The Galaxy, April, 1877: Vol. XXIII.—April, 1877.—No. 4.Various
General
The Galaxy, April, 1877: Vol. XXIII.—April, 1877.—No. 4.
Various
American literature -- Periodicals
It is to this admirable Emile Got that M. Sarcey's second notice is
devoted. Got is at the present hour unquestionably the first actor at
the Théâtre Français, and I have personally no hesitation in accepting
him as the first of living actors. His younger comrade, Coquelin, has,
I think, as much talent and as much art; but the older man Got has the
longer and fuller record, and may therefore be spoken of as the master
_par excellence_. If I were obliged to rank the half dozen _premiers
sujets_ of the last few years at the Théâtre Français in their absolute
order of _talent_ (thank Heaven, I am not so obliged!), I think I
should make up some such little list as this: Got, Coquelin, Mme.
Plessy, Sarah Bernhardt, Mlle. Favart, Delaunay. I confess that I have
no sooner written it than I feel as if I ought to amend it, and wonder
whether it is not a great folly to put Delaunay after Mlle. Favart. But
this is idle.
As for Got, he is a singularly interesting actor. I have often wondered
whether the best definition of him would not be to say that he is
really a _philosophic_ actor. He is an immense humorist, and his
comicality is sometimes colossal; but his most striking quality is the
one on which M. Sarcey dwells--his sobriety and profundity, his
underlying element of manliness and melancholy, the impression he gives
you of having a general conception of human life and of seeing the
relativity, as one may say, of the character he represents. Of all the
comic actors I have seen he is the least trivial--at the same time that
for richness of detail his comicality is unsurpassed. His repertory is
very large and various, but it may be divided into two equal
halves--the parts that belong to reality and the parts that belong to
fantasy. There is of course a vast deal of fantasy in his realistic
parts and a vast deal of reality in his fantastic ones, but the general
division is just; and at times, indeed, the two faces of his talent
seem to have little in common. The Duc Job, to which I just now
alluded, is one of the things he does most perfectly. The part, which
is that of a young man, is a serious and tender one. It is amazing that
the actor who plays it should also be able to carry off triumphantly
the frantic buffoonery of Maître Pathelin, or should represent the
Sganarelle of the "Médecin Malgré Lui" with such an unctuous breadth of
humor. The two characters, perhaps, which have given me the liveliest
idea of Got's power and fertility are the Maître Pathelin and the M.
Poirier, who figures in the title to the comedy which Emile Augier and
Jules Sandeau wrote together. M. Poirier, the retired shop-keeper who
marries his daughter to a marquis and makes acquaintance with the
incommodities incidental to such a piece of luck, is perhaps the
actor's most elaborate creation; it is difficult to see how the
portrayal of a type and an individual can have a larger sweep and a
more minute completeness. The _bonhomme_ Poirier, in Got's hands,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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