It is to this admirable Émile 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; as the older man Got has the
longer and fuller record and may therefore be spoken of as the master.
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, Madame Plessy, Sarah Bernhardt,
Mademoiselle 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 Mademoiselle 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 comic manner 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 great deal of fantasy in his realistic parts and a great 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 Émile Augier and Jules Sandeau wrote together. M. Poirier,
the retired shopkeeper 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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