John Philip Kemble

never the girl cried in a voice that made a dozen people look round i sometimes think it that the personal art is at an end and that henceforth we shall have only the arts capable no doubt of immense development in their way indeed they've already reached it of the stage-carpenter and the costumer in london the drama is already smothered in scenery the interpretation scrambles off as it can to get the old personal impression which used to be everything you must go to the poor countries and most of all to italy oh i've had it it's very personal said miriam knowingly you've seen the nudity of the stage the poor painted tattered screen behind and before that void the histrionic figure doing everything it knows how in complete possession the personality is in our english personality and it may not always carry us with it but the direction's right and it has the superiority that it's a human exhibition not a mechanical one i can act just like an italian miriam eagerly proclaimed i'd rather you acted like an englishwoman if an englishwoman would only act oh i'll show you-but you're not english said peter sociably his arms on the table i beg your pardon you should hear mamma about our race you're a jewess i'm sure of that he went on she jumped at this as he was destined to see later she would ever jump at anything that might make her more interesting or striking even at things that grotesquely contradicted or excluded each other that's always possible if one's clever i'm very willing because i want to be the english rachel then you must leave madame carr as soon as you've got from her what she can give oh you needn't fear you shan't lose me the girl replied with charming gross fatuity my name's jewish she went on but it was that of my grandmother my father's mother she was a baroness in germany that is she was the daughter of a baron peter accepted this statement with reservations but he replied put all that together and it makes you very sufficiently of rachel's tribe i don't care if i'm of her tribe artistically i'm of the family of the artists je m'affiche of any other i'm in the same style as that woman i know it you speak as if you had seen her he said amused at the way she talked of that woman oh i know all about her i know all about all the great actors but that won't prevent me from speaking divine english you must learn lots of verse you must repeat it to me sherringham went on you must break yourself in till you can say anything you must learn passages of milton passages of wordsworth did they write plays oh it isn't only a matter of plays you can't speak a part properly till you can speak everything else anything that comes up especially in proportion as it's difficult that gives you authority oh yes i'm going in for authority there's more chance in english the girl added in the next breath there are not so many others the terrible competition there are so many here not that i'm afraid she chattered on but we've got america and they haven't america's a great place you talk like a theatrical agent they're lucky not to have it as we have it some of them do go and it ruins them why it fills their pockets miriam cried yes but see what they pay it's the death of an actor to play to big populations that don't understand his language it's nothing then but the gros moyen all his delicacy perishes however they'll understand you Perhaps I shall be too affected, she said.

You won't be more so than Garrick, or Mrs. Siddons, or John Kemble, or Edmund Keene.

They understood Edmund Keene.

All reflection is affectation, and all acting's reflection.