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TRAINING FOR THE STAGE
not brought into touch at the right times,
and kept in touch for a sufficiently long
time, with the stage itself. The French
have solved the problem. The Gallic actor
of high ambition acquires the machinery
or skeleton of his art in the Conservatory,
and, contemporaneously, in the theatre,
learns to rid himself of the mechanical
stiffness which is almost sure to follow
technical drill in enunciation, pose, and
gesture. If he did not get the lightening
up and limbering out of the stage, with
resulting freedom of movement and utter-
ance, the French say, his playing would
suggest the operation of a machine, whose
works are heard, and sometimes even seen.
On the other hand, if he were not disci-
plined in the Conservatory, his art, in many
of its particulars, would be wanting in
clarity and precision. The actor of the
highest grade must receive, therefore, the
twofold training, — the scholastic and the
theatrical. They order all these things in
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