So far, the writer of the article in question is right.  Where he goes wrong is in saying that I describe this frame—­the stage—­as being furnished with a set of puppets.  He admits that he speaks only by report, but he should have remembered, Sir, that report is not merely a lying jade, which, personally, I would willingly forgive her, but a jade who lies without lovely invention is a thing that I, at any rate, can forgive her, never.

What I really said was that the frame we call the stage was ’peopled with either living actors or moving puppets,’ and I pointed out briefly, of necessity, that the personality of the actor is often a source of danger in the perfect presentation of a work of art.  It may distort.  It may lead astray.  It may be a discord in the tone or symphony.  For anybody can act.  Most people in England do nothing else.  To be conventional is to be a comedian.  To act a particular part, however, is a very different thing, and a very difficult thing as well.  The actor’s aim is, or should be, to convert his own accidental personality into the real and essential personality of the character he is called upon to personate, whatever that character may be; or perhaps I should say that there are two schools of action—­the school of those who attain their effect by exaggeration of personality, and the school of those who attain it by suppression.  It would be too long to discuss these schools, or to decide which of them the dramatist loves best.  Let me note the danger of personality, and pass to my puppets.

There are many advantages in puppets.  They never argue.  They have no crude views about art.  They have no private lives.  We are never bothered by accounts of their virtues, or bored by recitals of their vices; and when they are out of an engagement they never do good in public or save people from drowning, nor do they speak more than is set down for them.  They recognise the presiding intellect of the dramatist, and have never been known to ask for their parts to be written up.  They are admirably docile, and have no personalities at all.  I saw lately, in Paris, a performance by certain puppets of Shakespeare’s Tempest, in M. Maurice Boucher’s translation.  Miranda was the mirage of Miranda, because an artist has so fashioned her; and Ariel was true Ariel, because so had she been made.  Their gestures were quite sufficient, and the words that seemed to come from their little lips were spoken by poets who had beautiful voices.  It was a delightful performance, and I remember it still with delight, though Miranda took no notice of the flowers I sent her after the curtain fell.  For modern plays, however, perhaps we had better have living players, for in modern plays actuality is everything.  The charm—­the ineffable charm—­of the unreal is here denied us, and rightly.