The actor who contends in favour of his creative art that he must experience within him the feeling of the dramatist, that he must actually persuade himself to feel his rôle with all its turning smiles and tears, speaks nonsense. So, too, must the auditor, yet who would term the auditor a creative artist? The actor who contends in favour of his creative art the exact opposite, that he is, to wit, a creative artist since he must theatrically create the dramatist’s moods, illusions and emotions without feeling them himself, also speaks nonsense. For so, too, in such a case as “Electra,” or “Ghosts,” or “No More Blondes,” must the auditor, yet who, again, would term the latter a creative artist? The actor who contends in favour of his creative art that two accomplished actors often “create” the same rôle in an entirely different manner, speaks nonsense yet again. For what is not creation in the first place does not become creation merely because it is multiplied by two. The actor who further contends in behalf of his creative art that if effective acting were the mere trickery that some maintain it to be, any person ordinarily gifted should be able, after a little experiment, to give an effective stage performance, speaks truer than he knows. Some of the most remarkable performances on the stage of the Abbey Theatre of Dublin have been given by just such persons. And there are numerous other instances. If acting is an art--and I do not say that it may not be--it at least, as an art, ill bears cross-examination of even the most superficial nature. III Acting is perhaps less an art than the deceptive echo of an art. It is drama’s exalted halloo come back to drama from the walls of the surrounding amphitheatre. Criticism of acting too often mistakes the echo for the original voice. Although the analogy wears motley, criticism of this kind operates in much the same manner as if it were to contend that an approximately exact and beautiful Ben Ali Haggin _tableau vivant_ reproduction of, say, Velasquez’s “The Spinners,” was creative art in the sense that the original is creative art. Acting is to the art of the drama much what these so-called living pictures are to the art of painting. If acting is to be termed an art, it is, like the living picture, a freak art, an art with belladonna in its eyes and ever, even at its highest, a bit grotesque.