On Actors and the Art of Acting was published by Smith, Elder & Co. in 1875, collecting Lewes’s dramatic criticism from various periodicals over several decades. Lewes was one of the most knowledgeable and intelligent theatrical critics of the Victorian era — a man who had seen the great actors of Europe (in London, Paris, Berlin, and Weimar) and who brought both philosophical training and genuine passion for the theater to his criticism.
The book combines two modes: vivid portraits of individual actors (Rachel in her great French classical roles, Edmund Kean in Shakespeare, Macready in his final performances, Frédérick Lemaître in melodrama) and theoretical essays on the nature of acting as an art. Lewes argues that acting is genuinely an art — not mere imitation or mechanical execution of the playwright’s intentions — but an art of a peculiar kind: it requires the actor to feel the emotions they express (against Diderot’s famous argument that great acting requires coldness) while simultaneously controlling and shaping those emotions through technique.
The actor, in Lewes’s analysis, must possess both sensibility (the capacity to feel deeply) and intelligence (the capacity to judge, select, and shape what they feel into an artistically coherent performance). Neither alone is sufficient: sensibility without intelligence produces emotional chaos; intelligence without sensibility produces mechanical precision. The great actor combines both in a synthesis that appears natural but is actually the product of intense artistic discipline.
Collecting On Actors and the Art of Acting
First edition (Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1875): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition: $50–$150
- Later editions: $10–$25