Another of Belasco’s completely mistaken and indeed comically errant notions is set forth in the following paragraph from his “Story”:
“Coming to New York as a stranger, I knew I had a task before me _to introduce_ the _new style_ of acting which I felt was destined to take the place of the melodramatic method.... For a long time I had promised myself to give the public _a new style of acting and playwriting, all my own_.... New York audiences had been trained in _a school of exaggerated stage declamation, accompanied by a stage strut, and large, classic, sweeping gestures_, so, when _I introduced_ the _quiet acting_, we were laughed to scorn, and the papers criticised our ’milk and water’ methods. _It was all new_, and those who saw went away stunned and puzzled. We were considered extremists at the Madison Square Theatre, but we persisted, with the result that _our method_ prevails to-day.” [The italics are mine.--W. W.]
It is difficult to understand how such emanations of error could have proceeded from the pen of such an experienced actor, manager, dramatist, and observer as David Belasco, and it is even more difficult to be patient with them. New York audiences before his time had never been “trained in a school of exaggeration,” and there was nothing in the least new,--unless, perhaps, it were Sunday-school tameness,--in the style of acting that was exhibited in the Madison Square Theatre. Long before Belasco’s advent the New York audience had seen, enjoyed, admired, and accepted Edwin Booth as _Hamlet_ and _Richelieu_, Lester Wallack as _de Vigny_ and as _Don Felix_, Gilbert as _Old Dornton_, Blake as _Jesse Rural_, Chippindale as _Grandfather Whitehead_, Henry Placide as _Lord Ogleby_, Couldock as _Luke Fielding_, Jefferson as _Rip Van Winkle_, Salvini as _Conrad_ and _Sullivan_, Owens as _Caleb Plummer_, Walcot as _Touchstone_, Emery as _Bob Tyke_, Davenport as _St. Marc_, Elizabeth Jefferson (Mrs. Richardson) as _Pauline_, Agnes Robertson as _Jeanie Deans_, Mrs. Hoey as _Lady Teazle_, Laura Keene as _Marco_ and as _Peg Woffington_, Julia Bennett (Mrs. Barrow) as _Hypolita_ and _Cicely Homespun_, Mrs. Vernon as _Lady Franklin_, Mary Carr as _Temperance_, and Mary Gannon as _Prue_,--all of whom (and many more might be mentioned) were conspicuously representative of the most refined, delicate, “natural,” “quiet” style of acting that has been known anywhere. That the New York audience had seen “barnstormers” and “soapchewers” is true--but the educated, intelligent part of it had laughed at them before Belasco’s time just as heartily as it has since. I recollect evenings of frolic, many years ago, when I repaired, with gay comrades, to the old Bowery Theatre, with no other intent than to be merry over the proceedings of posers and spouters, of the _Crummles_ and _Bingley_ variety, who were sometimes to be found there. That tribe has always existed. Cicero derided it, in old Rome. In Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” written more than three hundred years ago, the _Prince_ condemns the “robustious, periwig-pated fellow,” who tears “a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings,” and utters his well-known, wise counsel to actors that they should “acquire and beget a temperance” that may give “smoothness” to their expression of even the most tempestuous passion. The movement toward artistic acting has always, apparently, been going on. Every student of theatrical history has read about the elocutionary improvement effected by David Garrick, in 1741. It is a matter of common knowledge that Macready was famous for the great excellence of his “quiet acting,” his wonderful use of facial expression, while never speaking a word. Edmund Kean, it has been authentically recorded, moved his audience to tears, merely by his _aspect_, while, as the _Stranger_, he sat gazing into vacancy, listening to the song,--sung for him, when he acted in this country, by Jefferson’s mother: