“For our eyes to see! 
    Sons of wisdom, song, and power,
    Giving earth her richest dower,
    And making nations free—­
    A glorious company!

    “Call them from the dead
    For our eyes to see! 
    Forms of beauty, love, and grace,
    ‘Sunshine in the shady place,’
    That made it life to be—­
    A blessed company!”

ADDRESS

TO THE STUDENTS

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HARVARD

30Th March 1885

THE ART OF ACTING

I.

The occasion.

I am deeply sensible of the compliment that has been paid, not so much to me personally as to the calling I represent, by the invitation to deliver an address to the students of this University.  As an actor, and especially as an English actor, it is a great pleasure to speak for my art in one of the chief centres of American culture; for in inviting me here to-day you intended, I believe, to recognize the drama as an educational influence, to show a genuine interest in the stage as a factor in life which must be accepted and not ignored by intelligent people.  I have thought that the best use I can make of the privilege you have conferred upon me is to offer you, as well as I am able, something like a practical exposition of my art; for it may chance—­who knows?—­that some of you may at some future time be disposed to adopt it as a vocation.  Not that I wish to be regarded as a tempter who has come among you to seduce you from your present studies by artful pictures of the fascinations of the footlights.  But I naturally supposed that you would like me to choose, as the theme of my address, the subject in which I am most interested, and to which my life has been devoted; and that if any students here should ever determine to become actors, they could not be much the worse for the information and counsel I could gather for them from a tolerably extensive experience.  This subject will, I trust, be welcome to all of you who are interested in the stage as an institution which appeals to the sober-minded and intelligent; for I take it that you have no lingering prejudice against the theatre, or else I should not be here.  Nor are you disposed, like certain good people, to object to the theatre simply as a name.  These sticklers for principle would never enter a playhouse for worlds; and I have heard that in a famous city of Massachusetts, not a hundred miles from here, there are persons to whom the theatre is unknown, but who have no objection to see a play in a building which is called a museum, especially if the vestibule leading to the theatre should be decorated with sound moral principles in the shape of statues, pictures, and stuffed objects in glass cases.