He carries in him the whole weight of the Zeitgeist; in
fact, everlasting negation lies on him--"
"You mean," we said, trying to speak as cheerfully as we
could, "that things are a little bit too much for him."
"His will," went on the Great Actor, disregarding our
interruption, "is paralysed. He seeks to move in one
direction and is hurled in another. 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_.
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