How ardent and
conscientious was the struggle a thousand details in this volume bear
testimony. Perhaps the most curious is the description given in a
letter written after his retirement of the methods he had practiced
for repressing exaggeration in gesture, utterance or facial
expression. "I would lie down on the floor, or stand straight against
a wall, or get my arms within a bandage, and, so pinned or confined,
repeat the most violent passages of _Othello, Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth_,
or whatever would require most energy and emotion; I would speak the
most passionate bursts of rage under the supposed constraint of
_whispering them_ in the ear of him of her to whom they were
addressed, thus keeping both voice and gesture in subjection to the
real impulse of the feeling.... I was obliged also to have frequent
recourse to the looking-glass, and had two or three large ones in my
room to reflect each view of the posture I might have fallen into,
besides being under the necessity of acting the passion close to a
glass to restrain the tendency to exaggerate its expression--which was
the most difficult of all--to repress the ready frown, and keep the
features, perhaps I should say the muscles, of the face undisturbed,
whilst intense passion would speak from the eye alone.
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