Editing Method acting (section)

=== Henry Irving's 'Dual Consciousness' System ===
The techniques used by the English actor [[Henry Irving]], who died in 1905, are a precursor to the established ideas about method acting.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Shepherd |first=Michael |title=Dracula & Cruden Bay |year=2023 |isbn=9798864198599 |publication-date=2023 |pages=65}}</ref> These were described by [[Bram Stoker]], author of [[Dracula]], in two chapters of his book [[Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving]], published in 1907. Stoker had worked in close cooperation with Irving as the business manager of  the [[Lyceum Theatre, London|Lyceum Theatre]] in London, which Irving owned.

Some quotes from Stoker’s book:<ref>{{Cite book |last=Stoker |first=Bram |title=Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving |publisher=William Heinemann |year=1907}}</ref><blockquote>Irving and I were alone together one hot afternoon in August 1889, crossing in the steamer from Southsea to the Isle of Wight, and were talking of that phase of Stage Art which deals with the conception and development of character. In the course of our conversation, whilst he was explaining to me the absolute necessity of an actor's understanding the prime qualities of a character in order that he may make it throughout consistent, he said these words: “If you do not pass a character through your own mind it can never be sincere”. I was much struck with the phrase... Lest I should forget the exact words I wrote them then and there in my pocket-book. I entered them later in my diary. p. 244

Quoting Irving: ‘It is most important that an actor should learn that he is a figure in a picture, and that the least exaggeration destroys the harmony of the composition. All the members of the company should work toward a common end, with the nicest subordination of their individuality to the general purpose.’ p.252

And quoting Irving again: ‘Has not the actor who can... make his feelings a part of his art an advantage over the actor who never feels, but makes his observations solely from the feelings of others? It is necessary to this art that the mind should have, as it were, a double consciousness, in which all the emotions proper to the occasion may have full swing, while the actor is all the time on the alert for every detail of his method... The actor who combines the electric force of a strong personality with a mastery of the resources of his art, must have a greater power over his audiences than the passionless actor who gives a most artistic simulation of the emotions he never experiences.’ p.256

‘For the purely monkey arts of life there is no future they stand only in the crude glare of the present, and there is no softness for them, in the twilight of either hope or memory. With the true artist the internal force is the first requisite the external appearance being merely the medium through which this is made known to others.’ p.257. 

‘If an actor has to learn of others often primarily through his own emotions, it is surely necessary that he learn first to know himself. He need not take himself as a standard of perfection though poor human nature is apt to lean that way; but he can accept himself as something that he knows. If he cannot get that far he will never know anything. With himself then, and his self-knowledge as a foothold, he may begin to understand others.’ p.258</blockquote>It has been suggested that Bram Stoker used Irving's techniques to help him capture authenticity of tone while writing [[Dracula]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Moorhead |first=Joanna |date=9 Oct 2022 |title=Cutting his teeth: how Bram Stoker found his inner Dracula in Scotland. |work=The Observer |pages=3}}</ref><ref name=":0" />