Frenzied Fiction Part 14

One moment he sinks into the abyss. The next, he rises above the clouds.

His feet seek the ground, but find only the air--"

"Wonderful," we said, "but will you not need a good deal of machinery?"

"Machinery!" exclaimed the Great Actor, with a leonine laugh. "The machinery of _thought_, the mechanism of power, of magnetism--"

"Ah," we said, "electricity."

"Not at all," said the Great Actor. "You fail to understand. It is all done by my rendering. Take, for example, the famous soliloquy on death.

You know it?"

"'To be or not to be,'" we began.

"Stop," said the Great Actor. "Now observe. It is a soliloquy.

Precisely. That is the key to it. It is something that Hamlet _says to himself_. Not a _word of it_, in my interpretation, is actually spoken.

All is done in absolute, unbroken silence."

"How on earth," we began, "can you do that?"

"Entirely and solely _with my face_."

Good heavens! Was it possible? We looked again, this time very closely, at the Great Actor's face. We realized with a thrill that it might be done.

"I come before the audience _so_," he went on, "and soliloquize--thus--follow my face, please--"

As the Great Actor spoke, he threw himself into a characteristic pose with folded arms, while gust after gust of emotion, of expression, of alternate hope, doubt and despair, swept--we might say chased themselves across his features.

"Wonderful!" we gasped.

"Shakespeare's lines," said the Great Actor, as his face subsided to its habitual calm, "are not necessary; not, at least, with my acting. The lines, indeed, are mere stage directions, nothing more. I leave them out. This happens again and again in the play. Take, for instance, the familiar scene where Hamlet holds the skull in his hand: Shakespeare here suggests the words 'Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him well--'"

"Yes, yes!" we interrupted, in spite of ourself, "'a fellow of infinite jest--'"

"Your intonation is awful," said the Actor. "But listen. In my interpretation I use no words at all. I merely carry the skull quietly in my hand, very slowly, across the stage. There I lean against a pillar at the side, with the skull in the palm of my hand, and look at it in silence."

"Wonderful!" we said.

"I then cross over to the right of the stage, very impressively, and seat myself on a plain wooden bench, and remain for some time, looking at the skull."

"Marvellous!"

"I then pa.s.s to the back of the stage and lie down on my stomach, still holding the skull before my eyes. After holding this posture for some time, I crawl slowly forward, portraying by the movement of my legs and stomach the whole sad history of Yorick. Finally I turn my back on the audience, still holding the skull, and convey through the spasmodic movements of my back Hamlet's pa.s.sionate grief at the loss of his friend."

"Why!" we exclaimed, beside ourself with excitement, "this is not merely a revolution, it is a revelation."

"Call it both," said the Great Actor.

"The meaning of it is," we went on, "that you practically don't need Shakespeare at all."

"Exactly, I do not. I could do better without him. Shakespeare cramps me. What I really mean to convey is not Shakespeare, but something greater, larger--how shall I express it--bigger." The Great Actor paused and we waited, our pencil poised in the air. Then he murmured, as his eyes lifted in an expression of something like rapture. "In fact--ME."

He remained thus, motionless, without moving. We slipped gently to our hands and knees and crawled quietly to the door, and so down the stairs, our notebook in our teeth.

III WITH OUR GREATEST SCIENTIST

As seen in any of our College Laboratories

It was among the retorts and test-tubes of his physical laboratory that we were privileged to interview the Great Scientist. His back was towards us when we entered. With characteristic modesty he kept it so for some time after our entry. Even when he turned round and saw us his face did not react off us as we should have expected.

He seemed to look at us, if such a thing were possible, without seeing us, or, at least, without wis.h.i.+ng to see us.

We handed him our card.

He took it, read it, dropped it in a bowlful of sulphuric acid and then, with a quiet gesture of satisfaction, turned again to his work.

We sat for some time behind him. "This, then," we thought to ourselves (we always think to ourselves when we are left alone), "is the man, or rather is the back of the man, who has done more" (here we consulted the notes given us by our editor), "to revolutionize our conception of atomic dynamics than the back of any other man."

Presently the Great Scientist turned towards us with a sigh that seemed to our ears to have a note of weariness in it. Something, we felt, must be making him tired.

"What can I do for you?" he said.

"Professor," we answered, "we have called upon you in response to an overwhelming demand on the part of the public--"

The Great Scientist nodded.

"To learn something of your new researches and discoveries in" (here we consulted a minute card which we carried in our pocket) "in radio-active-emanations which are already becoming" (we consulted our card again) "a household word--"

The Professor raised his hand as if to check us.

"I would rather say," he murmured, "helio-radio-active--"

"So would we," we admitted, "much rather--"

"After all," said the Great Scientist, "helium shares in the most intimate degree the properties of radium. So, too, for the matter of that," he added in afterthought, "do thorium, and borium!"

"Even borium!" we exclaimed, delighted, and writing rapidly in our notebook. Already we saw ourselves writing up as our headline _Borium Shares Properties of Thorium_.

"Just what is it," said the Great Scientist, "that you want to know?"

"Professor," we answered, "what our journal wants is a plain and simple explanation, so clear that even our readers can understand it, of the new scientific discoveries in radium. We understand that you possess, more than any other man, the gift of clear and lucid thought--"

The Professor nodded.

"And that you are able to express yourself with greater simplicity than any two men now lecturing."

The Professor nodded again.