On May 30 1814, Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes to Charles Mathews and provides some advice on acting.
2, Queen’s Square, Bristol, May 30, 1814.
Dear Sir, Unusual as this liberty may be, yet as it is a friendly one, you will pardon it, especially from one who has had already some connection with the stage, and may have more. But I was so highly gratified with my feast of this night, that I feel a sort of restless impulse to tell you what I felt and thought.
Imprimis, I grieved that you had such miserable materials to deal with as Colman’s Solomon Grundy, a character which in and of itself (Mathews and his Variations ad libitum put out of the question) contains no one element of genuine comedy, no, nor even of fun or drollery. The play is assuredly the very sediment, the dregs of a noble cask of wine; for such was, yes, in many instances was and has been, and in many more might have been, Colmans dramatic genius.
A genius Colman is by nature. What he is not, or has not been, is all of his own making. In my humble opinion, he possessed the elements of dramatic power in a far higher degree than Sheridan: or which of the two, think you, should pronounce with the deeper sigh of self reproach, “Fuimus Troes! and what might we not have been?” But I leave this to proceed to the really astonishing effect of your duplicate of Cook in Sir Archy McSarcasm. To say that in some of your higher notes your voice was rather thinner, rather less substance and thick body than poor Cook’s, would be merely to say that A. B. is not exactly A. A. But, on the whole, it was almost illusion, and so very excellent, that if I were intimate with you, I should get angry and abuse you for not forming for yourself some original and important character. The man who could so impersonate Sir Archy McSarcasm might do anything in profound Comedy (that is, that which gives us the passions of men and their endless modifications and influences on thought, gestures, etc., modified in their turn by circumstances of rank, relations, nationality, etc., instead of mere transitory manners; in short, the inmost man represented on the superficies, instead of the superficies merely representing itself). But you will forgive a stranger for a suggestion? I cannot but think that it would answer for your still increasing fame if you were either previously to, or as an occasional diversification of Sir Archy, to study and give that one most incomparable monologue of Sir Pertinax McSycophant, where he gives his son the history of his rise and progress in the world. Being in its essence a soliloquy with all the advantages of a dialogue, it would be a most happy introduction to Sir Archy McSarcasm, which, I doubt not, will call forth with good reason the Covent Garden Managers thanks to you next season.
I once had the presumption to address this advice to an actor on the London stage: “Think, in order that you may be able to observe! Observe, in order that you may have materials to think upon! And thirdly, keep awake ever the habit of instantly embodying and realising the results of the two; but always think!”
A great actor, comic or tragic, is not to be a mere copy a fac simile, or but an imitation, of Nature. Now an imitation differs from a copy in this, that it of necessity implies and demands difference, whereas a copy aims at identity. What a marble peach on a mantelpiece, that you take up deluded and put down with pettish disgust, is, compared with a fruit-piece of Vanhuyser’s, even such is a mere copy of nature compared with a true histrionic imitation. A good actor is Pygmalion’s Statue, a work of exquisite art, animated and gifted with motion; but still art, still a species of poetry.
Not the least advantage which an actor gains by having secured a high reputation is this, that those who sincerely admire him may dare tell him the truth at times, and thus, if he have sensible friends, secure his progressive improvement ; in other words, keep him thinking. For without thinking, nothing consummate can be effected.
Accept this, dear sir, as it is meant, a small testimony of the high gratification I have received from you and of the respectful and sincere kind wishes with which I am Your obedient S. T. Coleridge.
Mathews, Esq., to be left at the Bristol Theatre.
pastnow 