imagines the attributes of the various characters, and is interested in their personality, he will, as a rule, be eager to see their tragedy or comedy in action.  He will then find that very much which he could not imagine with any definiteness presents new images every moment—­the eloquence of look and gesture, the by-play, the inexhaustible significance of the human voice.  There are people who fancy they have more music in their souls than was ever translated into harmony by Beethoven or Mozart.  There are others who think they could paint pictures, write poetry—­in short, do anything, if they only made the effort.  To them what is accomplished by the practised actor seems easy and simple.  But as it needs the skill of the musician to draw the full volume of eloquence from the written score, so it needs the skill of the dramatic artist to develop the subtle harmonies of the poetic play.  In fact, to do and not to dream, is the mainspring of success in life.  The actor’s art is to act, and the true acting of any character is one of the most difficult accomplishments.  I challenge the acute student to ponder over Hamlet’s renunciation of Ophelia—­one of the most complex scenes in all the drama—­and say that he has learned more from his meditations than he could be taught by players whose intelligence is equal to his own.  To present the man thinking aloud is the most difficult achievement of our art.  Here the actor who has no real grip of the character, but simply recites the speeches with a certain grace and intelligence, will be untrue.  The more intent he is upon the words, and the less on the ideas that dictated them, the more likely he is to lay himself open to the charge of mechanical interpretation.  It is perfectly possible to express to an audience all the involutions of thought, the speculation, doubt, wavering, which reveal the meditative but irresolute mind.  As the varying shades of fancy pass and repass the mirror of the face, they may yield more material to the studious playgoer than he is likely to get by a diligent poring over the text.  In short, as we understand the people around us much better by personal intercourse than by all the revelations of written words—­for words, as Tennyson says, “half reveal and half conceal the soul within,” so the drama has, on the whole, infinitely more suggestions when it is well acted than when it is interpreted by the unaided judgment of the student.  It has been said that acting is an unworthy occupation because it represents feigned emotions, but this censure would apply with equal force to poet or novelist.  Do not imagine that I am claiming for the actor sole and undivided authority.  He should himself be a student, and it is his business to put into practice the best ideas he can gather from the general current of thought with regard to the highest dramatic literature.  But it is he who gives body to those ideas—­fire, force, and sensibility, without which they would remain for most people mere airy abstractions.