establish a balance among the different talents of the actors.  The supreme excellence of one actor does not recompense you for the mediocrity of the others, which is brought by that very superiority into disagreeable prominence.  Again, accent is easier to imitate than movement, but movements are what strike us most violently.  Hence a law to which there is no exception, namely, under pain of being cold, to make your denouement an action and not a narrative.[279]

One of the strongest satires on the reigning dramatic style, Diderot found in the need that the actor had of the mirror.  The fewer gestures, he said, the better; frequent gesticulation impairs energy and destroys nobleness.  It is the countenance, the eyes, it is the whole body that ought to move, and not the arms.[280] There is no maxim more forgotten by poets than that which says that great passions are mute.  It depends on the player to produce a greater effect by silence than the poet can produce by all his fine speeches.[281] Above all, the player is to study tranquil scenes, for it is these that are the most truly difficult.  He commends a young actress to play every morning, by way of orisons, the scene of Athalie with Joas; to say for evensong some scenes of Agrippina with Nero; and for Benedicite the first scene of Phaedra with her confidante.  Especially there is to be little emphasis—­a warning grievously needed by ninety-nine English speakers out of a hundred—­for emphasis is hardly ever natural; it is only a forced imitation of nature.[282]

Diderot had perceived very early that the complacency with which his countrymen regarded the national theatre was extravagant.  He would not allow a comparison between the conventional classic of the French stage and the works of the Greek stage.  He insisted in the case of the Greeks that their subjects are noble, well chosen, and interesting; that the action seems to develop itself spontaneously; that their dialogue is simple and very close to what is natural; that the denouements are not forced; that the interest is not divided nor the action overloaded with episodes.  In the French classic he found none of these merits.  He found none of that truth which is the only secret of pleasing and touching us; none of that simple and natural movement which is the only path to perfect and unbroken illusion.  The dialogue is all emphasis, wit, glitter; all a thousand leagues away from nature.  Instead of artificially giving to their characters esprit at every point, poets ought to place them in such situations as will give it to them.  Where in the world did men and women ever speak as we declaim?  Why should princes and kings walk differently from any man who walks well?  Did they then gesticulate like raving madmen?  Do princesses when they speak utter sharp hissings?

People believe us to have brought tragedy to a high degree of perfection.  It is not so.  Of all kinds of literature it is the most imperfect.[283]