plays from the Englishstage. It was an immediate success and three new editions quickly followed: two in1752 and 1753 respectively, no longer extant, and one in 1755.1

The first edition stated that it was particularly aimed at the managers of the twoLondon theatres, Covent Garden and Drury Lane, and extended the originals criticalcomment on actors performances, though the general contents remained essentiallythe same, as did Rmond de Sainte-Albines theoretical analysis.2 The 1755 editionintroduced considerable changes: examples were updated and critical discussionfurther extended, while a number of additions, substitutions and interpolationsundermined the emotionalist slant of the original.3

* Translated by Anita Weston, Libera Universit degli Studi per lInnovazione e le Organizzazioni diRoma. From C. Vicentini, La teoria della recitazione dallantichit al Settecento, Venezia, Marsilio, 2012.1 On John Hill and his relations to the theatre see B. Valentino, Pierre Rmond de Sainte-Albine and

John Hill. From Le Comdien to The Actor, Acting Archives Essays, AAR Supplement 12, April2011, pp. 3-15; on the attribution ofThe Actorsee C. Barbieri, La pagina e la scena, Firenze, Le Lettere,2006, pp. 222-226, and B. Valentino, Pierre Rmond de Sainte-Albine and John Hill, pp. 25-31. Thetracing of the 1752 and 1753 editions is due to Chiara Barbieri (pp. 222-226); see too Barbara

Valentinos observations (pp. 23-25).2 John Hill, Dedication, in The Actor: A Treatise on the Art of Playing, London, R. Griffiths, 1750. For thecomments aimed at the actor-managers see pp. 91-92, pp. 253-254 and p. 298. On the detailed analysisof individual performances see, e.g., the examples aboutthe physical inadequacy of the actor, the needto cast as lovers actors inclined towards love, or the need of appropriate dignity for tragic roles, withthe Garrick-Quin comparisons, pp. 65-71, pp. 116-119 and pp. 169-176.3 On the variants in the three texts, Le Comdien(Paris, Vincent, 1749), The Actor(1750) and The Actor(1755), an indispensable guide is Barbara Valentinos exemplary comparative analysis in the second

volume of The Actor di John Hill.La fonte, le versioni, le varianti (Ph.D thesis in Modern andContemporary Theatre History, Universit di Napoli LOrientale, 2009).


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Acting, the new version maintained, is a science and is to be studied as ascience.4 Awareness of its norms is fundamental for both the actor to reachperfection and the audience to assess his performance precisely and impartially:

indeed it is the existence of general, precise and consistent rules which indissolublylinks excellence of performance and the validity of a critical judgment in a two-wayprocess:

The better an audience judges, the better the performers will act: [] When thenumber of those who judge with knowledge and candour is increased, then theperformer will have the more spirit in submitting his endeavours to their determination:and when he knows by what rules they judge, he will also know those by which heought to conduct himself, in his attempts to merit their approbation.5

Once acting has been established as a science and the actors progress linked tothe learning of its rules and acknowledgment of criticism, intellectual abilities move

centre stage, as it were, as essential requisites for the actors performance, and thebalance between the necessary inner qualities, as acknowledged by Rmond deSainte-Albine, has shifted. Esprit now gives way to sentiment, translated asunderstanding in the English version, as prime criterion: among the advantages

which a player must have from nature, an understanding is principal. An explicithierarchy is established: An understanding has been established as the first requisiteto the qualifying a man for the stage. The second is certainly sensibility.6

Sentiment however retains essential characteristics. It is indispensable inperformance in moving from one passion to the next, to enact a wavering passionfading or to adapt it to a particular character and their circumstances. 7 To beutilizable, however, it must be disciplined, so that the actors ability to feel the

different passions readily now becomes less important than knowing how to selectthem, measure their intensity and control them through an understanding of whathe is to express and how to do so. It is a matter not of how much sensibility theactor possesses but how it is regulated, and only a perfect understanding of thepart will allow him to experience true feeling.8

Empathy then becomes less important compared with other actorly resources,such as the gift of imitation. Rmond de Sainte-Albine conceded that the actor couldrender all human passions without feeling them with the exception of love, albeitonly imitating the external expression, like a mask.9 The 1755 edition returns to thesubject but without the reservations as to the quality of the result. The passions, loveapart, can all be easily imitated, with nothing added.10 There equally emerges a

concern to eliminate all risk of the unexpected and thus the mistakes which couldevade the most meticulous and methodical control. Rmond de Sainte-Albinesappreciation of the improvised acting of the Italians is reversed: The Italians throwin speeches of their own in comedy, and they please because new; but here we have a

4 John Hill, The Actor, Or A Treatise in the Art of Playing, London, R. Griffiths, 1755, p. 1 and p. 12.5 Ibid., pp. 2-4.6 Ibid., p. 18 and p. 48.7 See ibid., p. 75 and p. 99.8 Ibid., p. 20 and p. 34.9 Pierre Rmond de Sainte-Albine, Le Comdien, p. 103.10 John Hill, The Actor(1750), p. 201. See also Pierre Rmond de Sainte-Albine, Le Comdien, p. 103.


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better judgment: nothing is, or ought to be so offensive as these interpolations. 11Actorly creativity in general is strictly circumscribed. Acting is a question of theprimary abilities of the understanding, after which the original script becomes the

one solid base to guarantee safe and effectual results. The words of the source textpoet must remain unaltered, and the passages in which Rmond de Sainte-Albinegave the actor textual license, both in modifying and cutting the authors script, havebeen removed, while new ones are added underlining the sovereignty of the text andleaving no doubt that adding and altering is simply abominable.12

2.Antoine-Franois Riccobonis LArt du ThtreThe variants of the 1755 version ofThe Actorindicated a new problem. The gap

left by the rejection of the gestural code of oratory could not be filled simply by theactors emotional empathy with the feelings to be expressed. Norms regulating the

actors performance seemed also to have disappeared, together with the ability toadapt with elegance and efficiency the immediate manifestation of feeling to thepassions of an imaginary character acting in a conventional place. Luigi Riccoboniand Rmond de Sainte-Albine had assigned sentiment the central role in acting, butalso recognized that the actors immediacy and spontaneity required the assistance ofart: hence the need to reformulate the theory of acting in terms which, if not exactlyscientific, were certainly clear and objective, and left no space for the uncertain or thearbitrary.

Riccobonis son, Antoine-Franois, was the first to attempt a solution. He hadfollowed in his fathers footsteps and had published LArt du Thtrein 1750, whenhe retired from the stage.13 The second edition ofLeComdienhad only come out the

previous year, and reviews of the new publication inevitably compared Riccoboniswith Rmond de Sainte-Albine work. A particularly caustic notice appeared in theMercure de France, probably the work of Rmond de Sainte-Albine himself.14 Theauthor replied to the reviews in his Lettre de Mr. Riccoboni, fils, Monsieur R*** au sujetde lArt du Thtre, claiming to have covered new ground with respect to LeComdien.

The basic issue was extremely simple: Le Comdien failed to give a single usefulprinciple to anyone going on the stage. Rmond de Sainte-Albine, Antoine-FranoisRiccoboni observed, stated that an actor must be natural, resourceful, graceful,interesting, delicate, lively, and surprising; he should be noble or pleasing, accordingto his part, his gestures should always be harmonious, and his voice pleasant. Thepublic, however, was perfectly aware of all this, Antoine-Franois Riccoboni

11 John Hill, The Actor(1755), p. 251. See also Pierre Rmond de Sainte-Albine, Le Comdien, pp. 182-183.12 See John Hill, The Actor(1755), pp. 7-8 and p. 35.13 Antoine-FranoisRiccoboni, LArt du Thtre Madame ***, Paris, C. F. Simon & Giffart Fils, 1750.

According to Riccoboni himself, it had been written some years earlier and only published in 1750when he had retired from the stage considering it would be inelegant to publish it while he was still onthe stage (seeAvant-Propos, ibid.).14 Reviews include: LArt du Thtre A Madame *** par Franois Riccoboni, Mmoires pour lHistoiredes Sciences & des Beaux-Arts, no. 2 (Februar, 1750), pp. 512-532; Abb Joseph de La Porte, LeComdien, Par M. Rmond de Sainte-Albine. LArt du Thtre, Par M. Riccoboni, Observations sur laLittrature moderne, no. 2 (1750), pp. 230-255; LArt du Thtre A Madame ***. Par FranoisRiccoboni,Mercure de France(March, 1750), pp. 170-175.


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observed, and were thus perfectly equipped to watch a performance and form ajudgment. The fact was that Le Comdiengave aspiring actors no indication of how toattain these different perfections.15

In his opinion, it was not simplyLe Comdienbut the majority of the literature onacting which centred on considerations which were undoubtedly profound or acute,but seemed inadequate for establishing essential and objective rules for the actor.Even his fathers Penses sur la dclamation, while full of fine and delicateconsiderations, could not be understood without the preliminary competence which

was indispensable for the most elementary approach to the stage. To attempt toapply the principles of the Penseswithout such knowledge would be like wishing topaint without having studied drawing.16

The completely practical rules of acting could be established, Antoine-FranoisRiccoboni continued, in open dissent with Rmond de Sainte-Albines assertions,only by those who had direct experience of the stage, and should proceed from the

material instruments available to the actor: the ability to use them is then theindispensable premise for a successful interpretation.LArt du Thtrethen begins with the position of the body, which should be erect

but not excessively rigid, going on to indicate the exact way to bow while managingto balance harmoniously.17 It then looks at arm movements, with an exhaustivelydetailed description of how to move them gracefully:

When the arm is to be raised the upper part, from the shoulder to the elbow, should bethe first to detach itself from the body, drawing in its wake the others which must onlymove after the first, and with no abruptness. The hand must thus be the last to move.It must remain palm down until the forearm has raised it to the height of the elbow; it

will then turn upwards, while the arm continues its movement to that point at which it

must stop. To descend, the hand must be the first to fall, the other parts following inorder. Furthermore it is necessary to avoid holding the arms over-rigidly, in such guisethat the line of the wrist and elbow are visible. The fingers should not be completelyextended, but gently curved, following the extent readily observable in a partiallyclosed hand.18

The voice then comes under scrutiny, with norms for correct breathing andmaximum projection. The mechanical parts of acting taken care of, Antoine-Franois Riccoboni moves on to rules governing the actors essential role, therepresentation of a character, its behaviour, and emotional reactions throughout theplay.

Here Riccoboni is peremptory: the governing factor is intellect. Lines and

speeches are to be pronounced following the sense of the sentence, avoiding thesonorous oratory-derived rhythms which had become conventional on the stage. Butthis is not enough. Also to be considered is the character, the characters situationand the overall effect. All this is the work of the intelligence which clarifies not only

15 Antoine-FranoisRiccoboni, Lettre de Mr. Riccoboni, fils, Monsieur R*** au sujetde lArt du Thtre,n.p., n.d., pp. 19-20, now in an appendix to LArt du Thtre: suivi dune lettre de M. Riccoboni fils M ***au sujet de lArt du Thtre, Genve, Slatkine, 1971. The Lettrewas in its turn reviewed inMmoires pourlHistoire des Sciences & des Beaux-Arts(October, 1750), pp. 2144-2152.16 Antoine-FranoisRiccoboni, LArt du Thtre, pp. 3-4.17 See ibid., pp. 5-9.18 Ibid., pp. 11-12.


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what the character effectively says but above all what relation the speech bears to thecharacter and the circumstances of the action. Riccoboni explicates this with thefamous example of the thousand ways of saying good day, the most simple of

greetings:

There exist a thousand ways of sayinggood day, according to character and situation. Alover will wish his beloved good day with the gentleness and affection that manifest hisfeelings to the person greeted. A father will say it with tenderness to the son he loves,and with coldness mixed with melancholy to the son of whom he is discontented. Amiser, even when wishing good day to a friend, must manifest preoccupation. A jealousman greeting a youth he is reluctant to receive manifests anger constrained by goodbreeding. A lady-in-waiting will say good day to her mistresss lover in flattering andinsinuating tones, but brusquely to an old man seeking her affection against her wishes.

The dandy greets with affected pleasantness mixed with a note of pride, implying that ifhe is greeting you it is because he is magnanimous, but is in no way obliged to do so.

The melancholy man says good day in afflicted tones. The servant who has played

some trick on his master affects a sense of security from which fear however transpires.A trickster will salute whom he is about to cheat in a tone calculated to inspire hisvictim with confidence while revealing its hidden intention to the audience.19

The practical rules then extend to ways of representing feelings and emotionalattitudes (tenderness, strength, fury, enthusiasm, nobility, majesty, etc.), and the typesof characters (from lovers to the roles of haut comique and bas comique). Theycontinue with instructions for silent acting and jeu du thtre in which internalfeelings are revealed solely by facial expressions, gestures and actions, all mute,concluding with the need to co-ordinate the different actors performances into acohesive whole, and with the use of pauses to mark the various characters reactionsin a dialogue, carefully assessing both the nature of the speech and, above all, thespectators reaction time.

The treatise ends with a description of an actors basic training. It is advisable tobegin, Antoine-Franois Riccoboni explains, by reading out a substantial passage as ifin a room, in the presence of a few friends, then rereading it as if declaiming it first toa meeting of the Acadmie Franaise, then in court, like a lawyer, and in the pulpit,like a preacher. The speech will gain in intensity each time and the voice becomelouder, gradually assuming the emotional effects to be produced on the public. Thefinal location is the stage itself, which contains all these divers tones.20

In proceeding from the lowest level (reading to a few friends) to the highest (thestage), the actor makes no recourse to his own feelings. What is required to play apart and produce suitable emotions in the audience is intelligence, to understand thelines and recognize the nature and situation of the character; also useful are theability to study and observe the world, combined with a gift for mimicry.21 As LArtdu Thtremakes clear, the problems the emotionalists solved by empathy can equallybe dealt with by technique. An example given is the risk of contorting the featuresinto a quasi-grimace in an exaggerated communication of feelings. For Rmond deSainte-Albine the simple solution was to actually experience the feeling to be

19 Ibid., pp. 32-34.20 Ibid., p. 100.21 See ibid., pp. 61-62.


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expressed.22 For Antoine-Franois Riccoboni too the solution was easy but verydifferent: the gentleness of the facial movements depends on habit which is purelymechanical. Instructions follow:

These features [of the face] must at every instant assume the expressive characterrequired in that moment, which must never be so forced as to appear a grimace []However, it is an easy matter to avoid such grimaces, and the gentleness of the facialmovements depends on a habit which is purely mechanical. The upper part of the facemust be continuously at work; the mouth and chin must never move unless to articulatethe words [] It is with justice stated that the eyes are the mirror of the soul. It is theythat depict all the inner movements, and it is thus necessary to possess eyes of adecided colour and vivacity visible from afar, operating in sensitive conjunction withthe countenance. The movements of the forehead greatly assist those of the eyes. Anactor must acquire, through practice, the ability to frown by raising his eyebrows andknitting the space between them by lowering the brows firmly. It is the differentgradations of creased forehead and knitted eyebrows, the eyes wide open, rounded or

slanted, which marks the difference of expression. That part of the cheek locatedbeneath the eyes can make its small contribution by being slightly raised or lowered; butmovements of this part of the face must needs be moderate to avoid seeming forced.

The mouth must make no movement other than to laugh, since they who turn downthe corners of the mouth to weep in moments of affliction reveal a countenance whichis greatly unseemly and not a little ignoble.23

The search for concrete and precise rules to be put quickly to practical effectseems, then, to concede no space to sentiment, and for obvious reasons. Sentiment isnot a constant and permanent resource, but can be intermittent, so that in anymoment of his stage presence the actor will have recourse to technique alone.Furthermore, emotional empathy is out of the question when no affinity exists

between the character and the actor. And there are situations, Antoine-FranoisRiccoboni, adds, in which emotional participation is clearly absurd, such as when, forexample, the character must appear astonished by a phrase or snatch of conversationof which his interpreter was obviously well aware.24

Such a volatile resource as sentiment then, with such restricted applicability,should not be included in norms constituting the foundation of the actors art. Onepragmatic solution, implied at the beginning of LArt du Thtre,when citing thePenses sur la dclamation,would be to recognize the usefulness of sentiment associated

with technical ability. Technique would then be the basis which the actor wouldimprove on and sophisticate through the added use of sentiment when required bycircumstance. In Antoine-Franois Riccobonis formula in part-defense of paternal

doctrine, the actor would begin painting having mastered the art of drawing.This, however, would appear to be illusory. Emotional empathy, as demonstratedby a key passage in LArt duThtre,is incompatiblewith technique. In demonstration,

Antoine-Franois Riccoboni develops a line of argument already present in thedoctrine of oratory and again mentioned, albeit fleetingly, in the recent literatureonacting. Quintilian had observed that when the orator improvised, emotion aroused bythe subject matter could make him lose control of his voice. In the seventeenthcentury Ren Rapin, in his Rflexions sur lloquence de ce temps, had recalled a celebrated

22 See Pierre Rmond de Sainte-Albine, Le Comdien, p. 149.23 Antoine-FranoisRiccoboni, LArt du Thtre, pp. 76-77.24 See ibid., p. 39.


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Parisian lawyer who would reach such a passion when speaking in court as tocompromise not only elegance of delivery but clarity of diction, to the point ofbecoming incomprehensible.25 Grimarest too had glanced at the problem,

commenting that the passion actually felt by a lawyer could alter his voice and distorthis diction, while Poisson, as recorded above, had treated the issue in more generalterms.26

The risk run by the sensitive orator when making his speech, in court or pulpit,becomes then certain and inevitable danger, according to Antoine-FranoisRiccoboni, for the actor absorbed in the part he is playing. In the concentrated time-frame of a scene in the theatre the succession of feelings to be expressed isconsiderably more rapid than in real life. The genuine empathy of the actor thusinevitably creates, always, an emotive build-up which undermines the actors controlover his various means of expression.

This accelerated succession of feelings on the stage is imposed by the reduced time-scale of a play which by precipitating events gives to stage action all the intensity itrequires. If in a moment of tenderness the actor is carried away by his part, his heart

will contract, his voice almost die in his throat, and if a single tear escape from his eyes,it will be impossible to pronounce a single word unaccompanied by ridiculous sobs.27

In this condition the actor will shift with great difficulty from one emotion toanother for example from tenderness to anger. Full of tender feelings, Riccoboniexplains, he will attempt to escape from a state of mind which blocks him, a mortalchill will possess his senses, and for some moments he will be unable to act otherthan mechanically. He will find it impossible to render the nuances necessary tomake all the feelings proper to the part seem linked, and born the one of the other.

If we have the misfortune truly to feel that which is to be expressed, then we are nolonger able to act.28 The actors empathy must therefore be totally replaced by theability to make the audience feel all the inner workings by which he would seemto be penetrated. Only in this way he will express the exact sentiments of a realindividual in the same situation, and will create in the audience the illusion of beingactually moved by the passions manifested.29

It remains to be seen, however, according to Riccobonis own standpoint, whatthe practical and precise norms might be which the actor should follow if he is to putthis abilities fully into practice. And here Riccoboni returns to the old phantoms oforatory. The training recommended to the actor, as reported above, from the privatereading of a passage through to public declamation, in the academy, lawcourt and

pulpit, almost exactly mirrors that of Grimarests Trait du rcitatif. The entire centralsection ofLArt du Thtre, dedicated to dealing with expression, opens with what isvirtually the usual list of feelings and with the acknowledging of the two dominant

25 See Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, XI,3,25; and Ren Rapin, Rflexions sur lloquence de ce temps,Paris,Barbin et Muguet, 1671, pp. 69-70.26 Jean-Lonor Le Gallois de Grimarest, Trait du rcitatif, Paris, Jacques Le Fvre et Pierre Ribou,1707, p. 118; and Jean Poisson, Rflexions sur lArt de parler en public, n.p., 1717, p. 25 (see C. Vicentini,Theory of Acting V. The Birth of Emonotionalism, Acting Archives Essays, AAR Supplement 5, April2011, p. 5).See too, a few years after the publication ofLArt du Thtre, The Actor(1755), p. 54.27 See Antoine-FranoisRiccoboni, LArt du Thtre, pp. 37-38.28 Ibid., pp. 36-39.29 Ibid., p. 36.


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passions, love and anger from which the others descend.30 There even reappear thetime-honoured prescriptions of gestures to be avoided, with the traditional indicationof expressions and attitudes to assume to portray the different inner feelings.

It is necessary to avoid clenching the fist whenever possible, and especially shaking it atthe actor one is facing, even in moments of extreme fury [] Rapid gesticulating is tobe eschewed: indeed, the slower and gentler be the gesture, the more pleasing [] if thearm be extended with overmuch strength and rapidity the gesture is harsh; but inmoving the lower half of the arm, the elbows remaining close to the body, then thezenith of unpleasantness is reached. In like fashion holding out the arms and bringingthem to the same height is also to be avoided.

Timidity has a weak and halting voice, vanity, tones imbued with importance andirksome security; the vulgar person has a loud voice and marked articulation; the miser

who passes the night in counting his gold should be near-hoarse.31

At this point, having excluded recourse to the volatile sentiment of the actor in itssearch for certain and general rules of acting, anti-emotionalism would seem to haveargued itself into an inevitable corner: the return to a pre-established expressive code,based on the traditions and norms of oratory.

LArt duThtrehowever glances at an alternative solution, based on the physicalpossibilities of the actors body, able to control gestures and expressions through itsown sensibility rather than the emotive version which blocks, distorts and disturbsthe correct rendering of the part. For Antoine-Franois Riccoboni a wholly physicalsensibility allows the actor to be aware of the precision and efficacy of hisexpressions without studying them and regulating them from the outside: hence hisadvice to the actor, identical to his fathers, against using the mirror to rehearse

gestures and movements. The mirror, he writes, is the mother of affectation since itis necessary to feel ones movements and assess them without seeing them.32 And inthe name of this physical sensibility, which transforms the body from passivematerial for the external show of sentiment into an active component in creating theactors attitude and performance, Lessing, a few years after the publication of LArtduThtre,was to attempt to re-orientate the critical demands of anti-emotionalism.

3. Lessings ProjectBetween the late 1740s and the early 1750s, marked by the publication of both Le

Comdienand LArt du Thtre, more and more attention was being given to the way

human expression was concretely realized through physical modifications and thebodys gesturality. In 1747 Human Physiognomy Explaind came out, by an Englishmedical doctor, James Parsons. Parsons reviewed physiognomys development from

Aristotle to Della Porta, Bulwer and Le Brun, to show how a particular bent ordisposition of mind are manifested not by the complexion or bone conformation,but by the articulation of the facial muscles.33 The onset of a passion is revealed in

30 See ibid., pp. 45-46.31 Ibid., pp. 12-13 and p. 62.32 Ibid., p. 14.33 James Parsons, Human Physiognomy Explaind: in the Cronian Lectures on Muscular Motion, London, C.Davis, 1747, p. 37.


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this way, Parsons explains, because frequent recourse to the same passion, repeatingthe same muscular disposition, ends up by creating a pre-disposition eventuallyleaving indelible marks on the face. The treatise then minutely analyzes the anatomy

of the different muscular conformations produced by inner attitudes, finally reachingthe inevitable conclusion that the actor can assume the grimace suited to thecharacter if he uses his muscles artfully.34

The ability to assimilate an external attitude by repeating specific poses, gesturesand movements again surfaces in The Analysis of Beauty, published in 1753 by thepainter and caricaturist William Hogarth, who was a friend of Parsons. Hogarthsperspective is considerably broader, taking in the whole action of the individual.

Action, he observes, is a sort of language which one day may come to be taught bya kind of grammar-rules.35 Having posited action as norm-based language, however,Hogarth is not concerned with drawing up the usual table of expressionscorresponding to the different passions, constituting as it were the vocabulary: on the

contrary, he greatly doubted the usefulness of indications of the kind. As for acting,action considered with regard to assisting the authors meaning, by enforcing thesentiments or raising the passions, must be left entirely to the judgment of theperformer.36

Hogarth had other concerns, principally the grace of the gestures and thepreparation of the limbs so as to have an equal readiness to move in all suchdirections as may be required.37 This can be done by developing the sheer force ofhabit through repetition exercises which will gradually confer spontaneous graceand elegance. He gives as an example tracing with the hands a serpentine movementon a relief:

Gentle movements of this sort [] may be made at any time and any where, which byfrequent repetitions will become so familiar to the parts so exercised, that on properoccasion they may make them as it were of their own accord [] Daily practising thesemovements with the hands and arms, as also with such other parts of the body, as arecapable of them, will in a short time render the whole person graceful and easy atpleasure.38

This use of studied repetition to create spontaneity and naturalness is madepossible by the bodys own dynamics, which can be felt by a form of inner sensibility.For Hogarth, as for Antoine-Franois Riccoboni, we can be aware of the precision,elegance and efficacy of our gestures even without seeing them, without the use of amirror:

true elegance [in the positioning of the head] is mostly seen in moving it from oneposition to another. And this may be attaind by a sensibility within yourself, thoyouhave not a sight of what you do by looking unto the glass, when with your head assistedby a sway of the body in order to give it more scope, you endeavor to make that veryserpentine line in the air, which the hands have been before taught to do 39

34 Ibid., p. 46.35 William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, London, Printed by J. Reeves for the Author,1753, p. 139.36 Ibid., p. 151.37 Ibid.38 Ibid., pp. 143-144.39 Ibid., p. 145.


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A wholly physical sensibility able to assess the precision of movement is describedin very similar terms in Johann Friedrich Lwens Kurzgefasste Grundsstze von der

Beredsamkeit des Leibes, which amply quotes from both Riccoboni and Hogarth. Thesubject of the short treatise (some forty-eight pages) is how to improve theperformance of orators and actors. The important element is constant practice underthe guidance of an expert whose rules, like Lwens own, must derive from no pre-established code but from experience and from personal sensations.40

After standard advice on understanding the script and using the voice, the secondpart concentrates on gesturality and external attitudes. Those of the preacher, whofrom the pulpit is only visible down to the waist, are more simple than the actors,

whose gait must render the whole character, his condition and state of mind, andmust differ on entry and exit. Above all, however, it is the hand movements whichconstitute the most important aspect of gestural eloquence. Lwen critizes various

norms cited in LArt du Thtre for being imprecise or restrictive, such as thecomplicated procedure prescribed for raising the arms, with its articulating of thesingle parts and rotating of the hands. His own advice is to contain the movement ofthe fingers in moments of reflection or demonstration; avoid over-swift movements,and never raise the hands above the eyes unless it is to express modesty, etc.,although in general there is no proscriptive norm to observe. The important point isfor the actor to feel his movements without studying them in a mirror.41

This is the context in which Lessing begins his study of acting, which was to lastfor some twenty years in parallel with his work as philosopher, theorist of art andliterature, and above all dramatist (Miss Sarah Sampson, performed in 1755, andMinnavon Barnhelm and Emilia Gallotti, in 1767 and 1772): he was also Dramaturg of

Hamburgs Nationaltheater. His interest in acting was already fully developed in 1750when as a twenty-one-year old, with Christlob Mylius, he edited the Beitrge zurHistorie undAufnahme des Theaters, followed up by his work on the various volumes ofthe Theatralische Bibliothek, published between 1754 and 1758. From May 1767onwards he worked on the Hamburgische Dramaturgie, following the programme of theNationaltheater with the aim of producing a critical compendium of all performancesand accompanying step by step the poets and actors along their path.42

Lessing was without doubt the most informed and aware scholarly voice of theperiod in the acting debate. In 1750, the same year it was published, he first reviewedRiccobonis LArt du Thtrefor the Berlinische privilegierte Zeitung, then translated it forthe Beitrge zur Historie und Aufnahme des Theaters. In the Beitrgehe also speaks highly

of Rmond de Sainte-Albines Le Comdien(with a promise to publish a translation),and Luigi Riccobonis Dellarte rappresentativaand Penses sur la declamation.Lessing halfmaintained his promise a few years later, when he published a compendium from Le

40 Johann Friedrich Lwen, Kurzgefasste Grundsstze von der Beredsamkeit des Leibes, Hamburg, Hertel,1755, p. 7.41 Ibid., p. 35.42 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie, 2 vols., Leipzig, J. Dodsley und Compagnie,1767-1769, in G. E. Lessing, Werke. Vollstndige Ausgabe in fnfundzwanzig Teilen, 25 vols., ed. by J.Petersen and W. von Olshausen, Hildesheim; New York, Olms, 1970, V, p. 25. Reviews of actorsperformances actually stopped after only three months, in July 1767, in response to complaints bySophie Hensel at comment of Lessings on her interpretation of Madame de Grafignys Cnie. Seeibid., p. 101 and p. 120.


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Comdien in Theatralische Bibliothek in which there also appeared his translation ofRiccobonis Histoire du Thtre Italien and the third volume of Du Bos, Rflexionscritiques sur la posie et la peinture. He also translated Diderots plays and works on the

theatre,43

and with Johann Joachim Christoph Bode translated Noverres Lettres sur laDanse,44 equally finding time to review Hogarths The Analysis of Beauty,whichMyliustranslated into German.45

Lessing combines all of the above with a careful and concrete observation of theactors work. His ideal model was Konrad Ekhof, the German Garrick who in 1753founded the first European Actors Academy in Schwerin (also drawing up thestatute), and had a hand in founding Hamburgs Nationaltheater. Ekhof is an artist,Lessing explains in the Hamburgische Dramaturgie, who creates exemplary models andgives examples from which it is then possible to seek to extrapolate generalprinciples. Ekhofs exemplary nature is underlined shortly afterwards in Lessingscomment on the performance of Voltaires Zareat the Nationaltheater. Everything

Rmond de Sainte-Albine observes in his Comdien, Lessing writes, is translated intopractice by Ekhof with such mastery as to make us believe that he alone must havebeen the model referred to by the critic in his considerations.46

Lessings departure-point emerges in the Vorrede to the Beitrge zur Historie undAufnahme desTheaters. Acting is a necessary part of dramatic poetry and has its ownrules which concern not only the actor but can be useful to all those who draw onthe eloquence of the body.47 Acting in relation to poetry then is judged in its ownright, independent of the assessment of the authors work. A critic demonstrates histrue sensibility, he writes in the Hamburgische Dramaturgie, in his infallible ability todistinguish which part of the pleasure or displeasure aroused by a performance is tobe attributed to the actor or to the author. The actor should not only think with the

author but think for him when he has committed some error, however excusable.Lessing then pronounces unequivocal judgment when discussing a scene from theopening premire of the Nationaltheater: the actor has conferred on the lines abeauty for which the playwright can arrogate to himself no merit.48 It is preciselythe mediocrity of a text, he states, which can reveal the actors skills, just as,conversely, the qualities of a work of art can emerge against the mediocrity of aperformance.49

What, in Lessings opinion, gives autonomous value to acting compared withpoetry is the peculiarity of its language. If poetry is verbal and its rules those of theeloquence of the word, acting speaks a physical language and its rules are those ofbodily eloquence. The task is precisely to locate these rules: several modern writers

43 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Das Theater Herrn Diderot,Berlin, n. pub., 1760.44 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Briefe ber die Tanzkunst und ber die Ballette, vom Herrn Noverre,Hamburgund Bremen, Johann Hinrich Cramer, 1769.45 The review appeared in the Berlinische Privilegirte Staats- und gelehrte Zeitung (30 May 1754), now in G.E. Lessing, Werke, VII.46 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie, p. 41 and p. 87. Lessing is referring to Zare(IV, 6), analyzed inRmond de Sainte-Albines Le Comdien, pp. 208-212.47 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Christlob Mylius, Vorrede, Beitrge zur Historie und Aufnahme desTheaters, in G. E. Lessing, Werke, VI, pp. 29-30.48 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie, pp. 25-26 and p. 43.49 Ibid., p. 25 and p. 118.


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have approached the task, Lessing writes; it is now a question of drawing on andcontinuing their work.50

Put in these terms, the whole line of research could be reduced to the extreme

attempt to reconduct the actors art to within the rigid confines ofactio oratoria. Theoriginality of Lessings position, though, lies in the new conception of the actorsbody. Oratory and its gestural codes traditionally views the body as the material andphysical instrument through which the concepts and sentiments elaborated withinthe individuals inner self are made visible. For Lessing referring to several modernauthors, however, the body has its own dynamics and sensibility which are able toregulate gestures and expressions, and immediately gauge their precision andeffectiveness. In a word, the body becomes a pro-active interlocutor which interacts

with the psychic dimension and has a part in actually creating the sentiments. It is inthe light of this concept that Lessing reviews the essential questions of the actors art.

The first result is a criticism of emotionalist doctrine, revealed as partial and

ineffectual rather than wrong: indeed, Lessing clearly agrees with the basic principlewhich recognizes empathy as an indispensable component in true perfection of theart of acting. He never wavers in the conviction, which re-emerges in HamburgischeDramaturgiewhen he proclaims the supremacy of the actor who actually feels thelines compared with another who merely understands them.

How great is the distance between the actor who merely understands the meaning of apassage and another who feels it at the same time! Words the sense of which has beengrasped once and for all, and which the memory has mastered, may be pronouncedcorrectly even while the mind is taken up with things of very different moment: it willthen be impossible to express them with sentiment.51

Empathy then is not deleterious, as Antoine-Franois Riccoboni would have it:and indeed Lessing had promised the Beitrge readers a German translation ofRmond de Sainte-Albines Le Comdien in 1750. He afterwards thought better of itand published only a compendium four years later, in volume one of the TheatralischeBibliothek, explaining that the complete text would be of little use since Rmond deSainte-Albine had quoted, in explanation, from French works with which theGerman actors were unfamiliar, and technical considerations divorced from concreteexamples and references were no more than a beautiful metaphysics of acting.52

There was also a second, considerably more important reason. LeComdiens mainprinciple could lead the reader into serious error. Rmond de Sainte-Albine maintainsthat the external modifications of the body are a natural consequence of the inner

essence of the soul. This is true, Lessing concedes, when we express ourselves indaily life: but in the theatre it is not enough. The public has no desire to see on thestage an imperfect rendering of the feelings as any ordinary person would expressthem in the same circumstances. The public expects to see expressions realized inthe best fashion possible i.e. in an exemplary, general way in that each mustdiscover in it something of his own expression.53

50 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Christlob Mylius, Vorrede, p. 29.51 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie, p. 35.52 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Auszug aus dem Schauspieler des Herrn Remond von Sainte Albine, inTheatralische Bibliothek, 4 vols., Berlin, Voss, 1754-1758, in G. E. Lessing, Werke, X, p. 248.53 Ibid., p. 249.


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Stage expressions, then, must be controlled and fine-honed, and therefore requirea system of rules: a grammar of body language. For Lessing this in no waycompromises the spontaneity and naturalness of acting: not because, as Antoine-

Franois Riccoboni would have it, the actor is able to create instant expressions soprecise as to convince the public is he truly involved in what he is acting, but becausethe control and correctness of his gestures never imperils the spontaneousrelationship between the actors inner self and its external manifestations. Bodily andmental sensibility are intimately interconnected in a dual relation. The process linking

what we feel and what we reveal marks its own pace, like breathing, from inside tooutside and vice-versa: just as the emotions are spontaneously projected into physicalexpression, in the same way expression modifies and models the mind of theindividual concerned.

It is my belief that when the actor is able to imitate all the signals and externalcharacteristics, all the changes to the body acquired by experience and which express a

given aspect, then his soul, through the impression received by the senses, will of itselfassume that state in its movements, attitudes and tones.54

Lessing returns to the same point later, in the Hamburgische Dramaturgie. Empathycan not only produce imperfect or unpredictable expressions, but can also bedistorted or actually cancelled by inadequate physical and material instruments on thepart of the actor. He may be gifted with much sentiment yet display none becausehis features, face and natural voice possess characteristics we habitually associate withcompletely different passions and feelings.55 In this case another actor would bepreferable, possessing a harmonious body, muscles he can command, and all thenecessary gifts of mimicry, so that he seems animated by the deepest feelings in the

very parts he plays not in accordance with his personal inspiration, but following asound model, since all that he says and does is mere mechanical imitation. This isaccording to the principle whereby the modifications of the soul, when followed byphysical modifications, are in their turn determined by the latter, as exemplified bythe actor expressing great anger:

if he perfectly imitates these characteristics, which can be successfully imitated if theactor so desires, then a dark sentiment of anger will inescapably take hold of him, and

will infallibly be reflected in his person, therein generating those mutations whichdepend not on our will alone: his countenance will take fire, his eyes flash, and hismuscles will contract; in short, he will truly appear an individual in prey to anger, albeit

without being it, and knowing no reason why he should be so.56

In Lessings opinion then bodily language can be learnt and perfected throughstudy and the application of a system of rules which, however, are not as yetformulated or available: hence the need to study and perfect the art of acting. Lessing

wasted no time in setting about it. All his energies, he stated in the introduction to LeComdien compendium, were trained on the writing of a short work on physical

54 Ibid.55 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie, p. 35.56 Ibid., pp. 35-36.


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eloquence, and indeed around 1754 he began on a treatise, Der Schauspieler, in whichHogarths influence is unmistakable.57

The projectremained incomplete, however, probably due to a mistaken premise:

on the one hand, the need to formulate a grammar of physical expression based onthe new principle of the dual dynamics between inner sentiment and outerexpression, and on the other, the impossibility of separating acting intended aseloquence of the body from the traditional terms ofactio oratoria, with its freight ofexpressive codes all founded on the principle of the unidirectional action ofsentiment on our outer manifestations. All oratorys accumulated knowledge thusbecomes, from Lessings perspective, an indispensable point of reference which issimultaneously impracticable, giving rise to a perception of the grammar of bodilyeloquence as a lost science, possessed by the ancients but extant only as aninapplicable fragment. The science had to be rediscovered, or even reinvented, since

what was truly useful, or even indispensable for the proposed study, was precisely the

part which was lost, such as the study of hand movements which, according to theoutline in Der Schauspieler seemed to constitute a relevant part of the proposedtreatise.58 Lessing returns to the question later, in the Hamburgische Dramaturgie:

Little is known of the chironomy of the ancients, as it is termed, namely the set of rulesthey had prescribed for moving the hands; but we know for certain that they hadelevated the language of the hands to a degree of perfection which our orators areunable so much as to suggest to us. It would appear that we have conserved but aninarticulate cry from this language: merely the ability to make movements but withoutconferring a stable meaning on them, or be able to link them together59

A theory of acting as bodily language was revealed then as an impossible task,

reduced to a statement of indispensable need which could not however be satisfied.At the end of the Hamburgische Dramaturgiewe find only a lapidary acknowledgment:we have actors, but lack a dramatic art. If it ever existed, Lessing concludes, we nolonger possess it; it has been lost, and must needs be entirely recreated.60

4. Sticotti and DiderotAntiemotionalist criticism found its extreme formulation in the early 1770s in

Diderot. The occasion was the publication of a treatise by Michel Sticotti, Garrick oules Acteurs Anglois, which Diderot vitriolically reviewed in the Correspondance littraire, aliterary and philosophical revue, circulated in handwritten form among the cultured

aristocracy of the time. The work, Diderot declared, was written in a style which isobscure, tortuous, verbose and laden with commonplaces.61Sticottis work was in actual fact a reworking of the 1755 edition of The Actor,

translated, as the prefacingAvertissementannounced, with much freedom to illustrate

57 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Der Schauspieler,in Gotthold Ephraim Lessings Theatralischer Nachlass, Berlin,1786, in G. E. Lessing, Werke, X, pp. 473-483.58 See ibid., pp. 478-480.59 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie, p. 39.60 Ibid., p. 410.61Denis Diderot, Sur une brochure intitule Garrick, ou les Acteurs Anglois, Correspondance littraire(15 October and 1 November 1769), in Correspondance littraire, philosophique et critique, par Grimm, Diderot,Raynal, Meister, etc., ed. by Maurice Tourneux, 16 vols., Paris, Garnier Frres, 1877-1882, IX, p. 134.


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how English actors were able to apply to the customs of their own country theprinciples of nature and of all nations.62 It was basically a treatise of acting withanecdotes and examples taken from the English and French stage, and Sticotti

seemed to have no idea that the The Actorwas in its turn derived from Rmond deSainte-Albines Le Comdien. This was possibly because the theoretical approach wascalqued faithfully on that of the 1755 English version, which had changed theemotionalist slant ofLeComdien, altering the balance between the different facultiesinvolved in acting.

Garrick ou les Acteurs Anglois is not, though, without typically emotionalistconsiderations. However well-prepared, an actor enters on stage a limproptu, soto speak, Sticotti writes, and his talents depend on the momentary disposition of hismind. Even the most expert actor when he faces the public is unable to guaranteethe finer details of his performance. Paradoxically it is this uncertainty, despite

which the actor manages to hold the mirror up to nature and paint the passions,

which at the creative moment itself elevates him to the stature of a great author.63

An emotionalist aspect is also behind Sticottis insistence that the actors personalcharacter should possess no strong traits which get in the way of the emotionsrequired for the various roles:

If the actor possesses no particular passion, then his heart will absorb them in theirentirety; he will feel them as the author felt them, and with certainty will reach thedegree of perfection attained by Garrick in such diverse parts. But this kind ofsensitivity, like intelligence, is one of the superior qualities which must be naturallypossessed and which all the strivings of art cannot supply.64

This type of consideration apart, however, the general drift of the treatise is

considerably different. For Sticotti, too, dramatic art is a science, and thus to bestudied as a science.65 Intelligence is without doubt one of the natural gifts which isuseful to an actor, and sensibility comes immediately after.66 If the truly sensitiveactor is able to arouse his own passions in the public, nature alone, withoutintelligence to regulate the sentiment, can only guide a blind man, who will becomeinappositely unruly or calm.67

Diderot had been interested in the theatre for many years by the time Garrick ou lesActeurs Angloiswas published. At twenty-one he had written a play, Est-il bon? Est-ilmchant?, and in Bijoux indiscrets, a novel from 1748, he had enumerated all the defectsof the French stage.68 In 1757 he had published the five-act Fils naturel, staged thesame year in a private theatre, then fourteen years later by the Comdie Franaise,

62 Michel Sticotti,Avertissement du traducteur, in Garrick ou les Acteurs Anglois, Paris, Lacombe, 1769. Thetreatise was first attributed to Antonio Fabio Sticotti, but subsequently and convincingly to Michel Sticotti by Claudio Melodolesi (Gli Sticotti: comici italiani in Europa, Roma, Edizioni di Storia eLetteratura, 1969). Sticottiswork hardly went unnoticed. Three editions came out between 1769 and1771: the second in 1770 (Paris, Costard) with the addition of the Avant-Propos du traducteur, butotherwise identical to the first, and the third in 1771 (Paris, Chez les Hritiers Rothe et Profit).63 Michel Sticotti, Garrick ou les Acteurs Anglois, p. 40.64 Ibid., pp. 71-72.65 Ibid., p. 19.66 Ibid., p. 61.67 Ibid., p. 43.68 Denis Diderot, Les Bijoux indiscrets, 2 vols., [Paris], Au Monomotapa, [1748].


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where it was a flop.69 Then in 1758 he had written a third play, Le Pre de Famille,performed in Marseilles and then in Paris in 1761.70 This play, restaged in 1769, was asuccess and was greatly influential in Germany, above all on Lessing and his

generation, in Italy and in Austria.More particularly, Diderot had formulated a proposal for a theatre reform,illustrated in the Entretiens sur Le Fils naturel, which prefaced his play, and in De la

posie dramatique, published as an appendix to his Pre de Famille. What Diderot aimedat was a sort of bourgeois tragedy, between traditional tragedy and comedy,reflecting the habits and concerns of the middle classes. The characters were torepresent the individuals peopling our daily life, reproducing their social status andmilieu. The three unities were to be loosely respected, without constituting aconstruction of any kind. The sets were to change considerably, becoming morenatural, with furnishings and objects from daily life. Costumes were to change in thesame way, and natural was the byword for acting too, which was to be modeled on

everyday behaviour.71

The actors were to use the whole stage, not simply centre-front, and expand their gestural range, which was to increase in importance,accompanying and sometimes replacing the words.

There is nothing which happens in society which may not be staged. Let us thenimagine two men, uncertain whether they be discontented or satisfied the each with theother, who wait for a third to make the situation clear: what shall they say to each other

while awaiting the arrival of the third? Nothing. They will come, go, reveal impatiencebut they will remain silent. They are in no danger of saying things they might regret.

This is an example of one scene almost the entirety of which is mimed: and so manymore could be cited!72

The stage directions in Fils natureland Pre de Familleare concrete examples of thisview of the scene and action. They begin with two detailed directions:

The scene is a sitting-room. A clavichord, some chairs and game-tables are visible; onone of these there is a tric-trac; on another, various leaflets; on one side, a loom fortapestries, etc. [] At the back, a sofa, etc. Dorval, alone. He is seated in an armchairnext to a table on which there lie a number of leaflets. He appears agitated. After a fewbrusque gestures, he leans against the arm of the chair, as if to sleep. He immediatelyrouses himself. He takes out his watch and states: It is just six oclock. He leans againstthe other arm, but immediately straightens up saying How can I sleep. He opens abook, at leisure, closing it almost immediately saying I am reading but understandnothing. He rises and walks about.73

At the front of the stage, the head of the family walking slowly, his head down, his armsfolded and with a preoccupied look. A little further down the stage, near the chimneyalong one wall of the room, the Commander and his nephew play at tric-trac. Behindthe Commander, slightly closer to the fire, Germeuil sits comfortably in an armchair,

69 Denis Diderot, Le Fils naturel, ou les preuves de la Vertu. Avec lhistoire vritable de la pice, Amsterdam,M. M. Rey, 1757.70 Denis Diderot, Le Pre de Famille: comdie and 5 actes et en prose; avec un Discours sur la posie dramatique,

Amsterdam, 1758.71 Denis Diderot, De la posie dramatique, in uvres compltes de Diderot, 20 vols., Paris, Garnier Frres,1875-1877, VII (1875), pp. 373-377.72 Ibid., p. 378.73 Denis Diderot, Le Fils naturel, in uvres compltes de Diderot,VII,p. 24.


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book in hand. He breaks off his reading every so often and looks tenderly at Ccilewhen she is absorbed in the game and cannot see him. The Commander guesses what ishappening behind his back. His suspicions create great anxiety in him, communicatedthrough his gestures.74

The reform project met with difficulties however, much criticism coming fromtheatre people themselves. One such was Marie-Jeanne de Laboras, actress then

writer of some standing, and wife of Antoine-Franois Riccoboni, who in a letter toDiderot explained that the innovations contained in the Pre de Famille were at

variance with the practical demands of theatre, both acoustic and visual. An actorwho is performing at some distance from centre-stage and turns to the side will beneither heard nor properly seen by the whole audience. In a position towards theback, she goes on, three feet from the lights, an actor no longer has a face, whileon many occasions a glance or a slight movement of the head, a smile or simpleeye movement can be charged with essential significance. Lastly, stage action without

words requires some time to be fully understood by the audience. And if a characterattracts attention by moving but remains mute, a chill descends, interest wanes andthe spectators become impatient.75

Diderot replied by simply restating his position more forcefully: if the presencelayout of the theatre made correct action impossible, then the theatre and not theaction was at fault. The distance and visibility factor were soon overcome: spectatorlyhabit and imagination would supply whatever the eye denied. It was only necessary tosee an actor some ten times at most, Diderot declared, to feel the acting at thefarthest distance. If then the imagination is engaged, the spectator will see evenfurther, and what he does not see will guess. In any case, an actor should never act

with his countenance alone, but with the whole person. Lastly, as regarded the time

of the action, no time, if it be true, can ever be too long or miscalculated.76

5.Artistic CreationThe above, then, presents Diderot on practical questions. His theoretical

comments on acting had been, evincing a general conception of an emotionalistaesthetics. The mechanisms, formulae and stylistic variations used by the actor, hereiterated on various occasions, are aimed at eliciting the emotive reactions of thepublic, and the poetic nature of the work of art is precisely its highly-chargedpassion, forcefulness and emotive intensity.

In general, the more civilized and genteel a people, the less are its customs poetic;gentility is a weakening process. When is it that nature furnishes art with models? Whenthe children tear their hair at the bedside of a dying father; when a mother bares herbreast and begs her son in the name of that which nourished him; when a friend cutsoff his hair and strews it over the body of his friend; when he who has supported hishead and led him to the stake then gathers his ashes and encloses them in an urn which

74 Denis Diderot, Le Pre de Famille, in uvres compltes de Diderot,VII,p. 187.75Lettre de Madame Riccoboni Monsieur Diderot (18 November 1758), in uvres compltes de Diderot,VII,pp. 395-397.76Rponse la lettre de Madame Riccoboni(27 November 1758), in uvres compltes de Diderot,VII, pp. 398-405.


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he then, on certain days, wets with tears; when dishevelled widows tear their cheekswith their nails [] I do not say that such customs are good, but that they are poetic.77

If these are the scenes to be reproduced in a work of art, it will clearly needs topossess a high emotional charge to produce an equivalent effect in the recipient.

This is obviously even more true of a play: hence the terms exhorting the dramatists.

Oh dramatic poets! The true applause you should aspire to is not the clapping of handsat the end of some particularly striking line, but the deep sigh from the soul, bringing itrelief, after a long silence. There exists a yet stronger emotion, which you could imagineif you were truly born for your art, and had fathomed all its magic: that of, as it were,torturing a group of people. Then shall the spirits be shaken, uncertain, indecisive,bewildered; and your spectators, like those whom in an earthquake see the walls of theirdwelling tremble and the earth escape from under their feet.78

Indeed all the features Diderots reform envisaged as desirable were tailored to

provoke an intense emotional reaction. The performance was to create a total effet dereelin the public: the illusion that the places and action reproduced were actually real.

When speaking of the Marseilles performance ofPre de Famille, Diderot observedwith satisfaction that before the first act was over, the spectators believed they werepart of the family and forgot they were at the theatre. These were not backdrops, buta private house.79 The language was not to be musical and artificial, the effectproduced by scansion and rhyme, but should break off and be taken up again likenatural speech. And lastly, as seen above, the gesture should accompany andsometimes effectually replace words, as happens in real life: all aspects whichconvince a spectator that he is taking part not in an illusion but in an actual scene to

which he will react with the appropriate emotional reactions.

If a play tends to create intense reaction in the public, it remains to be seen ofcourse if this extends to the playwright while writing it and the actor whileperforming it, or whether catalyst-like they are able to convey the emotion whilethemselves remaining untouched and lucidly able to operate all the technical skillsnecessary to work on the feelings of the observer.

Diderot had long maintained that emotional participation was an indispensablecomponent of artistic creation, in all its forms. Of the author he had written that thesoul alone, and not art, must produce the word, feature, or idea able to produce thenecessary effect. If an author is consciously aware of creating an effect, he willinevitably be unsuccessful, and if a poet is unable to exalt his reader it is because hehas failed to exalt himself. Poetry is produced by a tormented soul, a violent spirit, a

strong and ardent imagination.80 Before sitting down to create, the artist should havestarted from his sleep, arisen during the night, and run in his nightshirt, bare-footed,to fix his glimmers of ideas down on paper in the light of a lamp.81

77 Denis Diderot, De la posie dramatique, p. 370.78 Ibid., p. 314.79 Letter to Mademoiselle Volland (1 December 1760), in uvres compltes de Diderot, XIX (1876), p. 40.80 Denis Diderot, Observations sur Le Saisons. Pome par M. de Saint Lambert, in uvres compltes deDiderot, V (1875), p. 242 and p. 250.81 Denis Diderot, Salon de 1761,in uvres Compltes de Diderot, X (1876), p. 145.


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As regarded the actors, in his Entretiens sur Le Fils naturel Diderot had actuallyaffirmed in a passing comment not simply the primacy of feeling over reflection butthe possibility that sensibility could perform tasks normally entrusted to the intellect.

An actress of limited judgment and average penetrative powers but considerablesensibility will grasp a psychological situation with no difficulty [] poets, actors,musicians, painters, first-class singers, great dancers, tender lovers, the truly devoted, allthis company, enthusiastic, passionate, feels keenly and reflects but little.82

Later, in a series of letters to a young actress, Mademoiselle Jodin, Diderotmaintained the need to join sensibility and judgment when acting, since an actor

who possesses but sense and judgment is cold, and he who possesses only sensibilityis crazed. Moreover, acting must not be based on a series of studied gestures andeffects, predisposed and skillfully calculated: when inspiration comes from the soul,the actor is never aware what he will do, or in what way he will pronounce his lines.

Only the combination of sense, reflection and reason with passion and sensibilitywill allow the actor to reproduce on stage all the most effective details ofperformance.83

Only three years later however, by the time Sticottis treatise had been published,Diderots position would appear to have changed radically.84 While continuing toreiterate that soliciting the emotions of the spectator was an essential aim of aperformance, he now declared that the actors sensibility and ability to actually feelthe sentiments to be communicated was deleterious, and impeded the precision andaccuracy of gestures, intonation and movement. Sensibility was to be considered anenemy of study and reflection. All that Rmond de Sainte-Albine and Sticotti hadaffirmed as to the need to associate sensibility and reflection when interpreting a

character (convictions seconded, repeatedly, by Diderot himself) is therefore false.From this point of view Diderot was giving a considerably reductive reading of

Sticotti. If the aim was to demonstrate the negative effects of sensibility, it hardlymattered that Sticotti had insisted on the need to conjugate it with reflection, to theextent of declaring (following the last version of The Actor) the primacy ofintelligence over sentiment. It was more useful to consider Sticotti an absoluteemotionalist a non-existent figure, incidentally , who reduces acting to the simpleexercizing of sensibility and preaches the uselessness of technique.

This, however, was Diderots position. The review in the Correspondance littraireprovided the opportunity to list all the reasons for excluding emotionalism from theactors creative repertoire, and produced the germ for the subsequent extension into

Diderots Paradoxe sur le comdien.

82 Denis Diderot,Entretiens sur Le Fils naturel, p. 108.83 Denis Diderot, Lettres Mademoiselle Jodin, written between 1765 and 1767, in uvres Compltes deDiderot, XIX, pp. 389-390 and p. 392.84 An extensive literature exists on Diderots volte-face. A classic text is Y. Belaval, Lesthtique sansparadoxe de Diderot, Paris, Gallimard, 1950. Particularly interesting is J. R. Roach, The Players Passions.Studies in the Science of Acting,Anna Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1993, pp. 119-133.


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6. The Paradoxe and Its Reasoning. The Characteristics of SensibilityThe Paradoxe was written over the 1770s and underwent various modifications

before it was finally published in 1830, fully forty-six years after Diderots death.85 It

centres on the notion of artistic creation as imitation and representation, along theprevalent aesthetic lines of the eighteenth century. In his pictures, poems, sculptures,etc., the artist is not concerned with reproducing only the real, but flawed, world ofthe five senses, where gold, as Luigi Riccoboni observed, is mixed with mud. Theartist must produce forms which are of absolute beauty and perfection.

He perceives immediate reality, extrapolates an ideal model through theimagination, and then imitates or represents this model in his work. Art is thusmimesis: imitation, in different forms, in poetry, painting, sculpture, dance, of aparadigm which the artist has imaginatively conceived and perfected, purifying it ofmud.

In the case of acting, Diderot explains in the Paradoxe, the artistic process

develops through several stages. The playwright observes the forms of reality andimaginatively defines an ideal model (the plot and characters), then imitates andrepresents them in the lines of the script and possibly in the stage directionsindicating the sets, gestures and attitudes.

When the poet has given his dramatis personae the most suitable characters [] andpossesses some imagination, it is my belief that he must necessarily form images ofthem [] These images, formed on the basis of the characters, will then influence thelines and stage movements; not least if the poet evokes them, sees them, and fixes thembefore him, emphasizing the various changes.86

The actor gradually extracts the figure of the character as he reads and studies the

script. The script alone however will be insufficient for the characters transfer ontothe stage. The actor must then give the correct intonation to the lines, insert pauses,perform certain gestures and assume appropriate expressions. Even when theplaywrights directions are long and detailed, gaps remain which only the actors artcan fill:

There are points which it is almost better to leave to the actor [ ] The voice, tone,gesture, action: these belong to the actor; and it is this which most strikes us in therepresentation of the great passions.87

The actor in his turn also draws his inspiration from reality to complete the scriptwith the correct intonation, gestures, expressions, movements, pace and rhythm. He

85 Denis Diderot, Paradoxe sur le comdien, ouvrage posthume de Diderot,Paris, A. Sautelet et C. Libraires,1830. The first phase of composition is to be found in the ms. Lepinasse, conserved at the VoltaireFoundation (University of Oxford), which gives the text of the Observationswith variants which werethen integrated into the Paradoxe.The first available version of the Paradoxeis in the ms. Nageon inthe Bibliothque Nationale de France, and is datable to around 1773, with corrections and additionsfrom after the summer of 1777. A successive version, with minor variants, is contained in amanuscript conserved in St. Petersburg, on which the fourth manuscript now available is based, and

which was discovered in the Vandeul Collection. See J. Marsh Dieckmann, Des Observations auParadoxe, in Denis Diderot, Paradoxe sur le comdien, ed. by J. Marsh Dieckmann; G. Dulac; J. Varloot;Paris, Hermann, 1995, pp. 3-24.86 Denis Diderot, De la posie dramatique, p. 360.87 Denis Diderot,Entretiens sur Le Fils naturel, pp. 105-106.


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forms his own ideal image of the character, ready to be projected onto the stage. Onoccasions this ideal figure imagined by the actor is more perfect and successful thanthat imagined by the author; at other times, inferior. This depends on the respective

skill of the one and the other. The greatest of the poets, Diderot declares, is he wholeaves least to the imagination of the great actor,88althoughthe great actor can stillmanage to surpass him:

and there is nothing truer than Voltaire's exclamation, when he heard Clairon in a pieceof his, Did I really write that? [] Anyhow, at that moment the ideal type in thespeaking of the part went well beyond the poet's ideal type in the writing of it.89

Once the ideal figure is fixed in his imagination, the actor imitates it in his ownbody and voice in front of the audience. But to succeed convincingly he must notactually feel the passions he represents.

To demonstrate all of the above, Diderot accumulates throughout the Paradoxeamass of very varied observations with more urgency than clarity. Two main linesemerge however: the first concerning the characteristics of sensibility, the second thedifferences between stage representation and how we experience real events as theyhappen to and around us.

To truly feel the emotions of his part, Diderot observes, the actor must possess amind which is readily moved and reacts immediately to the images and situations inthe script. In other words, he must possess an acute sensibility, a gift of somecomplexity.

[Sensibility is] that disposition which accompanies organic weakness, which follows oneasy affection of the diaphragm, on vivacity of imagination, on delicacy of nerves,

which inclines one to being compassionate, to being horrified, to admiration, to fear, tobeing upset, to tears, to faintings, to rescues, to flights, to exclamations, to loss of self-control, to being contemptuous, disdainful, to having no clear notion of what is true,good and fine, to being unjust, to going mad.90

From an emotionalist viewpoint then the actor should then possess a sort ofemotive hyperactivity which escapes the control of the will and rational reflectionand acts according to its own, largely unpredictable dynamics. Our emotionalreactions emerge in spontaneous and generally unexpected forms, and with anintensity it is impossible to pre-establish.

For this reason, acting based on sensibility would be above all inconsistent anduncontrollable. The actor might appear sublime and superbly effective in a number

of scenes when in the apposite emotional state at the right time, but could equallyappear weak and flat as soon as the inner drive inexplicably flags. A perfect exampleis that of Mlle. Dumesnil, the celebrated representative of emotionalist acting and co-protagonist of the Paris stage with Mlle. Clairon. She arrives on stage withoutknowing what she is going to say; half the time she does not know what she issaying, even if then she has one sublime moment.91

88 Denis Diderot, The Paradox of Acting. Translated with Annotations from Diderots Paradoxe sur le comdienby Walter Pollock, London, Chatto and Windus, 1883, p. 75.89 Ibid., p. 55.90 Ibid., p. 56.91 Ibid., p. 12.


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Moreover, emotional reactions tend to consume themselves when the conditionsstimulating them are frequently repeated, and it is impossible for the actor tomaintain the same pitch and intensity of performance in subsequent repeats: full of

fire at the first performance, he would be worn out and cold as marble at the third.92

With no control over the dynamics of his inner reactions, the actor is then unableto regulate the swift changes of emotional states, from joy to calm, calm to surprise,amazement, sadness, terror, desperation, etc. required by many parts.93 Equallyimportant, trusting to his sensibility, and perceiving acting as reproducing thecharacters separate states of mind from moment to moment, the actor would beincapable of grasping the part in its complex entirety, to arrange its lights andshades, its forts and feebles so as to render the broad effect.94 Lastly, given his acuteemotive reactivity, the actor is in no way able to avoid interference from the innerresponses and motions elicited by his own daily life. The actor will have a father, amother, a wife, children, brothers, sisters, acquaintances, friends, a mistress, and

harassed and struck like us with an infinity of troubles would have mighty few daysleft to devote to our amusement.95This over-responsiveness poses such a threat that the actor must be wary not only

of his own natural sensibility, possessed in varying degrees by all flesh-and-bloodbeings, but similarly of the fake brand of actorly sensibility. When on stage,interpreting a part, pronouncing the characters lines and performing his actions, it iseasy for the actor to succumb to a strange, actorly sensibility which picks up all theechoes and spectres of the characters own emotions: a distorted and slightlyfebrile form of artificial emotion.

This fact of stage action generating its own heat and energy had already beennoted by dAigueberre. Aaron Hill opined that even assuming the poses required by

the part produced a strongly-braced tension in the nerves of the neck, arms and feetwhich could warm the actor and prime the emotive sphere.96 For dAigueberre andHill, however, this was a decided plus. Antoine-Franois Riccoboni had alsocommented on it, considering it neither positive nor negative but a physiologicalextraordinary motion of the blood due to the effort required to represent passionsthe actor did not actually feel.97

Diderot on the other hand considered fake sensibility as harmful. If the actorgives in to it, he will fall into mannerism and monotony, and must strip it from

92Ibid., p. 8.93 See ibid., pp. 38-39.94 Ibid., p. 95.95 Ibid., pp. 62-63.96 Cf. Jean Dumas dAigueberre, Seconde Lettre du Souffleur de la Comdie de Roen au Garon de Caff, ouEntretien sur le Defauts de la Declamation, Paris, Tabarie, 1730 p. 21; and Aaron Hill, The Works of the LateAaron Hill, 4 vols., London, Printed for the Benefit of the Family, 1753, I, p. 158.97 Antoine-Franois Riccoboni, LArt du Thtre, p. 41. In Rmond de Sainte-Albines Le Comdienthisfake warmth takes on a different meaning and is the negative result of overplayed gestures andshouts on the part of the actor to compensate his lack of feu (Le Comdien, pp. 41-42). See alsoClaude-Joseph Dorat, La dclamation thtrale, Paris, Sbastien Jorry, 1766, p. 79.


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him, imposing ferocious abnegation with a head of iron, expelling any forms ofinterior emotion from his interpretation.98

Diderot is careful however not to maintain that the whole creative process is

exclusively lucid and rational. When the author or actor are constructing their idealmodel, they can be guided by inspiration at various points, such as, for example,when the eyes of their imagination are suddenly confronted by unexpected traits andcharacteristics which are perfect, even essential, for the figure they are conjuring up.It is impossible to say who the prompter is, so to speak: they are a sort ofinspiration. But inspiration has nothing to do with febrile emotive passion.Inspiration arises, in Diderots opinion, in moments of cool reflection.99

Lastly, the range of emotions and states of mind which an actor can actuallyexperience is limited. Acting based on emotionalist principles would allow an actor toperform only parts similar to his own character, since he would actually be unable tofeel passions and states of mind inimical to his own personality, restricting his

repertoire unacceptably.

If by some impossible chance an actress were endowed with a sensibility comparable indegree to that which the most finished art can simulate, the stage offers so manydifferent characters for imitation, one leading part brings in so many opposite situationsthat this rare and tearful creature, incapable of playing two different parts well, would atbest excel in certain passages of one part; she would be the most unequal, thenarrowest, the least apt actress you can imagine.100

The actor, then, would have only a limited range of characters at his command,and companies would either have a great number of actors, or accept the idea ofoffering sub-standard performances of the majority of plays.101

7. Real Life-Theatre Difference. Actors and CharactersSo far Diderots critical line is basically analogous to that of Antoine-Franois

Riccoboni: emotivity disturbs and impedes a correct interpretation of the part sinceexpressive control is essential to acting. If the sound of the voice is raised or loweredby the twentieth part of a quarter of a tone, Diderot insists, they would ring false,and need laborious study if they are to solve a given problem. Then the actor mustknow exactly when to produce his handkerchief and shed tears.102

Control and consistency the actors ability to reproduce and repeat exactly andin the smallest detail the part he has rehearsed for so long thus become the

essential requisites for performance. On the other hand, he can only improve andfine-hone his performance if this is consistent and self-aware: year after year, as

98 Denis Diderot, The Paradox of Acting, pp. 23-24. Garrick too speaks of a warmth of the scene whichaffects the actor, in a letter to Helfrich Peter Sturz (3 January 1769), when discussing a performanceby Mlle. Clairon. See The Letters of David Garrick, 3 vols., ed. by D. M. Litte and G. M. Kahrl, London,Oxford University Press, 1963, II, p. 635.99 Denis Diderot, The Paradox of Acting, pp. 12-13.100 Ibid., p. 94.101 Ibid., p. 24.102 Ibid., pp. 15-16.


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regards his personal technical ability, and evening after evening as regards the singlepart to play.103Mlle. Clairon is the example of the perfect actress in this sense:

What acting was ever more perfect than Clairons? Think over this, study it; and youwill find that at the sixth performance of a given part, she has every detail of her actingby heart, just as much as every word of her part. Doubtless she has imagined a type,and to conform to this type has been her first thought [] When, by dint of hard work,she has got as near as she can to this idea, the thing is done. To preserve the samenearness is a mere matter of memory and practice.104

In parallel to this nucleus of arguments runs a strictly interconnected series ofconsiderations which follow Lessings line of distinction between real-life experienceand stage representation. In real life we express ourselves through externalmanifestations spontaneously dictated by our state of mind. If, though, we transferthe same realprocess onto the stage, the results are unconvincing and ineffectual: art

operates within its own system of rules and conventions, which do not coincide withthose of reality, so that nothing happens on the stage exactly as it happens innature.105 This is why the expressiveness of real life jars on stage, just as expressivitytailored to the stage would jar in daily life:

You give a recitation in a drawing-room; your feelings are stirred; your voice fails you;you burst into tears. You have, as you say, felt and felt deeply. Quite so; but had youmade up your mind to that? Not at all. Yet you were carried away; you surprised andtouched your hearers, you made a great hit. All this is true enough. But now transferyour easy tone, your simple expression, your every-day hearing, to the stage, and Iassure you, you will be paltry and weak. You may cry to your hearts content, and theaudience will only laugh.106

It is first and foremost the space in the theatre, Diderot explains, which prohibitsthe use of the expressions of real life. The space of the theatre is ample-to-vast,

which is why a debutante actress may perform very successfully in a private housebefore a restricted audience, but may be booed in a theatre, despite giving anidentical performance:

in her ground-floor room [] all was in proportion to the audience and the space;there was nothing that called for exaltation [] On the boards all conditions werechanged: there a different impersonation was needed, since all the surroundings wereenlarged. In private theatricals, in a drawing-room, where the spectator is almost on alevel with the actor, the true dramatic impersonation would almost have struck you as

being on an enormous, a gigantic scale, and at the end of the performance you wouldhave said confidentially to a friend, she will not succeed; she is too extravagant.107

It is not simply a question of space however. The fundamental difference is thedistance between a dramatis persona and a flesh-and-blood individual. In his

Entretiens sur Le Fils naturel Diderot had divided characters into two separate

103 See ibid., p. 8, p. 27 and p. 29.104 Ibid., pp. 9-10.105 Ibid., p. 5.106 Ibid., p. 18.107 Ibid., p. 81.


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categories, comic and tragic. In comedy, protagonists are types, each representing alarge number of people, while tragic figures are single and singular: out-of-the-ordinary heroes like Atilius Regulus, Brutus or Cato.108 But whether types or

individuals, as characters they are distinct from human beings. The figures of tragedypossess a greatness and force which is infinitely superior to that of real people, andexperience extreme passions which require expressive means onstage which aredisproportionate if compared to real-world counterparts. It logically follows that thenatural expression of feelings as experienced by the actor would be weak andinadequate: just as the movements, poses, cries and gestures suited to the Cleopatras,Merops and Agrippinas of theatre scripts, the vain images of poetry, would raiselaughter in society.109

The stature of comic characters on the other hand is very similar to that of normalhuman beings, but the comic character is a type-cast figure, paradigm of a wholecategory of humankind:

Billard, the clerk, is a tartufe; Grizel, the abb, is a tartufe, but he is not theTartufe.Toinard, the banker, was a miser, but he is not theMiser. The Miser, the Tartufe, weredrawn from the Toinards and Grizels in the world; they contain their broadest andmost marked features, but there is in them no exact portrait of an individual110

The onstage communication of feelings actually felt by the actor as a singleindividual would then again be inadequate for the expressive dimensions of a stagecharacter, to the extent that while for an emotionalist a character-actor affinity wasan advantage, for Diderot it becomes an obstacle.

A sure way to act in a cramped, mean style is to play ones own character. You are, let

us say, a tartufe, a miser, a misanthrope; you will play your part well enough, but youwill not come near what the poet has done. He has created theTartufe, theMiser, theMisanthrope.111

8. The Problems of the ParadoxeOf course the most famous pages of the Paradoxe are undoubtedly those

concerning the characteristics of sensibility and its incompatibility with the demandsof acting, but the essays importance probably lies firstly in its definition of actingscreative process. The actor forms an image of the character in his mind, elaboratingon that created by the playwright, and then imitates it through the physicalinstruments of the outer movements and expressions of the body. The actorlyprocess thus works in a completely analogous way to the mechanisms of literarycreation, and the actor is an artist on a par with the dramatic poet. His creative abilityis no longer measured by the right to cut or modify the words of the script. All thisbecomes a secondary problem. Creativity

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