David Garrick: Britain's Greatest Actor
Evan Johnson
SID 11236888
Theater 366 Essay Final David Garrick: Britain’s Greatest Actor
David Garrick's contemporaries felt it would be vanity to describe his acting. David Garrick was considered to be the most influential and skilled actor of his time. Garrick is credited with revolutionizing the portrayal of character. His concept of experiencing the feelings of the character, is a concept that helped lead 18th-century theatre into a new naturalistic era. It was an approach to acting that was directly at odds with the theatrical philosophy prior to Garrick's inception. Garrick's innovative style known as naturalism, led the extremely popular and successful actor James Quin to remark “If this [method of Garrick's] is right, then we are all wrong". The style that was so admired and later copied by Garrick's peers was a combination of naturalism, classical representation of the passions, and exaggerated physicality.
Garrick was not the originator of naturalism, that distinction is Charles Macklin’s, although he is credited with its success. Pure naturalism can be characterized by Macklin's instruction of his players to ignore the cadence of tragedy, but simply speak the passage as you would in common life and with more emotional force. The term used to describe this new style of speech is called broken tones of utterance. It is a method of speech which concentrates more on the emotion in a verse rather than its meter. David Garrick was a opportunistic actor who borrowed from many different acting techniques. Garrick's naturalism was concerned more with the feeling of true emotion, the uniqueness of character, combined with the physical representation of the passions. Representation of the passions was an accepted artistic convention for expressing emotion. Le Brun, a late 17th-century century artist , wrote a "grammar" of the passions from Descartes earlier work. In doing so he gives a formal explanation of the 17th and eventually
SID 11236888
Theater 366 Essay Final David Garrick: Britain’s Greatest Actor
David Garrick's contemporaries felt it would be vanity to describe his acting. David Garrick was considered to be the most influential and skilled actor of his time. Garrick is credited with revolutionizing the portrayal of character. His concept of experiencing the feelings of the character, is a concept that helped lead 18th-century theatre into a new naturalistic era. It was an approach to acting that was directly at odds with the theatrical philosophy prior to Garrick's inception. Garrick's innovative style known as naturalism, led the extremely popular and successful actor James Quin to remark “If this [method of Garrick's] is right, then we are all wrong". The style that was so admired and later copied by Garrick's peers was a combination of naturalism, classical representation of the passions, and exaggerated physicality.
Garrick was not the originator of naturalism, that distinction is Charles Macklin’s, although he is credited with its success. Pure naturalism can be characterized by Macklin's instruction of his players to ignore the cadence of tragedy, but simply speak the passage as you would in common life and with more emotional force. The term used to describe this new style of speech is called broken tones of utterance. It is a method of speech which concentrates more on the emotion in a verse rather than its meter. David Garrick was a opportunistic actor who borrowed from many different acting techniques. Garrick's naturalism was concerned more with the feeling of true emotion, the uniqueness of character, combined with the physical representation of the passions. Representation of the passions was an accepted artistic convention for expressing emotion. Le Brun, a late 17th-century century artist , wrote a "grammar" of the passions from Descartes earlier work. In doing so he gives a formal explanation of the 17th and eventually